ALBAN SEES LIFE
Alban had been five weeks at Hampstead when he met Willy Forrest for the
first time, and was able to gratify his curiosity concerning one whom he
believed to be Anna's lover.
The occasion was Richard Gessner's absence in Paris upon a business of
great urgency and the immediate appearance of the dashing captain at
"Five Gables." True, Anna behaved with great discretion, but, none the
less, Alban understood that this man was more to her than others, and he
did not fail to judge him with that shrewd scrutiny even youth may
command.
Willy Forrest, to give him his due, took an instinctive liking to the
new intruder and was not to be put off, however much his attentions were
displeasing to Anna. A cunning foresight, added to a fecund imagination
and a fine taste for all _chroniques scandaleuses_, led him to determine
that Alban Kennedy might yet inherit the bulk of Gessner's fortune and
become the plumpest of all possible pigeons. Should this be the case,
those who had been the young man's friends in the beginning might well
remain so to the end. He resolved instantly to cultivate an acquaintance
so desirable, and lost not a moment in the pursuit of his aims.
"My dear chap," he said on the third day of their association, "you are
positively growing grass in this place. Do you never go anywhere? Has no
one taught you how to amuse yourself?"
Alban replied that everything was so new to him that he desired no other
amusement than its enjoyment.
"It was almost years since I saw a tree that was not black," he said;
"the water used to drip through the roof of my garret, and there was a
family in the room on the opposite side of the landing. I don't think
you can understand what this house means to me. Perhaps I don't
understand myself. I'm almost afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I
should wake up in Union Street and find it all a fairy story. Mr.
Gessner says I am to stop with them always--but he might change his mind
and then it would be Commercial Road again--if I had the courage to go
back there."
Forrest had known evil times himself, and he could honestly appreciate
the possibility.
"Stick by the old horse while he sticks by you," was his candid advice.
"I expect he's under a pretty stiff obligation to some of your people
who are gone, and this is how he's paying it. You take all the corn you
can get and put it in your nose-bag. Anna herself tells me that the old
man is only happy while you are in the house. Play up to it, old chap,
and grease your wheels while the can's going round."
This very worldy advice fell upon ears strikingly deficient in
understanding subtleties. Alban could not dislike Forrest, though he
tried his best to do so. There was something sympathetic about the
fellow, rogue that he was, and even shrewd men admitted his
fascination. When the Captain proposed that they should go down to the
West End of London and see a little of life together, Alban consented
gladly. New experiences set him hungering after those supposed delights
which were made so much of in the newspapers. He reflected how very
little he really knew of the world and its people.
It was a day of early June when they set off in that very single
brougham which had carried Silas Geary to Whitechapel. The Captain,
having first ascertained the amount of money in his friend's possession,
proposed a light lunch in the restaurant of the Savoy, and there, to do
him justice, he was amusing enough.
"People are all giving up houses and living in restaurants nowadays," he
said as they sat at table. "I don't blame 'em either. Just think of the
number of nags in those big stables, all eating their heads off and
smoking your best cigars--eh, what? Why, I kept myself in weeds a few
years ago--got 'em for twopence halfpenny from a butler in Curzon Street
and never smoked better. You don't want to do that, for you can bottle
old Bluebeard's and try 'em on the dog--eh, what? When you marry, don't
you take a house. A man who lives in a hotel doesn't seem as though he
were married and that's good for the filly. Look at these angels here.
Why, half of them sold the family oak tree a generation ago, and
Attenborough down the street will tell you what their Tiffanies are
worth. They live in hotels because it's cheaper, and they wear French
paste because the other is at uncle's. That's the truth, my boy, and all
the world knows it."
Alban listened with an odd cynical smile upon his face, but he did not
immediately reply. This famous hotel had seemed a cavern of all the
wonders when first he entered it, and he would not willingly abandon his
illusions. The beautifully dressed women, the rustling gowns, the
chiffon, the lace, the feathers, the diamonds--might he not have thought
that they stood for all that pomp and circumstance of life which the
East End denounced so vehemently and the West End as persistently
demanded? Of the inner lives of these people he knew absolutely nothing.
And, after all, he remembered, men and women are much the same whatever
the circumstance.
"I like to be in beautiful places," he confessed in his turn, "and this
place seems to me very beautiful. Does it really matter to us, Forrest,
what the people do or what they are so long as they don't ask us to be
the same? Jimmy Dale, a parson in Whitechapel, used to say that a man
was just what his conscience made him. I don't see how the fact of
living in or out of a hotel would matter anyway--unless you leave your
conscience in a cab. The rest is mostly talk, and untrue at that, they
say. You yourself know that you don't believe half of it."
"My dear man, what would life be if one were incredulous? How would the
newspaper proprietors buy bread and cheese, to say nothing of pate de
foie gras and ninety-two Pommery if the world desired the truth? This
crowd is mostly on the brink of a precipice, and a man or a woman goes
over every day. Then you have the law report and old Righteousness in a
white wig, who has not been found out, to pronounce a judgment. I'd
like to wager that not one in three of these people ever did an honest
day's work in a lifetime. One half is rank idle--the other half is
trying to live on the remainder. Work it out and pass me the wine--and
mind you don't get setting up any images for time to knock down--eh,
what?"
Alban would not wrangle with him, and for a little while he ate in
silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such scraps of
conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street
it had been the fashion to decry idleness and the crimes of the
rich--the orators having it that leisure was criminal and ease a heinous
sin. Alban had never believed in any such fallacy. "We are all born
lazy," he had said, "and few of us would work unless we had to. Vanity
is at the bottom of all that we do. If no one were vain, the world would
stand still." In the Savoy, his arguments seemed to be justified a
hundredfold. A sense of both content and dignity came to him. He began
almost to believe that money could ennoble as well as satisfy.
Willy Forrest, of course, knew nothing whatever of thoughts such as
these. He was a past master in the art of killing time and he boasted
that he rarely knew an "idle hour." His programme for this day seemed
altogether beyond criticism.
"We'll look in at the club afterwards and play a game of bridge--you can
stand by me and see me win--or perhaps you'd like a side bet. Then we
might turn into the park to give the girls a treat--eh, what?--and go
on to the New Bridge Club to dress. After that there's the old sporting
shanty and a bit of a mill between Neddy Tinker and Marsh Hill. You
never saw a fight, I suppose? Man, but your education has been
neglected."
Alban smiled and admitted his deficiencies.
"I've seen many a set-to in Commercial Road and taken a hand sometimes.
Is it really quite necessary to my education?"
"Absolutely indispensable. You must do everything and be seen
everywhere. If I had time, I'd give you the personal history of half the
light-weights in this room. Look at that black crow in the corner there.
He's a Jew parson from Essex--as rich as bottled beer and always stops
here. Last time I rode a welter down his way they told me his favorite
text was "Blessed are the poor." He's a pretty figurehead for a
bean-feast, isn't he? That chirpy barrister next door has a practice of
fifteen thou. The blighter once cross-examined me in a card-sharping
case and made me look the biggest damned fool in Europe. Did I rest on
my laurels--eh, what? Why, sir, he can't cross a race-course now without
having his pocket picked. My doing, my immortal achievement. The little
Countess next door used to do stunts at the _Nouveau Cirque_. Lord
Saxe-Holt married her when he was hazy and is taming her. That old chap,
who eats like a mule, is Lord Whippingham. He hasn't got a sixpence, and
if you ask me how he lives--well, there are ways and means foreign to
your young and virgin mind. The old geezer used to run after little
Betty Sine at the Apollo--but she put an ice down his back at supper
here one night and then there were partings. Some day I'll take you to
the Blenheim and show you England's aristocracy in arm-chairs--we
haven't time to-day and here's the coffee coming. Pay up and be thankful
that your new pa isn't overdrawn, and has still a shekel or two in his
milk jug. My godfather!--but you are a lucky young man, and so you are
beginning to think, I suppose."
Alban did not condescend to answer a question so direct. He was still
quite uncertain as to his future, and he would not discuss it with this
irresponsible, who had undertaken to be his worldly mentor. When they
left the Savoy it was to visit a club in Trafalgar Square and there
discover the recumbent figures of aged gentlemen who had lunched not
wisely but too well. Of all that he had seen in the kingdoms of money,
Alban found this club least to his liking. The darkness of its great
rooms, the insolence of its members toward the servants who waited upon
them, the gross idleness, the trivial excitements of the card-room, the
secret drinking in remote corners--he had never imagined that men of
brains could so abase themselves, and he escaped ultimately to Hyde Park
with a measure of thankfulness he would not conceal.
"Why do people go to places like that, Forrest?" he asked as they went.
"What enjoyment do they get out of them?"
Willy Forrest, who had taken a "mahogany one" in the club and was
getting mighty confidential, answered him as candidly.
"Half of 'em go to get away from their wives, the other half to win
money--eh, what?"
"But why do they never speak to each other?"
"Put two game-cocks in a pen and then ask again. It's a club, my boy,
and so they think every other man a rogue or a fool."
"And do they pay much for the privilege?"
"That depends on the airs they give themselves. I've been pilled for
half the clubs in town and so, I suppose, I'm rather a decent sort of
chap. It used to be a kind of hall-mark to get in a good club, but we
live at hotels nowadays and don't care a dump for them. That's why half
of 'em are on the verge of bankruptcy. Don't you trouble about them,
unless you get a filly that bolts. I shall have to give up clubs
altogether, I suppose, when I marry Anna--eh, what?"
He laughed at the idea, and Alban remaining silent, he whistled a hansom
in a way that would have done credit to a railway porter, and continued
affably.
"You knew that I was going to marry Anna, didn't you? She told you on
the strict q.t., didn't she? Oh, my stars, how she can talk! I shall buy
an ear-trumpet when we're in double harness. But Anna told you, now
didn't she?"
"I have only once heard her mention your name--she certainly did not
speak of being engaged."
"They never do when the old man bucks--eh, what? Gessner don't like me,
and I'd poison him for a shilling. Why shouldn't I marry her? I can ride
a horse and point a gun and throw a fly better than most. Can Old
Bluebeard go better--eh, what? The old pot-hook, I'd play him any game
you like to name for a pony aside and back myself to the Day of
Judgment. And he's the man who talks about bagging a Duke for his girl!
Pshaw, Anna would kick the coronet downstairs in three days and the
owner after it. You must know that for yourself--she's a little devil to
rear and you can't touch her on the curb--eh, what, you've noticed it
yourself?"
Alban declared quite frankly that he had noticed nothing whatever. Not
for a fortune would he have declared his heart to this man, the hopes,
the perplexities, and the self-reproach which had attended ever these
early weeks in wonderland. Just as Anna's shrewdness had perceived, so
was it the truth that an image of perfect womanhood dazzled his
imagination and left him without any clear perception whatever. For
little Lois of the slums he had a sterling affection, begotten of long
association and of mutual sympathy--but the vision of Anna had been the
beatification of his love dream, so to speak, deceiving him by its
immense promise and leading him to credit Gessner's daughter with all
those qualities of womanhood which stood nearest to his heart's desire.
Here was a Lois become instantly more beautiful, more refined, more
winning. If he remained true to the little friend of his boyish years,
his faith had been obscured for a moment by this superb apparition of a
young girl's beauty, enshrined upon the altar of riches and endowed with
those qualities which wealth alone could purchase. Anna, indeed, held
him for a little while spellbound, and now he listened to Forrest as
though a heresy against all women were spoken.
"I did not know you were engaged," he said quite frankly. "Anna
certainly has never told me. Of course, I congratulate you. She is a
very beautiful girl, Forrest."
"That's true, old chap. You might see her in the paddock and pick her at
a glance--eh, what? But it's mum at present--not a whistle to the old
man until the south wind blows. And don't you tell Anna either. She'd
marry somebody else if she thought I was really in love with her--eh,
what?"
Alban shrugged his shoulders but had nothing to say. They had now come
to the famous Achilles Statue in Hyde Park, and there they walked for
half an hour amidst the showily dressed women on the lawn. Willy Forrest
was known to many of these and everywhere appeared sure of a familiar
welcome. The very men, who would tell you aside that he was a "wrong
'un," nodded affably to him and sometimes stopped to ask him what was
going to win the Oaks. He patronized a few pretty girls with
condescending recognition and immediately afterwards would relate to
Alban the more intimate and often scandalous stories of their families.
At a later moment they espied Anna herself in a superb victoria drawn by
two strawberry roans. And to their intense astonishment they perceived
that she had the Reverend Silas Geary in the carriage by her side.
"A clever little devil, upon my soul," said the Captain, ecstatically,
"to cart that fire-escape round and show him to the crowd. She must
have done it to annoy me--eh, what? She thinks I'm not so much an angel
as I look and is going to make me good. Oh, my stars--let's get. I shall
be saying the catechism if I stop here any longer."