Not long after that dinner, Lady Elspeth Gordon came up to town for
the first time after her husband's death.
She had been John Graeme's mother's closest friend, and when he was
left alone in the world, the dear old lady, before she had fully
recovered from her own sore loss, took upon herself a friendly
supervision of him and his small affairs, and their intercourse was
very delightful.
For Lady Elspeth knew everybody worth knowing, and all that was to be
known about the rest; and those gentle brown eyes of hers had missed
little of what had gone on around her since she first came to London,
fifty years before. She had known Wellington, and Palmerston, and John
Russell, and Disraeli, and Gladstone, and Louis Napoleon, and
Garibaldi, and many more. She was a veritable golden link with the
past, and a storehouse of reminiscence and delightful insight into
human nature.
And--since she knew everyone worth knowing, Graeme very soon
discovered that she knew Margaret Brandt, and Miss Brandt's very
frequent visits to Phillimore Gardens proved that she was an
acceptable visitor there.
Upon that, his own visits to Lady Elspeth naturally became still more
frequent than before,--approximating even, as she had said, the record
of the milkman,--and, though his dear old friend might rate him gently
as to the motives for his coming, he had every reason to believe that
her sympathies were with him, and that she would do what she could to
further his hopes.
He had never, however, openly discussed Margaret with her until that
afternoon of which I have already spoken.
Miss Brandt, you see, was always most graciously kind and charming
whenever they met. But that was just her natural self. She was
charming and gracious to everyone--even to Charles Pixley, the while
he swamped her with inane tittle-tattle, and higher proof of grace
than that it would be difficult to imagine.
And, since she was charming to all, Graeme felt that he could base no
solid hopes on her gracious treatment of himself, though the quiet
recollection of every smallest detail of it would set him all aglow
with hope for days after each chance meeting. And so he had never
ventured to discuss the matter with Lady Elspeth, and would not have
done so that afternoon had she not herself opened it.
The dear old lady's encouragement, however, deepened and strengthened
his hopes, in spite of her insidious hints concerning Mr. Pixley's
possible intentions. For she was a shrewd, shrewd woman, and those
soft brown eyes of hers saw far and deep. And, since she bade him
hope, hope he would, though every brick in London town became a Pixley
set on thwarting him.
The fact of Margaret's means being, for the present at all events, so
much larger than his own, he would not allow to trouble him. It was
Margaret herself he wanted, and had wanted long before he heard she
had money. The troublesome accident of her possessions should not come
between them if he could help it. He did not for one moment believe
she would ever think so ill of him as to believe that he wanted her
for anything but herself. And in any case, if kind Providence bestowed
her upon him, he would insist on her money being all settled on
herself absolutely and irrevocably.
Since that never-to-be-forgotten dinner, they had come across one
another at Lady Elspeth's with sufficient frequency to open the eyes
of that astute old lady to the heart-state of one of them at all
events. Possibly she knew more of the heart and mind of the other than
she cared to say in plain words; but, as a woman, she would naturally
abide by the rules of the game. In the smaller games of life it is
woman's privilege, indeed, to stretch and twist all rules to suit her
own convenience, but in this great game of love, woman stands by woman
and the womanly rules of the game--unless, indeed, she craves the
stakes for herself, in which case----
And so--although Lady Elspeth favoured him, that afternoon, only with
vague generalities as to the pleasures of hope, and afforded him no
solid standing-ground for the sole of his hopeful foot, but left him
to discover that for himself, as was only right and proper--his heart
stood high, and he looked forward with joyous anticipation to the
future.
The radiant sun of all his rosy heavens was Margaret Brandt, and he
would not for one moment admit the possibility of its clouding by
anything of the name of Pixley.
V
Graeme had not the entrée of the Pixley mansion.
Mr. Pixley he knew, by repute only, as the head of Pixley's, the great
law-firm, in Lincoln's Inn. Mrs. Pixley he had never met.
Mr. Pixley was a bright and shining light--yea, a veritable
light-house--of respectability and benevolence, and bushel coverings
were relegated to their proper place outside his scheme of life. His
charities were large, wide-spread, religiously advertised in the
donation columns of the daily papers, and doubtless palliated the
effects of multitudes of other people's sins.
He was a church-warden, president and honorary treasurer of numerous
philanthropical societies--in a word, at once a pillar and
corner-stone of his profession, his church, and his country.
He was also a smug little man with a fresh, well-fed face, bordered by
a touch of old-fashioned, gray side-whisker, rather outstanding blue
eyes, and he carried, and sometimes used as it was intended to be
used, a heavy gold pince-nez, which more frequently, however, acted as
a kind of lightning-conductor for the expression of his feelings. A
pince-nez of many parts:--now it was a scalping-knife, slaughtering
the hopes of some harried victim of the law; and again, it was a bâton
beating time to a hymn or the National Anthem; possibly it was, in
moments of relaxation, a jester's wand poking fun at ancient cronies,
though indeed a somewhat full-blooded imagination is required for
that. I have heard that once when, in the fervour of a speech, Mr.
Pixley dropped his pince-nez among the reporters below, he was utterly
unable to continue until the fetish was recovered and handed back to
him. It is an undoubted fact that though you might forget the exact
lines of Mr. Pixley's face and even his words, you never forgot the
fascinating evolutions of his heavy gold pince-nez. Like a Frenchman's
hands, it told even more than his face or his words.
He had a good voice, and a deportment which had, without doubt, been
specially created for the chairmanship of public meetings. And he was
Margaret Brandt's uncle by marriage, her guardian and trustee, and the
father of Charles Svendt, on whose account Lady Elspeth had thought
well to throw out warning hints of possible paternal intentions
respecting Margaret and her fortune.
From every point of view Graeme detested Mr. Pixley, though he had
never passed a word with him. He was too perfect, too immaculate. His
"unco' guidness," as Lady Elspeth would have said, bordered on
ostentation. The sight and sound of him aroused in some people a wild
inclination towards unaccustomed profanity and wallowing in the mire.
He was so undisguisedly and self-satisfiedly better than his fellows
that one felt his long and flawless life almost in the nature of a
rebuke if not an affront. He was too obtrusively good for this world.
One could not but feel that if he had been cut off in his youth, and
buried under a very white marble slab and an appropriate inscription,
both he and the world would have been far more comfortably
circumstanced. And John Graeme devoutly wished he had been so
favoured, for, in that case, he could neither have been Margaret's
uncle, trustee, nor guardian, and it is possible that there would also
have been no Charles Svendt Pixley to trouble the course of his own
true love.
But of Charles Svendt I have no harsh word to say. He could not help
being his father's son, and one must not blame him for the
unavoidable. And, in most respects, he was as unlike his worthy parent
as circumstances permitted.
He was on the Stock Exchange and doing well there. He had very
comfortable rooms near St. James's Square, and enjoyed life in his own
way and at his own not inconsiderable expense. When Margaret Brandt
was at home, however, he was much at his father's house in Melgrave
Square.
He made no pretence to unco' guidness whatever. He subscribed to
nothing outside the House, with two exceptions--the Dogs' Home at
Battersea, and the Home of Rest for Aged Horses at Acton--signs of
grace both these offerings, I take it!
To all other demands he invariably replied,--"Can't burn the candle
at both ends, my dear sir. The governor charitables for the whole
family. He'll give you something if you'll let him head the list and
keep it standing."
No, we have no fault to find with Charles Svendt. Time came when he
was weighed and not found wanting.
Graeme and he had run across one another occasionally--at the
Travellers' Club and elsewhere--but their acquaintance had never
ripened to the point of introduction till that night at the
Whitefriars' dinner. After that they were on nodding terms, but not
much more, until--well, until later.
So, though there was hope in his heart, born of Lady Elspeth's
approval and quiet suggestings, John Graeme was still somewhat
doubtful as to Margaret Brandt's feelings towards him, and quite at a
loss how to arrive at a more exact knowledge of them.
Too precipitate an advance might end in utter rout. And opportunities
of approach were all too infrequent for his wishes.
Their chance meetings were rare and exquisite pleasures,--to be looked
forward to with an eagerness that held within it the strange
possibility of pain through sheer excess of longing;--to be enjoyed
like the glory of a fleeting dream;--to be looked back upon with
touches of regret at opportunities missed;--to be dwelt upon for days
and nights with alternate hope and misgiving, with the rapturous
recalling of every tone of the sweet voice, of every word it had
uttered, of every gracious gesture, and every most minute and subtle
change in the sweetest face and the frankest and most charming eyes in
the world.