exclaimed.
I burst out laughing, and I fear my laugh may have had an effect of
impertinence.
"Especially to Miss Anvoy, who's so easily shocked? Why do such things
concern _her_?" I asked, much at a loss.
"Because she's there, exposed to all his craft. Mr. and Mrs. Pudney
have been watching this; they feel she may be taken in."
"Thank you for all the rest of us! What difference can it make, when
she has lost her power to contribute?"
Again Mrs. Saltram considered; then very nobly: "There are other
things in the world than money," she remarked. This hadn't occurred to
her so long as the young lady had any; but she now added, with a
glance at my letter, that Mr. and Mrs. Pudney doubtless explained
their motives. "It's all in kindness," she continued as she got up.
"Kindness to Miss Anvoy? You took, on the whole, another view of
kindness before her reverses."
My companion smiled with some acidity. "Perhaps you're no safer than
the Mulvilles!"
I didn't want her to think that, nor that she should report to the
Pudneys that they had not been happy in their agent; and I well
remember that this was the moment at which I began, with considerable
emotion, to promise myself to enjoin upon Miss Anvoy never to open any
letter that should come to her with a stamp worked into the envelope.
My emotion and I fear I must add my confusion quickly increased; I
presently should have been as glad to frighten Mrs. Saltram as to
think I might by some diplomacy restore the Pudneys to a quieter
vigilance. "It's best you should take _my_ view of my safety," I at
any rate soon responded. When I saw she didn't know what I meant by
this I added: "You may turn out to have done, in bringing me this
letter, a thing you will profoundly regret." My tone had a
significance which, I could see, did make her uneasy, and there was a
moment, after I had made two or three more remarks of studiously
bewildering effect, at which her eyes followed so hungrily the little
flourish of the letter with which I emphasised them, that I
instinctively slipped Mr. Pudney's communication into my pocket. She
looked, in her embarrassed annoyance, as if she might grab it and send
it back to him. I felt, after she had gone, as if I had almost given
her my word I wouldn't deliver the enclosure. The passionate movement,
at any rate, with which, in solitude, I transferred the whole thing,
unopened, from my pocket to a drawer which I double-locked would have
amounted, for an initiated observer, to some such promise.
XII
Mrs. Saltram left me drawing my breath more quickly and indeed almost
in pain--as if I had just perilously grazed the loss of something
precious. I didn't quite know what it was--it had a shocking
resemblance to my honour. The emotion was the livelier doubtless in
that my pulses were still shaken with the great rejoicing with which,
the night before, I had rallied to the most potent inspirer it could
ever have been a man's fortune to meet. What had dropped from me like
a cumbersome garment as Saltram appeared before me in the afternoon on
the heath was the disposition to haggle over his value. Hang it, one
had to choose, one had to put that value somewhere; so I would put it
really high and have done with it. Mrs. Mulville drove in for him at a
discreet hour--the earliest she could presume him to have got up; and
I learned that Miss Anvoy would also have come had she not been
expecting a visit from Mr. Gravener. I was perfectly mindful that I
was under bonds to see this young lady, and also that I had a letter
to deliver to her; but I took my time, I waited from day to day. I
left Mrs. Saltram to deal as her apprehensions should prompt with the
Pudneys. I knew at last what I meant--I had ceased to wince at my
responsibility. I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade
if it would; but it didn't fade, and, individually, it has not faded
even now. During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again
Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I
_was_ so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener with
them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in
between Mr. Gravener and her sweet young friend--a state of things
only partly satisfactory to her so long as the advantage accruing to
Mr. Saltram failed to disengage itself from the cold mists of theory.
She intimated that her sweet young friend was, if anything, a trifle
too reserved; she also intimated that there might now be an opening
for another clever young man. There never was the slightest opening, I
may here parenthesise, and of course the question can't come up
to-day. These are old frustrations now. Ruth Anvoy has not married, I
hear, and neither have I. During the month, toward the end, I wrote to
George Gravener to ask if, on a special errand, I might come to see
him, and his answer was to knock the very next day at my door. I saw
he had immediately connected my inquiry with the talk we had had in
the railway carriage, and his promptitude showed that the ashes of his
eagerness were not yet cold. I told him there was something I thought
I ought in candour to let him know--I recognised the obligation his
friendly confidence had laid upon me.
"You mean that Miss Anvoy has talked to you? She has told me so
herself," he said.
"It was not to tell so that _I_ wanted to see you," I replied; "for it
seemed to me that such a communication would rest wholly with herself.
If however she did speak to you of our conversation she probably told
you that I was discouraging."
"Discouraging?"
"On the subject of a present application of the Coxon Fund."
"To the case of Mr. Saltram? My dear fellow, I don't know what you
call discouraging!" Gravener exclaimed.
"Well, I thought I was, and I thought she thought I was."
"I believe she did, but such a thing is measured by the effect. She's
not discouraged."
"That's her own affair. The reason I asked you to see me was that it
appeared to me I ought to tell you frankly that decidedly I can't
undertake to produce that effect. In fact I don't want to!"
"It's very good of you, damn you!" my visitor laughed, red and really
grave. Then he said: "You would like to see that fellow publicly
glorified--perched on the pedestal of a great complimentary fortune?"
"Taking one form of public recognition with another, it seems to me on
the whole I could bear it. When I see the compliments that are paid
right and left, I ask myself why this one shouldn't take its course.
This therefore is what you're entitled to have looked to me to mention
to you. I have some evidence that perhaps would be really dissuasive,
but I propose to invite Miss Anvoy to remain in ignorance of it."
"And to invite me to do the same?"
"Oh, you don't require it--you've evidence enough. I speak of a sealed
letter which I've been requested to deliver to her."
"And you don't mean to?"
"There's only one consideration that would make me."
Gravener's clear, handsome eyes plunged into mine a minute; but
evidently without fishing up a clue to this motive--a failure by which
I was almost wounded. "What does the letter contain?"
"It's sealed, as I tell you, and I don't know what it contains."
"Why is it sent through you?"
"Rather than you?" I hesitated a moment. "The only explanation I can
think of is that the person sending it may have imagined your
relations with Miss Anvoy to be at an end--may have been told they
were by Mrs. Saltram."
"My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an end," poor Gravener
stammered.
Again, for an instant, I deliberated. "The offer I propose to make you
gives me the right to put you a question remarkably direct. Are you
still engaged to Miss Anvoy?"
"No, I'm not," he slowly brought out. "But we're perfectly good
friends."
"Such good friends that you will again become prospective husband and
wife if the obstacle in your path be removed?"
"Removed?" Gravener vaguely repeated.
"If I give Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of she may drop her project."
"Then for God's sake give it!"
"I'll do so if you're ready to assure me that her dropping it would
now presumably bring about your marriage."
"I'd marry her the next day!" my visitor cried.
"Yes, but would she marry you? What I ask of you of course is nothing
less than your word of honour as to your conviction of this. If you
give it me," I said, "I'll place the letter in her hand to-day."
Gravener took up his hat; turning it mechanically round, he stood
looking a moment hard at its unruffled perfection. Then, very angrily,
honestly and gallantly: "Place it in hell!" he broke out; with which
he clapped the hat on his head and left me.
"Will you read it or not?" I said to Ruth Anvoy, at Wimbledon, when I
had told her the story of Mrs. Saltram's visit.
She reflected for a period which was probably of the briefest, but
which was long enough to make me nervous. "Have you brought it with
you?"
"No indeed. It's at home, locked up."
There was another great silence, and then she said: "Go back and
destroy it."
I went back, but I didn't destroy it till after Saltram's death, when
I burnt it unread. The Pudneys approached her again pressingly, but,
prompt as they were, the Coxon Fund had already become an operative
benefit and a general amaze; Mr. Saltram, while we gathered about, as
it were, to watch the manna descend, was already drawing the
magnificent income. He drew it as he had always drawn everything, with
a grand abstracted gesture. Its magnificence, alas, as all the world
now knows, quite quenched him; it was the beginning of his decline. It
was also naturally a new grievance for his wife, who began to believe
in him as soon as he was blighted and who to this day accuses us of
having bribed him to gratify the fad of a pushing American, to
renounce his glorious office, to become, as she says, like everybody
else. On the day he found himself able to publish he wholly ceased to
produce. This deprived us, as may easily be imagined, of much of our
occupation, and especially deprived the Mulvilles, whose want of
self-support I never measured till they lost their great inmate. They
have no one to live on now. Adelaide's most frequent reference to
their destitution is embodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth's
intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet looking for
another prop, but everyone is so dreadfully robust. With Saltram the
type was scattered, the grander, the elder style. They have got their
carriage back, but what's an empty carriage? In short, I think we were
all happier as well as poorer before; even including George Gravener,
who, by the deaths of his brother and his nephew, has lately become
Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is
criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper House and he has not yet
had high office. But what are these accidents, which I should perhaps
apologise for mentioning, in the light of the great eventual boon
promised the patient by the rate at which the Coxon Fund must be
rolling up?
For the Backs of Playing Cards
By Aymer Vallance
[Illustration: Backs of Four Playing Cards]
[Illustration: Table of Contents and Art]
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation, use of hyphens, and accent marks were standardized.
Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.
Missing (unprinted) letters were added. Spelling corrections are noted
below. Words in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
The illustration on the back cover of the magazine duplicated the
table of contents and list of illustrations, with the addition of
sketches at the top and bottom of the page. The text was not repeated
at the end of the book.
Corrections:
'resourse' to 'resource' ... whatever resource he could command ...
'do' to 'to' ... and to judge from its stout walls ...
'Rennuf' to 'Renouf' ... But Mr. Renouf may ...
'Chausée' to 'Chaussée' ... corner of the Chaussée d'Antin,...
'consciouness' to 'consciousness' ... imply a consciousness of guilt ...
'lettter' to 'letter' ... began to write a letter,...
'you're' to 'your' ... the idea of your being a governess?...
'musn't' to 'mustn't' ... she mustn't be oppressed ...
'senuous' to 'sensuous' ... nervous, sensuous, trembling,...
'architectual' to 'architectural' ... chief architectural ornaments;...
missing word 'you' added: ... only those who you really like,...
'hackeyed' to 'hackneyed' ... employ a hackneyed, and often quite ...
'wisdow' to 'wisdom' ... to borrow wisdom ...
'musn't' to 'mustn't' ... You mustn't suppose he's good looking ...
'lasping' to 'lapsing' ... has come very near lapsing....
'their' to 'there' ... hold that there was never ...