COLLISION.
"Lord Wynderbroke!" said Uncle David, and bowed rather ceremoniously.
Lord Wynderbroke, a little surprised, extended two fingers and said,
"How d'ye do, Mr. Arden?" and smiled drily, and then seemed disposed to
pass on.
"I beg your pardon, Lord Wynderbroke," said David Arden, "but would you
mind giving me a few minutes? I have something you may think a little
important to say, and if you will allow me, I'll say it in this
room"--he indicated the half-open door of the dining-room, in which
there was still some light--"I shall not detain you long."
The urbane and smiling peer looked on him for a moment--rather
darkly--with a shrewd eye; and he said, still smiling,--
"Certainly, Mr. Arden; but at this hour, and being about to write a
note, you will see that I have very little time indeed--I'm very sorry."
He was speaking stiffly, and any one might have seen that he suspected
nothing very agreeable as the result of Mr. Arden's communication.
When they had got into the dining-room, and the door was closed, Lord
Wynderbroke, with his head a little high, invited Mr. Arden to proceed.
"Then, as you are in a hurry, you'll excuse my going direct to the
point. I've come here in consequence of a note that reached me about an
hour ago, informing me that my niece, Alice Arden, has suffered a great
deal of annoyance. You know, of course, to what I refer?"
"I should extremely regret that the young lady, your niece, should
suffer the least vexation, from any cause; but I should have fancied
that her happiness might be more naturally confided to the keeping of
her father, than of a relation residing in a different house, and by no
means so nearly interested in consulting it."
"I see, Lord Wynderbroke, that I must address you very plainly, and even
coarsely. My brother Reginald does not consult her happiness in this
matter, but merely his own ideas of a desirable family connection. She
is really quite miserable; she has unalterably made up her mind. You'll
not induce her to change it. There is no chance of that. But by
permitting my brother to exercise a pressure in favour of your suit----"
"You'll excuse my interrupting for a moment, to say that there is, and
can be, nothing but the perfectly legitimate influence of a parent.
_Pressure_, there is none--none in the world, Sir; although I am not,
like you, Mr. Arden, a relation--and a very near one--of Sir Reginald
Arden's, I think I can undertake to say that he is quite incapable of
exercising what you call a pressure upon the young lady his daughter;
and I have to beg that you will be so good as to spare me the pain of
hearing that term employed, as you have just now employed it--or _at
all_, Sir, in connection with me. I take the liberty of insisting upon
that, _peremptorily_."
Mr. Arden bowed, and went on:
"And when the young lady distinctly declines the honour you propose, you
persist in paying your addresses, as though her answer meant just
nothing."
"I don't quite know, Sir, why I've listened so long to this kind of
thing from you; you have no right on earth, Sir, to address that sort of
thing to me. How dare you talk to me, Sir, in that--a--a--audacious tone
upon my private affairs and conduct?"
Uncle David was a little fiery, and answered, holding his head high,--
"What I have to say is short and clear. I don't care twopence about your
affairs, or your conduct, but I do very much care about my niece's
happiness; and if you any longer decline to take the answer she has
given you, and continue to cause her the slightest trouble, I'll make it
a personal matter with you. Good-_night_!" he added, with an inflamed
visage, and a stamp on the floor, thundering his valediction. And forth
he went to pay his brief visit to his brother--not caring twopence, as
he said, what Lord Wynderbroke thought of him.
Sir Reginald had got into his dressing-gown. He was not now in any pain
to speak of, and expressed great surprise at the sudden appearance of
his brother.
"You'll take something, won't you?"
"Nothing, thanks," answered David. "I came to beg a favour."
"Oh! did you? You find me very poorly," said the baronet, in a tone that
seemed to imply, "You might easily kill me, by imposing the least
trouble just now."
"You'll be all the better, Reginald, for this little attack; it is so
comfortably established in your foot."
"Comfortably! I wish you felt it," said Sir Reginald, sharply; "and it's
confoundedly late. Why didn't you come to dinner?"
David laughed good-humouredly.
"You forgot, I think, to ask me," said he.
"Well, well, you know there is always a chair and a glass for you; but
won't it do to talk about any cursed thing you wish to-morrow? I--I
never, by any chance, hear anything agreeable. I have been tortured out
of my wits and senses all day long by a tissue of pig-headed,
indescribable frenzy. I vow to Heaven there's a conspiracy to drive me
into a mad-house, or into my grave; and I declare to my Maker, I wish
the first time I'm asleep, some fellow would come in and blow my brains
out on the pillow."
"I don't know an easier death," said David; and his brother, who meant
it to be terrific, did not pretend to hear him. "I have only a word to
say," he continued, "a request you have never refused to other friends,
and, in fact, dear Reginald, I ventured to take it for granted you would
not refuse me; so I have taken Alice into town, to make me a little
visit of a day or two."
"You haven't taken Alice--you don't mean--she's not gone?" exclaimed the
baronet, sitting up with a sudden perpendicularity, and staring at his
brother as if his eyes were about to leap from their sockets.
"I'll take the best care of her. Yes, she _is_ gone," said David.
"But my dear, excellent, worthy--why, curse you, David, you can't
possibly have done anything so clumsy! Why, you forgot that Wynderbroke
is here; how on earth am I to entertain Wynderbroke without her?"
"Why, it is exactly because Lord Wynderbroke is here, that I thought it
the best time for her to make me a visit."
"I protest to Heaven, David, I believe you're deranged! Do you the least
know what you are saying?"
"Perfectly. Now, my dear Reginald, let us look at the matter quietly.
The girl does not like him; she would not marry him, and never will; she
has grown to hate him; his own conduct has made her despise and detest
him; and she's not the kind of girl who would marry for a mere title.
She has unalterably made up her mind; and these are not times when you
can lock a young lady into her room, and starve her into compliance; and
Alice is a spirited girl--all the women of our family were. You're no
goose like Wynderbroke--you only need to know that the girl has quite
made up her mind, or her heart, or her hatred, or whatever it is, and
she won't marry him. It is as well he should know it at first, as at
last; and I don't think, if he were a gentleman, peer though he be, he
would have been in this house to-night. He counted on his title: he was
too sure. I am very proud of Alice. And now he can't bear the
mortification--having, like a fool, disclosed his suit to others before
it had succeeded--of letting the world know he has been refused; and to
this petty vanity he would sacrifice Alice, and prevail on you, if he
could, to bully her into accepting him, a plan in which, if he
perseveres, I have told him he shall, besides failing ridiculously, give
me a meeting; for I will make it a personal quarrel with him."
Sir Reginald sat in his chair, looking very white and wicked, with his
eyes gleaming fire on his brother. He opened his mouth once or twice, to
speak, but only drew a short breath at each attempt.
David Arden rather wondered that his brother took all this so quietly.
If he had observed him a little more closely, he would have seen that
his hands were trembling, and perceived also that he had tried
repeatedly to speak, and that either voice or articulation failed him.
On a sudden he recovered, and regardless of his gout started to his
feet, and limped along the floor, exclaiming,--
"Help us--help us--God help us! What's this? My--my--oh, my God! It's
very bad!" He was stumping round and round the table, near which he had
sat, and restlessly shoving the pamphlets and books hither and thither
as he went. "What have I done to earn this curse?--was ever mortal so
pursued? The last thing, this was; now all's gone--quite gone--it's
over, quite. They've done it--they've done it. _Bravo! bravi tutti!
brava!_ All--all, and everything gone! To think of her--only to think of
her! She was my pet." (And in his bleak, trembling voice, he cried a
horrid curse at her.) "I tell you," he screamed, dashing his hand on the
table, at the other end of which he had arrested his monotonous shuffle
round it, when his brother caught suddenly his vacant eye, "you think,
because I'm down in the world, and you are prosperous, that you can do
as you like. If I was where I should be, you daren't. I'll have her
back, Sir. I'll have the police with you. I'll--I'll indict you--it's a
police-office affair. They'll take her through the streets. Where's the
wretch like her? I charge her--let them take her by the shoulder. And my
son, Richard--to think of him!--the cursed puppy!--his _post obit_! One
foot in the grave, have I? No, I'm not so near smoked out as you take
me--I've a long time for it--I've a long life. I'll live to see him
broken--without a coat to his back--you villanous, swindling dandy, and
I'll----"
His voice got husky, and he struck his thin fist on the table, and clung
to it, and the room was suddenly silent.
David Arden rang the bell violently, and got his arm round his brother,
who shook himself feebly, and shrugged, as if he disdained and hated
that support.
In came Crozier, who looked aghast, but wheeled his easy-chair close to
where he stood, and between them they got him into it, trembling from
head to foot.
Martha Tansey came in and lent her aid, and beckoning her to the door,
David Arden asked her if she thought him very ill.
"I 'a' seen him just so a dozen times over. He'll be well enough, soon,
and if ye knew him as weel in they takins, ye'd ho'd wi' me, there's
nothing more than common in't; he's a bit teathy and short-waisted, and
always was, and that's how he works himself into them fits."
So spoke Tansey, into whose talk, in moments of excitement, returned
something of her old north-country dialect.
"Well, so he was, vexed with me, as with other people, and he has
over-excited himself; but as he has this little gout about him, I may as
well send out his doctor as I return."
This little conversation took place outside Sir Reginald's room-door,
which David did not care to re-enter, as his brother might have again
become furious on seeing him. So he took his leave of Martha Tansey, and
their whispered dialogue ended. One or two sighs and groans showed that
Sir Reginald's energies were returning. David Arden walked quickly
across the vast hall, in which now burned duskily but a single candle,
and let himself out into the clear, cold night; and as he walked down
the broad avenue he congratulated himself on having cut the Gordian
knot, and liberated his niece.
It was a pleasant walk by the narrow road, with its lofty groining of
foliage, down to the village outpost of Islington, where, under the
shadow of the old church-spire, he found his cab waiting, with Alice and
her maid in it.