All the way up to town Drake felt very depressed. It is strange that we
mortals never thoroughly appreciate a thing until we have lost it, or a
time until it has slipped past us; and Drake only realized, as the
express rushed along and took him farther and farther away from Shorne
Mills, how contented, and, yes, nearly happy, he had been there,
notwithstanding the pain and inconvenience of a broken limb.
As he leaned back and smoked, he thought of the little village in the
cleft of the cliffs, of the opaline sea, of the miniature jetty on which
he had so often sat and basked in the sunlight; but, more than all, he
thought of The Cottage, of the racketing, warm-hearted Dick, and--and of
Nell of Shorne Mills.
It seemed hard to realize, and not a little painful, that he should
never again sit in the parlor which now seemed to him so cozy, and
listen to the girl playing Chopin and Grieg; or ride beside her over the
yellow and purple moor; or lie coiled up at her feet as she sailed the
_Annie Laurie_.
He began to suspect that he had taken a greater interest in her than he
was aware of; he had grown accustomed to the sweet face, the musical
voice, the little tricks of manner and expression which went to make up
a charm which he now felt she certainly possessed. He looked round the
carriage and sighed as if he missed something, as if something had gone
out of his life.
They had been awfully good to him; they had in very truth played the
part of the good Samaritan; and in his mind he compared these simple
folk, buried in an out-of-the-way fishing village, with some of his
fashionable friends. Which of them would have nursed him as he had been
nursed at The Cottage, would have treated him as one of the family,
would have lavished upon him a regard nearly akin to affection? It was a
hollow world, he thought, and he wished to Heaven he had been born in
Shorne Mills, and got his living as a fisherman, putting in his spare
time by looking after, say, the _Annie Laurie_!
He had wired to his man, and he found his rooms all ready for him. He
wondered as he looked round the handsome and tastefully furnished
sitting room, while Sparling helped him off with his coat, whether he
should be able to afford to keep them up much longer.
"Any news, Sparling?" he asked. "Hope you've been all right," he added,
in the pleasant and friendly way with which he always addressed those
who did service for him.
"Thank you, my lord," said Sparling, "I've been very well; but I was
much upset to hear of your lordship's accident, and very sorry you
wouldn't let me come to you."
The man spoke with genuine sympathy and regret, for he was attached to
Drake, and was fully convinced that he had the best, the handsomest, and
the most desirable master in all England.
"Thanks; very much," said Drake; "but it was nothing to speak of, and
there was no reason for dragging you down there. There wasn't any
accommodation, to tell the truth, and you'd have moped yourself to
death."
"You're looking very well, my lord--a little thinner, perhaps," said
Sparling respectfully.
Drake sighed at the naive retort, then sighed unaccountably.
"Oh, I've done some fishing, boating, and riding," he said, "and I'm
pretty fit--fitter than I've been for some time. There's an awful pile
of letters, I see."
"Yes, my lord; you told me not to send them on. Will your lordship dine
at home to-night?"
Drake replied in the affirmative, had a bath, and changed, and sat down
to one of the daintily prepared dinners which were the envy and despair
of his bachelor friends. It was really an admirable little dinner; the
claret was a famous one from the Anglemere cellars, and warmed to a
nicety; the coffee was perfection; Sparling's ministrations left nothing
to be desired; and yet Drake sank into his easy-chair after the meal
with a sigh that was weary and wistful.
There had never been anything more than soup and a plain joint, with a
pudding to follow, at the dinners at The Cottage; but the simple meal
had been rendered a pleasant one by Dick's cheerful and boyish nonsense;
and whenever Drake looked across the table, there had been Nell's sweet
face opposite him, sometimes grave with a pensive thoughtfulness, at
others all alight with merriment and innocent, girlish gayety.
His room to-night seemed very dull and lonely. It was strange; he had
never been bored by his own society before; he had rather liked to dine
alone, to smoke his cigarette with the evening paper across his knee or
a book on the table beside him. He tried to read; but the carefully
edited paper, with its brilliant articles, its catchy little paragraphs,
and its sparkling gossip, didn't interest him in the least. He dropped
it, and fell to wondering, to picturing, what they were doing at that
precise moment at The Cottage. Mrs. Lorton, no doubt, was sitting in her
high-backed chair reading the _Fashion Gazette_; Dick was lounging just
outside the window, smoking a cigarette, mending his rod, and whistling
the last comic song. And Nell--what was Nell doing? Perhaps she was
playing softly one of the pieces he had grown fond of; or leaning half
out of the window squabbling affectionately with the boy.
Or perhaps they were talking of him--Drake. Did they miss him? At the
thought, he was reminded of the absurd song--"Will They Miss Me When I'm
Gone?" And, with something like a blush for his sentimental weakness, as
he mentally termed it, he sprang up and took his letters. They consisted
mostly of bills and invitations. He chucked the first aside and glanced
at the others; both were distasteful to him. He felt as if he should
like to cut the world forever.
And yet that wouldn't do. Everybody would say that he was completely
knocked over by the ruin of his prospects, and that he had run away. He
couldn't stand that. He had always been accustomed to facing the music,
however unpleasant it might be; and he would face it now. Besides, it
would never do to sit there moping, and wishing himself back at Shorne
Mills; because that was just what he was doing.
He turned over the gilt-edged cards and the scented notes--there seemed
to be a great many people in town, notwithstanding the deadness of the
season--and he selected one from a certain Lady Northgate. She was an
old friend of his, and she had written him a pretty little note, asking
him to a reception for that night. It was just the little note which a
thorough woman of the world would write to a man whom she liked, and who
had struck a streak of bad luck. Most of Drake's acquaintances who were
in town would be there; and it would be a good opportunity of facing the
situation and accepting more or less sincere sympathy with a good grace.
It was a fine night; and he walked to the Northgates' in Grosvenor
Square; and thought of the evening he and Nell had sailed in to Shorne
Mills with the lights peeping out through the trees, and the stars
twinkling in the deep-blue sky. It already seemed years since that
night, but he saw the girl's face as clearly as if she were walking
beside him now.
The face vanished as he went up the broad staircase and into the
brilliantly lighted room; and Shorne Mills seemed farther away, and all
that had happened there like a dream, as Lady Northgate held out her
hand and smiled at him.
She was an old friend, and many years his senior; but of course she
looked young--no one in society gets old nowadays--and she greeted him
with a cheerful badinage, which, however skillfully, suggested sympathy.
"It was a good boy to come!" she said. "I scarcely half expected you,
and Harry offered to bet me ten to one in my favorite gloves that you
wouldn't; but, somehow, I thought you would turn up. I wrote such a
pretty note, didn't I?"
"You did; you always do," said Drake. "It was quite irresistible."
Lord Northgate, who was the "Harry" alluded to, came up and gave Drake a
warm grip of the hand.
"What the deuce are you doing here?" he asked. "Thought you were
shooting down at Monkwell's place, or somewhere. Jolly glad Lucy didn't
take my bet. And where have you been?"
"With the Devon and Somerset," replied Drake, with partial truth.
"Wish I had!" grumbled Northgate. "Kept at the Office." He was in the
Cabinet. "There's always some beastly row, or little war, just going on
when one wants to get at the salmon or the grouse. I declare to goodness
that I work like a nigger and get nothing but kicks for halfpence! I'd
chuck politics to-morrow if it weren't for Lucy; and why on earth she
likes to be shut in town, and sweltering in hot rooms, playing this kind
of game, I can't imagine."
"But then you haven't a strong imagination, Harry, dear," said his wife
pleasantly.
"I've got a strong thirst on me," said Northgate, "and a still stronger
desire to cut this show. Come down to the smoking room and have a cigar
presently, old chap."
Drake knew that this was equivalent to saying, "I'm sorry for you, old
man!" and nodded comprehendingly.
"You're looking very well, Drake," said Lady Northgate, as her husband,
struggling with a fearful yawn, sauntered away. "And not at all
unhappy."
Drake shrugged his shoulders.
"What's the use? Of course, it's a bad business for me; but all the
yowling in the world wouldn't better it. What can't be cured must be
endured."
Lady Northgate nodded at him approvingly.
"I knew you'd take it like this," she said. "You won't go down to Harry
for a little while?"
"Oh, no," said Drake, with a smile. "I'm going the round; I'm not going
to shirk it."
He was one of the most popular men in London, and there were many in the
room who really sympathized with and were sorry for him; and Drake, as
he exchanged greetings with one and another, felt that the thing hadn't
been so bad, after all. He made this consoling reflection as he leaned
against the wall beside a chair in which sat a lady whom he did not
know, and at whom he had scarcely glanced; and he was roused from his
reverie by her saying:
"May I venture to trouble you to put this glass down?"
He took the glass and set it on the pedestal of the statuette beside
him, and, as in duty bound, returned to the lady. She was an extremely
pretty little woman, with soft brown hair and extremely bright eyes,
which, notwithstanding their brightness, were not at all hard. He felt,
rather than knew, that she was perfectly dressed, and he noticed that
she wore remarkably fine diamonds. They sparkled and glittered in her
hair, on her bosom, on her wrists, and on her fingers.
He had never seen her before, and he wondered who she was.
"You have just come up from the country?" she said.
The accent with which she made this rather startling remark betrayed her
nationality to Drake. The American accent, when it is voiced by a person
of culture and refinement, is an extremely pretty one; the slight drawl
is musical, and the emphasis which is given to words not usually made
emphatic, is attractive.
"Yes," said Drake. "But how did you know that?"
"Your face and hands are so brown," she replied, with a frankness which
was robbed of all offense by her placidity and unself-consciousness.
"Nearly all the men one meets here are so colorless. I suppose it is
because you have so little air and sun in London. At first, one is
afraid that everybody is ill; but after a time one gets used to it."
Drake was amused and a little interested.
"Have the men in America so much color?" he asked.
"Well, how did you know I was an American?" she inquired, with a
charming little air of surprise. "I suppose my speech betrayed me? That
is so annoying. I thought I had almost entirely lost my accent."
"I don't know why you should want to lose it," said Drake, honestly
enough. "It's five hundred times better than our London one!"
"I didn't say I wanted to exchange it for that," she remarked.
"Don't exchange it for any other, if I may be permitted to say so."
"That's very good of you," she said; "but isn't it rather like asking
the leopard not to change his spots? And after all, I don't know why we
shouldn't be as proud of our accent as you are of yours."
"I'm quite certain I'm not proud of mine," said Drake.
She smiled up at him over her fan; a small and costly painted affair,
with diamonds incrusted in the handle.
"You are more modest than most Englishmen," she said.
"I don't know whether to be grateful or not for that," remarked Drake.
"Are we all so conceited?"
"Well, I think you are all pretty well satisfied with yourselves," she
replied. "I never knew any nation so firmly convinced that it was the
pick of creation; and I expect before I am here very long I shall become
as fully convinced as you are that the world was made by special
contract for the use and amusement of the English. Mind, I won't say
that it could have been made for a better people."
"That's rather severe," said Drake. "But don't you forget that you were
English yourself a few years ago; that, in a sense, you are English
still."
"That's very nicely said," she remarked; "more especially as I didn't
quite deserve it. I was wanting to see whether I could make you angry."
Drake stared at her with astonishment.
"Why on earth should you want to make me angry?" he asked.
"Well, I've heard a great deal about you," she replied. "And all the
people who talked about you told me that you were rather hot-tempered.
Lady Northgate, for instance, assured me you could be a perfect bear
when you liked."
Drake smiled.
"That was extremely kind of Lady Northgate."
"Well, so long as it wasn't true. I've heard so much about you that I
was quite anxious to see you. I am speaking to Lord Drake Selbie, am I
not?"
"That's my name," said Drake.
"The nephew of Angleford?"
Drake nodded.
She looked up at him as if waiting to see how he took the mention of his
uncle's name; but Drake's face could be as impassive as a stone wall
when he liked.
"You know my uncle?" he asked, in a tone of polite interest.
"Yes," she said; "very well. I met him when he was in America. His wife
is a great friend of mine. You know her, of course?"
"I'm sorry to say I have not had that pleasure," said Drake. "I was
absent from England when the present Lady Angleford came over, after her
marriage."
"Oh, yes," said the lady. "I suppose I ought not to have mentioned her?"
"Good heavens! Why not?" asked Drake.
"Well, of course," she drawled slowly, but musically, "I know that Lord
Angleford's marriage was a bad thing for you. It wouldn't be my fault if
I didn't, seeing that everybody in London has been talking about it."
"Well, it's not a particularly good thing for me," Drake admitted; "but
it's no reason why I should dislike any reference to my uncle or his
wife."
"You don't bear her any ill will?" she asked.
This was extremely personal, especially coming from a stranger; but the
lady was an American, with an extremely pretty face and a charming
manner, and there was so much gentleness, almost deprecatory gentleness
in her softly bright eyes, that Drake, somehow, could not feel any
resentment.
"Not the very least in the world, I assure you," he replied. "My uncle
had a perfect right to marry when he pleased, and whom he pleased."
"I didn't think you'd be angry with him," she said, "because everybody
says you were such friends, and you are so fond of him; but I thought
you'd be riled with her."
Drake laughed rather grimly.
"Not in the least," he said. "Of course, I should have preferred that my
uncle should remain single, but I can't be absurd enough to quarrel with
a lady for marrying him. He is a very charming man, and perhaps she
couldn't help herself."
"That's just it--she couldn't," said the lady naively. "And have you
been to see your uncle since you've been back?" she asked.
"Not yet," replied Drake. "I only came back to London an hour or two
ago, but I will look him up to-morrow."
"I knew you would," she said; "because that was such a nice letter you
wrote, and such a pretty present you sent to Lady Angleford."
As she spoke, she transferred her fan to her left hand and raised her
right arm, and Drake recognized upon her wrist a bracelet which he had
sent Lady Angleford as a wedding present. He colored and frowned
slightly, then he laughed as he met the now timid and quite deprecatory
gaze of the upturned eyes.
"Was this quite fair, Lady Angleford?" he said, smiling.
"Well, I don't know," she said, a little pathetically. "I thought it
was, but I'm not quite sure now. You see, I wanted to meet you and talk
to you, and know exactly how you felt toward me without your knowing who
I was."
Drake went and sat down beside her, and leaned toward her with one arm
stretched on the back of her chair.
"But why?" he asked.
"Well, you see, I was a little afraid of you. When Lord Angleford asked
me to marry him and I consented, I didn't quite realize how things stood
between you and him. It was not until I came to Europe--I mean to
England--that I realized that I had, so to speak, come between your
uncle and you. And that made me feel bad, because everybody I met told
me that you were such a--a good fellow, as they call it----"
"One Englishman will become conceited, if you don't take care, Lady
Angleford," put in Drake, with a smile.
"That's what everybody says; and I found that you were so much liked and
so popular; and it was hateful to me that I should cause a quarrel
between you and Lord Angleford. It has made me very unhappy."
"Then don't be unhappy any longer, Lady Angleford," he said. "There has
been, and there need be, no quarrel between my uncle and me."
"Ah, now you make me happy!" she said; and she turned to him with a
little flush on her face which made her prettier than ever. "I have been
quite wretched whenever I thought of you or heard your name. People
spoke of you as if you had died, or got the measles, with a kind of pity
in their voices which made me mad and hate myself. You see, as I said, I
didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't realize that I was coming
between an hereditary legislator and his descendant and heir."
Drake could not help smiling.
"You had better not call my uncle an hereditary legislator, Lady
Angleford. I don't think he'd like it."
"But he is, isn't he?" she said. "It is so difficult for an American to
understand these things. We are supposed to have the peerage by heart;
but we haven't. It's all a mystery and a tangle to us, even the best of
us. But I try not to make mistakes. And now I want you to tell me that
we are friends. That is so, isn't it?"
She held out her tiny and perfectly gloved hand with a mixture of
timidity and impulsiveness which touched Drake.
"Indeed, I hope we are, Lady Angleford," he said.
She looked at him wistfully.
"You couldn't call me 'aunt,' I suppose?"
Drake laughed outright.
"I'm afraid I couldn't," he said. "You are far too young for that."
"I am sorry," she said. "I think I should have liked you to call me
aunt. But never mind. I must be satisfied with knowing that we are
friends, and that you bear me no ill will. And now, I think I will go.
My little plot has been rather successful, after all, hasn't it?"
"Quite a perfect success," said Drake. "And I congratulate you upon it."
"Don't tell Lord Angleford," she said. "He'll say it was 'so American';
and I do hate him to say that."
Drake promised that he would not relate the little farce to his uncle,
and got her cloak and took her down to the Angleford carriage. As he put
her in and closed the door, she gave him her hand, and smiled at him
with a little air of triumph and appeal.
"We are friends, aren't we?" she asked.
"The best of friends, Lady Angleford," he replied. "Good night."
He went back to say good night to Lady Northgate.
"You played it rather low down upon me, didn't you?" he remarked.
"My dear Drake, what could I do?" she exclaimed. "That poor little woman
was so terribly anxious to gain your good will. She didn't understand in
the least the harm she was doing you. And what will you do? She is
immensely rich--her father was an American millionaire----"
Drake's face hardened. One thing at least he knew he couldn't do: he
could not bring himself to accept charity from Lady Angleford. Lady
Northgate understood the frown.
"Don't kill me before all these people, Drake!" she said. "I dare say
it's very silly of me, but I can't help plotting for your welfare. You
see, I am foolish enough to be rather fond of you. There! Go down and
drink that soda and whisky with Harry. If you won't let your friends
help you, what will you do?"
"I give it up; ask me another. Don't you worry about me, my dear lady; I
shall jog along somehow."