A Young Man's Year
So all things promised bravely – Marie, the tender diplomatist, held a winning hand and was playing it well. Leave her to the skill that her heart taught her, and the game was won!
Among the accidents of life are relatives appurtenant to but ordinarily outside of the family circle. Mr. Sarradet owned one – an elder sister – in his eyes, by early memory and tradition, exceptionally endowed with the knowledge of the way to look after girls, and the proper things to be done in the interest of their dignity and virtue. She came up from Manchester, where she lived, to have her teeth seen to – not that there were not excellent dentists in Manchester, but her father had always gone to Mr. Mandells of Seymour Street and she had a fancy to go to Mr. Mandells's son (of Seymour Street still) – and stayed with her brother from Friday to Tuesday. Having seen what she saw, and had her doubts, and come to her own conclusions, she sat up late on Monday night, sat up till Arthur Lisle had departed and Marie was between the sheets, and even Raymond had yawned himself on to bed; and then she said abruptly to her brother Mr. Sarradet:
"It's a settled thing, I suppose, though it's not announced yet?"
Mr. Sarradet passed his hand over his hair-brush of a head, and pulled his moustache perplexedly. "I suppose it is," he answered lamely, quite conscious that Mrs. Veltheim possessed knowledge and commanded deference, but conscious also that, up to now, matters had gone on very well without her.
"You suppose!" said the lady. The two words carried home to a conscience hitherto guiltily easy. But Mrs. Veltheim left nothing to chance; she rammed the charge in. "If dear Marie had a mother!"
She alarmed the cautious old bourgeois– to the point of protesting that he felt no alarm whatever.
"He's a gentleman." He took a sip at his toddy. "No girl in the world has more self-respect." Another sip ended in "Perfect confidence!" vaguely murmured.
"Young men are young men."
"Not at all! I don't believe it of him for a minute." His protest was against the insinuation which even an identical proposition may carry.
"I rescued my Harriet just in time!"
"Damn your Harriet, and I wish you'd go back to Manchester!" It was not what he said to his respected sister. "Cases differ," was the more parliamentary form his answer took.
But the seed was sown before Mrs. Veltheim did go back to Manchester. It germinated in the cautious suspicious soul of the old shopkeeper, so trustful of a man's credit till the breath of a suspicion blew upon it, then so acute to note every eddying current of the air. He grew minded to confront Arthur Lisle with the attitude of Mrs. Veltheim – a lady for whom Arthur, on the strength of one evening's acquaintance, had conceived a most profound aversion.
She was a fat woman – broad, heavy, fair and florid, married to an exceedingly prosperous German. To Mr. Sarradet her opinion was, like her person, weighty; not always agreeable, but never unimportant. To Arthur she was already – before ever he had conceived of her as having or being entitled to have an opinion about him, his sentiments, or his intentions – an appreciable drawback, though not a serious obstacle, to the alliance which he was contemplating. He was, in fine, extremely glad that she and her husband, whom he defined and incarnated with all his imagination's power of vividness, lived in Manchester. If they too had dwelt in Regent's Park, it would not have been the same place to him. Collateral liabilities would have lurked round every corner.
By now, and notwithstanding a transitory disturbance created by the revelation of Mrs. Veltheim, Arthur's mind had subconsciously chosen its course; but emotionally he was not quite ready. His feelings waited for a spark to set them in a blaze – such a spark as might come any moment when he was with Marie, some special note of appeal sounded by her, some quick intuition of him or his mood, raising his admiration and gratitude, even some especially pretty aspect of her face suddenly striking on his sense of beauty. Any one of these would serve, but one of them was needed to change his present contentment into an impulse towards something conceived as yet more perfect. The tender shrewd diplomatist divined pretty well how things stood; she would not hurry or strive, that way danger lay; she waited, securely now and serenely, for the divine chance, the happy coincidence of opportunity and impulse. It was bound to come, and to come now speedily. Alas, she did not know that clumsy hands had been meddling with her delicate edifice!
Two days after Mrs. Veltheim had gone back to Manchester, old Sarradet left his place of business early, travelled by omnibus from Cheapside to the corner of Bloomsbury Street, and presented himself at the door of Arthur's lodgings. Arthur was at home; Marie had told him that she would not be able to meet him in Regent's Park that afternoon, as some shopping business called her elsewhere, and he was lounging through the hours, not (as it happened, and it does happen sometimes even when a man is in love) thinking about her much, but rather about that problem of his legal career which the waning of the vacation brought again to his mind. The appearance of Mr. Sarradet – who had never before honoured him with a visit – came as something of a surprise.
"As I was passing your corner, I thought I'd look in and see if you were coming up to our place this afternoon," Mr. Sarradet explained. "Because, if so, we might walk together."
Arthur said that he understood that Marie would be out, and therefore had not proposed to pay his friends a visit that day.
"Out, is she? Ah, yes!" He smiled knowingly. "You know what she's doing better than her father does!" He was walking about the little room, looking at Arthur's pictures, photographs, and other small possessions. "Well, you'll be coming again soon, I expect?"
"I expect so, if you'll have me," said Arthur, smiling.
Mr. Sarradet took up a photograph. "That's a nice face!"
"It's my mother, Mr. Sarradet."
"Your mother, is it? Ah, well now! And she lives at – ? Let me see! You did mention it."
"At Malvern – she and my sister."
"Your sister? Ah, yes! Unmarried, isn't she? Have you no other brothers or sisters?"
Under these questions – and more followed, eliciting a good deal of information about his family and its circumstances – Arthur's face gradually assumed its distinctively patient expression. The patience was very closely akin to endurance – in fact, to boredom. Why did the fussy old fellow worry him like that? Instinctively he hardened himself against Sarradet – against Sarradet's implied assertion of a right to ask him all these questions. Perhaps he knew that this resentment was not very reasonable. He felt it, none the less. To put him in any way to the question, to a test or a trial, was so entirely contrary to what had been Marie's way.
"And you're practising at the Bar, Mr. Lisle, eh?"
The infusion of obstinacy in the patience grew stronger. "I'm what is commonly called a briefless barrister."
Now old Sarradet knew that – and did not mind it under the circumstances. But the thought of that dowry was too much for him. He could not resist a little flourish. "Briefless! Oh, come, don't say that!" He pursed up his lips and shook his head humorously.
"It's unfortunately the case, Mr. Sarradet. I hope it won't always be so, of course."
"We must hope that, we must all hope that!" said Sarradet, rubbing his hands slowly together. "And in any case we none of us know what fortune has in store for us, do we?" He smiled, looking at Arthur with an interrogative air. He thought he had given the young man a lead, a good cue on which to speak. Arthur said nothing, and Sarradet's smile gradually vanished, being replaced by a look of some perplexity. He did not know how to go on; Mrs. Veltheim had told him what to do but had not told him how to do it. There was an awkward silence. Sarradet had taken up his hat and stood in the middle of the room, fingering it and eyeing Arthur with an air that seemed almost furtive. "Well, I must be going," he said at last.
Arthur moved towards the door of the room and opened it. Sarradet stepped into the hall, saying, "Perhaps you'll be looking in on us to-night?"
"Thanks awfully, but I've arranged to go to the theatre with a man to-night."
"To-morrow then?" Sarradet's tone sounded persistent.
Arthur had meant to look in to-morrow. It had been a pleasant prospect. Why was the old fellow making an obligation, a duty, of it?
"Yes, I'll come to-morrow," he said, rather curtly.
"Ah, that's right, that's right!" Arthur had opened the hall door by now. Sarradet took his hand and pressed it hard. "That'll be good news for Marie, won't it?" He had at last got a little nearer to what Mrs. Veltheim wanted.
"I'm very much flattered by your putting it like that." Arthur was still distant and defensive.
But Sarradet was desperate now – he must get out what he wanted to say before the door was shut on him. "Oh, nonsense! Come, Mr. Lisle, as man to man, we understand one another?"
The question was out at last. If he had put it a quarter of an hour earlier, Arthur Lisle would have answered it to his satisfaction, however little he relished its being put. But now it was not fated to have an answer. For on the very moment of its being put, there came interruption in a form which made the continuance of this momentous conversation impossible.
A barouche with a pair of fine bay horses, a barouche on Cee-springs, sumptuously appointed, clattered up the street and to the common amazement of the two men stopped at the door. The footman sprang down from the box and, touching his hat to a lady who occupied the carriage, waited for her instructions. But she paid no heed to him. She leant over the side of the carriage and looked at the two men for a moment. Sarradet took off his hat. Arthur Lisle just stared at the vision, at the entire vision, the lady, the carriage, the footman – the whole of it.
The lady's face broke into a bright smile of recognition.
"I came to call on Mr. Arthur Lisle. You must be Arthur, aren't you?" she said.
No, there was no possibility of Mr. Sarradet's getting his question answered now.
CHAPTER VI
A TIMELY DISCOVERY
When Arthur ran down the step and across the pavement, to take the hand which his visitor held out to him over the carriage door, Mr. Sarradet bowed politely, put his hat on, and turned on his heel. He was consumed with curiosity, but he had no excuse for lingering. He walked up Bloomsbury Street and along the east side of Bedford Square. But then, instead of pursuing a north-westerly course towards his home, he turned sharply to the right and, slackening his pace, strolled along Montague Place in the direction of Russell Square. He went about twenty yards, then turned, strolled back to the corner of Bedford Square and peered round it. He repeated these movements three or four times, very slowly; they consumed perhaps six or seven minutes. His last inspection showed the carriage still at the door, though neither the lady nor Arthur was visible. Evidently she was paying a call, as she had intimated; no telling how long it might last! "Well, I must go home," thought Mr. Sarradet, as he strolled slowly towards the east once more. He turned and walked briskly back. Just as he reached again the corner from which he had taken his observation, he made a sudden backward jump. He was afraid that he was caught! For the barouche dashed by him at a rapid trot, and in it sat the lady and Arthur Lisle. They did not see him; their heads were turned towards one another; they appeared to be engrossed in a lively conversation. The carriage turned westward, across Bedford Square; Sarradet watched it till it disappeared round the corner into Tottenham Court Road.
"That's quick work!" thought Mr. Sarradet; and in truth, if (as the visitor's words implied) she had never seen Arthur Lisle before, the acquaintance was going forward apace. Who could she be? He was vaguely troubled that Arthur Lisle should have – or make – a friend like that. The barouche somehow depressed him; perhaps it put him a little out of conceit with the dimensions of that precious dowry; it looked so rich. And then there had been the reserve, the distance, in Arthur's manner, his refusal to follow up leads and to take cues, and the final fact that the important question had (even though it were by accident) gone unanswered. All these things worked together to dash Mr. Sarradet's spirits.
He told Marie about his visit to Arthur. She was rather surprised at a sudden fancy like that (for so he represented it) taking hold of him, but her suspicions were not roused. When he went on to describe the arrival of the other visitor she listened with natural and eager interest. But the old fellow, full of his perplexities, made a false step.
"She was in the house nearly ten minutes, and then – what do you think, Marie? – they drove away together!"
"In the house ten minutes? Where were you all that time?"
"I was – er – strolling along."
"You must have strolled pretty slowly. Where did they overtake you, Pops?"
He grew rather red. "I can't remember exactly – " he began lamely.
She knew him so well; his confused manner, telling that he had something to conceal, could not escape her notice.
"I believe you waited round the corner to see what happened! Why did you spy on him like that?"
"I don't see any particular harm in being a little curious about – "
But she interrupted him. His spying after the carriage threw suspicion on his motives for his visit too. "Didn't you really go and see Mr. Lisle about anything in particular?"
"Anything in particular, my dear? What do you mean? I asked him to drop in to-morrow – "
"Did you talk about me?"
"Oh, well, you were mentioned, of course."
She leant her arm on the mantelpiece and looked down at him gravely. He read a reproachful question in her glance, and fidgeted under it. "Have you been meddling?" was what her gravely enquiring eyes asked. "Meddling as well as spying, Pops?"
He was roused to defend himself. "You've got no mother, Marie, and – "
"Ah!" she murmured, as a quick flash of enlightenment came. That was Aunt Louisa's phrase! She saw where it came from in a minute; it had always supplied Mrs. Veltheim with a much desired excuse for interfering. She went on in a hard voice – she was very angry – "Did you ask Mr. Lisle his intentions?"
"Of course not. I – I only took the opportunity of finding out something about his people, and – and so on. Really, I think you're very unreasonable, Marie, to object – " and he wandered or maundered on about his paternal rights and duties.
She let him go on. She had no more to say about it – no more that she could say, without revealing her delicate diplomacy. She would do that to nobody alive; she had never stated it explicitly even to herself. There she left the affair, left the last word and a barren show of victory to her father. How much mischief he had done she would find out later – perhaps to-morrow, if Arthur Lisle came. But would he – now? It was the effect of her father's meddling she feared, not that matter of the lady's visit. She knew that he had other friends than themselves. Why shouldn't one of them come and take him for a drive? It was Mrs. Norton Ward, very likely. Her quarrel with her father about his meddling even prevented her from asking what the visitor was like; whatever he might do, she at least would show no vulgar curiosity.
Yet it was the coincidence of the visit with the meddling that did the mischief. Without the first, the second would have resulted in nothing worse than a temporary annoyance, a transitory shock to Arthur's feelings, which a few days' time and Marie's own tact would have smoothed over. As it was, his distaste for old Sarradet's inquisition, an angry humiliation at having the pistol held to his head, a romantic abhorrence of such a way of dealing with the tenderest and most delicate matters, a hideous yet obstinate suspicion that Marie might be privy to the proceeding – all these set his feelings just in time for the unexpected visit.
The visit had been delightful, and delight is an unsettling thing. As Mrs. Godfrey Lisle – or Bernadette, as she bade him call her – purred about his room (so he put it to himself), still more when she declared for sunshine and carried him off to drive with her – in Regent's Park too! – he had felt a sudden lift of the spirit, an exaltation and expansion of feeling. The world seemed wider, its possibilities more various; it was as though walls had been torn down from around him – walls of his own choice and making, no doubt, but walls all the same. This sensation was very vague; it was little more than that the whole atmosphere of his existence seemed fresher, more spacious and more pungent. He owned ruefully that the barouche, the Cee-springs, the bay horses and the liveries, might have had something to do with his pleasure; he knew his susceptibility to the handsome things of material life – the gauds and luxuries – and ever feared to catch himself in snobbishness. But the essential matter did not lie there; his company was responsible for that – Bernadette, and the way she had suddenly appeared, and whisked him off as it were on a magic carpet for a brief journey through the heavens; it seemed all too brief.
"I came as soon as ever I could," she told him. "I got Esther Norton Ward's letter about you after we'd gone to Hilsey for Easter, and we got back only yesterday. But I had terrible work to get leave to come. I had to go down on my knees almost! Cousin Arthur, you're in disgrace, and when you come to see us, you must abase yourself before Godfrey. The Head of the House is hurt because you didn't call!"
"I know. It was awfully wrong of me, but – "
"I understand all about it. But Godfrey's a stickler for his rights. However Sir Oliver and I managed to bring him round ("Who's Sir Oliver?" asked Arthur inwardly), and when you've eaten humble pie, it will be all right. Do you like humble pie, Arthur?"
"No, I don't."
"No more do I." But she was smiling still, and he thought it was little of that stuff she would have to consume. "You see, you made quite an impression on Esther. Oh, and Sir Christopher came down for a week-end, and he was full of your praises too." She put on a sudden air of gravity. "I drove up to your door in a state of considerable excitement, and I had a momentary fear that the fat man with the black moustache was you. However it wasn't – so that's all right." She did not ask who the fat man really was; Arthur was glad – all that could come later.
In fact she asked him no questions about himself. She welcomed him with the glee of a child who has found a new toy or a new playmate. There was no hint of flirtation, no effort to make a conquest; a thing like that seemed quite out of her way. There was no pose, either of languor or of gush. The admiration of his eyes, which he could not altogether hide, she either did not notice or took as a matter of course – something universal and therefore, from a personal point of view, not important. On the other hand he caught her looking at him with interest and critically. She saw that she was caught and laughed merrily over it. "Well, I do feel rather responsible for you, you know," she said in self-defence.
Life does do funny things all of a sudden! He drove with her past the Sarradets' house. He seemed, for the moment, a world away from it. They drove together for an hour; they arranged that he should come to lunch on a day to be fixed after consultation with Godfrey – it appeared that Godfrey liked to be consulted – and then she set him down in the Marylebone Road. When he tried, rather stammeringly, to thank her, she shook her head with a smile that seemed a little wistful, saying "No, I think it's I who ought to thank you; you've given me an afternoon's holiday – all to myself!" She looked back over her shoulder and waved her hand to him again as she turned down Harley Street and passed out of sight. When she was gone, the vision of her remained with him, but vaguely and rather elusively – a memory of grey eyes, a smooth rich texture of skin, mobile changeable lips, fair wavy hair – these in a setting of the richest apparel; an impression of something very bright and very fragile, carefully bestowed in sumptuous wrappings.
He went to the Sarradets' the next evening, as he had been bidden, but he went with laggard steps. He could not do what seemed to be expected of him there – not merely because it was expected, though that went for something considerable, thanks to his strain of fastidious obstinacy, but because it had become impossible for him to – his feelings sought a word and found only a very blunt and ungracious one – to tie himself up like that. His great contentment was impaired and could no longer absorb him. His sober scheme of happiness was crumbling. His spirit was for adventure. Finality had become suddenly odious – and marriage presents itself as finality to those who are not yet married. If he had not been ready for the plunge before, now he was a thousand times less ready.
The evening belied the apprehensions he had of it. There was a merry party – Mildred Quain, Amabel Osling, Joe Halliday, and half-a-dozen other young folk. And Mr. Sarradet was out! Dining at his club with some old cronies, Marie explained. There were games and music, plenty of chaff and a little horseplay. There was neither the opportunity nor the atmosphere for sentiment or sentimental problems. In gratitude to fate for this, and in harmony with what was his true inward mood behind and deeper than his perplexity, Arthur's spirits rose high; he chaffed and sported with the merriest. Marie was easy, cordial, the best of friends with him – not a hint of anything except just that special and pleasant intimacy of friendship which made them something more to one another than the rest of the company could be to either of them. She was just as she had always been – and he dismissed his suspicion. She had known nothing at all of Mr. Sarradet's inquisition; she was in no way to blame for it. And if she were innocent, why, then, was not he innocent also? His only fault could lie in having seemed to her to mean what he had not meant. If he had not seemed to her to mean it, where was his fault, – and where his obligation? But if he acquitted Marie, and was quite disposed to acquit himself, he nursed his grudge against old Sarradet for his bungling attempt to interfere between friends who understood one another perfectly.
Marie watched him, without appearing to watch, and was well content. Her present object was to set him completely at his ease again – to get back to where they were before Mrs. Veltheim interfered and her father blundered. If she could do that, all would be well; and she thought that she was doing it. Had Mrs. Veltheim and Mr. Sarradet been the only factors in the case, she would probably have proved herself right; for she was skilful and tenacious, and no delicacy of scruple held her back from trying to get what she wanted, even when what she wanted happened to be a man to marry. There that toughness of hers served her ends well.
When he said good-night, he was so comfortable about the whole position, so friendly to her and so conscious of the pleasure she had given him in the last few weeks, that he said with genuine ruefulness, "Back to the Temple to-morrow! I shan't be able to play about so much!"
"No, you must work," she agreed. "But try to come and see us now and then, when you're not too busy."
"Oh, of course I shall – and I'm not at all likely to be busy. Only one has to stop in that hole – just in case."
"I mean – just when you feel like it. Don't make a duty of it. Just when you feel inclined for a riot like this, or perhaps for a quiet talk some afternoon."
This was all just what he wanted to hear, exactly how he wanted the thing to be put.
Yes, but Mr. Sarradet would not always be so obliging as to be out! The thought of Mr. Sarradet, whom he had really forgotten, suddenly recurred to him unpleasantly.
"That's what I like – our quiet talks," she went on. "But you've only to say the word, and we'll have company for you."
Her tone was light, playful, chaffing. He answered in the same vein. "I'll send my orders about that at least twelve hours beforehand."
"Thank you, my lord," and, laughing, she dropped him a curtsey.