Works of grant allen, p.249
Works of Grant Allen, page 249
Douglas Harrison gazed across at Basil Maclaine in blank surprise, and Basil Maclaine gazed back in blank surprise at Douglas Harrison. ‘This isn’t a removal; this is a revolution!’ the barrister gasped out at last in profound astonishment.
And the civil servant repeated slowly after him, ‘This is a revolution!’
‘I think I can explain it, though,’ Harrison murmured to himself, after a short lull.
‘And I think I can too,’ Basil replied, somewhat penitently.
As for the stipendiary, delighted at the profound sensation her news had produced, and at her own cleverness in thus implicitly obeying instructions and letting the final bomb-shell fall plump upon both young men unannounced and unexpected, she stood by, hugging herself, and chuckled in huge enjoyment of the scene, with a delicious consciousness that for once in her life she was playing the part of first fiddle in a real, unadulterated domestic drama.
Douglas Harrison was the first to break the moody silence that followed the explosion. ‘Where’s Miss Figgins to-day?’ he asked, turning round almost fiercely upon the startled stipendiary.
‘I dunno,’ the stipendiary replied with a stolid air of ignorance. ‘She went to Liverpool Toosday. She may be there now, and she may be somewhere else. She didn’t tell me. Mr. Figgins, he went off himself to meet her by the early train from Euston this mornin’.’
‘Liverpool!’ the barrister echoed aghast.
The girl grinned once more. This was as good as a play. ‘Yes, Liverpool,’ she answered firmly. ‘I know it was Liverpool, acos I see the label they stuck onto their portmantews.’
‘Goodness gracious, this is worse than I thought!’ Harrison ejaculated in horror. ‘This may mean Canada — America — Australia — anywhere.’
‘Ah, that was where he was goin’,’ the girl interposed, catching quick at the name; ‘I remember now — America!’
‘I’m afraid,’ Basil Maclaine put in, in a voice of about equal parts penitence, regret, and gratified vanity, ‘I’m to some extent the cause of this sudden departure.’
‘I’m afraid you are,’ Douglas retorted seriously. ‘You’ve done more harm to that poor girl than you ever intended with your misleading advances.’
‘‘Nd he give me some letters for you two gentlemen afore he left,’ the stipendiary continued, reverting mentally to the nominative case of her own last sentence, to which she regarded the lodger’s remarks as purely in the nature of parenthetical additions. ‘I was to give you each this one first; it’s marked so, Number One, in the corner; and after you’d read it, I was to give Mr. Harrison the other, as is marked Number Two; but not on any account afore you’d looked at the first one.’
‘This thing has been planned,’ Douglas Harrison said with profound conviction; ‘carefully planned beforehand.’
‘Ah, you’d say so if you knowed the trouble he took to get the furniture moved out of the dinin’-rooms unbeknown, when you two gentlemen was away yesterday,’ the stipendiary assented, beaming; ‘an’ to keep the parlour doors closed after you come in last night, for fear you should ‘appen to look in and see the things was missin’. He took his own supper on top o’ Miss Figgins’s printin’ machine, what she’d used to copy out with, an’ he set on his own box all the time whiles he eat it, acos there wasn’t no chairs or that left in the room for him to set upon.’
Douglas Harrison, unheeding her, tore open Number One with trembling fingers, and glanced through it eagerly. It was a plain business letter from Cecil Figgins, explaining the change made in his lodgers’ position.
6 a.m., Thursday.
‘Dear Mr. Harrison,
‘By the time this reaches you, I shall be well on my way to Liverpool, en route for America, whither I hope to sail an hour after arrival, with my sister, who has preceded me, and who accompanies me on my voyage. I trust you will excuse the abruptness of our departure, and the absence of any formal leave-taking. It is not without reason, as you may guess, that we take this hasty and irrevocable step. Some little of our ground for it you doubtless know already; the rest I will tell you in part as briefly as possible.
‘For several months past I have come to the conclusion there was a better opening for men of my sort in America than in England. Filled with this conviction, I set about looking for work some time since on the other side of the Atlantic, and after inserting a few advertisements in the Scientific American, succeeded in getting a most satisfactory offer of permanent employment from a first-rate firm of mechanicians near New York City. That is the primary reason for my departure. I am going out now to take up the excellent post they have assigned me in a most important engineering establishment.
‘It was my intention at first to keep on the house in Clandon Street as my own, leaving Linda in charge to manage it, as I knew I left her in good hands, and that you would do everything in your power to make its working as easy as possible for her. But circumstances which have occurred in the past fortnight, and with which you are already doubtless sufficiently acquainted, have decided Linda that it would be better for her, too, to quit England at once and for ever, without any leave-taking. I know you will forgive her. The wrench has cost her much, as you can easily believe; but she felt her own dignity demanded it of her. In this conclusion I entirely coincide. For the same reason we give no address in America. We both wish to begin life afresh in the new world, and to start unencumbered by disagreeable reminiscences of our English experience.
‘With regard to practical detail, I have sold the lease of the house to the new tenant, a most responsible party, who moves in his goods to-day, and who I am sure will make you and Mr. Maclaine extremely comfortable. As he was formerly butler in a gentleman’s family in Berkshire, and his wife was cook at the same place, you may rest satisfied everything will be done decently and in order. The furniture in your rooms will remain just as it is, and Emma (the stipendiary) goes, like yourself, with the goodwill of the house, so you may feel confident there will be no break in the continuity of your arrangements. Mr. Higgs, your new landlord, will get in the things for his own part of the house during the course of the morning, while Mr. Maclaine is out; and by the time you both return to dinner, everything, I hope, will be going on as smoothly and mechanically as usual. I hope you will be kind enough to excuse the way I have thus handed you over bodily, without consultation, to the custody of strangers — I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t felt fully convinced of their respectability and competence — and that you will always believe me, with thanks for your many acts of kindness towards my sister and myself,
‘Yours very faithfully,
‘Cecil A. Figgins.’
Douglas Harrison laid down the letter with a sniff of infinite displeasure. In spite of a few catch-words, it was a gentleman’s letter — written by one of nature’s gentlemen — with quiet self-respect and quiet respect for others showing clearly through every line and word of it; but, oh! what a fall was there! from that queenly Linda, with her superb beauty, to the butler in a gentleman’s family in Berkshire, and his wife who had been cook at the same place, and would make them both comfortable! He didn’t want to be made comfortable. He wanted to sit in sackcloth and ashes. Life without Linda would be a blank indeed. And what was worse, Cecil held out to him no prospect even of the possibility of writing to tell her how much he missed her. The blow was a terrible one. Douglas Harrison could easily realize in a moment its full significance.
For during that one week that Linda had been away, he had missed her already inexpressibly and helplessly. He had looked forward every hour of every day to her return on Thursday. And now Thursday had come, and just at the very moment when he expected her to arrive, came this crushing, annihilating, overwhelming letter. No more Linda, for ever and a day! No more Linda even to write to or to hear from! It was more than he could endure. He almost broke down over it. Mechanically he stretched across and held out a trembling hand to Basil for his letter from Cecil. Basil passed it over to him, with a somewhat shamefaced air. It contained much the same explanations as his own, though, of course, less cordially worded; but it began ‘Sir,’ instead of ‘Dear Mr. Harrison;’ it spoke throughout of ‘my sister,’ in place of ‘Linda’; and it ended it with one curt but significant sentence: ‘After our interview last week, you can have no difficulty in guessing what has led Miss Figgins to this hasty conclusion.’
Douglas handed it back to his companion without one word of reproach. He was too utterly disheartened and downcast to speak. Then he turned to the stipendiary — who stood, all agog with excitement, observant by his side, holding Number Two in her apron — and put out his hand for it.
Number Two was from Linda. Douglas tore it open and devoured it with avidity:
‘My dear Mr. Harrison,
‘Do please forgive me. But I know you will forgive me. I couldn’t bear to bid good-bye either to you or him. You were always good to me. I shall remember your goodness with gratitude wherever I go. But it will be best for us both that you shouldn’t know exactly where I have gone or what has become of me. I’m not ashamed to tell you now, this shock has unnerved me more than I could ever have believed. I shall bear the marks of it with me down into my grave. I don’t easily love or easily forget. But the cruel way my disillusionment burst upon me was almost more crushing in its suddenness than the disillusionment itself. He was so much to me, and it killed me to find I was nothing to him. From the bottom of my heart I thank you most sincerely for all your thoughtfulness, your brotherly care, your unremitting attention. I shall think of you often. I shall remember you always. But I must cut myself adrift from England altogether, and for ever. This is the very last word I must ever write you.
‘Yours, with sisterly affection,
‘L. A. F.’
Douglas Harrison gazed hard at it, and the tears stood in his eyes. Maclaine stretched out his hand inquiringly. ‘May I see it?’ he asked. There was no Number Two for him that morning.
But Douglas Harrison folded it up with care, and placed it reverently next his heart in his breast-pocket. ‘No, I can’t show it to you,’ he answered in a very husky voice. ‘I — I mustn’t show it to you. She has said to me things she couldn’t possibly ever have said to you. She would never have written it if she thought you would see it. Maclaine, Maclaine, I told you you would do it, and you have done it now. She loved you with all her heart; and you’ve broken her heart for her.’
Basil Maclaine stared hard at the empty grate, and answered nothing. For once in his life his conscience pricked him. To be sure, she was only a London lodging-house keeper, and it was absurd to expect a man who was beginning to mix with the Very Best People to dream of marrying her; but still, in an underhand, half-impenitent sort of way he admitted obliquely to his own soul that he’d, perhaps, behaved a little badly to Linda. Not, of course, that he thought even now he should have married her. Oh no; impossible! But, with a girl of that class, the mistake lay in ever for one moment allowing her to think he could really and truly care a brass farthing for her.
CHAPTER XVI.
SABINE FALLS.
But if Basil for a moment felt a twinge of remorse for his cruel treatment of Linda, the smiles of the people really best worth knowing soon brought balm and oblivion to that wounded bosom. For by the very next post did he not receive with becoming pleasure an elegantly-printed card which bade him to a wedding at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, and were not the principals to the transaction, as set forth with the archiepiscopal blessing in the necessary license, Thorndyke Venables, of Hurst Croft, Leatherhead, in the county of Surrey, Esquire, and Woodbine Weatherley, spinster, of Girton College, Cambridge, and of that parish?
Yes, in spite of Sabine Venables’ profound instinctive feeling that this horrible thing couldn’t, wouldn’t, and must never happen, the wedding-day approached as fast as any other ordinary date, and every preliminary for the ceremony was fully settled. Mr. Venables’ face glowed more radiant than ever, and his affability outdid itself during that brief period of happy anticipation. But as the fateful event drew nearer and nearer, Sabine’s horror and distress grew deeper and more visible. Bit by bit, item by item, she began, in her own heart, to realize it all — what a total change of prospects it meant for herself, what a dethronement from her position as the great recognised heiress, what a descent to the common level of every-day spinsterhood. Even already, beforehand, she could feel the difference foreshadowed and, as it were, discounted in two ways. She noticed that men of Bertie Montgomery’s sort paid her less attention now than formerly, while men of Basil Maclaine’s sort paid her more, and more boldly. The one class began to think her out of the running at last; the other class began to think themselves in it.
Time slipped on, and three days before the wedding Sabine had accepted the melancholy pleasure of a garden-party in some neighbours’ grounds — nouveaux riches like the Venables themselves, with a sister place of equal magnificence on the gilded slopes of the Leatherhead Downs. The heads of many great firms basked in the sunshine on the rustic seats, while their amiable spouses, plentiful ladies all of them, in silks too rich for their years, and too tight for their figures, sat severely up in wickerwork garden-chairs of doubtful stability for the weight imposed upon them. Hubert Harrison was there, too, not without some deliberate fishing on his own part for an invitation, though it was the Boomerang’s press day, for he had had few chances of meeting Sabine since the announcement of her father’s approaching marriage, and he wanted, if possible, to get a few words alone with her upon that important subject. It had all been so sudden; they had pushed things forward with such haste; indeed, there was no sufficient reason for delay. Woodbine’s only home was the Governess’s Retreat in London, where she spent her leisure time; and, therefore, as soon as Mr. Venables had once made up his mind to marry her, it was most natural and fitting that the wedding should take place, as the rubric observes, with all decent expedition. And in the hurry of the preparations Hubert Harrison had no excuse for paying flying visits to Hurst Croft, such as he had often paid before, and no opportunities for consulting with Sabine on the altered state of affairs which this new move on her father’s part portended.
Sabine was accounted one of the best women tennis-players on the country-side; but, to the great chagrin of her hostess on that particular afternoon, she cried off her set, and elected rather the chance of pacing with Hubert up and down the lawn, with the outer air of one who discusses the current trivialities of society, though inwardly her heart was very full indeed within her.
Mrs. Bouverie-Barton, ever prompt to encourage rebellion against social rule, helped to smuggle the two young people off together into a remote part of the garden. She was a wily widow, Mrs. Bouverie-Barton, and she managed these things always with consummate skill by pretending to disapprove where she most aided and abetted. ‘There’s Sabine Venables gone off now with that young man Harrison,’ she said, with a meaning nod to her next-door neighbour. ‘He hasn’t got a penny to bless himself with, you know. Son of the dear old archdeacon. How does he live? Oh, he contributes to the Saturday or the Spectator, I think — no matter which; and he edits a paper they call the Boomerang — presumably, because it’s sent out on sale or return, and most of the copies come back straight to the office. His brother’s worse still. He hangs on at the bar, lectures to ladies, takes private pupils at home, extends the Universities, and helps Hubert to correct the proofs of the Boomerang. There’s a nice sort of life for you! And yet he seems to like it!’
But in her heart of hearts Mrs. Bouverie-Barton was doing her best for all that to find every convenient opportunity for Sabine and her lover.
‘Well, what about the Duke, Sabine?’ the journalist began, as soon as they had got clear of the prying eyes and ears of chaperons. ‘Has he asked you yet, or hasn’t he? For till he’s disposed of, one way or the other, I suppose there’s no hope of a hearing for an unfortunate commoner.’
Sabine’s cheek burnt scarlet at this unexpected dilemma. On the one hand, her promise to the Duke bound her fast to say nothing about the proposal and rejection; on the other hand, she couldn’t bear that Hubert shouldn’t know how flattering an offer she had refused — for his sake only. For a moment she hesitated. Then she answered evasively, ‘The Duke has nothing to do with me one way or the other. I’ve only seen him once since his brother’s death, and I don’t suppose now I shall see any more of him.’
Hubert’s quick eye took in the situation at half a glance. ‘Then I see how it all goes,’ he said, with some pardonable elation. ‘He came down here to ask you, Sabine, and you sent him about his business — like a brick that you are — to look elsewhere for his Duchess.’
‘I never said so,’ Sabine answered proudly, with just a faint little quiver of those delicate nostrils. ‘I don’t say so now. I don’t want to talk about him; he doesn’t interest me. Whether he asked me or not’s neither here nor there. But if he did ask me, I should unhesitatingly refuse him.’
‘Thank you, Sabine,’ the young man said simply.
‘Thank me for what?’ Sabine retorted, turning round and fronting him with a hot, fiery face.
‘For preferring to choose where it pleases you best,’ Hubert answered, disarming her by his politic vagueness.
Never had he seen that proud girl’s dark beauty to greater advantage. Now, in the first flash of her humiliation, she looked prouder and haughtier and more lovely than ever. Whatever else might happen, Sabine Venables clearly didn’t intend to abdicate of her own accord. Whoever else thought less of her, she at least thought as well of herself as ever she did — or a trifle better.
‘Hubert,’ she broke out hastily, turning round to him once more in one of her sudden little fits of relenting tenderness, ‘I wanted to see you, oh! ever so much, to talk all this over with you; and now that you’re here, I can’t bear to break it to you, it’s so very, very hard. Oh, I can’t bear to break it to you!’
