Kitabı oku: «A Change of Air», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIV.
Mr. Delane Likes the Idea

On a bright morning, when February was in one of its brief moods of kindliness, Janet Delane was in the garden, and flitting from it into the hothouses in search of flowers. It was half-past eleven, and Captain Ripley had kept her gossiping long after breakfast; that was the worst of idle men staying in a house. So she hastened to and fro in a great parade of business-like activity, and, as she went, she would sing blithely and stop and smile to herself, and break into singing again, and call merrily to her dog, a rotund, slate-colored bundle of hair that waddled after her, and answered, if he were given time to get within earshot, to the name of Mop. Mop was more sedate than his mistress: she only pretended to be on business bent, while he had been dragged out to take a serious constitutional on account of his growing corpulence, and it made him sulky to be called here and beckoned there, and told there were rats, and cats, and what not – whereas in truth there was no such thing. But Janet did not mind his sulkiness; she smiled, and sang, and smiled, for she was thinking – but is nothing to be sacred from a prying race? It is no concern of anyone's what she was thinking, and no doubt she did not desire it to be known, or she would have told Captain Ripley in the course of that long gossip.

The Captain stood gazing at her out of the window, with his hands in his pockets and a doleful look of bewilderment on his face. He stared out into the garden, but he was listening to Mrs. Delane, and wondering uneasily if he were really such a dolt as his hostess seemed to consider.

"You know, Gerard," said Mrs. Delane in her usual tone of suave sovereignty, "that I am anxious to help you all I can. I have always looked forward to it as an event which would give us all pleasure, and I know my husband agrees with me. But really we can't do anything if you don't help yourself."

The Captain gnawed his mustache and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets.

"I can't make her out," said he. "I can't get any farther with her."

"It's not the way to 'get farther,'" answered Mrs. Delane, marking the quotation by a delicate emphasis, "with any girl to stand on the other side of the room and scowl whenever she talks to another man."

"You mean Bannister?"

"I mean anybody. I don't care whether it's Mr. Bannister or not. And it's just as useless to pull a long face and look tragic whenever she makes fun of you."

"She didn't use to be like that last time I was home."

"My dear boy, what has that got to do with it? She was a child then."

"She's always blowing me up. This morning she asked me why I didn't go to India instead of wasting my time doing nothing in London."

This was certainly unfeeling conduct on Janet's part. Mrs. Delane sighed.

"I don't know that I quite understand her either, Gerard. There's the Squire calling you. He's ready to ride, I expect."

When Janet came, she found her mother alone.

"Where's Gerard?" she asked.

"He's gone for a ride."

"Is he staying to-night?"

"Yes; two or three days, I think."

"Well, dear, I am glad we amuse him. There doesn't seem much for a man to do here, does there?"

"Don't you like him to be here?"

"Oh, I don't mind; only he wastes my time."

"I begin to think he's wasting his own too," remarked Mrs. Delane.

"Oh, he's got nothing else to do with it – or at least he does nothing else with it."

"You know what I mean, Janet, dear."

"I suppose I do, but how can I help it? I do all I can to show him it's no use."

"You used to like him very much."

"Oh, so I do now. But that's quite different."

The world goes very crooked. Mrs. Delane sighed again.

"It would have pleased your father very much."

"I'm so sorry. But I couldn't care for a man of that sort."

"What's the matter with the man, my dear?"

"That's just it, mamma. Nothing – nothing bad – and nothing good. Gerard is like heaps of men I know."

"I think you underrate him. His father was just the same, and he was very distinguished in the House."

Janet's gesture betrayed but slight veneration for the High Court of Parliament, as she answered: "They always say that about dull people."

"Well, if it's no use, the sooner the poor boy knows it the better."

"I can't tell him till he asks me, can I, dear? Though I'm sure he might see it for himself."

Mrs. Delane, when she made up her mind to sound her daughter's inclinations, had expected to find doubt, indecision, perhaps even an absence of any positive inclination toward Captain Ripley. She had not been prepared for Janet's unquestioning assumption that the thing was not within the range of consideration. A marriage so excellent from a material point of view, with one who enjoyed all the advantages old intimacy and liking could give, seemed to claim more than the unhesitating dismissal with which Janet relegated it to the limbo of impossibility, with never a thought for all the prospects it held out, and never a sigh for the wealth and rank it promised. Of course the Delanes needed no alliances to establish their position; still, as the Squire had no son, it would have been pleasant if his daughter had chosen a husband from the leading family in the county. The more Mrs. Delane thought, the more convinced she became that there must be a reason; and if there were, it could be looked for only in one direction. She wondered whether the Squire's penchant for his gifted young neighbor was strong enough to make him welcome him as a son-in-law. Frankly, her own was not.

Mr. Delane came in to luncheon, but Captain Ripley sent a message of excuse. He had ridden over to Sir Harry Fulmer's, and would spend the afternoon there. Mrs. Delane's reception of the news conveyed delicately that such conduct was only what might be expected, if one considered how Janet treated the poor fellow, but the Squire was too busy to appreciate the subtleties of his wife's demeanor.

Important events were in the way to happen. Denshire, like many other counties, had recently made up its mind that it behooved it to educate itself, and a building had arisen in Denborough which was to serve as an institute of technical education, a school of agriculture, a center of learning, a home of instructive recreation, a haven for the peripatetic lecturer, and several things besides. Lord Cransford had consented to open this temple of the arts, which was now near completion, and an inauguration by him would have been suitable and proper. But the Squire had something far better to announce. The Lord Lieutenant was, next month, to be honored by a visit from a Royal Duke, and the Royal Duke had graciously consented to come over and open the Institute. It would be an occasion the like of which Denborough had seldom seen, and Lord Cransford and Mr. Delane might well be pardoned the deputy-providential air with which they went about for the few days next following on the successful completion of this delicate negotiation.

"Now," said the Squire, when he had detailed the Prince's waverings and vacillations, his he-woulds and he-would-nots, and the culmination of his gracious assent, "I have a great idea, and I want you to help me, Jan."

"How can I help?" asked Janet, who was already in a flutter of loyalty.

"When the Duke comes, I want him to have a splendid reception."

"I'm sure he will, my dear," said Mrs. Delane; "at least I hope that we are loyal."

"We want," continued the Squire, "to show him all our resources."

"Well, papa, that won't take him very long. There's the old Mote Hall, and the Roman pavement and – Oh, but will he come here, papa – to the Grange?"

"I hope he will take luncheon here."

"How delightful!" exclaimed Janet joyfully.

"Goodness!" said Mrs. Delane anxiously.

"But, Jan, I want to show him our poet!"

"Papa! Mr. Bannister?"

"Yes. I want Bannister to write a poem of welcome."

"My dear," remarked Mrs. Delane, "Mr. Bannister doesn't like princes;" and she smiled satirically.

"What do you say, Jan?" asked the Squire, smiling in his turn.

"Oh, yes, do ask him, papa. I wish he would."

"Well, will you ask him to?"

"Really, George, you are the person to suggest it."

"Yes, Mary. But if I fail? Now, Jan?"

"Oh, don't be foolish papa. It's not likely – "

"Never mind. Will you?"

But Janet had, it seemed, finished her meal; at least she had left the room. Mrs. Delane looked vexed. The Squire laughed, for he was a man who enjoyed his little joke.

"Poor Jan!" he said. "It's a shame to chaff her on her conquests."

Mrs. Delane's fears had been confirmed by her daughter's reception of the raillery. She would have answered in the same tone, and accepted the challenge, if the banter had not hit the mark.

"It's a pity," said Mrs. Delane, "to encourage her to think so much about this young Bannister."

"Eh?" said the Squire, looking up from his plate.

"She thinks quite enough about him already, and hears enough, too."

"Well, I suppose he's something out of the common run, in Denshire at all events, and so he interests her."

"She'll have nothing to say to Gerard Ripley."

"What? Has he asked her?"

"No; but I found out from her. He's quite indifferent to her."

"I'm sorry for that, but there's time yet. I don't give up hope."

"Do you think you help your wishes by asking her to use her influence to make Dale Bannister write poems?"

The Squire laid down his napkin and looked at his wife.

"Oh!" he said, after a pause.

"Yes," said Mrs. Delane. "Are you surprised?"

"Yes, I am, rather."

He got up and walked about the room, jangling the money in his pocket.

"We know nothing about young Bannister," he said.

"Except that he's the son of a Dissenting minister and has lived with very queer people."

The Squire frowned; but presently his face cleared. "I dare say we're troubling ourselves quite unnecessarily. I haven't noticed anything."

"I dare say not, George," said Mrs. Delane.

"Come, Mary, you know it's a weakness of yours to find out people's love affairs before they do themselves."

"Very well, George," answered she in a resigned tone. "I have told you, and you will act as you think best. Only, if you wouldn't like him for a son-in-law – "

"Well, my dear, you do go ahead."

"Try to put him out of Janet's head, not in it;" and Mrs. Delane swept out of the room.

The Squire went to his study, thinking as he went. He would have liked the Ripley connection. Lord Cransford was an old friend, and the match would have been unimpeachable. Still – The Squire could not quite analyze his feelings, but he did feel that the idea of Dale Bannister was not altogether unattractive. By birth, of course, he was a nobody, and he had done and said, or at least said he had done, or would like to do, – for the Squire on reflection softened down his condemnation, – wild things; but he was a distinguished man, a man of brains, a force in the country. One must move with the times. Nowadays brains opened every front door, and genius was a passport everywhere. He was not sure that he disliked the idea. Women were such sticklers for old notions. Now, he had never been a – stick-in-the-mud Tory. If Dale went on improving as he was doing, the Squire would think twice before he refused him. But there! very likely it was only Mary's match-making instincts making a mountain out of a molehill.

"I shall keep at Jan about that poem," he ended by saying. "It would be a fine facer for the Radicals."

CHAPTER XV.
How It Seemed to the Doctor

James Roberts made to himself some excuse of business for his sudden expedition to London, but in reality he was moved to go by the desire for sympathy. There are times and moods when a man will do many strange things, if thereby he may gain the comfort of an approving voice. It was not so much his straitened means and impoverished household, with the silent suppressed reproach of his wife's sad face, which made Denborough for the time uninhabitable to the Doctor. The selfishness engendered by his absorption in outside affairs armed him against these; he was more oppressed, and finally overcome and routed to flight, by the universal, unbroken, and unhesitating condemnation and contempt that he met with. The severe banned him as wicked, the charitable dubbed him crazy; even Johnstone, whom he had bought, gave him no sympathy. He could not share his savage sneers, or his bitter mirth, or his passionate indignation, with a man to whom the whole affair was a matter of business or of personal grudge. He felt that he must escape for a time, and seek society in which he could unbosom himself and speak from his heart without stirring horror or ridicule. Arthur Angell at least, who, in regard to Dale and Dale's views, had always been a better royalist than the King, would share his anger and appreciate his meditated revenge. The lesson he meant to give the backslider was so appropriate and of such grim humor that Arthur must be delighted with it.

On Dale's departure, Arthur Angell had moved into the little flat at the top of the tall building in Chelsea, and there he cultivated the Muses with a devotion which was its own ample reward. Though to be passing rich on forty pounds a year is, with the best will, impossible in London as it is to-day, yet to be passing happy on one hundred and fifty is not beyond the range of youth and enthusiasm, when the future still provides a gorgeous setting and background, wherein the sordid details of the present are merged and lose their prominence, and all trials are but landmarks by which the hopeful grub counts his nearer approach to butterflydom. The little room, the humble chop, the occasional pit, the constant tobacco, the unending talks with fellows like-minded and like-pursed – all these had the beauty of literary tradition, and if not a guarantee, seemed at least a condition of future fame. So Arthur often said to Mrs. Hodge, who lived in the same block, a couple of floors lower down; and Mrs. Hodge heartily agreed as she instanced, in confirmation of the doctrine, how the late Mr. Hodge had once played the King at two pound ten, consule Pratt, and had lived to manage his own theater. This was to compare small things with great, felt Arthur, but the truth is true in whatever sphere it works.

Into his happy life there broke suddenly the tempestuous form of the Denborough Doctor. He arrived with but a pound or two in his pocket with wild ideas of employment on ultra-Radical newspapers; above all, with the full load of his rage against Dale Bannister, the traitor. He strode up and down the little room, tugging his beard and fiercely denouncing the renegade, while Arthur looked at his troubled eyes and knitted brows, and wondered if his mind were not unhinged. Who could talk like that about Dale, if he were sane? Arthur would have chaffed his friend, laughed at him, ridiculed him, perhaps slyly hinted at the illicit charms of rank and wealth, for which the poet's old mistress mourned deserted. But to speak in hate and rancor! And what was he plotting?

But when he heard the plot, his face cleared, and he laughed.

"I think you're hard on Dale," he said; "but, after all, it will be a good joke."

"Johnstone will do it," exclaimed the Doctor, pausing in his stride. "His shop window will be full of them. He'll have sandwich-men all over the place. Bannister won't be able to go out without being met by his own words – the words he denies. I'll cram them down his throat."

Arthur laughed again.

"It will be awkward when he's walking with old Delane."

"Aye, and with that girl who's got hold of him. He shan't forget what he wrote – nor shall a soul in Denborough either. I'll make his treachery plain, if I spend my last farthing."

"When are you going back?"

"In a week. It will all be ready in a week. He'll know who did it. Curse him!"

"My dear Doctor, aren't you a little – "

"Are you like that, too?" burst out Roberts. "Have none of you any sincerity? Is it sham with all of you? You laugh as if it were a joke."

"I can't be angry with old Dale. I expect he'll only laugh himself, you know. It will be good fun."

Roberts looked at him in hopeless wrath. It seemed to him that these men, who wrote the words and proclaimed the truths which had turned his life and reformed his soul, were themselves but playing with what they taught. Were they only actors – or amusing themselves?

"You are as bad as he is," he said angrily, and stalked out of the room.

Arthur, puzzled with his unmanageable guest, went down, as he often did, to his neighbors, and laid the whole case before Mrs. Hodge and Nellie Fane. He found them both in, Nellie having just returned from an afternoon concert where she had been singing.

"I believe the fellow's half mad, you know," said Arthur.

"If he isn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Hodge, and she launched on a description of Mrs. Robert's pitiable state.

"Well, I don't think that he's got more than five pounds in the world," responded Arthur. "And he's got no chance of making any money. Nobody dares publish what he wants to write."

"He used to be pleasant at Littlehill," Nellie remarked, "when we were first there."

"Yes, wasn't he? But he's gone quite wild over Dale. Do you know what his next move is?" And Arthur disclosed the Johnstone conspiracy.

"It will be rather sport, won't it?" he asked. "Poor old Dale!"

But no; Miss Fane did not see the "sport." She was indignant; she thought that such a trick was mean, malicious, and odious in the highest degree, and she was surprised that Arthur Angell could be amused at it.

"Women never see a joke," said Arthur huffily.

"Where's the joke in making Dale unhappy and – and absurd? And you call yourself his friend!"

"It's only a joke. Old Dale does deserve a dig, you know."

"And pray, why? You choose your friends, why mayn't he choose his? I dare say you would be glad enough to know that sort of people if you could."

"Oh, come, Nellie! I'm not like that. Besides, it's not the people; it's what he's written."

"I've read what he's written. It's beautiful. No, I call the whole thing horrid, and just like Dr. Roberts."

"I suppose you think, just like me, too?"

"If you don't write and warn Dale, I shall."

"I say, you mustn't do that. I told you in confidence. Roberts will be furious."

"What do I care for Dr. Roberts' fury? I shall write at once;" and she sat down at the table.

Arthur glanced in despair at Mrs. Hodge, but that discreet lady was entirely hidden in the evening paper.

"Well, I'll never tell you anything again, Nellie," he said.

"You'll never have the chance, unless you behave something like a gentleman," retorted Nellie.

Arthur banged the door as he went out, exclaiming:

"Damn Roberts! What does he want to make a row for?"

Meanwhile, the Doctor, who was angry enough with Arthur Angell to have rejoiced had he known that he had embroiled him in a quarter where Arthur was growing very anxious to stand well, was pacing the streets, nursing his resentment. His head ached, and fragments of what he had read, and half-forgotten conversations, mingling in his whirling brain, fretted and bewildered him. He could think of nothing but his wrongs and his revenge, returning always to hug himself on his own earnestness, and angrily to sneer at the weakness and treachery of his friends. Whatever it cost him or his, the world should see that there was one man ready to sacrifice himself for truth and right – and punish "that hound Dale Bannister."

As he walked, he bought the special edition of the paper, and, in hastily glancing at it, his eye was caught by the announcement that His Royal Highness the Duke of Mercia was to visit Lord Cransford, and would open the Institute at Market Denborough. The paragraph went on to describe the preparations being made to give the Prince a loyal reception, and ended by saying that it was hoped that the eminent poet, Mr. Dale Bannister, who was resident at Denborough, would consent to write a few lines of welcome to the illustrious visitor. The writer added a word or two of good-natured banter about Mr. Bannister's appearance in a new character, and the well-known effect which the proximity of royalty was apt to have on English republicanism. "Who knows," he concluded, "that Mr. Bannister may not figure as Sir Dale before long?"

The Doctor read the paragraph twice, the flush of anger reddening his pale face. Then he crumpled up the paper and flung it from him, resuming his hasty, restless walk. He could imagine the sickening scene, the rampant adulation, the blatant snobbishness. And, in the midst, a dishonored participator, the man who had been his leader, his liberator, the apostle of all he loved and lived by. Had the man been a hypocrite from the first? Impossible! No hypocrite could have written those burning lines which leaped to his memory and his lips. Or was he merely a weak fool? That could not be either. It was a barter, a deliberate barter of truth and honor against profit – as sordid a transaction as could be. He wanted a position in society, money, a rich wife, petting from great people – perhaps even, as that scribbler said, a ribbon to stick in his coat or a handle to fasten to his name. How could he? how could he? And the Doctor passed his hand across his hot, throbbing brow in the bewilderment of wrath.

For an hour and more he ranged the streets aimlessly, a prey to his unreasoning fury. For this man's sake he had ruined himself; led on by this man's words, he had defied the world – his world. At all hazards he had joined the daring band. Now he was forsaken, abandoned, flung aside. He and his like had served their turn. On their backs Dale Bannister had mounted. But now he had done with them, and their lot was repudiation and disdain. Roberts could not find words for his scorn and contempt. His head racked him more and more. Connected thought seemed to become impossible; he could do nothing but repeat again and again, "The traitor! The traitor!"

At last he turned home to his humble lodgings. The short hush of very early morning had fallen on the streets; he met no one, and the moon shone placidly down on the solitary figure of the maddened man, wrestling with his unconquerable rage. He could not stem it; yielding to its impulse, with quivering voice and face working with passion, he stretched his clenched fist to the sky and cried:

"By God, he shall pay for it!"