Immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he hurried to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows.
“You know very well, my dear Harry,” replied Lady Vandeleur, for she called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, “that you never by any chance do what the General tells you. No more do I, you may say. But that is different. A woman can earn her pardon for a good year of disobedience by a single adroit submission; and, besides, no one is married to his private secretary. I shall be sorry to lose you; but since you cannot stay longer in a house where you have been insulted, I shall wish you good-bye, and I promise you to make the General smart for his behaviour.”
Harry’s countenance fell; tears came into his eyes, and he gazed on Lady Vandeleur with a tender reproach.
“My Lady,” said he, “what is an insult? I should think little indeed of any one who could not forgive them by the score. But to leave one’s friends; to tear up the bonds of affection—”
He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began to weep.
Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression. “This little fool,” she thought, “imagines himself to be in love with me. Why should he not become my servant instead of the General’s? He is good-natured, obliging, and understands dress; and besides it will keep him out of mischief. He is positively too pretty to be unattached.” That night she talked over the General, who was already somewhat ashamed of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department, where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry. He took a pride in servility to a beautiful woman; received Lady Vandeleur’s commands as so many marks of favour; and was pleased to exhibit himself before other men, who derided and despised him, in his character of male lady’s-maid and man milliner. Nor could he think enough of his existence from a moral point of view. Wickedness seemed to him an essentially male attribute, and to pass one’s days with a delicate woman, and principally occupied about trimmings, was to inhabit an enchanted isle among the storms of life.
One fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange some music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation, and very lame of one foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of their conversation.
“To-day or never,” said the lady. “Once and for all, it shall be done to-day.”
“To-day, if it must be,” replied the brother, with a sigh. “But it is a false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall live to repent it dismally.”
Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely in the face.
“You forget,” she said; “the man must die at last.”
“Upon my word, Clara,” said Pendragon, “I believe you are the most heartless rascal in England.”
“You men,” she returned, “are so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find in us.”
“You are very likely right,” replied her brother; “you were always cleverer than I. And, anyway, you know my motto: The family before all.”
“Yes, Charlie,” she returned, taking his hand in hers, “I know your motto better than you know it yourself. ‘And Clara before the family!’ Is not that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the best of brothers, and I love you dearly.”
Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family endearments.
“I had better not be seen,” said he. “I understand my part to a miracle, and I’ll keep an eye on the Tame Cat.”
“Do,” she replied. “He is an abject creature, and might ruin all.”
She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother withdrew by the boudoir and the back stair.
“Harry,” said Lady Vandeleur, turning towards the secretary as soon as they were alone, “I have a commission for you this morning. But you shall take a cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled.”
She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half-motherly pride that caused great contentment to poor Harry; and he professed himself charmed to find an opportunity of serving her.
“It is another of our great secrets,” she went on archly, “and no one must know of it but my secretary and me. Sir Thomas would make the saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am of these scenes! Oh, Harry, Harry, can you explain to me what makes you men so violent and unjust? But, indeed, I know you cannot; you are the only man in the world who knows nothing of these shameful passions; you are so good, Harry, and so kind; you, at least, can be a woman’s friend; and, do you know? I think you make the others more ugly by comparison.”
“It is you,” said Harry gallantly, “who are so kind to me. You treat me like—”
“Like a mother,” interposed Lady Vandeleur; “I try to be a mother to you. Or, at least,” she corrected herself with a smile, “almost a mother. I am afraid I am too young to be your mother really. Let us say a friend — a dear friend.”
She paused long enough to let her words take effect in Harry’s sentimental quarters, but not long enough to allow him a reply.
“But all this is beside our purpose,” she resumed. “You will find a bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is underneath the pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin. You will take it immediately to this address,” and she gave him a paper, “but do not, on any account, let it out of your hands until you have received a receipt written by myself. Do you understand? Answer, if you please — answer! This is extremely important, and I must ask you to pay some attention.”
Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she was just going to tell him more when General Vandeleur flung into the apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate milliner’s bill in his hand.
“Will you look at this, madam?” cried he. “Will you have the goodness to look at this document? I know well enough you married me for my money, and I hope I can make as great allowances as any other man in the service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to put a period to this disreputable prodigality.”
“Mr. Hartley,” said Lady Vandeleur, “I think you understand what you have to do. May I ask you to see to it at once?”
“Stop,” said the General, addressing Harry, “one word before you go.” And then, turning again to Lady Vandeleur, “What is this precious fellow’s errand?” he demanded. “I trust him no further than I do yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as the rudiments of honesty, he would scorn to stay in this house; and what he does for his wages is a mystery to all the world. What is his errand, madam? and why are you hurrying him away?”
“I supposed you had something to say to me in private,” replied the lady.
“You spoke about an errand,” insisted the General. “Do not attempt to deceive me in my present state of temper. You certainly spoke about an errand.”
“If you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating dissensions,” replied Lady Vandeleur, “perhaps I had better ask Mr. Hartley to sit down. No?” she continued; “then you may go, Mr. Hartley. I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this room; it may be useful to you.”
Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran upstairs he could hear the General’s voice upraised in declamation, and the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at every opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skilfully she could evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery she repeated her instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and on
the other hand, how he detested the husband!
There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning’s events, for he was continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret missions, principally connected with millinery. There was a skeleton in the house, as he well knew. The bottomless extravagance and the unknown liabilities of the wife had long since swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day by day to engulph that of the husband. Once or twice in every year exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of furnishers’ shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war: not only did he adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but he naturally sympathised with the love of finery, and his own single extravagance was at the tailor’s.
He found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his toilette with care, and left the house. The sun shone brightly; the distance he had to travel was considerable, and he remembered with dismay that the General’s sudden irruption had prevented Lady Vandeleur from giving him money for a cab. On this sultry day there was every chance that his complexion would suffer severely; and to walk through so much of London with a bandbox on his arm was a humiliation almost insupportable to a youth of his character. He paused, and took counsel with himself. The Vandeleurs lived in Eaton Place; his destination was near Notting Hill; plainly, he might cross the Park by keeping well in the open and avoiding populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected that it was still comparatively early in the day.
Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than his ordinary, and he was already some way through Kensington Gardens when, in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself confronted by the General.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas,” observed Harry, politely falling on one side; for the other stood directly in his path.
“Where are you going, sir?” asked the General.
“I am taking a little walk among the trees,” replied the lad.
The General struck the bandbox with his cane.
“With that thing?” he cried; “you lie, sir, and you know you lie!”
“Indeed, Sir Thomas,” returned Harry, “I am not accustomed to be questioned in so high a key.”
“You do not understand your position,” said the General. “You are my servant, and a servant of whom I have conceived the most serious suspicions. How do I know but that your box is full of teaspoons?”
“It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend,” said Harry.
“Very well,” replied General Vandeleur. “Then I want to see your friend’s silk hat. I have,” he added grimly, “a singular curiosity for hats; and I believe you know me to be somewhat positive.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas, I am exceedingly grieved,” Harry apologised; “but indeed this is a private affair.”
The General caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while he raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other. Harry gave himself up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven vouchsafed him an unexpected defender in the person of Charlie Pendragon, who now strode forward from behind the trees.
“Come, come, General, hold your hand,” said he, “this is neither courteous nor manly.”
“Aha!” cried the General, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, “Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other members of her family.”
“And do you fancy, General Vandeleur,” retorted Charlie, “that because my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there and then forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own, sir, that by that action she did as much as anybody could to derogate from her position; but to me she is still a Pendragon. I make it my business to protect her from ungentlemanly outrage, and if you were ten times her husband I would not permit her liberty to be restrained, nor her private messengers to be violently arrested.”
“How is that, Mr. Hartley?” interrogated the General. “Mr. Pendragon is of my opinion, it appears. He too suspects that Lady Vandeleur has something to do with your friend’s silk hat.”
Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he hastened to repair.
“How, sir?” he cried; “I suspect, do you say? I suspect nothing. Only where I find strength abused and a man brutalising his inferiors, I take the liberty to interfere.”
As he said these words he made a sign to Harry, which the latter was too dull or too much troubled to understand.
“In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?” demanded Vandeleur.
“Why, sir, as you please,” returned Pendragon.
The General once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie’s head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable adversary.
“Run, Harry, run!” he cried; “run, you dolt!”
Harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the two men sway together in this fierce embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he cast a glance over his shoulder he saw the General prostrate under Charlie’s knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the situation; and the Gardens seemed to have filled with people, who were running from all directions towards the scene of fight. This spectacle lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace until he had gained the Bayswater road, and plunged at random into an unfrequented by-street.
To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the sight; he desired, above all, to put as great a distance as possible between himself and General Vandeleur; and in his eagerness for this he forgot everything about his destination, and hurried before him headlong and trembling. When he remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one and the sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched with sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his own situation in the General’s household looked hardly so pleasing as usual in the light of these violent transactions.
He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations, before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of the bandbox on his arm.
“Heavens!” cried he, “where was my head? and whither have I wandered?”
Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given him. The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply directed to ask for “the gentleman who expected a parcel from Lady Vandeleur,” and if he were not at home to await his return. The gentleman, added the note, should present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself. All this seemed mightily mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished at the omission of the name and the formality of the receipt. He had thought little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation; but reading it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in perilous affairs. For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady Vandeleur herself; for he found these obscure proceedings somewhat unworthy of so high a lady, and became more critical when her secrets were preserved against himself. But her empire over his spirit was too complete, he dismissed his suspicions, and blamed himself roundly for having so much as entertained them.
In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and his terrors, coincided — to get rid of the bandbox with the greatest possible despatch.
He accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired his way. It turned out that he was already not far from his destination, and a walk of a few minutes brought him to a small house in a lane, freshly painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention. The knocker a
nd bell-pull were highly polished; flowering pot-herbs garnished the sills of the different windows; and curtains of some rich material concealed the interior from the eyes of curious passengers. The place had an air of repose and secrecy; and Harry was so far caught with this spirit that he knocked with more than usual discretion, and was more than usually careful to remove all impurity from his boots.
A servant-maid of some personal attractions immediately opened the door, and seemed to regard the secretary with no unkind eyes.
“This is the parcel from Lady Vandeleur,” said Harry.
“I know,” replied the maid, with a nod. “But the gentleman is from home. Will you leave it with me?”
“I cannot,” answered Harry. “I am directed not to part with it but upon a certain condition, and I must ask you, I am afraid, to let me wait.”
“Well,” said she, “I suppose I may let you wait. I am lonely enough, I can tell you, and you do not look as though you would eat a girl. But be sure and do not ask the gentleman’s name, for that I am not to tell you.”
“Do you say so?” cried Harry. “Why, how strange! But indeed for some time back I walk among surprises. One question I think I may surely ask without indiscretion: Is he the master of this house?”
“He is a lodger, and not eight days old at that,” returned the maid. “And now a question for a question: Do you know lady Vandeleur?”
“I am her private secretary,” replied Harry with a glow of modest pride.
“She is pretty, is she not?” pursued the servant.
“Oh, beautiful!” cried Harry; “wonderfully lovely, and not less good and kind!”
“You look kind enough yourself,” she retorted; “and I wager you are worth a dozen Lady Vandeleurs.”
Harry was properly scandalised.
“I!” he cried. “I am only a secretary!”
“Do you mean that for me?” said the girl. “Because I am only a housemaid, if you please.” And then, relenting at the sight of Harry’s obvious confusion, “I know you mean nothing of the sort,” she added; “and I like your looks; but I think nothing of your Lady Vandeleur. Oh, these mistresses!” she cried. “To send out a real gentleman like you — with a bandbox — in broad day!”
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 281
