“My dear young lady, Devonshire isn’t London — but, of course, Mr. Cumberland is charming, and I hear people are going to St. Lawrence’s to hear his sermons.”
“People!” exclaimed Lilian; “why, the church is crammed every Sunday at all the services.”
“Ah; but I mean people — people like Lord Wordsworth, and Mr. Lemaitre, the actor; people like Lady Hyacinth Pulteney — people who criticise and talk. If that goes on, Mr. Cumberland will be an acquisition at your parties. But, my dear Gerard,” pursued Roger, solemnly, “the great point is food. People will go to you to be fed. Feed them. You will have a luxury of flowers, of course; Mrs. Smith — the Mrs. Smith — will decorate your rooms and dinner-table. People expect the lust of the eye to be gratified; but that is, after all, a minor point. Your iced asparagus, ortolans, quails, plovers’ eggs — those are the essentials.”
“And, as a reward for my hospitality, my house will be called the Restaurant Hillersdon, or Café Gerard. People will eat, drink, and be merry — all at my expense.”
“No, my dear fellow. You will not be laughed at. You have not made your money out of Russian hides or American manures. Yon do not come to us with inadequate aspirates, fresh from the Australian backwoods. You are not laboriously conning the alphabet of civilised life. You are one of us. You have graduated in all our follies and vices. You arc an adept in all our conventionalities — our mispronunciations, affectations, and jargon of all kinds. You will do. You are not a new man. You are only that nice boy, Gerard Hillersdon, plus two millions.”
Hillersdon, perhaps, hardly needed this assurance. He might affect the misanthrope, and preach as bitterly as Timon in his cave. He loved his fellow-men just well enough to enjoy bringing them about him, and to feel that splendour would be a poor thing if there were nobody to admire it. Again, the science of entertaining was in itself full of interest. Every man who has mixed ever so little in society believes that he can give a dinner — assort his guests and revise a menu — better than any one else, Hillersdon was not without that delusion, and society fostered it by praise and appreciation. His luncheons, which were more frequent at Hillersdon House than any other form of entertainment, were voted perfect — perfect as to the choice of guests, the harmonious blending of divers opinions, professions, crazes — perfect as to all material elements — the menu never too elaborate or too long — the choicest luxuries given with an air of simplicity which disguised their costliness. The popularity of his luncheons encouraged Mr. Hillersdon to revive a somewhat exploded form of hospitality. He began a series of Sunday breakfasts, to which only those were bidden whose wider and less orthodox views made the morning service of the Anglican Church a purely optional matter — to go or not to go, as the trained choir or the sensational preacher might invite; — unholy breakfasts, at which the literary agnostic or the disciple of the latest fad aired his or her opinions; breakfasts, the very thought of which made Lilian shudder, as she passed the breakfast-room door on her way to the victoria, which was to carry her to that little heaven below, where Jack Cumberland’s choir of working-men, trained by himself, were to sing, and where Jack was to preach one of his heart-stirring sermons. She heard the voices and laughter of her brother’s friends as she passed the breakfast-room door, and her heart sank within her at the thought of what small significance Sunday now had in the life of that brother. She loved him, and she began to fear that he had cast in his lot among the unbelievers, among men who ridicule the idea of a Personal God, who can discover nowhere in this universe the necessity for any higher form of being than their own, who think that through illimitable cycles creation has been climbing upwards to its ultimate outcome, Man, who has made gods, and shah unmake them.
“Gerard, dear, is Sunday after Sunday to go by without your going to church?” Lilian asked, one sunny April morning, when she found her brother smoking a cigarette in the winter-garden, and looking idly at the Marechal Niel roses, while the servants in the adjoining room were putting their finishing touches to a breakfast-table laid for eight.
“My darling, I shouldn’t be any the better for church, or the church any the better for me. I am a little out of harmony with the Christian idea, just now. Either I have outgrown it, or I am passing through a phase of doubt; but if you really want me to sacrifice to the respectabilities I will go to St. Lawrence with you next Sunday. One of Jack’s rousing sermons will do me good. They are capital tonics for a relaxed brain!”
“Years ago you used to go to church every Sunday, and sometimes twice on a Sunday.”
“Years ago I was very young, Lilian. I went to church for various reasons — first, to please my mother; and next, because the Rector would have made unpleasant remarks at luncheon if he had missed me from the family pew; next again, because I liked the sleepy old church and the sleepy service, and the familiar faces, and my father’s short sensible sermon; and last of all, because I had not begun to think of how much or how little faith in spiritual things there was in me.”
“And all that the cleverest people in London can teach you is not to believe,” said Lilian, sadly.
“My dear girl, the clever people have very little to do with my disbelief. The change is in myself. It came about as spontaneously and mysteriously as cotton blight on an apple-tree. One day you see the tree flourishing, the leaves clean and full of sap; and the next day they are all curled up and withered, as if a fire had passed over them, and the incipient fruit is eaten of worms.”
“The carriage is at the door, ma’am,” announced one of those perfectly matched footmen whom Mrs. Champion had selected, magnificent, impassible beings, who looked and moved and spoke as if they had been cradled amidst patrician surroundings.
Lilian drove away in the sunshine, heavy at heart for the brother she loved. She saw him with the illimitable power of wealth, surrounded by all the snares and temptations of a world in which whim and pleasure are the only laws that govern mankind. She saw him cut adrift from the anchor in which she believed, sailing away from the safe harbour of the Christian faith, to the bleak and barren sea of scornful and sullen materialism; a gloomy agnosticism which looks with contempt upon every spiritual instinct, and laughs at every Heavenward aspiration as the delusion of children and fools. While Lilian drove along Piccadilly, to the sound of various church bells, and past a population setting churchward, Mr. Hillersdon’s Sunday visitors were slowly dropping in to the eleven o’clock breakfast — a meal which had but one drawback, according to Roger Larose. It made luncheon an impossibility.
One of the guests of the day, Mr. Reuben Gambier, was a youthful novelist, who had made all vice his province, and whose delight was to shock the susceptibilities of the circulating library. His books were naturally popular, and as in the case of a nervous rider with a restive horse, people were impressed more by the idea of what he might do than of what he had actually done. He was lively and eccentric, and a favourite with Hillersdon and his circle.
“I’ve brought a particular friend of mine, who tells me he knows you well enough to come without an invitation,” said Gambier, entering the winter-garden unannounced, from the adjoining drawing-room into which he had been duly ushered. A low unctuous laugh sounded from the other side of the half-raised portière as he spoke, a laugh which Gerard instantly recognised.
“Your friend is Mr. Jermyn,” he said quickly.
“Yes — how did you guess?”
“I heard him laugh; there is nobody else on earth who laughs like that.”
“But you think there is some one down there who does,” said Gambier, pointing significantly to the ground. “A strange laugh, ain’t it? but very cheery — sounds as if mankind were a stupendous joke, and as if Jermyn were in the secret of all the springs that work this little world, and knew when it was going to burst up. I believe he knows more about it all than Sir William Thomson, or any of those scientific swells who tell us what the sun is made of, and how long they can warrant the earth to last.”
Jermyn’s hea
d appeared under the old brocade curtain — a curtain made from the vestments of Italian priests, the rich spoil of a mediæval sacristy — a curious face seen against the background of purple and gold, clear cut, brilliant in colouring, high narrow brow receding curiously, sharp nose, light grey eyes, and smiling mouth, displaying regular white teeth.
He paused for a moment or two, with the curtain in his hand, looking out of the purple and gold, then with a little gush of laughter came across the marble floor and shook hands with his host.
“Surprised to see me, ain’t you, Hillersdon?”
“No; I have only been surprised not to see you. And now answer me a question. Where the devil are those rooms of yours in which you gave me supper on the night after Lady Fridoline’s party?”
“What! Have you been hunting me up there?”
“Hunting! Yes, it was a decided case of hunting. I don’t think the shrewdest detective in London could find those rooms of yours.”
“I dare say not, unless he knew where to look for them. I’ never tell anybody my address, but I sometimes take a friend home to supper — a man who is too full of himself and his own affairs to observe the way by which he goes.”
Another visitor came into the winter-garden, and then Hillersdon went into the nest room to receive the rest of the party, which was soon complete.
The ninth guest proved a success. Most people were interested in the Fate-reader, although most people pretended to make very light of his art. That searching gaze of his, looking into a man’s soul through his face, had an uncanny influence that fascinated as much as it repelled. He had made such strange hits by those fate-reading prophecies of his, and foretold changes and events in the lives of men, of which those men had themselves no foreshadowing. What was this power which enabled him thus to prognosticate? He called it insight; but the word, though both vague and comprehensive, was not sufficient to explain a gift hitherto the peculiar property of the necromancer and the charlatan — never before exercised airily and gratuitously, by a man who was received in society. Whatever Mr. Jermyn’s means might be, whether large or small, he had never been known to make money by the exercise of his occult power.
He was leaving with the rest of Hillersdon’s friends before one o’clock, when his host detained him.
“I want to have a quiet talk with you,” said Gerard; “we have not met since my altered fortunes.”
“True,” answered Jermyn, lightly, “but I prophesied the turn in your luck, did I not, old fellow?”
“You hinted at possibilities — you set me on the track of an old memory — that scene in the railway station at Nice.”
“Lucky dog. Half the young men in London are green with envy when they talk about you. An instant’s peril — and a lifetime of boundless wealth.”
“There is no such thing as boundless wealth except in America,” said Gerard. “It is a phrase to be used only about a man who owns a silver mine. My income is fixed, and—”
“Limited,” cried Jermyn, interrupting; “a decidedly limited income. Is it eighty or ninety thousand a year, or does it run to a hundred? I believe were I in your shoes I should be thinking about economising. I should have a holy horror of the workhouse. One loses all sense of proportion under the weight of two millions.”
“There is a good deal of spending in it, certainly, if a man knows how to spend judiciously. Do you like my house?”
“I consider it perfect. You have had the discretion not to follow the prevailing fashion. That is your strong point. You have not gone too far, either, in expense or splendour. You have put on the brake at the right moment.”
“Come and see my den,” said Gerard.
He led the way to the upper floor, opened a door at the back of the house, and ushered Jermyn into a room with folding doors, opening into a second room. The two rooms exactly reproduced those Inn chambers where he had seen the vision of Hester Davenport. Colour, form, material — all had been carefully copied, Gerard’s memory of that night and its surroundings being more vivid than any other memory of his past life. There were the same curtains of sombre velvet, darkest green in the lights, and black in the shadows, the same Oriental carpet, of rich, but chastened, hues, the same, or almost the same, Italian pictures — a Judas by Titian — a wood-nymph by Guido, the same delicately-carved Chippendale secretaire and blackwood cabinet, the same touches of colour amidst the gloom.
“My very rooms! by all that’s wonderful!” cried Jermyn. “What a close observer of still life you must be! You have got everything — except me.”
“The black marble bust? Yes, that is wanting; but I mean to have that before I have done.”
“Well, my dear Hillersdon, imitation is the sincerest flattery, and I feel intensely flattered.”
“A whim — a fancy that pleased me for a moment — that is all it means. Those after-midnight hours in your chambers marked the turning-point in my life. I had made up my mind to shoot myself that very night. The pistol was ready loaded in my pistol-case. I had thought it all out, and had made up my mind. God knows how you guessed my secret so readily.”
“My dear fellow, your mind was steeped in suicide. There was no secret in the matter — to an observer with the slightest claim to insight. I saw despair, defiance, recklessness, and the gloom which means only one thing — self-destruction.”
“And while I was at the opera, listening to the doom of Don Juan, the everlasting type of spendthrift and profligate — while I was sitting in your chambers, the lawyer’s letter was lying on my table within a few feet of the pistol-case — the letter that heralded the announcement of millions. That night was like a bad dream — and it was not until many days afterwards that I was able to shake off that dream-feeling, and realise my good luck.”
“Good luck, with a vengeance,” laughed Jermyn. “You have been lucky in more ways than one — lucky in love as well as in gold; lucky in the fast coming release of the woman you love.”
“I don’t quite follow you,” Gerard said coldly, resenting this allusion, even from a man who professed to know everybody’s business.
“Don’t pretend to be angry with me for touching upon an open secret. Everybody knows of your devotion to one bright particular star; and everybody will be inclined to congratulate you when the worthy stockbroker -gets his order of release. Life can be of very little value to him, poor fellow. I saw him dragged about in a bath-chair on the parade at St. Leonards a month ago, a dismal wreck, and now I am told he is in retreat at Finchley — the beginning of the end.”
Gerard smoked his cigarette in silence. The conversation was evidently displeasing to him.
The beginning of the end? Yes, it might be that the end was near; and if it were so, what better could he desire than to marry the woman he had so ardently desired to many just four years ago; the capable, accomplished woman whom all the town admired, and who was rich enough to be in no wise influenced by his wealth. She was not less beautiful than she had been in her girlhood — more beautiful, rather, with a beauty which was only now ripening to its perfect development — a ruddier gold upon her hair, a finer curve of cheek and throat. People were never tired of telling him that Mrs. Champion was the handsomest woman in London.
“I want to ask you another question,” Gerard began, when ho had smoked out the cigarette. “Was I utterly mad that night in your rooms, or did I see a vision of a girl at a sewing-machine?”
“You were not mad by any means. Your conversation was both rational and logical. It is quite possible that you saw a vision.”
“Produced by some trickery of yours, no doubt. How was it done?”
“If I were master of any of the black arts, do you think I would tell you the secrets of my trade? What if I willed that you should recall the loveliest face you had ever seen? Would that account for the phenomenon, do you think?”
“I don’t know; the face was certainly one I had seen before; but I was quite unable to identify it without assistance, therefore one would suppose it h
ad faded out of my mind, and could hardly be willed into vivid actuality by you.”
“You make no allowance for the submerged identity — that inner ego beneath the outer husk of existence — that hidden nature which keeps its fancies and thoughts locked in darkness, perhaps for years, to start into light at a touch of a kindred spirit — that mysterious being dormant in us from the dawn of manhood, which only awakens at the call of love, and which is at the root of that other mystery we call love at first sight — love, passionate, all-absorbing, strong as death, born in an hour.”
“If not an Adam at his birth he is no love at all,” quoted Gerard.
And then he remembered how in the beaten track of life his love of Edith Champion had grown up; how he had met her at dinners, and tennis-parties, and cricket matches, and afternoon teas, and had danced with her three nights a week, and heard her praised by men and women; until gradually, out of these commonplace elements he had come to think her the first necessity of his existence, and to follow her, and devote himself to her. No, there had been nothing romantic there — no mysterious flame, wrapping him round in an instant, sudden, invincible. He loved as men and women love in what is called good society — reasonably, with a love that does not burst bonds, or even violate conventionalities.
He thought a good deal about Edith Champion during that April afternoon, long after Jermyn had left him, and when he was sauntering and dreaming alone in his little grove of lime and chestnut, where the purple leaf buds and newly opening leaves were faintly fanned by a soft west wind, and where, above the interwoven branches, the sky showed deeply blue — one of those peerless spring afternoons which bring with them, in their own fresh youthfulness, a sense of reviving youth in the frame and mind of man — factitious, but delightful while it lasts.
He thought of the woman to whom he had bound himself, and for the first time since he had given her his solemn promise of fidelity he felt the shadow of doubt creeping across that sunlit path which an indulgent Fate, granting him all things to be desired of man, had marked out for him. He told himself that he was one of the spoilt children of Fortune; and he hated himself because, like the spoilt child of nursery story-books, he was inclined to quarrel with his toys.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 904
