Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “I don’t want to be rested, ma douce. I have to be moving on, and there is no mob of men and women in which I may not find someone useful. You often accuse me of hating books, because I won’t read the novel that all you women are raving about. Men are my books, Laura, and I have to keep turning the pages.”

  She had to put up with his indifference — to take what he would give, and ask no more, hope no more from a nature she too well understood.

  He was an absolute egoist, but he charmed her. He was capable, she feared, of villainous conduct, shifty, dishonourable — but she could not live without his society. He was her magnetic man. She had gone about talking of his magnetism lightly enough at the first as a mere façon de parler, but she knew now that she was magnetized. Her friends were right when they told each other that there was no harm in her; nothing of that which their world would call harm; but she was, nevertheless, making herself impossible. She was too silly for words. She was doing things that even friendship cannot sanction.

  Imprimis, he was always at her flat — going in and out as if it belonged to him. He had extra overcoats hanging in her hall. He abused her furniture — hoped she would clear out the whole lot — tout le tremblement — and let some good city firm come in and give her chairs that one could sit on, and a table on which one could write a letter without its shaking like an aspen leaf. “And get rid of your Marie Antoinette secrétaire, that won’t hold a quire of paper, and all your fantastical contrivances for cumbering the floor, and making it impossible for a man to walk up and down while he talks to you. Men were not made to sit still and twiddle their thumbs — a strong man was no more meant to be quiet than a steam-engine. In the city we have rooms where we can walk about and feel the strength of our legs. Your West End drawing-rooms are like the bric-à-brac shops, or squirrels’ cages, to a man.”

  He was fond of talking of himself as a man. It was his excuse for bad manners, for never going to church, for dressing loudly — and the women whom he had put in the way of gaining a few hundreds accepted his excuse and went on calling him wonderful.

  He would talk in this reckless way to Lady Cheveril before a tea-party. That domineering tone suggested something louche, Mrs. Armytage said, but Mrs. Zabulon was certain there was nothing really wrong. Laura was toquée — Laura had always been a foolish creature — a tête de linotte, nothing worse.

  Rayner’s steady pursuit of Mary Tremayne had been observed and talked about. And then there had been the paragraphs, and a snapshot or two — though no photographer had been lucky enough to snap them together. People had talked volumes, and there had been those who declared that the event was only a question of time. The marriage would be in every way so suitable.

  Meanwhile poor Lady Cheveril was heart-broken. It was she, of course, whom Rayner ought to marry. She was not more than five or six years his senior, and she was still handsome, and socially she had made herself his slave.

  Even he himself knew that she was his best advertiser — that she had helped to keep him on the crest of the wave, and he told her that he was not ungrateful. But the word marriage — even the word love had never been on his lips. They were pals, nothing more. He told her that friendship, a strong loyal friendship, was not impossible for a sensible man and woman. It was only fools who could not understand or realize such a tie.

  “I suppose you have a good many of such friendships,” she answered once, with a touch of bitterness, “a good many pals just as loyal as I am.”

  “Never! No, Laura, you are the first, and you shall be the last. I have had men friends and to spare, some of them false as hell. But you are the first woman I have ever called my friend — the first to whom I would come in a run of bad luck — the first who has ever seen my face in one of my dark hours, when I have been on the brink of losing faith in myself.”

  “You must never do that, Jack, never, never.”

  “No — when I do, I shall be finished. It will be “ p. with Argentine Jack then.”

  He liked to talk to her. It relieved him when things had gone askew in the city and his head was on fire. It was not like talking to the child-wife in the Chelsea lodging, whose wondering eyes, lifted hopelessly to his face as he talked of financial enterprises that were to make his fortune, had irritated him. This was a woman of the world — had learnt something of finance and of its risks from her commercial husband. There was some satisfaction in talking to Laura Cheveril.

  She had altered her drawing-room to please him. All the superfluous furniture had been banished. Other rooms in that flat might be crowded and made uncomfortable, but here from wall to wall of the two rooms there was a pathway for restless feet. He could range from wall to wall, under the central archway backwards and forwards like a jaguar in his cage.

  He came every day when his work in the city was over, came at tea-time, though he did not drink tea — a deeper draught was necessary for a man who had been talking volumes at a meeting of shareholders. So there were always syphons and decanters, and tall tumblers on the side table — a Jeypore tray that reflected the firelight in ruddy gold, and cut crystal that sparkled and flashed. There was a table with solid legs for the Jeypore tray, and nothing shook or rattled when Jack refilled his glass for a second long drink. He rarely went beyond the second. He had to take care of himself.

  Sometimes he brought her a present, a jewel of value, and of finer taste than might have been expected from one who was not quite a gentleman.

  He would drop the white velvet case in her lap as she sat at her tea-table, and startle her by the richness of his gift — the single ruby, in a pendant, set clear, and hanging from a chain that looked like a thread.

  “You should not buy me such things, Jack,” she exclaimed, pretending to be vexed. “You will only make people talk.”

  “They will always talk about a handsome woman. What docs it matter?”

  “I’m afraid it matters a good deal. Women are such cats! My friends have begun to say nasty things to me. I’m afraid you had better not come here every day — and yet I shall miss you aw’fully.”

  “And I shall miss my hour’s talk with a clever woman, à cœur ouvert. But we won’t offend Mrs. Grundy if she is still alive. I thought the nineteenth century had seen the last of her; I thought she was dead and forgotten like sixpenny newspapers and hansom cabs.”

  Laura Cheveril was angry when her friends criticized Rayner’s manners, or his clothes, returning always to their odious jargon about men who were good form and men who were not.

  “I would be the last to call him a bounder,” one pert young person would say, “and I agree with you, dear, that he is splendid; but he is not like the other men we know. He says things that jar — that one would rather he had not said.”

  Even such twaddle as this rankled, for she loved the man — and would have had the world at his feet. Sometimes she tried to school him, but that always ended badly.

  “Why do you wear that large diamond ring?” she asked one evening, while he was on his march from wall to wall.

  “It is much too big. I can see it flashing from the other end of the room. It is much too conspicuous — only fit for the stage — and not then in a modern play. Why do you wear such a thing? It makes people talk. English gentlemen don’t wear diamonds.”

  “I am not an English gentleman.”

  “But you would like to be taken for a gentleman.”

  “Je men fiche. I would like to be taken for a man — and, by God! nobody shall ever take me for something less.”

  He was incorrigible, and Lady Cheveril admired him tremendously. If he wore the wrong clothes he looked so handsome in them that she must forgive him; and the ring was his only sin in the way of ornament.

  “It is my mascot,” he told Lady Cheveril.

  It was a yellow diamond, a large square stone, table-cut, and it was set in a rim of brilliants shaped like a snake, with the small wicked-looking white head peeping over the edge of the broad yellow stone.

  “Do let me
look at it,” Lady Cheveril said, and he held out his hand to her. “No, I mean in my own hand. Take it off, Jack. I want a good look at the setting.”

  “I never take it off. It is my mascot. You don’t want me to part with my luck?”

  “I wish you would give me a mascot. Those last shares have done no good.”

  “You took them against my advice. That is the way with women. One helps them to make a bit of money, and before they have had time to spend it, they begin to think they are cleverer than the man who gave them the tip. They want to speculate on their own account, and get chattering with other women, take some fool’s advice, and put their money on the wrong horse.”

  The next time her friends spoke of the offending ring, she told them that he wore it for luck.

  “I don’t think the people who have put their money into his companies would be quite happy if they knew he was that sort of man — a man who trusts to luck,” said one rather venomous dowager.

  “Napoleon believed in his star,” Lady Cheveril exclaimed, flushing angrily. “Jack is hard-headed enough, and all his companies are doing splendidly.”

  Her heart beat high as she said this, and the flush on her cheeks deepened. He had talked rather wildly sometimes in his march across the carpet. He had dropped strange phrases that troubled her.

  He had talked of “pulling the devil by the tail,” of “ window-dressing,” of “washing one hand with the other.”

  She had been constrained to ask him what the latter phrase meant.

  “Never mind that, Laura. A bit of city slang.”

  “But I like to understand. I can sympathize with you better if I understand.”

  He did not answer her. He was in one of his strange moods — talking by fits and starts, with intervals of silence and of abstraction so deep that it was useless to speak to him, since he never heard, but just went marching up and down with his swinging stride, as if unconscious of one’s presence.

  Lady Cheveril was beginning to feel uneasy about him. Yet the gloomy fit never lasted long enough to justify actual anxiety. If he were in low spirits one day, he was all talk and animation on the next, vivid and brilliant as ever, at his best.

  He was always engaged in the evening, dining here or there, mostly at men’s parties, or tête-à-tête with some man at his club. He was just as much in request as ever; and he told this devoted friend that his companies were going strong — a fact attested by the cheques that he brought her from time to time for her dividends. They were not very large cheques, for her investments had been small, but she called them “soothing,” and she rejoiced to know that he was prospering.

  But one afternoon in March, when he came to her before the friendly twilight began, she was distressed at seeing a change in the splendid face — a haggard look that was new to her.

  “Something must have gone wrong with you, Jack,” she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder, as he stood by the table with the decanters. “You are not looking a bit like yourself. Let me get you some coffee. Holtz makes such good coffee; it will pick you up better than that stuff.”

  He had the decanter in his hand, and he put it down quickly, with a disgusted air.

  “If you are going to preach temperance, I had better go to my club when I leave the city. I have been drinking coffee all day — strong enough to blow a man’s head off. Don’t look at me like that, Laura. There is nothing the matter with me, except overwork. There was a circus man who used to drive forty horses, five abreast, through Paris. He was a good whip and had been born in the sawdust, but it wasn’t easy work, even for him.”

  She understood his parable.

  “You mean you have too many schemes on hand.”

  “I have enough to keep my brain at work, my dear — but you needn’t be afraid. I know how to manage my team. Your little investments are quite safe.”

  “I was not thinking of myself.”

  They were still standing by the little table, facing each other. He took her in his arms suddenly, and kissed her for the first time.

  “Don’t be angry, Laura. It is a friend’s kiss — you are a good sort.”

  He was gone before she could answer.

  His first kiss! And how careful he had been to tell her that it did not mean love. Yet her heart was throbbing as it had never throbbed before — thrilled by that first kiss.

  XXIX

  GEORGE BERTRAM was at a loose end. The phrase was a common one with him, and his cousin was tired of hearing it.

  “Come, George, don’t let’s have any more of your howling,” he said, when the already successful K.C. had flung himself into a chair as savagely as if he had a quarrel with his friend’s furniture.

  “Upon my soul I am ashamed of you,” Austin went on, looking down at the frowning face — so handsome in feature and colour, so disfigured by the unquiet mind at the back of it.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Happiness.”

  “Well, that is your own lookout. You must earn it. You have money to burn, but happiness is not to be bought. It is something we have to work for and win, if not by one kind of work, by another. There must be something wrong with your work if it doesn’t make you happy, or at least contented.”

  “Don’t talk of my work, for God’s sake. I loathe it. I have loathed it almost from the beginning — and I shouldn’t have stuck it a second year, except on account of my father. He had taken such a lot of trouble about me, and was so glad in his jolly old jovial way that I had done pretty well. I think the men of his generation must have a different kind of blood in their veins — a better sort than ours. They can do big things, and they can take pleasure in small things. They may have worked like galley slaves, but they can get up after a public dinner and make a speech that rouses the sleepy echoes in the roof, and sets the tables in a roar. They have an infinite capacity for being happy.”

  “Try to imitate them, then. You could not have a better example than your father.”

  “Oh, J. B. is a good sort. If I didn’t see how happy he is, I should be inclined to honour him as a saint and martyr.”

  “A martyr?”

  “He has put up with my mother. Did you think of that, Austin, when you came to the show on their silver wedding? For five-and-twenty years that strong brain has brought itself down to the level of a woman’s small talk three or four nights a week — for he has not dined out half so often as other men of his calibre. He has not played cards at his club after dinner. He has allowed my mother to call for him, and bring him home in time to dress. And he has sat by the fireside like John Anderson my Jo, and listened to my mother’s twaddle. Oh, I know she is an angel, and that she worships him. Tout ça, c’est connu, but for such a man as my father to endure such evenings, and escape softening of the brain is next door to a miracle.”

  “It is only egotists like you, George, who want to go through life without being bored.”

  George gave another of his dismal yawns that was the next thing to a howl.

  “I don’t believe I was meant to be such a dreary selfish, unprofitable beast,” he groaned. “I believe I was meant to be happy.”

  “You may be happy still. You have the future in front of you.”

  “No, I have nothing in front of me but the past; my long history of failure. I have tried everything and chucked almost everything, or everything has chucked me.’

  Austin did not try to reason with him. He knew hi man too well. And George might, after all, be one of that large company of men who are foredoomed to fall short of expectation — who never come up to the measure of their capabilities. He had done wonders in the Law Courts at the first — had done brilliant work — and then he had grown tired, and had begun to disappoint people. The great solicitors no longer saw in him the man who was to surpass his father.

  He had made his mark in the House. His maiden speech had been a fine example of strong reasoning and free from rhetoric, polished and yet solid. But he had lost his temper in a subsequent debate, forgett
ing that he was not in court. Then he found out that Parliament bored him. It was not worth his while, nothing was worth his while.

  He walked away from Austin’s rooms seeing — not red, but black — everything behind him and in front of him: was black as ink.

  Mary was in Rome. He had tried to see more of her in that autumn season which was just over, but she had; avoided him, just as resolutely as she had avoided John Rayner, the adventurer whose pursuit George had watched and understood.

  “She is the only woman upon this earth who could make me happy,” he told himself. “The only one, and she would not.”

  He walked about the streets for an hour after he left Austin, and then went into a theatre, the first he came to.

  He heard gay music and women’s voices as he went along the passage to the stalls.

  “The usual kind of rubbish,” he thought, “the usual imbecilities set to music.”

  He went to his place in the last row, and looked at the: stage, and listened idly to the quartette that was being sung by three women with light girlish voices and a man with a fine baritone. The melody was bright and gay,; and the music cheered him somehow — the handsome faces and pretty clothes and graceful figures — the comedian’s humour, the brilliancy of colour and light, exorcised those blue devils that had been his constant companions of late, and he looked and listened, and j was glad he had chanced upon that particular theatre.

  “Rubbish, but pleasant rubbish!”

  The act finished and the audience sprang into light. The theatre was full, stalls, private boxes, dress circle — the piece was evidently a success. Well-dressed women, the usual men, the youths who have been called by every manner of absurd name and who yet are exactly the same — the name changes — the species remains.

  The house was full. George stuck his glass in his eye, and looked round, a slow deliberate look that swept the half circle of faces and figures and jewels and clothes, and that stopped all at once and fixed itself on a face and figure in the corner of one of the two private boxes on the grand tier.