Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Cyril folded up the note without noticing Nevitt’s words and put it in his pocket, somewhat carefully and obtrusively. “Thank you,” he said, in a very quiet tone, “I didn’t ask you about Miss Clifford’s fortune. When I want information on that point I’ll apply for it plainly. But meanwhile I don’t think any lady’s name should be dragged into conversation and bandied about like that, by an absolute stranger.”

  “Oh, now you needn’t be huffy,” Nevitt answered, with a still sweeter smile, showing all those pearly teeth of his to the greatest advantage. “I didn’t mean to put your back up, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I’ll heap coals of fire on your head, you ungrateful man. I’ll return good for evil. You shall have an invitation to Mrs. Holker’s garden party on Saturday week at Chetwood Court, and there you’ll be almost sure to meet the beautiful stranger.”

  But at that very moment, at Craighton, Tilgate, Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., a stiff little withered-up official Briton, half mummified by long exposure to tropical suns, was sitting in his drawing-room with Mrs. Clifford, his wife, and discussing — what subject of all others on earth but the personality of Cyril Waring?

  “Well, it was an awkward situation for Elma, of course, I admit,” he was chirping out cheerfully, with his back turned by pure force of habit to the empty grate, and his hands crossed behind him. “I don’t deny it was an awkward situation. Still, there’s no harm done, I hope and trust. Elma’s happily not a fanciful or foolishly susceptible sort of girl. She sees it’s a case for mere ordinary gratitude. And gratitude, in my opinion, towards a person in his position, is sufficiently expressed once for all by letter. There’s no reason on earth she should ever again see or hear any more of him.”

  “But girls are so romantic,” Mrs. Clifford put in doubtfully, with an anxious air. She herself was by no means romantic to look at, being, indeed, a person of a certain age, with a plump, matronly figure, and very staid of countenance; yet there was something in her eye, for all that, that recalled at times the vivid keenness of Elma’s, and her cheek had once been as delicate and creamy a brown as her pretty daughter’s. “Girls are so romantic,” Mrs. Clifford repeated once more, in a dreamy way, “and she was evidently impressed by him.”

  “Well, I’m glad I made inquiries at once about these two young men, anyhow,” the Companion of St. Michael and St. George responded with fervour, clasping his wizened little hands contentedly over his narrow waistcoat. “It’s a precious odd story, and a doubtful story, and not at all the sort of story one likes one’s girl to be any way mixed up with. For my part, I shall give them a very wide berth indeed in future; and there’s no reason why Elma should ever knock up against them.”

  “Who told you they were nobodies?” Mrs. Clifford inquired, drawing a wistful sigh.

  “Oh, Tom Clark was at school with them,” the ex-administrator continued, with a very cunning air, “and he knows all about them — has heard the whole circumstances. Very odd, very odd; never met anything so queer in all my life; most mysterious and uncanny. They never had a father; they never had a mother; they never had anybody on earth they could call their own; they dropped from the clouds, as it were, one rainy day, without a friend in the world, plump down into the Charterhouse. There they were well supplied with money, and spent their holidays with a person at Brighton, who wasn’t even supposed to be their lawful guardian. Looks fishy, doesn’t it? Their names are Cyril and Guy Waring — and that’s all they know of themselves. They were educated like gentlemen till they were twenty-one years old; and then they were turned loose upon the world, like a pair of young bears, with a couple of hundred pounds of capital apiece to shift for themselves with. Uncanny, very; I don’t like the look of it. Not at all the sort of people an impressionable girl like our Elma should ever be allowed to see too much of.”

  “I don’t think she was very much impressed by him,” Mrs. Clifford said with confidence. “I’ve watched her to see, and I don’t think she’s in love with him. But by to-morrow, Reginald, I shall be able, I’m sure, to tell you for certain.”

  The Companion of the Militant Saints glanced rather uneasily across the hearth-rug at his wife. “It’s a marvellous gift, to be sure, this intuition of yours, Louisa,” he said, shaking his head sagely, and swaying himself gently to and fro on the stone kerb of the fender. “I frankly confess, my dear, I don’t quite understand it. And Elma’s got it too, every bit as bad as you have. Runs in the family, I suppose — runs somehow in the family. After living with you now for twenty-two years — yes, twenty-two last April — in every part of the world and every grade of the service, I’m compelled to admit that your intuition in these matters is really remarkable — simply remarkable.”

  Mrs. Clifford coloured through her olive-brown skin, exactly like Elma, and rose with a somewhat embarrassed and half-guilty air, avoiding her husband’s eyes as if afraid to meet them.

  Elma had gone to bed early, wearied out as she was with her long agony in the tunnel. Mrs. Clifford crept up to her daughter’s room with a silent tread, like some noiseless Oriental, and, putting her ear to the keyhole, listened outside the door in profound suspense for several minutes.

  Not a sound from within; not a gentle footfall on the carpeted floor. For a moment she hesitated; then she turned the handle slowly, and, peering before her, peeped into the room. Thank Heaven! no snake signs. Elma lay asleep, with one arm above her head, as peacefully as a child, after her terrible adventure. Her bosom heaved, but slowly and regularly. The mother drew a deep breath, and crept down the stairs with a palpitating heart to the drawing-room again.

  “Reginald,” she said, with perfect confidence, relapsing once more at a bound into the ordinary every-day British matron, “there’s no harm done, I’m sure. She doesn’t think of this young man at all. You may dismiss him from your mind at once and for ever. She’s sleeping like a baby.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.

  “Mrs. Hugh Holker, at home, Saturday, May 29th, 3 to 6.30. Chetwood Court; tennis.”

  Cyril Waring read it out with a little thrill of triumph. To be sure, it was by no means certain that Elma would be there; but still, Chetwood Court was well within range of Tilgate town, and Montague Nevitt felt convinced, he said, the Holkers were friends of the Cliffords and the Kelmscotts.

  “For my part,” Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on his fork as he spoke, “I’m not going all that way down to Chetwood merely to swell Mrs. Holker’s triumph.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Cyril answered, with quiet incisiveness. He hadn’t exactly fallen in love with Elma at first sight, but he was very much interested in her, and it struck him at once that what interested him was likely also to interest his twin brother. And this is just one of those rare cases in life where a man prefers that his interest in a subject should not be shared by any other person.

  Before Saturday, the 29th, arrived, however, Guy had so far changed his mind in the matter, that he presented himself duly with Nevitt at Waterloo to catch the same train to Chetwood station that Cyril went down by.

  “After all,” he said to Nevitt, as they walked together from the club in Piccadilly, “I may as well see what the girl’s like, anyhow. If she’s got to be my sister-in-law — which seems not unlikely now — I’d better have a look at her beforehand, so to speak, on approbation.”

  The Holkers’ grounds were large and well planted, with velvety lawns on the slope of a well-wooded hill overlooking the boundless blue weald of Surrey. Nevitt and the Warings were late to arrive, and found most of the guests already assembled before them.

  After a time Guy found himself, to his intense chagrin, told off by his hostess to do the honours to an amiable old lady of high tonnage and great conversational powers, who rattled on uninterruptedly in one silvery stream about everybody on the ground, their histories and their pedigrees. She took the talking so completely off his hands, however, that, after a very few minutes, Guy, who was by natur
e of a lazy and contemplative disposition, had almost ceased to trouble himself about what she said, interposing “indeeds” and “reallys” with automatic politeness at measured intervals; when suddenly the old lady, coming upon a bench where a mother and daughter were seated in the shade, settled down by their sides in a fervour of welcome, and shook hands with them both effusively in a most demonstrative fashion.

  The daughter was pretty — yes, distinctly pretty. She attracted Guy’s attention at once by the piercing keenness of her lustrous dark eyes, and the delicate olive-brown of her transparent complexion. Her expression was merry, but with a strange and attractive undertone, he thought, of some mysterious charm. A more taking girl, indeed, now he came to look close, he hadn’t seen for months. He congratulated himself on his garrulous old lady’s choice of a bench to sit upon, if it helped him to an introduction to the beautiful stranger.

  But before he could even be introduced, the pretty girl with the olive-brown complexion had held out her hand to him frankly, and exclaimed in a voice as sunny as her face —

  “I don’t need to be told your friend’s name, I’m sure, Mrs. Godfrey. He’s so awfully like him. I should have known him anywhere. Of course, you’re Mr. Waring’s brother, aren’t you?”

  Guy smiled, and bowed gracefully; he was always graceful.

  “I refuse to be merely MR. WARING’S BROTHER,” he answered, with some amusement, as he took the proffered hand in his own warmly. “If it comes to that, I’m Mr. Waring myself; and Cyril, whom you seem to know already, is only my brother.”

  “Ah, but MY Mr. Waring isn’t here to-day, is he?” the olive-brown girl put in, looking around with quite an eager interest at the crowd in the distance. “Naturally, to me, he’s THE Mr. Waring, of course, and you are only MY Mr. Waring’s brother.”

  “Elma, my dear, what on earth will Mr. Waring think of you?” her mother put in, with the conventional shocked face of British propriety. “You know,” she went on, turning round quickly to Guy, “we’re all so grateful to your brother for his kindness to our girl in that dreadful accident the other day at Lavington, that we can’t help thinking and talking of him all the time as our Mr. Waring. I’m sorry he isn’t here himself this afternoon to receive our thanks. It would be such a pleasure to all of us to give them to him in person.”

  “Oh, he is about, somewhere,” Guy answered carelessly, still keeping his eye fixed hard on the pretty girl. “I’ll fetch him round by-and-by to pay his respects in due form. He’ll be only too glad. And this, I suppose, must be Miss Clifford that I’ve heard so much about.”

  As he said those words, a little gleam of pleasure shot through Elma’s eyes. Her painter hadn’t forgotten her, then. He had talked much about her.

  “Yes, I knew who you must be the very first moment I saw you,” she answered, blushing; “you’re so much like him in some ways, though not in all…. And he told me that day he had a twin brother.”

  “So much like him in some ways,” Guy repeated, much amused. “Why, I wonder you don’t take me for Cyril himself at once. You’re the very first person I ever knew in my life, except a few old and very intimate friends, who could tell at all the difference between us.”

  Elma drew back, almost as if shocked and hurt at the bare suggestion.

  “Oh, dear no,” she cried quickly, scanning him over at once with those piercing keen eyes of hers; “you’re like him, of course — I don’t deny the likeness — as brothers may be like one another. Your features are the same, and the colour of your hair and eyes, and all that sort of thing; but still, I knew at a glance you weren’t my Mr. Waring. I could never mistake you for him. The expression and the look are so utterly different.”

  “You must be a very subtle judge of faces,” the young man answered, still smiling, “if you knew us apart at first sight; for I never before in my life met anybody who’d seen my brother once or twice, and who didn’t take me for him, or him for me, the very first time he saw us apart. But then,” he added, after a short pause, with a quick dart of his eyes, “you were with him in the tunnel for a whole long day; and in that time, of course, you saw a good deal of him.”

  Elma blushed again, and Guy noticed in passing that she blushed very prettily.

  “And how’s Sardanapalus?” she asked, in a somewhat hurried voice, making an inartistic attempt to change the subject.

  “Oh, Sardanapalus is all right,” Guy answered, laughing. “Cyril told me you had made friends with him, and weren’t one bit afraid of him. Most people are so dreadfully frightened of the poor old creature.”

  “But he isn’t old,” Elma exclaimed, interrupting him with some warmth. “He’s in the prime of life. He’s so glossy and beautiful. I quite fell in love with him.”

  “And who is Sardanapalus?” Mrs. Clifford asked, with a vague maternal sense of discomfort and doubt. “A dog or a monkey?”

  “Oh, Sardanapalus, mother — didn’t I tell you about him?” Elma cried enthusiastically. “Why, he’s just lovely and beautiful. He’s such a glorious green and yellow-banded snake; and he coiled around my arm as if he’d always known me.”

  Mrs. Clifford drew back with a horror-stricken face, darting across at her daughter the same stealthy sort of look she had given her husband the night after Elma’s adventure.

  “A snake!” she repeated, aghast, “a snake! Oh, Elma! Why, you never told me that. And he coiled round your arm. How horrible!”

  But Elma wasn’t to be put down by exclamations of horror.

  “Why, you’re not afraid of snakes yourself, you know, mother,” she went on, undismayed. “I remember papa saying that when you were at St. Kitts with him you never minded them a bit, but caught them in your hands like an Indian juggler, and treated them as playthings, so I wasn’t afraid either. I suppose it’s hereditary.”

  Mrs. Clifford gazed at her fixedly for a few seconds with a very pale face.

  “I suppose it is,” she said slowly and stiffly, with an evident effort. “Most things are, in fact, in this world we live in. But I didn’t know YOU at least had inherited it, Elma.”

  Just at that moment they were relieved from the temporary embarrassment which the mention of Sardanapalus seemed to have caused the party, by the approach of a tall and very handsome man, who came forward with a smile towards where their group was standing. He was military in bearing, and had dark brown hair, with a white moustache; but he hardly looked more than fifty for all that, as Guy judged at once from his erect carriage and the singular youthfulness of both face and figure. That he was a born aristocrat one could see in every motion of his well-built limbs. His mien had that ineffable air of grace and breeding which sometimes marks the members of our old English families. Very much like Cyril, too, Guy thought to himself, in a flash of intuition; very much like Cyril, the way he raised his hat and then smiled urbanely on Mrs. Clifford and Elma. But it was Cyril grown old and prematurely white, and filled full with the grave haughtiness of an honoured aristocrat.

  “Why, here’s Colonel Kelmscott!” Mrs. Clifford exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, not a little set at ease by the timely diversion. “We’re so glad you’ve come, Colonel. And Lady Emily too; she’s over yonder, is she? Ah, well, I’ll look out for her. We heard you were to be here. Oh, how kind of you; thank you. No, Elma’s none the worse for her adventure, thank Heaven! just a little shaken, that’s all, but not otherwise injured. And this gentleman’s the brother of the kind friend who was so good to her in the tunnel. I’m not quite sure of the name. I think it’s—”

  “Guy Waring,” the young man interposed blandly. Hardly any one who looked at Colonel Kelmscott’s eyes could even have perceived the profound surprise this announcement caused him. He bowed without moving a muscle of that military face. Guy himself never noticed the intense emotion the introduction aroused in the distinguished stranger. But Mrs. Clifford and Elma, each scanning him closely with those keen grey eyes of theirs, observed at once that, unmoved as he appeared, a thunderbolt falling at Colonel
Kelmscott’s feet could not more thoroughly or completely have stunned him. For a second or two he gazed in the young man’s face uneasily, his colour came and went, his bosom heaved in silence; then he roped his moustache with his trembling fingers, and tried in vain to pump up some harmless remark appropriate to the occasion. But no remark came to him. Mrs. Clifford darted a furtive glance at Elma, and Elma darted back a furtive glance at Mrs. Clifford. Neither said a word, and each let her eyes drop to the ground at once as they met the other’s. But each knew in her heart that something passing strange had astonished Colonel Kelmscott; and each knew, too, that the other had observed it.

  Mother and daughter, indeed, needed no spoken words to tell these things plainly to one another. The deep intuition that descended to both was enough to put them in sympathy at once without the need of articulate language.

  “Yes, Mr. Guy Waring,” Mrs. Clifford repeated at last, breaking the awkward silence that supervened upon the group. “The brother of Mr. Cyril Waring, who was so kind the other day to my daughter in the tunnel.”

  The Colonel started imperceptibly to the naked eye again.