by Grant Allen
When Isabel had sucked her orange quite dry, she rose at last, and, remarking in the cheerful American tone of virginal discovery, “It must be getting on for one: I feel like lunching,” led the way back direct to the city.
As soon as she found herself in her own room at the Mitre, however, she took out a small Russia leather notebook from her pocket and entered in it with a neat gold pencil-case, and not without some rising tears, three short memoranda: “Judah Solomons, High Street, Hillborough, Surrey. Faith Gascoyne, 5 Plowden’s Court. Drexel, Morgan & Co., bankers, Paris.”
Then she dried her eyes with a clean white handkerchief, hummed a cheerful tune for a moment or two to herself to restore her spirits, and having satisfied herself in the glass that all traces of recent weeping had disappeared, descended, smiling, to her momma in the coffee-room.
“On Toosday,” she said to her mother with an abstracted air, as they sat down to a lunch of transatlantic splendor, “I shall go back to London. Appears to me as if I’d had about enough now of these Oxford colleges. There’s too many of ’em at once. They run into the monotonous.”
“Very well, Izzy,” her mother responded dutifully.
And Tuesday morning, in real earnest, they were back again once more, with all their boxes, at Hatchett’s Hotel in Piccadilly.
That afternoon as Isabel, somewhat disconsolate, strolled along Bond Street, she saw a familiar figure steering its way toward her loungily on the opposite side of the street. The figure was attired in a faultless frock coat and a shiny tall hat, and was booted, gloved, and cuffed to match with irreproachable exactitude. As a faint smile began to develop itself by premonition on Isabel’s countenance the figure displayed some momentary symptoms of nascent hesitation, not unmixed with an evident tendency to turn away, without the appearance of observing her, into Burlington Gardens. Miss Boyton might be very good fun on the Promenade du Midi, but was she quite the right sort of person to acknowledge on Bond Street? The authority on the meaning of the word scallywag had his doubts on the subject.
Before he could carry his hesitancy into effect, however, Isabel had darted promptly across the street with American irrepressibility, and was shaking the limp gloved hand with good-humored fervor.
“Oh, my! Mr. Armitage,” she said, “how funny I should meet you — you of all people in the world, right here in London!”
Armitage drew himself up with stiff politeness.
“One usually does expect to meet one’s friends in Bond Street,” he retorted with dignity. “And, indeed, I was here this very afternoon on the lookout for another old Mentone acquintance whom I often meet about these parts. I mean Mme. Ceriolo.”
“Oh, she’s in London, is she?” Isabel asked with languid interest.
“Well, yes, she’s in London,” Armitage answered cautiously. “Where, L don’t know; perhaps it would be wisest not to inquire too deep. Mme. Ceriolo’s movements should be judged, I take it, with tolerant leniency. But she amuses me, you know — she undoubtedly amuses me.” He spoke with a marked apologetic tone, as one who feels half ashamed of his own undeveloped taste. “I like to meet her and have a little chat with her now and again. She gives me a fillip. After all, one can forgive much to a person who amuses you.”
“I guess that’s about what we all want out of one another in this vale of tears,” Isabel answered frankly.
“The philosophy of life in a nutshell,” Armitage retorted reassured. “And really, in her way, the little woman’s quite presentable.”
“Oh, quite presentable,” Isabel answered, smiling.
“So why shouldn’t one know her?” Armitage went on with the timid air of a man who desires to be backed up in a heretical opinion. “I mean to find her out and look her up, I think. And you, Miss Boyton, what have you been doing with yourself since you left Mentone.”
The devil entered into Isabel Boyton (as he frequently does into her saucy fellow-countrywomen) and prompted her to respond with incisiveness.
“I’ve been up to Oxford, to see the scallywag.”
“No?” Armitage cried with a look of profound interest. “And tell, me, Miss Boyton, what did you see or hear there?”
Isabel took a cruel revenge for his desire to avoid her.
“I saw Nea Blair,” she said, “who was stopping at a house in Oxford with Faith Gascoyne, the scallywag’s sister; and we went out a great deal together, and saw Mr. Gascoyne and Mr. Thistleton, and a great many more. And no end of engagements and things have happened; and there’s lots of news; but I’m so sorry I’m busy. I must call a hack!”
And, quick as thought, she hailed a hansom, and left the poor scandalmonger lifting his hat, alone, on the pavement, tantalized.
It was a cruel revenge, but perhaps he deserved it.
Armitage would have given five pounds that moment to know all about these rumored engagements.
Had that fellow Gascoyne succeeded in bagging the American heiress who was so sweet upon him at Mentone?
And had Thistleton fallen a victim to the seeming innocence of Nea Blair? He rather suspected it. These innocent bread-and-butter misses often know at any rate on which side their bread’s buttered. So, twenty minutes later, Armitage was expounding both apocryphal engagements to little Mme. Ceriolo, whom he happened to run up against, quite by accident, of course, near the corner of Piccadilly. And little Mme. Ceriolo, smiling her most winning smile, remarked confidentially that it’s often the women of the world, whom everybody suspects, that have after all the most profound and disinterested affections.
As she said so, she looked most meaningly at Armitage.
CHAPTER XXIII.
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
“MOMMA,” Miss Isabel Boyton remarked at breakfast on Wednesday morning, balancing a fragment of sole on the end of her fork, as she glanced up sideways, “you needn’t worry to expect me to lunch to-day. I’m going out by myself, and I mayn’t be back till somewhere near dinner-time. If you happen to be loafing around anywhere about Bond Street, I daresay you’ll pick up Mr. Armitage; he’s there most all the time — afternoons, he says. But, if you don’t, I guess you can drop in and look at the National Gallery, or something instructive and entertaining, most as well without me.”
Mrs. Boyton helped herself to a third poached egg and some more broiled ham — she had the usual surprising appetite of the sallow American dyspeptic — as she answered meekly:
“Yes, indeed, Izzy. I’ve got to mail my letters to your poppa this morning, and after lunch I’ll fix myself up and sit out in the Park a bit.”
Miss Isabel went up to her own room and consulted “Bradshaw.” The high mathematical training she had received at the Harrisburg Lyceum enabled her in less than half an hour to arrive at the abstruse fact that a train for Hillborough left Victoria Station at 11.05, and that a return train might be expected at 3.17 or at 4.30. Armed with these data, and with the consciousness of virtue, she summoned a hansom — it was one of the chief joys of London, in Isabel Boyton’s eyes, to “ride a hansom” from place to place — and commanded her driver to take her “right away” to Victoria.
Arrived at the station which bore that regal and imperial name (Isabel did just love these faint echoes of royalty, resonant through the length and breadth of modern England) she went into the telegraph office and framed a hasty cablegram, in the imperative mood, addressed to Sylvanus P. Boyton, Philadelphia, Pa. — which last mysterious addition had reference, not to Mr. Boyton’s respected parental relation toward herself, but to his local habitation in the State of Pennsylvania. The message itself was pithy and to the point:
“Open me a credit for three thousand pounds sterling at once at Drexel & Morgan’s, Paris.
“ISABEL BOYTON.”
“‘Honor your father and mother’s’ gone out of date,” Mr. Sylvanus Boyton remarked, in his counting-house at Philadelphia, when he received that cablegram four hours earlier (by American time), and ‘Honor your sons’ and daughters’ checks’ has come in instead of
it!” But he understood his duty in his own generation for all that, for he telegraphed without delay:
“Have advised Drexel, Morgan, according to wish. You seem to be going it.”
And going it Miss Isabel undoubtedly was, in her own unconventional American fashion.
At Hillborough Station she found but a single cab in attendance. This she hailed at once, and observed in a confidential tone to the driver, “I want you to drive me to Mr. Solomons, auctioneer and estate agent, somewhere in the High Street; but please, in going, don’t pass a place called Plowden’s Court, if you can possibly help it, and don’t go near the school where Miss Gascoyne teaches. I don’t want her to know I’ve come to Hillborough.”
The driver smiled a curiously knowing smile; and his right eye was with difficulty prevented from winking, but he was a discreet man, as is the wont of cabmen — those involuntary depositories of so many other folks’ secrets — so he answered merely, “All right, Miss; I understand!” with an air as confidential as Isabel’s own, and drove her forthwith to the dingy, stingy little stuccoed house in the old-fashioned High Street, without further comment.
‘ Mr. Solomons was in somewhat low spirits that morning. Things generally had been using him very hard. A debtor against whom he had obtained a judgment summons had “sold up” so ill that barely enough remained, after expenses paid, to cover the principal of Mr. Solomons’ debt, let alone the interest. Great Occidental Shares which he held for a rise, had fallen yesterday five-eights to three-quarters. His nephew Lionel, whom he supplied so liberally, had written again to ask for more. And, to crown all, sitting clumsily down himself with all his weight of care, he had broken an office stool, value three and a penny, which would have to be replaced by a fresh article from the carpenter’s. These accumulated misfortunes told heavily upon Mr. Solomons. He was distinctly out of sorts, and he would have been glad of an excuse to vent his ill humor, if occasion turned up, upon some fitting object.
Nevertheless, when he saw a pretty young lady with golden hair — slim, too slim for Mr. Solomon’s Oriental taste, but still distinctly good-looking, and dressed with the nameless incommunicable charm of American plutocracy — descend at his own door and enter his office, doubtless on business thoughts intent, professional spirit rose so triumphant in Mr. Solomons’ breast that he advanced to meet the pretty young lady, smiling a smile of ten house-and-estate-agent power of persuasion. He saw in her, with the eye of faith, that valuable acquisition to the professional man, a new client. The new client was probably come to inquire for a furnished villa at Hillborough for the summer season. Mr. Solomons had always many such inquiries in July and August.
The young lady, however, declined the suggestion of wanting a house. She was in a hurry, she said — in a very great hurry — might she speak with Mr. Solomons half an hour — alone — on strictly private business.
Mr. Solomons rose and led the way upstairs with a beating heart. Sixty years of resolute bachelorhood had made him wary. Could the lady’s little game by any possibility be breach of promise? He trembled at the idea. If only Leo were here now to listen unobtrusively and act as witness through the medium of the key-hole! But to face her alone, unsupported even by the office boy’s evidence — the bare notion of such damages as the Court might award was really too appalling.
The young lady, however, soon set his doubts on that score at rest. She went straight to the point with transatlantic directness. Mr. Solomons had certain bonds, notes, or acceptances of Mr. Paul Gascoyne’s of Christ Church, Oxford. How much were they for? And what would Mr. Solomons take in a lump for them?
At this astounding proposition, fired off at his head point-blank, without explanation or introduction, without even a knowledge of the young woman’s name — Mr. Solomons’ breath came and went painfully, and a curious conflict of doubt and hope took possession of his bosom. He was a business man, and he must know more about this offer before he even admitted the existence of the bonds. Who knew but that the strange young lady wanted to rob and murder him!
So Mr. Solomons temporized. By long and slow degrees he drew out of Isabel the various facts that she was a rich American; that she had met Paul Gascoyne at Mentone and Oxford; that she wished to get the bonds into her own hands; and that, apparently, she was well-disposed toward the parties of the first part in those valuable documents. On the other hand, he gathered, by various suggestive side-hints, that the young lady was not aware of the precise position of Paul’s father, beyond the fact that he was a baronet of the United Kingdom in very small circumstances; and, further, that she had no sort of authority from Paul himself to make any offer whatsoever for the documents in question. She was prepared to buy them, she said, for their fair money value in prompt cash, and she would engage to cause the parties of the first part no unnecessary trouble in the matter of repayment.
Mr. Solomons’ heart, like the Homeric hero’s, was divided two ways within him at this singular application. He had never concealed from himself, and his nephew Lionel had certainly not concealed from him, the painful fact that these bonds were a very doubtful and problematical security. He had ventured much on a cock-and-bull scheme — a little private mare’s nest of his own invention; and he had trembled for years for his precious money. And here, now, was the very heiress, the deus ex machina (or dea, if we must speak by the card, lest equivocation undo us), who was to relieve him from all his financial follies, and justify his daring, and marry Paul, and make repayment certain. Nay, more than that, as Mr. Solomons read the problem, the heiress was even prepared to pay up beforehand, in order to relieve her future husband from the weight of debt, and put him in a better way, no doubt, for building up for himself a position in life and society. Mr. Solomons held his double chin between finger and thumb as he pondered deeply. A very strong bait, no doubt, this offer of prompt cash — a very strong bait indeed to human cupidity.
And yet two other feelings rose powerful at once in Mr. Solomon’s mind: two strange, deep feelings. The first was this. If here was the heiress who indeed was ready to marry Paul, and save him at once from all his struggles and difficulties, why should Mr. Solomons let her discount him, as it were, at present value, and so get him cheap, when, by holding on till the end, and selling dear, he would reap the full benefit himself of his long investment? What’s the use of embarking in a doubtful speculation if you don’t expect to get well repaid, cent, per cent., in the end for it? How foolish to get frightened with land in sight, so to speak, and forego the harvest of your own wise adventurousness! Why, Mr. Solomons would like to hold on, for nothing else, in order to show his nephew Leo he was wrong after all, and that Paul would book his heiress at last, and pay up, like a young man of honor as he was, to the uttermost farthing. Twenty per cent, and annual renewals, with discount off for the extra risk to start with — and to the uttermost farthing.
And the second feeling? Ah, that Mr. Solomons hardly even admitted to his own soul. He would have been ashamed, as a business man, to admit it. But it was there, nevertheless, vague and undetermined, a genuine sentiment, in some undercurrent of consciousness. Had he not conceived all this scheme himself, and risked his solid cash on the chimerical proposition? Was it not he who had put Paul to school and college, and thus acquired, as it were, a proprietary interest in him? Wasn’t Paul’s success in life his own business now? Had he backed it so long, and would he hedge at the last moment in favor of a stranger? And what stranger? Whatever did he know of this queer young lady, who had dropped down upon him from the clouds, with her brusque, sharp manners and her eager American promptitude? Why sell Paul’s future to her or anyone? Was not Paul his by right of investment, and should not he run him on his own account, to win or to lose, as the chances of the game of life would have it! The gambling spirit was strong in Mr. Solomons, after all. Having backed his horse, he liked to stand by him like a thorough going sportsman. No hedging for him. And a certain sneaking human regard for Paul made him say to himself, “Why hand him over, bound bo
dy and soul, to a golden-haired young lady from parts unknown, whose motives for buying him of me are, after all, doubtful.”
So he stared at Isabel hard as he opened his safe and took out the precious documents with trembling fingers. Then he said, “The total sum up to date comes to a trifle over fifteen hundred pounds sterling.”
