Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  It was only for the present, however, so far as Faith was concerned. For before Thistleton left Hillborough he had sat one afternoon with Faith in the bare little parlor, and there, before the impassive face of the spotted dog, once more discussed that important question which he had broached to her last spring in the flowery meadows at Ensham. At first, of course, Faith would have nothing to say to any such subversive scheme. She wouldn’t leave her mother, she said, alone in her widowhood. She must stay with her and comfort her, now nobody else was left to help her. But Thistleton had a strong card to play this time in the necessity for relieving Paul of any unnecessary burden. “Faith,” he said, taking her hand in his own persuasively (there is much virtue in a gentle pressure of the human hand), “you know you as good as promised me at Oxford, and we only put it off till a more convenient season.”

  “Why, I never promised you, Mr. Thistleton,” Faith retorted, half angry.

  “I said, you as good as promised me,” the blond young man corrected, unperturbed. “We left it open. But now, you know, Paul’s left the sole support of the entire family, and it becomes your duty to try and relieve him as far as possible. If you and I were married, your mother could often come to stop with us for a time — in Sheffield or London; and, at any rate, Paul would be freed from all anxiety on your account. For my part, I think it’s a duty you owe him.”

  “I won’t marry anyone as a duty to Paul,” Faith exclaimed firmly, bridling up like a Gascoyne, and trying to withdraw her fingers from the hand that imprisoned them.

  “I don’t ask you to,” Thistleton answered, with another soothing movement of that consolatory palm. “You know very well it isn’t that: I want you for yourself. I telegraphed to my people last spring, ‘the lady accepts, but defers for the present’; so you see the question of marrying me was settled long ago. It’s only the question of when that we have to talk about now. And I say this is a very convenient time, because it’ll make it a great deal easier for Paul to arrange about your mother and himself comfortably.”

  “There’s something in that,” Faith admitted with a grudging assent.

  So the end of it all was that, after many protests, Faith gave in at last to a proposal to be married in March — a very quiet wedding, of course, because of their deep mourning; but, as Thistleton justly remarked, with a triumphant sigh of relief, a wedding’s a wedding, however quiet you make it, and it was Faith, not the festivities, that he himself attached the greatest importance to.

  At the end of three weeks, therefore, the blond young man returned to Yorkshire with victory in his van (whatever that may be); and Mrs. Thistleton, senior, was in a position to call upon all her neighbors in Sheffield — master-cutlers’ wives every one of them to a woman — with the proud announcement that her son Charles was to be married in March to the sister of his Oxford friend, Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet, who had lately succeeded to his father’s title. And all the other ladies in Sheffield looked out the baronetcy in Debrett forthwith, as in duty bound; and when they found it was quite an ancient creation, of seventeenth century date, and unconnected with cutlery, were ready to die with envy to think that that fat old Mrs. Thistleton, a person in no wise richer or more distinguished than themselves, should become connected at last with most undoubted aristocracy.

  At Hillborough, meanwhile, the sister and daughter of those noble fourteenth and fifteenth baronets had a busy time in her own small room making such preparations as she was able for that quiet wedding, which must nevertheless tax the family resources to the very utmost. Indeed, it gave Paul no small qualms of conscience to buy the strictly necessary for so important an occasion; for how could he devote to his sister’s needful outfit — the outfit indispensable for the wedding-day itself, if she was not to put the Thistleton family to shame — a single penny of his precarious earnings, without neglecting the just claims of Mr. Solomons? Paul felt even more painfully than ever before how he was tied hand and foot to his remorseless creditor. It was impossible for him to spend money on anything beyond the barest necessaries without feeling he was wronging his universal assignee.

  However, he put it to himself on this special occasion that for Faith to be married, and to be married well, was, after all, the very best thing in the end for Mr. Solomons’ interests. It would leave him freer to earn money with which ultimately to repay those grinding claims; and so he judged he might honestly devote part of his still very modest income to buying what was most indispensable for Faith’s wedding. Faith herself, with the help of the little dressmaker from the neighboring court, would do all the rest; and, fortunately, their mourning gave them a good excuse for making the wedding preparations on the smallest possible scale of expenditure under the circumstances.

  So as soon as everything was arranged at Hillborough and Faith and her mother fairly settled into modest lodgings, Paul returned once more for a day to his rooms in Pimlico. But it was only in order to remove his books and belongings from the chambers he shared with Mr. Lionel Solomons to a new address across the city. The welcome change had been forced upon him by his interview with his old provider. Mr. Lionel’s society had never been agreeable to him; and now that he had cleared up matters with the uncle at Hillborough, Paul saw no reason why he should any longer put up with the nephew’s company in London. Besides, he contemplated now living on a still more modest basis than before, since it would be needful for him in future to support his mother as well as himself out of his journalistic earnings.

  Mr. Lionel met his proposals for removal with a shrug of contempt. “I suppose, now you’re a baronet,” he said, just suppressing a decent sneer, “you think yourself too fine to associate any longer with City gentlemen?”

  “On the contrary,” Paul answered; “now that I shall have to keep my mother as well as myself, I must manage to do with smaller and cheaper lodgings.”

  “Well, you’re a devilish odd fellow!” Mr. Lionel remarked, with a cheerful smile, provoked in part by the sight of an embossed coronet that just peeped from the corner of a dainty note on the mantelpiece. “If I were a baronet, I wouldn’t do like you, you may bet your last sixpence. If I didn’t intend to marry tin, at any rate I’d go in for making money in a modest way as a guinea-pig.” Paul’s ignorance of City ways was so profound that he answered with a puzzled expression of countenance: “What is a guinea-pig?”

  “A guinea-pig,” Mr. Lionel condescended to explain, gazing down with approbation at his own well-filled waistcoat; “a guinea-pig is a gentleman of birth, rank, title, or position, who accepts a seat at a board as director of a company, which he guarantees by his name, receiving in return a guinea a day every time he attends a meeting of the directorate. For example, let’s suppose I want to start an Automatic Pork Pie Company, or a Universal Artificial Guano Supply Association, Limited. Very well, then: I promote the company myself, and get two or three City people — good men, of course — to back me up in it. And I ask you to let me print your name at the head of the list. Directors: Sir Paul Gascoyne, Bart.; Timothy Twells, Esquire (Twells, Twemlow, and Handsomebody); and so forth and so forth. You give your name and you draw your guinea. We consider the advertisement worth to us that amount. And a person who lives by so lending his name to industrial undertakings is called a guinea-pig.”

  “But I couldn’t be a director of a public company,” Paul answered, smiling. “I don’t know anything at all about business.”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Lionel retorted. “That’s just where it is. If you did, you’d be meddling and inquiring into the affair. That’s exactly the good of you. What we particularly require in an ideal guinea-pig is that he should attend his meeting and take his fee and ask no questions. Otherwise, he’s apt to be a confounded nuisance to the working directorate.”

  “But I call that dishonest,” Paul exclaimed warmly. “A man lends his name, and his title if he has one, if I understand what you mean, in order to induce the public at large to believe this is a solid concern, with an influential board of direc
tors; and you want him to do it for a guinea a day without so much as inquiring into the solidity of the undertaking!”

  Mr. Lionel’s face relaxed into a broad smile. “Well, you are a rum one!” he answered, much amused at Paul’s indignant warmth. “I don’t want you to do it. It don’t matter tuppence either way to me whether you sink or swim. You’re at liberty to starve, so far as I’m concerned, in the most honest and Quixotic way that seems good to you. All I say is that if I were you I’d go in, for the present — till something neat turns up in the matrimonial line — for being a professional guinea-pig. I throw out the hint for your consideration, free, gratis, given away for nothing. If you don’t like it you’re at liberty to leave it. But you needn’t jump down a man’s throat for all that with your moral remarks, as if I was an idiot.

  “I don’t care to sell my name for money to anybody,” Paul answered, growing hot; “either to men or women. I never sought the title myself: it’s been thrust upon me by circumstances, and I suppose I must take it. But if I bear it at all, I trust I shall so bear it as to bring no disgrace upon my honest ancestors. I will lend it or sell it to nobody for my own advantage.”

  “So my uncle informed me,” Mr. Lionel answered, showing his even teeth in a very ugly smile, and once more ogling that coroneted note-paper: “and I’ll tell you what I think of you, Gascoyne! I think you’re a fool for your pains; that’s just my candid opinion of you! You’re a sight too sentimental, that’s where it is, with these notions and ideas of yours! You’ll find, when you’ve mixed a little more with the world, as I’ve done in the City, you’ll have to come down a bit at last from that precious high horse of yours. If you don’t, he’ll throw you, and then there’ll be an end of you! And I’ve got another thing to tell you, too, now I’m once about it! My Uncle Judah aint as strong a man by any means as he looks! His heart’s affected. His doctor tells me so. He can’t stand running about too much. Some day he’ll go running to catch a train, getting too much excited over a matter of a bargain, or putting himself in a fluster at an execution; and hi presto! before he knows where he is, his heart’ll go pop, and there’ll be the end of him.”

  “Well,” Paul said, drawing his breath slowly, with a faint apprehension of Mr. Lionel’s probable meaning.

  “Well, then,” Mr. Lionel went on, unmoved, that ugly smile growing more marked than before, “I’ll inherit every stiver my uncle leaves — and among the rest, those precious notes-of-hand of yours.”

  “Yes,” Paul answered, growing uncomfortably warm again.

  “Yes,” Mr. Lionel repeated, fixing his man with those nasty eyes of his; “and I’ll tell you what, Gascoyne — Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet — you’ll find you’ve got a very different sort of man to deal with from my Uncle Judah. Sentimentality won’t go down with me, I can tell you. It aint my line of country. You think you can do as you like with my uncle, because he takes a sort of personal interest in you, and feels proud of you as his own tame, live baronet that he’s raised by hand, and sent to college at his own expense, and floated in the world, and made a gentleman of. You think you can force him to wait as long as you like for his money. But mark my words — my uncle’s life aint worth a year’s purchase. No office in the City’d take him at any rate he’d like to offer. It’s touch and go with that ramshackled old heart of his. So my advice to you is, don’t put him to a strain, if you don’t want to lose by it. For when once those papers come into my hands, I give you fair warning, I’ll have my money’s worth out of them. I’ll drive you to marry somebody who’ll pay me up in full, I can tell you that; or, if I don’t, I’ll have you shown up for a defaulter, as you are, in every paper in England. They shall know how you got your education by fraud, and then turned round and refused to carry out your honest bargain.”

  Paul’s lips quivered, and his cheek was pale, but he made no reply to this coarse outburst of the inner self in Lionel Solomons. He knew too well what was due to his own dignity. He went without a word into his bedroom next door, packed up his few belongings as hurriedly as he could, and slipped out himself to call a hansom. Then, bringing down his portmanteau to the door in his own hands, he left Mr. Lionel in undisturbed possession of their joint apartments, and started off to his new rooms in a by-way off Gower Street.

  Nevertheless, that hint of a possible eventuality disturbed his mind not a little in the night watches. It was a fact, indeed, that Mr. Solomons’ heart was a feeble member; and Paul by no means relished the idea of being left with such an individual as Mr. Lionel Solomons for his life-long creditor.

  As for Mr. Lionel, no sooner was Paul’s back turned than he drew out a photograph from his inner breast-pocket with effusion, and gazed at it tenderly. It was a photograph of a lady of mature and somewhat obviously artificial charms, inclosed in a scented Russia leather case with a gilt coronet.

  “Well, he did me one good turn, anyhow,” Mr. Lionel murmured, with a rapturous look at the lady’s face, “when he introduced me to the Ceriolo. And now he’s gone, I’m not sorry to be rid of him, for I can ask her here to supper as often as I like next summer, with no chance of its getting round in the end to Uncle Judah.”

  For Mr. Lionel’s charmer had now gone abroad, as was her usual wont, to winter quarters. But even in those remote foreign parts she never neglected to write to her new admirer.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.

  How curiously different things look to each of us according to our particular point of view! While Faith and Paul at Hillborough and in London were reflecting seriously how to make things decent for the Thistleton family at the approaching ceremony, the Thistletons in turn, in their opulent mansion in the Park at Sheffield, were all agog with the unwonted excitement of preparation for their Charlie’s marriage with the sister of Sir Paul Gascoyne, Fifteenth Baronet.

  “The wedding must be in London, of course,” Mrs. Thistleton said musingly — she was a comfortable body of a certain age, with a material plenitude of face and figure; “and Sir Paul’ll give her away himself, you maybe certain. I suppose they won’t want it to be at Hillborough, Charlie? I’d much rather, for my part, you should be married in London.”

  “I think Faith would prefer it, too,” Thistleton answered, smiling. “You must remember, mother dear, I’ve always told you, they live in a very quiet way of their own down at Hillborough; and I fancy they’d rather we were married — well, away from the place, of course, where they’ve just lost their poor father.”

  “Naturally,” Mrs. Thistleton went on, still turning over with those matronly hands of hers the patterns for her new silk dress for the occasion, sent by post that morning — the richest Lyons — from Swan & Edgar’s. “There’ll be an account of it in the World, I suppose, and in the Morning Post, and the bride’s dress’ll be noticed in the Queen. I declare I shall feel quite nervous. But I suppose Sir Paul will be affable, won’t he?”

  Her son laughed good-humoredly. “Gascoyne’s a first-rate fellow,” he answered, unabashed; “but I can hardly imagine his being affable to anybody. To be affable’s to be condescending, and Gascoyne’s a great deal too shy and retiring himself ever to dream of condescending to, or patronizing anyone.

  “Well, I hope Faith won’t give herself any airs,” Mrs. Thistleton continued, laying four fashionable shades of silk side by side in the sunlight for critical comparison; “because your father’s a man who won’t stand airs; and I should be very sorry if she was to annoy him in any way. It’s a great pity she couldn’t have come up to stay with us beforehand, so that we might all have got to know a little about her and not be so afraid of her.”

  “It would have been impossible,” Thistleton replied, gazing across at his mother with an amused air. “But I wish I could disabuse your mind of these ideas about the Gascoynes. Paul and Faith will be a great deal more afraid of you than you are of them; and as to Faith giving herself airs, dear girl, she’ll be so awfully frightened, when she comes to stay here, at the size of the house and th
e number of the servants, that I wouldn’t for worlds have had her come to visit us before she’s married, or else I’m certain she’d try to cry off again the moment she arrived, from pure nervousness.”

  “Well, I’m sure I hope you’re right,” Mrs. Thistleton replied, selecting finally the exact shade that suited her complexion, and laying it down by itself on the costly inlaid table that stood beside the Oriental ottoman in the alcove by the bay window. “For though, of course, one naturally likes to be connected with people of title, and all that, one doesn’t want them to trample one under foot in return for all one’s consideration.”

  But at the very same moment, away over at Hillborough, Faith, as she sat in her simple black frock by the window of her new lodgings, stitching away at the skirt of her wedding-dress with aching fingers, was remarking to her mother:

  “What I am afraid of, dear, is that, perhaps, Charlie’s father and mother will turn out, when one comes to know them, to be nothing more or less than nasty rich people.”

  To which her mother wisely answered:

  “If they’re like himself, Faith, I don’t think you need be afraid of them.”

  In accordance with the wish of both the high contracting parties it had been finally arranged that the wedding should take place in London. Mr. Thistleton, senior, therefore went up to town a week or two in advance, “to consult with Sir Paul,” whom he was able to guarantee in his letter to his wife the same evening as “extremely amicable.” But it would be out of the question, the Master Cutler observed, when he saw the Fifteenth Baronet’s present abode, that Miss Gascoyne should be married from her brother’s chambers. (Mr. Thistleton, senior, influenced by somewhat the same motives as Mr. Lionel Solomons, wrote “chambers” in place of “lodgings” even to his wife, because he felt the simplicity of the latter word unsuitable to the Fifteenth Baronet’s exalted dignity.) So he had arranged with Sir Paul — much against Sir Paul’s original wish — to take rooms for the breakfast at a West-End hotel, whither the bridal party would proceed direct from the altar of St. George’s. Of course, the ceremony was to be the simplest possible — only a few very intimate friends of either family; but the Master Cutler couldn’t forbear the pleasure of the breakfast at the hotel, and the display of Sir Paul in the full glory of his Fifteenth Baronetcy, before the admiring eyes of a small but select Sheffield audience. If they smuggled their Baronet away in a corner, why their Charlie might almost as well have married any other girl whose name was not to be found in the pages of the British book of honor. To all these suggestions Paul at last gave way, though very unwillingly, and even consented to invite a few common Oxford friends of his own and Thistleton’s, including, of course, the invaluable Mrs. Douglas.