Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  “Yes, I really mean it,” Mr. Lionel answered, much flattered at her youthful emotion. “I’ve worked it all out, and I think I do see my way clear before me in essentials at last. But before I take any serious step I wish you’d allow me to explain at full to you.”

  “No, no,” Mme. Ceriolo answered, clapping her hands on her ears and turning upon him with a magnificent burst of feminine weakness and trustfulness. “I’d rather not hear. I’d rather know nothing. It’s quite enough for me if you say you can do it. I don’t want to be told how. I don’t want to ask why. I feel sure you could do nothing untrue or dishonorable. I’m content if you tell me you have solved our problem.”

  And, indeed, as a matter of fact, it suited Mme. Ceriolo’s book best to be able to plead entire ignorance of Mr. Lionel’s doings, in case that imprudent young gentleman should ever happen to find himself face to face with a criminal prosecution. She knew the chances of the game too well. She preferred to pose as dupe rather than as accomplice.

  Lionel Solomons winced a little at that painfully suggestive clause, “untrue or dishonorable,” but for all that he kept his own counsel.

  “At any rate,” he went on more cautiously, “whatever I did, Marie, I hope and trust you wouldn’t be angry with me?”

  “Angry with you?” the Ceriolo echoed in a blank tone of surprise. “Angry with you, Lionel! Impossible! Incredible! Inconceivable! How could I be? Whatever you did and whatever you dared would be right, to me, dearest one. How ever the world might judge it, I at least would understand and appreciate your motives. I would know that your love, your love for me, sanctified and excused whatever means you might be compelled to adopt for my sake, Lionel!”

  The young man leaned forward and pressed that plump hand tenderly. “Then you’ll forgive me,” he said, “whatever I may risk for you?”

  “Everything,” Mme. Ceriolo answered with innocent trust, “provided you don’t explain to me and ask me beforehand. I have perfect confidence in your wisdom and your honor.” And, as she said the last words, she looked up in his face with a guileless, look that quite took him captive. For guileless as it was, Lionel Solomons somehow felt in his heart of hearts that Mme. Ceriolo, in the most delicate and graceful manner possible, had mentally winked at him. And the consciousness of that infantile implied wink set him at his ease, on moral grounds at any rate.

  “We shall have to leave England,” he went on after a brief pause, during which his siren had been steadily transfixing him with those liquid eyes of hers.

  “That’s nothing to me,” madame responded passionately, in soft, low tones. “Where those I love are with me, there is my home. Besides, all Europe is pretty much the same to a woman who has traveled as long as I have done.” She sighed once more. “I’ve been buffeted about the world,” she went on, with a pathetic cadence, “in many strange places — Italy, Germany, Russia, Spain — it’s all one to me.”

  “Spain won’t do though,” Mr. Lionel responded briskly, half letting out his secret in the candor of private life (as encouraged by madame). “Spain’s played out, they say. No good any longer. A man’s no safer there since the last treaty than anywhere else on the Continent.”

  “I don’t quite understand you,” madame went on, once more, with that infantile smile repeated for his benefit, half as a wink and half as a warning. “We shall be safe wherever we go, dear heart, if we’re true to one another. Spain would be as good as anywhere else, Lionel.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to go there, anyhow,” Mr. Lionel rejoined with prudent vagueness. “Marie — can you follow me — across the broad Atlantic?”

  The Ceriolo gave a start of pleased surprise.

  Nothing on earth would suit her plans so well. It was she herself who, by dexterous remarks, à propos des bottes, had first put into his head the notion of South America as a possible place of refuge from impertinent inquiry. But he didn’t know that himself; he thought he had hit upon it all of his own mere motion. And he waited anxiously after playing this very doubtful card; while madame, pretending to be taken aback with astonishment, turned it over in her own mind with sudden lovesick infatuation.

  “With you, Lionel,” she cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it to her lips, ecstatically, “I could go to the world’s end — anywhere — everywhere!”

  And, indeed, if it came to that, the nearer the world’s end she got, the easier would it be for her to leave Mr. Lionel in the lurch as soon as she was done with him. In Paris or Madrid he might get in her way in the end and defeat her purpose; but in Rio or Buenos Ayres he would be harmless to hurt her, when, the orange once sucked dry, she turned her wandering bark anew toward the lodestar of London in search of Armitage.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Lionel said with warmth, and embraced her tenderly.

  “Will it be New York?” Mme. Ceriolo asked, gazing up at him yet again with infinite trustfulness. “Or do you prefer Philadelphia?”

  “Well, neither, Marie,” Mr. Lionel answered, fearing once more he might rouse suspicion or disgust in that innocent bosom. “I think — the — peculiar circumstances under which we must sail will compel our port to be Buenos Ayres.”

  “That’s a long way off,” madame mused resignedly, “a very long way off indeed. But where you are, Lionel, I shall be happy for ever.”

  The unfortunate young dupe endeavored to hedge. Mme. Ceriolo was forcing his hand too fast.

  “Well, I don’t say yet I’ve made my mind up to go,” he continued hastily. “There are contingencies that may occur which might easily prevent it. If my uncle—”

  Mme. Ceriolo clapped her hand promptly upon his mouth.

  “Not one word,” she exclaimed with fervor, “about old Cento-Cento. He’s a bad old man not to make things easier for you. It’s a sin and a shame you shouldn’t be able to come into your own and live comfortably without expatriation. I won’t hear the ancient wretch’s name so much as uttered in my presence. When you’ve finally emigrated, and we settle down on your quiet little farm in South America for life, I shall write to the old horror and just tell him what I think of him.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t,” Mr. Lionel interposed hastily.

  “Oh, yes, I will,” Mme. Ceriolo persisted, all smiles.

  Mr. Lionel glanced across at her in doubt once more. Was she really so childishly innocent as she seemed? Or was she only doing it all just to keep up appearances? He was almost half afraid she really meant what she said. For a moment he faltered. Was it safe, after all, to run away with this guileless creature?

  Mme. Ceriolo read the passing doubt in his eye. And she answered it characteristically. She drew out from her pocket a little packet of thin rice-papers and a pouch of delicately scented Russian tobacco.

  “Let me roll you a cigarette,” she said, peering deep into his eyes. Her gaze was full of unspeakable comprehension.

  “Thanks,” he answered. And she proceeded to roll it. How deftly those plump but dainty little fingers did their familiar work! He watched and admired. What a magical charm, to be sure, that fawn-eyed countess carried about with her! He took the cigarette from her hands, and she held the match herself to him. Then she went on to roll a second for herself. As soon as it was finished she placed it jauntily between those rich red lips and lighted it from his. How their eyes met and darted contagious fire as she puffed and drew in at two cigarettes’ length of distance between their faces! Then madame leaned back on the pillows and puffed away, not vigorously, but with languid and long-drawn enjoyment. Lionel had seen her smoke so a dozen times before; but this time the action had a special significance for him. She smoked like a woman to the manner born. How impossible to conceive that a person who handled her cigarette like that could be quite so blindly innocent as his charmer pretended to be!

  And if not so innocent, why, hang it all! what a clever little actress and schemer she was! How admirably she let him see, without one incriminating word ever passing between them, that she knew and approved exactly what he inte
nded.

  “So we understand one another?” he asked leaning over her, all intoxicated.

  And madame, pausing to blow out a long, slow current of thin blue smoke from between her pursed up lips, answered at last, gazing hard once more into the depths of his eyes:

  “We understand one another perfectly. Make what arrangements you choose and take your passage when you like. I am only yours. What day do you fix?”

  “For — the ceremony?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saturday.”

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  THE PLAN IN ACTION.

  To finish all needful preparations by Saturday was very hard work indeed; but having plighted his troth thus hastily to lady fair — as fair as pearl powder and crème de Ninon could make her — Mr. Lionel Solomons would have been loth in heart to fail her at a pinch! and he strained every nerve accordingly to complete his arrangements by the date agreed upon.

  And yet, there was a great deal, a very great deal to do meanwhile. Let alone certain important but doubtful elements in the case, which Mme. Ceriolo in her prudence would not so much as permit to be named before her, other more prosaic and ordinary preparations had still to be performed, as per act of Parliament in that case made and provided. There was the paternal blessing of the most Reverend Father in God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be obtained for this propitious union, on a piece of stamped paper duly sealed and delivered; for Mme. Ceriolo, true to her principles to the last, intended to be married with all proper solemnities to Mr. Lionel Solomons in a building legally set apart for the solemnization of matrimony, in accordance with the rite and ceremonies of the Church of England as by law established. No registrar’s office or hole-and-corner proceedings of doubtful respectability would suit madame’s delicate sense of the becoming in these profound matters; she must be married, if at all, by special license, and according to the rites of that Church in which, as she often remarked, her dear mamma’s father had formerly been a distinguished and respected dignitary. To be sure, once tied to Mr. Lionel Solomons by this stringent bond, there might be difficulties in the way of getting rid of him hereafter; but, like a wise woman, madame resolved to take short views and chance them. It’s better to be decently married even to a man you mean to suck dry and desert when completely drained, than to create a scandal. A separation between married folks is nowadays almost fashionable, and certainly not under the ban of the omnipotent Mrs. Grundy. And who knows what becomes of a beggared man in Buenos Ayres? Mme. Ceriolo trusted to the noble modern principles of natural selection to improve Mr. Lionel shortly off the face of the earth in those remote parts; and, at any rate, she felt that she was doing the very best possible for herself at present in marrying him.

  Mr. Lionel, for his part, showed unwonted energy in getting everything ready beforehand for that eventful Saturday. After procuring his license, and securing his berths, and engaging his parson, and making his way in every respect clear before him, he ran down, at last, on the Thursday of that eventful week to Hillborough. Everything depended now on the success of his visit. If he could succeed in what he wanted, all would be well; if not, he would have the mortification and chagrin on Saturday of confessing to the Ceriolo a complete fiasco.

  On the way down, the Southeastern Railway Company’s suburban train, making its wonted pace, gave Mr. Lionel in his comfortable smoking compartment ample time for meditation and reflection. And Mr. Lionel, turning all things quietly over with himself, came to the conclusion, in cold blood, that after all he was doing the very best thing for himself in thus anticipating his uncle’s testamentary disposition. Mr. Solomons, the elder, had frequently explained to him that all the money he had ground out of the Gascoynes and all his other clients by slow process, was intended in the end, wholly and solely, for Mr. Lionel’s own personal use and benefit. “It’s all for your sake I do it, Leo,” Mr. Solomons had said to him deprecatingly more than once. “It’s all for you that I slave and hoard, and wear myself out without getting any reasonable return in in life for it.”

  And in a certain sense Mr. Lionel knew that was true. His uncle made and hoarded money, to be sure, because to make and hoard money was the instinct of his kind; but Mr. Lionel was the conscious end in view for which as immediate object he made and hoarded it. Still, Mr. Lionel reflected to himself in his unprejudiced way, what was the good of money to a man of fifty? And if Uncle Judah went on living forever, as one might expect, in spite of his heart (for creaking doors last long), he, Lionel, would be certainly fifty or thereabouts before he had the slightest chance of touching one penny of it. It was absurd of a man to toil and slave for his nephew’s sake and then keep that nephew out of his own indefinitely. Mr. Lionel was prepared to relieve Uncle Judah from the onus of that illogical and untenable situation; he was prepared to carry out his uncle’s implied desire in a manner more intelligent and more directly sensible than his uncle contemplated.

  At any time of his life, indeed, he would have thought the same; he had often thought it before, though he had never dared to act upon it. But the great use of a woman in this world is that she supplies an efficient stimulus to action. Mme. Ceriolo’s clever and well-directed hints had rendered actual these potential impulses of Lionel’s. She had urged him forward to do as he thought; to take time by the forelock, and realize at once his uncle’s savings. He was prepared now to discount his future fortune — at a modest percentage; to take at once what would in any case be his on his uncle’s death, for an immediate inheritance.

  At fifty, of what use would it be to himself and his countess? And what worlds of fun they could get out of it nowadays!

  Mme. Ceriolo, indeed, had for many weeks been carefully instilling that simple moral, by wide generalizations and harmless copy-book maxims, into his receptive soul; and the seed she sowed had fallen on strictly appropriate soil, and, springing up well, was now to bring forth fruit in vigorous action. A man, madame had assured him more than once, should wisely plan and boldly execute; and, having attained his end, should sit down in peace under his own vine and fig tree to rest and enjoy himself. None but the brave deserve the fair; and when the brave had risked much for the sake of a countess in distress, she must be cruel, indeed, if, after that, she found it in her heart to blame or upbraid him.

  So Mr. Lionel sped slowly on his way southward, well satisfied in soul that he was doing the best in the end for himself and his charmer; and little trembling for the success of his vigorous plan of action.

  When he reached Hillborough and his uncle’s office he found Mr. Solomons very red in the face with suppressed excitement from a recent passage at arms with the local attorney.

  “That fellow Wilkie wanted to cheat me out of two and fourpence costs, Leo,” Mr. Solomons exclaimed indignantly, in explanation of his ruffled temper and suffused cheeks; “but I wouldn’t stand that, you know; I’ve had it out with him fairly, and I don’t think he’ll try it on with me a second time, the low pettifogging creature.”

  “It’s made you precious pink about the gills, anyway,” Mr. Lionel retorted with cheerful sympathy, seating himself lazily in the easy-chair, and gazing up at his uncle’s rotund face and figure. And indeed Mr. Solomons was very flushed — flushed, his nephew observed, with a certain deep blue lividness around the lips and eyes, which often indicates the later stages of heart-disease. Certain qualms of conscience rose that moment in Mr. Lionel’s soul. Was he going to render himself liable to criminal proceedings, then, all for nothing? If he waited a few weeks, or months, or seasons, would the pear drop ripe from the branch of its own accord? Was he anticipating nature dangerously when, if he held on in quiet a little longer, nature herself would bring him his inheritance? These were practical questions that Mr. Lionel’s conscience could readily understand, while on more abstract planes, perhaps, it would have been deaf as an adder. Uncle Judah’s heart was clearly getting very much the worse for wear. He might pop off any day. Why seek to get by foul means what would be his in time by fair, if only h
e cared to watch and wait for it?

  Pshaw! It was too late for such squeamishness now. With the Archbishop of Canterbury’s blessing in his desk, and the Royal Mail Steam Company’s receipt for berths per steamship Dom Pedro to Buenos Ayres direct in his trousers pocket, he couldn’t turn back at the eleventh hour and await contingencies. Threatened men live long. It’s no good counting upon heart-disease; the very worst hearts go beating on for years and years with most annoying regularity. Besides, what would Marie say if he returned to town and told her lamely that his plans had fallen through, and that he must decline to marry her, as per agreement arranged, on Saturday morning? When you’ve made up your mind to wed the charmer, who has enslaved your heart, at the week’s end, you can’t put her off on Thursday afternoon at two days’ notice. Come what might now he must pull this thing through. He must carry out his plan as settled upon at all hazard.

  “I’m glad you’ve come, though, Leo,” Mr. Solomons replied, putting his necktie straight, and endeavoring to compose his ruffled temper. “I’ve a great many things I want to talk over with you. I’d like your advice about sundry securities I hold in my hands: especially as to selling those Central Southern Railway Debentures.”

  Mr. Lionel’s eyes glistened as his uncle rose ten minutes later, after some further parley on business matters, and went over to the safe, where the papers which represented his wealth were duly pigeon-holed. How pat! How opportune! He had fallen on his feet indeed: this was precisely the exact chance he needed. Mr. Solomons drew out the various securities one by one, and discussed with loving cadences their different values. All yours, all yours, Leo, my dear,” he murmured more than once, as he fingered them gingerly. “You’ll be a rich man, Leo, when you come into your own. Gas and Coke Company’s A’s yield twelve percent, to original investors, of which I was one. Twelve per cent, is very good interest as times go nowadays on that class of security; excellent interest. No risk, no difficulty; nothing to do but to sit in your easy-chair, with your legs in the air, and draw your dividends. Not my style of business, you know, Leo; too slow for me; I like something that gives me good returns and close pickings, and some fun for one’s money; but for your sake, my dear boy, I like to have a little reserve fund put away safely. It’s better than all these speculative investments after all, Leo.”