Chapter 15

“Yes, it struck me that we might both go round to the fellow's hotel--Stracey, you call him, I think--and you might tell him that his visits must cease at the Manor House, and that he must not speak to your sister if he should happen to meet her. That should bring the matter to an end. He is in Brighton--he is staying at the 'Grand.' We might go round there to-morrow morning.”

“He might kick us out.”

“I only hope he may try. I would give him such a hammering. But you need not be afraid of that. It wouldn't do to have Maggie's name mentioned in connection with a vulgar brawl--people are not too charitable. My idea is that this business should be conducted in the quietest and most gentlemanly manner possible.”

“I think I had better speak to father first.”

“No necessity; he will be only too glad to get rid of the penniless brute. Don't you think so, Mrs. Brookes?”

“I do.”

They then spoke of other things--of the shop, the profit they had made on tomatoes, and the losses that had resulted from over-stocking themselves with flour. At last a loud snore brought the conversation to a full stop, and Frank hurriedly bade them good-night.

“Cissy will let you out,” said Willy, with a sigh of relief.

The little girl had pulled on her stockings and tied a petticoat round her waist. “So you are going to be married.”

“O Cissy, you have been listening!”

“Is she very nice? She must be very nice for you to marry her. I should like to marry you.”

“Would you, Cissy, and why?”

“Oh, because you are so very handsome. But you will come and see us all the same, and let me sit on your knee?”

“Of course I will, Cissy, and now good-night.”

Next morning Willy declared himself ready to go and see Mr. Charles Stracey, and to tell him that he was not to call any more at the Manor House, or speak to Miss Brookes if he should happen to meet her. Frank wondered if this decision was owing to Mrs. Brookes's influence.

“I slept last night at the 'Grand' It seemed odd sleeping in the same house--perhaps within a few doors of him. If you only knew how I love her, if I could only tell you, you would pity me. You ought to know what I feel--the anxiety, the heart-ache. I know you have gone through it all.”

“Yes, I think I know what it is,” Willy replied thoughtfully.

“Mr. Stracey is staying here?”

“Will you enquire at the office, sir?”

While the books were being searched the young men consulted together. Frank said: “Send up your card, and say you will be glad to speak to him on a matter of importance. Of course he will see you, but before you speak about Maggie you must apologise for my presence; you must say that I am a very particular friend, and that you thought it better that the interview should take place in the presence of a witness.”

“I wish it were all over. I wouldn't do what I am doing for any one else, I can tell you, Frank.”

“Mr. Stracey is in the hotel, sir.”

“Will you give him my card, and say I should be glad to speak to him on a matter of importance?”

“Very good, sir.”

(In an undertone to Frank), “Was that right?”

“Quite right.”

“Oh, one thing I had forgotten to ask you--am I to shake hands with him?”

“You mean if he offers you his hand?”

“Yes.”

“It is impossible to settle everything beforehand. One must act according as the occasion requires.”

“That's all very well for you, but I am a slow man, and am lost if I don't arrange beforehand.”

“Pretend not to see his hand, and apologise for my presence; he will then see that we mean business.”

“The waiting is the worst part.”

“Will you walk this way, sir?” said the page boy. “Mr. Stracey is not out of bed yet, but he said if you wouldn't mind, sir.”

They shrank from their enterprise instinctively, but the door was thrown open, and they saw a bath, and a sponge, and a towel, and Mr. Stracey lying on his back reading _The Sporting Times_. He extended a long brawny arm. The strength of the arm fixed itself on Willy's mind, and he doubted if he had not better take the proffered hand.

“I brought my friend Mr. Escott with me, for I thought a witness--I mean, that this interview should be conducted in the presence of a third party.”

At this speech Charlie opened his eyes and dropped his paper. Willy leaned over the rail of the bed; Frank looked into the bath, but remembering himself suddenly, he examined the chest of drawers.

“I have come to speak to you about my sister.”

Charlie changed countenance, and both men noticed the change.

“I mean to say I have come to tell you that you must discontinue your visits to the Manor House, and I must beg of you not to address my sisters should you meet them.”

“May I ask if you are your father's representative, if you speak with his authority?”

“I do not. I--”

“Then I should like to know on what authority you forbid me a house that doesn't belong to you, and I should like to know, if your father doesn't disapprove of my knowing your sisters, why you should? I shall speak to Miss Brookes as long as she cares to speak to me. The very idea of a man like you coming here to bully me! You have got my answer.”

“If, after this warning,” said Frank, who, seeing that things were going against them, thought he had better interfere, “you speak to Miss Brookes, you will do so at your peril.”

“Peril! What do you mean?”

“I mean that you must be prepared to take the consequences.”

“Who are you? I should like to know what you have to do in this matter?”

“I speak as Miss Brookes's future husband.”

“Future husband be damned! She'll never marry you,” said Charlie, springing out of bed.

Frank threw himself on his guard, and they would have struck each other if Willy had not cried out: “Frank, remember you promised me there must be no scandal.”

“I had almost forgotten. For Miss Brookes's sake, I refrain. Do you also, for her sake, cease to provoke me.”

Charlie hesitated for a moment, then rushing to the door, he said: “I, too, for Miss Brookes's sake, refrain, and I give you three seconds to clear out.”

In attempting to carry out the injunction Willy nearly fell in the bath. Frank had to bite his lip to avoid a smile, and he stalked out of the room assuming his most arrogant air.

“I think, on the whole, we got the best of it,” he said as they went down stairs.

“Do you? He turned us out of his room!”

“That's the worst of tackling a man in his own room--if he tells you to go, and you don't go, he can ring for the servants.”

“I was as nearly as possible going into the bath.”

“Yes, a touch more and down you'd have gone.” Frank laughed, and Willy laughed, “and that fellow in his nightshirt fishing you out!”

“Oh, don't, don't--”

Frank asked Willy to lunch with him at Mutton's, and he ordered a bottle of champagne in honour of the day.

“I say, just fancy pulling you out of the bath, and wiping you with a towel. I can see you dripping!”

“Don't set me off again. Let me enjoy my cutlets.”

“By Jove! there's something I hadn't thought of.”

“What's that?”

“We must be off. We must tell Maggie what has happened before he has time to communicate with her. What is the next train to Southwick?”

“There's one at half-past one.”

“It was after twelve when we saw him, he won't have time to catch that. We must be off. Waiter, the bill, and be quick. Look sharp, Willy, finish the bottle, pity to waste it.”

“What a nuisance women are, to be sure. Just as I was enjoying my cutlet! I can't walk fast in this weather, I should make myself ill.”

“We must take a cab.”

“What a fellow you are, you never think of the expense. I don't know where I should be if I were as reckless as you are.”

“Supposing he were at the station. It would be rather a sell if we went down by the same train! What should we do? He would surely never attempt to force his way in!”

“I don't think he would attempt that. If he did, we should have to send for the police.”

The young men strove to decide how the news should be broken to Maggie. But they had arranged nothing before they arrived at Southwick, and Frank stopped Willy time after time by the footpath, until at last in despair the latter said: “We must make haste; there's another train in twenty minutes.”

“By Jove! I had not thought of that; we must get on. Well, then, it is all arranged. You must tell her that you thought it your duty. Put it all down to duty, and it was your duty to do what you did--putting entirely out of the question the service you did me.”

“I can tell you what, Frank, I am very sorry I ever meddled in the matter. Had I known the vexation and annoyance it would have caused--and mark my words, and see if they don't come true, we are only commencing the annoyances that the affair will cause us. Ah, had I only foreseen! What a fool I was; I ought to have known better; I have had nothing but bad luck all my life. It is perfectly wonderful the bad luck I have had; no matter what I did, nothing seemed to go right. I dare say if you had gone to see that fellow without me it would have turned out differently. But I don't see how I am to tell my sister point blank that I have forbidden him the house. What will she say? She may fly at me. Women have queer tempers, particularly when you interfere with their young men. My sisters have the very worst of tempers; you don't know them as I do. Fortunately it is not Sally. I assure you I wouldn't face Sally with such news for all the money you could give me.”

“I am very sorry, old chap, but we must now go through it. You must forbid her to communicate with him.”

“She won't heed what I say. It will only excite her. She will fly at me, and call me names, and burst into tears. I should not be surprised if she went off her head--she has been very strange once before. I don't mean to say she was ever wrong in her head, but she is a nervous, excitable girl--most excitable; my sisters are the most excitable girls I have ever known.”

It was surprisingly soon over. Willy had not spoken a dozen words, when he was interrupted.

“You mean to say you have been to call on him?”

“Yes; and we told him he was never to speak to you again.”

Frank expected her eyes to flash fire, but he only noticed a slight change in her face, a movement of the muscles of the lower jaw.

“Then I will speak to neither of you again!” and she walked out of the room, and in dismay they listened to her going upstairs.

“She didn't fly at me,” said Willy; and, looking a little terrified, he stroked his moustache softly. “I told you she would give no heed to what we said; nor do I see how we can prevent her seeing that fellow if she chooses. He cannot come into the house, it is true, but she can go out when she pleases.”

“We must follow her.”

Conscious of defeat, Willy desired compromise. He could not be induced to take a share of watching and following which Frank declared essential; and, dreading an encounter with Stracey, whose brawny arm it was impossible to forget, he shut himself up in the shop, and devoted himself to drawing up a most elaborate balance-sheet, showing how he would stand if he were obliged to close the business to-morrow, whereas Frank loitered about the roads, till Mrs. Horlock came along with her dogs, and engaged him in conversation; and no matter at what corner he stationed himself, he found he was not free from observation. A few days after he could not bring himself to return to his post, and contented himself with looking out of his window, and taking an occasional stroll by the embankment, when he saw a train signalled.

A great weight seemed lifted from his shoulder the day he heard that his rival's holiday had come to an end, and that he had been forced to return to his counting-house in London. True it is that Mr. Brookes had in a certain measure approved of Willy's action in forbidding young Stracey the Manor House, and therefore of his, Frank Escott's, suit, but neither of these gains compensated him for the crowning loss of not being able to see his beloved, for although the Manor House was still theoretically open to him, practically it was closed. The sisters, although at variance on all subjects, had united in condemning him and Willy, and during one dinner, the misery of which he declared he could never forget, they had sat whispering together, refusing to address him either by look or word. Willy took all this calmly. It is an ill wind that blows no good, and the silence enabled him to thoroughly masticate his food. Mr. Brookes wept a little and laughed a little, and reminded them of the oblivion that awaited all their little quarrels.

All this, like much else in life, was ridiculous enough; but because we are ridiculous, it does not follow that we do not suffer, and Frank suffered. He was five-and-twenty, and light love had him fairly by the throat; he winced, and he cried out, but very soon his dignity gave way, and he craved forgiveness. But Maggie passed without heeding him. For more than a week she resisted all his appeals, and it was not until she saw that she was taking the neighbourhood into her confidence, and to feel that if she did not relent a little he might leave Southwick, and not return, she answered him with a monosyllable. With what bliss did he hear that first “no,” and how passionately he pleaded for a few words; it did not seem to matter what they were, so long as he heard her speak one whole sentence to him. Feeling her power, she was shy of yielding, and with every concession she drew him further into the meshes of love. He dined now nearly every day at the Manor House, and he spent an hour, sometimes two, with her in the morning or afternoon; he followed her from greenhouse to greenhouse, but all his efforts were in vain, and he failed not only to obtain her promise to marry him, but even a renewal of the feeble and partial hopes which she had given him that night on the beach. He prayed, he wept, he implored pity, he openly spoke of suicide, and he hinted at murder. But Maggie passed him, pushing him out of the way with the watering-pot, threatening to water him too, until one day he drew a revolver. She screamed, and the revolver was put away, but on the next occasion a stiletto that he had brought from Italy was produced, and with a great deal of earnestness life was declared to be a miserable thing. It was absurd, no doubt, but at the same time it was not a little pathetic; he was so good-looking, and so sincere. Maggie put down the watering-pot, and she would probably have allowed him to take her hand and kiss her, if he had not spoken roughly about Charlie, and called her conduct into question. So she told him she would not speak to him again, and she continued watering the flowers in silence. Amid vague remembrances of murders she had read of, Frank's words and behaviour remained present in her mind, and that evening when Willy, who rarely took the trouble to speak, much less to advise his sisters, told her that she might never get such a chance again, she said: “I am not going to marry a madman to please your vanity.”

“Marry a madman! What do you mean?”

“Well, I call a man that who comes regularly to see a girl with a revolver in one pocket and a stiletto in the other, and threatens to leave himself wallowing in a pool of blood at her feet--”

“You mean to say he does that? You are clearly determined to drive the poor fellow out of his mind with your infernal coquetry. Well, women are the most troublesome, and I believe in many cases, the wickedest creatures on the face of God's earth.”

“You shut up. Men who don't get on with women always abuse them; you are soured since Miss ----, the actress, jilted you.”

“If you ever dare mention that subject, I will never speak to you again. You know I don't break my word.”

“Why do you interfere in my affairs? You don't think of me when you go down to browbeat Charlie Stracey; you don't think of what would have been said of me had Frank hit him, and it had all come out in the papers.” Maggie said no more; she saw she had gone too far. Willy sat puffing at his pipe; but when her father spoke of a certain investment that had not turned out as well as he had anticipated, he joined in the conversation, and she hoped her cruelty was forgotten.

XII

Frank uttered a cry of surprise when he opened the studio door to his friend. It was his favourite complaint that Willy never came to see him.

“At last, at last! This is the second time you have been in the place since it was finished, faithless friend!”

“My dear fellow, you know it is not my fault. I have been very busy lately trying to get on with my accounts. There's not a room in the Manor House where I can work in; my sisters' things are everywhere, and they must not be interfered with--their ball-dresses, their birds, their work. My sisters think of nothing but pleasure.”

“Triss, go back, go to your chair, sir; I'll get the whip.”

Showing his fangs, the bull-dog retired; then with a hideous growl sprang upon his chair, and sat eyeing Willy's calves.

“I cannot think what pleasure it can give you to keep such a brute. Even if I had my accounts finished, I don't think I should care to come here much. It isn't safe.”

“You are quite mistaken. There's not a better-tempered dog alive than Triss; he wouldn't bite any one unless he attacked me. Give me a slap, and you'll see--I won't let him come near you.”

“Thank you, I'd rather not. But he sometimes growls even at you, and shows his teeth, too.”

“That's only a way of his, and when he does it I kick him. Come here, Triss--come here, sir!” The dog approached slowly; he sat down and gave his paw to his master, but he did not cease to growl. “There! We have had enough of you, go back to your chair. What will you take--a glass of Chartreuse--a cigarette?”

“Thanks, both if you will let me. I see you like pretty things,” he said, admiring the tall legs of the table--early English--and the quaint glasses into which Frank poured the liqueur. “You've got the place to look very nice.”

“Very different from what is was when the smith and his boisterous brood were here,” and as if he intended an apt illustration of his words, he stretched his leg out on the white fur rug and surveyed his calf and red silk stocking. “Just look at that dog, isn't he a beauty? I always think he looks well in that attitude, leaning his head over the rail. I began a picture of him the other day in a pose somewhat like that. I'll show it you.” Frank propped his sketch against the leg of the sofa, and returned to his place on the sofa. “What do you think of it? Your father said it was very like.”

“It is like him, but I can see no merit in it. I'm afraid of the brute. I can't help hating him, for he always looks as if he were going for my legs. What else have you been painting? Any pretty women about? I should admire them more.”

“I haven't been painting lately,” he said, sighing a little melodramatically, as was his wont, “I think I have been playing the piano more than anything else. I have composed something too, I don't think it bad, I'll play it to you: a dialogue between a gentleman and a lady. He speaks first, then she answers, then I blend the two motives, and that is what they both say.”

Willy sat enwrapped in his own thoughts, not having heard a note. Though he knew that Willy was incapable of judging of music, it disappointed him that his dialogue had passed unperceived. Then smiling, he struck a few notes, and Willy awoke. “You haven't been listening,” he said, reproachfully. “You don't care for any music, except that little tune.”

“Yes, I do; I heard what you played, and I think it very pretty.”

“Willy, I am the most miserable man in the world. Every hour, every minute of my life is a pain to me. I never knew before what you must have suffered, but I know now; it is a sickening feeling, it takes you by the throat, it rises in the throat, and you are almost suffocated. Last night I lay awake hour after hour thinking. I could see Maggie as plainly as I can see you--she looked down upon me out of space with strange, steadfast eyes, and my whole soul went out to her, and I cried to her that I loved her beyond all things; and we seemed to be so near each other; it seemed such an intimate and perfect communion of spirit and sense that I seemed, as it were, lifted out of actual life; I seemed to myself holier, purer, better than I had ever been before; I seemed to loose all that is gross and material in me, and to gain in all that is best and worthiest in man. Did you feel like that when you were in love?”

“I don't know that I felt exactly like that. But never mind how I felt; you are too fond of alluding to that subject, it is a very painful one to me; you will make me regret that I ever told you anything about it.”

“I am sorry I mentioned it. It is strange, but when one suffers one likes to speak of and to compare with one's own the suffering that another has endured. Your sister treats me most cruelly. She has forgiven me that miserable business, but she refuses to hold out any hope that she will ever be my wife. I don't understand--I am utterly at sea. I don't believe for a moment that she cares for that horrid brute; he is gone away. She tells me she never cared for him. If so, I should like to learn your explanation of her conduct.”

Willy stroked his moustache, apparently declining the responsibility of apologist; but his manner showed he had something on his mind, and Frank sought more eagerly than ever to enlist his sympathy and support.

“I have done everything I could to win her. I don't know why she should be so difficult to please. I am not bad looking, I am at least as good looking as that damned brute” (here he paused to glance at himself in the glass and smooth the curls above his forehead). “I am certainly quite as clever” (here he thought of his painting, and his eye sought one of his pictures), “and my position--I will not speak of that, it would be snobbish. Women have cared for me. I have told Maggie hundreds of times that I never could care for any but her. Fate seems to have specially marked us for each other. You must admit that there is something very remarkable in the way we have been brought together over and over again. I have told her that my life is worthless without her. The day before yesterday, when I was speaking to her, I burst into tears. That a man should cry, no doubt, seems to you very ridiculous but if you knew how I suffer you would pity me. I often think I shall commit suicide.” Frank took the stiletto from his pocket. “I don't mind telling you, when you knocked at the door I was lying on the sofa thinking it over. One stab just here and I should be at peace for ever. I told her so yesterday.”

“I'm not fond of giving advice, as you know--I have quite enough to do to think about my own affairs--but as you have often spoken to me on this matter, and as you have asked me for my opinion and my help, I had better tell you that I differ entirely from you concerning the wisdom of the course you are pursuing.”

“How's that?” said Frank, at first surprised and then delighted at Willy's breaking from his reserve.

“What I mean is, that I think you would be more successful if you would lay aside daggers and revolvers, and try to win her affection by patience and gentleness. Maggie was talking to me about it no later than last night, and I could see clearly that you frighten her with bluster. I am sure there are times when she dreads you; it must be a positive terror to her to sit with you alone--so it would be to any girl.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maggie is a very delicate and nervous girl, and it wouldn't surprise me if your threats to commit suicide seriously affected her health; you come with a revolver and a stiletto, and you ask her to marry you, and if she doesn't at once say yes, you abuse her, declaring all the time that you'll stab yourself with the revolver and shoot yourself with the stiletto--I beg your pardon, I mean--”

“Of course, if you've come here only to turn me into ridicule--”