Volume Two – Chapter Eight.
Dick Millet Feels Grown Up
“Bad?” said Dr Stonor, when he was left alone to attend his patient at Sir Humphrey’s. “Yes, of course he is bad – very bad. But I don’t call this illness. He must suffer. Men who drink always do.”
“But her ladyship, Stonor?” said Sir Humphrey; “will you come and see her now?”
“No,” said the doctor roughly. “What for? Nothing the matter. She can cure herself whenever she likes. What are you going to do about your sister, soldier boy?”
“I – I don’t know,” replied Dick. “Ought I to fetch her back?”
“Yes – no – can’t say,” said the doctor. “Hang this man, how strong he is! Look here, Dick, my boy: here’s a lesson for you. You will be a man some day. When you are, don’t go and poison yourself with drink till your brain revolts and sets up a government of its own. Look at this: the man’s as mad as a hatter, and I shall have to nearly poison him with strong drugs to calm him down. A wild revolutionary government, with death and destruction running riot. Think your sister has gone with John Huish?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Dick, for Sir Humphrey seemed utterly unnerved.
“Don’t see anything to be afraid of, boy. John Huish is a gentleman.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Dick hotly; “and it isn’t gentlemanly to act as he has done about my sister.”
“I shall have to get a strait-waistcoat for this fellow. About your sister. Bah! Human nature. Wait till you get old enough to fall in love, and some lady – mamma, say – wants to marry your pretty little Psyche to an old man. How then, my young Cupid?”
Dick changed colour like a girl.
“I hold to John Huish being a thorough gentleman, my boy. He’s all right. I wish Renée’s husband was as good a man. Yes, I mean you – you drunken, mad idiot I’m going to bring you round, and when I’ve done so, I hope, Dick, if he ever dares to say a word again about your sister Renée – ”
“You’ve heard then?”
“Heard? Of course. Doctors hear and know everything. Parson’s nowhere beside a doctor. People don’t tell the parson all the truth: they always keep a little bit back. They tell the doctor all because they know he can see right through them. Lie still, stupid. Ha! he’s calming down.”
“Isn’t he worse, Stonor?” asked Sir Humphrey.
“No; not a bit. And as I was saying, if, when he gets on his legs again, he dares to say a word against his wife, knock him down. I’ll make him so weak it will be quite easy.”
“Well, he deserves it,” said Dick.
“Of course he does. So do you, for thinking ill of your sister. I’ll be bound to say, if you sent to Wimpole Street, you’d find the poor girls there soaking pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“By Jove! yes,” cried Dick, starting at the doctor’s suggestion. “Why, of course. Doctor, you’ve hit it! Depend upon it, they’re gone to Uncle Robert’s, father.”
“Think so, my boy, eh? – think so?” said the old gentleman. “It would be very dull and gloomy.”
“Nonsense!” said the doctor. “My dear boy, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems to me that they have gone there.”
“Yes; that’s it, doctor. Guv’nor, I don’t like to be hard on you, but the doctor’s a very old friend. It’s a nice thing – isn’t it? – that our girls should have to go to Uncle Robert’s for the protection they cannot find here?”
“Yes, my dear boy, it is, it is,” said the old man querulously; “but I can’t help it. Her ladyship took the reins as soon as we were married, and she’s held them very tightly ever since.”
“Well, we’ll go and see. You’ll stay with Frank Morrison, doctor?”
“Stay, sir? Yes, I will. Think I’m going to be dragged down here from Highgate for nothing? I’ll make Master Morrison play the shoddy-devil in his Yorkshire mill for something. He shall have such a bill as shall astonish him.”
“Here, fetch a cab,” shouted Dick to the man who answered the bell; and soon after the jangling vehicle was taking them to Wimpole Street.
It was four o’clock, and broad daylight, as the cab drew up at Captain Millet’s door, when, in answer to a ring which Dick expected it would take half an hour to get attended to, the door was opened directly by Vidler.
“You were expecting us, then?” said Dick, as the little man put his head on one side, and glanced from the young officer to his father, and back again.
“Yes, sir. Master said you might come at any time, so I sat up.”
“All right, father; they’re here. What time did they come, Vidler?”
“They, sir?”
“Yes – my sisters,” said Dick impatiently. “What time did they come?”
“Miss Renée came here about half-past ten, sir.”
“There, dad,” whispered Dick. “And Frank swore she’d gone off with Malpas. I knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t insult a brother officer like that.”
“I’m very glad, my boy – I’m very glad,” said Sir Humphrey feebly; and Dick turned to Vidler again.
“And Miss Gertrude, what time did she get here?”
“Miss Gertrude, sir?”
“Don’t be a stupid old idiot!” cried Dick excitedly. “I say – what – time – did – my – sister – Gertrude-get here?”
“She has not been here, sir,” replied the little man – “not to-night.”
Dick looked blankly at his father, and, in spite of his determination not to believe the story suggested about his sister, it seemed to try and force itself upon his brain.
“Where is Mrs Morrison?” he cried at last.
“Lying down, sir. Salome is watching by her. She seemed in great distress, sir, and,” he added in a whisper, “we think master came out of his room and went to her when we had gone down.”
“Poor Robert!” muttered Sir Humphrey.
“Master’s very much distressed about her, gentlemen. Miss Renée is a very great favourite of his.”
“Is my uncle awake, do you think?”
“I think so, sir,” was the reply.
“Ask him if he will say a few words to my father and me. Tell him we are in great trouble.”
The little man bowed and went upstairs, returning at the end of a minute or two to request them to walk up.
“Last time I was here,” thought Dick, “I asked him for a couple of tenners, and he told me never to come near him again. A stingy old hunks! But, there, he’s kind to the girls.”
The little panel opened as Vidler closed the door, and Sir Humphrey, looking very old, and grey of hair and face, sat looking at it, leaving his son to open the conversation.
“Well, Humphrey, what is it?” said the voice behind the wainscoting.
“How do you do, Bob?” began the old gentleman. “I – I – Richard, my boy, tell your uncle; I’m too weak and upset.”
“We’re in great trouble, uncle,” began Dick sharply.
“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “Renée has fled to me for protection from her husband. You did well amongst you. Poor child!”
“Hang it all, uncle, don’t talk like that!” cried Dick impetuously. “You ought to know that we had nothing to do with it. Help us; don’t scold us.”
“I am helping you,” said the Captain. “Renée stays here with me till she can be sure of a happy home. And, look here,” he continued, growing in firmness, “she has told me everything. If you are a man, you will call out anyone who dares say a word against her fame.”
“It’s all very well, uncle,” said Dick; “but this is 18 – , and not your young days. No one has a word to say against Renée. But look here, uncle, that isn’t all. Gertrude has gone off.”
“With John Huish, of course. Ah, Humphrey, how strangely Fate works her ways!”
“But, uncle, they say John Huish has turned out an utter swindler and scamp. Last thing I heard was that he had been expelled from his club.”
“Let them talk,” said Captain Millet quietly. “I say it cannot be true.”
“But, Bob,” faltered Sir Humphrey weakly, “they do make out a very bad case against him.”
“Then you and your boy can take up the cudgels on his behalf. He is son and brother now. There, I am weary. Go.”
“But Renée – we must see her.”
“No; let the poor girl rest. When you can find her a decent home, if she wishes it, she can come.”
The little wicket was closed with a sharp snap, and father and son gazed at each other in the gloomy room.
“Come back home, Dick,” said Sir Humphrey feebly. “And take warning, my boy: be a bachelor. Ladies in every shape and form are a great mistake.”
Dick Millet thought of the glowing charms of Clotilde and Marie Dymcox, but he said nothing, only hinted to his father that he ought to give Vidler a sovereign; and this done, they went back into the cab.
Half an hour later they were back in the room where Frank Morrison lay talking wildly in a loud, husky voice.
“Oh, well, so much the better,” said the doctor, when he heard all. “Capital calming place for your sister at your uncle’s. And as for Gertrude – bless her sweet face! – your uncle must be right. Bet a guinea he knew beforehand. I wish her and John Huish joy, he’ll never make her leave her home, and drink himself into such a state as this.”
“I hope not,” thought Dick; but just then some of the ugly rumours he had heard crossed his mind, and he had his doubts.
“Precious hard on a fellow,” he said to himself, “two sisters going off like that! I wonder what Glen and the other fellows will say. Suppose fate forced me to do something of the same kind!”
Volume Two – Chapter Nine.
Going to Court
Marcus Glen was not a man given to deep thinking, but one of those straightforward, trusting fellows who, when once he placed faith in another, gave his whole blind confidence, and whom it was difficult afterwards to shake in his belief. He had had his flirtations here and there where his regiment had been stationed, and fancied himself deeply in love; been jilted in a fashionable way, smoked a cigar over it, and enjoyed his meals at the mess as usual. But he had found in Clotilde one so different to the insipid girls of former acquaintance: she was far more innocent in most things, thoroughly unworldly, and at the same time so full of loving passion, giving herself, as it were, to his arms with a full trust and faith, that his pulses had been thoroughly stirred. She told him of her past, and he soon found out for himself that hers had been no life of seasons, with half a dozen admirers in each. He was her first lover, and he told himself – doubtingly – that she was the first woman, and would be the only one, he could ever love.
Their meetings became few and seldom, and were nearly all of a stolen nature, for there could be no disguising the fact that when the young officer called the Honourable Philippa Dymcox was cold and stately; and though her sister seemed to nervously desire to further Glen’s wishes, she stood too much in awe of her sister, and with a sigh forebore.
Dick Millet then had to put his plan in force, and Joseph began to grow comparatively wealthy with the weight of the Queen’s heads that accompanied the notes he bore to the young ladies, and visions of the lodging-house he meant some day to take grew clearer and less hazy in the distance that they had formerly seemed to occupy.
Visits were paid to Lady Littletown’s, and that dame was quite affectionate in her ways, but Clotilde and Marie were rarely encountered there; and when fortune did favour Glen to the extent of a meeting, there were no more inspections of her ladyship’s exotics, no encounters alone, for Lady Littletown was always present; and at last Glen felt that, if he wished to win, it must be by extraordinary, and not by ordinary means.
The slightest hint of this seemed to set Dick on fire.
“To be sure,” he cried; “the very thing! We must carry them off, Glen, dear boy. Like you know who.”
“And do you think our friend Marie will consent to be carried off?”
“Well – er – yes; I dare say she would oppose it at first, but the moment she feels certain that her aunts mean to force her into a marriage with old Moorpark, I feel sure that she will yield.”
“Ah, well,” said Glen, “we shall see; but look here, most chivalrous of youths, and greatest among lovers of romance – ”
“Oh, I say, how I do hate it when you take up that horrible chaffing tone!”
“Chaff, my dear boy? No, no, this is sound commonsense! I do not say that under certain circumstances I might not have a brougham in waiting, and say to a lady ‘Here is the licence, let us be driven straight to the church and made one;’ but believe me, my dear Dick, all those romantic, elopement-loving days are gone by. We have grown too matter-of-fact now.”
“Hang matter-of-fact! I mean to let nothing stand in my way, so I tell you! But, I say, have you heard?”
“About your sisters? Yes.”
“Hang it, no!” cried Dick angrily; “let that rest. It’s bad enough meeting Black Malpas at the mess-table, and being kept back by etiquette from hurling knives. I mean about the dinner.”
“What dinner?”
“Dymcoxes’. And we’re not asked. Our dinner’s cold shoulder.”
“A dinner-party?”
“Yes; and those two old buffers are to be there.”
Dick was right, for a dinner was given in the private apartments, where the ladies did their best; but it certainly was not a success, and Marie could not help bitterly contrasting the difference between the repast and its surroundings and that given by Lady Littletown. For the Honourable Misses Dymcox had been unfortunate in the purveyor to whom they had applied to furnish the dinner and all the necessaries. All the linen, the plate, the glass, and, above all, the ornamentation, had a cheap, evening-party supper aspect. There was the plated épergne which showed so much copper that it seemed to be trying to out-brazen the battered Roman cup-shaped wine-coolers, in each of which stood icing a bottle of champagne, quite unknown to fame – a wine with which a respectable bottle of Burton ale would have considered it beneath its dignity to associate. There were flowers upon the table furnished by the pastrycook; and though a couple of shillings would have supplied a modest selection of the real, according to well-established custom these were artificial, many of them being fearfully and wonderfully made.
That artificiality pervaded the whole repast, which from beginning to end was suggestive of oil-made, puffed-up pastry, which would crush into nothing at a touch; while soups, gravies, and the preparations of animal flesh, purveyed and presented under names in John Bull French, with a good deal of à la in the composition, one and all tasted strongly of essence of beef, that delicious combination of tin-pot, solder, resin, and molten glue, which flavours so many of our cheaper feasts.
To give the whole a distingué air, the London pastrycook had sent down, beside his red-nosed chef and dubiously bright stewpans, those two well-known, ghastly-white temples, composed of sugar and chalk, which do duty at scores of wedding-breakfasts, and then stand in the pastrycook’s window afterwards covered with glass shades, to keep them from the unholy touch of flies, and their sides from desecration by rubbing shoulders with the penny buns.
It was a mistake, too, to engage Mortimer, the gentleman who waited table for the gentry of Hampton Court, and invariably took the lead in single-handed places and played the part of butler. Mr Mortimer had been in service —the service, he called it – saved money, applied to a rising brewer, and taken a public-house “doing” a great number of barrels per week, so he was informed; but the remarkable fact about that house was that as soon as Mr Mortimer had paid over his hard-earned savings and taken his position as landlord, the whole district became wonderfully temperate, and, to use his own words, “If I hadn’t taken to paying for glasses of ale myself, and so kept the engine going, there would have been next to nothing to do.” The result was that in six months Mr Mortimer had to leave the house, a poorer and a wiser man, picking up odd jobs in waiting afterwards in the Palace and neighbourhood, but retaining his habit of buying himself glasses of ale to a rather alarming extent.
This habit was manifest upon the entrance of the first course, and had greatly exercised Joseph in spirit lest it should be detected. In fact, it became so bad by the time that the remove in the second course was due, that the footman made a strategic movement, inveigling Mr Mortimer into the big cupboard where knives and boots and shoes were cleaned, and then and there locking him up in company with a glass and jug.
Perhaps a viler dinner, worse managed, was never set before guests; but to Lord Henry Moorpark it was a banquet in dreamland, to Mr Elbraham it was a feast, for from the moment he took down Clotilde to that when the ladies rose to return to the drawing-room, he literally gloated over and devoured the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s niece.
Good dinners, served in the most refined style, had lost their charm for the visitors, who seemed perfectly satisfied, Elbraham’s face shining like a sun when he smiled blandly at his vis-à-vis, whose deeply-lined, aristocratic countenance wore an aspect of pleasant satisfaction as he gazed back at the millionaire.
“I say, Moorpark, they look well, don’t they?” said Elbraham.
“They do, indeed,” assented Lord Henry, smiling.
“Make some of them stare on the happy day, I think.”
“They are certainly very, very beautiful women,” replied Lord Henry, smiling and thoughtful.
“Eh – what? Oh, ah – yes: coffee. Thanks; I’ll take coffee.”
This to Joseph, who brought in a black mixture with some thin hot milk and brown sugar to match. Lord Henry also took a cup, but it was observable that neither gentleman got much farther than a couple of spoonfuls.
“Well,” said Elbraham suddenly, stretching out his hairy paws, and examining their fronts and backs, “it’s of no use our sitting here drinking wine, is it?”
“Certainly not,” said Lord Henry, who had merely sipped the very thin champagne at dinner and taken nothing since.
So the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, where certain conversations took place before they left, the effect of which was to send Mr Elbraham back to town highly elate, and Lord Henry to his old bachelor home a sadder, if not a wiser, man.
He had found his opportunity, or, rather, it had been made for him, and he had plainly asked Marie to be his wife.
“I know I ask you to make a sacrifice,” he said – “you so youthful and beautiful, while I am old, and not possessed of the attraction a young man might have in your eyes; but if you will be my wife, nothing that wealth and position can give shall be wanting to make yours a happy home.”
He thought Marie had never looked so beautiful before, as with flushed cheeks she essayed to speak, and, smiling as he took her soft, white hand in his, he asked her to be calm and patient with him.
“I dread your refusal,” he said; “and yet, old as I am, there is no selfishness in my love. I wish to see you happy, my child – I wish to make you happy.”
“She has accepted him,” thought Marie; and her heart began to beat with painful violence, for, Clotilde away, who could say that Marcus Glen would not come to her for sympathy, and at last ask her love. She felt that she could not accept Lord Henry’s proposal, and she turned her face towards him in an appealing way.
“You look troubled, my child,” he said tenderly. “I want you to turn to me as you would to one who has your happiness thoroughly at heart. I want to win your love.”
“My – my aunts know that you ask me this, Lord Henry?” she faltered.
“Yes, they know it; and they wish it, for we have quietly discussed the matter, and,” he added, with a sad smile, “I have not omitted to point out to them how unsuited to you I am as a match. I throw myself then upon your mercy, Marie, but you must not let fear influence you; I must have your heart, my child, given over to my safe-keeping.”
She looked at him wildly.
“Is this hand to be mine?” he whispered. “Will you make the rest of my days blessed with your young love? Tell me, is it to be?”
“Oh, no, no, no, Lord Henry,” she said, in a low, excited tone; “I could not, I dare not say yes. Pray, pray do not ask me.”
“Shall I give you time?” he whispered; “shall I wait a week – a month, for your answer, and then come again and plead?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said; “I could – I never could say yes. I like you, Lord Henry, I respect and esteem you – indeed, indeed I do; but I could not become your wife.”
“You could not become my wife,” he said softly. “No, no, I suppose not. It was another foolish dream, and I should have been wiser. But you will not ridicule me when I am gone? I ask you to try and think of the old man’s love with respect, even if it is mingled with pity, for, believe me, my child, it is very true and honest.”
“Ridicule! oh, no, no,” cried Marie eagerly, “I could not do that. You ask me to be your wife, Lord Henry: I cannot, but I have always felt that I loved you as – like – ”
“You might say a father or some dear old friend?” said Lord Henry sadly.
“Yes, indeed yes!” she cried.
“Be it so, then,” he said, holding her hand in his in a sad, resigned way. “You are right; it is impossible. Your young verdant spring and my frosted winter would be ill matched. But let me go on loving you – if not as one who would be your husband, as a very faithful friend.”
“Yes, yes, please, Lord Henry,” she said; “I have so few friends.”
“Then you shall not lose me for one,” he continued sadly. “There, there, the little dream is over, and I am awake again. See here, Marie,” he said, drawing a diamond and sapphire ring from his pocket, “this was to be your engaged ring: I am going to place it on your finger now as a present from the dear old friend.”
She shrank from him, but he retained her hand gently, and she felt the ring glide over her finger, a quick glance showing her that her aunts were seeing everything from behind the books they were reading, becoming deeply immersed, though, as they saw how far matters seemed to have progressed.
Mr Elbraham’s wooing was moulded far differently to Lord Henry’s.
It was an understood thing that he was to propose that evening, the dinner being given for the purpose.
“There’s no confounded tom-fool nonsense about me;” and each time Mr Elbraham said this he took out of the morocco white satin-lined case a brilliant half-hoop ring, set with magnificent stones, breathed on it, held it to the light, moistened it between his lips, held it up again, finished by rubbing it upon his sleeve, and returning it to the case.
“That’ll fetch her,” he said. “My! what you can do with a woman if you bring out a few diamonds. I shan’t shilly-shally: I shall come out with it plump;” but all the same, when by proper manoeuvring the Honourable Misses Dymcox had arranged themselves behind books and left the two couples at opposite ends of the room, while they themselves occupied dos-à-dos the ottoman in the centre, Mr Elbraham did not “out with it plump.”
He seated himself as close as decency would permit to Clotilde, and stared at her, and breathed hard, while she returned his look with one that was half mocking, half defiant.
“Been to many parties lately?” he said at last, nothing else occurring to his mind except sentences that he would have addressed to ballet-girls upon their good looks, their agility, and the like.
No; Clotilde had not been to many parties.
“But you like ’em; I’ll bet a wager you like ’em?” said Elbraham with a hoarse laugh.
Oh yes, Clotilde dearly liked parties when they were nice.
There was another interval of hard breathing, during which Mr Elbraham took out and consulted his watch.
The act of replacing that made him remember the ring in the morocco case, and he thrust his finger and thumb in his vest pocket, but it was not there, and he remembered that he had placed it in his trousers pocket.
This was awkward, for Mr Elbraham was stout and his garments tight. Still, he would want it directly, and he made a struggle and dragged it out, growing rather red in the face with the effort.
This gave him something else to talk about.
“Ha! it’s nice to be you,” he said, dropping the case in his vest.
“Why?” said Clotilde, looking amused.
“Because you gal – ladies dress so well; not like us, always in black. That’s a pretty dress.”
“Think so?” said Clotilde carelessly.
“Very pretty. I like it ever so, but it isn’t half good enough for you. – That’s getting on at last,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh yes, but it is. Aunt Philippa said it was a very expensive dress.”
