The Master of the Ceremonies

“Oh, but – ”

“My dear Sir Matthew, if you are dissatisfied, pray give me the notes, and I’ll tear up the bill. You forget the risk. Those are my terms.”

“Oh, but, Barclay.”

“What’s he making you smart, Matt?” cried Sir Harry, joining them. “Just his way.”

“I’ve offered to cancel the bill, if Sir Matthew likes,” said Barclay.

“Have you got any money at all, Matt?”

“Yes, some, but – ”

“Hang it! Come along then, man; we’ve no time to lose. Come on and chance it.”

Sir Harry took his friend’s arm, and hurried him out, and Barclay was nodding his head thoughtfully as the door closed, but only for another to open, and Mrs Barclay to enter and sit down, making the entries of his two transactions as a matter of course.

“Old woman,” said Barclay quietly.

“Jo-si-ah!” she said, turning to him quickly, and laying her hand upon his.

“I try to think Claire Denville a good girl.”

“I’m sure she is,” cried Mrs Barclay. “Oh, Josiah, why do you talk like that?”

“Because things look ugly, old lady, and I shall be very sorry if you’ve been deceived.”

“Oh, but, my dear,” panted Mrs Barclay, “I’m sure.”

“One can’t be sure of anything with a pretty well-flattered woman. You know what you said about that row at Denville’s, when Sir Harry Payne was found with Claire that night.”

“Yes: I said it was May, and I’m sure of it.”

“You’re not sure, old lady – you can’t be. Suppose it was Claire after all.”

“I say it was May. Claire Denville couldn’t do such a thing.”

“I don’t know. I hope not,” said Barclay. “I want to believe in her. Well, Joseph?”

“Two chaises to-night, sir, Moggridge says. Sir Harry Payne and Sir Matthew Bray.”

“That will do. Well, old lady?”

“It can’t be for Claire, Jo-si-ah, I’m sure,” cried Mrs Barclay. “She wouldn’t look at that miserable fop.”

“Suppose he is jackal for Rockley, old lady?”

“Oh, Jo-si-ah, don’t. It must be for her sister May.”

“No, I think not. She and Burnett have got on all right lately, and Payne hasn’t been near her, that I know. Look here, old woman, I won’t believe it if I can help it, but it looks very much as if Claire is really going off to-night.”

“Then she shan’t,” cried Mrs Barclay, beginning to cry. “If the poor girl has been worked upon just when she was poor and miserable, and has been weak enough to consent, she shall find she has got a friend who will stand by her, and give her good advice, and stop her. Jo-si-ah, I love that girl as if she was my own child – and – ”

“Well?”

“I shall go down to their house and see her and talk to her, and I shall stop with her till I know she’s safe. That is, mind, if it’s true. But it ain’t.”

“Well,” said Barclay, “you shall do so, for I don’t want her to go wrong. Only mind this, it is suspicious that she has not been near you lately.”

“Not it,” said Mrs Barclay, “bless her! She’s had some reason, and – there, that’s her knock, I’ll swear.”

She ran out of the room, and came back directly with Claire, looking more pale and troubled than ever, leaning upon her arm.

Mrs Barclay darted a triumphant look at her husband, and Barclay took Claire’s hand in a grave distant manner that made the visitor wince.

Volume Three – Chapter Four.

Mrs Barclay has her Turn

Claire winced again, and involuntarily glanced at the door, repenting that she had come, as she saw Mrs Barclay frown and make a series of grimaces at her lord, all of which were peculiar enough to a stranger, but which simply meant to the initiated: “Go away and leave us together: I can manage her better than I could if you stayed here.”

Barclay comprehended from old experience all that his wife meant to signify, and, making some excuse, he shortly left the room.

“There, that’s right, my dear,” said Mrs Barclay warmly. “Men are such a nuisance when you want to have a nice cosy chat. Why dear, dear, dear, how white you look. Your bonny face oughtn’t to be like that. You’ve been wherriting yourself over something. It isn’t money, is it?”

“No, Mrs Barclay, we seem to have been a little better off lately.”

“But you are in trouble, my darling? Now don’t say you aren’t, but speak out plain to me. Oh, I wish I could make you believe that I am a very, very true friend, and that I want to help you. There, I know: you’ve been falling out with Cora Dean.”

Mrs Barclay prided herself on this as being a master stroke of policy to draw Claire out and make her ready to confide in her; but Claire shook her head and smiled sadly.

“No,” she said dreamily, “I am not in trouble about that. I thought I would call and see you to-day. There, I must go now.”

“Is that all?” said Mrs Barclay in a disappointed tone. “Why, I was in hopes that you were over head and ears in trouble, and had come to me for help.”

“Mrs Barclay!” exclaimed Claire.

“No, no, no, my dear. What a stupid old woman I am! I didn’t mean that, but if you were in trouble, I hoped that, seeing how much you are alone, you had come to me for help and advice.”

Claire’s face worked and her lips quivered. She vainly tried to speak, and finally, utterly broken-down with the agony of her encounters on the previous day with Louis and her sister, with the following sleepless night and the despair of the present day, during which she had been vainly striving to see some way out of the difficulty, she threw herself upon the breast offered to receive her troubles and sobbed aloud.

“I knew – I knew,” whispered Mrs Barclay, soothing and caressing the poor girl by turns. “I knew as well as if some one had told me that you were in trouble and wanted help. There, there, cry away, my darling. Have a good long patient one, and don’t hurry yourself. You’ll be a world better afterwards; and if you like then to tell me about it, why, you see, you can, and if you don’t like to, why, there’s no harm done.”

Even if the amiable plump old soul had said nothing more than the first sympathising words, Claire’s emotion, so long pent up, would now have had its vent, the tears seeming to relieve her overburdened brain as she clung to her hostess, listening, and yet only half hearing her whispered words.

It was perhaps as well, for with all its true-heartedness there was a comic side to Mrs Barclay’s well-meant sympathy; and some of her adjurations to “cry away,” and not to “stop it,” and the like, would have provoked a smile from anyone who had been present at the scene.

“There, there, there, then, that’s better,” cried Mrs Barclay, beaming in Claire’s face and kissing her tenderly. “Now you’ll be comfortable again; and now, my dear child, we’re all alone, and if you like to make a confidant of me, you shall find you can trust me as much as my Jo-si-ah can. But don’t you think I’m a scandal-loving old busybody, my dear, for I don’t ask you to tell me anything.”