The King's Stratagem, and Other Stories
After an interval, "Are you going to the Goldmaces' dance?"
"No," I answered her humbly. "I go out so little."
"Indeed," with an odd smile not too kindly; "I wish-no, I don't-that we could say the same. We are engaged, I think" – she paused, her attention divided between myself and Boccherini's minuet, the low strains of which she was sending through the room-"for every afternoon-this week-except Saturday. By the way, Mr. Herapath-do you remember what was the name-Bab told me you teased her with?"
"Wee bonnie Bab," I answered absently. My thoughts had gone forward to Saturday. We are always dropping to-day's substance for the shadow of tomorrow; like the dog-a dog was it not? – in the fable.
"Oh, yes, wee bonnie Bab," she murmured softly. "Poor Bab!" and suddenly cut short Boccherini's music and our chat by striking a terrific discord and laughing merrily at my start of discomfiture. Everyone took it as a signal to leave. They all seemed to be going to meet her again next day, or the day after that; they engaged her for dances, and made up a party for the law courts, and tossed to and fro a score of laughing catchwords, that were beyond my comprehension. They all did this, except myself.
And yet I went away with something before me-that call upon Saturday afternoon. Quite unreasonably I fancied I should see her alone. And so when the day came and I stood outside the opening door of the drawing room, and heard voices and laughter within, I was hurt and aggrieved beyond measure. There was quite a party, and a merry one, assembled, who were playing at some game as it seemed to me, for I caught sight of Clare whipping off an impromptu bandage from her eyes, and striving by her stiffest air to give the lie to a pair of flushed cheeks. The black-whiskered man was there, and two men of his kind, and a German governess, and a very old lady in a wheel-chair, who was called "grandmamma," and Miss Guest herself looking, in the prettiest dress of silvery plush, to the full as bright and fair and graceful as I had been picturing her each hour since we parted.
She dropped me a stately courtesy. "Will you play the part of Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, Mr. Herapath, while I act honest Burchell, and say 'Fudge!' or will you burn nuts and play games with neighbor Flamborough? You will join us, won't you? Clare does not so misbehave every day, only it is such a wet afternoon and so cold and wretched, and we did not think there would be any more callers-and tea will be up in five minutes."
She did not think there would be any more callers! Something in her smile belied the words and taught me that she had thought-she had known-that there would be one more caller-one who would burn nuts and play games with her, though Rome itself were afire, and Tooley Street and the Mile End Road to boot.
It was a simple game enough, and not likely, one would say, to afford much risk of that burning the fingers which gave a zest to the Vicar of Wakefield's nuts. One sat in the middle blind-folded, while the rest disguised their own or assumed each other's voices, and spoke one by one some gibe or quip at his expense. When he succeeded in naming the speaker, the detected satirist put on the poke, and in his turn heard things good-if he had a conceit of himself-for his soul's health. Now this rôle unhappily soon fell to me, and proved a heavy one, because I was not so familiar with the other's voices as were the rest; and Miss Guest-whose faintest tones I thought to have known-had a wondrous knack of cheating me, now taking off Clare's voice, and now-after the door had been opened to admit the tea-her father's. So I failed again and again to earn my release. But when a voice behind me cried with well-feigned eagerness:
"How nice! Do tell me all about a fire!"
Though no fresh creaking of the door had reached me, nor warning been given of an addition to the players, I had not the smallest doubt who was the speaker; but exclaimed at once, "That is Bab' Now I cry you mercy. I am right this time. That was Bab!"
I looked for a burst of applause and laughter, such as had before attended a good thrust home, but none came. On the contrary, with my words so odd a silence fell upon the room that it was clear that something was wrong, and I pulled off my handkerchief in haste, repeating, "That was Bab, I am sure."
But if it was, I could not see her. What had come over them all? Jack's face wore a provoking smile, and his friends were clearly bent upon sniggering. Clare looked horrified, and grandmamma gently titillated, while Miss Guest, who had risen and half turned away toward the windows, seemed to be in a state of proud confusion. What was the matter?
"I beg everyone's pardon by anticipation," I said, looking round in a bewildered way, "but have I said anything wrong?"
"Oh, dear no!" cried the fellow they called Jack, with a familiarity that was in the worst taste-as if I had meant to apologize to him! "Most natural thing in the world!"
"Jack, how dare you!" exclaimed Miss Guest, stamping her foot.
"Well, it seemed all right. It sounded very natural, I am sure."
"Oh, you are unbearable! Why don't you say something, Clare?"
"Mr. Herapath, I am sure that you did not know that my name was Barbara."
"Certainly not," I cried. "What a strange thing!"
"But it is, and that is why grandmamma is looking so shocked, and Mr. Buchanan is wearing threadbare an old friend's privilege of being rude. I freely forgive you if you will make allowance for him. And you shall come off the stool of repentance and have your tea first, since you are the greatest stranger. It is a stupid game, after all!"
She would hear no apologies from me. And when I would have asked why her sister bore the same name, and thus excused myself, she was intent upon tea-making, and the few moments I could with decency add to my call gave me scant opportunity. I blush to think how I eked them out, by what subservience to Clare, by what a slavish anxiety to help even Jack to muffins-each piece I hoped might choke him. How slow I was to find hat and gloves, calling to mind with terrible vividness, as I turned my back upon the circle, that again and again in my experience an acquaintance begun by a dinner had ended with the consequent call. And so I should have gone-it might have been so here-but that the door-handle was stiff, and Miss Guest came to my aid as I fumbled with it. "We are always at home on Saturdays, if you like to call, Mr. Herapath," she murmured carelessly, not lifting her eyes-and I found myself in the street.
So carelessly she said it that, with a sudden change of feeling, I vowed I would not call. Why should I? Why should I worry myself with the sight of those other fellows parading their favor? With the babble of that society chit-chat, which I had so often scorned, and-and still scorned, and had no part or concern in. They were not people to suit me or do me good. I would not go, I said, and repeated it firmly on Monday and Tuesday; on Wednesday only so far modified it that I thought at some distant time to leave a card-to avoid discourtesy; on Friday preferred an earlier date as wiser and more polite, and on Saturday walked shame-faced down the street, and knocked and rang and went upstairs-to taste a pleasant misery. Yes, and on the next Saturday too, and the next, and the next; and that one on which we all went to the theater, and that other one on which Mr. Guest kept me to dinner. Aye, and on other days that were not Saturdays, among which two stand high out of the waters of forgetfulness-high days, indeed-days like twin pillars of Hercules, through which I thought to reach, as did the seamen of old, I knew not what treasures of unknown lands stretching away under the setting sun. First that one on which I found Barbara Guest alone and blurted out that I had the audacity to wish to make her my wife; and then heard, before I had well-or badly-told my tale, the wheels of grandmamma's chair outside.
"Hush!" the girl said, her face turned from me. "Hush, Mr. Herapath! You don't know me, indeed. You have seen so little of me. Please say nothing more about it. You are completely under a delusion."
"It is no delusion that I love you, Barbara!" I cried.
"It is! it is!" she repeated, freeing her hand. "There, if you will not take an answer-come-come at three to-morrow. But mind, I promise you nothing-I promise nothing," she added feverishly, and fled from the room, leaving me to talk to grandmamma as best, and escape as quickly as, I might.
I longed for a great fire that evening, and, failing one, tired myself by tramping unknown streets of the East End, striving to teach myself that any trouble to-morrow might bring was but a shadow, a sentiment, a thing not to be mentioned in the same breath with the want and toil of which I caught glimpses up each street and lane that opened to right and left. In the main, of course, I failed; but the effort did me good, sending me home tired out, to sleep as soundly as if I were going to be hanged next day, and not-which is a very different thing-to be put upon my trial.
"I will tell Miss Guest you are here, sir," the man said. I looked at all the little things in the room which I had come to know well-her work basket, the music upon the piano, the table easel, her photograph, and wondered if I were to see them no more, or if they were to become a part of my everyday life. Then I heard her come in, and turned quickly, feeling that I should learn my fate from her greeting.
"Bab!" The word was wrung from me perforce. And then we stood and looked at one another, she with a strange pride and defiance in her eyes, though her cheek was dark with blushes, and I with wonder and perplexity in mine. Wonder and perplexity that quickly grew into a conviction, a certainty that the girl standing before me in the short-skirted brown dress with tangled hair and loose neck-ribbon was the Bab I had known in Norway; and yet that the eyes-I could not mistake them now, no matter what unaccustomed look they might wear-were Barbara Guest's!
"Miss Guest-Barbara," I stammered, grappling with the truth, "why have you played this trick upon me?"
"It is Miss Guest and Barbara now," she cried, with a mocking courtesy. "Do you remember, Mr. Herapath, when it was Bab? When you treated me as a kind of toy and a plaything, with which you might be as intimate as you liked; and hurt my feelings-yes, it is weak to confess it, I know-day by day and hour by hour?"
"But, surely, that is forgiven now?" I said, dazed by an attack so sudden and so bitter. "It is atonement enough that I am at your feet now, Barbara!"
"You are not," she retorted hotly. "Don't say you have offered love to me, who am the same with the child you teased at Breistolen. You have fallen in love with my fine clothes and my pearls and my maid's work, not with me! You have fancied the girl you saw other men make much of. But you have not loved the woman who might have prized that which Miss Guest has never learned to value."
"How old are you?" I said hoarsely.
"Nineteen!" she snapped out. And then for a moment we were both silent.
"I begin to understand now," I answered slowly as soon as I could conquer something in my throat. "Long ago, when I hardly knew you, I hurt your woman's pride; and since that you have plotted-"
"No, you have tricked yourself!"
"And schemed to bring me to your feet that you might have the pleasure of trampling on me. Miss Guest, your triumph is complete, more complete than you are able to understand. I loved you this morning above all the world-as my own life-as every hope I had. See, I tell you this that you may have a moment's keener pleasure when I am gone."
"Don't! Don't!" she cried, throwing herself into a chair and covering her face.
"You have won a man's heart and cast it aside to gratify an old pique. You may rest content now, for there is nothing wanting to your vengeance. You have given me as much pain as a woman, the vainest and the most heartless, can give a man. Good-by."
And with that I was leaving her, fighting my own pain and passion, so that the little hands she raised as though they would ward off my words were nothing to me. I felt a savage delight in seeing that I could hurt her, which deadened my own grief. The victory was not; all with her lying there sobbing. Only where was my hat? Let me get my hat and go. Let me escape from this room wherein every trifle upon which my eye rested awoke some memory that was a pang. Let me get away, and have done with it all.
Where was the hat? I had brought it up. I could not go without it. It must be under her chair, by all that was unlucky, for it was nowhere else. I could not stand and wait, and so I had to go up to her, with cold words of apology upon my lips, and being close to her and seeing on her wrist, half hidden by fallen hair, the scar she had brought home from Norway, I don't know how it was that I fell on my knees by her and cried:
"Oh, Bab, I loved you so! Let us part friends."
For a moment, silence. Then she whispered, her hand in mine: "Why did you not say Bab to begin? I only told you that Miss Guest had not learned to value your love."
"And Bab?" I murmured, my brain in a whirl.
"Learned long ago, poor girl!"
And the fair, tear-stained face of my tyrant looked into mine for a moment, and then came quite naturally to its resting place.
"Now," she said, when I was leaving, "you may have your hat, sir."
"I believe," I replied, "that you sat upon this chair on purpose."
And Bab blushed. I believe she did.
THE DRIFT OF FATE
On a certain morning in last June I was stooping to fasten a shoelace, having taken advantage for the purpose of the step of a corner house in St. James' Square, when a man passing behind me stopped.
"Well!" said he aloud, after a short pause during which I wondered-I could not see him-what he was doing, "the meanness of these rich folk is disgusting! Not a coat of paint for a twelvemonth! I should be ashamed to own a house and leave it like that!"
The man was a stranger to me, and his words seemed as uncalled for as they were ill-natured. But being thus challenged I looked at the house. It was a great stone mansion with a balustrade atop, with many windows and a long stretch of area railings. And, certainly it was shabby. I turned from it to the critic. He was shabby, too-a little red-nosed man, wearing a bad hat. "It is just possible," I suggested, "that the owner may be a poor man and unable to keep it in order."
"Ugh! What has that to do with it?" my new friend answered contemptuously. "He ought to think of the public."
"And your hat?" I asked, with wining politeness. "It strikes me, an unprejudiced observer, as a bad hat. Why do you not get a new one?"
"Cannot afford it!" he snapped out, his dull eyes sparkling with rage.
"Cannot afford it? But, my good man, you ought to think of the public."
"You tom-cat! What have you to do with my hat? Smother you!" was his kindly answer; and he went on his way muttering things uncomplimentary.
I was about to go mine, and was first falling back to gain a better view of the house in question, when a chuckle close to me betrayed the presence of a listener, a thin, gray-haired man, who, hidden by a pillar of the porch, must have heard our discussion. His hands were engaged with a white tablecloth, from which he had been shaking the crumbs. He had the air of an upper servant of the best class. As our eyes met he spoke.
"Neatly put, sir, if I may take the liberty of saying so," he observed with a quiet dignity it was a pleasure to witness, "and we are very much obliged to you. The man was a snob, sir."
"I am afraid he was," I answered; "and a fool too."
"And a fool, sir. Answer a fool after his folly. You did that, and he was nowhere; nowhere at all, except in the swearing line. Now might I ask," he continued, "if you are an American, sir?"
"No, I am not," I answered; "but I have spent some time in the States."
I could have fancied that he sighed.
"I thought-but never mind, sir," he began, "I was wrong, It is curious how very much alike gentlemen, that are real gentlemen, speak. Now, I dare swear, sir, that you have a taste for pictures."
I was inclined to humor the old fellow's mood. "I like a good picture, I admit," I said.
"Then perhaps you would not be offended if I asked you to step inside and look at one or two," he suggested timidly. "I would not take a liberty, sir, but there are some Van Dycks and a Rubens in the dining room that cost a mint of money in their day, I have heard; and there is no one else in the house but my wife and myself."
It was a strange invitation, strangely brought about. But I saw no reason for myself why I should not accept it, and I followed him into the hall. It was spacious, but sparsely furnished. The matted floor had a cold look, and so had the gaunt stand which seemed to be a fixture, and boasted but one umbrella, one sunshade, and one dog-whip. As I passed a half-open door I caught a glimpse of a small room prettily furnished, with dainty prints and water-colors on the walls. But these were of a common order. A dozen replicas of each and all might be seen in a walk through Bond Street. Even this oasis of taste and comfort told the same story as had the bare hall and dreary exterior; and laid, as it were, a finger on one's heart. I trod softly as I followed my guide along the strip of matting toward the rear of the house.
He opened a door at the inner end of the hall, and led me into a large and lofty room, built out from the back, as a state dining room or ballroom. At present it rather resembled the latter, for it was without furniture. "Now," said the old man, turning and respectfully touching my sleeve to gain my attention, "now you will not consider your labor lost in coming to see that, sir. It is a portrait of the second Lord Wetherby by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and is judged to be one of the finest specimens of his style in existence."
I was lost in astonishment; amazed, almost appalled! My companion stood by my side, his face wearing a placid smile of satisfaction, his hand pointing slightly upward to the blank wall before us. The blank wall! Of any picture, there or elsewhere in the room, there was no sign. I turned to him and then from him, and I felt very sick at heart. The poor old fellow was-must be-mad. I gazed blankly at the blank wall. "By Van Dyck?" I repeated mechanically.
"Yes, sir, by Van Dyck," he replied, in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable. "So, too, is this one;" he moved, as he spoke, a few feet to his left. "The second peer's first wife in the costume of a lady-in-waiting. This portrait and the last are in as good a state of preservation as on the day they were painted."
Oh, certainly mad! And yet so graphic was his manner, so crisp and realistic were his words, that I rubbed my eyes; and looked and looked again, and almost fancied that Lord Walter and Anne, his wife, grew into shape before me on the wall. Almost, but not quite; and it was with a heart full of wondering pity that I accompanied the old man, in whose manner there was no trace of wildness or excitement, round the walls; visiting in turn the Cuyp which my lord bought in Holland, the Rubens, the four Lawrences, and the Philips-a very Barmecide feast of art. I could not doubt that the old man saw the pictures. But I saw only bare walls.
"Now I think you have seen them, family portraits and all," he concluded, as we came to the doorway again; stating the fact, which was no fact, with complacent pride. "They are fine pictures, sir. They, at least, are left, although the house is not what it was."
"Very fine pictures!" I remarked. I was minded to learn if he were sane on other points. "Lord Wetherby," I said; "I should suppose that he is not in London?"
"I do not know, sir, one way or the other," the servant answered with a new air of reserve. "This is not his lordship's house. Mrs. Wigram, my late lord's daughter-in-law, lives here."
"But this is the Wetherbys' town house," I persisted. I knew so much.
"It was my late lord's house. At his son's marriage it was settled upon Mrs. Wigram; and little enough besides, God knows!" he exclaimed querulously. "It was Mr. Alfred's wish that some land should be settled upon his wife, but there was none out of the entail, and my lord, who did not like the match, though he lived to be fond enough of the mistress afterward, said, 'Settle the house in town!' in a bitter kind of joke like. So the house was settled, and five hundred pounds a year. Mr. Alfred died abroad, as you may know, sir, and my lord was not long in following him."
He was closing the shutters of one window after another as he spoke. The room had sunk into deep gloom. I could imagine now that the pictures were really where he fancied them. "And Lord Wetherby, the late peer?" I asked, after a pause, "did he leave his daughter-in-law nothing?"
"My lord died suddenly, leaving no will," he replied sadly. "That is how it all is. And the present peer, who was only a second cousin-well, I say nothing about him." A reticence which was well calculated to consign his lordship to the lowest deep.
"He did not help?" I asked.
"Devil a bit, begging your pardon, sir. But there-it is not my place to talk of these things. I doubt I have wearied you with talk about the family. It is not my way," he added, as if wondering at himself, "only something in what you said seemed to touch a chord like."
By this time we were outside the room, standing at the inner end of the hall, while he fumbled with the lock of the door. Short passages ending in swing doors ran out right and left from this point, and through one of these a tidy, middle-aged woman, wearing an apron, suddenly emerged. At sight of me she looked greatly astonished. "I have been showing the gentleman the pictures," said my guide, who was still occupied with the door.
A quick flash of pain altered and hardened the woman's face. "I have been very much interested, madam," I said softly.
Her gaze left me, to dwell upon the old man with infinite affection. "John had no right to bring you in, sir," she said primly. "I have never known him do such a thing before, and-Lord 'a' mercy! there is the mistress's knock. Go, John, and let her in; and this gentleman," with an inquisitive look at me, "will not mind stepping a bit aside, while her ladyship goes upstairs."
"Certainly not," I answered. I hastened to draw back into one of the side passages, into the darkest corner of it, and there stood leaning against the cool panels, my hat in my hand.
In the short pause which ensued before John opened the door she whispered to me, "You have not told him, sir?"
"About the pictures?"
"Yes, sir. He is blind, you see."
"Blind?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir, this year and more; and when the pictures were taken away-by the present earl-that he had known all his life, and been so proud to show to people just the same as if they had been his own-why, it seemed a shame to tell him. I have never had the heart to do it, and he thinks they are there to this day."
Blind! I had never thought of that; and while I was grasping the idea now, and fitting it to the facts, a light footstep sounded in the hall and a woman's voice on the stairs; such a voice and such a footstep, that, as it seemed to me, a man, if nothing else were left to him, might find home in them alone. "Your mistress," I said presently, when the sounds had died away upon the floor above, "has a sweet voice; but has not something annoyed her?"
"Well, I never should have thought that you would have noticed that!" exclaimed the housekeeper, who was, I dare say, many other things besides housekeeper. "You have a sharp ear, sir; that I will say. Yes, there is a something has gone wrong; but to think that an American gentleman should have noticed it!"
"I am not American," I said, perhaps testily.
"Oh, indeed, sir. I beg your pardon, I am sure. It was just your way of speaking made me think it," she replied; and then there came a second louder rap at the door, as John, who had gone upstairs with his mistress, came down in a leisurely fashion.
"That is Lord Wetherby, drat him!" he said, on his wife calling to him in a low voice; he was ignorant, I think, of my presence. "He is to be shown into the library, and the mistress will see him there in five minutes; and you are to go to her room. Oh, rap away!" he added, turning toward the door, and shaking his fist at it. "There is many a better man than you has waited longer at that door."
