"Never mind the beard, tell me about the money matters that your father and Mr. Berkins can't agree upon."

"Mr. Berkins has offered to settle twelve thousand pounds upon me if father will settle the same amount. But father won't agree to this; he wants Mr. Berkins to settle twelve, but does not want to settle more than seven himself upon me."

"Is this so, James?" asked Aunt Mary.

Mr. Brookes avoided answering the question, and entered into a long and garrulous statement concerning himself and his money: he had made it all himself! he spoke of his investments with pride, and pathetically declared that he would not marry again because he would not deprive his dear children of anything. Aunt Mary crossed her hands over her shawl, and set herself to listen to the old gentleman's rigmarole. Aunt Hester tried several times to cut him short, but this time he would not be silenced.

Then Aunt Mary started the story of a girl whom she had known intimately in early life, which she no doubt thought would help Grace to a better comprehension of her difficulties; but the dear lady lost herself in the domestic entanglement of many families, on the subject of which she contributed much curious information, without, however, elucidating the matter in hand. She wandered so far that at length all hope of return became impossible, and she was obliged to pull up suddenly and ask what she had been talking about.

"What was I talking about, James; you have been listening to me--what was I talking about?"

Mr. Brookes made no attempt to give the information necessary for the blending of her many narratives, and she was forced to seek unaided for the lost thread. Soon after the girls came in with their gin and water. They drank their grog, kissed their relations, and retired to bed.

And the next evening, and the next, and the next, so long as Aunt Mary and Aunt Hester remained at the Manor House, the evenings pa.s.sed in a similar fashion; and, notwithstanding the doleful faces they occasionally a.s.sumed, they found pleasure in lamenting the follies of the young people. The same stories were told, almost the same words were uttered. The only malcontent was w.i.l.l.y. He had no interest in his sisters, and the hours after dinner in the billiard-room when his sisters were in the drawing-room were those he devoted to looking through his letters and filling up his diary; so when Sally's name was mentioned he caught at his short crisp hair and gnashed his teeth.

VI

"My dear fellow, just as I'm settling down to do some work, Aunt Mary comes along the pa.s.sage; I know her step so well. And then it begins, the old story that I have heard twenty times before, all over again.

You have no idea how worrying it is."

Frank laughed, and talked of something else. These discussions of Sally's character and general behaviour did not appeal to him in either a comic or serious light, and the havoc they made of w.i.l.l.y's business hours did not perceptibly move him; he was full of his good looks, his clothes, his affections, his bull-dog, and the fact that his youth was going by, as it should go by, among girls, in an old English village, in a garden by the sea.

Aunt Mary was a woman that a rarer young man would have been attracted by; indeed the delicacy of a young man may be tested by the sympathy he may feel for women when age has drawn a veil over, and put s.e.xual promptings aside. Her bright teeth and eyes, the winsome little face, so glad, would have at once charmed and led any young man not so brutally young as Frank Escott. It would have pleased another to watch her, to wait on her, to listen to her rambling stories all so full of laughter and the sunshine of kindness and homely wit; it would have pleased him to note that she was gratified by the admiration of a young man; it would please him to hear himself called by his Christian name, while he must address her as Mrs. So-and-so, and in maintaining this difference they would both become conscious of pleasing restraint.

His comprehension of life was invariably a sentimental one, so the aunts were to him merely middle-aged women--uninteresting, and useful only so far as their efforts contributed to render the lives of young people easy and pleasurable. In abrupt and pa.s.sing impressions he concluded that Aunt Mary was bright and pleasant, but tediously voluble, given to wasting that time which he would have liked to spend talking to the young ladies of poetry and Italy.

He scorned poor Aunt Hester. She shrank from him, frightened by his harsh, blunt manners; she was afraid he led a sinful life in London.

Aunt Mary had few doubts on the subject, and her comments made her sister tremble. She spoke of him as a most desirable husband for Maggie. "He will be a peer, my dear James. Lord Mount Rorke will never marry again. He is the acknowledged heir to the t.i.tle and estates."

And the young man went as he came--full of himself, his clothes, his good looks; b.u.mptious and arrogant, effusive in his love of his friends, and yet sincere. He looked out of the railway carriage window to seize a last look of the green, with its horse pond and its downs, and the cricketers all in white, running to and fro (young Meason had just made a three, and Sally was applauding). The porches of the Southdown Road he could just see over the fields, and Mr. Brooke's gla.s.s glittered amid the summer foliage. At that moment he loved the ugly little village, with its barren downs and all its anomalous aspects of town and country. He thought of his friends there, and his life appeared to be theirs, and theirs his, and he wished it might flow on for ever in this quiet place. He seemed to understand it all so well, and to love it all so dearly. He accepted it all, even its vulgarest aspects. Even pompous Berkins appeared to him under a tenderer light--the light of orange-flowers and married love. For Aunt Mary had smoothed away all difficulties, hirsute and monetary, and the wedding had been fixed for the autumn. The gaiety of the day he had spent with the girls, its feasting and its flirtation, arose, memorised in a soft halo of imagination--a day of fruit, wine, and light words, and the dear General, with his St James's politics and his only desire--"a little something to do--something to bring me out, you know." The pugs, the mangy mastiff, the hospitable house always open, its ready welcome, and, above all, the air which it held of the lives of its occupants; its pictures of white arab horses, and elephants richly caparisoned; the wonderful goats in the field, and the tropical birds and animals in the back garden! Above all, the walks on the green with the chemist's wife, and the annoyance such familiarity caused Mr. Brookes--how funny, how charming, how amusing!

He was smiling through the tears that rose to his eyes when the train rolled into Brighton.

On arriving in London he drove straight to the Temple. The creaking, disjointed staircases, with the lanterns of old time in the windows, jarred his thoughts, which were still of Southwick; and when he entered his rooms their loneliness struck him with a chill. He pictured Maggie sitting in the arm-chair waiting for him, and he imagined how she would lay her book aside and say, "Oh, here you are!"

He sat down to read his letters. One was from Lord Mount Rorke, enclosing a cheque, another a daintily cut envelope, smelling daintily, came from Lady Seveley.

"DEAR MR ESCOTT,--I have not seen anything of you for a very long time; you promised to lunch with me before you left town, but I suppose amid the general gaieties and friends of the season you were carried far away quite out of my reckoning. However, I hope when you return you will come and see me. I got your address from Mr. ---, but you need not tell him that I wrote to you; he is, as you know, a dreadful chatterbox, and somehow or other, without meaning it, contrives to make gossip and mischief out of everything.

"The weather here is delicious--perhaps a trifle too hot; and sometimes I envy you your cool sea-side resort. I wonder what the attraction is? It must be a very special one to keep you out of London in June.

"Should you be in town next Thursday, come and dine; I have a box for the theatre. And as an extra inducement I will tell you that I have two very nice girls staying with me, who will interest you.--Yours very truly, HELEN SEVELEY."

Some men of thirty would have instantly understood Lady Seveley's letter. But age gives us nothing we do not already possess, the years develop what is latent in us in youth, and it is certain that Frank at thirty would have understood the letter as vaguely and incompletely as he did to-day. We read our sympathies and antipathies in all we look upon, and Frank read in this letter an old woman with diamonds and dyed hair. He had met her twice. The first time was at a ball where he knew n.o.body; the second was at a dinner party. She had fixed her eyes upon him; she had prevented him from talking after dinner to a young girl whom he had admired across the table during dinner. He did not like her, and he thought now of the young girls he would meet if he accepted her invitation. Lady Seveley was a shadow; and when the shadow defined itself he saw the slight wrinkling of the skin about the eyes, the almost imperceptible looseness of the flesh about the chin; but, worse to him than these physical changes, were the hard measured phrases in which there is knowledge of the savour and worth of life. He unpacked his portmanteau, and, dallying with his resolutions, he wondered if he should go to Lady Seveley's: conclusions and determinations were const.i.tutionally abhorrent, self- deception natural to him. Were he asked if he intended to turn to the right or the left, although he were going nowhere and an answer would compromise him in nothing, he would certainly say he did not know; and if he were expostulated with, he would reply rudely, arrogantly. This is worthy of notice, for what was special in his character was the combination it afforded of degenerate weakness and pride, complicated with a towering sense of self-sufficiency. Youth's illusions would not pa.s.s from him easily; in his eyes and heart the hawthorn would always be in bloom, young girls would always be beautiful, innocent, true to the lovers they had selected; nor was there of necessity degradation nor forced continuance in any state of vice. Love could raise and purify, love could restore, love could make whole; if one woman were faithless, another would be constant; if to-day were dark, to-morrow would be bright. Life had no deep truth for him, no underlying mysteries; it was not a problem capable of demonstration, capable of definition; it was not a thing of limitations and goals and ends; he could feel nothing of this--the philosophic temperament was absent in him. Life had no deep truth for him, no underlying mysteries; he did not dream of past times, and he placed few hopes in the future; life was a thing to be enjoyed in the moment of living, and the present moment was a very pleasant one. He leaned over the doors of the hansom resting his gloved hand upon his crutched stick. He was struck with the pride we feel when we are dressed for amus.e.m.e.nt and contemplate those in workaday garb; and in these sensations of pride he leaned forward, proud of his good looks, his shirt front, his shirt cuffs, his glazed shoes; he pleasured in the knowledge that many saw he was going to elegant company, to amus.e.m.e.nt. He was full of scorn for the women loitering, for the clerks hurrying, and especially for the crowds pressing about the entrances of the theatres.

London opened up upon a little black s.p.a.ce of asphalt; crimson clouds moved over the many windowed walls of the great hotels, the black monumented square foamed with white water, children played, and the gold of the inscriptions over the shops caught the eye. London was tall on the heavens. Regent Street was full of young men as elegant as himself driving to various pleasures, and Frank wondered what sort of dinners they would eat, what kind of women they would sit by. Then as he drove through Mayfair he thought of his own party. He wondered what the girls would think of him.

Lady Seveley lived in Green Street. When he had rung the bell he listened impatiently for approaching steps, for he tingled with presentiment that he would somehow be disappointed, and he dreaded dinner by himself and his lonely lodgings. Nor was he wholly wrong.

The butler who opened the door seemed surprised at seeing him, and in reply to his question if Lady Seveley was at home, replied hesitatingly:

"Her ladyship is at home, but she is not at all well, sir. She is, I think, in her room lying down, sir."

"Oh, but did she not expect me? I was to have dined here to-night."

"I heard nothing about it, sir; but I'd better ask. Will you come in, sir?"

Lady Seveley's house was a house of scent and soft carpets. The staircase was covered with pink silk, and in the recess on the first landing, or rather where the stairs paused, there was an aviary in which either hawks screeched or owls blinked; generally there was a magpie there, and the quaint bird now hopped to Frank's finger, casting a thievish look on his rings. The drawing-room was full of flowers. There was a grand piano, dark and bright; the skins of tigers Lord Seveley had shot carpeted the floor, and on their heads, Helen rested her feet, showing her plump legs to her visitors. On the walls there were indifferent water-colours, there were gold screens, the cabinets were full of china, there were three-volume novels on the tea-table--it was the typical rich widow's house, a house where young men lingered. Frank stood examining a portrait on china of Lady Seveley, it was happily hung with blue ribbon from the top of the mirror. It represented a woman inclined to stoutness, about three and thirty. The chestnut hair was piled and curled with strange art about the head. Above the face there was a mask, roses wreathed, and a swallow carrying a love missive, b.u.t.terflies and arrows everywhere, and below the face there was a skull profusely wreathed and almost hidden in roses. This portrait would have stirred the imagination of many young men, but Frank thought nothing of it--the theatrical display displeased him, it seemed to him even a little foolish. He crossed over to the flowers.

"Lady Seveley will be down in a moment, sir," said the maid. A few minutes after the door opened.

"How do you do? I am so glad to see you. Won't you sit down? I have been suffering terribly to-day--neuralgia; nothing for it but to lie down in a dark room."

"I hope you are better now."

"Oh, when I have had some champagne I shall be quite well. Now tell me something; talk to me."

Helen was sitting thrown back on the little black satin sofa; she had crossed her legs, and her foot was set on a tiger's head. The ankle was too thick, the foot slightly fat, but stocking and shoe were perfect, and these drew Frank's eyes too attentively. Helen noticed this and was glad.

"So you like Maggie the best?"

"Oh, yes, I like her the best, Sally is too rough. How those girls do worry their father. He has to go up to town every day; he is in the City, and the girls give tennis parties, and drink his best wine.

There was an awful row there the other day about the peaches; he had been going in for forcing, and was counting the days when they would be ripe. The young men ate them all."

Helen laughed. "A sort of comic King Lear."

"Just so, the girls will have large fortunes at their father's death.

I have known them all my life. I used to spend my holidays with them when I was a small boy."

"And you haven't seen them for a long time?"

"No, I was in Ireland two years, and then I went to Italy. This was the first time I saw them since they were really grown up."

"And you say they are beautiful girls and will have large fortunes."

"Yes, I suppose Maggie is a good-looking girl; she is more a fascinating girl than a beautiful girl." A sudden remembrance of Lizzie Baker dictated this opinion of Maggie Brookes.

"Dinner is on the table, my lady."

"I think you said in your letter that you were going to have two young girls staying with you."

"Yes, but they could not come; they were to have been here on Monday. I am very sorry; had I known for certain that you were coming, I would have arranged to have some one to meet you."

"I am very glad you didn't." The conversation dropped. "You said you were going to the theatre. What theatre are you thinking of going to?"

"My neuralgia put all thoughts of the theatre out of my head. I have a box for the Gaiety. We will go if you like."