"Sir, such insinuations are most uncalled for; I must beg of you to withdraw them. I must ask you to remember you are talking to one at least in the same position as yourself, to a man of seven thousand a year!"

"Pooh, pooh! seven thousand a year--you are making that to-day, to- morrow you mayn't be making three. Yours isn't invested money."

Berkins had risen from the great leather armchair, and he stood expressionless as a piece of office furniture, his grave face divided by the green shade of the billiard lamp; Mr. Brookes remained with his back--his straight fat back bound in a new frock coat that defined the senile fatness of the haunches--turned to his guest. He stooped as if to examine his favourite Linnell, but, in his pa.s.sion, he did not see it. The table, covered with a grey cloth, lay like an account spread out between the moneyed men.

"Taking your words into due consideration, I think I had better wish you good-morning, Mr. Brookes."

"Mr. Berkins, I would not wish you to misunderstand me," said Mr.

Brookes, whom the prospect of losing seven thousand a year had suddenly cooled. "My daughter will have--my children, I should say-- will have my fortune divided amongst them at my death, and when we come to go into figures you will find--"

"But in the meantime, what do you propose to settle on her?"

Mr. Brookes hesitated. He was angry at being pressed. Berkins's domineering tone irritated him; he would have liked to bundle him from the house.

Presently he said: "I think, considering the very large sums of money my daughters will come into at my death, that a settlement of two hundred a year is ample."

"Very well, in that case I shall settle the same."

"I could not, I will not, consent to any such arrangement. The man my daughter marries must settle on her a sum of money equivalent--"

"To what you settle on her."

"To her position, to her expectations," replied Mr. Brookes, growing more and more angry.

"But I don't know what her expectations are; you may marry again."

"I do not intend to marry again."

"Very possibly, but I know nothing of that; business is business, and I should be a fool if I settle five hundred to your two hundred."

Mr. Brookes stopped in his walk, and he looked at Berkins, who stood, his hand laid upon the billiard table as upon a huge balance sheet.

The word business had carried the men back to their offices in London, and, quite forgetful of the subject of their bargaining, each strove to obtain an advantage over the other.

"Well, let us say two hundred and fifty, that is my last word."

"Then, Mr. Brookes, I will not take your daughter."

III

"w.i.l.l.y, make haste, I beg of you; I shall miss my train. It is now exactly half-past nine."

"You had better go without me; I cannot start now. I haven't nearly got my things together."

"Very well, very well."

w.i.l.l.y walked from room to room tying and untying brown paper parcels in his most methodical and most dilatory manner. His sisters stood watching him from the drawing-room door.

"Did father tell you nothing when Berkins left? They had a row, hadn't they? It isn't off, is it?"

"I wish you would not speak so loud, Sally; you can be heard all over the house."

"Do tell us."

"But I don't know. Father was very much upset. I couldn't speak to him about my own business, I know that."

"Well, I suppose we shall hear about it to-night. You are going to meet Frank in Brighton, aren't you?"

"Yes; he is coming to lunch with me."

"Don't keep him all day; send him on here, we might have a game of tennis."

w.i.l.l.y did not answer; and he thought as he went upstairs, what a trouble young girls were in a house. "They think of nothing but pleasure, nothing but pleasure."

One, two, or three more delays, and he was ready, and with his brown paper parcel tucked under his arm he set forth. Upon the young blue of the sky, the fresh green of the buds melted. There were a few elms, but hardly enough to const.i.tute an avenue. The house looked as if it had been repeatedly altered. It ran into unexpected corners and angles; but it was far enough from the road to justify a gate lodge.

The swards were interspersed with shrubs in the most modern fashion, and the sumptuous gla.s.s-houses could be seen gleaming in the sun. It was a hot day, and the brick wall was dappled with hanging foliage, and further out, opposite the windows of the "Stag and Hounds," where Steyning's ales could be obtained, the over-reaching sprays of a great chestnut tree fell in delicate tracery on the white dust. The road led under the railway embankment, and looking through the arched opening, one could see the dirty town, straggling along the ca.n.a.l or harbour, which runs parallel with the sea. A black stain was the hull of a great steamer lying on her side in the mud, but the tapering masts of yachts were beautiful on the sky, and at the end of a row of slatternly houses there were sometimes spars and rigging so strange and bygone that they suggested Drake and the Spanish main.

Southwick is half a suburb, half a village. In the summer months the green seems a living thing. It is there the children talk and tumble when school is over. They are told to go to the green, they are forbidden to go to the green, and it is from the green the eldest girl leads the naughty boy howling. When they are a little older they avoid the green, it is too public then. It is to the green that elevens come from far and near to play their matches. All the summer through the green is a _fete_ of cricket. It is to the green the bra.s.s bands come on Sat.u.r.day. On the green, bat and trap is played till the ball disappears in shadow. The green is common; horses and cows are turned out there. All profit by the green. It is on the edge of the green the housewives come to talk in the limpid moonlight. It is on the green the fathers smoke when the little cottage rooms are unbearable with summer heat. It is on the green that Mrs. Horlock walks with her pugs and the chemist's wife, to the enormous scandal of the neighbourhood.

To the right, facing the embankment, and overlooking some fields, is the famous Southdown road, and parallel with the green is Mr.

Brookes's property--a solid five acres, with all modern improvements and embellishments, and surrounded by a brick wall over six feet high.

w.i.l.l.y hated Southwick. He thought it ugly and vulgar; he regretted deeply that his father would make no advances, and that they were as far from county society to-day as when they came to live in the place thirty years ago. "I knew the best people when I was at Oxford, why can I not know them now? Here we are doing the same thing from year's end to year's end; why, with our money we ought to be hob-n.o.bbing with the duke." In moments of dejection this was one of w.i.l.l.y's commonest thoughts. "I did my best, but I was opposed. Father doesn't care, and as for the girls, they'll take up with any man so long as he is young.

Still, in spite of them I should have got on if I hadn't lost my nerve and had to give up hunting; and without hunting there is no way of making acquaintances."

w.i.l.l.y had relied on a hunter as Berkins had on pheasants and gla.s.s- houses. But he hated hunting, and finding he got no further than a few breakfasts, he had told a story of a heavy fall and sold his horses.

He had then insisted on dinner-parties, and some few people more or less "county" had been collected; the pretext was politics, but w.i.l.l.y and politics were but a doleful mixture, and the scheme collapsed. The family was not endowed with any social qualifications, w.i.l.l.y least of all, and having failed to advance himself individually, and his family collectively, he threw up the game.

We rarely cultivate for long things in which we may not succeed in-- the lady with a small waist pinches it, the man with pretty feet wears pretty shoes, and in no circ.u.mstances could w.i.l.l.y have shone in society. He failed to interest the ladies he met on the King's Road, he knew this; and to sum up his deficiencies, let us say he was lacking in "go." He was too timid to succeed with the more facile loves whom he met in the evenings on the pier. All the same he had had his love affair.

Oh! men of inferior aspect and speech, often in you a true heart abides; you, and you only, are faithful to the end.

To this unromantic person a shred of pure romance was attached. None knew the whole story, and none spoke of it now; but his sisters remembered that w.i.l.l.y had fallen in love with a girl whom he had seen play "Sweet Anne Page." They remembered long letters, tears and wild looks. He had sent her diamonds; and one night he had attempted suicide. All was now forgotten; at least it was the past, and nothing remained but one little melody which he had heard her sing, and which he sometimes whistled out of tune.

But sooner or later a man's talents, and if not his talents, his tastes, appear through the mists of youth, and henceforth they lead him. w.i.l.l.y's efforts in society had resulted in abortive dinner- parties, his efforts in sport had been cut short by nerves, his efforts in dissipation had left him with a tolerably well-filled wardrobe, his efforts in love had brought him tears and a commonplace mistress, whom he kept in the necessaries of life in various lodging- houses. So his youth had pa.s.sed; but in all this mediocrity a certain spirit of resistance endured. His taste for figures grew more p.r.o.nounced; he surrounded himself with account books, letter books, and diaries; he took note of every penny that pa.s.sed through his hands. Money-making, profitable investments--that was to be his aim in life; and as each year closed his thoughts fixed themselves more definitely and entirely on it; and it was natural that it should be so, since all other outlets for the pa.s.sion of life were barred to him. His forced retirement from the distillery did not worry him. No one could please his father in business; his uncle had once threatened to throw his brother out of the window. Besides, the business was a declining one, and twelve thousand pounds for a junior partnership was not bad. Nor did his failure to make a success of the manure agency discourage him; the shop was a different matter, that was his own idea, he had thought of a fortune, and had lost two thousand pounds.

It had crippled him for life. True enough, there were other things to do. Some stockbrokers make twenty per cent. on their money, not in wild speculation, but in straightforward genuine business. He might go up to London and learn the business--he had heard that it would not take more than six months or a year to pick it up--and start on his own account. A thousand pounds would be sufficient to begin with; or he might buy a partnership--he could do that for three or four thousand. Either of these courses would suit him, the latter for preference, but a certain amount of capital would be necessary before he could take either, and that he hadn't got, and to all appearances it would be very difficult to persuade his father to consent to drawany more money out of the distillery.

So w.i.l.l.y's thoughts ran as he ascended the flight of wooden steps that led to the platform of the little country station. "The folk down here think there is nothing in me, that I am good for nothing but walking up and down the King's Road, but they little know what I have in my head. I'll make them open their eyes one of these days." The sting of vanity is in us all. Our heads may be greed, our bellies l.u.s.t, our limbs charity, faithfulness, truth, and goodwill, but in some cranny of our tails vanity always lies, only it may be marvellously well hidden, as in w.i.l.l.y. The keenest observer would not have detected it in him, and when he came out of his habitual reserve and lamented that bad luck had always followed him and spoke of his projects, one might have suspected him of greed, but hardly of vanity. Now he stood leaning on the wooden paling, and his movements showed the back and loins in strong outline, marking the thick calves. Without taking any heed, his eyes followed the cricket ball, which was in turn slogged into the horse-pond and cottage gardens. Through long familiarity, the green had faded from his notice, nor did the burnt-up crops on the Downs attract his thoughts, nor yet the sinuous lines of the hills.

From the platform one saw the whole of Southwick. The green with its cricket match, Mrs. Horlock and her dogs, the forge, the stile, the various cottages, the long fields full of green wheat, and, far away, the carriages pa.s.sing like insects along the road under the Downs; then on the right were the back gardens of the cottages, a large inscription announcing the different branches of the grocery business, a few fields with cows leaning their muzzles over the rough palings, some more cottages, a barn, and then the magnificent five acres of the Manor House, rich with gla.s.s-houses, and beautiful in a cloud of trees. From the platform of the station one could see the sea, not much of it, but one could see the sea; the slates of the street that went along the water's edge did not quite bar the view. The very small presence of Southwick contrived to hide the sea; even when one walked to the water's side the great ma.s.s of shingle which forms the outer bank of the ca.n.a.l allowed only one narrow rim of blue to appear. The inhabitants forget they live by the sea, and when the breeze fills their gardens with a smell of boats and nets they think of the sea with surprise.

Tired of the monotonous running to and fro of the cricket players, w.i.l.l.y walked up the platform. Arrow-like, the line lay in front of him, and in the tinted distance, in faint lines and flashes of light and shade, Brighton stretched from hill to hill. Morning was still in the sky, and the sea was deep blue between the yellow chimney-pots. A puff of steam showed up upon a distant field, and the train came along from Portslade, one of the links of the great chain of towns that binds the south coast. "I hope Frank won't arrive in Brighton before me," thought w.i.l.l.y.

They had been big boy and little boy at school. The vivacity of the Celt amused the good-natured south Saxon, and when Lord Mount Rorke called to see his nephew, he found him talking with Brookes. Once w.i.l.l.y had been invited to spend part of his holidays at Mount Rorke.

Afterwards they visited each other's rooms, and so their friendship had been decided, and, in spite of--or, perhaps, on account of--a very marked difference in their characters and temperaments, gathered strength as it matured. Another link between the men was that Escott had accompanied w.i.l.l.y to the theatre when he went to see the actress whom he had loved so madly. Frank had heard her sing the song which w.i.l.l.y whistled when his thoughts went wandering. w.i.l.l.y confided in no one--great sorrows cannot be and never are confided; but Frank had seen her, and he played her songs on the piano, and that was enough for w.i.l.l.y.

The young men had not seen each other for two years. Frank had shown some taste for painting, and his uncle, whose heir he was, had sent him, if not to study, at least to think about art in Italy. From Italy he had gone to Greece and Russia, he had returned home through Germany, he had visited Holland and France.