"Hallo, Bill, old man!"

This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice and manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.

In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery, a grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called Stroud, came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a moustache and a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be seen in the club any night of the year when there was no racing out of reach of London.

"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow. Miss Ca.s.serol--you know the Ca.s.serols--Muncaster Gate."

"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they would understand.

"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best. I tell you what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you won't get such another chance of practice. Benjy 'll give you a card."

"Delighted!" murmured Benjy.

"Where is it?"

"St. Briabas; two-thirty. Come and see how they do the trick. I'll call for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he patted Benjy's knee.

Shelton nodded his a.s.sent; the piquant callousness of the affair had made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage. But Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really be the case; it was merely a question of "good form," the conceit of a superior breeding, the duty not to give oneself away. And when in turn he marked the eyes of Stroud fixed on Benjy, under s.h.a.ggy brows, and the curious greedy glances of the racing man, he felt somehow sorry for him.

"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"

asked the racing man.

And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in his hair and a certain restlessness of att.i.tude.

"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the Chinese--must have a grudge against them! And now he 's got his leg he can't go there any more."

"Chinese? What does he do to them?"

"Bibles or guns. Don't ask me! An adventurer."

"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.

Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests," and plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these people with untidy lives. A minute later the man with the "game leg" pa.s.sed close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how intelligible the resentment of his fellow-members was. He had eyes which, not uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel bars; he seemed the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that were "bad form," a man who might even go as far as chivalry. He looked straight at Shelton, and his uncompromising glance gave an impression of fierce loneliness; altogether, an improper person to belong to such a club. Shelton remembered the words of an old friend of his father's: "Yes, d.i.c.k, all sorts of fellows belong here, and they come here for all sorts o'

reasons, and a lot of em come because they've nowhere else to go, poor beggars"; and, glancing from the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it occurred to Shelton that even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor beggars. One never knew! A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored him. Ah, the lucky devil! He would not have to come here any more! and the thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.

"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!" said young Bill Dennant.

Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left once more to reverie.

"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel. They'll go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such foolery."

He crossed over to the window. Rain had begun to fall; the streets looked wild and draughty. The cabmen were putting on their coats. Two women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly, desperate step. Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way amongst his fellow-members. A procession of old school and college friends came up before his eyes. After all, what had there been in his own education, or theirs, to give them any other standard than this "good form"? What had there been to teach them anything of life? Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think of it. They had all the air of knowing everything, and really they knew nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the Emotions; nothing of the bonds that bind all men together. Why, even such words were not "good form"; nothing outside their little circle was "good form." They had a fixed point of view over life because they came of certain schools, and colleges, and regiments! And they were those in charge of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.

Well, it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!

"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-leather boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with gold nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"

Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his solemn pleasure as he read. In the white of his eye there was a torpid and composed abstraction. There was nothing in that book to startle him or make him think.

The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking of his recent visit to the south of France. He had a scandalous anecdote or two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold nose-nippers; he was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly humour that it was impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave so perfect an impression of enjoying life, and doing himself well. "Well, good-night!"

he murmured--"An engagement!"--and the certainty he left behind that his engagement must be charming and illicit was pleasant to the soul.

And, slowly taking up his gla.s.s, Shelton drank; the sense of well-being was upon him. His superiority to these his fellow-members soothed him.

He saw through all the sham of this club life, the meanness of this worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved novelists, "good form,"

and the terrific decency of our education. It was soothing thus to see through things, soothing thus to be superior; and from the soft recesses of his chair he puffed out smoke and stretched his limbs toward the fire; and the fire burned back at him with a discreet and venerable glow.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WEDDING

Punctual to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.

"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of their cab at the church door and pa.s.sed between the crowded files of unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the pavement.

The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by her side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs of ragged matrimony. Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price of his tie was their board and lodging for a week. He followed his future brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with intuitive perception of the s.e.xes' endless warfare, each of the opposing parties to this contract had its serried battalion, the arrows of whose suspicion kept glancing across and across the central aisle.

Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.

"There's old Benjy!" he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of the day. A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered uniformity of his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he bent upon the guests had its wonted steely suavity. About his dress and his neat figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the ruck of common bridegrooms. There were no holes in his armour through which the impertinent might pry.

"Good old Benjy!" whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit short of cla.s.s, those Ca.s.serols."

Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled. The sensuous sanct.i.ty all round had begun to influence him. A perfume of flowers and dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle of whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the aisles, and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in front; without in the least desiring to make a speculation of this sort, he wondered whether her face was as charming as the lines of her back in their delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his glance wandered to the chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the grave, business faces of the presiding priests, till the organ began rolling out the wedding march.

"They're off!" whispered young Dermant.

Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain. The bride came slowly up the aisle. "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and the church will be filled with people like this . . . . She'll be a show to them!"

The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct of common chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately head where no such thought as "How am I looking, this day of all days, before all London?" had ever entered; the proud head, which no such fear as "How am I carrying it off?" could surely be besmirching.

He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and set his face, as a man might who found himself a.s.sisting at a sacrifice.

The words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and opening the Prayer Book he found the Marriage Service, which he had not looked at since he was a boy, and as he read he had some very curious sensations.

All this would soon be happening to himself! He went on reading in a kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!"

All around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure mount the pulpit and stand motionless. Ma.s.sive and high-featured, sunken of eye, he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole, above the blackness of his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for his beauty.

Shelton was still gazing at the st.i.tching of his gloves, when once again the organ played the Wedding March. All were smiling, and a few were weeping, craning their heads towards the bride. "Carnival of second-hand emotions!" thought Shelton; and he, too, craned his head and brushed his hat. Then, smirking at his friends, he made his way towards the door.

In the Ca.s.serols' house he found himself at last going round the presents with the eldest Ca.s.serol surviving, a tall girl in pale violet, who had been chief bridesmaid.

"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying

"Oh, awfully!"

"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the bride to come."

"Yes," murmured Shelton.

"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"