CHAPTER XI
IN MY LADY'S CHAMBER
BY this time I felt something like a criminal escaping from justice, a coiner evading the officers, or a smuggler dodging the preventive men. It seemed to me that the thunders of the law must inevitably be trained on Norroy Castle. But I did not care; indeed I rejoiced in the prospect. And if Norroy did not rejoice, he certainly was indifferent.
We had repulsed the first attack, but I was fearful as to the campaign they would open out. They might get an order for permission to substitute service. In my plentiful ignorance of the law I knew that such a thing was possible, as I had often seen advertisements to such effect in the papers. And so we discussed affairs with that possibility in view. Yet throughout the next day the cordon of spies was not broken, and it was clear that Mr. Horne and his friends had not relaxed their vigilance. I recognized my cockney friend at the gates, and nodded to him in an affable manner.
"A long job?" I queried.
"What do you think he countered with a grin, and stuck a twopenny cigar between his teeth. "Tidy little place," he commented. "Niceish bit of sea, too, though it wants a promenade badly. If I 'ad that," he indicated the estuary with his dirty thumb, "I'd run a pier like Southend across it. Get no end of people down then."
I shuddered as I laughed. "A ripping idea!" I said, lighted his cigar for him, and then applied the match to my own cigarette. He puffed away contentedly, and beamed on me amiably. We met on neutral ground, and exchanged civilities like gallant foes at odds for a principle but with no personal animus.
"Then there's them caves," he went on. "Why, they 'd make the fortune of any seaside place. I'd 'ave 'em in a Syndicate if I had my way. I wonder the Governor here does n't do it."
He threw his thumb over his shoulder towards the Castle.
"Tidy way they go in," he said, puffing again. "I did a crawl in myself yesterday afternoon, but the tide's a bit dangerous, and I should n't care to be caught there, not much."
"Now where should I find Mr. Naylor, if I wanted him?" I asked as I left him.
He stared. "Naylor," he said with his cockney twang. "Who's he?"
"I thought he was a friend of yours," I replied.
He shook his head. "I'm from London. I don't know any about here."
"And the butcher?" I ventured.
A broad grin spread over his face. "I told 'em it was a rotten notion," he said. "Why, when he's been at it as long as I have, he 'll have a bit more sense. You 've got to sap, and not to bombard. Sap's the game. See?"
"I believe you 're right," I said, pausing to reflect. "It sounds right, and a most sensible policy."
He looked pleased at my approval. "If ever you want anything in the line done, sir," said he, with modesty, 'I'm always good for a try." He drew out a soiled card with some difficulty from his pocket, which read:
John Brackett
Bailiff's Assistant
21 Dickens Street, Clerkenwell
"Thank you," I said politely. "One never knows; and so urbane a broker's man is a treasure."
I bade him farewell, and left him doing sentry-go at my gates while I went down to the village. Mr. Horne's organization seemed to be complete, but I had learned that ostensibly he had no connection with Mr. Naylor. Why? If this whole matter of the debts was straightforward, why was all this secrecy displayed? It puzzled me.
I had been obliged to postpone the task of explaining Mr. Eustace to the ladies at Southington, but I felt I ought to delay no longer. I had not been seen since my unceremonious bolt after Norroy, and I descended now with the object of proffering my excuses. I was lucky enough to find them at home, and I was admitted by Miss Fuller, who seemed pleased to see me. I offered my apologies for my hasty exit, and received forgiveness as if it was a matter of no consequence. Norroy was anxious that his identity should not be known, and so I felt myself somewhat embarrassed in my mission. I had to show that I no longer felt any doubts of Eustace, and yet to avoid identifying him with Sir Gilbert. I walked round the subject warily, and a little awkwardly, as I was aware. And finally I blurted out my chief fact.
"You were right about Mr. Eustace, Miss Forrest. He is quite a respectable member of society."
"I was not aware that I said so," said Perdita, coolly.
"Oh, well," I grew confused, "I thought you believed in his innocence."
"Refusing to believe that he is mixed up in a crime is quite another matter from vouching for a person's respectability," she remarked decidedly.
"I accept the snub," I said, "and I put my neck on the ground. You do not necessarily pass him. I can well believe you have a high standard, Miss Forrest."
She cast a curious glance at me. "It is a standard, at any rate," she asserted, "and not nothing."
"Women," said I, nursing my knee, and fixing a sententious but appealing eye on Miss Fuller, "women are given to high ideals. They are fond of climbing about on giddy precipices where man, frail man, is afraid to follow them."
"That is sarcastic," observed Perdita, primly.
"Oh, no, dear," broke in kind Miss Fuller, "I think what Mr. Brabazon means—"
"Oh, don't let's have annotated editions," said naughty Perdita, impatiently.
"Let me annotate my own sermon," I besought. "I spoke in all humility. I see pinnacles in the empyrean, and I admire, but I dare not attempt to reach them. Women do. Perhaps men are wiser in giving up, and feeding practically in the valleys. After all, the main business of life is feeding—mainly on others—so the herbage of the lower slopes for me! But I have heard that on the top the grass is sweeter, and the view finer. I should like the grass if I could get there. I'm not bothered much about views."
Perdita examined me with earnest and innocent eyes, but what she decided I don't know. She changed the conversation by a remark to Miss Fuller. I suspected that I ought to be going, but I did n't want to go. I had n't really done justice to Eustace. I awaited my chance and deftly drew the conversation back—not to him specifically, but to men in general.
We are a poor lot," I declared, lumping all of us together, "and under our visible obsessions we descend to the bottomless pit. Wisdom is fled to brutish beasts, and divine justice inhabits only the hearts of women, where it is locked up."
"What do you mean by that, Mr. Brabazon?" asked Perdita.
It did sound ambiguous, but I explained as well as I could, enlarging on the justice and generosity of her sex. She listened quietly, and then a sweet little smile spread infectiously over her face, signalling dimples.
"Oh, what a humbug you are!" she said.
"Oh, but, Perdita, Mr. Brabazon means—" The dear lady got no farther.
"Mr. Brabazon can say what he means himself, Isabel," said she, imperiously, "if he wishes us to understand what he means or if he means anything," she added; and then her eyes met mine.
I designed to throw chagrin and reproach into my glance, but I do not know if I did. She suddenly burst out laughing and I followed suit. Miss Fuller, after staring at both of us, weakly joined in, and immediately afterwards rose and left the room.
"Mr. Brabazon, you are bowled out. You stand revealed in all your naked insincerity," said Perdita.
"Please don't judge me so hardly," I said, and indeed I did not want her to regard me as a flippant person. I thought of Eustace in a happy flash, and of putting him right in her eyes. "I am serious enough about life. I think it sometimes beautiful. But it has its tiresome moments, and then one must pretend."
"And mock." she asked, with laughing eyes.
"Ye-es!" I said doubtfully. "Sometimes. Yet it is but the crossing of a passage to tragedy, even if the tragedy have its sordid aspects. A man," said I slowly, "is usually a fool in his youth, if a philosopher at forty. And a good many of us have not reached that age yet. It is necessary sometimes to hear the whole before condemning the part."
Perdita's laughing eyes grew serious and sympathetic, and I resolved to continue. After all, I was doing a kind thing in mitigating her evident contempt for Eustace.
"Take the case of a man like this," I pleaded. "He has been brought up in a more or less large way. Suppose, for example, his father ingrained him from his birth with sporting notions, the turf, the hunt, the shooting field, or the gun-club. But he had better instincts at bottom, probably."
"Yes," said Perdita, with manifest interest.
"Consider him much of a fool, if you like, but a decent fool who has had no nursing, a man of downright ineffectual good nature, and the taste for popularity. He gives away with both hands, and he cannot tell his friends from his foes. He is born, in fact, to be preyed upon, unless he is rescued. And that rescue may come too late."
"How is it to come?" asked Perdita, leaning forward, her elbow on her knee, her chin on her palm, her gaze rapt with interest in my little problem. The beauty of that long line sweeping from the waist outwards, thus manifest, took my eye and arrested me. I stumbled, picked myself up and resumed with difficulty.
"It might come through anything," I said. "An accident achieves a revolution. Provided the material is plastic, Providence employs odd artificers. But some are obvious—a woman, ambition, shock, even an independent graduation in life. But let us say in this case—" I thought—"partly the rough usage of adversity, and partly the dawn of sentiment. Let us leave it at that. Anyway, you see my point. We cannot judge the man unless we see his life whole."
"No-o," she assented; adding, "but a man can make what he likes of his life, if he be a man."
O, hard young heart! And, O, sweet innocence! What is determinism to you? Life is bounded only by birth and death to you, and betwixt is a straight and even pathway in which there can be no doubts. Within handsome hedges flung with bryony and honeysuckle, and in winter with the wild thorns of the bramble, walks our maiden on a course she can mistake not, to an end of which she is certain. For Perdita, I felt the hedge would break some day, so much shone out of her imaginative eyes. And when it did, pray God, I should be walking by her side and sharing in her cares and sorrows! The flush of her earnest face went to my heart with a stab of bitter delight. I could not put forth a hand to pluck her. Her innocence, her friendliness, her pretty distance defied me. What was she saying?
"He ought to be able to pull himself together, and to start afresh. It is never too late, and there are always friends to help."
O, wise young judge! Portia looked out of Perdita's eyes. "There are friends," I agreed, "but how many? And may not a man outwear his friends' patience? I am speaking of a silly man, of a man you might wrinkle your nose at." Had she not already wrinkled her pretty nose at poor Eustace?
"I hope I should not be so uncharitable," she hastened to say. "Certainly not, if I knew all the facts."
"This man we will conceive in great financial straits," I said, "to have plunged recklessly and lost, and to be beset by creditors and reduced to a pitiful case. He is obliged ingloriously to avoid his fellow men, to run in shame around corners, and to dodge pieces of blue paper."
I was conscious now that I was painting Norroy in somewhat theatrical colors, as it were a poster for the hoardings. But I had my reward. Perdita looked pensive and saddened at the picture. Her tender heart was touched. Besides, she had just professed charity.
"Still, I should say to such a man 'Hope and be strong,'" she said in a voice charged with feeling.
"You are kind," I said, "and I believe you would find excuses. But others—"
I happened at that moment to glance out of the window, and to my wonder saw the butcher-boy walking boldly up the stone pathway in the company of his master, Horne. I jumped to my feet and stared in astonishment. What on earth could bring them here? My silence and my abrupt action brought Perdita to her feet.
"What is it?" she asked with alarm in her gaze.
I laughed. I had gone so far, and as Norroy was to be my temporary guest, I should have to explain him somehow. "The blue paper," I said, "of which I have just spoken, advertises itself opportunely."
She looked startled. "You mean—" she halted, gazed out at the men who had reached the door—"writs?" she asked in a low voice. I nodded.
She flew out into the passage in a state of excitement which seemed to me disproportionate, and at the same time I heard the door open and Mrs. Lane's voice raised to answer a question from the visitors. A flying vision of white flashed in at the door of the sitting-room again, tragically pale of face.
"Please—oh, it's too late. You must be quick," she breathed.
"What—" I began, but was pushed with a certain force and vehemence towards a door in the inner wall. As I am an honest man, and one in love, I will swear and vow that I did not understand; that the manœuvre was so sudden and unexpected that I could not disengage my thoughts, and that when she had opened the door and thrust me through before her, I was scarcely aware into what sort of room we had penetrated. I would have protested vaguely, not because I had any distaste to be so handled by her, but merely on the grounds of her own inconvenience and obvious distress. But I was allowed no time. My Perdita, of the vivid imagination, had broken bounds forthright, and she was as impetuous as a wild roe.
In here, in here, oh, please! " she cried
"In here—in here, oh, please!" she cried, and opening something which I blankly recognized in my bewilderment as a wardrobe she pushed me in. Next moment I was in darkness; the door had closed upon me.
I had time now to reflect upon what had so marvellously happened, and on my present position. You know to which sense are the most direct avenues. Perhaps it is exactly because we inherit so primitive a cognition that it makes so sharp and so mysterious an appeal. The fragrance of lavender mingled in my nostrils with the unnamed and individual fragrance of a woman's dresses. Do you remember how Clara Vaughan was known to her lover by the incense of her hair? I breathed Perdita in my sweet, close prison, and I thrilled with absolute happiness.
But then returned reason on the tide of returning thought. My brain could not but piece together the facts leading up to my incarceration at such dear hands. I knew it in a flash. Perdita, dear heart, had read me into the parable I had set forth, and had rescued me from the duns!
Was there ever such sweet charity? Friends, quoth she! Lord, did friend ever show herself in so self-sacrificing and generous a light For me she had foregone the integrity of her chamber, and for me had she violated the sanctities of her boudoir. I strove to open the wardrobe, but it was not possible from within, and then in the very air of Perdita I pondered happily until brought up by a horrid thought. Did she, then, regard me as the incapable and reckless fool I had painted Norroy. I had put on the colors with a trowel, and now my jaw fell to think that she had recognized me in that portrait. And yet she had condescended to befriend such a creature.
The door opened and I stepped forth. Perdita, flushed with triumph, stood before me.
"They—they've gone away," she said eagerly. "They thought you were here, but I made Mrs. Lane show them over the dining-room and the sitting-room. And they seemed satisfied."
I caught at her hands—and both were in mine a moment. Should I—dare I—tell her, and ruin her splendid happiness? But I thought of my ugly portrait, as painted by me, and I hardened my heart.
"Nothing sweeter could have been done in the world," I said ardently. "Nothing more wonderful."
Her color was fast in her face, and for a moment she did not attempt to withdraw her hands.
"And you—you would have shown so much charity and loving-kindness to a man of no worth, who has ignominiously to dodge his creditors!" I said.
She did not seem able to find a reply, but she got one of her hands loose.
"You said we must not judge until we knew the whole," she said at last.
"I shall never forget that you did it for me, thinking it was I," I said, and in my feeling I could have drawn her to me.
She drew back. "You!" she cried. "Then it was n't you!"
I shook my head. "I have no history. I am not even interesting through defects. I spoke of Mr. Eustace."
Her color fled, leaving her white and startled, and her hand grew a little cold in mine.
"I have found out a good deal about him," I went on hurriedly. "He is really a good fellow, but has botched his affairs. He is staying with me at the Castle. I wanted you to know."
She withdrew her hand now, almost mechanically.
"I see!" she said weakly.
"But you did it for me, and I will never forget it," I cried eagerly.
"It seems to me the sooner you forget such a foolish mistake the better," said Perdita, coldly.
I had offended her as I should have guessed that I might. Not the sweet angel from heaven likes to see its magnanimous actions turn into comedy. Perdita moved to the door, and I followed. My last glance took in the demure little white bed and the dimity curtains and the hanging wardrobe. Then I was in the sitting-room, once more the formal visitor, and as if the intimate hospitality of that virginal chamber had never been extended to me. I had upset her and I was best away. And now I would have given worlds to have kept silence. I left miserably, and I never remembered to wonder what Mr. Horne and the butcher-boy had wanted of me.