Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  As Harry Brett talked and watched her he honestly tried not to wish that she might have been his wife, and when his resolution broke down he conscientiously talked on and did his best to interest himself in his own conversation. The effort was familiar to him of old, and had so often ended in failure that he was glad when the distant tinkle of the door bell announced the coming of a third person. John rarely lunched at home and old Mr. Darche was never summoned until the meal was served. Brett broke off in the middle of his story and laughed a little.

  “I believe you have not understood a word of what I have been telling you,” he said.

  Mrs. Darche looked up suddenly, abandoned the study of the burning logs and leaned back in her chair before she answered. Then she looked at him quietly and smiled, not even attempting to deny the imputation.

  “It is very rude of me, is it not? You must forgive me, to-day. I am very much preoccupied.”

  “You often are, nowadays,” answered Brett, with a short, manlike sigh, which might have passed for a sniff of dissatisfaction.

  “I know I am. I am sorry.”

  The door opened and Dolly Maylands entered the room, followed closely by Russell Vanbrugh.

  CHAPTER III.

  SIMON DARCHE WAS undoubtedly a bore. Since bores exist and there is no other name for them, the strong word has some right to pass into the English language. The old gentleman belonged to the unconscious and self-complacent variety of the species, which is, on the whole, less unbearable than certain others. Generally speaking, it is true that people who are easily bored are bores themselves, but there are many very genuine and intolerable bores who go through life rejoicing and convinced that their conversation is a blessing and their advice a treasure to those who get it.

  Bores always have one or two friends. Simon Darche had found one in his daughter-in-law and he availed himself of her friendship to the utmost, so that it was amazing to see how much she could bear, for she was as constantly bored by him as other people, and appeared, indeed, to be his favourite victim. But no one had ever heard her complain. Day after day she listened to his talk, smiled at his old stories, read to him, and seemed rather to seek his society than to avoid it. She was never apparently tired of hearing about John’s childhood and youth and she received the old man’s often repeated confidences concerning his own life with an ever-renewed expression of sympathy.

  “I simply could not stand it for a day!” exclaimed Dolly occasionally. “Why, he is worse than my school children!”

  Miss Maylands could not put the case more strongly. Perhaps no one else could.

  “I like him,” answered Mrs. Darche. “I know he is a bore. But then, I suppose I am a bore myself.”

  “Oh, Marion!” And Dolly laughed.

  That was generally the end of the conversation. But Dolly, who was by no means altogether frivolous and had a soul, and bestowed now and then considerable attention upon its religious toilet, so to say — Dolly fancied that Papa Darche, as she called him, took the place of a baby in her friend’s heart. Rather a permanent and antique baby, Dolly thought, but better than nothing for a woman who felt that she must love and take care of something helpless. She herself did not care for that sort of thing. The maternal instinct developed itself in another direction and she taught children in a kindergarten. The stupid ones tired her, as she expressed it, but then her soul came to the rescue and did its best, which was not bad. Dolly was a good girl, though she had too many “purposes” in life.

  Not many minutes after she and Vanbrugh had entered the room on the morning described in the previous chapters, luncheon was announced.

  “Tell Mr. Darche that luncheon is ready, Stubbs,” said Marion, and Stubbs, gray-haired, portly, rosy-cheeked and respectful, disappeared to summon the old gentleman.

  Vanbrugh looked at Brett and both smiled, hardly knowing why. Neither of them had ever lunched at the house without hearing the same order given by the hostess. People often smile foolishly at familiar things, merely because they are familiar. Dolly and Mrs. Darche had sat down together and the two men stood side by side near a table on which a number of reviews and periodicals were neatly arranged in order. Brett idly took up one of them and held it in his hand.

  “By the bye,” he said, “to-day is not Sunday. You are not ill, I hope.”

  “Only lazy,” answered Vanbrugh.

  “So am I,” answered Brett after a moment’s pause.

  There they stood in silence, apathetically glancing at the two ladies, at the fire and at the window, as two men who know each other very well are apt to do when they are waiting for luncheon. Brett chanced to look down at the magazine he held in his hand. It was bound in white paper and the back of the cover was occupied by a huge advertisement in large letters. The white margin around it was filled with calculations made in blue and red pencil, with occasional marks in green. Mechanically Brett’s eyes followed the calculations. The same figure, a high one, recurred in many places, and any one with a child’s knowledge of arithmetic could have seen that there was a constant attempt to make up another sum corresponding to it, — an attempt which seemed always to have failed. Brett remembered that Darche carried a pencil-case with leads of three colours in it, and he tossed the magazine upon the table as though he realised that he had been prying into another person’s business. He glanced at Mrs. Darche who was still talking with Dolly, and a moment later he took up the magazine again and cautiously tore off the back of the cover, crumpled it in his hands, approached the fire and tossed it into the flames. Mrs. Darche looked up quickly.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” answered Brett, “only a bit of paper.”

  Just then Simon Darche entered the room and all rose to go in to luncheon together.

  The old gentleman shook hands with Dolly and with both the men, looking keenly into their faces, but mentioning no names. He was cheerful and ruddy, and a stranger might have expected his conversation to be enlivening. In this however, he would have been egregiously disappointed.

  “What have you been doing this morning?” asked Mrs. Darche turning to him.

  She had asked the question every day for years, whenever she had lunched at home.

  “Very busy, very busy,” answered Mr. Darche.

  His hands did not tremble as he unfolded his napkin, but he seemed to bestow an extraordinary amount of attention on the exact position of the glasses before him, pushing them a little forwards and backwards and glancing at them critically until he was quite satisfied.

  “Busy, of course,” he said and looked cheerfully round the table. “There is no real happiness except in hard work. If I could only make you understand that, Marion, you would be much happier. Early to bed and early to rise.”

  “Makes a man stupid and closes his eyes,” observed Brett, finishing the proverb in its modern form.

  “What, what? What doggerel is that?”

  “Did you never hear that?” asked Dolly, laughing. “It is from an unwritten and unpublished book — modern proverbs.”

  Simon Darche shook his head and smiled feebly.

  “Dear me, dear me, I thought you were in earnest,” he said.

  “So he is,” said Dolly. “We may have to get up at dawn sometimes, but we are far too much in earnest to go to bed early.”

  This was evidently beyond Simon Darche’s comprehension and he relapsed into silence and the consumption of oysters. Mrs. Darche glanced reproachfully at Dolly as though to tell her that she should not chaff the old gentleman, and Vanbrugh came to the rescue.

  “Do you often get up at dawn, Miss Maylands?” he inquired.

  “Do I look as if I did?” retorted the young lady.

  “How in the world should I know,” asked Vanbrugh. “Do I look as though I associated with people who got up at dawn?”

  Brett laughed.

  “It always amuses me to hear you and Vanbrugh talk, Miss Maylands.”

  “Does it, I am so glad,” said Dolly.
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  “Yes, you seem perfectly incapable of saying one word to each other without chaffing.”

  Old Mr. Darche had finished his oysters.

  “Yes — yes,” he observed. “A pair of chaffinches.”

  A moment of silence followed this appalling pun. Then Mrs. Darche laughed a little nervously, and Brett, who wished to help her, followed her example. The old gentleman himself seemed delighted with his own wit.

  “We are beginning well,” said Dolly. “Puns and proverbs with the oysters. What shall we get with the fruit?”

  Vanbrugh was inclined to suggest that the dessert would probably find them in an idiot asylum, but he wisely abstained from words and tried to turn the conversation into a definite channel.

  “Did you read that book I sent you, Mrs. Darche?” he asked.

  “Yes,” answered the latter, “I began to read it to my father-in-law but he did not care for it, so I am going on with it alone.”

  “What book was that, my dear?” inquired the old gentleman.

  Mrs. Darche named a recent foreign novel which had been translated.

  “Oh, that thing!” exclaimed her father-in-law. “Why, it is all about Frenchmen and tea parties! Very dull. Very dull. But then a busy man like myself has very little time for such nonsense. Mr. Trehearne, I suppose I could not give you any idea of the amount of work I have to do.”

  He looked at Vanbrugh as he spoke.

  “Trehearne?” Brett repeated the name in a low voice, looking at Mrs. Darche.

  “I know you are one of the busiest men alive,” said Vanbrugh quietly and without betraying the slightest astonishment.

  “I should think so,” said Simon Darche, “and I am very glad I am. Nothing keeps a man busy like being successful. And I may fairly say that I have been very successful — thanks to John, well — I suppose I may take a little credit to myself.”

  “Indeed you may,” said Mrs. Darche readily.

  Every one thought it wise and proper to join in a little murmur of approval, but Dolly was curious to see what the old gentleman would say next. She wondered whether his taking Vanbrugh for old Mr. Trehearne, who had been a friend of his youth and who had been dead some years, was the first sign of mental decay. From Mrs. Darche’s calm manner she inferred that this was not the first time he had done something of the kind, and her mind went back quickly to her conversation with Vanbrugh that morning in Gramercy Park. Simon Darche was still talking.

  “The interests of the Company are becoming positively gigantic, and there seems to be no end to the fresh issues that are possible, though none of them have been brought to me to sign yet.”

  Brett looked quickly at Vanbrugh, but the latter was imperturbable.

  At that moment the door opened and John Darche entered the dining-room. His face was a little paler than usual and he seemed tired. Mrs. Darche looked at him in surprise and her father-in-law smiled as he always did when he saw his son. Every one present said something more or less incomprehensible by way of greeting. The new-comer shook hands with Dolly Maylands, nodded to the rest and sat down in the place which was always reserved for him opposite his wife.

  “I had nothing particular to do, so I came home to luncheon,” he said, by way of explaining his unexpected appearance.

  “I am so glad.”

  “Nothing particular to do!” exclaimed the old gentleman momentarily surprised into his senses.

  “Nothing requiring my presence,” answered John Darche gravely. “I was down town early this morning and cleared off everything. I shall ride this afternoon.”

  “Quite right, quite right, my boy!” put in Simon Darche. “You should take care of your health. You have been doing too much of late. I suppose,” he added, looking about at the others, “that there is not a man alive who has my son’s power of work.”

  “You do work dreadfully hard, John,” said Mrs. Darche.

  “But then,” said her father-in-law with evident pride, “John leads such a regular life. He does not drink, he does not smoke, he does not sit up late at night — altogether, I must say that he takes better care of himself than I ever did. And that is the reason,” continued the old gentleman with increasing animation, “that he has accomplished so much. If some of you young men would follow his example you would do a great deal more in the world. Regular hours, regular meals, no cocktails — oh I daresay if I had never smoked a cigar in my life I should be good for another fifty years. John will live to be a hundred.”

  “Let us hope so,” said Vanbrugh blandly.

  “What is this particular disagreeable thing you have given me to eat?” inquired John looking at his wife.

  Mrs. Darche looked up in surprise. The remark was quite in keeping with his usual manner, but it was very unlike him to notice anything that was put before him.

  “I believe it is a shad,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” answered John. “The thing has bones in it. Give me something else, Stubbs.”

  He got something else to eat and relapsed into silence. The remainder of the luncheon was not gay, for his coming had chilled even Dolly’s good spirits. Brett and Vanbrugh did their best to sustain the conversation, but the latter felt more certain than ever that something serious was the matter. Old Simon Darche meandered on, interspersing his praise of his son and his boasts of the prosperity of the Company with stale proverbs and atrocious puns. Almost as soon as the meal was over the few guests departed with that unpleasant sense of unsatisfied moral appetite which people have when they have expected to enjoy being together and have been disappointed.

  When every one was gone John Darche remained in the drawing-room with his wife. He sat down in his chair like a man over-tired with hard work, and something like a sigh escaped him. Mrs. Darche pushed a small table to his side, laid his papers upon it and sat down opposite him. A long silence followed. From time to time she looked up at her husband as though she expected him to say something, but he did not open his lips, though he often stared at her for several minutes together. His unwinking blue eyes faced the light as he looked at her, and their expression was disagreeable to her, so that she lowered her own rather than encounter it.

  “Are things growing worse, John?” at last she asked him.

  “Worse? What do you mean?”

  “You told me some time ago that you were anxious. I thought that perhaps you might be in some trouble.”

  John did not answer at once but looked at her as though he did not see her, took up a paper and glanced absently over the columns of advertisements.

  “Oh no,” he said at last, as though her question had annoyed him. “There is nothing wrong, nothing whatever.” Again a silence followed. Mrs. Darche went to her writing-table and began to write a note. John did not move.

  “Marion,” said he at last, “has any one been talking to you about my affairs?”

  “No indeed,” answered Mrs. Darche in evident surprise at the question, but with such ready frankness that he could not doubt her.

  “No,” he repeated. “I see that no one has. I only asked because people are always so ready to talk about what they cannot understand, and are generally so perfectly certain about what they do not know. I thought Dolly Maylands might have been chattering.”

  “Dolly does not talk about you, John.”

  “Oh! I wonder why not. Does she dislike me especially — I mean more than most people — more than you do, for instance?”

  “John!”

  “My dear, do not imagine that it grieves me, though it certainly does not make life more agreeable to be disliked. On the whole, I hardly know which I prefer — my father’s perpetual outspoken praise, or your dutiful and wifely hatred.”

  “Why do you talk like that?”

  Mrs. Darche did not leave her writing-table, but turned in her chair and faced him, still holding her pen.

  “I fancy there is some truth in what I say,” he answered calmly. “Of course you know that you made a mistake when you married me. You wer
e never in love with me — and you did not marry me for my money.”

  He laughed rather harshly.

  “No, I did not marry you for your money.”

  “Of course not. You have some of your own — enough—”

  “And to spare, if you needed it, John.”

  “You are very kind, my dear,” replied Darche with a scarcely perceptible touch of contempt in his tone. “I shall survive without borrowing money of my wife.”

  “I hope you may never need to borrow of any one,” said Marion.

  She turned to the table again and began arranging a few scattered notes and papers to conceal her annoyance at his tone, hoping that her inoffensive answer might soon have the effect of sending him away, as was usually the case. But Darche was not quite in his ordinary state. He was tired, irritable, and greedy for opposition, as men are whose nerves are overwrought and who do not realise the fact, because they are not used to it, and it is altogether new to them.

  “I am tired of ‘yea, yea.’ Change the conversation, please, and say ‘nay, nay.’ It would make a little variety.”

  “Do you object to my agreeing with you? I am sorry. It is not always easy to guess what you would like. I am quite ready to give up trying, if you say so. We can easily arrange our lives differently, if you prefer it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “We might separate, for instance,” suggested Mrs. Darche.

  John was surprised. He had sometimes wondered whether it were not altogether impossible to irritate his wife’s calm temper to some open expression of anger. He had almost succeeded, but he by no means liked the form of retort she had chosen. A separation would not have suited him at all, for in his character the love of his possessions was strong, and he looked upon his wife as an important item in the inventory of his personal property. He hesitated a moment before he answered.

  “Of course we might separate, but I do not intend that we should — if I can help it,” he added, as though an afterthought had occurred to him.