by Unknown
‘Yes,’ answered Nell tragically; ‘but fancy his keeping my letters lying about carelessly in a drawer — and — and, yes, using them as scribbling paper!’
Scrawled across the envelopes in a barely decipherable handwriting were such notes as these: ‘Schoolboys smoking master’s cane-chair, work up’; ‘Return of the swallows (poetic or humorous?)’; ‘My First Murder (magazine?)’; ‘Better do something pathetic for a change.’
There were tears in Nell’s eyes.
‘This comes of prying,’ said Mary.
‘Oh, I wasn’t prying,’ said Nell; ‘I only opened it by accident. That is the worst of it. I can’t say anything about them to him, because he might think I had opened his drawer to — to see what was in it — which is the last thing in the world I would think of doing. Oh, Mary,’ she added woefully, ‘what do you think?’
‘I think you are a goose,’ said Mary promptly.
‘Ah, you are so indifferent,’ Nell said, surrendering her position all at once. ‘Now when I see a drawer I am quite unhappy until I know what is in it, especially if it is locked. When we lived opposite the Burtons I was miserable because they always kept the blind of one of their windows down. If I had been a boy I would have climbed up to see why they did it. Ah! that is Dick; I know his step.’
She was hastening to the door, when she remembered the letters, and subsided primly into a chair.
‘Well?’ asked Mary, as her brother re-entered with something in his hand.
‘The poor fellow has had a nasty accident,’ said Dick; ‘run over in the street, it seems. He ought to have been taken to the infirmary, but they got a letter with his address on it in his pocket, and brought him here.’
‘Has a doctor seen him?’
‘Yes, but I hardly make out from the housekeeper what he said. He was gone before I went up. There are some signs, however, of what he did. The poor fellow seems to have been struck on the head.’
Mary shuddered, understanding that some operation had been found necessary.
‘Did he speak to you?’ asked Nell.
‘He was asleep,’ said Dick, ‘but talking more than he does when he is awake.’
‘He must have been delirious,’ said Mary.
‘One thing I can’t make out,’ Dick said, more to himself than to his companions. ‘He mumbled my name to himself half a dozen times while I was upstairs.’
‘But is there anything remarkable in that,’ asked Mary, ‘if he has so few friends in London?’
‘What I don’t understand,’ explained Dick, ‘is that the word I caught was Abinger. Now, I am quite certain that he only knew me as Noble Simms.’
‘Some one must have told him your real name,’ said Mary. ‘Is he asleep now?’
‘That reminds me of another thing,’ said Dick, looking at the torn card in his hand. ‘Just as I was coming away he staggered off the couch where he is lying to his desk, opened it, and took out this card. He glared at it, and tore it in two before I got him back to the couch.’
There were tears in Nell’s eyes now, for she felt that she understood it all.
‘It is horrible to think of him alone up there,’ she cried. ‘Let us go up to him, Mary.’
Mary hesitated.
‘I don’t think it would be the thing,’ she said, taking the card from Nell’s hand. She started slightly as she looked at it, and then became white.
‘What is his name, Dick?’ she faltered, in a voice that made Nell look at her.
‘Angus,’ said Dick. ‘He has been on the Press here for some months.’
The name suggested nothing at the moment to Nell, but Mary let the card fall. It was a shabby little Christmas card.
‘I think we should go up and see if we can do anything,’ Dick’s sister said.
‘But would it be the thing?’ Nell asked.
‘Of course it would,’ said Mary, a little surprised at Nell.
CHAPTER XII
THE STUPID SEX
Give a man his chance, and he has sufficient hardihood for anything. Within a week of the accident Rob was in Dick Abinger’s most luxurious chair, coolly taking a cup and saucer from Nell, while Mary arranged a cushion for his poor head. He even made several light-hearted jests, at which his nurses laughed heartily — because he was an invalid.
Rob’s improvement dated from the moment he opened his eyes and heard the soft rustle of a lady’s skirts in the next room. He lay quietly listening, and realised by and by that he had known she was Mary Abinger all along.
‘Who is that?’ he said abruptly to Dick, who was swinging his legs on the dressing-table. Dick came to him as awkwardly as if he had been asked to hold a baby, and saw no way of getting out of it. Sick-rooms chilled him.
‘Are you feeling better now, old fellow?’ he asked.
‘Who is it?’ Rob repeated, sitting up in bed.
‘That is my sister,’ Dick said.
Rob’s head fell back. He could not take it in all at once. Dick thought he had fallen asleep, and tried to slip gently from the room, discovering for the first time as he did so that his shoes creaked.
‘Don’t go,’ said Rob, sitting up again. ‘What is your sister’s name?’
‘Abinger, of course, Mary Abinger,’ answered Dick, under the conviction that the invalid was still off his head. He made for the door again, but Rob’s arm went out suddenly and seized him.
‘You are a liar, you know,’ Rob said feebly; ‘she’s not your sister.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Dick, humouring him.
‘I want to see her,’ Rob said authoritatively.
‘Certainly,’ answered Dick, escaping into the other room to tell Mary that the patient was raving again.
‘I heard him,’ said Mary.
‘Well, what’s to be done?’ asked her brother. ‘He’s madder than ever.’
‘Oh no, I think he’s getting on nicely now,’ Mary said, moving toward the bedroom.
‘Don’t,’ exclaimed Dick, getting in front of her; ‘why, I tell you his mind is wandering. He says you’re not my sister.’
‘Of course he can’t understand so long as he thinks your name is Simms.’
‘But he knows my name is Abinger. Didn’t I tell you I heard him groaning it over to himself?’
‘Oh, Dick,’ said Mary, ‘I wish you would go away and write a stupid article.’
Dick, however, stood at the door, ready to come to his sister’s assistance if Rob got violent.
‘He says you are his sister,’ said the patient to Mary.
‘So I am,’ said Mary softly. ‘My brother writes under the name of Noble Simms, but his real name is Abinger. Now you must lie still and think about that; you are not to talk any more.’
‘I won’t talk any more,’ said Rob slowly. ‘You are not going away, though?’
‘Just for a little while,’ Mary answered. ‘The doctor will be here presently.’
‘Well, you have quieted him,’ Dick admitted.
They were leaving the room, when they heard Rob calling.
‘There he goes again,’ said Dick, groaning.
‘What is it?’ Mary asked, returning to the bedroom.
‘Why did he say you were not his sister?’ Rob said, very suspiciously.
‘Oh, his mind was wandering,’ Mary answered cruelly.
She was retiring again, but stopped undecidedly. Then she looked from the door to see if her brother was within hearing. Dick was at the other end of the sitting-room, and she came back noiselessly to Rob’s bedside.
‘Do you remember,’ she asked, in a low voice, ‘how the accident happened? You know you were struck by a cab.’
‘Yes,’ answered Rob at once, ‘I saw him kissing you. I don’t remember anything after that.’
Mary, looking like a culprit, glanced hurriedly at the door. Then she softly pushed the invalid’s unruly hair off his brow, and glided from the room smiling.
‘Well?’ asked Dick.
‘He was telling me how the
accident happened,’ Mary said.
‘And how was it?’
‘Oh, just as you said. He got bewildered at a crossing and was knocked over.’
‘But he wasn’t the man to lose his reason at a crossing,’ said Dick. ‘There must have been something to agitate him.’
‘He said nothing about that,’ replied Mary, without blushing.
‘Did he tell you how he knew my name was Abinger?’ Dick asked, as they went downstairs.
‘No,’ his sister said, ‘I forgot to ask him.’
‘There was that Christmas card, too,’ Dick said suddenly. ‘Nell says Angus must be in love, poor fellow.’
‘Nell is always thinking people are in love,’ Mary answered severely.
‘By the way,’ said Dick, ‘what became of the card? He might want to treasure it, you know.’
‘I — I rather think I put it somewhere,’ Mary said.
‘I wonder,’ Dick remarked curiously, ‘what sort of girl Angus would take to?’
‘I wonder,’ said Mary.
They were back in Dick’s chambers by this time, and he continued with some complacency — for all men think they are on safe ground when discussing an affair of the heart: —
‘We could build the young lady up from the card, which, presumably, was her Christmas offering to him. It was not expensive, so she is a careful young person; and the somewhat florid design represents a blue bird sitting on a pink twig, so that we may hazard the assertion that her artistic taste is not as yet fully developed. She is a fresh country maid, or the somewhat rich colouring would not have taken her fancy, and she is short, a trifle stout, or a big man like Angus would not have fallen in love with her. Reserved men like gushing girls, so she gushes and says “Oh my!” and her nicest dress (here Dick shivered) is of a shiny satin with a dash of rich velvet here and there. Do you follow me?’
‘Yes,’ said Mary; ‘it is wonderful. I suppose, now, you are never wrong when you “build up” so much on so little?’
‘Sometimes we go a little astray,’ admitted Dick. ‘I remember going into a hotel with Rorrison once, and on a table we saw a sailor-hat lying, something like the one Nell wears — or is it you?’
‘The idea of your not knowing!’ said his sister indignantly.
‘Well, we discussed the probable owner. I concluded, after narrowly examining the hat, that she was tall, dark, and handsome, rather than pretty. Rorrison, on the other hand, maintained that she was a pretty, baby-faced girl, with winning ways.’
‘And did you discover if either of you was right?’
‘Yes,’ said Dick slowly. ‘In the middle of the discussion a little boy in a velvet suit toddled into the room, and said to us, “Gim’me my hat.”’
In the weeks that followed, Rob had many delicious experiences. He was present at several tea-parties in Abinger’s chambers, the guests being strictly limited to three; and when he could not pretend to be ill any longer, he gave a tea-party himself in honour of his two nurses — his one and a half nurses, Dick called them. At this Mary poured out the tea, and Rob’s eyes showed so plainly (though not to Dick) that he had never seen anything like it, that Nell became thoughtful, and made a number of remarks on the subject to her mother as soon as she returned home.
‘It would never do,’ Nell said, looking wise.
‘Whatever would the colonel say!’ exclaimed Mrs. Meredith. ‘After all, though,’ she added — for she had been to see Rob twice, and liked him because of something he had said to her about his mother—’he is just the same as Richard.’
‘Oh no, no,’ said Nell, ‘Dick is an Oxford man, you must remember, and Mr. Angus, as the colonel would say, rose from obscurity.’
‘Well, if he did,’ persisted Mrs. Meredith, ‘he does not seem to be going back to it, and universities seem to me to be places for making young men stupid.’
‘It would never, never do,’ said Nell, with doleful decision.
‘What does Mary say about him?’ asked her mother.
‘She never says anything,’ said Nell.
‘Does she talk much to him?’
‘No; very little.’
‘That is a good sign,’ said Mrs. Meredith.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nell.
‘Have you noticed anything else?’
‘Nothing except — well, Mary is longer in dressing now than I am, and she used not to be.’
‘I wonder,’ Mrs. Meredith remarked, ‘if Mary saw him at Silchester after that time at the castle?’
‘She never told me she did,’ Nell answered, ‘but sometimes I think — however, there is no good in thinking.’
‘It isn’t a thing you often do, Nell. By the way, he saw the first Sir Clement at Dome Castle, did he not?’
‘Yes,’ Nell said, ‘he saw the impostor, and I don’t suppose he knows there is another Sir Clement. The Abingers don’t like to speak of that. However, they may meet on Friday, for Dick has got Mr. Angus a card for the Symphonia, and Sir Clement is to be there.’
‘What does Richard say about it?’ asked Mrs. Meredith, going back apparently upon their conversation.
‘We never speak about it, Dick and I,’ said Nell.
‘What do you speak about, then?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Nell.
Mrs. Meredith sighed.
‘And you such an heiress, Nell,’ she said; ‘you could do so much better. He will never have anything but what he makes by writing; and if all stories be true, half of that goes to the colonel. I’m sure your father never will consent.’
‘Oh yes, he will,’ Nell said.
‘If he had really tried to get on at the Bar,’ Mrs. Meredith pursued, ‘it would not have been so bad, but he is evidently to be a newspaper man all his life.’
‘I wish you would say journalist, mamma,’ Nell said, pouting, ‘or literary man. The profession of letters is a noble one.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ Mrs. Meredith assented, with another sigh, ‘and I dare say he told you so, but I can’t think it is very respectable.’
Rob did not altogether enjoy the Symphonia, which is a polite club attended by the literary fry of both sexes; the ladies who write because they cannot help it, the poets who excuse their verses because they were young when they did them, the clergymen who publish their sermons by request of their congregations, the tourists who have been to Spain and cannot keep it to themselves. The club meets once a fortnight, for the purpose of not listening to music and recitations; and the members, of whom the ladies outnumber the men, sit in groups round little lions who roar mildly. The Symphonia is very fashionable and select, and having heard the little lions a-roaring, you get a cup of coffee and go home again.
Dick explained that he was a member of the Symphonia because he rather liked to put on the lion’s skin himself now and again, and he took Mrs. Meredith and the two girls to it to show them of what literature in its higher branches is capable. The elegant dresses of the literary ladies, and the suave manner of the literary gentlemen, impressed Nell’s mother favourably, and the Symphonia, which she had taken for an out-at-elbows club, raised letters in her estimation.
Rob, however, who never felt quite comfortable in evening dress, had a bad time of it, for Dick carried him off at once, and got him into a group round the authoress of My Baby Boy, to whom Rob was introduced as a passionate admirer of her delightful works. The lion made room for him, and he sat sadly beside her, wishing he was not so big.
Both of the rooms of the Symphonia club were crowded, but a number of gentlemen managed to wander from group to group over the skirts of ladies’ gowns. Rob watched them wistfully from his cage, and observed one come to rest at the back of Mary Abinger’s chair. He was a medium-sized man, and for five minutes Rob thought he was Sir Clement Dowton. Then he realised that he had been deceived by a remarkable resemblance.
The stranger said a great deal to Mary, and she seemed to like him. After a long time the authoress’s voice broke in on Rob’s cogitations, and when h
e saw that she was still talking without looking tired, a certain awe filled him. Then Mary rose from her chair, taking the arm of the gentleman who was Sir Clement’s double, and they went into the other room, where the coffee was served.
Rob was tempted to sit there stupidly miserable, for the easiest thing to do comes to us first. Then he thought it was better to be a man, and, drawing up his chest, boldly asked the lion to have a cup of coffee. In another moment he was steering her through the crowd, her hand resting on his arm, and, to his amazement, he found he rather liked it.
In the coffee-room Rob could not distinguish the young lady who moved like a swan, but he was elated with his social triumph, and cast about for any journalist of his acquaintance who, he thought, might like to meet the authoress of My Baby Boy. It struck Rob that he had no right to keep her all to himself. Quite close to him his eye lighted on Marriott, the author of Mary Hooney: a Romance of the Irish Question, but Marriott saw what he was after, and dived into the crowd. A very young gentleman, with large empty eyes, begged Rob’s pardon for treading on his toes, and Rob, who had not felt it, saw that this was his man. He introduced him to the authoress as another admirer, and the round-faced youth seemed such a likely subject for her next work that Rob moved off comfortably.
A shock awaited him when he met Dick, who had been passing the time by taking male guests aside and asking them in an impressive voice what they thought of his great book, Lives of Eminent Washer-women, which they had no doubt read.
‘Who is the man so like Dowton?’ he repeated, in answer to Rob’s question. ‘Why, it is Dowton.’
Then Dick looked vexed. He remembered that Rob had been at Dome Castle on the previous Christmas Eve.
‘Look here, Angus,’ he said bluntly, ‘this is a matter I hate to talk about. The fact is, however, that this is the real Sir Clement. The fellow you met was an impostor, who came from no one knows where. Unfortunately, he has returned to the same place.’
Dick bit his lip while Rob digested this.
‘But if you know the real Dowton,’ Rob asked, ‘how were you deceived?’
‘Well, it was my father who was deceived rather than myself, but we did not know the real baronet then. The other fellow, if you must know, traded on his likeness to Dowton, who is in the country now for the first time for many years. Whoever the impostor is, he is a humorist in his way, for when he left the castle in January he asked my father to call on him when he came to town. The fellow must have known that Dowton was coming home about that time; at all events, my father, who was in London shortly afterwards, looked up his friend the baronet, as he thought, at his club, and found that he had never set eyes on him before. It would make a delicious article if it had not happened in one’s own family.’