Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  It was always ‘Miss Figgins,’ officially of course, within earshot of the stipendiary or his fellow-lodger.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Harrison,’ Linda answered, half returning and waiting on the step. ‘I heard you come in, and I thought perhaps you might be in want of something.’

  ‘I am in want of something — in fact, of sympathy,’ the barrister said in a very low voice, catching Linda’s bright eye over the edge of the banister. ‘Are you very busy just now? Could you manage to spare me a tiny ten minutes?’

  ‘Not very busy,’ Linda answered, unfastening her kitchen apron and tripping upstairs yet again with untiring energy. ‘You’re disappointed, Mr. Harrison? The brief hasn’t come off? You’ve found there’s some hitch or other about defending the burglar?’

  Douglas Harrison sank down into the easy-chair with the boneless collapse of a dispirited man, and told her in brief the strange story of his interview with the head of the profession. Linda, all sympathetic, stood with an official duster ostentatiously displayed in her pretty brown fingers, leaning against the mantelpiece in one of those graceful attitudes which came to her naturally. As soon as Douglas had finished, she stepped over and took his hand quite unaffectedly in hers, as a sister might have taken it. ‘It’s a disappointment, of course, Mr. Harrison,’ she said in a sweetly soothing voice, ‘but I confess I’m not altogether sorry for it. It may have been foolish of me — I don’t know the ways of lawyers — but I couldn’t bear to think you should take up such a case. If you’d really taken it up, I should never quite have been reconciled to the desecration of your talents.’

  ‘Then you think I did right, Linda?’ the barrister asked anxiously, as one who attached great importance to her favourable opinion. ‘You think it wasn’t silly of me?’

  ‘Of course you did right,’ Linda answered with conviction. ‘You did just as I should have expected of you. If you hadn’t done so, I should have been quite disappointed in you.’

  ‘No, you don’t really mean that!’ the young man cried, beaming.

  ‘Yes I do,’ Linda answered with grave seriousness. ‘I expect a great deal from you, you know, and I always find my expectations fulfilled. You’re a person one can depend upon.’

  ‘Well, that is good of you, Linda!’ the barrister answered, still holding her hand, unreproved, in his own, for Linda never attempted for one moment to withdraw it from Douglas Harrison. ‘If you think I did right, that’s more than enough for me. I attach so much importance always to your judgment, Linda.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the girl said simply; ‘you’re always very kind and good, Mr. Harrison.’

  The young man paused, and stared for a moment at the empty grate. ‘And yet,’ he went on, in a dreamy sort of way that Linda knew well, ‘it was a disappointment; I won’t deny it. I almost hoped that if only I could once see my way clear in life there might be some chance, perhaps ... that some day ... hereafter — —’ He broke off suddenly, and looked with a timidly-inquiring glance into those great earnest eyes of hers.

  Linda shook her head with unalterable decision. ‘No, no, Mr. Harrison,’ she said firmly. ‘No more of that, you know. I thought we’d agreed that subject was never again to be re-opened between us. If you’re going to talk so, I must run down to my work. And, indeed, I must run down to it now, in any case. I’ve such lots to do — the pudding to make for dinner, and Mr. Hubert’s manuscript to copy for press, and a drawing to finish for to-night for my brother.’

  Douglas Harrison jumped up, full of penitence, at once. ‘And I’ve kept you here talking so long about this wretched brief,’ he said, ‘when you were wanted elsewhere! You, the prop of the house! the main corner-stone of the establishment! How dreadfully selfish of me! Can’t I make up for it now by helping you in any way? Can’t I — oh — can’t I manage that manuscript of Hubert’s, for example?’

  Linda shook her head with a capable smile. ‘Oh dear no!’ she answered with true feminine contempt for the clumsy male fingers, ‘that would never do. You can’t work the type-writer half well enough for press yet. Your brother’d never give me another article to copy if I were to send it in all full of blunders. Besides, I shall have time if I go off at once.’ And, with a nod and a smile, full of sisterly recognition, she ran off downstairs, leaving the drawing-rooms irradiated with a halo of glory by the bare memory of her presence for the once more briefless barrister.

  ‘She’s a jewel of a girl,’ Douglas Harrison thought to himself as she retreated through the door. ‘It does make me so happy when I’ve earned her approbation. But I wish she would only feel to me as she does to Maclaine. I don’t know how it is, nothing that I can do ever seems to make her regard me as anything but a brother.’

  It’s often so with a certain sort of man. They’re so thoroughly good, and girls like them so much, that they never for one moment dream of falling in love with them.

  That evening, when Basil Maclaine returned from the Board of Trade, he came in with an air of very conscious importance. Something that had happened to him during the day was evidently swelling his shirt-front to even more than its usual expansive dimensions. He was full of his grandeur. His waistcoat hardly held him. It was with difficulty he listened politely to Douglas Harrison’s account of the burglar fiasco.

  ‘The more fool you,’ was the only comment he made when Douglas had finished his tale of discomfiture. ‘Of course, you know what you’ve done for yourself now. You’ve knocked the bottom out of your own professional chances.’ And as he spoke he produced quite carelessly from his pocket a very large envelope, which, nevertheless, bore some obvious and distinct relation to the high barometric condition of his personal spirits.

  ‘What’s that?’ Douglas asked, with languid interest, as Basil pretended to lay it down like some unconsidered trifle.

  ‘Oh, only an invitation,’ Basil Maclaine replied, ostentatiously displaying the card at an illegible distance. ‘Garden-party next Saturday. Very smart family, too, in their way. I angled for it hard, I can tell you; but Charlie Simmons pulled it off at last for me. I believe I’m getting into the swim, after all. I’m beginning to know some of the Very Best People.’

  ‘Rich people, you mean. Well, I’m glad of that — as it seems to give you so much pleasure.’

  ‘It’s going to be an awfully swell affair,’ Maclaine went on, ruminating. ‘No end of titles.’

  ‘Hubert and I are going out next Saturday as well,’ Douglas Harrison murmured casually, as Basil fixed the pasteboard into the margin of the looking-glass in the little overmantel, with an affectionate glance at its printed inscription. ‘Down Leatherhead way. A garden-party also.’

  ‘Not at the Venables’, of Hurst Croft?’ the civil servant asked, with open eyes of wonder.

  ‘Yes, at the Venables’, of Hurst Croft. Is that your place, too? What a curious coincidence! Why, if I’d known you wanted to go there, Hubert would have got you an invitation at once without any angling. Miss Venables said they were rather hard up for men, I remember, and she asked if Hubert could hunt up some recruits for her from the Government offices.’

  ‘You never mentioned it before,’ Basil cried, rather crestfallen.

  ‘Well, it didn’t interest me,’ his friend replied, looking wholly unconcerned. ‘It’s a bore having to run down all the way to Leatherhead just to put in an appearance at somebody else’s garden-party.’

  The civil servant stared at him mutely for a minute in blank astonishment. How strange a man should think so little of his splendid opportunities for associating himself with the Best People! ‘Well, Miss Venables is an heiress, anyhow,’ he went on, in a more subdued voice, for he felt himself sat upon. ‘They tell me she’s one of the very richest girls come out this season. She’s a magnificent match. There can’t be much harm, at any rate, in taking a pot-shot at her.’

  ‘In taking what?’ Douglas Harrison exclaimed aghast, for the whole point of view was one thoroughly alien to his honest nature.

  ‘Taking a pot-shot at her
,’ Basil repeated, unabashed, pulling up his shirt-collar. ‘Of course I know I haven’t much chance of bringing down the game to my own gun, or even, if it comes to that, of winging her. Too many big swells with handles to their names are sure to be aiming at her from a point of vantage, and it isn’t likely a commoner will pot the first prize of the season in the matrimonial handicap. Still, if there’s anything good going in the market, one would like to feel, as a matter of justice to one’s self, one was standing one’s even chance to win it.’

  ‘Maclaine!’ his friend exclaimed in a tone of genuine disgust, ‘I’m positively ashamed of you!’

  ‘Why so, my dear fellow? All the Best People marry money nowadays. Look at the way our aristocracy are all going off to hunt for rich wives among the unspoilt preserves in America.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that only,’ Douglas Harrison answered in a very grave tone, ‘though that’s bad enough in itself. But how can you talk of any other woman on earth when I know the way you’ve gone about to make poor Lin — Miss Figgins unhappy?’

  ‘Miss Figgins!’ the civil servant cried out, starting back in surprise. It was his turn to be virtuously indignant now. ‘You don’t mean to say, Harrison, you really think it possible I could ever in my wildest moment dream of marrying Miss Figgins!’

  ‘I think she’d take you,’ Harrison answered with a carefully-suppressed sigh, ‘if you were to ask her properly. At any rate, it’s not right of you, while you’re going on so with her, to talk about taking pot-shots at any other woman.’

  ‘If I were to ask properly!’ Maclaine repeated with a profoundly scornful ring. ‘If I were to give her the chance! If I were to cut my own nose off! Of course she’d take me. Of course she’d jump at it. But am I likely to ask her?’ He flung himself with an air of patient resignation into the long basketwork chair. ‘Just like your aristocratic insolence!’ he muttered to himself half angrily.

  ‘My aristocratic insolence!’ Douglas Harrison echoed with a puzzled expression of face. ‘Why, what on earth do you mean by that, Basil?’

  ‘Well, that’s always the way with you fellows who’ve got a cousin a baronet and an uncle a general,’ Basil replied with warmth. ‘You think there are no distinctions of rank at all outside your own particular class or caste. You think all the rest of us who don’t happen to be born in your exalted sphere are at one universal dead-level of hopeless vulgarity. You think because my father’s in business, while yours is in the Church, I can marry a common London lodging-house girl, whose parents were labourers, I suppose, and whose brother’s a workman at the foundry round the corner. As if education and position and a gentlemanly employment were to count for nothing! Pure aristocratic insolence, that’s just what I call it.’

  Douglas Harrison looked across at him with a sort of pitying wonderment. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he answered slowly. ‘Do you mean to tell me, Maclaine, you don’t think she’s fit for you?’

  ‘Don’t think she’s fit for me!’ Maclaine answered hotly. ‘Do you want to insult me? Put it to yourself, my dear sir — I ask you, put it to yourself, and see how you’d like it! She’s all very well to flirt with in a mild sort of way, but do you mean to say you’d marry Miss Figgins?’

  Douglas Harrison rose and looked very solemnly into his friend’s eyes. ‘Marry her!’ he echoed. ‘Of course I’d marry her — if only she’d let me, and I could afford to keep her as she ought to be kept, like a cultivated lady. Marry her, Maclaine! Of course I’d marry her. Not fit for you, my dear fellow! Why, have you eyes in your head? She’s fit for anything. She’s fit to be a duchess.’

  ‘Well, all I can say is,’ Basil Maclaine retorted with a superior smile, ‘I ain’t a duke; but if I was, I could answer for one thing — I wouldn’t agree with you.’

  CHAPTER V.

  AMONG THE BEST PEOPLE.

  When Saturday came — that much-hoped-for Saturday — Basil Maclaine rose all undismayed to the height of the occasion. He prepared himself elaborately for mingling in Good Society. No critical eye ever beheld a more gorgeous expanse of spotless white linen than Basil Maclaine’s well-glazed shirt-front, a more faultless costume than Basil Maclaine’s artistic suit of Scotch homespun dittos, a cleaner shave than Basil Maclaine’s immaculate chin, a tighter fit than the pointed toes of Basil Maclaine’s neat Oxford walking shoes. If Sabine Venables, that coveted heiress, had only known the desperate preparations Basil Maclaine indulged in beforehand for taking a pot-shot at her heart (and accompanying fortune), she would, at least, have felt flattered by the obvious importance which the handsome young civil servant evidently attached to the merest casual glance from those beady black eyes of hers. But, then, Sabine Venables was so thoroughly accustomed to being paid much court to by young men generally — for was she not the greatest catch in that corner of Surrey? — that one extra young man, more or less, to the tale of her conquests really made very little difference to her.

  At Waterloo Station the two fellow-lodgers in Miss Figgins’s furnished apartments for gentlemen met by appointment Douglas Harrison’s journalistic brother, Hubert, the editor of that satirical print, the Boomerang.

  ‘Charlie Simmons, of the War Office, is coming, too,’ Maclaine ventured to observe as they took their seats in the train. ‘Suppose we look out for him?’

  ‘Oh no, don’t let’s,’ Hubert Harrison answered, making an ugly face. ‘He’s such awfully bad form. He’s the sort of man, don’t you know, who always sticks his invitation-cards in his looking-glass frame, by way of advertising his social importance.’

  Basil Maclaine withdrew his head from the window at once, and made no answer. He had always looked upon Charlie Simmons himself as very ‘good form’ till that precise moment; but he registered a mental note now to avoid in future the social solecism — if such it were — which had brought a neatly-dressed and fair-spoken fellow-citizen under the ban of a censor who formed opinion in the public prints of his country. For Basil Maclaine was one of those numerous people who live entirely for the appearances of life, and have never, for even one solitary second, penetrated the fact that it has any solid realities at all behind them.

  Charlie Simmons didn’t happen to reach their apartment — in point of fact, he was travelling first; while Basil, who had taken a ticket for the same exalted mode of conveyance, had been hurried and bustled by his companions, unawares, into a third-class carriage — so they went down by themselves in that inferior vehicle all the way to Leatherhead. There, they walked up a long ridge, and past a handsome lodge, Hubert Harrison seeming to know the way particularly well, till, turning a corner in a leafy avenue, they came full in sight of a big house on a hilltop. It was a ruddy Queen Anne mansion of the very latest pattern, plumped down among immemorial elms and beeches.

  ‘You’ve been here before, I see,’ Basil Maclaine observed, as he stooped to brush the dust of the road off those neat Oxford walking shoes with his second-best handkerchief — the one he kept immured in his right coat-tail for such menial purposes, while the clean society rag resided habitually in his left breast-pocket.

  ‘Dozens of times,’ Hubert Harrison answered laconically.

  ‘Then you know the people well?’

  ‘Intimately,’ the journalist responded, and lapsed into silence.

  ‘It’s a splendid place,’ Basil Maclaine remarked, glancing round him in admiration. And indeed it was. He had never seen a nobler. The lawn of fine turf sloped gently down towards the Mickleham Valley, and being gracefully planted with well-ordered clumps of horse-chestnut, beech, and lime at irregular intervals, opened up delightful vistas down the wooded glen and across intervening ridges to the tower-topped height of Leith Hill in the distance. The sward in between lay smooth and close and velvety as a carpet. Great parterres of blossom diversified the foreground. Just at that moment, in the first full glory of summer foliage, the broad shady trees of Hurst Croft, against a fleecy blue and white sky, were a sight to rejoice the eye of any lover of nature. But it wasn’t the pictu
resque beauty of the scene that struck Basil Maclaine with instant admiration and delight; it was the amplitude of the grounds, the spacious expanse of the lawn, the neatness of the roads and paths and flower-beds, the many outward and visible signs of extreme wealth and social importance. He saw in it, most of all, not a lovely stretch of hill country, but ‘a magnificent place,’ the external symbol of livery servants, horses, carriages, silver plates, diamonds, game preserves, dances, dinner-parties, and all the other vulgar gewgaws and festivities that his soul would have revelled in. He valued it at once as so much money’s worth, and so much consideration in the eyes of society.

  ‘Yes, there’s a beautiful view,’ Hubert Harrison answered, gazing vaguely away from the lawn and the foreground towards the varied outline of blue hills in the distance, rising one behind the other in long perspective. ‘But Venables père is just a typical British Philistine of the first water. He doesn’t deserve to live in such a lovely bit of wild country as this. He doesn’t regard those trees of his as trees at all; he regards them as a magnificent lot of first-class timber.’

  And poor Basil Maclaine had that moment been reflecting to himself that if only he had money to ‘keep it up,’ such a lovely bit of finely-timbered land as that would suit him down to the ground. For he, too, in his callow way, was an unfledged Philistine.

  On the terrace in front of the windows half a dozen guests were already assembled, chatting in a group around Miss Venables and her father.