"You find him out, and say old Mrs. Prichard she's gone in the country, and you can't say where. No more you can't, and I ain't going to tell you. So just you say that!"
"I'm your man, missis. On'y I shan't see him, like as not. He don't stop in one place. The orficers are after him--the police."
Then Aunt M'riar showed her weak and womanish character. Let her excuse be the memory of those six rapturous weeks, twenty-five years ago, when she was a bride, and all her life was rosy till she found herself deserted--left to deal as she best might with Time and her loneliness.
You see, this man actually _was_ her husband. Micky could not understand why her voice should change as she said:--"The police are after him--yes! But you be a good boy, and leave the catching of him to them.
'Tain't any concern of yours. Don't you say nothing to them, and they won't say nothing to you!"
The boy paused a moment, as though in doubt; then said with insight:--"I'll send 'em the wrong way." He thought explanation due, adding:--"I'm fly to the game, missis." Aunt M'riar had wished not to be transparent, but she was not good at this sort of thing. True, she had kept her counsel all those years, and no one had seen through her, but that was mere opacity in silence.
She left Micky's apprehension to fructify, and told him to go back and get his supper. As he opened the door to go Uncle Mo appeared, coming along the Court. The sight of him was welcome to Aunt M'riar, who was feeling very lonesome. And as for the old boy himself, he was quite exhilarated. "Now we shall have those two young pagins back!" he said.
CHAPTER XXXII
WHY NOT KEEP COMPANY WHEN YOU HAVE A CHANCE? GUIZOT AND MONTALEMBERT. MRS. BEMBRIDGE CORLETT's EYEGLASSES. KINKAJOUS. THE PYTHON'S ATTITUDE. AN OSTRICH'S CARESS. HOW SIR COUPLAND MERRIDEW CALLED ON LADY GWENDOLEN WITH A LETTER. ROYALTY. NECROSIS.
ILLEGIBILITY. SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. HOW GWEN CALLED AGAIN IN SAPPS COURT, AND KNOCKED IN VAIN. HOW OLD MRS. PRICHARD WAS SPIRITED AWAY TO ROCESTERSHIRE, AND THOUGHT SHE WAS DREAMING
Mr. Percival Pellew and Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson had passed, under the refining influence of Love, into a new phase, that of not being formally engaged. It was to be distinctly understood that there was to be nothing precipitate. This condition has its advantages; very particularly that it postpones, or averts, family introductions. Yet it cannot be enjoyed to the full without downright immorality, and it always does seem to us a pity that people should be forced into Evil Courses, in order to shun the terrors of Respectability. Why should not some compromise be possible? The life some couples above suspicion contrive to lead, each in the other's pocket as soon as the eyes of Europe wander elsewhere, certainly seems to suggest a basis of negotiation.
No doubt you know that little poem of Browning about the lady and gentleman who watched the Seine, and saw Guizot receive Montalembert, who rhymed to "flare"? Of course, the case was hardly on all fours with that of our two irreproachables, but we suspect a point in common. We feel sure that those lawless loiterers in a dissolute capital were joyous at heart at having escaped the fangs of the brothers of the one, and the sisters of the other, respectively, although at the cost of having the World's bad names applied to both. In this case there were no brothers on the lady's part, and only one sister on the gentleman's. But Aunt Constance was not sorry for a breathing-pause before being subjected to an inspection through glasses by the Hon. Mrs. Bembridge Corlett, which was the name of the unique sister-sample, and herself subjecting Mr. Pellew to a similar overhauling by her own numerous relatives. She had misgivings about the _accolade_ he might receive from Mrs. Amphlett Starfax, and also about the soul-communion which her sister Lilian, who had a sensitive nature, demanded as the price of recognition in public a second time of all persons introduced to her notice.
Mr. Pellew's description of the Hon. Mrs. Corlett had impressed her with the necessity of being ready to stand at bay when the presentation came off.
"Dishy will look at you along the top of her nose, with her chin in the air," said he. "But you mustn't be alarmed at that. She only does it because her glasses--we're all short-sighted--slip off her nose at ordinary levels. And when you come to think of it, how can she hold them on with her fingers when she looks at you. Like taking interest in a specimen!"
"I am a little alarmed at your sister Boadicea, Percy, for all that,"
said Miss Dickenson, and changed the conversation. This was only a day or two after the Sapps Court accident, and the phase of not being formally engaged had begun lasting as long as possible, being found satisfactory. So old Mrs. Prichard was a natural topic to change to.
"Isn't it funny, this whim of Gwen's, about the old lady you carried upstairs?"
"What whim of Gwen's?"
"Oh, don't you know. Of course you don't! Gwen's fallen in love with her, and means to take her to the Towers with her when she goes back."
"Very nice for the old girl. What's she doing that for?"
"It's an idea of hers. However, there is some reason in it. The old lady's apartments must be dry before she goes back to them, and that may be weeks."
"Why can't she stop where she is?"
"All by herself? At least, only the cook! When Miss Grahame goes to Devonshire, Maggie goes with her, to lady's-maid her."
"I thought we were going to be pastoral, and only spend three hundred a year on housekeeping."
"So we are--how absurdly you do put things, Percy!--when we make a fair start. But just till we begin in earnest, there's no need for such strictness. Anyhow, if Maggie doesn't go to Devonshire, she'll go back to her parents at Invercandlish. So the old lady can't stop. And Gwen will go back to the Towers, of course. I don't the least believe they'll hold out six months, those two.... What little ducks Kinkajous are! Give me a biscuit.... No--one of the soft ones!"
For, you see, they were at the Zoological Gardens. They had felt that these Gardens, besides being near at hand, were the kind of Gardens in which the eyes of Europe would find plenty to occupy them, without staring impertinently at a lady and gentleman who were not formally engaged. Who would care to study them and _their_ ways when he could see a Thibetan Bear bite the nails of his hind-foot, or observe the habits of Apes, or sympathize with a Tiger about his lunch? Our two visitors to the Gardens had spent an hour on these and similar attractions, noting occasionally the flavour that accompanies them, and had felt after a visit to the Pythons, that they could rest a while out of doors and think about the Wonders of Creation, and the drawbacks they appear to suffer from. But a friendly interest in a Python had lived and recrudesced as the Kinkajou endeavoured to get at some soft biscuit, in spite of a cruel wire screen no one bigger than a rat could get his little claw through.
"I don't believe that fillah _was_ moving. He was breathing. But he wasn't moving. I know that chap perfectly well. He never moves when anyone is looking at him, out of spite. He hears visitors hope he'll move, and keeps quite still to disappoint them." It was Mr. Pellew who said this. Miss Dickenson shook her head incredulously.
"He _was_ moving, you foolish man. You should use your eyes. That long straight middle piece of him on the shelf moved; in a very dignified way, considering. The move moved along him, and went slowly all the way to his tail. When I took my eyes off I thought the place was moving, which is a proof I'm right.... Oh, you little darling, you've dropped it! I'm so sorry. I must have another, because this has been in the mud, and you won't like it." This was, of course, to the Kinkajou.
Mr. Pellew supplied a biscuit, but improved the occasion:--"Now if this little character could only keep his paws off the Public, he wouldn't want a wire netting. Couldn't you give him a hint?"
"I could, but he wouldn't take it. He's a little darling, but he's pig-headed...." A pause, and then a quick explanatory side-note:--"Do you know, I think that's Sir Coupland Merridew coming along that path. I hope he isn't coming this way.... I'm afraid he is, though. You know who I mean? He was at the Towers...."
"I know. Yes, it's him. He's coming this way. If he sees it's us, he'll go off down the side-path. But he won't see--he's too short-sighted.
Can't be helped!"
"Oh dear--what a plague people are! Let's be absorbed in the Kinkajou.
He'll pass us."
But the great surgeon did nothing of the sort. On the contrary he said:--"I saw it was you, Miss Dickenson." Then he reflected about her companion, and said he was Mr. Pellew, he thought, and further:--"Met you at Ancester in July." It was a great relief that he did _not_ say:--"You are a lady and gentleman, and can perhaps explain yourselves.
_I_ can't!" He appeared to decide on silence about _them_, as irrelevant, and went on to something more to the purpose--"Perhaps you know if the family are in town--any of them?" Miss Dickenson testified to the whereabouts of Lady Gwendolen Rivers, and Sir Coupland wrote it in a notebook. There seemed at this point to be an opportunity to say how delightful the Gardens were this time of the year, so Miss Dickenson seized it.
"I didn't come to enjoy the gardens," said the F.R.C.S. "I wish I had time. I came to see to a broken scapula. Keeper in the Ostrich House--bird pecked him from behind. Did it from love, apparently. Said to be much attached to keeper. Two-hundred-and-two, Cavendish Square, is right, isn't it?"
"Two-hundred-and-two; corner house.... Must you go on? Sorry!--you could have told us such interesting things." The effect of this one word "us,"
indiscreetly used, was that Sir Coupland, walking away to his carriage outside the turnstiles, wondered whether it would come off, and if it did, would there be a family? Which shows how very careful you have to be, when you are a lady and gentleman.
The former, in this case, remained unconscious of her _lapsus linguae_; saying, in fact:--"I think we did that very well! I wonder whether he will go and see Gwen!"
"I hope he will. Do you know, I couldn't help suspecting that he had something to say about Torrens's eyesight--something good. Perhaps it was only the way one has of catching at straws. Still, unless he has, why should he want to see Gwen? He couldn't want to tell her there was no hope--to rub it in!"
"I see what you mean. But I'm afraid he only put down the address for us to tell her he did so--just to get the credit of a call without the trouble."
"When did you take to Cynicism, madam?... No--come, I say--that's not fair! It's only my second cigar since I came to the Gardens...." The byplay needed to make this intelligible may be imagined, without description.
Does not the foregoing lay further stress on the curious fact that the _passee_ young lady and the oscillator between Pall Mall and that Club at St. Stephen's--this describes the earlier seeming of these two--have really vanished from the story? Is it not a profitable commentary on the mistakes people make in the handling of their own lives?
Sir Coupland Merridew was not actuated by the contemptible motive Aunt Constance had ascribed to him. Moreover, the straw Mr. Pellew caught at was an actual straw, though it may have had no buoyancy to save a swimmer. It must have had _some_ though, or Sir Coupland would never have thrown it to Gwen, struggling against despair about her lover's eyesight. Of course he did not profess to do so of set purpose; that would have pledged him to an expression of confidence in that straw which he could hardly have felt.
When he called at Cavendish Square two days later at an unearthly hour, and found Gwen at breakfast, he accounted for his sudden intrusion by producing a letter recently received from Miss Irene Torrens, of which he said that, owing to the peculiarity of the handwriting, he had scarcely been able to make out anything beyond that it related to her brother's blindness. Probably Lady Gwendolen knew her handwriting better than he did. At any rate, she might have a shot at trying to make it out. But presently, when she had time! He, however, would take a cup of coffee, and would then go on and remove a portion of a diseased thigh-bone from a Royal leg--that of Prince Hohenslebenschlangenspielersgeiststein--only he never could get the name right.
The story surmises that, having carefully read every word of the letter, he chose this way of letting Gwen know of a fluctuation in Adrian's eye-symptoms; which, he had inferred, would not reach her otherwise. But he did not wish false hopes to be built on it. The deciphering of the illegibilities by Gwen, under correctives from himself, would exactly meet the case.
"I can _not_ see that 'Rene's writing is so very illegible," said Gwen.
"Now be quiet and let me read it." She settled down to perusal, while Sir Coupland sipped his coffee, and watched her colour heighten as she read. That meant, said he to himself, that he must be ready to throw more cold water on this letter than he had at first intended.
Said Gwen, when she had finished:--"Well, that seems to me very plain and straightforward. And as for illegibility, I know many worse hands than 'Re's."
"What's that word three lines down?... Yes, that one!"
"'Dreaming.'"