Chapter Eleven
It would be idle to assume that a man of Guy Spencer’s natural advantages had reached the age of thirty without experiencing a few affairs of the heart. But he had never been deeply touched, and his friend Tommy Esmond was right when he described him as not very susceptible to feminine influence.
The one feeling which had lasted for some years, was a pronounced affection for his cousin Nina. He felt as much at home with her as he would have done with a favourite sister, had he possessed one. But the regard had a warmth in it that is lacking in fraternal relations.
He knew that Lady Nina was not indifferent to him, that she allowed him to assume a certain air of proprietorship in the disposal of dances, in the claim to her society when he was disposed to enjoy it. He knew also that it was a match which would be warmly approved of by his invalid uncle.
Without being guilty of undue vanity, he felt pretty certain that if he proposed he would be accepted. And once or twice he had been very near to taking the decisive step. He never could quite understand what it was that made him hesitate.
The fact of his hesitation proved to himself, as well as to the young lady concerned, that much as he might like his cousin, he was certainly far from being deeply in love with her.
She was a pretty, winsome girl, possessing an upright, straightforward nature, and quite attractive in a simple, frank fashion. There was nothing subtle or mysterious about her, you could read her like an open book. She was a good daughter, she was the type of girl who could not help making a good wife.
Some day, no doubt, he would put the fateful question, and by her acceptance be made, in conventional parlance, the happiest of men. But although he would know he had chosen very wisely, and look forward to a placid kind of happiness, he was doubtful if Nina’s smiles and kisses would ever thrill him, if with her he would ever learn the meaning of real love.
He was not by any means sure that he was capable of very strong attachment. He had indulged in a few fancies, but they had only exercised a very small portion of his thoughts. Up to the present, he had certainly not experienced the wild ecstasies, the mingled joy and pain of the true lover.
For the first time in his life, he had been seriously perturbed by the advent of Stella Keane. He had not fashioned in his imagination any particular ideal, any special type of woman who would make to him an irresistible appeal. But, if she had been Lady Nina, if he had met her in his own world, he would have owned at once this was the girl for whom he had been waiting.
Her image pursued him persistently in his waking and his leisure hours. He could recall every word she had spoken during the short time they had spent together. He could see her a dozen times a day standing in the “Excelsior” dining-room, paralysed with terror.
He remembered the break in her voice, the mist in her beautiful eyes, when she had thanked him. And ever and again, he longed to fathom the mystery of her loneliness, the cause of that sadness that was always lurking underneath.
Was it wise to pursue the acquaintance, with the pretty certain result of intensifying the interest he already felt in her? He had no liking for Mrs L’Estrange, a woman merely on the fringe of his world, or her gambling circle. If he wanted to lose or win money, there were plenty of other houses where he could indulge his fancy.
And he knew nothing of Miss Keane’s antecedents. The only thing he did know was that she had a cousin who was obviously a bounder of the first water. Tommy Esmond knew nothing about her either, or, if he did know, would not tell.
For three days he wavered, one moment eager to rush off to the flat, the next determining that it would be better not to renew the brief acquaintance.
On the fourth day, his impulse conquered his prudence. He told himself soothingly that his visit was due to curiosity, that he merely wanted to penetrate the mystery of her loneliness, her unprotected position.
The bounder cousin was coming out as he entered. Mr Dutton nodded affably to him with a greasy and familiar smile. Spencer acknowledged him in the coolest fashion compatible with bare civility. Why were there people, he wondered, whom you instinctively wanted to kick, for no apparently sufficient reason?
Miss Keane was alone. Mrs L’Estrange, she explained, was in bed with a racking headache. She had lost heavily the night before, and this was the usual penalty she paid for losing.
“Hardly worth the candle, is it?” he said lightly, as he took his cup of tea from her. A slight frown crossed his brow as he observed the empty cup of “the bounder” on the table. Did he come here often? was his thought. Perhaps he was in love with her. But it was surely beyond the limits of possibility that she could ever return the affection of such a creature.
He would see what he could get out of her. “I met your cousin as I came in. I suppose he is a frequent visitor?”
She did not look in the least conscious or embarrassed by the question. “Oh yes, he comes very often. He is about the only one of my relatives I have any acquaintance with. My father’s mode of life estranged all the others.”
Spencer thought it would have been a good thing if Mr Dutton had been as sensitive to the disqualifications of the late Mr Keane as the rest of her connections. But, of course, he could not say so.
“He is not in the least like you.” Then, after a pause, he added boldly, and perhaps a little rudely: “I should never have dreamed you were related.”
She quite understood what he meant, and there was a lurking humour in her smile, as she answered:
“Poor old George, he is a good sort, but quite a rough diamond. His mother married a self-made man, of course, for his money. That may account for a great deal you have noticed.” Spencer had the grace to look confused. It was evident he had conveyed his private impression of Mr Dutton very distinctly to her clear young vision. But she did not seem offended, only slightly amused, at the poor figure cut by Cousin George in the estimation of a person in a superior world.
Anyway, that little mystery was explained. There was nothing unusual in poor gentlewomen marrying self-made men, for the sake of money. The noble family of Southleigh had many such mésalliances amongst its aristocratic records.
But it was a relief to find Stella herself under no delusions concerning the young man in question. He did not think it possible she could, but as diplomatically as was possible, she admitted that Mr Dutton was not what is, technically called, a gentleman.
“He is the only relative with whom I am on speaking terms,” she added, after a pause, “for reasons of which I have already given you a hint. And I think I have grown rather to look forward to his visits.”
Her observant eyes noticed a quick stiffening in his manner. She could guess his thoughts. How was it possible for a refined young woman to ever look forward to the visits of a person like Mr Dutton, cousin though he might be?
“You, of course, have heaps of relations; you can pick and choose,” she went on, as if eager to explain to his fastidious taste her toleration of a man, so obviously the denizen of an inferior world. “You cannot, I daresay, imagine the loneliness of a girl of my age, debarred, through no fault of her own, from the society of her own kith and kin.” Here was an opportunity to engage her in personal talk. He had not hoped she would take him into her confidence on his first visit.
He leaned forward, and there was an eager note in his voice. “I formed an idea of you in the first few moments of our acquaintance, that you were not happy, that you were, in a sense, isolated, and that you had known more of sorrow than joy in your short life.”
She mused a moment, and then answered him in grave tones:
“You were quite right. I feel it is the impression I must convey to either friend or stranger, an impression I shall always convey. For, if a great and overwhelming happiness were to come to me to-morrow, I could never forget the past years of sadness.”
“But, surely, you must have some happy memories? There were gleams of brightness in your childhood?”
“No,” she said, and there was a fierce vehemence in her voice. “They were the most miserable – an indifferent mother, a careless father, a roof and a shelter, food and clothing sufficient, if not in abundance, but no home, as it is understood by more fortunate children.”
“And when that home, or the wretched pretence of it, was broken up, you were thrown upon the mercy of the world,” he questioned, “with no kindred, no friends to stretch out a helping hand?”
“Our relatives had long before ceased to take any interest in the daughter of a ruined gambler. I was thrown, in a certain sense, on the mercy of the world. But for a small pittance, which my father could not deprive me of, I should have starved, for he left nothing behind him but debts.”
She was not, then, absolutely penniless. Something had been saved from the wreck. He wondered if Esmond knew this. And yet, if she told a comparative stranger this at their first real interview, she must have told him, who seemed to be on the footing of a friend of the house.
“I had no real friends,” she went on; “but in the course of a wandering life – when my father owed too much in one place he removed to another – I had picked up a few acquaintances. With these I made a home, on and off, for longer or shorter periods.”
“And you have come to anchor here with Mrs L’Estrange, who is your cousin, one of the few relatives who did not visit the sins of the fathers on the children.”
Her voice was a little scornful. “The cousinship is a very distant one. And, as she is an inveterate gambler herself, but more lucky than my father, she could hardly look upon gambling in another as a deadly sin.” He nodded his head in agreement. He did not want to talk himself, for fear he should interrupt the flow of her reminiscences; she was evidently in a confidential mood this afternoon.
“I saw her a few times when quite a child, and then she vanished like the others. A couple of years ago, we met in Devonshire at the house of a mutual acquaintance. She seemed to take a fancy to me. In the end, she proposed that I should, for the present, make my home with her. She has only one interest in life, play. She is a very lazy woman. She hates writing the briefest note, and housekeeping is abhorrent to her. I attend to her correspondence, I order the dinner and look after the servants. I am not exactly eating the bread of charity,” she concluded with a little mirthless laugh, “because I give some work in exchange for my food. My own little pittance provides me with clothes.”
He wondered what the little pittance represented in annual hard cash. She was dressed quietly but in good taste, and he was judge enough of woman’s apparel to know that the material of her dress was expensive. On her slender fingers glittered a few valuable rings, heirlooms probably saved from the clutches of the gambling father. She did not convey the impression of poverty, but perhaps she was clever, and knew how to make the best of a small income.
There was a long silence, and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten his presence. For she sat with a musing look in her beautiful eyes, her thoughts evidently in the past, conjuring up Heaven knows how many painful memories.
Then she came back to herself, and turned to him with an apologetic smile. “I am afraid I have bored you to tears with my stupid personal history, but I will finish by telling you one little thing that may amuse you.”
He protested, of course, that he had not been in the least bored, only too painfully interested.
“Well, I am not a person easily crushed, and although a physical coward and frightened of raids and thunderstorms, I am not a moral one. When I began to review my position, I tried to hit upon some way of making money.”
Was she fond of money, he wondered? Well, perhaps, like most women, she wanted money to buy herself pretty things. There was nothing unusual in that.
“When I was a schoolgirl, I was supposed to show some artistic talent; I got several prizes. So I set to work and painted some half-a-dozen small things, in what I conceived to be a popular style, and took them round to as many dealers. In a week my hopes were shattered. One straightforward creature told me frankly that they just attained the schoolgirl level of excellence, but that I should never become an artist. It was not in me.”
“A crushing blow, indeed,” said Spencer sympathetically.
“I then turned to writing. Here, at any rate, was a profession that required no previous painful training, only powers of observation, some imagination, and a certain fluency of expression. I wrote some short stories which I thought good, which I still think good. History repeated itself. I sent them to a dozen editors, one after another. In every case, they were declined with thanks.”
“I daresay they were quite good, and they were not taken because you didn’t happen to be in the ring,” was Spencer’s consoling comment.
“Well,” she exclaimed brightly, “there is an end of my reminiscences for to-day. Let us talk of anything and everything else. Have you seen Mr Esmond lately? He has not been near us since the night he came with you.”
Shortly afterwards he took his leave, he had stayed unconsciously long as it was.
“I shall come again soon, if I may, to listen to some more reminiscences,” he said, as he shook hands. And she had given him permission, with the brightest of smiles.
He had not learned half as much as he wanted, but he had gathered something. The bounder cousin was the son of a self-made man, a parvenu. And Stella Keane was not absolutely penniless, she had enough money to buy herself clothes. Did Tommy Esmond know as much as this? And if he did, why had he not said so?
Chapter Twelve
Although unsuspicious by nature, Guy Spencer had mixed much in the world and seen a good deal of life. Attracted as he was by the charming Stella, there was a something about the atmosphere of that flat in Elsinore Gardens which created an unfavourable impression.
Of Mrs L’Estrange’s antecedents there was no question. She was a woman of good family, she could produce chapter and verse for her ancestors. And yet, why was she not in a better environment?
Clearly, she was on the downward slope. But was there anything remarkable in that? Heaps of members of aristocratic families were in the same sort of predicament, from various causes, through certain circumstances.
Had he not received a letter a few days ago from the daughter of a well-known earl, imploring him for a loan of ten pounds, for the sake of old friendship?
The writer was some twenty years his senior, and she had tipped him when he was at Eton. She now dated her letter from a suburb in the extreme west of Kensington. If she, with all her advantages of birth and connection, had fallen by the wayside, why not a comparatively obscure person like Mrs L’Estrange?
It was very easy to see it. Mrs L’Estrange was of a Bohemian temperament, and probably a great spendthrift. She had made considerable inroads into whatever fortune she originally possessed, and had developed into an adept card-player, with a view to supplementing the little income that was left to her.
And Stella Keane, that beautiful, sad girl, with the tragic history of worthless parents behind her, was the victim of fate. She was not happy in her cousin’s home, amidst this gambling, card-playing set. She, at least, was pure, whoever else might be defiled. On that he would stake his existence.
For a few days he thought a great deal about the subject, and during those few days he kept away from Elsinore Gardens and denied himself the pleasure of listening to a further instalment of Miss Keane’s reminiscences of her unhappy history.
If he were going to fall in love, he told himself sternly, he would fall in love with a woman of his own world, not with a girl, however beautiful and interesting she might be, who was only a hanger-on of a woman well-born, but evidently déclassée, a woman no longer moving in the sphere to which she had been accustomed. In these reflections, he showed sound sense.
But for a certain event that happened in the course of the next few days, he might have adhered to his good resolutions and have finally dismissed Miss Keane from his serious thoughts. And, in that case, this story would not have been written.
And then the event happened. Returning home to his rooms one night, about twelve o’clock, his man told him that Mr Esmond was waiting for him in the sitting-room.
He found the little rotund man sitting in an easy-chair, white-faced, the marks of agitation written all over his countenance.
Wondering at this unusual spectacle – Tommy was frequently fussy, but always self-contained – Spencer advanced, and held out his hand.
“What’s up, Tommy? You’re a late visitor, but always welcome.” He pointed to the decanters standing on the sideboard. “I hope you have helped yourself?”
To Spencer’s great surprise, the little man did not take the proffered hand. He spoke in a hoarse, choking voice, his lips twitching.
“I’ve helped myself once too often, Spencer. And I can’t take the hand of an honest man, for reasons. You’ve got it at once.”
Spencer had average brains, but he was not very quick to realise the meaning of unexpected situations. At first, he thought the little man had been drinking.
“Sit down, Tommy, and get it off your chest. What in the name of wonder is the matter?” he said kindly. He was rather fond of Tommy in a casual sort of way.
Esmond did not sit down at once, but went over to the sideboard, and mixed himself a stiff tumbler of whisky-and-soda. He gulped it down at a draught, and then took an armchair.
“You won’t begrudge me that, I know,” he said, speaking in the same strained, hoarse voice. “It’s the last drink I’ll have in your rooms, the last drink in any house in England, I should say. I’m done for, old man, to-morrow I clear out, eat my heart away in some beastly foreign hole.”
No, Spencer’s first surmise had been incorrect. The man was not drunk, not even elevated. His face was chalk-white, and he was trembling all over as if he had been stricken with palsy. But he was perfectly sober.
Spencer took a chair himself, and spoke a little sternly. “Pull yourself together, old man, and speak out. At first I thought you had had a drop too much. But I see that’s not the case. Out with it. You’ve been waiting some time, my man informs me. You want to tell me something. Tell it.”
Tommy Esmond moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and spoke.
“I don’t quite know what instinct prompted me to come to you. We haven’t known each other so very intimately, after all, but I always felt you were a bit more of a Christian than the other chaps I have known, less of a Pharisee – that you would be more likely to find excuses for a poor devil who had yielded to temptation.”
“Do get on,” said Spencer a little impatiently. He did not at all like the turn the conversation was taking.
Tommy spoke brokenly, he could not put his words together very coherently, it appeared. But his halting utterance was simply due to emotion.
“I was at Elsinore Gardens to-night, playing cards. You know Elsinore Gardens, Mrs L’Estrange’s flat?”
He was quite sober, but his agitation made him wander a bit, or he would not have put the question.
“Of course I know Mrs L’Estrange’s flat. It was you who took me there,” said Spencer.
“Yes, we went there on the night of the raid, but I was not playing at your table. I remember you lost, and I won. Well, somebody has to lose, and somebody else has to win.”
Spencer made no comment on this obvious truism. Tommy Esmond again moistened his dry lips with his tongue. He was a long time in coming to the point, but he came to it at last.
“Well, old man, I was playing with an old pal of mine, with whom I have been in business for years. We had a nice code of signals arranged. I was as cautious as I could be, but my partner had been dining out, and he was a bit indiscreet. There were three or four men watching us, they caught us both, although, as I tell you, I was cautious. But I made one slip, and they were down on me like a knife. You don’t know my partner. It is the end of him. But it is the end of Tommy Esmond also.”
To say that Spencer was disgusted would be to convey a faint idea of his feelings. And yet, as he looked at the huddled, trembling form in the chair, his sentiment was rather one of compassion than loathing. What was there behind? What tragedy of circumstance had driven this apparently light-hearted, butterfly little creature to such crooked ways?
“You’re an old hand, then? It’s not the first time you’ve cheated?”
Tommy Esmond smiled wanly. He did not answer the question at once.
“What age do you guess me, Spencer?”
“At a casual glance, a little over fifty. You may be older. Looking at you closely, you do seem a bit made up, dye and all that sort of thing.”
“My dear sir, I am old enough to be your father. I shall never see sixty again.”
“And when did you take to this game?” Esmond thought a little before he replied, he was evidently counting the years.
“When I was twenty-two I got an entrée into society. I was then enjoying an income of two pounds a week, I was a clerk in an insurance office. At twenty-four I left the insurance business and started cheating for a living.”
Spencer uttered a horrified ejaculation. He had never come across anything quite like this, at any rate, in actual experience.
“Would you like to know something of my history, or would you like to kick me out at once, and have done with it?” asked Esmond quietly.
But there were still some remnants of compassion in Spencer. And he was also a little curious. He was dealing, after all, with a human document. Tommy’s revelations would add to his experience of life.
“Tell me all you would like to say,” he said.
“It will be a relief to unbosom myself, after the years I have led this life,” was Esmond’s answer. “When I left Elsinore Gardens with my life in ruins, I felt I could have shrieked it all out to the policeman standing at the corner. I came on here, because I thought you would listen to me, because I felt sure you were not a Pharisee.”
Spencer motioned him to the sideboard. “Mix yourself another stiff peg, and steady your nerves. Then tell me as much as you like.”
Esmond went over and helped himself. After a few seconds the ague-like trembling ceased, and he was able to speak in a fairly steady voice.
“My father was a solicitor in a small way of business in an obscure town in the west of England. There were three children – an elder brother, myself, and a sister. My elder brother succeeded to the practice and is still in the same place, making both ends meet on a microscopic income. My sister is dead.
“My father was a God-fearing, deeply religious man, and did more than his duty by his family. He scraped and pinched to give us a good education, that being the only capital he could leave us. I was placed in an insurance office, the head of which was a distant connection of my mother’s.
“If I had chosen to be content with my lot I daresay in time I might have done fairly well, as I had more than average abilities, and gave complete satisfaction in the performance of my duties.
“Unfortunately, I ran across, by the purest accident, a young man some couple of years my senior. His father, a man of very good family, had died a short time previously and left him a very decent income of about two thousand a year. He had been at a private school with me when we were boys.
“This young man took a violent fancy to me, I was slim and not bad looking in those days. He had the entrée to some of the best houses in London through his aristocratic connections. He took me with him everywhere, as his bosom friend. I had certain social instincts, derived from Heaven knows where, and I soon found my feet. In twelve months I was able to run alone, sometimes I was able to get into houses where even he could not gain a footing. He laughingly declared that I had beaten him in the social race, but he was a good-natured fellow, without a particle of envy or meanness in his nature, and he was rather proud than otherwise that the pupil had outstripped the master.”
He paused for a moment. It was evident, that having kept silence for so many years, it was an enormous relief to unbosom himself.
In spite of his disgust, Spencer could not but feel interested in this bit of life-history. He had often felt curious as to Tommy Esmond’s past, and now that curiosity was going to be satisfied. He understood now why the little man had never made any but the most distant allusions to his home or his relatives.
“The life suited me down to the ground, but there was always the terrible problem of ways and means, good clothes, travelling, expensive flowers, etc, etc. I had got to three pounds a week, but that doesn’t go far in the circles to which I had been transplanted. It began to dawn upon me that, delightful as the life was, I was playing the fool, and neglecting the substance for the shadow. People asked me to their big parties, often to their dinners and to week-ends, but there was no money in it. In fact, I was getting out of my depth. I had already been obliged to borrow small sums from money-lenders to cover my expenses.
“Bitterly I made up my mind that sooner or later I must cut it, and take life seriously, like the poor man I was. I belonged to a good club where I had all my letters addressed. I lodged in a little street in Bloomsbury, in cheap apartments. My friend alone knew this address.
“He would have helped me to a considerable extent, but, strange to say, considering what I did afterwards, I shrank from accepting actual cash from him.”
Spencer interrupted him for a second. “You would not sponge upon your friend, instead you took to cheating your acquaintance. I take it that is what you are going to tell me.”
Esmond nodded. “Quite right. I had made up my mind to cut it, and disappear from a world in which I had no right to intrude. I had even made up my mind as to the exact date at the close of the season when I would disappear, and return to the humdrum life from which my friend roused me.
“A few days before that date, something very strange happened; my life has always been full of surprises. A few weeks before the fixed date, I had made the acquaintance of a young nobleman, a member of one of the best-known families in England. He was then about thirty, very handsome, very popular with both men and women. He is dead now, but, of course, I shall not mention his name, which would startle you if you heard it.
“As I have said, his family was a very distinguished one, but poor for its position. My friend, whom for the sake of convenience I will call Lord Frederick, lived in good style, never seemed short of cash, and paid his debts promptly. Those who knew were sure that he got little or no help from his family, yet he betted at race-meetings, played cards nearly every night, and lived generally the life of a man with a fair income.
“His own explanation was, that he had some intimate friends on the Stock Exchange who put him on to any good thing going. In the course of the year, according to his own account, he made a considerable sum out of racing.
“Lord Frederick, like my first friend, took considerable notice of me after we had become acquainted. Several times he invited me to his club. Afterwards he told me that he had a premonition I should be useful to him.
“I shall never forget that night when the deadly temptation came to me, when I learned what manner of rascal he was. It was the close of the season. In a very few days more I should have looked my last on this gay and alluring existence, should have ceased to lead this double life of a poor clerk by day, a young man of fashion by night.”
Spencer suddenly interrupted. “But was there not a great risk of detection? Were you never recognised in the City by some chance West End acquaintance.”
“Up to then, no. Of course, I must have been found out in time, if only from the suspicious circumstance that I could never accept any day invitations. This was one of the reasons that weighed most strongly with me in the resolve to give it up. I could not bear the thought that the Tommy Esmond who bore himself so bravely in his new world, who had managed to outlive all curiosity as to his antecedents, should be discovered in his true colours, a poor City drudge in an insurance office.
“To return to my story. I had dined with Lord Frederick at the – . No, I will not give the name of the club, one of the most exclusive in London: it might put you on his track. He had ordered a choice dinner, and he plied me liberally with wine. My heart was very full at the prospect of having to say good-bye to this luxurious life, in a very few days’ time.
“After dinner we went into the smoking-room, which was nearly empty, as most of the members had left London. There were only two other occupants, and they were at the far end of the apartment. Practically, we had the place to ourselves.
“He urged me strongly to take a trip over to Paris as his guest. I should have loved to go, but the wrench had to be made some time, it might as well be made now. Besides, I was heavily in debt, for a poor man, and I had not the cash to purchase the necessary outfit for such a trip.
“He would not accept my first refusal, but tried to persuade me into reconsidering. When I still persisted, he bluntly asked me my reasons.
“As I have said, I was very depressed that night at the prospect of all I was saying good-bye to. This mood was responsible for my blurting out a great portion of the absolute truth.
“I explained to him that I had already accepted too much of his hospitality, which my circumstances did not enable me to return, that I could no longer take advantage of his generosity.