Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

Bob himself was hopeless from a parent's point of view. He was actually a little touched by Mrs Trumbler's way of looking at the world; he did think--and confessed it to Janie--that there was something very remarkable in the way Harry Tristram had been cleared from his path. He was in no sense an advanced thinker, and people in love are apt to believe in what are called interpositions. Further, he was primitive in his ideas; he had won the lady, and that seemed to him enough. It was enough, if he could keep her; and in these days that really depends on herself. Moreover he had no doubt of keeping her; his primitiveness appears again; with the first kiss he seemed to pass from slave to master. Many girls would have taught him better. Janie was not one. She seemed rather to acquiesce, being, it must be presumed, also of a somewhat primitive cast of mind. It was terribly clear to Iver that the pair would stand to one another and settle down in inglorious contentment together for their lives. Yes, it was worse than Duplay; something might have been made of him. As for Harry--Iver used to end by thinking how sensible a man old Mr Neeld was; for Mr Neeld had determined to hold his tongue.

There was another vexation, of a different kind indeed, but also a check in his success. Blinkhampton was not going quite right. Blinkhampton was a predestined seaside resort on the South Coast, and Iver, with certain associates, meant to develop it. They had bought it up, and laid it out for building, and arranged for a big hotel with Birch & Company, the famous furnishers. But all along in front of it--between where the street now was and the esplanade was soon to be--ran a long narrow strip, forming the estate of an elderly gentleman named Masters. Of course Masters had to be bought out, the whole scheme hanging on that. Iver, keen at a bargain, hard in business hours (had not Mina Zabriska discovered that?), confident that nobody would care to incur his enmity--he was powerful--by forestalling him, had refused Masters his price; the old gentleman would have to come down. But some young men stepped in, with the rashness of their youth, and acquired an option of purchase from Masters. Iver smiled in a vexed fashion, but was not dismayed. He let it be known that anybody who advanced money to the young men--Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney was the firm--would be his enemies; then he waited for the young men to approach him. They did not come. At last, pride protesting, prudence insisting, he wrote and suggested that they might probably be glad to make an arrangement with him. Mr Sloyd--our Mr Sloyd--wrote back that they had found a capitalist--no less than that--and proposed to develop their estate themselves, to put up their own hotel, also a row of boarding-houses, a club, a winter garden, and possibly an aquarium. Youth and a sense of elation caused Sloyd to add that they would always be glad to cooperate with other gentlemen interested in Blinkhampton.

Iver had many irons in the fire; he could no more devote himself exclusively and personally to Blinkhampton than Napoleon could spend all his time in the Peninsula. The transaction was important, yet hardly vital; besides Iver himself could keep his ear to the telephone. It was an opportunity for Bob to win his spurs; Iver proposed to him to go to town and act as his representative.

"I'm afraid you'll lose the game if I play it for you, Mr Iver," responded Bob, with a shake of his head and a good-humored smile. "I'm not accustomed to that sort of job, you know."

"It would be a good chance for you to begin to learn something of business."

"Well, you see, farming's my business. And I don't think I'm a fool at that. But building speculations and so on----" Bob shook his head again.

The progressive man gazed in wonder at the stationary. (We divide humanity again.)

"You've no desire for--for a broader sphere?" he asked.

"Well, I like a quiet life, you see--with my horses, and my crops, and so on. Don't believe I could stand the racket." So far as physique was concerned, Bob could have stood penal servitude and a London Season combined.

"But it's an opening," Iver persisted, by now actually more puzzled than angry. "If you found yourself at home in the work, it might lead to anything." He resisted the temptation to add, "Look at me!" Did not Fairholme, its lawns and green-houses, say as much for him?

"But I don't know that I want anything," smiled Bob. "Of course I'll have a shot if it'll oblige you," he added. "But---- Well, I'd rather not risk it, you know."

Janie was there. Iver turned to her in despair. She was smiling at Bob in an approving understanding way.

"It really isn't what would suit Bob, father," said she. "Besides, if he went into your business, we should have to be so much in town and hardly ever be at home at Mingham."

At home at Mingham! What a destiny! Certainly Blent was in the same valley, but---- Well, a "seat" is one thing, and a farm's another; the world is to blame again, no doubt. And with men who want nothing, for whom the word "opening" has no magic, what is to be done? Abstractly they are seen to be a necessary element in the community; but they do not make good sons or sons-in-law for ambitious men. Janie, when she had seen Bob, an unrepentant cheerful Bob, on his way, came back to find her father sitting sorrowful.

"Dearest father, I'm so sorry," she said, putting her arms round his neck.

He squared his shoulders to meet facts; he could always do that. Moreover he looked ahead--that power was also among his gifts--and saw how presently this thing, like other things, would become a matter of course.

"That's settled, Janie," said he. "I've made my last suggestion."

She went off in distress to her mother, but was told to "let him alone." The wisdom of woman and of years spoke. Presently Iver went out to play golf. But his heart was still bitter within him; he could not resist the sight of a possible sympathizer; he mentioned to the Major, who was his antagonist in the game, that it was not often that a young fellow refused such a chance as he had just offered in vain to Bob Broadley. His prospective relationship to Bob had reached the stage of being assumed between Duplay and him, although it had not yet been explicitly mentioned.

"I wish somebody would try me!" laughed the Major. "I'm kicking my heels all day down here."

Iver made no reply and played the round in silence. He lost, perhaps because he was thinking of something else. He liked Duplay, he thought him clever, and, looking back on the history of the Tristram affair, he felt somehow that he would like to do the Major a good turn. Were they not in a sense companions in misfortune?

Two days later Duplay sat in the offices of Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney, as Iver's representative; his mission was to represent to the youthful firm the exceeding folly of their conduct in regard to Blinkhampton. His ready brain had assimilated all the facts, and they lost nothing by his ready tongue. He even made an impression on the enemy.

"It doesn't do to look at one transaction only, Mr Sloyd," he reminded the spruce but rather nervous young man. "It'll pay you to treat us reasonably. Mr Iver's a good friend to have and a bad enemy."

"I'm quite alive to all that; but we have obtained a legitimate advantage and----" Sloyd was evidently a little puzzled, and he glanced at the clock.

"We recognize that; we offer you two thousand pounds. We take over your option and give you two thousand." This was the figure that Iver and he had decided would tempt the young firm; their fear of the great Mr Iver would make them content with that.

Sloyd was half inclined to be content; the firm would make a thousand; the balance would be good interest on the capitalist's ten thousand pounds; and there would still be enough of a victory to soothe the feelings of everybody concerned.

"I'm expecting the gentleman who is associated with us. If you'll excuse me, I'll step out and see if he's arrived."

Duplay saw through the suggestion, but he had no objection to permitting a consultation. He lit his cigar and waited while Sloyd was away. The Major was in greater contentment with himself than he had been since he recognized his defeat. Next to succeeding, it is perhaps the pleasantest thing to make people regret that you have not succeeded. If he proved his capacity Iver would regret what had happened more; possibly even Janie would come to regret it. And he was glad to be using his brains again. If they took the two thousand, if Iver got the Masters estate and entire control of Blinkhampton for twenty-two thousand, Duplay would have had a hand in a good bargain. He thought the Sloyds would yield. "Be strong about it," Iver had said. "These young fellows have plenty of enterprise, plenty of shrewdness, but they haven't got the grit to take big chances. They'll catch at a certainty." Sloyd's manner had gone far to bear out this opinion.

Sloyd returned, but, instead of coming in directly, he held the door and allowed another to pass in front of him. Duplay jumped up with a muttered exclamation. What the deuce was Harry Tristram doing there? Harry advanced, holding out his hand.

"We neither of us thought we should meet in this way, Major Duplay? The world's full of surprises. I've learnt that anyhow, and I dare say you've known it a long while."

"You're in this business?" cried the Major, too astonished for any preamble.

Harry nodded. "Let's get through it," he said. "Because it's very simple. Sloyd and I have made up our minds exactly what we ought to have."

It was the same manner that the Major remembered seeing by the Pool--perhaps a trifle less aggressive, but making up for that by an even increased self-confidence. Duplay had thought of his former successful rival as a broken man. He was not that. He had never thought of him as a speculator in building land. Seemingly that was what he had become.

Harry sat down by the table, Sloyd standing by him and spreading out before him a plan of Blinkhampton and the elevation of a row of buildings.

"You ask us," Harry went on resentfully, almost accusingly, "to throw up this thing just when we're ready to go ahead. Everything's in train; we could begin work to-morrow."

"Come, come, where are you going to get the money?" interrupted Duplay. He felt that he must assert himself.

"Never mind, we can get it; or we can wait till we do. We shut you out just as badly whether we leave the old buildings or put up new. However, we shall get it. I'm satisfied as to that."

"You've heard my offer?"

"Yes," smiled Harry. "The reward for getting ahead of Mr Iver is, it seems, two thousand pounds. It must be done pretty often if it's as cheap as that! I hope he's well?"

"Quite well, Mr Tristram, thank you. But when you talk of getting ahead of him----"

"Well, I put it plainly; that's all. I'm new to this, and I dare say Sloyd here would put it better. But my money's in it, so I like to have my say."

Both the dislike and the reluctant respect of old days were present in the Major's mind. He felt that the quality on whose absence Iver had based his calculations had been supplied. Harry might be ignorant. Sloyd could supply the knowledge. Harry had that grit which hitherto the firm had lacked. Harry seemed to guess something of what was passing through his adversary's mind.

"I don't want to be anything but friendly. Neither Sloyd nor I want that--especially toward Mr Iver--or toward you, Major. We've been neighbors." He smiled and went on, smiling still: "Oddly enough, I've said what I'm going to say to you once before--on a different occasion. You seem to have been trying to frighten us. I am not to be frightened, that's all."

Sloyd whispered in his ear; Duplay guessed that he counselled more urbanity; Harry turned from him with a rather contemptuous little laugh. "Oh, I've got my living to earn now," Duplay heard him whisper--and reflected that he had never wasted much time on politeness, even before that necessity came upon him.

It was strange that Sloyd did not try to take any part in the discussion. He wore an air of deference, partly due no doubt to Harry's ability, yet having unmistakably a social flavor about it. Harry's lordlinesses clung to him still, and had their effect on his business partner. Duplay lodged an angry inward protest to the effect that they had none whatever on him.

"Perhaps I'd better just say what we want," Harry pursued. "We've paid Masters twenty thousand. We may be five hundred more out of pocket. Never mind that." He pushed away the plans and elevations. "You're empowered to treat, I suppose?" he asked. Sloyd had whispered to him again.

"No," said Duplay. "But as a final offer, I think I can pledge Mr Iver to go as far as five thousand (over and above the twenty thousand of course)--to cover absolutely everything, you know."

"Multiply your twenty-five by two, and we're your men," said Harry.

"Multiply it by two? Fifty thousand? Oh, nonsense!"

"Twenty out of pocket--thirty profit. I call it very reasonable."

Major Duplay rose with a decisive air.

"I'm afraid I'm wasting your time," he said, "and my own too. I must say good-afternoon."

"Pray, Major Duplay, don't be so abrupt, sir. We've----" It was Sloyd who spoke, with an eager gesture as though he would detain the visitor. Harry turned on him with his ugliest haughtiest scowl.

"I thought you'd left this to me, Sloyd?" he said.

Sloyd subsided, apologetic but evidently terrified. Alas, that the grit had been supplied! But for that a triumph must have awaited the Major. Harry turned to Duplay.

"I asked you before if you'd authority to treat. I ask you now if you've authority to refuse to treat."

"I've authority to refuse to discuss absurdities."

"Doubtless. And to settle what are absurdities? Look here. I don't ask you to accept that proposal without referring to Mr Iver. I merely say that is the proposal, and that we give Mr Iver three days to consider it. After that our offer is withdrawn."

Sloyd was biting his nails--aye, those nails that he got trimmed in Regent Street twice a week; critical transactions must bring grist to those skilled in manicure. Duplay glanced from his troubled face to Harry's solid, composed, even amused mask.

"And you might add," Harry went on, "that it would be a very good thing if Mr Iver saw his way to run up and have a talk with me. I think I could make him see the thing from our point of view." Something seemed to occur to him. "You must tell him that in ordinary circumstances I should propose to call on him and to come wherever he was, but--well, he'll understand that I don't want to go to Blentmouth just now."

The implied apology relieved what Duplay had begun to feel an intolerable arrogance, but it was a concession of form only, and did not touch the substance. The substance was and remained an ultimatum. The Major felt aggrieved; he had been very anxious to carry his first commission through triumphantly and with _éclat_. For the second time Harry Tristram was in his path.

Harry rose. "That's all we can do to-day," he said. "We shall wait to hear from Mr Iver."

"I really don't feel justified in putting such a proposition before him."

"Oh, that's for you to consider," shrugged Harry. "I think I would though, if I were you. At the worst, it will justify you in refusing to do business with us. Do you happen to be walking down toward Pall Mall?" Sloyd's offices were in Mount Street. "Good-day, Sloyd. I'll drop in to-morrow."

With an idea that some concession might still be forthcoming, not from any expectation of enjoying his walk, the Major consented to accompany Harry.

"It was a great surprise to see you appear," he said as they started. "So odd a coincidence!"

"Not at all," smiled Harry. "You guess why I went into it? No? Well, of course, I know nothing about such things really. But Sloyd happened to mention that Iver wanted to buy, so I thought the thing must be worth buying, and I looked into it." He laughed a little. "That's one of the penalties of a reputation like Iver's, isn't it?"

"But I didn't know you'd taken to business at all."

"Oh, one must do something. I can't sit down on four hundred a year, you know. Besides, this is hardly business. By-the-bye, though, I ought to be as much surprised to see you. We've both lost our situation, is that it, Major?"

Insensibly the Major began to find him rather pleasanter, not a man he would ever like really, but all the same more tolerable than he had been at Blent; so Harry's somewhat audacious reference was received with a grim smile.

"I knocked you out, you know," Harry pursued. "Left to himself, I don't believe old Bob Broadley would ever have moved. But I put him up to it."

"What?" Duplay had not expected this.

"Well, you tried to put me out, you see. Besides, Janie Iver liked him, and she didn't care about you--or me either, for that matter. So just before I--well, disappeared--I told Bob that he'd win if he went ahead. And I gather he has won, hasn't he?"

A brief nod from Duplay answered him; he was still revolving the news about Bob Broadley.

"I'm afraid I haven't made you like me any better," said Harry with a laugh. "And I don't go out of my way to get myself disliked. Do you see why I mentioned that little fact about Bob Broadley just now?"

"I confess I don't, unless you wished to annoy me. Or--pardon--perhaps you thought it fair that I should know?"

"Neither the one nor the other. I didn't do it from the personal point of view at all. You see, Bob had a strong position--and didn't know it."

Duplay glanced at him. "Well," he said, "what you did didn't help you, though it hurt me perhaps."

"I told him he had a strong position. Then he took it. Hullo, here we are in Pall Mall. Now you see, don't you, Major?"

"No, I don't." Duplay was short in manner again.

"You don't see any parallel between Bob's position and our friend's up there in Mount Street?" Harry laughed again as he held out his hand. "Well, you tell the story to Iver and see if he does," he suggested.

"Oh, that's what you mean?" growled Duplay.

"Yes," assented Harry, almost gleefully. "That's what I mean; only this time it won't hurt you, and I think it will help me. You've done all you could, you know."

The touch of patronage came again. Duplay had hard work to keep his temper under. Yet now it was rather annoyance that he felt than the black dislike that he used to harbor. Harry's misfortune had lessened that. If only Harry had been more chastened by his misfortune the annoyance might have gone too. Unfortunately, the young man seemed almost exultant.

"Well, good-by. Write to Sloyd--unless Iver decides to come up. And don't forget that little story about Bob Broadley! Because you'll find it useful, if you think of frightening Sloyd. He can't move without me--and I don't move without my price."

"You moved from Blent," Duplay reminded him, stung to a sudden malice.

"Yes," said Harry thoughtfully. "Yes, so I did. Well, I suppose I had my price. Good-by." He turned away and walked quickly down the street.

"What was his price?" asked the Major, puzzled. He was not aware that Harry had got anything out of his surrender; and even Harry himself seemed rather to conclude that, since he had moved, he must have got his price than to say that he had got it or to be able to tell what it was.

But all that was not the question now. Duplay sought the telegraph office and informed Iver of the uncompromising attitude of the enemy. He added that Harry Tristram was in the business and that Harry suggested an interview. It was perhaps the most significant tribute that Harry had yet received when, after a few minutes of surprise and a few more of consideration, Iver telegraphed back that he would come up to town, and wished an appointment to be made for him with Mr Tristram. It was something to force Napoleon to come to the Peninsula.

In fact, the only thing that could upset Iver's plans was blank defiance. Reviewing his memories of Harry Tristram, he knew that defiance was just what he had to fear. It was in the blood of the Tristrams, and prudence made no better a resistance than propriety.

XX

THE TRISTRAM WAY--A SPECIMEN

Harry Tristram had led Lady Evenswood to believe that he would inform himself of his cousin's state of mind, or even open direct communication with her. He had done nothing to redeem this implied promise, although the remembrance of it had not passed out of his mind. But he was disinclined to fulfil it. In the first place, he was much occupied with the pursuits and interests of his new life; secondly, he saw no way to approach her in which he would not seem a disagreeable reminder; he might even be taken for a beggar or at least regarded as a reproachful suppliant. The splendor, the dramatic effect of his surrender and of the scene which had led up to it, would be endangered and probably spoilt by a resumption of intercourse between them. His disappearance had been magnificent--no other conclusion could explain the satisfaction with which he looked back on the episode. There was no material yet for a reappearance equally striking. When he thought about her--which was not very often just now--it was not to say that he would never meet her again; he liked her too well, and she was too deeply bound up with the associations of his life for that; but it was to decide to postpone the meeting, and to dream perhaps of some progress or turn of events which should present him with his opportunity, and invest their renewed acquaintance with an atmosphere as unusual and as stimulating as that in which their first days together had been spent. Thus thinking of her only as she affected him, he remained at heart insensible to the aspect of the case which Lady Evenswood had commended to his notice. Cecily's possible unhappiness did not come home to him. After all, she had everything and he nothing--and even he was not insupportably unhappy. His idea, perhaps, was that Blent and a high position would console most folk for somebody else's bad luck; men in bad luck themselves will easily take such a view as that; their intimacy makes a second-hand acquaintance with sorrow seem a trifling trouble.

Yet he had known his mother well. And he had made his surrender. Well, only a very observant man can tell what his own moods may be; it is too much to ask anybody to prophesy another's; and the last thing a man appreciates is the family peculiarities--unless he happens not to share them.

Southend was working quietly; aided by Jenkinson Neeld, he had prepared an elaborate statement and fired it in at Mr Disney's door, himself retreating as hastily as the urchin who has thrown a cracker. Lady Evenswood was trying to induce her eminent cousin to come to tea. The Imp, in response to that official missive which had made such an impression on her, was compiling her reminiscences of Heidelberg and Addie Tristram. Everybody was at work, and it was vaguely understood that Mr Disney was considering the matter, at least that he had not consigned all the documents to the waste-paper basket and the writers to perdition--which was a great point gained with Mr Disney. "No hurry, give me time"--"don't push it"--"wait"--"do nothing"--"the _status quo_"--all these various phrases expressed Lord Southend's earnest and re-iterated advice to the conspirators. A barony had, in his judgment, begun to be a thing which might be mentioned without a smile. And the viscounty--Well, said Lady Evenswood, if Robert were once convinced, the want of precedents would not stop him; precedents must, after all, be made, and why should not Robert make them?

This then, the moment when all the wise and experienced people were agreed that nothing could, should, or ought to be done, was the chance for a Tristram. Addie would have seized it without an instant's hesitation; Cecily, her blood unavoidably diluted with a strain of Gainsborough, took two whole days to make the plunge--two days and a struggle, neither of which would have happened had she been Addie. But she did at last reach the conclusion that immediate action was necessary, that she was the person to act, that she could endure no more delay, that she must herself go to Harry and do the one terrible thing which alone suited, met, and could save the situation. It was very horrible to her. Here was its last and irresistible fascination. Mina supplied Harry's address--ostensibly for the purpose of a letter; nothing else was necessary but a hansom cab.

In his quiet room in Duke Street, Harry was working out some details of the proposed buildings at Blinkhampton. Iver was to come to town next day, and Harry thought that the more entirely ready they seemed to go on, the more eager Iver would be to stop them; so he was at it with his elevations, plans, and estimates. It was just six o'clock, and a couple of quiet hours stretched before him. Nothing was in his mind except Blinkhampton; he had forgotten himself and his past fortunes, Blent and the rest of it; he had even forgotten the peculiarities of his own family. He heard with most genuine vexation that a lady must see him on urgent business; but he had not experience enough to embolden him to send word that he was out.

Such a message would probably have availed nothing. Cecily was already at the door; she was in the room before he had done giving directions that she should be admitted. Again the likeness which had already worked on him so powerfully struck him with unlessened force; for its sake he sprang forward to greet her and met her outstretched hands with his. There was no appearance of embarrassment about her, rather a great gladness and a triumph in her own courage in coming. She seemed quite sure that she had done the right thing.

"You didn't come to me, so I came to you," she explained, as though the explanation were quite sufficient.

She brought everything back to him very strongly--and in a moment banished Blinkhampton.

"Does anybody know you've come?"

"No," she smiled. That was a part of the fun. "Mina didn't know I was going out. You see everybody's been doing something except me and----"

"Everybody doing something? Doing what?"

"Oh, never mind now. Nothing of any real use."

"There's nothing to do," said Harry with a smile and a shrug.

She was a little disappointed to find him looking so well, so cheerful, so busy. But the new impression was not strong enough to upset the preconceptions with which she had come. "I've come to tell you I can't bear it," she said. "Oh, why did you ever do it, Harry?"

"On my honor I don't know," he admitted after a moment's thought. "Won't you sit down?" He watched her seat herself, actually hoping for the famous attitude. But she was too excited for it. She sat upright, her hands clasped on her knees. Her air was one of gravity, of tremulous importance. She realized what she was going to do; if she had failed to understand its very unusual character she would probably never have done it at all.

"I can't bear this state of things," she began. "I can't endure it any longer."

"Oh, I can, I'm all right. I hope you haven't been worrying?"

"Worrying! I've robbed you, robbed you of everything. Oh, I know you did it yourself! That makes it worse. How did I come to make you do it?"

"I don't know," he said again. "Well, you seemed so in your place at Blent. Somehow you made me feel an interloper. And----" He paused a moment. "Yes, I'm glad," he ended.

"No, no, you mustn't be glad," she cried quickly. "Because it's unendurable, unendurable!"

"To you? It's not to me. I thought it might be. It isn't."

"Yes, to me, to me! Oh, end it for me, Harry, end it for me!"

She was imploring, she was the suppliant. The reversal of parts, strange in itself, hardly seemed strange to Harry Tristram. And it made him quite his old self again. He felt that he had something to give. But her next words shattered that delusion.

"You must take it back. Let me give it back to you," she prayed.

He was silent a full minute before he answered slowly and coldly:

"From anybody else I should treat that as an insult; with you I'm willing to think it merely ignorance. In either case the absurdity's the same." He turned away from her with a look of distaste, almost of disgust. "How in the world could you do it?" he added by way of climax.

"I could do it. In one way I could." She rose as he turned back to her. "I want you to have Blent. You're the proper master of Blent. Do you think I want to have it by accident?"

"You have it by law, not by accident," he answered curtly. He was growing angry. "Why do you come here and unsettle me?" he demanded. "I wasn't thinking of it. And then you come here!"

She was apologetic no longer. She faced him boldly.

"You ought to think of it," she insisted. "And, yes, I've come here because it was right for me to come, because I couldn't respect myself unless I came. I want you to take back Blent."

"What infernal nonsense!" he exclaimed. "You know it's impossible."

"No," she said; she was calm but her breath came quick. "There's one way in which it's possible."

In an instant he understood her; there was no need of more words. She knew herself to be understood as she looked at him; and for a while she looked steadily. But his gaze too was long, and it became very searching, so that presently, in spite of her efforts, she felt herself flushing red, and her eyes fell. The room had become uncomfortably quiet too. At last he spoke.

"I suppose you remember what I told you about Janie Iver," he said, "and that's how you came to think I might do this. You must see that that was different. I gave as much as I got there. She was rich, I was----" He smiled sourly. "I was Tristram of Blent. You are Tristram of Blent, I am----" He shrugged his shoulders.

He made no reference to the personal side of the case. She was not hurt, she was enormously relieved.

"I'm not inclined to be a pensioner on my wife," he said.

She opened her lips to speak; she was within an ace of telling him that, if this and that went well, he would have so assured and recognized a position that none could throw stones at him. Her words died away in face of the peremptory finality of his words and the bitter anger on his face. She sat silent and forlorn, wondering what had become of her resolve and her inspiration.

"In my place you would feel as I do," he said a moment later. His tone was milder. "You can't deny it," he insisted. "Look me in the face and deny it if you can. I know you too well."

For some minutes longer she sat still. Then she got up with a desolate air. Everything seemed over; the great offer, with its great scene, had come to very little. Anticlimax, foe to emotion! She remembered how the scene in the Long Gallery had gone. So much better, so much better! But Harry dominated her--and he had stopped the scene. Without attempting to bid him any farewell she moved toward the door slowly and drearily.

She was arrested by his voice--a new voice, very good-natured, rather chaffing.

"Are you doing anything particular to-night?" he asked.

She turned round; he was smiling at her in an open but friendly amusement.

"No," she murmured. "I'm going back home, I suppose."

"To Blent?" he asked quickly.

"No, to our house. Mina's there and----" Her face was puzzled; she left her sentence unfinished.

"Well, I've got nothing to do. Let's have dinner and go somewhere together?"

Their eyes met. Gradually Cecily's lightened into a sparkle as her lips bent and her white teeth showed a little. She was almost laughing outright as she answered readily, without so much as a show of hesitation or a hint of surprise, "Yes."

Nothing else can be so ample as a monosyllable is sometimes. If it had been Harry's object to escape from a tragic or sensational situation he had achieved it triumphantly. The question was no longer who should have Blent, but where they should have dinner. Nothing in his manner showed that he had risked and succeeded in a hazardous experiment; he had brought her down to the level of common-sense--that is, to his own view of things; incidentally he had secured what he hoped would prove a very pleasant evening. Finally he meant to have one more word with her on the matter of her visit before they parted. His plan was very clear in his head. By the end of the evening she would have forgotten the exalted mood which had led her into absurdity; she would listen to a few wise and weighty words--such as he would have at command. Then the ludicrous episode would be over and done with forever; to its likeness, superficially at least rather strong, to that other scene in which he had been chief actor his mind did not advert.

A very pleasant evening it proved; so that it prolonged itself, naturally as it were and without express arrangement, beyond dinner and the play, and embraced in its many hours a little supper and a long drive in a cab to those distant regions where Cecily's house was situated. There was no more talk of Blent; there was some of Harry's new life, its features and its plans; there was a good deal about nothing in particular; and there was not much of any sort as they drove along in the cab at one o'clock in the morning.

But Harry's purpose was not forgotten. He bade the cabman wait and followed Cecily into the house. He looked round it with lively interest and curiosity.

"So this is where you came from!" he exclaimed with a compassionate smile. "You do want something to make up for this!"

She laughed as she took off her hat and sank into a chair. "Yes, this is--home," she said.

"Have you had a pleasant evening?" he demanded.

"You know I have."

"Are you feeling friendly to me?"

Now came the attitude; she threw herself into it and smiled.

"That's what I wanted," he went on. "Now I can say what I have to say."

She sat still, waiting to hear him. There was now no sign of uneasiness about her. She smiled luxuriously, and her eyes were resting on his face with evident pleasure. They were together again as they had been in the Long Gallery; the same contentment possessed her. The inner feeling had its outward effect. There came on him the same admiration, the same sense that she commanded his loyalty. When she had come to his rooms that afternoon he had found it easy to rebuke and to rule her. His intent for the evening had been the same; he had sought to bring her to a more friendly mind chiefly that she might accept with greater readiness the chastening of cool common-sense, and a rebuke from the decent pride which her proposal had outraged. Harry was amazed to find himself suddenly at a loss, looking at the girl, hardly knowing how to speak to her.

"Well?" she said. Where now was the tremulous excitement? She was magnificently at her ease and commanded him to speak, if he had anything to say. If not, let him hold his peace.

But he was proud and obstinate too. They came to a conflict there in the little room--the forgotten cab waiting outside, the forgotten Mina beginning to stir in her bed as voices dimly reached her ears and she awoke to the question--where was Cecily?

"If we're to be friends," Harry began, "I must hear no more of what you said this afternoon. You asked me to be a pensioner, you proposed yourself to be----"

He did not finish. The word was not handy, or he wished to spare her.

She showed no signs of receiving mercy.

"Very well," she said, smiling. "If you knew everything, you wouldn't talk like that. I suppose you've no idea what it cost me?"

"What it cost you?"

She broke into a scornful laugh. "You know what it really meant. Still you've only a scolding for me! How funny that you see one half and not the other! But you've given me a very pleasant evening, Cousin Harry."

"You must leave my life alone," he insisted brusquely.

"Oh, yes, for the future. I've nothing left to offer, have I? I have been--refused!" She seemed to exult in the abandonment of her candor.

He looked at her angrily, almost dangerously. For a passing moment she had a sensation of that physical fear from which no moral courage can wholly redeem the weak in body. But she showed none of it; her pose was unchanged; only the hand on which her head rested shook a little. And she began to laugh. "You look as if you were going to hit me," she said.

"Oh, you do talk nonsense!" he groaned. But she was too much for him; he laughed too. She had spoken with such a grand security. "If you tell me to walk out of the door I shall go."

"Well, in five minutes. It's very late."

"Oh, we weren't bred in Bayswater," he reminded her.

"I was--in Chelsea."

"So you say. I think in heaven--no, Olympus--really."

"Have you said what you wanted to say, Cousin Harry?"

"I suppose you hadn't the least idea what you were doing?"

"I was as cool as you were when you gave me Blent."

"You're cool enough now, anyhow," he admitted, in admiration of her parry.

"Quite, thanks." The hand behind her head trembled sorely. His eyes were on her, and a confusion threatened to overwhelm the composure of which she boasted.

"I gave you Blent because it was yours."

"What I offered you is mine."

"By God, no. Never yours to give till you've lost it!"

With an effort she kept her pose. His words hummed through her head.

"Did you say that to Janie Iver?" she mustered coolness to ask him mockingly.

He thrust away the taunt with a motion of his hand; one of Gainsborough's gimcracks fell smashed on the floor. Cecily laughed, glad of the excuse to seem at her ease.

"Hang the thing! If you'd loved me, you'd have been ashamed to do it."

"I was ashamed without loving you, Cousin Harry."

"Oh, do drop 'Cousin' Harry!"

"Well, I proposed to. But you wouldn't." Her only refuge now was in quips and verbal victories. They served her well, for Harry, less master of himself than usual, was hindered and tripped up by them. "Still, if we ever meet again, I'll say 'Harry' if you like."

"Of course we shall meet again." She surprised that out of him.

"It'll be so awkward for me now," she laughed lightly. But her mirth broke off suddenly as he came closer and stood over her.

"I could hate you for coming to me with that offer," he said.

Almost hating herself now, yet sorely wounded that he should think of hating her, she answered him in a fury.

"Well then, shouldn't I hate you for giving me Blent? That was worse. You could refuse, I couldn't. I have it, I have to keep it." In her excitement she rose and faced him. "And because of you I can't be happy!" she cried resentfully.

"I see! I ought to have drowned myself, instead of merely going away? Oh, I know I owe the world at large apologies for my existence, and you in particular, of course! Unfortunately, though, I intend to go on existing; I even intend to live a life of my own--not the life of a hanger-on--if you'll kindly allow me."

"Would any other man in the world talk like this after----?"

"Any man who had the sense to see what you'd done. I'm bound to be a nuisance to you anyhow. I should be least of a nuisance as your husband! That was it. Oh, I'm past astonishment at you."

His words sounded savage, but it was not their fierceness that banished her mirth. It was the new light they threw on that impulse of hers. She could only fall back on her old recrimination.

"When you gave me Blent----"

"Hold your tongue about Blent," he commanded imperiously. "If it were mine again, and I came to you and said, 'You're on my conscience, you fret me, you worry me. Marry me, and I shall be more comfortable!' What then?"

"Why, it would be just like you to do it!" she cried in malicious triumph.

"The sort of thing runs in the family, then." She started at the plainness of his sneer. "Oh, yes, that was it. Well, what would your answer be? Shall I tell you? You'd ask the first man who came by to kick me out of the room. And you'd be right."

The truth of his words pierced her. She flushed red, but she was resolved to admit nothing. Before him, at any rate, she would cling to her case, to the view of her own action to which she stood committed. He at least should never know that now at last he had made her bitterly and horribly ashamed, with a shame not for what she had proposed to do herself, but for what she had dared to ask him to do. She saw the thing now as he saw it. Had his manner softened, had he made any appeal, had he not lashed her with the bitterest words he could find, she would have been in tears at his feet. But now she faced him so boldly that he took her flush to mean anger. He turned away from her and picked up his hat from the chair on which he had thrown it.

"Well, that's all, isn't it?" he asked.

Before she had time to answer, there was a cry from the doorway, full of astonishment, consternation, and (it must be added) outraged propriety. For it was past two o'clock and Mina Zabriska, for all her freakishness, had been bred on strict lines of decorum. "Cecily!" she cried. "And you!" she added a moment later. They turned and saw her standing there in her dressing-gown, holding a candle. The sudden turn of events, the introduction of this new figure, the intrusion that seemed so absurd, overcame Cecily. She sank back in her chair, and laid her head on her hands on the table, laughing hysterically. Harry's frown grew heavier.

"Oh, you're there?" he said to Mina. "You're in it too, I suppose? I've always had the misfortune to interest you, haven't I? You wanted to turn me out first. Now you're trying to put me in again, are you? Oh, you women, can't you leave a man alone?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. And what are you doing here? Do you know it's half-past two?"

"It would be all the same to me if it was half-past twenty-two," said Harry contemptuously.

"You've been with her all the time?"

"Oh, lord, yes. Are you the chaperon?" He laughed, as he unceremoniously clapped his hat on his head. "We've had an evening out, my cousin and I, and I saw her home. And now I'm going home. Nothing wrong, I hope, Madame Zabriska?"

Cecily raised her head; she was laughing still, with tears in her eyes.

Mina looked at her. Considerations of propriety fell into the background.

"But what's it all about?" she cried.

"I'll leave Cecily to tell you." He was quiet now, but with a vicious quietness. "I've been explaining that I have a preference for being left alone. Perhaps it may not be superfluous to mention the fact to you too, Madame Zabriska. My cab's waiting. Good-night." He looked a moment at Cecily, and his eyes seemed to dwell a little longer than he had meant. In a tone rather softer and more gentle he repeated, "Good-night."

Cecily sprang to her feet. "I shall remember!" she cried. "I shall remember! If ever--if ever the time comes, I shall remember!" Her voice was full of bitterness, her manner proudly defiant.

Harry hesitated a moment, then smiled grimly. "I shouldn't be able to complain of that," he said, as he turned and went out to his cab.

Cecily threw herself into her chair again. The bewildered Imp stood staring at her.

"I didn't know where you were," Mina complained.

"Oh, it doesn't matter."

"Fancy being here with him at this time of night!"

Cecily gave no signs of hearing this superficial criticism on her conduct.

"You must tell me what it's all about," Mina insisted.

Cecily raised her eyes with a weary air, as though she spoke of a distasteful subject unwillingly and to no good purpose.

"I went to tell him he could get Blent back by marrying me."

"Cecily!" Many emotions were packed into the cry. "What did he say?"

Cecily seemed to consider for a moment, then she answered slowly:

"Well, he very nearly beat me--and I rather wish he had," she said.

The net result of the day had distinctly not been to further certain schemes. All that had been achieved--and both of them had contributed to it--was an admirable example of the Tristram way.

XXI

THE PERSISTENCE OF BLENT

Harry Tristram awoke the next morning with visions in his head--no unusual thing with young men, yet strange and almost unknown to him. They had not been wont to come at Blent, nor had his affair with Janie Iver created them. Possibly a constant, although unconscious, reference of all attractions to the standard, or the tradition, of Addie Tristram's had hitherto kept him free; or perhaps it was merely that there were no striking attractions in the valley of the Blent. Anyhow the visions were here now, a series of them covering all the hours of the evening before, and embodying for him the manifold changes of feeling which had marked the time. He saw himself as well as Cecily, and the approval of his eyes was still for himself, their irritation for her. But he could not dismiss her from the pictures; he realized this with a new annoyance. He lay later than his custom was, looking at her, recalling what she had said as he found the need of words to write beneath each mental apparition. Under the irritation, and greater than it, was the same sort of satisfaction that his activities had given him--a feeling of more life and broader; this thing, though rising out of the old life, fitted in well with the new. Above all, that sentence of hers rang in his head, its extravagance perhaps gaining pre-eminence for it: "If ever the time comes, I shall remember!" The time did not seem likely to come--so far as he could interpret the vague and rather threadbare phrase--but her resolution stirred his interest, and ended by exacting his applause. He was glad that she had resisted, and had not allowed herself to be trampled on. Though the threat was very empty, its utterance showed a high spirit, such a spirit as he still wished to preside over Blent. It was just what his mother might have said, with an equal intensity of determination and an equal absence of definite purpose. But then the whole proceedings had been just what he could imagine his mother bringing about. Consequently he was rather blind to the extraordinary character of the step Cecily had taken; so far he was of the same clay as his cousin. He was, however, none the less outraged by it, and none the less sure that he had met it in the right way. Yet he did not consider that there was any quarrel between them, and he meant to see more of her; he was accustomed to "scenes" occurring and leaving no permanent estrangement or bitterness; the storms blew over the sand, but they did not in the end make much difference in the sand.

There was work to be done--the first grave critical bit of work he had ever had to do, the first real measuring of himself against an opponent of proved ability. So he would think no more about the girl. This resolve did not work. She, or rather her apparition, seemed to insist that she had something to do with the work, was concerned in it, or at least meant to look on at it. Harry found that he had small objection, or even a sort of welcome for her presence. Side by side with the man's pleasure in doing the thing, there was still some of the boy's delight in showing he could do it. What had passed yesterday, particularly that idea of doing things for him which he had detected and raged at, made it additionally pleasant that he should be seen to be capable of doing things for himself. All this was vague, but it was in his mind as he walked to Sloyd's offices.

Grave and critical! Sloyd's nervous excitement and uneasy deference toward Iver were the only indications of any such thing. Duplay was there in the background, cool and easy. Iver himself was inclined to gossip with Harry and to chaff him on the fresh departure he had made, rather than to settle down to a discussion of Blinkhampton. That was after all a small matter--so his manner seemed to assert; he had been in town anyhow, so he dropped in; Duplay had made a point of it in his scrupulous modesty as to his own experience. Harry found that he could resist the impression he was meant to receive only by saying to himself as he faced his old friend and present antagonist: "But you're here--you're here--you're here!" Iver could neither gossip nor argue that fact away.

"Well now," said Iver with a glance at his watch, "we must really get to business. You don't want to live in Blinkhampton, you gentlemen, I suppose? You want to leave a little better for your visit, eh? Quite so. That's the proper thing with the sea-side. But you can't expect to find fortunes growing on the beach. Surely Major Duplay mistook your figures?"

"Unless he mentioned fifty thousand, he did," said Harry firmly.

"H'm, I did you injustice, Major--with some excuse, though. Surely, Mr Sloyd----?" He turned away from Harry as he spoke.

"I beg pardon," interrupted Harry. "Am I to talk to Major Duplay?"

Iver looked at him curiously. "Well, I'd rather talk to you, Harry," he said. "And I'll tell you plainly what I think. Mr Sloyd's a young business man--so are you."

"I'm a baby," Harry agreed.

"And blackmailing big people isn't a good way to start." He watched Harry, but he did not forget to watch Sloyd too. "Of course I use the word in a figurative sense. The estate's not worth half that money to you; we happen to want it--Oh, I'm always open!--So----" He gave a shrug.

"Sorry to introduce new and immoral methods into business, Mr Iver. It must be painful to you after all these years." Harry laughed good-humoredly. "I shall corrupt the Major too!" he added.

"We'll give you five thousand for your bargain--twenty-five in all."

"I suggested to Major Duplay that being ahead of you was so rare an achievement that it ought to be properly recognized."

Duplay whispered to Iver. Sloyd whispered to Harry. Iver listened attentively, Harry with evident impatience. "Let it go for thirty, don't make an enemy of him," had been Sloyd's secret counsel.