Читать книгу The Masterfolk - Haldane MacFall - Страница 10

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Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder

The brooding man was still standing in the middle of the great studio when the butler entered, with catlike tread, and handed him a card on a silver salver.

Pangbutt took the card without looking at it.

“Take away the tray, Dukes,” he said.

He pointed with a trace of disgust to the broken meats, and, as he watched the silent servant gathering up the relics of the hurried feast, all that shabby Bohemian life, the very thought of which he had banished for years, came flooding back with disgust across the threshold of his splendid home.... How he loathed it!... But—the strange irony of it all! That the brilliant ones of the time of his pupillage should have gone under!... He himself had been the commonplace one, the near to dullard—he smiled—but here was he, and there were they!... Strange how the promise of youth is unfulfilled!... The Baddlesmeres gone under! God! they of all people!... Whilst for him? Fame, stretching out a vast glittering prospect as he topped the hill of endeavour.... He had left no smallest effort unmade to advance his own interests—and he stood at last in view of the promised land where hang the glittering prizes. By heavens! they were within hand’s reach——

He was roused by the butler’s voice, as the old servant opened the door to depart:

“And this gentleman downstairs, sir?” said he.

“Ah, yes.” Pangbutt glanced at the card in his fingers:

“Eustace Lovegood!” he murmured in surprise. “H’m—he sends up his card—evidently all goes well with Eustace Lovegood!”

He turned to Dukes:

“All right—show him up.”

The old servant vanished, the door stealthily closing after him.

Pangbutt’s face was scarred with a self-satisfied smirk: “They find me in rather altered circumstances.”

There was no mistaking the comfort of the reflection.

He was about to stride towards the fireplace and take up a baronial attitude, but put his hands behind his back instead, and stared at the floor, pondering. He tried to rouse his memory:

“But—let me see—Lovegood made rather a mark? What was it?”

The door opened, and Eustace Lovegood strode tragically into the room, the old black cloak swinging at his back.

Pangbutt turned: “O lord!” he growled into his beard, “another of the failures!”

He eyed Lovegood cynically until he halted; and, seeing that he would have to speak, he said:

“You asked to see me, Mr. Lovegood.”

Lovegood put his heels together and bowed.

Pangbutt had to speak again.

“Can I do anything for you?” he asked.

Eustace Lovegood strode up to him, put his strong hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the face:

“Nothing,” he said in his deep bass—“nothing ... except to remember that we were once friends.”

Pangbutt, in spite of a biting desire to play the swaggering lord, at once took the defensive. This man made him feel diffident even on his own elaborate carpet.

“Why do you choose to remind me of that to-night?” he asked sullenly, trying to assert himself.

Eustace took his hand from his shoulder, and fixed his gloomy eyes upon him:

“As I stood in the shadows of your hall just now,” said he slowly, “Anthony Baddlesmere passed out.”

Pangbutt uttered a light cynical laugh:

“What?” said he—“without nodding to you?”

Lovegood’s great brows met in a black frown:

“His eyes were on a broken career.... But I saw that he had not yet become a good beggar.”

A sneer curled the bearded lips of the other:

“And you?” he asked flippantly.

“I am better practised.... I have come to beg for him.”

Pangbutt’s lips curled into a deeper contempt:

“Yes,” said he—“you were always a good borrower, Eustace Lovegood.”

“I have not grown rich upon it.”

“So I see.”

Lovegood smiled grimly:

“Do I owe you anything?” he asked.

Pangbutt hesitated:

“N-no,” he said; “I am bound to confess—not for yourself.”

“Perhaps your confession involves by implication that there may be virtue even in borrowing—for those in need!”

“I cannot deny it.”

“Then I have grown virtuous—I have come to borrow.... Nay, man—to ask you to pay back.... Anthony Baddlesmere—did he want help?”

“He did not ask for help,” said the painter lamely.

The eyes of the great tragic man before him saw into the nakedness of his very conceit; and Paul Pangbutt realized that his chief weapon, his cold pride of egoism, was useless against the truth-seeking eyes of Eustace Lovegood—was without awe to him. He recoiled under the calm eyes of this big gentle fellow as he spoke:

“Paul—you never could see the soul in a man.... You could only value what part of him could be bought in shops, or whittled into shapes in the academies. The man who was here to-night is almost destitute. Anthony and Caroline Baddlesmere—who were the Bountifuls to all of us in Paris—destitute!”

“I am not the cause of it,” Pangbutt answered sullenly.

An ugly frown came over the big man’s eyes:

“No, but he helped you to this.” He swept his hand round the room slowly. “He gave you a footing at the Embassy in Paris.... I need not go into details.... The rest is here. And you could let him leave your house ashamed to ask for help!”

Pangbutt made an effort to take the domineering careless attitude; but he realized that his play-acting was worse than lost on this man’s grim regard.

“I did not grasp that it was so serious, Lovegood.... I will—drop in one day—and—see if something cannot be done——”

He saw the smile of contempt move the pale heavy features of Eustace Lovegood as he shrugged his huge shoulders, and, with an exhaustive snort of disgust, strode slowly out of the room.

The door closed after him with a loud resounding slam, rattled on its hinges, and was still.

Pangbutt stood brooding with frowning eyes fixed upon it:

He shrugged his shoulders:

“Lovegood never loses the grand manner,” he thought, “even when he has no necktie. Damnation! the Past seems never to be buried.... We think the day is dead because we blowout the candle and lie down at night. We forget the world’s the same—’tis we that sleep. Tush! the Past is never dead—until it’s our winding-sheet——”

He saw himself reflected in a large mirror. He gazed at the well-groomed man of the world that stood there in the mirrored make-believe room, solid as he; and he laughed bitterly as it came to him that this dandified spruce shadow that mimicked his magnificence had thought to shake off at a wish the years of sordid striving together with the Things that had been Done and Rejected and—Forsaken!... Tshah; he had been congratulating this spruce fellow upon it only a few minutes gone by—thanking his most gentlemanly star that he had done with the whole gang. And to-day—they were pushing stealthily at his doors, creeping into his magnificent home, nay, bursting into his life again—thrusting jeering faces into his, whether he would or not. Indeed, his smug shadow sneered at him—for behind the well-bred silence of his old comrades was the knowledge of his low origin—and he had no pride in aught but hiding what had been to a bigger man his source of pride.

Perhaps he ought to help—for decency’s sake; but——

Strange—these were the very people who had given him his chance in life. But for them, he had still been a mediocrity in Paris.

But why should he have the whole crew “hail-fellow”?

If a man is to rise above the crowd he must stand alone—be rid of encumbrances——

He started:

A door slammed below.

There was the loud noise of a gathering tumult without. It was coming up the stairs—his stairs!

“Curse it! is all Bedlam abroad to-night?” said he.

He strode angrily towards the uproar beyond the great folding doors; but they were flung open, and there entered a gust of loud laughter and the shuffle of many feet upon the stairs.