Читать книгу Adrian Savage - Mary St. Leger Kingsley - Страница 10

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His retina still holding that northern elfin landscape and seascape, his ears the voices of the forest and of the wildly yelping gulls, his mind still working on the thought of that new moral and social order now coming into being, his heart and his manhood crying out for the woman he loved, Adrian—the keen freshness of the winter morning pouring in through the open door along with him—entered the hall of the Tower House. And down the broad staircase, over the thick, sound-muffling carpet, the wan light streaming in through the blurred, leaded glass of the great staircase windows falling upon her meager, flat-bosomed, crape-clad figure, yellowish-auburn hair and strained, anxious countenance, came the other woman, the Ibsen woman, concerning whose nature and attributes he had just indulged in so much analytic speculation.

Joanna held up the front of her crape dress. Her feet showed as she stepped down the shallow treads. And Adrian, standing below, looking up at her, hat in hand, saw—though he didn’t in the least want to see—that she wore black velvet slippers with square toes and no heels to them, and that both her feet and hands, though comparatively small, were lacking in individuality and in that sharpness of outline which is the mark of fineness of breeding. They might have been just anybody’s hands and feet; and so—he felt amusedly ashamed of himself for admitting it—they were exactly the hands and feet one would expect Joanna Smyrthwaite to possess.

Taking himself to task for this involuntary cruelty of observation, his manner the more persuasive and gallant because he felt himself to blame, the young man advanced through the dull reds and browns of the spacious hall to the foot of the staircase.

“Ah! you are here! Good-morning, chère cousine,” he said. “I rose early and have already been out walking in your great woods and down on the shore. It is all a poem of the first days of creation, before man intruded his perplexing presence upon the earth. I felt quite rampantly decadent in this overcivilized twentieth-century costume, under obligation to offer the humblest apologies to the hairy mammoths and pterodactyls, which, at every turn of the road, I instinctively braced my courage to meet. But really it is rather wonderful how ‘the desert and the sown’ jostle one another here in England. The contrasts are so unexpected, so violent, so complete!”

Adrian talked on rather at random, smiling, his head thrown back, the expression of his handsome face gay yet subtlely apologetic; the general effect of him pleasantly healthy, self-secure, finished, and on excellently good terms both with fortune and with himself. And Joanna, looking down at him, faltered, stopped in her descent, let slip the folds of her crape skirt, while she laid one hand hurriedly upon the baluster-rail and pressed the other nervously against her left side over her heart.

“I am afraid,” she said, “you get up and go out so early on our account—I mean so that you may devote all the rest of the day to us.”

“Oh no,” Adrian returned, still smiling. “It is an old habit, one of my very few good habits, that of early rising. You see, I am quite a busy man in my own small way, what with my Review, my friends, my literary work—”

“I realize that, and so I am very much distressed at the demands which we are making upon your valuable time. I cannot justify or excuse it to myself. I do not think it was proper that papa should have appointed you as my coexecutor without consulting you and asking your permission first.”

She spoke with a suppressed violence of feeling which caused Adrian to gulp down his complete agreement in these sentiments, and reply in soothing tones:

“But, dear cousin, surely at this time of day it is superfluous to vex yourself about that! Believe me, you are too scrupulous, too considerate. I assure you, as I have so often assured you before, that I am touched by the confidence your father showed me in thus temporarily intrusting not only his affairs, but yourself and your sister, to my care. My sole desire is worthily to fulfil that trust. To do so constitutes, in as far as my time is concerned, an all-sufficient reward. And then, after all,” he added, gaily, “ten days, a fortnight even, should I have to go north to Leeds for a brief visit, will see all imperative business through and so put a term to our joint labors.”

There he paused, looking discreetly aside as he unbuttoned his overcoat, since he was aware that the gladness of coming freedom might declare itself with unflattering distinctness. For in imagination he sprinted once again, three steps at a time, up the three flights of stairs to the top story of the tall, gray house overlooking the Quai Malaquais, while high expectation, at once delicious and disturbing, circulated through every fiber of his being. How adorable it would be—how richly, poignantly enchanting! But just then, though by no means easily open to hypnotic or mesmeric influences, he became conscious that Joanna Smyrthwaite’s eyes—those tenacious, prominent, faded-blue eyes, with red-rimmed lids to them, which, to his seeing, so perpetually gave away the inward tempest of feeling to which the compressed lips refused utterance—were fixed upon him with an extraordinary intensity of questioning scrutiny. For a moment the young man felt frankly embarrassed, uncertain how to comport himself. For he had no answer whatever to give to that questioning scrutiny. He suddenly grew wary, fearing demand might create supply—of a fraudulent sort—courtesy betraying him into return glances dishonestly sympathetic in character. But, to his relief, the sound of an opening door, followed by that of two chattering feminine voices—high-pitched, unmusical in tone, one indeed peevish and complaining—coming from the gallery above created a diversion. He felt, rather than saw, Joanna Smyrthwaite start and look impatiently upward. Thus the awkward minute passed, resolving itself; and the situation—if the little episode deserved so high-sounding a title—was saved. Adrian backed away and slipped off his overcoat, doubling it together across his arm.

Joanna, her expression and manner agitated, descending the remaining treads of the staircase hastily, followed and stood close by him.

“That is Margaret,” she said, in a hurried undertone. “Marion Chase is with her as usual. And Mr. Challoner comes here at half-past eleven. It was his own proposition. I had a note from him early this morning. I should have been glad to put aside legal business just for to-day, but Margaret expressed unwillingness that I should refuse to receive him. There is something I feel I must explain to you, Cousin Adrian, before I see him. But I cannot speak of it before Margaret, still less before Marion Chase. Would it trouble you too much to come into the library with me? We should be alone. Margaret would hardly attempt to bring Marion in there, I should think.”

The young man assented readily, though the invitation was not very much to his taste. Of all the rooms in this finely proportioned yet gloomy house, that distinctly masculine apartment, the library aforesaid, was, to his thinking, the most depressing. Facing north and east, its windows were darkened by the rough corrugated trunks and scraggy lower branches of a grove of Weymouth pines, spared when the rest of the site had been cleared for building. These, at close quarters and when old, are doleful trees, lifeless and unchanging in aspect, telling of sour soil and barren, unprofitable spaces. Two sides of the room were lined, to within a couple of feet of the ceiling, with mahogany bookcases, the contents of which, in Adrian’s opinion, only too thoroughly harmonized in spirit with the doleful grove outside. They consisted of ranges of well-bound volumes upon such juiceless subjects as commercial and municipal law, ethics of citizenship and political economy, together with an extensive collection of pamphlets embodying the controversies of the last fifty years—social, political, ecclesiastical, and religious—neatly indexed and bound. Not only did the complete works of Adam Smith, David Hume, Dugald Stewart, and the two Mills—elder and younger—decorate the shelves; but portrait prints of these authors, along with those of certain liberal statesmen and Nonconformist divines, solidly framed and glazed, decorated the remaining wall spaces. The carpet and curtains were of a dull brown, patterned in dusky blues and greens. A writing-table of huge dimensions, fitted with many drawers; dark leather-covered chairs, various mechanical devices in the form of reading-desks and leg-rests, and an elaborate adjustable invalid couch constituted the other appointments of the room.

Following Joanna’s crape-clad figure into this severely educational sanctuary, Adrian could not but think of the long joyless hours she must have spent there reading to or writing for that imperious old gentleman, the late lamented Montagu. And this thought softened his attitude toward her, reawakening sentiments of chivalrous pity. For, though rich, highly educated, and clever, had not she, poor girl, every bit as much as her cautious, halting lover, been denied the very barest fighting chance?

“You are tired, chère cousine,” he said, consolingly. “Is it any wonder after the painful fatigues of yesterday? See, I place this chair comfortably near the fire for you. Sit down, and, while resting, tell me at your leisure what it is that you wish to explain.”

And Joanna not only sat down obediently, but, rather to his consternation, bowed her lean person together and pressed a fine, black-bordered pocket-handkerchief—insisted upon by the stylish young person from Grays’ as a necessary part of her mourning equipment—against her faded eyes and wept. Ah! poor thing! poor thing! she was a pitiful spectacle, a pitiful creature, inciting all the young man’s goodness of heart, sense of personal success, delight in living, physical soundness and well-being, to claim sympathy and forbearance toward her!

“Yes, yes,” he declared, almost tenderly. “I comprehend and associate myself with your grief. The trial has been so prolonged. You cannot expect to throw off painful impressions and adjust yourself to new conditions immediately. But that adjustment will come, dear cousin, believe me. It is merely a question of time, for you are young, and in youth our recuperative power is immense. So do not fight against your tears. If they relieve you, shed them freely.”

For a while Joanna remained bowed together, then she threw herself back in her chair almost convulsively.

“You must not be too kind to me,” she cried. “I enjoy it, but it encourages my want of self-control.”

“Don’t you good English people set an exaggerated value upon self-control, perhaps?” Adrian asked, gently, argumentatively. “Why waste so much energy in the effort to maintain an appearance of Red Indian stoicism and impassivity? Why fear to be human? Sensibility is a grace rather than a fault, especially in a woman—”

He moved away and stood by one of the eastern windows looking out into the pine grove. A draught of air, round the corner of the house, shook the stiff branches. He felt sorry for her, quite horribly sorry. But, just Heaven, how plain she was, with that tear-blotched face and those quivering lips and nostrils! Andrew Merriman’s appraisement of her appearance and the consequences entailed by it in respect of a possible suitor were not overstated. Adrian waited, giving not only her, but himself, time to recover, and, approaching her again, did so smiling.

“Ah! that is well, dear cousin,” he said. “Already you feel better, you regain your serenity. Well then, let us talk quietly about this matter which you wish to explain to me.”

“It was about our wills—Margaret’s and mine, I mean; about the disposition of our property.” As she spoke she clenched her right hand, working it against the palm of her left, like a ball working in a socket. “Mr. Challoner has mentioned this subject to Margaret, impressing upon her that we ought to attend to it without delay.”

“Our good Challoner is a little disposed to magnify his office,” Adrian put in, lightly.

“So I have thought—sometimes,” Joanna agreed, a trace of eagerness in her flat, colorless voice, produced—as always—from the top of an empty lung. “But he has great influence over Margaret. I do not want to be unjust, but I think the ideas he suggests to her are not always suitable. They tend to create difficulties between us. From what Margaret tells me I gather that he has discussed this subject very freely with her. She refers to it and quotes him continually when we are alone. I gather that he thinks I ought to make a will exclusively in Margaret’s favor, so that in the event of my death the estate may pass to papa’s direct descendants. He tells Margaret, as I gather, that papa wished this although he left no written instructions regarding it. And he—he—Mr. Challoner, I mean—appears to take for granted that while Margaret will almost certainly marry now, it is improbable I shall ever marry.”

“But,” Adrian cried, indignantly, though against his convictions and his better judgment, “in even hinting at such a thing Challoner is guilty of a very great impertinence! He takes for granted that which is no concern of his, and takes it for granted altogether prematurely, thereby laying himself open to a well-deserved and very extensive snubbing.”

Joanna’s breath caught in her throat. Again the young man felt her eyes fix on him with an extraordinary intensity of gaze.

“Cousin Adrian,” she said, hurriedly, “has any one ever told you—do you know—I think you ought to know—about our brother William—about Bibby?”

This time Adrian met her gaze steadily. He felt it imperative to do so. To his relief, after a momentary fluttering, the red-rimmed eyelids were lowered.

“I have heard a little about him, poor boy,” he answered, gently and respectfully. “I have heard that he caused those who loved him anxiety and trouble.”

“And humiliation and disgrace,” Joanna whispered.

“But what would you have, dear cousin? It must be so at times. Life is a tremendous, a dangerous, though, in my opinion, a very splendid experiment. We all start as amateurs, in ignorance of the laws which govern it. Is it not, therefore, inevitable that some should get off the true lines, and make mistakes injurious to themselves and lamentable to others?”

“But papa did not permit mistakes. He never forgave them.”

“Pardon me, but in not forgiving them did he not himself, perhaps, commit the very gravest of all mistakes?” Adrian could not resist asking, though he feared the question trenched on levity.

“I wish I could believe that.” She spoke bitterly. “It would simplify so much for me. I should be so thankful to believe it. It would help to excuse Bibby. I know he was weak in character; but he was so nervous and delicate as a child. Papa alarmed him. He demanded too much of him, and was stern and sarcastic because Bibby could not meet that demand. My brother did not go to a preparatory school, but at thirteen he was sent to Rugby. It was papa’s old school, and he believed the traditions and atmosphere of it were calculated to induce the serious sense of moral and intellectual responsibility in which he thought Bibby deficient.”

“Poor child!” Adrian murmured.

“Yes,” she said; “I am thankful you understand and pity him. I know papa’s purpose was Bibby’s good, the improvement and development of his character; but the treatment was too severe. It did not brace him, but only broke his spirit. He was unaccustomed to associate with other boys. They frightened and bullied him. He was so miserable that at the beginning of his second term he ran away.”

She waited a moment, struggling against rising emotion, her hands working again ball-and-socket fashion.

“It was all very dreadful. For nearly a week he was lost. We knew he could have very little money, for his allowance was small. Papa held economy to be a duty for the young. I think, next to mamma, I suffered most, for I always loved Bibby best—better than I did Margaret. I shall never forget that week. I suppose papa suffered, too, in his own way. He was very silent, and looked angry. Andrew Merriman traced Bibby to London and brought him home. Mamma pleaded to keep him for a time, but he was sent straight back to school. About six months later papa received a request to remove him. He was accused of taking money from another boy’s locker. Nothing was actually proved, but suspicion clung to him, and as his general conduct was reported unsatisfactory, the authorities thought it better he should leave. Papa sent him abroad to a private school at Lausanne. He remained there three years, until he was seventeen. Papa refused to let him spend the holidays at home, so during the whole of that time we only saw him twice, when we were traveling.”

The monotonous, colorless voice, the monotonous story of well-meaning, cold-blooded tyranny it narrated, got upon the listener’s nerves. With difficulty he restrained explosive comment reflecting far from politely upon the so recently buried dead. He really could not sit still under the indignation it provoked in him. He got up, moved away and stood leaning his shoulder against the dark, polished woodwork of the eastern window, his back to the light. He thought it well the narrator should not see his expression too clearly.

“It is almost inconceivable,” he said.

“I am not exaggerating, Cousin Adrian,” Joanna returned, straining her eyes in the effort to fix them upon his face. “All these events in their consecutive order are stamped indelibly upon my memory.”

“I am convinced you are not exaggerating, my dear cousin, and just on that very account it is the more inconceivable,” Adrian declared.

“But in your present relation to us—to me—I feel you ought to know all about poor Bibby, all about our—my—family history. My duty is to place the facts before you. I should be guilty of great self-indulgence if I concealed anything from you in that connection,” Joanna protested, with growing agitation. “I should do very wrong if, to spare myself pain, I deceived you.”

And again that sensation of embarrassment, of uncertainty how to comport himself, returned upon Adrian.

“But, dear cousin,” he said, in a mildly argumentative manner, “don’t you emphasize the obligation of truth-telling unnecessarily? I am here to be of help to you, to shield you, in so far as possible, from that which is distressing. In thus reviving painful memories do you not defeat the very object of my presence?”

“Oh no, no,” Joanna cried. “Surely you realize how bitterly I might have cause to upbraid myself—later—if I now left anything untold which it was right you should have heard? It is incumbent upon me, a matter of—of honor, to be perfectly explicit.”

Adrian raised his eyebrows the least bit. How providential he stood with his back to the light! He passed his left hand down over his neat black beard, and his lips parted silently. Poor, dear young woman, what in the name of wonder did—And then he came near laughing. The idea was too preposterous, and, worse still—shame filled him at even momentary entertainment of it—too fatuous! He gave it unqualified dismissal.

“No,” she repeated, with a veiled and somber violence, “I should do very wrong by permitting you to remain in ignorance. I should deserve any after suffering which might come to me. For I have a duty to fulfil to Bibby as well—that is what I wanted to explain to you before giving instructions to Mr. Challoner about drafting my will. Some day my duty to Bibby may appear to clash with another duty; and therefore it is necessary you should know clearly beforehand.”

Joanna flung herself back in her chair.

“Whatever it may cost me now or—or—in the future, I must tell you the rest, Adrian.”

More mystified than ever, startled by the use of his Christian name without any qualifying prefix, at once affected and repelled by her excitement, the young man moved from his station at the window and stood near her, leaning his hands upon the head of the ungainly adjustable, couch.

“Pray tell me any and everything which may help to procure you relief,” he said, kindly.

And Joanna, lying back, looked up at him, an immense appeal, a something desperate and unsatiable in her faded blue eyes, which made him consciously shrink. The Ibsen woman—the Ibsen woman in another manifestation!—It was not pleasant. He didn’t like it in the very least.—Then, as if at the touch of a spring, she sat bolt upright, looking past him out of the window at the dark, wind-shaken branches of the pines.

“When my brother returned from Lausanne,” she began again in that colorless, monotonous voice, “he was put into Andrew Merriman’s office at the mills. Mamma and I were glad at first. We trusted Andrew Merriman. He had always been tactful and kind about Bibby. But papa decided he—my brother—should live at home so that he might exert a direct personal authority over him. And the two had nothing, nothing in common. You can judge from the contents of this library what papa’s tastes and pursuits were. My brother did not care anything about politics, or social reform, or that class of subject. He was pleasure-loving, and I do not think his long stay abroad improved him in that respect. Papa supposed the discipline at M. Leonard’s school to be rigid. Among the elder boys I have reason to fear it was decidedly lax.”

Adrian made a slight movement of comprehension. He could picture the régime, and could well imagine the nice little games these exiled young gentlemen had been at!

“Papa was stern; Bibby inattentive, sullen, and nervous. At dinner we—mamma and I—used constantly to be in dread of collisions. We were in perpetual anxiety as to what Bibby might inadvertently say, or not say, which might provoke papa’s sarcasm. Then mamma’s health began to give way. We went to Torquay for the winter, taking the servants, and Highdene was shut up. Bibby went into lodgings near to Andrew Merriman, in the suburb of Leeds, in which the mills are situated. Papa wishing to train him in habits of economy, only allowed him the salary of a junior clerk. But every one there knew we were rich, so the tradespeople were only too ready to give Bibby credit, while unscrupulous persons borrowed of him. He was naturally generous, and easily imposed upon, and he enjoyed the society of those who flattered and made much of him. It was said he frequented low company, that he gambled at cards and got intoxicated. I do not know how far this was true, but he did get deeply into debt. More than once Andrew Merriman helped him, but he could not afford to be responsible for Bibby’s continued extravagance. And then—then—my brother manipulated certain accounts and embezzled a large sum of money. Andrew Merriman discovered this. He tried to shield him, and interceded with papa for him—”

The speaker broke off, pausing for breath, bending down as though crushed by the weight of her recollections.

“It was very, very dreadful,” she said. “Papa paid my brother’s debts, but he forbade him all intercourse with us. He cut Bibby out of our family life, as a surgeon might cut out some malignant growth. He regarded him thus, I think—indeed, he said so once—as a diseased part the excision of which was imperative if the moral health of the family was to be preserved. He gave Andrew Merriman a capital sum, which was to be remitted to Bibby in small quarterly instalments. When that sum was exhausted he was to receive nothing further. We never saw him again. Papa bought this house, and we moved here. He would not remain at Highdene. The scandal had been too great. He could not forgive, nor could he endure pity. He made the business into a company, and retired. Mamma had become a complete invalid. The doctors thought this climate might benefit her; and then this place is far away from our former friends and associations. We knew no one here.”

Joanna raised herself, looking, not at Adrian Savage, but past him, out at the dusky pines. She wiped her lips with her black-bordered handkerchief.

“That is all, Cousin Adrian,” she said.

But, when the young man would have spoken she held up one hand restrainingly, and he saw that she shivered.

“Except—except this,” she went on. “Papa ordered that Bibby should be considered as dead. Later Andrew ceased to hear from him, and rumors came that he was actually dead—that he had died at Buenos Ayres, where he had gone as a member of some theatrical troupe. But mamma and I never credited those rumors. Nor did Andrew Merriman. He does not credit them now.”

She turned her head, looking full at Adrian with that same desperation of appeal.

“I asked him yesterday,” she said. “It was dreadful to speak to him on the subject, but I felt it my duty to do so. I felt I ought to know where I stood in regard to my fortune, because—because of the future. Andrew believes my brother is still alive. And that is why I must refuse to make a will in Margaret’s favor. If, as you say, papa made the gravest of all mistakes in never pardoning mistakes, clearly my duty to his memory is to redress the mistake he made in the case of my brother in as far as it is possible for me to do so. Margaret will have ample means of her own. I cannot be ruled by Mr. Challoner’s opinion.”

Joanna rose and walked over to the window, standing exactly where Adrian had stood some ten minutes before. There seemed a definite purpose in her selection of the exact spot, both in the placing of her feet and the leaning of her shoulder against the window-frame. Her back was to the light. Adrian could not see the expression of her face distinctly. He was glad of this. He did not want to see it, for again he was conscious of shrinking from her.

“After all, Mr. Challoner may be wrong—as you yourself just now said, Cousin Adrian—in taking for granted I shall never marry. I may marry. But, whatever happens, I shall not leave any part of my fortune to Margaret. I shall leave two-thirds of it to Bibby, and the rest—”

Smallbridge threw open the library door.

“Mr. Challoner, ma’am,” he said; and the Stourmouth solicitor, his Mongolian countenance quite strikingly devoid of all expression, ponderously entered the room.