CHAPTER XXI. MR. MARRABLE’S MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Surely no human creature ever trod this earth, who, by his appearance, seemed less likely to inspire fear than Mr. Marrable.
A fair, colourless, middle-aged man, under the middle height, and inclined to be stout, he was the most inoffensive-looking person in the world, and, to judge by his demeanour as he stood in the hall, holding his shabby tall hat in his hand, and looking about him with an air of awe-struck astonishment, the humblest and the meekest.
As John Bradfield approached him, with outstretched hand, and a rather forced smile of welcome on his face, Mr. Marrable withdrew his gaze from the objects around him, and fixed it nervously upon his old friend.
“Well, Alf,” began John Bradfield, as he came up to his abashed old friend, “this is a strange meeting after all these years, isn’t it?”
The other man, after hesitating a moment, thrust his hand with great delight into that of his old friend, and instantly became as talkative and lively as a moment before he had been taciturn and depressed.
“Why, John, so it is,” he exclaimed, with a smile broadening on his plump and placid face, turning his head a little towards his companion, after the manner of those who are slightly deaf. “And glad am I to see you again, old chap, and looking so well too, and—and so prosperous,” and he gave a shy glance round him. “Do you know,” he went on, growing buoyantly confidential under the influence of his friend’s hearty grip of the hand, “that I thought you wanted to cut me? That you had grown too grand for your old friends.”
“No. When was that?” asked John Bradfield, shortly.
He was not a good actor, and Marrable looked at him doubtfully, as he answered:
“Why, out in the street just now, outside the station. I knew you in a moment, wrapt up as you were, and cutting such a dash, too. But then you were always a dashing fellow, even in the old days, John,” maundered on the unprosperous one, admiringly. “I called out to you, but you took no notice. And I said to myself, ‘Ah, he’s like all the rest of ’em; he knows his friends by their coats. He——’”
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” returned John Bradfield’s loud voice. “I never turned my back on an old friend yet, and I’m not going to begin now. Did you come down here to see me?”
“Yes,” answered the other, meekly. “Well, at least, the fact is I heard of you quite by chance, and of how you’d got on, and as I’m down in the world, and I remembered your good heart in the old days, John, I thought I’d just run down and have a peep at you, and then, if I wasn’t wanted, I could come away.”
Mr. Bradfield felt a sensation of relief; these words seemed to show him a way out of his difficulty. But the next moment he was undeceived.
“If you don’t want me here, John, I’ll just spend a few days in the town here; I daresay I can find lodgings good enough for me easily enough, and all I’ll trouble you for will be my fare back to town, which you’ll not begrudge me, for old acquaintance sake.”
Mr. Bradfield inwardly called down upon his old friend’s head something which was not a blessing. He was not going back to town then, but proposed to potter about the place, chattering of course to everyone he met about his old friendship with the rich Mr. Bradfield, and either letting fall or picking up some scrap of information which it would be prejudicial to the rich Mr. Bradfield’s interests to be known.
The first suggestion which came into John Bradfield’s mind was bribery, but the next moment’s reflection told him that this was always a dangerous method, for if he were to make Marrable a handsome money present with the condition that he must take himself back to town immediately, that gentleman, little gifted as he was with intellectual brilliancy, could hardly fail to see that his old friend must have some strong motive for wishing to get rid of him. His curiosity once roused, he could hardly fail to find out something which would serve as an excuse for blackmailing in the time to come. The only alternative to this course was, John Bradfield felt, to keep his old chum under his own eye while he remained at Wyngham, so he said:
“Come, come; that’s not the way I treat my old friends. Stay and spend Christmas with me, Alf, and when it’s over, and you back to town, where I suppose your heart lies—for you’re a thoroughbred cockney, I know—I’ll see what I can do to set you on your legs, and give you a fresh start in life.”
Although Marrable was pleased, he was not overwhelmed with joy and gratitude as John Bradfield had expected. In truth Alfred, on learning by chance of the change in his old friend’s circumstances, had taken it for granted that he would be allowed, nay, invited to share in John Bradfield’s luck, as, in the old days of struggling and hardship, he, then the more prosperous one of the two, had shared what he had with John. An invitation to spend Christmas, even with the promise of help afterwards, was only a small measure of the hospitality he had expected; his answer betrayed his feelings.
“Thank you, thank you, John. I thought you couldn’t have forgotten old times altogether. I thought you had more heart than that. As for London, I seem to have lost my old fondness for it somehow. The old folk are dead; my poor mother died there as soon as we got back. I seem to have got disgusted with the bricks and mortar somehow. There’s nothing I should like better than to settle down for the rest of my days in a nice country place, as you have done.”
John Bradfield did not take this hint, as his friend had hoped. But he invited Marrable to come upstairs, and said he would see what he could do for him in the way of evening dress.
Unfortunately this was not much. John Bradfield was slim, Alfred Marrable was stout. The struggle of the latter to get into the clothes of the former left him, therefore, both uncomfortable and apoplectic. No persuasions, however, would induce him to go down to dinner in his own shabby morning clothes, for Marrable flattered himself that he was a lady’s man, and that he looked his best—which he did not—in evening dress.
John Bradfield, who had been turning over the situation in his mind, gave his old friend a hint as they went downstairs.
“I say, old chap,” said he, in a confidential tone, “there’s one thing I want you to do to oblige me.”
“Anything, old man, anything.”
“You see, I’m a great man here, not the poor starveling I was when you and I went out in the steerage to Melbourne thirty years ago. I don’t think I’ve grown much of a snob, but still one doesn’t care, when one’s got on, to have all the servants talking about their master having been glad enough to do things for himself once. Do you see?”
“Oh, yes, yes; of course, of course. I understand perfectly. You may rely upon me, old chap. I flatter myself I’m not wanting in tact, whatever my faults may be.”
John Bradfield, although he feared that Alfred was giving himself too high a character, went on:
“So no talk about old times and hard times, or”—his voice trembled a little here, for this was in truth a point on which he was most anxious—“or old acquaintances. Let the dead past bury its dead, as the poet says,” he continued, jocularly, “and we’ll have a merry Christmas over its grave.”
“That’s it, that’s it; so we will,” agreed Marrable, heartily, as they reached the drawing-room door.
In all good faith Alfred Marrable had given his promise to be discreet, and in all good faith John Bradfield had told him that he should have a merry Christmas. But unluckily the powers of darkness in the shape of Mrs. Graham-Shute, were against him. Indeed, John Bradfield had had his doubts about her, and as he entered the drawing-room with his protégé in his ill-fitting clothes, he whispered to the latter:
“Never mind the Queen of Snobs,” with a glance in the portly lady’s direction.
Mrs. Graham-Shute was already looking at them with an unpromising stare. She had a hatred of shabbily-dressed people, the keener that it was only by a great effort that she herself escaped that category. She had been indignant when her husband stopped the landau to speak to this “person,” and now to have the “person” obtruded upon her notice, in clothes which did not belong to him, was an outrage to her dignity, which at once dispelled the good humour which is traditionally supposed to belong to fat people. If people must invite their humble friends, they should not ask them to meet guests of greater consideration. It was extremely awkward and unpleasant, as one didn’t know where to draw the line between too much civility, which made the humble friend “presume,” and too little, which might offend one’s host.
In the case of Alfred Marrable, Mrs. Graham-Shute certainly did not err in the former manner. Her disdain of the poor man, who was just the sort of weak-minded person to be impressed by her foolish arrogance, had a crushing effect upon him; so, far from becoming loquacious on the subject of old times, the poor man could scarcely be prevailed upon to open his lips at all. The glare of the cold, fish-like eyes, turned full upon him at dinner—for she sat opposite to him—even took away the poor man’s appetite; and John Bradfield was able to congratulate himself that night that the evening had passed off (according to his views) so well.
The next day was Christmas day, and Alfred Marrable, always under the watchful eyes of his careful old friend, began it beautifully. He went to church, was almost pathetically civil and attentive to the ladies, delighted to carry their prayer-books, and to render them such small services of a like kind as he could. At luncheon, by which time Mrs. Graham-Shute had grown sufficiently used to him to ignore him altogether, he thawed a little, and needed the warning eye of his host to restrain him from making appropriate Christmas allusions to old times over his glass of port.
But it was at the Christmas dinner that evening that his discretion melted away like wax before the fire, and he made up for lost time and past reticence with a loquacity even more dangerous than John Bradfield had feared.
He alluded to change of fortune, some for the better, some for the worse, when they had got as far as the turkey. When they reached the plum-pudding, he got so far as to remember old friends by the initials of their names; and he broke down altogether into amiable chatter about thirty years ago, at the cheese.
John Bradfield frowned, but by this time frowns were thrown away upon Alfred. Nothing short of taking him by the shoulders and turning him out of the room would have checked the flow of his half-cheerful, half-sorrowful, wholly sentimental reminiscences.
Mr. Graham-Shute, observing John Bradfield’s disapproval in his face, and being, moreover, really interested in the past life of the extraordinarily successful man, mischievously encouraged Marrable by his sympathetic questions; while his wife, who considered these allusions to a ragged past indecent and revolting, tried in vain to talk more loudly than ever to drown the remarks both of Alfred Marrable and her liege lord.
“Dear me, that’s very interesting! And so you walked six hundred miles up the country with only one shirt apiece, and your feet for the most part tied up in straw for the want of boots!” said Mr. Graham-Shute, with deliberate distinctness, thus cleverly epitomising for the benefit of the entire company a rambling story which Alfred had been pouring into his ear.
“I’m sure we shall have skating to-morrow, at least almost sure, though of course one never knows, and the frost may break any minute, and then there would be an end of everything, just when the ice in the parks will be getting into nice condition, and when there are sure to be some ponds and things down here that will bear, though I think myself that skating in the country is always more risky than in town, because there are not so many appliances and things, in case you are drowned,” babbled out Mrs. Graham-Shute, with one nervous eye on dear cousin John, and the other on that wretched William, who was by this time cracking nuts while he listened to Alfred, and who took care, as his wife raised her voice, to raise his also.
The unhappy Marrable went on:
“Yes, indeed! Times are changed, and no mistake, since then. Fancy that fellow there,” and he gently indicated, by a wave of his bunch of grapes, his unhappy host, “fancy him coming to me, with a coat on his back that he bought for eighteenpence from the ship’s steward, and saying to me: ‘Alf, my boy! it’s all up with me! I’m stone-broke; and I believe I’ve got a touch of the fever upon me, and I know I can never stand the hard life out there in the bush. I shall just go and throw myself into the dock basin before another night has passed over my head.’ Fancy that, now, for a man that must have thousands and thousands a year, to judge by the style he lives in, and the goodness of the wines he gives us.”
And Mr. Marrable ended with an expressive smack of the lips. Mr. Graham-Shute nodded appreciatively.
“Was that when you first went out?” he asked with interest.
“Oh, no. We’d been knocking about out there for some time, and not doing much good, either of us. That was the odd part of it, that Bradfield, who’s got on so well since, didn’t seem to do any better than I.”
Being unable to silence her husband, Mrs. Graham-Shute had now turned her attention to occupying “dear cousin John” with conversation, so that William’s delinquencies should escape his notice. Otherwise, it is possible that John Bradfield might have been exasperated into some heroic measure to stop his old friend’s tongue. As it was, Mr. Graham-Shute’s kindly “Dear me, yes, that was curious!” encouraged Marrable to go on:
“Let me see, where had I got to? Oh, yes, I remember, Bradfield had told me he meant to do away with himself; he was so down on his luck, poor chap! I didn’t know what to say to him; the little capital I had gone out with was all gone; when who should we come across but the old chum we had gone out with, the only one of the three who had done any good—Gilbert Wryde!”
At the mention of this name, Mr. Graham-Shute suddenly put down his nut-crackers, and leaned back in his chair.
“Ah!” cried he, “that’s the name I’ve been trying to remember; I knew there were three of you who went out to Australia together, and I couldn’t remember the name of the third. I never saw him, but I’ve read some of his letters to John when they were little more than lads; and they were full of most uncommon sense for such a young chap. I thought to myself then that he ought to get on. So he did, did he? Gilbert Wryde!”
As he repeated the name deliberately and slowly, to impress it upon his memory, both John Bradfield and Chris looked up, rather startled. Chris was the more impressed of the two, for she had not been expecting to hear the name, while John Bradfield had.
Quite innocent of the effect his information was producing, Marrable resumed his story.
“Get on! I believe you, as well as our friend John here himself, and in half the time. He was the right sort, too, old Gilbert, and he took us by the hand, and set us on our legs again, and there was no more talk of suicide after that. He set me up in business in Melbourne, and he took John away with him up country, where he’d made his own fortune at sheep-farming, and where he evidently put him in the way of making his. Poor Wryde! He did not live long to enjoy his fortune. I never saw him again.”
John Bradfield had been listening to this speech with only the smallest pretence of attending to what his cousin Maude was saying. Marrable, catching his eye, and being in too jovial a mood to understand the menace in his host’s expression, turned to him with the direct question:
“Ah, John, you wouldn’t be in the position you are to-day if it hadn’t been for Gilbert Wryde, would you?”
John Bradfield’s face was as white as his friend’s was rosy. He answered at once, in a hard, metallic tone:
“We did each other mutual good service, Wryde and I. I’m not likely to forget him, certainly.”
“Ah!” pursued Marrable, “if he’d only been alive and here to-day, it would have been a merry meeting indeed, eh, John?”