Chapter Fourteen.
Fog.
The change from Italy to London in the month of December, of all months in the year, is somewhat gloomy. It struck Ibbetson the more that he was greeted the morning after his arrival by a dense yellow fog, which came down chimneys and into people’s throats in the persistent manner with which we are all familiar, but which is dolefully depressing to foreigners. Jack had somewhat of the feeling of a foreigner himself as the gas was turned on to enable him to eat his breakfast in his lodgings—not having as yet effected the counterbalance of comfort versus climate, which a well-brought up and constitutional Englishman derives from his Club and his Times. That would come later in the day. Meanwhile, the fog was the reverse of cheerful, his lodging looked grimy, and his thoughts went flying back to the blue skies of Italy, and to people he had left there.
What was Phillis doing, for instance, and why should he care to know? the young fellow thought, pushing his fingers through his crisp curly hair. Probably at that moment making plans for some excursions with those confounded Peningtons. What detestable bores people were who dragged others about in that ridiculous way, here, there, and everywhere, and how extraordinary it was that others should be found to submit! Here was he himself come on a wild goose errand, if ever there were such a thing in the world, to look after a youngster, who from all accounts had rapidly developed into a scoundrel, and without the smallest idea what he was to do when he had got hold of him. Good heavens, what an idiot he had been! The only point on which he could fall back with satisfaction was that if he could do anything it would be a possible release for Bice, of whom he thought with great interest and compassion. Only on her account, he assured himself, had he undertaken the quixotic enterprise on the threshold of which he had arrived. Distinctly, only on her account.
He put himself into a hansom on the strength of this conviction, and drove to Clive’s lodgings out in the Kensington direction. As he expected, the lad had gone to the City, but he heard the hour at which he was likely to return, and left a card with an explanatory line, saying that he would look in that evening. Then he went to his chambers and began gathering up those odds and ends of life which so soon seem to detach themselves from us if for a moment we lay them down, and yet have a latent power of reproach when we meet them. There had been a little property of the first Lady Ibbetson’s which her husband had made over to her son, on the occasion of his own second marriage, so that Jack had enough to live upon without troubling his head as to his profession. And then the idea of his marriage and the visions of Hetherton had somehow taken away the spur to work. This was at an end. In the foggy dinginess of his chambers he began to try to pull together some floating strands of ambition which had never had much more substance in them than a cobweb-like texture, and which now eluded his grasp. His nature was pre-eminently social. He could not group his dreams round a central and solitary self. He wanted someone else to stimulate him with sympathy or fellow-interest. And, as he stood listlessly turning over a bundle of papers—why did the roar of London suddenly change to the rush of water, the splash of silver streams? Whose were those brown and steadfast eyes which he saw again looking into his—?
An exclamation escaped his lips. Then he turned up the gas, and sat down doggedly with the papers on his knees, and two or three big books by his side. His work might not be worth much, but he felt as if it served as a barricade against thoughts which were worthless.
He did not go out to Kensington again until half past six or thereabouts, and as he rattled along through the muddy streets, he was the more convinced that his errand was not an agreeable one, and that it would require delicate handling. A good deal must depend upon his first impression of Clive. If this were favourable, well and good; and yet Jack was vaguely conscious that he had no great insight into character, and was apt to see no more than people were disposed to show him.
“Mr Masters?” Yes, Mr Masters was at home, and a slipshod girl conducted him into a small room on the ground floor, smelling strongly of smoke, and brightly lit. A tall young man, who was sitting over the fire, came forward with a little shy awkwardness, which at once recalled Kitty to Ibbetson, and muttered something about being sorry he should have had the trouble of calling twice. Jack had an easy kindliness of manner which generally put people at their ease, but this young fellow was as undoubtedly awkward as he was thin and dark, and though evidently interested in hearing news of his family, it did not seem as if it would be within the bounds of possibility to get him to talk freely. Jack, himself, conscious that he was receiving very little that was definite in the way of those first impressions from which he had hoped so much, could hardly help smiling at his own discomfiture. Except the smoke, there was nothing in the room or about Clive himself to assist him in discoveries, and yet he had not come all the way from Rome for nothing.
“There’s another link between us,” he said pleasantly. “One of your heads, Mr Thornton, is an uncle of mine.”
“We don’t see much of him down at the office.”
“No, perhaps not. But I suspect he looks sharply into things. Don’t you feel him in the background?”
“I haven’t much to do with the heads,” said the young fellow, looking uncomfortable.
“Something pinches there,” said Ibbetson inwardly, with his suspicions confirmed. Aloud he said, laughing, “I’m not in Mr Thornton’s best books at this present moment, but I might be able to give you an introduction—where do you go at Christmas?”
“Nowhere. I stay here.”
“Gloomy work, isn’t it?” said Jack, compassionately.
“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather stop on here,” said Clive, kicking a piece of coal.
“Is your cousin in London—I mean Mr Trent?”
“Oliver Trent?” glancing up in surprise. “Do you know him? Oh, you met him at the villa, I suppose. Yes, he is. At least I believe so. He and old—he and Mr Thornton are very thick.”
“He!”
“Didn’t you know it?”
“Not I. But perhaps that’s not to be wondered at. Still—”
There was a pause while Ibbetson was musing on this information. He was conscious that it aroused a vague uneasiness in his mind, and yet, what should make him uneasy? Phillis’s suspicions had not really touched him, and the half dislike which he at one time felt towards Trent had been as fleeting as other emotions of the same date. But there always remains the possibility that emotions may be revived.
Clive volunteered the next remark.
“I never knew such a fellow as Oliver for knowing people. You can’t mention anybody but he can tell you all about them. And he seems to find out anything he pleases.”
It was the nearest approach to confidence that he had shown, and Jack followed it up with a plunge.
“I tell you what it is, Masters,” he said, looking hard at the fire so that Clive might not feel himself stared at, “your cousin has said something to your mother and sisters which has made them very uneasy about you. If he’d said more, it mightn’t have been so bad for them, but they know so little that they are fretting their lives out,” pursued Ibbetson with a bold disregard for the truth which should certainly have been limited here by the third person singular. “I dare say you think I’ve no business to come poking my fingers into what doesn’t concern me, indeed to tell you the truth I’m of the same opinion myself. But I’m here because a friend of theirs for whom I’ve a regard is under the impression they’ve got an exaggerated idea of what is amiss, and thinks you might put things straighter. There! and I hope I’ve not made a bungle of it,” he continued mentally, feeling as if the pause which followed lasted five minutes at the very least.
“I don’t see what Oliver can have said,” said the young fellow a little sullenly. “I’ve followed his advice pretty closely.”
“Well,” Jack said slowly, “I suppose you’d hardly be disposed to take an outside opinion?”
“Yours, you mean?”
His manner was not very pleasant, but Jack acknowledged that it was scarcely to be expected it should be different, and so far he had been unable to trace any symptom of fear as of one who held a guilty secret. He began to have a stronger conviction of his innocence himself.
“Yes, I meant mine. One moment—I mean, of course, only on their account.”
“Oliver is all the world with them,” said Clive uneasily, “at least if one may trust half the messages he brings back.”
“Why on earth don’t you write direct instead of trusting to messages?”
“Direct? Why of course I do,” said Clive staring blankly.
“Well, openly then. Telling them of any—difficulties you may be in.”
“I can’t see the good of worrying them about all the particulars when one has made a fool of oneself, but they know the outcome of it.”
Clive said this frankly and without hesitation. Jack became more and more doubtful how he was to go on. Even if you believe a fellow-man, you may be offering him the worst insult in your power by telling him so.
“They fancy they don’t know, at any rate,” he said rather lamely.
“Not know! Why, haven’t they had Oliver out there? There was nothing to prevent their getting it all out of him. In fact, he told me he had explained everything.”
“He certainly left them with the impression that there were circumstances you didn’t wish made known.” The young man started to his feet and flushed angrily red.
“I?”
“Yes.”
“There is nothing whatever. Nothing to conceal from them,” he added in a lower tone.
“Then a false impression has undoubtedly been given, and I advise you to set it right. By the way, when Miss Capponi wrote to ask the question, why didn’t you explain?”
“Bice has never asked anything of the sort?” said Clive angrily, and yet uneasily.
“Are you certain? Just reflect. Last October it was.”
“I tell you she has never done anything of the sort. Why on earth should she?”
Jack got up and put his hand on his shoulder.
“I dare say it sounds queer to you, but I give you my word, I’m not asking from idle curiosity. Your sister did write to you last October. Look here, can you make up your mind to tell me your actual trouble? You owe money, I dare say. Much?”
“Much to me,” Clive said reluctantly. “I don’t know what you’d call it. Fifty pounds.”
“And to whom?”
“Oh, it’s all in Trent’s hands now. That’s one blessing.”
“Is that all the difficulty?” said Ibbetson. And this time he faced round and looked full at the other. Clive looked at him too, though distrustfully.
“No,” he said slowly. “But what there is besides, matters to no one.”
“No trouble with the firm?”
Jack’s eyes were on him still, and he saw that he hesitated. But he said “No” again. Then he broke out more eagerly.
“I can’t explain it to you, for Oliver wouldn’t like it, and I’m under tremendous obligations to him, there’s nothing wrong, only I’ve met with very bad luck.”
“Nothing wrong?”
“No. That I’ll swear.”
“Well,” said Ibbetson, “perhaps I can’t expect you to say more to me. But at any rate your mother and sisters deserve all your confidence. Write to them fully.”
“Oliver said it only bothered them, and that he would explain.”
“He has made a mistake or two in the matter, it seems to me,” said Ibbetson with so much concentrated anger in the tone that Clive looked at him in surprise. But he recovered himself quickly and put out his hand, “You’ll write, that’s understood. I’m going down to Hetherton, and will see you again when I come back.”
The interview had only been partly satisfactory. He felt sure that Clive had neither forged a cheque nor committed any other crime, and therefore Trent’s black insinuations deserved all that Phillis had thought of them. At the same time there was a depression about the young fellow which seemed to show that he was under some darker cloud than a debt of fifty pounds to a cousin. The more he thought of it, the more this conviction grew on him. Perhaps at Hetherton a light would be thrown upon it.
Before he had any chance of getting a hansom, he had to walk for some distance, and a thick wetting rain was falling. Lights were flashing and rolling through the fog, the noise of wheels, the cry of newsmen, were the only distinct sounds which reached him out of that mighty roar which London sends forth day and night. Damp and prosaic enough it all was; a beggar stretched forth a bony hand, the repulsiveness of face and figure unclothed by the picturesqueness which in the South might have softened its hideousness. Yet, as Jack splashed along, something within him seemed to leap into life as if in answer to a trumpet call. After all, it was his own country. He was young, strong, work had in it more of a joy than a burden. He felt as if he had been living of late in a fool’s paradise of dreams, where he was of no good to himself or to anyone else, except, perhaps, to kind Miss Cartwright. He had rather prided himself upon an absence of ambition. But a consciousness of strength and a desire to use it seemed to awaken that evening, and, although he did not own it, probably a wish that others—at any rate one other—should see that he, too, could do, awoke at the same time. Hetherton had gone from him, but he felt as if other Hethertons lay beckoning to him from a blue distance, and though he smiled at his own airy castles, they had the power of enabling him to face the prospect of the actual place with perfect cheerfulness. He refused the first hansom that offered itself, feeling as if the walk home among all those other workers who were passing, coming and going, was a sort of pledge of brotherhood with them—given to himself. And he resolved to run down to Hetherton to see what he could find out about Trent and Clive.