Chapter Six.
Allies.
If a tormenting, Jack Hibbert was a faithful, friend. He saw that Everitt was out of sorts, and he went to the Lascelles with the intention of doing him a good turn—somehow. His first business was to get hold of Mrs Marchmont, and ask for an introduction to Miss Lascelles. She looked at him, and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I see what that means. You have come as an emissary, and I can’t trust your prudence.”
It was in vain for Jack to protest that he was not an emissary, and that his prudence was beyond comprehension; she was certain that his masculine movements would be too lumbering and aggressive for the situation, which needed the most delicate advances.
“You would rush impetuously into the breach, and treat it all as a fine joke; and that would just finish everything quite hopelessly. No; be good and don’t meddle.”
“I know I could put things straight,” said Jack, ruefully.
“I thought that was in your head,” she answered. “Now. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You shall be introduced to Miss Aitcheson, and that will be almost as good as if I took you to Miss Lascelles, only not so dangerous.”
“You are very kind,” he said, brightening up.
“And you must promise to be cautious.”
He promised; he was ready to promise everything. But when he was left face to face with Miss Aitcheson, she was quickly aware what subject was burning on the tip of his tongue. He dragged in art, artists, and Everitt, in less than no time.
“The best of fellows!” he said, heartily.
“I suppose a little eccentric?” Bell remarked, looking on the ground.
“He isn’t so cut and dried as other people, if that’s what you mean,” Jack replied, with warmth. “If there’s a kind thing to be done, or a helping hand to be held out, he’s the man to do it. I wish there were a few more as eccentric as he.” Jack felt as if he had made rather a good point here. The worst of it was, as he rapidly reflected, that it all had to be run out so quickly. With a lot of people walking about, they were liable at any moment to be interrupted; even now he looked with disgust at a young lady in a creamy white dress, who smiled at Miss Aitcheson as she passed. He was more disgusted when Bell stopped her.
“We are talking about art and artists,” she said, slipping her arm into the other girl’s.
“And we don’t want you,” Jack said to himself, unmollified by the answering smile. “However, here goes! So long as Miss Aitcheson hears and repeats in the right quarter, it doesn’t matter who listens.” Aloud, he said, “People who only know Everitt as an artist can’t judge of his kindness of heart. You see, in our line there are a lot of poor wretches who find it awfully hard to pick up a living. Some are never good for anything, but there are a few who just want to be set on their legs, and then they stick there. I’m not sure I wasn’t one of them myself,” added Jack, with an ingenuous laugh.
“Did Mr Everitt set you on your legs?” inquired Bell, innocently.
“Yes, he did, and I’m not ashamed to own it,” said the young fellow, manfully. “If I do anything it will be thanks to him.” He was so much taken up with his cause that he did not notice that when Everitt’s name was first mentioned the girl who was standing close to Miss Aitcheson made a movement to leave them, and was held fast by Bell. Finding herself a prisoner, she did not again attempt to escape, but stood silently by, her face almost concealed by the drooping lace of her parasol.
“There was a man,” Jack went on, warming yet more to his subject, “who got a picture hung at one of last year’s exhibitions—it wasn’t at all a bad picture—and sold it. It was his first bit of luck, and almost sent him off his head; he married, for one thing, on the strength of it. Well, it wasn’t sold, after all.”
“Not sold?” repeated Bell, in wonder.
“The purchaser never turned up. That sort of thing does happen now and then, but it came awfully rough on this poor fellow. You see, it had kept off other buyers, and then, I expect, he had traded a bit on the money; and the end of it was, he worked himself into a sort of brain fever, and was about as bad as could be, and the poor little wife was at her wits’ end, without friends or money or anything. Anybody would have helped them who’d known, but nobody took the trouble to find out except Everitt. He got a doctor and a nurse, and I know he went there every day, and he bought the picture—though, of course, that isn’t much good to him.”
“Oh, yes,” said Bell, softly. “I think it will be of good to him.” And she looked at Jack very kindly. The young fellow was too much taken up with his object to notice it.
“He’s always doing that sort of thing,” he went on. And now, if he had been a diplomatist, had even possessed the caution which Mrs Marchmont had urged upon him, he would have paused here, or strengthened his good impression by another tale of the same description. But unluckily Jack felt that more was incumbent upon him. He was for a bold assault which should carry the position by storm; and when might another opportunity present itself? “People don’t know Everitt,” he repeated; “he does out-of-the-way things. Miss Aitcheson,”—suddenly—“I’m afraid he’s offended your friends here awfully.”
Unfortunate Jack! The parasol came a little lower down.
“Has he?” coldly from Bell.
But once started, he blundered into deeper mire, in spite of warning signs.
“It did sound an odd thing to do; but, don’t you see, he’d promised to send somebody, and Mrs Marchmont wasn’t to be put off. There wasn’t a bit of real harm, you know, and Everitt did it out of sheer good-nature.”
“Well, it’s over and done with,” said Bell, with an air of finality; “and I think it would be best to say no more about it.”
“But they’ve taken it in a way which makes him feel very uncomfortable,” urged Jack.
Bell lifted her head and looked him full in the face.
“You’re a very good friend, Mr Hibbert, but Mr Everitt is sufficiently a man of the world to have thought of consequences beforehand. Now, will you kindly go and tell Mrs Marchmont from me that she will find ices in the drawing-room.”
There was no help for it, Jack had to go. And then Bell turned to the girl by her side.
“You didn’t mind, did you, Kitty?” she demanded, with a little anxiety. “You know, I think you’re disposed to be hard upon poor Mr Everitt, and I wanted you to hear what his friends have to say for him. That’s a very nice boy.” Then, as Kitty did not speak, she looked in her face: “Don’t you think so?”
“I dare say,” said the other girl, impatiently. “Oh yes, I dare say he’s a very good friend; but oh, Bell, don’t you see?”
“What?”
“How dreadful it all is! The idea of this man knowing, and another man knowing, and all London knowing what he did! I am ashamed when I see people only looking at me. And just suppose if some one goes and alludes to it to father!”
“Now, Kitty! All London! Why, this Mr Hibbert works in the same studio!”
“He shouldn’t have told him, all the same.”
“I do think you’re dreadfully hard. Didn’t it touch you to hear of what he’d done for that poor artist?”
“Not when I thought of what he’d done to me. What have I to do with his kindness? He may be the kindest man in the world.”
“If I had been you,” said Bell, “I believe I should have taken it as a compliment; and I’m quite sure I should have sent him a card for to-day, and thought no more about it.”
“And if you had been I and I had been you,” returned Kitty, with spirit, “I am quite sure that I should have dropped the subject, and have done my best to help you to forget that such a disagreeable thing had happened.”
“Oh, well,” said the other girl, looking at her oddly, “I never knew until now that I was the more unselfish of the two.”
Afterwards, she told Mrs Marchmont what had happened. It will be seen that by this time Bell had become a partisan of Everitt’s, and it will be guessed that Mrs Marchmont had admitted her into her confidence. It was, indeed, the wisest thing that she could do, for Bell was a girl who resented being shut out, and would certainly take an active part on one side or the other. Perhaps she had a mischievous delight in beholding Kitty—whom she considered to be a little straight-laced—the victim of such an adventure; but the romance of it all, and some knowledge of Everitt’s real character, touched a deeper spring of love for her friend, and she was genuinely anxious to set this unfortunately crooked beginning straight.
Jack’s attempt, she owned, had not done much good.
Was it likely it would?—from Mrs Marchmont.
Well, Bell thought that he spoke out manfully. He said a great deal about Mr Everitt which certainly made her like him better, and she thought it must have produced the same effect upon Kitty, if she had not been unreasonable.
Mrs Marchmont, on her part, maintained chat men always bungled that sort of thing. Their touch was so heavy, they blundered in, and knocked over right and left. “But it is really dreadfully stupid of Kitty,” she said, “and I shall have to take her in hand myself.”
Jack, who had something of the same feeling about his own attempts, wandered about disconsolately, until he fell in with Miss Aitcheson again; and, as he stayed by her side for the remainder of the afternoon, it is to be supposed that she was able to administer consolation. But she found it impossible to induce him to understand Kitty’s view. He was dreadfully frivolous and inclined to laugh; he got Bell to describe poor Everitt’s shortcomings as a model, and the evident anguish which he endured, and then the two laughed together in a manner which, considering the aims which they professed, was, to say the least, heartless. Mrs Marchmont gave Bell a hint of this when she drove her away, and Bell resented the imputation.
“It was a jest from beginning to end—in one sense,” she said; “and Kitty’s mistake has been in treating it so seriously. If you encourage her in it, she will take on herself the airs of a tragic heroine.”
“Kitty never gave herself airs of any kind,” cried her friend indignantly. “No; I understand her feelings perfectly.”
“Shall you give up Mr Everitt?” inquired Bell.
“Give him up—no! But I shall take care that she is smoothed down. I have got a little plan in my head.”
What it was she would not reveal, though the girl did her best to find out. But that evening Mrs Marchmont informed her husband that she wished places to be taken at a favourite theatre.
“Five?” he repeated, lifting his eyebrows.
“Well, can’t you go yourself?”
“Impossible. I must be at the House.”
“Then, four. Charlie Everitt will take care of me; and I shall ask old General Sinclair besides, and a girl.”
She wrote to Everitt, “Keep yourself at liberty for Thursday evening;” and Kitty, who came to see her that afternoon, heard only of the play and of General Sinclair. Not that Mrs Marchmont intended to take her by surprise in such a manner as to allow of no retreat. They would all dine together beforehand, and Kitty should come half an hour before the others. Then would her friend gently and diplomatically unfold to her who was to be of the party, and use all her persuasions to induce her to meet him, and get over the first awkwardness. Should Kitty be hopelessly obstinate, there would still be time for her to retire, and there would be no difficulty in finding some one close at hand to replace her at short notice. To tell the truth, she did not dare to entrap Kitty in any closer mesh. She trusted to her own persuasions, to the girl’s dislike to making a fuss, to the chapter of accidents, the hundred and one things which play unexpected parts. She was a little nervous, but her spirits rose when she thought how smoothly everything might run. “If only,” she reflected—“if only it all turns out well, and I can get them together—not just at first, perhaps, but after one or two acts! There is nothing more effective than a play for putting people on a pleasant footing.” It was only of Kitty’s possible perverseness that she thought. Then on the morning of Thursday she wrote to Everitt; and, in the fulness of her expectations, perhaps let drop more of a hint of these intentions than she imagined. To her amazement he answered her letter in person.
“Are you come to dinner?” she demanded. “You are even earlier than I expected; but I need not say I am very glad to see you.”
“Thank you,” said Everitt, gravely; “in fact, however, I am come to say that I am not coming.”
His cousin stared blankly at him.
“Not coming!” she repeated, faintly. “But, Charlie, that is absurd! You don’t know.”
“I fancy,” he said, “that I do know. Unless I’m much mistaken, I could read between the lines of your letter. Is Miss Lascelles to be one of the party?”
“Yes,” she said, “she is.”
“And does she expect to see me?”
“Not yet. But,”—eagerly—“I was not going to spring a mine upon her.”
He listened very carefully while she explained her intentions, and when she had finished was silent for a few moments. There was that in his face which caused her misgivings.
“Charlie,” she said impressively, “you will not be so odious as to upset my little arrangements!”
“It seems to me,” he said, “that I am doomed to be odious in everything connected with this affair. It’s not a pleasant rôle.”
“Well,” she said in a vexed tone, “I was prepared to have a little difficulty with Kitty, but you, I certainly expected to take the good I had provided for you, and to have been thankful. You must really understand that there is nothing else that I can do.”
“I give you my word I’m thankful,” said Everitt, with a laugh.
“Then, why are you so provoking? Have you given up the idea?”
“Have I come to my senses? No.”
“In that case,” she said, “I can’t understand.”
“Oh yes, you can,” he replied. “Just reflect for a moment in what an uncomfortable position Miss Lascelles would be placed, if I accepted your kindness. She comes here unsuspecting, and she finds she must either stay and face what is unfortunately disagreeable to her, or do, as I am doing, go away and offend a kind friend. I don’t feel that I have the right to force the dilemma upon her.”
“It would not offend me if she preferred to go.”
“It would disappoint and vex you. When we make benevolent plans, we hate the people who thwart us. You have been splendidly benevolent.”
“Well, I think you are taking to scruples at a particularly inconvenient moment. And pray, if each of you flies off at a tangent directly the other is known to be near, how on earth are you ever to meet?”
“Ah,” said he, smiling, “but I am not going off at a tangent. Give me the chance, and see if I don’t use it.”
“What was this but a chance?”
“There shall be nothing more that she can complain of. Everything must be absolutely open and above-board. Come, Mary, you know in your heart of hearts that I am right.”
“That,” she said, with a laugh, “is more than you can expect a woman to own. The utmost you will extract is that I may possibly allow that you are politic. And there is one thing that I shall do.”
“What?”
“Ah, that is my affair. Leave me alone.”
“I am not sure that you are to be trusted,” he said, looking at her, and shaking his head. But he made no further effort to learn her intentions, and in a few minutes took his leave.
What Mrs Marchmont meant to do, and did, was to confess to Kitty what had taken place. The girl became a little pale as she listened.
“I thought I could trust you, Mary,” she said at last.
“If you would both trust to me, I should put an end to this foolish slate of things,” retorted her friend.
“There is nothing to end,” Kitty answered quietly, though there was a tremor in her voice.
“One would suppose that Mr Everitt and I had once been acquainted, and that something had made us fall out! The truth, however, is simply that we have never known each other, and that circumstances have made it pleasanter that we should remain unknown.”
“That is all very well for you, but you might consider poor Mr Everitt. He thinks you are hopelessly displeased with him, and naturally that places him in a most uncomfortable position.”
“Then, just because he is disagreeable to me, I am to consent!” cried the girl impatiently.
Mrs Marchmont rapidly shifted her ground.
“You can’t deny,” she asserted, “that he behaved with the utmost delicacy in refusing to come here to-day.”
“I don’t know what I should have thought of him or of you, if he had been here,” replied Kitty.
She carried things, indeed, with so high a hand, that Mrs Marchmont was quite disconcerted. Her attempt had failed at least as completely as Jack’s, and she began to experience a sensation of defeat to which she was altogether unaccustomed. It seemed really probable that these two provoking young persons, in whom, in spite of vexation, she daily took a deeper interest, would so obstinately persist in nullifying her good offices as entirely to prevent her from achieving their happiness. Nothing, it must be owned, could be more tiresome than such conduct. And yet she could not feel as angry with them as they deserved. She was even conscious of a little compunction as she noticed the graver lines on Kitty’s sweet face.
And Kitty herself?
She had answered Mrs Marchmont with a becoming spirit, and so far she looked back upon their talk with satisfaction. But, to tell the truth, she could not quite forgive herself for thinking so much about the matter as she had to acknowledge she was thinking, and though she had professed a lofty indifference to Everitt’s conduct, her mind dwelt upon it with a good deal of approval. Perhaps, in spite of her words, she was beginning to think less of that unfortunate business with the model, and to remember Everitt’s face in the chapel on Sunday, and the manner in which he had refused to avail himself of his cousin’s proposal, jack’s story made a kindly background for his hero.
After all, and notwithstanding Mrs Marchmont’s despair, it is possible that her arrangement had not been so complete a failure as it appeared to herself.