II
Mr. Gumberg was one of those who early school themselves to wait on life. Sitting in the pretty, gay morning-room, which opened upon a stately little garden—designed in the days when Italy was to the cultivated Englishman what the England of to-day is to the travelled American—he was rarely disappointed, even in August, as to what the day would bring forth.
Few afternoons went by but some acquaintance journeyed westward from the City to ask his advice concerning matters of business moment. In the hottest summer weather foreigners of distinction would find their way to St. James's Place, bearing letters of courteous introduction, couched in well-turned phrases, of which the diction, even in France and Austria, will soon be a lost art. And then, again, friends passing through town would remember the old man, and hasten to spend with him an idle hour, bearing with them a budget of the news he loved to hear.
But it was the day bringing forth the utterly unexpected that renewed Mr. Julius Gumberg's grip on life. It was then that he felt he was still taking part in the world's affairs, for the unexpected, in his case, almost always meant an appeal connected with one of those byways of human life in which he still took so vivid and so practical an interest.
To the old worldling a call from Lady Wantley had always been something of an event, and this over fifty years of their two lives. He respected her reserve, he admired her reticence, and, while himself so deeply interested in those about him, he yet delighted in the company of the one woman of his acquaintance whom he knew to have ever regarded the soul and the future life as of such infinitely more moment than the body and the pleasant world about her.
She was herself quite unaware of the peculiar feeling with which her old friend regarded her, and ignorant that on the rare occasions of her visits to St. James's Place no other visitor was welcome, or, indeed, tolerated. Still, at this painful, anguished moment of her life some subtle instinct caused her to turn to one with whom, in many ways, she had so little in common. She felt secure of his sympathy, and had implicit trust in his discretion; indeed, her belief in him extended to the hope that he would suggest a way by which Penelope should surely be saved from what the mother, full of pain and shrinking terror, could not but regard as a most awful fate.
The interview began badly. The gay little garden room, which still kept something of the insouciant, roguish charm of the famous eighteenth-century beauty from whose executors Mr. Julius Gumberg had originally purchased the house, formed an incongruous background to the shrunken figure, the parchment-coloured face, the hairless head, always, however, covered with a skull-cap, of Lady Wantley's old friend.
Gilt-rimmed, tarnished mirrors destroyed the sense of solitude, and seemed to Mr. Gumberg's visitor to reflect shadowy witnesses and mocking eavesdroppers of her shame and distress.
So strong was this impression that Lady Wantley doubted whether she had been well advised in coming. She felt inclined to get up and go away; and something of what was passing in her mind was divined by her host.
When the first long pause between them became oppressive, the old man, lifting himself somewhat painfully from his chair, rang the bell which always stood at his elbow. 'We shall be more at ease, and less likely to be disturbed upstairs,' he said briefly.
He was extremely curious to know what had brought Lady Wantley to town, what could be the matter concerning which she had evidently come to consult him; but he was too experienced a confessor to hasten confidences by a word.
The comfort of no human being, save that of his present visitor, could have made Mr. Julius Gumberg show himself, as he was about to do, and for no tangible reason, at a disadvantage—that is, so weighted with physical infirmity as to be compelled, when walking upstairs, to seek the assistance of his manservant's arm and guiding hand. His acute, well-trained intellect had remained so keen, and his powers of transacting business had diminished so little, that he felt, with a bitterness none the less intense because so gallantly concealed, the humiliations attendant on advancing age.
Accordingly, when quiet, careful Jackson came in answer to his master's summons, her host impatiently motioned Lady Wantley to precede him up the narrow stairs which connected the garden room with the octagon library, where Mr. Gumberg always received his friends in winter and in spring, and which appeared better suited to the receiving of confidences and the giving of advice than did the room below.
Once there—once, as it were, settled against his own familiar background, leaning back in his leather armchair, his man dismissed, his visitor seated opposite him in the pretty, comfortable chair always drawn forward when the old man was honoured by the visit of a fair friend—Mr. Gumberg felt rewarded for the late stripping of himself of personal dignity, for he perceived, by certain infallible signs, that now she would tell him all that was in her mind.
With scarce any preamble, Lady Wantley plunged into the middle of her story. In disconnected, but clearly worded, phrases, she told of her more than suspicion, of her certainty, of the coming peril. But, whereas she spoke of Downing by name, describing his action with a Biblical plainness of language which startled her old friend, she concealed the name of the woman in the case, beseeching Mr. Gumberg's intervention and advice on behalf 'of one known to you, but whose name I beg you not to inquire or try to discover.'
It was with eager, painful interest and growing excitement that the old man, his hand held shell-like to his ear, heard in silence the story she had come to tell. She had not spoken many words, and had used but little of the innocent craft to which she was so unaccustomed, before Mr. Julius Gumberg knew only too well the name of the woman for whom Lady Wantley was entreating his advice and help.
At last, when she had said all there was to say, she looked at her old friend dumbly, appealingly; and it was rather in answer to that look than to any word uttered by her that he said:
'Were you anyone else, I would respect your wish to conceal this lady's name. Nay, more: were she other than who she is, you should leave me to-day believing that you had been successful in hiding from me the name of your friend. But, Lady Wantley, I care for you.' He paused, then feelingly added: 'I have cared for you all, too well, during nearly the whole of my life, to tolerate this fiction. What you have come to tell me is indeed news, and painful news, to me, but Sir George Downing himself told me, during the few days he was here, that he was acquainted with Penelope, and that he had met her abroad this spring.'
And having thus cleared the decks for action, he remained silent for a few moments, his domed head sunk on his breast, thinking deeply.
George Downing and Penelope Wantley? Amazing, incredible, and most sinister conjunction! Why, the affair must have been going on—nay, the coming catastrophe, this mad scheme of going away together to form a permanent alliance, 'offensive and defensive' (the old man would have chuckled but for the poignant wretchedness of the face now hidden in Lady Wantley's hands) must have been hatching—when Downing was with him here, in St. James's Place!
He cast his mind back; he tried to remember a conversation held in this very room only two or three weeks ago. But Mr. Gumberg had come to a time of life when it is more easy to recall conversations of half a century old than words uttered yesterday.
He had indeed been blind, 'amazing blind, and stoopid, stoopid, stoopid!' so he exclaimed to himself, vexed that no suspicion of the truth should have crossed his mind while Downing had been asking him those eager, insistent questions concerning Mrs. Robinson and the Wantley family.
And now? Well, now that the house was well alight they came and asked him, Mr. Gumberg, how to extinguish the flames. This was not the first time—no, not by many—that the old man had been required to lend his aid in such a case, and, as a rule, he always advised that the fire be left to burn itself out. The counsellor's long experience had taught him that such flames always did burn out if left severely alone—if no fuel, in the shape of lamentations and good advice, were added by the incautious.
But this matter of Downing and Mrs. Robinson was more complicated than most. Pursuing his favourite metaphor, the old man said to himself that here was no flimsy thatch of straw which, when the embers were cold, could be restored, patched up again, on the old walls. Rather was Penelope like to one of those old-world frigates, proudly riding the sea, all afire and aglow, a wonderful sight to those safe on shore, but of whose splendour there would remain nothing but a shapeless, indescribable hulk, when all she bore had been burnt to the water's edge.
Sitting there, turning about in his still agile mind the story, as just told him in bare outline, he reminded himself that Mrs. Robinson, though a powerful, wilful creature, was not the stuff out of which have been fashioned the great, steadfast lovers of the world.
'Why, if all were well—if she became the man's wife ten times over—she would never be content to spend her whole life in Teheran!' he muttered; and then more loudly: 'No, no; we must find a way out!'
One question he longed to ask of Lady Wantley, for he felt that on the true answer much depended that would modify his judgment, and guide his opinion, as to what the immediate future must bring. But Mr. Gumberg was old-fashioned; his code as to what could, or rather what could not, be said to a lady was strict and meagre. Accordingly, he felt it impossible to put to this revered and trustful friend the question he longed to utter. Still, there might be a way round. He asked abruptly: 'How much of the six months—I don't think it was more—did Penelope actually spend at the Settlement? I mean, of course, between her wedding-day and poor young Robinson's death?'
Lady Wantley hesitated. She cast her mind back, then answered reluctantly: 'She was often away during the four months—it was only four months. But, then, that was utterly different.' A faint colour came into the mother's pale cheeks. 'Penelope did not care for poor Melancthon as she seems to care, now——'
'I know! I know!' The four words were snarled out rather than spoken. 'Nun and monk, that was the notion! No doubt you're right: there was nothing to keep her there, after all!'
He was so concerned with the problem filling both their minds for the moment he forgot his usual punctiliousness of speech, but to Lady Wantley there came a certain fierce comfort from his amazing frankness. She felt that he knew, that he understood, the unusual difficulty of the case, and in answer to his next words, 'I had actually forgotten all that for the moment, but of course it complicates matters devilishly!' she nodded her head twice in assent.
'You see them together,' he went on abruptly. 'Does she seem'—sought for a word, weighed one or two, rejected them, and finally chose 'bewitched?'
And then—but this time so much to himself that his listener heard no word of it—he added: 'Lucky George! Eh? Lucky George!'
Lady Wantley bent forward. Her grey eyes shone with excitement and anger. 'Yes, bewitched—that's the right word! Sir George Downing has bewitched my poor unhappy child. One who was there, our old nurse—you remember Mrs. Mote?—declares that she altered completely from the moment they first met. Why, she hasn't known him three months, and yet he's persuaded her to contemplate this thing—this going with him——'
She stopped speaking abruptly, choked with the horror of the thought, and then slowly added: 'I know—at least, I think I know—that you do not believe, as I believe, in the active, all-devouring power of the Evil One.' Her voice sank, but Mr. Gumberg caught the muttered words, 'Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.'
Mr. Gumberg smiled a queer little enigmatical smile. 'The old nurse was there, you say? She never left her mistress, eh?' He waited, and looked hard at Lady Wantley. But no gleam of comprehension of his meaning came into her worn eyes. 'What does she think? what does the old nurse say to it all?'
Again Lady Wantley covered her face with her hands. 'She's known it all longer than I have. She's in agony—agony, for she feels surer every day that the child means to go away with him—soon—at once—if we cannot devise some means of stopping them.'
'I take it that you have said nothing to your daughter—to Penelope—as yet?'
Lady Wantley raised her head, and he saw for a moment her convulsed, disfigured features. 'No, I have said nothing. I cannot speak to her on such a matter as this. Besides, she would not tolerate it. But you, dear friend——'
She suddenly rose from her chair, a tall, imposing figure, then moved closer to him, and looked imploringly down into the wrinkled, impassive face. 'I have thought that you, perhaps, would consent to speak to Sir George Downing? I know it is asking much of your old friendship for us.'
Mr. Gumberg coughed. He moved uneasily in his chair. 'In such a matter,' he began, 'one man can scarcely interfere with another man's business. Supposing I do as you wish, can we expect Downing to draw back now, if she—Penelope—has made up her mind to go on? Would you have him put on her so mortal an affront?'
Lady Wantley only looked at him bewildered. Such sophistry was not for her.
'But from the point of view of Sir George Downing's own life and career,' she said falteringly, 'I understand—indeed, Penelope herself has told me—that the one object of his life for many years past has been to rehabilitate himself. Could you not point out to him how greatly this would injure him with those whose good opinion he wishes to retain? Think of what all my husband's old friends and colleagues will feel;' and he saw that her hands were trembling.
Mr. Gumberg looked at Lady Wantley consideringly. He was surprised that she had brought herself to think over the matter from so practical a point of view. She had again sat down, and was gazing at him in a collected, earnest manner.
'He has weighed all that, depend upon it,' he said shortly. 'No, no! with such a man as George Downing one must appeal to something higher than self-interest. We must realize—it's no use blinking the fact—that we are now dealing, or attempting to deal, with a feeling none the less strong because you and I happen to have no sympathy with it—or perhaps I should say, as regards myself, have outlived it.'
He waited a moment, then concluded deliberately:
'In your place, Lady Wantley, I should make a personal appeal to Downing. Choose a time when Penelope is out of the way, and tell him the truth—that he does not know her as you know her, and that, even putting aside other and more obvious reasons which should make him pause, you are sure that she would not be happy in the life he has to offer her. Lastly, and most urgently, appeal to him for time. Time,' repeated the old man, with a certain solemnity—'time smooths out many crooked things. But why should I try and prompt you? You will know what to say better than I could tell you. And Downing, take my word for it, is not the man to seize an unfair advantage. Ask him to go away, alone, to give her more time for consideration. Such a serious business as they apparently both regard it—and most creditable it is to both of them that they should do so,' he added in a half-aside—'should not be settled in a hurry. Why, a few weeks ago each didn't know the other lived, and now nothing short will content them but the spending of their whole lives together! Though I have but little belief in its being of any use, I will comply with your request that I should write to him. As to what I say when I do write, you must leave that to me; but be sure that I will do my best.'
'You will write to him? Oh, how can I thank you adequately, my friend—my good friend!'
Lady Wantley's eyes filled with grateful tears, and a stifling weight seemed lifted from her heart. She felt that she had accomplished that which she had come to do, and she paid no heed to the admonition, 'Don't count too much on my influence with Downing.'
They both stood up, Mr. Gumberg leaning his left hand on his stick, while the other clasped hers in kindly, mute farewell.
'Do you remember,' she asked, rather shyly, 'your first visit to Oglethorpe, when I was a little girl? My mother, my dear, dear mother, was so interested in you. I remember she said you were such a well-behaved and intelligent youth. Of course, I know you came again when we were both older, but when I see you I always think of our first meeting. I saw no young folk at all in those years.'
'No,' said Mr. Gumberg, a little stiffly, 'I have forgotten nothing. Your parents, both then and later, were very kind to me, and I have always felt grateful for my reception at Oglethorpe.' He hesitated a moment, and then added, with an odd little old-fashioned bow over the hand he still held: 'And also for that in later days, at Monk's Eype and at Marston Lydiate.'
'Ah yes,' she said, 'I know how sincere a friendship my husband felt for you. But, as I said just now, I myself prefer to associate you in my own mind with my own home—with my dear father and mother.'
When Lady Wantley had left him, and after the house had settled down again into its usual summer stillness and silence, Mr. Gumberg, acting on a sudden impulse, did that which he lived to regret—though only, it must be admitted, when in a cynical mood—to the end of his life. Slowly he made his way to the mahogany cupboard where he kept some of his choicest treasures, including the rarer of his unframed prints. From there he extracted a small portfolio, and returning to his armchair, he propped it up on the sloping desk at his elbow. For a few moments his fingers fumbled with the green silk strings, and he turned over the contents with eager hands.
'The Lady and her Pack.' Mr. Gumberg peered musingly at the curious rudely-coloured design. He wondered half suspiciously whether it was only his fancy that detected a certain similarity between the horsewoman, sitting so squarely and so gallantly on her huge roan, and the lady who had just left him. Both figures—that of Rosina Bellamont and that of Lady Wantley—had about them a certain dauntlessness, a look of high courage.
Mr. Gumberg hastily turned the little print about. He took up a magnifying-glass, and carefully read through the notes with which the reverse side was covered, and which, in addition to names and dates, gave a number of more intimate particulars concerning the various human-faced hounds composing the pack.
Then, with a certain deliberateness, he lighted the little red taper with the help of which he always sealed his letters, and, holding what had been the most valued of his minor treasures over the flame, Mr. Gumberg watched it vanish into the flickering air above the taper. But during the rest of that afternoon and evening his eyes often turned towards the little tear-bottle, brought to him by a friend from Rome, where he had carefully placed the pinch of brown ash which was all that now remained of 'The Lady and her Pack.'