CHAPTER III.
Captain Bowood came forward. ‘Sir Frederick, your servant; glad to see you,’ he said in his hearty sailor-like fashion.
‘I am glad to see you, Captain,’ responded the Baronet as he proffered his hand. ‘How’s the gout this morning?’
‘So, so. Might be better—might be worse.—You here, Miss Saucebox!’ he added, turning to Elsie. ‘Why are you not at your lessons—eh, now?’
‘As if anybody could learn Latin roots on a sunny morning like this!’ Then, clasping one of his arms with both her hands, and looking up coaxingly into his face, she said: ‘You might give me a holiday, nunky dear.’
‘Why, why? A holiday indeed!—Listen to her, Sir Frederick. The baggage is always begging for holidays.’
‘But the baggage doesn’t always get them,’ was the answer with a pretty pout. Then, after another glance at the long-haired stranger, who was already busy with the piano, she said to herself: ‘It is he; I am sure of it. And yet if I had not heard his voice, I should not have known him.’
Captain Bowood at this time had left his sixtieth birthday behind him, but he carried his years lightly. He was a bluff, hearty-looking, loud-voiced man, with a very red face, and very white hair and whiskers. A fever, several years previously, had radically impaired his eyesight, since which time he had taken to wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He had a choleric temper; but his bursts of petulance were like those summer storms which are over almost as soon as they have broken, and leave not a cloud behind. Throughout the American Civil War, Captain Bowood had been known as one of the most daring and successful blockade-runners, and it was during those days of danger and excitement that he laid the foundation of the fortune on which he had since retired. No man was more completely ruled by his wife than the choleric but generous-hearted Captain, and no man suspected the fact less than he did.
‘I drove over this morning,’ said Sir Frederick, ‘to see you about that bay mare which I hear you are desirous of getting rid of.’
‘Yes, yes—just so. We’ll go to the stable and have a look at her. By-the-bye, I was talking to Boyd just now, when your name cropped up. It seems he met you when you were both in South America. Oscar Boyd, engineering fellow and all that. You remember him, eh, now?’
‘I certainly do remember a Mr Boyd; but it is many years since we met.’ Then to himself the Baronet said: ‘Can this be the other man? Oh! Lady Dimsdale.’
‘A very agreeable fellow,’ said the Captain. ‘Here on a visit for a couple of days. A little matter of business between him and me to save lawyers’ expenses.’
‘The other man, without a doubt,’ thought the Baronet. ‘His wife must be dead.’
Miss Brandon had slipped unobserved out of the room. She was now sitting in the veranda, making-believe to be intent over her Latin verbs, but in reality waiting impatiently till the coast should be clear. She had not long to wait. Presently she heard the Captain say in his cheery loud-voiced way: ‘Come along, Sir Frederick; we shall just have time to look at the mare before luncheon;’ and a minute later, she heard the shutting of a door.
Then she shut her book, rose from her seat, and crossing on tiptoe to the open French-window, she peeped into the room. ‘Is that you, Charley?’ she asked in a voice that was little above a whisper.
‘Whom else should it be?’ answered the young man, looking round from the piano with a smile.
‘I was nearly sure of it from the first; but then you look such a guy!’
‘She calls me a guy! after all the trouble I have taken to get myself up like a foreign nobleman.’ Speaking thus, he took off his spectacles and wig, and stood revealed, as pleasant-looking a young fellow as one would see in a day’s march.
Elsie ran forward with a little cry of surprise and delight. ‘Now I know you for my own!’ she exclaimed; and when he took her in his arms and kissed her—more than once—she offered not the slightest resistance. ‘But what a dreadful risk to run!’ she went on as soon as she was set at liberty. ‘Suppose your uncle—good gracious!’
‘My uncle? He can’t eat me, that’s certain; and he has already cut me off with the proverbial shilling.’
‘My poor boy! Fate is very, very hard upon you. We are both down on our luck, Charley; but we can die together, can’t we?’ As she propounded this question, she held out her box of bon-bons. Charley took one, she took another, and then the box was put away. ‘A pan of charcoal’—she went on, giving her sweetmeat a gustatory turn over with her tongue—‘door and windows close shut—you go to sleep and forget to wake up. What could be simpler?’
‘Hardly anything. But we have not quite come to that yet. Of course, that dreadful Vice-chancellor won’t let me marry you for some time to come; but he can’t help himself when you are one-and-twenty.’
‘That won’t be for nearly four years,’ answered Elsie with a pout. ‘What a long, long time to look forward to!’
‘We have only to be true to each other, which I am sure we shall be, and it will pass away far more quickly than you imagine. By that time, I hope to be earning enough money to find you a comfortable home.’
‘There’s my money, you know, Charley dear.’
‘I don’t mean to have anything to do with that. If I can’t earn enough to keep my wife, I’ll never marry.’
‘Oh!’
‘But I shall do that, dear. Why, I’m getting five guineas a week already; and if I’m not getting three times as much as that by the time you are twenty-one, I’ll swallow my wig.’
‘Your uncle will never forgive you for going on the stage.’
‘O yes, he will, by-and-by, when he sees that I am making a fair living by it and really mean to stick to it—having sown all my wild-oats; and above all, when he finds how well they speak of me in his favourite newspaper. And that reminds me that it was what the Telephone said about me that caused old Brooker our manager to raise my screw from four guineas a week to five. I cut the notice out of the paper, you may be sure. Here it is.’ Speaking thus, Master Charles produced his pocket-book; and drew from it a printed slip of paper, which he proceeded to read aloud: ‘“Although we have had occasion more than once to commend the acting of Mr Warden”—that’s me—“we were certainly surprised last evening by his very masterly rendering of the part of Captain Cleveland. His byplay was remarkably clever; and his impassioned love-making in the third act, where timidity or hesitation would have been fatal to the piece, brought down the house, and earned him two well-merited recalls. We certainly consider that there is no more promising jeune premier than Mr Warden now on the stage.” There, my pet, what do you think of that?’ asked the young actor as he put back the slip of paper into his pocket-book.
But his pet vouchsafed no answer. Her face was turned from him; a tear fell from her eye. His arms were round her in a moment. ‘My darling child, what can be the matter?’ he asked.
‘I—I wish you had never gone on the stage,’ said Elsie, with a sob in her voice. ‘I—I wish you were still a tea-broker!’
‘Good gracious! what makes you wish anything so absurd?’
‘It’s not absurd. Doesn’t the newspaper speak of your “impassioned love-making?” And then people—lovers, I mean—are always kissing each other on the stage.’
‘Just as they do sometimes in real life;’ and with that he suited the action to the word.
‘Don’t, Mr Summers, please.’ And she pushed him away, and her eyes flashed through her tears, and she looked very pretty.
Mr Summers sat down on a chair and was unfeeling enough to laugh. ‘Why, what a little goose you are!’ he said.
‘I don’t see it at all.’ This with a toss of her head. Certainly, it is not pleasant to be called a goose.
‘You must know, if you come to think of it, that both love-making and kissing on the stage are only so much make-believe, however real they may seem to the audience. During the last six months, it has been my fate to have to make love to about a dozen different ladies; and during the next six months I shall probably have to do the same thing to as many more; but to imagine on that account that I really care for any of them, or that they really care for me, would be as absurd as to suppose that because in the piece we shall play to-morrow night I shall hunt Tom Bowles—who is the villain of the drama—through three long acts, and kill him in the fourth, he and I must necessarily hate each other. The fact is that Tom and I are the best of friends, and generally contrive to lodge together when on our travels.’
Elsie was half convinced that she had made a goose of herself, but of course was not prepared to admit it. ‘I see that Miss Wylie is acting in your company,’ she said. ‘I saw her in London about a year ago; she is very, very pretty.’
‘Miss Wylie is a very charming woman.’
‘And you make love to her?’
‘Every night of my life—for a little while.’
Elsie felt her unreasonable mood coming back. ‘Then why don’t you marry her?’ she asked with a ring of bitterness in her voice.
Again that callous-hearted young man laughed. ‘Considering that she is married already, and the happy mother of two children, I can hardly see the feasibility of your suggestion.’
‘Then why does she call herself “Miss Wylie?”’
‘It’s a way they have in the profession. She goes by her maiden name. In reality, she is Mrs Berrington. Her husband travels with her. He plays “heavy fathers.”’
Miss Brandon looked mystified. Her lover saw it.
‘You see this suit of clothes,’ he said, ‘and this wig and these spectacles. They are part of the “make-up” of a certain character I played last week. I was the Count von Rosenthal, in love with the beautiful daughter of a poor music-master. In order to be able to make love to her, and win her for myself, and not for my title and riches, I go in the guise of a student, and take lodgings in the same house where she and her father are living. After many mishaps, all ends as it ought to do. Charlotte and I fall into each other’s arms, and her father blesses us both with tears in his eyes. Miss Wylie played the Professor’s daughter, and her husband played the father’s part, and very well he did it too.’
‘Her husband allowed you to make love to his wife?’ said Miss Brandon, with wide-open eyes.
‘Of course he did; and he was not so foolish as to be jealous, like some people. Why should he be?’
Elsie was fully convinced by this time that she had made a goose of herself. ‘You may kiss me, Charley,’ she said with much sweetness. ‘Dear boy, I forgive you.’
Suddenly the sound of a footstep caused them to start and fly asunder. There, close to the open French-window, stood Captain Bowood, glaring from one to the other of them. Miss Brandon gave vent to a little shriek and fled from the room. The Captain came forward, a fine frenzy in his eye. ‘Who the deuce may you be, sir?’ he spluttered, although he had recognised Charley at the first glance.
‘I have the honour to be your very affectionate and obedient nephew, sir.’
The Captain’s reply to this was an inarticulate growl. Next moment, his eye fell on the discarded wig. ‘And what the dickens may this be, sir?’ he asked as he lifted up the article in question on the end of his cane.
‘A trifle of property, sir, belonging to your affectionate and obedient nephew;’ and with that he took the wig off the end of the cane and crammed it into his pocket.
‘So, so. This is the way, you young jackanapes, that you set my commands at defiance, and steal into my house after being forbidden ever to set foot in it again! You young snake-in-the-grass! You crocodile! It would serve you right to give you in charge to the police. How do I know that you are not after my spoons and forks? Come now.’
‘I am glad to find, sir, that your powers of vituperation are in no way impaired since I had the pleasure of seeing you last. Time cannot wither them.—Hem! I believe, sir, that you have had the honour of twice paying my debts, amounting in the aggregate to the trifling sum of five hundred pounds. In this paper, sir, you will find twenty-five sovereigns, being my first dividend of one shilling in the pound. A further dividend will be paid at the earliest possible date.’ As Mr Summers spoke thus, he drew from his waistcoat pocket a small sealed packet and placed the same quietly on the table.
The irate Captain glanced at the packet and then at his imperturbable nephew. The cane trembled in his fingers; for a moment or two he could not command his voice. ‘What, what!’ he cried at last. ‘The boy will drive me crazy. What does he mean with his confounded rigmarole? Dividend! Shilling in the pound! Bother me, if I can make head or tail of his foolery!’
‘And yet, sir, both my words and my meaning were clear enough, as no doubt you will find when you come to think them over in your calmer moments.—And now I have the honour to wish you a very good-morning; and I hope to afford you the pleasure of seeing me again before long.’ Speaking thus, Charles Summers made his uncle a very low bow, took up his hat, and walked out of the room.
‘There’s insolence! There’s audacity!’ burst out the Captain as soon as he found himself alone. ‘The pleasure of seeing him again—eh? Only let me find him here without my leave—I’ll—I’ll—— I don’t know what I won’t do!—And now I come to think of it, it looks very much as if he and Miss Saucebox were making love to each other. How dare they? I’ll haul ’em both up before the Vice-chancellor.’ Here his eye fell on the packet on the table. He took it up and examined it. ‘Twenty-five sovereigns, did he say? As if I was going to take the young idiot’s money! I’ll keep it for the present, and send it back to him by-and-by. Must teach him a lesson. Do him all the good in the world. False hair and spectacles, eh? Deceived his old uncle finely. Just the sort of trick I should have delighted in when I was a boy. But Master Charley will be clever if he catches the old fox asleep a second time.’ He had reached the French-window on his way out, when he came to a sudden stand, and gave vent to a low whistle. ‘Ha, ha! Lady Dimsdale and Mr Boyd, and mighty taken up with each other they seem. Well, well. I’m no spoil-sport. I’ll not let them know I’ve seen them. Looks uncommonly as if Dan Cupid had got them by the ears. A widow too! All widows ought to be labelled “Dangerous.”’ Smiling and chuckling to himself, the Captain drew back, crossed the room, and went out by the opposite door.