CHAPTER XLI.—PULLED UP.
‘The strain is proving almost too much for me,’ Philip wrote. ‘I have no doubt that my scheme is practicable; and even if I fail, somebody else will carry it out by-and-by. But at present the men do not understand it, and are suspicious that my promises will not be fulfilled. So that the harder I strive to put matters right, the more wrong they seem to go. The losses are bringing me to a crisis, and the worry which is the consequence of daily disappointment is driving me out of my wits. Sleepless nights and restless nervous days began long ago, although I have not told you; and I have been obliged to swallow all sorts of rubbish in the form of narcotics. At first they gave me sleep, and that was a gain, notwithstanding the muddled headachy feeling they left me next day.
‘O yes; I have seen the doctor. Joy is a capital fellow. He came in by accident, and when he saw me, gave me good advice—as usual, the advice which could not be followed. He told me that I ought to have absolute rest of mind and body, and to secure it, ought to throw up everything. A good joke that—as good as telling a soldier that he ought to run as soon as he sees the chance of catching a bullet in the wrong way!
‘Do not be afraid, though: I will take a long rest, when I get things a little straight here.
‘One of my present worries is that Kersey has deserted—as I feared he would. Says he is going to Australia or Manitoba, but will give no explanation. That girl Pansy is no doubt at the bottom of it, and I do not think even you can set it right. If my suspicions are correct, she is the fool of her own vanity. She has thrown over an honest fellow, because she is thinking of a man who has no more notion of having anything to do with her than of trying to jump over the moon. I am sorry for her—especially as she deprives me of the best man about the place.
‘As for Wrentham, he irritates me. He sees my anxiety, and yet he comes and goes as gaily as if the whole thing were a farce, which should not disturb anybody’s equanimity, no matter how it ended. And then he has that horrible look of “I told you so” on his face, whenever I attempt to make him seriously examine the state of affairs.
‘The fact is I begin to repent having ever asked for his assistance. He is much more interested in speculative stocks than in the business which ought to occupy his whole attention at this juncture.
‘But, there—I am in a highly excited condition at present, and no doubt misjudge him. He does everything required willingly enough, although not in the spirit which seems to me necessary to the success of my plans.’
The letter was not finished, and so far it did not give a full account of his sufferings mental and physical, or of the gravity with which Dr Joy had warned him that he must pull up at once, or prepare for insanity or death. The good little doctor had never before pronounced such a decided verdict, for, with professional discretion and natural kindliness, he avoided a decisive prognosis unless the result were inevitable. Philip had promised obedience as soon as he got over the present difficulty—promised to take whatever drugs the doctor prescribed, and begged him in the meanwhile not to frighten the people at Willowmere (of course the doctor understood he meant Madge) with any alarming reports.
Philip was writing in his chambers late at night, when he was interrupted by the arrival of Wrentham. The visit had been expected, and therefore excited no surprise. Philip was struck by a change in his visitor’s manner, which, although slight, was enough to render the description he had just written of him a little unfair.
Wrentham’s face was not that of one who was gaily taking part in a farce. Still his bearing suggested the careless ease of a man who is either endowed with boundless fortune or a sublime indifference to bankruptcy. It might be that, being conscious of Philip’s dissatisfaction, he assumed a more marked degree of nonchalance than he would have done if there had been confidence between them.
Philip did try to keep this rule in mind—that when your suspicions are aroused about any person, you should make large allowances for the exaggerations of the meaning of his or her actions, as interpreted by your own excited nerves, and for the altered nervous condition of the person who is conscious of being suspected. But somehow, the rule did not seem to apply to Wrentham. In favour or out of favour, he was much the same. He was a cool-headed or light-hearted gambler in the business of life, and took his losses as coolly as he took his winnings—or feigned to do so; and this feigning, if well done, has as much effect upon the looker-on as if the feeling were genuine.
‘Any news?’ Philip inquired, as he put his letter into the desk and wheeled round to the fire, by the side of which his visitor was already seated.
‘None; except that our friend appears to consume an extraordinary quantity of B. and S. But Mr Shield could not be seen by any one this evening. The man first told me he was out; so I left your note and said I should return in an hour. Then I marched up and down near the door, on the watch for anybody like your uncle. I did not see him, but I saw a friend of mine arrive.’
‘Who was that?’
‘You know him—Beecham, who has been living so long at the King’s Head.’
‘That was an odd coincidence.’
‘Yes, it seemed so,’ rejoined Wrentham, with the tone of one who sees more than he reports. ‘Very odd that the day after your uncle leaves the Langham and takes up his quarters in this quiet private hotel, Beecham should bundle up his traps, quit Kingshope, and come to settle in the same house.’
‘Has he left our place, then?’
‘So he says—for of course I spoke to him. He does not know where he is going to, or whether he will return to Kingshope or not. I said it wasn’t fair to his friends to vanish from amongst them without a hint, or giving them a chance to express their regret at losing him. He said it was a way he had of making up his mind suddenly and acting on its decision instantly. He hoped, however, to have the pleasure of seeing me again. With that he shook hands and bustled into the hotel before it came into my head to ask him if he knew Mr Shield.’
‘How could he know him?’ muttered Philip a little impatiently, for this episode interrupted the account of Wrentham’s endeavours to obtain a reply from his uncle as to whether or not he would consent to see him on the following day.
‘Don’t know how exactly; but there are lots of ways in which they might have met. Beecham has travelled a bit in all sorts of odd corners of the earth. Anyhow, I think they know each other.’
‘Well, well, that is no business of ours.—Did you see Mr Shield at last?’
‘No; but I got this message from him with his compliments. He regretted that he could not see me, but the letter should have immediate attention.’
‘That is satisfactory,’ said Philip, relieved.
Wrentham looked at him critically, as if he had been a horse on which a heavy bet depended.
‘You are easily satisfied,’ he observed with a light laugh; but the sound was not pleasing to the ears of the listener. ‘Before being satisfied, I should like to have his answer to your note, for everything goes to the dogs if he declines to come down handsome.’
‘He will not refuse: he is pledged to it. But it is horrible to have to apply to him so soon.’
‘Ah, yes; it is nasty having to ask a favour. What do you mean to do if he should say “No” plump, or make some excuse?—which comes to the same thing, and is more unpleasant, because it kind of holds you under the obligation without granting you the favour.’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Philip rising and walking up and down the room uneasily.
‘Well, I have a notion,’ said Wrentham slowly, as he drew his hand over his chin; ‘but it seems scarcely worth mentioning, as it would take the form of advice, and you don’t care about my advice, or you wouldn’t be in this mess.... I beg your pardon: ’pon my honour, I didn’t mean to say anything that would hurt you.’
‘What were you going to say?’ was Philip’s abrupt response.
‘I was going to say that you ought to find out what Beecham has to do with him. Of course I have been pretty chummy with the old boy; but I never could get behind his eyes. You can learn what he is up to without any trouble.’
‘Me!—how?’
‘By asking Miss Heathcote.’
‘Miss Heathcote! What nonsense you are talking. She knows no more about the man than I do.’
‘Oh!’—There was a most provoking tone of amused surprise in this exclamation.—‘You think so?’
‘I am sure of it.’
Wrentham, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his thumbs, whilst the tips of his fingers touched in front, stared at him seriously.
‘Then you don’t know what friends they are?—that they have been meeting daily—that they correspond?’
Philip did not immediately catch the significance of voice and manner, he was so much occupied with other matters.
‘I daresay, I daresay,’ was the abstracted answer; ‘he is always wandering about, and they like him at Willowmere.... Do you think we can manage to prepare the full statement of accounts by the morning?’
The mention of accounts did not please Wrentham. He jerked his head back with the grand air of one who, being accustomed to deal with large totals, could not think of giving his mind to petty details.
‘Oh, well, if you don’t mind, I have nothing more to say. As to the accounts, I don’t see what you want more than your books. They are made up, and the totals will be quite enough for Mr Shield. They are what, as you know, I always expected them to be—most confoundedly on the wrong side. I warned you’——
‘Yes, yes; I know you warned me, and others warned me, and the thing has turned out as bad as you croakers could wish. That is due to my mismanagement—to a blunder I have made somewhere, not to any weakness in the principle of my scheme. Taking the position as it is, I want to find out where I have blundered.—I do not mean to give in, and will go on as hard as ever, if we can only tide over the present mess.’
‘That’s right enough,’ ejaculated Wrentham with an outburst of good-natured admiration; ‘but in the meanwhile, the first thing to do is to get over the mess.’
‘Ay, how to do that,’ muttered Philip still marching up and down.
‘The shortest way is to make sure that Mr Shield’s mind is not prejudiced against you and your work at the same time.’
‘Oh, stuff. Who wants to prejudice him against me?’
‘I say, find out what Beecham is after. Maybe he is your friend: in that case, so much the better; and if he is not, then you will be able to deal with him more promptly, if you have discovered his trick in time. Ask Miss Heathcote about him. She ought to tell you all she knows.’
Philip halted, head bowed, eyes fixed on the floor, and the words buzzing through his brain—‘She ought to tell me all she knows.’ Certainly she ought, and would. Then, for the first time, there seemed to reach his ears as from a distance the voices he had heard behind him at the ‘dancing beeches,’ and he recalled Madge’s agitated face as she told him that she had been intrusted by this man with a secret which she must not at present share with him. He had disapproved of her conduct at the time; he disapproved of it still more strongly now, although he regarded it as nothing more than a mistake into which she had been betrayed by her sympathetic heart.
‘Very well,’ he said sharply, ‘I shall ask Miss Heathcote what she knows about him. What then?’
‘Why, then we shall know where we are,’ Wrentham answered gaily. ‘To be sure, if you receive a message from Mr Shield to-morrow morning that it is all right, there will be no necessity to trouble Miss Heathcote.’
It was one of the anomalies of his association with Wrentham—or one of the effects of the weakness which the strain upon his nerves had produced—that Philip was influenced by him on those very points on which he would have least expected himself to be subject to influence by any one. It is true that whilst he had been all along aware of his manager’s want of sympathy with his work, he had discovered no reason to suspect his honesty—and this might account for the anomaly.
So, it was Wrentham who had persuaded him that the time had come to apply to Mr Shield for assistance at a critical juncture in his speculation; and it was Wrentham who persuaded him that he ought to learn from Madge the nature of the secret confided to her by Beecham.
‘He won’t think much more about the accounts to-night,’ Wrentham was saying mentally as he went down-stairs. And his step was not so jaunty as usual when he got into the street.