“Matravers.”
CHAPTER XV
The week that followed the sending of his letter was, to Matravers, with his love for equable times and emotions, like a week in hell! He had set himself a task not easy even to an ordinary man of business, but to him trebly difficult and harassing. Day after day he spent in the city—a somewhat strange visitor there, with his grave, dignified manner and studied fastidiousness of dress and deportment. He was unversed in the ways of the men with whom he had to deal, and he had no commercial aptitude whatever. But in a quiet way he was wonderfully persistent, and he succeeded better, perhaps, than any other emissary whom John Drage could have employed. The sum of money which he eventually collected amounted to nearly fifteen hundred pounds, and late one evening he started for Kensington with a bundle of papers under his arm and a cheque-book in his pocket.
It was his last visit,—at any rate, for the present,—he told himself with a sense of wonderful relief, as he walked through the Park in the gathering twilight. For of late, something in connection with his day’s efforts had taken him every evening to the shabby little house at Kensington, where his coming was eagerly welcomed by the tired, sick man and the lonely boy. He had esteemed himself a man well schooled in all manner of self-control, and little to be influenced in a matter of duty by his personal likes and dislikes. But these visits were a torture to him! To sit and talk for hours with a man, grateful enough, but peevish and commonplace, and with a curious lack of virility or self-reliance in his untoward circumstances, was trial enough to Matravers, who had been used to select his associates and associations with delicate and close care. But to remember that this man had been, and indeed was, the husband of Berenice, was madness! It was this man, whom at the best he could only regard with a kindly and gentle contempt, who stood between him and such surprising happiness, this man and the boy with his pale, serious face and dark eyes. And the bitterness of fate—for he never realized that it would have been possible for him to have acted otherwise—had made him their benefactor!
Just as he was leaving the Park he glanced up at the sound of a carriage passing him rapidly, and as he looked up he stood still! It seemed to him that life itself was standing still in his veins. Berenice had been silent. There had come no word from her! But nothing so tragic, so horrible as this, had ever occurred to him! His heart had been full of black despair, and his days had been days of misery; but even the possibility of seeking for himself solace, by means not altogether worthy, had never dawned upon him. Nor had he dreamed it of her! Yet the man who waved his hand from the box-seat of the phaeton with a courtesy seemingly real, but, under the circumstances, brutally ironical, was Thorndyke, and the woman who sat by his side was Berenice!
The carriage passed on down the broad drive, and Matravers stood looking after it. Was it his fancy, or was that, indeed, a faint cry which came travelling through the dim light to his ears as he stood there under the trees—a figure turned to stone. A faint cry, or the wailing of a lost spirit! A sudden dizziness came over him, and he sat down on one of the seats close at hand. There was a singing in his ears, and a pain at his heart. He sat there with half-closed eyes, battling with his weakness.
Presently he got up, and continued his journey. He found himself on the doorstep of the shabby little house, and mechanically he passed in and told the story of his day’s efforts to the man who welcomed him so eagerly. With his pocket-book in his hand he successfully underwent a searching cross-examination, faithfully recording what one man had said and what another, their excuses and their protestations. He made no mistakes, and his memory served him amply. But when he had come to the end of the list, and had placed the cheque-book in John Drage’s fingers, he felt that he must get away. Even his stoical endurance had a measurable depth. But it was hard to escape from the man’s most unwelcome gratitude. John Drage had not the tact to recognize in his benefactor the man to whom thanks are hateful.