The Arbiter: A Novel

by Lady Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe Bell

CHAPTER XI

The Miss Pateleys, sisters of Robert Pateley, lived together. The death of their parents, as we have said, had taken place when their brother was already launched on his successful career as a journalist. They had at first gone on living in the little country town in which their father had been a solicitor. It had not occurred to them to do anything else. They were surrounded there by people who knew them, who considered them, towards whom their social position needed no explaining and by whom it was taken for granted. When they went shopping, the tradespeople would reply in a friendly way, "Yes, Miss Pateley,—No, Miss Jane. This is the stocking you generally prefer"; or, "These were the pens you had last time," with an intimate understanding of the needs of their customers, forming a most pleasing contrast to the detached attitude of the staff of big shops. The sisters had a very small income between them, eked out by skilful management, and also, it must be said, by constant help from their brother, who represented to them the moving principle of the universe embodied in a visible form. He it was who knew things the female mind cannot grasp, how to read the gas meter, what to do when the cistern was blocked, or when the landlord said it was not his business to mend the roof. These things which appeared so preoccupying to Anna and Jane seemed to sit very lightly on their brother Robert, and when they saw him shoulder each detail and deal with it with instant and consummate ease they admired him as much as they did when they saw him carrying upstairs his own big portmanteau which the united female strength of the house was powerless to deal with. After a time Robert, devoted brother though he was, found that it complicated existence to have to settle these matters by correspondence, still more to have suddenly to take a journey of several hours from London in order to deal with them on the spot. He proposed to his sisters that they should come and live in London. With many misgivings, and yet not without some secret excitement, they assented, and for a few months before our story begins they had been established in the same house as their brother, on the floor above the lodgings he inhabited in Vernon Street, Bloomsbury. Vernon Street, Bloomsbury, was perhaps a fortunate place for them to begin their London life in, if London life, except as a geographical term, it can be called, for two poor little ladies living more absolutely outside what is commonly described by that name it would be hard to find. Indeed, if it had not been for the courage and adventurous spirit of Jane, the younger of the two, their hearts might well have failed them during those first months in which the autumn days shortened over the district of Bloomsbury. Since they knew no one, they had nobody to visit, and nobody came to see them. They were still not a little bewildered by London. There were, it was true, a great many sights of an inanimate kind; but how to get at them? They did not consider themselves justified in taking cabs, and omnibuses were at first, to two people who had lived all their lives in a tramless town, a disconcerting and complicated means of locomotion. However, as the time went on they shook down, they found their little niche in existence; they made acquaintance with the clergyman's wife and some of the district visitors, and when the first summer of their London life came round, the summer following Rachel's marriage, everything seemed to them more possible. London was bright, sunshiny, and welcoming, instead of being austere and repellent. Pateley had succeeded in obtaining a key of the square close to which they lived, and they sat there and revelled in the summer weather. The mere fact of having him so near them, of knowing that at any moment in the day he might come in with the loud voice and heartiness of manner which always cheered and uplifted them, albeit some of his acquaintances ventured to find it too audible, gave them a fresh sense of being in touch with all the great things happening in the world. Then came a moment in which, indeed, the larger issues of life seemed to present themselves to be dealt with. Pateley, under whose auspices the Arbiter had prospered exceedingly, and who had an interest in it from the point of view of a commercial enterprise as well as of a political organ, found himself one day the possessor of a larger sum of ready money than he had expected. He made up his mind that some of it should be given to his sisters, and that the rest should join their own savings invested in the "Equator," which seemed to present every prospect of succeeding when once the moment should come to work it. Pateley was altogether in a high state of jubilation in those days. The Cape to Cairo railway was actually on the verge of being completed. In a week more the gigantic scheme would be an accomplished fact. The excitement in London respecting it was immense. A small piece of German territory still remained to be crossed, but if no unforeseen incident arose to jeopardise the situation at the last moment all would yet be well. The rejoicings of Englishmen commonly take a sturdy and obvious form, and two days after the great junction was expected to take place, the Arbiter was to give a dinner at the Colossus Hotel in the Strand to the representatives of the Cape to Cairo Railway in London, after which the Hotel would be illuminated on all sides, and fireworks over the river were to proclaim to the whole town that Africa had been spanned. Pateley was to take the chair at the dinner. He had some shares in the railway himself, although the rush upon it had been too great for him to secure any large amount of them. He had golden hopes, however, in the future of the "Equator," when once the railway was at its doors. Anderson had gone back again to Africa, this time with an eager staff of companions, and was only waiting for his time to come.

"Now then," Pateley said jovially, one evening, as he went into the lodgings in Vernon Street and found his sisters sitting over their somewhat inadequate evening meal, "Times are looking up, I must tell you. I shouldn't wonder if you were better off before long. When the railway's finished, and if the "Equator" mine is all we believe it to be, you ought to get something handsome out of it—and I have got something for you to go on with which will keep you going in the meantime. So now I hope you will think yourselves justified in sitting down to a decent dinner every evening, instead of that kind of thing," and he pointed, with his loud, jovial laugh, to the cocoa and eggs on the rather dingily appointed table.

Jane's eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed with an incredulous joy. Anna's breath came quickly. What a fairy prince of a brother this was!

"But, Robert, we had better not make much difference in our way of living at first, had we?" Anna said, timidly, calling to mind the instances in fiction of imprudent persons who had launched out wildly on an accession of fortune and then been overtaken by ruin.

"Well, I don't suppose you are either of you likely to want to cut a big dash," he said with another loud laugh. "At least, I don't see you doing it."

"It is a great responsibility," Anna said timidly. "I hope we shall use it the right way."

"Right way!" said Pateley. "Of course you will. Go to the play with it, get yourself a fur cloak, have a fire in your bedroom——"

"Oh!" said Jane.