When Barney stepped into his waiting hansom, he said to himself, “Ah, Barney, my boy, you light on your feet as usual. What a lovely girl! and a mind of her own, too, if she is so shy. Who would ever have suspected grim old Sartwell of having such a pretty daughter! I must persuade the mater to come off that particular hobbyhorse of hers, for it is easy to see the girl doesn’t want anyone to interfere with her father. If I can bring the mater around and get the cheque too, I’m a diplomatist.”
CHAPTER VI.
From Wimbledon to Surbiton is comparatively but a step. An enterprising train, bent on accomplishing the feat, can do the distance in seven or eight minutes, and even the slowest of “locals” takes but twelve. Barney was an energetic young man, and, where a cheque was concerned, knew the dangers of delay; so he resolved, being in the neighbourhood, to go to Surbiton, see his mother, and settle the business. The young man often reassured himself by saying inwardly that he was no fool, and the few minutes he had to meditate on the situation, as he paced up and down No. 3 platform waiting for the train, enabled him to formulate a course of action.
Barney had a well-defined mental process by which he arrived at any plan of procedure. “The great thing, my boy,” he used to say, “is to know exactly what you want, and then go for it.” In going for it the young fellow trampled on anything that came in his path: truth, for example. His one object was success—the kind that succeeds. Having attained that, he was careless of the means.
In this instance what he wanted was to prevent any interference with Sartwell, and he knew, if he boldly opposed his mother’s scheme, such opposition would inevitably bring about the meddling he desired to avoid, and at the same time place himself in her bad books, which was financially undesirable.
“It will take a bit of thinking,” said Barney to himself, thus showing that he correctly estimated the difficulties of the situation, and realized the shortness of the distance between Wimbledon and Surbiton.
Surbiton is a most attractive Surrey suburb with an excellent service of trains. The houses are large, detached, and of the class known in the estate agents’ vocabulary as “desirable.” Stockbrokers in the city are attracted thither as much by the rapid train service as by the desirable residences; thus many of them live there. The rich and retired tradesman and the manufacturer in a large way have given the place an exclusiveness which it could never have attained if it had been a mere resort of noblemen, or a place for the housing of the working classes. It is the rich and retired tradesman who has given England its reputation as a cold and dignified nation. Nothing can compare with a first-class compartment from Surbiton—“Vaux-hall and Waterloo only”—for frigid exclusiveness. Sometimes an unfortunate duke or marquis, coming from his estates in the southwest, chances upon the Surbiton contingent, and makes an innocent and friendly remark. He is frozen into silence by the icy stare of the other five occupants of the compartment.
Surbiton, to a stranger, has the look of a sea-side place. Some of the streets are broad and divided by narrow railed-in parks. There are benches here and there, and trees everywhere, while an assembly hall in the centre of the town, and a sort of marine parade along the river, and a band-stand and military concert every Wednesday evening during the summer, give to this charming suburb the air of a coast resort, lacking only the long, spidery, cast-iron pier, which Surbiton may yet build over the river into the Hampton Court grounds, where in spring the waters lie like a broad yellow ocean. When that pier is built, the charge for admission will doubtless be fourpence—double the Brighton price, for Surbiton is prone to attest its exclusiveness in a manner that appeals to the financial imagination. It is proud of the fact that its local rates are high. The Surbiton improvement committee being elected to attend to that matter, and that a first-class season ticket costs two pounds more than to any other place an equal distance from London.