“I suppose it’s his handsome face that mankind, and womankind in particular, find so taking,” Stephen would remark to Nelly. “He certainly has a wonderful knack for getting on with people without caring twopence whether they like him or not. I wish I knew his secret. Perhaps it’s his high spirits.”
Nelly would sometimes suggest that Marmaduke’s fine temper might count for something in the mystery. And Stephen never contradicted her. His temper was not his best point. He had a heart of gold; he had energy, patience, and endurance to any extent—except in case of toothache; he was unselfish and generous; but he was sensitive and exacting. Like most persons who dispense liberally, he was impatient of the selfishness and ingratitude of men who take all they can get and return nothing. Marmaduke had no such accounts to square with human beings, so he never felt aggrieved, never quarrelled with them. Stephen was working hard at his profession—he was an engineer—and so far he had achieved but moderate success. Marmaduke had been called to the bar, but it was a mere formality so far; he spent his time dawdling about town, retailing gossip and reading poetry, waiting for briefs that never came—that never do come to handsome young gentlemen who take it so easy. His elder brother laid no blame on him for this want of success. He was busy all day himself, and took for granted that Marmaduke was busy on his side. The law was up-hill work, besides; the cleverest and most industrious men grew gray in its service before they made a name for themselves; and Duke was after all but a boy—he had time enough before him. So Stephen argued in his brotherly indulgence, in ignorance of the real state of things.
Nelly was, as yet, the only person who had found out Marmaduke, who knew him thoroughly. She knew him egotistical to the core, averse to work, to effort of every sort, idle, self-indulgent, extravagant; and the knowledge of all this afforded much anxious thought to her little head of nineteen years. They lived alone, these three. Nelly was a mother to the two young men, watching and caring for them with that instinctive child-motherhood that is so touching in young girls sometimes. She was a spirited, elfin little creature, very pretty, blessed with the sweetest of tempers, the shrewdest of common sense, and an energy of character that nothing daunted and few things resisted. Marmaduke described this trait of Nelly’s in brother-like fashion as “a will of her own.” He knew his was no match for it, and, with a tact which made one of his best weapons of defence, he contrived to avoid clashing with it. This was not all policy. He loved his pretty sister, and admired her more than anything in the world except himself. And yet he knew that this admiration was not mutual; that Nelly knew him thoroughly, saw through him as if he were glass; but he was not afraid of her. His elder brother was duped by him; but he would have staked his life on it that Nelly would never undeceive him; that she would let Stephen go on believing in him so long as the deceiver himself did not tear off the mask. Yet it was a source of bitter anxiety to the wise little mother-maiden to watch Marmy drifting on in this life of indolence and vacuity. Where was it to end? Where do such lives always end? Nothing but some terrible shock could awake him from it. And where was the shock to come from? Nelly never preached—she was far too sensible for that—but when the opportunity presented itself she would say a few brief words to the culprit in an earnest way that never irritated him, if they worked no better result. He would admit with exasperating good-humor that he was a good-for-nothing dog; that he was unworthy of such a perfection of a sister and such an irreproachable elder brother; but that, as nature had so blessed him, he meant to take advantage of the privilege of leaving the care of his perfection to them.
“If I were alone on my own hook, Nell, I would work like a galley-slave,” he protested once to her gentle upbraiding. “But as it is, why need I bother myself? You will save my soul, and pray me high and dry into heaven; and Stephen—Stephen the admirable, the unimpeachable, the pink of respectability—will keep me out of mischief in this.”
“I don’t believe in vicarious salvation for this world or the next, and neither do you, Marmy. You are much too intelligent to believe in any such absurdity,” replied Nelly, handing him a glove she had been sewing a button into.
Marmaduke did not contradict her, but, whistling an air from the Trovatore, arranged his hat becomingly, a little to one side, and, with a farewell look in the glass over the mantel-piece, sauntered out for his morning constitutional in the park. Nelly went to the window, and watched the lithe young figure, with its elastic step, until it disappeared. She was conscious of a stronger solicitude about Marmaduke this morning than she had ever felt before. It was like a presentiment. Yet there was nothing that she knew of to justify it. He had not taken to more irregular hours, nor more extravagant habits, nor done anything to cause her fresh anxiety; still, her heart beat as under some new and sudden fear. Perhaps it was the ring of false logic in his argument that sounded a louder note of alarm and warned her of worse danger than she had suspected. One might fear everything for a man starting in life with the deliberate purpose of shifting his responsibility on to another, setting his conscience to sleep because he had two brave, wakeful ones watching at his side.
“If something would but come and wake him up to see the monstrous folly, the sinfulness, of it!” sighed Nelly. “But nothing short of a miracle could do that, I believe. He might, indeed, fall ill and be brought to death’s door; he might break his leg and be a cripple for life, and that might serve the purpose; but oh! dear, I’m not brave enough to wish for so severe a remedy.”
Two months had passed since this little incident between the brother and sister, and nothing had occurred to vindicate Nelly’s gloomy forebodings. Marmaduke rose late, read the newspaper, then Tennyson, Lamartine, or the last novel, made an elaborate toilet, and sauntered down to the courts to keep a lookout for the coming briefs. But it was near Christmas now, and this serious and even tenor of life had been of late broken in upon by the getting up of private theatricals in company with some bachelor friends. What between learning his own part, and hearing his fellow-actors and actresses theirs, and overseeing stage arrangements, Marmaduke had a hard time of it. His hands were full; he was less at home than usual, seldom or never of an evening. He had come in very late some nights, and looked worn and out of spirits, Nelly thought, when he came down to his late breakfast.
“I wish those theatricals were over, Marmy. They will kill you if they last much longer,” she said, with a tender, anxious look on her pretty little face. This was the day he came home and found Stephen in the hands of the Philistines.
“’Tis hard work enough,” assented the young man, stretching out his long limbs wearily; “but the 26th will soon be here. It will be too bad if you are laid up and can’t come and applaud me, Steevy,” he added, considering his elder brother’s huge head, that looked as if it would take a month to regain its natural shape.