Luttrell Of Arran Part 99

"You spoke of a day in the country somewhere," reiterated Grenfell "St.

Germains, or Versailles."

"Very true. I am most grateful for your reminder. It will be charming. I am quite in the humour for a few pleasant people, and I hope the weather will favour us."

"Good-night," said Grenfell abruptly, and left the room.

CHAPTER LIX. MR. GRENFELL'S ROOM

Mr. Grenfell sat in an easy-chair, wrapped in a most comfortable dressing-gown, and his feet encased in the softest of slippers, before a cheery wood fire, smoking. His reflections were not depressing. The scene from which he had just come satisfied him as to a fact--which men like Grenfell have a sort of greedy appet.i.te to be daily a.s.sured of--that "Money is not everything in this world." Simple as the proposition seems, it takes a long and varied knowledge of life to bring home that conviction forcibly and effectually. Men are much more p.r.o.ne to utter it than to believe it, and more ready to believe it than to act upon it.

Now, though Grenfell was ready to admit that "Money was not everything,"

he coupled it with what he believed to be just as true--that it was a man's own fault that made it so. He instanced to his mind the old man he had just quitted, and who, except in the quality of years, was surrounded with everything one could desire--name, fortune, station, more than average abilities, and good health--and yet he must needs fall in love! By what fatality was it that a man always chose the worst road?

What malevolent ingenuity ever selected the precise path that led to ruin? Were there no other vices he could have taken to? Wine, gambling, gluttony, would have spared his intellect for a year or two certainly.

The brains of old people stand common wear and tear pretty well; it is only when the affections come to bear upon the mind that the system gives way. That a man should a.s.sume old age gracefully and becomingly, the heart ought to decay and grow callous, just as naturally as hair whitens and teeth fail. Nature never contemplated such a compact as that the blood at seventy should circulate as at thirty, and that the case-hardened, world-worn man should have a revival of Hope, Trustfulness, and Self-delusion. It was thus Grenfell regarded the question, and the view was not the less pleasing that he felt how safely he stood as regards all those seductions which fool other men and render their lives ridiculous. At all events, the world should not laugh at _him_. This is a philosophy that suffices for a large number of people in life; and simple as the first element of it may seem, it involves more hard-heartedness, more cruel indifference to others, and a more practical selfishness, than any other code I know of.

If he was well pleased that Vyner should "come all right again," it was because he liked a rich friend far better than a poor one; but there mingled with his satisfaction a regret that he had not made overtures to the Vyners--the "women," he called them--in their hour of dark fortune, and established with them a position he could continue to maintain in their prosperity. "Yes," thought he, "I ought to have been taught by those people who always courted the Bourbons in their exile, and speculated on their restoration." But the restoration of the Vyner dynasty was a thing he had never dreamed of. Had he only had the very faintest clue to it, what a game he might have played! What generous proffers he might have made, how ready he might have been with his aid!

It is only just to him to own that he very rarely was wanting in such prescience; he studied life pretty much as a physician studies disease, and argued from the presence of one symptom what was to follow it.

His present speculations took this form. Vyner will at once return to England, and go back to "the House;" he'll want occupation, and he'll want, besides, to reinstate himself with the world. With his position and his abilities--fair abilities they were--he may aspire to office, and Grenfell liked official people. They were a sort of priesthood, who could slip a friend into the sanctuary occasionally, not to add, that all privileged cla.s.ses have an immense attraction for the man whose birth has debarred him from their intimacy. Now, he could not present himself more auspiciously to the Vyners than in the company of Sir Within Wardle, who was most eager to renew all his former relations with them. Nor was it quite impossible but that Grenfell might seem to be the agency by which the reconciliation was brought about. A clever stroke of policy that, and one which would doubtless go far to render him acceptable to the "women."

If we must invade the secresy of a very secret nature, we must confess that Mr. Grenfell, in his gloomier hours, in his dark days at home, when dyspeptic and depressed, speculated on the possible event that he might at last be driven to marry. He thought of it the way men think of the precautions instilled by a certain time of life, the necessity of more care in diet, more regular hours, and such-like.

There would come a time, he suspected, when country-houses would be less eager for him, and the young fellows who now courted and surrounded him, would have themselves slipped into "mediaevalty," and need him no more.

It was sad enough to think of, but he saw it, he knew it. Nothing, then, remained but a wife.

It was all-essential--indeed indispensable--that she should be a person of family and connexions; one, in fact, that might be able to keep open the door of society--even half ajar--but still enough to let him slip in and mingle with those inside. Vyner's sister-in-law was pretty much what he wanted. She was no longer young, and consequently her market-value placed her nearer to his hopes; and although Sir Gervais had never yet made him known to Lady Vyner or Georgina, things were constantly done abroad that could not have occurred at home. Men were dear friends on the Tiber who would not have been known to each other on the Thames. The result of all his meditations was, that he must persuade Sir Within to cross the Alps, and then, by some lucky chance or other, come unexpectedly upon the Vyners. Fortune should take care of the rest.

Arrived at this conclusion, and his third cigar all but smoked out, he was thinking of bed, when a tap came to his door. Before he had well time to say "Come in," the door opened, and young Ladarelle's valet, Mr.

Fisk, stood before him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 502]

"I hope you'll forgive me, Sir," said he, submissively, "for obtruding upon you at such an hour, but I have been all over Paris, and only found out where you were this minute. I was at the station this evening when you drove up there, but I lost you in the crowd, and never could find you again."

"All which zeal implies that you had some business with me," said Grenfell, slowly.

"Yes, Sir, certainly. It is what I mean, Sir," said he, wiping his forehead, and betraying by his manner a considerable amount of agitation.

"Now, then, what is it?"

"It is my master, Sir, Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle, has got into trouble--very serious trouble, I'm afraid, too--and if _you_ can't help him through it, there's n.o.body can, I'm sure."

"A duel?"

"No, Sir, he don't fight."

"Debt?"

"Not exactly debt, Sir, but he has been arrested within the last few hours."

"Out with it. What's the story?"

"You have heard about that Irish business, I suppose, Sir--that story of the young girl he pretended to have married to prevent Sir Within making her my Lady----"

"I know it all; go on."

"Well, Sir, the worst of all that affair was, that it brought my master into close intimacy with a very dangerous fellow called O'Rorke, and though Mr. Ladarelle paid him--and paid him handsomely, too--for all he had done, and took his pa.s.sage out to Melbourne, the fellow wouldn't go. No, Sir, he swore he'd see Paris, and enjoy a little of Paris life, before he'd sail. _I_ was for getting him aboard when he was half drunk, and shipping him off before he was aware of it; but my master was afraid of him, and declared that he was quite capable of coming back from the farthest end of the world to 'serve him out' for anything like 'a cross.'"

"Go on--come to the arrest--what was it for?" broke in Grenfell, impatiently.

"Cheating at cards, Sir," plumped out the other, half vexed at being deemed prosy. "That's the charge, Sir; false cards and cogged dice, and the police have them in their hands this minute. It was all this fellow's doing, Sir; it was he persuaded Mr. Dolly to set up the rooms, and the tables, and here's what it's come to!" "And there _was_ false play?"

"So they say, Sir. One of the ladies that was taken up is well known to the police; she is an Italian Marchioness--at least they call her so--and the story goes 'well protected,' as they say here."

"I don't see that there's anything to be done in the matter, Fisk; the law will deal with them, and pretty sharply, too, and none can interfere with it. Are you compromised yourself?"

"No, Sir, not in the least. I was back and forward to Town once or twice a week getting bills discounted and the like, but I never went near the rooms. I took good care of that."

"Such being the case, I suspect your affection for your master will not prove fatal to you--eh?"

"Perhaps not, Sir; a strong const.i.tution and reg'lar habit may help me over it, but there's another point I ain't so easy about. Mr. Dolly has got a matter of nigh four hundred pounds of mine. I lent it at twenty-five per cent, to him last year, and I begin to fear the security is not what it ought to be."

"There's something in that, certainly," said Grenfell, slowly. "Yes, Sir, there's a great deal in it, because they say here, if Mr. Dolly should be sent to the galleys ever so short a time, he loses civil rights, and when he loses _them_, he needn't pay no debts to any one."

"Blessed invention those galleys must be, if they could give the immunity you mention!" said Grenfell, laughing; "but I opine your law is not quite accurate--at any rate, Fisk, there's nothing to be done for him. If he stood alone in the case, it is just possible there would be a chance of helping him, but here he must accept the lot of his a.s.sociates. By the way, what did he mean by that mock marriage? What was the object of it?" This query of Grenfell's was thrown out in a sort of random carelessness, its real object being to see if Mr. Fisk was on "the square" with him.

"Don't you know, Sir, that he wanted to prevent the old gent at Dalradern from marrying her? One of the great lawyers thinks that the estate doesn't go to the Ladarelles at all if Sir Within had an heir, and though it's not very likely, Sir, it might be possible. Master Dolly, at all events, was mortally afraid of it, and he always said that the mere chance cost him from fifteen to twenty per cent, in his dealings with money-lenders."

"Are you known to Sir Within, Fisk? Has he seen you at the Castle?"

"Not to know me, Sir; he never notices any of _us_ at all. Yates, his man, knows me."

"Yates is not with him. He has got a French valet who lived with him some years ago, and so I was thinking, perhaps, the best way to serve you would be to take you myself. What do you say to it?"

"I'm ever grateful, Sir, to you. I couldn't wish for anything better."

"It will be pleasanter than 'Clichy,' at all events, Fisk, and there's no doubt the police here will look out for you when they discover you were in Mr. Ladarelle's service."

"And am I safe here, Sir?"

"You'll be safe, because we leave here to-morrow. So come over here after breakfast, and we'll settle everything. By the way, I'd not go near Mr. Ladarelle if I were you; you can't be of use to him, and it's as well to take care of yourself."

"I was just thinking that same, Sir; not to say that if that fellow O'Rorke saw me, it's just as likely he'd say I was one of the gang."

"Quite so. Be here about twelve or one, not later."