The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols Part 30

'Well, I'm glad you take it that way,' said Mr. Tom. 'I thought you would be cut up. Most fellows are; though they pretend not to be. I really do believe you're rather glad that Madge has given you the slip.'

'Sit down, Beresford, and I will tell you all about it. I proposed to your sister Anne years ago.'

'To Nan? Why wasn't I told?'

'These things are not generally preached from the house-tops. She refused me point-blank; and I knew she was a girl who knew her own mind. Then I rejoined my ship; and remained mostly abroad for a long time. I fancied it would all blow over; but it didn't; I was harder hit than I thought; and then, you know, sailors are driven to think of bygone things. Well, you remember when I came home--when I met you in the street. I thought I should like to have just another glimpse of Nan--of Miss Anne, I mean--before she married the parson. Do you remember my going into the drawing-room? Madge was there--the perfect image of Nan! Indeed; I thought at first she was Nan herself. And wasn't it natural I should imagine the two sisters must be alike in disposition too? And then, as it was hopeless about Nan, I fancied--I imagined--well, the truth is, I made a most confounded mistake, Beresford; and the only thing I have been thinking of, day and night, of late, was what was the proper and manly thing to do--whether to tell Madge frankly--or whether to say nothing, with the hope that after marriage it would all come right. And now you needn't wonder at my being precious glad she has herself settled the affair; and there is not a human being in the world more heartily wishes her lifelong happiness than I do. And I wish to goodness I knew some way of letting her know that too.'

Tom stretched out his legs--his hands were in his pockets--and said, contemplatively,--

'So you thought Madge was the same as Nan. I could have told you different, if you had asked me. You thought you could find another girl like Nan. If you want to try, you'll have to step out. By the time you've found her, the Wandering Jew 'll be a fool compared to you.

Girls like Nan don't grow on every blackberry bush.'

'I know that,' said Frank King, with a sigh.

Then Mr. Tom looked at his watch.

'I'm very hungry,' said he. 'Have you dined?'

'No, I have not. I was going to walk along to the club when you came in.'

'Come with me to the Waterloo. You see, something must be done about these two ninnies. He must get something to do; and set to work. The Baby has never been accustomed to live up a tree. She must have a proper house.'

Frank King got his coat and hat; and they both went out. He was thinking of his own affairs mostly--and of this singular sense of relief that seemed to permeate him; Mr. Tom, on the other hand, was discussing the various aspects of the elopement, more particularly with regard to the Court of Chancery. During dinner the two friends arrived at the conclusion that people generally would look upon the affair as a harmless, or even humorous, escapade; and that the Court, seeing that the thing was done, would allow the young people to go their way, with a suitable admonition.

This was not quite what happened, however. To begin with, there was a clamour of contention and advice among guardians and friends; there were anonymous appeals to the runaways in agony-columns; there were futile attempts made to pacify the Court of Chancery. All the Beresfords came up to town, except Nan, who remained to look after the Brighton house. The chief difficulty of the moment was to discover the whereabouts of Mr. John Hanbury. That gentleman was coy; and wanted to find out something of what was likely to happen to him if he emerged from his hiding-place. At last it was conveyed to him that he was only making matters worse; then he wrote from certain furnished apartments in a house on the south-west side of Regent's Park; finally, there was a series of business interviews, and it was arranged that on a particular day he should attend the Court and hear the decision of the Vice-Chancellor.

On that fateful morning, poor Madge, her pretty eyes all bedimmed with tears, and her lips tremulous, was with her sisters and mother in the rooms in Bruton Street; the gentlemen only attended the Court. Jack Hanbury was looking exceedingly nervous and pale. And indeed, when the case came on, and the Vice-chancellor began to make certain observations, even Mr. Tom, whose care for the future of his sister had now quite overcome all his scorn for that fellow Hanbury, grew somewhat alarmed. The Court did not all appear inclined to take the free-and-easy view of the matter that had been antic.i.p.ated. The Vice-Chancellor's sentences, one after the other, seemed to become more and more severe, as he described the gross conduct and contempt of which this young man had been guilty. He deplored the condition of the law in England, which allowed persons to get married on the strength of false statements. He wound up his lecture, which had a conciseness and pertinence about it not often found in lectures, by the brief announcement that he should forthwith make an order committing Mr. John Hanbury to Holloway Prison.

There was an ominous silence for a brief second or so. Then the Court was addressed by Mr. Rupert--who was Mary Beresford's husband, and a fairly well-known Q.C.--who made a very humble and touching little appeal. He said he represented the relatives of the young lady; he was himself a near relative; and they were all inclined to beg his Lordship to take a merciful view of the case. They did not think the young man, though he had acted most improperly, was inspired by mercenary motives.

He was now in Court; and was anxious to make the most profound apology.

If his Lordship----

But at this moment his Lordship, by the slightest of gestures, seemed to intimate that Mr. Rupert was only wasting time; and the end of it was that Mr. Jack Hanbury, after having heard a little more lecturing on the heinousness of his conduct, found himself under the charge of the tipstaff of the Court, with Holloway prison as his destination. It was not to be considered as a humorous escapade after all.

'Madge will have a fit,' said Mr. Tom, when they were outside again.

'Some one must go and tell her. I shan't.'

'I knew he must be committed,' said Mr. Rupert to the young man's father. 'There was no help for that; his contempt of Court was too heinous. Now the proper thing to do is to let him have a little dose of prison--the authority of the Court must be vindicated, naturally; and then we must have a definite scheme for the establishment of the young man in business before we beg the Court to reconsider the matter.

I mean, you must name a sum; and it must be ready. And then there must be an understanding that Miss Beresford--I mean Mrs. Hanbury's--small fortune shall be settled on herself.'

'My advice,' remarked Mr. Tom, 'is that Madge should go herself and see the Vice-Chancellor. She might do the pathetic business--a wife and not a widow, or whatever the poetry of the thing is. I think it's deuced hard lines to lock up a fellow for merely humbugging an old parson up in Kentish Town. Why shouldn't people get married when they want to? Fancy having to live three weeks in Kentish Town! I wouldn't live three weeks in Kentish Town to marry a d.u.c.h.ess.'

'I am afraid,' said Mr. Rupert, drily, 'that the Vice-chancellor is too familiar with the sight of pretty damsels in distress. I think, Mr.

Hanbury, if you can produce a deed of partnership with your friends in Southampton, that would be more likely to influence the Court. On our side we agree. And of course there must be a humble apology from the young man himself. We had better wait a week, or a fortnight, and then renew the application. I will go myself and tell the young lady what has happened.'

Madge did not go into a fit at all; but what she did do was to decline positively to remain in Bruton Street. No; back she would go to the rooms that her dear Jack had taken for her. They might come to see her there if they liked; but that was her home; it was her place as a wife to remain in the home that her husband had chosen for her. Madge did not cry as much as had been expected; she was angry and indignant, and she said hard things about the condition of the law in England; and she had a vague belief that her brother Tom was a renegade and traitor and coward because he did not challenge the Vice-Chancellor to a duel on Calais sands.

Nevertheless, in her enforced widowhood, Madge found time to write the enclosed letter--nay, she went first of all to the trouble of walking down Baker Street until she came to a shop where she could get very pretty and nicely scented notepaper for the purpose:--

'DEAR FRANK--Tom brought me yesterday your very manly and generous letter, and I must write and thank you for your kind wishes for my happiness. It's dreadful to think that persons should be shut up in prison, when everybody is agreed it is needless--merely to satisfy a form. You are very kind in what you say; you were always kind to me--kinder than I deserved. But I didn't think you would mind very much my running away; for I am sure you care far more for Nan than you ever cared for me; and now Edith declares that Nan has been in love with you all the time. I hear you have been doing everything in your power towards getting poor Jack out of prison; and so I thought I would do you a good turn also. You might take this letter to Nan, and ask her if every word in it isn't true--unless you think you've had enough of our family already. Dear Frank, I am so glad you forgive me; and when I get out of my present deep distress I hope you will come and see us and be like old friends.--Yours sincerely, MADGE HANBURY.'

At this present moment Captain King, as they still call him (for all these things happened not so long ago), considers this letter the most valuable he ever received. Not any message from home announcing to the schoolboy that a hamper would speedily arrive; not any communication from the Admiralty after he had arrived at man's estate; nay, not any one of Nan's numerous love-letters--witty, and tender, and clever, as these were--had for him anything like the gigantic importance of this letter. It is needless to say that, very shortly after the receipt of it, and without saying a word to anybody, he slipped down to Brighton, and got a room at the Norfolk.

It was so strange to think that Nan was a little way along there; and that there was still a chance that that same Nan--the wonder of the world with whose going away from him the world had got quite altered somehow--might still be his! It bewildered him as yet. To think of Nan at Kingscourt!--her presence filling the house with sunlight; charming everybody with her quiet, humorous ways, and her self-possession, and her sweetness, and the faithfulness of her frank, clear eyes! And all his thinking came back to the one point. This was now Nan herself he had a chance of winning; not any imaginary Nan; not any subst.i.tute; not any vision to be wavering this way and that; but the very Nan herself. And if it was true--if the real Nan, after all, was to go hand-in-hand through life with him--where, of all the places in the world, should they first go to together? To that far-away inn at Splugen, surely! Now it would be his own Nan who would sit at the small table, and laugh with her shining, clear eyes. She would walk with him up the steep Pa.s.s; the sunlight on her pink cheeks; he would hear the chirp of her boots on the wet snow.

Amid all this wild whirl of hope and doubt and delightful a.s.surance, it was hard to have to wait for an opportunity of speaking to Nan alone.

He would not go to the house, lest there should be visitors, or some one staying there; he would rather catch Nan on one of her pilgrimages in the country or along the downs, with solitude and silence to aid him in his prayer. But that chance seemed far off. He watched for Nan incessantly; and his sharp sailor's eyes followed her keenly, while he kept at a considerable distance. But Nan seemed to be very busy at this time. Again and again he was tempted to speak to her as she came out of this or that shop, or when he saw her carrying an armful of toys into some small back street. But he was afraid. There was so much to win; so much to lose. He guessed that sooner or later the vagrant blood in Nan would drive her to seek the solitariness of the high cliffs over the sea.

It turned out differently, however. One squally and stormy morning he saw her leave the house, her ulster b.u.t.toned up, her hat well down over her brows. He let her pa.s.s the hotel, and slipped out afterwards. By and by she turned up into the town, and finally entered a stationer's shop, where there was a public library. No doubt she had merely come to order some books, he said to himself, downheartedly, and would go straight back again.

However, on coming out, he noticed her glance up at the driven sky, where the clouds were breaking here and there. Then she went down East Street towards the sea. Then she pa.s.sed the Aquarium by the lower road. This he could not understand at all, as she generally kept to the cliffs.

He soon discovered her intention. There was a heavy sea rolling in; and she had always had a great delight in watching the big waves come swinging past the head of the Chain Pier. That, indeed, turned out to be her destination. When he had seen the slight, girlish-looking figure well away out there, he also went on the Pier, and followed.

It is needless to say that there was not a human being out there at the end. Tags and rags of flying clouds were sending showers of rain spinning across; between them great bursts of sunlight flooded the sea; and the vast green ma.s.ses of water shone as they broke on the wooden piles and thundered on below. When he reached the head of the Pier, he found that Nan, who fancied herself entirely alone, was resting her two elbows on the bar, and so holding on her hat, as she looked down on the mighty volumes of water that broke and rushed roaring below.

He touched her on the shoulder; she jumped up with a start, and turned, growing a little pale as she confronted him. He, also, had an apprehensive look in his eyes--perhaps it was that that frightened her.

'Nothing has happened to Madge?' she said, quickly.

'No. But come over there to the shelter. I wish to show you a letter she has written.'

A few steps brought them to a sudden silence; it was like stepping from the outer air into a diving-bell.

'Nan, I want you to read this letter, and tell me if it is true.'

He gave it her; she read it; then slowly, very slowly, the one hand holding the letter dropped, and she stood there silent, her eyes downcast.

'Nan, I have loved you since the very first night I ever saw you. I tried to make believe that Madge was you; Madge herself has saved us from what might have happened through that desperate mistake. And you, Nan--you are free now--there is no one in the way--is it true what Edith says?'

'It isn't quite true,' said Nan, in a very low voice; and her fingers were making sad work with Madge's letter. 'I mean--if she means--what you can say--since the very first night that we met. But I think at least--it is true--since'--and here Nan looked up at him with her faithful eyes, and in them there was something that was neither laughing nor crying, but was strangely near to both--'since--since ever we parted at Como!'

CHAPTER XXIV.

'BRING HOME THE BRIDE SO FAIR!'

'Poor Jack!' that was all Madge's cry. She did not care what arrangement was being got up by the parents and guardians interested.

She did not want her fortune settled on herself. To her it did not matter whether the brewery was in Southampton or in Jerusalem. All her piteous appeal was that her dear Jack should be got out of prison; and the opinion that she had formed of the gross tyranny, and cruelty, and obstinacy of English law was of a character that dare not be set forth here.

'What is the use of it?' she would say. 'What good can it do except to keep people miserable?'

'My dear child,' the sighing and sorely-troubled mother would answer, 'the Vice-Chancellor has admitted that it can do no good. But the authority of the Court must be vindicated----'

'It is nothing but a mean and contemptible revenge?' exclaimed Madge.