The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories Part 6

Six months later I recalled this description of Mrs. Ireton. She was the talk of the town, the heroine of the newest divorce case. By that time I had got to know her husband; perhaps once a fortnight we chatted at the club, and I found him an agreeable acquaintance. Before the Divorce Court flashed a light of scandal upon his home, I felt that there was more in him than could be discovered in casual gossip; I wished to know him better.

Something of shyness marked his manner, and like all shy men he sometimes appeared arrogant. He had a habit of twisting his moustache nervously and of throwing quick glances in every direction as he talked; if he found some one's eye upon him, he pulled himself together and sat for a moment as if before a photographer. One easily perceived that he was not a man of liberal education; he had rather too much of the 'society' accent; his p.r.o.nunciation of foreign names told a tale. But I thought him good-hearted, and when the penny-a-liners began to busy themselves with his affairs, I felt sorry for him.

Nothing to his dishonour came out in the trial. He and his interesting spouse had evidently lived a cat-and-dog life throughout the three years of their marriage, but the countercharges brought against him broke down completely. It was abundantly proved that he had _not_ kept a harem somewhere near Leicester Square; that he had _not_ thrown a decanter at Mrs. Ireton. She, on the other hand, left the court with tattered reputation. Ireton got his release, and the weekly papers applauded.

But in Mortimer Street we saw him no more. Some one said that he had gone to live in Paris; some one else reported that he had purchased an estate in Bucks. Presently he was forgotten.

Some three years went by, and I was spending the autumn at a village by the New Forest. One day I came upon a man kneeling under a hedge, examining some object on the ground,--fern or flower, or perhaps insect. His costume showed that he was no native of the locality; I took him for a stray townsman, probably a naturalist. He wore a straw hat and a rough summer suit; a wallet hung from his shoulder. The sound of my steps on crackling wood caused him to turn and look at me. After a moment's hesitation I recognised Ireton.

And he knew me; he smiled, as I had often seen him smile, with a sort of embarra.s.sment. We greeted each other.

'Look here,' he said at once, when the handshaking was over, 'can you tell me what this little flower is?'

I stooped, but was unable to give him the information he desired.

'You don't go in for that kind of thing?'

'Well, no.'

'I'm having a turn at it. I want to know the flowers and ferns. I have a book at my lodgings, and I look the things up when I get home.'

His wallet contained a number of specimens; he plucked up the little plant by the root, and stowed it away. I watched him with curiosity. Perhaps I had seen only his public side; perhaps even then he was capable of dressing roughly, and of rambling for his pleasure among fields and wood. But such a possibility had never occurred to me. I wondered whether his brilliant wife had given him a disgust for the ways of town. If so, he was a more interesting man than I had supposed.

'Where are you staying?' he asked, after a glance this way and that.

I named the village, two miles away.

'Working?'

'Idling merely.'

In a few minutes he overcame his reserve and began to talk of the things which he knew interested me. We discussed the books of the past season, the exhibitions, the new men in letters and art. Ireton said that he had been living at a wayside inn for about a week; he thought of moving on, and, as I had nothing to do, suppose he came over for a few days to the village where I was camped? I welcomed the proposal.

'There's an inn, I dare say? I like the little inns in this part of the country. Dirty, of course, and the cooking hideous; but it's pleasant for a change. I like to be awoke by the c.o.c.k crowing, and to see the grubby little window when I open my eyes.'

I began to suspect that he had come down in the world. Could his prosperity have been due to Mrs. Treton? Had she carried off the money? He might affect a liking for simple things when grandeur was no longer in his reach.

Yet I remembered that he had undoubtedly been botanising before he knew of my approach, and such a form of pastime seemed to prove him sincere.

By chance I witnessed his arrival the next morning. He drove up in a farmer's trap, his luggage a couple of large Gladstone-bags. That day and the next we spent many hours together. His vanity, though not outgrown, was in abeyance; he talked with easy frankness, yet never of what I much desired to know, his own history and present position. It was his intellect that he revealed to me. I gathered that he had given much time to study during the past three years, and incidentally it came out that he had been living abroad; his improved p.r.o.nunciation of the names of French artists was very noticeable. At his age--not less than forty-five--this advance argued no common mental resources. Whether he had suffered much, I could not determine; at present he seemed light-hearted enough.

Certainly there was no affectation in his pursuit of botany; again and again I saw him glow with genuine delight when he had identified a plant.

After all, this might be in keeping with his character, for even in the old days he had never exhibited--at all events to me--a taste for the ign.o.bler luxuries, and he had seemed to me a very clean-minded man. I never knew any one who refrained so absolutely from allusion, good or bad, to his friends or acquaintances. He might have stood utterly alone in the world, a simple spectator of civilisation.

At length I ventured upon a question.

'You never see any of the Mortimer Street men?'

'No,' he answered carelessly, 'I haven't come in their way lately, somehow.'

That evening our ramble led us into an enclosure where game was preserved.

We had lost our way, and Ireton, scornful of objections, struck across country, making for a small plantation which he thought he remembered.

Here, among the trees, we were suddenly face to face with an old gentleman of distinguished bearing, who regarded us sternly.

'Is it necessary,' he said, 'to tell you that you are trespa.s.sing?'

The tone was severe, but not offensive. I saw my companion draw himself to his full height.

'Not at all necessary,' he answered, in a voice that surprised me, it was so nearly insolent. 'We are making our way to the road as quickly as possible.'

'Then be so good as to take the turning to the right when you reach the field,' said our admonisher coldly. And he turned his back upon us.

I looked at Ireton. To my astonishment he was pallid, the lines of his countenance indicating fiercest wrath. He marched on in silence till we had reached the field.

'The fellow took us for cheap-trippers, I suppose,' then burst from his lips.

'Not very likely.'

'Then why the devil did he speak like that?'

The grave reproof had exasperated him; he was flushed and his hands trembled. I observed him with the utmost interest, and it became clear from the angry words he poured forth that he could not endure to be supposed anything but a gentleman at large. Here was the old characteristic; it had merely been dormant. I tried to laugh him out of his irritation, but soon saw that the attempt was dangerous. On the way home he talked very little; the encounter in the wood had thoroughly upset him.

Next morning he came into my room with a laugh that I did not like; he seated himself stiffly, looked at me from beneath his knitted brows, and said in an aggressive tone:

'I have got to know all about that impudent old fellow.'

'Indeed? Who is he?'

'A poverty-stricken squire, with an old house and a few acres--the remnants of a large estate gambled away by his father. I know him by name, and I'm quite sure that he knows me. If I had offered him my card, as I thought of doing, I dare say his tone would have changed.'

This pettishness amused me so much that I pretended to be a little sore myself.

'His poverty, I suppose, has spoilt his temper.'

'No doubt,--I can understand that,' he added, with a smile. 'But I don't allow people to treat me like a tramp. I shall go up and see him this afternoon.'

'And insist on an apology?'

'Oh, there'll be no need of insisting. The fellow has several unmarried daughters.'

It seemed to me that my companion was bent on showing his worst side. I returned to my old thoughts of him; he was sn.o.bbish, insolent, generally detestable; but a man to be studied, and I let him talk as he would.

The reduced squire was Mr. Humphrey Armitage, of Brackley Hall. For my own part, the demeanour of this gentleman had seemed perfectly adapted to the occasion; we were strangers plunging through his preserves, and his tone to us had nothing improper; it was we who owed an apology. In point of breeding, I felt sure that Ireton could not compare with Mr. Armitage for a moment, and it seemed to me vastly improbable that the invader of Brackley Hall would meet with the kind of reception he antic.i.p.ated.

I saw Ireton when he set out to pay his call. His Gladstone-bags had provided him with the costume of Piccadilly; from shining hat to patent-leather shoes, he was immaculate. Seeing that he had to walk more than a mile, that the month was September, and that he could not pretend to have come straight from town, this apparel struck me as not a little inappropriate; I could only suppose that the man had no social tact.

At seven in the evening he again sought me. His urban glories were exchanged for the ordinary attire, but I at once read in his face that he had suffered no humiliation.

'Come and dine with me at the inn,' he exclaimed cordially; 'if one may use such a word as _dine_ under the circ.u.mstances.'

'With pleasure.'