The Primadonna Part 32

'I did,' Griggs answered. 'That's usually my share of the proceedings.

The last person I carried--let me see--I think it must have been that poor girl who died at the Opera in New York. We had found Feist's address in the visitors' book, and we sent him home in a hansom. I wonder whether he got there!'

'I should think the member who put him down would be rather annoyed,'

observed Logotheti.

'Yes. It's the first time anything of that sort ever happened at the Mutton Chop, and I fancy it will be the last. I don't think we shall see Mr. Feist again.'

'I took a particular dislike to his face,' Logotheti said. 'I remember thinking of him when I went home that night, and wondering who he was and what he was about.'

'At first I took him for a detective,' said Griggs. 'But detectives don't drink.'

'What made you think he might be one?'

'He has a very clever way of leading the conversation to a point and then asking an unexpected question.'

'Perhaps he is an amateur,' suggested Logotheti. 'He may be a spy. Is Feist an American name?'

'You will find all sorts of names in America. They prove nothing in the way of nationality, unless they are English, Dutch, or French, and even then they don't prove much. I'm an American myself, and I feel sure that Feist either is one or has spent many years in the country, in which case he is probably naturalised. As for his being a spy, I don't think I ever came across one in England.'

'They come here to rest in time of peace, or to escape hanging in other countries in time of war,' said the Greek. 'His being at the Turkish Emba.s.sy, of all places in the world, is rather in favour of the idea. Do you happen to remember the name of his hotel?'

'Are you going to call on him?' Griggs asked with a smile.

'Perhaps. He begins to interest me. Is it indiscreet to ask what sort of questions he put to you?'

'He's stopping at the Carlton--if the cabby took him there! We gave the man half-a-crown for the job, and took his number, so I suppose it was all right. As for the questions he asked me, that's another matter.'

Logotheti glanced quickly at his companion's rather grim face, and was silent for a few moments. He judged that Mr. Feist's inquiries must have concerned a woman, since Griggs was so reticent, and it required no great ingenuity to connect that probability with one or both of the ladies who had been at the dinner where Griggs and Feist had first met.

'I think I shall go and ask for Mr. Feist,' he said presently. 'I shall say that I heard he was ill and wanted to know if I could do anything for him.'

'I've no doubt he'll be much touched by your kindness!' said Griggs.

'But please don't mention the Mutton Chop Club, if you really see him.'

'Oh no! Besides, I shall let him do the talking.'

'Then take care that you don't let him talk you to death!'

Logotheti smiled as he hailed a pa.s.sing hansom; he nodded to his companion, told the man to go to the Carlton, and drove away, leaving Griggs to continue his walk alone.

The elderly man of letters had not talked about Mr. Feist with any special intention, and was very far from thinking that what he had said would lead to any important result. He liked the Greek, because he liked most Orientals, under certain important reservations and at a certain distance, and he had lived amongst them long enough not to be surprised at anything they did. Logotheti had been disappointed in not finding the Primadonna at home, and he was not inclined to put up with the usual round of an evening in London during the early part of the season as a subst.i.tute for what he had lost. He was the more put out, because, when he had last seen Margaret, three or four days earlier, she had told him that if he came on that evening at about seven o'clock he would probably find her alone. Having nothing that looked at all amusing to occupy him, he was just in the mood to do anything unusual that presented itself.

Griggs guessed at most of these things, and as he walked along he vaguely pictured to himself the interview that was likely to take place.

CHAPTER XII

Opinion was strongly against Mr. Van Torp. A millionaire is almost as good a mark at which to throw mud as a woman of the world whose reputation has never before been attacked, and when the two can be pilloried together it is hardly to be expected that ordinary people should abstain from pelting them and calling them bad names.

Lady Maud, indeed, was protected to some extent by her father and brothers, and by many loyal friends. It is happily still doubtful how far one may go in printing lies about an honest woman without getting into trouble with the law, and when the lady's father is not only a peer, but has previously been a barrister of reputation and a popular and hard-working member of the House of Commons during a long time, it is generally safer to use guarded language; the advisability of moderation also increases directly as the number and size of the lady's brothers, and inversely as their patience. Therefore, on the whole, Lady Maud was much better treated by the society columns than Margaret at first expected.

On the other hand, they vented their spleen and sharpened their English on the American financier, who had no relations and scarcely any friends to stand by him, and was, moreover, in a foreign country, which always seems to be regarded as an aggravating circ.u.mstance when a man gets into any sort of trouble. Isidore Bamberger and Mr. Feist had roused and let loose upon him a whole pack of hungry reporters and paragraph writers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The papers did not at first print his name except in connection with the divorce of Lady Maud. But this was a landmark, the smallest reference to which made all other allusions to him quite clear. It was easy to speak of Mr. Van Torp as the central figure in a _cause celebre_: newspapers love the French language the more as they understand it the less; just as the gentle amateur in literature tries to hide his cloven hoof under the thin elegance of italics.

Particular stress was laid upon the millionaire's dreadful hypocrisy.

He taught in the Sunday Schools at Nickelville, the big village which had sprung up at his will and which was the headquarters of his sanctimonious wickedness. He was compared to Solomon, not for his wisdom, but on account of his domestic arrangements. He was indeed a father to his flock. It was a touching sight to see the little ones gathered round the knees of this great and good man, and to note how an unconscious and affectionate imitation reflected his face in theirs. It was true that there was another side to this truly patriarchal picture. In a city of the Far West, wrote an eloquent paragraph writer, a pale face, once divinely beautiful, was often seen at the barred window of a madhouse, and eyes that had once looked too tenderly into those of the Nickelville Solomon stared wildly at the palm-trees in the asylum grounds. This paragraph was rich in sentiment.

There were a good many mentions of the explosion in New York, too, and hints, dark, but uncommonly straight, that the great Sunday School teacher had been the author and stage-manager of an awful comedy designed expressly to injure a firm of contractors against whom he had a standing grudge. In proof of the a.s.sertion, the story went on to say that he had written four hours before the 'accident' happened to give warning of it to the young lady whom he was about to marry. She was a neurasthenic young lady, and in spite of the warning she died very suddenly at the theatre from shock immediately after the explosion, and his note was found on her dressing-table when she was brought home dead. Clearly, if the explosion had not been his work, and if he had been informed of it beforehand, he would have warned the police and the Department of Public Works at the same time. The young lady's untimely death had not prevented him from sailing for Europe three or four days later, and on the trip he had actually occupied alone the same 'thousand dollar suite' which he had previously engaged for himself and his bride. From this detail the public might form some idea of the Nickelville magnate's heartless character. In fact, if one-half of what was written, telegraphed, and printed about Rufus Van Torp on both sides of the Atlantic during the next fortnight was to be believed, he had no character at all.

To all this he answered nothing, and he did not take the trouble to allude to the matter in the few letters he wrote to his acquaintances.

Day after day numbers of marked papers were carefully ironed and laid on the breakfast-table, after having been read and commented on in the servants' hall. The butler began to look askance at him, Mrs. Dubbs, the housekeeper, talked gloomily of giving warning, and the footmen gossiped with the stable hands; but the men all decided that it was not derogatory to their dignity to remain in the service of a master who was soon to be exhibited in the divorce court beside such a 'real lady' as Lord Creedmore's daughter; the housemaids agreed in this view, and the housekeeper consulted Miss More. For Mrs. Dubbs was an imposing person, morally and physically, and had a character to lose; and though the place was a very good one for her old age, because the master only spent six weeks or two months at Oxley Paddox each year, and never found fault, yet Mrs. Dubbs was not going to have her name a.s.sociated with that of a gentleman who blew up underground works and took Solomon's view of the domestic affections. She came of very good people in the north; one of her brothers was a minister, and the other was an a.s.sistant steward on a large Scotch estate.

Miss More's quiet serenity was not at all disturbed by what was happening, for it could hardly be supposed that she was ignorant of the general attack on Mr. Van Torp, though he did not leave the papers lying about, where little Ida's quick eyes might fall on a marked pa.s.sage. The housekeeper waited for an occasion when Mr. Van Torp had taken the child for a drive, as he often did, and Miss More was established in her favourite corner of the garden, just out of sight of the house. Mrs. Dubbs first exposed the situation, then expressed a strong opinion as to her own respectability, and finally asked Miss More's advice.

Miss More listened attentively, and waited till her large and sleek interlocutor had absolutely nothing more to say. Then she spoke.

'Mrs. Dubbs,' she said, 'do you consider me a respectable young woman?'

'Oh, Miss More!' cried the housekeeper. 'You! Indeed, I'd put my hand into the fire for you any day!'

'And I'm an American, and I've known Mr. Van Torp several years, though this is the first time you have seen me here. Do you think I would let the child stay an hour under his roof, or stay here myself, if I believed one word of all those wicked stories the papers are publishing? Look at me, please. Do you think I would?'

It was quite impossible to look at Miss More's quiet healthy face and clear eyes and to believe she would. There are some women of whom one is sure at a glance that they are perfectly trustworthy in every imaginable way, and above even the suspicion of countenancing any wrong.

'No,' answered Mrs. Dubbs, with honest conviction, 'I don't, indeed.'

'I think, then,' said Miss More, 'that if I feel I can stay here, you are safe in staying too. I do not believe any of these slanders, and I am quite sure that Mr. Van Torp is one of the kindest men in the world.'

'I feel as if you must be right, Miss More,' replied the housekeeper.

'But they do say dreadful things about him, indeed, and he doesn't deny a word of it, as he ought to, in my humble opinion, though it's not my business to judge, of course, but I'll say this, Miss More, and that is, that if the butler's character was publicly attacked in the papers, in the way Mr. Van Torp's is, and if I were Mr. Van Torp, which of course I'm not, I'd say "Crookes, you may be all right, but if you're going to be butler here any longer, it's your duty to defend yourself against these attacks upon you in the papers, Crookes, because as a Christian man you must not hide your light under a bushel, Crookes, but let it shine abroad." That's what I'd say, Miss More, and I should like to know if you don't think I should be right.'

'If the English and American press united to attack the butler's character,' answered Miss More without a smile, 'I think you would be quite right, Mrs. Dubbs. But as regards Mr. Van Torp's present position, I am sure he is the best judge of what he ought to do.'

These words of wisdom, and Miss More's truthful eyes, greatly rea.s.sured the housekeeper, who afterwards upbraided the servants for paying any attention to such wicked falsehoods; and Mr. Crookes, the butler, wrote to his aged mother, who was anxious about his situation, to say that Mr. Van Torp must be either a real gentleman or a very hardened criminal indeed, because it was only forgers and real gentlemen who could act so precious cool; but that, on the whole, he, Crookes, and the housekeeper, who was a highly respectable person and the sister of a minister, as he wished his mother to remember, had made up their minds that Mr. V.T. was Al, copper-bottomed--Mrs.

Crookes was the widow of a seafaring man, and lived at Liverpool, and had heard Lloyd's rating quoted all her life--and that they, the writer and Mrs. Dubbs, meant to see him through his troubles, though he was a little trying at his meals, for he would have b.u.t.ter on the table at his dinner, and he wanted two and three courses served together, and drank milk at his luncheon, like no Christian gentleman did that Mr. Crookes had ever seen.

The financier might have been amused if he could have read this letter, which contained no allusion to the material attractions of Torp Towers as a situation; for like a good many American millionaires, Mr. Van Torp had a blind spot on his financial retina.

He could deal daringly and surely with vast sums, or he could screw twice the normal quant.i.ty of work out of an underpaid clerk; but the household arithmetic that lies between the two was entirely beyond his comprehension. He 'didn't want to be bothered,' he said; he maintained that he 'could make more money in ten minutes than he could save in a year by checking the housekeeper's accounts'; he 'could live on coffee and pie,' but if he chose to hire the chef of the Cafe Anglais to cook for him at five thousand dollars a year he 'didn't want to know the price of a truffled pheasant or a chaudfroid of ortolans.' That was his way, and it was good enough for him. What was the use of having made money if you were to be bothered? And besides, he concluded, 'it was none of anybody's blank blank business what he did.'

Mr. Van Torp did not hesitate to borrow similes from another world when his rather limited command of refined language was unequal to the occasion.

But at the present juncture, though his face did not change, and though he slept as soundly and had as good an appet.i.te as usual, no words with which he was acquainted could express his feelings at all.

He had, indeed, consigned the writer of the first article to perdition with some satisfaction; but after his interview with Logotheti, when he had understood that a general attack upon him had begun, he gathered his strength in silence and studied the position with all the concentration of earnest thought which his exceptional nature could command.

He had recognised Feist's handwriting, and he remembered the man as his partner's former secretary. Feist might have written the letter to Logotheti and the first article, but Van Torp did not believe him capable of raising a general hue and cry on both sides of the Atlantic. It undoubtedly happened sometimes that when a fire had been smouldering long unseen a single spark sufficed to start the blaze, but Mr. Van Torp was too well informed as to public opinion about him to have been in ignorance of any general feeling against him, if it had existed; and the present attack was of too personal a nature to have been devised by financial rivals. Besides, the Nickel Trust had recently absorbed all its compet.i.tors to such an extent that it had no rivals at all, and the dangers that threatened it lay on the one hand in the growing strength of the Labour Party in its great movement against capital, and on the other in its position with regard to recent American legislation about Trusts. From the beginning Mr. Van Torp had been certain that the campaign of defamation had not been begun by the Unions, and by its nature it could have no connection with the legal aspect of his position. It was therefore clear that war had been declared upon him by one or more individuals on purely personal grounds, and that Mr. Feist was but the chief instrument in the hands of an unknown enemy.