The Woman's Way Part 8

He laid his hand on her shoulder as he pa.s.sed her on his way to the door, and Celia, blinded by tears, took the hand and carried it to her lips.

Mr. Clendon went down to his own room, almost as barely furnished as Celia's had become; and he stood for a moment or two looking round it with a sigh; then he took up his worn hat and stick, and went out. With bent head, and eyes fixed on the pavement, he made his way to Grosvenor Square; and, mounting the steps of one of the largest of the houses, rang the bell. A dignified hall-porter opened the door leisurely, and eyed the thin, poorly-clad figure and pallid face with stern disfavour.

"Is Lord Sutcombe at home?" asked Mr. Clendon, quietly, and not without a certain dignity.

"His lordship the Marquess is within; suttenly; but----" The man hesitated, with unconcealed suspicion.

"Will you tell his lordship, please, that a gentleman wishes to see him?" said Mr. Clendon.

The porter looked beyond the bowed figure, as if he expected to see someone else, the "gentleman" referred to; then, as he failed to see anyone, he said, severely:

"'Ave you an appointment? 'Is lordship don't see promiskus visitors."

Mr. Clendon seemed to consider for a moment; as if he had expected this difficulty. He wrote the single letter "W" on a piece of paper he found in his pocket, and handed it to the man.

"Please give this to his lordship," he said, still with that quiet air of dignity and composure which had impressed the porter, against his will.

The man eyed the piece of paper doubtfully, and the applicant for admission still more so; then, signing to the bench in the hall, by way of permitting rather than inviting the old man to take a seat, he went slowly up the broad stairs, lined with pictures and statuary, and carpeted with thick Axminster. Mr. Clendon seated himself, leant both hands on his stick and looked around him, not curiously, but with a thoughtful, and yet impa.s.sive, expression. Presently the man came down, with evident surprise on his well-fed countenance.

"Please follow me," he said; and Mr. Clendon followed him up the stairs, and was ushered into a small room on the first floor. It was a library, handsomely furnished and luxuriously appointed; a huge fire was burning in the bronze grate, and, as its warmth went out to meet him, Mr.

Clendon thought of the fireless grate over which the young girl had crouched. By the table, with one hand pressed hardly against it, stood a middle-aged man, with a pale, careworn face; his hair was flecked with grey; his thin lips drawn and drooping at the corners, as if their possessor was heavily burdened by the cares of the world. That he was agitated was obvious; for the lids flickered over his almost colourless eyes, and the hand he held against his side was clenched tightly.

At sight of the old man he uttered a cry, the kind of cry with which one might greet a ghost.

"Wilfred! You! You! Alive! I--we--thought you were dead."

"I am sorry," said Mr. Clendon. "Yes; I knew that you thought me dead.

It was just as well; I wished you to do so. Don't be alarmed; there is nothing to be alarmed at. Permit me to sit down; I have walked some distance."

The Marquess of Sutcombe, with an air of desperation, motioned to a chair, and fell to pacing up and down the room. "I swear that I thought you were dead, Wilfred! When you disappeared, father--all of us--did our best to find you; we searched for you everywhere. We were in the greatest distress, perplexity; for we did not know why you had gone--I don't know even now--I can't, no, I can't believe that it is you! Why did you--disappear?"

"There is no need why I should tell you, Talbot," said Mr. Clendon, calmly. "It is my secret; it must remain so."

"But--but, consider my position!" exclaimed the Marquess, with agitation. "You _must_ do so! Here am I, bearing the t.i.tle and--and the rest of it, under the impression that my elder brother has died.

Wilfred, you must explain. We all believed the report of your death----"

"I know," said Mr. Clendon, quietly, but not apologetically. "I took care that the evidence should satisfy you. Once more, there is no cause for alarm----"

"No cause for alarm! You talk--absurdly! You forget that the fact of your sitting there proves that I am a--a usurper; that I have no right to the t.i.tle, the estate; that everything belongs to you. By Heaven, Wilfred, I can scarcely believe that you have done this thing, that you could have found it possible to do me--and Percy--such a wrong! Put yourself in my place. How would you like to discover that you were living under false pretences, that you had no right to--everything you hold. Yes; put yourself in my place!"

"That is exactly what I have refused, and still refuse, to do," said Mr.

Clendon, quietly. "I see that you think I have come to disclose my ident.i.ty, to displace you. You are mistaken. To do so after I, of my own free will, have effaced myself all these years, and allowed you to step into my place, would be unjust, would be impossible for--well, one of us, Sutcombe."

"And--and there's Percy, my son," went on the Marquess, as if he ignored, or had not heard, the other man's a.s.surance. "It's hard on me, but it's harder on him; for I--well, I am well-nigh weary of everything, of life itself. My wife died--you may have heard of it--there was nothing left but Percy, and--yes, perhaps you know it--he's a bad lot.

He has given me a great deal of trouble, will give me more. He has married beneath him. I had hoped, much as I disapprove of the match, that it might steady him; but I fear----All the same, bad as he is, it's hard on him----"

The Marquess wiped the sweat from his brow and stifled a groan.

"You distress yourself without cause, Talbot. I am sorry to hear that you are not happy, that your son is not--satisfactory. I have not come to add to your unhappiness. Believe that."

"Then why _have_ you disturbed me?" demanded the Marquess, desperately.

"I will tell you," said Mr. Clendon. "Will you not come and sit down? Be calm, and listen to me quietly. Accept my a.s.surance that I have no intention whatever, and never shall have, of taking my proper place, of depriving you of all I resigned. If I ever had any desire to do so, that desire would have died since I entered this house. Are you any happier, Talbot, for the burden which I laid down, resigned to you? I am poor, as you see,"--he glanced at his old, worn clothes--"but----"

The Marquess broke in impatiently.

"Oh, I see that. You look--look as if you'd had bad times; you look old enough to be my father. You look--are dressed--in rags. Do you think that doesn't worry me, and add to my misery? Do you think that, ever since you entered and I recognized you, I haven't been saying to myself, 'This is my elder brother; this old, haggard-looking man, clad like a beggar, is the Marquess of Sutcombe and you are an impostor'?"

"Grant the case as you put it. I am poor, but not unhappy. I will venture to say that I am far happier than you, Talbot," said Mr.

Clendon, his dark eyes scanning the careworn face of the Marquess. "I have my niche in the world; I earn my living, such as it is; I am free from care; I have enough laid by to save me from a pauper's grave, while you----"

"Oh, I'm unhappy enough, I'll admit," said the Marquess, with a deep sigh. "I hold your place, and all that it means in the way of money and power; but I'm alone in the world, worse than alone; for Percy, my only son, I tell you--by Heaven, there is not a morning I wake that I do not dread to hear that he has done something to disgrace the name he bears.

Wilfred, if you've a mind to take it all back----"

He stretched out his hands with a gesture of renunciation, almost an eager, antic.i.p.atory relief.

Mr. Clendon shook his head. "No," he said, resolutely, "you must continue to bear the burden I have imposed upon you, Talbot; and I beg you to believe me, fully and undoubtingly, that I shall never relieve you of your responsibilities, which you have borne so well. Oh, of course, I have watched. I know how admirably you have filled your place, and where I should have failed. Fate, Providence knew better than I what was best for me, for all of us, when it drove me out of the world."

"Tell me, why can't you tell me, why you disappeared?" demanded the Marquess. "Surely you owe it to me!"

"No, I have buried the past," said Mr. Clendon. "Let it lie. But I will tell you why I have forced myself to come to you--yes, forced myself, Talbot, for I knew that it was better that I should remain as one dead."

"Yes, tell me," said the Marquess, with feverish eagerness. "If there is anything I can do, if you have decided to stick to your resolution, if there is nothing I can say that will persuade you to come forward----"

"There is nothing," Mr. Clendon a.s.sured him calmly.

The Marquess sighed heavily. "Then you must let me--how shall I put it?--provide for you, take care of your future. You must want money. Oh, it's absurd; it drives me mad! To think that nearly every penny I possess is yours. But tell me what I'm to do, Wilfred."

"Nothing for me--that is directly," said Mr. Clendon. "Don't say any more about myself. I am touched by your generosity--yes, generosity, Talbot; for I feel that you have every reason, every right, to turn upon me and upbraid me for presenting myself after all this time, for harrowing you with the knowledge of my existence. You can do nothing for me in the way of money. I have all I need. I have grown so used to the poverty of my surroundings that, if I were raised out of them I should feel like the prisoner released from the Bastille, and weep for my cell and the prison rations. But you can do something for someone in whom I am interested."

The Marquess looked up, with something like a gleam of apprehension.

"Someone belonging to you? Your son--daughter?"

Mr. Clendon was silent for a moment, then he said: "No, I have no son or daughter. I am childless. The person of whom I speak is a young girl, no relation of mine, scarcely a friend, save for the fact that I have been of service to her, and that she regards me as the only friend she has.

We live in the same block of buildings--have met as ships pa.s.s in the night. She is a poor girl who has been working as a kind of secretary, but her employer has died suddenly, and she is now penniless and helpless."

The Marquess started to his feet and paced the room again.

"I feel as if I were in a dream, a nightmare," he said. "Here are you, suddenly springing to life, poor, almost dest.i.tute, and you come to me, not asking for all that is yours by right, not even for money for yourself, but for someone, for some girl who is not even of your kith and kin, has no claim on you. I always thought you mad, Wilfred, in the old days when we were boys together. I still think you're mad. How could I think otherwise?"

"We are all mad, more or less, Talbot," rejoined Mr. Clendon, with the flicker of a grim smile on his thin lips. "But this young girl--I have taken her misery to heart. If you had seen her as I have seen her--but you haven't, and I have to try to impress her case on you, enlist your sympathies, as well as I can. She is a lady, not by birth, perhaps, but by instinct and training. She has been well educated. That's been against her, of course. It always is with persons in her position; anyway, it makes her lot a still harder one."

"Well, well!" broke in the Marquess. "You want me to give her money. Of course, you can have what you want, any sum; you have but to ask--_Ask!_ it is all yours; you have but to _demand_!--No, no, I don't mean to be angry, brutal; but, surely, you can understand what I am feeling. How much do you want?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Clendon, with another flickering smile. "My dear Talbot, you don't understand. But I don't blame you; how should you? All the same, we poor people have our little pride; the girl of whom I speak--well, I found her starving in her miserable little room, because she was too proud to descend a flight of steps to mine, to ask for the bread for which she was dying."

The Marquess stared. "Is it possible that such cases can exist?"