Vera Nevill Part 36

The air he had selected for his musical self-refreshment was the lively and slightly vulgar one of "Tommy make Room for your Uncle;" but let anybody just try to whistle that same vivacious tune to the time of the Dead March in "Saul," and with a lingering and plaintive emphasis upon each note, with "linked sweetness long drawn out," and then say whether the gloomiest of dirges would not be festive indeed in comparison.

Thus did Herbert Pryme whistle it as he looked down upon the piles of legal doc.u.ments heaped up together upon his table.

All of them meant work, but none of them meant money. For Herbert was fain to accept the humble position of "devil" to a great legal light who occupied the floor below him, and who considered, and perhaps rightly, that he was doing the young man above him, who had been sent up from the country with a letter of introduction to him from a second cousin, a sufficient and inestimable benefit in allowing him to do his dirty work gratis.

It was all very useful to him, doubtless, but it was not remunerative; and Herbert wanted money badly.

"Oh, if I could only reckon upon a couple of hundred a year," he sighed, half aloud to himself, "I might have a chance of winning her! It seems hard that heaps of these fellows can make hundreds a week by a short speech, or a few strokes of the pen, that cost them no labour and little forethought, whilst I, with all my hard work, can make nothing! What uphill work it is! Not that the Bar is not a fine profession; quite the finest there is," for not even to himself would Herbert Pryme decry the legal muse whom he worshipped; "but, I suppose, like every other profession, it is overstocked; there are too many struggling for the same prizes. The fact is, that England is over-populated. Now, if a law were to be pa.s.sed compelling one-half of the adult males in this country to remain in a state of celibacy for the s.p.a.ce of fifteen years----" but here he stopped short in his soliloquy and smiled; for was not the one desire of his life at present to marry Beatrice Miller immediately? And how was the extra population to be stayed if every one of the doomed quota of marriageable males were of the same mind as himself?

Presently Mr. Pryme sauntered idly to the window, and stood looking drearily out of it, still whistling, of course.

The prospect was not a lively one. His chambers looked out upon a little square, stone-flagged court, with a melancholy-looking pump in the centre of it. There was an arched pa.s.sage leading away to one side, down which a distant footstep echoed drearily now and then, and a side glimpse of the empty road at the other end, beyond the corner of the opposite houses.

Now and then some member of the learned profession pa.s.sed rapidly across the small open s.p.a.ce with the pre-occupied air of a man who has not a minute to spare, or a clerk, bearing the official red bag, ran hastily along the pa.s.sage; for the rest, the London sparrows had it pretty much to themselves. As things were, Mr. Pryme envied the sparrows, who were ready clothed by Providence, and had no rates and taxes to pay, as well as the clerks, who, at all events, had plenty to do and no time to soliloquize upon the hardness and hollowness of life. To have plenty of brains, and an indefinite amount of spare time to use them in; to desire ardently to hasten along the road towards fortune and happiness, and to be forced to sit idly by whilst others, duller-witted, perchance, and with less capacity for work, are ama.s.sing wealth under your very nose--when this is achieved by sheer luck, or good interest, or any other of those inadequate causes which get people on in life independent of talent and industry--that is what makes a radical of a man. This is what causes him to dream unwholesome dreams about equality and liberty, about a republic, where there shall be no more princ.i.p.alities and powers, where plutocracy, as well as aristocracy, shall be unregarded, and where every good man and true shall rise on his own merits, and on none other.

Oh, happy and impossible Arcadia! You must wait for the millennium, my friend, before your aspirations shall come to pa.s.s. Wait till jealousy, and selfishness, and sn.o.bbism--that last and unconquerable dragon--shall be destroyed out of the British heart, then, and only then, when jobbery, and interest, and mammon-worship shall be abolished; then will men be honoured for what they are, and not for what they seem to be.

Something of all this pa.s.sed through our friend's jaundiced mind as he contemplated those homely and familiar little birds, born and bred and smoke-dried in all the turmoil of the City's heart, who ruffled their feathers and plumed their wings with contented chirpings upon the dusty flags of the little courtyard.

Things were exceptionally bad with Herbert Pryme just now. His exchequer was low--had never been lower--and his sweetheart was far removed out of his reach. Beatrice had duly come up with her parents to the family mansion in Eaton Square for the London season, but although he had, it is true, the satisfaction, such as it was, of breathing the same air as she did, she was far more out of his reach in town than she had been in the country. As long as she was at Shadonake Mr. Pryme had always been able to run down to his excellent friend, the parson of Tripton, and once there, it had been easy to negotiate a surrept.i.tious meeting with Beatrice. The fields and the lanes are everybody's property. If Tom and Maria are caught love-making at the stile out of the wood, and they both swear that the meeting was purely accidental, I don't see how any one is to prove that it was premeditated; nor can any parents, now that it is no longer the fashion to keep grown women under lock and key, prevent their daughters from going out in the country occasionally unattended, nor forbid strange young men from walking along the Queen's highway in the same direction.

But remove your daughter to London, and the case is altered at once. To keep a girl who goes out a great deal in the whirl of London society out of the way of a man who goes out very little, who is not in the inner circle of town life, and is not in the same set as herself, is the easiest thing in the world.

So Mrs. Miller found it. She kept Beatrice hard at work at the routine of dissipation. Not an hour of her time was unoccupied, not a minute of her day unaccounted for; and, of course, she was never alone--it is not yet the fashion for young girls to dance about London by themselves--her mother, as a matter of course, was always with her.

As a natural sequence, the lovers had a hard time of it. Beatrice had been six weeks in London, and Herbert, beyond catching sight of her once or twice as she was driven past in her mother's carriage down Bond Street, or through the crowd in the Park, had never seen her at all.

Mrs. Miller was congratulating herself upon the success of her tactics; she flattered herself that her daughter was completely getting over that unlucky fancy for the penniless and briefless barrister. Beatrice gave no sign; she appeared perfectly satisfied and contented, and seemed to be enjoying herself thoroughly, and to be troubled by no love-sick hankerings after her absent swain.

"She has forgotten him," said Mrs. Miller, to herself.

But the mother did not take into account that indomitable spirit and stubborn determination in her own character which had served to carry out successfully all the schemes of her life, and which she had probably transmitted to her child.

In Beatrice's head, under its short thick thatch of dark rough hair, and in her st.u.r.dily-built little frame, there lurked the tenacity of a bulldog. Once she had taken an idea firmly into her mind, Beatrice Miller would never relinquish it until she had got her own way. Herbert, in the dingy solitude of his untempting chambers, might despair and look upon life and its aims as a hopeless enigma. Beatrice did not despair at all. She only bided her time.

One day, if she waited for it patiently, the opportunity would come to her, and when it came she would not be slow to make use of it. It came to her in the shape of a morning visit from Captain Maurice Kynaston.

"Come down and see my mother," Maurice had said to her; "she has not seen you for a long while. I am just going back to Walpole Lodge to lunch."

"I should like to come very much. You have no objection, I suppose, mamma?"

No; Mrs. Miller could have no possible objection. Lady Kynaston was amongst her oldest and most respected friends; under whose house could Beatrice be safer? And even Maurice, as an escort, engaged to be married so shortly as he was known to be, was perfectly un.o.bjectionable.

Beatrice went, and, as we have seen, lunched at Walpole Lodge. She had told her mother not to expect her till late in the afternoon, as, in all probability, Lady Kynaston would drive her into town and would drop her in Eaton Square at the end of her drive. Mrs. Miller, to whose watchful maternal mind the Temple and Kew appeared to be in such totally different directions that they presented no connecting suggestions, agreed, unsuspiciously, not to expect her daughter back until after six o'clock.

In this way Beatrice secured the whole afternoon to herself to do what she liked with it. She was not slow to make use of it. There was all the pluck of the Esterworths in her veins, together with all the determination and energy which had raised her father's family from a race of shopkeepers to take their place amongst gentlemen.

As soon as Captain Kynaston joined the two ladies in the garden at Walpole Lodge after luncheon Beatrice requested him to order a hansom to be fetched for her.

"Why should you hurry away?" said Maurice, politely. "My mother will take you back to town in the carriage if you will wait."

Helen was stooping over the flower-beds, gathering some violets. Beatrice stepped closer to Maurice.

"Don't say a word, there's a good fellow, but get me the hansom--and--and--please don't mention it at home."

Then Maurice, who was no tyro in such matters, understood that it was expected of him that he should ask no questions, but do what he was told and hold his tongue.

The sequence of which proceedings was, that a hansom cab drew up at the far corner of the little stone-flagged court in the Temple between four and five that afternoon.

Mr. Pryme was no longer by the window when it did so, so that he was totally unprepared for the visitor, whose trembling and twice-repeated tap at his door he answered somewhat impatiently--

"Come in, and be d----d to you, and don't stand rapping at that door all day."

The people, as a rule, who solicited admittance to his chambers were either the boy from the legal light below, who came to ask whether the papers were ready that had been sent up this morning, or else they were smiling and sleek-faced tradesmen who washed their hands insinuatingly whilst they requested that Mr. Pryme would be kind enough to settle that little outstanding account.

Either of these visitors were equally unwelcome, which must be some excuse for the roughness of Mr. Pryme's language.

The door was softly pushed ajar.

"Now, then--come in, can't you; who the deuce are you--_Beatrice_!"

Enter Miss Miller, smiling.

"Oh, fie, Herbert! what naughty words, sir."

"Beatrice, is it possible that it is you! Where is your mother? Are you alone?" looking nervously round at the door, whilst he caught her outstretched hand.

"Yes, I am quite alone; don't be very shocked. I know I am a horrid, bold girl to come all by myself to a man's chambers; it's dreadful, isn't it!

Oh, what would people say of it if they knew--why, even _you_ look horrified! But oh, Herbert, I did want to see you so. I was determined to get at you somehow--and now I am here for a whole hour; I have managed it beautifully--no one will ever find out where I have been. Mamma thinks I am driving with Lady Kynaston!"

And then she sat down and took off her veil, and told him all about it.

She had got at her lover, and she felt perfectly happy and secure, sitting there with his arm round her waist and her hand in his. Not so Herbert. He was pleased, of course, to see her, and called her by a thousand fond names, and he admired her courage and her spirit for breaking through the conventional trammels of her life in order to come to him; but he was horribly nervous all the same. Supposing that boy were to come in from below, or the smiling tradesman, or, still worse, if the great Q.C. were to catch a glimpse of her as she went out, and recognize her from having met her in society, where would Miss Miller's reputation be then?

"It is very imprudent of you--most rash and foolish," he kept on repeating; but he was glad to see her all the same, and kissed her between every other word.

"Now, don't waste any more time spooning," says Beatrice, with decision, drawing herself a little farther from him on the hard leather sofa. "An hour soon goes, and I have plenty to say to you. Herbert," with great solemnity, "_I mean to elope with you!_"

Herbert gives an irrepressible start.

"_Now!_ this minute?" he exclaims, in some dismay, and reflects swiftly that, just now he possesses exactly three pounds seven and sixpence in ready money.

"No; don't be a goose; not now, because I haven't any clothes." Herbert breathes more freely. "But some day, very soon, before the end of the season."

"But, my pet, you are not of age," objects her lover; whilst sundry clauses in the laws concerning the marriages of minors without the consent of their parents pa.s.s hurriedly through his brain.

"What do I care about my age?" says Beatrice, with the recklessness of an impetuous woman bent upon having her own way. "Of course, I don't wish to do anything disreputable, or to make a scandal, but mamma is driving me to it by never allowing me to see you, and forbidding you to come to the house, and by encouraging all sorts of men whom she wants me to marry."

"Ah! And these men, do they make love to you?" The instinct of the lover rises instantly superior to the instinct of legal prudence within him.

"That is hard for me to bear."