Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower portion of the house to be thrown open and a mult.i.tude of lights to be placed in convenient and effective positions. Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks and flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the dusky wainscots, casting great luminous circles upon the pendent stiffness of sombre tapestries, enhancing and completing with admirable effect the variety and mystery of the great ancient house, they seemed to people the wide rooms, as our little group pa.s.sed slowly from one to another, with a dim expectant presence. We had thus, in spite of everything, a wonderful hour of it. Mr. Searle at once a.s.sumed the part of cicerone, and--I had not hitherto done him justice--Mr. Searle became almost agreeable. While I lingered behind with his sister he walked in advance with his kinsman.
It was as if he had said: "Well, if you want the old place you shall have it--so far as the impression goes!" He spared us no thrill--I had almost said no pang--of that experience. Carrying a tall silver candlestick in his left hand, he raised it and lowered it and cast the light hither and thither, upon pictures and hangings and carvings and cornices. He knew his house to perfection. He touched upon a hundred traditions and memories, he threw off a cloud of rich reference to its earlier occupants. He threw off again, in his easy elegant way, a dozen--happily lighter--anecdotes. His relative attended with a brooding deference. Miss Searle and I meanwhile were not wholly silent.
"I suppose that by this time you and your cousin are almost old friends," I remarked.
She trifled a moment with her fan and then raised her kind small eyes. "Old friends--yet at the same time strangely new! My cousin, my cousin"--and her voice lingered on the word--"it seems so strange to call him my cousin after thinking these many years that I"ve no one in the world but my brother. But he"s really so very odd!"
"It"s not so much he as--well, as his situation, that deserves that name," I tried to reason.
"I"m so sorry for his situation. I wish I could help it in some way. He interests me so much." She gave a sweet-sounding sigh. "I wish I could have known him sooner--and better. He tells me he"s but the shadow of what he used to be."
I wondered if he had been consciously practising on the sensibilities of this gentle creature. If he had I believed he had gained his point. But his position had in fact become to my sense so precarious that I hardly ventured to be glad. "His better self just now seems again to be taking shape," I said. "It will have been a good deed on your part if you help to restore him to all he ought to be."
She met my idea blankly. "Dear me, what can I do?"
"Be a friend to him. Let him like you, let him love you. I dare say you see in him now much to pity and to wonder at. But let him simply enjoy a while the grateful sense of your nearness and dearness. He"ll be a better and stronger man for it, and then you can love him, you can esteem him, without restriction."
She fairly frowned for helplessness. "It"s a hard part for poor stupid me to play!"
Her almost infantine innocence left me no choice but to be absolutely frank. "Did you ever play any part at all?"
She blushed as if I had been reproaching her with her insignificance.
"Never! I think I"ve hardly lived."
"You"ve begun to live now perhaps. You"ve begun to care for something else than your old-fashioned habits. Pardon me if I seem rather meddlesome; you know we Americans are very rough and ready. It"s a great moment. I wish you joy!"
"I could almost believe you"re laughing at me. I feel more trouble than joy."
"Why do you feel trouble?"
She paused with her eyes fixed on our companions. "My cousin"s arrival"s a great disturbance," she said at last.
"You mean you did wrong in coming to meet him? In that case the fault"s mine. He had no intention of giving you the opportunity."
"I certainly took too much on myself. But I can"t find it in my heart to regret it. I never shall regret it! I did the only thing I COULD, heaven forgive me!"
"Heaven bless you, Miss Searle! Is any harm to come of it? I did the evil; let me bear the brunt!"
She shook her head gravely. "You don"t know my brother!"
"The sooner I master the subject the better then," I said. I couldn"t help relieving myself--at least by the tone of my voice--of the antipathy with which, decidedly, this gentleman had inspired me. "Not perhaps that we should get on so well together!" After which, as she turned away, "Are you VERY much afraid of him?" I added.
She gave me a shuddering sidelong glance. "He"s looking at me!"
He was placed with his back to us, holding a large Venetian hand-mirror, framed in chiselled silver, which he had taken from a shelf of antiquities, just at such an angle that he caught the reflexion of his sister"s person. It was evident that I too was under his attention, and was resolved I wouldn"t be suspected for nothing. "Miss Searle," I said with urgency, "promise me something."
She turned upon me with a start and a look that seemed to beg me to spare her. "Oh don"t ask me--please don"t!" It was as if she were standing on the edge of a place where the ground had suddenly fallen away, and had been called upon to make a leap. I felt retreat was impossible, however, and that it was the greater kindness to a.s.sist her to jump.
"Promise me," I repeated.
Still with her eyes she protested. "Oh what a dreadful day!" she cried at last.
"Promise me to let him speak to you alone if he should ask you--any wish you may suspect on your brother"s part notwithstanding." She coloured deeply. "You mean he has something so particular to say?"
"Something so particular!"
"Poor cousin!"
"Well, poor cousin! But promise me."
"I promise," she said, and moved away across the long room and out of the door.
"You"re in time to hear the most delightful story," Searle began to me as I rejoined him and his host. They were standing before an old sombre portrait of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne"s time, whose ill-painted flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark drapery and background. "This is Mrs. Margaret Searle--a sort of Beatrix Esmond--qui se pa.s.sait ses fantaisies. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs.
Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks like Miss Searle! But pray go on. What came of it all?"
Our companion watched him with an air of distaste for his boisterous homage and of pity for his crude imagination. But he took up the tale with an effective dryness: "I found a year ago, in a box of very old papers, a letter from the lady in question to a certain Cynthia Searle, her elder sister. It was dated from Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled.
It contained a most pa.s.sionate appeal for pecuniary a.s.sistance. She had just had a baby, she was starving and dreadfully neglected by her husband--she cursed the day she had left England. It was a most dismal production. I never heard she found means to return."
"So much for marrying a Frenchman!" I said sententiously.
Our host had one of his waits. "This is the only lady of the family who ever was taken in by an adventurer."
"Does Miss Searle know her history?" asked my friend with a stare at the rounded whiteness of the heroine"s cheek.
"Miss Searle knows nothing!" said our host with expression.
"She shall know at least the tale of Mrs. Margaret," their guest returned; and he walked rapidly away in search of her.
Mr. Searle and I pursued our march through the lighted rooms. "You"ve found a cousin with a vengeance," I doubtless awkwardly enough laughed.
"Ah a vengeance?" my entertainer stiffly repeated.
"I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your annals and possessions as yourself."
"Oh exactly so! He tells me he"s a bad invalid," he added in a moment.
"I should never have supposed it."
"Within the past few hours he"s a changed man. Your beautiful house, your extreme kindness, have refreshed him immensely." Mr. Searle uttered the vague e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n with which self-conscious Britons so often betray the concussion of any especial courtesy of speech. But he followed this by a sudden odd glare and the sharp declaration: "I"m an honest man!" I was quite prepared to a.s.sent; but he went on with a fury of frankness, as if it were the first time in his life he had opened himself to any one, as if the process were highly disagreeable and he were hurrying through it as a task. "An honest man, mind you! I know nothing about Mr.
Clement Searle! I never expected to see him. He has been to me a--a--!"
And here he paused to select a word which should vividly enough express what, for good or for ill, his kinsman represented. "He has been to me an Amazement! I"ve no doubt he"s a most amiable man. You"ll not deny, however, that he"s a very extraordinary sort of person. I"m sorry he"s ill. I"m sorry he"s poor. He"s my fiftieth cousin. Well and good. I"m an honest man. He shall not have it to say that he wasn"t received at my house."
"He too, thank heaven, is an honest man!" I smiled.
"Why the devil then," cried Mr. Searle, turning almost fiercely on me, "has he put forward this underhand claim to my property?"
The question, quite ringing out, flashed backward a gleam of light upon the demeanour of our host and the suppressed agitation of his sister. In an instant the jealous gentleman revealed itself. For a moment I was so surprised and scandalised at the directness of his attack that I lacked words to reply. As soon as he had spoken indeed Mr. Searle appeared to feel he had been wanting in form. "Pardon me," he began afresh, "if I speak of this matter with heat. But I"ve been more disgusted than I can say to hear, as I heard this morning from my solicitor, of the extraordinary proceedings of Mr. Clement Searle. Gracious goodness, sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends to the Lord knows what fantastic admiration for my place. Let him then show his respect for it by not taking too many liberties! Let him, with his high-flown parade of loyalty, imagine a t.i.the of what _I_ feel! I love my estate; it"s my pa.s.sion, my conscience, my life! Am I to divide it up at this time of day with a beggarly foreigner--a man without means, without appearance, without proof, a pretender, an adventurer, a chattering mountebank? I thought America boasted having lands for all men! Upon my soul, sir, I"ve never been so shocked in my life."
I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow his pa.s.sion fully to expend itself and to flicker up again if it chose; for so far as I was concerned in the whole awkward matter I but wanted to deal with him discreetly. "Your apprehensions, sir," I said at last, "your not unnatural surprise, perhaps, at the candour of our interest, have acted too much on your nerves. You"re attacking a man of straw, a creature of unworthy illusion; though I"m sadly afraid you"ve wounded a man of spirit and conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on your estate, in which case your agitation is superfluous; or he HAS a valid claim--"
Mr. Searle seized my arm and glared at me; his pale face paler still with the horror of my suggestion, his great eyes of alarm glowing and his strange red hair erect and quivering. "A valid claim!" he shouted.