The Archdeacon shuddered. He dropped his napkin and picked it up again, to hide his dismay. Then he plunged into a fresh subject. When his son upon some excuse left him early, he was glad to be alone. He had now a course laid down for him, and acting upon it, he next day saw the landlady in Sidmouth Street and requested her to take charge of the young lady in the event of the mother"s death and to guard her from intrusion until other arrangements could be made. "You will look to me for all expenses," the Archdeacon added, seizing with eagerness the only ground on which he felt himself at home. To which the landlady gladly said she would, and accepted Mr. Yale"s address at the Athenaeum Club as a personal favour to herself.
So the Archdeacon, free for the moment, went down to Studbury, and as he walked about his shrubberies with the scent of his wife"s old-fashioned flowers in the air, or sat drinking his gla.s.s of Leoville "74 after dinner while Vinnells the butler, anxious to get to his supper, rattled the spoons on the sideboard, he tried to believe it a dream. What, he wondered, would Vinnells say if he knew that master had a ward, and that ward a play-actress? Or, as Studbury would prefer to style her, a painted Jezebel? And what would Mrs. Yale say, who loved lavender, and had seen a ballet--once? Was Archdeacon ever, he asked himself, in a position so--so anomalous before?
"My dear," his wife remarked when he had read his letters one morning, a week or two later, "I am sure you are not well. I have noticed that you have not been yourself since you were in London."
"Nonsense," he replied tartly.
"It is not nonsense. There is something preying on your mind. I believe," she persisted, "it is that visitation, Cyprian, that is troubling you."
"Visitation? What visitation?" he asked incautiously. For indeed he had forgotten all about that very important business, and could think only of a visitation more personal to himself. Before his wife could hold up her hands in astonishment, "What visitation! indeed!" he had escaped into the open air. Mrs. Kent was dead.
Yes, the blow had fallen; but the first shock over, things were made easy for him. He wrote to his ward as soon after the funeral as seemed decent, and her answer pleased him greatly. Ready as he was to scent misbehaviour in the air, he thought it a proper letter, a good girl"s letter. She did not deny his right to give advice. She had not, she said, seen the gentleman he mentioned since her mother"s death, although Mr. Charles Williams--that was his name--had called several times. But she had given him an appointment for the following Tuesday, and was willing that Mr. Yale should see him on that occasion.
All this in a formal and precise way; but there was something in the tone of her reference to Mr. Williams which led the Archdeacon to smile. "She is over head and ears in love," he thought. And in his reply, after saying that he would be in Sidmouth Street on Tuesday at the hour named, he added that if there appeared to be nothing against Mr. Charles Williams he, the Archdeacon, would have pleasure in forwarding his ward"s happiness.
"I am going to London to-morrow, my dear, for two nights," he said to his wife on the Sunday evening. "I have some business there."
Mrs. Yale sat silent for a moment, as if she had not heard. Then she laid down her book and folded her hands. "Cyprian," she said, "what is it?"
The Archdeacon was fussing with his pile of sermons and did not turn.
"What is what, my dear?" he asked.
"Why are you going to London?"
"On business, my dear; business," he said lightly.
"Yes, but what business?" replied Mrs. Yale with decision. "Cyprian, you are keeping something from me; you were not used to have secrets from me. Tell me what it is."
But he remained obstinately silent. He would not tell a lie, and he could not tell the truth.
"Is it about Jack?" with sudden conviction. "I know what it is; he has entangled himself with some girl!"
The Archdeacon laughed oddly. "You ought to know your son better by this time, my dear. He is about as likely to entangle himself with a girl as--as I am."
But Mrs. Yale shook her head unconvinced. The Archdeacon was a landowner, though a poor one. It was his ambition, and his wife"s, that Jack should some day be rich enough to live at the Hall, instead of letting it, as his father found it necessary to do. But while the Archdeacon considered that Jack"s way to the Hall lay over the woolsack, his wife had in view a short cut through the marriage market; being a woman, and so thinking it a small sin in a man to marry for money. Consequently she lived in fear lest Jack should be entrapped by some penniless fair one, and was not wholly rea.s.sured now. "Well, I shall be sure to find out, Cyprian," she said warningly, "if you are deceiving me."
And these words recurred disagreeably to the Archdeacon"s mind on his way to town and afterwards. They rendered him as sensitive as a mole in the sunshine. He found London almost intolerable. He could not walk the streets without seeing those horrid placards, nor take up a newspaper without being stared out of countenance by the name "Kittie Latouche." While his conscience so multiplied each bill and poster and programme that in twenty-four hours London seemed to him a great h.o.a.rding of which his ward was the sole lessee.
Naturally he shrank into himself as he pa.s.sed down Sidmouth Street next day. He pondered, standing on the steps of No. 14, what the neighbours thought of the house; whether they knew that "Kittie Latouche" lived there. He was spared the giggling and dirty plates on the stairs, but looking round the room at the ten photographs, and thinking what Mrs. Yale would say could she see him, he shuddered.
Nervously he picked up the first pamphlet he saw on the table. It was a trifle in one act: "The Tench," Lacy"s edition, by Charles Williams.
He set it down with a grimace, and a word about birds of a feather.
And then the door by which he had entered opened behind him, and he turned.
One look was enough. The kindly expression faded from his handsome features. His face turned to flame. The veins of his forehead swelled with pa.s.sion, and he strode forward as though he would lay hands on the intruder. "How dare you," he cried when he could find his voice--"how dare you follow me? How dare you play the spy upon me, sir? Speak!"
But Jack--for Jack it was--had no answer ready. He seemed to have lost for once (astonished at being taken in this way, perhaps) his presence of mind. "I do not--understand," he said helplessly.
"Understand? You understand," the Archdeacon cried, his son"s very confusion condemning him unheard, "that you have meanly followed me to--to detect me in--in----" And then he came to a deadlock, and, redder than before, thundered, "Are you not ashamed of yourself, sir?"
"I thought I saw a back I knew," Jack muttered, looking everywhere but at his father, which was terribly irritating. "I was coming through the street."
"You were coming through the street? I suppose you often pa.s.s through Sidmouth Street!" retorted the Archdeacon with withering sarcasm. But his wrath was growing cool.
"Very often," said Jack so st.u.r.dily that his father could not but believe him, and was further sobered. "I saw a back I thought I knew, and I came in here. I had no intention of offending you, sir. And now I think I will go," he added, looking about him uneasily, "and--and speak to you another time."
But the Archdeacon"s anger was quite gone now. A wretched embarra.s.sment was taking its place as it dawned upon him that after all Jack might by pure chance have seen him enter and have followed innocently. In that case how had he committed himself by his outbreak--how indeed! "Jack," he said, "I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, Jack. I see I was mistaken. Do not go, my boy, until I have explained to you why I am here. It is not," he went on, smiling a wretched smile at the pretty faces round him, "quite the place in which you would expect to find me."
"It is certainly not the place in which I did expect to find you,"
Jack said bluntly. And he looked about him, also in a dazed fashion, as if the Archdeacon and the photographs were not a conjunction for which he was prepared.
"No, no," a.s.sented the Archdeacon, wincing, however. "But it is the simplest piece of business in the world which has brought me here."
And he recalled to his son"s memory their talk at the club.
"Ah, I understand!" Jack said, as if he did, too. "You have come about your friend"s business."
The Archdeacon could not hide a spasm. "Well, not precisely. To tell you the truth, there never was a friend, Jack. But," he went on hurriedly, holding up a hand of dignified protest, for Jack was looking at him queerly, very queerly, "you know me too well to doubt me, I hope, when I say there is no ground for doubt?"
The son"s keen eyes met the father"s for an instant, and then a rare smile softened them as the men"s hands met. "I do, sir. You may be sure of that!" he said brightly.
The Archdeacon cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said; "now I think you will understand the position. Miss Kent, the young lady in question, lives here; and I have called to-day to see her by appointment."
"The d.i.c.kens you have! It is like your impudence!" cried some one--some one behind them.
Both men swung round at the interruption. In the doorway, holding the door open with one hand, while with the other set against the wall he balanced himself on his feet, stood a smart Jewish-looking man. "The d.i.c.kens you have!" this gentleman repeated, leering on the two most unpleasantly. "So that is your game, is it? Ain"t you ashamed of yourself," he continued, addressing himself to the shuddering Archdeacon--and how far away seemed Vinnells and the lavender, and the calm delights of Studbury at that moment!--"ain"t you ashamed of yourself, old man?"
"This is a private room," Jack said sternly, antic.i.p.ating his father"s outburst. "You do not seem to be aware of it, my friend."
"A private room, is it?" the visitor replied, closing one eye with much enjoyment. "A private room, and what then?"
"This much, that you are requested to leave it."
"Ho, ho!" the man replied; "so you would put me out of my daughter"s room, would you--out of my own daughter"s room? I daresay that you would like to do it." Then, with a sudden change to ferocity, he added, "You are bragging above your cards, young man, you are! Dry up, do you hear? Dry up."
And Jack did dry up, falling back against the table with a white face.
The Archdeacon, even in his own misery--misery which far exceeded his presentiments--saw and marvelled at his son"s collapse. That Jack, keen, practical, hard-headed, should be so completely overwhelmed by collision with this creature, so plainly scared by his insinuations, infected the Archdeacon with a kind of terror. Yet, struggling against the feeling, he forced himself to say, "You are Mr. Kent, I presume?"
"I am, sir; yours to command," swaggered the wretch.
"Then I may tell you that your daughter," the Archdeacon continued, resuming something of his natural self-possession, "was left in my charge by your wife, and that I am here in consequence of that arrangement."
"Gammon!" Mr. Kent replied, distinctly, putting his tongue in his cheek. "Gammon! Do you think that that story will go down with me? Do you think it will go down with any one?"
"It is the truth."
"All right; but look here, when did you see my wife? On her death-bed.
And before that--not for twenty years. Well, what do you make of it now? Why," he exclaimed, with admiration in his tone, "you have the impudence of the old one himself! Fie on you, sir! Ain"t you ashamed of hanging about stage doors, and following actresses home at your age? But I know you. And your friends shall know you, Archdeacon Yale, of the Athenaeum Club. You will hear more of this!"
"You are an insolent fellow!" the clergyman cried. But the perspiration stood in great beads upon his brow, and his quivering lips betrayed the agony of his soul as he writhed under the man"s coa.r.s.e insinuations. The awkwardness, the improbability of the tale he would have to tell in his defence flashed across his mind while the other spoke. He saw how cogently the silence he had maintained about the matter would tell against him. He pictured the nudge of one friend, the wink of another, and his own crimsoning cheeks. His son"s unwonted silence, too, touched him home. Yet he tried to bear himself as an innocent man; he struggled to give back look for look. "You are a madman and a scoundrel, besides being drunk!" he said stoutly. "If it were not so, or--or I were as young as my son here----"