"Dear old boy," she said in milder accents, "I didn"t mean to be unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked Bingley"--Bingley is my housekeeper--"whether I could stay to dinner."
"That"s good of you--but this magnificence----?"
"I"m going on later to the Foreign Office reception."
"Then you do still mingle with the great and gorgeous?" I said.
"What do you mean? Why shouldn"t I?"
I laughed, suspecting rightly that my sisters" social position had not been greatly imperilled by the profligacy of their scandal-bespattered brother.
"What are people saying about me?" I asked suddenly.
She made a helpless gesture. "Can"t you guess? You have told us the facts, and, of course, we believe you; we have done our best to spread abroad the correct version--but you know what people are. If they"re told they oughtn"t to believe the worst, they"re disappointed and still go on believing it so as to comfort themselves."
"You cynical little wretch!" said I.
"But it"s true," she urged. "And, after all, even if they were well disposed, the correct version makes considerable demands on their faith.
Even Letty Farfax--"
"I know! I know!" said I. "Letty Farfax is typical. She would love to be on the side of the angels, but as she wouldn"t meet the best people there, she ranges herself with the other party."
Presently we dined, and during the meal, when the servants happened to be out of the room, we continued, snippet-wise, the inconclusive conversation. Like a good sister Agatha had come to cheer a lonely and much abused man; like a daughter of Eve she had also come to find out as much as she possibly could.
"I think I must tell you something which you ought to know," she said.
"It"s all over the town that you stole the lady from Dale Kynnersley."
"If I did," said I, "it was at his mother"s earnest entreaty. You can tell folks that. You can also tell them Madame Brandt is not the kind of woman to be stolen by one man from another. She is a thoroughly virtuous, good, and n.o.ble woman, and there"s not a creature living who wouldn"t be honoured by her friendship."
As I made this announcement with an impetuosity which reminded me (with a twinge of remorse) of poor Dale"s dithyrambics, Agatha shot at me a quick glance of apprehension.
"But, my dear Simon, she used to act in a circus with a horse!"
"I fail to see," said I, growing angry, "how the horse could have imbued her with depravity, and I"m given to understand that the tone of the circus is not quite what it used to be in the days of the Empress Theodora."
A ripple pa.s.sed over Agatha"s bare shoulders, which I knew to be a suppressed shrug.
"I suppose men and women look at these things differently," she remarked, and from the stiffness of her tone I divined that the idea of moral qualities lurking in the nature of Lola Brandt occasioned her considerable displeasure.
"I hope----" She paused. There was another ripple. "No. I had better not say it. It"s none of my business, after all."
"I don"t think it is, my dear," said I.
Rogers bringing in the cutlets ended the snippet of talk.
It was not the cheeriest of dinners. I took advantage of the next interval of quiet to inquire after Dale. I learned that the poor boy had almost collapsed after the election and was now yachting with young Lord Essendale somewhere about the Hebrides. Agatha had not seen him, but Lady Kynnersley had called on her one day in a distracted frame of mind, bitterly reproaching me for the unhappiness of her son. I should never have suspected that such fierce maternal love could burn beneath Lady Kynnersley"s granite exterior. She accused me of treachery towards Dale and, most illogically, of dishonourable conduct towards herself.
"She said things about you," said Agatha, "for which, even if they were true, I couldn"t forgive her. So that"s an end of that friendship.
Indeed, it has been very difficult, Simon," she continued, "to keep up with our common friends. It has placed us in the most painful and delicate position. And now you"re back, I"m afraid it will be worse."
Thus under all Agatha"s affection there ran the general hostility of London. Guilty or not, I had offended her in her most deeply rooted susceptibilities, and as yet she only knew half the imbroglio in which I was enmeshed. Over coffee, however, she began to take a more optimistic view of affairs.
"After all, you"ll be able to live it down," she said with a cheerful air of patronage. "People soon forget. Before the year is out you"ll be going about just as usual, and at the General Election you"ll find a seat somewhere."
I informed her that I had given up politics. What then, she asked, would I do for an occupation?
"Work for my living," I replied.
"Work?" She arched her eyebrows, as if it were the most extraordinary thing a man could do. "What kind of work?"
"Road-sweeping or tax-collecting or envelope-addressing."
She selected a cigarette from the silver box in front of her, and did not reply until she had lit it and inhaled a puff or two.
"I wish you wouldn"t be so flippant, Simon."
From this remark I inferred that I still was in the criminal dock before this lady Chief Justice. I smiled at the airs the little woman gave herself now that I was no longer the impeccable and irreproachable dictator of the family. Mine was the experience of every fallen tyrant since the world began.
"My dear Agatha, I"ve had enough shocks during the last few weeks to knock the flippancy out of a Congregational minister. In November I was condemned to die within six months. The sentence was final and absolute.
I thought I would do the kind of good one can"t do with a lifetime in front of one, and I wasted all my substance in riotous giving. In the elegant phraseology of high society I am stone-broke. As my training has not fitted me to earn my living in high-falutin ways, I must earn it in some humble capacity. Therefore, if you see me call at your house for the water rate, you"ll understand that I am driven to that expedient by necessity and not by degradation."
Naturally I had to elaborate this succinct statement before my sister could understand its full significance. Then dismay overwhelmed her.
Surely something could be done. The fortunes of Jane and herself were at my disposal to set me on my feet again. We were brother and sisters; what was theirs was mine; they couldn"t see me starve. I thanked her for her affection--the dear creatures would unhesitatingly have let me play ducks and drakes with their money, but I explained that though poor, I was still proud and prized the independence of the tax-collector above the position of the pensioner of Love"s bounty.
"Tom must get you something to do," she declared.
"Tom must do nothing of the kind. Let me say that once and for all,"
I returned peremptorily. "I"ve made my position clear to you, because you"re my sister and you ought to be spared any further misinterpretation of my actions. But to have you dear people intriguing after billets for me would be intolerable."
"But what are you going to _do_?" she cried, wringing her hands.
"I"m going for my first omnibus ride to-morrow," said I heroically.
Upon which a.s.sertion Rogers entered announcing that her ladyship"s carriage had arrived. A while later I accompanied her downstairs and along the arcade.
"I shall be so miserable, thinking of you, poor old boy," she said affectionately, as she bade me good-bye.
"Don"t, I am going to enjoy myself for the first time in my life."
These were "prave "orts," but I felt doleful enough when I re-entered the chambers where I had lived in uncomplaining luxury for fourteen years.
"There"s no help for it," I murmured. "I must get rid of the remainder of my lease, sell my books and pictures and other more or less expensive household goods, dismiss Rogers and Bingley, and go and live on thirty shillings a week in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. I think," I continued, regarding myself in the Queen Anne mirror over the mantelpiece, "I think that it will better harmonise with my fallen fortunes if I refrain from waxing the ends of my moustache. There ought to be a modest droop about the moustache of a tax-collector."
The next morning I gave my servants a months" notice. Rogers, who had been with me for many years, behaved in the correctest manner. He neither offered to lend me his modest savings nor to work for me for no wages. He expressed his deep regret at leaving my service and his confidence that I would give him a good character. Bingley wept after the way of women. There was also a shadowy housemaidy young person in a cap who used to make meteoric appearances and whom I left to the diplomacy of Bingley. These dismal rites performed, I put my chambers into the hands of a house agent and interviewed a firm of auctioneers with reference to the sale. It was all exceedingly unpleasant. The agent was so anxious to let my chambers, the auctioneer so delighted at the chance of selling my effects, that I felt myself forthwith turned neck and crop out of doors. It was a bright morning in early spring, with a satirical touch of hope in the air. London, no longer to be my London, maintained its hostile att.i.tude to me. If any one had prophesied that I should be a stranger in Piccadilly, I should have laughed aloud. Yet I was.
Walking moodily up Saint James"s street I met the omniscient and expansive Renniker. He gave me a curt nod and a "How d"ye do?" and pa.s.sed on. I felt savagely disposed to slash his jaunty silk hat off with my walking-stick. A few months before he would have rushed effusively into my arms and bedaubed me with miscellaneous inaccuracies of information. At first I was furiously indignant. Then I laughed, and swinging my stick, nearly wreaked my vengeance on a harmless elderly gentleman.
It was my first experience of social ostracism. Although I curled a contumelious lip, I smarted under the indignity. It was all very well to say proudly "_io son" io_"; but _io_ used to be a person of some importance who was not cavalierly "how d"ye do"d" by creatures like Renniker. This and the chance encounters of the next few weeks gave me furiously to think. I knew that in one respect my sister Agatha was right. These good folks who shied now at the stains of murder with which my reputation was soiled would in time get used to them and eventually forget them altogether. But I reflected that I should not forget, and I determined that I should not be admitted on sufferance, as at first I should have to be admitted, into any man"s club or any woman"s drawing-room.