Aladdin of London Part 17

She rose as though this was the end of the argument. Her words, lightly spoken, were so transparently honest that the shrewd man of business summed up the whole situation in an instant. The mere possibility that his name should be mixed up with a racing scandal staggered him by its dangers and its absurdity. Anger against his daughter became in some measure compa.s.sion. Of course she was but a woman and a clever charlatan had entrapped her.

"Sit down--sit down," he said bluffly, motioning her back to her seat.

"It is perfectly clear that this William Forrest of yours is a rogue, and as a rogue we must treat him. I am astonished at what you tell me.

It is a piece of nonsense, women's sense as ridiculous as the silly business which is responsible for it. Of course you must pay them the money. I will do the rest, Anna. I have friends who will quickly put that matter straight--and if your rogue finds his way to a race-course again, he is a very lucky man. Now sit down and let me speak to you in my turn, Anna. I want you to speak about Alban--I want to hear how you like him. He has now been with us long enough for us to know something about him. Let us see if your opinion agrees with mine."

His keen scrutiny detected a flush upon her face while he asked the question and he understood that all he had suspected had been nothing but the truth. Anna had come to love this open-minded lad who had been forced upon them by such an odd train of circ.u.mstances; her threats concerning w.i.l.l.y Forrest were the merest bravado. Gessner would have trembled at the knowledge a week ago, but to-night it found him singularly complacent. He listened to Anna's response with the air of a light-hearted judge who condemned a guilty prisoner out of her own mouth.

"Alban Kennedy has many good qualities," she said. "I think he is very worthy of your generosity."

"Ah, you like him, I perceive. Let us suppose, Anna, that my intentions toward him were to go beyond anything I had imagined--suppose, being no longer under any compulsion in the matter, the compulsion of an imaginary obligation which does not exist, I were still to consider him as my own son. Would you be surprised then at my conduct?"

"It would not surprise me," she said. "You have always wished for a son.

Alban is the most original boy of his age I have ever met. He is clever and absurdly honest. I don't think you would regret any kindness you may show to him."

"And you yourself?"

"What have I to do with it, father?"

"It might concern you very closely, Anna."

"In what way, father?"

"In the only way which would concern a woman. Suppose that I thought of him as your husband?"

She flushed crimson.

"Have you spoken to him on the matter?"

"No, but being about to speak to him--after dinner to-night."

"I should defer my opinion until that has happened."

He laughed as though the idea of it amused him very much.

"Of course, he will have nothing to do with us, Anna. What is a fortune to such a fine fellow? What is a great house--and I say it--a very beautiful wife? Of course, he will refuse us. Any boy would do that, especially one who has been brought up in Union Street. Now go and look for him in the garden. I must tell Geary to have that cheque drawn out--and mind you, if I meet that fellow Forrest, I will half kill him just to show my good opinion of him. This nonsense must end to-night.

Remember, it is a promise to me."

She shrugged her shoulders and left the room with slow steps. Gessner, still smiling, turned up a lamp by his writing-table and took out his cheque-book.

CHAPTER XVIII

FATE IRONICAL

They were a merry party at the dinner-table, and the Reverend Silas Geary amused them greatly by his discussion of that absorbing topic, is golf worth playing? He himself, good man, deplored the fact that several worthy persons who, otherwise, would have been working ten or twelve hours a day as Cabinet ministers, deliberately toiled in the sloughs and pits of the golf course.

"The whole nation is chasing a little ball," he said; "we deplore the advance of Germany, but, I would ask you, how does the German spend his day, what are his needs, where do his amus.e.m.e.nts lie? There is a country for you--every man a soldier, every worker an intellect. In England nowadays our young fellows seem to try and find out how little they can do. We live for minimums. We are only happy when we have struck a bat with a ball and it has gone far. We reserve our greatest honors for those who thus excel."

Alban ventured to say that beer seemed to be the recreation of the average German and insolence his amus.e.m.e.nt. He confessed that the Germans beat his own people by hard work; but he asked, is it really a good thing that work should be the beginning and the end of all things?

He had been taught at school that the supreme beauty of life lay in things apart and chiefly in a man's own soul. To which Gessner himself retorted that a woman's soul was what the writer probably meant.

"We have let civilization make us what we are," the banker said shrewdly, "and now we complain of her handiwork. Write what you like about it, money and love are the only two things left in the world to-day. The story has always been the same, but people did not read it so often formerly. There have always been ambition, strife, struggle, suffering--why should the historians trouble to tell of them? You yourself, Alban, would be a worker if the opportunity came to you. I have foreseen that from the first moment I met you. If you were interested, you would outdo the Germans and beat them both with your head and your hands. But it will be very difficult to interest you. You would need some great stimulus, and in your case it would be ambition rather than its rewards."

Alban replied that a love of power was probably the strongest influence in the world.

"We all hate work," he said, repeating his favorite dictum, "I don't suppose there is one man in a thousand who would do another day's work unless he were compelled. The success of Socialism in our time is the belief that it will glorify idleness and make it real. The agitators themselves never work. They have learned the rich men's secret--I have heard them preaching the dignity of labor a hundred times, but I never yet saw one wheeling a barrow. The poor fellows who listen to them think that you have only got to pa.s.s a few acts of Parliament to be happy forever after. I pity them, but how are you to teach them that the present state of things is just--and if it is not just, why should you wish it to last?"

Gessner could answer that. A rich man himself, all that concerned the new doctrines was of the profoundest interest to him.

"The present state of things is the only state of things--in the bulk,"

he said; "it is as old as the world and will go on as long as the world.

We grumble at our rich men, but those who have ama.s.sed their own fortunes are properly the nation's bankers. Consider what a sudden gift of money would mean to the working-men of England to-day--drunkenness, crime, debauchery. You can legislate to improve the conditions of their lives, but to give them creative brains is beyond all legislation. And I will tell you this--that once you have pa.s.sed any considerable socialistic legislation for this kingdom of Great Britain, you have decided her destiny. She will in twenty years be in the position of Holland--a country that was but never will be again."

No one disputed the proposition, for no one thoroughly understood it.

Alban had not the courage to debate his pet theorems at such a time, and the parson was too intent upon denouncing the national want of seriousness to enter upon such abstruse questions as the banker would willingly have discussed. So they fell back upon athletics again, and were busy with football and cricket until the time came for Anna to withdraw and leave them to their cigars. Silas Geary, quickly imitating her, waited but for a gla.s.s of port before he made his excuses and departed, as he said, upon a "parochial necessity."

"We will go to the Winter Garden," Gessner said to Alban when they were alone--"I will see that Fellows takes our coffee there. Bring some cigarettes, Alban--I wish to have a little private talk with you."

Alban a.s.sented willingly, for he was glad of this opportunity to say much that he had desired to say for some days past. The night had turned very hot and close, but the gla.s.s roof of the Winter Garden stood open and they sat there almost as in the open air, the great palms and shrubs all about them and many lights glowing cunningly amid the giant leaves.

As earlier in the evening, so now Gessner was in the best of spirits, laughing at every trivial circ.u.mstance and compelling his guest to see how kindly was his desposition toward him.

"We shall be comfortable here," he said, "and far enough away from the port wine to save me self-reproach to-morrow. I see that you drink little, Alban. It is wise--all those who have the gout will speak of your wisdom. We drink because the wine is there, not because we want it.

And then in the morning, we say, how foolish. Come now, light another cigarette and listen to me. I have great things to talk about, great questions to ask you. You must listen patiently, for this concerns your happiness--as closely perhaps as anything will concern it as long as you live."

He did not continue immediately, seeing the footman at his elbow with the coffee. Alban, upon his part, lighted a cigarette as he had been commanded, and waited patiently. He thought that he knew what was coming and yet was afraid of the thought. Anna's sudden pa.s.sion for him had been too patent to all the world that he should lightly escape its consequences. Indeed, he had never waited for any one to speak with the anxiety which attended this interval of service. He thought that the footman would never leave them alone.

"Now," said Gessner at last, "now that those fellows are gone we can make ourselves comfortable. I shall be very plain, my lad--I shall not deceive you again. When you first came to my house, I did not tell you the truth--I am going to tell it to you to-night, for it is only right that you should know it."

He stirred his coffee vigorously and puffed at his cigar until it glowed red again. When he resumed he spoke in brief decisive sentences as though forbidding question or contradiction until he had finished.

"There is a fellow-countryman of mine--you know him and know his daughter. He believes that I am under some obligation to him and I do not contradict him. When we met in London, many years after the business transaction of which he complains, I asked him in what way I could be of service to him or to his family, as the case might be. He answered that he wanted nothing for himself, but that any favor I might be disposed to show should be toward his daughter and to you. I took it that you were in love with the girl and would marry her. That was what I was given to believe. At the same time, this fellow Boriskoff a.s.sured me that you were well educated, of a singularly independent character, and well worthy of being received into this house. I will not deny that the fellow made very much of this request, and that it was put to me with certain alternatives which I considered impertinent. You, however, had no part in that. You came here because the whole truth was not told to you--and you remained because my daughter wished it. There I do not fear contradiction. You know yourself that it is true and will not contradict me. As the time went on, I perceived that you had established a claim to my generosity such as did not exist when first you came here--the claim of my affection and of my daughter's. This, I will confess, has given me more pleasure than anything which has happened here for a long time. I have no son and I take it as the beneficent work of Providence that one should be sent to me as you were sent. My daughter would possibly have married a scoundrel if the circ.u.mstances had been otherwise. So, you see, that while you are now established here by right of our affection, I am rewarded twofold for anything I may have done for you. Henceforth this happy state of things must become still happier. I have spoken to Anna to-night, and I should be very foolish if I could not construe her answer rightly. She loves you, my lad, and will take you for her husband. It remains for you to say that your happiness shall not be delayed any longer than may be reasonable."

It need scarcely be said with what surprise Alban listened to this lengthy recital. Some part of the truth had already been made known to him--but this fuller account could not but flatter his vanity while it left him silent in his amazement and perplexity. Richard Gessner, he understood, had always desired a brilliant match for Anna, and had sought an alliance with some of the foremost English families. If he abandoned these ambitions, a shrewd belief in the impossibility lay at the root of his determination. Anna would never marry as he wished. Her birthright and her Eastern blood forbade it. She would be the child of whim and of pa.s.sion always, and it lay upon him to avert the greater evil by the lesser. Alban in a vague way understood this, but of his own case he could make little. What a world of ease and luxury and delight these few simple words opened up to him. He had but to say "yes" to become the ultimate master of this man's fortune, the possessor of a heritage which would have been considered fabulous but fifty years ago.

And yet he would not say "yes." It was as though some unknown power restrained him, almost as though his own brain tricked him. Of Anna's sudden pa.s.sion for him he had no doubt whatever. She was ready and willing to yield her whole self to him and would, it might be, make him a devoted wife. None the less, the temptation found him vacillating and incapable even of a clear decision. Some voice of the past called to him and would not be silenced. Maladroitly, he gave no direct reply, but answered the question by another.

"Did Paul Boriskoff tell you that I was about to marry his daughter, Mr.

Gessner?"

"My dear lad, what Paul Boriskoff said or did can be of little interest to you or me to-night. He is no longer in England, let me tell you. He left for Poland three days ago."

"Then you saw him or heard from him before he left?"

"Not at all. The less one sees or hears from that kind of person the better. You know the fellow and will understand me. He is a firebrand we can well do without. I recommended him to go to Poland and he has gone.

His daughter, I understand, is being educated at Warsaw. Let me advise you to forget such acquaintances--they are no longer of any concern to either of us."

He waved his hand as though to dismiss the subject finally; but his words left Alban strangely ill at ease.