Mike Fletcher Part 24

"Row! I'd have broken his dirty neck. Not content with swindling poor Beacham Brown, he tries it on with the contributors. I wish I had been able to get him to go on. I would willingly have fleeced him of every penny he has in the world."

Lizzie bade them good-night, and the servant brought in a letter for Mike, a letter which she explained had been incorrectly addressed, and had just come from the hotel. Frank took up a newspaper which Thigh had left on the table. He turned it over, glancing hastily through it. Then something caught his eye, and the expression of his face changed. And what caused him pain could be no more than a few words, for the paper fell instantly from his hands and he sat quite still, staring into s.p.a.ce. But neither the sound of the paper falling, nor yet the frozen rigidity of his att.i.tude drew Mike's thoughts from the letter he was reading. He glanced hastily through it, then he read it attentively, lingering over every word. He seemed to suck sweetness out of every one; it was the deep, sensual absorption of a fly in a pot of treacle. His eyes were dim with pleasure long drawn out; they saw nothing, and it was some moments before the pallor and pain of Frank's face dispelled the melliferous Edens in which Mike's soul moved.

"What is the matter, old chap? Are you ill?"

Frank did not answer.

"Are you ill? Shall I get you a drink?"

"No, no," he said. "I a.s.sure you it is nothing; no, it is nothing."

He struggled for a moment for shame's sake to keep his secret, but it was more than he could bear. "Ah!" he said, "it is all over; I'm done for--read."

He stooped to pick up the paper. Mike took the paper from him and read--

"Thursday--Lady Mount Rorke, of a son."

Whilst one man hears his doom p.r.o.nounced, another sees a golden fortune fallen in his hand, and the letter Mike had just read was from a firm of solicitors, informing him that Lady Seeley had left him her entire fortune, three thousand a year in various securities, and a property in Berks.h.i.+re; house, pictures, plate--in a word, everything she possessed. The bitterness of his friend's ill fortune contrasting with the sweetness of his own good fortune, struck his heart, and he said, with genuine sorrow in his voice--

"I'm awfully sorry, old chap."

"There's no use being sorry for me, I'm done for; I shall never be Lord Mount Rorke now. That child, that wife, are paupers; that castle, that park, that river, all--everything that I was led to believe would be mine one day, has pa.s.sed from me irrevocably. It is terribly cruel--it seems too cruel to be true; all those old places--you know them--all has pa.s.sed from me. I never believed Mount Rorke would have an heir, he is nearly seventy; it is too cruel."

Tears swam in his eyes, and covering his face in his hands he burst into a storm of heavy sobbing.

Mike was sincere, but "there is something not wholly disagreeable to us in hearing of the misfortunes even of our best friends," and Mike felt the old thought forced into his mind that he who had come from the top had gone to the bottom, and that he who came from the bottom was going--had gone to the top. Taking care, however, that none of the triumph ebullient within him should rise into his voice, he said--

"I am really sorry for you, Frank. You mustn't despair; perhaps the child won't live, and perhaps the paper will succeed. It must succeed. It shall succeed."

"Succeed! nothing succeeds with me. I and my wife and child are beggars on the face of the earth. It matters little to me whether the paper succeeds or fails. Thigh has got pretty nearly all of it. When my debts are paid I shall not have enough to set myself up in rooms."

At the end of a painful silence, Mike said--

"We've had our quarrels, but you've been a d.a.m.ned good friend to me; it is my turn now to stand to you. To begin with, here is the three hundred that I won from Thigh. I don't want it. I a.s.sure you I don't.

Then there are your rooms in Temple Gardens; I'll take them off your hands. I'll pay all the arrears of rent, and give you the price you paid for your furniture."

"What d.a.m.ned nonsense! how can you do that? Take three hundred pounds from you--the price of your book. You have nothing else in the world!"

"Yes, I have; it is all right, old chap; you can have the money. The fact is," he said, "Lady Seeley has left me her whole fortune; the letter I just received is from the solicitors. They say three thousand a year in various securities, and a property in Berks.h.i.+re.

So you see I can afford to be generous. I shall feel much hurt if you don't accept. Indeed, it is the least I can do; I owe it to you."

The men looked at each other, their eyes luminous with intense and quickening emotions. Fortune had been so derisive that Mike feared Frank would break into foolish anger, and that only a quarrel and worse hatred might result from his offer of a.s.sistance.

"It was in my box you met her; I remember the night quite well. You were with Harding." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.] The men exchanged an inquiring look. "She wanted me to go home and have supper with her; she was in love with me then; I might have been her lover. But I refused, and I went into the bar and spoke to Lizzie; when she went off on duty I went and sat with you and Harding. Not long after I saw you at Reading, in the hotel overlooking the river. I was with Lizzie." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.]

"You can't accuse me of having cut you out. You could have got her, and--"

"I didn't want her; I was in love with Lizzie, and I am still. And strange as it may appear to you, I regret nothing, at least nothing that concerns Lizzie."

Mike wondered if this were true. His fingers fidgeted with the cheques. "Won't you take them?"

Frank took them. It was impossible to continue the conversation.

Frank made a remark, and the young men bade each other good-night.

As Mike went up the staircase to his room, his exultation swelled, and in one of those hallucinations of the brain consequent upon nerve excitement, and in which we are conscious of our insanity, he wondered the trivial fabric of the cottage did not fall, and his soul seemed to pierce the depth and mystery imprisoned in the stars. He undressed slowly, looking at himself in the gla.s.s, pausing when he drew off his waistcoat, unb.u.t.toning his braces with deliberation.

"I can make nothing of it; there never was any one like me.... I could do anything, I might have been Napoleon or Caesar."

As he folded his coat he put his hand into the breast pocket and produced the unposted letter.

"That letter will drive me mad! Shall I burn it? What do I want with a wife? I've plenty of money now."

He held the letter to the flame of the candle. But he could not burn it.

"This is too d.a.m.ned idiotic!" he thought, as he laid it on the table and prepared to get into bed; "I'm not going to carry that letter about all my life. I must either post it or destroy it."

Then the darkness became as if charged with a personality sweet and intense; it seemed to emanate from the letter which lay on the table, and to materialize strangely and inexplicably. It was the fragrance of brown hair, and the light of youthful eyes; and in this perfume, and this light, he realized her entire person; every delicate defect of thinness. She hung over him in all her girlishness, and he clasped her waist with his hands.

"How sweet she is! There is none like her."

Then wearying of the strained delight he remembered Belthorpe Park, now his. Trees and gardens waved in his mind; downs and river lands floated, and he half imagined Lily there smiling upon them; and when he turned to the wall, resolute in his search for sleep, the perfume he knew her by, the savour of the skin, where the first faint curls begin, haunted in his hallucinations, and intruded beneath the bed-clothes. One dream was so exquisite in its tenderness, so illusive was the enchanted image that lay upon his brain, that fearing to lose it, he strove to fix his dream with words, but no word pictured her eyes, or the ineffable love they expressed, and yet the sensation of both was for the moment quite real in his mind. They were sitting in a little shady room; she was his wife, and she hung over him, sitting on his knee. Her eyes were especially distinct and beautiful, and her arms--those thin arms which he knew so well--and that waist were clothed in a puritanic frock of some blue material.

His happiness thrilled him, and he lay staring into the darkness till the darkness withered, and the lines of the room appeared--the wardrobe, the wash-hand-stand, and then the letter. He rose from his bed. In all-pervading grayness the world lay as if dead; not a whiff of smoke ascended, not a bird had yet begun, and the river, like a sheet of zinc, swirled between its low banks.

"G.o.d! it is worse than the moonlight!" thought Mike, and went back to bed. But he could not rest, and when he went again to the window there was a faint flush in the sky's cheek; and then a bar of rose pierced the heavy ridge of clouds that hung above the woodland.

"An omen! I will post her letter in the sunrise." And conscious of the folly, but unable to subdue that desire of romance so inveterate in him, he considered how he might leave the house. He remembered, and with pleasure, that he could not pa.s.s down the staircase without disturbing the dog, and he thought of the prolonged barking that would begin the moment he touched the chain on the front door. He would have to get out of the window; but the window was twenty feet from the ground. "A rope! I have no rope! How absurd!" he thought, and, rejoicing in the absurdity, he drew a sheet from the bed and made it fast. Going to Lily through a window seemed to relieve marriage of some of its shame.

"Life wouldn't be complete without her. Yes, that's just it; that sums it up completely; curious I did not think of that before. It would have saved such a lot. Yes, life would not be complete without her. The problem is solved," and he dropped the letter as easily as if it had been a note asking for seats in the theatre. "I'm married,"

he said. "Good heavens! how strange it seems. I shall have to give her a ring, and buy furniture. I had forgotten! ... No difficulty about that now. We shall go to my place in Berks.h.i.+re."

But he could not go back to bed, and he walked down to the river, his fine figure swinging beautifully distinct in his light clothing. The dawn wind thrilled in his chest, for he had only a light coat over the ta.s.selled silk night-s.h.i.+rt; and the dew drenched his feet as he swung along the pathway to the river. The old willow was full of small birds; they sat ruffling their feathers, and when Mike sprang into the boat they flew through the gray light, taking refuge in some osier-beds. And as he looked down stream he saw the night clouds dispersing in the wind. He pulled, making the boat shoot through the water for about a mile, then touched by the beauty of the landscape, paused to view it. Cattle lay in the long, moist meadows, harmonizing in their semi-unconsciousness with the large gray earth; mist hung in the sedges, floated evanescent upon the surface of the water, within reach of his oars, floated and went out in the suns.h.i.+ne. But on the verge of an oak wood, amid tangled and tawny ma.s.ses of fern and gra.s.s, a hound stopped and looked up. Then the huntsman appeared galloping along the upland, and turning in his saddle, he blew a joyful blast.

Mike sat still, his heart close shut, the beauty of the scene in its quick and core. Then yielding utterly he drove the boat ash.o.r.e, and calling to the nearest, to one who had stopped and was tightening his horse's girths, he offered to buy his horse. A hundred pounds was asked. "It is not worth it," he thought; "but I must spend my four thousand a year." The desire to do what others think of doing but don't do was always active in Mike. He gave his name and address; and, fearing to miss dealing on such advantageous terms, the owner consented to allow Mike to try the horse then and there. But the hounds had got on the scent of a fox. The horn was heard ringing in the seared wood in the crimson morning, and the hounds streamed across the meadows.

"I must try him over some fences. Take my boat and row up to Ash Cottage; I'll meet you there."

"I'll do nothing of the sort!" roared the man in top-boots.

"Then walk across the fields," cried Mike; and he rode at the hedge and rail, coming down heavily, but before the owner could reach him he had mounted and was away.

Some hours later, as he approached the cottage, he saw Frank and a man in top-boots engaged in deep converse.

"Get off my horse instantly!" exclaimed the latter.

"The horse is mine," said Mike, who unfortunately could not control his laughter.

"Your horse! Certainly not! Get off my horse, or I'll pull you off."

Mike jumped off.