CHAPTER IX.

GEOFFREY HAS THOUGHTS OF SHANGHAI.

Cheered and sustained by the hope of another happy afternoon with Janet in the little cottage parlour, Geoffrey Hossack made himself wonderfully agreeable to his cousins Belle and Jessie, and shot the game on his uncle’s estate, and on the estates of his uncle’s neighbours, with a good will. He was always popular, and in this part of Hampshire he was accepted as a product of the soil, and cherished accordingly. His father had been liked before him, and people expressed their regret that an alien trader should occupy the house where that gentleman had once dispensed what our ancestors were wont to call an elegant hospitality.

‘O, I mean to marry, and turn out the sugar-broker some day,’ Geoffrey would reply in answer to these friendly speeches. Whereat Belle and Jessie would both blush, and look at each other, and then at the carpet. So bright a spot had that rustic tea-drinking made in the life of this infatuated gentleman, that the sunshine lingered after the event, and the mere memory of that one happy hour with Janet made life pleasant to him for a long time. Belle and Jessie noticed his high spirits, and each flattered herself with the idea that it was her society which gladdened him. And when they ‘talked him over,’ as they called it, at hair-brushing time, they in a manner congratulated each other upon his ‘niceness,’ just as if he were a kind of common property, and could marry both of them. He had still one tiresome trick, and that was a habit of rambling off for long solitary walks, in what the sisters considered a most unsociable spirit.

‘It’s about the only thing I can do on my own hook,’ this unpolite young man answered upon being remonstrated with. ‘If I go out shooting, you go too; if I go on the water, you pull a better stroke than I do; if I play bowls, you play bowls. You don’t smoke, but you are kind enough to come and sit with me in the smoking-room. So my only chance of doing a little thinking is a solitary walk. I suppose you don’t pedestrianise? Twenty miles a day might be too much for you.’

‘O no, it wouldn’t,’ replied these thoroughbred damsels. ‘We’re going for a walking tour in the Isle of Wight next spring, if papa will take us. It seems absurd that two girls can’t walk alone, but I suppose it might be thought odd if we went by ourselves.’

Geoffrey uttered a faint groan, but spoke no word. He was counting the days that must elapse before he could pay a second visit to Foxley, without stretching the license Mrs. Bertram had accorded him. His lonely walks had taken him through Foxley more than once, and he had lingered a little on the village-green, and looked at the windows of old Sally’s cottage, and had longed in vain for but a glimpse of the face he loved. Fortune did not favour these surreptitious pilgrimages. Just as he began to think that the time had come when he might pay his second visit, and demand that promised cup of orange pekoe, Lucius Davoren’s letter reached him, and he learned that Janet’s husband was alive and in England. The news was a death-blow to his hopes. The man alive whose death he had vouched for! Alive, and with as good a life as his own perhaps!

What would Janet think of him should she come to know this? What could she think, save that he had deliberately attempted to deceive her? His honest heart sank at the thought that she might deem him guilty of such baseness.

What should he do? Go straightway to her, and tell her that he had been deceived; that if her marriage was indeed legal, his love was hopeless. Yes, he would do that. Anything would be better than to hazard being scorned by her. He would go to her, and tell her the bitter truth, so far as the one fact that her husband was alive. The details of the story—all that concerned the villain’s supposed death in the American forest—must remain untold till he had Lucius’s permission to reveal it.

He set off upon his lonely walk to Foxley with a heavy heart—a soul which the varied beauty of autumnal woods, the shifting lights and shadows upon the undulating stubble, could not gladden. His case had seemed hopeless enough a little while ago, so steadfast was Janet’s determination to hear no word of a second marriage till she had convincing proof that Death had cancelled the first; but it seemed ever so much more hopeless now, after this assurance from Lucius that the man was alive. And as a mere basis for speculation, where ages are equal, one man’s life is as good as another.

‘I daresay that beggar’s ten years my senior,’ pondered Geoffrey as he strode along the rustic lanes, where ripening blackberries hung between him and the sharp clear air; ‘but for all that I’ll be bound he’ll outlive me. If he hadn’t more lives than a cat, he’d hardly have escaped Davoren’s bullet, and the sharp tooth of Jack Frost into the bargain. I suppose he keeps Death at a distance by the awe-inspiring sounds of that fiddle, like Orpheus with his lyre.’

Geoffrey had made up his mind to a desperate step. He would do that which must needs be as bitter as self-inflicted martyrdom. He would tell what he had to tell, and then take a lifelong leave of the woman he loved. Vain, worse than vain, the poor pretence of friendship where his heart was so deeply engaged. Platonism here would be the hollowest falsehood. With heart, soul, and mind he loved her, and for such love as his there was no second name. Better the swift and sudden death of all his joys than that his agonies should be protracted by such occasional meetings as Janet might be disposed to permit—meetings in which he must school his lips to the formal language of polite conversation, while his heart burned to pour out its wealth of passionate love.

Foxley wore its accustomed aspect of utter peacefulness. The same donkey, hampered as to the hind legs, grazed on the village-green; the happy geese who had escaped the sacrificial spit at fatal Michaelmas hissed their unfriendly salutation to the stranger. Nothing seemed changed, save that the late-lingering roses looked pale and pinched by the frosty breath of autumnal mornings; and even the dahlias had a weedy look, like fashionable beauties at the close of the London season.

Flossie was skipping in the little garden-path, with much exhibition of her scarlet stockings, which flashed gaily from the snow-white drapery of daintily-embroidered petticoats.

‘Well, my little red-legged partridge,’ cried Geoffrey, ‘and where is mamma?’

‘Mamma has gone to London,’ answered Flossie, with the callousness of childhood.

Geoffrey turned pale. He had come on purpose to be miserable—to utter words which must be sharp as Moorish javelins to pierce his own heart. Yet, not finding Janet, he felt as deeply disappointed as if his errand had been the happiest. And Flossie’s calm announcement kindled a spark of jealousy in his breast. ‘To London, and why?’ was his first question. ‘To London, and with whom?’ was his second.

‘A boy brought a nasty wicked letter, in a yellow envelope, from the railway-station,’ said Flossie, making a face expressive of supreme disgust; ‘and mamma went away directly. Poor mamma was so pale, and trembled as she put on her bonnet, and I cried when she went. But old Sally is ever so kind to me, and I’m happy now.’

‘Shallow, fickle child!’ cried Geoffrey; ‘take me to old Sally.’

Flossie conducted him through the pretty little parlour he remembered so well, across a tiny kitchen—neat as the kitchen of a doll’s house and not much bigger—to the garden behind the cottage, where old Sally stood boldly out on a bit of high ground, cutting winter cabbages, and in a bonnet which she wore like a helmet.

She was not a little surprised and confused by the apparition of a tall young gentleman in her back garden; but on recovering her fluttered spirits, told Geoffrey what he so ardently desired to know.

‘The telegraft was from Mr. Lucius,’ she said, ‘and Miss Janet was to go up to London by the first train that left Foxley-road station. I asked her if Mr. Lucius was ill, and she says No. “But somebody is ill, Sarah,” she says, “and I must go at once.” And she leaves all of a maze like, poor dear young lady! So I ups and runs to Mr. Hind, at the farm, and asks the loan of his wagonette and man; and the man drove Miss Janet and the other young lady off in time to catch the twelve-o’clock train.’

‘Some one ill,’ thought Geoffrey. ‘Who could that have been? I have heard her say she had no one in the world to care for except Flossie and her brother Lucius.’

‘Have you heard nothing since she left you?’ he asked.

‘Lor bless her dear heart, o’ course I have!’ answered the old woman, picking up her greenstuffs, which she had dropped in her embarrassment at Geoffrey’s abrupt appearance. ‘I had a sweet letter telling me as she was going to stop a few days up in London with her brother. A nice change for her, poor dear!’ added Sally, whose rustic idea of London was a scene of perpetual enchantment; ‘and telling me to take care of little missy; and I do take care of her, don’t I, dear?’ she said, looking benevolently down at Flossie, who was hanging affectionately to her apron; ‘and little missy and me are going to have a nice bit of biled bacon and greens and a apple dumpling for our dinner.’

This was quite enough for Geoffrey. He immediately determined to follow Janet to London, see her under her brother’s roof, and there hear from Lucius all that he could tell about Matchi or Vandeleur’s reappearance. His friend’s letter had told him so little. It would be some satisfaction to know what ground Lucius had for his belief that Matchi still lived.

‘There is an up-train from Foxley-road station at one o’clock, you say?’ he said, looking at his watch. It was now a quarter to twelve.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how far is the station from here?’

‘About three miles.’

‘Good, I can walk that easily. I’m going to London to see mamma, Flossie. Have you any message for her?’

‘Only that she is to come back directly, and give her fifty kisses.’

‘You must give me the kisses first.’

Flossie obeyed, and counted out her fifty kisses methodically in the region of Mr. Hossack’s left whisker. Thus furnished, he set out again, directed by Sally, to walk to the Foxley-road station.

It was hardly a polite manner in which to depart from Hillersdon, but Geoffrey relied upon a telegram to set himself right with his uncle and cousins ere they should have time to be inconvenienced or offended by his departure. A telegram from London, stating that important business had summoned him there, would be ample explanation, he considered. And the leaving behind of his portmanteaus made little difference to him, since he always had a collection of clothes, boots, brushes, and other toilet implements, in his own particular room at the Cosmopolitan, neatly stowed away in drawers inaccessible to less-privileged patrons of that house.

The train which called at Foxley-road was a farmers’ train, stopped at every station, and performed the journey in a provokingly deliberate style. Not till it had passed Guildford did the engine hasten, and when Waterloo did at last loom upon his weary gaze, smoke-veiled and dingy, Mr. Hossack thought the journey one of the longest he had ever endured.

He only stopped long enough to write a plausible and explanatory telegram for the pacification of his cousin Belle before plunging into a hansom, whose charioteer he directed to the Shadrack-road. That cab-ride through the busiest thoroughfares of the City was also tedious; but as the streets and the atmosphere grew duller and smokier hope brightened, and he knew that he was nearing his goal. He was only going, as it were, in search of misery, yet he had a wild longing to see the dear face, even though it was to shine upon him for the last time.

The charioteer was tolerably quick of comprehension, and did not make above three false stoppages before he drew up opposite Lucius Davoren’s gate, with the big brass plate which bore his name and titles. It was growing dusk by this time, so long had been the journey, and the comfortable gleam of firelight shone through the parlour-window. That genial glow seemed to betoken occupation. She was there most likely. Geoffrey’s heart beat strong and fast.

An old woman with a clean white cap—Mrs. Wincher _vice_ Mrs. Babb dismissed—opened the door. Was Mr. Davoren at home? Yes. Was anybody with him? Yes, Mrs. Bertram, his sister. Geoffrey dashed back to the cab, blindly thrust some loose silver into the cabman’s hand, and dismissed him elated, with at least double his fare, and then, this duty done, he walked into the parlour.

The room looked curiously changed since he had seen it last. The furniture was the same, no doubt; the same dull red-and-brown paper lined the narrow walls; yet everything had a brighter look—a look that was even homelike. A fire burned cheerily in the small grate, a tea-tray stood ready on the table; Lucius sat on one side of the hearth, Janet on the other. She wore a black dress, against whose dense hue her complexion showed pure as marble. They both looked up, somewhat startled by the opening of the door—still more startled when they recognised the intruder. Lucius had a guilty feeling. In the excitement of the last fortnight he had forgotten all about Geoffrey.

‘Dear old Geoff!’ he exclaimed, speedily recovering from that sense of guilt. ‘How good of you to turn up in such an unexpected way! Where have you come from?’

‘Hillersdon—Foxley-road, that is to say. I called at Foxley this morning, Mrs. Bertram, and not finding you, ventured to come on here.’

Janet blushed, but answered not a word.

‘You’ve just come from Foxley?’ cried Lucius; ‘there never was such a fellow for tearing up and down the earth, except that person who must be nameless. You haven’t dined, of course? You shall have some chops. Ring the bell, Janet; that one on your side of the fire does ring, if you give the handle a good jerk. Dear old Geoff, it is so good of you to come, and I’ve so much to tell you.’

‘Yes,’ answered Geoffrey with a gloomy look, ‘I got your letter. It was that which brought me here.’

‘Wonderful things have happened since I wrote that letter, Geoff. But let me see about your dinner, and we’ll talk seriously afterwards.’

Geoffrey made no objection. He sat in a shadowy corner, silent, stealing a look at the face he loved every now and then, and very despondent in spirit. He was with her once more, and now began to ask himself how he could ever bid her that lifelong farewell he had thought of. No, he could never so sacrifice his own fondest desires. If it were but a crumb she could give him, he would take that crumb and be passably content. He would be like Dives in the place of torment, and if he could not have that nectar-draught for which his soul languished, he would ask for but one drop of water. He would not be self-banished from the light; better even that he should be consumed—annihilated—by its too vivid glory.

These were his thoughts while Lucius, provokingly practical, was giving orders for chops and rashers and poached eggs to Mrs. Wincher, who had made a complete transformation in her personal appearance to do honour to her new situation, and now wore a white cap and a clean linen apron, in place of the crumpled black bonnet and sage-green half-shawl which had been her distinguishing marks in Cedar House.

Jacob Wincher came in, while his good lady was cooking chops and rashers, and laid the cloth neatly, placing the tea-tray on one side of the table. He handled things as deftly as if he had been all his life languishing to be a butler, and only now found his right position in the world. To serve Lucius was a labour of love with both these people. He had wronged them, and generously atoned for the wrong he had done, and it seemed as if the wrong and the atonement had endeared him to them.

Jacob drew the curtains, lighted the candles, and made all snug just as Mrs. Wincher bumped against the door with the dishes. The chops were perfection, the eggs and bacon fit for a picture of still life, the crusty loaf a model for all bakers to imitate who would achieve renown in neighbourhoods where bread is verily the staff of life.

Janet made the tea, and at sight of her seated by the tea-tray Geoffrey’s spirits in some measure revived. He relegated that question of lifelong adieu to the regions of abstract thought. His countenance brightened. He gave Janet Flossie’s message about the fifty kisses; at which the mother smiled and asked many eager questions about her darling.

‘I am going back to my pet to-morrow,’ she said. ‘It is the first time we were ever parted, and it has been a hard trial for me.’

‘Should I be impertinent if I asked why you came so suddenly to London?’ Geoffrey inquired.

A pained look came into Janet’s face.

‘I came upon a sorrowful errand,’ she answered; ‘Lucius can tell you about it by and by.’

‘You are in mourning for some one who has died lately,’ hazarded Geoffrey, with a glance at that black dress about which he had been puzzling himself considerably.

‘I am in mourning for my husband, who died only a week ago,’ Janet answered quietly.

The blow was almost too sudden. Great joys are overwhelming as great sorrows. Geoffrey, the strong, manly, joyous-hearted Geoffrey, grew pale to the lips. He got up from his chair, and gave a struggling gasp, as if striving for breath.

‘Janet, is it true?’ he asked, lest he should be the victim of some cruel deception.

‘It is quite true, Mr. Hossack,’ she answered; the coldness of her tone rebuking the ardour of his. ‘My husband is dead. His death was as unhappy as his life was guilty. It pains me to remember either.’

Geoffrey was silent. He scarcely dared open his lips lest his joy should gush forth in ill-considered words. He could not look sorry, or even sympathetic. As a last resource, in this conflict of emotions, he devoured a mutton-chop, with no more sense of the operation of eating than if he had been a brazen idol whose jaws were worked by machinery.

That tea-party was curiously silent, though Lucius did now and then attempt to promote conversation by a somewhat feeble remark. Directly the meal was over, Geoffrey rose from the table, no longer able to support the intensity of his own feelings, and bursting with impatience to question his friend.

‘Let’s go outside and have a smoke, Lucius,’ he said; ‘that is to say, if Mrs. Bertram will excuse us,’ he added with a deprecating look at Janet.

‘Pray do not consider me,’ she answered. ‘I am going to my room to pack my portmanteau for to-morrow. You can smoke here, if you like. I have become accustomed to the smell of tobacco since I have been staying with Lucius.’

‘Poor Janet. I’ve been rather too bad; but it’s such a treat to have you sitting opposite me while I smoke.’

She smiled at her brother, the first smile Geoffrey had seen on that pale serious face, and left them. Privileged by her permission, they drew their chairs to the fender. Lucius filled his favourite pipe, and Geoffrey drew a cigar from a well-supplied case.

‘For heaven’s sake tell me all about it,’ said Geoffrey, directly Jacob Wincher had retired, staggering a little under the burden of the tea-tray. ‘Thank God she is free! She is free, and I may hope! I didn’t like to be too grateful to Providence in her presence. A woman’s tender heart will lament even a scoundrel when the grave closes upon him. Tell me everything, Lucius; but first tell me why you did not write me word of this man’s death. You wrote fast enough to tell me he was alive; why not write to announce the blessed fact of his departure?’

‘For the simple reason that I forgot the necessity for such a letter. Janet’s husband died only ten days ago, and his death involved me in a good deal of business. There was the inquest, and then came the funeral. Yesterday I had to go down to Brighton, to-day I had an interview with a lawyer.’

‘An inquest!’ exclaimed Geoffrey. ‘Then that fellow came to a violent end after all.’

‘A violent and a strange end,’ answered his friend, and then proceeded to narrate the circumstances of Ferdinand Sivewright’s death, and to acquaint Geoffrey with the link which had bound Lucille to his sister’s husband. Geoffrey listened with patient attention. The main fact that this man was dead, and Janet free to marry whomsoever she pleased, was all-sufficient for his contentment. The serenity of disposition which had made him so pleasant a companion in days of hardship and trial once more asserted itself. Geoffrey Hossack was himself again.

‘Do you think there’s any hope for me?’ he asked, when Lucius had told all he had to tell.

‘Hope of what?’

‘That Janet will reward my devotion?’

‘In due time, I daresay, such a thing may be possible,’ answered Lucius, with provoking deliberation; ‘but you had better refrain from any allusion to such hopes for some time to come.’

‘How long now? What’s the fashionable period of mourning for a young widow whose husband was a scoundrel? Six weeks, is it? or three months? And does society demand as long a period of mourning for its scoundrels as for its most estimable men?’

‘If it were not so near winter, Geoffrey, I should recommend you to do a few months in Norway; or, as you are so near the docks, why not take a run to Shanghai in one of those splendid China steamers—three hundred and fifty feet from stem to stern? You might by that means escape the winter; or, if you don’t care about Shanghai, you can stop at Port Said, and do a little of Egypt.’

‘I’ve done the Pyramids and Pompey’s Pillar, and all that kind of thing,’ answered Geoffrey with a wry face. ‘Do the laws of society demand my departure?’

‘I think it would be better for you to be away for six months or so, dear old fellow,’ answered Lucius kindly. ‘You are such an impetuous spoiled child of fortune, and I know you will be fretting and fuming, and perhaps injuring your cause with Janet by too hasty a wooing. She is a woman of deep feeling. Give her time to recover from the shock of Sivewright’s death; and be sure that I will guard your interests in the mean time. No other than Geoffrey Hossack shall ever call me brother.’

‘It’s very good of you to say that,’ replied Geoffrey gratefully. ‘But you may be promising too much. Suppose some confoundedly agreeable fellow were to make up to your sister while I was at Shanghai, and the first thing I saw when I came back to England, in the _Times_, were the announcement of her marriage?’

‘If that were possible, she would not be worthy of you, and you’d be better off without her,’ replied Lucius.

‘Perhaps. But I’d rather have her, even if she were capable of doing that, so long as she hadn’t done it.’

‘There you get metaphysical, and I can barely follow you. But I’ll stake my own chances of happiness upon Janet’s constancy, even though no pledge has ever passed between you. I’ll go so far as to postpone my own marriage for the next six months, so that you may be married on the same day, if you like.’

‘There seems something like assurance in such an offer as that,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘but I won’t fetter you. I shouldn’t like to be a stumbling-block in the way of your happiness. I’ll go straight to Shanghai. I think you’re right; I should fret and fume, and perhaps annoy Janet with my obnoxious presence if I were to remain within reach of her, walk up and down under her windows, and make myself otherwise objectionable. I’d better go to Shanghai. Yet it is hard to leave her without one word of hope from her own dear lips. You’ll let me say good-bye, Lucius?’

‘Neither Janet nor I could very well refuse you so slight a boon.’

Janet reëntered just as this discussion finished. The pale calm face had a tranquilising effect upon Geoffrey’s excited nerves. He had been pacing the room in a distracted manner, hardly able to smoke; but at sight of Janet he flung his cigar into the fender, and became a reasonable being.

They talked a little, quietly, of indifferent things, and a good deal about Flossie, an ever-delightful subject to the fond mother; and then Geoffrey, feeling that it was growing late and that duty demanded self-sacrifice, rose and said something about going away. Happily there came a reprieve in the shape of an offer of brandy-and-soda from Lucius, who rang the bell for his ancient seneschal; so Geoffrey lingered just a little longer and took heart of grace to tell Janet his intention of a speedy voyage eastward.

‘Lucius seems to think I oughtn’t to idle about London all the winter,’ he said, ‘and suggests a trip to China—a mere bagatelle—fifty days out and fifty days home, and a week or so to look about one while the steamer coals, and so forth. Yet it makes a hole in a year, and it is sad to leave one’s friends even for so short a time.’

‘Are you really going to China?’ asked Janet, opening those splendid eyes of hers in calmest astonishment.

Geoffrey wavered immediately.

‘Well, Lucius advises me, you see,’ he replied irresolutely; ‘but I don’t know that I care much about China. And as to going about in steamers just because steamers can give you all the comforts you can get at home, why not stay at home at once and enjoy the comforts without the steamer? And as to China—it sounds interesting in the abstract; but really, on second thoughts, I can’t perceive any gratification in visiting a country in which men have pigtails and women crumpled feet. One is brought up with a vague idea of the China Wall and Crim Tartary, which, as one grows to manhood, gives place to another vague idea of the Caucasus, and the river Amoor, and Russian aggression, and some vast uncomfortable territory lying between Russia and India, just as Bloomsbury lies between the West-end and the City, and I daresay almost as impassable. No, I really don’t see why I should go to Shang-kong—I beg your pardon—Honghai,’ faltered Geoffrey, brightening at Janet’s kindly smile; ‘I think a little hunting at Stillmington would do me more good.’

‘Stop at home, then, Geoff,’ said Lucius, laughing at his faithful comrade, ‘and have your season in the shires. Janet shall stay and keep house for me till I marry.’

‘What! is Mrs. Bertram going to stop with you?’

‘For a little while,’ answered Janet; ‘I don’t think this part of town would do for Flossie very long; but I am going to fetch her to-morrow, and she and I are to keep house for Lucius for a month or two.’

‘And then we are all going to migrate to the West-end together,’ said Lucius.

Geoffrey sighed and looked miserable.

‘How pleasantly you lay your plans!’ he said; ‘and I stand quite alone in the world and belong to nobody. I think I shall go down to the docks to-morrow morning and pick my berth on board a China steamer.’

‘Don’t,’ said Janet gently. ‘Go to Stillmington and enjoy yourself hunting those unhappy foxes; and then, since you are always restless, you can come up to town sometimes and give us an account of your sport.’

This permission exalted Geoffrey to the seventh circle in the lover’s paradise. It seemed to him like a promise.