Part 5

“Well, they are less serious,” answers Lady Jane. “You can get rid of _them_; but an Annie Brown when you have once married her----”

“At all events,” says Cicely, “whatever it may be, it is certainly only the business of those concerned in it, and none of ours. Why are you not already on your way to the newspaper offices, Lord Marlow? I believe they give a guinea for first news.”

“Bertram may be so happy as to interest you, Miss Seymour,” says Marlow, sullenly, “but he’s an unknown quantity to the world in general. Nobody’d give twopence for any news of him.”

“Certainly he is not chronicled as the winner at pigeon-shooting and polo matches, which is your distinction, Lord Marlow, and I believe your only one.”

“Why will you be so unkind to Marlow?” asks Lady Jane, as, having shaken off their admirers, they walk back alone.

“I grant,” she continues, as poor Marlow, mortified, falls behind, “that he is not an extraordinarily brilliant person; he will not head the Cabinet or be President of the Royal Society, but his temper is kind and his character blameless.”

“One would think you were recommending a groom! You may safely add that his hand is light and his seat is sure, for riding is his solitary accomplishment!”

“My dear child, how remarkably severe you are! Will you tell me what use to Wilfrid Bertram are the incontestable talents with which he was born? What does he do with them? Write in such a manner that if he were a native of any other country than England he would have been lodged in prison years ago.”

Cicely Seymour is silent.

She has read some numbers of the _Age to Come_, and she cannot honestly say that she approves of its subversive tendencies. She looks straight before her with a heightened colour, and the rose-leaves of her lips are pressed together in irritation.

“I suppose you will offer to be bridesmaid to Miss Annie Brown,” says Lady Jane, irritably.

“Why not?” says Cicely, very coldly. “One attends many weddings brought about by more ignoble motives.”

“You will not see me at the ceremony,” replies Lady Jane, more and more incensed.

“I know I shall not, nor any of his relatives. But I do not admire the class prejudice which will keep you all away.”

And she leans over the rail of the Ride and pats the mane of a child’s pony.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, resting her empty basket and her rheumatic limbs for a few minutes on a bench, ponders vainly on the name Mr. Fanshawe gave her. “Mrs. Sockatees,” she repeats to herself. “He can’t think as I’m one to marry agen at my time o’ life. If it hadn’t bin for the children there were a tallow chandler, a warm man too, he was, who would hev bin ready as ready----”

She muses pensively a moment on the charms of the lost tallow chandler who had been sacrificed to her maternal scruples, whilst Cicely Seymour and Lady Jane are walking towards her.

“Let’s sit down here a moment, Cicely,” says Lady Jane. “The children will be back again directly.”

Mrs. Brown rises and curtsies, taking up her basket.

“Don’t get up, my good woman, there’s room enough.”

“Your ’umble servant, ma’am,” says Mrs. Brown, standing erect, her empty basket held before her like a shield of Boadicea; she does not know them by name, but they are possible clients for the wash-tub.

“Why should you stand?” says Cicely. “These seats are free to all.”

“Thanks, miss, but I know my duty.” Then she adds, insinuatingly, “If you should be wanting a laundress, ma’am, you’d be doin’ a charity to remember me--Eliza Brown, o’ 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square; no acids used, miss, and no machine-work.”

Cicely looks at her, and with some hesitation asks:

“Are you--are you--the mother of a young person called Annie Brown? She has just gone past here with some primroses.”

“Yes, miss, I be.”

“Of Mr. Bertram’s heroine!” adds Lady Jane, with a laugh.

“Please ’m, don’t call her names, ma’am,” says Annie’s mother, quickly. “She’s a good girl, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, and there’s nought to laugh at, unless it be the gentleman’s rubbish.”

“You don’t seem to be grateful for the compliment he pays to your family,” says Lady Jane, much amused.

“Compliment is it, my lady? The gentleman’s a crank, that’s what he is; he won’t never marry her, and there’s a good young man round the corner as is left out in the cold. He’s in the greengrocery line, and hev got a good bit o’ money put by, and the match ’ud be suitable in every way, for my daughter’s a good judge o’ green stuff.”

“Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely, “I should like to have the pleasure of knowing your daughter. Will you bring her to see me? I am staying with Mr. Bertram’s aunt, Lady Southwold.”

Mrs. Brown stares hard.

“You do my girl a great honour, miss, but her head’s turned too crazy as ’tis. Poor folks, miss, ain’t got no place with rich ’uns.”

“That is a rather narrow feeling, Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely; “and surely your daughter ought to begin to know Mr. Bertram’s friends and relatives?”

“She won’t never be nought to Mr. Bertram, miss,” replies Mrs. Brown, very confidently. “’Tis a pack of stuff their thinkin’ on it. Lord, my lady, if you only see his shirts, that fine as cobwebs is coarse to ’em!”

Lady Jane is much diverted.

“She evidently does not believe in the seriousness of Bertram’s intentions, Cicely.”

Mrs. Brown tucks her basket under her arm.

“You’ll excuse me, my ladies, if I don’t stay to prate. Us poor folks ’even’t got time to lose in gossip; and if you can give me work, ’m, I’ll be truly thankful to you, ma’am--Eliza Brown, 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square. Your servant, ladies.”

With that she bobs a curtsey and departs.

“A nice honest woman,” says Cicely.

Lady Jane laughs.

“She doesn’t appreciate Bertram or his shirts. What right has he, with his principles, to wear lawn shirts? He ought to wear hemp.”

Cicely traces patterns on the gravel with her sunshade.

“I should like to see the girl.”

“Why? You may be sure she is a little horror.”

“I am sure she is a very good girl,” says Cicely. “I am sure she is a very good girl. A person must be good that lives amongst flowers.”

“Florists are not all saints,” replies Lady Jane, out of patience; “and it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers. There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration. She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”

“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children again.”

Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house--a friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarme and Verlaine, writes studies on the _pointillistes_, and has published a volume of five hundred pages on Strindberg--but he feels indisposed for even that sympathetic society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door with his latch-key.

His rooms are _en suite_, one out of another, and from the door-mat he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is his study.

There is in that room a large Florentine cabinet of tortoise-shell and brass-work; the key of the drawers thereof is on his watch-chain; yet he perceives that the drawers are all open, their contents are strewn about, and stooping down over them is Critchett.

Critchett’s back is unmistakable; it has as much character in it as the profile of Cæsar or Napoleon.

Bertram walks noiselessly over the thick carpets, and touches him on the shoulder.

“You!--a common thief!”

Critchett stumbles to his feet, pulls himself erect rather nervously, and faces his employer. In his right hand is a pearl necklace.

“I beg pardon, sir,” he murmurs. “I thought you had gone to Mr. Domville’s. I was coming down with the valise.”

Bertram takes the pearls out of his grasp; he has grown much paler than his nefarious valet. He is cut to the heart.

“A common thief--you!” he repeats. The _Et tu Brute_ had not more pathetic reproval in it.

Critchett in the interval has recovered his self-possession, and what more vulgar persons would call his cheek.

“Excuse me, sir. There aren’t such a thing as theft. What is called theft is only an over-violent readjustment of unfairly divided values. I’ve read it in the _Age to Come_.”

“You infernal scoundrel! These are my dead mother’s jewels!”

“I know they are, sir. They were doing no good here; and you told the ladies yesterday as all jewellery was an abomination.”

“This is probably not the first time by many that you have robbed me?”

“I let nobody else steal a farthing from you, sir.”

“Indeed! You like vicarious virtue! How could you open the cabinet? It has a Bramah lock.”

“And this here’s a Bramah pick-lock, sir,” says Critchett, displaying an elegant little tool.

“You infernal scoundrel!” repeats Bertram. “If I did my duty, I should give you to the police.”

“Oh, no, sir, you couldn’t do that to be consistent; and consistency is the first of virtues. I’ve heard you say, sir, that prevention is suggestion, and that if there was no constables there’d be no crime. In locking up this cabinet you put into my mind the idea of opening it. It is you, sir, who are to blame, not I.”

Critchett smiles demurely as he repeats these words.

“You have debased me, sir, by making me fill a servile office,” he adds. “No man should serve another. You’ve said so often.”

Bertram is silent, unspeakably annoyed, mortified, and distressed. He cannot discuss ethics with a treacherous valet.

“I believed in you, Critchett,” he says, after a pause.

Critchett smiles.

“I know you did, sir; you believe in a lot o’ things as won’t wash.”

“And you feel no remorse for having deceived me?”

“No, sir. Remorse aren’t seen outside the theatres, I think. ’Tis a word, sir. ’Tis only a word.”

Bertram is silent. The cheap cynicism of this man, who has lived beside him during a dozen years, is revolting.

“You are aware I could have you arrested?” he says, after a pause.

“No, sir, you couldn’t,” replies Critchett, calmly. “You’d be giving the lie to all your own theories. Try and look at it philosophic-like, sir.”

Bertram feels a violent longing to call up the policeman now passing by the rails of the Green Park. He puts a five-pound note on the table.

“Take your wage for the coming month, and begone.”

“It is usual, sir,” objects Critchett, “to give more than a month’s anticipatory honorarium on parting after such long association.”

This is the drop too much which makes the cup of Bertram’s patience overflow.

“You impudent villain,” he exclaims. “The only payment you deserve is the treadmill. Do not stretch my patience too far.”

Critchett perceives that his long docile victim is roused, and may become dangerous.

He retreats meekly.

“Would you wish to examine my portmanteau, sir?”

“No,” says Bertram. “Begone.”

Critchett bows very low.

“I have only put your theories into practice, sir,” he says, when he has reached a safe distance; “and you will be sorry if you send me away. You won’t find another Critchett very easily.”

Bertram turns his back on him; he feels again a great inclination to summon the constable who is walking in the street below.

The man having at last departed, he picks up the various objects and begins to replace them in the drawers of the cabinet. He is depressed and humiliated. For over twelve years he has implicitly trusted Critchett, believed in him, extolled him, and depended on him; taking his excellent service as a surety for moral excellence, as most of us do with our servants.

The cool impertinence with which the thief has quoted his own writings and sayings against him mortifies him; he is conscious that Critchett must have always considered him an ineffable idiot. It is not soothing to one’s self-respect to realise that for more than a dozen years one has been made a fool of successfully.

The sight of his mother’s jewels also saddens him; he had been her favourite son, and he had loved her tenderly.

“You will keep them for your wife, Wilfrid,” she had said to him, when she had given him the pearls and other ornaments on her death-bed.

What would his mother say, were she living, to such a wife for him as poor little Annie Brown? Poor Annie! Who said “as how” and “umberellar,” and who “liked to ’ear the growlers come rattlin’ ’ome o’ nights.”

“Mr. Bertram,” says the voice of Annie at that moment timidly. She has come through the anteroom of which Critchett has left the door open behind him. She wears the same clothes that she wore in the Park, but she carries no baskets on her arms.

Noticing Bertram’s preoccupied and distressed expression and the litter of objects on the floor, she is afraid she appears at an inopportune moment.

“Lord’s sakes, sir!” she murmurs, “what hev happened?”

“Critchett is a thief, Annie. I caught him in the act,” replies Bertram, with tragic force.

“Mother always knew as he was so, sir,” replies the girl, not astonished. “But she didn’t dare to tell you. You was that fond on him.”

“How could she possibly know?”

“Well, sir, he was allers a-boasting of ’ow he fleeced you. I believe all the gentlemen’s gentlemen in these ’ere parts o’ London know how he tricked ye. Law, sir, he even pawned your shirts!”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Well, you see, sir, we didn’t like to lose a man his place.”

“You condoned a felony sooner?”

“Please, sir, I don’t know what that is. But poor folk don’t never take the bread out of each other’s mouths. And, besides, you wouldn’t have believed anybody against Critchett, sir. You were that wrapped up in him.”

“How cruelly one may be deceived!”

“’Tis easy to deceive you, sir, as instead of seeing people as they is, you see ’em as you fancies ’em to be.”

“Perhaps so. I fear I am a greater fool than I thought.”

“Oh, no, sir; only too trustin’ like.”

“Well, well,” says Bertram, much irritated, “Critchett is a thing of the past. We will never speak of him. But why have you come to my rooms, my dear girl? It is not--not quite--correct. Cæsar’s wife you know. But perhaps you never heard of her----”

“No, sir. Who was the lady? I only came to say a word, Mr. Bertram. There aren’t no harm in it, though mother would be angry over the place.”

“If you had sent me a line I would have called on you.”

“You see, sir, mother’s and sister Kate’s at home, they’d hear every word, and I want to speak to you all alone. I won’t be many minutes. I don’t think it’s any harm my comin’, though mother would be fit to kill me if she knew----”

“Your mother is quite right in her views, Annie. Young women cannot be too circumspect.”

“I’m allus circumspec’, sir; and--oh, Lord, Mr. Bertram, what a beautiful string o’ pearls!”

“They were my mother’s, Annie. They will be yours.”

“Mine, sir! Lord, never! The idea of Critchett takin’ them pearls. Why they must be worth thousands and thousands!”

“No, a few hundreds. My mother left these things to me for my wife when I should have one. They are very sacred to me. They will be as dear to you, Annie, I am sure?”

“Oh, sir, they’ll never be mine. You might as well talk of my wearin’ the crown of England.”

“Always low and servile comparisons, Annie!”

“Lord, sir, be a queen’s crown low?”

“To think of it as a desirable and enviable thing is extremely low.”

“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t understand. Will you please put up these pearls? They’re that beautiful I don’t dare touch ’em.”

“They will be my wife’s. Therefore I repeat they will be yours.”

“That’s what I come to say to you, sir. What we have thought of won’t never be. Can’t never be. Tisn’t in reason. When the ’bus run over me in Piccadilly last year, and you picked me up and took me ’ome, you seemed like a prince to me, sir----”

“Always vulgar and servile comparisons!”

“And when you come about our place, mother said to me, ‘That gent don’t mean no good, and it’s the broom I’ll take to him’; and Sam he said, ‘If he’s harter Hann I’ll give ’im a ’idin’.’ And then you said we was to marry, and mother said it was all moonshine, and Sam didn’t like the idea of it; but you said it would be a beautiful example to all classes, and I--I--well I couldn’t believe my ears, Mr. Bertram.”

“What is the use of going over all this ground, Annie?”

“I want you to understand, sir. I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ of all you said yesterday, and I see, sir, as how you haven’t a mite o’ love for me, and it makes me feel cold all over like----”

“Oh, why do you want love? It is something so vulgar, so unspiritual, so indicative of an unoccupied mind! I have the highest respect for you, which I am about to prove in the strongest manner that any man can prove his sentiments----”

“Yes, I know, sir; but--but----”

“But there are finer sentiments than love!”

“Perhaps there are, sir, for the quality. But love’s poor people’s feast; the only one they ever knows all their days. And--you--don’t love me?”

She looks at him fixedly.

He is embarrassed.

“Should I have given you my mother’s pearls if I did not?”

“You haven’t giv’ ’em, and I haven’t took ’em. Some other than me ’ll wear ’em. I came to say to you, Mr. Bertram, that I won’t never marry you. Mother says as ’ow you’ve come into a great fortune; but, whether you’re rich or poor, that’s nothing to me. I won’t marry you, ’cos we’d be miserable; and that’s what I come here all alone to-day to say to you.”

“You are faithless, Annie!”

“No, sir; I’m faithful. As for me, I’ll remember ye all my days. P’rhaps I’ll marry, p’rhaps I won’t; but I’ll never forget _you_, and I’ll pray for you every night.”

Bertram is touched and astonished.

“But, my dear little girl, you have my word of honour. I can’t retract it. I will try and make you happy, Annie.”

“I’m sure you would try, sir; but you couldn’t do it. You’d make me miserable. You haven’t any love for me; you have said you hadn’t. I couldn’t live like that. I’d work on my knees for you all the day long, but I couldn’t stand your chilly pity and your smiling scorn. I’d die of shame and sorrow!”

“My poor child, you exaggerate immensely. You don’t understand what sincere regard I have for you, how honestly I will try to do my duty by you.”

“Sir, I ain’t more fit for you than my poor sun-browned throat be fit for a lady’s jewels. You’ve had a hobby, and you’ve rid it hard, and I was a part of it for awhile. But ’twas only a fancy. Lord! how clear I saw it all when you spoke so scornful-like o’ love! Love may be a ordinary valleyless sort o’ thing like buttercups and daisies, but how them little blossoms do make a glory on a dusty common! It’s the buttercups and daisies as I want, sir; not them cold, white pearls.”

“Poor little Annie! I can’t give you what I have not.”

“No, sir, that’s just it; the fault ain’t none o’ yours. Don’t think as I blame ye, sir, or cast a word against ye. We are as we are made. But it is goodbye, sir, and goodbye it must be for ever. Don’t ye worry or fret. ’Taint no fault o’ yours. We’re too wide apart, and ’twas folly to think as we could ever be one.”

Her voice breaks down, her tears fall; Bertram takes her hands in his and kisses her on the forehead.

“Dear little Annie! I feel as if I had sinned against you! and yet God knows I had the best intentions; and if I deceived any one, I deceived myself first of all.”

The tramp of heavy steps is heard in the rooms beyond, and Annie’s elder brother, Sam, dashes the door-curtains aside and enters, wildly flourishing a driving-whip.

“Yah! Bloated aristocrat! I’ve nabbed ye at last! Shame on ye! Shame on ye, too, Hann!” he yells at the top of his voice. “Out o’ this room, gal, whilst I gi’e your bloomin’ nob the lickin’ he deserves. ’Tis for this we pore workin’-folk toils and moils and starves, to hev our wimmen-kind trod under foot like dirt by blackguard swells! Sister Kate, at ’ome, says to me, ‘Sam, run quick and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ And I meets yer servant in the street, and he says, too, ‘Run, Sam, and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ But I never thought, respectable as our fam’ly is, and so mealy-mouthed as is Sister Hann----”

Bertram coldly interposes.

“When you have done yelling, my good youth, will you listen to a word of common sense?”

“Oh, Sam, are you mad?” cries Annie. “Kate never meant anything of the kind. You know Mr. Bertram has ever treated me as if I was a waxworks under a glass case.”

“Take off your hat, put down your whip, apologise to your sister, and listen to me,” says Bertram, with authority.

But the youth is in no mood to hear or to obey. He has taken a glass of gin with a fellow-cabby, and his blood is on fire.

“I won’t listen to you, nor to nobody. Ye’ll get yer thrashin’ at last, you scoundrel, as preaches to the pore.”

He advances on Bertram, whirling his horsewhip, with a broken lash, above his head. Bertram eyes him calmly, remembers old Oxford rows, straightens his arm, and meets him with a scientific blow which sends him backward on the floor.

“Don’t scream, Annie. I have not hurt your brother; but he must have a lesson,” he says, as he picked up the whip which has dropped, breaks it, in two, and throws the pieces in a corner. “Get up, you dolt, and ask your sister’s pardon,” he adds, severely, “for brawling in her presence.”

Sam Brown does get up, stupidly and slowly, looks around him bewildered, with a dazed, blind look.

“You hits uncommon hard,” he mutters, when he becomes fully alive to the position which he occupies.

“Certainly, I hit hard when I hit at all. You insulted me and, more gravely still, your sister. I am perfectly ready to marry her; but she will not marry me. Can you put that into your brain and understand it?”

Sam stares and rubs his aching head.

“Lord, sir, do you mean as Hann hev jilted you?”

“Oh, Sam, how can you!” cries his sister.

“I believe that is what you would call it in your world,” says Bertram, with a slight smile. “Your sister does not wish to marry me. She thinks--perhaps she is right--that I am not worthy of her.”

“Oh, Mr. Bertram! I never----”