“le bonheur c'est être né joyeux.”
there are in the suburbs of london certain strata of men which lie in circles of diminishing density around the great city, like debris around a volcano. london indeed erupts every evening between the hours of five and six, and throws out showers of tired men, who lie where they fall—or rather where their season ticket drops them—until morning, when they arise and crowd back again to the seething crater. the deposits of small clerks and tradespeople fall near at hand in a dense shower, bounded on the north by finchley, on the south by streatham. an outer circle of head clerks, government servants, junior partners, covers the land in a stratum reaching as far south as surbiton, as far north as the alexandra palace. and beyond these limits are cast the brighter lights of commerce, law, and finance, who fall, a thin golden shower, in the favoured neighbourhoods of the far suburbs, where, from eventide till morning, they play at being country gentlemen, talking stock and stable, with minds attuned to share and produce.
mr. joseph wade, banker, was one of those who are thrown far afield by the facilities of a fine suburban train service. he wore a frock-coat, a very shiny hat, and he read the times in the train. he lived in a staring red house, solid brick without and solid comfort within, in the favoured pine country of weybridge. he was one of those pillars of the british constitution who are laughed at behind their backs and eminently respected to their faces. his gardeners trembled before him, his coachman, as stout and respectable as himself, knew him to be a just and a good master, who grudged no man his perquisites, and behaved with a fine gentlemanly tact at those trying moments when the departing visitor is desirous of tipping and the coachman knows that it is blessed to receive.
mr. wade rather scorned the amateur country-gentleman hobby which so many of his travelling companions affected. it led them to don rough tweed suits on sunday, and walk about their paddocks and gardens as if these formed a great estate.
“i am a banker,” he said, with that sound common sense which led him to avoid those cheap affectations of superiority that belong to the outer strata of the daily volcanic deposit—“i am a banker, and i am content to be a banker in the evening and on sundays, as well as during bank-hours. what should i know about horses or alderneys or dorking fowls? none of 'em yield a dividend.”
mr. wade, in fact, looked upon “the brambles” as a place of rest, arriving there at half-past six, in time to dress for a very good dinner. after dinner he read in a small way by no means to be despised. he had a taste for biography, and cherished in his stout heart a fine old respect for thackeray and dickens and walter scott. of the modern fictionists he knew nothing.
“seems to me they are splitting straws, my dear,” he once said to an earnest young person who thought that literature meant contemporary fiction, whereas we all know that the two are in no way connected.
joseph wade was a widower, having some years before buried a wife as stout and sensible as himself. he never spoke of her except to his daughter marguerite, now leaving school, and usually confined his remarks to a consideration of what marguerite's mother would have liked in the circumstances under discussion at the moment.
marguerite had been educated at cheltenham, and “finished” at dresden, without any limit as to extras. she had come home from dresden a few months before the malgamite scheme was set on foot, to find herself regarded by her father in the light of a rather delicate financial crisis. the affection which had always existed between father and daughter soon developed into something stronger—something volatile and half mocking on her part, indulgent and half mystified on his.
“she is rather a handful,” wrote mr. wade to tony cornish, “and too inconsequent to let my mind be easy about her future. i wish you would run down and dine and sleep at 'the brambles' some evening soon. monday is marguerite's eighteenth birthday. will you come on that evening?”
“he is not thirty-three yet,” reflected mr. wade, as he folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope, “and she is the sort of girl who must be able to give a man her full respect before she can give him—er—anything else.”
from which it may be perceived that the astute banker was preparing to face the delicate financial crisis.
cornish received the invitation the day after returning from holland. mr. wade had been his father's friend and trustee, and was, he understood, distantly related to the mother whom tony had never known. such invitations were not infrequent, and it was the recipient's custom to set aside others in order to reply with an acceptance. a friendship had sprung up between two men who were not only divided by a gulf of years, but had hardly a thought in common.
on arriving at weybridge station, cornish found marguerite awaiting his arrival in a very high dog-cart drawn by an exceedingly shiny cob, which animal she proceeded to handle with vast spirit and a blithe ignorance. she looked trim and fresh, with bright brown hair under a smart sailor hat, and a complexion almost dazzling in its youthfulness and brilliancy. she nodded gaily at cornish.
“hop up,” she said encouragingly, “and then hang on like grim death. there are going to be—whoa, my pet!—er—ructions. all right, william. let go.”
william let go, and made a dash at the rear step. the shiny cob squeaked, stood thoughtfully on his hind legs for a moment, and then dashed across the bridge, shaving a cab rather closely, and failing to observe a bank of stones at one side of the road.
“do you mind this sort of thing?” inquired marguerite, as they bumped heavily over the obstruction.
“not in the least. most invigorating, i consider it.” marguerite arranged the reins carefully, and inclined the whip at a suitable angle across her companion's vision.
“i'm learning to drive, you know,” she said, leaning confidently down from her high seat. “and papa thinks that because this young gentleman is rather stout he is quiet, which is quite a mistake. whoa! steady! keep off the grass! visitors are requested to keep to—well, i'm”—she hauled the pony off the common, whither he had betaken himself, on to the road again—“blowed,” she added, religiously completing her unfinished sentence.
they were now between high fences, and compelled to progress more steadily.
“i am very glad you have come, you know,” marguerite took the opportunity of assuring the visitor. “it is jolly slow, i can tell you, at times; and then you will do papa good. he is very difficult to manage. it took me a week to get this pony out of him. his great idea is for somebody to marry me. he looks upon me as a sort of fund that has to be placed or sunk or something, somewhere. there was a young scotchman here the week before last. i have forgotten his name already. john—something—fairly. yes, that is it—john fairly, of auchen-something. it is better to be john fairly, of auchen-something, than a belted earl, it appears.”
“did john tell you so himself?” inquired tony.
“yes; and he ought to know, oughtn't he? but that was what put me on my guard. when a scotchman begins to tell you who he is, take my advice and sheer off.”
“i will,” said tony.
“and when a scotchman begins to tell you what he has, you may be sure that he wants something more. i smelt a rat at once. and i would not speak to him for the rest of the evening, or if i did, i spoke with a scotch accent—just a suspeecion of an accent, you know—nothing to get hold of, but just enough to let him know that his auchen-something would not go down with me.”
she spoke with a sort of inconsequent earnestness, a relic of the school-days she had so lately left behind. she did not seem to have had time to decide yet whether life was a rattling farce or a matter of deadly earnest. and who shall blame her, remembering that older heads than hers are no clearer on that point?
on approaching the red villa by its short entrance drive of yellow gravel, they perceived mr. wade slowly walking in his garden. the garden of “the brambles” was exactly the sort of garden one would expect to find attached to a house of that name. it was chiefly conspicuous for its lack of brambles, or indeed of any vegetable of such disorderly habit. yellow gravel walks intersected smooth lawns. april having drawn almost to its close, there were thin red lines of tulips standing at attention all along the flowery borders. not a stalk was out of place. one suspected that the flowers had been drilled by a martinet of a gardener. the sight of an honest weed would have been a relief to the eye. the curse of too much gardener and too little nature lay over the land.
“ah!” said mr. wade, holding out a large white hand. “you perceive me inspecting the garden, and if you glance in the direction of mcpherson's cottage you will perceive mcpherson watching me. i pay him a hundred and twenty and he knows that it is too much.”
“by the way, papa,” put in marguerite, gravely, “will you tell mcpherson that he will receive a month's notice if he counts the peaches this summer, as he did last year?”
mr. wade laughed, and promised her a freer hand in this matter. they walked in the trim garden until it was time to dress for dinner, and cornish saw enough to convince him that mr. wade was fully occupied between banking hours in his capacity as marguerite's father.
that young lady came down as the bell rang, in a white dress as fresh and girlish as herself, and during the meal, which was long and somewhat solemn, entertained the guest with considerable liveliness. it was only after she had left them to their wine, over which the banker loved to linger in the old-fashioned way that mr. wade put on his grave financial air. he fingered his glass thoughtfully, as if choosing, not a subject of conversation, but a suitable way of approaching a premeditated question.
“you do not recollect your mother?” he said suddenly.
“no; she died when i was two years old.”
mr. wade nodded, and slowly sipped his port. “queer thing is,” he said, after a pause and looking towards the door, “that that child is startlingly like what your mother used to be at the age of eighteen, when i first knew her. perhaps it is only my imagination—not that i have much of that. perhaps all girls are alike at that age—a sort of freshness and an optimism that positively take one's breath away. at any rate, she reminds me of your mother.” he broke off, and looked at cornish with his slow and rather ponderous smile. his attitude towards the world was indeed one of conscious ponderosity. he did not attempt to understand the lighter side of life, but took it seriously as a work-a-day matter. “i was once in love with your mother,” he stated squarely. “but circumstances were against us. you see, your father was a lord's younger brother, and that made a great difference in clapham in those days. i felt it a good deal at the time, but i of course got over it years and years ago. no sentiment about me, tony. sentiment and seventeen stone won't balance, you know.” the great man slowly drew the decanter towards him. “she got a better husband in your father—a clever, bright chap—and i was best man, i recollect. it was about that time—about your age i was—that i took seriously to my work. before, i had been a little wild. and that interest has lasted me right up to the present time. take my word for it, tony, the greatest interest in life would be money-making—if one only knew what to do with the money afterwards.” the banker had been eating a biscuit, and he now swept the crumbs together with his little finger from all sides in a lessening circle until they formed a heap upon the white tablecloth. “it accumulates,” he said slowly, “accumulates, accumulates. and, after all, one can only eat and drink the best that are to be obtained, and the best costs so little—a mere drop in the ocean.” he handed tony the decanter as he spoke. “then i married marguerite's mother, some years afterwards, when i was a middle-aged man. she was the only daughter of—the bank, you know.”
and that seemed to be all that there was to be said about marguerite's mother.
tony cornish nodded in his quick, sympathetic way. mr. wade had told him none of this before, but it was to be presumed that he had heard at least part of it from other sources. his manner now indicated that he was interested, but he did not ask his companion to say one word more than he felt disposed to utter. it is probable that he knew these to be no idle after-dinner words, spoken without premeditation, out of a full heart; for mr. wade was not, as he had boasted, a person of sentiment, but a plain, straightforward business man, who, if he had no meaning to convey, said nothing. and in this respect it is a pity that more are not like him.
“we have always been pretty good friends, you and i,” continued the banker, “though i know i am not exactly your sort. i am distinctly city; you are as distinctly west end. but during your minority, and when we settled up accounts on your coming of age, and since then, we have always hit it off pretty well.”
“yes,” said cornish, moving his feet impatiently under the table.
there was no mistaking the aim of all this, and mr. wade was too british in his habits to beat about the bush much longer.
“i do not mind telling you that i have got you down in my will,” said the banker.
cornish bit his lip and frowned at his wine-glass. and it is possible that the man of no sentiment understood his silence.
“i have frequently disbelieved what i have heard of you,” went on the elder man. “you have, doubtless, enemies—as all men have—and you have been a trifle reckless, perhaps, of what the world might say. if you will allow me to say so, i think none the worse of you for that.”
mr. wade pushed the decanter across the table, and when cornish had filled his glass, drew it back towards himself. it is wonderful what resource there is in half a glass of wine, if merely to examine it when it is hard to look elsewhere.
“you remember, six months ago, i spoke to you of a personal matter,” said the banker. “i asked you if you had thoughts of marrying, and suggested something in the nature of a partnership if that would facilitate your plans in any way.”
“that is not the sort of offer one is likely to forget,” answered cornish.
“i asked you if—well, if it was joan ferriby.”
“yes. and i answered that it was not joan ferriby. that was mere gossip, of which we are both aware, and for which neither of us cares a pin.”
“then it comes to this,” said mr. wade, drawing lines on the tablecloth with his dessert knife as if it were a balance-sheet, and he was casting the final totals there. “you are a man of the world; you are clever; you are like your father before you, in that you have something that women care about. heaven only knows what it is, for i don't!” he paused, and looked at his companion as if seeking that intangible something. then he jerked his head towards the drawing-room, where marguerite could be dimly heard playing an air from the latest comic opera with a fine contempt for accidentals. “that child,” he said, “knows no more about life than a sparrow. a man like myself—seventeen stone—may have to balance his books at any moment. you have a clear field; for you may take my word for it that you will be the first in it. my own experience of life has been mostly financial, but i am pretty certain that the first man a woman cares for is the man she cares for all along, though she may never see him again. i don't hold it out as an inducement, but there is no reason why you should not know that she will have a hundred and fifty thousand pounds—not when i am dead, but on the day she marries.” mr. wade paused, and took a sip of his most excellent port. “do not hurry,” he said. “take your time. think about it carefully—unless you have already thought about it, and can say yes or no now.”
“i can do that.”
mr. wade bent forward heavily, with one arm on the table.
“ah!” he said. “which is it?”
“it is no,” answered cornish, simply. the banker passed his table-napkin across his lips, paused for a moment, and then rose with, as was his hospitable custom, his hand upon the sherry decanter. “then let us go into the drawing-room,” he said.
