Denzil Quarrier

CHAPTER VIII

"Do you know of any good house to let in or near the town?" inquired Denzil of his sister the next morning, as they chatted after Toby's departure to business.

"A house! What do you want with one?"

"Oh, I must have a local habitation—the more solid the better."

Mrs. Liversedge examined him.

"What is going on, Denzil?"

"My candidature—that's all. Any houses advertised in this rag?" He took up yesterday's Examiner, and began to search the pages.

"You can live very well with us."

Denzil did not reply, and his sister, summoned by a servant, left him. There was indeed an advertisement such as he sought. An old and pleasant family residence, situated on the outskirts of Polterham (he remembered it very well), would be vacant at Christmas. Application could be made on the premises. Still in a state of very high pressure, unable to keep still or engage in any quiet pursuit, he set off the instant to view this house. It stood in a high-walled garden, which was entered through heavy iron-barred gates, one of them now open. The place had rather a forlorn look, due in part to the decay of the foliage which in summer shaded the lawn; blinds were drawn on all the front windows; the porch needed repair. He rang at the door, and was quickly answered by a dame of the housekeeper species. On learning his business, she began to conduct him through the rooms, which were in habitable state, though with furniture muffled.

"The next room, sir, is the library. A lady is there at present. Perhaps you know her?—Mrs. Wade."

"Mrs. Wade! Yes, I know her slightly."

The coincidence amused him.

"She comes here to study, sir—being a friend of the family. Will you go in?"

Foreseeing a lively dialogue, he released his attendant till she should hear his voice again, and, with preface of a discreet knock, entered the room. An agreeable warmth met him, and the aspect of the interior contrasted cheerfully with that of the chambers into which he had looked. There was no great collection of books, but some fine engravings filled the vacancies around. At the smaller of two writing-tables sat the person he was prepared to discover; she had several volumes open before her, and appeared to be making notes. At his entrance she turned and gazed at him fixedly.

"Forgive my intrusion, Mrs. Wade," Denzil began, in a genial voice. "I have come to look over the house, and was just told that you were here. As we are not absolute strangers"–

He had never met her in the social way, though she had been a resident at Polterham for some six years. Through Mrs. Liversedge, her repute had long ago reached him; she was universally considered eccentric, and, by many people, hardly proper for an acquaintance. On her first arrival in the town she wore the garb of recent widowhood; relatives here she had none, but an old friendship existed between her and the occupants of this house, a childless couple named Hornibrook. Her age was now about thirty.

Quarrier was far from regarding her as an attractive woman. He thought better of her intelligence than before hearing her speak, and it was not difficult for him to imagine that the rumour of Polterham went much astray when it concerned itself with her characteristics; but the face now directed to him had no power whatever over his sensibilities. It might be that of a high-spirited and large-brained woman; beautiful it could not be called. There was something amiss with the eyes. All the other features might pass: they were neither plain nor comely: a forehead of good type, a very ordinary nose, largish lips, chin suggesting the masculine; but the eyes, to begin with, were prominent, and they glistened in a way which made it very difficult to determine their colour. They impressed Denzil as of a steely-grey, and seemed hard as the metal itself. His preference was distinctly for soft feminine eyes—such as Lilian gazed with.

Her figure was slight, but seemed strong and active. He had noticed the evening before that, in standing to address an audience, she looked anything but ridiculous—spite of bonnet. Here too, though allowing her surprise to be seen, she had the bearing of perfect self-possession, and perhaps of conscious superiority. Fawn-coloured hair, less than luxuriant, lay in soft folds and plaits on the top of her head; possibly (the thought was not incongruous) she hoped to gain half an inch of seeming stature.

They shook hands, and Denzil explained his object in calling.

"Then you are going to settle at Polterham?"

"Probably—that is, to keep an abode here."

"You are not married, I think, Mr. Quarrier?"

"No."

"There was a report at the Institute last night—may I speak of it?"

"Political? I don't think it need be kept a secret. My brother-in-law wishes me to make friends with the Liberals, in his place."

"I dare say you will find them very willing to meet your advances. On one question you have taken a pretty safe line."

"Much to your disgust," said Denzil, who found himself speaking very freely and inclined to face debatable points.

"Disgust is hardly the word. Will you sit down? In Mrs. Hornibrook's absence, I must represent her. They are good enough to let me use the library; my own is poorly supplied."

Denzil took a chair.

"Are you busy with any particular subject?" he asked.

"The history of woman in Greece."

"Profound! I have as good as forgotten my classics. You read the originals?"

"After a fashion. I don't know much about the enclitic de, and I couldn't pass an exam. in the hypothetical sentences; but I pick up the sense as I read on."

Her tone seemed to imply that, after all, she was not ill-versed in grammatical niceties. She curtailed the word "examination" in an off-hand way which smacked of an undergraduate, and her attitude on the chair suggested that she had half a mind to cross her legs and throw her hands behind her head.

"Then," said Quarrier, "you have a good deal more right to speak of woman's claims to independence than most female orators."

She looked at him with a good-humoured curl of the lip.

"Excuse me if I mention it—your tone reminds me of that with which you began last evening. It was rather patronizing."

"Heaven forbid! I am very sorry to have been guilty of such ill-manners."

"In a measure you atoned for it afterwards. When I got up to offer you my thanks, I was thinking of the best part of your lecture—that where you spoke of girls being entrapped into monstrous marriages. That was generous, and splendidly put. It seemed to me that you must have had cases in mind."

For the second time Denzil was unable to meet the steely gaze. He looked away and laughed.

"Oh, of course I had; who hasn't—that knows anything of the world? But," he changed the subject, "don't you find it rather dull, living in a place like Polterham?"

"I have my work here."

"Work?—the work of propagandism?"

"Precisely. It would be pleasant enough to live in London, and associate with people of my own way of thinking; but what's the good?—there's too much of that centralization. The obscurantists take very good care to spread themselves. Why shouldn't those who love the light try to keep little beacons going in out-of-the-way places?"

"Well, do you make any progress?"

"Oh, I think so. The mere fact of my existence here ensures that. I dare say you have heard tell of me, as the countryfolk say?"

The question helped Denzil to understand why Mrs. Wade was content with Polterham. He smiled.

"Your influence won't be exerted against me, I hope, when the time comes?"

"By no means. Don't you see that I have already begun to help you?"

"By making it clear that my Radicalism is not of the most dangerous type?"

They laughed, together, and Quarrier, though the dialogue entertained him, rose as if to depart.

"I will leave you with your Greeks, Mrs. Wade; though I fear you haven't much pleasure in them from that special point of view."

"I don't know; they have given us important types of womanhood. The astonishing thing is that we have got so little ahead of them in the facts of female life. Woman is still enslaved, though men nowadays think it necessary to disguise it."

"Do you really attach much importance to the right of voting, and so on?"

"'And so on!' That covers a great deal, Mr. Quarrier. I attach all importance to a state of things which takes for granted that women stand on a level with children."

"So they do—with an inappreciable number of exceptions. You must be perfectly well aware of that."

"And so you expect me to be satisfied with it?—I insist on the franchise, because it symbolizes full citizenship. I won't aim at anything less than that. Women must be taught to keep their eyes on that, as the irreducible minimum of their demands."

"We mustn't argue. You know that I think they must be taught to look at quite different things."

"Yes; but what those things are you have left me in doubt. We will talk it over when you have more time to spare. Do you know my address? Pear-tree Cottage, Rickstead Road. I shall be very glad to see you if ever you care to call."

Denzil made his acknowledgments, shook hands, and left the room.

When his step sounded in the hall, the housekeeper appeared and conducted him to the upper stories. He examined everything attentively, but in silence; his features expressed grave thought. Mr. and Mrs. Hornibrook, he was told, were living in Guernsey, and had resolved to make that island their permanent abode. A Polterham solicitor was their agent for the property.

Denzil was given to acting on the spur of the moment. There might be dwellings obtainable that would suit him better than this, but he did not care to linger in the business. As he passed out of the iron gates he made up his mind that the house, with necessary repairs, would do very well; and straightway he turned his steps to the office of the agent.

CHAPTER IX

The village of Rickstead lay at some five miles' distance from that suburb of Polterham where dwelt Mr. Toby Liversedge, Mr. Mumbray (the Mayor), Mr. Samuel Quarrier, and sundry other distinguished townsfolk. A walk along the Rickstead Bead was a familiar form of exercise with the less-favoured people who had their homes in narrow streets; for on either side of the highway lay an expanse of meadows, crossed here and there by pleasant paths which led to the surrounding hamlets. In this direction no factories had as yet risen to deform the scene.

Darkness was falling when Quarrier set forth to keep his appointment with Eustace Glazzard at the Coach and Horses Inn. The road-lamps already glimmered; there would be no moon, but a soft dusky glow lingered over half the sky, and gave promise of a fair night. Denzil felt his boyhood revive as he got clear of the new houses, and began to recognize gates, trees, banks, and stiles; he could not say whether he enjoyed the sensation, but it served to combat certain troublesome thoughts which had beset him since the morning. He was experiencing reaction after the excitement of the last two days. A change from the orderly domesticities of his sister's house had become necessary to him, and he looked forward with satisfaction to the evening he had planned.

At a turn of the road, which, as he well remembered, had been a frequent limit of his nurse-guarded walk five-and-twenty years ago, his eye fell upon a garden gate marked with the white inscription, "Pear-tree Cottage." It brought him to a pause. This must be Mrs. Wade's dwelling; the intellectual lady had quite slipped out of his thoughts, and with amusement he stopped to examine the cottage as well as dusk permitted. The front was overgrown with some creeper; the low roof made an irregular line against the sky one window on the ground-floor showed light through a red blind. Mrs. Wade, he had learnt, enjoyed but a small income; the interior was probably very modest. There she sat behind the red blind and meditated on the servitude of her sex. Repressing an inclination to laugh aloud, he stepped briskly forward.

Rickstead consisted of twenty or thirty scattered houses; an ancient, slumberous place, remarkable chiefly for its time-honoured inn, which stood at the crossing of two high roads. The landlord had received notice that two gentlemen would dine under his roof, and the unwonted event was making quite a stir in the hostelry. Quarrier walked in at about a quarter-past six, savoury odours saluted him from the threshold. Glazzard had not yet arrived, but in less than five minutes a private carriage drew up to the door, and the friends hailed each other.

The room prepared for them lay well apart from the bar, with its small traffic. A great fire had been blazing for an hour or two; and the table, not too large, was laid with the best service the house could afford—nothing very grand, to be sure, in these days of its decline, but the general effect was inviting to men with a good appetite and some historical imagination.

"A happy idea of yours!" said Glazzard, as he rubbed his hands before the great hearth. "Are we to begin with a cup of sack?"

Punctually the meal was served; the liquor provided therewith, though of small dignity, did no discredit to the host. They talked and laughed over old Grammar School days, old acquaintances long since dead or lost to sight, boyish ambitions and achievements. Dinner dismissed, a bottle of whisky on the table, a kettle steaming by the fire, Denzil's pipe and Glazzard's cigar comfortably glowing, there came a long pause.

"Well, I have a story to fell you," said Quarrier, at length.

"So I supposed," murmured the other, without eagerness.

"I don't know that I should have told it but for that chance encounter at Kew. But I'm not sorry. I think, Glazzard, you are the one man in the world in whom I have perfect confidence."

The listener just bent his head. His features were impassive.

"It concerns Lilian, of course," Quarrier pursued, when he had taken a few puffs less composedly than hitherto. "I am telling the story without her leave, but—well, in a way, as I said, the necessity is forced upon me. I can't help doing many things just now that I should avoid if I had my choice. I have undertaken to fight society by stratagem. For my own part, I would rather deal it a plain blow in the face, and bid it do its worst; but"–He waved his hand.

Glazzard murmured and nodded comprehension.

"I'll go back to the beginning. That was about three years ago. I was crossing the North Sea (you remember the time; I said good-bye to you in the Academy, where your bust was), and on the boat I got into conversation with a decent kind of man who had his wife and family with him, going to settle for a time at Stockholm; a merchant of some sort. There were three children, and they had a governess—Lilian, in fact, who was then not much more than eighteen. I liked the look of her from the first. She was very still and grave,—the kind of thing that takes me in a woman, provided she has good features. I managed to get a word or two with her, and I liked her way of speaking. Well, I was sufficiently interested to say to myself that I might as well spend a week or two at Stockholm and keep up the acquaintance of these people; Becket, their name was. I'm not exactly the kind of fellow who goes about falling in love with nursery governesses, and at that time (perhaps you recollect?) I had somebody else in mind. I dare say it was partly the contrast between that shark of a woman and this modest girl; at all events, I wanted to see more of Lilian, and I did I was in Stockholm, off and on, for a couple of months. I became good friends with the Beckets, and before coming back to England I made an offer to Miss Allen—that was the governess's name. She refused me, and I was conceited enough to wonder what the deuce she meant."

Glazzard laughed. He was listening with more show of interest.

"Well," pursued Quarrier, after puffing vainly at his extinguished pipe, "there was reason for wondering. Before I took the plunge, I had a confidential talk with Mrs. Becket, who as good as assured me that I had only to speak; in fact, she was rather angry with me for disturbing her family arrangements. Miss Allen, I learnt from her, was an uncommonly good girl—everything I imagined her. Mrs. Becket didn't know her family, but she had engaged her on the strength of excellent testimonials, which didn't seem exaggerated. Yet after that I was floored—told that the thing couldn't be. No weeping and wailing; but a face and a voice that puzzled me. The girl liked me well enough; I felt sure of it. All the same I had to come back to England alone, and in a devilish bad temper. You remember that I half quarrelled with you about something at our first meeting."

"You were rather bearish," remarked Glazzard, knocking the ash off his cigar.

"As I often am. Forgive me, old fellow!"

Denzil relit his pipe.

"The next summer I went over to Sweden again. Miss Allen was still with the Beckets, as I knew; but she was only going to stay a few months more. One of the children had died, and the other two were to be sent to a boarding-school in England. Again I went through the proposing ordeal, and again it was useless. 'Confound it!' I shouted, 'do deal honestly with me! What's the matter? Are you engaged already?' She kept silent for a long time, then said 'Yes!' 'Then why in the name of the Jotuns didn't you tell me so before?' I was brutal (as I often am), and the poor girl began to cry. Then there was a scene—positive stage business. I wouldn't take her refusal. 'This other man, you don't really care for him—you are going to sacrifice yourself! I won't have it! She wept and moaned, and threatened hysterics; and at last, when I was losing patience (I can't stand women's idiotic way of flinging themselves about and making a disturbance, instead of discussing difficulties calmly), she said at last that, if ever we met in England, she would explain her position. 'Why not now?'—no, not in the Beckets' house. Very well then, at least she might make it certain that I should see her in England. After trouble enough, she at last consented to this. She was to come back with Mr. Becket and the boys, and then go to her people. I got her promise that she would write to me and make an appointment somewhere or other.—More whisky?"

Glazzard declined; so Denzil replenished his own glass, and went on. He was now tremulous with the excitement of his reminiscences; he fidgeted on the chair, and his narrative became more jerky than ever.

"Her letter came, posted in London. She had taken leave of the Becket party, and was supposed to be travelling homewards; but she would keep her word with me. I was to go and see her at an hotel in the West End. Go, I did, punctually enough; I believe I would have gone to Yokohama for half an hour of her society. I found her in a private sitting-room, looking wretched enough, confoundedly ill. And then and there she told me her story. It was a queer one; no one could have guessed it."

He seized the poker and stirred the fire savagely.

"I shall just give you the plain facts. Her father was a builder in a small way, living at Bristol. He had made a little money, and was able to give his children a decent education. There was a son, who died young, and then two girls, Lilian the elder of them. The old man must have been rather eccentric; he brought up the girls very strictly (their mother died when they were children)—would scarcely let them go out of his sight, preached to them a sort of mixture of Christianity and Pantheism, forbade all pleasures except those of home, didn't like them to make acquaintances. Their mother's sister kept the house; a feeble, very pious creature, probably knowing as much about life as the cat or the canary—so Lilian describes her. The man came to a sudden end; a brick fell on his head whilst he was going over a new building. Lilian was then about fifteen. She had passed the Oxford Local, and was preparing herself to teach—or rather, being prepared at a good school.

"Allen left enough money to provide his daughters with about a hundred a year each; this was to be theirs absolutely when they came of age, or when they married. The will had been carefully drawn up, and provided against all sorts of real and imaginary dangers. The one thing it couldn't provide against was the imbecility of the old aunt, who still had the girls in her care.

"A couple of years went by, and Lilian became a teacher in the school she had attended. Do you know anything about Bristol and the neighbourhood? It seems that the people there are in the habit of going to a place called Weston-super-Mare—excursion steamers, and so on. Well, the girls and their aunt went to spend a day at Weston, and on the boat they somehow made acquaintance with a young man named Northway. That means, of course, he made up to them, and the aunt was idiot enough to let him keep talking. He stuck by them all day, and accompanied them back to Bristol.—Pah! it sickens me to tell the story!"

He took the glass to drink, but it slipped from his nervous fingers and crashed on the ground.

"Never mind; let it be there. I have had whisky enough. This damned fellow Northway soon called upon them, and was allowed to come as often as he liked. He was a clerk in a commercial house—gave references which were found to be satisfactory enough, a great talker, and of course a consummate liar. His special interest was the condition of the lower classes; he made speeches here and there, went slumming, called himself a Christian Socialist. This kind of thing was no doubt attractive to Lilian—you know enough of her to understand that. She was a girl of seventeen, remember. In the end, Northway asked her to marry him, and she consented."

"Did he know of the money?" inquired Glazzard.

"Undoubtedly. I shouldn't wonder if the blockhead aunt told. Well, the wedding-day came; they were married; and—just as they came out of the church, up walks a detective, claps his hand on Northway's shoulder, and arrests him for forgery."

"H'm! I see."

"The fellow was tried. Lilian wouldn't tell me the details; she gave me an old newspaper with full report. Northway had already, some years before, been in the hands of the police in London. It came out now that he was keeping a mistress; on the eve of marriage he had dispensed with her services, and the woman, in revenge, went to his employers to let them know certain suspicious facts. He was sent to penal servitude for three years."

"Three years!" murmured Glazzard. "About so ago, I suppose?"

"Yes; perhaps he is already restored to society. Pleasant reflection!"

"Moral and discreet law," remarked the other, "which maintains the validity of such a marriage!"

Denzil uttered a few violent oaths, reminiscences of the Navy.

"And she went at once to Sweden?" Glazzard inquired.

"In a month or two the head-mistress of her school, a sensible woman, helped her to get an engagement—with not a word said of the catastrophe. She went as Miss Allen. It was her firm resolve never again to see Northway. She would not acknowledge that that ceremony in the church made her a wife. Of course, you understand that it wasn't only the forgery that revolted her; that, I suppose, could have been pardoned. In a few days she had learnt more of herself and of the world than in all the previous years. She understood that Northway was really nothing to her. She accepted him because he was the first man who interested her and made love to her—like thousands of girls. Lilian is rather weak, unfortunately. She can't stand by herself. But for me, I am convinced she would now be at the mercy of the blackguard, when he comes out. Horror and despair enabled her to act firmly three years ago; but if she had no one to support her—well, she has!"

"What did you propose," asked Glazzard, "when you persuaded her to live with you?"

Denzil wrinkled his brow and looked gloomily at the fire.

"We agreed to live a life of our own, that was all. To tell you the truth, Glazzard, I had no clear plans. I was desperately in love, and—well, I thought of emigration some day. You know me too well to doubt my honesty. Lilian became my wife, for good and all—no doubt about that! But I didn't trouble much about the future—it's my way."

"She cut herself loose from the Bristol people?"

"No; she has corresponded with them at long intervals. They think she is teaching in London. The tragedy excuses her from visiting them. Aunt and sister are sworn to secrecy concerning her whereabouts. A good thing she has no male relatives to hunt her up."