The Hermit and the Wild Woman, and Other Stories Page 6

  “Why, yes, I am,” said Garnett with a start of conjecture.

  His companion uttered a sigh. “I supposed so,” he said resignedly; “and in that case,” he added, “we may as well have the matter out in the Luxembourg.”

  Garnett had halted before him with deepening astonishment. “But you don’t mean to tell me—?” he stammered.

  The little man made a motion of assent. “I am Samuel C. Newell,” he said drily; “and if you have no objection, I prefer not to break through my habit of feeding the sparrows. We are five minutes late as it is.”

  He quickened his pace without awaiting any reply from Garnett, who walked beside him in unsubdued wonder till they reached the Luxembourg gardens, where Mr. Newell, making for one of the less frequented alleys, seated himself on a bench and drew the fragment of a roll from his pocket. His coming was evidently expected, for a shower of little dusky bodies at once descended on him, and the gravel fluttered with battling wings and beaks as he distributed his dole with impartial gestures.

  It was not till the ground was white with crumbs, and the first frenzy of his pensioners appeased, that he turned to Garnett and said: “I presume, sir, that you come from my wife.”

  Garnett coloured with embarrassment: the more simply the old man took his mission the more complicated it appeared to himself.

  “From your wife—and from Miss Newell,” he said at length. “You have perhaps heard that she is to be married.”

  “Oh, yes—I read the Herald pretty faithfully,” said Miss Newell’s parent, shaking out another handful of crumbs.

  Garnett cleared his throat. “Then you have no doubt thought it natural that, under the circumstances, they should wish to communicate with you.”

  The sage continued to fix his attention on the sparrows. “My wife,” he remarked, “might have written to me.”

  “Mrs. Newell was afraid she might not hear from you in reply.”

  “In reply? Why should she? I suppose she merely wishes to announce the marriage. She knows I have no money left to buy wedding-presents,” said Mr. Newell astonishingly.

  Garnett felt his colour deepen: he had a vague sense of standing as the representative of something guilty and enormous, with which he had rashly identified himself.

  “I don’t think you understand,” he said. “Mrs. Newell and your daughter have asked me to see you because they are anxious that you should consent to appear at the wedding.”

  Mr. Newell, at this, ceased to give his attention to the birds, and turned a compassionate gaze upon Garnett.

  “My dear sir—I don’t know your name—” he remarked, “would you mind telling me how long you have been acquainted with Mrs. Newell?” And without waiting for an answer he added judicially: “If you wait long enough she will ask you to do some very disagreeable things for her.”

  This echo of his own thoughts gave Garnett a sharp twinge of discomfort, but he made shift to answer good-humouredly: “If you refer to my present errand, I must tell you that I don’t find it disagreeable to do anything which may be of service to Miss Hermione.”

  Mr. Newell fumbled in his pocket, as though searching unavailingly for another morsel of bread; then he said: “From her point of view I shall not be the most important person at the ceremony.”

  Garnett smiled. “That is hardly a reason—” he began; but he was checked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: “I am not aware that I am called upon to give you my reasons.”

  “You are certainly not,” the young man rejoined, “except in so far as you are willing to consider me as the messenger of your wife and daughter.”

  “Oh, I accept your credentials,” said the other with his dry smile; “what I don’t recognize is their right to send a message.”

  This reduced Garnett to silence, and after a moment’s pause Mr. Newell drew his watch from his pocket.

  “I am sorry to cut the conversation short, but my days are mapped out with a certain regularity, and this is the hour for my nap.” He rose as he spoke and held out his hand with a glint of melancholy humour in his small clear eyes.

  “You dismiss me, then? I am to take back a refusal?” the young man exclaimed.

  “My dear sir, those ladies have got on very well without me for a number of years: I imagine they can put through this wedding without my help.”

  “You are mistaken, then; if it were not for that I shouldn’t have undertaken this errand.”

  Mr. Newell paused as he was turning away. “Not for what?” he enquired.

  “The fact that, as it happens, the wedding can’t be put through without your help.”

  Mr. Newell’s thin lips formed a noiseless whistle. “They’ve got to have my consent, have they? Well, is he a good young man?”

  “The bridegroom?” Garnett echoed in surprise. “I hear the best accounts of him—and Miss Newell is very much in love.”

  Her parent met this with an odd smile. “Well, then, I give my consent—it’s all I’ve got left to give,” he added philosophically.

  Garnett hesitated. “But if you consent—if you approve—why do you refuse your daughter’s request?”

  Mr. Newell looked at him a moment. “Ask Mrs. Newell!” he said. And as Garnett was again silent, he turned away with a slight gesture of leave-taking.

  But in an instant the young man was at his side. “I will not ask your reasons, sir,” he said, “but I will give you mine for being here. Miss Newell cannot be married unless you are present at the ceremony. The young man’s parents know that she has a father living, and they give their consent only on condition that he appears at her marriage. I believe it is customary in old French families—.”

  “Old French families be damned!” said Mr. Newell with sudden vigour. “She had better marry an American.” And he made a more decided motion to free himself from Garnett’s importunities.

  But his resistance only strengthened the young man’s. The more unpleasant the latter’s task became, the more unwilling he grew to see his efforts end in failure. During the three days which had been consumed in his quest it had become clear to him that the bridegroom’s parents, having been surprised into a reluctant consent, were but too ready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr. Newell’s non-appearance. Mrs. Newell, on the last edge of tension, had confided to Garnett that the Morningfields were “being nasty”; and he could picture the whole powerful clan, on both sides of the Channel, arrayed in a common resolve to exclude poor Hermione from their ranks. The very inequality of the contest stirred his blood, and made him vow that in this case at least the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. In his talk with the young secretary he had obtained some glimpses of Baron Schenkelderff’s past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, at one time a familiar figure in a much-observed London set, had been mixed up in an ugly money-lending business ending in suicide, which had excluded him from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance with Mrs. Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from social extinction. That Hermione’s marriage was a mere stake in their game did not in the least affect Garnett’s view of its urgency. If on their part it was a sordid speculation, to her it had the freshness of the first wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk of such base uses; and to achieve this had become a necessity to him.

  The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might not easily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite of the resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force of his plea into the tone with which he cried: “Ah, you don’t know your daughter!”

  VI

  MRS. NEWELL, that afternoon, met him on the threshold of her sitting-room with a “Well?” of pent-up anxiety.

  In the room itself, Baron Schenkelderff sat with crossed legs and head thrown back, in an
attitude which he did not see fit to alter at the young man’s approach.

  Garnett hesitated; but it was not the summariness of the Baron’s greeting which he resented.

  “You’ve found him?” Mrs. Newell exclaimed.

  “Yes; but—”

  She followed his glance and answered it with a slight shrug. “I can’t take you into my room, because there’s a dressmaker there, and she won’t go because she is waiting to be paid. Schenkelderff,” she exclaimed, “you’re not wanted; please go and look out of the window.”

  The Baron rose and, lighting a cigarette, laughingly retired to the embrasure. Mrs. Newell flung herself down and signed to Garnett to take a seat at her side.

  “Well—you’ve found him? You’ve talked with him?”

  “Yes; I have talked with him—for an hour.”

  She made an impatient movement. “That’s too long! Does he refuse?”

  “He doesn’t consent.”

  “Then you mean—?”

  “He wants time to think it over.”

  “Time? There is no time—did you tell him so?”

  “I told him so; but you must remember that he has plenty. He has taken twenty-four hours.”

  Mrs. Newell groaned. “Oh, that’s too much. When he thinks things over he always refuses.”

  “Well, he would have refused at once if I had not agreed to the delay.”

  She rose nervously from her seat and pressed her hands to her forehead. “It’s too hard, after all I’ve done! The trousseau is ordered—think how disgraceful! You must have managed him badly; I’ll go and see him myself.”

  The Baron, at this, turned abruptly from his study of the Place Vendome.

  “My dear creature, for heaven’s sake don’t spoil everything!” he exclaimed.

  Mrs. Newell coloured furiously. “What’s the meaning of that brilliant speech?”

  “I was merely putting myself in the place of a man on whom you have ceased to smile.”

  He picked up his hat and stick, nodded knowingly to Garnett, and walked toward the door with an air of creaking jauntiness.

  But on the threshold Mrs. Newell waylaid him.

  “Don’t go—I must speak to you,” she said, following him into the antechamber; and Garnett remembered the dressmaker who was not to be dislodged from her bedroom.

  In a moment Mrs. Newell returned, with a small flat packet which she vainly sought to dissemble in an inaccessible pocket.

  “He makes everything too odious!” she exclaimed; but whether she referred to her husband or the Baron it was left to Garnett to decide.

  She sat silent, nervously twisting her cigarette-case between her fingers, while her visitor rehearsed the details of his conversation with Mr. Newell. He did not indeed tell her the arguments he had used to shake her husband’s resolve, since in his eloquent sketch of Hermione’s situation there had perforce entered hints unflattering to her mother; but he gave the impression that his hearer had in the end been moved, and for that reason had consented to defer his refusal.

  “Ah, it’s not that—it’s to prolong our misery!” Mrs. Newell exclaimed; and after a moment she added drearily: “He has been waiting for such an opportunity for years.”

  It seemed needless for Garnett to protract his visit, and he took leave with the promise to report at once the result of his final talk with Mr. Newell. But as he was passing through the antechamber a side-door opened and Hermione stood before him. Her face was flushed and shaken out of its usual repose of line, and he saw at once that she had been waiting for him.

  “Mr. Garnett!” she said in a whisper.

  He paused, considering her with surprise: he had never supposed her capable of such emotion as her voice and eyes revealed.

  “I want to speak to you; we are quite safe here. Mamma is with the dressmaker,” she explained, closing the door behind her, while Garnett laid aside his hat and stick.

  “I am at your service,” he said.

  “You have seen my father? Mamma told me that you were to see him to-day,” the girl went on, standing close to him in order that she might not have to raise her voice.

  “Yes; I have seen him,” Garnett replied with increasing wonder. Hermione had never before mentioned her father to him, and it was by a slight stretch of veracity that he had included her name in her mother’s plea to Mr. Newell. He had supposed her to be either unconscious of the transaction, or else too much engrossed in her own happiness to give it a thought; and he had forgiven her the last alternative in consideration of the abnormal character of her filial relations. But now he saw that he must readjust his view of her.

  “You went to ask him to come to my wedding; I know about it,” Hermione continued. “Of course it is the custom—people will think it odd if he does not come.” She paused, and then asked: “Does he consent?”

  “No; he has not yet consented.”

  “Ah, I thought so when I saw Mamma just now!”

  “But he hasn’t quite refused—he has promised to think it over.”

  “But he hated it—he hated the idea?”

  Garnett hesitated. “It seemed to arouse painful associations.”

  “Ah, it would—it would!” she exclaimed.

  He was astonished at the passion of her accent; astonished still more at the tone with which she went on, laying her hand on his arm: “Mr. Garnett, he must not be asked—he has been asked too often to do things that he hated!”

  Garnett looked at the girl with a shock of awe. What abysses of knowledge did her purity hide?

  “But, my dear Miss Hermione—” he began.

  “I know what you are going to say,” she interrupted him. “It is necessary that he should be present at the marriage or the du Trayas will break it off. They don’t want it very much, at any rate,” she added with a strange candour, “and they will not be sorry, perhaps—for of course Louis would have to obey them.”

  “So I explained to your father,” Garnett assured her.

  “Yes—yes; I knew you would put it to him. But that makes no difference, Mr. Garnett. He must not be forced to come unwillingly.”

  “But if he sees the point—after all, no one can force him!”

  “No; but if it is painful to him—if it reminds him too much … Oh, Mr. Garnett, I was not a child when he left us…. I was old enough to see … to see how it must hurt him even now to be reminded. Peace was all he asked for, and I want him to be left in peace!”

  Garnett paused in deep embarrassment. “My dear child, there is no need to remind you that your own future—”

  She had a gesture that recalled her mother. “My future must take care of itself; he must not be made to see us!” she said imperatively. And as Garnett remained silent she went on: “I have always hoped he did not hate me, but he would hate me now if he were forced to see me.”

  “Not if he could see you at this moment!” he exclaimed.

  She lifted her face with swimming eyes.

  “Well, go to him, then; tell him what I have said to you!”

  Garnett continued to stand before her, deeply struck. “It might be the best thing,” he reflected inwardly; but he did not give utterance to the thought. He merely put out his hand, holding Hermione’s in a long pressure.

  “I will do whatever you wish,” he replied.

  “You understand that I am in earnest?” she urged tenaciously.

  “I am quite sure of it.”

  “Then I want you to repeat to him what I have said—I want him to be left undisturbed. I don’t want him ever to hear of us again!”

  The next day, at the appointed hour, Garnett resorted to the Luxembourg gardens, which Mr. Newell had named as a meeting-place in preference to his own lodgings. It was clear that he did not wish to admit the young man any further into his privacy than the occasion required, and the extreme shabbiness of his dress hinted that pride might be the cause of his reluctance.

  Garnett found him feeding the sparrows, but he desisted at the young man’s approach,
and said at once: “You will not thank me for bringing you all this distance.”

  “If that means that you are going to send me away with a refusal, I have come to spare you the necessity,” Garnett answered.

  Mr. Newell turned on him a glance of undisguised wonder, in which an undertone of disappointment might almost have been detected.

  “Ah—they’ve got no use for me, after all?” he said ironically.

  Garnett, in reply, related without comment his conversation with Hermione, and the message with which she had charged him. He remembered her words exactly and repeated them without modification, heedless of what they implied or revealed.

  Mr. Newell listened with an immovable face, occasionally casting a crumb to his flock. When Garnett ended he asked: “Does her mother know of this?”

  “Assuredly not!” cried Garnett with a movement of disgust.

  “You must pardon me; but Mrs. Newell is a very ingenious woman.” Mr. Newell shook out his remaining crumbs and turned thoughtfully toward Garnett.

  “You believe it’s quite clear to Hermione that these people will use my refusal as a pretext for backing out of the marriage?”

  “Perfectly clear—she told me so herself.”

  “Doesn’t she consider the young man rather chicken-hearted?”

  “No; he has already put up a big fight for her, and you know the French look at these things differently. He’s only twenty-three and his marrying against his parents’ approval is in itself an act of heroism.”

  “Yes; I believe they look at it that way,” Mr. Newell assented. He rose and picked up the half-smoked cigar which he had laid on the bench beside him.

  “What do they wear at these French weddings, anyhow? A dress-suit, isn’t it?” he asked.

  The question was such a surprise to Garnett that for the moment he could only stammer out—“You consent then? I may go and tell her?”

  “You may tell my girl—yes.” He gave a vague laugh and added: “One way or another, my wife always gets what she wants.”

  VII

  MR. NEWELL’S consent brought with it no accompanying concessions. In the first flush of his success Garnett had pictured himself as bringing together the father and daughter, and hovering in an attitude of benediction over a family group in which Mrs. Newell did not very distinctly figure.