The Lady of the Pool/Chapter 6
Chapter VI
There Was Somebody
Two worlds and half a dozen industries had conspired to shower gold on Calder Wentworth’s head. There was land in the family, brought by his grandmother; there was finance on the paternal side (whence came a Portuguese title, carefully eschewed by Calder); there had been a London street, half a watering-place, a South African mine, and the better part of an American railway. The street and the watering-place remained; the mine and the railway had been sold at the top of the market. About the same time the family name became Wentworth—it had been Stripes, which was felt to be absurd—and the family itself began to take an exalted place in society. The rise was the easier because, when old Mr. Stripes-Wentworth died, young Mr. Calder S. Wentworth became the only representative; and a rich young bachelor can rise lightly to heights inaccessible to the feet of less happily situated folk. It seemed part of Providence’s benevolence that when Lady Forteville asked how many “Stripes women” there were, the answer could be “None;” whereupon the countess at once invited Mr. Calder Wentworth to dinner. Calder went, and rolled his frog’s eyes with much amusement when the lady asked him to what Wentworths he belonged, for, as he observed to Miss Glyn, whom he had the pleasure of escorting, his Wentworths were an entirely new brand, and Lady Forteville knew it as well as if she had read the letters patent and invented the coat-of-arms.
“Mr. Wentworth—Mr. Merceron,” said Victor Sutton, with a wave of his hand.
“I believe I know an uncle of yours—an uncommon clever fellow,” said Calder, unfolding his napkin and glancing round the dining-room of the Themis Club.
“Oh, Uncle Van? Yes, we consider him our”
“Leading article? Quite so. I’ve heard a bit about you too—something about a canoe, eh?”
Charlie looked somewhat disturbed.
“Oughtn’t Sutton to have told me? Well, it’s too late now because I’ve told half a dozen fellows.”
“But there’s nothing to tell.”
“Well, I told it to old Thrapston—you don’t know him, do you? Cunningest old boy in London. Upon my honor, you know, I shouldn’t like to be like old Thrapston, not when I was getting old, you know. He’s too”
“Well, what did he say?” asked Victor.
“He said what you never had the sense to see, my boy; but I expect Mr. Merceron won’t be obliged to me for repeating it.”
“I should like to hear it,” said Charlie, with necessary politeness.
“Well, it’s not me, its old Thrapston; and if you say it’s wrong, I’ll believe you. Old Thrapston—hang it, Victor, that old man ought to be hanged! Why, only the other day I saw him”
“Do stick to the point,” groaned Victor.
“All right. Well, he said, ‘I’ll lay a guinea there was a’—and he winked his sinful old eye, you know, for all the world like a what-d’ye-call-it in a cathedral—one of those hideous—I say, what is the word, Victor? I saw ’em when Agatha took me—beg pardon, Merceron?”
Was the world full of Agathas? If so, it would be well not to start whenever one was mentioned. Charlie recovered himself.
“I think you must mean a gargoyle,” he said, wondering who this Agatha might be.
“Of course I do. Fancy forgetting that! Gargoyle, of course. Well, old Thrapston said, ‘I’ll lay a guinea there was a woman in that dashed summer house, Calder, my boy.’”
Victor Sutton’s eyes lighted with a gleam,
“Well, I’m hanged if I ever thought of that! Charlie, you held us all!”
“Bosh!” said Charlie Merceron. “There was no one there.”
“All right. But there ought to have been, you know—to give interest to the position.”
“Honor bright, Charlie?” asked Victor Sutton.
“Shut up, Sutton,” interposed Calder, “He’s not in the Divorce Court, Let’s change the subject.”
Charlie was in a difficulty, but the better course seemed to be to allow the subject to be changed, in spite of the wink that accompanied Calder’s suggestion.
“All right,” said Victor. “How is Miss Glyn, Wentworth?”
“Oh, she’s all right. She’s been in the country for a bit, but she’s back now.”
“And when is the happy event to be?”
Calder laid down his knife and fork and remarked deliberately:
“I haven’t, my dear boy, the least idea.”
“I should hurry her up,” laughed Sutton.
“I’d just like—now I should just like to put you in my shoes for half an hour, and see you hurry up Agatha.”
“She couldn’t eat me.”
“Eat you? No, but she’d flatten you out so that you’d go under that door and leave room for the jolly draught there is all the same.”
Sutton laughed complacently.
“Well, you’re a patient man,” he observed. “For my part, I like a thing to be off or on.”
It came to Charlie Merceron almost as a surprise to find that Victor’s impudence—he could call it by no other name—was not reserved for his juniors or for young men from the country; but Calder took it quite good-humoredly, contenting himself with observing,
“Well, it was very soon off in your case, wasn’t it, old fellow?”
Sutton flushed.
“I’ve told you before that that’s not true,” he said angrily.
Calder laughed.
“All right, all right. We used to think, once upon a time, Merceron, you know, that old Victor here was a bit smitten himself; but he hasn’t drugged my champagne yet, so of course, as he says, it was all a mistake.”
After dinner the three separated. Victor had to go to a party. Calder Wentworth proposed to Charlie that they should take a stroll together with a view to seeing whether, when they came opposite to the door of a music-hall, they would “feel like” dropping in to see part of the entertainment. Charlie agreed, and, having lit their cigars, they set out. He found his now friend amusing, and Calder, for his part, took a liking for Charlie, largely on account of his good looks; like many plain people, he was extremely sensitive to the influence of beauty in women and men alike.
“I say, old fellow,” he said, pressing Charlie’s arm as if he had known him all his life, “there was somebody in that summer-house, eh?”
Charlie turned with a smile and a blush. He felt confidential.
“Yes, there was, only Victor”
“Oh, I know. I nearly break his head whenever he mentions any girl I like.”
“You know what he’d have thought—and it wasn’t anything like that really.”
“Who was she, then?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Oh, I don’t mean her name, of course. But what was she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did she come from?”
“London, I believe.”
“Oh! I say, that’s a queer go, Merceron.”
“I don’t know what to think about it. She’s simply vanished,” said poor Charlie, and no one should wonder if his voice faltered a little. Calder Wentworth laughed at many things, but he did not laugh now at Charlie Merceron. Indeed he looked unusually grave.
“I should drop it,” he remarked. “It don’t look—well—healthy.”
“Ah, you’ve never seen her,” said Charlie.
“No, and I tell you what—it won’t be a bad thing if you don’t see her again.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re just in the state of mind to marry her.”
“And why shouldn’t I?”
Mr. Wentworth made no answer, and they walked on till they readied Piccadilly Circus. Then Charlie suddenly darted forward.
“Hullo, what’s up?” cried Calder, following him.
Charlie was talking eagerly to a very smart young lady who had just got down from an omnibus.
“By Jove! he can’t have found, her!” thought Calder.
It was not the unknown, but her friend Nettie Wallace, whom Charlie’s quick eye had discerned; and the next moment Willie Prime made his appearance. Charlie received them both almost with enthusiasm, and the news from Lang Marsh was asked and given. Calder drew near, and Charlie presented his friends to one another with the intent that he might get a word with Nettie while Calder engrossed her fiancé’s attention.
“Have—have you heard from Miss Brown lately?” he was just beginning, when Calder, who had been looking steadily at Nettie, burst out:
“Hullo, I say, Miss Wallace, we’ve met before, haven’t we? You know me, don’t you?”
Nettie laughed.
“Oh, yes, I know you, sir. You’re” She paused abruptly, and glanced from Charlie to Calder, and back from Calder to Charlie. Then she blushed very red indeed.
“Well, who am I?”
“I—I saw you at—at Miss Glyn’s, Mr. Wentworth.”
“’Course you did—that’s it;” and, looking curiously at the girl’s flushed face, he added: “Don’t be afraid to mention Miss Glyn; Mr. Merceron knows all about it.”
“All about it, does he, sir?” cried Nettie. “Well, I’m glad of that. I haven’t been easy in my mind ever since.”
Calder’s conformation of eye enabled him to express much surprise by facial expression, and at this moment he used his power to the full.
“Awfully kind of you, Miss Wallace,” said he, “but I don’t see where your responsibility comes in. Ever since what?”
Nettie shot a glance of inquiry at Charlie, but here too she met only bewilderment.
“Does he know that Miss Glyn is” she began.
“Engaged to me? Certainly.”
“Oh!”
Willie stood by in silence. He had never heard of this Miss Glyn. Charlie, puzzled as he was, was too intent on Miss Brown to spend much time wondering why Miss Glyn’s affairs should have been a trouble to Nettie.
“You’ll let me know if you hear about her, won’t you?” he asked in a low voice.
Nettie gave up the hope of understanding. She shook her head.
“I’ll ask her, if I see her, whether she wishes it,” she whispered back; and, with a hasty good-night, she seized Willie’s arm and hurried him off. Charlie was left alone with Calder.
“What the deuce did she mean?” asked Calder.
“I don’t know,” answered Charlie.
“Where did you meet her?”
“Oh, down at home. The fellow she was with is a son of a tenant of ours; she’s going to marry him.”
“She’s a nice little girl, but I’m hanged if I know what she meant.”
And, as the one was thinking exclusively of Agatha Glyn, and the other spared a thought for no one but Agatha Brown, they did not arrive at an explanation.
One result, however, that chance encounter had. The next morning Miss Agatha Glyn received a letter in the following terms:
“Madam:—I hope you will excuse me intruding, but I think you would wish to know that Mr. Charles Merceron is in London, and that I met him this evening with Mr. Wentworth. As you informed me that you had passed Mr. Merceron on the road two or three times during your visit to Lang Marsh, I think you may wish to be informed of the above. I may add that Mr. Merceron is aware that you are engaged to Mr. Wentworth, but I could not make out how far he was aware of what happened at Lang Marsh. I think he does not know it. Of course you will know whether Mr. Wentworth is aware of your visit there. I should be much obliged if you would be so kind as to tell me what to say if I meet the gentlemen again. Mr. Merceron is very pressing in asking me for news of you. I am to be married in a fortnight from the present date, and I am, Madam, yours respectfully,
Nettie Wallace.”
“In London, and with Calder!” exclaimed Agatha Glyn. “Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! What is to be done? I wish I’d never gone near the wretched place!”
Then she took up the letter and re-read it.
“He and I mustn’t meet, that’s all,” she said.
Then she slowly tore the letter into very small pieces and put them in the waste-paper basket.
“Calder has no idea where I was,” she said, and she sat down by the window and looked out over the Park for nearly ten minutes.
“Ah, well! I should like to see him just once again. Dear old Pool.” said she.
Then she suddenly began to laugh—an action only to be excused in one in her position, and burdened with her sins, by the fact of her having at the moment a peculiarly vivid vision of Millie Bushell going head first out of a canoe.