Part 33 (1/2)
She did her best, seeing already the anxious face of the nurse in the window behind. And as she got up to go, she said, ”I shall come again very soon. And when you go to Yorks.h.i.+re, I shall see you perhaps every day.”
He looked up in astonishment and delight, and she explained that at Scarfedale Manor, her aunts' old house, she would be only two or three miles from the high moorland vicarage whither he was soon to be moved.
”That will do more for me than doctors!” said Radowitz with decision.
Yet almost before she had reached the window opening on the balcony, his pain, mental and physical, had clutched him again. He did not look up as she waved farewell; and Sorell hurried her away.
Thenceforward she saw him almost every day, to Lady Langmoor's astonishment. Sorell too, and his relation to Connie, puzzled her greatly. Connie a.s.sured her with smiles that she was not in love with the handsome young don, and never thought of flirting with him. ”He was mother's friend, Aunt Sophia,” she would say, as though that settled the matter entirely. But Lady Langmoor could not see that it settled it at all. Mr. Sorell could not be much over thirty--the best time of all for falling in love. And here was Connie going to pictures with him, and the British Museum, and to visit the poor fellow in the nursing home. It was true that the aunt could never detect the smallest sign of love-making between them. And Connie was always putting forward that Mr. Sorell taught her Greek. As if that kind of thing wasn't one of the best and oldest gambits in the great game of matrimony! Lady Langmoor would have felt it her solemn duty to snub the young man had it been at all possible. But it was really not possible to snub any one possessed of such a courteous self-forgetting dignity. And he came of a good Anglo-Irish family too. Lady Langmoor had soon discovered that she knew some of his relations, and placed him socially to a T. But, of course, any notion of his marrying Connie, with her money, her rank, and her good looks, would be simply ridiculous, so ridiculous that Lady Langmoor soon ceased to think about it, accepted his visits, and began to like him on her own account.
One evening towards the end of the first week in July, a hansom drew up before a house in Portman Square. Douglas Falloden emerged from it, as the door was opened by a maidservant.
The house, which had been occupied at the beginning of the season by the family, was given over now to a charwoman and a couple of housemaids, the senior of whom looked a little scared at the prospect of having to wait on the magnificent gentleman who had just entered the house. In general, when Mr. Douglas came up to town in the absence of his family, he put up at his own very expensive club, and the servants in Portman Square were not troubled with him. But they, like every one else, knew that something was going wrong with the Fallodens.
Falloden walked into the deserted and dust-sheeted house, while the cabman brought in his portmanteau. ”Is Mr. Gregory here?” he enquired of the maid.
”Yes, sir, he is in the library. Please, sir, Mrs. O'Connor wants to know if you'll want dinner.”
Falloden impatiently said ”No,” and walked on down a long pa.s.sage to the library, which had been built out at the back of the house. Here the blinds had been drawn up, only to reveal the dusty desolation of an unused room, in which a few chairs had been uncovered, and a table cleared. A man rose from a chair beside the table, and he and Falloden shook hands. He was a round-faced and broad-shouldered person, with one of the unreadable faces developed by the life of a prominent solicitor, in contact with all sorts of clients and many varieties of business; and Falloden's sensitive pride had soon detected in his manner certain shades of expression to which the heir of Flood Castle was not accustomed.
”I am sorry to hear Sir Arthur is not well.” Mr. Gregory spoke politely, but perhaps without that accent of grave and even tragic concern which six months earlier he would have given to the same words. ”There is a great deal of heavy, and, I am afraid, disagreeable business to be done.”
”My father is not fit for it,” said Falloden abruptly. ”I must do the best I can.”
Mr. Gregory gave a sign of a.s.sent. He drew a packet of doc.u.ments from his pocket, and spreading out a letter from Sir Arthur Falloden on the table, proceeded to deal with the points in it seriatim. Falloden sat beside him, looking carefully through the various doc.u.ments handed to him, asking questions occasionally, and making notes of his own. In the dusty northern light of the room, his face had a curiously purple and congested look; and his eyes were dead tired. But he showed so much shrewdness in his various remarks that the solicitor secretly admitted his capacity, reflecting indeed once or twice that, young as he was, it would have been a good thing if his father had taken him into counsel earlier. After the discussion had lasted half an hour, Falloden pushed the papers away.
”I think I see. The broad facts are that my father can raise no more money, either on his securities, or on the land; his two banks are pressing him; and the Scotch mortgages must be paid. The estates, of course, will have to be sold. I am quite willing.”
”So I understand. But it will take time and the bank overdrafts are urgent. Mason's Bank declare that if their debt is not paid--or freshly secured--within a month from now, they will certainly take proceedings.
I must remind you they have been exceedingly forbearing.”
”And the amount?” Falloden consulted his papers.
”Forty thousand. The securities on which Sir Arthur obtained it are now not worth more than eight.”
The lawyer paused a moment, looked at his companion, and at last said--
”There are, of course, your own expectations from Lord Dagnall. I do not know whether you and your father have considered them. But I imagine it would be possible to raise money on them.”
Falloden laughed. The sound was a mixture of irritation and contempt.
”Uncommonly little! The fact is my uncle--at seventy-two--is philandering with a lady-housekeeper he set up a year ago. She seems to be bent on netting him, and my father thinks she'll do it. If she does, my uncle will probably find himself with an heir of his own. Anyway the value of my prospects is enormously less than it was. All the neighbours are perfectly aware of what is going on. Oh, I suppose he'll leave me something--enough to keep me out of the workhouse. But there's nothing to be got out of it now.”
There was another silence. Falloden pondered the figures before him.
”There are always the pictures,” he said at last, looking up.
The lawyer's face lightened.
”If you and Sir Arthur will sell! But as you know they are heirlooms, and you could stop it.”
”On the contrary, I am ready to agree to it,” said Falloden briefly.