Part 18 (1/2)

”All right. Then I shall see you to-morrow morning in Lisle Street.

Good-bye.”

He jumped into a hansom, and was presently rattling away through the busy streets. How sweet and fresh was the air, even here in the midst of the misty and golden city! The early summer was abroad; there was a flush of green on the trees in the squares. When he got down to the Embankment, he was quite surprised by the beauty of the gardens; there were not many gardens in the towns he had chiefly been living in.

He dashed up the narrow wooden stairs.

”Look alive now, Waters: get my bath ready.”

”It is ready, sir.”

”And breakfast!”

”Whenever you please, sir.”

He took off his dust-smothered travelling-coat, and was about to fling it on the couch, when he saw lying there two pieces of some brilliant stuff that were strange to him.

”What are these things?”

”They were left, sir, by Mr. ----, of Bond Street, on approval. He will call this afternoon.”

”Tell him to go to the devil!” said Brand, briefly, as he walked off into his bedroom.

Presently he came back.

”Stay a bit,” said he; and he took up the two long strips of silk-embroidered stuff--Florentine work, probably, of about the end of the sixteenth century. The ground was a delicate yellowish-gray, with an initial letter worked in various colors over it. Mr. ----, of Bond Street, knew that Brand had often amused his idle hours abroad in picking up things like this, chiefly as presents to lady friends, and no doubt thought they would be welcome enough, even for bachelors'

rooms.

”Tell him I will take them.”

”But the price, sir?”

”Ask him his price; beat him down; and keep the difference.”

After bath and breakfast there was an enormous pile of correspondence awaiting him; for not a single letter referring to his own affairs had been forwarded to him for over two months. He had thrown his entire time and care into his work in the North. And now that these arrears had to be cleared off, he attacked the business with an obvious impatience.

Formerly he had been used to dawdle over his letters, getting through a good portion of the forenoon with them and conversations with Waters about Buckinghams.h.i.+re news. Now, even with that omniscient factotum by his side, his progress was slow, simply because he was hurried. He made dives here and there, without system, without settlement. At last, looking at his watch, he jumped up; it was half-past eleven.

”Some other time, Waters--some other time; the man must wait,” he said to the astonished but patient person beside him. ”If Lord Evelyn calls, tell him I shall look in at the Century to-night.”

”Yes, sir.”

Some half-hour thereafter he was standing in Park Lane, his heart beating somewhat quickly, his eyes fixed eagerly on two figures that were crossing the thoroughfare lower down to one of the gates leading into Hyde Park. These were Natalie Lind and the little Anneli. He had known that he would see her thus; he had imagined the scene a thousand times; he had pictured to himself every detail--the trees, the tall railings, the spring flowers in the plots, and the little rosy-cheeked German girl walking by her mistress's side; and yet, now that this familiar thing had come true, he trembled to behold it; he breathed quickly; he could not go forward to her and hold out his hand. Slowly, for they were walking slowly, he went along to the gate and entered after them; cautiously, lest she should turn suddenly and confront him with her eyes; drawn, and yet fearing to follow. She was talking with some animation to her companion; though even in this profound silence he could not hear the sound of her voice. But he could see the beautiful oval of her face! and sometimes, when she turned with a laugh to the little Anneli, he caught a glimpse of the black eyes and eyelashes, the smiling lips and brilliant teeth; and once or twice she put out the palm of her right hand with a little gesture which, despite her English dress, would have told a stranger that she was of foreign ways. But the look of welcome, the smile of reward that he had been looking forward to?

Well, Mr. Lind was in America; and during his absence his daughter saw but few visitors. There was no particular reason why, supposing that George Brand met Natalie in the street, he should not go up and shake hands with her; and many a time, in these mental pictures of his of her morning walk with the rosy-cheeked Anneli, he imagined himself confronting her under the shadow of the trees, and perhaps walking some way with her, to listen once more to the clear, low vibrations of her musical voice. But no sooner had he seen her come into Park Lane--the vision became real--than he felt he could not go up and speak to her. If he had met her by accident, perhaps he might; but to watch her, to entrap her, to break in on her wished-for isolation under false pretences--all that he suddenly felt to be impossible. He could follow her with his heart; but the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, the smile of her calm, beautiful, dark eyes, were as remote for him as if she, too, were beyond the broad Atlantic.

He was not much given to introspection and a.n.a.lysis; daring the past two months more especially he had been far too busy to be perpetually asking ”Why? why?”--the vice of indolence. It was enough that, in the cold and the wet, there was a fire in his heart that kept him glad with thinking of the fair days to come; and that, in the foggy afternoons or the lonely nights when he was alone, and perhaps despondent or impatient over the stupidity or the contumacy he had had to encounter, there came to him the soft murmur of a voice from far away--proud, sad, and yet full of consolation and hope:

”--But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant, Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present, That clothe yourself with the cold future air; When mother and father, and tender sister and brother, And the old live love that was shall be as ye, Dust and no fruit of loving life shall be.

--She shall be yet who is more than all these were, Than sister or wife or father unto us, or mother.”