In the Year of Jubilee

‘But how you do work, Mr. Crewe! It’s marvellous. And yet you look so well,—you have really a seaside colour!’

‘I never ailed much since I can remember. The harder I work, the better I feel.’

‘I, too, have always been rather proud of my constitution.’ Her eyes dropped. ‘But then I have led a life of idleness. Couldn’t you make me useful in some way? Set me to work! I am convinced I should be so much happier. Let me help you, Mr. Crewe. I write a pretty fair hand, don’t I?’

Crewe smiled at her, made a sound as if clearing his throat, grasped his knee, and was on the very point of momentous utterance, when the door opened. Turning his head impatiently, he saw, not the clerk whose duty it was to announce people, but a lady, much younger than Mrs. Damerel, and more fashionably dressed, who for some reason had preferred to announce herself.

‘Why do you come in like that?’ Crewe demanded, staring at her. ‘I’m engaged.’

‘Are you indeed?’

‘You ought to send in your name.

‘They said you had a lady here, so I told them another would make no difference.—How do you do, Mrs. Damerel? It’s so long since I had the pleasure of seeing you.’

Beatrice French stepped forward, smiling ominously, and eyeing first Crewe then his companion with curiosity of the frankest impertinence. Mrs. Damerel stood up.

‘We will speak of our business at another time, Mr. Crewe.’

Crewe, red with anger, turned upon Beatrice.

‘I tell you I am engaged—’

‘To Mrs. Damerel?’ asked the intruder airily.

‘You might suppose,’—he addressed the elder lady,—‘that this woman has some sort of hold upon me—’

‘I’m sure I hope not,’ said Mrs. Damerel, ‘for your own sake.’

‘Nothing of the kind. She has pestered me a good deal, and it began in this way.’

Beatrice gave him so fierce a look, that his tongue faltered.

‘Before you tell that little story,’ she interposed, ‘you had better know what I’ve come about. It’s a queer thing that Mrs. Damerel should be here; happens more conveniently than things generally do. I had something to tell you about her. You may know it, but most likely you don’t.—You remember,’ she faced the other listener, ‘when I came to see you a long time ago, I said it might be worth while to find out who you really were. I haven’t given much thought to you since then, but I’ve got hold of what I wanted, as I knew I should.’

Crewe did not disguise his eagerness to hear the rest. Mrs. Damerel stood like a statue of British respectability, deaf and blind to everything that conflicts with good-breeding; stony-faced, she had set her lips in the smile appropriate to one who is braving torture.

‘Do you know who she is—or not?’ Beatrice asked of Crewe.

He shuffled, and made no reply.

‘Fanny has just told me in a letter; she got it from her husband. Our friend here is the mother of Horace Lord and of Nancy. She ran away from her first husband, and was divorced. Whether she really married afterwards, I don’t quite know; most likely not. At all events, she has run through her money, and wants her son to set her up again.’

For a few seconds Mrs. Damerel bore the astonished gaze of her admirer, then, her expression scarcely changing, she walked steadily to the door and vanished. The silence was prolonged till broken by Beatrice’s laugh.

‘Has she been bamboozling you, old man? I didn’t know what was going on. You had bad luck with the daughter; shouldn’t wonder if the mother would suit you better, all said and done.’

Crewe seated himself and gave vent to his feelings in a phrase of pure soliloquy: ‘Well, I’m damned!’

‘I cut in just at the right time, did I?—No malice. I’ve had my hit back at her, and that’s enough.’

As the man of business remained absorbed in his thoughts, Beatrice took a chair. Presently he looked up at her, and said savagely:

‘What the devil do you want?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then take it and go.’

But Beatrice smiled, and kept her seat.

CHAPTER 5

Nancy stood before her husband with a substantial packet in brown paper. It was after breakfast, at the moment of their parting.

‘Here is something I want you to take, and look at, and speak about the next time you come.’

‘Ho, ho! I don’t like the look of it.’ He felt the packet. ‘Several quires of paper here.’

‘Be off, or you’ll miss the train.’

‘Poor little girl! Et tu!’

He kissed her affectionately, and went his way. In the ordinary course of things Nancy would not have seen him again for ten days or a fortnight. She expected a letter very soon, but on the fourth evening Tarrant’s fingers tapped at the window-pane. In his hand was the brown paper parcel, done up as when he received it.

Nancy searched his face, her own perturbed and pallid.

‘How long have you been working at this?’

‘Nearly a year. But not every day, of course. Sometimes for a week or more I could get no time. You think it bad?’

‘No,’—puff—‘not in any sense’—puff—‘bad. In one sense, it’s good. But’—puff—‘that’s a private sense; a domestic sense.’

‘The question is, dear, can it be sold to a publisher.’

‘The question is nothing of the kind. You mustn’t even try to sell it to a publisher.’

‘Why not? You mean you would be ashamed if it came out. But I shouldn’t put my own name to it. I have written it only in the hope of making money, and so helping you. I’ll put any name to it you like.’

Tarrant smoked for a minute or two, until his companion gave a sign of impatience. He wore a very good-humoured look.

‘It’s more than likely you might get the thing accepted—’

‘Oh, then why not?’ she interrupted eagerly, with bright eyes.

‘Because it isn’t literature, but a little bit of Nancy’s mind and heart, not to be profaned by vulgar handling. To sell it for hard cash would be horrible. Leave that to the poor creatures who have no choice. You are not obliged to go into the market.’

‘But, Lionel, if it is a bit of my mind and heart, it must be a good book. You have often praised books to me just on that account because they were genuine.’