The Ivory Gate, a new edition

'Accept? Oh! Accept? What can I do? What can I say – but accept?' He walked to the window, and looked out; I suppose he was admiring the trees in the square, which were certainly very beautiful in early July. Then he returned, his eyes humid.

'Aha!' Mr. Dering chuckled. 'I told you that I would make it impossible for you to marry on two hundred pounds a year. I waited till Elsie's birthday. Well? You will now be able to revise that little estimate of living on two hundred a year. Eh?'

'Mr. Dering,' said George, with breaking voice, 'I cannot believe it; I cannot understand it. I have not deserved it.'

'Shake hands, my Partner.'

The two men shook hands.

'Now sit down and let us talk a bit,' said Mr. Dering. 'I am old. I am past seventy. I have tried to persuade myself that I am still as fit for work as ever. But I have had warnings. I now perceive that they must be taken as warnings. Sometimes it is a little confusion of memory – I am not able to account for little things – I forget what I did yesterday afternoon. I suppose all old men get these reminders of coming decay. It means that I must reduce work and responsibility. I might give up business altogether and retire: I have money enough and to spare: but this is the third generation of a successful House, and I could not bear to close the doors, and to think that the Firm would altogether vanish. So I thought I would take a partner, and I began to look about me. Well – in brief, I came to the conclusion that I should find no young man better qualified than yourself for ability and for power of work and for all the qualities necessary for the successful conduct of such a House as this. Especially I considered the essential of good manners. I was early taught by my father that the greatest aid to success is good breeding. I trust that in this respect I have done justice to the teaching of one who was the most courtly of his time. You belong to an age of less ceremony and less respect to rank. But we are not always in a barrack or in a club. We are not all comrades or equals. There are those below to consider as well as those above. There are women: there are old men: you, my partner, have shown me that you can give to each the consideration, the deference, the recognition that he deserves. True breeding is the recognition of the individual. You are careful of the small things which smooth the asperities of business. In no profession, not even that of medicine, is a good manner more useful than in ours. And this you possess. – It also pleases me,' he added after a pause, 'to think that in making you my partner I am also promoting the happiness of a young lady I have known all her life.'

George murmured something. He looked more like a guilty schoolboy than a man just raised to a position most enviable. His cheeks were flushed and his hands trembled. Mr. Dering touched his bell.

'Checkley,' he said, when that faithful retainer appeared, 'I have already told you of my intention to take a partner. This is my new partner.'

Checkley changed colour. His old eyes – or was George wrong? – flashed with a light of malignity as he raised them. It made him feel uncomfortable – but only for a moment.

'My partner, Checkley,' repeated Mr. Dering.

'Oh!' His voice was dry and grating. 'Since we couldn't go on as before – Well, I hope you won't repent it.'

'You shall witness the signing of the deed, Checkley. Call in a clerk. So – there we have it, drawn, signed, and witnessed. Once more, my partner, shake hands.'

Elsie retired to her own room after the snub administered to her rising spirits. She soon began to sing again, being much too happy to be affected by anything so small. She went on with her portrait, preserving some, but not all, of the softness and benevolence which she had put into it, and thereby producing what is allowed to be an excellent portrait, but somewhat flattering. She herself knows very well that it is not flattering at all, but even lower than the truth, only the other people have never seen the lawyer in an expansive moment.

Now while she was thus engaged, her mind going back every other minute to her newly-acquired inheritance, a cab drove up to the house – the door flew open, and her lover – her George – flew into her arms.

'You here – George? Actually in the house? Oh! but you know – '

'I know – I know. But I could not possibly wait till this evening. My dear child, the most wonderful – the most wonderful thing – the most extraordinary thing – in the whole world has happened – a thing we could never hope and never ask – '

'Mr. Dering has told you, then?'

'What? Do you know?'

'Mr. Dering told me this morning. – Oh, George! isn't it wonderful?'

'Wonderful? It is like the last chapter of a novel!' This he said speaking as a fool, because the only last chapter in life is that in which Azrael crosses the threshold.

'Oh, George! – I have been walking in the air – I have been flying – I have been singing and dancing. I feel as if I had never before known what it was to be happy. Mr. Dering said something about having it settled – mind – it's all yours, George – yours as well as mine.'

'Yes,' said George, a little puzzled. 'I suppose in the eyes of the law it is mine, but then it is yours as well. All that is mine is yours.

'Oh! Mr. Dering said it was mine in the eyes of the law. What does it matter, George, what the stupid old law says?'

'Nothing, my dear – nothing at all.'

'It will be worth five hundred pounds a year very nearly. That, with your two hundred pounds a year, will make us actually comfortable after all our anxieties.'

'Five hundred a year? It will be worth four times that, I hope.'

'Four times? Oh, no! – that is impossible. But Mr. Dering told me that he could hardly get so much as four per cent., and I have made a sum and worked it out. Rule for simple interest: multiply the principal by the rate per cent., and again by the time, and divide by a hundred. It is quite simple. And what makes the sum simpler, you need only take one year.'

'What principal, Elsie, by what interest? You are running your little head against rules of arithmetic. Here there is no principal and no interest. It is a case of proceeds, and then division.'

'We will call it proceeds, if you like, George, but he called it interest. Anyhow, it comes to five hundred a year, very nearly; and with your two hundred – '

'I don't know what you mean by your five hundred a year. As for my two hundred, unless I am very much mistaken, that will very soon be two thousand.'

'Your two hundred will become – ? George, we are talking across each other.'

'Yes. What money of yours do you mean?'

'I mean the twelve thousand pounds that Mr. Dering holds for me – with accumulations – accumulations' – she began to sing the rhyme of the omnibus wheels – 'accumulations – ations – ations.'

'Twelve thousand pounds? Is this fairyland? Twelve thousand – ? I reel – I faint – I sink – I melt away. Take my hands – both my hands, Elsie – kiss me kindly – it's better than brandy – kindly kiss me. Twelve thousand pounds! with accumulations – '

' – ations – ations – ations,' she sung. 'Never before, George, have I understood the loveliness and the power of money. They were given to Mr. Dering by an anonymous person to be held for me – secretly. No one knows – not even, yet, my mother.'

'Oh! It is altogether too much – too much: once there was a poor but loving couple, and Fortune turned her wheel, and – You don't know – you most unsuspecting ignorant Thing – you can't guess – Oh, Elsie, I am a partner – Mr. Dering's partner!

They caught hands again – then they let go – then they sat down, and gazed upon each other.

'Elsie,' said George.

'George,' said Elsie.

'We can now marry like everybody else – but much better. We shall have furniture now.'

'All the furniture we shall want, and a house where we please. No contriving now – no pinching.'

'No self-denying for each other, my dear.'

'That's a pity, isn't it? – But, George, don't repine. The advantages may counterbalance the drawbacks. I think I see the cottage where we were going to live. It is in Islington: or near it – Barnsbury, perhaps: there is a little garden in front, and one at the back. There is always washing hung out to dry. I don't like the smell of suds. For dinner, one has cold Australian tinned meat for economy, not for choice. The rooms are very small, and the furniture is shabby, because it was cheap and bad to begin with. And when you come home – oh, George!' – she stuck her forefinger in her chalk, and drew two or three lines on his face – 'you look like that, so discontented, so grumpy, so gloomy. Oh, my dear, the advantages – they do so greatly outbalance the drawbacks; and George – you will love your wife all the more – I am sure you will – because she can always dress properly and look nice, and give you a dinner that will help to rest you from the work of the day.'

Once more this foolish couple fell into each other's arms and kissed again with tears and smiles and laughter.

'Who,' asked Mrs. Arundel, ringing the bell up-stairs, 'who is with Miss Elsie below?'

On hearing that it was Mr. George Austin, whose presence in the house was forbidden, Mrs. Arundel rose solemnly and awfully, and walked down the stairs. She had a clear duty before her. When she threw open the door, the lovers were hand in hand dancing round the room laughing – but the tears were running down Elsie's cheeks.

'Elsie,' said her mother, standing at the open door, 'perhaps you can explain this.'

'Permit me to explain,' said George.

'This gentleman, Elsie, has been forbidden the house.'

'One moment,' he began.