The Trespasser, Complete - Gilbert Parker
Gaston turned upon the House, and flashed a glance towards Lord Faramond,
who, turned round on the Treasury Bench, was looking up at him. He began
slowly to pit against his former startling admissions the testimony of
his few principles, and to buttress them on every side with apposite
observations, naive, pungent. Presently there came a poignant edge to his
trailing tones. After giving the subject new points of view, showing him
to have studied Whitechapel as well as Kicking Horse Pass, he contended
that no social problem could be solved by a bill so crudely radical, so
impractical.
He was saying: "In the history of the British Parliament--" when some
angry member cried out, "Who coached you?"
Gaston's quick eye found the man.
"Once," he answered instantly, "one honourable gentleman asked that of
another in King Charles's Parliament, and the reply then is mine
now--'You, sir!'"
"How?" returned the puzzled member.
Gaston smiled:
"The nakedness of the honourable gentleman's mind!"
The game was in his hands. Lord Faramond twisted a shoulder with
satisfaction, tossed a whimsical look down the line of the Treasury
Bench, and from that Bench came unusual applause.
"Where the devil did he get it?" queried a Minister.
"Out on the buffalo-trail," replied Lord Faramond. "Good fellow!"
In the Ladies Gallery, Delia clasped her mother's hand with delight; in
the Strangers Gallery, a man said softly, "Not so bad, Cadet."
Alice Wingfield's face had a light of aching pleasure. "Gaston, Gaston!"
she said, in a whisper heard only by the woman sitting next to her, who
though a stranger gave a murmur of sympathy.
Gaston made his last effort in a comparison of the state of the English
people now and before she became Cromwell's Commonwealth, and then
incisively traced the social development onwards. It was the work of a
man with a dramatic nature and a mathematical turn. He put the time, the
manners, the movements, the men, as in a picture.
Presently he grew scornful. His words came hotly, like whip-lashes. He
rose to force and power, though his voice was never loud, rather
concentrated, resonant. It dropped suddenly to a tone of persuasiveness
and conciliation, and declaring that the bill would be merely vicious
where it meant to be virtuous, ended with the question:
"Shall we burn the house to roast the pig?"
"That sounds American," said the member for Burton-Halsey, "but he hasn't
an accent. Pig is vulgar though--vulgar."
"Make it Lamb--make it Lamb!" urged his neighbour.
Meanwhile both sides applauded. Maiden speeches like this were not
common. Lord Faramond turned round to him. Another member made way and
Gaston leaned towards the Premier, who nodded and smiled. "Most excellent
buffalo!" he said.
"One day we will chain you--to the Treasury Bench."
Gaston smiled.
"You are thought prudent, sir!"
"Ah! an enemy hath said this."
Gaston looked towards the Ladies Gallery. Delia's eyes were on him; Alice
was gone.
A half-hour later he stood in the lobby, waiting for Mrs. Gasgoyne, Lady
Dargan, and Delia to come. He had had congratulations in the House; he
was having them now. Presently some one touched him on the arm.
"Not so bad, Cadet."
Gaston turned and saw his uncle. They shook hands. "You've a gift that
way," Ian Belward continued, "but to what good? Bless you, the pot on the
crackling thorns! Don't you find it all pretty hollow?"
Gaston was feeling reaction from the nervous work. "It is exciting."
"Yes, but you'll never have it again as to-night. The place reeks with
smugness, vanity, and drudgery. It's only the swells--Derby, Gladstone,
and the few--who get any real sport out of it. I can show you much more
amusing things."
"For instance?"
"'Hast thou forgotten me?' You hungered for Paris and Art and the joyous
life. Well, I'm ready. I want you. Paris, too, is waiting, and a good
cuisine in a cheery menage. Sup with me at the Garrick, and I'll tell
you. Come along. Quis separabit?"
"I have to wait for Mrs. Gasgoyne--and Delia."
"Delia! Delia! Goddess of proprieties, has it come to that!"
He saw a sudden glitter in Gaston's eyes, and changed his tone.
"Well, an' a man will he will, and he must be wished good-luck. So,
good-luck to you! I'm sorry, though, for that cuisine in Paris, and the
grand picnic at Fontainebleau, and Moban and Cerise. But it can't be
helped."
He eyed Gaston curiously. Gaston was not in the least deceived. His uncle
added presently, "But you will have supper with me just the same?"
Gaston consented, and at this point the ladies appeared. He had a thrill
of pleasure at hearing their praises, but, somehow, of all the fresh
experiences he had had in England, this, the weightiest, left him least
elated. He had now had it all: the reaction was begun, and he knew it.
"Well, Ian Belward, what mischief are you at now?" said Mrs. Gasgoyne.
"A picture merely, and to offer homage. How have you tamed our lion, and
how sweetly does he roar! I feed him at my Club to-night."
"Ian Belward, you are never so wicked as when you ought most to be
decent.--I wish I knew your place in this picture," she added brusquely.
"Merely a little corner at their fireside." He nodded towards Delia and
Gaston.
"The man has sense, and Delia is my daughter!"
"Precisely why I wish a place in their affections."
"Why don't you marry one of the women you have--spoiled, and spend the
rest of your time in living yourself down? You are getting old."
"For their own sakes, I don't. Put that to my credit. I'll have but one
mistress only as the sand gets low. I've been true to her."
"You, true to anything!"
"The world has said so."
"Nonsense! You couldn't be."
"Visit my new picture in three months--my biggest thing. You will say my
mistress fares well at my hands."
"Mere talk. I have seen your mistress, and before every picture I have
thought of those women! A thing cannot be good at your price: so don't
talk that sentimental stuff to me."
"Be original; you said that to me thirty years ago."
"I remember perfectly: that did not require much sense."
"No; you tossed it off, as it were. Yet I'd have made you a good husband.
You are the most interesting woman I've ever met."
"The compliment is not remarkable. Now, Ian Belward, don't try to say
clever things. And remember that I will have no mischief-making."
"At thy command--"
"Oh, cease acting, and take Sophie to her carriage." Two hours later,
Delia Gasgoyne sat in her bedroom wondering at Gaston's abstraction
during the drive home. Yet she had a proud elation at his success, and a
happy tear came to her eye.
Meanwhile Gaston was supping with his uncle. Ian was in excellent
spirits: brilliant, caustic, genial, suggestive. After a little while
Gaston rose to the temper of his host. Already the scene in the Commons
was fading from him, and when Ian proposed Paris immediately, he did not
demur. The season was nearly over,
Ian said; very well, why remain? His attendance at the House? Well, it
would soon be up for the session. Besides, the most effective thing he
could do was to disappear for the time. Be unexpected--that was the key
to notoriety. Delia Gasgoyne? Well, as Gaston had said, they were to meet
in the Mediterranean in September; meanwhile a brief separation would be
good for both. Last of all--he did not wish to press it--but there was a
promise!
Gaston answered quietly, at last: "I will redeem the promise."
"When?"
"Within thirty-six hours."
"That is, you will be at my studio in Paris within thirty-six hours from
now?"
"That is it."
"Good! I shall start at eight to-morrow morning. You will bring your
horse, Cadet?"
"Yes, and Brillon."
"He isn't necessary." Ian's brow clouded slightly.
"Absolutely necessary."
"A fantastic little beggar. You can get a better valet in France. Why
have one at all?"
"I shall not decline from Brillon on a Parisian valet. Besides, he comes
as my camarade."
"Goth! Goth! My friend the valet! Cadet, you're a wonderful fellow, but
you'll never fit in quite."
"I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me." Ian smiled to himself.
"He has tasted it all--it's not quite satisfying--revolution next! What a
smash-up there'll be! The romantic, the barbaric overlaps. Well, I shall
get my picture out of it, and the estate too."
Gaston toyed with his wine-glass, and was deep in thought. Strange to
say, he was seeing two pictures. The tomb of Sir Gaston in the little
church at Ridley: A gipsy's van on the crest of a common, and a girl
standing in the doorway.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Down in her heart, loves to be mastered
I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me
Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love
Live and let live is doing good
THE TRESPASSER
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 3.
XII. HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS XIII. HE JOURNEYS AFAR XIV. IN
WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED XV. WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE
GARDEN XVI. WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S XVII. THE MAN AND
THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE XVIII. "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
CHAPTER XII
HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
The next morning he went down to the family solicitor's office. He had
done so, off and on, for weeks. He spent the time in looking through old
family papers, fishing out ancient documents, partly out of curiosity,
partly from an unaccountable presentiment. He had been there about an
hour this morning when a clerk brought him a small box, which, he said,
had been found inside another box belonging to the Belward-Staplings, a
distant branch of the family. These had asked for certain ancient papers
lately, and a search had been made, with this result. The little box was
not locked, and the key was in it. How the accident occurred was not
difficult to imagine. Generations ago there had probably been a
conference of the two branches of the family, and the clerk had
inadvertently locked the one box within the other. This particular box of
the Belward-Staplings was not needed again. Gaston felt that here was
something. These hours spent among old papers had given him strange
sensations, had, on the one hand, shown him his heritage; but had also
filled him with the spirit of that by-gone time. He had grown further
away from the present. He had played his part as in a drama: his real
life was in the distant past and out in the land of the heathen.
Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with a
faded tape. He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands. He
saw his own name on the outside of one: "Sir Gaston Robert Belward." And
there was added: "Bart." He laughed. Well, why not complete the
reproduction? He was an M. P.--why not a Baronet? He knew how it was
done. There were a hundred ways. Throw himself into the arbitration
question between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand pounds
of--his grandfather's--money on the Party? His reply to himself was
cynical: the game was not worth the candle. What had he got out of it
all? Money? Yes: and he enjoyed that--the power that it gave--thoroughly.
The rest? He knew that it did not strike as deep as it ought: the family
tradition, the social scheme--the girl.
"What a brute I am!" he said. "I'm never wholly of it. I either want to
do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsy as
I did so many years."
The gipsy! As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had done
last night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of--how well he
remembered her name!--of Andree.
He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed. "Well, well, but it is
droll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the
Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch for
change. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this
moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas.
Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?--Jove, I thirst for a
swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston,
games! Why the devil did little Joe worry at being made 'move on'? I've
got 'move on' in every pore: I'm the Wandering Jew. Oh, a gentleman born
am I! But the Romany sweats from every inch of you, Gaston Belward! What
was it that sailor on the Cyprian said of the other? 'For every hair of
him was rope-yarn, and every drop of blood Stockholm tar!'"
He opened a paper. Immediately he was interested. Another; then, quickly,
two more; and at last, getting to his feet with an exclamation, he held a
document to the light, and read it through carefully. He was alone in the
room. He calmly folded it up, put it in his pocket, placed the rest of
the papers back, locked the box, and passing into the next room, gave it
to the clerk. Then he went out, a curious smile on his face. He stopped
presently on the pavement.
"But it wouldn't hold good, I fancy, after all these years. Yet Law is a
queer business. Anyhow, I've got it."
An hour later he called on Mrs. Gasgoyne and Delia. Mrs. Gasgoyne was not
at home. After a little while, Gaston, having listened to some extracts
from the newspapers upon his "brilliant, powerful, caustic speech,
infinite in promise of an important career," quietly told her that he was
starting for Paris, and asked when they expected to go abroad in their
yacht. Delia turned pale, and could not answer for a moment. Then she
became very still, and as quietly answered that they expected to get away
by the middle of August. He would join them? Yes, certainly, at
Marseilles, or perhaps, Gibraltar. Her manner, so well-controlled, though
her features seemed to shrink all at once, if it did not deceive him,
gave him the wish to say an affectionate thing. He took her hand and said
it. She thanked him, then suddenly dropped her fingers on his shoulder,
and murmured with infinite gentleness and pride:
"You will miss me; you ought to!"
He drew the hand down.
"I could not forget you, Delia," he said.
Her eyes came up quickly, and she looked steadily, wonderingly at him.
"Was it necessary to say that?"
She was hurt--inexpressibly,--and she shrank. He saw that she
misunderstood him; but he also saw that, on the face of it, the phrase
was not complimentary. His reply was deeply kind, effective. There was a
pause--and the great moment for them both passed. Something ought to have
happened. It did not. If she had had that touch of abandon shown when she
sang "The Waking of the Fire," Gaston might, even at this moment, have
broken his promise to his uncle; but, somehow, he knew himself slipping
away from her. With the tenderness he felt, he still knew that he was
acting; imitating, reproducing other, better, moments with her. He felt
the disrespect to her, but it could not be helped--it could not be
helped.
He said that he would call and say good-bye to her and Mrs. Gasgoyne at
four o'clock. Then he left. He went to his chambers, gave Jacques
instructions, did some writing, and returned at four. Mrs. Gasgoyne had
not come back. She had telegraphed that she would not be in for lunch.
There was nothing remarkable in Gaston's and Delia's farewell. She
thought he looked worn, and ought to have change, showing in every word
that she trusted him, and was anxious that he should be, as she put it
gaily, "comfy." She was composed. The cleverest men are blind in the
matter of a woman's affections; and Gaston was only a mere man, after
all. He thought that she had gone about as far in the way of feeling as
she could go.
Nevertheless, in his hansom, he frowned, and said: "I oughtn't to go. But
I'm choking here. I can't play the game an hour longer without a change.
I'll come back all right. I'll meet her in the Mediterranean after my
kick-up, and it'll be all O. K. Jacques and I will ride down through
Spain to Gibraltar, and meet the Kismet there. I shall have got rid of
this restlessness then, and I'll be glad enough to settle down, pose for
throne and constitution, cultivate the olive branch, and have family
prayers."
At eight o'clock he appeared at Ridley Court, and bade his grandfather
and grandmother good-bye. They were full of pride, and showed their
affection in indirect ways--Sir William most by offering his opinion on
the Bill and quoting Gaston frequently; Lady Belward, by saying that next
year she would certainly go up to town--she had not done so for five
years! They both agreed that a scamper on the Continent would now be good
for him. At nine o'clock he passed the rectory, on his way, strange to
note, to the church. There was one light burning, but it was not in the
study nor in Alice's window. He supposed they had not returned. He paused
and thought. If anything happened, she should know. But what should
happen? He shook his head. He moved on to the church. The doors were
unlocked. He went in, drew out a little pocket-lantern, lit it, and
walked up the aisle.
"A sentimental business this: I don't know why I do it," he thought.
He stopped at the tomb of Sir Gaston Belward, put his hand on it, and
stood looking at it.
"I wonder if there is anything in it?" he said aloud: "if he does
influence me? if we've got anything to do with each other? What he did I
seem to know somehow, more or less. A little dwarf up in my brain drops
the nuts down now and then. Well, Sir Gaston Belward, what is going to be
the end of all this? If we can reach across the centuries, why,
good-night and goodbye to you. Good-bye."
He turned and went down the aisle. At the door a voice, a whispering
voice, floated to him: "Good-bye."
He stopped short and listened. All was still. He walked up the aisle, and
listened again.-Nothing! He stood before the tomb, looking at it
curiously. He was pale, but collected. He raised the light above his
head, and looked towards the altar.--Nothing! Then he went to the door
again, and paused.--Nothing!
Outside he said
"I'd stake my life I heard it!"
A few minutes afterwards, a girl rose up from behind the organ in the
chancel, and felt her way outside. It was Alice Wingfield, who had gone
to the church to pray. It was her good-bye which had floated down to
Gaston.
CHAPTER XIII
HE JOURNEYS AFAR
Politicians gossiped. Where was the new member? His friends could not
tell, further than that he had gone abroad. Lord Faramond did not know,
but fetched out his lower lip knowingly.
"The fellow has instinct for the game," he said. Sketches, portraits were
in the daily and weekly journals, and one hardy journalist even gave an
interview--which had never occurred. But Gaston remained a picturesque
nine-days' figure, and then Parliament rose for the year.
Meanwhile he was in Paris, and every morning early he could be seen with
Jacques riding up the Champs Elysee and out to the Bois de Boulogne.
Every afternoon at three he sat for "Monmouth" or the "King of Ys" with
his horse in his uncle's garden.
Ian Belward might have lived in a fashionable part; he preferred the
Latin Quarter, with incursions into the other at fancy. Gaston lived for
three days in the Boulevard Haussman, and then took apartments, neither
expensive nor fashionable, in a quiet street. He was surrounded by
students and artists, a few great men and a host of small men:
Collarossi's school here and Delacluse's there: models flitting in and
out of the studios in his court-yard, who stared at him as he rode, and
sought to gossip with Jacques--accomplished without great difficulty.
Jacques was transformed. A cheerful hue grew on his face. He had been an
exile, he was now at home. His French tongue ran, now with words in the
patois of Normandy, now of Brittany; and all with the accent of French
Canada, an accent undisturbed by the changes and growths of France. He
gossiped, but no word escaped him which threw any light on his master's
history.
Soon, in the Latin Quarter, they were as notable as they had been at
Ridley Court or in London. On the Champs Elysee side people stared at the
two: chiefly because of Gaston's splendid mount and Jacques's strange
broncho. But they felt that they were at home. Gaston's French was not
perfect, but it was enough for his needs. He got a taste of that freedom
which he had handed over to the dungeons of convention two years before.
He breathed. Everything interested him so much that the life he had led
in England seemed very distant.
He wrote to Delia, of course. His letters were brief, most interesting,
not tenderly intimate, and not daily. From the first they puzzled her a
little, and continued to do so; but because her mother said, "What an
impossible man!" she said, "Perfectly possible! Of course he is not like
other men; he is a genius."
And the days went on.
Gaston little loved the purlieus of the Place de l'Opera. One evening at
a club in the Boulevard Malesherbes bored him. It was merely
Anglo-American enjoyment, dashed with French drama. The Bois was more to
his taste, for he could stretch his horse's legs; but every day he could
be found before some simple cafe in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth, and
watching the gay, light life about him. He sat up with delight to see an
artist and his "Madame" returning from a journey in the country, seated
upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they listed
with unabashed simplicity. He dined often at the little Hotel St. Malo
near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played the host,
father, critic, patron, comrade--often benefactor--to his bons enfants.
He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes, made friends, and was
in all as a savage--or a much-travelled English gentleman.
His uncle Ian had introduced him here as at other places of the kind,
and, whatever his ulterior object was, had an artist's pleasure at seeing
a layman enjoy the doings of Paris art life. Himself lived more
luxuriously. In an avenue not far from the Luxembourg he had a small
hotel with a fine old-fashioned garden behind it, and here distinguished
artists, musicians, actors, and actresses came at times.
The evening of Gaston's arrival he took him to a cafe and dined him, and
afterwards to the Boullier--there, merely that he might see; but this
place had nothing more than a passing interest for him. His mind had the
poetry of a free, simple--even wild-life, but he had no instinct for vice
in the name of amusement. But the later hours spent in the garden under
the stars, the cheerful hum of the boulevards coming to them distantly,
stung his veins like good wine. They sat and talked, with no word of
England in it at all, Jacques near, listening.
Ian Belward was at his best: genial, entertaining, with the art of the
man of no principles, no convictions, and a keen sense of life's sublime
incongruities. Even Jacques, whose sense of humour had grown by long
association with Gaston, enjoyed the piquant conversation. The next
evening the same. About ten o'clock a few men dropped in: a sculptor,
artists, and Meyerbeer, an American newspaper correspondent--who,
however, was not known as such to Gaston.
This evening Ian determined to make Gaston talk. To deepen a man's love
for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener--he passes from
the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of
England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did
so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French. But
as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques make
a quick expression of dissent. He smiled. He had made some mistake in
detail. Now, Jacques had been in his young days in Quebec the village
story-teller; one who, by inheritance or competency, becomes
semi-officially a raconteur for the parish; filling in winter evenings,
nourishing summer afternoons, with tales, weird, childlike, daring.
Now Gaston turned and said to Jacques:
"Well, Brillon, I've forgotten, as you see; tell them how it was."
Two hours later when Jacques retired on some errand, amid ripe applause,
Ian said:
"You've got an artist there, Cadet: that description of the fight with
the loop garoo was as good as a thing from Victor Hugo. Hugo must have
heard just such yarns, and spun them on the pattern. Upon my soul, it's
excellent stuff. You've lived, you two."
Another night Ian Belward gave a dinner, at which were present an
actress, a singer of some repute, the American journalist, and others.
Something that was said sent Gaston's mind to the House of Commons.
Presently he saw himself in a ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the
Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd
dream. He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was
telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in "Fedora,"
unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and
eyes like daggers, called him a bear. This brought him to him self, and
he swam with the enjoyment. He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished
and hoped. Gaston did not respond eagerly to the charms of Mademoiselle
Cerise and Madame Juliette.