Under Two Skies (4 page)

This letter she kept in front of her on the desk after she had poured everything else back into the bag. It bore the postmark of an English town which, until the other day, had been no more than a name to her. It was superscribed in a firm, businesslike, masculine hand. Without doubt it was from Jim's father! Miss Jenny toyed musingly with the envelope. She tried to guess the contents; she even held the letter up to the light; but the paper of the envelope was provokingly opaque. If the letter itself was written on such thick paper it must be a pretty short letter. It has been said that Genevieve was naturally inquisitive; other un-fortunate qualities of hers combined to strengthen the temptation now thrown in her way.

Perhaps the drowsy stillness of the store and her entire solitude fed that temptation; perhaps, on the contrary, she argued that she had almost' a right to read the letters of the man she meant to marry next
week; or it may even have crossed her mind that possibly she held in her hands words of forgiveness from father to son, and that in this case Providence had clearly reserved it for her to break the good news to Jim. In any case, the fact remains that she opened the envelope with a paper-knife, and so cleverly that she separated the flap without tearing it. Having done this she was startled. She told herself that she had done it without thinking. This was partly true, for she made more bones about reading the letter now that it was opened than about opening it. It may have been the sight of a gum-bottle and brush among the ink-stands that helped to decide her the wrong way.

When Genevieve Howard had read three lines of the letter to the man she had promised to marry, she sank forward on the sloping desk as if in a swoon, and the letter fluttered to the floor. There it lay in the dust—after all, not much more than the three lines that had been read.

“Dear James,” the letter ran, “when I refused to see you or communicate with you any more, after your disgraceful marriage with an opera singer, I took the step after due deliberation. My decision was therefore irrevocable, and I am sorry you again compel me to emphasise it. I am not surprised to learn that this woman has proved your final ruin. That you have separated from her and left the stage may possibly be
for your comparative good, unless you once more go from bad to worse. But I must repeat, and I trust for the last time, that you cheat and deceive yourself in looking to a reconciliation, no matter at how distant a date, with—your father.”

A jingle of spurs sounded along the verandah outside. The mail-boy re-entered the store.

“I'll take the bag now,” said this young Australian; and he was walking off with it when Miss Howard started up from the desk with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, and stopped him.

“Bring it to me!” she cried. “There is a letter in the bag that must not go!”

She cut the string, extracted the letter addressed to Clinton Browne, and tore it into a hundred fragments before the mail-boy's eyes. He saw her tie up and seal the bag once more; he saw her hands tremble so that she burnt herself with the sealing-wax. In his uncouth way he lent a hand; and he went out and told all the men at the hut that “his girl” was certainly “taken worse.” Nor did Miss Jenny's white face that evening escape the notice of her brother-in-law, though he said nothing until she told him that she had given up the idea of rail from Hay to
Albury viâ Wagga
, and so on, in favour of the more direct and cheaper coach journey to Deniliquin; and then he merely praised her economy, which was after his own heart.

VI.

On the railway platform at Wagga-Wagga there was to be seen daily, right through the busy time of the Christmas holidays, and principally at the hour when the train came in from Hay, a man whose appearance, at first gentlemanlike and irreproachable in point of dress, became rapidly shabby-genteel. This man attracted attention at first by reason of his good looks, and at last because people remembered his good looks, and wondered what had become of them. His expression, however, forbade inquiry; and as he never was seen in even the primary and confidential stage of intoxication (being evidently a teetotaller, since he was sober on Christmas Day) he was left unmolested. Just before he disappeared from Wagga, towards the end of January, this man presented an appearance that is familiar enough in cities: he had good clothes on his back and no money to live up to them; his cheeks were sunken, his chin stubbly, his linen grimy. At the first glance the man looked well to do; at the second, you could see that he was starving.

About a fortnight later the same man walked into the store at Macdonald's station, and young Parker cried out in surprise across the ledger—

“Jim-of-the-Whim!”

There was nothing surprising about Jim's return, though he had never before stayed away quite so long. What was surprising was the urban cut and texture of his clothes. Parker attempted to interrogate him lightly on the point, but got short answers. The fact was, the clothes were Jim's wedding garments, which had been made for him immediately after his arrival in Wagga, and which he would not part with though everything else had to go to buy him bread, while he waited for the bride who never came.

Parker gave up the dress riddle, and informed Jim that he had come back in the nick of time, his successor at the whim having that very morning rolled up his swag, got his cheque, and gone.

At the news Jim's eyes lighted up ever so little.

“Is the little cat there still, sir?” he asked suddenly.

“He was this morning,” returned Parker—and the light in Jim's eyes grew stronger. “By the way, Jim, here's a letter for you—came the day after you went.”

Jim read his father's ultimatum with complete apathy. It was the few words in pencil at the end, in a different hand, over a different signature, that caused him to stagger as though drunk, and to sink down on the nearest box.

Young Parker was going on with his entries, and his back was turned to Jim.

Jim read the pencilled words over and over again without grasping their meaning; yet they were simple enough. They told very shortly how the letter had been opened, what its first words revealed, how the writer would see him no more, yet forgave him, and wished him well. There was not one syllable of reproach. Jim blessed her in his heart.

In a few minutes, when he was quite calm again, he put his hand into an inner pocket, and drew out an old and dirty blue envelope, the same that Parker had handed to him in the hut on the day when he first heard of Miss Jenny, and would not listen. From this envelope Jim took the newspaper cutting which had agitated him on that occasion: it was an announcement of the death of Jim's wife at Sydney.

Jim rose and obtained from the storekeeper a clean envelope, into which he slipped his newspaper cutting, closing up the envelope without adding a written word; merely underlining the date of his wife's death.

“Mr. Parker, will you be so kind as to address this to the young lady that was staying here—Miss Howard, wasn't her name? You needn't whistle; it's only a cutting that'll interest her. Come, sir, as a favour to me.”

That was what Jim said. But he was thinking—“I won't add a word. She'll see it all and write.
Then I'll go down to her, and after all—after all—after all—”

“Her name
isn't
Howard, Jim,” said Parker, taking the envelope.

“What is it, then?”

“This,” said young Parker, squaring his elbows to direct the envelope: and the address began: “Mrs. Clinton Browne.”

I.

It was Nettleship's match; or rather, the University match that cricketers persist in calling Nettleship's, because it is generally held to have been Nettleship's long score (and apparently nothing else) that ultimately won the game for Oxford. It was the second day of the match, and the luncheon interval, which occurred shortly after Nettleship had gone in.

The day was gorgeous, as those who were up at Lord's will remember; and the dresses of the ladies were in keeping with the day, as half a dozen newspapers observed next morning. Never, it was agreed, had the well-appointed ground in St. John's Wood presented a fairer spectacle than during that interval. A perfect galaxy of beauty floated before your eyes across the trim green sward; behind you the dainty picnic as already in full swing on the tops of the hand-some drags; and over all shone the hot June sun. So
the papers said, and not without truth. Personally, however, it is more than likely that you took little or no interest in these phenomena. You knew them by heart as well as the descriptive gentlemen who reported them, at long range, from Fleet Street. More probably you spent the time in those exceptionally delightful recognitions which come but once a year, and at Lord's; where you have the annual opportunity of offering a good cigar to your old house-master (who had you flogged for smoking in your study), and of patronising the snob you used to fag for. You and some other fellow strolled about the ground together, sought out the old set, and criticised them horribly; and, no doubt, among other objects, you drew his attention to one of the players who was lunching in a landau, and was somewhat conspicuous, being the only one of the twenty-two, so far as could be seen, who preferred this sort of discomfort to the regular thing under cover. “That's Nettleship,” you said; “he's in, you know.” And of course the other fellow said pointedly that he could see that Nettleship was having his innings, and laughed; and you laughed too, indulgently, but drew nearer, to stare at the man who seemed already to have collared the Cambridge bowling.

All Oxford knew Nettleship by sight, and probably so did most Cambridge men. He had played the three previous years at Lord's, and though he had been a
disappointment in those three matches, no one who had seen him in the field was likely to forget him; not so much because he was the finest cover-point in either team, but almost entirely on account of his good looks, which were not at all of the conventional order. His jet-black hair was a sheer anachronism in its length and curliness, and would have been considered extremely bad form in anybody but Nettleship. Also, his pale face was vexatiously deprived of the moustache which might at least have modernised him; but then his features were notably of a classic cast. So, at least, they had seemed when Nettleship played his first match at Lord's as a freshman. They were now, it was remarked, a trifle sharp and angular. In short—though it was the face of a determined, persevering poet, at least looking the part, rather than that of a born athlete—it was a face that every one knew. Even the ladies at Lord's, who notoriously never look at the cricket, except to furnish their annual supply of high-class “comic copy” in the form of artless comment—even the ladies knew Mr. Nettleship by sight, and really watched the game if he fielded close to the ropes. As for the men of his time, it has been hinted that they judged him by no ordinary standard of “form,” though they may have regarded him as a dangerous and even impossible model. It may be added that they did not even speak of him in the ordinary way. It is Brown
of Oriel, Jones of Brasenose, Robinson of New. It was Nettleship of the 'Varsity—Nettleship of Oxford. And Nettleship of Oxford was having his innings, it was observed; and the reference was not so much to the thirty or forty runs he had already made, and the hundred he was possibly good for, as to the fact that Nettleship was calmly eating salmon mayonnaise by the side of one of the loveliest girls on the ground, on the apex of whose parasol flaunted a dark blue knot.

The landau patronised by the celebrated Oxonian was a new one, though in point of existence the crest upon the door was a good deal newer. The liveries of footman and page were also very new, and their wearers were at any rate new to London (which was plain from their behaviour). In fact, Nettleship of the 'Varsity was with painfully new people. Their name was M'llwraith; old M'llwraith was one of the newest of the new M.P.'s; and their town house was an institution whose age in weeks could be reckoned on the fingers of two hands.

Nettleship finished his salmon mayonnaise as regardless of the world's eyes as though he were still at the wicket.

“Let me take your plate,” said the lovely girl at his side; and Nettleship let her, or at any rate did not attempt to prevent her until too late. Then he apologised, of course, but coolly.

“Elaine!” said the girl's mother with some severity. “That is Thomas's business. Thomas!”

Thomas, the page, arose somewhat flushed from a playful bear-fight with the Masters M'llwraith under the carriage, and was within an ace of spilling the remains of the mayonnaise over Miss M'llwraith's dress, in his self-consciousness.

“That boy is quite unbearable,” said Mrs. M'llwraith with irritation. “Mr. Nettleship,” she continued, in tones that were artificially hospitable but unmistakably cold, “what dare we offer you? My eldest boy has told me such terrible tales about training, that really one does not know, you know.”

There was a moral wheeze in the lady's voice that Nettleship's ear detected with the celerity and certainty of a stethoscope. At once he became alert and attentive. He wanted nothing more—not that cricket demanded any particular training, like the Sports—but what might he get for Mrs. M'llwraith? Oyster patties, salad, strawberries, an ice, champagne? He must be allowed to make himself useful, he protested; and for some minutes Mrs. M'llwraith received more assiduous attention at his hands than she had ever seen him pay her daughter, or any other woman, young or old. This, of course, may have been diplomacy in Nettleship. His eyes were blue, and keen, and searching; his smile had of late taken a cynical curl; and indeed there were
diplomatic potentialities in every corner of his mobile, clear-cut countenance. But there was enough of careless candour in his smiling glance—enough to be largely genuine.

This glance, too, was levelled exclusively at the elder lady. Nor could it have done any violence to his optic nerves to contemplate Mrs. M'llwraith closely and long, for, as elderly ladies go, she was among the very prettiest. Stout she undoubtedly was, but her hair was still golden, almost, and her own entirely; while her complexion had resolutely refused to grow any older some thirty years ago, and had carried out its independent resolve without the aid of a single cosmetic. She was dimpled, too, with sympathetic, poetical dimples not in complete harmony with her present character, though they had very well suited those idyllic and comparatively humble days in which Mrs. M'llwraith had read her “Tennyson” to such practical purpose as to christen every child out of the well-loved volume. In addition to these lingering charms of a simple girlhood, there was her later, more worldly, but scarcely less pleasing attribute of being always thoroughly well dressed in the best possible taste. This, of course, was greatly
en évidence
to-day; while, as usual, her face offered a choice study in comfortable serenity. As for Elaine M'llwraith, she was precisely what it was plain that her mother had been at Elaine's
age; only prettier, you would have said; and less shallow, I happen to know.