MR. GUS was much startled by the change in Lady Markham’s manner, by her sudden withdrawal and altered looks. Had he offended her? He did not know how. He had been puzzled, much puzzled, by all she had said. She had professed to be sorry for him. Why? Of all who were concerned, Gus felt that he himself was the one whom it was not needful to be sorry for. The others might have some cause for complaint; but nothing could affect him—his position was sure. And it was very mysterious to him what Lady Markham could mean when she professed to be ready to make him amends—for what? Gus could afford to laugh, though, indeed, he was very much surprised. But happily the nature of the mistake which Lady Markham had made, and the cause of her indignation were things he never guessed at. They did not occur to him. His position had never been in the least degree equivocal in any way. He had known exactly, and everybody around him had known exactly, what it was. Though he had been adopted as his uncle’s heir; he had never been kept in the dark—why should he?—as to whose son he was. And when the poor old planter fell into trouble, and the estate of which Gus was to be the heir diminished day by day, “It does not matter for Gus,” the old man had said; “you must go back to your own family when I am gone; there’s plenty there for you, if there is not much here.” Gus had known all about Markham all his life. An old pencil-drawing of the house, feeble enough, yet recognisable still, had been hanging in his room since ever he could remember. It had belonged to his poor young mother, and since the time he had been able to speak he had known it as home. The idea of considering “the second family” had only dawned upon him when he began to plan his voyage “home,” after his uncle’s death. He had heard there were children, and consequently one of his great packing-cases contained many things which children would be likely to value. It gave Gus pleasure to think of little sisters and brothers to whom he would be more like an uncle than a brother. He was fond of children, and he had a very comfortable simple confidence in himself. It had never occurred to him that they might not “get on.” It was true that to hear of Paul gave him at first a certain twinge; but he thought it impossible, quite impossible, that Sir William could have let his son grow up to manhood without informing him of the circumstances. Surely it was impossible! There might be reasons why Lady Markham need not be told—it might make her jealous, it might be disappointing and vexatious to her—but he would not permit himself to believe that Paul had been left in ignorance. And Alice, who was grown up, it seemed certain to him that she, too, must know something. He had been greatly moved by the sight of Alice. The young ladies out in Barbadoes, he thought, were not like that, nor did he in Barbadoes see many young ladies; and this dainty, well-trained, well-bred English girl was a wonder and delight to him. Why should he not say that he was fond of Alice? It was not only natural, but desirable that he should be so. He walked out after Lady Markham left him with a slight sense of discomfiture; he could not tell why, but yet a smile at the “flurry” into which she had allowed herself to be thrown. Women were subject to “flurries” for next to no cause, he was aware. It was foolish of her, but yet she was a woman to whom a good deal might be pardoned. And he did not feel angry, only astonished, and half discomfited, and a little amused. It was strange—he could not tell what she meant—but yet in time no doubt, all would be amicably settled, and they would “get on,” however huffy she might be for the moment. Gus knew himself very well, and he knew that in general he was a person with whom it was easy to get on.
But he was a little disappointed to go away—after the hopes he had formed of being at once received into the bosom of the family, acknowledged by Sir William, and made known to the others—without any advance at all. He had spoken to Alice when he met her with the children, and had got “fond of her” on the spot: and he would have liked to have had her brought to him, and to have made himself known in his real character to all the girls and boys. But however, it must all come right sooner or later, he said to himself; and no doubt Lady Markham, with her husband sick on her hands, and her son, as all the village believed, giving her a great deal of anxiety, might be forgiven if she could not take the trouble to occupy herself about anything else. Gus went away without meeting any one, and when he had got out in front of the house, turned round to look at it, as he was in the custom of doing. It was a dull day, drizzly and overcast. This made the house look very like that woolly pencil-drawing, which had always hung at the head of his bed, and always been called home.
As he stood there some one came from behind the wing where the gate of the flower-garden was, and approached him slowly. Gus had not been quite able to make out who Fairfax was. He was “no relation,” and there did not even seem to be any special understanding between him and Alice, which was the first idea that had come into the stranger’s head. He had spoken to Fairfax two or three times when he had met him with the children, and Gus, who was full of the frankest and simplest curiosity, waited for him as soon as he perceived him. “We are going the same way, and I hope you don’t dislike company,” he said. To tell the truth, Fairfax had no particular liking for company at that moment. It seemed to him that he was in a very awkward position in this house where dangerous sickness had come in and taken possession; but how to act, how to disembarrass them of his constant presence, without depriving them of his services, which, with natural self-regard he thought perhaps more valuable than they really were, he did not know. The quaint “little gentleman,” about whom all the children chattered, seemed for the first moment somewhat of a bore to Fairfax; but after a moment’s hesitation he accepted him with his usual good-nature, and joined him without any apparent reluctance. Mr. Gus was very glad of the opportunity of examining at his leisure this visitor whose connection with the family he did not understand.
“I have been asking for the old gentleman,” he said. “I have seen Lady Markham. You know them a great deal better than I do, no doubt, though I am—a relation.”
“I do not know them very well,” said Fairfax. “Indeed, I find myself in a very awkward position. I came here by chance because Sir William fell ill when I was with them, and I was of some use for the moment. That made me come on with them, without any intention of staying. And here I am, a stranger, or almost a stranger, in a house where there is dangerous illness. It is very embarrassing; I don’t know what to do.”
He had thought Gus a bore one minute, and the next opened all his mind to him. This was characteristic of the young man; but yet in his carelessness and easy impulse there was a certain sudden sense that the support of a third person somehow connected with the Markham family might give him some countenance.
“Then you don’t know them—much?” said Mr. Gus, half-satisfied, half-contemptuous. “I couldn’t make you out, to tell the truth. Nobody but an old friend or a connection—or some one who was likely to become a connection”—he added, giving Fairfax a keen sidelong glance, “seemed the right sort of person to be here.”
Fairfax felt uneasy under that look. He blushed, he could scarcely tell why. “I can’t be said to be more than a chance acquaintance,” he said. “It was a lucky chance for me. I have known Markham for a long time. I’ve known him pretty well; but it was a mere chance which brought Sir William to me when they were looking for Markham; and then, by another chance, I was calling when he was taken ill. That’s all. I feel as if I were of a little use, and that makes me hesitate; but I know I have no right to be here.”
“Who’s Markham? The—son, I suppose?”
“Yes, the eldest son. I suppose you know him as Paul. Of course,” said Fairfax, with hesitation, “he ought to be here; but there are some family misunderstandings. He doesn’t know, of course, how serious it is.”
“Wild?” said Mr. Gus, with his little, precise air.
“Oh—I don’t quite know what you mean by wild. Viewy he is, certainly.”
“Viewy? Now I don’t know what you mean by viewy. It is not a word that has got as far as the tropics, I suppose.”
Fairfax paused to give a look of increased interest at the “little gentleman.” He began to be amused, and it was easy—very easy—to lead him from his own affairs into the consideration of some one else’s. “Paul,” he said—“I have got into the way of calling him Paul since I have been here, as they all do—goes wrong by the head, not in any other way. We have been dabbling in—what shall I call it?—socialism, communism, in a way—the whole set of us: and he is more in earnest than the rest; he is giving himself up to it.”
“Socialism—communism!” cried Mr. Gus; he was horrified in his simplicity. “Why that’s revolution, that’s bloodshed and murder!” he cried.
“Oh, no; we’re not of the bloody kind—we’re not red,” said Fairfax, laughing. “It’s the communism that is going to form an ideal society—not fire and flame and barricades.”
“You don’t mean to tell me,” said Gus, not listening to this explanation, “that this young Markham—Paul, this Lady Markham’s son—is one of those villains that want to assassinate all the kings, and plunge all Europe into trouble? Good God! what a lucky thing I came here!”
“No, no, I tell you,” said Fairfax. “On the contrary, what Paul wants is to turn his back upon kings and aristocracies, to give up civilisation altogether, for that matter, and found a new world in the backwoods. We’ve all played with the notion. It sounds fine; and then there’s one eloquent fellow—a real orator, mind you—who makes it look like the grandest thing in the world to do. I believe he thinks it is, and so does Paul. He’s gone wrong in his head on the subject; that is all that is wrong with him. But there is this difference,” said Fairfax reflectively, “from going wrong that way and—other ways. If you prove yourself an ass in the common form, you’re sorry and ashamed of yourself, and glad to make it up with your people at home; but when it’s this sort of thing you stand on your high principles and will not give in. That’s one difference between being viewy and—the other. Paul can’t make up his mind to give in; and then probably he thinks they are making the very most of his father’s illness in order to work upon his feelings. Well! he ought to know better,” cried Fairfax, with a flush of indignation; “Lady Markham is not the sort of person to be suspected in that way; but you know the kind of ideas that are general. He makes himself fancy so, I suppose.”
“He seems a nice sort of young fellow to come into this fine property,” said Gus, with another sidelong, inquisitive look at Fairfax. There was an air of keen curiosity, and at the same time of sarcastic enjoyment, on his face.
“That is the strange thing about it,” said Fairfax reflectively stroking the visionary moustache which very lightly adorned his lip. “Paul is a very queer fellow. He is against the idea of property. He thinks it should all be re-divided and every man have his share. And, what’s stranger still,” he added, with an exclamation, “he’s the fellow to do it if he had the chance. There is nothing sham about him. He would strip himself of everything as easily as I would throw off a coat.”
“Against the idea of property!” said little Gus, with a very odd expression. He gave a long whistle of surprise and apparent discomfiture. “He must be a very queer fellow indeed,” he said, with an air of something like disappointment. Why should he have been disappointed? But this was what no one, however intimately acquainted with the circumstances, could have told.
“Yes, he is a very queer fellow. He has a great deal in him. One thing that makes me a little uncomfortable,” continued Fairfax, unconsciously falling more and more into a confidential tone, “is that I don’t know how he may take my being here.”
“How should he take it? you are his friend, you said?”
“Ye-es; oh, we’ve always been very good friends, and one time and another have seen a great deal of each other. Still, you may like a fellow well enough among men, and not care to see him domesticated, you know, in your home. Besides, he might think I had put myself in the way on purpose to curry favour when Sir William was ill—or—I don’t know what he might think. It seems shabby somehow to be living with your friend’s people when your friend isn’t there.”
“Especially if he ought to be there, and you are doing his work.”
“Perhaps,” Fairfax said; and they walked down to the end of the avenue in silence. Mr. Gus had got a great deal to think of from this interview. A new light had come into his mind—and somehow, strangely, it was not at first an entirely agreeable light. He went along for some way without saying anything, going out of the great gates, and into the high road, which was so quiet. A country cart lumbering past now and then, or a farmer’s gig, the sharp trot of a horse carrying a groom from some other great house to inquire after Sir William, gave a little more movement to the rural stillness, increasing the cheerfulness, though the occasion was of the saddest; and as they approached the village, a woman came out from a cottage door, and, making her homely curtsey, asked the same question.
“My lady will be in a sad way,” this humble inquirer said. It was of my lady more than of Sir William that the rustic neighbours thought.
“My lady’s a great person hereabout,” said Mr. Gus, with a look that was half spiteful. “I wonder how she will like it when the property goes away from her. She will not take it so easily as Paul.”
“No,” said Fairfax, rousing up in defence, “it is not likely she would take it easily; she has all her children to think of. It is to be hoped Paul will have sense enough to provide for the children before he lets it go out of his hands.”
“Ah!” This again seemed to be a new light to Gus. “Your Lady Markham would have nothing to say to me,” he said, after a pause. “She sent me off fast enough. She neither knows who I am, nor wants to know. Perhaps it would be better both for her and the children if she had been a little more civil.”
It was Fairfax’s turn to look at him now, which he did with quite a new curiosity. He could not understand in what possible way it might be to Lady Markham’s advantage to be civil to the little gentleman whom no one knew anything about; then it occurred to him suddenly that the uncles who appear mysteriously from far countries with heaps of money to bestow, and who present themselves incognito to test their families, are not strictly confined to novels and the stage. Now and then such a thing has happened, or has been said to happen, in real life. Could this be an instance? He was puzzled and he was amused by the idea. Mr. Gus did not look like the possessor of a colossal fortune looking for an heir; nor, though Lady Markham thought him nearly as old-looking as Sir William, did he seem to Fairfax old enough to adopt a simply beneficent rôle. Still, there seemed no other way to account for this half threat. It was all Fairfax could do to restrain his inclination to laugh; but he did so, and exerted himself at once to restore Lady Markham to his companion’s good opinion.
“You must remember,” he said—“and all we have been saying proves how much both you and I are convinced of it—that Sir William is very ill. His wife’s mind is entirely occupied with him, and she is anxious about Paul. Indeed, can any one doubt that she has a great many anxieties very overwhelming to a woman who has been taken care of all her life? Fancy, should anything happen to Sir William, what a charge upon her shoulders! The wonder to me is that she can see any one; indeed she does not see any one. And if she does not know, as you say, who you are——”
“No,” said Mr. Gus. Something which sounded half like a chuckle of satisfaction, and half a note of offence, was in his voice. He was like a mischievous school-boy delighted with the effect of a mystification, yet at the same time angry that he had not been found out. “She knows nothing about me,” he said, with a half-laugh. Just then they had reached the Markham Arms, into which Fairfax followed him without thinking. They went into the little parlour, which was somewhat gloomy on this dull day, and green with the shadow of the honeysuckle which hung so delightfully over the window when the sun was shining, but darkened the room now with its wreaths of obtrusive foliage, glistening in the soft summer drizzle. “Come in, come in,” said Mr. Gus, pushing the chair, which was miscalled easy, towards his visitor, and shivering slightly; “nobody knows anything about me here: and if this is what you call summer, I wish I had never left Barbados. I can tell you, Mr. Fairfax, it was not a reception like this I looked for when I came here.”
“Probably,” said Fairfax, hitting the mark at a venture, “it is only Sir William himself who is acquainted with all the family relations—and as he is ill and disabled, of course he does not even know that you are here.”
“He does know that I am here,” cried the little gentleman, bursting with his grievance. It had come to that pitch that he could not keep silence any longer, and shut this all up in his own breast. “I wrote to let him know I had come. I should think he did know about his relations; and I—I can tell you, I’m a much nearer relation than any one here is aware.”
Fairfax received this intimation quite calmly; he was not excited. Indeed it did not convey to him any kind of emotion. What did the matter? Uncle or distant cousin, it was of very little consequence. He said, placidly—
“The village looks very pretty from this window. Are you comfortable here?”
“Comfortable!” echoed Gus. “Do you think I came all this way across the sea to shut myself up in a village public-house? I didn’t even know what a village public-house was. I knew that house up there, and had known it all my life. I’ve got a drawing of it I’ll show you, as like as anything ever was. Do you suppose I thought I would ever be sent away from there? I—oh, but you don’t know, you can’t suppose, how near a relation I am.”
Fairfax thought the little man must be a monomaniac on this subject of his relationship to the Markhams. He thought it was but another instance of the wonderful way in which people worship family and descent. He himself having none of these things had marked often, with the keenness of a man who is beyond the temptation, the exaggerated importance which most people gave to them. Sir William Markham, it might be said, was a man whom it was worth while to be related to; but it did not matter what poor bit of a squire it was, Fairfax thought; a man who could boast himself the cousin of Hodge of Claypits was socially a better man than the best man who was related to nobody. What a strange thing this kind of test was! To belong to a famous historical family, or to be connected with people of eminent acquirements, he could understand that there might be a pride in that; but the poorest little common-place family that had vegetated at one place for a century or two! He did not make any answer to Mr. Gus, but smiled at him, and yet compassionated him—this poor little fellow who had come over here from the tropics with his head full of the glory of the Markhams, and now had nothing better to do than to sit in this little inn parlour and brag of his relationship to them; it was very pitiful, and yet it was ludicrous too.
“I wonder,” he said suddenly, “whether they could put me up here? I want to go, and yet I don’t want to be away, if you can understand that. If anything were to happen, and Markham not here——”
“I should be here,” said Gus. “I tell you you haven’t the least idea how near a relation I am. Lady Markham may be as high and mighty as she likes, but it would be better for her if she were a little civil. She doesn’t know the power that a man may have whom she chooses to slight. And I can tell you my papers are all in order. There are no registers wanting or certificates, or anything to be put a question upon; uncle took care of that. Though he adopted me, and had the intention of making me his heir (if he had left anything to be heir to), he always took the greatest care of all my papers. And he used to say to me, ‘Look here, Gus, if anything should happen to me, here’s what will set you up, my boy.’ I never thought much about it so long as he was living, I thought things were going better than they were; and when the smash came I took a little time to pick myself up. Then I thought I’d do what he always advised—I’d come home. But if any one had told me I was to be living here, in a bit of a tavern, and nobody knowing who I am, I should not have believed a word.”
“It is very unfortunate,” said Fairfax; “but of course it is because of Sir William’s illness—that could not have been foreseen.”
“No, to be sure it could not have been foreseen,” Gus said; then roused himself again in the might of his injury. “But if you could guess, if you could so much as imagine, who I really am——”
Fairfax looked at him with curiosity. It was strange to see the vehemence in his face: but Gus was now carried beyond self-control. He could not help letting himself out, getting the relief of disclosure. He leant across the little shining mahogany table and whispered a few words into Fairfax’s ear.