Under Two Skies Read online

  “You say you are living in town now?” said Mrs. M’llwraith.

  “For the last few months,” Nettleship replied. “Since I got back from my globe trot.”

  “Then how does it happen that you are playing for your College still?”

  “For his University,” Elaine suggested.

  “Oh, we are allowed to play four seasons, don’t you know?” Nettleship explained. “It wasn’t my intention to play this year, and I haven’t been up once this term; but they bothered me about the London matches, and I suppose I was too keen, myself, to refuse.”

  At this moment an elephantine young man rolled up to the carriage and lent heavily upon the door. He was very stout indeed, and extremely like Mrs. M’llwraith in face. In fact, he was her eldest boy. But those terrible tales of training mentioned by that lady were evidently not her son’s personal experiences.

  “Ned, my boy,” cried this young man, slapping Nettleship heavily upon the shoulder, “you’re drinking nothing! Thomas—champagne for Mr. Nettleship.”

  “Arthur,” said Nettleship, “I don’t want any.”

  Arthur insisting, however, he took the glass, put it once to his lips, and seized an early opportunity of surreptitiously conveying it over the far side of the carriage into the hands of young Launcelot M’llwraith, who shared it (unfairly) with the still younger Enoch Arden M’llwraith; who flung the dregs in the footman’s face.

  The bell for clearing the ground was now likely to ring at any moment. Luncheon, so far as Nettleship was concerned, was long over. He took the opportunity, however, before going back to the pavilion, afforded by Arthur’s whispering into his mother’s ear the names of some nobles on a neighbouring drag, in fulfilment of a solemn charge delivered before leaving home—Nettleship took this opportunity to turn and speak to Elaine.

  “What ages it is since we met!” he said looking at her critically.

  “It is just a year and a half,” Elaine said simply.

  He, for his part, had no idea when it was; he would not have owned to one in any case; but Elaine’s long memory did not displease him, and he answered with a laugh:

  “Is it really all that? I say, Elaine, how old we are all getting! You must be—let me see—twenty—what?”

  “How ridiculous you are! Twenty’s a year away still. I’m nineteen on Friday, as you might know if you—if—”

  “Friday! Oho, your birthday’s on Friday!” whistled Nettleship—as though, until the other year, he had not sent her presents, regularly as the calendar, on that day. “You ought to celebrate it, Elaine, in Sussex Square.”

  “What is that, Mr. Nettleship?” said Mrs. M’llwraith sharply. Her face, however, did not for a moment lose its serenity. That was its way.

  “I made so bold as to suggest a birthday party in Elaine’s honour,” said Nettleship, with the coolness of an old-established family friend.

  Arthur, having detected his small brothers in the act of opening a fresh bottle of champagne in their inferno under the carriage, was engaged in brotherly chastisement, so he did not hear what followed.

  “A party!” cried Mrs. M’llwraith, taken aback for the moment, but yet able promptly to press her daughter’s foot with her own. “Oh, I see, an ‘At Home,’ a Reception. And all because of a birthday! Why, really, Mr. Nettleship—the children are not children now!”

  “It appears not,” said Nettleship, rising as the bell rang in the pavilion; “when they were I was ‘Ned’ to you all!” And with a somewhat cold smile, a short leave-taking, he was gone.

  A thousand glances followed his retreating form, in the jacket that was no longer dark blue, but honourably faded. It was its fourth and last appearance at Lord’s on this great occasion. A thousand tongues talked “Nettleship” for the moment. It was his last chance in the ’Varsity match. He had never done anything in it before. Yet he was the best bat in the eleven; he had begun well; he did look like rising to the occasion this time, and coming off at last.

  But in the new landau Elaine ventured at once upon a mild remonstrance with her mother.

  “How very odd of you not to tell him about Friday evening, mamma! You implied an untruth, even if you didn’t tell one.”

  “If it was only ‘a lie which is half a truth,’” said Mrs. M’llwraith blandly, remembering a phrase but entirely forgetting the context; “if it was only that, my dear, I am sorry. It shows that I need practice. Don’t look absurd, Elaine! Town life would be unbearable without the fib—the little, necessary fib. I settled that before we left the country.”

  “But why on earth not ask him, when we know him so well?”

  “Why on earth? Every reason on earth,” smiled Mrs. M’llwraith, in perfect good-humour. “Must I remind you of some of them? Well, then, they are losing money, the Nettleships, as fast as ever they can. Before long they will fail; nothing can prevent it. Your father has reason to know this. Your father saw reason to cease doing business with them at least a year ago. This young man has no longer any prospects. Why did he hurry home from abroad, after six months, when he went for eighteen, if it was not that supplies ceased? Yes, all the sons had a few thousands from their mother, I know that; but it is the merest pittance, and goodness knows what he is doing for a living in town, or how he dare be playing here. These are a few of the reasons on earth; and they are reasons enough for our not going out of our way to ask him to the house. Because a young man has a room in the Temple, Elaine, it doesn’t follow— Elaine! you are not listening! Why, the girl is clapping her hands like a lunatic! What is it?”

  “Ned hit two fourers the first over!” Elaine replied, without taking her sparkling eyes from the game.

  “Ned, indeed!” said Mrs. M’llwraith. But it was obviously of no use to say more just then, when Elaine was so shamefully excited. Mrs. M’llwraith subsided into composed silence. After all, it was not so very hard to get into town ways; and, really, when one tried, it came quite natural to show the cold shoulder to one’s oldest country friends…. Ned, indeed!

  Mrs. M’llwraith raised her eyes to the box of the vehicle. There sat Enid, the second Miss M’llwraith, and by her side a most satisfactory young man. These two were really delightfully engrossed in one another. They were in a planet of their own, from which it seldom occurred to them to turn their heads and look down. The young man was enormously wealthy, though lineally of small account. But everything was not to be compassed at once. There should be no taint of trade in Elaine’s bargain, not even of successful trade. The idea of “Ned!”

  The hot afternoon wore on, and the fieldsmen’s shadows became longer and narrower every over. Launcelot, Enoch, and their friend the page snored happily under the axle-trees. As for Mrs. M’llwraith, she had become inured to rounds of applause that did not in the least excite her curiosity, and was herself on the point of dozing, when a peculiarly long and loud uproar induced her to open her eyes. She opened them upon the strangely pale face of Elaine.

  “Whatever is the matter?” cried Mrs. M’llwraith.

  “Hush!” Elaine whispered. “He’s out! Wait a moment! There!”

  Mrs. M’llwraith had descried the figure of young Nettleship walking slowly from the wicket, with bent shoulders—after the first outburst, in dead silence. But as he neared the densely crowded pavilion the shouting and clapping of hands burst forth again with redoubled enthusiasm. Elaine clapped too, clapped wildly, and the pink was back in her face.

  “Dear me, it must be something quite out of the way to make all this fuss about,” said Mrs. M’llwraith, perceiving at last that the occasion was a great one. “In whose honour, pray, is all this din?”

  “In Ned’s—Ned’s!” cried Elaine, still clapping furiously. “See, the other side are clapping too! Oh, I do hope it is a hundred—it must be a hundred—it can’t be short of a hundred!”

  But it was—by one run. Nettleship’s memorable score was exactly ninety-nine!

  Sympathy at once made itself felt in a fresh and touching roar. But as for Elaine
, tears sprang into her fine, flashing eyes; she leant back in the landau, and the match interested her no more.

  Her mother appeared to be thinking. At last she said:

  “Has he distinguished himself so very much, my dear?”

  “Oh, mamma—tremendously!

  A pause. “Then,” said Mrs. M’llwraith naively, “why don’t he come back and sit with us?”

  “He might, perhaps,” answered Elaine, “if he had distinguished himself less.” And for a moment her wishes were at variance.

  “Elaine,” said her mother, after another and a longer pause, “will there be anything about him in the papers to-morrow?”

  “Anything? Columns!”

  “And people will talk about him?”

  “Of course, mamma—as the hero of the match!”

  “Elaine,” said Mrs. M’llwraith at last (it was just as they were going), “send Mr. Nettleship a card this evening—for Friday, you know!”

  II.

  So many men get a hundred runs in the University match, that it would be superfluous to describe the variety of congratulations—from excited clergymen and hardened Old Blues, from hoary veterans and beardless boys—which assailed Nettleship in the pavilion. Of late years “centuries” in first-class cricket have become so terribly common, and at least one century in the University match so entirely inevitable, that Nettleship was rather glad than otherwise to have fallen just short of the commonplace three figures. He had achieved a record all to himself, for ninety-nine is the rarest of scores, and has never before or since been made in the Oxford and Cambridge matches. Indeed, Nettleship would have been perfectly contented but for the tiresome expressions of sympathy, on account of that one run short, which mingled largely with the praises buzzing in his ears. The popular commiseration savoured of strained sentiment, for it could not have been more demonstrative if he had got no runs at all, and it bored Nettleship supremely; in fact, it had a good deal to do with his leaving the ground when he did, half an hour before play ceased, there being no danger of Oxford having to field again that evening.

  He tried to get away unobserved; but the penalties of a public personality are inexorable, and the invitations and questions that pelted him between the pavilion and the gates were a little trying. Nettleship refused the invitations, ignored the questions, and eventually rattled off alone in a hansom.

  Speeding towards the City in that hansom, the young man underwent a swift transfiguration. His head drooped in dejection, his pointed features grew sensibly sharper, his eyes filled with bitterness; and an ugly distortion—a mere parody of a smile, and a poor one—froze upon his lips. Two pictures, both of himself, were in his mind. Lord’s cricket-ground was the background of the one, an ill-furnished room in the Temple that of the other. His back was turned upon the first, his face was set towards the second; and the iron was deep in his soul. He had carried off the honours of this afternoon pretty coolly, if not (from purely physical causes) exactly in cold blood; yet, looking at him now, one would have taken him for a young man denied all his life the happiness of a single triumphal hour. In point of fact, Nettleship was to be pitied; but not at his own computation. For young men are the worst judges of their own hardships; and this one was driving to chambers in the Temple, not to a garret—driving, too, not walking—and had an income upon which it was quite possible to live in tolerable comfort, dress decently, and occasionally even to drink wine at meals. What was impossible for Nettleship was to live as he had been accustomed to live; as he considered Nature had intended him to live from the first; as all the men he had been playing with to-day lived. But, misery being purely a matter of comparison, even this qualified form of it was in Nettleship’s case considerable, not to say grievous.

  The hansom was half-way to the Temple when, apparently on a sudden impulse, the fare knocked violently with his knuckles upon the trap overhead. A square of blue sky was stamped for a moment in the roof of the cab, and then hidden by a sun-flayed ear and whiskered cheek. Into that ear Nettleship pronounced the name of a celebrated emporium of fashionable virtu and saleable conceits in metal and fabric. Three minutes later he was in the artistic precincts of the shop itself, asking for the manager by name, and giving his own. The manager came forward at once.

  “Ah!” said he, “about your curios; follow me, sir.”

  Nettleship did so. They paused before a table, artistic in itself, upon which a number of Asiatic curios were effectively arranged.

  “Here they are, sir, and in advantageous position, as I think you will admit But I am sorry to say their number is undiminished—undiminished, sir, by so much as a single spear-head. I told you my fears frankly, I think, at the first; so far, I regret to say, they have been realised. There is no sale for curios now. They have gone out. They are not the Craze, sir. You know what the Craze is now, sir; and two Crazes cannot be co-existent. I am perfectly frank—they must be done to death one at a time, sir, seniores priores” Nettleship smiled. “Now, a year ago it would have been different. We would have speculated in these things then, sir—for they are very pretty things indeed, Mr. Nettleship—we would have nothing to do with them at all, not even on the present terms, if they were not such exceedingly pretty things. But; as it is, we dare not speculate in them; as it is, the speculation must be yours, sir.”

  The man was voluble, and knew his business. Considering everything, there was a pinch of humour in the situation. Nettleship smiled again, not entirely in bitterness.

  “There has been no inquiry at all about the things, then?” said Nettleship, preparing to leave the shop.

  “None to my knowledge. But stay: I will make sure before you go.”

  The manager left him. In less than a minute he returned.

  “There has been an inquiry, after all—and a good deal of interest shown—about this.” He took up a small bronze water-vase, delicately traced with strange figures. It was the one thing in his collection that Nettleship had supposed to be of real value, though he had kept tobacco in it until the day it occurred to him to make money of his curios.

  “But,” said Nettleship, “nothing came of it, you say?”

  “No, because we named your price. It will never go at fifty guineas, sir; it’s too tall altogether.”

  Nettleship looked coldly at the man of business: he had a keen eye for Crazes, no doubt, but what was he to know about the antique art of India? On the other hand, Nettleship himself was completely ignorant of that subject. He had only some chance acquaintance’s word for it, out in India, that this little vase was a valuable property. Nettleship looked at the man of business very coldly indeed.

  “Look here,” he said slowly, and in the preternaturally calm tones in which one might warn a fellow-creature of one’s immediate intention of throwing him through the window. “Look here: next time any one asks, let it go for thirty!”

  Without another word he stalked from the shop. The hansom rattled on until it stopped at Middle Temple Lane. There Nettleship got out, walked into Brick Court, and up the stone stairs to his chambers. For the next hour he lounged in a chair, thinking the vagrant thoughts that are encouraged, if not inspired, by the smoking of several cigarettes at a sitting. Naturally, in his case, they were not the pleasantest thoughts in the world; yet, when he got up and stretched himself, and went out to dine, his mood had improved. It was then eight o’clock. He returned at five minutes to nine; so that his dinner, wherever he got it, could not have been a very elaborate affair. Dropping once more into his armchair, he abandoned himself to further thought. Possibly his thoughts were of a more concentrated character than before, for a single cigarette sustained them. The long summer twilight went through all its mellow gradations, and finally deepened into complete darkness, before the young man at last rose and lit the lamp. This done, he carried the lamp to a pedestal desk, and sitting down at the desk drew up his chair close. There was now an appearance of settled purpose in his manner, and his face was full of cool determination; it wore, in fact, the id
entical expression which the Cambridge bowlers of that year have such good reason to remember.

  Nettleship had not sat down to write, however. Unlocking a drawer in the left-hand pedestal, he took out of it handfuls of photographs of various sizes, which he heaped together on the flat part of the desk, close to the lamp. Without more ado he proceeded deliberately to sort the photographs, throwing most of them carelessly on one side, but picking out one in twenty, or so, and placing it carefully on the slope in front of him. So might the modern Paris approach his invidious task, without embarrassment, the fatal apple already packed up and ticketed for the Parcels Post; for the photographs were nearly all of the other sex. But there were evidences that this was no selection of the fairest. In the first place, the greatest beauties of the civilised world were tossed aside without a moment’s thought; in the second, the selected photographs were all of one woman, in the various stages of her girlhood. The conclusion was manifestly foregone. The chosen woman was Elaine M’llwraith.

  Her photographs he now arranged in one long row on the slope of the desk, in chronological order, from left to right. To the disinterested philosopher the series would have offered interesting illustrations of the respective improvements in photography and the female dress during late years, quite apart from the graduated coming forth of a most attractive flower of girlhood. Nettleship’s reflections, however, were to the point. He shifted the lamp from the left side of the desk to the right, and turned up the wick. The strongest rays now fell upon the latest photographs. Upon these young Nettleship gazed long and thoughtfully. The act was sentimental; but the expression of the actor was nothing of the kind. It was not even a tender expression; nor was it, on the other hand, coldly calculating—altogether; it was merely thoughtful. Edward Nettleship was making up his mind.