“Mrs. Newell was afraid she might not hear from you in reply.”
“In reply? Why should she? I suppose she merely wishes to announce the marriage. She knows I have no money left to buy wedding-presents,” said Mr. Newell astonishingly.
Garnett felt his colour deepen: he had a vague sense of standing as the representative of something guilty and enormous, with which he had rashly identified himself.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “Mrs. Newell and your daughter have asked me to see you because they are anxious that you should consent to appear at the wedding.”
Mr. Newell, at this, ceased to give his attention to the birds, and turned a compassionate gaze upon Garnett.
“My dear sir—I don’t know your name—” he remarked, “would you mind telling me how long you have been acquainted with Mrs. Newell?” And without waiting for an answer he added judicially: “If you wait long enough she will ask you to do some very disagreeable things for her.”
This echo of his own thoughts gave Garnett a sharp twinge of discomfort, but he made shift to answer good-humouredly: “If you refer to my present errand, I must tell you that I don’t find it disagreeable to do anything which may be of service to Miss Hermione.”
Mr. Newell fumbled in his pocket, as though searching unavailingly for another morsel of bread; then he said: “From her point of view I shall not be the most important person at the ceremony.”
Garnett smiled. “That is hardly a reason—” he began; but he was checked by the brevity of tone with which his companion replied: “I am not aware that I am called upon to give you my reasons.”
“You are certainly not,” the young man rejoined, “except in so far as you are willing to consider me as the messenger of your wife and daughter.”
“Oh, I accept your credentials,” said the other with his dry smile; “what I don’t recognize is their right to send a message.”
This reduced Garnett to silence, and after a moment’s pause Mr. Newell drew his watch from his pocket.
“I am sorry to cut the conversation short, but my days are mapped out with a certain regularity, and this is the hour for my nap.” He rose as he spoke and held out his hand with a glint of melancholy humour in his small clear eyes.
“You dismiss me, then? I am to take back a refusal?” the young man exclaimed.
“My dear sir, those ladies have got on very well without me for a number of years: I imagine they can put through this wedding without my help.”
“You are mistaken, then; if it were not for that I shouldn’t have undertaken this errand.”
Mr. Newell paused as he was turning away. “Not for what?” he enquired.
“The fact that, as it happens, the wedding can’t be put through without your help.”
Mr. Newell’s thin lips formed a noiseless whistle. “They’ve got to have my consent, have they? Well, is he a good young man?”
“The bridegroom?” Garnett echoed in surprise. “I hear the best accounts of him—and Miss Newell is very much in love.”
Her parent met this with an odd smile. “Well, then, I give my consent—it’s all I’ve got left to give,” he added philosophically.
Garnett hesitated. “But if you consent—if you approve—why do you refuse your daughter’s request?”
Mr. Newell looked at him a moment. “Ask Mrs. Newell!” he said. And as Garnett was again silent, he turned away with a slight gesture of leave-taking.
But in an instant the young man was at his side. “I will not ask your reasons, sir,” he said, “but I will give you mine for being here. Miss Newell cannot be married unless you are present at the ceremony. The young man’s parents know that she has a father living, and they give their consent only on condition that he appears at her marriage. I believe it is customary in old French families—.”
“Old French families be damned!” said Mr. Newell with sudden vigour. “She had better marry an American.” And he made a more decided motion to free himself from Garnett’s importunities.
But his resistance only strengthened the young man’s. The more unpleasant the latter’s task became, the more unwilling he grew to see his efforts end in failure. During the three days which had been consumed in his quest it had become clear to him that the bridegroom’s parents, having been surprised into a reluctant consent, were but too ready to withdraw it on the plea of Mr. Newell’s non-appearance. Mrs. Newell, on the last edge of tension, had confided to Garnett that the Morningfields were “being nasty”; and he could picture the whole powerful clan, on both sides of the Channel, arrayed in a common resolve to exclude poor Hermione from their ranks. The very inequality of the contest stirred his blood, and made him vow that in this case at least the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. In his talk with the young secretary he had obtained some glimpses of Baron Schenkelderff’s past which fortified this resolve. The Baron, at one time a familiar figure in a much-observed London set, had been mixed up in an ugly money-lending business ending in suicide, which had excluded him from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance with Mrs. Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from social extinction. That Hermione’s marriage was a mere stake in their game did not in the least affect Garnett’s view of its urgency. If on their part it was a sordid speculation, to her it had the freshness of the first wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk of such base uses; and to achieve this had become a necessity to him.
The sense that, if he lost sight of Mr. Newell, the latter might not easily be found again, nerved Garnett to hold his ground in spite of the resistance he encountered; and he tried to put the full force of his plea into the tone with which he cried: “Ah, you don’t know your daughter!”
VI
MRS. NEWELL, that afternoon, met him on the threshold of her sitting-room with a “Well?” of pent-up anxiety.
In the room itself, Baron Schenkelderff sat with crossed legs and head thrown back, in an attitude which he did not see fit to alter at the young man’s approach.
Garnett hesitated; but it was not the summariness of the Baron’s greeting which he resented.
“You’ve found him?” Mrs. Newell exclaimed.
“Yes; but—”
She followed his glance and answered it with a slight shrug. “I can’t take you into my room, because there’s a dressmaker there, and she won’t go because she is waiting to be paid. Schenkelderff,” she exclaimed, “you’re not wanted; please go and look out of the window.”
The Baron rose and, lighting a cigarette, laughingly retired to the embrasure. Mrs. Newell flung herself down and signed to Garnett to take a seat at her side.
“Well—you’ve found him? You’ve talked with him?”
“Yes; I have talked with him—for an hour.”
She made an impatient movement. “That’s too long! Does he refuse?”
“He doesn’t consent.”
“Then you mean—?”
“He wants time to think it over.”
“Time? There is no time—did you tell him so?”
“I told him so; but you must remember that he has plenty. He has taken twenty-four hours.”
Mrs. Newell groaned. “Oh, that’s too much. When he thinks things over he always refuses.”
“Well, he would have refused at once if I had not agreed to the delay.”
She rose nervously from her seat and pressed her hands to her forehead. “It’s too hard, after all I’ve done! The trousseau is ordered—think how disgraceful! You must have managed him badly; I’ll go and see him myself.”
The Baron, at this, turned abruptly from his study of the Place Vendome.
“My dear creature, for heaven’s sake don’t spoil everything!” he exclaimed.