Эдит Несбит - The Prophet's Mantle

It did not seem to Dick that his knowledge was much increased by his conversation with Alice. The blackest point was still that mysterious holiday trip, taken at such an unusual time, and about which his brother had been so strangely reticent. And that might be accounted for in plenty of other ways. Alice's disappearance at that particular time was very likely only a rather queer coincidence.

Dick had thought all this, and more, before he had finished dressing, and he was ready to meet his brother at breakfast with a manner a shade more cordial than usual—the reaction perhaps from his recent suspicions. Roland was in particularly high spirits.

'Wherever did you get to last night?' he asked. 'I was quite uneasy till I heard you were safe in your bed.'

'What time did you get home?'

It seemed that Roland's uneasiness had been shown by his not turning in till about two.

'Good heavens!—you didn't stay there till that time?' asked Dick, with an air of outraged propriety that would have amused him very much in anyone else. 'How old Stanley must have cursed you!'

'Oh, no; we left there at eleven.'

'We? You didn't take Miss Stanley for a walk on the Embankment, I presume?'

'No such luck. Didn't I tell you? I met an awfully jolly fellow there—a Russian beggar—a real Nihilist and a count, and we went and had a smoke together.'

'My dear fellow, all exiled Russians are Nihilists, and most of them are counts.'

'Oh, no; he really is. I only found out he was a count quite by chance.'

'What's made old Stanley take up with him? Not community of political sentiments, I guess?'

'Oh, no; he saved the old boy from being smashed by some runaway horses, and of course he's earned his everlasting gratitude. I didn't like him much at first, but when you come to talk to him you find he's got a lot in him. I'm sure you'll like him when you see him.'

'Am I sure to have that honour?' asked Dick, helping himself to another kidney. 'Is he tame cat about the Stanleys already.'

'Why, he'd never been there before; what a fellow you are! I've asked him to come and have dinner with us to-night. I want you to see him. I'm sure you'll get on together. He seems to have met with all sorts of adventures.'

'A veritable Baron Munchausen, in fact?'

'I never met such a suspicious fellow as you are, Dick,' said Roland, a little huffily; 'you never seem to believe in any body.'

This smote Dick with some compunction, and he resolved not to dislike this soi-disant count until he had cause to do so, which cause he did not doubt that their first meeting would furnish forth abundantly. But he was wrong.

Litvinoff came, and Dick found his prejudices melting away. The count seemed a standing proof of the correctness of the parallels which have been drawn between Russian and English character. He was English in his frankness, his modesty, his off-hand way of telling his own adventures without making himself the hero of his stories. Before the evening was over Dick began to realise that Nihilists were not quite so black as they are sometimes painted, and that there are other countries besides England where progressive measures are desirable. The brothers were both interested, and tried very hard to get more particulars of Nihilist doctrines, but as they grew more curious Litvinoff became more reticent. As he rose to go he said,—

'Well, if you want to hear a more explicit statement of our wrongs, our principles, and our hopes, and you don't mind rubbing shoulders with English workmen for an hour or two—and if you're not too strict Sabbatarians, by-the-way—you might come down to a Radical club in Soho. I am going to speak there at eight on Sunday evening. I shall be very glad if you'll come; but don't come if you think it will bore you.'

'I shall like it awfully,' said Dick. 'You'll go, won't you, Roland?'

'Of course I will.'

'We might have dinner together,' said Litvinoff. 'Come down to Morley's; we'll dine at six.'

This offer was too tempting to be refused. It presented an admirable opportunity for making an afternoon call on the Stanleys, and the brothers closed with it with avidity, and their new acquaintance took his leave.

When Dick was alone he opened a letter which had been brought to him during the evening. He read:—

'Dear Mr Richard,—I promised to write to you but I did not mean to see you again. But it was a great comfort to meet a face I knew, and I feel I must see you again, if it's only to ask you so many questions about them all at home. I do not seem to have said half I ought to have said the other night. If you really care to see me again, I shall be in on Monday afternoon. Go straight up the stairs until you get to the very top—it's the right-hand door. I beg you not to say you have seen me—to Mr Roland or to anyone else.—Yours respectfully,

This letter revived his doubts, but he was very glad of the chance of seeing her again, and he determined not to be deterred from pressing the question which he had at heart by any pain which it might cause her or himself. Jealousy, curiosity, regard for the girl—all these urged him to learn the truth, and besides them all a certain sense of duty. If her sorrow had come to her through his brother it surely was all the more incumbent on him to see that her material sufferings, at any rate, were speedily ended. If not....

Men almost always move from very mixed motives, and of these motives they only acknowledge one to be their spring of action. This sense of duty was the one motive which Dick now admitted to himself. At any rate he did not mean to think any more about it till Monday came, so he thrust the letter into his pocket, and let his fancy busy itself with Clare Stanley after its wonted fashion. It found plenty of occupation in the anticipation of that Sunday afternoon call.

When the call was made Mr Stanley was asleep, and though he roused himself to welcome them he soon relapsed into the condition which is peculiar to the respectable Briton on Sunday afternoons.

Miss Stanley was particularly cheerful, but as soon as she heard where they intended to spend the evening, the conversation took a turn so distinctly Russian, as to be almost a forestalment of the coming evening's entertainment. Nihilism in general and Nihilist counts in particular seemed to be the only theme on which she would converse for two minutes at a time. Roland made a vigorous effort to lead the conversation to things English, but it was a dead failure. Dick sought to elicit Miss Stanley's opinion of the reigning actress, but this, as he might have foreseen, only led to a detailed account of that adventure in which the principal part of hero had been played by a Russian, a Nihilist, or a count, and there were all the favoured subjects at once over again.

The young men felt that the visit had not been a distinct success, and when Clare woke her father up to beg him to take her to that Radical club in Soho, even his explosive refusal and anathematising of Radicals as pests of society failed to reconcile the Ferriers to their lady's new enthusiasm.

The conversation at dinner, however, was a complete change. Count Litvinoff appeared to feel no interest in life, save in the question of athletics at the English universities; but on this topic he managed to be so entertaining that his guests quite forgot, in his charm as talker, the irritation he had caused them to feel when he was merely the subject of someone else's talk. When dinner was over, and the three started to walk to Soho, they were all on the very best of terms with themselves and each other.

Would one of them have been quite so much at ease if he had known that the announcement of the coming lecture had been seen in the paper by Alice Hatfield, and that she—not being much by way of going to church—had made up her mind to be there?