Miss Bretherton | Page 7

sister and he divided his
father's money between them, and Eustace found himself with a fortune
such as in the eyes of most of his friends constituted a leading of
Providence towards two things--marriage and a seat in Parliament.
However, fortunately, his sister, the only person to whom he applied
for advice, was in no hurry to press a decision in either case upon him.
She saw that without the stimulus of the father's presence, Eustace's
interest in politics was less real than his interest in letters, nor did the
times seem to her propitious to that philosophic conservatism which
might be said to represent the family type of mind. So she stirred him
up to return to some of the projects of his college days when he and she
were first bitten with a passion for that great, that fascinating French
literature which absorbs, generation after generation, the interests of
two-thirds of those who are sensitive to the things of letters. She
suggested a book to him which took his fancy, and in planning it
something of the old zest of life returned to him. Moreover, it was a
book which required him to spend a part of every year in Paris, and the
neighbourhood of his sister was now more delightful to him than ever.
So, after a time, he settled down contentedly in his London chambers
with his books about him, and presently found that glow of labour
stealing over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every

true son of knowledge. His book reconciled him to life again, and soon
he was as often seen in the common haunts of London society as before.
He dined out, he went to the theatre, he frequented his club like other
men, and every year he spent three of the winter months in Paris, living
in the best French world, talking as he never talked in London, and
cultivating, whether in the theatre or in the salons of his sister's friends
or in the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists, a
fastidious critical temper, which was rapidly becoming more and more
exacting, more and more master of the man.
Now, on this May afternoon, as he settled himself down to his work, it
would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal--and they
were many--pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had
returned from his round of the Academy faded away, how he shook
back the tumbling gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the
eagerness of one setting forth to battle, and how, as time passed on and
the shadows deepened on the white spire opposite, the contentment of
successful labour showed itself in the slow unconscious caress which
fell upon the back of the sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him,
or in the absent but still kindly smile with which he greeted the
punctual entrance of the servant, who at five o'clock came to put tea
and the evening paper beside him and to make up the fire, which
crackled on with cheery companionable sounds through the lamp-lit
evening and far into the night.
CHAPTER II
Two or three days afterwards, Kendal, in looking over his
engagement-book, in which the entries were methodically kept, noticed
'Afternoon tea, Mrs. Stuart's, Friday,' and at once sent off a note to
Edward Wallace, suggesting that they should go to the theatre together
on Thursday evening to see Miss Bretherton, 'for, as you will see,' he
wrote, 'it will be impossible for me to meet her with a good conscience
unless I have done my duty beforehand by going to see her perform.'
To this the American replied by a counter proposal. 'Miss Bretherton,'
he wrote, 'offers my sister and myself a box for Friday night; it will
hold four or five; you must certainly be of the party, and I shall ask

Forbes.'
Kendal felt himself a little entrapped, and would have preferred to see
the actress under conditions more favourable to an independent
judgment, but he was conscious that a refusal would be ungracious, so
he accepted, and prepared himself to meet the beauty in as sympathetic
a frame of mind as possible.
On Friday afternoon, after a long and fruitful day's work, he found
himself driving westward towards the old-fashioned Kensington house
of which Mrs. Stuart, with her bright, bird-like, American ways, had
succeeded in making a considerable social centre. His mind was still
full of his work, phrases of Joubert or of Stendhal seemed to be still
floating about him, and certain subtleties of artistic and critical
speculation were still vaguely arguing themselves out within him as he
sped westward, drawing in the pleasant influences of the spring
sunshine, and delighting