The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

A cat may look at a king. A solicitor's clerk may love an earl's daughter. It was an undeniable madness in Kimberley even to dream of loving the Lady Ella Santerre. He knew perfectly well what a fool he was; but he was in love for all that.

To Bolsover Kimberley, seated in a little room with a dingy red desk and cobwebbed skylight, there entered Mr. Ragshaw, senior clerk to Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors.

"My dear Mr. Kimberley," said Mr. Ragshaw, "allow me the honour of shaking hands with you. I believe that I am the first bearer of good news."

Mr. Kimberley turned pale.

"My firm, sir," pursued Mr. Ragshaw, "represented the trustees of the late owner of the Gallowbay Estate, who died three months ago at the age of twenty, leaving no known relatives. We instituted a search, which resulted in the discovery of an indisputable title to the estate. Permit me to congratulate you, sir--the estate is yours."

Bolsover Kimberley gasped, and his voice was harsh.

"How much?"

"The estate, sir, is now approximately valued at forty-seven thousand per annum."

Kimberley lurched forward, and fell over in a dead faint. Mr. Ragshaw's attentions restored him to his senses, and he drank a little water, and sobbed hysterically.

When he had recovered a little, he arose weakly from the one office chair, took off his office coat, rolled it up neatly, and put it in his desk. Then he put on his walking coat and his hat and went out.

"Don't you think, Mr. Kimberley," asked Mr. Ragshaw, with profound respect, "that a little something----"

They were outside the Windgall Arms, and Kimberley understood.

"Why, yes, sir," he said; "but I never keep it in the 'ouse, and having had to pay a tailor's bill this week, I don't happen----"

"My dear sir, allow me!" said Ragshaw, with genuine emotion.

The champagne, the dinner that followed, the interviews with pressmen, the excitement and obsequiousness of everybody, conveyed to Kimberley's mind, in a dizzy sort of a way, that he was somebody in the world, and ought to be proud of it. But his long life of servitude, his shyness and want of nerve, all weighed heavily upon him, and he was far from being happy.

Mr. Begg, senior partner of Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, was sitting in his office a day or two later when a clerk ushered in the Earl of Windgall.

"What's this news about Gallowbay, Begg? Is it true?" asked the earl.

"It is certainly true," answered Begg.

"What sort of fellow is this Kimberley?"

"Well, he seems to be a shy little man, gauche, and--and--underbred, even for his late position."

"That's a pity. I should like to see him," added the grey little nobleman. "I suppose you will act for him as you did for poor young Edward?"

Poor young Edward was the deceased minor whose early death had wrecked the finest chances the Windgall family craft had ever carried.

"I suppose so," said Begg.

"I presume," said the earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money you could arrange elsewhere?"

"With regard to the first mortgage?" asked Mr. Begg. "Certainly."

"And what about the new arrangement?" asked the earl nervously.

"Impossible, I regret to say."

"Very well," returned the earl, with a sigh. "I suppose the timber must go. If poor Edward had lived, it would all have been very different."

Next day, when Kimberley, preposterously overdressed and thoroughly ashamed of himself, was trying to talk business in Mr. Begg's office, the Earl of Windgall was announced. There was nothing in the world that could have terrified him more. And when the father of his ideal love, Lady Ella Santerre, shook him by the hand, he could only gasp and gurgle in response. But the earl's manner gradually reassured him, and in a little time he began to plume himself in harmless trembling vanity upon sitting in the same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer.

"I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley," said the earl, in going; "and I trust we shall see more of each other."

Mr. Kimberley flushed, and bowed in a violent flutter.

As the earl was driven homeward he could not help feeling that he was engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why he was asked there. Let them talk.

"A million and a quarter!" said the poor peer. "And if I don't catch him, somebody else will."

Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of dragoons, was in the depths of despair. He was the younger brother of Lord Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre, whose family was still poorer. The heads of the families had forbidden the match for financial reasons. He had stolen an interview with Ella, and had found that she bowed to the decision of the seniors.

"It is all quite hopeless and impossible," she had said. "Good-bye, Jack!"

As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.

II.--A Peer in Difficulties

The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father's neck.