“ ... This is truth the poet sings,That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
“ ... This is truth the poet sings,That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
“ ... This is truth the poet sings,That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s what’s the matter with her! She is crowned with that crown—poor little Violet! And by Jove she wears it royally! And she will rule her sorrow and conquer it with a fine strength and firm spirit,—and she will be a queen among women yet!—my little broken-hearted girl!”
And he wafted a kiss back to the windows of Miss Letty’s house as he pulled his hat over his eyes and walked away.
Aftera storm comes a calm, and the old proverbs which tell us that the longest lane must have a turning and the darkest cloud a silver lining are not without something of a cheery note in their constant reiteration, like the repeated warble of a thrush telling us of the certainty of spring. And Violet Morrison soon began to prove these old-fashioned truths for herself, though the sudden and ruthless destruction of her first love dream had cast a shadow over the bright opening of her life, and had made her graver and more thoughtful than her youth and beauty warranted. Her troubles were none the less hard to bear, when the recalcitrant Max Nugent, weary of his connection with Lady Wantyn, promptly severed it as soon as her husband divorced that famous “beauty,” and sought to make his peace with the innocent girl whom he had so deeply wronged. Again and again he wrote to her and implored her to forgive him and to marry him,—but she answered none of his letters. The first faith and devotion of her heart were killed, and she knew she could never trust him, but he very persistently urged a renewal of his attentions inspite of the curt return of his letters through the Major’s hands, and she was therefore very glad when her uncle and Miss Letty decided to take her abroad for a time on a tour through France, Italy and Spain, as this gave her freedom, and an escape from the constant pleading of her former lover. The interest in new countries, and the constant distraction of thought caused by the various wonders and beauties of the shifting panorama, served as an excellent mental and moral tonic, and braced up all the energies of her mind. They stayed abroad, residing sometimes in one beautiful place, sometimes another, for about three years, and it was while they were wintering in Palermo in the last year of their wanderings that the Major received a letter which gave him the burden of another secret which he had to keep from Miss Letty in addition to the one concerning the “dead rascal” Harry Raikes. The letter was from an old friend and fellow-officer, and among other items of the news he gave was the following:—
“By the way, you asked me to tell you if I ever heard any news of D’Arcy-Muir’s son. I have heard something, and I expect it won’t please you. He passed by the skin of his teeth into Sandhurst,—and the other day was expelled for being drunk and kicking up a disorderly row. It is a bad job for the young chap, but what’s in the blood will out—and I suppose he has caught the drink disease fromhis father. He has ruined his military career at the outset.”
Long and deeply did the good Major ponder over this piece of depressing intelligence. He read it in the courtyard of the hotel in Palermo where they were just then staying, a courtyard which, as is the custom in Southern climes, presented the appearance of a fairy flower-garden, festooned with climbing plants in blossom, with oranges ripening in the warm sun, and odours of mimosa, heliotrope and violets on the air. “Expelled for being drunk”! The news seemed an infamy and an insult, in such a scene of beauty as that which he looked upon.
“God bless my soul!” he murmured disconsolately, fixing his eyes on a fair cluster of white clematis swinging above his head. “It seems to me that some of us aren’t fit to inhabit this planet! There’s everything beautiful in it, and everything is wisely ordained,—and it is only we who make the mischief and create the trouble. ‘Expelled for being drunk’! And that kind of thing ends in being expelled from the world altogether before one has served one’s time. What would Letty say!”
He sighed heavily,—but in a few minutes of consideration decided that it would be worse than foolish to tell her.
“Let her keep her little ideal somewhere in her heart,” he said to himself. “Don’t let me be such a great blundering idiot as to smudge all the pictureout for her. She believes in Harry Raikes,—she may as well believe in Boy as long as she can. And if anyone tells her what’s happened, it won’t be me!”
And he steadily adhered to this resolution. It was easy to do so, as Boy’s name was never mentioned by Miss Letty now, and all her thoughts seemed taken up with Violet. He put away his friend’s letter unanswered, carefully marking the date on which he received it,—and as he calculated that Boy must be getting on now for twenty, he shook his head and decided that everything, so far as “that unfortunate young chap” was concerned, was rather hopeless.
“However, it’s no use blaming the lad himself too severely,” he considered—“He has had everything against him—his parents have both shown him the worst of examples. His nature was warped at its very commencement and in its very growing—and if he takes to the bottle like his father and runs down-hill at a tearing speed, the fault doesn’t rest entirely with him.”
In the spring of that same year they returned to London, and “settled down,” as the saying is, in order that Violet might take up the career her heart was pining for—that of a thoroughly trained nurse. She was never happier than when she could soothe pain and alleviate suffering, and she was altogether eminently fitted for the profession she sought to adopt. Miss Letty did not deter her, nor did heruncle, for they both saw that work and active interest in the welfare of others was the only way to make her life interesting to herself. She had really no need to work, for Miss Letty had, though Violet knew it not, left her a considerable fortune in her will, and of course Major Desmond, though not a rich man, had made over to her everything he possessed,—but the fact of having money is not sufficient to fill lives which are strong and earnest, and which would fain prove to God that they are worth living. So Violet with her firm faith, pure heart and gentle manner, went into the forests of difficulty, unarmed and fair as Una in Spenser’s famous poem, and studied hard, consecrating herself heart and soul to the work she had undertaken, with the usual result of all earnest endeavour—complete success. Max Nugent had long ceased to importune her for the mending of the broken threads of affection,—and of this she was glad. Her disappointment in her first love had, however, deprived her of any interest or expectation of marriage for herself,—in fact the idea had become repugnant to her mind. One day her uncle asked her,—
“Are you going to devote all your life to the memory of Max Nugent, as Letty has devoted hers to the lost and gone Harry Raikes?”
Violet smiled.
“No, uncle.Ihave been undeceived—Miss Letty keeps her illusion. I never think of Max now.”
“Well, do you ever think of anybody else?” demanded the Major.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Violet laughed outright.
“Dearest uncle! I cannot fall in love to order! I don’t much like the men I see,—they don’t want me, and I don’t want them. Leave me alone to work, dear uncle,—I love my work—I am useful—I can help a great many people to bear their troubles,—and it will be all right for me. If I am to marry, why, I shall,—if not, I shan’t.”
And she kissed him and slipped away.
Meanwhile, in the self-same monster metropolis of London, where Violet went daily to her work in the hospital—where the Major divided his days between his club and Miss Letty’s always charming house—and where Miss Letty herself, growing more feeble and ailing with years, was content to sit very much at home with her embroidery,—Boy, who had unconsciously been a link in the chain of their three lives, was drifting like a wreck in a vast ocean. The terrible blow of his expulsion from Sandhurst had been taken by his parents as a deadly injury to themselves,—and for the shame, the misery, the utter breaking-down of the lad’s own life and ambitions, they, his progenitors, took no thought and had no pity. The Honourable Jim, half-paralysed as he was, had plenty of strength left for swearing, andused oaths in plenty to his son, calling him a “d—— d low rascal.”
“You don’t seem to belong to me at all!” he shouted, his red face becoming purple with rage and excitement. “D——n it, sir, I am a gentleman—my father was a gentleman, but you—you are a blackguard, sir! D——n it!—when I took my glass I took it like a gentleman, I didn’t go about disgracing myself and my profession as you have done. You had better enlist if they’ll have you. Anyhow you must do something for your bread—I can’t afford to keep you!”
Boy heard in absolute silence. He was too completely scornful of life and the ways of life to care to remind his father that he himself had been one long disgrace to his son from that son’s babyhood—and that his paralytic condition was altogether owing to his indulgence in strong drink,—What was the good? More oaths and a redder face would be the sole result. And his mother? Had she one word of pardon or of sympathy for him in his deep humiliation? Not she! Embedded in fat, all she could do was to shake her double chin at him over a mountain of maternal bosom.
“It’s always the way,” she said, dabbing a handkerchief into her eyes, “when good mothers do everything for their sons! They have to suffer! You have broken my heart, Boy!—your mother’s heart! All my hopes of you are ruined! I don’t feel as ifyou weremyBoy! I’m sure I don’t know what you are going to do. We have no fortune, as you are perfectly aware—we can’t afford to keep you idling about, doing nothing!”
Boy, tall, pale, handsome, and with an indefinable air of languor and scorn about him, smiled wearily.
“Don’t trouble yourself, mother!” he said. “I will earn enough bread to keep me alive, if I do it by sweeping a crossing. Good-bye!”
“Where are you going?” demanded his mother, somewhat frightened at his set face and blazing eyes.
“Do you care?” And he laughed bitterly. “I’m going—to the devil, I suppose!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir moaned and dabbed her eyes again.
“Oh dear, oh dear!” she wailed. “When I think of all the sacrifices I have made to send you to college—and all the trouble I have had, really it seems too dreadful! A mother’s life is martyrdom—complete martyrdom! Why don’t you go and hunt up old Miss Letty?”
Then, and quite suddenly, Boy flared up. “Miss Letty! The Miss Letty who wanted to adopt me as a child—and you wouldn’t let her? Not I! It would have been a jolly sight better for me perhaps if I had been with her—but to go to her now—now, when I am expelled”—he choked at the word and had a struggle to go on—“and in disgrace,—now! No, mother, never!”
With a strange gesture, half of fury, half of despair, he turned and left her and went out of the house. His mother was far too unwieldy and comfortable in herself to rise from her chair and enquire where he was going, and though she called “Boy!” once as he disappeared, he did not hear her.
He had two or three pounds in his pocket, and rather than put up with any more useless reproaches and complaints at home, he decided to take a cheap lodging somewhere near the Strand, and seek for work,—any kind of work.
“It’s all the same,” he said with a sort of cynical philosophy which had come of “cramming” and the weariness resulting from that pernicious system—“whether one sweeps out an office or controls it, work of every kind is simply work. It only differs in the quality and the pay.”
In a few days, through the help of a young fellow he had known at Sandhurst, one who was unaffectedly sorry for his disgrace, he got a place as assistant clerk in an agency office. It was dull business, but he drudged through it uncomplainingly, and earned enough to keep himself going. Sometimes a vague idea occurred to him that he would go on the stage.
“Everyone does that when they are down on their luck!” he said. “I might begin as a super. But if I began as one I expect I should stay as one, for I haven’t an idea of acting. However, some peoplewould say that is an advantage. Because if youcanact, you may never get an engagement!”
He took to going to the theatre of an evening, and studying the various antics and grimaces of all the puppets in the different shows. Sometimes it amused him,—more often it bored him. But for a lonely and downhearted lad as he was, it was better to sit among human beings in the warmth and light, with the sound of music about him, than to be all alone in his cheap lodging, brooding on his miseries. One night he saw a very pretty little play performed, in which the heroine was a maiden lady who had made the mistake of loving where she was not loved. Something—a mere trifle of pathos—a touch of sentiment in one scene, suddenly called Miss Letty to his mind. Quite involuntarily, and almost as if his brain had taken to acting independently of himself, he began to retrace his life, and follow it backward step by step to his childhood’s days, till gradually, very gradually, small incidents and circumstances began to arrange themselves like the pieces of a puzzle, and he remembered a number of things he had long forgotten. Again he saw himself rambling down by the sea-shore, a solitary, sad little fellow, talking to Rattling Jack,—again he saw Miss Letty’s house in Scotland; and the memory of the last walk he had taken with her there through the Pass of Achray came back to him as freshly as if it had only happened yesterday.
Though his eyes were fixed on the stage he sawan entirely different picture from that which the actors were representing—a picture which had been blurred and blotted out from his mind for many years by the heavy mass of information which had been thrown at him to digest as best he might in the shortest possible time. This obscuration of mental faculty was beginning to clear like a thick fog away from the mirror of his brain, and with a strange pang of regret he recalled the gentle face, the soft voice, the sweet and kindly ways of the good woman who had loved him so much when a child. As soon as the play was ended he got up and went out with the rest, but lingered near the theatre door while the crowd of fashionable and unfashionable folk were hustling themselves and each other into cabs and carriages, watching each face as it passed by and wondering if by chance Miss Letty might be among them. Or if not, perhaps Major Desmond, to whom he would at once tell his miserable story,—the story of his disgrace at Sandhurst, which had not been so much his fault as that of a “superior” officer who had tempted him to drink and had laughed at him when drunk, himself escaping scot-free when the matter was inquired into, and the unhappy boy whom he had led to ruin was expelled. Yes—it might be well to confide in Major Desmond,—he would do so, he resolved, the very next day. With a deep sigh he roused himself from his reverie, and moved away from the threshold of the corridor to the theatre,where he had been standing, when suddenly his arm was touched timidly and a sweet anxious voice said,—
“I beg your pardon!—but would you mind——! Might I ask you to find me a cab? I have missed my father in the crowd—I am all alone!”
He turned and looked at the speaker, and was quite startled by the exquisite beauty of the face uplifted to his own. Such large eloquent dark eyes!—such beautiful black curly hair!—such an exquisite complexion!—a smile that fairly dazzled him!—and a figure of the most girlish and fairylike grace to crown and complete all these attractions! Hastily he raised his cap, and blushed hotly at the extreme honour he felt at being spoken to by such a beautiful woman.
“Do you mind?” murmured the fair one again. “I am afraid it is very dreadful of me to ask you!—but papa must have taken the carriage—he must have thought I had gone home with some other friends who were here to-night. And I do feel so very nervous,—I have never been left alone anywhere!”
Boy started from his stupor of admiration into instant action.
“I’ll get you a cab directly—of course I will,” he said. “Just sit down here in the corridor—it’s very draughty though, I am afraid—won’t you catch cold?”
“I have a warm cloak, thank you,” said the bewitching siren, smiling up at him. “Thank yousomuch!”
“A hansom or a four-wheeler?” asked Boy.
“Oh, anything! I amsosorry to trouble you!”
Boy dashed off into the street. It never for a moment occurred to him that the young lady could just as well have asked the same attention from one of the stalwart policemen on guard near the theatre door, and that perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the proprieties if she had done so. He soon secured a hansom, the smartest and cleanest he could find, and ran back to the charming creature who had so confidingly thrown herself upon his protection.
“Oh thank you! But won’t you come with me?” said the beautiful heroine of this dramatic incident. “Pleasedo! Come home and see papa! He will besoglad!” Nothing could have been more winning than the innocent and childlike way in which she gave this invitation. She made it all the more irresistible by pressing her little daintily gloved fingers on Boy’s arm,—a touch which thrilled him through and through.
“I shall be so frightened,” she went on, “in a cab all alone! Please see me home, if only to the door!”
“All right,” said Boy resolutely. “I’ll come!”
He assisted her into the hansom with the greatest tenderness, and carefully tucked her pretty skirts about her tiny feet,—oh! what charming skirts, all soft and silken and frilled and rustling, like the leaves of fringed French poppies!
“What address?” he inquired.
She gave him a number and street near Sloane Square, and he, confiding the same to the cabman, sprang in beside her, and they rattled away together through the streets, Boy delighted with the adventure and the pleasure of being chosen as the protector and cavalier of so fascinating a being as his companion.
“Isn’t this fun?” she said, her eyes sparkling like jewels in the light reflected from the cab lamps. “I feel so safe now! You ought to know my name, I think. Shall I tell you?”
“If you don’t mind,” answered Boy, still troubled by a tendency to blush at his own temerity—“I should like to know it, so that I might remember it—and you—always!”
This was a fairly good hit, and was promptly responded to on the part of the fair one, by a modest droop of the head and tender side glance.
“How sweet of you to say—that!” she murmured, “but I am afraid you will soon forget. My name is Lenore de Gramont. I am the only daughter of a French nobleman, the Marquis de Gramont.”
Boy blushed more hotly than ever. What a position for him! Here he was, in a hansom cab, with the daughter of a French Marquis! He did not know whether he ought to be proud or humiliated!
“Papa is a very clever man”—went on the charming Lenore confidingly,—“he has a beautiful castle in France, but he is so fond of England—oh,sofond!—He would rather live in quite little apartments in England than in a palace in France!”
“Really!” said Boy.
“Yes! And he is so fond of Englishmen. He adores them! You are English?”
“Yes,” answered Boy. “My name is Robert D’Arcy-Muir. I am the only son of the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir.”
“The Honourable?” queried Lenore with a fascinating uplifting of her delicate eyebrows. “Ah yes, that is one of your English distinctions—so grand and meaning so much! Our titles in France mean nothing!”
“I have been in France,” said Boy.
“Have you? Did you like it?”
“I was only at school there when a boy,” he replied. “The school was near the sea-coast in Brittany.”
“Ah, dear Brittany! So charming—so picturesque—so poetic!”
“Well, I can’t say much about that,” said Boy. “I was there just for a year,—but I didn’t care about it. The boys were rather a bad lot.”
“It was perhaps a bad school,” said the daughter of the Marquis, with a little laugh. “Oh, you must not be too severe about my dear Brittany! Here we are! Do come in!”
Boy helped her out of the cab, and as she sprang lightly to the ground she looked up with tenderentreaty in her eyes and repeated the words. “Do come in!”
Boy hesitated,—then paid the cabman and dismissed him.
“Do you think your father—the Marquis——” he stammered uneasily.
“He will be charmed!” said the captivating Lenore. “Come—I will take no denial. You must have supper with us—come!” And almost before he knew how it happened, Boy found himself in the highly decorated hall of a small flat, bowing to a stoutly built gentleman with a red face and a superabundance of moustache, whom Lenore introduced as—
“My father, the Marquis de Gramont!”
And while Boy made his bashful salute, father and daughter exchanged a profane wink which had their guileless guest observed, would certainly have surprised him.
“Dear papa!” said Lenore then, in her pretty caressing voice, “how could you leave me behind at the theatre in that cruel way? What were you thinking about? This is Mr. Robert D’Arcy-Muir, the son of the Honourable Mr. D’Arcy-Muir, who was good enough to get me a hansom and bring me home,—and if he hadn’t been so kind to me, where do you suppose I should have been, you naughty papa!”
By this time the Marquis appeared to understand and grasp the position.
“My dear, I am very sorry!” he said in smooth deep accents—“very sorry! I really thought you had gone home with our other friends! But you have been most fortunate in finding such a handsome and gallant cavalier to take care of you. You are very welcome, my boy,” he said heartily, laying a fat hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Supper has just begun. Come in,sans cérémonie! Come and share our simple meal!”
He led the way,—Lenore threw off her opera cloak, thereby showing her dazzling beauty to much greater advantage than before, and slipping her bare rounded arm through Boy’s with a little coaxing pressure, she took him into a room of considerable size, where a light supper was laid out with a good deal of elegance, and where several other men were sitting, all rather red-faced, and with something of a free-and-easy air about them. Boy was introduced to the party as “the son of the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir,” whereat he wondered a little, as he could not see what his parentage had to do with his present way of passing his evening. But he presently decided that as his host was a Marquis, no doubt all the gentlemen with him were of the bluest blood and highest degree, and that therefore it was necessary to say who he was, in order that he might be known as a fit companion for such distinguished personages. Suppose they knew he was expelled from Sandhurst! The hot blood surged to the very tips of his ears asthis thought crossed his mind, and he took his seat at table like one in a dream.
“Champagne, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir?” inquired the Marquis courteously, passing the bottle.
“Thanks!” And Boy, filling his glass, raised it to his lips and bowed low to the fair Lenore sitting next to him, who, smiling, bowed in return. And after the little pause which generally follows the entry of a stranger at a feast, conversation began again and soon became argumentative and noisy. Politics and society were discussed, and several of the gentlemen present appeared, for gentlemen, to have some curious notions of honour.
“Oh, hang all that sort of rot,” said one, a man with a clean-shaven face, and a physiognomy apparently got up as a copy of Mr. Pinero’s—“Success is the only thing you need care about. Money, money, money! People don’t care a brass button whether you are honourable or not. Tradesmen are more civil to the fellows who run up long bills than to those who owe short ones. It’s all a matter of hard cash. Principle is an old card, long played out.”
“Did you see that new girl in the piece at the Harem Theatre last night?” said another. “Little idiot! She can’t act. She ought to be a charwoman.”
“Perhaps she cannot do charing,” suggested the Marquis, nodding at his daughter, who at oncereplenished Boy’s glass. “It is amétier!—it may require study!”
They all laughed.
“She’s an idiot, I say,” went on the former speaker—“She could make thousands if she would just let the actor-manager do as he likes with her——”
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Marquis with a fierce twirl of his moustache, “I must beg you to remember that my daughter is present!”
Boy looked at him admiringly, and warmed to the fine spirit he exhibited. He, Boy, was rapidly getting indignant at the unmannerly way in which these eating and drinking men were eyeing the exquisite Lenore,—one man had actually wafted her a kiss from the other side of the table,—and she had pretended not to see. But of course she had seen, and was no doubt hurt and disgusted. She must have been disgusted,—any sweet girl like that would feel outraged at such vulgar familiarity! Boy was growing more and more heated and excited as the time went on; he had eaten scarcely anything, but he had taken all the champagne given to him, and there was a buzzing in his head like the swarming of a hive of bees. At a sign from the Marquis he got up unsteadily, and accepting a cigarette went with all the party into a side room, where Lenore drove him to still further desperation and infatuation by taking his cigarette from him, putting it for a moment between her own rosy lips, then lighting itand giving it back to him with a mischievous curtsey and smile that were enough to confuse a much wiser and clearer head than that of a young man only just turned twenty. Dimly he became aware of a card-table being pushed towards him,—dimly through the brain-fumes of smoke and champagne he heard his host, the Marquis de Gramont, asking him to play a game with them.
“What is it?” he demanded thickly—“I am not clever at cards. Are you?” This with a stupid laugh and sentimental look at Lenore.
“Oh no! I never play anything!” said the young lady, smiling sweetly. “I only look on! But I think baccarat is a very amusing game. Do play!”
Whereupon he sat down with the rest of the men, and was soon, under the guidance of the Marquis, in the full heat and excitement of play. He did not know in the least what he was doing,—he obeyed every hint from the Marquis, or from Lenore, who leaned over his shoulder caressingly and whispered now and then—“I would play that if I were you”—or “I would do that.” Everything was in a whirl with him, and he only came to his senses at last with a sharp shock when, at the conclusion of four or five games, the Marquis asked courteously,—
“Would you care to go on any further, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir? Pray do not think me officious for reminding you that you have lost five hundred pounds already!”
Boy started from his chair.
“What? Five hundred pounds! Nonsense! I thought we were playing for fun,—for sixpences,—for——”
“No, not exactly!” said the Marquis urbanely and with a slight smile. “You have been rather unlucky so far,—but if you wish to go on, it is possible you may win back what you have lost.”
But Boy still stood amazed, with a wild look in his eyes.
“Lost! Five hundred pounds! My God!” Then rallying a little he looked around him bewilderedly. “To whom do I owe this money?”
The other men laughed carelessly.
“Why, to the winners, old chappie,” said one. “The Marquis”—with a slight somewhat sarcastic emphasis on this title,—“will tell you all about it. Don’t worry!—he’ll settle it all for you.”
“I shall be most happy to be of any service to Mr. D’Arcy-Muir,” said the Marquis at once. “He has only to give me his note of hand that in ten days he will repay me, and the five hundred pounds is ready for him—even more, if he requires it.”
“Repay—five hundred pounds!” And Boy still stared about him in horror and fear. “But—I have not five hundred pence in all the world!”
The Marquis smiled again and stroked his moustache.
“No? That is certainly unfortunate! But yourfather, the Honourable Mr. D’Arcy-Muir, will no doubt be answerable for you. This is a debt of honour, of course—not a public matter—but involving serious private disgrace if left unpaid. However, don’t distress yourself, my dear boy! I will accept your note of hand at fourteen days instead of ten.”
Boy was silent—his face was deadly pale, his eyes bloodshot. Then he suddenly walked up to his smiling host and looked him full in the face.
“I understand!” he said hoarsely. “I begin to realize whatyouare!—and what kind of a trap I have fallen into! Very well! Let it be as you say. Pay these men what I owe to them—what you have made me lose to them, and I will give you my note of hand for the amount. And in fourteen days you shall be paid back—somehow!”
“Good!” And the Marquis went at once to a writing-desk conveniently at hand and scrawled a few lines hastily, which Boy as hastily glanced at and signed with his name and address,—“Thank you!” And the distinguished French nobleman shifted about a little, and avoided with some uneasiness the steady glance of the young man’s eyes. “Five hundred!—and I will charge you no interest for the loan! Will you play again?”
“Play again?” And Boy turned upon them all with such a tragedy of pain written on his face as for a moment awed even the callous gamesters, accustomed to ruin young men’s lives with as littlecompunction as they cracked their nuts after dinner. “No! Had I known better I would not have played at all.” With a sudden fierce movement he sprang towards the bewitching Lenore and seized her hands, while with a slight cry she tried to drag herself away from him. “You—you—betrayed me into this!Youbrought me here!—you, with your beautiful face and beautiful eyes—you whom I thought a good innocent girl! A good girl!” And he broke into a loud harsh laugh, like the laugh of a madman. “God help me! I thought you were good!”
He flung her hands from him with a gesture of loathing and contempt, and then, with one look of miserable defiance at the practised villains who, seated round the card-table, were smoking leisurely and smiling as though they were listening to a very amusing farce, turned and left the room.
His first thought when he stood in the open street again was suicide,—his next, Miss Letty. He walked along swiftly, scarcely heeding where he went, his head burning, his heart throbbing, his whole being possessed by the exceeding wrong done to him by Fate in endowing him with the mere fact of life. He was unconscious of making any protest, yet a protest there was in his own soul which would not and could not have found its way into words, because he did not himself recognize the nature of it. God alone was able to read that protest and understand it,—the terrible indictment brought against those whohad been given this young life to guard and train to noblest results,—an indictment involuntarily and invisibly set before a crowd of witnesses every day by young men and women who owe their mistakes and miseries to the blind tyranny and selfishness of the parents who brought them into existence. If Boy had made an end of his troubles then and there he would not, strictly speaking, have murdered himself so much as his parents would have murdered him. From the earliest beginnings of childhood, all the seeds of his present misery had been sown,—by neglect, by carelessness, by bad example, by uncomfortable home surroundings, by domestic quarrellings,—by the want of all the grace, repose, freedom, courtesy, kindliness and sympathy, which should give every man’s house the hall-mark of “Home.” His childhood had been sad and solitary—his boyhood embittered by disappointment, followed by the excessive strain of “competitive cram,” which had tired and tortured every little cell in his brain to utter exhaustion,—he was old before he had had time to be young. Miss Letty! The thought of her just now in all his wretchedness brought a sudden mist of tears to his eyes. He had forgotten her so long—so long! And when he had seen her last he had scarcely been conscious of her, because so stupefied by the weight of the things he had to remember for his “exam.” She had seemed a dream to him, and so had the Major. Now, when the mass of undigestedlearning had all rolled off and been absolutely forgotten as though it had never been studied, the remembrance of her love for him as a child came freshly back like a breath from the sea, or the perfume of flowers. He slackened his hurried pace, and grew calmer. The stars were shining brightly above his head, though London was enswathed in a kind of low fog, which crept dismally up from the ground to the top of the ugly brick houses, and there hung like a veil—beyond this, the deep heavens arched high and clear, and Venus shone steadfastly like a lamp to guide lost travellers on their way.
“I will try Miss Letty,” he said to himself. “I won’t tell her just yet how I have been caught in a gambler’s snare—I will just simply ask her if she will lend me a little money. Then if she says ‘Yes’ I will go to her and explain. I don’t think she will refuse.”
He carried this plan into action the next day, and wrote to his old friend as follows:—
“Dear Miss Letty,I am afraid you will have thought me very careless in not writing to you all these years, and very selfish now to write when I have only a favour to ask of you, but I hope you will not mind, and try still to keep as good an opinion of me as you can. I have got into rather a difficulty, and am inurgent need of a little money. Can you lend me some? I do not know when I shall be able to pay you back, but I do not think you will be a very hard creditor toYours affectionately,Boy.”
“Dear Miss Letty,
I am afraid you will have thought me very careless in not writing to you all these years, and very selfish now to write when I have only a favour to ask of you, but I hope you will not mind, and try still to keep as good an opinion of me as you can. I have got into rather a difficulty, and am inurgent need of a little money. Can you lend me some? I do not know when I shall be able to pay you back, but I do not think you will be a very hard creditor to
Yours affectionately,Boy.”
He posted this in the morning about ten o’clock. At eight the same evening he got his answer, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds and the following letter:—
“My dear Boy,—I am so very glad to hear from you again. Please accept the enclosed as a little present. Change it at my bank, and if you like to come and see me afterwards, and talk over your difficulties, I shall be only too happy to help you. I am nearly always to be found at home, as I am rather an invalid.Your old friend,Letitia Leslie.”
“My dear Boy,—
I am so very glad to hear from you again. Please accept the enclosed as a little present. Change it at my bank, and if you like to come and see me afterwards, and talk over your difficulties, I shall be only too happy to help you. I am nearly always to be found at home, as I am rather an invalid.
Your old friend,Letitia Leslie.”
The letter dropped from his hand and he looked at the cheque with a kind of despair. Fifty pounds! In his extremity it was useless. How foolish he had been not to ask Miss Letty for the whole sum at once! He took up the letter and read it again—again and again he looked at the cheque.
“Had I better go and see her?” he meditated. “But if I do I shall have to tell her all about the row at Sandhurst,—and this gambling business—shewill think me a regular villain. She must be quite an old lady now—and I should worry her to death. She would be so disappointed in me——”
He looked at the cheque again,—and then—like a black cloud crossing the horizon, a Thought began to creep over his mind, darkening it steadily into gloom. He sat quiet, fingering the cheque and Miss Letty’s letter together, his face growing paler and paler,—his eyes harder and colder—his form rigid.
“People should always write the amount they are drawing in plain letters on their cheques,” he half-whispered with dry lips—“Miss Letty should have written theword‘fifty,’ not thefigure‘50.’”
He put away letter and cheque and went to bed early,—not to sleep but to toss about restlessly all night long. What a horrible time he passed!—what fretting dreams tortured him!—what strange and evil faces haunted him, chief among which were those of the “Marquis” de Gramont and his fascinating daughter Lenore—and the smooth cold handsome face of the officer who had first tempted him to drink at Sandhurst. Of his mother and father he never thought,—they had never shown him the slightest sympathy. Once, during this wretched night of fleeting visions, he saw the bent crooked figure and wrinkled countenance of the old sailor Rattling Jack, whose last words had been “I’ll just think o’ ye as if ye were dead.” Death was better than disgrace—and yet—Miss Letty was so good a woman—she had loved him so much—she would be sure to forgive him—if——!
With the daylight he rose and sat at his writing-table, vaguely turning over bits of paper and scribbling figures on them without any apparent intention,—then after a hurried breakfast he went out. At about half-past ten he made his way to Miss Letty’s bank and drawing her cheque out of his pocket, passed it across the counter. The cashier glanced at it with a little uplifting of his eyebrows.
“All in notes, or would you like any gold?” he demanded.
Boy was staring fixedly in front of him and did not hear. The cashier was busy, and spoke again impatiently and with a suspicious glance.
“Notes or gold? Will you have all notes or any gold?”
“Notes, please,” answered Boy in a low voice.
The cashier turned over the cheque.
“You have forgotten to endorse it,” he said, passing it back and handing him a pen ready dipped in ink.
Boy took the pen—but his hand shook. Again the cashier looked at him suspiciously. When he had endorsed the cheque the cashier vanished into the manager’s room and was absent some minutes. Then he came back and said with great civility,—
“Will you kindly call back in an hour? There is a little formality to go through with this beforepaying out so large an amount from Miss Leslie’s current account——”
“Is there?” stammered Boy, turning deathly white.
“Oh, only a mere matter of form,” said the cashier, watching him narrowly, “and our manager is rather busy just now. If you will call back at twelve he will explain everything to you, and hand you over the money.”
Boy bent his head mechanically and went out, sick with terror. Meanwhile, one of the bank’s confidential clerks, acting on instructions received, went out of the building by a side door, and jumping into a hansom was driven straight to Miss Letty’s house. Could he see Miss Leslie? The servant who opened the door was not quite sure,—Miss Leslie was not very well.
“Please say to her that the business is urgent, and that I come from the bank,” said the clerk.
Upon this, the servant showed him into the hall, where he waited for a few minutes impatiently. Then he was shown into Miss Letty’s morning-room, where, near a sparkling fire, and surrounded by many flowers, sat Miss Letty herself, a picture of fair and tranquil old age, quietly knitting.
“Excuse me troubling you, madam,” began the clerk, stumbling awkwardly into the dainty little sanctum, and standing abashed in the presence of this gracious, sweet old lady, who as he afterwards said when speaking of her, looked like a queen.
“Pray do not mention it, sir,” said Miss Letty with her old-fashioned courtesy. “I am quite ready to attend to business at any time. Excuse my not rising to receive you,—I am not very strong to-day.”
The clerk hesitated.
“Our cashier was not quite certain about this cheque,” he at last went on. “As it is not usual for you to draw such a large sum at once out of your current account, we thought it might be as well to make an inquiry before paying it——”
He paused, alarmed at the white face Miss Letty turned upon him.
“What cheque are you speaking of?” she asked. “For a large sum? Pray let me see it.”
He took out his pocket-book and handed her the cheque, carefully folded in two,—then awaited her response. With trembling fingers she opened it and read—“Pay to Robert D’Arcy-Muir the sum of £500.”
A dark mist swam before her eyes,—she turned faint and giddy—the room whirled round her in a circle of firelight and flowers, with the conventional figure of the bank clerk standing out angularly in the centre,—then with a strong mental effort she recovered herself and quietly re-folded the cheque.
“Yes!” she said faintly, then clearing her voice, she forced herself to speak more distinctly and to smile. “Yes!—it is quite right! Quite—correct!”
And she rose from her chair, her soft grey cashmeres falling about her, and the old lace kerchiefknotted on her bosom heaving a little with her quickened breath. “It is quite correct,” she went on. “The young man—Mr. D’Arcy-Muir—presented it himself, no doubt?”
“Yes, madam,” said the clerk humbly, “he did, but—we thought it best to ask. Very sorry, I am sure, to have had any doubt! But you see the last ‘nought’ is not precisely in your usual way of finishing a figure—and—er—the sum being large——”
“Yes, yes, I see,” said Miss Letty, bravely smiling. “My writing is not so good as it was,—I am getting old! Thank you for your trouble in coming,—and thank the manager, please! Tell him it is quite correct!”
She gave him back the cheque, and he accepted it with a bow.
“Sorry to have troubled you, madam, I am sure!”
“Not at all!” said Miss Letty. “Not at all! Good morning!”
“Good morning, madam!”
He left her, and she stood like a creature turned into stone.
“Boy! Oh, Boy!” The name escaped her lips in a half-whisper.
She looked around her—her eyes were dim,—and she was still troubled by a sickening giddiness. She moved to her chair, and laid one hand on the arm of it to steady herself.
“You should have died when you were a child,poor Boy!” she said still whisperingly—“Poor little Boy! You should have died when you were a child!”
Still she stood rigid and tearless, unconscious of all around her, her blue eyes fixed on vacancy. The door opened—she did not hear it. Violet Morrison, very fair to see in the neat grey gown and spotless white cap of her calling, entered—she did not notice her.
“Miss Letty!”
She started a little, turned her head, and strove to smile and speak, but could not. Violet, alarmed, sprang to her side.
“Darling Miss Letty! What has happened?—What is the matter?”
A deep sigh broke from Miss Letty’s lips. She trembled a little.
“Nothing, dear! Nothing! I was only just thinking—of Boy!”
“Were you?” And Violet’s face grew more serious. Something was surely wrong with Miss Letty!—she had not mentioned Boy for years. “What made you think of him just now, dearest?” And she slipped her strong young arm about the old lady’s trembling figure.
“A little circumstance reminded me,” replied Miss Letty dreamily, “of the days when he was a child. Do you see up there, Violet?”—and she pointed to a small shelf above the mantelpiece,—“Those quaintlittle shoes? He used to wear them—and rub them out at the toes—you will notice they are quite worn! And that toy there—that cow—it moves its head—he used to call it ‘Dunny,’ and he loved it so much that he took it everywhere about with him. Such a funny little fellow!—such a dear innocent little man—such an innocent—sweet little man!”
The last words were almost inaudible—for as she spoke them her face suddenly changed and grew ashen grey,—she reeled and would have fallen, had not Violet caught her just in time, and laid her gently back in her arm-chair in a dead faint. The house was soon in confusion,—one servant flew for the doctor, another for Major Desmond, who arrived on the scene just as his old friend was beginning to recover consciousness under the careful tending of Violet, whose trained medical knowledge stood her in good stead.
“What has upset her like this?” he asked, his kind face growing drawn and haggard as he saw the death-like pallor of his beloved Letty’s features. “How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” answered Violet in a low tone. “I found her standing by her chair, and talking to herself about Boy!”
The doctor soon came, and after careful examination pronounced it to be shock.
“A nervous shock,” he said cheerfully. “She’ll get all right presently, won’t you?” And he patted hispatient’s pretty old hand soothingly. “You’ll get all right presently?”
Miss Letty looked upon them all with her sweetly patient air and smiled.
“Oh yes! I shall soon be quite well. You must not worry about me.”
“But what’s the matter, Letty?” asked the Major tenderly, bending over her chair. “What is troubling you?”
“Nothing, Dick! It was only a little faintness. I am almost well now—almost well!—only weak—very weak——”
She closed her eyes and lay back again in her chair, while Violet still bathed her forehead and chafed her hands. She was reviving gradually, and after a few minutes the doctor took his leave. Out in the hall, however, he beckoned mysteriously to Major Desmond.
“She may last a couple of years or so longer,” he said, “but she will require the greatest care,—it is the beginning of the end.”
And with a hurried bow after these ominous words, he got into his brougham and was driven away. Major Desmond stood where the doctor had left him, stupefied.
“The beginning of the end!” Letty! He shuddered. Letty had got her deathblow! She was going away to be an angel with Harry Raikes, and sit on a golden throne——
“No! By G——! She shan’t!” said the Major desperately. “If she goes I’ll go with her!”
Meanwhile, the confidential clerk from the bank, whose visit was the unguessed cause of all this trouble, went back to his chief and reported the result of his mission.
“Well, I’m glad it’s all right,” said the manager after hearing him out. “I confess I had my suspicions, for Miss Leslie has never drawn five hundred all at once from her current account before. I am sorry I doubted the young man. Tell the cashier to attend to him at once when he calls.”
At the appointed hour, Boy came into the bank, walking slowly and feebly, and looking very ill. The cashier greeted him smilingly, and with effusive civility.
“Just ready, sir!” and he began counting out crisp bank notes rapidly.
Boy leaned on the counter looking at him.
“I thought you said there was some formality——” he began.
“Quite right, sir! Yes—so there was, but we hurried the matter by sending the cheque to Miss Leslie and asking her if it was all right——”
Boy took a deep sharp breath.
“And she——?” he began.
“She said it was quite correct. You see we were a little uncertain,—we have to be very cautious in banking matters—sorry to have caused any delay,I’m sure! Now let me see,—three hundred—two fifties—four hundred—fifty—twenty-five—another twenty-five. Kindly look through the notes before leaving the counter.”
Boy did as he was told with shaking fingers.
Then he folded them all together and put them in his pocket, and looked at the cashier very strangely indeed.
“Good morning!” he said.
“Good morning.”
Boy walked to the heavy spring door and pulled it open—then passed through and was gone, the cashier watching him till he had disappeared.
“Curious—very curious!” he soliloquized. “That young chap looked as if he had got poison instead of bank notes. I wonder what’s up?”
Often did that wonder affect the worthy cashier. The people who came and went in the bank, with money, and without it, were strange enough in their various expressions of countenance and mannerisms to provide many a student with subject-matter for thought,—still, it was not often that so young a lad as Boy was seen there with such a whole history of despair and shame written on his face. And that despair and shame had not lightened with his possession of the much-needed and sorely coveted money,—it had, on the contrary, deepened and become far heavier to bear. But he had now made up his mind as to his immediate course of action. He hadresolved upon it in the very moment that the cashier had handed him the bank notes, and he was only anxious to go through with his intention while it was fresh and newly formed in his mind, lest anything should make him hesitate or falter. He went back straight to his lodgings and there putting all the bank notes into one large envelope wrote the following letter:—