A small, friendly dinner-table, Mr. Grubb and Lady Adela presiding. A thin, sharp-featured, insignificant little man, whose evening clothes looked the worse for wear, and who wore a black watered ribbon across his waistcoat in lieu of a gold chain, sat at Lady Adela's right hand. It was Colonel Hope. To look at him and his attire, you would have said he did not know where to turn for a shilling: yet he was the possessor of great wealth, and had seen hard service in India. Beside Mr. Grubb sat the colonel's wife, Lady Sarah; a tall, portly woman, whose face bore much resemblance to her mother's, Lady Acorn. Grace and Frances Chenevix and Mr. Howard, Mr. Grubb's partner, completed the party: the latter was a staid, stiff gentleman of sixty, with iron-grey hair and whiskers, and a stern face. He and the colonel had known each other in early life, when both had the world to fight for fame or fortune. Each had fought it well, and won; certainly so far as fortune was concerned. The colonel was just home from India, and Mr. Grubb had given the two early friends a speedy opportunity of meeting. One place at table was empty, and the young lady who sat next it, Frances Chenevix, did not look quite pleased at its being so. It was intended for Gerard Hope, who had somehow failed to make his appearance.
Colonel Hope had retired from the army and was come home for good. About a year ago he and Lady Sarah had lost their two sons, lads of seven and eight, from fever. They had no other children, and it was generally supposed the colonel would make his nephew, Gerard, his heir. The colonel and his wife were both tired this evening, having been looking at houses all day. Frances had been with them, but she seemed fresh and bright as a lark. The colonel had bought a pretty little property in Gloucestershire, but Lady Sarah wished for a town house also.
"I think I shall take it, though it is rather small," observed the colonel, talking of one of the houses they had seen. "There'd be room for a friend or two as well as for ourselves: and for Gerard also, if I decide to adopt him. By the way—what is your opinion of that young man, Grubb?"
"As to looks, do you mean, colonel?" smiled Mr. Grubb. "They are good. I don't know much else of him."
"Thought you did," growled the colonel, who was a hot-tempered man, and liked plain answers to his questions.
"I know nothing against him," said Mr. Grubb, emphatically. "I have seen but little of him, but that little I like."
"He is very nice and very good, and quite worthy to be adopted by you and Sarah, colonel," spoke up Lady Frances in her free way. "I'm sure the manner he slaves away in that red-tape office he is chained to, ought to be a gold feather in his cap."
"A gold feather?" repeated the literal colonel, looking at the speaker questioningly. While Mr. Howard, who knew what "slaving away" amounted to in a red-tape office, indulged in a silent laugh.
"Well, ought to tell in his favour, I mean," said Frances, mending her speech.
"I suppose he only does what he is put to do—his daily work," continued the colonel. "That, he cannot shirk: he has nothing to look to but his salary to pay his way. There's no merit in doing one's simple duty."
"I think there is a great deal, when it is such hard work as Gerard's," contended Frances. And this time Mr. Howard laughed outright at the "hard work."
"Perhaps the hard work is keeping him tonight," suggested Mr. Grubb, with just the ghost of a smile.
"No," said Frances, "I think the office closes at four."
"Oh," cried the colonel. "Where is he then? What does he mean by staying away?"
"He is run over, of course," said Frances, "and taken to the nearest hospital. Nothing short of that would have kept him away."
Lady Sarah Hope looked down the table at her sister. "Is Gerard in love with you, Frances?"
"In love with me!" exclaimed the young lady, her face flushing vividly. "What ridiculous fable will you imagine next, Sarah?"
"Is it a fable?" added Lady Sarah, struck with the flush.
"What else should it be?" laughed Frances. "Gerard could not think of falling in love upon nothing a-year. Nothing a-year, and find himself! That has been his case, poor fellow—or something akin to it."
"That may be remedied," remarked Lady Sarah. She had caught up an opinion upon the subject, and she held to it in the future.
As the small line of ladies filed out of the dining-room, Lady Sarah, walking first, turned just outside the door to wait for her sister Adela. Mr. Grubb, who was holding the door open, said something to his wife in an undertone as she passed him. Adela made no answer whatever; except that her lifted face put on a look of scorn, and her lips took a downward curve.
"What did your husband say to you?" asked Lady Sarah, having fancied that she heard her own name—Hope.
"I don't know—or care. As if I should listen to anything he might say!" contemptuously added Lady Adela.
Lady Sarah stared. "Why, child, what do you mean? He is your husband."
"To my cost."
"What do you mean? What does she mean?" continued Lady Sarah, appealing to the other two sisters, for Adela had not deemed it necessary to lower her voice. They did not answer. Grace took up an album, her face wearing a sad look of pain; Frances walked into the other drawing-room.
"I insist upon knowing what you mean, in saying that Mr. Grubb is your husband toyour cost," cried Lady Sarah, returning to the charge. She was so much older than Adela—looking, in fact, old enough to be her mother, for India's sun and the loss of her children had greatly aged her—that she took her to task at will. Lady Sarah, like her mother, had always displayed somewhat of a propensity for setting the world to rights.
"It is to my cost," spoke Adela, defiantly. "That I should behiswife, obliged to stand as such before the world, a man ofhisname, a tradesman!" And the emphatic scorn, the stress of aversion laid on the "his," no pen could adequately express. "I never hear myself announced, 'Lady Adela Grubb,' but I shiver; I never see it in theMorning Post, amongst the lists at an entertainment, or perhaps at Court, but I fling the paper from me. As I should like to flinghim."
"Bless my heart and mind, what's in a name?" demanded Lady Sarah, having listened as one astounded.
"Grubb! Grubb!" hissed Adela, from between her dainty lips. "There is a great deal in that name, at any rate, Sarah. I hate it. It is to me as a nightmare. And I hate him for forcing me to bear it."
"Forcing you to bear it! Why, you are his wife."
"I am—to my shame. But he had no right to make me his wife: to ask me to be his wife. Why could he not have fixed upon any one else? Grace, there, for instance. She would not have minded the name or the trade. She'd have got used to it—and to him."
Lady Sarah Hope nodded her head four or five times in succession. "A pretty frame of mind you are cherishing, Adela! Leave off such evil speaking—and thinking. Your husband is a true gentleman, a man that the world may be proud of; he can hold his own as such anywhere. As to the house in Leadenhall Street, it is of world-wide fame—the idea of your calling him a 'tradesman!'—Let me speak! Where can you find a man with so noble a presence, so refined and sweet a countenance? And I feel sure that he is as good and true and generous in himself as he is distinguished in reputation and person."
"All the same, I scorn him. I hate him for having chosen me. And it is the pleasure of my life to let him see that I do," concluded Adela, in sheer defiance, as she tossed her pretty head.
"Cease, Adela, cease!" interposed Grace, coming forward, her hands lifted imploringly. "You little know the wickedness of what you are saying; or the evil you may be laying up for yourself in the days to come. This is not your true nature; you are only forcing it upon yourself to gratify a resentment you have persistently taken up. How often have I prayed to you to be your own true self!
"Pray for it yourself, child," enjoined Lady Sarah, laying her hand with a firm grasp upon Adela's shoulder. "Pray upon your bended knees to Heaven, to snatch and shield you from Satan. Most assuredly he has got into you."
"What has got into me?" asked Adela, with languid indifference, not having caught the words.
"The devil," angrily amended Lady Sarah.
That infant of Lady Adela's, little George, did not live. Just for a month or two, just long enough for her to get passionately attached to him, to use every means to make him strong, he lingered. Then there came three days of illness, and the little soul fled from the feeble frame. No other child had been born, and Lady Adela seemed to be left with no end or aim in life, except that of cherishing resentment against Mr. Grubb. She took it up more fiercely than ever, and she let him feel it to his heart's core. The still, small voice of conscience, warning her that this was a forced and unnatural state of mind, could not always be deadened. The very fact of its pricking her caused her to resent the pricks, and to nourish her ill-omened temper the more persistently. Francis Grubb's life was not one of fair skies and rose-leaves.
"I should like to shake it out of her—and I wonder he does not do it," ran the thoughts of Frances Chenevix, as she opened the piano in the next room and began to play a dashing march.
Very especially just now was the Lady Adela Grubb resenting things in general. Captain Stanley—who had set up a flirtation with her when she was but a slip of a girl, and with whom it had pleased her to fancy herself in love after he sailed for India, though that was pure fancy and not fact—had taken no notice of her now that he was home again, beyond that demanded by the ordinary usages of society; and at this Lady Adela felt mortified—slighted. He had not as much as said to her, "So we are both married, you and I; we cannot sit in corners any more to talk in whispers:" on the contrary, he spent his time talking with newer beauties, Selina Dalrymple for one. It was quite the behaviour of a bear, decided Adela; and she was resenting it by showing temper to the world.
Frances Chenevix dashed through the march. Its last bars were dying into silence, when she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs. Going to the door, she saw Gerard Hope.
"Well, and what account have you to give of yourself?" began Frances, as he took her hand.
"I was at a water-party at Richmond," breathlessly answered Gerard, who had been having a race with time.
"Well, I'm sure! And here have I been vowing to them that nothing could have kept you but being run over in the streets; and Colonel Hope thinks you are detained over the red-tape duties. You might have come for once, Gerard."
"I couldn't possibly, Frances; I couldn't land; and then I had to dress. The tide kept us out. It has vexed me above a bit, I can tell you."
"You look vexed," she retorted, regarding his laughing countenance.
"I am vexed; but it is of no use to weep over it. You know I want to stand well with my uncle. I suppose you have finished dinner?"
"Ages ago."
"Where are the rest of you ladies?"
"In the next room, quarrelling. Lady Sarah is treating Adela to a bit of her mind—and she deserves it. Now, Gerard, behave yourself. What do you want to come so close to me for?"
For Mr. Gerard Hope was squeezing himself beside her on a small ottoman, meant for only one portly personage. He did more than that: he stole his arm round her waist.
"I believe Uncle Hope wants to adopt me," cried Gerard. "Won't it be jolly. No more scratch, scratch, scratch away with a pen all the blessed day."
"I called it 'slavery' to them just now," interrupted Frances.
"Good girl! No more getting up by candle-light in winter, and trudging off through the frost and through the thaw without breakfast, which you have not had time to take! It will be a change—if he does it. I'm not sure of it yet."
"You don't deserve it, Gerard."
"No! Why don't I? I'd try and be a good nephew to him—as dutiful as the good boy in the spelling-book. I say, Frances, has he been asking about me?—getting references as to character?"
"Yes, he has," was the perhaps unexpected answer. "Just as if you were a footman. Mr. Grubb said he did not know much of you; but what he did know he liked. Hark! They are coming out of the dining-room. And if you want any dinner, you had better go there and ring for it."
"Perhaps there's none left for me."
Frances laughed. "I heard Mr. Grubb whisper to his wife that if Gerard Hope came he was to go into the dining-room."
Gerard rose, went out, and met the gentlemen. Frances stayed where she was, and fell into a reverie. Did Gerard really love her? At times she thought so, at others she thought not.
The days wore onwards in their rapid flight. Time does not stand still even for those favoured ones who are plunged, for the first time, into the allurements of a London season: as was Selina Dalrymple.
One bright morning, when the sun was shining brilliantly and the skies were blue and the streets warm and dusty, she sat in the breakfast-room with her husband. The late meal was over, and Selina, a hot colour in her cheeks, was drumming her pretty foot on the floor, and not looking the essence of good-humour. She wore a richly embroidered white dress with pink ribbons. Mr. Dalrymple's eyes had rarely rested on a fairer woman, and his heart knew it too well.
"Selina, I asked you last night whether you intended to go to Lady Burnham's breakfast, at that rural villa of theirs. Of course, if you go, I will accompany you, otherwise I have some business I should like to attend to on Thursday."
"I can't go," answered Selina. "I have nothing to wear."
"Nothing to wear!"
"Nothing on earth."
"How can you say so?"
"I did think of ordering a suitable toilette for it, and was at Damereau's about it yesterday. But, after what you said last night——"
"My dear, what do you mean? what did I say? Only that you seemed, to me, never to appear in the same gown whether at home or out; and I begged you to remember that our income was limited."
"You said I changed my dresses four times a-day, Oscar."
"Well. Don't you?"
"But every one else does; Some change them five times. You would not like me to come down in the morning and go up to bed at night in the same dress, would you?"
"I suppose not. It's of no use asking me about dress, Selina. I scarcely know one gown from another. But it does strike me that you have a most extraordinary number of new things. Go out or come in when I will, there's sure to be the milliner's porter and basket at the door."
"Would you have me look an object?"
"You never do look an object."
"Of course I don't. I guard against it. I'd give the world to go to this fête at the Burnhams'. Every soul will be there, but me."
"And why not you, if your heart is so set upon It? I think all such affairs a stupid bore: but that's nothing."
"Would you wish me to go there in a petticoat?"
"No; I suppose not. I tell you I am no judge of a lady's things. I don't think I should know a petticoat from a gown. Those are gowns, are they not, hanging in rows round the walls in the room above, and covered up with sheets and table-cloths."
"Sheets and table-cloths! Oscar!"
"My dear, they look like it."
"Well—if they are gowns—there's not one I can wear."
"They are all recently new," said Mr. Dalrymple. "What's the matter with them?"
"There's not one I can wear," persisted his wife.
"But why?"
"Why!" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple, in quite a contemptuous tone, for she had no patience with ignorance. "You ought to know why!"
"My dear, I really don't. If you wish me to know, you must tell me."
"I have worn them all once," was the angry answer. "And some twice, and some three times. And one—— Oscar," she broke off, "you remember that lovely one; a sky blue, shot with white; a robe à disposition?"
"What is à disposition?"
"Oh—a silk, flounced, and the flounces have some designs upon them, embossed, or raised, sometimes of a different colour. That dress I have worn five times. I really have, Oscar; five times!
"I wear my coats fifty times five."
"The idea of my being seen at Lady Burnham's in a dress I have worn before! No; I'd rather go in a petticoat, of the two evils, and hide my head for ever after."
Mr. Dalrymple was puzzled. "Why could you not be seen, there or anywhere else, in a dress you have worn before?"
"Because no one else is."
"Then what becomes of all the new gowns?" inquired the wondering man.
"For goodness' sake, do not keep on calling them 'gowns.'"
"Dresses, then. What becomes of them?"
"Oh—they do for the country. Some few, by dint of retrimming, can be made to look new for town. You don't understand ladies' dresses, Oscar."
"I have said I do not."
"Neither ought you," added Selina, crossly. "We do not worry ourselves to interfere between you and your tailors, or pry into the shape and make of your waistcoats and buttons and things, and we do not expect to have it done by us."
"Selina, let your grievance come to an end. I do not like to hear this tone of reproach."
"Then you must retract what you said last night. It was as if you wanted me never to have a new dress again."
"Nay, Selina, I only reminded you how small our income is. You must not overlook that."
"Don't be foolish, Oscar. Do you fear I am going to ruin you? What's the cost of a few dresses? Imusthave one for Lady Burnham's fête."
"My dear, have what you like, in reason," he said, in the innocence of his unconscious heart: "you are the best judge. Of course I can trust you."
The words were as the sweetest music in her ear. She sprang up, dancing to a scrap of a song.
"You dear, good Oscar I knew you were never going to be an old griffin. I think I must have that lovely green-and-white gauze. It was the most magnificent dress. I was divided between that and a cream-coloured damask. I'll have the gauze. And gauze dresses cost nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Next to nothing."
Selina flew upstairs. She pulled aside the "sheets and table-cloths," and glanced underneath. It was a goodly stock of robes; but yet not all the stock: for the lace, and muslin, and flimsy gauze, and delicate white, and delicate pearl, and delicate pink, and delicate other shades, were reposing in drawers, out of sight, between folds of tissue paper. Barège and balzarine: satin, plain and figured; velvet; silk, plain, damask, flowered, shot, corded, and of all the colours of the rainbow. Beautiful dresses; and yet—new, and rich, and elegant as they were, Selina Dalrymple could not go to the fête without a new one!
Away she went to Madame Damereau's. Astonishing that renowned artiste by the early hour of her visit.
"I want a thousand things," began Selina, in the blitheness of her heart. "Have you sold the green-and-white gauze dress?"
No, was madame's answer, she had kept it on purpose for Madame Dalreemp. Milady Ac-corn had come in yesterday afternoon late, and wanted it, but she had told milady that it was sold.
Selina took it all in. The fact was, madame had tried to persuade Milady Ac-corn into buying it, but milady was proof against the price. She had wanted it for Frances. It was only seventeen guineas, and that included the fringe and trimmings. Selina had told her husband that gauze dresses cost nothing!
"I want it for the breakfast on Thursday," cried Selina. "What mantle can I wear?"
A momentous question. They ran over in memory the mantles, scarfs, fichus, possessed by Mrs. Dalrymple, and came to the conclusion that not one of them would "go with" the gauze dress.
"I have a lace mantle," said madame—"ah! but it is recherché!—a real Brussels. If there is one robe in my house that it ought to go with, it is that green-and-white."
She brought it forward and exhibited it upon the dress. Very beautiful; of that there was no doubt. It was probably a beautiful price also.
"Twenty-five guineas."
"Oh my goodness—twenty-five guineas!" cried Selina. "But I'll take it. A breakfast fête does not come every day."
For a wonder—fora wonder—Selina, having exhibited her white lace bonnet with the emeralds only twice, came to the conclusion that that "would do." Not that she hesitated at buying another, but that it was so suitable to the green-and-white dress.
"And now for—— Oh, stop; I think I must have a new parasol. My point-lace one is soiled, and I caught it in my bracelet the other day and tore it a little. You had a beautiful point-lace parasol here yesterday. Let me see it."
"The one you wore looking at yesterday will not do," cried madame. "It is lined with blue: Madame Dalreemp knows that blue can never go with the green dress. I have one parasol—ah, but it is a beauty!—a point-lace, lined with white. I will get it. It does surpass the other."
It did surpass the other, and in price also. Selina chose it. It was twenty guineas.
"My husband thought I could have worn one of my old dresses," observed Selina, as she turned over some gloves; "he says I have a great many. But one can only appear in a perfectly fresh toilette at a magnificent gathering such as this is to be." And madame fully assented.
Mrs. Dalrymple went to the breakfast, and she and her attire were lovely amidst the lovely, exciting no end of admiration. Very gratifying to her heart, then topsy-turvy with vanity. And so it went on to the end of the season, and her pleasurable course was never checked.
When they were preparing to return to the Grange, and her maid was driven wild with perplexity as to the stowing away of so extensive a wardrobe, and conjecturing that the carriage down of it would alone come to "something," it occurred to Selina, as she sat watching, that the original cost would also come to "something." Some hundreds, she feared, now she came to see the whole collection in a mass.
"Of course I shall not let Oscar see the bill," she soliloquized. "I'll get it from madame before I leave: and then there'll be no fear of its coming to him at the Grange."
Mrs. Dalrymple asked for the bill; and madame, under protest that there was no hurry in the world, promised to send it in.
Selina was alone, sitting in the drawing-room by twilight, when the account was delivered to her; it was enclosed in a large thick envelope, with an imposing red seal. She opened it somewhat eagerly. "What makes it such a bulk?" she thought. "Oh, I see; she has detailed the things."
Holding it close to the window, she looked at the bottom of the page, and saw ninety-four pounds.
"Ninety-four pounds!" ejaculated Selina. "What does madame mean? It must be much more than that."
She lighted the little taper on her writing-table; and then found she had been looking at one item only—the Venice point-lace for the decoration of a dress. So she turned the page and looked at the foot of the next.
"Antique robe, lace trimmings, and sapphire buttons, one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Tush!" impatiently exclaimed Selina.
With a rapid movement she turned the account over to the end, and gazed at the sum total; gazed at it, stared at it, and recoiled from it. Three thousand and odd pounds, odd shillings, and no pence! What the odd pounds were, whether one, or whether nine hundred ninety-nine, she did not catch in that moment of terror; the first grand sum of three thousand absorbed her eyes and her faculties. And there floated over her a confused consciousness of other bills to come in: one from the jeweller's, one for shawls, one for expensively trimmed linen. There was one shawl, real India—but she dared not think of that. "Oscar will say I have been mad," she groaned.
No doubt he would.
At that moment she heard his step, coming in from the dining-room, and turned sick. She crushed the bill in her right hand and thrust it down the neck of her dress. Then she blew out the taper, and turned, with a burning brow and shrinking frame, to the window again, and stood there, apparently looking out. Selina had never attempted to sum up what she had bought. At odd moments she had feared it might come to something like a thousand pounds.
Oscar came up and put his arm around her, asking whether it was not time to have the lights.
"Yes. Presently."
"What in the world have you got here?" cried he. "A ball?"
She pushed the "ball" higher up, and murmured something about "some paper."
"My dear, what is the matter with you here? You are trembling."
"The night-air, I suppose. It is rather chilly."
Yet the night was hot. Mr. Dalrymple immediately began to close the window. He was a minute or two over it, for one of the cords was stiff and did not go well. When he turned round again, his wife had left the room.
"Selina does not seem very well," thought Oscar.
There is no misfortune on earth so great as that of a troubled conscience: there is nothing that will wear the spirits and the frame like a burdensome secret which may not be told. It will blanch the cheek and sicken the heart; it will render the day a terror and the bed weary; so that the unhappy victim will be tempted to say with Job: When shall I arise and the night be gone? He is full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day: his sleep is scared with dreams and terrified with visions.
Had Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple been of a different temperament, this unhappy state of mind would have been hers. But she had no very deep feeling. Troubled in a degree she undoubtedly was. That terrible secret, the debts she had incurred, lay on her mind always in a greater or a less degree; for she knew that when her husband paid them he would be half ruined; certainly crippled for years to come.
Another season had come round and was at its height; and Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple had again come up to it. The past autumn and winter had been spent at Moat Grange, which Selina found insufferably dull, and where her chief solace and recreation consisted in looking over her beautiful and extensive wardrobe, and trying on portions of it in private. A very negative sort of enjoyment. Where was the use of possessing these divine dresses and adjuncts, when no field was afforded for their display? Selina had ventured to wear one costly robe on a certain evening that she dined at Court Netherleigh, and was severely taken to task by her mother, who was the only other guest, and by Miss Upton, for appearing in such "finery." They asked her what she meant by such extravagance. And that before Oscar, too! Selina blushed a little and laughed it off; but she mentally wondered what would have been said had she put on her very finest, or if they saw the stock at home.
During the winter Selina had a fever, brought on, it was thought, from exposing herself unduly to damp. She grew better, but was somewhat delicate and very capricious. Oscar, loving her intensely, grew to humour her fancies and to pet her as if she were a spoiled child. Her conscience reproached her now and then for the tacit deceit she was enacting, in thus suffering him to live in blissful ignorance of their true position; but on the whole it did not trouble her greatly. Alice, her sensitive sister, would have died under it; Selina contrived to exist very comfortably.
"If you found out that I had done anything dreadfully wrong, would you quite kill me?" she playfully said to him one day.
"Dare say I should," answered Oscar, putting on a face of mock severity. "Might depend, perhaps, upon what the thing was."
"Ah, no; you'd just scold me for five minutes, and then kiss and be friends. I always said you'd never turn out to be an old griffin."
That was the nearest approach Selina ever made towards confessing to her husband. And Oscar had only looked upon it as a bit of passing pleasantry.
Alice Dalrymple had left her mother's house to become companion to Lady Sarah Hope. During a week's visit that Colonel Hope and his wife made to Miss Upton in the autumn—it was soon after they had got into their new house in London—Alice had also been staying at Court Netherleigh. One day Lady Sarah chanced to say she wished she could find some nice young gentlewoman, who would come to her in the capacity of companion: upon which Alice said, "Would you take me?" "Ay, and be glad to get you," returned Lady Sarah, supposing that Alice had spoken in jest. Alice, however, was in earnest. She could not bear to be living on the charity of Oscar Dalrymple, for she shrewdly guessed that Selina threw as much expense on him as he could well afford; and Alice quite believed that her mother, devoted to the care of her poultry, her birds, and her flowers, would not miss her. So the bargain was struck. "And please remember, Lady Sarah, that I come to you entirely as companion, prepared to fulfil all a companion's duties, and not merely as a visitor," Alice gravely said; and she meant it.
Selina was vexed when she heard of the arrangement. She went straight down to her mother's cottage, and upbraided Alice sharply. "It is lowering us all," she said to her. "A companion is next door to a servant; every one knows that. It will be just a disgrace to the name of Dalrymple."
"Very well, Selina; then, as you think that, I will drop the name," returned Alice. "I was christened Alice Seaton, you know, after my godmother, and I will be called Miss Seaton at Lady Sarah's."
"Stuff and nonsense, child!" retorted Selina. "You may call yourself Seaton all the world over, but all the world will know still that you are Alice Dalrymple."
Alice entered upon her new home in London, and gravely told everybody in it that she wished to be called by her second name, Seaton. Lady Sarah laughed, and promised to humour her as often as she could remember to do it.
In December, Colonel Hope had formally adopted his nephew, Gerard. The young man threw up his post in the red-tape office (not at all a wise thing to do), and took up his abode with his uncle. They all went down to the colonel's place in Gloucestershire to spend Christmas, including Frances Chenevix, who almost seemed to have been as much adopted as Gerard, so frequently was she staying with them. Christmas passed; they came to London again, and things went on smoothly and gaily until just before Easter, when a fracas occurred. Gerard Hope contrived in some way to offend the colonel and Lady Sarah so implacably that they discarded him; frequent growls had ended in a quarrel. Gerard was insolent, and the colonel, hot and peppery, turned him out of the house. They went again into Gloucestershire for Easter, Alice with them as companion and Frances as a guest; but not Gerard. In fact, so far as one might judge, he was discarded for ever.
The cause was this: Lady Sarah, detecting the predilection of her sister Frances for the young man, and believing that he was equally attached to her, went out of her way and her pride to offer her to him. Gerard had refused it point blank. No wonder Lady Sarah was angry!
The sweet month of June came round again, and the London season, as I have said, was at its height. Amidst those who were plunging headlong into its vanities was Selina Dalrymple. She had coaxed and begged and prayed her husband to give her just another month or two of it this year, assuring him she should die if he did not. And Oscar, though wincing at the cost, knowing well he could not and ought not to afford it, at length gave in. It appeared that he could deny her nothing. The expenses of the previous season were far more than he had expected, and as yet he had not been able to discharge them all. Apart, this, from his wife's private expenses, of which he as yet remained in ignorance.
It may be questioned, however, whether Selina enjoyed this second season quite as much as she had the last. The visit and the gaiety and the homage were as captivating as ever, but she lived in a kind of terror; for Madame Damereau was pressing for the payment of her account. If that came to Oscar's knowledge, he would not only do to her, she hardly knew what, perhaps even box her ears, but he would be quite certain to carry her forthwith from this delightful London life to that awful prison, Moat Grange, at Netherleigh.
One afternoon, Oscar was turning out of his temporary home in Berkeley Street—for they had the same rooms as last year—when he saw coming towards him a young lady who walked a little lame. It was Alice Dalrymple.
"Ah, Alice!" he cried. "Have you come to London?"
"Yes," she replied. "Lady Sarah is better, and we left Gloucestershire yesterday to join the colonel here: he has been writing for us for more than a week past. Is Selina at home?"
"She is, for a wonder. Waiting for somebody she intends to go out with."
"How is she?"
"I cannot tell you how she is. Rather strange, it seems to me."
"Strange!"
"Take my arm, Alice, and walk with me a few paces. There's something the matter with Selina, and I cannot make it out," continued Mr. Dalrymple. "She acts for all the world as if she had committed some crime. I told her so the other day."
"Acts in what way?" cried Alice.
"She's frightened at her own shadow. When the post used to come in at the Grange she would watch for the boy, dart down the path, and seize the letters, as if she feared I might read the directions of hers. When she was recovering from that fever, and I would take her letters in to her, she more than once became blanched and scared. Often I ask her questions, or address remarks to her, and she is buried in her own thoughts, and does not hear me. She starts and moans in her sleep; twice lately I have awakened in the middle of the night and found her gone from the bed and pacing the dressing-room."
"You alarm me," exclaimed Alice. "What can it be?"
"I can only suppose that her nerves are overwrought with all these follies she is plunged into. It is nothing but turmoil and excitement; turmoil and excitement from day to day. I was a fool to come here again this year, and that's the truth."
"Selina had always led so very quiet a life," murmured Alice.
"Of course she had; and it has been a wonderful change for her; enough to upset the nervous system of a delicate woman. Selina has not been too strong since she had that fever."
"She ought to keep more quiet."
"She ought; but she will not. Before we came up I told her she must not do as she did last year; and I thought she did not mean to. Alice, she is mad after these gay frivolities; worse than she was last summer, I do believe—and that need not be. I wished not to come; I told Selina why—the expense, and other reasons—but she would. She would, Alice. I wonder what it is that chains her mind to this Babel of a city. I hate it. Go you in and see her, Alice. I can't stay now, for I have an appointment."
Mrs. Dalrymple was in her bedroom when Alice entered, dressed, and waiting to go out: dressed with an elegance regardless of expense.
"Good gracious, child, is it you!" she exclaimed.
When the first moments had passed, Alice sat down and looked at her sister: her cheek was thin, and its bloom told more of hectic than of health.
"Selina!" exclaimed Alice, "what is the matter? You are much altered."
"Am I? People do alter. You are altered. You look ill."
"Not more so than usual," replied Alice. "I grow weaker with time But you are ill: I can see it. You look as if you had something preying on your mind."
"Nonsense, Alice. You are fanciful."
"What is it?" persisted Alice.
"If I have, your knowing it would do me no good, and would worry you. And yet," added Mrs. Dalrymple, "I think I will tell you. I have felt lately, Alice, that I must tell some one!"
Alice laid gentle hold of her. "Let us sit down on the sofa, as we used to sit together at the Grange, when we were really sisters. But, Selina, if you have wanted a confidant in any grief, who so fitted to be that as your husband?"
"He!" cried Selina—"he!It is the dread of his knowing it—the anxiety I am in, daily and hourly, to keep it from him—that is wearing me out. Sometimes I say to myself, 'What if I put an end to it all, as Robert did?'"
Alice was accustomed to the random figures of speech her sister was at moments given to using; nevertheless her heart stood still.
"What is it that you have done, Selina?"
"Ruined Oscar."
"Ruined Oscar!"
"And ruined myself, with him," added Selina, in reckless tones, as she took off her bonnet with a jerk, and let it lie in her lap. "I have contracted debts that neither he nor I can pay, thousands upon thousands; and the worry of it, the constant fear is rendering my life a—I will notsaywhat—upon earth."
"Debts! thousands upon thousands!" confusedly uttered Alice.
"It is so."
"How did you contract them? Not as—as—Robert did? Surely that infatuation is not come upon you?"
"No. But that infatuation, as you call it, is in fashion in our circles just now. I could tell you of one young lady, whom you know, who amuses herself with it pretty largely."
"A young lady!"
"She is younger than I am—but she's married," returned Selina: and the young lady in question was the Lady Adela Grubb. "My embarrassment arises from a love of pretty gowns," she added lightly; for it was not possible for Selina Dalrymple to maintain a tragic mood many minutes together. "Damereau's bill for last season was between three and four thousand pounds. It is between four and five thousand now."
Alice Dalrymple felt bewildered. "It is not possible for one person to owe all that for one year, Selina!"
"Not possible?" repeated Mrs. Dalrymple. "Some of my friends spend double—treble—four times what I do."
"And so their example led you on?" cried Alice, presently, waking up from a whirlpool of thought.
"Something led me on. If one is in the world, one must dress."
"No, Selina: not as you have done. Not to ruin. If people have only a small income they dress accordingly."
"And make a sight of themselves. I don't choose to."
"Better that, and have peace of mind," remarked Alice.
"Peace of mind! Oh, I don't know where that is to be found nowadays."
"I hope you will find it, Selina. How much do you say you owe?"
"There's four thousand to Damereau, and——"
"Who is Damereau?"
"Goodness me, Alice; if you never did spend a season in town, you ought to know who she is, without asking. Madame Damereau's the great milliner and dressmaker; every one goes to her."
"I remember now. Lady Sarah has her things elsewhere."
"Then I owe for India shawls, and lace, and jewels, and furs and things. I owe six thousand pounds if I owe a farthing."
"What a sum!" echoed Alice, aghast. "Six thousand pounds!"
"Ay, you may well repeat it! Which of the queens was it who said that when she died the name of Calais would be found engraven on her heart? Mary, I think. Were I to die, those two words, 'six thousand,' would be found engraven on mine. They are never absent from me. I see them written up in figures in my dreams; I see them always; in the ball-room, at the opera, in the park they are buzzing in my ears; when I wake from my troubled sleep they come rushing over me, and I start from my bed to escape them. I am not at all sure that it won't turn out to be seven thousand," candidly added Mrs. Dalrymple.
"You must have dressed in silver and gold," said poor Alice.
"No: only in things that cost it: such things as these," said Mrs. Dalrymple, pulling at her bonnet with both hands in irritation so passionate that it was torn in two.
"Oh, pray! pray!" Alice interposed, but too late to prevent the catastrophe. "Your beautiful bonnet! Selina, it must have cost three or four guineas. What a waste!"
"Tush!" peevishly replied Mrs. Dalrymple, flinging the wrecks to the middle of the room. "A bonnet more or less—what does it matter?"
Alice sat in thought; looking very pained, very perplexed.
"It appears to me that you are on a wrong course altogether, Selina. The past is past; but you might strive to redeem it."
"Strive against a whirlpool," sarcastically responded Selina.
"You are getting deeper into it: by your own admission, you are having new things every day. It is adding fuel to fire."
"I can't go naked."
"But you must have a large stock of dresses by you."
"Do you think I would appear in last year's things? I can't and I won't. You do not understand these matters, Alice."
"Then you ought not to 'appear' at all. You should have stopped at the Grange."
"As good be in a nunnery. Once you have been initiated into the delights of a London season, you can only come back to it. Fancy my stopping at that mouldy old Grange."
"What is to be the end of all this?" lamented Alice.
"Ah, that's it! The End. One does not know, you see, how soon it may come. I'd not so much mind if I could get all the season first. The torment of it is, that Damereau is pressing for payment. She is throwing out hints that she can't supply me any longer on credit—and what on earth am I to do if she won't? What a shame it is that there should be so much worry in the world!"
"The greatest portion of it is of our own creating, Selina. And no worry ought to have the power very seriously to disturb our peace," the younger sister continued, in a whisper.
"Now, Alice, you are going to bring up some of those religious notions of yours! They will be lost upon me. One cannot have one's body in this world and one's heart in the next."
"Oh yes, we can," said Alice, earnestly.
"Well, I don't suppose I am going into the next yet, unless I torment myself out of this one; so don't go on about it," was Selina's graceless reply. But as Alice rose to leave, her mood changed.
"Forgive my fractiousness, Alice; indeed, you would excuse it, if you only knew how bothered and miserable I am. It makes me cross with myself and with other people."
"Ma'am," interrupted Ann, Mrs. Dalrymple's maid, "Lady Burnham is at the door, waiting for you."
"I am not going out today," answered her mistress, rising. "I have changed my mind."
"Oh, my patience!" uttered the maid. "What's this? Why, ma'am, it's never your bonnet?"
No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre: I fear the same may be said of woman. "Bother the bonnet," was the undignified reply of Mrs. Dalrymple, as she flirted the pieces further away with her foot. Ann humbly followed them to the far-off corner, and there took them into her hands. "Reach me another bonnet," said her mistress; "I think I will go, after all. What's the use of staying indoors?"
"Which bonnet, ma'am?"
"Oh, I don't know! Bring some out."
An array of bonnets, new and costly, were displayed for Mrs. Dalrymple's difficult choice. Alice, to whom all this was as a revelation, took her departure with uplifted hands and a shrinking heart.
Mrs. Dalrymple went downstairs, and took her seat in Lady Burnham's carriage. The latter, an extremely wealthy woman, full of pleasurable excitement, imparted some particulars she had learnt of the marriage festivities about to be held in a family of their acquaintance, to which they were both invited. Lady Burnham was then on her road to Damereau's to order a suitable toilette for it—one that would eclipse everybody's but the bride's. Selina, in listening, forgot her cares: when carried out of herself by the excitement of preparing for these pomps and vanities, she generally did so forget. But only then. In the enacting of the pomps and vanities themselves, when they were before her in all their glory, and she made one of the bedizened crowd, her nightmare would return to her; the skeleton in the closet would at those festive times, be exceeding prominent and bare. The reader may be a philosopher, a grave old F.R.S., very learned in searching out cause and effect, and so be able to account for this. I am not.
Selina's mouth watered as she listened to Lady Burnham's description of what she meant to wear at the wedding, and what she recommended to Selina: and the carriage stopped at Madame Damereau's. Mrs. Dalrymple's orders were quite moderate today—only amounting to about ninety pounds.
Was she quite silly? the reader will ask. Well, not more so than many another thoughtless woman.
Madame Damereau took the order as politely and carefully as though Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple had been made of bank notes and gold. She knew better manners—and better policy, too—than to make any objection before others of her clientèle. But that same evening, when Selina was dressing, she was told that a lady who gave the name of Cooper wished to see her. Selina knew that there was a Mrs. Cooper in the establishment of Madame Damereau, a partner, she fancied, or book-keeper; something of that sort. She had seen her once or twice; a lady-like woman, who had been reduced.
"Let Mrs. Cooper come up here," she said to the maid. And Mrs. Cooper entered the bedroom.
"I come from Madame Damereau's," she began, taking the chair that Selina pointed to. "She hopes——"
"For goodness' sake, speak low!" interrupted Selina, in ill-concealed terror. "Mr. Dalrymple is only in his dressing-room, and I do not wish him to hear all my private affairs. These London walls are thin. She wants money, I suppose."
"She hopes, madam, that you will make it convenient to let her have some," said Mrs. Cooper, sinking her voice to a whisper. "If it were only a few hundred pounds," she said. "That is trifling compared with the whole sum, which amounts now to——"
"Oh, I know what it amounts to; I can guess it near enough," hastily interposed Mrs. Dalrymple. "In the course of a week or two I will see what I can do."
Poor Selina, at her wits' end for excuses, had said "in the course of a week or two" so many times now, that Madame Damereau was tired of hearing the phrase.
Mrs. Cooper hesitated, not much liking her errand. "She bade me say, madam, that she was extremely sorry to cause inconvenience, but that she cannot execute the order you gave today unless she previously receives some money."
"Not execute it!" repeated Selina, with flashing eyes. "What do you mean by saying such a thing to me?"
"Madam, I am but the agent of Madame Damereau. I can only speak as she bids me."
"True," answered Selina, softening; "it is not your fault. But I must have the things. You will get them for me, will you not?" she said, in an accent of entreaty, feeling that she was speaking to a gentlewoman, although one who but held a situation at a milliner's. "Oh, pray use your influence; get her to let me have them."
Mrs. Cooper stood in distress, for hers was one of those refined natures that cannot bear to cause or to witness pain.
"If it depended upon me, indeed you should have them," she answered, "but I have no influence of that sort with Madame Damereau. She would not allow the slightest interference between her and her ladies: were I to attempt it, I might lose my place in her house, and be turned out again to struggle with the world."
"Has it been a harsh world to you?" inquired Selina, pityingly.
"Oh yes," was Mrs. Cooper's answer, "or I should not be where I am now. And I am thankful to be there," she hastily added: "I would not seem ungrateful for the mercy that has followed me in my misfortunes."
"I think misfortunes are the lot of all," spoke Selina. "What can I do to induce Madame Damereau to furnish me with these things?"
"Perhaps you had better call and see her yourself, madam," replied Mrs. Cooper, relapsing into her ostensible position. "I will try and say a word to her tonight that may prepare her. She has a good heart."
"I will see her tomorrow. Thank you," replied Mrs. Dalrymple, ringing for Mrs. Cooper to be shown out.
Selina finished dressing, and went forth to the evening's gaiety with what spirits she had. Once plunged into the gay scene, she forgot care and was merry as the merriest there. Her husband had never seen her face brighter.
On the following day, Selina proceeded to Madame Damereau's at an early hour, before any of the other clientèle would be likely to appear. But the interview, although Mrs. Cooper had said as much as she dared, was not productive of good. Madame had gradually learnt the true position of Oscar Dalrymple, that he was a very poor man, instead of a rich one; she feared she might have trouble over her account, and was obstinate and obdurate. Not exactly insolent: she was never that, to her customers' faces: but she and Mrs. Dalrymple both lost temper, and the latter was impolitic enough to say some cutting things, not only in disparagement of madame's goods, but about the "cheating prices" she had been charged. Madame Damereau's face turned green, and the interview ended by her stating that if some money was not immediately furnished her, she should sue Mr. Dalrymple for the whole. Selina went away sick at heart; for she read determination on the incensed lips of the Frenchwoman.