CHAPTER I.
A SINGULAR WILL.
Always more or less subdued in tone and tranquil of aspect, the eminently genteel Square of Porchester is, perhaps, seen in its most benign mood in the gently falling shadows of a summer’s twilight.
The tall houses begin slowly, very slowly, to twinkle with a glowworm irradiance from the drawing-rooms to the apartments on the upper floors as the darkness increases. From the open windows float the glittering strains of Gounod, Offenbach, Hervé, fluttering down over the flower-wreathed balconies into the silent street beneath, each succession of chords tumbling like so many fairies intoxicated with the spirit of music. At not infrequent intervals, sparkling broughams whirl past, carrying ladies arrayed obviously for dinner-party, soirée, or opera, in gay toilets, only half-concealed by the loose folds of soft wraps.
At the moment the curtain rises, two persons of the drama occupy this stage.
One is an individual of a peculiarly unattractive exterior—a man of probably some two or three and thirty years of age—a foreigner, by his appearance. It would have been difficult to tell whether recent illness or absolute want had made his not unhandsome face so white and pinched, and caused the shabby garments to hang about his tall, well-knit figure. Seemingly, he was one of those most forlorn of creatures—a domestic servant out of employ.
The expression on his countenance just now, as heleaned against the iron railings of the enclosure, almost concealed behind a doctor’s brougham which awaited its master, was not pleasant to regard. Following the direction of his fixed stare, the eye was led to a superbly beautiful woman, sitting half-within the French window of a drawing-room opposite, half-out upon the balcony, among some clustering flowers.
This woman was undoubtedly quite unconscious of the steady attention bestowed upon her by the solitary being, only distant from her presence by a few feet. She was a young woman of about three-and-twenty—an Italian, judging by her general aspect—attired in a rich costume, lavishly trimmed with black lace. A white lace shawl, lightly thrown over her shoulders, permitted only gracious and flowing outlines to reveal themselves; but her supremely lovely face, the masses of coiled and plaited hair, dark as night, stray diamond stars gleaming here and there, the glowing complexion, the sleepy, long, silk, soft lashes, resting upon cheeks which might be described as “peachlike,” the crimson lips, the delicately rounded chin, the perfect, shell-like ears, made up an ensemble of haunting beauty that, once seen, could never be forgotten.
Of the vicinity, much less of the rapt gaze of the wayfarer lingering yonder, she was profoundly ignorant, her attention being entirely occupied by a written sheet of paper, held between her slender white fingers. This she was apparently studying with absorbed interest.
The loiterer clenched his fist, malignant hate wrinkling his care-worn face, and made a gesture, betraying the most intense anger toward the imperial creature in the amber and black draperies.
“So, Madam Lucia Guiscardini,” he muttered, under his breath, “you bask up there, in your beauty and your finery, like some sleek, treacherous cat! Beautiful signora, if I had a pistol now, I could shoot you dead, without leaving you a moment to think upon your sins. Your sins! and they say you are one of the best and noblest of women—those who do not know your cold and cruel heart, snow-plumaged swan of Firenze! How can it be that I could ever have loved you so wildly—that I couldhave knelt down to kiss the ground upon which your dainty step had trod? Were you the same—was I the same? Has all the world changed since those days?
“I have suffered cold and hunger, sickness and pain, weariness of body, anguish of mind, while you have been lapped in luxury. You have been gently borne about in your carriage, wrapped in velvets and furs, or satins and laces, while I—I have passed through the rain-sodden streets with scarcely a shoe to my foot. They say you refused, in your pride, to marry a Russian prince the other day. All the world marveled at your insolent caprice. I wonder what you think of me, or if you ever honor me with a flying recollection? Am I the one drop of gall in your cup of nectar, or have you forgotten me?”
A quick, firm step startled the tranquil echoes of the square, and made this fellow glance about with the vague sense of ever-recurring alarm which poverty and distress engender in those unaccustomed to the companionship of such dismal comrades.
The instant he descried the person approaching, his countenance changed. He cast down his fierce, keen eyes, and an expression of humility replaced the glare of vindictive bitterness that had previously rendered his visage anything but pleasant to look upon.
This third personage of the drama was one, in appearance, worthy to take the part of hero. He was, perhaps, about thirty years old, with a noble presence, a fair and frank face, though one clouded by a strange shadow of mysterious care ever brooding. The face attracted at once, and inspired a wish to know something more of the soul looking through those bright, half-sadly smiling violet eyes as from the windows of a prison.
The forlorn watcher next the iron railings left his post of stealthy observation on seeing this gentleman, and, crossing, so as to intercept him, stood in the middle of the pavement in such a way as to abruptly bar the passage.
The large kindly eyes, which had been cast down, as if indifferent to all outward things, and engaged in painful introspection, were suddenly raised with a flash of displeased surprise.
“Sir,” began the poor lounger deprecatingly, half-unconsciously clasping his meager hands, and speaking almost in the voice of a supplicant, “Captain Desfrayne, forgive me for daring to address you; but——”
“You are a stranger to me, although you seem acquainted with my name,” the gentleman said, scanning him with a keen glance. “I don’t know that I have ever seen you before. What do you want? By your accent, you appear to be an Italian.”
“I am so, captain. I did not know you were coming this way, nor did I know you were in London. I have only this moment seen you, as you turned into the square; or I—I thought—for I know you, though perhaps you may never have noticed me—I knew of old that you have a kind and tender heart, and I thought—— Sir, I am a bad hand at begging; but I am sorely, bitterly in need of help.”
“Of help?” repeated Captain Desfrayne, still looking at him attentively. “Of what kind of help?”
Those bright eyes saw, although he asked the question, that the man required succor in any and in every shape.
“Sir, when I knew you, about three years ago, I was in the service of the Count di Venosta, at Padua, as valet.”
“I knew the count well, though I have no recollection of you,” said Captain Desfrayne. “Go on.”
“He died about a year and a half ago. I nursed him through his last illness, and caught the fever of which he died. I had a little money—my savings—to live on for a while; but all is gone now, and I don’t know which way to turn, or whither to look for another situation. It was with the hope of finding some friends that I came to London; I might as well be in the Great Desert.”
“I have no doubt your story is perfectly true; but I don’t see what I can do for you,” Captain Desfrayne said, with some pity. “However, I will consider, and, if you like to come and see me to-morrow, perhaps I—— What is your name?”
“Leonardo Gilardoni, sir.”
The hungry, eager eyes watched as Captain Desfraynetook a note-book from his pocket and scribbled down the name, adding a brief memorandum besides.
The sound of these men’s voices speaking just beneath her window had failed to attract the attention of the beautiful creature in the balcony. But now, when a sudden silence succeeded, she looked over from an undefined feeling of half-unconscious interest or curiosity.
As she glanced carelessly down at the two figures, the expression on her face utterly changed. The great eyes, the hue of black velvet, opened widely, as if from terror, or an astonishment too stupendous to be controlled. For a moment she seemed unable to withdraw her gaze, fascinated, apparently.
The little white hands were fiercely clenched; and if glances could kill, those two men would have rapidly traversed the valley of the shadow of death.
Fortunately, glances, however baleful, fall harmless as summer lightning; and the interlocutors remained happily ignorant of the absorbed attention wherewith they were favored.
In a moment or two she rose, and, standing just within the room, clutching the curtain with a half-convulsive grip, peered down malevolently into the street.
“What can have brought these two men here together?” she muttered. “Do they come to seek me? I did not know they were conscious of one another’s existence. What are they doing? Why are they here? Accursed be the day I ever saw the face of either!”
The visage, so wondrously beautiful in repose, looked almost hideous thus distorted by fury.
She saw Captain Desfrayne put his little note-book back in his pocket, and then heard him say:
“If you will come to me about—say, six or seven o’clock to-morrow evening, at my chambers in”—she missed the name of the street and the number, though she craned her white throat forward eagerly—“I will speak further to you. Do not come before that time, as I shall be absent all day.”
With swift, compassionate fingers he dropped a piece of gold into the thin hand of the unhappy, friendless man before him, and then moved, as if to continue his way.
The superb creature above craned out her head as far as she dared, to watch the two. Captain Desfrayne, however, seemed to be the personage she was specially desirous of following with her keen glances. To her amazement and evident consternation, he walked up to the immediately adjacent house, and rang the bell. The door opened, and he disappeared.
The shabby, half-slouching figure of the supplicant for help shuffled off in the other direction, toward Westbourne Grove, and vanished from out the square.
Releasing her grip of the draperies hanging by the window, the proud and insolent beauty began walking up and down the room, flinging away the paper from which she had been studying.
She looked like some handsome tigress, cramped up in a gilded cage, as she paced to and fro, her dress trailing along the carpet in rich and massive folds. Some almost ungovernable fit of passion appeared to have seized upon her, and she gave way to her impulses as a hot, undisciplined nature might yield.
There was a strange kind of contrast between the feline grace of her movements, the faultless elegance of her perfect toilet, the splendor of her beauty, and the untutored violence of her manner.
“What do they want here?” she asked, half-aloud. “Why do they come here, plotting under my windows? Do they defy me? Do they hope to crush me? What has Paul Desfrayne to complain of? I defy him, as I do Leonardo Gilardoni! Let them do their worst! What are they going to do? Has Leonardo Gilardoni found any—any——”
She started back and looked round with a guilty terror, as if she dared not think out the half-spoken surmise even to herself.
“He knows nothing—he can know nothing; and he has no longer any hold on me,” she muttered presently; “unless—unless the other has told him; and I don’t believe he would trust a fellow likehim: for Paul Desfrayne is as proud as Lucifer. Oh, if I could but live my life over again! What mistakes—what fatal mistakes I have made—mistakes which may yet bring ruinas their fruit! I will leave England to-morrow. I don’t care what they say, or think, or what loss it may cost to myself or any one else. Yet, am I safer elsewhere? I know not. What would be the consequences if they could prove I had done what I have done? I know not; I have never had the courage to ask.”
Totally unconscious of the vicinity of this beautiful, vindictive woman, Captain Desfrayne tranquilly passed into the house which he had come to visit.
“Can I see Mrs. Desfrayne?” he inquired of the smart maid servant who answered his summons.
“I will see, sir. She was at dinner, sir, and I don’t think she has gone out yet.”
The beribboned and pretty girl, throwing open the door of a room at hand, and ushering the visitor within, left him alone, while she flitted off in search of the lady for whom he had asked, not, however, without taking a sidelong glance at his handsome face before she disappeared.
The apartment was a long dining-room, extending from the front to the back of the house, furnished amply, yet with a certain richness, the articles being all of old oak, carved elaborately, which lent a somber, somewhat stately effect. It was obviously, however, a room in a semifashionable boarding-house.
In a few minutes a lady opened the door, and entered with the joyous eagerness of a girl.
A graceful, dignified woman, in reality seventeen years older than Captain Desfrayne, but who looked hardly five years his senior, of the purest type of English matronly beauty. She seemed like one of Reynolds’ or Gainsborough’s most exquisite portraits warmed into life, just alighted from its canvas. The soft, blond hair, the clear, roselike complexion, the large, half-melting violet eyes, the smiling mouth, with its dimples playing at hide-and-seek, the perfectly chiseled nose, the dainty, rounded chin, the patrician figure, so classically molded that it drew away attention from the fact that every little detail of the apparently little-studied yet careful toilet was finished to the most refined nicety—these hastily noted pointscould scarce give any conception of the almost dazzling loveliness of Paul Desfrayne’s widowed mother.
She entered with a light, quick step, and being met almost as she crossed the threshold by her visitor, she raised her white hands, sparkling with rings, and drew down his head with an ineffably tender and loving touch.
“My boy—my own Paul,” she half-cooed, kissing his forehead. “This is, indeed, an unexpected pleasure. I did not even know that you were in London.”
For a moment the young man seemed about to return his mother’s caress; but he did not do so.
She crossed to the window, and placing a second chair, as she seated herself, desired Paul to take it.
There was a positive pleasure in observing the movements of this perfectly graceful woman. She seemed the embodiment of a soft, sweet strain of music; every gesture, every fold of her draperies was at once so natural, yet so absolutely harmonious, that it was impossible to suggest an alteration for the better.
“I supposed you to be settled for a time in Paris,” Mrs. Desfrayne said, as her son did not appear inclined to take the lead in the impending dialogue, but accepted his chair in almost moody silence.
“I should have written to you, mother; but I thought I should most probably arrive as soon, or perhaps even precede my letter,” replied Captain Desfrayne.
“You look anxious and a little worried. Has unpleasant business brought you back? You have not obtained the appointment to the French embassy for which you were looking?”
“No. I am anxious, undoubtedly; but I suppose I ought not to say I am worried, though I find myself placed in a most remarkable, and—what shall I say?—delicate position. Yesterday I received a letter, and I came at once to consult you, with the hope that you might be able to give me some good advice. I fear I have called at rather an unreasonable hour?”
A tenderly reproachful glance seemed to assure him that no hour could be unreasonable that brought his ever-welcome presence.
“I will advise you to the best of my ability, my dear,” Mrs. Desfrayne smilingly said. “What has happened?”
Paul Desfrayne drew a letter from the pocket of the light coat which he had thrown over his evening dress, and looked at it for a moment or two in silence, as if at a loss how to introduce its evidently embarrassing contents.
His mother watched him with undisguised anxiety, her brilliant eyes half-veiled by the blue-veined lids.
“This letter,” Paul at length said, “is from a legal firm. It refers to a person whom I had some difficulty in recalling to mind, and places me in a most embarrassing position toward another person whom I have never seen.”
“A situation certainly indicating a promise of some perplexity,” Mrs. Desfrayne half-laughingly remarked.
“Some years ago,” Paul continued, “there lived an old man—he was an iron-dealer originally, or something of that sort—a person in a very humble rank of life; but somehow he contrived to make an enormous fortune. He has, in fact, left the sum of nearly three hundred thousand pounds.”
“To you?” demanded Mrs. Desfrayne, in a thrilling tone, not as if she believed such to be the case; for her son’s accent scarcely warranted such an assumption; but as if the wish was father to the thought.
Paul shook his head.
“Not to me—to some young girl he took an interest in, as far as I can understand. I happened to render him a slight service—I hardly remembered it now—some insignificant piece of civility or kindness. It seems he entertained a great respect for me, and attributed the rise of his wealth to me. This young girl—I don’t know whether she was related to him or not—has been left the sole, or nearly the sole, inheritor of his money, and I——”
“And you, Paul?”
“Have been nominated her trustee and sole executor by his will. I believe he has bequeathed me some few thousands, as a remuneration for my trouble.”
The slight tinge of pinky color on the cheeks of thebeautiful Mrs. Desfrayne deepened visibly, although she sat with her back to the window.
“How old is the young lady?” she asked, in a subdued tone.
“Eighteen or nineteen.”
“Is she—has she any father or mother?”
“Both are dead. She is, I understand, alone in the world.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“Do you know what she is like?”
“I am as ignorant of everything concerning her, personally, as you are yourself, mother.”
“Is she pretty?”
Paul Desfrayne’s face hardened almost to sternness and his eyes drooped.
“I have already told you, mother mine, that I know nothing whatever about her. If you will take the trouble to glance over this letter, you will learn as much as I know myself. I have nothing more to tell you than what is written therein.”
The dainty fingers trembled slightly as they were quickly stretched forth to receive the missive, which Paul took from its legal-looking envelope.
Mrs. Desfrayne ran rapidly over the contents, and then read it through more slowly a second time.
It purported to be from Messrs. Salmon, Joyner & Joyner, the eminent firm of solicitors in Alderman’s Lane, and requested Captain Desfrayne to favor them with a call at his earliest convenience, as they wished to go over the will of Mr. Vere Gardiner, iron-founder, lately deceased, who had appointed him—Captain Desfrayne—sole trustee to the chief legatee, an orphan girl of nineteen, sole executor to the estate, which was valued at about two hundred and sixty thousand pounds, and legatee to the amount of ten thousand pounds. The letter added that Mr. Vere Gardiner had expressed a profound respect for Captain Desfrayne, and had several times declared that he owed his uprise in life to a special act of kindness received from him.
“How very extraordinary!” Mrs. Desfrayne softly exclaimed,at length. “He scarcely knew you, yet trusts this young girl and her large fortune to your sole charge. Flattering, but, as you say, embarrassing. Two hundred and sixty thousand pounds!” she murmured. “A girl of nineteen. If she is a beauty”—she slightly shrugged her dimpled shoulders—“your position will be an onerous one, indeed.”
“They might as well have asked me to play keeper to a white elephant,” the young man said, with some acerbity. “I will have nothing to do with it.”
“Do not be too hasty. Probably this person had good reason for what he has done. Besides, you would be foolish to refuse so handsome a present as you are promised; for we cannot conceal from ourselves that ten thousand pounds would be a very acceptable gift.”
“If a free one, yes; if burdened with unpleasant conditions, why, there might be difference of opinion. I had almost made up my mind to decline at once and for all; but I thought it would be more prudent to consult you first.”
“My dear Paul, I feel—I will not say flattered, but I thank you very much for your kind estimation of my judgment. All I can say is: Go and see what these lawyers have to say. Then, if they do not succeed in inducing you to receive the trust, see the girl, and judge for yourself what would be best. Perhaps she has no friend but you, and she might run the risk of losing her fortune. Perhaps she is sorely in need of some protector—perhaps even of money. Where does she live?”
“As I told you before,” Captain Desfrayne replied, with more asperity than seemed at all necessary under the circumstances, “I did not know even of her existence before receiving that letter, and I now know not one solitary fact more than you do. I know nothing of the girl, or of her money. I do not wish to know; I take no interest, and I don’t want to take any interest now, or in the future.”
“But it is foolish to refuse to perform a duty when you are so entirely ignorant of the reasons why this money has been thrown into your keeping,” urged Mrs. Desfrayne gently.
“If I refuse, I suppose the Court of Chancery will find somebody more capable, and certainly may easily find some one more willing than myself,” Captain Desfrayne said, almost irritably.
“If it had been a boy, instead of a girl, would you have been so reluctant?” asked Mrs. Desfrayne, smiling mischievously.
“That has nothing to do with it. I have to deal with the matter as it now exists, not as it might have been.”
Mrs. Desfrayne glanced at her son from beneath the long, silken lashes that half-concealed her great blue eyes. It seemed so strange to hear that musical voice, which for nine-and-twenty or thirty years had been as soft and sweet to her ears, as if incapable of one jangled note, fall into that odd, irritable discordance.
Paul was out of sorts and out of humor, she could see. Was he telling herallthe truth?
Never, in all those years of his life, most of which had passed under her own vision, had he uttered, looked, or even seemed to harbor one thought that he was not ready and willing for his mother to take cognizance of. Why, then, this possible reticence, blowing across their lifelong confidence like the bitter northeast wind ruffling over clear water, turning its surface into a fragile veil of ice?
The young man was out of humor, for his meeting with the fellow whom he had just encountered almost on the threshold of the house had brought up many recollections he would fain have banished—memories of a time he would gladly have erased from the pages of his life—a time whereof his mother knew nothing.
Mrs. Desfrayne, however, shot very wide of the mark when she ascribed his alteration of look and manner to some foreknowledge of the girl in question. He spoke nothing but the truth in saying that he had never as much as heard of her before receiving the letter that lay between his mother’s fingers.
With the electric sympathy of strong mutual affection, Paul Desfrayne quickly perceived the ill effect his coldness had upon his mother; and with an effort he clearedhis countenance, and assumed a shadow of his formerly smiling aspect. He looked down, and appeared to consider. Then, raising his eyes to those of his mother, he said, with an air of resignation:
“I suppose it would be best to see the lawyers, and hear what they have to say. It is a most intolerable bore. I don’t know what I have done to merit being visited for my sins in this fashion.”
“You don’t remember what you happened to do for this eccentrically disposed old man?”
Paul Desfrayne shrugged his shoulders.
“A remarkably simple matter, when all is said and done. I was traveling once with him, as well as I can remember, and he began talking to me about some wonderful invention he had just brought to perfection. He was in what I supposed to be rather cramped circumstances, though not an absolutely poor man, for he was traveling first-class. I should not have thought about him at all, only, with the enthusiasm of an inventor, he persisted in bothering me about this thing.
“I thought at the time it was deserving of notice; and when he alighted, I happened to almost tumble into the arms of the very man who had it in his power to get the affair into use and practise. More to get rid of him than for any more worthy motive, I introduced the two to each other. It was something this old Vere Gardiner had invented, for some kind of machinery, which, if adopted by the government, would save—I really forget how much. I recollect asking this friend, some time after, if he had done anything about it, and he told me it would probably make the fortune of half a dozen people. He seemed delighted with the old man and his invention.
“This must be the service he made so much of. It was a service costing me just five or six sentences. I did not even stop to see what Percival, this friend, thought of old Gardiner, or what he thought of Percival; but left them talking together in the waiting-room, for I was in a desperate hurry to reach you, mother. I never anticipated hearing of the affair again.”
There was a brief silence.
“This man, it is to be presumed, was of humble birth,” said Mrs. Desfrayne. “It will be too dreadful if, with the irony of blind fate, this girl proves unpresentable. In that case—at nineteen—it will be too late to mend her manners, or her education. Perhaps she has some frightfully appalling cognomen, which will render it a martyrdom to present her in society. If she is anything of a hobgoblin, you may with justice talk of a white elephant.”
“I suppose there is no clause in the criminal code whereby I may be compelled to accept the trust if I do not elect voluntarily to undertake it?” Captain Desfrayne asked, with a slight smile at his mother’s fastidious alarm. “And if she is nineteen now, I suppose my responsibility would cease in two years?”
“Perhaps. Some crotchety old men make very singular wills. I wonder how it happened that he had no business friend in whom he could confide?—why he must choose a stranger, and entrust to that stranger such a large sum? I wish I knew what the girl’s name is, and what she is like, and what possible position she may occupy? For if you receive the trust, I presume I shall have the felicity of playing the part of chaperon.”
“It is perfectly useless discussing the matter until we know something more certain,” Captain Desfrayne said, his irritation again displaying itself unaccountably.
“One cannot help surmising, my dearest Paul. Perhaps the girl is a nursemaid, or a milliner’s apprentice, and misuses her aspirates, and is a budding Malaprop,” Mrs. Desfrayne persisted. “However, we shall see. Go with me this evening to the opera, if you have nothing better to do. Lady Quaintree has lent me her box.”
As she was folding her opera-cloak about her youthful-looking person the good lady said to herself:
“There is some mystery here; but of what kind? Paul is not quite his own frank self. What has happened? He has kept something from me. I could not help fancying something occurred during his absence in Venice three years ago. I wonder if he knows more about this girl,the fortunate legatee of the eccentric old iron-founder, than he chooses to acknowledge? But he must have some most powerful reason to induce him to hide anything from me; and he said twice most distinctly that he had never seen her and did not know her name. I do not believe Paul could be guilty of deceit.”