I wouldhave given the world to have been able to rise from my seat, leave the theatre, and go straight home. But the power to do it was not in me. I knew there was a storm in the air. I felt it about me on every side. I am sure I am not a nervous person, as a rule. But just then I was simply a bundle of nerves; on tenterhooks all the time as to what was going to happen next. And then Jane’s shoes were inflicting such agonies on my unfortunate feet that I would have slipped them off had it not been for the conviction that I should never be able to get into them again if I did; and what would happen if I had to march out of the theatre in my crimson-stockinged feet? In such a case, would it be more dignified to carry Jane’s shoes with me in my hand, or to leave them behind me on the floor?
That pretty lady on the stage finished her encored song, and I had not caught a word or a note!—and generally I do not allow a single thing to escape me. Under cover of the clapping, an attendant handed Mr Hammond a note. I knew in an instant who it was from, if only by the eagerness with which the four in the box observed the manner of its reception. Not that I looked at them. I looked at no one, I did not dare, keeping my eyes fixed as much as possible on vacancy. For, wherever I looked, there was some presumptuous man who looked back at me in a manner which was simply indescribable. But one need not look to see; and I was quite aware that each of those four men was leaning as far over the edge of the box as was consistent with safety, in order that they might have the earliest possible information of the adventures of that missive.
They soon had it. Mr Hammond rent the envelope open; took out a card—something told me it was Basil Carter’s—read what was written on the back of it, and tore it into shreds, which he dropped between his knees.
“No answer,” he said to the attendant, “except that you can tell ’em to go to blazes.”
Then, as if such language was a matter of no consequence, he turned to me, continuing his previous most extraordinary remarks, completely regardless of the performance on the stage, and of the people all around us, too.
“Frightfully sorry to seem to rush you, Miss Norah. Fact is, when judge’s box is within a furlong, if you don’t want to get left behind, you’re bound to bustle. I’ve got it all on this time—every copper—must bar taking chances—a certainty is what I’m after. A certainty it is, if you’ll consent. Let’s put our piles together—come in with me on the same horse—Matrimony, out of True Love, by Unbounded Admiration. She’s the mare to carry two as if they were one; and if you ride her with a gentle hand, she keeps on winning all the time. Miss Norah, say that it’s a go.”
I suppose, looking back, that that extraordinary speech was intended to be regarded as a proposal of marriage. I do not see, now, what else it could have been meant for. But I did not see it then. Considering the circumstances under which it was made, it was not strange.
I do not know if it is customary for proposals to be made in the stalls of a theatre. I sincerely hope, for the lady’s sake, that it is not; especially if the subject is treated in the singular manner in which it was treated then. Not only was the phraseology very peculiar, but many of the people about us could not help hearing most of what he said; so that I had a dreadful feeling that they were more amused by his remarks than by those of the performers on the stage. No woman, I suppose, likes the declaration of a man’s passion to be made a public mock of, even when it comes from such a ridiculous creature as Walter Hammond.
Voices came to us from the pit—as before, vulgar voices.
“Silence! Shut up there in front! Can’t the gentleman in the stalls go outside if he wants to talk to his young lady?”
In desperation, I endeavoured to induce him to respect their most reasonable wishes.
“Mr Hammond,” I whispered, “can’t you keep still? You prevent the people from enjoying the performance.”
“Hang the performance!” was his answer. “And hang the people, too! Say yes, Miss Norah—only say yes!—and I’ll be silent as the grave.”
He reached out—in the stalls!—for my hand. I had the greatest difficulty in keeping it from him. If I had allowed him to get it into his, what he would have tried to do next, I do not dare to think. Had I had the vaguest conception of what kind of person he really was, nothing would have induced me to have any connection with him whatever. I pitied Eveleen, from the bottom of my heart, if she ever allowed her path in life to become associated with his.
The same attendant who had brought Mr Carter’s card—or, at least, what I believed to have been Mr Carter’s card—re-appeared. All round us people were smiling, some of them giggling outright. They were whispering among themselves. I saw that we were targets for everybody’s eyes. I had a horrid feeling that we were even attracting the attention of the actors and actresses on the stage. There was no doubt as to our being observed by the band. One of the clarionet players was grinning with such intense enjoyment that it was a miracle how it was that he managed to blow. The reappearance of that attendant was a distinct relief. She held out an envelope, which Mr Hammond snatched at with an air of resentment. She drew it back, saying, beneath her breath:
“It’s for the lady, sir.”
I took it, with trembling fingers. I managed, after a deal of ridiculous fumbling, to get it open. Inside were no less than four visiting cards. There was no need to refer to their fronts to understand from whom they came; I felt those four men glaring at me from the box above. On the back of one of them something was written. I did not look to see whose it was, but I knew it was Basil Carter’s. It was written so very badly, apparently with a blunt lead pencil, and I myself was in such a state of fluster, that I had difficulty in making out what it was.
“My dear Miss Norah,—I implore you to come up to my box at once! Mr Hammond undertook to conduct you to it, but, with monstrous perfidy, he enticed you to his own stall instead. This is not the time, and I have not the space, to give you my candid opinion of his behaviour, but I appeal to your sense of justice——”
“My dear Miss Norah,—I implore you to come up to my box at once! Mr Hammond undertook to conduct you to it, but, with monstrous perfidy, he enticed you to his own stall instead. This is not the time, and I have not the space, to give you my candid opinion of his behaviour, but I appeal to your sense of justice——”
That was all I could read. Several more words—or what I supposed were words—were crammed into the corner, which were beyond my powers of deciphering. But I had deciphered enough. What an awful character Mr Hammond appeared to be, to have played such a trick upon his friends—and upon me!—with the seemingly express intention of making a laughing-stock of me in front of all the theatre. I stood up on the instant, trembling—at least, partly—with rage. He stood up, too.
“What’s the matter? Miss Norah, where are you going?”
“I am going to Mr Carter’s box.”
He had the assurance to seem surprised.
“Miss Norah! Not before giving me an answer! Say yes! Be a sportsman, Miss Norah, and put my number up!”
Naturally, the whole place was in commotion.
“Sit down in front!” exclaimed half-a-dozen voices.
One unmannerly creature made himself clearly heard above the others. One of the many objectionable things about Mr Hammond was that he had such a strident voice, and that he would speak so loudly.
“Put the gentleman’s number up, if it’s only up the spout, Miss Norah; and then, perhaps, he will sit down!”
I distinctly heard the acid lady beside me say:
“I cannot understand how it is that they admit such creatures. I certainly should have thought that they would not have been allowed in the stalls of a respectable theatre.”
What she meant I did not know, and I could scarcely inquire. Anyhow, it was not an agreeable thing to have said of one. The man in the row behind stood up, also, again thrusting his head between Mr Hammond and me, and actually forcing a scrap of paper into my hand.
“Pardon me once more, sir, but some of us have paid for our seats with the idea of witnessing the performance, which, I believe, still is going on.”
The impertinence of the man’s manner, and the absolute insolence of his behaviour to me, stung me to sudden fury. I can get into a rage if I like! I held out the piece of paper which he had just insinuated between my fingers.
“Mr Hammond, this person has just forced this into my hand, and a few minutes ago he dropped this down my neck.”
I extracted the three-cornered fragment, which still reposed where it had fallen, inside my bodice, offering it to Mr Hammond with the other. He took them both, opened one, glanced at it, then said, in a tone of inquiry:
“This the Johnny?”
“That is the man.”
I do not know what was on that scrap of paper. I have sometimes wondered; but I never did know, and I never shall. Whatever it was, I can scarcely conceive that it could have been an, in any way, adequate excuse for what Mr Hammond immediately did. Yet there was a workmanlike promptness about the fashion in which it was done which, in a sense, appealed to me. Though it must not be, for a moment, supposed that I regarded his action as anything but shocking.
He turned round, and he hit that insolent man in the centre of his face with such force that he knocked him over the back of his own stall right into the row behind. Whatever else it was, it was a magnificent hit.
I amafraid that, in my nature somewhere, there must be a touch of the original savage. It is a painful thing to have to admit, but when one is so full of faults, as I confessedly am, I fancy that one or two, more or less, can hardly make much difference. I only know that, when I saw that person go flying over the back of his own stall, I was obliged to Mr Hammond for having sent him there. More, a good deal more!—I should not have minded if he had sent a good many of the people round us after him, especially—in spite of his age—that barefaced old man on the other side of the vinegary little woman, who, under cover of the excitement which immediately ensued, came to my side, and took my hand in his, and began to look at me in a fashion, and to say things, which made me burn with a desire to throw him into the middle of the band.
Of course there was a disturbance. All the people in the theatre jumped to their feet; the band ceased playing; the performance on the stage stopped also. Shouts and noises came from all parts of the building. Half-a-dozen men came towards us as quickly as the cramped space permitted. Mr Hammond confronted them as coolly as you please; he could keep his presence of mind.
“Only gave the fellow a taste of what he deserves. Chap who behaves like a blackguard to a woman wants drowning. Sorry, though, to have had to make a mess with him in a place like this.”
Attendants seemed to be advancing on us from all sides. Suddenly I found that Basil Carter was standing in front of me. He was white with anxiety, or agitation, or rage, or something. He began to order me about as if I were a child.
“Miss Norah, come up to my box, at once. Mr Hammond, I shall call you to a personal account for this.”
That fired me.
“Account! Why should you call him to account? He has merely marked his sense of an insult which was offered me. Do you consider that he is to blame for that?”
“There is a right and wrong way of doing that sort of thing, Miss Norah, as Mr Hammond knows. Will you be so good as to come up into my box?”
That ridiculous Mr Hammond turned to me—his tenacity of purpose, in his own absurd way, was wonderful.
“Miss Norah, you’ll give me an answer before you go!”
“If it had not been for the almost insane manner in which you have behaved, there might never have been this trouble. That is the answer I give you, and that is the only one you ever will receive.”
I marched off. In the corridor I found myself in the company of the four. I was in a towering passion, and they also were in a rage, each in his own way.
“The man is a scoundrel—perfect scoundrel—ought to be treated as such!”
This was the Major.
“Who is a scoundrel, Major Tibbet?”
“Man Hammond—regular ruffian!”
“I should recommend you to go back and tell him so. You will find that, in the proceedings which will follow, he will be disposed to do his share.”
“He hasn’t behaved well, Miss Norah—really, he hasn’t!” This was Mr Rumford; his manner I should describe as cattish. There was something about him which reminded me of an elderly tabby. “Hoodwinked us in a most ungentlemanly manner. Induced us to entrust him with you, on what were absolutely false pretences. He really did.”
“If that is so, I am more indebted to him than I imagined. That is all I can say, Mr Rumford.”
“It isn’t fair of you to say such things, Miss Norah.” Mr Purchase had the audacity to say that. “You came with us as our common guest——”
“Please don’t speak of me as your common guest, or as your guest at all, Mr Purchase.”
“You purposely twist my words. You know perfectly well——”
“I know perfectly well that I wish to have nothing to say to you, nor do I wish you to have anything to say to me—thank you very much indeed, Mr Purchase. Gentlemen, I need not trouble you to come any farther—I am going home.”
“Going home!” cried Mr Carter. “You are coming to my box, Miss Norah.”
“I am going to do nothing of the kind.”
“But, Miss Norah, surely you will not punish us because of Hammond’s misconduct; surely——”
“Do not trouble yourself to say anything more, Mr Carter; and be so good as to understand me clearly. I am indebted to you, separately and collectively, for a very unpleasant evening. I will not apportion the blame among you; I will leave you to do that yourselves. I can only say that had I known what sort of persons you were I should not have trespassed on your generosity, in search—in vain search—of an evening’s entertainment. You have already caused me to be a principal figure in a most disagreeable scene; you see how, thanks to you, the people are staring at me now—it’s a wonder the police do not turn me out! Being fearful lest you may drag me into another, I will say good-evening to you now—and thank you very much. Please do not come with me another inch.”
“But, Miss Norah, you will at least allow us to see you home.”
“See me home!—you! I would sooner ride with a cabman on his box.”
“But you have no carriage!”
“I have no omnibus, you mean. It’s a kind of vehicle I never cared about. If you persist in following me I shall have to appeal to the attendants for protection. There are cabs. I will get one for myself.”
Someone touched me on the arm. It was the girl who had been in the brown man’s box. She looked up at me with the most lovely smile, speaking in the sweetest voice:
“Perhaps you will allow me to relieve you of that difficulty. I have a carriage at the door. It is at your service to take you home.”
“It is very good of you to make me such an offer, but I could not think of troubling you—of putting you to so much inconvenience.”
“There will be no inconvenience, and no trouble. I have some friends here with whom I am going on. If you don’t use it it will go home empty, so it may as well take you.”
“But—the gentleman who was with you in the box?”
“My brother?” Somehow I was pleased to hear that the brown man was her brother. “He is looking for my friends; you needn’t worry about him. Come, I’ll show you which my carriage is.”
She laid her hand lightly on my arm. All at once I found myself walking at her side, as if we were old acquaintances. The four stood staring after us. It was quite a comfort to be walking with a woman, after being the observed of all those men—particularly as she was so pretty and so beautifully dressed. As we went she talked—always with that lovely smile.
“You’re a girl of many adventures.”
“To-night I am—too many.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A girl can’t have too many adventures, especially if they’re amusing ones. Do you think she can? There isn’t a man in the theatre who has eyes for anyone but you.”
“It’s not my fault. I’d almost rather they hadn’t any eyes at all.”
She laughed, as if something I had said had tickled her.
“It’s not good wishing that; they have—big ones where a women is concerned. There is my carriage. The commissionaire will open the door for you; I didn’t bring a footman. Tell them where to drive. Good-night. No thanks! Delighted it’s of use to you.”
I left her at the top of the steps which led into the street. At the foot a brougham was standing. As I went down the steps she signalled to the porter, or commissionaire, or whatever he was, who, I suppose, was attached to the theatre. He held the brougham door open for me to enter. I stepped in, waving my hand to her in farewell greeting, and the door was closed. I gave the commissionaire my address, leaned back among the cushions—lovely cushions they were, like down to one’s back!—congratulating myself on having got rid of my late companions, and of being in the possession of so charming a conveyance. Jane’s shoes were pinching me cruelly. I was thinking to myself that since, fortunately, I was alone, I should be able to take them off at once—even if I had to enter the house barefooted. The brougham moved off. I took it for granted that we had started, and was already leaning forward to take off those wretched shoes—the agony they were occasioning me seemed to have suddenly become more intense than ever—when, before we could have gone more than three or four yards, with a little jerk we stopped. The door was opened, someone came floundering in, the door was shut with a bang; we were off again—this time at a good round pace, which plainly meant business.
They say that women are fond of italics and notes of exclamation, and I daresay I am fonder of them than I ought to be—it is so convenient to put a mark which expresses a great deal without your having to go to the trouble of explaining just what. But all the italics and notes of exclamation put together would be incapable of even hinting at what my feelings were when I realised that the object who had come blundering in upon my privacy was the bald-headed creature who had been sitting on the other side of the sour little woman. The discovery of his identity set my brain—which had been settling down into a condition of normal quiescence—in a whirl again. Had I been the victim of a deep-laid plot? What was the meaning of the wretch’s presence there?
His demeanour, the words with which he addressed me, the matter-of-fact air with which he uttered them, made the confusion worse confounded.
“The idea of finding you in here! Best joke I ever had in my life! You little dear!”
He put out his hand and felt for mine. I fancy that the rapidity with which I withdrew myself as far as possible from him into the opposite corner a little startled him.
“How dare you intrude yourself in here?”
He laughed—actually laughed.
“You can carry things off with an air. I thought you could, by the way you treated that chap who tried to spoon you—in the middle of the stalls. He had a nerve. It was as good as a play to watch him. Not that I blame him for wanting to spoon you—there isn’t a man living who wouldn’t draw a blank cheque for the chance of doing it. You little sweet!”
I hurled back the hand, which again came out towards me, with a degree of force which I imagine rather shook his ancient frame.
“Be so good as to stop the carriage, and at once get out!”
“Get out?”
“Certainly, sir—get out!”
“Get out of my own carriage?”
“Your own carriage?” A wild thought rushed through my mind. Was it possible that that lovely lady could have been playing me a trick? I had heard of the deceitfulness of women—and seen, alas! too much; there was a good deal of deceit practised in the bosom of my own family, but that would be to surpass all bounds. It was incredible. Such double dealing could not be! “It’s not your carriage. It’s the brown man’s sister’s!”
“The brown man’s sister’s? And who is the brown man’s sister? For the matter of that, who’s the brown man?”
“I don’t know her name—I don’t know either of their names—but it’s hers. I know it’s hers—she told me it was hers!”
“Did she? Then she could tell ’em. Some folks can.” He winked at me—one of those disgraceful winks of which he was so fond. “I tell you that this carriage is mine—mine! Or rather, it’s my wife’s. I presented it to her—with my love. If you want to have any peace at all you’re obliged to give your wife things—at intervals. What you’ve got to do is to make the intervals as long as you can. Between ourselves, my wife is waiting for it now—on the pavement. She’ll be getting anxious. She soon gets anxious, does Maria. When she finds out what has become of it—if she ever does find out—the mercury’ll run up the thermometer at a rate that’ll burst the whole machine. I know. I’ve had it happen before, and found it most expensive. That’s when the intervals recur.” The dreadful being winked again. “But this time I shan’t mind. When I noticed, in the theatre there, the friendly way in which you received those little movements of my eyelids I had my hopes, but they never went as far as this. You little pet!”
Out came the hand, and back it went—quicker than it came.
“Will you keep yourself to yourself, sir? Did you dare for one moment to suggest that I encouraged you in your insolent behaviour?”
“Never know what a woman calls encouragement. But when you find her waiting for you in your own wife’s brougham, it does—well, it does look as if something was meant, doesn’t it?”
“Do you venture to insinuate that I got into your wife’s carriage knowing it was here, and that you were coming into it?”
“Now, my dear, don’t let’s ask each other questions. I’m used to being put through my catechism; it happens every day of my life. Do let’s be sociable.”
“Be so good as to stop the carriage—your wife’s carriage—this instant. If you won’t get out of it, I will.”
“Not if I know it. Now you’re unreasonable. Whatever happens now, I shall get it hot. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“It’s a matter of complete indifference to me for what you’re hung, so long as you are hung. If you won’t stop the carriage, then I shall.”
“No, you don’t.”
He moved towards me with a degree of agility which was incredible to his multitudinous years.
“Man!” I cried.
Putting my hand upon his shoulder I drove him back against the cushions with a degree of vigour which nearly sent him through them. I think it occasioned him surprise. For the moment he seemed to be able to do nothing else but gasp.
I daresay I should have stopped the carriage, only just at that moment another brougham came tearing along, which, the moment it passed, was drawn right across our path. We stopped, perforce, with a jerk, and, I suspect, with remarks from our driver. The other stopped also, somebody jumped out, and there, standing in the road, looking in at us, was the brown man.
Helooked very nice—it is a principle of mine to tell the truth always, or, at least, nearly always; so I will go so far as to assert that he looked positively delicious. Because he did. He wore no overcoat. As he stood at the open door, with his hat in his hand, and just that flavour of impertinence about his smile and bearing and general deportment which does become some men, he struck me—even in that moment of so many agitations—not only as being extremely good-looking, which he undoubtedly was, but also as one of those recklessly, and criminally, delightful persons with whom one could hardly help having a really first-rate time. His manner, when he spoke, was suavity itself. He had a pleasant voice, and a take-it-for-granted air which was in keeping with his mischievous eyes and his moustache and his white waistcoat.
“I thought it was you.” Did he? How good of him! What business had he to think about it at all? “There has been a misunderstanding. My sister directed you to the wrong carriage. This is my sister’s carriage. May I ask you to take the trouble to transfer yourself to it.”
I hesitated, or I should have hesitated, had it not been for that wicked and presumptuous old man.
“Who are you, sir? What do you mean by detaining my carriage, sir? Go away, sir, and shut the door, and allow my carriage to proceed. This lady is with me.”
She might be, but not intentionally, and the even dim suggestion that she was, was sufficient to settle the question on the spot. I paid no attention to him whatever. I addressed myself solely and entirely to the brown man.
“So kind of you to take so much trouble, and so sweet of your sister to let me have her carriage. I expect that the mistake was mine.” Though, considering the care she had taken to particularise the vehicle which I was to enter, I did not see how that could be, but that was by the way. “If I may intrude.”
I proceeded to descend. My ancient companion endeavoured to stop me.
“My dear young lady, don’t leave me—only too delighted—take you anywhere!” Then he descended to the vernacular, altogether oblivious of the solemn truth that the fact of his having nearly, if not quite, attained to the Psalmist’s span should have induced him to pay some regard to the proprieties. “It’s hard lines your throwing me over like this—uncommonly hard lines—especially considering the row I’m booked for anyhow. I don’t call it a ladylike thing to do!”
His notions of what was, and of what was not, a ladylike thing to do were probably so distinctly his own that they could hardly be expected to interest me. At any rate, they did not. I just crossed over to the brown man’s sister’s carriage, and left him to formulate—I believe that is the proper word, but if not I cannot help it—his views on ladies and things at his leisure.
It was an odd sensation passing from one brougham to the other. Broughams with us are represented by vehicles from the livery stables. People sometimes, indeed often, take mamma and the girls in their broughams; but no one, since I was the merest child, ever betrayed the slightest desire to take me—not even to play the part of gooseberry. This unwonted actual anxiety to place absolutely charming conveyances at my disposal was most refreshing—to say no more. I had already been in a private omnibus—which, after all, was not so bad; in that bad old man’s wife’s carriage—which was a pet; and now I was in the most scrumptious little vehicle you could possibly imagine—and all in the course of a single evening. If I progressed at this rate I might find myself riding in the Lord Mayor’s coach before I went to bed.
Before many moments had elapsed, however, it began to dawn upon me that, so far as company was concerned, from certainly one point of view, I might not have made an altogether felicitous exchange. The brown man moved in seven-league boots. Compared to the rapidity of his advance, my previous companion had merely stumbled along. But then, of course, he was very much older.
We had been bowling along in silence, and I was beginning to wonder if I could possibly be in for a Quaker’s meeting, when my new companion put an end to any fears I might have had on that point by saying, in the calmest voice in the world, the sort of voice in which he would have referred to the possibility of a shower of rain:
“I wonder if we can get married in the morning.”
I jumped, not boisterously, perhaps, but I certainly did jump.
“I beg your pardon?” I observed.
“I say that I was wondering if we can get married in the morning. My uncle’s the Bishop of Battersea. I believe that you can get special licences from Bishops and persons of that sort while you wait. I’ve a suspicion that he turns in early: he’s that kind of character. The question is, whether I shall assail him at this hour of the night, or rout him out with the milk in the morning—which would he dislike least? I don’t want to hurt the poor dear man’s feelings more than I can help.”
It was as if a drop of ice-cold water had gone trickling down my spinal column. I had to shiver. Could the brown man be insane? And so good-looking! I endeavoured—if such were the case—to lead him back to lines of comparative sanity.
“It’s wonderfully good of your sister to lend me her beautiful carriage.”
His answer did startle me.
“She didn’t. Don’t suppose it.”
“But—she offered it to me herself.”
“That’s her artfulness. Louisa is artful. When I told her I wanted her brougham—for you; her brougham gives the thing an air—she said she’d see me farther first. So, when I went off to nobble it, waylaying you, she carted you off in someone else’s. Very neat indeed—Louisa’s no fool.”
This statement of the facts of the case, as they appeared to him, took my breath away. It might be true.
“Then am I to understand that your sister does not know that I am in her brougham?”
“She knows. You may bet on Louisa’s knowing.”
“Then am I here contrary to her wish?”
“What’s the use of worrying about trifles? never do. What’s troubling me is the much more serious question as to whether we can be married in the morning. The Bishop’s an unmanageable creature. Used to be my tutor. Short of throwing things at him, you never could get him to behave with decency. You can’t throw things at a Bishop. It’s not good form. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?”
“About what sort of thing?”
“Special licences, and so on.”
“Will you have the kindness to ask your coachman to stop the next cab we come to, and I will get into it.”
“I say! Really! You mustn’t talk like that!”
“It seems to me very much as if I must talk like that. I appear to be riding in your sister’s carriage against her wish, and you certainly are talking in a strain which would seem to hint at there being something the matter with your mental balance. I should be sorry to seem discourteous, but I prefer a cab.”
He looked at me with his impertinent eyes in a way which made me thrill all over. It is entirely impossible for a person like me—who hardly knows one end of a pen from the other, and does not want to—to give an adequate impression of the perfectly charming way in which he said the most ridiculous and disgraceful things. I had every intention and desire to be angry, but I had to smile.
“That’s the unreasonableness of the world. Everybody—including Louisa, who practically is everybody—has been urging me for ever so long to marry. But I have felt that I had a vocation. Women have seemed to me to be good for everything but marrying. Louisa weeps. Then, to-night, when I see you at the Imperial, I not only fall in love with you—which is nothing, because I am constantly falling in love and out again—but I am seized with an instant conviction that marriage is my vocation. I rush after you to the theatre, where Louisa has a box. I say to her, ‘Louisa, I am going to do as you wish, I am about to marry!’ She gives a movement which may or may not signify satisfaction, and ejaculates, ‘No!’ I retort, ‘Yes! there is the lady who is to be my wife!’ And I point you out to her in your place in the stalls. She focusses you with her glass, and exclaims ‘Good heavens!’ Then adds, ‘Who is she?’ ‘I have not the faintest notion who she is,’ I explain, ‘I only know that she is going to be—my wife.’ Louisa looks up at me and demands, ‘Are you mad?’ There—to return to my former position—is the unreasonableness of the world. Louisa hints insanity because I am unable to accede to her wishes; when I am, she calls me mad. I ask you if there is any reason why you should not be my wife?”
“Rather! To enter for a moment into your mood—is there any reason why I should?”
“Manifold obvious reasons. First, I love, which is a bourgeois reason perhaps. Then, I am rich, which again is a little bourgeois; but still sound reason. I am young, sound of mind, hale of body, not ill-looking, of decent reputation, easy temper. Happiness is but a word, meaning different things in different mouths. Yet it’s but the simple truth that I can offer you all that the heart of a woman can desire—when she marries.”
“You seem to have a tolerable opinion of yourself.”
“Why not? Yet I have a higher opinion still of you.”
“I doubt it. I am wondering if you are supposing that I have recently escaped from a lunatic asylum, or if it is the fact that you have.”
“Don’t say that you see sanity only in the commonplace. That were to rank yourself too violently with Louisa.”
“And this is Louisa’s carriage, if, as you pretend, that is your sister’s name. I have already asked you to let me get out of it into a cab. Where is the man driving? I don’t believe that this is the way to Kensington.”
“Why should it be the way to Kensington?”
“Why! Because I live there. Didn’t you hear the address I gave you?”
“But my address is in Berkeley Square.”
“Youraddress! What hasyouraddress to do with me?”
“Since it is also to be yours, does not the question seem a trifle crude?”
“Your address is to be mine? What do you mean?”
“I trust that you are sufficiently old-fashioned to consent to share your husband’s home.”
“My husband’s home! Have you dared to tell the man to drive me to your house?”
“The notion’s this: that you will consent to accept the shelter of my roof while I rout out the Bishop, so that we may be married in the morning. It may seem to be pressing matters on a trifle hastily, to ask you to permit yourself to be ‘wooed and married and all’ inside of half-a-dozen hours. But I’ve a feeling strong upon me that this is a business which were well done if it were done quickly. If we delay there’ll be a hundred thousand reasons buzzing about our ears, to sting us as if they were mosquitoes. While, if we’re married, there’ll be no sting left in them. They’ll only buzz. And of that they’ll soon grow tired.”
“I believe that you’re stark mad. You’re worse than that wicked old man. And I thought you were a gentleman. Will you tell the coachman—at once!—to drive me straight home.”
“My dear lady, permit me to ask your name. It’s a disadvantage to a man not to know the name of the lady he’s about to marry.”
“I certainly will not tell you my name. Will you do as I ask you?”
“I am your devoted slave, only do not treat me with too much harshness. This is a critical moment in my life: my fate hangs in the balance. Let us approach the consideration of our respective destinies with dispassionate calmness, with open minds. Let us be careful to avoid anything which may have the appearance of heat.”
As I caught his eye, I was surer than ever that he was laughing at me. He might have been an altogether delightful individual—I am offering no suggestion that he was not; but his barefaced impudence and brazen audacity were beyond anything I had ever conceived as possible. I saw that I should find myself in a pretty position if I did not look out—and quickly too. I had had such a dry-as-dust existence; here was the promise of adventure, if you liked. And I do not mind owning that there flashed through my mind a wild idea of seeing the adventure to a finish, of trusting him, of allowing him to take the arbitrament of my fate in his two hands, if that avuncular Bishop could only be persuaded to prove amenable—of permitting him to marry me in the morning. What a courtship it would have been! and what a wedding! What a nine days’ wonder! What would the girls have said? and mamma? and the five—particularly Walter Hammond, when he learnt how somebody else had taken a leaf out of his very own book, and made the running with a vengeance? His sister’s face—what sort of an expression would have been on that when she learnt the use which had been made of her brougham?—and what kind of an opinion would she have had of me?
He was a very magnetic person—by far the most magnetic I ever had encountered. As one became more and more conscious of his supremely attractive personality—as one could not help but do—there was something fascinating even about his topsy-turvy way of putting things. If I had surrendered myself to the magic of his influence, what would have happened? What would have been the issue of the night’s adventures? If I had! But I did not. I gave myself, as it were, a mental pinch, and I put my head out of the window, and I called to the driver.
“Coachman!” I cried. The driver reined in his horse. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home, my lady.”
“Home? To whose home? To my home?”
“To His Grace’s, my lady—Chelmsford House.”
He called me “my lady,” and spoke of “His Grace,” and of Chelmsford House. Then the brown man must be the Duke of Chelmsford? No woman can suddenly awake to the fact that she has been in the society of a real live duke—and such a duke—without becoming conscious of a singular something. I withdrew my head from the window with a sort of spasmodic rush.
“Are you the Duke of Chelmsford?”
“I am; and hope that you will shortly be the Duchess.”
The Duchess! the Duchess of Chelmsford! the consort of the richest duke in the world, and, as my own eyes told me—the very handsomest; the queen of English society—palaces and lands just everywhere—the world at my feet, ready, willing, eager to do me homage—me! Small wonder that everything seemed all at once to be going round. Was it possible that the greatest of life’s prizes—from every sensible woman’s point of view—was being offered me? that I was actually being entreated to accept it? This was something like an adventure.
The brown man’s—I mean the Duke’s—voice came to my still startled ear.
“You’ll find being a Duchess rather a bore. The natural boredom, to which all flesh is heir, will afflict you in an accentuated form. But you’ll get used to it. Use is by way of being a universal panacea. Then you’ll discover that it’s a sort of boredom which you have rather grown to like. My mother used to say she had.”
I turned the handle of the door, and, without a word, stepped out into the road. So soon as I stood upright I realised that I was trembling from head to foot. I wondered, hazily, if I was going to be silly; dimly aware that it was an absurdly inconvenient place in which to make a fuss. Instantly the brown man—I mean the Duke—was at my side.
“Why have you got out here? You prefer to walk the remainder of the distance? It’s fine for walking. My house—our house—is but over the way.”
“Will you please tell me where is the nearest place at which I can find a cab?”
I know little of that part of London. Especially is it strange to me at night. We seemed to be in a great square, with huge houses all round it, and a fine wide road, which, apparently, we had all to ourselves.
“We shall not need one, it is but a step.” Then, I suppose, he perceived that I was looking queer, because all at once his tone became solicitous. “May I beg you to accept my arm. Has anything distressed you?”
“I want a cab,” was all that I could murmur.
What he would have said I do not know. Before he could speak another brougham came bowling along. It stopped just by us, and out of it—of all persons in the world—walked that wicked old man. He marched straight up to where we were standing—as if he had the slightest ground for interference. What he imagined had occurred I, of course, cannot say; but he addressed us in a truly remarkable strain.
“Just what I expected—knew I should find this sort of thing going on. If you had asked me, you would have been warned in time. You young people are never able to judge for yourselves whom you can trust. Now, my dear young lady, you would have seen how much wiser you would have been if you had remained with me.”
“Who is this gentleman?” inquired the Duke.
“I don’t know who he is—I don’t want to have anything to do with him—he’s no acquaintance of mine—I wish he’d go away!”
That old man actually dared to pretend to be hurt by my repudiation of him.
“There now, listen to that! And, for all I know, my wife’s still standing on the pavement waiting for her carriage; while, at this hour of the night, I’ve been following this ungrateful girl in it like a—like a—like a true friend. And I arrive at the moment when the protection of a true friend is most needed, and this is the welcome I receive. There’s nothing so ungrateful as a young girl—especially when gratitude is owing to a man of my years. But, my dear young lady, I will forgive you everything; so come back to my carriage and don’t let us trouble this young gentleman any further.”
His fingers fastened about my arm. I shrunk back.
“Don’t touch me.”
The Duke, placing himself between us, spoke to that horrid old wretch.
“Have the goodness not to allow us to detain you any longer.”
I believe there would have been a scene before we could have got rid of him, because, so far as I could see, he showed no sign of budging, and every second I was growing queerer and queerer. Something inside of me seemed to have escaped from my control, so that I could not pull myself together and behave like a reasonable being. Just as I was beginning to be afraid that I should have to sit down in the middle of the road, or do something else equally insane, up dashed another vehicle. I believe it was a hansom cab, but as I was seeing everything through a kind of mist, I could not be sure. Anyhow, out of it jumped the brown man’s sister. I thought her voice, as it reached my dulling ears, was the pleasantest I had heard that night. After all, there is nothing like a woman, when you have had enough of men.
“So I’ve found you, have I? Pray, what’s doing now? Bernard, what fresh freak are you indulging in?”
“Louisa, will you take this lady to Chelmsford House. I fear she’s feeling tired. There are a few words which I must say to this gentleman.”
I felt the brown man’s sister’s arm go round my waist; it was so nice.
“Tired? You poor child! You’ve upset her with your nonsense. Bernard! quick! help me with her to the carriage. Who are all these people who are coming?”
“All these people” were the five. They came clattering up together—the four in the omnibus, Walter Hammond alone in a hansom cab. I fancy that there was a fine to-do. But it was lost on me. For the first time in my life I was behaving like a goose—in the Duke of Chelmsford’s arms.
So I rode home in the brown man’s sister’s brougham.
Andwhat a time I did have of it when I did get home, attended by an entire retinue. Mamma was sitting up for me, and Audrey, and also Jane. What a sensation my arrival caused, and were there not alarms and excursions. It must have been a singular procession, especially when one considers that for our part of the world it was a trifle late. I with the brown man’s sister in her brougham, the Duke in his sister’s cab, Walter Hammond in his own hansom, that bad old man in his wife’s carriage—he insisted on following in that injured female’s vehicle to my very doorstep,—the four in their omnibus. I daresay that remarks were made which would have been worth reporting. But I was beyond the reporting stage.
Was I not glad to find myself alone again in my own shabby little bedroom, and rid of Jane. It was not an easy task to be rid of Jane. Had I not got my foot against the door the instant I was through it, I should hardly have been rid of her at all. As it was, she tapped unceasingly at the panels, imploring from without to be allowed to assist me to undress. She had assisted me to dress; that was sufficient, at any rate, for me. But it was no use telling her so; in tones which grew more and more lachrymose she continued to entreat for some time after I had declined to indulge in further parley.
What a relief it was to sit on the edge of the bed and get Jane’s shoes off—at last! I should have liked to have dropped on to the counterpane, and gone to sleep just as I was; I was so tired. When one is accustomed to retire early—I was generally in bed and fast asleep hours before the others were—and to no excitement, to have so much excitement crammed into a single night is fatiguing. I know I found it so. It was only because my conscience would not let me get into bed with my clothes on that I undressed at all. As I struggled with refractory tapes and buttons—and they were all refractory then—I told myself that I was an idiot to allow myself to be a slave to habit, and call it conscience, when my eyes would not keep open.
Yet when I got into bed, with my clothes honestly off, I could not sleep. I suppose I was over-tired. I certainly was over-tired. Like a constantly shifting phantasmagoria, the events of the night passed backwards and forwards through my brain. It was such an upheaval of the whole course of nature that I should be courted, a thing to be desired by men. Since what time? Since, say three o’clock, the whole world, so far as I was concerned, had been turned upside down; the order of nature had been changed, a miracle had been worked—I had become all those things which I had never been before. That it was no delusion, I, and others, had had assurance enough and to spare. I had seen it in the way in which men looked at me, in the way in which they spoke to me, hunted me when they could. In plain English, it seemed as if I had acquired a sudden capacity to drive men mad. I had always suspected that not much was required to do that. Now it appeared that it only needed me. There was proof plain as Holy Writ that the writing on the paper——
At the thought of the scrap of paper, I was out of bed again in half a twinkling, nearly wide awake. Where was it? I re-lit the gas, looked for it, found it still among the litter on the dressing-table. There was the mystic, magic, incredible sentence, in the small clear writing, which somehow reminded me of the writing in which they put one’s name upon one’s visiting-card.
“Your wish shall be gratified until——”
“Until?”
Why, surely, when I saw it last no “until” was there. It certainly was not when I saw it first. Was the sentence really still being written? Then the scribe was pretty slow. If such were the case what was to follow after “until”?
“Until”—satiety ensued, and I had had enough of it? Could I turn off my power at pleasure, and, having done so, turn it on again? How? Would the secret of that somewhat delicate operation also be revealed? “Until”—I was married? I might be married in a few hours, if I chose, to the Duke of Chelmsford, that deliciously impertinent brown man. Should I not be able to crow over mamma and the girls if I were? Would it not be a magnificent instance of Cinderella up-to-date? Though no one could speak of the girls as “ugly sisters.” “Until”—I was old? Some people might regard twenty-two as old. I myself sometimes feel as if bowed down by the weight of years. What was the period in life at which it was universally agreed that folks were old, even by the folks themselves? I knew that mamma considered herself quite young. If it were left to me to fix the age at which I might be reckoned old, I might say after the expiration of a century, and, even from the little I had seen of things, I believe that some people esteemed themselves comparatively juvenile even then. Fancy men of all ranks and ages making love to a real old lady! Would it not be dreadful? “Until”—I died? I was not sure that I should like to be regarded as an object of desire by every male creature I encountered, quite until the end. I might have had a great deal more than enough of them long ere that. Especially if they continued to press themselves upon me as eagerly as they had done that night. Indeed, it was extremely probable, if only death could put a period to their persecution, that I might welcome with rapture a suicide’s grave.
I put out the gas again, and, with the scrap of paper between my fingers, returned to bed, the problem of the unfinished sentence yet unsolved. And I have a vague idea that I fell fast asleep as soon as I was between the sheets a second time—the missing words still missing.
Forsome moments I could not think what had happened. I had just been eloping with the Duke of Chelmsford, and because several men had maintained that he ought to do nothing of the kind, he had put me in his pocket—which was not anything like large enough—and thrown Jane’s crimson shoes into his sister’s face, who had thereupon changed into a horse—with Walter Hammond’s head, on which he had sprung; and, galloping down the racecourse, had dragged me from his pocket—with much difficulty!—and married me in the middle of the grand stand. I felt, even in my sleep, that this was a surprising way for a person to behave, and that I had a grievance, when all at once I became conscious of Audrey’s face bent over my bed, and of the fact that she was shaking me.
“Do you know what time it is?” I did not, and did not care. I fancy I signified as much. “It’s half-past eleven, and already people have come to see you.” Still I was indifferent: as yet the statement conveyed no meaning. “How are you feeling?”
“Cheap.”
Audrey laughed.
“That’s lack of experience, my dear. Though it’s true that the more expensive a night one has, the more economical one feels in the morning—especially, I fancy, when it’s a woman in the case. Though I’ve known men who suffered. But you did have a good time—didn’t you?”
“Don’t ask me. I suppose I did—but—at present—I’m not quite sure. It was a little nightmarey.”
Audrey was still. Although my eyes were closed I was oddly conscious that hers were searching my face with a curious scrutiny. And, somehow, I seemed to know that what she saw there made her sorry, but whether for herself or for me I could not tell.
“I fancy that everyone must have been a wee bit mad—yesterday.”
There was an inflection in her voice which caused me to look up.
“Mad? Yes; I think they must have been!”
“Some of Puck’s magic powder must have got into their eyes, so that they saw things as they did in that wood near Athens. Perhaps they’ll have got it out to-day.”
“Perhaps.”
Again she looked at me, and, as I was looking at her, this time I saw that there was trouble in her eyes, trouble which seemed to grow as she looked. Stooping, she kissed me, saying something which I did not understand at all.
“Never mind, Norah; we’ve all got our burdens to bear. It’s a pretty hard world for feminine things. Shall I tell those people you cannot see them, that you’re not feeling well? You don’t seem quite up to the mark, you know.”
“Am I looking ill?”
“No—not ill—exactly. You’re like your ordinary self: and—last night—you hardly were.”
This time something in her words, her tone, her manner, did give me a hint of what it was she meant. As I began to perceive what it was she wanted me to understand I became conscious of a tightness about the region of the heart, as if it had been suddenly weighted with lead. She saw it was so, because she kissed me again.
“Shall I send them away?”
While I hesitated, because the thought which she had presented to my mind had left me for the moment speechless, mamma came into the room. The instant she spoke, it was plain that she had heard what Audrey had said:
“They won’t go,” she began. “I can’t think what people are coming to nowadays—never saw such manners in my life—if those men were crossing-sweepers they could not behave worse!—and I’m not sure that some of them are much better! One of them has the assurance to call himself the Duke of Chelmsford. Quite apart from anything else, the fact of his being so extremely good-looking proclaims him an impostor. All dukes are notoriously ugly. Norah, I insist upon your telling me what is the meaning of these proceedings.”
Audrey answered for me.
“My dear mamma, since Norah is scarcely awake I can’t see how you can expect her to explain what she herself as yet knows nothing about.”
Mamma pretended to be angry with Audrey, which was a most unusual thing, for no one was ever angry with Audrey long.
“It’s no use your endeavouring to palliate Norah’s conduct, Audrey—I won’t have it!—I have had too much of it already!—I don’t like the attitude you have taken up in the matter!—it doesn’t become you! Norah’s behaviour is beyond my comprehension—look at the scene last night! And now here are these men—strange men!—at this unseemly hour of the morning, demanding to see her as if they were presenting a pistol at my head. I will not keep silent and allow scandal to be brought upon my house. Tell me at once, Norah, who is this person who calls himself the Duke of Chelmsford?”
“He is the Duke of Chelmsford, mamma.”
“How do you know? And how did you become acquainted with him, if he is—you, of all the people in the world?”
“He introduced himself to me last night.”
“Introduced himself to you!—a man in his position!—to you! Where were those other men that such a thing should have been possible?”
I sighed, at least I made a noise which I suppose may be described as a sigh, though it has always seemed to me to be rather a poetic word to apply to the sort of gasping sound one makes when one feels that other people are just a trifle stupid.
“It would take me a good time to explain, mamma, and then perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”
“Indeed, though that’s a remark which no girl ought to make to her mother, I daresay it’s true enough; the whole thing’s beyond my understanding. Ever since yesterday afternoon I’ve been asking myself if the whole world’s gone mad. And now that I look at you I ask myself more than ever. No man has ever seen anything in you except two eyes and a nose, and now what they think they see in you all of a sudden is beyond me altogether. What you say about her having changed, Audrey, is just nonsense, except it’s changed for the worse—unless you wish to insinuate that my eyesight’s failing me. She’s always been a plain girl—the only one of my family!—and she’s a plain woman—without even that kind of plainness which is interesting. And what you wish me to understand by talking about her having changed sufficiently to account for the behaviour of those men, as I say, unless I’m going blind, it’s balderdash you’re talking. She’s a fright, just that, and nothing more; and it’s a bad day when I, her mother, that never had a child except her that wasn’t fit for framing—have to say it.”
During the utterance of these very outspoken remarks, I knew—although I was not looking—that Audrey was making signs to mamma to be a little careful in her choice of words; signs which, apparently, mamma preferred to ignore—feeling, possibly, that, under the circumstances, to spare my feelings was to spoil the child. When mamma had quite finished then I did turn towards Audrey, and when I caught her eyes she smiled, there was no mistake about her being a picture well worth framing!
“Never mind what mamma says,” she whispered.
“I don’t,” I replied, with perfect candour, and equal truth. “I never do.”
Of course the confession was not lost upon mamma.
“If I’d spoken to my mother like that, in her presence, she’d have beaten me; but, in those days, daughters used to look upon a mother as a parent. Now, she might as well be the cattle in the field. And the consequences of it will be, Norah O’Brady, that you may as well go clerking, or companion to an old lady, or something equally as degrading to your father’s child, for all the chances you’ll ever have of getting decently settled in life—in spite of all the half-witted men who’re invading my house at this time of the morning. And what it is that I’m to do with them, I’d like to know.”
Audrey repeated the question which I had left unanswered.
“Shall I send them away?”
I hesitated, searching her face for what was written on it. It was with a fresh sinking of the heart that I understood, or thought I did.
“No; let them wait. I will be as quick as I can, and come down to them. It will be better to get it over.”
She stooped down and whispered in my ear, so that, this time, I was the only one who heard:
“Men are the least dependable of all God’s creatures. You mustn’t mind.”
It was a cryptic utterance—to those who were without the key, which I fancied that I had. She took mamma away with her. I was left alone.
The instant they were gone I brought up, from between the sheets, a scrap of paper—thescrap. I had taken it with me to bed. All night long, it seemed, I had held it in my hand, clutched between my fingers. I had thought of it the moment I supposed myself to have an idea of Audrey’s meaning; and, feeling it there, had realised how close a neighbour it had been while I had slept. It was all crumpled. I smoothed it out, and looked. The writing had grown faint; so faint as to suggest that the writer must have used ink of a very evanescent quality. Already, here and there, the words could scarcely be deciphered.
But the sentence was finished!
How, while I had slept, the finish had been arrived at, or by whom, I could not tell. The result was unmistakable. My doom stared me in the face; my forebodings were realised; the meaning of what I had seen in Audrey’s eyes, heard in her voice, was made quite plain.
“Your wish shall be gratified until to-morrow.”
“To-morrow” had been the missing word—that was, to-day. My wish was to be gratified until to-day, which meant that all the gratification I was to receive—so far as that particular wish was concerned—I had already had. What was my wish exactly? I should not have liked to have had to answer the question on my oath. I had been talking pretty wildly at the time! But, so far as I could remember, I wished that all men—every man—might fall in love with me at sight. As, lying there, in cold blood—metaphorically, in very cold blood, indeed!—I endeavoured to recall it, as accurately as I could, what a singular wish it seemed, to say the very least!
And it had been gratified? And now it was done with? Dear! dear! what a very short span of enjoyment had been allotted me. What a very small result the boon which had been conferred had ended in. Was that the meaning of the feeling I was conscious of—that I had returned again to what I was? It certainly was true that I was oppressed by an apprehension, which was near akin to fear, that since last night something had been lost, that something had gone from me, which I had when I laid down to sleep—gone, never to return. What could it be? It was not that I was ill, or tired, or—as I had pretended to Audrey—even cheap. It was nothing half so commonplace.
I got out of bed, and, as I did so, I felt that virtue had gone from me; life, that ichor of the gods which had been in my veins last night instead of blood. I had hit it—I was as one of the gods—the writer of the sentence on that scrap of paper alone knew how—and was again but mortal. Between sleeping and waking, I had come down the Olympian hill, slung down, rather, been kicked down, perhaps, amid the jeers and jesting of the rightful inhabitants; and at the very, very foot was once more—Norah O’Brady.
I needed not the assurance of the mirror. Had I done so, I had it, beyond all possibility of controverting. The face I saw in it was the one I had always seen; not the one that had seemed to blaze at me yester afternoon. The light had gone from the eyes; the flare, a mere glimpse of which—as, somehow, I had known—would set the most sluggish blood in masculine veins flaming as with fire; and, with it, all had gone. There was but left the plain, uninteresting, undistinguished, unintellectual face of overgrown Norah O’Brady.
I dressed. How shabby my things did seem, unusually shabby, even for me. Ill-shaped, ill-fitting, with about them, every one, that exasperating suggestion of having been intended for someone else. Always, everything I had, seemed to shout at me, with furious grievance, that it might have looked presentable if only it had been worn by a creature different entirely to me. If they had only let me choose my own things, and, regardless of what was, or was not, the mode, have permitted me to clothe myself in the garments in which I looked least awkward; at any rate, my actual deficiencies might not have been quite so obtrusive. But, in continual parodies of the fashions of the moment—which went very well with them, but, oh! so horribly with me—what a fright they made me look.
AsI went down the stairs, dressed—if you could call it dressed—at last, how hideously conscious I was that I presented a spectacle of all that was least desirable in womanhood. Long familiarity with the fact had hardened me. I take it that no feminine thing becomes completely reconciled to the accident that she is not physically prepossessing. Women who are plain sometimes do not realise their plainness. I daresay that is true. Or they may cherish a hope that, in the eyes of someone, some day, they may not be plain. If, fatherless, brotherless, they live with five lovely sisters, and a still good-looking mother—who esteems beauty the only thing which is worth a woman’s having—both these consolations will be denied them. Long before they have reached years of maturity, they will have learnt, with that absolute certainty of conviction which leaves no room whatever for doubt, that they are ugly ducklings, and that, for such as they, this world has no good things; that, indeed, it is as sure as that the sky is above the earth, that none but idiots, or worse, will ever esteem them for themselves alone. And, though they become accustomed to this knowledge, and so pachydermatous, in a sense, there are occasions when the actualities of their position are as pin-pricks to make them wince as eagerly as if their skins had never been tanned, by the laying on of innumerable stripes, into hide at all.
The descent of the stairs which divided my bedroom from the drawing-room was one of those occasions. Worse luck for me. In the drawing-room were the men who had been the worshippers of the girl who was—last night; come, at that matutinal hour, to render her the proofs of their devotion. Going to them was the girl who was to-day; that grotesque caricature of the being they had known, and of whom they apparently still dreamed. Clearly, it was doubtful if this was a case in which they would perceive that it was “better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” No man cherishes a sentimental pang when he discovers that he has been deluded into loving a female Bottom in an ass’s head. The humour of the situation would probably appeal to them so much more strongly than to me.
Half-way down I encountered Jane, who, I rather suspect, had been keeping herself handy in the possible expectation of such an encounter. At sight of me she gave a jump.
“Lor’! Miss Norah, whatever has come to you! I shouldn’t hardly ever have known you; you look so different—really, I shouldn’t.”
“Do I look different? How?”
I was curious to learn how the matter appeared to her. Her way of seeing it might be as a straw to guide me as to the quarter from which I might expect the wind to blow in the interview to which I was advancing. Her eyes travelled over my features in stolid, observant fashion, as if she were searching out the peculiarities of a wooden figurehead.
“Really, miss, I couldn’t hardly say—I really couldn’t; though such a difference I never see. It’s more than a difference; you don’t seem as if you was the same person—that you don’t.”
“But I assure you that I am.”
“Excuse me, Miss Norah, but that you aren’t—you are not, really. Leastways, not so far as looks is concerned. If you could see yourself as you looked last night, and as you looks now, you yourself wouldn’t say you was the same—I don’t believe you would, really.”
It was encouraging to receive such a testimonial from Jane, especially as on her countenance sincerity was written large, and surprise, and, I rather fancied—it might have been only fancy, but I doubt it—disappointment too. If the alteration were so apparent to Jane, the not inhumanly critical, with what appalling obviousness would they not strike the keen-sighted gentlemen who awaited me in the drawing-room, and whose voices I already heard. The same reflection actually occurred to the handmaid of the crimson slippers—at the recollection of their splendours they still seemed to pinch me.
“Whatever them there gentlemen will say when they see you looking like that, Miss Norah, I can’t think; and there is a few of ’em. There’s a bald-headed old party what give me a sovereign to show him in without announcing him.”
“A bald-headed old party?”
“‘Never mind my name,’ he says. ‘You show me straight in without announcing me, and here’s a sovereign for you.’ So I showed him in, because sovereigns aren’t lying about all over the place, not in this house they aren’t. Though I should like to know what he thinks he’s after, with no more hair on his head than a yellow Bramah egg.”
I felt that I also should like to know. Was it possible that that hoary reprobate had not yet repented of his last night’s misdoings. Jane went on to say something which nearly caused me to tumble down the remainder of the stairs.
“But the one that takes my fancy is him with the moustaches. Now, he is something like a man. If he’d been took clean out of a picture he couldn’t have been more what he ought to be.”
“With the moustaches?”
My thoughts recurred to the Duke of Chelmsford. Was he, in Jane’s estimation, something like a man? But it seemed that I was on the wrong scent.
“Him with the moustaches what turns up at the ends like as if they was ramrods. If he isn’t a soldier it ain’t for want of looking it. Splendid, I call him. Then look at the height of him—regular monument, as you might say. And that straight! Then them there eyes of his!—ain’t they eyes? I never! When they looked at me they made me go all over—really they did. And I’ve not got over the feeling now—that I haven’t. It’s my opinion, and always has been, that some of them foreign men is better grown than some of our English.”
“Foreign men?”
A premonitory something was beginning to chill me about the centre of the back.
“He speaks with a foreign accent—lovely accent, I call it—that musical. And he’s got a way about him which makes you think, for all his being such a great big giant of a man, that if he was to take you in his arms he would be tender.”