Beauty like hers is genius.D. G. Rossetti.
Beauty like hers is genius.D. G. Rossetti.
Beauty like hers is genius.D. G. Rossetti.
Beauty like hers is genius.
D. G. Rossetti.
Lucy slept little that night. At the first flush of the magnificent summer dawn she was astir, making her preparations for the traveller's breakfast.
She had changed suddenly, from a demure and rather frigid maiden to a loving and anxious woman. Perhaps the signet-ring on her middle finger was a magic ring, and had wrought the charm.
Frank's notice to quit had been so short, that he had been obliged to apply for various necessaries to Darrell, who, withLord Watergate, had supplied him with the main features of a tropical outfit. His ship sailed that day, at noon, so there was little time to be lost. He came over at an unconscionably early hour to Number 20B, for there was much to be said and little opportunity for saying it.
Lucy, displaying a truly feminine mixture of the tender and the practical, packed his bag, strapped his rugs, and put searching questions as to his preparations for travel. Already, womanlike, she had taken him under her wing, and henceforward the minutest detail of his existence would be more precious to her than anything on earth.
Gertrude, when she had kissed the vivid young face in sisterly farewell, saw the lovers drive off to the station and wondered inwardly at their calmness.
Later in the day, coming into the studio, she found Lucy quietly engaged in putting a negative into the printing-frame.
"It is his," she said, looking up with a smile; "I never felt that I had a right to do it before."
At luncheon, Phyllis reminded her that to-night was the night of Mr. Darrell'sconversazioneat the Berkeley Galleries, for which he had sent them two tickets.
"It's no good expecting Lucy to go; you will have to take me, Gerty," she announced.
Gertrude had a great dislike to going, and she said—
"Can't Fanny take you?"
"Edward and I are dining at the Septimus Pratts'," replied Fanny.
After much hesitation, she and her betrothed had had to resign themselves to the inevitable, and dispense with the services of a chaperon; a breach of decorum which Mr. Marsh, in particular, deplored.
"Are you very anxious about this party?" pleaded Gertrude.
"Oh Gerty, of course. And if you won't take me, I'll go alone," cried Phyllis, with unusual vehemence.
Gertrude was indignant at her sister's tone; then reflected that it was, perhaps, hard on Phyllis, to cut off one of her few festivities.
Phyllis, indeed, had not been very well of late, and demanded more spoiling than ever. She coughed constantly, and her eyes were unnaturally bright.
Gertrude ended by submitting to the sacrifice, and at ten o'clock she and Phyllis found themselves in Bond Street, where the rooms were already thronged with people.
Phyllis had blazed into a degree of beauty that startled even her sister, and made her the frequent mark for observation in that brilliant gathering.
Her grey dress was cut low, displaying the white and rounded slenderness of her shoulders and arms; the soft brown hair was coiled about the perfect head in a manner that afforded a view of the neck and its graceful action; her eyes shone like stars; her cheeks glowed exquisitely pink. Wherever she went, went forth a sweet strong fragrance, the breath of a great spray of tuberose which was fastened in her bodice, and which had arrived for her that day from an unnamed donor.
Darrell's greeting to both the sisters had been of the briefest. He had shaken hands unsmilingly with Phyllis; he and Gertrude had brought their finger-tips into chill and momentary contact, without so much as lifting their eyes, and Gertrude had felt humiliated at her presence there.
She had not seen Darrell since his PrivateView, more than six weeks ago; and now, as she stood talking to Lord Watergate, her eye, guided by a nameless curiosity, an unaccountable fascination, sought him out. He was looking ill, she thought, as she watched him standing in his host's place, near the doorway, chatting to an ugly old woman, whom she knew to be the Duchess of Kilburne; ill, and very unhappy. Happiness indeed, as she instinctively felt, is not for such as he—for the egotist and the sensualist.
Her acute feminine sense, sharpened perhaps by personal soreness, had pierced to the second-rateness of the man and his art. Beneath his arrogance and air of assured success, she read the signs of an almost craven hunger for pre-eminence; of a morbid self-consciousness; an insatiable vanity. And for all the stupendous cleverness of his workmanship, she failed to detect in his work the traces of those qualities which, combined with far less skill than his, can make greatness.
As for her own relations to Darrell, the positions of the two had shifted a little since the first. In the brief flashes of intercourse which they had known, a dramahad silently enacted itself; a war without words or weapons, in which, so far, she had come off victor. For Sidney had ceased to regard her as merely ridiculous; and she, on her part, was no longer cowed by his aggressive personality, by the all-seeing, languid glance, the arrogant, indifferent manner. They stood on a level platform of unspoken, yet open distaste; which, should occasion arise, might blaze into actual defiance.
Lord Watergate, as I have said, was talking to Gertrude; but his glance, as she was quick to observe, strayed constantly toward Phyllis. She had wondered before this, as to the measure of his admiration for her sister; it seemed to her that he paid her the tribute of a deeper interest than that which her beauty and her brightness would, in the natural course of things, exact.
As for Phyllis, she was enjoying a triumph which many a professional beauty might have envied. People flocked round her, scheming for introductions, staring at her in open admiration, laughing at her whimsical sallies.
"That young person has a career before her."
"Who is she?"
"Oh, one of Darrell's discoveries. Works at a photographer's, they say."
"Darrell is painting her portrait."
"No, not her portrait; but a study of 'Cressida.'"
"Cressida!
"'There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;Nay, her foot speaks——'"
"'There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;Nay, her foot speaks——'"
"'There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;Nay, her foot speaks——'"
"'There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks——'"
"Hush, hush!"
Such floating spars of talk had drifted past Gertrude's corner, and had been caught, not by her, but by her companion.
Lord Watergate frowned, as he mentally finished the quotation, which struck him as being in shocking taste. He had adopted, unconsciously, a protective attitude towards the Lorimers; their courage, their fearlessness, their immense ignorance, appealed to his generous and chivalrous nature. He made up his mind to speak to Darrell about that baseless rumour of the Cressida.
Gertrude, on her part, was not too absorbed in conversation to notice whather sister was doing. She saw at once that, in spite of some thrills of satisfied vanity, Phyllis was not enjoying herself. There was a restless, discontented light in her eyes, a half-weary recklessness in her pose, as she leant against the edge of a tall screen, which filled Gertrude with wonder and anxiety. She felt, as she had felt so often lately, that Phyllis, her little Phyllis, whom she had scolded and petted and yearned over for eighteen years, was passing beyond her ken, into regions where she could never follow.
The evening wore itself away as such evenings do, in aimless drifting to and fro, half-hearted attempts at conversation, much mutual staring, and a determined raid on the refreshment buffet, on the part of people who have dined sumptuously an hour ago.
"Our English social institutions," Darrell said aside to Lord Watergate; "the private view, where every one goes; theconversazione, where no one talks."
Lord Watergate laughed, and went back to Gertrude, to propose an attack on the buffet, by way of diversion; and Sidney, with his inscrutable air of utterpurposelessness, made his way through the crowd to where Phyllis stood in conversation with two young men.
Some paces off from her he paused, and stood in silence, looking at her.
Phyllis shot her glance to his, half-petulant, half-supplicating, like that of a child.
It was late in the evening, and this was the first attempt he had made to approach her. Darrell advanced a step or two, and Phyllis lowered her eyes, with a sudden and vivid blush.
"At last," said Darrell, in a low voice, as the two young men instinctively moved off before him.
"You are just in time to say 'good-night' to me, Mr. Darrell."
Darrell smiled, with his face close to hers. His smile was considered attractive—
"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone."
"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone."
"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone."
"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone."
"It is not 'good-night,' but 'good-bye,' that I have come to say."
The brilliant and rapid smile had passed across his face, leaving no trace.
"What do you mean, Mr. Darrell?"
"I mean that I am going away to-morrow."
"For ever and ever?" Phyllis laughed, as she spoke, turning pale.
"For several months. I have important business in Paris."
"But you haven't finished my portrait, Mr. Darrell."
Sidney looked down, biting his lip.
"Shall you be able to finish it in time for the Grosvenor?"
"Possibly not."
"Now you are disagreeable," cried Phyllis, in a high voice; "and ungrateful, too, after all those long sittings."
"Not ungrateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Under cover of the crowd he had taken both her hands, and was pressing them fiercely at each repetition, while his miserable eyes looked imploringly into hers.
"You are hurting me." Her voice was low and broken. She shrank back afraid.
"Good-bye—Phyllis."
Gertrude, coming back from the refreshment-room a minute later, found Phyllis standing by herself, in an angle formed by one of the screens, pale to the lips, with brilliant, meaningless eyes.
"We are going home," said Gertrude, walking up to her.
"Oh, very well," she answered, rousing herself; "the sooner the better. I am not well." She put her hand to her side. "I had that pain again that I used to have."
Lord Watergate, who stood a little apart, watching her, came forward and gave her his arm, and they all three went from the room.
In the cab Phyllis recovered something of her wonted vivacity.
"Isn't it a nuisance," she said, "Mr. Darrell is going away for a long time, and doesn't know when he will be able to finish my portrait."
Gertrude started.
"Well, I suppose you always knew that he was an erratic person."
"You speak as if you were pleased, Gerty. I am very disappointed."
"Put not your trust in princes, Phyllis, nor in fashionable artists, who are rather more important than princes, in these days," answered Gertrude, secretly hoping that their relations with Darrell would never be renewed. "He has tired of his whim," she thought, indignant, yet relieved.
Mrs. Maryon opened the door to them herself.
Phyllis shuddered as they went upstairs. "That bird of ill-omen!" she cried, beneath her breath.
"Poor Mrs. Maryon. How can you be so silly?" said Gertrude, who herself had noted the long and earnest glance which the woman had cast on her sister.
In the sitting-room they found Lucy sewing peacefully by the lamplight.
"You hardly went to bed at all last night; you shouldn't be sitting up," said Gertrude, throwing off her cloak; while Phyllis carefully detached the knot of tuberose from her bodice, as she delivered herself for the second time of her grievance.
Afterwards, going up to the mantelpiece, she placed the flowers in a slender Venetian vase, its crystal flecked with flakes of gold, which Darrell had given her; took the vase in her hand, and swept upstairs without a word.
"I do not know what to think about Phyllis," said Gertrude.
"You are afraid that she is too much interested in Mr. Darrell?"
"Yes."
"She does not care two straws for him," said Lucy, with the conviction of one who knows; "her vanity is hurt, but I am not sure that that will be bad for her."
"He is the sort of person to attract——" began Gertrude; but Lucy struck in—
"Why, Gerty, what are you thinking of? he must be forty at least; and Phyllis is a child."
Something in her tones recalled to Gertrude that clarion-blast of triumph, in the wonderful lyric—
"Oh, my love, my love is young!"
"Oh, my love, my love is young!"
"Oh, my love, my love is young!"
"Oh, my love, my love is young!"
"At any rate," she said, as they prepared to retire, "I am thankful that the sittings are at an end. Phyllis was getting her head turned. She is looking shockingly unwell, moreover, and I shall persuade her to accept the Devonshires' invitation for next month."
A human heart should beat for two,Whate'er may say your single scorners;And all the hearths I ever knewHad got a pair of chimney-corners.F. Locker: London Lyrics.
A human heart should beat for two,Whate'er may say your single scorners;And all the hearths I ever knewHad got a pair of chimney-corners.F. Locker: London Lyrics.
A human heart should beat for two,Whate'er may say your single scorners;And all the hearths I ever knewHad got a pair of chimney-corners.F. Locker: London Lyrics.
A human heart should beat for two,
Whate'er may say your single scorners;
And all the hearths I ever knew
Had got a pair of chimney-corners.
F. Locker: London Lyrics.
The next day, at about six o'clock, just as they had gone upstairs from the studio, Constance Devonshire was announced, and came sailing in, in her smartest attire, and with her most gracious smile on her face.
"I have come to offer my congratulations," she cried, going up to Lucy; "you know, I have always thought little Mr. Jermyn a nice person."
Lucy laughed quietly.
"I am glad you have brought your congratulations in person, Conny. I rather expected you would tell your coachman to leave cards at the door."
Conny turned away her face abruptly.
"What is the good of coming to see such busy people as you have been lately?... And with so much love-making going on at the same time! What does Mrs. Maryon think of it all?"
"Oh, she finds it very tame and hackneyed, I am afraid."
"You see," added Phyllis, who lounged idly in an arm-chair by the window, pale but sprightly, "the course of true love runs so monotonously smooth in this household. And Mrs. Maryon has a taste for the dramatic."
Conny laughed; and at this point the door was thrown open to admit Aunt Caroline, whose fixed and rigid smile was intended to show that she was in a gracious mood, and was accepted by the girls as a signal of truce.
"What is this a little bird tells me, Lucy?" she cried archly, for Mrs. Pratt shared the liking of her sex for matters matrimonial.
Fanny, who was, in fact, none other than the little bird who had broken the news, put her head on one side in unconsciously avine fashion, and smiled benevolently at her sister.
"I am engaged to Mr. Jermyn," said Lucy, her clear voice lingering proudly over the words.
Conny winced suddenly; then turned to gaze through the window at the blank casements above the auctioneer's shop.
"Then you have found out who Mr. Jermynis?" went on Aunt Caroline, still in her most conciliatory tones.
"We never wanted to know," said Lucy, unexpectedly showing fight.
Aunt Caroline flushed, but she had come resolved against hostile encounter, in which, hitherto, she had found herself overpowered by force of numbers; so she contented herself with saying—
"And have you any prospect of getting married?"
"Frank has gone to Africa for the present," said Lucy.
Aunt Caroline looked significant.
"I only hope," she said afterwards to Fanny, who let her out at the street-door,"that your sister has not fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer. It will be time when the young man comes home, if he ever does, for Mr. Pratt to make the proper inquiries."
Fanny had risen into favour since her engagement; Mr. Marsh, also, had won golden opinions at Lancaster Gate.
"I believe," Fanny replied, speaking for once to the point, "that Frank Jermyn is going to write, himself, to Mr. Pratt, at the first opportunity."
Meanwhile, upstairs in the sitting-room, Conny was delivering herself of her opinion that they had all behaved shamefully to Aunt Caroline.
"She had a right to know. And it is very good of her to trouble about such a set of ungrateful girls at all," she cried. "You can't expect every one besides yourselves to look upon Frank Jermyn as dropped from heaven."
"Aunt Caroline is cumulative—not to be judged at a sitting," pleaded Gertrude.
Very soon Constance herself rose to go.
"I shall not see you again unless you come down to us; which, I suppose, you won't," she said. "We go to Eastbourneon Friday; and afterwards to Homburg. Mama is going to write and invite you in due form."
"It is very kind of Mrs. Devonshire. Lucy and I cannot possibly leave home, but Phyllis would like to go," answered Gertrude; a remark of which Phyllis herself took no notice.
"Well then, good-bye. Lucy, Fred sends his congratulations. Phyllis, my dear, we shall meet ere long. Fanny, I shall look out for your wedding in the paper. Come on, Gerty, and let a fellow out!"
On the other side of the door her manner changed suddenly.
"Do come home and dine, Gerty."
"I can't, Con, possibly."
"Gerty, of course I can guess about Fred. I knew it was no good, but I can't help being sorry."
"It was out of the question, poor boy."
"Oh, don't pity him too much. He'll get over it soon enough. His is not a complaint that lasts."
There was a significant emphasis on the last words, that did not escape Gertrude.
"You look better, Conny, than when I last saw you."
"Oh, I'm all right. There's nothing the matter with me but too many parties."
"I think dancing has agreed with you."
"I don't know about dancing. I have taken to sitting in conservatories under pink lamps. That is better sport, and far more becoming to the complexion."
"I shouldn't play that game, Conny. It never ends well."
"Indeed it does. Often in St. George's, Hanover Square. You are shocked, but I do not contemplate matrimony just at present. But I see you agree withChastelard—
"'I do not like this manner of a dance;This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the dances, than to sit,Each lady out of earshot with her friend.'"
"'I do not like this manner of a dance;This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the dances, than to sit,Each lady out of earshot with her friend.'"
"'I do not like this manner of a dance;This game of two and two; it were much betterTo mix between the dances, than to sit,Each lady out of earshot with her friend.'"
"'I do not like this manner of a dance;
This game of two and two; it were much better
To mix between the dances, than to sit,
Each lady out of earshot with her friend.'"
"Have you been taking to literature?"
"Yes; to the modern poets and the French novelists particularly. When next you hear of me, I shall have taken probably to slumming; shall have found peace in bearing jellies to aged paupers. Then you might write a moral tale about me."
Gertrude sighed, as the door closed on Constance. It was the Devonshires who,throughout their troubles, had shown them the most unwavering kindness; and on the Devonshires, it seemed, they were doomed to bring misfortune.
At the end of August, Fanny was quietly married at Marylebone Church. She would have dearly liked a "white wedding;" and secretly hoped that her sisters would suggest what she dared not—a white satin bride and white muslin bridesmaids. Truth to tell, such an idea never entered the heads of those practical young women; and poor Fanny went soberly to the altar in a dark green travelling dress, which was becoming if not festive.
Aunt Caroline and Uncle Septimus came up from Tunbridge Wells for the wedding, and the Devonshires, who were away, lent their carriage. It was a sober, middle-aged little function enough, and every one was glad when it was over.
Aunt Caroline said little, but contented herself with sending her hard, keen eyes into every nook and corner, every fold and plait, every dish and bowl; while she mentally appraised the value of the feast.
One result of the encounters with her nieces was this, that she was moreoutwardly gracious and less inwardly benevolent than before; a change not wholly to be deprecated.
Lucy, with bright eyes, listened, with the air of one who has a right to be interested, to the words of the marriage service, taking afterwards her usual share in practical details. She was upheld, no doubt, by the consciousness of the letter in her pocket; a letter which had come that very morning; was written on thin paper in a bold hand; and in common with others from the same source, was bright and kind; tender and hopeful; and very full of confidential statements as to all that concerned the writer.
Phyllis, pale but beautiful, alternated between langour and a fitful sprightliness; her three weeks at Eastbourne seemed to have done her little good; while Gertrude went through her part mechanically, and remembered remorsefully that she had never been very nice to Fanny.
As for the bride, she was subdued and tearful, as an orthodox bride should be; and invited all her sisters in turn to come and stay with her at Notting Hill directly the honeymoon in Switzerland should be over. Edward Marsh suffered the usualinsignificance of bridegrooms; but did all that was demanded of him with exactness.
In the evening, when that blankness which invariably follows a wedding had fallen upon the sisters, Mrs. Maryon came up into the sitting-room, and beguiled them with tales of the various brides she had known; who, if they had not married in haste, must certainly, to judge by the sequel, have repented at leisure.
We bear to thinkYou're gone,—to feel you may not come,—To hear the door-latch stir and clink,Yet no more you!....E. B. Browning.
We bear to thinkYou're gone,—to feel you may not come,—To hear the door-latch stir and clink,Yet no more you!....E. B. Browning.
We bear to thinkYou're gone,—to feel you may not come,—To hear the door-latch stir and clink,Yet no more you!....E. B. Browning.
We bear to think
You're gone,—to feel you may not come,—
To hear the door-latch stir and clink,
Yet no more you!....
E. B. Browning.
It was true enough, no doubt, that Phyllis did not care for Darrell in Lucy's sense of the word; but at the same time it was sufficiently clear that he had been the means of injecting a subtle poison into her veins.
Since the night of theconversazioneat the Berkeley Galleries, when he had bidden her farewell, a change, in every respect for the worse, had crept over her.
The buoyancy, which had been one of herchief charms, had deserted her. She was languid, restless, bored, and more utterly idle than ever. The flippancy of her lighter moods shocked even her sisters, who had been accustomed to allow her great license in the matter of jokes; the moodiness of her moments of depression distressed them beyond measure.
At Eastbourne she had amused herself with getting up a tremendous flirtation with Fred, to the Devonshires' annoyance and the satisfaction of the victim himself, whose present mood it suited and who hoped that Lucy would hear of it.
After Phyllis's visit to Eastbourne, which had been closely followed by Fanny's wedding, the household at Upper Baker Street underwent a period of dulness, which was felt all the more keenly from the cheerful fulness of the previous summer. Every one was out of town. In early September even the country cousins have departed, and people have not yet begun to return to London, where it is perhaps the most desolate period of the whole year.
Work, of course, was slack, and they had no longer the preparations for Fanny's wedding to fall back upon.
The air was hot, sunless, misty; likea vapour bath, Phyllis said. Even Gertrude, inveterate cockney as she was, began to long for the country. Nothing but a strong sense of loyalty to her sister prevented Lucy from accepting a cordial invitation from the "old folks." Phyllis openly proclaimed that she was only awaitingder erste besteto make her escape for ever from Baker Street.
Phyllis, indeed, was in the worst case of them all; for while Lucy had the precious letters from Africa to console her, Gertrude had again taken up her pen, which seemed to move more freely in her hand than it had ever done before.
So the days went on till it was the middle of September, and life was beginning to quicken in the great city.
One sultry afternoon, the Lorimers were gathered in the sitting-room; both windows stood open, admitting the hot, still, autumnal air; every sound in the street could be distinctly heard.
Lucy sat apart, deep in a voluminous letter on foreign paper which had come for her that morning, and which she had been too busy to read before. Phyllis was at the table, yawning over a copy ofThe Woodcut;which was opened at a page of engravings headed: "The War in Africa; from sketches by our special artist." Gertrude sewed by the window, too tired to think or talk. Now and then she glanced across mechanically to the opposite house, whence in these days of dreariness, no picturesque, impetuous young man was wont to issue; from whose upper windows no friendly eyes gazed wistfully across.
The rooms above the auctioneer's had, in fact, a fresh occupant; an ex-Girtonian without a waist, who taught at the High School for girls hard-by.
The Lorimers chose to regard her as a usurper; and with the justice usually attributed to their sex, indulged in much sarcastic comment on her appearance; on her round shoulders and swinging gait; on the green gown with balloon sleeves, and the sulphur-coloured handkerchief which she habitually wore.
Presently Lucy looked up from her letter, folded it, sighed, and smiled.
"What has your special artist to say for himself?" asked Phyllis, pushing awayThe Woodcut.
"He writes in good spirits, but holds out no prospect of the war coming to an end.He was just about to go further into the interior, with General Somerset's division. Mr. Steele ofThe Photogravure, with whom he seems to have chummed, goes too," answered Lucy, putting the letter into her pocket.
"Perhaps his sketches will be a little livelier in consequence. They are very dull this week."
Phyllis rose as she spoke, stretching her arms above her head. "I think I will go and dine with Fan. She is such fun."
Fanny had returned from Switzerland a day or two before, and was now in the full tide of bridal complacency. As mistress of a snug and hideous little house at Notting Hill, and wedded wife of a large and affectionate man, she was beginning to feel that she had a place in the world at last.
"I will come up with you," said Lucy to Phyllis, "and brush your hair before you go."
The two girls went from the room, leaving Gertrude alone. Letting fall her work into her lap, she leaned in dreamy idleness from the window, looking out into the street, where the afternoon was deepening apace into evening. A dun-colouredhaze, thin and transparent, hung in the air, softening the long perspective of the street. School hours were over, and the Girtonian, her arm swinging like a bell-rope, could be discerned on her way home, a devotedcortègeof school-girls straggling in her wake. From the corner of the street floated up the cries of the newspaper boys, mingling with the clatter of omnibus wheels.
An empty hansom cab crawled slowly by. Gertrude noticed that it had violet lamps instead of red ones.
A lamplighter was going his rounds, leaving a lengthening line of orange-coloured lights to mark his track. The recollection of summer, the presage of winter, were met in the dusky atmosphere.
"How the place echoes," thought Gertrude. It seemed to her that the boys crying the evening papers were more vociferous than usual; and as the thought passed through her mind, she was aware of a hateful, familiar sound—the hoarse shriek of a man proclaiming a "special edition" up the street.
No amount of familiarity could conquer the instinctive shudder with which she always listened to these birds of ill-omen,these carrion, whose hideous task it is to gloat over human calamity. Now, as the sound grew louder and more distinct, the usual vague and sickening horror crept over her. She put her hands to her ears. "It is some ridiculous race, no doubt."
She let in the sound again.
Her fears were unformulated, but she hoped that Lucy upstairs in the bed-room had not heard.
The cry ceased abruptly; some one was buying a paper; then was taken up again with increased vociferousness. Gertrude strained her ears to listen.
"Terrible slaughter, terrible slaughter of British troops!" floated up in the hideous tones.
She listened, fascinated with a nameless horror.
"A regiment cut to pieces! Death of a general! Special edition!" The fiend stood under the window, vociferating upwards.
In an instant Gertrude had slipped down the dusky staircase, and was giving the man sixpence for a halfpenny paper. Standing beneath the gas-jet in the passage, she opened the sheet and read; then,still clutching it, sank down white and trembling on the lowest stair.
Noiseless, rapid footfalls came down behind her, some one touched her on the shoulder, and a strange voice said in her ear, "Give it to me."
She started up, putting the hateful thing behind her.
"No, no, no, Lucy! It is not true."
"Yes, yes, yes! don't be ridiculous, Gerty."
Lucy took the paper in her hands, bore it to the light, and read, Gertrude hiding her face against the wall.
The paper stated, briefly, that news had arrived at head-quarters of the almost total destruction of the troops which, under General Somerset, had set out for the interior of Africa some weeks before. A few stragglers, chiefly native allies, had reached the coast in safety, and had reported that the General himself had been among the first to perish.
Messrs. Steele and Jermyn, special artists ofThe PhotogravureandThe Woodcut, respectively, had been among those to join the expedition. No news of their fate had been ascertained, and there was reason to fear that they had shared the doom of the others.
"It is not true." Lucy's voice rang hollow and strange. She stood there, white and rigid, under the gas-jet.
Mrs. Maryon, who had bought a paper on her own account, issued from the shop-parlour in time to see the poor young lady sway forward into her sister's arms.
* * * * *
Those were dark days that followed. At first there had been hope; but as time went on, and further details of the catastrophe came to light, there was nothing for the most sanguine to do but to accept the worst.
Gertrude herself felt that the one pale gleam of uncertainty which yet remained was, perhaps, the most cruel feature of the case. If only Lucy's hollow eyes could drop their natural tears above Frank's grave she might again find peace.
Frank's grave! Gertrude found herself starting back incredulous at the thought.
Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief; it is only when we come face to face with it that we find the great mystery so cruelly hard to realise; for death, like love, is ever old and ever new.
"People always come back in books," Fanny had said, endeavouring, in all good faith, to administer consolation; and Lucy had actually laughed.
"Your sister ought to be able to do better for herself," Edward Marsh said, later on, to his wife.
But Fanny, who had had a genuine liking for kind Frank, disagreed for once with the marital opinion.
"He was good, and he loved her. She has always that to remember," Gertrude thought, as she watched Lucy going about her business with a calmness that alarmed her more than the most violent expressions of sorrow would have done.
"Dear little Frank! I wonder if he is really dead," Phyllis reflected, staring with wide eyes at the house opposite, rather as if she expected to see a ghost issue from the door.
Fortunately for the Lorimers they had little time for brooding over their troubles. Their success had proved itself no ephemeral one. As people returned to town, work began to flow in upon them from all sides, and their hands were full. Labour and sorrow, the common human portion, weretheirs, and they accepted them with courage, if not, indeed, with resignation. September and October glided by, and now the winter was upon them.
Die æltre Tochter gæhnet"Ich will nicht verhungern bei euch,Ich gehe morgen zum Grafen,Und der ist verliebt und reich."Heine.
Die æltre Tochter gæhnet"Ich will nicht verhungern bei euch,Ich gehe morgen zum Grafen,Und der ist verliebt und reich."Heine.
Die æltre Tochter gæhnet"Ich will nicht verhungern bei euch,Ich gehe morgen zum Grafen,Und der ist verliebt und reich."Heine.
Die æltre Tochter gæhnet
"Ich will nicht verhungern bei euch,
Ich gehe morgen zum Grafen,
Und der ist verliebt und reich."
Heine.
"Lucy, dear, you must go."
"But, Gerty, you can never manage to get through the work alone."
"I will make Phyllis help me. It will be the best thing for her, and she works better than any of us when she chooses."
The sisters were standing together in the studio, discussing a letter which Lucy held in her hand—an appeal from the heartbroken "old folks" that she, who was tohave been their daughter, should visit them in their sorrow.
"It is simply your duty to go," went on Gertrude, who was consumed with anxiety concerning her sister; then added, involuntarily, "if you think you can bear it."
A light came into Lucy's eyes.
"Is there anything that one cannot bear?"
She turned away, and began mechanically fixing a negative into one of the printing frames. She remembered how, on that last day, Frank had planned the visit to Cornwall. Was he not going to show her every nook and corner of the old home, which many a time before he had so minutely described to her? The place had for long been familiar to her imagination, and now she was in fact to make acquaintance with it; that was all. What availed it to dwell on contrasts?
The sisters spoke little of Lucy's approaching journey, which was fixed for some days after the receipt of the letter; and one cold and foggy November afternoon found her helping Mrs. Maryon with her little box down the stairs, while Matilda went for a cab.
At the same moment Gertrude issued from the studio with her outdoor clothes on.
"No one is likely to come in this Egyptian darkness," she said; "it is four o'clock already, and I am going to take you to Paddington."
"That will be delightful, if you think you may risk it," answered Lucy, who looked very pale in her black clothes.
"I have left a message with Mrs. Maryon to be delivered in the improbable event of 'three customers coming in,' as they did inJohn Gilpin," said Gertrude, with a feeble attempt at sprightliness.
Matilda appeared at this point to announce that the cab was at the door.
"Where is Phyllis?" cried Lucy. "I have not said good-bye to her."
"She went out two hours ago, miss," put in Mrs. Maryon, in her sad voice.
"No doubt," said Gertrude, "she has gone to Conny's. I think she goes there a great deal in these days."
Mrs. Maryon looked up quickly, then set about helping Matilda hoist the box on to the cab.
"How bitterly cold it is," criedGertrude, with a shudder, as they crossed the threshold.
An orange-coloured fog hung in the air, congealed by the sudden change of temperature into a thick and palpable mass.
"I shouldn't be surprised if we had snow," observed Mrs. Maryon, shaking her head.
"Oh, how could Phyllis be so wicked as to go out?" cried Gertrude, as the cab drove off: "and her cough has been so troublesome lately."
"I think she has been looking more like her old self the last week or two," said Lucy; then added, "Do you know that Mr. Darrell is back? I forgot to tell you that I met him in Regent's Park the other day."
"I hope he will not wish to renew the sittings; but no doubt he has found some fresh whim by this time. I wish he had let Phyllis alone; he did her no good."
"Poor little soul, I am afraid she finds it dismal," said Lucy.
"I mean to plan a little dissipation for us both when you are away—the theatre, probably," said Gertrude, who felt remorsefully that in her anxiety concerning Lucy she had rather neglected Phyllis.
"Yes, do, and take care of yourself, dear old Gerty," said Lucy, as the cab drew up at Paddington station.
The sisters embraced long and silently, and in a few minutes Lucy was steaming westward in a third-class carriage, and Gertrude was making her way through the fog to Praed Street station. At Baker Street she perceived that Mrs. Maryon's prophecy was undergoing fulfilment; the fog had lifted a little, and flakes of snow were falling at slow intervals.
Before the door of Number 20Ba small brougham was standing—a brougham, as she observed by the light of the street lamp, with a coronet emblazoned on the panels.
"Lord Watergate is in the studio, miss," announced Mrs. Maryon, who opened the door; "he only came a minute ago, and preferred to wait. I have lit the lamp." As Gertrude was going towards the studio the woman ran up to her, and put a note in her hand. "I forgot to give you this," she said. "I found it in the letter-box a minute after you left."
Gertrude, glancing hastily at the envelope, recognised, with some surprise, the childish handwriting of her sister Phyllis,and concluded that she had decided to remain overnight at the Devonshires.
"She might have remembered that I was alone," she thought, a little wistfully as she opened the door of the waiting-room.
Lord Watergate advanced to meet her, and they shook hands gravely. She had not seen him since the night of theconversazioneat the Berkeley Galleries. His ample presence seemed to fill the little room.
"It is a shame," he said, "to come down upon you at this time of night."
She laid Phyllis's note on the table, and turned to him with a smile of deprecation.
"Won't you read your letter before we embark on the question of slides?"
"Thank you. I will just open it."
She broke the seal, advanced to the lamp, and cast her eye hastily over the letter. But something in the contents seemed to rivet her attention, to merit more than a casual glance. For some moments she stood absorbed in the carelessly-written sheet; then, suddenly, an exclamation of sorrow and astonishment burst from her lips.
Lord Watergate advanced towards her.
"Miss Lorimer, you are in some trouble. Can I help you, or shall I go away?"
She looked up, half-bewildered, into the strong and gentle face. Then realising nothing, save that here was a friendly human presence, put the letter into his hand.
This is what he read.
"My dear Gerty,—This is to tell you that I am not coming home to-night—am not coming home again at all, in fact. I am going to marry Mr. Darrell, who will take me to Italy, where the weather is decent, and where I shall get well. For you know, I am horribly seedy, Gerty, and very dull."Of course you will be angry with me; you never liked Sidney, and you will think it ungrateful of me, perhaps, to go off like this. But oh, Gerty, it has been so dismal, especially since we heard about poor little Frank. Sidney hates a fuss, and so do I. We both of us prefer to go off on the Q.T., as Fred says. With love from"Phyllis."
"My dear Gerty,—This is to tell you that I am not coming home to-night—am not coming home again at all, in fact. I am going to marry Mr. Darrell, who will take me to Italy, where the weather is decent, and where I shall get well. For you know, I am horribly seedy, Gerty, and very dull.
"Of course you will be angry with me; you never liked Sidney, and you will think it ungrateful of me, perhaps, to go off like this. But oh, Gerty, it has been so dismal, especially since we heard about poor little Frank. Sidney hates a fuss, and so do I. We both of us prefer to go off on the Q.T., as Fred says. With love from
"Phyllis."
As Lord Watergate finished thischaracteristic epistle, an exclamation more fraught with horror than Gertrude's own burst from his lips. He strode across the room, crushing the paper in his hands.
"Lord Watergate!" Gertrude faced him, pale, questioning: a nameless dread clutched at her.
Something in her face struck him. Stopping short in front of her, in tones half paralysed with horror, he said—
"Don't you know?"
"Do I know?" she echoed his words, bewildered.
"Darrell is married. He does not live with his wife; but it is no secret."
The red tables and chairs, the lamp, Lord Watergate himself, whose voice sounded fierce and angry, were whirling round Gertrude in hopeless confusion; and then suddenly she remembered that this was an old story; that she had known it always, from the first moment when she had looked upon Darrell's face.
Gertrude closed her eyes, but she did not faint. She remained standing, while one hand rested on the table for support. Yes, she had known it; had stood by powerless, paralysed, while this thing approached; hadseen it even as Cassandra saw from afar the horror which she had been unable to avert.
Opening her eyes, she met the gaze, grieved, pitiful, indignant, of her companion.
"What is to be done?"
Her lips framed the words with difficulty.
A pause; then he said—
"I cannot hold out much hope. But will you come with me to—to—his house and make inquiries?"
She bowed her head, and gathering herself together, led the way from the room.
The snow was falling thick and fast as they emerged from the house, and Lord Watergate handed her into his brougham. It had grown very dark, and the wind had risen.
"The Sycamores," said Lord Watergate to his coachman, as he took his seat by Gertrude, and drew the fur about her knees.
Mrs. Maryon, watching from the shop window, shrugged her shoulders.
"Who would have thought it? But you never can tell. And that Phyllis! It's twice I've seen her with the fair-haired gentleman, with his beard cut like a foreigner's. It'swhat you'd expect from her, poor creature—but Gertrude!"
"They have got the rooms on lease," grumbled Mr. Maryon, from among his pestles and mortars.