ONE of the greatest among our most English of English poets has finely expressed the melancholy transformation which one brief day may make in human destinies, thus:—
One day! one night! yet what a change they bring!
High in the clouds the same sweet birds may sing,
The same green leaves may rustle in the air,
And the same flowers unfold their blossoms fair,—
Still Nature smile, unchanged in all her plan,
But, oh, what change may blight the soul of man!
The sun may rise as brightly as before,
But many a heart can hail its beams no more;
’Tis but one turn of earth’s incessant ball,
Yet in that space what myriad hopes may fall!
What love depart! what friendship melt away!
Ay, Virtue’s self may wane to her decay,
Torn from her throne, heart-placed, in one eventful day!
And if this be true—as it is,—none of us should be surprised at the changes wrought in six years. Yet Major Desmond was so far removed from the philosophy of indifferentism as to be more than surprised at the complete metamorphosis of “young D’Arcy-Muir,” as he now called him in his own mind, instead of the old, familiar and endearing name of “Boy.” In half an hour’s walk with him through the London streets the Major, who had seen all sorts and conditions of men young and old,—lads beginning their career, and veterans on the verge of finishing it, gauged his disposition and temperament pretty correctly. Two characteristics were particularly marked in him which did not augur well for his future. One was a slighting contempt for women,—the result, of course, of contact with his mother’s shiftless, slovenly, useless mode of life. Her inability to awaken either admiration or respect in her son’s mind, was a seed of mischief which was beginning to bear abundant harvest. The other dominating point was a spirit of weariness, listless boredom and cynicism, which might be real or might be affected,—but which, whether it were one or the other, was indescribably irritating to a man of the Major’s frank and vigorous type. “Nil admirari” was not his Gospel. His particular habit of life was to consider all things with gratitude and appreciation,—to be thankful for the simple privilege of being alive, and having eyes wherewith to see the many varying wonders and beauties of the world which Providence had ordained to him as his home. But it may be remarked, in passing, that this is unfortunately not the ‘habit’ which is generally encouraged by the latter-day masters of schools and colleges among their boys. They make much of the difficulties of life,—but little of its pleasures. The hardships of learning are insisted upon, but not the delights. The little dry pedagogues who undertake the high and responsible business of fostering the growth and guiding the education of young unspoilt natures, do their best as a rule to cramp and destroy all that is fresh and eager and enthusiastic. A young colt gallops about in the meadows, and frisks and rolls on the soft green turf, rejoicing in his youth and strength,—but the young boy must take his college ‘sports’ as he takes his lessons,—by rule and line and with more or less severity, under the control of a master. Absolute freedom of body and soul,—or what may be called pure revelry in the mere fact of life, is almost unknown to the ‘crammed’ modern lad,—he is old before his time,—and it is no uncommon thing to see a stripling of fourteen or fifteen quite wrinkled in face, with that dull film in his eyes which used to be the special and distinctive sign of extreme old age. It is a sad pity!—for youth is a gracious thing and life is full of beauty, and the natural joy, the opulent vivacity and radiating force of a truly young heart, are the most cheerful of all physical influences. One of the pagan philosophers asserts that “if a country is peopled with joyous inhabitants, that is, those who take pleasure in innocent and healthful pastimes, in which young men and maids take equal part, such as country games, village feasts and dances, it is a safe and good country to live in, and you may be sure that the people thereof are more virtuous than vicious, more wise than foolish,—but if things are in such a condition that the youth of both sexes are constrained to dulness, and have no mirth set forth for them, such as meadow festivals of flowers, and harmless tripping forth together to the sound of music, then beware, for it is a country full of languors and vapourish discontents, where there will be seditions and troubles, if not sooner, then late, and men will agitate with those who labour, for excess of payment rather than excess of toil, while honesty and open dealing will be more known by memory than present fact.”
And if, in pagan times, they could so consider the merit and national advantage of the spirit of joy, how much more ought we, in our Christian generation, to feel that we cannot do too much to inculcate that happy spirit among the young,—we who have almost ‘touched’ immortality in the divine teaching of Christ,—we, who know there is no death but only a ‘passing on’ from joy to joy!
Major Desmond was one of those few remaining ‘grand old men’ who, without any cant or feigned excess of piety, believed humbly and devoutly in the holiness and saving grace of the Christian faith. Both as a man and a soldier,—safe at home, or face to face with death on the battlefield, he had guided his conduct as best he could by its plain principles, and it had, as he himself expressed it, ‘carried him through.’ But it lay too close to his heart for him to willingly make it a subject of conversation,—yet, while he talked with Boy, or rather while he elicited certain scrappy monosyllables from him in reply to his own easy chat, he became gradually aware that the lad was a complete atheist,—that he had no idea whatever of God, and no sense of the proportion and balance existing between the material and spiritual side of things. The deep, hard cynicism which showed itself more and more as the foundation of his character made him casual and flippant even in his ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; and by-and-by, after trying him on various themes,—his home, his studies, his ‘sports,’ his interests generally—Desmond instinctively realised that this young and embittered scrap of humanity was sitting in cold judgment on himself, and relegating him to the level of a garrulous old man who did not know what he was talking about. For irreverence to age is one of the unadmirable features of a large proportion of the rising ‘new’ generation. As soon as this idea was borne in upon his mind, the Major came to a sudden halt.
“Well, you’re nearly where you want to be, aren’t you?” he demanded.
Boy looked about him. They were at the corner of Trafalgar Square.
“Yes. It’s just down Northumberland Avenue.”
“All right!” and Desmond glanced at his watch—“Five minutes to three! You’d better look sharp! Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Boy carelessly, without raising his cap, and in another moment he had gone.
Major Desmond paused a moment, staring after him. Then he shook his head. Then he took out his cigar-case, chose a cigar, and lit it. Then he walked slowly and thoughtfully to his club, where he found his old friend ‘Fitz,’ “of the rueful countenance,” in a favourite arm-chair near the window reading the paper.
“Hullo!” said that gentleman.
“Hullo!” responded the Major dismally.
“Where have you been?” inquired ‘Fitz’—“You look as if you were down on your luck!”
“Do I?” and Major Desmond threw himself into the opposite chair. “It is not that. I’ve had a depressing companion.”
“Oh!” said Fitz. “Where did you pick him up? Who was he?”
“Boy,” said the Major, with a sort of grunt that was half a groan—“at least, not Boy, but the young chap that used to be Boy.”
Fitz raised his melancholy blue eyes with a bewildered expression.
“Do you mean the little fellow Miss Leslie was so fond of?”
“Yes. It’s a blow to her, Fitz!—I’m sure it must be a blow!”
Fitz was puzzled, and grew more saturnine of aspect than ever.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “What’s happened? Has he got anything the matter with him?”
“He’s got everything the matter with him!” said the Major, bursting forth into hot speech—“everything! Callousness is the matter with him—worldliness is the matter with him—indifference to affection is the matter with him,—d——n it, sir!—general priggishness is the matter with him! By Jove! The rascal doesn’t seem to have an ounce of real warm blood in all his body!”
The thin stern physiognomy of the worthy Captain ‘Fitz’ remained unmoved, except for the faintest flickering expression, which might have been satire, grief, surprise, scorn, or humour, whichever way the observer chose to take it.
“Ah!” he said, letting the ejaculation escape his lips slowly, as though it were a puff of smoke.
The Major rolled his eyes indignantly.
“Ah!” he repeated—“Is that all you can say?”
“My dear chap, what do you want me to say?” remonstrated Fitz—“There’s nothing to be said!”
“That’s true!” said the Major, and relapsed into silence. But not for long, however. Drawing his cigar out of his mouth after an interval of meditative smoking, he began in subdued tones,—
“When I think of her, Fitz—you know who I mean—Letty,—when I think of her sweetness and patience and goodness, and when I remember all the pretty tender ways she had with that little fellow!—and when—after all these years, he came to visit her to-day, and I saw her looking wistfully at him to see if he had the smallest pulse of affection beating in his hard young heart for her, I could have cried! Yes, I could! I’m an old fool of course,—you can call me one if you like and have done with it. But that’s how I felt. Of course years have gone by,—he was a child when she saw him last—but I should have thought—yes, I should certainly have thought, that if he had any recollections of his childhood at all, he would at least have remembered her—and how she loved him!”
Whereupon Fitz roused himself to utterance.
“There’s where you were wrong, Dick”—he said. “You have made the same fatal mistake we all make when we think that love—love of any kind—will last!”
The Major looked at him steadfastly, but did not interrupt him.
“It’s the same thing everywhere. Men and women fall in love,—swear eternal fidelity—and by-and-by we find them figuring in the divorce court. Other men and women resign themselves gracefully to the monotony of each other’s companionship for life, and God sends them children to cheer up the dullness a little, and they think those children are perfect paragons, who will grow up to love them in their old age. Not a bit of it! Not nowadays. Old folks are voted a bore,—and the young cub of the present day may often be heard declaring that the ‘Governor’ has had ‘too long an innings,’ and ‘doesn’t know when to die.’ As for Boy,—Miss Letty’s pet Boy,—from all you tell me, he has gone; there’s only a young cub left now—a cub who doesn’t care, and doesn’t mean to care about anything or anybody but himself. That’s the supreme result of modern training,—it is ’pon my soul! Boys are brought up in the code of selfishness from the very beginning. Their mothers spoil them and foster all their bad points instead of their good ones,—and as soon as they begin to go about in the world, a lot of idiotic girls and women—the kind of women who must have a masculine thing to pay court to them, whether he be a raw youth or a seasoned old stager—get hold of them and make shameless love to them. And their heads are of course turned the wrong way round,—they think they are the most precious and amazing objects in all creation,—and instead of paying court to women, and learning to be chivalrous and reverential, they expect to be courted themselves and admired, as if they were full-blown heroes from the classic world of conquest. That’s the way of it. Boy has no doubt caught the fever of conceit. He probably expected Miss Letty to kneel down and kiss his boot-ties.”
“Part of your argument may be right,” said the Major,—“but part of it is entirely wrong. You said in the beginning that we all of us make a mistake when we think that love—love of any kind—will last. Did you not?”
“I did,” admitted Fitz, looking slightly shame-faced under the calm stare of the Major’s eye.
“Well, you know that’s d——d nonsense!” pursued the Major bluntly. “You know as well as I do that I—I, for example, have loved the same woman ever since I was thirty, and there’s no change in me yet. And Letty—Letty has loved the same ne’er-do-weel all her life, though he’s a corpse and not a very entire one by this time I should say, though she thinks, God bless her, that he’s a sort of angel-King on a throne in Heaven—which is a pleasing and pretty picture enough, only it doesn’t seem to quite fit Harry Raikes. However, there you are, you see,—love does last—when it is love!”
“When it is—yes—but when is it?” asked Fitz, with the smile which so beautifully altered his features beginning to illumine his deep-set eyes. “You see, you and Miss Leslie are old-fashioned! That’s what it is! You’re old-fashioned, sir!” he repeated, getting up and prodding a finger into the Major’s waistcoat. “You belong to the last century, like one’s grandmother’s old china! You are a part of the days when, if a married woman entertained a score of lovers apart from her own husband, she was considered a disgrace to her sex. All that is altered, my boy! She is now a ‘queen of society’! Ha, ha, ha! You believe in God’s blessing on true love! But, my dear fellow, the present generation doesn’t care whether there’s a God to bless anything or not, or whether love is false or true. It isn’t love, you see. It’s something else. Love has gone out with the tinder-boxes and stage-coaches. It’s all electricity and motor-cars now—flash and fizzle through life at a tearing pace, and leave a bad smell behind you! Ha, ha! You’re old-fashioned, Dick! I like you for it because I’m a bit old-fashioned myself—but we’re out of it,—we’re old stumps of trees that can’t understand the rank and quickly withering weeds of youth that are growing up around us to-day—weeds that are going to choke and poison the destinies of England by-and-by!”
The Major got up, possibly moved thereto by the pressure of his friend’s fingers in the middle of his waistcoat.
“By that time you and I will be underground, Fitz,” he said half-lightly, half-sadly. “And thank God for it!—for if any harm comes to England, I don’t want to be alive to see it. I wonder if I shall be sitting on a gold throne in Heaven, next to Harry Raikes? If so, angel Letty will have to choose between us!”
He laughed,—and the two old friends presently left the club together and went for an afternoon stroll through Piccadilly and the Park, where they saw Miss Letty driving in her victoria with pretty Violet Morrison by her side. They raised their hats to both ladies, and Fitz commented on their looks.
“Nothing will ever make Miss Letty old,” he said. “She always has the eyes of a child who trusts both God and man.”
The Major nodded approvingly.
“That’s very well said, Fitz,—and it’s true,—but she’s had a blow to-day. I’m sure she has. She doesn’t say much—she’s not one to say much,—she may say nothing, even to me,—but she’s had a blow. Boy’s not what she thought he would be. I’ve got a bit of a heartache over it. I’m sorry we came back to England!”
Fitz was silent. He fully understood and participated in his old friend’s feelings, but he felt that the subject was too sore a one to be discussed, and when he spoke again it was on a different theme.
That evening Major Desmond escorted his niece and Miss Letty to the theatre, and just before starting, while Violet was still engaged in putting the finishing touches to her pretty evening toilette, Miss Letty came in alone to the Major, where he pensively waited in the sitting-room, and said softly,—
“Dick!”
He started, and turned round, and was fairly taken aback for the moment by the spiritual beauty of her gentle face framed in its snow-white hair. She was fully attired for the theatre, and wore an opera-mantle of some silvery neutral tint, showered with lace;—and a pretty flush came on her cheeks as she met the faithful tender gaze of the man who had loved her so loyally and so long. Having expressed his admiration of her charm by a look, he responded,—
“Well, Letty?”
“I want you,” she said, laying her delicately gloved hand on his arm, “to promise me one thing. Will you?”
“Anything and everything in the world!” said the Major recklessly.
“It is only just this,—do not talk to me at all, or ask me what I feel, about Boy.” Her voice trembled a little,—then she went on,—“It is no use,—it only makes me think of what might have been and what is not. I am a little disappointed,—but then—what of that? We all have disappointments, and it is no use brooding upon them. We only make ourselves and others miserable. You see I loved Boy as a child;—he is not a child now—he is getting to be a young man,—and—he does not want me,—it is not natural he should want me. Do you understand?”
The Major was profoundly moved, but he only nodded and said,—
“Yes,—I understand!”
“He is just a college lad now,—like—like all the rest,” went on Miss Letty quietly—“and it was my mistake to have expected him to be in any way different. He will no doubt turn out very well and be a good soldier. But”—and she suddenly looked up with a swift glance and smile that went straight to the Major’s heart—“he is Robert D’Arcy-Muir now,—he is not Boy!”
The Major said not a word, but he took up the little gloved hand resting on his arm and kissed it. A moment afterwards Violet entered, looking like a blush rose in a pretty gown of pink chiffon; and the two elderly folks, welcoming her presence as a relief from emotion and embarrassment, turned to admire her sweet and fresh appearance. And then they went to the theatre, and enjoyed “David Garrick,” and the subject of Boy was avoided among them by mutual consent, both on that evening and for many a long day afterwards.
But he was not forgotten. Day after day, night after night, Miss Letty thought of him and wondered what he was doing, but she never heard whether he had passed his examination or not. His mother never wrote,—and he himself was evidently unmindful of his promise. Major Desmond, however, kept his eyes and ears open for news of him, not so much for the lad’s own sake, as for Miss Letty’s. He had friends at Sandhurst, and to them he confided his wish to know all the information they could get concerning “young D’Arcy-Muir,” if he should eventually go there. To which he received the reply that if the young chap did get to Sandhurst at all, they would let him know. With this he had to be satisfied, knowing that it would be worse than useless to enquire about him from his parents, the Honourable Jim being half paralysed, and Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir being incapable of giving a straight answer at any time to a straight question.
By-and-by, however, the attention of Major Desmond and Miss Letty began to be entirely engrossed by a new cause of anxiety and perplexity. Violet was looking ill, and getting pale and thin, and it was evident she was unhappy. Yet she never complained, and always tried to be cheerful, though it seemed an effort to her.
“Look here, Letty,—what is the matter with the girl?” asked the Major bluntly one day. “I have worried her to tell me, and she won’t. Does she tell you?”
Miss Letty’s kind face clouded, and her eyes grew very sorrowful.
“No, Dick, she has not actually told me, but I can guess. She has not heard from Max Nugent for a long time,—his letters have practically ceased.”
“Ceased!” repeated the Major, getting very red. “What do you mean, Letty? Ceased?”
“She will not admit it,” continued Miss Letty. “She will not own, even to herself, that he is neglecting her. When I ask her if she has heard from him, she answers me all in a nervous hurry, and assures me that it is because he is away travelling somewhere that she has received no letters. She says he has no time to write. But one would think that if he loved her as he professed to love her, he would certainly find time, or make time to write.”
“Of course he would!” said the Major brusquely. “There is no power on earth that can hinder a man from writing to the woman he loves. Even if he were ill or dying, he could get a friend to send a wire for him. No, no,—there is some humbug going on,—I am sure of it!” He took one or two rapid strides up and down the room. “Letty!” he said, stopping abruptly in front of her,—“when you were engaged to Harry Raikes did he write to you often?”
“Not as often as I should have liked,” answered Miss Letty with a faint smile,—“but then you see he was in India,—that is a long way off—and of course he could not possibly write by every mail.”
“Couldn’t he?” And the Major gave a curious grunt of incredulity. “Why not?”
“If he could he would have done so,” said Miss Letty gently but firmly. “I am sure of that.”
The Major walked up and down the room, loyally battling against the temptation which assailed him to tell her the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“You never doubted him?” he asked suddenly.
“Doubted him!” And Miss Letty’s eyes opened in mild half-reproachful amazement. “Never! How can you suggest such a thing! I knew how true and good he was, and how much he loved me,—and that is why I have devoted all my life to his memory.”
Up and down, up and down, once more strode the Major, and at the third turn the temptation was conquered and he was himself again.
“Then according to your experience, Letty, Violet ought not to doubt Max Nugent, because he has, as you say, practically ceased writing to her?”
Miss Letty looked puzzled.
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” she answered. “You see they are not engaged,—you would not consent to an engagement till Mr. Nugent had proved his sincerity,—and I think you were wise; but as matters now stand, the child cannot insist on his writing to her. She has no hold upon him, save that of his professed love and honour.”
“That ought to be a strong hold,” said the Major. “Honour especially. No man has a right to win a woman’s love and then throw it away again. I must speak to Violet.”
And he did. He called unexpectedly one morning to take her to a Picture Exhibition, and after sauntering about the galleries a little, he sat down in a retired corner with her and put his first question very gently.
“Violet, when did you last hear from Nugent?”
The girl coloured hotly.
“Some time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“I forget,” she answered listlessly.
Her face was bent, and he could not see it under the shadow of her hat.
“Violet!”
Slowly she raised her head,—her eyes were full of tears. The Major smothered an oath and strove to speak calmly.
“Look here, child: you can trust me, can’t you?”
“Yes, uncle,” she murmured inaudibly.
“Well, don’t fret. Be a brave little woman. I will see to this for you. It is no good living in suspense. Better know the worst at once!”
Violet furtively dashed away her teardrops, and looked at him anxiously.
“The worst ...?” she murmured.
The Major squared his shoulders resolutely.
“Look here, Violet: when we have to swallow a dose of bitter medicine, we don’t like it, but if we are told it will save our lives, we do it. Now, in this affair of Max Nugent, the sooner your medicine is swallowed the better. I am afraid the man is not sincere. What do you yourself think about it?”
Violet sighed deeply.
“I do not understand it,” she said, in rather a tremulous voice. “I have written to him several times, but have had no reply. You may as well know all. The last letter I had from him was quite two months ago, and in that he said he was coming to Europe immediately—to Paris first—and he promised to come on to London afterwards and see me.”
“And was that letter exactly what you expected it to be?” asked the Major, looking at her narrowly. “Was it all that you had a right to expect?”
Violet hesitated, then answered truthfully,—
“No. It was just the letter—of a friend.”
The Major rose.
“Come along now,” he said. “I will see into this for you. A millionaire like Nugent can’t hide his light under a bushel. I will find out where he is, and see him myself, if I have to cross the ocean to do it.”
Violet looked up at him with tearful eyes.
“You are good to me, uncle!” she said; “but—you know—if he does not care for me any more——”
“You do not care for him!” finished the Major. “That’s what you must say, and that is what you must feel.”
The girl shook her head.
“Ah, you may shake your head!” said Desmond; “but I am not going to let you waste your life as Miss Letty has wasted hers, all for the love of a rascal. You do not know Letty’s history. I do. She was engaged to a man I knew, and when he was out in India well away from her he was getting ready to marry some one else and throw her over. But he caught fever and died—just in time. Letty never knew that he had been false to her. I knew—but I never told her. And I never mean to tell.”
Violet laid her hand on his arm caressingly.
“Uncle! And you loved her yourself!”
“Now how did you find that out?” said the Major with a little smile. “Well! You are right—I have loved her nearly all my life. And we have rubbed on pretty well as friends together—and we have kept the memory of that dead rascal as holy as if he were a saint. So you see I know something about love and loyalty, little girl—and I can enter thoroughly into your feelings. But fortunately you are very young, and if Nugent turns out a failure your heart will be sore for a while, but it will mend.”
“Never, uncle!” said Violet. “I can never care for any one else.”
“Nonsense!” said the Major. “You must not talk like that at nineteen. This is your first love, I grant—but one gets over first love like the measles.”
“Did you?” asked Violet anxiously.
“God bless my soul! Of course I did. When I was nineteen I fell in love with my father’s cook. She was a very pretty woman, and made jam puffs divinely. She married the grocer round the corner,—and somehow I lived through it. I was nearly thirty when I found Letty—and I have loved her ever since.”
Violet pressed his arm but said nothing.
“Now come along,” said the Major cheerfully. “Don’t worry yourself, thin yourself, or lose your looks. Nobody will thank you for that except your kind female friends. We will clear this little matter up somehow. And I am sure you are far too high-spirited and straightforward to care for a man who turns out to be a dishonourable scamp—though mind, I don’t say he is dishonourable till I have proved it. But unless he has been kidnapped for his millions by brigands, I don’t see any excuse for his silence. If he were ill he could send you word,—so there is only one inference to be drawn from his conduct, and that is, that he doesn’t mean to keep his promise to you. It is hard for you to look at it in that light, but you must try, Violet—you must try. If he does turn out a villain, I will take care he gets a jolly good horsewhipping.”
Violet uttered an exclamation.
“Oh no, uncle!”
“‘Oh no, uncle?’—I say ‘Oh yes, uncle!’ Leave this to me, child! There are too many scamps sneaking about in society embittering and spoiling the lives of innocent women, and a few sound thrashings on the backs of such fellows would be pure joy and relief to the feelings of the majority. I should like to thrash a millionaire!—especially if his conduct is on the level of a play-actor, who is the worst kind of unprincipled rogue between this world and the nearest gallows.” And the Major chuckled. “I did thrash one of those painted fellows once, and by Jove!—how I enjoyed it!”
Violet looked up at him timidly with a faint smile.
“It was in India,” said the Major, his eyes twinkling and his cheeks beginning to crease up with wrinkles of satisfaction at the recollection. “There came what was supposed to be a tiptop theatrical company to the place where we were, and among the players there was a thin, white-faced fellow, as conceited as they make them, who ‘made up’ to look a king or a villain, whichever you fancied—though, to my mind, the villain suited his style of beauty best. Well, when he was off the stage, he pretended to be a very fine gentleman indeed,—explained that he had taken to the stage as a freak—that his mother had nearly broken her heart over it, and all that sort of ancient stock-in-trade nonsense; and he pushed himself by degrees into the society of