AFTER a storm comes a calm, and the old proverbs which tell us that the longest lane must have a turning and the darkest cloud a silver lining are not without something of a cheery note in their constant reiteration, like the repeated warble of a thrush telling us of the certainty of spring. And Violet Morrison soon began to prove these old-fashioned truths for herself, though the sudden and ruthless destruction of her first love dream had cast a shadow over the bright opening of her life, and had made her graver and more thoughtful than her youth and beauty warranted. Her troubles were none the less hard to bear, when the recalcitrant Max Nugent, weary of his connection with Lady Wantyn, promptly severed it as soon as her husband divorced that famous “beauty,” and sought to make his peace with the innocent girl whom he had so deeply wronged. Again and again he wrote to her and implored her to forgive him and to marry him,—but she answered none of his letters. The first faith and devotion of her heart were killed, and she knew she could never trust him, but he very persistently urged a renewal of his attentions in spite of the curt return of his letters through the Major’s hands, and she was therefore very glad when her uncle and Miss Letty decided to take her abroad for a time on a tour through France, Italy and Spain, as this gave her freedom, and an escape from the constant pleading of her former lover. The interest in new countries, and the constant distraction of thought caused by the various wonders and beauties of the shifting panorama, served as an excellent mental and moral tonic, and braced up all the energies of her mind. They stayed abroad, residing sometimes in one beautiful place, sometimes another, for about three years, and it was while they were wintering in Palermo in the last year of their wanderings that the Major received a letter which gave him the burden of another secret which he had to keep from Miss Letty in addition to the one concerning the “dead rascal” Harry Raikes. The letter was from an old friend and fellow-officer, and among other items of the news he gave was the following:—
“By the way, you asked me to tell you if I ever heard any news of D’Arcy-Muir’s son. I have heard something, and I expect it won’t please you. He passed by the skin of his teeth into Sandhurst,—and the other day was expelled for being drunk and kicking up a disorderly row. It is a bad job for the young chap, but what’s in the blood will out—and I suppose he has caught the drink disease from his father. He has ruined his military career at the outset.”
Long and deeply did the good Major ponder over this piece of depressing intelligence. He read it in the courtyard of the hotel in Palermo where they were just then staying, a courtyard which, as is the custom in Southern climes, presented the appearance of a fairy flower-garden, festooned with climbing plants in blossom, with oranges ripening in the warm sun, and odours of mimosa, heliotrope and violets on the air. “Expelled for being drunk”! The news seemed an infamy and an insult, in such a scene of beauty as that which he looked upon.
“God bless my soul!” he murmured disconsolately, fixing his eyes on a fair cluster of white clematis swinging above his head. “It seems to me that some of us aren’t fit to inhabit this planet! There’s everything beautiful in it, and everything is wisely ordained,—and it is only we who make the mischief and create the trouble. ‘Expelled for being drunk’! And that kind of thing ends in being expelled from the world altogether before one has served one’s time. What would Letty say!”
He sighed heavily,—but in a few minutes of consideration decided that it would be worse than foolish to tell her.
“Let her keep her little ideal somewhere in her heart,” he said to himself. “Don’t let me be such a great blundering idiot as to smudge all the picture out for her. She believes in Harry Raikes,—she may as well believe in Boy as long as she can. And if anyone tells her what’s happened, it won’t be me!”
And he steadily adhered to this resolution. It was easy to do so, as Boy’s name was never mentioned by Miss Letty now, and all her thoughts seemed taken up with Violet. He put away his friend’s letter unanswered, carefully marking the date on which he received it,—and as he calculated that Boy must be getting on now for twenty, he shook his head and decided that everything, so far as “that unfortunate young chap” was concerned, was rather hopeless.
“However, it’s no use blaming the lad himself too severely,” he considered—“He has had everything against him—his parents have both shown him the worst of examples. His nature was warped at its very commencement and in its very growing—and if he takes to the bottle like his father and runs down-hill at a tearing speed, the fault doesn’t rest entirely with him.”
In the spring of that same year they returned to London, and “settled down,” as the saying is, in order that Violet might take up the career her heart was pining for—that of a thoroughly trained nurse. She was never happier than when she could soothe pain and alleviate suffering, and she was altogether eminently fitted for the profession she sought to adopt. Miss Letty did not deter her, nor did her uncle, for they both saw that work and active interest in the welfare of others was the only way to make her life interesting to herself. She had really no need to work, for Miss Letty had, though Violet knew it not, left her a considerable fortune in her will, and of course Major Desmond, though not a rich man, had made over to her everything he possessed,—but the fact of having money is not sufficient to fill lives which are strong and earnest, and which would fain prove to God that they are worth living. So Violet with her firm faith, pure heart and gentle manner, went into the forests of difficulty, unarmed and fair as Una in Spenser’s famous poem, and studied hard, consecrating herself heart and soul to the work she had undertaken, with the usual result of all earnest endeavour—complete success. Max Nugent had long ceased to importune her for the mending of the broken threads of affection,—and of this she was glad. Her disappointment in her first love had, however, deprived her of any interest or expectation of marriage for herself,—in fact the idea had become repugnant to her mind. One day her uncle asked her,—
“Are you going to devote all your life to the memory of Max Nugent, as Letty has devoted hers to the lost and gone Harry Raikes?”
Violet smiled.
“No, uncle. I have been undeceived—Miss Letty keeps her illusion. I never think of Max now.”
“Well, do you ever think of anybody else?” demanded the Major.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Violet laughed outright.
“Dearest uncle! I cannot fall in love to order! I don’t much like the men I see,—they don’t want me, and I don’t want them. Leave me alone to work, dear uncle,—I love my work—I am useful—I can help a great many people to bear their troubles,—and it will be all right for me. If I am to marry, why, I shall,—if not, I shan’t.”
And she kissed him and slipped away.
Meanwhile, in the self-same monster metropolis of London, where Violet went daily to her work in the hospital—where the Major divided his days between his club and Miss Letty’s always charming house—and where Miss Letty herself, growing more feeble and ailing with years, was content to sit very much at home with her embroidery,—Boy, who had unconsciously been a link in the chain of their three lives, was drifting like a wreck in a vast ocean. The terrible blow of his expulsion from Sandhurst had been taken by his parents as a deadly injury to themselves,—and for the shame, the misery, the utter breaking-down of the lad’s own life and ambitions, they, his progenitors, took no thought and had no pity. The Honourable Jim, half-paralysed as he was, had plenty of strength left for swearing, and used oaths in plenty to his son, calling him a “d—— d low rascal.”
“You don’t seem to belong to me at all!” he shouted, his red face becoming purple with rage and excitement. “D——n it, sir, I am a gentleman—my father was a gentleman, but you—you are a blackguard, sir! D——n it!—when I took my glass I took it like a gentleman, I didn’t go about disgracing myself and my profession as you have done. You had better enlist if they’ll have you. Anyhow you must do something for your bread—I can’t afford to keep you!”
Boy heard in absolute silence. He was too completely scornful of life and the ways of life to care to remind his father that he himself had been one long disgrace to his son from that son’s babyhood—and that his paralytic condition was altogether owing to his indulgence in strong drink,—What was the good? More oaths and a redder face would be the sole result. And his mother? Had she one word of pardon or of sympathy for him in his deep humiliation? Not she! Embedded in fat, all she could do was to shake her double chin at him over a mountain of maternal bosom.
“It’s always the way,” she said, dabbing a handkerchief into her eyes, “when good mothers do everything for their sons! They have to suffer! You have broken my heart, Boy!—your mother’s heart! All my hopes of you are ruined! I don’t feel as if you were my Boy! I’m sure I don’t know what you are going to do. We have no fortune, as you are perfectly aware—we can’t afford to keep you idling about, doing nothing!”
Boy, tall, pale, handsome, and with an indefinable air of languor and scorn about him, smiled wearily.
“Don’t trouble yourself, mother!” he said. “I will earn enough bread to keep me alive, if I do it by sweeping a crossing. Good-bye!”
“Where are you going?” demanded his mother, somewhat frightened at his set face and blazing eyes.
“Do you care?” And he laughed bitterly. “I’m going—to the devil, I suppose!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir moaned and dabbed her eyes again.
“Oh dear, oh dear!” she wailed. “When I think of all the sacrifices I have made to send you to college—and all the trouble I have had, really it seems too dreadful! A mother’s life is martyrdom—complete martyrdom! Why don’t you go and hunt up old Miss Letty?”
Then, and quite suddenly, Boy flared up. “Miss Letty! The Miss Letty who wanted to adopt me as a child—and you wouldn’t let her? Not I! It would have been a jolly sight better for me perhaps if I had been with her—but to go to her now—now, when I am expelled”—he choked at the word and had a struggle to go on—“and in disgrace,—now! No, mother, never!”
With a strange gesture, half of fury, half of despair, he turned and left her and went out of the house. His mother was far too unwieldy and comfortable in herself to rise from her chair and enquire where he was going, and though she called “Boy!” once as he disappeared, he did not hear her.
He had two or three pounds in his pocket, and rather than put up with any more useless reproaches and complaints at home, he decided to take a cheap lodging somewhere near the Strand, and seek for work,—any kind of work.
“It’s all the same,” he said with a sort of cynical philosophy which had come of “cramming” and the weariness resulting from that pernicious system—“whether one sweeps out an office or controls it, work of every kind is simply work. It only differs in the quality and the pay.”
In a few days, through the help of a young fellow he had known at Sandhurst, one who was unaffectedly sorry for his disgrace, he got a place as assistant clerk in an agency office. It was dull business, but he drudged through it uncomplainingly, and earned enough to keep himself going. Sometimes a vague idea occurred to him that he would go on the stage.
“Everyone does that when they are down on their luck!” he said. “I might begin as a super. But if I began as one I expect I should stay as one, for I haven’t an idea of acting. However, some people would say that is an advantage. Because if you can act, you may never get an engagement!”
He took to going to the theatre of an evening, and studying the various antics and grimaces of all the puppets in the different shows. Sometimes it amused him,—more often it bored him. But for a lonely and downhearted lad as he was, it was better to sit among human beings in the warmth and light, with the sound of music about him, than to be all alone in his cheap lodging, brooding on his miseries. One night he saw a very pretty little play performed, in which the heroine was a maiden lady who had made the mistake of loving where she was not loved. Something—a mere trifle of pathos—a touch of sentiment in one scene, suddenly called Miss Letty to his mind. Quite involuntarily, and almost as if his brain had taken to acting independently of himself, he began to retrace his life, and follow it backward step by step to his childhood’s days, till gradually, very gradually, small incidents and circumstances began to arrange themselves like the pieces of a puzzle, and he remembered a number of things he had long forgotten. Again he saw himself rambling down by the sea-shore, a solitary, sad little fellow, talking to Rattling Jack,—again he saw Miss Letty’s house in Scotland; and the memory of the last walk he had taken with her there through the Pass of Achray came back to him as freshly as if it had only happened yesterday.
Though his eyes were fixed on the stage he saw an entirely different picture from that which the actors were representing—a picture which had been blurred and blotted out from his mind for many years by the heavy mass of information which had been thrown at him to digest as best he might in the shortest possible time. This obscuration of mental faculty was beginning to clear like a thick fog away from the mirror of his brain, and with a strange pang of regret he recalled the gentle face, the soft voice, the sweet and kindly ways of the good woman who had loved him so much when a child. As soon as the play was ended he got up and went out with the rest, but lingered near the theatre door while the crowd of fashionable and unfashionable folk were hustling themselves and each other into cabs and carriages, watching each face as it passed by and wondering if by chance Miss Letty might be among them. Or if not, perhaps Major Desmond, to whom he would at once tell his miserable story,—the story of his disgrace at Sandhurst, which had not been so much his fault as that of a “superior” officer who had tempted him to drink and had laughed at him when drunk, himself escaping scot-free when the matter was inquired into, and the unhappy boy whom he had led to ruin was expelled. Yes—it might be well to confide in Major Desmond,—he would do so, he resolved, the very next day. With a deep sigh he roused himself from his reverie, and moved away from the threshold of the corridor to the theatre, where he had been standing, when suddenly his arm was touched timidly and a sweet anxious voice said,—
“I beg your pardon!—but would you mind——! Might I ask you to find me a cab? I have missed my father in the crowd—I am all alone!”
He turned and looked at the speaker, and was quite startled by the exquisite beauty of the face uplifted to his own. Such large eloquent dark eyes!—such beautiful black curly hair!—such an exquisite complexion!—a smile that fairly dazzled him!—and a figure of the most girlish and fairylike grace to crown and complete all these attractions! Hastily he raised his cap, and blushed hotly at the extreme honour he felt at being spoken to by such a beautiful woman.
“Do you mind?” murmured the fair one again. “I am afraid it is very dreadful of me to ask you!—but papa must have taken the carriage—he must have thought I had gone home with some other friends who were here to-night. And I do feel so very nervous,—I have never been left alone anywhere!”
Boy started from his stupor of admiration into instant action.
“I’ll get you a cab directly—of course I will,” he said. “Just sit down here in the corridor—it’s very draughty though, I am afraid—won’t you catch cold?”
“I have a warm cloak, thank you,” said the bewitching siren, smiling up at him. “Thank you so much!”
“A hansom or a four-wheeler?” asked Boy.
“Oh, anything! I am so sorry to trouble you!”
Boy dashed off into the street. It never for a moment occurred to him that the young lady could just as well have asked the same attention from one of the stalwart policemen on guard near the theatre door, and that perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the proprieties if she had done so. He soon secured a hansom, the smartest and cleanest he could find, and ran back to the charming creature who had so confidingly thrown herself upon his protection.
“Oh thank you! But won’t you come with me?” said the beautiful heroine of this dramatic incident. “Please do! Come home and see papa! He will be so glad!” Nothing could have been more winning than the innocent and childlike way in which she gave this invitation. She made it all the more irresistible by pressing her little daintily gloved fingers on Boy’s arm,—a touch which thrilled him through and through.
“I shall be so frightened,” she went on, “in a cab all alone! Please see me home, if only to the door!”
“All right,” said Boy resolutely. “I’ll come!”
He assisted her into the hansom with the greatest tenderness, and carefully tucked her pretty skirts about her tiny feet,—oh! what charming skirts, all soft and silken and frilled and rustling, like the leaves of fringed French poppies!
“What address?” he inquired.
She gave him a number and street near Sloane Square, and he, confiding the same to the cabman, sprang in beside her, and they rattled away together through the streets, Boy delighted with the adventure and the pleasure of being chosen as the protector and cavalier of so fascinating a being as his companion.
“Isn’t this fun?” she said, her eyes sparkling like jewels in the light reflected from the cab lamps. “I feel so safe now! You ought to know my name, I think. Shall I tell you?”
“If you don’t mind,” answered Boy, still troubled by a tendency to blush at his own temerity—“I should like to know it, so that I might remember it—and you—always!”
This was a fairly good hit, and was promptly responded to on the part of the fair one, by a modest droop of the head and tender side glance.
“How sweet of you to say—that!” she murmured, “but I am afraid you will soon forget. My name is Lenore de Gramont. I am the only daughter of a French nobleman, the Marquis de Gramont.”
Boy blushed more hotly than ever. What a position for him! Here he was, in a hansom cab, with the daughter of a French Marquis! He did not know whether he ought to be proud or humiliated!
“Papa is a very clever man”—went on the charming Lenore confidingly,—“he has a beautiful castle in France, but he is so fond of England—oh, so fond!—He would rather live in quite little apartments in England than in a palace in France!”
“Really!” said Boy.
“Yes! And he is so fond of Englishmen. He adores them! You are English?”
“Yes,” answered Boy. “My name is Robert D’Arcy-Muir. I am the only son of the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir.”
“The Honourable?” queried Lenore with a fascinating uplifting of her delicate eyebrows. “Ah yes, that is one of your English distinctions—so grand and meaning so much! Our titles in France mean nothing!”
“I have been in France,” said Boy.
“Have you? Did you like it?”
“I was only at school there when a boy,” he replied. “The school was near the sea-coast in Brittany.”
“Ah, dear Brittany! So charming—so picturesque—so poetic!”
“Well, I can’t say much about that,” said Boy. “I was there just for a year,—but I didn’t care about it. The boys were rather a bad lot.”
“It was perhaps a bad school,” said the daughter of the Marquis, with a little laugh. “Oh, you must not be too severe about my dear Brittany! Here we are! Do come in!”
Boy helped her out of the cab, and as she sprang lightly to the ground she looked up with tender entreaty in her eyes and repeated the words. “Do come in!”
Boy hesitated,—then paid the cabman and dismissed him.
“Do you think your father—the Marquis——” he stammered uneasily.
“He will be charmed!” said the captivating Lenore. “Come—I will take no denial. You must have supper with us—come!” And almost before he knew how it happened, Boy found himself in the highly decorated hall of a small flat, bowing to a stoutly built gentleman with a red face and a superabundance of moustache, whom Lenore introduced as—
“My father, the Marquis de Gramont!”
And while Boy made his bashful salute, father and daughter exchanged a profane wink which had their guileless guest observed, would certainly have surprised him.
“Dear papa!” said Lenore then, in her pretty caressing voice, “how could you leave me behind at the theatre in that cruel way? What were you thinking about? This is Mr. Robert D’Arcy-Muir, the son of the Honourable Mr. D’Arcy-Muir, who was good enough to get me a hansom and bring me home,—and if he hadn’t been so kind to me, where do you suppose I should have been, you naughty papa!”
By this time the Marquis appeared to understand and grasp the position.
“My dear, I am very sorry!” he said in smooth deep accents—“very sorry! I really thought you had gone home with our other friends! But you have been most fortunate in finding such a handsome and gallant cavalier to take care of you. You are very welcome, my boy,” he said heartily, laying a fat hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Supper has just begun. Come in, sans cérémonie! Come and share our simple meal!”
He led the way,—Lenore threw off her opera cloak, thereby showing her dazzling beauty to much greater advantage than before, and slipping her bare rounded arm through Boy’s with a little coaxing pressure, she took him into a room of considerable size, where a light supper was laid out with a good deal of elegance, and where several other men were sitting, all rather red-faced, and with something of a free-and-easy air about them. Boy was introduced to the party as “the son of the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir,” whereat he wondered a little, as he could not see what his parentage had to do with his present way of passing his evening. But he presently decided that as his host was a Marquis, no doubt all the gentlemen with him were of the bluest blood and highest degree, and that therefore it was necessary to say who he was, in order that he might be known as a fit companion for such distinguished personages. Suppose they knew he was expelled from Sandhurst! The hot blood surged to the very tips of his ears as this thought crossed his mind, and he took his seat at table like one in a dream.
“Champagne, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir?” inquired the Marquis courteously, passing the bottle.
“Thanks!” And Boy, filling his glass, raised it to his lips and bowed low to the fair Lenore sitting next to him, who, smiling, bowed in return. And after the little pause which generally follows the entry of a stranger at a feast, conversation began again and soon became argumentative and noisy. Politics and society were discussed, and several of the gentlemen present appeared, for gentlemen, to have some curious notions of honour.
“Oh, hang all that sort of rot,” said one, a man with a clean-shaven face, and a physiognomy apparently got up as a copy of Mr. Pinero’s—“Success is the only thing you need care about. Money, money, money! People don’t care a brass button whether you are honourable or not. Tradesmen are more civil to the fellows who run up long bills than to those who owe short ones. It’s all a matter of hard cash. Principle is an old card, long played out.”
“Did you see that new girl in the piece at the Harem Theatre last night?” said another. “Little idiot! She can’t act. She ought to be a charwoman.”
“Perhaps she cannot do charing,” suggested the Marquis, nodding at his daughter, who at once replenished Boy’s glass. “It is a métier!—it may require study!”
They all laughed.
“She’s an idiot, I say,” went on the former speaker—“She could make thousands if she would just let the actor-manager do as he likes with her——”
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Marquis with a fierce twirl of his moustache, “I must beg you to remember that my daughter is present!”
Boy looked at him admiringly, and warmed to the fine spirit he exhibited. He, Boy, was rapidly getting indignant at the unmannerly way in which these eating and drinking men were eyeing the exquisite Lenore,—one man had actually wafted her a kiss from the other side of the table,—and she had pretended not to see. But of course she had seen, and was no doubt hurt and disgusted. She must have been disgusted,—any sweet girl like that would feel outraged at such vulgar familiarity! Boy was growing more and more heated and excited as the time went on; he had eaten scarcely anything, but he had taken all the champagne given to him, and there was a buzzing in his head like the swarming of a hive of bees. At a sign from the Marquis he got up unsteadily, and accepting a cigarette went with all the party into a side room, where Lenore drove him to still further desperation and infatuation by taking his cigarette from him, putting it for a moment between her own rosy lips, then lighting it and giving it back to him with a mischievous curtsey and smile that were enough to confuse a much wiser and clearer head than that of a young man only just turned twenty. Dimly he became aware of a card-table being pushed towards him,—dimly through the brain-fumes of smoke and champagne he heard his host, the Marquis de Gramont, asking him to play a game with them.
“What is it?” he demanded thickly—“I am not clever at cards. Are you?” This with a stupid laugh and sentimental look at Lenore.
“Oh no! I never play anything!” said the young lady, smiling sweetly. “I only look on! But I think baccarat is a very amusing game. Do play!”
Whereupon he sat down with the rest of the men, and was soon, under the guidance of the Marquis, in the full heat and excitement of play. He did not know in the least what he was doing,—he obeyed every hint from the Marquis, or from Lenore, who leaned over his shoulder caressingly and whispered now and then—“I would play that if I were you”—or “I would do that.” Everything was in a whirl with him, and he only came to his senses at last with a sharp shock when, at the conclusion of four or five games, the Marquis asked courteously,—
“Would you care to go on any further, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir? Pray do not think me officious for reminding you that you have lost five hundred pounds already!”
Boy started from his chair.
“What? Five hundred pounds! Nonsense! I thought we were playing for fun,—for sixpences,—for——”
“No, not exactly!” said the Marquis urbanely and with a slight smile. “You have been rather unlucky so far,—but if you wish to go on, it is possible you may win back what you have lost.”
But Boy still stood amazed, with a wild look in his eyes.
“Lost! Five hundred pounds! My God!” Then rallying a little he looked around him bewilderedly. “To whom do I owe this money?”
The other men laughed carelessly.
“Why, to the winners, old chappie,” said one. “The Marquis”—with a slight somewhat sarcastic emphasis on this title,—“will tell you all about it. Don’t worry!—he’ll settle it all for you.”
“I shall be most happy to be of any service to Mr. D’Arcy-Muir,” said the Marquis at once. “He has only to give me his note of hand that in ten days he will repay me, and the five hundred pounds is ready for him—even more, if he requires it.”
“Repay—five hundred pounds!” And Boy still stared about him in horror and fear. “But—I have not five hundred pence in all the world!”
The Marquis smiled again and stroked his moustache.
“No? That is certainly unfortunate! But your father, the Honourable Mr. D’Arcy-Muir, will no doubt be answerable for you. This is a debt of honour, of course—not a public matter—but involving serious private disgrace if left unpaid. However, don’t distress yourself, my dear boy! I will accept your note of hand at fourteen days instead of ten.”
Boy was silent—his face was deadly pale, his eyes bloodshot. Then he suddenly walked up to his smiling host and looked him full in the face.
“I understand!” he said hoarsely. “I begin to realize what you are!—and what kind of a trap I have fallen into! Very well! Let it be as you say. Pay these men what I owe to them—what you have made me lose to them, and I will give you my note of hand for the amount. And in fourteen days you shall be paid back—somehow!”
“Good!” And the Marquis went at once to a writing-desk conveniently at hand and scrawled a few lines hastily, which Boy as hastily glanced at and signed with his name and address,—“Thank you!” And the distinguished French nobleman shifted about a little, and avoided with some uneasiness the steady glance of the young man’s eyes. “Five hundred!—and I will charge you no interest for the loan! Will you play again?”
“Play again?” And Boy turned upon them all with such a tragedy of pain written on his face as for a moment awed even the callous gamesters, accustomed to ruin young men’s lives with as little compunction as they cracked their nuts after dinner. “No! Had I known better I would not have played at all.” With a sudden fierce movement he sprang towards the bewitching Lenore and seized her hands, while with a slight cry she tried to drag herself away from him. “You—you—betrayed me into this!