“HOW very sober Mr. Hammond seems to-night! I hope he isn’t going to be cross.”
Though she spoke gayly enough, a vague sense of ill was stealing over her. She sat down on a low cane settee, over which flowering shrubs made a sort of canopy, and a sadness seemed to breathe in the heavy scent of tuberose and stephanotis.
Captain Mauleverer placed himself beside her, and looked at her with a certain respectful pity as he answered:
“That isn’t likely. I’m sure it wouldn’t be easy to be cross with you, Miss Yorke.”
Belle detected something in his voice which increased her foreboding.
“You look as grave as Mr. Hammond. Is anything the matter?”
“Yes, I’m afraid there is.”
The moment he had spoken the words he wished them unuttered. The light faded out of the beautiful eyes, and a pathetic sadness took its place.
“Oh, please don’t tell me that!” she pleaded. “I am enjoying myself so much this evening.”
“Are you? I am glad of that,” said Mauleverer, tugging uneasily at his mustache.
“Yes; I have never been to a place like this before, you know, and it is all so strange and beautiful. I am a little bit afraid of the Marchioness of Severn, but every one else has been so kind that I haven’t felt myself a stranger. I feel almost like the little chimney-sweep who wandered by accident into the state bedroom of the castle, and turned out to be the rightful heir. Please don’t send me back to my chimney.”
The captain swallowed something in his throat.
“I wish I hadn’t promised to, but the fact is I have undertaken to give you a message.”
This time Belle turned to him with a look of something like alarm.
“Can’t you put it off till to-morrow? Do let me have my dream out to-night.”
Mauleverer shook himself.
“Hang it! I have a great mind to,” he exclaimed.
“Please do, if it is an unkind message. I didn’t think I had any enemies.”
“You have none—at least, I don’t believe you have. It isn’t that. What I have promised to tell you is something about yourself, something you ought to know.”
“Something about myself! Oh, what do you mean? I haven’t been doing anything wrong, have I?”
Captain Mauleverer bit his lip and looked more than half inclined to run away. Then he said, slowly:
“Perhaps I should have said—something about your father.”
“My father!” She gazed at him in astonishment. “But he is dead! He died before I was born.”
“No!”
The answer struck her dumb. She sat still and pressed her hand against her heart. The man replied to her unspoken questions with a grave shake of the head.
“My father is not dead? Oh, Captain Mauleverer, what are you saying? What do you know about him?”
“I wish I didn’t have to speak to you like this. Your father is alive.”
“And they have always told me he was dead! My mother— Captain Mauleverer, are you sure of what you say?”
“I am. I know your father.”
“Then why—” She broke off in the midst of the question and wrung her hands. “Ah! I begin to understand. My father has done something that has made them hide his existence from me. And you are going to tell me what it is.”
“I—well, I promised that I would.”
She gave a half-sob.
“You may go on now. I find that I am only the little chimney-sweeper after all. But stay!” A fresh thought struck her with overwhelming force. “Perhaps this is some mistake after all. You say my father is alive, but did you know that my mother had been married again?”
The captain clenched his fists.
“God forgive me—I can’t tell you!”
“Then—then there is only one explanation, Captain Mauleverer.” She hid her face in her hands for a minute, and then raised it again and looked him bravely in the face. “Is that it? Tell me the truth.”
Mauleverer sprang from his seat.
“No, I’m damned if I do!”
A burst of music and a babble of tongues told them that the door had opened again, and some one else was coming in. It was the Marchioness of Severn, and she was alone.
Belle rose from her seat dry-eyed.
“Ah, Miss Yorke, they told me I should find you here. That will do, Gerald. Miss Yorke and I are going to have a little talk. Pray sit down again.”
Belle resumed her seat in silence, with an inward dread of what was in store for her next, while Captain Mauleverer walked off with the hang-dog air of a man who feels he has made a brute of himself.
The marchioness sat down beside her guest.
“I have to thank you for a most delightful evening. You sang most charmingly. I almost wish I hadn’t asked you for that one called ‘Little Willy,’ though. I am so sensitive. You almost made me cry—you did, indeed.”
Belle stole a timid glance at her.
“It is very kind of you to praise me so much. That song of mine has always been a favorite.”
“I don’t wonder at it. Dear, sweet little thing, freezing to death like that! Why didn’t some one give him a seal-skin jacket? And do you really sing things like that at those dreadful places in Leicester Square?”
Belle began to feel uncomfortable. The patronage it was difficult to resent, but the hinted disparagement roused her courage.
“I am sorry you think them dreadful,” she said, modestly but quite firmly, “because, you know, I have to sing there for my living.”
The marchioness’s determined good-nature was not to be turned aside.
“No, no; of course, I ought not to have called them that before you. But one reads such shocking things about them in the newspapers when they apply for their licenses to the County Council. I’m sure I hope it isn’t half of it true.”
“I hope you won’t be offended if I stand up for them,” Belle persisted, bravely. “I must be loyal to my own profession, mustn’t I?”
“Of course! Of course! Most properly. I hope—in fact, I am sure, that they have done you no harm. But I have heard so much about these places, and the life, that it makes me feel the very gravest doubt. I take an interest in you, Miss Yorke, and I should be so sorry if you were to lower yourself by your connection with the music-halls.”
Still bleeding from the wound dealt her in all respectful kindness by the man who had been with her just before, Belle roused herself to ward off the more envenomed stabs of the woman who was with her now.
“I don’t intend to lower myself, or to let myself be lowered, by any place I may go to,” she said, with dignity, looking the marchioness in the face.
The marchioness smiled on her like a mother.
“That is right. I am so glad to hear you say that. But you can’t be too careful, you know. The world is so censorious. Society has very keen ears for the least whisper against a woman’s name.”
This time Belle realized that there was some serious purpose beneath her persecutor’s moralizing. She turned on her indignantly.
“I hope you don’t mean that society has been listening to any whispers against my name!” she cried.
The marchioness put out her hands with a soothing gesture.
“Oh, no—not yet, at all events. Still, as I say, you cannot be too careful in your unfortunate position. I thought I ought to take the opportunity of giving you a friendly warning. It is so easy to check a thing of this kind at the outset, but afterwards it may be too late.”
“I am afraid I don’t understand you yet,” said Belle, in a carefully measured voice which would have betrayed the rising anger to a duller ear than the Marchioness of Severn’s. “Do you mean to say that there is anything for me to check?”
The marchioness, becoming slightly nervous, tried to beat about the bush.
“No, no; I won’t go so far as that. I don’t put it in that way—merely a possibility, that is all. Of course, it is very natural that the men who go to such places should admire you, with your voice and figure; only don’t let one particular man admire you more openly than the rest. You understand me?”
Belle’s voice became cold and metallic.
“Do you mean that there is some one whose name has been associated with mine as an admirer more than the rest?”
The marchioness bowed and smiled.
“That is just it. You have put it very nicely.”
“May I ask you to tell me his name?”
The marchioness threw a glance of mild reproach at her young friend.
“Surely, my dear Miss Yorke, you must know that! Every one tells me that his attentions have been most marked—Mr. Hammond.”
The marchioness brought out the name with a jerk, watching her victim keenly the while. But Belle gave her no assurance, by so much as the flutter of an eyelid, that the shaft had gone home.
“Mr. Hammond’s attentions to me have always been perfectly respectful.”
The marchioness positively bubbled over with shame at the implied suggestion that she had thought otherwise.
“Of course! Naturally! But you know, my dear girl, that society will take a very different view. Society is so incredulous. It never believes that a man’s friendship for a woman is perfectly respectful.”
“Not when he asks her to become his wife?” Belle could not resist the question.
“That is quite different.” The marchioness suddenly became the great lady. “We are not talking of that, as you know. Mr. Hammond is not one of those foolish young men who marry a girl out of their own class and regret it ever afterwards. You must put that idea out of your head at once, believe me. I am speaking as your friend and as a woman of the world.”
Belle looked at her friend for a moment with a silence that had something satirical in it.
“What is Mr. Hammond’s class?”
“Don’t you know? Mr. Hammond is a millionaire. He moves in the very best society. He could marry almost any woman in England, except royalty. I know dukes, even, who would feel honored by an alliance with Mr. Hammond.”
All this time it had not occurred to Belle, in her simplicity, that she could possibly be regarded by the great lady beside her as a rival, and a dangerous rival, to her own daughter. She only felt that something very dear to her was at stake, and she wrestled for it blindly.
“Is that simply because he is rich?” she demanded, with the scorn which youth always feels for wealth.
“Not entirely,” the marchioness answered, mildly, “though, of course, that has a great deal to do with it. But Mr. Hammond comes of a most respectable family, I believe. I have heard that his father was quite a gentleman towards the end of his life. And then he has a fine political career before him; he is in Parliament, and may be in the Cabinet. You can’t expect him to throw all that away to marry you, my dear.”
Belle began to fear that she was going to be beaten.
“And would he? Would it be such a very great disgrace?” she murmured below her breath.
“I don’t say that it would,” replied her deeply sympathizing friend; “but society would consider it so. You see, we can none of us do all that we like. There are many things that I should like to do, but I dare not. We all feel inclined to rebel sometimes and gratify our own inclinations, but we are restrained by a higher law.”
“What higher law is there than the loyal instinct of our own hearts?” demanded Belle, with a flash of indignation.
“My dear, the prejudices of society! Its feelings must be respected. We have to mould our lives accordingly.”
“Why? Why should we obey such a code? Why should we cringe to this bogie you call society? Why should we make ourselves slaves to one another’s shadows?”
The marchioness drew herself up and regarded her young friend with real pain.
“Miss Yorke, you quite surprise me. I am shocked to hear you use such language. Do you realize what you are saying? You called society a bogie!”
“I was wrong. It is something more.”
“It is true that its dictates sometimes appear harsh and unreasonable, but that is the same for all of us. Why should you expect to be an exception to the rule more than others?”
“Shall I tell you?” All the bitterness of her newly acquired knowledge rang out in Belle’s voice. “Because I am one of the victims of society; because it placed its brand upon me before ever I was born. Society has made me an outlaw, and therefore I owe it no allegiance, and I will give it none. You tell me that because I am a public singer I have no right to the friendship of an honorable man; that there are whispers in circulation against my name already. Let them whisper! I have done with all that. I shall not abandon my friends at society’s bidding, and I won’t give up the man I love because it tells me—I won’t do it!”
The marchioness rose, deeply shocked and grieved.
“Really, I can’t stay here—”
Again the sudden loudness of the sounds from the concert-room. Again the door stood open, and John Hammond in the doorway.