SCENE XII
THE LONG ARM OF MR. DESPENCER
GEORGE, MARQUIS OF SEVERN, was one of those unfortunate men who are out of sympathy with the class into which they have been born. As a yeoman, farming his own land, he would have been contented; as a marquis, he was miserable. His rank was irksome to him, he was bored by dignity, he took no interest in politics, and detested what is called society.
If his lot had lain in a humbler sphere of life, he would have had a wife of his own choice, and been a good husband and father. As it was, he had married a woman selected for him by his people, and with whom he had not a thought in common. She was not his wife—she was merely his marchioness. He felt himself a stranger in his own household; his very children grew up to regard him with good-natured contempt, and the people with whom Lady Severn surrounded herself were hardly conscious that there was such a person as Lord Severn in existence.
By natural disposition George Mauleverer was the reverse of a libertine. He was fitted for domestic happiness as it is understood by the middle classes. The irony of his fate compelled him to seek it away from his own hearth, under conditions fatal to its permanence. The woman whom he had taken as his second wife, and whom he would willingly have continued to treat as such, was too much like himself to rest satisfied in a life which outraged the social and moral prejudices of her class. She could not find satisfaction any more than he in that restless, artificial form of existence which is known as a life of pleasure. She hated the gay sisterhood of St. John, and yearned after the respectability in which she had been reared. To these motives for breaking off the connection was added, after a few years, the decisive one of religion. A sermon convicted her of living in sin, and she resolved to return to the paths of righteousness.
George Mauleverer could not oppose her determination. He sorrowfully recognized that she was in the right, and assisted her efforts to regain her natural place in the world. In due course she found a husband, and from that moment all intercourse between the two came to an end.
The only right which the man reserved to himself was that of watching over the child of their former union. He had done this under an assumed name, and in the character of a godfather. Neither he nor the mother had contemplated the necessity of revealing the truth to their daughter. But they had reckoned without the world. Just as Belle was growing into womanhood her stepfather died, and her mother was threatened with disastrous poverty. In that strait she would not consent to take money from her old lover. As a lesser evil, she allowed her daughter to turn her talents to account on the stage.
It had occurred neither to her nor to Belle’s father that the secret which had been kept so successfully while Belle remained in the obscurity of middle-class life might be endangered by the publicity which she must now incur. The father continued to associate with his daughter under the name by which she knew him. But Belle’s comings and goings now fell under the eyes of more than one who knew the Marquis of Severn. London is not such a large place as some of us are apt to suppose; or, rather, within the small area covered by a dozen theatres and restaurants which some of us are apt to mistake for London, there is not much more real privacy than in a village for those whose doings happen to be of interest to the lookers-on.
It did not take long for the world of Piccadilly Circus to discover the identity of the quiet, badly dressed, middle-aged man who was seen from time to time in the company of the celebrated Belle Yorke. Further than that the world could hardly be expected to inquire. It drew its own conclusions, and very naturally judged others by itself.
No whisper of the discovery had yet reached the ears of the Marquis of Severn. When he heard his daughter’s name announced in his wife’s drawing-room, he had realized for the first time the danger and falsity of his position. At once he made up his mind that it was necessary for Belle to know the truth. The merest accident, the sight of one of his portraits, might lead to a scandal. He dared not run the risk of going up to her himself before the crowd. He escaped into another room, and, finding his nephew there, resolved to intrust him with the task of speaking to Belle.
Gerald had always had a loyal regard for his homely and despised uncle. He listened to his confession with sympathy, and undertook to warn Belle that she was in her father’s house. But he had carried out his task imperfectly. The marquis realized that he must himself complete the revelation which Gerald had begun. He had found Belle for a moment by herself, and had arranged this meeting in a spot where he expected to be free from interruption.
“Why should the marchioness look at you like that?” asked Belle, in perfect innocence, as she came towards the window, where her father was waiting for her.
“That is one of the things that I have to tell you,” he answered, gravely. “But sit down, my dear, sit down.”
She obeyed, and gazed up at him wonderingly as he stood before her.
“I thought it better to bring you here,” he explained. “We might have been disturbed down-stairs, but no one ever comes here except the members of the family.”
“Are you, then—what about you? Are you a member of the same family as the Marchioness of Severn?”
The marquis bowed his head.
“Yes, I am a member of the family. That is what I want to speak to you about. I want to tell you a family secret.”
“But why? Why should you tell me?” she gasped, with something like dismay. “I don’t belong to the Marquis of Severn’s family.”
Her father stifled a groan.
“Suppose I were to tell you that you did?” he said in a low voice.
The recollection of her interview with Captain Mauleverer rushed over Belle. She shrank back and raised her hands as though for protection.
“No; this—this isn’t the secret, is it?” she whispered.
“Listen,” was the answer. “I have just spoken to Gerald, and he tells me that he only delivered half of the message he was to have given you this evening. Do you think you can bear to hear the rest?”
Again she held up her hands with that pathetic, deprecating gesture.
“Wait! Don’t tell it to me too quickly! Give me time to think a little, won’t you?”
“Poor child!”
He turned away his head, unable to face the sight of her distress, and silence reigned for a minute. Belle was the first to speak.
“Captain Mauleverer told me that my father was still alive. That is true, then?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And that—that— Oh, tell it me as kindly as you can!”
The marquis caught his breath.
“Your father is a damned villain!” he cried out.
“Don’t speak so harshly as that!” she implored. “Don’t make him out worse than you can help. Remember, I am his daughter, after all.”
“You are too good for him, Belle. He doesn’t deserve that you should call yourself his daughter.”
She looked up quickly.
“You know him, then?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Then—is he a relation of Lord Severn’s?”
“He is Lord Severn.”
“Ah!” In the midst of her astonishment a bitter thought came into her mind. “Now I begin to understand. So that is why Lord Severn left the house the moment I arrived, without seeing me.”
“Yes, that is the reason.”
“And why was I asked to come here, then? Why did he let his wife bring me here to sing for hire in my own father’s house? Oh, it was cruel, cruel!”
The marquis shook beneath the reproach.
“He did not know; the marchioness arranged it without telling him. Your father knew nothing of it till you were here.”
“And the marchioness?” she demanded, with sudden fire.
“The marchioness has never heard that you are his daughter. It has been kept a secret from every one.”
The expression of Belle’s face became hard.
“I see. Lord Severn is a great nobleman, I suppose, and he was ashamed of the poor little music-hall singer whom he had cast off as soon as she was born, and whom he never wished to see. So that is why he ordered his nephew to speak to me, to warn me off the premises, lest I should embarrass him before his noble wife and daughter. And now he has sent you to complete the work.” She rose to her feet in bitter indignation. “Well, you may tell my father that he has no need to fear. I will not trouble him; I will go.”
Every word stung the marquis like the knot of a lash.
“Stop!” he cried, passionately. “What are you thinking of? You cannot go like this.”
“And do you think,” said Belle, turning on him with flashing eyes, “that now I know the truth I will stop another moment beneath the roof of a father who considers me a disgrace to him? I will go, if I should have to walk the whole way home barefoot!”
“No, stay; you don’t understand! My God, that you should take it like this! Your father is not ashamed of you, but of himself. It is he who disgraces you, not you him. He went away because he had not the courage to meet you, and to tell you with his own lips the injury he had done you.”
“Is that the truth?” She gazed at him in doubt, a half-formed suspicion beginning to struggle faintly for entrance to her mind. “Then why has he never come near me since I was born? Why has he let me grow up in ignorance that I had a father? Why has he never cast one glance of pity towards his nameless child?”
The marquis stood silent, eager to answer, and yet afraid. She went on with increasing vehemence:
“No, I am not his child; the Lady Victoria is his child. She has sat upon his knee; I never have. She bears his name, and is protected by his rank; I bear a name to which I have no right, and have no one to protect me. She has been reared in her father’s house, among riches and splendor; I have grown up in obscurity, and have had to go out to battle with the world. She meets in her father’s drawing-room the men whom I meet in the street. No; you are wrong in telling me that Lord Severn is my father. I have no father. Lady Victoria is his daughter, but I am only his orphan.”
The marquis broke down.
“Belle, don’t make it too hard for me,” he said, humbly. “Your father has not been quite so bad as that. He has watched over you, but, like a coward, in disguise.”
For a minute she stood with heaving breast gazing at him, while his own eyes were cast down before her.
“Father! You!” The words escaped slowly from her lips at last.
Her father gave a bitter sigh.
“If we men could foresee these moments in our lives, we should not sin so lightly. Yes, I have done you the greatest injury that a father can do his child. I have tried all these years to persuade myself that the best atonement I could make was to keep you in ignorance of the truth; but now the truth has been forced from me, and you see me ashamed to look you in the face.”
“Don’t speak like that!” said his daughter, gently; “don’t look away from me! Why, I thought I had no father, but now—”
He looked up swiftly, a new hope in his eyes.
“You are going to forgive me, my child?” he said, and trembled.
“No,” said Belle, simply, “I am going to love you.”
He uttered a cry, and clasped her to him.
“After all,” she said presently with a tearful smile, “I was only a poor little music-hall singer before. It isn’t as if I had much character to lose, is it?”
“You are very good to me, my child. If you knew how often I have wanted to tell you who I was, and been afraid to do it! The Fates prepare some rough places for us, but the beds we make for ourselves are the hardest to lie on.”
“Does any one else know of this, father?” Belle asked.
“No one knows it except Gerald, and I can trust him. This must be a secret between us two, Belle. It is the one favor I have to ask of you; and I don’t ask it for my own sake, but for the sake of my family.”
“For the sake of the Marchioness of Severn. I understand.” There was a touch of resentment in her voice. “She has been good enough to speak to me since I came to this house; she has explained to me the gulf that separates her world from mine.”
“My child! If you knew how bitter it is to me not to be able to spare you such things! But what motive could she have had for speaking to you like that? She can have no suspicion of the truth, surely?”
“Oh, no. She simply wished to point out to me how unworthy I was to receive the honorable addresses of a gentleman such as her daughter might accept.”
“What man is that?”
“Mr. John Hammond.”
The marquis started. It was the first time he had heard Hammond’s name in connection with Belle’s, and he was not ignorant of his wife’s designs on behalf of Victoria.
“The very man!” he exclaimed. “And you—what have you done?”
“I have taken her ladyship’s good advice,” said Belle, proudly. “I have refused Mr. Hammond.”
Her father stood and gazed at her in consternation. This rivalry between his two daughters, the rich one and the poor one, came on him as an unexpected shock. Suddenly there came a sound of the door opening at the end of the gallery.
“We must not be seen!” burst from his lips; and, without pausing to consider the possible consequences, he seized hold of the curtains and drew them across the opening.
There had been two persons outside the door, and they entered together. One was Despencer, the other was John Hammond.
It was not in Despencer’s nature to be revengeful, but he had not been left entirely unmoved by Hammond’s biting taunts during their interview in the conservatory. But for them he might have been satisfied with the success already achieved. His only motive in denouncing Belle Yorke in the first place had been to bring about the engagement which he had just seen ratified. It was Hammond’s insulting treatment of him which had given him a personal interest in the affair. He yielded to the temptation of proving himself right and scoring off the man who had disbelieved him. As soon as he could manage his escape from the marchioness, he went to seek Hammond and bring him to the spot where he had left the marquis and Belle Yorke together.
Hammond at first refused to listen. Belle had assured him with her own lips that she had never even seen the man with whom her name was coupled. But Despencer’s statement compelled him to action. Wondering, reluctant, and dismayed, he allowed himself to be dragged into the gallery.
Both men as they entered glanced eagerly in the direction of the window. The next instant both stopped abruptly, and their eyes met. Despencer’s filled with malicious triumph, Hammond’s with the deepest mortification.
The curtains were closed. Who was behind them?
“Now, if you wish to know the truth, draw that curtain,” the tempter whispered. Then he walked slowly out of the gallery, watching Hammond as he went.
Left to himself, Hammond stood in silent anguish, his gaze fixed on the velvet folds which spared him the sight of the falsehood of the woman he loved. Fresh from his betrothal to Victoria, he had forgotten her already, so much greater was the bitterness of finding that his love was misplaced than the bitterness of having it rejected. He thought he could hear that Belle should not love him, but he found he could not bear that she should love another.
Face to face with that curtain, there seemed to be no more room for doubt. Despencer might not be a man of honor, but he could not, he dared not, have brought Hammond there unless he were sure of the result. What inducement had Despencer to lie? None. And Belle? Alas! it was evident that she had only too much.
He took a step towards the curtain, and then drew back. What right had he to lift it? What right had he, the promised husband of Lady Victoria, to test the faith of the woman who had just refused his hand? Reason bade him go away, satisfied with the silent testimony of that damning screen.
But reason is a mere lawyer, whose client is passion. John Hammond could no more leave that gallery without drawing the curtain than the steel can detach itself from the magnet. It did not take long to reason himself into the belief that to go away now would be disloyalty to Belle herself; it would be to accept Despencer’s word against hers without inquiry. He stepped forward again, and his hand was stretched out towards the curtain, when he was arrested by the entrance of a man at the opposite door.
Captain Mauleverer had taken advantage of his dismissal by the marchioness to wander off to a nook at the top of his uncle’s house and indulge in a quiet smoke. Returning through the gallery, where he had half hoped to find Victoria waiting for him, he was surprised to find himself in the presence of Hammond.
“Why, Hammond, what are you doing here all by yourself?” he exclaimed as he came up.
Hammond drew back a few steps from the curtain.
“What am I doing?” He raised his voice and glanced towards the purple folds as though he would have looked through them to see the effect of his words. “I am wondering why it is that we men are ever fools enough to expect truth from the lips of a woman.”
“Is that all?” returned Mauleverer, his own mood in harmony with his friend’s. “I didn’t know that any sensible man ever did. I’m sure I don’t.”
“Why, what is wrong with you?” asked the other, incredulously. “You haven’t been deceived by the woman you trusted?”
“It seems to me we all have,” was the bitter answer. “Don’t you remember what I was telling you about down-stairs?”
“Ah, yes; I had forgotten it. You mean that girl? Why, have you just discovered that she really loves another man?”
“Not that exactly. She loves me, or she pretends to, but she has sold herself to the other man.”
“She doesn’t love you!” The words were pronounced with an emphasis which Mauleverer could not understand, and which was not meant for his ears. “They all pretend, if not in words, in looks and actions. It is their occupation, like politics with us. I knew a woman once who made me think she loved me. She never said so, you understand, but led me on, and laughed at me in her sleeve all the while. Depend upon it, this girl of yours is like her. She has some secret lover in the background, some man whom she has sworn to you that she has never seen.”
There were three listeners to that savage outburst—two men and a woman; but only the woman understood.
The captain remonstrated.
“I don’t think that of her. No; hang it! the girl is straight enough. She doesn’t think me worth deceiving; I am too poor.”
“I see. Then it is the other man she is deceiving, and you are the lover in the background. You see, it comes to the same thing. I told you they were all alike.”
“It’s not her fault, damn it!” said the loyal Gerald. “She has got to marry the brute; her people have driven her into it.”
“Why?”
“You needn’t ask. Money. It’s some infernal millionaire like you.”
Hammond started. For the first time he turned his attention from the unseen listeners to this dialogue to the man who was speaking to him.
“Who? What did you say? Who is this man?”
“I don’t know his name; she wouldn’t tell me,” replied the suspicious captain. “What does it matter to me who he is?”
“Do I know the girl?”
“Yes. I don’t mind telling you, old man; it’s my cousin Victoria.”
“What!” The word burst from Hammond like a bullet. His eyes sought the curtain. “Are all women traitors?” he cried.
And striding to the curtains, he dragged them back. There in the light of the moon stood the two who had overheard every word. The marquis had his arm round Belle’s neck, and her face was hidden in her father’s breast.
“It is true!” gasped Hammond.
A tremendous silence followed. How long it lasted none of the four could tell. At length the marquis broke it.
“Well, sir?” he said, looking Hammond full in the face with a certain dignity for which the other had not been prepared.
“I beg your pardon, marquis. I was told that you and this lady were strangers, and I believed it, like a fool.”
He had turned on his heel to withdraw, when he was made aware that some one else was coming on the scene. He glanced towards the door, and then with a bow of silent apology drew the curtains across again as he had found them. This done, he turned round and stood facing whoever might come in.
He had expected Despencer, and he was right. But Despencer had not come alone. He had had another object in view all this time, and what that object was was now revealed. Having arranged for what promised to be a stormy scene between Hammond and the Marquis of Severn, having fired his train and calculated the time required for it to reach the mine, he had now brought the marchioness to witness the explosion.
The marchioness entered quickly, her face alight with suspicion. Despencer had skilfully aroused her expectations, without committing himself to any definite statement. Her eye instantly fell on the curtain, and she divined that it concealed a mystery.
“Why is that curtain closed?” she demanded, advancing towards it. “Is there any one in the window?”
There was just one instant in which Hammond hesitated, nearly carried away by the temptation to let her draw back the curtain and overwhelm those two by whom he deemed that he had been deceived. Then, just as the horrified Gerald was about to step forward, Hammond planted himself right in front of the marchioness.
“No!” he said, firmly. “There is no one there.”
She stopped unwillingly and looked at him. He looked at her, and to that look she yielded.
A moment afterwards he was leading her out of the gallery on his arm, while Captain Mauleverer escorted Despencer in the rear.