SCENE IV
THE NOTORIOUS BELLE YORKE
MISS YORKE was out, but the servant, whose dishevelled coiffure indicated that she had been interrupted in the midst of her afternoon toilette, thought that Miss Yorke would be in directly. Would the gentleman like to step in and wait?
The gentleman accepted the invitation, giving his name as Hammond. He found himself in one of those curious apartments characteristic of the suburbs of London, and known as parlors, a word believed to be derived from the French. Like the rooms of state in Buckingham Palace, the parlor does not enter into the daily life of the household, but is reserved for occasions of ceremony, and more particularly, as its name indicates to the learned, for interviews with visitors. The parlor of the notorious Belle Yorke was more old-fashioned in appearance than most rooms of its class. The furniture was veneered in rosewood. There was a round table in the centre, covered with a cloth over which the deadly gift-book and the paralyzing parlor-game were disposed with a carelessness which spoke of greater care. There was a sofa, attired in a chintz dressing-gown. There were two easy-chairs flanking the fireplace, one with arms for the gentleman, and one without for the lady, as in old crinoline days, and there were six little chairs to match, all irresistibly suggestive of one of those ancient tombs on which the father and mother are represented kneeling opposite each other, each with a row of children behind. There was a species of disguised wash-stand, called a chiffonnier, ranged against one side of the room, and a piano against another. The walls were hung with prints, chiefly Scriptural subjects, among which the place of honor was taken by an engraving representing the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was a scene of primeval simplicity and Nonconformist peace.
Hammond looked about him with a sense of intrusion, as he found himself for the first time in Belle Yorke’s home. It was utterly unlike anything he had expected to find. Belle Yorke lived in that part of Hammersmith which had not yet succeeded in covering itself with flats and calling itself West Kensington. The house outside was small and unpretentious; but so are the outsides of many houses which are gay enough within. Miss Yorke’s appearance on the boards was too recent for her yet to have furnished a miniature palace and set up a brougham on the proceeds of the public favor. But the domestic, old-fashioned air which pervaded the whole place came on Hammond as a surprise and a rebuke.
The servant who had just shown him in asked a question which further opened his eyes.
“Would you like to see Mrs. Yorke, sir?”
Hammond started.
“Is that Miss Yorke’s mother?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Does she live here?”
The servant opened her eyes.
“Lor’, yes, sir! This is ’er ’ouse!”
Hammond considered for a minute.
“Well, you can tell Mrs. Yorke I am here, if you like.”
The servant nodded and went out, leaving him to his reflections.
In love, as in war, there is an armed neutrality when the period of friendship has passed away, but neither side is yet ready for a declaration. Just such a stage had been reached in the joint history of John Hammond and Belle Yorke.
He had met her in Bohemia, that pleasant country which the passing tourist sees only in its brightest garb, when the trees are green in the valleys and the vines are ripening in the warm sunshine. The manners of Bohemia are freer than those of other lands, and among that friendly folk the course of acquaintanceship between a man and a woman is not curbed and governed and interpreted quite as it is in the dominions of society.
So the millionaire had drifted into a friendship with the music-hall singer without any after-thought; and when the after-thought had gradually grown up of its own accord, he had found it the most comfortable plan to shut his eyes to it and make believe it was not there.
If he had been ten years younger, the Marchioness of Severn might have despaired of her son-in-law. But he had come to that age when life begins to change its aspect; when the white blossom of romance with which it tempts the eye of youth begins to shed its petals, and the red fruit of ambition is disclosed. John Hammond was still young enough to love, but he was old enough to count the cost.
For some time he had been doing his best to convince himself that he had not the slightest intention of marrying Belle Yorke. He had grown more and more assured of this; and, naturally, the more confident he became of his resolution to give her up, the more her charm for him increased. He set up the old, old debtor-and-creditor account between prudence and inclination. He did penance for his friendship with Belle Yorke by his flirtation with Lady Victoria Mauleverer, and repaid himself for his attentions to Lord Severn’s daughter with a smile from the singer.
To a man in such a state of self-deception Despencer’s poison came as a tonic. His wrath at hearing her attacked, and the necessity he felt of being able to rebut the accusation, were the measure of his love for the woman he had resolved never to love.
It was twenty-four hours since the little episode at the Marchioness of Severn’s. Hammond’s blunt contradiction had glided harmless off the imperturbable Despencer, who had murmured some vague apology and made his escape, leaving his sting behind. There was no wisdom in rubbing it in then. It was better to let it rankle during the interval before the concert. It was then that Despencer intended to play out his winning cards.
Despencer’s words had been the first intimation to Hammond of the existence of any such ill report. Promptly as he had spurned it, the incident had served to remind him roughly of how little he really knew of this girl who had come to hold such a large place in his life. He had seen much of her in Bohemia, enough for those lookers-on who always see our motives and aims so much more clearly than we do ourselves to write him down her lover. But then no one lives altogether in Bohemia. Even the oldest inhabitants are only migratory; like the swallows, they have their seasons of coming and of flight, and who knows in what strange lands they spend the other periods of their existence! Intimate as they were in that sunlit region, Hammond felt that there were reserves in the singer’s life. One of those reserves was her home, which she had steadily avoided showing him. He knew as little of her private life, indeed, as any stranger in the stalls who heard her sing.
He had come away from the house in Berkeley Square resolving to dismiss the slander from his mind. He spent the next night and morning in the vain effort, and in the afternoon he came to Belle Yorke’s house. It was not till he found himself waiting alone in the little parlor, surrounded by the Scriptural prints and parlor games, that Hammond began to ask himself what madness had brought him to such a place with any thought of evil in his heart.
He was not left alone for very long. He heard steps outside, and the sound of the door-handle turning in the lock. He rose to his feet, expecting to see Belle Yorke’s mother. Instead there entered a small boy in knickerbockers, apparently about twelve or thirteen years of age.
The boy seemed to be quite as much surprised to see Hammond as Hammond was to see him. He stood in the doorway, frankly staring at the visitor. Hammond had time to notice that he wore a black cloth band on the sleeve of his plain homespun jacket.
“Come in, my boy; don’t be afraid,” he said, with that awkward patronage by which grown-up people render themselves so supremely ridiculous to the intelligent modern child.
“I’m not afraid,” the boy replied, boldly, advancing into the room. “Why should I be afraid of you?”
It was not a question which the man found it easy to reply to. He smiled, and then asked, rather lamely:
“And what might your name be?”
The justly offended youth retorted mercilessly:
“It might be Napoleon Bonaparte, but, as it happens, it’s Robert Mainwaring Yorke.”
Hammond felt that he had put himself in the wrong. He tried to address the boy like one on his own level.
“I called here to see Miss Belle Yorke. She is your sister, I suppose?”
Robert Mainwaring Yorke had not yet lost his sense of irritation.
“Well, you don’t think she’s my mother, do you?” he replied, with severity. “She’s my eldest sister,” he condescended to explain.
“Oh, then there are several of you?” said Hammond, wonderingly. It was the first time he had ever heard of Belle Yorke’s family.
“What do you think?” returned the boy. “There’s Lizzie—that’s my second sister; and Arthur—he’s a year younger than me; and Reggie—he’s a year younger; and the kid—he’s only four. Anything else you’d like to know?”
“And who is Mr. Yorke?” asked Hammond.
“I’m Mr. Yorke.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Hammond began, and then, catching sight of the black band, stopped, as though he had bitten his tongue.
“Father’s dead,” Mr. Yorke explained, unconcernedly. “He died last winter, and I’m the head of the family.”
“I didn’t know; I beg your pardon. Your sister is not in mourning.”
“He wasn’t her father. Belle’s only my half-sister. Her father died when she was a kid.”
“I see. And I suppose your mother married again?”
“I suppose so, or I shouldn’t be here.”
A fresh thought occurred to Hammond. If what the boy said was true, he did not even know Belle Yorke’s real name. He was on the point of putting a question to the boy, but restrained himself. He had no right to seek that information from any one but Belle Yorke herself.
Mr. Yorke seized the opportunity to put in a word for the absent.
“Mind you, I look on Belle as just as good as a whole sister,” he remarked. “I don’t make any difference.”
Hammond smiled.
“She is kind to you, then?” At least he might have the pleasure of listening to Belle Yorke’s praise.
“Well, I don’t know that you can call it kind,” said the boy, with another touch of resentment at the implied inferiority. “She’s just like any other sister. She knits my stockings for me, and does whatever I want her to. She’s not a bad sort.”
“She must be fond of you,” observed the man, gazing at the ungrateful little wretch with wondering amusement.
“Yes, oh, she’s fond of me! When I had the chicken-pox she took me to Brighton for a fortnight, all at her own expense, and stayed with me all the time, and wouldn’t go out anywhere, though she had lots of invitations. Belle’s very good in that way.”
The man felt a strong inclination to shake Belle Yorke’s callous brother, as he thus grudgingly praised her. It was with an uneasy, self-reproachful feeling that he put the next question:
“Your sister must make a good many friends by her singing?”
Mr. Yorke nodded superciliously.
“Yes; but she doesn’t care much for that lot; they’re not very respectable, we think. We don’t like her going on the stage at all; but she wanted to do something to earn her living. As soon as ever I’m a man, and get rich, I’m going to take her out of that and have her live with me.”
Hammond looked up, pleased.
“Why, the little chap’s a brick, after all!” he mentally ejaculated.
“She’ll make a very good housekeeper,” concluded Mr. Yorke.
“I can’t question this child,” he said to himself. And turning to the boy, he said, abruptly: “Will you ask your mother if I can see her?”
Mr. Yorke instantly responded to the tone of authority and became respectful.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, and promptly went out of the room.
“By Heaven, I have a great mind to bolt!” exclaimed Hammond as the door closed. “I feel like a miserable spy.”
Before he could act on his impulse the door opened again, and Belle Yorke’s mother came in.
Hammond rose. He saw before him a woman who had once been eminently handsome. She was dressed in the deep mourning of a widow, and to this fact, perhaps, was due the impression of melancholy produced by her appearance. She looked at him with large, apprehensive eyes, as she murmured the conventional expressions which people exchange when they meet. But she did not offer him her hand.
As soon as both were seated, Mrs. Yorke said:
“I understand you have called to see my daughter?”
“Yes. Perhaps she has mentioned my name to you some time?”
“She has. She has often spoken of you. But she didn’t tell me that you were coming here.”
Hammond bit his lip.
“You mean, she told you that I was not coming—that she had discouraged me from visiting her?”
“No, no; I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Yorke stammered. “I am sure that there is no one whom my daughter would be more pleased to see here than you, if she received any visitors at all outside our friends in the neighborhood. But she has made it a fixed rule not to invite any of the acquaintances she makes on the stage to come here.”
Hammond listened to this explanation with a feeling of relief. It was something to find that if he were excluded the exclusion was not personal to him.
“Please deal frankly with me, Mrs. Yorke,” he said. “If you think Miss Yorke would consider my visit an intrusion, tell me so, and I will go away before she comes.”
“Not an intrusion; that is scarcely the word. But I am afraid she will be disturbed at finding you here.”
“But why? Surely there is no harm in a friend like myself calling on her beneath her own mother’s roof?”
Mrs. Yorke gave a questioning glance at him.
“I hardly know what to say to you, Mr. Hammond. You call yourself my daughter’s friend, but what do you really know about her?”
Hammond was silenced. He recalled the discovery that he had just made, that he did not even know the true name of the girl whom he had come to question, and he began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. He answered, rather lamely:
“I can only say that it is my greatest ambition that you and your daughter should include me among your friends.”
Mrs. Yorke shook her head with a resolution that had a certain sadness in it.
“How can you be our friend? What is there in common between you and us? It would have been better if you had not come here, Mr. Hammond.”
“Why do you say that?” he protested. “Why should you think it necessary to keep me at arm’s length like this?”
“Surely you must see that for yourself. You know well enough what the world thinks of such friendships between a gentleman in your position and a singer on the music-hall stage. What impression would it make on your mind, if you found my daughter receiving the visits of one of your society friends?”
Hammond was staggered by this unconscious reference to his own doubts. He could only reply:
“That would depend on many things—for instance, whether I believed him to be actuated by the same motives as myself.”
“I do not see what difference his motives could make. It is impossible for me to look upon attentions from one in your position as likely to lead to any good result.”
“But why not?” Hammond pleaded, earnestly. “It is true that, as you say, I know but little of Miss Yorke. But that little has been enough to make me wish to know more. Is there any reason why I should not? I will be plain with you, on condition that you will be plain with me. Is there any reason why you should not allow me to visit your house on the footing of one who means to ask you for your daughter’s hand?”
Mrs. Yorke recoiled. Instead of showing common surprise at the question, or that gratification which the ordinary mother feels when such words are addressed to her by a man far her child’s superior in wealth and station, an anxious, frightened look came into her eyes.
“No, you must not think of that!” she exclaimed, hastily; and then added, in a calmer tone: “Such a marriage would be impossible. The difference between her and you is too great.”
“It has been crossed before now,” returned Hammond. “If you have no better reason for your refusal than that, I shall stay.” And he settled himself firmly in his chair.
Mrs. Yorke wrung her hands.
“Why do you compel me like this? I have another reason—don’t ask me what it is!—for telling you that this cannot be.”
Hammond started, and gazed at her with a new apprehension, not less than her own. He could scarcely muster up courage to put his next question.
“I must ask you. You have gone too far, and I have gone too far, to draw back now.”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Then I shall ask your daughter herself.”
“No, anything but that!” She rose to her feet, trembling. “I beg you, I ask you as a gentleman, to go, and leave us.”
Hammond rose dismayed. He had taken two steps towards the door when it was thrown open and Belle Yorke stood revealed on the threshold.
The notorious Belle Yorke did not look the part. People said it was her air of bright, girlish innocence, so foreign to the footlights, which was the secret of her success. When she tripped on to the stage from behind the painted side scenes, looking as if she had just come out of some rustic cottage in that far-off land called “the country,” and began singing one of her simple ballads, in a voice clear and fresh as the tinkle of a brook among the hills, they said it was the contrast with all her surroundings which caused such a thrill of emotion to go through the jaded audience. Of course no one believed that it was real innocence and real freshness. Belle Yorke was simply a little more clever than her professional sisters, and had thought out a “turn” which had the advantage of novelty; that was all. But it was very well done, so well that some quite hardened men of the world were ashamed afterwards to recall how far they had yielded to the spell. They declared that she made up better than any other woman on the stage, and that hers was the art which conceals art, except, of course, from such complete judges as themselves.
Those who had met her off the stage found, to their surprise, perhaps to their disappointment, that Belle Yorke seen close at hand was very much like Belle Yorke upon the boards. She was not to be found drinking brandy in the bar while she was waiting for her turn to go on. She did not go from the music-hall to a fashionable restaurant, and sit in public with a group of male admirers round her. She was generally seen slipping out quietly and going off on foot, or, if she found herself threatened with companionship, she took refuge in a cab. There was clearly some mystery underneath such conduct, and the mystery could be of only one kind.
Belle Yorke was friendly but not familiar with her stage associates. Perhaps there is no course which gives more offence than that. It is much easier to forgive downright rudeness than the perfect courtesy which makes others keep their distance. Some of the affronted ones were women, and the charity of women for women, as a rule, is not of the kind which covereth a multitude of sins. The eyes that began to watch Belle Yorke were robbed of sleep by jealousy. Something like a throb of exultation went through the ranks of those to whom Belle Yorke’s innocence was a stumbling-block when it was discovered that Belle Yorke had a friend.
Mr. Despencer, to do him justice, had not invented, nor had he originated, the report which he had mentioned to the marchioness, and repeated to Hammond. It goes without saying that he believed it to be true. Such reports are like Euclid’s axioms: no one requires to have them demonstrated. It had not even occurred to him that he was doing an injury to Belle Yorke in repeating it; nor did it injure her in the eyes of the public, nor in those of the managers of the music-halls. What a woman loses in reputation she gains in celebrity. As soon as Belle Yorke’s manager heard that she was protected by the Marquis of Severn he rubbed his hands and silently raised her salary.
When Belle Yorke opened the door and saw who was in her mother’s parlor she stood still, betrayed into a stifled cry and a blush that would not be stifled. Then she stepped in slowly, and laid down on the table some paper bags which she was carrying in her hands.
A pang of compunction shot through Hammond’s breast as she raised her eyes to his. There was something in Belle Yorke’s eyes which touched most people. They were always laughing, and yet somehow it always seemed as though they were laughing in order to keep themselves from tears. Looking into their clear depths, the man felt ashamed of his errand, and ashamed of his presence there, and he stood before her unable to speak.
It was she who found words first.
“This is too bad of you, Mr. Hammond! You had no business to come here. You know I don’t allow it.”
But there was something in the voice that undid the reproach of the words. Hammond’s courage came back to him again.
“I have no defence to make,” he answered, in the same light vein. “The temptation was too strong for me, and I yielded to it. I plead the First Offenders’ Act.”
Belle turned gayly to her mother, who had concealed, by a strong effort, all traces of her recent agitation.
“What punishment shall we give him? I think, sir, you shall be sentenced to stay to tea.”
She opened the paper bags, and produced a store of those fearful and wonderful delicacies variously named crumpets, or pikelets, and said to have been invented by a member of the medical profession.
“You see you are in luck. To-day is Bobby’s birthday, and we are going to have a cake and all sorts of luxuries.”
Hammond began to feel like a man in a dream. He had walked straight out of tragedy into comedy. He had come to Hammersmith in search of an answer to the most terrible question which can present itself to a man who loves a woman, and he found himself in the midst of a children’s tea-party. Perhaps this was the answer, the best of answers, to the doubt which had striven to effect a lodgment in his mind. Sitting there, in the midst of Belle Yorke’s little brothers and sisters, as they trooped into the feast, watching her feed the hungry swarm, he found his dark thoughts dying away of themselves. Such an atmosphere was fatal to them; they could not live in it.
So the millionaire forgot his millions and his marchionesses and his ambitions, and threw himself into the spirit of the festival with such cordiality that he won the children’s hearts. Mr. Yorke, forgetting his former animosity, cut him the biggest slice of the birthday-cake with his own hands, and edified him with a full, true, and particular account of his exploits on the football field in that famous match between the Hammersmith Juniors and the Brook Green Stars, which is now matter of history. Master Reginald Yorke insisted on sitting on the stranger’s knee, and sharing with him the contents of a paper of brown sweetmeats, highly flavored with peppermint, which he called bull’s eyes. Belle’s grateful looks repaid him for his submission to these outrages, and when he rose reluctantly to go away he felt there was a new tie between them, stronger than there had been before.
“May I come to tea again, some time?” he pleaded, as she went with him to the door.
“When you are asked,” said Belle.