AN ALLIANCE.
In the boudoir of a dear little house, just far enough off Piccadilly to
be out of the roar of its carriages, sat Mrs. Lascelles, "waiting
luncheon," as she called it, for her travelling companion of the day
before.
The ladies had been so charmed with each other in their railway journey
the previous evening, that an invitation to the pleasantest of all meals
was given, and accepted with great cordiality, before they parted; and
the mistress of No. 40, as she loved to designate it, was glad to think
that her pretty home should look its best for the reception of this new
friend. A canary was perched in the window, a fire blazed in the grate,
a pug-dog was snoring happily on the rug, a bullfinch swelling in
splendid sulks on the work-table: with a peal at the door bell this
simple machinery seemed all set in motion at once--the canary twittered,
the pug barked, the bullfinch subsided, Mrs. Lascelles jumped up, the
door opened, and a footman announced "Miss Ross!"
If Miss Ross looked well under the dim light of a railway carriage, she
lost nothing of her prestige when exposed to the full glare of day. She
was pale, certainly, and perhaps a little too thin, but her black eyes
were certainly splendid; while over her rather irregular features and
her too resolute mouth and chin was cast a wild, mournful expression,
half pathetic, half defiant, expressly calculated, it would seem, for
the subjugation of mankind, especially that portion who have outlived
the fresher and more healthy tastes of youth; add to this, masses of
black hair, a little bonnet with a scarlet flower, a graceful figure,
lithe as a panther's, clad in a dark but very becoming dress, and I
submit that the general effect of such an arrival fully justified the
disturbance it created in the boudoir at No. 40.
Mrs. Lascelles, it is needless to observe, took in all these details at
a glance,--she had "reckoned up" her visitor, as the Yankees say, long
before she let go the hands she clasped in both her own with so cordial
a welcome.
"This woman," thought she, "would be a formidable enemy. I wonder
whether she might not also prove a valuable friend."
Then, sharp and cold, shot through her the misgiving of the day before;
what had she been doing at Blackgrove, this dark-eyed girl, and what did
she know of Sir Henry Hallaton? No stone would she leave unturned till
she found out.
Miss Ross, however, did not seem at all a mysterious person, at least on
the surface.
Before she had taken off her bonnet and made friends with the pug, she
had already broached the subject nearest the other's heart.
"You are very kind to me, Mrs. Lascelles," she said, folding the pug's
ears back with her white, well-shaped hands; "but I must not come into
your house and waste your substance under false colours. Do I look like
an adventurer, adventuress,--what do you call it?--a person who lives
from hand to mouth, who has no settled abode,--a sort of
decently-dressed vagrant, not exactly starving, but barely respectable?
Because that's what I _am_!"
Mrs. Lascelles stared, and called her dog away.
"I went to Blackgrove as an adventuress," continued Miss Ross, in calm,
placid tones, with no appearance of earnestness but in the firm lines
round her mouth, "I left it as an adventuress. I can hold my own
anywhere, and with any one; but I should have been worse than I am had
I stayed a day longer in that house!"
"Tell me about it!" exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles eagerly. "I am sure you are
not--not--at all the sort of person I shouldn't like to know."
"I _will_ tell you," said the other, speaking lower and faster now, with
a bright gleam in her black eyes. "I haven't a friend in the world--I
never _did_ have a woman friend; if I had--well, it's no use thinking of
that now. Never mind; I'll tell you every thing, because--because I
fancy I can guess something, and you ought to know. Have you ever seen
Miss Hallaton, Helen Hallaton?--a girl with black eye-brows, and a face
like an old Greek _bas-relief_. Well, I was to be Helen's
companion;--does that surprise you? If you were a widower, Mrs.
Lascelles, and had daughters, am I the sort of person you would engage
as their companion?"
It was a difficult question. From the widower's point of view, Mrs.
Lascelles was not quite sure but she _would_. Miss Ross, however, went
on without waiting for an answer.
"Shall I tell you how I lived before I ever thought of being anybody's
companion? Shall I tell you all I learned in a school at Dieppe, in a
convent at Paris, amongst the strange people who struggle on for bare
existence in the foreign quarter of London? I have sat for a model at
half a crown an hour; I have sung in a music-hall at half-a-guinea a
night. I suppose it was my own fault that I was born without a home,
without a position, without parents, as I sometimes think,--certainly
without a conscience and without a heart! Yet I know hundreds who have
been twice as bad as I ever was, without half my excuses. Mrs.
Lascelles, I have been at war with most of my own sex and the whole of
the other ever since the days of short frocks and a skipping-rope. Don't
you think I must sometimes long to sit down and rest, to leave off being
a she-Arab, if only for half an hour?"
"Was that why you went to Blackgrove?" asked the other, wondering,
interested, a little frightened, yet also a little fascinated, by her
guest.
"I was in London with a capital of three pounds seventeen shillings,"
laughed Miss Ross, "and a personalty of five dresses, two bracelets, and
Alfred de Musset's poems half-bound, the morning I answered the
advertisement that took me to Blackgrove. Can you believe that when I
left it yesterday, I might have stayed, if I had chosen, as mistress of
the house, the flower garden, the whole establishment, and wife of the
worst--well, _one_ of the worst men I have ever had to do with? For a
moment I hesitated--I own I hesitated; though I knew her so little, I
could almost have done it for Helen's sake. Mrs. Lascelles, that girl is
an angel, and her father is--is--not to use strong language--_quite the
reverse_."
Mrs. Lascelles was woman enough to defend an absent friend, and the
colour rose to her brow while she thought how confidentially they were
riding together along the Bragford road not twenty-four hours ago.
"I have known Sir Henry some time," she said, drawing herself up, and
blushing yet deeper to reflect that the "some time" was but a very few
weeks after all; "I cannot believe him what you describe. You ought not
to say such things if you have no proof of them."
"It was to prove them I came here to-day," replied Miss Ross. "It was to
prevent a bad man from making a fool of another woman as he has tried to
make a fool of me. Plain speaking, Mrs. Lascelles, but listen to my
story before you ring the bell for the footman to turn me out of the
house. The first fortnight I was at Blackgrove I never saw the papa at
all; and I honestly own I was becoming every day more attached to the
eldest girl. It was a quiet, peaceful life; and what with the country
air, the sleep, the fresh butter and cream, I began to feel quite strong
and healthy. Sometimes I thought I was even getting gentle and almost
good; I do believe I could have lived there with Helen, and looked after
the younger ones, and gone to bed at ten o'clock, and never wanted
change or excitement for years. I don't know--it seems as if it was not
_me_, but somebody else, who passed such a calm and happy fortnight in
that quiet old country house.
"But I woke up the first day Sir Henry came home. I was looking my best,
and he took care I should know he thought so before he had been five
minutes in the room. At dinner, too, he was perfectly odious, and the
way he helped me to claret, after three hours' acquaintance, was an
insult in itself. Can you believe the man wrote me a letter that very
night, and had the effrontery to put it on my pincushion himself after I
had gone down to breakfast? Such a letter! excusing the outrageous
nature of the whole proceeding, and thus showing he knew perfectly well
how badly he was behaving, on the score, if you please, of his age and
experience in such matters! He had often fancied himself in love before,
he said, but he now knew that he had met his fate for the first and last
time. He should leave home, he protested, that same day, and unless I
could give him some hope of toleration, if not of forgiveness, should
probably never return, for he dreaded my displeasure more even than he
loved the very ground I trod on, &c., &c. All in the worst and washiest
style, as silly and vulgar as a Valentine! But he didn't leave home;
for, to my dismay, he appeared at tea-time, on the best possible terms
with himself, having been out all the morning with the Bragford hounds,
and lunched, as he told us, in very charming society at the 'Peacock.'"
A Red Indian displays, I believe, wonderful fortitude and self-command
under punishment, but a woman tortured by another woman far surpasses
the savage in the calm hypocrisy with which she masks and subdues her
pangs. Not a quiver in her voice, not a shadow on her face, betrayed
more than natural curiosity, while Mrs. Lascelles inquired, in a tone of
perfect unconcern:
"Do you remember, by chance, whether it was the day of the railway
accident?"
The day of the railway accident was impressed on her memory, less indeed
by the collision, which only damaged a few trucks in a goods-train, than
by an interview she held with Sir Henry after luncheon, in which he had
given her to understand, as distinctly as he could without saying it in
so many words, that amongst all the women of the world there was but one
for _him_, and her name was Rose Lascelles!
"I _do_ remember something about a smash that same day at Bragford
Station," answered Miss Ross, "and it seemed to me miraculous that
nobody was hurt. I only saw it in the papers next morning, for Sir Henry
never mentioned the subject--I suppose he was so full of other matters."
"What do you mean?" said Mrs. Lascelles, getting up to stir the fire,
and so turning her face from her companion. "You think I am interested
in Sir Henry Hallaton, and you have got something more to tell me about
him. Frankly, I _am_ interested--to a certain extent. Be as open with me
as I am with you, and tell me all you know."
Miss Ross took the pug on her lap, settled herself in a comfortable
attitude, and proceeded calmly with her narrative.
"That same evening, when the girls went to bed, Sir Henry detained me,
almost by force, in the library. Without the slightest reserve or
hesitation, he related all the particulars of his interview that
afternoon with yourself. He assured me solemnly, that you were avowedly
attached to him, and ready at any time to become his wife. He showed me
a letter you wrote him, and a ring you had given him to keep."
"He took it to be mended!" interrupted the other, with great
indignation. "I never gave it him--I insisted on having it back that
very day."
"It wouldn't come off," proceeded Miss Ross, "for I own I was malicious
enough to ask for it as a proof of his sincerity, and I couldn't help
laughing while he tugged and tugged to get it over the joint of his
little finger. Then he told me that he had thought of marrying only for
the sake of his daughters; that he had looked about him for what the
advertisements call 'a suitable person,' and had selected Mrs.
Lascelles--I use his own words--as a lady-like woman, with a good
fortune, not at all bad-looking, and thoroughly devoted to himself."
"Upon my word, I am very much obliged to him!" broke, in the other, with
but little more vehemence, after all, than the occasion demanded. "The
man has lied to you like a villain! and his lie is all the more cowardly
that it has a certain leaven of truth. Engaged to him I never was; love
him I never did; I might have _liked_ him, perhaps, if I hadn't found
him out in time, but there is no fear that I shall ever like him now!"
"All this fiction, then," continued Miss Ross, "served as a preamble for
a proposal in form to the young lady who had entered his house as
companion to his daughters, and whom he was bound, by every manly
sentiment, to shelter and protect. I told him so, and he answered that
he could in no way fulfil this duty so completely as by making me his
wife. Then I laughed at him--I couldn't help it--and he looked so hurt
and sad, for he's not a bad actor, that I almost pitied him for the
moment, as you _do_ pity people on the stage, though you know it's
acting all the time. At last I got sleepy, and wanted to go to bed, so I
determined to put him to a real test, knowing perfectly well what would
be the result.
"I pretended to soften. I gave him my hand, no more, though he was an
old player, and obviously accustomed to consider such concessions the
preliminaries of a winning game. Then I told him he ought to know my
history; that I had entered his house under false pretences; that long
ago, and far away (this is _true_, Mrs. Lascelles, but let it never
again be alluded to by you or me), I had loved and been deceived, and
could never care for any one in that way again. Lastly, I reminded him
of his children, his age (I couldn't resist _that_!) and his position,
watching him very narrowly while I shammed a good cry, and sobbed out
'Sir Henry, I am not fit to be your wife.'
"Then I unmasked my man, just as I expected all along. His face
brightened, he never dropped my hand, he looked pleased and altogether
relieved, while he embarked on a long and fluent dissertation, in which
he insisted on the advantages of a protector and a home, on his own
merits, on my friendless position, and on the reparation I owed him for
his resolution at once to break off with _you_. Not a word now about
matrimony. Oh! I was never deceived in him from the beginning--not for a
moment!
"I told him so. 'Do you think,' I said, 'after all I have gone through,
after all I have confessed to you, that I have a spark of sentiment, an
atom of romance left--that I would trust myself to the tender mercies of
any man living, except as his wife?'
"He turned pale, walked to the fire, poked it furiously, and came back
with his hands in his pockets glaring at me like a tiger. 'Then _be_ my
wife, Miss Ross!' he growled. 'You won't like it, but I'll do my best to
make you happier than the others!' He was horridly put out, I saw, so I
made him a curtsy, took my candlestick, and marched off to bed. I locked
my door, you may be sure, and as he was off early next morning to pay a
visit in the neighbourhood, he came and knocked several times to wish me
'Good-bye,' but I pretended to be asleep, and before he returned
yesterday I was gone.
"Mrs. Lascelles, you are the only person who was ever good to me without
a selfish motive. I have tried to repay you by putting you on your
guard. I can begin my fight with the world where I left off--I rather
like it. But think of me kindly sometimes, and try not to forget our
drive in the dark to Midcombe Station. I must go now. I don't suppose we
shall ever meet again!"
But she didn't go, notwithstanding, for Mrs. Lascelles had many more
questions to ask, many more confidences to receive, all tending to the
condemnation of her false adorer, Sir Henry Hallaton. Tea-time found the
ladies still in earnest conclave, and their intimacy must have been
closely cemented, for Miss Ross had already confided to her hostess that
her Christian name was Virginie, and that she was familiarly called
"Jin."