"REMORSEFUL."
Mrs. Lascelles was a lady who could ill-keep a secret. Such disclosures
as those made in the boudoir after tea, when Helen had gone up-stairs to
rest, roused alike her indignation and her sympathy; she would have
cried for justice from the house-tops, rather than suffer the fraud to
pass unexposed. Even Goldthred did not escape rebuke for the very
negative part he had taken in the transaction.
"Why didn't you bring it here that instant?" she asked, in her pretty,
imperious way, while she filled her admirer's tea-cup, and offered him
the easiest chair in the room. "You shouldn't have kept such a thing
from _me_ for half-a-second. It's not like you to be so wicked, and I'm
determined to scold you well!"
"But it was one o'clock in the morning," urged Goldthred, with a comical
look of deprecation. "And you must remember I thought you didn't care a
bit for me then. Of course it would be different _now_."
"That's nonsense," she exclaimed. "You know I always liked you; and as
for your cool suggestion of coming here at one in the morning _now_, I
beg you won't attempt anything of the kind. But you _ought_ to have told
me indeed, because, after all, the note might have been from somebody
who had fallen in love with you!"
"I didn't suppose such a thing possible," he answered simply, "and I'm
sure I didn't wish it. I used to think happiness was never intended for
me. The one I liked seemed so much too good. I'm often afraid I shall
wake and find it all a dream."
"Not half good enough," she murmured, making a great clatter among the
cups and saucers. "I wish I was ten times better, and I mean to be. But
never mind about that. Don't you see exactly what has happened?"
"No, I don't," he answered, wondering fondly whether in Europe could be
found such a pair of hands and arms as were hovering about the tea-tray
under his nose. "I dare say I'm very stupid, but hang me if I can see
daylight anywhere!"
"Not if you look for it in my bracelet," she said, laughing. "But it's
obvious Helen has written you a note intended for somebody else.
Unless"--here she threatened him with a pretty finger he longed to
kiss--"unless you have reason to believe she valued the admiration you
could not disguise in all your looks and actions."
"Don't say such things!" he exclaimed, in the utmost alarm. "Mrs.
Lascelles, do you think I'm--I'm _that_ sort of fellow? Surely _you_
know me better. Surely you are only in joke!"
"You're deep, sir" she continued, still laughing at an earnestness that
touched while it amused her. "Deep and sly! However, I'll believe you
this time, and if you're honestly stupid I'll condescend to explain. Can
you take in, that if the note wasn't written to _you_ it must have been
intended for somebody else? I can guess who that somebody is. I'll ask
Helen point-blank. She's as proud as Lucifer, but I think she has
confidence in me."
She _did_ ask Helen point-blank, and that young lady, though as proud as
Lucifer, condescended to own the truth, but accompanied her confession
with a solemn declaration that everything was at an end between herself
and Frank Vanguard, so that the great desire of her heart now was never
to set eyes on him again. Mrs. Lascelles interpreting these sentiments
in her own way, sat down forthwith, and penned the following little
note, for further mystification of this bewildered young officer.
"DEAR CAPTAIN VANGUARD,--I have discovered something you ought to
know. Such an _embrouillement_ was never heard of but in an
improbable farce, or still more improbable novel. Come to luncheon
to-morrow, and we will lay our heads together in hopes of
unravelling the skein. Miss Hallaton is staying with me. You will
like to meet her I am sure, only you and I must have our conference
_first_.
"Yours very sincerely,
"ROSE LASCELLES."
Frank's heart leaped under his cuirass while he read this mysterious
epistle, on his return from a sweltering inspection in the Long Walk. He
had been trying to persuade himself he did not care for Helen, and
fancied he succeeded. It was humiliating to feel that the bare mention
of her name could thus affect him, yet was there a keen, strange
pleasure in the sensation nevertheless.
On the barrack-room table of this fortunate dragoon there lay however
another little missive, bearing to that of Mrs. Lascelles the sort of
likeness a pen-wiper has to a butterfly. Its envelope was squarer and
larger, its monogram gaudier and more intricate, its superscription
fainter, paler, more aslant, more illegible. It exhaled a strong odour
of musk, and was written on paper that glistened like satin.
"Dear Frank," it ran, "I shall be in the park to-morrow, at twelve.
Look for the pony-carriage. I _want_ you--so no nonsense. Don't
fail--there's a good fellow.--Yours truly,--KATE CREMORNE. P.S. If
I'm not under the clock, wait there till I come."
"What can _she_ be up to now?" thought Frank, carefully twisting this
communication into a spill with which to light his cigar. "Got into a
mess of some sort, no doubt, and expects me to pull her through, like
the rest of them. How odd it is, I'm always blundering into
entanglements with women I don't care two straws about, and the one I
really _could_ love, the one who would make me a good man, I do believe,
and certainly a happy one, seems to be drifting every day farther and
farther out of my reach. I shall see her to-morrow, and what then? I
suppose our greeting will be confined to a distant bow, and some
conventional sentence more painful than a cut direct. Still, I shall see
her. That will be something. How strange it seems to be so easily
satisfied now, when I think of all I hoped and expected so short a time
ago. Well, beggars mustn't be choosers. I suppose I may as well meet
Kate Cremorne first, and do her a turn if I can. She's a good girl,
Kate, after all. Not half a bad-looking one neither, and as honest as
the day."
So twelve o'clock found Frank very nicely dressed, and with a
wonderfully prosperous air, considering his many troubles, picking his
way daintily across the deserted Ride, to where a solitary
pony-carriage, with a solitary pony drawing, and a solitary lady driving
it, stood like a pretty toy, drawn up by the footway under the clock.
Miss Cremorne received him with coldness, even displeasure. She
entertained a high opinion of her own acuteness, and thought she had hit
upon a discovery by no means to his credit. In her many visits to Miss
Ross--visits never made empty-handed, and to which, in all probability,
the latter owed her restoration to health--she gathered from Jin that a
friendship had lately existed between herself and the Captain Vanguard
of whom they both loved to talk. Now, Belgravia and Brompton look at
most matters in life, and particularly those connected with the
affections, from different points of view. Kate, though a hybrid
belonging to both districts, partook largely of the sentiments and
feelings affected by the latter. She imagined a touching little romance,
of which Jin's dark, curly-headed boy was the sequel, and being herself
_sans peur_, determined to show Frank she did not hold him _sans
reproche_.
"Jump in," said she, with extreme abruptness, as he approached the
carriage. "I've got a crow to pick with you, and I mean to have it out.
You're a nice young man, now! Don't you think you are?"
"Certainly," answered Frank, with imperturbable _bonhomie_. "I used to
hope you thought so too!"
"I'll tell you what I used to think," said Kate, lashing the pony with
considerable vehemence. "I used to think you were a good fellow at
heart, though the nonsense had never been taken out of you; that you
were only vain and affected on the surface, like lots of you guardsmen,
but that there was a _man_ inside the dandy, if one could only get at
him. Oh, Captain Vanguard, I'm disappointed in you! If I cared two
straws for a fellow, and he did as you've done, I'd never speak to him
again! There!"
The whip was again dropped on the pony, and they shaved the wheels of an
omnibus to an inch.
"Don't take it so to heart, Kate!" laughed Frank. "If I _have_ deserted
you, I'll come back again. You know, Miss Cremorne, that you are the
only woman I ever loved, and all that. Fate has been obdurate; but
rather would I be torn with wild----"
"_Will_ you be serious?" demanded the fair charioteer, knitting her
brows, and looking intensely austere. "Do you know where I am driving
you now?"
He was incorrigible.
"To Gretna, I trust, or the Register Office. That's what I should like
with _you_. Let's have it out, Kate. Jump over a broomstick, and the
thing's done!"
"I'll tell you where you're going," she said gravely: "I am taking you
to see Miss Ross!"
His whole countenance changed; and with all his self-command, he could
not disguise how deeply he was agitated.
"Miss Ross!" he stammered. "You have heard from her! You know where she
is!"
"I have _seen_ her every day for the last fortnight," was the answer.
"Seen her battle and bear up against sorrow, sickness, privation--actual
want! Ay, many a day, when you've been sitting down to a dinner of four
courses and dessert, that woman and her boy--her boy, Captain
Vanguard--have not had enough to eat!"
"Great heavens, Kate!" he exclaimed. "This is too shocking! Why did I
not know of it before?"
"Why, indeed!" repeated Kate. "You may well ask yourself the question.
Whose duty was it but yours to be answerable for her, poor dear, to
find her a home, to provide for her and the child? I don't want to have
many words about it. I'm not one of that sort; but I tell you she would
have starved--yes--_starved_, if I hadn't happened to run against her by
good luck, just in the nick of time."
"God bless you, Kate!"
His eyes were full of tears, and she looked at him a little less hardly
than before, but answered in scornful accents:
"Ought such a job as that to have been left to _me_?"
"Miss Cremorne! Kate!" he urged; "you think worse of me than I deserve!
There is nothing I wouldn't have done, no sacrifice I wouldn't have
made, to insure Miss Ross's comfort! It is not my fault, indeed! I give
you my word of honour, I have left no stone unturned to discover her
place of refuge from the moment she disappeared, and never obtained the
slightest trace of her till to-day."
"Gammon!" replied Kate, pulling the pony short up by the kerbstone.
"There's the house. It's not much to look at, but it's better inside
than out, since she's found a chance friend, poor thing! Run up-stairs
and see her. Say I meant to have taken her out for a drive, but I'll
come again in the afternoon. I never did--I never will--believe you're a
bad-hearted fellow, Frank; but you've done no end of mischief here. Go
and undo it now."
So Kate drove off at high pressure, leaving Frank on the door-step,
confronting a maid-of-all-work, who, seeming to expect him, yet glanced
from time to time with considerable interest and approval at his general
appearance and outline.
He was shown into a clean, neatly furnished apartment, from which he
could distinctly hear his announcement as "The gentleman, if you please,
ma'am," and the rustle of a dress that followed this information. Then
the door opened, and Miss Ross stopped short on the threshold,
exclaiming only--
"Frank!"
The tone denoted nothing but extreme and overwhelming astonishment.
Looking in her face, he could not but admit she was sadly altered. A few
short weeks had changed the brilliant, piquante beauty to a faded
invalid, with wan, wasted features, lit up only by the wonderful black
eyes.
His first thought was the humiliating question--"Can this be the woman I
fancied I loved so dearly?" His second brought a manly and natural
resolution to stand by her all the more firmly for her distress.
"Jin," he exclaimed, "why did you leave me like that? What has been the
matter? and why didn't you trust entirely to _me_?"
He would have taken her in his arms, but she waved him off, and the
delight that had flashed across her face when she confronted him gave
way to a cold, unnatural reserve.
"Did you get my letter?" she asked. "And why are you here?"
He explained how and why he had come, touching on the disappointment he
experienced in the contents of her communication, trying to put into his
tones that warmth of affection which he felt was completely extinguished
in his heart.
"I did not mean to see you again, Captain Vanguard," she said, in a
measured voice; "I did not _wish_ to see you again. The person I
expected was your friend, Mr. Picard. That man stands between us, and
always must. I will have no more concealments now--no more foul play--no
more crime. I have been punished enough; I pray heaven I may not be
punished yet more! I deceived you, Captain Vanguard, because I--well--I
believe I _did_ care for you, as much as it is in my wicked, heartless
nature to care for anybody; but I meant you to marry me. And all the
time Picard was my husband!"
"Your husband!" He had no power to utter another word.
"It takes your breath away," she exclaimed, with a touch of her old
malice. "You are so innocent! so inexperienced! Frank, I believe you
_did_ mean honestly by me. I believe you thought you liked me; and I
certainly--well--I liked _you_. Horribly--shamefully! To win you, I was
guilty of a fraud, a degradation, _une bassesse, entendez vous? une
lâcheté_. I took the letter of a girl who loved you, and I sent it off
to another man--a good creature, _mais tant soit peu ganache_, who
didn't know what to make of it. Never mind. I detached you from her, and
caught you for myself. But I would not make you a slave to my husband; I
know him too well. None of us come out of this _imbroglio_ very
creditably, and, believe me, your part is not of the highest calibre;
but I have injured you, and now, because my spirit is broke, I try to
make reparation. Go to your Miss Hallaton; explain all to her; marry
her, if you will! Oh! Frank, be happy with her, I entreat of you; and
never come to see me any more!"
She looked in his face for about half a second, made a plunge at his
hand, caught it eagerly to her heart, her eyes, her lips, and was in the
next room, of which he heard the door locked and bolted, before he had
realised the fact that she was gone.
He waited, he called, he went and tapped at that securely fortified
retreat, he even rang for the servant, and begged her to ask the lady
whether there were no more commands for him before he left; but without
avail.
"Why the devil Kate brought me here," said Frank to himself, standing
once more in the street, looking helplessly about for a Hansom cab, "is
more than I can make out! One thing's clear--I'm not bound in any way
to Miss Ross. Hang it! she's _not_ Miss Ross! What a fool I've been! I
don't deserve to get out of the mess so well. Helen, my darling! I ought
to have known, if they hadn't got _at_ you, you'd have been as true as
steel! By Jove, though, I'm bound in honour to book up to Kate! It must
have cost her a goodish stake, and I don't suppose Picard will."
But when this proposal was submitted to Miss Cremorne, she repudiated it
with a contempt savouring of Belgravia, and an energy of expression not
unworthy of Brompton.