One of the greatest among our most English of English poets has finely
expressed the melancholy transformation which one brief day may make in
human destinies, thus:--
One day! one night! yet what a change they bring!
High in the clouds the same sweet birds may sing,
The same green leaves may rustle in the air,
And the same flowers unfold their blossoms fair,--
Still Nature smile, unchanged in all her plan,
But, oh, what change may blight the soul of man!
The sun may rise as brightly as before,
But many a heart can hail its beams no more;
’Tis but one turn of earth’s incessant ball,
Yet in that space what myriad hopes may fall!
What love depart! what friendship melt away!
Ay, Virtue’s self may wane to her decay,
Torn from her throne, heart-placed, in one eventful day!
And if this be true--as it is,--none of us should be surprised at the
changes wrought in six years. Yet Major Desmond was so far removed from
the philosophy of indifferentism as to be more than surprised at the
complete metamorphosis of “young D’Arcy-Muir,” as he now called him in
his own mind, instead of the old, familiar and endearing name of “Boy.”
In half an hour’s walk with him through the London streets the Major,
who had seen all sorts and conditions of men young and old,--lads
beginning their career, and veterans on the verge of finishing it,
gauged his disposition and temperament pretty correctly. Two
characteristics were particularly marked in him which did not augur well
for his future. One was a slighting contempt for women,--the result, of
course, of contact with his mother’s shiftless, slovenly, useless mode
of life. Her inability to awaken either admiration or respect in her
son’s mind, was a seed of mischief which was beginning to bear abundant
harvest. The other dominating point was a spirit of weariness, listless
boredom and cynicism, which might be real or might be affected,--but
which, whether it were one or the other, was indescribably irritating to
a man of the Major’s frank and vigorous type. “Nil admirari” was not his
Gospel. His particular habit of life was to consider all things with
gratitude and appreciation,--to be thankful for the simple privilege of
being alive, and having eyes wherewith to see the many varying wonders
and beauties of the world which Providence had ordained to him as his
home. But it may be remarked, in passing, that this is unfortunately not
the ‘habit’ which is generally encouraged by the latter-day masters of
schools and colleges among their boys. They make much of the
difficulties of life,--but little of its pleasures. The hardships of
learning are insisted upon, but not the delights. The little dry
pedagogues who undertake the high and responsible business of fostering
the growth and guiding the education of young unspoilt natures, do their
best as a rule to cramp and destroy all that is fresh and eager and
enthusiastic. A young colt gallops about in the meadows, and frisks and
rolls on the soft green turf, rejoicing in his youth and strength,--but
the young boy must take his college ‘sports’ as he takes his
lessons,--by rule and line and with more or less severity, under the
control of a master. Absolute freedom of body and soul,--or what may be
called pure revelry in the mere fact of life, is almost unknown to the
‘crammed’ modern lad,--he is old before his time,--and it is no uncommon
thing to see a stripling of fourteen or fifteen quite wrinkled in face,
with that dull film in his eyes which used to be the special and
distinctive sign of extreme old age. It is a sad pity!--for youth is a
gracious thing and life is full of beauty, and the natural joy, the
opulent vivacity and radiating force of a truly young heart, are the
most cheerful of all physical influences. One of the pagan philosophers
asserts that “if a country is peopled with joyous inhabitants, that is,
those who take pleasure in innocent and healthful pastimes, in which
young men and maids take equal part, such as country games, village
feasts and dances, it is a safe and good country to live in, and you may
be sure that the people thereof are more virtuous than vicious, more
wise than foolish,--but if things are in such a condition that the youth
of both sexes are constrained to dulness, and have no mirth set forth
for them, such as meadow festivals of flowers, and harmless tripping
forth together to the sound of music, then beware, for it is a country
full of languors and vapourish discontents, where there will be
seditions and troubles, if not sooner, then late, and men will agitate
with those who labour, for excess of payment rather than excess of toil,
while honesty and open dealing will be more known by memory than present
fact.”
And if, in pagan times, they could so consider the merit and national
advantage of the spirit of joy, how much more ought we, in our Christian
generation, to feel that we cannot do too much to inculcate that happy
spirit among the young,--we who have almost ‘touched’ immortality in the
divine teaching of Christ,--we, who know there is no death but only a
‘passing on’ from joy to joy!
Major Desmond was one of those few remaining ‘grand old men’ who,
without any cant or feigned excess of piety, believed humbly and
devoutly in the holiness and saving grace of the Christian faith. Both
as a man and a soldier,--safe at home, or face to face with death on the
battlefield, he had guided his conduct as best he could by its plain
principles, and it had, as he himself expressed it, ‘carried him
through.’ But it lay too close to his heart for him to willingly make
it a subject of conversation,--yet, while he talked with Boy, or rather
while he elicited certain scrappy monosyllables from him in reply to his
own easy chat, he became gradually aware that the lad was a complete
atheist,--that he had no idea whatever of God, and no sense of the
proportion and balance existing between the material and spiritual side
of things. The deep, hard cynicism which showed itself more and more as
the foundation of his character made him casual and flippant even in his
‘Yes’ or ‘No’; and by-and-by, after trying him on various themes,--his
home, his studies, his ‘sports,’ his interests generally--Desmond
instinctively realised that this young and embittered scrap of humanity
was sitting in cold judgment on himself, and relegating him to the level
of a garrulous old man who did not know what he was talking about. For
irreverence to age is one of the unadmirable features of a large
proportion of the rising ‘new’ generation. As soon as this idea was
borne in upon his mind, the Major came to a sudden halt.
“Well, you’re nearly where you want to be, aren’t you?” he demanded.
Boy looked about him. They were at the corner of Trafalgar Square.
“Yes. It’s just down Northumberland Avenue.”
“All right!” and Desmond glanced at his watch--“Five minutes to three!
You’d better look sharp! Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Boy carelessly, without raising his cap, and in another
moment he had gone.
Major Desmond paused a moment, staring after him. Then he shook his
head. Then he took out his cigar-case, chose a cigar, and lit it. Then
he walked slowly and thoughtfully to his club, where he found his old
friend ‘Fitz,’ “of the rueful countenance,” in a favourite arm-chair
near the window reading the paper.
“Hullo!” said that gentleman.
“Hullo!” responded the Major dismally.
“Where have you been?” inquired ‘Fitz’--“You look as if you were down on
your luck!”
“Do I?” and Major Desmond threw himself into the opposite chair. “It is
not that. I’ve had a depressing companion.”
“Oh!” said Fitz. “Where did you pick him up? Who was he?”
“Boy,” said the Major, with a sort of grunt that was half a groan--“at
least, not Boy, but the young chap that used to be Boy.”
Fitz raised his melancholy blue eyes with a bewildered expression.
“Do you mean the little fellow Miss Leslie was so fond of?”
“Yes. It’s a blow to her, Fitz!--I’m sure it _must_ be a blow!”
Fitz was puzzled, and grew more saturnine of aspect than ever.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “What’s happened? Has he got anything the
matter with him?”
“He’s got everything the matter with him!” said the Major, bursting
forth into hot speech--“everything! Callousness is the matter with
him--worldliness is the matter with him--indifference to affection is
the matter with him,--d----n it, sir!--general priggishness is the
matter with him! By Jove! The rascal doesn’t seem to have an ounce of
real warm blood in all his body!”
The thin stern physiognomy of the worthy Captain ‘Fitz’ remained
unmoved, except for the faintest flickering expression, which might have
been satire, grief, surprise, scorn, or humour, whichever way the
observer chose to take it.
“Ah!” he said, letting the ejaculation escape his lips slowly, as though
it were a puff of smoke.
The Major rolled his eyes indignantly.
“Ah!” he repeated--“Is that all you can say?”
“My dear chap, what do you want me to say?” remonstrated Fitz--“There’s
nothing to be said!”
“That’s true!” said the Major, and relapsed into silence. But not for
long, however. Drawing his cigar out of his mouth after an interval of
meditative smoking, he began in subdued tones,--
“When I think of her, Fitz--you know who I mean--Letty,--when I think of
her sweetness and patience and goodness, and when I remember all the
pretty tender ways she had with that little fellow!--and when--after all
these years, he came to visit her to-day, and I saw her looking
wistfully at him to see if he had the smallest pulse of affection
beating in his hard young heart for her, I could have cried! Yes, I
could! I’m an old fool of course,--you can call me one if you like and
have done with it. But that’s how I felt. Of course years have gone
by,--he was a child when she saw him last--but I should have
thought--yes, I should certainly have thought, that if he had any
recollections of his childhood at all, he would at least have remembered
her--and how she loved him!”
Whereupon Fitz roused himself to utterance.
“There’s where you were wrong, Dick”--he said. “You have made the same
fatal mistake we all make when we think that love--love of any
kind--will last!”
The Major looked at him steadfastly, but did not interrupt him.
“It’s the same thing everywhere. Men and women fall in love,--swear
eternal fidelity--and by-and-by we find them figuring in the divorce
court. Other men and women resign themselves gracefully to the monotony
of each other’s companionship for life, and God sends them children to
cheer up the dullness a little, and they think those children are
perfect paragons, who will grow up to love them in their old age. Not a
bit of it! Not nowadays. Old folks are voted a bore,--and the young cub
of the present day may often be heard declaring that the ‘Governor’ has
had ‘too long an innings,’ and ‘doesn’t know when to die.’ As for
Boy,--Miss Letty’s pet Boy,--from all you tell me, he has gone; there’s
only a young cub left now--a cub who doesn’t care, and doesn’t mean to
care about anything or anybody but himself. That’s the supreme result of
modern training,--it is ’pon my soul! Boys are brought up in the code of
selfishness from the very beginning. Their mothers spoil them and foster
all their bad points instead of their good ones,--and as soon as they
begin to go about in the world, a lot of idiotic girls and women--the
kind of women who _must_ have a masculine thing to pay court to them,
whether he be a raw youth or a seasoned old stager--get hold of them and
make shameless love to them. And their heads are of course turned the
wrong way round,--they think they are the most precious and amazing
objects in all creation,--and instead of paying court to women, and
learning to be chivalrous and reverential, they expect to be courted
themselves and admired, as if they were full-blown heroes from the
classic world of conquest. That’s the way of it. Boy has no doubt caught
the fever of conceit. He probably expected Miss Letty to kneel down and
kiss his boot-ties.”
“Part of your argument may be right,” said the Major,--“but part of it
is entirely wrong. You said in the beginning that we all of us make a
mistake when we think that love--love of any kind--will last. Did you
not?”
“I did,” admitted Fitz, looking slightly shame-faced under the calm
stare of the Major’s eye.
“Well, you know that’s d----d nonsense!” pursued the Major bluntly.
“You know as well as I do that I--I, for example, have loved the same
woman ever since I was thirty, and there’s no change in me yet. And
Letty--Letty has loved the same ne’er-do-weel all her life, though he’s
a corpse and not a very entire one by this time I should say, though she
thinks, God bless her, that he’s a sort of angel-King on a throne in
Heaven--which is a pleasing and pretty picture enough, only it doesn’t
seem to quite fit Harry Raikes. However, there you are, you see,--love
does last--when it _is_ love!”
“When it _is_--yes--but when _is_ it?” asked Fitz, with the smile which
so beautifully altered his features beginning to illumine his deep-set
eyes. “You see, you and Miss Leslie are old-fashioned! That’s what it
is! You’re old-fashioned, sir!” he repeated, getting up and prodding a
finger into the Major’s waistcoat. “You belong to the last century, like
one’s grandmother’s old china! You are a part of the days when, if a
married woman entertained a score of lovers apart from her own husband,
she was considered a disgrace to her sex. All that is altered, my boy!
She is now a ‘queen of society’! Ha, ha, ha! You believe in God’s
blessing on true love! But, my dear fellow, the present generation
doesn’t care whether there’s a God to bless anything or not, or whether
love is false or true. It isn’t love, you see. It’s something else. Love
has gone out with the tinder-boxes and stage-coaches. It’s all
electricity and motor-cars now--flash and fizzle through life at a
tearing pace, and leave a bad smell behind you! Ha, ha! You’re
old-fashioned, Dick! I like you for it because I’m a bit old-fashioned
myself--but we’re out of it,--we’re old stumps of trees that can’t
understand the rank and quickly withering weeds of youth that are
growing up around us to-day--weeds that are going to choke and poison
the destinies of England by-and-by!”
The Major got up, possibly moved thereto by the pressure of his friend’s
fingers in the middle of his waistcoat.
“By that time you and I will be underground, Fitz,” he said
half-lightly, half-sadly. “And thank God for it!--for if any harm comes
to England, I don’t want to be alive to see it. I wonder if I shall be
sitting on a gold throne in Heaven, next to Harry Raikes? If so, angel
Letty will have to choose between us!”
He laughed,--and the two old friends presently left the club together
and went for an afternoon stroll through Piccadilly and the Park, where
they saw Miss Letty driving in her victoria with pretty Violet Morrison
by her side. They raised their hats to both ladies, and Fitz commented
on their looks.
“Nothing will ever make Miss Letty old,” he said. “She always has the
eyes of a child who trusts both God and man.”
The Major nodded approvingly.
“That’s very well said, Fitz,--and it’s true,--but she’s had a blow
to-day. I’m sure she has. She doesn’t say much--she’s not one to say
much,--she may say nothing, even to me,--but she’s had a blow. Boy’s not
what she thought he would be. I’ve got a bit of a heartache over it. I’m
sorry we came back to England!”
Fitz was silent. He fully understood and participated in his old
friend’s feelings, but he felt that the subject was too sore a one to be
discussed, and when he spoke again it was on a different theme.
That evening Major Desmond escorted his niece and Miss Letty to the
theatre, and just before starting, while Violet was still engaged in
putting the finishing touches to her pretty evening toilette, Miss Letty
came in alone to the Major, where he pensively waited in the
sitting-room, and said softly,--
“Dick!”
He started, and turned round, and was fairly taken aback for the moment
by the spiritual beauty of her gentle face framed in its snow-white
hair. She was fully attired for the theatre, and wore an opera-mantle of
some silvery neutral tint, showered with lace;--and a pretty flush came
on her cheeks as she met the faithful tender gaze of the man who had
loved her so loyally and so long. Having expressed his admiration of
her charm by a look, he responded,--
“Well, Letty?”
“I want you,” she said, laying her delicately gloved hand on his arm,
“to promise me one thing. Will you?”
“Anything and everything in the world!” said the Major recklessly.
“It is only just this,--do not talk to me at all, or ask me what I feel,
about Boy.” Her voice trembled a little,--then she went on,--“It is no
use,--it only makes me think of what might have been and what is not. I
am a little disappointed,--but then--what of that? We all have
disappointments, and it is no use brooding upon them. We only make
ourselves and others miserable. You see I loved Boy as a child;--he is
not a child now--he is getting to be a young man,--and--he does not want
me,--it is not natural he should want me. Do you understand?”
The Major was profoundly moved, but he only nodded and said,--
“Yes,--I understand!”
“He is just a college lad now,--like--like all the rest,” went on Miss
Letty quietly--“and it was my mistake to have expected him to be in any
way different. He will no doubt turn out very well and be a good
soldier. But”--and she suddenly looked up with a swift glance and smile
that went straight to the Major’s heart--“he is Robert D’Arcy-Muir
now,--he is not Boy!”
The Major said not a word, but he took up the little gloved hand resting
on his arm and kissed it. A moment afterwards Violet entered, looking
like a blush rose in a pretty gown of pink chiffon; and the two elderly
folks, welcoming her presence as a relief from emotion and
embarrassment, turned to admire her sweet and fresh appearance. And then
they went to the theatre, and enjoyed “David Garrick,” and the subject
of Boy was avoided among them by mutual consent, both on that evening
and for many a long day afterwards.
But he was not forgotten. Day after day, night after night, Miss Letty
thought of him and wondered what he was doing, but she never heard
whether he had passed his examination or not. His mother never
wrote,--and he himself was evidently unmindful of his promise. Major
Desmond, however, kept his eyes and ears open for news of him, not so
much for the lad’s own sake, as for Miss Letty’s. He had friends at
Sandhurst, and to them he confided his wish to know all the information
they could get concerning “young D’Arcy-Muir,” if he should eventually
go there. To which he received the reply that if the young chap did get
to Sandhurst at all, they would let him know. With this he had to be
satisfied, knowing that it would be worse than useless to enquire about
him from his parents, the Honourable Jim being half paralysed, and Mrs.
D’Arcy-Muir being incapable of giving a straight answer at any time to a
straight question.
By-and-by, however, the attention of Major Desmond and Miss Letty began
to be entirely engrossed by a new cause of anxiety and perplexity.
Violet was looking ill, and getting pale and thin, and it was evident
she was unhappy. Yet she never complained, and always tried to be
cheerful, though it seemed an effort to her.
“Look here, Letty,--what is the matter with the girl?” asked the Major
bluntly one day. “I have worried her to tell me, and she won’t. Does she
tell _you_?”
Miss Letty’s kind face clouded, and her eyes grew very sorrowful.
“No, Dick, she has not actually told me, but I can guess. She has not
heard from Max Nugent for a long time,--his letters have practically
ceased.”
“Ceased!” repeated the Major, getting very red. “What do you mean,
Letty? Ceased?”
“She will not admit it,” continued Miss Letty. “She will not own, even
to herself, that he is neglecting her. When I ask her if she has heard
from him, she answers me all in a nervous hurry, and assures me that it
is because he is away travelling somewhere that she has received no
letters. She says he has no time to write. But one would think that if
he loved her as he professed to love her, he would certainly find time,
or make time to write.”
“Of course he would!” said the Major brusquely. “There is no power on
earth that can hinder a man from writing to the woman he loves. Even if
he were ill or dying, he could get a friend to send a wire for him. No,
no,--there is some humbug going on,--I am sure of it!” He took one or
two rapid strides up and down the room. “Letty!” he said, stopping
abruptly in front of her,--“when you were engaged to Harry Raikes did he
write to you often?”
“Not as often as I should have liked,” answered Miss Letty with a faint
smile,--“but then you see he was in India,--that is a long way off--and
of course he could not possibly write by every mail.”
“Couldn’t he?” And the Major gave a curious grunt of incredulity. “Why
not?”
“If he could he would have done so,” said Miss Letty gently but firmly.
“I am sure of that.”
The Major walked up and down the room, loyally battling against the
temptation which assailed him to tell her the whole truth and nothing
but the truth.
“You never doubted him?” he asked suddenly.
“Doubted him!” And Miss Letty’s eyes opened in mild half-reproachful
amazement. “Never! How can you suggest such a thing! I knew how true and
good he was, and how much he loved me,--and that is why I have devoted
all my life to his memory.”
Up and down, up and down, once more strode the Major, and at the third
turn the temptation was conquered and he was himself again.
“Then according to your experience, Letty, Violet ought not to doubt Max
Nugent, because he has, as you say, practically ceased writing to her?”
Miss Letty looked puzzled.
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” she answered. “You see they are not
engaged,--you would not consent to an engagement till Mr. Nugent had
proved his sincerity,--and I think you were wise; but as matters now
stand, the child cannot insist on his writing to her. She has no hold
upon him, save that of his professed love and honour.”
“That ought to be a strong hold,” said the Major. “Honour especially. No
man has a right to win a woman’s love and then throw it away again. I
must speak to Violet.”
And he did. He called unexpectedly one morning to take her to a Picture
Exhibition, and after sauntering about the galleries a little, he sat
down in a retired corner with her and put his first question very
gently.
“Violet, when did you last hear from Nugent?”
The girl coloured hotly.
“Some time ago.”
“How long ago?”
“I forget,” she answered listlessly.
Her face was bent, and he could not see it under the shadow of her hat.
“Violet!”
Slowly she raised her head,--her eyes were full of tears. The Major
smothered an oath and strove to speak calmly.
“Look here, child: you can trust me, can’t you?”
“Yes, uncle,” she murmured inaudibly.
“Well, don’t fret. Be a brave little woman. _I_ will see to this for
you. It is no good living in suspense. Better know the worst at once!”
Violet furtively dashed away her teardrops, and looked at him anxiously.
“The worst ...?” she murmured.
The Major squared his shoulders resolutely.
“Look here, Violet: when we have to swallow a dose of bitter medicine,
we don’t like it, but if we are told it will save our lives, we do it.
Now, in this affair of Max Nugent, the sooner your medicine is swallowed
the better. I am afraid the man is not sincere. What do you yourself
think about it?”
Violet sighed deeply.
“I do not understand it,” she said, in rather a tremulous voice. “I have
written to him several times, but have had no reply. You may as well
know all. The last letter I had from him was quite two months ago, and
in that he said he was coming to Europe immediately--to Paris first--and
he promised to come on to London afterwards and see me.”
“And was that letter exactly what you expected it to be?” asked the
Major, looking at her narrowly. “Was it all that you had a right to
expect?”
Violet hesitated, then answered truthfully,--
“No. It was just the letter--of a friend.”
The Major rose.
“Come along now,” he said. “I will see into this for you. A millionaire
like Nugent can’t hide his light under a bushel. I will find out where
he is, and see him myself, if I have to cross the ocean to do it.”
Violet looked up at him with tearful eyes.
“You _are_ good to me, uncle!” she said; “but--you know--if he does not
care for me any more----”
“You do not care for him!” finished the Major. “That’s what you must
say, and that is what you must feel.”
The girl shook her head.
“Ah, you may shake your head!” said Desmond; “but I am not going to let
you waste your life as Miss Letty has wasted hers, all for the love of a
rascal. You do not know Letty’s history. I do. She was engaged to a man
I knew, and when he was out in India well away from her he was getting
ready to marry some one else and throw her over. But he caught fever and
died--just in time. Letty never knew that he had been false to her. _I_
knew--but I never told her. And I never mean to tell.”
Violet laid her hand on his arm caressingly.
“Uncle! And you loved her yourself!”
“Now how did you find that out?” said the Major with a little smile.
“Well! You are right--I have loved her nearly all my life. And we have
rubbed on pretty well as friends together--and we have kept the memory
of that dead rascal as holy as if he were a saint. So you see I know
something about love and loyalty, little girl--and I can enter
thoroughly into your feelings. But fortunately you are very young, and
if Nugent turns out a failure your heart will be sore for a while, but
it will mend.”
“Never, uncle!” said Violet. “I can never care for any one else.”
“Nonsense!” said the Major. “You must not talk like that at nineteen.
This is your first love, I grant--but one gets over first love like the
measles.”
“Did you?” asked Violet anxiously.
“God bless my soul! Of course I did. When I was nineteen I fell in love
with my father’s cook. She was a very pretty woman, and made jam puffs
divinely. She married the grocer round the corner,--and somehow I lived
through it. I was nearly thirty when I found Letty--and I have loved
_her_ ever since.”
Violet pressed his arm but said nothing.
“Now come along,” said the Major cheerfully. “Don’t worry yourself, thin
yourself, or lose your looks. Nobody will thank you for that except your
kind female friends. We will clear this little matter up somehow. And I
am sure you are far too high-spirited and straightforward to care for a
man who turns out to be a dishonourable scamp--though mind, I don’t say
he _is_ dishonourable till I have proved it. But unless he has been
kidnapped for his millions by brigands, I don’t see any excuse for his
silence. If he were ill he could send you word,--so there is only one
inference to be drawn from his conduct, and that is, that he doesn’t
mean to keep his promise to you. It is hard for you to look at it in
that light, but you must try, Violet--you must try. If he does turn out
a villain, I will take care he gets a jolly good horsewhipping.”
Violet uttered an exclamation.
“Oh no, uncle!”
“‘Oh no, uncle?’--I say ‘Oh yes, uncle!’ Leave this to me, child! There
are too many scamps sneaking about in society embittering and spoiling
the lives of innocent women, and a few sound thrashings on the backs of
such fellows would be pure joy and relief to the feelings of the
majority. I should like to thrash a millionaire!--especially if his
conduct is on the level of a play-actor, who is the worst kind of
unprincipled rogue between this world and the nearest gallows.” And the
Major chuckled. “I _did_ thrash one of those painted fellows once, and
by Jove!--how I enjoyed it!”
Violet looked up at him timidly with a faint smile.
“It was in India,” said the Major, his eyes twinkling and his cheeks
beginning to crease up with wrinkles of satisfaction at the
recollection. “There came what was supposed to be a tiptop theatrical
company to the place where we were, and among the players there was a
thin, white-faced fellow, as conceited as they make them, who ‘made up’
to look a king or a villain, whichever you fancied--though, to my mind,
the villain suited his style of beauty best. Well, when he was off the
stage, he pretended to be a very fine gentleman indeed,--explained that
he had taken to the stage as a freak--that his mother had nearly broken
her heart over it, and all that sort of ancient stock-in-trade nonsense;
and he pushed himself by degrees into the society of the women, till he
came across a little creature who was fascinated by his artful ways,
thought him a budding ‘genius,’ and listened to his long stories as if
he were an angel singing. And then he poured out more confidences: he
told her how he had in an evil hour married a woman he could not love,
and that she--the little creature aforesaid--was his own true mate, and
all that kind of gibberish. Poor little soul!--she believed him, and was
for immolating herself on the altar of what she believed to be an
‘ideal’ passion. Only there happened to be another little creature
round, to whom he had told the selfsame tale, and she, having more
spirit in her than the first one, came to me and told me all about it.
‘And I have written letters to him!’ she said, stamping her little foot
and flashing her pretty eyes--‘and he won’t give them back--the coward!’
‘What do you want me to do, my dear?’ I said. ‘Thrash him!’ she replied.
And of course I did. I went for him one day when he was tripping
gingerly out on his tiptoes from the place where he put his rouge and
false legs on. I said, ‘Look here, Hamlet--King Richard--As you Like
It--or whatever you are,--you are a scoundrel! Make yourself into all
the people that ever blessed or disgraced the world, you are an
unprincipled cad! I am not Hamlet, thank God!--I am a British officer,
and though you are not worth kicking, you are worth whipping for the fun
of it. Now, Hamlet, look out!’ He smiled pallidly, and said ‘Sir!’--but
the rest of his sentence was lost. I forget what happened afterwards,
till I saw him picked up by two coolies, and carried off. He couldn’t
act for some time afterwards,--he was ill with a kind of influenza! But
I got back the girl’s letters for her.”
The Major laughed heartily over this reminiscence, and enjoyed himself
very much for several minutes, till he noticed the pretty pensive face
of the girl at his side. Then he scolded himself violently and called
himself a brute for not considering her feelings more tenderly.
“Come, come, don’t be downhearted, little woman!” he said kindly. “Take
a bright face to Miss Letty. She has her own trouble to bear--and I can
see she frets over it too, though she never mentions it, and has asked
me not to talk to her about it. But I am sure she had set a good many of
her hopes on Boy.”
“Ah, yes!” and Violet’s quick sympathy showed itself in her expressive
face. “I know how disappointed she was in him! She had been building up
an ideal ‘Boy’ who did not exist.”
“And you have perhaps been building up an ideal Max who does not exist,”
said her uncle good-humouredly. “What a pity it is that all the best and
nicest women in the world will persist in imagining men to be so much
better than they are! We don’t deserve it--we always fail to come up to
the required standard.”
“Not always,” said Violet, her eyes beaming on him affectionately. “You
never fail!”
The Major laughed.
“Oh, don’t idealise _me_, for Heaven’s sake, child!” he said. “I am just
a bluff old man with a highly inflammable temper and an average sense of
honour that’s all. Now try and put your sad thoughts away for the
present, and take Miss Letty for your example,--you can’t do better.
Always bright, always patient, always brave,--she takes everything God
sends her in the same equable spirit, and does her best to keep a
cheerful heart and cheerful face through everything.”
“Yes--but remember,” said Violet tremulously, “thanks to you, she has
never known that her lover was false to her!”
The Major was taken aback by this pathetic observation, and pulled his
white moustache dismally.
“True!--I forgot! She has never known.”
He gave a compassionate side-glance at his niece, and said no more. They
returned to the hotel in silence,--but that afternoon Violet had a long
quiet chat with Miss Letty all alone and told her frankly all the extent
of her troubles, doubts and fears. After this her heart was considerably
relieved, and she felt more resigned. For Miss Letty was the wisest and
tenderest of counsellors, and out of the store of her life’s experience
she was able to bring many consolations and suggestions of peace.
But the storm which had been so mysteriously gathering over Violet’s
life was ready to break more suddenly and heavily than either of her
kind guardians knew,--and scarcely a week had elapsed since her talk
with her uncle Desmond, when the fashionable worlds of London, Paris and
New York were electrified by what was set forth late one evening in bold
headlines on all the newspaper placards as “Great Society Scandal.”
Major Desmond heard the news first at his club, and promptly clapping on
his hat, took a hansom, and urging its driver to his utmost speed,
dashed through the streets to Miss Letty’s house in Hans Place, whither
she had recently returned to set things in order after her vacating
tenants.
“Where’s Violet?” he demanded, as he burst into the drawing-room and
startled his gentle old friend out of a mild little doze in her
arm-chair.
Miss Letty gazed at him affrighted.
“My dear Dick! What is the matter? Violet is out. She has gone to the
theatre with some friends.”
The Major sank into the nearest chair with a groan.
“Then it’s all up!” he said. “She will hear everything before she gets
home!”
Miss Letty gazed at him, hopelessly bewildered.
“Hear what? You alarm me, Dick! Is anything wrong?”
And she trembled from head to foot as she laid a hand pleadingly on his
arm. He looked up at her, and saw how nervous she was,--how her slight
worn old frame shook with the agitation she sought to repress, and he at
once cursed himself for his impetuous brusquerie.
“What a brute I am to frighten you!” he said, getting up as quickly as
he had sat down, and taking her hand tenderly in his own. “Come back to
your chair, Letty,--sit down,--there now!--don’t tremble so! You will
want all your strength to help Violet, poor child! That d----d Nugent
has run off with Lord Wantyn’s wife--the low rascal! If I ever get hold
of him I will----”
He stopped, silenced by a gesture from Miss Letty’s trembling hand.
“Wait a minute, Dick,” she said faintly. “I don’t quite grasp it. Do you
mean to say that Max Nugent,--the man who professed to love, and asked
to marry our little innocent Violet,--has taken another man’s wife away
from him?”
The Major nodded violently.
“Yes--it’s in all the papers. Wantyn’s wife, ‘the beautiful Lady
Wantyn,’ as the feminine asses of the fashion papers call her. He has
taken her--or she has gone with him--one is as bad as ’tother. Anyhow
they are off--sloped from Paris last night, reached the South of France
this morning--Nugent’s yacht was waiting for him at Marseilles--and they
are away, the Lord knows where! And everybody will sympathise with the
miserable cad because he is a millionaire. I tell you it is in all the
papers--and one penny-a-liner has already put in print that it is the
outcome of an ‘old and romantic’ love affair! Old and romantic! By Jove!
A little old and romantic treatment of the right sort would do them both
good,--a few of the old and romantic notions which put a bullet through
a rascal’s head, and whipped a bad wife at the cart’s tail! That would
be the proper ‘old and romantic’ way to deal with them!”
But Miss Letty sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap,--her eyes
full of pain.
“My poor Violet!” she murmured at last. “Poor little girl! Dick, what
shall we do?”
“I don’t know,” said the Major despairingly. “I came here post haste to
ask you to keep the newspapers away from her for a day or two,--but it’s
no use now--if she has gone to the theatre she will see Nugent’s name
on all the placards. And if she does by chance miss it, one of her
friends will be sure to see it and tell her.”
“You forget, Dick,” said Miss Letty, “that no one in England knows of
Max Nugent’s connection with her, and only two or three in America. That
is very fortunate! How wise you were in not allowing any engagement to
take place! You have saved Violet much indignity. It is true the poor
child will have to bear her trouble alone, but I think that is better
than if she had to endure the possibly contemptuous pity of her
friends.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said the Major. “There would be no real sympathy
whatever for her,--all the feeling in our latter-day social sets goes
out to the moneybags. Nugent’s a villain,--but he will be turned into a
hero by the time Wantyn gets his divorce. Didn’t I tell you I never
liked that glass in his eye?”
Miss Letty could not smile. She was thinking of Violet. She glanced at
the clock.
“Violet will soon be coming back,” she said. Poor, poor Violet! I dread
seeing her face! I think I should have died if my Harry had been false
to me!”
The Major was here afflicted with a violent cough, which kept him
barking hoarsely for some minutes.
“Dear me!” said Miss Letty, solicitously watching him as he got redder
and redder in the face and kept on coughing. “I am afraid you have
caught cold, Dick! Did you have your overcoat on when you came just
now?”
“Yes, I had everything on,” said the Major, still struggling with the
strange obstruction in his throat. “Everything that was necessary.” Here
he suddenly recovered himself and relapsed into calm. “When do you think
Violet will be back?”
“She cannot be later than eleven or half-past,” replied Miss Letty. “But
we must be very careful. She may not have seen the news as yet.”
“I am afraid there is no hope of that,” said Desmond bitterly. “It is
all over the place. You know what these wretched papers are,--anything
to sell their copies. A scandal is treated to the biggest headlines,
just as the dress of a stage woman gets more notice than the death of a
great man. Oh, she’s seen it, you may be sure!”
Miss Letty clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
“We must be brave, Dick,” she murmured. “We must not let her see us
break down--we must not pity her too much.”
“Pity her!” ejaculated the Major. “I feel more like congratulating her
on a narrow escape from getting a bad husband. Only it won’t do to put
it that way. She might think it unkind----”
“Hush!” said Miss Letty, lifting a warning finger and growing very
pale, as the wheels of a carriage came to a stop outside. “There she
is!”
The Major held his breath, listening. Violet’s clear young voice could
be heard distinctly saying--“Good-night! Thanks for a delightful
evening.”
The Major turned his eyes round amazedly on Miss Letty.
“‘A delightful evening!’ She cannot have heard----”
The door-bell rang, and to the two elderly people who were in such
suspense, its peal seemed to waken loud and discordant echoes through
the house, suggestive of everything horrible. Another minute, and Violet
entered--looking no longer merely pretty, but radiantly beautiful. Her
eyes were dark and brilliant,--her cheeks were flushed,--she held her
little head up like a queen, and her light step as she advanced was
almost regal in its pride and grace.
“Uncle Desmond!” she exclaimed, smiling--“You here!”
The Major instinctively scrambled out of his chair and reverentially
stared at the dazzling creature who seemed to be suddenly transformed
from a mere slip of a girl into an exquisite woman.
“Yes--I am here!” he stammered.
Violet loosened her cloak, threw it aside, and put her arms round his
neck and kissed him, still smiling into his eyes with such a straight
sweet look that he was quite bewildered. Then she dropped on her knees
by Miss Letty’s chair, and raised her fair young face to the equally
fair old one bending so anxiously over her.
“Darling Miss Letty!” she said. “Why did you sit up for me? You must be
tired! My own Miss Letty! And Uncle Desmond coming here so late too!”
They glanced at one another, silent and sorely puzzled. Did she know? Or
did she not know? What was it that made her so unusually royal and proud
in her bearing? Still kneeling by Miss Letty, she looked up at the
perplexed Major with that new and wonderful brilliancy in her eyes which
seemed to be the reflection of a strong soul-flame within, and said,--
“Dearest uncle! Don’t be unhappy about me! I know what brought you here
to-night--I know everything!”
“You do, Violet?” murmured Miss Letty, catching the girl’s hand in
hers--“Are you sure you do?”
“Am I sure?” And Violet sprang up from her kneeling position, and stood
with her fair head thrown back and her whole face expressing a grand
disdain--“Indeed I am! I am sure that the man I thought a gentleman, is
beneath contempt! I am sure that the love I bore him for what I thought
his goodness, his chivalry, his honour, was the love for a fancied being
of my own heart who did not exist! I am sure that I do not, and could
not love a man who has deliberately disgraced himself and ruined the
honour of a woman! I am sure--yes--that if I met Max Nugent now I would
pass him by as beneath the notice of an honest girl! I mean it!”
continued Violet, her eyes glowing more brilliantly than ever with the
intensity of her thought. “Yes! for though I am only a girl, I have
never done any harm to any one that I know of, nor would I hurt any one
by so much as a word if I could help it, and so far at least I am above
this millionaire, who has made himself too mean for even a _man_ to
know!”
The Major brought his hand down with a vigorous slap on the table near
which he stood.
“There spoke Jack Morrison’s girl!” he exclaimed. “Blood will out! you
have got your father’s mettle in you! Bravo! Let the fellow go to the
dogs in his own way and be d----d to him!--excuse me!”
“Wait, uncle!” said Violet, looking at Miss Letty’s pained and anxious
face with great tenderness in her eyes. “You must not think I don’t
suffer! I do! When I saw that horrible news to-night--when I heard
people talking of it, I felt like killing myself! Yes!”--for Miss Letty
uttered a piteous exclamation,--“Yes, dear Miss Letty, you must not
think I don’t feel. I feel cruelly!” Her lips trembled, her voice shook.
“But you have both been so good to me--you have taken such care of me,
that I should be a wicked, ungrateful girl if I thought of myself only.
I think of _you_--dear kind Uncle Desmond!--darling sweet Miss Letty!
and I will try to bear it bravely, I will indeed! I am trying now. Don’t
you see I am? My heart is wounded, and the wound hurts--yes, it hurts!
But I will try--I will try hard, that the pain may make me better!”
And here, her pride breaking down entirely, she fell again on her knees
beside Miss Letty, and buried her head in her lap, sobbing bitterly.
Quietly Miss Letty laid her two hands over the soft hair, stroking it
gently,--and controlling her own tears, she made a gentle sign to the
stricken Major to go. With a mute glance of farewell tenderness, that
gallant officer stole out of the room on tiptoe,--and pausing in the
hall outside, wiped his eyes and blew his nose guardedly lest he should
make too much noise.
“God bless my soul!” he ejaculated. “These women beat everything! Break
their hearts, and they say the pain shall make them better! ’Pon my
soul! What brutes we men are--what revolting, dirty, selfish, downright
brutes! We don’t deserve ever to have had mothers. Here, let me get out
of this!”
And opening the street door gingerly, he closed it as gingerly after
him, and stood for a moment in the street with the guilty air of a
burglar who had just abstracted some valuable plate. And again he blew
his nose--with greater freedom and vigour this time.
“Poor little girl!” he murmured. “Poor little Violet! Only
nineteen!--and faces the music like an old warrior of a hundred
battles! Brave child--brave child! And by Jove, what a beauty she’s
growing! A positive beauty! Never noticed it till to-night, ’pon my
soul.”
And a couple of lines suddenly came into his head as it seemed from
nowhere,--lines he remembered vaguely, as having heard when quite a lad:
“ ... This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s what’s the matter with her! She is crowned
with that crown--poor little Violet! And by Jove she wears it royally!
And she will rule her sorrow and conquer it with a fine strength and
firm spirit,--and she will be a queen among women yet!--my little
broken-hearted girl!”
And he wafted a kiss back to the windows of Miss Letty’s house as he
pulled his hat over his eyes and walked away.