After a storm comes a calm, and the old proverbs which tell us that the
longest lane must have a turning and the darkest cloud a silver lining
are not without something of a cheery note in their constant
reiteration, like the repeated warble of a thrush telling us of the
certainty of spring. And Violet Morrison soon began to prove these
old-fashioned truths for herself, though the sudden and ruthless
destruction of her first love dream had cast a shadow over the bright
opening of her life, and had made her graver and more thoughtful than
her youth and beauty warranted. Her troubles were none the less hard to
bear, when the recalcitrant Max Nugent, weary of his connection with
Lady Wantyn, promptly severed it as soon as her husband divorced that
famous “beauty,” and sought to make his peace with the innocent girl
whom he had so deeply wronged. Again and again he wrote to her and
implored her to forgive him and to marry him,--but she answered none of
his letters. The first faith and devotion of her heart were killed, and
she knew she could never trust him, but he very persistently urged a
renewal of his attentions in spite of the curt return of his letters
through the Major’s hands, and she was therefore very glad when her
uncle and Miss Letty decided to take her abroad for a time on a tour
through France, Italy and Spain, as this gave her freedom, and an escape
from the constant pleading of her former lover. The interest in new
countries, and the constant distraction of thought caused by the various
wonders and beauties of the shifting panorama, served as an excellent
mental and moral tonic, and braced up all the energies of her mind. They
stayed abroad, residing sometimes in one beautiful place, sometimes
another, for about three years, and it was while they were wintering in
Palermo in the last year of their wanderings that the Major received a
letter which gave him the burden of another secret which he had to keep
from Miss Letty in addition to the one concerning the “dead rascal”
Harry Raikes. The letter was from an old friend and fellow-officer, and
among other items of the news he gave was the following:--
“By the way, you asked me to tell you if I ever heard any news of
D’Arcy-Muir’s son. I have heard something, and I expect it won’t please
you. He passed by the skin of his teeth into Sandhurst,--and the other
day was expelled for being drunk and kicking up a disorderly row. It is
a bad job for the young chap, but what’s in the blood will out--and I
suppose he has caught the drink disease from his father. He has ruined
his military career at the outset.”
Long and deeply did the good Major ponder over this piece of depressing
intelligence. He read it in the courtyard of the hotel in Palermo where
they were just then staying, a courtyard which, as is the custom in
Southern climes, presented the appearance of a fairy flower-garden,
festooned with climbing plants in blossom, with oranges ripening in the
warm sun, and odours of mimosa, heliotrope and violets on the air.
“Expelled for being drunk”! The news seemed an infamy and an insult, in
such a scene of beauty as that which he looked upon.
“God bless my soul!” he murmured disconsolately, fixing his eyes on a
fair cluster of white clematis swinging above his head. “It seems to me
that some of us aren’t fit to inhabit this planet! There’s everything
beautiful in it, and everything is wisely ordained,--and it is only we
who make the mischief and create the trouble. ‘Expelled for being
drunk’! And that kind of thing ends in being expelled from the world
altogether before one has served one’s time. What would Letty say!”
He sighed heavily,--but in a few minutes of consideration decided that
it would be worse than foolish to tell her.
“Let her keep her little ideal somewhere in her heart,” he said to
himself. “Don’t let me be such a great blundering idiot as to smudge all
the picture out for her. She believes in Harry Raikes,--she may as well
believe in Boy as long as she can. And if anyone tells her what’s
happened, it won’t be me!”
And he steadily adhered to this resolution. It was easy to do so, as
Boy’s name was never mentioned by Miss Letty now, and all her thoughts
seemed taken up with Violet. He put away his friend’s letter unanswered,
carefully marking the date on which he received it,--and as he
calculated that Boy must be getting on now for twenty, he shook his head
and decided that everything, so far as “that unfortunate young chap” was
concerned, was rather hopeless.
“However, it’s no use blaming the lad himself too severely,” he
considered--“He has had everything against him--his parents have both
shown him the worst of examples. His nature was warped at its very
commencement and in its very growing--and if he takes to the bottle like
his father and runs down-hill at a tearing speed, the fault doesn’t rest
entirely with him.”
In the spring of that same year they returned to London, and “settled
down,” as the saying is, in order that Violet might take up the career
her heart was pining for--that of a thoroughly trained nurse. She was
never happier than when she could soothe pain and alleviate suffering,
and she was altogether eminently fitted for the profession she sought to
adopt. Miss Letty did not deter her, nor did her uncle, for they both
saw that work and active interest in the welfare of others was the only
way to make her life interesting to herself. She had really no need to
work, for Miss Letty had, though Violet knew it not, left her a
considerable fortune in her will, and of course Major Desmond, though
not a rich man, had made over to her everything he possessed,--but the
fact of having money is not sufficient to fill lives which are strong
and earnest, and which would fain prove to God that they are worth
living. So Violet with her firm faith, pure heart and gentle manner,
went into the forests of difficulty, unarmed and fair as Una in
Spenser’s famous poem, and studied hard, consecrating herself heart and
soul to the work she had undertaken, with the usual result of all
earnest endeavour--complete success. Max Nugent had long ceased to
importune her for the mending of the broken threads of affection,--and
of this she was glad. Her disappointment in her first love had, however,
deprived her of any interest or expectation of marriage for herself,--in
fact the idea had become repugnant to her mind. One day her uncle asked
her,--
“Are you going to devote all your life to the memory of Max Nugent, as
Letty has devoted hers to the lost and gone Harry Raikes?”
Violet smiled.
“No, uncle. _I_ have been undeceived--Miss Letty keeps her illusion. I
never think of Max now.”
“Well, do you ever think of anybody else?” demanded the Major.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Violet laughed outright.
“Dearest uncle! I cannot fall in love to order! I don’t much like the
men I see,--they don’t want me, and I don’t want them. Leave me alone to
work, dear uncle,--I love my work--I am useful--I can help a great many
people to bear their troubles,--and it will be all right for me. If I am
to marry, why, I shall,--if not, I shan’t.”
And she kissed him and slipped away.
Meanwhile, in the self-same monster metropolis of London, where Violet
went daily to her work in the hospital--where the Major divided his days
between his club and Miss Letty’s always charming house--and where Miss
Letty herself, growing more feeble and ailing with years, was content to
sit very much at home with her embroidery,--Boy, who had unconsciously
been a link in the chain of their three lives, was drifting like a wreck
in a vast ocean. The terrible blow of his expulsion from Sandhurst had
been taken by his parents as a deadly injury to themselves,--and for the
shame, the misery, the utter breaking-down of the lad’s own life and
ambitions, they, his progenitors, took no thought and had no pity. The
Honourable Jim, half-paralysed as he was, had plenty of strength left
for swearing, and used oaths in plenty to his son, calling him a “d----
d low rascal.”
“You don’t seem to belong to me at all!” he shouted, his red face
becoming purple with rage and excitement. “D----n it, sir, I am a
gentleman--my father was a gentleman, but you--you are a blackguard,
sir! D----n it!--when I took my glass I took it like a gentleman, I
didn’t go about disgracing myself and my profession as you have done.
You had better enlist if they’ll have you. Anyhow you must do something
for your bread--I can’t afford to keep you!”
Boy heard in absolute silence. He was too completely scornful of life
and the ways of life to care to remind his father that he himself had
been one long disgrace to his son from that son’s babyhood--and that his
paralytic condition was altogether owing to his indulgence in strong
drink,--What was the good? More oaths and a redder face would be the
sole result. And his mother? Had she one word of pardon or of sympathy
for him in his deep humiliation? Not she! Embedded in fat, all she could
do was to shake her double chin at him over a mountain of maternal
bosom.
“It’s always the way,” she said, dabbing a handkerchief into her eyes,
“when good mothers do everything for their sons! They have to suffer!
You have broken my heart, Boy!--your mother’s heart! All my hopes of you
are ruined! I don’t feel as if you were _my_ Boy! I’m sure I don’t know
what you are going to do. We have no fortune, as you are perfectly
aware--we can’t afford to keep you idling about, doing nothing!”
Boy, tall, pale, handsome, and with an indefinable air of languor and
scorn about him, smiled wearily.
“Don’t trouble yourself, mother!” he said. “I will earn enough bread to
keep me alive, if I do it by sweeping a crossing. Good-bye!”
“Where are you going?” demanded his mother, somewhat frightened at his
set face and blazing eyes.
“Do you care?” And he laughed bitterly. “I’m going--to the devil, I
suppose!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir moaned and dabbed her eyes again.
“Oh dear, oh dear!” she wailed. “When I think of all the sacrifices I
have made to send you to college--and all the trouble I have had, really
it seems too dreadful! A mother’s life is martyrdom--complete martyrdom!
Why don’t you go and hunt up old Miss Letty?”
Then, and quite suddenly, Boy flared up. “Miss Letty! The Miss Letty who
wanted to adopt me as a child--and you wouldn’t let her? Not I! It would
have been a jolly sight better for me perhaps if I had been with
her--but to go to her now--now, when I am expelled”--he choked at the
word and had a struggle to go on--“and in disgrace,--now! No, mother,
never!”
With a strange gesture, half of fury, half of despair, he turned and
left her and went out of the house. His mother was far too unwieldy and
comfortable in herself to rise from her chair and enquire where he was
going, and though she called “Boy!” once as he disappeared, he did not
hear her.
He had two or three pounds in his pocket, and rather than put up with
any more useless reproaches and complaints at home, he decided to take a
cheap lodging somewhere near the Strand, and seek for work,--any kind of
work.
“It’s all the same,” he said with a sort of cynical philosophy which had
come of “cramming” and the weariness resulting from that pernicious
system--“whether one sweeps out an office or controls it, work of every
kind is simply work. It only differs in the quality and the pay.”
In a few days, through the help of a young fellow he had known at
Sandhurst, one who was unaffectedly sorry for his disgrace, he got a
place as assistant clerk in an agency office. It was dull business, but
he drudged through it uncomplainingly, and earned enough to keep himself
going. Sometimes a vague idea occurred to him that he would go on the
stage.
“Everyone does that when they are down on their luck!” he said. “I might
begin as a super. But if I began as one I expect I should stay as one,
for I haven’t an idea of acting. However, some people would say that is
an advantage. Because if you _can_ act, you may never get an
engagement!”
He took to going to the theatre of an evening, and studying the various
antics and grimaces of all the puppets in the different shows. Sometimes
it amused him,--more often it bored him. But for a lonely and
downhearted lad as he was, it was better to sit among human beings in
the warmth and light, with the sound of music about him, than to be all
alone in his cheap lodging, brooding on his miseries. One night he saw a
very pretty little play performed, in which the heroine was a maiden
lady who had made the mistake of loving where she was not loved.
Something--a mere trifle of pathos--a touch of sentiment in one scene,
suddenly called Miss Letty to his mind. Quite involuntarily, and almost
as if his brain had taken to acting independently of himself, he began
to retrace his life, and follow it backward step by step to his
childhood’s days, till gradually, very gradually, small incidents and
circumstances began to arrange themselves like the pieces of a puzzle,
and he remembered a number of things he had long forgotten. Again he saw
himself rambling down by the sea-shore, a solitary, sad little fellow,
talking to Rattling Jack,--again he saw Miss Letty’s house in Scotland;
and the memory of the last walk he had taken with her there through the
Pass of Achray came back to him as freshly as if it had only happened
yesterday.
Though his eyes were fixed on the stage he saw an entirely different
picture from that which the actors were representing--a picture which
had been blurred and blotted out from his mind for many years by the
heavy mass of information which had been thrown at him to digest as best
he might in the shortest possible time. This obscuration of mental
faculty was beginning to clear like a thick fog away from the mirror of
his brain, and with a strange pang of regret he recalled the gentle
face, the soft voice, the sweet and kindly ways of the good woman who
had loved him so much when a child. As soon as the play was ended he got
up and went out with the rest, but lingered near the theatre door while
the crowd of fashionable and unfashionable folk were hustling themselves
and each other into cabs and carriages, watching each face as it passed
by and wondering if by chance Miss Letty might be among them. Or if not,
perhaps Major Desmond, to whom he would at once tell his miserable
story,--the story of his disgrace at Sandhurst, which had not been so
much his fault as that of a “superior” officer who had tempted him to
drink and had laughed at him when drunk, himself escaping scot-free when
the matter was inquired into, and the unhappy boy whom he had led to
ruin was expelled. Yes--it might be well to confide in Major
Desmond,--he would do so, he resolved, the very next day. With a deep
sigh he roused himself from his reverie, and moved away from the
threshold of the corridor to the theatre, where he had been standing,
when suddenly his arm was touched timidly and a sweet anxious voice
said,--
“I beg your pardon!--but would you mind----! Might I ask you to find me
a cab? I have missed my father in the crowd--I am all alone!”
He turned and looked at the speaker, and was quite startled by the
exquisite beauty of the face uplifted to his own. Such large eloquent
dark eyes!--such beautiful black curly hair!--such an exquisite
complexion!--a smile that fairly dazzled him!--and a figure of the most
girlish and fairylike grace to crown and complete all these attractions!
Hastily he raised his cap, and blushed hotly at the extreme honour he
felt at being spoken to by such a beautiful woman.
“Do you mind?” murmured the fair one again. “I am afraid it is very
dreadful of me to ask you!--but papa must have taken the carriage--he
must have thought I had gone home with some other friends who were here
to-night. And I do feel so very nervous,--I have never been left alone
anywhere!”
Boy started from his stupor of admiration into instant action.
“I’ll get you a cab directly--of course I will,” he said. “Just sit down
here in the corridor--it’s very draughty though, I am afraid--won’t you
catch cold?”
“I have a warm cloak, thank you,” said the bewitching siren, smiling up
at him. “Thank you _so_ much!”
“A hansom or a four-wheeler?” asked Boy.
“Oh, anything! I am _so_ sorry to trouble you!”
Boy dashed off into the street. It never for a moment occurred to him
that the young lady could just as well have asked the same attention
from one of the stalwart policemen on guard near the theatre door, and
that perhaps it would have been more in keeping with the proprieties if
she had done so. He soon secured a hansom, the smartest and cleanest he
could find, and ran back to the charming creature who had so confidingly
thrown herself upon his protection.
“Oh thank you! But won’t you come with me?” said the beautiful heroine
of this dramatic incident. “Please _do_! Come home and see papa! He will
be _so_ glad!” Nothing could have been more winning than the innocent
and childlike way in which she gave this invitation. She made it all the
more irresistible by pressing her little daintily gloved fingers on
Boy’s arm,--a touch which thrilled him through and through.
“I shall be so frightened,” she went on, “in a cab all alone! Please see
me home, if only to the door!”
“All right,” said Boy resolutely. “I’ll come!”
He assisted her into the hansom with the greatest tenderness, and
carefully tucked her pretty skirts about her tiny feet,--oh! what
charming skirts, all soft and silken and frilled and rustling, like the
leaves of fringed French poppies!
“What address?” he inquired.
She gave him a number and street near Sloane Square, and he, confiding
the same to the cabman, sprang in beside her, and they rattled away
together through the streets, Boy delighted with the adventure and the
pleasure of being chosen as the protector and cavalier of so fascinating
a being as his companion.
“Isn’t this fun?” she said, her eyes sparkling like jewels in the light
reflected from the cab lamps. “I feel so safe now! You ought to know my
name, I think. Shall I tell you?”
“If you don’t mind,” answered Boy, still troubled by a tendency to blush
at his own temerity--“I should like to know it, so that I might remember
it--and you--always!”
This was a fairly good hit, and was promptly responded to on the part of
the fair one, by a modest droop of the head and tender side glance.
“How sweet of you to say--_that_!” she murmured, “but I am afraid you
will soon forget. My name is Lenore de Gramont. I am the only daughter
of a French nobleman, the Marquis de Gramont.”
Boy blushed more hotly than ever. What a position for him! Here he was,
in a hansom cab, with the daughter of a French Marquis! He did not know
whether he ought to be proud or humiliated!
“Papa is a very clever man”--went on the charming Lenore
confidingly,--“he has a beautiful castle in France, but he is so fond of
England--oh, _so_ fond!--He would rather live in quite little
apartments in England than in a palace in France!”
“Really!” said Boy.
“Yes! And he is so fond of Englishmen. He adores them! You are English?”
“Yes,” answered Boy. “My name is Robert D’Arcy-Muir. I am the only son
of the Honourable James D’Arcy-Muir.”
“The Honourable?” queried Lenore with a fascinating uplifting of her
delicate eyebrows. “Ah yes, that is one of your English distinctions--so
grand and meaning so much! Our titles in France mean nothing!”
“I have been in France,” said Boy.
“Have you? Did you like it?”
“I was only at school there when a boy,” he replied. “The school was
near the sea-coast in Brittany.”
“Ah, dear Brittany! So charming--so picturesque--so poetic!”
“Well, I can’t say much about that,” said Boy. “I was there just for a
year,--but I didn’t care about it. The boys were rather a bad lot.”
“It was perhaps a bad school,” said the daughter of the Marquis, with a
little laugh. “Oh, you must not be too severe about my dear Brittany!
Here we are! Do come in!”
Boy helped her out of the cab, and as she sprang lightly to the ground
she looked up with tender entreaty in her eyes and repeated the words.
“Do come in!”
Boy hesitated,--then paid the cabman and dismissed him.
“Do you think your father--the Marquis----” he stammered uneasily.
“He will be charmed!” said the captivating Lenore. “Come--I will take no
denial. You must have supper with us--come!” And almost before he knew
how it happened, Boy found himself in the highly decorated hall of a
small flat, bowing to a stoutly built gentleman with a red face and a
superabundance of moustache, whom Lenore introduced as--
“My father, the Marquis de Gramont!”
And while Boy made his bashful salute, father and daughter exchanged a
profane wink which had their guileless guest observed, would certainly
have surprised him.
“Dear papa!” said Lenore then, in her pretty caressing voice, “how could
you leave me behind at the theatre in that cruel way? What were you
thinking about? This is Mr. Robert D’Arcy-Muir, the son of the
Honourable Mr. D’Arcy-Muir, who was good enough to get me a hansom and
bring me home,--and if he hadn’t been so kind to me, where do you
suppose I should have been, you naughty papa!”
By this time the Marquis appeared to understand and grasp the position.
“My dear, I am very sorry!” he said in smooth deep accents--“very sorry!
I really thought you had gone home with our other friends! But you have
been most fortunate in finding such a handsome and gallant cavalier to
take care of you. You are very welcome, my boy,” he said heartily,
laying a fat hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Supper has just begun.
Come in, _sans cérémonie_! Come and share our simple meal!”
He led the way,--Lenore threw off her opera cloak, thereby showing her
dazzling beauty to much greater advantage than before, and slipping her
bare rounded arm through Boy’s with a little coaxing pressure, she took
him into a room of considerable size, where a light supper was laid out
with a good deal of elegance, and where several other men were sitting,
all rather red-faced, and with something of a free-and-easy air about
them. Boy was introduced to the party as “the son of the Honourable
James D’Arcy-Muir,” whereat he wondered a little, as he could not see
what his parentage had to do with his present way of passing his
evening. But he presently decided that as his host was a Marquis, no
doubt all the gentlemen with him were of the bluest blood and highest
degree, and that therefore it was necessary to say who he was, in order
that he might be known as a fit companion for such distinguished
personages. Suppose they knew he was expelled from Sandhurst! The hot
blood surged to the very tips of his ears as this thought crossed his
mind, and he took his seat at table like one in a dream.
“Champagne, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir?” inquired the Marquis courteously, passing
the bottle.
“Thanks!” And Boy, filling his glass, raised it to his lips and bowed
low to the fair Lenore sitting next to him, who, smiling, bowed in
return. And after the little pause which generally follows the entry of
a stranger at a feast, conversation began again and soon became
argumentative and noisy. Politics and society were discussed, and
several of the gentlemen present appeared, for gentlemen, to have some
curious notions of honour.
“Oh, hang all that sort of rot,” said one, a man with a clean-shaven
face, and a physiognomy apparently got up as a copy of Mr.
Pinero’s--“Success is the only thing you need care about. Money, money,
money! People don’t care a brass button whether you are honourable or
not. Tradesmen are more civil to the fellows who run up long bills than
to those who owe short ones. It’s all a matter of hard cash. Principle
is an old card, long played out.”
“Did you see that new girl in the piece at the Harem Theatre last
night?” said another. “Little idiot! She can’t act. She ought to be a
charwoman.”
“Perhaps she cannot do charing,” suggested the Marquis, nodding at his
daughter, who at once replenished Boy’s glass. “It is a _métier_!--it
may require study!”
They all laughed.
“She’s an idiot, I say,” went on the former speaker--“She could make
thousands if she would just let the actor-manager do as he likes with
her----”
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the Marquis with a fierce twirl of his
moustache, “I must beg you to remember that my daughter is present!”
Boy looked at him admiringly, and warmed to the fine spirit he
exhibited. He, Boy, was rapidly getting indignant at the unmannerly way
in which these eating and drinking men were eyeing the exquisite
Lenore,--one man had actually wafted her a kiss from the other side of
the table,--and she had pretended not to see. But of course she had
seen, and was no doubt hurt and disgusted. She must have been
disgusted,--any sweet girl like that would feel outraged at such vulgar
familiarity! Boy was growing more and more heated and excited as the
time went on; he had eaten scarcely anything, but he had taken all the
champagne given to him, and there was a buzzing in his head like the
swarming of a hive of bees. At a sign from the Marquis he got up
unsteadily, and accepting a cigarette went with all the party into a
side room, where Lenore drove him to still further desperation and
infatuation by taking his cigarette from him, putting it for a moment
between her own rosy lips, then lighting it and giving it back to him
with a mischievous curtsey and smile that were enough to confuse a much
wiser and clearer head than that of a young man only just turned twenty.
Dimly he became aware of a card-table being pushed towards him,--dimly
through the brain-fumes of smoke and champagne he heard his host, the
Marquis de Gramont, asking him to play a game with them.
“What is it?” he demanded thickly--“I am not clever at cards. Are you?”
This with a stupid laugh and sentimental look at Lenore.
“Oh no! I never play anything!” said the young lady, smiling sweetly. “I
only look on! But I think baccarat is a very amusing game. Do play!”
Whereupon he sat down with the rest of the men, and was soon, under the
guidance of the Marquis, in the full heat and excitement of play. He did
not know in the least what he was doing,--he obeyed every hint from the
Marquis, or from Lenore, who leaned over his shoulder caressingly and
whispered now and then--“I would play that if I were you”--or “I would
do that.” Everything was in a whirl with him, and he only came to his
senses at last with a sharp shock when, at the conclusion of four or
five games, the Marquis asked courteously,--
“Would you care to go on any further, Mr. D’Arcy-Muir? Pray do not think
me officious for reminding you that you have lost five hundred pounds
already!”
Boy started from his chair.
“What? Five hundred pounds! Nonsense! I thought we were playing for
fun,--for sixpences,--for----”
“No, not exactly!” said the Marquis urbanely and with a slight smile.
“You have been rather unlucky so far,--but if you wish to go on, it is
possible you may win back what you have lost.”
But Boy still stood amazed, with a wild look in his eyes.
“Lost! Five hundred pounds! My God!” Then rallying a little he looked
around him bewilderedly. “To whom do I owe this money?”
The other men laughed carelessly.
“Why, to the winners, old chappie,” said one. “The Marquis”--with a
slight somewhat sarcastic emphasis on this title,--“will tell you all
about it. Don’t worry!--he’ll settle it all for you.”
“I shall be most happy to be of any service to Mr. D’Arcy-Muir,” said
the Marquis at once. “He has only to give me his note of hand that in
ten days he will repay me, and the five hundred pounds is ready for
him--even more, if he requires it.”
“Repay--five hundred pounds!” And Boy still stared about him in horror
and fear. “But--I have not five hundred pence in all the world!”
The Marquis smiled again and stroked his moustache.
“No? That is certainly unfortunate! But your father, the Honourable Mr.
D’Arcy-Muir, will no doubt be answerable for you. This is a debt of
honour, of course--not a public matter--but involving serious private
disgrace if left unpaid. However, don’t distress yourself, my dear boy!
I will accept your note of hand at fourteen days instead of ten.”
Boy was silent--his face was deadly pale, his eyes bloodshot. Then he
suddenly walked up to his smiling host and looked him full in the face.
“I understand!” he said hoarsely. “I begin to realize what _you_
are!--and what kind of a trap I have fallen into! Very well! Let it be
as you say. Pay these men what I owe to them--what you have made me lose
to them, and I will give you my note of hand for the amount. And in
fourteen days you shall be paid back--somehow!”
“Good!” And the Marquis went at once to a writing-desk conveniently at
hand and scrawled a few lines hastily, which Boy as hastily glanced at
and signed with his name and address,--“Thank you!” And the
distinguished French nobleman shifted about a little, and avoided with
some uneasiness the steady glance of the young man’s eyes. “Five
hundred!--and I will charge you no interest for the loan! Will you play
again?”
“Play again?” And Boy turned upon them all with such a tragedy of pain
written on his face as for a moment awed even the callous gamesters,
accustomed to ruin young men’s lives with as little compunction as they
cracked their nuts after dinner. “No! Had I known better I would not
have played at all.” With a sudden fierce movement he sprang towards the
bewitching Lenore and seized her hands, while with a slight cry she
tried to drag herself away from him. “You--you--betrayed me into this!
_You_ brought me here!--_you_, with your beautiful face and beautiful
eyes--you whom I thought a good innocent girl! A good girl!” And he
broke into a loud harsh laugh, like the laugh of a madman. “God help me!
I thought you were good!”
He flung her hands from him with a gesture of loathing and contempt, and
then, with one look of miserable defiance at the practised villains who,
seated round the card-table, were smoking leisurely and smiling as
though they were listening to a very amusing farce, turned and left the
room.
His first thought when he stood in the open street again was
suicide,--his next, Miss Letty. He walked along swiftly, scarcely
heeding where he went, his head burning, his heart throbbing, his whole
being possessed by the exceeding wrong done to him by Fate in endowing
him with the mere fact of life. He was unconscious of making any
protest, yet a protest there was in his own soul which would not and
could not have found its way into words, because he did not himself
recognize the nature of it. God alone was able to read that protest and
understand it,--the terrible indictment brought against those who had
been given this young life to guard and train to noblest results,--an
indictment involuntarily and invisibly set before a crowd of witnesses
every day by young men and women who owe their mistakes and miseries to
the blind tyranny and selfishness of the parents who brought them into
existence. If Boy had made an end of his troubles then and there he
would not, strictly speaking, have murdered himself so much as his
parents would have murdered him. From the earliest beginnings of
childhood, all the seeds of his present misery had been sown,--by
neglect, by carelessness, by bad example, by uncomfortable home
surroundings, by domestic quarrellings,--by the want of all the grace,
repose, freedom, courtesy, kindliness and sympathy, which should give
every man’s house the hall-mark of “Home.” His childhood had been sad
and solitary--his boyhood embittered by disappointment, followed by the
excessive strain of “competitive cram,” which had tired and tortured
every little cell in his brain to utter exhaustion,--he was old before
he had had time to be young. Miss Letty! The thought of her just now in
all his wretchedness brought a sudden mist of tears to his eyes. He had
forgotten her so long--so long! And when he had seen her last he had
scarcely been conscious of her, because so stupefied by the weight of
the things he had to remember for his “exam.” She had seemed a dream to
him, and so had the Major. Now, when the mass of undigested learning
had all rolled off and been absolutely forgotten as though it had never
been studied, the remembrance of her love for him as a child came
freshly back like a breath from the sea, or the perfume of flowers. He
slackened his hurried pace, and grew calmer. The stars were shining
brightly above his head, though London was enswathed in a kind of low
fog, which crept dismally up from the ground to the top of the ugly
brick houses, and there hung like a veil--beyond this, the deep heavens
arched high and clear, and Venus shone steadfastly like a lamp to guide
lost travellers on their way.
“I will try Miss Letty,” he said to himself. “I won’t tell her just yet
how I have been caught in a gambler’s snare--I will just simply ask her
if she will lend me a little money. Then if she says ‘Yes’ I will go to
her and explain. I don’t think she will refuse.”
He carried this plan into action the next day, and wrote to his old
friend as follows:--
“DEAR MISS LETTY,
I am afraid you will have thought me very careless in not writing
to you all these years, and very selfish now to write when I have
only a favour to ask of you, but I hope you will not mind, and try
still to keep as good an opinion of me as you can. I have got into
rather a difficulty, and am in urgent need of a little money. Can
you lend me some? I do not know when I shall be able to pay you
back, but I do not think you will be a very hard creditor to
Yours affectionately,
BOY.”
He posted this in the morning about ten o’clock. At eight the same
evening he got his answer, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds and the
following letter:--
“MY DEAR BOY,--
I am so very glad to hear from you again. Please accept the
enclosed as a little present. Change it at my bank, and if you like
to come and see me afterwards, and talk over your difficulties, I
shall be only too happy to help you. I am nearly always to be found
at home, as I am rather an invalid.
Your old friend,
LETITIA LESLIE.”
The letter dropped from his hand and he looked at the cheque with a kind
of despair. Fifty pounds! In his extremity it was useless. How foolish
he had been not to ask Miss Letty for the whole sum at once! He took up
the letter and read it again--again and again he looked at the cheque.
“Had I better go and see her?” he meditated. “But if I do I shall have
to tell her all about the row at Sandhurst,--and this gambling
business--she will think me a regular villain. She must be quite an old
lady now--and I should worry her to death. She would be so disappointed
in me----”
He looked at the cheque again,--and then--like a black cloud crossing
the horizon, a Thought began to creep over his mind, darkening it
steadily into gloom. He sat quiet, fingering the cheque and Miss Letty’s
letter together, his face growing paler and paler,--his eyes harder and
colder--his form rigid.
“People should always write the amount they are drawing in plain letters
on their cheques,” he half-whispered with dry lips--“Miss Letty should
have written the _word_ ‘fifty,’ not the _figure_ ‘50.’”
He put away letter and cheque and went to bed early,--not to sleep but
to toss about restlessly all night long. What a horrible time he
passed!--what fretting dreams tortured him!--what strange and evil faces
haunted him, chief among which were those of the “Marquis” de Gramont
and his fascinating daughter Lenore--and the smooth cold handsome face
of the officer who had first tempted him to drink at Sandhurst. Of his
mother and father he never thought,--they had never shown him the
slightest sympathy. Once, during this wretched night of fleeting
visions, he saw the bent crooked figure and wrinkled countenance of the
old sailor Rattling Jack, whose last words had been “I’ll just think o’
ye as if ye were dead.” Death was better than disgrace--and yet--Miss
Letty was so good a woman--she had loved him so much--she would be sure
to forgive him--if----!
With the daylight he rose and sat at his writing-table, vaguely turning
over bits of paper and scribbling figures on them without any apparent
intention,--then after a hurried breakfast he went out. At about
half-past ten he made his way to Miss Letty’s bank and drawing her
cheque out of his pocket, passed it across the counter. The cashier
glanced at it with a little uplifting of his eyebrows.
“All in notes, or would you like any gold?” he demanded.
Boy was staring fixedly in front of him and did not hear. The cashier
was busy, and spoke again impatiently and with a suspicious glance.
“Notes or gold? Will you have all notes or any gold?”
“Notes, please,” answered Boy in a low voice.
The cashier turned over the cheque.
“You have forgotten to endorse it,” he said, passing it back and handing
him a pen ready dipped in ink.
Boy took the pen--but his hand shook. Again the cashier looked at him
suspiciously. When he had endorsed the cheque the cashier vanished into
the manager’s room and was absent some minutes. Then he came back and
said with great civility,--
“Will you kindly call back in an hour? There is a little formality to go
through with this before paying out so large an amount from Miss
Leslie’s current account----”
“Is there?” stammered Boy, turning deathly white.
“Oh, only a mere matter of form,” said the cashier, watching him
narrowly, “and our manager is rather busy just now. If you will call
back at twelve he will explain everything to you, and hand you over the
money.”
Boy bent his head mechanically and went out, sick with terror.
Meanwhile, one of the bank’s confidential clerks, acting on instructions
received, went out of the building by a side door, and jumping into a
hansom was driven straight to Miss Letty’s house. Could he see Miss
Leslie? The servant who opened the door was not quite sure,--Miss Leslie
was not very well.
“Please say to her that the business is urgent, and that I come from the
bank,” said the clerk.
Upon this, the servant showed him into the hall, where he waited for a
few minutes impatiently. Then he was shown into Miss Letty’s
morning-room, where, near a sparkling fire, and surrounded by many
flowers, sat Miss Letty herself, a picture of fair and tranquil old age,
quietly knitting.
“Excuse me troubling you, madam,” began the clerk, stumbling awkwardly
into the dainty little sanctum, and standing abashed in the presence of
this gracious, sweet old lady, who as he afterwards said when speaking
of her, looked like a queen.
“Pray do not mention it, sir,” said Miss Letty with her old-fashioned
courtesy. “I am quite ready to attend to business at any time. Excuse my
not rising to receive you,--I am not very strong to-day.”
The clerk hesitated.
“Our cashier was not quite certain about this cheque,” he at last went
on. “As it is not usual for you to draw such a large sum at once out of
your current account, we thought it might be as well to make an inquiry
before paying it----”
He paused, alarmed at the white face Miss Letty turned upon him.
“What cheque are you speaking of?” she asked. “For a large sum? Pray let
me see it.”
He took out his pocket-book and handed her the cheque, carefully folded
in two,--then awaited her response. With trembling fingers she opened it
and read--“Pay to Robert D’Arcy-Muir the sum of £500.”
A dark mist swam before her eyes,--she turned faint and giddy--the room
whirled round her in a circle of firelight and flowers, with the
conventional figure of the bank clerk standing out angularly in the
centre,--then with a strong mental effort she recovered herself and
quietly re-folded the cheque.
“Yes!” she said faintly, then clearing her voice, she forced herself to
speak more distinctly and to smile. “Yes!--it is quite right!
Quite--correct!”
And she rose from her chair, her soft grey cashmeres falling about her,
and the old lace kerchief knotted on her bosom heaving a little with
her quickened breath. “It is quite correct,” she went on. “The young
man--Mr. D’Arcy-Muir--presented it himself, no doubt?”
“Yes, madam,” said the clerk humbly, “he did, but--we thought it best to
ask. Very sorry, I am sure, to have had any doubt! But you see the last
‘_nought_’ is not precisely in your usual way of finishing a
figure--and--er--the sum being large----”
“Yes, yes, I see,” said Miss Letty, bravely smiling. “My writing is not
so good as it was,--I am getting old! Thank you for your trouble in
coming,--and thank the manager, please! Tell him it is quite correct!”
She gave him back the cheque, and he accepted it with a bow.
“Sorry to have troubled you, madam, I am sure!”
“Not at all!” said Miss Letty. “Not at all! Good morning!”
“Good morning, madam!”
He left her, and she stood like a creature turned into stone.
“Boy! Oh, Boy!” The name escaped her lips in a half-whisper.
She looked around her--her eyes were dim,--and she was still troubled by
a sickening giddiness. She moved to her chair, and laid one hand on the
arm of it to steady herself.
“You should have died when you were a child, poor Boy!” she said still
whisperingly--“Poor little Boy! You should have died when you were a
child!”
Still she stood rigid and tearless, unconscious of all around her, her
blue eyes fixed on vacancy. The door opened--she did not hear it. Violet
Morrison, very fair to see in the neat grey gown and spotless white cap
of her calling, entered--she did not notice her.
“Miss Letty!”
She started a little, turned her head, and strove to smile and speak,
but could not. Violet, alarmed, sprang to her side.
“Darling Miss Letty! What has happened?--What is the matter?”
A deep sigh broke from Miss Letty’s lips. She trembled a little.
“Nothing, dear! Nothing! I was only just thinking--of Boy!”
“Were you?” And Violet’s face grew more serious. Something was surely
wrong with Miss Letty!--she had not mentioned Boy for years. “What made
you think of him just now, dearest?” And she slipped her strong young
arm about the old lady’s trembling figure.
“A little circumstance reminded me,” replied Miss Letty dreamily, “of
the days when he was a child. Do you see up there, Violet?”--and she
pointed to a small shelf above the mantelpiece,--“Those quaint little
shoes? He used to wear them--and rub them out at the toes--you will
notice they are quite worn! And that toy there--that cow--it moves its
head--he used to call it ‘Dunny,’ and he loved it so much that he took
it everywhere about with him. Such a funny little fellow!--such a dear
innocent little man--such an innocent--sweet little man!”
The last words were almost inaudible--for as she spoke them her face
suddenly changed and grew ashen grey,--she reeled and would have fallen,
had not Violet caught her just in time, and laid her gently back in her
arm-chair in a dead faint. The house was soon in confusion,--one servant
flew for the doctor, another for Major Desmond, who arrived on the scene
just as his old friend was beginning to recover consciousness under the
careful tending of Violet, whose trained medical knowledge stood her in
good stead.
“What has upset her like this?” he asked, his kind face growing drawn
and haggard as he saw the death-like pallor of his beloved Letty’s
features. “How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” answered Violet in a low tone. “I found her standing by
her chair, and talking to herself about Boy!”
The doctor soon came, and after careful examination pronounced it to be
shock.
“A nervous shock,” he said cheerfully. “She’ll get all right presently,
won’t you?” And he patted his patient’s pretty old hand soothingly.
“You’ll get all right presently?”
Miss Letty looked upon them all with her sweetly patient air and smiled.
“Oh yes! I shall soon be quite well. You must not worry about me.”
“But what’s the matter, Letty?” asked the Major tenderly, bending over
her chair. “What is troubling you?”
“Nothing, Dick! It was only a little faintness. I am almost well
now--almost well!--only weak--very weak----”
She closed her eyes and lay back again in her chair, while Violet still
bathed her forehead and chafed her hands. She was reviving gradually,
and after a few minutes the doctor took his leave. Out in the hall,
however, he beckoned mysteriously to Major Desmond.
“She may last a couple of years or so longer,” he said, “but she will
require the greatest care,--it is the beginning of the end.”
And with a hurried bow after these ominous words, he got into his
brougham and was driven away. Major Desmond stood where the doctor had
left him, stupefied.
“The beginning of the end!” Letty! He shuddered. Letty had got her
deathblow! She was going away to be an angel with Harry Raikes, and sit
on a golden throne----
“No! By G----! She shan’t!” said the Major desperately. “If she goes
I’ll go with her!”
Meanwhile, the confidential clerk from the bank, whose visit was the
unguessed cause of all this trouble, went back to his chief and reported
the result of his mission.
“Well, I’m glad it’s all right,” said the manager after hearing him out.
“I confess I had my suspicions, for Miss Leslie has never drawn five
hundred all at once from her current account before. I am sorry I
doubted the young man. Tell the cashier to attend to him at once when he
calls.”
At the appointed hour, Boy came into the bank, walking slowly and
feebly, and looking very ill. The cashier greeted him smilingly, and
with effusive civility.
“Just ready, sir!” and he began counting out crisp bank notes rapidly.
Boy leaned on the counter looking at him.
“I thought you said there was some formality----” he began.
“Quite right, sir! Yes--so there was, but we hurried the matter by
sending the cheque to Miss Leslie and asking her if it was all
right----”
Boy took a deep sharp breath.
“And she----?” he began.
“She said it was quite correct. You see we were a little uncertain,--we
have to be very cautious in banking matters--sorry to have caused any
delay, I’m sure! Now let me see,--three hundred--two fifties--four
hundred--fifty--twenty-five--another twenty-five. Kindly look through
the notes before leaving the counter.”
Boy did as he was told with shaking fingers.
Then he folded them all together and put them in his pocket, and looked
at the cashier very strangely indeed.
“Good morning!” he said.
“Good morning.”
Boy walked to the heavy spring door and pulled it open--then passed
through and was gone, the cashier watching him till he had disappeared.
“Curious--very curious!” he soliloquized. “That young chap looked as if
he had got poison instead of bank notes. I wonder what’s up?”
Often did that wonder affect the worthy cashier. The people who came and
went in the bank, with money, and without it, were strange enough in
their various expressions of countenance and mannerisms to provide many
a student with subject-matter for thought,--still, it was not often that
so young a lad as Boy was seen there with such a whole history of
despair and shame written on his face. And that despair and shame had
not lightened with his possession of the much-needed and sorely coveted
money,--it had, on the contrary, deepened and become far heavier to
bear. But he had now made up his mind as to his immediate course of
action. He had resolved upon it in the very moment that the cashier had
handed him the bank notes, and he was only anxious to go through with
his intention while it was fresh and newly formed in his mind, lest
anything should make him hesitate or falter. He went back straight to
his lodgings and there putting all the bank notes into one large
envelope wrote the following letter:--
“DEAR GENEROUS MISS LETTY!
I don’t know what to say to you for your kindness and your mercy to
me, which is so much more than I deserve!--but I know what I ought
to do and I am doing it as well as I can. I send you back here all
the money I tried to get by the wicked fraud of adding another
figure to the one in your cheque--and I hope you will try and
forgive me for my attempted and intended theft. I don’t understand
how it is you can be so good to me as to shield me in this way, but
your great mercy has made me bitterly ashamed of myself, and I do
beg your pardon with all my heart. I will try to make amends
somehow, so that you shall not hear any bad of me again. God bless
you always, dear Miss Letty, for your unexpected and most heavenly
kindness to your wretched
BOY.
I have brought this letter myself, but I won’t come in, as I could
not bear to see your kind face just now.”
He put this epistle in with the bank notes and sealed the
envelope,--then anxious to be rid of the now hateful money and put
temptation away from him as far as possible, he took a hansom and drove
to Hans Place. The servant who opened the door looked pale and flurried,
and her eyes were red as if she had been crying.
“Give this to Miss Leslie, please,” he said, holding out the packet.
“Miss Leslie is very ill, sir,’ said the girl. “I do not think she will
be able to read any letters to-day.”
Boy’s heart almost stood still.
“_Very_ ill? Since when?
“Since this morning, sir. She was taken quite sudden-like.”
Boy uttered a little cry. His fault! His fault! If his old friend died,
it would be his fault!
“Give her that,” he repeated sternly between his set teeth. “If she is
not able to receive it, give it to Major Desmond. He will understand.
And--when Miss Letty gets better, if she can hear a message, will you
say that Boy left his love?”
The servant stared at the pale eager young face and the pained sorrowful
eyes.
“‘Boy left his love,’” repeated the girl,--“Oh well, sir, wouldn’t you
like to come in a minute, sir?”
“No!” said Boy almost fiercely. “I’m not fit to come in! I am a thief
and a scoundrel! But all the same--say to her that Boy left his love!”
He rushed away leaving the servant panic-stricken, gazing after him with
the sealed packet for Miss Letty in her hands.
Hurrying back again to his lodgings with grief and fury raging in his
soul, Boy sat down for a moment to think. The force of his trouble and
the mental victory he had gained over himself in the restoration of Miss
Letty’s money had cleared his brain, and he was able to consider his
position more calmly than he had considered it before. A sense of
freedom came over him,--he had shaken himself out of a net of crime
before it was too late--and it was the beautiful, merciful, angelic
spirit of his childhood’s friend, Miss Letty, that had saved him! When
she had the power to ruin him she had rescued him,--and for this, he
resolved to prove himself worthy of her clemency! After a little
meditation, he wrote a long letter of explanation to Major Desmond,
telling him the whole history of his adventure at the theatre and his
visit to the house of the “Marquis” de Gramont, begging him to say the
best he could for him to Miss Letty.
“Tell her,” he wrote, “that the horror she has saved me from, shall
bring out whatever good stuff there is in me, if any. Please do not
come to see me, for I could not bear it. And do not send me any
money, because I could not bear that either. If you will just let
me have a wire saying how dear Miss Letty is some time to-morrow,
that is all I ask of you. And after that, both of you forget me
till you hear of me again.
Yours,
‘BOY’
(R. D’ARCY-MUIR).”
This done he wrote a note to the “Marquis” de Gramont, who had carefully
reminded him of his address that very morning. The note was as
follows:--
“SIR,
I have placed my affair with you in the hands of my old friend
Major Desmond, who will inquire into the exact justice of my debts
of honour.
Yours faithfully,
R. D’ARCY-MUIR.”
Full of nervous hurry and excitement he posted these letters, and could
hardly sleep all night for wondering what the answers would be. The next
day brought him first of all a wire--“Keep up your courage. Miss Letty
much better.--DESMOND.”
Later on came a letter:--
“DEAR BOY,
Yours is a sad and very common story, and this isn’t the time for
reproaches. Miss Letty, who is an angel, never told me what had
happened,--and I shall not mention to her, unless it is necessary,
how you were trapped into de Gramont’s little den. Don’t trouble
yourself about this ‘Marquis’; he is no more a marquis than I am,
and he is particularly wanted to attend a little party given by the
police. You will hear no more of your ‘honourable’ debts in that
quarter. I wish you would be reasonable and let me come and see
you. A little talk would do us both good, and I might be able to
help you out of present difficulties. _Keep on the square_, and
everything will come right.
Yours heartily,
DESMOND.”
Boy gave a great sigh of relief. Miss Letty was better--thank God! The
money was restored,--and the spectre of the “Marquis” de Gramont was
dwindling and dissolving gradually into thin air like a black dream
following on a bad digestion. And now--what should he do? One step
more--and all was plain sailing. He made that step by writing to his
employer and setting himself free of his daily business as a clerk.
Then, without pausing to think any more about it, he walked rapidly down
to a certain office in a certain quarter, where there were certain showy
bills put up outside, the chief lettering on which seemed to be “Her
Majesty” in very large capitals. There stepping in, he addressed himself
at once to a neat and well-set-up man, in smart uniform, who was at
that moment taking his “rest” in rather a novel way by standing very
bolt upright against a wall and smoking.
“Are you the recruiting sergeant?” said Boy.
“I am, young feller! What can I do for you?”
“Oh, nothing in particular,” said Boy shyly, with a sudden smile which
made his face very captivating. “I want to enlist, that’s all!”
The sergeant looked him up and down.
“H’m! You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?”
“Well, I’m not so sure of that,” said Boy with a forced laugh. “I’ll try
to be one when I’m a soldier!”
Upon which the sergeant gave him such a heavy blow of approval on his
shoulder that he almost fell down under it.
“I like that!” he said. “That’ll do for me! Sound in wind and limb,
aren’t you?”
“I think so!” And Boy, warmed and encouraged at heart by the kindly
twinkle of the sergeant’s keen eyes, began to feel almost happy.
“Right you are! Come along then. Here’s your shilling,” and he pressed
that silver coin, which Boy at the moment desired more than a nugget of
gold, into the young man’s hand--“Done! Come along--name, age, and all
the etceteras--and then a drink--and God save the Queen!”
“Amen!” said Boy as he followed his new commander.