When Anne Percy smiled her mouth looked ripe and eager for pleasure,
her eyes sparkled with youth and gaiety, but when shy or thoughtful or
impatient her mouth was too large and closely set, her low thick brows
made her eyes look sullen and opaque, their blue too dark even for
beauty. It was a day when "pencilled" eyebrows inspired the sonnet,
when mouths were rosebuds, or should be for fashion's sake, when forms
were slight and languid, and a freckle was a blemish on the pink and
white complexions of England's high-born maidens. Anne was tanned by
the winds of moor and sea, she had a superb majestic figure, and
strode when she took her exercise in a thoroughly unladylike manner.
She had not an attribute, not even an affectation, in common with
the beauties of Bath House; and the reigning novelists of the day,
Disraeli, Bulwer, Dickens, Lady Blessington, Mrs. Norton, would never
have modelled a heroine of romance on her. There were plenty of fine
women in England even then, but they were not in fashion, and when
fate took them to court they soon learned to reduce their proportions,
mince their gait, and bleach their complexions.
But Anne had not yet been to court and had arrived that day at Bath
House. She drew down her heavy brows and looked as haughty as she felt
shy and impatient, staring at the dark oblongs of open window, beyond
which, effaced by the glare about her, was the warm perfumed tropic
night. But in the early Victorian era it would not have been thought
becoming for a girl to step out upon a terrace alone, nor, indeed, to
leave the wing of her chaperon, save briefly for the dance. Anne did
not dance, and had remained in the great saloon after dinner watching
with deep interest, for a time, the groups of men and women in evening
dress, playing whist or loo, the affected young ladies and their
gallants, strolling in from the music room, to show themselves off in
the long lane between the tables. But the sight, the most splendid
she had ever seen, had palled, the glare of the innumerable candles,
reflected in the mirrors, and even the crimson brocade of the walls,
dazzled her eyes. She had her reasons, moreover, for wishing to be
alone, a condition she had not realised since she had left England,
now nearly a month since, and she fairly sprang to her feet as her
aunt laid down her cards and signified that it was her pleasure to
retire. Anne rearranged Mrs. Nunn's lace shawl, which had fallen
to her waist in the ardour of the game, gathered up her fan,
smelling-salts, and winnings, then, with a slight drop in her spirit,
steeled herself to walk the great length of the saloon to the thrice
blessed exit. Mrs. Nunn, who had been a beauty, and always a woman of
fashion, sailed along like a light sloop on a mild afternoon, her
curves of time and crinoline not unlike sails filled by a gentle
breeze; affectedly unconscious but quite aware that many a card was
laid down as she rustled by, and that all the winter world of Nevis
already knew that the fashionable Mrs. Nunn, sister of one of the
ladies of the bed-chamber, had arrived by the afternoon packet, and
eagerly anticipated the intimate bits of court gossip with which she
might condescend to regale them.
But Miss Percy knew naught of courts and little of drawing-rooms,
and although pride held up her chin, and she tried to reflect that
the moors had given her a finer, freer carriage than any of these
languishing girls could boast, she followed her imposing chaperon with
a furious beating of the heart; a condition which gave her, as the
elegant Miss Bargarny remarked to the elegant Mr. Abergenny, the
colour of a milkmaid. But although the blood of the girl bred in a
remote corner of England was warm and rich in her veins, and her skin
was tanned, it would take more than colour to coarsen her features,
and perhaps it was the straight nose of the Percys' which enabled her
to step calmly along in the wake of her aunt whilst wishing that she
might fly through one of the windows. (A good nose is the backbone
of moral fortitude.) Although there were arches leading into
drawing-rooms, and morning-rooms, there was but one exit to the
staircase, and in spite of the grandeur and the masses of palms and
tropic flowers everywhere, the hotel had ceased to look like a fairy
palace to the girl who had only paused long enough in her journey from
her old manor to furnish her wardrobe in the darkest and dirtiest of
winter cities. She had felt like the enchanted princess in the fairy
tale for a few hours, but now she longed for nothing but her balcony
up-stairs.
She had begun to wonder if she might beg her aunt to accelerate her
lady-like gait, when, to her horror, Mrs. Nunn was signalled by an
acquaintance, as yet unseen, and promptly sat down at her table;
announcing that she tarried but a moment. There was no other vacant
chair; all near by were occupied by dames as imposing as Mrs. Nunn or
by elderly gentlemen who bent the more attentively over their cards.
There was nothing for Anne to do but draw herself up to her full
height, and look quite indifferent to being the only woman in the room
to stand and invite the critical eye. In the early forties "young
females" were expected to be retiring, modest, and although they were
as often not, by the grace of that human nature which has changed
little in its progress down the centuries, they maintained a decent
pretence. There were a number of belles in the room, with their
attendant swains, and no doubt each thought herself a great beauty;
but not one of them would have stood up alone in the central promenade
of Bath House. Several of the men stared in disapproval; which
emboldened their fair partners to make disparaging remarks, until
it was observed that Lord Hunsdon, the greatest _parti_ in the
matrimonial market, had gone in search of a chair.
Anne longed to fold the arms she knew not what to do with, but
apprehending open laughter, held them rigidly to her sides, shooting
anxious glances at the opposite mirror. She encountered a battery of
eyes. At the same time she heard a suppressed titter. It was only by
an effort of will that she refrained from running out of the room, and
she felt as if she had been dipped in the hot springs of Nevis. It was
at this agonising moment that the amiable Lord Hunsdon presented the
chair, with the murmured hope that he was not taking a liberty and
that she recalled his having had the good fortune to be presented to
her by his friend Mrs. Nunn earlier in the day. Anne, muttering her
gratitude, accepted the chair without looking at him, although after
he had retired her conscience smote her and she would have made an
effort to be agreeable had he lingered. But immediately she caught the
drift of a dialogue between two women at a neighbouring table, where
the play had stopped, that had beaten faintly upon her ears before she
sank out of sight; and in a moment she was conscious of nothing else.
"My son insists that it is my duty to help him, and I am inclined to
agree with him," a clear decided voice announced. "And after all he is
a gentleman, to say nothing of the fact that time was when he had to
hide himself from the importunities of Bath House. But since that
unhappy affair--I fear our sex had much to answer for--but he has
suffered enough----"
"No doubt!" broke in a caustic voice, "but that is hardly the point.
He has taken to ways of relieving his sufferings which make him quite
unfit for decent society----"
"He can be reformed."
"Fiddlesticks. No one ever reforms. He merely changes his vice. And
_he_! Mr. Mortlake, who is fond of what he calls the picturesqueness
of Charlestown by night, has seen him--well, it is enough that I
should have heard. You have been too intimate with the little Queen
lately. You never could stand it! Suffice it to say, that brandy, or
rum, or whatever he takes by the barrel, makes a madman of him."
"I have heard these stories, but I also know that he only drinks by
fits and starts----"
"Worse and worse."
"Well!" in tones of great decision, "since a woman, and a woman of our
own class ruined him, Constance Mortlake, I believe it to be the duty
of our sex and rank to redeem him. Do you," with high and increasing
impatience, "realise that the man is a genius, the poet of the age?"
"Haven't I always doted on poetry since I was in love with Byron? But
we can buy this young man's poetry for a guinea a volume--ten guineas
for special editions at Christmas. I hear that Lady Blessington paid
him a hundred pounds for three pages in last year's 'Book of Beauty.'
I am glad he is in no danger of starving, and am quite willing to do
my little share toward keeping him off the parish; but I prefer to
enjoy his genius without being inflicted by the horrid tenement in
which that genius has taken up its abode. Most undiscriminating
faculty genius seems to be. Besides, I have no respect for a man who
lets his life be ruined by a woman. Heavens, supposing we--we
women----"
"You can't have everything, and a man who can write like Byam
Warner----"
"Don't believe you ever read a line of him. What on earth has a leader
of _ton_ to do with poetry, unless, to be sure, to read up a bit
before caging the lion for a dinner where everybody will bore the poor
wretch to death by quoting his worst lines at him. As for Warner there
is no question that he writes even better than before he went to the
dogs, and that, to my mind, is proof that he holds his gifts in fief
from the devil not from Almighty God----"
"Out upon you for a bigot. I should think you had lived in this world
long enough----"
"Was there ever on this earth a more virtuous court than our young
Queen's, Maria Hunsdon?"
"It is too good to last. And it is not so long ago----"
"Let us be permitted to forget the court of that iniquitous man"--Anne
could see a large-veined hand wave in the direction of a long portrait
of George IV.--"since we are mercifully and at last permitted so
to do. Besides," changing the subject hastily, "I believe in
predestination. You forget that although married these thousand years
to an Englishman I am a Scot by birth----"
But Anne heard no more, although her ears were thirsty. Mrs. Nunn
brought her amiable nothings to a close, and a moment later they were
ascending the great staircase, where the pretty little Queen and her
stately husband smiled alike on the just and the unjust.
Mrs. Nunn entered Anne's room before passing on to her own. As hostess
to her young relative whose income would not have permitted her to
visit this most fashionable of winter cities uninvited, it behooved
her to see that the guest lacked no comfort. She was a selfish old
woman, but she rarely forgot her manners.
"These coloured servants are so inefficient," she remarked as she
peered into the water jars and shook the mosquito netting. "This is
my third visit here, so they are as disposed to respect my orders
as their limited intelligence and careless habits will permit. I
should always advise you to look in and under the bed--not for bad
characters, but for caterpillars as long as your two hands, to say
nothing of ants. There are no snakes on the island, but I believe land
crabs have been seen on the stairs, and I am sure I never should
recover if I got into bed with one. The maid will bring your coffee
about six. I shall not appear till the half-after-nine breakfast."
"Then you will not mind if I go out for a walk?"
"Dear me, no. This is not London. But of course you will not permit a
gentleman to attend you."
"As I do not know any----"
"But you will," said Mrs. Nunn amiably. "You are handsome, my dear, if
not quite _à la mode_. I am glad you must wear white in this climate.
It becomes you far better than black. Good night."
She was gone at last. Anne locked the door that she might know to the
full the joy of being alone. She shook down her hair impatiently. In
spite of her twenty-two years, she had worn it in pendant braids, save
at the dinner hour, until her capture by Mrs. Nunn. It was rich,
heavy, dark hair, bright with much gold, worn in a bunch of curls on
either side of the face and coiled low on the neck. Anne made a
little face at herself in the glass. She knew that she possessed a
noble, straight, full figure, but she saw no beauty in the sunburnt
skin, the square jaw, the eyebrows as wide as her finger. Her mouth
was also too large, her eyelashes too short. She had her ideals of
beauty, and, having read many romances, they were the conventional
ideals of the day. She smiled at her aunt's hint that she might find
favour in the eyes of the beaux of Bath House. She knew nothing of the
jargon of "the world," nothing of men. Nor did she desire knowledge of
either. Even had her father shown any disposition to part with his
only companion, she would have refused Mrs. Nunn's invitations to pass
a season in London, for she lived an inner life which gave her an
increasing distaste for realities. It was before the day when women,
unimpelled by poverty or genius, flew to the ink-pot with their
over-burdened imaginations. To write a book had never occurred to
Anne, although she had led a lonely life in a forgotten corner of
England where even her duties were few; the old servants knew their
tasks before she was born, and her father preferred his pen and his
laboratory to the society of his daughter. She must preside at his
table, but between whiles she could spend her time on the sea or the
moors, in the library or with her needlework--the era of governesses
passing--as she listed.
And the wild North Sea, the moors and her books, above all, her
dreams, had sufficed. Her vivid and intense imagination had translated
her surroundings into the past, into far-off countries of which she
knew as much as any traveller, oftener and still oftener to the
tropics, to this very island of Nevis. Then, suddenly, her father
had died, leaving her, until she reached the age of five-and-twenty,
in the guardianship of his sister, Mrs. Nunn, who purposed making
her favourite pilgrimage the following winter, insisted that Anne
accompany her, and finally rented the manor over her head that she be
forced to comply. The truth was she intended to marry the girl as soon
as possible and had no mind that she should squander any more of her
youth unseen by man. The shrewd old woman knew the value of that very
ignorance of convention, that lack of feminine arts and wiles, so
assiduously cultivated by young ladies in the matrimonial market,
that suggestion of untrammelled nature, so humbly deprecated by Anne.
Moreover, concluded Mrs. Nunn, ruffling herself, she was a Percy and
could not but look well-bred, no matter how ill she managed her hoop
or curled her hair.
But although Mrs. Nunn could appraise the market value of a comely
exterior and the more primitive charms of nature, of Anne Percy she
knew nothing. She had puzzled for a moment at the vehement refusal of
the young recluse to visit the West Indies, and even more at her
ill-suppressed exultation when she realised that the migration was
settled. But, she concluded, there was no accounting for the vagaries
of the girl-brain, and dismissed the subject. Of the deep and
passionate maturity of Anne Percy's brain, of the reasons for the
alternate terror and delight at the prospect of visiting Nevis, she
had not a suspicion. If she had she would have hastened to leave her
to the roar of the North Sea and the wild voices of the moor.