PAUL’S GALLING SHACKLES.
“You are surprised to see me here to-night, Mimi,” Paul Desfrayne
said, using an old childish pet-name that always disarmed his mother.
“I came here with a friend to see Lady Quaintree”--he hesitated
painfully--“on--on business.”
Mrs. Desfrayne opened her big blue eyes, and looked him straight in the
face. A spasm of pique passed through her heart.
“You did not know that _I_ was acquainted with Lady Quaintree?” she
remarked, half-sarcastically, opening and shutting her fan with a
movement which he knew well of old as indicating vexation. She was
angry that he had come hither with some friend unknown to her, instead
of asking her for an introduction, and telling her of his business.
“My dear mother, I did not know until this very afternoon that I was to
come here. I remembered, when I heard the name, that you had spoken of
her. It was she who lent you the opera-box last night, was it not?”
“Well--well, it does not signify. I must not be inquisitive,” said Mrs.
Desfrayne, confident that she must learn all sooner or later. “Have
you heard or seen anything of the young lady you spoke of yesterday
evening?”
“I have.”
“You have?” cried Mrs. Desfrayne, drawing a step or two nearer to him.
“What is she like? Where does she live? Is she pretty? What is she?”
Captain Desfrayne paused for an instant, as if perplexed at such a
volley of questions.
“Her name is Lois Turquand, and she is the companion of Lady
Quaintree,” he then very quietly replied.
Mrs. Desfrayne retreated several steps, as if confounded.
“You are jesting!” she angrily exclaimed, unable to credit that she had
heard aright.
“I presume you have seen the young lady?”
“Miss Turquand!” Mrs. Desfrayne slowly repeated--“Lois Turquand! Oh, it
is impossible!”
The information did not seem to afford her much pleasure, and there was
a visible expression of blank disappointment upon her face.
The truth--or part of the truth--was that Mrs. Desfrayne had no great
liking for Lois Turquand. By nature aristocratic, proud as a duchess of
Norman descent, she cared not for persons beneath her in station, while
winning and all that was gracious to those in her own rank or above her.
To Lady Quaintree, wife of the world-famed lawyer, she had ever paid
eager court; but Miss Turquand, the daughter of an embroideress,
a penniless nobody, she had always politely ignored. When her son
had told her of the strange will which had placed him in such an
unexpectedly advantageous position, she had built, with feminine
imaginative rapidity and skill, sparkling castles in the traitorous
air. All her life she had yearned to mix freely in society--she longed
to be a leader of fashion, a star in the hemisphere of the beau monde;
but her income was limited. Her husband, a colonel in the army, had
died almost a poor man, leaving her some six hundred a year, and to
her son an equal pittance--for such she considered it, measured by her
desires and wants. She was still young and most beautiful when left a
widow, and might have married again advantageously, but her overweening
ambition had induced her to reject more than one excellent offer, and
now it was too late to retrieve these errors of judgment--though she
still had her secret plans and schemes.
Under a fair and smiling mask she hid many little feminine piques and
spites, and one of her pet “aversions” happened to be Miss Turquand.
She could hardly pardon the girl her roseate youth, her fresh, piquant
loveliness, her grace, spontaneous as that of a wood-nymph. For some
reason, unexplainable even to herself, she always experienced a
horribly galling sense of being old, and world-worn, and artificial,
in presence of Lois Turquand, and it created a small vindictive
sense of envy and spite that augured ill for any future attempt at
conciliation. Her short-lived dream of taking the young person left
in her son’s charge in hand, and shining in society by means of a
reflected light, was at an end.
She could have better endured to hear that the legatee was a plain
young woman, in a vastly inferior station. It was as if her son had
held a draft of gall and wormwood to her lips, and asked her to swallow
it.
“It is incredible!” she said, after a brief pause, during which she
kept her eyes fixed upon her son’s face.
“You have certainly surprised me,” she added, slightly shrugging her
shoulders. “Though why I should feel surprise, I cannot tell. It is
absurd, I have no doubt. So Miss Turquand has become a young woman of
property. I long ago was determined not to be astonished at anything,
and I take a fresh resolution from to-night. Was the person who left
her this money a relative?”
“No.”
“Not a relative! May I ask what----Am I indiscreet in asking for any
particulars?”
Paul Desfrayne knew that sooner or later his mother must become
acquainted with everything that the will contained. It was better to
take things with a good grace, and let her hear now, than to shrink
and keep silence, or grant half-confidences, and make bad worse, by
appearing to make a mystery of what was apparently a simple matter.
“The old gentleman of whom I was speaking to you last night--Mr. Vere
Gardiner--has left Miss Turquand one hundred and thirty thousand pounds
unconditionally. He has left me ten thousand in the same way, but----”
With an effort he rapidly told her the general contents of the will.
“You marry Miss Turquand!” almost angrily cried Mrs. Desfrayne,
flirting her fan backward and forward with a nervous movement. She had
seated herself, in her agitation, while Paul remained standing a few
steps from her.
“Such are the terms of the will. If she dies before the three years
have expired, I am to receive--I forget how many thousands.”
“Have you seen her?”
“I have.”
“How do you like her?”
“Not at all, as far as I can judge.”
A smile, almost of gratification, rippled over the fair, smooth face of
his mother at this admission. She was on the point of exclaiming: “I am
glad of it!” but checked herself, and remarked instead:
“How is it that I find you here alone?”
These words recalled Captain Desfrayne to his exact position. He felt
as if he could have given worlds to speak with the old freedom to the
woman who loved him so fondly--could he but explain to her what weighed
upon his life like a constant nightmare. But it was impossible. He was
a coward, and dared not face her inevitable anger.
“I was going away just as I saw you,” he replied, with apparent
tranquillity, though his heart for a moment had beat wildly at the
thought of making his confession. “The rooms were frightfully hot
up-stairs, and this place seemed so cool and inviting, I lingered.”
“You will take me up-stairs, however. Does Lady Quaintree know you are
my son?”
Captain Desfrayne had not thought of it.
“I have such an intolerable headache!” he pleaded, anxious to escape;
and his temples throbbed to agony. “I really cannot stay.”
“That is very unusual with you, having a headache,” said his mother.
“What is the cause of it?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders without replying in words.
His mother urged him, only half-believing in his excuse, to escort her
up-stairs. She had many reasons for desiring his company. Although it
was a little vexatious, perhaps, for so young-looking a woman to be
attended by a son who seemed nearly as old as she did herself, she
always wished for his escort. He was so handsome, so dignified, so
chivalrous, gallant, devoted, in his behavior--there was the mother’s
pride and glory to atone in a measure for the beauty’s mortified
vanity. At this moment she wished to see him with Miss Turquand, to
judge how far affairs were likely to go; she wanted to hear Lady
Quaintree’s opinion, and see how Miss Turquand carried herself beneath
the golden blaze of her new prosperity. But it was in vain she urged
him, and she was piqued by this odd refusal. He was determined to go at
once.
“Well, you must call to-morrow, Paul. I am dying with curiosity to hear
all the rest, and your opinion, and so on.”
Captain Desfrayne escaped. The balmy air cooled his fevered pulses, and
he walked rapidly away into the darkness of the summer’s night.
“Good heavens, what an escape!” he muttered. “I don’t know what
earthly inducement could have impelled me to go up-stairs. My poor
mother! What an ungrateful villain I feel in deceiving her! It was
an accursed day when that brilliant butterfly crossed my path, and
led me away as easily as ever schoolboy was lured into a mad chase on
an idle afternoon, or peasant lout drawn into pursuit of a gleaming
Jack-o’-lantern. There is no peace, no happiness for me henceforth.
I sometimes wish my mother knew all. It would be an infinite weight
lifted off my mind; and yet I dare not--I dare not tell her.”
The desire to be rid of this painful secret rose so strongly within his
breast, that when he had traversed several streets, he abruptly paused
to reflect on the advisability of going to the house in Porchester
Square, where his mother was staying, and awaiting her return, with the
object of telling her precisely how he was situated.
“No,” he at length decided. “I _cannot_ do so to-night. To-morrow,
perhaps, I shall be more courageous. If this unlucky piece of ‘good
fortune,’ as I suppose some folks would style it, had not occurred, I
might have borne my secret some few years longer--maybe forever--safe
locked within my breast, there to gnaw away my life at its ease. But
this misguided old man’s absurd whim has been the fatal means of
letting in a flood of misery now and in the future upon my most unhappy
head. It is well that the girl is cold and seemingly impassive. It is
also providential that she has powerful friends, who will render my
duties merely nominal.”
The sleepy quiet of the aristocratic street through which he was
passing with slow, undecided steps was broken by swift-rolling wheels.
The gleaming lamps of a dashing brougham threw long gleams of light
through the semiobscurity of the somber thoroughfare, and the champ of
the horses’ feet, the jingle of the silver harness, evidenced that the
vehicle belonged to some one of wealth, if not of position.
Paul Desfrayne’s glance was mechanically attracted to this handsome
equipage, unconsciously to himself.
As it passed him, the face of a woman appeared at the window--the face
of Madam Guiscardini thus coming before him like an apparition for the
second time this night.
Her face looked like some beautiful pictured head painted on a dark
background. She did not see him, but spoke to the coachman, apparently
giving him some new direction. Glancing forth like a vision, she as
rapidly vanished again, and in a moment the brougham had swept off down
one of the side streets.
Paul Desfrayne struck his hands together with a gesture of despair.
“She seems to haunt me to-night like some evil spirit,” he muttered.
“I did not know she was in London. Her face fills me with affright and
a sense of coming danger. Can it be true that I once fancied I loved
this woman, and that I let her crush my life forevermore with her cold,
pitiless hand? Can it be that I am her bond-slave--no longer free to
do more than move in the one dull round day by day, with these galling
shackles about me, forced to relinquish all the bright hopes of love
and happiness that bring sunshine about other men? Oh! fool, fool, fool
that I have been!” he cried, aloud.
Then he once more quickened his steps, as if to escape from himself.