LORD JOCELYN'S TROUBLES.
As the season advanced and the autumn deepened into winter, Angela found
that there were certain social duties which it was impossible altogether
to escape. The fiction of the country-house was good enough for the
general world, but for her more intimate friends and cousins this would
not do for long. Therefore, while she kept the facts of her present
occupation and place of residence a secret from all except Constance
Woodcote, now the unsympathizing, she could not wholly shut herself off
from the old circle. Among others there was one lady whose invitations
she was in a sense bound to accept. What her obligations were, and who
this lady was, belong in no way to this history--that is to say, the
explanation belongs to Angela's simple chronicle of the old days, when
she was only Miss Messenger, the heiress presumptive of the great
brewery. Therefore, it need not concern us. Suffice it to say that she
was a lady in society, and that she gave great dinners, and held other
gatherings, and was at all times properly awake to the attractions which
the young and beautiful and wealthy Angela Messenger lent to her
receptions.
On this occasion Constance Woodcote, among others, was invited to meet
her old friend; she came, but she was ungracious, and Angela felt, more
than she had expected, how great already was the gulf between the old
days of Newnham and her life of active, practical work. Six months
before such coldness would have hurt and pained her; now she hardly felt
it. Yet Constance meant to demonstrate by a becoming frost of manner how
grievous was her disappointment about those scholarships. Then there
were half a dozen men--unmarried men, men in society, men of clubs, men
who felt strongly that the possession of Miss Messenger's millions might
reconcile them to matrimony, and were much interested by the possibility
of an introduction to her, and came away disappointed because they got
nothing out of her, not even an encouragement to talk; and everybody
said that she was singularly cold, _distraite_, and even embarrassed
that evening; and those who had heard that Miss Messenger was a young
lady of great conversational powers went away cynically supposing that
any young lady with less than half her money could achieve the same
reputation at the same cost of energy. The reason of this coldness, this
preoccupation, was as follows.
The dinner-party was large, and the conversation by no means general. So
far as Angela was concerned, it was held entirely with the man who took
her down, and his name was Lord Jocelyn le Breton--a rugged-faced man,
with a pleasing manner and an agreeable voice; no longer young. He
talked to her a good deal in a light, irresponsible vein, as if it
mattered very little what he said so that it amused the young lady. He
discoursed about many things, principally about dinners, asking Angela
what were her own views as to dinners, and expostulating with her
feminine contempt for the subject. "Each dinner," he said, "should be
like a separate and distinct work of art, and should be contrived for
different kinds of wine. There should be a champagne dinner, for
instance, light, and composed of many dishes, but some of these
substantial; there should be a claret dinner, grave and conscientious; a
Burgundy dinner of few courses, and those solid; a German wine dinner,
in which only the simplest _plates_ should appear. But unto harmony and
consistency in dining we have not yet arrived. Perhaps, Miss Messenger,
you may be induced to bring your intellect to bear upon the subject. I
hear you took high honors at Newnham lately."
She laughed.
"You do too much honor to my intellect, Lord Jocelyn. At Newnham they
teach us political economy, but they have not trusted us with the art of
dining. Do you know, we positively did not care much what we had for
dinner!"
"My ward, Harry, used to say--but I forget if you ever met him."
"I think not. What is his name?"
"Well, he used to bear my name, and everybody knew him as Harry le
Breton; but he had no right to it, because he was no relation of mine,
and so he gave it up and took his own."
"Oh!" Angela felt profoundly uninterested in Mr. Harry le Breton.
"Yes. And now you never will meet him. For he is gone." Lord Jocelyn
uttered these words in so sepulchral a tone that Angela gave them
greater significance than they deserved.
"I am very sorry," she said.
"No, Miss Messenger, he is not dead. He is only dead to society. He has
gone out of the world; he has returned to--in fact, his native rank in
life."
Angela reddened. What could he mean?
"You interest me, Lord Jocelyn? Do you say that your ward has
voluntarily given up society, and--and--everything?" She thought of
herself for the moment, and also, but vaguely, of Harry Goslett. For
although she knew that this young man had refused some kind of offer
which included idleness, she had never connected him in her mind quite
with her own rank and station. How could she? He was only a
cabinet-maker, whose resemblance to a gentleman she had learned to
accept without any further wonder.
"He gave up everything; he laughed over it--he took a header into the
mob, just as if he was going to enjoy the plunge. But did you not hear
of it? Everybody talked about it--the story got into the society
journals, and people blamed me for telling him the truth."
"I have not been in London much this year, therefore I heard nothing,"
said Angela. Just then the dinner came to an end.
"Will you tell me more about your ward, Lord Jocelyn?" she asked as she
left him. His words had raised in her mind a vague and uncertain
anxiety.
Half an hour later he came to her side. The room by this time was all
full, and Angela was surrounded. But she made room for Lord Jocelyn, and
presently the others dropped away and they could talk. A young lady
began, too, a long and very brilliant piece of music, under cover of
which everybody could talk.
"Do you really want to hear my trouble about Harry?" he asked. "You look
a very sympathetic young lady, and perhaps you will feel for me. You see
I brought him up in ignorance of his father, whom he always imagined to
be a gentleman, whereas he was only a sergeant in a Line regiment. What
is it, Miss Messenger?"
For she became suddenly white in the cheek. Could there be two Harrys,
sons of sergeants, who had taken this downward plunge? Mere wonderful
than a pair of Timothy Clitheroes.
"It is nothing, Lord Jocelyn. Pray go on. Your adopted son, then----"
"I had always resolved to tell him all about his people when he was
twenty-three. Who would have thought, however, that he would take it as
he did?"
"You forget that you have not told me what he did do. If I am to
sympathize you must tell me all."
"As far as the world knows, he went away on leave, so to speak. Perhaps
it is only on leave, after all. But it is a long leave, and it looks
more like desertion."
"You are mysterious, Lord Jocelyn."
"Are you curious, Miss Messenger?"
"Say I am sympathetic. Tell me as much as you can about your ward."
Lord Jocelyn looked in his listener's face. Yes; there was sympathy in
it and interest, both, as phrenologists say, largely developed.
"Then I will explain to you, Miss Messenger, how the boy did this most
remarkable and unexpected thing." He paused a moment, considering.
"Imagine a boy whom I had taken away from his own people at three, or
thereabouts, so that he should never know anything of them at all, or
dream about them, or yearn, you know, or anything of that kind--an
orphan, too, with nothing but an uncle Bunker--it is inconceivable!"
"But we do not get on," said Angela, in great impatience; yet relieved
to find from the reference to her worthy friend, Bunker, that there was
only one Harry. "What is inconceivable?"
"I am coming to that. I gave the boy the best education I could get for
him; he was so eager and apt that he taught himself more than he could
be taught; if he saw anybody doing a thing well, he was never satisfied
till he could do it as well himself--not better, mark you! a cad might
have wanted to do it better; a gentleman is content to do it as well as
any--any other gentleman. There is hardly anything he could not do;
there was nobody who did not love him; he was a favorite in society; he
had hosts of friends; nobody cared who was his father: what did that
matter? As I put it to him, I said, 'Look at So-and-So and So-and-So,
who are their fathers? Who cares? Who asks?' Yet when he learned the
truth, he broke away, gave up all, and went back to his own
relations--to Whitechapel!"
Angela blushed again, and her lip trembled a little. Than she said
softly:
"To Whitechapel! That is very interesting to me. Because, Lord Jocelyn,
I belong to Whitechapel myself."
"Do you?" She might as well have said that she belonged to Seven Dials.
In fact, much better, because in his young days, his Corinthian days,
Lord Jocelyn had often repaired to Seven Dials to see noble sportsmen
_chez_ Ben Caunt, and rat-killing, and cock-fighting, and many other
beautiful forms of sport. "Do you really? Do you belong to that
remarkable part of London?"
"Certainly. My grandfather--did you know him?"
Lord Jocelyn shook his head.
"He had the brewery, you know, Messenger, Marsden & Company, in
Whitechapel. He was born there, and always called himself a Whitechapel
man. He seemed to be proud of it, so that in common filial respect I,
too, should be proud of it. I am, in fact, a Whitechapel granddaughter."
"But that does not seem to help my unlucky Harry."
"It gives one a little more sympathy, perhaps," she said. "And that is,
you know, so very useful a possession."
"Yes," but he did not seem to recognize its usefulness as regards his
ward. "Well, he went to Whitechapel with a light heart. He would look
round him, make the acquaintance of his own people, then he would come
back again, and we would go on just as usual. At least he did not
exactly say this, but I understood him so. Because it seemed impossible
that a man who had once lived in society, among ourselves, and formed
one of us, could ever dream of living down there." Angela laughed. From
her superior knowledge of "down there," she laughed.
"He went away and I was left without him, for the first time for twenty
years. It was pretty dull. He said he would give the thing a trial; he
wrote to me that he was trying it; that it was not so bad as it seemed,
and yet he talked as if the experiment would be a short one. I left him
there. I went away for a cruise in the Mediterranean; when I came home
he returned to me."
"He did return, then?"
"Yes, he came back one evening, a good deal changed. I should not have
thought it possible for a boy to change so much in so short a time. He
wasn't ill-fed; he hadn't suffered any privation, apparently; but he was
changed: he was more thoughtful; his smile and his laugh were not so
ready. Poor boy!"
Lord Jocelyn sighed heavily. Angela's sympathy grew deeper, for he
evidently loved the "boy."
"What had he done, then?"
"He came to say farewell to me; he thanked me, for you know what a good
honest lad would say; and he told me that he had an offer made to him of
an unexpected nature which he had determined to accept. You see, he is a
clever fellow with his fingers; he can play and paint and carve, and do
all sorts of things. And among his various arts and accomplishments he
knows how to turn a lathe, and so he has become a joiner or a
cabinet-maker, and he told me that he has got an appointment in some
great factory or works or something, as a cabinet-maker in ordinary."
"What is his name?"
"Harry Goslett."
"Goslett, Goslett!" Here she blushed again, and once more made play with
the fan. "Has he got a relation, a certain Mr. Bunker?"
"Why--yes--I told you, an uncle Bunker."
"Then I remember the name. And, Lord Jocelyn, I hope you will be
grateful to me, because I have been the humble means of procuring him
this distinguished post. Mr. Bunker, in fact, was, or conceived that he
had been, useful to my grandfather, and was said to be disappointed at
getting nothing by the will. Therefore I endeavored to make some return
by taking his nephew into the House. That is all."
"And a great deal more than enough, because, Miss Messenger, you have
all out of your kindness done a great mischief, for if you had not
employed him I am quite certain no one else would. Then he would have to
come back to me. Send him away. Do send him away. Do send him away, Miss
Messenger. There are lots of cabinet-makers to be had. Then he will
come back to society, and I will present him to you, and he shall thank
you."
She smiled and shook her head.
"People are never sent away from the brewery so long as they behave
properly. But it is strange indeed, that your ward should voluntarily
surrender all the advantages of life and social position for the hard
work and poor pay of an artisan. Was it--was it affection for his
cousins?" She blushed deeply as she put this question.
"Strange, indeed. When he came to me the other night, he told me a long
story about men being all alike in every rank of life. I have noticed
much the same thing in the army; of course he did not have the impudence
to say that women are all alike; and he talked a quantity of prodigious
nonsense about living among his own people. Presently, however, I got
out of him the real truth."
"What was that?"
"He confessed that he was in love."
"With a young lady of Whitechapel? This does great credit to the
excellent education you gave him, Lord Jocelyn." She blushed for the
fourth or fifth time, and he wondered why, and she held her fan before
her face. "But, perhaps," she added, "you are wrong, and women of all
ranks, like men, are the same."
"Perhaps I ought not to have told you this, Miss Messenger. Now you will
despise him. Yet he had the impudence to say that she was a
lady--positively a lady--this Whitechapel dressmaker."
"A dressmaker!--oh!" She threw into her voice a little of that icy
coldness with which ladies are expected to receive this kind of
announcement.
"Ah! now you care no more about him. I might have known that your
sympathy would cease directly you heard all. He went into raptures over
this young milliner. She is beautiful as the day; she is graceful,
accomplished, well-bred, well-mannered, a queen----"
"No doubt," said Angela, still frozen. "But really, Lord Jocelyn, as it
is Mr. Goslett, the cabinet-maker, and not you, who is in love with
this paragon, we may be spared her praises."
"And, which is more remarkable still, she won't have anything to say to
him."
"That is indeed remarkable. But perhaps as she is the Queen of
Dressmakers, she is looking for the King of Cabinet-Makers."
"No doubt," said Lord Jocelyn; "I think the music is coming to an end.
However, Miss Messenger, one favor."
"A dozen, Lord Jocelyn, if I can grant them."
"He refuses to take any help from me; he lives on work paid for at the
rate of tenpence an hour. If you will not send away--then--oh, then----"
"Quick, Lord Jocelyn, what is it?"
"Tax the resources of the brewery. Put on the odd twopence. It is the
gift of the Samaritan--make it a shilling an hour."
"I will, Lord Jocelyn--hush! The music is just over, and I hope that the
dressmaker will relent, and there will be a wedding in Stepney Church,
and that they will be happy ever after. O brave and loyal lover! He
gives up all, all"--she looked round the room, the room filled with
guests, and her great eyes became limpid, and her voice fell to a
murmur--"for love, for love. Do you think, Lord Jocelyn, that the
dressmaker will continue to be obdurate? But perhaps she does not know,
or cannot suspect, what he has thrown away--for her sake--happy
dressmaker!"
"I think," said Lord Jocelyn afterward, "that if Harry had seen Miss
Messenger before he saw his dressmaker we shouldn't have heard so much
about the beautiful life of a working-man. Why the devil couldn't I
wait? This girl is a Helen of Troy, and Harry should have written his
name Paris and carried her off, by gad! before Menelaus or any other
fellow got hold of her. What a woman! What a match it would have been!"