THRICE HAPPY BOY.
A man of the world at forty-five seldom feels surprised at anything,
unless, indeed, like Molière, he encounters virtue in unexpected
quarters. This, however, was a thing so extraordinary that Lord Jocelyn
gasped.
"Pardon me, Miss Messenger," he said, recovering himself. "I was so
totally unprepared for this--this discovery."
"Now that you have made it, Lord Jocelyn, may I ask you most earnestly
to reveal it to no one? I mean no one at all."
"I understand perfectly. Yes, Miss Messenger, I will keep your secret.
Since it is a secret, I will tell it to none. But I would ask a favor in
return, if I may."
"What is that?"
"Take me further into your confidence. Let me know why you have done
this most wonderful thing. I hope I am not impertinent in asking this of
you."
"Not impertinent, certainly. And the thing must seem strange to you. And
after what you told me some time ago, about----" She hesitated a moment,
and then turned her clear brown eyes straight upon his face, "about your
ward, perhaps some explanation is due to you."
"Thank you, beforehand."
"First, however, call me Miss Kennedy here; pray--pray, do not forget
that there is no Miss Messenger nearer than Portman Square."
"I will try to remember."
"I came here," she went on, "last July, having a certain problem in my
mind. I have remained here ever since, working at that problem. It is
not nearly worked out yet, nor do I think that in the longest life it
could be worked out. It is a most wonderful problem, for one thing leads
to another, and great schemes rise out of small, and there are hundreds
of plans springing out of one--if I could only carry them out."
"To assist you in carrying them out, you have secured the services of my
ward, I learn."
"Yes; he has been very good to me."
"I have never," said Lord Jocelyn, "been greatly tempted in the
direction of philanthropy. But pray go on."
"The first thing I came to establish was an association of dressmakers,
myself being one. That is very simple. I have started them with a house
free of rent and the necessary furniture--which I know is wrong, because
it introduces an unfair advantage--and we divide all the money in
certain proportions. That is one thing."
"But, my dear young lady, could you not have done this from Portman
Square?"
"I could, but not so well. To live here as a workwoman among other
workwomen is, at least, to avoid the danger of being flattered,
deceived, and paid court to. I was a most insignificant person when I
came. I am now so far advanced that a great many employers of women's
labor cordially detest me, and would like to see my association ruined.
"O Lord Jocelyn," she went on, after a pause, "you do not know, you
cannot know the dreadful dangers which a rich woman has to encounter. If
I had come here in my own name I should have been besieged by every
plausible rogue who could catch my ear for half an hour. I should have
all the clergy round me imploring help for their schools and their
churches; I should have had every unmarried curate making love to me; I
should have paid ten times as much as anybody else; and, worse than all,
I should not have made a single friend. My sympathies, whenever I read
the parable, are always with Dives, because he must have been so
flattered and worshipped before his pride became intolerable."
"I see. All this you escaped by your assumption of the false name."
"Yes. I am one of themselves; one of the people; I have got my girls
together; I have made them understand my project; they have become my
fast and faithful friends. The better to inspire confidence, I even
sheltered myself behind myself. I said Miss Messenger was interested in
our success. She sends us orders. I went to the West End with things
made up for her. Thanks mainly to her, we are flourishing. We work for
shorter hours and for greater pay than other girls: I could already
double my staff if I could only, which I shall soon, double the work. We
have recreation, too, and we dine together, and in the evening we have
singing and dancing. My girls have never before known any happiness: now
they have learned the happiness of quiet, at least, with a little of the
culture, and some of the things which make rich people happy. Oh! would
you have me go away and leave them, when I have taught these things of
which they never dreamed before? Should I send them back to the squalid
house and the bare pittance again? Stay and take your luncheon with us
when we dine, and ask yourself whether it would not be better for me to
live here altogether--never to go back to the West End at all--than to
go away and desert my girls?"
She was agitated because she spoke from her heart. She went on without
waiting for any reply:
"If you knew the joyless lives, the hopeless days of these girls, if you
could see their workrooms, if you knew what is meant by their long hours
and their insufficient food, you would not wonder at my staying here,
you would cry shame upon the rich woman so selfish as to spend her
substance in idle follies, when she might have spent it upon her
unfortunate sisters."
"I think," said Lord Jocelyn, "that you are a very noble girl."
"Then there is another scheme of mine: a project so great and
generous--nay, I am not singing my own praises, believe me--that I can
never get it out of my mind. This project, Lord Jocelyn, is due to your
ward."
"Harry was always an ingenious youth. But pray tell me what it is."
"I cannot," she replied; "when I put the project into words they seem
cold and feeble. They do not express the greatness of it. They would not
rouse your enthusiasm. I could not make you understand in any degree the
great hopes I have of this enterprise."
"And it is Harry's invention?"
"Yes--his. All I have done is to find the money to carry it out."
"That is a good part of any enterprise, however."
At this point the bell rang.
"That is the first bell," said Angela; "now they lay down their work and
scamper about--at least the younger ones do--for ten minutes before
dinner. Come with me to the dining-room."
Presently the girls came trooping in, fifteen or so, with bright eyes
and healthy cheeks. Some of them were pretty: one, Lord Jocelyn thought,
of a peculiarly graceful and delicate type, though too fragile in
appearance. This was Nelly Sorensen. She looked more fragile than usual
to-day, and there were black lines under her lustrous eyes. Another,
whom Miss Kennedy called Rebekah, was good-looking in a different way,
being sturdy, rosy-cheeked, and downright in her manner. Another, who
would otherwise have been quite common in appearance, was made
beautiful--almost--by the patient look which had followed years of
suffering; she was a cripple; all their faces during the last few months
had changed for the better; not one among them all bore the expression
which is described by the significant words "bold" and "common." Six
months of daily drill and practice in good manners had abolished that
look at any rate.
The dinner was perfectly plain and simple, consisting of a piece of meat
with plenty of vegetables and bread, and nothing else at all. But the
meat was good and well cooked, and the service was on fair white linen.
Moreover, Lord Jocelyn, sitting down in this strange company, observed
that the girls behaved with great propriety. Soon after they began, the
door opened and a man came in. It was one of those to whom Lord Jocelyn
had spoken on the green, the man with the bushy sandy eyebrows. He took
his seat at the table and began to eat his food ravenously. Once he
pushed his plate away as if in a temper, and looked up as if he was
going to complain. Then the girl they called Rebekah--she came to dinner
on Saturdays, so as to have the same advantages as the rest, though she
did no work on that day--held up her forefinger and shook it at him, and
he relapsed into silence. He was the only one who behaved badly, and
Miss Kennedy made as if she had not seen.
During the dinner the girls talked freely among themselves without any
of the giggling and whispering which, in some circles, is considered
good manners; they all treated Miss Kennedy with great respect, though
she was only one workwoman among the rest. Yet there was a great
difference, and the girls knew it; next to her on her left sat the
pretty girl whom she called Nelly.
When dinner was over, because it was Saturday there was no more work.
Some of the girls went into the drawing-room to rest for an hour and
read; Rebekah went home again to attend the afternoon service; some
went into the garden, although it was December, and began to play
lawn-tennis on the asphalt; the man with the eyebrows got up and glared
moodily around from under those shaggy eyebrows and then vanished.
Angela and Lord Jocelyn remained alone.
"You have seen us," she said; "what do you think of us?"
"I have nothing to say, and I do not know what to think."
"Your ward is our right hand. We women want a man to work for us always.
It is his business, and his pleasure, too, to help us to amuse
ourselves. He finds diversions; he invents all kinds of things for us.
Just now he is arranging tableaux and plays for Christmas."
"Is it--is it--oh, Miss Kennedy--is it for the girls only?"
"That is dangerous ground," she replied, but not severely. "Do you think
we had better discuss the subject from that point of view?"
"Poor boy!" said Lord Jocelyn. "It is the point of view from which I
must regard it."
She blushed again--and her beautiful eyes grew limpid.
"Do you think," she said, speaking low, "do you think I do not feel for
him? Yet there is a cause--a sentiment, perhaps. The time is not quite
come. Lord Jocelyn, be patient with me!"
"You will take pity on him?"
"Oh!" she took the hand he offered her. "If I can make him happy----"
"If not," replied Lord Jocelyn, kissing her hand, "he would be the most
ungrateful dog in all the world. If not, he deserves to get nothing but
a shilling an hour for the miserable balance of his days. A shilling?
No; let him go back to his tenpence. My dear young lady, you have made
me at all events, the happiest of men! No, do not fear: neither by word
nor look shall Harry--shall any one--know what you have been so very,
very good, so generous, and so thoughtful as to tell me."
"He loves me for myself," she murmured. "He does not know that I am
rich. Think of that, and think of the terrible suspicions which grow up
in every rich woman's heart when a man makes love to her. Now I can
never, never doubt his honesty. For my sake he has given up so much; for
my sake--mine! oh! Why are men so good to women?"
"No," said Lord Jocelyn. "Ask what men can ever do that they should be
rewarded with the love and trust of such a woman as you?"
That is, indeed, a difficult question, seeing in what words the virtuous
woman has been described by one who writes as if he ought to have known.
As a pendant to the picture 'tis pity, 'tis great pity we have not the
eulogy of the virtuous man. But there never were any, perhaps.
Lord Jocelyn stayed with Angela all the afternoon. They talked of many
things; of Harry's boyhood, of his gentle and ready ways, of his many
good qualities, and of Angela herself, her hopes and ambitions, and of
their life at Bormalack's. And Angela told Lord Jocelyn about her
_protégés_, the claimants to the Davenant peerage, with the history of
the "Roag in Grane," Saturday Davenant; and Lord Jocelyn promised to
call upon them.
It was five o'clock when she sent him away, with permission to come
again. Now this, Lord Jocelyn felt, as he came away, was the most
satisfactory, nay the most delightful, day that he had ever spent.
That lucky rascal Harry! To think of this tremendous stroke of fortune!
To fall in love with the richest heiress in England; to have that
passion returned, to be about to marry the most charming, the most
beautiful, the sweetest woman that had ever been made. Happy, thrice
happy boy! What wonder, now, that he found tinkering chairs, in company,
so to speak, with that incomparable woman, better than the soft divans
of his club or the dinners and dances of society? What had he, Lord
Jocelyn, to offer the lad, in comparison with the delights of this
strange and charming courtship?