NO NONSENSE ABOUT HER.
On the day following the dinner at Richmond, Mr. Dolby presented
himself at Miss Montressor's abode somewhat later than she had looked
for his coming.
He did not find the fair lady in a very serene mood--she was tired;
several small domestic occurrences had ruffled her temper--which, to
say the truth, was not a bad one--during the early part of the day,
and when they met there was in the manner of both those latent
symptoms of ill-humour which arise so often between persons in the
habit of being much in each other's society, and who have, therefore,
cast off the self-restraint which occasionally tends to hypocrisy, but
has, nevertheless, a wholesome influence in human intercourse.
Mr. Dolby omitted to tell Miss Montressor that she was looking
beautiful--and that was a grave offence. He, moreover, omitted to
exhibit any very lively curiosity as to the proceedings of the
previous day, and though Miss Montressor did not care a straw where he
had passed the interval between their last and their present meeting,
or would not think of troubling herself to make an inquiry about his
proceedings, she was not prepared to find him equally philosophical.
'I suppose you forgot all about the Richmond dinner?' she said to him,
when a few phrases, of course, had passed between them.
'O no, I didn't forget it,' he said, 'but I suppose one dinner at
Richmond resembles another very much, except in point of talk. People
eat the same things, drink the same things, wear the same things, and
get intensely bored earlier or later in the evening, such as the case
may be.'
'It was considerably later last evening,' replied Miss Montressor,
with an aggravating smile, which, however, failed to aggravate Mr.
Dolby, or to tempt him into an inquiry as to the vivifying principle
of the previous day's entertainment. A more acute observer than Miss
Montressor might have discerned in Mr. Dolby's manner preoccupation
rather than indifference; but she was not an acute observer, and she
was so honestly and unaffectedly interested in herself; and not
interested in other people, that she resented his indifference. It
would never have occurred to this woman--who, after all, was
simple-minded--that any one who came to see her could think of
anything but her, at least during the visit; and she therefore
promptly resolved to punish Mr. Dolby for his departure from the laws
laid down by her code of what was due to her. He did not seem inclined
to take up the challenge she had flung down to him, and she found
herself obliged to put an aggressive question.
'I suppose you don't care to know about the party yesterday,' she
said, 'because it's quite clear I enjoyed myself, though you were not
there; and men always resent that, though they can get away from us
and be as jolly as possible.'
'My dear girl,' said Mr. Dolby, taking the inevitable photograph-book
off the table, and carefully opening its ormolu clasps, as if the
investigation of its contents offered to him a mental prospect of the
most charming description, 'your theories about men are utterly
absurd! I have told you so more than once, and I am not disposed to
discuss the subject. I am very glad you had a pleasant day at
Richmond, and--though I don't care for _réchaffés_ in general, and you
told me on Saturday who was to be there and all about it--I really
didn't suppose you had any new or startling details to communicate.
However, I don't at all mind hearing about the day if you are disposed
to tell me. What did you wear? who did you go with? was the wine good?
what hour did you get back?'
He had spoken in a monotonous tone of voice, with his eyes cast down,
and turning over the clicking leaves of the photograph-book with one
finger. Miss Montressor snatched it out of his hand with a suddenness
which obliged him to look up, and he saw in her face that she was
downright angry, which he had not intended her to be at this stage of
the proceedings. A little later anger would be a wholesome sentiment,
which he proposed to awaken; so he smiled, took her hand, and said,
with an attempted playfulness:
'Come--come, Clara, let us be friends; we're both a little bit out of
sorts. I don't know what cause you may have; probably nothing more
serious than your day yesterday having been too pleasant and having
lasted too long. By the bye, what hour did you get back?'
'O, it was very late,' said Miss Montressor, withdrawing her hand, but
not captiously, and arranging her bracelets. 'It was, in fact, awfully
late, and Justine had got into the horrors under the influence of a
solitary Sunday, and was full of possible robbers and tramps with a
taste for murder; so I went to bed in rather an ill-temper, and
several things which have happened to-day have not improved me. I have
not seen you so disagreeable for an age; what's wrong?'
'I am excessively disappointed, Clara, and I am afraid you will be so
too; but it cannot be helped. I find I shall not be able to go with
you to Liverpool.'
'Not able to go with me to Liverpool, after promising that you would?'
said Miss Montressor, with a good deal of vehemence. 'I never heard
such a thing. That's really too bad, and I'm quite certain there is no
real reason for it. I never knew you to be prevented doing a thing
that you really cared to do. You are throwing me over, sir.'
'I am not throwing you over,' said Mr. Dolby coolly, 'and your
suspicions are equally unjust to me and uncomplimentary to yourself. I
told you I should see you off, and I not only wished to do so, but did
not foresee the slightest difficulty about it; the difficulty has
arisen, however. There is a man coming from New York whom I must see,
and I can only see him on this day week, the day you leave.'
'How did you know?' said she quickly. 'There is no mail in.'
'And you never heard of the Atlantic cable, I suppose? A message
cabled this morning, my child; and though I am your slave, you know, I
have troublesome business for my second master, whom I am obliged to
serve, and this time his claims are paramount. Don't get angry--don't
spoil the last few hours we shall have together for some time by
causeless pique and silly petulance--that sort of thing does not
attract me, and you don't look handsome when you are out of temper. I
would go if I could. I cannot go, and there's an end of it.'
'Please keep your comments on my temper to yourself,' said Miss
Montressor, with an air of steady and determined ill-humour, which, as
Mr. Dolby had truly remarked, did not become her. Like all under-bred
women, she could not venture on anger; that most disfiguring of
passions was destructive to her dignity. She stood up, brought both
hands resolutely down upon the table before her, and said, with a
slight stamp of her foot:
'It is not business that prevents you, and I don't believe a word of
it; it is because you are afraid of being seen with me. You have
always been playing a game of hide-and-seek--you are no better than
other people, and I am no worse, and I hate such hypocrisy. Who are
you keeping up a character for, or with, a character that is to suffer
because you are civil to an actress, who was going by herself to the
other side of the world? I suppose you think there is more chance of
your being seen in Liverpool than London by some "goody" acquaintance,
who would be excessively shocked.'
'Please don't talk in that tone, Clara. _It's_ rather shocking--though
I don't expect you to understand why. However, I don't mind telling
you that you are not altogether wrong, though you put my objection to
being seen with your pleasant associates on a totally mistaken
footing; and as I don't like to part with you in a fit of offence, I
shall take the trouble of explaining to you again that it is a matter
of great importance to me not to be seen at present by any New York
people, and not to have my name mentioned in the hearing of such. I
have told you that the business I am engaged upon in London might be
seriously compromised by manoeuvring friends from the other side, that
my whole fortune is involved in it--an argument whose strength you
might very fairly comprehend, though, mind, I do not mean to say you
are as mercenary as most women, or more expensive than others; but
after all, a very little imprudence on your part, you see, might make
a considerable difference to you, and all the difference to me. The
truth is, I have the appointment in London I have told you of and I
could not go down to Liverpool and run the risk of being seen there by
the set who I am advised are coming from New York by the mail that
will arrive just before the Cuba goes out; so now you know all about
it. You will take my word, won't you, that I am very sorry; and you
will take that frown off your face, for I really want to talk to you
seriously, and this is childish, however pretty.'
Miss Montressor was endowed with very good sense, and it showed her at
once that Dolby was speaking the truth. She did not understand much
about his business--she had never cared enough about him to try;--but
she was alive to the reasonableness of his refusal to gratify her
wish--a wish dictated a good deal more by _amour propre_ than any
sentimental longing to enjoy his society to the last possible moment.
She accordingly recovered herself; and with no more protest than a
dubious shake of the head, resumed her seat and prepared to listen to
Mr. Dolby.
'Well,' she said, 'go on; what have you got to say to me?'
'That,' said Mr. Dolby seriously, 'I have always found you
trustworthy. Nine women out of ten, on being told that it was a matter
of importance to me that no American in London should know that am in
London, would have betrayed the fact to every American of her
acquaintance, from an amiable desire to penetrate the motive of my
injunction. I am quite sure that you have scrupulously observed it.'
'Certainly,' said she; 'it don't matter to me. Why should I go and
talk about you when you ask me not? That would be simply perverse.'
'Nine women out of ten, my dear,' said Mr. Dolby, 'are perverse. I
esteem myself very fortunate to have found the exceptional tenth.'
'I hate men who are always sneering at women,' said Miss Montressor;
'it's a bad sign.'
'For the women?'
'No, sir, for the men. But I daresay you have been very ill-treated in
your time; only it doesn't matter to me what women you think ill of,
provided you think well of me, so I will take the compliment. I assure
you once again that I never mentioned your name to any American--or
rather, I should say, to the only American I know.
'That is Mr. Foster,' said Mr. Dolby, with a slight effort.
'Yes,' said Miss Montressor, 'to Mr. Foster. I like him so much,' she
added in a brisk parenthesis. 'Do you know him?'
'No,' said Mr. Dolby; 'never heard of him. What's his business?'
'O, I am sure I don't know. You don't suppose he talked of business
yesterday, or would bother me about it under any circumstances. He was
much too jolly for that. I hate your concentrated men who cannot think
of anything but money-making, and cannot talk of anything except the
way they make it.'
'You like the money though,' said Dolby.
'O yes, I like the money; but I like it as a result, just as one likes
dinner. Dinner would be a nuisance if one had to see it cooked and
know how it is done; so would money if one had to superintend the
getting of it. Mr. Foster never alludes to business.'
'Ah, well,' said Mr. Dolby, 'that is no proof that he may not be in
something that would clash with me, and it is highly important that he
should not know of my existence,--here at least. Was there any one
with him yesterday?'
'No; he came alone--I mean not with Duval and me in the mail
phaeton--and was the life of the evening--such a charming man!'
'Married?' asked Mr. Dolby.
'Yes, married; and to a charming wife, if one may judge by the way he
talked about her.'
'What wretched taste!' said Mr. Dolby. 'You hate a man who talks about
business. I hate a man who talks about domesticities. I go so far with
the Orientals as this, that men should not talk about their womankind
or suffer them to be mentioned to them in general, except by very
intimate friends, who ought to be mutual.'
'How do you know that we are not very intimate friends?' said Miss
Montressor, suddenly assuming an air of coquettishness. The serious
tone of the interview had been unduly prolonged for her taste, and she
had no capacity for ethics.
'It must be a very sudden intimacy if it exists,' said Mr. Dolby
angrily.
'I didn't say it was not; one doesn't take a lifetime to like a man,
to find it out, and let him know the fact.'
'No,' said Mr. Dolby, 'one doesn't; nor does he take a lifetime to
reciprocate, even though he has this charming wife, and talks the most
arrant nonsense about her.'
'Mr. Foster talks no nonsense,' said Miss Montressor, 'about her or
about me, which is what you mean to imply. He made himself exceedingly
agreeable--shall I tell you how?' (There was a sudden depth in her
voice and a sudden depth in her eyes which would have had pathetic
meaning to any one capable of reading it.) 'You don't answer; well,
then, I will. By treating me exactly like a lady, with the respect he
might have paid to his wife or his sister, and without the smallest
intimation, except when I turned the conversation in that direction,
that he remembered that I was only an actress.'
'Pooh!' said Dolby, in a tone of exaggerated contempt, and watching
her closely as he spoke; 'that is the stalest trick. A man gets
introduced to you because you are an actress simply, and ingratiates
himself with you by pretending to forget it. You ought to be too sharp
to be done by such an artifice as that, and have too much respect for
your profession to be pleased by it. After all, my dear, what's your
claim to consideration and admiration? First, that you are a pretty
woman, which is always the first claim that any woman can have;
secondly, that you are a popular actress. When a man attempts to put
either admiration or consideration on any other footing, he is in
reality flattering you with an additional assumption that you are a
fool. I was more honest than your new admirer, Miss Montressor.'
'My new admirer, as you choose to call him, Mr. Dolby, is at least
more courteous than you are. I heard him tell Duval, to whom he does
not speak on business matters, that he would postpone an important
one, for the purpose of accompanying us to Liverpool.'
Mr. Dolby drew a long breath, and his nostrils expanded slowly--a
symptom of emotion with which Miss Montressor was acquainted.
'I have roused him now in earnest,' she said to herself; 'we shall
have a storm.'
But she either misinterpreted the source of this manifestation, or Mr.
Dolby exhibited great self-control. Instead of the passion with which
she expected to be rebuked, he simply replied, leaning back indolently
in his chair, and clasping his hands over his head, with an air of
absolute leisure, 'Lucky dog who can postpone business for pleasure.'
'He regards it as a very great pleasure, I assure you, Mr. Dolby. He
said he would not lose the last sight of us for any consideration, and
deeply regretted his absence from New York during cur stay.'
'Of course he introduced you to his charming wife.'
'Not just yet--not by letter, I mean. He hopes to be able to return
before our engagement terminates; and to have, as he expressed it,
"the pleasure of making the introduction in person."'
Mr. Dolby laughed an exceedingly insolent laugh.
'And you believe that?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Don't you?'
'Certainly not. I believe he has not the slightest intention that you
should know his wife--it might not be convenient; he might not have
quite so strong an opinion of your discretion as I have--he has not
had so much time to found one, you know--and circumstances may defeat
his hope of getting back during your stay. I don't think you will make
Mrs. Foster's acquaintance, but I suppose you will find Mr. Foster
waiting to receive you at Liverpool on your return.'
'He says so,' she answered, 'if he does not come to New York. It is
all very well your sneering at a man you know nothing about, but I
believe in Mr. Foster, and you shall not sneer me out of it.'
'I have no wish to interfere with your faith in him or in time,' said
Mr. Dolby; 'but with reference to this same coming back, have you
anything to say about me?'
Miss Montressor blushed violently. The cold cynicism of his tone hurt
her. She was not sensitive, and she did not care about him, but she
was proud in her way, and he had offended her.
'I do not understand your meaning,' she said. 'I do not know what you
are driving at.'
'Not at an enigma, my dear. I do not want you to go away with any
notion of acting a little private drama in addition to those in which
I have no doubt you will make a stunning success in my country. You
know well enough what a matter-of-fact fellow I am, how entirely
averse to acting off the boards. I am not jealous, it is too much
trouble, and I like to leave people as much freedom of action as I
claim for myself; still I like things on the square, you know; and it
strikes me very forcibly that it might suit your book to put our
future relations upon a tolerably liberal footing.'
'Do you mean to say you want to get rid of me?' said Miss Montressor,
surprised for the moment out of her coquetry into very real disgust.
'Certainly not; but, unless I am very much mistaken, it might be
convenient to you to be aware that you can get rid of me, without any
manoeuvring on the subject, without making an enemy of me, and without
incurring any grave risk of breaking my heart.'
'I don't believe you have any heart to break,' said she.
'O yes, I have; quite as much as is convenient to myself; or pleasant
for you. Look here, Clara, there is a long parting before us--at all
events, a parting you have chosen to make, in the interests of your
professional career. I think you are quite right, and I don't want to
hamper your action with any consideration for the future. When you
return, I shall be very glad to see you, but you can choose for
yourself; without any reproach from me, whatever may be the end of
your choice, the exact character of our future relations. You can take
them up at their present point, if you please; you can reduce them to
simple friendship. I don't believe in platonics, remember, as a
starting-point, but I believe in them as a terminus. You know where I
am always to be heard of. I presume I shall hear from you during your
stay in America, but if it bores you to write, I shall not tie you to
a correspondence; on your return to England, any communication you may
choose to make to me shall, as we say in business, "receive my prompt
consideration."'
With these words Mr. Dolby rose, buttoned his coat, took up his hat
and gloves, and offered Miss Montressor his hand, with the cool ease
of an ordinary morning visitor. She was so thoroughly taken aback by
his demeanour, that for once in her life nature and training alike
failed her. She was entirely unequal to the emergency, so she stood
perfectly still and perfectly silent, without making any movement in
answer to the gesture by which he invited her to shake hands. In
another instant Mr. Dolby had left the room, and she heard him walk
quietly down-stairs and out of the house, before she recovered
herself.
For a good hour Miss Montressor sat in her drawing-room, under the
impression of this extraordinary parting scene. It was a demonstration
not only unlike but entirely opposed to anything which she had
previously remarked in Mr. Dolby's character. If this woman had been
naturally very clever--or had learned by education to decipher the
relations between cause and effect, as they are, indicated by the
actions of human beings--she would probably have hit upon the truth;
she would probably have discerned that Mr. Dolby had for the nonce
assumed her profession, that she had seen him in the character of an
actor, performing a part as carefully rehearsed as any that she had
ever played, and with far more serious meaning.
During her confused meditations it had crossed her mind vaguely that
there might be a motive for his extraordinary conduct; for the
senseless outburst of jealousy which, though he strenuously denied it,
his line of action betrayed.
'What can he mean by it?' she asked herself a score of times,
something within her heart contending with the natural and somewhat
flattering interpretation which she placed upon his behaviour. She
remembered his ill-humour when they first met, and it flashed across
her mind as a possibility that he might have come with the
predetermination to quarrel with her. But why? She had given him no
offence, their last interview had been conducted on the footing of a
perfectly good understanding; and the mention of Mr. Foster, to which
his present freak manifestly referred, had only arisen on the present
occasion.
Miss Montressor was lost in a maze; but among its bewilderments love
had no place, as she was quite conscious that she could be perfectly
happy without Mr. Dolby, could it be proved that he had made up his
mind to do without her. And she was not vehemently impatient to emerge
from the maze.
The cogitation of an hour ended, after all, in the contented
conviction on her part that the sole motive of Mr. Dolby's conduct was
jealousy, mingled with a perception that he was a stronger-willed and
worse-tempered man than she had hitherto believed him to be.
The practical conclusion at which she arrived was that she would leave
Mr. Dolby to himself for a day or two. He had spoken of 'faith in
time,' and though Miss Montressor was not apt in poetry, she was
capable of prosaic adaptation of the adage. She would try the effect
of time at very little cost to herself. It was a matter of comparative
indifference whether she saw Mr. Dolby the next day, or the next day
but one, or the next day but two; he should have a wholesome interval
to come to his senses, and she really had a great deal to do in
preparing for her voyage to America.
Within an hour and a half after Mr. Dolby's precipitate exit from Miss
Montressor's abode, that lady was engaged in the prosaic occupation of
making out, with Justine's assistance, an inventory of the finery
which, apart from her stage wardrobe, she considered it necessary to
take to New York; then an inventory of that which she was leaving
behind. These grave matters of business were of sufficient importance
to shroud in temporary oblivion anything so insignificant as a quarrel
with Mr. Dolby--which might, perhaps, be called a lover's quarrel on
his side, but which, to Miss Montressor, had simply the commonplace
aspect of a fit of unqualified ill-temper.
'He is a surly brute!' was her summary; 'and I will just leave him to
come out of his sulk.'
* * * * * *
The next day but one went over, the first stage in the process of Mr.
Dolby's coming to his senses in Miss Montressor's mental time-table.
The hours did not drag; there was plenty to do, there were many people
to see; and the more Miss Montressor dwelt upon the prospect of
her Transatlantic trip, higher rose the hopes of reaching her
ambition--the expectant star about to get a real opportunity of
shining for the first time could not trouble her head with such
mundane matters as a sullen admirer.
The next day but two went over, and Mr. Dolby neither came nor wrote.
No conciliatory bouquet, no reconciliatory bracelet, came as a token
of regret and repentance. Things were looking serious, and Miss
Montressor was sorry--sorry, not with the interested annoyance of a
woman of her class who has awakened to the fear of losing a rich
lover, but sorry with a genuine kindheartedness, reluctant to part
with an old friend on bad terms; and with something of the
irresistible tenderness which all but a thoroughly heartless woman
must feel towards one whose feelings she believes herself to have
miscalculated and wounded unawares.
'Who could have thought,' she said to herself on the morning of the
third day, 'that he cared about me so much?' A shallow generalisation;
but somehow one would have liked Miss Montressor less if she had been
more clear-sighted--if she had been able to read between the lines on
this occasion.
At noon of the third day Miss Montressor took a resolution and
a sheet of her very best note-paper, with a very dainty monogram in
rose-colour and silver, and scrawled upon it just two of those
characteristic lines which mean so much and say so little, which are
full of apology without humiliating concession, and full of attraction
without formal invitation.
This letter she despatched by her page, who returned considerably
before she looked for him, bringing back the letter, with the
unexpected intelligence that Mr. Dolby had left his lodgings at
Queen-street, Mayfair, 'for good;' and also that the people at the
house had no address and no instructions for the forwarding of
communications intended for him.
Miss Montressor had literally never been so taken aback in all her
life.
'What could it mean?' she again asked herself, this time without the
vaguest indication of an answer; and now she was alarmed as well as
sorry. Was this indeed to be a fatal and irreparable breach?
Rather late on the same evening a four-wheeled cab drove up at the
door of No. 192 Queen-street, Mayfair. Two females occupied the
vehicle, one of whom was presumably, by her dress and appearance, a
respectable upper servant, perhaps a lady's maid. Her dress was plain,
but suitable to such an assumption, and she was closely veiled.
Leaving her companion, who was somewhat similarly attired, in the cab,
this person rang the bell and requested to see the mistress of the
house. A respectable-looking middle-aged woman, with a countenance
exhibiting that peculiar mixture of conventional complacency and
ever-present anxiety which characterises the London lodging-house
keeper, presented herself in answer to this request, and begged that
the lady would step into her little room. The visitor explained at
once, to avoid disappointing the expectation which was very plainly
written in the landlady's anxious face, that she had not come to
engage rooms, that she had merely called to make inquiry. This
announcement was met with no decrease of civility, and the invitation
to walk in was repeated.
It then appeared that the visitor had called to inquire about the
lodger who had recently left No. 192, and the interview between the
two women very rapidly assumed the aspect of a gossiping chat. Mrs.
Watts was very sorry to part with her lodger, 'which he was quite the
gentleman,' and had gone away with his luggage in a cab, and himself
in a hansom. There was a deal of luggage; them big boxes as come from
New York, and looks like ladies' boxes mostly. Mrs. Watts could not
say where he had gone to--certainly she had seen the labels; but they
were two brass labels slipped into the ticket grooves, with New York
in black letters upon the metal.
'Was there any name upon the trunks?' asked the visitor.
Mrs. Watts was quite sure there was no name anywhere, nor upon the
strapped-up package of railway rugs, canes, and umbrellas.
'Did Mrs. Watts,' asked the visitor, 'entertain any doubt whatever
upon the subject?'
'He had left in the evening, and she had heard the driver of the
hansom directed to Euston Station, to catch the Liverpool mail.'
This was conclusive, and the visitor, taking a polite leave of Mrs.
Watts, got into the cab and drove home without exchanging a single
word with her companion.
'He is mad,' thought Miss Montressor during that silent drive, and
there was a strange complacency in her mind at this conclusion--'he is
stark mad with jealousy--who would have thought it? Well, he will get
over it, I suppose, and it don't matter to me.'
A reader of Miss Montressor's thoughts and an observer of Miss
Montressor's ways would have been struck by the extraordinary
frequency with which that little phrase, it don't matter to me,'
turned up in Miss Montressor's meditations, and found utterance in
Miss Montressor's speech. It don't matter to me, but it is better than
any play I ever had a part in, or any play I know anything about, for
I firmly believe he has gone to New York beforehand to watch me.'
It was not, on the whole, an unnatural conclusion; it only lacked one
element of probability. Mr. Dolby's unexpected access of jealousy had
come on apropos of Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster was not gone nor going to
New York. This circumstance struck Miss Montressor after some time,
but she got over the little difficulty by reasoning from the
particular to the general, and making up her mind that Mr. Dolby had
suddenly arrived at the conclusion that she was not to be trusted
either here or there. There was something flattering in this
conclusion, even to a woman who did not care a straw about him, and
who was in her way, and according to her light, frank and honest. Miss
Montressor liked the flattery, accepted the conclusion, did not
trouble herself to reconcile it with Mr. Dolby's story of his
appointment in London, and supposed they should meet over there, and
it would be all good fun.
* * * * * *
Only one incident remains to be recorded with regard to Miss
Montressor's visit to Mr. Dolby's former abode. It was not under that
familiar name that she inquired for him; it was not in that name that
Mrs. Watts praised the amiability, and lamented the departure of her
late lodger, nor had that been the name inscribed upon the note with
the rose-and-silver monogram.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Impending Sword (Vol. 1 of 3), by Edmund Yates