CONGRATULATIONS
In the afternoon of the same day Armorel received a visit from a
certain Lady Frances, of whom mention has already been made. She was
sitting in her own room, alone. The excitements of the last night and
of the morning were succeeded by a gentle melancholy. These things had
not been expected when she took her rooms and plunged into London
life. Besides, after these excitements the afternoon was flat.
Lady Frances came in, dressed beautifully, gracious and cordial; she
took both Armorel's hands in her own, and looked as if she would have
kissed her but for conscientious scruples: she was five-and-forty, or
perhaps fifty, fat, comfortable, and rosy-cheeked. And she began to
talk volubly. Not in the common and breathless way of volubility which
leaves out the stops; but steadily and irresistibly, so that her
companion should not be able to get in one single word. Well-bred
persons do not leave out their commas and their full stops: but they
do sometimes talk continuously, like a cataract or a Westmoreland
Force, at least.
'My dear,' she said, 'I told your maid that I wanted to see you alone,
and in your own room. She said Mrs. Elstree was out. So I came in. It
is a very pretty little room. They tell me you play wonderfully. This
is where you practise, I suppose.' She put up her glasses and looked
round, as if to see what impression had been produced on the walls by
the music. 'And I hear also that you paint and draw. My dear, you are
the very person for him.' Again she looked round. 'A very pretty room,
really--wonderful to observe how the taste for decoration and domestic
art has spread of late years!' A doubtful compliment, when you
consider it. 'Well, my dear, as an old friend of his--at all events, a
very useful friend of his--I am come to congratulate you.'
'To congratulate me?'
'Yes. I thought I would be one of the first. I asked him two or three
days ago if it was settled, and he confessed the truth, but begged me
not to spread it abroad, because there were lawyers and people to see.
Of course, his secrets are mine. And, except my own very intimate
friends and one or two who can be perfectly trusted, I don't think I
have mentioned the thing to a soul. I dare say, however, the news is
all over the town by this time. Wonderful how things get carried--a
bird of the air--the flying thistledown----'
'I do not understand, Lady Frances.'
'My dear, you need not pretend, because he confessed. And I think you
are a very lucky girl to catch the cleverest man in all London, and he
certainly is a lucky man to catch such a pretty girl as you. They say
that he has got through all his money--men of genius are always bad
men of business--but your own fortune will set him up again--a hundred
thousand, I am told--mind you have it all settled on yourself. No one
knows what may happen. I could tell you a heartrending story of a girl
who trusted her lover with her money. But your lawyers will, of
course, look after that.'
'I assure you----'
'He tells me,' the lady went on, without taking any notice of the
interruption, 'that the thing will not come off for some time yet. I
wouldn't keep it waiting too long, if I were you. Engagements easily
get stale. Like buns. Well, I suppose you have learned all his secrets
by this time: of course he is madly in love, and can keep nothing from
you.'
'Indeed----'
'Has he told you yet who writes his stories for him? Eh? Has he told
you that?' The lady bent forward and lowered her voice, and spoke
earnestly. 'Has he told you?'
'I assure you that he has told me nothing--and----'
'That is in reality what I came about. Because, my dear, there must be
a little plain speaking.'
'Oh! but let me speak--I----'
'When I have said what I came to say'--Lady Frances motioned with her
hand gently but with authority--'then you shall have your turn. Men
are so foolish that they tell their sweethearts everything. The chief
reason why they fall in love, I believe, is a burning desire to have
somebody to whom they can tell everything. I know a man who drove his
wife mad by constantly telling her all his difficulties. He was always
swimming in difficulties. Well, Alec is bound to tell you before long,
even if he has not told you yet, which I can hardly believe. Now, my
dear child, it matters very little to him if all the world knew the
truth. All the world, to be sure, credits him with those stories,
though he has been very careful not to claim them. He knows better. I
say to such a clever man as Alec a few stories, more or less, matter
nothing. But it matters a great deal to me'--what was this person
talking about?--'because, you see, if it were to come out that I had
been putting together old family scandals and forgotten stories, and
sending them to the papers--there would be--there would be--Heaven
knows what there would be! Yes, my dear--you can tell Alec that you
know--I am the person who has written those stories. I wrote them,
every one. They are all family stories--every good old family has got
thousands of stories, and I have been collecting them--some of my own
people, some of my husband's, and some of other people--and writing
them down, changing names, and scenes, and dates, so that they should
not be identified except by the few who knew them.'
Armorel made no further attempt to stem the tide of communication.
'I have come to make you understand clearly, young lady, that it is
not his secret alone, but mine. You would do him a little harm,
perhaps--I don't know--by letting it out, but you would do me an
infinity of harm. I write them down, you see, and I take them to Alec,
and he alters them--puts the style right--or says he does--though I
never see any difference in them when they come out in the paper. And
everybody who knows the story asks how in the name of wonder he got
it.'
'Oh! But I do assure you that I know nothing at all of this.'
'Don't you? Well, never mind. Now you do know. And you know also that
you can't talk about it, because it is his secret as well as mine.
Why, you don't suppose that the man really does all he says he does,
do you? Nobody could. It isn't in nature. Everybody who knows anything
at all agrees that there must be a ghost--perhaps more than one. I'm
the story ghost. I dare say there's a picture ghost, and a poetry
ghost. He's a wonderful clever man, no doubt--it's the cleverest thing
in the world to make other people work for you; but don't imagine,
pray, that he can write stories of society. Bourgeois stories--about
the middle class--his own class--perhaps; but not stories about Us. My
stories belong to quite another level. Well, my dear, that is off my
mind. Remember that this secret would do a great deal of harm to him
as well as to me if it were to get about.'
'Oh! You are altogether--wholly--wrong----'
'My dear, I really do not care if I am wrong. You will not, however,
damage his reputation by letting out his secrets? A wife can help her
husband in a thousand ways, and especially in keeping up the little
deceptions. Thousands of wives, I am told, pass their whole lives in
the pretence that they and their husbands are gentlefolk. Alec has
been received into a few good houses; and though it is, of course,
more difficult to get a woman in than a man, I will really do what I
can for you. With a good face, good eyes, a good figure, and a little
addition of style, you ought to get on very well by degrees. Or you
might take the town by storm, and become a professional beauty.'
'Thank you--but----'
'And there's another thing. As an old friend of Alec's, I feel that I
can give advice to you. Let me advise you earnestly, my dear, to make
all the haste you can to get rid of your companion. I know all about
it. She was sent to your lawyer's by Alec himself. Why? Well, it is an
old story, and I suppose he wanted to place her comfortably--or he had
some other reason. He's always been a crafty man. You can see that in
his eyes.'
'Oh! But I cannot listen to this!' cried Armorel.
'Nonsense, my dear. You do not expect your husband to be an angel, I
suppose. Only silly middle-class girls who read novels do that. It
will do you no harm to know that the man is no better than his
neighbours. And I am sure he is no worse. I am speaking, in fact, for
your own good. My dear child, Alec ran after the woman years ago. She
was rich then, and used to go about. Certain houses do not mind who
enter within their gates. They lived in Palace Gardens, and Monsieur
le Papa was rich--oh! rich _à millions_--and the daughter was
sugar-sweet and as innocent as an angel--fluffy hair, all tangled and
rebellious--you know the kind--and large blue, wondering eyes,
generally lowered until the time came for lifting them in the faces of
young men. It was deadly, my dear. I believe she might have married
anybody she pleased. There was the young Earl of Silchester--he wanted
her. What a fool she was not to take him! No; she was spoony on Alec
Feilding----'
'Oh! I must not!' cried Armorel again.
'My dear, I'm telling you. Her papa went smash--poor thing!--a grand,
awful, impossible smash; other people's money mixed up in it. A dozen
workhouses were filled with the victims, I believe. That kind of smash
out of which it is impossible to pull yourself anyhow. Killed himself,
therefore. Went out of the world without invitation by means of a
coarse, vulgar, common piece of two-penny rope, tied round his great
fat neck. I remember him. What did the girl do? Ran away from society:
went on the stage as one of a travelling company. Why, I saw her
myself three years ago at Leamington. I knew her instantly. "Aha!" I
said, "there's Miss Fluffy, with the appealing, wondering eyes. Poor
thing! Here is a come down in the world!" Now I find her here--your
companion--a widow--widow of one Jerome Elstree deceased--artist, I am
told. I never heard of the gentleman, and I confess I have my doubts
as to his existence at all.'
Armorel ceased to offer any further opposition to the stream.
'The innocent, appealing blue eyes: the childish face: oh! I remember.
My dear, I hope you will not have any reason to be jealous of Mrs.
Elstree. But take care. There were other girls, too, now I come to
think about it. There was his cousin, Philippa Rosevean. Everybody
knows that he went as far with her as a man can go, short of an actual
engagement. Canon Langley, of St. Paul's, wants to marry her. She's an
admirable person for an ecclesiastical dignitary's wife--beautiful,
cold, and dignified. But, as yet, she has not accepted him. They say
he will be a bishop. And they say she loves her cousin Alec still.
Women are generally dreadful fools about men. But I don't know. I
don't think, if I were you, I should be jealous of Philippa. There's
another little girl, too, I have seen coming out of his studio. But
she's only a model, or something. If you begin to be jealous about the
models, there will be no end. Then, there are hundreds of girls about
town--especially those who can draw and paint a little, or write a
silly little song--who think they are greatly endowed with genius, and
would give their heads to get your chance. You are a lucky girl, Miss
Armorel Rosevean; but I would advise you, in order to make the most of
your good fortune, to change your companion quickly. Persuade her to
try the climate of Australia. Else, there may be family jars.'
Here she stopped. She had said what was in her mind. Whether she came
to say this out of the goodness of her heart; or whether she intended
to make a little mischief between the girl and her lover; or whether
she supposed Armorel to be a young lady who accepts a lover with no
illusions as to imaginary perfections, so that a new weakness
discovered here and there would not lower him in her opinion, I cannot
say. Lady Frances was generally considered a good-natured kind of
person, and certainly she had no illusions about perfection in any
man.
'May I speak now?' asked Armorel.
'Certainly, my dear. It was very good of you to hear me patiently. And
I've said all I wanted to. Keep my secret, and get rid of your
companion, and I'll take you in hand.'
'Thank you. But you would not suffer me to explain that you are
entirely mistaken. I am not engaged to Mr. Feilding at all.'
'But he told me that you were.'
'Yes; but he also tells the world, or allows the world to believe,
that he writes your stories. I am not engaged to Mr. Feilding, Lady
Frances, and, what is more, I never shall be engaged to that
man--never!'
'Have you quarrelled already?'
'We have not quarrelled, because before people quarrel they must be on
terms of some intimacy. We have never been more than acquaintances.'
'Well--but--child--he has been seen with you constantly. At theatres,
at concerts, in the park, in galleries--everywhere, he has been
walking with you as if he had the right.'
'I could not help that. Besides, I never thought----'
'Never thought? Why, where were you brought up? Never thought? Good
gracious! what do young ladies go into society for?'
'I am not a young lady of society, I am afraid.'
'Well--but--what was your companion about, to allow---- Oh!'--Lady
Frances nodded her head--'oh! now I understand. Now one can understand
why he got her placed here. Now one understands her business. My dear,
you have been placed in a very dangerous position--most dangerous.
Your guardians or lawyers are very much to blame. And you really never
suspected anything?'
'How should I suspect? I was always told that Mr. Feilding was not the
man to begin that kind of thing.'
'Were you? Your companion told you that, I suppose?'
'Oh! I suppose so. There seems a horrid network of deception all about
me, Lady Frances.' Armorel rose, and her visitor followed her example.
'You have put a secret into my hands. I shall respect it. Henceforth,
I desire but one more interview with this man. Oh! he is all
lies--through and through. There is no part of him that is true.'
'Nonsense, my dear; you take things too seriously. We all have our
little reservations, and some deceptions are necessary. When you get
to my age you will understand. Why won't you marry the man? He is
young: his manners are pretty good: he is a man of the world: he is
really clever: he is quite sure to get on, particularly if his wife
help him. He means to get on. He is the kind of man to get on. You see
he is clever enough to take the credit of other people's work: to make
others work for you is the first rule in the art of getting on. Oh! he
will do. I shall live to see him made a baronet, and in the next
generation his son will marry money, and go up into the Lords. That is
the way. My dear, you had better take him. You will never get a more
promising offer. You seem to me rather an unworldly kind of girl. You
should really take advice of those who know the world.'
'I could never--never--marry Mr. Feilding.
'Wealth, position, society, rank, consideration--these are the only
things in life worth having, and you are going to throw them away! My
dear, is there actually nothing between you at all? Was it all a fib?'
'Actually nothing at all, except that he offered himself to me this
very morning, and he received an answer which was, I hope, plain
enough.'
'Ah! now I see.' Lady Frances laughed. 'Now I understand, my dear, the
vanity of the man! The creature, when he told me that fib, thought it
was the truth because he had made up his mind to ask you, and, of
course, he concluded that no one could say "No" to him. Now I
understand. You need not fall into a rage about it, my dear. It was
only his vanity. Poor dear Alec! Well, he'll get another pretty girl,
I dare say; but, my dear, I doubt whether---- Rising men are scarce,
you know. Good-bye, child! Keep that little secret, and don't bear
malice. The vanity--the vanity of the men! Wonderful! wonderful!'
* * * * *
'And now,' cried Armorel, alone--'now there is nothing left.
Everything has been torn from him. He can do nothing--nothing. The
cleverest man--the very cleverest man in all London!'