Meantime the golden hours were slipping away in a very agreeable manner
for Lord Ilfracombe at Malta. He had been accustomed to spend several
weeks of each summer yachting with a few chosen companions, and as soon
as his little yacht, _Débutante_, had anchored in view of Valetta, a
score of husbands, fathers and brothers had scrambled aboard, carrying
a score of invitations for the newcomer from their womankind. A
young, good-looking and unmarried earl was not so common a visitor to
Malta as to be allowed to consider himself neglected, and before Lord
Ilfracombe and his friends had been located a week in Valetta, they
were the lions of the place, each family vying with the other to do
them honour. Naturally, the earl was pretty well used to that sort of
thing, especially as he had enjoyed his title for the last ten years.
There is such an ingrained snobbishness in the English nature, that it
is only necessary to have a handle to one’s name to get off scot-free,
whatever one may do. There was a divorce case, not so very long ago,
which was as flagrant as such a case could well be; but where the
titled wife came off triumphant, simply because the titled husband had
been as immoral as herself. The lady had money and the lady had good
looks--how far they went to salve over the little errors of which she
had been accused it is impossible to say, but the bulk of the public
forgave her, and the parsons prayed over her, and she is to be met
everywhere, and usually surrounded by a clique of adoring tuft hunters.
Sometimes I have wondered, had she been plain Mrs Brown, instead of
Lady Marcus Marengo, if the satellites would have continued to revolve
so faithfully. But in sweet, simple Christian England, a title, even a
borrowed one, covers a multitude of sins. The Earl of Ilfracombe had
naturally not been left to find out this truth for herself, but to
give him his due, it had never affected him in the least. He despised
servility, though, like most of his sex, he was open to flattery--the
flattery of deeds, not words. Amongst the many families who threw wide
their doors to him in Malta was that of Admiral Sir Richard Abinger,
who had been stationed there for many years. Sir Richard was a regular
family man. He had married sons and daughters; a bevy of girls on
their promotion; and a nursery of little ones. The Abinger girls, as
they were called, were an institution in Valetta. On account of their
father’s professional duties, and their mother’s constant occupation
with her younger children, they were allowed to go about a great deal
alone, and had become frank and fearless, and very well able to take
care of themselves in consequence. They personally conducted Lord
Ilfracombe and his friends to see everything worth seeing in Malta,
and a considerable intimacy was the result. There were three sisters
of the respective ages of eighteen, twenty and twenty-two, and it was
the middle one of these three, Leonora, or Nora, as she was generally
called, who attracted Lord Ilfracombe most. She was not exactly pretty,
but graceful and piquant. Her complexion was pale. Her eyes brown and
not very large; her nose sharp and inclined to be long; her mouth
of an ordinary size, but her teeth ravishingly white and regular. A
connoisseur, summing up her perfections, would have totalled them by
pronouncing her to have long eyelashes, well-marked eyebrows, good
teeth and red lips. But Nora Abinger’s chief charm did not lie in
physical attractions. To many it would not have counted as a charm at
all. They would have set it down as a decided disqualification. This
was her freedom of speech; her quickness of _repartee_; her sense of
the ridiculous; and her power of sustaining a conversation. Young men
of the present day, who find their greatest pleasure in associating
with women whom they would not dare introduce to their mothers and
sisters, are apt to become rather dumb when they find themselves in
respectable society. This had been much the case hitherto with the Earl
of Ilfracombe. He had assiduously neglected his duties to society (if
indeed we _do_ owe any duty to such a mass of corruption and deceit)
and had found his pleasure amongst his own sex, and in pursuing the
delights of sport, not excepting that of the racing field, on which he
had lost, at times, a considerable amount of money. To find that his
ignorance of society squibs and fashions, his slowness of speech and
ideas, his inability to make jokes, and sometimes even to see them,
was no drawback in Nora’s eyes, and that she chatted no less glibly
because he was silent, raised him in his own estimation. In fact, Nora
was a girl who _made_ conversation for her companions. She rubbed up
their wits by friction with her own; and people who had been half an
hour in her company felt all the brightness with which she had infused
them, and were better pleased with themselves in consequence. Lord
Ilfracombe experienced this to the fullest extent. For the first time
perhaps in his life he walked and talked with a young lady without
feeling himself ill at ease, or with nothing to say. Nora talked with
him about Malta and its inhabitants, many of whom she took off to the
life for his amusement. She drew him out on the subject of England
(which she had not visited since she was a child), and his particular
bit of England before all the rest; made him tell her of his favourite
pursuits, and found, strange to say, that they all agreed with her
own tastes; and lamented often and openly that there was no chance of
her father leaving that abominable, stupid island of which she was
so sick. Miss Nora Abinger had indeed determined from the very first
to secure the earl if possible for herself. Her two sisters, Mabel
and Susan, entertained the same aspiration, but they stood no chance
against keen-witted Nora, who was as knowing a young lady as the
present century can produce. She was tired to death, as she frankly
said, of their family life. The admiral would have been well off if he
had not had such a large family; but thirteen children are enough to
try the resources of any profession. Five of the brothers and sisters
were married, and should have been independent, but the many expenses
contingent on matrimony, and the numerous grandchildren with which they
annually endowed him, often brought them back in _forma pauperis_ on
their father’s hands. His nursery offspring, too, would soon be needing
education and a return to England, so that Sir Richard had to think
twice before he acceded to the requests of his marriageable maidens for
ball dresses and pocket-money. All these drawbacks in her domestic life
Nora confided, little by little, to her new friend, the earl, until the
young man yearned to carry the girl away to England with him and give
her all that she desired. He could not help thinking, as he listened
to her gay, rattling talk, how splendidly she would do the honours
of Thistlemere and Cotswood for him; what a graceful, elegant, witty
countess she would make; what an attraction for his bachelor friends;
what a hostess to receive the ladies of his family. The upshot was just
what might have been expected. Lounging one day on a bench under the
shade of the orange-trees which overhang the water’s edge, whilst their
companions had wandered along the quay, Lord Ilfracombe asked her if
she would go back to England with him. Nora was secretly delighted with
the offer, but not at all taken aback.
‘What do you think?’ she inquired, looking up at him archly with her
bright eyes. ‘You know I’ve liked you ever since you came here, and if
you can manage to pull along with me, I’m sure I can with you.’
‘Pull along with you, my darling!’ cried the young man. ‘Why, I adore
you beyond anything. I don’t know how I should get on now without your
bright talk and fascinating ways to cheer my life.’
‘Well, you’ll have to talk to papa about it, you know,’ resumed Nora.
‘I don’t suppose he’ll make any objection (he’ll be a great fool if he
does), still there’s just the chance of it, so I can’t say anything for
certain till you’ve seen him. He’s awfully particular, very religious,
you know, and always says he’d rather marry us to parsons without a
halfpenny, than dukes who were not all they ought to be. But that may
be all talkee-talkee! Though I hope you’re a good boy, all the same,
for my own sake!’
‘Oh, I’m an awfully good boy,’ replied Lord Ilfracombe. ‘This is the
very first offer I ever made a girl in my life, and if you won’t have
me, Nora, it will be the last. Say you like me a little, darling,
whatever papa may say.’
‘I _do_ like you ever so much, and I don’t believe there’ll be any
hitch in the matter.’
‘But if there were--if your father has any objection to me as a
son-in-law--will that make you break with me, Nora?’
‘Of course not. There’s my hand on it! But I don’t see how we are
to get married in this poky little place without his consent. But
there--don’t let us think of such a thing. He’ll give it fast enough.
But we had better go home now and get the matter over at once.’
‘You’ll give me one kiss before we go, Nora,’ pleaded Ilfracombe; ‘no
one can see us here. Just one, to prove you love me!’
‘Out in the open!’ cried the girl, with comical dismay. ‘Oh, Lord
Ilfracombe, what are you thinking of? You don’t know what a horrid
place this is for scandal! Why, if a boatman or beggar came by, it
would be all over the town before the evening. Oh, no; you must wait
till we are properly engaged before you ask for such a thing.’
‘I’ll take my revenge on you, then,’ said the young man gaily; but he
was disappointed, all the same, that Nora had not given in to him.
Sir Richard Abinger was unaffectedly surprised when the earl asked
for an interview, and made his wishes known. His daughters had walked
about and talked with so many men before, without receiving a proposal.
And that Lord Ilfracombe should have fixed on Nora seemed to him the
greatest surprise of all.
‘Nora?’ he reiterated, ‘_Nora?_ Are you sure that you mean Nora? I
should have thought that Mabel or Susie would have been more likely
to take your fancy. People tell me that Susie is the beauty of the
family--that she is so very much admired. We have always considered
Nora to be the plainest of them all.’
‘I do not consider her so, Sir Richard, I can assure you,’ replied the
earl, ‘although, at the same time, I have chosen her much more for her
mind than her looks. She is the most charmingly vivacious girl I have
ever come across. She is as clever as they’re made.’
‘Oh, yes, yes, very clever,’ said the old man; ‘but now we come to the
most important matter--’
‘The settlements? Oh, yes! I hope I shall be able to satisfy you
thoroughly with respect to them.’
‘No, Lord Ilfracombe, not the settlements, though, of course, they are
necessary; but, in my eyes, quite a minor consideration. My daughter,
Nora, is--well, to be frank with you, she is not my favourite daughter.
Perhaps it is our own fault (for the poor child has been left a great
deal to herself), but she is more heedless, less reliable--how shall I
put it? Let me say, more headstrong and inclined to have her own way
than her sisters. It will require a strong man, and a sensible man, to
guide her through life; ay, more than these, a _good_ man. The position
you offer her is a very brilliant one, and I should be proud to see her
fill it; but, before I give my consent to her marrying you, I must be
assured that the example you set her will be such as to raise instead
of debase her.’
‘I do not understand what you mean,’ replied the young man, with a
puzzled air. ‘How can you possibly suspect me of setting my wife a bad
example?’
‘Not practically, perhaps, but theoretically, Lord Ilfracombe. Forgive
me, if I touch upon a delicate subject; but, in the interests of my
daughter, I must lay aside all false scruples. I have heard something
of your domestic life in England, from the men who have come over here,
and I must ascertain for certain that everything of that kind will be
put a stop to before you marry Nora.’
Lord Ilfracombe reddened with shame.
‘Of course, of course,’ he said, after a pause. ‘How can you doubt it?’
‘I am aware,’ continued the admiral, ‘that men of the present day think
little of such matters--that they believe all that goes on before
marriage is of no consequence to anyone but themselves. But it is not
so. Some years back, perhaps, our women were kept in such ignorance
of the ways of the world, that they only believed what their husbands
chose to tell them. Now it is very different. Their eyes seem to have
been opened, and they see for themselves, and act for themselves. I
am often astonished at the insight given to me by my own daughters to
female nature. Where they have learned it in this quiet, little place,
I cannot imagine. It seems to me as if they were born wide-awake. And
Nora is especially so. She is ready to be anything you choose to make
her. And if she found out that you had deceived her, I would not answer
for the consequences.’
‘You may rely on my word, sir, that, in the future, I will never
deceive her. With regard to the past, I should like to make a clean
breast to you, in order that hereafter you may not be able to say I
have kept anything back. Others may also have represented my life as
worse than it has been, and, as my future father-in-law, I should
wish you to think the best of me. Some three years ago, I fell in
with a very beautiful young woman, in a humble station of life, whom
I took into my household as housekeeper. After a while--there was
nothing coarse or vulgar about her, and her beauty was something
extraordinary--I succumbed to the temptation of seeing her constantly
before my eyes, and raised her to the position of my mistress.’
‘I beg your pardon, Lord Ilfracombe,’ said the admiral, looking up.
‘Well, not _raised_ exactly, perhaps, but you know what I mean. We
were mutually attracted, but, of course, it was understood from the
beginning that the connection would only last until I thought fit
to marry. Now, of course, I shall pension her off, and have already
written to my solicitor on the subject. That is really all that any
man can say against me, Sir Richard, and it is far less than the
generality of young fellows of the present day have to confess to.
My life has always been a clean one. I have no debts, my property is
unencumbered, and I have no proclivities for low tastes or companions.
If you will trust your daughter to my care, I promise that her private
rights shall be protected as rigorously as her public ones.’
‘It is a grand position,’ said the father, thoughtfully, ‘and I do not
know that I should be justified in refusing it for Nora. Only it seems
very terrible to me about this other young woman. How is your marriage
likely to affect her? I could have no faith in the stability of my
daughter’s happiness if it were built up on the misery of another.’
Lord Ilfracombe looked up astonished.
‘Oh, Sir Richard, you need have no scruples on that account, I assure
you. These people do not feel as we do. I should have ended the
business any way, for I was getting rather sick of it. To prove what
I say is correct, I have already written to my man of business, Mr
Sterndale, to draw up a deed settling five thousand pounds upon her,
which will secure an ample annuity for a woman in her sphere of life.
She was only a country girl somewhere out of Scotland, I believe. She
will be all right, and, honestly, I never wish to hear her name again.’
‘Very well, Lord Ilfracombe, of course, under any circumstances, the
termination of such a connection is a good thing, and I am glad to
hear that the remembrance of it is distasteful to you. You are a man
of honour, and, therefore, I accept your assurance that it is all over
henceforth, and that you will make my daughter a kind and faithful
husband. But be careful of her, and don’t let her have too much of her
own way. I’ve seen the bad effects of such a course of behaviour before
now.’
So it was a settled thing that Miss Nora Abinger was to become the
Countess of Ilfracombe, and she rose in the estimation of the residents
of Malta accordingly. She had been a fast, bold, flirting girl as Nora
Abinger, but when she was announced as the future Lady Ilfracombe,
it was suddenly discovered that she was really excessively clever and
witty, and though no one could call her exactly pretty, there was
something, a _je ne sais quoi_, about her manner of holding herself
and the way she turned her head that was certainly very fascinating.
Her promised husband, who had discovered her fascinations before, and
was admitted to the full enjoyments of all her wilful moods and witty
sayings, fell more deeply in love with her every day, and had hardly
patience to wait till the wedding preparations were completed for the
fulfilment of his happiness. If a thought of Nell Llewellyn crossed
his mind at this period it was only to hope that her interview with
Sterndale had passed off quietly, and that she would have the sense to
clear out without any fuss. So intensely selfish does a new passion
make a man! The time had been when Nell, who was twice as strong,
mentally and physically, as Nora Abinger, was Lord Ilfracombe’s ideal
of a woman. Her finely moulded form had seemed to him the perfection
of symmetry; her majestic movements, the bearing of a queen; the calm,
classic expression of her features, just what that of a well-bred
gentlewoman’s should be. Now he was gazing rapturously, day after
day, upon Nora’s mobile face, on her slim and lissom figure, which,
stripped of its clothing, resembled nothing better than a willow
wand, and listening eagerly to her flow of nonsensical chatter,
during which she successively ‘cheeked’ her parents and himself,
ridiculed her acquaintances, scolded her younger brethren, and took
her own way in everything. In truth, she differed as greatly from the
loving, submissive woman, who lived but to please him, in England, as
she possibly could do, and herein lay her attraction for him. Nell
Llewellyn was more beautiful, more obedient and more loving, but Nora
was more _new_. He had become just a little bit tired of Nell, and he
had never met a girl who treated him as Nora did, before. She spoke to
him exactly as she chose; she didn’t seem to care a pin about his title
or his money. She contradicted him freely; refused his wishes whenever
they clashed in any degree with her own, and let him fully understand
that she intended to do exactly as she chose for the remainder of
her life. She was a new experience to Lord Ilfracombe, who had been
accustomed to be deferred to in everything. Perhaps she knew this;
perhaps she was ‘cute’ enough to guess the likeliest method by which
to snare the fish she had set her heart on catching; anyway the bait
took and the gudgeon was netted. The Earl of Ilfracombe and Miss Nora
Abinger were formally engaged and the wedding-day was fixed. But still
the young lady did not relax her discipline, and her lover’s privileges
remained few and far between.
‘Paws off Pompey!’ she would cry if he attempted to take any of the
familiarities permissible to engaged people. ‘Do you want Vicenzo
or Giorgione to make us the jest of Valetta? Don’t you know that
“spooning” is out of fashion? We leave all that sort of thing to the
_oi polloi_ now-a-days.’
‘Oh, do we?’ the young man would retort, playfully; ‘then I’ll belong
to the _oi polloi_, Nora, if you please! At all events, I’m going to
have a kiss!’
‘At all events, you’re going to have no such thing; at least, not now.
There’ll be plenty of time for all that kind of nonsense after we’re
married, and we’re not there yet, you know. Don’t forget “there’s many
a slip ’twixt cup and lip.”’
Then, seeing him frown, she would add coaxingly, twisting her mouth up
into the most seductive curves as she spoke,--
‘There, don’t be vexed, you’ll have too much of kissing some day, you
know. Come out in the boat with me. You’re the most troublesome boy I
ever knew. There’s no keeping you in order in the house.’
So he would follow her obediently, with his longing still ungratified,
and always looking forward to a luckier to-morrow. Whoever had been
her instructor, Miss Nora Abinger had certainly learnt the art of
keeping a man at her feet. Perhaps the same thought struck him also,
for one day, when they were alone together, he asked her if he were
the only man she had ever loved. Nora looked at him with the keenest
appreciation lurking in the corners of her mirthful eyes.
‘Are you the only man I’ve ever loved, Ilfracombe?’ she repeated after
him. ‘Well, I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so? Good heavens, do you mean to tell me you’ve had
lovers beside myself!’ he exclaimed, getting into a sudden fury.
‘My dear boy, do you know how old I am? Twenty, last birthday! What are
you dreaming of? Do you suppose all the men in Malta are deaf, dumb,
and blind? Of course I’ve had other lovers--scores of them!’
‘But you didn’t love them, Nora; not as you love me,’ Lord Ilfracombe
asked anxiously.
‘Well, before I can answer that question, we must decide how much I
_do_ love you. Anyway, I didn’t marry any of them, though I might have
had a dozen husbands by this time if I had accepted them all. As it is,
you see, I chucked them over.’
‘But were you engaged to any of them, Nora?’ he persisted.
She might easily have said ‘no,’ but it was not in this girl’s nature
to deceive. She was frankly naughty, defiantly so, some people might
have said, and rather glorified in her faults than otherwise. Besides,
she dearly loved to tease her lover, and tyrannise over him.
‘Oh, yes I was,’ she replied, ‘that is, I had a kind of a sort of an
engagement with several of them. But it amounted to nothing. There was
only one of the whole lot I shed a single tear for.’
‘And pray, who may he have been?’ demanded Lord Ilfracombe, with a
sudden access of dignity.
‘Find it out for yourself,’ she said pertly. ‘Oh, he _was_ a dear,
quite six foot high, with the goldenest golden hair you ever saw; not a
bit like yours. I call yours flaxen. It’s too pale, but his had a rich
tinge in it, and he had such lovely eyes, just like a summer night, I
nearly cried myself blind when he left Malta.’
‘It seems to me,’ said the earl, with the same offended air he had
assumed before, ‘that I am _de trop_ here, since the recollection of
this fascinating admirer is still so fresh. Perhaps I had better resign
in favour of him while there is still time?’
‘Just as you like!’ returned Nora indifferently. ‘I have no wish to
bias your movements in any way. But if you did not want an answer, why
did you put the question to me?’
‘But, Nora, my darling, you did not mean what you said? You did not
waste any of your precious tears on this brute, surely? You said it
only to tease me?’
‘Indeed I did not! Do you imagine you are the only nice man I have ever
seen--that I have been shut up on this island like poor Miranda and
never met a man before? What a simpleton you must be! Of course I was
engaged to him, and should have been married to him by this time, only
the poor dear had no certain income, and papa would not hear of it!
And I cried for weeks afterwards whenever I heard his name mentioned.
Would you have had me an insensible block, and not care whether we had
to give each other up or no?’
‘No, no, of course not, but it is terrible to me, Nora, to think you
could have cared for another man.’
‘Rubbish!’ cried the young lady. ‘How many women have you cared for
yourself? Come now, let us have the list?’
The earl blushed uneasily.
‘I have told you already,’ he replied, ‘that you are the first woman I
have ever asked to be the Countess of Ilfracombe!’
‘And I didn’t ask you how many women you had proposed to, but how many
you had thought you loved. The list can’t be so long that you have
forgotten them all? Let’s begin at the end. That will make it easier.
Who was the last woman before me?’
‘That is a very silly question, Nora, and I consider that I have
already answered it. Besides, I am not a young lady, and that makes
all the difference.’
‘In your idea, Ilfracombe, perhaps, but not mine. We women see no
difference in the two things at all. And if you cannot produce a
clean bill of health in the matter of having loved before, you have
no right to expect it of me. Besides, my dear boy,’ she continued in
a more soothing voice, ‘do you mean to tell me, in this nineteenth
century, that you have reached your present age--what is your present
age, Ilfracombe, nine-and-twenty, is it not?--without having made love
to heaps of women? Not that I care one jot! I am not such a zany! I
think it’s all for the best since “pot will not be able to call kettle
black,” eh?’
And she glanced up into his face from under her long eyelashes in so
fascinating a manner, that the earl caught her in his arms before she
had time to remonstrate, and forgot all about the former lover. So the
time wore away, each day more delightful than the last, spent under
the orange and myrtle trees, or in sailing round the bay, until the
longed-for wedding morning broke, and they were married in the English
church at Malta. Their plans were to go to an hotel higher up in the
island, for a fortnight’s honeymoon, after which they were to start in
the _Débutante_ for the Grecian Isles, before returning to England. A
few days after his marriage, Lord Ilfracombe received a letter by the
English mail that seemed greatly to disturb him. He was most anxious to
conceal it, and his own feelings regarding it, from the observation of
his wife, and this he had no difficulty in doing, as she did not appear
even to have noticed that he was unlike himself. The letter was from a
woman, long and diffusive, and he read it many times. Then he entered
the sitting-room and addressed Lady Ilfracombe.
‘Have you torn up the paper that contained the description of our
marriage, darling?’ he inquired.
‘What, that local thing? No, I never looked at it a second time. It is
somewhere about. What can you possibly want with it, Ilfracombe?’
‘Only to send to one of my English friends, Nora. It is so funnily
worded, it will amuse them.’
And then he found it, and put it in a wrapper and directed it to Miss
Llewellyn, 999 Grosvenor Square, London.