THE LONG ARM OF MR. DESPENCER
George, Marquis of Severn, was one of those unfortunate men who are out
of sympathy with the class into which they have been born. As a yeoman,
farming his own land, he would have been contented; as a marquis, he
was miserable. His rank was irksome to him, he was bored by dignity, he
took no interest in politics, and detested what is called society.
If his lot had lain in a humbler sphere of life, he would have had a
wife of his own choice, and been a good husband and father. As it was,
he had married a woman selected for him by his people, and with whom
he had not a thought in common. She was not his wife--she was merely
his marchioness. He felt himself a stranger in his own household; his
very children grew up to regard him with good-natured contempt, and the
people with whom Lady Severn surrounded herself were hardly conscious
that there was such a person as Lord Severn in existence.
By natural disposition George Mauleverer was the reverse of a
libertine. He was fitted for domestic happiness as it is understood
by the middle classes. The irony of his fate compelled him to seek it
away from his own hearth, under conditions fatal to its permanence. The
woman whom he had taken as his second wife, and whom he would willingly
have continued to treat as such, was too much like himself to rest
satisfied in a life which outraged the social and moral prejudices of
her class. She could not find satisfaction any more than he in that
restless, artificial form of existence which is known as a life of
pleasure. She hated the gay sisterhood of St. John, and yearned after
the respectability in which she had been reared. To these motives for
breaking off the connection was added, after a few years, the decisive
one of religion. A sermon convicted her of living in sin, and she
resolved to return to the paths of righteousness.
George Mauleverer could not oppose her determination. He sorrowfully
recognized that she was in the right, and assisted her efforts to
regain her natural place in the world. In due course she found a
husband, and from that moment all intercourse between the two came to
an end.
The only right which the man reserved to himself was that of watching
over the child of their former union. He had done this under an
assumed name, and in the character of a godfather. Neither he nor
the mother had contemplated the necessity of revealing the truth to
their daughter. But they had reckoned without the world. Just as Belle
was growing into womanhood her stepfather died, and her mother was
threatened with disastrous poverty. In that strait she would not
consent to take money from her old lover. As a lesser evil, she allowed
her daughter to turn her talents to account on the stage.
It had occurred neither to her nor to Belle’s father that the secret
which had been kept so successfully while Belle remained in the
obscurity of middle-class life might be endangered by the publicity
which she must now incur. The father continued to associate with his
daughter under the name by which she knew him. But Belle’s comings and
goings now fell under the eyes of more than one who knew the Marquis
of Severn. London is not such a large place as some of us are apt to
suppose; or, rather, within the small area covered by a dozen theatres
and restaurants which some of us are apt to mistake for London, there
is not much more real privacy than in a village for those whose doings
happen to be of interest to the lookers-on.
It did not take long for the world of Piccadilly Circus to discover
the identity of the quiet, badly dressed, middle-aged man who was seen
from time to time in the company of the celebrated Belle Yorke. Further
than that the world could hardly be expected to inquire. It drew its
own conclusions, and very naturally judged others by itself.
No whisper of the discovery had yet reached the ears of the Marquis
of Severn. When he heard his daughter’s name announced in his wife’s
drawing-room, he had realized for the first time the danger and falsity
of his position. At once he made up his mind that it was necessary for
Belle to know the truth. The merest accident, the sight of one of his
portraits, might lead to a scandal. He dared not run the risk of going
up to her himself before the crowd. He escaped into another room, and,
finding his nephew there, resolved to intrust him with the task of
speaking to Belle.
Gerald had always had a loyal regard for his homely and despised
uncle. He listened to his confession with sympathy, and undertook to
warn Belle that she was in her father’s house. But he had carried
out his task imperfectly. The marquis realized that he must himself
complete the revelation which Gerald had begun. He had found Belle for
a moment by herself, and had arranged this meeting in a spot where he
expected to be free from interruption.
“Why should the marchioness look at you like that?” asked Belle, in
perfect innocence, as she came towards the window, where her father was
waiting for her.
“That is one of the things that I have to tell you,” he answered,
gravely. “But sit down, my dear, sit down.”
She obeyed, and gazed up at him wonderingly as he stood before her.
“I thought it better to bring you here,” he explained. “We might have
been disturbed down-stairs, but no one ever comes here except the
members of the family.”
Belle opened her eyes.
“Are you, then--what about you? Are you a member of the same family as
the Marchioness of Severn?”
The marquis bowed his head.
“Yes, I am a member of the family. That is what I want to speak to you
about. I want to tell you a family secret.”
“But why? Why should you tell me?” she gasped, with something like
dismay. “I don’t belong to the Marquis of Severn’s family.”
Her father stifled a groan.
“Suppose I were to tell you that you did?” he said in a low voice.
The recollection of her interview with Captain Mauleverer rushed over
Belle. She shrank back and raised her hands as though for protection.
“No; this--this isn’t the secret, is it?” she whispered.
“Listen,” was the answer. “I have just spoken to Gerald, and he tells
me that he only delivered half of the message he was to have given you
this evening. Do you think you can bear to hear the rest?”
Again she held up her hands with that pathetic, deprecating gesture.
“Wait! Don’t tell it to me too quickly! Give me time to think a little,
won’t you?”
“Poor child!”
He turned away his head, unable to face the sight of her distress, and
silence reigned for a minute. Belle was the first to speak.
“Captain Mauleverer told me that my father was still alive. That is
true, then?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“And that--that-- Oh, tell it me as kindly as you can!”
The marquis caught his breath.
“Your father is a damned villain!” he cried out.
“Don’t speak so harshly as that!” she implored. “Don’t make him out
worse than you can help. Remember, I am his daughter, after all.”
“You are too good for him, Belle. He doesn’t deserve that you should
call yourself his daughter.”
She looked up quickly.
“You know him, then?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Then--is he a relation of Lord Severn’s?”
“He is Lord Severn.”
“Ah!” In the midst of her astonishment a bitter thought came into her
mind. “Now I begin to understand. So that is why Lord Severn left the
house the moment I arrived, without seeing me.”
“Yes, that is the reason.”
“And why was I asked to come here, then? Why did he let his wife bring
me here to sing for hire in my own father’s house? Oh, it was cruel,
cruel!”
The marquis shook beneath the reproach.
“He did not know; the marchioness arranged it without telling him. Your
father knew nothing of it till you were here.”
“And the marchioness?” she demanded, with sudden fire.
“The marchioness has never heard that you are his daughter. It has been
kept a secret from every one.”
The expression of Belle’s face became hard.
“I see. Lord Severn is a great nobleman, I suppose, and he was ashamed
of the poor little music-hall singer whom he had cast off as soon
as she was born, and whom he never wished to see. So that is why he
ordered his nephew to speak to me, to warn me off the premises, lest
I should embarrass him before his noble wife and daughter. And now he
has sent you to complete the work.” She rose to her feet in bitter
indignation. “Well, you may tell my father that he has no need to fear.
I will not trouble him; I will go.”
Every word stung the marquis like the knot of a lash.
“Stop!” he cried, passionately. “What are you thinking of? You cannot
go like this.”
“And do you think,” said Belle, turning on him with flashing eyes,
“that now I know the truth I will stop another moment beneath the roof
of a father who considers me a disgrace to him? I will go, if I should
have to walk the whole way home barefoot!”
“No, stay; you don’t understand! My God, that you should take it like
this! Your father is not ashamed of you, but of himself. It is he who
disgraces you, not you him. He went away because he had not the courage
to meet you, and to tell you with his own lips the injury he had done
you.”
“Is that the truth?” She gazed at him in doubt, a half-formed suspicion
beginning to struggle faintly for entrance to her mind. “Then why has
he never come near me since I was born? Why has he let me grow up in
ignorance that I had a father? Why has he never cast one glance of pity
towards his nameless child?”
The marquis stood silent, eager to answer, and yet afraid. She went on
with increasing vehemence:
“No, I am not his child; the Lady Victoria is his child. She has sat
upon his knee; I never have. She bears his name, and is protected by
his rank; I bear a name to which I have no right, and have no one to
protect me. She has been reared in her father’s house, among riches
and splendor; I have grown up in obscurity, and have had to go out to
battle with the world. She meets in her father’s drawing-room the men
whom I meet in the street. No; you are wrong in telling me that Lord
Severn is my father. I have no father. Lady Victoria is his daughter,
but I am only his orphan.”
The marquis broke down.
“Belle, don’t make it too hard for me,” he said, humbly. “Your father
has not been quite so bad as that. He has watched over you, but, like a
coward, in disguise.”
For a minute she stood with heaving breast gazing at him, while his
own eyes were cast down before her.
“Father! You!” The words escaped slowly from her lips at last.
Her father gave a bitter sigh.
“If we men could foresee these moments in our lives, we should not sin
so lightly. Yes, I have done you the greatest injury that a father can
do his child. I have tried all these years to persuade myself that the
best atonement I could make was to keep you in ignorance of the truth;
but now the truth has been forced from me, and you see me ashamed to
look you in the face.”
“Don’t speak like that!” said his daughter, gently; “don’t look away
from me! Why, I thought I had no father, but now--”
He looked up swiftly, a new hope in his eyes.
“You are going to forgive me, my child?” he said, and trembled.
“No,” said Belle, simply, “I am going to love you.”
He uttered a cry, and clasped her to him.
“After all,” she said presently with a tearful smile, “I was only
a poor little music-hall singer before. It isn’t as if I had much
character to lose, is it?”
“You are very good to me, my child. If you knew how often I have wanted
to tell you who I was, and been afraid to do it! The Fates prepare some
rough places for us, but the beds we make for ourselves are the hardest
to lie on.”
“Does any one else know of this, father?” Belle asked.
“No one knows it except Gerald, and I can trust him. This must be a
secret between us two, Belle. It is the one favor I have to ask of you;
and I don’t ask it for my own sake, but for the sake of my family.”
“For the sake of the Marchioness of Severn. I understand.” There was a
touch of resentment in her voice. “She has been good enough to speak to
me since I came to this house; she has explained to me the gulf that
separates her world from mine.”
“My child! If you knew how bitter it is to me not to be able to spare
you such things! But what motive could she have had for speaking to you
like that? She can have no suspicion of the truth, surely?”
“Oh, no. She simply wished to point out to me how unworthy I was to
receive the honorable addresses of a gentleman such as her daughter
might accept.”
“What man is that?”
“Mr. John Hammond.”
The marquis started. It was the first time he had heard Hammond’s name
in connection with Belle’s, and he was not ignorant of his wife’s
designs on behalf of Victoria.
“The very man!” he exclaimed. “And you--what have you done?”
“I have taken her ladyship’s good advice,” said Belle, proudly. “I have
refused Mr. Hammond.”
Her father stood and gazed at her in consternation. This rivalry
between his two daughters, the rich one and the poor one, came on him
as an unexpected shock. Suddenly there came a sound of the door opening
at the end of the gallery.
“We must not be seen!” burst from his lips; and, without pausing to
consider the possible consequences, he seized hold of the curtains and
drew them across the opening.
There had been two persons outside the door, and they entered together.
One was Despencer, the other was John Hammond.
It was not in Despencer’s nature to be revengeful, but he had not been
left entirely unmoved by Hammond’s biting taunts during their interview
in the conservatory. But for them he might have been satisfied with the
success already achieved. His only motive in denouncing Belle Yorke
in the first place had been to bring about the engagement which he
had just seen ratified. It was Hammond’s insulting treatment of him
which had given him a personal interest in the affair. He yielded to
the temptation of proving himself right and scoring off the man who
had disbelieved him. As soon as he could manage his escape from the
marchioness, he went to seek Hammond and bring him to the spot where he
had left the marquis and Belle Yorke together.
Hammond at first refused to listen. Belle had assured him with her
own lips that she had never even seen the man with whom her name was
coupled. But Despencer’s statement compelled him to action. Wondering,
reluctant, and dismayed, he allowed himself to be dragged into the
gallery.
Both men as they entered glanced eagerly in the direction of the
window. The next instant both stopped abruptly, and their eyes met.
Despencer’s filled with malicious triumph, Hammond’s with the deepest
mortification.
The curtains were closed. Who was behind them?
“Now, if you wish to know the truth, draw that curtain,” the tempter
whispered. Then he walked slowly out of the gallery, watching Hammond
as he went.
Left to himself, Hammond stood in silent anguish, his gaze fixed on the
velvet folds which spared him the sight of the falsehood of the woman
he loved. Fresh from his betrothal to Victoria, he had forgotten her
already, so much greater was the bitterness of finding that his love
was misplaced than the bitterness of having it rejected. He thought he
could hear that Belle should not love him, but he found he could not
bear that she should love another.
Face to face with that curtain, there seemed to be no more room for
doubt. Despencer might not be a man of honor, but he could not, he
dared not, have brought Hammond there unless he were sure of the
result. What inducement had Despencer to lie? None. And Belle? Alas! it
was evident that she had only too much.
He took a step towards the curtain, and then drew back. What right
had he to lift it? What right had he, the promised husband of Lady
Victoria, to test the faith of the woman who had just refused his hand?
Reason bade him go away, satisfied with the silent testimony of that
damning screen.
But reason is a mere lawyer, whose client is passion. John Hammond
could no more leave that gallery without drawing the curtain than
the steel can detach itself from the magnet. It did not take long to
reason himself into the belief that to go away now would be disloyalty
to Belle herself; it would be to accept Despencer’s word against hers
without inquiry. He stepped forward again, and his hand was stretched
out towards the curtain, when he was arrested by the entrance of a man
at the opposite door.
Captain Mauleverer had taken advantage of his dismissal by the
marchioness to wander off to a nook at the top of his uncle’s house and
indulge in a quiet smoke. Returning through the gallery, where he had
half hoped to find Victoria waiting for him, he was surprised to find
himself in the presence of Hammond.
“Why, Hammond, what are you doing here all by yourself?” he exclaimed
as he came up.
Hammond drew back a few steps from the curtain.
“What am I doing?” He raised his voice and glanced towards the purple
folds as though he would have looked through them to see the effect of
his words. “I am wondering why it is that we men are ever fools enough
to expect truth from the lips of a woman.”
“Is that all?” returned Mauleverer, his own mood in harmony with his
friend’s. “I didn’t know that any sensible man ever did. I’m sure I
don’t.”
“Why, what is wrong with you?” asked the other, incredulously. “You
haven’t been deceived by the woman you trusted?”
“It seems to me we all have,” was the bitter answer. “Don’t you
remember what I was telling you about down-stairs?”
“Ah, yes; I had forgotten it. You mean that girl? Why, have you just
discovered that she really loves another man?”
“Not that exactly. She loves me, or she pretends to, but she has sold
herself to the other man.”
“She doesn’t love you!” The words were pronounced with an emphasis
which Mauleverer could not understand, and which was not meant for his
ears. “They all pretend, if not in words, in looks and actions. It is
their occupation, like politics with us. I knew a woman once who made
me think she loved me. She never said so, you understand, but led me
on, and laughed at me in her sleeve all the while. Depend upon it, this
girl of yours is like her. She has some secret lover in the background,
some man whom she has sworn to you that she has never seen.”
There were three listeners to that savage outburst--two men and a
woman; but only the woman understood.
The captain remonstrated.
“I don’t think that of her. No; hang it! the girl is straight enough.
She doesn’t think me worth deceiving; I am too poor.”
“I see. Then it is the other man she is deceiving, and you are the
lover in the background. You see, it comes to the same thing. I told
you they were all alike.”
“It’s not her fault, damn it!” said the loyal Gerald. “She has got to
marry the brute; her people have driven her into it.”
“Why?”
“You needn’t ask. Money. It’s some infernal millionaire like you.”
Hammond started. For the first time he turned his attention from the
unseen listeners to this dialogue to the man who was speaking to him.
“Who? What did you say? Who is this man?”
“I don’t know his name; she wouldn’t tell me,” replied the suspicious
captain. “What does it matter to me who he is?”
“Do I know the girl?”
“Yes. I don’t mind telling you, old man; it’s my cousin Victoria.”
“What!” The word burst from Hammond like a bullet. His eyes sought the
curtain. “Are all women traitors?” he cried.
And striding to the curtains, he dragged them back. There in the light
of the moon stood the two who had overheard every word. The marquis had
his arm round Belle’s neck, and her face was hidden in her father’s
breast.
“It is true!” gasped Hammond.
A tremendous silence followed. How long it lasted none of the four
could tell. At length the marquis broke it.
“Well, sir?” he said, looking Hammond full in the face with a certain
dignity for which the other had not been prepared.
“I beg your pardon, marquis. I was told that you and this lady were
strangers, and I believed it, like a fool.”
He had turned on his heel to withdraw, when he was made aware that some
one else was coming on the scene. He glanced towards the door, and then
with a bow of silent apology drew the curtains across again as he had
found them. This done, he turned round and stood facing whoever might
come in.
He had expected Despencer, and he was right. But Despencer had not come
alone. He had had another object in view all this time, and what that
object was was now revealed. Having arranged for what promised to be a
stormy scene between Hammond and the Marquis of Severn, having fired
his train and calculated the time required for it to reach the mine, he
had now brought the marchioness to witness the explosion.
The marchioness entered quickly, her face alight with suspicion.
Despencer had skilfully aroused her expectations, without committing
himself to any definite statement. Her eye instantly fell on the
curtain, and she divined that it concealed a mystery.
“Why is that curtain closed?” she demanded, advancing towards it. “Is
there any one in the window?”
There was just one instant in which Hammond hesitated, nearly carried
away by the temptation to let her draw back the curtain and overwhelm
those two by whom he deemed that he had been deceived. Then, just as
the horrified Gerald was about to step forward, Hammond planted himself
right in front of the marchioness.
“No!” he said, firmly. “There is no one there.”
She stopped unwillingly and looked at him. He looked at her, and to
that look she yielded.
A moment afterwards he was leading her out of the gallery on his arm,
while Captain Mauleverer escorted Despencer in the rear.