A MAN-TRAP
Julian Casti was successful in his application for the post of
dispenser at the All Saints' Hospital, and shortly after Easter he left
the shop in Oxford Street, taking lodgings in Beaufort Street, Chelsea.
His first evening there was spent in Waymark's company, and there was
much talk of the progress his writing would make, now that his hours of
liberty were so considerably extended. For the first time in his life
he was enjoying the sense of independence. Waymark talked of moving
from Walcot Square, in order to be nearer to his friend. He, too, was
possessed of more freedom than had been the case for a long time, and
his head was full of various fancies. They would encourage each other
in their work, afford by mutual appreciation that stimulus which is so
essential to the young artist.
But in this world, though man may propose, it is woman who disposes.
And at this moment, Julian's future was being disposed of in a manner
he could not well have foreseen.
Harriet Smales had heard with unconcealed pleasure of his leaving the
shop and taking lodgings of his own. She had been anxious to come and
see the rooms, and, though the following Sunday was appointed for her
visit, she could not wait so long, but, to her cousin's surprise,
presented herself at the house one evening, and was announced by the
landlady, who looked suspicious. Julian, with some nervousness,
hastened to explain that the visitor was a relative, which did not in
the least alter his landlady's preconceived ideas. Harriet sat down and
looked about her with a sigh of satisfaction. If she could but have
such a home! Girls had no chance of getting on as men did. If only her
father could have lived, things would have been different. Now she was
thrown on the world, and had to depend upon her own hard work. Then she
gave way to an hysterical sob, and Julian--who felt sure that the
landlady was listening at the door--could only beg her nervously not to
be so down-hearted.
"Whatever success I have," he said to her, "you will share it."
"If I thought so!" she sighed, looking down at the floor, and moving
the point of her umbrella up and down. Harriet had saturated her mind
with the fiction of penny weeklies, and owed to this training all
manner of awkward affectations which she took to be the most becoming
manifestations of a susceptible heart. At times she would express
herself in phrases of the most absurdly high-flown kind, and lately she
had got into the habit of heaving profound sighs between her sentences.
Julian was not blind to the meaning of all this. His active employments
during the past week had kept his thoughts from brooding on the matter,
and he had all but dismissed the trouble it had given him. But this
visit, and Harriet's demeanour throughout it, revived all his
anxieties. He came back from accompanying his cousin part of her way
home in a very uneasy frame of mind. What could he do to disabuse the
poor girl of the unhappy hopes she entertained? The thought of giving
pain to any most humble creature was itself a pain unendurable to
Julian. His was one of those natures to which self-sacrifice is
infinitely easier than the idea of sacrificing another to his own
desires or even necessities, a vice of weakness often more deeply and
widely destructive than the vices of strength.
The visit having been paid, it was arranged that on the following
Sunday Julian should meet his cousin at the end of Gray's Inn Road as
usual. On that day the weather was fine, but Harriet came out in no
mood for a walk. She had been ailing for a day or two, she said, and
felt incapable of exertion; Mrs. Ogle was away from home for the day,
too, and it would be better they should spend the afternoon together in
the house. Julian of course assented, as always, and they established
themselves in the parlour behind the shop. In the course of talk, the
girl made mention of an engraving Julian had given her a week or two
before, and said that she had had it framed and hung it in her bed-room.
"Do come up and look at it," she exclaimed; "there's no one in the
house. I want to ask you if you can find a better place for it. It
doesn't show so well where it is."
Julian hesitated for a moment, but she was already leading the way, and
he could not refuse to follow. They went up to the top of the house,
and entered a little chamber which might have been more tidy, but was
decently furnished. The bed was made in a slovenly way, the mantelpiece
was dusty, and the pictures on the walls hung askew. Harriet closed the
door behind them, and proceeded to point out the new picture, and
discuss the various positions which had occurred to her. Julian would
have decided the question as speedily as possible, and once or twice
moved to return downstairs, but each time the girl found something new
to detain him. Opening a drawer, she took out several paltry little
ornaments, which she wished him to admire, and, in showing them, stood
very close by his side. All at once the door of the room was pushed
open, and a woman ran in. On seeing the stranger present, she darted
back with an exclamation of surprise.
"Oh, Miss Smales, I didn't know as you wasn't alone! I heard you moving
about, and come just to arst you to lend me--but never mind, I'm so
sorry; why didn't you lock the door?"
And she bustled out again, apparently in much confusion.
Harriet had dropped the thing she held in her hand, and stood looking
at her cousin as if dismayed.
"I never thought any one was in," she said nervously. "It's Miss Mould,
the lodger. She went out before I did, and I never heard her come back.
Whatever will she think!"
"But of course," he stammered, "you will explain everything to her. She
knows who I am, doesn't she?"
"I don't think so, and, even if she did--"
She stopped, and stood with eyes on the ground, doing her best to
display maiden confusion. Then she began to cry.
"But surely, surely there is no need to trouble yourself," exclaimed
Julian, almost distracted, beginning to be dimly conscious of all
manner of threatening possibilities. "I will speak to the woman myself,
and clear you of every--. Oh, but this is all nonsense. Let us go down
at once, Harriet. What a pity you asked me to come up here!"
It was the nearest to a reproach that he had ever yet addressed to her.
His face showed clearly how distressed he was, and that on his own
account more than hers, for he could not conceive any blame save on
himself for being so regardless of appearances.
"Go as quietly as ever you can," Harriet whispered. "The stairs creak
so. Step very softly."
This was terrible to the poor fellow. To steal down in this guilty way
was as bad as a confession of evil intentions, and he so entirely
innocent of a shadow of evil even in his thought. Yet he could not but
do as she bade him. Even on the stairs she urged him in a very loud
whisper to be yet more cautious. He was out of himself with
mortification; and felt angry with her for bringing him into such
ignominy. In the back parlour once more, he took up his hat at once.
"You mustn't go yet," whispered Harriet. "I'm sure that woman's
listening on the stairs. You must talk a little. Let's talk so she can
hear us. Suppose she should tell Mrs. Ogle."
"I can't see that it matters," said Julian, with annoyance. "I will
myself see Mrs. Ogle."
"No, no! The idea! I should have to leave at once. Whatever shall I do
if she turns me away, and won't give me a reference or anything!"
Even in a calmer mood, Julian's excessive delicacy would have presented
an affair of this kind in a grave light to him; at present he was
wholly incapable of distinguishing between true and false, or of
gauging these fears at their true value. The mere fact of the girl
making so great a matter out of what should have been so easy to
explain and have done with, caused an exaggeration of the difficulty in
his own mind. He felt that he ought of course to justify himself before
Mrs. Ogle, and would have been capable of doing so had only Harriet
taken the same sensible view; but her apparent distress seemed--even to
him--so much more like conscious guilt than troubled innocence, that
such a task would cost him the acutest suffering. For nearly an hour he
argued with her, trying to convince her how impossible it was that the
woman who had surprised them should harbour any injurious suspicions.
"But she knows--" began Harriet, and then stopped, her eyes falling.
"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get no
reply to his question. However, his arguments seemed at length to have
a calming effect, and, as he took leave, he even affected to laugh at
the whole affair. For all that, he had never suffered such mental
trouble in his life as during this visit and throughout the evening
which followed. The mere thought of having been obliged to discuss such
things with his cousin filled him with inexpressible shame and misery.
Waymark came to spend the evening with him, but found poor
entertainment. Several times Julian was on the point of relating what
had happened, and asking for advice, but he found it impossible to
broach the subject. There was an ever-recurring anger against Harriet
in his mind, too, for which at the same time he reproached himself. He
dreaded the next meeting between them.
Harriet, though herself quite innocent of fine feeling and nice
complexities of conscience, was well aware of the existence of such
properties in her cousin. She neither admired nor despised him for
possessing them; they were of unknown value, indifferent to her,
indeed, until she became aware of the practical use that might be made
of them. Like most narrow-minded girls, she became a shrewd reader of
character, when her affections and interests were concerned, and could
calculate Julian's motives, and the course wherein they would lead him,
with much precision. She knew too well that he did not care for her in
the way she desired, but at the same time she knew that he was capable
of making almost any sacrifice to spare her humiliation and trouble,
especially if he felt that her unhappiness was in any way caused by
himself.
Thus it came about that, on the Tuesday evening of the ensuing week,
Julian was startled by his landlady's announcing another visit from
Miss Smales. Harriet came into the room with a veil over her face, and
sank on a chair, sobbing. What she had feared had come to pass. The
lodger had told Mrs. Ogle of what had taken place in her absence on the
Sunday afternoon, and Harriet had received notice that she must find
another place at once. Mrs. Ogle was a woman of severe virtue, and
would not endure the suspicion of wrong-doing under her roof. To whom
could she come for advice and help, but to Julian?
Julian was overwhelmed. His perfectly sincere nature was incapable of
suspecting a far more palpable fraud. He started up with the intention
of going forthwith to Gray's Inn Road, but Harriet clung to him and
held him back. The idea was vain. The lodger, Miss Mould, had long
entertained a spite against her, Harriet said, and had so exaggerated
this story in relating it to Mrs. Ogle, that the latter, and her
husband, had declared that Casti should not as much as put foot in
their shop again.
"If you only knew what they've been told!" sobbed the girl, still
clinging to Julian. "They wouldn't listen to a word you said. As if I
could have thought of such a thing happening, and that woman to say all
the bad things of us she can turn her tongue to! I sha'n't never get
another place; I'm thrown out on the wide world!"
It was a phrase she had got out of her penny fiction; and very
remarkable indeed was the mixture of acting and real sentiment which
marked her utterances throughout.
Julian's shame and anger began to turn to compassion. A woman in tears
was a sight which always caused him the keenest distress.
"But," he cried, with tears in his own eyes, "it is impossible that you
should suffer all this through me, and I not even make an attempt to
clear you of such vile charges!"
"It was my own fault. I was thoughtless. I ought to have known that
people's always ready to think harm. But I think of nothing when I'm
with you, Julian!"
He had disengaged himself from her hands, and was holding one of them
in his own. But, as she made this last confession, she threw her arms
about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.
"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.
No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a
woman's lips that she loves him. Harriet was the only girl whom Julian
had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival to fear
amongst living women; the one rival to be dreaded was altogether out of
the sphere of her conceptions,--the ideal love of a poet's heart and
brain. But the ideal is often least present to us when most needed.
Here was love; offer but love to a poet, and does he pause to gauge its
quality? The sudden whirl of conflicting emotions left Julian at the
mercy of the instant's impulse. She was weak; she was suffering through
him; she loved him.
"Be my wife, then," he whispered, returning her embrace, "and let me
guard you from all who would do you harm."
She uttered a cry of delight, and the cry was a true one.