"I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HIM."
Lady Eleanor reached Palace Gardens and went straight to her boudoir
and flung herself on a couch.
To women of her class come very few such adventures as that which
had happened to her this morning. From their cradles, through their
girlhood, and indeed all through their lives, they are so hedged in and
protected from the world outside the refined and exclusive circle in
which they move, that there is little chance of their coming in contact
with other than their own set.
She had seen Finetta on the stage of the Diadem, had heard of her, read
of her, knew that Yorke Auchester's name was in some way connected with
her, but she had never dreamed that a meeting with her would be even
possible, much less probable.
And now she had not only met with her, but talked and listened to her.
The fact that she had done so filled her with shame and confusion.
What would her friends and relatives think if they knew? What would
Godolphin, the duke, say if he were told that she had not only engaged
in conversation with this Finetta, but actually entered into a kind of
compact and conspiracy with her.
But she soon dismissed this part of the case and allowed herself to
think only of the information Finetta had given her.
Yorke going to be married!
She would almost as soon have heard that he was going to die. Indeed,
death would not more completely remove him for her, would not set up a
more surmountable barrier between them than a marriage. For if he were
to die, she could still think and dream of him as hers; whereas, if he
married, he would belong in this world and the next to another woman.
And such a woman! Finetta had spoken of this Leslie Lisle as if she
were an uncultivated, half-educated country girl.
Lady Eleanor could imagine what she was like; some simpering,
round-faced girl, just a step above a laborer's daughter. One of these
girls who blushed with timidity and fright when they were spoken to,
who spoke in a strong provincial dialect, who dressed like a dowdy and
looked just respectable; something between a servant and a shop girl.
She was pretty, no doubt; but to think that Yorke, Yorke the
fastidious, should be caught by a pretty face! Why, she, Lady Eleanor,
was pretty! She looked at her pale, agitated face, and a kind of
indignant rage consumed her for a moment. She was the acknowledged
belle of many a ballroom. She might have been a professional beauty if
she had cared to be one. She was accomplished, was in his own rank and
class, a fitting mate--yes, she told herself with inward conviction, a
fitting mate for him.
With her by his side, as his wife, he could have filled a conspicuous
place in the world, their world, the upper ten thousand, the rulers and
masters.
And he had passed her by and was going to marry a half-educated,
uncivilized, uncultivated country girl, with pink cheeks and a
simpering smile.
The thought drove her half mad. Finetta had said that she had tried to
prevent it, and that it now rested with her, Lady Eleanor, to make an
attempt.
Lady Eleanor shuddered and reddened with shame at the idea of being a
conspirator with such a one as Finetta of the Diadem. And yet was not
the object to be attained worthy of even such means?
She would not ask herself why Finetta desired to stop the marriage; she
put that question away from her resolutely, and told herself that it
was of Yorke and Yorke's welfare alone that she was thinking.
A servant came up to announce visitors, but Lady Eleanor answered
through the locked door that she wasn't at home.
"I will only see Mr. Ralph Duncombe," she said, and she longed for his
presence with a feverish impatience; though she had no fixed plan in
her mind, nothing but a vague idea that Ralph Duncombe, the cute city
man, might be able to help her.
About six o'clock the servant announced him, and she had him shown
up to her boudoir. She had had time to collect herself and regain
composure, to change her dress for a tea gown and do her hair; but her
face was pale and still showed traces of the terrible agitation which
she had suffered, and Ralph Duncombe as he took her hand looked at her
inquiringly.
"I am afraid you have found the heat trying, Lady Eleanor. I hope you
are well," he said, in his grave, sedate voice.
"Thank you, yes," she said; "I am well, quite well. But I am--what is
the term you city men use when you want to say that you are worried?
Pray sit down," and she pointed to a chair so placed that she could see
his face while hers was against the light.
"We find 'worried' good enough for us, Lady Eleanor; but we are worried
so often that we think little of it and take things very much as they
come."
"Ah, then I envy you!" she said with a genuine sigh. "I am afraid you
will think me very inconsiderate in sending for you, you who have so
much to occupy your time and energies."
"I am always glad to be of some slight service to you," he said with
grave courtesy, "and can always spare time to come to you when you
send for me. Is anything the matter? Are you anxious about the Mining
Company? You have no cause to be, for everything is going on remarkably
well, and succeeding beyond my expectations. Some of the best men in
the city have joined us, and, as I wrote to you, the shares already
stand at a high premium. You have made a very large sum of money, Lady
Eleanor, and are on the way to making a still larger."
"Money, money!" she exclaimed. "It is always money. You talk as if it
were the one and only thing desirable and worth having! And, after all,
what can it buy? Can it buy the one thing on which one's heart is set?
Have you found it so all-powerful that you set such store by it?"
His face flushed and a singular look came into his eyes.
"I--I beg your pardon!" she said hurriedly and almost humbly. "I did
not mean to be impertinent or obtrusive; but just now I am in trouble
in which I think even the all-powerful money will be powerless."
"Tell me what it is," he said in a low voice, and rather absently, as
if the hasty words she had just spoken were still haunting him. "That
is, I suppose you sent to consult me about it?"
"Well--yes," said Lady Eleanor more calmly, but with her color coming
and going. "I sent to you because you are the only friend I have whom
I should care to consult about this--this trouble. Because I feel that
you will understand, and, what is more important, not misunderstand me,
or--or my motives."
"I will do my best to understand and sympathize, Lady Eleanor," he
said, watching her, yet without seeming to do so.
"You remember," she said after a pause, during which she was seeking
for some way of beginning the subject as if it were not of much
importance after all. "You remember Yorke Auchester, Lord Yorke
Auchester?"
He inclined his head, suppressing a look of surprise.
"Certainly," he said. "That is, I remember--I could not fail to do
so--that I have purchased his debts, to a very large sum, on your
behalf."
"Yes," she said nervously, "and I daresay--I know--that you have
wondered why I have done so."
He kept silence, but raised his eyebrows slightly.
"Well," she went on, "it was to save him from trouble. He is a great
friend of mine; his cousin, the duke, and I are great friends. But
you know all this! And now I want to do something more for--for Lord
Auchester."
He looked up. Her face was red one moment and pale the next, but she
kept her eyes--the half-proud, half-appealing eyes--upon his.
"He is in great trouble and--and danger. A worse danger than a monetary
one."
He smiled.
"Can there be worse?" he said with a city man's incredulity. "We live
in a prosaic age, Lady Eleanor, from which we have dismissed the
midnight assassin and all the other romantic perils which made life
and history so interesting in the middle ages; and the only dangers we
run now are from a railway or steamboat accident----."
She tried to listen to him patiently.
"It is not that kind of danger I was thinking," she said. "Is it not
possible for a man to--to ruin and wreck his life in--many ways, Mr.
Duncombe?"
He looked at her still half smilingly.
"Oh, yes, a man may enlist as a common soldier, or forge a check, or
marry his cook; but I do not imagine that there is any risk of Lord
Auchester committing any of these--shall we say, follies?"
"Of all the things you have mentioned, it seems to me that the last is
the worst," said Lady Eleanor bitterly.
"Yes?"
He raised his brows again.
"At any rate it is punished more severely than the others," she said.
"Yes," he assented thoughtfully. "But," and he smiled, "Lord Auchester
does not contemplate marrying his cook, does he?"
"His cook? No; but he is in danger of marrying almost as far beneath
him!" The retort flashed from her with hot hauteur. "Mr. Duncombe, when
a man of Lord Auchester's station marries beneath him he is as utterly
ruined, his life is as completely wrecked, as if he had committed
forgery or enlisted as a common soldier."
He leaned back and listened with sedate politeness, wondering whither
all this was leading, and what it was she would ask him to do.
"A man of Lord Auchester's rank has only one life--the social one.
He has no business, no profession to fall back upon, to employ his
thoughts, to engross and solace him. He must mix in the world to which
he belongs, and he can only do so as an equal with his fellows. When he
marries he is expected to take for a wife a lady of his own rank, or
at any rate, a lady who is accepted as such in the circle to which he
belongs. She must be one whom his friends can receive and visit, one of
whom neither he nor they will be ashamed. His life may then continue
in its old course; he will still have his friends and relatives round
him, still have his place in the world, his niche, be it a high or a
moderately high one, and all will be well with him."
She paused for breath, and put her hand to smooth back the delicate
silken hair from her fair forehead.
"But if he should so far forget himself and all he owes to society as
to marry beneath him--then, as I say he is utterly wrecked and undone.
His friends will not receive his wife, or if they do it is with a
coldness which she and he cannot fail to notice and resent. He sees
them look pityingly, scornfully upon the woman he has made his wife,
and he feels that he cannot take her amongst them. So he drifts from
his own class, and either sinks into the one below it--where he is
wretchedly miserable, or lives like a hermit. In the latter case he has
plenty of time in which to get tired of his life and of the woman who
has, in all innocence, severed him from all his old associates and,
still in all innocence, has degraded him. The result, be it quick or
slow in coming, is invariably the same. He is always thinking of the
sacrifice he has made in marrying her, she is always conscious that he
is so thinking, and sooner or later they grow to weary of and hate each
other. She has ruined him, wrecked his life, and both know it! I am not
speaking by theory; I have seen it, seen it in half a dozen cases, and
I say that a man had better throw himself into the Thames than marry
beneath him."
She dropped back in her low chair and put her hand to her head. She had
talked swiftly, passionately, and her brow was burning.
Ralph Duncombe looked up.
"All you say is very true, no doubt, Lady Eleanor. And Lord
Auchester----."
"Is thinking of making such a match," she said in a low voice.
Ralph Duncombe looked at the carpet.
"It scarcely seems--pardon me--scarcely seems credible. I do not know
Lord Auchester, but from what I have heard of him I should think he
would be the last man to be blind to the consequences of contracting
a marriage with a lady who was considered his inferior in the social
scale."
"Ah, yes!" she said with a sigh. "So anyone who knew him would have
said; but--but--in this matter even the wisest men are fools."
He smiled gravely.
"Yes, fools!" she said bitterly; "they are caught by a pretty face, a
look in the eyes, a curve on the lip, a dimple in the cheek----." She
rose and took one or two paces, as if her impatience would not permit
of her sitting still any longer. "At any rate, Lord Auchester has been
so caught!" she wound up suddenly.
"And you wish----?"
"Ah, I scarcely know," she answered, stretching out her hands. "He is
doing this thing secretly. He is keeping it from his friends. From the
duke, from--from me, from all of us."
"Then he is half ashamed of it?" he suggested.
"Perhaps so," she said. "Perhaps so. But if he has made up his mind
to do it he will go through with it, in spite of all arguments and
attempts to dissuade him. Yorke--" she used his Christian name
unconsciously--"Yorke is one of the sweetest tempered men--you can
lead him with a silken thread, until he has resolved to do anything;
then----." She had turned to him and looked at him beseechingly. "Can
you help me, us; his friends, I mean, generally? He is so popular, so
much liked. It would be a shame and a sin that such a one should be
wrecked and ruined. In such a case a man should be saved in spite of
himself. Can nothing be done? I sent for you, because you have always
helped me, have always been so kind----." She stopped and turned her
head away.
Ralph Duncombe regarded her with grave surprise.
"I am very sorry," he said slowly, as a lawyer speaks to a client to
whom he has been listening patiently. "But I do not see how you can act
in the matter. You might try persuasion----."
She shook her head.
"Ah, you do not know Lord Auchester!" she said.
"I scarcely see what else you can do. He's of age, and his own master,
and the lady is of age, I presume. You could scarce bring any pressure
upon her?"
Lady Eleanor shook her head scornfully.
"It is scarcely to be expected that she would be induced to release
him. In these cases the woman is generally a low-bred schemer, or some
simple girl who believes that she and the man she is ruining are in
love. Oh, no; nothing can be done with her! Besides, I know--" she
was going to say, "I know one who has tried and failed," but stopped
suddenly.
"Well, then," said Ralph Duncombe, "I fear that I can suggest nothing.
After all, if Lord Auchester is resolved upon committing social
suicide----."
"Oh, it is terrible, terrible!" she exclaimed in a low, agitated voice;
"and I thought you would be able to help me."
"I am very sorry at being so useless," he put in.
"I thought that perhaps these bills you hold for me--that they would
give you some power over him," and she colored and cast her eyes down.
He smiled.
"There is no longer arrest for debt, Lady Eleanor," he said. "They say
there is no longer imprisonment, but that is not true. They imprison
still, but they call it for contempt of court. Ah, it is a pity we
are not living in the dark ages! We could have set an ambush for Lord
Auchester, seized him bodily, and cast him into a dungeon below the
moat until he had come to his senses; but there is an absurd prejudice
against that kind of thing nowadays."
She drew a long breath, and, taking her silence as an acceptation of
the fact that he could be of no use to her, he reached for his hat and
prepared to go.
"I suppose it is the usual thing," he said sympathetically. "Some girl
of the lower middle class has attracted him, and she and her parents
have succeeded in obtaining a promise of marriage from him. It is not
an uncommon case."
Lady Eleanor had sunk into the chair again, and answered languidly, for
the excitement was beginning to tell upon her.
"I do not know the details of the affair. It is very probable. The
girl's name is Lisle, Leslie Lisle----."
"What!" The exclamation broke from him with the suddenness of a gunshot.
Lady Eleanor looked up, but he had turned and stood at a little
distance with his back to the window; and, though pale as usual, his
face was set and calm.
"I--beg your pardon, I did not quite catch the name," he said. He spoke
very slowly, enunciating each word distinctly, as if he were uncertain
of his voice. "I did not quite catch the name."
"Leslie Lisle," said Lady Eleanor. "He met her at a place called
Portmaris. You may remember that I mentioned it to you when you were
here some weeks ago."
"Yes--I--remember," he said, in just the same slow, mechanical voice.
He put his hat down and sat with tightly set lips and eyes fixed on the
carpet.
Lady Eleanor looked at his grave, set face, waiting.
"Have you thought of anything, any plan by which the marriage could be
prevented?" she asked anxiously.
He was silent for a moment or two, then, without looking up, he said:
"And they are to be married secretly?"
"Yes," and her face flushed and paled.
"And at once?" he asked, and she thought his voice was strangely hoarse.
"At once, I--I am told."
"At once," he repeated, as if to himself. "Lady Eleanor, I see a carafe
of water on that side table; will you allow me----." He rose and crossed
the room and drank nearly a glassful of water, while Lady Eleanor
pressed him to allow her to ring for wine.
"No, no. Water, I prefer water. I am almost a teetotaler. Thanks,
thanks," he waved his hand impatiently, almost imperiously. "And is
that all you know? Do you know the place they are going to be married
at?"
"No," she said. "Lord Auchester is in London," she added after a
moment; "I saw him this morning."
He leant his head on his hand so that his face was almost completely
concealed from her.
"In London. To be married at once," he repeated. He looked up. "I am
thinking, Lady Eleanor----."
"Oh, yes, yes," she breathed, leaning forward. "I know if you will
only think you will find some way. It is a shame to bother and trouble
you----."
He smiled grimly.
"Don't mention it. Let me see." He put his hand to his forehead. "He is
fearfully in debt. Some of those bills are long overdue. Do you think
he means to leave the country?" He asked the question suddenly, with a
flash.
"I--I don't know. He must, I should think."
"I see--I see," he said. "Say, don't be too hopeful, too sanguine.
But--well, the law has long claws still, though we have pared them
down pretty considerably. And in the city its claws are longer than
elsewhere. That's an anomaly, but it's true. In a city court of law you
can do strange things. For instance, if a man owes me money and I go
and swear that I have reason to believe that he is intending to leave
the country--to abscond, in short--the court has an almost forgotten
power to stop that man. The machinery is antiquated and rusty, but--but
it may be made to work." He rose. A strange light was burning in his
eyes, a hectic flush on his pale and rather hollow cheeks. "Lady
Eleanor----."
"What is it?" she asked, almost frightened by the change in his manner,
by the subdued eagerness and earnestness where a few minutes ago was
only polite indifference.
"Lady Eleanor, if I consent to help you, I can do so on one condition."
"Yes! What is that?" she asked, trembling a little.
"That you follow my instructions to the letter. That you leave the
whole matter to me, and offer no opposition to anything I may direct
or do. I see--mark me!--I see a small chance, a slight hope of saving
Lord Auchester from this," he smiled scornfully, "ruinous marriage. It
is but slight, and to do anything with it I must have a free hand. Will
you give it me?"
"I will," she said. "I would do anything--anything to save him."
"And so would I!" he muttered, but so low that she did not hear him.