"A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY."
Neither Lydia Graham nor her brother were quick to recover from the
disappointment caused by the untimely fate of Lionel Dale. Miss Graham
endeavoured to sustain her failing spirits with the hope that in
Douglas she might find a wealthier prize than his brother; but Douglas
was yet to be enslaved by those charms which Lydia herself felt were on
the wane, and by fascinations which twelve years of fashionable
existence had rendered somewhat stale even to the fair Lydia's most
ardent admirers.
It was very bitter--the cup had been so near her lips, when an adverse
destiny had dashed it from her. The lady's grief was painfully sincere.
She did not waste one lamentation on her lover's sad fate, but she most
bitterly regretted her own loss of a rich husband.
She watched and hoped day after day for the promised visit from Douglas
Dale, but he did not come. Every day during visiting hours she wore her
most becoming toilets; she arranged her small drawing-room with the
studied carelessness of an elegant woman; she seated herself in her
most graceful attitudes every time the knocker heralded the advent of a
caller; but it was all so much wasted labour. The only guest whom she
cared to see was not among those morning visitors; and Lydia's heart
began to be oppressed by a sense of despair.
"Well, Gordon, have you heard anything of Douglas Dale?" she asked her
brother, day after day.
One day he came home with a very gloomy face, and when she uttered the
usual question, he answered her in his gloomiest tone.
"I've heard something you'll scarcely care to learn," he said, "as it
must sound the death-knell of all your hopes in that quarter. You know,
Douglas Dale is a member of the Phoenix, as well as the Forum. I don't
belong to the Phoenix, as you also know, but I meet Dale occasionally
at the Forum. Yesterday I lunched with Lord Caversham, a member of the
Phoenix, and an acquaintance of Dale's; and from him I learned that
Douglas Dale has publicly announced his intended marriage with Paulina
Durski."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Lydia.
She had heard of Paulina and the villa at Fulham from her brother, and
she hated the lovely Austrian for the beauty and the fascination which
won her a kind of renown amongst the fops and lordlings--the idlers and
spendthrifts of the fashionable clubs.
"It cannot be true," cried Miss Graham, flushing crimson with anger.
"It is one of Lord Caversham's absurd stories; and I dare say is
without the slightest foundation. I cannot and will not believe that
Douglas Dale would throw himself away upon such a woman as this Madame
Durski."
"You have never seen her?"
"Of course not."
"Then don't speak so very confidently," said Captain Graham, who was
malicious enough to take some pleasure in his sister's discomfiture.
"Paulina Durski is one of the handsomest women I ever saw; not above
five-and-twenty years of age--elegant, fascinating, patrician--a woman
for whose sake a wiser man than Douglas Dale might be willing to
sacrifice himself."
"I will see Mr. Dale," exclaimed Lydia. "I will ascertain from his own
lips whether there is any foundation for this report."
"How will you contrive to see him?" "You must arrange that for me. You
can invite him to dinner."
"I can invite him; but the question is whether he will come. Perhaps,
if you were to write him a note, he would be more flattered than by any
verbal invitation from me."
Lydia was not slow to take this hint. She wrote one of those charming
and flattering epistles which an artful and self-seeking woman of the
world so well knows how to pen. She expressed her surprise and regret
at not having seen Mr. Dale since her return to town--her fear that he
might be ill, her hope that he would accept an invitation to a friendly
dinner with herself and her brother, who was also most anxious about
him.
She was not destined to disappointment. On the following day she
received a brief note from Mr. Dale, accepting her invitation for the
next evening.
The note was very stiffly--nay, almost coldly worded; but Lydia
attributed the apparent lack of warmth to the reserved nature of
Douglas Dale, rather than to any failure of her own scheme.
The fact that he accepted her invitation at all, she considered a proof
of the falsehood of the report about his intended marriage, and a good
omen for herself.
She took care to provide a _recherché_ little dinner for her important
guest, low as the finances of herself and her brother were--and were
likely to be for some time to come. She invited a dashing widow, who
was her obliging friend and neighbour, and who was quite ready to play
propriety for the occasion. Lydia Graham looked her handsomest when
Douglas Dale was ushered into her presence that evening; but she little
knew how indifferent were the eyes that contemplated her bold, dark
beauty; and how, even as he looked at her, Douglas Dale's thoughts
wandered to the fair, pale face of Paulina Durski--that face, which for
him was the loveliest that had ever beamed with light and beauty below
the stars.
The dinner was to all appearance a success. Nothing could be more
cordial or friendly, as it seemed, than that party of four, seated at a
prettily decorated circular table, attended by a well-trained
man-servant--the dashing widow's butler and factotum, borrowed for the
occasion.
Mrs. Marmaduke, the dashing widow, made herself very agreeable, and
took care to engage Captain Graham in conversation all the evening,
leaving Lydia free to occupy the entire attention of Douglas Dale.
That young lady made excellent use of her time. Day by day her chances
of a rich marriage had grown less and less, and day by day she had
grown more and more anxious to secure a position and a home. She had a
very poor opinion of Mr. Dale's intellect, for she believed only in the
cleverness of those bolder and more obtrusive men who make themselves
prominent in every assembly. She thought him a man easily to be
beguiled by honeyed words and bewitching glances, and she had,
therefore, determined to play a bold, if not a desperate game. While
Mrs. Marmaduke and Captain Graham were talking in the front
drawing-room, Lydia contrived to detain her guest in the inner
apartment--a tiny chamber, just large enough to hold a small cottage
piano, a stand of music-books, and a couple of chairs.
Miss Graham seated herself at the piano, and played a few bars with an
absent and somewhat pensive air.
"That is a mournful melody," said Douglas. "I don't think I ever heard
it before."
"Indeed!" murmured Lydia; "and yet I think it is very generally known.
The air is pretty, is it not? But the words are ultra-sentimental."
And then she began to sing softly--
"I do not ask to offer thee
A timid love like mine;
I lay it, as the rose is laid,
On some immortal shrine."
"I think the words are rather pretty," said Douglas.
"Do you?" murmured Miss Graham; and then she stopped suddenly, looking
downward, with one of those conscious blushes which were always at her
command.
There was a pause. Douglas Dale stood by the music-stand, listlessly
turning over a volume of songs.
Lydia was the first to break the silence.
"Why did you not come to see us sooner, Mr. Dale?" she asked. "You
promised me you would come."
"I have been too much engaged to come," answered Douglas.
This reply sounded almost rude; but to Lydia this unpolished manner
seemed only the result of extreme shyness, and, indeed, embarrassment,
which to her appeared proof positive of her intended victim's
enthralment.
Her eyes grew bright with a glance of triumph.
"I shall win," she thought to herself; "I shall win."
"Have you really wished to see me?" asked Douglas, after another pause.
"I did indeed wish to see you," she murmured, in tremulous tones.
"Indeed!" said Douglas, in a tone that might mean astonishment,
delight, or anything else. "Well, Miss Graham, that was very kind of
you. I go out very little, and never except to the houses of intimate
friends."
"Surely you number us--my brother, I mean--among that privileged
class," said Lydia, once more blushing bewitchingly.
"I do, indeed," said Douglas Dale, in a candid, kind, unembarrassed
tone, which, if she had been a little less under the dominion of that
proverbially blinding quality, vanity, would have been the most
discouraging of all possible tones, to the schemes which she had
formed; "I never forget how high you stood in my poor brother's esteem,
Miss Graham; indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, I thought there
was a much warmer feeling than that, on his part."
Lydia hardly knew how to take this observation. In one sense it was
flattering, in another discouraging. If the belief brought Douglas Dale
into easier relations with her, if it induced him to feel that a bond
of friendship, cemented by the memory of the past, subsisted between
them, so much the better for her purpose; but if he believed that this
supposed love of Lionel's had been returned, and proposed to cultivate
her on the mutual sympathy, or "weep with thee, tear for tear,"
principle, so much the worse. The position was undeniably embarrassing
even to a young lady of Miss Lydia Graham's remarkable strength of
mind, and _savoir faire_. But she extricated herself from it, without
speaking, by some wonderful management of her eyes, and a slight
deprecatory movement of her shoulders, which made even Douglas Dale, a
by no means ready man, though endowed with deep feelings and strong
common sense, understand, as well as if she had spoken, that Lionel had
indeed entertained feelings of a tender nature towards her, but that
she had not returned them by any warmer sentiment than friendship. It
was admirably well done; and the next sentence which Douglas Dale spoke
was certainly calculated to nourish Lydia's hopes.
"He might have sustained a terrible grief, then, had he lived longer,"
said Douglas; "but I see this subject pains you, Miss Graham; I will
touch upon it no more. But perhaps you will allow the recollection of
what we must both believe to have been his feelings and his hopes, to
plead with you for me."
"For you, Mr. Dale!" and Lydia Graham's breast heaved with genuine
emotion, and her voice trembled with no artificial faltering.
"Yes, Miss Graham, for me. I need a friend, such a friend as you could
be, if you would, to counsel and to aid me. But, pardon me, I am
detaining you, and you have another guest." (How ardently Lydia Graham
wished she had not invited the accommodating widow to play propriety!)
"You will permit me to visit you soon again, and we will speak of much
which cannot now be discussed. May I come soon?"
As he spoke these hope-inspiring words, there was genuine eagerness in
the tone of Douglas Dale's voice, there was brightness in his frank
eyes. No wonder Lydia held the story her brother had told her in
scornful disbelief; no wonder she felt all the glow of the fulfilment
of long-deferred hope. What would have been her sensations had she
known that Douglas Dale's only actuating motive in the proposed
friendly alliance, was to secure a female friend for his adored
Paulina, to gain for her the countenance and protection of a woman
whose place in society was recognized and unassailable?
"You will excuse my joining your brother and your friend now, will you
not, Miss Graham? I must, at all events, have taken an early leave of
you, and this conversation has given me much to think of. I shall see
you soon again. Good night!"
He moved hastily, passed through the door of the small apartment which,
opened on the staircase, and was gone. Lydia Graham remained alone for
a few moments, in a triumphant reverie, then she joined Gordon Graham
and the bewitching widow, who had been making the most of the
opportunity for indulging in her favourite florid style of flirtation.
"I have won," Lydia said to herself; "and how easily! Poor fellow; his
agitation was really painful. He did not even stop to shake hands with
me."
Mrs. Marmaduke took leave of her dearest Lydia, and her dearest Lydia's
brother, soon after Douglas Dale had departed, and Miss Graham and her
brother were left _tête-à-tête_.
"Well," said Gordon Graham, with rather a sulky air, "you don't seem to
have done much execution by your dinner-party, my young lady. Dale went
off in a great hurry, which does not say much for your powers of
fascination."
Lydia gave her head a triumphant little toss as she looked at her
brother.
"You are remarkably clever, my dear Gordon," she said; "but you are apt
to make mistakes occasionally, in spite of your cleverness. What should
you say if I were to tell you that Mr. Dale has this evening almost
made me an offer of his hand?"
"You don't mean to say so?"
"I do mean to say so," answered Lydia, triumphantly. "He is one of that
eccentric kind of people who have their own manner of doing things, and
do not care to tread the beaten track; or it may be that it is only his
reserved nature which renders him strange and awkward in his manner of
avowing himself."
"Never mind how awkwardly the offer has been made, provided it is
genuine," returned the practical Captain Graham. "But I don't like
'almosts.' Besides, you really must mind what you are about, Lydia; for
I assure you there is no doubt at all about the fact of his engagement.
He stated it himself."
"Well, and suppose he did," said Lydia, "and suppose some
good-for-nothing woman, in an equivocal position, _has_ trapped him
into an offer. Is he the first man who has got into a dilemma of that
kind, and got out of it? He thought I cared for Lionel, and that so
there was no hope for him. I can quite understand his getting himself
into an entanglement of the kind, under such circumstances."
Gordon Graham smiled, a certain satirical smile, intensely irritating
to his sister's temper (which she called her nerves), and which it was
rather fortunate she did not see. He was perfectly alive to the
omnivorous quality of his sister's vanity, and perfectly aware that it
had on many occasions led her into a fool's paradise, whence she had
been ejected into the waste regions of disappointment and bitterness of
spirit. He had been quite willing that she should try the experiment
upon Douglas Dale, to which that gentleman had just been subjected; but
he had not been sanguine as to its results, and he did not implicitly
confide in the very exhilarating statement now made to him by Lydia. If
Douglas Dale's "almost" proposal meant nothing more than that he would
be glad, or implied that he would be glad to be off with Paulina and on
with Lydia, he did not think very highly of the chances of the latter.
A man of the world, in the worst sense of that widely significant word,
Gordon Graham was inclined to think that Douglas Dale was merely
trifling with his sister, indulging in a "safe" flirtation, under the
aegis of an avowed engagement. Graham felt very anxious to know the
particulars of the conversation between Dale and his sister, in order
to discover how far they bore out his theory; but he knew Lydia too
well to place implicit reliance on any statement of them he might
elicit from her.
"Well, but," said he, "supposing you are right in all this, the
'entanglement,' as you call it, exists. How did he explain, or excuse
it?"
Lydia smiled, a self-satisfied, contemptuous smile. She was not jealous
of Madame Durski; she despised her. "He did not excuse it; he did not
explain; he knows he has no severity to fear from me. All he needs is
to induce me to acknowledge my affection for him, and then he will soon
rid himself of all obstacles. Don't be afraid, Gordon; this is a great
falling off from the ambitions I once cherished, the hopes I once
formed; this is a very different kind of thing from Sir Oswald
Eversleigh and Raynham Castle, but I have made up my mind to be content
with it."
Lydia spoke with a kind of virtuous resignation and resolution,
infinitely assuring to her brother. But he was getting tired of the
discussion, and desirous to end it. Anxious as he was to be rid of his
sister, and to effect the riddance on the best possible terms, he did
not mean to be bored by her just then. So he spoke to the point at once.
"That's rather a queer mode of proceeding," he said. "You are to avow
your affection for this fine gentleman, and then he is to throw over
another lady in order to reward your devotion. There was a day when
Miss Graham's pride would have been outraged by a proposition which
certainly seems rather humiliating."
Lydia flushed crimson, and looked at her brother with angry eyes. She
felt the sting of his malicious speech, and knew that it was intended
to wound her.
"Pride and I have long parted company," she answered, bitterly. "I have
learnt to endure degradation as placidly as you do when you condescend
to become the toady and flatterer of richer men than yourself."
Captain Graham did not take the trouble to resent this remark. He
smiled at his sister's anger, with the air of a man who is quite
indifferent to the opinion of others.
"Well, my dear Lydia," he said, good-humouredly, "all I can say is,
that if you have caught the brother of your late admirer, you are very
lucky. The merest schoolboy knows enough arithmetic to be aware that
ten thousand a year is twice as good as five. And it certainly is not
every woman's fortune to be able to recover a chance which seemed so
nearly lost as yours when we left Hallgrove. By all means nail him to
his proposition, and let him throw over the lovely Paulina. What a fool
the man must be not to know his mind a little better!"
"Madame Durski entrapped him into the engagement," said Lydia,
scornfully.
"Ah, to be sure, women have a way of laying snares of the matrimonial
kind, as you and I know, my dear Lydia. And now, good night. Go and
think about your trousseau in the silence of your own apartment."
Lydia Graham fell asleep that night, secure in the certainty that the
end and aim of her selfish life had been at last attained, and disposed
to regard the interval as very brief that must elapse before Douglas
Dale would come to throw himself at her feet.
For a day or two unwonted peace and serenity were observable in Lydia
Graham's demeanour and countenance. She took even more than the
ordinary pains with her dress; she arranged her little drawing-room
more than ever effectively and with sedulous care, and she remained at
home every afternoon, in spite of fine weather and an unusual number of
invitations. But Douglas Dale made no sign, he did not come, he did not
write, and all his enthusiastic declarations seemed to have ended in
nothing. The truth was that Paulina Durski was ill, and in his anxiety
and uneasiness, Douglas forgot even the existence of Lydia Graham.
A vague alarm began to fill Lydia's mind, and she felt as if the good
establishment, the liberal allowance of pin-money, the equipages, the
clever French maid, the diamonds, and all the other delightful things
which she had looked upon almost as already her own, were suddenly
vanishing away like a dream.
Miss Graham was in no very amiable humour when, after a week's watching
and suspense, she descended to the dining-room, a small and shabbily
furnished apartment, which bore upon it the stamp peculiar to London
lodging-houses--an aspect which is just the reverse of everything we
look for in a home.
Gordon Graham was already seated at the breakfast-table.
A letter for Miss Graham lay by the side of her breakfast-cup--a bulky
document, with four stamps upon the envelope.
Lydia knew the hand too well. It was that of her French milliner,
Mademoiselle Susanne, to whom she owed a sum which she knew never could
be paid out of her own finances. The thought of this debt had been a
perpetual nightmare to her. There was no such thing as bankruptcy for a
lady of fashion in those days; and it was in the power of Mademoiselle
Susanna to put her high-bred creditor into a common prison, and detain
her there until she had passed the ordeal of the Insolvent Debtors'
Court.
Lydia opened the packet with a sinking heart. There it was, the awful
bill, with its records of elegant dresses--every one of which had been
worn with the hope of conquest, and all of which had, so far, failed to
attain the hoped-for victory. And at the end of that long list came the
fearful total--close upon three hundred pounds!
"I can never pay it!" murmured Lydia; "never! never!"
Her involuntary exclamation sounded almost like a cry of despair.
Gordon Graham looked up from the newspaper in which he had been
absorbed until this moment, and stared at his sister.
"What's the matter?" he exclaimed. "Oh, I see! it's a bill--Susanne's,
I suppose? Well, well, you women will make yourselves handsome at any
cost, and you must pay for it sooner or later. If you can secure
Douglas Dale, a cheque from him will soon settle Mademoiselle Susanne,
and make her your humble slave for the future. But what has gone wrong
with you, my Lydia? Your brow wears a gloomy shade this morning. Have
you received no tidings of your lover?"
"Gordon," said Lydia, passionately, "do not taunt me. I don't know what
to think. But I have played a desperate game--I have risked all upon
the hazard of this die--and if I have failed I must submit to my fate.
I can struggle no longer; I am utterly weary of a life that has brought
me nothing but disappointment and defeat."
* * * * *