It would be idle to assume that a man of Guy Spencer's natural
advantages had reached the age of thirty without experiencing a few
affairs of the heart. But he had never been deeply touched, and his
friend Tommy Esmond was right when he described him as not very
susceptible to feminine influence.
The one feeling which had lasted for some years, was a pronounced
affection for his cousin Nina. He felt as much at home with her as he
would have done with a favourite sister, had he possessed one. But the
regard had a warmth in it that is lacking in fraternal relations.
He knew that Lady Nina was not indifferent to him, that she allowed him
to assume a certain air of proprietorship in the disposal of dances, in
the claim to her society when he was disposed to enjoy it. He knew also
that it was a match which would be warmly approved of by his invalid
uncle.
Without being guilty of undue vanity, he felt pretty certain that if he
proposed he would be accepted. And once or twice he had been very near
to taking the decisive step. He never could quite understand what it
was that made him hesitate.
The fact of his hesitation proved to himself, as well as to the young
lady concerned, that much as he might like his cousin, he was certainly
far from being deeply in love with her.
She was a pretty, winsome girl, possessing an upright, straightforward
nature, and quite attractive in a simple, frank fashion. There was
nothing subtle or mysterious about her, you could read her like an open
book. She was a good daughter, she was the type of girl who could not
help making a good wife.
Some day, no doubt, he would put the fateful question, and by her
acceptance be made, in conventional parlance, the happiest of men. But
although he would know he had chosen very wisely, and look forward to a
placid kind of happiness, he was doubtful if Nina's smiles and kisses
would ever thrill him, if with her he would ever learn the meaning of
real love.
He was not by any means sure that he was capable of very strong
attachment. He had indulged in a few fancies, but they had only
exercised a very small portion of his thoughts. Up to the present, he
had certainly not experienced the wild ecstasies, the mingled joy and
pain of the true lover.
For the first time in his life, he had been seriously perturbed by the
advent of Stella Keane. He had not fashioned in his imagination any
particular ideal, any special type of woman who would make to him an
irresistible appeal. But, if she had been Lady Nina, if he had met her
in his own world, he would have owned at once this was the girl for whom
he had been waiting.
Her image pursued him persistently in his waking and his leisure hours.
He could recall every word she had spoken during the short time they had
spent together. He could see her a dozen times a day standing in the
"Excelsior" dining-room, paralysed with terror.
He remembered the break in her voice, the mist in her beautiful eyes,
when she had thanked him. And ever and again, he longed to fathom the
mystery of her loneliness, the cause of that sadness that was always
lurking underneath.
Was it wise to pursue the acquaintance, with the pretty certain result
of intensifying the interest he already felt in her? He had no liking
for Mrs L'Estrange, a woman merely on the fringe of his world, or her
gambling circle. If he wanted to lose or win money, there were plenty
of other houses where he could indulge his fancy.
And he knew nothing of Miss Keane's antecedents. The only thing he did
know was that she had a cousin who was obviously a bounder of the first
water. Tommy Esmond knew nothing about her either, or, if he did know,
would not tell.
For three days he wavered, one moment eager to rush off to the flat, the
next determining that it would be better not to renew the brief
acquaintance.
On the fourth day, his impulse conquered his prudence. He told himself
soothingly that his visit was due to curiosity, that he merely wanted to
penetrate the mystery of her loneliness, her unprotected position.
The bounder cousin was coming out as he entered. Mr Dutton nodded
affably to him with a greasy and familiar smile. Spencer acknowledged
him in the coolest fashion compatible with bare civility. Why were
there people, he wondered, whom you instinctively wanted to kick, for no
apparently sufficient reason?
Miss Keane was alone. Mrs L'Estrange, she explained, was in bed with a
racking headache. She had lost heavily the night before, and this was
the usual penalty she paid for losing.
"Hardly worth the candle, is it?" he said lightly, as he took his cup of
tea from her. A slight frown crossed his brow as he observed the empty
cup of "the bounder" on the table. Did he come here often? was his
thought. Perhaps he was in love with her. But it was surely beyond the
limits of possibility that she could ever return the affection of such a
creature.
He would see what he could get out of her. "I met your cousin as I came
in. I suppose he is a frequent visitor?"
She did not look in the least conscious or embarrassed by the question.
"Oh yes, he comes very often. He is about the only one of my relatives
I have any acquaintance with. My father's mode of life estranged all
the others."
Spencer thought it would have been a good thing if Mr Dutton had been
as sensitive to the disqualifications of the late Mr Keane as the rest
of her connections. But, of course, he could not say so.
"He is not in the least like you." Then, after a pause, he added
boldly, and perhaps a little rudely: "I should never have dreamed you
were related."
She quite understood what he meant, and there was a lurking humour in
her smile, as she answered:
"Poor old George, he is a good sort, but quite a rough diamond. His
mother married a self-made man, of course, for his money. That may
account for a great deal you have noticed." Spencer had the grace to
look confused. It was evident he had conveyed his private impression of
Mr Dutton very distinctly to her clear young vision. But she did not
seem offended, only slightly amused, at the poor figure cut by Cousin
George in the estimation of a person in a superior world.
Anyway, that little mystery was explained. There was nothing unusual in
poor gentlewomen marrying self-made men, for the sake of money. The
noble family of Southleigh had many such _mesalliances_ amongst its
aristocratic records.
But it was a relief to find Stella herself under no delusions concerning
the young man in question. He did not think it possible she could, but
as diplomatically as was possible, she admitted that Mr Dutton was not
what is, technically called, a gentleman.
"He is the only relative with whom I am on speaking terms," she added,
after a pause, "for reasons of which I have already given you a hint.
And I think I have grown rather to look forward to his visits."
Her observant eyes noticed a quick stiffening in his manner. She could
guess his thoughts. How was it possible for a refined young woman to
ever look forward to the visits of a person like Mr Dutton, cousin
though he might be?
"You, of course, have heaps of relations; you can pick and choose," she
went on, as if eager to explain to his fastidious taste her toleration
of a man, so obviously the denizen of an inferior world. "You cannot, I
daresay, imagine the loneliness of a girl of my age, debarred, through
no fault of her own, from the society of her own kith and kin." Here
was an opportunity to engage her in personal talk. He had not hoped she
would take him into her confidence on his first visit.
He leaned forward, and there was an eager note in his voice. "I formed
an idea of you in the first few moments of our acquaintance, that you
were not happy, that you were, in a sense, isolated, and that you had
known more of sorrow than joy in your short life."
She mused a moment, and then answered him in grave tones:
"You were quite right. I feel it is the impression I must convey to
either friend or stranger, an impression I shall always convey. For, if
a great and overwhelming happiness were to come to me to-morrow, I could
never forget the past years of sadness."
"But, surely, you must have some happy memories? There were gleams of
brightness in your childhood?"
"No," she said, and there was a fierce vehemence in her voice. "They
were the most miserable--an indifferent mother, a careless father, a
roof and a shelter, food and clothing sufficient, if not in abundance,
but no home, as it is understood by more fortunate children."
"And when that home, or the wretched pretence of it, was broken up, you
were thrown upon the mercy of the world," he questioned, "with no
kindred, no friends to stretch out a helping hand?"
"Our relatives had long before ceased to take any interest in the
daughter of a ruined gambler. I was thrown, in a certain sense, on the
mercy of the world. But for a small pittance, which my father could not
deprive me of, I should have starved, for he left nothing behind him but
debts."
She was not, then, absolutely penniless. Something had been saved from
the wreck. He wondered if Esmond knew this. And yet, if she told a
comparative stranger this at their first real interview, she must have
told him, who seemed to be on the footing of a friend of the house.
"I had no real friends," she went on; "but in the course of a wandering
life--when my father owed too much in one place he removed to another--I
had picked up a few acquaintances. With these I made a home, on and
off, for longer or shorter periods."
"And you have come to anchor here with Mrs L'Estrange, who is your
cousin, one of the few relatives who did not visit the sins of the
fathers on the children."
Her voice was a little scornful. "The cousinship is a very distant one.
And, as she is an inveterate gambler herself, but more lucky than my
father, she could hardly look upon gambling in another as a deadly sin."
He nodded his head in agreement. He did not want to talk himself, for
fear he should interrupt the flow of her reminiscences; she was
evidently in a confidential mood this afternoon.
"I saw her a few times when quite a child, and then she vanished like
the others. A couple of years ago, we met in Devonshire at the house of
a mutual acquaintance. She seemed to take a fancy to me. In the end,
she proposed that I should, for the present, make my home with her. She
has only one interest in life, _play_. She is a very lazy woman. She
hates writing the briefest note, and housekeeping is abhorrent to her.
I attend to her correspondence, I order the dinner and look after the
servants. I am not exactly eating the bread of charity," she concluded
with a little mirthless laugh, "because I give some work in exchange for
my food. My own little pittance provides me with clothes."
He wondered what the little pittance represented in annual hard cash.
She was dressed quietly but in good taste, and he was judge enough of
woman's apparel to know that the material of her dress was expensive.
On her slender fingers glittered a few valuable rings, heirlooms
probably saved from the clutches of the gambling father. She did not
convey the impression of poverty, but perhaps she was clever, and knew
how to make the best of a small income.
There was a long silence, and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten
his presence. For she sat with a musing look in her beautiful eyes, her
thoughts evidently in the past, conjuring up Heaven knows how many
painful memories.
Then she came back to herself, and turned to him with an apologetic
smile. "I am afraid I have bored you to tears with my stupid personal
history, but I will finish by telling you one little thing that may
amuse you."
He protested, of course, that he had not been in the least bored, only
too painfully interested.
"Well, I am not a person easily crushed, and although a physical coward
and frightened of raids and thunderstorms, I am not a moral one. When I
began to review my position, I tried to hit upon some way of making
money."
Was she fond of money, he wondered? Well, perhaps, like most women, she
wanted money to buy herself pretty things. There was nothing unusual in
that.
"When I was a schoolgirl, I was supposed to show some artistic talent; I
got several prizes. So I set to work and painted some half-a-dozen
small things, in what I conceived to be a popular style, and took them
round to as many dealers. In a week my hopes were shattered. One
straightforward creature told me frankly that they just attained the
schoolgirl level of excellence, but that I should never become an
artist. It was not in me."
"A crushing blow, indeed," said Spencer sympathetically.
"I then turned to writing. Here, at any rate, was a profession that
required no previous painful training, only powers of observation, some
imagination, and a certain fluency of expression. I wrote some short
stories which I thought good, which I still think good. History
repeated itself. I sent them to a dozen editors, one after another. In
every case, they were declined with thanks."
"I daresay they were quite good, and they were not taken because you
didn't happen to be in the ring," was Spencer's consoling comment.
"Well," she exclaimed brightly, "there is an end of my reminiscences for
to-day. Let us talk of anything and everything else. Have you seen Mr
Esmond lately? He has not been near us since the night he came with
you."
Shortly afterwards he took his leave, he had stayed unconsciously long
as it was.
"I shall come again soon, if I may, to listen to some more
reminiscences," he said, as he shook hands. And she had given him
permission, with the brightest of smiles.
He had not learned half as much as he wanted, but he had gathered
something. The bounder cousin was the son of a self-made man, a
_parvenu_. And Stella Keane was not absolutely penniless, she had
enough money to buy herself clothes. Did Tommy Esmond know as much as
this? And if he did, why had he not said so?