that sort of forgiveness: "I don't want you to be hanged or
quartered--but good-bye"? That won't do, my dear. I am a wife and
mother, and my experience of life is much more matured than yours. Take
my word for it, forgiveness is the quality that best suits us
women--even when we are most sinned against. It does not become us to
be too logical, or look too far ahead. It was not for nothing that God
made our brains smaller than those of men. Where would I be to-day, and
my two little ones, if I had not swallowed a great deal more than ever
you will have to overlook?'
'Laurette, I have no doubt you mean very well,' said Stella wearily. 'I
do not want to make a public scandal, but----'
'Sail to-morrow as was arranged, Stella, and make your own conditions,
till you are satisfied that the episode of yesterday was an accident
which won't happen again. Now, be reasonable, and tell me what other
plan could Cuthbert, or even an angel from heaven, suggest better than
this? What sacredness would the marriage service have if men and women
tried to throw the contract over at the first shock? Come on, Stella,
and speak to Ted.'
When Stella went into her husband's room, the sight of his haggard face,
with its broken, appealing look, smote on her heart.
'Stella, forgive me,' he said, speaking very low, lest he should betray
emotion.
'I do,' she said, with bent head. 'I do forgive you, Ted.'
'And, Stella, don't say you don't blame me any more than if I had
small-pox. I would sooner, somehow, you thought I was as black as the
devil himself, than believe I couldn't help being such an infernal
idiot.'
'But, Ted, you know how, less than a year ago, when you were to meet me
at your father's, the same thing happened, and now--do I not know that
you would not willingly give me pain, that----'
'Thank you for saying that, Stella. May I hold your hand? I know all
that--and yet this time it's partly, I know, because I got into my head
you knew, and didn't mind so very much. Larry made some mistake, and
she thought you knew. And then, you know, I wanted to tell you when I
said I wasn't what I ought to be--and you said rather queer things. Of
course it was because you didn't really know. I never was so ashamed of
myself in my life before, and I'll do whatever you want me to.'
'Oh, Ted, it is all too miserable; it seems as if the things that are
worst in life pursued us and hounded us down so that we cannot escape
them--so that we cannot help ourselves.'
A scalding tear rolled down Stella's cheek and fell on Ted's hand.
Then, so extreme was his misery and remorse, for the first time in his
life he moaned aloud.
The thought crossed Stella's mind that she would tell him all she meant
to say on the previous night. But the sight of his motionless form and
ghastly vacant face, as he lay submerged far below the unconsciousness
of brute life, rose before her with cruel vividness. And then she knew
that she dared not breathe a word to him of her irremediable
bereavement. It would be sacrilege--stealing the oil for common
purposes from the lamp that burned in commemoration of her dead.
But a hard unsympathetic antagonism was impossible to her. She was too
keenly alive to the tragic element in human affairs--to the multiform
aspects in which circumstance, destiny, chance, heredity--call it what
we may--so often wove the pattern of our lives with cynical disregard of
the designs that make for their salvation and happiness.
As Ted looked at her with dim, appealing eyes, she was sorry for him
beyond the reach of words. Yet she was inflexible in the resolve that
till the memory of the past had grown more dim, and till the ascendancy
of his fatal weakness was disproved, their lives must virtually be lived
apart.
'But we can help ourselves--we can yet make it all right, Stella,' he
said in answer to her words. 'Only let me be near you--let me be with
you--let me look at you day by day--let me do things for you! ... It was
on the twenty-sixth of last December that I forgot myself before. If on
this day twelve months I can tell you honestly that during all that time
I have not made such a horrible blunder, will you believe that I can
help making a fool of myself, and live with me as my wife? Will you,
Stella?'
She made answer that she would, and then he clasped both her hands in a
fervent grasp.
'We will travel during that year, Stella,' he went on; and Laurette
re-entered the room as he spoke. 'We will sail to-morrow, as we meant
to.'
Laurette's face was a little flushed. Her heart rose with a bound.
'You have given your promise, Ted, and I am sure you will keep to it. I
will read a verse or two to make you remember it better.'
Laurette, who had the dramatic faculty in some respects to a remarkable
degree, caught up a New Testament that lay on the toilet-table, knelt
down by the bedside, and, opening the book at random, read the first
verses on which her eyes fell:
'"And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch as he had done
wisely; for the children of this world are wiser in their generation
than the children of light. And I say to you, Make unto you friends of
the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail they may receive you
into everlasting dwellings."'
Laurette rose from her knees and put away the Testament, feeling for her
own part deeply encouraged and reassured. She had heard something of
the practice of reading a verse or verses where the Bible happened to
open, and her present experience gave her the belief that there was
something in it. As far as she had known anything of the sect of the
children of light, they were often, in practical matters, conies of the
rocks; and she was well content to be of those who made friends of the
mammon of iniquity, which seemed to be a sort of Biblical nickname for
worldly prudence.
As for Stella, the feeling overcame her more strongly than ever that she
was looking on at dioramic views in a troubled dream, or that she was a
supernumerary in a serio-comic opera in which people spoke prose instead
of intoning doggerel rhymes. Moral and physical exhaustion was creeping
over her, for the time sealing up the sources of emotion. Yet she found
herself half smiling as Laurette rose from her knees.
'Stella, promise me that you will rest,' whispered Ted, looking at her
worn white face with keen self-reproach. Then he raised her hand to his
lips, murmuring his promises anew before Stella left the room. 'What
the devil made you read the Scriptures in broad daylight on a Thursday,
Larry?' he said when they were alone.
'That's just like you, Ted; you have no imagination,' retorted Laurette.
'You know how they read the Bible at Fairacre night and day; Stella
would feel your promise was more solemn--though, of course, in a case of
this kind, all is fair in love and war.'
'Don't you believe I am going to funk my promise to Stella,' returned
Ted doggedly.
Then Laurette sat by his bedside, and told the wonderful news, which had
by this time mounted to her head. A great success is never so
intoxicating as when it fairly dawns on the horizon while consummation
is yet delayed; for even to the earthliest nature fruition seldom fails
to bring its leaden-faced twin-brother satiety.
'Well, Larry, you've kept Tareling in hand better than people expected,'
said Ted. 'Those who knew him best said he would never stay in
Australia more than a couple of years.'
This little speech opened Laurette's heart.
'My dear boy, no one knows what a struggle I've had to keep Talbot in
the narrow path of duty,' she said solemnly. 'Quite recently he was on
the point of going off with a wretched little divorced actress who
danced and sang, as people used to say, like an angel--as if angels ever
made such wicked eyes at the fathers of families!--when she sang,
'"Viene, ben mio, fra questi piante ascose,
Ti vo' la fronte incoronar di rose,"
with such brazen archness. I have often thought, and I am sure of it,
that in decent theatres, which, after all, owe much of their support to
families, effrontery of that kind should be put down with a strong hand.
But, however, there Talbot used to sit beside me, gloating on the little
Jezebel--his jewel-gifts shining in her impudent little head--at the
very time I shouldn't have known where to turn for a crust, if it hadn't
been for the generosity of my good dear old Ted here. You needn't turn
rusty, Ted. You have too much of the John Bull in you in that respect,
always trying to hide your generosity under a rough outside. But I must
finish about the actress. Yes, I knew everything was arranged; and the
precious pair were to be off to California in a few days. Of course I
would not enter upon such particulars to anyone but my own brother; not
but what it was one of the stories probably that men grinned over in the
Club. Well, what did I do? Flew into a rage, and prepared to run away
home on my own account, or melted perpetually into tears? Nothing of
the kind. If I had packed up and gone off to Godolphin House, who would
have been relieved and delighted? Why, Talbot, of course. And if, on
the other hand, I had wept and implored, he wouldn't have come near the
place at all. As it was, I never lost his confidence. I was gay and
smiling, though my heart might have been in ruins. Suspecting nothing,
never dreaming I had an inkling of what was going on, Talbot was so much
off his guard that I gleaned all necessary information. I knew the
boat, and the hour it was to sail. That morning I had a private
interview with our largest creditor, a man to whom we owed five hundred
pounds; and I said to him, "If you want to make sure of twenty shillings
in the pound of this debt, just see that the Honourable Talbot Tareling
doesn't leave by the _Don Carlos_ at noon to-day, under the name 'Signor
Foscari'"--and he didn't,' said Laurette, nodding triumphantly at her
brother, who by this time was listening with a look of interest.
'You are more of a nut than I ever thought you were, Laurette!' he said
with a grim smile.
'Nut or not, I know what I am about. And I would like to know where
Talbot would be this day, when there is but a step or two between his
being a peer of England and an hereditary legislator of Great Britain,
if I didn't possess the necessary tact? Talk of the Prodigal Son!
Talbot looked like one that evening, when he came home--only, I suppose,
much older. I think a man must have very little idea of fun when he has
such an escapade after he has lost all the hair off the top of his head,
and his moustache is grizzled. I had got a special friend to get Talbot
out of the hands of the creditor at once, and pay the five hundred
pounds down. I had the amount by me, you know, out of the money you
gave me. Talbot thought I knew nothing of the affair, for he
intercepted the letter he had left at the Club to be posted to me the
day after he sailed--telling me he would probably be away a couple of
years, as he really could not stand Melbourne society any longer. He
kindly advised me to economize in his absence at Cannawijera. Oh, I knew
what was in it; I saw a draft of the letter in his pocket-book a few
days before then. Yes, and he paid this friend three hundred pounds of
the debt, which was of course promptly handed to me. I had no scruple
in keeping it, for it was part of six hundred pounds I lent him early in
October. Yes; all this happened two days before you were married. And
there was I, that evening, prattling away about the babies as innocently
as Howard boy himself, and the next Government House dinner-party, a
specially cosy little affair, for which an invitation had come two or
three days before. How a man could give himself up to a Bohemian career
with such an invitation staring him in the face I cannot tell. I don't
mention myself or the dear children, because it would seem that these
are the items which some men part from most easily at times; more
especially when they have been importuned for many weeks to hasten away
to have their brows coroneted with roses, such as they were. Of course
this news will, in a manner, help to steady Talbot. You see his father
is seventy-six, and very tottery.'
'But don't reckon upon the old chap giving up the ghost immediately,
Laurette,' said her brother, half smiling.
'God forbid!' answered Laurette devoutly.
It was one of the edifying features of her character, in an emergency,
that piety of the kind which preachers call 'a bulwark of the State' was
always at her command. Then, emboldened by Ted's remorseful mood, and
by the thought that at any moment the summons might come which would
call Talbot and herself to take their place among the English nobility,
Laurette made a full confession to Ted of all their financial
difficulties. It would take an additional two thousand pounds to quite
clear their liabilities. In any case they would be leaving for England
in about nine months. They ought to have a thousand or two in hand for
emergencies. The Lillimore estates were in such a state of
impoverishment, with so many charges on them, etc. The upshot of these
confidences was, that Ted arranged to leave four thousand pounds to
Laurette's credit--'for, after all, you've proved yourself a true friend
to me, Larry; and though I've put my foot in it so confoundedly, to
begin with----'
'Oh, my dear boy, as for that, it will soon blow over. A woman may have
principles and theories, but life is so arranged that she soon sees how
ridiculous it is to try and act on them. And nothing in this world, nor
that which is to come, will, as a rule, enable her to face a ridiculous
position for a whole year.'
Thus Laurette, like an artist who knows how and when to strike the
desired key-note, went on her way conquering and to conquer. Stella's
involved passionate nature, her lack of patience and fidelity to her
better self, Ted's fall and remorse, Tareling's chronic servitude to
common vice, all under Laurette's cunning fingers were touched into
fairy music, which led her to that career of assured triumph she had
long felt herself born to achieve. Nor did she fail to acknowledge her
obligations to a higher power. An unwavering determination to make the
best of life might compass much, but when dealings with such capricious
and obstinate material as a girl like Stella are brought to a successful
issue, one is bound to recognise the aid of that strain of divinity in
mundane matters which 'shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.'
This strain of divinity was at times rather obscured in the arrangements
of a world in which ready money was an extremely precarious possession
with many who might be termed born leaders of society. But who could
fail to recognise the finger of an overruling Providence in the series
of events that had brought Laurette to her present position?
*CHAPTER XLVI*
The _Hindoo Fawn_ steamed away at the appointed hour with a large number
of passengers, among them rather more than the average mixture of
classes who make up the miscellaneous crowds that are constantly to be
found going to and fro on the mail-boats between Australia and the old
world. They were all there, from the publican who had made a large
fortune in a shanty at a new gold-mine, to the Governor whose term of
office had expired, and who discussed European politics with an air of
lofty reserve, as if sources of information lay in the hollow of his
hand denied to such everyday avenues as newspapers. 'Ah, yes, yes; that
is the popular rumour,' he would murmur, with an indulgent smile, as
though he had a special Asmodeus in his pay in each European Court. His
'lady,' too, was usually surrounded by a small coterie, who hung on her
words with that pathetic docility which oftentimes marks the
Australienne who has much money and little culture, and who in
provincial simplicity regards a Governor's wife as being necessarily an
oracle of fashion and the higher social ethics. But there were many on
board the _Hindoo Fawn_ who did not join in this form of fetich-worship.
Conspicuous among these was Mrs. Anstey Hobbs, who formed what might be
termed a counter-circle, and numbered among her adherents many of the
'Melbourne people,' and a young man who was supposed to be engaged on a
weighty work on Australia. As he had passed four months in the
island-continent, had lived only in the cities and among the wealthy
grocer order, his qualifications for the task may be imagined. But,
then, what he lacked in experience he made up in theories. Even if he
had been deficient in these, his friend, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs, would have
jogged his imagination.
'The omnipotence of money in our young Republics, that is the bane of
our social life, Mr. FitzAlan,' she would say sententiously; on which
Mr. FitzAlan would whip out his note-book and enter the observation with
a glow of thankfulness at being able to gather knowledge at so sure and
trustworthy a source. 'Look at those exuberant young women sweeping the
deck in cream-coloured plush and lace tea-gowns. Their mother laid the
foundation of the family's immense wealth by washing in the early days
of the Ballarat diggings, and then the father kept a sly grog-shop. Now
their lives are as much divorced from labour as Solomon's lilies.'
In her desire to be epigrammatic, Mrs. Anstey Hobbs occasionally
perpetrated a derangement of associations, of which this may be taken as
a favourable specimen.
'They keep betting-books, they talk slang, they wear pearls and diamonds
at breakfast, and their reading is confined to a few trashy novels and
sporting news; their sole idea of conversation is horsy chaff, and their
favourite avocation is a pronounced flirtation. Ah, Mr. FitzAlan, it is
a cruel fate to find one's self bracketed with such people. Yes, people
like you may discriminate.'
'Well, you have helped me to a much clearer understanding of these young
ladies. I fear when my work come out you will find it enriched with
many of your observations, Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs. They are so true to the
life, so apt, so full of individuality. And that young lady who keeps
so much aloof, who has constantly a book in her hands, and seldom speaks
except to her husband or dog, or her maid, and has formed no friendship
except with a sick ape?'
'Oh, Mrs. Ted Ritchie! Well, now, there is a study for you. A few
months ago that languid, supercilious, indifferent young person, who
preserves such a haughty silence most of the day, was introduced for the
first time to what might be termed society. She was delightfully naive
and fresh, interested in everyone and everything--really, one might also
say intelligent--her whole face constantly sparkling with enjoyment.
She had, too, a very fair idea of talking, perhaps a little too
_ingenue_ in her delight in entering fashionable society, too ready with
a smile when there was no call for it, but on the whole so vivacious and
ingenuous that it was quite a pleasure to meet her.'
'You amaze me! What can have wrought so marvellous a change?'
'Money. Fifteen thousand a year is the secret of it all. Mark her cold
listlessness, the droop in her mouth, the disengaged air. She is
practising the _role_ of the woman of society to perfection. Oh yes,
her sister-in-law may be Countess of Lillimore any day. The two
influences combined--wealth and an aristocratic connection--have been
too much for her. Just notice, the maid brings her a couple of books,
her husband shifts the sunshade, his valet, or groom rather, leads up
her dog, and then, for the first time, our fine lady permits herself a
feeble smile. One might imagine it was a marriage _a la mode_, instead
of which the young man was the only one she ever cared for, and she had
set her heart for years on marrying him. She has accomplished her
object--she is wealthy--behold the result!
Now, judge whether I over-estimate the exaggerated part that money plays
with us.'
Mr. FitzAlan was deeply impressed by all this, and more than ever
conscious of his great good-fortune in securing so skilful a coadjutor
as Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs in imparting a lively local colour to his
Australian impressions. He made what he would have called a 'study' of
Mrs. Ritchie. After sketching the exuberant young women whose toilettes
on board ship were of so telling a nature, whose fortunes were laid in
so dramatic a form, he took up his parable regarding another phase of
Australian womanhood--the young lady who belongs socially to a higher
grade, but who has lived in straitened circumstances till a lucky
marriage has landed her in affluence and wealth. Here the young man
warmed to his work, and with those side-lights and cumulative details,
which are so much more effective in the tourist's hands than any shred
of the truth would be, beset as it is with thorny points which do not
adapt themselves harmoniously to neatly packed little theories, he went
on to probe and 'accentuate,' as he would term it, the difference of
types.
The young persons whose wealth made them so frankly jubilant in its
enjoyment had, after all, been born in the lap of luxury. With all
their loud, costly, inappropriate costumes, their silken trains dusting
the decks of mail-steamers, yet their faith in the almighty dollar as
the governing factor of life was not so sublimely immovable as that of
the more cultured young lady who had been poor and was suddenly
rich--suddenly in touch, through her husband's family, with the proud
exclusive aristocracy of England! Then came a fetching picture of the
_milieu_ of this young lady in her father's house, where she had
unwillingly drudged with the maid-of-all-work, and spent a large portion
of her leisure in making up cheap dresses that were as faithful a
reproduction of the last fashion-plates as circumstances would permit.
There was even a light and rapid inventory of the furniture--the
varnished side-board, with its plated ware, the imitation Brussels
carpet, the oleographs, the large supply of the novel of a second-rate
order which formed the chief reading of the young lady, whose heart
would beat with yearning envy at the facile victories of
heiresses--those fortunate beings who command the last triumphs of the
milliner's confections, and the man-dressmaker's knowing art--whose
coiffure is built up by the cunning fingers of a trained maid. For,
under an artless and vivacious appearance, an inflexible purpose lodged
itself in this young woman's breast. She would, if possible, be rich!
She would cast aside the sordid trappings that bound her, and soar into
the empyrean of those whose lives were beautified with wealth! She
would become one of the elect who neither toil nor spin. And all at
once this was accomplished. Now mark the outcome. So possessed is this
young person with her incredible change of fortune, that her whole
nature is transformed. She is penetrated to her finger-tips with a keen
appreciation of her good-fortune, and yet she hides her glowing
satisfaction under an air of profound indifference, etc., etc.
So enamoured did the young man become of the sketch thus done from
life--piping hot, as it were, from the inner reality of things--that he
was never weary of adding new touches. Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs was delighted.
The artist in her, as she would have termed it, expanded in considering
this masterly exposition of character. He discovered that his 'study'
absented herself from the Sunday services held on deck, sitting apart in
the society of her dog and the sick ape. It was then he wrote: 'Nor is
this assumption of haughty coldness, of languid scorn, confined to the
ordinary intercourse of life. In her determination to be quite above
the average herd--to be abreast with the latest development of advanced
thought so called--she despises even those outward observances of
religion that have consoled humanity through countless aeons of time.'
After admiring this phrase hugely for some days, the thought occurred to
him that the Church of England Prayer-book was after all dated, and he
accordingly made an alteration. This Mrs. Anstey-Hobbs called being
rigorously critical.
'Each shade, every _nuance_ in her nature is subtly touched,' she
murmured, adjusting her pince-nez to take a better look at the subject
who afforded these masterly discoveries.