_MRS. VERDON_
"We know too much of Love ere we love. We can trace
Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face
When we see it at last. 'Tis the same little Cupid,
With the same dimpled cheek and the smile almost stupid,
We have seen in our pictures and stuck on our shelves,
And copied, a hundred times over, ourselves."
--OWEN MEREDITH.
Mrs. Verdon held an untrammelled position in life. She was a rich young
widow, uncontrolled, and without children. The death of her little boy
had been a greater sorrow than the death of a husband who was much older
than herself. Katherine Verdon had adored her child; it was Jamie's
resemblance to her lost darling which had drawn her so strongly towards
him. She had been a widow five years, and was in no haste to marry
again. Like Queen Elizabeth, she coquetted with her suitors, but these
coquetries were of a harmless kind, and never went far enough to set the
world talking. She had a great deal of tact and cleverness, and managed
all her affairs with graceful dexterity.
She was not really beautiful, but in a woman so fortunately situated a
little beauty is made much of. Her figure, tall and slender, had the
flexible grace of ribbon-grass; her little head, regally poised, was
almost overweighted with thick braids of satiny hair of pale gold; small
features, delicate, if irregular, a colourless, fair skin, and pale-blue
eyes, completed this face, which never had a warm tint. Her dress was
costly, but always well chosen, and she had so carefully studied herself
that she could not put on anything which did not become her.
On that summer evening at Richmond she was at her best. Deliverance from
great peril had opened her heart to all good influences. The fear of
losing Jamie was set at rest, and it was a fear which had increased as
the child grew dearer. She was genial, responsive, full of gentle gaiety
and genuine gratitude.
For a whole year Arnold Wayne had listened to the praises of Katherine
Verdon, chanted by his cousins the Danforths. They had found fault with
him, as all his relations did, for leading an unsettled life, and were
always asking when he was going to marry. He had been travelling for
three or four years, associating with all sorts and conditions of men
and women, interesting himself in strange religions, penetrating into
regions which few Englishmen had ever visited, and he had reached the
mature age of thirty-three without having been very deeply and seriously
in love. Of course he had had love affairs. There was an Italian who had
held him in her enchantments for a whole winter, not to mention a
_gitana_, whose liquid eyes had kept him spell-bound under the walls of
the Alhambra, and others, fair and dark, tall and little, who had been--
"The summer pilots of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing."
But, as he had owned to his innermost self a hundred times, the woman
who was to reign over his life had not yet come. Would she ever come? He
had asked himself this question on the day when he had seen Elsie with
the rector. Certainly, there had been a strange attraction in her face.
It was beautiful, but he had seen beauties by the score; beauties of all
lands and of all grades, high and low. It was not Elsie's beauty which
had so strongly moved him, although it was of a type which he especially
admired. It was an expression--a something that was wistful and tender
in the eyes--a look as of one who was waiting before the fast-shut door
of paradise. In time the face might have passed out of his memory, but
it flashed upon him again at Richmond, and he had a prophetic feeling
that his fate had come to him at last.
The boy Jamie, as he saw at once, would be the connecting-link between
Elsie and himself. It would be perfectly right in him to call on one who
had taken so warm an interest in the nephew of his intimate friend.
Then, too, there had been something said about Miss Neale's manuscript,
in which his name was mentioned. He felt that he ought to examine the
manuscript, and carry out, as far as he could, the wishes of the writer.
These were the thoughts which came crowding into his mind during the
drive home from Richmond. Meanwhile Mrs. Verdon was talking to him in
silvery tones, and asking, with pleasant friendliness, whether he had
made any plans for the autumn. Jamie, rosy and sleepy, gave him an
indolent smile now and then. It was a curious thing, he reflected, that
the child should link him to Mrs. Verdon as well as to Miss Kilner. And
then he smiled to himself, remembering all that the Danforths had said
in this fair widow's praise. Her carriage set him down in a convenient
spot, and he walked away to his chambers in Piccadilly, pondering over
the strange adventures of the day.
Mrs. Verdon, although she loved liberty, was not unprotected, and her
late husband's sister--a Mrs. Tell--had lived with her all through the
years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of
imposing aspect, but easy-tempered and rather lazy. She was past sixty,
and looked a majestic matron, with her white hair and lace cap.
Katherine's whims did not annoy her in the least, and she had taken
quite kindly to Jamie. In her inmost heart she did not want her
sister-in-law to marry again, and the boy, she thought, would fill up
the void in her life, and help to make her contented with her lot.
Mrs. Verdon had a good deal of pleasure in her large house. She found
her pictures, chairs, tables, plaques, and hangings quite absorbing
sometimes. Many a morning was spent in arranging and rearranging
cabinets and mantels, and trying the effect of new draperies; and Mrs.
Tell enjoyed anything that made the time pass tranquilly away.
The carriage stopped at the door in Portman Square. Sleepy Jamie went
toiling up the wide staircase in the dusk, and Mrs. Verdon slowly
followed. Everything looked rich and dim; the plants in the great Indian
jars filled the hall with sweet scents. Flowers were blooming in every
nook. Through a half-drawn _portiere_ there was a glimpse of Mrs. Tell
reading in the shaded lamplight.
A motherly woman met Jamie on the landing, and gave him a loving
greeting. She had been nurse to Mrs. Verdon's own child.
"Ready for bed?" she said in her cheery voice. "What pretty dreams
you'll have to-night!"
"Horses ran away," Jamie began, opening his blue eyes. "Went faster than
my rocking-horse! Dreadful! Don't want to go out in the carriage any
more."
"Never mind," said nurse, with a little hug, "we won't talk about
runaway horses at bedtime. We'll just shut our eyes and think of a field
of yellow corn, waving, waving, waving."
Elsie had often been troubled with sad visions of Jamie at night. She
had pictured him sleeping in rags under an arch, or in some corner of a
grimy garret. But fancy had never shown her anything like the dainty
little white bed in this spacious room.
Gaily-coloured prints decorated the walls, and on a bracket just above
the boy's pillow stood a lovely statuette of an angel, with folded wings
and down-bent gracious face. When any visitor came up to see the
night-nursery, Jamie would point at once to the figure and say proudly,
"My guardian angel."
An hour or two later, when Jamie, rosy and beautiful, was wrapped in the
deep sweet sleep of childhood, Mrs. Verdon and her sister-in-law were
sitting together after dinner.
"What an eventful day you have had!" said Mrs. Tell, looking up from her
knitting in the softly-shaded light. "And what a romantic meeting with
Mr. Wayne! Is he all that the Danforths described?"
"Of course not," replied Mrs. Verdon. "They described one of the
impossible heroes of fiction. You know, they have a talent for
description."
"But isn't he nice?" Mrs. Tell asked.
"Yes, he is nice. There is something about him that is not commonplace."
She leaned back in her chair with a half-smile, absently toying with a
sprig of lemon-plant. Her slender figure looked graceful in a gown of
some soft kind of silk, flowered with faint blue and pink.
Looking at her, you somehow imbibed the notion that her hair, eyes,
complexion, and dress corresponded with her character. She was faintly
coloured. Nothing about her was intense.
A vague thought of this kind flitted through Mrs. Tell's brain at this
moment. She was not a clever woman, but long intercourse with the world
had quickened her faculty for observation, and she was much given to
studying Katherine.
"Not commonplace," she repeated; "then, of course, you found him very
interesting?"
"There was not time to get interested in him," Mrs. Verdon answered.
"Naturally if a man saves one's life one feels grateful. Perhaps my
gratitude has invested him with a fictitious charm."
She spoke with a little mocking air, twisting the sprig of lemon-plant
in her long white fingers, and looking down meditatively at the carpet.
"He will follow up his advantage," remarked Mrs. Tell, knitting
steadily. "No man ever had a more favourable introduction. I wonder if
he knew whose carriage it was when he stopped the horses? It was very
well done. Of course, a man who has travelled for years, and gone into
all sorts of risky places, is always ready for an emergency. He will
call soon."
"He will call soon," echoed the younger widow, still with the little
touch of mockery in her tone, "and I shall ask him to dinner. And then,
Olivia, you will sit there in your pet chair and watch us both over your
knitting-pins. When men come here, you always remind me of Madame
Defarge and the dreadful knitting-women of the French Revolution. You
have knitted all my admirers into that coverlet you are making. It's a
sort of secret record, I do believe."
She rose, with a slight laugh, suppressed a yawn in saying good-night,
and went out of the room with a soft rustle of trailing draperies,
leaving Mrs. Tell sitting in the "pet-chair."