HER FAIRY PRINCE
BY
_Gertrude Warden_
AUTHOR OF "THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT KEW," "AS A
BIRD TO THE SNARE," ETC.
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1895
Copyright, 1895,
by
J.B. Lippincott Company.
Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
HER FAIRY PRINCE.
CHAPTER I.
"Hallo, Armstrong! Thought you were in Australia!"
"Hallo, Garth! Thought you were in gaol!"
Such were the greetings interchanged in Boulogne market-place on a hot
August forenoon by two Englishmen who had not met for five years.
The first speaker, Mr., or Captain Garth, as he styled himself, was a
man of medium height, inclined to stoutness and of florid complexion,
with bloodshot blue eyes, plentiful prematurely-white hair, a heavy
cavalry moustache, and a jovial swaggering manner. His clothes were
carefully brushed and darned, his boots beautifully polished, and his
chimney-pot hat, set rakishly on one side on his white curls, was
suspiciously shiny in its surface. The Captain's red face, overhanging
eyebrows, and ferocious moustache were wont to frighten children, of
whom he was specially fond; but his features were well-cut and his
manners plausible, and most women considered him a very good-looking
man for his six-and-fifty years.
Of his companion's claims to personal beauty there could be no doubt,
in spite of the air of drink, dissipation, and neglect which hung about
him. Wallace Armstrong at six-and-twenty was intended by nature to
be a splendid specimen of muscular manhood--tall, broad-shouldered,
vigorous, and sinewy, looming enormous over the small French soldiers
who slouched in twos and threes across the market-place, and followed
where he walked by the admiring glances of the stalwart bare-footed
fish-girls trooping up and down to and from the quay.
But already Wallace Armstrong had done his best to injure the heritage
of vigour and manly beauty which had devolved upon him at birth. Under
his eyes, of a brilliant bluish-gray colour shaded by thick black
lashes, late hours and hard drinking had imprinted lines and shadows
ill-suited to early manhood; his whole expression was sullen and
defiant, as though he distrusted and despised his fellow men and was
at little trouble to disguise his feelings towards them. His manner of
greeting his old acquaintance was not only insolent as to words, but
still more so in the tone he used the while he roughly shook Garth's
detaining hand off his coat-sleeve.
"It's of no use to claim acquaintanceship with me now!" Armstrong
remarked, harshly. "I'm broke, stone-broke--and, what's more, if I had
any money, I know better now than to play cards with you for it!"
Captain Garth's red face grew a shade redder; but he was not sensitive
as to snubs, and his tone was altogether friendly when he spoke again.
"We're all broke occasionally," he observed, soothingly; "even I do
not absolutely wallow in gold at the present minute. Still, I've a
little place up here in the High Town where I can put up a friend in
difficulties until things blow over."
"Oh, I'm not wanted by the police, if that's what you mean!" the other
interrupted, scornfully. "My early indiscretions have been whitewashed
by a visit to Australia, which means that, having got into bad company
in England, I was sent across the sea to get into worse company in
Australia."
"Have you been back long?" Garth inquired, accommodating with
difficulty his footsteps to the long strides of his companion.
"Long enough to spend in Paris the money which was to take me back to
England! Look!" And he turned his empty pockets inside out for Garth's
edification.
The elder man looked thoughtful, and walked on by his side for some
seconds in silence.
"But your uncle?" he suggested at last. "Surely Alexander Wallace's
credit should help his nephew in raising the 'needful'?"
"A lot of use when for four years the old skinflint has gone about
denouncing me as a ne'er-do-weel, and proclaiming the fact that I shall
never get another ha'penny from him. I've written to him from here--it
was the only thing to be done; but it won't be any good. The picture I
drew in my letter of my sick and starving young wife was enough to melt
the heart of a stone! But it won't move Uncle Alec."
"Your wife?" Garth repeated, in surprise.
"Yes. The young, lovely, and pious orphan daughter of a clergyman,
who fell in love with me on board ship and decided to take in hand my
reformation. There never was such a perfect woman--if, indeed, she's
alive still; but as, when I wrote, she'd had nothing to eat for three
days--and I can swear she's had nothing since--she may very likely be
dead by this time!"
Captain Garth was neither a good nor a scrupulous man, but he had the
remnants of a heart about him, and his companion's words shocked and
startled him.
"Are you mad or drunk, Armstrong?" he cried. "Do you really mean to
tell me your wife is here in Boulogne starving?"
Armstrong turned and looked at him. Then he thrust his hands into his
empty pockets and burst out laughing.
"Why, you old idiot," he exclaimed, "she's only my wife on paper! What
in the world should I want to burden myself with a wife for? Uncle Alec
has always been soft-hearted about women, probably because he's had
very little to do with them and doesn't know what fools and plagues
they are; so the idea came into my head to pitch this starving-wife
story, and see whether that would move him. But I don't hope much from
it."
"It would be rather awkward, though, if he took you at your word and
asked you to produce her!"
"Nothing less likely. He has frequently stated in the letters of
good advice he sent me at Melbourne that he never wished to set eyes
on me again; and Heaven knows I am not hungering for a sight of the
sanctimonious old bag of bones! My precious cousin is now the darling
of his eye, the industrious apprentice and good boy, and all that sort
of thing! He has been taken into the bank, and, no doubt, will get
the old screw's money when he dies--if he ever will die, which I am
beginning to doubt! He never would if I were his heir, for certain.
Curse my luck!"
Clearly Armstrong was in a communicative mood as he strode along, every
now and then savagely kicking the stones on the pathway. His last franc
had been spent on a dose of fiery cognac, which, taken after long
fasting, had mounted to his brain and brought on a talkative mood. All
the time they conversed the two men were mounting the dusty white road
which led to the High Town, Armstrong insensibly and Garth by design.
Captain Garth, as has been said before, was not wholly ill-natured.
Five years before he had had some hand in the ruining of Wallace
Armstrong, then a high-spirited lad of one-and-twenty, and known to be
the favourite nephew of a wealthy Scotch banker. At that time Garth
was the secret proprietor of a gambling club, and it was to meet the
liabilities contracted there that young Armstrong forged his uncle's
name, and was subsequently banished from his native country and his
uncle's favour. The gambling club in question had been raided and
dispersed long ago; but Garth had evaded the law and taken up his
residence abroad. He was now really sorry to note the shabbiness and
recklessness of his former dupe, and was casting about in his mind as
to whether he could not assist him with possible profit to himself.
"Come up to my diggings!" he said, cheerily. "My little girl will cook
us a cutlet and mix a French salad as well as any waiter in Paris!"
"Your little girl? I didn't know you had any family!"
"Mrs. Garth died in England three years ago," returned the Captain.
"She was a very good woman, according to her lights; but--h'm--a little
narrow, you know! Country rector's sister, kept house for him in a
Sussex village, fell in love with a handsome blue-eyed young racing-man
she saw in church. I like church--it's an institution that ought to
be kept up. And eighteen years ago, Armstrong,--though I say it that
shouldn't--there wasn't a better-looking fellow at Goodwood than
Randolph Garth. I have always been weak--I own it--where a pretty woman
is concerned; and the late Mrs. Garth was certainly pretty, though
she was eight-and-twenty when I first met her, and had never had an
offer. That sly old brother of hers drove would-be suitors away--wanted
to keep her little pittance--just a beggarly life-interest in three
hundred a year in the family, d'ye see? But she fell in love, as pretty
women will, quarrelled with her family, ran away to London, and met
and married me by appointment in an old church in the City. As to the
little misunderstandings which followed, no doubt each of us was a
little to blame; but Mrs. Garth was a lady, and never made scenes. Our
methods of life didn't suit; so ten years ago we parted quite amicably,
and my wife settled down with our little girl Laline in a cottage in
the Lake district, where I visited them occasionally. Three years ago
Mrs. Garth died very suddenly, and her income died with her. So my
little girl had to come over and rough it in Boulogne with her father."
Such was the story of his marriage, detailed airily by Captain Garth--a
story true in the main, but with many touches omitted which would have
lent meaning and pathos to the whole. The story of a good and tender
woman's mistake, of her gradual disillusion and growing hopelessness,
and of the self-sacrifice by which, at last, she forfeited annually
one-third of her little income to her worthless husband, in order that
she might keep and educate her child far from the gambling, drinking,
and unscrupulous set to which the man she had once so loved belonged.
Possibly, had Wallace Armstrong paid much attention to Garth's story,
he might have read between the lines some of these truths; but he was
at present too much occupied with his own affairs to trouble himself
with the autobiography of a man whom he despised and mistrusted.
The Rue Planché, where Captain Garth's lodgings were situated, was a
mean street in the High Town, composed of tumble-down ill-built little
houses, painted in various tints of cream-and-mustard colour, one
storey high, and furnished with green shutters and little back gardens
liberally adorned with clothes to dry.
One worn step only divided No. 7, Rue Planché, from the street. The
front door was open as the two men approached, showing a very narrow,
brick-paved passage, and the linen-hung garden beyond, in which
_la mère_ Bénoîte, the Captain's landlady, was engaged in hanging
up clothes. The Captain's rooms comprised a little _salon_ on the
right, and a little _salle-à-manger_ on the left of the entrance,
and up-stairs two tiny bedrooms; but before now Mr. Garth had put up
a friend on the sofa of one of the ground-floor rooms, and he was
prepared to offer a similar privilege to the nephew of Alexander
Wallace.
The _salon_ was the Captain's special den. Although the window was
open, the scent of spirits and stale tobacco hung on the air, a few
sporting prints adorned the walls, and the Captain's desk was littered
by cuttings from sporting papers. A card-table stood in the middle of
the room, and an empty bottle of cognac, half a dozen glasses, and a
dirty well-thumbed pack of cards clearly showed the manner in which
the Captain had spent the preceding evening. Nothing in this room was
removed except by Garth's special permission; but when he caught sight
of the sardonic expression on his visitor's face, he shut the door
somewhat hastily, and inwardly regretted that he had not ordered the
place to be put straight before leaving home that morning.
"At your old tricks, I see," Armstrong observed, an unpleasant smile
curving his full lips under his heavy black moustache.
"Oh, just a game with the boys, to charm away homesickness in the
evenings. But I must introduce you to my little girl. Laline," he
cried, throwing open the door of the _salle-à-manger_, "I have brought
a visitor--Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"
Even Armstrong's clouded senses understood at once the contrast offered
by this apartment to the dirty and neglected-looking _salon_. Here the
green shutters were wide open, letting the sunlight flood the shining
deal flooring, stained and polished to resemble oak, and the cheap
suite of dining-room furniture, which had been beautified in the same
manner. An earthenware jug, filled with poppies, marguerites, and
cornflowers, stood on the mantelpiece, and a bowl of poppies on the
snowy well-darned cloth laid upon the table, which article of furniture
was pushed back to allow full space for the gambols of a girl, a cat,
and a kitten on the uncarpeted floor.
Laline's back was turned to the two men as they entered. She was
kneeling, holding a small black-and-white Persian kitten high above
her head, and the sunlight from the window seemed to concentrate and
shimmer in the loose masses of her abundant auburn hair, from which a
restraining black ribbon had slipped on to the floor. Her dress was a
long, loose blouse of dark-blue linen, yoked at the neck and wrists,
and falling straight to her ankles, and her slim feet, in blue cashmere
stockings, were innocent of shoes, Laline having kicked off her little
high-heeled slippers in school-girl fashion, the better to enjoy her
game of "romps."
Immediately in front of her sat the mother-cat, watching the struggles
of her squeaking kitten with attention, but with no apparent alarm. She
was a matron of ripe experience, and was well assured that her young
ones would come to no harm in the hands of Laline Garth. The girl was
laughing as the door opened, a happy laugh of childish gaiety, which
sounded wonderfully sweet to Wallace Armstrong's ears.
"Aren't you frightened, Nell? Aren't you afraid that I shall let your
silly scratching little ball of fluff fall and kill itself? Oh, you
unnatural mother!"
"Laline," said the Captain again, "here is a gentleman to see us."
She sprang to her feet and faced them, still holding the kitten--a
lovely over-grown child, to all appearance, a bright rose-flush
mantling in her sunburnt cheeks right up to the long, brown lashes
of her hazel eyes. A very, very pretty child, too tall for her short
skirts, too long in the arm for her short sleeves, from which her
slender brown wrists were thrust out too far. There existed no trace
of likeness between the girl and her father. From her mother Laline
inherited her slender limbs, her bright hair, broad brow, level
eyebrows, and a certain delicate grace which distinguished her even at
this half-formed period from other girls of her age. Only one detail
of her face suggested that she had experienced more of life's trials
than her years warranted--two little perpendicular lines between her
eyebrows became clearly marked as her father presented her to this
handsome, ill-dressed, unshaved young man, with the loose mouth, square
jaw, and singularly-attractive blue eyes.
"Won't you shake hands with me, Miss Laline?" Wallace asked, gently.
"Or am I too dirty?"
She held out her small brown hand in silence, looking straight up into
his face as she did so. And at the questioning gaze of her dreamy,
dark eyes Armstrong's eyes fell. It was absurd, of course, as he told
himself afterwards when he recalled this incident, and due to his
nerves being in a bad order, but it seemed as though this child's look
conveyed a reproach.
"I had no idea, Garth, that your little girl as you called her, would
be such a tall, well-grown young lady," he said, turning to Garth to
hide his sudden embarrassment. "She looks quite fourteen or fifteen."
"I am sixteen to-day," Laline said, in full, sweet tones.
Laline's voice was unlike any voice which Armstrong had ever heard,
with a sound in it which constitutes what the French call _une voix
voilée_, a low-pitched cooing inflection, peculiarly soothing to the
ear.
"Have you had any nice presents?" he asked, determining instantly to go
down to the town and buy the pretty child some sweets, until, with a
hot flush of vexation, he remembered his empty pockets.
"I haven't had any presents," the girl answered; and then, with a
little break in her voice, she added, "Papa had forgotten the date!"
"Not at all, my dear, not at all. The fact was I was on my way to
choose you some pretty trifle when I met our friend here. And, as soon
as you and the good Bénoîte have prepared us a little _déjeuner_, I
will go down to the town and get you some little souvenir. But now a
cutlet and a little salad will be acceptable; and here"--he fumbled in
his pockets and produced at length a coin--"take this, my child, to
Monsieur Desjardins, and bring a bottle of _vin ordinaire_. He'll let
you take it for cash, though we have a little account there."
Laline took a wide-brimmed Zulu straw hat from a nail, slung a basket
over her arm, and went pattering down the stone-paved street on the
little wooden-heeled shoes, into which she had thrust her feet when
disturbed at her play. Wallace Armstrong leaned his elbows on the
window-sill and stared after the slim figure in blue with hair that
shone gold in the bright sunlight.
"How in the world," he said to Garth, without looking round, "do you
come to have a daughter like that? And what are you about letting her
potter about dirty little wine-shops in Boulogne?"
"Monsieur Desjardins is our grocer--a most respectable person,"
returned Captain Garth, joining Armstrong at the window and lighting
a cigarette. "Every one knows that Laline and I belong to the upper
classes, although we're not very ready with our money just now."
"I'm sorry for the child," was his companion's only comment--"very
sorry!"