Thus far had Wallace Armstrong proceeded in his unique love-making,
when the lady he meant to wed in a few days' time disconcerted him by
bursting into a hearty peal of laughter.
"Look at my hand," she said, pulling off her glove and showing a soft
pink palm. "I had my fortune told several months ago, and I am not to
fall in love until I am years older than I am now."
"Give me your hand," he said. "I know something of palmistry, too."
This statement was absolutely untrue. But, as he meant to leave no
means untried to gain his end, and could see that the girl half
believed in the fortune told by her hand, he resolved to practise on
her childish credulity and superstition. In truth, he did not know one
line from another, and could only decide that it was a nice soft girl's
hand and eminently kissable.
"Show me your line of fate!" he said, peremptorily.
Laline eagerly pointed it out.
"As I suspected," he said, crumpling her hand together to emphasise the
lines and looking absorbed in the study of them; "very early in your
career you fall under the influence of a man of far stronger will than
yours. His line of fate and yours run side by side, and only death can
separate them!"
He spoke with much solemnity, but, more than his words, the magnetism
of his touch affected Laline's sensitive nature. She shivered and
turned pale.
"Can you really read that in my hand?" she asked, fearfully.
"Clearly. This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape
from him. Before you are seventeen you will be his wife."
"Oh, it's impossible!"
"Not at all. It's inevitable," he said--"written indelibly, for all who
understand to read, here in the centre of your hand!"
And, as he spoke in slow impressive tones, he pointed his finger at
random into her upturned palm. Looking up to see the effect of his
prophecy, he found that she was leaning back in her seat, pale to the
lips.
"What is the matter, child?" he exclaimed.
"You will laugh," she answered, in a low troubled tone, "but, as you
held my hand and told me these things, something flashed into my head
that you were right, and that there would be in my life a will against
which I should fight in vain. The feeling terrified me, and I can't
forget it!"
She raised her hands to her eyes, in which tears were shining, and
pressed them close. Wallace Armstrong watched her, surprised and
amused by what he considered her folly and weak-mindedness. In reality
Laline was neither foolish nor specially weak-minded, only abnormally
sensitive to influences to which a coarser nature would have been
impervious. Looking into Wallace Armstrong's bold bright eyes, in the
depths of which a scornful smile was lurking, the young girl seemed to
read there, better than any fortune-teller could inform her, a will,
selfish, resolute, and cruel, a nature attracted by and yet strongly
antagonistic to her own, a personality she might grow to fear and even,
it might be, to hate, but which she would never be able to regard with
indifference.
Not in so many words did these convictions come upon her, but the
sense of them grew as she gazed, her soft, near-sighted eyes, that had
something of the wistfulness of a dumb animal, straining to realize
what she saw.
At last Wallace broke the silence with a laugh.
"If we sit so still, staring at each other, people will think that I am
mesmerising you," he said. "And, by-the-way, I believe I could."
"Please don't try!" she exclaimed, starting from her seat and pushing
her hair from her forehead with a quick nervous gesture peculiar to
her. "I must be getting back home now to see after papa's dinner."
"I will walk up with you," he said; "but you haven't yet told me
whether you would like to go back to England, leaving your father
comfortably settled here, provided for for life, and with all his bills
paid."
"Why do you ask me such questions," she said, "when you know what you
suggest is impossible?"
Then an inspiration seized Armstrong. In his pocket was another advance
from his uncle to provide his niece Laline with medicines, new clothes,
and other necessaries. Wallace directed his steps to the Rue Royale.
"Come and look in this jeweller's shop-window," he said, "and tell me
whether you are fond of trinkets."
"Very fond," she answered, "and I often look in here."
"Don't you want to have some of the pretty things?"
"I should, I dare say, if I had any money. But I have never had any
jewelry except my dear mother's gold watch and chain. I hope I shall
never part with that; but I don't wear it, because it is a great deal
out of repair, and I can't afford to have it put right."
"Come inside and look at the things," he said. "Oh, it's all right," he
added, seeing that she hesitated; "I have to buy something for myself!"
Once within the jeweller's shop, Wallace approached the attendant and
held towards him Laline's hand.
"I want a very pretty ring for this young lady," he said in French.
"Take off your glove, Laline."
In her astonishment she did not notice that, for the first time, he
called her by her name without any prefix. Before she could do more
than stammer a few words of inquiry, Wallace had deftly unbuttoned her
glove and drawn it off, and the smiling attendant was showing her a
trayful of rings.
"Here is one suitable to mademoiselle," the man suggested, showing her
two tiny pearl hearts intertwined with a true-lover's knot.
"They are all too large!" Wallace complained. "No--I can't wait for one
to be altered. Have you nothing smaller?"
A turquoise heart, surrounded by very small diamonds, proved so small
that, once it was thrust upon the girl's finger, it could hardly be
withdrawn. Wallace beat the price down to a hundred francs, and paid
the money over the counter before Laline could do more than gasp an
astonished protest.
"Now that you are formally engaged to me," he said, "I may as well
order the wedding-ring, too."
This he proceeded to do, and, having at length discovered one of
suitable smallness, he slipped the little parcel into his pocket, after
paying for it, and left the shop, drawing Laline's arm through his in
an authoritative manner as he did so.
"We will fetch your father," he said, "and we will all dine in the town
together to celebrate our engagement."
"But, Mr. Armstrong," gasped Laline, "you must be in fun! Do you know
that I am only sixteen?"
"Well, plenty of your friends over here get married at sixteen,"
he returned, "and my own mother was married before her seventeenth
birthday!"
"But I don't want to marry you!"
"Not to go to England, to live in a big, beautiful house under my
care and that of my old uncle, one of the worthiest and kindest old
gentlemen alive, who is simply longing to welcome you as his daughter,
and writes to me about you nearly every day?"
"Why, what can you mean?" she was beginning, when he drew from his
pocket the letter from his uncle which he had received that morning,
and, carefully folding down one portion, held it before her eyes.
The lines which the girl read ran thus:--
"Give my love to Laline, and tell her how much I look forward to
welcoming her in my house. If she is like your description, she must
indeed be a sweet and womanly young creature. Be sure to buy her all
that she requires. I want my niece to enter her new home in the style
that befits a lady of gentle birth and careful training."
"I can't understand it!" exclaimed Laline, bewildered. "You never told
me that you had been writing about me to your uncle. And what does he
mean by calling me his niece?"
"I told him I hoped to marry you very shortly."
"But you never even asked me!"
"You are too young to know your own mind, so it had to be made up for
you," he said, laughing. "Now listen, Laline dear. As soon as I saw
you it went to my heart to think that you were wasting your youth and
beauty and refinement among such coarse and sordid surroundings. An
atmosphere of unpaid bills and greasy cards and cognac was not suited
for so fresh and sweet a flower. I know your father thoroughly well. I
won't talk about him lest I should hurt your feelings. But he is not
the man to be entrusted with the care of a girl like you; and, had your
dear mother lived to see you degraded into a half-starved kitchen
drudge, friendless and neglected----"
"Don't--ah, don't!" cried Laline, passionately. "I can't bear it!"
By that outburst he understood how keenly the girl felt her position,
and how well-timed had been his allusion to her lost mother. At once he
followed up his advantage.
"You want a home, my dear little girl," he continued, drawing her
hand through his arm and patting it affectionately. "This is not the
place for you, and these are not the surroundings you ought to have.
In my home you will enjoy what should be your position by right--that
of an English lady! You will be petted and loved and cared for, you
will have your own rooms and your own furniture, pocket-money to spend
on pretty frocks and little presents for your friends, plenty of
books to read, ample leisure and servants to wait upon you. My uncle,
Alexander Wallace, is one of the richest bankers in London, and I am
his favourite nephew and heir. You will have just what money you want
now; and, later on, you will be an extremely rich woman, able to buy
diamonds and horses and carriages and everything that you wish for in
the world."
She turned her wondering eyes upon him.
"And what makes you offer me all these things?" she asked, simply.
"Because I love you," was the answer on the tip of his tongue; and he
was angry with both her and himself because he could not speak it.
Something in her absolute innocence and candour disarmed him. Almost
for one moment he wished that he could tell her the whole truth in
words of brutal frankness--"Because I am a ruined and dishonoured
good-for-nothing, and my only hope of help consists in the immediate
production of a wife at my rich uncle's house! I have chosen you
because you are very pretty, and too young and ignorant of the world to
disbelieve my lying statements. Also because you have a mercenary scamp
of a father, who has sold you to me for my wife for a consideration! I
don't pretend to love you; much of your society would bore me to death.
But I don't intend to have much of your society; and you are just the
good, sweet-faced, refined sort of a little girl to get round my uncle,
and coax money out of him for my extravagances!"
This is what Wallace Armstrong longed for one brief moment to say. He
felt that he should despise himself less than if he were successful in
deceiving her. But he was not in the habit of following good impulses
when they stood in the way of his interests; and he slipped again into
lying, and cleverly affecting a kindly and tender interest in the girl,
until Rue Planché was reached and they entered the street together.
Then suddenly Laline, who had been listening to him in silence,
stopped. She had something she wished to say to him before she entered
the house. Her tones were low and earnest, and her eyes were grave.
"It is all very strange and wonderful," she said, "that you, who have
known me so short a time, and your uncle, who has never seen me, should
love me and want me to be with you always. I don't deserve it, and I
don't understand it! There must be so many beautiful girls who would be
much more suitable to you than I can be. And--I can't understand why,
and it seems dreadfully ungrateful--but all the time you are talking I
seem to hear whispered in my ear, 'Don't listen; he does not mean what
he says!' And though you are so kind, and though I long to go back to
England, and cannot bear the life here, I--I am afraid of you!"
Although she half whispered the last words, there was no mistaking the
startled look in her eyes. At that moment Armstrong positively disliked
her, although her slight opposition only had the effect of making him
more than ever determined to carry through his project.
What business had this ignorant child with intuitions warning her
against him? Was it possible that under her demure and child-like
exterior there lurked a spirit which would not easily be swayed and
mastered by his own? Some hint of this flashed upon him as he watched
her and listened to her faltering confession.
"You need never be afraid of me," he said, gently. "My ways are
unpolished, I know. I have been knocking about in Australia for nearly
five years, roughing it in the Bush and among miners. I wanted to see
something of the world before marrying and settling down in England.
But you shall cure my uncouth ways, and correct all my other defects,
too, my dear Laline!"
Once in the house, and alone with Captain Garth in his den, Wallace's
tone changed.
"For Heaven's sake give me a drop of brandy to wash out of my mouth the
taste of all the lies I've been telling!" he cried, irritably. "It's my
opinion, Garth, that little bread-and-butter prig of yours will be dear
at the price!"
"She's a good child, and won't give you any trouble," Laline's father
assured him, soothingly. "Have you broached the subject of the marriage
to her yet?"
"Your fingers are itching to touch the two 'quid' a week, I see!"
sneered Armstrong, as he tossed off a glass of neat cognac. "Oh, it's
safe enough! She's delighted at the idea, which is more than I am.
However, it's got to be gone through with. Unluckily, I've promised to
take her and you to dine with me in the town this evening. Can't we put
her off?"
Garth shook his head dubiously.
"Better not," he said. "If she's left alone, she'll get thinking--she's
a great one for thinking and dreaming and fancying. Now that the
thing's settled, she had better not be left alone this evening."
"As you like. But, mind, I've had enough of nursery courtship; and
she mustn't expect to see much of me during the next few days. On the
third, as soon as the ceremony is over, we will cross by the midday
boat; and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Armstrong will proceed to London and
dine on fat veal, _au Fils Prodigue_! It will be time enough to tell
Laline the day when her frocks are ready."
"Here's to your happy married life!" observed Garth, pouring himself
out some brandy. "I hope you'll be kind to her, Armstrong, when I am
not by to look after her!"
Up-stairs in her own room, Laline was kneeling before her little
dressing-table of painted deal, gazing earnestly at her dead mother's
portrait.
"Mother," she murmured, with tears in her eyes, "if you could only
speak to me and advise me! Is it your voice which seems to tell me not
to listen to Mr. Armstrong? And yet he seems so kind, and he is going
to be so good and generous to papa! Such a fairy prince to such a poor
little penniless Cinderella! How good it is of him to be so sorry for
me--to sympathise with me so deeply about losing you, and to understand
how much it would hurt you to know just how things have been since you
left me! I remember how you once said to me, while I sat reading at
your feet and you smoothed my hair, 'I hope and pray that my little
girl may some day marry a good man, who will love her for herself, as a
woman should be loved!' I have not remembered that speech until to-day.
I wanted to wait for years before I thought of love and marriage for
myself. There is no one to help me and advise me. Oh, mother, if you
could only come back for one moment and tell me what to do!"
But the wills of two unscrupulous men were warring against the vague
intuitions of an inexperienced girl; and every day the net was drawn
more closely about Laline's feet, until the dawn of the thirtieth of
August, her wedding-morning.