Chapter XVII: Humiliation

Had Goring indeed forgotten or ceased to love her? This was the ever-recurring question in the mind of Alison now, and she recalled the lines of the Spanish song, _Vanse mis amores_, as applicable to herself:

'How could I bear--how bear disdain,
Who not the slightest favour ever
Received without a blush of pain;
How could I bear disdain? O, never!
One hour of absence, swift and brief,
I could not bear--how should I bear
A long and tedious age of grief,
An age of grief, of gloom and fear?
O! I shall die without relief,
For I am young, and--O, sincere.'

If Goring was, as she thought bitterly and repiningly, remiss in attempting to trace her or not caring to do so, as her heart at times began to forebode, she certainly would not and could not throw herself in his way; she could but wait and hope, suffer and endure.

But one day she had an unexpected annoyance to encounter.

While the two little girls with the fantastic names, Irene and Iseulte, played on the grass near her in Kensington Gardens, seated under the shadow of the trees, she was reading--or trying to read, for her mind was ever preoccupied--a railway volume, she became conscious that a man was hovering near, indeed, hanging over her. She looked up and instantly recognized Sir Jasper Dehorsey--or Captain Smith, as she supposed him to be--regarding her with his calm and insolent though admiring and insoucient smile. He lifted his hat, and said, with a bow,

'I knew I was not mistaken; there could not be another like my little runaway of Antwerp.'

Alison blushed scarlet with intense annoyance and then grew pale with alarm, she felt herself so friendless and alone. Finding her silent he spoke again.

'We have met before--you remember me, I hope?'

'Sir--I have no wish to remember you, and still less to renew the acquaintance,' said Alison, quitting her seat.

'Now, that's too bad,' said Dehorsey, deliberately barring her way; 'too bad indeed. If my admiration of you----'

'Please to remember that I cannot listen to your insolence. These children to whom I am governess----'

'Governess--you--here is a game!' said he, mockingly. 'Ahoi, girls--run after this, find it and keep it?'

Taking a crown piece from his purse he spun it along the grass to some distance, and the girls rushed after it to search for and find it, a task of some difficulty.

'Sir, sir,' said Alison, tremulous with indignation, 'you ought not to have done that.'

'Why?'

'I am the governess of these girls, and responsible for them.'

'Absurd--a governess, you! One might as well expect to see a queen or a professional beauty filling the post. Clever this governess dodge of yours,' he continued, with a kind of insolence peculiar to himself. 'I suppose these girls are your nieces--little decoy ducklings to play propriety? And how is our mutual friend, old Cad--I mean Lord Cadbury? Seen him lately? No answer? Quarrelled, I suppose--these things never last long; but you are as charming as ever. How bad of you to leave me as you did that night in the Café au Progrès!'

Alison called the children to her side and walked away. There was in her whole air and manner a conscious dignity that might have quieted the presumptuous coxcomb and _roué_ who dared to address her, while affliction had touched her features with something in expression that was beyond even beauty; but Dehorsey was one of those men who had a total disbelief in any feminine purity.

'Where do you live, little one?' he asked, while deliberately following her.

Alison made no reply, but looked round to see if Archie was near. He was in sight, but an appeal to him just then would have been unwise, for, old though he was, Dehorsey would have felt the full weight of his walking staff.

'How dare you, coward that you are, to molest me thus!' exclaimed Alison.

'A rough word from such lips as yours,' he said, mockingly, but changing colour nevertheless; 'but as an old friend----'

'Friend!'

'Votre pardon, mademoiselle--acquaintance then.'

Alison quitted the Gardens in haste, and hurried home with her two charges; and she was afterwards compelled to relinquish promenading there, one of her chief pleasures, as Dehorsey was always on the watch for her, and more than once had followed her at a little distance to the door of the house in Pembridge Square.

She was thus obliged to remain more indoors than she was wont to do; and, to add to her annoyance there, she was considerably afflicted by much more than she relished of the society of the loud and fast Miss De Jobbyns; for that young lady had recently found an admirer, or--as she confidently alleged--a lover, and in her vanity and exultation was never weary of expatiating to Alison on his merits and wealth, his looks, his phrases, his dress, the 'button-holes' she made for him, and how she and her mamma contrived to waylay him in the park or the Row and elsewhere, to all of which Alison's listened wearily and without interest, not even caring to inquire his name.

She had her own sad thoughts of love, and they were enough for her.

'I should like you to see him when he comes to mamma's weekly reception,' continued the young lady, as she frizzed up her hair and practised _œillades_ at herself in Alison's little mirror, 'but as a rule mamma never intrudes a governess on friends--excuse me saying so.'

'I am aware of that,' replied Alison, softly, and heedless of the cutting rudeness of the speech.

'Since Miss Smythe-Smythe was here, she fancies that governesses require to be snubbed.'

'Why?'

'As a matter of principle, I suppose; but, upon my soul, I think it is rather hard upon you,' continued this slangy young person. 'We met him at Mr. Taype the lawyer's house, in Sussex Gardens, and, as he is rich, mamma fastened on him at once for me, don't you know; oh, isn't it fun?'

'Are you engaged then?' asked Alison, when Miss De Jobbyns had expatiated on the subject for more than half an hour.

'Engaged--oh, no--not exactly yet--but it is only a matter of time. He showed a great desire to cultivate our family; or rather mamma determined to cultivate him. But, hang it all! He is very shy for an officer, and leaves me to do the spooning actually.'

'He is in the army then?'

'Yes; and hangs out at Aldershot.'

Alison felt her colour change at the name of that locality; but she only said,

'Miss De Jobbyns, you should not use the fast phrases you do.'

'Well, ma uses them; ma always does.'

She did not add, that which perhaps she did not know, that her 'ma' had whilom been most accomplished in 'sherry-glass flirtations' while behind the bar at the 'Black Swan.'

'Isn't spoon English?' she asked.

'It is slang.'

'Is it? Well, if the verb "to spoon" is slang, I like it--that is all! But I wish I could flirt.'

'For what purpose?'

'To draw him on. But simply I can't do it, he is so stand-off in his manner.'

'Why?'

'It is not my _forte_; I wish it was. There is Miss Le Robbynson, she can flirt with a dozen of men at once, and even make them quarrel about her.'

'But men as a rule dislike flirts, and don't marry them; and flirting is pretending to care for a person when you don't.'

'Ah; but I care a great deal for this fellow.'

'Fellow?' queried Alison, on whose delicate ear this girl's phraseology jarred sorely.

'Well, my military beau?'

'You should not adopt this style.'

'You are not my governess!' retorted Miss De Jobbyns, with some asperity.

'Some day, no doubt, I shall see your intended.'

The daughter of the house blushed with pleasure at the phrase; but thought that, with a governess so undeniably handsome, it might be better that no meeting took place as yet. Suddenly she said,

'You have some fellow's photo that you wear at your neck; you have it on now,' she added, making a clutch at a ribbon which encircled the slender throat of Alison, who instinctively drew back and placed a hand upon her bosom.

'Some fellow's photo!--how _can_ you use such a style of language?' she asked, haughtily.

'I have told you before that you are not my governess, and I won't be lectured by you; but as for the photo----'

'It is not a photo I wear to-day.'

'What then?'

'An ornament which I wear because--because----'

'What?' asked Miss De Jobbyns, impatiently.

'It is the anniversary of papa's birth.'

'And you won't show it to me?'

'I have not said so,' replied Alison, gently, as she drew up the object from her bosom. It was her father's badge, and the badge of his father before him, as a baronet of Nova Scotia--a gold oval species of medal, bearing in a scutcheon, _argent_, a St. Andrew's cross, _azure_, with thereon an inscutcheon of the royal arms of Scotland, with an Imperial crown, and the motto of Henry, Duke of Rothesay, '_Fax mentis honestœ gloria_.'

Miss De Jobbyns, who had never seen anything of the kind before, surveyed it with equal wonder and admiration.

'What a funny thing! I would so like to wear it at a ball to-night,' she exclaimed.

'Excuse me,' replied Alison, as she replaced it in her bosom, 'but I cannot lend it.'

'How greedy of you! Then you will sell it, perhaps?'

'_Sell it!_' repeated Alison, with an inflection of voice that struck even the dull ear of the soap-boiler's daughter. 'Not for worlds!'

'I thought you said that your father was dead.'

'He is dead.'

'Then who is that queer-looking old Scotsman whom Irene and Iseulte see speaking to you sometimes?'

'He was my father's faithful valet, and is now my faithful friend,' replied Alison, with mingled hauteur and emotion.

'Dear me! how romantic--how funny! But I suppose you will have no place now to spend your holidays in?'

'None,' sighed Alison, who had never thought of them till then, and she looked round the bare, bleak school-room, the scene of her daily toil, and where nearly all her time was passed now; but just then the carriage was announced, and she was relieved of the oppressive society of the somewhat irrepressible Miss Victoria De Jobbyns.

If the children talked thus of poor old Archie Auchindoir, they might speak of the insolent 'Captain Smith.' Thus she might lose her situation and be again cast on the world. Oh, how tempest-tossed was her poor little heart!

The perfect, self-posed, and ladylike manner of Alison was to a certain extent lost upon the rather rough, pampered, and hoydenish damsel who had just driven off to the Row to meet her admirer, no doubt, and who saw in her only a paid dependant, whom her mother might discard like one of the housemaids at an hour's notice or less. Her sweet nature, her natural lightness and cheerfulness, her readiness and wish to oblige, yet never intrusively in any way, were all lost on the coarse natures of those among whom her evil fortune had cast her.

She was glad that on this particular day, inspired by filial reverence, she had substituted the relic of her father for the locket which contained the photo of Bevil Goring, whose face she would have shrunk from subjecting to the off-hand criticism of the young lady who had just left her; and she was not without a stronger fear that the military lover of Miss De Jobbyns--if lover he was--was the _roué_ Dehorsey, who now haunted Kensington Gardens and Pembridge Square, though 'Captain Smith' seemed scarcely the kind of man to be captivated by the soap-boiler's daughter.