Chapter IV: Part 4

“I think not. The game is not quite finished yet. I am still waiting to play my ace of trumps.”

The marchioness was too full of her triumph to heed the last words.

“We had better announce this in the papers at once,” she remarked, pursuing her own line of thought. “One cannot make too sure.”

“You will have to wait till he has seen Lord Severn,” suggested the prudent Despencer.

The marchioness made a grimace.

“I suppose so. How tiresome all this etiquette is! I sometimes wish I could go and be a curate’s wife in the country.”

This pathetic yearning failed to move the callous listener. He retorted:

“I believe there is no more rigid code of etiquette than that which obtains among curates’ wives in the country. I used to know three curates’ wives and one rector’s, but they have all dropped me. I never knew why.”

“I am afraid you must have a dreadful reputation,” said the marchioness, admiringly. “I positively don’t think I ought to stay here alone with you. Do you know they call this the Lovers’ Window?”

Despencer’s eyes fell on the marchioness, and he ventured two and a half inches nearer.

“What a romantic situation! You ought not to have told me that. Remember that I am a poet.”

“I am afraid you are only mocking me,” said the marchioness, lowering her eyes with a bashfulness which, regarded as a work of art, was beautiful. “I believe you are a heartless cynic.”

Despencer moved an inch nearer along the divan as he protested--

“No, you are quite wrong. You must not judge me by outward appearances, or you will be deceived. The fact is, I am a hypocrite. I pretend to be more worldly and wicked than I really am. If you could look into my heart you would be surprised.”

“I have no doubt of that. But you are not going to persuade me that I should find much innocence there.”

“Ah! but, my dear marchioness, why speak of it like that? Think how uninteresting innocence is. Believe me, innocence has been sadly overpraised by people who knew very little about it. For my part, I much prefer experience. One is a blank page, the other is a romance, generally of the kind that is not allowed on the railway book-stalls.”

The marchioness was not insensible to the subtle flattery. Her voice became actually soft.

“You are not going to pretend to me that there is anything romantic about an old woman who will soon be forty.” (The marchioness’s own age in society was thirty-seven.)

Despencer moved six inches closer. But there was no softening in his voice; that was where he had the advantage over the marchioness.

“Every woman is romantic when she is seated in the Lovers’ Window with a man,” he murmured in her ear.

What might have happened next it is impossible even to imagine. What did happen was that both started violently apart, and rose to their feet at the same time, the marchioness exclaiming, in a tone of subdued consternation, “Of all men in the world, my husband!”

The Marquis of Severn had come in very quietly by the door at the farther end of the gallery. As his wife and her companion came rather awkwardly out on to the floor of the gallery, he walked past them into the window, scarcely heeding their presence, and stood with his back towards them, looking out at the slowly rising moon.

Throwing an impatient frown behind her, the marchioness led the way out by the other door. Just as they reached it it was opened from without, revealing on the threshold Belle Yorke.

The marchioness stopped abruptly, and directed an astonished and inquisitive glance from Belle to her husband, and from her husband to Belle. Then she took hold of Despencer’s arm and marched off in formidable silence.

SCENE XII

THE LONG ARM OF MR. DESPENCER

George, Marquis of Severn, was one of those unfortunate men who are out of sympathy with the class into which they have been born. As a yeoman, farming his own land, he would have been contented; as a marquis, he was miserable. His rank was irksome to him, he was bored by dignity, he took no interest in politics, and detested what is called society.

If his lot had lain in a humbler sphere of life, he would have had a wife of his own choice, and been a good husband and father. As it was, he had married a woman selected for him by his people, and with whom he had not a thought in common. She was not his wife--she was merely his marchioness. He felt himself a stranger in his own household; his very children grew up to regard him with good-natured contempt, and the people with whom Lady Severn surrounded herself were hardly conscious that there was such a person as Lord Severn in existence.

By natural disposition George Mauleverer was the reverse of a libertine. He was fitted for domestic happiness as it is understood by the middle classes. The irony of his fate compelled him to seek it away from his own hearth, under conditions fatal to its permanence. The woman whom he had taken as his second wife, and whom he would willingly have continued to treat as such, was too much like himself to rest satisfied in a life which outraged the social and moral prejudices of her class. She could not find satisfaction any more than he in that restless, artificial form of existence which is known as a life of pleasure. She hated the gay sisterhood of St. John, and yearned after the respectability in which she had been reared. To these motives for breaking off the connection was added, after a few years, the decisive one of religion. A sermon convicted her of living in sin, and she resolved to return to the paths of righteousness.

George Mauleverer could not oppose her determination. He sorrowfully recognized that she was in the right, and assisted her efforts to regain her natural place in the world. In due course she found a husband, and from that moment all intercourse between the two came to an end.

The only right which the man reserved to himself was that of watching over the child of their former union. He had done this under an assumed name, and in the character of a godfather. Neither he nor the mother had contemplated the necessity of revealing the truth to their daughter. But they had reckoned without the world. Just as Belle was growing into womanhood her stepfather died, and her mother was threatened with disastrous poverty. In that strait she would not consent to take money from her old lover. As a lesser evil, she allowed her daughter to turn her talents to account on the stage.

It had occurred neither to her nor to Belle’s father that the secret which had been kept so successfully while Belle remained in the obscurity of middle-class life might be endangered by the publicity which she must now incur. The father continued to associate with his daughter under the name by which she knew him. But Belle’s comings and goings now fell under the eyes of more than one who knew the Marquis of Severn. London is not such a large place as some of us are apt to suppose; or, rather, within the small area covered by a dozen theatres and restaurants which some of us are apt to mistake for London, there is not much more real privacy than in a village for those whose doings happen to be of interest to the lookers-on.

It did not take long for the world of Piccadilly Circus to discover the identity of the quiet, badly dressed, middle-aged man who was seen from time to time in the company of the celebrated Belle Yorke. Further than that the world could hardly be expected to inquire. It drew its own conclusions, and very naturally judged others by itself.

No whisper of the discovery had yet reached the ears of the Marquis of Severn. When he heard his daughter’s name announced in his wife’s drawing-room, he had realized for the first time the danger and falsity of his position. At once he made up his mind that it was necessary for Belle to know the truth. The merest accident, the sight of one of his portraits, might lead to a scandal. He dared not run the risk of going up to her himself before the crowd. He escaped into another room, and, finding his nephew there, resolved to intrust him with the task of speaking to Belle.

Gerald had always had a loyal regard for his homely and despised uncle. He listened to his confession with sympathy, and undertook to warn Belle that she was in her father’s house. But he had carried out his task imperfectly. The marquis realized that he must himself complete the revelation which Gerald had begun. He had found Belle for a moment by herself, and had arranged this meeting in a spot where he expected to be free from interruption.

“Why should the marchioness look at you like that?” asked Belle, in perfect innocence, as she came towards the window, where her father was waiting for her.

“That is one of the things that I have to tell you,” he answered, gravely. “But sit down, my dear, sit down.”

She obeyed, and gazed up at him wonderingly as he stood before her.

“I thought it better to bring you here,” he explained. “We might have been disturbed down-stairs, but no one ever comes here except the members of the family.”

Belle opened her eyes.

“Are you, then--what about you? Are you a member of the same family as the Marchioness of Severn?”

The marquis bowed his head.

“Yes, I am a member of the family. That is what I want to speak to you about. I want to tell you a family secret.”

“But why? Why should you tell me?” she gasped, with something like dismay. “I don’t belong to the Marquis of Severn’s family.”

Her father stifled a groan.

“Suppose I were to tell you that you did?” he said in a low voice.

The recollection of her interview with Captain Mauleverer rushed over Belle. She shrank back and raised her hands as though for protection.

“No; this--this isn’t the secret, is it?” she whispered.

“Listen,” was the answer. “I have just spoken to Gerald, and he tells me that he only delivered half of the message he was to have given you this evening. Do you think you can bear to hear the rest?”

Again she held up her hands with that pathetic, deprecating gesture.

“Wait! Don’t tell it to me too quickly! Give me time to think a little, won’t you?”

“Poor child!”

He turned away his head, unable to face the sight of her distress, and silence reigned for a minute. Belle was the first to speak.

“Captain Mauleverer told me that my father was still alive. That is true, then?”

“Yes, that is true.”

“And that--that-- Oh, tell it me as kindly as you can!”

The marquis caught his breath.

“Your father is a damned villain!” he cried out.

“Don’t speak so harshly as that!” she implored. “Don’t make him out worse than you can help. Remember, I am his daughter, after all.”

“You are too good for him, Belle. He doesn’t deserve that you should call yourself his daughter.”

She looked up quickly.

“You know him, then?”

“Yes, I know him.”

“Then--is he a relation of Lord Severn’s?”

“He is Lord Severn.”

“Ah!” In the midst of her astonishment a bitter thought came into her mind. “Now I begin to understand. So that is why Lord Severn left the house the moment I arrived, without seeing me.”

“Yes, that is the reason.”

“And why was I asked to come here, then? Why did he let his wife bring me here to sing for hire in my own father’s house? Oh, it was cruel, cruel!”

The marquis shook beneath the reproach.

“He did not know; the marchioness arranged it without telling him. Your father knew nothing of it till you were here.”

“And the marchioness?” she demanded, with sudden fire.

“The marchioness has never heard that you are his daughter. It has been kept a secret from every one.”

The expression of Belle’s face became hard.

“I see. Lord Severn is a great nobleman, I suppose, and he was ashamed of the poor little music-hall singer whom he had cast off as soon as she was born, and whom he never wished to see. So that is why he ordered his nephew to speak to me, to warn me off the premises, lest I should embarrass him before his noble wife and daughter. And now he has sent you to complete the work.” She rose to her feet in bitter indignation. “Well, you may tell my father that he has no need to fear. I will not trouble him; I will go.”

Every word stung the marquis like the knot of a lash.

“Stop!” he cried, passionately. “What are you thinking of? You cannot go like this.”

“And do you think,” said Belle, turning on him with flashing eyes, “that now I know the truth I will stop another moment beneath the roof of a father who considers me a disgrace to him? I will go, if I should have to walk the whole way home barefoot!”

“No, stay; you don’t understand! My God, that you should take it like this! Your father is not ashamed of you, but of himself. It is he who disgraces you, not you him. He went away because he had not the courage to meet you, and to tell you with his own lips the injury he had done you.”

“Is that the truth?” She gazed at him in doubt, a half-formed suspicion beginning to struggle faintly for entrance to her mind. “Then why has he never come near me since I was born? Why has he let me grow up in ignorance that I had a father? Why has he never cast one glance of pity towards his nameless child?”

The marquis stood silent, eager to answer, and yet afraid. She went on with increasing vehemence:

“No, I am not his child; the Lady Victoria is his child. She has sat upon his knee; I never have. She bears his name, and is protected by his rank; I bear a name to which I have no right, and have no one to protect me. She has been reared in her father’s house, among riches and splendor; I have grown up in obscurity, and have had to go out to battle with the world. She meets in her father’s drawing-room the men whom I meet in the street. No; you are wrong in telling me that Lord Severn is my father. I have no father. Lady Victoria is his daughter, but I am only his orphan.”

The marquis broke down.

“Belle, don’t make it too hard for me,” he said, humbly. “Your father has not been quite so bad as that. He has watched over you, but, like a coward, in disguise.”

For a minute she stood with heaving breast gazing at him, while his own eyes were cast down before her.

“Father! You!” The words escaped slowly from her lips at last.

Her father gave a bitter sigh.

“If we men could foresee these moments in our lives, we should not sin so lightly. Yes, I have done you the greatest injury that a father can do his child. I have tried all these years to persuade myself that the best atonement I could make was to keep you in ignorance of the truth; but now the truth has been forced from me, and you see me ashamed to look you in the face.”

“Don’t speak like that!” said his daughter, gently; “don’t look away from me! Why, I thought I had no father, but now--”

He looked up swiftly, a new hope in his eyes.

“You are going to forgive me, my child?” he said, and trembled.

“No,” said Belle, simply, “I am going to love you.”

He uttered a cry, and clasped her to him.

“After all,” she said presently with a tearful smile, “I was only a poor little music-hall singer before. It isn’t as if I had much character to lose, is it?”

“You are very good to me, my child. If you knew how often I have wanted to tell you who I was, and been afraid to do it! The Fates prepare some rough places for us, but the beds we make for ourselves are the hardest to lie on.”

“Does any one else know of this, father?” Belle asked.

“No one knows it except Gerald, and I can trust him. This must be a secret between us two, Belle. It is the one favor I have to ask of you; and I don’t ask it for my own sake, but for the sake of my family.”

“For the sake of the Marchioness of Severn. I understand.” There was a touch of resentment in her voice. “She has been good enough to speak to me since I came to this house; she has explained to me the gulf that separates her world from mine.”

“My child! If you knew how bitter it is to me not to be able to spare you such things! But what motive could she have had for speaking to you like that? She can have no suspicion of the truth, surely?”

“Oh, no. She simply wished to point out to me how unworthy I was to receive the honorable addresses of a gentleman such as her daughter might accept.”

“What man is that?”

“Mr. John Hammond.”

The marquis started. It was the first time he had heard Hammond’s name in connection with Belle’s, and he was not ignorant of his wife’s designs on behalf of Victoria.

“The very man!” he exclaimed. “And you--what have you done?”

“I have taken her ladyship’s good advice,” said Belle, proudly. “I have refused Mr. Hammond.”

Her father stood and gazed at her in consternation. This rivalry between his two daughters, the rich one and the poor one, came on him as an unexpected shock. Suddenly there came a sound of the door opening at the end of the gallery.

“We must not be seen!” burst from his lips; and, without pausing to consider the possible consequences, he seized hold of the curtains and drew them across the opening.

There had been two persons outside the door, and they entered together. One was Despencer, the other was John Hammond.

It was not in Despencer’s nature to be revengeful, but he had not been left entirely unmoved by Hammond’s biting taunts during their interview in the conservatory. But for them he might have been satisfied with the success already achieved. His only motive in denouncing Belle Yorke in the first place had been to bring about the engagement which he had just seen ratified. It was Hammond’s insulting treatment of him which had given him a personal interest in the affair. He yielded to the temptation of proving himself right and scoring off the man who had disbelieved him. As soon as he could manage his escape from the marchioness, he went to seek Hammond and bring him to the spot where he had left the marquis and Belle Yorke together.

Hammond at first refused to listen. Belle had assured him with her own lips that she had never even seen the man with whom her name was coupled. But Despencer’s statement compelled him to action. Wondering, reluctant, and dismayed, he allowed himself to be dragged into the gallery.

Both men as they entered glanced eagerly in the direction of the window. The next instant both stopped abruptly, and their eyes met. Despencer’s filled with malicious triumph, Hammond’s with the deepest mortification.

The curtains were closed. Who was behind them?

“Now, if you wish to know the truth, draw that curtain,” the tempter whispered. Then he walked slowly out of the gallery, watching Hammond as he went.

Left to himself, Hammond stood in silent anguish, his gaze fixed on the velvet folds which spared him the sight of the falsehood of the woman he loved. Fresh from his betrothal to Victoria, he had forgotten her already, so much greater was the bitterness of finding that his love was misplaced than the bitterness of having it rejected. He thought he could hear that Belle should not love him, but he found he could not bear that she should love another.

Face to face with that curtain, there seemed to be no more room for doubt. Despencer might not be a man of honor, but he could not, he dared not, have brought Hammond there unless he were sure of the result. What inducement had Despencer to lie? None. And Belle? Alas! it was evident that she had only too much.

He took a step towards the curtain, and then drew back. What right had he to lift it? What right had he, the promised husband of Lady Victoria, to test the faith of the woman who had just refused his hand? Reason bade him go away, satisfied with the silent testimony of that damning screen.

But reason is a mere lawyer, whose client is passion. John Hammond could no more leave that gallery without drawing the curtain than the steel can detach itself from the magnet. It did not take long to reason himself into the belief that to go away now would be disloyalty to Belle herself; it would be to accept Despencer’s word against hers without inquiry. He stepped forward again, and his hand was stretched out towards the curtain, when he was arrested by the entrance of a man at the opposite door.

Captain Mauleverer had taken advantage of his dismissal by the marchioness to wander off to a nook at the top of his uncle’s house and indulge in a quiet smoke. Returning through the gallery, where he had half hoped to find Victoria waiting for him, he was surprised to find himself in the presence of Hammond.

“Why, Hammond, what are you doing here all by yourself?” he exclaimed as he came up.

Hammond drew back a few steps from the curtain.

“What am I doing?” He raised his voice and glanced towards the purple folds as though he would have looked through them to see the effect of his words. “I am wondering why it is that we men are ever fools enough to expect truth from the lips of a woman.”

“Is that all?” returned Mauleverer, his own mood in harmony with his friend’s. “I didn’t know that any sensible man ever did. I’m sure I don’t.”

“Why, what is wrong with you?” asked the other, incredulously. “You haven’t been deceived by the woman you trusted?”

“It seems to me we all have,” was the bitter answer. “Don’t you remember what I was telling you about down-stairs?”

“Ah, yes; I had forgotten it. You mean that girl? Why, have you just discovered that she really loves another man?”

“Not that exactly. She loves me, or she pretends to, but she has sold herself to the other man.”

“She doesn’t love you!” The words were pronounced with an emphasis which Mauleverer could not understand, and which was not meant for his ears. “They all pretend, if not in words, in looks and actions. It is their occupation, like politics with us. I knew a woman once who made me think she loved me. She never said so, you understand, but led me on, and laughed at me in her sleeve all the while. Depend upon it, this girl of yours is like her. She has some secret lover in the background, some man whom she has sworn to you that she has never seen.”

There were three listeners to that savage outburst--two men and a woman; but only the woman understood.

The captain remonstrated.

“I don’t think that of her. No; hang it! the girl is straight enough. She doesn’t think me worth deceiving; I am too poor.”

“I see. Then it is the other man she is deceiving, and you are the lover in the background. You see, it comes to the same thing. I told you they were all alike.”

“It’s not her fault, damn it!” said the loyal Gerald. “She has got to marry the brute; her people have driven her into it.”

“Why?”

“You needn’t ask. Money. It’s some infernal millionaire like you.”

Hammond started. For the first time he turned his attention from the unseen listeners to this dialogue to the man who was speaking to him.

“Who? What did you say? Who is this man?”

“I don’t know his name; she wouldn’t tell me,” replied the suspicious captain. “What does it matter to me who he is?”

“Do I know the girl?”

“Yes. I don’t mind telling you, old man; it’s my cousin Victoria.”

“What!” The word burst from Hammond like a bullet. His eyes sought the curtain. “Are all women traitors?” he cried.

And striding to the curtains, he dragged them back. There in the light of the moon stood the two who had overheard every word. The marquis had his arm round Belle’s neck, and her face was hidden in her father’s breast.

“It is true!” gasped Hammond.

A tremendous silence followed. How long it lasted none of the four could tell. At length the marquis broke it.

“Well, sir?” he said, looking Hammond full in the face with a certain dignity for which the other had not been prepared.

“I beg your pardon, marquis. I was told that you and this lady were strangers, and I believed it, like a fool.”

He had turned on his heel to withdraw, when he was made aware that some one else was coming on the scene. He glanced towards the door, and then with a bow of silent apology drew the curtains across again as he had found them. This done, he turned round and stood facing whoever might come in.

He had expected Despencer, and he was right. But Despencer had not come alone. He had had another object in view all this time, and what that object was was now revealed. Having arranged for what promised to be a stormy scene between Hammond and the Marquis of Severn, having fired his train and calculated the time required for it to reach the mine, he had now brought the marchioness to witness the explosion.

The marchioness entered quickly, her face alight with suspicion. Despencer had skilfully aroused her expectations, without committing himself to any definite statement. Her eye instantly fell on the curtain, and she divined that it concealed a mystery.

“Why is that curtain closed?” she demanded, advancing towards it. “Is there any one in the window?”

There was just one instant in which Hammond hesitated, nearly carried away by the temptation to let her draw back the curtain and overwhelm those two by whom he deemed that he had been deceived. Then, just as the horrified Gerald was about to step forward, Hammond planted himself right in front of the marchioness.

“No!” he said, firmly. “There is no one there.”

She stopped unwillingly and looked at him. He looked at her, and to that look she yielded.

A moment afterwards he was leading her out of the gallery on his arm, while Captain Mauleverer escorted Despencer in the rear.

SCENE XIII

THE MARCHIONESS AT BAY

“Has anything happened?”

“The worst has happened.”

It was the morning after the concert, and the sedulous Despencer had called upon his exacting patroness, as in duty bound. The marchioness had only just descended; she had made a hurried toilette, and in consequence the pearl powder was not quite so delicately shaded off round her neck as usual, and her waist was at least half an inch wider than its wont.

Such touching traces of maternal anxiety were not lost on the observant Despencer. There is no eye like that of love.

“Why, what is it? You alarm me,” he said, lazily sinking into a chair in front of the marchioness. They were in her boudoir, an apartment which ladies reserve for the reception of gentlemen who do not happen to be married to them. The Marquis of Severn had not been in his wife’s boudoir for ten years.

“That man Hammond has had the audacity to send a note to Victoria this morning asking her to release him from their engagement,” the marchioness announced.

“Why on earth has he done that?”

“He says he finds he has mistaken the nature of his feelings for her,” said the marchioness, with fine scorn.

“What a ridiculous idea! As if his feelings had anything to do with it! The man must be a scoundrel.”

“He is worse,” said the marchioness with conviction; “he is a fool. Oh, if I had only sent the announcement to the papers last night; then they could neither of them have backed out of it.”

“What does Lady Victoria say?” inquired her friend, cautiously.

“She pretends to be perfectly indifferent. She treats the affair as if it were more my concern than hers. That is what is so hard. If she only took a proper interest in her own position, I should not be afraid; but when I have to deal with a man who says he doesn’t want to marry my daughter, and a daughter who says she doesn’t want to marry him, what am I, as a mother, to do?”

She gazed plaintively at Despencer, who considerately shook his head.

“It is a difficult position, certainly, but I don’t despair,” he remarked, encouragingly. “I have the very greatest confidence in you, marchioness. I shall be quite interested to see how you get on.”

“Don’t be so heartless and unfeeling! I consider this is as much your business as mine. You helped to bring about the engagement, and now you ought to support me in holding this man to his word.”

“Well, if you are going to bring an action, I shall be delighted to give evidence, but I don’t see what else I can do.” He paused a moment, and then asked, in a different tone: “Have you any idea of the cause of this sudden change? I thought everything was going so smoothly last night.”

The marchioness gave an emphatic nod.

“That is just what I want to know. I suspect that it has something to do with that scene in the picture-gallery, and I am determined to get at the truth about it.”

“Really!” Despencer regarded her with an amused smile. “Do you know, I quite envy you. You are so energetic, and so hopeful.”

“You mean by that, I suppose, that you don’t think I shall succeed?”

He shrugged his shoulders with bland deprecation.

“Well, I can only say that in the course of my experience I have several times tried to get at the truth where a man and a woman were concerned, and _I_ never succeeded. You may be more fortunate.”

The marchioness darted a suspicious look at him.

“One thing I mean to know anyway, and that is, who were behind that curtain.”

Despencer stole a glance at her sideways.

“There I think you are unwise. It is always so much better _not_ to know who are behind the curtain.”

The marchioness sat up and frowned in earnest.

“That shows that you think it was my husband and Belle Yorke. Mr. Despencer, I can see that there is some connection between those two, and that you know all about it.”

Despencer smiled pleasantly, with the satisfaction of a general who sees the enemy march straight into the ambush he has prepared. He could even afford to play with his victim.

“Oh, my dear marchioness, what do you take me for?” he returned, with an insincerity not intended to deceive. “Am I a necromancer? Am I the author of ‘Who’s Who’?”

But, much to his inward disappointment, he was saved from further questioning by the entrance at this juncture of the marchioness’s nephew, to whom she had sent an urgent summons before Despencer’s arrival.

Captain Mauleverer came in looking very guilty and ashamed, though he made a poor bravado of ignorance.

“Yes, aunt, what is it?” he inquired, scarcely troubling to acknowledge Despencer’s presence by a nod.

“Sit down, please,” ordered the marchioness. “I want you to tell me exactly what passed in the picture-gallery last night before I came in.”

Gerald sat down with ill-concealed reluctance.

“I am afraid there is nothing I can tell you,” he stammered.

“Oh, yes, there is,” his aunt retorted. “What were you and Mr. Hammond doing there?”

“I am not aware that we were doing anything,” was the sullen answer. “We met there by accident, and we fell into conversation.”

“What was the conversation about?” pursued the relentless examiner.

“I’m afraid I can’t even tell you that.”

“Do you know that Mr. Hammond is engaged to your cousin Victoria?”

“I gathered something of the kind from what he said.”

The marchioness pounced on the admission.

“So much the better. You hear that, Mr. Despencer?”

“Certainly. Most damaging evidence. He can’t possibly get out of that,” murmured the faithful one.

“My dear aunt!” exclaimed the startled captain, “surely you don’t anticipate any trouble with Hammond, do you?”

“Never mind. You say that he has made the engagement a subject of conversation among his friends, and that is sufficient to bind him as an honorable man.”

“But, good heavens! I didn’t say that,” protested her unfortunate nephew.

The marchioness turned coldly to her ally.

“Mr. Despencer, you heard?”

“Most distinctly,” said the witness. “Nothing could be clearer.”

The captain became desperate. He tried to explain:

“No--but really, it was from Victoria that I heard of it first, only she didn’t mention Hammond’s name.”

The marchioness smiled cruelly.

“Very good. Then I shall be able to tell him that she has also announced the engagement among _her_ friends.” She turned to Despencer. “What do you say to that?”

“It is absolutely conclusive. It doesn’t leave him a single loop-hole.”

The miserable captain writhed helplessly, like a victim in the hands of the Holy Office, finding every answer twisted into a fresh heresy.

“Look here, do you mean to say that there is a chance of his breaking it off?” he asked the marchioness.

“Not the very slightest,” was the grim response; “but he may try to.” All at once her manner became coaxing. “Now, I trust to you, Gerald, as a gentleman, not to stand in your cousin’s way. You can’t marry her yourself, as you know perfectly well, and therefore you ought not to prevent her making a good match.”

“I am not likely to,” he answered, gloomily. “As long as Vick and Hammond are engaged, I am out of it altogether.”

The marchioness looked extremely relieved.

“That is right,” she said, approvingly. “I knew I could rely on your good feelings not to let two millions go out of the family. But now, are you quite sure, Gerald, that you said nothing to Mr. Hammond last night that might have led him to suspect that there was something between you and Victoria?”

Gerald, conscious of having assured Hammond with considerable earnestness that Victoria loved himself, turned red as he stammered:

“Oh--er--well--I don’t know; the fact is, you see, I didn’t understand--”

His aunt came to his relief.

“Exactly. I thought as much. Now, Gerald, I shall be seeing Mr. Hammond this morning, and I leave it to your sense of honor to go and speak to him and put things right first. You understand me?”

The wretched Mauleverer rose to go out. On his way to the door he caught Despencer’s mocking smile, and longed to kick him. As soon as he was gone, the other, unconscious of the peril he had run, uttered the words:

“Marchioness, you are a great woman!”

SCENE XIV

PISTOLS FOR TWO

John Hammond, although a bachelor, lived in a very good house, in the same neighborhood as Lord Severn’s, and, strange as it may appear to the author of _The Christian_, he possessed more than one teaspoon. When he had hospital nurses of doubtful character to tea, which was extremely seldom, he did not even wait on them himself; he kept servants for that very purpose. Possibly those extraordinary facts may be accounted for by his not being a wicked lord, nor even a misguided baronet.

John Hammond was seated at home on the morning after the concert, considering his position. Immediately after the scene in the picture-gallery overnight he had come away, feeling as if his world had crumbled into ruin around him. He had saved the woman he loved from the marchioness’s scorn; he could not save her from his own. And the other woman, whom he had considered his friend, to whom he had offered himself in all good-will, believing that she had affection to give him, if not love--he had discovered that her heart was engaged, and that she regarded marriage with him as a hateful necessity.

He had sent her a note, brief, courteous, and dignified. In it he had not used one word that might seem to accuse her; he had taken the entire blame upon himself. He had stated simply that he found he could not offer her the love of a husband, and he had placed himself in her hands. Now he was waiting for her answer.

But though he was waiting to hear from Lady Victoria, he was thinking of Belle Yorke. There are two kinds of misfortune which sometimes come upon a man at the same time; and one makes a public arrival, and it harasses him a great deal, but the other comes in silence and in secrecy, and it wrecks his life.

There was a knock at the door, and a footman announced Captain Mauleverer.

For the first time in the history of their friendship the two men faced each other with mutual embarrassment. The captain, like a sensible man, went straight at his fence.

“Look here, Hammond, I am awfully sorry I made such an ass of myself last night. I’m afraid I have given you a wrong impression about Victoria.”

“No. Why should you say that?” Hammond replied in a tone of indifference.

Mauleverer looked at him anxiously.

“I’m afraid I have led you to think there was something between us, that she--well, in fact, that she cared about me.”

Hammond gave a weary shrug.

“What of it? What does it matter?”

“It’s very decent of you to take it so well,” said the puzzled captain. “I was afraid that I might have unwittingly injured her in your mind.”

“No, oh no; don’t think that. There was no hypocrisy about Lady Victoria, I can assure you. She didn’t pretend to be in love with me, and I didn’t pretend to be in love with her.”

“You asked her to marry you,” observed the other, in a tone of remonstrance.

“I know; I did it to please my constituents, as she was aware. A public man has to do that sort of thing.”

“Surely you expected her to care for you in time?”

“No; I merely expected her to canvass for me.”

Mauleverer began to feel baffled by this cynical indifference.

“You seem to take a very curious tone,” he said, after a moment. “Of course, you understand that, whatever feeling I may have had for her in the past, I shall never think of her again except as a cousin.”

In spite of his own inward trouble, Hammond could not resist a smile at the honest captain’s efforts to plead against himself. He gave him an amused glance as he retorted:

“I am afraid that is rather ambiguous. I have known cousins who were very much attached to each other.”

“Hammond, do you doubt me when I tell you that from this moment Victoria will be perfectly indifferent to me?”

“Well, you piled it on pretty strongly last night, you know. I can’t help thinking that you are rather more fond of her than you pretend. But there is no need to get excited about it; it makes no difference to me.”

Mauleverer gazed at him in dismay.

“Is that the way in which you speak about your future wife?”

“No,” said Hammond, shaking his head decidedly.

“Hammond, what does this mean? You say that my attachment to Victoria makes no difference to you, and yet you no longer wish to marry her?”

“It means that I have made a mistake, and that I have to get out of it the best way I can.”

“Old man, this is my doing. This is because of what I said to you last night.”

“No.” Hammond became earnest for the first time. “I am very glad you said what you did, because if I had had the vanity to think that Lady Victoria cared twopence about me, you would have undeceived me. But the reason why I have determined not to marry her is not merely because I believe she loves you, but because I have discovered that I love another woman too well ever to marry any one besides.”

“Great heavens! Is that it?” Mauleverer exclaimed. He recalled the scene of last night, and began dimly to understand it.

Hammond proceeded to enlighten him.

“Did you think that I was jealous of you? Why, man, if I had loved your cousin with one-hundredth part of the love I have for that other, I should have taken you by the throat last night when you said what you did. Jealous of you? No, but of that man whose years protect him from my anger, though they have not protected youth and innocence from him. It is Lord Severn, not you, who has robbed me of the woman I love; and let me tell you that if I had no other reason for breaking the hollow, lying pledge I gave last night, I would sooner cut off this hand than give it to the daughter of the man who is guilty of Belle Yorke’s betrayal!”

“My God!”

Mauleverer sat transfixed as the whole truth of the situation burst upon him. Twice he opened his lips to speak, and twice he recollected that the secret had been intrusted to his honor. He was on the point of springing to his feet to go, when the door opened and the footman came in.

“A Mr. Yorke, sir, wishes to see you. He is in the hall,” announced the stately creature with icy impassibility.

“Mr. Yorke?” repeated Hammond, bewildered.

“He is a rather young man, sir.” The information was vouchsafed with a crushing absence of emotion. “I should judge him to be about thirteen.”

Hammond started and changed color. Then he said with quiet emphasis:

“Show the young gentleman in.”

If ever footman permitted himself to show human feelings, assuredly a faint gleam of something resembling surprise played across the visage of that footman as he withdrew.

“Who is it?” asked Mauleverer, amused.

“Belle Yorke’s brother.”

The footman threw open the door. With perfect self-control, with a beautiful unconsciousness of whether he was announcing a member of the royal family or a detective with a warrant for his master’s arrest, he uttered the words:

“Mr. Yorke.”

The captain saw a rather undersized boy in knickerbockers, with his fists tightly clenched and a flush of excitement on his cheeks, who walked boldly into the centre of the room, and there stood still.

Hammond, who had already risen, went towards the boy with extended hand. Mr. Yorke drew back, and kept his own hands down by his side.

“I’d rather not shake hands with you, please, Mr. Hammond.”

The man started, and dropped his hand with a strange look.

“Will you sit down?” he asked, quietly.

“I’d rather not, please.”

Hammond bowed, and remained standing himself.

“I’ve come to see you about my sister. Miss Belle Yorke. She hasn’t any father, you know, so I’m her protector.”

“Yes, my boy, I’m sure you are,” said Hammond, very gently.

Mr. Yorke went on, with a certain feverish energy:

“It’s rather difficult for me to speak to you, because I don’t know exactly what you’ve done to Belle; but I know it’s your doing, whatever it is, because you used to be her sweetheart, and now she says she shall never see you any more. You’ve broken her heart, and she wouldn’t eat any breakfast this morning, and mother says she will give up the stage; and I believe she’s been crying, though she won’t own to it. And I don’t think you’re a gentleman, Mr. Hammond.”

Hammond’s head was drooping on his breast.

“God knows that!” he muttered.

“So I have come here to tell you that I consider you’ve no right to treat Belle like that, and I’m not going to stand it. And as soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to challenge you to a duel.”

“My child!”

The exclamation burst from the man unawares. Mr. Yorke turned very red.

“I think it’s very offensive of you to call me that,” he said, wrathfully, “and it isn’t treating me as you ought to.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the man, humbly.

“And if you think,” Mr. Yorke went on fiercely, “that you can take advantage of my being young to refuse me satisfaction, I shall think you’re not very honorable, because you knew Belle had only me to protect her when you broke her heart. And I’ve come here to ask you, as a gentleman, to wait till I am twenty-one, so that I can fight you. It’s only eight years and two months, and I expect you to give me your word of honor that you will wait till then.”

“I will wait.”

“Thank you, sir.” Mr. Yorke became more friendly. “It’s only fair for me to tell you that I’m going to save up and buy a revolver and practise every day, so you had better do the same. I don’t want to take any advantage of you.”

“You’re a brave fellow,” said Hammond.

“Then I think that’s all. Good-morning, Mr. Hammond.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Yorke.”

Hammond rang the bell, and advanced to open the door of the room. Mr. Yorke was half-way out when he paused in the doorway.

“I say, Mr. Hammond,” he said, his manner suddenly changing to thorough boyishness, “do you mind promising me, as a great favor, that you won’t tell mother or Belle about this, or they mightn’t let me buy the revolver?”

Hammond bowed kindly.

“I promise.”

The footman appeared outside.

“Show Mr. Yorke out.”

Mr. Yorke, regaining his dignity, made his exit in state, leaving the two men looking at each other.

“By Jove! that was a little trump!” Mauleverer burst out as the door closed. “Not much the matter with the modern child, after all.”

Hammond nodded as he cast himself wearily into a chair.

“Do you mind going now, old man?” he said, bluntly.

Mauleverer sprang up with a sudden recollection, hurried out on to the pavement, hailed the nearest cab, and dashed off to Berkeley Square.

SCENE XV

A MISFORTUNE FOR SOCIETY

Hammond was not left to himself for very long. The marchioness waited to give her nephew time to clear the way, and then took the field in person.

When he heard her name, a sardonic smile crossed Hammond’s lips. He stood up to receive her, a very different man to the one whom Belle Yorke’s brother had encountered.

The marchioness walked in with an angry gleam in her eyes. Hammond at once proceeded to draw first blood.

“Show Mr. Despencer in!” he called out to the footman, looking out through the door as if in the expectation of seeing that gentleman outside.

“Mr. Despencer is not with me, Mr. Hammond,” said the marchioness shortly, biting her lips.

Mr. Hammond affected to be surprised.

“I apologize!” he exclaimed, as the footman withdrew. “But this is very good of you, marchioness. Where will you sit?”

The marchioness planted herself in an arm-chair.

“I suppose you know, Mr. Hammond, why I have called?”

Hammond seated himself comfortably in another easy-chair opposite, and crossed his legs.

“No, unless it’s about that unfortunate affair last evening.”

“Mr. Hammond!” The marchioness darted a glance of withering rebuke at the recalcitrant suitor. “Is that the way in which you refer to the fact that you are engaged to my daughter Victoria?”

“_Was_ engaged, excuse me, marchioness,” he corrected, with easy good-nature. “Didn’t you know that I had written to Lady Victoria to beg off?”

“It is in consequence of your extraordinary letter that I have come here,” said the marchioness, scowling. “I trust you will have the good sense and right feeling to withdraw it before my daughter is compelled to give it any reply.”

“I am afraid I can’t oblige you.”

The answer was given quietly enough, but the marchioness looked in his face and saw something there which she did not like.

“Have you considered the effect of such a step as this on my daughter’s reputation?” she demanded, with dignity.

“I don’t see that it need go beyond ourselves,” Hammond replied. “Nobody else knows of it but Mr. Despencer, and your influence with him--”

The marchioness interrupted, breathing angrily:

“You are utterly wrong there. The engagement is public property. I understand you yourself have freely mentioned it to your friends.”

“I? Never!”

He stared at her in amazement.

“Pardon me, I have proof of what I say,” she affirmed. “And Victoria has done the same. She has mentioned it to her friends.”

“I am sorry to hear that.”

The marchioness began to hope.

“You must see that, under the circumstances, you have no alternative, as a gentleman, but to withdraw your letter.”

“I am afraid I don’t see it. I would much rather leave myself in Lady Victoria’s hands.”

“Have you no regard for her feelings, pray?”

“Every regard. If she tells me that she still wishes to marry me, I shall keep my word.”

“You have no right whatever to throw the decision on her. Have you no consideration for her parents?”

Hammond’s lip curled.

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

The marchioness glared at him.

“Mr. Hammond, are you a gentleman?”

“Well, it is rather a question, isn’t it?” he responded, with a cheerful smile which drove her frantic.

“Do you know that our family is one of the oldest in Great Britain?” she demanded, after a moment’s pause.

“Precisely. And mine is one of the newest. It would really have been a _mésalliance_, my dear marchioness.”

The marchioness could hardly believe her ears.

“Have you _no_ regard for descent?” she gasped. “My daughter has royal blood in her veins, Mr. Hammond.”

“Ah! there you have me at a disadvantage,” he returned. “All my female ancestors were respectable married women.”

The marchioness turned crimson. It was well known that the royal blood in the house of Mauleverer had entered it by irregular channels.

“I am not accustomed to this kind of language,” she proclaimed, rising. “I shall request the marquis to call on you.”

“That will suit me a great deal better. I shall be able to talk to the marquis,” was the grim answer.

The marchioness swept towards the door.

“I see I have made a mistake in coming here. I begin to ask myself whether you were really aware of what you were doing yesterday.”

Hammond smiled pleasantly.

“Ah, now, that sounds like rather a good explanation. I can say I was intoxicated, can’t I?”

“Well--”

The marchioness broke off short, her eyes fixed in stony horror on the doorway.

“Lady Victoria Mauleverer and Mr. Despencer!”

Victoria had been still considering how to deal with the letter she had received from Mr. Hammond, when the treacherous Despencer had come and informed her that her mother was on the way to her lover’s house to bring him to book. Her mind was instantly made up. She put on a hat, impressed Despencer into the service, ordered a hansom, and drove off on the track of her parent.

The two newcomers were in the room, and the door had closed on the departing footman, before the marchioness recovered herself.

“Victoria, you will oblige me by leaving this house immediately. I order it.”

Victoria laughed negligently.

“How absurd you are this morning, mother! You keep forgetting that I am over twenty-one,” she remarked. Then, crossing over to Hammond, she held out her hand with frank good-will. “Good-morning, Mr. Hammond!”

The sight of her daughter calmly shaking hands with the man who had jilted her, as if nothing had happened, nearly turned her mother’s hair gray. Fortunately it was from the best maker, and could not turn gray.

“Victoria,” she said, in a suffocated voice, “if you have no respect for yourself, perhaps you will have some respect for me! Mr. Hammond has grossly insulted me. Mr. Despencer, will you be good enough to take me to my carriage?”

“No, he can’t do that yet,” interposed Victoria. “I brought him here as my chaperon, and I haven’t done with him.”

Despencer glanced from the daughter to the mother. The contest was between fear and love.

“I apologize for being so badly constructed,” he murmured, “but I don’t take in halves. Will it do if I give somebody my visiting-card?”

“I shall not go till you do, Victoria. I decline to leave you alone with Mr. Hammond again,” the marchioness said, spitefully.