Part 9

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_ 300 PARK STREET,
_Friday night._

Luncheon passed off very well. Sir Charles returned from the City improved in temper, and, as Lady Ver had predicted, presented her with a Cartier jewel. It was a brooch, not a ring, but she was delighted, and purred to him.

He was a little late, and we were seated, a party of eight, when he came in. They all chaffed him about Paris, and he took it quite good-humoredly--he even seemed pleased. He has no wit, but he looks like a gentleman, and I dare say as husbands go he is suitable.

I am getting quite at home in the world, and can speak to any one. I listen, and I do not talk much, only when I want to say something that makes them think.

A very nice man sat next me to-day; he reminded me of the old generals at Branches. We had quite a war of wits, and it stimulated me.

He told me, among other things, when he discovered who I was, that he had known papa--papa was in the same Guards with him--and that he was the best-looking man of his day. Numbers of women were in love with him, he said, but he was a faithless being, and rode away.

"He probably enjoyed himself--don't you think so?--and he had the good luck to die in his zenith," I said.

"He was once engaged to Lady Merrenden, you know. She was Lady Sophia Vavasour then, and absolutely devoted to him, but Mrs. Carruthers came between them and carried him off--she was years older than he was, too, and as clever as paint."

"Poor papa seems to have been a weak creature, I fear."

"All men are weak," he said.

"And then he married and left Mrs. Carruthers, I suppose?" I asked. I wanted to hear as much as I could.

"Ye-e-s," said my old colonel. "I was best man at the wedding."

"And what was she like, my mamma?"

"She was the loveliest creature I ever saw," he said--"as lovely as you, only you are the image of your father, all but the hair--his was fair."

"No one has ever said I was lovely before. Oh, I am so glad if you think so," I said. It did please me. I have often been told I am attractive and extraordinary, and wonderful and divine, but never just lovely. He would not say any more about my parents, except that they hadn't a sou to live on, and were not very happy--Mrs. Carruthers took care of that.

Then, as every one was going, he said: "I am awfully glad to have met you. We must be pals, for the sake of old times," and he gave me his card for me to keep his address, and told me if ever I wanted a friend to send him a line--Colonel Tom Carden, The Albany.

I promised I would.

"You might give me away at my wedding," I said, gayly. "I am thinking of getting married, some day!"

"That I will," he promised; "and, by Jove! the man will be a fortunate fellow."

Lady Ver and I drove after luncheon--me paid some calls, and went in to tea with the Montgomeries, who had just arrived at Brown's Hotel for a week's shopping.

"Aunt Katherine brings those poor girls up always at this time, and takes them to some impossible old dressmaker of her own in the daytime, and to Shakespeare or a concert at night, and returns with them equipped in more hideous garments each year. It is positively cruel," said Lady Ver, as we went up the stairs to their _appartement_.

There they were, sitting round the tea-table just as at Tryland--Kirstie and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading new catalogues of books for their work.

Lady Ver began to tease them. She asked them all sorts of questions about their new frocks, and suggested they had better go to Paris once in a way. Lady Katherine was like ice. She strongly disapproved of my being with her niece, one could see.

The connection with the family she hoped would be ended with my visit to Tryland. Malcolm was arriving in town, too, we gathered, and Lady Ver left a message to ask him to dine to-night.

Then we got away.

"If one of those lumps of suet had a spark of spirit they would go straight to the devil," Lady Ver said as we went down the stairs. "Think of it--ties and altar-cloths in London! Mercifully they could not dine to-night. I had to ask them, and they generally come once while they are up--the four girls and Aunt Katherine--and it is with the greatest difficulty I can collect four young men for them if they get the least hint whom they are to meet. I generally secure a couple of socially budding Jews, because I feel the subscriptions for their charities which they will pester whoever they do sit next for are better filched from the Hebrew than from some pretty, needy Guardsman. Oh, what a life!"

She was so kind to me on the way back; she said she hated leaving me alone on the morrow, and that I must settle now what I was going to do or she would not go. I said I would go to Claridge's, where Mrs. Carruthers and I had always stayed, and remain quietly alone with Veronique. I could afford it for a week. So we drove there and made the arrangement.

"It is absolutely impossible for you to go on like this, dear child," she said. "You must have a chaperone; you are far too pretty to stay alone in a hotel. What _can_ I do for you?"

I felt so horribly uncomfortable I was really at my wits' end. Oh, it is no fun being an adventuress, after all, if you want to keep your friends of the world as well.

"Perhaps it won't matter if I don't see any one for a few days," I said. "I will write to Paris. My old mademoiselle is married there to a flourishing poet, I believe--perhaps she would take me as a paying guest for a little."

"That is very visionary--a French poet! Horrible, long-haired, frowsy creature! Impossible! Surely you see how necessary it is for you to marry Christopher as soon as you can, Evangeline, don't you?" she said, and I was obliged to admit there were reasons.

"The truth is, you can't be the least eccentric or unconventional if you are good-looking and unmarried," she continued. "You may snap your fingers at society, but if you do you won't have a good time, and all the men will either foolishly champion you or be impertinent to you."

"Oh, I realize it," I said, and there was a lump in my throat.

"I shall write to Christopher to-morrow," she went on, "and thank him for our outing last night, and I shall say something nice about you and your loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and see you on Sunday, as long as he doesn't make love to you, and he can take you to the Zoo--don't see him in your sitting-room. That will give him just the extra fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and then by those stimulating lions' and tigers' cages you can plight your troth. It will be quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday to Sedgwick, and you must come back to Park Street directly I return on Thursday, if it is all settled."

I thanked her as well as I could. She was quite ingenuous and quite sincere. I should be a welcome guest as Christopher's fiancee, and there was no use my feeling bitter about it--she was quite right.

As I put my hand on Malcolm's skinny arm going down to the dining-room, the only consolation was my fate had not got to be him. I would rather be anything in the world than married to that!

I tried to be agreeable to Sir Charles. We were only a party of six. An old Miss Harpenden, who goes everywhere to play bridge, and Malcolm, and one of Lady Ver's young men, and I. Sir Charles is absent, and brings himself back. He fiddles with the knives and forks, and sprawls on the table rather, too. He looks at Lady Ver with admiration in his eyes. It is true, then, in the intervals of Paris, I suppose, she can make his heart beat.

Malcolm made love to me after dinner. We were left to talk when the others sat down to bridge in the little drawing-room.

"I missed you so terribly, Miss Travers," he said, priggishly, "when you left us that I realized I was extremely attracted by you."

"No, you don't say so!" I said, innocently. "Could one believe a thing like that?"

"Yes," he said, earnestly. "You may, indeed, believe it."

"Do not say it so suddenly, then," I said, turning my head away so that he could not see how I was laughing. "You see, to a red-haired person like me these compliments go to my head."

"Oh, I do not want to flurry you," he said, affably. "I know I have been a good deal sought after--perhaps on account of my possessions"--this with arrogant modesty--"but I am willing to lay everything at your feet if you will marry me."

"Everything?" I asked.

"Yes, everything."

"You are too good, Mr. Montgomerie--but what would your mother say?"

He looked uneasy and slightly unnerved.

"My mother, I fear, has old-fashioned notions, but I am sure if you went to her dressmaker--you--you would look different."

"Should you like me to look different, then? You wouldn't recognize me, you know, if I went to her dressmaker."

"I like you just as you are," he said, with an air of great condescension.

"I am overcome," I said, humbly. "But--but--what is this story I hear about Miss Angela Grey? A lady, I see in the papers, who dances at the Gaiety, is it not? Are you sure she will permit you to make this declaration without her knowledge?"

He became petrified.

"Who has told you about her?" he asked.

"No one," I said. "Jean said your father was angry with you on account of a horse of that name, but I chanced to see it in the list of attractions at the Gaiety, so I conclude it is not a horse; and if you are engaged to her, I don't think it is quite right of you to try and break my heart."

"Oh, Evangeline--Miss Travers!" he spluttered. "I am greatly attached to you--the other was only a pastime--a--a--Oh, we men, you know--young and--and--run after--have our temptations, you know. You must think nothing about it. I will never see her again, except just to finally say good-bye. I promise you."

"Oh, I could not do a mean thing like that, Mr. Montgomerie," I said. "You must not think of behaving so on my account. I am not altogether heartbroken, you know; in fact, I rather think of getting married, myself."

He bounded up.

"Oh, you have deceived me, then!" he said, in self-righteous wrath. "After all I said to you that evening at Tryland, and what you promised then! Yes, you have grossly deceived me."

I could not say I had not listened to a word he had said that night and was utterly unconscious of what I had promised. Even his self-appreciation did not deserve such a blow as that, so I softened my voice and natural anger at his words, and said, quite gently:

"Do not be angry. If I have unconsciously given you a wrong impression I am sorry, but if one came to talking of deceiving, you have deceived me about Miss Grey, so do not let us speak further upon the matter. We are quits. Now, won't you be friends as you have always been?" and I put out my hand and smiled frankly in his face. The mean little lines in it relaxed, he pulled himself together, and took my hand and pressed it warmly. From which I knew there was more in the affair of Angela Grey than met the eye.

"Evangeline," he said. "I shall always love you; but Miss Grey is an estimable young woman--there is not a word to be said against her moral character--and I have promised her my hand in marriage, so perhaps we had better say good-bye."

"Good-bye," I said; "but I consider I have every reason to feel insulted by your offer, which was not, judging from your subsequent remarks, worth a moment's thought."

"Oh, but I love you!" he said, and by his face, for the time, this was probably true. So I did not say any more, and we rose and joined the bridge players. And I contrived that he should not speak to me again alone before he said good-night.

"Did Malcolm propose to you?" Lady Ver asked as we came up to bed. "I thought I saw a look in his eye at dinner."

I told her he had done it in a kind of a way, with a reservation in favor of Miss Angela Grey.

"That is too dreadful!" she said. "There is a regular epidemic in some of the Guards regiments just now to marry these poor, common things with high moral characters and indifferent feet. But I should have thought the cuteness of the Scot would have protected Malcolm from their designs. Poor Aunt Katherine!"

 

CLARIDGE'S,
Saturday, November 26th.

Lady Ver went off early to the station to catch her train to Northumberland this morning, and I hardly saw her to say good-bye. She seemed out of temper, too, on getting a note--she did not tell me who it was from or what it was about, only she said immediately after that I was not to be stupid. "Do not play with Christopher further," she said, "or you will lose him. He will certainly come and see you to-morrow. He wrote to me this morning in answer to mine of last night, but he says he won't go to the Zoo, so you will have to see him in your sitting-room, after all. He will come about four."

I did not speak.

"Evangeline," she said, "promise me you won't be a fool."

"I--won't be a fool," I said.

Then she kissed me and was off, and a few moments after I also started for Claridge's.

I have a very nice little suite right up at the top, and if only it were respectable for me, and I could afford it, I could live here very comfortably by myself for a long time.

At a quarter to two I was ringing the bell at 200 Carlton House Terrace--Lady Merrenden's house--with a strange feeling of excitement and interest. Of course, it must have been because once she had been engaged to papa. In the second thoughts take to flash, I remembered Lord Robert's words when I talked of coming to London alone at Branches--how he would bring me here, and how she would be kind to me until I could "hunt round."

Oh, it came to me with a sudden stab. He was leaning over Lady Ver in the northern train by now.

Such a stately, beautiful hall it is when the doors open, with a fine staircase going each way, and full of splendid pictures, and the whole atmosphere pervaded with an air of refinement and calm.

The footmen are tall, and not too young, and even at this time of the year have powdered hair.

Lady Merrenden was up-stairs in the small drawing-room, and she rose to meet me, a book in her hand, when I was announced.

Her manners are so beautiful in her own home--gracious, and not the least patronizing.

"I am so glad to see you," she said. "I hope you won't be bored, but I have not asked any one to meet you, only my nephew Torquilstone is coming. He is a great sufferer, poor fellow, and numbers of faces worry him at times----"

I said I was delighted to see her alone. No look more kind could be expressed in a human countenance than is expressed in hers. She has the same exceptional appearance of breeding that Lord Robert has--tiny ears and wrists and head; even dressed as a char-woman Lady Merrenden would look like a great lady.

Very soon we were talking without the least restraint. She did not speak of people or of very deep things, but it gave one the impression of an elevated mind and a knowledge of books, and wide thoughts. Oh, I could love her so easily.

We had been talking for nearly a quarter of an hour. She had incidentally asked me where I was staying now, and had not seemed surprised or shocked when I said Claridge's, and by myself.

All she said was: "What a lonely little girl! But I dare say it is very restful sometimes to be by one's self, only you must let your friends come and see you, won't you?"

"I don't think I have any friends," I said. "You see, I have been out so little, but if you would come and see me--oh, I should be so grateful."

"Then you must count me as one of your rare friends!" she said.

Nothing could be so rare or so sweet as her smile. Fancy papa throwing over this angel for Mrs. Carruthers! Men are certainly unaccountable creatures.

I said I would be too honored to have her for a friend, and she took my hand.

"You bring back the long ago," she said. "My name is Evangeline, too--Sophia Evangeline--and I sometimes think you may have been called so in remembrance of me."

What a strange, powerful factor love must be! Here were these two women, Mrs. Carruthers and Lady Merrenden--the very opposites of each other--and they had evidently both adored papa, and both, according to their natures, had taken an interest in me in consequence, the child of a third woman who had superseded them both! Papa must have been extraordinarily fascinating, for to the day of her death Mrs. Carruthers had his miniature on her table, with a fresh rose beside it--his memory the only soft spot, it seemed, in her hard heart.

And this sweet lady's eyes melted in tenderness when she spoke of the long ago, although she does not know me well enough yet to say anything further. To me papa's picture is nothing so very wonderful--just a good-looking young Guardsman, with eyes shaped like mine, only gray, and light, curly hair. He must have had "a way with him," as the servants say.

At that moment the Duke of Torquilstone came in. Oh, such a sad sight!

A poor, humpbacked man, with a strong face and head and a soured, suspicious, cynical expression. He would evidently have been very tall but for his deformity--a hump stands out on his back almost like Mr. Punch. He can't be much over forty, but he looks far older; his hair is quite gray.

Not a line or an expression in him reminded me of Lord Robert, I am glad to say.

Lady Merrenden introduced us, and Lord Merrenden came in then, too, and we all went down to luncheon.

It was a rather small table, so we were all near one another and could talk.

The dining-room is immense.

"I always have this little table when we are such a small party," Lady Merrenden said. "It is more cosey, and one does not feel so isolated."

How I agreed with her!

The duke looked at me searchingly, often, with his shrewd little eyes. One could not say if it was with approval or disapproval.

Lord Merrenden talked about politics and the questions of the day. He has a courteous manner, and all their voices are soft and refined. And nothing could have been more smooth and silent than the service.

The luncheon was very simple and very good, but not half the number of rich dishes like at Branches, or Lady Ver's. There was only one bowl of violets on the table, but the bowl was gold, and a beautiful shape, and the violets nearly as big as pansies. My eyes wandered to the pictures--Gainsborough's and Reynolds's and Romney's--of stately men and women.

"You met my other nephew, Lord Robert, did you not?" Lady Merrenden said, presently. "He told me he had gone to Branches, where I believe you lived."

"Yes," I said, and--oh, it is too humiliating to write!--I felt my cheeks get crimson at the mention of Lord Robert's name. What could she have thought? Can anything be so young-ladylike and ridiculous!

"He came to the opera with us the night before last," I continued. "Mr. Carruthers had a box, and Lady Verningham and I went with them." Then, recollecting how odd this must sound in my deep mourning, I added, "I am so fond of music."

"So is Robert," she said. "I am sure he must have been pleased to meet a kindred spirit there."

Sweet, charming, kind lady! If she only knew what emotions were really agitating us in that box that night! I fear the actual love of music was the least of them.

The duke, during this conversation and from the beginning mention of Lord Robert's name, never took his eyes off my face--it was very disconcerting; his look was clearer now, and it was certainly disapproving.

We had coffee up-stairs, out of such exquisite Dresden cups, and then Lord Merrenden showed me some miniatures. Finally it happened that the duke and I were left alone for a minute looking out of a window onto the Mall.

His eyes pierced me through and through. Well, at all events, my nose and my ears and my wrists are as fine as Lady Merrenden's--poor mamma's odd mother does not show in me on the outside, thank goodness! He did not say much, only commonplaces about the view. I felt afraid of him, and rather depressed. I am sure he dislikes me.

"May I not drive you somewhere?" my kind hostess said. "Or, if you have nowhere in particular to go, will you come with me?"

I said I should be delighted. An ache of loneliness was creeping over me. I wanted to put off as long as possible getting back to the hotel. I wanted to distract my thoughts from dwelling upon to-morrow and what I was going to say to Christopher. To-morrow--that seems the end of the world!

She has beautiful horses, Lady Merrenden, and the whole turn-out, except she herself, is as smart as can be. She really looks a little frumpish out-of-doors, and perhaps that is why papa went on to Mrs. Carruthers. Goodness and dearness like this do not suit male creatures as well as caprice, it seems.

She was so good to me, and talked in the nicest way. I quite forgot I was a homeless wanderer, and arrived at Claridge's about half-past four in almost good spirits.

"You won't forget I am to be one of your friends," Lady Merrenden said, as I bid her good-bye.

"Indeed I won't," I replied, and she drove off, smiling at me.

I do wonder what she will think of my marriage with Christopher.

Now it is night. I have had a miserable, lonely dinner in my sitting-room. Veronique has been most gracious and coddling--she feels Mr. Carruthers in the air, I suppose--and so I must go to bed.

Oh, why am I not happy, and why don't I think this is a delightful and unusual situation, as I once would have done? I only feel depressed and miserable, and as if I wished Christopher at the bottom of the sea. I have told myself how good-looking he is, and how he attracted me at Branches, but that was before--Yes, I may as well write what I was going to--before Lord Robert arrived. Well, he and Lady Ver are talking together on a nice sofa by now, I suppose, in a big, well-lit drawing-room, and--Oh, I _wish_, I _wish_ I had never made any bargain with her--perhaps, now, in that case--Ah, well----

 

_Sunday afternoon._

No, I can't bear it. All the morning I have been in a fever, first hot and then cold. What will it be like? Oh, I shall faint when he kisses me. And I know he will be dreadful like that; I have seen it in his eye. He will eat me up. Oh, I am sure I shall hate it. No man has ever kissed me in my life, and I can't judge, but I am sure it is frightful--unless--I feel as if I shall go crazy if I stay here any longer. I can't--I can't stop and wait and face it. I must have some air first. There is a misty fog. I would like to go out and get lost in it, and I _will_, too! Not get lost, perhaps, but go out in it, and alone. I won't have even Veronique. I shall go by myself into the park. It is growing nearly dark, though only three o'clock. I have got an hour. It looks mysterious, and will soothe me, and suit my mood, and then, when I come in again, I shall perhaps be able to bear it bravely, kisses and all. _

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