Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli

by Marie Corelli

  “Of course he would!” said the major, brusquely. “There is no power on earth that can hinder a man from writing to the woman he loves. Even if he were ill or dying, he could get a friend to send a wire for him. No, no, there is some humbug going on, — I am sure of it!” He took one or two rapid strides up and down the room. “Letty,” he said, stopping abruptly in front of her, “when you were engaged to Harry Raikes, did he write to you often?”

  “Not as often as I should have liked,” answered Miss Letty, with a faint smile, “but then, you see, he was in India, — that is a long way off, — and, of course, he could not possibly write by every mail.”

  “Couldn’t he?” And the major gave a curious’ grunt of incredulity. “Why not?”

  “If he could, he would have done so,” said Miss Letty, gently but firmly. “I am sure of that.”

  The major walked up and down the room, loyally battling against the temptation which assailed him to tell her the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  “You never doubted him?” he asked, suddenly.

  “Doubted him!” And Miss Letty’s eyes opened in mild, half-reproachful amazement. “Never! How can you suggest such a thing? I knew how true and good he was, and how much he loved me, — and’ that is why I have devoted all my life to his memory.”

  Up and down, up and down, once more strode the major, and at the third turn the temptation was conquered and he was himself again.

  “Then, according to your experience, Letty, Violet ought not to doubt Max Nugent because he has, as you say, practically ceased writing to her?”

  Miss Letty looked puzzled.

  “Well, I don’t know what to say,” she answered. “You see, they are not engaged, — you would not consent to an engagement till Mr. Nugent had proved his sincerity, and I think you were wise; but as matters now stand, the child cannot insist on his writing to her. She has no hold upon him, save that of his professed love and honour.”

  “That ought to be a strong hold,” said the major, “ honour especially. No man has a right to win a woman’s love and then throw it away again. I must speak to Violet.”

  And he did. He called unexpectedly one morning to take her to a Picture Exhibition, and after sauntering about the galleries a little he sat down in a retired corner with her and put his first question very gently.

  “Violet, when did you last hear from Nugent?” The girl coloured hotly.

  “Some time ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I forget,” she answered, listlessly.

  Her face was bent, and he could not see it under the shadow of her hat.

  “Violet!”

  Slowly she raised her head, her eyes were full of tears. The major smothered an oath and strove to speak calmly.

  “Look here, child, you can trust me, can’t you?”

  “Yes, uncle,” she murmured, inaudibly.

  “Well, don’t fret. Be a brave little woman. I will see to this for you. It is no good living in suspense. Better know the worst at once.”

  Violet furtively dashed away her teardrops and looked at him anxiously.

  “The worst?” she murmured.

  The major squared his shoulders resolutely.

  “Look here, Violet, when we have to swallow a dose of bitter medicine, we don’t like it, but if we are told it will save our lives, we do it. Now in this affair of Max Nugent, the sooner your medicine is swallowed the better. I am afraid the man is not sincere. What do you yourself think about it?” —

  Violet sighed deeply.

  “I do not understand it,” she said in rather a tremulous voice. “I have written to him several times, but have had no reply. You may as well know all. The last letter I had from him was quite two months ago, and in that he said he was coming to Europe immediately, — to Paris first, — and he promised to come on to London afterwards and see me.”

  “And was that letter exactly what you expected it to be?” asked the major, looking at her narrowly. “Was it all that you had a right to expect?’”

  Violet hesitated, then answered truthfully, —

  “No. It was just the letter — of a friend.”

  The major rose.

  “Come along now,” he said. “I will see into this for you. A millionaire like Nugent can’t hide his light under a bushel. I will find out where he is, and see him myself, if I have to cross the ocean to do it.”

  Violet looked up at him with tearful eyes.

  “You are good to me, uncle,” she said, “but — you know — if he does not care for me any more—”

  “You do not care for him!” finished the major. “That’s what you must say, and that is what you must feel.”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Ah, you may shake your head,” said Desmond, “but I am not going to let you waste your life as Miss Letty has wasted hers, all for the love of a rascal. You do not know Letty’s history. I do. She was engaged to a man I knew, and when he was out in India well away from her he was getting ready to marry some one else and throw her over. But he caught fever and died — just in time. Letty never knew that he had been false to her. I knew — but I never told her. And I never mean to tell.”

  Violet laid her hand on his arm caressingly.

  “Uncle! And you loved her yourself!”

  “Now, how did you find that out?” said the major, with a little smile. “Well, you are right, — I have loved her nearly all my life. And we have rubbed on pretty well as friends together, and we have kept the memory of that dead rascal as holy as if he were a saint. So, you see, I know something about love and loyalty, little girl, and I can enter thoroughly into your feelings. But, fortunately, you are very young, and if Nugent turns out a failure your heart will be sore for a while, but it will mend.”

  “Never, uncle!” said Violet. “I can never care for anyone else.”

  “Nonsense!” said the major. “You must not talk like that at nineteen. This is your first love, I grant, but one gets over first love, like the measles.”

  “Did you?” asked Violet, anxiously.

  “God bless my soul! Of course I did. When I was nineteen I fell in love with my father’s cook. She was a very pretty woman, and made jam puffs divinely. She married the grocer round the corner, — and somehow I lived through it. I was nearly thirty when I found Letty, and I have loved her ever since.”

  Violet pressed his arm, but said nothing.

  “Now come along,” said the major, cheerfully. “Don’t worry yourself, thin yourself, or lose your looks. Nobody will thank you for that except your kind female friends. We will clear this little matter up somehow. And I am sure you are far too high-spirited and straightforward to care for a man who turns out to be a dishonourable scamp, — though, mind, I don’t say he is dishonourable till I have proved it. But unless he has been kidnapped for his millions by brigands, I don’t see any excuse for his silence; if he were ill he could send you word, — so there is only one inference to be drawn from his conduct, and that is, that he doesn’t mean to keep his promise to you. It is hard for you to look at it in that light, but you must try, Violet — you must try. If he does turn out a villain, I will take care he gets a jolly good horse-whipping.”

  Violet uttered an exclamation.

  “Oh, no, uncle!”

  “‘Oh, no, uncle!’ — I say ‘Oh, yes, uncle!’ Leave this to me, child. There are too many scamps sneaking about in society embittering and spoiling the lives of innocent women, and a few sound thrashings on the backs of such fellows would be pure joy and relief to the feelings of the majority. I should like to thrash a millionaire! especially if his conduct is on the level of that of a play-actor, who is the worst kind of unprincipled rogue between this world and the nearest gallows.” And the major chuckled. “I did thrash one of those painted fellows once, and, by Jove! how I enjoyed it!”

  Violet looked up at him timidly, with a faint smile.

  “It was in India,” said the major, his eyes twinkling and his chee
ks beginning to crease up with wrinkles of satisfaction at the recollection. “There came what was supposed to be a tip-top theatrical company to the place where we were, and among the players there was a thin, whitefaced fellow as conceited as they make them, who ‘made up’ to look a king or a villain, whichever you fancied, though, to my mind, the villain suited his style of beauty best. Well, when he was off the stage he pretended to be a very fine gentleman indeed, — explained that he had taken to the stage as a freak, that his mother had nearly broken her heart over it, and all that sort of ancient stock-in-trade nonsense, — and he pushed himself by degrees into the society of the women, till he came across a little creature who was fascinated by his artful ways, thought him a budding ‘genius,’ and listened to his long stories as if he were an angel singing. And then he poured out more confidences; he told her how he had in an evil hour married a woman he could not love, and that she — the little creature aforesaid — was his own true mate, and all that kind of gibberish. Poor little soul! — she believed him, and was for immolating herself on the altar of what she believed to be an ‘ideal’ passion. Only there happened to be another little creature round to whom he had told the self-same tale, and she, having more spirit in her than the first one, came to me and told me all about it. ‘And I have written letters to him!’ she said, stamping her little foot and flashing her pretty eyes, ‘and he won’t give them back, the coward!’— ‘What do you want me to do, my dear?’ I said. ‘Thrash him!’ she replied. And, of course, I did. I went for him one day when he was tripping gingerly out on his tip-toes from the place where he put his rouge and false legs on. I said, ‘Look here, Hamlet — King Richard — As you Like It — or whatever you are, — you are a scoundrel. Make yourself into all the people that ever blessed or disgraced the world, you are an unprincipled cad! I am not Hamlet, thank God! I am a British officer, and though you are not worth kicking, you are worth whipping for the fun of it. Now, Hamlet, look out!’ He smiled pallidly, and said ‘Sir!’ — but the rest of his sentence was lost. I forgot what happened afterwards, till I saw him picked up by two coolies and carried off. He couldn’t act for some time afterwards, — he was ill with a kind of influenza! But I got back the girl’s letters for her.”

  The major laughed heartily over this reminiscence, and enjoyed himself very much for several minutes, till he noticed the pretty, pensive face at his side. Then he scolded himself violently and called himself a brute for not considering her feelings more tenderly.

  “Come, come, don’t be down-hearted, little woman,” he said, kindly. “Take a bright face to Miss Letty. She has her own trouble to bear, and I can see she frets over it, too, though she never mentions it, and has asked me not to talk to her about it. But I am sure she had set a good many of her hopes on Boy.”

  “Ah, yes,” and Violet’s quick sympathy showed itself in her expressive face. “I know how disappointed she was in him. She had been building up an ideal Boy who did not exist.”

  “And you have perhaps been building up an ideal Max who does not exist,” said her uncle, good-humouredly. “What a pity it is that all the best and nicest women in the world will persist in imagining men to be so much better than they are!

  We don’t deserve it — we always fail to come up to the required standard.”

  “Not always,” said Violet, her eyes beaming on him affectionately. “You never fail.”

  The major laughed.

  “Oh, don’t idealize me, for heaven’s sake, child!” he said. “I am just a bluff old man with a highly inflammable temper and an average sense of honour, that’s all. Now try and put your sad thoughts away for the present, and take Miss Letty for your example, — you can’t do better. Always bright, always patient, always brave, she takes everything God sends her in the same equable spirit, and does her best to keep a cheerful heart and cheerful face through everything.”

  “Yes, but remember,” said Violet, tremulously, “thanks to you, she has never known that her lover was false to her.”

  The major was taken aback by this pathetic observation, and pulled his white moustache dismally.

  “True! — I forgot. She has never known.”

  He gave a compassionate side-glance at his niece, and said no more. They returned to the hotel in silence, but that afternoon Violet had a long, quiet chat with Miss Letty all alone, and told her frankly all the extent of her troubles, doubts, and fears. After this her heart was considerably relieved, and she felt more resigned; for Miss Letty was the wisest and tenderest of counsellors, and out of the store of her life’s experience she was able to bring many consolations and suggestions of peace.

  But the storm which had been so mysteriously gathering over Violet’s life was ready to break more suddenly and heavily than either of her kind guardians knew, and scarcely a week had elapsed since her talk with her Uncle Desmond at the picture-galleries, when the fashionable worlds of London, Paris, and New York were electrified by what was set forth late one evening in bold headlines on all the newspaper placards as a “Great Society Scandal.” Major Desmond heard the news first at his club, and, promptly clapping on his hat, took a hansom, and, urging its driver to his utmost speed, dashed through the streets to Miss Letty’s house in Hans Place, whither she had recently returned to set things in order after her vacating tenants.

  “Where’s Violet?” he demanded, as he burst into the drawing-room and startled his gentle old friend out of a mild little doze in her arm-chair. Miss Letty gazed at him affrighted.

  “My dear Dick, what is the matter? Violet is out. She has gone to the theatre with some friends.”

  The major sank into the nearest chair with a groan.

  “Then it’s all up!” he said. “She will hear everything before she gets home.”

  Miss Letty gazed at him, hopelessly bewildered.

  “Hear what? You alarm me, Dick! Is anything wrong?”

  And she trembled from head to foot as she laid a hand pleadingly on his arm. He looked up at her and saw how nervous she was, and how her slight, worn old frame shook with the agitation she sought to repress, and he at once cursed himself for his impetuous brusquerie.

  “What a brute I am to frighten you!” he said, getting up as quickly as he had sat down, and taking her hand tenderly in his own. “Come back to your chair, Letty, — sit down, — there now! — don’t tremble so! You will want all your strength to help Violet, poor child! That d — d Nugent has run off with Lord Wantyn’s wife, the low rascal!

  If ever I get hold of him I will—”

  He stopped, silenced by a gesture from Miss Letty’s trembling hand.

  “Wait a minute, Dick,” she said, faintly. “I don’t quite grasp it. Do you mean to say that Max Nugent, the man who professed to love and asked to marry our little innocent Violet, has taken another man’s wife away from him?”

  The major nodded violently.

  “Yes, it’s in all the papers. Wantyn’s wife, ‘the beautiful Lady Wantyn,” as the feminine asses of the fashion papers call her. He has taken her — or she has gone with him — one is as bad as t’other. Anyhow, they are off — sloped from Paris last night, reached the South of France this morning, — Nugent’s yacht was waiting for him at Marseilles, — and they are away, the Lord knows where! And everybody will sympathize with the miserable cad because he is a millionaire. I tell you it is in all the papers, and one penny-a-liner has already put in print that it is the outcome of an ‘old and romantic’ love affair! Old and romantic! By Jove! A little old and romantic treatment of the right sort would do them both good, — a few of the old and romantic notions which put a bullet through a rascal’s head, and whipped a bad wife at the cart’s tail! That would be the proper ‘old and romantic’ way to deal with them!”

  But Miss Letty sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes full of pain.

  “My poor Violet!” she murmured at last. “Poor little girl! Dick, what shall we do?”

  “I don’t know,” said the major, despairingly. “I
came here post-haste to ask you to keep the newspapers away from her for a day or two; but it’s no use now; if she has gone to the theatre she will see Nugent’s name on all the placards. And if she does by chance miss it, one of her friends will be sure to see it and tell her.”

  “You forget, Dick,” said Miss Letty, “that no one in England knows of Max Nugent’s connection with her, and only two or three in America. That is very fortunate! — how wise you were in not allowing any engagement to take place! You have saved Violet much indignity. It is true the poor child will have to bear her trouble alone, but I think that is better than if she had to endure the possibly contemptuous pity of her friends.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said the major. “There would be no real sympathy whatever for her, — all the feeling in our latter-day social sets goes out to the money-bags. Nugent’s a villain, but he will be turned into a hero by the time Wantyn gets his divorce. Didn’t I tell you I never liked that glass in his eye?”

  Miss Letty could not smile. She was thinking of Violet. She glanced at the clock.

  “Violet will soon be coming back,” she said. “Poor, poor Violet! I dread seeing her face. I think I should have died if my Harry had been false to me.”

  The major was here afflicted with a violent cough which kept him barking hoarsely for some minutes.

  “Dear me,” said Miss Letty, solicitously watching him as he got redder and redder in the face and kept on coughing. “I am afraid you have caught cold, Dick. Did you have your overcoat on when you came just now?”

  “Yes, I had everything on,” said the major, still struggling with the strange obstruction in his throat, “ everything that was necessary.” Here he suddenly recovered himself and relapsed into calm. “When do you think Violet will be back?”

  “She cannot be later than eleven or half-past,” replied Miss Letty. “But we must be very careful. She may not have seen the news as yet.

  “I am afraid there is no hope of that,” said Desmond, bitterly. “It is all over the place. You know what these wretched papers are, — anything to sell their copies. A scandal is treated to the biggest head-lines, just as the dress of a stage woman gets more notice than the death of a great man. Oh, she’s seen it, you may be sure!”