Miss Letty clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
“We must be brave, Dick,” she murmured. “We must not let her see us break down — we must not pity her too much—”
“Pity her!” ejaculated the major. “I feel more like congratulating her on a narrow escape from getting a bad husband. Only it won’t do to put it that way. She might think it unkind—”
“Hush!” said Miss Letty, lifting a warning finger and growing very pale, as the wheels of a carriage came to a stop outside, “ there she is!” The major held his breath, listening. Violet’s clear young voice could be heard distinctly saying “Good-night! Thanks for a delightful evening.”
The major turned his eyes round amazedly on Miss Letty.
“‘A delightful evening!’ She cannot have heard—”
The door-bell rang, and to the two elder people who were in such suspense its peal seemed to waken loud and discordant echoes through the house, suggestive of everything horrible. Another minute, and Violet entered, looking no longer merely pretty, but radiantly beautiful. Her eyes were dark and brilliant, her cheeks were flushed; she held her little head up like a queen, and her light step as she advanced was almost regal in-its pride and grace.
“Uncle Desmond!” she exclaimed, smiling. “You here!”
The major instinctively scrambled up out of his chair and reverentially stared at the dazzling creature who seemed to be suddenly transformed from a mere slip of a girl into an exquisite woman.
“Yes — I am here,” he stammered.
Violet loosened her cloak, threw it aside, and put her arms round his neck and kissed him, still smiling into his eyes with such a straight, sweet look that he was quite bewildered. Then she dropped on her knees by Miss Letty’s chair, and raised her fair young face to the equally fair old one bending so anxiously over her.
“Darling Miss Letty!” she said. “Why did you sit up for me? You must be tired. My own Miss Letty! And Uncle Desmond coming here so late, too!”
They glanced at one another, silent and sorely puzzled. Did she know? Or did she not know? What was it that made her so unusually royal and proud in her bearing? Still kneeling by Miss Letty, she looked up at the perplexed major with that new and wonderful brilliancy in her eyes which seemed to be the reflection of a strong soul-flame within, and said, —
“Dearest uncle, don’t be unhappy about me. I know what brought you here to-night — I know everything!”
“You do, Violet?” murmured Miss Letty, catching the girl’s hand in hers. “Are you sure you do?”
“Am I sure?” And Violet sprang up from her kneeling position, and stood with her fair head thrown back and her whole face expressing a grand disdain. “Indeed I am! I am sure that the man I thought a gentleman is beneath contempt! I am sure that the love I bore him for what I thought his goodness, his chivalry, his honour, was the love for a fancied being of my own heart who did not exist! I am sure that I do not, and could not, love a man who has deliberately disgraced himself and ruined the honour of a woman! I am sure — yes — that if I meet Max Nugent now I would pass him by as beneath the notice of an honest girl! I mean it!” continued Violet, her eyes glowing more brilliantly than ever with the intensity of her thought, “ yes! — for though I am only a girl, I have never done any harm to anyone that I know of, nor would I hurt anyone by so much as a word if I could help it — and so far, at least, I am above this millionaire, who has made himself too mean for even a man to know!”
The major brought his hand down with a vigourous slap on the table near which he stood.
“There spoke Jack Morrison’s girl!” he exclaimed. “Blood will out, — you have got your father’s mettle in you! Bravo! Let the fellow go to the dogs in his own way and be d — d to him! — excuse me — —”
“Wait, uncle,” said Violet, looking at Miss Letty’s pained and anxious face with great tenderness in her eyes; “you must not think I don’t suffer. I do! When I saw that horrible news tonight — when I heard people talking of it — I felt like killing myself! Yes!” — for Miss Letty uttered a piteous exclamation, “ yes, dear Miss Letty, you must not think I don’t feel. I feel — cruelly!” Her lips trembled — her voice shook. “But you have both been so good to me — you have taken such care of me — that I should be a wicked, ungrateful girl if I thought of myself only. I think of you, dear, kind Uncle Desmond! — darling, sweet Miss Letty! — and I will try to bear it bravely, I will, indeed! — I am trying now. Don’t you see I am? My heart is wounded — and the wound hurts — yes, it hurts! But I will try — I will try hard — that the pain may make me better!”
And here, her pride breaking down entirely, she fell again on her knees beside Miss Letty and buried her head in her lap, sobbing bitterly. Quietly Miss Letty laid her two hands over the soft hair, stroking it gently, and, controlling her own tears, she made a gentle sign to the stricken major to go. With a mute glance of farewell tenderness, that gallant officer stole out of the room on tip-toe, and, pausing in the hall outside, wiped his eyes and blew his nose guardedly lest he should make too much noise.
“God bless my soul!” he ejaculated. “These women beat everything! Break their hearts, and they say the pain shall make them better! ‘Pon my soul! — What brutes we men are — what revolting, dirty, selfish, down-right brutes! We don’t deserve ever to have had mothers. Here, let me get out of this!”
And opening the street door gingerly, he closed it as gingerly after him, and stood for a moment in the street with the guilty air of a burglar who had just abstracted some valuable plate. And again he blew his nose — with greater freedom and vigour this time.
“Poor little girl!” he murmured. “Poor little Violet! Only nineteen! — and faces the music like an old warrior of a hundred battles! Brave child — brave child! And, by Jove! what a beauty she’s growing! A positive beauty! Never noticed it till to-night, ‘pon my soul!”
And a couple of lines suddenly came into his head as it seemed from nowhere, — lines he remembered vaguely, as having heard when quite a lad:
“ — This is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s what’s the matter with her. She is crowned with that crown — poor little Violet! — And, by Jove! she wears it royally! And she will rule her sorrow and conquer it with a fine strength and firm spirit, — and she will be a queen among women yet! — my little, broken-hearted girl.”
And he wafted a kiss back to the windows of Miss Letty’s house as he pulled his hat over his eyes and walked away.
CHAPTER XI
AFTER a storm comes a calm, and the old proverbs which tell us that the longest lane must have a turning and the darkest cloud a silver lining are not without something of a cheery note in their constant reiteration, like the repeated warble of a thrush telling us of the certainty of spring. And Violet Morrison soon began to prove these old-fashioned truths for herself, though the sudden and ruthless destruction of her first love-dream had cast a shadow over the bright opening of her life, and had made her graver and more thoughtful than her youth and beauty warranted. Her troubles were none the less hard to bear when the recalcitrant Max Nugent, weary of his connection with Lady Wantyn, promptly severed it as soon as her husband divorced that famous “beauty,” and sought to make his peace with the innocent girl whom he had so deeply wronged. Again and again he wrote to her and implored her to forgive him and to marry him, but she answered none of his letters. The first faith and devotion of her heart were killed, and she knew she could never trust him; but he very persistently urged a renewal of his attentions in spite of the curt return of his letters through the major’s hands, and she was, therefore, very glad when her uncle and Miss Letty decided to take her abroad for a time on a tour through France, Italy, and Spain, as this gave her freedom and an escape from the constant pleading of her former lover. The interest in new countries and the constant distraction of thought caused by the various wonde
rs and beauties of the shifting panorama served as an excellent mental and moral tonic, and braced up all the energies of her mind. They stayed abroad, residing sometimes in one beautiful place, sometimes another, for about three years, and it was while they were wintering in Palermo in the last year of their wanderings that the major received a letter which gave him the burden of another secret which he had to keep from Miss Letty in addition to the one concerning the “dead rascal,” Harry Raikes. The letter was from an old friend and fellow-officer, and among other items of the news he gave was the following:
“By the way, you asked me to tell you if I ever heard any news of D’Arcy-Muir’s son. I have heard something, and I expect it won’t please you. He passed by the skin of his teeth into Sandhurst, and the other day was expelled for being drunk and kicking up a disorderly row. It is a bad job for the young chap, but what’s in the blood will out — and I suppose he has caught the drink disease from his father. He has ruined his military career at the outset.”
Long and deeply did the good major ponder over this piece of depressing intelligence. He read it in the court-yard of the hotel in Palermo where they were just then staying, a court-yard which, as is the custom in Southern climes, presented the appearance of a fairy flower-garden, festooned with climbing plants in blossom, with oranges ripening in the warm sun, and odours of mimosa, heliotrope, and violets on the air. “Expelled for being drunk!” Such news seemed an infamy and an insult, in such a scene of beauty as that which he looked upon.
“God bless my soul!” he murmured, disconsolately, fixing his eyes on a fair cluster of white clematis swinging above his head. “It seems to me that some of us aren’t fit to inhabit this planet! There’s everything beautiful in it, and everything is wisely ordained, and it is only we who make the mischief and create the trouble. ‘Expelled for being drunk!’ And that kind of thing ends in being expelled from the world altogether before one has served one’s time. What would Letty say?”
He sighed heavily, but in a few minutes of consideration decided that it would be worse than foolish to tell her.
“Let her keep her little ideal somewhere in her heart,” he said to himself. “Don’t let me be such a great, blundering idiot as to smudge all the picture out for her. She believes in Harry Raikes, — she may as well believe in Boy as long as she can. And if any one tells her what’s happened, it won’t be me.”
And he steadily adhered to this resolution. It was easy to do so, as Boy’s name was never mentioned by Miss Letty now, and all her thoughts seemed taken up with Violet. He put away his friend’s letter unanswered, — carefully marking the date on which he received it, — and as he calculated that Boy must be getting on now for twenty, he shook his head and decided that everything, so far as “that unfortunate young chap” was concerned, was rather hopeless.
“However, it’s no use blaming the lad himself too severely,” he considered. “He has had everything against him; his parents have both shown him the worst of examples; his nature was warped at its very commencement and in its very growing, and if he takes to the bottle, like his father, and runs down-hill at a tearing speed, the fault doesn’t rest entirely with him.”
In the spring of that same year they returned to London and “settled down,” as the saying is, in order that Violet might take up the career her heart was pining for — that of a thoroughly trained nurse. She was never happier than when she could soothe pain and alleviate suffering, and she was altogether eminently fitted for the profession she sought to adopt. Miss Letty did not deter her, nor did her uncle, for they both saw that work and active interest in the welfare of others was the only way to make her life interesting to herself. She had really no need to work, for Miss Letty had, though Violet knew it not, left her a considerable fortune in her will, and, of course, good Major Desmond, though not a rich man, had made over to her everything he possessed, — but the fact of having money is not sufficient to fill lives which are strong and earnest, and which would fain prove to God that they are worth living. So Violet, with her firm faith, pure heart, and gentle manner, went into the forests of difficulty unarmed and fair as Una in Spenser’s famous poem, and studied hard, consecrating herself heart and soul to the work she had undertaken, with the usual result of all earnest endeavour — complete success. Max Nugent had long ceased to importune her for the mending up of the broken threads of affection, and of this she was glad. Her disappointment in her first love had, however, deprived her of any interest in or expectation of marriage for herself, — in fact, the idea had become repugnant to her mind. One day her uncle asked her, —
“Are you going to devote all your life to the memory of Max Nugent, as Letty has devoted hers to the lost and gone Harry Raikes?”
Violet smiled.
“No, uncle. I have been undeceived — Miss Letty keeps her illusion. I never think of Max now.”
“Well, do you ever think of anybody else?” demanded the major.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Violet laughed outright.
“Dearest uncle! I cannot fall in love to order! I don’t like the men I see much, — they don’t want me, and I don’t want them. Leave me alone to work, dear uncle, — I love my work — I am useful — I can help a great many people to bear their troubles, — and it will be all right for me. If I am to marry, why, I shall; if not, I shan’t.”
And she kissed him and slipped away. Meanwhile, in the self-same monster metropolis of London, where Violet went daily to her work in the hospital, where the major divided his days between his club and Miss Letty’s always charming house, and where Miss Letty herself, growing more feeble and ailing with years, was content to sit very much at home with her embroidery, — Boy, who had unconsciously been a link in the chain of their three lives, was drifting like a wreck in a vast ocean. The terrible blow of his expulsion from Sandhurst had been taken by his parents as a deadly injury to themselves, — and for the shame, the misery, the utter breaking-down of the lad’s own life and ambitions, they, his progenitors, took no thought and had no pity. The “Honourable” Jim, half-paralysed as he was, had plenty of strength left for swearing, and used oaths in plenty to his son, calling him a “d — d low rascal!”
“You don’t seem to belong to me at all!” he shouted, his red face becoming purple with rage and excitement. “D — n it, sir, I am a gentleman — my father was a gentleman, but you — you are a blackguard, sir! D — n it! when I took my glass I took it like a gentleman; I didn’t go about disgracing myself and my profession as you have done. You had better enlist, if they’ll have you, as a private. Anyhow, you must do something for your bread — I can’t afford to keep you!”
Boy heard in absolute silence. He was too completely scornful of life and the ways of life to care to remind his father that he himself had been one long disgrace to his son from that son’s babyhood, and that his paralytic condition was altogether owing to his indulgence in strong drink. What was the good? More oaths and a redder face would be the sole result. And his mother? Had she one word of pardon or of sympathy for him in his deep humiliation? Not she! Embedded in fat, all she could do was to shake her double chin at him over a mountain of maternal bosom.
“It’s always the way,” she said, dabbing a handkerchief into her eyes, “when good mothers do everything for their sons! They have to suffer! You have broken my heart, Boy! — your mother’s heart! All my hopes of you are ruined! I don’t feel as if you were my Boy! I’m sure I don’t know what you are going to do. We have no fortune, as you are perfectly aware. We can’t afford to keep you idling about, doing nothing!”
Boy, tall, pale, handsome, and with an indefinable air of langour and scorn about him, smiled wearily.
“Don’t trouble yourself, mother!” he said. “I will earn enough bread to keep me alive, if I do it by sweeping a crossing. Good-bye.”
“Where are you going?” demanded his mother, somewhat frightened at his set face and blazing eyes.
“Do you care?”
And he laughed bitterly. “I’m going — to the devil, I suppose!”
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir moaned and dabbed her eyes again.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” she wailed. “When I think of all the sacrifices I have made to send you to college, and all the trouble I have had, really it seems too dreadful! A mother’s life is martyrdom — complete martyrdom! Why don’t you go hunt up old Miss Letty—”
Then, and quite suddenly, Boy flared up. “Miss Letty! The Miss Letty who wanted to adopt me as a child — and you wouldn’t let her! Not I! It would have been a jolly sight better for me, perhaps, if I had been with her; but to go to her now — now, when I am expelled” — he choked at the word and had a struggle to go on—” and in disgrace, — now! No, mother, never!”
With a strange gesture, half of fury, half of despair, he turned and left her and went out of the house. His mother was far too unwieldy and comfortable in herself to rise from her chair and enquire where he was going, and though she called “Boy!” once as he disappeared, he did not hear her.
He had two or three pounds in his pocket, and rather than put up with any more useless reproaches and complaints at home, he decided to take a cheap lodging somewhere near the Strand and seek for work, — any kind of work.
“It’s all the same,” he said, with a sort of cynical philosophy which had come of “cramming” and the weariness resulting from that pernicious system, “whether one sweeps out an office or controls it, work of every kind is simply work. It only differs in the quality and the pay.”
In a few days, through the help of a young fellow he had known at Sandhurst, one who was unaffectedly sorry for his disgrace, he got a place as assistant clerk in an agency office. It was dull business, but he drudged through it uncomplainingly, and earned enough to keep himself going. Sometimes a vague idea occurred to him that he would go on the stage.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 449
