Two Fair Ladies. A story

Front matter

TWO FAIE LADIES TWO FAIR LADIES. & Siorg. BY F. B. DREW BICKERSTAFFE DREW. " But we are all men In our own natures frail and capable Of our flesh : few are angels." Henry VIII. Sonbcm : SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO., io, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1879. [AU Rights Reserved.} Hcbuaticit. TO FOUR FAIR LADIES, L . A. M. C. C, M. I. C. C, V. E. C. C, A. K. C. C, this little story IS INSCRIBED EY their old friend, THE AUTHOR.

Prologue

. Some scattered leaves are liere of withered trees That long ago, in summers past, upreared Their goodly crowns among their sturdy peers, Joyful in hfe ; but now no more above The even surface of the forest-tops Climb the fair dome to kiss. For some have bowed Beneath the cruel tempest-blasts, and lie Prone 'neath the wood. Nor is there any gap Whence they downfell, for, overhead, new buds Have oped on newer boughs, and filled afresh The void above : some saplings weak there were, That shuddered at the eager winter's breath And grey-eyed glance, and so have gone Untimely hence ; some stricken by the bolt — But most are gone, and I am left behind To gather up these leaflets that are here, Not all unfragrant, haply, of the past.

Book I. Ursula

' All beauty compassed in a female form " 0 miracle of women," said the book.' ' With her exquisite face, And wild voice pealing up to the sunny sky, And feet like sunny gems on an English green, In the light of her youth and her grace . , . There is none like her, none.' CHAPTER T. It was September, and half-past six p.m. to boot. The day of the month I do not recollect, and it skills not to invent. An irresolute sun was trying half-heartedly to render Reichenhall, and the Hotel Louisenbad in especial, cheerful and bright, but with no very marked success. As has before been hinted, it was evening, and the area in front of the hotel was the scene of what faint excitement could be derived from the arrival of the omnibus from waiting upon the 6.30 train from Salzburg and Freilassing. A few dishevelled travellers had just been dis gorged, and were surveying, with marked dis favour, each other's dirty persons, and frantically claiming, without the slightest result, their obese and many-labelled portmanteaux.

In one of the front windows stood a young 1—2 girl in deep mourning, placidly gloating over the filthy new arrivals, supremely forgetful of her own similar condition three days before, when she herself arrived from Salzburg by this same evening train. For an hour or more, Ursula had been standing there looking out, and had said nothing, there being none to hear. But she had thought much and bitterly, of things in genera], and of the lean missive in her hand, and her destitute condition, in particular. Perhaps, too, she had thought a little of her dinner, which had been postponed — shamefully postponed, she thought — in honour of the ex pected arrival of a certain noble prince. This potentate, ' lord,' chiefly, ' of his own hands ' — a tolerably extensive realm by the way — ruled, and rules still, his hundred acres of the Father land with despotic sway, and through the length and breadth of that dominion his kingly features deck every kreutzer and pfennig in circulation.

His true name we will not here disclose, lest on our next visit to the land of the Teutons His Serene and Royal Highness should proscribe our person and necessitate a detour of some thing like four miles to enable us to arrive at Munich ; but Hohenlohenstein, though rather short, is not unlike it. Either the princely toilette was of the simplest Ursula. 5 or else the patience of the cook was exhausted ; any way, that 'tocsin of the soul, the dinner-bell/ soon rang through the house, and Ursula, casting her cogitations to the winds, fled precipitately, lest a more worthy man than she should enter in before her and take the likeliest place. On her way she encountered the great Furst him self, also hurrying to the scene of combat, undignifiedly solicitous as to his food, and evidently by no means sure of his superior claims being respected by those before him on the field.

Unheeding of the drab monarchlet's glance of calm pity and stolid admiration — pity for her sad worn face and new deep black, and admira tion for her rare sweet beauty — -she passed on her way, and a moment later took her place amongf the reeking steams and nameless odours that render the salle a manger of an average Teutonic hotel a hopeful young Cologne. Immediately opposite, the princess had mar shalled her little grey, eyebrowless band of the children of Hohenlohenstein, and both she and they lost no time in putting beyond all doubt their appreciation of the viands at their call. Far otherwise was it, however, with the miserable little English cotton-spinner or soap-boiler on Ursula's left, whose loathing of German fare and total ignorance of the language, combined to render starvation imminent.

With an amused but compassionate smile, Ursula at length came to his assistance. ' Wouldn't you like some mutton 1 There is some down there, I think, opposite the woman in green tartan with blue bows. If you would, I'll use my influence with an aufwarter to get you some. This wretched stranger in a strange land replied with deep though incoherent gratitude, considering his new friend's importance to be considerable, and vaguely wondering what high dignitary of the place an aufwarter might be. Presently he was duly provided with some quivering slices of purple meat floating rawly in a deep red sea ; mutton, in fact, as the menu declared, cooked ' in the English fashion.' Mr. Augustus Tidman, from behind a ruddy mouthful, poured forth brokenly his heartfelt gratitude, and was Ursula's friend for life.

The whole proceeding had afforded no small delight to a young Englishman opposite, also a fresh arrival, who from his place among the little Hohenlohen steins had watched it with re spective approval and amusement. Ursula, looking up suddenly, caught him in the very act, with a broad smile on his handsome Ursula. 7 mouth and in his honest Saxon eyes ; instantly he averted his glance, and she turned round promptly to her new protege" and asked him who the stranger might be. With awe-struck mien Augustus replied that he was a great English lord, whose name was only less proud than old, and whose family diamonds were the envy of his world. 'Indeed,' remarked Ursula, profanely shrugging her shapely shoulders ; she, having been herself a vagabond all her life, was no respecter of persons. The soap-boiler, unable to realize such indifference, supposed it to be incredulity, and added, a little warmly, ' I assure you it is the case.

His valet told mine all about him : we were in the same hotel at Venice and afterwards at Salzburg.' ' Quite a coincidence !' said Ursula, somewhat sceptically, beginning to be bored by her acquaintance, and yearning for her dinner. But Mr. Tidman was too much pleased with her conversation to have any notion of letting it drop there. ' Have you ever been to Salzburg, by the way ? ' he asked, after a decent pause ; ' I have come from tliere to-day ; you have no notion, unless you've seen them, how splendid the stalactites are. I assure you .' The Englishman opposite was watching them again ; why did the soap-boiler pause abruptly ? and why did the fair and noble-looking lady turn her head aside and bend low over her plate ?—evidently he had said the wrong thing, and knew it. The idea seemed to strike him that she might be laughing, and at his pronunciation of the German name, which in his mouth sounded Sawltsbirg ; growing redder than the sunset outside, he stammered forth : ' Please don't laugh at my way of saying these hideous German names ; they do pronounce them so oddly here — it all has to come from the back of one's throat, and really makes it quite sore.

I mean, have you ever been to S-a-1-z-b-u-r-g ?' he concluded with a sickly smile of hopeless and conscious ignorance, laboriously spelling the word letter for letter. ' Indeed I was not laughing' she said chok ingly; and certainly she did not look like it, as she thought bitterly of that red raw grave in the little English cemetery of the town that the bag man could not pronounce, and which held in its chill and unlovely embrace all that her poor desolate heart had held dearest. He was not altogether obtuse, this soap-boiler, and he could see well enough that somehow he had touched a wound; so with frantic confusion he hurriedly explained that he only thought she Ursula. 9 might have been to see the Berchtesgaden salt mines, and might care to see the lovely stalac tites he had brought away thence yesterday.

The utter and appalling confusion of the poor foolish little snob acted as a restorative to Ursula ; and with a grateful smile and her own sweet composure she accepted indefinitely his proposal of the salt crystalline inspection. The great English lord, the while, whose diamonds and descent were so extraordinary, had been observing it all with the keenest interest,' and had vaguely been trying to guess something of what this fair proud maiden's short sad history had been. Short her sweet fresh youth proclaimed it, sad it must have been, or her weary smile belied her. Had her youth been less apparent, had the sad smile been upon less lovely lips, would he have felt as keen an interest in her history, I wonder ? The tiresome meal dragged out its long length with all the pomp and circumstance attendant on its kind, like all foreign table d'hote dinners, with so very much cry and so very little wool.

At last it was over, and those who had partaken of its varied abominations parted on their several ways for a time, most of the Germans electing to make little Spaziergangen in the town, and most of the new arrivals to retire to their quarters for their arrangement and inspection.

Chapter II

' God comfort thee !' — Twelfth Night, Act iii., Sc. 4. Back to her own room, away from the heat and clatter of voices in the great saal, Ursula sped. Sped, and yet listlessly withal. For of late, poor child, all things had been done very list lessly by her, until, perhaps, within the last few days ; and now this little stray allusion of the unwitting bagman's had aroused all the old sorrow, and poured through her whole soul the ■old overwhelming flood of chilling, hopeless anguish. Very dreary was it, that chamber of hers. Indeed, a curtainless bed and a tiny washing stand seldom suffice alone to render any room luxurious, however well intentioned. But then, my friends, it was also very cheap, and that was everything. Wearily she threw up the sash, and wearily Ursula. 11 she walked out upon the narrow balcony ; and there, with her great dark eyes gleaming through their unshed tears, she turned her fair face to wards the far-off summits of the sun-kissed Alps of Bavaria, and pondered hopelessly upon her short sad past, her bitter present, and all her long comfortless future.

But through all there rang one only cry, one bitter unavailing moan of cruel grief : ' Oh ! my mother, my mother !' Presently, however, she became aware of the stolid observation of one of the youthful hopes of Hohenlohenstein fixed upon her from the adjoining balcony ; so, turning away with a sigh, she entered again her little, bare, close room, and paced restlessly to and fro, with her long white fingers clasped tight on her beautiful bosom, as if, poor fool ! she thought thus to calm the wild, agonised pulsations of her full heart. ' Humanly speaking,' she said, after one or two turns up and down the meagre chamber, drawing out from her breast the missive before alluded to, and smoothing out impatiently its crumpled sallow folds, ' humanly speaking, it's simply " providential." I've no money, and no immediate prospect of ever having any, nor the slightest capacity for earning my bread, and here there drops down from heaven, so to speak, an elderly rich aunt, offering me a home, and a luxurious home, too.

But ' There was no lack of eloquent and angry meaning in the monosyllabic reservation and the fierce twitch of the letter that accompanied it. ' The woman must be horrible — I hate her, and always shall — who wrote this !' And she proceeded to read it aloud for the fiftieth time, with such emphasis as she thought the writer would have used. It was nothing wonderful. A note neither rude nor wholly polite, not perhaps kind, but certainly not tangibly unkind. Here it is : ' Saumerez Court. ' My Dear Niece, 'We have seen the announcement of your poor mother's death in the Times, and fearing you should be thrown into circumstances of diffi culty unfitting your station, I hasten to offer you a home with us. ' The wretched past we neither pretend to forgive or forget, but for that past we cannot hold you responsible, or justly make you suffer.

Since, then, in spite of his inexcusable mar riage, your father was our only brother, and you are his only child, we extend to you all the Ursula. 13 consideration in our power. A home with us is at your service, permanent if you choose, temporary if you see your way to any other. 'I remains, yours very truly, ' Elizabeth de Saumerez.' ' Oh !' exclaimed Ursula vehemently, crum pling the offending document again in her small strong hand ; ' why need she talk of the wretched past at all ? Who made it wretched but they 1 Wasn't my darling as good as this woman ? as much a lady ? I will write her the answer she deserves.' And the thoughts of the poor proud girl wandered off into the composition of an ideal letter intended to annihilate her aunt for ever. ' But it's all very well ; like the great family of Boyle, " God's Providence is my inheritance," and very insufficient sustenance I find it.

I cannot teach ; to beg I'm not the least ashamed, but I don't think I should make much by the trade.' A hard unyouthful smile of dull despondency settled on her sweet face, as thus she pondered bitterly upon her evil case. She saw in retrospect her single experience in tuition, when, long ago in Italy, she had once taken charge of five unruly English children during their parents' temporary absence. On that occasion she had come untimely to a dead lock, through honest inability to explain the following utterance of the profound Darnell : ' Sacramental housemaids desecrate unconstitu tional wardrobes.' Her feeble efforts to curb the young idea in its lawless endeavour to shoot were notably without success. It was useless to aver that all things in copy-books are not necessarily explainable.

Her pupils could themselves explain most of them, and hence refused to believe any inexplicable. ' No,' she said, with a grim smile at the recollection, even now blushing at the remembered rage and confusion, ' I cannot teach, even if I knew enough, which I don't. Unquestionably, if that old saw be true, that man's extremities are God's opportunities, I present indeed a sovereign chance to the Deity.' ' Well, well,' she continued, after a pause, and with a weary sigh, 'there's not much good in being blasphemous : it's some relief, no doubt, but it doesn't help me much to be independent and alive simultaneously. Heaven knows, I'm not much afraid of dying, in a fairly picturesque and painless manner, of course, but that's just what one can't do. They won't even let you die of star vation unassisted, but insist on your carrying on Ursula. 15 the process in a workhouse, or some such insti tution of love.

And once more, the great sorrow of all, that sorrow that even to herself she could not bear to speak about, welled over in her sore heart and aching eyes ; and from the darkest, profoundest depths of her sad poor soul went forth that great and exceeding bitter cry, 'Mother, oh my mother, why did you leave me alone V So all through the weary, weary hours wrestled Ursula with herself and her sorrow, and with grief and tears grew dazed and heavy. It was truly hard to decide : on the one hand a home; and, more, immunity from want, vulgar, debasing, soul-degrading want, and leisure to indulge her sadness undisturbed by meaner cares, free from worrying anxiety ; but all to be received at the hands of a woman she did not know but did dislike. On the other side, independence, of a sort certainly, a dinner of herbs, or more probably no dinner at all — and nothing at all therewith : at best a scrambling day-to-day drudgery, and wearing bustle, with no time for her dead, and as a make-weight, the consciousness that no sphere of labour was within her reach, she being totally unqualified for any post, except perhaps that of 'companion,' which, needs no qualifica tions but which would never have occurred to her foreign-bred mind. Two Fair Lactic?. 16

Chapter III

' He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.' Mr. Augustus Tidman, of Trafalgar Villas, Camden Town, and Lord St. Just, of Horsey Park, Surrey, were sitting together on one of the benches of the Kurhaus garten, mutually won dering what the deuce the other meant by it. To tell the truth, they both knew Miss de Saumerez was going out for a walk, and both were already sufficiently well acquainted with Reichenhall to be aware that no two persons could do so at the same time in that watering place without meeting. Now, in spite of the fact that at Reichenhall there is ' stat. and pop. 3000 ;' that there are fur nished apartments and villas at moderate prices, that brine baths may be had, and that there are many resident medical men, to say nothing ofthe beautiful thought that ' Church-service may be Ursula. supplied by the Col. and Cont.

Ch. Soc.,' and lastly, although ' the Bavarian Alps and River Salahare "available," andthe climate is peculiarly mild" (v. the immortal Bradshaw), still it cannot be denied that there is no overplus of employ ment for leisure hours in this highly favoured watering-place. This fact once conceded, it will not be wondered at if both these men, the bagman and the baron, found Ursula's society a diversion from the all-consuming extinctive boredom of that unblissful clime. But they each liked it neat, if one may borrow the phraseology of the bar, and particularly disliked it diluted by the presence of the other. ' What the devil does he want loafing about here all day?' mentally wondered Lord St. Just ; ' why on earth can't he dangle about after that sturdy princess and her little tame legion : they want him, perhaps — / don't, that's certain.

An d there's the band, too, at the Kirchberg, very nice, too, and quite in his line. Some people never can see when they're de trop.' He often talked French, to himself, and boldly, too ; on other people he tried the experi ment seldom or never, and there is no doubt he was undetected in his attempts. ' Humph ! I suppose he thinks I'm going to Two Fair Ladies. clear off just because 'e's come on the scenes,' was the inward grunt of Augustus. ' Wouldn't he like it f So with outraged feelings they glared at each other from behind their Allgemeine Zeitungs, as though either thought the other a poacher on his own particular preserves. And yet a fortnight ago neither of them had ever seen this girl, and the sum total of their united converse with her would not have amounted to forty hours. So they sat on ; and each swelled with righteous disgust at the bad taste and obtuse ness of the other, neither caring the least for the other's company, but fearful of leaving him to the possible enjoyment of their common object.

At last, however, Lord St. Just got up and marched away in despair, and after wandering ill humouredly round the garden for five minutes, set off for the Hotel Louisenbad for a pipe and book wherewith to while away dull care inde pendently of Miss de Saumerez. Naturally enough, upon the step he met her going out, having really only just made up her mind so to do. ' I thought you were going out long ago,' he said naively. ' No. I said, certainly, I was going out, but did not specify any time, and my remark was Ursula. 19 intended merely to stave off the royal family, whom yesterday I found just nine too many for me.' ' May I come, too V he asked, diffidently. ' Oh, certainly, if you want to,' she replied with prompt indifference. ' You can carry all these things — you see, I'm going to sketch.' So they started off through the little village streets, past the tiny shops reeking with carved brackets and other Alpine mementoes, past Buhler's,in whose window his own 'BadReichen hall und seine Umgebung ' enjoys such indecent monopoly, towards the clear, sweet and gentle Salah, St. Just triumphing gloriously over the consequent discomfiture of Augustus. ' Mr. Tidman and I have both sought you sorrowing,' he said presently, with great candour. ' I am very sorry ; but really there's no "call" for your swords to leap from their scab bards in this violent way at my lightest pre cautionary falsehood.

I shouldn't have come out even so soon as this, had it not been for that English girl who came last night having not ceased since breakfast to express her tune ful belief that " He will return, she knows he will." I left her holding the same views, though, unless I'm mistaken, he'll know better.' 2—2 Tivo Fair Ladies. ' I hope he will come back. Fancy if he left her there to die !' ' It would be a bore, certainly. She'd not make a nice corpse, would she V ' Not in this weather,' assented St. Just nastily. The jest was unsavoury, but they rewarded it with their facile laughter — he particularly. They had left the village behind, and passed along the road intervening between its straggling streets and the Salah, and now on the banks of the placid stream they paused under the over hanging boughs of the lindens, where Ursula decided to sit and make her sketch.

St. Just stretched his long length at her feet among the cool cyclamens, in blissful content and lazy comfort, and for some time neither said much. ' How long have you been here ?' asked he at length. ' About three weeks ; and if I stopped another I should petrify, or, like Lot's good lady, become a pillar of salt. That would be the more appropriate local sort of thing to do, wouldn't it ?' Again he laughed, not so much that her re mark was so very humorous, as that he was .in a good temper and rather wanted to laugh. ' However,' she continued, ' there's no fear of Ursula. 21 that, for I leave this place on my way to England next Thursday.' ' Really ?' he exclaimed, in unfeigned and half credulous surprise, sitting up the more fully to scan her countenance. ' You quite gave me the impression of being a confirmed Bohemian.

May I know in what part of England your home is?' ' I am going to the west,' she answered, with candid vagueness, and St. Just pursued his inquiries no further. He lay down again at her feet and destroyed a hundred cyclamens in the act. It was very pleasant there, underneath the domed arches of those ancient linden trees, that shaded them so sweetly from the hot glare of the great sun ; with the restful song of the calm river murmuring in their ears, and its cool smell mingling in their nostrils with a thousand other delicate and nameless odours into a de lightful and indefinable fragrance. Far away, the sharp-cut heights of the Bavarian Alps, and the rounder shoulder of huge old Hohenstaufen, stood out keen and distinct against the cloudless blue, hemming in the smiling valley-lands at their rugged feet.

It was one of those rare rich days of very early autumn that sometimes in England, and very often abroad, cast us all too willingly back into the royal summer-time, flattering us with a fleeting dream of warmth and light and colour. ' That reminds me,' said Lord St. Just, after a time, with the hopeless irrelevance so invariably introduced by that expression — ' that reminds me, I have frequently intended to ask you if you are related to the Derwents ? I used to know some of them very well, and de Saumerez is such an uncommon name.' 'Yes, I am some sort of a relation,' she replied, carelessly, not caring to say how near a one ; ' but the fact is, I know hardly anything about them, or indeed about any of my father's family.' Evidently she did not care for the subject, so they were silent again for a while.

After a long pause, however, she said, in con tinuation of the same discussion : ' England is to me, you know, the only really " foreign" country in Europe. At one time or another we have lived pretty nearly everywhere else ; but since I was seven or eight we have never been to tbe land of fogs and Saxons.' ' And yet you speak English perfectly,' said St. Just ; and honestly, too, for the slight, faint suspicion of some foreign accent only rendered her speech more charming. Ursula. 23 ' Pretty well, of course ; you see, it was the language I was first taught to speak in, and my mother and I always spoke it together, at least as much as Italian, and most of our nicest friends have been English.' She might have said ' my friends.' However, passing that by, he had found out that her mother had been an Italian, and this accorded well with her rich southern beauty, with the heavy masses of silky sable coiled round her dainty head, with the soft and liquid eyes, dark as still deep lakes fringed round with some strange dusky reeds.

As he had half guessed, doubtless this noble maiden was the child of that lovely southern lady for whom he had often heard Jack de Saumerez had been content to give up home and country, station and inheritance — nor, as St. Just looked at the daughter, could he marvel at the choice, if she were in anything like her luckless mother. 1 Have you always led this delicious Ishmael life of wandering everywhere your fancy takes you ? Have you never had a home ?' ' Europe is my home ; I've never had any other,' she answered, smiling. ' Roomy, at all events,' he replied, with his hearty laugh. That was all the talk that he could contrive to get upon this subject before the sketch was finished, and it didn't altogether satisfy him. St. Just had intended by hook or by crook to find out where her new abode was to be fixed, and with whom.

He had no idea of losing sight of that matchless face as suddenly as he had found it. She had come upon him in all her perfection of beauty like a divine and godsent revelation, and should he suffer the message to depart unread ? No ; he determined that he would find out more about her destination ; she had only told him that the ' west ' was where her home was to be — nay, she had not even said that, for he remembered she had answered his question indirectly — would she consider Shrop shire ' west V he wondered. Ursula, 25

Chapter IV

Just such a day as English autumns abound in, when first that humid season begins to show its grey face at the door. A light silent drizzle had succeeded an outright honest downpour, just enough to prevent going out and to pre clude all possibility of ' clearing up.' And yet it was not so much cold as comfortless, and indoors, although a fire was absolutely necessary for the sake of cosiness of appearance, it was really very oppressive if one ventured within feeling distance of it. And this was Ursula's first experience of our genial, mild and cheerful English climate. Three days ago she had left Reichenhall parched, dusty and summery ; there she had been en gaged in lazily picnicing under big umbrellas ; here, alas ! she found herself arrayed in a light travelling-gown, shivering and gloomy from the combined effects of rain in the air and total absence of sun.

AVell as she could speak English herself, it surprised her at first to hear railway-porters and cabmen speaking it almost equally so, and in spite of herself she wondered vaguely at their erudition. Last night she had parted on the platform of Euston Station from the snuffy old matron with whom, in compliance with St. Just's advice, she had travelled all the way from Reichenhall, their compact being that she, Ursula, should talk all outlandish tongues requisite on the journey, and in return for these services be protected by the matchless ugliness of Mr3. Dangerfield from any molestation on the way. And now here she was speeding along luxuri ously cowering among the soft cushions and warm rugs of a smart brougham, behind a pair of sleek thorough-breds, such as she had seldom seen abroad in the carriages of serene and royal highnesses.