Jinny Blake

Front matter

All rights reserved. BY- HANNAH LYNCH AUTHOR OF " DR VERMONT'S FANTASY," ETC. *' I must bury sorrow Out of sight, Must a little weep, love, (Foolish me) And so fall asleep, love, Loved by thee." — Browning. LONDON J. M. DENT & COMPANY ALDINE HOUSE AU DOCTEUR LEREBOULLET (de VAcaeUmie de Midicine de France) SOUVENIR RECONNA1SSANT ET AFFECTUEUX HANNAH LYNCH Paris, Fevrier CONTENTS CHAPTER FACE I Conspiracy ii II The Success of Perfidy A Meeting in Paris 21 III. IV. 3- A Meeting of School Comrades En Attendant 45 V. 55 VI Into the Land of Cervantes 74 VII VIII, Which Shows a Heroine Perplexed . In which the Heavy Father of Romance go Appears . io8 IX, At Torre Rosso 122 X, Miss Blake Cries Check to His Excellency of Usias . . . . . 140 XI A Visit to a Banker's on Behalf of a Destitute Nobleman— En route for Malaga ..... 1 58 XII.

XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. In which Pepe Appears in an Operatic Light And does Irretrievable Damage to His own 175 Cause 195 Showing the Nature of the Enemy's Plan Evasion . . . . . 207 211 The Truant's Return Befogged 231 CONTENTS 10 CHAPTER PAGE XVIII. Mr Nugent's Dismissal XIX. Humiliation . 247 252 XX. Bereavement as an Antidote XXI. The Last of Pepe . 266 289 XXII. The End of Jinny's Girlhood . 3o6 — W\A/v

Chapter I Conspiracy

Mr Blake, the popular tragedian, was engaged upon his late breakfast, when the lady in whose house he was that afternoon to lunch appeared. " Lady Jewsbury ! " he gasped, rising. Lady Jewsbury was too eager and upset to remember the formalities of greeting, and dropped into a seat in a dramatic way that at once announced disaster. It is a fine thing to record of two persons of opposite sexes, neither saints, and conscious of a very strong mutual admiration, that they met upon purely Platonic ground, and one would have shrank from crossing the hedge as sensitively as the other. Mr Blake, with his knuckles bent upon the table, stood and watched her apprehensively under knitted brows. " That girl of yours, Herbert ! She is quite crazy ; oh ! there is no doubt," Lady Jewsbury at length found voice to utter.

"Jinny! what has she done? Not proposed to elope with your footman, or start a young woman's League against tyrant man ! " k " Oh, worse, worse ! " Mr Blake bounded and blanched. " Worse ! you are jesting, Mary." " I wish I were. Did you ever know me to jest with you, Herbert ? " Her lids were lifted protestingly, and her hands went out in a pathetic gesture. He came round the table, and drawing near a low chair, took the complaining hands and nursed them very gently. "Jinny, I know, is what she describes herself, a tempestuous element," he said. " That is why your protection of her makes me your eternal debtor, dear friend, but, after all, there are limits to the aberrations of the most headstrong young girl. She hasn't run away, and there is nothing else that is irradicably serious that she can do."

" Give me time to collect my thoughts, Herbert. There, you have taken the chill out of my hands. I can talk now. But for your foolish prejudice against Jinny seeing you act, this would never have occurred." Mr Blake frowned, and compressed his upper lip between thumb and first finger in an angry gesture. This was a subject upon which he and his daughter had nearly quarrelled, and he did not care to discuss it again. " In all other things, Mary, I shall be proud and happy to follow your advice, but in this I am not to be advised. If I were in the middle of the first act, and I caught sight of Jinny in the theatre, I should instantly stop, and she would have to choose between sitting out the performance, and never seeing me again off the stage. I can rely on her honour not to expose me so horribly, but she must never ask for my consent to CONSPIRACY 13 that which years ago I made up my mind would never happen."

" Very well, you wouldn't let her see you as Benedict, and that delicious Marion Travers as Beatrice, so I had to take her to a lively theatre to restore her spirits. I unhappily chose the Strand. When we were coming down the stairs, your wild Irish girl must bolt — that's her eternal attitude. She is only happy when she is bolting from something or other. She was bolting from four young men who bored her — one would think she scented the wolf in man, and was afraid of being devoured prematurely. I was talking to Sir Harley Smith, and she eluded me, just as my attention was engaged upon one of his most caustic criticisms. Don't scold me, Herbert. I know my deficiencies as a chaperon. I have a fatal habit of losing sight of my care. Mrs Massey was listening to the sugary utter ances of Mr Digby Long, and there was Jinny sighing to break loose from the disputed attentions of four most eligible young men — one of them my brother.

Fifty thousand pounds unprotected and in revolt ! " She lifted her hands to the sides of her pretty head, and made a pretence to rock herself distractedly. " Down the stairs in front of us rushes the untamed creature — you saw her dress ! that lovely blue, and the white swansdown trimmed cloak. She looked like a bit of sky peeping out of a soft white cloud. On the edge of the pavement, it seems she fell into the arms — it wasn't a man — prepare for something much worse ! " " Worse than a man ! " shouted Mr Blake. " I must wait until I am damned to meet it." " No, no. A man would have brought her to her senses. It was one of those unfortunate creatures of the streets. You know how the Strand looks at night, when you come out of the theatre? so brilliant and naked in its devilish glamour." Mr Blake smiled.

He thought he had some know ledge of it. He nodded encouragingly. "Our Jinny carried her favourite bunch of loose roses, red and white, and the wretch demanded one insolently. Instead of rushing back to us, Jinny stood and offered her all the flowers, which pretty action brought better feelings into the creature's bosom. Jinny then pressed her to accept help, and the woman burst into tears. You know Jinny's way, Herbert ? " " Go on, Mary, for heaven's sake," muttered Mr Blake, devouring her with his eyes, and following the movements of her lips with his own. "She hadn't her purse, and just as we reached the hall, there she was, white and eager. ' Will anyone lend me a sovereign ? ' she was crying wildly, and of course six sovereigns were instantly produced by the six men of our party, and John insisted on escorting her.

He collapsed on sight of the object of her reckless charity. He saw what she was and that she was not sober at a glance, and was in time to prevent her getting more than one pound, handing her his card for use when she needed the rest. Will you believe it, even of Jinny ? she was for driving the woman home, either to her own vile lodgings or to my house. She actually cried in the carriage because it was forcibly demonstrated to her that she could do neither. John soothed her as well as he could, and made a thousand mad promises. We thought it ended there, but an hour after I had gone to my room Jinny came to me, CONSPIRACY 15 all dishevelled and distressed, in her blue frock and evening shoes. The pearls were even in her hair, and she was in a state of violent grief; she was still crying about that woman.

She railed and raved in the most extraordinary manner, accused God and man, and wanted to die and leave a world so miserable and wicked. She vowed she would never smile again, and propounded extravagant theories for the reform of this worn-out planet. Women were to be rescued by other women, the poor and trodden by the wealthy and honoured, and men were to be freed to take the oath of Arthur. All her money was to go to the support of the rescued outcasts, and she would sleep on a pallet and dine off bread and milk for the rest of her days. She even began to discuss a favourable site for the erection of her refuge. I spoke of the Magdalen Asylums, and she hurled thunder and lightning at me. That was not the method of reform she proposed, but the honourable help and friendship of honourable women.

Oh, I hear her still. Herbert, I solemnly assure you, I spoke to the desperate child as logically and seriously as if I were speaking for immortality in Hansard. At last I thought I had convinced her — I had more than convinced myself, I know, and I was so anxious that I had forgotten all about sleep. She left me, as I thought, reconciled to life, and convinced of the sound doctrine that out of evil cometh good, and that it is not for us to meddle with that which we cannot mend." "Well," pursued Mr Blake, seeing her pause for breath. " This morning at eight, my maid, preparing my bath, mentioned as a curious fact that though the sun was shining, she saw the dead glimmer of Miss Blake's candle through the chink of the door, and it was her belief that Miss Blake hadn't gone to bed that night.

I threw on my dressing-gown and went to Jinny's room. There was the candle, burnt nearly to its socket, and poor Jinny, a most woe-begone picture in her night bravery of blue gossamer and pearls, her white arms and shoulders bare and as cold as marble. She had sat up all night, had finished a letter to that young man in Dublin, and then had applied herself to the further disfigurement of her eyelids, which were horribly discoloured and swollen. The dear child was breaking her heart over the sorrows and degradations of her sex, and had sat up to cry over them all night. When I remarked upon the folly of tears, she tragically informed me that she would regard it as a crime on her part ever to smile again. She had thought much during her long vigil, and remembering my assertion that one could do nothing for the many, that men were strong, and that victims were necessary for our protection, that God and nature were leagued against the weak, that the world was a fretting weariness, and full of selfish ness, she was resolved to rush away from it, never to be happy any more, to give up all things she had hitherto loved, and devote the rest of her days to prayer and tears " " In a desert?

" Mr Blake smilingly inquired. " Its modern synonym — a convent." " Absurd ! I would never allow it." " Could you prevent it ? Remember, fortunately for men women rarely have strong wills, but when they have, my friend, it is not you or I or anyone else who can hope to prevent them from carrying out their CONSPIRACY 17 intentions. You were alarmed about that young fellow over in Dublin to whom she announced herself engaged " "Quite a low fellow, Mary — impossible. I rescued him in an evil moment from the obscurity of provincial journalism, and was foolish enough to place him on a pair of remarkably slim and ungrateful legs. Egad, if he expects to turn son-in-law on my hands " " It is not what he expects, but what she intends. The French is the only mind capable of grasping the fact. Ce que femme veut, etc.

If Jinny resolves to marry that young man she will do so, and you can't prevent her." Mr Blake remembered her mother, and wisely held his tongue. Had not she resolved to marry him years ago, and had she failed ? Possibly, he thought, irregular affections may be hereditary. "You know how thwarted romances usually end," pursued Lady Jewsbury, and eagerness brought out the strong American twang in her voice, while she fluttered her little hands. Mr Blake nodded compre hensively. He had peculiar reason for knowing how they end. " Exactly, you see it as I do. If parents wish to bring a lover to his or her senses, they have only one attitude to adopt with any reasonable promise of success — acquiescence. Take the offensive creature to your bosom, and appear to cherish him, and work the while subterraneously against him.

You may not succeed, but at least you will avert elopement, which resistance always provokes. I have thought the posi tion well out driving here. Herbert, if we appear to resist Jinny now, it will produce a catastrophe. It will precipitate her into the notion that she is a martyr, B and youth is violently prone to that attitude already without any assistance of ours. She will bolt for the cloister as under other circumstances she might take it into her head to bolt for Mr Nugent's arms." " I see. You wish me to appear to accede to her new project, and take it for granted that a girl of fortune cannot do better than shave her hair and wear a black sack for the rest of her days." Mr Blake's brows gathered thoughtfully, and his mind seemed concentrated upon the extremity of his crossed leg. " You forget the discipline, the lying in one's coffin at night, the perpetual silence, and the hilarious task of digging one's grave," suggested Lady Jewsbury, eyeing him in furtive malice, with a pretty sly little smile playing across her lips.

"My God !" shouted Mr Blake, jumping to his feet, an expression of unutterable horror painted upon his dramatic features. He saw the picture in one lucid, nervous flash of intelligence. Jinny apparelled in hues and folds of grotesque penitence, dumb, holy, dead, her sunny hair rased to the skin, her beautiful body bent over the half-dug grave, her soft hands hardening in the clutch of the spade, or at night her limbs stretched in the anticipated box. He sat down again shuddering, and kept his hands tightly crushed into his face. "We must conspire, Herbert. You have acted enough by night to be able to do a fine bit of acting by day. It is a tiresome task, I know. One likes to evade shop out of shop hours. But we are on the brink of catas trophe, and a step forward or backward may urge us down the abyss.

For Jinny in the trappings of penitence for CONSPIRACY 19 the sins of the world and sleeping in her coffin may be described as an abyss, with you and me left gazing dis consolately upon the verge. You know, Herbert, she is my girl too." Mr Blake squeezed her hand, and flushed delicately, which consciousness forced the impetuous lady to bite her underlip before proceeding to develop her perfidious plan for the girl's rescue. " I see the approaching interview. Jinny will come to you tragically ; she is nothing if not tragic in her present state. She will tell you that she is miserable, and that she intends to be still more miserable for life. You will try to soothe her in the usual paternal way, and then the mischief will come out. You are not to start or laugh. You must simply look grave and sympathetically concerned, — above all, Herbert, be sympathetic.

Listen to all her views, however mad she may appear to you. I know Jinny better than you do. She is desperately in earnest, and if you shocked her by ill-timed levity, above all, if you dashed her with one of your sex's superior smiles, off at a tangent she would be — God knows, perhaps chloroform or laudanum. She is capable of it, my friend. She would regard you as not only her deadly enemy, but the deadliest enemy of her sex, a still more awful crime. You twill then ask her to consider a step so grave and irrevocable in a tone to convince her that there could be no doubt of the fact of your reasonableness whatever the result of her consideration. This will touch her, for she is all heart and feeling, and she will probably fling herself into your arms and tell you that it is not for her own happiness that she is leaving you.

Refer then sympathetically to the feelings of that poor young man in Dublin. Your magnanimity at this point will utterly overcome her, so that when as a favour you beg she will defer her final decision for one little year, she will gratefully consent. Leave the rest to me. We shall both have the air of beautiful resig nation to her choice ; meanwhile I'll take care that she only sees the best of life. Not balls or parties — she hates them. But I'll bring her where comfortable, happy 'poor women may be seen — not here but in France. John shall be posted on the watch for every poor home where there are plenty of rosy, well-fed children and happy wives and sober husbands — the show establishments, in fact, of domestic life. John is a good conspirator, too, he will be invaluable through that unenthusiastic, convincing, and perfectly sincere air of his."

Mr Blake stared in admiration at his friend and leader. He lifted her hand to his lips, and murmured some phrase of compliance and subjugation and com plete gratitude. He was hers as well as Jinny, where upon Lady Jewsbury blushed sweetly and pressed his fingers.

Chapter II The Success Of Perfidy

Lady Jewsbury's plans succeeded. When Mr Blake arrived for lunch, Jinny came down, gloomy and reserved ; her features looked a little pinched, and her eyelids were still red. Mr Blake's heart ached at the sight of her. , Until now he had never seen her other than brilliant and laughing. In her present mood she might sit appropriately for the tragic Muse. What a surplus of exaltation and strong feeling she must have ! He devoutly prayed the fit might prove as evanescent as Lady Jewsbury had predicted. He looked sharply at both women from under his mobile brows, and thought that, on the whole, there is much comfort in the unintense and worldly type of woman, when there is plenty of good nature to keep her from selfishness or anything worse than cynicism of tongue. He could not imagine a pleasanter companion than Lady Jewsbury, or one more adorable in her beauty, more perplexing and disturbing than that girl of his.

To be mated to her for life ! The victim of her incalculable whims, her phases, her enthusiastically embraced and rapidly dis carded hobbies ! Well, on the whole, he was sufficiently impartial to conclude that the enviable fate of the young man destined to pluck and wear this very thorny rose upon his breast would be adequately tempered to teach him to keep his head in the height of his fortune. Jinny did not speak to him that day, and he was coward enough to thank his stars. He dreaded the interview, and was grateful for the postponement. She brooded in silence, and made her admirers, and worse still, poor Lady Jewsbury's danglers, very uncomfort able and nervous by her aspect of monumental misery. Mr John Trowbridge was the only person who kept his balance and his unperturbed reason. He was neither frightened nor hurt, and set himself to soothe her by music.

Gradually she grew to believe that man who could create such divine harmonies as those of the majestic Germans could not be wholly bad. But her purpose was as firm, though less impassioned. She saw herself going through the preliminaries dutifully but unshaken, a martyr with her eyes fixed upon the stake, and she came to glory in the imposed trial. When she had written her farewell letter to Nugent, she felt braced to face the final interview with her father. It was after lunch, and she asked him to come to her room. Mr Blake shivered slightly, and looked a moment into Lady Jewsbury's eyes for nerve and courage. In the play of that lady's eyebrows and lips he read his instructions, and followed. " Has Lady Jewsbury told you of my resolution, papa ? " Jinny asked, when the door was shut. Mr Blake sat, and she remained standing.

Lady Jews bury had not prepared him for this question, but he decided on his own responsibility to answer truth fully. " I was waiting for you to speak, Jinny, and I respected your silence. Of course Lady Jewsbury mentioned your communication to her." " And you will not oppose me ? " " My dearest child, I must bend before your prin ciples, even at the price of my own happiness." " Oh, papa, how good you are to me ! " poor Jinny cried, almost ashamed of the trial of his goodness she contemplated. " But it is not to please myself that I am about to give you so much pain. Papa, I am not selfish, am I ? " she asked, and her lips quivered anxiously. Mr Blake had an arrowy thought for the perspicacity of his friend and conspirator below as he drew her to him. " You are a dear, dear girl, Jinny, full of feeling and truth.

But we must not be precipitate in a matter so vitally important, eh, my darling? We will think a little longer. For myself I do not urge it, but to guard against change or error " " Papa, there can be no change. I am not mistaken. See how conscientious I have been. Before speaking to you I have taken an entire week to think the matter out. Oh, if I were not sure of myself " "Jinny, remember there is somebody else to be thought of besides you and myself. There is that poor young fellow in Dublin to whom you have engaged yourself. He loves you, I am sure, very devotedly. It is true he is not the kind of man a girl in your position ought to marry, but love is a very serious thing. In spite of the wishes of her parents, my beautiful Ethna, your dear mother, Jinny, married me because she loved me, and I am forced to remember what my own grief was when I lost her before the prospect of Mr Nugent's loss of you.

That is why I would ask you to think of him." Jinny lifted her head from her father's breast, and gazed at him radiantly. She knew his ambition for her, and this magnanimous defence of an undesirable son-in-law melted her in an overwhelming tenderness for her father. She was touched beyond speech, and tears broke under her lids as she bent nearer to kiss his cheek. Wise Lady Jewsbury ! Admirable tactician ! This was not a card of himself he would ever have dreamed of playing, and, as she had calculated, it won the day. " Papa, my dear papa, you are very generous," she moaned softly, in an indefinable feeling of self-censure. " Not generous, my darling, only just," said the con spirator, in turn humiliated by her guilelessness and his own borrowed ingenuity. " What would you have me do ? " she asked.

" My proposal is a very simple one. Instead of entering a convent at once, as doubtless you desire to do, defer it for a year. A year is a very small matter fronting a lifetime. You will travel with Lady Jews bury, and see something more of the world before quitting it for ever. If your vocation be firm, this will not shake it but confirm it. Then Mr Nugent cannot say that he has been badly used " " But I have broken off with him. Whether or no, I know I should never have married him. I can't explain it, papa, but we made each other very unhappy. Either the woman should manage the man, or he should manage her. I would not let anyone manage me ; I would scorn to stoop to manage anybody. There, you have the situation. A betrothed girl restive and in revolt, and a complaining lover." Inwardly Mr Blake exulted.

Outwardly he appeared distressed for the young fellow in Dublin, and urged the necessity for treating him fairly. The bigger the prize, the crueller its hasty withdrawal, which sugges tion of course sent Jinny's brows up in frantic indignation, and brought a proud flame to her white cheeks. But Mr Blake had his way, and he was promised that poor Mr Nugent, for whom his heart bled, should have fair treatment, and be rejected upon no rash impulse. She would consent to go abroad with Lady Jewsbury, officered by that admirable guide, Mr John Trowbridge, and at the end of a year she would become a Trappist in the South of France. Looking at her, so rash and impetuous, so vividly alive to all the joys of the senses, so lovely and so loving in spite of pride and prejudices, Mr Blake curled his fine mouth into arch question and lifted an unconvinced eyelid.

He anticipated a different ending of the year. Discoursing upon the unutterable one in Dublin, Lady Jewsbury said to Mr Blake that evening : — " He is not a gentleman, and of course he racks her nerves and tortures her sensibilities. Being Irish, I can imagine him a bag of nerves and humours, and the unhappy creatures naturally have their ideals. That's the curse of young humanity. Your man of ideals wants a bloodless young woman who will pose on a pedestal without food or laughter. There is nothing more opposed to the ideal than good meat and honest laughter. And the young woman of ideals forms a part for her lover to play, and should he be human and sensible, and refuse to act up to it, there is her frail bark wrecked on the shores of reality, and the heroine plunged in the abysmal depths of woe."

Lady Jewsbury was a shrewd tactician, and proposed to drop her victim softly down the slope of forgetful ness. She took her to Ostend, where the sun shone comfortably, but did not dazzle, and where people were not aggressively joyous. She showed her Brussels and the field of Waterloo, and Mr Trowbridge was there to allay any foolish ardour in nature. She brought her to Strassburg, and then down to Rheims, where Mr Trowbridge was mildly humorous, and recited " The Jackdaw." And then the judicious commander saw signs of convalescence, and down she marched her army upon fair Lutetia. Paris ! The mere name is enchantment, and drew Miss Blake rapturously forth at dawn to renew acquaintance in a solitude peopled with kindly memories, with the old joyous scenes of school-life. The city was waking to a lovely summer sunrise, and the sight sparkled like wine through her veins, and sent her with excited cheeks down the long empty boulevards and streets.

She was into the heart of the city, each view a delight, each breath a joy. Even the cafes, blinking haggardly after a noisy night, had no meanness for her. She radiantly inspected troops of young folk, students and grisettes, pouring in every direction in pursuit of breakfast and business, and caught the laughing salutations tossed from one side of the pavement to the other on the morning breeze. It was a delicious draught, she felt, untainted, unsaddened; and sped straight for the river. She was on her way to Notre Dame, but countless objects held her wander ing attention, and checked her devout pilgrimage. The streets were now alive, and the verdure of Paris melted with the domes and spires of the distant edifices upon a blazing horizon. The sun was out of its bandages of voluptuous clouds, and shot powdered glory upon the thrilled earth.

Every pause in the hum and murmur of humanity was a revelation of the upper music of the world, and the Seine broke the uniformity of the streets like a silver thread unwound beneath green foliage. She stood on the Pont Neuf, and watched the water gather blue from the mounting sun, with no thought of scared companions or the perplexities of Mr Trow bridge, who lay awake thinking of her. Not that he had dropped into sentimental musings, but he was disturbed in his cold criticism of her. As a study he found her aboundingly stimulating. He enjoyed the tones of her Irish voice, and strove to recall the way she dropped her words with each sentence. Had she stood before the bar of his judgment upon no other claim than undeniable beauty, he would have dismissed her with the remark that she was more vivid and fuller blooded than the American girl.

But he would, perhaps, have lingered a moment over a certain way she had of lifting her eyelids, on the lovely curve of her upper lip, and on her delightful smile, which gave her face the sudden warmth of sunshine. There were many points about her on which memory would be sure to linger with feelings of pleasure and loss. But there were other more tantalising influences. Her voice thrilled him, and he never tired of watching her movements. He had never before seen a woman walk quite so straight and so rapidly with grace, and when she bent, it was like the sail of a ship breasting the wind. For comparison with her you were forced to nature. She seemed to carry with her all elemental suggestions. She was in exquisite union with the free winds and the flowers in the open air, and to think of her was to reject the notion of all things artificial.