'On London Stones.'

Front matter

"ON LONDON STONES." ' On London Stones." BY Catherine March ("CARL SWERDNA"), Author of "Jasper Felladew's Romance," "King Roughbeard," "Cruel Kindred," "The Organist of St. Bride's," "A Long Lane," "Cherry Blossom," "A Year Between," &c, &c. London : JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. 1897. Contents. CHAP. PAOE I. — A Letter and an Accident ... ... ... 1 II. — Her Ladyship's Disclosure ... ... ... 14 III.— Randal Lowry 30 IV. — An Odd Coincidence... ... ... ... 44 V.— " And You Did Not Eemember ? " 56 VI. — Leon Varondie... ... ... ... ... 70 VII. — Ninon's Neighbour ... 85 VIII.— The Lovers 99 IX. — Father and Daughter 112 X.— "I Have Not One Friend" 127 XL— The Rout of Lady Jane 141 XII.— The Major's Visitor 156 XIIL— A Golden Day 171 XIV.— A Shock 185 XV.— A Slight Disagreement 197 XVI.—" When is the Marriage to be?" 210 XVII.- The Emeralds 221 XVIII.— "Not English, is She?" 238 XIX.— "I Will Tell Her" 251 XX.— Warned 263 XXI.— " In the Hollow of My Hand " 277 XXIL— Betrayed ... . 288 XXIII.— Tragedy 303 XXIV— Lady Jane Does Her Duty 316 XXV.— " She is Gone !

" 326 XX VI— What the Papers Told 333 XX VII— After the Storm 343 XXVIII.— Utterly Mistaken 359 XXIX.— The Only Way Out 374 XXX.— " I Leave Her to You " "On London Stones."

Chapter I

A Letter and an Accident Nothing, in a small and insignificant way, could have been more unwelcome to the Major than that note from Lady Jane. His journey up from South ampton through the bitter January day had been chilly and comfortless ; he was tired and cold and a little out of spirits — for it was hardly likely that he would ever see old Luttrell again — and in that condition had naturally been looking forward to the comfort of his cigar and book beside his bachelor fire. He would smoke and read away the evening pleasantly, he had thought, until Blake brought up the supper which that best of servants and caterers would have ready for him. As for any business which might have accumulated during his fortnight's absence, it should wait until to-morrow. And now, waiting for him, catching his eye before his gloves were even off, there lay, in the ruddy circle of light cast by his reading-lamp, insistent upon notice, routing his anticipated quiet, this letter of Lady Jane !

The Major frowned, unbuttoning his overcoat, looking at the envelope. It was a large envelope, thick, pink, and faintly scented, and directed in such a big, loose hand that the three words of its superscription — "Major Jocelyn Woodcourt" — sprawled across it from corner to corner. It had no further address, so had evidently been sent by hand ; from which it might be deduced that her ladyship had some urgent reason for desiring to communicate with her kinsman as soon as might be. The Major, deducing as much, with the readiness of frequent experience, frowned more, for her ladyship's epistles were mostly urgent ; their mood was usuaUy imperative, their matter voluminous, their fre quency more than monotonous — and they had, more over, the further unpleasant peculiarity, when addressed to this recipient, of invariably wanting something.

" H'm ! " said the Major, with a good deal of expression. "Blake." " Sir ? " Blake, turning from one of the narrow, small-paned windows over which he was drawing and arranging the curtains, brought his hand to his forehead in a mditary salute, and stood with a pair of shoulders as square as his master's, a soldier from head to heel. A spare, grizzled man of perhaps fifty, deeply bronzed and burnt by the blazing Indian sun, he looked older than his age, as Anglo-Indians mostly do. Such was also the case with the Major, who might have added another decade to his six-and-thirty years, had he been so disposed, without much fear of rousing suspicion in anybody. His lank-cheeked brown face was at its oldest just now as he frowned, holding out Lady Jane's perfumed pink note. " When did this come ?

" "About an hour ago, sir. It was brought by her ladyship's man." " I see it has been brought. How did her ladyship know I was at home ? " " Beg your pardon, sh ; her ladyship did not know it. Simcox was to ask, he told me, if you were back or were expected back to-night, as, if not, he was to bring the note away, and her ladyship would write down to Southampton. Hearing that you had wired, giving me the train you meant to take, he left it." " Anything else ? " " Only that her ladyship particularly wished you should have it as soon as you arrived, sir. It was important, I understood." " Ah ! " said the Major, as he tore open the note. " Humph ! What's the matter now, I wonder r1 " The question was not addressed to the man, but his face assumed an expression as though he could very well have answered it, for the terms existing between himself and her ladyship's man were of a friendly and confidential character, and what is it that one's servants do not know ?

In fact, Simcox, in delivering his lady's missive, had been communicative, and had freely called somebody a fool. Unconscious, the Major sat down in his arm-chair, his overcoat still on, opened the pink sheet of scented paper, and bent his brow over it in the light of the lamp. Lady Jane's sprawhng and untidy caligraphy had at least one atoning merit — it was particularly easy to read. This especial epistle had another and a most unusual one — it was short. Mt dear Jocelyn, — I beg and implore you to come to me without the delay of an instant. I am in the greatest possible distress and perplexity about Randal, and must consult you at once. I cannot possibly enter into what is the matter, but I am literally distracted. Pray come the moment you receive this. — Your attached and afflicted, Jane Lowkt.

" Humph ! " said the Major as before. " Eandal, eh ? What's he been up to, I wonder ? It was cards last time, I remember ; and the time before a barmaid. Taking things in their regular turn I should say it's probably cash." He said it with a certain phlegm, for he had known her ladyship to be distracted on a variety of previous occasions, and nothing in particular had ever come of it. He even grinned irreverently as he re-read the letter with its thick black dashes under almost every other word, bespeaking the energy and agitation of the writer, and finally put it into his pocket. Then he got out of his chair and glanced at his watch. "What time's supper, Blake ? " " You said nine, sir." " True, so I did. And now it's half-past seven." He buttoned his coat again. " Her ladyship wants to see me," he said, explanatorily.

" I'll run round, I think." " To-night, sir ? " " Tes. I shall be busy to-morrow, and if I go to night — well, I can't stay long, don't you see?" said the Major, with a good deal of expression again. "Just so, sir." If Blake did " see," he gave no sign. No approach to a smile broke the wooden stolidity of his features, although he, too, in his way, had his experience of Lady Jane. " Shall I call a cab, sir ? " " No. I shall get one in the Strand. Nine sharp, mind." He took up his hat and left the room, descending the stairs of the quiet, staid, demure old house where he had pitched his tent three years ago, when he and India and "the Service" had said good-bye to each other. It stood in a quiet, staid, demure old square between the Strand and Holborn, not far from Lincoln's Inn, and suited his simple, unfashionable taste far better than the grander quarters which his friends in general, and Lady Jane in particular, were fond of urging upon him would ever have done.

" It was not the sort of thing people expected, really ! " her ladyship protested complainingly, with a petulance to which she was sometimes prone. " He ought to recollect that he was what one might call a rich man, and act accordingly." But the Major, though the best tempered and most obliging of men in a general way, and accustomed from habit to let his kinswoman lecture him as she would, had a vein of obstinacy in him, and in this matter paid no attention to people whatever, stubbornly choosing to take his own way. " So odd ! But then Jocelyn always was so obstinate ! " said Lady Jane. The Major made his way into the Strand, arrested the first crawling hansom he saw, got in, and gave the address — an address which was one of the many crosses in the lot of his kinswoman, who bitterly rebelled against the flat near Victoria, which was the best estab lishment her means would afford.

She had never expected it, she said. And, indeed, when she married Robert Lowry — the wealthy financier, speculator, who could tell what ? — no one had expected or even con sidered the possibility of his dying a ruined man, and leaving his widow little for her support beyond her comparatively slender jointure. But he had so died, and Lady Jane resented it with a sense of wrong and injury which time did httle to wear out ; for, in her way, she was a perfectly frank woman, and, neither to her husband in his lifetime nor to her friends now that he was dead, had she ever made the least secret of why she had married the vulgar, clever, ambitious, middle aged man. It may be that she had had her httle romance before he came in her way, but she had not a penny, and her spendthrift, out-at-elbows, not too reputable old father could not give her one; and, romance or no, she was not at all unwilling to accept Robert Lowry and his money when they were offered to her.

She had been a handsome girl in those days, although her blonde good looks had faded early, and he had been honestly in love with her. She took him then, not unwillingly, even with a sense of escape and gratitude to Pate, and was totally incapable of under standing that he cut a much better figure in the tran saction than did she. And now that he had died and left her poor, she had never forgiven him. The Strand, thronged just at that hour with theatre goers, was crowded ; the Major's cab, threading its course among multitudinous vehicles of all kinds, and mobs of hurrying foot-passengers, could make way but slowly. Quite resigned to his dilatory progress — for the longer the time he consumed in getting to Lady Jane the shorter would be the time he could devote to listening to her — he leant comfortably back upon its cushions, idly wondering what Randal had been up to now, and if it was cash, how much cash ?

It was a personal question, for if it were supplied at all he knew that it must be out of his own pocket. And it would not be for the first time, nor the second. "It's a thousand pities," said the Major, half-aloud, pulling thoughtfully at the big moustache, whose black ness seemed to make his lean, tanned face look browner, — " it's a thousand pities that the boy hasn't got some thing to do. Bad thing for a young fellow — nothing to do with his hands but to empty his pockets — bad. thing! But it's too late now I suppose — I'm afraid it is. I wish he'd settle down. Upon my life, I half wish that Lowry hadn't left me guardian and trustee and all the rest of it. Por it makes me feel, in a sense, responsible for him, and yet — Hullo ! What's that ? " The Major pulled the checkstring, and the cab drew up by the kerb, the cabman looking down in wonder at this abrupt stoppage.

They were abreast of one of the many narrow turnings leading down to the Embank ment, and the rapid gathering of a little crowd of foot passengers had attracted the Major's attention and caused both his exclamation and his halt. As he threw back the cab door and jumped out a policeman saunt ered up, slow and dispassionate. " Anything wrong, sir ? " " I saw a woman fall, I think," said the Major, hurriedly. " She was walking quickly, almost running, and seemed to catch her foot and stumble. See what it is. She may be hurt." The policeman unceremoniously shouldered his way in among the knot, and the Major followed. He had been quite right ; his hasty glimpse had not misled him. Down on the pavement, not too clearly seen in the flickering light of an adjacent lamp, lay the black clothed figure of a woman.

Quick in all his move ments, he stooped on his knee and lifted it, supporting the head against his shoulder. It dropped back inertly. " She is hurt, I'm afraid, constable — seems insen sible. Show your light here, will you ? " " Humph ! " said the pohceman, with a grunt of cynicism. " Drunk, most likely, sir." But he showed the light, and his voice changed as its gleam fell on the white face. " Hardly looks it, either," he said. " Isn't that blood, sir ? " " Yes. Drunk ? Pooh ! You fellows are too fond of your ' drunk,' it strikes me. She must have struck her head upon the kerb in falling. I thought as much. Get me some brandy, one of you, will you ? Look sharp." A couple of men in the little throng rushed away. The Major, altering his position as little as he could, got his handkerchief out of his pocket.

" It is a bruise more than a cut, I fancy," he said ; " I'll wipe away the blood if I can, we shall see better what it is. She is quite insensible. Poor girl ! Poor little creature ! 1 hope the hurt is not much." Now the Major, had he been asked, could not have given any cogent reason for the use of either of these epithets, for what his burden was really like he knew not at all— that one gleam of the policeman's lantern having given him no impression whatever, beyond one of palhd insensibility. But the figure felt so small and slight in his arms, so light as it rested against him, that he used them involuntarily. A thick gossamer veil of many folds was wound about the small, plain head-covering, which might have been either hat or bonnet — certainly he did not know which — and he gently pushed it aside and wiped away the spot or two of blood.

Another flash of the policeman's lantern showed the graze or cut on the forehead from which they had sprung, but no other injury. " It's a bruise ; I thought so," said the Major, replacing the handkerchief. " Think it's a hospital case, sh ? " inquired the policeman, indifferently. " I don't think so. Here is the brandy. Hold her, will you ? I think I shall be handier over giving it than you will." The Major's habit of command, acquired during the fifteen years of his soldier's hfe, was insensibly his habit still. The constable obeyed, as humanity in general obeys when it is only commanded with suffi cient authority. He knelt down, received the insen sible figure, and supported it while the brandy was administered. The Major was quick and dexterous — he had had to perform a similar task many times before — and a gasp and spasmodic movement of the throat and shoulders followed his efforts in a moment or two.

Another interval, and the eyes opened, staring wide and blank, dark and large in the shadow. The Major waited until they withdrew from their vaguely wild look upon the hovering circle of figures and faces and fastened with some reviving intelligence upon his own. " It is all right," he said then, slowly and distinctly. " You fell, and hurt your head a little. Try to swallow this again. That's brave ! Now let me see if you can stand. Let me lift you." " Yes. I'm not hurt, I think. Thank you." The voice was stronger than he had expected to hear, though ft was dull and low, and the eyes still bewildered and confused. But she had recovered her faculties and motion sufficiently to make a mechanically responsive movement as he raised her. He kept his arm about her, feeling that she clung with both hands to his support.

"You will be better directly," he said, with cheerful reassurance, feeling that she began to suddenly tremble from head to foot. " A tumble like that gives one's nerves a shock, doesn't it ? Did you shp ? " " No. I was hurrying — it was later than I thought, and I did not see the kerb." She answered docdely like a child, looking up at him and seeing his face far better than he saw hers, for the policeman's lantern was at her shoulder, and so shone upon it full. " You are very kind," she said. " Thank you. I shall be able to walk directly." "Walk?" echoed the Major. "No, no," he said, kind and peremptory, and quite sure that she was very young — some little delicate workgirl, most likely, poor child ! — " you must not talk about walking, my dear. There's a cab here — I was in it when I saw you fall — and it shall take you home.

Is it very far ? " " Yes. I don't know how far, but a long way," she answered, in the same confused, mechanical tone. " A long way ? Then most certainly walking is not to be thought of. Give me that brandy again, Bobby, and just bring the cab round here, will you ? I think she is all right now." She was, at any rate, sufficiently so to decline the brandy, which she did with a little shudder of disgust ; but she made no protest or objection when she was gently lifted and placed in the cab. The Major, carefully closing the door, bent forward to speak to her. " Shall I draw up the window, or do you think the air will be better for you ? The air ? Very well. I'll tell the man to drive carefully, and you will be all right by the time you get there. You'd better go the quietest ways, I think, cabby ; her nerves are upset, poor child And now, where is it that he is to take you, my dear ?

" She murmured an address. The Major, who had no idea of where it might be, never having heard it before in his life, repeated it, parrot-like, for the benefit of the cabman as he gave him a fare generous enough to have certainly ensured the careful driving which he had recommended. The cab rolled away with a passing glimpse of a white face and dark eyes leaning back upon the cushions ; and the Major and the policeman were left standing side by side at the street corner as the little crowd thinned away. " Where is that place ? Do you know ? " the former asked, as he took out a cigar for the benefit of himself and some silver for the benefit of the policeman. Receiving it with a touch to his helmet, the man nodded. " Meaning the address that the young woman gave, sh ? It's north, over Islington way, not far from the Angel, I fancy, but I couldn't say any nearer than that.

Call you another cab, sir ? " " No ; here comes one, I think. Good night." The approaching cab drew up at his signal ; he got in, and was driven off at a pace smart enough to make up for this unexpected delay, reaching Lady Jane's without any further hindrance. Glancing at his watch as he entered the hf t, he found that it was already past eight o'clock. The Major shrugged his shoulders resignedly. Even if her ladyship were for once as brief as she was sure to be voluble, still it would be well-nigh impossible to be back by nine, and the supper would meet a fate which no meal of Blake's producing deserved to meet. " Almost a pity I didn't put it off until to-morrow, after all," he thought. " Won't say that though. I was just in time to see after that poor little woman. Hope she'll get home all right.

Perhaps I ought to have gone with her ? Never thought of that." Lady Jane was in the habit of complaining of her residence, being unable to forget the two or three splendid establishments of which she had been unstress in her husband's lifetime ; but to unprejudiced eyes it was a very compact, cosy, and comfortable domicile — the position good, the rooms large, airy, and handsome. If they had a fault it was that they were rather too ornate in their furniture and decorations ; but Lady Jane was fond of luxury of all kinds, and delighted in many soft pillows and voluminous draperies. The Major was shown into a small apartment opening off the drawing-room — a retreat in which he had enjoyed many a confidential conclave with his kinswoman — and was shut up there and left to his own devices until she should appear.

A bright little fire crackled in the festooned fireplace, and he approached it, unbuttoning the heavy overcoat which he had not removed ; since his long residence in India he had always been sensitive to cold. He pushed aside, with his elbow, some of the multitudinous trifles which littered the mantelshelf, and, leaning so, stood looking down into the blaze as he waited. If her ladyship were really as distracted as she represented herself, he thought, she would probably not be long. The candles in fancy sconces and upon fancy brackets, which were grouped about the mirror above the shelf, reflected not only all the fittings and drapings of the pretty and luxurious little nook, but reflected also the Major's face and figure. Their brilliance had no mercy upon him. They made his sunburnt, lank-cheeked face thinner and browner ; showed the premature streaks of grey in the dense blackness of his close-cropped hair and in the heavy moustache which followed the outline of his hps in a drooping and melancholy curve; emphasized the disfigurement of the long scar which seamed his left cheek almost from the eye to the mouth — the result of a furious slash from a hillman's sword in one of the many border skirmishes of which his Indian experiences had been full ; insisted upon it that his eyes were of no particular colour, being neither black nor grey nor blue, and gave an aspect additionally dark and sombre to a face that was dark and sombre enough already.

And yet, in spite of these manifest drawbacks, and notwithstanding the leanness and gauntness of his powerful wiry figure, which had not an ounce of superfluous flesh about it anywhere, there were, curiously, some few people who did not stigmatise the Major as ugly. Indeed, these professed to find something oddly attractive in his grave tanned face, something distinguished in his erect soldierly bearing, and had even been known to declare that he looked exactly like Don Quixote. For his own part he was not given to think much about his looks, one way or the other, having long ago accepted the fact that he was unquestionably ugly, and being serenely indifferent to the effect of the livid hne of the sword-cut across his cheek, at which Lady Jane had screamed when she saw it first. He withdrew his eyes from the fire presently, and stared at his own reflection without seeing it in the least, wondering again what Randal had been " up to," and if Randal's mother, her distraction remembered, would keep him waiting much longer.

But he had not had time to grow impatient when the rustling of feminine draperies made itself audible, the curtain which shrouded the entrance to the drawing-room was pulled aside, and Lady Jane appeared.

Chapter II

Her Ladyship's Disclosure. " Mt dear Jocelyn, how very, very good of you to come to me at once like this. You really are most kind." Lady Jane, advancing with both her hands out stretched, and with a little tremulous gush of manner which was, perhaps, rather too youthful for her fifty years, resembled her kinsman and distant cousin in at least two points of her appearance, for, like him, she was tall, and, like him, she was thin ; but, unlike him, she was fair. In her girlish days, when in the full bloom of her short-lived blonde beauty, it had been said of her that she was too fair, that her blue eyes wanted depth, her flaxen hair lustre, her skin colour. What had certainly been true of her in her youth was doubly true of her in her middle age. Her face, almost unlined still, and handsomely aquiline in feature, was painfully bloodless, only the faintest trace of red mark ing the outline of her small, straight mouth ; her abun dant hah had lost its flaxen hue without becoming grey — it had faded into a neutral something that was not white, that was not anything ; her blue eyes were so faint and pale that they might have seemed to lack any decided colour at all but for the emphasis lent by the adroitly darkened lashes which surrounded them.

She was always richly dressed, never too youthfully, and had an art of making a general impression of elegance and handsomeness to which many women, far her superiors in wealth and personal attraction, could not, somehow, attain. For the rest, she was not clever, and made no pretence of cleverness, but had a certain appealing grace and charm of manner which pleased almost universally, and possessed as httle heart as ever fell to the lot of woman, perhaps. But nearly every body liked her, and pitied her for the poverty which she deplored with such a touching, open frankness, feeling that for her husband to die so inconsiderately ruined was not what such a woman had had a right to expect. If there was a reverse side to the smiling and amiable shield which her ladyship showed to the world, it was only the few who knew her very well indeed who were aware of the incongruity.

Randal Lowry, her son, whom she loved with the greedy, jealous maternal passion often curiously seen in otherwise totally un loving women — Randal, whom she had loved and spoilt from his babyhood, and who knew her more than veiy well — had once said that his mother had two moods, the effusive for ordinary use and the frozen for special occasions, and that it was in the latter that the genuine woman came out. Perhaps the only person who knew her better still was the Major, who was exceedingly penetrative in his quiet, grave way, and had long since grasped the neglected truth that the weak can be both crueller and colder than the strong. He was not puzzled by his kinswoman, therefore, though amused by her often. She touched and tickled a dry sense of humour that was in him — -the more so because of the utter absence of any such sense in herself.

For him it must be admitted that she had a sort of contempt, regarding him with an indulgent tolerance upon which she secretly plumed herself as a very creditable senti ment, and with an involuntary, unwilling respect that almost touched dishke. Possibly the Major, being thus penetrative, guessed as much, but no trace of the know ledge ever appeared in his behaviour— his manner to her, as to all women, being always one of grave and deferential politeness. The effusive side, the charming side, the ordinary side of her ladyship, was the side that was uppermost now as she advanced, a stately figure in the handsome black robes which were her usual wear, and held out her two thin white delicate hands. Some men — plenty of men — would have tenderly kept them, merely as an act of deference to a lady in distress, who was still young enough — as what woman is not ? — to appreciate the offering of masculine sympathy.

The Major, though he made her his stiff soldierly bow, only gave them both a brief, business-like shake and let them go again. "I came as soon as I read your note," he said, "which was as soon as I got home. Knowing that I should most likely have no time to spare to-morrow, it seemed the best thing to do." " So very kind of you ! " said Lady Jane. She sat down, carefully arranging the fall of her skirts — she might be distracted, her state of mind might baffle language, but to forget how she looked, or to be indifferent to the effect she made, was an impossibihty to her — and made him a little sign with her hand to take another chair over against her. " I appreciate it, Jocelyn — I do assure you that in my state of distress I feel it. I do indeed." " Not at all," said the Major, politely and vaguely.