Victims

Front matter

Cloth, Gilt Top, 2S. "Autumn Leaf" Tinted Hand-made Paper, is. 6d. The Modern L" Charming pocket series." — Globe. IljRAlvY. "Its binding, size, paper, and all other adjuncts are charming."— Athenæum. L— A LATTER DAY ROMANCE. By Mrs. MURRAY HICKSON. "A very pleasant little story." — Literary World. "Dramatic power and artistic finish. . . . The book is good literature. It possesses distinction of style, force of expression, and quickness of insight, and is thoroughly interesting." — Speaker. 2. -THE WORLD'S PLEASURES. By CLARA SAVILE-CLARKE. " Forcible and fearless, while never overstepping the bounds of delicacy and decorum. " — Daily Telegraph. The book is cleverly written." — Queen. 3.— A NAUGHTY GIRL. By J. ASHBY STERRY. [fust Published. 4.— "HEAVENS!" By ALOIS VOJTECH SMILOVSKY. A Bohemian Novel, translated from the Czech by Professor Mourek, of Prague University, and Jane Mourek. [Ready Dec. 31st, '93. 5.— A CONSUL'S PASSENGER.

By HARRY LANDER. [Ready fan. 31st, '94. (OTHER VOLUMES ARE IN PREPARATION.) Victims BY THE SAME AUTHOR A Merciful Divorce OPINIONS OF THE PRESS The SPECTATOR says : " Mr. Maude's book .... comes as a pleasant relies. Altogether " the book is lively, and thoroughly readable from cover to " cover." " Decidedly a book to read." — Nat. Observer. " Describes a run with hounds admirably, and a race as well "or even better . . . carefully thought out . . . freshness in " the style." — Saturday Review. " Interesting enough to hold the attention of the reader from "start to finish." — Review of Reviews. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. Published by Bliss, Sands and Foster Victims By F. W. MAUDE BLISS SANDS LONDON is, CRAVEN STREET AND STRAND, W.C FOSTER VICTIMS.

Chapter I. On

a fine summer evening, early in the eighties, a punt containing two persons floated down the smooth current of Father Thames. Recumbent among the cushions in the stern lay a handsome woman. Opposite to her a man sat smoking. His face indicated a puzzling combination of strong will and scornful indolence; of passion and fastidiousness ; of power of appreciation, even enthusiasm, and sceptical incredulity. For thirty odd years John Musgrave of Swaledale had sauntered through life, finding most things easy and uninteresting, politely satirical at the tedium of existence on the surface, in his heart a vague unrest and craving for excitement which prompted him to try the narcotic effect of dangers that disappointed, and follies he condemned. The society of the lady opposite had been a folly, never a danger.

Now they were excellent friends, with the delightfully frank relationship of people who know and sympathise with each other's faults. In the pauses of their conversation Lady Southcourt's fingers played with the strings of her guitar, and she hummed, in a sympathetic contralto voice, snatches of plantation songs and quaint, passionate Spanish melodies. As the last notes of Palonna died away she put down her instrument and nestled cosily amongst the cushions. VICTIMS. 8 " Somebody told me, John, that you will not stand again, and intend to cut politics for the future. Is it true ? Are you as tired of them as of all the other things you have done well — hunting, shooting, writing, making love? As desillusionne with your work in the House as you are — say with me ?" " Don't wrong yourself by the comparison.

The House is dull, ugly, vulgar. It is impossible that I could ever have been rude enough to detect such qualities in you. Because you found my whims and abominable temper a nuisance, you have no right to impeach my good taste. You should be grateful that I accepted my conge with such good grace, not incite me to rebel against my successor." "A truce to compliments. I am in earnest. Of course I never interested you seriously. I was only one of your experiments. I never quite understood you. I get tired of sailing on water I cannot fathom. It frightens me when the pole does not touch the bottom. You were rather formidable and fatiguing. I did try to live up to you." " For goodness sake don't accuse me of trying to set you a good example. I don't fancy the role of the censorious reprobate." " No, you were only like a novel of the last century, in which I appreciate what ought to shock, and can't under stand what I ought to admire."

" If you must call me bad names, I prefer Tom Jones to Lovelace." "Joking apart, I am very sorry to hear you are not going to stand again. It seems a pity, you were doing so well. Lord Horton said that speech you made in answer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the best impromptu by a young member he ever heard. I thought at last you had found your vocation." " Perhaps I have none." VICTIMS. 9 "Don't say that. It is depressing. I don't think I minded your getting tired of sport, or of me. I always felt even that year you won so many races — so much money — even in that lovely summer when you were most charming, that we were merely pastimes, that you were made for bigger things. But now " " You are afraid that I may prove an ever present nuisance, rather than a distant object of admiration ?

" " Do be serious ; you know it is not that. What is it, John, that makes everything turn to dust and ashes in your mouth ? You have neither a liver complaint, a failure, nor a wife to make you sour. You have health, money, talent, have a nicer house, prettier things, better horses, are popular enough to go where you please, not popular enough to be hunted by bores, and yet " " I 'm a source of disappointment to my friends — more especially because I am no disappointment to myself." " You are extremely annoying to your friends, because you are always exciting their interest and dashing their hopes. Is there nothing you can care about more than your faculty for not caring I I would sooner see you making a fool of yourself about another woman, than see you so painfully unable to make a fool of yourself at all."

" You wish me to personally conduct a revolution or an elopement. Perhaps I am saved, as you suggest, by an antipathy to making a fool of myself, and a fearful acuteness in discovering when I am on the road to do so." " And you are satisfied with the results ? " " Comparatively. I am prepared to drift on the off chance of ultimate satisfaction. Don't despair. I may have it in me to make as great a fool of myself as you desire. For instance, in politics as a rule the ends are sordid and the means tedious, but now and then there is an interesting phase when the crack of the party whip ceases to have terror ; when, instead of being called upon to vote VICTIMS. 10 for Tweedledum, their sympathies being entirely with Tweedledee on the particular point at issue, the tide of national passion flows strongly, and men do the work of Titans — magnificent, if destructive."

" And it is the constant training in what you call sordid details that enables men to control the tide " "To perform what history may condemn as folly, and what the authors will wish to repudiate within ten years ? " "To a certain degree; not necessarily." " The balance of probabilities is against the work of this generation being tolerated by the next. We grow daily fonder of proving our cleverness by demonstrating the stupidity of our predecessors. Anyhow, although I may feel within me the taint of insanity, which under certain circumstances might break out in a dangerous enthusiasm for the destruction of a parliament, a throne, or a democracy, I cannot consent to suffer the drip, drip of dreary declamation, the shoddy heroisms of Primrose League Jingo, the cheap demagogism of aspirants for the peerage, or the reproaches of my excellent friends, the Whips, on the off chance of that delightful moment of madness.

Besides, my constituents are very long-suffering, but I have not been able to endow them with the critical faculty it is my chief pleasure in Parliament to indulge. They are hero worshippers of mediocrity, and can't understand why I don't share their amiable weakness. On the whole I fear it is probable your hope of seeing me personally conduct a revolution will be disappointed." " Now as to the elopement or marriage, whichever you think the supreme folly?" " On the whole an elopement ; it entails greater responsi bility, and generally includes the lesser evil, marriage. Even in regard to marriage, you need not despair of my making a fool of myself. Deep down in me there is a craving to discover a peerless creature who never did, and never will, VICTIMS. 11 exist out of my own imagination, but whom in some moment of aberration I shall think I have found — just as the old scientists used to think they had found the philosopher's stone.

In a fit of folly, the ingredients of which will be blindness and passion, I shall humiliate myself at the feet of some lovely animal whom I have mistaken for an angel, a first humiliation that will probably lead to a second, when, bored with the pedestal on which I place her, she insists upon stepping down into the mud." " You are too cynical ; it is the false link in your philosophy. Because your father was unlucky, and because you have found success tiresomely easy, you are unfair to us as a sex, my friend. You underrate your own power, and consequently overrate our weakness. It seems very unfair, but there are attractive women who are also good, and beautiful girls who would neither bore nor disappoint you. We have a fine capacity for virtue if only we fall into the right hands, at least we like to think so, and to consider you men responsible for our failings, as we are responsible for your manners.

All we need to become paragons of virtue, are husbands who excite our interest and satisfy our wants." " Unluckily marriage seems to develop in women an extraordinarily critical faculty, and a craving for more than their husbands ever bargained to give. You ought to be more developed before marriage, or develop less after it, if the same man is to please you as a suitor and as a husband," Musgrave answered. " Considering the average results, it always strikes me as an audacious blasphemy to say that marriages are made in heaven," Lady Southcourt continued. " If my dress maker turned out so many misfits as Hymen I should leave her. Most of us feel that we were made for somebody we have not married, that we have been sent to the wrong house, and consequently are unappreciated and useless. VICTIMS.

As for us women, we are sworn to love, honour, and obey our husbands; but if they make it impossible for us to honour, how can it be expected that we should keep the rest of our oath ? We cast our pearls before swine, and are condemned as reprobates if we dirty our fingers in saving them for a better market." "Yes, your disillusions must be even worse than ours; until the palace of truth has become the temple of Hymen it must always be so. Marriage is generally a contract made in the dark between parties mentally intoxicated. What wonder if, when the fumes of passion have lost their power, and the searching light of reality creeps in, the result is disappointment and disgust ? Nor is it always the other party's fault. Lack of self-knowledge of our own needs, mental and physical, is the rock on which most marriages are wrecked."

" That is true. Women especially do not take trouble to realise themselves. They are sometimes worse, often better, than they think. What hundreds of girls marry because they think that liberty, money, position are all they require, and wake up to find they have higher, more importunate needs — the need of sympathy, intellectual comradeship, passion." " And yet you would persuade me to try the rash ex periment ? " " Oh, I believe you have the making of a surprisingly good husband, and a good husband makes a good wife ! Besides, you would never marry unless you were very much in love. Why should you ? And for the honour of our sex I should like to think that one of us has the power to make you love her better than you love yourself. I don't think I shall envy your wife. You will expect so much.

I like to lay aside my angel's wings now and then." " They are troublesome appendages ; I hate to have them flapped in my face; though I rather admire the women who VICTIMS. 13 can use them to gain great heights. There is something impressive in people who soar so much in the ideal that they have only a bird's-eye view of life, and are quite untainted by the real." "They must be a little difficult to live with on earth, although they may be excellent guides to a better place. From those heights all the grass looks green, and the hills easy to climb. Even angels' tempers must be tried when they find real life difficult and ugly." "Yes; but we are so anxious their tempers should not be disturbed, their hopes disappointed, that we make astonish ing efforts to water the grass and smooth the hills.

I have not so many illusions of my own that I can bear with equanimity to see them destroyed in others," Musgrave answered. They drifted down the stream in silence. The conversation had spent itself in the long way it had travelled, since they had started two hours before in high spirits, exchanging amusing anecdotes and cynical reflections on the ways of the world they lived in. Perhaps they had a truer appreciation of each other's good qualities, now that the funeral service of their old flirtation had been solemnised — when an event was imminent that would terminate their intimacy — than at any previous period. As the punt drifted under the overhanging boughs of a willow-clad eyot, Lady Southcourt stooped forward and touched Musgrave's arm. " Look," she said, " is she not a lovely child ?

" Musgrave turned in the direction indicated, and perceived, standing opposite the easel at which she had been sketching, a young girl. Her work was apparently finished. She stood in rapt contemplation, brush in hand, her lips slightly parted, a look in her eyes that denoted appreciation almost amounting to pain. John Musgrave never forgot that first sight of Gladys VICTIMS. 14 Gainsford, as she stood in her serge boating frock and shady hat, gazing, in profound abstraction, at the softening light on the houses at the lock, a far-off look in her eyes that reflected the paradise he might not enter, the pensive melancholy of the gloaming moving her to passionate tenderness. The girl's beauty was of that fragile, emotional type that seems to bear within it the seeds of its own decay; which, whilst it lasts, appeals to our highest feelings, thrilling us like the solemn strains of the orchestra through the darkened theatre at Bayreuth, or the mysterious murmur of the echo in the dome of the Taj.

Instinctively Musgrave seized an overhanging bough and checked the punt. He wished to observe Gladys unseen by her, to gratify his keen artistic appreciation. Lady Southcourt was too sympathetic to disturb his silent, absorbed scrutiny. The broad classic brow, the delicately -chiselled features glowing with the transient tints of youth, the nobility and grace of the girl's pose, enchanted his æsthetic sense. The intense pathos of her expression stirred in the blase undemonstrative man of the world an indefinable regret. The writing was on the wall, not clearly legible to his world stained eyes, but instinct told him that the fair characters reproached him for his selfish existence amongst the husks and the swine, alienated from those finer, subtler essences of life — really so grateful to his nature — of which the girl's charm was emblematic.

Unhappy the man to whom such a moment of dissatisfaction has never come, who has never felt the clear-sightedness to his own failings that is the forerunner of true passion. Suddenly a hot sense of shame at his impertinent, irreverent curiosity pervaded him. From the depths of the girl's nature tears, telling of a yearning for she knew not what, of a sympathy with the inarticulate, painful progress of the world, welled up into her eyes, and trickled VICTIMS. 15 unheeded down her cheeks. The bough by which Musgrave steadied the punt snapped in his hand. With an exclamation of surprise, Gladys Gainsford turned, the tenderness of her expression giving place to a look of annoyance, at the obtrusive attention of a stranger. Nature, with the impish pleasure it takes in promoting troublous attachments between men and women, created a diversion.

The evening breeze puffed vigorously, and sent some loose sketches of Miss Gainsford's flying towards the water. Musgrave sprang to land, and saved them from immersion. As he handed them back to their creator, Lady Southcourt, who had followed him on shore, introduced him to the young lady at whom he had been so unwarrantably staring. " Gladys, I don't think you know Mr. Musgrave. Mr. John Musgrave, Miss Gainsford." Every trace of annoyance vanished from the girl's face at the mention of Musgrave's name. She smiled frankly up at him, and held out her hand with an air of dignified cordiality that became her well. " Mr. Musgrave seems fated to come to my rescue," she answered lightly. " Last time it was my pony he stopped, now it is my sketches. Don't you remember the little girl to whose rescue you came in Rotten Row, Mr. Musgrave?"

" What ! poor Sir Grahame Gainsford's little daughter ? " " I have that honour," the girl answered softly. She had loved her father, the great artist, dearly. He had been dead about two years. "Gladys, chirie, we ought to be going home. Lady Mary warned me not to let you stop out too late, your English breezes are very treacherous, and I believe your chest is not strong." Musgrave turned quickly at the sound of the resonant contralto voice, with its slight foreign accent. The speaker, VICTIMS. who had approached from the end of the island where Glady's boat was moored, was a handsome brunette, no longer in her first youth. Musgrave scrutinised her keenly. He could not be mistaken. He had met this black bizarre beauty, with her incisive utterance, before. She recalled an incident that he felt instinctively averse to think of, in Miss Gainsford's presence.

It was monstrous that this woman should be associated with her. "Lady Southcourt, you know Miss M'Mahon. You met her when you called at Losewick, I think," Miss Gainsford said. Musgrave's quick ear detected a ring of purpose in her voice, which piqued his curiosity. "Yes," answered Lady Southcourt with some embarrass ment, " I believe I had the pleasure of being introduced to Miss M'Mahon. I was not sure she had not forgotten me." " I quite understand, Lady Southcourt," Miss M'Mahon answered roughly. " You take such pleasure in the process of being introduced to me, that to insure its repetition you exert your powers to forget me directly we part." The position was full of embarrassment. Tactless as Miss M'Mahon's remark was, it was true. For reasons best known to herself, Lady Southcourt had on several occasion shown very plainly that she was not desirous of the adventuress's acquaintance.

Gladys had heard of the slight to her companion and resented it. Luckily Musgrave came to the rescue. " Lady Southcourt's sight and memory are proverbially short. It is not the least of her charms for those who have the good fortune to be remembered. I can quite understand, and I am sure you can, Miss Gainsford, that a lady who numbers her acquaintances by hundreds must occasionally cut some of them by accident. Personally," he continued, looking deliberately at Miss M'Mahon, "I find it somewhat of a misfortune to have an excellent VICTIMS. 17 memory for faces and facts. It sometimes imposes upon me unpleasant duties. Miss M'Mahon had started and grown pale under her rich colouring, when Musgrave began to speak. As he concluded her defiant gaze fell before his ; the significance of his words made her anxious to get away.

"Perhaps I was hasty, Gladys, in being offended with Lady Southcourt," she said hurriedly. " Anyhow, there is no use talking about it now. You ought to be getting home, cherie. See, I have brought your cloak, will you not put it on ?" "You will come and see my mother if you remain in these parts, Mr. Musgrave?" Gladys said, when, having packed up her easel, he handed her into the boat. "She is quite miserable because she has never had an opportunity of thanking you for saving me from a horrible accident. You went abroad, I think, for a long time just after. Lady Southcourt will tell you where to find us. Promise me you will come." " I will come to-morrow, if I may, to resume my ac quaintance with Lady Mary. Your poor father was a very kind friend to me as a boy. You know I am lucky enough to have secured his great work."

" What do you think of her. Is she not a lovely child?" asked Lady Southcourt, when Gladys Gainsford had dis appeared round the bend of the river. "Yes, she is lovely; and the other one, the black woman, is handsome, and must have been more so. Who and what is she?" "Nina M'Mahon is the daughter of some protege of old Sir Grahame Gainsford. She lived in America till six months ago, when she arrived at Losewick, and sought or rather commanded the protection of Lady Mary Gainsford. Since then she has established herself there as a sort of companion to Gladys. She is extremely clever in an B VICTIMS. 18 artistic sort of way, and presumes on her ability and her reputation for eccentricity to be intolerably rude. You call her the black woman, and I have a superstitious feeling that with her hypnotism and thought-reading she dabbles in what our ancestors called the black art."

"I was not mistaken then, she is the handsome hypnotist." "You have met her before?" "Yes, years ago, when I was quite a boy, somewhere out in the Western States. Everybody was crazy about her looks and strange power." "Including John Musgrave of Swaledale? Was she one of your victims or you one of hers?" "She interested me; she is a remarkable woman — not quite the companion I should have chosen for a young lady though. Some day I will tell you that story, Madeleine, but not now, I must find out something first." Amongst the gay party of men assembled that evening at Lady Southcourt's villa John Musgrave sat ungraciously silent, his thoughts apparently far away. He was in one of the impenetrable moods that made many people pronounce him alarming, difficult to get on with. It was a relief to Lady Southcourt's more thoughtless guests when he pleaded fatigue and retired early to his room.

Before he went to bed John Musgrave sat long by his open window, gazing out into the warm spring night, his thoughts travelling with disgust over the last ten years of his life. Amongst the incidents he remembered with bitter self-contempt was his arrival in an out-of-the-way town in the Western States, his visit to the theatre, where the chief attraction, a dark, handsome woman, after mesmerising many others, had entirely failed to influence him. How she had been furious at her failure, and had asked him for a private seance. How for a few weeks they had met often, and it had amused him to gratify the woman's passionate passing caprice, flatter her egotistic vanity, and foil her VICTIMS. 19 attempts to gain any hypnotic power over him. They had parted with no pretence of sentiment on his side, never expecting to meet again, and now Musgrave found Miss M'Mahon — she called herself something else in those days — in the position of companion to Gladys Gainsford.

The close association of these two was intensely distasteful to him. The legend of the toad breathing its poison into the ear of Eve flashed across his mind. " What right has she to be in such a position?" he muttered angrily. He failed to ask what right John Musgrave, who had helped to make Nina M'Mahon a contaminating influence, had to dream of the pure spiritual beauty of Gladys Gainsford. Man defileth and goes forth in his own opinion undefiled ; but the shadow of the woman, his victim, is an insult on the path of his wife.

Chapter II. The

next day John Musgrave sculled down to Losewick House. He had decided to be guided by circumstances, as to the best method of bringing about the de parture of Nina M'Mahon from her position of companion to Gladys Gainsford. But, that their close association should end at once, he was determined, cost him what it might. He hoped to find some opportunity of talking to Nina alone, of influencing her either through her good feelings, her fears, or her cupidity. He felt to know so little of her that he was uncertain to which feeling he should first appeal. As he fastened his boat to the raft of the Losewick boathouse, he discovered Nina M'Mahon lying back in a comfortable deck chair in the adjoining summer-house. She was alone. The spot where she sat was not visible from Losewick House, which lay back from the river about two hundred yards on the high ground.

He determined to avail himself of the opportunity to speak to her. She rose and came to meet him. He noticed that she had dressed herself carefully for the fray — the loose flannel boating frock thrown open at the neck and tied with a crimson sailor's knot ; and the shady straw hat, artistically decorated with a bright scarf, being wonderfully becoming to her bizarre voluptuous beauty. Her greeting was cordial in the extreme, but the defiant ring in her voice revealed her anxiety as to the result of a struggle with a foe she knew to be formidable. VICTIMS. 21 " I thought you would come, Mr. Musgrave. I have been on the look-out for you all day. I want to speak to you quite frankly, to appeal to your honour as a gentleman, your sympathies as a man, before you decide to do any thing that may make my remaining here impossible."

"You have guessed the purpose of my visit. What made you think I should come to fulfil a most unpleasant duty? I have no intention of saying anything to Lady Mary if you will be reasonable." " I was always clever at what you call guessing. Besides, you were struck with Gladys yesterday, and the more you see of her the less fitted you — having known me in my reckless, uncared-for girlhood — will think me to be her companion. She is all that I was not. Her life has always been fenced and guarded. I was left to shift for myself. You will admire, perhaps love, the delicate bloom on the hothouse fruit, having helped to destroy the same bloom on myself and others whom you found growing wild." " If I had any responsibility for making you what you were, I owe you some reparation. Heaven knows I don't pretend to any particular qualification or taste to play the Pharisee.

I will help you if I can. At the same time I don't think this is the proper place for you. I should have thought, after the life of excitement you used to lead, the position of companion to a young lady, however charming, might be a little irksome. I thought you were going regularly on the stage." " It is such hard work, and it is so difficult to get an opening. When I am not excited I am horribly lazy. That is why I like my life here." "You must give it up, Nina." " Suppose I refuse ? " "I shall be forced to tell Lady Mary that I first met you in the Western States, leading a life not calculated VICTIMS. 22 to fit you for a young lady's companion; very fond of admiration ; and of your illegitimate child." " You would not be so cruel." " I do not want to be. I have not come to hound you down, Nina.

I have come to offer to help you out of a false position. Leave here as soon as possible, and if you fall back into your old ways it shall not be for lack of money, or any help I can give you." Musgrave hated himself for the part he found himself compelled to play. What was he that he should play the Pharisee, and threaten to denounce this woman as a sinner? What were the Gainsfords to him ? He felt it his duty to be obdurate, not so much on account of her lax morality, as on account of startling stories he remembered of Nina's magnetic power over weaker natures with whom she came in contact, and the unscrupulous use she had made of it. Suppose some taint should enter into the life of that lovely child through this woman's evil influence, an influence it was in his power to remove before it had time to do harm.