Laura Arbuthnot. A novel

Chapter I

Mrs. Blake expected a friend. And as her friend was late she was getting impatient, as pretty women who are disappointed will. If you have your own way nine times out of ten, the tenth time is a trial, of course. So, after looking out of window five times in five minutes, and upsetting her work-basket twice, and opening her piano with an air of great determination and then shutting it down with a slam, she rang the bell, just the very least little bit loudly, and ordered her servant to call a cab. But things were inclined to go generally awry this afternoon ; for before the girl could leave the room a carriage and pair dashed up to the door, and a portly middle-aged lady got down. "If it is anyone for me, Porter," said Mrs. Blake, incisively, "remember I am not at home." She was not in the mood for middle-aged ladies, nor indeed for any ladies at all ; — a woman in a temper never is ; a man may possibly soothe her another woman is certain to drive her mad.

However, the fates were against her again. The middle-aged lady was sceptical, and treated Porter's plain statement with contempt. " Your mistress not at home ! " she said, incredulously. " Why, I saw her myself as I came up the path ! Perhaps if you try again you may find her. I'll just come in, and wait while you do, if I may." And without another word she marched calmly into the hall, and from thence (seeing the way clear) down the passage, and was in the drawing room in the twinkling of an eye. Though a bad breach of good manners it was a brilliant manœuvre ; and brilliancy excuses a great deal. Mrs. Blake looked up with angry astonishment, She had been sitting there feeling as secure from intrusion as if she were protected by triple bolts and bars, never dreaming that such an outrage as this was possible in a civilised country and age.

Her face Hushed a dee}) crimson, and she scowled. The intruder was probably prepared for at least a lukewarm reception : she preserved her composure intact, " I hope you will excuse my want of ceremony," she said, in an off-hand manner that robbed the apology of all its grace ; " but my business is im portant, and it was imperative I should see you. First of all, though, perhaps I may take a seat." And she did so without waiting for permission; apparently, this was her usual, genial, agreeable way. " I am Mrs. Arbuthnot," she went on, as soon as she was seated, " Gerald Arbuthnot's mother. You know Gerald Arbuthnot, I believe?" " I do," said Mrs. Blake, very frigidly. " I thought so ; you know him very well in fact, and have been seeing a great deal of him the last few months. That is the case, is it not ?

" " Really, madam, " exclaimed Mrs. Blake, " you astonish me. You first force your way into my room without my leave, and then attempt to cross-examine me as if I were some criminal and you were my judge. Please understand that if you cannot behave politely I shall have to ask you to go." Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her in frank surprise. " I am very sorry, " she said slowly ; " I am sure I had no intention of being impolite. You see this is how things stand. Gerald is our eldest son, and we wish him to marry soon, and to marry well. Therefore, entanglements of any kind are un desirable for him. You follow me, no doubt ? " " Perfectly," said Mrs. Blake, with the slightest suspicion of a sneer. " So when I heard there was a danger of his becoming entangled I felt it was necessary to interpose."

" Do you mean becoming entangled with me ? " asked the other, looking her full in the face. " Well ! Yes. When a young man is constantly about with an attractive lady like yourself, it is obvious he is going the way to get entangled, is it not ? " " In other words, to become engaged to be married, which is the very thing you are anxious for, I thought," Mrs. Arbuthnot coughed gently. It was a very significant cough. "Excuse me, to marry well was what I said." " And to marry me would be to marry badly ? " " If you put it in that way — yes. But really I should not have supposed there was any question of marriage. That idea has never entered my head, nor Gerald's either, I should think." The insolence of her tone was almost worse than the insolence ofthe words themselves. But Mrs. Blake had learnt long ago that losing one's temper means usually losing everything else as well ; so instead of flying into a flaming temper and making a fiery speech, she lifted her glasses and stared at her visitor, and said in the quietest tone : — " Indeed !

That is rather unfortunate ; for, as it happens, I am engaged to be married to your son. It was settled many months ago." Mrs. Arbuthnot was a much older woman than her companion, but her life had taught her less ; it had been easier, probably, and ease makes one stupid rather than quick. At any rate she did not know how to keep cool under fire. She became angry and excited at once. " It is an abominable falsehood ! " she cried, throwing courtesy to the winds. " I don't believe a word of it. Gerald would never have done such a thing." Mrs. Blake shrugged her shoulders and smiled. It was a very irritating smile. " You had better ask him, had you not ? " she said sweetly, brushing a speck of dust off her sleeve as she spoke. The last remnants of Mrs. Arbuthnot's polite ness deserted her. She was no longer merely angry — she was in a blind, wild, towering rage.

" You are an insolent woman ! " she spluttered. " And you are charmingly pleasant and polite." " But you'll repent it ; I tell you, you'll repent it. " Well, perhaps I may," said Mrs. Blake, with cruel irony. "That is the worst of getting married ; you never know how it will turn out. My present impression is that your son will make a good husband, but he may not of course ; and in that case, no doubt, I shall repent it, as you say." Poor Mrs. Arbuthnot ! She had come prepared to demolish this person, and instead she was being demolished herself. She sat there purple and speechless, a really pathetic picture of middle-aged respectability at bay. LAURA ARBUTHNOT. "And now," said Mrs. Blake, rising and ringing the bell, " I think we have each said eLough. "Porter (this to the servant who had just entered), " will you show Mrs. Arbuthnot to her carriage, if you please ?

" And before Mrs. Arbuthnot knew where she was or could frame a single retort, she found her self following Porter out of the room in a dazed mechanical way, and in another half-minute she was on the doorstep with the door tightly shut behind her and all her ojiportunities gone. Had she been a servant, or a laundress, or the greengrocer's wife, she might have made a few caustic remarks through the key-hole, or pealed the bell till it broke ; but being dressed in satin and sealskin and having a carriage at the gate even this small satisfaction was denied her, and she was forced to go away completely unre venged. Satin and sealskin have their draw backs sometimes !

Chapter II

Opinions on the subject of beauty are widely opposed, and you can never be sure that a face you fancy to be perfect, and are ready to rhapsodise over whenever the opportunity pre sents, may not be pronounced by some friend, more fastidious than yourself, merely passable, or positively plain. Yet, making due allowance for this exasperating fact, it is scarcely to be con ceived that even in this atrabilious island of ours, where sour ideas being indigenous thrive, there could have been found a critic so cross-grained and exacting as not to be satisfied with Mrs. Blake. For it was not only the beauty of her features that attracted you, though in truth these were beautiful enough, nor the brightness and clear ness of her complexion, nor even the exquisite shape and colour of her soft brown eyes ; there was something quite beyond and above these, — a charm of expression that defied definition and de scription, and was perhaps all the more irresist ible for that.

You knew you were charmed, but you did not know why, or at least exactly why. It was an expression that expressed so much. There was gentleness in it, and firmness and fire and force, and the deep human pity and sym pathy that come from acquaintance with grief; LAURA ARBUTHNOT. and sunniness too of a sort, that is sunniness so tempered and toned down by seriousness that any silly, superficial, impenetrating observer might have complained it was not sunniness at all. On the whole, a face to enchant and enchain you : the face of a woman who had suffered, but whom suffering, instead of spoiling and souring, had strengthened and was strengthening still. Strength and resolution were strongly marked in Mrs. Blake's face this afternoon as, after her unwelcome visitor had left, she sat down before the drawing-room fire, and leaning back in her chair began to think — strength and resolution, however, deeply tinged with a certain element of depression and doubt.

It was now six months since she had first met Gerald Arbuthnot, and five since they had been engaged. She had been introduced to him on the sea-front at Brighton, and he had fallen in love with her on the spot, And she — well, she was nearly at the end of her resources, and she knew he was a very rich young man, and he was sufficiently pleasant and nice looking and not over-burdened with sense ; so what could one expect ? she followed his lead, and fell in love with him. But Gerald, though rich, was not rich in his own right, He had a liberal allowance from his father, that was all. His father's sanction to his engagement was, therefore, of prime importance; without it he was nowhere, so to speak. And would this sanction be forthcoming ? On con sideration, he had serious doubts. It is true Mrs. Blake was a charming person, handsome, vivacious, and accomplished, and as clever as poor Gerald was dull.

Moreover, she was unencumbered with children and barely three-and-twenty, and (a point of some im portance in these advanced modern days) she neither gambled, nor smoked, nor swore. She was, in fact, a lady by birth and behaviour, and a woman whom you would have thought the most fastidious man might be proud to possess as a wife. Unfortunately, however, she had, or people said that she had (which conies to very much the same thing in the end), a somewhat chequered history behind her. Her husband had divorced her, it was rumoured ; and since her divorce she had had adventures like the rest. What kind of adventures, and when, and where, and with whom, one was not particularly informed ; but that there had been adventures was a fact beyond dispute : a divorced woman without ad ventures was too absurd.

To the impetuous and deeply enamoured Gerald all this did not matter a doit. Mrs. Blake had been divorced : well, what of that ? a poor girl in her teens married to one cursed blackguard and betrayed by another, how could she help coming to grief? Wouldn't any of these damned dowagers who were so free in flinging stones have done just the same in her place ? While as for this talk of subsequent ad ventures it was a mere malevolent lie, invented by a pack of vile venomous slanderers, whose heads he would most willingly punch. Indeed, my belief is that Mrs. Blake's past misfortunes rather strengthened the young man's love. His sense of chivalry was roused ; this woman was attacked, he would defend her ; she had suffered, he would make her forget her sufferings by caring for her as she had never been cared for before.

(For which, not being Mr. Arbuthnot's father or guardian, I am inclined to give him a hearty pat on the back : it is quite astonishing how enthusiastic it makes us — generosity for which we have not to pay.) But that an ambitious and opulent East Indian merchant, with a parliamentary seat in posses sion, and (as he fancied) a peerage almost in view, would be disposed to fall in with such eccentric notions and to look on a lady of soiled reputation as a suitable wife for his son was a thing hardly to be expected. Indeed, a point-blank refusal was inevitable, — there was no blinking the fact ; and the more Gerald thought the matter over the more doubtful and depressed he became. However, he was young and sanguine, and in love. " Give him a little margin," he said, " and he would get round ' the old man ' right enough, trust him for that.

" And as there was no time like the present, he would go up to town im mediately and begin operations straight off. But meanwhile he could not be parted from Mrs. Blake. She must come to London too. She couldn't afford it ? Stuff and nonsense ! Here was a cheque for i'500. Let her hire a furnished house with that, and then they could jog along comfortably, and patiently await events. Propriety prompted the refusal of the offer ; but prudence suggested the reverse. Absence weakens attachments quite as often as it strengthens them ; and Mr. Arbuthnot was a volatile young man. So Mrs. Blake did not hesitate long ; she listened to the voice of prudence and followed her admirer to town. Some three months had elapsed since then ; and during the interval Mrs. Blake had lived quietly in her furnished house and Mr. Arbuthnot in his bachelor rooms.

They had seen one another daily, of course ; and on the whole, what with drives down to Richmond, and rows on the river, and morning gallops in the Park, had managed to enjoy themselves pretty thoroughly ; and the time had slipped rapidly along. But, unfortunately, the business that brought them to town stood still. Gerald was as confident as ever that he was going to bring round " the old man" by-and-by ; but as to when or by what means he was beautifully vague, not having the least notion himself. And meantime, in order to guard against all risk of being betrayed into too precipitate speech, he kept away from his father's house as much as possible, and when he went there was always careful to explain that he was only up in town for the night, Of Mrs. Blake and his engagement to her he breathed not a word.

And now, as any reasonable being might have anticipated, his parents had found out every thing for themselves, and utter ruin was the result. No wonder Mrs. Blake looked blankly at the fire ; and although she had put Mrs. Arbuthnot to flight was inclined to think but meanly of the feat. There are some victories which are fer more fatal than defeats, and this was one of them, it was plain. After such an encounter with such a termination no hope of reconciliation remained : it would be war to the knife, and the first act of hostility would be the stoppage of Gerald's supplies. She had just arrived at this stage of her mournful meditations when the belated Gerald himself burst in — a tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired young man, with an open, frank, ingenuous face, that took all beholders by storm.

" Ten thousand apologies, my darling!" he said, as he stooped down and kissed her lips ; " but I couldn't get here before. I have had a bother ing day. The governor has turned rusty, that's the fact, Something I've done has put him out, and instead of sending me my month's money this morning he writes this letter. Just read." "Dear Gerald,"— the note ran,— "I am not satisfied with your conduct ; and until it is ex plained I cannot forward you my usual cheque. I shall be out of town to-day and to-morrow ; but if you call at the office at twelve on Friday I can see you and hear what you have to say. " Your affectionate father, " George Arbuthnot. "That's a pretty letter for a man to write to his son now, isn't it ? " he cried, pacing the room with short angry steps. "Downright, con founded impudence, I call it.

Why, if I hadn't run up against my cousin, Sydney Dyson, in the City and got him to lend me £'20, I should have been positively penniless, Laura, — not had enough to pay my cab fare here ; think of that. Now what can the old fellow be up to ? Who's been making mischief, I should like to know ? " " My dear boy," said Laura, coming close to him and putting her hand on his arm, " the murder is out ; they have found out about me, and your mother has been here this afternoon ; and there's no more chance of their consenting to our engagement than of their kneeling down and blacking our boots. It's all over, dear; it was a pleasant little dream while it lasted, but now we're awake and have to take facts as they are. And the first fact is that we must say good-bye, now, — to-night, — once and for all."

Gerald was silent for a moment : he seemed scarcely to comprehend ; then he took her hand between both of his, and said in a husky voice he could only partly control : — " Laura — child — I'm damned if we will ! " And he drew her nearer to him and kissed her. Was she not more to him than all the world ? Mrs. Blake may have been divorced, and have had adventures, as they said, but she was a woman, and she had a heart ; this brave, loyal devotion touched her, and she did what the simplest girl might have done, — put her head on his shoulder and cried. " My darling," he said, tenderly, " did you think I would give you up ? Not for all the fathers and all the money under the sun." " But, Gerald," she said, looking up at him through her tears, " it's madness ! you have nothing, and you can't — you shan't ruin your self for me."

" Never fear, little woman," he laughed gaily. " I'll work. We'll go to the colonies and start a store, or a ranch, or a sheep farm or something, and get along somehow. Lots of fellows do." " But some don't, dear," she sighed. She was more practical, and so less sanguine than he. " Stay ! " he exclaimed, a sudden thought striking him. " I have it. I'll go into partnership with Sydney Dyson. He's been at me about it for months. I can bring in those few hundreds my grandfather left me last year. They've never been touched, for I've never wanted them, you see. That's the trick, Laura, depend on it. I'll see him to-morrow, and we'll fix it all up in less than no time. And, by Jove," he added, with a cheerful chuckle, " how jolly savage it will make the old governor too ! He hates Sydney like poison, you know."

" And what is Mr. Dyson's business ? " asked Laura, with some interest. There seemed a little rift in the clouds at last. " Well, to tell you the truth, I hardly know. He isn't exactly a stockbroker, but he has something to do with stocks and shares, — sells them when they are going up, and buys them when they are going down. I fancy that's what he told me he did. Anyhow, my dear girl, he makes pots of money, and that's the main point. Not so long ago he was horridly poor, used to wear the seediest hats you ever saw and no gloves — made one quite ashamed to meet him in the streets. And now, bless your soul, he dresses better than I do, and has a yacht and a snug little place at Brighton, and chambers in St. James' Street, and everything else he wants. If I can make anything like as much we shall do very well ; and I don't see why I shouldn't, do you ?

" "No, dear, no," said Mrs. Blake; but there was the least shade of hesitation in her voice. She would have felt so much more confident if he had only been a little more precise. As it was, his loose way of putting things rather dis mayed her, and left her wondering whether he had exactly the qualifications which make for commercial success. However, the present scheme was, on the whole, less hazardous than going to the colonies and incontinently starting a store ; — it had that in its favour, at least. So, after some further discussion, it was finally arranged that Gerald should see Mr. Dyson the next morning, and propose to become his partner, and — share his profits forthwith. Of course, as Mrs. Blake told herself many times during the evening, she ought to have stood firm and to have stoutly insisted on their engagement being put an end to then and there.

That was plainly the only prudent and honour able course. But just conceive her situation. When Gerald met her she was nearing the © brink of the precipice that threatens all women who leave the beaten track ; and she knew that sooner or later on some dark night or rainy misty day, when all was blackness about her and no star or sunlight was to be seen, she would stumble nearer and nearer, take one final false step and disappear. It had been so with others again and again; and so inevitably it must be with her. He had snatched her from the danger and put her far beyond its reach, made her safe for to-day and for ever, she had thought. Was she now to return to it again ? to encounter the same fearful perils ? to be confronted by the same horrible fate ? How could one expect such a sacrifice from her? or be surprised if, after having once offered to make it, she listened to his generous persuasions and took the rash offer back ?

Moralists of the higher order, whose benevolence prompts them to wish others to be much better than themselves, may perhaps feel compelled to blame her; for my own part my virtue is unequal to such a strain, and I frankly acknowledge that I cannot. Besides, if we must probe deeper, there was another reason. At the outset she had thought more of Gerald's money than of Gerald himself. He was merely, as rich young men so often are to their dear friends, an unimportant adjunct to his income — nothing more. But as time went on she had learnt to value the honest love that was laid so lavishly at her feet. She had had no experience of such love before. Other men had made love to her, and had loved her no doubt in their own way ; but it was love of the base ephemeral sort, that degrades giver and taker alike.

And she, recognising the thing at its true value, had got to despise and loathe the very name of love. It was a sham, a delusion, a snare, — something that, like cosmetics, one might put on for one's own purposes, but that was as false and unreal as they. Now, however, she found herself changing ; at first conceiving the possibility of an unselfish affection, then realising that she felt the faint stirrings of it herself. Her love grew slowly, but it did grow ; and at length it was as strong and as deeply rooted as his. Stronger, indeed ; for her nature was stronger, and she could feel more powerfully and lastingly than he. His very weakness, too, appealed to her, and drew out her tenderness ; he was so inept and ineffectual; he leant on her and needed her so much. She had therefore other than mere sordid motives for clinging to him ; and with these as well as with the first one feels it hard to find fault.

Gerald supplied yet another motive when, as he was leaving to-night, he said : — " Look here, darling, they want to part us. They say I have done a bad thing for myself in getting engaged to you. And 1 know that I never did a better thing in my life. I was a mere useless selfish brute before ; and though it's true I'm not very much of it even now, at any rate I'd work for you till I dropped, dearie, and chuck away my life, if you wanted it, as readily as if it were a stone. And, damn it all, that's better than only working and caring for one's self, — isn't it now, little woman ? " Could she help saying and thinking it was ?

Chapter III

Mr, Sydney Dyson was what they call on the Stock Exchange " a bear " ; — that is to say, when stocks were rising like wildfire he sold them, and when they were falling like ninepins he bought them back, the difference between the high price he got and the low price he gave representing his profit on the deal. And as the difference was often considerable the profits were correspondingly big. It was thus that from being a poor and rather humble individual, much addicted to wearing bad hats, he had become in a surprisingly short space of time well-dressed, self-sufficient, and rich. But lest some of my unprofessional readers, supposing they have discovered an easy and royal road to wealth, should be tempted to abandon their ordinary avocations, and rush pell-mell into the City, and become "bears," I must explain that the simple and ingenious process of " bearing " is not quite so simple as it seems.

For instance, the stock you have sold on the idea that it would go down may obsti nately continue to rise, and then when you come to buy it you will suffer the chagrin of paying a much higher price than you were paid ; or, what is worse, you may be " cornered," which (being translated into the vernacular) means, that having sold some stock you do not possess, and the knowledge of this having got abroad, the actual holders of the stock refuse to supply any except at a ruinous rate ; or you may be too greedy, and neglect to take a profit when you have one because you hope if you wait it will increase, and while you are waiting the markets may change and your profit may be converted into a loss ; in all of which cases, instead of making your fortune and proudly migrating with your family to the West End, you will probably have to exchange your villa at Bayswater for a six roomed house at Shepherd's Bush. — This quite by the way, and merely to free myself from the suspicion, which might otherwise, perhaps, be entertained, that I am putting about an elaborate puff of Stock Exchange speculation in the form of an outwardly innocent tale.

To resume : Mr. Dyson had an office in a court off Throgmorton Street, almost within sight and sound of the Stock Exchange and of the greedy crowds that beat about its doors. It was quite a unique little place, resembling a lady's boudoir more than the gloomy, dirty, depressing den in which the ordinary man of business works. The floor was covered with a rich Turkey carpet, into which your feet sank deep at every step ; the furniture was dark oak, upholstered in red velvet ; and the wall paper was red too, though of a deeper shade. Of this paper, however, not much was to be seen, for the walls were hung from end to end with pictures, — bright, charming land scapes mostly, that refreshed the eye wearied with the dull ugly uniformity outside ; and what little space was left was filled with quaint mirrors and old pistols, and curious javelins and spears.

In each of the windows — there were two of them — stood a small richlycarved ebony table holding a white marble statuette, one a Psyche listening enraptured while Cupid whispered his secret in her ear, the other a recumbent Venus surrounded by a group of winged Loves. The windows them selves were of stained glass, through which the light — when there was any — filtered slowly in subdued many-coloured rays. In this luxurious room Gerald Arbuthnot was sitting on the morning after his talk with Mrs. Blake, viciously biting his finger nails to pieces, and looking very flustered and hot. He had just been explaining to Mr. Dyson that he was engaged to a lady, whose name he was not at liberty to disclose, but whose beauty, and goodness, and general excellence he was pre pared to maintain against all the world ; that he was bent on marrying her, should die if he did not, and that she would probably die too ; that notwithstanding all this his father opposed him out of pure tyrannical contrariety, and nothing else ; that he was not going to stand being treated like this, he wasn't a schoolboy, con found it ! to be told what he was and what he was not to do.