Vaia's Lord

Front matter

New Two-shilling and Three-and-sixpenny Novels: Clarke, Hamilton. .'Two Chorus Girls 'Jf Desart, Earl of. 'Lord and Lady Piccadilly *£ „ *Herne Lodge < Hannan, Charles. A Swallow's Wing 2 ' Tenkins, Edward. 'Jobson's Enemies *'* Law, John. "Out of Work •'," Leith-Adams, Mrs. 'Geoffrey Stirling 2;" ,, Madelm Lemoine .3- Lennox. Lady William. Castle Heather 3/" Marshall, Emma. Alma : the Story of a Little Music Mistress ...3'° Tean. Vaia's Lord 2 " Muddock.J.E. "From the Bosom of the Deep 2(" Miiller, Prof. Max. Deutche Liebe (German Love) 3/0 Parker, Dr. Tosenh. Weaver Stephen 2/- Phillips, F. C. *The Strange Adventurers of Lucy Smith 2/- ♦Little Mrs. Murray */" Reade. Amos. * Life in the Cut 2'" Scalpel, Æsculapius. *St. Bernard's 2/- „ ,, Dying Scientifically Ir Shaw, G. Bernard. 'An Unsocial Socialist */- Skottowe, Britiffe.

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Chapter I. How Girls Talk

"Well, you are lucky, dear; he is chaimiiig," said Marion to her friend, as Clarence Hood left the house. " You think so ? " returned the girl addressed, whose name was Vaia Temple. She spoke in a listless, even dejected, manner, and gave a slight shrug to her shapely shoulders. " Why, don't you, dear ? " exclaimed Marion, opening her large eyes. Then, with an espieglerie, which especially suited her prettiness, " Well, if you want to be off your bargain, pray transfer your cousin, Mr. Hood, to me. Remember, I am not the great Miss Temple — mistress of herself and ever so much besides. Here the smallest contribution in the shape of a lover, or even of a suitor, would be gratefully received." " Why, you greedy little monkey ! " " Monkey ! " "Yes; all girls are monkeys at seventeen. But it is one thing to value an article only moderately ourselves; quite another to give it away, even to so great a little pal as .

But what are you counting on your tiny fingers, you little blonde diablesse ? " B "To see how many years it is since you were a monkey." " You are a little demon ! I swear it," said the elder girl, stopping her mouth with a kiss. " Oh, dear ! Oh, dear ! " and she was sad again. "I don't like the tone of those sighs, Vi. No, not at all." " Well, tune them." " You shall sigh not at all. Now you are thinking of Mr. Hood again." " How do you know ? " " Because I do." " And you are right. Oh ! " she exclaimed, rising and pacing the boudoir where they were, her hands clasped high in air right over her head. " Why, — why, — why " " Why what, your majesty ? " " Why cannot I marry you, or a child, or some nice old woman, or even my horse ? I should be delighted ! " " Now you are talking nonsense." " Impossible !

Oh, thanks so for telling me." This with a touch of pique, real or feigned ; probably a mixture of both. She pursued, — " Love, how delightful ! Marriage, ecstatic ! But the man — the man spoils all." " Then change him." " Idiot ! I mean any man." " You are wrong. Given that I must be married to something, I should prefer a man." "Indeed! But you always were eccentric." "To be married to a dog, a cat, or a bird is so old-maidish." " I own it. I also own that if I hate a man, I am excessively fond of men." " I have often thought so." "You see, men," pursued Vaia, disclaiming the taunt — " men is an entity which one cannot, wed in this country at present; at least," she added, catch ing herself up with a serio-comic toss of her hand some, rather classic features, " only under very disagreeable circumstances."

"Divorce and death," jerked out Marion, imper turbably. Then, seeing she was going to be rebuked, she added, " Go on." "Even a man, a husband, is an idea far from repellent to me." " That's right." " As an idea. I confess that in the abstract, in books, plays — even in real life, when I hear of a girl being engaged to some nice handsome fellow, I am interested and attracted. I generally go so far as to envy her ; nay, more, if I chance to meet the fascinating individual, I am often delighted with him. I continue to envy the fiancee; but mind, I feel even then that, if he could suddenly transfer his allegiance to me, I should instantly loathe him." This time there was no banter, but a touch of real sympathy in Marion's monosyllabic comment as she said, — " Strange ! " She rose and put her arm round the other's waist, and they paced the room together — now and again mechanically pausing opposite the window to gaze at the spring landscape of Hyde Park.

Presently the younger girl said, — " Do you know what I make of it all ? " " What ? " " Oh, I think it very sad and awful." "Never mind. Let it be sad and awful if you like, but speak out." " Well, I have, of course, no experience; but then I have known you so long and so well, that I think I can read into your — your case, as the doctors call it, if into no other." " Well, dear ? " " It seems to me, Vi, that the being predestined to have all your sighs — mind, I speali under cor rection — is certainly not an old maid's cat. That there are women who could never, under any circumstances, be happy as wives, I feel sure — women whose ideal could never, under any conditions, take a human shape, even in imagination." " Why, bless me, Marion, where have you been reading all these fine definitions — this hair-splitting of the psychological analyzer ?

" "Well, I own I have picked up a thing or two lately from books; but I am, I hope, quite capable of putting them to an original application." " Well ? " "Well, your present state of mind — or it would be more correct to say of heart, for an unoccupied or fallow state of that interesting organ is as much a state as any other — with all that you have just been saying and implying on the subject of man and men, convinces me that you are the very woman to love, and to make a husband and yourself su premely happy; but, either you have not yet seen the right man " " But I am engaged to Clarence Hood ! " " Or that you have hitherto failed to recognise in him the one you are, perhaps, after all, destined to love." " Never ! " " Never what ? " " If I live a thousand years, I shall never care for him a bit more than I do at this moment; but it seems to me quite on the cards I may like him less and less." '* Then But is this really, honestly true ?

" " Yes ; on my soul." " Then I shall not let you marry him." "Oh, why not? He'll do as well as any other." " Vaia, 1 read in a book the other day, ' A woman is sometimes won by dint of love — a man never.' And I think it so true. Are you sure you will never be won by Clarence Hood ? for that he loves you with what Shakespeare calls fan enraged affection,' is patent to anybody." " He does, indeed, worse luck ! Do you know, child " "I'm not a child!" "Well then, sweet monkey, little woman.' "Yes; I like 'little woman.' Go on." " Then, do you know, my chief objection to taking Clarence Hood is just that he cares for me so passionately. If one is to wed, as I am doing, without love glamours, mirage, enthusiasm, the only thing to make it bearable to my mind is a similar state of feeling in ' the happy man.' " Marion hereupon put her pretty white hand to her whiter brow, and, leaving her companion, went and threw herself upon a sofa in an attitude of deep reflection.

" What is the matter now ? — headache ? " " No ; only a slight thinking pain. It is an ill more moral than physical, and I often have it when I am puzzled." " And has the oracle stopped speaking ? " asked Vaia, dropping down by her side. " Vaia, you shall not marry Mr. Hood ; and to save you from such a fate, I would — I would " " What ? " "Why, marry him myself?" " Oh, that is the drift of all your philosophy, is it ? " "I believe you now," said Marion, pursuing her own thoughts. " I feel you will never love him, and — and that is not the worst of it." " I don't understand." "I also feel that you will some day, if you do marry him, meet another — the man." "May!" vaia's loud. " For that he exists is certain." " May ! " " Galivanting about at this moment — busy, I dare say, with his thirty-sixth flirtation."

" Marion, what do you take me for ? " " Only for a woman." " And my honour ? " " Well, stupid, I never said you would listen to him — you are not that sort. I am not thinking of your honour, but your happiness. Now a temptation is not apt to diminish through resisting it. Your life will be blighted ; you will hate and loathe poor Hood, and — no, I see it all — you shall never have him ! " " Dearest, your word-picture is most eloquent. I feel ashamed to meet it with so ugly a mono syllable as — fudge ! " "Not flattering, I must say; but come, demolish my scaffolding piecemeal, I pray." "Well, of course, from your premises it is logic itself. But you beg the question from the beginning. I may have been born with a somewhat high-flown romantic disposition. I have quite lost it now, and, I honestly think, for good and all."

" And from what cause ? " " Time, experience, disappointment ! " "Disappointment! Not in the domain of love?" " Well, no — so far as I have never been in love, no ; but I am disappointed — half with myself, half with men in general — sorely disappointed; so much so, that I could live and die without once feeling the tender passion." " It will come yet." "No; I am too old." " Yes, dear — quite tottering. Where do you get your hair-dye. If it be required at your age, one cannot find it out too soon." "Silly child! I don't mean old in years, although you had the impertinence just now to pretend you could not reckon up the time since I was seventeen without the assistance of the fingers of both hands." " You know I only did it because you are very young, and look much younger still." " But I feel so old — so old in soul !

" " You are, in point of fact, two-and-twenty." " TAree-and-twenty next month." " Well, I never ! as old nurse says. Three-andtwenty, and youth gone already ! A girl does not come out till she is eighteen. If she has elder sisters still hanging fire, she is often kept in a year or two later, or else her birthday comes at an awkward time of the year, and so, not to bring her out before eighteen, she is left in the schoolroom nearly a year longer. Then when the blessed child at length takes the plunge, everybody calls her a chit, and a bread-and-butter miss, and all the rest of it; so that she doesn't find her legs for, say, a twelvemonth more. At last the poor thing is just beginning to know people, and to get known — perhaps liked a little; when, after a few months — for there are only twelve, you know, in a year — just when she is beginning really to enjoy herself, in short, she is to discover that a woman who is not married is old at two or three-andtwenty; that life, so far as it deserves the name, is over after three seasons !

Well, Vaia, I can only say, if that is to be the limit of the glorious premiere jeunesse, anybody may have mine for twopence-halfpenny ! " " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed her friend ; " delicious child ! How I do love to hear you talk ! Most of all when you get warm and excited ! But, darliug, I don't want to limit your span of fun and illusion. You must not imagine that I represent — that I am a fair type of the average girl." " Why should you not be ? " "Because— but I doubt if I ought to tell you. I have never breathed a word of it to any one before." "And why?" " Oh, first, because I am too proud ; and next, because I think a woman who grumbles and moans over her fate must be an insufferable bore." "I'll chance the boring, Vi." "But I fear by stripping the gingerbread of its gilt, to make your future like my own ; for 1 feel sure 'anticipation ofttimes moulds the soul for weal or woe.' " " But, darling Vi," said the girl, nestling close up to her, "did you think my tirade just now — for I know it was one — sprung out of regret for my selfish little self, and my future ?

No, I assure you, dear ; a good nine-tenths of it was pure indignation that your dreams should be ovef, your bright course, so to speak, run. Do, do tell me all. I know, I hope I might do you some good." Vaia kissed the girl's sunny curls. " My pet, shall I tell you the secret of my life ? " " Then you have a secret ! I know it ! Oh, how delightful ! Do be quick and make a clean breast of it ! " " Child ! it is not what you think. I am sorry you should lose the joy of a real sensational, old fashioned secret, but, alas! " " Oh ! if it were a crime, I feel I could forgive it in you." "It is very little to tell. Everything to me, it is scarce anything to the most sympathizing listener." " I am sorry, but go on." " I have only to record a change — a terrible change, perfectly comprehensible to me ; yet I almost despair of making it so to you, most intelligent of little beings though you be — since it will appear to you so causeless."

"Well, we shall see." " Know, then, that I was once a great dreamer — that, indeed, my whole childhood and youth may be said to have been mainly nourished with dreams and fictions ; as far, I mean, as leisure and relaxa tion were concerned." " When you were not squaring the circle, you read the ' Arabian Nights ' ? " " Exactly ! you barely knew my father, but he held that women, having, probably from heredity, feminine minds, stand in far more need of a mas culine education than men do." " I wish mine had been like him ; perhaps then it would not have been my constant reproach that I can think, but not reason." " Well, your drawing a clear distinction between the two is, of itself, a sign of no little wisdom, I should say. However, you were taught the usual, I the unusual things; by the latter, I chiefly mean mathematics, logic, rhetoric ; and I went through more critical and extended studies in literature than is generally thought necessary for girls.

I do not know that I ever gained more than may be called a fair smattering in any of them ; but my poor father was satisfied, and I am grateful, for I feel that these things, rather reluctantly undertaken for his sake, have left a permanent impression on my mind." " Pardon, dear," said Marion gently, " if I in terrupt you for a moment, but do you not find one terrible drawback to any advantage thus gained ? I mean, does it not become doubly irritating to a mind trained like yours, to be doomed to listen to the blatant nonsense which does duty for conver sation in half oui» drawing-rooms ? " " Everything, of course, has its price ; and there is much in what you say. I regret it most when it makes me rude ; for, you know, I am detestably rude sometimes." "You are — you are to those you dislike."

" Which includes all idiots." " Except me ! " "If you are one. I had forgotten it. But to resume," said Vaia. "I console myself by think ing that of these studies we are talking of, I know far less than most well-informed men, and that if they can endure all the arguments which are no arguments, the logic which is not logic, why, I feel rather honoured to suffer in their company. Now if you think the consciousness that I can reason has made me conceited " " But I don't, dear, not a scrap." "And you are right, because for every peg that such a gift sends me up in the scale of self-esteem, it certainly pulls one down a good ten. Well, you will think I am never coming to the point." "I am patient, but curious," said Marion, glancing up with frolicsome blue eyes at the friend who spoiled and loved her so.

" I divided life into two distinct parts — the dull, peaceful, monotonous — which we all experience with but little difference — the routine of existence, and then the other — Oh ! that other ! — the adventurous, bewildering, ecstatic ; the love-bringing period when the fates are most busy with our des tiny ; that time which we dreamers and romance readers look forward to with trembling delight from our very childhood, and which, once over, is to be for ever looked back upon as the cream of one's days, and whose events and sensations are never really more similar in any two of our lives than are our features, figures, or handwritings." " Oh, delightful ! " cried Marion. " That is the part I want to hear about. Go on." " So did I. I hoped high hopes, yet prepared myself for what I deemed the worst.

I did this lest I should die of disappointment. I was to be the victim of misplaced affection — I know not what; all kinds of shocks and crimes would often appear like spectres about my steps ; yet I had schooled myself to bear all; for, even in my darkest dreams, one picture was ever present, which con soled me for all." " Yes, yes, and that was ■" gasped Marion, as her friend fairly stopped for breath. "I was to love — love with a wildness and intensity which seemed to me the easiest thing in the world ; and I was to ' be beloved, or fully imagine myself so, in like fashion. Kneeling at my feet, my hands upon his upturned brow, my love and I were to draw from each other magic powers for overcoming the money obstacles — for these were always numerous and frightful — which beset our path."

" Well, and the result ? " "No climax, no drama, no obstacles, no lover, no anything." And Vaia rose and walked excitedly to the window. " Oh, Vi ! " said the young girl, in no mocking tone of dejection. " What a sell ! " "You are right; that is just the word for it." " But surely the time may yet come ? " " Never ! And what will surprise you still more than all, I haven't the slightest wish that it ever should. I can still believe in romantic love for other people; in you, for instance, but not for me — not for me ! " "And you have never felt it?" " No, on my honour. I feel sure the man does not walk the earth who, loving me, could disturb my peace. A few years ago, he might." "And so " "And so I shall marry my Cousin Clarence. Life to me is a series of days all wonderfully like each other.

You may do this, that, or the other, and it matters precious little what. The chief result seems to be that one goes on growing a little older all the time. The most we can hope for is that Heaven will spare us any very terrible sufferings ; but I shall always think the bare fact of being alive at all is something of a wonder. Voila tout!" " It is not encouraging, I must own," said Marion, still on the sofa. " And I am sorry I told you." " I am very glad." " Why, may one ask ? " " Because I want to convert you." "You?" " Well, or to see you converted, I don't care which." " Converted by whom ? " "Oh, no fairy — a magician." " Where will you find him ? " " He will come." " And what is he to convert me to ? " " Why, to the joys of loving, to be sure ! " At this point any farther confidence between the pair was, for the time being, cut short by the en trance upon the scene of a much finer lady than both of them combined — of no less a person, indeed, than Vaia's stately mamma, Lady Amaranth Temple.

Chapter II

A LONDON MOTHER. Lady Amaranth may be best described as one of those redoubtable, but too often under-rated, forces — a successful mediocrity. She had not the slightest pretension to be anything but an agreeable woman of fashion, whose native quickness and natural good sense compensated very fairly for that want of education, in its true sense, which her late husband had tried to remedy in Vaia. He had even thought, when he first married, of instilling his own love of study into his bride; but he very soon found how futile would be any efforts in that direction ; for Lady Amaranth lost no time in telling him, with a bewitching smile, that her pet aversion was thinking. Now, as in that large part of culture which is independent of conscious thinking, her ladyship was already a past mistress, the Honourable James Temple, second son of Lord Castlemore, had resigned himself, with the best grace he could, to taking her as she was ; and most of the fashionable authorities of the day were of opinion that he had no bad bargain of it either.

To be sure his noble bride brought him but a very slender dower; but as Mr. Temple in herited some eight thousand a year from his maternal uncle — who, truth to tell, was neither more nor less than a great Lancashire cotton-spinner — he could well afford to be indifferent on that score. No doubt it was a very pretty income in the abstract; but small if you are to make it look like double, and yet keep out of debt ; and this was one of the many clever things which Lady Amaranth managed to do. We say Lady Amaranth advisedly, for her husband, with whom she always lived very happily, was wonderfully indifferent alike to money itself and to most things it will bring ; and as we seldom attain to any subtle understanding in matters which fail to interest us, James Temple lived and died one of the most stupid of beings, as far as money was con cerned.

This was the more noticeable from his being so decidedly above the average in other things. However, he knew his deficiency, and trusted all pecuniary matters entirely to his wife ; and as Vaia, their only child, was but fifteen at the period of his death, he left a proviso in his will that should she marry without her mother's consent, the whole of her fortune, save a beggarly ten thousand pounds, should, ipso facto, become Lady Amaranth's absolute property. Now, in the event of the said clause ever coming into force, it was pretty evident who would become the ultimate gainer; and this was no other than Lady Amaranth's nephew — her late sister's son — the Clarence Hood already spoken of as the destined husband of Vaia. Her ladyship has for long years cherished this project as the darling plan of her life ; yet it is only during the last twelve months that she has breathed a word of it to her daughter, well knowing how unconquerably averse girls almost always are to any matrimonial alliance with which they have nothing to do but obey.

Lady Gertrude Hood, Clarence's mother, had lived almost entirely in France, and she had never been willing to part from her son, who was delicate from his birth ; so he had never been to a school or college of any kind, and he and his English relations had only met at more or less rare intervals. It may here be mentioned that there were all kinds vaia's lord. 15 of stories afloat as to the persistence with which the Hoods clung to a rather remote district in the south of France, where they rented both a rambling and somewhat crumbly old chateau and a snug winter residence in the neighbouring town. The Hood estates in England were, like so many others, fair to see, but almost worthless to their owners from being mortgaged to their utmost value. These lands joined those which the Temples inherited from the useful but ordinary cotton-spinner ; and the chief motive of Lady Amaranth's darling plan of a marriage between the young people was, that she might thereby be the means of rebuilding the broken fortunes of that ancient race.

Why she should be so desirous of benefiting the family into which her favourite sister had happened to marry, we will not pretend to say for certain ; but there ran a rumour in Lady Amaranth's circles, some few years ago, that she had married Mr. Temple, who was many years her senior, out of pique at Mr. Hood's proposing to Lady Gertrude after having raised hopes of love in her own breast. Be that as it may, she certainly was a gainer by the change. A woman may, however, live to thank Heaven for such an escape as marrying an invalid, a pauper, or what not ; and yet cherish to the grave a romantic, albeit perfectly pure, devotion to him who alone once embodied for her " Love's young dream." Yes, the Hoods were a very old family indeed; some hinted too old, for there were not wanting tongues to hint that it would have been far better if the Hoods had not married so exclusively among their own caste.

It is curious how reluctant most people are to saying, if asked about the affairs of a given family : " I don't know." Rather than that, they will retail, with some show of credit, the wildest thing they have heard, and upon the weakest authority. Accordingly, you were assured that the Hoods could only contrive to make ends meet by staying where they were. Others pretended, on the contrary, that money matters had greatly improved with them, and that poor Mr. Hood's state — he was always so distressingly eccentric, you know — was alone the cause of their having to keep so dark ; while yet a third version of the affair But, really, we will not weary you with any more of such profitless gossip, but return to the living present, leaving the past to speak for itself in such fruit as it shall hereafter bear.