Poor Little Bella

Chapter I

, The keynote of my life : " Every girl seems to get married but you, Bella." " I can't make anybody marry me if he doesn't want to, can I ? " As often as I have the weakness to look back, that familiar reproach of my mother's, and my own ill tempered reply sound in my ears again. Mother and child — a great many beautiful things have been written about the relationship ; I have nothing beautiful to add to them. The keenest shame I am capable of feeling I have been put to by my mother ; the hottest blushes that have ever stained my face, my mother has caused. I say that whenever I review my youth I always see ber — painfully thin, feverishly eager — reading the marriage announce- B ments in the Post, and giving the paper an impatient rustle as she exclaims brutally: "Every girl seems to get married but you."

It is a cold-blooded thing to do, even a foolish thing. A very famous man had the courage to do it once, and he was called a knave for his pains. The man I mean is Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the folly he committed was to tell the truth about himself. But I mean to imitate his candour, whether I am wise or not. I shall not be immortal, but I hope that I shall not be dull. I don't think that an autobiography of any person can be dull who has the audacity to be entirely frank, and I bave no reason to be anything else. Moreover, my weakness will help me where my pluck fails. One feels so clean after a confession — it is a kind of moral Turkish batb. I really became acquainted with my mother when I was eighteen, and quite nice ; just like other girls — with ideals and a little sentiment. I had seen next to nothing of her up to tben, because soon after my father died I was sent to school on the Continent and had very rarely gone home during the vacations.

My uncle, Lord Elstree, paid the school bills ; but besides having a tribe of daughters of his own to consider, and a wife to remind him that I was not one of them, his difficulties with rents, and ill-luck in litigation, which subsequently killed him, had already begun, so that he grew less inclined every year to supplement the cost of my education with any cheques for travelling expenses. To my mother herself, badly as she needed pecuniary aid, I am bound to admit he offered no assistance whatever ; but he had never been on cordial terms with his sister-in-law, his brother having married in opposition to the family wishes. She was the only child of an alderman, who after wards became bankrupt; and when I grew up, I remember that one of the first things she said to jar upon me was that my father, the Hon. Langton Dyce, proposed to her for her expectations, and went into a decline from his chagrin at her inheriting nothing.

It may have been true, but all the same it was not kind of her to say so to me. Our income was deplorable. We lived on the second floor, and the hazardous investment of the b remnants of her marriage portion. When I returned from Brussels, I found her installed in two tiny rooms in Hampstead, where she took in the Post and enjoyed the Family Herald. (There you have one phase of her in a nutshell.) My arrival obliged us to hire a third apartment, and her expressions of pleasure on seeing me were punctuated by sigbs at the additional expense. Personally, I was quite willing to make the room that she had serve for both of us, but my mother, perhaps on account of certain secrets connected with tbe toilet, declared the suggestion to be impracticable. She breakfasted in bed, rose at ten o'clock, and then took a disdainful stroll to order the day's comestibles and inspect the shelves of the circulating library from which she borrowed her books.

The assumption of superiority with which she invariably insulted the tradespeople, who would rather have been spared her petty custom, and the air with which sbe always repeated " The Honourable Mrs. Dyce," though they knew her perfectly, were a sight for the gods. I discovered that once a month or so she informed the landlady she had come to Hampstead to look for a house, and temporarily resigned herself to lodgings because there was not an hotel in the neighbourhood. To corroborate the falsehood, she made a practice, when the woman was in the room, of gazing at the objects that met her view with a faint and wondering smile, as if they were pheno mena of nature. " Any one in my position is bound to be so careful," she explained to me; "people think it so strange for me to be here ! " She had a voice specially reserved for her allusions to " people " and her " position " : and when she began to talk in a stuffy, affected manner, as if she had a cold in the head, one would have thought by her phrases that she was the cynosure of the fashionable world.

I protest that at this period I was as simple, and as naturally affectionate, as the heroine of a young lady's novel, and when I thought of matrimony at all, contemplated it only as an indefinite romance composed of chivalry, devotion, and white satin. The idea of ever giving myself to a man I did not love was in those days repulsive to me ; and my mother, who perceived it, refrained from advocating such a course. She, doubtless, decided that there would be time enough to ridicule my point of view when a man I did not love wanted me to be his wife. In the meanwhile, she lost no opportunity of delicately hinting that I had better feel myself devoted as speedily as possible. We expected that Lady Elstree would ask me to stay with her on my return, but she did not ; and my mother accordingly found occasion to write three letters of thanks to my uncle, telling him how greatly I had benefited by his generosity.

The third of the epistles extracted the invitation, and after some delay, a note came asking me to go to Cone Chase " for two or three weeks." My wardrobe, which was absurdly inadequate, called for a few amendments on my mother's part ; but she argued that she could not fit me out properly if she tried, wherefore it was advisable that I should look as shabby as I could, in order that my uncle might see how badly some dresses were required. I recollect I cried at that, and complained bitterly. I declared with much vehemence that I was not a pauper to depend on anybody's charity. My mother corrected this mistake, and I hated her. My uncle received me very kindly, and announced an intention of giving me a cheque " for gloves and things " in the course of our first conversation. I never got it, as a badly-fitting velveteen was made for me by the local dressmaker, and I was presented with a couple of frocks that I had admired out of politeness on one of my cousins.

"Bella liked them so much that Greorgina has made her take them," Lady Elstree explained ; and I have no doubt she privately added, " so mind there is no necessity for you to give her any money." H I was not irreproachably attired, however, I was certainly in the midst of luxury. I heard that retrenchments were being practised, and both my uncle and my aunt referred more than once to the need of economy; but I should never have known they were economizing if they had not told me so, and the delightful dinner-table and the impressive ministrations of the butler who divined one's wants before one was wholly conscious of them, were the earliest gratification I had had of my natural tastes. I do not mean that I had a passsion for eating, but that I liked to do it nicely. I admired the fragile glass, the flowers, the immaculate linen, the sheen of the candles on the fruit.

I liked the refinements of life ; and this was the first glimpse I had had of them. I did not remain quite three weeks at Cone Chase, because some men were expected, to shoot things ; and Lady Elstree told me that as I was not " out " yet, it was impossible for me to be there when people were staying in the house. This was, of course, a transparent lie. Then she said with vague gracious ness that I must go to her in town, and let her present me some day when my cousins were married ! It is needless to say that my cousins' conditions as spinsters had more to do with the impossibility of my being introduced to the guests she expected than the fact of my not being " out." Poor girls ! they took after their mother in their appearance, or she might have been fonder of me. Although the men who shot would have been shocked to meet me before my debut was made, I did form the acquaintance of one stranger before I left, which afterwards proved very pleasant to me.

She was old Lady Parminter, who had written to inquire whether my aunt could receive her a fortnight earlier than it had been arranged that she should come. She took a great deal of notice of me, and vowed I was the image of my poor father, whereat my aunt said, " Nonsense ! " sharply — for he had been a very handsome man. The old lady was nice to me in various ways. She told me I must certainly spend a month with her later on, and asked my address, which I gave with considerable trepidation, fearing she might take it into her head to go there to see me. As a matter of fact, she wrote at the commence ment of the next summer ; and my mother, who was beginning to complain that I might as well be in a convent for any opportunities I had of becoming engaged, invested this time in some clothes for me to wear.

It was a dreadful pang to her, for apart from not being rich, she was not liberal, but the pain was equally divided at all events. She had unearthed a little humpback who worked by the day — eighteenpence and her meals, I think it was — and we used to take the omnibus to the West End and order costumes and hats to be sent home to give them to the little humpback to copy, and then return them with the message that they did not suit, and " the Hon. Mrs. Dyce would call and explain." My sufferings in these excursions, when my mother, more affected than ever, and with the stuffy intonation very strong, sailed into shops as if her victoria were outside, and performed a ghastly comedy with me for the deception of the salespeople, I shall never forget. The sun was very fierce, too, and we used to get tired and thirsty and disagreeable ; but we could never afford to go into a confectioner's and rest.

We used to trudge along the hot pavements, down Oxford Street, and Bond Street, and Piccadilly, in a sour silence, until another victim's window hove in sight, and my mother would say tartly : " Now, do hold yourself up, and look interested, Bella ; I'm sure you make it a misery to one to do anything for you ! " Thank Heaven her services to me were finished at last ! And I dried my eyes in the train that bore me away. Lady Parminter was passionately fond of music, and, as one of my few accomplishments was to play well, I soon established myself firmly in her good graces. The term for which I had been asked was twice extended before I was permitted to depart, and this was only the first of the invitations she was kind enough to send me— her friendliness being a marked contrast to the attitude of my relatives, with whom I only stayed three weeks during the next two years.

I understood that my uncle was personally, sufficiently occupied with his lawsuits, and my aunt with her plain daughters ; but my mother, who was never tired of reminding me I was " his own flesh and blood," continued to write her brother-in-law voluminous reports of me with undiminished faith. She lived indeed in hourly expectation of a carriage appearing to whirl me to his arms. While she was still looking for it, her hopes and the title both became extinct ; he died of apoplexy and counsel's fees. He was the last Lord Elstree, and the last link that bound us to the family. Our prospects in that quarter were absolutely at an end. It was now that I learnt to know my mother, there being no such test of character as disappointment. I was told passionately that I had had golden oppor tunities and been a failure, and that the outlays made upon my visits had been a wanton waste.

I realized that I had always been relied upon to return engaged, and that my innocent recitals, in which no man had ever figured, must have goaded her to the borders of exasperation. My efforts to conceal the disgust with which the lodging had inspired me on every home-coming had been " a selfish indifference to being a burden on her slender resources " ; and, if it had not been for my "tactless behaviour" at Cone Chase, my aunt would certainly have kept me there "for once and all." The storm passed, as all storms pass, and we talked together amiably again. But I was never able to forget that I had seen her real nature ; and she always remembered she had shown it. I knew per fectly well at last that it was my business to secure a husband as quickly as I could, and she, on her side, was no longer at any pains to veil her anxiety that I should do so.

Euphemisms were banished from our conversations henceforward, and plain speaking took their place. She acquired the habit of remarking that I was now a woman, and that the occasion for her to pick and choose her words was over ; and when she began thus, I was aware that some piece of wisdom more than usually degrading was to follow. She gave me, with the air of a Lord Chesterfield in petticoats, instructions as to how a man might be caught. The value of a tete-a-tete to a girl after a man has begun to notice her ; the ways in which she can get him alone with her when they are guests at a house ; the childishness of a portionless girl being too particular in her methods — these were the head lines of a lecture in the delivery of which she smacked her lips. Her aphorisms grated on me, but her eagerness to see me leave her was not without effect.

One is not vehemently desirous of residing with a person who openly shows herself wishful to be rid of one : and if with time my standpoint grew less exalted, if I deteriorated in this atmosphere — and I did deteriorate — I will not admit that I was to blame. I gradually came to discuss my chances of finding a husband with her quite naturally, and to give Lady Parminter, with whom I had kept up a fitful correspondence, a hint of my dulness without any prompting. I recognized the value of her friendship very fully now, and pinned my faith on it. I saw in the drawing-room of Ormsby Towers the key to the " promised land." After the second of my invitations there, however, more than twelve months had elapsed, and a letter I had written remained unanswered. I was, as may be imagined, bitterly disconcerted, and though my mother changed the subject when I spoke of it, the dis appointment and apparent rudeness rankled in me.

I decided at length that my hints must have been too strong, and, determining to escape at all hazards from the oppression of the lodging, I began to meditate a life of independence as " Companion." It was not an attractive picture, but the alternative of inaction looked more unwelcome still, and, my project not being very strenuously opposed, I com menced replying to the best of the advertisements I came across. I wrote my little applications during several weeks without result, and perceived a lack of result to be very damping to sudden virtue. At the inception of the plan my resolve had been encouraged by the applause I gave it ; but it had required to be taken on the effervescence, as it were, and as this subsided, it left me flat, and stale, and miserable. I can recall the evenings in that period as if they had occurred quite recently — my mother reclining in the only easy-chair, ungracefully immersed in her latest fiction, on a tray a jug of water, with a decanter of brandy and a tumbler in the middle of an expanse of red table cover ; the burners of the gaselier illuminating the bilious oleographs in their tarnished frames, the blue rep furniture, and my discontented face, which I supported on my hands, before the window from which I could no longer see ; for com pany, a gilt clock under a glass shade emitting a melancholy tick upon a mottled mantlepiece.

When my mother had finished the third volume, she would yawn drearily, and say it was very late. Then I kissed her on the cheek, and we went to bed. Nevertheless, if my fervour had cooled, and I felt less a heroine and more a martyr, my lukewarm efforts to obtain employment continued ; and one October afternoon I went as far as Regent Street and an agency. The presiding personage had one or two vacancies on her books which seemed endurable, and my interview with her did more to confirm me in my purpose than anything that had come before. I quitted the office with an approach to satisfaction, and was walking briskly towards the corner for an omnibus when I heard some one exclaim my name. Turning, I saw to my delight dear old Lady Parminter who I believed had forgotten me. Her carriage had already stopped, and she leant from it to greet me warmly.

" I have been wondering why you did not let me know where you were," she said. " In what part are you living ? " I answered that we were at Hampstead, as of old. " Oh," she cried, " then you did not move after all! You know I was in your neighbourhood just before I went to Nice, and had the courage to intrude on you ! Your mother told me she was looking for a flat, so, of course, when I came home, I concluded it was useless writing to you." Need it be said I had not known of the visit, or of my mother's disastrous boast ! I was less concerned, though, with blaming her for all the damage her insensate folly might have done, than with congratulating myself upon its being set right. The meeting resulted in an arrangement for me to go to Lady Parminter for Christmas ; and banishing the thought of employment from my mind, I drew a luxurious breath of relief. o

Chapter II

How well I recollect my ecstatic frame of mind as I rode back to Hampstead after my fortunate meeting with Lady Parminter ! Everything on which my eye rested was, so to speak, surrounded by the halo of the impending visit to Ormsby Towers. As I journeyed down I had come across an uncivil conductor. Truth to tell, I had experienced some little difficulty in making up my mind. I could not for the moment decide whether I should get out at Orchard Street and walk to Regent Street, or indulge in a further ride to the Circus. As it seemed likely to rain, I expended the extra penny. There had been a time when I should have laughed at the necessity for such minute economy — laughed to myself, and thought that one day it would all be changed. Prince Charming would certainly appear, and if I were not actually whirled away in a carriage and six, at least I should be beyond the reach of poverty's shafts.

But I had not laughed then. I had long since realized such a hopeless and bitter state of things that the sight of well-dressed and happy people, of a couple evidently engaged, even though they belonged to the humblest condition of life, filled me, if not with hatred, at any rate with envy and all uncharitableness. I have already said that I intend to be perfectly frank in these pages, and I have no intention what ever of going back from my word. I know full well that most people will consider me, if not a horrible, at any rate an altogether impossible, girl, deserving indeed of my fate. Very possibly, however, there may be one or two who have had almost as bitter experiences as I, and they will understand. If the rest are in any measure entertained and amused, I am perfectly content. I could not help noticing that many of the girls whom their attendant cavaliers assisted so assiduously in and out of hansoms were really not so good-looking as myself; only their well-cut gowns and pretty c hats, and dainty gloves and shoes, and frilled petticoats made such an immense difference.

The conviction, however, that Lady Parminter had not changed to me, and the thought of the brilliant possibilities that lay open during Christmas-time at such a delightful place as Ormsby Towers, literally transformed the damp, cold, murky atmosphere into a rose-tinted mist, through which I now regarded my fellow-beings with optimistic views. The future, which before appeared as barren and dreary as the Desert of Sahara, seemed now a very Eldorado of untold wealth. When I told my mother my good news, she scarcely betrayed the sympathy that I was perhaps foolish enough to expect. And the knowledge that her own silly remark was the sole cause of Lady Parminter's long silence and apparent neglect did not tend to make her more amiable. My mother said she was thankful that something had turned up at last, and that she devoutly hoped I should not be so disappointing and stupid as on previous occasions.

She added that I was now more experienced, and no longer a mere child, and she further trusted that I should not wait until the bonbons were thrust into my mouth. All the counsels that I had heard scores of times before were reiterated with the bare facts glaringly apparent ; no veneer was now spread over them to tone down their hideous aim. I was to leave no stone unturned by which I might assist myself to catch — as she termed it — a matrimonial prize ; age, or nationality, or morals, or ideas, or mutual affection, were absolutely of no account, provided that a man with money was willing to marry me. Whether be had two or more divorced wives, or a squint, or a wooden leg, or suffered from consump tion, or whether he were a dwarf, or a giant, or a hunchback, or a Jew, Turk, infidel, or heretic, mattered not.

I bore all this as long as I could, and then I said, perhaps a little tartly, that in my judgment my wardrobe was the vital point, and that I must at once begin to replenish it. Nothing could be done without clothes, I added, and they must be both smart and new. My mother was extremely reluctant to spend any money upon having them made. She said that at my age I ought to be able to both cut out and make my own dresses, ignoring the fact that she never took a needle in her hand herself, and had never let me learn any kind of dress-making. I could manage well enough for our life in dingy lodgings, but to cut out and to " build up " tailor-made and evening gowns to wear amongst people to whom Worth, and Felix, and Pingat, and the rest of them were the only mediums, was utterly impossible and absurd.

The little humpback was dying in some infirmary or other, so a new galley slave had to be unearthed who could copy the latest models for me. Needless to say, I was busy all day myself making a dressinggown and a tea-gown, and manipulating petticoats from old silk skirts, until at last the eventful day dawned, and with a sigh of relief I got into the train at Paddington. Of course, I travelled third class. But I had learnt the wisdom of never being in a hurry ; and when the train stopped at Ormsby Towers Station, where I saw the footman awaiting me opposite the first-class carriages, I managed to step behind him. " Are you looking for Miss Dyce ? " I said, as he glanced in my direction. " Miss Dyce, madam, Ormsby Towers ? " " Yes, you missed me," I returned tranquilly, as he collected my wraps, and I made my way to the brougham with a relieved breath.

Lady Parminter welcomed me with unmistakable cordiality, and even went with me herself to see that everything conducive to comfort was in my room, which was large and furnished as a boudoir and sleeping-room combined. As I drank freshly-made tea, whose perfume meant that it had travelled overland by caravan instead of by sea, and ate the delicious little sardine sandwiches while I toasted my feet at the blazing fire of pine logs and coals, I felt that life was worth living, temporarily at all events, and I determined to banish all my pessimism for the present. We were a party of fourteen, and Lady Parminter said that she expected four more on Christmas Eve. So far, the girls did not look very formidable. There were two brunettes, and a blonde about my own age, perhaps a year or two older, and a bride, whose prevailing tint was a warm brown.

I found that her husband was in the army, and ordered out to India in January. She had made up her mind to accompany him, so although she was very nice to me, I knew that as a future friend she was perfectly useless. The man who took me in to dinner was as hard as iron. He was a good height, and fairly well-looking ; evidently he had never felt the miseries of poverty. On every subject that came up between us he expressed rigid ideas, based upon apparent satisfaction with the world as he had found it. No other view appeared worth consideration — his politics, his thoughts, his arguments, and his deductions were all in one groove. Not that it was a very narrow groove. He had travelled a great deal, and seen men and cities, and witnessed a good deal of life, but not life in many phases. I recollect reflecting whether it would be the wiser course to agree with everything he said in a more or less diplomatic way, or now and then to hold to my own ideas.

As he seemed six or eight and thirty, and, of course, had no idea of what kind of existence mine was, I temporized, and got on well with him. Music proved to be a point of mutual interest, but Mr. Ogilvie — that was his name — would not admit that anything was classical or of great merit outside the German school. Of violinists, Joachim was his god, whereas I infinitely preferred Sarasate. Chopin, he said, was " pretty " ; I considered him one of the greatest composers for the piano, at least one of the most original. No one who understands music at all could fail to love and venerate the old masters ; Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were each and all kings of the divine art. But Chopin, if not so theoretically and technically great, appeals to every phase of human feeling, and because of this I could not understand any one failing to appreciate him.

The keynote, however, was struck when one reflected that Mr. Ogilvie had never suffered, and probably never would — much. After dinner Lady Parminter made me play. " There is some one besides myself who will appreciate your music, my dear," she said, smiling kindly. " Mr. Ogilvie, who took you down to dinner, is an exceptionally good violinist, and as you are such a correct reader, I hope we shall hear some charming things." Later on, she told me that Mr. Ogilvie was one of the Ogilvies of North Down, and that, although a younger son, he had inherited his mother's fortune, and that he had held high diplomatic posts in France and Italy for some years ; but had lately resigned owing to some dispute with a superior, he not being a man to brook interference. " " I suppose that is rather unfortunate ?

" I hazarded. " For a person without influence, certainly ; but not for him," said Lady Parminter with a smile, giving me a tap with her fan as she left me. There was no longer any doubt to be entertained. My duty had been clearly indicated in tbe kindest way. If I did not succeed, it would not be my fault, I said to myself. I plunged into one of Chopin's "Ballads," and before I finished, the men came back to the room. I remained playing softly, and listening to the scraps of conversation. Sir Thomas and Lady Apsley were both inveterate talkers, and each formed the centre of a small coterie. Sir Thomas was one of Her Majesty's Judges, and he held that all the poorer classes were criminals at heart, by reason of their surroundings and their misery. " It is not a problem," he said ; " it is a self-evident fact that when people haven't the necessaries of life they obtain them, if they can, no matter by what means.