All for Herself

Chapter I

s)UT before the shadow passed away -*•-' from Helen's mind — if indeed it ever wholly disappeared — her conduct had more than once puzzled her attentive and de voted lover. Mrs. Westbrook was the kindest and most considerate of chaperons, and used to leave him alone with Helen for hours, and once when Lord Forrester, who was very tender, but not very demonstrative, had been unusually moved, and had quite startled the girl by the depth of the love which she had inspired, she had clung to VOL. II. B him, and between laughing and crying, had wildly asked him if it would make any differ ence in his love if he were to find out that she was less perfect than he believed her to be. " I suppose we are all more or less blind when we are in love, my darling !" he had answered fondly, "but I do not think I am likely to find that you are much less per fect than you appear to me now.

You seem so natural, so truthful, that I cannot fancy time bringing to light any defect my lover's eyes have overlooked." "But," she persisted, "if you should hear that, in the days before you knew me, I had done, or thought of doing, anything you disapproved, what then ?" "What can be the use of asking im possibilities, Nellie ?" he answered, a little impatiently. "But this much I can tell you, if, after our marriage, I were to find out that your love was all a pretence, and that, liking some one else better, you had married me for my position, and not for myself, I think I should go mad, for, unfortunately, a man too often remains the slave of a woman's beauty long after respect and esteem have vanished. I might still be your lover, while my whole soul revolted against you as the friend and companion of my life, the completion of myself."

Helen but vaguely understood his meaning. Her own experience, and the precepts of her sister, had not been of a nature to teach her to discriminate between the pure adoration of the mind, and the coarser worship of the senses ; but every hour she spent with her lover brought home more clearly the new knowledge to her, and made him infinitely more dear to her heart, and more noble in her eyes. Lord Forrester's character was, without doubt, an uncommon one, and it met with but scant appreciation in a world which is b so essentially selfish, coarse, and volup tuous in idea, if tolerably refined in words and actions. He had fallen in love at first, as the majority of young men are wont to do, wdth Helen's lovely face and graceful form ; then he began to invest her in his own mind with a thousand charms and virtues which she did not possess, until, as is often the case with men of his ardent and romantic temperament, he ran the risk of loving an ideal instead of a real woman.

All this was before his engagement. When she had accepted him, and when his fancy had no longer room, as it were, to play around her, his devotion became less ethereal ; but it is not too much to say that had illness or accident made his beautiful Helen a helpless cripple for life, he would still have made her his wife, and have loved her as fondly and faithfully as he had done when she was in all the pride of health and beauty. To know that she was his by the bond of sympathy only would not have disappointed him half so deeply as would the discovery of her idiotic and wholly indefensible elopement with Per cival. It was only, as I have said, by degrees that Helen learned all this, and so, while her fear of detection grew less and less as the days went on, her fear of the con sequences of detection, should it ever occur, daily and hourly increased.

In proportion as she felt pride in having won love such as Lord Forrester had given to her, so in proportion did she feel some of the sharp agony it would cause her to lose his confidence and respect. Constant and intimate intercourse with him had ample power to counteract the insidious, and therefore dangerous, in fluence of Cecilia, who tried hard to impress upon her that the whole duty of a married woman is to keep her husband in a state of happy ignorance respecting her mode of life when out of his sight. The marriage was to take place from Rutland Gate, and then Lord and Lady Forrester, having spent the honeymoon at Beauwood Chase, were to come to town for the season. In the autumn they in tended to make a tour abroad in order to meet Lady Olivia, if she were not able to come to England before that time.

The wedding was a quiet one, at the special request of both bride and bridegroom ; but Cecilia took care that an elaborate description of the ceremony should appear in all the fashionable newspapers. And there was special mention made of the dress of the bride's sister, Mrs. West brook ; and those of Lord Forrester's friends and relatives who were not in town for the marriage, called at Rutland Gate soon after they came up for the " season," ALL FOR HERSELF. and they were one and all completely fascinated by the beautiful young widow. The first drawing-room was held soon after the marriage, and Mrs. Westbrook was presented by Lady Belgravia, who had called upon her and been specially attentive at the request of the dowager and Lady Frederica. Such an introduc tion was enough ; cards and invitations poured in thick and fast, and almost, as it seemed, without an effort on her own part, Cecilia found herself the most ad mired and sought after woman in Lon don.

She could scarcely believe that one of the summits of her ambition had been so easily attained ; but with the strange per versity of her nature she knew that her success would have had more value in her eyes if it had been more difficult of attainment. But there was still one goal unreached, ALL FOR HERSELF. and the barriers which seemed to attend her progress towards it made her more contented with the smoothness of the road over which she had hitherto passed. Universal as was the admiration she excited, and notwithstanding the crowd of adorers who would fain have ridden by her side in the Row, and who gathered round her carriage when she had it drawn up close to the rails in the afternoon, the wished-for duke had not appeared to carry off the prize, and it seemed as if the " strawberry leaves " were not for her.

Her proposals certainly averaged one, if not two, a week ! Guardsmen, over head and ears in debt, vowed to her that they were also over head and ears in love. A battered and used-up old roue or two perjured them selves by declaring that they were heart broken for her sake, and that never before in the course of their sinful old lives had they known what love was. Languid swells in the Foreign Office, who were vain enough to believe that their noble names were a fair equivalent for her splendid fortune, stared bard when she refused them, and declared that, "By Jove! they were ill-used !" A young squire from one of the Midland Counties, the head of a fine old family, with a good temper, a healthy appetite, noble digestion, and a fair, unencumbered rent-roll, came Up to enjoy himself for a week or two in town, was introduced to Cecilia at a dinner-party, and fell an honest and sincere victim to her matchless beauty.

She might willingly have given all her money in charity, as far as he was con cerned, if she would but accept him for her husband ; but some instinct, stronger even than love in his simple heart, warned him not to risk a refusal, and he went back to the shires a sadder and a thinner man. The blind adulation of such a man, and the flattery of the fortune-hunters, were the very essence of this vain woman's life ; and yet, in the midst of her ambitious dreams and her social triumphs, there had come to her, what comes sooner or later to all women, no matter how selfish and heartless they may be, just a gleam of something better and purer — the vision of a life crowned by love alone. One of the guests at Helen's wedding was a young man, a cousin of Lord For rester's, and a few years younger than he, the only child of his father's sister, a wilful young beauty, who had married — of course against the wishes of her family — a man years older, and in a lower grade of life than herself.

He was very poor, but a perfect gentleman in mind and manners, and a most accomplished artist ; and when he found that he was getting too fond of his pretty, wayward pupil, the Lady Sarah ALL FOR HERSELF. Forrester, he tried most honourably to draw back. But it was too late ; the girl loved him ; and when she had let him know it, he could not give her up, so she became Lady Sarah Saville. And when, after a happy marriage of two years, she died in giving birth to a son, the shock to her husband was so great that he never rallied, and little Edward wus left an orphan at a year old. He was brought up by his mother's family, and her fortune, not a very large one, was settled upon him ; but he was generally in trouble of one kind or another, being a regular genius, with, as it seemed, " every gift except the gift of the power to use them."

He would not follow any profession — he intended one year to be an artist, another an author, the next a dramatist, and at the time of the marriage of his cousin and boyish friend and ally, Lord ALL FOR HERSELF. Forrester, be was living in London, a thorough Bohemian in tastes and habits ; but he was so gentlemanlike, so handsome, and, in manner, so fascinating, that he was a favourite with everyone, and although life in Bohemia was far more congenial to his taste than he ever found it in the drawing-rooms of the " swells," as he called his relations and their friends, he was sure to appear at any special festivity, such as the marriage of his cousin, looking as great a swell as the best of them. He was always going to paint the best picture of the year, to write the tragedy which Irving would make immortal, or the poem that would make him famous in a day, but somehow the picture remained in outline on the canvas, and the tragedy and poem in the fertile brain of the author.

The interest of his poor mother's fortune gave him an ample income, so he was not driven to work for his bread, and he lived the happiest and simplest of lives, making friends for himself wdierever he went, without, as it seemed, any effort of his own. One day, about a year and half before Lord Forrester's marriage, Saville had met in that most unromantic of all places, a station of the Underground Railway, a young girl, whose sweet face had haunted him for months. His meeting with her had been the result of accident, and al though in every public place which he fre quented, in the streets, in omnibusses, at raUway stations, on board penny steam boats, in out-of-the-way churches in the City, he had watched eagerly, in the hope of again coming across her, he had been always disappointed. He had been able to render her a very trifling service at their first meeting.

She had come out without her purse, and he had begged to be allowed to pay her fare. She insisted upon being allowed to refund the money, and although he at first de murred, he finally agreed, in the hope that her letter containing the money would also give him her name and address. But be was disappointed. He got a shilling's worth of stamps, folded in a sheet of note-paper, on which was written " With many thanks." The postmark was Charing Cross, so he had no clue. He saw her again at the same station at the end of a week, but she did not speak to him, and again at the end of a fortnight, when he spoke to her ; but she gave him no encouragement, and after that she disappeared altogether, and, of course, not being a conjurer, he could not tell that his cousin, Lady Olivia Forrester, knew all about her, and, moreover, could have made him happy with the information that the girl had thought quite as much about him as he had done about her.

But although the little incident ended in disappointment, it inspired him to write some charming little love lyrics, which ap peared in one of the monthly magazines, and to cover sheet after sheet of drawing-paper with highly idealized portraits of the un known, while the note-paper in which she had enclosed the stamps was treasured up as a memorial of her. The romantic episode had in some degree faded from his impressionable mind at the time of his cousin's marriage, and that event sent his thoughts for the time being into a fresh channel.

Chapter II. Edward Saville

thought his sweet new cousin Helen the loveliest creature he had ever seen, except her sister, Mrs. Westbrook. Her beauty, her graceful movements, and the apparently unstudied simplicity of every action — the effect, in reality, of the very highest art — completely fascinated him, and he felt actually struck dumb with admiration. He was generally the life of every party which he joined, but on this occasion he was totally unlike himself. His eyes follow ed Mrs. Westbrook about wherever she went ; he would break off a conversation in order to listen, if he heard her voice at the far end of the room ; in short, he behaved himself in the most idiotic and laughable manner; but then his eccentricities were always not only tolerated, but pardoned by his friends. Lord Forrester, however, took him to task, half jestingly, when Helen had gone away, after the breakfast, to change her dress, and had warned, him against falling in love.

"My dear boy," Saville had answered, "you might as well warn me not to fall in love with the Queen of Sheba, if there is such a lady on the earth at present ! I am simply frightened, there is no other word for it, by Mrs. Westbrook's beauty ! I do not covet it in the least, except as I might covet a beautiful picture or statue, just to put on a pedestal to gaze at." " How long would that last ?" laughed his cousin. " Longer than you think," replied Saville gravely ; " but at the same time I must VOL. II. o confess that I am looking at her to-day in a sort of maze ! I can hardly realize that she is common flesh and blood ! And you tell me that she has over thirty thousand a year ; well, that is natural and material enough in all conscience !" Then, after a pause, he added, while one of his sweet bright smiles. broke over his mouth, "As your sister-in-law, Arthur, she must be my cousin ; do you think 1 might call her by her name?"

" Not Avithout my express permission," said the voice of the charmer close behind him. " I never allow anyone that privilege until he has proved his devotion to me for a twelvemonth, and then only on Sundays." " Tell me how to crowd the devotion of a twelvemonth into one day, or one hour, that my probation may be the sooner over !" he replied, catching her tone. " But then I am never in town on Sundays, so I could not enjoy what I had earned." " And where do you spend your Sundays, if not in town ?" she asked. " That," he answered, with assumed gravity, "is a secret which I cannot tell, even to you." " And yet you expect favours from me, and refuse such very common-place in formation," she replied, with a pretty pout. " I expect favours ?" he repeated. " Ah, no, Mrs. Westbrook. If you knew me better you would know that I never at tempt impossibilities ; that you graciously accord me this audience is, I fear, but a proof " he stopped short.

" That what ?" " That you have not anything better to do just at this moment," he continued, with that saucy air which became him so well. " But then when any good happens to me in this world I do not ask how it comes, I simply enjoy it." " Have you seen my conservatory ?" she c2 asked inconsequently, and getting, as she expected, an answer in the negative, she walked away with him out of the crowd, pleased, as she always was, at the prospect of a new victim. On further acquaintance he proved so original and delightful that Cecilia was perfectly charmed with him ; and as she never thought it was in the least necessary to hide her feelings, she was presently so bewitchingly frank and cordial that the awe inspired by her beauty passed rapidly away, and Saville felt as much at home with her as if he had known her for years, and was as merry and audacious as if he had been the spoiled pet of a gay Bohemian gathering instead of the guest of a fashionable lady whom he had met that day for the first time.

Some of the wedding guests were to dine at Rutland Gate to meet Mr. and Mrs. Calvert who had come up for the wedding, and Cecilia asked Saville to join the party. " It will be as deadly stupid as all family gatherings are," she said. " And you expect me, as one of the family, to come and add my stupidity to the general stock ; take care, Mrs. West brook, perhaps I may develop a new faculty under new inspiration, and astonish you aU with my brilliancy !" " It would surprise me far more to find you the opposite of brilliant," she answered, with the most open flattery in look and tone. This young fellow was not showing as many signs of capture as others, older than he, had shown in less time, and it would never do to allow him to escape from her unharmed. Throughout the evening she contrived, with that ingenuity which seemed so artless in her, to single him out for particular attention without making him conspicuous.

She found out that he could sing, and she played accompaniments for him with her well-taught accuracy, but with a want of true feeling for the music which jarred upon his sensitive ear. The attention which courtesy obliged her to pay to other guests called her at length from the piano, and then he sat down and sang a love-song of his own composition, which was, of course, new to everyone in the room. The words were as follows : — Oh ! maiden, with the soft eyes full of fancies Which through the world in search of beauty stray, Whilst others bask in sunshine of your glances, Keep one tender thought for me to-day. Have I not mused on thee in woodpaths lonely, Where song-birds chant in liquid notes thy name ? Have I not dreamed of thee and loved thee only, Trusting to Time my passion to proclaim ?

Then, maiden, with the soft eyes full of fancies, Oh ! keep one tender thought for me to-day. Now, maiden, thou art pledged my lot to lighten, A pledge so sweetly sealed can we forget ? Like kindred stars each other's path we'll brighten • And trust me, darling, thou shalt ne'er re<rret. Though days to come be sometimes touched by sadness, Like autumn tints now tangled in your hair, The current of our lives shall glide in gladness, And naught but love itself be imaged there. Then, maiden, with the soft eyes full of fancies, Oh ! keep one tender thought for me to-day. When the sweet melody of the opening bars caught CecUia's ear, she went back to the piano and sat down in a low chair, placed so as to command a full view of the singer's face. SaviUe's song was one of the many which he had written to the unknown girl by whom his thoughts had been filled for so long, and as he sang the words which he had, in fancy, dedicated to her, his mind was again, for the moment, centred upon her, and he threw such intense expression into the music that Mrs. Westbrook was moved as she had never been moved before.

Music had always appealed to her senses, but this night a chord, which lay far deeper than mere sensuous pleasure, was touched, and it vibrated for many and many a day. She lay back in her chair watching, with dreamy eyes, the expressive face of the handsome young poet and musician, and as the last words of the refrain of the second verse died away, she knew that tears were blotting him out of her sight. Never before had she felt so gentle and so womanly, never before had anything so nearly approaching disgust at the artificial life she had led almost from her childhood assailed her, and she longed to be alone that she might unburden her heart by tears. Wondering at her silence, for her com pliments at the end of each song had been, until then, but too profuse, Saville turned to look at her, and he was startled by the change in her face.

She looked then what he did not think until that moment she could have ever seemed in his eyes: a woman whom it might be possible to sway through her feelings ; and had she but known it, she might, by keeping up that mood, have brought him quickly enough to her feet. But she had no confidence in anything except her beauty and her wealth. It was one of her axioms that a man could be influenced only through his senses or his purse, and it must be con fessed that hitherto her own experience had not proved her to be mistaken. With the exception of Percival, the many men who had aspired to her hand, had been avowed fortune-hunters. Percival, she knew, would have wished to make her his wife had their positions been reversed, and sometimes, in unambitious moments, she found herself wishing that the wealth were his, and that she had nothing to give ex cept her beauty.

She had learned quickly enough that Saville in many respects differed from the men who hovered about her continually, but she did not for a moment imagine that his poetic and romantic temperament lifted him so far above his fellows that he had hardly a thought or feeling in common even with those whom he called associates and friends. He had, it is true, his hours of extreme weakness, when the lower and coarser instincts, inseparable from human nature, attacked him fiercely ; but the pure and noble spirit of the man soon shook off such mere earthly trammels ; and if his fall had been sudden, his recovery was certain to be as prompt and sure. Long after her guests had left her, Mrs. Westbrook sat on alone in her drawing: room, but not, as was usual with her, thinking over plans which were formed, not to give pleasure to others, but to advance her own ambitious designs.

She had found popularity easy of achievement, but she wished, above all things, to keep on her side even those to whom she refused her special favours. Women who showed jealousy had to be conciliated, and men who aspired to marriage had to be skil fully kept in their place as useful friends. But on this particular night all her schemes were set aside, and she gave herself up to a dream of the future, in which not one element of ambition mingled. She was half angry with herself for her weakness, as she called it, and the more so that it was so very probable her dream would, if she willed it, prove true. Of course Saville would fall in love ; and if her present state of mind continued, she could not refuse to be his wife, if he were bold enough to make her an offer. " Ah, yes," she said, following out her train of thought, " with him, and for his sake, I think it might be possible to live the life he loves."

Saville had inveighed to her against the — to him — hateful slavery of fashionable life in London, and had sketched out rapidly at her request his ideal of an exist ence which would be, in his estimation, simply perfect. There was much that was extremely poetical and unpractical about his scheme, and so Mrs. Westbrook had laughingly told him ; but her mind dwelt longingly upon the picture, and she be lieved that, with him, banishment to that enchanting island in the warm southern sea, where he told her he longed to have the power to make his future home, would be bearable. " With my money we might manage to surround ourselves with English com forts," Cecilia thought, with a little sigh of regret that this singularly fascinating young poet could not content himself with Rutland Gate and Richmond.

And then, for the time being, romance was put aside, and the reign of worldly wisdom set in anew. Before a month was over, he would be so completely her slave that if she agreed to give up ambition for his sake, he would, in gratitude for the sacrifice, con sent to remain in England, and to take permanently that place in society to which he was entitled by birth.

Chapter III

f)Y the end of April, Lord Forrester and -*•**-' his bride were at their town house. Easter was over, and the season had fairly set in, but Mrs. Westbrook was reluctantly obliged to admit that Saville was not her slave, although, had she been truthful even to herself, she must have acknowledged that she was his. Yes, the beautiful woman, who had over and over again scoffed at love as the plague and pastime of silly schoolgirls, who had so ridiculed her sister's attach ment to Lord Forrester that poor Helen was at last almost ashamed of loving him so dearly, was now herself in the toils of the tyrant. But she was too thorough a woman of the world to betray herself in the slightest degree, even to herself. She tried to hide the fact, but she knew well enough what it was that made her heart beat so fast when she heard his voice, and what caused that strange and almost painful sensation of intense pleasure to take such complete possession of her, when, as sometimes happened, they were side by side in a crowded drawing-room, or at her own house.

To be alone in the crowd was, she soon found, more satisfactory than to be abso lutely tete-a-tete, for the utmost effort of which she was capable was scarcely enough to put her at her ease with him, if he came to visit her and found her alone. She did so long to see on his part even the slight est sign of departure from that perfect composure, and that bright flow of humour, which told her but too plainly that, however much he might admire her beauty, it had no lasting power over him. The momentary feeling which had swayed him when he saw the agitation caused by his song, had entirely passed away, and there was not. the slightest danger to his peace of mind in the famibar intercourse which had sprung up between him and the beautiful woman who was so very kind to him, and who took so much interest in his affairs.

She very often asked him to dine when she expected her sister and Lord Forrester, knowing that it was probable they would have an engagement which would take them away early, and so leave her alone with Saville. On these occasions — and she took care not to make them too frequent, lest they might lose their charm — she spared no pains to enhance her beauty by the aid of dress. She had often heard Saville express his admiration for natural flowers in the hair, and from that hour, when she ex pected to be seen by him, she never wore any others. She had not waited for the orthodox year to pass to put off her mourning, but at Helen's wedding had appeared in white, which was particularly becoming to her beautiful complexion. She was one evening going to a ball at M House, but knowing that she need not appear there until midnight, she asked the Forresters to dine, and Saville to meet them.

She put on her ball-dress for dinner ; it was white silk, with trimmings of rich lace, but the only ornaments upon it were trailing branches of wild roses upon the skirt, so cunningly made that they looked perfectly natural ; but in her hair she wore the real flowers. Saville, who was the first to arrive, openly expressed his admiration. It was very pleasant to be told that he did not know another wo man in London who could have borne the VOL. II. D ordeal of such a dress by daylight, but it would have pleased her better if he had stammered over his speech, and if he had looked more than he said. "What am I to do with him?" she thought, as he strolled away from her — he was on too friendly terms to be ceremoni ous — to look at a new water-colour she had lately bought. " I begin to think that he is either ice or marble."