Vice Valentine

Chapter I

It was a wild October evening. A soft gale was blowing from the west, carrying in it occasional heavy drops of rain ; the sea in the bay below was breaking and tumbling on the rocks, the white foam now7 and then visible when a gleam from the moon, pale and watery as it shone out for a moment from a rift in the driving, hurrying clouds, caught and illumin ated it. The air AA'as full of a confusion of sound, now7 louder as the storm became more fierce, now7 sinking to a low menacing mutter © © when a lull took place in the tumult of wind and waves, only to break a moment later into wilder fury. Above on the cliffs was a mass of tangled undergrowth, dead and living, inextricably twined and intermingled ; stunted fir trees, scarcely more than distorted and ungraceful VOL. I. bushes, interlaced their crooked branches, whilst beneath them patches of heather and brown faded bracken alternated with the carpet of brown fir needles, smooth and wet, which covered the sandy soil.

In a gap of the thick undergrowth, made perhaps by nature or possibly fashioned long ago by human hands for some purpose now forgotten, there had met on that autumn night tw7o persons, a man and a girl. The branches over their heads formed a sort of natural roof through which the rain penetrated but little as they stood close together in the narrow limits of the shelter, and it was only now and then that a gust of wind more violent than the rest forced its way through the defences of the interlacing branches. At other times the shelter was almost as complete as if the walls had been of more substantial fabric. In a transient interval of the storm the moon had just shone out, and one of its faint and fugitive rays, penetrating the over-arching branches, fell on the girl's erect figure and clear-cut, well-defined features.

A shawl had been drawn over her bare head, but it had fallen back, leaving the crisp dark hair uncovered, upon which as well as upon her face the rain drops lay, simulating the tears which, since her childhood, Valentine Kremleck had never been known to shed. Her companion stood in shadow, and it was he who first broke the silence which appeared to have fallen between them. " So this is the last time," he said. " How7 did you manage to come ? " " They think I am gone to bed," she answered. " I was up all last night. My cousin died this morning. Of course I © came." He gave a half laugh. " Ah, Valentine," he said, " it would have been better for you not to have known me. I have taught you a good deal, have I not ? but most people would tell you they are lessons as well unlearned. I have taught you to lie, to come and meet me out here in the ram — how7 wet your hair is," laying his hand on it — " when they imagine you are safe in your room upstairs.

And I have taught you — well, other things that you w ill never forget, though you will probably forget soon enough — most women, luckily for them, do — to whose instructions you owe them. Well, as I was 1-2 saying, the world would tell you you would have done as well without all the knowledge you owe to me." " AYe are no worse than other people," she said, a note of defiance in her sweet husky voice, one of those voices which seem to have a veil over it. " No," he said, " you are right enough there, only you wouldn't have known that either two months ago ; it is another proof of the progress you have made in the time, thanks to me. It would all have seemed very bad to j'ou then, you know. Did you not tell me once that you had never told a lie till you met me ? That is one of the things I have taught you, you see — how bad the world is, and that there is not so very much harm in it after all."

There was a short silence ; A'alentine had made no reply. AAlien he spoke again his voice was a little changed, though it had not lost its carelessness. " You don't repent it," he said ; perhaps his own words, no less than her silence, had roused in him a faint misgiving, a touch of remorse or of self-reproach from which he was anxious to be freed. " You don't throw it in my teeth — most women would — that I have treated you badly ? " " No, Ralph," her hazel eyes looked steadily up at him. " No, it was my owrn doing, my own choice. It is my own fault if I suffer for it. You always told me the truth, always, from the first. It was my own affair if I chose to take what I could and to pay for it after wards. You haA'e not treated me badly ; yon told me no lie." " Honour among thieves ! " he said with _c. © half laugh.

"No, at least I never lied to you. After all, you are right — the pupil teaches the master — we are no worse than other people ; perhaps, who knows, even better. At all events we don't call our lies truth, and our hypocrisy religion ; we give things their right names, even when they happen to be ugly ones. Though you are fond of me hi spite of it, you cherish no illu sions as to my character, and as for me, I know very well that you are no saint — that you have a wicked temper and can be as hard as the rocks down below." " I haven't been hard to you," she said. " As for the rest, if I don't care for them they don't care for me. I have never had anybody to care for me, all my life. My stepmother cares for nobody but Jerry, and he " — her voice softened — "yes," she added, "I do care for him, but he cares for neither of us.

If I am hard it is not my fault." " Poor child ! " he said. He had been only half listening as he twined a short ring of her wet hair round his fingers. He pushed it back from her brow as he spoke and looked down at her with careless affection. " No one to care for you all your life — nineteen years ! AVell, never mind, you will have people enough soon. When was it" — irreleA-antly — "when was it I met you first, down by the rocks ? A month ago ? " " FiAre weeks." Her mouth was firmly shut ; her hands hung before her, tightly locked together. " Five weeks, is it, since I found you lying on the shingle, and we became friends at once ? AVe passed quickly over the prelimin aries, did we not ? AA nat a child you were then, Valentine, and what a difference five weeks can make ! I wonder who will be the next fellow ?

That is the worst of it — you go on when once you have begun. I wonder who will be the next fellow, A'alentine ? " He was watching her, and perhaps something in her face touched him. There was a softer tone in his voice as he spoke again " Well, never mind," he said. " Poor little Valentine, you are tired to-night." " Yes," she answered ; it was with an effort that she steadied her voice, but she looked him in the face, " I am tired. I told you I was up all last night. Tina died this morning." O © " Your cousin ? And you were fond of her ? " he asked with absent sympathy. Valentine shook her head. " I did not care for her," she said. " AVe were never friends. But I was sorry for her ; she wanted so much ti five." " Poor soul," he said with passing com passion. " AVe most of us want to do that, however little there may be that is worth living for.

She had been ill a long time, had she not ? " " For nearly four years. Yes, she had not much that seemed worth living for. She " She had looked up at him, but if she had in tended to tell him more of her cousin's history she changed her mind. It was clear that his transitory interest in the dead girl, slight as it had been, was already gone, merged in a more personal one, and whatever might have been on Valentine's lips remained unspoken. " Well," he said presently, " you know7 I leave England to-morrow. I should like you to remember me for a little, till that other fellow conies. Of course he will come before long ; it is much better that he should, and I should be a more selfish wretch than I am if I did not think so. The best thing that can happen to you is that some good fellow who is his own master should fall in love with you and marry you, and make you forget all about our evenings on the heather and our mornings on the shore — there was not much harm in them after all.

AA7hy, A'alentine," as she turned away from him with an abrupt move ment, " you are not angry with me, are you ? " " No, not angry," she said, " but " She stopped ; there had been a quiver in her voice. " Ah, I know what you mean. Poor little fool ! You think you know everything now, but, thank heaven, you don't. There are some lessons that take more than a month in the learning. You think, don't you, that you will go on caring for me, a fellow you have known for exactly five weeks ; and who, VICE A7ALENTINE. 9 though he is fond enough of you, will not throw over his prospects by marrying you. You think you are to go on caring for him all your life, and you are just nineteen years old ! Do you know that that is a dream, Valen tine ? " His voice, kind as it was, had a touch of mockery in it.

She made no reply. Outside the storm, which had risen again, was rushing by, wild and tumultuous, and filled up the pause. If he had not convinced her she would not say so ; he had taught her the first lesson of scepticism — to be silent concerning her faith ; the rest would come later. It was he who spoke again. " And so it is the last time," he said. " Well, everything has an end, but parting is a bad business. You will miss me ? " Her eyes answered for her. Drawn a little back, she was taking such note of his face as the uncertain light permitted, filling in the details from memory. He was not handsome, nor were his features even marked with any clear and definite individuality. The grey eyes, straight dark eyebrows, and browm close cut hair might have belonged to many men of his age and profession, but A'alentine was in no critical mood.

It mattered nothing to her what others might have seen or missed in © his face ; she was remembering only that she was looking at it, so far as she knew, for the last time. Her voice, as she answered, shook in spite of her efforts to keep it steady. " Yes, I shall miss you," she said slowly. '• I hope what you say is true. I hope I shall not care for you long. I know there are many things you care for more than you care for me, but now " she broke off. " Heaven knows I don't know what the things are that I care for more than for you," he said moodily. " AVbat do you say, Valentine ? Shall I throw it all up and risk my uncle's cut ting me off with a shil ing ? Then I would come and get introduced to you in your stepmother's drawing-room some fine day, and call you Miss Kremleck and put on my best manners, and you would call me Captain Dennis and give me your little brown hand when I went away.

And then when I had called half-a-dozen times perhaps, I might venture to ask your step mother to let you marry me — provided I could win your consent. Dj you think so, Valen tine, or would it be too precipitate ? " " You don't mean it," she sail, turnino- ' 7 © away with a slight impatient gesture. "You are not in earnest." " AVell, I suppose not," he said. " It was a dream, like yours just now of eternal con stancy and broken hearts. It would scarcely do, would it, to go to my uncle and say that in compliance with his moderate conditions in making me his heir — namelv, that I should make a marriage in accordance with his views — I had married " " Valentine Kremleck," broke in the girl with a laugh that was not without bitterness, © '• whose slither was a penniless curate and whose mother was a gipsy, found by the ReA'erend James Kremleck at a fair, and married for her slice."

Dennis sighed impatiently. " If I were free " he began, then break ing off, " Is that the clock ? " Somewhere hi the distance the deep tones of a clock were striking the hour. She started, her momentary flash of anger dying quickly out. " It is ten," she said ; " I must go. They will be shutting up the house." " And you would have to sleep outside on the heather, like a little tramp " " Like my mother." The girl laughed shortly. "It is not the first time I should have done it. Let me go, Ralph," she added. " I must not stay any longer." " Well, good-bye," he said. " Let me look at you once more," he drew her into the moonlight. " Yes, you might have been a better little girl, as I told you, if you had not knoAvn me, but yet, well, you wouldn't have been what you are iioaa' — your eyes wouldn't have been the sweetest eyes hi all the Avorld.

It ought to be about enough for a man to have been the first, whoever comes after. There, good-bye." Five minutes later they had parted, and Val entine, forcing back the tears which she had never allowed to fall, was running quickly along the narrow7 path which wound through the dripping undergrowth, her dress brushing it as she went, till she emerged into a lane which led between high hedges towards the grey old church which stood on the green slope of the downs aboA7e the small fishing A'illage of Pencarne. There for a moment she stood still, striving to stram her eyes in the direction from which she had come. Another minute, how ever, and she had resolutely turned agahi to go on her way. Taking a short cut across the churchyard she reached a small house, half villa, half cottage, which stood a few yards back from the road, and opening, with a swift and cautious hand, the wicket-gate she found her self in the garden, a patch of ground mostly turf, varied by beds of chrysanthemums, whose white and yellow blossoms showed out faintly in the dim light on either side of the narrow shingled pathway Avhieh led up to the door.

Valentine glanced at the house with a sense of dismay. AVith the exception of one upper room, through whose curtained window light was shining, all Avas hi darkness, as if the household, weary after the watching of the preceding night, had retired early to rest. No sounds reached the ear of the listener, strained to catch any indication of movement on the part of those within. She paused irresolute, then moving forward, though with small hope of success, tried the door. To her surprise, howeA'er, it yielded at once. The bolt had been withdrawn and it was only latched. With a murmured exclamation of relief she pushed the door open and entered the hall. Through a skylight in the small, tAA'o-storied house a faint light penetrated, dark as it had seemed without. Valentine's eyes, accustomed to the obscurity, could distinguish the door of the sitting-room on the right of the entrance standing open, the room unoccupied.

It Avas clear that no one Avas up. Groping her way to a table where matches Avere accustomed to be placed she found the box, and striking a light, mounted, with the same noiseless caution with which she had effected her entrance, the steep and narrow staircase Avhich led to the upper story, pausing Avhen she had reached the landing to stand still and consider. o There, too, all Avas dark and silent, except where, from under a closed door, a streak of light made its way. A'alenthie glanced to wards it with an involuntary shiver, hesitated, standing still for a moment uncertain and irresolute, then, opening the door, entered. Lights were burning in the room, and on the bed lay the girl who, as she had told Dennis, had that morning died — her cousin and her namesake, Valentine. Movinoto the bed she lifted the covering from the face and looked long and steadily at the fair, placid features which it had hidden.

She had, as she had told Dennis, borne her cousin, living, no great love, nor had death, as not unseldom happens, in this case invested its victim wdth any halo of sanctity and grace. As Valentine had been living, so she remembered her dead, veiled by no tender mist of illusion — slight in nature, trivial, shallow, selfish, frivolous. Yet she was only filled with the more profound pity for her iioav. Had she been other than she was death might © haA'e seemed less cruel, less incongruous ; it was as if an iron glove had been used to crush © a butterfly. If she had lived, who knew what she might have become ? Life is so merciful, and so almost infinite in its possibilities. But now death had stepped in to stereotype her imperfections and make them, so to speak, eternal. Standing above her silent, stern with the justice of youth, yet touched with compassion too, the living Aralentme recalled to her mind old recollections, blurred with the mist of the past — the lightness and gaiety of the dead woman's girlhood, her fretful impatience of poA-erty — the poA'erty which from her orphaned childhood upwards she had shared — her eager ness to clutch at whatever fife might be forced to yield, and all these ending hi the story of which it had been on her lips that evening to make the recital to Dennis.

True, the secret had been guarded jealously and well during her lifetime, but now that she was dead it could have done her no harm that he should know7 it, and to Valentine, with the old indignation at her cousin's wrongs, the old compassion stirred afresh within her, it Avould have been a relief to have told the story. Yet it Avas per haps as Avell that she had been silent. After all, the dead woman's secret was still her own. Standing there, Valentine recalled, point by pohit, the history of that episode in her cousin's life from which the last four years had taken their colour. She remembered Tina's return home after Avhat had been supposed to be a visit of several weeks to the house of a newly married school friend ; the strange story that, unable to bear the weight of concealment, she had, under promise of strictest secresy, unfolded to Valentine and her stepmother — the only two to whom it had ever become known — of a marriage contracted without the knowledge or consent of the friends of either party, followed by her separation from her husband in six weeks' time and her return alone to her old home.

A'alentine recalled it all — her reluctant confession, her sullen impatience under Mrs. Kremleck's blame, cold and seA'ere ; finally her life shice, of fretful discontent, ending in the lingering illness of Avhich she had that morning died. Alike pitiful and indignant, ATalentine went once more over the story. If it was true that she had borne her dead cousin no love it was none the less true that she was profoundly sorry for her, and her mouth took a harder line as she revieAved her history. Of the man who had married her she knew little, save that he had been named Osmund AA^ynter, that if he had not actually deserted her — since his wife had asserted that it had been with her that the decision had lain — he had at least acquiesced at once and absolutely hi the separation which had taken place, making no effort thereafter to obtain a reversal of her decision nor even so far troubling himself about her as to keep himself informed of her condition and the course of her life.

As her cousin stood beside her now, with the storm raging outside, and finding its way through the ill-fitting window sashes, causing the lights which burnt round the bed to © flicker, she accused Osmund AVynter, the man who was to her no more than a name, VOL. I. of the wreck of the life which he had sworn to protect, uttermg a voiceless and but half con scious prayer that he might not go unpunished. Then turning away, she quitted the room as noiselessly as she had entered it.

Chapter II

Once outside she stood still, drawinoa long O © breath, then crossing the little passage she pushed open the door of a room opposite and looked in. " Jerry," she said, " are you there ? are you asleep ? " There was no answer, and entering softly she saw that the room was empty and the bed unoccupied. She gave an impatient sigh, yet neither as if surprised nor alarmed, then setting down the candle she carried upon the table, she went to kneel by the window which commanded a view7 ofthe road. For whatever she was waiting it was long in © © coming. For nearly the space of an hour she kept her place. The church clock struck eleven, then half-past, and still she knelt, her eyes gazing across to the cliff, where an hour earlier she had parted from Dennis, the sharp pang of that parting mingling incongru ously with the thought of the girl lying dead 2-2 in the bed-room, for whom love and sorrow7 and regret — all those threads and fibres which go to make up the woof of one earthly fife — w7ere over.

At last, however, the sound for which she had been watching greeted her ears ; once again the gate clicked and the slight figure of a boy entered, coming up the path with a light and buoyant step. Valentine rose, and gliding noiselessly down the stairs, opened the door Avhich upon her own entrance she had locked, just as her brother had reached and tried it. " Hush," she said in answer to his Ioav exclamation of mingled surprise and dismay. " I waited up for you. The mother does not know." She turned and re -ascended the stairs, not speaking another word till the room where she had awaited him had been reached, and she had shut the door upon them both. Then she turned to him. " AA^here have you been ? " she asked. " To Railesford. I didn't mean to go." He spoke with an air of apology as if anticipating and deprecating her displeasure.

He was a lad of perhaps fourteen, slight and well made, wuth clear blue eyes and a bright mobile face. Even now, shamefaced as he was and plainly and uneasily conscious of detection, there was no cloud of ill-temper or sullenness apparent on it, any more than any trace of bluster or self assertion in his manner. " I didn't mean to go, but you were gone to bed, or I thought you were," with a slightly sceptical glance. " I fell in with To n Dacres, and he asked me to go. After all it would haA7e done poor Tina no good if I had stayed at home." " It is not Tina," she interrupted a little impatiently. " AArhat were you doing in Railesford ? " " No good and not much harm," answered the boy. He was still subdued, as was fitting hi a house where some one was lying dead, yet a sort of irrepressible undercurrent of natural gaiety was beginning to re-assert itself.

" Come, Valentine," he added, " never mind. I am not such a bad fellow7 after all. With no tempta tions you would see how steady I should be. It is they that are to blame, not I." She looked at him with a singular blending of contempt and tenderness, yet as if recogniz ing a certain force in his plea. " Poor Jerry," she said. " Yes, I have had no chance," he said, quick to perceive and to make use of his advantage. He had sat down on the table and was regard iiif her with the same lurking amusement. " If I go to the dogs no one will have a right © © to say I had opportunities and neglected them. If I had had my chance like other fellows I daresay I should have made as good use of them ; I might have turned out a statesman, or a bishop — who knows ? As it is " " As it is," the girl interrupted him im patiently, " as it is you will let any one who cares to take the trouble lead you where they please — will allow Tom Dacres to teach you to bet and to gamble as you did at the races last week, and Dick Stamers to introduce you to his brother-in-law who was fined ten days ago for drunkenness," she broke off with a shrug of her shoulders.

" You are unreasonable, Valentine," said her brother, still maintaining his air of easy and imperturbable good humour. " You treat the matter as if I preferred by choice the associates you describe. It is simply that there are no others to be had. It is, as I said just now, that I have had no chance. It is not my fault." A'alentine made no answer. Her anger © against Jerry was always short-lived, and already she had admitted in her heart the justice of his plea. He had had no chance ; it was not his fault. AA'as he to blame if, easeloving, gay and weak, he was lightly led astray, if he was constitutionally lacking in the courage necessary to say no ? A great pity surged up within her for the very weaknesses and defects which, translated into action, were already threatening to drag him down ; it was not his fault, so she told herself, if they were stronger than he and were gaining the mastery.

Was not he a victim rather than a criminal ? He had had no chance. AVas it his fault that, sociable by nature, his only possibilities of companionship lay with the sons ofthe tradespeople at Railesford ; the only education he had received had been at the grammar school they had attended ; that, his father dead, he had been left to the injudicious training of a mother alternately unwisely indulgent and equally unwisely severe ? No, looking with wistful eyes at his face, careless and gay, Valentine told herself that his plea was just : he had had no chance. And yet what could be done ? how was the end that she foresaw7 to be averted ? Jerry had been regarding her smilingly, discerning perhaps a portion at least of her reflections, and now7 he spoke. " Go to bed, Valentine," he said. " You are tired, and therefore take a pessimist's view of the matter.

The case may not after all be as hopeless as you imagine. Remember at least, for your consolation, that it is al AA'ays possible that I may fall into the hands of some one who may lead me in the right way. Go to bed, my dear. Good-night." He rose as he spoke and opening the door stepped back politely to allow his sister to pass, stooping to disengage from her dress a spray of briar that had caught in its hem. " It was stormy out of doors to-night," he «aid, as he lifted his head again and looked her full in the face as she passed out. Valentine flushed hotly, understanding and admitting the justice of the counter accusation which her brother had tacitly brought against her. It was not the first time that he had shown that he was not without his suspicions as to the fashion in which she had lately spent her time.

After all, in Avhat was she better than he ? That he was untruthful she knew ; she had detected him in falsehood, not once nor VICE A'ALENTINE. 25 twice, but whenever it suited his purposes ; but if she had prided herself heretofore upon her own uprightness, had it not simply been that, till Dennis had crossed her path, she had had no sufficient temptation to act otherwise ? AVhen the temptation to lie and to deceive had come, had she, any more than her brother, resisted it ? She reviewed in her own mind the course of the last six weeks, from her first meeting with Ralph to their parting to-night, the trysts she had given him, the mockery with which he had put aside her early scruples. Yes, she had been no better than Jerry ; it was only that their objects were different. AVell, it was OA'er now ; there would be no more mornings, with the dew7 on the heather and the gossamer webs underfoot, when he would wait for her on the moor ; no more even ings when, escaphig from her stepmother's stern silence and Tina's fretful complaints, she would find him on the sands.