Paul's Stepmother, and one other story

Front matter

PAUL'S STEPMOTHER ONE OTHER STORY PAUL'S STEPMOTHER ONE OTHER STORY 'By LADY TROUBRIDGE LONDON GRANT RICHARDS 9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN Printed by Ballantvne Hanson c^ Co. At the Ballantyne Prcsb TO THE MEMORY OF A FRIEND I DEDICATE THIS BOOK CONTENTS Paul's Stepmother .... pa_e I prologue ..... 3 chap. i. meeting ...... 7 „ ii. "why, you must be paul " . i 5 „ III. "i LIKE THAT SORT " ... 26 „ iv. a quarrel ..... 30 ,, v. creeting and farewell . . . 53 „ vi. how paul believed her . . 75 „ vii. paul resolves to go . . . 83 „ viii. "you'll say good-bye to me?" . 89 „ ix. the doom of the rose . . . i07 „ x. the end of the dream . . . ii7 Poor Roderick . . . . . . .125 chap. i. love at first sight . . 1 27 „ ii. sir roderick gives a toast . . 1 63 „ iii. meeting again . . . i 88 „ iv. the riddle of the sphinx . . 2i4. PAUL'S STEPMOTHER " On earth the broken arcs, In heaven the perfect round." Robert Browning

Prologue

Paul Wallender was a man of few ambitions, a silent creature and not at all up to date. To his contemporaries he seemed to be behind the times, a kind of nineteenth-century Rip Van Winkle. He was a quiet, old-fashioned, middle-aged young man. All his ideas upon life were of the old-fashioned kind. He had probably never heard of Ibsen or his views, and he certainly would not have cared for them if he had. He believed in women ; but they were of the old-fashioned sort. They were women without fringes, and without big picturesque and extravagant looking hats. They were quiet women, who never contradicted their husbands or had their jewels reset in the strange new-fangled crescents and suns and the glittering bands which now meander across artificially waved hair, instead of the solid unbecoming tiaras which his mother, Lady Wallender, and her friends had always worn and found good enough.

Lady Wallender herself had now passed away to a land where diamonds are not. She had left her old-fashioned tiaras behind her with all other pomps and vanities : but fortunately she had been able to take in her hand the white flower of a blameless life, a thing which shines, so we are told, when the lustre of earthly jewels fade. Her image in marble lay recumbent in the parish church of Wallender, and her portrait in faded water-colours hung in Paul's London rooms. Furthermore, her memory was en shrined in his heart, there was something sacred to him in this woman who had given him birth. He mourned her in a grim con stant fashion of his own. She had in reality been a dull and colourless person enough, but she had been the only element of softness and brightness in his reserved life, and he had loved her fondly.

She became now a most sacred recollection to him. Women individu ally he had not much sympathy for. Their small society talk and their small light natures, seemed to find no echo in his own deep temperament. He had run the gauntlet of Prologue 5 life's temptations, and succumbed to them to a certain degree ; but he had given no woman as yet the least claim upon his life, amongst other reasons, the passive attitude he had adopted towards life had stood in his way and had prevented him from being much drawn to anything, or anybody. Nor had he wider aims. In politics, the party spirit and want of patriotism which he observed on each side of the House had repelled him. The wire pulling and meanness which seemed to accom pany even high aims and great doings appeared almost tragic to him. By degrees Paul began to feel himself out of things.

The larger in terests of existence gradually drifted past him, and he was left between the old and the young men of his day in those quiet chambers in the Temple where he read for the law ; a man who had missed the best gifts of Life, although perhaps he did not know it. Such was Paul Wallender before a certain episode in his history, a quiet, grim, middle-aged creature, the very last person about whom a strange fantas tic love-story might be woven. But passion claims her victims as impartially as death. " Thou shalt suffer," she says to one after another, "and Thou, and Thou," and lo! the quiet student responds to the call as well as his livelier comrades. Then they hear those magic whispers that deaden the ear to the dull sounds of prosaic life. They see the radiance of the light that, they say, never was on sea or land.

But sometimes the suffering outweighs the joy. Years afterwards, a man who saw Paul Wallender die spoke of him to me. "He was not a morbid man by any means," he said, "ora man who undervalued the gift of life, but he was awfully, terribly glad to go, and when I told him I wondered to see him so resigned, he smiled. ' My heart has ached for twenty years, my good friend,' he said, 'and it's getting tiring work at last.' And then he stretched himself out and murmured a woman's name. ' Milly,' he said, ' Milly.' I looked at his face and it was calm and peaceful." "Who could Milly have been?" asked the man who told me. " Some woman he was fond of?" I shook my head. I had no clue. Out of the mist of dead and gone years a name had been spoken bringing with it a life's secret, but into the still deeper mists of the grave it had passed with Paul Wallender.

Chapter I Meeting

' Would but some winged angel ere too late A rrest the yet unfolded roll of fate, A nd make the stern recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate." " A designing minx, my dear fellow," said Wallender with an angry sneer, that was one half a snarl and the other half a groan. " That's what she is." He was speaking to Gerald Lovel, one of the very few he was intimate with. Lovel was a fair-haired, dogmatic, but kind-hearted young fellow, who had dug Paul out of his shell. When Wallender snubbed him he was quite unaware of it, as his serene self satisfaction never allowed him to entertain such an idea for a moment. And so they had drifted into friendship. Lovel laughed heartily at Paul's words. "A strange way to talk of your future stepmother." " Hush," said Paul, becoming grave. " Do not call her that.

This hideous unnatural marriage shall be put a stop to — I shall manage to break it off somehow." "That you cannot possibly do, old chap," said his friend. " If it is not already an accomplished fact, by the tone of your respected papa's note it pretty soon will be." Paul pulled the letter out with an angry jerk. " It's a miserably lame rigmarole," he continued; "and I shall have to be con gratulated by people on it, Gerald, and simper and smirk as if I wasn't wild with him. Oh ! the old fool ! " he ended, but his voice was almost pitying. " Draw it mild, Wallender, you are a nice filial specimen," said Lord Gerald, settling himself down in one of the shabby arm chairs with an air of calm amusement, and pulling himself out a cigarette from a quaint inlaid case. " Oh ! filial be hanged ! " retorted Paul ; "as to that, I'm old enough to be a grand father myself and have had an average share of ups and downs in my day, but I've always been glad to think I had a quiet old home Meeting 9 and a dear steady old father to come back to.

It's always been so pleasant for a fellow to find everything just the same as when he left it, and now to hear that he's actually engaged to a child in her teens — a sort of freckled hoyden." As he spoke his lips pursed them selves together with an indescribable move ment of contempt, and then he turned again to the letter in his hand without finishing his sentence. " Listen to this," he said, and he began to read aloud. •Wallender Hall, " June ist. " My Dear Paul, — I fear you may be startled to hear that I contemplate a second marriage, and that at no distant date." [" That means it is coming off about the day after to morrow," put in Gerald.] "And I feel that an explanation is perhaps due from me to you, although I have no reasonable doubt of your sympathy. Your dear mother's memory " Here Paul suddenly broke off, stopped his half-sneering manner of reading for a moment, then, looking on, he began again : " You are perhaps surprised that a man of my age should unite himself to one so much younger, but, my dear Paul, I have only lately experienced the truth of that golden saying that a man is no older than he feels.

My Milly is simple and artless " [" Ugh," said Paul] " and unites to the beauty of her person a kind and loving heart." ["A little garrison flirt."] " I feel that she is one whom you will readily love as a friend. Now pray come, my boy, and see her and get to know her. We shall be settled at Wallender directly after our marriage, which will be a private one, no fuss or ceremony that we can avoid, and I trust you will lose no time in coming home." " There, Gerald," said Wallender, refold ing this letter and putting it away. " What do you think of that ? " " I think that love is a wonderful thing and it has evidently laid your poor father low." " Love — folly ! imbecility," said Paul. " Call things by their right names." " Well, I hope you won't think yourself obliged to quarrel with him. There's no such mistake on earth, my dear fellow," and as he pensively watched the rings of smoke Meeting 11 rising from his cigarette Lovel's thoughts wandered back o'er many a hard-fought skirmish with his own father and its barren results.

Paul moved restlessly about the room and finally stationed himself against the sash of the window meditatively puckering his forehead into lines of thought. This marriage was a profound blow to him, and his bluster ing talk was adopted to conceal and carry off the chagrin he felt. Every now and then his eyes went to the faded likeness of his mother over the mantelpiece. " No ! I shall not quarrel with him" he said at last. " The marriage is as good as over and I never quarrel with the inevitable ; but as for that girl ! " " Oh, she will not mind your contempt if she is what we think her, for she will know she has the best of you." As Paul could not refute this he made no answer and a silence succeeded. Then Wallender spoke again. His thoughts had left his father's matrimonial prospects and fixed themselves on Lovel's. " So you are going to do it next," he grumbled ; " at least so they tell me.

Out with it, Gerald. Of course she is young and lovely, and of course you have never loved any one as you do her." Gerald smiled mysteriously. " What I cannot understand," went on Paul, " is proposing to a woman at all. I mean I cannot understand the state of mind in which a man does it. The same mood, I suppose, in which he stakes all he is worth at Monte Carlo, or volunteers to lead a forlorn hope. The concentration of purpose which it needs and the reckless acceptance of an awful responsibility. I wonder the words don't fail on your lips, as you think of the almost certain results." " But that is what one wants, the results," said Gerald. " Think of that altar," went on Paul musingly, "and the awful nature of the vows which you will gabble off there." " I'll keep them," put in Gerald in a matter of-fact voice.

" Suppose you do keep them. Is that any guarantee that she will ? As far as I am concerned the marriage ceremony amazes me. Such eternal pledges in this changing world of ours. Then the babies " Meeting 13 " Now, Paul," remonstrated his friend, " you go too far." " Then the babies come," reiterated Wal lender. " Oh, yes, my dear fellow, they come almost invariably and then the mother loses her health, becomes nervous, querulous, invalidish, full of fancies — in plain English, devilish disagreeable. Never mind, she is yours for life and you may look neither to the right nor to the left. ' For better, for worse,' still rings in your ears, and you catch yourself wondering why it seems always to be for worse." Paul ceased, and Gerald fixed his eyes upon him with his usual unchanging smile creeping about the corners of his mouth.

" You are talking of something we neither of us understand," he said at last. " I suppose marriage is like religion, and you cannot ex plain it in words. It must be a part of your very life before you can understand it." For a moment his pale blue eyes seemed lit by a perception of deeper truths than came to him as a rule, but the flash of inspiration soon passed away. " It. What?" said Paul impatiently. " The purity of it," answered Lovel. " That is the core of it, Wallender. The other day — she kissed me. I mean the girl I am going to marry. It was a real human kiss full of feeling and ardour, and yet somehow it was sacred." " Well, well ! " returned the other. " These things have passed me by ; but I am glad that they have been revealed unto you, old fellow." Later on, when Lovel had gone, he again drew out Sir David's letter from his pocket, and reperused it.

" So this is marriage, sacred marriage ! " he said. " This is a man's faithfulness and gratitude for years of devotion. My God ! Well, well ! it is a curious sort of a world, but I suppose we must stick to it until our modern scientists construct us an electric ladder to the nearest planet."

Chapter II

"WHY, YOU MUST BE PAUL" It was three weeks before the two met again. At the end of that time Paul invaded Lord Gerald's luxurious rooms in Ryder Street and flung himself into an armchair. Lovel had just finished his breakfast, and it would have been impossible for any one to have pre sented a neater appearance than he did. Each hair was in its place, his coat fitted — well ! as few coats do ; his cuffs positively shone as he moved his arm up and down in smoking a cigar. This dainty elegance, which somehow never degenerated into effeminacy, was a part of himself. This morning it struck Wallender particularly, as he glanced at his fresh-coloured, placid face. " By Jove, I believe you are the cleanest fellow I've met for years," he said, watching him. Lovel half smiled. "Have you come to tell me that?" he asked.

"No," said Paul. "No; I cannot say that I did." He paused a second, and then said gravely : " It is over, Lovel." Lovel understood him. " Yes," continued Paul. "It is over, and I am going down to see them. Will you come with me ? I am afraid it is incon venient for you just now, but I have deter mined to take you, so you had better put off all those little dinners at the Savoy to which you were going. They will all do just as well next week. The same faces, the same gowns, even the band will go on playing the same tunes." " I shall be so exceedingly in the way," said Gerald, catching at a straw. " Not a bit of it," said Wallender briskly : " in fact, old boy, I do not intend to go without you. You will act as a buffer between my father and myself." " I hate acting as buffers to people," said Gerald, flicking with his table-napkin a minute crumb off his shoe.

" It is as great a bore as playing gooseberry." " And just as important," observed Paul. 1 You'll come, won't you ? " " All right, old boy." Two days later saw them leaving Euston station, Gerald immaculately attired in a long drab overcoat, followed by a man-servant, who placed sufficient books and periodicals in the railway carriage to have occupied him during a day's journey. He was a contrast to Paul, who threw in his old portmanteau and then scrambled in himself after it. During the short journey Wallender spoke freely about the facts of the marriage as he had gathered them from different letters written by old friends in the neighbour hood. " This is how it came about," he began, pulling out an old stalking-cap from his pocket and forcing it on to his head with a fine disregard for appearances that Gerald did not feel inclined to copy.

" The father of these girls is a regular old scamp — a major in a marching regiment with a parcel of girls and a long train of debts be hind him wherever he goes." Here he paused, then added grimly enough : " I daresay they are paid now. He took a cottage in the B village and the girls, who follow the drum, lived in it with him." "In the drum ? " said Gerald, who was a trifle deaf. " No : in the cottage, old boy. Well, one of them — the prettiest, I hear, and the one with the most brains — cast her eyes on the poor old dad as the only ' eligible ' about. It was a heartless, mercenary, disgusting business," added Wallender, allowing him self to speak plainly. "He has offered to start each and every Smith in life. The boys will all go into the army with allow ances, I suppose, and the girls will be given five hundred pounds worth of trous seau.

So we shall find them swarming like locusts." Between such discussion and reading the time slipped by. " By Jove, here we are," said Wallender at last, when the familiar station came into view. As the train stopped a footman came up to them touching his hat. " What carriages are here, John ? " asked Paul, as he began handing out parcels to that functionary. " Only the fly from the village, sir," was the reply. " The other carriages is all at the picnic, sir." " But where's my trap, and the brougham ? They can't be all out." "They was all ordered, sir, for the picnic," replied the footman with stolid composure, and he volunteered a further explanation. " Sir David and her ladyship in the brougham, the two Mr. Smiths in the dogcart, and the Miss Smiths in the waggonette." Wallender turned away with a jerk of im patience and walked at a quick pace through the station, followed by Gerald Lovel's tall figure.

Lovel was perfectly imperturbable. He could not understand Wallender's hasty fits of almost boyish rage. When he himself was thoroughly displeased, he contrived to make it very unpleasant for somebody, but Paul's rages seemed to affect himself even more acutely than they affected his neigh bours. He was in one now. " Imagine the coolness of these infernal brothers in my cart ! " he ejaculated, flinging down the dusty, creaking windows of the fly ; " and the heat and discomfort of this beastly covered thing." " The picnic will be hot work also," put in Gerald, with his eyes straying over the dust covered hedge-rows, and his mind taking in the sultry hush of the June evening. Wallender Abbey was an Elizabethan house of not large proportions, and was approached by one of those tortuous winding drives which seem to have been carefully calculated to add to the importance of moderate-sized houses — as the prologue to a play is supposed to excite a greater interest in the real story when it at length begins.

After following the zigzaggings of the road for a long time, Wallender and Lovel at length came to a sudden standstill, and found themselves before a long row of windows. As they went in, there fell upon them both that sudden sense of silence which is one of the pleasantest sensations of an arrival in the country after a long spell of the London roar. This feeling wears off after even a few hours stay in the locality, but it is strangely soothing while it lasts. Passing through the hall, the feeling was with Paul, and silence and sweet odours seemed to pervade everything. It was a real home coming, after all. After having rather perfunctorily done the honours and rung for tea for Gerald, Paul went in search of that parti cular room which had been his sanctum from boyhood. Here the quaint still perfume clung also, but it was mingled with a sense of warm comfort and occupation ; a quantity of freshly gathered roses having evidently lately been arranged in a Worcester bowl on a table by the window ; magazines and books were ready to hand.

He threw himself into a leather-covered arm-chair, and looked at his books, his knick-knacks and long hoarded possessions with a calm delight. At all events, nothing here was changed. The rest and peace of it all penetrated him. He leaned back, passed his hand across his fore head where the lines seemed to be smoothing themselves out, and enjoyed the moment. All at once faint shrieks of laughter became audible in the distance and a peculiar sound like the tick-tacking noise made by high heeled shoes hurrying down the passage. A change passed over Wallender's face. " The picnic's coming back," he said to himself in dismay. The hurrying feet came nearer and then suddenly the door was flung open and a girl stood in the doorway, and then whirled into the room. She was flushed, dishevelled and panting, and seemed to his first glance to be between eighteen and nine teen years old.

Her brown hair was loosened and almost tumbling down her back, her hat was swinging by its elastic in her hand ; she rushed on up to Paul — apparently without seeing him — whisking a china ornament from the table as she did so. "She is lovely," thought he, and then with this thought another idea came hard on its heels. " But not in the least like a lady." "Home! home! you can't catch me," she called out as she ran, he supposed, to her pursuers behind, then suddenly catching sight of Wallender, she said " Oh ! " and stood still, with her very pretty mouth wide open in surprise. Wallender stood up, but did not speak. Perhaps he could not make up his mind what to say. "Why, you must be Paul," continued the girl, still gaping at him. " Good gracious, of course you must be ! " " I am Paul," replied Wallender, with in creasing stiffness.

On hearing this, she came further into the room and let herself drop into an arm-chair, while her eyes never left his face. " We've had such a game," she said, " and I'm all to bits : but I am forgetting, do you know who / am ? " This was said rather exultingly. Paul took care to answer with a parade of in difference. " I believe you to be Lady Wallender." "Yes, I'm your stepmother," she said, im pressively. " I daresay it seems curious to you my being so young," she said, and then came a rather uncomfortable laugh. " There is a good deal of strangeness in the whole situation," said Paul, fixing his eyes on her steadily for an interval of about two seconds, during which she returned his stare, and then her colour varied and at length her bright, bold glance fell before his. For a moment it seemed as though she were abashed, and then she began to speak again : " I daresay you hate the whole thing," she said tentatively, bending her head down and absently turning a diamond ring on her finger.

Wallender, he told himself, could scarcely have believed in such a persistent exhibition of bad taste if he had not witnessed it himself. Again he stared at her and then in a studiously quiet way, as though the subject interested him, he said : " Was your picnic far off? " Apparently she was clever enough to under stand his snubs, for the red colour rushed up to her cheeks again. Before she could answer, it seemed to Paul that a quantity of strangers burst into the room. The only familiar figure amongst them was his infatuated parent, who greeted him with cordiality and even a certain amount of timidity. " Ah, Paul, there you are ! No introduction is needed, I see, in that quarter," nodding towards his wife, " but here are some others you do not yet know — Miss Georgy Smith, Miss Cissy, and Margaret" — laying his hand for a moment on the shoulder of a thin leggy child of fourteen.

"You are all his aunts, are you not?" ex claimed Lady Wallender with what seemed to Paul the very bad taste which had hitherto marked all she said and did. He bowed comprehensively to the group, but did not speak, and after a somewhat strained silence, some one made a move to dress for dinner. "I'll race you upstairs!" cried Georgy. " Come on ! Milly, you look moonstruck — picnics don't agree with you, my dear." " There are other disagreeable things in the world besides picnics," replied Lady Wallender — the "Milly" appealed to. She rose from her chair as she spoke with a side long glance in Paul's direction, and strolled out of the room. This byplay was lost upon him as he did not observe it. On finding themselves alone together, the elder man fidgeted uneasily. " She is lovely, Paul, eh ?

" he said. " She is certainly lovely," answered Paul. " I think you'll like each other, eh ? " said the old man, encouraged by this acquiescence. " How old is she — sixteen ? " interrupted Paul. Sir David drew himself up. " Folly, sir, folly," he said, " she is nearly twenty I beleve. Paul laughed shortly. " Well, father, you are a bold man," he said, "but, however, we will not discuss it. By Jove, nearly eight o'clock ! " and he too, after a hasty look at the clock, went his way. His words remained with his father, and stung him. Paul seemed at once to have put the matter in its true light. Yes, it was May and December with a vengeance, morning and evening, and long after his day was done she, he knew, would be shining in midday splendour. But for whom ? that was the question. He shivered a little, and tried to fancy it was the chill of the fast coming twilight.

"What does he mean, he thought ? Ah ! well, I needn't be anxious. Milly is true as steel, and if he has taken a dislike to her, it can't be helped, but it's a pity — a great pity." And the tall clock echo ing his words as clocks will, repeated mourn fully, " a great pity."

Chapter III

"I LIKE THAT SORT" Perchance if we had never met, I had been spared this mad regret, This endless striving to forget For ever and for ever." Violet Fane. Dinner at Wallender Hall had always been considered a solemn old-fashioned meal, when Paul and his father had sat facing each other, digesting their own mutton, and finally discussing, with a mild interest that never seemed to grow less, the merits of their port. A dull meal, some people would consider this, prepared by an English cook, one of those cooks that you might be certain would be spoken of in an advertisement as " thorough." There were few appetising little dishes, no eggs lightly flung together with a hint of cheese, or devilled shrimps lurking in a seeming egg : but, on the other hand, the sideboard was weighed down by all kinds of cut hams, tongues and pressed beef.

The conversation too seemed to partake a little of the stodgy nature of the food, for Paul and his father discussed the state of shorthorns, the orthodoxy of the clergyman, and politics were reviewed towards the end of dinner, the port lending colour to Paul's denunciations of Mr. Gladstone, with which, as often as not, the evening would close. But Paul, as he settled his tie before the glass and ruefully inspected the growing baldness about his temples, felt that these good old times were over for ever now, and, finishing his self-scrutiny, he turned from the window with a deep sigh. On nearing the drawing-room those eternal giggles were heard again. " Why are some women perpetually laughing ? " he wondered, "everything cannot be so amusing after all." The room when he came in appeared full of large brightly dressed women, among whom Sir David looked overpowered, seeming more than ever an attenuated old man — Miss Georgy and another beetle-browed girl were contending for the honour of pinning a flower to the coat of their brother-in-law, who was " I Like that Sort " 29 quoting, with cumbersome gallantry, the hackneyed quotation : "How happy could I be with either!"