The Wooing of a Fairy

Front matter

A NEW NOVELS AT ALL THE LIBRARIES. AN AUSTRALIAN DUCHESS. By AMYOT SAGON, Author of 'A Fair Palmist,' &c 1 vol. 6b. GENTLEMAN GEORGE, A Story without a Heroine. By Mrs. Herbert Martin, Author of ' ttritomart,' &c. 1vol. 6b. BLIND BATS. By MARGARET B. CROSS, Author of 'Stolen Honey,' 'The Saffron Eobe,' 'Newly Fashioned,' &c. 1vol. 6s. THE YOKE OF STEEL. By C. J. WILLS, Author of ' The Pit Town Coronet,' 'An EaBy-Going Fellow,' &c; and GODFKEY BURCHETT, Author of ' Dominic Penterne,* ' One of the Wicked,' &c. 1 vol. Ga. OF THE DEEPEST DYE. By COLONEL CUTHBEET LARKING, Author of 'With Everything Against Her,' &c. 1 vol <:-*. A LEDDY IN HEE AIN RICHT. By Mrs. TOM KELLY, Author of 'Time and Chance.' With Frontispiece. 1vol. ils. LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LIMITED. BY GERTRUDE WARDEN AUTHOR OF 'THE SENTIMENTAL SEX.

IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED, 13. GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1897. AU rights rtsenni. CONTENTS. <;HAt*TF.R PAGE I. The Story of Adrian Hervey . . . 1 II. Introduces Nicholas Wray .... 19 III. Lythinge 31 IV. I Meet my Ideal 34 V. A Marsh Fairy 54 VI. My Great Mistake 66 VII. Woman Proposes 77 VIII. An Uninvited Guest 94 IX. A Bohemian Banquet 100 X. ' T'other dear Charmer ' . . . .113 XI. Lilith's Ordeal 126 XII. A Lover's Tiff 134 XIII. Lilith again 150 XIV. A Little Dinner 163 XV. A Little Gipsy 178 XVI. A Prodigal Daughter 192 XVII. Jealousy in Love ...... CONTESTS. 6 CHAPTER TAt.E XVIII. A Warning 220 XIX. AKefusai 235 XX. A Legacy 247 XXI. Lost Lilith 261 XXII. Thi: Wedding Eve 267 XXIII. For Richer, for Poorer ! 275 XXIV. Married to a Fairy 280 XXV. Madge's Visit 288 XXVI. My Art Life 297 XXVII. Forsaken! 304 XXVIII. The Old French House .... 309 XXIX. Lilith Comes Home 318 XXX. Forgiveness

Chapter I. The Story Of Adrian Hervey

When I was ill, very ill both in mind and body, not many months ago, my kind nurses procured for me a large assortment of the latest and most popular novels. The authors were chiefly ladies, and one and all were occupied in showing how complicated, how delicate, and how little understood a thing is the heart of a wo man, and how unworthy a being is man to be entrusted with the care of it ; how coarse and gross are his tastes, how unstable and wavering is the passion he dignifies by the name of love. The books containing these principles have had a great sale and have run through many editions, and after reading them I was moved, perhaps in a spirit of protest, to chronicle faithfully my own experiences as a lover, admitting first candidly that I may not be accept- B ed as an ordinary type of man on account of my un usual capability (a very unfashionable one in this end of the century) for making an utter fool of myself where my affections are concerned.

I have never written before, and have nothing but the memory of my absolute experience to guide me, an experience burnt so deeply into my mind that I shall have great difficulty in speaking of it without bitterness. What I want to show is this : that men as well as wo men occasionally have hearts, aud are none the happier or the better treated for it. It is the old story, I suppose : in dealings with the other sex one must be the executioner or the victim. All I maintain is that the world-old strife is not always one-sided in result, the battle is not always to the swift or the race to the strong. The romance of my life, such as it was, began just six years ago. Its starting-point was the accidental meeting in the Park with a foolish youth, a fellow-club man, who frittered his life away at afternoon tea-tables, and thought himself popular because he was laughed at by half the well-dressed men and women in London.

For the life of me I never could remember the fellow's name, but we all called him ' Collars,' on account of the tremendously high ones he wore, aud as ' Collars ' I shall speak of him now. 'I congratulate you, Hervey,' Collars began. 'You are in luck. Heard about your picture being bought by the something or other bequest for the nation. Let me see, what will the nation do with it? Put it in a museum, don't they ? or is it in the Academy cellars . Never mind. It's a great honour, of course. Wish I had gone in for painting. But you look fagged. Want a change, eh . I've discovered the jolliest little place you ever saw. No railway, five miles from anywhere, and a mile from the sea. Stuck on a cliff — you can live like a fighting-cock at a shilling a day, and never see a soul. No visitors — no room for any — no niggers, and you can't see the French coast.

I do so love to get away from the French coast on a clear day. Run down in an hour and a half, and you can paint ripping big landscapes all day without any natives to bother you. There aren't any natives — besides, they're too stupid. So you're A. R.A. now ! Fellow told me the other day it meant "Another Ruined Artist," as you painting chaps never do any good when you begin to stick letters after your name. Never mind. They can't take it away, and you're sure to be R.A. if you live long enough. Then you can sell any stuff. Not that you want the money. Lucky dog ! Rolling in wealth, and engaged to a heiress. When's it coming off!' ' Collars ' had run himself out, and he stopped to take breath, not to wait for an answer. I handed him my pocket-book and pencil. B ' Write down the address of that place you spoke of,' I said.

And ' Collars,' taken by surprise before he was wound up again, wrote it down. ' The Rose aud Crown Hotel, Lythinge, Kent.' ' It's an inn, not a hotel really, you know,' he ex plained, ' but they think " hotel " is finer because it has five letters in it and " inn " has three. Jolly old sanded floor, you know. I sit there and drink beer, and ask the farmers about the crops. That sort of thing rests a man at the end of the season.' I burst out laughing, and he laughed also without knowing why. The picture conjured up before my mind's eye of ' Collars,' immaculately dressed, imperturbably hobnobbing with the sons of agriculture, and ask ing them, in his loud, slipshod, fashionable English, irrelevant questions about the crops, struck me as being irresistibly humorous. Still, ' out of the mouths of babes ' words of wisdom have been known to come, and I mentally resolved to run down to Lythinge within the next twenty-four hours.

The fact was, I was tired and wanted to think. The London season was in full swing, and being well off and successful I had so many friends and acquaintances that I sometimes sighed for my own society. Above all, 1 longed for the sea. I was born at sea on a voyage to India, whither my mother and father were travelling to join my father's regiment. My mother's people had been in the navy for generations — an ancestor fell by Nelson's side — and a living great-uncle of mine was a distinguished admiral. I had the sea in my blood, and as they would not make a sailor of me I became a painter of the sea and ships. I believe I succeeded because 1 loved it. I had a bit of a yacht, and kept a deaf old salt and his grand son always within call about the coast, and I got more pleasure out of that boat than the smartest reception or ball could give me.

To fashionable entertainments I went sometimes, of course, but chiefly to please my cousin Madge. Madge said that if people did not see me about they would for get that my uncle was Lord Carchestei". It never seemed to me to matter a rap whether they remembered it or not, but I usually did what Madge told me, and that night I promised to take her and her mother to the opera, and afterwards to a ball and reception — Madge loved at that time to cram as many engagements as possible into one day. After getting rid of ' Collars,' I made my way along the Row, nodding to acquaintances, while I looked out for old Lady Carchester's carriage. Everybody called Madge's mother 'old Lady Carchester,' although she could not really have been more than five and fifty ; but she was so small and wizened and painted, aud had something so witchlike and uncanny about her, that she might have been a hundred.

She was the daughter and sole heiress of 'Jackson's candles,' or to put it another way, Madge's maternal grandfather had been a tallow millionaire from the north of England, and his money had helped to build the parliamentary fame and secure a peerage for the son of that eminent brewer. John Lorimer, created Baron Lorimer, whose sou, Madge's father, had been buried in a brand-new family vault nine years ago under the style and title of first Earl of Sandling. A year later, his disconsolate countess descended in rank a step or two to become the wife of my uncle, Baron Carchester, and Madge and I first became acquainted. My Uncle Carchester was the head of our house. I was his favourite nephew and after my parents' death liis home was mine. I know it always grieved him that I, the son of his best-loved brother, am not heir to the title and what is left of the family estates.

My Uncle Greville's two boys, who come before me, are not strong physically or mentally, but there they are. They are wel come to the title, although Madge, for one, who thinks a lot of titles, grudges it to them. But Madge must speak for herself, and in order to tell my tale properly I must try and make you under stand her, and see her as I did on this particular after noon, bending forward in her carriage, and showing her ■ fine white teeth in a delightful laugh as she listened to what Charlie Brookton .who is considered one of the most amusing men about town, but whom I personally dislike intensely) was relating to her across the railings of the Row. Madge saw me before she chose to notice me ; at least, I divined that from the extra interest she began to take in Brookton's conversation.

She knew I did not like the man and she always took a malicious pleasure in being specially gracious to men I did not hke. Even now, when I look back, I cannot pretend to understand Madge's motives. That she had a motive for almost everything she did 1 have very little doubt, except on occasions when her feelings carried her away. But she did not allow that to happen very often. She was four-and-twenty, and considered one of the most fascinating women in London, an odd series of contradictions, daring in speech but irreproachable in conduct, a coquette to her finger-tips and yet at times bluntly sincere, far too cynical in her views and yet believing with the most whole-souled loyalty in those to whom her trust was given. I cannot lay claim to understanding Madge, and it would take reams of paper to record my varied impressions of ber changing, complex nature.

As to her appearance, she was considered a great beauty, but I suppose that had she been plain Miss Lorimer, without any money, she would have been es teemed merely a pretty, interesting-looking girl. Her skin was very clear and fair, but she powdered so thickly that everybody said she rouged also, which was a calumny. She had an abundance of pretty brown hair, but she patronised some detestable French hairdresser who frizzed and fluffed, and gilded and bronzed it until I was never sure of the colour it would be from one season to another ; a straight, finely-modelled nose, with something almost disdainful and insolent about the curve at the tip of it ; dark eyebrows, with that crook in the middle which physiognomists tell us means wit ; rather a large mouth, well-shaped, but a little hard when closed ; a prettily-curved chin and thi-oat, and dainty little ears.

Such were Madge's claims to beauty, added to a shapely figure not tall enough for grace, and a nice soft hand unusually strong for a girl. Her voice was altogether charming ; it put you at your ease, or it chilled your blood by its freezing qualities at its owner's will, and there was just a touch of the chill on to-day when she greeted me after I had shaken hands with Aunt Louise, the mummified-looking little old lady who sat by Madge's side, and in whose sharp, hawk-like features there lurked little, if any, trace of her daughter's comeliness. Charles Brookton left the carriage almost as soon as I arrived. Men had a way of making room for me near Madge's side. Not only were we cousins, or rather step cousins, for there was no real relationship between us, but it was one of those clearly understood and settled family arrangements that we were to make a match of it some day.

My uncle and Lady Carchester certainly wished it, as did the rest of the family, but when Madge came of age three years before she had resolutely refused to let the marriage take place until she had had what she called ' a few years' liberty to sow some decorous and highly-cultivated oats ' on her own account. To this suggestion of course I had agreed. I loved my art and wanted to make some name for myself, and it was not as though Madge cared for me. In my work she took a very real interest and often helped me great ly by her suggestions. Neither she nor I saw that any thing was to be gained by tying ourselves up at twenty one and twenty-three. It was not as though we could not see each other every day. My studio was close to my uncle's place and Madge and I could be together whenever we pleased.

Sometimes it seemed to me that she had about her capabilities for a really ardent attachment should the right man come in her way, and I con fess I now and then secretly hoped he would do so. I was very fond of Madge, but her biting, sarcastic re marks often hurt me, and her views of life, and especially of woman's proper share in it, were disquieting in the extreme. Then, too, she flirted so much that, w-atching her, I often rejoiced that I was not in love with her as so many other men were. It was not that she was un kind or cruel. She was on the contrary too kind, aud she encouraged all and sundry to make fools of them selves, so that she was always surrounded by a little court of half-accepted, half-rejected admirers, who wait ed about, as she herself expressed it, in case / should ' drop out of the running.' That was her way of putting it, and of course it was absurd.

Yet I often felt I stood in the way of a brilliant match for her, and sometimes I used to tease her about it. ' You won't marry me,' I used to say, ' yet you let me keep other fellows off. Is that reasonable *' But she had turned on me with sudden temper. ' 1 act like this to please myself,' she said. ' Suppose I like to be a girl-bachelor, or, in other words, an old maid. I presume I may please myself . It is not as if you were iu love, and wanted to marry someone else.' ' / / Good heavens, no !' ' You are not in love, are you, Adrian .' she had suddenly asked me very earnestly, laying her finger-tips on my shoulders and gazing up into my face. ' Not a little bit,' I had answered, with perfect truth, and she had pushed me from her a little impatiently, and changed the subject by bursting into extravagant praises of the beauties and graces of her last favourite actor.

This had happened on the occasion of our last meeting two clays before. To-day she greeted me, as I said, with a little offended air. ' Why didn't you come to lunch yesterday .' she asked, sharply. ' The President came, and we expected you. It would do you good to meet him like that, and Denvil, the new art critic on the Daily Post, was there too. It was very stupid of you not to come. What were you doing ?' ' I was sketching, and I couldn't leave my work. ' Poor dear thing ! Toiling for your daily bread, or perhaps for a little scrape of butter to put on it, eh? And, by the way, talking of poverty-stricken artists — such as you — have you heard of Nicholas Wray lately?' 'No. Have you?' ' Yes.' Her expression changed suddenly and her dark eyes grew pitiful and moist. ' Adrian,' she said, in a very low voice, ' you must find him out at once and help him.

He has been ill, and he is nearly starving /' ' Who told you so ?' ' Denvil said something which made me suspect it. So I wrote Nicholas Wray a note, asking him to lunch with us to-day, as I wanted to talk to him about making an outline sketch of my father from his portraits. I sent it by hand and got a verbal answer thanking me but saying he could not undertake any work at present. I'm sure there's something very wrong with him.' But here the thin, high voice of Madge's mother chimed in : ' If Nicholas Wray is ill he has drunk himself into it. 1 have no patience with dirty, drunken, money-borrow ing Bohemians. It's the fashion to call his scribblings clever, but I've seen better work done with a bit of chalk on the pavement.' Lady Carchester seldom spoke, but when she did air her views, they were usually old-fashioned and emphatic.

Nicholas Wray had been a fellow-student of mine in Paris studios. His work was chiefly black and white, dashing, brilliant caricatures and 'impressions,' and as such did not commend itself to Madge's mother, who in art rated ' finish ' above all other qualities. Madge on her part believed that Wray had a future and Madge was generally right. She made a funny little mo ue at me unseen to Lady Carchester, but she was wise enough to drop the subject of Nicholas Wray, who, by the way, cherished so profound an admiration for her that now and then I wondered whether he had succeeded in making some slight impression upon her apparently un assailable heart. 'You'll dine with us, of course?' she said. 'Other wise we may be late, and I don't want to miss that duet in the first act. Oh ! and I want you to go with me to Hurlingham to-morrow, and ' ' To-morrow,' I said, ' I am going out of town.' She raised her eyebrows. ' Out of town !

Why ?' ' Because I am sick of it.' Madge flushed angrily. ' Complimentary to us, isn't he, mamma ? 1 am sure we have done our best ' ' Don't be silly, Madge. You know how I hate a London season. And haven't I been good, doing every thing and going everywhere ? Now I want to be out of it for a few hours ' ' Where are you going ? Mamma, there's Lady Wrex ford bowing to you. Wbat a perfectly frightful hat ! And her complexion isn't made up to tone with it one bit. You great artists, Adrian, R.A.'s, and A.R.A.'s, and all that, ought to take advantage of your social position to go about giving hints to people how to paint pro perly — their faces, I mean. There's Miss St. Albyn just gone by, with a cream-colour complexion, clearly meant for black, under a cornflower-blue hat. And Lady Marchmont is made up cerise with a vieux rose costume.

A few elementary lessons in the art of making-up would come as a boon and a blessing to so many women, and prevent us, who kuow apple-green from purple, from having our eyes set on edge — well, Adrian, what was it you were saying about going away ? and whither are you bouud ?' ' Out of the pale of civilization for a day or two. I want to forget the Row, and the opera, and Hurlingham, and Lady Marchmont's make-up, and ' ' And me V 'Not you, of course, but myself, my stiffly-collared, frock-coated self.' ' And play at being an artist ?' I bowed and laughed, but I did not like it. Madge knew how to make her speeches sting. ' Exactly,' I said, ' and play at being an artist. But my destination is a state secret.' ' Never mind,' she returned, smiling radiantly into my face, as though conscious that her last thrust had been too sharply barbed. ' I daresay we shall see the result of your visit on the line at Burlington House next spring.' ' Among other respectable and popular mediocrities ?' ' Now you are being bitter at your own expense.

Your work is far above mediocrity.' ' But I don't starve in a garret, which in your opinion is the one and only incentive to talent. Good-bye until this evening.' ' Good-bye, and don't be late for dinner.' Then she leaned for an instant towards me, and whispered very lightly, for Lady Carchester was rather deaf, ' Don't forget Nicholas Wray.' 1 did not forget him. I bent my steps at once in the direction of his studio, and, as I walked, I thought about my cousin Madge. Clearly I was bound to her, and I liked no other wo man so well. For eight years we had seen each other almost daily, and although I did not for a moment flat ter myself that she loved me, she was fond of me in her way, and had not the least objection to marry me — at some time. From a worldly point of view it was undoubtedly a magnificent match for me.

Lady Margaret Lorimer, ouly child and heiress of the ' Diamond Queen,' as Lady Carchester was called, on account of the enormous amount of diamonds she habitually wore iu the evening stuck about her small, wizened person, — handsome, brilliant, witty, and accomplished, could have mated far better than with the son of a younger son, whose allowance was but a thousand a year, and was never likely to be more. It was true that I had been exceptionally suc cessful in my artistic career, but picture-painting, except in very rare instances, is not a lucrative profession, and for one person who would buy a canvas representing sea-shore and waves, there are five hundred who would purchase genre and figure studies. But I was happy in my art and in my dreams, dreams through which, all unbidden, a certain fairy figure, quite unlike Lady Bladge Lorimer, sometimes flitted.

A young man's vague ideal of freshness, simplicity, and girlish grace, a creature all sunshine and sweetness, glad laugh ter and spontaneous caresses, unacquainted with French novels, ignorant of all advanced and decadent and pessimistic ideas, but revelling in youth, and life, and love. This slender, golden-haired sylph of my day-dreams, and often of my night-dreams as well, floated tantalizing ly before my eyes under the Park trees, and I wished, as I had often wished before, that I had sufficient skill as a figure-painter to commit my floating fancies ade quately to canvas. And yet of what use was it to dwell on such visions, such yearnings after an impossible ideal ? My way in life lay neatly rolled and made smooth before me. Sooner or later my cousin Madge, the arbiter of my fate, would get tired of being a ' girl bachelor,' and, failing the man she could love, would signify to me her royal permission to buy the wedding ring.

We should in due course endure a long and elaborate wedding in a church crammed with most of the 'smart' sightseers of London, and ladies' papers, social weeklies, and Radical evening sheets would alike chronicle the bride's white satin, or ' ivory bengaline/ the bridesmaids' gowns, and the expensive presents showered upon the happy pair, from the diamond tiara, diamond sun, diamond necklace, diamond bracelets and rings of the bride's mother, to the bound volumes of Longfellow's poems, presented by the bride's old governess. Well, it was a picture many men would look forward to gladly. We should live in a big house in a big square, and give big receptions or costly little dinners, as Madge's caprice would prompt her. We should keep a yacht, of course, a very large one, instead of the tiny vessel so dear to my heart, and we should always have it full of people, nice people, 'smart' people, well-bred people, all singularly alike in style, manner, and con versation, the only original personality among them beiug that of my wife herself, who for all her patron age of Bohemia was at heart a Philistine, and detested seeing too much of h'less genius with dirty nails.

We should be everywhere at the right time, that is to say, the fashionable time. We should be in Cowes for ' the week,' in Brighton for Goodwood, Staines for Ascot, Rome for the Carnival, Algiers or Cairo for the winter, Scotland in the autumn, Paris in the New Year, London in early summer. I had done it all, and was so constitut ed that I preferred all these places without the cackling crowd with whom we should certainly rub shoulders and exchange inanities all the time. And for home life — oh, that would scarcely exist ! C Madge would be the first to laugh at the ' small clerk and his wife ' notion of sitting one on each side of the fire in the winter, and wandering together in country lanes in the summer. She would still have her troop of more or less platonic admirers, and sooner or later I should probably be glad to relegate to them the con stant attendance at balls, theatres, concerts, race-meet ings, and receptions, which I already found so irksome.

Luckily, it is not the fashion for husbands and wives to be inseparable in society. Aud yet in my ideal life that ideal wife and I would be inseparable indeed. She would inspire my art, and I should work for her. Through my studio I could see her slim figure flitting, fairylike, and could hear her bright laughter cheering me after a long day of happy work. She would know as little of the outside fashion able chattering world as I cared for it ; she would live with me and for me, and I for her. But here my medi tations ceased as 1 found myself opposite the door of Nicholas Wray's studio, in a side street off High Street, Kensington.

Chapter II. Introduces Nicholas Wray

' Old Nick ' himself, as we used to call him in Paris, opened the door. He looked pale and ill and very dirty ; but his were the Rembr-andtesque style of good looks, to which dirt lends a mellowness and a deepening of the shadows by no means unpicturesque in effect. He was very tall and thin and gaunt. A long, droop ing brown moustache hung over the corners of a heavy, sensual mouth, and his hair, worn preposterously long so that he looked something between an artist's model and a dancing master, was plentifully streaked with grey. His forehead was broad and full of intelligence, and the keen analytical gaze of his grey eyes contradicted the more animal tendency shown in his over-full red lips and protruding jaw. At the studio we had admired him immensely, and had sketched that fine head of his from every possible point C2 of view.

AVith all his slovenliness Wray was immensely vain, particularly of his long, slender white hands, which he even sometimes was induced to wash, so highly did he value their beauty. But on this particular day they had not received this attention, and as he stood peering surlily at me from behind the half-open studio door, he looked like nothing in the world but a big, sinewy, handsome gipsy tramp, over-lean from lack of pence and long fasting. I could see from where I stood that the studio was almost destitute of furniture. The tapestry hangings, the big brass bowls, the old oak chairs, which had decorated it a few months back, were gone. Even the square of carpet and the rugs before the fireplace had vanished from the bare, unswept boards. Wray saw my glance, and grinned sardonically. ' We can't be all Associates at seven and twenty,' he observed, with mock deference. ' Some of us succeed, and some go to the wall.

You belong to the former category, I to the latter.' On the table stood an empty tumbler by an empty bottle. Wray's breath smelt of spirits, although he was sober. Again he seemed to divine my thoughts, and again he laughed. ' Seems odd to a well-fed bird like you that a man should drink to forget that he is a hungry failure, doesn't it ?' ' Wray,' I said, ' don't talk like cheap melodrama, and let me come in.' ' No good. The chairs are gone.' ' I don't want a chair ! I want to know what in the world you are up to ? How have you got into this condition ?' ' My dear boy, wonderful as it may seem to you, it's the most natural thing in the world. I came to London, took a studio on hopes, had a few good notices, thought the world was at my feet, launched out a bit, treated a few pretty girls to little dinners and little suppers — result, the brokers.