A Stolen Mask

Front matter

a EY ROMA WHITE. "Like driftwood spars, which meet and paBS Upon the boundless ocean-plain, So on the sea of life, alas ! Man meets man — meets and quits again. " Yet we shall one day gain, life past, Clear prospect o'er our being's whole ; Shall see ourselves, and learn at last Our true affinities of soul. " And we, whose ways were unlike here, May then more neighbouring courses ply ; May to each other be brought near, And greet across infinity." Matthew Aenoip. LONDON: A. D. INNES & CO. BEDFORD STREET. 1896. CHAPTEE I. When Piers Aylmer died he bequeathed his daughter to the mercy of God and of the county. He added that he knew he had done his duty to neither, but that he trusted Lois would conform to principle, and communicate with the Family, whose address was enclosed, with two five-pound notes, in the tin box under the bed.

Then he lay awhile silent, musing on this thing which was to befall him before the stars came out. "Lois," he said suddenly, "I should like a cigarette." She was a garrulous woman, as a rule, but now only her eyes told her trouble. In helpless silence she put on her hat, and went to fetch what he B wanted from the tobacconist's at the street corner ; and so she never knew how death came to him. When she returned his strange new aspect of still ness terrified her. She ran from the room and from the house, her face quivering with fear and bewilder ment, and tears streaming fast from her eyes. Several people in the street paused to stare after her, but she heeded none of them, and hurried on, sobbing. When she reached a little insignificant house beyond the tobacconist's she stopped running, knocked on the panels of the door, and entered without waiting for an answer to her summons.

" Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry!" she cried, precipitating herself headlong into the floury embrace of a stout woman, who was rolling pastry on the dresser. " Oh, come ! He's dead ! I'm sure he is dead ! " " Lor' bless us an' save us, my dear, mind the pastry ! Dead ? When did he die ? " " I don't know ! " Lois leant against the dresser, crying hysterically. " I don't know. It must be quite twenty minutes since. I went out to buy him some cigarettes. When I came back he looked horrible." " Sakes alive ! " cried Mrs. Berry, suddenly roused to full comprehension of the situation. " Twenty minutes, an' no one but yourself to look to him, poor lamb ! an' him not laid out, I'll be bound, an' stiffenin' that fast as no one 'ull be able to straighten him in another half-hour ! I'll come with you right away, my dear.

Chapter II

" I could not help it," said Lois. " It was Mrs. Berry ! " She had risen, and was standing by the clergy man's side near the fire. He looked compassionate and concerned. " When did he die ? " he asked. " Early this afternoon," answered Lois, rather feverishly. " I feel as if the world had come to an end, and yet I can't help laughing at Mrs. Berry. She will keep on talking about worms." Mr. Barnard sat down. He had come in his cassock, and he crumpled it up and dragged it over his knees, that he might spread them wide apart. He seemed genuinely distressed, and unable to say much. Lois went to the table and lifted the Bible from it, carrying it to the small cheap varnished sideboard. "That was put there for your benefit," she said. " Mrs. Berry told me that ministers expected a deal from mourners.

I'm afraid, if you do, you'll be dreadfully disappointed in me. I've cried all my tears away into this pocket-handkerchief. See how wet it is ! " She held it out to him, squeezed up into a damp ball, upon the palm of her hand. The action was almost child-like, and he smiled involuntarily. It is agreeable to see some people smile. Lawrence Barnard — who generally made queer and unbecoming grimaces as a mark of temporary tribulation — had the sweet, easy, good-tempered smile of a child, and it rendered his face very pleasant to look upon. He was a big man, heavily built, and he moved awkwardly and circumspectly, as if in continual fear of falling into clumsiness. He never seemed to know what to do with his feet, and as he smiled at Lois, he was describing extraordinary circles with them upon the floor.

" I think you are very brave," he said earnestly. " But women always are." "I'm not a bit brave; I've been hysterical all the afternoon, and now I'm tired, that's all." " Poor Lois ! I'm sure you are. Can't you rest somewhere ? " He looked round the room as if in search of a possible chair or sofa that did not offer a general horse-hair knobbiness ; and Lois allowed her eyes to rest upon him wistfully. His face was remarkably sympathetic and boyish, and something ardent and pleasure-seeking in his glances made him look very much younger than his twenty-seven years. The moulding of his lips and chin betrayed that Use held for him no little sensuous and æsthetic charm ; but a suggestion of idealism might be traced in the good contour of eyebrow and forehead. His hair was a mass of tangled yellow curls, and his features were cast in the strong and slightly aquiline mould that is generally associated with Scottish descent.

His look, as he turned it back upon Lois, was full of deprecation and concern ; and his big, well-formed hands tugged ruthlessly at the cassock, as he hunted about in his mind for words with which to express all that he felt for her. " Lois," he said, at last, heaving up an inadequate observation from his well-stocked store of ortho doxies, " you know, after all, it must be for the best." Lois glanced up at him with a sudden irre pressible look of humour. Upon this effect Mr. Barnard had not calculated, and it discomposed him considerably. " Don't, whatever you do, mention either dis pensations or worms!" she said. "I shall only shock you, if you do, by laughing. Father and I never could manage to get up emotions suitable for solemn occasions. We have always laughed when we should have cried, and cried when we should have laughed.

I'm sure we had more than our fair share of original sin." " What do you think of doing ? " asked Lawrence. " One always has to consider practical matters." He leant back in his chair, and, having hauled the cassock up somewhere round his waist, contrived to cross his legs with a certain appearance of comfort. He evidently preferred rather to discuss with Lois her future welfare, than the justice of her supply of original sin. " I don't know. I suppose I shall have to fall back upon the Family." " What family ? Your father's ? " " Yes. It is spelt with a capital F, and it lives in Cheshire. It has always sounded to me most awfully dull. It has a park, with a church in it, and a chaplain, whose funeral it attends regularly about every five years, as he invariably succumbs to the pervading leakiness of the vicarage.

But the Family will not interfere with the leakiness, from a sort of conscientious Toryism, which refuses to alter old landmarks. So father told me. I never saw one of them in my life, but I suppose I must go to them now." Mr. Barnard's eyes were fixed full upon her with an expression of involuntary admiration and pity. They were bright blue eyes, and had never looked on a handsome woman, or a woman in trouble, with out a certain unconscious tenderness. He was interested, too, in what Lois was saying. Her glance was brilliant, shining, and rebellious, and her hair had fallen almost entirely upon her shoulders. " Are you one of the Aylmers of Cheshire ? " he asked, with a touch of surprise. " Yes. My mother was Spanish, and an actress. They disinherited my father for marrying her. But we loved her, father and I. Oh, do you think they have recognized one another now ?

Is there really a Paradise ? " Mr. Barnard hesitated, and in the pause Lois came and knelt by him, crying again, like a little child, and clinging to him with her long, soft fingers. "Poor father! poor father! Do you wonder he drank more than was good for him ? I should have done it myself. Indeed, I have done it once or twice. I know I have ! " " My dear Lois ! ' ' cried Mr. Barnard— and his tone made her dash away her tears and look up at him, dry-eyed and defiant — "my dear Lois, you are talking nonsense ! " "No, I'm not; it's quite true. But it was an accident. Honour bright, it was an accident." She seemed to think that she had rendered atone ment; but he was pulling the queer face that showed him to be perplexed or moved. " Never mind ! " he said. " It has not been your fault, poor child !

Forget it, Lois — and don't do it again. You've had a racketty life. You have endured it nobly." He could not bear to think evil of any woman, and he smiled at her very kindly. She was still kneeling near him, and something in her face stirred him to an impulsive movement. He bent his head and kissed her. It was not the first time he had done so, but he intended that it should be the last. He was fond of her, and very sorry for her ; and she had wooed him to some trivial meaningless caresses with the witchery of her dark eyes. Nevertheless, their familiarity, though wholly innocent from a worldly point of view, had already begun to cause him discomfort ; for he realized fully that it was not c compatible with the life which the ideals of his office demanded from him. He had only been two years in orders, and was often burdened by the sense of his position.

He had come across Piers Aylmer in a curious fashion ; having, one evening, been able to rescue him from the hands of a constable and help him home, recognizing that the seedy-looking, half-tipsy artist was a gentleman. Afterwards he had continued to visit the Aylmers, chiefly from good nature ; and gradually the Bohemianism and the outspoken heresies of Lois, which had originally fallen with a slight shock upon the mosaic of orthodoxy with which he had overlaid his naturally buoyant and careless mind, began to hold for the infirmities of his unfledged manhood a provoking charm. To begin with, she never accorded him any of the respect which he had learnt to look for in women ; and she made profane remarks about his exceedingly ungraceful management of his cassock. It was quite evident that his office was of abso lutely no account in her general scheme of things.

Far from asking his advice in religious matters, she gave him her own, fluently and illogically. Gradually, in her presence, he found himself alto gether forgetting his character of clergyman, and betraying himself as an undeveloped impressible man, on whom the slighter influences of life played more sensitively and freely than he realized. He had no sooner kissed Lois this afternoon, in the dingy half-lit parlour, than he was sorry for it, and began to remember the dead man upstairs. But Lois found comfort in his caresses, and made a nestling movement towards him. He glanced towards the door, and put his hands into his pockets. " Mrs. Berry will be coming in," he said. "I don't care if she does," replied Lois, coming nearer. Lawrence felt a sudden wish that she would sit on the sofa, though he still looked down on her affectionately.

He suggested that she would be more comfortable in a chair, and that her present attitude would make her side ache. The moment after he had kissed her he had felt a chivalrous desire for a fair and dignified memory of this woman, who had temporarily so bewitched his fancy. " I never make my side ache, and I hke the rug best," rejoined Lois, in answer to his suggestion. Intuitively she divined his sudden feeling, and was not indifferent to it. Indeed, it gave her a momentary sick pain, for he had stirred what was tender and refined in her, and sometimes she cried tempestuously over the spoilt possibilities of their relationship. But her recklessness, with its strange sweet touches of honesty, prevailed over all else in her character, and she remained kneeling on the rug and staring into the fire.

Mr. Barnard pulled a face, and sighed. " What is the matter ? " demanded Lois, with a touch of severity. " I hate people who sigh." " I am sorry for many things, Lois. You have been too sweet, too generous to me ; I feel as if I ought not to have taken advantage of it as I have done." "Are you referring to the fact that you have frequently kissed me ? " asked Lois, who sometimes liked, from sheer perversity, to reduce a situation to bald facts. "Yes, I did mean that, and all our long talks, and your affection and sympathy. They have been very precious to me. I shall value their memory." " / shan't," proclaimed Lois, calmly. Mr. Barnard looked rather taken aback. He had been trying, earnestly, to introduce a flavour of Christian and provincial ethics into their mutual position. He felt that he wanted to raise it from its aspect of a silly flirtation.

"Why not?" he asked, with distressed gruff ness. "Do you think I have behaved badly to yon?" ■ I think yon have behaved selfishly, as all men do," said Lois, wishing that her voice would not break npon the words. She understood that he would never ask her to marry him. " Yon might have made me a better woman. You have amused yourself with me, and have left me a worse one." Even as she enunciated the epigram, she felt that their responsibility had been equal, and she knew she was unj-cr. Lawrence Barnard flushed, but, at the same time, he turned a little stubborn, as was inevitable. Where he had striven to give a saving respectability to the situation, Lois had suddenly plunged them both into unvarnished realism. Moreover, the aspect of thing3 savoured of tragedy; and he had all a healthy man'3 hatred of personal emotions.

He was silent for a moment, staring gloomily at his big boots. Then he turned his glance on her remorsefully, and rose to his feet " I say, Fm awfully sorry \ " he said huskily. " I know it's all been my fault; but, indeed, I never meant to play with yon, Lois. You have been far too kind to a clumsy, short-sighted fellow like myself." He endeavoured earnestly to retain an attitude of chivalry. He was afraid, too, that Lois was about to say things which her pride would afterwards make her regret. She was on the verge of that mistake ; but, with a sudden change of impulses, she retrieved the position from its most dangerous emergency by flying into a passion. " I dare say you think I would have married you if you had asked me ! " quoth she, springing to her feet. " I can tell you that I would never, never, never have had you — so there !

" Lawrence looked unaffectedly relieved. " I'm very glad, Lois ! " he said, with evident sincerity. " I think, you know, we've both been a bit foohsh; and I'm sure, for my part, I've behaved like a downright brute ! I'm so awfully glad that you understood it was only weakness — and affection ! For, indeed, dear, I like you tremendously. I shouldn't have thought anything of carrying on with a girl in the same way two years ago. But I'm a parson, you see, and I've got to preach sermons and things — and mighty difficult they are to get up — and — and — well, I've been a wretch and a hypocrite, Lois. But, indeed, I'm sorry, and we'll always be friends, if you'll let me. You must let me know if ever you need help of any kind. Indeed, I'd do anything in the world to help you." He held out his hand with the pleading, penitent look of a disgraced schoolboy; and Lois suddenly felt many years older than this sincere, unaffected man.

" Are you going ? " she asked, letting her hand lie unresponsively in his grasp. " Yes. It is getting late." They said good-bye without further lingering of look or hand-pressure. But when he had gone Lois let fall the tears she had withheld during the moment of parting. " Oh, but I would have married him, I would ! " she sobbed into the crumples of the sofa-cushion. "He's so strong and comfortable! And I want some one to love me — and there is nobody left." Then she stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun, and sat bolt upright upon the couch. " I'm not a bit sorry I let him kiss me, all the same," she said to herself, with a touch of vindictiveness. " It will give him something to feel remorseful about —the brute ! " Lawrence Barnard walked home, frowning and twitching up his face, his cassock hanging in remarkable festoons to his knees.

The suggestion that he left Lois " a worse woman " for their inter course seemed to him an exaggerated view to take of a relationship which had, after all, been innocent of any serious wrong. Yet he felt hurt by the notion. He did not wish to marry Lois, and had never contemplated such a possibility. Her untidiness, her excitability, and her general attitude of schism had fascinated him to a certain extent ; but they were not qualities that he desired in his wife, whom he pictured as a fresh, sound, English girl, leading a practical Christian life, with no uncertainties concerning the resurrection of the body at the end of it. He entered his house, situated in the suburbs of the manufacturing town, and went straight to the presence of his mother. Those who knew the history of the Barnards understood Lawrence's deficiencies, and forgave him his inadequate youthful utterances from the pulpit, which showed so plainly his lack of luminous and critical insight into life, his un developed perception of the dignity and responsibility of human existence.

For the hving of New Millwark had been offered to him at a financial crisis, on condition that he took orders without delay. His mother had, owing to a large bank failure, been left dependent upon the charity of relatives ; and, though Lawrence could not honestly feel that the promises of old and eccentric Miss Amelia Barnard were a medium for the Voice that spoke to Samuel, he accepted the offer made to him, and so, after a short preparation, woke up to find himself a clergyman, with a solid belief in the precepts of the Church Catechism, and a distinct flavour of the Oxford movement clinging to his dogma. He agreed to the Thirty -nine Articles in a pleasant spirit of acquiescence, and would, in other circumstances, probably have accepted a Chinese belief in the canonization of his ancestors with as httle demur.

As he entered the drawing-room, where his mother sat with her knitting, behind the hissing urn on the httle tea-table, he was struck by a sense of contrast between the cosy respectable apartment and the ugly untidy room where he had left poor Lois. He sat down, stretched out his legs, and took his cup with a sigh. " That poor artist-chap's dead," he said, stirring his tea. Mrs. Barnard looked across the tray at him rather keenly. " And his daughter ? " she asked. Lawrence wished that he could have suppressed a blush. "Oh, she seems to have swell relations," he said awkwardly. "She belongs to that Cheshire lot." " The Aylmer Park people ? ,: "Yes, so she says. .Some more sugar, please, mother." Mrs. Barnard supplied his cup, and then returned to her knitting. She was a handsome old lady, with the good aquiline features that had descended to Lawrence ; but whereas his eyes were blue and unclouded, her own were brown, small, and deeply set.

Her silver hah was drawn softly from her fine forehead ; and she looked as if life had dealt hardly with her, but had left her with, at least, her sense of humour unimpaired. She knew Lawrence through and through ; and, though she thanked Heaven for his kindness and unworldliness, did not understand why Providence had not given her a cleverer son. " It was a mistake not to bring her to see me," she said decidedly. " It would have been only kind and proper." " I did try to, mother," he told her apologetically. But you don't know how unconventional they are. They have knocked about tremendously, and I know poor Aylmer couldn't afford to visit. Loi — Miss Aylmer's frocks woidd have sent you into a fit." Mrs. Barnard looked up from her knitting. " Do you call her Lois to her face ? " she asked, rather dryly.

Lawrence blushed again, and, setting down his cup, came and sat close up to his mother. He often told her, when she showed him that she appreciated his care for her, that she made him adequate payment in being the only woman he could conscientiously kiss. " Don't knit ! " he said. " Have compassion on a poor parson-chap, who has to spend the whole evening writing a sermon." Lawrence could not live without a woman's sympathy, and his hand was insinuating itself caressingly under his mother's arm. She fixed her clever, penetrating glance upon him, and wondered silently what was on his mind. There was much love and comprehension between these two. " You are worried about something, Lawrence ? " she said presently, seeing the dissatisfaction in his face increase. "I am thinking of that poor girl, mother.

Suppose her people won't do anything for her ? I don't want to lose sight of her. Can't you call on her ? Then her frocks won't matter." " I wished to, originally, but you always seemed to think it unadvisable." Unconsciously Mrs. Barnard's tone was again a httle dry. " Poor Aylmer ! It was on his account. He was so often over the line," said Lawrence. " I never knew when it would be safe for you to go, and they had only the one sitting-room, and Lois always had to open the front-door for herself. I tell you what, mother ; we never, in our most screwing days, knew what real poverty meant." As Lawrence Barnard poured into his mother's ears innumerable suggestions for Lois's social and spiritual welfare, the girl herself sat upon her depressing horse-hair chair and thought about him. The tumult of her mind would have disturbed him considerably could he have looked into it.

Their conversation to-day had broken off with a jarring recoil, which had stung her like a whip. A hard look was upon her young face as she suddenly rose to her feet and called Mrs. Berry. " You don't want to go home to-night, do you, Mrs. Berry ? " "Bless you, no!" said Mrs. Berry, reappearing from her discreet oblivion in the kitchen. " I must just run round and leave a message for Berry, that's all. And, Miss Aylmer love, you must be seeing about your mourning. There's Miss Jemima Horrocks, as lives next door but three, and has had her eye on you ever since she heard your poor pa was took bad with dreaming tremens. She's a very good hand wi' crape, an' makes for the Miss Jenkyns, as keep the pie-shop, an' lose their relations terrible. Miss Horrocks she says to me the other day, ' I can't help watchin' the blinds o' No. 6/ she says, ' for I've got a pattern 0' a mantle as 'ull comfort Miss Aylmer's feelin's, if anything can.

There's not many as 'ud set off that mantle, but she will, you mark my words. An' I'd make it wi' crape an' bugles, wi'out extra charge, for it 'ud be as good as an advertisement to me.' Eh, dear, I dessay as she's seed the blinds are down, an' is cutting it out i' brown paper this minute." "Then, Mrs. Berry, pray go round to Miss Jemima Horrocks and stop her. She is only wast ing her time and her brown paper. I shall not go into mourning for my father." " Not put on a bit 0' black ! " cried Mrs. Berry, with a step backwards. Not a rag nor a bugle ; not even a jet brooch ! But, my dear, why not ? " Because I can't afford it." " Miss Aylmer, there'll be a sight o' talk." " I shall be far away from it, but if it buzzed round my head, I should not care." " Have you friends to go to, my dear ?

" "Friends — no. A Family — yes. I shall go to the Family. It will not welcome me, but it may possibly put up with me." "Ay, they're a fine sight o' worry, is relations," said Mrs. Berry, who began to realize that Lois spoke lightly of a tragedy. " I mind my poor brother's sister-in-law well ; she never had a minute's peace after she married into the veal and ham connection. My dear, I've often wondered if you weren't one 0' the quahty — one o' the Aylmers." "Well, I suppose I am, Mrs. Berry. But what do you know of them ? " "I know nothing o' them but their inks — Aylmer's ink, my dear. Well, well, I wish you luck wi' them." " Thank you, Mrs. Berry," said Lois, soberly. " I will mention your knowledge of the Family to my uncle."

Chapter III

Each tree upon the enclosing slopes of the valley was separate and distinct in tint from its fellows, and the distant hills were embossed in crimson and gold. The morning sun glistened upon a shining network of threads, which trembled among the tough rank grass as Lois stepped across the pastures, on her way to Aylmer Park. Presently the house was in sight, a long low building, its upper story over laid with black and white mosaic. She stood still for a moment and gazed at it, catching her breath. Then she went on through a world that seemed to her to be glittering everywhere with autumn sun shine and dews. She was perhaps a httle untidier than usual, and wore a brilliant scarlet jacket, open at the throat. Her soft neck was bare, unconcealed by scarf or collar. She had attempted to do her hair after a Parisian method, and had failed ignominiously, with the consequence that it was now tossed, in hopeless disorder, round her forehead and ears.

Her large picturesque hat had assumed an angle that was not only disreputable, but unbecoming ; and she carried in her hands great clusters of scarlet berries and trailing sprays of dark ivy. In this plight, which she endeavoured to remedy by shifting her hat as far to the right as hitherto it had erred upon the left, and by giving an ex traordinary but dexterous kick to the hang of her trailing green dress, Lois sauntered indolently up the gravel drive, and pulled the bell with a decisive jerk. Its clang, just inside the doorway, made her jump ; but she pulled herself together, and managed to meet the perplexed glance of the footman with an insolent stare. " Is Mr. Henry Aylmer at home ? " she said, clearly. The man answered in the affirmative. " Then tell him that Miss Aylmer wishes to see him.

And kindly put these berries in a safe place for me. Aren't they beautiful ? " Her warm, unconscious smile suddenly shone out upon the puzzled servant, whom she now regarded with a look of friendly interest. He was, to Lois, a fellow-being, and no automaton. But then Lois had never in her hfe before exchanged speech with a footman. " If Uncle Henry asks who I am, say I'm his niece," she went on pleasantly. "What a lovely morning it is, isn't it ? " The footman showed her into a hbrary, and discreetly vanished Lois tossed her hat on to a chair, walked to the window, and looked out. The space before her was occupied by rows and rows of cabbage-beds, with some bare pea-sticks in the distance. In the foreground of this picture was a large photographic camera; and from the funereal cloth flung over the top of the machine issued the black back, immaculate coat-tails, and grey legs of a somewhat stout gentleman.

Round the corner of this kitchen-garden Lois perceived the approach of the footman. With a sudden noiseless laugh, she quietly opened the French window, and stood listening. " Beg pardon, sir, there's a lady to see you in the library." " Lady ? What does she want ? " came in muffled tones from the camera. "Just hold this thing steady, Thomas, while I change the plates." " She says her name's Miss Aylmer, sir, but she didn't give me no card." D " Aylmer ? One of that ink lot, I've no doubt ! Great impertinence to come here! I'll be in directly. I want a good negative of that giant cabbage while the light is right for it. Thomas, just go into the hbrary, and bring me slide No. 5. They're all in the left-hand cupboard." Lois retreated, and sat down at the table, resting her chin on her hands.