A Blameless Woman

Front matter

a Ul JOHN STRANGE WINTER, AUTHOR of BOOTLEs' BABY," "BEAUTIFUL JIM," "MY POOR DICK," "GOOD-BYE, "THE SOUL OF THE BISHOP," " THE OTHEK MAN'S WIFE," " A SEVENTH CHILD," " A BORN SOLDIER," "MY GEOFF," "AUNT JOHNNIE," etc. , etc. AV ONE VOLUME. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. 1895. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Margaret, ...... 1 II. The Irrevocable, ..... 9 III. Into the Unknown, . . . . .14 IV. The Veil was Rent, . . . . .18 V. A Gleam of Light, ..... 24 VI. The Naked Truth, . . . . .31 VII. Into the World, ...... 36 VIII. Going Back, ...... 40 IX. The Burden of Life, ..... 48 X. In the Valley of the Shadow, . . . .54 XI. Learning to Forget, ..... 59 XII. Touch with the Past, ..... 63 XIII. Susy Ridgeway, ..... 69 XIV. By the Side of the Sea, . . . .77 XV. A Delicate Hint, .... 82 XVI.

New Ground, ...... 86 XVII. At Marchmont Castle, . . .90 XVIII. Very Near to the Truth, .... 94 XIX. Blue, for Luck ! ..... 102 XX. With Her Own Hand, .... 108 XXI. Why Not? ...... 116 XXII. Over the Rubicon. . . . . .121 XXIII. Reflection, . . . . . .125 XXIV. Max, ...... 133 XXV. Memories, . . . . ■ .138 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. J AGK XXVI. A Burnt Sacrifice. . . . .142 XXVII. Claverhou.se, . . . . .148 XXVIII. Aunt Marian. . . . . .155 XXIX. Effie's Fate, ..... 161 XXX. A Poor Little Weed, . . . .169 XXXI. Baby Fingers, ..... 175 XXXII. Benefits Forgot, ..... 182 XXXIII. An Echo from the Past, . .188 XXXIV. No more than a Pin-Prick, . . .194 XXXV. Effie's Suspicions, ..... 200 XXXVI. A Great Surprise, . .... 208 XXXVII. Studied Indifference, .... 214 XXXVIII. The ThriU of L'ncertainty, . . . .221 XXXIX.

The Tearing of an Old Wound, . . 227 XL. Where is It ? . . . . 234 XLI. Au Old Letter, . . . . .240 XLII. The Irony of Circumstance, . . . 247 XLIII. Oil the Verge, ..... 253 XL1V. The Net draws closer, .... 260 XLY. Forget-me-nots, ..... 264 XLYI. Take Care ! ..... 270 XLVII, Dolgouroff's Obedience, .... 27S XLVIIL A Thunderbolt, . . . . .2*3 XLIX. The Beginning of the End, . . . L. Desolation, ..... yoi LI. My Joy and My Treasure, . . . 30S Tll MT VERY DEAR FRIEND LOUISE BROOKES WHITE (Mrs F. V. WHITE) 5 affectionately Dedicate THE STORY OF "A BLAMELESS WOMAN." John Strange Winter

Chapter I. Margaret

"Silent men, like silent waters, are deep and dangerous.' Dr Luscombe was one of the principal medical men in Blankhampton. Everybody liked him. He and his had lived in Blankhampton from generation to generation for at least a couple of hundred years. He himself was the fifth in an unbroken line that had followed medicine as a profession. He was connected with half the county families in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, he had a grand practice, was an exceedingly brilliant surgeon, standing at the head of all the surgeons in Blankshire, and he was, moreover, quite renowned for his success among children. Dr Luscombe lived in a beautiful old house in the Cathedral Close, a house which went by the name of The Courtyard, and which stood within a high-walled garden, and boasted of many wainscoted rooms, of wide staircases, of long corridors, and one of the best entrance halls in the town.

There was plenty of room and to spare both for the doctor and his family. His wife, by-the-bye, was a woman of considerable property, and had a tremendous idea of her own position, both by birth and as the wife of the principal doctor in Blankhampton, that most important of cathedral cities. They had never had but three children. A son, Bob, who went iuto the army early, married well, and saw but little of his own people afterwards ; and two daughters — Adela, who was one of the prettiest girls in Blankhampton, and A Winifred, who was much less good looking, but who, in her nineteenth year, made an exceedingly good marriage, while staying among her mother's people in Ireland. As I said, there was room and to spare in the old house, and it was fortunate that it was so, because some ten years previous to the opening of this story, Dr Luscombe had been, together with his wife, appointed guardian to two of his wife's nieces; and, naturally, they at once be came permanent additions to the family at the Courtyard.

Now, I have said that the Luscombes were very well off. Mrs Luscombe was, so to speak, a rich woman, and Dr Luscombe had private means and an excellent practice. Their family was small, and in a town like Blankhampton it is not possible to be very extravagant in living. The two girls, who were thus added to the family, were also ex ceedingly well off. Their name was North — Mary and Margaret North. Their mother had been Mrs Luscombe's twin sister, and had died at the birth of Margaret; their father was a Colonel in the Royal Artillery, and died in India, leaving his two little girls, then at school in France, orphans. When this took place, Margaret was ten and Mary twelve years old. It would be useless for me to protest that these children realised their situation. They heard the sad news, cried a good deal for a couple of days, and were suitably attired in the deep mourning then thought necessary for a child to wear for a parent.

They heard without emotion the fact that in future their home would be in Blankhampton. They were accustomed to the roomy old house in the Cathedral Close, for Mrs Luscombe had naturally invited them many times to stay with her since her favourite sister's death ; and now, when her nieces were left orphans, and she and her husband became their legal guardians, she and they thought it a perfectly natuial thing that Blank hampton should in future be their home. The two girls had about six hundred a year each, and, therefore, never knew, as so many girls whose parents die while they are young know but too well, the pain and humiliation of living upon the charity of others. They remained without any thought of change at their expensive boarding-school in Paris, coming home twice a year for their holidays.

They had always ample but not too lavish pocket-money, and, on the whole, they enjoyed an exceedingly good time. MARGARET. The years went by, until Mary North was eighteen years old, when both girls returned to England for good, Dr and Mrs Luscombe not caring to leave Margaret alone in a foreign country when the time came for her sister to leave school, and during the following winter, Mrs Luscombe gave a large dance to celebrate her niece's debut. They had given such dances in bygone years for their own daughters, who were both older than the North girls ; indeed, when they came back to Blankhampton for good, Winifred Luscombe had been married more than three years, and Adela, who was nearly four years older than her sister, was therefore just five-and-twenty. For the first time in her life, Margaret North was pre sent at a grown-up dance.

Mrs Luscombe had been some what doubtful as to the propriety of her being present, excepting in the markedly plain dress of a schoolgirl ; but Mary North, who was devoted to her young sister, and also Adela Luscombe had added their entreaties to those of the girl herself, who was naturally anxious to appear to what she believed to be the best advantage. And eventually, Mrs Luscombe consented to her niece's wearing a pretty white ball-gown, the puffed sleeves of which were intended to convey the fact that she was not yet really introduced into Society. But, although the ball was given in Mary's honour, Margaret was its indisputable belle. Why, it would be hard to tell. She was not beautiful ; she was not even pretty. Adela Luscombe was tall, statuesque, and fair as a pure white lily. Mary North was brilliantly fair, with a lovely peach-like bloom, with serene, straight features and blue, seraphic eyes, while Margaret was a willowy slip of a girl, without a good feature in her face, excepting her blazing eyes.

Her eyes, too, were blue, but it was the blue of the ocean on a stormy day, not deep and blue and seraphic, as an ocean sometimes looks under a summer sun, but something between blue and grey, and very deep, both in expression and in tone. She was pale and her hair was of a very dark chestnut brown ; her eyelashes and eyebrows were black as night. I do not know wherein the great charm of her face lay, unless it was in the eyes, and in a somewhat mutinous mouth, a mouth that she always seemed to be trying to subdue into calm and serious lines, but which as often persisted in parting in a brilliant, rippling smile. But whatever the cause, on that evening she carried off all the honours, and lived every moment of the time. "We ought not to have let Margaret come down to-night," said Mrs Luscombe uneasily to her husband, as she watched her young niece go past them on the arm of a tall soldier, one of those quartered in the garrison.

" She has simply rlirted by wholesale — really, she will have to go back to school again." " Nonsense !" said the sensible old Doctor ; " nonsense, my dear ! every woman flirts that knows how, and every woman ought to know how. You are a nice one to find fault with your niece for flirting. Why, madam, you were scarcely older than Margaret when I first knew you, and you flirted ten times as hard as this little girl can do." "Did I?" said the Doctor's wife, in a different tone. "Did you? Hear that. H'm ! Yes, madam, you did; and what was more, you nearly broke my heart ; but that was altogether another thin?." s> . i - tm._-._ in. i <iiiv.in. i u_i_ug. " Uli, no, I didn't," said she, smiling ; and in the smile, she forgot that Margaret was flirting with a desperation which w;vs at least five years too old for her age.

To i.ll practical intents and purposes, Mrs Luscombe might just as well have introduced her younger niece at the same time as her sister. Somehow, from the evening of the ball, Margaret North never went back into the obscurity of school-life again ; and, for three years, she positively ruled the old city of Blankhampton with the sceptre of an uncrowned queen. Nobody knew why, because really when you came to look at her, Margaret was not pretty, much less a beauty. But she was very winsome — what the younger men called " fetching." A gay thing, who took the pleasure of the moment as it came, and let the one which had gone by die without regret, and the one which was to come, come without, in any way, preparing for it. Towards the end of the three years, Mary North married. She married fairly well — a man in the Service to whom she was devoted.

I think everyone was a little surprised, because she was so quiet, so demure — or no, scarcely demure, for that word conveys something hidden behind. I should rather say that she was placid, and that she was such an unobtrusive sort of girl that it was rather a surprise to MARGARET. 5 Blankhampton society when it was announced that she was shortly going to be married to an officer of a dragoon regiment then occupying the cavalry barracks. And in due course of time the wedding came off. By Mary's wish, the wedding was rather quiet ; her sister Mar garet and Adela Luscombe were her sole bridesmaids, and within three months the newly-married couple sailed for India. About this time Adela Luscombe accepted an invitation to go on a very long yachting tour, and Margaret remained at home in the old house, the only young thing that it con tained.

Just at that time Blankhampton was rather gay. There were various balls going on, six or seven within the fortnight. A young Indian prince had come down to stay in the neighbourhood, and was made a great deal of, especially by the young ladies, of whom, by-the-bye, Margaret North was not one. Still, he was a prince, and everybody who considered themselves anybody outside of the town, and everybody who considered themselves anybody inside the town, made some festivity or other in his honour. And Margaret North was practically the queen of every thing. Now it happened, about this time, that Margaret was the re cipient of the most ardent and devoted attention from one of the officers of the regiment which had not long been quartered in the Cavalry Barracks at Blankhampton. This man had everything to recommend him.

He was exceedingly good looking ; a fine, big, well-grown man ; was young and fairly well off, and had come of very good people. And Margaret North was the lode-star of his existence. She encouraged him — oh, yes, she flirted with him desperately. She saved her best dances, she let him take her into supper, she sat out squares, under stairways, or in alcoves, or any other dimly-lighted recess that came to hand. She met him — quite by accident, of course — in the shady precincts of the beautiful old Cathedral, with its wonderful Norman arches, and its wealth of fine old stained-glass windows, commonly known as "the Parish" by the good people of Blank hampton. For myself, I do not know of any combination that makes a genuine flirtation so well worth indulging in, as a combination of old Norman arches and early English coloured windows.

Blankhampton Cathedral was singularly adapted for that particular pursuit ; and the young people of the town did not, as a rule, neglect the opportunities which the beautiful old fane afforded them. But, somehow, Captain Stewart never got any further with Margaret North. She was gay and friendly, she openly chose him as her special cavalier, she flirted desperately with him, she gave him every opportunity — seemingly — of becoming her serious lover; yet, in spite of all, she contrived to keep him veiy effectually at arm's length. " My dear," said Mrs Luscombe one day to her, " I think Captain Stewart is very much in love with you." " Oh, no, Auntie, not in love — no. Good fellow, you know, dear, but not in love with me — oh, no ! " "I think he is," said Mrs Luscombe, who, though she did not want to get rid of her niece, took quite a profes sional pride in her young ladies making early and suitable marriages.

" I thought you liked him." It had always been a trouble to Mrs Luscombe that Adela should be approaching thirty — for she was by that time turned eight-and-twenty — and be Adela Luscombe still ; it was a slur upon her generalship ; she looked upon it as a slight to herself. But Adela was hard to please, and when one swain after another loves and rides away, not entirely of his own free will, the fact becomes known, not unlike the way in which beggars get to know the house where the dog is always set loose upon them. And Mrs Luscombe had no wish to see Margaret following in Adela's footsteps. " So I do," rejoined Margaret promptly ; " T think he's an awfully good sort." It was a period when young ladies said " awfully " upon every occasion. "I am quite sure that he is serious," said Mrs Luscombe.

"I don't think so," said Margaret; but, all the same, she knew that he was serious, and that Mrs Luscombe's words were perfectly true. Still, she was a young lady who thought herself quite able to manage her own affairs, especially her love affairs, and she continued alternately to encourage and flout the gallant hussar, in tolerably equal proportions, administering sugar or vinegar as a very mischievous spirit prompted at the moment. So Maxwell Stewart got no further and, had he been asked the question, would not have MARGARET. been able to say, with any degree of certainty, what Mar garet North's views were either on the subject of matri mony or concerning himself. The first of the series of seven balls which took place during February, was one given by the officers of the Blankshire Militia, and was to be followed, as usual, by a ball for the benefit of the County Hospital.

As soon as Margaret North entered the ballroom, she was at once surrounded by a crowd of men, all eager and anxious to secure dances with the most popular girl in the whole town ; but almost before she had opened her programme, a gentleman came up to her and unceremoniously forcing his way to her side, said, in an undertone, — ■ "My friend, Prince Dolgouroff, is particularly anxious to have the honour of being presented to you." " I shall be very glad," she replied at once. So he went back, returning in a moment with a tall stranger, whom he presented as Prince Dol gouroff. The Prince was undoubtedly of the Sclavonic races. He was very tall, very commanding in person, with close cropped black hair, black, sleepy eyes, and rather high cheek bones. A man with a great air of distinction, and such manners as a prince is generally supposed to have, and equally generally has not.

He made mademoiselle a very low bow, and craved the honour of a dance. Margaret shot a glance at him through her long eye lashes, and said that he might have one. He took two, and then asked if he might have the honour of a second. " Oh, yes," she answered smiling. The Prince took two more. "I believe that they are just going to begin this waltz," he said, with an air as of elbowing the half dozen men standing round completely away from her. " But I must give my other partners their dances," she said with a gesture, indicating that she was not going to take the arm he offered. " So 1 " he said, in a distinctly interrogatory tone, and then put himself into an attitude of patient waiting. Now all this was very galling to the half dozen other men, who felt that they had a prior claim to Miss North's hand.

She, however, did not seem to notice it. Her keen eyes had taken in at a glance the fact that he had put down A RLAMELESS WOMAN. 8 four dances instead of two, and, therefore, instead of hand ing her programme to be filled as others might choose, she doled out her dances one by one, putting down the names upon her own programme herself. " No, I prefer to write the names myself," she said, with decision. "I really don't care whether it looks queer or whether it pleases you particularly ; I wish to do it, and that is enough." Then the impassive Sclav gave her his arm and led her away. "I don't like that fellow," said Captain Stewart, in a disgusted tone to the man nearest to him. °__ _ . . . „ . " Nor I. They're such brutes, are Russians." "Oh, he is a Russian, is he?" " I think so — they're all brutes.

Let us hope he can't dance." But, unfortunately, Prince Dolgouroff danced to perfection — simply to perfection. "You dance divinely," he murmured to Margaret. " And you," said she, under her breath. She behaved very shamefully that night. She threw over partners right and left ; she danced a great deal more than she ought to have done with the Prince, and she sat out more often in dimly-lighted corridors than even she would have done had she realised the full extent of her enormities. This was but the beginning of the end. At every one of these seven balls did the tall form of the Prince appear, towering above all others — for he stood some six-feet-two in height, and was straight and upright as a dart. And he continued, as if by right, to monopolise Margaret North completely. For a wonder, Mrs Luscombe realised very little of what was going on.

The Prince had been duly presented to her, had uttered some half dozen polite sentences, had called upon her and had sat for twenty minutes or so, looking very stiff and rather forbidding, in her pleasant wainscoted drawing-room. She knew, of course, that he had danced a good deal with Margaret ; but when Margaret went gaily out after breakfast, muffled up in a sealskin coat, with her hands tucked into a bear-skin muff, remarking carelessly, as a bit of more or less indifferent information, that she was going out for a turn and could she do anything for her in THE IRREVOCARLE. the town, Mrs Luscombe never suspected for a moment that, in reality, she was going to meet the big Prince. Now, in such a city as Blankhampton, meeting places are many. There is, for instance, the broad avenue of horse-chestnuts which leads in the direction of the Bishop's Palace, a sort of semi-private walk, between the road and the river, only used by pedestrians.

There are the ancient walls of Blankhampton, with their quaint towers, and, here and there, deep embrasures which form pleasant restingplaces for the weary passers-by. The walls of Blankhampton are airy and clean, and give foot-passengers a fine opportunity of breathing fresher air than they can get in the narrow and tortuous streets. But few people use them — they are, indeed, almost deserted. A few children going to and from school, and an occasional pair of lovers are almost the only people who are ever to be seen upon these quaint and cleanly walks. Then there are the outer courts of the Parish, the terrace walk by the river, and also the Winter Garden, with its many glass houses and conservatories, its terrace walks, its summer houses, and clumps of trees and shrubs. Oh, I assure you, in Blankhampton there were plenty of places where such a couple as Prince Dolgouroff and Mar garet North could meet and enjoy each other's society with out the rest of the world being much the wiser.

Chapter II. The Irrevocable

"if there be anything you highly value or tenderly love, estimate, at the same time, its true nature." It happened one morning that Margaret North, dressed in a new red frock, her warm sealskin coat, and with a little red velvet toque upon the rebellious masses of her chestnut hair, went out of the old house in the Close, crossed the Cathedral Yard, and disappeared by the little postern which led into one of the transepts of the Cathedral. was not the first at the tryst. Out of the gloom cast by a tall pillar, Prince Dolgouroff stepped to meet her. " You are late, my dearest," he said tenderly. So you see it had already come about. " I could not help it, Paul," she replied. " I really could not help it. I was kept at the last minute by a letter that Auntie wanted me to post for her. You are not vexed at having to wait, are you ?

" " Vexed ! No, how could I be ? It is my privilege to wait for you. But, tell me, it is so bitterly cold this morning and inclined to rain, too — shall we stay here by the stove, instead of seeking the outside ! " "Yes, I think we had better stay here," she replied. " And, besides, it is so dark in this corner that nobody will notice us or see who we are." "And also," he added, " we can talk in comfort — we can discuss everything." " Everything," echoed Margaret, in rather a faint voice. " You are nervous," he remarked, drawing her down on to the low stone bench, which ran entirely round the transept. "Sit here, in the shadow of the stove. You will soon be warm ; you are quite cold, dearest. Why are you trembling so, little one — you are not afraid of me ? " " No, I am not afraid of you exactly," she answered.

"But you are afraid of me. That is wrong; you should not be so. I would not hurt a hair of your head." "I don't think you would — I hope not," she returned. " But I will be frank with you, Paul, I do not like this continual concealment, this dodging and getting away into corners. I have not been used to it. What I have done in the past, has been done in the face of the whole world, my little flirtations have all been above board, and now, when I am more in earnest than I have ever been before in my life, I have to do things that I would have blushed to do at any other time and for any other man in the world." Dolgouroff drew her hands close to him. "My dear," he said, in a voice of much patience, "when I told you first that I loved you, did I not explain to you that my circumstances are totally different to those of an Englishman, who is absolutely his own master?

We Russians — aud yet, what a mockery it is for me to call my self a Russian — we Poles are not our own masters. The Tzar is the pivot upon which every nobleman in the Russian THE IRREVOCABLE. 11 Empire turns, moves, and has his being. I am not free to go to your uncle, in the usual manner of an Englishman, and to ask him for your hand. I could not do that with out certain formalities. If we go now to Berlin, we can be married privately there at the Russian Embassy, and, after two years, that marriage can be ratified at Petersburgh. But I may not publicly marry an English subject, an alien, without a great many formalities, which would entail considerable loss of time, an immense outlay of money, and a great many tedious formalities, both to you and to me." " But how then are you able to marry me privately ?

" she asked. " Because you will always find with nations where great formality is necessary to accomplish a marriage-contract, that some loophole is given by which the contracting parties may avoid the necessary outlay, and also the delay of the more formal arrangements." "Oh, I see," she said; but she spoke rather doubtfully, and in truth did not see at all. "You told me not many days ago," he continued — "you see, I have been thinking out all our plans and trying to arrange for the best — you told me a few days ago, that an old governess of yours lived in Berlin." " No, in Silesia," said Margaret. "It is the same thing, at least as far as our purpose is concerned. You can easily arrange to go out and pay her a long visit." "But Silesia is not Berlin," she exclaimed. "You can tell your people that she has moved from Berlin."

"But supposing she should write to me?" " You would write to her from Berlin, naturally. She will not write to you in England, when she has your address in Berlin. That will be quite safe. Your people will not worry about you, so long as you write once a week or so, and tell them of your doings. It is not as if they were your own father and mother. They will believe you to be perfectly safe with this German lady ; they will know nothing, and need know nothing, until the proper times comes for revealing the marriage." Now, I have not said anywhere that Margaret North was a clever girl. A more really clever girl than she would have seen th<i difficulties and dangers of this scheme; on the contrary, lent herself, in a great measure, to it. Eventually, that is, after some further persuasion from Prince Dolgouroff, she paved the way for going out to Berlin, in order to pay a long-promised visit to her old governess, Frau Bergem, who was married to a highly respectable notary, and lived at Posen in Silesia.

She, with a little stumbling it must be admitted, told the necessary fibs in order to make her visit to Berlin fit in with her visit to her old governess, and she succeeded so well that at last she turned her back, as she believed for ever, upon the old city of Blankhampton, where she had been so happy, and where truly she had queened it for several years. It was without a single sigh of regret that she did so. She was like a being possessed. The day before her de parture, she wandered round to every spot in the old city and its environs that had once had any interest for her. She bade farewell to everybody, including Captain Stewart, and all with smiling lips and dancing eyes, like a gay schoolgirl going home for the holidays. With Captain Stewart, indeed, she had something approaching to a scene.

" You have never let me speak to you," he said, that last afternoon, having hedged her up into a corner of Mrs Luscombe's inner drawing-room. " You have never let me speak to you before, and you are going away now, and per haps, when you comeback again, I shall have got my march ing orders. You have never let me speak to yon, and so I am going to speak now." " Well, I wish you wouldn't," she said, with admirable indifference. " I daresay you do, but I simply must. Why are you going away 1 " "Because I am tired of Blankhampton," she replied. " But why are you tired of Blankhampton? You have had a very good time here. It is a very jolly place ; one of the best quarters I was ever in." "Yes, I know, but I want a change. I have been here for three years — nearly four years, in fact — and I have not been anywhere, excepting just to go to town for a few days, or to Brighton or Rockborough for a few days.