Her friend Laurence : a novel

Front matter

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- HER FrienD LAURENCE.

A flovel.

Chapter I. For His Daughter

Tue Amaldi Palace stands in a small square not far from the beautiful old church of Santa Maria Novella, fills up nearly one side of the piazza, and is stately enough to be noticeable, rich as Florence is in picturesque and storied edifices.

There are three or four courts, and the vast pile has numerous occupants ; but one quadrangle, with its separate entrance, belongs to Violet Cameron. She has not, however, asserted her claims to proprietorship by giving her portion of the mansion a new name ; and therein, I think, has shown wisdom Nowadays, in Florence and Rome, the traveller not

VOL. L 1 unfrequently finds historical dwellings, which have been re-christened under the Anglo- Saxon cognomens of their present owners ; but I cannot persuade myself that Palazzo Sankey and Villino Jenkinson sound as well as their original [Italian titles.

In the beginning of October, 187—, Miss Cameron returned to Florence, after more than a year’s absence, intending to spend the rest of the autumn, and perhaps the whole winter, unless it should prove one of those hopelessly rainy seasons, which the variable Tuscan climate will occasionally disgrace itself by adopting and clinging to for several consecutive months.

At an early hour on the morning after her arrival she was seated in her dressing-room— a pretty nook, with its walls panelled in blue silk, the windows hung with blue and white draperies, and the easy-chairs and couches covered with the faintest possible tint of azure velvet. A door stood open, and showed a boudoir, rich and quaint as a cinque-cento casket; beyond, other open doors. gave elimpses of a long suite of apartments, which were the envy of half her acquaintance, though to attempt a description of the various chambers, with their treasures of art and for His Daughter. 3 virtu, would only make this page sound like an auction catalogue.

Miss Cameron had drunk her coffee, and was indulging in the luxury of complete idleness, looking her best, too, in an undress which would have been very trying to many women—a gown of some dead white woollen stuff, loosely confined about the waist by a broad ribbon, and her hair (dark auburn, with golden reflections upon it) brushed back from her forehead, and falling in heavy masses over her shoulders. Even in that severely simple toilet and the rigid truthfulness of the morning light, six-and-twenty was the mosta close observer would have assigned as her age ; but Violet Cameron had counted three years be yond thirty, and reached the era at which her sex, as a rule, is forced to relinquish all claims to appearing youthful. I think it was the indescribable softness and purity of her complexion which kept her face so young; and even feminine critics never tried to hint that the delicate bloom in her cheeks, like the colour in the heart of a wild rose, was not natural.

Women did say her eyes were green, and, I believe, rightly ; but they were nevertheless wonderfully beautiful eyes, which gained 1—2 added depth from the blackness of the arched brows, and the lashes so long and thick as to cast that peculiar shadow which less fortunate women are obliged to supply by factitious aids.

She was too small to be called handsome ; the features were too irregular for perfect beauty ; and her grace and supreme elegance (that highest and most indefinable charm) rendered the term pretty inapplicable. She seemed to have caught certain characteristics of each of the three types, and Nature had managed the combination with such skill that the result was a loveliness as unique as it was indisputable.

Three-and-thirty years of age, and unmarried. So I must call her my elderly heroine, though, in the presence of her radiant fairness, the epithet would have become a positively ludicrous misnomer.

Miss Cameron’s meditations were interrupted by the opening of a door; steps crossed the boudoir; and a thin, faded voice, which one would have sworn belonged to an ancient spinster, called, quaveringly :

‘Good-morning, dear! May I come in? Excuse this early visit. Clarice said you were up, and I wanted—but it is a shame to disturb you ;

Por His Daughter. 5

‘Pray come in!’ Miss Cameron said, as the unseen speaker’s sentence trailed off into a sigh. ‘I may be unentertaining, but I am not dangerous, I give you my word,’

The portiére was pushed farther back by a hand which suited the voice—long, bony, and uncertain in its movements; but it was not until Miss Cameron repeated her invitation that their owner appeared. She gave the effect of unusual height, from the fact that each separate part—neck, waist, and limbs—seemed unduly elongated; and she was so thin that apparently only skin and bones had been left after that drawing-out process.

Fifty-five at least; tiny wrinkles, like cracks in yellow porcelain; straggling corkserew curls; a perpetual smile; a habit of carrying her head on one side—of breaking her sentences with inexpressibly irritating little gasps—these were Miss Bronson’s chief characteristics, whereto I may add a morbid taste in the matter of faded pink bows which she had a mania for pinning on every available spot, from the crown of her head to the toes of her slippers.

‘Good-morning, Eliza,’ said Miss Cameron.

‘I hope you have slept off the fatigues of the journey.’

‘Oh, perfectly! And how fresh you look ! with a sigh so much deeper than ordinary, that Miss Cameron added :

‘What have you got on your soul or your conscience? Something troubles you, I know. Your voice is more Holian harp-like than usual.’

‘My love, I am in a state of such painful uncertainty

‘My love, people say that is the normal state of all us spinsters. But sit down and reveal your woes. I don’t ask you to weep on my sympathetic bosom, but I will do anything short of drying tears to show my tender interest, said Miss Cameron, laughingly.

Miss Bronson seated herself, slipped from her arm into her lap a canvas reticule worked with worsted flowers of such discordant hues that they gave her friend a sensation like incipient sea-sickness, and shook her head pensively,

‘Are you carrying your trouble in that preposterous bag? Miss Cameron asked. ‘It is ugly enough to hold all the ills of Pandora’s box, though Hope would die in disgust if shut up there.’

For His Daughter. i

‘I declare, my dear, you are as witty as a play ; but I don’t know—is it now—at least among foreigners——’

‘What in the name of goodness !

‘Exactly the thing to talk so differently from everybody else,’ sighed Miss Bronson. ‘ Please don’t be offended at my mentioning it, but several times people have said to me, they should know you were an American just by your conversation.’

‘I hope so! I don’t propose to cultivate stupidity for the sake of bemg supposed a native of some other country. Perhaps, too, I talk through my nose.’

‘Ohno! You have nothing of the nasal intonation.’ |

‘Do say twang, Eliza! We are not schoolmistresses any longer, and there is no necessity for using long words,’ said Miss Cameron, laughing outright.

‘T wish you would not speak so often of having been a schoolmistress,’ expostulated Miss Bronson ; ‘it does not matter for me, but with your wealth and beauty

‘My dear, the wealth gives me the privilege of saying what I please! I am proud of having been a school-ma’am! Why, I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I had always led as useless a life as [do now! I am very doubtful whether fate did me any kindness in putting an end to my drudgery. Good heavens! ten years gone since then—and I meant to have done so much! And here I am thirty-three, and have accomplished literally nothing

‘You know what French people say— “that a woman in reality has only the age she looks,” ’ said Eliza, glancing in the mirror as if to determine how many years this privilege would take off her own record.

‘French people have talked nonsense in regard to women since the foundation of the Gallic empire’ (‘ Erroneously declared by many authors to have begun with Charlemagne,’ parenthesised Miss Bronson’), ‘ and will continue to do so until the Day of Judgment, whenever they began,’ pursued Miss Cameron. ‘ But never mind my age, or the follies of the Gauls : what secret have you got shut up there ?

At this reminder of her errand, the spinster made a sudden nervous movement which sent several sealed envelopes flying out of the reticule.

‘Ugh! I was right to compare the thing to Pandora’s box! slivered Miss Cameron.

For Mis Daughter. 9:

She stooped to pick up two of the epistles which had fluttered close to her chair, adding, in the playfully teasing way whereby she often perplexed poor Eliza: ‘They are for me! Why were you hiding my correspondence in your sack? If you mean to turn postman I shall buy you a uniform,’

‘Oh—oh ! don’t look—wait till I explain ! cried the antique virgin despairingly, as her friend was about to open the envelopes. ‘Please don’t look !’

Miss Cameron laid the missives down and watched the spinster execute a kind of weird waltz, which was rather like a caricature of Dinorah’s Shadow-dance.

‘This is exceedingly mysterious,’ she said ; ‘even awe-inspiring !’

‘My dear, continued Miss Bronson, as soon as she reached the speaking stage of her eccentric exercise, ‘ I have a message which is, so to speak, a key to the whole matter.’

‘Then pray give me the key, else I shall force the lock,’ returned Miss Cameron, with a glance towards the letters, which caused Eliza to dance anew.

‘One moment-—I wanted to break it—--~’

‘I hate broken news as I do broken china, interrupted Miss Cameron. ‘ Pray give it to me entire, whatever it may be. If it comes in fragments it will be sure to excoriate my temper, just as broken china would my fingers.’

‘You make me laugh so! He! he! ha! ha! | And, as a proof that her merriment was heart-felt, Miss Bronson began to cry.

Any person unaccustomed to the spinster’s vagaries would either have been alarmed or ready to shake her from sheer impatience, but experience had taught Miss Cameron that emotion of any sort in the presence of Eliza’s small agitations was usually emotion wasted, for, as a rule, the slighter the cause, the more force she put into her demonstrations. So now her friend only said, composedly .

‘You will tell me when you can.’

‘ Yes—I—wanted to break—’ sobbed Eliza; then gave a great gulp and burst out, ‘ Your cousin George Danvers is dead.’

Miss Cameron changed colour, put her hand over her eyes, and remained silent for a few seconds, during which Eliza sat choking behind her pocket-handkerchief, and by the time she emerged from its depths Miss Cameron had resumed her former attitude.

‘He died to meso many years since that I cannot pretend to be deeply affected,’ she said,

For His Daughter. vol in a voice which was awed rather than saddened. ‘If he can see me—or cares to see— he is certain that I have no hard feeling towards him. Once I thought I could never say this, but I can now, freely.’

‘Qh, my dear, that is like you! But only think—he had lost his fortune—every penny. His daughter is left absolutely destitute.’

‘Do you know, I had forgotten he had a daughter,’ returned Miss Cameron, with a little wonder in her tone. ‘That shows me how completely I had put him and his out of my mind! Yes, he had a daughter—she must be eighteen. His wife died ?

‘To be sure; and he married again. It seems the poor girl and her stepmother are not good friends—oh! his letter is heartbreaking !’

“He wrote to you ?

‘And to you,’ said Eliza, pointing towards the epistles on the table. ‘ Only think ! they have been lying here more thana month ; and oh, he does so plead—it would soften a stone ! The wife can go to her relations—but the unfortunate girl will not be received by them——’

‘TI think the quickest way to make me understand the whole matter will be to let me read the explanations, Miss Cameron interrupted, with a mildness which spoke volumes for her powers of self-restraint. ‘Give me your letter first, please.’

Eliza declared that she had already done so, and was astounded when accused of guarding it still in her Pandora’s box. She handed out a packet of cough lozenges, then a roll of knitting, then a receipted hotel-bill—insisting wildly that each article in turn was the required epistle, and weeping bitterly all the while. Finally, Miss Cameron took possession of the bag and turned its multifarious contents upon the table. Eliza shrieked over the confusion her friend was making, but Miss Cameron did not heed her distress. She found the document at length, and said :

‘You can pick up the things while 1 am reading. Please don’t speak to me till I have finished ; I am so dull that I can only attend to one thing at a time ; which was as near a reproof as she ever went in her dealings with this sometimes troublesome daughter of Vesta.

Eliza began collecting her treasures, and Miss Cameron read the letter through, then observed calmly :

‘What a miserable opinion the poor man

For His Daughter. 13 had of human nature up to the very last, since he thought it necessary to write you this piteous appeal to try and touch my hard heart.’

‘Qh, my dear, he felt he had wronged you so terribly !’

‘And he supposed I would be unforgiving. It was natural, no doubt, for him to fear that, since in my case he would have been——’

‘But the poor gil? And he is gone where

Miss Cameron held up her hand and finished the sentence thus :

‘Where the things of this world must look very unimportant, since they do so to us ten years after their happening, however weighty they seemed at the time.’

Miss Bronson feared that the assertion sounded sadly unorthodox, and went out of the room in silence ; partly because she perceived it would be cruel to inflict further companionship on Violet, partly to meditate over this speech, and prepare herself to convict her friend, in case conscience and certain old Calvinistic writers, in whose gloomy polemics she had a faith which we will hope is rare in our day, should decide that the sentiment savoured of heresy.

14 TTer Friend Laurence.

Miss Cameron examined her letters, opening first the epistle from George Danvers-- the utterance of a dying man ; and, as such, according to the creeds in which we have all been reared, a communication to be received with solemn respect.

An odd thought crossed Violet Cameron’s mind as she read—one which others of us have had under similar circumstances, and been startled thereby, because so utterly opposed to .our theories—namely, why, because the man was dying, should any particular weight attach to his request ?

Fathers, on their death-beds, ask pledges of their children, which must fetter those children for years; husbands beg wives never to marry ; wives entreat husbands not to wed some particular woman. Having received the desired promises, the departing spirits go tranquilly out of the world—go away, we believe, to an existence fuller of fruition than this, to a happiness of which happiness here can give no conception—certainly not regretting the friends they have left, else they could not find peace even in heaven—living new lives, untrammeiled by any duty to their mourners on earth, who are considered worse than heathens if they fail to obey every wish

For Eis Daughter. 1S of the dead, however unreasonable, however difficult, or, indeed, impracticable, the changes. of this mortal sphere may render such obedience. Violet indulged this reflection ; then was a little shocked; then thought herself silly for being so. But George Danvers had asked nothing which she deemed unreasonable or shrank from granting.

Miss Cameron’s widowed father had died soon after her seventeenth birthday. George Danvers settled his estate. The orphan was declared penniless, but the executor speedily became wealthy. A few people suspected him of cheating. Violet felt assured of his guilt ; for her father, during his brief illness, had shown her that the property he left (consisting of large coal and iron mines), though - involved, would afford her an ample income, if matters were honestly and wisely conducted.

She had refused to become a pensioner on her relative’s bounty, and had told him her certainty that he was a robber. He had grossly defrauded—he admitted this in his letter—but he had always meant to right her when he should grow rich enough! Now death stood near; a sudden financial crisis had ruined him; and in all the world there was no human being to whom he could appeal in his daughter’s behalf, save to the cousin whom he had so deeply wronged.

The stepmother wrote, just after her husband’s death, a letter full of complaints and self-commiseration. Her own fortune had been swallowed up, and she could not ask her relations to burthen themselves with the care of a girl who, ever since her father’s second marriage—an event which had occurred some six years previous—had plainly shown that she considered his new wife and her connections interlopers and foes.

The third letter was from the orphan, Mary Danvers, written still later—girlish, highflown, but not a bad letter by any means-—its whole tenor proving her ignorance of the causes which had separated the cousins for so many years.

Miss Cameron recollected that, owing to the long delay, the poor child might have suffered torments worse than those of purgatory ; at least, no more time should be lost. She prepared a telegram for her lawyer in New York, telling him how and where to communicate with Mary Danvers, and promising letters by the next steamer ; though, if any suitable escort offered before their

For His Daughter. 17 arrival, the young lady might start on her voyage. This done, she wrote to him and to George’s daughter; and, as she finished, Eliza Bronson appeared again, with her eyes and nose in a pitiable state, and her doubts in regard to Miss Cameron’s heresy still unsettled.

‘Read these, Eliza, said Violet, holding out the epistles.

‘The spinster slowly perused the two, and exclaimed :

‘ Really, dear, you are almost an angel, if only you wouldn’t give in to foreign carelessness about spending Sunday !’

‘ Please have the despatch sent at once, and the letters put in the post,’ said Miss Cameron. ‘ And just call Clarice. I shall go for a ride. The air will do me good.’

‘Yes,’ Miss Bronson assented; but her tone and manner showed that she still had a weight on her mind, and desired to be questioned.

‘What is it? Miss Cameron asked resignedly.

‘ About—about mourning. Shall you put on black ?

‘No,’ Miss Cameron replied, without hesitation.

VoL, I. 2

‘My dear, that will look so odd! Everybody does it for a few weeks—say six, if not a very near relative.’

‘George Danvers has already been dead almost two months,’ said Miss Cameron. ‘To go into black now would only be exposing myself to hear and answer the same question forty times each day for the next fortnight.’

“Yes, but custom, my dear—custom !

‘Since people do not know what has happened, their prejudices cannot be shocked.’

‘Very well!’ sighed Miss Bronson.

‘ Khiza,’ said her friend, coldly, ‘when my father died, I was so poor that I could not buy mourning. Do you think it fitting I should adopt it for his—for George Danvers?

‘I—I—perhaps not, murmured the spinster.

Miss Cameron went into her bedroom. By the time Eliza had reached the boudoir, she called :

‘I dare say you are right! I will wear white and lavender and grey for a few weeks. Now I hope your conscience is at rest.’

Miss Bronson wept again, and retired, so satisfied in every particular, that she could not have been more complacent had they just heard of a wedding instead of a death.

Chapter II. The Forbidden Path

Miss Cameron mounted her horse and rode off into the Cascine, finding the lovely wood deserted as it usually is, save for an hour or two before sunset.

Away to the right, Fiesole and its range of blue hills, glorious with sunshine, shut in the view ; on the left, through the aisles of trees, ~ Violet caught glimpses of the Arno and the plain beyond. A low breeze sang among the branches like a harp accompaniment to the sones of the birds—the sky was a vast dome of turquoise, flecked here and there with opal clouds—and, in spite of her grave preoccupation, the beauty of the scene did not escape Miss Cameron’s eyes. She loved nature, as she did everything else beautiful, with a genuine love, and Italy possessed for her that peculiar attraction which it must have for all

2—2 imaginative people. She was given to-day dreams, which, had she transcribed them, might have made her known as a poet ; but she never thought of doing this—they were her chief treasures, which she liked to keep sacred between herself and her soul. She had learned to guard her secret when in girlhood life suddenly assumed an aspect so bald and commonplace that she fostered this visionary faculty in order to forget now and then the coldness and closeness of existence. A governess inclined to dreams would be a lusus nature intolerable to parents or the wise heads of scholastic institutions, and Violet’s fancies were not allowed to interfere with the conscientious fulfilment of her duties.

In the early days she had been forced to strugele hard for patience—had felt like a caged bird—as if she must die if relief did not come. But by degrees she conquered that restlessness, gradually grew accustomed to the routine and restraint, and, if not happy, perhaps as nearly reached contentment as youth often does.

Violet did not remember her mother; when she was a little child Miss Bronson had been selected for her governess, who if not a woman of powerful intellect, was at least

The Forbidden Path. at well-informed, prudent, and loved her charge most tenderly.

When orphanage and poverty overtook Violet, Miss Bronson would gladly have toiled for and supported her, but this the girl would not permit, so Eliza obtained situations for both in a boarding-school where she had herself been educated. Violet, at first received as a pupil-teacher, rose rapidly in rank till, before her season of toil ended, she stood next to the stately lady who ruled in those halls of Minerva, and the destiny to which my heroine had looked forward was of one day becoming mistress of the establishment.

The change to her present position had arrived as unexpectedly as the tempest which at her father’s death flung her from luxury into want-—it possessed, too, a certain halo of romance.

During a summer vacation she accompanied one of the scholars to her home, and there formed the acquaintance of a gentleman who had known her parents. Mr. Goring was no longer young—a widower, and standing very much alone in the world. THe fell in love with the beautiful governess, and her friends thought her insane to decline his hand.

Me Her Friend Laurence.

Reason and common-sense urged her to accept, but, at the end of the six months’ probation he had begged, she definitely refused his offer. It was hard to cast aside the future which showed so bright in contrast to her surroundings—harder to give him pain, for his whole heart centred in his plea. but, to her mind, a marriage unsanctified by love —love so strong that it could work miracles— became a bartering of body and soul, from which she recoiled with unutterable loathing. Other women, feeling the respect and esteem which she felt, might have accepted—been right in so doing: to her it was simply impossible.

Eighteen months later Mr. Goring died in Brazil, and, with the exception of legacies to his dead wife’s relatives—he had none of his own—bequeathed his vast fortune to Violet Cameron. There would be nothing specially interesting in the records of the ensuing decade, looking back from which the old workaday epoch seemed strangely unreal. It had passed as it might have been expected to do with a woman rich, beautiful, and unmarried —save in one particular: nothing like love had touched her heart—not so much as a brief fancy which she could weave an idyl over. She had lived in the world, been surrounded by admirers ; but no voice from any man’s soul had possessed power to waken a response in hers,

Even women never thought of setting her down anywhere near her age; if she told it to some confidant she was not believed, and Eliza Dicngon, exaggeratedly scrupulous in general, burthened her conscience with many prevarications to prevent such possibility.

That she had gone so many years beyond all claim to girlhood appeared inconceivable to Violet herself, even when she laughingly adopted the title of old maid. She was as young in her feelings as her face—naturally enough, too, since love, life’s profoundest mystery, remained only a name and a dream.

Violet rode on more and more rapidly, trying to forget the hosts of perplexed, inexplicable fancies which beset her, following in the wake of the recollections roused by George Danvers’s letter. She turned her horse so abruptly down one of the side alleys that she nearly exterminated a gentleman who had just emerged into it from the recesses of the wood.

They caught sight of each other at the same instant. The gentleman sprang aside, and Miss Cameron reined in her steed so suddenly that she sent him back on his haunches. She received a somewhat reproachful glance from the stranger, then Selim engaged her attention, for, offended at the unexpected and vigorous check, he began to stand on his hind legs and perform antics more like those of a _trained horse in a circus than was agreeable to his rider.

Her narrowly-escaped victim stood watching the exhibition, no doubt with the intention of coming to her aid if assistance should prove necessary ; but in a very few seconds she convinced Selim that wisdom would dictate a return to his duty and the legitimate use of his hmbs. Violet was about to speak some words of apology and hurry on, when she dropped her whip, which the gentleman picked up, and she, sufficiently vexed with herself and Selim to be unreasonable, hastily decided that even the ceremonious lifting of the stranger’s hat conveyed a fresh reproach.

Of course she could do no less than offer her thanks, and, as she looked full at him, she perceived her blunder: the dullest woman living could not have mistaken the expression in his face for anything save wondering and respectful admiration. Still she could not resist saying :

‘I must beg your pardon. I ought not to have ridden so fast round the corner: but it is very unsafe for any person to walk in these alleys, meant only for equestrians.’

He smiled slightly, still he did smile, and evidently in amusement at her neatly-combined apology and reproof.

‘The next turning is the one the signora should have taken,’ he said, with a bow. As he spoke he pointed to a signboard at the side of the road, and Violet read thereon, printed in very legible characters andin two languages, ‘ Per 1 pedoni—for foot-passengers.’

‘It seems I was in the wrong every way. Pardon again,’ she said ; and, to make matters worse, she felt herself colouring like a schoolorl.

Her groom rode up at this juncture, and repeated the announcement that his mistress had strayed into forbidden paths; but Violet urged Selim on, andthe groom was obliged to. follow, and her haste lost her the slight satisfaction of hearing that the guardians of the wood might bear a portion of the blame for removing the bar which ought to have obstructed the route. The gentleman went his way and Miss Cameron went hers—or the way not hers by right—and of course both took with them some thought of the brief encounter.

Violet had spoken in Italian, and the stranger had replied in the same tongue, vut her trained ear caught a foreign accent.

‘Not English, however,’ was her reflection.

‘He looked like some of those handsome men one sees in Athens. No doubt he isa Greek—a worthless race as a rule; and I would wager anything he is no exception.’

As for the gentleman, his meditations, conducted in the same language as her own, ran somewhat in this fashion :

‘What a superb creature! However, I dare say she never looked so well before and never will again! Difficult to make that woman turn back, whatever path she had started on. How old? Not a _ young miss, certainly — five-and-twenty perhaps. How vexed she tried to be with me just because herself in the wrong! However, it was like a woman—like anything human, for that matter, though we men always pretend to think such little errors are monopolised by the softer sex.’

Miss Cameron reached home for the twelve o'clock breakfast, and found a note from a friend awaiting her.

‘You dearest, wickedest, most delightful of creatures !—Carlo heard last night of your arrival. If you meant to let the day pass without sending me word, don’t admit the fact, else I never, never will forgive you! We are out at the villa. I am literally tied fast by the foot, or ankle, which I managed to sprain a week ago with an awkwardness that merited the punishment it received. Half a dozen people—only among the nicest of our set—are coming this evening to condole with me; be sure to brighten us by adding yourself to the number. As a reward I will present two or three charming new men—only you are a hard-hearted wretch, and this will be no inducement.