Won by a hand : a novel

Chapter I. Page

GETTING INTO PosITION : é ‘ : ? me abl CHAPTER II.

Hnevish NEIGHBOURS . : , : : 5 a eT CHAPTER III.

A Rapip RETROSPECT ‘ : é ‘ ‘ eo allel CHAPTER Y.

Hann in Hanp . 4 ; 5 : : A . 141 CHAPTER VI.

A Tenant at WILL ; : A - ; 5g LED)

CHAPTER VII.

A Moprrn Favouritp E ‘ ; : 5 . 195 vil CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.

InrpoRTANT TRIFLES ; : é 4 é ee 0)

CHAPTER IX.

A Wartine GAME ; P ; - F . 5 POil

WON BY A HEAD.

CHAPTER I.

GETTING INTO POSITION.

You would not have known that you were in a London house. Upon entering it, you looked for the staircase in precisely the direction in which it did not stand ; ‘you thought you had passed through the hall, when to your surprise you turned into another; and just as you expected to ascend and find your hostess awaiting you in a square or oblong drawing-room on an upper story, a door was suddenly thrown open and you were shown into a chamber, all

VOL. I. B angles and corners, upon the ground floor. Nor did its contents, any more than its approach, answer to the conventional anticipations with which one enters a metropolitan salon. Without being an upholsterer, you saw at a first glance that large expenditure of money had not given to it its peculiarities; and without boasting any extraordinary amount of critical refinement, you saw at a second that it was indebted for its charm to good taste, and that good taste the taste of a woman. It had but one opening to the light, but this monopolised one entire end of the room, and gave upon a verandahed balcony, which, dressed with flowering plants, looked down upon a miniature garden scrupulously kept and hemmed in by thriving trees. Surely Babylon is nowhere near ? Listen. In vain will you strive to catch through the foliage a treacherous glimpse of steeple or chimney-stack. But that indefinite homogeneous hum that never swells or swoops, but never ceases, can be and is no other than the Babel of the many-footed town.

Its usual society was, no more than its arrangement, in accordance with the average pattern of the English capital, You have now an excellent opportunity for forming its acquaintance and your own judgment, as this very moment some half-dozen men, with the laughter provoked by the last joke of the wine-flask still upon their lips, break in upon some half-dozen women, whose fewer and milder jokes have already been fully expended.

Do not be too anxious to follow that tall, good-looking fellow, who, with just a glance, unnoticed by all but herself, at by far the handsomest woman in the room, goes straight to a corner of the balcony where leans a slim figure, whose face we cannot see, but whose fair hair, from necessity or choice, has been cut so short as, though perfectly free, not to trespass beyond the imaginary line which divides neck from shoulder. Let

B2 him go. It is his habit to please himself and single out for selfish converse whoever most attracts him. You shall see more of him and his choice a little later. For the present, take up the glance that he threw, in passing, at that lovely woman with all the virtues of a statue united to all the virtues of the flesh, and keep it for a time fixed attentively upon her. She is the lady of the house, though you would not think it, to see her splendidly sitting and calmly waiting to be entertained by any of her guests, male or female, who should next offer to undertake that pleasant office. She is, take her all in all, one of the finest-looking women you ever saw. She must be a duchess, at least. No, she is not. She is plain Mrs. Narracott. Her father was a celebrated optician, a very scientific person, but a gentleman of yesterday, having nothing to do with the cream of the cream, not even being the blue milk immediately below it, but quite new milk altogether; perhaps with capacities there-

GETTING INTO POSITION. iy fore of producing cream, and this his daughter may, forsooth, be the product. That privileged guest who walked past her to the balcony, takes upon himself sometimes to call her Countess, and her husband is falling rapidly into the habit after him; but that is nothing more than the banter of this peculiar circle. How very agreeable it must be to talk with her! for, without abating one line of her exquisite repose, her eyes and mouth have all the mobility necessary for female animation, and now and then her pretty neck arches with dignified roguery, and her pretty hands are raised an inch or two in malicious surprise. As great a man as a modern artist can be is talking to her now. Griffon, R.A., you would pass in the street without looking at; and in a room he does not obtrude himself upon your notice. - He has, to those who know how to note such things, an air of quiet humoristic observation. He knows his own value, yet thinks very highly of his art and very meanly of himself. Exteriorly he is not retiring, but very modest in reality. He made both mark and money very early in life, and is now in the best years of manhood. He has a wife and a large family, and is thoroughly happy among them. He is, withal, very younghearted, and often, as to-day, affects the bachelor, and has a merry mania for warning men for whom he cares, against being married.

“Our baronet is struck with the fast young authoress,” he is saying to Mrs. Narracott. “Do you think he is fool enough ever to dream of marrying her ?”

“He might dream of it,’ she answers; ‘but be quite sure that he will wake before he does it.”

“Ah! but when young fellows go standing upon balconies.”

“J should think Sir Everard has been standing on balconies half his life.”

“Well, you ought to know better than I do,” and he gave her a look of playful imputation, which she met with a quiet bend of the head and a smile, implying that she cheerfully accepted it. ‘“‘Still, a man is never safe. Look at me! I never intended to marry, but I did, and now I’ve a dozen of "em, as near as possible, to paint for.”

“ And a poor lost miserable creature you would have been if you had not married.”

“T never should have worked, if I had not, that’s true; but what good have I done by working? But Delafosse is not going to work, whether he marries or not. The world will never get much work out of him.”

“Don’t you be too sure of that, though you cannot be too sure that Sir Everard is not going to marry Rosie Raffles, or anybody else—without my permission. . .. Now, I know you want to smoke, and I will be generous. Go and join those barbarians.”

Some of those “ barbarians” had descended into the little garden and had already filled the summer night with the trail of their cigars. Three of them, who were also smoking, were in noisy converse at the other end of the balcony to that where, very close to each other, and anything but noisy, still stood the two figures who had paired so early. The fumes of the tobacco might or might not invade the drawing-room; that was an affair of the wind, about which nobody concerned himself. Nor did anybody concern himself as to whether those half-dozen women would like to be talked to. That one sex ought to be as well able to amuse itself and hold its own as the other, appeared to be the silently accepted opinion. And since they had not yet arrived, and probably never would arrive at the full profanity of smoking actually within the drawing-room, those who chose to remain under its shelter had to pay the penalty, if it was one, of temporary masculine absence. At every turn, and in every incident, you saw a circle where “the proper thing” was utterly ignored. There was a piano in the room, it is true, but nobody was asked either to play or sing, and “a little music” was entirely banned. Yet let decorum be consoled. With the exception of the hostess, and perhaps— for as yet it would be premature to give an opinion —the young lady with the slim figure and the undulating short fair hair, none of the women provoked, or would have supported, description. ‘They were not original, yet they were not made to order. They walked out of the ordinary paths without leading you anywhere else. It is a dangerous thing on the mere score of social effect, for even a woman of genius to disregard the recognised trivialities of behaviour. When an ordinary woman disregards them, she simply unsexes herself without obtaining the slightest compensation. Polished conventionality is the saving clause in the constitution of common-place people. “There is only one opinion about it, Montagu,” was being said by Knightsbridge, of whom exceptionally it may be asserted that he was a gentleman, not only on the stage, but off it; “ everybody likes, and everybody praises it.”

“Yes, I think I’ve done the trick this time,” answered Narracott, raising his arms and shoulders simultaneously, as though he wanted, as the phrase is, to pull himself together—a gesture which you could not be five minutes with the man without perceiving to have grown part of his personality ; “T’ve done it this time. The third edition is out on Saturday, and even this ruffian, Marston Light, condescends to review it favourably.” |

The “ruffian” alluded to was one of the jolliest and best-natured looking men in London, and one might have wondered how he managed not to be drowned in the human kindness with which his appearance overflowed. But his voice told a different tale ; and, could common repute be relied on, Marston Light was one of the most cynical, selfish, ill-tongued, cruel-penned. litterateurs

GETTING INTO POSITION. it of the town. Somebody said of him that he had read the Sacred Scriptures as hastily as the books which he reviewed, and that he had in consequence totally misunderstood the divine admonition, and invariably did to his neighbours what he took precious good care they should never do to him.

‘“‘T dared not review it otherwise,” he repled, turning to Knightsbridge, for he always talked as to an audience, and expected every word he uttered to tell somewhere, “‘for Narracott has ensconced himself both in the ‘ Afternoon Siesta,’ and the ‘ Monthly Mixture, and hits back with usurious interest at any frank scribe who hesitates dislike. But the novel is really first rate. Poor

Rosie Raffles! she can neither ensure such encomium, nor strike out when she is fiercely stricken.”

‘They say you wrote that notice in the ‘Papercutter,’” interrupted Knightsbridge.

“They lie,” Light answered, briefly.

‘“‘ Whoever wrote it, she seems comforted at present. A good-natured baronet easily consoles a young woman for an ill-natured critic. Look at ’em!”

“The rapidity of your work astounds me,” Delafosse was saying.

‘But then it is so poor and superficial,” she answered meekly, then adding, with pathetic inflection on the words: “so different from yours!”

‘Well, it is.” Then, probably perceiving that his answer might unfortunately be taken to apply to the latter as well as to the former part of her remark, he was forced to add: ‘it 2s comparatively poor and superficial.” He did not choose to accept the compliment paid to himself; but he repeated the derogatory criticism upon herself with the frankest calmness. ‘Then since you know that it is superficial, why not try to do something better ?”

‘Can I, do you think ?”

“‘T cannot tell, though I should be inclined to hope so, at any rate. You know

I have never read more than your first novel, which your publisher sent me; and that is one more than I read of most people. Of your last and—you wrote another, a second, did you not ?”

“Yes; the last is my third.”

“I know nothing of either. Can you give them a better character than the first, or are they also poor and superficial ?”

“T fear so.”

‘Then I am not to read them ?”

“No. But tell me—do you, from what you read of the first, encourage me to try to do something better ?”

It was a very interesting face, though beautiful, or even pretty, it could not be considered. It was too irregular to be the first, and too earnest to be the second. Perhaps it was only this, its earnestness, that made you doubt, when you were told that she was but five-and-twenty. The foreheads of even very capable women are never ploughed into ridges, as are men’s, by preparatory thought, and hers was no exception. It was broad enough, but very smooth, and her eyebrows seemed traced more by the soft hands of the toilet-table than the rough processes of the laborious study. Her nose was rather delicate, but it had an undulating line that asserted her right to some share in the fanciful faculty. The jaws swept suddenly round as if in haste to meet at a sharp protuberant chin ; and this, with an eloquentseeming, but outward-lipped mouth, gave her a strange sort of hungry look, as though she terribly wanted something, though what it was there was nothing to instruct you. She had lovely little ears; and the way in which the silky hair went rippling back behind them gave her the one thing, and the only thing, which could really be called fascinating.

Unless her voice were deemed such, and that depended entirely on the listener. Such a deep voice, soft and round enough withal, somewhat reminding you of the first notes of an organ when touched very gently. There was a crescendo character about it, and yet it never rose, maintaining ever that deep even tone which, like the combined expression of the mouth and chin, seemed to speak of a soul inordinately but vaguely hungry.

‘Could there have been contrast to her voice greater than was his? A wandering voice, now in this key, now in that, full of musical possibilities. For a moment it would be deeper, ever so far deeper, than hers, but only in temporary and appropriate accompaniment to his words. It shifted with his language, shifted as his eyes or hands shifted, obedient to what he wanted it to say. He had neither laughed nor sighed whilst talking to her, and they had talked as people talk who do not particularly wish to be overheard. But had you listened, you would have been sure that his voice could have rung and rippled with merry mad laughter, or interpreted the troubles of the heart by the notes of “the pathetic minor.”

‘“‘ Do you encourage me to try to do something better ?” she had just, asked. “ Mr. Narracott, who is very kind to me, would have me do something that I think worse. He says I am not cautious and conventional enough, that I do not Cansider my public or conciliate my critics and the circulating libraries sufficiently. Now, if I were to try to do what I consider better, I should conciliate less, and, I suspect, offend very much more.”

She pushed her curls just a hair or two’s breadth farther behind her little ears, threw back her head till it almost rested on her neck, and looked up, in the broken moonlight, to his face. He was so much taller than she, and his eyes were therefore so far off, that she could gaze up at them as though she were gazing at the stars. They were verynear each other, and her fawning manner made it appear, or feel, at least, that they were still nearer than they really were.

Considering women’s immense natural ad-

GETTING INTO POSITION. gure vantages, upon my word they use them with astounding moderation.

Did he encourage her to try to do something better? As Mrs. Narracott had said to Griffon, Sir Everard Delafosse had spent pretty nearly half his yet young life on balconies, and had been in the moonlight often enough before to-day with maidens who wanted to be encouraged to do something better. But he would have been harder than that flint which we are assured, in spite of its being such, can be rent, if he had not given the uplooking petitioner the benefit of every doubt.

“Yes, I would encourage you, though with a certain amount of hesitation. I know but one of your books, and you only—for dinner goes for nothing (you saw J was outside the conversation all the time) —and you only for the first time, these last ten minutes. Now, Montagu—pardon me, I cannot get into the way of calling him anything else—Montagu has probably read all VOLS Te C your books, and knows you—does he not ?— pretty intimately ?

‘“¢-Yes. He has known me some time.”

“ Acain, he is well acquainted with the taste of the public, because he has long considered and consulted it. I am completely ignorant of it, inasmuch as I never consult or even consider it at all. His advice and mine are sure to clash, supposing that I think highly enough of your powers to advise you. But his will be sound advice, and certainly safe. Mine may be not only danserous, but fatal.”

‘You are not encouraging me, now, Sir Everard. You are talking on the very supposition that my only chance of continued success lies in meeting my public half way and propitiating my audience, and that the moment I tried to get an audience for myself as myself, I should not be strong enough to retain what I have already got. That is what Mr. Narracott says. He threatens me with losing my present public, unless, to use his words, I mend my manners. But you!”

‘““T see,” he said, slightly shifting his position and smiling, “ that you are determined I should encourage you. Montagu is the best fellow in the world, and we are sworn alles; but no two men could look at things with more different eyes. You have had his advice; you shall now have mine, or rather my opinions, since I do not feel justified in advising you till I am better acquainted with your strength. But supposing that you are strong, I should in that case say to you, never think of your public at all. Let not such a thing as a circulating library ever enter your head. Give general opinion the go-by. Do not fly in its face: do not even look in its face. There is no necessity for you, as an artist, to be acquainted with it, any more than with the shape of the last new bonnet, or the fulness of the last new skirt. Write your book out of yourself, and leave it. If the public likes it, good. If the public does not like it, equally good— perhaps, better. Follow my advice, and

C2 run the risk, still supposing that you are really strong, of ending by not having above a couple of hundred readers, until after the last Church Service has been drawled over you, and very likely not then. Now, you know what my encouragement amounts to.”

She had kept her head thrown back and still, the whole time he spoke, and had been staring earnestly with her steady grey eyes up into his face. When he finished, she said with a voice, deeper and more hungrysounding even than before :

“ But do you think I am strong ?”

He answered with judicial calmness :

‘““ Very few people are, even of those who fancy themselves so, or of those who really wish to be so. Therefore the odds are considerably against you.” ‘The conversation had been maintained too long at a serious pitch; and, had she known him better, she might have been sure that a little banter was coming. “ But if”—and his face melted into playfulness—‘if you want to

GETTING INTO POSITION. on solve the problem, you could not do better than plant yourself, alone, in some abandoned wilderness or other, and stay there till you have written the most truthful thing that it is in you to write. In London, you can forget neither your audience nor yourself.”

“ And where is there such a wilderness?” she asked, a little puzzled to know whether he were laughing at her, or his pleasantry were only earnestness out of harness.

‘“In heaps of places. There is just such a one on my estate; a cottage held by an old woman, who says she is over a hundred, and is certainly not much under it, and who will probably live a hundred years more.”

“ Everard !”

“What is it, old boy?”

“ Come and see me, Sir Everard.”

“ Where ? in the howling wilderness ? But I said you were to be alone.”

“No: here in town. You know my address ?”

bo bo

WON BY A HEAD.

“ No I don't.”

“ Everard !”

“Yes, old boy!”

“That is it! You will come? Come on Monday.”

“‘Confound the fellow! We shall never get him off that girl. Let us try another influence. . . . Miss Raflles, I am told that Marston Light wrote that pleasant notice of you in the ‘ Papercutter.’”

“Did he?” she answered, without stirring from the balcony. ‘Then he is a monster.”

Delafosse had tried to move, but his companion still managed to detain him. Narracott and the other two men came nearer, discussing the review that had just been named. On hearing what was the subject of their talk, Delafosse no longer manifested any desire to stir. But as, though himself not moving, he made no especial efforts to enthral his companion, she seemed gradually more and more drawn by the influence of their conversation, in which she principally figured, till she at last became the centre about which they gathered. Sir Everard then went and sat by Mrs. Narracott. Between Mr. and Mrs. Narracott and Sir Everard Delafosse had, for now four years, subsisted a most intimate acquaintance. A remarkable literary success, entailing nothing at all lke popularity, but arising partly from the approbation of the really critical, and partly from the curiosity of the merely fashionable, had made Sir Everard be sought for by many who would never otherwise have heard of his name, or, hearing it, would not have associated it with anything particularly worth courting. Among these was Montagu Narracott, who, then a litterateur well known about town, was always on the look-out for what he called, in familiar language, men of mark. But as Sir Everard was the last man in the world to think anybody entitled to claim his acquaintance because he had written a clever book, and as Montagu Narracott belonged by reputation to a class of people whom, because perfectly ignorant of them, the successful young author held least in favour, it is highly probable that Narracott’s generous and courteous advances would have led to nothing like intimacy, had there been no other inducement, appreciable at once, to accept it. But, sensitive to beauty in all directions, to a degree for which, in an Englishman, it is difficult to account, Delafosse saw, in a first glance at Montagu Narracott’s wife, a gratification for his eyes such as he -was not likely to forego. He did not then know that her loveliness, though the greatest, was far from being the only one of her charms, nor that her husband was a man worth going through much trouble to know, even if he had had for wife the ugliest woman in Europe. But it was not a fortnight before he knew both.

Bright, energetic, straightforward, and fearless, Montagu Narracott had then already made of but a moderately good education, and of abilities, certainly superior, but not astounding, the very best possible use. Of course, he had a good stout fight of it. He was a hard but not a cruel hitter, and had a knack of knocking a man over without very much hurting him. Of course, some of his blows had not been quite forgotten, but none, I think, were remembered rancorously. He had never thrust unfairly but once, and that once by accident, and not by malice; and the parade made of the thrust by its conspicuous object only made Narracott the more regret it, and the public the more condemn the uses to which the other had applied it. He had begun life at twenty, with barely the most economical bachelor’s means of single subsistence. But, whilst other men, with as fair a start, as good a head, and as sound a constitution, who had embarked in the same profession, were still smoking in pothouses, supping in cellars, boozing in coffee-houses, and accusing fate, Narracott, at twenty-three, had married a wife, rented a house, gave occasional quiet little dinners, faced his creditors, and paid his bills. At last, he had written a book which had brought him considerable remuneration, and had lifted him out of the mere arena of litterateurship, beyond which he had not previously figured. He enjoyed his success immensely, and had the satisfaction of feeling that he thoroughly deserved it. A man always seems to be fortunate who succeeds; and certainly, in one important point, he had fortune to thank for his success.) He had made the most of the conditions amid which he had | found himself; but then the conditions had been, when his character came to be considered, extremely favourable. He had, by nature, powerful social qualities, and a very keen perception of phenomena; and it was for him the luckiest thing in the world that the necessities of strugele threw him into a superficial society where phenomena are

GETTING INTO POSITION. Zt numerous, and threw him into it before he had attained his majority. I do not think that any amount. of solitude could have made. a god of him, and moneyed ease would have probably made him only indolent, not reflective. So that the busy, observant life which he was compelled to lead, harmonised best and co-operated with his natural faculties. Hence, now at fourand-thirty, he had produced a book which, without being either deep or broad, was— like himself—very true, and bright, and animated, and popular.

You would have gone round Europe with- _ out finding a man mentally more different from this last than his unflinching friend, Sir Everard Delafosse. Probably Sir Everard admired Narracott more than Narracott admired him, since the reflective and philosophic mind usually appreciates the observant and practical one far more thoroughly than the observant and practical does the philosophical and reflective. Delafosse was quite contented with Narracott being such as he was, and esteemed him accordingly. Narracott, on the other hand, would, if he could, have had Delafosse more pliant to circumstances, and more conciliatory with the accidents of his age. But the fact that the one could not soar and the other would not crawl, in no way interfered with a manly friendship that, having enough of common intellectual interest to assist it, resided upon the much broader and surer ground of loyalty, good fellowship, and brotherhood. And then this lovely wife who had so much aided in the formation of an alliance extremely valuable to each, was ever doing much to preserve it.

The relationship between her and Sir Everard was peculiar, but—and let us be immensely thankful for it—as yet in England, anything but singular. This pen, which I reverence as a soldier does his sword, shall tell no witting lies, and shall never write one single stroke to flatter or propitiate my countrymen. But he who has lived most in any other European country, whilst seeing there no little that he might wish transferred to his own, cannot fail to return home with blessings on his lips for the women of the land that is hemmed in by the sea, and with unutterable thankfulness, not for its political structure, not for its enormous wealth, not for its fair woods, nor its stalwart sinews—for none of these necessarily ; but for the one pre-eminently precious possession, the sound average prevalence of the domestic idea. So defended, long may English matrons preserve their inestimable privilege of having at their side, when they will, friends who are not their husbands, but whom withal no foul tongue shall dare asperse with the sad soft Southern pseudonym of “cavalieri serventi.”

What an immense amount of admiration had this lovely woman received, and dearly did she love it. From no one, perhaps, was it so welcome, after Montagu, as from Sir

Everard. He was young, skilful, and of excellent address, and then his taste was as unimpeachable as it was severe. An ugly woman had to be very old, or very infirm, or very much in need, to get attention from him. He seemed, in society at least, to think, with Ben Jonson, that ‘‘it was for beauty that the world was made,” and I fear he could be very tolerant to a fool, provided the fool happened to be a pretty one. When, as in Mrs. Narracott’s case, appearance and conversation combined to charm, he became as much a slave as it was possible for woman or man to make of him. Had you asked Mrs. Narracott, she would have told you that, for either or both, to make him such, was quite impossible; and she would have told you the truth.