A prophet of the real

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Copyright N°

Chapter II

■ JHE story of your life ! repeated Verschoyle, incredulously.

“ Yes— all of it— all of it ! ”

“ Of course I didn't know. What a remarkable coincidence ! ”

The shock of surprise had almost taken his breath away. He gazed in a sort of stupefaction at the girl, who had risen and stood with her back against the table, grasping it, her cheeks white, her lips white, her dark eyes wild, dilated, her bosom panting under her shabby gown.

“ If I had told it to you, it could scarcely be truer. But I know more than you, clever as you are. It is here," — she struck her breast — “ the agony which you have only imagined, which I have felt ! Oh, the shame, the misery, the anguish of my life ! ”

She stopped and sobbed. It was evident that she had forgotten where she was, that her self-consciousness, restraint, subservience of service were alike swept away by a torrent of emotion. She talked because she had to talk, and Verschoyle, 6 watching her, wondered if he had never seen her before, or whether the smothered fire that he had fanned to flame had transformed an ordinary girl into the tragic muse, with her great eyes burning in her pale cheeks, her mobile lips, her white forehead, her quivering throat and hands.

“ Sit down in the arm-chair,” he said, with charming gentleness. “ Don’t cry. I am very sorry for you. It is most unfortunate that I should have stirred such painful memories. . . Would you like some brandy ? ”

She had sunk into the chair, her head bowed; .stricken, sobbing still.

He stood before her, and his voice when he spoke again was tense.

“ Is the affair with the man going on now? ”

“ Yes, he proposed last night. That was why I slept badly, and was late this morning.”

“You have accepted him?”

She nodded.

“ And he knows nothing? ”

“ Nothing.” She wiped her eyes without looking up. “ It’s just like your tale. I don’t know what to do.”

“Who are you? Tell me all about it.”

“Do you remember the Durand case? It happened a long time ago; I was only seven years old.”

“ I can’t recall it,” he said, in a low tone. “ What did she do? ”

The girl rocked herself to and fro in blind agony.

“ She was jealous of my father and she killed him.”

“ Good Lord!”

“ She was hanged. I knew all about it. A servant took me to see the black flag flying over the gaol. I dreamed about it afterwards, and screamed in the night. I dream about it still. I have her portrait taken with my father’s during their honeymoon. He was a very handsome man, and she was like I am now, only beautiful; the eyes, the mouth, the colouring are the same. . . . There was no money for me. A public subscription was raised, and I was sent to school till I was seventeen. I have been keeping myself since. I have never spoken about it to any one before, but you startled me — you startled me so.”

“ Have you no relations or friends ? ”

She shook her head.

“ I am alone. At school I thought they whispered about me, and I used to hold aloof for fear of a snub. It was the same afterwards. Oh, you can’t realize what it is to be cut off from the world as I am ! When people are kind to me I think : ‘ If they knew who I was they would turn away ! ’ and I feel a hypocrite, and fear to make friends. I never 8 forget. I don’t think that I have ever been happy. Sometimes it seems to me that I shall die if I can’t tell somebody what I feel; but I daren’t talk about it.”

“ Go on,” said Verschoyle, thoughtfully, “ talk to me.”

“ They say,” she whispered, “ that it isn’t painful to be hanged; just a shock, and then — nothing. But what must she have felt in the days beforehand ? To have killed a man, her husband ! Wnat a horror must have been upon her — enough to drive her mad; what shame, what sickening fear! And she was going to die. There was the Afterwards to face. What has become of her ? ”

“ Ah, there you raise a difficult question ! Are you religious ? ”

“ I don’t know. I don’t go to church often, because they talk about things that frighten me. Do you think they’ve met again? She loved him, you know; she must have loved him. Did he hate her, or did he forgive — or is it all nonsense, and was that the end ? ” She pushed her black hair from her brow feverishly. “ I lie awake at night thinking it out till my brain swims and my flesh creeps, and I never seem to get any nearer the truth.”

“ I think,” said Verschoyle, studying her, “ that you have lived too much alone. You were wrong to nurse these ideas in silence for so many years. It would have been better for you to have told every one you met.”

“ No — no — no,” she cried, shrinking. “ I should have died of shame. I don't know how I have managed to talk to you like this. I suppose it is because you seem to understand. You won't betray me, will you? You won't think badly of me? It's such a terrible thing for a girl to have fastened on her.”

“ Of course I won’t ‘ think badly ’ of you,” he answered. “ Why should I? You couldn't help it. I pity you with all my heart. But you ought to tell your lover.”

“ He would give me up ! ”

“ If he is worth his salt it won't make any difference. He will only try to comfort you.”

“ You say that,” she cried, “ but you don’t make the girl in your book believe it, and I know you mean her to lose him.”

“ But my lover is a poor little conventional cad, bound to the chariot wheels of Mrs. Grundy.”

“ And so is mine.”

“ Will he be any loss, in that case? ”

“ Oh, don't you understand ? ” she said, tearfully. “ You wrote it! What is to become of me? I have had such a dreary, lonely life; I am so poor. He is well off; he could give me a home, and he loves me. Nobody else loves me. He is the first io man who has ever noticed me. I might never have another chance, and I might get ill and lose my work at any time; and what should I do when I grew old ? ”

Verschoyle regarded her with half a smile, the first relaxation of humour; with a little curiosity too, of a different kind — a late interest in the potentialities of her youth and sex.

“You do look for the worst, don’t you? Why should you not have another and a better offer by-and-by? You are only a young girl still.”

She shook her head, which he noticed for the first time was small, well-shaped, well-set. A shadow brooded in her eyes.

“ I am not attractive. I am too dull, too quiet, too sad. Men — most men — like gay women who amuse them; pretty, well-dressed women with parents and friends. Besides, I never meet anybody, and if I do I’ve no home to ask them to. I don’t know why George cares. He’s a nephew of the people where I board — not quite a gentleman, you know, but — he loves me. He’s my only chance. After all,” she said, defiantly, “ what is it to do with him who my parents were?”

“ Has he asked you ? ”

“ I said that my father was a gentleman. It’s true.”

ii

“Of course it is your own concern,” said Verschoyle. “ I can’t presume to influence you.”

“ You think that I ought to tell him, though ! Of course you are right.” She was conventional again, suddenly — the girl, dull, decorous, subdued, who had passed in and out of his days unobserved. Even the touch of subservience returned. “ But before I came to you I was out of employment for weeks, and nearly all my money went. I was so frightened. You don’t know how difficult it is for a girl to get on. Do I suit you? Do you mean to keep me? You won’t turn me away, will you, if he doesn’t want any more to do with me ? ”

“ No,” said Verschoyle, gently, “ I won’t turn you away. I think we are getting on very well, don’t you ? ”

The girl rose.

“You have been very kind to me to-day,” she murmured. “ I shall never forget. You must have thought me mad to burst out like that; but it has been such a relief to talk. I won’t take up any more of your time. Shall we begin to work ? ”

“Do you feel like it?”

Her lashes drooped.

“ I don’t mind, I am here to work.”

“ Go home, and see your lover, and tell me to-morrow what he says.”

“You are sure that you can spare me?”

“ Yes. Have a glass of wine before you go.”

He touched the bell. They both waited silently, eyeing each other sometimes. The girl sipped the wine as though she were not used to it.

“ I wish you luck,” said Verschoyle, drinking himself.

“ Oh, I know what it will be ! ” she answered, hopelessly “ Your book will come true.”

“ Good-bye,” he said, and they shook hands for the first time in their lives. “ Mind you come to-morrow — and — and don’t fret more than you can help.”

Her lips quivered.

When she had gone, Verschoyle threw himself into an arm-chair, and wiped his face.

“ Well, this is a new experience,” he mused. “ I have seen Bernhardt and Duse, but I don’t think I ever realized tragedy as keenly before. And what a tragedy! She never rose above the commonplace until to-day. I scarcely looked at her. She was the representative of a class, no more — a type, not a personality. It is the difference, I suppose, between truth and art — or shall we say between art and a temperament combined with truth? A ploughboy would be a dumb repository. She has the sensitiveness of a photographic plate; every emotion is felt, reproduced: passion, tenderness, imagination. Grown to womanhood she lies awake, the child who 13 saw the black flag flying, and asks herself if that husband and wife have met again. I should never have thought of that ! What a touch ! There’s life in that — the keystone of a character. Good God! how morbid she is ! Her white face, her black eyes and hair; the thinness of her, the nervous delicacy of her hands — all just as it should be. . . . I could not have drawn her half as well as she is made.”

He rose and paced the room in the restlessness of excitement. It was as though the tragedy he had invented had materialized under his eyes. A ghost, illusive, indistinct, had turned to flesh and blood. He had wondered how to invent her, this girl of gloomy parentage, and he had only to describe. She was here as a model in his hand.

He could not but realize what an opportunity of a lifetime this was for him. Chance had placed it in his power to write a book that should be such a human document as had never been written before. And the subject appealed to him; he had chosen it; he was not being forced into an uncongenial task for the sake of utilizing good material.

“ It is strange that it should be now, while she is with me, that the idea should come,” he thought. “ The coincidence opens up an interesting problem. Is there anything in thought transference? Can 14 her continual brooding on the one subject have affected me? ”

He was intensely anxious to place his new impressions on paper. He hated the manual effort of writing, but it would be easier to do this part of the book without her. If some of the emotions, phrases, ideas, struck her as familiar afterwards, she would merely conclude that he had grafted them upon the character previously conceived.

Flushed enthusiasm kept his pen moving for a couple of solid hours. If he lacked anything, most days, it was that fervour without which the novelist becomes a mere cold-blooded manipulator of words — a Frankenstein creating bodies without a soul. The curious episode of the morning had stirred him powerfully. The feeling was upon him that now, if ever, he was to surpass himself, and write a book that was worthy to live.

When he stopped at last, it was not for want of material. A chilling recollection had brought dismay to his face.

The man might marry her after all! What a pity it would be — how deadly commonplace! Identified with his heroine as she had become, he would find it difficult to contrive an artistic ending to his book. She should have a tragic history; at least her neurotic temperament should expand un- 15 cramped. It would kill his imagination if she were to settle down into a suburban matron and the mother of babies.

“ Although no doubt the less interesting she became, the healthier and the happier she would be, and I am brutal to hope that George's loyalty will prove unequal to the strain," he told himself. “ Fortunately or unfortunately, I have no influence in the matter, so my selfishness is not a crime. We shall see ! ”

It was luncheon time, and a servant came to call him to the dining-room. His excitement had given him an appetite. It had been a morning to set the pulses of a man's life moving faster. He had gone to sleep over that story; he had felt uncertain of his deductions, depressed by misgivings; now he was in his best mood.

What news would she bring to-morrow? He would not have believed a week ago that he could be so interested in this girl.

Chapter III

A LICE DURAND lived at Notting Hill in a tall, shabby house where they took boarders at a guinea a week. Verschoyle only wanted her in the mornings, however, so she was received for ten shillings in return for her services as “ lady help ” in the afternoons. As he paid her liberally, she was able to put by fifteen shillings a week for clothes, ’bus fares, and emergencies. In fact, she was better off than she had ever been, but experience had taught her the insecurity of every salary in this life.

She reached home with a mixture of sensations: — the sickness of agitation and suspense, a shrinking consciousness that she had expanded to a stranger and a man who had certainly taken no pains before to gain her confidence or make himself her friend. To her intense reserve this seemed a terrible thing to have done; although it had relieved her over-charged heart, and he had advised her conscientiously, she knew. She grew alternately hot and cold. How could she have unveiled her inmost soul to Anthony Verschoyle? She was

n not used to talking about herself. His unconscious hand had opened the floodgates of her soul. The impulse to put into words what she had been feeling with such hideous keenness all her life, had been too strong to resist. The artificial restraint had been broken down by the pent-up emotions of years. The girl had hidden her tragedy, crushed it in her breast till the agony of it had almost driven her mad. It was as though she had screamed at last.

What was her lover going to say to her? She had no hope. If Verschoyle had not put her duty before her, she would have vacillated and tormented herself perhaps to the very eve of the marriage, and spoken then. It was better as it was. Love might have found a guilty happiness, for a few weeks, in the engagement; she did not love her fiance, so she had nothing to gain by prolonging the suspense.

She was so tired of dependence, servitude, poverty. When she reached her own bedroom at the very top of the tall boarding-house, she took her things off and cast them down with a sort of passion. The means of escape was within her reach, and she must renounce it.

“ It's hard,” she said, between her teeth, “ hard. Am I never to have a little comfort and happiness, a home of my own ? ”

Her stormy eyes sought their own reflection in the glass. A lock of black hair fell over her forehead, accentuating its whiteness; her cheeks were colourless; her mutinous lips trembled still over the memory of that storm in Verschoyle’s study, and the anticipation of the interview to come.

The prolonged sound of a gong mounted the well of the staircase. She washed her hands and tidied her hair hastily, and went down-stairs.

Luncheon was on the table. A lady of uncertain age, with a golden fringe, was presiding over a cold leg of mutton, and a dish of curry — the mutton in another guise. There were only two or three women and an old man at the table. Most of the boarders were clerks who were absent during the day.

“ You are home early,” remarked the hostess. “ How’s that?”

“ Mr. Verschoyle didn’t want me any longer this morning.”

Mrs. Wilson waved the carving-fork at the dishes.

“ Which will you have, my dear?”

The woman was vulgar but good-natured. She had taken Alice to the play in the pit occasionally, and once to Kempton Park races. It was on the latter occasion, in fact, that George Wilson had made the girl’s acquaintance.

He was coming to dinner to-night, and she would be able to get her confession over then. Would he 19 think it necessary to tell his aunt who she was? In any case she would lose the prestige which the engagement had conferred upon her in the boarding-house, where George Wilson with his smart city clothes and gay air was “ such a gentleman.”

Mrs. Wilson asked her a question twice before she heard it. She was wondering what Anthony Verschoyle, the cultivated, fastidious Oxford man, would think of the dirty tablecloth, the oleographs and “ rep ” furniture, Mrs. Wilson's golden “ front ” and slipshod English, and George Wilson when he was trying to tell a funny story.

And yet she, who could see every shortcoming, every vulgarism in her fiance from the scented oil on his hair and the geranium in his button-hole, to his lamentable ignorance, trembled at the thought of losing him. They had not a thought in common ; his point of view on every subject was as “ impossible" as his summer clothes; he was no more her equal in refinement than in intellect. His sole merits were that he was fond of her, and could give her a home.

But she had to be thankful for him — grateful that this pacha of Mincing Lane had condescended to throw the handkerchief, and to rehearse her miserable story in order to find phrases which would tell the truth yet shock him least, trembling the while with fear that he would not consider her good enough to be his wife !

A wild gleam came into the girl’s eyes; her breast heaved. In a passion of revolt against her fate, her crushed pride rose, and she felt inclined to fling his ring back to him without a word. Why should she apologize to him — cringe to him for what she was? Why should she humble herself to any man? It was he who was not good enough for her !

She wept again in her room afterwards. She hated the world, outcast that she was through no fault of her own. If only she had had money in her hands, and could afford to hold aloof, wrapped in the reserve of a defiant and despairing melancholy. The humiliation of her dependence upon this man ate like vitriol into her soul. Her pride which had survived her tragic parentage, fought in her breast with her weariness of the life she led, its insecurity, the dread she had mentioned to Verschoyle of what her future might be if this one chance of marriage passed her by.

When George came to dinner — a slim, slopingshouldered young man, with an unwholesome complexion — he had tickets for the theatre.

She sat out the Greek God , deaf and blind to the vulgar tinselled folly which kept her lover in a roar, postponing the evil moment in an agony of apprehension which made her despise herself.

They entered a hansom to go home, and she shrank from the lamplight and the man’s familiar arm. All her carefully-rehearsed phrases had melted away. But the inevitable moment had come.

“ I’ve something to tell you, George.”

“ Eh, old girl?”

“ My mother was hanged,” she said.

George Wilson stared at her blankly. It took him a long time to grasp a new idea. In the present instance the idea was so startling that it produced an effect natural upon his order of mind.

“ Oh, you are joking,” he said, with a feeble chuckle. “Your mother was hanged! That’s a good ’un, by Jove! ”

“ I am not joking,” said Alice, steadily.

“ I’ll tell aunt when we get to the house,” he said. “ Won’t it startle all the old ladies ! I say, what are you looking so glum for? I’m meant to laugh, ain’t I ? ”

“ It’s not a joke,” repeated Alice. “ Oh, can’t you understand what it is costing me to tell you? I thought you ought to know before you married me.”

The young man was silent for a moment. His face had grown bewildered and pale, and he stammered when he essayed to speak at last.

“Do you — do you mean that it’s really true? — no humbug, you know ? ”

“ Haven’t I said so three times already ? She killed my father through jealousy, and she was hanged fifteen years ago.”

“ What an awful woman ! ”

The girl shrank.

“ I suppose she was in a passion. It’s very terrible. But it isn’t my fault. / couldn’t help it.”

A sullen flush of anger overspread Wilson’s pasty complexion.

“ I’ve been badly treated,” he said. “ It’s been kept from me. I ought to have been told before.”

“ Now you are angry,” she said, in a tone of despair. “ It was because I feared you would be, that I found it so difficult to confess. What is the use of resenting it on me? I am not responsible for what my mother did, and no worse for it surely ! ”

“ The daughter of a murderess,” he muttered. “ Whatever would people say ! ”

“ Why need anybody know ? ” she asked. “ It can be a secret between ourselves.”

“ People always worm things out,” he said. “ Women watch like cats to pick holes in each other. I shouldn’t have a moment’s peace; besides — no, it’s impossible! You’ve deceived me. You’ve played a beastly low down trick on me, Alice, and I don’t feel called upon to overlook it.”

The girl sat bolt upright and silent in the hansom, gazing straight before her; she felt hard rather 23 than tremulous and pathetic. She had meant to support everything he chose to say meekly; but her mood after all was not meek. He was selfish, narrow, cowardly, and she despised him. He had not a word of pity for her, only of reproach, and she would have choked if she had attempted to beguile him.

“ I was led to believe,” continued George, with feebly vindictive passion, “ that you belonged to decent people, and all that, or of course I shouldn't have wanted anything to do with you. A man in my position looks to marry suitably — well; his people and friends expect it of him. You know that I asked most particularly, when we were first acquainted, who your parents were.”

“ They were better born than yours, George.”

A man of his stamp cannot quarrel in cold blood; he was working himself into a rage on purpose.

“ Mine were respectable at any rate, and if you are going to throw my father’s china shop in my face,” he said, with unconscious humour and deep offence, “ the sooner we wish each other good-bye the better ! I can understand a girl in your position wanting to better herself, but I say again that I have been grossly taken in, and I’m quite justified in ’aving no more to do with you.”

“ Very well,” she said. “It is as you like, of course.”

“ If I had been told at the very beginning,” he said, “ it would have saved me a good deal of unhappiness. I was very fond of you, Alice.”

“Were you?” said the girl.

She laughed faintly, and he glared.

“ Yes,” he repeated, “ I was very fond of you, and looking forward to be settled comfortably in a decent and respectable ’ome. You’ve deceived me, and aunt, and all the people in the house. I wonder you weren’t ashamed to do it, seeming so open too. It was very artful. You are evidently not the girl I fancied you.”

“If I had told you when you proposed, would you have married me?” she asked.

“ Er — I don’t know,” he stammered. “ I might have done so. . . . It isn’t exactly a pleasant thing to think that one’s wife’s mother committed a murder! There may be a wax image of her in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s ” — he called it Twoswords — “ for all I know ! A nice thing for a fellow in my position to think of! In justice to myself, I couldn’t, Alice. We’ve had a good time together, and I thought you were a deuced nice girl, but I really can’t. One must draw the line somewhere.”

She had been pulling off her glove while he spoke.

“ Here is your ring back,” she said.

“Oh!” He was going to say “Never mind, 25 keep it,” in a burst of generous emotion, but checked himself. It had cost him fifteen pounds, and she had really treated him very badly. He took it sourly and put it in his waistcoat pocket. “ Thanks.”

An awkward pause followed.

“And I let you kiss me,” she murmured.

He did not understand her at all. Of course he had kissed her; they had been engaged. He wished the drive was over. He could not leave her in the middle of it very well, and she made him uncomfortable, sitting beside him like a sphinx with her tight lips and stony eyes.

“ You need not return the presents I’ve given you,” he jerked out, at last.

“ You are very generous.”

“ I don’t know whether you are trying to be sarcastic,” he replied. “If you are it’s most unbecoming and unnecessary under the circumstances. I hope,” he added, “ that you won’t take too much to heart anything I have said. It is natural, I think, that I should feel bitter.”

“Need we talk about it any more?” she said, impatiently. “ You don’t consider me good enough to be your wife, and I am rather glad now the climax has come. We were not suited to each other. I doubt if we should have been happy in any case.”

“ You didn't seem to have any qualms formerly. I am afraid it is a case of sour grapes, my dear ! ”

She withered him with a glance, and the cab stopped.

“ Thank goodness ! ” she exclaimed. “ Are you coming in ? ”

“ Good-bye, then,” she said, relieved.

“ Good-bye,” he said, sulkily.

They shook hands, and the girl got out, leaving him in his seat.

The cab drove off as she admitted herself with her latch-key. There was a light still burning in the dining-room, and Mrs. Wilson came out. She was in a crude mauve silk blouse, which she wore for dinner, with plenty of fluttering ribbons about it, and gold buttons, some of which were missing.

“ Where's George ? ”

“ He wouldn't come in.”

“ I thought he would have 'ad a bit of supper,” said Mrs. Wilson. “ There's some cold steak-pie, and baked custard, if you'd like it.”

“ I am not hungry, thanks,” said Alice. “ I am tired. I shall go straight to bed.”

“ Did you enjoy yourself? ”

“ Not particularly. Good-night.”

Mrs. Wilson's good-liumoure!d laugh followed the girl up-stairs.

n

“ I believe you and George have been having a tiff,” she said. “ What silly creatures lovers are ! ”

Alice went to her room, and began to undress. There was a pathetic suggestion of poverty in the flickering candle-light. She was a well-formed girl, but much too thin. All her life she had fretted and fevered her soul almost out of its envelope of flesh. She hugged herself in her arms, and looked at the saucers in her shoulder-blades, and at her hollow eyes.