The Argosy. Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891

He came close and touched the crouching figure, and asked gently, "Are you ill? Can I do anything for you?"

The figure started violently and looked up at him, and in the starlight he recognised the face of Nancy Forest.

In a moment he was seated on the fallen tree beside her, and had placed his arm about her. "Nancy, dearest Nancy," he cried, pressing burning kisses on her cold cheek—the first he had ever given her. "Nancy, speak to me; tell me what is the meaning of your being here."

But she could not answer him then; she simply laid her cheek against his shoulder and wept bitterly. But she did tell him all presently; and he told her what he had long since wished to tell, and they walked together to the old farm, for, of course, Nancy must return to her parents for a little time—only a very little time, they decided. When they reached the farm, John Forest and his wife were standing by the round table in the house-place, where the half-sovereign lay. John was hard and relentless; his wife was sobbing aloud. And then the door opened, and Nancy and Fred stood before them.

With a wild cry, Eliza Forest clasped her daughter to her heart, imploring her forgiveness. "My temper 'welly' worried me this time, Nancy," she said; "but after this I will worry it."

So here the story properly ends, for Mr. Hurst, to the surprise of everyone, yielded a ready consent to the marriage, and even offered an allowance to the young couple and one of his small farms to live in. Miss Sabina allowed her old interest in Nancy to revive, and sent her the material for her wedding dress, which Miss Michin announced her intention of making up herself—every stitch. Nor was this all. Mrs. Dodd, the worthy post-mistress, with whom Nancy had always been a favourite, begged her acceptance of a prettily-furnished work-basket which she had made a journey to Exboro' to buy.

And the half-sovereign?

It was never spent, but was always in sight under a wine-glass, to remind the owner—so she said—"of how her temper nearly worried her."

Jeanie Gwynne Bettany.

PAUL

By the Author of "Adonais, Q.C."

It was a great surprise and disappointment to me when Janet, the only child of my brother, Duncan Wright, wrote announcing her engagement to the Honourable Stephen Vandeleur.

I had always thought she would marry Paul. Paul was the only surviving son—four others had died—of my dead brother Alexander, and had made one of Duncan's household from his boyhood. I had always loved Janet—and Paul was as the apple of my eye. When the two were mere children, and Duncan was still in comparatively humble circumstances, living in a semi-detached villa in the suburbs of Glasgow, I kept my brother's house for some years, he being then a widower.

I cannot say I altogether liked doing so. Having independent means of my own, I did not require to fill such a position, and I had never got on very well with Duncan. However, I dearly loved the children, although I had enough to do with them, too. Janet was one of the prettiest, merriest, laughing little creatures—with eyes the colour of the sea in summer-time, and a complexion like a wild-rose—the sun ever shed its light upon; but she had a most distressing way of tearing her frocks and of never looking tidy, which Duncan seemed to think entirely my fault; and as for Paul, he certainly was a most awful boy.

He was fair as Janet, though with a differently-shaped face; rather a long face, with a square, determined-looking chin; and, besides being one of the handsomest, was assuredly one of the cleverest boys I ever knew. He had a good, sound, strong Scotch intellect, and was as sharp as a needle, or any Yankee, into the bargain.

But he would have his own way, whatever it was, and was often mischievous as a fiend incarnate; and in his contradictory moods, would have gone on saying black was white all day on the chance of getting somebody to argue with him. Duncan paid no attention whatever to the lad, except, from time to time, to speculate what particular bad end he would come to.

But I loved Paul, and Paul loved me—and adored Janet.

The boy had one exceedingly beautiful feature in his face: sometimes I could not take my eyes from it; I used to wonder if it could be that which made me love him so much—his mouth. I have never seen another anything like it. The steady, strong, and yet delicate lips—so calm and serious when still, as to make one feel at rest merely to look at them; but when in motion extraordinarily sensitive, quivering, curving, and curling in sympathy with every thought.

I loved both children; but perhaps the reason that made me love Paul most was—that whilst I knew Janet's nature, out and in, to the core of her very loving little heart, Paul's often puzzled me.

There was not much in the way of landscape to be seen from that villa in the suburbs of Glasgow; but we did catch just one glimpse of sky which was not always obscured by smoke, and I have seen Paul, lost in thought, looking up at this patch of blue, with an expression on his face—at once sweet and sorrowful—so strange in one so young, that it made me instinctively move more quietly, not to disturb him, and set me wondering.

However, what with one thing and another, I was not by any means heart-broken when Duncan married again—one of the kindest women in the world; I can't think what she saw in him—and thus released me.

So the years flew on—and the wheel of fortune gave some strange turns for Duncan. By a series of wonderfully successful speculations he rapidly amassed a huge fortune.

They left Glasgow then, and built a colossal white brick mansion not far from London.

When Janet was eighteen and Paul twenty-one, I paid them a visit there. Except that Janet was now grown up, she was just the same—with her thriftless, thoughtless ways, and her laughing baby face, and her yellow head—a silly little head enough, perhaps, but a dear, dear little head to me.

She had the same admiration, almost awe, of the splendours of this world in any form; the same love of fine clothes—with the same carelessness as to how she used them. It gave me a good laugh, the first afternoon I was there, to see her come in with a new dress all soiled and torn by a holly-bush she had pushed her way through on the lawn. It made me think of the time when she had gone popping in and out to the little back garden at Glasgow, and singing and swinging about the stairs—a bonnie wee lassie with a dirty pink cotton gown, and, as often as not, dirtier face.

Paul seemed to me, in looks at least, to have more than fulfilled the promise of his boyhood. A handsomer, more self-reliant-looking young fellow I had never seen; and I was not long in the house before I observed—with secret tears of amusement—that it was not only in looks he remained unchanged. The same dictatorialness and sharp tongue; the same thinly-veiled insolence to Duncan; the same swift smiles from his entrancing lips—thank Heaven undisfigured by any moustache—to myself; the same unalterable gentleness to Janet. His invariable courtesy to Duncan's wife made me very happy. It was as I said: there was much good in the boy.

Paul had a little money of his own to begin with, and I did think Duncan, with his fortune, might have sent an exceptionally clever lad like that to one of the Universities, and made something of him afterwards—a lawyer, say; but instead of that, Paul was put into business in London, and, I was glad to hear, was doing very well.

As for Duncan's hideous white brick castle, with its paltry half-dozen acres, entered by lodges of the utmost pretension, and his coach-houses full of flashy carriages, with the family coat-of-arms(!) upon each, I thought the whole place one of the most contemptible patches of snobbery on this fair earth; and I was glad my father's toil-bleared eyes were hid in the grave, so that they should not have the shame of resting upon it.

In spite of what I thought, however, I did my best to keep a solemn face at Paul's smart speeches, which were often amusing, and often simply impudence.

Duncan, as of yore, went as though he saw him not.

I had not been at Duncan's palace long before I came to the conclusion that there was some private understanding betwixt the two young people; and, at last, just before I left, my suspicions were confirmed.

Hastily pushing open the library door, which stood ajar, I saw Paul with his back to me, at the end of the room, looking into the conservatory. He had evidently just entered from the garden. "Janet," he called, in a voice the import of which there could be no mistaking; and with a rush, I heard several pots crash; Janet, who had no doubt happened to have her head turned the other way, sprang into view, and threw herself into his arms.

I quietly withdrew, and went away very, very happy. I knew Paul had a promise of a first-rate appointment abroad, by-and-by; and supposing I should hear more of this before long, I went placidly away home to the far north. Instead of that, in six months or so, Janet wrote announcing her engagement to the Honourable Stephen Vandeleur.

Of course I went south for Janet's wedding.

If I had thought she was being forced into this marriage (Duncan was snob enough) I should not have gone a step, but should have done my best to prevent it; but I could not think that from the tone of the letter; and Paul wrote as well all about it. I could but think I had been mistaken; that there had been no serious engagement between them, but only a flirtation, as they might call it, or something of that sort: a very reprehensible flirtation, with my Puritanical notions, it seemed to me. I need not say I was greatly disappointed.

So in due course south I went.

Paul met me—handsomer and more dictatorial than ever; his blue eyes clear and piercing as before. He seemed quite pleased; said Stephen Vandeleur was a good fellow; was most impertinently sarcastic about Duncan's aristocratic guests; and altogether appeared in good spirits. Janet I did not think looking well. She seemed very nervous, and made the remark that she wished it were six months ago; but of course it was natural a girl should be a little hysterical on the eve of her wedding-day.

The morrow came, and the wedding with it. I thought it a very unpleasant one. Whatever might be Stephen Vandeleur's own feelings, he seemed, as Paul said, a very good fellow. It was evident his friends only countenanced it on consideration of the huge dowry Janet brought with her. Some of them were gentlepeople, as I understand the word, and some were not; but Duncan, who appeared really to think the mere accident of superior birth in itself a guarantee of personal merit, as Paul very truly put it, grovelled all round, until I was sick with shame. Paul, however, was at his best and wittiest and brightest, and kept everybody in tolerably good humour.

When the carriage came to take the bride and bridegroom away, I remembered some trifle of Janet's that had been left in the conservatory; and, as I was in the hall at the time, ran hastily outside and round by the gravel to the door opening from the lawn, which was my shortest way to the conservatory from there.

Suddenly I stood quite still. Paul was looking out of the library window, and Janet, ready for departure, came falteringly in and stood behind him. He did not look towards her. "Paul!" she whispered entreatingly; and although so low there was the utmost anguish in the tone: "Paul." As though not knowing what she did, she raised her arm, standing behind him there, as if to shake hands. Abruptly he wheeled round, with a face down which the great tears coursed, but awful in its pallor and sternness; and, taking no notice of her outstretched hand, pointed to the door. Weeping bitterly, she swiftly turned and went.

I cannot describe the shock this terrible scene gave me. It did not take half-a-dozen short moments to enact, but it represented, unmistakably, the blasting of two lives—the lives of those dearest in all the world to me.

I do not know, I never knew, whether Paul saw me. I think I must have become momentarily unconscious, and when I came to myself he was gone.

I sat where I was, weeping bitter tears—bitter as Janet's—and thought of the little lassie in the dirty pink frock that had sung and swung about the stairs, and of the boy who had stood day-dreaming, looking up into the blue sky. Sometimes I was wildly angry. Whose fault was it? Who was answerable for this? If it was the young people's own fault, someone ought to have looked after them better, ought to have prevented it. No one, not even I, could help them now, that was the bitterest, bitterest part of it; no one and nothing—save time, or death.

I wished that day I had never left my children.

II

I must pass over a long period now—I suppose I should have said I was writing of a great many years ago, and come to the time, twenty years later, when Paul came home from abroad. He had not been home all these years, and neither had I been once in the south.

Janet, my poor Janet, was long since dead. She had died before she was quite two years married. It was an additional pang to my grief that I had never said good-bye to her at all; but no good-bye was better than that awful one I had witnessed of Paul.

What was the precise explanation of it I never knew. It was easy to divine that Janet had indeed been engaged to marry Paul, and had given him up; but whether this was the result of some quarrel, or whether she had deliberately done it, dazzled by the prospect of a union with an earl's son, I cannot say. Anyhow, I am sure she quickly regretted her determination. I am certain she loved only Paul. But the word had been spoken, and whatever Vandeleur may have been, Paul was not a man to give any woman a chance of trifling with him twice. So my poor Janet had to reap what her folly had sown, as best she might.

Janet left one little child, a daughter, called Janet, after her; and this child, becoming an orphan at an early age by the death, next, of Stephen Vandeleur, was brought up with his family in Ireland.

She was in Scotland once when she was about fourteen, and I saw her, and was not favourably impressed. She was quiet and prim and proper, as cold as an icicle: a very pretty little girl, I owned that; but then I had thought to find something of my Janet, and was disappointed. Her eyes were indeed blue, but looked one in the face calmly as though they had belonged to a woman of forty; and her hair and long eye-lashes were as dark as night. She had just this of my Janet, her pink and snow wild-rose complexion. She seemed to me, in all else, a Vandeleur to her finger-tips.

She occasionally paid Duncan long visits; and as she grew up, I heard that Duncan tried to make these visits as frequent and as lengthy as possible. She was immensely admired, it seemed, and Duncan liked her to stay with him because of the people she attracted to his house. I was sure this was true. It was so like one of Duncan's horrid ways. He still lived in that white brick edifice, and was richer then ever. A good deal of gossip drifted to me, in the far north as I was. I was told that Janet had a Manchester millionaire, an American railway king, and a real live lord, all madly in love with her—and she not yet quite nineteen!

Just then Paul returned home, and Duncan wrote inviting me to come down and see them. Paul was to stay with them—and Duncan was quite proud about it. His predictions had turned out all wrong; for Paul had come home a personage of importance, and a very rich man indeed. I was almost sorry that Janet's child happened to be at Duncan's just then, thinking her presence would revive old memories better forgotten. And then, if Paul were at all like what he used to be, I was sure her calmly superior, supercilious little ways would irritate him intensely. I had never seen her at Duncan's, but I could fancy how she would look there.

When I saw Paul, just for the first minute or so I felt quite startled. He seemed so marvellously little changed. He was forty-one, and would have looked young for thirty. Of course by-and-by I saw there were lines in his face which had not before been there. I could not say, not talking of appearance but of character, that I thought him improved. He no longer spoke scornfully to or of Duncan, but was always coldly courteous; yet often I would see a sneer on his curving lips that was more biting and bitter than any words, and made them look evil. He was not dictatorial all round to everybody as he used to be, but I thought him harsh in particular instances. His smiles to myself were more rare; his eyes colder: he seemed to me cynical of all on earth; I feared, too, with keen sorrow, of all in Heaven.

Others spoke of the changes the wear and tear of life abroad had made on Paul, but I had seen his face as it looked—for the last time on earth—upon Janet that day, and had my own sad thoughts.

But although I speak of these changes, I do not mean to say that Paul was not as gentle and loving to me as he had ever been, and that I was not exquisitely happy to be with him again. Many a pleasant walk had we about Duncan's garden, I leaning on Paul's strong arm, a support which I felt the need of now. Twenty years had not come and gone without leaving plenty of traces on me. We neither of us ever mentioned Janet, my Janet, that is to say. Janet's daughter (Janet II., as I used to mentally designate her for convenience' sake) was here as I expected, and for a while, just as before, I did not take to her. I left her alone and she left me alone; that was her way.

She was lovely, certainly; ethereally lovely; almost too lovely for one's senses to grasp the fact that she was but common flesh and blood like all the rest of the world: a poem in human form if there ever was one. Gossip had spoken truly for once; there were the three distinguished lovers, and goodness knows how many more besides.

Paul and I never spoke of this girl, any more than we did of my Janet; but, at first, I often fancied I saw his gaze fastened on her; the same unpleasant sneer on his lips which disfigured them when he looked at Duncan. By and by I grew rather to like her. I believe I, at heart, resented Paul looking like that at my Janet's bairn. I began to fancy that, for all her apparent calmness, she was shy. If we met in the garden she would give me a swift glance to see if I were going to stop and speak to her, and, I thought, seemed pleased when I did. At last there came an odd little episode.

Paul was very fond of animals—that was always one of his good traits—and he one day found a little stray white kitten somewhere about the place, and brought it into the room where I sat alone at work. He began grimly to play with it. Just then Janet opened the door. She gave a delighted exclamation, and, coming eagerly forward, smilingly held out her arms for the kitten. She was dressed for the evening, and the little thing began clawing about her lovely gown, and in one instant had pulled to shreds a very expensive bit of trimming.

I started up in distress; but Janet, putting the kitten gently back on the table, burst into laughter. I am very sure I had never heard Janet laugh before, and I don't think Paul ever had. A prettier, happier, more silvery little peal could not be imagined; but it was not so much that which struck home to my heart as the fact that if I had shut my eyes I could have thought my Janet stood in the room. The girl had her mother's laugh.

I returned hastily to my work, and did not dare to lift my head until Janet was gone—then I looked stealthily at Paul.

The sun was just setting—the sky a rolling roseate glory from end to end. Paul—my Paul—my Paul, with the old beautiful light in his face, stood, with arms crossed, looking up into it. All at once something came into my throat which almost stifled me, so that I could not have sat where I was for any consideration whatever. I slipped quietly away and left him.

From this day I loved the girl. Whether it was her carelessness about the dress—so like her mother—or the laugh—or what—I loved her now almost as much as I had loved her mother.

It seemed to me that from this day, too, Paul became more like his old self: a very much toned-down and softened old self; no longer so much the hard, cynical Paul of later years as the boyish Paul of old. Of course, no sooner had my feelings changed in this way than I became greatly interested in Janet's lovers. I thought the cotton millionaire vulgar; and the American railway king I could not make this or that of; but the lord seemed a very nice, simple-mannered young man; so that I hoped—for although I am a bit of a Radical, I lay claim to having some common-sense too—if it were to be one of these three, it would be he.

But the calm indifference with which this slip of a girl treated three such lovers was truly appalling. I can't think how they stood it: I shouldn't.

I cannot remember exactly when it was that I made a discovery. Opposite to the library, of which I have already spoken, now a venerable old room, was my bed-room; and there was no other room until you had gone along a passage and crossed a hall. It was my custom to go to bed very early, and I did so here at Duncan's, long before the rest of the household. I suppose they thought I went fair off to sleep, too; for this part of the house was always deserted after I had gone into my room.

It was thus I made the discovery that every night, before retiring herself, Janet came to the library and stayed a few minutes; and I could hear her sometimes moving about books on the table.

For a considerable time I felt hopelessly puzzled. All at once it struck me—girls are the same all over the world and in all ages—that she must come there to look at the photograph of someone she cared for; to say good-night to it; perhaps to murmur a prayer over it. Girls are made so. Doubtless she would take it away with her altogether to some place more convenient for such oblations but that Duncan was much in the library, and had lynx-eyes.

I grew troubled, these nocturnal visits continuing, and wished that I could help her. I thought if I could only find out whose the photograph was, perhaps I might.

One night I could bear it no longer. I am aware that I must seem a most prying old woman; but somehow or other this library was fated to be mixed up with my life. I rose and just peeped round the library door to see what she was doing. She was standing in the clear moonlight—not, as I had expected, with an open photograph album, but holding a little miniature, taken from its place on the table. I went back to bed, my heart bounding. I knew now! I did not sleep much that night.

Perhaps I acted rashly—but I thought I should apply to Paul for help. I was sure, from various signs, that he did not hate my Janet's bairn now. I told him of these stolen visits to the library, and tried to persuade him to conceal himself and watch there—for the purpose of finding out whose the portrait was. I did not tell him, deceitful woman that I was, that I myself already knew. Old people like him and me, I said, should help the child out of her trouble. I must have startled him terribly: he grew, at first, so white. Then he looked at me long and intently; and by-and-by began to cross-examine me. We were canny Scots, both of us, and fenced.

"You say it was a photograph you saw her with?"

"I did not say I saw her."

"You have heard her open an album?"

"I have heard her move books."

I have seen the time when I could have broken a lance with the best; but I was growing old, and he finished by getting me into rather a hobble—when he abruptly left me, a great flush sweeping over his face. He came back by-and-by, and took me out into the garden. If he never had been the real old Paul before—he was so now. He cut the pansies from my best cap, and decorated Duncan's coat-of-arms—which had broken out about the walls now-a-days—with them. But he might have cut the cap in two for all I cared just then.

That night—I hoped he had not forgotten—I hoped he would come. Presently I heard a quiet step which I knew to be his. Then I sat down and listened again. Swish, swish—here she was at last. I had listened too often to the soft rustle of her trailing gown to make any mistake now. In my excitement—you see I was an old habitué at prying and peering about the library by this time—I put one eye round the door, at her very back. She had gone a few steps into the room—and now stood, rooted to the spot, startled. There, with his face—and all that he would have it say—fair and bright in the moonlight, stood Paul. He opened his arms.