Contraband Part 34

But _one_ was out of town, another couldn't get away early enough in the afternoon; _this_ person wouldn't come without the certainty of meeting _that_. Of two charming sisters both must be asked or neither. In short, the fourth seat in the carriage was wanted for half-a-dozen people, and the prospective little dinner out of town soon a.s.sumed the dimensions of a pic-nic.

Thus it fell out that Mrs. Lascelles had to write several notes after luncheon, and "dear Helen" sat down to help her, while Goldthred, lounging about and failing sadly in his efforts to make the bullfinch pipe, volunteered to post these missives on his way to the club when they were finished.

Pocketing them all in a lump, and expressing his intention of returning at tea-time, Mr. Goldthred took his departure to walk down the street, with the jaunty step and lightsome air of a happy lover.

At the nearest pillar-post, he stopped to fulfil his promise, and being (though in love) a man of business, looked carefully at their addresses before dropping the letters one by one into the slide.

The very top-most was Helen's production, and he started violently, the moment its superscription caught his eye. Hastily examining two more in the same handwriting, he replaced the whole in his pocket, hailed a Hansom and drove straight home, where he ran to his writing-table, unlocked a drawer and pulled out a certain little note that he had received one night at his club awhile ago, that had puzzled him exceedingly at the time, and that was, perhaps, the only secret he kept from Mrs. Lascelles, because he had found himself unable to explain it till to-day.

Yes, there could be no doubt, it was the same handwriting, he felt convinced, fully as ever was Malvolio. The unknown correspondent who wrote--"If you are really in earnest, come to-morrow; there is somebody to be consulted besides me," was Miss Hallaton! "There's something very queer about this," pondered Goldthred. "The girl's met with some foul play somewhere or another. It's all right now. I'll have it out with her to-night before I sleep--then I can tell my beautiful queen, and she will decide what ought to be done."

And Mr. Goldthred in his pre-occupation, forgetting to post the letters he had examined so carefully, brought them all back to No. 40 in his pocket, so that the expedition to Oatlands fell through after all.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

"REMORSEFUL."

Mrs. Lascelles was a lady who could ill-keep a secret. Such disclosures as those made in the boudoir after tea, when Helen had gone up-stairs to rest, roused alike her indignation and her sympathy; she would have cried for justice from the house-tops, rather than suffer the fraud to pa.s.s unexposed. Even Goldthred did not escape rebuke for the very negative part he had taken in the transaction.

"Why didn't you bring it here that instant?" she asked, in her pretty, imperious way, while she filled her admirer's tea-cup, and offered him the easiest chair in the room. "You shouldn't have kept such a thing from _me_ for half-a-second. It's not like you to be so wicked, and I'm determined to scold you well!"

"But it was one o'clock in the morning," urged Goldthred, with a comical look of deprecation. "And you must remember I thought you didn't care a bit for me then. Of course it would be different _now_."

"That's nonsense," she exclaimed. "You know I always liked you; and as for your cool suggestion of coming here at one in the morning _now_, I beg you won't attempt anything of the kind. But you _ought_ to have told me indeed, because, after all, the note might have been from somebody who had fallen in love with you!"

"I didn't suppose such a thing possible," he answered simply, "and I'm sure I didn't wish it. I used to think happiness was never intended for me. The one I liked seemed so much too good. I'm often afraid I shall wake and find it all a dream."

"Not half good enough," she murmured, making a great clatter among the cups and saucers. "I wish I was ten times better, and I mean to be. But never mind about that. Don't you see exactly what has happened?"

"No, I don't," he answered, wondering fondly whether in Europe could be found such a pair of hands and arms as were hovering about the tea-tray under his nose. "I dare say I'm very stupid, but hang me if I can see daylight anywhere!"

"Not if you look for it in my bracelet," she said, laughing. "But it's obvious Helen has written you a note intended for somebody else.

Unless"--here she threatened him with a pretty finger he longed to kiss--"unless you have reason to believe she valued the admiration you could not disguise in all your looks and actions."

"Don't say such things!" he exclaimed, in the utmost alarm. "Mrs.

Lascelles, do you think I'm--I'm _that_ sort of fellow? Surely _you_ know me better. Surely you are only in joke!"

"You're deep, sir" she continued, still laughing at an earnestness that touched while it amused her. "Deep and sly! However, I'll believe you this time, and if you're honestly stupid I'll condescend to explain. Can you take in, that if the note wasn't written to _you_ it must have been intended for somebody else? I can guess who that somebody is. I'll ask Helen point-blank. She's as proud as Lucifer, but I think she has confidence in me."

She _did_ ask Helen point-blank, and that young lady, though as proud as Lucifer, condescended to own the truth, but accompanied her confession with a solemn declaration that everything was at an end between herself and Frank Vanguard, so that the great desire of her heart now was never to set eyes on him again. Mrs. Lascelles interpreting these sentiments in her own way, sat down forthwith, and penned the following little note, for further mystification of this bewildered young officer.

"DEAR CAPTAIN VANGUARD,--I have discovered something you ought to know. Such an _embrouillement_ was never heard of but in an improbable farce, or still more improbable novel. Come to luncheon to-morrow, and we will lay our heads together in hopes of unravelling the skein. Miss Hallaton is staying with me. You will like to meet her I am sure, only you and I must have our conference _first_.

"Yours very sincerely,

"ROSE LASCELLES."

Frank's heart leaped under his cuira.s.s while he read this mysterious epistle, on his return from a sweltering inspection in the Long Walk. He had been trying to persuade himself he did not care for Helen, and fancied he succeeded. It was humiliating to feel that the bare mention of her name could thus affect him, yet was there a keen, strange pleasure in the sensation nevertheless.

On the barrack-room table of this fortunate dragoon there lay however another little missive, bearing to that of Mrs. Lascelles the sort of likeness a pen-wiper has to a b.u.t.terfly. Its envelope was squarer and larger, its monogram gaudier and more intricate, its superscription fainter, paler, more aslant, more illegible. It exhaled a strong odour of musk, and was written on paper that glistened like satin.

"Dear Frank," it ran, "I shall be in the park to-morrow, at twelve.

Look for the pony-carriage. I _want_ you--so no nonsense. Don't fail--there's a good fellow.--Yours truly,--KATE CREMORNE. P.S. If I'm not under the clock, wait there till I come."

"What can _she_ be up to now?" thought Frank, carefully twisting this communication into a spill with which to light his cigar. "Got into a mess of some sort, no doubt, and expects me to pull her through, like the rest of them. How odd it is, I'm always blundering into entanglements with women I don't care two straws about, and the one I really _could_ love, the one who would make me a good man, I do believe, and certainly a happy one, seems to be drifting every day farther and farther out of my reach. I shall see her to-morrow, and what then? I suppose our greeting will be confined to a distant bow, and some conventional sentence more painful than a cut direct. Still, I shall see her. That will be something. How strange it seems to be so easily satisfied now, when I think of all I hoped and expected so short a time ago. Well, beggars mustn't be choosers. I suppose I may as well meet Kate Cremorne first, and do her a turn if I can. She's a good girl, Kate, after all. Not half a bad-looking one neither, and as honest as the day."

So twelve o'clock found Frank very nicely dressed, and with a wonderfully prosperous air, considering his many troubles, picking his way daintily across the deserted Ride, to where a solitary pony-carriage, with a solitary pony drawing, and a solitary lady driving it, stood like a pretty toy, drawn up by the footway under the clock.

Miss Cremorne received him with coldness, even displeasure. She entertained a high opinion of her own acuteness, and thought she had hit upon a discovery by no means to his credit. In her many visits to Miss Ross--visits never made empty-handed, and to which, in all probability, the latter owed her restoration to health--she gathered from Jin that a friendship had lately existed between herself and the Captain Vanguard of whom they both loved to talk. Now, Belgravia and Brompton look at most matters in life, and particularly those connected with the affections, from different points of view. Kate, though a hybrid belonging to both districts, partook largely of the sentiments and feelings affected by the latter. She imagined a touching little romance, of which Jin's dark, curly-headed boy was the sequel, and being herself _sans peur_, determined to show Frank she did not hold him _sans reproche_.

"Jump in," said she, with extreme abruptness, as he approached the carriage. "I've got a crow to pick with you, and I mean to have it out.

You're a nice young man, now! Don't you think you are?"

"Certainly," answered Frank, with imperturbable _bonhomie_. "I used to hope you thought so too!"

"I'll tell you what I used to think," said Kate, lashing the pony with considerable vehemence. "I used to think you were a good fellow at heart, though the nonsense had never been taken out of you; that you were only vain and affected on the surface, like lots of you guardsmen, but that there was a _man_ inside the dandy, if one could only get at him. Oh, Captain Vanguard, I'm disappointed in you! If I cared two straws for a fellow, and he did as you've done, I'd never speak to him again! There!"

The whip was again dropped on the pony, and they shaved the wheels of an omnibus to an inch.

"Don't take it so to heart, Kate!" laughed Frank. "If I _have_ deserted you, I'll come back again. You know, Miss Cremorne, that you are the only woman I ever loved, and all that. Fate has been obdurate; but rather would I be torn with wild----"

"_Will_ you be serious?" demanded the fair charioteer, knitting her brows, and looking intensely austere. "Do you know where I am driving you now?"

He was incorrigible.

"To Gretna, I trust, or the Register Office. That's what I should like with _you_. Let's have it out, Kate. Jump over a broomstick, and the thing's done!"

"I'll tell you where you're going," she said gravely: "I am taking you to see Miss Ross!"

His whole countenance changed; and with all his self-command, he could not disguise how deeply he was agitated.

"Miss Ross!" he stammered. "You have heard from her! You know where she is!"

"I have _seen_ her every day for the last fortnight," was the answer.

"Seen her battle and bear up against sorrow, sickness, privation--actual want! Ay, many a day, when you've been sitting down to a dinner of four courses and dessert, that woman and her boy--her boy, Captain Vanguard--have not had enough to eat!"

"Great heavens, Kate!" he exclaimed. "This is too shocking! Why did I not know of it before?"

"Why, indeed!" repeated Kate. "You may well ask yourself the question.

Whose duty was it but yours to be answerable for her, poor dear, to find her a home, to provide for her and the child? I don't want to have many words about it. I'm not one of that sort; but I tell you she would have starved--yes--_starved_, if I hadn't happened to run against her by good luck, just in the nick of time."

"G.o.d bless you, Kate!"

His eyes were full of tears, and she looked at him a little less hardly than before, but answered in scornful accents: