Nell, of Shorne Mills Part 14

"For me?" she exclaimed.

They were opposite Sandy's stables, and d.i.c.k dropped off his horse and brought out the other.

"Look at her, Nell!" he exclaimed, with bated breath. "Perfect, isn't she?"

Nell looked at her with a flush that came and went

"Oh, but I--I--could not!" she breathed.

Mr. Drake Vernon laughed.

"Why not?" he said argumentatively. "Fair play's a jewel. You can't expect to have all the innings your side, Miss Nell. You've treated me--well, like a prince; and you won't refuse to ride a horse of mine that's simply spoiling for want of exercise!"

Nell looked from him to the horse, and from the horse to him.

"I--I--am so surprised," she faltered. "I--I will ask mamma."

"That's all right," said Vernon, who had learned to know "mamma" by this time.

Nell left d.i.c.k and Vernon standing round the horses in man fashion. d.i.c.k was all aglow with satisfaction and admiration.

"Never saw a better pair than these, Mr. Vernon," he said. "I should think this one could jump."

She had just won a military steeplechase, and Vernon nodded a.s.sent.

"You must persuade your sister to ride her," he said.

As he spoke, he seated himself on the edge of the steep roadway which led to the jetty.

"Take the horses in," he said. "I'll come up in a few minutes."

But the minutes ran into hours. He looked out to sea with a meditative and retrospective mind. He was going over the past which seemed so far away, so vague, since he had gone sailing in the _Annie Laurie_ this morning.

Then suddenly the past became the present. There was a stir on the jetty below him. Voices--the voice of fashionable people, the voices of "society"--rose in an indistinguishable sound to his ears. He moved uneasily, and refilled and lit the pipe that he had borrowed of d.i.c.k. He heard the footsteps of several persons climbing the steep stairs. One seemed familiar to him. He pulled at his pipe, and crossed his legs with an air of preparation, of resignation.

The voices came nearer, and presently one said:

"I certainly, for one, decline to go any farther. I think it is too absurd to expect one to climb these ridiculous steps. And there is nothing to see up there, is there?"

At the sound of the voice, clear and bell-like, yet languid, with the languor of the fashionable woman, Mr. Drake Vernon bit his lips and colored. He half rose, but sank down again, as if uncertain whether to meet her, or to remain where he was; eventually he crossed his legs again, rammed down his pipe, and waited.

"Oh, but you'll come up to the top, Lady Lucille!" remonstrated a man's voice, the half-nasal drawl of the man about town--the ordinary club lounger. "There's a view, don't you know--there really is!"

"I don't care for views. Not another step, Archie. I'll wait here till you come back. You can describe the view--or, rather, you can't, thank Heaven!"

As she spoke, she mounted a few steps, and turned into the small square which offered a resting place on the steep ascent, and so came full upon Mr. Vernon.

He rose and raised his hat, and she looked at him, at first with the vagueness of sheer amazement, then with a start of recognition, and with her fair face all crimson for one instant, and, the next, pale, she said, in a suppressed voice, as if she were afraid of being overheard:

"Drake!"

He looked at her with a curious smile, as if something in the tone of her voice, in her sudden pallor following upon her; blush, were significant, and had told himself something.

"Well, Luce," he said; "and what brings you here?"

CHAPTER VI.

The girl who, with changing color, stood gazing at Lord Drake Selbie might have stepped out of one of Marcus Stone's pictures. She was as fair as a piece of biscuit china. Her hair was golden, and, strange to say in these latter days, naturally so. It was, indeed, like the fleece of gold itself under her fashionable yachting hat. Her eyes, widely opened, with that curious look of surprise and fear, were hazel--a deep hazel, which men, until they knew her, accepted as an indication of Lady Lucille's depth of feeling. She was slightly built, but graceful, with the grace of the fashionable modiste.

She was the product of the marriage of Art and Fashion of this fin-de-siecle age. Other ages have given us wit, beauty allied with esprit, dignity of demeanor, and a n.o.bility of principle; this end of the nineteenth century has bestowed upon us--Lady Lucille Turfleigh.

It is in its way a marvelous product. It is very beautiful, with the delicate beauty of excessive culture and effete luxury. It has the subtle charm of the exotic, of the tall and graceful arum, whose spotless whiteness cannot bear a single breath of the keen east wind.

It is charming, bewitching; it looks all purity and spirituality; it seems to breathe poetry and a Higher Culture. It goes through life like a rose leaf floating upon a placid stream. It is precious to look at, pleasant to live with, and it has only one defect--it has no heart.

We have cast off the old creeds like so many shackles; we are so finely educated, so cultivated, that we have learned to do more than laugh at sentiment; we regard it with a contemptuous pity.

There is only one thing which we value, and that is Pleasure. Some persons labor under the mistaken notion that Money is the universal quest; but it is not so. The Golden G.o.d is set up in every market place, it stands at every street corner; but it is not for himself that the crowd worship at the feet of the brazen image, but because he can buy so much.

It is Money which nowadays holds the magician's rod. With a wave he can give us rank, luxury, power, place, influence, and beauty. This is the creed, the religion, which we teach our children, which is continually in our hearts if not on our lips; and it is the creed, the religion, in which Lady Lucille was reared.

Her history is a public one. It is the story of how many fashionable women? Her father, Lord Turfleigh, was an Irish peer. He had inherited a historic t.i.tle, and thousands of acres which he had scarcely seen, but which he had helped to inc.u.mber. All the Turfleighs from time immemorial had been fast and reckless, but this Turfleigh had outpaced them all, and had easily romped in first in the race of dissipation. As a young man his name had been synonymous with every kind of picturesque profligacy. Every pound he could screw out of the land, or obtain at ruinous interest from the Jews, had been spent in what he and his kind call pleasure.

He had married for money, had got it, and had spent it, even before his patient and long-suffering wife had expiated the mistake of her life in the only possible way. She had left Lady Lucille behind, and the girl had matriculated and taken honors in her father's school.

To Lady Lucille there was only one thing in life worth having--money; and to obtain this prize she had been carefully nurtured and laboriously taught. Long before she left the nursery she had grown to understand that her one object and sole ambition must be a wealthy and suitable marriage; and to this end every advantage of mind and body had been trained and cultivated as one trains a young thoroughbred for a great race.

She had been taught to laugh at sentiment, to regard admiration as valueless unless it came from a millionaire; to sneer at love unless it paced, richly clad and warmly shod, from a palace. She had graduated in the School of Fashion, and had pa.s.sed with high honors. There was no more beautiful woman in all England than Lady Lucille; few possessed greater charm; men sang her praises; artists fought for the honor of hanging her picture in the Academy; the society papers humbly reported her doings, her sayings, and her conquests; royalties smiled approvingly on this queen of fashion, and not a single soul, Lady Lucille herself least of all, realized that this perfection was but the hollow husk and sh.e.l.l of beauty without heart or soul; that behind the lovely face, within the graceful form, lurked as selfish and ign.o.ble a nature as that which stirs the blood of any drab upon the Streets.

"Drake!" she said. "Why! I'd no idea! What are you doing here?"

He motioned her to a seat with a wave of his pipe, and she sank down on the stone slab, after a careful glance at it, and eyed him curiously but with still a trace of her first embarra.s.sment.

She looked a perfect picture, as she sat there, with the steep, descending wall, the red Devon cliffs, the blue, glittering sea for her background; a picture which might have been presented with a summer number of one of the ill.u.s.trated weeklies; and all as unreal and as unlike life as they are. It is true that she wore a yachting costume exquisitely made and perfectly fitting; and Drake, as he looked at it, acknowledged its claims upon his admiration, but he knew it was all a sham, and, half unconsciously, he compared it with the old worn skirt and the serviceable jersey worn by Nell, who had gone up the hill--how long ago was it? Nell's face and hands were brown with the kiss of G.o.d's sun; Lady Lucille's face was like a piece of delicate Sevres, and her hands were incased in white kid gauntlets. To him, at that moment, she looked like an actress playing in a nautical burlesque at the Gaiety; and, for the first time since he had known her, he found himself looking at her critically, and, notwithstanding her faultless attire--faultless from a fashionable point of view--with disapproval.

"You are surprised to see me, Luce?" he said.

"Of course I am," she replied. "I'd no idea where you were. I've written to you--twice."

"Have you?" he said. "That was good of you. I've not had your letters; but that's my fault, not yours. I told Sparling not to send any letters on."

She looked down, as if rather embarra.s.sed, and dug at the interstices of the rough stone pavement with her dainty, and altogether unnautical, sunshade.

"But what are you doing here?" she asked. "And--and what's the matter with your arm? Isn't that a sling?"