The Dark Flower Part 24

"By the way, I never knew that YOU had been."

From Dromore's face the chaffing look went, like a candle-flame blown out; and a coppery flush spread over it. For some seconds he did not speak, then, jerking his head towards the picture, he muttered gruffly:

"Never had the chance of marrying, there; Nell's 'outside.'"

A sort of anger leaped in Lennan; why should Dromore speak that word as if he were ashamed of his own daughter? Just like his sort--none so hidebound as men-about-town! Flotsam on the tide of other men's opinions; poor devils adrift, without the one true anchorage of their own real feelings! And doubtful whether Dromore would be pleased, or think him gushing, or even distrustful of his morality, he said:

"As for that, it would only make any decent man or woman nicer to her.

When is she going to let me teach her drawing?"

Dromore crossed the room, drew back the curtain of the picture, and in a m.u.f.fled voice, said:

"My G.o.d, Lenny! Life's unfair. Nell's coming killed her mother. I'd rather it had been me--bar chaff! Women have no luck."

Lennan got up from his comfortable chair. For, startled out of the past, the memory of that summer night, when yet another woman had no luck, was flooding his heart with its black, inextinguishable grief. He said quietly:

"The past IS past, old man."

Dromore drew the curtain again across the picture, and came back to the fire. And for a full minute he stared into it.

"What am I to do with Nell? She's growing up."

"What have you done with her so far?"

"She's been at school. In the summer she goes to Ireland--I've got a bit of an old place there. She'll be eighteen in July. I shall have to introduce her to women, and all that. It's the devil! How? Who?"

Lennan could only murmur: "My wife, for one."

He took his leave soon after. Johnny Dromore! Bizarre guardian for that child! Queer life she must have of it, in that bachelor's den, surrounded by Ruff's Guides! What would become of her? Caught up by some young spark about town; married to him, no doubt--her father would see to the thoroughness of that, his standard of respectability was evidently high! And after--go the way, maybe, of her mother--that poor thing in the picture with the alluring, desperate face. Well! It was no business of his!

IV

No business of his! The merest sense of comradeship, then, took him once more to Dromore's after that disclosure, to prove that the word 'outside' had no significance save in his friend's own fancy; to a.s.sure him again that Sylvia would be very glad to welcome the child at any time she liked to come.

When he had told her of that little matter of Nell's birth, she had been silent a long minute, looking in his face, and then had said: "Poor child! I wonder if SHE knows! People are so unkind, even nowadays!"

He could not himself think of anyone who would pay attention to such a thing, except to be kinder to the girl; but in such matters Sylvia was the better judge, in closer touch with general thought. She met people that he did not--and of a more normal species.

It was rather late when he got to Dromore's diggings on that third visit.

"Mr. Dromore, sir," the man said--he had one of those strictly confidential faces bestowed by an all-wise Providence on servants in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly--"Mr. Dromore, sir, is not in. But he will be almost sure to be in to dress. Miss Nell is in, sir."

And there she was, sitting at the table, pasting photographs into an alb.u.m--lonely young creature in that abode of male middle-age!

Lennan stood, unheard, gazing at the back of her head, with its thick crinkly-brown hair tied back on her dark-red frock. And, to the confidential man's soft:

"Mr. Lennan, miss," he added a softer: "May I come in?"

She put her hand into his with intense composure.

"Oh, yes, do! if you don't mind the mess I'm making;" and, with a little squeeze of the tips of his fingers, added: "Would it bore you to see my photographs?"

And down they sat together before the photographs--snapshots of people with guns or fishing-rods, little groups of schoolgirls, kittens, Dromore and herself on horseback, and several of a young man with a broad, daring, rather good-looking face. "That's Oliver--Oliver Dromore--Dad's first cousin once removed. Rather nice, isn't he? Do you like his expression?"

Lennan did not know. Not her second cousin; her father's first cousin once removed! And again there leaped in him that unreasoning flame of indignant pity.

"And how about drawing? You haven't come to be taught yet."

She went almost as red as her frock.

"I thought you were only being polite. I oughtn't to have asked. Of course, I want to awfully--only I know it'll bore you."

"It won't at all."

She looked up at that. What peculiar languorous eyes they were!

"Shall I come to-morrow, then?"

"Any day you like, between half-past twelve and one."

"Where?"

He took out a card.

"Mark Lennan--yes--I like your name. I liked it the other day. It's awfully nice!"

What was in a name that she should like him because of it? His fame as a sculptor--such as it was--could have nothing to do with that, for she would certainly not know of it. Ah! but there was a lot in a name--for children. In his childhood what fascination there had been in the words macaroon, and Spaniard, and Carinola, and Aldebaran, and Mr. McCrae. For quite a week the whole world had been Mr. McCrae--a most ordinary friend of Gordy's.

By whatever fascination moved, she talked freely enough now--of her school; of riding and motoring--she seemed to love going very fast; about Newmarket--which was 'perfect'; and theatres--plays of the type that Johnny Dromore might be expected to approve; these together with 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' were all she had seen. Never was a girl so untouched by thought, or Art--yet not stupid, having, seemingly, a certain natural good taste; only, nothing, evidently, had come her way.

How could it--'Johnny Dromore duce, et auspice Johnny Dromore!' She had been taken, indeed, to the National Gallery while at school. And Lennan had a vision of eight or ten young maidens trailing round at the skirts of one old maiden, admiring Landseer's dogs, giggling faintly at Botticelli's angels, gaping, rustling, chattering like young birds in a shrubbery.

But with all her surroundings, this child of Johnny Dromoredom was as yet more innocent than cultured girls of the same age. If those grey, mesmeric eyes of hers followed him about, they did so frankly, unconsciously. There was no minx in her, so far.

An hour went by, and Dromore did not come. And the loneliness of this young creature in her incongruous abode began telling on Lennan's equanimity.

What did she do in the evenings?

"Sometimes I go to the theatre with Dad, generally I stay at home."

"And then?"

"Oh! I just read, or talk French."

"What? To yourself?"

"Yes, or to Oliver sometimes, when he comes in."

So Oliver came in!