Vera Nevill Part 33

"No, and I only wish I could get hold of the man who put it there!" cried Miss Nevill, viciously; and it is certain that unfortunate literary person would not have relished the interview.

A "beauty" with such strange and unnatural views was, it must be confessed, as much of a trial as a triumph to an anxious chaperon.

There was a certain amount of fashionable routine, the daily treadmill of pleasure, to which, however, Vera submitted readily enough, and even extracted a good deal of enjoyment out of it. There was the morning saunter into the Row, the afternoons spent at garden parties or "at-homes," the evenings filled up with dinner parties, to be followed almost invariably by b.a.l.l.s lasting late into the night. All these things repeat themselves year after year: they are utter weariness to some of us, but to her they were still new, and Vera entered into the daily whirl of the London season with an amount of zest which was almost a surprise to herself.

Just at first there had been a daily terror upon her, that of meeting Sir John Kynaston or his brother; but London is a large place, and you may go out to different houses for many nights running without ever coming across the friend or the foe whom you desire or dread most to encounter.

After a little while, she forgot to glance hurriedly and fearfully around her every time she entered a ball-room, or to look up shudderingly each time the door was opened and a fresh guest announced at a dinner-party.

She never met either of them, nor did the name of Kynaston ever strike upon her ear.

She told herself that she had forgotten the two brothers, whose fate had seemed at one time so intimately bound up with her own--the one as well as the other. They were nothing more to her now--they had pa.s.sed away out of her life. Henceforth she had entered upon a new course, in which her beauty and her mother wit were to exact their full value, but in which her heart was to count for nothing more. It was to be smothered up within her. That, together with all the best, and sweetest, and truest part of her, once awakened for a brief s.p.a.ce by the magic touch of love, was now to be extinguished within her as though they had never been.

Meanwhile Vera enjoys herself.

She looks happy enough now as she sits by her friend's side in the park, with a little knot of admirers about her; not taking very much trouble to talk to them, indeed, but smiling serenely from one to the other, letting herself be talked to and amused, with just a word here and there, to show them she is listening to what they say. It is, perhaps, the secret of her success that she is so thoroughly indifferent to it all. It matters so little to her whether they come or go; there is so little eagerness about her, so perfect an _insouciance_ of manner. Other women lay themselves out to attract and to be admired; Vera only sits still, and waits with a certain queenliness of manner for the worship that is laid at her feet, and which she receives as her due.

Behind her, with his hand on the back of her chair, stands a young fellow of about two or three and twenty; he does not speak to her much, nor join in the merry, empty chatter that is going on around her; but it is easy to see by the way he looks down at her, by the fashion in which he watches her slightest movement, that Vera exercises no ordinary influence over him.

He is a tall, slight-figured boy, with very fair yellow hair and delicate features; his blue eyes are frank and pleasant, but his mouth is a trifle weak and vacillating, and the lips are too sensitively cut for strength of character, whilst his chest is too narrow for strength of body. He is carefully dressed, and wears a white, heavy-scented flower in his coat, a flower which, five minutes ago, he had ineffectually attempted to transfer to Miss Nevill's dress; but Vera had only gently pushed back his hand. "My dear boy, pray keep your gardenia; a flower in one's dress is such a nuisance, it is always tumbling out."

Denis Wilde, "the boy," as Mrs. Hazeldine called him with a flush on his fair face, had put it back quietly in his b.u.t.ton-hole, too well bred to show the pain he felt by flinging it, as he would have liked to do, over the railing, to be trampled under the feet of the horses.

The little group kept its place for some time, the two well-dressed and good-looking women sitting down, the two or three idlers who stood in front of them gossiping about nothing at all--last night's ball, to-day's plans, a little bit of scandal about one pa.s.ser-by, somebody's rumoured engagement, somebody else's reported elopement. Denis Wilde stood behind Vera's chair and listened to it all, the well-known familiar chatter of a knot of London idlers. There was nothing new or interesting or entertaining about it. Only a string of names, some of which were strange to him, but most of which were familiar; and always some little story, ill-natured or harmless as the case might be, about each name that was mentioned. And Vera listened, smiling, a.s.senting, but only half attentive, with her eyes dreamily fixed upon the long procession of riders pa.s.sing ever ceaselessly to and fro along the ride.

Suddenly Denis Wilde felt a sudden movement of the chair beneath his hand. Vera had started violently.

"Here comes Sir John Kynaston," the man before her was saying to his companion. "What a time it is since he has shown himself; he looks as if he had had a bad illness."

"Some woman jilted him, I've heard," answered the other man: "some girl down in the country. People say, Miss Nevill, he is going to die of that old-fashioned complaint, which you certainly will not believe in, a broken heart! Poor old boy, he looks as if he had been buried, and had come up again for a breath of air!"

Vera followed the direction of their eyes. Sir John was walking slowly towards them; he was thin and careworn; he looked aged beyond all belief.

He walked slowly, as though it were an effort to him, with his eyes upon the ground. He had not seen her yet; in another minute he would be within a couple of yards of her. It was next to impossible that he could avoid seeing her, the centre, as she was, of that noisy, chattering group.

A sort of despair seized her. How was she to meet him--this man whom she had so cruelly treated? She could _not_ meet him; she felt that it was an impossibility. Like an imprisoned bird that seeks to escape, she looked about instinctively from side to side. What possible excuse could she frame? In what direction could she fly to avoid the glance of reproach that would smite her to the heart.

Suddenly Denis Wilde bent down over her.

"Miss Nevill, there goes a _Dachshund_, exactly like the one you wanted; come quickly, and we shall catch him up. He ran away down here."

She sprang up and turned after him; a path leading away from the crowded Row, towards the comparatively empty park at the back, opened out immediately behind her chair.

Young Wilde strode rapidly along it before her, and Vera followed him blindly and thankfully.

After a few minutes he stopped and turned round.

"Where is--the dog--wasn't it a dog, you said? Where is it?" She was white and trembling.

"There is no dog," he answered, not looking at her. "I--I saw you wanted to get away for a minute. You will forgive me, won't you?"

Vera looked at him with a sudden earnestness. The watchfulness which had seen her distress, the ready tact which had guessed at her desire to escape, and had so promptly suggested the manner of it, touched her suddenly. She put forth her hand gently and almost timidly.

"Thank you," she said, simply. "I did not imagine you were so clever--or so kind."

The boy blushed deeply with pleasure. He did not know her trouble, but the keen eye of love had guessed at its existence. It had been easy for him who watched her every look, who knew every shade and every line of her face, to tell that she was in distress, to interpret her pallor and her trembling terror aright.

"You don't want to go back?" he asked.

"Oh, no, I cannot go back! Besides, I am tired; it is time to go home."

"Stay here, then, and I will call Mrs. Hazeldine."

He left her standing alone upon the gra.s.s, and went back to the crowded path. Presently he returned with her friend.

"My dear Vera, what is the matter? The boy says you have such a headache!

I am so sorry, and I wouldn't let any of those chattering fools come back to lunch. Why, you look quite pale, child! Will it be too much for you to have the boy, because we will send him away, too, if you like?"

But Vera turned round and smiled upon the boy.

"Oh, no, let him come, certainly; but let us go home, all three of us at once, if you don't mind."

The thoughtfulness that had kept her secret for her, even from the eyes of the woman who was supposed to be her intimate friend, surely deserved its reward.

They walked home slowly together across the park, and, when Vera came down to luncheon, a white gardenia had somehow or other found its way to the bosom of her dress.

That was Denis Wilde's reward.

CHAPTER XXI.

MAURICE'S INTERCESSION.

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.

B. Disraeli, "Coningsby."

Two or three days later the east wind was still blowing, and the chilled sunshine still feebly shining down upon the nipped lilac and laburnum blossoms. The garden at Walpole Lodge was shorn of half its customary beauty, yet to Helen Romer, pacing slowly up and down its gravel walks, it had never possibly presented a fairer appearance. For Mrs. Romer had won her battle. All that she had waited for so long and striven for so hard was at length within her grasp. Her grandfather was dead, his money had been all left to her, her engagement to Captain Kynaston was an acknowledged fact, and she herself was staying as an honoured and welcome guest in her future mother-in-law's house. Everything in the present and the future seemed to smile upon her, and yet there were drawbacks--as are there not in most earthly delights?--to the full enjoyment of her happiness.

For instance, there was that unreasonable and unaccountable codicil to her grandfather's will, of which no one had been able to discern either the sense or the meaning, and which stated that, should his beloved grand-daughter, Helen Romer, be still unmarried within two months of the date of his death, the whole of the previous bequests and legacies were to be revoked and cancelled, and, with the exception of five thousand pounds which she would retain, the whole bulk of his fortune was to devolve upon the Crown, for the special use of the pensioners of Greenwich and Chelsea Hospitals.

Why such an extraordinary clause had been added to the old man's will it was difficult to say. Possibly he feared that his grand-daughter might be tempted to remain unmarried, in order that she might the more freely squander her newly-acquired fortune in selfish pleasures; possibly he desired to ensure her future by the speedy shelter and support of a husband's name and authority, or perhaps he only hoped at his heart that she would be unable to fulfil his condition; and, whilst his memory would be left free from blame towards his daughter's orphaned child, his money might go away from her by her own fault, and enrich the inst.i.tutions of his country at the expense of the grand-daughter, whom he had always disliked.

Be that as it may, it was sufficient to place Helen in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. She had not only to claim Maurice's promised troth to her, but she had also to urge on him an almost immediate marriage; the task was a thankless and most unpleasant one.

Besides that, there was the existence of a certain little French vicomte which caused Mrs. Romer not a little anxiety. Now, if ever, was the time when she had reason to dread his re-appearance with those fatal letters with which he had once threatened to spoil her life should she ever attempt to marry again.

But her grandfather had died and had left her his money, and her engagement and approaching marriage to another man was no secret, yet still Monsieur Le Vicomte D'Arblet made no sign, and gave forth no token of his promised vengeance.