TO GAY
AN ANONYMOUS LETTER
MISS MARY WATCHETT, a young Colonial heiress, had written—from Westminster—to Lord Riversdale, at Kensington, asking him to recommend to her, if he could and would, a capable man secretary. Miss Watchett was new to London and, comparatively, to moneyed independence. She felt a little deafened and confused amid the roar of harpies that enveloped her; she walked, like Tennyson's youthful sceptic, but far less rancorously, with her head "in a cloud of poisonous flies," and it taxed all the resources of that staid young cerebrum to preserve to itself a rational regard of things in the thick of the tumultuous swarm.
Miss Watchett, clear-eyed and constitutionally sedate, had applied to the Viscount in this matter of a secretary because her father, Jack Watchett, of Sydney, had once advised her, when in any difficulty of the sort, to do so. He and his lordship were past school-fellows, and chums in the pre-colonial days, and Jack, himself a hard-headed man of business, had always retained the profoundest admiration for the other's practical abilities. Wherefore, foreseeing the inevitable home-sickness that would overtake his Mary when left alone, he had instructed her as to her best friends, as he regarded them, in England, amongst which best he had put foremost the shrewd unemotional man of the world who had once been his inseparable ally.
But that was long ago. A faith in race kinship dwells warmer in the Colonial than in the insular breast, and many figures had supplanted Jack's in the affections of his lordship since their separation. Riversdale's reception of the girl's letter was significant of the different point of view; it expressed the faint boredom of the aristocrat over the injudicious resurrection of dead intimacies long laid and quite pleasantly forgotten. He tossed the epistle over with a snort to his eldest hope, Lord Kilmeston. It was true that he was ill with an aggravated form of gout at the time.
"Answer that for me," he said, "and do your best for the girl. She is the daughter and heiress of a one-time friend of mine—deceased, it seems. She had much better have remained at home; but, since she's elected to come to England, we must be civil to her, I suppose. Only I'm not going to be called upon to father her interests. Watchett was a good fellow, but rough, and his progeny have scant attractions for me."
The young gentleman read the letter.
"Who the deuce am I to recommend?" he demanded.
"Recommend the—don't worry me, sir," roared his father. "Keep her away, that's all; I won't have her here. You might apply yourself for the post, you idle young rip. It would put your hands to something useful for the first time in their existence."
The heir rose, a light in his eyes. "By Jove," he said, "a good idea. An heiress, and with that intimate opportunity to examine my ground before committing myself! I believe I'll do it."
His father called furiously after him, but he was gone.
II
Miss Watchett sat curiously conning an anonymous letter which had reached her by the second morning post. She was alone in her boudoir—a cosy room, one of a commodious suite which she had taken on the second floor of Queen Anne's Mansions, St. James's Park. There were advantages about these Mansions to a much-pestered and solicited moneyed maiden, the greatest being that all visitors had to run the gauntlet of the hall porter's extensive bureau on the ground floor. Others comprised an excellent restaurant, a staff common to all inmates of the huge pile, privacy as much as one liked and security unruffled. You might keep your own servants, or none at all; you might take your meals in public or have them served to you in your rooms; there were no rules, no 'hours', no obligations of any sort. And all this suited Miss Watchett, who had enjoyed her fortune long enough to appreciate its penalties. She kept a companion, for companionship's sake; otherwise the conduct of her domestic affairs lay to the staff, who came and went softly, dusted, made the beds, ordered all things comfortably, and for nine-tenths of her time, if she chose, left her in undisturbed seclusion. The only 'rift within the lute' jarring on so much harmony lay in the applicants, the supplicants, the beggars and impostors who, in spite of all precautions, managed to win through to the front-door knocker, which they kept in a pretty constant state of agitation. It was principally on their account that the young lady had come to desire the services of a capable male secretary.
Miss Watchett sat thoughtfully conning her letter. It was not, of course, the first received by her of the anonymous kind; the point was that it touched, and humorously, upon a definite problem. She read it through for a third time:
"Your application to Lord Riversdale re a male secretary has been received. His Lordship, being ill at the time, handed it over to his son, Lord Kilmeston, to answer. Lord K. will recommend the bearer of his reply to you for the post in question. But, take warning: the bearer will be no other than Lord Kilmeston himself, passing under an assumed name—that of Mr. Charles Lorry. He, Lord K., has devised this intimate means of satisfying himself as to the possible desirableness of an heiress. Beware the snake in the grass. A well-wisher."
Miss Watchett replaced the letter in her lap.
"O, indeed!" she said.
III
Mr. Charles Lorry, humming a confident little air, knocked smartly at the door of the flat. It was opened to him by a neat young woman, having on a tucker and apron of blue cotton.
"Can I see Miss Watchett?" he demanded.
She replied, in a soft composed voice, by asking him his name. He gave it freely, adding that he brought a letter of introduction. At that, bidding him enter, she shut the door, and put out her hand.
"Yes?" he asked.
"The letter," she replied.
"I'll give it myself."
"O, no! You must let her decide if she will see you! We have a number of impostors to guard against."
He flushed up to the roots of his hair. He was tall, well-built, patently an aristocrat—a fact which the companion noted with some secret curiosity. There was an air about him of that prescriptive self-confidence which can take liberties with the most charming grace in the world—and resent them, with an equally compelling savoir-faire.
"Take it to her, if you will be so good," he responded frigidly, and she tripped away, perfectly unconcerned, leaving him standing on the mat. In a few moments she returned.
"Yes, she will see you," she said. "Please to wipe your boots first."
He scraped the soles for quite two minutes, while she stood by.
"Thanks for reminding me," he said. "Do you think that will do; or had I better take them off, and walk in my socks?"
"The carpets are new," she said. "Follow me, please."
He obeyed, positively shaking his fist at the serenely unconscious little thing. She conducted him into a pleasant well-furnished room, where at a littered table sat a lady writing.
"Here is the person, Miss Watchett," said the companion, and, without another word, went out and shut the door.
Mr. Lorry stood for some moments speechless and unregarded while the heiress finished her letter. He felt in himself a curious tingling emotion associated somehow with a long-forgotten experience of a certain study, not uncomfortable, a head master, and a sensation of guilt shortly to be exchanged for another and a worse. When the lady looked up at last, he instinctively shivered. She held his letter in her hand—a shapely but large white hand, he observed, capable of wielding a rod effectively.
"From Lord Kilmeston?" she said. "You are acquainted with his Lordship, perhaps?"
"Intimately," said the applicant, with a little conscious smile and flush, which the other did not fail to notice. She was a rather spacious young woman of a golden aspect. Her hair, her eyes, her pince-nez were all of the precious colour, tone contrasting with tone. Even her nice plain frock was of a warm citron hue. For the rest her complexion was of a serene pallor, her manner self-possessed, her brow severely calm—decidedly, all in all, an imposing figure; but attractive.
"His Lordship"—she referred to the letter—"acting for his father" ("He is ill," interpolated the visitor murmuringly), "warmly recommends the bearer of this note, Mr. Charles Lorry" ("Myself," intimated the visitor, ingratiatory), "for the post of secretary to Miss Watchett. She will find him sober, ingenious, and the best of good fellows."
The lady replaced the letter on the table—leisurely, and looked up—suddenly. Mr. Lorry was biting the rim of his hat, and grinning over it. His expression sobered instantly.
"The best of qualifications, no doubt," she said, steadily regarding the abashed face, "particularly as franked, indirectly, by my father's old friend, Lord Riversdale, to whom I had applied in my difficulty. He would be the last to misunderstand me, would he not?"
"Of course," answered the young gentleman, feeling a little hot. "Why should he?"
"O, I don't know!" said the heiress. "Only in Australia one's recommendations to a post commonly consist in one's capacities for it. These are rather abstract virtues, are they not? but no doubt it is different in England. Can you spell?"
The abruptness of the demand made him jump.
"Madam," he said, with dignity, "I have had a public-school education; I have been at a University."
"Can you use a typewriter?"
"I would scorn to say no."
"Are you proficient in languages?"
"I will confess I have an insular shyness of blowing my own trumpet. But I know some out-of-the-way words."
She rubbed her lips delicately with a snowy wisp of a handkerchief.
"You see, it is this way," she said. "I have a large correspondence. It is one, perhaps the greatest, of the penalties of wealth."
"I feel that, for my part, I could suffer a worse," said Mr. Lorry, with some emotion, "for half the consideration."
"It reaches me—from everywhere," continued Miss Watchett; "and it has to be answered—mostly unkindly. But you understand?"
"Fully."
"You would have to undertake the bulk of it for me. Then there are the personal applications"
"Leave those to me," decided the visitor firmly. "There I should be upon my own ground."
"They are really the first consideration," said the heiress. "They interfere intolerably with the repose and retirement I desire for myself, and to command which I have arranged to dispense with all service here save that which is absolutely necessary. The Mansion servants do their daily work in the rooms and then go. For the rest of the time I, and my paid companion, Miss Clare Normanby, are alone here together. She is a valuable auxiliary; but what with the correspondence, the unwelcome calls, and the vigilant attendance on personal and household duties expected of her by her employer, her engagement is overtaxing her resources, and I have been reluctantly compelled to consider the necessity of an addition to our ménage."
The gentleman bowed, but a little coldly. There was already something illuminating, he felt, in this speech. That "paid," purse-proud and insolent, stuck in his gorge. A first faint flicker of commiseration for the staid little figure that had let him in stirred somewhere in his depths.
"The wages I could offer you," said Miss Watchett, "would be fifteen shillings a week. Hours ten to four."
He stared and gasped. Then recollected himself.
"I should call that munificent," he said joyfully. "If it were only for the delight of serving you, I"
She interrupted him, holding up her hand:
"There is one of them at the door now—if you like to go and prove your ability."
He hurried out, and into the hall. Miss Normanby was in altercation at the front door with a stranger who refused to be dismissed. The girl looked doubtful and a little distressed.
"Surely, young woman, she will not decline to see me," the visitor was protesting; "to refuse of her abundance a stiver to the necessitous?"
He was attired like a mouldy clergyman, and his nose was red.
"Allow me," said Lorry, and very gently he interposed.
"Who's necessitous?" said he.
"Sir," said the stranger sourly, "I collect for the Novelists' Evangelical Mission."
"I know you do," said the young gentleman; "and that you do nothing else. I have seen you before, and introduced you to your own name in a certain Cautionary List."
That was a shot in the dark; but master Charles was a knowing man of the world. It went home, and the clergyman vanished, softly and instantly, as if he had seen a Boojum.
"Thank you," said the companion. "I suspected, but I couldn't be sure."
Charles returned to the heiress.
"I foresee I can be of some use to you," he said.
"Do you wish to accept the post?"
"By all means."
IV
"Were you the sole amanuensis and chucker-out, really, before I came?" asked Mr. Lorry of the companion one morning. He had been at his task a fortnight now, and was enjoying it immensely on the whole. There was an originality about vigorous occupation which was an increasing charm to him. He looked up from his table, and from voluminous correspondence, to canvass Miss Normanby, who was busy arranging flowers about the room.
"Why should you doubt it?" answered the lady. "You were introduced to me in the act."
"I have a picture, by Du Maurier, in my mind's eye, that's all," he said. "It is of a very little footman, a three-foot-six child, waiting to escort his mistress, a young lady of magnificent proportions, home from a party. I hope Miss Watchett is careful not to tread on you, at least."
She glanced at him swiftly, and away again. He detected a tiny flush on her cheek, and it gave him an odd wilful pleasure to believe it a flower of his growing. They had come to be on quite familiar terms, and he delighted in, while he patronised, the little desirable soul. She exhaled a sort of quiet purity, and though she was no more than bluntly passable in looks, a certain fragrance of mind and little body, coupled with a sweet complexion, atoned in her for most defects.
"Did you intend a double-meaning in saying that?" she asked him.
"Please don't interrupt me. How do you spell eligible?"
"How do you?"
"O! that's weak."
"Well, how do public schools and universities spell it, then?"
"I am not allowed to say. They don't like these things talked about. Do tell me."
"I don't know."
"I mean two l's or one?"
"Put two and make a blot."
"Impostor!"
"Isn't that rather the pot calling the kettle black?"
"Eh?" He looked up, a sudden startled light in his eyes. "What do you mean, madam?"
She was busy at her task, with her back presented to him.
"Why, are you not one?" she asked, quite innocently, without turning round.
"This," he said, "must not stop here. Give the charge a name."
"Did not you tell Miss Watchett," she said, "that you could use a typewriter?"
"Never."
"That you were master of several languages?"
"Words, madam, I said—words not in common use."
"And you cannot even spell."
"How do you know, when you confess you can't yourself?"
"But that is not the worst. I suppose it has never occurred to you that Miss Watchett might all this time be perfectly well aware of the trick you are playing on her?"
He rose in very real perturbation.
"Trick!" he cried. The shock was quite unexpected.
She whipped round on him, produced a letter from her pocket, and presented it:
"Would you like to read that? It may enlighten you."
He took it from her hand, read it through with an amazed face, and gave a little gasp. It was the anonymous missive.
"I knew nothing about this," he said stupidly.
"Who," she answered; "supposed you did? Do you guess who wrote it?"
"Yes, very well."
"And his, or her purpose?"
"I'll ask him by and by. Just mischief, I expect." He expelled a huge accumulated sigh, and gave his chest a thwack. "Ouf!" he said. "A staggerer! Did she, Miss Watchett, authorise you to show it me?"
"O, no!"
"Then, why"
"It seemed cruel to me—somehow—to leave you in the dark, fancying yourself such a wag."
"O, you overcome me with gratitude! Will you tell her now how you have opened my eyes? "
"I should never dare. I don't know how she would take it. I had no business to touch the letter; but the temptation came suddenly."
"You were in her confidence in the matter?"
"Yes; but she never actually prohibited me. This is a secret between you and me. She must take her own course; and, anyhow, I'm not going to spoil sport, Lord Kilmeston."
Even as she spoke, Miss Watchett herself came into the room. She glanced from one conscious face to the other, and her lips tightened.
"I could wish, Miss Normanby," she said, "that you would interrupt Mr. Lorry less frequently at his work. And do, pray, hurry up with those flowers. You have a dozen things of more importance to attend to."
V
Mr. Charles Lorry had been getting on—so far as his main purpose, a critical appreciation of the heiress, was concerned—very well, better than he had ventured, for all his assurance, to expect. He was a handsome and attractive young man, possessed of a considerable fund of the calm impudence associated with that class of beings, fruges consumere nati, who unite in their agreeable selves the sense of untroubled appropriation and Quixotic honesty. He had from the first regarded the outcome of this business as a foregone conclusion. He would succeed in prevailing with the heiress, did she prove worthy of his regard; about that he had never allowed himself a doubt. On the other hand, it would be the simplest matter to chuck up his engagement at short notice, leaving things exactly as he had found them. He certainly wanted a rich wife; but, to do him the right justice, money without respect and affection had no appeal to him. It disturbed him now, only in degree, that he must play his game self-consciously.
His opportunities for an intimate study of Miss Watchett had given him plentiful food for reflection. It had been satisfying, at least, to find Jack's daughter an indubitable lady, cultivated, clever and accomplished. She talked well, played well, looked well, and her bearing was beyond reproach. As against those recommendations there were some apparently inherent qualities which repelled him. She had no sense of humour, for one thing; but that was not the worst. She was intolerant and hard—so hard in her judgments that he often wondered over his own secretarial indispensability, inasmuch as the nine-tenths of her correspondence which turned upon appeals she ruled inexorably into the waste-paper basket. He always hoped that she might, on reconsideration, disinter a selection, but she never did—in his presence, at least; and anyhow, the wholesale immolation simplified matters.
She had begun by treating him personally with an abrupt hauteur which had seemed designed for his humiliation; but it had not been very long before his persistent charms had begun to win their way with her. He had become conscious of a softening in their relations, at first hardly perceptible, but presently confessing itself in a regard which he could not mistake. It was the swift and swifter melting of virgin snow in the beams of an ardent Spring. And at last she was patently making love to him.
He accepted that fruition of his scheme as yet with philosophy, since he had by no means made up his own mind in the matter. It distressed him keenly, for one thing, to observe how, correspondingly with the heiress's hardly-veiled approaches to himself, her manner towards the companion became more and more disagreeably distant. She had always been the most exacting, the most inconsiderate of employers towards this kind devoted little helpmate; she now seemed to take pleasure in finding fault with her, while she heaped the most intolerable burden of duties on the young shoulders. The thing came to amount to a positive persecution, which could have only one end, apparently designed—the dismissal of a hated incubus.
Did the child figure as such, indeed? Jealousy, supposed master Charles, was not excluded from commanding white presences and majestic bosoms; and he was attached to the little creature; he sympathised with and pitied her. Still, not to be over-conceited, he was no more than madam's munificently paid secretary; and he might be mistaken.
And then came the revelation about the anonymous letter, and in its light things which had been obscure appeared plain. Miss Watchett had known all along; Miss Watchett had been melting, perchance, in the golden sun, not of love but of a coronet. He did not know whether to thank or to curse that rather vicious young scatterbrain, Mr. Vivian Plunkett, who had been present when the little plot was hatched, and who had written (of that he was certain; he could not mistake the rascal's handwriting) the anonymous letter in question. Certainly he himself held no brief for Miss Clare Normanby; and certainly Miss Mary Watchett was, in many respects, quite a seductive young parti. He stood at the fork of the road. Which way was he to take? The question was decided for him quite abruptly.
VI
There had been a painful scene, ending, as anticipated, in a notice to leave being given to the companion. Miss Watchett, after delivering her fiat, stood panting a little, as if overcome by, or ashamed of, her own vehemence; Miss Normanby, who had said little in her personal defence, remained pale but composed. It was the man whose heart was blazing in a fume of indignation.
Now there are within us certain germs which, though living, only awaken and become active in the shock of unforeseen accident. In the same way an emotion, failing its particular provocation, may lie dormant in us for years or for ever. So it happened with master Charles. The blow, though half expected, dislodged and quickened in him the germ of something so amazing and unexpected that it positively took his breath away. He felt as if a mist had been swept from his eyes, leaving his choice of a road quite startlingly clear—so inevitable, indeed, that it seemed impossible he could ever have doubted it. He faced the heiress quietly, but his eyes looked curiously large and his lips oddly red.
"Miss Normanby is to go to-morrow, then," he said. "From to-morrow you will please, also, to employ another secretary."
He heard her exclaim and gasp as he turned his back on her. He took no notice, but walked stiffly up to Clare Normanby and stood before her.
"I had not understood up to now," he said, "what had come to move me so intensely in the sight of my fellow-bondslave subjected to her daily martyrdom. I know at last. I had come here to prevail with the employer: I end by being vanquished by the employed. In the prospect of her loss I realise my own. My dear, I wasn't aware, but you have become indispensable to me. This fortnight has finished my education. I am not worth much in any way; but I can keep a wife, and I ask you to give yourself to me. You are worth a thousand heiresses, and I will try to make you as happy as your sweetness and virtue deserve."
He was conscious in himself, while speaking, of a sort of delirious self-abandonment, like that of an unharnessed horse let loose to roll and flounder in a meadow of spring flowers. A sudden astonished voice recalled him to his senses.
"You came here, Mr. Lorry, to prevail with the employer!"
He faced about, triumphantly regarding the injured goddess.
"You know, madam, you know," he said; "and I know that you know. I have seen the letter, whose writer, believe me, I shall be careful to call to account for his abominable abuse of a trust. Yet I have to thank him in one way for opening my eyes to a double truth, to which, without his interference, I might have remained for ever blind—the impotence of wealth without a heart to recommend itself; the inestimable value, above all material advantages, of a lovable goodness. And now to confess. I am not, Miss Watchett, what you think me."
"Do you not mean, Lord Kilmeston, what, without the letter, I should have thought you?"
"No."
Even as he spoke something happened—something so morally dislocating that for the moment his brain reeled in the shock of it. Miss Clare Normanby, with a tiny rippling laugh, ran past him and threw herself upon the shoulder of Miss Mary Watchett. In the same instant the oddest expression made itself seen on the heiress's face. It was like nothing so much as suppressed merriment.
"Explain yourself, please," she said—with difficulty.
"I am not Lord Kilmeston."
"Well, I am not Miss Mary Watchett."
A silence followed—brief, but too enormous for measurement. Then, out of a mist and thunder of stupefaction, Mr. Charles Lorry became conscious that two faces were curiously regarding him. He laughed ruefully.
"Hoist with my own petard," he said, and fell dumb.
"O!" said the golden lady, shaking a severe finger at him; "are you not ashamed of yourself for playing such a trick upon two unsuspecting women? And it might have succeeded, had it not been for the letter, and an adventurer spared his deserts. Be quiet, Mary, I will say it. Yes, sir, this is Miss Watchett, and I am the companion. The daring insolence of the imposture! But, being forewarned, we were equal to it, and we just exchanged parts. I would have punished you for the fraud far more drastically than I was allowed; but I trust, anyhow, you have had your sufficient lesson. Now please to tell us who you are, and why it is that Lord Riversdale deigned to lend himself to so gross an abuse of confidence?"
"He didn't. Don't torture the trodden worm," cried the suffering youth. "I don't defend myself, but it was not quite so bad as you suppose. Kilmeston came and told me about his idea in the presence of Vivian Plunkett; but he wasn't really serious, and he offered to turn the business over to me if I cared to apply. I'm not over-blessed with worldly goods, and I jumped at the thing—mostly for the fun and adventure of it. I trusted to my own rotten attractions, you see; and, of course, I knew nothing about the letter, for which I'll wring that beast's nose when I see him. I'm really Charles Lorry, and—and now I'd better go."
He turned and moved, rather reluctantly, towards the door.
"And you had the assurance—the assurance," breathed Miss Normanby, "to regard yourself as an eligible suitor?"
"Well, I changed my mind—I couldn't help it."
"Mr. Lorry!"
Charles came about again. It was Miss Watchett, the real Miss Watchett, who had spoken. Her eyes were shining, her face was a little flushed.
"Perhaps," she said, "your explanation—it's not so bad—it's not bad at all. And—and—after testing you—to see if you were base enough to aspire where you couldn't respect, and then—I think, after all, our trick was the meanest, and you come out of it all—best. I only want to say that we shall be dining—alone here to-morrow, and that we shall be glad to see you. And—and there are two l's, I think, in eligible."