CHAPTER VI
THE SNARE
Having now displayed to your sympathising eyes poor Sandra in the worst possible emotional fix, I cannot do less than show you how she got there.
It all happened when she was a slip of a girl, running wild in the New Forest. Her grandfather, always a perfect Providence to anyone who did not happen to be related to him, had arranged that Denis was to have lessons—lessons in the three R’s from the National schoolmaster; lessons in Latin and English from the vicar, and lessons in music from the organist of that little church at the edge of the forest, that church which tourists love—the church whose graveyard bristles with bicycles during the hours of divine service.
This organist, by name Saccage, was the wet retriever of the aunt’s narrative. He was oily in face and hair, his hands were podgy, his legs short. He had almost every physical characteristic calculated to repel a girl. But he was an artist. He was a skilled musician, and could draw dreams down from heaven with his organ-playing, or, with the fiddle jerk up devils from hell. Also, he could recognise genius in arts other than his own.
Prowling about in the forest, thinking out the andante of his concerto, he came, as another man had done, on the Sylvan stage; and, laid as close against an oak as his shape permitted, watched through green branches the dancing of Sylvia—heard the music of Pan.
It may he counted to him, for what it is worth, that he was the first to see the financial possibilities of Sandra’s dancing.
He withdrew unseen, and went home, knowing that he held the chance of his life in his hands. If he could get that girl and that boy onto the boards of a London theatre—having first established a claim to tax their earnings to the last bearable point,—his future was made.
But how to establish the claim?
Teach her music—for nothing—for love?
Gratitude?
Gratitude would only confer on him the power to tax for crumbs and broken meats—the tax a dog levies who has saved your house from burglars. He did not want to be a dog; he wanted to be master.
Teach the violin—for love.
Yes—love was the way.
It was easy to make Sandra’s acquaintance in those days. She had no friend but her old nurse, Mrs. Mosenthal, now promoted to be housekeeper. And Mrs. Mosenthal did not love the forest, or tread its green ways.
He taught the child music, and was confident that later he could teach love to her. For all his physical repulsiveness he had not been unsuccessful in that art which he called love. The artist in him gave him a power over weak and coarse natures. But it gave him none over Sandra, save the power of one who tells dream-stories of a great future, and who seems disinterestedly anxious to make those dreams come true.
He talked to her, really quite cleverly, about genius—its responsibilities, its claims. He won her confidence—got her to dance for him; and with astonishment and awe, proclaimed that, little as he had suspected it, all which he had said about genius applied to her. That dancing of hers was genius. How could she reconcile it to her artistic conscience to hide such a light under a bushel? She ought to go to London—to take a concert hall—not a vulgar theatre—and just dance for the elect, who would watch her with reverent wonder, and pay well for the privilege.
“But my grandfather would never agree,” the girl told him one day after a music lesson.
“I would help you,” he said; “all artists are of one brotherhood and bound to help each other. Your grandfather has no right to prevent you from giving your wonderful gift to the world. You ought to take the matter into your own hands.”
This meant run away.
When Sandra understood, “He’d fetch me hack,” she said dismally. “By the ear,” she added.
It was after some such talk that Saccage unfolded his plan. There was so sacrifice he would not make in the cause of Art. There were means to prevent her grandfather from taking her back. A marriage ceremony——
“Who with?” said Sandra.
“With me,” he answered impressively. And Sandra laughed.
After that he hated her. Before he had desired her beauty and the money that it and her talent should make, and had been indifferent to herself. Now he hated her, and he hated her to the end. But he only smiled.
“You misunderstand me. I said a ceremony. I could never trammel my art with the absurd outworn fetters of marriage. But I would lend you my name. There is no sacrifice. . . .”
And so on, till the girl asked him bluntly what it was that he did mean.
“I have a friend,” he said, “who used to be a registrar of marriages. He has some of the old certificate forms by him. To oblige me, and for the sake of art—he has a fine, untrained baritone,—he will fill in one for us. And to obtain proper witnesses we must pretend to go through the marriage ceremony. Then you can show the certificate to your grandfather, and he will think you are my wife and that he has no power to take you back.”
It was a beautiful, romantic plan, and it was carried out to the last detail.
Sandra went out alone for the day, as she had been used to do now and again when the desire seized her, and came back with a marriage certificate tucked into the front of her loose girl’s blouse.
It is impossible, you think, that any girl, however untaught and neglected, could have been so silly? My dear madam, I beg you to remember what a goose of a girl you were at seventeen. And you, my good sir—has no girl, for your dear sake, ever consented to things even more foolish than this mock marriage?
Sandra returned to Ringwood—she was to pack her clothes to be sent after her: to put all her valuables and money in a hand-bag, and to meet Saccage at the railway-station and go with him to London.
“I have a dear sister,” he said—“most musical she is—who will make you welcome to her unpretending flat. We will interest a few wealthy friends in your career, and then. . . Fame, my child, Fame, and the fulfilment of your genius.”
So poor Sandra packs up her belongings—the books and scarves she likes best, and the theatrical paste jewels that were her mother’s—old Nurse had found them somewhere, and given them to her to play with—packs up, breathless with excitement and expectation.
“Not a word to your nurse,” Saccage had told her, “nor to Denis. As soon as we’re settled we’ll send for them both.”
So she packs in secret.
What a situation for the child! One would think now that nothing could save her. Yet she was saved. That snake in the grass, the anonymous letter, so justly reviled in all respectable fiction, proved her salvation.
Her growing intimacy with the organist had not, you may be sure, escaped local attention. Someone, brave enough to write a letter to save a child, but not brave enough to sign it, had written to her grandfather. I shall always believe that the courageous, cowardly writer was Mr. Templar’s aunt.
And the grandfather came back, just too late. . . . and just in time. For he met them at the station—the two first-class tickets taken but not clipped, and the bag already in the corner of an empty compartment.
“Where are you going?” said the grandfather, hoarse with fury.
“To London,” said Sandra, pale and desperate.
“With her husband,” said Saccage dramatically. He also was pale, but resolved to assert himself. He had not looked to have to do it so soon.
We were married this morning,” said Sandra. “You always hated me. You ought to be glad I’m going.”
“You are not going!” he said, and caught her wrist. A crowd began to gather. He dragged her into the waiting-room and the train went without them.
The old man looked at the certificate, and then at the two whose names were on it. Also he asked certain straightforward questions of the organist that did more to frighten Sandra into submission than all his bullying.
“Miss Mundy is a ward in Chancery,” he said, “under her grandmother’s will. Do you know the penalty for marrying a ward without permission of the court, you cur? It’s pretty severe. Imprisonment’s not a thing you’ll care for, perhaps.”
“I want my wife,” said Saccage, nobly, as it seemed to Sandra, keeping up the farce they had agreed upon.
“You will not get your wife,” said the old man, “but you will get your trial and your sentence. And Miss Mundy will come home with me.”
“Mrs. Saccage, if you please,” said Saccage. “If you choose to bring an action I can’t prevent it. But if you do, your cruel neglect of your granddaughter will come out. I will send you the address of my solicitor. Meantime I claim my wife.”
“Will they really send him to prison?” Sandra asked, breathless.
“Of course they will,” her grandfather said, impatiently.
“Well then—I won’t have it. No, I won’t let him sacrifice himself for me,” she said bravely. “We’re not really married. It’s only pretence so that you shouldn’t be able to make me go back. But I’ll go. Only don’t do anything to him. He’s been so kind. We aren’t really married.”
The old man laughed—a laugh that Sandra always remembered as the most horrible sound she had ever heard.
“So that’s how he’s worked it?” he said. “I was wondering. After all you’ve a little of my blood in your veins. I was wondering how you came to throw yourself into the arms of this dirty counter-jumper. But don’t you make any mistake, my girl. This is a real marriage certificate. You’re his wife right enough. Now will you come home with me and do as I tell you? Or will you go with him and share his bed and board? You’re his wife—he can do what he likes with you. Kiss you, put his fat arms round you. . . .”
“I don’t believe it,” said Sandra. But she did. She sat down trembling on the yellow wooden seat in the waiting room.
“Well—will you go with him?”
“No,” said Sandra.
“Then sit still.” He walked to the door, hustling the organist before him. They talked there in low voices, till Mr. Mundy swept the other one out of his way, took Sandra’s arm, none too gently, and carried her off in the station fly.
Left alone, Mr. Saccage got back the money for his first-class ticket, and instructed the station-master to wire to the Terminus about a bag that had been put into the 6:15 London express. He did not believe in wasting things. He took the next up-train, and Ringwood knew him no more. But he did not get the bag, for old Mr. Mundy also had a thrifty soul, and his wire went five minutes earlier.
Sandra, dazed, berated, all her castles shattered, her only knight-errant proved to be but a scheming knave—be sure the old man rubbed it in—who had married her because she was the grand-daughter of a rich man who might be expected to leave her his money—poor Sandra that night sobbed out the truth to her nurse. When she had cried herself to sleep, Mr. Mundy gave the nurse his version of the story.
Next day Sandra was sent to school, and only came home when her grandfather, whom she had feared and hated, lay stiff and straight in the big bed he had used so seldom. If he had lived he would probably have tried to help Sandra to seek annulment of her marriage. The pension he paid to her horrible husband shows that he had some thought and care for her. His solicitor says that he did not at once seek to cancel the marriage, because he considered that a couple of hundred a year was well spent in guarding the girl from fortune-hunters during her impressionable minority. There is no security against being married for mercenary motives so strong as the fact that you are already married, and that your husband still lives. But Death came quickly and quietly, and if her grandfather meant to help Sandra at long last, when she had been schooled enough by the humiliation of her bondage, he never lived to do it.
She was not a ward in Chancery. That was only a useful lie.
In the cold dining room, with the dead man lying in the room above, the house-keeper who had been nurse sat murmuring comfort—vague little plans of quiet pleasure, a month at the seaside perhaps—anything her dear liked.
It was then that Sandra, quite calmly and very affectionately, explained what she meant to do. All the nurse’s objections, and they were many, were swept away with a quiet firmness that did not so much defy opposition as ignore it.
“We are going at once,” the girl repeated, “you and I and Denny. You must go down and tell him to-morrow morning. We are going to London, and I am going to make a fortune by dancing. That man was right about one thing. I can dance. I know he was right. And when we’ve made a lot of money I shall buy a place near here—I’d buy the Mount if I could,—and come back and live here and be good to the poor people. And you shall live in luxury, nursie-love, and so shall Denny. But we’ll make a name for ourselves first. Now help me to pack up every single thing that’s valuable and packable. That lawyer man told me grandfather left no money, only debts. And I’m not a ward of Chancery, and Granny didn’t leave me anything. Grandfather only said that. And everything here’s to be sold to pay the debts. They sha’n’t sell my share. We’ll take it.”
“But my love,” said the nurse, “it’s stealing.”
“No, it isn’t. I ought to have my share. And if it was stealing I’d do it just the same. I’ve had enough of being under people’s thumbs. I’m going to have people under my thumb. And the way to do it’s money, money, money. And you’re going to help me—Denny and you.”
The nurse sat gazing into the fire, for it was in late October that his last chance of doing anything kind for his son’s child was taken away from Richard Mundy. And she was silent for quite a minute.
Then she said: “You know, my lamb, your dear father married beneath him, as they say.”
“So they say,” said the girl. “I expect she was worth twenty of him, if he was anything like grandpapa.”
“Oh, hush,” said the nurse. “Your father was a perfect gentleman, like a fashion-plate for politeness to all. And your mother was a good honest girl and loved him faithful, dear, for all she was a dancer. Don’t you ever believe different.”
“Did you know her?” Sandra asked curiously.
“Better than I did anyone else,” said her nurse, in a curious stuffy voice.
Sandra looked at her, the light of romance awake in her eyes.
“Oh, darling, how splendid! I see it all—you’re my mother!” she cried through an embrace.
“How you do jump at things,” said the nurse. “I wish I was your mother, my pet, but she’s in her grave this many a year.”
“How disappointing of you not to be her,” said Sandra.
“You wouldn’t be ashamed of her if it was me?”
“Do I look like it?” said Sandra, hugging her again.
“Well then. . . I think p’r’aps I ought to tell you, love, and if it hurts your pride I’ll wish I’d bitten my tongue out first. I’m your own mother’s own cousin! There!”
It was pale after the light of rosy romance, but that it was something, warm kisses attested.
“How lovely! And I’ve got someone that really belongs to me. And it’s you. Oh, you dear, I haven’t been so happy since I was a little kid and you used to let me have dolls’ tea-parties in the forest.”
“Your grandfather. . .” the nurse admonished with an upward glance.
“He’s dead,” said Sandra firmly, “so we won’t say anything about him. I’m glad I’ve got one relation who hasn’t a stone cannon-ball instead of a heart. I wonder he let you come here, I’m sure. ‘It was not like his great and gracious ways!’”
“It was the only way I could think of to be near you. Your grandfather was a hard man, but you’ve always got to remember he let me come as nurse to my pretty. I took you from your mother’s side as she lay dead,” she went on slowly, “and no one else ever did a hand’s turn dressing or bathing you. That’s something. Her and I were like sisters,” she said, “and there were other reasons. . . .” she paused on a sob.
“You poor, dear darling,” said Sandra. “You were fond of my father, and my mother got him. I do really see it all this time.”
“I don’t know how you fare to think of such things,” said the nurse; but she did not deny it.
“It was decent of him to let you come,” the girl said.
“It was that. But he made me promise that I’d never tell you I was anything to your mother. And I’ve kept my word up to now, haven’t I, pet?”
“And now?”
“Oh, well—a promise is a promise—and while he lived I would as soon have broken it as laugh in church. But he’s dead, and that makes all the difference. So if you do go this wild goose chase to London, you’ll have your own aunt—or as good as—to watch over you and see that people respect you like they ought.”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Sandra. “So you’re going to be a dragon or a gorgon—or whatever it is. . . . I say, I can’t go on calling you nurse. I shall call you Aunt Medusa. Do you mind?”
“So long as you’re within arm’s reach you may call me what you like,” said the nurse fondly. “I’ve had my own troubles. I’ve been married—such a handsome man as he was!—a Jew, it’s true, but such a way with him! I never had a moment’s peace till I buried him. And that reminds me.” She cleared her throat nervously. “I ought to tell you, my dear—your grandfather told me all about that wicked musical gentleman who tried to take advantage of you.”
“All?”
“He told me he’d got you to marry him on false pretences, the scum! But don’t you worry about him, love. He’s dead and buried, too—I’ll be bound. Your grandfather used to send him money to keep him quiet. But I know he hasn’t sent to him for over a year. So I say he’s dead and out of the way.”
“Ah!” said Sandra.
“And if you do hold to this moonlight flitting, what I say is let me send to my late husband’s brother—a fine gentleman he is, rolling in money—a house-agent, and a good many other things besides, if what my Eph used to tell was true. He was always quite the gentleman to me: sends me £50 every Christmas for a present regular as the day comes round. I’ll drop him a line, and see if he won’t help us. You won’t be any the worse for a gentleman of means to back you, who’s, so to say, a relation, so he can’t be up to any of their underhand schemes with a young girl.”
Nurse’s late husband’s brother wrote a very laconic answer to her involved appeal. “Come and see me,” he said.
So when the three, with their boxes and bales, reached London, they went to see Mr. Moses Mosenthal, House and Estate Agent and. . . the rest.
“I must see her dance,” he said. “I cannot take the risk of helping a maiden to make of herself a fool. That is not the way for Moses Mosenthal. Go now to this quiet hotel.” He pencilled the address. “And to-morrow afternoon, when she is from her journey rested, return here—she shall dance for me. And the young man shall bring the flute.”
It was in a narrow first-floor room, among rolled pieces of cloth piled to the ceiling, with coats hanging from curved bars, and books of patterns outspread on a rosewood centre table, with coats half finished embellished with white tacking threads and mysterious patches of what looked like sacking, that Sandra first danced to Mr. Moses Mosenthal. Two shut doors to the left bore the legend: “Mr. Mosenthal. Store-rooms. Private.”
The dark blue velvet curtains that conceal the intimacies of the “trying on” served well as background.
Sandra had flattened her pretty nose at a florist’s window and presently gone in and bought long trails of smilax and white chrysanthemums. These formed a wreath. Her dress was an old limp muslin wrapper that had been her mother’s, artfully wetted and creased and dried in long wavy folds. Ankles and feet were bare. So were the slender arms and girlish shoulders. Perched on a pile of cloth, Pan piped to her. The nurse, her bonnet on one side, watched breathlessly—not her girl, but the face of her brother-in-law. It was the Tchaikovsky music that had sounded long ago through the forest leaves to Mr. Edmund Templar, and the spirit of the dance that he had watched was there, in the tailor’s shop, as it had been in the green forest.
The dance ended. Sandra was on one knee, arms held out, appealing, questioning, to Mr. Moses Mosenthal. Would he approve? Would he applaud?
He just nodded, three times. Then he rubbed his hands.
“Well,” said the nurse. Sandra would not have spoken then.
“Good, good! But it is good! It is great!”
He reached his large hand to Sandra to raise her—much as Ahasuerus may have reached the sceptre to Queen Esther.
“So! To-morrow I take you to see a manager. He will give you a show if I say so. But you sign nothing without me. See? And you do not give your address. See? And t-onight you still stay at the Hotel, and tomorrow I find you a house that no one know where you are. See? I am house-agent. I have many houses. And I have among them, I have without doubt the house for you—the house without an address!”