The Time of Roses

"I have no money," she said, looking full at Edith.

Tom Franks happened to come into the room at the time.

"What are you talking about?" he said. "By the way, here is a letter for you."

As he spoke, he laid a letter on the table near Florence's side. She glanced at it, saw that it was in the handwriting of Bertha Keys, and did not give it a further thought.

"Flo is thinking about her trousseau; all brides require trousseaux," said Edith, who, although unorthodox in most things, did not think it seemly that a bride should go to the altar without fine clothes.

"But why should we worry about a trousseau?" replied Tom. "I take Florence for what she is, not for her dress; and I can give you things in Paris," he added, looking at her. "I have some peculiar ideas, and my own notions with regard to your future dress. You want a good deal of rich colour, and rich stuffs, and nothing too girlish. You are very young, but you will look still younger if you are dressed somewhat old, as I mean to dress you. We will get your evening dress in Paris. I am not a rich man, but I have saved up money for the purpose."

"I don't really care about clothes at all," said Florence.

"I know that; but you will change your mind. With your particular style, you must be careful how you dress. I will manage it. Don't waste your money on anything now. I want you to come to me as you are."

Tom then sat down near Florence, and began to give her particulars with regard to several flats which he had looked over. He was a keen man of business, and talked £. s. d. until the girl was tired of the subject.

"I shall take the flat in Fortescue Mansions to-morrow morning," he said finally; "it will just suit us. There is a very fine reception-room, and, what is still better, all the reception-rooms open one into the other. We must begin to give our weekly salons as soon as ever you return from your wedding tour, Florence."

"Surely you will wait until people call on Florence?" interrupted Edith. "You are too quick, Tom, for anything. You must not transgress all the ordinary rules of society."

Tom looked at his sister, shut up his firm lips, and turned away; he did not even vouchsafe to answer.

A moment later, he left the room. It was his custom when he met Florence to kiss her coldly on the forehead, and to repeat this ceremony when he left her. He did not neglect this little attention on the present occasion. As his steps, in his patent-leather boots, were heard descending the stairs, Edith saw Florence raise her handkerchief to her forehead and rub the spot which Tom's lips had touched.

"How heartily you dislike him!" said Edith. "I would not marry him if I were you."

Florence made no reply. She took up her letter and prepared to leave the room.

"Why do you go? There is a good fire here, and there is none in your room. Sit by the fire, and make yourself comfy. I am going out for a little."

CHAPTER XLIV.

BERTHA CHANGES HER TONE

Edith pinned on her hat as she spoke, and a moment later left the flat. Florence looked around her. She sank into an easy-chair, and opened the letter. It was, as she already knew, from Bertha. She began to read it languidly, but soon its contents caused her to start; her eyes grew bright with a strange mixture of fear, relief, and apprehension. Bertha had written as follows: —

"My Dear Florence —

"You will doubtless, long ere this, have been told of the fearful blow which the late Mrs. Aylmer of Aylmer's Court has inflicted on us all. Kind as we have been to her, and faithfully as we have served her – I allude especially here to myself – we have been cut off without a farthing whereas two monstrous establishments have been left the benefit of her wealth. The clergyman, Mr. Edwards, is responsible for this act of what I call sacrilege. She made him write a will for her just after poor Mr. Wiltshire had departed. It is, I believe, quite in proper form, and there is not a loophole of escape. Mr. Edwards knew what he was about. Mrs. Aylmer gave her money, as she thought, back to God: a very queer way of doing charity – to leave those nearest to her to starve.

"However, my dear Florence, to come to the point, I, who have spent the last five years of my life absolutely devoted to this woman, serving her hand and foot, day and night, at all times and all seasons, have not even had a ten-pound note left to me for my pains. It is true that I shall receive my salary, which happens to be a very good one, up to the end of the present quarter. After that, as far as I am concerned, I might as well never have known Aylmer's Court nor its mistress. Fortunately I was able to feather my nest to a very small extent while with her, and have a few hundred pounds with which to face the world.

"Now, Florence, I hope you are somewhat prepared for what is about to follow. It is this: I shall be obliged in the future to use my talent for my own aggrandisement. I find that it is a very marketable commodity. A few months' use of it has placed you in great comfort; it has also brought you fame, and, further, a very excellent husband. What the said future husband will say when the dénouement is revealed to him – as of course revealed it will be – is more than I can say. But you must face the fact that I can no longer supply you with stories or essays. I myself will write my own stories, and send them myself to the different papers, and the golden sovereigns, my dear, will roll into my pocket, and not into yours. You will naturally say: 'How will you do this, and face the shame of your actions in the past?' But the fact is, I am not at all ashamed, nor do I mind confessing exactly what I have done. My talent is my own, and it is my opinion that the world will crowd after me all the more because I have done this daring thing, and you, my poor little understudy for the time being, will be my understudy no longer. I take the part of leading lady once for all myself. I am coming up to London to-morrow, and will call to see you, as, on consideration, I think that fourth story which you are preparing for the Argonaut might as well appear with my name to it.

"Yours very sincerely,"Bertha Keys."

Florence perused this letter two or three times; then she put it in her pocket and entered her bed-room. She did not quite know what she was doing. She felt a little giddy, but there was a queer, unaccountable sense of relief all over her. On her desk lay her own neat copy of the story which she was preparing for the Argonaut. By the side of the desk also was quite a pile of letters from different publishers offering her work and good pay. These letters Tom Franks insisted on her either taking no notice of or merely writing to decline the advantageous offers. She took them up now.

"Messrs. So-and-so would be glad to see Miss Aylmer. They could offer her…" And then came terms which would have made the mouths of most girls water. Or Florence received a letter asking her if she would undertake to write three or four stories for such a paper, the terms to be what she herself liked to ask. She looked at them all wistfully. It is true she had not yet lighted a fire in her room, but she put a match to it now, in order to burn the publishers' letters. The story she was copying was about half-done. She had meant to finish it from Bertha's manuscript before she went out. She smiled to herself as she looked.

"I need never finish it now," she thought.

Just as this thought came to her she heard a tap at her door. It was a messenger with a note. She told him to wait, and opened it. It was from Franks.

"I quite forgot when I saw you an hour ago to ask you to let me have manuscript of the next story without fail this evening. Can you send it now by messenger, or shall he call again for it within a couple of hours? This is urgent.

"Thomas Franks."

Florence sat down and wrote a brief reply.

"I am very sorry, but you cannot have manuscript to-night.

"Florence Aylmer."

The messenger departed with this note, and Florence dressed herself to go out, and she went quickly downstairs. She walked until she saw the special omnibus which she was looking for. She was taken straight to Hampstead, and she walked up the steep hill until she found the little cottage which she had visited months ago in the late summer-time. Florence went to the door, and a neat servant with an apple-blossom face opened it.

"Is Mrs. Trevor in?" asked Florence.

"Yes, miss; what name shall I say?"

Florence gave her name: "Miss Florence Aylmer."

She was immediately ushered into the snug drawing-room, bright with firelight. She shut her eyes, and a feeling of pain went through her heart.

"The way of transgressors is very, very hard," she thought. "Shall I ever keep straight? What a miserable character I must be!"

Just then Mrs. Trevor entered the room. She had not been pleased with Florence; she had not been pleased with her manner to her son. Mothers guess things quickly, and she had guessed Maurice's secret many months ago.

Florence held out her hand wistfully, and looked full at the little widow.

"I have come to speak to you," she said. "I want to know if you will" – her lips trembled – "advise me."

"Sit down, my dear," said Mrs. Trevor. She motioned Florence to a seat, but the girl did not take it.

"I have come to you, as the only one in all the world who can help me," continued Florence. "I have something very terrible to say, and I thought perhaps you would listen, and perhaps you would advise. May I speak to you just because I am a very lonely girl and you are a woman?"

"If you put it in that way, of course you may speak," said Mrs. Trevor. "To tell you the truth, I have been displeased with you; I have thought that you have not been fair."

"To whom?" asked Florence.

"To my son Maurice."

Florence coloured; then she put her hand to her heart.

"You never replied to my letter, Mrs. Trevor."

"What was there to say?"

"Will you tell me now what you thought of it?"

Mrs. Trevor had seated herself by the fire. She held out her small hands to the grateful blaze; then she looked round at the girl.

"Sit down, child," she said; "take off your hat. If you wish to know what I really thought, I imagined that you were a little hysterical and that you had overstated things. Girls of your age are apt to do so. I was very sorry, for Maurice's sake, that you did not accept my offer; but otherwise I prefer to be alone."

"I see. Well, I must tell you now that I did not exaggerate. I have been bad through and through: quite unworthy of your attention and care: quite unworthy of Mr. Maurice's regard."

"That is extremely likely," said the mother of Mr. Maurice, drawing herself up in a stately fashion.

"Oh, don't be unkind to me; do bear with me while I tell you. Afterwards I shall go away somewhere, but I must relieve my soul. Oh, it is so sinful!"

"Speak, child, speak. Who am I that I should turn away from you?"

"Years ago," began Florence, speaking in a dreary tone, "I was at a school called Cherry Court School. While there I was assailed by a very great temptation. The patron of the school, Sir John Wallis, offered a prize on certain conditions to the girls. The prize meant a great deal, and covered a wide curriculum.

"It was a great opportunity, and I struggled hard to win; but Sir John Wallis, although he offered the prize to the school, in reality wanted a girl called Kitty Sharston, who was the daughter of his old friend, to get it.

"Kitty Sharston was supposed to be most likely to win the prize, and she did win it in the end; but let me tell you how. In the school was a girl as pupil teacher, whose name was Bertha Keys."

"What!" cried Mrs. Trevor: "the girl who has been companion to Mrs. Aylmer: whom my son has so often mentioned?"

"The very same girl. Oh, I don't want to abuse her too much, and yet I cannot tell my terrible story without mentioning her. She tempted me; she was very clever, and she tempted me mightily. She wrote the essay for me, the prize essay which was hers, not mine. Oh, I know you are shocked, I feel your hand trembling; but let me hold it; don't draw it away. She wrote the essay, and it was read aloud before all the guests and all the other girls as mine, and I won the Scholarship; yes, I won it through the essay written by Bertha Keys."

"That was very terrible, my dear. How could you bear it? How could you?"

"I went to London. You remember how I came to see you. I had very little money, just twenty pounds, and mother, who had only fifty pounds a year, could not help me, and I was so wretched that I did not know what to do. I went from one place to another offering myself as teacher, although I hated teaching and I could not teach well; but no one wanted me, and I was in despair, and I used to get so desperately hungry too. Oh, you cannot tell what it is to want a meal – just to have a good dinner, say, once a week, and bread-and-butter all the rest of the days. Oh, you do feel so empty when you live on bread-and-butter and nothing else! Then I had a letter from Bertha, and she made me a proposal. She sent with the letter a manuscript. Ah! I feel you start now."

"This is terrible!" said Mrs. Trevor. She stood up in her excitement; she backed a little way from Florence.

"You guess all, but I must go on telling you," continued the poor girl. "She sent this manuscript, and she asked me to use it as my own. She said she did not want any of the money, and she spoke specious words, and I was tempted. But I struggled, I did struggle. It was Miss Franks who really was the innocent cause of pushing me over the gulf, for she read the manuscript and said it was very clever, and she showed it to her brother, the man I am now engaged to, and he said it was clever, and it was accepted for the Argonaut almost before I knew what I was doing; and that was the beginning of everything. I was famous. Bertha was the person who wrote the stories and the essays. I was wearing borrowed plumes, and I was not a bit clever; and, oh, Mrs. Trevor, the end has come now, for Mrs. Aylmer has died and has left all her great wealth to the hospitals, and I have had a letter from Bertha. You may read it, Mrs. Trevor: do read it. This Is what Bertha says."

As Florence spoke, she thrust Bertha's letter into Mrs. Trevor's hand.

"I will ring for a light," said the widow. She approached the bell, rang it, and the little rosy-faced servant appeared.

"Tea, Mary, at once for two, and some hot cakes, and bring a lamp, please.

"I am glad and I am sorry you have told me," she said. "I will read the letter when the lamp comes. Now warm yourself.

"You poor girl," she said. "I will not touch this letter until I see you looking better.

"I will read this in another room," she said; "you would like to be alone for a little."

She left the room softly with Bertha's letter, and Florence still sat on by the fire. She sat so for some time, and presently, soothed by the warmth, and weary from all the agony she had undergone, the tired-out girl dropped asleep.

CHAPTER XLV.

"ALL THE ROSES ARE DEAD."

When she awoke she heard someone moving in the room. There was the rustling of a paper and the creak of a chair.

"Oh, Mrs. Trevor, have I told you everything?" she said, and she sprang to her feet, the color suffusing her cheeks and her eyes growing bright. "And are you going to send me out into the cold? Are you never going to speak to me again? Are you going to forsake me?"

"No, no; sit down," said a voice, and then Florence did indeed color painfully, for Mrs. Trevor was not in the room, but Maurice Trevor stood before the excited girl.

"My mother has told me the whole story," he said.

He looked perturbed, his voice shook with emotion, and his face was pale, and there was an angry scowl in his eyes. He took Florence's hand and pushed her into a chair.

"Sit down," he said. She looked up at him drearily.

"All the roses are dead," she said softly; "the time of roses is over."

"No, it is not over; it will come back again at the proper season," said Trevor; "and don't think that I – "

"But do you know – "

"I know," he answered gravely. He bowed his head; then he drew a chair forward.

"I must speak to you," he said.

"You know everything?" she repeated.

"I do," he said. "I am glad you came to mother and told her. It is true I suspected much. You know that passage in Miss Keys's handwriting which I told you about some time ago, and the identically same passage in the newspaper article which was supposed to be yours? – to a great extent my eyes were opened at that time, but not completely."

"You look very, very angry," she said.

"I am angry," he answered; "but, I think I can say with truth, not with you."

"With Bertha?"

"Please do not mention her name."

"But I have been to blame: I have been terribly weak."

"You have been terribly weak; you have been worse. You have done wrong, great wrong; but, Florence – may I call you by your Christian name? – winter comes in every year, but it is followed by spring, and spring is followed by summer, and in summer the roses bloom again, and the time of roses comes back, Florence, and it will come back even to you."

"No, no," she said, and she began to sob piteously.

"You have been so good, so more than good to me," she said. "If you had known you would have despised me."

"If I had known I should have gone straight to Miss Keys and put a stop to this disgraceful thing," was the young man's answer. "I suppose, Florence," he added, after a pause, "you, if you have time to think of me at all, pity me now because I am a penniless man."

"Oh, no, no," she replied; "it is not good for people to be too rich. I have quite come to be of that opinion."

"Thank God, then, we are both of one way of thinking because God, though He has not given you this special talent, has given you much."

"Much," she repeated, vaguely.

"Yes," he repeated, speaking earnestly: "He has given you attractiveness, great earnestness of purpose, and oh! a thousand other things. He has at least done this for you, Florence: He has made you so that in all the wide world you are the only woman for me. I can love no one but you, Florence – no one else – no one else, even though you did fall."

"You cannot: it is impossible," answered Florence. "You cannot love me now."

"I have loved you all through, and this thing does not alter my love. You see, Florence," he added, "it was not the girl who was famous that I cared for. I never did care a bit about the wonderful writing which was supposed to be yours. Far from liking it, I hated it. I never wanted a wife who would be either famous or clever."

"And Tom Franks," continued Florence, "only wants me because he thinks me clever. But he will not wish to marry me now."

"I only wanted you for yourself. Will you wait for me and let me try to make a home for you, and when I have done that, will you come to me? I am going away to Australia; I have heard of a good post there, and I am going out almost at once, and if things succeed, you and the mother can come to me, and in the meantime will you stay with her and comfort her?"

"Oh, you are too good," said poor Florence; but she did not cry now. She clasped her hands and gazed straight into the fire; then she looked up at Trevor with awe.

"God must have forgiven me when He sent you to me," she said simply.

The next moment he had clasped her in his arms.

CHAPTER XLVI.

A DENOUEMENT

Tom Franks was seated before his desk in his office. He was a good deal perturbed. His calm was for the time being destroyed, although it wanted but a week to his wedding-day. He did not look at all like a happy bride-groom.

"It is a case of jilting," he said to himself, and he took up a letter which he had received from Florence that morning. It was very short and ran as follows:

"I cannot marry you, and you will soon know why. When you know the reason you won't want me. I am terribly sorry, but sorrow won't alter matters. Please do not expect the manuscript. Yours truly,

"Florence Aylmer."

"What does the girl mean?" he said to himself. "Really, at the present moment, the most annoying part of all is the fact that I have not received the manuscript. The printers are waiting for it. The new number of the Argonaut will be nothing without it. The story was advertised in the last number, and all our readers will expect it."

A clerk came in at that moment.

"Has Miss Aylmer's manuscript come, sir?" he said. "The printers are waiting for it."

"The printers must wait, Dawson; I shall be going to see Miss Aylmer and will bring the manuscript back. Here, hand me a telegram form. I want to send a wire in a hurry."

The clerk did so. Franks dictated a few words aloud: "Will call to see you at twelve o'clock. Please remain in."

He gave the man Florence's address, and he departed with the telegram. Franks looked up at the clock.

He thought for a little longer. Anderson opened the door of his room and called him.

"Is that you, Franks?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I speak to you for a moment?"

"Certainly," replied Franks. He went into his chief's room and shut the door.

"I have been thinking, Franks," said Mr. Anderson, "whether we do well to encourage that extremely pessimistic writing which Miss Florence Aylmer supplies us with."

"Do well to encourage it?" said Franks, opening his eyes very wide.

"I have hesitated to speak to you," continued Mr. Anderson, "because you are engaged to the young lady, and you naturally, and very justly, are proud of her abilities; but the strain in which she addresses her public is beginning to be noticed, and although her talent attracts, her morbidity and want of all hope will in the end tell against the Argonaut, and even still more against the General Review. I wish you would have a serious talk with her, Franks, and tell her that unless she alters the tone of her writings – my dear fellow, I am sorry to pain you, but really I cannot accept them."

Franks uttered a bitter laugh.

"You are very likely to have your wish, sir," he said. "I am even now writing for the manuscript for the fourth story which you know was advertised in the last Argonaut."

"I believe she will always write according to her convictions."

"And that is what pains me so much," continued Mr. Anderson. "I have myself looked over her proofs, and have endeavoured to infuse a cheerful note into them; but cutting won't do it, nor will removing certain passages. The same miserable, unnatural outlook pervades every word she says. I believe her mind is made that way."

"You are not very complimentary," said Franks, almost losing his temper. He was quiet for a moment, then he said slowly: "We are very likely to have to do without Miss Aylmer. I begin to think that she is a very strange girl. She has offered to release me from my engagement; in fact, she has declared that she will not go on with it, and says that she cannot furnish us with any more manuscripts."

"Then, in the name of Heaven, what are we to do for the next number?" said Mr. Anderson. "Look through all available manuscripts at once, my dear fellow; there is not a moment to lose."

"I'll do better than that," replied Franks. "Our public expect a story by Miss Aylmer in the next number, and if possible they must have it. I have already wired to say that I will call upon her, and with your permission, as the time is nearly up, I will go to Prince's Mansions now."

"It may be best," said Mr. Anderson. He looked gloomy and anxious. "You can cut the new story a bit cannot you, Franks?"

"I will do my best, sir."

The young man went out of the room. He was just crossing his own apartment when the door was opened and his clerk came in.

"A lady to see you, sir: she says her business is pressing."

"A lady to see me! Say I am going out. I cannot see anyone at present. Who is she? Has she come by appointment?"

"She has not come by appointment, sir; her name is Miss Keys – Miss Bertha Keys."

"I never heard of her. Say that I am obliged to go out and cannot see her to-day; ask her to call another time. Leave me now, Dawson; I want to keep my appointment with Miss Aylmer."