Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day

'Not my style,' he said shortly. 'Never mind the girl.'

'Well – there is one more thing, Alec – and a more pleasant subject – about yourself. I want to ask you one or two questions – family questions.'

'I thought you knew all about my family.'

'So I do, pretty well. However – this is really important – most important. I wouldn't waste your time if it was not important. Do you remember your great-aunt Eleanor Fletcher?'

'Very well. She left all her money to charities – Cat!'

'And your grandmother, Mrs. Needham?'

'Quite well. What is in the wind now? Has Aunt Eleanor been proved to have made a later will in my favour?'

'You will find out in a day or two. Eh! Alec, you are a lucky dog. Painter – poet – nothing in which you do not command success. And now – now – '

'Now – what?'

'That I will tell you, my dear boy, in two or three days. There's many a slip, we know, but this time the cup will reach your lips.'

'What do you mean?' cried the young man, startled. 'Cup? Do you mean to tell me that you have something – something unexpected – coming to me? Something considerable?'

'If it comes – oh! yes, it is quite certain to come – very considerable. You are your mother's only son, and she was an only child, and her grandfather was one Robert Fletcher, wasn't he?'

'I believe he was. There's a family Bible on the shelves that can tell us.'

'Did you ever hear anything about the early life and adventures of this Robert Fletcher?'

'No: he was in the City, I believe, and he left a good large fortune. That is all.'

'That is all. That is all. Well, my dear boy, the strangest things happen: we must never be surprised at anything. But be prepared to-morrow – or next day – or the day after – to be agreeably – most agreeably – surprised.'

'To the tune of – what? A thousand pounds, say?'

'Perhaps. It may amount very nearly to as much – very nearly – Ha! ha! – to nearly as much as that, I dare say – Ho! ho!' He chuckled, and wagged his white head. 'Very nearly a thousand pounds, I dare say.' He walked over to look at the picture.

'Really, Alec,' he said, 'you deserve all the luck you get. Nobody can possibly grudge it to you. This picture is charming. I don't know when I have seen a sweeter thing. You have the finest feeling for rock and sea-shore and water. Well, my dear boy, I am very sorry that you haven't as fine a feeling for Armorel Rosevean – the sweetest girl and the best, I believe, in the world. Good-bye! – good-bye! till the day after to-morrow – the day after to-morrow! It will certainly reach to a thousand – or very near. Ho! ho! Lucky dog!'

Mr. Jagenal went away nodding and smiling. There are moments when it is very good to be a solicitor: they are moments rich in blessing: they compensate, in some measure, for those other moments when the guilty are brought to bay and the thriftless are made to tremble: they are the moments when the solicitor announces a windfall – the return of the long-lost Nabob – the discovery of a will – the favourable decision of the Court.

Alec sat down and seized a pen. He wrote hurriedly to his printers: 'Let the present arrangements,' he said, continue unchanged. I shall be in a position in two or three days to make a very considerable payment, and, after that, we will start on a more regular understanding.'

Another knock, and again the discreet man-servant came in on tiptoe. 'Lady refused her card,' he whispered.

The lady was none other than Armorel herself – in morning dress, wearing a hat.

He bowed coldly. There was a light in her eyes, and a heightened colour on her cheek, which hardly looked like a friendly call. But that, of course, one could not expect.

'After our recent interview,' he said, 'and after the very remarkable string of accusations which fell from your lips, I could hardly expect to see you in my studio, Miss Rosevean.'

'I came only to communicate a resolution arrived at by my friends Mr. Roland Lee and Miss Effie Wilmot.'

'From your friends Mr. Roland Lee and Miss Effie Wilmot? May I offer you a chair?'

'Thank you. No. My message is only to tell you this. They have resolved to let the past remain unknown.'

'To let the past remain unknown.' He tried to appear careless, but the girl watched the sudden light of satisfaction in his eyes and the sudden expression of relief in his face. 'The past remain unknown,' he repeated. 'Yes – certainly. Am I – may I ask – interested in this decision?'

'That you know best, Mr. Feilding. It seems hardly necessary to try to carry it off with me – I know everything. But – as you please. They agree that they have been themselves deeply to blame: they cannot acquit themselves. Certainly it is a pitiful thing for an artist to own that he has sold his name and fame in a moment of despair.'

'It would be indeed a pitiful thing if it were ever done.'

'Nothing more, therefore, will be said by either of them as to the pictures or poems.'

'Indeed? From what you have already told me: from the gracious freedom of your utterances at the National Gallery, I seem to connect those two names with the charges you then brought. They refuse to bring forward, or to endorse, those charges, then? Do you withdraw them?'

'They do not refuse to bring forward the charges. They have never made those charges. I made them, and I, Mr. Feilding' – she raised her voice a little – 'I do not withdraw them.'

'Oh! you do not withdraw them? May I ask what your word in the matter is worth unsupported by their evidence – even if their evidence were worth anything?'

'You shall hear what my word is worth. This picture' – she placed herself before it – 'is painted by Mr. Roland Lee. Perhaps he will not say so. Oh! It is a beautiful picture – it is quite the best he has ever painted – yet. It is a true picture: you cannot understand either its beauty or its truth. You have never been to the place: you do not even know where it is: why, Sir, it is my birthplace. I lived there until I was sixteen years of age: the scene, like all the scenes in those pictures you call your own, was taken in the Scilly archipelago.' He started. 'You do not even know the girl who stands in the foreground – your own model. Why – it is my portrait – mine – look at me, Sir – it is my portrait. Now you know what my word is worth. I have only to stand before this picture and tell the world that this is my portrait.'

He started and changed colour. This was unexpected. If the girl was to go on talking in this way outside, it would be difficult to reply. What was he to say if the words were reported to him? Because, you see, once pointed out, there could be no doubt at all about the portrait.

'A portrait of myself,' she repeated.

'Permit me to observe,' he said, with some assumption of dignity, 'that you will find it very difficult to prove these statements – most difficult – and at the same time highly dangerous, because libellous.'

'No, not dangerous, Mr. Feilding. Would you dare to go into a Court of Justice and swear that these pictures are yours? When did you go to Scilly? Where did you stay? Under what circumstances did you have me for a model? On what island did you find this view?'

He was silent.

'Will you dare to paint anything – the merest sketch – to show that this picture is in your own style? You cannot.'

'Anyone,' he said, 'may bring charges – the most reckless charges. But I think you would hardly dare – '

'I will do this, then. If you dare to exhibit this picture as your own, I will, most assuredly, take all my friends and stand in front of it, and tell them when and where it was painted, and by whom, and show them my own portrait.'

The resolution of this threat quelled him. 'I have no intention,' he said, 'of exhibiting this picture. It is sold to an American, and will go to New York immediately. Next year, perhaps, I may take up your challenge.'

She laughed scornfully. 'I promised Roland,' she said, 'that you should not show this picture. That is settled, then. You shall not, you dare not.'

She left the picture reluctantly. It was dreadful to her to think that it must go, with his name upon it.

On a side-table lay, among a pile of books, the dainty white-and-gold volume of poems bearing the name of this great genius. She took it up, and laughed.

'Oh!' she said. 'Was there ever greater impudence? Every line in this volume was written by Effie Wilmot – every line!'

'Indeed? Who says so?'

'I say so. I have compared the manuscript with the volume. There is not the difference of a word.'

'If Miss Effie Wilmot, for purposes of her own, and for base purposes of deception, has copied out my verses in her own handwriting, probably a wonderful agreement may be found.'

'Shame!' cried Armorel.

'You see the force of that remark. It is a great shame. Some girls take to lying naturally. Others acquire proficiency in the art. Effie, I suppose, took to it naturally. I am sorry for Effie. I used to think better of her.'

'Oh! He tries, even now! How can you pretend – you – to have written this sweet and dainty verse? Oh! You dare to put your signature to these poems!'

'Of course,' said the divine Maker, with brazen front and calmly dignified speech, 'if these things are said in public or outside the studio, I shall be compelled to bring an action for libel. I have warned you already. Before repeating what you have said here you had better make quite sure that you can prove your words. Ask Miss Effie Wilmot what proofs she has of her assertion, if it is hers, and not an invention of your own!'

Armorel threw down the volume. 'Poor Effie!' she said. 'She has been robbed of the first-fruits of her genius. How dare you talk of proofs?' She took up the current number of the journal. 'That is not all,' she said. 'Look here! This is one of your stories, is it not? I read in a paper yesterday that no Frenchman ever had so light a touch: that there are no modern stories anywhere so artistic in treatment and in construction as your own – your own – your very own, Mr. Feilding. Yet they are written for you, every one of them: they are written by Lady Frances Hollington. You are a Triple Impostor. I believe that you really are the very greatest Pretender – the most gigantic Pretender in the whole world.'

'Of course,' he went on, a little abashed by her impetuosity. 'I cannot stop your tongue. You may say what you please.'

'We shall say nothing more. That is what I came to say on behalf of my friends. I wished to spare them the pain of further communication with you.'

'Kind and thoughtful!'

'I have one more question to ask you, Mr. Feilding. Pray, why did you tell people that I was engaged to you?'

'Probably,' he replied, unabashed, 'because I wished it to be believed.'

'Why did you wish it to be believed?'

'Probably for private reasons.'

'It was a vile and horrible falsehood!'

'Come, Miss Rosevean, we will not call each other names. Otherwise I might ask you what the world calls a girl who encourages a man to dangle after her for weeks, till everybody talks about her, and then throws him over.'

'Oh! You cannot mean – ' Before those flashing eyes his own dropped.

'I mean that this is exactly what you have done,' he said, but without looking up.

'Is it possible that a man can be so base? What encouragement did I ever give you?'

'You surely are not going to deny the thing, after all. Why, it has been patent for all the world to see you. I have been with you everywhere, in all public places. What hint did you ever give me that my addresses were disagreeable to you?'

'How can one reply to such insinuations?' asked Armorel, with flaming face. 'And so you followed me about in order to be able to say that I encouraged you! What a man! What a man! You have taught me to understand, now, why one man may sometimes take a stick and beat another. If I were a man, at this moment, I would beat you with a stick. No other treatment is fit for such a man. I to encourage you! – when for a month and more I have known what an Impostor and Pretender you are! You dare to say that I have encouraged you! – you – the robber of other men's name and fame!'

'Well, if you come to that, I do dare to say as much. Come, Miss Armorel Rosevean. I certainly do dare to say as much.'

She turned with a gesture of impatience.

'I have said what I came to say. I will go.'

'Stop a moment!' said Alec Feilding. 'Is it not rather a bold proceeding for a beautiful girl like you, a day or two after you have refused a man, to visit him alone at his studio? Is it altogether the way to let the world distinctly understand that there never has been anything between us, and that it is all over?'

'I am less afraid of the world than you think. My world is my very little circle of friends. I am very much afraid of what they think. But it is on their account, and with their knowledge, that I am here.'

'Alone and unprotected?'

'Alone, it is true. I can always protect myself.'

'Indeed!' He turned an ugly – a villanous – face towards her. 'We shall see! You come here with your charges and your fine phrases. We shall see!'

He had been standing all this time before his study table. He now stepped quickly to the door. The key was in the lock. He turned it, drew it out, and dropped it in his pocket.

'Now, my lovely lady,' he said, grinning, 'you have had your innings, and I am going to have mine. You have come to this studio in order to have a row with me. You have had that row. You can use your tongue in a manner that does credit to your early education. As for your nonsense about Roland Lee and Effie and Lady Frances, no one is going to believe that stuff, you know. As for your question, I did tell Lady Frances that you were engaged to me. And I told others. Because, of course, you were – or ought to have been. It was only by some kind of accident that I did not speak before. As I intended to speak the next day, I anticipated the thing by twelve hours or so. What of that? Well, I shall now have to explain that you seem not to know your own mind. It will be awkward for you – not for me. You have thrown me over. And all you have got to say in explanation is a long rigmarole of abuse. This not my own painting? These not my own poems? These, again, not my own stories? Really, Miss Armorel Rosevean, you know so very little of the world – you are so inexperienced – you are so easily imposed upon – that I am inclined to pity rather than to blame you. Of course, you have tried to do me harm, and I ought to be angry with you. But I cannot. You are much too beautiful. To a lovely woman everything, even mischief, is forgiven.'

'Will you open the door and let me go?'

'All in good time. When I please. It will do you no harm to be caught alone in my studio – alone with me. It will look so like returning to the lover whom, in a moment of temper, you threw over. I will take care that it shall bear that interpretation, if necessary. You have changed your mind, sweet Armorel, have you not? You have repented of that cruel decision?'

He advanced a little nearer. I really believe that he was still confident in his own power of subjugating the sex feminine – Heaven knows why some men always retain this confidence.

Armorel looked round the room: the window was high, too high for her to reach: there was no way of escape except through the door. Then she saw something hanging on the wall within her reach, and she took courage.

He drew still nearer: he held out his hands, and laughed.

'You are a really lovely girl,' he said. 'I believe there is not a more beautiful girl in the whole world. Before you go let us make friends and forgive. It is not too late to change your mind. I will forget all you have said and all the mischief you have done me. My man is very discreet. He will say nothing about your visit here, unless I give him permission to speak. This I will never allow unless I am compelled. Come, Armorel, once more let me be your lover – once more. Give me your hands.'

He bowed suppliant. He looked in her face with baleful eyes. He tried to take her hands. Armorel sprang from him and darted to the other end of the room.

The thing she had observed was hanging up among the weapons and armour and tapestry which decorated this wall of the studio. It was an axe from foreign parts, I think, from Indian parts, with a stout wooden handle and a boss of steel at the upper part. Armorel seized this lethal weapon. It was so heavy that no ordinary girl could have lifted it. But her arm, strengthened by a thousand days upon the water, tugging at the oar, wielded it easily.

'Open the door!' she cried. 'Open the door this moment!'

Her wooer made no reply. He shrank back before the girl who handled this heavy axe as lightly as a paper-knife. But he did not open the door.

'Open it, I say!'

He only shrank back farther. He was cowed before the wrath in her face. He did not know what she would do next. I think he even forgot that the key was in his pocket. The door, a dainty piece of furniture, was not one of the common machine-made things which the competitive German – or is it the thrifty Swede? – is so good as to send over to us. It was a planned and fitted door, the panels painted with reeds and grasses, the gift of some admirer of genius. Armorel raised the axe – and looked at him. He did not move.

Crash! It went through the panel. Crash! again and again. The upper part of the door was a gaping wreck of splinters. Outside, the discreet man-servant waited in silence and expectation. Often ladies had held interviews alone with his master. But this was the first time that an interview had ended with such a crash.

'Will you open the door?' she asked again.

The man replied by a curse.

The lock – a piece of imitation mediævalism in iron – was fitted on to the inner part of the door, a very pretty ornament. Armorel raised her axe again, and brought the square boss at the top of it down upon the dainty fragile lock, breaking it and tearing it from the wood. There was no more difficulty in opening the door. She did so. She threw the hatchet on the carpet and walked away, the discreet man-servant opening the door for her with unchanged countenance, as if the deplorable incident had not happened at all.

CHAPTER XXII

THE END OF WORLDLY TROUBLES

Not more than five minutes afterwards, Mrs. Elstree arrived upon this scene of wreck. The splintered panels, the broken lock, the axe lying on the floor, proclaimed aloud that there had been an Incident of some gravity – certainly what we have called a Deplorable Incident.

Such a thing as a Deplorable Incident in such a place and with such a man was, indeed, remarkable. Mrs. Elstree gazed upon the wreck with astonishment unfeigned: she turned to the tenant of the studio, who stood exactly where Armorel had left him. As the sea when the storm has ceased continues to heave in sullen anger, so that majestic spirit still heaved with wrath as yet unappeased.

In answer to the mute question of her eyes, he growled, and threw himself into his study-chair. When she picked up the axe and bore it back to its place, he growled. When she pointed to the door, he growled again.

She looked at his angry face, and she laughed gently. The last time we saw her she was pale and hysterical. She was now smiling, apparently in perfect health of body and ease of mind. Perhaps she was a very good actress – off the stage: perhaps she shook off things easily. Otherwise one does not always step from a highly nervous and hysterical condition to one of happiness and cheerfulness.

'There appears to have been a little unpleasantness,' she said softly. 'Something, apparently an axe – something hard and sharp – has been brought into contact with the door. It has been awkward for the door. There has been, I suppose, an earthquake.'

He said nothing, but drummed the table with his fingers – a sign of impatient and enforced listening.

'Earthquakes are dangerous things, sometimes. Meanwhile, Alec, if I were you I would have the broken bits taken away.' She touched the bell on the table. 'Ford' – this was the name of the discreet man-servant – 'will you kindly take the door, which you see is broken, off its hinges and send it away to be mended. We will manage with the curtain.'

'What do you want, Zoe?' – when this operation had been effected – 'what is the important news you have to bring me? And why have you given up your berth? I suppose you think I am able to find you a place just by lifting up my little finger? And I hear you have gone without a moment's notice, just as if you had run away?'

'I did run away, Alec,' she replied. 'After what has – been done' – she caught her breath – 'I was obliged to run away. I could no longer stay.'

'What has been done, then? Did Armorel tell you? No – she couldn't.'

'She has told me nothing. I have hardly seen her at all during the last few days. Of course, I know that you proposed to her – because you went off with that purpose; and that she refused you – because that was certain. And, now, don't begin scolding and questioning, because we have got something much more important to discuss. I have given up my charge of Armorel, and I have come here. If you possibly can, Alec, clear up your face a little, forget the earthquake, and behave with some attempt at politeness. I insist,' she added sharply, 'upon being treated with some pretence at politeness.'

'Mind, I am in no mood to listen to a pack of complaints and squabbles and jealousies.'

'Whatever mind you are in, my dear Alec, it wants the sweetening. You shall have no squabbles or jealousies. I will not even ask who brought along the earthquake – though, of course, it was an Angel in the House. They are generally the cause of all the earthquakes. Fortunately for you, I am not jealous. The important thing about which I want to talk to you is money, Alec – money.'

Something in her manner seemed to hold out promise. A drowning man catches at a straw. Alec lifted his gloomy face.

'What's the use?' he said. 'You have failed to get money in the way I suggested. I haven't got any left at all. And we are now at the very end. All is over and done, Zoe. The game is ended. We must throw up the sponge.'

'Not just yet, dear Alec,' she said softly.

'Look here, Zoe' – he softened a little. 'I have thought over things. I shall have to disappear for a while, I believe, till things blow over. Now, here's just a gleam of luck. Jagenal the lawyer has been here to-day. He came to tell me that he has discovered, somehow, something belonging to me. He says it will run up to nearly a thousand pounds. It isn't much, but it is something. Now, Zoe, I mean to convert that thousand into cash – notes – portable property – and I shall keep it in my pocket. Don't think I am going to let the creditors have much of that! If the smash has to come off, I will then give you half, and keep the other half myself. Meantime, the possession of the money may stave off the smash. But if it comes, we will go away – different ways, you know – and own each other no more.'

'Not exactly, my dear Alec. You may go away, if you please, but I shall go with you. For the future, I mean to go the same way as you – with you – beside you.'

'Oh!' His face did not betray immoderate joy at this prospect. 'I suppose you have got something else to say. If that was all, I should ask how you propose to pay for your railway ticket and your hotel bill.'

'Of course, I have got something else to say.'

'It must be something substantial, then. Look here, Zoe: this is really no time for fooling. Everything, I tell you, has gone, and all at once. I can't explain. Credit – everything!'

'I have read,' said Zoe, taking the most comfortable chair and lying well back in it, 'that the wise man once discovered that everybody must be either a hammer or an anvil. I think it was Voltaire. He resolved on becoming the hammer. You, Alec, made the same useful discovery. You, also, became a hammer. So far, you have done pretty well, considering. But now there is a sudden check, and you are thrown out altogether.'

'Well?'

'That seems to show that your plans were incomplete. Your ideas were sound, but they were not fully developed.'

'I don't know you this morning, Zoe. I have never heard you talk like this before.'

'You have never known me, Alec,' she replied, perhaps a little sadly. 'You have never tried to know me. Well – I know all. Mr. Roland Lee, the painter, was one anvil – you played upon him very harmoniously. Effie Wilmot was another. Now, Alec, don't' – she knew the premonitory symptoms – 'don't begin to deny, either with the "D" or without, because, I assure you, I know everything. You are like the ostrich, who buries his head in the sand and thinks himself invisible. Don't deny things, because it is quite useless. Before we go a step farther I am going to make you understand exactly. I know the whole story. I have suspected things for a long time, and now I have learned the truth. I learned it bit by bit through the fortunate accident of living with Armorel, who has been the real discoverer. First I saw the man's work, and I saw at once where you got your pictures from, and what was the meaning of certain words that had passed from Armorel. Why, Armorel was the model – your model, and you didn't know it. And the coast scenery is her scenery – the Scilly Isles, where you have never been. I won't tell you how I pieced things together till I had made a connected story and had no longer any doubt. But remember the night of the Reading. Why did Armorel hold that Reading? Why did she show the unfinished picture? Why did she sing that song? It was for you, Alec. It was to tell you a great deal more than it told the people. It was to let you know that everything was discovered. Do you deny it now?'