In Silk Attire: A Novel

When Annie Brunel tapped at the door and stepped in, Nelly threw all these things aside, and rushed to her old friend, and hugged and kissed her in her usual impulsive manner, with a dozen "my dears" to every sentence. Her friend's story was soon told; she wanted Nelly to help her to get some cheap lodgings in the neighbourhood.

"And so you know where to come first when you're down in your luck," said the girl, giving her another kiss, with the tears coming into her eyes – for Nelly's well-worn heart had still a true and tender throb in it. "So sit you down and take everything off your mind – and share my room to-night, and to-morrow we'll see about business. Give me your bonnet, there now. Poor dear mother Christmas! – and I'll give you something to do until supper-time comes, and then we shall have a bit of cold mutton and bottled stout. Oh, I've had my trials, too, my dear, since I saw you."

"What's been the matter with you, Nelly? That young gentleman, I suppose – ?"

"Oh, yes, he's always at it. But, thank goodness, I've got rid of him at last."

"Quite sure?" said the other, with a smile.

"Oh, quite. Such a fearful row we had, my dear. First about lip-salve; he accused me of using that to make my lips red, when I declare I haven't used it for two years. Very well, just as we had made that up, you know, dear, we were walking along Oxford Street, and there was a match-boy amusing himself, opposite a publichouse, with a lot of other boys, and he was dancing a very, very clever breakdown step, and I said I'd give my ears if I could do that, just in fun, you know; and, lor, the passion he got into! Stormed about my low tastes, abused the British drama, said I had no more sentiment than a clown; and then I ordered him off, and walked home by myself."

"And which of you was the more miserable, Nelly?"

"I miserable? Not I. That very night Mr. Helstone sent me the most beautiful little speech about politics and other stuff, and Mr. Melton says I may use it in my part."

"You'll break that young gentleman's heart, Nelly. Indeed, it is a shame – "

"Nonsense! But I'll have my revenge upon him this time for his quarrelling with me. You see this is a boy's dress. I've made the skirt of it two inches shorter than I should have done. There. And I shall be in tights; and dance a breakdown; and sing a music-hall song; and when the lime-light comes on at the end, I'll stare into it as hard as ever I can."

"But why should you injure your eyes?"

"To provoke him. He will be there. And he hates to see me in a boy's dress; and he hates to see me dance – "

"But I thought you were never to see him again."

"Neither I shall. Never."

Miss Featherstone's landlady tapped at the door, and entered with a letter.

"Please, miss, he says he's sorry to trouble you, but is there an answer?"

Nelly hurriedly ran over the letter, and there was a wicked smile of triumph on her face.

"It's him," she said to her companion. "Would you like to see him? Shall I ask him to come up, since you are here?"

"By all means."

"Mrs. Goddridge, tell him I have a friend with me, and he may come up, if he likes."

Blushing, embarrassed, delighted, shamefaced, and yet radiant with joy, Mr. Frank Glyn was introduced to Annie Brunel. He was a good-looking slightly-built young fellow, with a sensitive cast of face, pleasant large blue eyes, and a certain tenderness about the lines of the mouth which boded ill for his future reminiscences of his acquaintance with Miss Nelly Featherstone. That young person should have been flirted with by a man of stronger mettle than Frank Glyn.

"I hope I am not disturbing you," he said, nervously, looking at the table.

"I hope you are in a better temper than when I last saw you," said she.

"We may let bygones be bygones now, Nelly. It wouldn't do to fight before Miss Brunel. She might have a strange impression of us."

"I think you are two foolish children," said Annie Brunel, "who don't spend a peaceable life when you might."

"I say so, too," said Nelly. "Life is not so long, as I have told him, that we can afford to throw it away in quarrels. And yet he will quarrel. Confess that you always do quarrel, Frank. There's only one person in the world who is always good to me; and I do so love him! When the dear old gentleman who made me these boots brought them home, and when I looked at them, I could have thrown my arms round his neck."

"I dare say you could, without looking at the boots," said her lover, with a fierce and terrible sneer.

"I suppose it's a weakness," said Nelly, with philosophic equanimity, "but I confess that I love a pair of beautiful little, bright, neat, soft, close-fitting boots better than any man I ever saw."

She caught up that charming little pair of gleaming boots, and pressed them to her bosom, and folded her hands over them, and then took them and kissed them affectionately before placing them again on the table.

An awful thundercloud dwelt on poor Frank's brow.

"I shall take them to bed with me," said the young lady, with loving eyes still on the small heels and the green satin; "and I'll put them underneath my pillow, and dream of them all the night through."

Mr. Glyn got up. There was a terrible look in his eyes, and a terrible cold harshness in his voice, as he said:

"I am interrupting your work and your conversation, ladies. Good-night, Miss Brunel; good-bye, Miss Featherstone."

With which he shook hands and departed – to spend the rest of the evening in walking recklessly along dark suburban roads, wondering whether a few drops of prussic acid might not be his gentlest and truest friend.

First love had been awakened in Frank Glyn's heart by the unlucky instrumentality of Miss Featherstone. Delighted with this new and beautiful idealism, he was eager to repay her with an extravagant gratitude for what, after all, was only his own gift to himself. Nelly knew nothing of this occult psychical problem; but was aware of the extravagant gratitude, and conducted herself towards it and him with such results as do not concern this present history.

"You are very hard upon the poor boy," said Annie Brunel.

Nelly pouted prettily, as if she had been ten years younger than she was, and said he had no business to be so quick-tempered. But after supper, when they were retiring for the night, and she had grown confidential, she confessed she was very fond of him, and hoped he would come again and "make it up."

"I can't help quarrelling with him, and he can't help quarrelling with me; and so we'll go on, and on, and on – "

"Until you marry."

"No, until I marry somebody else, for the sake of peace and quiet. And yet I declare if he were to come boldly up to-morrow and insist on my marrying him, I'd do it at once. But he is always too sensitive and respectful, and I can't help teasing him. Why doesn't he make me do what he wants? He's a man, and I'm a woman, and yet I never feel as if he were stronger than I was – as if I ought to look to him for strength, and advice, and what not. He's too much of a girl in his delicate frightened ways."

Next morning Nelly got a messenger and sent him up to Mr. John Hubbard's for Annie Brunel's boxes, which had been left packed up. Then they two went out to inspect some lodgings which had been recommended to them by Miss Featherstone's landlady. The house was a dingy building in Howland Street, Tottenham Court Road; but the rent of the two rooms was small, and Miss Brunel engaged them. She had very little money now in her purse. Mrs. Hubbard and she had been on so peculiar terms that both refrained from talking about salary; and when the boxes were brought down to Nelly's place by the messenger, no communication of any kind accompanied them.

"If they want to see me, Nelly," said Annie Brunel, "they will send to your house, thinking that my address. But I don't want my address to be given them, mind, on any consideration."

"But how are you to live, my dear?"

"I must find out, like other people," she said, with a smile.

"Won't your Anerley friends help you?"

"What help could I take from them? Besides, they are worse off than myself, and that pretty girl of theirs, about whom I have so often spoken to you, is very poorly, and wants to be taken out of London. I should rather like to help them than think of their helping me."

"Won't you come back to the stage, then?"

"Not until I'm starving."

The rehearsals for the new burlesque began, and a farce was put on in which Nelly played; so that, for several days, she was so busy from morning till night that she never had time to run up to see her friend in these poor Howland-street lodgings. So Annie Brunel was left alone. The Anerleys had not her address. The Hubbards she was only too anxious to avoid. Mrs. Christmas, her old companion, was gone; and around her were thousands of her fellow-creatures all struggling to get that bit of bread and that glass of water which were necessary to her existence.

The landlady and her husband treated her with great respect, because, when asked for a month's rent in advance, she at once gave them the two sovereigns demanded. There remained to her, in available money, about twenty-four shillings, which is not a great sum wherewith to support a person looking out for a situation in London.

In about a week's time Nelly Featherstone called. After the usual osculation and "my dearing," Nelly assumed a serious air, and said that it wouldn't do.

"You're looking remarkably ill, and you'll be worse if you sit moping here, and doing nothing. You must be a descendant of Don Quixote. Why not come down to the theatre, see Mr. Melton, and get an engagement?"

"I can't do it, Nelly.

"You mean you won't. Then, at all events, you'll spend to-day as a holiday. The rehearsals are all over. I shall send for Frank, and he will take us into the country."

"For shame! – to drive that poor fellow mad, and then call him back whenever you want a service from him!"

"It will give him far more delight than it will us."

"No, Nelly; I have no heart to go anywhere. If you have promised to meet your Frank, as I imagine, you ought to go off by yourself at once."

"I'm not going to do anything of the kind. Tell me what you mean to do if you remain in the house."

"See if there are any more letters I can write, and watch the postman as he comes round from Tottenham Court Road."

"Then you can't go on doing that for ever. Put on your bonnet, and let us have a walk down Regent Street, and then come and have dinner with me, and spend the afternoon with me, until I go to the theatre."

This she was ultimately persuaded to do. Nelly did her utmost to keep her friend in good spirits; and altogether the day was passed pleasantly enough.

But the reaction came when Nelly had to go down to the theatre alone.

"You look so very wretched and miserable," said she, to Annie. "I can't bear the idea of your going home to that dull room. And what nonsense it is not to have a fire because you can't afford it! Come you down to the theatre; Mr. Melton will give you a stage-box all to yourself; then you'll go home with me to-night, and stay with me."

She would not do that. She went home to the cold dark room – she lit only one candle for economy's sake – and she asked if there were any letters. There were none.

She had only a few shillings left now. She abhorred the idea of getting into debt with her landlady; but that, or starvation, lay clearly before her. And as she sate and pondered over her future, she wondered whether her mother had ever been in the like straits – whether she, too, had ever been alone, with scarcely a friend in the world. She thought of the Count, too.

"If the beggar would marry the king, and exchange her rags for silk attire," she said to herself, bitterly, "now would be the time."

By the nine-o'clock post no letter came; but a few minutes after the postman had passed, the landlord came up to the door of her room.

"A letter, please, miss – left by a boy."

Hoping against hope, she opened it as soon as the man had left. Something tumbled out and fell on the floor. On the page before her she saw inscribed, in a large, coarse, masculine handwriting, these words —

"An old admirer begs the liberty to send the enclosed to Miss Brunel, with love and affection."

But in that assumed handwriting Nelly Featherstone's e's and r's were plainly legible. The recipient of the letter picked up the folded paper that had fallen. It was a five-pound note.

"Poor Nelly!" she said, with a sort of nervous smile; and then her head fell on her hands, which were on the table, and she burst into tears over the scrawled bit of paper.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

POSSESSION

Mr. Joseph Cayley., Junr., sate in his private room in the office of Cayley & Hubbard. He was an unusually tall man, with a thin, cold, hard face, black eyes, black hair, and an expression of extraordinary solemnity. He looked as if none of his ancestors had ever laughed. A shrewd and clear-headed man of business, he was remarkable at once for his upright conduct of professional affairs, and for the uncompromising frankness, with the extreme courtesy, of his personal demeanour. His friends used to wonder how such a man and John Hubbard ever pulled together; but they did, and their business was even better now than when old Mr. Cayley took John Hubbard into partnership.

A card was handed to Mr. Cayley by one of the youths in the office. He glanced at the card, looked at it attentively, and then there came over his face a singular expression of concern, surprise, and almost fear.

"Show her in," he said, sharply, to the lad.

He rose and paced up and down the room for a moment; then he found himself bowing into a chair a lady completely dressed in black, who had just entered.

"Will you permit me," he said, fixing his big black eyes upon her, "to ask my partner to join us? I anticipate the object of your visit – and – and – "

"Does your partner live at Haverstock Hill?"

"Yes."

"I would rather speak with you alone, then," said the young lady, calmly. "I have here a letter from my mother, Mrs. Brunel, to you. I need not explain to you why the letter has not been delivered for years. I was not to deliver it until necessity – "

"You need not explain," said Mr. Cayley, hurriedly taking the letter. "This is addressed to my father; but I may open it. I know its contents; I know everything you wish to know, Miss Brunel."

When he had opened the letter, he read it, and handed it to Annie Brunel, who read these words —

"Mr. Cayley,

"My daughter claims her rights.

"Annie Marchioness of Knottingley."

She looked at him, vaguely, wonderingly, and then at the faded brown writing again. The words seemed to disappear in a mist; then there was a soft sound in her ears, as of her mother's voice; and then a sort of languor stole over her, and it seemed to her that she was falling asleep.

"Take this glass of wine," was the next thing she heard. "You have been surprised, alarmed, perhaps. But you know the handwriting to be your mother's?"

"Yes," was the reply, in a low voice.

"And you understand now why you were to call upon us?"

"I don't know – I don't understand – my mother ought to be here now," said the girl, in hurried, despairing accents. "If that letter means anything, if my mother was a rich lady, why did she keep always to the stage? Why conceal it from me? And my father? – where was he that he allowed her to travel about, and work day after day and night after night?"

"He was dead."

Many and many a time had Joseph Cayley rehearsed this scene upon which he had now entered. His earliest initiation into the secrets of the office was connected with it. It had been a legacy to him from his father; and the unusual mystery and importance of the case had so impressed him, that he used to imagine all the circumstances of the young girl's coming to claim her own, and of his speeches and bearing during the interview. He forgot all his elaborate speeches, and remembering only the bare facts of the case, related them with as great delicacy as he could. Now for the first time did Annie Brunel understand the sad circumstances of her mother's story, and for the moment she lost sight of everything else. She was away back in that strange and mournful past, recalling her mother's patient bearing, her heroic labour, her more than heroic cheerfulness and self-denial, and the bitter loneliness of her last hours.

"It was his friends who kept him from her?" she asked, not daring to look up.

The lawyer knew better; but he dared not tell the cruel truth to the girl.

"Doubtless," he said. "Your father's friends were very proud, and very much against his marrying an actress."

"And my mother feared my going among them?"

"Doubtless. But you need not do so now."

"Do they know who I am?"

"Yes, my lady."

He uttered the words, not out of compliment, but of set purpose. It was part of the information he had to give her. She looked up to him with a curious look, as if he were some magician who had suddenly given her sacksful of gold, and was about to change the gold again into flints.

"If all this is true, why did I never hear it from any one else?"

"We alone knew, and your father's friends. They concealed the marriage as well as they could, and certainly never would speak to any one about you."

"And all these estates you speak of are mine?" she said, with a bewildered look on her face.

"Yes."

"And all that money?"

"Certainly."

"Without the chance of anybody coming forward and saying it is not mine?"

"There is no such chance that I know of, once you have been identified as Lady Knottingley's daughter, and that will not be difficult."

"And I can do with the money what I like?" she asked, the bewilderment turning to a look of joy.

"Most undoubtedly."

"Out of such sums as you mention, I could give 20,000*l.* to one person, and the same amount to another?"

"Certainly. But you will forgive my saying that such bequests are not usual – perhaps you will get the advice of a friend."

"I have only two friends – a Miss Featherstone, and an old gentleman called Mr. Anerley. These are the two I mean."

Mr. Cayley opened his eyes with astonishment.

"Miss Featherstone of the – Theatre?"

"Yes."

"You propose to give her 20,000*l.*?"

"Yes," said the young girl, frankly, and with a bright happy look on her face.

"The imprudence – the indiscretion – if I may say so! – (although it is no business of mine, my lady, and we shall be glad to fulfil any of your instructions). What could such a girl do with that sum of money?"

"What shall I do with all the rest – if it is real, which I can scarcely believe yet? But I wish you to tell me truly what was my mother's intention in keeping this secret from me. I was only to apply to you in extreme need. No one knows how extreme my need is – how extreme it was last night, when it drove me to take out that letter and resolve to appeal to you."

"Your mother told my father why she should keep the secret from you. She wished you never to undergo the wrongs she had suffered by coming in contact with those people whose influence over your father she feared and hated."

"And how she used to teach me always to rely upon the stage!" she said, musingly, and scarcely addressing herself to the man before her. "Perhaps I have done very wrong in relinquishing it. Perhaps I am to have as miserable a life as she had; but it will not be through them."

"Now, my lady, there is no necessity why you should ever see one of the family."

"And it was her wish that I should come to you when I was in extreme distress – ?"

"Distress! I hope not pecuniary – "

"That, and nothing else," said the girl, calmly.

Mr. Cayley was only too glad to become her banker until the legal arrangements should permit of her stepping into a command of money such as Harry Ormond himself had never owned.

"And in the meantime," she added, "you will not mention to any one my having seen you. I do not know what I shall do yet. I fear there is something wrong about it all – something unreal or dangerous; and when I think of my poor mother's life, I do not wish to do anything in haste. I cannot believe that all this money is mine. And the title, too – I should feel as if I were on the stage again, and were assuming a part that I should have to drop in an hour. I don't want all that money; I should be afraid of it. If my mother were only here to tell me!"

Mr. Cayley was called away at this moment to see some other visitor. In his absence John Hubbard came to the door of the room and looked in.

He saw before him a figure which he instantly recognised. The girl was looking at the sheet of brown paper which bore her mother's name, her eyes were wet, and her hands were clasped together, as if in mute supplication to that scrap of writing to say something more and guide her in this great emergency. John Hubbard guessed the whole situation of affairs directly. Without a moment's hesitation, he entered, and Annie Brunel looked up.

"My poor girl!" he said, in accents of deep compassion, with his pale face twitching nervously, "I understand your sad position; and if you had only remained in our house a few days longer, our counsel and advice might have been of service to you in this crisis. How deeply you must feel the want of a true and faithful adviser – !"

John Hubbard became aware that he had made a mistake. All the return that his sympathetic consolation provoked was a calm and penetrating look: and then, with a sudden change of manner, that surprised and half frightened him, she rose to her feet, and said, coldly and proudly —

"I am here on business; it is Mr. Cayley I wish to see."

Bewildered alike by her manner and her speech, Mr. Hubbard only blundered the worse.

"My lady," he said hurriedly, and with profound respect, "you will forgive me if I have been too forgetful in offering you my sympathy. But as an old friend – our old relations – the pleasant evenings – "

"Mr. Hubbard," she said, in the same tone (and before the clear, cold, cruel notes of her voice the walls of his imaginative Jericho fell down and crumbled into dust), "I am much obliged to you and your wife for having employed me. I hope I did my work in return for the food I received. As to your kindness, and the pleasant evenings spent in your house, I have an impression which I need not put into words. You know I had a conversation with your brother before I left your house which seemed to explain your kindness to me. At the same time, I am as grateful to you as I can be."

"That brother of mine again!" thought John Hubbard, with an inward groan.

Mr. Cayley came into the room, and was surprised to find his partner there.

"I wish to speak to you in private, sir," said Miss Brunel to Mr. Cayley; and thus dismissed, John Hubbard retired, thinking of the poor children who had been deprived of handsome little presents all through the blundering folly of their uncle.

"Hang him!" said John Hubbard; "the best thing the fool can do is to shoot himself and leave his money to the boys. As for her, he has set her dead against me for ever. And now she will be Lady Annie Knottingley, and my wife might have been her best friend, and we might have lived, almost, at that splendid place in Berks – and the children – "

There was no more miserable creature in London that day than the Count's brother; and he considered himself an injured, ill-used, and virtuous man.

The appearance of John Hubbard had done this one good thing – it had determined Annie Brunel to make up her mind. It recalled so forcibly the loneliness and misery, the humiliation and wretchedness of these past months, that she instantly resolved never, if she could help it, to come into contact with such people again. With this wealth at her command, she was free. She could choose such friends, and scenes, and pursuits as she liked best; she could – and here the warm heart of her leapt up with joy – she could reach out her hand to those friends who might be in want – she could be their secret protector, and glide in like an invisible fairy to scare away the wolf from their door by the sunshine of her gilded and luminous presence. This splendid potentiality she hugged to her heart with a great joy; and as she went away from Mr. Cayley's office (after a long interview, in which he explained to her the legal aspects and requirements of the situation) there was a fine happy light on her face. She no longer doubted that it was all real. She already felt the tingling of a full hand; and her brain was busy with pictures of all the people to whom that hand was to be freely extended. In many a romance had she played; but never a romance like this, in which all the world but herself was ignorant of the secret. She would go about, like an emperor with a bundle of pardons in his pocket, like a kindly spirit who would transform the coals in poor men's grates into lumps of gleaming rubies, and diamonds, and emeralds. She would conceal her mysterious power; and lo! the invisible will would go forth, and this or that unhappy man or woman – ready to sink in despair before the crushing powers of circumstance – would suddenly receive her kindly help, and find himself or herself enriched and made comfortable by an unknown agency.