The Daughter Pays.

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds.

CHAPTER I

THE MAN IN THE GALLERY

"_Yes, I have felt like some deserted world That G.o.d hath done with, and had cast aside Untilled, no use, no pleasure, not desired ...

Could such a world have hope that, some blest day, G.o.d would remember her, and fashion her Anew?_"--Jean Ingelow.

The full sunshine of late June, tempered by the medium of London atmosphere, illumined the long extent of Gallery Number Sixteen at Hertford House.

It was a pay-day, and there were, in consequence, but few visitors. The expanse of polished floor glimmered with a suggestion of coolness, a hint of ice; and the summer light touched with brilliance the rich colour on the walls, the mellow harmonies of the bits of old furniture ranged below.

The s.p.a.ce and solitude, the silence and sunlight, emphasised and threw into strong relief the figures of two girls, deep in contemplation before the portrait of Isabella, wife of Paul de Vos.

Though these were modern, even ultra-modern, Nattier and Boucher, great interpreters of an artificial age, might have hailed them as kindred spirits. They seemed eloquent of all that luxury could produce in the way of exotic perfection. But for the absence of rouge and powder, they were as far removed from the dingy, the commonplace, or the underbred, as any pre-Revolution marquise, smiling from the windows of her chateau upon a world dark with misery, convulsed with pain, and all unconscious of its very existence.

Far indeed from these hot-house blooms seemed the seamy side. They were of those who feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life. They belonged to the cla.s.s which a novelist of our own day has so happily described as expensive. They were the fine flower of our epoch, and unconscious of their own supreme selfishness.

One was of the pet.i.te type, gipsy brown and captivating, from the tip of her plumes to the shoes and stockings which matched her gown, and upon whose buckles the light winked. The other was taller and more willowy. She was not big, but formed with the lithe grace of the modern Atalanta. Something in the veiled loveliness of her soft eye suggested a dove. Her hair was fair, and her face, wide across the brows, and tapering at the chin, seemed designed to make an involuntary appeal to the heartstrings of any man who looked at her. Every movement of this girl was graceful. Yet one would have felt certain that her grace was unstudied; she was not self-conscious; her attentions seemed entirely absorbed by the beauty of the paintings at which she gazed.

Thus she stood, her chin uplifted; and a man who entered, with halting step, from Gallery Fifteen, shot a keen glance and stopped short.

He was not a young man, and his dress, for London, was negligent; whilst his long black moustache gave him a slightly out-of-date, or provincial, aspect. His black hair showed some grey at the temples, but he appeared to be in vigorous health.

For some long moments he stood in absorbed contemplation of the girlish figure isolated against the dim, dignified background of the gallery: and as he gazed there crept into his face an expression which made it almost devilish. Every feature hardened--the mouth took on a sneer, the eyes glowed with some concentration of feeling which altered his whole face for the worse.

As yet unconscious of his presence, the girl gazed on; and after a minute her smaller, darker friend strolled up and joined her. She said something that made the other laugh. The chime of their mirth sounded sweetly through the empty s.p.a.ce, but brought to the lips of the watcher a curl of contempt. He began to move forward slowly, seemingly intent upon the pictures, but always coming nearer, until he stood where he could hear the girls' light, careless talk.

"My dear," said the smaller girl, "I am thinking all the time what a fancy dress this would make, for anybody that could wear it." They were standing before Mierevelt's lovely portrait of the young nameless lady in the ruff.

As her companion did not immediately reply, she added insistently: "Virginia! Did you hear?"

The lame man started, or, as it were, winced at the sound of the name; yet a certain satisfaction crept into his eyes, as of one who inly reflects: "I thought so! I was not mistaken."

Virginia, thus appealed to, brought her dreamy gaze from the portrait of the burgomaster who sits with his small son. "What? A fancy dress?

Oh, Mims, yes! That little bit of stiffened lace round the back of her hair is an inspiration. I could make it, too--I see just how it's done."

The two proceeded to examine the head-dress in detail, with girlish talk about the way to copy it. "Gold embroidery all down the front of her gown. How sweet!" sighed Virginia admiringly. "But that ruff--would it do?"

"For you? Of course! You could wear it, for you have a throat. But what _did_ little people like me do, when they had all that between their chin and their chest?"

Virginia was much amused. "No, Mims, you were not made for a ruff! But then, _en revanche,_ you can wear all those lovely Venetian reds and ambers that I can't touch!"

Childish talk, but with no suspicion of a critical listener! The lame man heard every word. As the eager girl turned to point across the gallery to a picture exemplifying the colours she meant, she slightly brushed against him, for he was standing within a few feet of her. He stepped back, raising his hat in acknowledgment of her gentle apology; and his eyes, full of something between hostility and contempt, met hers hardly, as if in a challenge, for a puzzling instant before he turned away and limped to another place.

Virginia's colour rose and her lips set, as if an unspoken insult had reached her. She was not used to read hostility in the eyes of men. She recovered, however, in a moment, and continued her study of the pictures, moving round for some minutes longer, until Miriam, leaning near her, murmured:

"Shall we go into the next room? There is a custodian there, and that man keeps on staring odiously."

"Yes; let us go and look at the Greuzes," replied Virginia.

It was not long before the unknown man followed them. He was now more careful, however, and kept his eyes for the beauties of the catalogue instead of allowing them to roam towards the beauties of his own day.

"I don't think he meant to be rude," presently said Virginia doubtfully. "He looked at me almost as though he thought he knew me--as if he expected me to speak to him."

"My dear, it is evident that you must never be allowed to go about London alone," laughed Mims. "As if he knew you, indeed! That's the commonest dodge of all. I am sure he is trying to be rude--he is edging round here now----"

"Oh, nonsense! Let us think about the pictures and take no notice. He could not be rude in a public place like this--he cannot think we are girls of that sort."

"There's the portrait of you," said Mims mischievously, pausing before Greuze's picture ent.i.tled "Innocence"--the picture with the lamb.

It was true, the likeness was striking. Virginia even coloured slightly as she gazed. "Chocolate box!" said she disdainfully. "Greuze is only pretty-pretty! I would far rather be like Isabella de Vos!"

As she spoke she moved away with her undulating grace, the lame man having again approached nearer than was quite consistent with good manners.

"That's the worst of you, Virginia--you can't go about without dragging backwards the heads of all the men that pa.s.s," said Mims in injured tones.

"Talk about gla.s.s-houses!" was her friend's sarcastic response, adding with a little sigh: "Well, you won't long be troubled. Cinderella's clock strikes to-morrow, and I go back to Wayhurst and my native obscurity."

Miriam's soft, dark eyes clouded.

"Native obscurity! No, my dear, that's the tragedy! You were _not_ born to it, and you will never thrive in it! Oh, the pity! I could cry when I think of you, mewed up in that wee brick-box of a villa, and when I remember that it's not much more than two years ago since we were staying with you at Lissendean--riding, hunting, motoring!"

"Don't talk of it, Mimsie, for pity's sake! It can't be helped, you know; and, of course, it isn't half as bad for me as for poor mother."

Mims made a grumpy sound. She was depressed, not only by her friend's impending departure, but by the thought of that friend's destiny.

Virginia Mynors, in the days when she and Miriam Rosenberg were at school together, had been queen of everything. She was the elder daughter of a county gentleman, her clothes came from the best places, she took all the extras, rode, swam, hunted--with no more thought of ways and means than her present appearance led one to suppose.

During the weary days of her father's long illness--a kind of creeping paralysis which lasted for two years--Virginia had known that he had money troubles. But though she had been his devoted nurse and trusted secretary, she was no more prepared than was her b.u.t.terfly mother for the state of financial catastrophe revealed at his death. The solid ground had failed beneath her feet. Everything was gone. Even Lissendean, the home in which she had been born, was mortgaged. They all moved out, the house was let, and upon the few hundreds a year received as rent her mother, herself, her brother Antony, and her little sister Pansy, were to live.

Virginia had to be the moving spirit in it all. She elected to settle at Wayhurst, because there is an excellent public school there, and, as a day boy, Antony, who was nearly fourteen, might obtain the education of a gentleman. For nearly two years now such had been the girl's life.

Yet even Miriam did not guess the truth--did not guess the drudgery and devotion of Virginia's daily round.

Mr. Rosenberg was what is described as rolling in money. He had social ambitions, and was very well pleased when his daughter made friends at school with the daughter of Bernard Mynors. The Rosenbergs, brother and sister, had more than once accepted the whole-hearted hospitality of Lissendean. Their father could not, therefore, with any good grace, make objections to Miriam's pleading when she begged to have Virginia to stay with her.

Miriam had a great deal too much pocket-money. She sent a substantial cheque to Virginia, that she might provide herself with an outfit and railway fares for the projected visit. Virginia was able to devote part of this cheque to the providing of what was locally known as a "supply"

to do the housework while she herself was away. She belonged, indeed, to that wonderful type of woman who can make a pound, expended upon clothes, go as far as another woman makes five, or even ten. She arrived in Bryanston Square for her visit with exactly the right frocks, with her spirits high, and her bloom unimpaired, in spite of the hard life she led. Youth and high spirit will carry all before them. Mr. Rosenberg, when his astute eye rested upon the charming creature, became suddenly aware of her as an incarnate temptation to his son Gerald, upon whom all his hopes were concentrated.

Mr. Rosenberg was not without good impulses. He desired to befriend this beautiful girl to whom Fate had shown herself so cruel. It was, however, more than could be demanded of human nature that he should be ready to console her for her misfortunes with the gift of all his wealth and all his social ambition. As a man of business, he divined her mother to have been the ruin of the family. He knew Mrs. Mynors as a lovely, vain, shallow and selfish person, who all her life had lived for her own amus.e.m.e.nt. Such a mother-in-law would be a burden that Gerald could never carry. Moreover, there were two younger children, of whom one, the little girl, was badly crippled--a permanent invalid.

Had Virginia, being her father's daughter, stood alone, it is just possible that her extreme beauty would have brought Mr. Rosenberg to the point of allowing the match. With her enc.u.mbrances he felt it to be impossible. He did not know that it was at Gerald's instigation that Mims had gone to the length of actually financing the scheme of the visit. Yet his shrewdness rather suspected something of the sort.

During the whole fortnight of Virginia's sojourn he had been on tenter-hooks--manoeuvring to keep his son out of the way without seeming to do so.