“I have no other engagement whatever,” answered the lady, in a cold, measured voice.
“I wish to speak to you upon very serious business,” continued Victor, “and I believe that I can venture to address you with perfect candour. The business to which I allude concerns the interests of Madame Durski, and I have every reason to suppose that you are thoroughly devoted to her interests.”
“For whom else should I care?” returned Miss Brewer, with a bitter laugh. “Madame Durski is the only friend I can count in this world. I have known her from her childhood — and if I can believe anything good of my species, which is not very easy for me to do, I can believe that she cares for me — a little — as she might care for some piece of furniture which she had been accustomed to see about her from her infancy, and which she would miss if it were removed.”
“You wrong your friend,” said Victor. “She has every reason to be sincerely attached to you, and I have little doubt that she is so.”
“What right have you to have little doubt or much doubt about it?” exclaimed Miss Brewer, contemptuously; “and why do you try to palm off upon me the idle nonsense which senseless people consider it incumbent on them to utter? You do not know Paulina Durski — I do. She is a woman who never in her life cared for more than two things.”
“And these two things are—”
“The excitement of the gaming-table, and the love of your worthless friend, Sir Reginald Eversleigh.”
“Does she really love my friend?”
“She does. She loves him as few men deserve to be loved — and least of all that man. She loves him, although she knows that her affection is unreturned, unappreciated. For his sake she would sacrifice her own happiness, her own prosperity. Women are foolish creatures, Mr. Carrington, and you men do wisely when you despise them.”
“I will not enter into the question of my friend’s merits,” said Victor; “but I know that Madame Durski has won the love of a man who is worthy of any woman’s affection — a man who is rich, and can elevate her from her present — doubtful — position.”
The Frenchman uttered these last words with a great appearance of restraint and hesitation.
“Say, miserable position,” exclaimed Miss Brewer; “for Paulina Durski’s position is the most degraded that a woman — whose life has been comparatively sinless — ever occupied.”
“And every day its degradation will become more profound,” said Victor.
“Unless Madame Durski follows my advice, she cannot long remain in
England. In her native city she has little to hope for. In Paris, her
name has acquired an evil odour. What, then, lies before her?”
“Ruin!” exclaimed Miss Brewer, abruptly; “starvation it may be. I know that our race is nearly run, Mr. Carrington. You need not trouble yourself to remind me of our misery.”
“If I do remind you of it, I only do so in the hope that I may be able to serve you,” answered Victor. “I have tasted all the bitterness of poverty, Miss Brewer. Forgive me, if I ask whether you, too, have been acquainted with its sting?”
“Have I felt its sting?” cried the poor faded creature. “Who has felt the tooth of the serpent, Poverty, more cruelly than I? It has pierced my very heart. From my childhood I have known nothing but poverty. Shall I tell you my story, Mr. Carrington? I am not apt to speak of myself, or of my youth; but you have evoked the demon, Memory, and I feel a kind of relief in speaking of that long-departed time.”
“I am deeply interested in all you say, Miss Brewer. Stranger though I am, believe me that my interest is sincere.”
As Victor Carrington said this, Charlotte Brewer looked at him with a sharp, penetrating glance. She was not a woman to be fooled by shallow hypocrisies. The light of the winter’s day was fading; but even in the fading light Victor saw the look of sharp suspicion in her pinched face.
“Why should you be interested in me?” she asked, abruptly.
“Because I believe you may be useful to me,” answered Victor, boldly. “I do not want to deceive you, Miss Brewer. Great triumphs have been achieved by the union of two powerful minds.”
I know you to possess a powerful mind; I know you to be a woman above ordinary prejudices; and I want you to help me, as I am ready to help you. But you were about to tell me the story of your youth.
“It shall be told briefly,” said Miss Brewer, speaking in a rapid, energetic manner that was the very reverse of the measured tones she was wont to use. “I am the daughter of a disgraced man, who was a gentleman once; but I have forgotten that time, as he forgot it long before he died.
“My father passed the last ten years of his life in a prison. He died in that prison, and within those dingy smoke-blackened walls my childhood was spent — a joyless childhood, without a hope, without a dream, haunted perpetually by the dark phantom, Poverty. I emerged from that prison to enter a new one, in the shape of a West-end boarding-school, where I became the drudge and scape-goat of rich citizens’ daughters, heiresses presumptive to the scrapings of tallow-chandlers and coal-merchants, linen-drapers and cheesemongers. For six years I endured my fate patiently, uncomplainingly. Not one creature amongst that large household loved me, or cared for me, or thought whether I was happy or miserable.
“I worked like a slave. I rose early, and went to bed late, giving my youth, my health, my beauty — you will smile, perhaps, Mr. Carrington, but in those days I was accounted a handsome woman — in exchange for what? My daily bread, and the education which was to enable me to earn a livelihood hereafter. Some distant relations undertook to clothe me; and I was dressed in those days about as shabbily as I have been dressed ever since. In all my life, I never knew the innocent pleasure which every woman feels in the possession of handsome clothes.
“At eighteen, I left the boarding-school to go on the Continent, where I was to fill a situation which had been procured for me. That situation was in the household of Paulina Durski’s father. Paulina was ten years of age, and I was appointed as her governess and companion. From that day to this, I have never left her. As much as I am capable of loving any one, I love her. But my mind has been embittered by the miseries of my girlhood, and I do not pretend to be capable of much womanly feeling.”
“I thank you for your candour,” said Victor. “It is of importance for me to understand your position, for, by so doing, I shall be the better able to assist you. I may believe, then, that there is only one person in the world for whom you care, and that person is Paulina Durski?”
“You may believe that.”
“And I may also believe that you, who have drained to the dregs the bitter cup of poverty, would do much, and risk much, in order to be rich?”
“You may.”
“Then, Miss Brewer, let me speak to you openly, as one sincerely interested in you, and desirous of serving you and your charming but infatuated friend. May I hope that we shall be uninterrupted for some time longer, for I am anxious to explain myself at once, and fully, now that the opportunity has arisen?”
“No one is likely to enter this room, unless summoned by me,” said Miss
Brewer. “You may speak freely, and at any length you please, Mr.
Carrington; but I warn you, you are speaking to a person who has no
faith in any profession of disinterested regard.”
As she spoke, Miss Brewer leaned back in her chair, folded her hands before her, and assumed an utterly impassible expression of countenance. No less promising recipient of a confidential scheme could have been seen: but Victor Carrington was not in the least discouraged. He replied, in a cheerful, deferential, and yet business-like tone:
“I am quite aware of that, Miss Brewer; and for my part, I should not feel the respect I do feel for you if I believed you so deficient in sense and experience as to take any other view. I don’t offer myself to you in the absurd disguise of a preux chevalier, anxious to espouse the unprofitable cause of two unprotected women in an equivocal position, and in ci
rcumstances rapidly tending to desperation.”
Here Victor Carrington glanced at his companion; he wanted to see if the shot had told. But Miss Brewer cared no more for the almost open insult, than she had cared for the implied interest conveyed in the exordium of his discourse. She sat silent and motionless. He continued:
“I have an object to gain, which I am resolved to achieve. Two ways to the attainment of this object are open to me; the one injurious, in fact destructive, to you and Madame Durski, the other eminently beneficial. I am interested in you. I particularly like Madame Durski, though I am not one of the legion of her professed admirers.”
Miss Brewer shook her head sadly. That legion was much reduced in its numbers of late.
“Therefore,” continued Carrington, without seeming to observe the gesture, “I prefer to adopt the latter course, and further your interests in securing my own. I suppose you can at least understand and credit such very plain motives, so very plainly expressed, Miss Brewer?”
“Yes,” she said, “that may be true; it does not seem unlikely; we shall see.”
“You certainly shall. My explanation will not, I hope, be unduly tedious, but it is indispensable that it should be full. You know, Miss Brewer, that Sir Reginald Eversleigh and I are intimate friends?”
Miss Brewer smiled — a pale, prolonged, unpleasant smile, and then replied, speaking very deliberately:
“I know nothing of the kind, Mr. Carrington. I know you are much together, and have an air of familiar acquaintance, which is the true interpretation of friendship, I take it, between men of the world — of your world in particular.”
The hard and determined expression of her manner would have discouraged and deterred most men. It did not discourage or deter Victor Carrington.
“Put what interpretation you please upon my words,” he said, “but recognize the facts. There is a strict alliance, if you prefer that phrase, between me and Sir Reginald Eversleigh, and his present intimacy, with his seeming devotion to Madame Durski, prevents him from carrying out the terms of that alliance to my satisfaction. I am therefore resolved to break off that intimacy. Do you comprehend me so far?”
“Yes, I comprehend you so far,” answered Miss Brewer, “perfectly.”
“Considering Madame Durski’s feelings for Sir Reginald — feelings of which, I assure you, I consider him, even according to my own unpretending standard, entirely unworthy — this intimacy cannot be broken off without pain to her, but it might be destroyed without any profit, nay, with ruinous loss. Now, I cannot spare her the pain; that is necessary, indispensable, both for her good, and — which I don’t pretend not to regard more urgently — my own. But I can make the pain eminently profitable to her, with your assistance — in fact, so profitable as to secure the peace and prosperity of her whole future life.”
He paused, and Miss Brewer looked steadily at him, but she did not speak.
“Reginald Eversleigh owes me money, Miss Brewer, and I cannot afford to allow him to remain in my debt. I don’t mean that he has borrowed money from me, for I never had any to lend, and, having any, should never have lent it.” He saw how the tone he was taking suited the woman’s perverted mind, and pursued it. “But I have done him certain services for which he undertook to pay me money, and I want money. He has none, and the only means by which he can procure it is a rich marriage. Such a marriage is within his reach; one of the richest heiresses in London would have him for the asking — she is an ironmonger’s daughter, and pines to be My Lady — but he hesitates, and loses his time in visits to Madame Durski, which are only doing them both harm. Doing her harm, because they are deceiving her, encouraging a delusion; and doing him harm, because they are wasting his time, and incurring the risk of his being ‘blown upon’ to the ironmonger. Vulgar people of the kind, you know, my dear Miss Brewer, give ugly names, and attach undue importance to intimacies of this kind, and — and — in short, it is on the cards that Madame Durski may spoil Sir Reginald’s game. Well, as that game is also mine, you will find no difficulty in understanding that I do not intend Madame Durski shall spoil it.”
“Yes, I understand that,” said Miss Brewer, as plainly as before; “but I don’t understand how Paulina is to be served in the affair, and I don’t understand what my part is to be in it.”
“I am coming to that,” he said. “You cannot be unaware of the impression which Madame Durski has made upon Sir Reginald’s cousin, Douglas Dale.”
“I know he did admire her,” said Miss Brewer, “but he has not been here since his brother’s death. He is a rich man now.”
“Yes, he is — but that will make no change in him in certain respects. Douglas Dale is a fool, and will always remain so. Madame Durski has completely captivated him, and I am perfectly certain he would marry her to-morrow, if she could be brought to consent.”
“A striking proof that Mr. Douglas Dale deserves the character you have given him, you would say, Mr. Carrington?”
“Madam, I am at the mercy of your perspicuity,” said Victor, with a mock bow; “however, a truce to badinage — Douglas Dale is a rich man, and very much in love with Madame Durski; but he is the last man in the world to interfere with his cousin, by trying to win her affections, if he believes her attached to Sir Reginald. He is a fool in some things, as I have said before, and he is much more likely, if he thinks it a case of mutual desperation, to contribute a thousand a year or so to set the couple up in a modest competence, like a princely proprietor in a play, than to advance his own claims. Now, this modest competence business would not suit Sir Reginald, or Madame Durski, or me, but the other arrangement would be a capital thing for us all.”
“H — m, you see she really loves your friend, Sir Reginald,” said Miss
Brewer.
“Tush,” ejaculated Victor Carrington, contemptuously; “of course I know she does, but what does it matter? She would be the most wretched of women if Reginald married her, and he won’t, — after all, that’s the great point, he won’t. Now Dale will, and will give her unlimited control of his money — a very nice position, not so elevated as to ensure an undesirable raking-up of her antecedents, and the means of proving her gratitude to you, by providing for you comfortably for life.”
“That is all possible,” replied Miss Brewer, as calmly as before; “but what am I to do towards bringing about so desirable a state of affairs.”
“You have to use the influence which your position auprès de Madame Durski gives you. You can keep her situation constantly before her, you can perpetually harp upon its exigencies — they are pressing, are they not? Yes — then make them more pressing. Expose her to the constant worry and annoyance of poverty, make no effort to hide the inconvenience of ruin. She is a bad manager, of course — all women of her sort are bad managers. Don’t help her — make the very worst of everything. Then, you can take every opportunity of pointing out Reginald’s neglect, all his defalcations, the cruelty of his conduct to her, the evidence of his never intending to marry her, the selfishness which makes him indifferent to her troubles, and unwilling to help her. Work on pride, on pique, on jealousy, on the love of comfort and luxury, and the horror of poverty and privation, which are always powerful in the minds of women like Madame Durski. Don’t talk much to her at first about Douglas Dale, especially until he has come to town and has resumed his visiting here; but take care that her difficulties press heavily upon her, and that she is kept in mind that help or hope from Reginald there is none. I have no doubt whatever that Dale will propose to her, if he does not see her infatuation for Reginald.”
“But suppose Mr. Dale does not come here at all?” asked Miss Brewer; “he has broken through the habit now, and he may have thought it over, and determined to keep away.”
“Suppose a moth flies away from a candle, Miss Brewer,” returned Carrington, “and makes a refreshing excursion out of window into the cool evening air! May we not calculate with tolerable certainty on his return, and his incremation? The last thing
in all this matter I should think of doubting would be the readiness of Douglas Dale to tumble head-foremost into any net we please to spread for him.”
A short pause ensued — interrupted by Miss Brewer, who said, “I suppose this must all be done quickly — on account of that wealthy Philistine, the ironmonger?”
“On account of my happening to want money very badly, Miss Brewer, and Madame Durski finding herself in the same position. The more quickly the better for all parties. And now, I have spoken very plainly to you so far, let me speak still more plainly. It is manifestly for your advantage that Madame Durski should be rich and respectable, rather than that she should be poor and — under a cloud. It is no less manifestly, though not so largely, for your advantage, that I should get my money from Reginald Eversleigh, because, when I do, get it, I will hand you five hundred pounds by way of bonus.”
“If there were any means by which you could be legally bound to the fulfilment of that promise, Mr. Carrington,” said Miss Brewer, “I should request you to put it in writing. But I am quite aware that no such means exist. I accept it, therefore, with moderate confidence, and will adopt the course you have sketched, not because I look for the punctual payment of the money, but because Paulina’s good fortune, if secured, will secure mine. But I must add,” and here Miss Brewer sat upright in her chair, and a faint colour came into her sallow cheek, “I should not have anything to do with your plots and plans, if I did not believe, and see, that this one is for Paulina’s real good.”
Victor Carrington smiled, as he thought, “Here is a rare sample of human nature. Here is this woman, quite pleased with herself, and positively looking almost dignified, because she has succeeded in persuading herself that she is actuated by a good motive.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 458