Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “We will leave England for ever after the marriage,” he said to himself sometimes. “We will make our home in some fair Italian city, where my Paulina will be respected and admired as if she were a queen, as well as the loveliest and sweetest of women.”

  If he asked Paulina where their future life was to be spent she always replied to him in the same manner.

  “Wherever you take me I shall be content,” she said. “I can never be grateful enough for your goodness; I can never repay the debt I owe you. Let our future be your planning, not mine.”

  “And you have no wish, no fancy, that I can realize, Paulina?”

  “None. Prom my earliest girlhood I have sighed for only one blessing — peace! You have given me that. What more can I ask at your hands? Ah! Douglas, I fear my love has already cost you too dearly. The world will never forgive you for your choice; you, who might make so brilliant a marriage!”

  Her generous feelings once aroused, Paulina could be almost as noble as her lover. Again and again she implored him to withdraw his promise — to leave, and to forget her.

  “Believe me, Douglas, our engagement is a mistake,” she said. “Consider this before it is too late. You are a proud man where honour is concerned, and the past life of her whom you marry should be without spot or blemish. It is not so with me. If I have not sinned as other women have sinned, I have stooped to be the companion of gamblers and roués; I have allowed my house to become the haunt of reckless and dissipated men. Society revenges itself cruelly upon those who break its laws. Society will neither forget nor forgive my offence.”

  “I do not live for society, but for you, Paulina,” replied Douglas, passionately; “you are all the world to me. Let me never hear these arguments again, unless you would have me think that you are weary of me, and that you only want an excuse for getting rid of me.”

  “Weary of you!” exclaimed Paulina; “my friend, my benefactor. How can I ever prove my gratitude for your goodness — your devotion?”

  “By learning to love me a little,” answered Douglas, tenderly.

  “The lesson ought not to be difficult,” Paulina murmured.

  Could she do less than love this noble friend, this pure-minded and unselfish adorer?

  He came to her one day, accompanied by a solicitor; but before introducing the man of law, he asked for a private interview with Paulina, and in this interview gave her a new proof of his devotion.

  “In thinking much of our position, dearest, I have been struck with a sudden terror of the uncertainty of life. What would be your fate, Paulina, if anything were to happen — if — well, if I were to die suddenly, as men so often die in this high-pressure age, before marriage had united our interests? What would be your fate, alone and helpless, assailed once more by all the perplexities of poverty, and, perhaps, subject to the mean spite of my cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, who does not forgive me for having robbed him of his place in your heart, little as he was worthy of your love?”

  “Oh, Douglas!” exclaimed Paulina, “why do you imagine such things? Why should death assail you?”

  “Why, indeed, dearest,” returned Douglas, with a smile. “Do not think that I anticipate so sad a close to our engagement. But it is the duty of a man to look sharply out for every danger in the pathway of the woman he is bound to protect. I am a lawyer, remember, Paulina, and I contemplate the future with the eye of a lawyer. So far as I can secure you from even the possibility of misfortune, I will do it. I have brought a solicitor here to-day, in order that he may read you a will which I have this morning executed in your favour.”

  “A will!” repeated Madame Durski; “you are only too good to me. But there is something horrible to my mind in these legal formalities.”

  “That is only a woman’s prejudice. It is the feminine idea that a man must needs be at the point of death when he makes his will. And now let me explain the nature of this will,” continued Douglas. “I have told you that if I should happen to die without direct heirs, the estate left me by Sir Oswald Eversleigh will go to my cousin Reginald. That estate, from which is derived my income, I have no power to alienate; I am a tenant for life only. But my income has been double, and sometimes treble, my expenditure, for my habits have been very simple, and my life only that of a student in the Temple. My sole extravagance, indeed, has been the collection of a library. I have, therefore, been able to save twelve thousand pounds, and this sum is my own to bequeath. I have made a will, leaving this amount to you, Paulina — charged only with a small annuity to a faithful old servant — together with my personal property, consisting only of a few good Italian pictures, a library of rare old books, and the carvings and decorations of my roams — all valuable in their way. This is all the law allows me to give you, Paulina; but it will, at least, secure you from want.”

  Madame Durski tried to speak; but she was too deeply affected by this new proof of her lover’s generosity. Tears choked her utterance; she took Douglas Dale’s hand in both her own, and lifted it to her lips; and this silent expression of gratitude touched his heart more than the most eloquent speech could have affected it.

  He led her into the room where the attorney awaited her.

  “This gentleman is Mr. Horley,” he said, “a friend and adviser in whom you may place unbounded confidence. My will is to remain in his possession; and should any untimely fate overtake me, he will protect your interests. And now, Mr. Horley, will you be good enough to read the document to Madame Durski, in order that she may understand what her position would be in case of the worst?”

  Mr. Horley read the will. It was as simple and concise as the law allows any legal document to be; and it made Paulina Durski mistress of twelve thousand pounds, and property equal to two or three thousand more, in the event of Douglas Dale’s death.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  “A WORTHLESS WOMAN, MERE COLD CLAY.”

  Neither Lydia Graham nor her brother were quick to recover from the disappointment caused by the untimely fate of Lionel Dale. Miss Graham endeavoured to sustain her failing spirits with the hope that in Douglas she might find a wealthier prize than his brother; but Douglas was yet to be enslaved by those charms which Lydia herself felt were on the wane, and by fascinations which twelve years of fashionable existence had rendered somewhat stale even to the fair Lydia’s most ardent admirers.

  It was very bitter — the cup had been so near her lips, when an adverse destiny had dashed it from her. The lady’s grief was painfully sincere. She did not waste one lamentation on her lover’s sad fate, but she most bitterly regretted her own loss of a rich husband.

  She watched and hoped day after day for the promised visit from Douglas Dale, but he did not come. Every day during visiting hours she wore her most becoming toilets; she arranged her small drawing-room with the studied carelessness of an elegant woman; she seated herself in her most graceful attitudes every time the knocker heralded the advent of a caller; but it was all so much wasted labour. The only guest whom she cared to see was not among those morning visitors; and Lydia’s heart began to be oppressed by a sense of despair.

  “Well, Gordon, have you heard anything of Douglas Dale?” she asked her brother, day after day.

  One day he came home with a very gloomy face, and when she uttered the usual question, he answered her in his gloomiest tone.

  “I’ve heard something you’ll scarcely care to learn,” he said, “as it must sound the death-knell of all your hopes in that quarter. You know, Douglas Dale is a member of the Phoenix, as well as the Forum. I don’t belong to the Phoenix, as you also know, but I meet Dale occasionally at the Forum. Yesterday I lunched with Lord Caversham, a member of the Phoenix, and an acquaintance of Dale’s; and from him I learned that Douglas Dale has publicly announced his intended marriage with Paulina Durski.”

  “Impossible!” exclaimed Lydia.

  She had heard of Paulina and the villa at Fulham from her brother, and she hated the lovely Austrian for the beauty and
the fascination which won her a kind of renown amongst the fops and lordlings — the idlers and spendthrifts of the fashionable clubs.

  “It cannot be true,” cried Miss Graham, flushing crimson with anger.

  “It is one of Lord Caversham’s absurd stories; and I dare say is

  without the slightest foundation. I cannot and will not believe that

  Douglas Dale would throw himself away upon such a woman as this Madame

  Durski.”

  “You have never seen her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then don’t speak so very confidently,” said Captain Graham, who was malicious enough to take some pleasure in his sister’s discomfiture. “Paulina Durski is one of the handsomest women I ever saw; not above five-and-twenty years of age — elegant, fascinating, patrician — a woman for whose sake a wiser man than Douglas Dale might be willing to sacrifice himself.”

  “I will see Mr. Dale,” exclaimed Lydia. “I will ascertain from his own lips whether there is any foundation for this report.”

  “How will you contrive to see him?” “You must arrange that for me. You can invite him to dinner.”

  “I can invite him; but the question is whether he will come. Perhaps, if you were to write him a note, he would be more flattered than by any verbal invitation from me.”

  Lydia was not slow to take this hint. She wrote one of those charming and flattering epistles which an artful and self-seeking woman of the world so well knows how to pen. She expressed her surprise and regret at not having seen Mr. Dale since her return to town — her fear that he might be ill, her hope that he would accept an invitation to a friendly dinner with herself and her brother, who was also most anxious about him.

  She was not destined to disappointment. On the following day she received a brief note from Mr. Dale, accepting her invitation for the next evening.

  The note was very stiffly — nay, almost coldly worded; but Lydia attributed the apparent lack of warmth to the reserved nature of Douglas Dale, rather than to any failure of her own scheme.

  The fact that he accepted her invitation at all, she considered a proof of the falsehood of the report about his intended marriage, and a good omen for herself.

  She took care to provide a recherché little dinner for her important guest, low as the finances of herself and her brother were — and were likely to be for some time to come. She invited a dashing widow, who was her obliging friend and neighbour, and who was quite ready to play propriety for the occasion. Lydia Graham looked her handsomest when Douglas Dale was ushered into her presence that evening; but she little knew how indifferent were the eyes that contemplated her bold, dark beauty; and how, even as he looked at her, Douglas Dale’s thoughts wandered to the fair, pale face of Paulina Durski — that face, which for him was the loveliest that had ever beamed with light and beauty below the stars.

  The dinner was to all appearance a success. Nothing could be more cordial or friendly, as it seemed, than that party of four, seated at a prettily decorated circular table, attended by a well-trained man-servant — the dashing widow’s butler and factotum, borrowed for the occasion.

  Mrs. Marmaduke, the dashing widow, made herself very agreeable, and took care to engage Captain Graham in conversation all the evening, leaving Lydia free to occupy the entire attention of Douglas Dale.

  That young lady made excellent use of her time. Day by day her chances of a rich marriage had grown less and less, and day by day she had grown more and more anxious to secure a position and a home. She had a very poor opinion of Mr. Dale’s intellect, for she believed only in the cleverness of those bolder and more obtrusive men who make themselves prominent in every assembly. She thought him a man easily to be beguiled by honeyed words and bewitching glances, and she had, therefore, determined to play a bold, if not a desperate game. While Mrs. Marmaduke and Captain Graham were talking in the front drawing-room, Lydia contrived to detain her guest in the inner apartment — a tiny chamber, just large enough to hold a small cottage piano, a stand of music-books, and a couple of chairs.

  Miss Graham seated herself at the piano, and played a few bars with an absent and somewhat pensive air.

  “That is a mournful melody,” said Douglas. “I don’t think I ever heard it before.”

  “Indeed!” murmured Lydia; “and yet I think it is very generally known.

  The air is pretty, is it not? But the words are ultra-sentimental.”

  And then she began to sing softly —

  “I do not ask to offer thee

  A timid love like mine;

  I lay it, as the rose is laid,

  On some immortal shrine.”

  “I think the words are rather pretty,” said Douglas.

  “Do you?” murmured Miss Graham; and then she stopped suddenly, looking downward, with one of those conscious blushes which were always at her command.

  There was a pause. Douglas Dale stood by the music-stand, listlessly turning over a volume of songs.

  Lydia was the first to break the silence.

  “Why did you not come to see us sooner, Mr. Dale?” she asked. “You promised me you would come.”

  “I have been too much engaged to come,” answered Douglas.

  This reply sounded almost rude; but to Lydia this unpolished manner seemed only the result of extreme shyness, and, indeed, embarrassment, which to her appeared proof positive of her intended victim’s enthralment.

  Her eyes grew bright with a glance of triumph.

  “I shall win,” she thought to herself; “I shall win.”

  “Have you really wished to see me?” asked Douglas, after another pause.

  “I did indeed wish to see you,” she murmured, in tremulous tones.

  “Indeed!” said Douglas, in a tone that might mean astonishment, delight, or anything else. “Well, Miss Graham, that was very kind of you. I go out very little, and never except to the houses of intimate friends.”

  “Surely you number us — my brother, I mean — among that privileged class,” said Lydia, once more blushing bewitchingly.

  “I do, indeed,” said Douglas Dale, in a candid, kind, unembarrassed tone, which, if she had been a little less under the dominion of that proverbially blinding quality, vanity, would have been the most discouraging of all possible tones, to the schemes which she had formed; “I never forget how high you stood in my poor brother’s esteem, Miss Graham; indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, I thought there was a much warmer feeling than that, on his part.”

  Lydia hardly knew how to take this observation. In one sense it was flattering, in another discouraging. If the belief brought Douglas Dale into easier relations with her, if it induced him to feel that a bond of friendship, cemented by the memory of the past, subsisted between them, so much the better for her purpose; but if he believed that this supposed love of Lionel’s had been returned, and proposed to cultivate her on the mutual sympathy, or “weep with thee, tear for tear,” principle, so much the worse. The position was undeniably embarrassing even to a young lady of Miss Lydia Graham’s remarkable strength of mind, and savoir faire. But she extricated herself from it, without speaking, by some wonderful management of her eyes, and a slight deprecatory movement of her shoulders, which made even Douglas Dale, a by no means ready man, though endowed with deep feelings and strong common sense, understand, as well as if she had spoken, that Lionel had indeed entertained feelings of a tender nature towards her, but that she had not returned them by any warmer sentiment than friendship. It was admirably well done; and the next sentence which Douglas Dale spoke was certainly calculated to nourish Lydia’s hopes.

  “He might have sustained a terrible grief, then, had he lived longer,” said Douglas; “but I see this subject pains you, Miss Graham; I will touch upon it no more. But perhaps you will allow the recollection of what we must both believe to have been his feelings and his hopes, to plead with you for me.”

  “For you, Mr. Dale!” and Lydia Graham’s breast heaved with genuine emo
tion, and her voice trembled with no artificial faltering.

  “Yes, Miss Graham, for me. I need a friend, such a friend as you could be, if you would, to counsel and to aid me. But, pardon me, I am detaining you, and you have another guest.” (How ardently Lydia Graham wished she had not invited the accommodating widow to play propriety!) “You will permit me to visit you soon again, and we will speak of much which cannot now be discussed. May I come soon?”

  As he spoke these hope-inspiring words, there was genuine eagerness in the tone of Douglas Dale’s voice, there was brightness in his frank eyes. No wonder Lydia held the story her brother had told her in scornful disbelief; no wonder she felt all the glow of the fulfilment of long-deferred hope. What would have been her sensations had she known that Douglas Dale’s only actuating motive in the proposed friendly alliance, was to secure a female friend for his adored Paulina, to gain for her the countenance and protection of a woman whose place in society was recognized and unassailable?

  “You will excuse my joining your brother and your friend now, will you not, Miss Graham? I must, at all events, have taken an early leave of you, and this conversation has given me much to think of. I shall see you soon again. Good night!”

  He moved hastily, passed through the door of the small apartment which, opened on the staircase, and was gone. Lydia Graham remained alone for a few moments, in a triumphant reverie, then she joined Gordon Graham and the bewitching widow, who had been making the most of the opportunity for indulging in her favourite florid style of flirtation.

  “I have won,” Lydia said to herself; “and how easily! Poor fellow; his agitation was really painful. He did not even stop to shake hands with me.”

  Mrs. Marmaduke took leave of her dearest Lydia, and her dearest Lydia’s brother, soon after Douglas Dale had departed, and Miss Graham and her brother were left tête-à-tête.

  “Well,” said Gordon Graham, with rather a sulky air, “you don’t seem to have done much execution by your dinner-party, my young lady. Dale went off in a great hurry, which does not say much for your powers of fascination.”