That Girl in Black; and, Bronzie

"I can imagine its seeming so to you," he said aloud. "You have, I think you told me, lived always in the country. Of course, in the country one's acquaintances stand out distinctly, and one remembers every day whom one has and has not seen. In town it is quite different. I find myself constantly forgetting people, and doing all sorts of stupid things, imagining I have seen some one last week when it was six months ago, and so on. But people are really very good-natured."

She listened attentively.

"How difficult it must be to remember all the people you know!" she said, with the greatest apparent simplicity; indeed, with a tone of almost awe-struck reverence.

"I simply don't attempt it," he replied.

"How--dear me, I hardly know how to say it--how _very_ good and kind of you it is to remember me," she said.

Mr Norreys glanced at her sharply.

Was she playing him off? For an instant the appalling suggestion all but took his breath away, but it was quickly dismissed. Its utter absurdity was too self-evident; and the expression on her face reassured him. She seemed so innocent as she stood there, her eyes hidden for the moment by their well-fringed lids, for she was looking down. A faint, the very faintest, suspicion of a blush coloured her cheeks, there was a tiny little trembling about the corners of her mouth. But somehow these small evidences of confusion did not irritate him as they had done when he first met her. On the contrary. "Poor little girl," he said to himself. "I see I must be careful. Still, she will live to get over it, and one cannot be positively brutal."

For an instant or two he did not speak.

Then: "I never pay compliments, Miss Ford," he said, "but what I am going to say may sound to you like one. However, I trust you will not dislike it."

And again he unaccountably hesitated--what was the matter with him? He meant to be kindly encouraging to the girl, but as she stood beside him, looking up with a half-curious, half-deprecating expression in her eyes, he was conscious of his face slightly flushing; the words he wanted refused to come, he felt as if he were bewitched.

"Won't you tell me what you were going to say?" she said at last. "I should so like to hear it."

"It's not worth saying," he blurted out. "Indeed, though I know what I mean, I cannot express it. You--you are quite different from other girls, Miss Ford. It would be impossible to confuse you with the crowd. That's about the sum of what I was thinking, though--I meant to express it differently. Certainly, in the way I have said it, no one by any possibility could take it for a compliment."

To his surprise she looked up at him with a bright smile, a smile of pleasure, and--of something else.

"On the contrary, I do take it as a compliment, as a very distinct compliment," she said, "considering whom it comes from. Though, after all, it is scarcely _I_ that should accept it. The--the circumstances of my life may have made me different--my having been so little in town, for instance. I suppose there are some advantages in everything, even in apparent disadvantages."

Her extreme gentleness and deference put him at his ease again.

"Oh, certainly," he said. "For my part, I often wish I had never been anywhere or seen anything! Life would, in such a case, seem so much more interesting. There would be still things left to dream about."

He sighed, and there was something genuine in his sigh. "I envy people who have never travelled, sometimes," he added.

"Have you travelled much?" she asked.

"Oh, dear, yes--been everywhere--the usual round."

"But the usual round is just what with me counts for nothing," she said sharply. "Real travelling means living in other countries, leading the life of their peoples, not rushing round the capitals of Europe from one cosmopolitan hotel to another."

He smiled a superior smile. "When you have rushed round the capitals of Europe you may give an opinion," his smile seemed to say.

"That sort of thing is impossible, except for Bohemians," he said languidly. "I detest talking about travels."

"Do you really?" she said, with a very distinct accent of contempt. "Then I suppose you have not read--" and she named a book on everybody's table at the moment.

Despard's face lighted up.

"Oh, indeed, yes," he said. "That is not an ordinary book of travels;" and he went on to speak of the volume in question in a manner which showed that he had read it intelligently, while Miss Fforde, forgetting herself and her companion in the interest of what he said, responded sympathetically.

Half unconsciously, as they talked they strolled up and down the wide open space in front of the ferns. Suddenly voices, apparently approaching them, caught the girl's ear.

"Oh, dear," she said, "my friends will be wondering what has become of me! I must go. Good-bye, Mr Norreys," and she held out her hand. There was something simple and perfectly natural in her manner as she did so, which struck him. It was almost as if she were throwing off impulsively a part which she was tired of playing.

He held her hand for a quarter of an instant longer than was actually necessary.

"I--I hope we may meet again, Miss Ford," he said, simply but cordially--something in her present manner was infectious--"and continue our talk."

She glanced up at him.

"I hope so, too," she said quickly. But then her brows contracted again a little. "At least--I don't know that it is very probable," she added disconnectedly, as she hastened away in the direction whence came the voices.

"Hasn't many invitations, I dare say," he said to himself as he looked after her. "If she had been still with Gertrude Englewood I might, perhaps, have got one or two people to be civil to them. But I daresay it would have been Quixotic, and it's the sort of thing I dislike doing--putting one's self under obligation for no real reason."

If he had heard what Maisie Fforde was thinking to herself as she made her way quickly to her cousin!

"What a pity!" she thought. "What a real pity that a man who must have had good material in him should have so sunk--to what I can't help thinking vulgarity of _feeling_, if not of externals--to such contemptible self-conceit and affectations! I can understand, however, that he may have been a nice boy once, as Gertrude maintains. Poor Gertrude--how her hero has turned out! I must never let her know how impossible I find it to resist drawing him out--it surely is not wrong? Oh, how I should _love_ to see him thoroughly humbled! The worst of it is, that when he becomes a reasonable being, as he does now and then, he can be so nice--interesting even--and I forget whom I am talking to. But not for long! No, indeed--`Mrs Englewood's dowdy _protegee_,' the `bread-and-butter miss,' for whom the tenth waltz was too much condescension, hasn't such a bad memory. And when I had looked forward to my first dance so, and fancied the world was a good and kind place! _Oh_!" and she clenched her hands as the hot mortification, the scathing _desillusionnement_, of that evening recurred to her in its full force. "Oh, I hope it is not wicked and un-Christian, but I should _love_ to see him humbled! I wonder if I shall meet him again. I hope not--and yet I hope I shall."

The "again" came next at a dinner-party, to which she accompanied her cousin. Mrs Maberly was old-fashioned in some of her ideas. Nothing, for instance, would persuade her that it was courteous to be _more_ than twenty minutes later than the dinner-hour named, in consequence of which she not unfrequently found herself the first arrival. This in no way annoyed Maisie, as it might have done a less simple-minded maiden; indeed, on the contrary, it rather added to her enjoyment. She liked to get into a quiet corner and watch the various guests as they came in; she felt amused by, and yet sorry for, the little perturbations she sometimes discerned on the part of the hostess, especially if the latter happened to be young and at all anxious-minded. This was the case on the evening in question, when fully half-an-hour had been spent by Miss Fforde in her corner before dinner was announced.

"It is too bad," Maisie overhead the young _chatelaine_ whisper to a friend, "such affectation really amounts to rudeness. But yet it is so awkward to go down--" then followed some words too low for her to understand, succeeded by a joyful exclamation--"Ah, there he is at last," as again the door opened, and "Mr Norreys" was announced.

And Maisie's ears must surely have been praeter-naturally sharp, for through the buzz of voices, through the hostess's amiably expressed reproaches, they caught the sound of her own name, and the fatal words "that girl in black."

"You must think me a sort of Frankenstein's nightmare," she could not help saying with a smile, as Despard approached to take her down to dinner. But she was scarcely prepared for the rejoinder.

"I won't contradict you, Miss Ford, if you like to call yourself names. No, I should have been both surprised and disappointed had you not been here. I have felt sure all day I was going to meet you."

Maisie felt herself blush, felt too that his eyes were upon her, and blushed more, in fury at herself.

"Fool that I am," she thought. "He is going to play now at making me fall in love with him, is he? How contemptible, how absurd! Does he really imagine he can take me in?"

She raised her head proudly and looked at him, to show him that she was not afraid to do so. But the expression on his face surprised her again. It was serious, gentle, and almost deprecating, yet with an honest light in the eyes such as she had never seen there before.

"What an actor he would make," she thought. But a little quiver of some curious inexplicable sympathy which shot through her as she caught those eyes, belied the unspoken words.

"I am giving far more thought to the man and his moods than he is worth," was the decision she had arrived at by the time they reached the dining-room door. "After all, the wisest philosophy is to take the goods the gods send us and enjoy them. I shall forget it all for the present, and speak to him as to any other pleasant man I happen to meet."

And for that evening, and whenever they met, which was not unfrequently in the course of the next few weeks, Maisie Fforde kept to this determination. It was not difficult, for when he chose, Despard Norreys could be more than pleasant. And--"Miss Ford" in her third personality was not hard to be pleasant to; and--another "and"--they were both young, both--in certain directions--deplorably mistaken in their estimates of themselves; and, lastly, human nature is human nature still, through all the changes of philosophies, fashions, and customs.

The girl was no longer acting a part; had she been doing so, indeed, she could not so perfectly have carried out the end she had, in the first fire of her indignation, vaguely proposed to herself. For the time being she was, so to speak, "letting herself go" with the pleasant insidious current of circumstances.

Yet the memory of that first evening was still there. She had not forgotten.

And Despard?

CHAPTER THREE.

The London season was over. Mr Norreys had been longing for its close; so, at least, he had repeated to his friends, and with even more insistence to himself, a great many, indeed a very great many, times, during the last hot, dusty weeks of the poor season's existence. He wanted to get off to Norway in a friend's yacht for some fishing, he said; he seemed for once really eager about it, so eager as to make more than one of his companions smile, and ask themselves what had come to Norreys, he who always took things with such imperturbable equanimity, what had given him this mania for northern fishing?

And now the fishing and the trip were things of the past. They had not turned out as delightful in reality as in anticipation somehow, and yet what had gone wrong Despard, on looking back, found it hard to say. That nothing had gone wrong was the truth of the matter. The weather had been fine and favourable; the party had been well chosen; Lennox-Brown, the yacht's owner, was the perfection of a host.

"It was a case of the workman, not of the tools, I suspect," Despard said to himself one morning, when, strolling slowly up and down the smooth bit of gravel path outside the drawing-room windows at Markerslea Vicarage, he allowed his thoughts to wander backwards some little way. "I am sick of it all," he went on, with an impatient shake, testifying to inward discomposure. "I'm a fool after all, no wiser, indeed a very great deal more foolish, than my neighbours. And I've been hard enough upon other fellows in my time. Little I knew! I cannot throw it off, and what to do I know not."

He was staying with his sister, his only near relation. She was older than he, had been married for several years, and had but one trouble in life. She was childless. Naturally, therefore, she lavished on Despard an altogether undue amount of sisterly devotion. But she was by no means an entirely foolish woman. She had helped to spoil him, and she was beginning to regret it.

"He is terribly, quite terribly _blase_," she was saying to herself as she watched him this morning, herself unobserved. "I have never seen it so plainly as this autumn," and she sighed. "He is changed, too; he is moody and irritable, and that is new. He has always been so sweet-tempered. Surely he has not got into money difficulties--I can scarcely think so. He is too sensible. Though, after all, as Charles often says, perhaps the best thing that could befall the poor boy would be to have to work hard for his living--" a most natural remark on the part of "Charles," seeing that he himself had always enjoyed a thoroughly comfortable sufficiency,--and again Mrs Selby sighed.

Her sigh was echoed; she started slightly, then, glancing round, she saw that the glass door by which she stood was ajar, and that her brother had arrested his steps for a moment or two, and was within a couple of yards of her. It was his sigh that she had heard. Her face clouded over still more; it is even probable that a tear or two rose unbidden to her eyes. She was a calm, considering woman as a rule; for once she yielded to impulse, and, stepping out, quickly slipped her hand through Mr Norreys' arm.

"My dear Despard," she said, "what a sigh! It sounded as if from the very depths of your heart, if," she went on, trying to speak lightly, "if you have one that is to say, which I have sometimes doubted."

But he threw back no joke in return.

"I have never given _you_ reason to doubt it, surely, Maddie?" he said half reproachfully.

"No, no, dear. I'm in fun, of course. But seriously--"

"I'm serious enough."

"Yes, that you are--too serious. What's the matter, Despard, for that there is something the matter I am convinced?"

He did not attempt to deny it.

"Yes, Madeline," he said slowly, "I'm altogether upset. I've been false to all my own theories. I've been a selfish enough brute always, I know, but at least I think I've been consistent. I've chosen my own line, and lived the life, and among the people that suited me, and--"

"Been dreadfully, _miserably_ spoilt, Despard."

He glanced up at her sharply. No, she was not smiling. His face clouded over still more.

"And that's the best even you can say of me?" he asked.

Mrs Selby hardly let him finish.

"No, no. I am blaming myself more than you," she said quickly. "You are much--much better than you know, Despard. You are not selfish really. Think of what you have done for others; how consistently you have given up those evenings to that night school."

"One a week--what's that? And there's no credit in doing a thing one likes. I enjoy those evenings, and it's more than I can say for the average of my days."

But his face cleared a very little as he spoke.

"Well," she went on, "that shows you are not at heart an altogether selfish brute," and now she smiled a little. "And all the more does it show how much better you might still be if you chose. I am very glad, delighted, Despard, that you _are_ discontented and dissatisfied; I knew it would come sooner or later."

Mr Norreys looked rather embarrassed.

"Maddie," he began again, "you haven't quite understood me. I didn't finish my sentence. I was going on to say that at least I had done no harm to anyone else; if no one's any better through me, at least no one's the _worse_ for my selfishness--oh, yes, don't interrupt," he went on. "I know what you'd like to say--`No man liveth to himself,' the high-flown sort of thing. I don't go in for that. But _now_--I have not even kept my consistency. You'd never guess what I've gone and done--at least, Maddie, _can_ you guess?"

And his at all times sweet voice sweetened and softened as he spoke, and into his eyes stole a look Madeline had never seen there before.

"Despard," she exclaimed breathlessly, "have you, can you, have fallen in love?"

He nodded.

"Oh, dear Despard," she exclaimed, "I am so very glad. It will be the making of you. That's to say, if--but it must be somebody _very_ nice."

"Nice enough in herself--nice," he repeated, and he smiled. "Yes, if by nice you mean everything sweet and womanly, and original and delightful, and--oh, you mustn't tempt me to talk about her. But what she is _herself_ is not the only thing, my poor Maddie."

Mrs Selby gave a start.

"Oh, Despard," she exclaimed, "you don't mean that she's a married woman."

"No, no."

"Or, or any one very decidedly beneath you?" she continued, with some relief, but anxiously still.

Despard hesitated.

"That's exactly what I can't quite say," he replied. "She's a lady by birth, that I'm sure of. But she has seen very little. Lived always in a village apparently--she has been in some ways unusually well and carefully educated. But I'm quite positive she's poor, really with nothing of her own, I fancy. I'm not sure--it has struck me once or twice that perhaps she had been intended for a governess."

Mrs Selby gasped, but checked herself.

"She has friends who are kind to her. I met her at some good houses. It was at Mrs Englewood's first of all, but since then I've seen her at much better places."

"But why do you speak so doubtfully--you keep saying `I fancy'--`I suppose.' It must be easy to find out all about her."

"No; that's just it. She's curiously, no--not reserved--she's too nice and well-bred for that sort of thing--but, if you can understand, she's _frankly_ backward in speaking of herself. She'll talk of anything but herself. She has an old invalid father whom she adores--and--upon my soul, that's about all she has ever told me."

"You can ask Mrs Englewood, surely."

Despard frowned.

"I can, and I have; at least, I tried it. But it was not easy. She's been rather queer to me lately. She would volunteer no information, and of course--you see--I didn't want to seem interested on the subject. It's only just lately, since I came here in fact, that I've really owned it to myself," and his face flushed. "I went yachting and fishing to put it out of my head, but--it's been no use--I won't laugh at all that sort of thing again as I have done, I can tell you."

"He's very much in earnest," thought Mrs Selby.

"What--you don't mind telling me--what is her name?" she asked.

"Ford--Miss Ford. I fancy her first name is Mary. There's a pet name they call her by," but he did not tell it.

"Mary Ford--that does not sound aristocratic," mused Mrs Selby. "Despard, tell me--Mrs Englewood is really fond of you. Do you think she knows anything against the girl, or her family, or anything like that, and that she was afraid of it for you?"