Читать книгу King of The Rocks - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 9

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DAUGHTERS of society are generally trained and brought from infancy to womanhood according to the doctrines of some settled plan, which plan, in its turn following the individual parental opinion, is either the outcome of fashion or experience.

In most cases fashion is the motive power of choice, and that is the chief reason why one physically matured but unmarried woman largely resembles another in the expression of her individuality.

An ardent pity for the gentler sex seizes the intelligent dreamer, male or female, who sees and understands. Fashion is but another name for custom, and custom is a remorseless thing which thrives in undiminished vigour long after the reasons that originally explained its existence have died or disappeared. No custom is more fixed and settled than the iron prejudice of habit which guards the education of woman—women whom men delight to call the most perfect handiwork of the Creator, and yet still bind in their opinions as the irresponsible half of humanity, to be treated as eternal children and fenced in with a thousand absurd and half-imaginary precautions. Woman, already sufficiently restrained and circumscribed by the unfortunate physical limitations of her sex, becomes, by the system of her education, a creature deceitful, fanciful, and imaginative. She is compelled to affect a grotesque combination of childish innocence and modesty, an attitude impossible to sustain except by the exercise of a ridiculous deceit, which, after all, deceives no one, if the truth be told, except perhaps the woman herself who uses it.

Behold there the fountain from which spring the thousand and one cynical and half-truthful proverbs which entangle the feet of womankind at the instance of the wit of man. The wits see the effect, but they continue to despise the cause.

Nine out of ten women born into the world are constrained during girlhood to gain their experience of life and to mould their own dispositions from and upon the unexciting and still more uninstructive incidents of their semi-conventual education until they wed. After that, the deluge! Released from prison bars, which formerly sought even to restrain their very thoughts, they experience a sudden limitless freedom, their callow minds are confronted with life as it is, unveiled truths are remorselessly thrust beneath their notice. Unprepared by any previous training more instructive than their own undisciplined imaginings, marriage becomes, instead of a blissful and crowning experience, something little short of a tragedy, the key to unlock the Bluebeard's chamber of the world's dreadful secrets, thitherto a thousand times intensified because undefined and only guessed at.

Marriage thus is constituted a furnace which tries the temper of the steel; it consumes the bad, it refines the best. Little wonder, then, that man, who is a curious, inquisitive animal, much given to probing exciting problems and watching interesting developments, invariably prefers the society of one newly-married young woman to that of a score of single girls, however bright-eyed the innocents may be. The reason of that purely masculine peculiarity has frequently been asked—behold the riddle solved.

Mara Hescombe's parents had fallen in love when boy and girl together, but they only married late in life, being constrained to wait many years for the fulfilment of their hopes by force of inexorable circumstances. Mara was their only child.

They were not exclusively votaries of the modern fashionable world, being rather of the old-time school of thoughtful, retiring folk, but they were, nevertheless, subject in a certain degree to the dictates of established customs; therefore, when their daughter had arrived at the age of ten they placed the girl in charge of the head mistress of a fashionable ladies' college, an establishment which had stood the test of years, and had already furnished to the world a score of brilliant leaders of society.

Mara Hescombe spent three years at that boarding-school, during which time she casually acquired four doubtful excellencies—an extravagant love of reading, an elegant slanted handwriting, a smattering of modern languages, and a very decided taste for the wearing of expensive frocks. At the age of thirteen she emancipated herself from control, parental or scholastic, and continued her education after her own methods. These methods chiefly consisted in the division of the waking hours of each day into two separate employments—the morning absolutely devoted to the indiscriminate exploration of her father's well-stocked library, the afternoon to pleasure: a canter in the park, tennis, or the earnest designing of a frock, which invariably, when completed, sent her dressmaker into bubbling ecstacies.

"Bon Dieu!" the little Frenchwoman would cry, "what taste, what esprit! Ciel, mam'selle, you would make a fortune as one modiste. You have ze—comment s'appelle—T'il—ze genius; c'est a dire vous etes, 'chic.'"

Lady Hescombe's dowager friends, who one and all believed in the conventual system as the most perfect education for girls not yet arrived at a marriageable age, predicted a shocking future career for a child whose parents were so doting and weak-minded as to suffer themselves to be dictated to by such a forward chit; they counselled bread and water or a convent as a cure for stubbornness, certainly a firm course of treatment, involving a return to boarding-school, and the finishing of a fashionable education according to approved standards. "Why," they chorused as a final argument, "a girl is not looked at by men nowadays unless she can play like a Chopin or sing like a Patti. You will never marry her, dear, never!" It was true that Mara had declined even to receive the visits of a music-master.

Lady Hescombe sighed and agreed, and consulted her husband.

"Let the girl alone," advised Sir Stuart; "she'll find a husband fast enough, she has her mother's face."

But in spite of the pretty flattery, the mother's soul was troubled. She was of the old school, and believed a woman's only destiny lay in the field of marriage. Her doubts in time communicated themselves to her husband, and half reluctantly the pair sent for Mara one day to talk seriously with her. Mara was fifteen then, and had already enjoyed in undisputed sovereignty her own way for two years. A servant found her in the library, with her head in the cushions of a lounge, her heels on a conveniently placed table; she was reading an expurgated edition of the "Decameron," not from choice, but she had never heard at that time of such a thing as expurgation.

"Your father and mother wish to see you in Sir Stuart's study, Miss Mara," said the butler respectfully enough, though his old-fashioned, grey-headed soul was shocked by the young lady's unconventional attitude, albeit he worshipped his young mistress.

"Oh, bother, Jacob," returned Miss Hescombe, without stirring. "I'm at an interesting part just now; tell them I'll be along in a moment."

The moment was a long one; but the conspirators in the study were not unthankful for the slight reprieve, although they imagined themselves sternly resolved in mind.

"I wonder what is keeping the dear child?" murmured Lady Hescombe at the end of fifteen minutes.

"I expect she's reading. She hates to be disturbed when she has a book; but really, Alice, I think she ought to show us a little more respect. I shall ring for Jacob to remind her we are waiting."

But Mara, opening the door at that moment, walked into the room, fresh, breezy, and convincing.

"You sent for me, father. Mother" (note, not "papa," "mamma"), "what is it?"

She looked from one to the other with an engaging smile. Sir Stuart cleared his throat.

"Your mother and I," he began, and hesitated; then, "sit down, my dear; we want to talk with you a little."

Mara perched herself at once upon the old gentleman's knee.

"All right, father, only do be quick about it. I have an appointment to ride in the park with Charley Morrison at three, and it's nearly half-past two already. I have to dress and lots of things before then."

Lady Hescombe saw her opportunity and took it.

"You are not going alone, my dear, I hope, as you did last week, to my great displeasure; you must take a groom with you, at least."

Mara pouted her lips.

"It's not half the fun with a groom,'' she declared.

"But you are growing into a big girl now, my child, and the proprieties must be considered."

"Bother the proprieties," said Mara Hescombe. "They were only invented for girls who can't take care of themselves. I can take care of myself, can't I, father?" and she dabbed a kiss upon the old gentleman's nose, to his combined delight and discomfort.

"But your mother is right, my darling," he said half apologetically, to be truthful. "If you do that sort of thing often, people would commence to talk."

The girl sprang from his knee on to the floor with sudden energy.

"That is the sort of thing that does make me angry," she cried, with fiery vehemence. "People will talk. One can't turn round but people will talk. If a girl does the most innocent things, people will talk. A man may do it, and it's nothing. Even if the girl does the same thing, so long as there's a third person present, it's nothing. There's really no harm in it alone; but she must do everything in a crowd, or people will talk! People seem to think that no girl is fit to be trusted! Let them talk, I say; it makes one wild. I am fit to be trusted, so there." She heaved a great sob in her passion.

"My darling," murmured both her parents together.

"Look here, father and mother," continued the girl, "you know I am a good girl, don't you?"

"I'd like to hear anyone dare say a word to the contrary," said Sir Stuart warmly.

"You are my daughter," declared Lady Hescombe proudly, as if that fact were amply sufficient to account for unexampled funds of goodness.

"Well," said Mara, "you know that I'm not going to do anything wrong, whether I take a groom with me or not. Life wouldn't be worth living if one has to do everything in fear and trembling of what a lot of folk one doesn't know and doesn't care a fig for would say if they heard of it. Let them hear, and let them talk just as much as they like! They're nothing to me. All I care about is your good opinions, daddy and mammy, and you know I'm all right, don't you, dears?"

The "daddy" and "mammy" were pet names, and only used on rare occasions when coaxing was necessary as a last resort; they never failed.

"Bless the child," cried Sir Stuart, "she shall do as she likes."

Lady Hescombe sighed, but said nothing. She yielded to her daughter's stronger will, but, like all her sex when beaten, was of the same opinion still.

"Thank you, dears," cooed Mara, graciously including her mother in her gratitude; "and now, if that's all you want me for, I'll be off. Young Morrison has a beastly temper if he's kept waiting."

Sir Stuart looked at Lady Hescombe and Lady Hescombe looked at him; they had been routed in one direction, they were nervous of renewing the attack in another, but Lady Hescombe remembered the danger of delay, and decided not to postpone the event.

"One moment, my pet," she began tremulously, a fact Mara was quick to note to her own advantage, disclosing as it did an acknowledgment both of her strength and her mother's weakness. "Your father and I have been thinking about you and your future, and trying to decide what will be best for our darling in order to secure her happiness and comfort when we are both dead and gone. Ah, yes, my dear," she went on quickly, noticing the girl's gesture of painful dissatisfaction on mention of so sombre a subject, "some day we must be called away, everyone must die, and your father and I are both growing old now, dearie, and that is why we must now think of you and your future, so that when God calls upon us to leave our pet, we may know that she is in safe hands. We could not die happily unless."

"Oh, mammy dear, don't speak of dying," cried the girl, melted into tears at the very thought of losing her loved ones.

"Ah, but I must, you are growing into a woman now, Mara, able to see and judge for yourself, and you know these things must be. It is our dearest hope to be allowed to be spared until we see our darling happily settled in life, and married to some good man in whose hands we may safely leave her when the parting comes."

"I will never marry; I will never leave you," sobbed Mara.

"Don't cry, pet, don't cry," muttered Sir Stuart, with a suspicious break in his own voice.

"So you see, dear," went on Lady Hescombe steadily, disregarding the interruption, "as you are a good girl who wishes to please her poor old father and mother, we want you to help us by doing what we know is best for your good. You know how we love you and how we have always cared for you, and you know that all we do and wish is for your good. It is not too much for us to ask you to help us for your own sake, is it, my child?"

The appeal was an artful one, and went straight to the girl's heart. Mara threw her arms round her mother's neck, and rubbed her tear-wet face on the old lady's cheek.

"What is it you want me to do, mammy dear?"

Lady Hescombe glanced triumphantly at Sir Stuart.

"Well, pet, you know that nowadays a young lady of society is expected to be very wise, and to know and to be able to do many things which we have allowed you to neglect through our fondness for you, dear; that is our fault and we are to blame, not you, but I know my brave little girl will soon repair her deficiencies to please us."

Mara dried her tears, and looked at her mother wonderingly.

"What things, mother?" her voice had regained its calm.

This was slightly discouraging, but the old lady spoke on still confidently.

"Well, dear, every lady is expected nowadays to be a linguist, at any rate to speak French and German fluently, and then she should be a musician, or have some other accomplishments. Every educated man expects now his wife to be not only educated but an accomplished woman."

Mara shook her head.

"Father said only yesterday that the only way to learn foreign languages properly is by mixing with the people whose tongue you want to acquire; those are his very words. I'd learn German in a week in Berlin, and I just long to see Paris. As for music, mother, I just love it, but I couldn't learn it; I'd try really to please you, but it would be money thrown away, I know; it's beyond me! I'm not musical at all, I can't keep a tune in my head for ten minutes together; really, mammy, I'm telling you the truth, dear. But I can recite; you ask Jacob or any of the servants. I just sent them into hysterics the other night in the kitchen after you had gone to bed by a piece out of Huck Finn; I was the Duke of Bilgewater. They screamed so much I thought every minute they'd wake you and daddy up; the footman says I ought to be on the stage, he says I'd make a fortune at the Friv." She laughed merrily at the recollection, then suddenly her face sobered, and assumed an expression of grave mystery. "Mammy, dear, and you, daddy, I'll tell you a secret. Do you remember, daddy, the other night at dinner when the Secretary of State for the Colonies was here he said that a real author needed nothing but his writings to make him an attractive personality for ever? Well, I mean to be a great authoress. I'm writing a book!"

The announcement was made with tragic seriousness; Lady Hescombe looked at Sir Stuart, Sir Stuart looked back at Lady Hescombe. Both sighed, but, as usual, the girl had vanquished them, and presently she departed unrestrained, after depositing a breezy kiss upon either of their brows.

There was a long silence after her departure.

"Really, my dear," murmured Lady Hescombe at last, "we could do worse than adopt the child's suggestion about travelling; it is absolutely necessary that she should have a good accent. Even those horrid Quimper girls spent a year abroad before they were considered finished."

Sir Stuart arose and took up his hat.

"We must consider it," he said. "I hate leaving England, but if it is necessary—" and he sighed again, leaving the sentence unfinished. "I am going to the club for an hour," he added presently and departed, bowing low to his wife like the courtly old gentleman he was.

Meanwhile, Mara rode unattended to the park, dressed in a silk velvet habit that both became her well and satisfied her taste for excellence. She encountered soon a boy of twenty, who, mounted on a big bay thoroughbred, waited for her in murmuring impatience.

"What kept you?" he demanded. "You're near a half-hour late."

"I'll tell you after we have had a gallop," replied the girl, and for a while she kept her companion busily occupied in following her rather reckless course, but a press of vehicles soon compelled a halt.

"Now tell me," insisted his boyship, catching her.

Mara turned to him with mirthful eyes.

"Guess!" she said.

"Can't," he growled, his temper still a little ruffled, "unless it was dressing; girls take such years to shove on a frock. I wonder they ever leave their mirrors."

"I take no time to dress," declared Mara indignantly. "I'd race you any day."

"Well, I give it up."

The girl looked at him pityingly.

"Of course you give it up, you never did have more than one idea in your head at a time."

"All right to that; you wait! But never mind, what's your news?"

"Father and mother," with a ripple of laughter, "had me in the study for a lecture; they wanted me to go to school again, so that I might learn enough to be a credit to the man I marry. Pooh, why I know as much as half a dozen men already—men like you anyway, Charley," with a frankly critical glance at the boy. "Fancy me going to school. But I fixed them up in two two's; they won't ask me again, I guess," the last two words with a strong American accent.

"Good for you, old girl; what'll they be wanting next?—old fogies!"

"How dare you!"

Like a flash of light Mara turned a face blazing with anger on the boy, then she pulled her mare's rein sharply with one hand, and with the other let the whip fall heavily upon the spirited creature's flanks. With a bound the mare turned and the girl galloped homewards alone with set face and quivering lips, meditating furiously on the slighting word spoken of her parents. She never spoke to Charlie Morrison again.

Next month she took her parents for a prolonged continental tour.

Thus Mara Hescombe grew to womanhood, mistress of herself, and queen of the household of her parents. Her first grown-up dinner-party was not a startling event to her, for she had presided at many another during her girlhood; her first grown-up ball was even less exciting, for she had arranged all her dances beforehand with as cool a sang-froid as any tenth season belle; but her coming of age was a final emancipation almost as complete as the attainder of majority of a man; and if the young lady did not buy herself a latch-key to celebrate the event, it was merely because she really did not need one in a house where her word was Medean law.

Not only over her parents was Miss Hescombe accustomed to wield her tyrannical sceptre. Every one about her felt her influence more or less; that is, every one with whom she was brought in contact, and at the same time wished to influence, for the young lady could be very disdainful to those she did not like. Young girls adored her, partly because she was beautiful—for young girls are the most cheerful worshippers of beauty in the world—partly because she was the embodiment of that freedom which the female heart sighs for, and yet in nearly every instance is afraid to grasp. Older women were a little afraid of her, perhaps because of her inquiring eyes and searching tongue, perhaps because of a ruthless pen which had already, through the medium of a fairly successful novel, won the girl some fame as a fearless unmasker of social shams and mockeries. Young men voted her good fun or a jolly chum, until they knew her better, whereupon they usually singed their wings at the fire in her vestal shrine, for Miss Hescombe, though romantically inclined, had arrived at the age of twenty-four quite fancy free. Old men and old ladies invariably doted on her, for to these the girl showed herself at her best—reverential, thoughtful, and unselfish.

Her present, which was her second visit to Australia, was undertaken in the interests of patriotic literature, for Miss Hescombe had determined to write a book which should enlighten the really widespread ignorance of the people of England as to the condition of their cousins dwelling in the Antipodes—an ignorance which she had discovered on her return to Britain from her first sojourn in the land of the South.

Occupied in a remorseless hunt for copy, the adventure which had brought beneath her ken the romantic figure of the young Australian, Julian Savage, had come to her as a gift of the gods, and she seized upon the chance with an eagerness she scarcely attempted to conceal, and straightway she fastened the spirit of her subject upon the marble table of her mental dissecting-room, holding her scalpel aloft. But, alas! she found that she could not dissect a spirit, and the man himself was as elusive as a shadow. Every inquiry concerning him terminated in nothingness. People had heard of him—they knew him to be a remarkably handsome person, an ambitious person, but—There was always a "but."

From a prolonged series of "buts," she gathered that Julian Savage was not too desirable an acquaintance for any young girl to form. For one thing, he was not a member of that section of society, soi-disant the "upper ten"; worse still, he did not seem to want to gain admittance there. Again, he was a man of mystery, about whose doings there were many mutterings and queer fantastic shadows cast. The great "They say" declared him to be a political wire-puller, a secret but colossal democratic agitator, the leader of a reformed band of ruffians, whose very reformation was a menace to the community, so complete it seemed to be, and so mysterious its suddenness "They say" whispered behind glove, moustache, or fan that he was a wonderfully successful gambler and breaker of the law; no one, however, accused him of being a roue, to Miss Hescombe's extreme astonishment. Smuggling was hinted at in connection with his seafaring trade. One thing alone was notorious about him, everybody knew that he had acquired a fortune through the flotation in London of a large gold-mining company, but no one could find a handle to tarnish his name with even there, for the mine had not yet proved a failure, and was still paying dividends, though slender, on capital invested. The mystery surrounding his personality, his habits, his character, his very domicile (for no one knew his settled whereabouts), invested Julian Savage with a tenfold interest in Miss Hescombe's eyes. Her inquisitiveness intensified, and soon she, who had come to Australia to study Australians, discovered that the sphere of her ambitious observation had narrowed into an overweening curiosity concerning the character, disposition, and habits of one solitary man. She was, however, compelled at last to rely, for the assistance necessary for the satisfaction of her curiosity and the pursuit of her studies, upon the half promise she had extracted from Mr. Cecil Vane, Q.C., on the night of Lord Killingworth's dinner. After days of waiting for the fulfilment of that promise, she exercised the prerogative of emancipated womanhood, and indicted to Mr. Vane the following short letter:—

"DEAR MR. VANE,—I fear that the pressure of your affairs has caused you to forget a promise made recently to so insignificant a person as Mara Hescombe. I hate to remind you, but my humility is sincere, and I know that I have stated the true reason of your neglect. Be assured of my forgiveness for past delay, but please remember that the pin and the camphor are awaiting the arrival of the beetle which you have contracted to supply. My mother and father would be glad of your company to dinner on Thursday next.

"Sincerely yours,

"M. H."

Thursday morning brought her a reply:—

"MY DEAR MISS HESCOMBE,—The difficulties of the task you set me, and not the reason you assigned, have hitherto delayed me. I commend your humbleness, without, however—pardon me—entirely giving credence to its sincerity. Many thanks for your invitation to dine, of which I shall gladly avail myself upon condition that your parents and yourself will afterwards be my guests at the opera, when I shall take the opportunity of presenting to you the insect whose capture you have set your heart upon.

"Very sincerely,

"C. VANE."

Miss Hescombe immediately telegraphed—

"Bring the Beetle to dinner."

Mr. Vane returned—

"Fear to alarm the brute; better as it is."

Which message the girl read with subdued delight, for it aroused her expectations.

"Which dress, mammy, do you think I look my very utmost best in?" she inquired when evening approached.

Lady Hescombe considered judiciously.

"I should say the black silk with the jet and silver trimmings, it shows your fair skin so beautifully, my dear; but why?"

"Why?" echoed Mara, "because I want to look my best to-night, mother, for, as we heard that girl the other day in King Street say, 'I'm on the mash.'"

"Not Mr. Vane, dear, is it?" asked the old lady a little wistfully.

"No, mother darling, a beetle," answered Mara Hescombe.