Chapter IV

That was a gala day in Laline's life, a day towards which, in after years, she often looked back with a swift pain at her heart.

How kind they had all seemed! Wallace Armstrong was gentleness itself, and there was in his manner towards her a blending of protecting care with playful admiration peculiarly flattering to a girl in her early teens. Her father, too, was unusually indulgent; and, when he got into the _fiacre_ at Wallace's invitation, and drove back with them to the High Town and the Rue Planché, it was quite a triumphal journey, and the arrival at number seven created considerable sensation. Even Bénoîte was almost civil. Decidedly, she told herself, _Monsieur le Capitaine_ had got hold of a rich and foolish young man, to whom gold was as dross--a _riche Anglais eccentrique_, who might very possibly be coaxed into paying the arrears of monsieur's rent. So that Bénoîte, like every one else, saw everything _couleur de rose_ that evening. And when Laline at last went to bed, after a dinner--a real substantial dinner, with good red wine--her first dinner at a restaurant--and in her new hat, too, with her father and his friend--she laid her head upon her pillow, convinced of her mistake in supposing that Wallace Armstrong was a Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a morose and evil-minded Templar, when in reality he was a Prince Charming!

And, while Laline slept peacefully above, dreaming of triumphal drives, of marvellous new hats, and unlimited bonbons and toys for her friends the children, Mr. Wallace Armstrong and her father, in the shabby smoke-laden _salon_ below, concocted between them the following letter for the delectation of Mr. Alexander Wallace in London,--

"My Dear Uncle Alec,--I can't tell you how grateful I felt at
receiving your letter and enclosure. Things were at a pretty bad
pass for me and my poor Laline when your unexpected help arrived.
I say unexpected, because I know quite well I didn't deserve it;
but you have given me another chance, and I mean to profit by it.
Unfortunately, I fear that it will be quite a fortnight before my
wife is fit to travel. You see, owing to my ill-luck, she has had
a rough time of it lately, and she is young--very little more than
a child, in fact--and un-used to privations. Happily the doctor,
whom I at once fetched in on receiving your kindly help, declares
her constitution to be so good that with rest and nourishing food
she will be herself again in a very short time. But he strongly
recommends me to defer our journey for a fortnight or ten days, at
the least. My wife's maiden name was Laline Garth; her mother was a
country rector's daughter, and she has been most carefully trained
in all womanly virtues, besides being an excellent little cook and
housekeeper. She is wonderfully pretty, although very thin, poor
child! She is not yet eighteen, and knows next to nothing of the
world. In short, she is much, very much too good for me! I am not
sending you the receipts you ask for, as at every moment I find some
new thing we are in need of. Poor Laline and I haven't even decent
clothing yet. You may well say that under the circumstances it was
madness to marry. I admit that perhaps it was; but such madness might
well be inspired by such a girl as Laline. However, you must see her
yourself and judge whether I have over-praised her, and whether among
my many faults there may not be counted unto me the saving virtue of
knowing and loving a good women when I see one.

"Always your affectionate nephew,

"Wallace Armstrong."

"The difficulty now is," observed Wallace, as he fastened the letter and addressed the envelope, after studying the contents with his mentor and friend, "to coach Miss Laline up in her part of the business. She seems somehow or other to possess a good deal of the awkward George Washington faculty. It will be a delicate matter to make her understand that you were an estimable clergyman, and that you are slumbering peaceful within the tomb."

"The best plan," advised the Captain, thoughtfully sipping at his cognac, "is to warn her that your uncle disapproves of all men connected with the turf, and to beg her to think of me as dead. Of course it is not a particularly pleasant experience for an affectionate father----"

"You are going to be paid for it!" Wallace interrupted, with his usual brutal directness. "It is not as though you were being asked to do anything for nothing!"

"And, by-the-bye, the sum was never fixed," said Garth, resting his elbows on the table and scanning his prospective son-in-law sharply. "I must have all that clearly settled before I make that call with you on the Consul to-morrow morning."

And here a difference of opinion was made manifest which seemed to threaten a serious breach between the worthy pair. Wallace Armstrong was inclined to dismiss his future father-in-law's pretensions with the offer of a pound a week for life, or so long as he should retain his uncle's favour. But Laline's father had prepared a fixed scale of charges, from which nothing would induce him to depart. He was making a great sacrifice, he declared; he was relinquishing the love, companionship, and services of his only living relative, the pride of his heart, the legacy of his lost wife, and, out of sheer kindness and compassion for an old friend in difficulties, he was giving her in marriage to a man who he greatly feared would never make her truly happy.

"And if you should grow tired of her or become unkind to her, where would the poor child fly but to me, her old father, whom she has been forced to consider dead, but who, in his old age, must at least be sufficiently well off to provide her with a home when all else fails her!"

Tears stood in Captain Garth's eyes at his own eloquence, to which the younger man listened quite unmoved.

Two pounds a week, to be paid quarterly from the date of the marriage, three pounds a week when the income allowed by Alexander Wallace should be raised to five hundred a year; and in the event of the banker dying and leaving a will favourable to Armstrong, an income for Garth of two hundred and fifty a year for the remainder of his life.

Until fully three o'clock the two men sat smoking and drinking cognac, while they quarrelled and haggled and finally out cards over the settlement of the elder man's allowance in the event of his giving his daughter in marriage to the ex-forger and family scapegrace before him. Not until the early sunrise forced its rays through the green shutters did they part, Randolph Garth having won all he demanded, and retiring to bed in high good humour; while Wallace, disdainfully refusing the offer of a "shake-up" in the _salle-à-manger_, took his way down to the town and his hotel, cursing his future father-in-law for a swindling old reprobate, and his uncle for a narrow-minded old skinflint and imbecile.

The bargain was effected, a bargain which was to transfer the charge of a girl--young, beautiful, innocent, and friendless--from an old scamp to a young one. Garth and Armstrong had arranged their visit to the English Consul after they had renovated their toilets with the remainder of Alexander Wallace's gift; and at the Consul's office due notice was given of the marriage between Laline Garth, aged seventeen, daughter of Randolph Garth, an English subject residing in Boulogne, and Wallace Armstrong, aged twenty-six, of no occupation, whose present address was the Hôtel Mendon, Boulogne.

The one part of the affair which both men appeared to shirk was breaking to Laline the news that she was to be married in three weeks' time. Captain Garth in some measure paved the way for the announcement by taking her into his confidence concerning his state of hopeless insolvency, a thing he had never before done. Laline sat on the window-sill opposite to him in the little _salle-à-manger_, listening very quietly to the tale of his embarrassments, her soft dark eyes fixed intently on his face. She knew quite well, to her bitter mortification, the ever-increasing amounts they owed to Bénoîte and to the tradespeople, whose patience was in several cases altogether exhausted. She herself ate little but bread and butter, and drank nothing but water; but her father was extremely fond of the pleasures of the table, and invariably spent his last franc on wine or tempting _charcuterie_ for his own delectation.

At the end of his recital of his debts and difficulties, which were real enough, Laline looked up suddenly.

"Papa," she said, "I have an idea. It's not the first time it has come into my mind, but I didn't like to speak of it to you before! Why shouldn't I go out and earn some money as a nursery governess? I speak French as well as English, and I'm very fond of children. Then the money I earned would help to pay the bills."

"My dear child," her father began, rather nonplussed by her offer and by the earnestness of her tone, which taught him that this plan had become fixed in her mind, "do you look like a nursery governess? No one would engage you!"

"But Mr. Armstrong took me to Madame Caillard's shop yesterday and made me order a gray cashmere dress and be measured for it--a proper grown-up dress, touching the ground all around; he said he owed you money, and you had told him to buy me what I liked. You can't think how grown-up I shall look in it. And he told me to look in the hair-dresser's shops and notice how hair was dressed now, because I am growing too tall to wear my hair tied back with a ribbon. And I thought all the time of this nursery-governess idea, and was delighted, for I am longing to pay off the bills!"

"My dear little girl," put in her father, who had been listening with ill-concealed impatience, "if you had the least idea of a nursery-governess's duties and salary, you wouldn't entertain such a project for a moment. Nursery governesses are treated much worse than nursemaids, are worked about thirteen hours a day, and paid from fifteen to twenty pounds a year. You, at your age, and without experience, could not hope to receive more than about twelve or fourteen pounds a year to start with, and you would be simply a nurse-girl, a servant, to take your orders from some vulgar and domineering nurse. Even if by a miracle you received the highest possible salary for such a situation, of what use would twenty pounds a year be to me? Five hundred francs, out of which your washing and clothes must come--and we owe about eight thousand francs, at least. No, no, my dear, it's not to be thought of! They must come and carry off our poor little sticks, I suppose, as they have done before; and, if the very worst comes, they can put me in prison."

This conversation impressed and pained Laline deeply. She was greatly disappointed at the manner in which her father disparaged the possible help she was capable of affording him, and fell to wondering if there was no other way out of their difficulties. Down to the pier she wandered, late on a hot afternoon, to think over the subject that was troubling her. In appearance she was a little more sedate than she had been on her first introduction to Wallace Armstrong twelve days before. Her abundant hair was looped up, and her pink cotton frock, fashioned by her own hands, made some attempt to follow the lines of her slim figure. Wallace Armstrong had bought her a pair of long Suède gloves, of which she was extremely proud; so that, with these additions to her toilet, and her new black-lace hat with the rosebuds, she looked a very different being to "_la p'tite Gart_," with the flying hair and blue cotton blouse of a few days ago.

It was of Wallace the girl was thinking as she sat at the end of the pier, looking down into the shining green water. He seemed so rich and so kind; would he not help her father out of his difficulties, especially as he owed him money, on his own confession? She grew suddenly hot and unhappy when she thought of the many francs she had allowed Mr. Armstrong to waste over sweets and trifles to herself, while all the time there was such desperate need of money at home. Was it possible that her father was too proud to ask for help from his friend? But no; she at once dismissed that idea as unlikely. From her knowledge of her father she was not inclined to think that motives of delicacy would ever restrain him from borrowing money wherever he could. Laline was not in the least suspicious, but in her dreamy, half-childish, half-womanly nature there lurked a strange intuition, which illuminated more than any reasoning powers could the natures of those around her.

Of the mercenary plot by which she was to be made the means of supplying her father and Wallace Armstrong with money for their vices and extravagances by her marriage with the latter, she had not the slightest suspicion. More than once she had been startled by the troubled and remorseful expression which crept into Mr. Armstrong's face when she raised her clear eyes to his. The young man had the saving grace to realise the paltry part he was playing, and for three days now he had avoided Laline, and had spent his time in bars and billiard-rooms of the town. He was fully determined to marry her, and to play the part of a kindly and affectionate brother until she could grow to love him. That she would do this sooner or later he took as a foregone conclusion, sharing, as he did with most men, the idea that any woman married to him was bound in time to love him. But meanwhile he did not care to meet the long trustful gaze of her soft dark eyes; and it was almost with a feeling of vexation that this afternoon, as he strolled down the pier, smoking a cigar, with his hands in his pockets and his straw hat tilted over his eyes to protect them from the sun, he found himself face to face with Laline, and saw the look of pleasure on her face as she recognised him.

"We haven't seen you for three days," she said, as he took a seat by her side. "I began to think you must have left Boulogne."

"Without saying 'Good-bye' to you? Was that likely?"

He was to be married to this girl in ten days--they were to pass their future lives together. And yet, seated here by her side in the sunshine, Wallace Armstrong, ordinarily the most self-possessed of men, felt tongue-tied and abashed before her.

She was wonderfully pretty, but her very freshness and fairness became a reproach. He knew that he did not love her--knew, too, that her attraction for him lay chiefly in the utter dissimilarity between her and such women as he had heretofore chiefly noticed. The thought of his own unworthiness, while it failed to turn him from his purpose, served to render him morose and discontented. Laline saw his heavy black eyebrows contract into an ugly frown, and involuntarily drew back from him.

"Are you vexed with us in any way?" she asked, timidly. "With my father or myself, I mean?"

"Don't talk of your father in the same breath with yourself!" he said, harshly. "I never think of you as in any way akin."

Laline flushed painfully.

"Please remember," she said, in a low voice, "that he is my father."

"Do you love him for that, simply because you are told it is your duty?"

"I hope I do," she answered very low. "But I cannot love him as I loved her--my mother."

"Well, you will leave him some day, of course, and will find some one who will appreciate you better. Tell me, Miss Laline--have you any sweethearts in the town?"

She opened her dark eyes wide and laughed.

"Dear, no!" she answered, without the least hesitation. "How should I have time for such things? I am always busy, you know."

"Spoiling your pretty hands with rough housework!"

"Ah, but I remember what you said the other day, and am going to take great care of my nails. And mother always taught me to wear gloves in housework."

"Don't you sometimes want to go back to England?"

Such a transfiguration took place in her face at the words! Her eyes shone, her cheeks flushed, her lips quivered.

"Ah!" she whispered, "I try not to think how much I want to go back there!"

"Would you thank any one who would take you?"

"As a governess, do you mean? But it would put papa to such expense if I were to leave him. And I think--I think there is something or some one that prevents his ever going back there at all."

"But if, for your sake, some one came forward and paid all your father's debts, and provided for him comfortably, and then sailed away with you in one of those nice white-funnelled steamers, and gave you a beautiful home in England, and surrounded you with everything that money and forethought could provide, and all for love of you, what would you say?"

"Why, who would do such a thing?"

"Some one who is very fond of you. Some one not very good, but who believes you could make him better by your sweet influence. Some one whose home is very lonely without a bright-faced Laline to look after things, and to sing about the house as I have heard you sing at the Rue Planché. Some one who loves you, Laline."

She stared into his face with wondering eyes which betrayed no self-consciousness.

"It sounds like a fairy-tale," she said.

"It is true, all the same. You are Cinderella, and I am a degenerate Fairy Prince, Laline!"