Chapter VII

On a winter afternoon in London, rather more than four years after Laline's flight from Boulogne, a beautiful young woman stood in the ground-floor sitting-room of a London lodging-house, poring over the advertisements headed "Wanted" in a daily paper.

To the owner of the house, who was a relative of her old friend Mrs. Melville, of Norwood, this young lady was known as Miss Lina Grahame; but the reader has already made her acquaintance as Laline Garth, who, on a certain rainy morning in Boulogne, became the bride of Wallace Armstrong.

For four years Laline had earned her living in the girls'-school kept by her mother's old school-fellow--four well-occupied uneventful years, spent in the schoolroom, the dormitory, the Crystal Palace, and walks in the neighbourhood of Norwood, looking after the younger pupils, teaching French to the elder ones, preparing and correcting lessons and studying for examinations, with the duties of every hour in the day well-defined and clear, a healthy but monotonous life of gray routine and unchangeable discipline.

And now, at the age of forty-two, Mrs. Melville, Laline's employer and friend, had been carried off to Canada by a cousin and old sweetheart, who, finding himself at the age of forty-five a well-to-do widower, with four young children, had bethought him of that eminent instructress of youth, his widowed cousin, and in a very practical letter had proposed to come over to England, marry her, and take her back with him to Canada to look after his household and his children.

Such an offer, in the eyes of a buxom business-like woman of forty-two, was too advantageous to be refused. Mrs. Melville thought so; and, after speedily disposing of her house and selling the scholastic good-will and name to her senior teacher, she married her cousin with the utmost composure, and dutifully accompanied him to his Canadian home in order to undertake the mental and moral education of her four step-children.

To her junior governess, Miss Lina Grahame, Mrs. Melville gave on parting a travelling-clock, an ivory-bound prayer-book, and some excellent advice.

"I have only one fault to find with you, my dear," she had said, kindly--"you are too pretty. It grew to be quite awkward sending away the foreign masters because they made themselves silly about you, and the pupils noticed it. No--I don't tell you to cut your hair off or to wear blue spectacles; but I do say that I am not surprised that Miss Finch doesn't want to keep you on with the school, although you have such nice ways with the children and such a good French accent. I have myself been a very successful teacher--but then I have always been plain. Now, although it goes against the grain to say it, for a girl with your appearance I suppose that the most desirable profession is marriage."

Laline had suddenly flushed at Mrs. Melville's words, and then burst into a peal of laughter.

"Now, Mrs. Melville," she had cried, "that comes very oddly from you, who are just marrying for the second time! And I have often told you that it is useless to talk like that to me, as I shall never marry."

This parting conversation recurred to Laline as she turned over the advertisement-pages of the papers on this wintry afternoon in search of a suitable scholastic engagement.

"I wonder," she reflected, "that all those years I never let out that I was really married in talking to Mrs. Melville. I often felt strongly tempted to tell her, but that it seemed impossible that just a visit to a Consul's house, and some mumbled words, and a ring which I never wore, can mean a tie for life. It is not as if it had been in a church, and I had gone through a proper religious ceremony, with some kindly-faced clergyman to utter the beautiful words I know. I should have held that to be binding; but as to this, it all seems now like an incident in a half-forgotten dream. And yet I suppose that, if Wallace Armstrong is not dead, I really am his wife, and shall be as long as he and I both live. Yet if he saw me now he would not know me, and I think I should hardly recognise him. It seems absurd. Luckily I have never been the least little bit in love, and do not mean to be, except in day-dreams and with wholly imaginary persons. I never felt anything, I know, when Monsieur Marchand and Herr Pfeiffer got sentimental about me. I suppose they behaved like that just because I was what Mrs. Melville called pretty. She thinks my looks will stand in my way; she would have been amused at my impudence in answering yesterday this advertisement, which I see is inserted again to-day."

And, with her soft eyes sparkling with fun, Laline read over the somewhat remarkable insertion to which she had replied.

"Wanted, as companion and amanuensis to a lady, a well-educated
young girl, refined and beautiful, of high character and gentle
birth. Apply by letter, enclosing photograph, to Occult, Box 72,631,
advertisement-office, _Daily Post_."

"Occult, whoever she may be, must be rather mad," Laline decided. "But I haven't a doubt that she will get dozens of answers. I wonder what she is like? There is an originality about the advertisement which is fascinating; and to be a companion and amanuensis sounds much nicer and more vague than to be teacher in a school."

At that identical moment the repeated double-knock of a telegraph-boy resounded through the hall. Then came a tap at the door of Laline's sitting-room, and a slatternly little servant entered and presented a telegram addressed to "Miss Grahame."

The message ran thus:--

"_Re_ Occult's advertisement. Come at once to 21, Queen Mary
Crescent, Kensington. Photograph and letter approved."

It was with excitement not unmingled with a curious sense of trepidation that Laline got out of a hansom cab, the driver of which had had considerable trouble in discovering the narrow _cul-de-sac_ turning which led to St. Mary's Crescent--a row of old-fashioned houses, mellowed by age and smoke to a deep crimson colour. Near them waved the tall trees of Kensington Gardens, and before their narrow green-painted doors two steps led to a walk three feet wide and a stone-paved yard, over which the wheels of Laline's cab clattered noisily, awakening the protests of more than one pet-dog from the quiet houses into which the noise from the busy thoroughfare of the High Street came only as a distant and soothing murmur.

As Laline laid her hand on the knocker of number seven, she became suddenly embarrassed as to the name of its occupant. Could she ask for Miss or Mrs. Occult?

"I have come in answer to a telegram about an advertisement," she finally announced, as the door was opened by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid, and Laline found herself in a very small square hall dimly lighted by an oil-lamp, and furnished with tapestry-hangings and two oak settles of old-fashioned make.

The servant opened the door of a room to the right of the entrance, and asked the visitor to step inside. Almost at the same moment a young lady darted down the staircase into the hall, so swiftly and suddenly as to suggest the idea that she had been on the watch for the visitor, and joined Laline at the door of the room into which she was being shown.

"It is my aunt who has sent for you," the new-comer whispered confidentially to Laline, after carefully closing the door behind her; "and I do hope she will engage you! The moment I saw your face at the door I took such a fancy to you!"

The speaker was a girl of apparently Laline's own age, well developed, and of medium height, with curiously lithe feline movements. Her dress, of yellow-green serge, was loosely draped about her and caught here and there by silver buckles, her skin was white as paper and framed in an untidy halo of silky yellow-red hair. Regular features, oddly-gleaming green-gray eyes under pale-yellow lashes, and narrow curved red lips completed an _ensemble_ which to Laline was at once repellent and attractive.

"If this was the niece, what would the aunt be?" she asked herself, fascinated by the strange brightness of the girl's eyes. But, as Laline gazed, her new acquaintance suddenly lowered her white eyelids, and the trick struck the other as affected and insincere.

The same cat-like quality which characterised her movements was shown also in her voice, which was marked by a purring and caressing intonation.

"Do you know who my aunt is?" she asked.

And then, as Laline shook her head, the red-haired girl enunciated her aunt's name with much impressiveness.

"She is Mrs. Vandeleur--Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur."

The name meant nothing to Laline, but she saw that the red-haired girl expected her to be struck by it, and she hastened to explain her unmoved attitude.

"I know nothing of London celebrities," she said; "I have not lived in London since I was a child."

"Oh, that accounts for your not having heard of her!" said the other, evidently disappointed. "My aunt is extremely well known; and I should have thought that, to any one who reads the papers----"

"But I don't read the papers!" put in Laline. "I have never had time."

The other girl drew back her head, and appeared to be studying her.

"How delightful!" she murmured, sympathetically. "I should like to be like that--it leaves so many things to be found out. You have lived all your life at Norwood, haven't you?"

The question was asked with such point-blank directness, but, at the same time, with such an appearance of spontaneous simplicity, that Laline was a little taken aback. With the strange intuition which she had retained from her childish days, she already distrusted the apparent friendliness of this picturesque stranger, and she accordingly framed her answer in vague and reserved tones.

"I have lived for a part of my life at Norwood," she answered.

"At a girls'-school? That must be a dull life, but nice and restful for the nerves. Have you any nerves? This house is the worst possible place for you if you have."

The last words were uttered in a very low voice, after a quick glance round the room.

"I don't think I am particularly nervous," Laline replied.

"But you look nervous," remarked the red-haired girl. "Those delicate faces, with pale-pink skins and dark eyes and auburn hair, are always the nervous ones. Now I am colourless and lymphatic, so this house doesn't hurt me!"

"And why is it likely to hurt me?" inquired Laline, calmly.

"Hush--don't talk so loudly! I liked your face so much that I thought I ought to speak to you just to put you on your guard!"

She glanced round her again, and, drawing nearer to Laline, breathed rather than spoke in her ear--

"Are you afraid of ghosts?"

Before Laline could answer, a thin but silvery voice broke upon the silence, and caused the red-haired girl to start guiltily from her companion's side.

"Go to your room, Clare--I wish to speak to Miss Grahame alone!"

Without a word Clare stole away, leaving Laline _tête-à-tête_ with a lady whom she rightly judged to be "Occult," otherwise Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur.

Standing before the picturesque background of dark-red plush curtains which draped the folding-doors through which she had entered, Mrs. Vandeleur appeared to Laline one of the most picturesque figures she had ever seen. Rather under the medium height, and of extreme thinness and fragility, she looked more like a spirit than a woman, an effect heightened by her powdered hair, dressed loosely and high upon her head, her piercing, dark eyes, ivory-white skin, and the soft silvery-gray draperies swathed round her slender form. In her thin hand she held a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, the handle of which was thickly encrusted with turquoise and garnets in an old-fashioned gold setting, and through these she peered in a bird-like manner at Laline, with her head poised a little on one side.

"What is your name," she asked--"your full name, given you at baptism?"

The terms of the question rather disconcerted Laline, and there was a perceptible hesitation in her voice as she replied--

"I am called Lina Grahame."

"That is not your real name!"

"It is the one by which I am known."

"That means," said Mrs. Vandeleur, putting down her eye-glasses and tapping her thin fingers with them, "that you have reasons for concealing your identity?"

"I had at one time, Mrs. Vandeleur, and I have now got used to the names of Lina Grahame, to which I have some right!"

"The surname was a family name?"

"Yes!"

Grahame was indeed the maiden name of Laline's mother, and the girl was startled and interested by Mrs. Vandeleur's surmise.

"I was often called Lina as a child," she added, quickly, to forestall Mrs. Vandeleur's interrogatories.

"The mystery concerns a man," said the little lady in gray, peering again at Laline through her gold-rimmed glasses. "And yet your face----Take off your glove--no, the left hand--and let me look at your lines!"

Laline obeyed. As she did so, with startling distinctness there flashed back upon her memory a similar scene in which she had taken part more than four years ago. In her mind's eye she saw it all again--the hot stirless afternoon in mid-August, the sun's rays shining over a long stretch of gleaming sand and peeping under the straw hat-brim of a big black-haired Englishman with insolent, bright blue eyes. By his side sat a thin over-grown girl of sixteen, listening in rapt silence while he told her fortune by the lines of her hand, and prophesied that all her life through she would be haunted by the influence of a stronger will than hers, and that, before the age of seventeen, she would marry a man who would never cease to dominate her life until death should part them.

Half dreamily, with her thoughts elsewhere, she began to listen while Mrs. Vandeleur, in a level, monotonous voice, as though speaking words dictated to her rather than spontaneous utterances, began to repeat aloud what she professed to read in Laline's hand.

"Early in your life," she murmured, "you were subjected to strangely-opposing influences. Your career has been unlike that of girls of your age. Let me look at your eyes; the light is bad, and I am near-sighted but, before I see them, I will tell you their colour--it will be that of the darkest hazel-nut, a mossy green, with red-brown lights here and there. Do you dream much and vividly?"

"Constantly. And by day as well as by night, I am ashamed to say!" Laline answered, laughing. "I am a born dreamer."

"You are just the person I want!" exclaimed Mrs. Vandeleur, a touch of restless excitement showing itself in her voice and manner. "My niece Clare cannot dream. A dreamer--a day-dreamer--must have a pure white soul, must be untouched by the world, and far above all monetary considerations. What is your age? I could find out by your hands, but I know that I can believe your words."

"I was twenty last August."

"You look younger; you have not yet lost your child-mind. You have never been in love--oh, I know you haven't--you need not tell me!"

"I have certainly never been in love with any one alive."

"That means that you have had ideals, and have loved them in dreams and waking fancies?"

"Sometimes."

"Keep your ideals for your dreams, child, and love them there. In real life you will never meet them. There is but little ideality in end-of-the-century Englishmen. We read the old fairy-tale of the Briar-Rose Princess, and are glad that she awakes at the Prince's kiss. But she was much happier dreaming. In her dreams he and she would never grow old, would never fall sick, would never tire of loving, would never die: autumn winds would never blow down summer leaves, or spring flowers wither at the touch of frost. Life is full of sadness, full of disillusions! Only in dreams and fancies can true happiness be found!"

Something in the sadness of Mrs. Vandeleur's sweet voice brought the tears to Laline's eyes. This woman, with her fairy-like appearance and disconnected talk, her pretensions to sibylline magic, her ready intuition, quick observation, and random guesses at truths she could not know, possessed an undeniable fascination, to which older and more experienced brains than Laline's were wont to succumb. The girl felt that she had met a friend, and one wholly in sympathy with an especial side of her nature; and Mrs. Vandeleur, for her part, had discovered just such a personality as she required, sensitive, impressionable, yet maidenly, reserved, and proud.

"You will make your home here with me, of course," she said, patting Laline's hand. "Bring your things here directly; your room has been waiting for you a long time. Fifty pounds a year and all your expenses. You won't find it too much, for I shall want you always to be picturesquely dressed; but come to me when you require more, and you shall have it. No--I ask no references. Your face and your hand are sufficient references for me. I shall study your hand when I mean to know more. One thing I have learned from it already: in the troubled time before you will want me as a friend--you will come to me for counsel, and I will give it."