Ainslee's Magazine/The Dark Veil/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
THE brightener is worthy of her hire.” That was my motto in the career I chose, or rather the career chosen for me by my guardian angel, Mrs. Carstairs, at the time when my sole fortune was my face—not a mere face, mind you; but a face to find another fortune—good birth, a down-in-the-heel title, and an up-the-spout country house. I made money on her plan, so much money that now and then I could afford to brighten a “client” for love of the game.
Brightening was fun. I brightened charming people, queer people, people bloated with Bradburys, or weighted with woe; people with their hearts in the right place, and their “h's” in the wrong one. I was an expensive luxury, but it paid to have me, as it pays to get a good doctor or the best quality in boots.
After several successful operations and some lurid adventures, I was doing so well on the whole, that I felt the need of a secretary. How to hit on the right one was the problem; for I wanted her young, but not too young; pretty, but not too pretty; lively, not giddy; sensible, yet never a bore; a lady, but not a howling swell; accomplished, but not overwhelming; in fact, perfection. And if you happen to know of my adventures in “the house of the twisted chimney,” you'll understand my faith in advertising.
This time I didn't hide my light under a bushel of initials, or in a box at a newspaper office. I announced:
- The Princess di Miramare requires immediately the services of a gentlewoman, age from twenty-one to thirty years, for secretarial work four or five hours during six days of the week. Must be intelligent and experienced typist-stenographer. Salary, three guineas a week. Apply in person between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty in the morning. No letters considered.
I gave the address of my own flat and awaited developments, with high hopes; for I expected an advertisement under my own name to attract a good class of applicants. You see, most people know who I am; that I was Elizabeth Courtenaye of Courtenaye Abbey in Devonshire; that my wonderful grandmother—a far more famous Elizabeth—married me in Rome to Prince di Miramare, who should have come into piles of money and didn't. Instead, having gone back to the front an hour after the wedding, he left me a war widow without having been a wife.
I advertised in several London dailies for my secretary, and succeeded like a July sale. I wouldn't have believed there were such crowds of pretty typists on earth! Luckily the lift boy was young and of hospitable inclinations, so he enjoyed the rush,
As for me, I felt like a spider that has got religion and pities its flies. There were so many flies—I mean girls—and each in one way or other was more desirable than the others! I might have been reduced to tossing up a copper or having the applicants draw lots, if something very special hadn't happened.
The twenty-sixth girl brought a letter of introduction from Robert Lorillard.
Robert Lorillard! Why, the very name is a thrill!
Of course, I was in love with Robert Lorillard when I was seventeen, just before the war. Everybody was in love with him that year. It was the fashionable thing. Whenever grandmother let me come up to town, I went to the theater to adore dear Robert. Women used to boast that they'd seen him fifty times in some favorite play. But never did he act on the stage so stirring a part as that thrust upon him in August, 1914! I must let the girl with the letter wait while I tell you the story, in case you've not heard the true version.
While she hung upon my decision, and I gazed at Lorillard's signature—worth guineas as an autograph—my mind raced back along the years.
Oh, that gorgeous spring before the war! I wasn't “out,” but somehow I contrived to be “in.” That is, in all the things that I'd have died rather than miss.
We were absurdly poor, but grandmother knew every one. That April, while she was looking for a town house and arranging to present me, we stayed with the Duchess of Stane. Her daughter, Lady June, was the girl in society just then. She had been the girl for several years. She was the prettiest, the most original, and the most daring one in her set. She wasn't twenty-three, but she'd picked up the most extraordinary reputation! I should think there could hardly have been more interest in the doings of “professional beauties” in old days than was taken in hers. No illustrated weekly was complete without her newest portrait done by the photographer of the minute; no picture daily existed which wouldn't pay well for a snapshot of Lady June Dana, even with a foot out of focus, or a hand as big as her head! And she loved it all! She lived, lived every minute! It didn't seem as if there could be a world without June.
I was only a flapper, but I worshiped at the shrine, and the goddess didn't mind being worshiped. She used to let me perch on her bed when she had her morning tea, looking a dream in a rosebud wreathed bit of tulle called a boudoir cap, and a nightie like the first outline sketch for a ball gown. She reeled off yards of stuff for my benefit about the men who loved her, and among them was Robert Lorillard.
All the clever people who did things came to Stane House, provided they were good to look at and interesting in themselves. Lorillard was there nearly every Sunday for luncheon, and at other times, too. I couldn't help staring at him, though I knew it was rude, for he was so handsome, so—almost divine!
One laughs at writers who make their heroes Greek statues, but, really, Lorillard was like the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican: those perfect features, that high, yet winning air—some one has said—“of the greatest statue that ever was a gentleman, the greatest gentleman that ever was a statue.”
I think June met Lorillard away from home often; and once, after grandmother and I had gone to live in our own house, and I'd been presented, June took me behind scenes after a matinée at his theater. He was charming to me, and I loved him more than ever, with that delicious, hopeless, agonizing love of seventeen.
People talked about June and Lorillard, but no more Lorillard than a dozen other men. Nobody dreamed of their marrying, and none less than she herself. As for him, though he was madly in love, he must have known that as an eligible, he'd have as much chance with a royal princess as with Lady June Dana.
It was in this way that matters stood when the war broke out. And among the first volunteers of note was Robert Lorillard. No doubt he would have gone sooner or later in any case. But being taken up, thrown down, smiled at, and frowned on by June was getting upon his nerves, as even I could see; so war, fighting, and dying, perhaps, must have been a welcome counterirritant.
The moment she heard that Lorillard had offered himself, and was furiously training for a commission, June was a changed girl. She was like a creature burning with fever, but I thought her more beautiful than she'd ever been, with that rose flame in her cheeks, and blue fire in her eyes.
One afternoon she asked me to shop with her, But instead of going to Bond Street, we made straight for Robert Lorillard's flat in St. James' Square. How he could have got there that day I don't know, but I think she'd sent an urgent wire begging him to get a few hours' leave.
Anyhow, he was waiting for us. I shall never forget his face, though truly he forgot my existence! June did the same. I'd been dragged at her chariot wheels—it was a taxi!—to play propriety; my first appearance as a chaperon. I might as well have been a fly on the wall, for both of them!
Robert himself opened the door of the flat when we rang—servants were superfluous for that interview!—and they looked at each other, those two. Lorillard didn't seem to see me. I drifted vaguely in after June, and effaced myself superficially. The most rarefied sense of honor couldn't be expected, perhaps, in a flapper whose favorite stage hero was about to play the part of his life, unrehearsed, with the flapper's most admired heroine.
Instead of shutting myself up in a cupboard or something, or at the least closing my eyes and stuffing my fingers into my ears, I hovered in a handy background. I saw June burst out crying and throw herself into Lorillard's arms. I heard her sob that she realized now she couldn't live without him, that he was the only person on earth who mattered, ever had, or ever would matter. I heard him gasp a few explosive “Darlings!” and “Angels!” And then I heard June coolly—no, hotly!—propose that they should be married at once, at once!
Even I floated sympathetically on a rose-colored wave of love, as I listened and looked, so where must Lorillard have floated—he who had adored, and never had hoped?
In one of his own plays, the noble hero would have put June from him in super-unselfishness, declaiming:
“No, beloved; I cannot accept this sacrifice, made on a mad impulse. I love you too much to take you for my own.” But, thank Heaven, real men aren't built on those stiff lines! As for this one, he simply hugged his glorious, incredible luck—including the giver—as hard as he could.
It took the two about one hour to come to themselves, and remember they had heads as well as hearts; while I, for my part, remembered mostly my right foot, which had gone to sleep during efforts at self-obliteration. I had to stamp it at last, which drew surprised attention to me; so I was offered officially the rôle of confidante, and agreed with June that the wedding must be secret. The duchess and four terrifically powerful uncles would make as much fuss as if June were Queen Elizabeth bent on marrying a commoner, and it would end in the lovers being parted.
Well, they were married by special license three days later, with me and a friend of Lorillard's as witnesses. When the knot was safely tied, June and Robert went together and broke it to the duchess—not the knot, but the news. The Duchess of Stane is supposed to know more bad words than any other peeress in England and, judging from June's account of the scene, she hurled them all at Lorillard, with a few spontaneous creations for her daughter. When the lady and her vocabulary were exhausted, however, common sense refilled the vacuum. The duchess and the family made the best of a bad bargain, hoping no doubt that Lorillard would soon be safely killed; and a delicious dish of romance was served up to the public.
I was the only one beyond pardon, it seemed. According to the duchess, I was a wicked, little, treacherous cat not to have told her what was going on, so that it could have been stopped in time. A complaint was made to grandmother. But that peppery old darling—after scolding me well—took my part, and quarreled with the duchess.
June was too busy being the bride of all war brides to bother much with me, and Lorillard was training hard for France. So a kind of magic glass wall arose between the affair and me. Months passed and then in an air raid over London a fragment of shrapnel pierced June's heart and killed her instantly, before she could have felt a pang.
The news almost broke Lorillard up, so his friend who had witnessed the marriage with me, put the case. Every one thought that Lorillard would take up his old career where he had laid it down, when the war was ended. But he refused several star parts, and announced that he never intended to act again. The reason was, he said, that he did not wish to do so, that he could hardly remember how he had felt at the time when acting made up the great interest of his life.
He bought a quaint old cottage near the river, not many miles from a house the duchess owned, a happy house where he had spent week-ends with June. June had loved the place, and her body lay—buried in a glass coffin to preserve its beauty forever—in the cedar-shaded graveyard of the country church near by. Once she had laughingly told Lorillard she would like to be there if she died, and he had persuaded the duchess to fulfill the wish. Instead of a grave-stone there was a sundial, with the motto:
- All her days were happy days, and all her hours were hours of sun.
Robert Lorillard's cottage was within walking distance of the churchyard, and I imagine he often went there. Anyhow, he went nowhere else. After some months an anonymous book of poems appeared, poems of such extreme beauty and pure passion that all the critics talked about them. By and by others began to talk, and it leaked out through the publisher that Lorillard was the author.
I loved those poems so much that I couldn't resist scribbling a few lines to Robert in my first flush of enthusiasm. He didn't answer. I'd hardly expected a reply, but now, long after, here was a letter from him introducing a girl who wanted to be my secretary! He wrote:
- Dear Princess di Miramare: I don't ask if you remember me. I know you do, because of one we have both greatly loved. I meant to thank you long ago for the kind things you took the trouble to say about my verses. The thoughts your name called up were very poignant. I put off acknowledging your note. But you will forgive me, because you are a real friend; and for that reason I venture to send you a very strong personal recommendation with Miss Joyce Arnold, who will ask for a position as your secretary. I saw your advertisement in the Times, and showed it to Miss Arnold, offering to introduce her to you. She nursed me in France, and she has been my secretary for some months. All I need say about her I can put into a few words. She is absolutely perfect. It will be a great wrench for me to lose her valuable help with the work I give my time to nowadays, but
I'd been too much excited when she said, “I have an introduction to you from Mr. Lorillard,” to do more than glance at the girl, and ask her to sit down. But as I finished the letter, I looked up to meet the gaze of a pair of gray eyes.
Caught staring, Miss Arnold blushed, and what with those eyes and that color I thought her one of the most delightful girls I'd ever seen.
I don't mean that she was one of the prettiest. She was—and is—pretty. But it wasn't entirely her looks you thought of, in seeing her first. It was something which shone out from her eyes, and seemed to make a sweet, happy brightness all around her. Eyes are windows, and something must be on the other side: but alas, it seldom shines through. The windows are dim, or the blinds are down to cover emptiness. Joyce Arnold had a living spirit behind those big, bright soul windows which were her eyes!
As for the rest, she was tall and slim, and delicately long-limbed. She had milk-white skin with a soft touch of rose on the cheek bones, a few freckles which were like the dust from tiger-lily petals, and a charming, sensitive mouth, full and red.
“Why, of course I want you!” I said. “I'm lucky to secure you, too! How glad I am that you didn't come after I'd engaged some one else. But even if you had, I'd have managed to get rid of her, one way or other.”
Miss Arnold smiled. She had the most contagious smile, though it struck me, even then, that it wasn't a merry smile. Her face, with its piquant little nose, was meant to be gay and happy, I thought; yet it wasn't either. It was more plucky and brave; and the eyes had known sadness, I felt sure. I guessed her age as twenty-three or twenty-four.
She said that she would love to be with me. The girls who were waiting to be interviewed were sent politely away in search of other engagements, while I settled things with Miss Arnold. The more I looked at her, the more I talked with her, the more definite became an impression that I'd seen her before, a long time ago. At last I asked her the question.
“Can it be that we've met somewhere?”
The blood streamed over her rather pale face.
“Yes, princess, we have,” she said. “At least, we didn't exactly meet. It couldn't be called that.”
“What was it then, if not a meeting?” I encouraged her.
“I was in my first job as secretary. I was with Miss Opal Fawcett. When it was Ben Ali's day out—Ben Ali was her Arab butler, you know—I used to open the door. I opened it for you and—and Lady June Dana when you came. I remember quite well, though I never thought you would.”
Why did the girl blush so? I wondered. Could it be that she was ashamed of having been with Opal Fawcett, or had it something to do with the mention of June? Miss Arnold had evidently just left her place with Robert Lorillard, and probably the name of his wife had been taboo between them, for I couldn't fancy Robert talking of June with any one unless some old friend who had known her well.
“Ah, that's it!” I exclaimed. “Now I do remember. June and I spoke of you afterward, as we were going away. We said 'What an interesting girl!' Nearly five years ago! It seems a hundred.”
Miss Arnold didn't speak, and again my thoughts flew back.
Opal Fawcett suddenly had sprung into fame when all the sweethearts and wives of England yearned to get news from beyond the veil of those who had “gone west.” She had, however, been making her way to weird success for several years before. She had a strange history, as strange as herself.
A man named Fawcett edited a Spiritualistic paper, The Gleam. One foggy October night—it was Halloween—he heard a shrill, wailing cry outside his old house in Westminster. Naturally it was a haunted house, or he wouldn't have cared to live in it! Some one had left a tiny baby girl in a basket at his door, and with it, a letter in a woman's handwriting. This said that the child had been born in October, so its name must be Opal.
Fawcett was a bachelor, but he imagined that spiritual influences had turned the unknown mother's thoughts to him. For this reason he kept the baby, obligingly named it Opal, and brought it up in his own religious belief.
Opal was extremely proud of her romantic début in life, and when she had decided upon a career for herself, she wrote her autobiography up to date. As she was quite young at the time—not more than twenty-five—the book was short. She had a certain number of copies bound in especially dyed silk, supposed to be of an opal tint, changeable from blue to pinkish purple, and these she gave to her friends, or sold to her clients.
I say “clients” because, after being a celebrated child medium during her adopted father's life, and then failing on the stage as an actress, she discovered that palmistry was her forte. At least it was one among several others, You told her the date you were born, and she did your horoscope. She advised you also what colors you ought to wear to “suit your aura,” and what jewels were lucky or unlucky for you. Later, when the war came, she took to crystal gazing. Perhaps she had begun it before, but it was then that she suddenly “caught on.” One heard all one's friends talking about her, saying, “Have you ever been to Opal Fawcett? She's absolutely wonderful. You must go!” Accordingly we went.
When June and Lorillard were waiting in secret suspense for their special license, June implored Robert to let Opal look into the crystal for him, and read his hand. He tried to beg off, because he had met Miss Fawcett during her disastrous year on the stage. In a play of ancient Rome in which he was the star, Opal Fawcett had been a sort of walking-on martyr, and he had a scene with her in the arena, defending her from a doped, milk-fed lion. Opal had acted, clung, and twined so much more than necessary that Robert had disliked the scene intensely, always fearing that the audience might “queer” it by laughing. He would not complain to the management, because the girl had been given the part through official friendship, and was already marked down as prey by the critics. He hadn't wished to do her harm, but neither did he wish now to have his future foretold by her.
June was so keen, however, that he consented to be led like a lamb to the sacrifice. I heard from her how they went together to the old house which the spiritualist had left to his adopted daughter, and I heard what happened at the interview. June was vexed because Opal would see Robert alone. June had wanted to be in the room, and listen to everything; Opal was most ungrateful, June said, because she, June, had sent lots of people to have their “hands read,” and get special jewels prescribed for them, like medicines. Robert had laughed to June about what Opal claimed to see for him in her crystal, but had pretended to forget most of the “silly stuff,” and be unable to repeat it. June had worried, fearing lest misfortune had appeared in the crystal, and Robert wished to hide the fact from her.
“I'll get it all out of Opal, myself!” she exclaimed to me, and took me with her to Miss Fawcett's next day.
The excuse for this visit was to have my hand “told,” and to order a mascot for Robert. I was delighted to go, for I'd never seen a fortune teller, but June was too eager to talk about Robert to spare me much time with the seeress. My hand-telling was rather perfunctory for Miss Fawcett didn't feel the same need to see me alone which she had felt with Lorillard, and June was very much on the spot, sighing, fussing, and looking at her wrist watch.
Opal was as reticent about her interview with Lorillard as he had been, though unlike him she didn't laugh. So poor June got little for her pains, and I learned nothing about my character that grandmother hadn't told me when she was cross. Still, it was an experience. I'd never forgotten the tall, white, angular young woman wearing amethysts and a purple robe, in a purple room; a creature who looked as if she'd founded herself on Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and overshot the mark. It seemed, also, that I'd never forgotten her secretary; though perhaps I'd not thought of the girl from that day to this.
“Do tell me how you happened to be with Opal Fawcett!” I couldn't help blurting out from the depths of my curiosity. “You seem so—so—absolutely alien from her and her 'atmosphere.'”
“Oh, it's quite simple,” said Joyce Arnold, not betraying whether or not she considered me intrusive or rude. “An aunt of mine, a dear old maid, was a great disciple of Mr. Fawcett's. She thought Opal the wonder of the world, as 'the child medium, about ten or twelve,' and she used to take me to the house often. I was five or six years younger than Opal, and Aunt Jenny hoped it would 'spiritualize' me to play with her. We never quite lost sight of each other after that, Opal and I. When she went into business—I mean, when she became a hand-reader and so on—I was beginning what I called my 'profession.' She engaged me as her secretary, and I stayed on till I left to go to France. There I met Captain Lorillard, you know. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened, when he asked me to work for him. You see, I was dead tired after four years without a rest. And, oh, it's been Paradise at that heavenly place on the river, helping to put down in black and white the beautiful thoughts of such a man!”
As she spoke, an expression of rapture that was like light, illumined the girl's face for an instant, bright as a flash of sunshine on a white bird's wing. But it passed, and her eyes darkened with some quick memory of pain. She looked down, thick black lashes shadowing her cheeks.
“By Jove!” I thought. “There's a story here!”
Robert Lorillard wrote that Miss Arnold was “perfect.” Yet he had sent her away. He said he was going away himself. But I felt sure he wasn't, or else, he was going on purpose. He had searched the newspapers to find a place for her. If he hadn't done that deliberately, he would never have seen my advertisement.
And she? The girl was breaking her heart at the loss of her “Paradise.”
What did it mean?