The Master of the Ceremonies

“It’s very little I know of you, Miss Dean, and – I’m a plain woman – I never thought I should like you; but if you wouldn’t mind, my dear!”

It was a kiss of peace, and Mrs Barclay added another that was very loud and very warm.

“And her saying that she had no friends,” she exclaimed. “Pooh!”

Claire darted a grateful look at both, and then began to wince and shrink as Mrs Barclay, in all well-meaning, went on talking from one to the other with the most voluble of tongues.

“I declare,” she cried, “as I said to my Jo-si-ah, there’s no end to the nasty scandals talked in this miserable town.”

“Pray say no more, Mrs Barclay,” cried Claire; “I am so grateful to you both for coming here, but – ”

“I won’t say much, my dear, but I must tell Miss Dean, or I shan’t be able to bear myself. What we want here is a great high tide to come all over the place and wash it clean.”

“Why, we should be drowned, too, Mrs Barclay,” said Cora, laughing.

“I hope not, my dear, for I’m no lover of scandal; but do you know, they actually have had the impudence to say that my dear Claire here has been seen at her back door talking to a common soldier.”

Claire tried to control herself, but her eyes would stray to Cora Dean’s and rest there as if fascinated.

“When the reason is,” continued the visitor, as Claire was asking herself should she not boldly avow her connection, “the reason is that she has been seen talking to her brother, who is not a common soldier, but an officer. What do you think of that?”

Cora turned to her, smiled, and said:

“I can believe in the Saltinville people saying anything ill-natured for the sake of petty gossip. We had much to contend against when we came.”

“Of course, you had, my dear. Look at me, too: just because my poor Jo-si-ah does money business with some of the spendthrifts, and, of course, lets ’em pay for it, I’m made out to be the most greedy, miserly, wicked, drinking woman that ever breathed. I’m bad enough, I dare say, and between ourselves I do like a glass of hot port wine negus with plenty of nutmeg; but I am not so bad as they say, am I, my dear?”

“You are one of the truest-hearted women I know,” said Claire, taking her hand.

“There’s a character for me, my dear,” said Mrs Barclay, turning to Cora and nodding her head and laughing. “Ah, I must tell you that too,” she cried as the recollection came, “just because – ”

“Mrs Barclay,” said Claire, rising, “pray spare me. I am not well; I have not been well lately, and – and – I know you will forgive me.”

“Forgive you, my dear?” cried Mrs Barclay. “Why, of course. It’s horribly thoughtless of me. There, good-bye. Are you coming, Miss Dean?”

Cora rose, feeling that she could not stay longer, and after a warm leave-taking, during which the two younger women mentally asked themselves whether they were friends or bitter enemies, Claire’s visitors withdrew and walked together along the parade.

The slightest touch set Mrs Barclay’s tongue going, and before they had gone far Cora was in full possession of the newly-retailed story about Claire’s visits to the fishermen’s huts.

“And do you believe this of her?” said Cora, with an eagerness that she could not conceal.

“Now, we’re just become friendly, my dear, and I should be sorry to say anything nasty, but I ask you do I look as if I believed it?”

“You look as if you were Claire Denville’s best friend,” said Cora diplomatically.

“And so I am,” replied Mrs Barclay proudly. “I can’t help people talking scandal. They glory in it. And, look here, my dear, it isn’t far from here, and if you don’t mind, we’ll go along the cliff to the very house and call.”

“Call!” said Cora in amaze.

“Yes; it’s at a fisherman’s, you know – Fisherman Dick’s – and we can get a pint or two of s’rimps for tea.”

The consequence was that Cora did walk along the cliff to Fisherman Dick’s cottage, and when Mrs Barclay reached her house an hour later her reticule bag was bulging so that the strings could not be drawn close, and the reason why was – shrimps.

On the other hand, Cora Dean had not filled her reticule with shrimps, but her mind with unpleasant little thoughts that made it bulge. Curious thoughts they were, too, and, like Mrs Barclay’s shrimps, all jumbled together, heads and tails, ups and downs. She felt then that she could not arrange them, but that there was a great sensation of triumph in her breast, and what she wanted to do most was to sit down and think – no easy task, for her brain was in a whirl.

Volume Two – Chapter Eighteen.

A Stormy Scene

“I’ve never dared to write to you before, Clairy. Frank watches me so; but, though I don’t come, I think lots about you, and I shall never forget what a dear, good thing you were that night. Good-bye. We must be separate for a bit, till that bother’s all forgotten, but don’t you fidget; I’m going to be so good now.”

Claire was reading the note that had come to her, she knew not how, for the second time, wondering how a woman – her sister – could be so utterly heartless; and, after leaving her to bear the brunt of Sir Harry Payne’s shameless accusation, treat it all as such a mere trifle.

Claire held the letter in her hand, with her spirits very low, and a bitter, despairing look was in her eyes as she sat gazing before her, thinking that no greater trouble could come to her now.

Richard Linnell had just passed the house, and though ever since the night of the “At Home,” she had shrunk away and rigidly kept from noticing him, the one pleasure she had longed for was to see the grave, wistful look he was in the habit of directing at the window. Now, he had gone by without raising his eyes.

It was the most cruel pang of all. He might have had faith in her, even if she had rejected his suit, and told him that it was hopeless in the extreme.

Her cheeks burned as she thought of Cora Dean with her Juno-like face and her manifest liking for Richard Linnell.

“What is it to me?” she said to herself; and her tears fell fast upon the letter she held in her hand, and she did not hear her father enter the drawing-room, nor see him glance quickly from her in the flesh to the sweetly innocent face of his favourite child, smiling down upon him from the young Italian artist’s canvas.

Then he caught sight of the letter, and saw that she was weeping.

An angry flash came into his eyes; the mincing dandyism gave place to a sharp angular rigidity, and stepping quickly across the intervening space that separated him from his child, he was about to take the note from her hands.

Claire uttered a faint cry of alarm, started from the sofa, and hastily thrust the folded paper into her pocket.

“That letter,” he said, stamping his foot, “give me that letter.”

“No, no, I cannot, father,” she cried, with a look of terror at his worn and excited face.

“I insist,” he cried. “I will not allow these clandestine correspondences to be carried on. Give me the letter.”

“Father, I cannot,” she said firmly.

“Am I to take it from you by force?” he cried. “Am I, a gentleman who has struggled all these years to make himself the model from which society is to take its stand, who has striven so hard for his children, to be disgraced by you?”

No answer.

“Heaven knows how I have struggled, and it seems that two of my children must have been born with some base blood in their veins, and to be for ever my disgrace.”

Claire raised her eyes to his full of pitying wonder.

“See how your – no, God help me!” he cried wildly, “I dare not utter his name. See how you have disgraced your married sister – lowered me in the eyes of society. I am almost ruined, and just at a time when I had succeeded in placing your brother well. And now, see here – see here!”

He tore a note from his breast, and held it out rustling in his trembling hand.