That Girl in Black; and, Bronzie

Poor man! it was, so far, a disappointment to him. He would have liked to get a merry, happy letter that morning as he sat at his solitary breakfast. For he had no fear, no shadow of a fear, that his Maisie’s head ever could be turned.

“I have guarded against any dangers of that kind for her, at least,” he said to himself, “provided I have not gone too far and made her too sober-minded. But no; after all, it is erring on the safe side – considering everything.”

Three or four evenings after Mrs Englewood’s dance Despard found himself at a musical party. He was in his own milieu this time, and proportionately affable – with the cool, condescending affability which was the nearest approach to making himself agreeable that he recognised. He had been smiled at by the beauty of the evening, much enjoying her discomfiture when he did not remain many minutes by her side; he had been all but abjectly entreated by the most important of the dowagers, a very great lady indeed, in every sense of the word, to promise his assistance at her intended theatricals; he had, in short, received the appreciation which was due to him, and was now resting on his oars, comfortably installed in an easy chair, debating within himself whether it was worth while to give Mrs Belmont a fright by engrossing her pretty daughter, and thus causing to retire from her side in the sulks Sir Henry Gayburn, to whom the girl was talking. For Sir Henry was rich, and was known to be looking out for a wife, and Despard had long since been erased from the maternal list of desirable possibilities.

“Shall I?” he was saying to himself as he lay back with a smile, when a voice beside him made him look up. It was that of the son of the house, a friend of his own; the young man seemed annoyed and perplexed.

“Norreys! oh, do me a good turn, will you? I have to look after the lady who has just been singing, and my mother is fussing about a girl who has been sitting all the evening alone. She’s a stranger. Will you be so awfully good as to take her down for an ice or something?”

Despard looked round. He could scarcely refuse a request so couched, but he was far from pleased.

“Where is she? Who is she?” he asked, beginning languidly to show signs of moving.

“There – over by the window – that girl in black,” his friend replied. “Who she is I can’t say. My mother told me her name was Ford. Come along, and I’ll introduce you, that’s a good fellow.”

Despard by this time had risen to his feet.

“Upon my soul!” he ejaculated.

But Mr Leslie was in too great a hurry to notice the unusual emphasis with which he spoke.

And in half a second he found himself standing in front of the girl, who, the last time they met, had aroused in him such unwonted emotions.

“Miss Ford,” murmured young Leslie, “may I introduce Mr Norreys?” and then Mr Leslie turned on his heel and disappeared.

Despard stood there perfectly grave. He would hazard no repulse; he waited for her.

She looked up, but there was no smile on her face – only the calm self-composedness which it seemed to him he knew so well. How was it so? Had he met her before in some former existence? Why did all about her seem at once strange and yet familiar? He had never experienced the like before.

These thoughts – scarcely thoughts indeed – flickered through his brain as he looked at her. They served one purpose at least, they prevented his feeling or looking awkward, could such a state of things have been conceived possible.

Seeing that he was not going to speak, remembering, perhaps, that if he remembered the last words she had honoured him with, he could scarcely be expected to do so, she at last opened her lips.

“That,” she said quietly, slightly inclining her head in the direction where young Leslie had stood, “was, under the circumstances, unnecessary.”

“He did not know,” said Despard.

“I suppose not; though I don’t know. Perhaps you told him you had forgotten my name.”

“No,” he replied, “I did not. It would not have been true.”

She smiled very slightly.

“There is no dancing to-night,” she said. “May I ask – ?” and she hesitated.

“Why I ventured to disturb you?” he interrupted. “I was requested to take you downstairs for an ice or whatever you may prefer to that. The farce did not originate with me, I assure you.”

“Do you mean by that that you will not take me downstairs?” she said, smiling again as she got up from her seat. “I should like an ice very much.”

Despard bowed without speaking, and offered her his arm.

But when he had piloted her through the crowd, and she was standing quietly with her ice, he broke the silence.

“Miss Ford,” he began, “as the fates have again forced me on your notice, I should like to ask you a question.”

She raised her eyes inquiringly. No – he had not exaggerated their beauty.

“I should like to know the meaning of the strange words you honoured me with as I was leaving Mrs Englewood’s the other evening. I do not think you have forgotten them.”

“No,” she replied, “I have not forgotten them, and I meant them, and I still mean them. But I will not talk about them or explain anything I said.”

There was nothing the least flippant in her tone – only quiet determination. But Despard, watching keenly, saw that her lips quivered a little as she spoke.

“As you choose,” he said. “Of course, in the face of such a very uncompromising refusal, I can say nothing more.”

“Then shall we go upstairs again?” proposed Miss Fforde.

Mr Norreys acquiesced. But he had laid his plans, and he was a more diplomatic adversary than Miss Fforde was prepared to cope with.

“I finished reading the book we were speaking of the other evening,” he began in a matter-of-fact voice; “I mean – ” and he named the book. “At least, I fancy it was you I was discussing it with. The last volume falls off greatly.”

“Oh, do you think so?” said the girl in a tone of half-indignant disappointment, falling blindly into the trap. “I, on the contrary, felt that the last volume made amends for all that was unsatisfactory in the others. You see by it what he was driving at all the time, and that the persiflage and apparent cynicism were only means to an end. I do hate cynicism – it is so easy, and such a little makes such a great effect.”

Something in her tone made Despard feel irritated. “Is she hitting at me again?” he thought. And the idea threw him, in his turn, off his guard.

The natural result was that both forgot themselves in the interest of the discussion. And Despard, when he, as it were, awoke to the realisation of this, took care not to throw away the advantage he had gained. He drew her out, he talked as he but seldom exerted himself to do, and when, at the end of half-an-hour or so, an elderly lady, whom he knew by name only, was seen approaching them, and Miss Fforde sprang to her feet, exclaiming, —

“Have you been looking for me? I hope not – ” he smiled quietly as he prepared to withdraw – he had succeeded!

“Good-night, Mr Norreys,” said Maisie simply.

“Two evenings ago she would not say good-night at all,” he thought. But he made no attempt to do more than bow quietly.

“You are very – cold, grim – no, I don’t know what to call it, Maisie, dear,” said the lady, her cousin and present chaperone, as they drove away, “in your manner to men; and that man in particular – Despard Norreys. It is not often he is so civil to any girl.”

“I detest all men – all young men,” replied Maisie irritably.

“But, my dear, you should be commonly civil. And he had been giving himself, for him, unusual trouble to entertain you.”

“Can he know about her? Oh, no, it is impossible,” she added to herself.

Miss Fforde closed her lips firmly. But in a moment or two she opened them again.

“Cousin Agnes,” she said, half smiling, “I am afraid you are quite mistaken. If I had not been what you call ‘commonly civil,’ would he have gone on talking to me? On the contrary, I am sadly afraid I was far too civil.”

“My dear child,” ejaculated her cousin, “what do you mean?”

“Oh,” said Maisie, “I don’t know. Never mind the silly things I say. I like being with you, Cousin Agnes, but I don’t like London. I am much happier at home in the country.”

“But, my dear child, when I saw you at home a few months ago you were looking forward with pleasure to coming. What has changed you? What has disappointed you?”

“I am not suited for anything but a quiet country life – that is all,” said Miss Fforde.

“But, then, Maisie, afterwards, you know, you will have to come to town and have a house of your own and all that sort of thing. It is necessary for you to see something of the world to prepare you for – ”

“Afterwards isn’t now, Cousin Agnes. And I am doing my best, as papa wished,” said the girl weariedly. “Do let us talk of something else. Really sometimes I do wish I were any one but myself.”

“Maisie,” said her cousin reproachfully, “you know, dear, that isn’t right. You must take the cares and responsibilities of a position like yours along with the advantages and privileges of it.”

“I know,” Miss Fforde replied meekly enough; “but, Cousin Agnes, do tell me who was that very funny-looking man with the long fluffy beard whom you were talking to for some time.”

“Oh, that, my dear, was Count Dalmiati, the celebrated so-and-so,” and once launched in her descriptions Cousin Agnes left Maisie in peace.

Two days later came the afternoon of Lady Valence’s garden-party. It was one of the garden parties to which “everybody” went – Despard Norreys for one, as a matter of course. He had got more gratification and less annoyance out of his second meeting with Miss Fforde; for he flattered himself he knew how to manage her now – “that little girl in black, who thinks herself so wonderfully wise, forsooth!” Yet the sting was there still; the very persistence with which he repeated to himself that he had mastered her showed it. His thoughts recurred to her more than they were in the habit of doing to any one or anything but his own immediate concerns. Out of curiosity, merely, no doubt; curiosity increased by the apparent improbability of satisfying it. For no one seemed to know anything about her. She might have dropped from the skies. He had indeed some difficulty in recalling her personality to the two or three people to whom he applied for information.

“A girl in black – at the Leslies’ musical party? Why, my dear fellow, there were probably a dozen girls in black there. There usually is a good sprinkling of black frocks at evening parties,” said one of the knowers of everybody whom he had selected to honour with his inquiries. “What was there remarkable about her? There must have been something to attract your notice.”

“No, on the contrary,” Despard replied, “she was remarkably unremarkable;” and he laughed lightly. “It was only rather absurd. I have seemed haunted by her once or twice lately, and yet nobody knows anything about her, except that her name is Ford.”

“Ford,” said his companion; “that does not tell much. And not pretty, you say?”

“Pretty, oh, yes. No, not exactly pretty,” and a vision of Maisie’s clear cold profile and – yes, there was no denying it – most lovely eyes, rose before him. “More than pretty,” he would have said had he not been afraid of being laughed at. “I don’t really know how to describe her, and it is of less than no consequence. I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again,” and he went on to talk of other matters.

He did see her again, however, and it was, as will have already been supposed, at Lady Valence’s garden-party that he did so. It was a cold day, of course. The weather, with its usual consideration, had changed that very morning, after having been, for May, really decently mild and agreeable. The wind had veered round to the east, and it seemed not improbable that the rain would look in, an uninvited guest, in the course of the afternoon.

Lady Valence declared herself in despair, but as nobody could remember the weather ever being anything but highly detestable the day of her garden-party, it is to be hoped that she in reality took it more philosophically than she allowed, Despard strode about feeling very cold, and wondering why he had come, and why, having come, he stayed. There was a long row of conservatories and ferneries, and glass-houses of every degree of temperature not far from the lawn, where at one end the band was playing, and at the other some deluded beings were eating ices. Despard shivered; the whole was too ghastly. A door in the centre house stood invitingly open, and he turned in. Voices near at hand, female voices, warned him off at one side, for he was not feeling amiable, and he hastened in the opposite direction. By degrees the pleasant warmth, the extreme beauty of the plants and flowers amidst which he found himself, the solitariness, too, soothed and subdued his irritation.

“If I could smoke,” he began to say to himself, when, looking round with a half-formed idea of so doing, he caught sight amidst the ferns of feminine drapery. Some one was there before him – but a very quiet, mouse-like somebody. A somebody who was standing there motionless, gazing at the tall tropical plants, enjoying, apparently, the warmth and the quiet like himself.

“That girl in black, that sphinx of a girl again – by Jove!” murmured Despard under his breath, and as he did so, she turned and saw him.

Her first glance was of annoyance; he saw her clearly from where he stood, there was no mistaking the fact. But, so quickly, that it was difficult to believe it had been there, the expression of vexation passed. The sharply contracted brows smoothed; the graceful head bent slightly forward; the lips parted.

“How do you do, Mr Norreys?” she said. “We are always running against each other unexpectedly, are we not?”

Her tone was perfectly natural, her manner expressed simple pleasure and gratification. She was again the third, the rarest of her three selves – the personality which Despard, in his heart of hearts, believed to be herself.

He smiled – a slightly amused, almost a slightly condescending smile, but a very pleasant one all the same. He could afford to be pleasant now. Poor silly little girl – she had given in with a good grace, a truce to her nonsense of regal airs and dignity; a truce, too, to the timid self-consciousness of her first introduction.

“She understands better now, I see,” he thought. “Understands that a little country girl is but – ah, well – but a little country girl. Still, I must allow – ” and he hesitated as his glance fell on her; it was the first time he had seen her by daylight, and the words he had mentally used did not quite “fit” – “I must allow that she has brains, and some character of her own.”

“I can imagine its seeming so to you,” he said aloud. “You have, I think you told me, lived always in the country. Of course, in the country one’s acquaintances stand out distinctly, and one remembers every day whom one has and has not seen. In town it is quite different. I find myself constantly forgetting people, and doing all sorts of stupid things, imagining I have seen some one last week when it was six months ago, and so on. But people are really very good-natured.”

She listened attentively.

“How difficult it must be to remember all the people you know!” she said, with the greatest apparent simplicity; indeed, with a tone of almost awe-struck reverence.

“I simply don’t attempt it,” he replied.

“How – dear me, I hardly know how to say it – how very good and kind of you it is to remember me,” she said.

Mr Norreys glanced at her sharply.

Was she playing him off? For an instant the appalling suggestion all but took his breath away, but it was quickly dismissed. Its utter absurdity was too self-evident; and the expression on her face reassured him. She seemed so innocent as she stood there, her eyes hidden for the moment by their well-fringed lids, for she was looking down. A faint, the very faintest, suspicion of a blush coloured her cheeks, there was a tiny little trembling about the corners of her mouth. But somehow these small evidences of confusion did not irritate him as they had done when he first met her. On the contrary. “Poor little girl,” he said to himself. “I see I must be careful. Still, she will live to get over it, and one cannot be positively brutal.”

For an instant or two he did not speak.

Then: “I never pay compliments, Miss Ford,” he said, “but what I am going to say may sound to you like one. However, I trust you will not dislike it.”

And again he unaccountably hesitated – what was the matter with him? He meant to be kindly encouraging to the girl, but as she stood beside him, looking up with a half-curious, half-deprecating expression in her eyes, he was conscious of his face slightly flushing; the words he wanted refused to come, he felt as if he were bewitched.

“Won’t you tell me what you were going to say?” she said at last. “I should so like to hear it.”

“It’s not worth saying,” he blurted out. “Indeed, though I know what I mean, I cannot express it. You – you are quite different from other girls, Miss Ford. It would be impossible to confuse you with the crowd. That’s about the sum of what I was thinking, though – I meant to express it differently. Certainly, in the way I have said it, no one by any possibility could take it for a compliment.”

To his surprise she looked up at him with a bright smile, a smile of pleasure, and – of something else.

“On the contrary, I do take it as a compliment, as a very distinct compliment,” she said, “considering whom it comes from. Though, after all, it is scarcely I that should accept it. The – the circumstances of my life may have made me different – my having been so little in town, for instance. I suppose there are some advantages in everything, even in apparent disadvantages.”

Her extreme gentleness and deference put him at his ease again.

“Oh, certainly,” he said. “For my part, I often wish I had never been anywhere or seen anything! Life would, in such a case, seem so much more interesting. There would be still things left to dream about.”

He sighed, and there was something genuine in his sigh. “I envy people who have never travelled, sometimes,” he added.

“Have you travelled much?” she asked.

“Oh, dear, yes – been everywhere – the usual round.”

“But the usual round is just what with me counts for nothing,” she said sharply. “Real travelling means living in other countries, leading the life of their peoples, not rushing round the capitals of Europe from one cosmopolitan hotel to another.”

He smiled a superior smile. “When you have rushed round the capitals of Europe you may give an opinion,” his smile seemed to say.

“That sort of thing is impossible, except for Bohemians,” he said languidly. “I detest talking about travels.”

“Do you really?” she said, with a very distinct accent of contempt. “Then I suppose you have not read – ” and she named a book on everybody’s table at the moment.

Despard’s face lighted up.

“Oh, indeed, yes,” he said. “That is not an ordinary book of travels;” and he went on to speak of the volume in question in a manner which showed that he had read it intelligently, while Miss Fforde, forgetting herself and her companion in the interest of what he said, responded sympathetically.

Half unconsciously, as they talked they strolled up and down the wide open space in front of the ferns. Suddenly voices, apparently approaching them, caught the girl’s ear.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “my friends will be wondering what has become of me! I must go. Good-bye, Mr Norreys,” and she held out her hand. There was something simple and perfectly natural in her manner as she did so, which struck him. It was almost as if she were throwing off impulsively a part which she was tired of playing.

He held her hand for a quarter of an instant longer than was actually necessary.

“I – I hope we may meet again, Miss Ford,” he said, simply but cordially – something in her present manner was infectious – “and continue our talk.”

She glanced up at him.

“I hope so, too,” she said quickly. But then her brows contracted again a little. “At least – I don’t know that it is very probable,” she added disconnectedly, as she hastened away in the direction whence came the voices.

“Hasn’t many invitations, I dare say,” he said to himself as he looked after her. “If she had been still with Gertrude Englewood I might, perhaps, have got one or two people to be civil to them. But I daresay it would have been Quixotic, and it’s the sort of thing I dislike doing – putting one’s self under obligation for no real reason.”

If he had heard what Maisie Fforde was thinking to herself as she made her way quickly to her cousin!

“What a pity!” she thought. “What a real pity that a man who must have had good material in him should have so sunk – to what I can’t help thinking vulgarity of feeling, if not of externals – to such contemptible self-conceit and affectations! I can understand, however, that he may have been a nice boy once, as Gertrude maintains. Poor Gertrude – how her hero has turned out! I must never let her know how impossible I find it to resist drawing him out – it surely is not wrong? Oh, how I should love to see him thoroughly humbled! The worst of it is, that when he becomes a reasonable being, as he does now and then, he can be so nice – interesting even – and I forget whom I am talking to. But not for long! No, indeed – ‘Mrs Englewood’s dowdy protégée,’ the ‘bread-and-butter miss,’ for whom the tenth waltz was too much condescension, hasn’t such a bad memory. And when I had looked forward to my first dance so, and fancied the world was a good and kind place! Oh!” and she clenched her hands as the hot mortification, the scathing désillusionnement, of that evening recurred to her in its full force. “Oh, I hope it is not wicked and un-Christian, but I should love to see him humbled! I wonder if I shall meet him again. I hope not – and yet I hope I shall.”

The “again” came next at a dinner-party, to which she accompanied her cousin. Mrs Maberly was old-fashioned in some of her ideas. Nothing, for instance, would persuade her that it was courteous to be more than twenty minutes later than the dinner-hour named, in consequence of which she not unfrequently found herself the first arrival. This in no way annoyed Maisie, as it might have done a less simple-minded maiden; indeed, on the contrary, it rather added to her enjoyment. She liked to get into a quiet corner and watch the various guests as they came in; she felt amused by, and yet sorry for, the little perturbations she sometimes discerned on the part of the hostess, especially if the latter happened to be young and at all anxious-minded. This was the case on the evening in question, when fully half-an-hour had been spent by Miss Fforde in her corner before dinner was announced.

“It is too bad,” Maisie overhead the young châtelaine whisper to a friend, “such affectation really amounts to rudeness. But yet it is so awkward to go down – ” then followed some words too low for her to understand, succeeded by a joyful exclamation – “Ah, there he is at last,” as again the door opened, and “Mr Norreys” was announced.

And Maisie’s ears must surely have been praeter-naturally sharp, for through the buzz of voices, through the hostess’s amiably expressed reproaches, they caught the sound of her own name, and the fatal words “that girl in black.”

“You must think me a sort of Frankenstein’s nightmare,” she could not help saying with a smile, as Despard approached to take her down to dinner. But she was scarcely prepared for the rejoinder.

“I won’t contradict you, Miss Ford, if you like to call yourself names. No, I should have been both surprised and disappointed had you not been here. I have felt sure all day I was going to meet you.”

Maisie felt herself blush, felt too that his eyes were upon her, and blushed more, in fury at herself.

“Fool that I am,” she thought. “He is going to play now at making me fall in love with him, is he? How contemptible, how absurd! Does he really imagine he can take me in?”

She raised her head proudly and looked at him, to show him that she was not afraid to do so. But the expression on his face surprised her again. It was serious, gentle, and almost deprecating, yet with an honest light in the eyes such as she had never seen there before.