CHAPTER XXXI

Miss Ransome’s eyes looked heavy next morning at breakfast. That her hostess noticed the fact was made apparent by a remark that followed her first glance at her guest.

“I suppose you were very sorry to leave Stillington?”

“What an ass I was to cry!” was the unspoken response to this question. The spoken one ran more subtilely--

“As sorry as I could be when I was so exceedingly glad too.”

“It seems delightfully natural to see you here,” responded Felicity, with not inferior fondness. “But I must not have you looking pale because I keep you up listening to my tiresome worries; of course, they are multiplied tenfold since you were here last.”

She paused to heave a sigh at the thought of the burden of her new prosperities, and Bonnybell gently echoed it at the pensive reflection how easily her own shoulders would bear the load were it transferred to them.

“I shall send you out for a walk this morning,” continued Lady Bletchley. “You look as if you wanted air.”

Bonnybell’s heart leapt at the prospect thus indicated of a solitude tempered by shops, but her voice repelled the suggestion.

“And leave you to cope alone with all that mass of work you told me of last night? Do I look very pasty? I dare say; I did not sleep very well; I suppose because I was too excited at being back again with you.”

This charming explanation was accepted as probable, and Miss Ransome’s conscience eased by receiving the assurance that she could be equally useful to her patroness doing commissions out-of-doors; that patroness’s lady’s-maid being apparently only inferior to her secretary, Miss Sloggett, in block-like stupidity.

An hour later, therefore, Bonnybell found herself walking down Bond Street, chaperoned by the functionary in question, and entrusted with many nice tasks of matching, pricing, and ordering. Shopping had always been inexpressibly dear to Miss Ransome’s towny heart; and though the choosing of vicarious finery was a very inferior pastime to the testing of colours and shapes upon her own light form and brilliant face; yet it would have been difficult to find an anodyne more effectual than that provided, with no such intention nor the least knowledge that any painkiller was needed, by her protectress.

Bonnybell had set off on her walk in the lowest spirits possible to one of her nature. She had not at all adjusted her mind to a future from which Edward was eliminated. The insecurity of her present status, hinging on the more or less of water in the Scotch river honoured by Tom’s rod; and the dismal possibility of a livelihood dearly bought by conducting a Mrs. Slammer’s servants to those elevating museums and exhibitions in which she herself would never willingly set foot, called forth reflections not calculated to exhilarate.

But true philosophy, that “perpetual feast of nectared sweets,” never leaves its sincere votary long unsupported; and by the time that she had realized what startling surprises in shape and fabric the spring hats revealed, and that half a score of men had twisted their necks to get a longer look at her through the side window of their hansoms, Miss Ransome felt that there was yet balm in Gilead for her broken spirit. A really delightful hour and a half followed, spent in exhilarating intercourse with a couple of very smart dressmakers, during which she committed herself on her own account to two _toilettes sérieuses_, some trivial costlinesses in the way of “little” _matinées_, _fichus_, veils, etc., and three really bewildering toques.

Her purchases made a large hole in Camilla’s handsome tip--that is to say, they would have done if she had paid for them, but, as she piously said to herself, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” adding, less piously, that there was no reason why her future husband should not pay for them.

Reluctantly, and summoned by duty, she at length began to turn her steps homeward, and was loitering a moment before a florist’s--the flowers that grew in shops were the only ones really admired by Bonnybell--and inhaling whiffs from the white lilac boughs and stacks of lilies-of-the-valley inside, when she was startled by a voice calling to her from an electric brougham which had pulled up at the kerbstone.

“Bonnybell! Bonnybell!”

Who could be Bonnybell-ing her here in Piccadilly, whither her maiden feet had now strayed? The answer came all too soon, nor did it take more than one glance at the face of the very pronounced “chemical blonde” thrust out of the automobile’s window to tell Miss Ransome that she was once more face to face with her past and Flora Tennington.

As on a former meeting, the pleasure in the encounter was all on one side.

“This is rippin’!” cried the occupant of the brougham, who occasionally borrowed a word of slang from the little young men who frequented her. “How long have you been up? and why have not you been to see me?”

“I came up only the day before yesterday,” replied Bonnybell, in a tone which implied that the lateness of her arrival was the only reason why she had not already sought out so chosen and valued a friend. One must not make an enemy of Flora; but what a piece of ill-luck!

As she spoke she stepped quickly across the pavement, to hinder, by greater proximity, the sharing by other ears of the unavoidable impending dialogue; and tried to put her head so far inside the carriage window as to hide from passers-by the identity of her flamboyant friend.

“Where are you staying?”

“In Hill Street.”

“Come back to luncheon with me.”

“Oh, how I should love it! but I am staying with--people.”

“What people?”

At this query a horrifying vision passed before Miss Ransome’s eyes, of Flora, champagne-headed, low-necked, whitened and sealing-waxed, sweeping into Felicity’s drawing-room and falling on her own neck under that lady’s nose.

“Oh, nobody very interesting; not your sort.”

A look of cynic humour flashed into the other’s highly decorated eyes.

“I see,” she said, dryly; adding, “But at least come and take a turn with me. If you sit well back nobody will see you, and I have a hundred things to say to you. Come, get in!”

Bonnybell hesitated, though nothing could be more distasteful to her than her present position. At high noon, in open confabulation with a lady of Flora’s appearance and antecedents, exposed to the probability of recognition, and observed with respectful surprise by the chaperoning lady’s-maid, who, if she was of the block-like stupidity attributed to her by her mistress, was likewise of the highest and touchiest respectability. The sense of having conveyed to an old friend with brutal clumsiness that she was ashamed of being seen with her annoyed Miss Ransome also, though in a less degree. She put her face--it seemed impossible that both were made of the same materials--very close to Flora’s, and whispered--

“There’s a dragon with me--an imbecile of a maid. I dare not send her back without me.”

“Give her five shillings, and tell her to hold her tongue.”

This counsel, though its radical badness and inartistic quality was fully recognized by its recipient, was yet finally accepted, as being the least objectionable of the only two alternatives open to her. Flora, as she knew, would not let her go without a prolonged exchange of questions and answers, heard inevitably by the footman holding the brougham door open, and probably by a goodly number of Piccadilly _flâneurs_. Bonnybell had often before tipped servants to silence, and even when the tip was not very large or likely to have successors had seldom found reason to complain of their fidelity.

As Lady Tennington never cared what she said, where she said it, or who heard it, Miss Ransome decided that she had, on the whole, chosen practically the least perilous of the two vexatious paths open to her, when she and her companion were whizzing down the great thoroughfare.

“So it is all off!” said Flora, without preamble, as soon as they were in motion.

“What is all off?”

“It was all on; and it is all off.”

Miss Ransome was too old a hand, in experience if not in years, to be trapped into a confidence by the device of pretending to know all about it; so her rejoinder was a fence.

“_What_ was all on, and _is_ all off?”

“Oh, come, do not pretend innocence; we have not too much time. Remember that it was I who first introduced you to him--turned you into the conservatory together, the day he came to your rescue when you were in such an abject fright at the idea of a _tête-à-tête_ drive home with poor old Charlie.” She chuckled at the recollection; and, since the only way in which Bonnybell showed that she “rose” to this jogging of her memory was by a slight shiver, continued, “It came to grief over a letter. Did anything unlucky turn up? Did they find out anything?”

A slight repetition of the shiver produced by “Charlie’s” name ran over Bonnybell. Stillington might not have effected much in the way of moral teaching, but it had at least made Flora’s scheme of ethics unfamiliar. And Flora’s appearance did not gain in impressiveness by proximity. She had evidently lately embarked on a new dye, which had stained her hair with a brilliant pink hue. If it was champagne-coloured now, it was a very bad and headachey champagne!

There was a lovely maiden flush on Bonnybell’s cheek as she answered very gently--

“There was nothing about me to find out; nothing that I could help.”

Lady Tennington looked at her with compassionate surprise and amusement at the carefully suppressed indignation lurking under her mild words.

“I know that; you always were a very good little miss!” she rejoined, laughing; then, more seriously, “Yes, you poor little devil, I really believe that you are speaking truth; and, of course, Claire had no business to take you to those places.”

“She never did when she was all right.”

The plea was set up with the customary generosity; nor did its utterer ever seem aware that the defence was in itself an indictment.

“Well, how much came out?”

There could be no doubt that Flora did know, yet Bonnybell’s resolution not to go further in admissions than she was absolutely compelled was instinctive.

“How did you hear about it?”

“Oh, how does one hear things? Servants, little birds, God knows what! I asked Charlie whether he knew anything about it, but he only laughed, and said, whoever the writer was, he had done Bonnybell a good turn.” (It was not because Flora’s pink hair and chalky face were disagreeable objects that Miss Ransome had turned away her head.) “Of course, I at once concluded that he had written it himself. He really will play these little games once too often, and get himself into trouble.” (To most people it would have seemed difficult for “Charlie” to effect that object more thoroughly than he had already done.) “I suppose that it is partly his way of showing his affection for you, and partly that being in such low water himself has made him spiteful. My prudish friends tell me I ought to shut my door on him, but I am not fond of shutting doors upon people, it is not a pleasant process for either side.”

She spoke as one who had known, personally, the outside of a good many doors.

“You were always so kind.”

“Yes, so I was and am”--accepting the tribute as her undoubted due (there were so many tributes that never were and never could be paid to Flora)--“but it is not altogether that. I do not want to make an enemy of him; and, low in the world as he is, he could yet do me a nasty turn, as he has just done you. If you take my advice, my dear, you will keep on terms with him, despite his last achievement.”

Bonnybell heaved a most unaffected sigh. A feeling of disgusted despair took temporary possession of her sanguine breast. Was she never to be able to free herself from the environment of mud and slime into which circumstances, not herself, had plunged her? Was she never to get away from the past and its most hideous embodiment, Charlie? He had done her a good turn this time, but he would repeat his action when it would not be a good turn. She might be just about to pull off something really good--the eyes of the passers-by, both on foot and in hansoms, had convinced her how much lay in her power if she had a fair chance--and Charlie would come in again with his thrust in the dark, another of his anonymous letters would arrive, and it would all be “blued”!

“Is he in London?” she asked faintly.

“I do not know. He comes and goes. I generally see him when he is up. I am afraid, poor devil, that mine is the only respectable house left open to him.”

A streak of sincere amusement stirred the younger woman’s gloom. Poor, dear Flora! she must be forgetting to whom she is talking. Perhaps Flora remembered, for she left the topic.

“You know that I have left Tennington?”

“Yes, I was _so_ sorry.”

“It is more than I was,” replied Flora, dryly. “I never had such a run of bad cards in my life as I had there, and I always detest the country.”

“How can any one who is in their senses like living there?” agreed Bonnybell, fervently, deriving the first advantage she had yet reaped from the lost Edward in the ability to lay aside for ever her rural enthusiasms.

“I shall take a cottage on the river in the summer, and you must come and stay with me, and we will get hold of some of the old set--oh no, not Charlie, of course--some of the right sort.”

It was not easy to Miss Ransome, though she accomplished it--since it pleased Flora, and tied her to nothing--to give an answer to the effect that Heaven seemed to open to her at this prospect. Flora needed some amends for the plain indications she herself had been obliged to give her, that the world’s market-places were not the spots where conferences with her were most to be relished; and, moreover, acquiescence in distant made it easier to evade nearer projects of reunion.

“Cannot you dine quietly with me to-night or some other night? We will get somebody to feed us at the Carlton and take us to hear Suzette at the Empire. I believe she has brought over her Paris _répertoire_ quite unmutilated!”

Bonnybell veiled the terror inspired by this proposition by a little grimace of regret that had something of truth in it. If Lady Tennington could be made invisible and Lady Bletchley’s ears stopped, their _protégée_ would have thoroughly enjoyed listening once again, with the perfect comprehension she did herself the justice to know that she could bring to them, to Suzette’s astonishing audacities. Suzette was _canaille_ before everything; but what a genius!

“Oh, _what_ a treat it would have been for me! and how dear of you to think of it! But it is--as pleasant things generally are for me, nowadays--quite out of the question. I am to spend a ‘Happy Evening.’”

“I hope that you would do that with me!”

“It is not quite the same class of happiness. It is a factory girls’ ‘Happy Evening.’”

Both laughed, and Bonnybell made a second and better grimace.

“Miss Sloggett is going to show them her magic lantern.”

“Miss Sloggett! What a name! Who is Miss Sloggett?”

“Oh, she is an old ass who does secretary and door-mat to--to--the friend I am staying with.”

After all, there were “points” in being able, for a whole hour, not to be “a nice girl.” Flora _was_ a good sort, for she did not press her invitation, and without being asked--perhaps because she had not failed to perceive Bonnybell’s latent effort to conceal her hostess’s name--set her down at the corner of Hill Street, magnanimously refraining from any attempt to pry into what was so clearly meant to be hidden from her, though the motive for concealment could scarcely be a flattering one.

It was with a trembling hand that Bonnybell rang the bell--a project for compassing the possession of a latch-key flitting through her head--but she was _quitte pour la peur_. Though the church clock in South Audley Street had pointed to five minutes past two, Felicity had not missed her. She was soon--with a mind relieved at least from that portion of its load--giving a report, with excisions something like those practised on Russian newspapers, of her morning’s employment, and adorning it with touches, so nicely adapted to Felicity’s humour, that the latter ended by expressing an ecstatic wonder as to how she had ever managed to bear so long the absence from her side of such a seasoner and sweetener of her own toilsome existence. Her regret extended even to being unable--owing to another engagement--to be present at the “Happy Evening,” to which Bonnybell and Miss Sloggett proceeded in the brougham without her.

Bonnybell would have liked to be silent during the drive, ruminating over the additions made to her difficulties by the morning’s meeting, and the news it brought her. But poor Sloggett’s spirits were in a very tender condition, and asked for delicate handling. A nascent jealousy of herself, which amused Miss Ransome, coupled with deep misgivings as to her own capacity for the evening’s task, combined to overset the poor secretary.

“I trust there will be no _contretemps_! I trust it will all go well; but I have not much confidence in myself. I am only a beginner. I _hope_ it will be all right.”

“What does it matter if it is not? It will only be the more amusing.” It was the sort of ointment with which she was wont to anoint her own hurts, but it was clear that such was not the balm for Miss Sloggett’s wounds.

“Oh, but Lady Bletchley would be _so_ much annoyed at any _contretemps_.”

“Why need she ever hear of it?”

A shocked look in the face of the more conscientious understudy brought Bonnybell back at once to the sense of having deviated slightly but certainly from the path of _niceness_. “It must have been that whiff of Flora which demoralized me,” she said to herself, but she hastened to mend the breach.

“I made the suggestion,” she said, with uncommon sweetness, “because I would not for the world add anything to Lady Bletchley’s trials” (it is just as well to pretend that I believe in that peach-fed old Felicity’s imaginary troubles), “and also because I do not want _you_ to suffer.”

The sympathy in eye and tone was--or to Miss Sloggett it seemed so--unactably sincere.

“It is very good of you to care,” she murmured, still half-doubtfully; but there was a slight mist before her eyes.

The poor secretary’s misgivings were amply justified by the result. Not only was she, as she had tremblingly confessed, new to the task of exhibition, but the “plant” was deplorably inadequate, the magic lantern much too large for the sheet. Before it, in its first innocent blankness, sat the girls, prepared to comment, with their terrible town frankness, in giggling rows upon the magic lantern and its manager. The latter prefaced each picture with a little explanatory speech, the first tinged with regretful deprecation.

“I am afraid that, owing to the smallness of the sheet, I shall not be able to show you the whole picture at once. I will, however, show you as much as I can of ‘The Father of the Prodigal Son.’”

In fulfilment of this promise, the character alluded to flashed upon the sheet, with a very crowded and uncomfortable appearance, and--with no legs.

There was a nervous sense of not entire success in the accents with which the subsequent pictures were heralded.

“You all know the story of ‘The Prodigal Son,’ don’t you, girls? how, ‘while he was yet a great way off,’ his father met him? He did not wait for the poor prodigal to come to him; he _ran_ to meet him with outstretched arms!”

The picture followed; but the effect was somewhat marred by the fact that it revealed the father sitting motionless indoors with his head in his hands.

It was in vain that the luckless show-woman hastily explained that she had made a mistake, and that her elucidation referred to the slide that was to follow, not to the present one. To an accompaniment of squeals of laughter and flowers of cockney wit, the exhibition ignominiously ended.

It was a very crushed Miss Sloggett whose failing heart Bonnybell good-naturedly tried to uplift on the homeward drive, and a sense of amusement presently pervaded her own rather drooped spirits at the perception that, after all, the poor secretary was ready to take a leaf out of Miss Ransome’s book.

“I think,” she said, hesitatingly, “that, considering how much Lady Bletchley has of various kinds to occupy and distress her just at present, it would, perhaps, be as well not to go into details over the evening.”

Never was it the least difficult to Bonnybell to promise or perform connivance in any form of deceit, and she kindly and warmly acquiesced. She had not the slightest wish to harm poor Sloggett. Was not there, after all, a good deal of analogy between their fates? (“I am a pretty Sloggett, and she is an ugly Bonnybell, but we both live by our wits.”)