The Career of Joan Carthew/Chapter 6

OW, where on earth have I seen that girl before?" Joan Carthew asked herself.

It was at Biarritz, where she was enjoying, as she put it to herself, a well-earned holiday; and she was known at her hotel, and among the few acquaintances she had made, as the Comtesse de Merival, a young widow with plenty of money. She was a Comtesse because it is easy to say that one has married a sprig of foreign nobility, without being found out; she was a widow because it is possible for a widow to be alone, unchaperoned, and to amuse herself without ceasing to be .

Joan had amused herself a great deal the six weeks since she had left England, and the cream of the amusement had consisted in inventing a romantic story about herself and getting it believed. It was as good as acting in a successful play which one has written for oneself.

At the present moment she was walking on the plage, pleasantly conscious that she was one of the prettiest and best-dressed women among many who were pretty and well-dressed. Then a blonde girl passed her, a blonde girl who was new to Biarritz, but who, somehow, did not seem new to Joan's retina. Her photograph was somewhere in the book of memory, and, oddly enough, it seemed to have a background of sea and blue sky, as it had to-day.

The girl was pretty, as a beautifully dressed, golden-haired doll in a shop window is pretty. She was also exceedingly "good form," and she was vouched for as a young person of importance by a remarkably distinguished-looking old man who strolled beside her.

They turned, and in passing the "Comtesse" for the second time, the girl looked full in Joan's face, with a lingering gaze such as a spoiled beauty often directs upon a possible rival.

Then, all in an instant, Joan knew.

"Why," she exclaimed mentally, "it's the girl I saw at Brighton—the girl I envied. I know it is she. That's nine years ago, but I cannot be mistaken."

Somehow this seemed an important discovery. If Joan, a miserable, overworked slavey of twelve, nursing her tyrant's baby, had not been bitten with consuming jealousy of a child no older but a thousand times more fortunate than herself, she might have gone on indefinitely as a slavey and never have had a career.

The little girl at Brighton had looked scornfully from under her softly drooping Leghorn bat at the shabby child-nurse, and a rage of resentment had boiled in Joan's passionate young heart. Now, the tall girl at Biarritz looked with half-reluctant admiration from under an equally becoming hat, at the Comtesse de Merival, who was more beautiful and apparently quite as fortunate as she. Nevertheless the old scar suddenly throbbed again, so that Joan remembered there had once been a wound; and she knew that she had no gratitude for the girl to whom, indirectly, she owed her rise in the world. Joan was usually generous to women, even when she had no cause to love them, for, with all her faults, there was nothing of the "cat" in her nature; yet, to her surprise, she felt that she would like to hurt this girl in some way. "What a brute I must be!" she said to herself. "I didn't know I was so bad. Really I mustn't let this sort of thing grow on me, otherwise I shall degenerate from a highwayman (rather a gallant one, I think) into a cad, and I should lose interest in foraging for myself if I were a cad."

As she thought this, the girl and her companion were joined by a man. Joan glanced, then gazed, and decided that he was the most interesting man to look at whom she had ever seen in her life. Not that he was the handsomest, as mere beauty of feature goes, but he was of exactly the type which Joan and most women admire at heart above all others.

One did not need to be told, to know that he was a soldier. As he stood talking to his friends, with his hat off, and the sun chiselling the ripples of his close-cropped hair, in bronze, his head towered above those of the other men who came and went. His face was bronze, too, of a lighter shade, blending into ivory half way up the forehead, and his features were strong and clear-cut as a bronze man's should always be. He wore no moustache or beard, and his mouth and chin were self-reliant, firm, and generous, but Joan liked his eyes best of all. As she passed slowly, they met hers for a second, and their clear depths were brown and bright as a Devonshire brook when the noonday sun shines into it.

It was only for a second that the man's soul looked at her from its windows, but it was long enough to make her sharply realise two facts. One, that she was far, far beneath him; the other, that he was the only man in the world for her.

"To think that that girl should know him, and I not!" she said to herself rebelliously. "He is miles too good for me, but he's more miles too good for her, because she hasn't any soul, and I have, even though it's a bad one. Again, after all these years, that girl passes through my life, taking with her as she goes what I would give all I own, all I might ever gain, to have. It's Kismet—nothing less."

"Ah, Comtesse, bon jour!" murmured a voice that Joan knew, and then it went on in very good English, with only a slight foreign accent: "You are charming to-day, but you do not see your friends. They must remind you of their existence before they can win a bow."

"I have just seen someone who was like a ghost out of the past," returned Joan, with a careless smile for the handsome, dark young man who had stopped to greet her.

"What!" his face lighted up. "You know that young lady you were looking at? That is indeed interesting, and I will tell you why, presently, if you will let me. If you would but introduce me—at all events, to the father. The rest I can do for myself."

"I don't know her," said Joan, "although an important issue of my life was associated with the girl. I can't even give you her name."

"I can do as much as that, for you," said the Marchese Villa Fora. "She is a Miss Violet Ffrench, and the old man is her father, General Ffrench. Not only is she one of the greatest beauties, but one of the greatest heiresses in England."

"Ah!" said Joan, "no wonder you are interested."

"No wonder. But what good does that do to me, since I have not the honour of her acquaintance, and since she is to marry that great, bronze statue of a fellow?"

A pang shot through Joan's heart, and she was ashamed because it was a jealous pang. "She is to marry him! How do you know that, since you are not acquainted with her?"

"It is an open secret. I saw the father and daughter in Paris three weeks ago, and fell in love at first sight—ah! you may laugh. You Englishwomen cannot understand us Latins. It is true that I proposed to you, but you would not take me, and my heart was soon after caught in the rebound. It is very simple."

"You thought that you fell in love with me at first sight, too; at least, you said so, and without any introduction except picking up my purse when I dropped it in the Champs Elysées."

"I got an introduction afterwards."

"Yes, a lady who was staying at my hotel."

"At all events, she vouched for me. She has known my family for years, in Madrid."

"She warned me against you, Marchese. She said that you were a fortune-hunter, and that you fancied I was rich. When you had proposed, and I had told you frankly that my fortune was but silver-gilt, warranted to keep its colour for a few years only, you were very much obliged to me for refusing you, as it saved you the trouble of jilting me afterwards. You are still more obliged to me now that you have met a genuine heiress who has all other desirable qualifications as well."

"You are cruel," exclaimed Villa Fora, to whose style of good looks reproaches were becoming. "Cannot a man love twice? What does it matter to the heart whether there has been an interval of weeks or of years? I am madly in love with Miss Ffrench, and as you promised to be my friend if I would 'talk no more nonsense,' I have no hesitation in confessing it to you. I followed her here from Paris, and arrived only this afternoon. She is at the Hôtel Victoria; therefore, so am I."

"So am I, but not 'therefore,'" cut in Joan. "And the—the man you say she is to marry?"

"Colonel Sir Justin Wentworth? He is at the Grand. But he has come for her. I know the whole story—I have it from a gossiping old lady who is au courant with everyone's affairs if they are worth bothering with; and she does not make mistakes. She has told me that General Ffrench was the guardian of this Sir Justin, that the father—a baronet—was his dearest friend. The match has been an understood thing ever since Wentworth was sixteen and the girl five; for there is eleven years' difference in their ages."

"Then he is about thirty-two or three," said Joan thoughtfully.

"Yes, but in that I am not interested. The awful part for me is that the girl is now of age, and the obstacle of her youth no longer prevents the marriage. Any day the worst may happen. If I could only meet her, I might have a chance to undermine the cold, bronze statue, even though he has a great reputation as a soldier, and is a V.C. But how to manage an introduction? The father has the air of a mediæval dragon."

Joan's heart said: "The man is not a cold statue," but aloud she remarked: "I see now why you hoped that I knew Miss Ffrench. You wanted me to manage it. Well, perhaps I can, even as it is. I have undertaken more difficult things and succeeded."

"Oh, if you would! But why should I hope it, since you have nothing to gain?"

Joan dropped her eyes and did not answer.

"Yet you will try?" pleaded Villa Fora.

"Yet I will try, on one condition. You must be a connection of the late Comte de Merival."

"Your husband!"

Joan smiled as she nodded.

"I am Spanish; he was, I understand, French. But then that presents no difficulty. There are such things as international marriages."

"Yes. Your mother's sister married an uncle of my husband's, didn't she?"

"Quite so. It is settled," agreed the Marchese gravely.

"Well, then, that is the sharp end of the wedge. I will do my best and cleverest to insert it," said Joan. "As you have just arrived, it will be the easier. We are cousins. It can appear to all those whom it does not concern (meaning the gossips of the hotel) that you have run on to see your cousin. For the rest, you must trust me for a day or two, or perhaps more."

Joan had tea—with her cousin—at Miremont's; and they saw the Ffrenches and Sir Justin Wentworth, also having tea. Violet Ffrench looked at Joan with the same side-glance of half-grudging admiration as before, and Joan looked, now and then, at Violet Ffrench with a charming, frank gaze, which seemed to say: "You are so sweetly pretty that I can't keep my eyes off you, and I like you for being pretty." In reality it said something quite different, but it was effects, not realities, which mattered at the moment.

Thus the campaign had begun, though the enemy was blissfully ignorant of the activity upon the other side.

Joan went back to the hotel rather earlier than she had intended, and going straight to the large, empty dining-room, rang for the head waiter. When he appeared, she asked if it were yet arranged where a new arrival; General Ffrench, was to sit with his daughter. The waiter pointed out a small table for two, near the centre of the room; but before his hand withdrew from the gesture, it was turned palm upward in answer to a slight, silent hint from Joan. Finally, it retired with a louis in its clasp. "I want you to put my table close to theirs," said she. "It shall be done, madame," replied the man; and it was done. Therefore Joan and Violet could scarcely help exchanging more glances from between their red-shaded candles that night at dinner, which Joan ate alone, unaccompanied by the wistful Villa Fora.

The Ffrenches appeared to know nobody in the hotel, and of this she was glad. There was the more chance for her.

After dinner there was conjuring, and Joan contrived to sit next to Miss Ffrench. Villa Fora was on the opposite side of the big drawing-room, where he had reluctantly gone in obedience to his "cousin's" instructions. The conjuring made conversation, and Joan was not surprised to find the heiress open to flattery. When the performance was over, she kept her seat; and by this time, having introduced herself to Miss Ffrench, the introduction was passed on to the father. He, good man, was too well-born to be actually a snob, but he had no objection to titles, even foreign ones, and the Comtesse de Merival was so pretty, so modest, altogether such good form, that he had no objection to her as, at least, an hotel acquaintance for his daughter.

It seemed that General Ffrench had been ordered to Biarritz for his health, and that he hoped to do some golfing; but Miss Ffrench hated golf, and as she had no friends in the place, she expected to be very dull.

At this, Joan reminded her gaily of the friend with whom she and her father had been walking in the afternoon.

"Oh, but he is such an old friend, he doesn't count," exclaimed Violet, blushing a little.

"She isn't a bit in love with him," thought Joan. "What a shame! But—. She is vain and romantic; often the two qualities go together in a woman. The ground is all prepared for me."

By and by, Sir Justin Wentworth strolled in from his hotel. Though she was dying to stay and meet him, and perhaps have a few words, Joan rose and walked away. This course was approved by General Ffrench. He would have known what to think if the beautiful Comtesse had made herself fascinating, at such short notice, to his son-in-law elect.

Joan talked with her "cousin," who had been in the smoking-room, and Violet Ffrench had time to be intensely curious as to the connection between her charming new acquaintance, the Comtesse de Merival, and the handsome, dark young man who had been in her hotel at Paris. He had looked at her then; he looked at her now. What was he to the Comtesse? what was the Comtesse to him?

Next morning, both General Ffrench and Sir Justin Wentworth walked off to the golf-links, leaving Violet to write letters in the glass room that looked out on the sea. Presently Joan came in, with a writing-case in her hand, and Violet stopped in the midst of the first sentence of her first letter. Joan did not even begin to write, nor had she ever cherished the faintest intention of doing so.

Violet rather hoped that she would mention the dark young man, but she did not; and then, of course, Violet hoped it a great deal more. The two girls drifted from one subject to another, and finally, by way of a favourite author and a popular novel of the moment, they touched the key of romance.

"I used to think that romance was dead in this century, but lately I have been finding out that it isn't," said Joan. "Oh, not personally. Romance is over for me. I loved my husband, you see, and he died the day of our wedding; I married him on his death-bed. That is not romance; it is tragedy. But I am speaking of what I should not speak of, to you, so let us talk of something else."

"Why?" asked Violet.

"Oh, because—because I have an idea that you are engaged."

"How can that matter?"

"It does matter. I oughtn't to explain, so you mustn't urge me."

"You rouse my curiosity," said Violet; but this was not news to Joan.

"Engaged girls shouldn't have curiosity about anything outside their own romances," replied the Comtesse de Merival mysteriously. "I've never had a real romance," sighed Violet. "I've always been more or less engaged to Sir Justin Wentworth ever since I can remember. He is a splendid fellow, as you can see."

"I hardly noticed," said Joan; then added, in a whisper, but not too low a whisper to be heard: "I was so busy pitying someone else."

Violet's colour rose, and she was really a very pretty girl, though vanity made her eyes cold.

"Sir Justin's father and mine were old chums," went on Violet. "Our place and his lie close together in Devonshire. We have even some of the same money-interests—mines in Australia. He has heaps of money, too, so there's no question of his needing to think of mine."

"As if any man could think of your money when he had you to think of!" exclaimed Joan. "No doubt you will be very happy. Such a long friendship ought to be a good foundation for the rest, and yet—and yet—it's a pity that you should have to marry and become a placid British matron without first knowing some of the wild joys of real love, real romance."

"I thought you doubted there being any left in the world?" "No; I said I had found at least one case which had built up my faith again; a case of passionate love, born at first sight, and strong enough to carry the man across the world, if necessary, to follow the woman he loves."

"Such love isn't likely to come my way."

"It has come your way. It is here—close to you. Oh, I have done wrong! I should not have spoken. But I am so sorry for him—my poor, handsome cousin."

"Your cousin!" This was a revelation, and Violet's eyes were not cold now, but warm with interest.

"Yes, the Marchese Villa Fora, the best-looking and one of the best-born young men in Spain. But indeed we must not talk of him. What a lovely day it is! I must have my motor-car out this afternoon. How I should love to take you with me!"

Violet would ask no more questions; but all that had been dark was now clear, and she could think of nothing and no one except the Comtesse's cousin, the Marchese Villa Fora.

Joan had been in the hotel at Biarritz for ten days, and by the trick of "being nice" (she knew how to be very nice) to the unattached old ladies and middle-aged dowagers, she had been accepted on her own valuation. She did not flirt, she had a title, she appeared to be rich, she owned a motor-car, therefore none of her statements regarding herself was doubted. General Ffrench made an inquiry or two concerning her, was satisfied with the replies, and therefore consented to let his daughter join an automobile party arranged by the Comtesse for the afternoon.

Somehow, in the motor-car, Violet sat next to the Marchese Villa Fora, who gazed at her sadly with magnificent eyes and said very little. It was extremely interesting, she discovered, to sit shoulder to shoulder with a man who was dying of hopeless love for you, and had followed you across France, though he had never spoken a word to you until to-day. It was he who helped her out when they came back to the hotel, and the thrill in her fingers after his had pressed them almost convulsively for an instant remained for a long time.

Now, the thin end of the entering wedge, of which Joan had hinted, was well in, and after this day events moved swiftly. The Comtesse de Merival and Miss Ffrench were close friends. Violet opened her heart to Joan and told her everything that was in it—not a long list. Joan sympathised and advised. She did so want dear Violet to be happy, she said, for happiness was the best thing in the world; and love was happiness. She wanted her to have that.

The two girls were together constantly, and this meant that Joan soon began to see a good deal of Sir Justin Wentworth. Quickly she diagnosed that he cared nothing for Violet Ffrench, except in a kindly, protective, affectionate way, but that he had a deep regard for her father. He would never try to free himself of the tacit understanding into which he had drifted as a boy; if any change were to come, the initiative must be taken, and firmly taken, by Violet.

Meanwhile, two things were happening. If Violet was not precisely falling in love with Villa Fora, she was in love with the idea of him which was growing up in her mind; and Justin Wentworth had discovered that he craved for something more in life than Violet Ffrench could ever give him.

He had gone on contentedly enough for the several years during which he had definitely thought of the marriage. There had been the Boer war, and then the interest of coming home to England and his beautiful old place in Devonshire, which he loved. But suddenly he had awakened to the fact that contentment is no better than desperate resignation; and though he was hardly aware of it yet, the awakening had come to him when looking into Joan's eyes.

He would not confess to himself that he loved her, but he thought that she was the most vivid creature he had ever met, and he could not help realising how curiously congenial they were in most of their thoughts. Often he seemed to feel what she was feeling, without a word being spoken on either side, and unconsciously he was passionately jealous of the handsome Spanish cousin with whom (General Ffrench innocently suggested) the Comtesse would probably make a match.

Joan, on her part, cared too much by this time to be able to see clearly, where her own affairs were concerned. She had begun the little comedy she was playing not for the sake of Villa Fora, but for her own, with the deliberate intention of separating Violet Ffrench from Justin Wentworth, even though she might never come any nearer to him herself. All the machinery which she had set going was running smoothly. Violet was fascinated by Villa Fora, was meeting him secretly and receiving notes from him; he was determined to bring matters to a climax soon, and was sure of his success. General Ffrench played golf all day, bridge half the night, and suspected nothing; nor, apparently, did anyone else. Still, Joan was more miserable than she had ever been in her life—far more miserable than when Lady Thorndyke had died without making a new will and left her penniless.

The girl saw herself at last as she was, unscrupulous, an adventuress, living on her wits and the lack of wits in others. She hated herself, and worshipped more and more each day the honourable soldier from whom her own unworthiness (if there were no other barrier) must, she felt, put her irrevocably apart.

Even as Joan talked to Violet of Wentworth and Villa Fora, outwardly agreeing with the girl that the one was cold, that it was the other who knew how to love, her whole soul was in rebellion against itself. "He does not think of me at all," she would repeat over and over again, despite the secret voice of instinct which whispered a contradiction. "He doesn't think of me; and even if he did, he Would only have to know half the truth to despise me as the vilest of women."

Then, one day, there was a great scandal at the hotel. The Marchese Villa Fora had run away with Miss Violet Ffrench, in the Comtesse de Merival's motor-car, which lately he had been learning to drive. Even Joan was taken by surprise, for she had not known that the thing was going to happen so soon. She was actually able to tell the truth—or something approaching the truth—when she assured the father and the deserted fiancé that she was innocent of complicity. So candid were her beautiful, wet eyes, so tremulous her sweet voice, and so pale the delicate oval of her cheeks, that both men believed her, and one of them was so happy in this sudden relief from the weight of a great burden that he could have sung aloud.

General Ffrench was far from happy; but he determined that, rather than give fuel to the scandal, he would make the best of things as they were. To this course he was partly persuaded by the counsels of Justin Wentworth. Villa Fora was undoubtedly what he pretended to be, a Spanish marquis of very ancient and honourable lineage, though it would take many golden bricks to rebuild the family castle in Spain. The girl had gone with him, and gone too far before the truth came out to be brought back with good grace, therefore it were well to let her become the Marchesa Villa Fora quietly, without useless ragings.

The thing Joan had set herself to accomplish was done; she had separated Justin Wentworth and Violet Ffrench for ever, and now the end had come. She was hurt and sore, and could hardly bear to see her own face in the glass, for she imagined that it had grown hard and cruel—that Justin Wentworth must find it so.

General Ffrench openly announced his daughter's marriage to the Marchese Villa Fora and told all inquirers that he was going to her in Madrid; but Justin Wentworth would not, of course, accompany his old friend on such a mission. He would set his face towards England, and with this intention he said "Good-bye" to the Comtesse de Merival.

"This has hurt and shocked you, too," he said. "There is one thing I must say to you, and it is this: it is only for her father that I care. I want her to be happy in her own way. We did not suit each other."

"I used sometimes to think not," Joan answered in a voice genuinely broken. "I used to be afraid that—if you should ever marry—you would not have been happy. Perhaps she—wasn't the right one for you."

Her eyes were downcast, but the compelling magnetism in the man's caught them up to his and held them.

"I have known that she wasn't the right one for a long time," he said. "I have known the right one, and it is you. I love you with all my heart and soul. I want you. You are the one woman on earth for me. I hadn't meant to say this now, but—I can't let you go out of my life. I must do all I can to keep you always."

"Don't!" gasped Joan. "Don't! it will kill me. Oh, if you only knew, how you would hate me!"

"Nothing could make me hate you."

"Yes. Wait!" And then Joan poured out the whole story—not only of this last fraud, but of all the frauds; the story of her "career."

He listened to the end, without interrupting her once. Then, at last, when the strange tale was finished, and the pale girl was silent from sheer exhaustion of the hopeless spirit tasting its punishment in purgatory, he held out his arms.

"Poor, little, lonely girl!" he said. "How sorry I am for you! How I want to comfort and take care of you all the rest of your life, so that it may be clear and white, as your true self would have it be! And—how glad I am that you're not a widowed Comtesse!"

She was in his arms still when a knock at the door roused them both from the first dream of real happiness the girl had ever known.

A servant brought a card. She took it from the tray and read it out mechanically: "Mr. George Gallon."

"Tell the gentleman" she had begun; but before she could go further with her instructions George Gallon himself had entered the room.

"Well, Miss Carthew," he said, "I heard from an unexpected source that you were here, swaggering about as the widow of a French Comte. I needed a little holiday, and so I ran out to see whether you were a greater success as a Comtesse than you were as a typewriter in my office. Oh! I beg your pardon. You're not alone. I'm afraid I may have surprised your friend with some disagreeable news."

"Not at all," said Justin Wentworth calmly. "Miss Carthew has not only told me of that episode in her life, but how it become necessary for her to take up the position of a typewriter. Your treatment of her seemed almost incredible—until I saw you. No wonder it was necessary for Miss Carthew to adopt an alias, if this is the sort of persecution she is subject to under her own name. But in future it will be different. As Lady Wentworth she will be safe even from cads like you; and though she is not yet my wife, I am thankful to say I have even now the right to protect her. When do you intend to leave Biarritz, Mr. Gallon?"

George opened his lips furiously, but snapped them shut again. Then, having paused to reflect, he said: "I am here only for an hour. I'm going on to Spain."

"Pray watch over your tongue in that hour," returned Wentworth.

Then George Gallon was gone.

"I'll worship you all my life on my knees," said Joan. "I'm not worthy to touch your hand. But I will be. I will be a new self."

"Only the best of the old one, that is all I want," answered her lover. "The past is like a garment which you wore for protection against the storm. But there will be no more storms after this."

"Because you have forgiven me, because you believe in me," cried Joan, "you will make of me the woman you would have me to be!"

"The woman you really are, or I would not have loved you," he said.

And so it was that Joan Carthew's career ended and her life began.