Part 7

The artists continued to prosper; their tide of success flowed steadily--fortune increased with fame. Miniatures by J. Hay were much sought for; Josephine had more orders than she could execute--her reputation was firmly established. As for Rose--the name of “R. Hay” on a black-and-white sketch was a guarantee of excellence; she illustrated important books, and where once she was thankful for shillings, she now received sovereigns. Former acquaintances recalled the sisters--and their own active benevolence to a couple of struggling strangers--and prided themselves on their perspicuity. They looked up the Hays, deluged them with invitations, and enquired “where they had been hiding for the last twelve months?”

“Nothing succeeds like success.” The portraits of the sister artists appeared in popular papers and magazines, their names in paragraphs, and in lists of guests at various famous houses.

They no longer rented an “upper part,” but a smart and commodious flat in a fashionable locality, and employed two servants, and a Court dressmaker. Their strides in their art were amazing, even to themselves. Once, as Rose completed a spirited sketch, she exclaimed:

“Now this really _is_ good! So good, that I can hardly believe I have drawn it myself, but that I am a mere automaton, worked by--a--a--certain--something--a hidden power!”

“Do you know, _I_ have often felt that too,” said Josephine, “as if some masterful personality helped me--a peculiar inspiration directed my hand, guided it rapidly, and resolutely, to unerring achievement and success!”

Her sister looked at her with an air of grave surprise. “I wonder if this could be so?” she murmured.

The pen in Josephine’s fingers suddenly wrote on the margin of her work the words:

“Yes, it is so.”

She stared at the sentence in fascinated silence, then turning hastily about, said:

“Oh, Rose, do come and see what the pen has just written of itself! What can it mean? I declare on my honour I did not originate this.”

“I see.... I believe it is what is called automatic writing,” said Rose, after a significant pause. “I have heard of it. Do try if it will write more. See, here is a sheet of clean paper--now write a question.”

“Do you help my sister?” Josephine wrote obediently.

“Yes, and yourself,” came the reply.

“We are most grateful to you. Were you a great artist?”

“I am--a great artist,” wrote the power behind the pen.

“May we know your name?”

“No.”

“What may we call you?”

“Helper.”

“Can we do anything for you?”

“Pray.”

“Will you continue to help us?”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

“Is it not uncanny?” said Josephine. “Do you think I wrote this?--or the artist?--or is it one of the modern discoveries--my subconscious self coming to the surface?”

“Perhaps,” replied Rose, “but it explains all my success, and yours. The help arrived precisely when we were at our wits’ end. Don’t you remember, that wet November night--how we talked of lost gifts, and inspiration? I believe he came then.”

“Yes, I remember that night well.”

“We were two wretched little painstaking amateurs, without one spark, or glimmer, of genius. Now we are ‘true artists’; even the wickedest critic admits this. The Helper has been our master, has taught us, and set his own work once more before the public, drawn by our feeble fingers; it is the hand of the dead reincarnated in ours--we are in tune with some unknown mystery.”

“Yes, and we had better keep the mystery to ourselves,” said Rose the practical, and she stood up, and put the sheet of paper in the fire.

“Do you think it wrong, Rosie?--are we what is called ‘possessed’?”

“No--did he not ask us to pray? And we will. Why should not a departed spirit show kindness, and give charity to others? You and I are the objects of his benevolence--but for him, God knows what would have become of us!”

After this experience, it became an everyday matter to carry on a little correspondence with the Helper, who proved to be the Hays’ mainstay for many months; but at last he gave notice of his departure, in these words:

“You can now walk, and work alone--and another sorely needs assistance.”

“For a picture?” wrote Josephine.

“Yes, an important picture, which may make his fortune. A picture like this,” and with a few telling strokes the pen rapidly sketched a desert scene, a sunset, and a great caravan, with many kneeling figures; in the foreground two horses and two men; in the far distance, a passing sandstorm. Under this sketch the pen wrote, ‘Good-bye.’

“How we shall miss him,” said Rose, with a sigh; “though it is true that we are able to walk alone,--especially since we have had those lessons in Paris.”

“I shall always treasure the sketch,” said her sister, “our Helper’s last writing, and message. I shall lock it away in my desk.”

Two years elapsed, and ‘R. and J. Hay’ continued to prosper; they visited Dullditch--but not by motor--and during a holiday on the Continent happened by chance to enter a fine exhibition of modern paintings.

As she moved along slowly and conscientiously, catalogue in hand, Rose was accosted by Josephine, who looked so agitated and pale, that she was justly alarmed.

“Are you ill?” she asked. “What is it?”

“_The picture is here_,” she whispered excitedly. “Come, it is in the next room--the Helper’s picture of the desert. Oh, it is a masterpiece!--I could scarcely get near it for the crowd.”

Then, when at last an opening was obtained, Rose beheld the finished result of the sketch in her sister’s desk--correct in every particular.

There was the vast desert, the passing of a great sandstorm, the setting of a red sun, and a halted caravan. It was the hour of prayer and thanksgiving; a multitude of the faithful had prostrated themselves towards Mecca; in the foreground, two Europeans, dismounted, held their Arab horses, as they stood bare-headed, gazing towards the east.

On referring to the catalogue, the sisters read:

“409.--After the Sirocco. Anon.”

VI

THE FATAL PARAGRAPH

A TRAGEDY

It is scarcely possible that many women have led a more dull, monotonous, miserable life than Annie Fleude; actual want, and the real nip of actual poverty, with some variety and excitement, would have been preferable! All her days since she left school--and she was now thirty--had been dedicated to querulous old people. Her uncle, a paralytic, who lived at Camberwell--in a gloomy, semi-detached house overlooking a damp garden--had engrossed the entire summer of her youth. Her stagnant existence had been narrowed to the routine of the household, and the only breaks she enjoyed were an occasional Sunday School Treat, a Magic Lantern Lecture, or a Summer Sale!

When Mr. Jonas Fleude died he left his niece thirty pounds a year, and figuratively handed her on to his sister, Mrs. Pyzer, a deaf old lady residing in the Midlands, and here, if possible, Annie’s case was worse--she had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire!

The locality in which Mrs. Pyzer resided was neither town, village, nor country, but combined all the drawbacks, and none of the advantages, of the three. Battsbridge was a collection of houses near a cross-road in Flatshire. These had been built in the immediate vicinity of a once celebrated posting inn--a hostelry of no little importance in the old coaching days. It was situated on the great North Road--cautiously aloof from the temptations of a market town--capable of accommodating many guests, and its stables received one hundred and fifty horses. But time and the railway had brought changes, and diverted the traffic elsewhere. The stables fell into ruins, the inn was turned into six cottages, and the inn’s parasites alone remained!--four substantial detached houses of the Georgian period, red-faced, ugly, and close to the road, with little mean enclosures, flagged paths in front, and large straggling gardens at the rear. They were of different sizes and ages, but were all at the same side of the highway, facing north, and resembled substantial suburban residences which had ventured into the country--and gone astray!

Besides these houses, Battsbridge boasted a large forge and a tiny post-office--where sweets, tobacco, and stationery were sold. The parish church was two miles by road--and one mile across the fields and stiles. The nearest town and railway-station was four miles distant along a dreary, monotonous stretch of the great North Road. Here, at Idleford, a fine old county town, were shops, a market square, a town hall, two churches, and a considerable railway-station. It was one of Ann Fleude’s few relaxations to plod to this station, buy a paper or two from the tempting bookstall, watch the passengers depart and arrive, and witness the great Scotch expresses, with their huge green engines, thunder by. She often lingered for the best part of an hour (there was nothing attractive awaiting her at home), solaced herself with refreshment-room tea and buns, and boldly pretended that she was expecting the arrival of a friend! These expeditions to Idleford station were her gala days--think of it! Her aunt, Mrs. Pyzer, was ill-tempered, tyrannical, rheumatic, and deaf. Her two servants, ancient retainers, were elderly women settled in their ways; the rooms were low and dark, and held a perpetual atmosphere of mouldy hay. No sun ever entered them, and with the consent of Mrs. Pyzer and her servants--no _air_. The furniture dated from the epoch of the old lady’s marriage--when black horsehair and solid mahogany was the rage; the beds were four-posters, with bolsters and mattresses stuffed with rank and noisome feathers of fabulous age: the whole character of the house was to correspond--nothing young or modern was ever to be found within it. Its mistress objected to new-fangled ways, she disliked cut flowers, pet animals, or even birds, and lived apparently in a world of her own--the past.

Mrs. Pyzer did not appear till lunch-time, and then she was always accompanied by shawls, cushions, and her ear-trumpet. Her food consisted of mince and milk puddings; her drink was hot brandy and water. She subscribed to the parish magazine, a local weekly paper, and some missionary journals, but set her face sternly against novels, cards and callers. The oldest and (in her own opinion) most respected residence of Battsbridge, she believed that she had done a deed of remarkable benevolence in giving a home to her niece Annie, whom she looked upon as a mere child--but nevertheless expected her to share the tastes of a woman who was eighty-one last birthday.

Mr. Jones, the doctor, and his wife, resided at Battsbridge, also two faded old sisters, the Misses Horn-Finch, and in the largest and most important of the four houses dwelt the widow of a late rector, a certain Mrs. Brandon, who considered herself, like her abode, to be vastly superior to her neighbours. She owned the largest garden, also a thatched arbour, and a greenhouse, kept three maids, and was visited by the County; and it was to Mrs. Brandon that Annie Fleude looked for all her little pleasures. Now and then she lent her a book--a new novel--or invited her to tea, or took her out driving, when she hired a brougham from Idleford, and made a few calls (leaving Annie meanwhile sitting in the carriage). Annie was not acquainted with the resident gentry; indeed, it was no secret that her father had been a bankrupt auctioneer--though Mrs. Pyzer, his sister, had married far above her deserts, a retired Major from a West Indian regiment, and always spoke of herself as “a Military Lady.”

Annie’s days were all precisely alike--week after week--month after month--year after year. As soon as she had breakfasted, she dusted the drawing-room, did some sewing and mending, and watered the plants in the frame. They dined at three o’clock; when she had settled her aunt, told her all the news, and left her to doze, she went forth on the household messages, such as to a farm for eggs and butter, to a cottager for chickens, or for a solitary aimless walk along the country road; then came seven o’clock tea, a game of backgammon, a bowl of bread and milk, and to bed--and the next morning _da capo_.

Annie Fleude had endured this existence for three weary years, notwithstanding determined and desperate efforts to effect a release. She walked to church twice on Sundays, and in all weathers, and taught laboriously in the Sunday-school, until the announcement of the curate’s marriage--the wretch had been secretly engaged for years! Then there was the Rector, a hale, rosy-cheeked old gentleman of seventy--he was undoubtedly flattered by her profound interest in his sermons; he lent her books, she knitted him socks, accepted his invitation to tea, and to see his roses; all was going admirably, till some wicked interfering person sounded a note of alarm, and one of his married daughters appeared upon the scene--so _that_ chance of escape was barred! There was a yearly subscription ball in Idleford. To this Miss Fleude went once, wearing a new black net gown, her hair beautifully dressed, and chaperoned by the doctor’s wife--but alas, she was a wallflower! No one noticed her, or “requested the pleasure of a dance,” except the young man from the station bookstall, and the chemist’s assistant.

There were various bazaars, where Miss A. Fleude served on committees, and assisted at stalls, carried dolls for raffles, dipped in bran-pies, and was gay, vivacious, and useful, and pretended to enjoy herself! Local ladies, when comparing notes, said:

“That Miss Fleude at Battsbridge isn’t a bad sort of person--I shall ask her to help me at my rummage sale.”

But even at the rummage sales poor Annie failed to find a likely suitor! And yet poor Annie was not plain: tall, flat-backed, with rather a long face, thick brown hair, fine brown eyes, a passable nose, and beautiful white teeth. Sometimes she would stare at herself in her little spotted mirror, with a drawer beneath it, and shake her head at her reflection, and say:

“Oh, you wretched, blighted sort of creature! Whatever were you born for, _I_ should like to know? Have you ever had one really happy day to look back upon--one splendid, dazzling hour? And yet you are not ugly, you are not an idiot, you have thirty pounds a year--and more to come. But what is the good of it all? No one wants you--you are like a thing in prison, and the best that could happen to you would be to have a nice, easy, painless sort of illness--and to _die_!”

As she thus wished for her own demise, tears would rise into her eyes and trickle down her face; then she would shake her fist at her reflection, and say:

“Annie, you must buck up! When things come to the worst, they mend. I’ll subscribe to the library, I’ll buy a bicycle, and I’ll stick up for myself more than I do; everyone imposes on _me_ because I am so good-natured. I’m called ‘Gentle Annie.’ I mend Mrs. Brandon’s lace--yes, and her stockings--I go messages for the Finches, and I teach the Jones’ child music. I take the smallest piece of cake, the weakest cup of tea--but I’m not going to be good-natured and gentle any more, but fierce and aggressive, and fighting, and I’ll just see how that will answer!”

But these good resolutions were generally of short duration--her courage evaporated within an hour; she had arranged her aunt’s knitting, shrieked through the ear-trumpet till she was hoarse, undertook other people’s distasteful tasks, and was just as obedient, “gentle,” and good-natured as ever.

At last cruel Fortune remembered her captive, the unfortunate woman, who never had a gleam of sun in her life, who had no one to love and to care for--for who could care for Mrs. Pyzer? a passionate, selfish, and greedy old beldame--a woman whose life was passing away, as if she were a stone at the bottom of a disused well.

Light and hope came to Annie through the misfortune of another. Mrs. Brandon, who had been becoming more and more near-sighted, had recently consulted a specialist, who announced “cataract on both eyes.” This was a terrible verdict to a woman so fond of reading, so active in her garden, and such an indefatigable correspondent. However, after the first shock, she pulled herself together, and seriously considered the situation. She would be obliged to employ a companion and secretary--what a bore to have a strange woman (who would probably be odious) with her continually day after day, and she becoming blinder and blinder, and falling by degrees into that other woman’s power. A stranger would read her letters, would see her accounts, examine her bank-book, and would probably require a handsome salary. Mrs. Brandon began to look through a list of her connections. There was Constance Talbot, a woman of a certain age, who would no doubt be glad of a temporary home; but she would never stand the dulness of the place, and always be wanting to run about the country, to lunch, and bridge. Then there was her widowed niece, Mrs. Forrest; but she had such an awful tongue, and was a most dangerous gossip. No, no, Sissie Forrest would never do. Suddenly an idea dawned upon her! Why should she not make use of good-natured Annie Fleude, who had ample time on her hands, a pleasant voice, and wrote a good hand? She need not pay her a penny--on the contrary, Annie would look upon the employment as an honour, and a favour; she would be only too thankful for a few hours to escape from that odious, deaf old woman.

Mrs. Brandon in appearance was tall, commanding, and arrogant, with a high aquiline nose and piercing black eyes. In character she was hard, determined and ambitious; her manner to her inferiors was uncertain. One day she would be confidential, and even sympathetic, another distant, and disagreeable. It was no secret that she had a handsome fortune (twelve hundred a year) when as an heiress who was “getting on,” she had given her hand to the Rector of Froom, and resignedly settled herself to enact the _rôle_ of parson’s wife. The Rector had survived ten years, and died, leaving his widow a well-to-do matron, with one son, who had now been in India for a considerable time.

As soon as Mrs. Brandon had made up her mind about a suitable companion, she sent in for Annie Fleude, and having bitterly bewailed her sad circumstances, threw herself upon her kindness and good-nature--but made no mention of any remuneration; and Annie, who was only too pleased to find that she could be of valuable assistance to such an important neighbour, entered upon her duties without delay. But the Misses Horn-Finch (ever interested in other people’s affairs) took counsel with the doctor’s wife, and the curate’s bride, and said:

“Mrs. Brandon really ought to pay--she can well afford it, but she is very mean in some ways. She uses Annie as a companion, makes her read all the papers, write all her letters, and manage the house.”

But Annie enjoyed this; Mrs. Brandon’s garden was pleasant to sit in, indoors her armchairs were delightfully comfortable, her tea was fragrant, and her cakes delicious. Annie had the pleasure of reading the latest news, and the newest books, she met numbers of nice people in Mrs. Brandon’s modern drawing-room--although she was never introduced to them--she liked to see their smart clothes, and listen to their smart talk. And as for acting as amanuensis--that was the best of all! Miss Fleude’s own correspondence was pathetically scanty, and if she liked one thing better than another, it was to receive a letter. The few who wrote to her were old school-fellows, at long intervals, and one or two neighbours in Camberwell. Sometimes for days and days the stolid postman would walk past Mrs. Pyzer’s door, and on two or three occasions Annie had actually addressed and posted a paper to herself in Idleford--simply in order to hear his familiar knock! Now she enjoyed the reading and writing of letters every day. Once a week Mrs. Brandon dictated a long epistle to her son, who had an appointment in India (something to do with indigo). Every one of Mrs. Brandon’s friends had heard of “Cecil,” of his extraordinary cleverness at school, his social successes, his devotion to his parent--but no one had seen him, for Mrs. Brandon had only come to Battsbridge within the last five years. How exciting it was to be corresponding with a young man, to receive and read all his replies; these came almost every mail, and were subsequently secured by elastic bands, and tidily stored in a japanned box. Annie had been obliged to explain herself, in her first letter, as the secretary who was temporarily his mother’s pen and eyes, and he sent her charming little messages of thanks, and said:

“How nice and clearly you write, Miss Secretary. It is delightful to read such handwriting.” Whereupon his mother exclaimed, “Tut, tut, tut!” but Annie took greater pains than ever. She, however, had wit enough to realise that Mrs. Brandon was a bitterly jealous mother, and that she must be extremely cautious, and never obtrude her own personality. The Indian letters were really interesting, and invariably full of Cecil Brandon; a less experienced eye might have considered his descriptions florid and exaggerated, and declared that there was rather too much of the wonderful exploits of the writer. It is always so easy to give oneself the _beau rôle_ in a letter!

Cecil Brandon was in the local volunteers; his mother explained that he had failed for the Army at home, not through his own fault (of course), and that as she had a good deal of family interest, she had found him an excellent post in the Bengal Presidency. He was delighted with India; the life out there suited him, even the climate was not to be condemned. Poor Cecil had always a delicate chest, and the winters at home had been trying. Sometimes towards the end of one of his most interesting and affectionate letters, there would be a playful request for a little cheque.

“You see, he is obliged to keep up his position, and entertain,” explained his mother; “I’m afraid he is rather inclined to be extravagant, and that he can’t help, poor boy. He takes after his grandfather, Carlyon of Carlyon, and has blue blood in his veins.”

Then she would contemplate her own long hands, and say, “Blue blood!--blue blood is _always_ generous,” and yet, at the moment, she was making use of Annie Fleude, and not giving her the smallest return. “Cecil is all I have,” she would exclaim, “and I am ambitious for him--ambition is my one weakness. There was never much outlook in the Church for the aspirations of a Rector’s wife--even if she is well born--but her son in India is different. I believe Cecil will make himself a name.”

Then she would take up his photograph, and hold it close to her dim eyes. Cecil’s photographs were numerous, in many styles and many sizes: in volunteer uniform, dark green and silver, in a racing jacket, Indian shikar kit, fancy dress, or plain mufti. His best portraits were large, merely the head and shoulders, showing a face with thick wavy hair, a wide forehead, well-opened eyes, and a large black moustache.

Between his letters, his mother’s copious reminiscences, and his many photographs, Annie was already in love with Cecil Brandon--her very first and possibly her very last romance. Once she stealthily slipped a violet into the envelope, and he, in return, sent her a leaf of lemon-scented verbena, with a line, “For the pretty secretary.”--Needless to say, she did not read this aloud.

She treasured the leaf and its inscription, and oh, folly! put them into a tiny gold locket--but then, you see, the poor thing had had so little in her life!