CHAPTER IV.

THIS LOT TO BE SOLD.

May Forestfield was brought back to her lodgings in Podbury-street--how she never knew. The maid, whose devotion had brought such obloquy upon her, half helped, half carried her mistress down the avenue, and at the lodge they found the fly which had brought them from Crawley. All the way to the station, and in the railway carriage up to town, May lay in a half-comatose, half-hysterical state; and when she had reached her lodging, and was once more installed in her clean and pretty, if not luxurious, bedroom, it was plain to the maid and to Mrs. Wilson that Lady Forestfield was 'in for an illness' of some kind or other. Their predictions were speedily verified. When the maid visited her mistress next morning, she found her in a burning fever, so far advanced that her utterances were already half delirious. The girl, who was tolerably bright, as well as thoroughly devoted, remembered that in one or two cases of slight illness, under which Lady Forestfield had suffered in Seamore-place, a fashionable physician, Dr. Chenoweth, had been called in to attend her. By the aid of the Blue-Book his address was obtained, and the maid started off in a cab to beg an immediate visit from him.

Dr. Chenoweth was something more than a fashionable physician; he was, like most of his brethren with whom the present writer is acquainted, a gentleman, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, and benevolent to a rare degree. He knew all about the story of Lord and Lady Forestfield. There were few scandals of any kind which did not come to his ears, to be listened to generally with a smile and a shrug, to be repeated sometimes--for there are certain patients to whom gossip is better than medicine, and to whom the sound of the doctor's cheery voice is of more service than his learned prescriptions--but never to be allowed to militate in his mind against those who were the subjects of them. Dr. Chenoweth thought it not at all improbable that in visiting Lady Forestfield he might affront some of his most important patients; for the affair had been much discussed, and it is needless to say that few partisans ranged themselves on poor May's side. He knew nothing of the pecuniary circumstances in which Lady Forestfield was then placed, and would not have been surprised had they been such as possibly to preclude the payment of his fees; he only recollected May Dunmow, the pretty child whom he remembered riding with her father Lord Stortford in the Row, and at whose wedding at St. Andrew's, Wells-street, he, an old and intimate friend of the family, had been present. Dr. Chenoweth accordingly bade his servant tell the messenger that his first visit that day would be to Podbury-street.

May Forestfield had a very sharp attack; indeed, for more than a fortnight she lay between life and death. Dr. Chenoweth's earliest and latest visits were paid to her, and two professional nurses, hospital sisters--skilled and attentive women who have succeeded to the Gamp and Prig creatures--relieved each other in daily and nightly watch at her bedside. When, however, one morning in the beginning of the third week of her illness, May opened her weary eyes, and for the first time was able to recognise things around her, her glance fell, not upon any hired attendant, but upon the upturned face of a pretty girl; a delicate, pensive face surrounded with shining fair hair, a face which, though half strange to her, seemed to bring back pleasantly familiar recollections of long ago.

The girl's attention was at once attracted by the movement of the patient, and she rose from her seat and placed herself quietly by the bedside.

'It is Eleanor,' murmured May, raising her hand to shade her eyes; 'it must be Eleanor, and yet how can she be here? My head throbs, and I feel as though I were yet in a dream. Speak to me and say whether you are really there.'

'It is Eleanor,' said the girl, bending over the bed and smoothing the rumpled pillow; 'it is Eleanor, and you are in no dream, dear Lady Forestfield; but I must implore you not to talk now. Dr. Chenoweth has left the strictest orders that you should have no excitement, and, for your own sake, I must see that he is obeyed.'

May made no resistance; the mere effort of speech had completely exhausted her; and she sank back into a slumber, during which, as her gentle nurse noted with pleasure, her breathing was regular and her whole manner devoid of the feverish restlessness which had characterised her slumbers during her illness. When, after a couple of hours' peaceful repose, May again opened her eyes, she recognised her companion in an instant, and in a clearer and firmer voice spoke to her at once.

'I know you now, Eleanor,' she said, 'but even now I cannot account for your presence here. I know perfectly well I am at Mrs. Wilson's lodgings in Podbury-street, but that knowledge does not account for your presence. My head is heavy and my limbs horribly weak and languid. I feel as though I had gone through an illness.'

'You have gone through a very severe illness, dear Lady Forestfield,' said the girl, fanning the patient's face with a huge palm-leaf, on which she had previously sprinkled some drops of scent, 'and even now, though I am delighted to see you recognise me, and to hear your own well-remembered voice once again, I must warn you that you are only in the very earliest stage of convalescence. It will be brave news for Dr. Chenoweth when he comes to-night, for though he anticipated your recovery, he did not think it would commence so soon.'

'Have I, then, been so very ill?' asked May.

'For more than a fortnight you have lain here so completely prostrated with fever that the doctor would not answer for you from day to day. Now, however, thank God, we may think that all danger is passed.'

May buried her face in the pillow and was silent for some minutes. When she looked up again there were traces of tears upon her cheeks.

'And during all that time,' she whispered, stretching out her thin wan hand, 'you, dear Eleanor, have been my nurse.'

'I have been here off and on for the last ten days,' said the girl. 'I did not hear of your illness until some little time after you had been attacked, or, of course, I should have been with you before.'

'And how did you hear of it?' asked May.

'In a very curious way,' said the girl. 'It appears that in your delirium--you must not mind my mentioning it, dear Lady Forestfield--you talked about all kinds of curious things, declared that you were destitute, and that your only means of supporting yourself would be by painting pictures for your livelihood. In connection with this you mentioned the name of your old drawing-master, Mr. Irvine, who, you said, could speak as to your capability in art. Your frequent repetition of this name attracted the attention of Dr. Chenoweth, who was an old friend of my poor father, and who still keeps up his acquaintance with my sister, Mrs. Chadwick. He knew I was staying at their house, and one day, when he was calling there, he took me aside before my sister came down, and told me how very ill you were; told me, moreover, that while you were carefully and assiduously attended by the good people in this house, he thought that when you came to yourself--a period which he anticipated, but for which he could fix no date--it would be a comfort to you if your eyes could fall upon a face which you had known in--in happier times, and of which you had nothing but pleasant reminiscences. I understood him at once. I told him I thought I could say there had been no cloud upon the friendship with which you had once honoured me; and I came here that day with a letter from the doctor, which secured me a pleasant reception from Mrs. Wilson.'

May's heart was too full to speak. She pressed the young girl's hand and fell back dreamily on the pillow, grateful to the Providence which, in the midst of her complete abandonment, by those who in her prosperity she had imagined were devoted to her, had sent her one friend to prove that the old-fashioned sentiment called gratitude, mocked at and ignored nowadays, yet existed.

It was a strange history, that of the friendship between these two young women, so different in birth and surroundings. Eleanor's father, Angus Irvine, the son of a small Scotch farmer, had at an early age evinced such artistic talent as to attract the attention of the old Lord Stortford, the great landowner of the district, who purchased two or three of the young lad's early sketches, and better still, furnished him with the means of establishing himself for two or three years as an art student in Rome. The good which the young man here did for himself (on his first arrival his tastes and sympathies, quickened by the ever-present daily surroundings, so fired his eye and nerved his hand that old Roman colonists, whose judgment had been tempered by time and experience, predicted the greatest things of him) was not without a certain counterbalance of evil. The loose life led by many of his Bohemian companions, the gatherings at the Caffè Greco, the _soirées intimes_ of men and women at which he was a constant guest, had a baleful effect on the hitherto strictly-kept Scottish youth, and his name was scarcely known in the art circles of Rome before a rumour ran round that Angus Irvine was following in the footsteps of so many other young men of promise, and was becoming dissipated, not to say drunken. The rumour was harsh and exaggerated, and it had an exaggerated and harsh effect. He was a mere boy after all, this gaunt beardless youth of two or three and twenty, and a few glasses of wine had unwonted power on one who, in the seclusion of his mountain home, had been brought up a strict abstainer; and had the censorious left him in peace, it is probable that, so far as the drink was concerned, he would soon have got the better of his newly-acquired freedom, and settled down to a steady plodding life. As it was, when he learned--as he did speedily--that his conduct had become the subject of conversation amongst a certain set, he received the news with an outbreak of wrath, which, cooling down, was supplanted by a sturdy Scotch obstinacy, under which he determined to 'gang his ain gait,' and to treat the animadversion of his detractors with contempt. He laboured fitfully thenceforward, turning out now brilliant work, now pictures which, though undeniably possessing genius, were hurried and scamped; his doing of that which he ought not to have done was more regular, while his drinking was harder than ever.

Suddenly there came a change. Angus Irvine received a letter from Lord Stortford intimating a desire that he should come to London, it being the old lord's wish to see his protégé settled and striving for the honours of the Academy before he died. Irvine was sensible enough to know that this was the turning-point of his fate, and that if he neglected such an opportunity he would have no other chance. He was aware of his lamentable failing, and was determined to seize on and overcome it there and then; and being a man of great power of will and determination, he was able to carry out his intention. He started for England within a few weeks, and immediately on his arrival paid a visit to his patron. The old nobleman was delighted with the modest demeanour and brilliant conversational powers of the young artist; he introduced him to his son, Mr. Dunmow, a young man of about Angus's own age, who had already made a brilliant figure in Parliament, and who was about to be married to a charming girl, to whom Angus was also made known. He presented him to the leading art critics and connoisseurs of the day, from some of whom the young Scotchman received valuable commissions; and when, in the course of a couple of years, Lord Stortford heard from Angus of his approaching marriage with a young lady, the daughter of a brother artist, the old nobleman was scarcely less happy than he had been at his own son's wedding, which had taken place a year previously, and he bestowed a substantial mark of his regard upon the bride and bridegroom.

Years went on, and after a lapse of some sixteen or seventeen of them, the two pretty girls who had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Irvine were growing into young women, and Angus Irvine himself, his constitution undermined by excesses of all kinds, was rapidly lapsing into a broken elderly man; for within a very few years of his marriage, so soon as the joys of domesticity were beginning to pall upon him, he found delight in the loose and brilliant society only too ready to welcome him; the old desire for drink came upon him, and he yielded to it with scarcely a struggle. All the young fellows about town were delighted to have the company of Angus Irvine, who talked so brilliantly, and sung the homely Scotch ditties with such exquisite pathos; who could brew a bowl of punch as quickly and as deftly as he could sketch a delicious caricature, and who never minded to what hour of the morning he sat up. Nor did this cheery convivialist confine himself to men's society, or blush to be seen driving in the carriages or seated in the opera-boxes of some of the most noted improprieties of the time. Old Lord Stortford was dead; but his son and his son's wife, and the friends to whom they had introduced their northern protégé, shook their heads dismally, prophesied Angus's ruin, and wondered what Mrs. Irvine would do.

Mrs. Irvine settled that question within a very few months. She was a meek little woman, devoted to her Angus, with a sweet temper and a bad constitution; and when she found that she was deserted by her husband, and that the establishment generally was going to ruin, she thought the best thing she could do was to die--and she did it off-hand. The shock of her death sobered the poor wretch for a time. He had long since given up all hope of selling, or indeed of painting, any more pictures; his muddled brain and unsteady hand forbade that; but Lord Stortford and a few other gentlemen who had known him in better times had engaged him as drawing-master to their children, more for the sake of bestowing a small annuity on him than from the idea of any good to be obtained from his instruction, and he now saw his way to a new method of money-making.

His elder daughter, Fanny, who was eighteen years of age, inherited from him a remarkably sweet voice, and sung Scotch ballads with all the taste and pathos which had been so much applauded in her father. This was a talent which it struck Angus should be cultivated, and accordingly, by Lord Stortford's aid, he procured her _entrée_ as a pupil at the Academy of Music, and, after a few years' instruction, she made her _début_ as a concert-singer with considerable success. The talent of one daughter having been thus utilised, Angus Irvine thought it time that the younger, Eleanor, should take her turn at bread-winning. What to do with her was the crux. Eleanor had a good speaking voice, but no ear and no musical talent; neither of the children had inherited her father's artistic ability, and the education which they had received, though fair enough, was not sufficient to qualify them to act as governesses in the present day, when ladies, possessed of every possible accomplishment and willing to accept next to nothing, are advertising for situations.

What occurred to him as a happy thought at length flashed into Angus Irvine's brain--he would make his girl an actress! She was really good-looking--much handsomer than many of those women whom he used to know in the old time, and who drew large salaries. He could get her taught to speak by a professional elocutionist, and she would soon be able to contribute to the household expenses.

When this plan was mooted to Eleanor, her horror was extreme. She implored her father not to attempt to carry it out, declared her readiness to undertake any kind of service, no matter how menial, but spoke in such piteous terms of the degradation she should feel in having to appear before the public, that the Angus Irvine of a few years before would not have required her to speak twice on the subject. Now, however, drink and misfortune had rendered him callous; he released himself from his daughter's weeping embrace, and bade her make up her mind to what he had decided. In an agony of terror and fright, the girl rushed off to the one person in London whom she knew to be a true and influential friend of her father's, Lord Stortford, and told him all, imploring his interference on her behalf. Lord Stortford was greatly touched at the girl's entreaties, and after a consultation with his wife, he called on Angus Irvine, and, without hinting at his interview with Eleanor, said that he had a plan to which he requested Mr. Irvine's sanction. This was that Eleanor should come to and live in Grosvenor-square as companion to his daughter May. This proposition suited Angus Irvine very well. He would be rid of the very moderate expense entailed upon him by Eleanor, who would hand over to him the liberal salary she was to receive in consideration of her services; so that he made no objection, and the next week saw Eleanor installed as May's companion in Grosvenor-square, where, a great friendship having grown up between the girls, she remained for eighteen months, until May's marriage with Lord Forestfield.

Later in the afternoon of the first day of her convalescence, May renewed her conversation with her friend.

'You must have thought it very unkind of me, dear,' she said, placing her hand in Eleanor's, 'that notwithstanding our great intimacy, and the love and affection I had from you in Grosvenor-square, I have scarcely taken any notice of you since my marriage.'

'Not at all, dear Lady Forestfield,' said Eleanor. 'I never imagined that that intimacy, pleasant as it was to me, could be kept up. You were not out during the most part of the time I was with you, you must remember, and after your marriage I knew that you would take up your position in society, which involved innumerable claims upon you, and would form your own circle of friends.'

'From which circle,' said May, with a sigh, 'I omitted you, the very best of them, the only one who has remembered me in my time of trouble. I think you said you were staying with your sister? Where is Mr. Irvine?'

'Papa has been dead for nearly a twelvemonth,' said Eleanor, glancing down at her black dress. 'He was ill, if you recollect, just before your marriage, and he never recovered, but faded gradually away.'

'I wish my poor papa had been alive to help him,' said May; 'he would have seen that his old friend wanted for nothing.'

'I am sure of that,' said Eleanor; 'but, fortunately, my sister was enabled to take care of her father in his last illness. She was married a few months before his death to a very rich man.'

'Indeed!' said May. 'Who is he?'

'His name is Chadwick,' said Eleanor. 'I suppose he would be called a tradesman, for he is the senior member of a firm which employs hundreds of men in making boilers and engines for steam vessels. He attends to business himself, and is every day at his works, which are down the river somewhere; but they live in a splendid house in Fairfax-gardens, and Fanny now receives and goes into a great deal of what I suppose is called excellent society.'

'I recollect having heard of Mrs. Chadwick's parties, now you mention the name,' said May, 'and of their having some specialty, but what it is I cannot remember.'

'They are very grand, very hot, and, I believe, considered very splendid,' said Eleanor; 'but I do not know that there is anything particular about them, unless it be the presence of a large number of artists of different kinds--painters and musical people I mean. Fanny always takes occasion to say that she never forgets the class of which she was once a member, but I am bound to say her recognition of them is something too like patronage for my taste.'

'And you live with Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick, Eleanor? and you are happy?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor, 'I suppose so.'

'That was but a half-hearted answer,' said May. 'Are you really happy? You, used to speak frankly to me in the old days; are you frank now?'

'I never could be otherwise with you, dear Lady Forestfield, and I will tell you plainly that just now I have some cause for discomfort. The general life at Fairfax-gardens is not particularly suited to my taste; but everybody is especially kind to me, and I should make no complaint, were it not that recently Fanny seems to have made up her mind to carry out a project with which I am greatly concerned, and to which I have a strong objection.'

'This project is, of course, to marry you,' said May, 'to some friend of her own?'

'Not particularly a friend of hers,' said Eleanor, 'but a man of fashion, and for the matter of that, a celebrity, a connection with whom would, she thinks, be advantageous.'

'And you don't care for him?' asked May.

'Not in the faintest degree,' replied Eleanor. 'He is very clever, very agreeable, and particularly polished and courteous in his manner towards women; a little too polished perhaps,' she added.

'May I ask his name?' said Lady Forestfield. 'Certainly,' said Eleanor, with a smile. 'It is a curious one, but his mother or grandmother--I do not know which--was originally Greek: his name is Spiridion Pratt.'

Lady Forestfield started. 'Spiridion Pratt!' she echoed; 'I think I know him; there could not be two men of that name.'

'O, he knows you,' said Eleanor; 'he has been to your house; he was taken there by Mrs. Hamblin.'

'Exactly,' said Lady Forestfield; 'I remember now.'

'Do you dislike him?' asked Eleanor, looking up astonished at her friend's evident embarrassment.

'I know--I know very little of Mr. Pratt. And it is to him that your sister wishes to marry you?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor. 'And from what little you do know of him, you think I am right in objecting, do you not?'

'I don't say that, dear,' said May, 'but I certainly do not think you are wrong.'