A PINK-AND-WHITE POSSIBILITY.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9326, 29 January 1896, Page 2

A PINK-AND-WHITE POSSIBILITY.

Miss Fairfax was standing with her partner in the archway that led from the conservatory to the ball-room at Lady Tadcaster's against a background of luxuriant palms. They made an efficient background, for, though Miss Fairfax was innocent of posing, she was old enough to know where and how a girl should stand. Through the wide arch she could see flooded in the glare of electric light, a tall, somewhat commanding figure. The ball was half over, but he had only just arrived. " Who is that man?" she said, languidly, and in a tone perhaps too studiously devoid of interest. Her fan barely hinted the direction in which he was. " Good gracious !" wa3 the answer, " why it's Avoncourt. I had no idea he was in town. He's been the Queen's ambassador somewhere or other—St. Petersburg or——" She interrupted him. " I didn't know he wa3 in London, either," she said in the same tone. It was not very leng before a mutual friend brought Lord Avoncourt up to be introduced to Miss Fairfax. She was more or less the fashion. Being accustomed to homage, she was moro interested than flattered at his notice. She gave him a " wonder-who-you-can-be " look, with ono eyebrow raised, but her smile'was charming. She was at that time a little tired of everything—of the season, her frocks, her partners, and the world in general. Lord Avoncourt remembered her. He had been away from England for five years, and was a little out of touch with his old life. But he had a distinct recollection of seeing Mis 3 Fairfax at her first ball, and he wondered rather that she had not married in the interim. As a debutante i»ho was enchantingly pretty, very fair, with a skin like tho petals of a wild rose, large, wondering grey eyes, and hair of a conspicuously goldon colour. A friend of his, Eric Le Marchant, had pointed her out to him. " One of the new beauties," he said, " Lady Mary Fairfax's little girl. What do you think of her !" Avoncourt remembered his verdict only too well; to-night it seemed a little in the nature of a prophecy. "Think of her?" he said. "'Ask mc again five year 3 henca. At present she is only a pink-and-white possibility." The stated tims had elapsed, aad he saw a subtle change had come over her. She had " arrived," as the French say. The wild-rose skin was untouched by the ravages of. time or art. The hair, naturally of a dubious tint, wa3 still of a crisped, deep gold. But the charm of the young girl had gone : the charm of the woman had taken its place. Lord Avoncourt was over forty, and had just succeeded to the title through the death of a cousin. As a young man he always said he had no time to marry; later, the inclination was not forthcoming. Now he contemplated matrimony from the utilitarian rather than the sentimental point of view. Ho had decided to make no extravagant demands of the lady who should share the Avoncourt honours with him. She must only be virtuous, beautiful, and intelligent as is necessary for a woman. It is difficult to distinguish the hand of that divinity which shapes our ends from an insidious temptation of the devil. At this critical point in his careor had Avoncourt encountered the woman, in the divine guise of Miss Fairfax. She mads an impression on him, sho compelled him with large lustrous eyes to remain beside her most of the evening. He was clever, he was celebrated, he wa3 the principal person present. Sho Had reached tho stage when she inquired less who a man was, than what he had done. A certain conscious sense of power came to her assistance. " I am so tired of it all !" she had said to him. "It" was a very comprehensive word, it meant the balls—and that ball in particular —the partners, the monotony of excitement, even the homage bestowed under such obvious disguises as bouquets and fans. But he understood. It had been his business in life to understand. " You ara tired," he said, reflectively, " because you have eaten too many of Society's good things—you have had the plums out of all the cakes." Miss Fairfax smiled disconcertingly. " How do you know ?" she demanded. " You are a stranger to mc." •' Not to know Miss Fairfax is to argue oneself if not unknown at least the most unobservant of men." "Ah !" she said, "I have had the plums out of that cake ! Last week I was introduced to a Royal personage. How he bored mc 1" Avoncourt smiled the smile of diplomacy. "But he was not bored," he said, "and you had the honour and glory—most people J would have thought of nothing else. Popularity has to be paid lor, but it's quite a marketable commodity, and has never yet 1 fallen below par." She gave his clever, clean-shaven face a brief but searching look. His compliments possessed a subtlety which her last admirer's had lacked. On the whole, she was pleased that this star of the first magnitude should have risen above her horizon. Moreover, she waa monopolising Lady Tadcaeter's care-fully-selected lion, and the situation was fraught with a delicate sense of triumph. Miss Fairfax was the practical outcome of the century which has seen the emancipation of slaves and of Engb'eh-women. She was saturated with a clever pose of modernity. Her intellect was gregarious and acquisitive; she had read most things and had talked about them with a naivete that was almost ingenuous. For the rest, her life had been wasted on Society and many balls, for which, her appetite was insatiable, her contempt immense and unconcealed. She had a great deal to say to Lord Avoncourt. He was interested in the Egyption question (there is always an Egyptian question, as if to remind men of the Sphinx's riddle), in a frontier dispute, in a lately revealed atrocity among aboriginal tribes. She was quite aufait about them, had caught all the points with curious alacrity. He found her cleverness very charming ; it is quite a tolerable commodity in a pretty woman, though it aggravates the physical defects of a plain one. "How bored Lβ Marchant looks!" he

said suddenly, a3 two people walked slowly past. Neither was spooking; the man looked unspeakably ennuyi, the woman as if she knew she was boring him, and could not help it. Miss Fairfax did not answer. A very faint flush came into her face. The sight of those people hod recalled an odious—to* night an impossible—memory. Very soon afterwards she suggested a return to the ballroom. Meanwhile Lady Tadcaster had missed her lion. "I can't think where on earth Lord Avoncourt is," she said rather irritably, to her favourite nephew, Mr Edward Laxiriston, who happened to be standing near her. "I want to introduce him to somebody." " I don't think he wants to be introduced to anybody, though," remarked the young man, " ho has gone the way of all flesh." " You don't mean to say he's dead !" she said, putting on her lorgnette. " Only to a sense of the honour you wish to confer upon him. He is sitting out with Hiss Fairfax in the conservatory." Lady Tadcaster smiled. "\ou men are all like sheep," she said ; "one leads, the rest follow. I thought Lord Avoncourt never noticed women except professionally." "Miss Fairfax is the exception which proves the rule null and void." At that moment the music began, and two people entered the ballroom. Tho man, a tall, commanding figure, with a certain conquering air, holding himself as one accustomed to power. Beside him—the woman trininphant here on Earth ! Her ladyship's lorgnette wont up promptly. She bestowed a stare that was not quite well-bred upon them. "Teddy," she said, "that girl grows prettier every day. It's impossible to believe she's own daughter to Mary." (Lady Mary having been always noted for the kind of features to be found on the platform of Women's Suffrage meetings.) " ' She put in her thumb and pulled out a plum, and said what a 'cute girl am 1, , " remarked Teddy, sapiently. "How horribly vulgar I" "The obvious is nearly always vulgar. By Jove ! Avoncourt's making the running to-night. Poor Le Marchant ! " Now Lady Tadcaster had been heard to say of her nephew that all he demanded of her was an unlimited supply of endurance and of funds. She had como almost to the end of her stock of the fir3t, and, turning sharply upon him, remarked in a severe tono: " Mr Le Marchant has a wife who is far too good for him. You ought to know better than to rake up a scandal that is three yeara old. Miss Fairfax was very young then, and I admit her conduct may have been sometimes lacking in discretion." " As a jewel of gold in a swina's snout, so is a fair woman without discretion," quoted Teddy. " She is older now," pursued his aunt. " And knows," he observed, " that a girl's reputation can only be preserved by the utmost caution, and a married woman's only lost through the utmost folly. I'm engaged for this dance;" and he moved nonchalantly across the room. About a fortnight later Miss Fairfax entered her mother's boudoir at ten o'clock one morning, and found her absorbed in the contemplation of sundry dishes which would have tempted the most rigorous abstainer from breakfast. Lady Mary had a most roote.d objection to meeting any of her relations bofore lunch. "What do you want, Dorothy?" she said, curtly. Miss Fairfax sat down by the table and began to play with the salt. Sho wore a dress of white muslin, with soft ruches of lace, and soma pink rosebuds fastened near her throat. " I shan't keep you long," she remarked. " I only wanted to tell you that Lord Avoncourt proposed to mc last night." " Oh, is that all ?" She was relieved to find that the matutinal visit did not mean on this occasion a request for cheques. Expcilenti docet. *' I accepted him." said Dorothy. " Then I hope he is well off. Most peers are so wretchedly poor in these days." 1 ' My dear mother, I naturally haven't inquired into the extent of his income. I believe he has a house in ,town and one in the country and a place in Scotland." Her mother looked at her, and observed that she was as beautiful as people said she was. She also failed to discern the faintest trace of enthusiasm in her countenance. " Ask him to lunch," she said, and waved her hand in a manner that unmistakably convoyed a dismissal. Dorothy left the room, and sho returned to her egg with renewed vigour and appetite. Lord Avoncourt came to lunch, and wanted Dorothy to drive or walk in the park afterwards, but she declined. She had something important to do. Her fiance was not best pleased that at this early stage of their engagement he should have drifted into a place of secondary importance. He had fallen suddenly and desperately in love with this beautiful girl with the calm statuesque features and the je ne sais quoi suggestive of experience in her smile. She was rather too independent, he thought, as he saw her drive away alone in a hansom, but sho was dressed so plainly in black with a close fitting black hat and veil that he concluded she had gone on some charitable mission, perhaps to visit the sick in the East End. He had heard her refuse to go in her mother's carriage. Miss Fairfax drove in the direction of South Kensington. At the Museum she stopped, paid her fare, and entered the building. She then proceeded to the picture-gallery, where a solitary figure— that of a man—was pacing up and down. He came forward and bowed to her. "This is the most public place of all," said Miss Fairfax, "and I wish to speak to you in private You this place better than I do—take mc to a more private part." Her voice was cold and restrained. He led the way downstairs into a more secluded >art. Till then he had hardly vouchsafed her a single glance, now he looked at her intently. The black dress made her slight form look even slimmer; the only colour about her was the warm richness of her gold hair. There wa3 an unexpected childish aspect in her white face. " Well," he said, harshly, yet wondering at himself for hie -harshness, "I suppose you have come to tell mc ? I have heard it already." His face betrayed a certain dogged passion which brutally wounded, refused to expire. She, in an innocence of which he had been powerless to rob her, had never understood the full significance-of this man's love. She only knew it had nothing in common with the discursive sentimentality of her girl friends' fiances, whose conversations had been repeated to her. " You knew," she said, rather helplessly, " that it was a question of time." "The greater than I—as I prophesied," he said. "Don't," she said, breathing hard. She had never cared for him, but the sight of him now was positively loathsome to her. It was the first time she had spoken to him since the day when it suddenly became patent to her that she had narrowly escaped being made the victim of a deliberate plot. Even as it was he had informed her that one word from him could destroy her fair name forever. Joined to her hatred

of the man was the knowledge that he had a certain power to make or mar her future. The world is not lonient in its judgment of ■women, and those few pencilled words of hers, innocently written, might be difficult to explain away should they ever fall into the hands of any one. "Mr Le Marchant," she said, "I want you to give mc something. That is why I came to-day." He was silent. "My letter," she said, "there was a letter—give it back to mc." His face was set in firm, rigid lines. A sick sensation of fear passed through her. "I will never givo it up while I live," said Lo Marchant, "so help mo God 1" Dorothy fell down at his feet. " Oh !" she cried, " you can't be so cruel. You can't keep it—any day it might come to light." "Listen," ho said, "I am going to keep that letter. I meant to marry you—if I were ever free—now it seems you are going to drag a third person into the imbroglio Avoncourt—well, I supposo he is like other men, and prefers a wife with a blameless future, if possible, rather than one with even tho suggestion of a past!" " Tho letter !" she moaned. ! Ho thought she resembled a picture he had once seen of Guinevere. "I will never part with it," he repeated, sullenly. The girl rose from her knees, spent with emotion, her hair dishevelled, her face tearstained. Avoncourt had admired her for her calm self-possession, her little frozen speech, her reserve. These subtleties were swept away by a consuming wave of passion and pain. There was no more to be said. " How well I understand you now," she remarked j and pulling her veil down over i her face, Miss Fairfax walked away. She held her chin, if possible, a little higher than before. He felt rather like dirt beneath that parting glance, and wondered if, after all, he had had the best of it. " To think Avoncourt should have her ! '* ho said. Then he drew out of his pocket a square leather case, clumsy but strong, and from thence produced an envelope. It was getting yellow with age, and rather dilapidated, but still bore intact the crest of Fairfax family—a lion passant with tho motto Fortiter et recte" beneath. That envelope, with its contents, was tho only proof or sign left of tho indiscretion ■ of Dorothy Fairfax. Miss Fairfax's wedding took place in the autumn. Contrary to all expectation, it was a very quiet affair, only immediate relations or intimate friends being invited. ', After a short tour abroad, Lord and Lady . Avoncourt went to Greylande, their country , seat, for the shooting season. Lord Avon- ; court had retired from the Diplomatic ; Service just before his marriage. i Dorothy was sitting alone one November evening waiting for her husband's return. ■ He had been out shooting all day. She was not exactly lonely, but the country was 1 beginning to bore her. He came in about five with a ' couple of dogs at his heels. All three were ' very muddy. . j " Have some tea ?" said Dorothy. "Please." He sat down, and held out 1 his hands to the blaze. "By the way," he 1 went on, "who do you think was shooting ' with old Carlton to-day ? M ] " I am sure I don't know," said his wife. \ "Le Marchant—you remember Eric Lβ i Marchant? He and his wife are stopping 1 there. I asked them to come oyer and dine ' here on Tuesday." " I had much rather they did not come," she said rather hurriedly. " I thought you liked Lo Marchant," said Avoncourt. " He's a very clever man." "On the contrary," she said, "I dislike him very much. I don't want them to come here." " Surely, dear, this is unreasonable ¥' " I can't help it. You must get out of it somehow." She looked up rather pathetically. Lately she had so seldom evinced any decided opinions that he was surprised at her sudden opposition to his wishes. He could not quite understand it. She looked very white, and there was a troubled look in her eyes. "Very well," he said, v you must do just as you like about it." "You must say you are called away somewhere on Tuesday. Don't say anything about me—they might suspect I don't want them." "I'm going to shoot there again tomorrow, so I'll explain to Lβ Marchant. Will that do, Dorothy?' Hβ touched her hand; the touch awoke a smile, and he felt rewarded. No one quite knew how it happened. Certainly young Carlton shot very recklessly all day, but for the sake of their host—his' father—the guests refrained from alluding to the fact. The only certainty in the case was that Eric Le Merchant was found lying under., a hedge, a stream of blood flowing from his side, darkening the turf on which he lay. Lord Avoncourt unbuttoned his coat and loosened the collar, vainly trying to staunch

I the blood with his own handkerchief. The . others, who woro summoned hastily to the f spot, went off in different directions to E obtain help, and fetch tho doctor and a 5 stretcher, and he was left alono with Lβ • Marchant. The dying man opened his eyes at last and ; recognised him. He began to speak incoherently. "In this pocket," he said, "there is a letter .... her letter. .... ■ She wanted it back .... and ire fused—Take it." • Without understanding in tho least what he meant Avoncourt put his hand into tho pocket indicated, and drew out a well-worn leather case. Again Lβ Marchaht opened his eyoa. " Yes, in there 1 8U p pOM 1 ; it's all up with mc now Tell !her.» ' * I 1 Avoncourt drew forth from the case % rsomewhat dilapidated envelope. Something , oddly familiar about the handwriting ' ; arrested his attention. Yes, it was hew, ' only in its immature stage. The letter was simply directed to Eric Le Marchant at some j club in Pall Mall; the crest upon it, a lion ; passant, with tho motto, "Fortiter et recte," ! belonged to the Fairfax family. He hesitated a moment, then thrust it into his own pocket. Eric Lo Marchant was still staring at him, but tho eyes were glazed and unseeing, and his breath had ceased to com« in short quick gasps. Lord Avoncourt felt his piilso, listened for the beating of hia „. heart—but there was no answering throb. The doctor, arriving on the scene shortly afterwards pronounced Le Marchant to be dead. Lord Ayonoourt walked homewards with his brain in a whirl. He was thinking less of the terrible accident that day than of the j letter which was lying in his coat pocket. What could it all mean? A vision of his wife in her gleaming white satin dress at Lady Tadcaster's ball rose before him, followed by yet an earlier memory, accompanied by his own words, so carelessly spoken, " A pink-ami-white possibility." A cold feeling of fear clutched his heart. Was that calm indifference of her, that ioy exterior, only a mask? Were all her possibilities of love. before Wβ coining by Bomo other hand, eomo other voice? 1 He was sitting with his wife late that evening in the study at Greylands. • They preferred that room when they were alone, Dorothy wore a white tea-gown, and looked very young and girlish. They had been talking in hushed tones of the accident. Presently he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and thrust it carelessly towards her, "Le Marchant gave mo this before he died," he said, carefully ironing his voice of overs trace of expression, "and I thought as it was yours, I had better give it back to you." Her heart beat; the superscription danced I before her eyes, dazzling her. By the thick.--nesß of the envelope she guessed that the , letter was still inside it. She knew he h&d not read it. At that moment, he was the star, she the worm. She was unworthy of him, of his kiss, of his touch, more than all, of his love. She crept towards him and put it back in his hand. "My husband," she said, "I ought to have told you long ago. Read it now." He looked into her face. There wu anguish unspeakable. The mask was gone, leaving only a beautiful, suffering woman. He rose, letter in hand, and went to tne fireplace. ■■ ♦ The next moment a flash of flame and a thin blue wreath of smoke leaped up from the heart of the fire—then a few charred scraps of paper fell forward upon the tiles. One atom only had escaped destruction. Lord Avoncourt stooped and picked it up. The printed words, Fortiter et recte were visible upon it. With a smile, which had lost nothing of devotion or confidence, h» handed it to hie wife.

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