The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood Part 81

"I desire you will come to me at once. Do not disobey me, Harold. I am very seriously displeased, and will only consent to forgive the past when I find you ready to bend your stubborn heart to obey my will."

Harold started at once for home. He hoped rather against hope that he might talk his mother over; but her aspect was not encouraging when he met her face to face.

No tragedy-queen could have a.s.sumed more scorn. Mrs. Purling, having thrown herself into several att.i.tudes, fell at length into a chair.

"I never thought it," she said; "not from my own and only child. The serpent's tooth hath not such fangs, such power to sting, as the base ingrat.i.tude of one undutiful boy. But this fills the cup. I have done with you--for ever, unless you give me your sacred word of honour now, at this minute, never to speak to Dolly Driver again."

"Such a promise would be quite impossible under any circ.u.mstances, but I distinctly refuse to give it--upon compulsion."

"Then you have fair warning. Not one penny of my money shall you ever possess. I will never see you again."

"I sincerely trust the last is only an empty threat, my dearest mother."

She made a gesture as though she were not to be beguiled by soft words.

"As for the money, it matters little. Thank G.o.d, I have my profession."

"At which you will starve."

"By which I shall earn my bread as my father did. Besides, I can fall back upon the reputation of the Family Pills."

"I see you wish to goad me beyond endurance, Harold. Go!"

"For good and all?"

"Yes; except on the one alternative. Will you give up this idiotic pa.s.sion? You refuse. It is on your own head, then. Go--go till I send for you, which will be never!"

Harold went without another word--to Harbridge, overcame Dolly's scruples, secured the practice, and within a month was married and settled.

Mrs. Purling, in Phillipa's presence, made a great parade of burning her will.

"He has brought it all on himself, unnatural boy! But you, darling Phillipa, will never treat me thus. _n.o.blesse oblige._ The bright blue blood that fills your veins would curdle at a _mesalliance_, I know."

Mrs. Purling was quite calm and self-possessed, while Miss Fanshawe, strange to say, seemed agitated enough for both. Her hands trembled, she looked away; only with positive repugnance she submitted to her new mother's affectionate embrace. A woman who is capable of the most cold-blooded calculating intrigue may yet have an access of remorse.

Phillipa's heart was heavy now at the moment of her triumph. It cost her more than a pa.s.sing pang to remember that she had robbed Harold Purling of his birthright, and had turned to her own base purpose the foolish cravings of the silly mother's heart.

But she had put aside self-upbraiding when she met her lover in town.

"Faith, you are a trump, Phillipa; but it's not much too soon. When will you take your reward?"

"Meaning Mr. Jillingham? Is the reward worth taking, I wonder?" For a moment she held him at bay. "Suppose I were to refuse you now at the eleventh hour? It is for you to sue. I am not what I was. Mrs. Purling calls me the heiress of the Purlings, and we may not consider Mr.

Gilbert Jillingham a very eligible _parti_."

"You dare not refuse me, Phillipa," said Gilly very seriously. "I should expose your schemes, and we should go to the wall together. No, there is no escape for you now; our interests are identical."

"How am I to introduce you upon the scene?"

"Quite naturally; I shall go and stay at Compton Revel. They will have me, for your sake, if not for my own. I shall begin _de novo_--at the very beginning: be smitten, pay you court, win over the heiress, and propose."

So it fell out, and they also were married before the end of the year.

CHAPTER VI.

Mean as had been their conduct towards Mrs. Purling and her son, Phillipa and her husband were not to be cla.s.sed with common adventurers of the ordinary type. Born in a lower station, Gilly Jillingham might have taken honours as a "prig"; in his own with less luck he might have been an Ishmaelite generally shunned. Phillipa also might have degenerated into a mere soured cackling hanger-on; but they were not pariahs by caste, but Brahmins, and ent.i.tled to all due honour so long as they floated on top of the wave. Perhaps if near drowning no finger would have been outstretched to save; but there were plenty to pat them on the back as they disported themselves on the sound dry land. Fair-weather friends and needy relatives rallied round their prosperity, of course; but they were also accepted as successful social facts by the whole of that great world which judges for the most part by appearances, being too idle or too much engrossed by folly to apply more accurate or searching tests. In good society those who cared to talk twice of the matter blamed Harold; he was absent; besides, he had gone to the wall, therefore he must be in the wrong. On the other hand, the Jillinghams deserved the triumph that is never denied success. To Gilly prosperous were forgiven the sins of Gilly in social and moral rags. If scandal like an evil gas had been let loose to crystallise upon Phillipa's good name, the black stains could not adhere long to so charming a person, who made the Purling mansion in Berkeley Square one of the best-frequented and most fas.h.i.+onable in town.

There were many reasons why the Jillinghams should find their account in perpetual junketings. Social excitement was as the breath in Gilly's nostrils; notorious for profuse expenditure even when he was penniless, he was now absolutely reckless with money that was plentiful and moreover not his own. Nor was the constant whirl of gaieties without its charm for Phillipa; it deadened conscience, and consoled in some measure for the neglect and indifference she soon encountered at her husband's hands. But the most potent reason was that it fooled Mrs. Purling to the top of her bent. Self-satisfaction beamed upon her ample face as she found herself at length in constant intercourse and on a social equality--as she thought--with the potentates and powers and great ones of the earth. Gilly Jillingham in the days of his apogee had been the spoiled favourite of more than one t.i.tled dame; his success must have been great, to measure it by the envy and hatred he evoked among his fellowmen--even when in the cold shade there were d.u.c.h.esses who fought for him still; and now, when once more in full blossom, all his fair friends were ready to pet him as of old. The form in which their kindness pleased him best--because it was most to his advantage--was in making much of Mrs. Purling.

Great people have the knack of putting those whom they patronise on the very best terms with themselves; and Mrs. Purling was so convinced of her success as a leader of fas.h.i.+on that she would have asked for a peerage in her own right, taking for arms three pills proper upon a silver field, if she could have been certain that these honours would not descend to her recreant son.

Whether or not, as time pa.s.sed, she was absolutely happy, she did not pause to inquire. The devotion of her newly-adopted children was so unstinting, and they kept her so continually busy, that she had not time for self-reproach. It was a disappointment to her that the Jillinghams had no prospect of a family, and her chagrin would have been increased had she known that already a boy and girl had been born to the rightful heirs at Harbridge. But such news was carefully kept from her; she was rigorously cut off from all communication with her son. There was no safety otherwise against mischance; the strange processes of the old creature's mind were inscrutable; she might in one spasm of an awakened conscience undo all. For the Jillinghams were still absolutely dependent upon her; she could turn them out of house and home whenever she pleased. A small settlement was all the real property Phillipa had secured. Although with right royal generosity Mrs. Purling gave her favourites a liberal allowance, and promised them everything when she was gone, yet was she like a crustacean in the tenacity of her grip upon her own. This close-fistedness was exceedingly distasteful to Mr. Jillingham. He had an appet.i.te for gold not easily appeased, and four or five thousand a year was to him but a mouthful to be swallowed at one gulp.

Openly of course he continued on his best behaviour, but behind the scenes he permitted himself to grumble loudly at the old lady's meanness and miserly ways.

"I cannot understand you, Gilbert. I cannot see what you do with all the money you get," said Phillipa reproachfully one day when they were alone, and Gilly was enlarging upon his favourite theme. "You live at free quarters, you have no expenses and ought to have no debts."

"Have you no debts, pray?"

"None that you are ignorant of."

"Look here, Phillipa; listen to me. I spend what I please, how I please. I shall give no account of it to you, nor to any one else in the world."

"It is not necessary. I had rather not be told. I do not care to know," said Phillipa, womanlike, forgetting that she had begun by wis.h.i.+ng to be informed. She had her own suspicions, but forbore to question further, lest she might be brought face to face with the outrages she feared he put upon her.

"She will take to counting the potatoes next. It's most contemptible.

A mean old brute--"

"I shall not listen to you, Gilbert. You owe her everything."

"Do I? I wonder what my tailor would say to that or Reuben Isaac Melchisedec? I've more than one creditor; they are a prolific and, I am sorry to say, a long-lived race."

"I hope Mrs. Purling may live to be a hundred years at least--"

"I don't. I'd rather she was choked by one of those pills you tell me she takes every morning and night."

There was something in his tone which made Phillipa look at him hard.

Was it possible that he contemplated any terrible wickedness? The mere apprehension made her blood run cold.

"O Gilly, swear to me that you will not harbour evil thoughts, that you will put aside the devil who is prompting and luring you to some awful crime!"

"Psha, Phillipa, you ought to have gone into the Church. Moderate your transports--here comes one of the footmen."

"A person to see you, sir," said the servant. "He 'aven't got any card, but his business is very particular."

"I can't see him; send him away. If he won't go call the police."

"Says his name, sir, is Shubenacady."