It Happened in Japan. Baroness Albert d' Anethan
been watching the whole incident with interest and considerable amusement.
"Tell me, Ralph," he exclaimed, "am I dreaming? Is it not Mrs. Norrywood? Is it her double? But what a fool I am," he added; "of course there is not a doubt of it. The fact is, my dear boy, that I--I, Stanislas de Güldenfeldt, have been deliberately cut by one of the prettiest and smartest women in Town. A by no means pleasant experience, I can tell you!" and Monsieur de Güldenfeldt, with a twinkle in his blue eyes, gave a little shake to his shoulders that was distinctly foreign and decidedly expressive.
"Yes," smiled Nicholson, "if she had snubbed a nobody like me, now, there would have been nothing to be surprised at. Precious glad, though, I didn't give her the chance," he added, with a cheery laugh. "I should never have survived it, whereas a diplomat like you can of course, get even with her any day. Forgive my laughing, de Güldenfeldt, but really it was rather a comic spectacle for an onlooker, you know."
"Laugh away, laugh away, my dear boy. Perhaps, however, when your hilarity has spent itself, you will kindly help me to unravel this mystery. What the dickens does it mean, eh?"
"Oh! I don't think we need go very far for an explanation. Probably she is going out to the Antipodes to try and start afresh. Of course, the first step towards that operation is to wipe out the past. So she begins by cutting her old friends, you see. 'Pon my word, I admire her pluck. But I shall take warning from your adventure, and before making a move shall wait with resignation until Mrs. Norrywood--I beg her pardon--Mrs. Nugent, condescends to recognise in me a former acquaintance. It's a beastly bore being snubbed by a pretty woman, isn't it old fellow? Come, don't eat me, but let's go below and see if Martinworth's name is among the list of passengers."
Meanwhile the subject of the above conversation was standing in her cabin, and with flushed cheeks and a beating heart was thinking deeply. This meeting with two members of the set in which she had originally moved had come upon her as a most unpleasant shock, a shock for which she was totally unprepared. Indeed, she had been so taken by surprise that she had behaved, as she told herself now, in a most unwarrantably tactless manner. Both de Güldenfeldt and Nicholson she had known fairly well in the old days, and in calmly thinking over the circumstances of the meeting, it struck her what a false step she had made in this crude attempt of ignoring persons whom, indeed, it was impossible to ignore. She remembered now having read in a paper before leaving England, that de Güldenfeldt had been named Swedish Minister to the Court of Japan, in which case she knew that sooner or later she was bound to come across him again, and as for Nicholson, it did not take her long to recall that his relations with Lord Martinworth had been in former years of the most friendly nature.
The meeting with these two men brought back vividly to Pearl all the wretchedness of her past life, and it was only now that she realised to the full the intense relief and sense of freedom that filled her soul, as she stepped aboard the Atlantic Liner at Southampton, and had watched the coast-line of England fade--as she then had sincerely hoped--for ever from her eyes.
Sir Ralph Nicholson had judged the situation rightly. Pearl Norrywood, or Nugent, had left England with the firm intention of forgetting everything connected with her unhappy past. She was determined, as far as it was possible, to wipe out all the despair, the hatred, the humiliation of the last ten years of her life. But in doing this, she felt there could be no half measures. That in company with the misery must also be obliterated all the joy and happiness she had experienced in the one love of her existence. She told herself that with this blotting out of the past, Dick Martinworth must be sacrificed with the rest. There was a decision of character, a certain sternness in her nature which she knew would help her to carry out that determination, and from the day that she and Lord Martinworth left the Divorce Court a suspected, but in spite of all, an unconvicted couple, Pearl Nugent had never again seen the man who for a series of years had exercised so great an influence over her life.
She had been but little past twenty when she put her future into the charge of a husband whom three months later she learned to utterly loathe and fear. From that time, every day, every hour, was a fiery ordeal from which, indeed, but few women could have hoped to escape unscathed. The inevitable arose ere long in the appearance on the scene of the Honourable Dick Pelham, as he was in those far-away days. Mr. Pelham had at once been struck by the refined beauty and grace of the girl with sad grey eyes. Then in getting to know her well he learnt to pity her, a feeling which ultimately culminated before many months passed into a deep and passionate love.
It did not indeed take Pelham long to learn that he worshipped the very ground on which Pearl trod, and no great interval passed before he told her so. The world never knew, never would know, whether Pearl Norrywood had listened to these protestations. All that it saw was that she behaved as if she had done so, for from the day that Dick Pelham commenced to haunt her side she became another person. She developed into an extremely beautiful woman. The grey eyes lost their sadness, the lovely lips learned to smile, and there was a radiance over the whole charming face that is only seen around those who love. The world put down this wonderful transformation to the presence of Dicky Pelham, and for once the world was right.
Society indeed at this period of their existence was more than indulgent to Pearl and Mr. Pelham. With the indifference and cynicism which characterises a certain class, not only did it condone, but it appeared on the contrary to encourage Pelham's devotion, to smile with approbation upon the marked and evident intimacy existing between this happy and good-looking couple. To invite one without the other would have indeed shown a total manque de savoir faire, and the same post that carried a letter begging Pearl's presence at a certain entertainment, or a certain house, as a matter of course conveyed another to Mr. Pelham containing the same request.
And yet, if the truth were known, this inseparableness, this constant daily companionship, was apt at times to prove to both more of a trial than a joy, more of a curse than a blessing. On Pelham's side it was a never-ending, feverish dream of unsatisfied desire, which Pearl was eternally resisting, eternally fighting against with all the weapons of her decidedly religious training, and a genuine and innate purity of heart.
And thus matters remained for the next five or six years. Dick Pelham succeeded in course of time to the title, and blossomed into Lord Martinworth, and his devotion to Pearl instead of cooling increased in intensity as time went on. One day, after years of waiting and imploring, he finally succeeded in persuading Mrs. Norrywood to take the decisive step of issuing divorce proceedings against her husband. This had long been his aim. But not only Pearl's hatred of open scandal and publicity, but her better judgment had prevented her hitherto from listening to his persuasions and from acceding to his unwearying entreaties. A severe, and what indeed might have proved a fatal injury from a blow bestowed in one of his ungovernable rages by the husband who had tortured her for so many years, finally however, decided Pearl to give ear to Martinworth's prayers, and at length to go to the extremity of sueing for a divorce.
She succeeded, after days of suspense, in obtaining her divorce. But whereas she had entered the court with the smiles and approbation of the world, she left it with a ruined reputation, a social outcast, and with hardly a friend to hold out a helping hand. The decree nisi had indeed been dearly bought, and as Pearl drove away from the Divorce Court she was the first to realise and to acknowledge to herself that in obtaining her freedom she had, from a worldly point of view, brought about her own doom.
As the judgment was pronounced, Martinworth cast her one radiant glance, which expressed as plainly as words "At last you are mine. At last! at last! after all these years." But there was no answering look of triumph in Pearl's eyes, for at that moment she felt that never again could she raise them to the face of man. In after times she often wondered how she had lived through all those awful days, how she could have remained silent, drinking in that terrible evidence which her husband had raked up from the very gutters. Nevertheless she survived this truly distressing ordeal, and with a look of utter scorn on her face sat patiently listening to servants' lies, and to sordid details of innocent situations, which under the clever cross examination were transformed into all that seemed most guilty and most damaging to her cause.
She walked away that day with Martinworth, and as she passed into her carriage people whispered together and nudged each other. Nothing had been proved,--and yet, in the eyes of her world, she knew that