“I cannot tell you.”
“Then I shall ask your daughter herself.”
“No, anything but that!” She rose to her feet, trembling. “I beg you, I ask you as a gentleman, to go, and leave us.”
Hammond rose dismayed. He had taken two steps towards the door when it was thrown open and Belle Yorke stood revealed on the threshold.
The notorious Belle Yorke did not look the part. People said it was her air of bright, girlish innocence, so foreign to the footlights, which was the secret of her success. When she tripped on to the stage from behind the painted side scenes, looking as if she had just come out of some rustic cottage in that far-off land called “the country,” and began singing one of her simple ballads, in a voice clear and fresh as the tinkle of a brook among the hills, they said it was the contrast with all her surroundings which caused such a thrill of emotion to go through the jaded audience. Of course no one believed that it was real innocence and real freshness. Belle Yorke was simply a little more clever than her professional sisters, and had thought out a “turn” which had the advantage of novelty; that was all. But it was very well done, so well that some quite hardened men of the world were ashamed afterwards to recall how far they had yielded to the spell. They declared that she made up better than any other woman on the stage, and that hers was the art which conceals art, except, of course, from such complete judges as themselves.
Those who had met her off the stage found, to their surprise, perhaps to their disappointment, that Belle Yorke seen close at hand was very much like Belle Yorke upon the boards. She was not to be found drinking brandy in the bar while she was waiting for her turn to go on. She did not go from the music-hall to a fashionable restaurant, and sit in public with a group of male admirers round her. She was generally seen slipping out quietly and going off on foot, or, if she found herself threatened with companionship, she took refuge in a cab. There was clearly some mystery underneath such conduct, and the mystery could be of only one kind.
Belle Yorke was friendly but not familiar with her stage associates. Perhaps there is no course which gives more offence than that. It is much easier to forgive downright rudeness than the perfect courtesy which makes others keep their distance. Some of the affronted ones were women, and the charity of women for women, as a rule, is not of the kind which covereth a multitude of sins. The eyes that began to watch Belle Yorke were robbed of sleep by jealousy. Something like a throb of exultation went through the ranks of those to whom Belle Yorke’s innocence was a stumbling-block when it was discovered that Belle Yorke had a friend.
Mr. Despencer, to do him justice, had not invented, nor had he originated, the report which he had mentioned to the marchioness, and repeated to Hammond. It goes without saying that he believed it to be true. Such reports are like Euclid’s axioms: no one requires to have them demonstrated. It had not even occurred to him that he was doing an injury to Belle Yorke in repeating it; nor did it injure her in the eyes of the public, nor in those of the managers of the music-halls. What a woman loses in reputation she gains in celebrity. As soon as Belle Yorke’s manager heard that she was protected by the Marquis of Severn he rubbed his hands and silently raised her salary.
When Belle Yorke opened the door and saw who was in her mother’s parlor she stood still, betrayed into a stifled cry and a blush that would not be stifled. Then she stepped in slowly, and laid down on the table some paper bags which she was carrying in her hands.
A pang of compunction shot through Hammond’s breast as she raised her eyes to his. There was something in Belle Yorke’s eyes which touched most people. They were always laughing, and yet somehow it always seemed as though they were laughing in order to keep themselves from tears. Looking into their clear depths, the man felt ashamed of his errand, and ashamed of his presence there, and he stood before her unable to speak.