Reasons? two! She knew stories about every one, which she retailed to their friends at the pitch of her voice; and she was always hunting for a husband for Eunice. Eldest sons had a horror of her, and the announcement that Mrs. Dengelton was to be at any special ball was sufficient to keep all the eligible young men away. Consequently, no one asked “The Parrot” to a dance unless the invitation was dragged out of them; but Mrs. Dengelton was skilful at such work, and went out a good deal during the season. Hitherto she had not been successful in her husband-hunting, as no one would marry Eunice, with the chance of having Mrs. Dengelton as mother-in-law. Crispin certainly was daring enough to pay his addresses, but Crispin had neither name, title, nor family, nothing but his genius, and Mrs. Dengelton therefore frowned on his suit. When Maurice came in for the Roylands estate, his aunt thought it would be splendid for Eunice to marry her first cousin, “just to keep the property in the family,” as Mrs. Dengelton put it, though how such a saying applied in this case it is rather difficult to see. However, The Parrot gladly accepted her nephew’s invitation,—when she arrived, he regretted having asked her—and came down with Eunice, with the firm determination to talk Maurice into matrimony.
She was very angry when Crispin arrived, and forbade Eunice to encourage the young man, but she could scarcely turn him out of the house, as she would have liked to do, so put up with his presence as best she could, and never lost an opportunity of saying disagreeable things to him in a covert fashion.
Eunice herself was a charmingly pretty girl, who very much resented the way in which her mother put her up to auction, but, being rather weak-willed, could not combat Mrs. Dengelton’s determination, and submitted quietly to be dragged about all over the place, with the hope that some day a modern St. George would deliver her from this dragon.
St. George, long looked for, unexpectedly appeared one day in the person of Crispin, and, though Mrs. Dengelton laughed at the idea of her daughter throwing herself away on a pauper, Eunice, nevertheless, fell in love with the poet. Crispin would have married her at once, but, in spite of her anxiety to get beyond the clack of Mrs. Dengelton’s tongue, she was too much afraid of that strong-willed lady to break out into open mutiny, so poor St. George had to adore her in secret, lest the dragon should pounce down on him.
Crispin! who ever heard of such a name? being the more singular as it had neither head nor tail. If he had been Henry Crispin, or Crispin Jones, people could have put up with the oddness of the sound; but Crispin, all alone by itself, sounded heathenish, to say the least of it. No one knew who Crispin was, or where he came from, for he had suddenly flashed like a meteor into literary London, two years previous, with a book of brilliant poems, which made a great success. For once the critics were unanimous in praising good work, and pronounced “The Roses of Shiraz, and Other Poems” to be the finest series of poetical Eastern tales since Lord Byron had enchanted the world with “The Giaour” and “The Bride of Abydos.” For the critics’ praise or blame Crispin seemed to care but little, nor did he satisfy the curiosity of those up to date people who desired to meet him. Sometimes he would appear in a Belgravian drawing-room, but only for a moment, and would then leave England for a tour in his beloved East. Just when the world would begin to forget him, he would suddenly reappear in society, and fascinate one and all by his charming manners. Handsome some he was not, being small and dark, but he was as lithe as a serpent, and his dark eyes flashed with the fierce fire of genius. All sorts of stories were told about him, and none of them were correct, though Mrs. Dengelton was ready to swear to the truth of at least half a dozen. In fact, he puzzled society very much, and, as society always takes to that which is not understandable, Crispin was quite the lion of the season.
An article called “The Lord Byron of our days” appeared in a leading society paper, which retailed wonders about this unknown poet; but Crispin neither contradicted nor affirmed the truth of these statements, therefore became more of a puzzle than ever. He was a brilliant musician; he talked several languages, and seemed to have been all over the world; but beyond this he was a mystery. To no one, not even to Maurice, who was his closest friend, did he tell the story of his life, and even Mrs. Dengelton, who was an adept at finding out things people did not want known, could make nothing of him.
Then Crispin met Eunice, and all his heart went out to this dainty, dark-haired girl, who spoke so seldom, but whose eyes and gestures were so eloquent. “The Fairy of Midnight,” he called her, and often wondered how such a woman as Mrs. Dengelton ever came to have so silent and lovely a daughter. To Crispin, steeped in the lore of the East, she was like a Peri, and her love inspired him with wondrous love poems, some of which appeared in The Nineteenth Century and The Fortnightly Review. Whether he told her who he was is doubtful—if he did, Eunice never betrayed his confidence, for she was a woman who could keep a secret, which was a miracle, seeing her mother was such a gossip. They loved and suffered in silence with such discretion, that even keen-eyed Mrs. Dengelton did not guess the understanding which existed between them, and was hard at work trying to arrange a marriage with Maurice, quite unaware that her meek daughter had made up her mind to marry no one but this mysterious Crispin.
Sitting at the piano, Crispin was playing a wild Eastern air with the soft pedal down, and looking at Eunice, whose eyes responded eloquently to his glances. Neither of them paid much attention to the chatter of The Parrot, who was quite ignorant of the love-making going on under her nose, for both Eunice and Crispin had arrived at the stage of complete union of souls which renders words superfluous while eyes can talk.
Mrs. Dengelton was doing a parrot in beadwork for a screen, and the gaudy bird might have passed for her portrait, so like her did it seem. Luckily, the beadwork parrot could not talk, but its creator could, and did, with as few pauses as possible.
“As I was saying, my dear Eunice, there is something very strange about this silence of my dear nephew. I’ve no doubt it is smoking too much,—so many young men smoke in that dreadful place, Bloomsbury, where he lived,—or perhaps he feels a little out of society after living so long away from it. Oh, I know Bloomsbury! yes! I sometimes visit the poor there. How strange I never came across poor dear Maurice! He is so sadly altered, not gay like he used to be. I do not really think he knows how to laugh, and”—