"It doesn't matter," she went on presently. "He frightened me, that was all. He had such a stern, smooth-spoken way with him; and he seemed to know so much. He said that he had heard of me and my story, and would befriend me if I would tell him the name of the man who ruined me. Yes, he would befriend me, help me to lead a respectable life."
Her sunken eyes flashed for a moment, and her lip was scornfully curled.
"God knows!" she cried, with a certain rude dignity, "I was always an honest woman but for Cyril—Dick she called him."
The intimate term, tossed so lightly from those lips, caused Rainham to quiver, as though she had rasped raw wounds. It was the concrete touch giving flesh and blood to his vision of her past. It made the girl's old relation with Eve's husband grow into a very present horror, startlingly real and distinct.
"Go on," he said at last, wearily.
"Ah, I didn't tell him, sir," she explained, misinterpreting his silence. "I wouldn't have done that. He sore angered me, though he may have meant well. He was set on seeing the child then, but I wouldn't let him. It came over me after he was gone that that, maybe, was what he came for—the child. Someone might have put him on to take her from me—some society. Oh, I was at my wits' end, sir! for, you see, she is all I have—all—all! Then I made up my mind to go and see him. Bad as he is, he wouldn't have let them do it. Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that."
She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting. She pressed both hands against her breast, as though she sought composure. Then she continued:
"It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night! I would never have sought her out myself, being where she is. Oh, I have my pride! It was the servant's mistake: he took me for a fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers. Perhaps there was one expected, I don't know. But I didn't think of that when I came in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft. It all came over me—how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard Death coming on me—and I told her. It seemed quite natural then, as though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though, Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before. I was sorry afterwards. Yes, before you came in withhimI was sorry. It wasn't as if I owed her any grudge. How could she have known? She is an innocent young thing, after all—younger than I ever was—for all her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way. It was like striking a bit of a child…. God forgive him," she added half hysterically, "if he uses her as bad as me!"
Rainham's hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his head. When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.
"For pity's sake, girl," he whispered, "be silent."
She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood. His expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the pity which he aroused.
"I am sorry," she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did not comprehend. "You did it for her."
"Oh, for her! What does it matter since it is done? Say that it was an accident—a folly—that I am sorry too."
"No," said the girl softly; "you are glad."
He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.
"I am glad, then. Have it as you like."
But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found malignant.
"If it was that," she said ambiguously, "you had better have held your tongue. You had only to gain—— Ah, why did you do it? What was the good?"
He made another gesture of lassitude; then, rousing himself, he remarked:
"It was a calculation, then, a piece of simple arithmetic. If it gives her a little peace a little longer, why should three persons suffer—be sacrificed—when two might serve?"
"Oh, him!" cried the girl scornfully; "he can't suffer—he hasn't a heart!"
Rainham looked up at her at last. His fingers ceased playing with his ring.
"Oh, let me count for a little," he murmured, with a little, ghastly laugh.
The girl's eyes looked full into his, and in a moment they shone out of her face, which was suffused with a rosy flush that made her almost beautiful, with the illumination of some transcendent idea.
"Ah, youarea gentleman!" she cried.
In the tension of their nerves they were neither aware that the cab had come to a standstill, and before he could prevent her, she had stooped swiftly down and caught his hand passionately to her lips.
"Heaven forgive me! How unhappy you must be!" she said.
After all, things were not so complicated as they seemed. For Kitty was nearly at the end of her troubles; her trivial little life, with its commonplace tale of careless wrong and short-lived irony of suffering, telling with the more effect on a nature at once so light and so wanting in buoyancy, was soon to be hurried away and forgotten, amid the chaos of things broken and ruined.
"I don't want to die," she said, day after day, to the sternly cheerful nurse who had her in charge at the quiet, sunny hospital in the suburbs, where Rainham had gained admission for her as in-patient. "But I don't know that I want to live, either."
And so it had been from the beginning, poor soul, poor wavering fatalist! with a nature too innately weak to make an inception either of good or evil, the predestined prey of circumstance.
As she lay in the long, white room dedicated to those stricken, like herself, with the disease that feeds on youth, her strength ebbing away quite painlessly, she often entered upon the pathless little track of introspection, a pathetic, illogical summing up of the conduct of her life, which always led so quickly to the same broad end of reassurance, followed by unreasoned condemnation—the conventional judgement on her very inability to discover where she had so gravely sinned, how and when she had earned the extreme penalty of reprobation and of death. She was too wicked, she concluded hopelessly, vaguely struggling with the memories of the teaching of her Sunday-school, too wicked to find out wherein her exceeding wickedness lay.
One comfort she took to her sad heart, that Rainham had not condemned her; that he had only pitied her, while he reserved his damnation for the iron-bound, Sabbatarian world which had ruined and spurned another helpless victim. Rainham she believed implicitly, obeyed unquestioningly, with a sense of gratitude which had been largely mingled with self-reproach, until he had told her that, so far as he was concerned, she had nothing to reproach herself with. It never occurred to her for a moment now to question or to resent the part he had made her play on that tragical afternoon in Grove Road. Why should she? The imputation of a lie, what was that to her? Had he not taken it all, all her misery upon himself? Had he not fed, and clothed, and lodged her like the most penitent of prodigals, although she had no claim upon him until he chose to give it to her? Her benefactor could do no wrong, that was her creed; and it made things wonderfully smooth, the future on a sudden strangely simple. She had lied to him at the bidding of the other, and he had not resented it when he came to know the truth: she had brought shame on him, and he had not reproached her. A man like this was outside her experience; she regarded him with a kind of grateful amazement—a wondering veneration, which sometimes held her dumb in his presence.
If she had felt unhappy at first about the future of her child—and there had been moments when this thought had been more bitter than all the rest of her life together—this care was taken from her when Rainham promised to adopt the little girl, or, better still, to induce Mrs. Bullen to open her motherly heart to her. "They'll be only too glad to get her," he had said decisively, interrupting her awkward little speech of thanks. "That will be all right. Mrs. Bullen hasn't known what to do with herself since her son went to sea; she wants a child to care for. You needn't worry yourself about that."
It was after this that Kitty had owned to the nurse that she had no desire to live; and though the shifting of this burden enabled her to carry her life for a time less wearily, the end was not far; and the news of her death came to Rainham just after the first snowfall, in the middle of a dreary, cruel December.
The winter wore on, and still Rainham was to be seen almost nightly in his now familiar corner by the fireside at Brodonowski's, in the seat next that which had become Oswyn's by right of almost immemorial occupation. His negotiations with the company who were to buy him out of his ancestral dock were still incomplete, and now he felt a strange reluctance to hurry matters, to hasten the day on which he should be forced to leave the little room looking out upon the unprofitable river which he loved.
The two men would sit together, sometimes talking, but far more often not, until a very late hour; and when the doors were closed upon them they often wandered aimlessly in the empty streets, dismissing their cares in contemplation of great moonlit buildings, or the strong, silent river, sliding under the solemn bridges; united from day to day more closely by the rare sympathy which asks no questions and finds its chief expression in silence. One thing they both hated—to be alone; but loneliness for them was not what most mortals understand by the name. There was company for them in inanimate things—in books, in pictures, and even in objects less expressive; they were men who did not fear their thoughts, who looked to the past for their greatest pleasures. And now for Rainham the whole of life was a thing so essentially weary and flavourless that theennuiof little things seemed hardly worth consideration. He was dumbly content to let destiny lead him whither it would, without apprehension, without expectation. Oswyn had asked him, one evening, just before they parted on the doorstep of the club, with a certain abruptness which the other had long since learnt to understand, why he was in London instead of being at Bordighera. Rainham sighed, echoing the question as if the idea suggested was entirely novel.
"Why, because—— Well, for one thing, because you are in London and the Dollonds are at Bordighera. You don't know Mrs. Dollond?" he added, seeing that the other looked at him with a certain air of wistful distrust, a momentarily visible desire to see behind so obvious a veil.
"No, thank God!" said Oswyn devoutly, shrugging his bent shoulders, and turning away with a relapse into his unwonted impassiveness.
"But you have apparently heard of her," continued Rainham, with an effort toward humour. "And I am afraid people have been slandering her. She is a very excellent person, the soul of good-nature, and as amusing as—as an American comic paper! But in my present state of health I'm afraid she would be a little too much for me. I can stand her in homeopathic doses, but the Riviera isn't nearly big enough for the two of us as permanencies. No, I think I shall wait until next winter now."
Oswyn shot a quick glance at him, and then looked away as suddenly, and after a brief silence they parted.
Rainham was already beginning to consider himself secure from the inconvenient allusions to Lightmark and their altered relations, which he had at first nervously anticipated. Oswyn rarely mentioned the other painter's name, and accepted, without surprise or the faintest appearance of a desire for explanation, the self-evident fact of the breach between the two quondam allies; regarding it as in the natural course of events, and as an additional link in the chain of their intimacy. Indeed, Lightmark had long ceased to be a component element of the atmosphere of Brodonowski's: he no longer brought the sunshine of his expansive, elaborate presence into the limits of the dingy little place; nor did its clever, shabby constituents, with their bright-eyed contempt for the popular slaves of a fatuous public, care to swell the successful throng who worshipped the rising genius in his new temple in Grove Road. The fact that in those days Rainham avoided Lightmark's name, once so often quoted; his demeanour, when the more ignorant or less tactical of their mutual acquaintances pressed him with inquiries as to the well-being and work of his former friend, had not failed to suggest to the intimate circle that there had been a rupture, a change, something far more significant than the general severance which had gradually been effected between them, the unreclaimed children of the desert, and Richard Lightmark, the brilliant society painter; something as to which it seemed that explanation would not be forthcoming, as to which questions were undesirable. The perception of this did not demand much subtlety, and, in accordance with the instincts of their craft, Rainham's reticence was respected.
"It was curious, when you come to think of it," Copal said reflectively one evening after his return from a late autumnal ramble in Finistère, and while the situation was still new to him, "very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal to one another."
"Yes," assented McAllister, thoughtfully stroking his reddish beard. "And there was a time—not so very long ago, either—when Lightmark and Oswyn were on pretty good terms too!"
"Ah, well; most people quarrel with old Oswyn sooner or later. But it certainly does look a little as if—as if Lightmark had done something and the other two had found it out—Oswyn first. However, it's no business of ours. I suppose he's safe to be elected next week,—though he isn't a Scotchman, eh, Sandy old man?"
"Quite," said the other laconically.
And then their conversation was modulated into a less personal key as they resumed their discussion of the colony of Americanpleinairisteswith whom Rathbone had foregathered at Pontaven, and of the "paintability" of fields ofsarrasinand poplars.
Rainham found it rather difficult to satisfy his inner self as to his real, fundamental motive for wintering in England. Sir Egbert's orders? They had not, after all, amounted to much more than an expression of opinion, and it was somewhat late for him to begin to obey his doctors. The transfer of his business? That could have been carried out just as well in his absence by his solicitors.
For some time after Kitty's death—and her illness had certainly at first detained him—he was able to assure himself that he was waiting until little Margot (so he called the child) should have secured a firm foothold in the affections of his foreman's family; the fact that the Bullens were so soon to leave him seemed to render this all more necessary. But now, in the face of Bullen's somewhat deferential devotion and his wife's vociferous raptures, there hardly seemed to be room for doubt on this score. For the present, at least, the child ran no risk greater than that of being too much petted.
And at last he was obliged to own that his inability to follow his established precedent was due to some moral deficiency, a species of cowardice which he could only vaguely analyse, but which was closely connected with his reluctance to isolate himself among the loquacious herd of those who sought for health or pleasure. If Oswyn would have accompanied him to the Riviera he would have gone; but Oswyn was not to be induced to forsake his beloved city, and so he stayed, telling himself that each week was to be the last.
On a bright day, when spring seemed to be within measurable distance in spite of the cold, he made an expedition with Margot to Kensington Gardens; and they passed, on their way through the Park, the seat on which he had rested after his interview with Lady Garnett on that far-away October evening—the memory struck him now as of another life. It was frosty to-day, and the seat raised itself forlornly from quite a mound of snow. And when they left the Gardens he hailed a cab, and, before they had reached the Circus on their homeward journey, bade the man turn and drive northward, up Orchard Street and into Grove Road.
It was dusk now, and there were bright touches of light in the windows of the low, white house, which he glanced at almost surreptitiously as they passed, and two carriages waited before the outer door.
"My dear child," he remarked suddenly to the little girl, who was growing almost frightened by his frowning silence, "you should always, always remember that when a man has made a fool of himself, the best thing he can do is to clear out, and not return to his folly like the proverbial dog!"
Margot looked solemnly puzzled for a moment, and then laughed, deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game—a joke, perhaps—which she was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few friends among his peers, and for children—especially for pretty children of a prettiness which accorded with his own private views—Rainham had an undeniable weakness.
On slack days—and they were always slack now—loungers about the precincts of the dock often caught a glimpse of the child's fair hair above the low level of the dark bow-window which leaned outwards from Rainham's room; and the foreman had even gone so far as to suggest that his master was bringing her up to the business. "Pays us for looking after her," he confided to his wife, "and looks after her himself!"
Mrs. Bullen laughed and then sighed, being a soft-hearted woman, and inclined to grieve over their impending desertion of their unbusinesslike master.
"Mr. Philip couldn't do more for her if he was her own father," she acknowledged appreciatively.
Whereat Bullen had smiled with the superior air of one who knew—of one who had been down to the sea in ships, and was versed in the mysteries of the great world, of fathers and of children.
"Right you are, old woman," he chuckled, "no more he could. Blessed if he could! And there's no mistake about that. And when you and me go North in the spring, why, it strikes me that we shall have to leave missie behind. Yes, that we shall: though I'd take her, glad enough, without the money."
If at first his association with Margot reminded Rainham of another little girl whom he had loved, and whose place she could never even approximately fill, the memory was not a bitter one, and he was soon able to listen to her childish questioning without more than a gentle pang. In time, he even found a dreary transient pleasure in closing his eyes on the dank dun reality of Blackpool, while the child discoursed to her doll in the nook of the bow-window, and his fancy wandered in another sunnier, larger room, with open windows, and the hum of a softer language rising in frequent snatches from the steep street outside; with a faint perfume of wood fires in the balmy, shimmering air, a merry clatter and jingle of hoofs, and bells, and harness; and another daintier child voice ringing quaint, colloquial Italian in his ears. The awakening was certainly cruel, sometimes with almost the shock of a sudden savage blow, but the dream lasted and recurred: he had always been a dreamer, and every day found him more forgetful of the present, more familiar with the past.
Upon his return, rather late, to the dock, he recognised, with a thrill of pleasure tinged with something of self-reproach, among the little pile of business letters which Mrs. Bullen brought to him with his tea-tray, the delicate angular handwriting of Lady Garnett, and he made haste to possess himself of the secret of the narrow envelope, of a by-gone fashion, secured with a careful seal.
"MY DEAR" (so she wrote): "This is very absurd; yes, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you that it is not clever of you to take things so very muchau serieux. I know more than you think, Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, who means well, doubtless—but,mon Dieu, what a woman!—Mrs. Sylvester has been here; she has spoken to me, and I am afraid I have scandalized her. 'You don't suppose he has married her,' I said, I confess not altogether disingenuously, and how mystified she looked! You will say that Mrs. Sylvester ought to mind her own affairs, and you will even find me a trifle impertinent, perhaps. But I claim my privilege. Am I not your godmother? Still, I am rather intrigued, I own. I don't want to ask what you have done, or why; whatever it is, I approve of it. What I find fault with is what you are doing, the part you are playing. You must not give me the chagrin of seeing Mrs. Sylvester and the admirable Charles triumphant at your expense, Philip. You must show yourself: you must come and see me; you must come to dinner forthwith, or I shall have to make you a visit at your dock. I must talk to you, mon cher! I am troubled about you, and so is Mary. Come to us, and Mary shall play to you and exorcise your demons. Besides, I am bored—horribly bored. Yes, even Mary bores me sometimes, and I her, doubtless; and we want you. We will own that we are selfish, after all, but you must come!"
Then there was a postscript: "Mary suggests that possibly you are not so incomprehensible as I think; perhaps you are at Bordighera? But you ought to let us know."
Rainham sat with the letter before him until Margot came to bid him good-night. And then he decided to take advantage of the suggestion of the postscript: surely, if he did not answer the dear old lady's letter, she would conclude that he was indeed upon his travels.
If Eve could have mended her idol discreetly and permanently, so that for the outward world it would still present the same uncompromising surface, so that no inquisitive or bungling touch could bring to light the grim, disfiguring fracture which it had sustained, it is probable that she would have chosen this part, and hidden the grief of her life from the eyes of all save those who were so inseparably connected with the tragedy of that autumnal afternoon. But it was so completely shattered, the pieces were so many; and, worst of all, some of them were lost. To forget! What a world of bitter irony was in the word! And she could not even bury her illusions quietly and unobserved of uncharitable eyes; there was the sordid necessity of explanation to be faced, the lame pretexts to be fashioned, and the half-truths to be uttered, which bore an interpretation so far more damning than the full measure which it seemed so hard to give.
Mrs. Sylvester, whose jealous maternal instincts continued to be on the alert hardly less keenly after her daughter's marriage than before, had soon detected something of oppression in the atmosphere; an explanation had been demanded, and the story, magnified somewhat in its least attractive features by Eve's natural reticence, had gone to swell the volume of similar experiences recorded in Mrs. Sylvester's brain. That she felt a genuine sorrow for Rainham is certain, for the grain of her nature was kindly enough beneath its veneer of worldly cleverness; but her grief was more than tempered by a sense of self-congratulation, of unlimited approval of the prudence which had enabled her to marry her daughter so irreproachably before the bubble burst. Indeed, the little glow of pride which mingled quite harmoniously with her nevertheless perfectly sincere regret, was an almost visible element in her moral atmosphere, as she emerged from the door of her daughter's house after this momentous interview, drawing her furs about her with a little shiver before she stepped into her well-appointed brougham. She had the air of saying to herself, "Dear me, dear, dear! it's very sad, it's very terrible; but I! how clever I have been, and how beautifully I behaved!" There was nothing particularly novel from her point of view in the story which she had just extracted from her reluctant daughter; the situation called for an edifying, comfortable sorrow, but by no means for surprise. It was what might have been expected—though this (which was somewhat hard) did not render the episode any the less reprehensible.
And it was this feeling which had predominated during the lady's homeward drive, and the half hour'stête-à-tête, before dinner, which she had utilized for an exchange of confidences with her son.
"I didn't know that there had been an—an exposure," he said, as he stood, a stiff, uncompromising figure, before the fire in the little drawing-room. "But I had an idea that it was inevitable from—from certain information which I have received. In fact, I have been rather puzzled. You must do me the justice to remember that I never liked the man—though he had his good points," he added a little awkwardly, as inconvenient memories of the many kindnesses which he had received at Rainham's hands thrust themselves upon him. "But I'm afraid he's hardly the sort of person one ought to be intimate with. Especially you, and Eve. Of course, for her it's out of the question."
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Sylvester decisively; "and they haven't seen him since, I need hardly say. In fact, they haven't even heard of him. They haven't told a soul except me, and of course I sha'n't tell anybody," the lady concluded with a sigh, as she remembered how difficult she had found it to drive straight home without breaking the vow of secrecy which her daughter had exacted from her.
Whatever Mrs. Sylvester may have thought, it is certain that the interview, from which she enjoyed the impression of having emerged so triumphantly, had brought anything but consolation to her daughter, whose first impulse was to blame herself quite angrily for having admitted to her secret places, after all so natural a confidante.
Nor had Eve repented of this feeling. As time went on she found her mother's somewhat too obviously complacent attitude more and more exasperating, and she compared her want of reserve very unfavourably with her husband's demeanour (it must be owned that he had his reasons for a certain reticence). Against Colonel Lightmark, also, she cherished something of resentment, for he, too, more especially in collaboration with her mother, was wont to indulge in elderly, moral reflections, which, although for the most part no names were mentioned, were evidently not directed generally and at hazard against the society of which the Colonel and Mrs. Sylvester formed ornaments so distinguished.
Upon one afternoon, when Christmas was already a thing of the past, and the days were growing longer, it was with considerable relief that Eve heard the outer door close upon her mother, leaving her alone in the twilight of the smaller portion of the double drawing-room. She was alone, for Mrs. Sylvester had been the last to depart of a small crowd of afternoon callers, and Dick was interviewing somebody—a frame-maker, a model, or a dealer—in the studio. She sat with a book unopened in her hand, gazing intently into the fire, which cast responsive flickers over her face, giving a shadowed emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists at the play-houses on "first nights"; her carriage-horses performed extensive nightly pilgrimages in the regions of Kensington and Mayfair; and she had made a reputation for her dressmaker. And already she realized that her efforts to live outside herself were futile; moments like these must come, and the knowledge that, in spite of her countless friends and voluminous visiting list, she was alone.
Her mother? Dick? After all, they were only in the position of occupying somewhat exceptionally prominent places on the visiting-list.
As for her husband, after all these long months of married life, she could not say that she knew him. She regarded him with a kind of admiration of his personal, social attractions, in which she recognised him as fully her equal, with a kind of envy of the genius, which she could not entirely comprehend, but which seemed to make him so vastly her superior. And yet there was a shadow of doubt about it all: there had been sinister flashes, illumining, dimly enough, depths which the marital intimacy still left unfathomed, making her wonder whether her husband's candour might not mask something more terrible than forgotten follies, something that might prove a more real and irremovable barrier between them than even that indefinable want of a mutual horizon, of common ground upon which their traditions could unite themselves.
So long as Dick had remained cheerfully masterful, and picturesquelyflamboyant, without even an occasional betrayal of the bitterness which makes the one attribute savour of insolence, and the other of oppression, his wife had regarded him as exactly fulfilling the part for which he had obviously been cast—of a good-humoured, ornamental, domestic tyrant, to be openly obeyed and covertly coerced. A husband who assisted her acquisition of social laurels; who gave her more money than she asked for; who designed for her the most elaborate and enviable dresses—yes, her mother certainly had reasons for declaring him a paragon! But still Eve was vaguely conscious of a defect, a shortcoming. It was all very well so far as it went, but the prospect was by no means unbounded. And, then, had he not also designed gowns for Mrs. Dollond, and succeeded (there was a sting in this) where success was somewhat more difficult of achievement?
Now, moreover, he had begun to carry an aggrieved air—an air which suggested that he pitied himself, that he considered that he had been unfairly dealt with, that he was entitled to assume the attitude of an innocent, injured victim of some blindly-dealt retribution. What did that mean? The only explanation which his wife could find for this symptomatic manifestation had its origin in the unhappy episode of which the memory was always on the threshold of her solitary thoughts, and, perhaps, of his. She began to feel, with a certain compunction, that Dick must resent the circumstances which obliged him practically to sever his acquaintance with a man who had indisputably figured for so many years as his nearest friend; and she asked herself sometimes whether the circumstances in question did not, in effect, centre in herself.
Although the world was as yet far from being an open book for her, it was conceivable that Philip Rainham (even if one judged by appearances) had done nothing which need necessarily cast him beyond the pale of the unregenerate society of bachelordom. It never occurred to her that, so far as she herself was concerned, a renewal of the old relation was among possible things: if she had met Philip in public she would have made it clear to him that he was no longer on the same plane with her; that, from her point of view, he had practically ceased to exist.
It was only when she was alone, and pleasant, bitter memories of the old days recurred, that she owned to herself how hard it was to think of this intimacy as severed by a rule of moral conduct no less inexorable, and even more cruel, than death. And yet there were moments—and this was one of them—when her husband's bearing seemed more portentous, when the explanation she had found possible seemed no longer probable, and uncomfortable doubts as to the real meaning of his uneasiness assailed her mind.
A fragment of burning coal fell with a clatter into the grate: she welcomed the interruption, and for the moment abandoned her thoughts, only, however, to enter upon them again by a different path.
"I wonder why I don't hate him?" she asked herself, almost wistfully. (She was not now thinking of her husband.) "I ought to hate him, I suppose, and to pity her. But I pity him, I think, and I hate—her."
The fire still crackled cheerfully, and she began to feel its heat oppressive; she let her hands fall with a gesture half of contempt, half of despair, and then rose abruptly, and walked into the darkness of the larger room, from the unshuttered windows of which she could see the dark bulk of her husband's studio looming against the gray, smoke-coloured sky.
While she stood, leaning with something of a forward tilt of her gracile figure, upon the ledge of the low, square window, the side door of the studio opened, letting a flood of light out upon the lawn, and with absent eyes she saw that her husband's visitor was taking his leave. Presently the door closed; the broad rays which had shone coldly from the skylight of the building died out, so abruptly that the change seemed almost audible; and simultaneously she heard her husband's careless step in the long glazed passage, half conservatory, half corridor, which led from her domain to his. He came in, softly humming an air from a comic opera, and then paused, peering into the darkness for an instant before he distinguished his wife's shape in dusky relief against the pale square of window.
"Don't light the room!" she said quickly, as she saw him stretch his hand towards the little button which controlled the electric light; "we can talk in the dark."
He stopped with his hand on the porcelain knob, breaking off his ditty in the middle of a bar.
"By all means, if you like," he said, "though I should prefer to see you, you know."
Then he dropped luxuriously into an easy-chair by the side of the fire, which continued to exhibit a comfortable, glowing redness.
But very soon Lightmark became aware of a certain weight of apprehension, which took from him the power to enjoy these material comforts; unattractive possibilities seemed to hover in the silent darkness, and his more subtile senses were roused, and brought to a state of quivering tension, which was almost insupportable. His wife moved, and he felt that she had directed her eyes towards him, though he could not see her; and he winced instinctively, seeking to be first to break the silence, but unable to find a timely word to say. The blow fell, and even while she spoke he felt a quick admiration for the instinct which had enabled him to anticipate her thought.
"Dick," she said quietly, without moving from her place by the window, "have you seenhimsince——?"
There was no need of names; he did not even notice the omission.Could she see his face, he wondered, in the firelight?
"No!" he sighed, "no!"
She came nearer to him, so near that he could hear her breathing, the touch of her fingers upon the back of a chair; and presently she spoke again:
"You think there was no excuse for him?"
"Ah—for excuse! She was pretty, you know!"
He got up, and stood facing her for a moment in the darkness, and then, while she appeared to consider, glanced at his watch, and made a suggestion of movement towards the door.
"Only a minute, Dick," she said, in the same set voice. "You will do me the justice to admit that I haven't alluded to this before. But I have been thinking—I can't help it—and I want to know——"
"To know?" he echoed impatiently.
"To know your position—our position; what you had to do with it all."
"What is the good? What difference can it make?"
"It's the doubt," she said—"the doubt. I thought you might like to explain."
"To explain? Good Lord! what have I to explain? Is it not all settled, all clear? My dear child, let us be reasonable, let us forget; it's the only way."
There was less of anger in his voice, but if Eve could have seen his eyes in the firelight, she might have noticed that they were very bright, and their pupils were contracted to hard, iridescent points.
"How can it be settled," she asked wearily, "while there is this shadow of doubt? And to forget—Heaven knows I have tried!"
Dick shrugged his shoulders tolerantly.
"What do you want me to say?—to explain?"
"Could you not have warned him, Dick? Did you not see it coming? She, that woman, was she not your model? Did he not meet her at your studio? Was not that the beginning of it all? Ah, can you say that you were not to blame?"
She spoke fast, following question with question, as if she anticipated the answer with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and there was more of entreaty than of denunciation in her last words.
"It's such an old story," he rejoined, with an air of feeble protest. "How could I foresee what would happen? And," he added, hardening himself, "they did not meet for the first time at my studio; on the contrary, it was he who brought her to me, and I suspected nothing. What more can I say? Surely it is all plain enough!"
Eve sighed. It seemed to her husband that she was on the whole disappointed, and he felt that, while he was about it, he might have given himself a freer hand, and made himself emerge, not only without a stain upon his character—the expression occurred to him with a kind of familiar mockery—but with beaten drums and flying colours.
He reflected that this was another example of the folly of attempting to economize. At the same time he was gently thrilled by what he owned to himself was a not ignoble emotion: that sigh seemed to speak so naturally and pathetically of disillusionment, it was such a simple little confession of a damaged ideal. It did not occur to him to suspect that the character of which his wife had formed too proudly high an estimate was his own.
"Don't you think you might trust me?" he said presently in a milder, almost paternal tone, magnanimously prepared for a charming display of penitence, which it would be his duty rather to encourage than to deprecate.
"To trust you?" replied Eve quickly. "Haven't I the appearance of trusting you? Don't I accept your explanations?"
It was Lightmark's turn to sigh. His wife moved away, with an air of dismissing the subject.
"It is quite dark; it must be time to dress for dinner. Please turn on the light." Then she added as she left the room, without waiting for an answer: "And you, do you find it so easy to forget?"
When Lightmark was alone, he stood for a few minutes before the fire in meditation; then he clenched his fist viciously.
"Confound the girl, and him, too! No, poor devil! he meant well. It was just the senseless, quixotic sort of thing one would have expected of him. But I don't know that it has done much good. It has made me feel a sneak, though I've only been lying to back him up. Why couldn't he let it alone? There would have been a storm, of course, but it would soon have blown over, and no one else need have known."
He stopped in front of a mirror—he had been pacing up and down the room—and found himself looking rather pale in the soft, brilliant glow of the incandescent lamps. Moreover, the clock pointed to an hour very near that for which the carriage had been ordered.
While he was dressing for dinner, it occurred to him—it was not for the first time—that, after all, it would take very little to render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory. For what if Kitty should split?—so he elegantly expressed his fears—what if the girl, of whom he had heard nothing since the day of that deplorable scene, should break loose, and throw up the part which she had undertaken upon such very short notice?
Decidedly, he felt that he was abundantly justified in resenting the false position into which he had been thrust; the imposture was too glaring. Would it not even now be well to remodel the situation with a greater semblance of adherence to facts—to make a clean breast of it? The crudity of the idea offended him; the process would necessarily be wanting in art. But possibly it was not yet too late to substitute a story which, if it caused him temporary discomfort, would at least leave him more certain of the future, the master of an easier, a less violently outraged conscience.
At dinner the taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of the morning in forming an amended plan of campaign, of which the first move took the shape of a somewhat voluminous letter, addressed to Philip Rainham.
Charles Sylvester was a man of a somewhat austere punctuality, and there were few of his habits in which he took a juster pride than in the immemorial regularity with which he distributed the first few hours of his day. To rise at half-past seven, whatever might be the state of the temperature or the condition of the air; to reach the breakfast-room on the stroke of eight, and to devote half an hour to the perusal of theTimesand of his more intimate correspondence—of course, there were certain letters which he reserved until his arrival in chambers—while he discussed a moderate breakfast which seldom varied; to ride in the Row for another half-hour; and finally, having delivered his horse to a groom, who met him at the corner of Park Lane, to enter the precincts of the Temple, after a brisk walk through Piccadilly and the Strand, shortly after ten—these were infallible articles in his somewhat rigid creed.
Mrs. Sylvester, therefore, was struck with all the surprise which results from an unprecedented breach of custom when, descending to breakfast at her own laxer hour one dark morning in February, she found her son still presiding at the table, absorbed in his letters. He pushed aside these and a packet of telegram forms as she entered, and, rising to accept her discreet kiss, responded to her implicit inquiry as to whether anything was wrong—her eyes had strayed involuntarily to the clock—by pointing her attention to a paragraph in the morning paper. His manner was more solemn than usual; it betrayed an undercurrent of suppressed excitement.
"This is unusual," he remarked; "but, you see, I have an excuse."
She followed the direction of his finger: "Death of the Member for North Mallow." The cream of the news was contained for her in the heading, and so she did not read the rest of the notice, which was a short one.
Now, North Mallow was the respectable constituency in which a coalition of two parties had selected Mr. Sylvester to be their candidate at the next election, which this death had transferred into the immediate present.
"My dear boy!" said Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically.
Then she checked herself, recognising that a too open satisfaction in the event—opportune as it might be—would be hardly decent.
"Of course, it is very sad for him, poor man!" she remarked. "But I cannot help feeling glad that you should be in the House, and so much sooner than we expected."
He interrupted her with another discreet embrace.
"My dear boy!" she said again vaguely, contentedly, as she poured herself a cup of tea.
"He has been in bad health for some time," continued Charles. "He died two days ago at Cannes. It is astonishing that I did not hear the news before. I have wired to Hutchins, my election agent, and if I can manage it, I shall run down to Mallow. Of course one is sorry, but since it has been ordered so, after all, one has to think of the party."
"Ah yes, the party," murmured Mrs. Sylvester sympathetically; "of course that is the great thing. I am sure you will distinguish yourself. I suppose there is no danger of a defeat?"
"Oh, it is a safe seat! But one has always to canvass; there is always a certain risk. I sometimes wish——" He stopped short, pulled nervously at his collar, finding it a little difficult to express his meaning. "I think," he went on at last with a visible effort, flushing somewhat, "that I must marry. An intelligent woman devoted to my interests would be of great service to me now."
Mrs. Sylvester allowed her eyes to remain in discreet observation of the tablecloth.
"I have often thought so," she said at last quietly.
"Indeed!" he remarked politely. "Yes; it is a matter, perhaps, which I should have discussed with you before. I am fully aware of the right you have—— I would not, I mean, have failed——"
"Oh, my son!" she protested, "I am sure you have always been most correct."
"I have tried to be," he said simply. "If I have said nothing to you, it has been because I wished to be cautious, not to commit myself, to be very sure——"
"Of the lady's affection, do you mean?"
"Ah, can one ever be sure of that? No; I mean rather of my own attitude, of my own situation. It has always seemed to me that marriage is a very great undertaking, a thing to be immensely considered, not to be embarked on rashly."
"You view everything so justly!" she exclaimed. "Have you—am I to understand that you have a particular person in view?"
He waved aside the compliment with a bland gesture, which asserted that only his magnanimity prevented him from acknowledging its truth.
"Surely, surely!" he said. "You are perhaps aware how immensely I admire Miss Masters; that I have paid her very great attention—marked attention, I may say?"
"I observed something of the kind at Lucerne. I did not know if it had continued; sometimes I thought so. Have you proposed to her?"
"No," he said slowly; "I have not yet proposed to her. Naturally, I wished to consult you first."
"I am sure, Charles," said his mother cheerfully, "that I shall be extremely pleased. She is a very nice girl. She is a great-niece of Lord Hazelbury, and connected with the Marshes, and I know she will have at least sixty thousand pounds."
He glanced across at her, frowning a little, with a certain irritation.
"I shall not marry her for her money," he said.
"My dear boy," she retaliated, "I did not suppose you would be mercenary; only, a little money is very desirable; and Lady Garnett has a great deal, and Mary will certainly get her share of it."
"Ah, I don't like her," put in Charles inconsequently; "she is a profane old woman."
"Neither do I; but one must accept her. And Mary, after all, is only her niece."
"She has a beautiful character," he continued slowly. (This time he was not speaking of Lady Garnett.) "I admire it more than I can say; it has very great depths."
His mother looked up at him quickly, struck by his strenuous accent, for which she was scarcely prepared. She had a high notion of his character, of his ability, and was pleased, more pleased than she cared to admit, at the suitability of the match. He had always been an excellent, even a sympathetic son; and it had been part of his excellence that whenever he should marry, she had been quite certain that he would marry like this, selecting with dignity a young woman whom one could emphatically approve—a testimony to his constancy in certain definite traditions in which he had been reared, traditions, it may be said, which he adhered to with a tenacity that even exceeded her own.
It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon him as an ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he had just spoken. She recognised the tone.
And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to give her an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she could reflect that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly practical and mature, it was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at the best, not precisely the tone by which women are most likely to be won.
She said placidly:
"I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at once."
"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.
"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."
Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the unwonted dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together with the pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field, had rendered him singularly mild.
He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some magnitude, at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured, and where Mary would certainly be.
"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he prepared for departure, "this evening."
He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional degree to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of the whips of his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with his agent on the temper of the constituency whose member was so seasonably deceased), he had dressed at his club, and dawdled at his accustomed table in the large bright room over a solitary dinner.
His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which the image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had eminently that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to separate and disconnect the various interests of his life, admitting each only in its due order and place; but none the less had he been conscious all along that somewhere in the background of his mind her image subsisted, and now that he was at leisure again to give her that place of honour in his consideration which she had long been insensibly acquiring, he was more than ever determined to do all that lay in his power to make her his wife.
It amazed him almost that he had not put the important question long before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone with him; so that, however much he had desired it, he could never, without doing her gross violence, have succeeded in striking the precisely right personal note.
To-night, however, there should be no more fencing; of that he was thoroughly resolved. He would be eloquent and sustained, impassioned, and, if necessary, humble—but, above all, perfectly direct; he would brook no faltering, feminine evasions; would insist on an answer, and on a right answer too, pointing out, with the close reasoning acquired in his profession, the superb propriety of the match. And he believed that she would be convinced. Was it not half of her attraction that she was a woman of intelligence, not a silly school-girl, who flirted and danced?
In spite of his self-esteem, however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have been first on the field.
Considering these things, he allowed himself a glass of chartreuse with his coffee, and the unwonted luxury of a cigar, over which he lingered, growing more nervous as its white ash lengthened and the occasion drew near. Yet he could remind himself at last that—at any rate, to his knowledge—there was no one else whose pretensions the lady preferred, since Rainham, the man whom he had marked as dangerous, was socially damned, and no longer to be feared.
It was very nearly eleven before he reached the house to which he had been invited, and where he found a very brilliant party already in progress. The house was chiefly a legal and political one, although there seemed to be a fair leaven of literary and artistic celebrities among the more solid reputations; and for some time he was engrossed by various of his Parliamentary acquaintances, who questioned and encouraged him. Two or three had newly arrived from the House, where an important division had just been declared; and Charles listened with some impatience to their account of it, gazing absently, over their heads, at the maze of pretty toilettes, which made an agreeablefrou-frouover the polished floor, although the debate had been upon a question in which he was warmly interested.
He escaped from them at last with a murmured apology, an intimation that he wished to find somebody, and made his way slowly into the adjoining room, from which the strains of waltz music floated in, and where they danced. His friends found his demeanour noticeable, and were inclined to wonder with some amusement, knowing his habitual equanimity, that the vacancy at North Mallow should have undermined it. When he entered the ball-room he stopped for a moment, flushing a little. The first person he had seen, between the heads of the floating couples, was Lady Garnett, on a little raised seat at the further end of the large room, engaged in an animated conversation with an ambassador. He realized quickly that she would not have come alone.
He waited until the music ceased and the dispersal of the dancers made the passage of the floor practicable, then he set off in her direction, trusting that he might find her niece in the vicinity. Halfway down he stopped again; he had recognised his sister, who fanned herself languidly, seated on one of two chairs partially concealed by a great mass of exotic shrubbery, in pots, which formed almost an alcove. She removed her long soft skirt, which she had thrown over the vacant seat, as he approached; and at this tacit invitation he accepted it.
"Only until the rightful owner comes," he explained. "But I see you so seldom now that I must not lose this chance. I suppose you are keeping it for someone?"
"It is for Miss Masters," said Mrs. Lightmark; "but she won't want it yet. She has just gone down to supper."
"Ah, so much the better. I want to see her."
"Do you?" she asked indifferently. "Well, you had better keep me company until she comes. It is a long time since I saw you."
He considered her for a moment with a heavy, fraternal appreciation.
"Yes," he said—"yes, it is a long time, Eve. But, of course, we have each our own occupations, our own duties now. And being the wife of a successful painter must involve almost as many as being—if I may say so—a fairly successful barrister. Gratified as we are, my dear—my mother and I—at the success of your marriage, which has proved more brilliant even than we hoped, I must say that we often regret having lost you. We are duller people, I fear, since you have left us. However, we can still think of the old days, as you, no doubt, do sometimes."
She gave a faint, little, elusive smile, behind her fan.
"Oh, I am afraid I have forgotten them," she said. Then she went on quickly, before he had time to reply: "Another thing, too, I had almost forgotten—to congratulate you—on Mr. Humphrey's death."
"My dear Eve!" He looked at her with some reproof, with an air of finding her a little crude. "You should not say such things, Eve! I deeply deplore——"
"Shouldn't I?" she asked flippantly. "Dick told me you were to succeed to his seat. Isn't it true?"
He ignored her question, busied himself with an obdurate button on his glove. She watched him over her fan, half smiling, with her brilliant eyes.
"You are cynical," he remarked at last. "I dare say I shall get in.Is Lightmark here?"
"Yes, he is here. He has taken Mrs. Van der Gucht—the American Petroleum Queen they call her, don't they?—down to supper. She wants him to paint her portrait, at his own price. He will be here to fetch me at half-past eleven. I believe we have to move on then."
"Move on?" he asked, with an air of mystification.
"Show ourselves at another house," she replied. "It's a convenient practice, you know; one gets two advertisements in one night. Besides, one saves one's self a little that way; one sometimes gets an evening off."
"You talk as if you were an actress," he said, with offended irony."I don't understand your tone. Does Miss Masters accompany you?"
"I think not. Did you say you wanted to see her?"
"Particularly; it is chiefly for that I am here."
"She is a very nice girl," remarked his sister gently. "I hope——" She hesitated slightly; then held out her hand to him, which involuntarily he clasped. "I hope you will have a satisfactory conversation, Charles."
He glanced at her for a moment silently, feeling a secret pleasure in her discrimination.
"You look very well," he said at last, "only rather tired. That is a very pretty dress."
She smiled vaguely.
"I didn't know you ever noticed dresses. Yes, I am rather tired. Ah, there is Mary—and Dick."
The girl came towards them at this moment, looking pretty and distinguished in her square-cut, dark gown; and Lightmark followed, carrying her bouquet of great yellow roses, which he held appreciatively under his nose.
He nodded to Charles Sylvester, who was shaking hands with Mary; then he turned to his wife.
"If you are ready, dear," he said lightly, "I expect the carriage is. Miss Masters, you know we have another dance to do. My brother-in-law will see after you and your bouquet, if you will allow me."
"Oh, give it me, please," cried the girl, with a nervous laugh. "I really did not know you were carrying it. Thanks so much."
She had succeeded almost mechanically to Mrs. Lightmark's vacated chair; and as she sat there, with her big nosegay on her lap, he was struck by her extreme pallor, the lassitude in her fine eyes. He ventured to remark on it, when the other two had left them, and she had not made, as he had feared and half anticipated, any motion to rise.
"Yes, the rooms are hot and dreadfully full. There are too many sweet-smelling flowers about; they make one faint. It's a relief to sit down in comparative quiet and calm for a little."
He was emboldened by her quiescence to resume his chair at her side.
"I won't ask you to dance, then," he said; "and allow me to hope that no one else has done so."
She glanced indifferently at her card.
"No. 10," he added anxiously; "a waltz, after the Lancers."
"I see some vague initials," she said; "but probably my partner will not be able to find me, thanks to these shrubs."
"I hope not, with all my heart," said Charles devoutly. "At any rate, I can sit with you until you are claimed."
"As you like," she replied wearily. "Are you not anxious to dance?"
"I am not a great dancer at any time," he protested; "and to-night my heart would be particularly out of it. I came for another purpose."
He spoke tensely, and there was a slight tremor in his voice, ordinarily so clear and dogmatic, which alarmed the girl so that she forgot her weariness and meditated a retreat.
"Oh, so did I," she replied with forced gaiety. "I came to look after my aunt, which reminds me that this is hardly the way to do it. Will you please take me to her?"
"I assure you she does not want you," cried Charles eagerly. "I saw her not ten minutes ago with M. de Loudéac. They seemed to be talking most intimately."
"He is an old friend," said Mary; "but, still, they may have finished by this time. One can say a great deal in ten minutes."
"Ah!" he put in quickly, "only give me them, Miss Masters."
"I really think it is unnecessary," she murmured with a rapid flush. She made another movement, as if she would rise, dropping her bouquet in her haste to prevent his speech. He picked it up quickly and replaced it in her hands.
"No, don't go, Miss Masters," he insisted. "I surely have a right to be heard. After all, I do not require ten minutes, nor five. Only I came to say——"
"Ah, don't say it, Mr. Sylvester," she pleaded. "What is the good?"
"I mean that I love you! I want you immensely to be my wife."
She bent her head over her flowers, so that her eyes were quite hidden, and he could not see that they were full of tears; and for a long time there was silence, in which Sylvester's foot kept time nervously with the music. The girl bitterly reproached her tiredness, which had dulled apprehension so far that she had not realized at once the danger of the situation, nor retreated while there was yet time. She had always dreaded this; and now that it was accomplished, an illimitable vista of the disagreeable consequences broadened out before her. The ice being once broken, however she might answer him now, a repetition, perhaps even several, could scarcely be avoided; she foresaw that his persistence would be immense, so that with whatsoever finality she might refuse him, it would all be to go over again. And with it all was joined her natural reluctance to give an honest gentleman pain, only heightened by her sense that, for the first time in her knowledge of the man, the evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to deal gently with him.
"Mr. Sylvester," she said at last, looking up at him, "I am so sorry, but please do not speak of this any more. Believe me, it is quite impossible. I am sensible of the honour you do me, deeply sensible, only it is impossible. Let us forget this—this mistake, and be better friends than we have ever been before."
"Ah, Mary," he broke out, "you must not answer me like that, without consideration. Why should it be impossible?"
"Forgive me," she said gently; "only I am tired now. And consideration would not alter it. Let me go."
He put one hand out detaining her, and she sank back again wearily on her chair.
"If you are tired, so much the more reason that you should hear me. You will not be tired if you marry me. If you are tired, it is because your life has no great interests: it's frivolous; it is dribbled away on little things. You don't really care for it—you are too good for it—the sort of life you lead."
"The sort of life I lead?"
"The ideals of your set, of the people who surround your aunt, of your aunt herself. The whole thing is barren."
"Are we more frivolous than the rest?" she asked suddenly.
"You are better than the rest," he said promptly. "That is why I want you to marry me. You were made for great interests—for a large scene."
"What are they—your great interests, your ideals?" she asked presently. "How are they so much better than ours?—though I don't know what ours may be."
"If you marry me, you will find out," he said. "Oh, you shall have them, I promise you that! I want you immensely, Mary! I am just going into public life, I mean to go far—and if I have your support, your sympathy, if you become my wife, I shall go much farther. And I want to take you away from all this littleness, and put you where you can be felt, where your character—I can't say how I admire it—may have scope."
"I am sorry," she said again; "you are very good, and you do me great honour: but I can only answer as before—it is not possible."
"Ah, but you give no reason!" he cried. "There is no reason."
"Is it not a good enough one that I do not love you?" said the girl.
"Only marry me," he persisted, "and that will come. I don't want to hurry you, you know. I would rather you would take time and consider; give me your answer in a week or two's time."
They were silent for a little; Sylvester was now perfectly composed: his own agitation seemed to have communicated itself to the girl, whom he watched intently, with his bland, impartial gaze. She had closed her eyes, was resting her chin on her bouquet, and appeared to be deeply meditating his words. She looked up at last with a little shiver.
"I am very tired," she said. "If I promise to think over what you have said to-night and to give you my answer in a month's time, will you try and find Lady Garnett for me now?"
"Ah, Miss Masters—Mary!" he said, "that is all I want."
"And in the meantime," she pursued gently, "to allow the subject to drop?"
"You must make your own terms," he said; "but surely I may come and see you?"
"Very well," she consented, after a moment; "if it gives you any pleasure, you may come."
At which Charles simply took her cold, irresponsive hand in his own, with a silent pressure. Irresponsive as it was, however, he reminded himself, she had made no effective protest against the gesture.