CHAPTER XXIV

Three days later, Mordaunt, who inquired at the office every morning whether Mr. Planter's family was expected, learned that the best suite of rooms was retained for that gentleman, who was expected to arrive from San Francisco the same afternoon. His watchful aunt detected the change in his glad face when he sat down to breakfast, and she guessed the cause.

They arrived, happily without followers, though Clare took pains to let it be known that "some of her friends" were coming to Monterey for the night on Sunday. She met the Englishman's fresh demonstration of delight at having her here to himself once more, as she always met such calls, with every outward token of pleasure and response. Did he delude himself?—or was there even a touch of something more, something which had not been there in her manner to him hitherto? Be that as it may, she had no idea of not letting him know how much his conduct at San Francisco had displeased her. They were alone in the garden, the first morning after their arrival, when she said,

"You were awfully cross and disagreeable at San Francisco, Sir Mordaunt. I am glad to see you are ever so much nicer here."

"Well, there was good reason for my being cross there."

"Because of my friends? No;youwere not at all nice tothem. That was the trouble."

"Not nice? I like that! Come, come, the worm will turn at last. I don't want to say anything disagreeable about your friends. But be honest, confess that they insinuated every sort of villainy about me behind my back, though theywereso sugary to my face. You know as well as I do that one of them wrote those anonymous letters."

"I know nothing of the kind."

"Then I do. The expressions in one of the letters I received are identically the same that—well, I won't saywhoused to my sister when speaking of you and your father. Of course, I didn't care a brass farthing."

"No one does in San Francisco. People get them all the time, and no one pays any heed to them. That was no excuse for your treating my friendsde-haut-en-bas, as you did. It was very rude of you—very rude to me. And then, that last night when I begged you—I actually begged you—to come to us, and you refused! After all your protestations. I never heard of such a thing!"

"I protest nothing more than I feel; indeed, much less. It is because Idofeel that I can't stand that lot of cads, what my aunt calls 'braying' round you. If you prefer them—well, then you'd better say so, and I'll retire. I hope I have the pluck to take my defeat like a man."

"I have no doubt you will, with perfect equanimity," she said, resentfully.

"Well, you remember what I told you at Brackly. I can't talk a lot of sentimental rubbish. It isn't in my line. If you send me about my business, I shall be awfully cut up. I shall never be quite the same fellow I was, again, I fancy. And if you told me to wait, I'd do it, if you thought you would get to care for me. But to make one of the crowd, and see you encouraging them—no, I can't, and I won't. I'd rather take the first train to New York, and return to Europe at once."

"You are quite at liberty to do so. If you expect an American girl to give up her old friends, at your dictation, you are mistaken."

"'Friends' is a convenient term. If they were your real friends I'd try and make them mine. They want to be something more, and are in reality much less. I shouldn't blame them for admiring you, God knows, if they were true, honest fellows; but they are not. They are double-faced. They are humbugs."

"The fact is, you are jealous of them," she said, laughing.

"I am not so stupid as to be seriously jealous of any one of them; but I am jealous, as every Englishman is, of the girl he loves wasting her sweetness—stooping to encourage a lot of men he thinks in every way her inferiors."

"Dear me! Men are very troublesome," said Miss Planter, stooping to pick a rose, "and Englishmen are the worst of all. John Bloxsome says—" Here she stopped short.

"What does Mr. Bloxsome say?"

"He says the English are the most arrogant nation on the face of the earth, and I am afraid he is right! You are awfully stuck up, you really are."

"Perhaps I am, as an Englishman. I am proud of being one. Not as myself, Mordaunt Ballinger. I have nothing to be stuck up about."

"No, indeed!" pursued the girl, relentlessly. "You are very nice, of course, and all that. But there is nothing so wonderful about you."

"Nothing—except my love for you."

He said this with an earnestness unlike himself.

The girl laughed, but the color deepened on her cheek, as she replied, lightly,

"Do you mean it is wonderful you should care for any one?—or wonderful that I should be the present object of your affections? I am told they change every month."

"I recognize Mr. Bloxsome there. What I meant was, that I never expected—that it was wonderful to find myself caring about any girl as I do about you."

Miss Planter turned away, and began humming "La donna e mobile." But there was a curious expression on her face, an expression which he would probably have been incapable of reading, had he seen it. It told of an internal struggle between the forces which are ever at war in such a woman's complex character.

"All my friends whom you abuse would give up anything for me."

"Would they? Try them. That's all!"

"While you would sacrifice nothing, not even your pride. Look at the other night!"

"You call it pride; I call it honesty. I won't take the hands of fellows I despise, men whoforge, men who write lies about me to your father, and lies about your father to me. That's a sort of sacrifice you've no right to ask. I simplycan'tmake it. If Bloxsome were to come here I am afraid I should kick him. Ask any other sacrifice, and I'll make it; my English home, my seat in Parliament, I'm afraid I'd give them all up, though I know it would be wrong, if you wished it. As to money, I don't want your father to give you a penny. I'm not rich, but I have enough to support a wife. All I want is that you should care enough for me to give up those fellows for my sake."

She looked at him for a moment, steadily. Then she said, with a flickering smile,

"No. I am not going to give up all independence of action yet. But here is aboutonnièrefor you," and she gave him the rose she had just gathered.

Nevertheless the young lady sent off three telegrams that afternoon, couched in the same terms:

"Sorry cannot see you on Sunday. Shall be engaged all day."

Three weeks slid by; weeks all too brief for four out of the group of friends, two of whom had nearly reached the full of happiness, while two were in the crescent stage, nearing, day by day, the second quarter.

Clare Planter's conquest was a slow one, if indeed that may be called a conquest which is not as yet proclaimed. Mr. Planter's sudden decision to leave Monterey—unshaken, for once, by his wife's and daughter's supplications—was due, no doubt, to some indication on Clare's part that the Englishman was beginning to be not absolutely indifferent to her. As long as she encouraged a number of other admirers her father was not alarmed. But when he learned that, on one pretext or another, she had put some of them off on three successive Sundays (the only day they could get away from business), when he saw that the Englishman had undisputed possession of the field, he grew uneasy. He spoke with great frankness to Mrs. Frampton.

"I am going to take my daughter right home. My wife doesn't like it, but I think it wiser. And I have refused to allow her and Clare to go to Europe this year. It is about the first time I ever refused them anything. You and I, Mrs. Frampton, are of one mind—I don't want my daughter to marry an Englishman; you don't want your nephew to marry an American."

"Pardon me, Mr. Planter," she replied, with a boldness begotten of the occasion. "I have no objection to my nephew marrying an American; and if I had twenty objections they would be of no avail with him on that subject. I see that now. He has some regard for my opinion, but where his feelings are concerned he consults no one. They are very deeply concerned, I am afraid, in this case. He is not rich, and I should like him to marry a girl with somesecuredfortune. That is the only objection to his marrying your daughter that I can conceive upon our side, though it would not weigh with him for a moment. I understand that business men in America, as a rule, do not make settlements on their daughters when they marry?"

"That is so. But—" Here he paused, then went on. "We need not enter upon that matter. I trust Sir Mordaunt's feelings are not as deeply engaged as you imagine. I trust separation for a year will effectually cure him, and prevent this folly going any further. Clare knows my views on the subject; she has never admitted that she likes your nephew more than as a friend. Now, then, with a little tact, a little firmness, it seems to me the thing may be nipped in the bud."

"I am afraid it is beyond the bud stage. Shall you forbid their corresponding?"

"Forbid? No, indeed, that would be the worst course. I shall tell Sir Mordaunt frankly that I cannot ask him to Pittsburgh, and that I do not wish him and Clare to meet for the present. In the summer I shall take the best cottage I can find at Newport, and entertain there, and have a yacht, and let my girl have a good time. It will be strange if some fine young fellow there can't make her forget this fancy—if she reallyhasany fancy—for your nephew."

Mrs. Frampton did not think it would be at all strange, but she held her peace. She believed this to be more than a "fancy" on the girl's part. There was, however, the fact, so difficult to explain, that she still refused to bind herself by any pledge. She told Mordaunt she liked him "awfully," but—but—she was not sure of herself; and then papa would offer so many objections. In short, as his aunt knew, he had been again refused. Nevertheless, a strong impression remained on Mrs. Frampton's mind that this was by no means final; and that clever lady had now hoped, but failed, by acoup de main, to wrench from Mr. Planter some avowal of what he would do for his daughter if, as Mrs. Frampton put it to Grace, "the worst comes to the worst."

To the young man, the worst—as it seemed to him, at least—had come, when he held Clare's hand for the last time, in the garden, the morning of her departure.

"You will forget all about me, and be snapped up by some New York dude—I know you will," he said. "A whole year without seeing you! It is too awful!"

"You said something about writing to me," she observed, with a smile. "How can I possibly forget you, if I have to answer your letters? Besides, I have your photograph."

"But you wouldn't give me yours."

"Oh! American girls don't give their photographs, unless—their position is different to mine. But I shall have that stalwart form, that magnificent moustache before me, on my writing-table, to refer to, in case my memory becomes hazy. I don't see how I can forget you."

She gave a little laugh, which lacked solidity; he looked hurt.

"If you'd give me some sort of promise; if you'd hold out some sort of hope that in a year's time—"

"Oh, dear! how tiresome you are!" she cried. "Can't you understand? can't you see that only time and separation can show whether I really and truly care for you?—care for you enough to run counter to all papa's wishes—dear, good old papa, whom I hate to grieve? Nothing would justify my doing this but caring about a man very,verymuch. I do care for you! There, I have said it. But I don't know how much till I get away from you. When a man is about you, all the time, it is awfully hard to tell exactly how much you care for him. And if my caring doesn't stand this test, depend on it you will be much better without me."

Here Mr. Planter's voice was heard, shouting,

"Clare! Where are you? We are waiting."

Their hands met, and remained clasped a few seconds. Then they turned quickly towards the hotel, where the omnibus was standing, ready laden.

In New York, a fortnight later, on the eve of embarkation, Grace, who had written to Mrs. Courtly to announce her engagement, received the following letter:

"May 1st."My dear Miss Ballinger,—Accept my hearty congratulations and best wishes for your happiness. This good news comes to cheer me to-day, when I feel very sad at heart. It was impossible for me to doubt, even on our short acquaintance, that whoever was fortunate enough to win you would be no ordinary man. I rejoice to learn that you have found one to whom you can give, not only your whole heart, but your whole respect and admiration. Poor Quintin Ferrars! It would not have been possible for you to do that, under any circumstances, in his case. He is now free from the terrible millstone which hung round his neck more than ten years. But of what avail is his freedom? He will never marry again. He understood, after his last interview with you, how utterly hopeless his suit was, and he sailed last month for Honolulu. You may not be aware that he studied medicine in early life, and the circumstance of being left a moderate fortune, combined with his taste for literature, alone prevented his following it as a profession. He is now resolved to devote himself, for some years to come, to alleviating, as far as he can, the condition of the unhappy lepers in the islands. I cannot but feel that the change in my cynical and, as many thought, purely selfish friend, is due entirely to you. You first made him feel the uselessness of his life. If knowing you has led him to experience the most poignant grief and disappointment he has ever known, it has also led to the ennobling and purifying of his character. Therefore you have nothing to regret. He is one of the men who are born to be unhappy. But there is a higher and a lower condition of unhappiness. You have opened the valve of sympathy with the suffering of others; that is more healthy than inhaling over and over again the vitiated atmosphere of personal misery."And now I come to a far sadder episode."I had planned a party of literary friends to meet a few days since, and not having seen Mr. Saul Barham since you were here, I wrote to ask him to Brackly. I did not have an answer for several posts, when a letter came from his mother, whom I did not know, at Fellbridge, saying, 'My son begs me to write to you. He is here with us, very sick, and quite unable to write. He was seized with hemorrhage of the lungs, while passing Sunday with us, a fortnight ago, since when he has not left his bed, he has had two subsequent attacks, and grows weaker daily. I have lost all hope. Knowing what a kind friend you have been to my dear son, I take the liberty of asking if you would come and see him. I think it would be the greatest consolation to him to see you—to see any friend who would communicate with dear Miss Ballinger—before he is taken. Do you know where she is? He talks of her all the time. Even when he is asleep, I can sometimes catch her name upon his lips. You will forgive me, a stranger, for writing like this to you, dear madam, and if you can come here for an hour I shall thank you from the bottom of my heart.'"The simplicity and yet reticence of the heart-stricken mother's letter touched me greatly. You can imagine I did not hesitate an instant, but wired to say I would be at Fellbridge the same afternoon."That visit was the saddest hour I ever remember, outside the personal troubles I have had in life. The extreme quietude of everything in that little home, from the sternly-sad, self-contained father downwards, affected me far more than any noisy demonstrations of grief would have done. As to the wan, gentle creature who met me at the door, I could only think of Shakespeare's line, 'Dry sorrow drinks our blood.' Her agony was far too deep for tears. When I was admitted to the poor young man's room, I saw at once that he had not many days to live. But the light flickered up in those wonderful eyes of his, as he held out his hand and thanked me for coming. His first question was for you. Where were you? Had I heard from you lately? I could tell him nothing, except that I believed you to be still in California. Then he asked me to transmit a message to you whenever I could do so. 'Tell her,' he said,'that the happiest hours of my life I owe to her. Little mother will not mind my saying that. She knows that the first and only love of my manhood was for that noble Englishwoman. If she had returned my love I should have struggled—fought for life. Perhaps I should have won. As it is, I am glad to go. If it were not for little mother I should not have a regret. But her love is so unselfish. She has seen my suffering. She has borne my irritability. She knows I shall be happier at rest.'"I sat with him for some time, his mother beside me, Mr. Barham standing at the foot of the bed. I thought it must wound him that Saul never once alluded to his father—appeared to think thathewould never feel his son's death. Was this the result of a principle of life-long suppression on the minister's part? Could it be that I, the stranger, surmised better the intensity of the elder man's feelings than did his dying boy? I know not; I can only say what struck me."After a while I saw that he was exhausted. Talking made him cough, and there was a thin red streak on the handkerchief he held to his mouth. 'Would you object to joining us in prayer by my son's side?' Mr. Barham then said, in a perfectly unemotional voice. It was the first time he had broken silence since entering the room. I instantly knelt down, and, taking Saul's hand in mine, bowed my head, while the minister with great solemnity repeated that fine prayer from 'The Visitation of the Sick,' beginning 'Oh, Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.'"When he had finished, there was silence for a minute or two. I looked up and saw the poor mother's tearless eyes fixed upon her son's. I stooped, as I rose from my knees, and kissed him on the forehead. 'Good-by,' I whispered. 'Good-by, for a little while. I shall bear your love to her, and tell her you are gone to await her coming in that glad place where we all hope to meet.' His beautiful eyes alone answered me; his lips moved, but I could not hear what they murmured. And so, afraid of breaking down, I turned and hurried from the room."On receiving your letter, I wrote at once to Mrs. Barham. The answer came in a telegram to-day, which I recognize as the minister's wording,"'Saul departed this life at daybreak.'"So the aching heart and troubled spirit are at rest; and until death summons the poor father and mother to rejoin their beloved son, they must wander wearily on, bereft of the pride and joy of their life!"I will not ask your forgiveness for writing at such length. Though knowing the young man comparatively little, my heart has been deeply stirred. Yours, with much greater reason, cannot fail to be so."I am, dear Miss Ballinger,"Yours most cordially,"Anne Courtly."

"May 1st.

"My dear Miss Ballinger,—Accept my hearty congratulations and best wishes for your happiness. This good news comes to cheer me to-day, when I feel very sad at heart. It was impossible for me to doubt, even on our short acquaintance, that whoever was fortunate enough to win you would be no ordinary man. I rejoice to learn that you have found one to whom you can give, not only your whole heart, but your whole respect and admiration. Poor Quintin Ferrars! It would not have been possible for you to do that, under any circumstances, in his case. He is now free from the terrible millstone which hung round his neck more than ten years. But of what avail is his freedom? He will never marry again. He understood, after his last interview with you, how utterly hopeless his suit was, and he sailed last month for Honolulu. You may not be aware that he studied medicine in early life, and the circumstance of being left a moderate fortune, combined with his taste for literature, alone prevented his following it as a profession. He is now resolved to devote himself, for some years to come, to alleviating, as far as he can, the condition of the unhappy lepers in the islands. I cannot but feel that the change in my cynical and, as many thought, purely selfish friend, is due entirely to you. You first made him feel the uselessness of his life. If knowing you has led him to experience the most poignant grief and disappointment he has ever known, it has also led to the ennobling and purifying of his character. Therefore you have nothing to regret. He is one of the men who are born to be unhappy. But there is a higher and a lower condition of unhappiness. You have opened the valve of sympathy with the suffering of others; that is more healthy than inhaling over and over again the vitiated atmosphere of personal misery.

"And now I come to a far sadder episode.

"I had planned a party of literary friends to meet a few days since, and not having seen Mr. Saul Barham since you were here, I wrote to ask him to Brackly. I did not have an answer for several posts, when a letter came from his mother, whom I did not know, at Fellbridge, saying, 'My son begs me to write to you. He is here with us, very sick, and quite unable to write. He was seized with hemorrhage of the lungs, while passing Sunday with us, a fortnight ago, since when he has not left his bed, he has had two subsequent attacks, and grows weaker daily. I have lost all hope. Knowing what a kind friend you have been to my dear son, I take the liberty of asking if you would come and see him. I think it would be the greatest consolation to him to see you—to see any friend who would communicate with dear Miss Ballinger—before he is taken. Do you know where she is? He talks of her all the time. Even when he is asleep, I can sometimes catch her name upon his lips. You will forgive me, a stranger, for writing like this to you, dear madam, and if you can come here for an hour I shall thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

"The simplicity and yet reticence of the heart-stricken mother's letter touched me greatly. You can imagine I did not hesitate an instant, but wired to say I would be at Fellbridge the same afternoon.

"That visit was the saddest hour I ever remember, outside the personal troubles I have had in life. The extreme quietude of everything in that little home, from the sternly-sad, self-contained father downwards, affected me far more than any noisy demonstrations of grief would have done. As to the wan, gentle creature who met me at the door, I could only think of Shakespeare's line, 'Dry sorrow drinks our blood.' Her agony was far too deep for tears. When I was admitted to the poor young man's room, I saw at once that he had not many days to live. But the light flickered up in those wonderful eyes of his, as he held out his hand and thanked me for coming. His first question was for you. Where were you? Had I heard from you lately? I could tell him nothing, except that I believed you to be still in California. Then he asked me to transmit a message to you whenever I could do so. 'Tell her,' he said,'that the happiest hours of my life I owe to her. Little mother will not mind my saying that. She knows that the first and only love of my manhood was for that noble Englishwoman. If she had returned my love I should have struggled—fought for life. Perhaps I should have won. As it is, I am glad to go. If it were not for little mother I should not have a regret. But her love is so unselfish. She has seen my suffering. She has borne my irritability. She knows I shall be happier at rest.'

"I sat with him for some time, his mother beside me, Mr. Barham standing at the foot of the bed. I thought it must wound him that Saul never once alluded to his father—appeared to think thathewould never feel his son's death. Was this the result of a principle of life-long suppression on the minister's part? Could it be that I, the stranger, surmised better the intensity of the elder man's feelings than did his dying boy? I know not; I can only say what struck me.

"After a while I saw that he was exhausted. Talking made him cough, and there was a thin red streak on the handkerchief he held to his mouth. 'Would you object to joining us in prayer by my son's side?' Mr. Barham then said, in a perfectly unemotional voice. It was the first time he had broken silence since entering the room. I instantly knelt down, and, taking Saul's hand in mine, bowed my head, while the minister with great solemnity repeated that fine prayer from 'The Visitation of the Sick,' beginning 'Oh, Father of mercies, and God of all comfort.'

"When he had finished, there was silence for a minute or two. I looked up and saw the poor mother's tearless eyes fixed upon her son's. I stooped, as I rose from my knees, and kissed him on the forehead. 'Good-by,' I whispered. 'Good-by, for a little while. I shall bear your love to her, and tell her you are gone to await her coming in that glad place where we all hope to meet.' His beautiful eyes alone answered me; his lips moved, but I could not hear what they murmured. And so, afraid of breaking down, I turned and hurried from the room.

"On receiving your letter, I wrote at once to Mrs. Barham. The answer came in a telegram to-day, which I recognize as the minister's wording,

"'Saul departed this life at daybreak.'

"So the aching heart and troubled spirit are at rest; and until death summons the poor father and mother to rejoin their beloved son, they must wander wearily on, bereft of the pride and joy of their life!

"I will not ask your forgiveness for writing at such length. Though knowing the young man comparatively little, my heart has been deeply stirred. Yours, with much greater reason, cannot fail to be so.

"I am, dear Miss Ballinger,

"Yours most cordially,

"Anne Courtly."

This letter affected Grace Ballinger deeply. It was placed in her hand, with a packet of others, as she stepped on board theMajestic, on her homeward passage, and she read it as they steamed down the bay. Lawrence found her looking very sorrowful, her eyes fixed on the same shores she remembered watching with Saul, in the fog, as they stood on deck together that January morning less than five months ago.

"Something has troubled you, dear," he said, in a low voice, as he put his hand upon hers. "What is it?"

"It is Life," she answered, presently. "Life, and his brother, Death. Read that." She gave him the letter. "I have told you about him. I have told you about both those men. I knew them both but such a short time, yet each interested me deeply; and over each—I cannot understand how or why—I exercised some strange influence. And now it is all over. The book is closed. Poor Saul Barham, with his brilliant gifts and high aspirations, is dead. Quintin Ferrars I am never likely to see again. Perhaps it is better I should not. But of all the memories of America I bear away with me, the most pathetic is that of the minister's small household in New England, as I knew it, with this only son, their idol, now lying in the dust. Can religion like Mr. Barham's bring consolation? I hope so. But that poor mother! I think I will return to America some day, if it be only to see her!"

Nearly a year has passed since then. Between Clare Planter and her English admirer things remain, to all outward seeming, very much as they were. Newport did not produce the results so confidently looked for by her father, nor has New York done so during the past winter. A constant battledore and shuttlecock of letters—the punctuality of the interchange being broken only once or twice, when Mordaunt Ballinger had forgotten to post his letter in time to catch the American mail, never by the young lady's own negligence—has led Mrs. Ivor Lawrence to assure her aunt that she must make up her mind to the inevitable result of the Planters' approaching arrival in England. She pretends that the American girl's liking for her brother, having clearly resisted the effect of separation and the onslaughts of other admirers, has developed into a far stronger affection than existed a year ago. She even declares that she perceives in some of the letters Mordaunt has shown her a covert dread on Clare's part of his constancy being put to too severe a test. But who can tell? This view of the case may be only that of a devoted sister, and Mordaunt's hopes may be dissipated, on the arrival of the Planters in London, "like the baseless fabric of a vision."

THE END

[1]By the Americans it is considered more formal, by the English more familiar, to begin with "My." I am surprised to find my friend, Mr. Marion Crawford, asserting precisely the reverse in his "American Politician." I can only refer this divergence of opinion to the experience of the general reader.

[2]Economy of labor has almost abolished the use of steel knives throughout the United States.

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