He was beside her in a moment. An inarticulate sound of triumph had come from him—the legacy of some carniverous ancestor coeval with Adam. He was kissing her hands, and her face, and, when she bowed her head, he kissed the shining beauty of her hair.
It had the taste of sunlight.
She did not take any great pains to prevent him. She did not at that moment see that there was a particular need to do so. It seemed to her so good to be kissed by him.
He had an impression that she kissed him back—once.
Then they looked into each other’s faces and laughed quite pleasantly.
“How funny, isn’t it?” she said, “you have not seen me more than a dozen times.”
He was unable to see what was funny in the matter—that was why he laughed very seriously, and whispered, “My beloved!” in her ear.
“My beloved,” he said again holding her hand close to him. “My beloved, never say that I have not been seeing you all my life. From the time I first knew what love meant I loved you—an ideal—I loved the Ideal that was you. I wondered if I should ever meet you. I hoped that I should or it would not have been worth my while to live. But I met you—you came to me.”
“Yes, I have come to you,” she said. “But...”
“Ah, why should you introduce that note of discord?” he cried. “You said something just now—something—I wonder if I heard it aright... Never mind. This hour is mine, is it not?”
“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “You have made it yours, have you not? Oh, yes it must be your hour—and mine—I suppose it must be mine too—because I never felt so happy before; and I do not even let the thought of—of—the other man come between us.”
There was a dreadful recklessness in her voice. She could not help it: she felt reckless at that moment. She felt that she was retaliating justly upon the man who had tricked her. She would have liked if he had suddenly appeared on the other side of the stile and looked on. She would have kissed her lover before his face. What could he have done to her? Did he really fancy that Pierce Winwood would allow him to interfere? If he did he was a fool.
He did not know that it is part of a woman’s nature to be reckless—once in her life; and he became a little afraid of the way in which she was speaking to him. He did not know how she had been driven ahead by the thought that another man had tried to trick her into being true to him.
She was having her retaliation.
He did not object in the least to be a participator in it, though he knew nothing about it. He held her hands in his own and looked into her face.
“You were right,” he whispered; “it is the best day of my life. And I thought that I came here by chance. You love me, don’t you? I wonder if you really do love me. Shall I awaken and find that this marvel of sunshine and summer has fled forever? Were you really thinking of me as I came up? It seems ridiculous to hope so much.”
“I think I must have been thinking of you,” she said, “if I had not been thinking of you should I have felt so... Oh, I recollect now—I was not thinking of you—I was only thinking of the loveliness of the world—that was why I felt angry that he had bound me to him—if I never really hated him before I hated him then. You will not let me go back to him, will you? You must promise to save me from him.”
She had caught him by the arm. All her recklessness had vanished. She was appealing to him as a child appeals to one for protection against a bogey man.
He had his arms about her.
“No one shall take you from me,” he said. “Who is it that you fear, my dearest?”
She stared at him for some moments, and then burst into a laugh.
“I forgot—I forgot,” she cried. “You never heard it. How was it possible for you to hear it?”
Then she put down a hand to his that clasped her waist, and held it away from her. Her eyes were looking out over the whispering breadth of the wheat-field. The wood pigeons were still rising at intervals and curving downward with a glint of sunlight on their feathers.
She rose from where she was sitting against the bank, and picked up her sunshade.
“I am afraid that it is all wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I have been too sudden—I had no right to listen to you—to tell you—but you came upon me before I was aware of it, and—oh, I told you just how I felt. As I kept telling you, I felt that I was telling myself the truth for the first time. But—well, I was free—that is to say, I should have been free if he had not said that he trusted in me. That was his trick... Oh, why did you come here to-day? Why—why—why? Could you not have waited until I had carried out my resolution to go to him and tell him that I would not be bound by any trick of his? You had no right to come as you did. I feel that I have been wrong—horribly wrong. I should have gone to him first.”
“Yes; but I came—I came, and you cannot take back a word that you spoke—that’s one good thing anyway,” said he in the voice of a man that no woman’s treble can oppose, unless it becomes shrill, and there is a craning of the neck as it is uttered.
“You will say that women have no sense of honour—I have heard men say that,” she continued, and there was indignation in her voice. “No sense of honour! Perhaps we have not; but I meant—yes, it was my sense of honour that made me make up my mind to go to him and give him to understand that I meant to be free—free, not merely in name, but really free—free so that he should have no right to say that he trusted me. He said that he trusted me—those were his words; they sounded generous at the moment, but then I perceived that—that——” Her utterance became more deliberate; then it seemed to occur to her that there was something wanting on the part of her auditor: there was a puzzled expression on his face that puzzled her at first interfering with her fluency; then all at once she seemed to recollect that the extent of her knowledge of the subject on which she was speaking was a good deal more than his could possibly be. How could he be expected to know what had been kept a secret from her father and mother—from all the world?
“You know nothing,” she said after a long pause. “I shall have to tell you everything. Perhaps you will feel that I have acted badly—disgracefully—without a sense of honour. I dare say I have—yes, I feel that I have behaved badly; but it was your fault. You came too soon. I tell you that indeed I had thought it all out, and made up my mind that I should be free from all blame.”
“Tell me all that is on your mind, my dearest,” said he. “You have already told me all that is on your heart.”
“It doesn’t matter what he may think—now, does it?” she cried.
“Nothing matters so long as we love each other,” he responded glibly and gladly.
“And it really isn’t much after all that I have to tell,” she said. “How I ever came to agree to his proposal, I cannot explain.”
“Whose proposal?”
“Whose?—Whose? Oh, you do not know even so much. Listen. Nearly a year ago I fancied that I was in love with Ernest Clifton. At any rate he told me that he was in love with me and I admired him so much for the way he had worked himself up from the humblest of positions—I suppose that’s the best explanation of the matter—I agreed to marry him, and he also persuaded me to keep my engagement secret from all the world: he knew that my father would not sanction it until at least he had a seat in Parliament. Well, it was kept a secret; but I gradually so came to see that I was acting wrongly—the whole business so weighed upon me that I was conscious of my whole character—my whole nature changing, and I insisted on his releasing me from my engagement.”
“And he did so? It would not matter to me whether he did so or not; but I suppose he was wise enough to do so.”
“After some time, and a letter or two, he said that he released me; and then—this was what made me angry—he said, ‘Between you and me there is no need for the formality of an engagement. I have implicit faith in you and I know that you have implicit faith in me. We can trust each other.’ Now don’t you see how despicably clever he was? Don’t you see that while he released me with one hand he was holding me to him with the other? Don’t you see that in listening to you here to-day—in admitting to you that it is you and none other whom I love, I have acted dishonestly—shamefully, if you insist on it.”
“I don’t insist on it. I am glad that I came here when I did, taking you by surprise. I see clearly that if I had not taken you by surprise I might never have had a chance of hearing the truth from you—the truth which has made a new man of me.”
“I don’t agree with you. I feel that when he trusted me—cannot you see that he made it a question of honour with me? Haven’t you heard of a soldier’sparole?I have broken myparole. That’s what I feel.”
“My dearest girl, do you fancy thatparolecan be a one-sided agreement? Is your sense of honour to be entrapped by sophistry? Talk ofparole—a man to whom you consider yourself bound by a promise releases you from the consequence of this promise, and then tells you that though you promised not to run away, and though he releases you from that promise he trusts in your honour not to run away. What sophistry is this? It might do well enough for a political juggler, but it is not for such people as you or I. You didn’t say to him, did you?—‘I agree to be bound to you by the faith which we have in each other.’”
“He took care to give me no chance of replying to him one way or another.”
“Then cannot you perceive that he had no claim on you?”
She was silent. The fact was that she did not perceive it. But undoubtedly the way he proved the point was agreeable to her. Of course it is quite possible for a man to prove a point to a woman’s satisfaction and yet to leave her unsatisfied as to whether or not his contention is correct. Pierce Winwood had proved to this young woman that she had been well within her rights in accepting him as her lover, and yet she had an uneasy feeling that she had done the other man a wrong. An old rhyme went jingling through her brain, with all the irritating force of a milk cart hurrying for a train—something about the advisability of being off with the old love before being on with the new.
But that was just what she had done: she had been strictly conscientious. She had written to Ernest Clifton asking to be released from the promise which she had made to him and he had freed her—what the young man beside her said was perfectly true: she had not been a party to theparole—it had been forced upon her. She had not consented to it. Nothing in the world could be clearer than this.
And yet the result of thinking over it all was to leave her with a feeling of uneasiness in respect of her own action and of still greater uneasiness in respect of his sense of honour.
“Don’t think anything more about the business,” said he.
“I will not,” she said. “I will not; after all, did not hetryto trick me, and why should not I, if I saw that—that—— But you—well, I have made a confession to you at any rate, and that’s something, isn’t it? You are not angry?”
“Angry—I—angry——”
He was taking such action in regard to her as should he thought convince her that he was not permanently embittered against her; but she gave him to understand that his word of mouth was quite adequate to allay her doubts.
“Ah, no—no,” she said; and his lips had to be content with the back of her hand. “I was taken by surprise just now. I did wrong, considering the position in which I stood—in which I still stand.”
“Good heavens,” he cried, “haven’t I proved—didn’t you agree with me——”
“Yes, yes; there can be no doubt about it,” she assented with the utmost cordiality. “Yes; still—but I see clearly what I can do. I can tell him that without my father’s consent it would be impossible for me to—to—to be otherwise than free. I will tell him that I consider myself to be free—that I considered myself to be so from the moment he agreed to my taking back my promise.”
He could not see that anything would be gained by this traffic with the other man; but he thought that she might fancy that he was giving himself the airs of a lover too early in his career. Only half an hour had elapsed since he had undertaken to play the part, and though ambitious to make a mark in therole, he thought it would be more prudent to perfect himself in it by slow degrees.
Still he could not refrain from saying:
“I wouldn’t bother myself much, if I were you, in this business. These chaps are so clever you never know quite where you are with them. I see plainly that was how you came to engage yourself to him. He told you of his hopes—you wished out of the goodness and generosity of your heart to help him on, and so—well, there you were, don’t you see?”
“That was exactly how it was,” she cried. “You are just to me. I know now that I never loved him—ah, now I know what love is!”
“My beloved!”
“I admired him for his courage—I admired him for having got on without any one to help him—I do so still: indeed there is a good deal that is worthy of admiration about him—and respect—oh, heaven knows that I respect him.”
The lover laughed. He knew that he had nothing to fear from the other man when she began to talk of respecting him. In fact the more she spoke in praise of the fellow the more confident he felt in her love for himself. Girls do not talk in praise of the men they love. They simply love them.
She went on.
“Yes, I thought—I hoped that it might be possible for me to have helped him. Perhaps I felt flattered—every one about me was saying how clever he was—that he was one of the coming men—that was the phrase—I think I hate the sound of it now. But I dare say that I felt flattered... he might have chosen some other girl, you see: such men usually choose girls who are heiresses—and yet he chose me—I suppose I felt all that.”
“He’ll have a chance of choosing one of the heiresses now,” said the Real Lover grimly; “and he’ll do it, you may be certain.”
She did not respond to the laugh he gave. She felt that it would have been in bad taste. When the second husband looks at the portrait of his predecessor and says something jocular about the size of his ears, the widow of the original of the picture does not usually acquiesce with a smile, even though her late husband’s ears were as long as Bottom’s. She thinks that, ears or no ears, he was once her gentle joy.
There was a note of reproof in Josephine’s voice as she said:
“You must do him the justice to acknowledge that he was not mercenary when he asked me to give him my promise. We must do Mr. Clifton justice.”
The Real Lover was better pleased than ever. He had almost reached the chuckling point of the condition of being pleased. When a girl talks about her desire to be strictly just towards a man she (Mr. Win-wood felt assured) has no remnant of affection for that man. The moment a girl becomes just towards a man she ceases to have any affection for him. There is some chance for a man (Winwood knew) so long as a girl is capable of treating him unjustly. The assumption of the judicial attitude on the part of a girl means that the little god Cupid has had the bandage snatched from his eyes, and Cupid with his eyes open might, if provided with a jacket covered with buttons, pass for the boy at any dentist’s door.
The Real Lover being, by virtue of his Loverhood, strictly dishonourable, encouraged her to be just to the other.
“Yes,” he said gravely, “I should be sorry to think that he is otherwise than a good kind of chap—for a professor of politics. But there are heiresses and heiresses. Money is a very minor inheritance. I am quite ready to believe as you did, that he had a real—that is to say, a—an honest—he may have fancied it was honest—feeling that you—yes, that you could advance his interests. Oh, I don’t say that these clever chaps are indifferent to beauty and grace and the soul of a woman as the means of advancing their own ends. I dare say that he had a notion that you—but he’ll certainly have a look in where there are heiresses now.”
“You are grossly unjust—you are grossly ungenerous—and I am deeply hurt,” said she.
“That makes me love you all the more,” he cried. “For every word you say in his favour I will love you an extra thousand years.”
He knew that if he could only stimulate her to talk still more generously about Mr. Clifton he would soon get her to feel that she had not been guilty of the breach of honour with which she was still inclined to reproach herself. It was so like a woman, he thought, to place so much importance upon a little flaw in the etiquette of being off with the old love and on with the new. He loved her the more for her femininity and he thought that he might lead her on to feel that she had actually been generous in respect of the other.
“I will not have a word said against Mr. Clifton,” she said firmly.
And she did not hear a word said against him, though she had so earnestly encouraged him to say such a word; but the fact was that the dinner-hour of the prosaic harvesters had come to an end, and the reaping machine, with the patent binding attachment, began to work under their eyes, and a girl cannot speak well even of the man whom she has just thrown over when so interesting a machine is at hand.
The two stood spell-bound watching that beautiful thing of blue picked out with red, as it went mightily on its way down the wall of standing grain, stretching out its pendulous arms with a rhythmic regularity that a poet might have envied,—lifting the material for a sheaf and laying it along with more than the tenderness of a mother for her child, laying it in its cot.
How much more picturesque—how much more stimulating to the imagination was not this marvellous creature—this graminivorous reanimated thing of the early world, than the squalid shrill-voiced, beer-ex-haling reapers of the fields in the days gone by? This was the boldly expressed opinion of both the watchers, though each of them had a good word to say for the cycle of the sickle.
“The sickle was the lyric of the wheatfield, the reaping machine is the epic,” said Josephine, with a laugh at her attempt to satisfy an exacting recollection of a picture of Ruth, the Moabitess, with her sickle in a field flooded with moonlight, as well as an inexorable sense of what is due to the modern inventor.
“My dearest,” said he, “I know now that you are happy. Are you happy, my dearest?”
“Ah, happy, happy, happy!” she whispered, when their faces were only an inch or two apart.
They watched the wood pigeons circling, and dip-. ping with the exceeding delicacy of cherubic wings until they dropped upon the surface of the freshly cleared space. They breathed the warm fragrance of the sun-saturated air, with now and again a whiff of the wild thyme that caused them to hear through the whir of the machinery the faint strain of a Shakesperian lyric floating above the oxlips and nodding violets of that bank beside them—and the sweet briar that was somewhere, loved of the wild bee. The sulphur butterflies went through their dances in the air, and more than one velvety butterfly in brown—a floating pansy—swung on the poppies of the path.
“You are happy,” he said again.
“Happy—happy, happy,” she repeated.
Happiness was in her face—in her parted lips—in her half closed eyes—in the smile of the maiden who loves she knows not why, and she cares not whom.
She was not quite so happy when she had returned to her home two hours later and her father met her saying:
“My dearest child, Ernest Clifton has been with me and he has persuaded me. Josephine, my child, I think of your happiness more than any earthly consideration. I have given my consent to your engagement. Kiss me, my Josephine.”
What could she say? What could she do on hearing this sentence pronounced by her father?
He had impressed upon her the kiss of a father. It lay on her forehead and she could feel it there like the seal to a contract. It was his formality that made her feel there was nothing to be said or done further in the matter. When once a contract is sealed no one can do anything. Protest is useless. Submission is taken for granted.
But to come up fresh from the glory of that wheatfield—every ear of grain seemed a unit in the sum of the love which was alive in that field—to come up to town by the side of the man whom she knew that she loved—his hand touching hers now and again—his eyes evermore drawing her own to meet them and to mix with them—his voice still in her heart—to leave him feeling certain of him—certain of the future, and then to hear her father speak that sentence and to feel that cold wax kiss of his on her forehead—oh, the thought of it all was suffocating.
What could she say?
How could she tell her father at that moment that two hours ago she had found out that she loved, not the man who had by some mysterious means won her father’s consent to her name being united with his, but quite another man—a man whom her father had only seen twice, and who had been seen by herself not more than a dozen times, and all within a period of a few weeks.
The surprise was too much for her. The mystery of it all overcame her. She could only stare at her father, while he held her hand and talked to her in a paternal, parliamentary way, patting the back of her fingers very gently.
She felt that his words were in good taste and well chosen. She knew that they could never be otherwise. But how could they ever come to be uttered? That was the question which was humming through her poor head all the while he was assuring her that though perhaps he had had other views in his mind in respect of securing her happiness—other ambitions in regard to her future, still he was content to waive all in order that she might marry the man of her choice.
“Clifton has been perfectly frank with me, my dear,” he said. “Oh, yes, he confessed to me that you and he had an understanding early last autumn that if my consent could be obtained he could count on you. I cannot say that I approve of such secret understandings between young people: an exchange of confidences of this type is almost equivalent to a secret engagement, is it not? But he told me how sensitive you were on this point and how scrupulous you were—I know that he admires you more than ever on account of your scruples—every right thinking man, lover or otherwise, must do so. He too had his scruples—they do him honour also. He was sensible—fully sensible of the fact that we had every right to look higher—much higher for our daughter than our daughter herself thought fit to look. Of course my position in the Government—well, some people have been flattering enough to say that I may look for a place in the Cabinet when the next change takes place, and between ourselves, I think a change is imminent. Never mind that. I know that Clifton is a rising man; he has been a power in our camp for several years past and his advice is esteemed in—I have reason to know—the highest—the very highest quarters. In fact if he had not made himself so very useful as to become almost indispensable he would long ago have been provided with a Seat and a post. He is by no means at the foot of the ladder. He is a man who has made a successful fight against the most adverse influences—he knows his own strength—he still knows it—he does not fritter away his chances, taking up one thing and then dropping it for another. Men of his stamp are the men to succeed. Your future, my child, is, I know, safe in his keeping—oh, quite safe. You have shown your wisdom in your choice. God bless you, my dear, God bless you!”
The paternal kiss was this time impressed upon her forehead with a paternal smile, and she could say nothing. The futility of saying anything was impressed upon her with each of the two paternal kisses. The next moment she was left alone, and her most prominent thought was that he had spoken so convincingly as to leave no opening for any one to say a single word.
And yet, only two hours before, she had been kissed on the cheeks and on the hair by Pierce Winwood!
The result of her father’s words was to make her feel far more deeply than she had yet felt that she had been guilty of something dreadful in the way of double-dealing when she had allowed Pierce Winwood to kiss her—even if she had allowed him to kiss only one of her hands she would have been guilty (she now felt) of something almost shocking. Breathing as she now did, in the centre of the paternal halo of her father’s phrases, she could not but feel shocked as she reflected upon her frankness in confessing (in the breathing spaces between his kisses) her love for Pierce Winwood, and before she met her mother she was actually thinking what reparation she could make to her parents for her shocking conduct. Would an attitude of complete submission to their wishes be sufficient, she asked herself.
She came to the conclusion that it would not be an excessive atonement to make for so terrible a lapse from the conduct which was expected from her. It certainly would not, for her father had given her to understand that he had only been induced to give his consent to her engagement to Ernest Clifton, because it was clearly her dearest hope to get his consent to that engagement. How absurd then was her thought that there was any atonement in an attitude of submission to a fate which her parents had the best reasons for believing that she most ardently sought.
And thus she had to face her mother.
The maternal halo which her mother welded to that of her father formed a most appropriate decoration, any connoisseur of phrases would have admitted. It was mat gilt with a burnished bit ofrepoussehere and there along the border. But the double halo, though decorative enough, was too heavy for Josephine’s head and its weight oppressed her.
Her mother was a charming woman. She had not reached that period of humiliation in the life of a woman of the world when she hears people say that she is a charming womanstill. No one ever thought of saying that she was a charming womanstill. Growing old has gone out, for it has become acknowledged that the custom of a woman’s doing her best to look hideous with caps and combs and things when she gets married is allied to the Suttee; and Lady Gwendolen West—she was the fifth daughter of the late Earl of Innisfallen in the peerage of Ireland—was one of the leaders of modern intelligence who had made this discovery in the science of comparative superstition. By the aid of a confidentialmasseuseand an hour’s sleep before lunch and dinner every day of her life, she remained worldly at forty-six.
She kissed her daughter with a subtle discrimination of what her daughter expected of her and gave her her blessing.
“You are a wicked child,” was the opening bar of the maternal benediction. “How wicked you have been!—absolutely naughty: you know you cannot deny it, you sweet thing. And you make me look a hundred, you know, especially when I have anything of mauve about me. Thank heaven, I am not as other women who make up with that absurd mauve complexion and think that it deceives any one. What would you think of your mother, Joe, if she made up like those poor things one meets even at the best houses, though I do think that you might have let me into your confidence, Joe—I do really. You know that I should have been delighted to take your part against your father any day. I see you looking at my newtocque, but if you say that the pink and crimson poppies do not look well among the corn ears I’ll have nothing more to do with you or your affairs. Now what on earth are you staring at, Joe? Isn’t it quite natural for corn and poppies——”
“It’s wheat—wheat,” said Josephine, and still she kept her eyes fixed upon the headdress of her mother. (“Only two hours ago—only two hours ago.”)
“And where’s the difference between wheat and corn, you little quibbler?” laughed Lady Gwen. “You didn’t know that I had ordered thetocquefrom Madame Sophy. I kept it a secret from you in order to surprise you. But it hasn’t surprised you after all. Now what was I saying apropos of secrets just now?—something about—of course, I knew that we had been talking of secrets. You were very naughty, you sly puss, and you don’t deserve to be forgiven; but Mr. Clifton—I suppose I must call him Ernest now—how funny it will be!—he’s one of the most coming men—he’s awfully coming. Your father agreed with surprising ease. I expect that some one turned him against the notion that he had that Lord Lull-worth would have suited you. Lord Lully is no fool, as I happen to know; so perhaps things are just as well as they are, though I know your father thought that, with you married to the son of the Minister, he was pretty sure of getting into the Cabinet. I met Lord Lully only yesterday and he asked me how it had never occurred to some of the men who do the caricatures in the papers to draw the Marquis in the character of a job-master. Funny, wasn’t it? A bit disrespectful of course; but then everybody knows that the Marquis has done very well for all his relations and his relations’ relations. Good heavens, is that four o’clock striking? Hurry upstairs and get Madeline to put you into another dress. We are going to the Glastonburys’ reception in Hyde Park Gate. The Green Scandinavian are to be there. Make haste. We have two other places of call.”
What was she to say to such a mother? How could she hope for sympathy from such a source? How could she tell Lady Gwendolen that she had changed her mind—that she loved not Ernest Clifton but Pierce Winwood?
That was the terrible part of this greeting of her parents: they took everything for granted; they assumed that her dearest wish was to obtain their consent to be engaged with Mr. Clifton, though it did not look very much as if they expected her to be exuberant in her gratitude to them for their complaisance. She had been deadly cold while her father had spoken to her, and she had not warmed in the least under the influence of her mother’s chatter. Was this the way in which girls as a rule deport themselves when the happiest hour of their life has come?
“I am not going out this afternoon,” she said when her mother had turned to a mirror to pinch some fancied improvement in the poppies that flared over hertocque.
“What nonsense are you talking?” cried Lady Gwen pinching away. “What nonsense! These things should be bordered with wire; they fall out of shape in a day. Is that an improvement?”
She faced her daughter, and Joe said:
“I somehow think that it was best lying flat. No, I’m not going out this afternoon. I am deadly tired.”
“You do look a bit blowsy,” said the mother with a critical poise of the inverted flower-basket on her head. Then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, she added, while Josephine was going to the door: “Don’t you run away with the notion that he is likely to drop in this afternoon upon you. The chances are that he will be at the Oppenkirks’, so your best chance will be to come with me.”
“I have no wish to see anybody this evening—least of all Mr. Clifton. I’m only tired to death,” said Josephine.
Her mother’s laugh followed her to the staircase.
She threw herself upon the sofa in her boudoir and tried to face the situation which presented itself to her. She tried to think what she could do to escape from the toils which had been woven round her—woven with the appropriate phrases that went to the declaring of a father’s blessing, and the frivolous inconsequence of a mother’s acquiescence.
She felt for a moment as if she were a prisoner in a strong room, with bars across the windows and bolts upon the door. She looked, as an imprisoned girl might, first to the door then to the windows, as if she had a hope that, by some accidental neglect of precaution on the part of her gaoler a chance might be left for her of escape one way or another.
She threw back her head and stared at the ceiling. She felt that she had no chance. The door had its bolts drawn and no one of the bars across the window was defective. She was a prisoner without means of escape.
She felt hopeless facing such cleverness as that which Ernest Clifton had shown her he had at his command. A fortnight ago he had given her to understand that he considered it beyond the bounds of possibility that he should obtain the consent of her father to their engagement—he had certainly had no hope of winning her father’s consent for if he had had such a hope he would only have required to tell her so when she had met him at that garden party and had asked him to free her from her promise made to him in the autumn. Yes, all he need have said was this:
“I am going to run the chance of getting your father’s consent, and if I am not successful we can then talk as you are talking, of throwing over our compact.”
That was all he need have said, if he had had any expectation of winning over her father; but he had said nothing of the sort; and yet he had, by his own cleverness—by some mystery of adroitness of which she was ignorant—by some strange trick—she was sure it was a trick, though she knew nothing about it—gained the acquiescence of her father in their compact, and his cheerful forgiveness for the deception of the past.
What could she do in the face of such cleverness as this? How could she hope to combat it? Would it not be ridiculous for such a girl as she to strive against such a man as he? Would it not be better for her to submit to the inevitable with good grace?
But had she not already submitted to it? She had been dumb in the presence of her father, so overwhelmed as she was with surprise at the first words of the announcement of his forgiveness; and she had thus given him to understand that she was extremely grateful—grateful to a point of complete extinction of the power of expressing her gratitude—to him for his more than fatherly appreciation of her dearest hopes. And as for her mother—she had allowed her mother to go so far as to suggest that she was pretending to be tired in order to be at home if her lover—her lover—were to call.
Well, she had made a fool of herself—so much was certain. That secret engagement was an act of folly that had to be paid for. It seemed as if no power was strong enough to show her how she could evade the supreme penalty which that act carried with it. Yes, she had undoubtedly made a fool of herself.
And then the thought came to her that she had not only made a fool of herself, she had also made a fool of Pierce Winwood. This reflection was too much for her. She turned her face to a pillow and wept silently into its depths.
This was the second time she had been moved to tears since the morning, and it was the memory of the incident of her first tears that caused her to weep the more piteously now. By a strange inconsistency it was this same memory that caused her to leap to her feet after an interval of silent sobbing, and to toss away her second handkerchief just as she had done her first and then to strike the palms of her hands together crying aloud:
“I will face them all—I will face them all. I am not afraid of any of them. I know my own mind now—now. I don’t care whether I have behaved honourably or basely or idiotically, I love one man and that man I mean to marry. That’s enough for me.”
It was in this spirit that she sat down in front of herescritoireand flung the ink upon a sheet of paper to the effect that if Dear Mr. Clifton would have the kindness to pay her a visit on the following afternoon she would be glad. She thumped the scrawl when face downward on the blotter, as good-natured people thump the back of a child that has swallowed a fishbone. It was a great satisfaction to her to pound away at it; and when she picked it up she saw that the blotting paper, which had been spotless before was now black. The face of the letter was also smudged, the absorbent not having been rapid enough in its action. But she knew that not only would the lines be deciphered by the man to whom they were addressed, he would also be made to understand something of the mood she was in when she had made that cavalry charge upon the paper using her broadest quill as a lance.
She gave a sigh of relief when she saw the envelope with the letter inside, lying on the table beside her; and then she wrote the date on another sheet of paper. The second letter, however, seemed to require more careful composition than the first. She sat looking wistfully at the blank paper for more than half an hour, without making sufficient progress to write the name of the one whom the post office authorities call the addressee. She leant back in her chair and bit at the feather end of the pen for a long time. At last she tore up the sheet of paper and dropped the fragments with great tenderness into the Dresden vase that stood on a carved bracket on the wall.
“I will not spoil his day,” she said pathetically. “I may have a good deal more to tell him by this time to-morrow. But I am not afraid to face anything that may come to pass. I know my own mind now—now.”
Her maid came to enquire if she was at home, and if she would have tea in her boudoir or in one of the drawing-rooms. She replied that she was not at home and that she would like her tea brought to her at once.
This was done and she found herself greatly refreshed, and able to enjoy an hour’s sleep before dinner, and to hear during that meal, her mother’s account of the two entertainments at which she had assisted, with a detailed description of some of the most innocuous of the dresses worn by the heroines of the lady correspondents’ columns. A word or two Lady Gwendolen threw in about the less interesting subject of the men who had walked through the garden of the Hyde Park Gate house, with the usual mournfulness of the men among five o’clock ices and angel-cakes, failed to move Josephine.
“You should have been there, Joe,” said the mother when the servants had left the dining-room, and the scent of fresh peeled peaches was in the air. “I told you that it was quite unlikely that your Ernest would call to-day, so you had your waiting at home for nothing. Amber was there wearing that ancient thing with the little sprigs of violets—she must have had that since May—but I think the hat was new—do you know it?—a fearfully broad thing of white straw with a droop on both sides and two ostrich feathers lying flat, one falling over the brim and coiling underneath, and who is the latest victim to her theories of training, do you think? Why, Lord Lully himself. She had ices with him, and held on to him with grim determination for half an hour, though he told me last week that he would be there and I saw that he was struggling hard to get away from her, poor boy! But if she fancies that Lord Lully is such a fool as the rest of them, she is going a little too far. I happen to know that he has his eyes open just as wide as his father could wish. Amber will make nothing of him, take my word for it. Theories! Experiments! Fiddlestrings and fiddlesticks! And his mother was quite civil to her too—almost gracious, only that we know that she never is so except for three weeks during a General Election, and she takes it out of her home circle when it’s all over and she need be civil no longer. I hope your father will get into the Cabinet and so relieve me from the General Election smile. I smiled him through three General Elections, but I decline to face a fourth. Why should an Under Secretary’s wife be supposed to make a Cheshire Cat of herself when the wife of a Cabinet Minister need only be civil?”
This and several other social problems were formulated by Lady Gwendolen for the consideration of her daughter while they ate their peaches, and then they had an interval to themselves before dressing for a very Small Dance at a very great house, following an Official Reception.
An Official Reception means a scuffle in a hall, a scramble on a staircase and a scamper past a whiff of scent. That’s an Official Reception.
Josephine danced eleven dances at the Small Dance and would have gone on to the fifteenth only that she had the responsibility of chaperoning her mother. She knew that her mother could not stand late hours, so she took her home (reluctantly) at two.
At four o’clock the following afternoon Ernest Clifton made his call, and Josephine received him alone.
“At last—at last!” he cried in a very creditable imitation of the lover’s exaltation, when they were alone. He had approached her with outstretched hands. His voice was tremulous.
She did not allow him to put even one arm around her. He was showing an aspiration in regard to the employment of both.
“I wrote to you to come here to-day in order to tell you that—that—” she paused. She did not know what she had to tell him. Was it that she considered that he had tricked her into an acceptance of the terms on which he had granted her petition for liberty? Was it that she had merely changed her mind in regard to him? “I wish to tell you that—that you must have misunderstood—I cannot tell how—the effect of the letter which I wrote to you—of the explanation I made to you the last time we met.”
“Good heavens! what can you possibly mean, my Josephine?” said he in a maelstrom of astonishment; but she thought she could detect an artificial gesture for all the swirl: the whirlpool was a machine made one. “Good heavens! where was the possibility of a mistake?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I meant to be clear enough. I told you that I wanted to be freed from the consequences of our engagement; you freed me, and yet a few days later, you go to my father and tell him that all we want is his sanction for our engagement—our engagement that was annulled some time before.”
“What,” he cried, “can you forget that the only reason you put forward for wishing to be free—nominally free—was that you felt uneasy at the secrecy of our engagement? You said you felt as if you were guilty of double-dealing because your father had not given his consent—you said all this, my dearest, the last time we met, and your saying so—your feeling so—filled me with remorse—the deepest remorse—the intensest self-reproach. I had caused you to suffer, and what more natural than that I make the attempt at the earliest possible moment to atone for what I had done—to remove the one cause of your suffering? I made up my mind that I would risk all to save you from further self-reproach. I took my life in my hand, so to speak—I risked all on a simple cast for your sake—I went to your father... well, by giving his consent he withdrew the cause—the very reasonable cause, I admit of your—your uneasiness. Surely you remember?”
“I remember everything,” she said. “I asked you to free me—to release me from the promise I had made to you and you released me.”
“You place too great emphasis on my simple act,” said he. “What man worthy of the name of man would have been less generous than I was? Could I forget that you had suffered on my account? Oh, my Josephine, I could not but release you from your promise—your promise of secrecy. But I trusted you—I knew I could trust you.”
She perceived in a moment the position in which he meant to place her.
“But it was not from my promise of secrecy that I begged you to free me,” she said; “it was from my engagement—I wished to be free altogether, and you agreed. I was free when we parted. I did not consider myself bound to you in any way.”
“What? ah, my dear Josephine, you are something of a sophist. Just think for a moment and you will see how impossible it was for me to accept what you said in the sense in which you now say you meant it. You told me that the one reason—the sole reason you had for writing to me as you wrote, and for appealing to me as you did, was the fact that the secrecy—the secret—the secret that you shared with me was preying on your mind. Well, that sole reason is now removed, therefore—oh, the thing is simplicity itself.”
“That is perfectly plausible,” said she, after a long interval. She saw without difficulty that he had logic and reason on his side. That made her feel a greater antipathy to him than she had yet felt: a woman hates the man who has proved himself to be in the right. “Yes, it is perfectly plausible, but—but—you did not tell me that you intended coming to my father.”
“And you did not know enough of my character to know that the first step I should take after hearing from your lips that the fact of our engagement being kept from him was causing you pain, would be to go to your father?”
There was more than a suggestion of reproach in his voice: there was pain.
“I did not know enough of your character,” she said. “And so I considered myself free—altogether free. No engagement existed between us when we parted last.”
“Although my last words to you were that I knew I could trust you? Did not those words suggest to you that you had not made your meaning plain to me—that I at least had no feeling that our engagement was at an end?”
“I felt that—that you were setting me free with one phrase and trying to bind me faster than before with another phrase,” she replied.
“But you made no protest. You tacitly admitted that I was entitled to accept your meaning as I did.”
“You did not give me a chance. You turned away to speak to some one who came up at that moment.”
“What would you have said to me if you had had the chance?” he asked her slowly.
She hesitated.
“Oh, do not trouble yourself thinking for an answer,” he cried. “What is the good of discussing in this way the—diplomatists call it thestatus quo ante?Such a discussion is quite profitless. Even if we were not engaged then we are now. The obstacle has been removed.”
She felt overcome by the plausibility of it all, just as she had felt overcome in the presence of her father by a sense of the inevitable. It was not surprising that he accepted the long pause on her part as indicating complete surrender to his reasoning. He went towards her with a smile and outstretched hands.
“Do not come to me: I love another man and I mean to marry him—I shall never marry you,” she said quietly.