So she had abandoned the untenable position of reason, and had withdrawn to the cover of a statement of complete femininity. She gave a sigh of relief: she knew where she was now. She was on firm ground.
“I am afraid, Josephine,” said he with the utmost calmness, “that you have been too late in coming to this determination. You cannot be so flagrantly inconsistent.”
“I know nothing about consistency or inconsistency; I love another man, and all the arguments in the world will not prevent my loving him.”
She knew where she stood now. Her position was impregnable.
“You say that you broke off your engagement with me. Why? Because I had not got your father’s consent. Well, if the absence of your father’s consent was a legitimate reason for our engagement coming to an end it is certainly a reason for your refraining from entering into an engagement with another man, for your father cannot give his consent to two men at the same time. You see that you cannot possibly—as you are showing—be engaged to any one but myself.”
“I told you I care nothing for consistency—or reason—or logic—or—or—you. I love another man—I love another man.”
“I am sorry for you, dear Josephine. But if you do not care anything for consistency and me, I care for consistency and you far too much to relinquish either. If you can show me that there has ever been a breach in our engagement I might be led to consider the situation from another standpoint. Look at me and tell me that you understood clearly when we parted last that you were free—that there was no uneasy feeling in your mind that you were still bound to me. You see, you cannot. You are silent. Yes, my dearest, there was a bond between us when we separated, and you and I are engaged now, as we have been for several months, and your father and mother take exactly the same view of our position, and are good enough to sanction it. That is enough for me; it should be enough for you. I decline to take any other view of the matter. You have admitted tacitly—that I never released you. I decline to release you now. Of course you will accept the situation. Think over it and you will find that no alternative remains. Good-bye, my dear—for the present.”
He did not ask her to give him her hand; but simply moved smiling, to the door with a wave of his own hand that somehow produced upon her the effect of shaking hands with her—at any rate that graceful gesture rendered a parting salute unnecessary, without the slightest suggestion of a breach of courtesy.
He was gone, and he had got the better of her—that was her first impression when he had closed the door—very gently—behind him. He had been too clever for her. She knew long ago that it would be ridiculous for her to hope to get the better of him.
And the worst of it was that he was altogether in the right. He was hopelessly in the right. She had treated him badly. She had behaved dishonestly, whatever Pierce Winwood might say by way of exculpating her: she had parted from Ernest Clifton feeling—she could not deny it face to face with him—bound to him, and she could not but acknowledge that until she had a complete understanding with him, she had no right to listen to a word of love to another man.
She had behaved basely—there could be no doubt about that, and the only excuse—and she knew that it was no excuse—that she could make for herself was that Pierce Winwood had come upon her so suddenly—so unexpectedly that she had no chance of giving due consideration to the question as to whether or not she would be justified in listening to him. The idea of her pausing at such a moment to determine whether or not Pierce Winwood had what lawyers term alocus standiin the suit did not strike her as being at all funny. She felt that she should have adopted something of a judicial attitude in regard to Pierce. She could not understand how it was that she had had that moment of recklessness—that moment of recklessness which remains a mystery to so many women.
And the result of all this after consideration of the matter was to convince her that she had been desperately in the wrong—deceiving every one around her and trying to deceive herself also from the very first; for knowing the impression that Pierce had produced on her upon the occasion of their first meeting at Ranelagh, she had not refused to meet him again as she should have done. She had told Amber that she hated him; but she knew perfectly well that why she hated him was because he had compelled her to love him. It was not he whom she hated but only the idea of acting dishonourably in regard to the man whom she had promised to marry.
Oh, she knew all along but too well that she loved him from the first, and yet she had not—after the first week—taken the least trouble to keep apart from him, the result being the feeling of humiliation that now had taken possession of her—this feeling that she had been so dreadfully in the wrong that nothing remained for her but to plunge still deeper into the depths of wickedness by agreeing to marry the man whom she did not love and to throw over the man she did love.
She felt that Ernest Clifton had spoken the truth. No alternative remained to her. She had agreed with her eyes open, to marry him, and she was quite unable to give any reason that would be considered satisfactory by her father for declining to marry him.
After an hour or two she actually became resigned to the idea. After all, what did it matter? She had got into the frame of mind of the one who asks this question. The frame of mind of the French philosopher on the guillotine, who rolled his cigarette, saying “N’importe: un homme de mois!”
What did it matter whom she married? The general scheme of the universe would not be interfered with because she was about to do the thing that was most abhorrent to her of all acts done by women—this act being, by the way, the one which she was most earnest to do only six months before!
She was able, without the shedding of a tear, to sit down to her escritoire and write a letter to Pierce, letting him know the determination to which she had come, and admitting to him that she had behaved basely—cruelly—inconsiderately. She had been bound to Mr. Clifton—and she knew it—at the very moment that she had acknowledged to the man to whom she was writing that she loved him. She admitted how culpably weak she had been—and still was, but she thought that she was strong enough to see that the best way—the only way—of sparing the one who was dearest to her much misery—the only way of escaping from a hopeless position was by submitting to Fate. If he would think over the matter he would, she was sure, see that she was right, and thinking over it all he could not but be thankful that he was saved from a wretched woman who did not know her own mind two days together and who had no sense of honour or truth or fidelity.
That was the substance of the letter which she felt great satisfaction in writing to Pierce Winwood; and she sincerely believed that she was all that she announced herself to be, though she would have been terribly disappointed if she had thought that she would succeed in convincing him that she was unworthy to be loved by him.
She felt greatly relieved on writing this letter embodying as it did so frank a confession of her weakness and—incidentally—of her womanliness, and she was able to dance nine dances and to partake of a veryrecherchesupper in the course of the night. She felt that she had become thoroughly worldly, taking a pleasure in the whirl and the glow and the glitter of all. There was no chance of her being led to think about what lay heavy on her heart while she was giving herself up to this form of intoxication. Every dance had the effect of a dram of green Chartreuse upon her, and the result of her night’s festivity was to make her feel, she thought, that the world was very well adapted as a place of residence for men and women; and as for the worldliness—well, worldliness was one of the pleasantest elements in the world of men and women.
Having come to so satisfactory a conclusion, it was somewhat remarkable, she thought, that, on finding her father drinking his glass of Apollinaris in his study—he had just returned from the House—she should go straight up to him, after shutting the door, and say, “I wish to say to you that I do not wish to marry Ernest Clifton, because I love quite another man.”
He looked at her curiously for a few moments, then he said, laying down his tumbler:
“What stuff is this? Is it not true that you agreed to listen to Clifton six months ago? Heavens above us! Another man—quite another man! Have you been making a fool of Clifton and—and yourself, and do you now think to make a fool of me?”
“I am ready to admit everything,” she cried plaintively. “I have been a fool, I know. I have behaved badly—with no sense of honour—basely—basely—but I am wretched and I will not marry Ernest Clifton—oh, nothing will force me to marry him.”
“Poor child! poor child! It is quite natural this maidenly shrinking!” said the father smiling like a mulberry. “Bromide of potassium—that will steady you. After all, you are not going to be married tomorrow, nor even the next day. Give yourself a night off, my child. Don’t let your mother rush you. It’s all very well for her. At her age women can do anything; but a girl’s nerves——”
“It is not my nerves—it is—because I love another man—and I mean to love him. I cannot help it—I have tried—God knows—oh, my dear father, you will pity me—you must pity me, no matter how foolish I have been.”
She broke down and would have thrown herself into his arms but that he was too quick for her. At the first suggestion of such a thing, he had picked up his tumbler half full of Apollinaris. That saved him. It was on a big red leather chair that she was sobbing, not on his shirt front.
“Poor child—poor child, poor—bromide,” he murmured. “Tell me all about it, my Josephine—my little Josephine. I have had a busy night of it but I can give five minutes to the troubles of my little girl.”
He flattered himself that he was acting the part of the father to a quaver. He half believed that she would accept his representation of an honourable character without misgiving. What could she know of the terms of the contract which he had made—in the most delicate way, no word being used on either side to which exception could be taken by a sensitive person—with Ernest Clifton, respecting the feeling of the ticklish constituency of Arbroath Burghs?
She lost some precious moments of the night in sobbing. But though her father did not know very much about women he knew enough to cause him to refrain from asking her to come to the point upon which she was anxious to talk to him. Upstairs the door of the Lady Gwendolen’s dressing-room banged.
“Poor little Josey!” said the father smoothing her hair. He felt that he really would miss her when Clifton had married her and he had got his seat in the Cabinet.
She looked up.
“I know I have been a fool, my dear father,” she said. “But I love another man—not Mr. Clifton, and I will not marry Mr. Clifton.”
“That is nonsense, my dear,” said he in a pleasant, soothing tone—the tone that suggests a large toleration for human weaknesses, especially those of a girl, because so few of them are worth talking about. “You must not worry yourself, my dear. You will have worries enough when you are married, if I know anything about what marriage means. Now take my advice and have a good dose of bromide and get into bed. Don’t get up early. Had you a touch of the sun when you were up the river?”
“He will not listen to me! He treats me as if I were a child—a sick child!” cried Josephine piteously.
The reproach annoyed him.
“You are behaving as such,” he said. “I am anxious to make every allowance for you, but when you talk in this wild fashion—why did you not stop me yesterday when I told you that I had given my consent to your engagement?”
“I did not know what to say—I was overcome with surprise.”
“Do you mean to tell me that he—Clifton—left you the last time he was with you before you went up the river, under the impression that you and he were no longer engaged?”
“I cannot say what his impression was—I asked him to release me on that very day.”
“What reason did you put forward for making such a request?”
“I said that—that I felt that I was doing wrong in remaining engaged to him in secret—without your consent.”
“You were quite right. But you see I have removed the cause—the legitimate cause of your self-reproach. The consequence is that you are engaged to him, if I know anything of logic and reason.”
“Oh, logic and reason! I am only a woman, God help me!”
“My dear girl, to be a woman is to be a very charming thing, if a bit unreasonable at times. You are the slaves to your nerves. And these days—what does the poet say? ‘It was the time of roses’—ah, neurosis, he would have written to-day—‘and we plucked them as we passed.’”
She had risen.
“I am going to bed,” she said. “Good-night.”
“You couldn’t do better, my dear. Good-night and God bless you! Don’t neglect the bro—by the way, I should perhaps mention to you that even if I were inclined to accept your protest now it would be too late—I should be powerless to do anything, for the announcement is already gone to the papers.”
“What—you have sent it to the papers?”
“Of course I have—that is to say, Clare has sent it.” (Julian Clare was Mr. West’s private secretary.) “It was necessary for it to appear without delay. It will increase the interest in your father—there is always a sort of reflected glory upon the father of a beautiful girl who is about to be married. We cannot fly in the face of Providence and the papers at the present moment. The present moment is critical for the house of West.”
“You are going into the Cabinet,” she said. “That represents the highest height of your ambition.”
“It is one of the peaks, at any rate,” said he smiling. “It is high enough for me. Those who cannot get to the summit of Mont Blanc must be content with the humble Monte Rosa. And feeling that your future, my child, is assured, I shall be the more content, if—ah, you are quite right. Good-night—good-night.”
She went upstairs feeling that the fight with Fate was over. What would be the use of struggling any longer against what was plainly the decree of Fate? Fate is a tough antagonist at any time, but when Fate and the newspapers are pulling together——
She went to bed without saying her prayers.
Amber Severn read the announcement in one of the papers the next morning that a marriage was arranged and would shortly take place between Mr. Ernest Clifton, fifth son of the late Constantine Clifton of The Elms, Lynnthorpe, Esq., and Josephine, only daughter of the Right Honourable J. Carew West, Under Secretary of State for the Department of Arbitration.
She gave an exclamation of surprise, and this was followed by one that suggested irritation. She was more than irritated, she felt that she had lost a friend—her dearest friend. She had always known that Josephine was somewhat reticent about her own affairs for an ideal friend; but the notion of her being in love with Mr. Clifton and carefully refraining from giving a hint to any one of the state of her heart was past all bearing.
And yet she remembered now having had once or twice during the previous six months, a suspicion that if Josephine inclined to look on any man of their acquaintance with especial favour that man was Mr. Clifton. She might have guessed but what about Pierce Winwood? What about her father’s subtle suggestions as to the possibility of Josephine’s looking with eyes of favour on Pierce Winwood? What about that Monday morning when they had come into the house together talking with guilty fluency about a reaping machine that was painted blue and delicately picked out with vermillion?
“I will never—never trust to the evidence of my own eyes again,” she cried, remembering the look of exultation on Mr. Winwood’s face upon that morning. She also made up her mind that she would never again in matters of this sort trust to the evidence of her father’s experience, even though conveyed to her in the choicest and most enigmatical language ever employed by him. Her father had shown a desire to encourage the bringing about of a match between Josephine and Pierce; and indeed he had proved his possession of some of the qualities of the fully equipped match-maker, which she took to be a cheery readiness to assume the rôle of a sort of boarding-house Providence, and a complete faith in the influence of propinquity upon opposing natures.
She would never again trust to her father’s judgment. He knew too much about electricity.
She had an opportunity of telling him so, but she refrained from doing so: if he lacked judgment there was no reason for her to attempt to consolidate his views on heredity by so indiscreet an act. She pointed out the paragraph to him when he came down to breakfast but made no comment upon it. No one since the world began ever regarded an absence of comment as an indiscretion.
“But it takes my breath away,” said Sir Creighton. “Heavens! just think of it—Clifton—Ernest Clifton, the wire-puller. What can she possibly see... oh, after all... a curious coincidence, isn’t it, that this talk should be just now about her father getting a seat in the Cabinet? But I can’t for the life of me see where Clifton comes in. He has no power of that sort, whatever may be ascribed to him as an organiser in the country. He could be of no use to West, for his seat is a perfectly safe one. And we thought...”
“Youdid, at any rate,” said Amber.
“I did—I admit it. I thought—I hoped. It would have come out so well. I might have been able to give him a helping hand.”
“To give Mr. Winwood a helping hand?”
“I thought it just possible if the worst came to the worst. But I suppose the business is settled in the other quarter. We can do nothing now.”
“Of course one can do nothing when the announcement has appeared in the papers.” Amber was disposed to take the same view of Providence and the papers as was taken by the Under Secretary for the Arbitration Department. They both appeared to regard the newspaper announcement as a sort of civil ceremony, quite as binding as the one which follows the singing of “The Voice that breathed o’er Eden.”
“I confess that I am surprised,” continued Amber. “But I suppose one’s friends never do marry the people one allots to them. Still, there was no reason for Josephine to be so secret.”
“Was there not?” said her father. “Take my word for it, if a woman is ever secret it is only under the severest pressure.”
Amber smiled. Applying her father’s aphorism to herself, she refrained from expressing what she thought on the subject of her father’s knowledge of woman’s nature.
But beyond doubt Sir Creighton took deeply to heart the frustration of his incipient efforts as a matchmaker. His daughter was surprised at his head-shakings and his thoughtful pauses—at his general abstraction. She knew enough of him to be well aware that it was not his own work which disturbed him: he was accustomed to made merry over the little aberrations of adapted electricity, just as some fathers (with trusted memories) make merry over the vagaries of their sons, and as some women (with a sense of humour) can smile at the fringes of their under-housemaids. It was perfectly clear that Sir Creighton was profoundly discouraged at the failure of his attempt to make Josephine and Pierce fall in love, each with each. He felt as if Fate had openly sneered at him and he was looking about for a way of retaliating. So much at least his daughter gathered from his manner, and his frank admissions. The frank admissions of a man count for something in any honest endeavour that one may make to determine what is on his mind.
“Do you know what a straight flush is, my dear?” he enquired as he rose from the table. “I thought that I had the joker,” he added thoughtfully—regretfully.
(He was the best poker player in the Royal Society.)
Amber had herself been thinking out a scheme of retaliation, and it was directed against her friend who had been reticent to a point of unfriendliness. A friend should be permitted to share her friend’s infirmities but Josephine had left her to read the announcement of her engagement in the papers. After some thought she came to the conclusion that she would be out when Josephine should call. She took it for granted that Josephine intended to call, and so made arrangements for going to the Technical School of Literature immediately after lunch. She would have gone before lunch—for she had not been latterly so regular an attendant as Mr. Richmond could have wished—but that for the fact that her mother had asked Lord Lullworth to drop in and have lunch with them, and Amber’s scheme of retaliation did not go so far as to compass the personal slighting of even the least of her mother’s guests.
And Lord Lullworth came.
He was really very amusing, and sometimes very nice; but he was both during lunch; it was when that refection was over, and Lady Severn had gone into an inner room to write out a commission—it had something to do with the matching of sewing-silks—for her daughter to execute in Regent Street that Lord Lullworth ceased to be amusing because he began to be funny. He told Amber that he didn’t mind being one of the literary arbitrators on the Aunt Dorothy competition, should such be set on foot at the Technical School. Would dear Aunt Dorothy tell him what was the colour of Adam’s grey mare? Would she hazard a reply to the query, under the heading of “Our Feathered Pets” as to whether the white goose or the grey goose was the gander? Also could she supply some information respecting the man who had the twenty-six sheep—twenty sick sheep, mind—and when one of them died how many were left?
“I will not have my hobby made fun of,” said Amber. “It would do you all the good in the world to come to the school.”
“I believe it would,” he said, after a pause, “and I do believe that I’ll come; but it won’t be for the sake of the show, but just because you are there. Now, a fortnight ago I would have laughed at the idea of going to such a show, so I think that you’ll agree with me in what I said about love growing. I really feel that mine is becoming quite grown up. He has got too big for his sailor suit, and I’ll have to get him measured for an Eton jacket. I wonder if you have been thinking over the possibilities that I placed before you that day.”
“Of course I thought over them. Why shouldn’t I?” said Amber.
“And do they appear so ridiculous now as they did then?”
“Not nearly so ridiculous,” she replied. “One gets used to things. Really there’s nothing I like better than to hear that you will be some place where I am going. I have—yes, I have got really to like you.”
“You never thought of wishing to have me for a brother, did you?” he asked apprehensively.
“Oh, never—never—I give you my word—never!” she cried, and he breathed freely once more.
“Thank goodness! Then I’ve still got a chance. If you had ever felt that you would like me for a brother I would put on my hat and skip. Do you know that you are encouraging me?”
“Of course I know it. I meant to encourage you, just to see what will come of it.”
“You’ll see. I should like to encourage you. It will take a deal of encouragement to bring you on so that we may start scratch; because, you know, I—I really do believe that I’m on the verge of being in love with you.”
“I would not go on any further, until I catch you up.”
“If I thought you would one day.”
“I really think that I shall—one day. There is nothing like getting used to an idea. I thought that I should never get reconciled to the notion of a lover—a lover seems sobanal—and yet already I—yes, I like it. You see, I’m wondering what will come of it. I was born in a laboratory atmosphere. My father made his first great discovery in electricity the day I was born—that’s why he called me Amber—Amber is the English for the Greek wordelectron, and that’s the origin of the word electricity, you know.” He looked at her admiringly. “You don’t need much to go to any school,” said he. “Just fancy your knowing all that! By the way, don’t you forget that it’s in the bargain that I’m to let you know if I find myself properly in love with you—seriously, I mean.”
“It will be so interesting,” said she. “I’m dying to see what will be the result of our experiment. I wonder does it matter about my not thinking you good-looking.”
He caught her hand. She flushed.
“Do you not think me good-looking?” he asked. “Well, really, to be candid with you—and of course it’s in the ‘rules’ that we are both to be candid, I think you anything but—but—good gracious! what has come over me? Only yesterday I was thinking about you and I thought of you as being quite plain; but now—now that I come to look at you, I declare that you seem good-looking—positively good-looking! You have good eyes. I don’t suppose you ever told a lie in your life.”
“That’s going from a question of eyes to ethics, isn’t it; but whether or not I ever had imagination enough to tell a whopper, I am telling the truth now when I say that I have come to the conclusion that you are the nicest girl I ever met as well as being the most beautiful—that’s why I tried to. You see I always thought you the most beautiful—that’s why I tried to avoid meeting you for a long time—I was afraid that I would be disillusioned, as they call it.”
“And you were not?”
“On the contrary I think that—that we’re on the eve of a very interesting experiment—that’s how the newspapers would define the situation of the moment.”
“After all nothing may come of it.” There was a suspicion of a sigh in her delivery of the phrase.
“Are you taking what you would call an optimistic view of the matter?” he asked.
She actually flushed again—very slightly—as she said:
“The scientific atmosphere in which I was born forbids optimism or pessimism. I wish to remain neutral.”
“I shall make no attempt to bias your judgment one way or another,” said he.
Lady Severn returned to the room and gave her daughter her instructions regarding the silks.
“I wish you would let me do it for you, Lady Severn,” said Lord Lullworth seriously. “I have to go to Bond Street anyway, and my horse wants exercise.” Amber turned round and stared at him; her mother laughed. Then Amber put the patterns of silk into one of his hands, and crying, “Let him do it: he really wants to do it,” she ran out of the room.
“I want to have a chat with you, my dear Lady Severn,” said he. “It was you who were good enough to ask me to lunch, and yet I’ve hardly exchanged a word with you.”
“Nothing would delight me more,” said Lady Severn. “I will intrust you with my commission, but it will do any time in the course of the afternoon. We can have our chat first.”
And they had their chat.
It was while it was in progress Amber was sitting at her desk in the Technical Schoolroom listening to Mr. Owen Glendower’s enunciation of the problem in plots which was to serve as an exercise for his pupils. Amber, in her haste to retaliate upon Josephine’s secrecy by being absent when she should call, arrived at the class-room several minutes too soon. She had, however, upon a former occasion, made the acquaintance of the earnest American girl whose name was Miss Quartz Mica Hanker—she was said to be worth some ten million (dollars)—and now she had a pleasant little talk with her.
At first Amber hesitated approaching her, for today, Miss Hanker was dressed in deep mourning. She, however, smiled invitingly towards Amber, and Amber crossed the class-room to her.
“I fear that you have suffered a bereavement,” said Amber in the hushed voice that suggests sympathy.
“Oh, no; at least not recently; but you must surely remember that this is the anniversary of the death of King James the Third,” said Miss Hanker.
“Oh, King James the Third?” said Amber. “But there never was a James the Third of England.”
“That is the fiction of the Hanoverians,” said Miss Hanker scornfully. “But we know better. I am the Vice-President of the White Rose Society of Nokomis County, Nebraska, and we are loyal to the true dynasty. We decline to acknowledge any allegiance to the distant branch at present in occupation of the Throne. The rightful Queen to-day is the Princess Clementina Sobieska.”
“I thought that the Pretender—” began Amber.
“The Pretender!” cried Miss Hanker still more scornfully. “He pretended nothing. I am going to separate pretence and the Pretender once and for all when I write my novel—‘The White Rose.’ I came to this side to learn how to do it. I find Owen Glen-dower Richmond very helpful. He has royal blood in his veins—plenty of it. He may be on the throne of Wales yet. Miss Amber, I don’t desiderate a Civil war, but when my novel comes out if the British don’t turn round and put the Princess Clementina Sobieska on their Throne, they are not the people I have been told they are. I don’t advocate extreme measures, but loyalty is loyalty, and the American people are true Royalists. They can never forget that it was one of the Hanoverians who brought about their separation from Britain. That old wound is rankling yet in the breast of every true American.”
And then Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond entered the class-room, and Amber noddedau revoirto the American girl, and went to her own desk.
Mr. Richmond had become more carefully careless in regard to his dress during the past few weeks than he had yet been, Amber thought. She noticed with surprise that them was a breath of Byron—a suspiration of Shelley about his collars, which was not so before. He still wore a frock coat but he did it with the most painstaking negligence, and from some standpoints it did not look a bit like a frock coat. His hair was short, but it was plainly (in some lights) the hair of a thoughtful man. The amount of thinking that goes on beneath even the shortest hair has a perturbing influence upon it: one does not expect the grass which grows on the sides of an active volcano to be as ordinary grass.
He wore his tie in a loose bow.
“I am about to offer for your consideration a time-study,” said Mr. Richmond, when he had tapped the tubular end of his quill pen upon the edge of his desk. “Last week I had a most satisfactory response to the home exercise on the ‘Honest Doubter’ form of fiction, but I must say here lest I should forget it, that I think it was unnecessary to define, as some of the class did, the doubts of the Honest Doubter. It was also a technical error to clear away his doubts. Of course there is a good deal to say in favour of the domestic treatment of the theme, adopted by some of the class. Marrying him to an estimable and brainless woman, and showing his doubts cleared away as he stands alone in the nursery looking at the face of his sleeping child, is an excellent suburban view to take of the Honest Doubter; nine ladies were most successful in their treatment of the subject on these lines; but I regret to say that not one of them thought of the moonlight. A moment’s reflection should be sufficient to convince any one of the impossibility of banishing a strong man’s doubts in the afternoon, or before lunch. He must be brought full into the moonlight. The technical phrase is: ‘There; with the moonlight of heaven streaming through the nursery window upon the little face of his child, the strong man felt his heart soften and become once more as the heart of a little child. All the doubts that had clung to him for years as the mists cling to the moor fled away, as those same mists melt into the moonlight. He felt that a new day was breaking for him, a new light, he looked down at the little sleeping face, and cried—‘you can make him say anything you please: but he must say it when the moon is full. Still, I repeat the papers were most satisfactory as a whole. Now, the Time Study for to-day is on a very different theme; but it is one which I hope will appeal to the imagination of a good many in the class. The headings are these: Given, a young man—well, not perhaps, very young—let us say, a still young man, of good family, but by the force of circumstances for which he is not responsible—undeserved misfortune—compelled to become a tutor in a family of distinction; he falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the house; but he is too proud to confess his love, he is too modest to reveal himself to her. He has his hopes—sometimes they are strong when she smiles upon him, and then he thinks of his own humble position and he is on the verge of despair. Required the conclusion of the story: the happy accident by which he is enabled to reveal himself.”
In a second a dozen at least of the young women in the class were writing away for dear life, only a few thought it necessary to give any preliminary consideration to the problem suggested by Mr. Richmond. The little governess, however, who sat at a distant desk, could not write on account of her tears, and the half pay veteran was laboriously mending his quill pen. Amber, who used a reservoir pen, and had never seen a quill being mended, watched the operation with a curious interest.
She had no intention of making an attempt to work out the theme. The truth was that her heart was beginning to soften towards Josephine, and she came to the conclusion that in adopting so drastic a scheme of retaliation for Josephine’s secrecy respecting her engagement to Mr. Clifton, she was showing herself to be very hard-hearted. She felt that she should have waited at home to kiss Josephine when she should call.
She made up her mind not to remain at the school for the Aunt Dorothy class which followed the Time-Study class, but to hasten to the side of her friend, and if she failed to find her at home, she would drive back to her own home, and catch her there, and then—well, perhaps Lord Lullworth would drop in for tea, when he came back with the matched silks for Lady Severn.
“You are not working out the Time Study, Miss Severn,” said Mr. Richmond taking a seat beside her. This was his system of helpfulness referred to by Miss Quartz Mica Hanker. He was accustomed to take a seat by the side of some member of his class—he seemed discreetly indifferent to sex in this matter—in order to make suggestions as to the working out of the Time Study. He invariably spoke in so low a tone as to run no chance of disturbing the active members of the class.
“I do not feel much inclined to work at anything just now,” said Amber. “But I am glad to see so many other girls do their best. You have given them confidence, Mr. Richmond.”
“Then I give away what I myself stand most in need of just now,” said Mr. Richmond in a still lower tone.
“Confidence?” said Amber. “Oh, I think you have a very firm hand in these matters, Mr. Richmond. You deal with every problem with the hand of a master.”
“Alas!” he murmured. “Alas! I find myself faltering even now—at this moment. Dear Miss Severn, will you not make the attempt to work out the question which I have enunciated for you—believe me, it was for you only I enunciated it?—a Time Study? Ah, it is with me at all times—that problem. Miss Severn—Amber, will you try to suggest a happy conclusion to the parable which I have just uttered, when I tell you that I am in the position of the man, and that I think of you in the position of the girl?”
Amber scarcely gave a start. She only looked curiously at the man as if she was under the impression that he was enunciating another Time Study for her to work out—as if he was making a well-meant but more than usually unintelligible attempt to help her over a literary stile.
“I don’t quite understand, Mr. Richmond,” said she, after a thoughtful pause. “You say that you are—you———”
“I am poor and obscure, and I am unfortunate enough to love—to love the daughter of a distinguished family—you—you, Amber. What is to be the conclusion of the story—my love story?—the conclusion of it rests with you.”
Amber heard the quill pens about going scrawl, and the steel pens going scratch and the pencils going scribble. The voice of Mr. Richmond had not been raised louder than the voice of the pens. She was too much astonished to be able to reply at once. But soon the reply came.
This was it.
She picked up her little morocco writing case and folded it carefully and fastened the elastic band over it, then she picked up her parasol, rose, and went to the door, without a word.
He was before her at the door; he held it open for her. She went out without a word.
He was in no way overcome. He simply walked to another desk at which a girl was scribbling. He said a few words of commendation to her. Then he crossed the room to where Miss Quartz Mica Hanker was sitting industriously idle. He knew she was giving all her thoughts to the solution of the problem which he had offered to her, and this was real industry.
“Dear Miss Quartz,” he said in his low earnest voice—every time he conversed with her in this voice it was not the white rose that was suggested by her cheeks. “Dear Miss Quartz, are you making the attempt to work out the question which I have enunciated for you—believe me, it was for you only I enunciated it—a Time Study? Ah, it is with me for all time—that problem. Miss Quartz, will you try to suggest a happy conclusion to the parable which I have just uttered, when I tell you that I am in the position of the man and that I think of you in the position of the girl?”
Miss Quartz proved herself to be a far more apt student of the obscure than Miss Severn. She looked down at the blank paper in front of her saying:
“I wonder if you mean that—that—you——
“I am poor and obscure,” said he, “and I am unfortunate enough to love—to love the daughter of a distinguished family—to love you—you. What is to be the conclusion of the story—my love story?—the conclusion rests with you.”
Miss Quartz had mastered the literary technicalities of various sorts of proposals and acceptances—it had been Mr. Richmond’s pleasing duty during the month to keep the members of his class abreast of that important incident in the making of fiction known as The Proposal. She carried out the technicalities of the “business” of the part of the addressee to the letter—that is to say, she became suffused with a delicate pink—only she became a very peony, as she looked coyly down to the paper on her desk. She put her ungloved hand an inch or two nearer to his, raising her eyes to his, for a moment.
He glanced round the room, and having reassured himself, he laid his hand gently on hers.
“Dear child,” he said. “I have greatly dared—I have greatly dared. You will never regret it. Your novel will rank with ‘Esmond’ and ‘The Virginians’ and ‘Ben Hur’————”
“And Kate Douglas Wiggin?” she cried. “Oh, Mr. Richmond, if you promise me that I shall be alluded to as the Kate Douglas Wiggin of Nebraska I’ll just go down on my knees and worship you.”
“Ah,” he said with a smile. “She has never written an historical novel. She has made books, but never an Epoch. ‘The White Rose’ will be an Epoch-making book.”
“The girl’s eyes filled with tears. Such a future as he promised her was too dazzling to be viewed except through such a dimness.
“Come to my aunt’s for tea to-night,” she whispered. “The Daniel Webster boarding-house, Guildford Street. My money is in my own hands. Sixty thousand dollars.”
“The legitimate end of the story has come—you have solved the question,” he murmured.
He rose and returned to his desk. Sixty thousand dollars—twelve thousand pounds. He had calculated on five millions. Sixty thousand—well, it was better than nothing.
And that insolent girl, Amber Severn, would know that all girls were not like her—that was something too.
But by the time he had come to consider this very important point, Amber Severn, full of anger against the man who had not hesitated to take advantage of his position as the master of a school in order to make a proposal to one of his pupils—the man who had outraged her sense of the protecting influences of Platonic friendship, was flying along in her motor Victoria in the direction of Palace Gate where was the town residence of the Under Secretary for the Arbitration Department. She was burning with indignation against Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond, for his having the effrontery to add to the efforts which other people had already made to shatter her theory. She had heard of preceptors—they were mostly in the musical line—taking advantage of their opportunities to make love to their pupils and she had always held such persons in contempt. But if they were contemptible, how much more so was not such a man as Mr. Richmond—a man whose business it was to give a helping hand to those who might be anxious to write books illustrating the charm of disinterested friendship between men and women?
She felt very bitterly in regard to Mr. Richmond, quite as bitterly as did Barak the son of Zippor against the professional vituperator who, when he had a chance of showing what stuff he was made of, had rounded upon his patron. Amber had great hopes that one day a novel might be written to make the world aware of the beautiful possibilities of friendship for friendship’s sake only, between the sexes, and she had looked to Mr. Richmond to help on such a project. And yet it was he who had gone further than any one else in impressing on her the weakness of the basis of her faith.
She felt greatly disappointed. She felt that she was being daily disillusioned, and no one likes to be disillusioned: it makes one feel such a fool. So great an effect had the act of Guy Overton and Mr. Richmond upon her that she actually felt glad that she had not bound herself irrevocably to her theory but that latterly she had hedged. She knew that her attitude in regard to Lord Lullworth was suggestive of the hedge. He had boldly refused any compromise with her. He had told her at the outset of their acquaintance that he scoffed at the idea of her ideal—that his object in coming to see her would be strictly anti-platonic and yet her fondness for experiments had been so great that she had not made his scoffing at her ideal of friendship a barrier to their future association. If this was not hedging there never was hedging in any question of philosophy in the world; and so far as she could make out philosophy was simply the science of hedging.
She felt glad that she had encouraged Lord Lullworth, the exponent of a cult that admitted of no compromise. With him she was at least safe. For obvious reasons, he could never cause her to feel such disappointment as she felt at the conduct of Guy Overton and at the conduct of Owen Glendower Richmond. When one is in the presence of a man who promptly avows himself a brigand one is never surprised if one feels a tug at one’s purse. The surprise and the sorrow come only when one is in the company of a professional moralist and detects him trying to wheedle one’s handkerchief out of one’s pocket.
By the time she had reached the Brompton Road Amber Severn was feeling very strongly that the companionship of professed brigands was much to be preferred to the association with philosophers who talked of disinterested friendship while in the act of pocketing your silver spoons. An avowed lover was, she was sure, infinitely safer than a man who carries Plato in his breast pocket and presses his hand upon it while he makes a glib proposal of marriage to every girl he meets.