Amber had been dwelling so much upon her philosophy and its development that she half hoped that Josephine was not at home: there was just a possibility that if Josephine was not at home, she, Amber, would get back to her own home in time to give Lord Lullworth a cup of tea on his return with the matched silks for her mother. She was therefore slightly disappointed to learn that Miss West was at home and in the drawing-room with her ladyship.
Josephine was paler than Amber had ever seen her, and she was certainly colder than she had ever known her. She scarcely made any response to Amber’s long kiss.
Resignation—that was the word which came to Amber’s mind when she held her friend by both hands and looked at her. She was a statue—a marble statue of Resignation. The worst might come; it would not move her.
“I thought—I expected—” Amber began, with a tone of reproach in her voice. “You are really going to marry him—him—Mr. Clifton?” she cried, after faltering over a word or two.
“Did you not see it in the papers, and has any one the hardihood to put the papers in the wrong?” said Josephine.
“And you are to be congratulated? I am to congratulate you?” said Amber.
“Ah, that is quite another matter, my Amber,” laughed Josephine. Amber did not like her laugh.
“Why should it be another matter?” she asked. “If you love——”
“Heavens! are you—you—you who are the exponent of the ineffable fragrance of friendship—according to Plato—are you going to talk of the lustre of love?” said Josephine. “There’s a cluster of phrases for you, my dear. ‘The fragrance of Friendship—the lustre of Love’—quite like a modern poet’s phrase, is it not? Send it to your friend Mr. Richmond to serve up to his fourth form pupils. ‘Given, the phrase to make the poem’—that’s the exercise—what does he call it—the Time Study? Do let us try it. It should run like this: ‘The Fragrance of Friendship is folly’—that’s a capital line—even though it does contain a memory of ‘Dolores.’ And then you must go on—‘The Lustre of Love is a lure’? Yes, that might do, if you can’t find anything better. And now let us talk about something agreeable for a change. Here is my dear mother dying to tell you what she thinks of your trying to entrap poor Lord Lully in your network of Platonism. She saw you in the garden at Hyde Park Gate on Monday.”
Amber turned away. She had never known anything more pathetic than the way in which Josephine had rushed along when once she began to speak.
There was not a note of Josephine’s voice in all she had said. When Josephine had ever played at being cynical, she had gone softly—there had been something of merriment in her voice; but now there was the gleam of chilled steel in every flash of her phrases. The implacable brilliance of a bayonet charge was in all her words. Amber felt as if a bird which had always sung the song of a thrush had suddenly developed the metallic shriek of the parrot.
Amber was ready to weep at the pathos of it. It was pathetic; but terrible. She saw that Josephine’s nerves were strung up to the highest point of tension, and that was why the effect of shrillness was produced by her speech.
She turned to Lady Gwendolen. Surely Lady Gwendolen would at last become a mother to her own daughter! Surely she would detect the pathos of the change that had come about in her nature. And indeed Lady Gwendolen was very sympathetic.
“It is all very well to make light of the whole business, my dear Amber,” she cried plaintively. “Daughters engage themselves to be married, and sometimes get married too, without a thought for their mothers. Ah, is there no poet—no novelist—who will deal adequately with the mother’s tragedy? It will make me look a hundred, at the very least! A married daughter! ... ‘Good heavens!’ people will say. ‘I had no idea that Lady Gwendolen had a married daughter; why then she must be at least’—and then they will name some horrid age—forty, may be,—I know the way of these women. ‘Forty—she must be a good way over forty,’ they will say. ‘She was no chicken when she married, and her daughter looks every day of twenty-six—why, she must be at least fifty’—they will try to make me out to be fifty—fifty-two the spiteful ones will insist on—I know them. They will take very good care never to look up Debrett to get at the truth. Ah, the Mother’s Tragedy—the Mother’s Tragedy. No one ever thinks of asking about a woman’s age until her daughter gets married. Then, it’s the first thing they do. Ah, the Mother’s Tragedy! How well that broad brim suits her, doesn’t it, Joe? You didn’t think, I suppose, of a bow of cerise chiffon just at the curve? A little daring thing like that, you know, is often quite effective.”
“I hope you will be happy, my dearest Joe,” said Amber.
“I shall be married, at any rate,” said Josephine, “and isn’t that a step in the right direction? Happiness?... Well, could there be anything more ridiculous than an attempt to define happiness? Six months ago I had no hesitation in defining it for my own benefit. I defined it—down to the very man. That was where I was the fool,—for now I have come to think that that which I thought to be happiness is the only unhappiness that exists for me in the world. But I shall face it. I shall face it. When one has been a fool one must pay for it.”
“Dear Joe—oh, Joe—Joe! Do not talk so, for God’s sake,” cried Amber.
“You began it, my dear Amber,” said Joe, pointing a finger at her, and leaning back among the cushions of her sofa. The attitude was that one of the lovely figures in Andrea’s picture of “The Wedding Feast,” and Amber recognised it with horror. “You began it—you, talking about happiness and the rest of it,” she continued. “Well, there, I’ll say no more.... Heavens, I forgot that I did not see you since we returned from The Weir! And that seems a lifetime ago. Ah, it is true, ‘Marriage and death and division, make barren our lives.’ I wonder why I was such a fool as to go to The Weir with you, Amber.”
“What has come over her? She has been quite as rude as that all day,” complained Lady Gwendolen. “I thought that nothing could make her rude, however full of theories she might be. But I’ve noticed, Amber, that rudeness and a reputation usually go together. At any rate, the women who are said to be intellectual seem to me to be nothing but rude. As soon as a woman has insulted you grossly three times you must take it for granted that her intellect is of the highest order. Of course if you think cerise too trying you might have it in a much lighter shade just where the brim begins to curve. You saw my toque with the poppies and the corn? I was not afraid to face the strongest colour. Oh, must you really go?”
“She really must: I cannot see how she could possibly remain another five minutes,” said Josephine. “Amber has some sense of what is sacred and what is profane. I had the same ideas a week ago, but that’s a long time back. Priestesses of Baal must have revolted the sensitiveness of the daughters of Levi. Good-bye, Amber, and take my advice and don’t come back to us. I should be sorry to flaunt my new-found unhappiness in your face.”
The tone of her voice and of her laugh that followed gave Amber the impulse to put her fingers in her ears and rush from the room—from the house. She resisted the suggestion, however, and contented herself with a protest of uplifted hands and mournfully shaking head.
“Poor Joe—poor Joe!” she whispered.
“That is the sincerest congratulation I have yet had,” said Josephine. “It is the congratulation that contains the smallest amount of bitterness. When people say ‘I hope you may be happy, my dear,’ they mean that they wouldn’t give much for my chances. No, Amber, don’t come back to us until I get used to being engaged. So many people have come. Mr. Clifton is wiser: he stays away. Oh, he was always so clever! The idea of a girl like myself trying to be equal to him!—Good-bye, dear.”
Amber did not speak a word. She almost rushed from the room, while Lady Gwendolen was still talking, musingly, of the merits of a bow of pink chiffon—it need not necessarily be a large or an imposing incident in the composition of the hat with the broad brim, a mere suggestion of the tint would be enough, she thought.
Amber felt as if she had just come from the deathbed of her dearest friend. She was horrified at the tone of Josephine’s voice and at the sound of her laugh. She felt that she never wished to see again the creature who had taken the place of her dear friend Josephine West.
The daughter of a mother who was a worldling, and of a father who was a politician, Josephine had ever shown herself to be free from the influence of either. But now—well, even her father was able to assume a certain amount of sincerity in dealing with political questions, especially when a General Election was impending. He had never talked cynically of the things which were held dear by the people with the votes. And as for her mother she was in the habit of speaking with deep feeling on the subject of the right fur for opera cloaks and other matters of interest to the intelligent. But there was Josephine talking and laughing on the first day of her engagement with a cynicism that could not have been bitterer had she been married a whole year.
What did it mean? What had brought about that extraordinary change in the girl’s nature? These were the questions which distracted Amber all the way to her home.
She could not forget that, after Josephine had written that little paper defining Platonic Friendship, she had been led to ask herself why Josephine should have thought well to be so satirical on the subject; and she had come to the conclusion that Josephine’s attitude was due to the fact of her having a tender feeling not of friendship but of love for some man; and Amber’s suspicions fell upon Ernest Clifton. She felt sure that she had noticed a certain light in Josephine’s face upon occasions when Mr. Clifton was near her. And yet now that she promised to become the wife of Mr. Clifton, the light that was in her eyes was an illumination of a very different sort.
And then as the question of exultation suggested itself to her she recollected how she fancied that she had perceived such an expression on the face of her friend on the Monday morning when she had returned to The Weir by the side of Pierce Winwood. The same expression was on the face of Pierce Winwood also, and Amber had felt convinced that he had told her he loved her and that she had not rejected him.
That was why they had talked so enthusiastically on the subject of the reaping machine (blue, picked out with vermillion).
But how was she to reconcile what she had seen and heard in the drawing-room which she had just left with her recollection of the return of Josephine and the other man—not the man whom she had promised to marry—from the survey of the reaping machine?
Pierce Winwood had practically confessed to her that he meant to ask Josephine if she thought she could love him, and the chance had undoubtedly been given to him to put such a question to her. If then—if—if he...
In an instant she fancied that she perceived all that had happened.
She did not as a matter of fact perceive all that had happened, but she certainly did become aware of a good deal—enough for her to go on with; and a moment after perceiving this she saw that Pierce Winwood was walking rapidly alongside the rails of Kensington Gardens.
He saw her and made a little motion with his hand suggesting his desire to speak to her. She stopped the victoria.
“I hope you will be at home this afternoon,” he said. “I am so anxious to speak with you for five minutes.”
“I will walk the rest of the way home: I have not had a walk to-day,” she said, stepping out of the victoria.
“You are very good,” he said, as the machine whirled off. “Do let us turn into the gardens for a minute. I should not like to miss this chance. You saw that announcement in the papers to-day?”
“Ah—ah!” she sighed, as they went through one of the gates and on to an avenue made dim by the boughs of horse-chestnut.
“Think of it! Think of that paragraph if you can when I tell you that she told me only on Monday that she loved me,” he cried.
She stopped short. So she had not been mistaken after all.
“She promised—Josephine promised?”
“She promised. I gave you to understand that I meant to put my fate to the test, and I did so on Monday. Ah, she told me that she loved me—me only—me only—and I know that she spoke the truth. She loved me then—she loves me now—me only—and yet—you saw that announcement.”
Amber could only shake her head dolefully. Matters were getting too complicated for her. The effort to reconcile one incident with another was a pain to her.
“You told me that she was free,” he continued. “That was because you did not know that she had been engaged secretly to that man. He was clever enough—unscrupulous enough—clever people are unscrupulous. It is only the people who are less clever that fail to get rid of their scruples—at any rate he persuaded her to bind herself to him in secret. Later—a fortnight ago—she insisted on his releasing her and he did so—technically; but in parting from her—more cleverness—he gave her to understand that he regarded her as still bound to him—he made it a matter of honour—she was only released onparole—a trick. Was she not entitled to listen to me? No one can deny it. She had her misgivings, but that was afterwards—she had confessed that she loved me—me only. I did not give the matter a thought. She had no doubt that she would be able to meet him. Her protection was to ask him to go to her father for his consent.”
“And he took her at her word. He got her father’s consent. They are both politicians—her father and the other. And every member of the Government knows enough about every other member of the Government to hang him. They must have made a compact together. They say that Mr. Clifton is the cleverest politician in England. We know what that means. My father says, ‘Show me the cleverest politician in England and I’ll show you the greatest rascal in Europe.’”
“There must have been something diabolical at work. This is the letter which she wrote to me. Poor girl! Poor girl!”
“I cannot read it—I know it all—all. I love her—I cannot listen to the despairing cries of one whom I love. Poor Josephine! I was with her just now... oh, terrible—terrible!”
“Ah, you have been with her? you saw her? She would not see me. And what have you found out? Do not tell me that she cares anything for him.”
“I saw her; but what could I find out? She did not confide anything to me—she did not seek to do so. I shall never go again—— She frightened me. There was no word of Josephine in all she said. Have you not been to her?”
“Been to her. How could I get that letter and remain away from her? I went in the forenoon—she would not see me—the man had received his instructions. That is why I was going to you. You must ask her to go to you to-morrow, and I shall meet her at your house. My God, cannot you perceive that I must see?—that she must be saved from her fate?... What am I thinking of—to talk to you in this way—commanding? What can you think of me?”
“Do not accuse me of being unable to see how you love her. But I cannot do what you ask me. How would it be possible? You must write to her—persuade her to see you.”
“And I thought that you were my friend.”
He had stopped on the avenue and was gazing at her reproachfully.
“I am your friend,” she said, “and therefore I cannot do this. If you were to meet her and hear her talk as I heard her to-day you would turn away from her forever. I know that.”
“Turn from her—I—I—turn from her—her?” he cried. “Oh, let me have the chance—you will give me the chance?”
She shook her head.
“Then what am I to do?” he said. “Would you counsel me to remain passive—to allow her to marry that man whom she detests and to send her a wedding present? A diamond star would be a nice present, wouldn’t it? or a wheat sheaf—I saw one the other day—set with pearls and diamonds?”
“Oh, you are talking now just as she talked—so wildly—so wickedly. Cannot you see that just at this moment you are both beyond the control of reason? You say things to me now that you do not mean—she did the same. If you were to meet now you would say things to her—she would say things to you—you would part from her forever.”
“I would be calm. I would remember that everything depended on my being calm.”
“Ah, you think so. But you cannot be calm even to me. And you did not see her as I saw her just now.”
“Would to heaven that I had the chance.”
“Do not say that. You would drown yourself there.”
(They had reached the Round Pond.)
He walked along in silence by her side—in silence and with bowed head.
“I know what will happen,” he said at last: “she will soon become reconciled to her fate. She will soon come to think that he is part of her life and I shall cease to be in any thought of hers. Well, perhaps that is the best thing that could happen. But I thought that she was not like other women. I fancied that when she knew... But you will see her again? You will tell her that I must see her—surely she will let me say good-bye to her.”
“I can say nothing. But you must not see her now. Wait for a day or two. Oh, cannot you trust her to bear you in mind for a day or two? Did she not say that she loved you?”
“And she does—I know that she does. Oh, it is the old story—the old story. Her father has forced her into this.”
Amber could say nothing. She thought that it would be better for her not to go into the question of the antiquity of the story of a girl promising to marry a rich man, and her parents endeavouring to marry her to a poor one—that was the summary of the love story of Josephine West.
He walked in silence—comparative silence—by her side until they reached the road once more. At the entrance to her home, he said humbly:
“My dear Miss Severn, I feel that you have given me good advice. I will obey you—I will make no attempt to see her for some days. I knew that I should be right in coming to you. You will forgive me for the wild way I talked to you.”
“If you had not talked in that way I would never speak to you again,” said Amber, giving him her hand.
Amber ran upstairs to her room and threw herself not upon the little sofa in her dressing-room but upon the bed in her bedroom. She was guided in the right direction. She knew perfectly well that the cry which was coming was too big for a sofa—it was a bed-sized cry.
She lay in her tears for more than an hour, and no one went near her to disturb her. Emotions were recognised as possible in this household—emotions and moods and sulks—and no member of the household—ancillary or otherwise—was allowed to interfere with another.
Her mother was fortunate in having been at one time of her life of the same age as Amber, and she had a pretty good notion of how it was that her daughter did not come downstairs for tea. Lady Severn had heard her daughter’s comments upon the announcement of Josephine’s engagement, and having herself noticed the expression on the faces of her guests at The Weir on their return together from their stroll, she had no great difficulty in understanding how it was possible that Amber might be having a good cry after visiting her friend Josephine.
It was, however, Sir Creighton who, before dinner, asked Amber if she had learned anything by her visit to Josephine. He appeared quite anxious to know all that there was to be known on the subject of Josephine’s engagement to Mr. Clifton; but for that matter he took quite as much interest as his wife, in the incidents of their social life. Even the humblest essays in elementary biology had a certain attraction about them, he was accustomed to say.
Amber gave him a spasmodic account of her call upon Josephine, and of her subsequent overtaking of Pierce and his confession during their stroll in the Park.
“Just think of it,” she said by way of summing up. “Just think of it: she acknowledged to Mr. Winwood on Monday that she loved him, and yet to-day she allows it to be announced in the papers that she is to be married to the other man! Was there ever anything so terrible since the world began?”
“Never—never,” said he. “Nothing of such terrible significance to Josephine and Winwood has been heard of since the world began. There is a good deal in this business which is not easy to understand without the aid of a trustworthy key to the motives of men and women and political adventurers. If she had promised in secret long ago to marry Clifton, the secret being kept a secret because of the unlikelihood of her father’s giving his consent to the engagement, what, I should like to know, has occurred during the past few days to make Clifton perceive that her father would give his consent? You got a hint from Josephine on this point—or that fool of a mother of hers—did she say nothing that would suggest a compact—a reciprocal treaty, these politicians would call it—between Mr. West and Mr. Clifton?”
Amber laughed scornfully.
“Lady Gwendolen talked about the new opera cloaks,” said she.
“A topic well within her grasp,” said Sir Creighton. “If I wished for any information regarding the possibilities of longevity among certain esoteric developments of the opera cloak I think I would apply to Lady Gwendolen. She is, one might say, the actuary of the opera cloak: she can calculate, upon the theory of averages, the duration of life of such ephemera.”
“Yes; but what is to be done,” said Amber, who perceived the danger of drifting into phrases and fancying that because a good sentence has been made, there is no need for further action.
Sir Creighton walked to a window and stood in front of it with his hands in his pockets.
“We can do a good deal,” he said, after a pause of considerable duration. “I know, at any rate, that I can do a good deal in this matter—yes, in certain circumstances I think that I have a good deal of influence—moral influence of course, not the other sort,—to avoid making use of an uglier word, we shall call it political influence. But we must be certain first how we stand—exactly how we stand. Why should West give his consent just now to his daughter’s engagement to Clifton when both persons mainly concerned in the contract considered six months ago that it would be quite useless to make an appeal to him. Why, according to what you say Winwood told you, Josephine up to last Monday felt certain that it would be ridiculous to expect that he would entertain a thought of Clifton as a son-in-law. Now, what we need to find out is, How did Clifton convince Josephine’s father that he was the right man to marry his daughter?”
Amber could not see for the life of her what bearing this point had upon the question of the destiny of Josephine, but she had a great deal of confidence in her father.
“Mind you, my dear,” resumed Sir Creighton, “I do not say that Josephine has not herself to thank for a good deal of this trouble. Why should she allow herself to be persuaded into an underhand compact with that man? And then, having entered into that compact, why does she allow herself to fall in love with quite another man?”
“How could she prevent it?” cried Amber. “How is a girl to prevent herself from falling in love with one particular man?”
“Possibly a course of higher mathematics might be prescribed,” said Sir Creighton. “My dear Amber, I don’t think that Josephine is the heroine of this romance. However, that is no reason why she should not be happy—it is certainly no reason why Pierce Winwood should be unhappy. He at least is blameless.”
This was the end of their conversation at that time, and Amber felt that it had not been very helpful in the way of furthering the prospects of Pierce Win-wood, and, incidentally, of Josephine West.
She could not even see why her father should laugh the laugh of a man who is gratified on receiving a proof of his own shrewdness, when the following morning he pointed out to her in one of the newspapers, under the heading of Changes in the Cabinet, the announcement that the Minister of the Annexation Department had agreed to go to the Exchequer on the resignation owing to his increasing deafness of the Chancellor, and that Mr. Carew West, the Under Secretary for the Arbitration Office, had accepted the portfolio thereby rendered vacant, with a Seat in the Cabinet.
Every paper in the kingdom contained a leading article or a note under the leading article, referring to this important change and offering congratulations to the new Minister. But the paper which Sir Creighton showed to his daughter went rather more into the details of the Cabinet Changes, and explained that it was thought by many people that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not resign until a seat had been found for Mr. Eardley, who had had a seat in the last Cabinet of the existing Government, but who had failed to be returned for his old constituency at the General Election. The Government had, however, been advised that, owing to the attitude of the electors of the Arbroath Burghs in regard to the war, the return of Mr. Eardley for that fickle constituency could not be relied on, and therefore the Under Secretary at the Arbitration Office had got his seat in the Cabinet rather sooner than might have been expected.
“There is the explanation of it all,” said Sir Creighton. “I wondered how it was that Clifton could get into his hands the wires that affected West, for every one knows that West’s seat is a perfectly safe one, and Clifton is only a wire-puller among the constituencies. But now the whole thing is clear to me. The Chancellor has made a fool of himself and the Government want to unload him. They want their old colleague Eardley back, and they ask Clifton about the Arbroath Burghs. If Clifton says ‘safe,’ the Chancellor will wait until Eardley is returned; if he says ‘unsafe’ the vacant place will be given to West. Clifton then goes to West and says ‘Would you care to get into the Cabinet? I can put you into the Cabinet to-morrow.’ ‘What’s your price?’ cries West, perceiving that the object of his ambition is within reach, and hoping that Clifton will be as reasonable as Mephisto was to Faust, and only say, ‘Your Soul.’ But Clifton knows that the soul of an Under Secretary is quoted low in the Market, but that a daughter is a perfectly negotiable security—oh, the whole thing is clear.”
“Quite clear,” acquiesced Amber, “but where does Mr. Winwood come in?”
Her father roared with laughter.
“You are surely the most practical young woman that lives,” he said. “Here have I been romancing away in the vaguest fashion and so overwhelmed with a sense of my own cleverness that I lose sight of the true objective—the phrase is one of the multitudinous military critics, my dear—but you, you hold me down to the dry details of the matter in hand.”
“You see, my dear father, I have not yet been able to understand how much is gained by your knowing that Mr. West had some reason for giving his consent to Josephine’s engagement with Mr. Clifton,” said Amber.
“It was necessary for me to see if Mr. Clifton held debenture stock in the Soul of Julian Carew West or only ordinary shares,” said Sir Creighton. “And have you found that out?”
“I have found that he holds merely preference shares. And now that the Soul of Mr. West is going into allotment it is just possible that I may be successful in getting in on the ground floor, as your friend Mr. Galmyn would say.”
“I don’t understand even yet.”
“Better not try for a few days yet. Give the man a chance of settling down in his place in the Cabinet and feeling comfortable in regard to his future. A man who has just managed to crawl into a high office should not be bothered by people making enquiries as to the marks of mud on the knees of his trousers. There is no crawling through mud without getting a stain or two. But do not forget that I am the inventor of the only time fuse in existence.”
He left his daughter to ponder over that dark saying. Exploding mines were so well known that even the members of his own family had heard of them. But what did her father who was the least egotistical man on the face of the earth, mean by referring to that special invention of his?
She was annoyed by his attitude of mystery, and when the afternoon came she was still further annoyed, when in the course of giving Arthur Galmyn a cup of nice tea, he begged of her to marry him, confessing that he had gone on the Stock Exchange only out of love for her, and threatening to go back to the poetry once more if she refused him.
Regardless of this pistol held to her head, she told him that he had disappointed her. She had always looked on him as a true friend.
He hurried away at the entrance of Mr. Willie Bateman, and before Mr. Bateman had eaten his second hot cake, he had assured her that if she were good enough to marry him she might depend upon his making her the most celebrated woman in England. He had a plan, he said—an advertising system that could not possibly fail, and if she rejected him he would communicate it to the Duchess of Manxland who was at her wit’s end to find some new scheme of advertising herself—she had exhausted all the old ones.
But even the force of this threat did not prevent Amber from telling him that he had disappointed her. She had always looked on him as a true friend.
When he had gone away in a huff, she ate the remainder of the hot cakes and reflected that she had received four proposals of marriage within the week.
This was excessively flattering and annoying, and the truth began to be impressed upon her that Platonic Friendship was all that Josephine had said it was and that it was in addition a perpetual encouragement to a timorous lover.
Aletter received from Pierce Winwood two days later made her inclined to ask, as he did several times, in the course of three hurricane pages, if inaction as a policy might not be pursued too long? Her father had responded enigmatically to her hints that she thought if a Cabinet Minister could not settle down in his seat in the course of two days he must be singularly ill-adapted for a career of repose.
He had laughed heartily when she asked him again if Mr. West was not ready for the time-fuse? or was it the time-fuse that was not ready for Mr. West, but the questions were not further responded to; and now here was Mr. Winwood saying that he would call this very day.
His announcement sounded like the tradesman’s threat which she had once seen at the foot of a college bill of her brother’s to the effect that the writer would call on such a day at such an hour and hoped that Mr. Severn would find it convenient to have his money ready for him.
She found, on counting her loose change—all that she had got from her father in response to her hints—that she had not enough to pay Pierce Winwood—she would not even be able to give him something on account. She had neither seen Josephine nor heard anything about her; and she knew better than to fancy that the ardent lover would go away satisfied with the parable of the time-fuse.
She had all the courage of her sex; but she could not face him. She actually felt herself becoming nervous at the thought of his entering the room and repeating in her ears the words which he had shouted into his letter. His noisy letter had greatly disturbed her; so after an interval—an uneasy interval, she rushed at paper and pens and scrawled off a page in precisely the same style as that which he had made his own, begging him for heaven’s sake to be patient, if it was possible, for a few days still, and entreating him to be a man. (She knew that this was nonsense: to be a man was to be wildly unreasonable and absurdly impatient in simple matters such as waiting until a young woman came to know her own mind.)
She was in the act of putting her avalanche letter in reply to his hurricane pages, into its envelope when the door of the small drawing-room where she was sitting at a writing-table was flung open and Josephine swooped down on her, kissing her noisily and crying in her ear the one word “saved—saved—saved!” after the style of the young woman in the last popular melodrama—only much less graceful in pose.
“What—what—what?” cried Amber spasmodically within the encircling arms of her friend.
Then they both rose, as it might be said, to the surface of their overwhelming emotions, and stood facing each other breathless and disordered.
Josephine went off in a peal of laughter, Amber, ever sympathetic though burning with curiosity, followed her, and then they flung themselves on the sofa—one at each end, and laughed again.
“I am saved—saved—and I come to you to tell you so,” cried Josephine, catching one of Amber’s hands and swinging her arm over the cushions that billowed between them.
“Saved—saved—is he dead—or—or—has he been found out?” whispered Amber. “Clever men invaribly are found out.”
“Found out?—oh, I found him out long ago—the day he tricked me into believing that I was still bound to him, though he had just pretended to set me free. But to-day—before lunch time—by the way, I have had no lunch yet!”
Both girls laughed as aimlessly as negresses at this point, it seemed so ridiculous not to have had lunch.
“Before lunch—he came to you?” suggested Amber.
“Not he—not Launcelot but another—the other was a young woman—oh, quite good-looking, and wearing a very pretty Parma-violet velvet hat with ospreys, and a cashmere dress, with an Eton jacket trimmed with diagonal stripes of velvet to match the hat—oh, quite a nice girl. I had never seen her before—she had sent in her name—Miss Barbara Burden—such a sweet name, isn’t it?”
“Quite charming! Who was she? I never heard the name.”
“I had never heard the name. I fancied that she had come about a bazaar for the widows and orphans, so many strangers come about that, you know—but she hadn’t. I saw her. It was most amusing; but she was quite nice. She had the newspaper in her hand with that announcement—that horrid announcement——-”
“I know—I know.”
“‘Do you love that man, Miss West?’ she began, pointing to the paragraph.”
“Good gracious! That was a beginning—and a total stranger!”
“So I thought. Of course I became cold and dignified. ‘Have you not seen that I am going to marry Mr. Clifton?’ I asked in as chilling a voice as I could put on at a moment’s notice. ‘What I mean is this,’ said the young woman; ‘if you tell me that you are about to marry him because you love him, I will go away now and you will never hear anything of me again. But if you cannot say truly that you do love him I will tell you that the day you marry him I shall bring an action against him that will go far to ruin his career and to make you unhappy for the rest of your life unless you are very different from what I have heard you are, Miss West.’”
“Heavens!”
“I looked at her and saw that she was quite nice. ‘I cannot tell you that I love him,’ said I, ‘but I can tell you that I detest him, and that I love somebody else. Is that good enough for you to go on with?’ ‘Thank God!’ she cried quite fervently, and then she told me her story. Oh, there was nothing wicked in it. She is the daughter of a doctor in a town where he lived before he came to London. Her father was a man of influence in the town and Mr. Clifton became engaged to the girl—but in secret—no one was to know anything about it until he should find himself in a position to get her father’s consent.”
“A country doctor: Mr. Clifton must have been in a small way even then.”
“So he was—he hoped to better himself by marrying her, however. She showed me several letters that he had written to her—clever letters, but still such letters as would be received with laughter, in brackets, if read in a court of law. Well, he left that town and went to a larger, and having worked himself into a better position, he found that to marry the girl would be to marry beneath him—that was the girl’s phrase—‘to marry beneath him’—so he engaged himself—also in secret—to a girl above him in social position; but in the meantime he had worked himself up and up until he came to London and was a sufficiently important person to get me to engage myself to him—in secret too—and—that’s the whole story the young lady had to tell only—yes, I forgot: before he met her he had actually engaged himself to a girl in Lynnthorpe—a grocer’s daughter in the town—Miss Burden found that out also. Was there ever anything so amusing heard since the world began—such a comedy of courtships! He had been gradually working himself up through the whole gamut of the social scale until he reached the dizzy height represented by me—me! But there is a sublimer height even than me, and now he shall have his chance of reaching it.”
“And we have always thought him so clever!”
“So he is. But the cleverest men that have ever lived have had their weaknesses. His little weakness seems to have been the secret engagement. It appears that he has never been able to resist it. He has gone from one girl to another like a butterfly. He will marry the daughter of a Duke now.”
“You believed the girl—Miss Burden?” said Amber in a tone that suggested suspicion.
Josephine laughed and patted her hand.
“He came into the room while we were together,” she said.
“Oh!”
“He had not been to see me since Tuesday, and to-day is Saturday; he thought it better on the whole to let me get accustomed to the situation which was the natural sequel to the announcement in the papers. But he came to-day. He met the other girl—one of the other girls—face to face. You never saw anything so funny. For a moment I thought that he would make the attempt to strangle her as the villain on the stage does. But he did nothing of the sort. ‘I have just been telling Miss West that the day you marry her, I shall bring up an action against you and give the leader writers of the Opposition a chance of showing off their cleverness in dealing with the case of Burden v. Clifton,’ said she quite nicely. And he was dumb—absolutely dumb! ‘But Miss West has too high a regard for Mr. Clifton to precipitate such an event,’ said I, and then my father came into the room.”
“More comedy!”
“I felt equal to playing my rôle. He looked from me to Mr. Clifton, and from Mr. Clifton to Miss Burden. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I forgot that you don’t know Miss Burden, papa. This is my father, Miss Burden. Miss Burden is the young lady whom Mr. Clifton promised to marry four years ago. It is a nice question, and one which no doubt will have to be decided in a Court of law, but it really seems to me that he is still engaged to marry Miss Burden. But of course there were other girls and other secret engagements.’”
“You said that? How neat! And your father?”
“He said ‘Don’t be a fool, Josephine. What nonsense is this, Clifton?’ ‘I think I should like five minutes alone with Miss Burden; I think I could bring her to see that nothing would be gained by——’ ‘I do not want such an interview with you,’ said Miss Burden. ‘I am here and if Mr. West wishes to ask me any question—Mr. West or Miss West—I shall answer it in your presence, Ernest.’ I pitied my father—I really did. ‘Clifton,’ said he, ‘do you mean to tell me that you were not a free man when you made your proposal to my daughter?’ ‘A free man? that girl is a fool—an utter fool!’ said Mr. Clifton. ‘Good heavens! Because a man happens—psha! it was four years ago. There is nothing criminal in the business!’ ‘Oh, no,’ said I, ‘nothing criminal—only ridiculous; but for my part I have no intention of allowing my name to be associated with the brackets in the newspaper reports enclosing the words “Great laughter in the court,” and I cannot believe that my father anticipates such a destiny for me.’ Then my father did a foolish thing. He said, ‘Madam, what damages do you hope for in this matter? Do you fancy that any jury would award you more than a thousand pounds? That would be ridiculous. But at the same time—I have my cheque-book here—supposing we say fifteen hundred pounds?’”
“He fancied that she would take it? Was he deceived by the ospreys in her Parma-violet hat, do you think?”
“He couldn’t have been, they were quite simple. But anyhow the girl walked straight to the door and was out before any one could say a word.”
“How good!”
“I ran after her and caught her up on the landing. I kissed her, and—well, I didn’t think it worth while returning to the drawing-room. But when I was putting on my hat to come to you, my father met me and said, ‘Don’t you fancy that because this business has gone astray for a while there is the smallest chance of your getting my consent in regard to—to that fellow from Australia. Perhaps it is as well for us to be clear of Clifton—such men have no sense of honour; but don’t you think for a moment that this Winwood man—Clifton told me all about him—will get my consent.’ So you see, my dear, although I have escaped from Ernest Clifton... oh, how horribly I talked when you came to see me... But you knew that I cared for Pierce—you knew that I had given him my promise—you knew that he——”
And at this point Mr. Pierce Winwood was announced and Amber Severn rushed past him as he entered the room.
“My dear West,” said Sir Creighton Severn when after church the next day, he found himself seated opposite to the new Minister of the Annexation Department in Mr. West’s library. “My dear West, so old a friend as I am should be the first to offer you congratulations. You see that your ambition was not the foolish impulse that so many people in the old days said that it was. You had the stuff in you.”
“I knew that you would be the first, my dear Severn,” said the new Minister. “We have both done very well for ourselves since those old days—those cruel old days, Severn. Ah, we had both ambitions of the right sort. We knew how to make the most of our opportunities, you and I. Yes, we have done pretty well for ourselves.”
“And we have done pretty well for others too—if people only knew it,” said Sir Creighton.
“Yes, yes, the world is the happier for our having lived in it—you in particular, Severn—you in particular. Your inventions—where are they going to end? that’s what some one was saying to me the other day—a man at the Admiralty—we had been hearing the result of the trial of that boat of yours. Ah, you are fortunate, Severn. Your work is recognised freely; whereas the labours of one who aspires to be thought a statesman—ah, how few appreciate the life of perpetual self-sacrifice which we are compelled to lead. People talk of the sweets of office—sweets?—Do you know, Severn, I feel greatly inclined sometimes to relinquish forever all this worry of political life—all this noise—the clamour—the—thestrepitum—that is the word—thestrepitum—and settle down to enjoy the life which is nearest to my heart—the home life—the home—the hearth.”
“Not yet—not yet, my friend,” said Sir Creighton, shaking his head sadly. “You are not your own master now. Your duty may be an onerous one, but there are too few statesmen in England for you to think of retiring yet awhile.”
“Well, perhaps one should not look at such a matter from the standpoint of one’s private feelings. You do not see so much of me nowadays as you once did, Severn; if you did you would know that the home—the hearth—ah—ah!”
“We do not see so much of each other; but our children—our girls, you know that they are inseparable—West,—you are the father of a girl whom I have come to understand, and to understand such a nature as hers is to love her. I love her as I do my own child; and I am here to talk to you about her.”
“Ah, Severn, she is a good girl—a noble girl, but—well, frankly, I am rather glad that this affair with Clifton has come to an end. It will be years before Clifton is anything but the merest wire-puller—a paltry provincial sort of jobbing jerrymander—that was—he will be—not without his uses, of course—those organisms have their uses to us; but I think that my daughter has every right to look for some one—some one, in short, more in her own rank in life. You heard, of course, that Clifton had been a fool—that it would be impossible for us to entertain any longer the idea of——”
“I saw Josephine yesterday. I am quite of your way of thinking in this matter. Clifton behaved badly from the first—inducing her to do an underhand thing—I know that her better nature recoiled from it. I cannot understand how you ever came to give your consent, West.”
“Well, you see, my dear Severn, I believed that she loved him, and a girl’s heart—ah, Severn, Severn, when the prospect of one’s daughter’s happiness——”
“That is what I want to talk to you about, West—her future happiness—and yours.”
“If you are going to talk to me about that man from Australia—or is it New Zealand?—whom she fancies she loves, you may spare yourself the trouble, my dear friend—I decline to discuss a man so obviously—flagrantly ineligible.”
“I have found out a good deal about him during the past month, and I have heard nothing except what is good.”
“Good—good—what signifies goodness—I mean, of course, that my daughter is now in a very different position from that she occupied six months ago. The best families in the land might receive her with open arms. But a Colonial—well, of course, they did very well in the war, the Colonials, and the mother country is proud of them—yes, quite proud of them. But for my daughter to marry a man who does not know his own father——”
“I know all about his father, though he does not.”
“I don’t want to know, anything, West. His father may have been the Archbishop of Canterbury for all I care; but the chances are that he was a convict—or a descendant of convicts.”
“You have not guessed very wide of the mark; his father was a convict.”
“What; and you are here to suggest that—that—good lord, Severn, are you mad—oh, you must be mad?”
“I do not consider that he is anything the worse for being the son of a convict, West. There is always the possibility of a convict being innocent.”
“Oh, they all affirm their innocence, of course. Now, that is all I want to hear about either father or son. You will stay to lunch, I hope—oh, yes, you must stay to lunch. The Marquis may drop in afterwards; his son is certainly coming. You know Lord Lullworth—a promising young fellow, Severn—quite promising. Come upstairs; Lady Gwendolen will be pleased.”
“One moment, my dear West. I happen to know that the convict father of Pierce Winwood, as he calls himself, was innocent of the crime for which he suffered.”
“Then comfort the son with that information. He will be glad to believe it, I am confident.”
“Shall I add to that information the name of the criminal on whose behalf he suffered?”
“You may add the names of all the heroes of the Newgate Calendar, if you please, my dear friend.”
“I will not offer him so interesting a catalogue. But come with me—I have taken the liberty of bringing him here with me: he is upstairs—I will give him the name of the real criminal in your presence and in the presence of the Marquis and the Marquis’s son and also present him with the proofs, which I have in my pocket, that I have not made a mistake.”
Sir Creighton took a step towards the door.
Mr. West did not move. His jaw had fallen. He had grasped the back of a chair.
The gong sounded for luncheon filling up the long pause with its hum.
“For God’s sake—for God’s sake,” whispered the Cabinet Minister.
“I tell you the truth, West,” said Sir Creighton. “The son of Richard Gaintree, the man who was in your father’s works with myself and with you—the man who in that strange way when we thought he was at the point of death confessed to the crime which you committed and so saved you—the man whom you saw go cheerfully to prison, without speaking a word to save him—that man is the father of Pierce Winwood as certain as we stand here.”
Mr. West gazed at Sir Creighton Severn for some minutes, and then with an articulation that was half a cry and half a groan, dropped into the chair in front of him, and bowed his head down to his hands on the table.
For a long time his visitor did not speak—did not stir. At last he went to him and laid his hand on his shoulder.
“‘God moves in a mysterious way,’—you remember that hymn at the Chapel in the old days, Julian?” he said in a low voice. “Though we have drifted away from the chapel, we can still recognise the truth of that line. I know that for years you have thought and thought if it might be possible for you to redeem that one foolish act of your life—to redeem your act of cowardice in sending that man to suffer in your place. Well, now, by the mysterious working of Providence, the chance is offered to you.”
“And I will accept it—I will accept it as I did the offer of Richard Gaintree,” cried West, clutching at his friend’s arm. “Thank God I can do it—I can do it. But he need not know—the son need not know—you say he does not know?”
“He knows the story—the bare story, but his father hid the names from him. He need never know more than he does now.”
“Send them to me—send them to me, quick, Severn, quick—I may die before I have accomplished the act of restitution.”
Sir Creighton put out his hand, the other man put his own right hand into it for a moment.
Sir Creighton went upstairs to the drawing-room where Josephine and Pierce were sitting with Lord Lullworth and Amber. Lady Gwendolen was still in her dressing-room.
Josephine started up at his entrance. She looked eagerly—enquiringly at him.
“He is in his study. He wants to see you both. Dear child, you have my congratulations—and you too, Winwood.”
Josephine was in Sir Creighton’s arms before he had finished speaking.
“We are starving. What has happened?” cried Amber with some awe in her voice, when Josephine and Pierce had disappeared.
“The time-fuse has burnt itself down—that’s all,” said her father. “Listen: you can almost hear Mr. West telling his daughter that his fondest wish has always been for her happiness, and that he is ready to sacrifice all his aspirations and ambitions in order that she may marry the man whom she loves. That is what he is saying just now.”
And, sure enough, that was exactly what Mr. West was saying at that moment.
“But the time-fuse?” said Amber.
“Time-fuse—the time-fuse,” said Lord Lullworth. “Ah, that reminds me—well, I may as well get it over at once, Sir Creighton. The fact is that I—I have—well, I gave myself a time-fuse of six months to fall in love with your daughter, but the explosion has come a good deal sooner than I expected. She says that she thinks that she may come to think about me as I do of her, in about four months.”
“Oh, less than four months, now,” cried Amber. “It was four months half an hour ago. Half an hour of the time-fuse has burnt away. And it’s not the real Severn time-fuse, I know, for I’ve no confidence that the climax may not be reached at any time.”
“You are a pair of young fools,” said Sir Creighton. “And yet—well, I don’t know. You may be the two wisest people in the world.”
“Great Queen of Sheba! we can’t be so bad as all that,” said Lord Lull worth.