"You haven't such a thing as a match about you?"
"George, before you begin to smoke, turn round and look at me."
Mr Coventry's head was turned round the other way; he was blowing through the stem of his pipe.
"George!"
If the lady had been a gentleman we should have written that he put his arm about her waist.
"Thunder! my pipe won't draw!"
The gentleman sprang to his feet with startling suddenness; but the lady was equal to the occasion. Before he knew it she had taken him with both her hands, and drawn him on to her knee.
"You silly thing!"
While Mr Coventry was wondering if the skies had fallen, she had kissed him on the lips.
Just then the train reached Brighton.
Mr Coventry chartered a fly to the Steyne. He drew up at the house in which lived the little woman with the foot. The person who opened the door informed him that Miss Hardy was in. He rushed upstairs without waiting to be announced. The little woman was seated writing at a table. At his entrance she rose with a start--as well she might.
"Miss Hardy, I--I want to speak to you."
"Mr Coventry."
As the lady stood facing the gentleman she turned a little pale, or perhaps it was a curious effect of the lamplight shining in her face. As for the gentleman's complexion, any suggestion of pallor was ridiculous. A ripe tomato was the best comparison which could have been applied to him.
"I beg ten thousand pardons, but I--I've been with that Murphy woman in the train!"
The girl said nothing. Her big brown eyes were fixed upon her visitor's countenance. In them was a look of not unjustifiable inquiry.
"I--I daresay you think that I'm mad; but I'm not. The fact is, Miss Hardy, I've had a stroke of luck!"
"I am glad to hear it."
"Is that all?"
"What else would you have me say?"
The intensity of the gaze which the gentleman kept fixed upon the lady she must have found a little trying. All at once he went forward. He brought his hand down heavily on the little table at which she was standing.
"Dora, I love you!"
The remark was sudden. The girl for a moment was silent, as if she could scarcely believe her ears. Then a wave of vivid red went up all over her, so that it even dyed the roots of her hair. In her eyes were tears.
"Mr Coventry!"
"Dora, I love you!" If she had had eyes to see, which may be doubted, she might have seen that he was trembling. His words came from him like a flood. "I don't ask you to say that you love me; I know you can't; but I do ask you to say that one day you will try!"
The girl was trembling too.
"Mr Coventry, I--I cannot think you are in earnest."
"You know I am."
As she looked into his eyes--and she did look, as though there was fascination in his glance--she could scarcely doubt that at least he thought he was. She tried to smile; the effort was a failure.
"But it's--it's so absurd. You know nothing of me. We are strangers. You only saw me the day before yesterday for the first time in your life."
"What does that matter? I know a man who met a girl upon the Friday and married her upon the Monday."
"Absurd!"
"Some men would be able to do this sort of thing in style; I can't. I know that this sort of thing comes to a man once in his life, and then in an instant. I know that I love you; I know that there will never be another woman to me like you. Some men do not take long to find out these things, you see!"
There was a pause. Then she at last looked down.
"I thought you mentioned something about pecuniary complications."
"This morning I had a hint from a friend; it has brought me in a fortune! There will be enough to settle up with, and something over to start again. And, Dora, I can work."
"Mr Coventry, do you clearly understand that I am a nameless nobody, who has to give music lessons for a living?"
"I understand that you are the woman whom I love!"
She turned her back to him. She moved across the room; she stood trifling with the fringe of the curtains.
"This is the maddest thing of which ever yet I heard."
He could hear that her voice was trembling.
"You know, Dora, I'm not asking you to say at once that you will be my wife. I daren't, and that's the fact; but I'm asking you one day to try to say you will. I want something to keep me going. I want something to save me from that woman Murphy."
"I believe 'that woman Murphy,' as you politely term the lady, is at the bottom of the compliment--I suppose I must call it so--which you have paid to me."
There was a curious intonation in the voice from the curtains.
"She has been making love to me. I couldn't stand that when I loved you, Dora!" The gentleman was creeping round the table. "Say that you will try!"
"Suppose I do?"
"Dora!"
She would not let him stay. They parted, this queer pair! He dined, not at his hotel, but at a restaurant on the Front; dined well! When he left it was with that good digestion which waits on appetite. He walked as if he walked on air. He certainly had the gift of making history quickly.
When he reached the hotel, an acquaintance stopped him at the door.
"The great Sarah is here."
"The great who?"
"Sarah! Miss Freemantle! The five-times millionaire."
Mr Coventry looked a trifle bored.
"I'm not interested in the lady."
"The deuce you aren't! I am; and, by Jove, I wish she were in me!"
"I'm sorry for you. Come in and have a smoke."
As they crossed the hall, someone was coming down the stairs. The acquaintance drew Mr Coventry a little aside.
"Here she is!" Mr Coventry glanced up. "That's Miss Freemantle, the little woman in black. She's not a bad-looking little thing."
Mr Coventry looked at the lady referred to. It was Dora Hardy! As she descended the staircase, she leant on Mr Gainsford's arm. On the gentleman's other side was Mrs Murphy. As he saw her, she saw him. The young lady dropped the gentleman's arm. She ran down the stairs with her hand stretched out.
"Mr Coventry!"
"Dora!"
She laughed--and blushed. She turned to her companions.
"I don't think I need trouble you after all, Mr Coventry will see me home."
Before Mr Coventry had realised the situation he found himself in the open air with the lady. They turned, perhaps instinctively, towards Hove. It happened, that night, that that part of the Front was almost deserted. They walked some little distance before the gentleman recovered the use of his tongue.
"Dora--what--what cock-and-bull story was that fool telling me?"
"I really cannot say."
"He--he said that you--you were the great Sarah."
"So I am. Don't I look it?"
The gentleman stopped dead. He groaned.
"What--what a fool I've been!"
"You flatter me."
They resumed their promenade. Her hand stole towards his.
"George, are you sorry you said you loved me?"
"Dora, is--is it a joke?"
"No, George, it's not a joke, it's a romance."
"What--what have I done?"
"Made me happy. Isn't that enough to do?"
They stopped again, under a gas-lamp. It was fortunate so few persons were about.
"George, I have a confession to make. It was not you who fell in love with me, it was I who fell in love with you."
"Dora!"
"It is true. It was at Lady Brentford's ball. I saw you there for the first time. I fell in love with you--at sight. You see, when your turn came, you did not make up your mind more rapidly than I had done. It was a case of Goethe's mutual affinity! I saw you at other houses. I went to them on purpose to see you, but I took care never to be introduced to you."
"Why?"
"You know that I am the great Sarah, George. But when I found that you had come to the very hotel at which I was stopping, I formed a little plot. I changed my quarters, I dropped the Freemantle, and became Miss Hardy. Then--thenI thrust myself right into your path, and--and it was all soon over. Are you sorry, George?"
"Sorry! But--but about those notes?"
"You goose! They came from me. I knew you had been betting, and I knew that you had lost. I didn't want to lose you for a pound or two. But when you told me that you would not owe your salvation to a woman's money--not knowing who the woman was--why, then I sent you the 'tip' for Ceruleans instead. It was the best thing that I ever did, for it brought me you."
Mr Coventry took off his hat. He wiped his brow. He seemed to be turning matters over in his mind.
"I shall always call you Dora."
"Call me what you please."
"Darling!"
Miss Macleod passed the newspaper to her nephew. "Look at that," she said. She had her finger on an advertisement. He looked at it. This is what he read:--
"A clergyman, having a large family entirely dependent on him, is compelled to sacrifice a unique set of apostle spoons. Twelve large, twelve small, silver-gilt, in handsome case. Being in urgent want of money, a trifle will be accepted. Quite new. Would make a handsome present. Approval willingly. Letters only, Pomona Villa, Ladbroke Grove, W."
"What do you think of it?" inquired the lady.
The Rev. Alan smoothed the paper with his hand.
"Not much," he ventured to remark.
"Put on your hat and come with me. I'm going to buy them."
"My dear aunt!"
"They will do for a wedding present for Clara Leach. Other people can marry, if you can't."
The Rev. Alan sighed. He had been having a bad quarter of an hour. He was a little, freckled, sandy-haired, short-sighted man: one of those short-sighted men whose spectacles require continually settling in their place on the bridge of the nose. Such as he was, he was the only hope of an ancient race--the only male hope, that is.
The Macleods of Pittenquhair predated the first of the Scottish kings. Fortunately for themselves they postdated them as well.
For a considerable portion of their history, the members of that time-honoured family had been compelled, in the Sidney-Smithian phrase, to cultivate their greatness on a little oatmeal--for want of cash to enable them to indulge in any other form of cultivation. But in these latter days they had grown rich, owing to a fortunate matrimonial speculation with a Chicago young lady whose father had something to do with hogs. The lady's name was Biggins--Cornelia P. Biggins--the P. stood for Pollie, which was her mother's name, the "front" name came from history. The particular Macleod who had married her had been christened David. He devoted a considerable portion of his wife's fortune to buying up the ancient lands of the Macleods, in the neighbourhood of Pittenquhair and thereabouts. In his person he resolved that the ancient family glories should reappear--and more. But in these cases it is notorious that man only proposes--his wife never bore him a child. To make matters worse, he only outlived Mrs Macleod six months, so that he never had a decent chance to try his luck again.
David had a brother. Being a childless man, and desirous to restore the ancestral grandeur, one would have thought that he would have left his wealth to his brother, who wanted it if ever a man did yet. But, unfortunately, Alan was not only an irredeemable scamp--which might have been forgiven him, for David was by no means spotless--but also the two brothers hated each other with a truly enduring brotherly hatred. Nor had Alan improved matters by making public and unpleasant allusions to hogs and swine, not only on the occasion of David's marriage, but on many occasions afterwards. So it came to pass that when David was gathered to his fathers, his brother's name was not even mentioned in his will. All his wealth was left to his sister Janet.
In course of time Alan died abroad--very much abroad, and in more senses than one. Then, for the first time, Janet appeared upon the scene. She paid for her brother's funeral, and took his only child, a boy, back with her to England. The child's mother, who was nothing and nobody, had died--charitable people said, murdered by her husband--soon after her infant's birth. So his aunt was the only relation the youngster had.
Janet was a spinster. She had ideas of her own, and plenty of them. Her dominant idea was that in her nephew the family sun should rise again in splendour. But alas for the perversity of fate! The boy passed from a public school to the university, and from the university--after a struggle, in which he showed himself, in a lymphatic sort of way, as obstinate as one of Mrs David's father's pigs--into the church. This was bad enough for a son of his father, and the heir to Pittenquhair and ten thousand pounds a year, but what followed was infinitely worse. He became a ritualist of the ritualists--more Roman than the Romans--and the motto which he nailed to the mast was "Celibacy of the clergy"!
Her nephew's conduct almost drove Miss Janet mad. Two wives she might have forgiven--but none! In season and out of season she preached to him the duty of marriage; but what she regarded as a duty he regarded as a crime. She spoke of an heir for Pittenquhair; his thoughts were of something very different indeed. To speak of disinheriting him was to pander to his tastes. The income from his curacy was seventy pounds a year--and he lived on it. The money sent him by his aunt he surrendered to the Church and to the poor. What availed it to preach of disinheritance to a man who behaved like that?
And yet, in his own peculiar way, he was a good nephew to his aunt. He was the meekest, ugliest, shyest, awkwardest of men. His curacy was at a place on the Suffolk coast called Swaffham-on-Sea. From these wilds he was perpetually being summoned by his aunt to attend on her in her house in town. Although--possibly because he was that kind of man--these visits were anything but occasions of pleasure, he generally obeyed the summons. On the present occasion it was the second day of his stay under his aunt's hospitable roof in Cadogan Place. From the moment of his arrival she had continually reviled him. She had suggested as wives some two-score eligible young women, from earls' daughters to confectioners' assistants. She had arrived at that state of mind in which, if he would only marry, she would have welcomed a cook. In his awkward, stammering way, he had vetoed them all. Then she had rated him for an hour and three-quarters by the clock. Finally, exhausted by her efforts, she had caught up the paper in a rage. The Rev. Alan watched her in silence as she read it, fingering a little book of prayers he had in his waistcoat pocket.
All at once she had thrust the advertisement sheet of the paper underneath his nose, with the exclamation--
"Look at that!"
He looked at it, and had read the advertisement reproduced above.
"Don't sit there like a stuck dummy," observed Miss Macleod, whose English, in her moments of excitement, was more than peculiar. "Go and get the thing that you call a hat! Hat!" Miss Macleod sniffed; "if you had appeared in the streets inmydays with such a thing on your head, people would have thought that Guy Fawkes's day was come again."
The Rev. Alan was still studying the paper.
"But, my dear aunt, you are not seriously thinking of paying any attention to such an advertisement as that?"
"And why not? Isn't the man a clergyman?"
"I can't think that a priest--"
"A priest!" cried Miss Macleod, to whom the word was as a red rag to a bull. "Who spoke about a priest?"
The Rev. Alan went placidly on--
"--under any circumstances would advertise apostle spoons for sale."
"Who asks you what you think? Put on your hat and come with me."
"There is another point. The advertisement says 'letters only'; there is evidently an objection to a personal call."
As Miss Macleod grasped her nephew by the shoulder with a sufficiently muscular grasp, the Rev. Alan put on his hat and went with her.
They walked all the way--it is some distance from Cadogan Place to Ladbroke Grove. There was not much conversation--what there was was not of a particularly cheerful kind. The day was warm. The lady was tall, the gentleman short. Miss Macleod was a first-rate pedestrian; the Rev. Alan was not good at any kind of exercise. By the time they reached their journey's end he was in quite a pitiable plight. He was bedewed with perspiration, and agitated beyond measure by the rather better than four miles-an-hour pace which his aunt would persist in keeping up.
Pomona Villa proved to be a little house which stood back at some distance from the road. Just as they reached it the door was opened, shut again with a bang, and a gentleman came hastening out of the house as though he were pressed for time. He was a tall, portly person, with very red whiskers, and a complexion which was even more vivid than his whiskers. He was attired in what might be called recollections of clerical costume, and was without a hat. He appeared to be very much distressed either in body or in mind. Just as he laid his hand on the handle on one side of the gate, Miss Macleod grasped it on the other. Brought in this way unexpectedly face to face, he stared at the lady, and the lady stared at him.
"She's at it again!" he cried.
"Sir!" exclaimed Miss Macleod. She drew herself up.
"I beg your pardon." The gentleman on the other side of the gate produced a very dirty pocket-handkerchief, and mopped his head and face with it. "I thought it was a friend of mine."
"Is this Pomona Villa?" asked Miss Macleod.
The bare-headed man looked up and down, and round about, and seemed as though he were more than half disposed to say it wasn't. But as the name was painted over the top bar of the wooden gate, within twelve inches of the lady's nose, he perhaps deemed it wiser to dissemble.
"What--what name?" he stammered.
"I've come about the apostle spoons."
"The apostle spoons! Oh!" The bare-headed man looked blank. He added in a sort of stage aside--"Letters only."
"Perhaps you will allow me to enter."
Miss Macleod did not wait for the required permission, but pushed the gate open, and entered. Her nephew followed at her heels. The bare-headed man stared at the Rev. Alan, and the Rev. Alan at him--one seemed quite as confused as the other.
"Can I see the spoons?" continued Miss Macleod.
"Eh--the fact is--eh--owing to distressing family circumstances--eh--it is impossible--"
What was impossible will never be known, for at that moment the door was opened, and a woman appeared.
"If you please, mum, Miss Vesey says, will you walk in? She's upstairs."
Miss Macleod walked in, her nephew always at her heels. The bare-headed man stared after them, as though he did not understand this mode of procedure in the least.
"Up the stairs, first door to the right," continued the woman who had bade them enter. As, in accordance with these directions, Miss Macleod proceeded to mount the stairs, the woman, who still stood at the open door, addressed herself to the bare-headed man at the gate. Her words were sufficiently audible.
"You brute!" she said, and banged the door in his face.
Seemingly unconscious of there being anything peculiar about the house or its inhabitants, Miss Macleod strode up the stairs. The Rev. Alan, conscious for himself and his aunt as well, crept uncomfortably after. The first door on the right stood wide open. Miss Macleod unceremoniously entered the room. Her nephew followed sheepishly in the rear.
The room was a good-sized one, and was scantily furnished. One striking piece of furniture, however, it did contain, and that was a grand piano. At the moment of their entrance the instrument stood wide open, and at the keyboard was seated a young lady.
"I am Miss Vesey," she observed, without troubling herself to rise as the visitors entered.
Miss Macleod bowed. She appeared about to make some remark, possibly with reference to the apostle spoons; but before she could speak, Miss Vesey went on,--
"That is my father you saw outside--the Rev. George Vesey. He's a dipsomaniac."
Miss Macleod started, which, under the circumstances, was not unnatural. Her nephew stared with all his eyes and spectacles. Miss Vesey was a fine young woman, about nineteen years of age. The most prominent feature in her really intellectual countenance was a pair of large and radiant black eyes.
"I'm engaged in his cure," she added.
"I have called," remarked Miss Macleod, perhaps deeming it wiser to ignore the young lady's candid allusion to her father's weakness, "with reference to an advertisement about some apostle spoons."
Miss Vesey, still seated on the music-stool, clasped her hands behind her head.
"Oh, that's one of his swindles," she said.
"One of his swindles!" echoed Miss Macleod.
"He's agent for a Birmingham firm. He finds it a good dodge to put in advertisements like that. Each person who buys thinks she gets the only set he has to sell; but he sells dozens every week. It's drink has brought him to it. But I'm engaged in curing him all round. The worst of it is that when I begin to cure him, he runs away. He was just going to run away when you came to the gate."
"If what you say is correct," said Miss Macleod grimly, "I should say the case was incurable--save by the police."
"Ah, that's because you don't understand my means of cure: I'm a magician."
"A magician!"
There was a pause. Miss Macleod eyed Miss Vesey keenly, Miss Vesey returning the compliment by eyeing her.
Miss Macleod was a woman of the day. Openly expressing unbelief in all the faiths that are old, she was continually on the look-out for a faith that was new. She had tried spiritualism and theosophy. She had sworn by all sorts of rogues and humbugs--until she found them out to be rogues and humbugs, which, to her credit be it said, it did not take her long to do. Just at that moment she was without a fetish. So that when Miss Vesey calmly announced that she was a magician, she did not do what, for instance, that very much more weak-minded person than herself, her nephew, would have done--she did not promptly laugh her to scorn.
"What do you mean by saying you're a magician?" she inquired.
"I mean what I say. I have my magic here."
Miss Vesey laid her hand on the piano.
"I suppose you mean that you're a fine pianist."
"More than that. With my music I can do with men and women what I will. I can drive the desire for drink out of my father for days together; I can make him keep sober against his will."
Miss Macleod turned towards her nephew.
"This is my nephew. Exercise your power upon him."
"Aunt!" cried the Rev. Alan.
Miss Vesey laughed.
"Shall I?" she asked.
"You have my permission. You say you can do with men and women what you will. He will be a rich man one of these fine days. Make him marry you."
The curate's distress was piteous.
"Aunt! Have you any sense of shame?"
"Suppose I try," observed Miss Vesey, her face alive with laughter. "I'm sure I'm poor enough, and I'm already connected with the clergy."
"Aunt, I entreat you, come away. If you will not come, then I must go alone. I cannot stay to see the Church insulted."
Miss Macleod turned to Miss Vesey.
"Will you let him go?"
"Certainly not," laughed the young lady. "If only to pay him out for being so ungallant."
The Rev. Alan--literally--wrung his hands.
"This--this is intolerable. Aunt, it is impossible for me to stay. You--you'll find me there when you get home."
The Rev. Alan, in a state of quite indescribable confusion, turned towards the door. But before he could move a step, Miss Vesey struck a chord on the piano.
"Stay!" she said.
The curate seemed to hesitate for a moment, then turned to her again. He seemed to be under the impression that he owed an apology to the pianist. "I--I must apologise for--for my seeming rudeness. I know that my--my aunt only meant what she said as--as a joke; but, at the same time, my respect for my sacred office"--at this point the little man drew himself up--"compels me, after what has passed, to go."
Miss Vesey struck a second chord.
"Stay!" she said again.
Before the agitated believer in the propriety of the unmarried state for clergymen could say her yea or nay, she cast her spells--and her hands--upon the keyboard of the instrument, so that it burst out into a concourse of sweet sounds. The Rev. Alan was, in his way a born musician. The only dissipation he allowed himself was music. The soul of the mean-looking, wrong-headed little man was attuned to harmony. Good music had on him the effect which Orpheus with his lute had on more stubborn materials than curates--it bewitched him. Miss Vesey had not played ten seconds before he realised that here was a dispenser of the food which his soul loved--a mistress of melody. What it was she played he did not know--it seemed to him an improvisation. He stood listening--entranced. Suddenly the musician's mood changed. The notes of triumph ceased, and there came instead a strain of languorous music which set all the curate's pulses throbbing.
"Come here!"
Miss Vesey whispered. The curate settled his spectacles upon his nose. He looked around him as though he were not sure that he had heard aright. And the command was uttered in such half-tones that he might be excused for supposing that his ears had played him false.
"Come here!"
The command again. Again the Rev. Alan settled his spectacles upon his nose. He gazed at the musician as if still in doubt.
"I--I beg your pardon? Did you speak to me?"
"Come here!"
A third time the command--this time clearer and louder too. As if unconsciously he advanced towards the pianist, hat in one hand, handkerchief in another, his whole bearing eloquent of a state of mental indecision. He went quite close to her--so close that there would be no excuse for saying that he could not hear her if she whispered again.
Again the musician's theme was changed. The languorous melody faded. There came a succession of wild sounds, as of souls in pain. The curate's organisation was a sensitive one--the cries were almost more than he could bear.
"Pity me!"
The voice was corporal enough. It was Miss Vesey, once more indulging in a whisper. Again the curate was at a nonplus. Again he went through the mechanical action of settling his spectacles upon his nose.
"I--I beg your pardon?" It seemed to be a stereotyped form of words with him.
"Pity me! Pity me! Do!"
The words were a cry of anguish--quite as anguished as the music was. The Rev. Alan looked round the room, perhaps for succour and relief. He saw his aunt, but at that moment her face happened to be turned another way.
"If you need my pity, it is yours."
The words, like the lady's, were spoken, doubtless unintentionally, in a whisper.
"If you pity me, then help me too!"
"If I can, I--I will!"
"You promise?"
"Certainly."
Although the word was a tolerably bold one, it was by no means boldly spoken; probably that was owing to the state of confusion existing in the speaker's mind.
The theme was changed again. The piano ceased to wail. A tumult of sound came from it which was positively deafening. The effect was most bewildering, especially as it concerned the Rev. Alan. For in the midst of all the tumult he was conscious of these words being addressed to him by Miss Vesey.
"Help me with your love!"
The instant the words were spoken the tumult died away, there was the languorous strain again. The curate was speechless, which, all things considered, was perhaps excusable. An idea was taking root in his brain that the musician was mad, at least mad enough to be irresponsible for the words she used. If that were so, then, unlike the generality of lunatics, she had a curious aptitude for sticking to the point.
"Love me, or I die!"
"My--my dear young lady!" stammered the curate.
"You will be my murderer!"
The accent with which these words were spoken was indescribable, as indescribable as the music which accompanied them. It may be doubted if, as he heard them, it was not the Rev. Alan himself who was going mad. The heat and agitation brought on by the pace at which his aunt had marched him from Cadogan Place, the extraordinary manner of his reception at Pomona Villa, the still more extraordinary things which had happened to him since he had got inside; all these, put together, were quite enough to make him uncertain as to whether he were standing on his head or his heels. And then, for him, a staunch believer in the theory, and the practice, of the celibate priest, to have such language addressed to him, after five minutes' acquaintance, by a total stranger! and such a pianist! and a fine young woman! No wonder the Rev. Alan put his hand up to his head under the impression that that portion of his frame was leaving him.
"If you do not marry me," continued this extraordinary young woman, in tones which harrowed his heart--and yet which were not so harrowing as her music, by a very great deal, "I shall die before your eyes."
The Rev. Alan still had his hand to his head. He looked round him with bewildered, short-sighted eyes. Curiously enough his aunt still had her face turned in the opposite direction.
"I--I'm sure--" he stammered.
"Of what?"
"I--I shall be happy--"
"Happy!"
The music ceased, and that for the sufficiently good reason that the pianist rose from her seat and flung her arms about the curate's neck. He said something, but what it was was lost in the ample expanses of Miss Vesey's breast.
"Madam," she cried, addressing Miss Macleod, "your nephew has promised to marry me! He has said that he will be happy."
Miss Macleod, who did not happen just then to be looking in the opposite direction, smiled grimly. Owing to the peculiarity of her physical configuration everything about her was grim--even her smile.
"I am glad to hear it," she observed.
The Rev. Alan struggled himself free from the lady's powerful embrace. His distress was tragic in its intensity.
"This--this is some extraordinary--"
"Happiness!" cried the lady, and again she clasped him in her arms. "Your happiness is mine! It has been my life-long dream to be married to a clergyman; is not my father one already?"
At that moment the father referred to entered the room.
"What's this?" he cried, as a father naturally would cry on seeing his daughter with a stranger in her arms.
The young lady, however, promptly relieved his mind.
"Father, let me present to you my future husband."
"I--I do protest," screamed the frenzied curate.
"You do protest, sir! What do you protest?" The father's voice was terrible, so was his manner. Apparently all his paternal instincts had not been destroyed by dipsomania. "You come to this house, sir, a perfect stranger, sir; you assault my daughter, sir; you take her in your arms."
This was, perhaps, strictly speaking, a perversion of the truth; but at this moment Miss Macleod offered her interposition.
"You need be under no concern. My nephew is a gentleman. I was a witness of his proposal. If he behaves as a dastard to your daughter, I will deliver him to your righteous vengeance then. In the meantime, perhaps you and your daughter will accompany us home to luncheon. We can arrange the preliminaries of the marriage during the course of the meal."
"Miss Bayley, I am in a position of the extremest difficulty."
Miss Bayley was not only the Rev. Alan Macleod's parishioner; she was, so to speak, his co-curate, at Swaffham-on-Sea. That delightful village boasted of a rector who found that the local air did not agree with him, so he spent most of his time in the South of France. The Rev. Alan was, therefore, to all intents and purposes, the head and front of all Church matters in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately the greater part of the population--what there was of it--was dissenting, and that part of it which was not dissenting was even worse--it was Episcopalian!--the lowest of the low! The curate, therefore, found himself in the position of the sower who sows his seed in barren soil. His congregation not unfrequently consisted of two--the verger and Miss Bayley.
The curate had returned to Swaffham, and it was this faithful feminine flower of his flock he was addressing now.
"Oh, Mr Macleod, I am so sorry! Can I help you? Is it spiritual?"
The curate shook his head. He had not fallen quite so low as that. The idea of his coming to a person in petticoats for help in spiritual matters struck him as too absurd. He could scarcely excuse Miss Bayley.
"Can you think that I, your priest, should come to learn of you?"
Miss Bayley looked down.
"I was wrong," she murmured. She told herself that she ought to have remembered that none of the curates ever was half so cocksure about that kind of thing as the Rev. Alan. But then, she was so anxious to lend him a hand in anything.
"An error owned is half atoned."
He meant this for a little pleasantry--but he was an awkward man, even when he trifled. He hesitated. He was conscious that he had come for assistance in a matter quite as delicate as anything which appertained to Church government.
"Miss Bayley." He cleared his throat. "I--I have an aunt." The abashed Miss Bayley signified that she had heard him mention that fact before--which she had, about half a dozen times a day. "She is not one of us." Miss Bayley sighed; she felt that she was expected to sigh. "She is of the world worldly. Her thoughts are fixed on temporalities. Being possessed of great riches, to which I am the natural heir, the continual desire of her life is that I--I should marry."
The Rev. Alan stammered a little at the end. Miss Bayley perceptibly started. That was the continual desire of her life too. She wondered if it was going to be gratified at last.
"That you should marry? Oh, Mr Macleod!"
"I need not tell you that, in such a matter, her desire would not weigh with me in the least. The true priest is celibate."
Miss Bayley's heart fluttered--she did not go with him so far as that.
"But--if she were to disinherit you?"
"Do you know me so little as that? Nothing would please me better than that she should."
He clasped his hands in a kind of ecstasy. The lady, whose father was the parish doctor, and who knew what it was to have to dress on nothing a year, was almost tempted to think that the curate was a fool. But as she could scarcely express the thought aloud, she was wise enough to hold her peace. The gentleman went on rather awkwardly. The travelling was getting difficult, in fact.
"To--eh--such lengths has--eh--she--she--allowed her desire to--eh--carry her, that--eh--it--it has resulted in--eh--involving me in--eh--complications of an excessively disagreeable kind."
Miss Bayley's imagination realised the worst at once.
"Are you engaged?" she cried.
"She--she says I am."
"She says you are!" The lady was on the verge of tears--the blow was sudden. "Mr Macleod, I have something which I have to do upstairs."
She felt that if she stayed in the room she might disgrace herself by crying before his face. The Rev. Alan was dismayed at the idea of her leaving him.
"Miss Bayley, I do entreat you not to go. You do not understand me in the least.Ido not say I am engaged; quite--quite the other way."
"Oh, Mr Macleod!"
The affair might have its comic side for a looker-on, but it was tragic enough for her. If she did not get this man, whom could she get? At Swaffham-on-Sea eligible bachelors were as rare as snow in summer. Besides--women attach themselves to poodle dogs!--she really liked the man.
The curate continued:
"The--the circumstances really are, I think, the most extraordinary I ever heard of. I should be almost induced to believe that it had all happened in a dream were it not for a letter that I have in my pocket."
"From whom is the letter?"
"From--from Miss Vesey."
"Is that the lady you are engaged to?"
"En--engaged to? I hadn't made her acquaintance ten minutes before she said I had proposed to her."
"She would not have said so unless you had."
"Miss Bayley, do you not know me better than that? Nothing was further from my mind! The proposal came from her."
"I have heard of women proposing to men! And I suppose you accepted her?" She was strongly tempted to add, "You are imbecile enough for anything!" But even in that hour of her trial she refrained.
"I can only assure you that I had no such intention in any words. I may have used words which came from me unawares, owing to the state of confusion I was in on receiving such a proposition from a total stranger."
Miss Bayley turned away. She thought she saw exactly how it was.
"I can only offer you my congratulations. I do not know why you enter into all these details. When is the marriage to be?"
"Marriage!"
"Yes, marriage! I hope you will send me a piece of cake! Oh, Mr Macleod, I never thought you would behave to me like this!"
Miss Bayley fairly succumbed. She buried her face in her hands and ran crying from the room. Mr Macleod, left behind, was thunderstruck. He realised what any man, with even a little knowledge of the world, would have seen from the first.
"She loves me! What have I done?" He sank in a chair and he too buried his face in his hands. Presently he rose again. "Poor, pure soul! She is the best woman in the world!" He twisted his hands together with a nervousness which was peculiarly his. "I have done wrong in the sight of God and man!"
How he got out of the house he never knew; but he did get out, and through the front door too. He set off walking towards the rectory, where in the absence of the rector, he lived rent free. He had not gone twenty yards from the house when a gloved hand slapped him smartly on the shoulder.
"Alan!"
He turned. There was Miss Vesey and her father. He could hardly believe that it was, but it was. The lady was brilliantly attired, perhaps as a set-off to her father. That worthy gentleman resembled nothing so much as what, in former days, they would have called a broken-down hedge parson. He was evidently meant for a clergyman, sartorially. That is, the conception was clear enough, it was the result which was unsatisfactory.
"Your hand, my son!"
He held out his hand after the manner of the fathers in old comedy. But unfortunately he did not wait for the curate to give him his hand, he seized it, and shook it up and down--pump-handle fashion. And while the father was engaged in this edifying performance, the daughter flung her arms about the curate's neck.
"My beloved!" she cried.
If there was any there to behold, they beheld what they had never seen before--the curate embraced as a curate never had been embraced in public, at Swaffham-on-Sea.
"Let me go!" he stammered.
And in due time the lady let him go. Under the circumstances he kept his presence of mind very well--for him.
"You--you'll find the rectory about a quarter of a mile in front of you, just round the bend in the road. If--if you'll excuse me, I have a most important visit I must make."
Miss Vesey's father slapped him heartily--too heartily!--upon the back, again after the fashion of the comedy fathers.
"Don't put yourself out for us, my boy! Don't neglect your duties, as is too often the case with the young. Tell us where the bottles are, and we'll make ourselves snug till you come in."
The curate did not tell them where the bottles were; in fact, there was only a solitary bottle of cod-liver oil in the house, and probably the speaker's thoughts did not incline that way; but they went on to the rectory alone. Miss Vesey waved her parasol, and kissed her glove to him so long as she was in sight. He stood watching them till they were round the bend in the road, then he re-entered the doctor's house.
This time he passed through the back door, straight into the kitchen. "Lauk, sir!" cried the maid-of-all-work; "who'd a thought of seeing you?"
The Rev. Alan addressed her in a fever of excitement.
"Tell Miss Ellen I must speak to her at once."
He went into the parlour, and the maid-of-all-work went upstairs. Presently she returned with a message.
"If you please, sir, Miss Ellen's compliments, and she's got a headache."
Mr Macleod was pacing up and down the room, very much in the manner of the carnivora about feeding time at the Zoo.
"A headache!"
He took his note-book from his pocket. Tearing out a page he scribbled on it these two or three strongly-worded lines.