Making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute shadow watching all.
“Pooh! the girl is happy enough!”
Mr. Glynde jerked his newspaper up and read an advertisement of steamships about to depart to the West Coast of Africa. His wife—engaged in cutting out a scarlet flannel garment of diminutive proportions (an operation which she made a point of performing on the study table)—gave two gentle snips and ceased her occupation.
She looked at the back of her husband's head, where the hair was getting a little thin, and said nothing. No one argued with the Reverend Thomas Glynde.
“The girl is happy enough,” he repeated, seeking contradiction. There are times when an autocrat would very much like to be argued with.
“She is always lively and gay,” he continued defiantly.
“Too gay,” Mrs. Glynde whispered to the scissors, with a flash of the only wisdom which Heaven gives away, and it is not given to all mothers.
The winter had closed over Stagholme, the isolating, distance-making winter of English country life, wherein each house is thrown upon its own resource, and the peaceful are at rest because their neighbours cannot get at them.
Dora was out. She was out a good deal now; exceedingly busy in good works of a different type from those affected by Sister Cecilia. The winter air seemed to invigorate her, and she tramped miles with a can of soup or an infant's flannel wrapper. And always when she came in she was gay, as her father described it. She gave amusing descriptions of her visits among the cottagers, retailed little quaint conceits such as drop from rustic lips declared unto them by their fathers from the old time before them, and in it all she displayed a keen insight into human nature. At times she was brilliant; which her father noticed with grave approval, ignorant or heedless of the fact that brilliancy means friction. Happy people are not brilliant.
She suddenly developed a taste for politics, and read the newspaper with a keen interest. Several half-forgotten duties were revived, and their performance became a matter of principle.
Mr. Glynde did not notice these subtle changes. Old men are generally selfish, more so, if possible, than young ones, and Mr. Glynde was eminently so. He only saw other people in relationship to himself. He looked at them through himself.
Mrs. Glynde had taken the opportunity of a “cutting out” to mention that she thought a change would do Dora good. During the three months that had elapsed since the announcement of Jem's death, Stagholme had necessarily been a somewhat dull abode. The winter had not come on well, but in fits and starts, with trying winds and much rain. She said these things while she cut into her roll of red flannel—the scissors seemed to give her courage.
The Rector of Stagholme had awful visions of a furnished house at Brighton or a crammed hotel on the Riviera.
“Where do you want to go to?” he inquired, with a gruffness which meant less than it conveyed.
“To town, dear.”
Now Mr. Glynde loved London.
In the meantime Dora was standing at the gate of the gamekeeper's little cottage-garden which adjoined the orchard at Stagholme. There were certain women with whom Sister Cecilia did not “get on,” and these were by tacit understanding relegated to Dora. This same inability to “get on” was one of the crosses which Sister Cecilia carried in a magnified condition through life. The gamekeeper's wife was one of the failures—a hardy mother of several hardy little embryo gamekeepers, who held that she knew her own business of motherhood best, and intimated as much to Sister Cecilia.
Dora went there very frequently, and the pathos of her way with little children is one of the things which cannot be touched upon here. It is possible that she went there because the cottage was near the Holme, and the way took her past the great house. She had never laid aside her old girlish habit of passing through the rooms, unannounced, to exchange a few words with Mrs. Agar. It was not that she held that lady in great veneration or respect; but in the country people learn to take their neighbours as they are, remembering that they are neighbours.
She went through the orchard and in at the side-door, which stood always open to the turn of the handle. She had fallen into a singular habit of always using this entrance, and of glancing as she passed at the stick-rack, where a rough mountain-ash was wont to stand—a stick which Jem had cut, while she stood by, years before. There was, perhaps, something characteristically suggestive of Jem in this stick—something strong and simple. She was not the person to indulge in sentimental thoughts; she could not afford to do that, Indeed, she often looked into the stick-rack without thinking, but she never passed it without looking.
In the library she found Mrs. Agar, talking to her maid, who withdrew with a pinched salutation. Mrs. Agar was one of those unfortunate women who level all ranks in their sore need of a listener. The expression of her face was decidedly lachrymose.
“Poor Arthur!” she exclaimed. “Dora, dear, something so dreadful has happened!”
“Yes,” returned Dora, with the indifference of one who has tasted of the worst.
“Poor Arthur has received Jem's papers and diaries and things, and I can see from his letter that it has quite upset him. He is so sympathetic, you know.”
Dora had turned quite away. She usually carried a stick in her country rambles, and it seemed suddenly to have suggested itself to her to lay this on a table near the door. The stick fell off again, and some moments elapsed while she picked it up from the floor. When she turned, her veil had slipped from the brim of her hat down over her face.
“But it could not have been a surprise to him,” she said quietly. “He must have known that there would probably be something of the sort sent home.”
“Yes, yes. But you know, dear, how keenly he feels everything. These highly-strung, artistic temperaments—but I need not tell you; you know Arthur almost as well as I do.”
Dora answered nothing. It was not the first time that Mrs. Agar had charged some remark with that weight of significance which, in her vulgar-minded subtlety, she considered delicate and exceptionally clever. And each time that Dora heard it she was conscious of a vague discomfort, as at the approach of some danger, of some interference in her life which would be too strong for her to resist. It was one of those mean feminine thrusts to parry which is to acknowledge, to ignore is to admit fear.
“Has he sent them on to you?” she asked after a little pause, resisting only by a great effort the temptation to look towards the writing-table.
“Yes,” was the reply. “It appears that they have been in his possession for some time. He kept them back for some reason—I cannot think why.”
Providence is sometimes unexpectedly kind. Had Mrs. Agar been a different woman, had she, perhaps, been a better woman, less aggravating, more discreet, more honourable, she would not have done at this moment precisely that which Dora was silently praying that she would do.
“Here,” continued the mistress of Stagholme, going to the writing-table, “is his diary; perhaps you would care to look through it? Poor Jem! I am afraid it will not be very interesting.”
Dora took the little dark-coloured book almost indifferently.
“Thanks,” she said. “It was always an effort to him to write the very shortest letter, was it not? Papa would like to see it, I know, if I may show it to him.”
Being rather taller than Mrs. Agar, she could see over that lady's shoulder as she stood turning over with some curiosity a score or so of bundles evidently containing letters.
“These,” said Mrs. Agar, “seem to be letters; probably our letters to him. Shall we burn them?”
Dora reflected for a moment. She knew that many of the bundles must contain letters from herself to Jem—letters which could have been read from the housetops without conveying anything to the populace. But some of them—almost between the lines—had been intended to convey, and had conveyed, something to Jem. She reflected—without anger, as women do on such matters—that if curiosity moved her, Mrs. Agar would not scruple to open all these letters and read them. The packets had evidently not been opened, and a momentary feeling of grateful recognition of Arthur's gentlemanly honour passed through her mind. There was about the faded papers that dim, mysterious odour which ever clings to packages that have been packed in India.
“Yes,” she said, “let us burn them.”
Mrs. Agar seemed to hesitate for a moment, but it was only for effect. She dreaded the packages, for one of them might contain the will which haunted her.
And so these two women, so very different, from such very different motives, carried the letters to the fire, and there they burnt them. In the curling flames Dora saw her own handwriting. She could not understand the suppressed excitement of Mrs. Agar's manner; she only knew that the mistress of Stagholme seemed to be afraid of looking at the burning papers.
When all was consumed both women heaved a sigh of relief.
“There,” said Mrs. Agar, “I am glad we have been able to save poor Arthur that. These things are so very painful.”
Dora looked rather as if she could not understand why the painful things of life should be harder for Arthur to bear than for other people. But she said nothing.
“He will be glad,” continued Mrs. Agar, “to hear that it was you who helped me. I know he would rather that it had been you than any one.”
All this with the horrid meaning, the sly significance, of her kind; for there are women for whom there is absolutely nothing sacred in the whole gamut of human feelings. There are women who will talk of things upon which the lips of even the most depraved men are silent.
And with it there was nothing that Dora could take exception to—nothing that she could answer without running the risk of bringing upon herself questions to which she had no reply.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “it is done now, so we can dismiss it from our minds. Of course you know that mother is getting out of hand altogether. I cannot hold her in. Her plans are simply kittenish. She wants to take a flat in town for two months, to take Boulton and one maid, to hire a cook, and to go generally to the bad.”
Mrs. Agar's eyes glistened. She liked to hear of other people seeking excitement because she felt more justified in doing so herself.
“Well, I think she is very sensible. I am sure you all want a change. I feel I do. It is so depressing here all alone with one's thoughts. Sister Cecilia was just saying the other day that I ought to go away to Brighton or somewhere—that I owed it to Arthur.”
“I don't see why you should not pay it to yourself, whoever you owe it to,” said Dora. “This is an age of going away for changes. Life is like old Martin's trousers—so patched up with changes that the original pattern has disappeared.”
“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Agar, with a vague laugh. In conversation with Dora she invariably felt clumsy and unable to protect herself, like a stout fencer conscious of many vulnerable outlying points. She did not understand this girl, and never knew which was carte and which tierce. “So you are going away?”
“I expect so. Mother usually carries through her little schemes, and in his inward soul papa is rather a fast old gentleman. He loves the pavement, and—I don't object to the shops myself.”
“Then you will like it?”
“Oh yes!” replied Dora, rising to go. “Like Mr. Martin, I am not sure that the old pattern is worth preserving.”
“I wish I could go with you,” said Mrs. Agar, holding up her cheek in an absent way for the farewell kiss; “I have not been to town for ages.”
“Last week,” amended Dora mentally.
“Why not come too?” she said aloud, gathering together stick, basket, and gloves.
“There is Arthur,” replied the lady. “I am afraid he will not care to leave home just now, after so great a blow.”
“All the more reason why he should go to town for a little and forget—himself.”
Mrs. Agar smiled sadly and waited for further persuasion. She had fully made up her mind to go to Brighton, but was anxious first that the whole parish should press her to do so against her will.
“It will be very nice,” continued Dora, “to have you to help me to keep my flighty progenitors in order. Now Imustgo.”
With a nod and a light laugh she closed the library door behind her, having apparently forgotten the sadder events of the visit. But in her basket she had the diary.
“And, of course, you know every one in the room?” Dora was saying to her cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into “God bless the Prince of Wales.”
“Good gracious, no!” Miss Mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up to curtsey to the Royal party.
It was the great artisticsoiréeof the year, and crowds of nobodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
“Of course,” said Dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of the Welsh air had been suppressed “by desire,” “they may be very great swells; I have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not look it.”
Miss Mazerod looked round critically.
“Some of them,” she said, “are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big bills in high places. Others are actresses—very great actresses off the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress 'pour se faire photographier.'”
“And this is the cream of London society?” said Dora, looking round her with considerable amusement.
“Society,” returned her cousin, “is not allowed to stand for cream now. It is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets hopelessly mixed up with the cream. That young man who is now talking to the actress person is not what he looks. He is, as a matter of fact, the scion of a noble house, who models in clay atrociously.”
“And the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?”
“One of his models.”
“Of clay?”
“Essentially so.”
And Miss Mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. Hers was not the bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more suggestive. It was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
“Who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?” asked Dora.
“My dear! That is one of the great lady artists of the age. She lectures to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over tiger-lilies. Her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat—I imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. She objects to backbone.”
Miss Mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
“Then,” said Dora, “I feel quite consoled about my sketches.”
For the first time Miss Mazerod looked serious.
“Dora,” she said, “I often wonder whether it would be profane to mention in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul. There are lots of women like that in the world, especially in London. They pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in their hearts that they are inferior to women. For they have not something that women ought to have—No, Dolly, no brown studies here; you must not dream here!”
Dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. It was the face of a man—brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long drooping nose.
“Who isthatman?” she inquired at once. “Now, he is quite different from the rest. He is about the only person who is not furtively finding out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting.”
“Yes, that is a man with a purpose.”
“What purpose?” inquired Dora.
“I don't know; I shouldn't think any one knows.”
“Heknows,” suggested Dora.
“Yes,heknows.”
Miss Mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure expression on lips shaped for happiness. A dark young man was elbowing his way through the mixed crowd towards them.
“What is his name?” asked Dora, who was still looking at the man with a purpose.
“General Seymour Michael.”
“The Indian man?”
“Yes.”
There was a little pause, during which Miss Mazerod glanced in the direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with a purple dress and a depressed daughter.
“I should like to know him,” said Dora.
“Nothing easier,” replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. “I know him quite well.”
“He is looking at you now.”
Miss Mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too young to be stately; one of those bows that say “Come here.”
At this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with Dora, slowly with Miss Mazerod.
“Jack,” said that young lady, “I have just beamed on General Michael, who is behind you. I want to introduce him to Dora.”
Jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with alacrity.
Seymour Michael came forward with his pleasant smile. He certainly was one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect which stamps the successful soldier.
“When did you come back to England?” inquired Edith Mazerod, whose father had worked with this man in India.
“I—oh! I have been home six months,” he replied, shaking hands with a subtleempressemantwhich was more effective than words.
“On leave?”
“No. Laid on the shelf.”
He stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work in him yet.
Edith Mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
“Dora,” she said, “may I introduce General Michael? My cousin.”
She rose, and Seymour Michael prepared to take the vacant seat. The youth called Jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to decipher his meaning she forgot to mention Dora's name.
“You will be sorry for this,” said Seymour Michael, sitting down. “You will not thank your cousin.”
“Why?” inquired Dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a brown face and wore his hair cut short.
“Because,” he replied, “I am hopelessly new to this work.”
“So am I,” replied Dora; “I don't even know what pictures to look at and what to ignore. So I dare not look at the walls at all.”
“That is precisely my position, only I am worse. You know how to behave in polite circles; I don't. You have a slightly tired look, as if this sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony.”
“Have I? I am sorry for that.”
“No, there is no reason to be sorry. They all have it.”
“But,” protested Dora, “I am not one of them. I am only aping the Romans.”
“You do it well; I shall study your method. You do it better than Edith Mazerod.”
“Edith is young—hopelessly, enviably young. Do you know them well?”
“Yes, I knew them in India.”
“Of course; I forgot.”
He turned and looked at her sharply. Sometimes his own reputation, far from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
It was Seymour Michael who spoke first. True to his mixed blood, he sought to make himself safe.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but Edith Mazerod did not mention your name; may I ask it?”
“Dora Glynde!”
She saw him start. She saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in another man she would have set down to fear.
“Miss Dora Glynde,” he repeated; and the expression of his face was so serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
“When I was younger and shyer,” he said, with a singular haste, “I was afraid to ask a lady her name when I did not catch it, and—and I frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so.”
She recollected it all afterwards—every word, every pause. But then, as so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance to every detail.
“Are you staying with the Mazerods?” he asked.
“Yes, I am being shown life. I am doing a season. To-night is part of my education. To-morrow, I believe, we go to Hurlingham; the next day to a charity bazaar, and so on. I believe I am getting on very well. Aunt Mary is pleased with me. But I still stare about me, and show visible disappointment when I am presented to a literary celebrity or some other person of newspaper renown.”
“Celebrities in the flesharedisappointing.”
“Not only that, but I find that many of them are just a little common. Not quite what we in the country call gentlemen.”
“Ah! Miss Glynde, you forget that Art rises superior to class distinctions.”
“Yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. I think you are to be congratulated. In your profession there are fewer persons 'superior to class distinction.'”
This was a subject which Seymour Michael dreaded. He was ignorant of how much Dora might know. He had suspected from the first that Jem Agar's desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. He disliked Edith Mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as incomprehensible as it was suspicious. Dora he rather feared without knowing why.
“I suppose you know India well?” she said, looking straight in front of her.
“Too well,” was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
He was right. At that moment Dora might have been one of thesehabituéesof rout and ballroom. She was very pale and looked tired out.
“I went out there thirty years ago,” he continued, “into the Mutiny. From that time to this India has been killing my friends.”
There was a little pause. She knew that in the natural course of events it was almost certain that this man knew Jem personally. It would have been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
For a second Seymour Michael hovered on the brink. His lips almost framed the name. Good almost triumphed over evil.
And the girl sitting there—broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only women can be—never knew how near she was. Sometimes it seems as if the cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or spoken merely to further a Providential experiment.
“Yes,” said Michael, “I hate India.”
And the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. Seymour Michael had kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was spoken. Who can tell? We are offered chances—we are, if you will, the puppets of an experiment—and surely there must be a moment which decides.
Dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. She had led him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him step back. She did not dare to lead him to it again.
It was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another friend.
The introduction brought about by Miss Mazerod did not seem to have been an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing the hope of meeting again. And yet Dora liked him, for he was strong and purposeful, such as she would have had all men. She wanted to know more of him. She wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she knew to be his.
Seymour Michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less disquieting by reason of its vagueness. He had a nervous sensation of being surrounded by something—something in the nature of a chain, piecing itself together, link by link—something that was slowly closing in upon him.
It is not your deep person who succeeds in carrying out a set purpose, but one who is just profound enough to be fathomed of the multitude. For, after all, the multitude is ready enough to help, in a casual, parenthetic way, in the furtherance of a design; and a little depth, serving to flatter that vanity which taketh delight in a sense of superior perspicacity, only adds to the zest. There are plenty of people ready to pull on a rope or shove at a wheel, but there are more eager to do so if they are offered the direction of affairs.
Mrs. Glynde was one of those easily-fathomed persons who often succeed in their designs by the very transparency of their method. She had come to London with the purpose of leaving Dora there under the care of her sister Lady Mazerod, and before she had talked to that amiable widow for half an hour the design was as apparent as if it had been spoken.
In due course Dora and Miss Mazerod renewed a childish love, and at the end of April Mr. And Mrs. Glynde went back to Stagholme alone. It is probable that neither Mrs. Glynde nor Providence could have chosen a better companion for Dora at this time than Edith Mazerod. There was a breezy simplicity about this young lady's view of life which seemed to have the power of simplifying life itself. There are some people like this to whom is vouchsafed a limited comprehension of evil and an unlimited belief in good. A very shrewd author, who is, perhaps, not so much read to-day as he ought to be, said that “to the pure all things are pure.” He often said less than he meant. For he knew as well as we do that the pure-minded are just so many moral filters who clear the atmosphere and take no harm themselves.
Dora Glynde required some one like this; for she had, as the French say, “found herself.” The little world of Stagholme—the world of this Record—was intensely human. There was nobody very good in it and nobody very bad. Jem, with that quicker perception of evil which is wisely included in the mental outfit of men, had warned her against Sister Cecilia. And she had begun to understand his meaning now. Mrs. Agar she had found out for herself. Her father she respected and loved, but she had reached that age wherein we discover that father and mother are but as other men and women. Her mother she loved with that half-patronising affection which is found where a daughter is mentally superior.
The only person whom she had ever really respected and looked up to without reserve was Jem.
Altogether life was too complicated, subtle, difficult, hopeless, when Edith Mazerod came into it, and by her presence seemed to clear the atmosphere of daily existence.
At first the constant round of visiting and gaiety was a supreme effort; then came tolerance, and finally that business-like acceptance which is mistaken by many for enjoyment. The human machine is not constructed to go always at high pressure, either in happiness or in misery. We cannot exist all day and all night with a living care on our shoulders—the greatest misery slips off-sometimes. With men it can be lubricated by hard work, and likewise by alcohol, but the latter method is not always to be advised. With women there is much consolation to be extracted from a new dress or several new dresses and a hat. Even a new pair of gloves may help a breaking heart, and a glass of bitter beer taken at the right moment (with or without faith) has power to change a man's view of life.
So Dora, who had at no time been tragic, began to find that Academysoiréesand similar entertainments assisted her in preserving towards the world that attitude which she had elected to assume. And if there be any who blame her, they are at liberty to do so. It is not worth while to pause for the purpose of writing—on the ground or elsewhere—for their edification.
Only one such alleviation did she repent of in after life. The day after the Academysoiréethe Mazerods took her to Hurlingham. And Hurlingham became one of the pages of her life which she would have wished to tear completely out.
When they drove in through the simple gateway and round by the winding drive, it was evident that a great afternoon was to be expected. The blue-and-white club flag fluttered over a pavilion crammed from roof to terrace. The teams were already out in their bright colours, curveting about, each with a practice ball, on their stiff little ponies, moving with that singular cramped action only seen on the polo ground.
It was one of those brilliant days in early May when only gardeners, grumbling, talk or think of rain. A few fleecy white clouds seemed painted. So motionless were they, on the sky, reproducing the Hurlingham colours far above the ground. A gentle breeze coming up from the river brought with it the odour of lilac and budding things.
The chairs were crowded with a well-dressed throng, the larger majority of which seemed to be unaware that polo was the object of the afternoon.
The Mazerods and Dora had scarcely taken chairs when Arthur Agar presented himself. His tailor had apparently told him that after a lapse of six months it was permissible to assume habiliments of a slightly resigned tenour. His grey suit was one of the most elegant on the ground, his Suède gloves fitted perfectly, his tie was unique. And Arthur Agar was as happy as the best-dressed girl there.
The reception accorded him was not exactly enthusiastic. Having in view the fact that the young man called Jack was entirely satisfactory, Lady Mazerod treated all other young men with indifference. Edith despised Arthur Agar because Jack was athletic in his tendencies; and Dora was sorry to see him, because she had not answered his three last letters. There were also numerous small but expensive presents for which she had failed to tender thanks.
Unfortunately the young man called Jack turned up at tea-time, carrying one of the heavy chairs, which never fail to spoil the gloves of some of us, with unconscious ease. Owing to the activity and enterprise of this young gentleman, tea was soon procured, and consequently despatched before the interval was over and before the band had wet its whistle with something of a different nature from that in vogue on the lawn. A stroll through the gardens was proposed, and Lady Mazerod sent the young people off alone. There was no choice; but Dora had probably no thought of making a choice, had such been offered to her. She, like many another young lady, erred in placing too great a confidence in her own powers of staving things off.
There was no doubt whatever about Edith and the energetic John. They led the way round by the river path and the tennis-courts with a sublime disregard for the eye of the multitude, leaving Dora and Arthur to follow at such speed as their discretion might dictate.
Before they had left the tennis-lawn Arthur plunged. It may have been the desperation of diffidence, or perhaps that the new grey suit and the unique tie lent him confidence. One sees a young lady completely carried off her mental status by the success of a dress or the absence of a dreaded competitor, and Arthur Agar had enough of the woman in him to give way to this dangerous vertigo.
“Dora,” he said, “you have not answered my last three letters.”
“No,” she replied, “because they struck me as a little ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous!” he repeated, with such sincere dismay that she was moved to compassion. “Ridiculous, Dora, why?”
His horror-struck, almost tearful voice gave her a pang of self-reproach, as if she had struck some defenceless dumb animal.
“Well, there were things in them that I did not understand.”
“But I could make you understand them,” he said, with a sudden self-assertion which startled her. The weakest man is, after all, a man—so far as women are concerned.
“I think you had better not,” she said, hurrying her steps.
But he refused to alter his pace, and he disregarded her warning.
“They meant,” he said, “that I wanted you to know that I love you.”
There was a little pause. Dora was struck dumb by a chill sense of foreboding. It was like a momentary glance into a future full of trouble.
“I am sorry,” she said, “for that. I hope—that you may find that it is a mistake.”
“But it is not a mistake. I don't see why it should be one.”
Dora paused. She was afraid to strike. She did not know yet that it is less cruel to be cruel at once.
“It is best to look at these things practically,” she said. “And if we look at it practically we shall find that you and I are not at all likely to be happy together.”
“However I look at it, I only see that I should never be happy without you.”
“Then, Arthur, you are not looking at it practically.”
“No, and I don't want to,” he replied doggedly.
“That is a mistake. A little bit of life may not be practical, but all the rest of it is; and for the gratification of that little bit, there is all the rest to be lived through.”
Arthur looked puzzled. He rearranged the orchid in his coat before replying. He had found time to think of the orchid.
“I don't understand all that,” he said. “I only know that I love you, and that I should be miserable without you. Besides, if that little bit is love—I suppose you admit there is such a thing as love?”
Dora winced. She was looking through the trees across the peaceful evening river.
“Yes,” she answered gently. “I suppose so.”
Arthur Agar had been brought up in an atmosphere of futile discussion, but he had never wanted anything in vain. There are women—fools—who dare to bring up children thus in a world where wanting in vain is the chief characteristic of daily life. Arthur was ready enough to go on discussing his future thus, but never doubted that it would all come to his desire in the end. He was like a woman in so much as he failed to understand an argument which he could not meet.
They walked on amidst the flowering shrubs, and Dora was filled with a disquieting sense of having failed to convince him.
“I do not want to hurry you,” said Arthur presently, with a maddening equanimity. “You can give me your answer some other time.”
“But I have given it now.”
Arthur was engaged in taking off his hat to a passing lady, and made no acknowledgment of this.
“Everybody at home would be pleased,” he observed, after a pause occupied by the adjustment of his hat. “They all want it.”
It was not that he refused to take No when it was given to him, but rather that he did not recognise it, never having encountered it before.
They were now coming round by the pigeon-shooting enclosure, and the strains of the band announced that the interval for tea had elapsed.
In the distance Lady Mazerod and Edith, attended by the indefatigable Jack, were keeping a chair for Dora. She slackened her pace. To her the knowledge had come that the difficulties of life have usually to be met single-handed. She was not afraid of Arthur, but this was a distinct difficulty because of the influence he had at his back.
“Arthur,” she said, “I think we had better understand each othernow. It may save us both something in the future. I cannot help feeling rather sorry that I must say No. Every girl must feel that. I do not know from whence the feeling comes. It is a sort of regret, as if something good and valuable were being wasted. But, Arthur, itisNo, and it must always be No. I am not the sort of person to change.”
“I suppose,” he replied,en vrai fils de sa mère, “that there is some one else?”
He turned as he spoke, but Dora's parasol was too quick for him.
“Please do not let us be like people in books,” she said. “There is no necessity to go into side issues at all. You have asked me to marry you. I can never marry you. There is the whole question and the whole answer. I say nothing to you about finding somebody worthier, or any nonsense of that sort. Please spare me the usual—impertinences—about there being somebody else.”
The word found its mark. Arthur Agar caught his breath, but made no answer.
They were among the well-dressed throng now crowding back to the chairs.
When Arthur had handed Dora over to the care of Lady Mazerod he lifted his hat and took his departure with that perfectsavoir fairewhich was hisforte.