“‘Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,The power of beauty I remember yet.’”
Lady Lundie looked unaffectedly shocked. Mr. Delamayn went a step farther. He interfered on the spot—with the air of a man who feels himself imperatively called upon to perform a public duty.
“Dryden never said that,” he remarked, “I’ll answer for it.”
Sir Patrick wheeled round with the help of his ivory cane, and looked Mr. Delamayn hard in the face.
“Do you know Dryden, Sir, better than I do?” he asked.
The Honorable Geoffrey answered, modestly, “I should say I did. I have rowed three races with him, and we trained together.”
Sir Patrick looked round him with a sour smile of triumph.
“Then let me tell you, Sir,” he said, “that you trained with a man who died nearly two hundred years ago.”
Mr. Delamayn appealed, in genuine bewilderment, to the company generally:
“What does this old gentleman mean?” he asked. “I am speaking of Tom Dryden, of Corpus. Every body in the University knowshim.”
“I am speaking,” echoed Sir Patrick, “of John Dryden the Poet. Apparently, every body in the University doesnotknowhim!”
Mr. Delamayn answered, with a cordial earnestness very pleasant to see:
“Give you my word of honor, I never heard of him before in my life! Don’t be angry, Sir.I’mnot offended withyou.” He smiled, and took out his brier-wood pipe. “Got a light?” he asked, in the friendliest possible manner.
Sir Patrick answered, with a total absence of cordiality:
“I don’t smoke, Sir.”
Mr. Delamayn looked at him, without taking the slightest offense:
“You don’t smoke!” he repeated. “I wonder how you get through your spare time?”
Sir Patrick closed the conversation:
“Sir,” he said, with a low bow, “youmaywonder.”
While this little skirmish was proceeding Lady Lundie and her step-daughter had organized the game; and the company, players and spectators, were beginning to move toward the lawn. Sir Patrick stopped his niece on her way out, with the dark young man in close attendance on her.
“Leave Mr. Brinkworth with me,” he said. “I want to speak to him.”
Blanche issued her orders immediately. Mr. Brinkworth was sentenced to stay with Sir Patrick until she wanted him for the game. Mr. Brinkworth wondered, and obeyed.
During the exercise of this act of authority a circumstance occurred at the other end of the summer-house. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by the general movement to the lawn, Miss Silvester suddenly placed herself close to Mr. Delamayn.
“In ten minutes,” she whispered, “the summer-house will be empty. Meet me here.”
The Honorable Geoffrey started, and looked furtively at the visitors about him.
“Do you think it’s safe?” he whispered back.
The governess’s sensitive lips trembled, with fear or with anger, it was hard to say which.
“I insist on it!” she answered, and left him.
Mr. Delamayn knitted his handsome eyebrows as he looked after her, and then left the summer-house in his turn. The rose-garden at the back of the building was solitary for the moment. He took out his pipe and hid himself among the roses. The smoke came from his mouth in hot and hasty puffs. He was usually the gentlest of masters—to his pipe. When he hurried that confidential servant, it was a sure sign of disturbance in the inner man.
BUT two persons were now left in the summer-house—Arnold Brinkworth and Sir Patrick Lundie.
“Mr. Brinkworth,” said the old gentleman, “I have had no opportunity of speaking to you before this; and (as I hear that you are to leave us, to-day) I may find no opportunity at a later time. I want to introduce myself. Your father was one of my dearest friends—let me make a friend of your father’s son.”
He held out his hands, and mentioned his name.
Arnold recognized it directly. “Oh, Sir Patrick!” he said, warmly, “if my poor father had only taken your advice—”
“He would have thought twice before he gambled away his fortune on the turf; and he might have been alive here among us, instead of dying an exile in a foreign land,” said Sir Patrick, finishing the sentence which the other had begun. “No more of that! Let’s talk of something else. Lady Lundie wrote to me about you the other day. She told me your aunt was dead, and had left you heir to her property in Scotland. Is that true?—It is?—I congratulate you with all my heart. Why are you visiting here, instead of looking after your house and lands? Oh! it’s only three-and-twenty miles from this; and you’re going to look after it to-day, by the next train? Quite right. And—what? what?—coming back again the day after to-morrow? Why should you come back? Some special attraction here, I suppose? I hope it’s the right sort of attraction. You’re very young—you’re exposed to all sorts of temptations. Have you got a solid foundation of good sense at the bottom of you? It is not inherited from your poor father, if you have. You must have been a mere boy when he ruined his children’s prospects. How have you lived from that time to this? What were you doing when your aunt’s will made an idle man of you for life?”
The question was a searching one. Arnold answered it, without the slightest hesitation; speaking with an unaffected modesty and simplicity which at once won Sir Patrick’s heart.
“I was a boy at Eton, Sir,” he said, “when my father’s losses ruined him. I had to leave school, and get my own living; and I have got it, in a roughish way, from that time to this. In plain English, I have followed the sea—in the merchant-service.”
“In plainer English still, you met adversity like a brave lad, and you have fairly earned the good luck that has fallen to you,” rejoined Sir Patrick. “Give me your hand—I have taken a liking to you. You’re not like the other young fellows of the present time. I shall call you ‘Arnold.’ You mus’n’t return the compliment and call me ‘Patrick,’ mind—I’m too old to be treated in that way. Well, and how do you get on here? What sort of a woman is my sister-in-law? and what sort of a house is this?”
Arnold burst out laughing.
“Those are extraordinary questions for you to put to me,” he said. “You talk, Sir, as if you were a stranger here!”
Sir Patrick touched a spring in the knob of his ivory cane. A little gold lid flew up, and disclosed the snuff-box hidden inside. He took a pinch, and chuckled satirically over some passing thought, which he did not think it necessary to communicate to his young friend.
“I talk as if I was a stranger here, do I?” he resumed. “That’s exactly what I am. Lady Lundie and I correspond on excellent terms; but we run in different grooves, and we see each other as seldom as possible. My story,” continued the pleasant old man, with a charming frankness which leveled all differences of age and rank between Arnold and himself, “is not entirely unlike yours; though Iamold enough to be your grandfather. I was getting my living, in my way (as a crusty old Scotch lawyer), when my brother married again. His death, without leaving a son by either of his wives, gave me a lift in the world, like you. Here I am (to my own sincere regret) the present baronet. Yes, to my sincere regret! All sorts of responsibilities which I never bargained for are thrust on my shoulders. I am the head of the family; I am my niece’s guardian; I am compelled to appear at this lawn-party—and (between ourselves) I am as completely out of my element as a man can be. Not a single familiar face meetsmeamong all these fine people. Do you know any body here?”
“I have one friend at Windygates,” said Arnold. “He came here this morning, like you. Geoffrey Delamayn.”
As he made the reply, Miss Silvester appeared at the entrance to the summer-house. A shadow of annoyance passed over her face when she saw that the place was occupied. She vanished, unnoticed, and glided back to the game.
Sir Patrick looked at the son of his old friend, with every appearance of being disappointed in the young man for the first time.
“Your choice of a friend rather surprises me,” he said.
Arnold artlessly accepted the words as an appeal to him for information.
“I beg your pardon, Sir—there’s nothing surprising in it,” he returned. “We were school-fellows at Eton, in the old times. And I have met Geoffrey since, when he was yachting, and when I was with my ship. Geoffrey saved my life, Sir Patrick,” he added, his voice rising, and his eyes brightening with honest admiration of his friend. “But for him, I should have been drowned in a boat-accident. Isn’tthata good reason for his being a friend of mine?”
“It depends entirely on the value you set on your life,” said Sir Patrick.
“The value I set on my life?” repeated Arnold. “I set a high value on it, of course!”
“In that case, Mr. Delamayn has laid you under an obligation.”
“Which I can never repay!”
“Which you will repay one of these days, with interest—if I know any thing of human nature,” answered Sir Patrick.
He said the words with the emphasis of strong conviction. They were barely spoken when Mr. Delamayn appeared (exactly as Miss Silvester had appeared) at the entrance to the summer-house. He, too, vanished, unnoticed—like Miss Silvester again. But there the parallel stopped. The Honorable Geoffrey’s expression, on discovering the place to be occupied, was, unmistakably an expression of relief.
Arnold drew the right inference, this time, from Sir Patrick’s language and Sir Patrick’s tones. He eagerly took up the defense of his friend.
“You said that rather bitterly, Sir,” he remarked. “What has Geoffrey done to offend you?”
“He presumes to exist—that’s what he has done,” retorted Sir Patrick. “Don’t stare! I am speaking generally. Your friend is the model young Briton of the present time. I don’t like the model young Briton. I don’t see the sense of crowing over him as a superb national production, because he is big and strong, and drinks beer with impunity, and takes a cold shower bath all the year round. There is far too much glorification in England, just now, of the mere physical qualities which an Englishman shares with the savage and the brute. And the ill results are beginning to show themselves already! We are readier than we ever were to practice all that is rough in our national customs, and to excuse all that is violent and brutish in our national acts. Read the popular books—attend the popular amusements; and you will find at the bottom of them all a lessening regard for the gentler graces of civilized life, and a growing admiration for the virtues of the aboriginal Britons!”
Arnold listened in blank amazement. He had been the innocent means of relieving Sir Patrick’s mind of an accumulation of social protest, unprovided with an issue for some time past. “How hot you are over it, Sir!” he exclaimed, in irrepressible astonishment.
Sir Patrick instantly recovered himself. The genuine wonder expressed in the young man’s face was irresistible.
“Almost as hot,” he said, “as if I was cheering at a boat-race, or wrangling over a betting-book—eh? Ah, we were so easily heated when I was a young man! Let’s change the subject. I know nothing to the prejudice of your friend, Mr. Delamayn. It’s the cant of the day,” cried Sir Patrick, relapsing again, “to take these physically-wholesome men for granted as being morally-wholesome men into the bargain. Time will show whether the cant of the day is right.—So you are actually coming back to Lady Lundie’s after a mere flying visit to your own property? I repeat, that is a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of a landed gentleman like you. What’s the attraction here—eh?”
Before Arnold could reply Blanche called to him from the lawn. His color rose, and he turned eagerly to go out. Sir Patrick nodded his head with the air of a man who had been answered to his own entire satisfaction. “Oh!” he said, “that’sthe attraction, is it?”
Arnold’s life at sea had left him singularly ignorant of the ways of the world on shore. Instead of taking the joke, he looked confused. A deeper tinge of color reddened his dark cheeks. “I didn’t say so,” he answered, a little irritably.
Sir Patrick lifted two of his white, wrinkled old fingers, and good-humoredly patted the young sailor on the cheek.
“Yes you did,” he said. “In red letters.”
The little gold lid in the knob of the ivory cane flew up, and the old gentleman rewarded himself for that neat retort with a pinch of snuff. At the same moment Blanche made her appearance on the scene.
“Mr. Brinkworth,” she said, “I shall want you directly. Uncle, it’s your turn to play.”
“Bless my soul!” cried Sir Patrick, “I forgot the game.” He looked about him, and saw his mallet and ball left waiting on the table. “Where are the modern substitutes for conversation? Oh, here they are!” He bowled the ball out before him on to the lawn, and tucked the mallet, as if it was an umbrella, under his arm. “Who was the first mistaken person,” he said to himself, as he briskly hobbled out, “who discovered that human life was a serious thing? Here am I, with one foot in the grave; and the most serious question before me at the present moment is, Shall I get through the Hoops?”
Arnold and Blanche were left together.
Among the personal privileges which Nature has accorded to women, there are surely none more enviable than their privilege of always looking their best when they look at the man they love. When Blanche’s eyes turned on Arnold after her uncle had gone out, not even the hideous fashionable disfigurements of the inflated “chignon” and the tilted hat could destroy the triple charm of youth, beauty, and tenderness beaming in her face. Arnold looked at her—and remembered, as he had never remembered yet, that he was going by the next train, and that he was leaving her in the society of more than one admiring man of his own age. The experience of a whole fortnight passed under the same roof with her had proved Blanche to be the most charming girl in existence. It was possible that she might not be mortally offended with him if he told her so. He determined that hewouldtell her so at that auspicious moment.
But who shall presume to measure the abyss that lies between the Intention and the Execution? Arnold’s resolution to speak was as firmly settled as a resolution could be. And what came of it? Alas for human infirmity! Nothing came of it but silence.
“You don’t look quite at your ease, Mr. Brinkworth,” said Blanche. “What has Sir Patrick been saying to you? My uncle sharpens his wit on every body. He has been sharpening it onyou?”
Arnold began to see his way. At an immeasurable distance—but still he saw it.
“Sir Patrick is a terrible old man,” he answered. “Just before you came in he discovered one of my secrets by only looking in my face.” He paused, rallied his courage, pushed on at all hazards, and came headlong to the point. “I wonder,” he asked, bluntly, “whether you take after your uncle?”
Blanche instantly understood him. With time at her disposal, she would have taken him lightly in hand, and led him, by fine gradations, to the object in view. But in two minutes or less it would be Arnold’s turn to play. “He is going to make me an offer,” thought Blanche; “and he has about a minute to do it in. Heshalldo it!”
“What!” she exclaimed, “do you think the gift of discovery runs in the family?”
Arnold made a plunge.
“I wish it did!” he said.
Blanche looked the picture of astonishment.
“Why?” she asked.
“If you could see in my face what Sir Patrick saw—”
He had only to finish the sentence, and the thing was done. But the tender passion perversely delights in raising obstacles to itself. A sudden timidity seized on Arnold exactly at the wrong moment. He stopped short, in the most awkward manner possible.
Blanche heard from the lawn the blow of the mallet on the ball, and the laughter of the company at some blunder of Sir Patrick’s. The precious seconds were slipping away. She could have boxed Arnold on both ears for being so unreasonably afraid of her.
“Well,” she said, impatiently, “if I did look in your face, what should I see?”
Arnold made another plunge. He answered: “You would see that I want a little encouragement.”
“Fromme?”
“Yes—if you please.”
Blanche looked back over her shoulder. The summer-house stood on an eminence, approached by steps. The players on the lawn beneath were audible, but not visible. Any one of them might appear, unexpectedly, at a moment’s notice. Blanche listened. There was no sound of approaching footsteps—there was a general hush, and then another bang of the mallet on the ball and then a clapping of hands. Sir Patrick was a privileged person. He had been allowed, in all probability, to try again; and he was succeeding at the second effort. This implied a reprieve of some seconds. Blanche looked back again at Arnold.
“Consider yourself encouraged,” she whispered; and instantly added, with the ineradicable female instinct of self-defense, “within limits!”
Arnold made a last plunge—straight to the bottom, this time.
“Consider yourself loved,” he burst out, “without any limits at all.”
It was all over—the words were spoken—he had got her by the hand. Again the perversity of the tender passion showed itself more strongly than ever. The confession which Blanche had been longing to hear, had barely escaped her lover’s lips before Blanche protested against it! She struggled to release her hand. She formally appealed to Arnold to let her go.
Arnold only held her the tighter.
“Do try to like me a little!” he pleaded. “I am so fond ofyou!”
Who was to resist such wooing as this?—when you were privately fond of him yourself, remember, and when you were certain to be interrupted in another moment! Blanche left off struggling, and looked up at her young sailor with a smile.
“Did you learn this method of making love in the merchant-service?” she inquired, saucily.
Arnold persisted in contemplating his prospects from the serious point of view.
“I’ll go back to the merchant-service,” he said, “if I have made you angry with me.”
Blanche administered another dose of encouragement.
“Anger, Mr. Brinkworth, is one of the bad passions,” she answered, demurely. “A young lady who has been properly brought up has no bad passions.”
There was a sudden cry from the players on the lawn—a cry for “Mr. Brinkworth.” Blanche tried to push him out. Arnold was immovable.
“Say something to encourage me before I go,” he pleaded. “One word will do. Say, Yes.”
Blanche shook her head. Now she had got him, the temptation to tease him was irresistible.
“Quite impossible!” she rejoined. “If you want any more encouragement, you must speak to my uncle.”
“I’ll speak to him,” returned Arnold, “before I leave the house.”
There was another cry for “Mr. Brinkworth.” Blanche made another effort to push him out.
“Go!” she said. “And mind you get through the hoop!”
She had both hands on his shoulders—her face was close to his—she was simply irresistible. Arnold caught her round the waist and kissed her. Needless to tell him to get through the hoop. He had surely got through it already! Blanche was speechless. Arnold’s last effort in the art of courtship had taken away her breath. Before she could recover herself a sound of approaching footsteps became plainly audible. Arnold gave her a last squeeze, and ran out.
She sank on the nearest chair, and closed her eyes in a flutter of delicious confusion.
The footsteps ascending to the summer-house came nearer. Blanche opened her eyes, and saw Anne Silvester, standing alone, looking at her. She sprang to her feet, and threw her arms impulsively round Anne’s neck.
“You don’t know what has happened,” she whispered. “Wish me joy, darling. He has said the words. He is mine for life!”
All the sisterly love and sisterly confidence of many years was expressed in that embrace, and in the tone in which the words were spoken. The hearts of the mothers, in the past time, could hardly have been closer to each other—as it seemed—than the hearts of the daughters were now. And yet, if Blanche had looked up in Anne’s face at that moment, she must have seen that Anne’s mind was far away from her little love-story.
“You know who it is?” she went on, after waiting for a reply.
“Mr. Brinkworth?”
“Of course! Who else should it be?”
“And you are really happy, my love?”
“Happy?” repeated Blanche “Mind! this is strictly between ourselves. I am ready to jump out of my skin for joy. I love him! I love him! I love him!” she cried, with a childish pleasure in repeating the words. They were echoed by a heavy sigh. Blanche instantly looked up into Anne’s face. “What’s the matter?” she asked, with a sudden change of voice and manner.
“Nothing.”
Blanche’s observation saw too plainly to be blinded in that way.
“Thereissomething the matter,” she said. “Is it money?” she added, after a moment’s consideration. “Bills to pay? I have got plenty of money, Anne. I’ll lend you what you like.”
“No, no, my dear!”
Blanche drew back, a little hurt. Anne was keeping her at a distance for the first time in Blanche’s experience of her.
“I tell you all my secrets,” she said. “Why areyoukeeping a secret fromme?Do you know that you have been looking anxious and out of spirits for some time past? Perhaps you don’t like Mr. Brinkworth? No? youdolike him? Is it my marrying, then? I believe it is! You fancy we shall be parted, you goose? As if I could do without you! Of course, when I am married to Arnold, you will come and live with us. That’s quite understood between us—isn’t it?”
Anne drew herself suddenly, almost roughly, away from Blanche, and pointed out to the steps.
“There is somebody coming,” she said. “Look!”
The person coming was Arnold. It was Blanche’s turn to play, and he had volunteered to fetch her.
Blanche’s attention—easily enough distracted on other occasions—remained steadily fixed on Anne.
“You are not yourself,” she said, “and I must know the reason of it. I will wait till to-night; and then you will tell me, when you come into my room. Don’t look like that! Youshalltell me. And there’s a kiss for you in the mean time!”
She joined Arnold, and recovered her gayety the moment she looked at him.
“Well? Have you got through the hoops?”
“Never mind the hoops. I have broken the ice with Sir Patrick.”
“What! before all the company!”
“Of course not! I have made an appointment to speak to him here.”
They went laughing down the steps, and joined the game.
Left alone, Anne Silvester walked slowly to the inner and darker part of the summer-house. A glass, in a carved wooden frame, was fixed against one of the side walls. She stopped and looked into it—looked, shuddering, at the reflection of herself.
“Is the time coming,” she said, “when even Blanche will see what I am in my face?”
She turned aside from the glass. With a sudden cry of despair she flung up her arms and laid them heavily against the wall, and rested her head on them with her back to the light. At the same moment a man’s figure appeared—standing dark in the flood of sunshine at the entrance to the summer-house. The man was Geoffrey Delamayn.
He advanced a few steps, and stopped. Absorbed in herself, Anne failed to hear him. She never moved.
“I have come, as you made a point of it,” he said, sullenly. “But, mind you, it isn’t safe.”
At the sound of his voice, Anne turned toward him. A change of expression appeared in her face, as she slowly advanced from the back of the summer-house, which revealed a likeness to her moth er, not perceivable at other times. As the mother had looked, in by-gone days, at the man who had disowned her, so the daughter looked at Geoffrey Delamayn—with the same terrible composure, and the same terrible contempt.
“Well?” he asked. “What have you got to say to me?”
“Mr. Delamayn,” she answered, “you are one of the fortunate people of this world. You are a nobleman’s son. You are a handsome man. You are popular at your college. You are free of the best houses in England. Are you something besides all this? Are you a coward and a scoundrel as well?”
He started—opened his lips to speak—checked himself—and made an uneasy attempt to laugh it off. “Come!” he said, “keep your temper.”
The suppressed passion in her began to force its way to the surface.
“Keep my temper?” she repeated. “Doyouof all men expect me to control myself? What a memory yours must be! Have you forgotten the time when I was fool enough to think you were fond of me? and mad enough to believe you could keep a promise?”
He persisted in trying to laugh it off. “Mad is a strongish word to use, Miss Silvester!”
“Mad is the right word! I look back at my own infatuation—and I can’t account for it; I can’t understand myself. What was there inyou,” she asked, with an outbreak of contemptuous surprise, “to attract such a woman as I am?”
His inexhaustible good-nature was proof even against this. He put his hands in his pockets, and said, “I’m sure I don’t know.”
She turned away from him. The frank brutality of the answer had not offended her. It forced her, cruelly forced her, to remember that she had nobody but herself to blame for the position in which she stood at that moment. She was unwilling to let him see how the remembrance hurt her—that was all. A sad, sad story; but it must be told. In her mother’s time she had been the sweetest, the most lovable of children. In later days, under the care of her mother’s friend, her girlhood had passed so harmlessly and so happily—it seemed as if the sleeping passions might sleep forever! She had lived on to the prime of her womanhood—and then, when the treasure of her life was at its richest, in one fatal moment she had flung it away on the man in whose presence she now stood.
Was she without excuse? No: not utterly without excuse.
She had seen him under other aspects than the aspect which he presented now. She had seen him, the hero of the river-race, the first and foremost man in a trial of strength and skill which had roused the enthusiasm of all England. She had seen him, the central object of the interest of a nation; the idol of the popular worship and the popular applause.Hiswere the arms whose muscle was celebrated in the newspapers.Hewas first among the heroes hailed by ten thousand roaring throats as the pride and flower of England. A woman, in an atmosphere of red-hot enthusiasm, witnesses the apotheosis of Physical Strength. Is it reasonable—is it just—to expect her to ask herself, in cold blood, What (morally and intellectually) is all this worth?—and that, when the man who is the object of the apotheosis, notices her, is presented to her, finds her to his taste, and singles her out from the rest? No. While humanity is humanity, the woman is not utterly without excuse.
Has she escaped, without suffering for it?
Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own secret—the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl, whom she loves with a sister’s love. Look at her, bowed down under a humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the surface—now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value—now, when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken, who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so cultivated, so refined—what, in Heaven’s name, couldyousee in him? Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too—that you waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took his seat, with the others, in the boat—that your heart was like to jump out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her remorse, she will not even seek forthatexcuse for herself. Is there no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has repented—you have the authority of the Divine Teacher for it—is your fellow-creature, purified and ennobled. A joy among the angels of heaven—oh, my brothers and sisters of the earth, have I not laid my hand on a fit companion for You?
There was a moment of silence in the summer-house. The cheerful tumult of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet against the ball. Inside, nothing but a woman forcing back the bitter tears of sorrow and shame—and a man who was tired of her.
She roused herself. She was her mother’s daughter; and she had a spark of her mother’s spirit. Her life depended on the issue of that interview. It was useless—without father or brother to take her part—to lose the last chance of appealing to him. She dashed away the tears—time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman’s existence—she dashed away the tears, and spoke to him again, more gently than she had spoken yet.
“You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius’s place, not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me. You would not have come to-day, if I had not written to you to insist on it. Is that the treatment I have deserved?”
She paused. There was no answer.
“Do you hear me?” she asked, advancing and speaking in louder tones.
He was still silent. It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt. The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face. He met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front. Feeling nervous about the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden—now that he stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself. He was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its case—composed enough to set that little matter right before other matters went any farther. He took the case out of one pocket, and the pipe out of another.
“Go on,” he said, quietly. “I hear you.”
She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow. If she had had the strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the summer-house.
“How dare you use me in this way?” she burst out, vehemently. “Your conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!”
He made no attempt to defend it. He looked, with an expression of genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe. It was beautifully colored—it had cost him ten shillings. “I’ll pick up my pipe first,” he said. His face brightened pleasantly—he looked handsomer than ever—as he examined the precious object, and put it back in the case. “All right,” he said to himself. “She hasn’t broken it.” His attitude as he looked at her again, was the perfection of easy grace—the grace that attends on cultivated strength in a state of repose. “I put it to your own common-sense,” he said, in the most reasonable manner, “what’s the good of bullying me? You don’t want them to hear you, out on the lawn there—do you? You women are all alike. There’s no beating a little prudence into your heads, try how one may.”
There he waited, expecting her to speak. She waited, on her side, and forced him to go on.
“Look here,” he said, “there’s no need to quarrel, you know. I don’t want to break my promise; but what can I do? I’m not the eldest son. I’m dependent on my father for every farthing I have; and I’m on bad terms with him already. Can’t you see it yourself? You’re a lady, and all that, I know. But you’re only a governess. It’s your interest as well as mine to wait till my father has provided for me. Here it is in a nut-shell: if I marry you now, I’m a ruined man.”
The answer came, this time.
“You villain if youdon’tmarry me, I am a ruined woman!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t look at me in that way.”
“How do you expect me to look at a woman who calls me a villain to my face?”
She suddenly changed her tone. The savage element in humanity—let the modern optimists who doubt its existence look at any uncultivated man (no matter how muscular), woman (no matter how beautiful), or child (no matter how young)—began to show itself furtively in his eyes, to utter itself furtively in his voice. Was he to blame for the manner in which he looked at her and spoke to her? Not he! What had there been in the training ofhislife (at school or at college) to soften and subdue the savage element in him? About as much as there had been in the training of his ancestors (without the school or the college) five hundred years since.
It was plain that one of them must give way. The woman had the most at stake—and the woman set the example of submission.
“Don’t be hard on me,” she pleaded. “I don’t mean to be hard onyou.My temper gets the better of me. You know my temper. I am sorry I forgot myself. Geoffrey, my whole future is in your hands. Will you do me justice?”
She came nearer, and laid her hand persuasively on his arm.
“Haven’t you a word to say to me? No answer? Not even a look?” She waited a moment more. A marked change came over her. She turned slowly to leave the summer-house. “I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Delamayn. I won’t detain you any longer.”
He looked at her. There was a tone in her voice that he had never heard before. There was a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before. Suddenly and fiercely he reached out his hand, and stopped her.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She answered, looking him straight in the face, “Where many a miserable woman has gone before me. Out of the world.”
He drew her nearer to him, and eyed her closely. Evenhisintelligence discovered that he had brought her to bay, and that she really meant it!
“Do you mean you will destroy yourself?” he said.
“Yes. I mean I will destroy myself.”
He dropped her arm. “By Jupiter, shedoesmean it!”
With that conviction in him, he pushed one of the chairs in the summer-house to her with his foot, and signed to her to take it. “Sit down!” he said, roughly. She had frightened him—and fear comes seldom to men of his type. They feel it, when it does come, with an angry distrust; they grow loud and brutal, in instinctive protest against it. “Sit down!” he repeated. She obeyed him. “Haven’t you got a word to say to me?” he asked, with an oath. No! there she sat, immovable, reckless how it ended—as only women can be, when women’s minds are made up. He took a turn in the summer-house and came back, and struck his hand angrily on the rail of her chair. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
He took another turn. There was nothing for it but to give way on his side, or run the risk of something happening which might cause an awkward scandal, and come to his father’s ears.
“Look here, Anne,” he began, abruptly. “I have got something to propose.”
She looked up at him.
“What do you say to a private marriage?”
Without asking a single question, without making objections, she answered him, speaking as bluntly as he had spoken himself:
“I consent to a private marriage.”
He began to temporize directly.
“I own I don’t see how it’s to be managed—”
She stopped him there.
“I do!”
“What!” he cried out, suspiciously. “You have thought of it yourself, have you?”
“Yes.”
“And planned for it?”
“And planned for it!”
“Why didn’t you tell me so before?”
She answered haughtily; insisting on the respect which is due to women—the respect which was doubly due fromhim,in her position.
“Becauseyouowed it tome,Sir, to speak first.”
“Very well. I’ve spoken first. Will you wait a little?”
“Not a day!”
The tone was positive. There was no mistaking it. Her mind was made up.
“Where’s the hurry?”
“Have you eyes?” she asked, vehemently. “Have you ears? Do you see how Lady Lundie looks at me? Do you hear how Lady Lundie speaks to me? I am suspected by that woman. My shameful dismissal from this house may be a question of a few hours.” Her head sunk on her bosom; she wrung her clasped hands as they rested on her lap. “And, oh, Blanche!” she moaned to herself, the tears gathering again, and falling, this time, unchecked. “Blanche, who looks up to me! Blanche, who loves me! Blanche, who told me, in this very place, that I was to live with her when she was married!” She started up from the chair; the tears dried suddenly; the hard despair settled again, wan and white, on her face. “Let me go! What is death, compared to such a life as is waiting forme?” She looked him over, in one disdainful glance from head to foot; her voice rose to its loudest and firmest tones. “Why, evenyou; would have the courage to die if you were in my place!”
Geoffrey glanced round toward the lawn.
“Hush!” he said. “They will hear you!”
“Let them hear me! WhenIam past hearingthem, what does it matter?”
He put her back by main force on the chair. In another moment they must have heard her, through all the noise and laughter of the game.
“Say what you want,” he resumed, “and I’ll do it. Only be reasonable. I can’t marry you to-day.”
“You can!”
“What nonsense you talk! The house and grounds are swarming with company. It can’t be!”
“It can! I have been thinking about it ever since we came to this house. I have got something to propose to you. Will you hear it, or not?”
“Speak lower!”
“Will you hear it, or not?”
“There’s somebody coming!”
“Will you hear it, or not?”
“The devil take your obstinacy! Yes!”
The answer had been wrung from him. Still, it was the answer she wanted—it opened the door to hope. The instant he had consented to hear her her mind awakened to the serious necessity of averting discovery by any third person who might stray idly into the summer-house. She held up her hand for silence, and listened to what was going forward on the lawn.
The dull thump of the croquet-mallet against the ball was no longer to be heard. The game had stopped.
In a moment more she heard her own name called. An interval of another instant passed, and a familiar voice said, “I know where she is. I’ll fetch her.”
She turned to Geoffrey, and pointed to the back of the summer-house.
“It’s my turn to play,” she said. “And Blanche is coming here to look for me. Wait there, and I’ll stop her on the steps.”
She went out at once. It was a critical moment. Discovery, which meant moral-ruin to the woman, meant money-ruin to the man. Geoffrey had not exaggerated his position with his father. Lord Holchester had twice paid his debts, and had declined to see him since. One more outrage on his father’s rigid sense of propriety, and he would be left out of the will as well as kept out of the house. He looked for a means of retreat, in case there was no escaping unperceived by the front entrance. A door—intended for the use of servants, when picnics and gipsy tea-parties were given in the summer-house—had been made in the back wall. It opened outward, and it was locked. With his strength it was easy to remove that obstacle. He put his shoulder to the door. At the moment when he burst it open he felt a hand on his arm. Anne was behind him, alone.
“You may want it before long,” she said, observing the open door, without expressing any surprise, “You don’t want it now. Another person will play for me—I have told Blanche I am not well. Sit down. I have secured a respite of five minutes, and I must make the most of it. In that time, or less, Lady Lundie’s suspicions will bring her here—to see how I am. For the present, shut the door.”
She seated herself, and pointed to a second chair. He took it—with his eye on the closed door.
“Come to the point!” he said, impatiently. “What is it?”
“You can marry me privately to-day,” she answered. “Lis ten—and I will tell you how!”