But the remembrance of that thoughtless run through the darkening woods seemed incredible--to the girl, at least--when next morning her companion in it came down, as in duty bound, to inquire after the result of her wetting, for he was palpably conventional and commonplace. Partly because Lady George accompanied him, eager to renew her protestations of gratitude, and partly because it was his way whenever he had made any special departure from the ordinary line of conduct, which he laid down for himself. This evident artificiality had the effect of producing the same sort of unreality in Marjory, so that the only straightforward part of the interview came from Lord George, who, with an odd little quake in his voice, thanked her for the fact that Blazes was at the present moment rehearsing the scene in the nursery.
"You should see the little beggar," he said. "'Pon my word he doesn't seem to have missed a single detail. Has Sam to the life, and we have been obliged to forbid Alice's screams; they were heard all over the house."
"And what does he say was his own part in the business?" asked Marjory. "All I remember is a face--very like yours, Lord George--with great wide eyes, while Eve and Adam were hiding theirs."
Lord George gave another odd little sound between a laugh and a sob. "He says he sate still and swore, like Uncle Paul!"
"I'm afraid I did, Miss Carmichael," confessed the culprit, with a flash of the old manner; "but really, the tangle that young idiot had got things into, and stramash----" He turned to the window with a frown, and looked out. "You are the heroine of the hour, I see," he added cynically. "There is the Manse machine, with your two devoted admirers in it, come to congratulate you. Blanche, if you have induced Miss Carmichael to dine with us to-night--our last night--we had better quit the court. By the way, Mrs. Vane desired me to say, Miss Carmichael, that she did not intend to leave Gleneira without seeing you again; so, as she is not well enough to come to the Lodge, you may be induced to take pity on her."
The covert implication that some such inducement was necessary to overcome her reluctance, stung the girl's pride, without her recognising the cause of it, and she accepted the invitation hurriedly, telling herself she was glad it was the last, and that after to-morrow she could return to the old peaceful days. The thought made her turn with a quick expansion of face and manner to the two old men who advanced to meet them, as she accompanied Lady George to the garden-gate. Two old men almost tremulous with pride and delight.
"Tanto fortior tanto felicior!" cried the little Father, his fresh, round face beaming with sheer content.
"So, so, young lady! we have heard the story," put in the minister, full of courtly bows, in which those suggestions of a shapely calf had a fair field. "True is it thatFortis cadere, cedere non potest. Ah, Lady George! I have to express my great thankfulness that a dreadful bereavement has been spared you, under Providence, by our dear young friend's courage; or, rather, by her wisdom, since, without the quick thought, the former would have been useless. In this case, to paraphrase the saying,tam Minerva quam Marte, as even a soldier must allow."
"You will not find me backward, sir, in acknowledging either Miss Carmichael's wisdom or her courage," replied Paul, thus challenged; but his tone had that suggestion of a hidden meaning in it, to which Lady George objected, and rightly, as bad form; so she covered it by a remark upon the beauty of a boy, who stood holding open the gate.
"He is a little like that crayon portrait of you when you were a boy, Paul," she added cheerfully.
"He is old Peggy's grandson," replied Marjory, "and as he has been left to Dr. Kennedy's care, I am to look after him. He will be my first pupil."
"Then the likeness will soon disappear," said Paul, in a low voice, as he passed out.
"Perhaps he will be not the worse of that," retorted Marjory, in the same tone.
"I don't know. Men who are brought up by women are generally prigs."
"And women who have been brought up by men?" she asked sharply, not thinking of herself or her past.
"Are brave," he said quietly.
Brave! So he thought that of her. The one word was worth all the rest. And as she went up the path again with Father Macdonald on her right hand and Mr. Wilson on her left, all their fine phrases seemed forgotten in that simple acknowledgment. She would remember that always, even when the old peaceful days came back, as they would on the morrow. There was only the dinner at the Big House between her and that desirable consummation; but that was an ordeal without Tom, who was at home anywhere.
To tell truth, it would have been an ordeal to one less reluctant than Marjory; for a general air of uncertainty, like that of amateur theatricals when the prompter is best man, pervaded the party. Mrs. Woodward called her host by his Christian name with a manifest effort of memory, and when Sam ventured on a like familiarity with Blanche, her face betrayed her real feelings. Indeed, she took a private opportunity of confiding to Lord George her relief that it was only a one-night part, as she could not stand it much longer.
"Yet you condemn poor Paul to a life-long connection with that young bounder. Upon my soul! you women are queer creatures;" and the perversity of the feminine nature appeared to absorb him for the rest of the evening. Even Mrs. Vane, who ventured down to dinner for the first time, could make nothing of the ghastly function, so she retired immediately afterwards on plea of being tired, chiefly because she wished to have an opportunity of seeing Marjory alone, which she secured by bidding her in a whisper be sure and come to her room after she had said good-bye to everyone else.
Her departure reduced the drawing-room to flat despair.
"It is the sadness of farewell," remarked Miss Smith, part of whose contract was that she was to remain to the last and see nothing was forgotten; not even a decent show of sentiment.
"Parting is such sweet sorrow," murmured the Major under his moustache. He was the most cheerful of the party, since his flirtation had resulted in another week's grouse shooting with his charmer's father.
"Mr. St. Clare has written such a sweet thing called 'Good-bye,'" continued the Moth, appealing to the Poet. "He might recite it to cheer us up."
"I wonder how many poets there are who haven't written a piece on that subject," put in Paul, hastily, as Mr. St. Clare gave a preliminary cough, "and yet it will supply tons of agony to generations still unborn."
"There are forty songs of that name," remarked Alice, practically. "I wanted one for a friend, and the music man told me so."
Then the remembrance of that friend, a certain young fellow with a pleasant baritone voice, busy over tallow at Riga, gave her quite a pang of regret.
"Mostly trash, too," assented the Major; "Tosti's is the best, but even there one is all battered to pieces before the end."
"That is true," put in Marjory, eagerly. "You see, the poet begins by fine-drawing the agony, the composer follows suit, and the singer carries out the distortion. So in the third verse there is nothing for it but to 'kill the coo.'"
"I haven't heard 'Auld Robin Gray' for twenty years," murmured Lord George. "No one sings anything but German nowadays. German or comic operas."
"Miss Carmichael sings Scotch songs; I've heard her," said Paul from the skein of silk he was holding for Alice Woodward.
"Oh, do!" cried the Moth. "Something touching."
"Somethin' to cheer us up, you mean," put in Sam; "somethin' with a chorus, you know."
"Something old-fashioned," protested Lord George.
"Something appropriate to the occasion," suggested his wife.
"Something Miss Carmichael approves of," came from the skein of silk.
The girl stood by the piano for an instant, looking at them all with a touch of fine scorn in her face.
"I will do my best," she said at last, with a laugh. The next instant, with a crash of chords, her clear, fresh, young voice rang through the room in that gayest and saddest of songs:--
"A weary lot is thine, fair maid,A weary lot is thine;To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,And press the rue for wine.A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,A feather of the blue,A doublet of the Lincoln green,No more of me you knew,My love,No more of me you knew."
"A weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine;
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine.
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green,
No more of me you knew,
My love,
No more of me you knew."
Paul's hands turning the skeins paused, his eyes were on the girl's face as, with a mixture of recklessness and regret, she went on--
"The morn is merry June, I trow,The rose is budding fain,But she shall bloom in winter snowEre we two meet again!He turned his charger as he spakeUpon the river shore,Said 'Adieu for evermore,My love,And adieu for evermore.'"
"The morn is merry June, I trow,
The rose is budding fain,
But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere we two meet again!
He turned his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,
Said 'Adieu for evermore,
My love,
And adieu for evermore.'"
"What a heartless, unromantic, roving wretch!" remarked Lady George, in the pause which followed the refrain. "I hope he was jilted after all by the heiress; there generally is an heiress in these cases." Then, becoming aware of the possible indiscretion of her words, she looked at her brother hurriedly.
"In that case he married and lived happily ever afterwards; at least, that is what I should have done in his case. And I don't think he was so heartless, after all. He told the truth. It isn't as if he had sneaked away without saying good-bye."
Marjory rose from the piano with a little shrug of her shoulders.
"I must say good-night, at any rate, Lady George, and sneak up to see Mrs. Vane; for it is getting late, and you have all to be up so early."
Paul, standing at the door holding it open for her to pass through, was the last of the group to whom she had to give the conventional farewell.
"Good-bye," she said, feeling above her real regret a relief that this was the end.
"Auf-wieder-sehn," he replied. That was what Tom had said. As she ran upstairs to Mrs. Vane's room she was telling herself passionately that she did not want to see Captain Macleod again--that she would rather he went out of her life altogether, and cease to make her wonder at his changeful moods.
"Entrez," said the soft voice to her knock, and the next moment she felt herself in an atmosphere in which she had never been before. The semi-darkness of the pink-shaded light, the littered dressing-table, the soft perfume, the thousand and one evidences of an almost sensuous ease were to her absolutely novel. And the small figure, nestling in the armchair, so dainty in its laces and little velvet-shod feet. All that meant something she had never grasped before, something which attracted and yet repelled her.
"How pretty it is," she said, in sudden impulse, as her fingers stroked one of the soft folds almost caressingly. Mrs. Vane's hand went out swiftly, and drew hers closer.
"Don't, child! That does for me, not for you. So this is good-bye. You are not sorry?" Her eyes scanned the girl's closely, and then she smiled. "If you are, you will get over it soon. That is the best of work. I often wish I had some--to make me forget myself."
"But you do work--you work harder than anyone I know, in a way. Why, to-night we were quite dull; so dull without you! Everyone missed you; and yet----"
"And yet? out with it, little one!"
"I was wondering if it was worth it?"
"Yes! if you have a craze to be admired, as I have. But I didn't ask you to come here in order to talk about myself. You would not understand me if I did. Pray Heaven you never may. So you have said good-bye to them all, and you are not sorry! That is well. Now, let me wish you good luck, and give you a word of advice."
"Twenty, if you like."
"Make the most of that luck--andAlphonse."
"You mean Dr. Kennedy?" asked the girl, stiffly.
"Dr. Kennedy. There are not many like him in this world."
"I doubt if there are any. At least, I have not met them," she replied, with a quick flush of impatience.
"I am glad to hear you say that. Good-bye, my dear, and forget us all as soon as you can."
"I shall remember your kindness--for you have been kind--all of you. Good-bye."
When the door had closed, Mrs. Vane leant back in her chair with a sigh of relief. That was over then, and, so far as she could judge, without harm to the girl. And now--now she could face the other problem. Perhaps there need be no harm there, either, but she must think--she must think. So in the softness, and the dimness, and the luxury, her face grew more anxious, more weary, until the memory of Marjory's words came back to her.
Was it worth it all? Whether it was worth it or not did not matter; the plotting and planning had become a second nature to her--she must think--she must think!
And Marjory, passing out into the calm cool of the night, gave a sigh of relief also. It was over; that strange life, so different from the future one which lay before her. Was she sorry? Yes! a little. No one could know Paul Macleod and not feel a regret at the thought of his future. Yet she was glad it was over despite that queer sort of numb pain at her heart at the thought of his unfailing kindness to her. And now she would never see him again, never---- A red star showed low down behind a turn in the rhododendrons, and a moment after Paul's voice said easily, as he threw away his cigar:
"You have not been long."
So it was not over! That was her first thought, and then came a quick flutter at her heart. Over! was not it rather just beginning for this--thiswas new. Her pride rose in arms against it instantly.
"I did not expect--" she began almost haughtily.
"Did you not? That was rather foolish of you. You expected me to let you walk home alone; but I think I know my duties; as a host, at any rate."
It was true. He did know them. There could not be two opinions as to his considerate courtesy to all. She admitted the fact to herself gladly, telling herself that it was quite natural he should see her home, though the possibility of his doing so had not occurred to her. Hitherto, of course, Tom had been with her; to-night she was alone. It was the usual thing; yet not usual, surely, that they should be walking fast through the darkness without a word, just as if they had quarrelled. What was there to quarrel about? Nothing. Not his engagement certainly, though he might think so if she kept silent on a fact which no one had attempted to conceal. Hitherto she had had no opportunity of alluding to it, but now there was no excuse. The merest acquaintance would be expected to take such an opportunity of wishing him good luck, unless--unless some personal motive prevented it. And there was none. How could there be? since Paul was surely welcome to do as he liked.
Yet, for a time, the crunch of the gravel beneath their feet as they walked on in silence was the only sound upon the cool night air. But the glimmering white of the Lodge gate nerved her to the effort.
"I want to congratulate you, Captain Macleod," she began, when he interrupted her quickly.
"Hush! If there cannot be truth, don't let there be falsehood between us."
It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen, piercing her ignorance. She stopped short, her pulses bounding to that strange new thrill in his voice which seemed to make her forget her surprise, her indignation. She had to steady her own tones ere she could reply.
"There has been no falsehood on my part."
"Has there not? Then there shall be none on mine. Marjory! I love you! Nay! you shall listen----" His outstretched arm barred her quick movement of disdain. "I shall not keep you long, but you must hear the truth. I've loved you from the beginning--I love you now--I feel as if I should love you always----"
She stood there as if she had been turned to stone, listening, listening, like a child to some fairy tale; and in the darkness a look that had never been there before crept to her clear eyes, and a quiver to her mouth.
"Yes! I love you; not only as most men count love, so that the touch of your hand thrills me, and the thought of your kisses is as heaven---- Don't shrink from the truth--you must face it sometime--why not now? It is so, and God knows it is no new thing to me. But this is new--that you are my soul--if I have one--Marjory! Marjory! Why have you made me feel like this?--why would you never see me as I really am?--why would you always believe me better than I was?"
His passionate questioning seemed to pass her by. She stood silent till, in the darkness, he seized her hands and drew her closer to him, peering into her face as if to read the answer there.
"For pity's sake don't look so kind, so sweet," he burst out vehemently, for even in the faint starlight he could see something of her eyes. "Tell me how vile I am--then I could go--then I could leave you! Listen to me, Marjory--" his voice grew calmer, and a sort of bitter entreaty came to its passionate anger--"I know quite well--I am certain that my only chance of living what you hold to be a worthy life lies with you, and yet I have renounced it--I do renounce it without a shadow of remorse. Is not that enough? You are my better self, my one hope of redemption, yet still I say, Adieu, my love, adieu, for evermore!"
And then the half-seen softness of her face seemed to madden him. "Before God youshallsee me as I am. Youshallunderstand."
His arms clasped her close, his reckless, passionate kiss was on her lips, and then----
Then he stood as it were before the tribunal which he had invoked--that tribunal of perfect knowledge, of blinding truth, in which alone lies the terror of judgment.
"Marjory!" The whisper could scarcely be heard. "Marjory! is it true? My God! is it true that you love me?" He still held her, but with a touch which had changed utterly, and his tone was almost pitiful in its appeal. "Marjory! why--why did I not know? Why did you hide yourself from me?"
"I did not know myself," she answered, and her voice had a ring of pain in it; "how could I know? But it would have made no difference--no difference to you."
The keenest reproach could not have hit him so hard as this instinctive defence of her own ignorance, her own innocence; it pierced the armour of his worldliness and went straight to that part of his nature which, even at his worst, held fast to life in a sort of veiled self-contempt.
"You are right; it would have made no difference, no difference to such as I am." Then in the darkness he was at her feet kissing the hem of her garment.
"Adieu, my love; adieu for evermore!"
The next instant the sound of his retreating footsteps broke the stillness, and she was alone.
Alone, with a smile upon her face--a smile of infinite tenderness for his manhood and for her own new-found womanhood, which tingled in each vein and seemed to fill the whole world with the cry, "He loves me! he loves me!"
So this was Love. This unreasoning joy, this absorbing desire to hap and to hold, to let all else slip by and be forgotten as nothing worth; to live for oneself alone--oneself, since he and she were one--one only!
Yes; she loved him like that. And he? The memory of his voice, the clasp of his hand, the touch of his lips came back to her in a rush, dazing and bewildering her utterly, so that she stretched her arms into the night and whispered into the darkness: "Paul, come back! you must come back and tell me what it means. Paul! Paul!"
But he was gone; and then the pity of it, the shame that he had left her came home to her, not for herself, but for him, and with a little short, sharp cry, such as will come with sudden physical pain, she turned on her way tearless, composed, half stunned by her own emotion.
When she had undressed she blew out the candle, and, kneeling by the window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass while she gazed unseeingly into the night.
So this was Love!--the Love which the poets called divine--the Love to which she had looked forward all her life. What did it mean? What was it, this feeling which had come to her unbidden, unrecognised? For now with opened eyes she understood that it had been there almost from the beginning; that it had been the cause of all her moods and his. The curious attraction and repulsion, the unrest, the desire to influence him. Ought she to have known this sooner? Perhaps; and yet, how could she when neither her own nature or her education had given her a hint of this thing? The Love she had dreamed of had been a thing of the mind, of conscious choice, and this was not. No! best to tell the truth--it was not!
As she knelt there, alone in her ignorance, not so much of evil as of the realities of life, she could yet see that this unreasoning attraction--though with her it could not but be indissolubly mixed up with something higher, something nobler than itself; something which craved a like nobility in its object--was yet in its very essence of the earth earthy.
Without that something what was it?
She was clear sighted was this girl, whose reasoning powers had been trained to be truthful; so she did not attempt to deny that Paul Macleod was not her ideal of what a man should be. That her whole soul went out in one desire that he should be so, and in a tender longing to help him, to comfort and console him, did not alter the fact. That desire, that longing, was apart from this bewildering emotion which filled the world with the cry, "He loves me! He loves me!" She loved him as he was; not as he ought to be.
As he was! And then her eyes seemed to come back from the darkness and find a light as she remembered those words of his: "It is not only as if I loved you as men count love."
Then he, too, understood--he, too, was torn in twain. A sense of companionship seemed to come to her; she rose from her knees and crept to bed. And as she lay awake the slow tears fell on her pillow. So this was Love! this bitter pain, this keener joy; but underneath his stress of passion, and her fainter reflection of it, lay something which might bring peace if he would let it, and the thought of this made her whisper softly:--
"Paul, I love you. Come back to me, Paul, and we will forget our love."
But up at the Big House he was cursing his own folly in yielding to the temptation of seeing Marjory home. Yet what had come over him? He, who for the most part behaved with some regard to gentlemanly instincts. What had he done? The memory of it, seen by the light of his knowledge of evil, filled him with shame. Well! that finished it. When she had time to think she would never forgive him. She would understand, and that look would fade from her face--that look which---- But she was right! Even if he had seen it before, it would have made no difference; he would have gone on his way all the same. Why had he ever seen it to give him needless pain, and be a miserable memory? The only thing was to forget it--to forget, not the love which thrilled him--that, Heaven knows, could be easily forgotten--but that other! Yes! he must forget it. That was the only thing to be done now.
Luckily, perhaps, for his determination to forget, a variety of causes combined to give Paul Macleod breathing space before he had, as it were, to take up the burden of his engagement with Alice Woodward. To begin with, he had to pay a visit on the way south, and the delights of really good partridge shooting are of a distinctly soothing nature. There is something fat and calm and comfortable about the stubbles and turnip fields which makes one think kindly of county magistrates and quarter sessions, of growing stout, and laying down bins of port wine. A very different affair this from cresting the brow of a heather-covered hill, with a wild wind from the west scattering the coveys like bunches of brown feathers, while the next brae rises purple before you, and another--and another--and another! Up and up, with a strain and an effort, yet with the pulse of life beating its strongest.
Then, when the North mail finally set him down at Euston, the Woodwards had gone to Brighton; and there was that going on in the artistic little house in Brutonstreet, which would have made it unkind for him to leave town and follow them, even if his own inclination had not been to stay and see what the days brought forth. For Blasius was ill, dangerously ill, and Lord George was a piteous sight as he wandered aimlessly down to the Foreign Office, and, after a vain effort to remain at work, wandered home again with the eager question on his lips, "Is there any change?"
But there was none. The child, after the manner of his sturdy kind, took the disease as hardly as it could be taken, and then fought against it as gamely. So the little life hung in the balance, till there came a day when the pretence of the Foreign Office was set aside, and Lord George sate in the nursery with his little son in his arms, an unconscious burden in the red flannel dressing-gown, which somehow seemed connected with so much of Blazes' short life. Blanche, almost worn out, stood by the open window holding Paul's hand--Paul, who was always so sympathetic, so kindly when one was in trouble. So they waited to see whether the child would choose life or death; while outside the people were picking their way gingerly through the mingled sunshine and shade of a thunder shower. It was so silent that you could hear the clock on the stairs ticking above the faint patter on the window-pane, almost hear the splash of the slow tear-drop which trickled down Lord George's cheek, and fell on Blazes' closed hand. And then, suddenly, a pair of languid eyes opened, and the little voice, mellow still, despite its weakness, said quietly:
"Ith's waining. Blazeth wants a wumberwella."
In the days following, if Blazes had wanted the moon, Lord George would have entered into diplomatic relations with the man in it, regarding a cession of territory; but the child, according to the doctors, wanted sea air more than anything else. So, naturally enough, they all migrated to Brighton, and, though he did not realise it, the general sense of relief and contentment pervading the whole party did much to make Paul Macleod feel the shackles bearable. Then Mrs. Woodward and Alice were at one of the big hotels, the Temples were in lodgings, while he, himself, had rooms at a golfing club, to which he belonged; an arrangement which gave everyone a certain freedom. Finally, as Paul discovered on the very first day, Alice showed much more to advantage on the parade, or riding over the downs, or putting on the green, than she had ever done at Gleneira.
"Oh, yes!" she said gaily, "I am a regular cockney at heart. I love the pavements, and I hate uncivilised ways. I know when Blanche told me she had to see the sheep cut up at Gleneira, I made a mental note that I wouldn't. I couldn't, for I hate the sight of raw meat."
"You bear the butchers' shops with tolerable equanimity," returned her lover, who hardly liked her constant allusions to Highland barbarism; "as a matter of fact, raw meat intrudes itself more on your notice in town than it ever does in the country."
"Perhaps; but then the sheep with the flowery pattern down their backs don't look like sheep, and as for the beef, why, you can't connect the joints with any part of the animal. At least, I can't, and I don't believe you can, either. Now what part of the beast is an aitchbone?"
Paul set the question aside by proposing a canter, and by the time that was over he was quite ready to be sentimental; for Alice looked well on horseback in a sort of willowy, graceful fashion, which made the pastime seem superabundantly feminine.
Still, the subject had a knack of cropping up again and again; and once, when she had excused herself for some aspersion by saying, good-naturedly, that it was a mere matter of association, and that she was of the cat kind, liking those things to which she was accustomed, he had taken her up short by saying she would have to get accustomed to Gleneira.
"Shall I?" she asked. "Somehow, I don't think we shall live there very much. It is nice enough for six weeks' shooting; but, even then, the damp spotted some of my dresses."
"You are getting plenty of new ones at any rate," retorted Paul, for the room was littered withchiffons.
She raised her pretty eyebrows. "Oh, these are only patterns. I always send for them when I'm away from town. It is almost as good as shopping. But I don't mean to buy much now. I shall wait for the winter sales. They are such fun, and I like getting my money's worth--though, of course, father gives me as much as I want. Still, a bargain is a bargain, isn't it?"
Paul acquiesced, but the conversation rankled in his mind. To begin with, it gave him an insight into a certainbourgeoisestrain in the young lady's nature, and though he told himself that nothing else was to be expected from Mr. Woodward's daughter--who derived her chief charm from the fact that her fatherhadmade bargains and got his money's worth--that did not make its presence any more desirable. And then he could not escape the reflection thathewas a bargain, and that the whole family into which he was marrying would make a point of having their money's worth.
He would have realised this still more clearly if he could have seen one of the daily letters which Mrs. Woodward, with praiseworthy regularity, wrote to her lord and master in London, for it is a sort of shibboleth of the married state that those in it should write to each other every day whether they have anything to say or not.
"Alice," she wrote, "is so sensible and seems quite content. At one time I feared a slight entanglement with Jack, but Lady George has been most kind and taken her to all the best places, which is, of course, what we have a right to expect. By the way, there is an Irish member here--O'Flanagin, or something like that--and he declares the Land League will spread to the West Highlands. So you must be sure and tie up the money securely, as it does not seem quite a safe investment."
Mr. Woodward, on receiving this missive, swore audibly, asserting that the devil might take him if he knew of any investment which could be called safe in the present unsettled state of the markets! For his visit to Gleneira, where, as he angrily put it, telegrams came occasionally and the post never--had somehow been the beginning of one of those streaks of real ill-luck which defy the speculator. The result being that Mr. Woodward generally left his office in the city poorer by some thousands than he had entered it in the morning, and though he knew his own fortune to be beyond the risk of actual poverty, it altered his outlook upon life, and threatened his credit as a successful financier.
Nor did it threaten his alone; there were uncomfortable rumours of disaster in the air, which, in course of time, came to Lady George's ears.
"I do hope Mr. Woodward is not mixed up in it," she said to Paul, as she sate working bilious-looking sunflowers on a faded bit of stuff for the Highland bazaar; "but he was a littledistraitwhen he came down last Sunday, and he didn't eat any dinner to speak of--we dined with them, you remember."
"Perhaps I gave him too good a lunch at the club," replied her brother, jocosely; "besides, he wouldn't let a few losses spoil his appetite. He is well secured, and then he could always fall back on his share in the soap-boiling business."
"I was not thinking of him, Paul, I was thinking of you. You could not boil soap."
The fact was indubitable, and though her brother laughed, he felt vaguely that there were two sides to a bargain, and when his sister began on the subject again, he met her hints with a frown.
"I am perfectly aware," he said, "that Patagonians are dangerous, and Mr. Woodward knows it as well as I do."
"But he was nicked--that is how that city man I met at dinner last night put it--he was nicked in Atalantas also."
"If you had asked me, Blanche, instead of inquiring from strangers, as you seem to have done," interrupted her brother, with great heat, "I could have told you he was nicked, as you choose to call it, heavily--very heavily. He has been unlucky of late. He admits it."
"Good heavens, Paul! what are you going to do?"
"Nothing. He is quite capable of managing his own affairs."
"Don't pretend to be stupid, Paul! I mean your engagement."
"What has business to do with that?" he asked, quickly taking the high hand; but Lady George was his match there.
"Everything, unless you have fallen in love with her."
Home thrusts of this sort are, however, unwise, since they rouse the meanest antagonist to resistance.
"Have it so if you will. I am quite ready to admit that love has nothing to do with business. Honour has. I am engaged to Miss Woodward, and that is enough for me."
Lady George shrugged her shoulders. There was a manly dogmatism about his manner which was simply unbearable.
"My dear boy," she said, "if a man begins to talk about honour it is time for a woman to beat a retreat. Since you have such strict notions on the subject, I presume you have explained to Mr. Woodward the exact state of affairs at Gleneira? The estate overburdened, and not a penny of ready money to be had except by sale."
"I really can't discuss the subject with you, Blanche. Women never understand a man's code of honour on these points; and they never understand business."
She crushed down an obvious retort in favour of peace, for she was genuinely alarmed. So much so, that the moment she returned to town she went to see Mrs. Vane, thinking it more than likely that Paul might have confided something to her. She was just the sort of little woman in whom men did confide, and Paul was perfectly silly about her, though, of course, she was a very charming little woman.
Now, Mrs. Vane had heard the rumours of Mr. Woodward's losses before, and heard them with a glad heart, since the possibility of having to use those letters which were locked up in her dressing-case weighed upon her. But she had not heard them from Paul; had not seen him, in fact, as she had only returned from the country two days before, and had since been ill with fever.
Nevertheless, the very next afternoon, in obedience to a little note left at his club, Paul walked into her flower-decked drawing-room and gave an exclamation of surprise and concern at the white face and figure on the sofa.
"You have been ill," he said quickly; "why didn't you let me know before?"
"Only a go of fever; and I've danced all night long--some of the dances with you, Paul--when I had a worse bout, and no one found me out. Let me make you a cup of tea."
"Please not. I'll take one. Yes! I remember; that was our regimental ball, and there were so few ladies; you never spared yourself, Violet, never knew how to take care of yourself."
"Perhaps not. I must pay someone to do it, I suppose, like other old women; for all my friends are deserting me. Two married last month, and I hear from Mrs. Woodward that your wedding-day is fixed."
"I was not aware of it," he replied, with a frown; "but if it were, I fail to see why I should desert--my friends."
Mrs. Vane laughed. "My dear Paul! you are something of a man of the world; did you ever know of anyone like you keeping up a friendship with anybody like me after his marriage? I mean out of the pages of a French novel. Certainly not; and I am quite resigned to the prospect. I suffered the blow in a minor degree when you left India. Besides, I should not anyhow see much of you if you lived at Gleneira; and you will have to do so, won't you, till Mr. Woodward recovers himself?"
Paul stirred his tea moodily. "So you have heard, too," he said distastefully.
"Everybody has heard, of course. Such things are a godsend at this time of the year. Lady Dorset was quite pathetic over your bad luck yesterday, but I told her no one would think theworseof you or Miss Woodward if you were to thinkbetterof it, since poverty--even comparative poverty--would suit neither of you."
The spirited pose of her head, as she spoke, the bold challenge of her tone, were admirable.
"You said that! Would you have me break my word because my promised wife had a few pounds less than I expected?"
She laughed again. "How lofty you are, Paul! You caught that trick from Marjory Carmichael. By the way, I heard from her to-day--she comes up to town soon."
"So I believe." His heart gave a throb at the sound of her name, but he would not confess it, even to himself. "Excuse me if I hark back to the other subject. I should like to hear what you have to say on it. Women have such curious notions of honour, at least, Blanche----"
"So Lady George has been taking you to task, has she? That was very unwise of her. For my part I have no opinion. I never liked the engagement, as you know; I like it still less now, when, if tales be true, Mr. Woodward will not be able to make his daughter so handsome an allowance as--as you expected. But they may not be true."
"There is no reason why I should not tell you that they are true. The allowance will be about a quarter of what was intended. Mr. Woodward spoke to me to-day about it, hinting that it might make a difference; but, of course, I cut him short."
"Of course." There was a fine smile for an instant on her face ere she went on. "Still, he was right, it does make a difference."
"Undoubtedly it makes a difference," echoed Paul, testily. "No one knows that better than I do. But that is no reason why I should back out of my word. We shall have to vegetate at Gleneira, I suppose, or live in a villa somewhere----"
"My poor Paul, how funny you are!" she interrupted, taking up a letter which had been lying beside her, and giving it a little flourish. "That is just what you could have done--with someone else! So you will do for a girl you do not love, what you would not do for one--but it is really too funny! One half of you being unable to exist without love, the other without money, you cut the Gordian knot by experimenting on life without either! Now, I should have tried to secure both--you might have managed that, I think." She paused a moment, and then went on. "As it is, my friend is not unwilling to play the hero, to a limited extent, because it soothes him and makes him feel less mercenary. Ah! my dear Paul, I understand. Only, might it not be more heroic and less mercenary to give Miss Woodward a chance of something more to her taste than a villa somewhere?--plus, of course, the heroic husband! She may not like heroics; some of us don't. You must be prepared for that."
The gentle raillery of her tone had a touch of seriousness in it which seemed to throw a new light on his view of the subject.
"You mean that it is likely----"
"Yes. I think it extremely likely that the Woodwards would rather break it off."
"But why?" he asked, angrily rising to pace the room; "my prospects have not changed."
"'They twain shall be one flesh,'" quoted Mrs. Vane, lightly. "And do you really think so much of your heroism, that--unaided by love, remember--you will fancy it will compensate Alice Woodward, who loves the pavement, for the damp and dulness of Gleneira? I remember, Paul"--her voice grew a trifle unsteady--"having to decide a similar question, once. To decide whether I could compensate the man I loved for something--well, for something which was not more dear to him than civilisation is to this young lady, and, though I loved him, I knew I could not."
"And--and were you right?" he asked with a sudden interest.
"Of course I was right. He recovered the loss of me rapidly, and yet I am not unattractive--what is more, I am generally considered good company, which I defy anyone to be if he careers up and down the room like a Polar bear. Please sit down and let me make you a nice cup of tea. The last, I am sure, must have been horrid. You don't know how to take care of yourself a bit, Paul, butyouare lucky.Youwill get plenty of people to pay for the privilege of doing so."
He told himself that she talked a great deal of nonsense at times, but that she did it, as she did everything else, with infinite verve and grace. Blanche, who had not said half as much, had made him angry; and here he was seated beside Violet's sofa, enjoying his tea, and feeling that sense ofbien êtrewhich he always felt in her company.
Yet even she might have failed in producing this for once, if he could have overheard a conversation which was going on over another cup of tea in Queen's Gardens, where Mrs. Woodward, with a real frown on her usually placid face, was listening to her husband's account of his interview with Paul that morning.
"Very honourable, no doubt, but exceedingly unsatisfactory," she remarked, with asperity. "I must say that I think you failed."
"Did you wish me to give the man hiscongé, my dear?" interrupted her spouse, irritably. "If so, you should have told me so distinctly, but if it comes to that I can write and dismiss him."
"You have such a crude way of putting things, James, and though I don't presume to understand business affairs I must own it seems inexplicable how these difficulties have come about. And Alice is so accustomed to civilisation, and Jack is coming back from Riga next week, so it does seem to me a flying in the face of Providence."
Mr. Woodward looked at her in impatient amaze. "Good heavens! Maria, what do you mean? Who or what is flying in the face of Providence?"
"Everyone! Everything! It seems as if he had been away on purpose, so that there should be no fuss. And they have always been so fond of each other. Alice would be miserable if she had to think about money; so why should she be sacrificed to Captain Macleod's notions of honour----"
"My dear!----"
"Yes, James! Sacrificed! You say you told him plainly the state of the case, and he----"
"Behaved as a gentleman would. Expressed sorrow at my losses, but gave me to understand that it would make no difference to him."
"And to Alice? He never gave a thought to her, I suppose; but you men are all alike--selfish to the core."
"Really, my dear," protested Mr. Woodward, roused by this general attack.
"Well,youare selfish. Are you not sitting there calmly proposing to sacrifice Alice to an adventurer--a principled adventurer if you like, though that is a miserable attempt to--what was it you used to call guaranteed stock?"
"A disastrous attempt to combine safety and speculation," suggested her husband, meekly.
"Just so! and this is a disastrous attempt to combine common sense and romance. But I will not have Alice sacrificed. I will speak to the man myself."
"You shall do nothing of the sort, my dear. If necessary, I can do it; but there is no hurry."
"It must be settled before next week, unless you want a fuss; I tell you that."
"It shall be settled; but I must talk to Alice first. It is surely possible she may be in love with the man?"
Mrs. Woodward shook her head wisely.
"But why, in heaven's name, Maria? He is handsome--gentlemanly--well born. Why should she not love him?"
"Because she is in love with Jack."
"God bless my soul!"