Friday, September7, 5a.m.Such a wretched night! I hope Lord Ruddington has had a still worse one. He deserves it, and I don't. Besides, he has something to gain (or thinks he has), while I only have something to lose. Even if he rushes out of his infatuation as precipitately as he rushed into it, Susan can never be the same nice girl again.I have thought about it all the many hours of this blessed night that I have been awake; and I have dreamt about it all the few nightmarish minutes I have been asleep--twisty, scary, jumpy dreams that I can't half remember.Heaven knows I was vexed enough when Alice would persist in teasing me last Sunday about Lord Ruddington. What would Alice not have said if she had known that he was hardly three miles away at the very time she was plaguing me? On Wednesday, at the station, her last words were, "Gertie, don't be a fool." From Alice's point of view, Gertie will be a fool if Gertie doesn't so play her cards as to become Lady Ruddington.I did so hate it. If I am happy, why can't people leave me alone? Alice will be dreadfully indignant if ever she finds out that I knew Lord Ruddington was coming at once to the Towers. But if I had told her, she would only have fought against me going off to Sainte Véronique. Yet, why in the world should I be going to a place like Sainte Véronique at the fag-end of the season? I'm going simply and solely because I was determined not to give the tiniest scrap of opportunity to the gossips and matchmakers who would have been so ready to connect the young spinster of Traxelby Grange with the young bachelor of Ruddington Towers.But I'm wandering away from my own point. I say, Alice's chaff and hints and coaxings were bad enough; but this farce of Susan's is a million times worse. I admit I'm weak enough to care what people say and think; and what sort of a position will it be when all the world knows that his noble lordship of Ruddington is come to the Grange a-wooing, not me but my maid? It's perfectly hateful.Noon.Susan is herself again. I don't mean that she isn't still burdened with the worries and anxieties of her amazing good luck. Indeed, she confesses that she has had a wakeful night. But in her work and her behaviour she's once more as good as gold.After all, it was lean and ungenerous of me yesterday to be jarred by her one low-class remark. We are none of us at our best every single minute of our lives.When I'd written in this diary, with my teeth chattering, at five o'clock this morning, I crawled back into bed in a very sour temper; and if Susan had come in sulky with a second lot of weak toast and strong tea, it would have finished me off. As it was, I lay trying to get warm, and wondering whether it mightn't be better to leave Susan and Ruddington to patch up their ridiculous match in their own unthinkable way.At a quarter to seven Susan brought me three perfect square inches of toast, and a perfect tablespoonful of China tea in that sweet little thin birds'-egg-coloured porcelain cup which I thought was broken. She saw at once that I hadn't slept; and, in her quiet, untoadying, genuine old way, she was ever so much concerned. But I didn't let her begin talking.I must do my duty by Susan.Haven't I often felt inwardly virtuous on the strength of my compassion (more sentimental than practical!) for Susan's motherlessness? How do I know that the poor good creature has not consciously pitied me on the same account? It isn't too much to say that Susan has been almost a mother to me over and over again. Surely, then, it is my duty to be a mother to her in this big, sudden strain on her simple wits.Rumour says that Ruddington is all right. But Rumour sometimes has a lying tongue even when she speaks in a man's praise. I have no guarantee whatever that Lord Ruddington intends to treat Susan honourably. If he doesn't, I know I shall be a poor defender of Susan, and that I can't hope to be his match in worldly knowledge and cunning. But I don't mean to fail for want of doing my best.This is the reply I have drafted:--THE GRANGE,TRAXELBY, Friday.Your letter of Tuesday was not one to be answered, or even acknowledged, in a hurry.Indeed, it is only after hesitation that I decide to answer it at all. How do I know that this unaccountable flame of passion has not died down as quickly as it sprang up?But there is a reason why, if I am to reply at all, I ought to do so to-day. To-morrow we are going to France. We shall be away a month.You ask me if I am free to bestow my affection where I will. The answer is--Yes.Deeply disturbed though I am by your surprising letter, I will not make a difficult situation more difficult still by anything like coyness. In fairness to both of us, I will speak as plainly and shortly and practically as I can.There is only one direct question in your letter, and I have answered it above. But there is an indirect question also. You want to know if the affection which I have not given elsewhere can be given to Lord Ruddington. The answer is--I do not know.You have seenme, but I have not seenyou. Again, if I consent, you will remain in your old rank and station, while I must make a great and exacting and perilous change. Above all, you declare that you have the fullest possible inward light on this matter, whereas I have nothing of the kind. Thus you have a threefold advantage over me.Reading your letter as an offer of marriage, the most I can say to-day is that, for the present, I do not refuse it.Will you write to me once a week (not more) while I am at Sainte Véronique? Our address will be at the Hôtel du Dauphin.Meanwhile, I beg most earnestly that you will not try to see me before we leave to-morrow. This journey to France is surely providential, and we must not throw its advantages away.I am going to be very frank indeed. To a poor girl, with her living to earn, your offer is so tempting and marvellous that, if you pressed it immediately and in person, I fear I might be swept off my feet into acceptance long before I could be sure that love will exist on both sides. For your own sake, if not for mine, do not put me to such proof. What would my consent be worth if you won it solely through the powers of your wealth and birth to dazzle my eyes and confuse my brain?My month abroad will serve two ends. By correspondence we shall know one another better; and our first meeting will thereby be made less embarrassing and formidable--especially to me. Again (and you must forgive me for saying it), time and absence may reveal to you more of your own heart and mind. Perhaps you will repent most bitterly of your letter which I am now answering, and, if so, it will surely be better to admit that you have been the victim of a passing madness rather than to fasten life-long unhappiness upon us both.SUSAN BRIGGS.I can hardly say I am proud of this production. Quite the contrary. Both in matter and style, it's altogether too un-Susanish. Indeed, now that I've tried and failed, I'm beginning to have more respect for the effusion of the young lady in the short-waisted muslin frock. Perhaps if I'd taken out the bits about the coach and the casual intercourse her letter would have been better than mine.Heaven knows what Susan will make of it! I'm positively nervy every time I hear her on the stairs.All the same, I've said the best thing to Lord Ruddington, even if I've said it in the worst way. Going to Sainte Véronique bright and early to-morrow morning is quite a good scheme. If the noble lord comes hot-foot after us, I can certainly manage him better at Sainte Véronique than here at the Grange. Besides, I'm half persuaded that the poor boy's paroxysm won't last long. If needs be, we'll go to Alice's when we come back to England.I think we'll travel by Dieppe. It means more train-journey on the other side, but he's less likely to track us and bother us that way. Of course, if he did anything of the kind, it would be abominable. But one never knows where a madman will draw the line.Before dinner.Susan isn't happy.I can see she doesn't like my draft. But she's docile, and she's going to use it.I made the poor thing sit beside me at my desk while we went through it together. At the end she said:"Thank you, Miss. But I hate to think I've caused so much trouble.""That's nothing, Susan," I said. "Just tell me plainly if you think it'll do.""It's beautiful, Miss," said Susan. "Only...""Only what?""Well, Miss, very likely I'm wrong. But it seems to leave him a way of backing out again."I was prepared for this. So I said, severely:"Susan, what do you mean?""About going away," answered Susan doggedly. "About being a month in France, and not saying Good-bye, and only having him write once a week. It seems to give him a chance of changing his mind.""Very well, Susan. Shall we tear this up? How will it be to write and tell Lord Ruddington that you will be disengaged to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock?""Oh no, Miss, please no!" gasped Susan, turning pale. "I couldn't, really I couldn't. I could never face him.""Why not?"Tears came into Susan's eyes."I should be as dumb as a fish, Miss. I should just sit and sit and never be able to say a word--and then he'd think I was stupid and he'd go away.""So I think myself," I said. "That's why this letter is sensible. After he's written to you two or three times, you'll feel less strange and more able to meet him.""Yes, Miss. But it's such a long way and such a long time. He might change his mind.""Susan," I began, with all the grown-up, worldly-wise solemnity I could muster, "listen to me. If he's going to change his mind as easy as that, won't you be better without him?"Susan looked dubious. "I don't think I would go as far as that, Miss," she said candidly.Evidently it was necessary to rub the truth well in."Susan," I said, "I admit that lords don't marry lady's-maids every day. This case is unusual. But it isn't the first. Before we were born, dukes have married dairy-maids and earls have married their cooks. A few of them have been happy all their lives long. Most of them have been miserable before the end of the honeymoon."Susan began to pout. I piled it on thicker."I won't mention names," I said. "But I know a case myself. The son of a duke took a fancy to a poor governess, and married her for her looks. He was infatuated with her at first sight, he followed her everywhere, he wouldn't take her refusal, he quarrelled with his father for her sake: and at last he got her. What happened? Although she was as well educated as he was, he tired of her in a year.""But I suppose, Miss, she has all she wants?" said Susan, pouting harder than ever."She has all she wants," I replied scornfully, "in the way of house and clothes and food. But, Susan, think. What if she wantshim?"Susan was silent. I drove it home."What if she wantshim? And what if she hardly ever sees him? Susan, I don't care to talk to you about such things; but this affair of Lord Ruddington is too serious for mincing words. The reason why the woman I'm telling you about never sees her husband is that he's the slave of another woman--a woman neither so pretty nor so clever nor so good-tempered nor even so well-born as his poor wife. Susan, would you like a life like that, even if you could live it in silks and old laces amidst all the luxury of Ruddington Towers?"Susan was blushing hotly, as I had intended and hoped she would."Oh no, Miss," she said eagerly, all her honest blood and good training coming to the rescue. "But I don't think Lord Ruddington would do those sort of things.""You think. But you don't know. Susan, I'm going to put you an old-fashioned question. Do you think it would be right to marry a man--never mind whether it's Lord Ruddington, or Gibson, or any other man--if you didn't love him?"I was trying my poor, honest Susan too searchingly. Tears again shone in her blue eyes. Her colour came and went. She turned away her head."Never mind, Susan," I said, very much more kindly. "I can guess your answer. And I can read your mind. You don't love Lord Ruddington. It isn't possible you should, at present. But you think it will be so lovely to be Lady Ruddington that you mean to make yourself love him whatever happens.""Yes. That's it, Miss," sobbed Susan. "I don't deserve that you should be so kind to me, Miss.""The danger is, Susan, that we can't depend on Love coming whenever we beckon to it. Perhaps Lord Ruddington is cold and unlovable. Perhaps he's too passionate to be affectionate. Unless you can love him in return, his love will only torture you. Susan, make quite sure of your ground. You are not like other girls. A mistake of this kind would first sour you and then kill you. Think of it all in this light, and you will understand my answer to Lord Ruddington better.""I do, Miss," said Susan urgently. "I understand it quite well now. And I know it's best. Please, Miss Gertrude, if you'll show me how to address it I'll send it to-night."I took up an envelope and addressed it to Lord Ruddington."You know best, Miss," said Susan, glancing at the draft once more. "But ... but oughtn't a girl like me to say 'your lordship'? Besides----"She checked herself. It was a new thing for Susan to question my judgment on any point, however small."Besides what?" I asked."Well, Miss, it seems to look strange beginning the letter without anything to start off, like.""Lord Ruddington set us the example," I explained. "I thought it was rather clever and delicate of him. He couldn't write in the third person, could he? And he couldn't very well call you 'Madam,' or 'Dear Miss Briggs,' or 'Dear Susan.' No. It's far better for both the letters to be as they are.""Thank you, Miss," said Susan, as humbly and teachably as she had ever spoken in her life.She has gone to her own room. I do hope she won't write it out in that frightful, blotty school-girl hand. I ought to have told her to write more quickly and freely, and less as if she's doing it with a paint-brush. Still, I'm deeply thankful we're getting on so nicely.To-morrow, the glorious sea, and the cider, and dear old Sainte Véronique!9.30p.m.More worry and tangle. I feel all bruised and weak, as if I'd been battered about in the surf on a stony beach.While I was walking in the garden after dinner, Gibson came across from the stables and began hanging about. I had a presentiment as to what he wanted, and I nearly bolted back into the house. Susan had been quite enough for one day. But, although it was dusk, I could see his trouble sitting, so to speak, on Gibson's shoulders. There was nothing for it but to face it out."Good-evening, Gibson," I said. "Do you want to speak to me?""I do, Ma'am," Gibson answered. His manner was perfectly respectful, but his tone was almost imperative."What is the matter?""You told me, Ma'am, I could have a holiday, beginning Monday. Hughes is well able now to look after the horses. If I couldn't trust him, I wouldn't go.""But, Gibson, we talked over all this on Tuesday, and it was settled you should go. Why do you want me to discuss it again?"Gibson looked awkward; shifted his cap from one hand to the other; shifted it back again. Suddenly he demanded bluntly:"Will you mind, Ma'am, if I go to France?""To France?" I said, bewildered. "Why France?"Gibson floundered through an unconvincing explanation. He affected to have doubts as to the Future of the Horse. He declared that, until lately, he had clung to a belief that "these here motor-cars would die out, same as the bicycles did;" but, tardily and bitterly, he has changed his mind. It seems the Horse will not become extinct. There will always be a few horses in the country, just as there will always be a few bows and arrows. But the number of horse-owners in the near future as compared with the horse-owners of the near past is to be in pretty much the same proportion as the archery-club amateurs of to-day in comparison with the English bowmen at Crécy and Agincourt. Gibson didn't put it exactly in this way, but his point is that the Horse, as the Psalmist says, is a vain thing for safety when a young man is looking well ahead for his bread and butter. Gibson wants to stay at Traxelby as long as I will keep him: but, "begging pardon, Ma'am, with a single lady one never knows," and therefore he thinks it is high time he should put himself in the way of qualifying as a chauffeur. Hence France."You do right to improve yourself, Gibson," I said. "But why France? Nowadays you can learn to be a chauffeur far better in England."His face darkened."Asking pardon, Ma'am," he said obstinately, "I have a fancy for learning in France.""Very well," I said. "It's your holiday, and you can spend it wherever you like. If you can manage the language, go to France by all means.""Then you haven't any objection, Ma'am?""Why should I?"Gibson hesitated. Then he stammered:"I was afraid, Ma'am, that ... that me goin' to France the same time as you, Ma'am, wouldn't be ... I mean, it would look like taking a liberty."I perceived that Gibson, like many others of his class, conceives France as a territory about the size of the Isle of Wight, with Paris in the middle."But France is a very big country, Gibson," I said. "Far larger than England. Even if I did object to you, we shouldn't be likely to meet. You couldn't learn to be a chauffeur at Saint Véronique. It's the last place in the world. That's why I go there."Gibson looked at me narrowly."I thank you, Ma'am," he said curtly and proudly. And he made room for me to pass.In his own fashion, Gibson is as good and as likable as Susan. Never till this week has either of them caused me the slightest anxiety. I saw in a flash how matters stood; and I felt in my heart that Gibson deserved the more sympathy of the two. He was deeper-natured than Susan: prouder and capable of a grand passion which my sweeter and shallower Susan could neither receive nor return. His clean-shaven face was almost as handsome as Susan's was pretty; and if he had enjoyed Susan's advantages instead of being brought up among grooms and stable-boys, he might have been as refined. Rather rashly, I let myself go and said:"No, Gibson, I'm not going in yet. You have not told me what it is that is really troubling you. There is something on your mind."He stood stock-still at the path-side and vouchsafed no answer for a long time. At last he said abruptly:"Then you won't prevent me, Ma'am, coming to France?""How could I stop you? France is a free country. I couldn't make the French army shoot you, or the French police lock you up. But I'd better say plainly, Gibson, that I object to you coming to Sainte Véronique unless I send for you."The colour mounted to Gibson's cheeks. He drew himself up and seemed to take some sudden decision. He was about to speak, when the clatter of buckets at the pump, where Hughes was gone for water, drew his gaze to the beloved stables. I followed his eyes as they ranged over the red roofs which had sheltered him at work and at play, at bed and at board, both in Grandma's time and mine, ever since he came to Traxelby as a half-fed boy of fourteen. He heard Nero's neighing and Boxer's answering bark; and I could see that he suffered. But these dear old sights and sounds did not soften his face for long. He pulled himself together again, and began decisively:"Then if you please, Ma'am, with all respect----""No, Gibson," I said, like lightning; "don't finish. Let me finish for you. You were going to say that you give me notice, that you will leave this old place, that you'll give up everything, just to be a free man. No. Don't interrupt. Above all, do have just a little bit of common sense. For instance, instead of giving up Traxelby simply so that you can come to Sainte Véronique, how would it be if you told me like a sensible man what you want to come to Sainte Véronique for?"He struggled hard with his pride. I helped him out."Surely you can trust me, Gibson?""I don't say I can't, Ma'am.""Very well, Gibson," I answered shortly "I've done my best. Good-night.""No!" cried Gibson, springing across my path. "Miss Gertrude, I ask your pardon It would break my heart to leave this place. But ... good God, this is too hard for me to bear!""Speak less loudly," I said. "Now, tell me. Is it about Susan?"He bent his head."You mean," I said, "you've fallen in love with Susan." And then, although my spirit was quailing and failing at the desperate sight of the poor lad's agony, I actually forced myself to try and laugh him out of it, as if it had been no more than a mild attack of calf-love."Really, Gibson," I said, as banteringly and gaily as I could, "I'm surprised at you. You're behaving as if Susan's going to Siberia for life instead of to France for a month. No doubt it's very painful and upsetting to be head over ears in love, though I confess I don't know much about it. But surely, Gibson, you can manage to exist without seeing Susan for four little weeks? Be more of a man.""It's because I'm a man, Ma'am," he rejoined firmly, "that my right place is at Sinn Veeronik. You talk of four little weeks, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I see the same Susan as went away?"His earnestness was so terrible that I could not maintain my hollow banter, and I was silent."I put it plain, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I ever see Susan any more?"I couldn't answer. Worse still, I guessed that his next move would be to ask me how much I knew. So I clung fast to the one hope that buoys me up in all this outrageous business--the hope that Time and Separation will restore Lord Ruddington to such senses as he may possess, and that Susan, like a ruffled dove, will home back to Gibson's faithful heart after all."You can't answer, Ma'am," he said almost fiercely."Of course I can't, you foolish fellow," I said, recovering my wits and making a show of irritation. "I can't answer for Susan any more than I can for you. How do I know that, when we come back in four weeks' time, poor Susan won't find you consoling yourself with somebody else?"He brushed my trifling aside."Then I'll tell you, Ma'am, something you don't know," he almost hissed in my ear. "God knows who it is: but some one's turned Susan's head. She doesn't do no more than give me hints. It's driving me mad. She doesn't name the party: but it's somebody richer'n a lord."Gibson flung down his cap and lifted his right hand."Hark ye, Miss Gertrude," he said harshly and chokily. "Hark ye while I swear. This is my Bible oath. If he touches a hair on Susan's head, saving what's honest, I'll break every bone in his body! Don't matter to me if it's the king himself. Whoever he is, I'll wring his neck, and swing for it gladly. If I don't, may I be struck dead!""Silence, Gibson!" I said sternly. "Don't speak like this to me.""Then how shall I speak, Ma'am? Answer me that. Me that's worshipped every inch of ground that Susan's trod on for years and years! Me that would go through fire and water and hell----""Gibson, listen. You think you've told me what I don't know. What if I knew it already?"He faced me, startled."I say, what if I knew it already? I've never seen this man; but what if I can give you my word that Susan has only written to him once in her life? What if her only letter was to say that she does not love this man, and that she does not know she ever can or will, and that, if she cannot, all the money in the world won't bribe her into marrying him? What if she has told him that she is glad she is going to France? What if she has forbidden him to try and see her till she comes back to England? What if she will see you again, Gibson, before she sees him? Most important of all, what if I tell you that I have made up my mind to look after Susan in this affair as if she were my own younger sister? What if I promise you that she shall not come to harm?"Gibson drank in my words with greedy ears and devoured me with searching eyes."God bless you, Miss Gertrude, God bless you!" he faltered; "and God grant it may be true!""So you think I would tell you lies, Gibson?""No, Ma'am, no. You're dealing with me fair. But how long will you be able to manage Susan if her head gets any more turned? And oh, Miss Gertrude ... I ask pardon--but this isn't no job for a young lady like you, as pure as an angel, that doesn't know this wicked world. Ma'am, if he's a scoundrel, he'll deceive Susan and he'll deceive you, Ma'am, as easy as looking at you! Oh, Ma'am, you don't understand! I can put up with losing Susan, though it'll kill me. I can put up with her being took away honest. But----"He brought his lips to my ear and finished his sentence:"If there's any devil's work, it'll be murder for him and hanging for me. Miss Gertrude, may I come to France?"I drew a step away."No, Gibson," I answered, assuming a calmness and a mastery which I did not feel. "You can't come to France. There is no need. I am sorry for you--deeply sorry--and I respect you for some of the things you have said. But you are excited. You have been brooding. You've got morbid, exaggerated fears."He came towards me again."Gibson, wait till I've finished. You stopped me saying something that ought to satisfy you. It is this. At Sainte Véronique, Susan will be under my eye all the time. If this man follows her, I shall know. And I pledge you my word that, if he comes, I will write to you--no, I will telegraph--and then you can do whatever you please.""You pledge me your word, Ma'am?""I said so."For at least five seconds he scrutinized my face. Then he stooped down low, as if he was going to kneel at my feet, and began hunting for the cap which he had thrown down among the nasturtiums. He was a long time finding it. When he got up again, he said in clear, low, sad tones:"Miss Gertrude, I pray to God that I may live to do one half as much for you as you have done this night for me.""Cheer up, Gibson," I said; "things are hardly ever as bad as they look. Enjoy your holiday all you can. Write down your address and give it me in the morning. It's getting chilly. Good-night."I hadn't moved twenty yards before he was at my heels once more."I beg your pardon, Ma'am," he said breathlessly, "but there's just one other thing.""Yes?""I'm thinking, Ma'am, perhaps you won't name it to Susan that I've spoke like this to-night?""You may be easy in mind, Gibson, I'm not likely to say a word about it. And be careful that you never name it to her yourself that we've had this talk.""Never, Ma'am, as long as I live," said Gibson fervently. And so I managed to get away. On the whole, the Gibson part of this drama of ours has tried me more than Susan's. That Susan should marry a lord, and become mistress of Ruddington Towers, is no more than an oddity, an awkwardness. But it is a very different thing to look on while an honest lad like Gibson sees the girl he worships bribed away from him with money.To say that I feel like a bather banged about on the stones by the breakers is to put it too weakly. My brains feel like a battlefield, where Greeks and Trojans, Hector and Achilles, have been trampling, and slashing, and charging all the long day. And for Helen and Paris, I have a lady's-maid and a groom!Bed-time.Another thunderbolt--the loudest and horriblest and most abominable yet!Susan must be stark mad.Instead of copying out my draft, she has simply tucked it inside the specimen envelope I addressed, and has posted it to Ruddington!I'm too utterly sick and tired and disgusted to write down in this diary all that Susan said--which wasn't much--and all that I said--which was even less, but entirely to the point. Susan has gone off, crying--as if she's the one with the grievance!Thank God for bed!BOOK IIDIEPPEBOOK IISaturday night.The sight, and smell, and sound of the glittering, tumbling sea must have done me good. After last night's and Thursday night's bad dreams and worse wakings, I ought to be as sleepy as a dormouse. Yet I feel quite fresh and keen.Not that to-day has been any great improvement on yesterday and the day before. To begin with, it put me quite out of temper, at Traxelby station, to see how Susan was far too nasty to Gibson, and how Gibson was far too nice to Susan. And Gibson couldn't possibly have been clumsier in his attempt to give me his address on the sly. It was a miracle that Susan didn't see.I kept Susan beside me all the way to Newhaven, and also on the boat. It was a turbine steamer, and the sea was smooth, and I ought to have enjoyed the crossing immensely. But I didn't.Of course, the reason was Susan. We hadn't fairly lost sight of that blinding, towering white cliff above Seaford before Susan said tragically in my ear:"Oh, Miss, I have such a dreadful feeling!"Never before have I been cruel to the sea-sick. But it was altogether too much that Susan, who has always been the best sailor in the world, should begin to work up a squeamishness on a turbine, with the sun shining and the sea as calm as a pond, and no one ill, not even the trippers in ready-made yachting-suits. I felt she was doing it just to be important, and interesting, and difficult."Nonsense, Susan!" I said, quite roughly: "it's perfectly ridiculous. Don't think about it, and you'll be all right.""I don't mean that I'm took bad, Miss," said Susan. And she looked aggrieved. Probably it was my fancy; but, in her injured dignity, there seemed to be a blend of Susan Briggs with the future Lady Ruddington."What do you mean, then?" I asked grudgingly.She did not answer at once. When she did, she said mysteriously:"I've got the feeling, Miss, that ... that it's him!""Him?""Yes, Miss. He's kept looking at me ever since we landed on the ship."Susan shot a swift glance to her right, and then, with a modest blush, resumed her scrutiny of the pattern on the rug across her knees. I affected to take an interest in a fishing-smack which was fast dropping astern of us; and, in this way, I was able to examine the part of the boat whither Susan's glance had winged its coy flight.No doubt, ever so many people have stayed in town for the Harvard and Cambridge Boat-race. Anyhow, there weren't many crossing this morning. We were sitting abaft the funnel, and there was hardly anybody between our two chairs and the gate leading to the second-class.The second-class deck was fairly full. There the poor "seconds" sat, like animals in a zoo, behind a bar, for us superior mortals to stare at. They were seated oddly, on bags or undersized stools, so that they looked like wrong-doers in the stocks. The very funnel (which soared up from the midst of the first-class deck) showed its contempt by visiting them with a copious and increasing plague of large black grits, until they were sootier than the damned in hell. And after all, had not each and every one of them committed the deadly sin of being either unwilling or unable to pay the extra half-crown or so which would have made them, for three or four glorious hours, the equals of such notables as myself and the future Lady Ruddington? They had the air of accepting their punishment as just.I picked out two unabashed and unassociated males, either of whom might be Susan's "Him." Keeping my eyes still on the second-class deck, but directing my voice towards Susan's cheek, I asked:"Which?""The gentleman that's staring so, Miss.""Can't you see there are two staring?" I said. "Which do you mean? Is it the one with the peaked cap and the gilt buttons--the one that's rubbing the back of his head against the side of the life-boat?""Oh, no, Miss! It's the gentleman with the cigar and the thick stockings."The fact that the puffer of the cigar was staring at us without the slightest attempt at dissimulation made it easier for me to take him in from top to toe. The top was hidden in a grey cloth cap, and the toe in a brown boot of a large size. The creature was large-handed, large-featured, and (as I afterwards found) large-laughed and large-voiced. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, continued downwards by the thick grey stockings which had vied with the cigar in Susan's regard. There was a bold ring on the little (or, rather, on the smallest) finger of his left hand. His whole port and mien were idle and evil; and never in my life have I seen more horrid legs.At a first glance his coarseness was so evidently the coarseness of a low-bred shopman or bookie, that I nearly turned on Susan to rebuke her sharply for wasting my time. But, at a second glance, I became conscious of a sickening doubt. Had I not seen this identical coarseness before, in very high places?Apart from his one unilluminating letter to Susan, all my meagre knowledge of Lord Ruddington has been collected at second or third hand. Both Alice and I have heard that he is reticent, aloof, rather studious; and the stray reports of him which have reached Traxelby have been pretty much to the same effect. But our informants may have been wrong. Or, as our information is a year old, Lord Ruddington may have changed for the worse. If so, he has galloped downhill at the devil's own pace.When I had seen a good deal more than enough, I turned my back on him pointedly, and said to Susan:"Move your chair a little--the way the boat's going. The wind can't hurt you."Visibly loth, Susan shifted her chair."What makes you think it is he, Susan?" I demanded."I don't know, Miss," said Susan."Come, now. There must be something.""No, Miss," answered Susan. "It's just a dreadful feeling that keeps coming over me.""Then the sooner you put the dreadful feeling on one side, the better," I said unpleasantly. "I hardly call it complimentary to Lord Ruddington that you should mistake him for a man like that."Susan began her new pout--the bride-elect pout that was never in Susan's world till last Thursday. It annoyed me."Why," I said, "if that's Lord Ruddington, all I can say is that poor Gibson is fit to be a duke or a prince beside him."Susan was touched in a raw place. She pouted worse than ever. I couldn't help saying:"One has only to look at his legs!""I was thinking, Miss," said the bride-elect, "that they was rather nice."She actually turned her head, and had begun to take quite a deliberate peep at the rather nice legs, when I addressed her sharply."Susan," I said, "so long as you're with me, you'll be so good as to behave yourself properly. I'm surprised."She recalled her wanton glance at once, and blushed suitably and sufficiently. Gibson is only partly right about Susan's head being turned. If it were turned more than a very, very little, she wouldn't be able to obey so fully and promptly and shamefacedly when I whistle her straying fancy back to heel."What have you done with those two magazines?" I asked. "Why don't you read them? If you don't look at him, he won't look at you."My dutiful Susan did her best. So did I. But my best was no better than Susan's. Try as I would, I couldn't restrain myself from darting an occasional glance at the brute in grey to see if he was still staring; and, try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that Susan was doing the same. At the end of about ten minutes, we did it at the same moment."You're looking again, Susan," I snapped angrily. It was mean of me and dishonest, I know. Besides, it was taking an ungenerous advantage of my powers as Susan's mistress. But I had to save my dignity. And Susan would have done the same in my place.Susan hung her head."I'm very sorry, Miss," she said. "I was really trying not to, Miss. But it's such a dreadful feeling. I feel as if Imustlook.""Susan," I said ingeniously, "we will suppose, just for a moment, that the creature is Lord Ruddington. For your sake, and his own sake, and everybody's sake, I hope and believe he isn't. But let us suppose he is.""Yes, Miss," said Susan patiently."Susan, I put it to you. If heisLord Ruddington, what will he think of you for casting sheep's eyes at him, and looking up and looking down, and blushing, and all the rest of it?""I don't think it's him as ought to complain, Miss," said Susan, "seeing it's him that's making me do it.""You don't see what I mean. If he's Lord Ruddington, he knows that you're Susan, and he can hardly help looking at you, though I must say he isn't treating you as he would a lady. But when it's a case ofyoulooking at him, it's different. You see, you're not supposed to have any idea it's Lord Ruddington. All you've got to go by is 'a dreadful feeling'--which is nothing at all. So what must he think of you, when he sees you making eyes at a perfect stranger? He must think you've got glances and blushes for every man who chooses to stare at you."Susan did not see my point clearly. Indeed, the more I laboured it, the less clearly I saw it myself. Besides, if this was really and truly Lord Ruddington, my attempt at crediting him with superfine feelings was either hypothetical or ludicrous."I'm very sorry, Miss," said Susan from the depths of her immeasurable docility. And then we got through another half-hour of pretending to look at magazines, while we were cunningly looking at the creature who was fixedly looking at us.When it became intolerable, I said to Susan:"I'm determined not to move. One mustn't even seem to be beaten by such rudeness. But do, for goodness' sake, put it out of your head that it can possibly be Lord Ruddington. What would Lord Ruddington be doing, travelling second-class?""I suppose, Miss," answered Susan, so promptly that she must have already thought it out, "he's come after Me. And he thought we shouldn't guess it was him if he rode in the second-class."I suddenly felt that I had had heaps more than enough of the whole sordid business. I had felt for an hour that Susan knew a little more than she cared to admit. Probably she was right, and this was indeed Lord Ruddington. If so, everything was plain. This coarse-grained young rake's desire of Susan's country freshness and innocence was something even more detestable than the familiar infatuation of some weedy young lordling with a dressy and exuberant and altogether outrageous chorus-girl in town. I felt as if a rosy veil of illusion had been drawn away from life, and it almost turned me faint and sick. The worst of the affair was that Susan, with her wholesome instincts, was not revolted as she ought to have been, even by that which she did not understand."Susan," I said abruptly, "I'm not at all satisfied. You keep talking about a dreadful feeling, which is all sheer nonsense. I feel perfectly certain you know something about that man down there that you haven't told me.""The only thing, Miss----""Why didn't you tell me before?""I didn't think there was anything much in it, Miss.""What? In what?""Only that he came out through that little gate when you were downstairs, Miss, changing the money. It was before they locked the gate--before the guard looked at the tickets, just after the boat started.""What did he say to you?""He didn't say anything, Miss," replied Susan regretfully. "All he did was he looked at these bags, Miss, and stood over them till he'd read the names on the labels enough to learn them by heart, and where we were going as well. It was that that gave me such a dreadful feeling. Then the guard came and asked him what he was doing in the first-class, and looked at his ticket, and said it would be four-and-six more; and, with that, he went back again through the gate.""Susan," I said, "I am really very angry. You ought to have told me this at once. Help me to put these things together. You know how I hate it; but we are going below."We didn't go below; but we went as far forward as we could, and sat gazing southward until a little low moan of joy from a French-woman at my side told me that she had caught sight of the faint white ramparts of France.As the cliffs rose higher from the sea and spread widelier to the east and west, my spirits rose and expanded with them. If Lord Ruddington was following us, there was his insult to me as well as his designs upon Susan to be dealt with. So long as we were cramped up on a ship, he had the advantage of us; but with the hugeness of France unfolding before me, I felt myself his match, and began spoiling for a fight.I didn't have to wait long. As we entered Dieppe harbour, a sailor unlocked the gate of the second-class pen, and the inmates streamed out all over the main deck. Susan was for hurrying to swell the serried mass of Britons who invariably fight like Bushmen to be first on the gangway. But I kept her in her place, and we were among the last to disembark.Ruddington--if it's truly he--was waiting for us at the Customs. He had got his own bag passed and chalk-marked already. I was prepared for developments, but not for what actually followed. Ignoring me, with the coolest insolence, he marched straight up to Susan, clawed carelessly at his cloth cap, and said:"Can I be of any assistance?"Susan shrank under my wing, all crimson confusion. I turned on him sharply."What is it you want?" I demanded.He coloured up; having, I suppose, some poor remnant of shame after all. Then he stammered:"I thought I might be of some assistance.""Thank you," I said. "None is needed." And I turned my back.When we had got everything through, we went into the buffet, and drank thin tea out of thick cups, while He stood at the bar with a long glass of something-and-soda. Susan had been so thoroughly cowed into speechlessness and good behaviour that I was able to take counsel with myself in peace.We had deposited the trunks in theconsigneuntil Monday, the day I had intended to resume the journey to Sainte Véronique. The bags were piled up at Susan's feet, labelled with the labels He had so coolly looked at. I wished my writing wasn't so legible. No doubt he had memorized the address--Hôtel du Cheval d'Or, Dieppe.All the way to Newhaven in the train, my poor little week-end time-table had seemed so lovely. Saturday, 4 P.M., arrive at the Cheval d'Or; 4.15 P.M., a bath and change; 5 P.M., a peep into St. Jacques andune petite promenadealong the front; 6.30 P.M., a short and early dinner, with asole Normande, acaneton Rouennais, a bit of Neufchatel cheese, some wild strawberries, and a broad-based, high-soaring, unemptiable carafe of cider; 8 P.M., this diary (with, I devoutly hoped, not a word in it about Susan); 9 P.M., bed; Sunday, a little dash upon Rouen, a run round the churches, and back for seven-o'clock dinner at the Cheval d'Or; Monday, 8.30 A.M., depart for Sainte Véronique. But now the dream was shattered. The gilt was off the Cheval d'Or, and he was the one horse in all France that I might not mount.I sat and debated whether it would be best to go to one of the other Dieppe hotels, sending the Cheval d'Or the price of the rooms by post, or to climb straight into the Paris train and spend the night in Rouen. At last I decided that we had better stick to Dieppe and go to the Astor, where their idea of welcoming you to Normandy is to try and make you believe you're at the Carlton, and where you can't drink cider without feeling that you're a perfect monster of parsimony. It was maddening. But it had to be faced.He drained the last drop of his something-and-soda and strode out quickly with his bag--doubtless to entrench himself in good time at the Cheval d'Or. When He was safely off the premises, I went to the platform door to find a porter. Behind the excited crowd of officials who implore you to take your seat for Paris, I espied their rivals--that silent band, with the names of hotels gilt-lettered on their caps, whose dumb eloquence pleads with you to remain in Dieppe. I had almost caught the "Astor" man's eye, when a face I dimly remembered pushed itself into sight. The face looked at me from under a cap inscribed "Hôtel du Cheval d'Or." It was Pierre, that best of porters. He knew me. I was too late.I've learned a lesson and drawn a moral. Whenever I've forgotten, or been too lazy, to write beforehand to an hotel, I never once remember coming to the smallest harm. But whenever I've been a paragon of methodicalness and have given two or three days' notice, how often haven't I found myself shoved away into a back room or an annexe? If only I hadn't wired to the Cheval d'Or last night, I could have tossed Pierre a pleasant look and have gone off to the Astor, leaving Ruddington all alone in his glory.Pierre had us and our bags in his omnibus in a twinkling; and, five minutes later, we were in the very muzzle of the Cheval d'Or. Out flew Madame Legendre, all smiles and hearty welcomes, and it is the simple-literal truth that, at the same moment, Justine was haling a perfectly adorable new-pluckedcanetoninto her kitchen by his neck.Something forced me to glance up to the sunny stuccoed walls and snowy-curtained casements of the main hotel building on the left-hand side of the court. A man was leaning out of a second-floor window. When he caught sight of me, he swiftly drew in his head. It was He!My mind made itself up in a moment. I plunged boldly into an extensive and variegated falsehood. I declared that when I telegraphed last night, I didn't know that some great friends of mine were at the Astor. It was the greatest disappointment to me not to stay, as arranged, at the Cheval d'Or. On my way back to England from Sainte Véronique, I would be sure to pay Madame Legendre at least a week's visit. Meanwhile, could Madame, as an exceptional favour, allow Pierre to carry us round to the Astor?The long and short of it is that, so far, I have outwitted him; and here I am, spending my first French night in an English hotel. As one might as well be damned for fifty fibs as for one, I have told Madame Legendre that I want to pass all my time with my friends here at the Astor; and that if any one who knows me inquires, ever so pressingly, she isn't to acknowledge that she has the faintest idea where I've gone. She's promised. As for Pierre, I have bought him body and soul for ten francs, cash down; and if Ruddington begins asking questions he'll be told that the English lady and her maid have changed their minds and gone on to Paris.Alas, poor dreams! I have just eaten a Paris dinner and have sent it down with London claret. And I'm going to sleep in an English bedroom, instead of in a French one. I did so want a French one, with a curtained bed and a pudgy quilt, and an Empire mirror over the mantelpiece, to say nothing of a gilt clock, and two bronze horses, and four or five nice pious pictures of martyrs all stuck full of arrows. But one can't have everything; and it's enough for me that I've beaten Ruddington to-day, as I shall beat him to-morrow and every other day until I can believe that he's something better than a libertine cad.He's done me one good turn, at any rate. Scribbling down all this has made me deliciously drowsy. So now to make up all those arrears of sleep.
Friday, September7, 5a.m.
Such a wretched night! I hope Lord Ruddington has had a still worse one. He deserves it, and I don't. Besides, he has something to gain (or thinks he has), while I only have something to lose. Even if he rushes out of his infatuation as precipitately as he rushed into it, Susan can never be the same nice girl again.
I have thought about it all the many hours of this blessed night that I have been awake; and I have dreamt about it all the few nightmarish minutes I have been asleep--twisty, scary, jumpy dreams that I can't half remember.
Heaven knows I was vexed enough when Alice would persist in teasing me last Sunday about Lord Ruddington. What would Alice not have said if she had known that he was hardly three miles away at the very time she was plaguing me? On Wednesday, at the station, her last words were, "Gertie, don't be a fool." From Alice's point of view, Gertie will be a fool if Gertie doesn't so play her cards as to become Lady Ruddington.
I did so hate it. If I am happy, why can't people leave me alone? Alice will be dreadfully indignant if ever she finds out that I knew Lord Ruddington was coming at once to the Towers. But if I had told her, she would only have fought against me going off to Sainte Véronique. Yet, why in the world should I be going to a place like Sainte Véronique at the fag-end of the season? I'm going simply and solely because I was determined not to give the tiniest scrap of opportunity to the gossips and matchmakers who would have been so ready to connect the young spinster of Traxelby Grange with the young bachelor of Ruddington Towers.
But I'm wandering away from my own point. I say, Alice's chaff and hints and coaxings were bad enough; but this farce of Susan's is a million times worse. I admit I'm weak enough to care what people say and think; and what sort of a position will it be when all the world knows that his noble lordship of Ruddington is come to the Grange a-wooing, not me but my maid? It's perfectly hateful.
Noon.
Susan is herself again. I don't mean that she isn't still burdened with the worries and anxieties of her amazing good luck. Indeed, she confesses that she has had a wakeful night. But in her work and her behaviour she's once more as good as gold.
After all, it was lean and ungenerous of me yesterday to be jarred by her one low-class remark. We are none of us at our best every single minute of our lives.
When I'd written in this diary, with my teeth chattering, at five o'clock this morning, I crawled back into bed in a very sour temper; and if Susan had come in sulky with a second lot of weak toast and strong tea, it would have finished me off. As it was, I lay trying to get warm, and wondering whether it mightn't be better to leave Susan and Ruddington to patch up their ridiculous match in their own unthinkable way.
At a quarter to seven Susan brought me three perfect square inches of toast, and a perfect tablespoonful of China tea in that sweet little thin birds'-egg-coloured porcelain cup which I thought was broken. She saw at once that I hadn't slept; and, in her quiet, untoadying, genuine old way, she was ever so much concerned. But I didn't let her begin talking.
I must do my duty by Susan.
Haven't I often felt inwardly virtuous on the strength of my compassion (more sentimental than practical!) for Susan's motherlessness? How do I know that the poor good creature has not consciously pitied me on the same account? It isn't too much to say that Susan has been almost a mother to me over and over again. Surely, then, it is my duty to be a mother to her in this big, sudden strain on her simple wits.
Rumour says that Ruddington is all right. But Rumour sometimes has a lying tongue even when she speaks in a man's praise. I have no guarantee whatever that Lord Ruddington intends to treat Susan honourably. If he doesn't, I know I shall be a poor defender of Susan, and that I can't hope to be his match in worldly knowledge and cunning. But I don't mean to fail for want of doing my best.
This is the reply I have drafted:--
THE GRANGE,TRAXELBY, Friday.
Your letter of Tuesday was not one to be answered, or even acknowledged, in a hurry.
Indeed, it is only after hesitation that I decide to answer it at all. How do I know that this unaccountable flame of passion has not died down as quickly as it sprang up?
But there is a reason why, if I am to reply at all, I ought to do so to-day. To-morrow we are going to France. We shall be away a month.
You ask me if I am free to bestow my affection where I will. The answer is--Yes.
Deeply disturbed though I am by your surprising letter, I will not make a difficult situation more difficult still by anything like coyness. In fairness to both of us, I will speak as plainly and shortly and practically as I can.
There is only one direct question in your letter, and I have answered it above. But there is an indirect question also. You want to know if the affection which I have not given elsewhere can be given to Lord Ruddington. The answer is--I do not know.
You have seenme, but I have not seenyou. Again, if I consent, you will remain in your old rank and station, while I must make a great and exacting and perilous change. Above all, you declare that you have the fullest possible inward light on this matter, whereas I have nothing of the kind. Thus you have a threefold advantage over me.
Reading your letter as an offer of marriage, the most I can say to-day is that, for the present, I do not refuse it.
Will you write to me once a week (not more) while I am at Sainte Véronique? Our address will be at the Hôtel du Dauphin.
Meanwhile, I beg most earnestly that you will not try to see me before we leave to-morrow. This journey to France is surely providential, and we must not throw its advantages away.
I am going to be very frank indeed. To a poor girl, with her living to earn, your offer is so tempting and marvellous that, if you pressed it immediately and in person, I fear I might be swept off my feet into acceptance long before I could be sure that love will exist on both sides. For your own sake, if not for mine, do not put me to such proof. What would my consent be worth if you won it solely through the powers of your wealth and birth to dazzle my eyes and confuse my brain?
My month abroad will serve two ends. By correspondence we shall know one another better; and our first meeting will thereby be made less embarrassing and formidable--especially to me. Again (and you must forgive me for saying it), time and absence may reveal to you more of your own heart and mind. Perhaps you will repent most bitterly of your letter which I am now answering, and, if so, it will surely be better to admit that you have been the victim of a passing madness rather than to fasten life-long unhappiness upon us both.
SUSAN BRIGGS.
I can hardly say I am proud of this production. Quite the contrary. Both in matter and style, it's altogether too un-Susanish. Indeed, now that I've tried and failed, I'm beginning to have more respect for the effusion of the young lady in the short-waisted muslin frock. Perhaps if I'd taken out the bits about the coach and the casual intercourse her letter would have been better than mine.
Heaven knows what Susan will make of it! I'm positively nervy every time I hear her on the stairs.
All the same, I've said the best thing to Lord Ruddington, even if I've said it in the worst way. Going to Sainte Véronique bright and early to-morrow morning is quite a good scheme. If the noble lord comes hot-foot after us, I can certainly manage him better at Sainte Véronique than here at the Grange. Besides, I'm half persuaded that the poor boy's paroxysm won't last long. If needs be, we'll go to Alice's when we come back to England.
I think we'll travel by Dieppe. It means more train-journey on the other side, but he's less likely to track us and bother us that way. Of course, if he did anything of the kind, it would be abominable. But one never knows where a madman will draw the line.
Before dinner.
Susan isn't happy.
I can see she doesn't like my draft. But she's docile, and she's going to use it.
I made the poor thing sit beside me at my desk while we went through it together. At the end she said:
"Thank you, Miss. But I hate to think I've caused so much trouble."
"That's nothing, Susan," I said. "Just tell me plainly if you think it'll do."
"It's beautiful, Miss," said Susan. "Only..."
"Only what?"
"Well, Miss, very likely I'm wrong. But it seems to leave him a way of backing out again."
I was prepared for this. So I said, severely:
"Susan, what do you mean?"
"About going away," answered Susan doggedly. "About being a month in France, and not saying Good-bye, and only having him write once a week. It seems to give him a chance of changing his mind."
"Very well, Susan. Shall we tear this up? How will it be to write and tell Lord Ruddington that you will be disengaged to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock?"
"Oh no, Miss, please no!" gasped Susan, turning pale. "I couldn't, really I couldn't. I could never face him."
"Why not?"
Tears came into Susan's eyes.
"I should be as dumb as a fish, Miss. I should just sit and sit and never be able to say a word--and then he'd think I was stupid and he'd go away."
"So I think myself," I said. "That's why this letter is sensible. After he's written to you two or three times, you'll feel less strange and more able to meet him."
"Yes, Miss. But it's such a long way and such a long time. He might change his mind."
"Susan," I began, with all the grown-up, worldly-wise solemnity I could muster, "listen to me. If he's going to change his mind as easy as that, won't you be better without him?"
Susan looked dubious. "I don't think I would go as far as that, Miss," she said candidly.
Evidently it was necessary to rub the truth well in.
"Susan," I said, "I admit that lords don't marry lady's-maids every day. This case is unusual. But it isn't the first. Before we were born, dukes have married dairy-maids and earls have married their cooks. A few of them have been happy all their lives long. Most of them have been miserable before the end of the honeymoon."
Susan began to pout. I piled it on thicker.
"I won't mention names," I said. "But I know a case myself. The son of a duke took a fancy to a poor governess, and married her for her looks. He was infatuated with her at first sight, he followed her everywhere, he wouldn't take her refusal, he quarrelled with his father for her sake: and at last he got her. What happened? Although she was as well educated as he was, he tired of her in a year."
"But I suppose, Miss, she has all she wants?" said Susan, pouting harder than ever.
"She has all she wants," I replied scornfully, "in the way of house and clothes and food. But, Susan, think. What if she wantshim?"
Susan was silent. I drove it home.
"What if she wantshim? And what if she hardly ever sees him? Susan, I don't care to talk to you about such things; but this affair of Lord Ruddington is too serious for mincing words. The reason why the woman I'm telling you about never sees her husband is that he's the slave of another woman--a woman neither so pretty nor so clever nor so good-tempered nor even so well-born as his poor wife. Susan, would you like a life like that, even if you could live it in silks and old laces amidst all the luxury of Ruddington Towers?"
Susan was blushing hotly, as I had intended and hoped she would.
"Oh no, Miss," she said eagerly, all her honest blood and good training coming to the rescue. "But I don't think Lord Ruddington would do those sort of things."
"You think. But you don't know. Susan, I'm going to put you an old-fashioned question. Do you think it would be right to marry a man--never mind whether it's Lord Ruddington, or Gibson, or any other man--if you didn't love him?"
I was trying my poor, honest Susan too searchingly. Tears again shone in her blue eyes. Her colour came and went. She turned away her head.
"Never mind, Susan," I said, very much more kindly. "I can guess your answer. And I can read your mind. You don't love Lord Ruddington. It isn't possible you should, at present. But you think it will be so lovely to be Lady Ruddington that you mean to make yourself love him whatever happens."
"Yes. That's it, Miss," sobbed Susan. "I don't deserve that you should be so kind to me, Miss."
"The danger is, Susan, that we can't depend on Love coming whenever we beckon to it. Perhaps Lord Ruddington is cold and unlovable. Perhaps he's too passionate to be affectionate. Unless you can love him in return, his love will only torture you. Susan, make quite sure of your ground. You are not like other girls. A mistake of this kind would first sour you and then kill you. Think of it all in this light, and you will understand my answer to Lord Ruddington better."
"I do, Miss," said Susan urgently. "I understand it quite well now. And I know it's best. Please, Miss Gertrude, if you'll show me how to address it I'll send it to-night."
I took up an envelope and addressed it to Lord Ruddington.
"You know best, Miss," said Susan, glancing at the draft once more. "But ... but oughtn't a girl like me to say 'your lordship'? Besides----"
She checked herself. It was a new thing for Susan to question my judgment on any point, however small.
"Besides what?" I asked.
"Well, Miss, it seems to look strange beginning the letter without anything to start off, like."
"Lord Ruddington set us the example," I explained. "I thought it was rather clever and delicate of him. He couldn't write in the third person, could he? And he couldn't very well call you 'Madam,' or 'Dear Miss Briggs,' or 'Dear Susan.' No. It's far better for both the letters to be as they are."
"Thank you, Miss," said Susan, as humbly and teachably as she had ever spoken in her life.
She has gone to her own room. I do hope she won't write it out in that frightful, blotty school-girl hand. I ought to have told her to write more quickly and freely, and less as if she's doing it with a paint-brush. Still, I'm deeply thankful we're getting on so nicely.
To-morrow, the glorious sea, and the cider, and dear old Sainte Véronique!
9.30p.m.
More worry and tangle. I feel all bruised and weak, as if I'd been battered about in the surf on a stony beach.
While I was walking in the garden after dinner, Gibson came across from the stables and began hanging about. I had a presentiment as to what he wanted, and I nearly bolted back into the house. Susan had been quite enough for one day. But, although it was dusk, I could see his trouble sitting, so to speak, on Gibson's shoulders. There was nothing for it but to face it out.
"Good-evening, Gibson," I said. "Do you want to speak to me?"
"I do, Ma'am," Gibson answered. His manner was perfectly respectful, but his tone was almost imperative.
"What is the matter?"
"You told me, Ma'am, I could have a holiday, beginning Monday. Hughes is well able now to look after the horses. If I couldn't trust him, I wouldn't go."
"But, Gibson, we talked over all this on Tuesday, and it was settled you should go. Why do you want me to discuss it again?"
Gibson looked awkward; shifted his cap from one hand to the other; shifted it back again. Suddenly he demanded bluntly:
"Will you mind, Ma'am, if I go to France?"
"To France?" I said, bewildered. "Why France?"
Gibson floundered through an unconvincing explanation. He affected to have doubts as to the Future of the Horse. He declared that, until lately, he had clung to a belief that "these here motor-cars would die out, same as the bicycles did;" but, tardily and bitterly, he has changed his mind. It seems the Horse will not become extinct. There will always be a few horses in the country, just as there will always be a few bows and arrows. But the number of horse-owners in the near future as compared with the horse-owners of the near past is to be in pretty much the same proportion as the archery-club amateurs of to-day in comparison with the English bowmen at Crécy and Agincourt. Gibson didn't put it exactly in this way, but his point is that the Horse, as the Psalmist says, is a vain thing for safety when a young man is looking well ahead for his bread and butter. Gibson wants to stay at Traxelby as long as I will keep him: but, "begging pardon, Ma'am, with a single lady one never knows," and therefore he thinks it is high time he should put himself in the way of qualifying as a chauffeur. Hence France.
"You do right to improve yourself, Gibson," I said. "But why France? Nowadays you can learn to be a chauffeur far better in England."
His face darkened.
"Asking pardon, Ma'am," he said obstinately, "I have a fancy for learning in France."
"Very well," I said. "It's your holiday, and you can spend it wherever you like. If you can manage the language, go to France by all means."
"Then you haven't any objection, Ma'am?"
"Why should I?"
Gibson hesitated. Then he stammered:
"I was afraid, Ma'am, that ... that me goin' to France the same time as you, Ma'am, wouldn't be ... I mean, it would look like taking a liberty."
I perceived that Gibson, like many others of his class, conceives France as a territory about the size of the Isle of Wight, with Paris in the middle.
"But France is a very big country, Gibson," I said. "Far larger than England. Even if I did object to you, we shouldn't be likely to meet. You couldn't learn to be a chauffeur at Saint Véronique. It's the last place in the world. That's why I go there."
Gibson looked at me narrowly.
"I thank you, Ma'am," he said curtly and proudly. And he made room for me to pass.
In his own fashion, Gibson is as good and as likable as Susan. Never till this week has either of them caused me the slightest anxiety. I saw in a flash how matters stood; and I felt in my heart that Gibson deserved the more sympathy of the two. He was deeper-natured than Susan: prouder and capable of a grand passion which my sweeter and shallower Susan could neither receive nor return. His clean-shaven face was almost as handsome as Susan's was pretty; and if he had enjoyed Susan's advantages instead of being brought up among grooms and stable-boys, he might have been as refined. Rather rashly, I let myself go and said:
"No, Gibson, I'm not going in yet. You have not told me what it is that is really troubling you. There is something on your mind."
He stood stock-still at the path-side and vouchsafed no answer for a long time. At last he said abruptly:
"Then you won't prevent me, Ma'am, coming to France?"
"How could I stop you? France is a free country. I couldn't make the French army shoot you, or the French police lock you up. But I'd better say plainly, Gibson, that I object to you coming to Sainte Véronique unless I send for you."
The colour mounted to Gibson's cheeks. He drew himself up and seemed to take some sudden decision. He was about to speak, when the clatter of buckets at the pump, where Hughes was gone for water, drew his gaze to the beloved stables. I followed his eyes as they ranged over the red roofs which had sheltered him at work and at play, at bed and at board, both in Grandma's time and mine, ever since he came to Traxelby as a half-fed boy of fourteen. He heard Nero's neighing and Boxer's answering bark; and I could see that he suffered. But these dear old sights and sounds did not soften his face for long. He pulled himself together again, and began decisively:
"Then if you please, Ma'am, with all respect----"
"No, Gibson," I said, like lightning; "don't finish. Let me finish for you. You were going to say that you give me notice, that you will leave this old place, that you'll give up everything, just to be a free man. No. Don't interrupt. Above all, do have just a little bit of common sense. For instance, instead of giving up Traxelby simply so that you can come to Sainte Véronique, how would it be if you told me like a sensible man what you want to come to Sainte Véronique for?"
He struggled hard with his pride. I helped him out.
"Surely you can trust me, Gibson?"
"I don't say I can't, Ma'am."
"Very well, Gibson," I answered shortly "I've done my best. Good-night."
"No!" cried Gibson, springing across my path. "Miss Gertrude, I ask your pardon It would break my heart to leave this place. But ... good God, this is too hard for me to bear!"
"Speak less loudly," I said. "Now, tell me. Is it about Susan?"
He bent his head.
"You mean," I said, "you've fallen in love with Susan." And then, although my spirit was quailing and failing at the desperate sight of the poor lad's agony, I actually forced myself to try and laugh him out of it, as if it had been no more than a mild attack of calf-love.
"Really, Gibson," I said, as banteringly and gaily as I could, "I'm surprised at you. You're behaving as if Susan's going to Siberia for life instead of to France for a month. No doubt it's very painful and upsetting to be head over ears in love, though I confess I don't know much about it. But surely, Gibson, you can manage to exist without seeing Susan for four little weeks? Be more of a man."
"It's because I'm a man, Ma'am," he rejoined firmly, "that my right place is at Sinn Veeronik. You talk of four little weeks, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I see the same Susan as went away?"
His earnestness was so terrible that I could not maintain my hollow banter, and I was silent.
"I put it plain, Ma'am. When them four little weeks are over, shall I ever see Susan any more?"
I couldn't answer. Worse still, I guessed that his next move would be to ask me how much I knew. So I clung fast to the one hope that buoys me up in all this outrageous business--the hope that Time and Separation will restore Lord Ruddington to such senses as he may possess, and that Susan, like a ruffled dove, will home back to Gibson's faithful heart after all.
"You can't answer, Ma'am," he said almost fiercely.
"Of course I can't, you foolish fellow," I said, recovering my wits and making a show of irritation. "I can't answer for Susan any more than I can for you. How do I know that, when we come back in four weeks' time, poor Susan won't find you consoling yourself with somebody else?"
He brushed my trifling aside.
"Then I'll tell you, Ma'am, something you don't know," he almost hissed in my ear. "God knows who it is: but some one's turned Susan's head. She doesn't do no more than give me hints. It's driving me mad. She doesn't name the party: but it's somebody richer'n a lord."
Gibson flung down his cap and lifted his right hand.
"Hark ye, Miss Gertrude," he said harshly and chokily. "Hark ye while I swear. This is my Bible oath. If he touches a hair on Susan's head, saving what's honest, I'll break every bone in his body! Don't matter to me if it's the king himself. Whoever he is, I'll wring his neck, and swing for it gladly. If I don't, may I be struck dead!"
"Silence, Gibson!" I said sternly. "Don't speak like this to me."
"Then how shall I speak, Ma'am? Answer me that. Me that's worshipped every inch of ground that Susan's trod on for years and years! Me that would go through fire and water and hell----"
"Gibson, listen. You think you've told me what I don't know. What if I knew it already?"
He faced me, startled.
"I say, what if I knew it already? I've never seen this man; but what if I can give you my word that Susan has only written to him once in her life? What if her only letter was to say that she does not love this man, and that she does not know she ever can or will, and that, if she cannot, all the money in the world won't bribe her into marrying him? What if she has told him that she is glad she is going to France? What if she has forbidden him to try and see her till she comes back to England? What if she will see you again, Gibson, before she sees him? Most important of all, what if I tell you that I have made up my mind to look after Susan in this affair as if she were my own younger sister? What if I promise you that she shall not come to harm?"
Gibson drank in my words with greedy ears and devoured me with searching eyes.
"God bless you, Miss Gertrude, God bless you!" he faltered; "and God grant it may be true!"
"So you think I would tell you lies, Gibson?"
"No, Ma'am, no. You're dealing with me fair. But how long will you be able to manage Susan if her head gets any more turned? And oh, Miss Gertrude ... I ask pardon--but this isn't no job for a young lady like you, as pure as an angel, that doesn't know this wicked world. Ma'am, if he's a scoundrel, he'll deceive Susan and he'll deceive you, Ma'am, as easy as looking at you! Oh, Ma'am, you don't understand! I can put up with losing Susan, though it'll kill me. I can put up with her being took away honest. But----"
He brought his lips to my ear and finished his sentence:
"If there's any devil's work, it'll be murder for him and hanging for me. Miss Gertrude, may I come to France?"
I drew a step away.
"No, Gibson," I answered, assuming a calmness and a mastery which I did not feel. "You can't come to France. There is no need. I am sorry for you--deeply sorry--and I respect you for some of the things you have said. But you are excited. You have been brooding. You've got morbid, exaggerated fears."
He came towards me again.
"Gibson, wait till I've finished. You stopped me saying something that ought to satisfy you. It is this. At Sainte Véronique, Susan will be under my eye all the time. If this man follows her, I shall know. And I pledge you my word that, if he comes, I will write to you--no, I will telegraph--and then you can do whatever you please."
"You pledge me your word, Ma'am?"
"I said so."
For at least five seconds he scrutinized my face. Then he stooped down low, as if he was going to kneel at my feet, and began hunting for the cap which he had thrown down among the nasturtiums. He was a long time finding it. When he got up again, he said in clear, low, sad tones:
"Miss Gertrude, I pray to God that I may live to do one half as much for you as you have done this night for me."
"Cheer up, Gibson," I said; "things are hardly ever as bad as they look. Enjoy your holiday all you can. Write down your address and give it me in the morning. It's getting chilly. Good-night."
I hadn't moved twenty yards before he was at my heels once more.
"I beg your pardon, Ma'am," he said breathlessly, "but there's just one other thing."
"Yes?"
"I'm thinking, Ma'am, perhaps you won't name it to Susan that I've spoke like this to-night?"
"You may be easy in mind, Gibson, I'm not likely to say a word about it. And be careful that you never name it to her yourself that we've had this talk."
"Never, Ma'am, as long as I live," said Gibson fervently. And so I managed to get away. On the whole, the Gibson part of this drama of ours has tried me more than Susan's. That Susan should marry a lord, and become mistress of Ruddington Towers, is no more than an oddity, an awkwardness. But it is a very different thing to look on while an honest lad like Gibson sees the girl he worships bribed away from him with money.
To say that I feel like a bather banged about on the stones by the breakers is to put it too weakly. My brains feel like a battlefield, where Greeks and Trojans, Hector and Achilles, have been trampling, and slashing, and charging all the long day. And for Helen and Paris, I have a lady's-maid and a groom!
Bed-time.
Another thunderbolt--the loudest and horriblest and most abominable yet!
Susan must be stark mad.
Instead of copying out my draft, she has simply tucked it inside the specimen envelope I addressed, and has posted it to Ruddington!
I'm too utterly sick and tired and disgusted to write down in this diary all that Susan said--which wasn't much--and all that I said--which was even less, but entirely to the point. Susan has gone off, crying--as if she's the one with the grievance!
Thank God for bed!
BOOK II
DIEPPE
BOOK II
Saturday night.
The sight, and smell, and sound of the glittering, tumbling sea must have done me good. After last night's and Thursday night's bad dreams and worse wakings, I ought to be as sleepy as a dormouse. Yet I feel quite fresh and keen.
Not that to-day has been any great improvement on yesterday and the day before. To begin with, it put me quite out of temper, at Traxelby station, to see how Susan was far too nasty to Gibson, and how Gibson was far too nice to Susan. And Gibson couldn't possibly have been clumsier in his attempt to give me his address on the sly. It was a miracle that Susan didn't see.
I kept Susan beside me all the way to Newhaven, and also on the boat. It was a turbine steamer, and the sea was smooth, and I ought to have enjoyed the crossing immensely. But I didn't.
Of course, the reason was Susan. We hadn't fairly lost sight of that blinding, towering white cliff above Seaford before Susan said tragically in my ear:
"Oh, Miss, I have such a dreadful feeling!"
Never before have I been cruel to the sea-sick. But it was altogether too much that Susan, who has always been the best sailor in the world, should begin to work up a squeamishness on a turbine, with the sun shining and the sea as calm as a pond, and no one ill, not even the trippers in ready-made yachting-suits. I felt she was doing it just to be important, and interesting, and difficult.
"Nonsense, Susan!" I said, quite roughly: "it's perfectly ridiculous. Don't think about it, and you'll be all right."
"I don't mean that I'm took bad, Miss," said Susan. And she looked aggrieved. Probably it was my fancy; but, in her injured dignity, there seemed to be a blend of Susan Briggs with the future Lady Ruddington.
"What do you mean, then?" I asked grudgingly.
She did not answer at once. When she did, she said mysteriously:
"I've got the feeling, Miss, that ... that it's him!"
"Him?"
"Yes, Miss. He's kept looking at me ever since we landed on the ship."
Susan shot a swift glance to her right, and then, with a modest blush, resumed her scrutiny of the pattern on the rug across her knees. I affected to take an interest in a fishing-smack which was fast dropping astern of us; and, in this way, I was able to examine the part of the boat whither Susan's glance had winged its coy flight.
No doubt, ever so many people have stayed in town for the Harvard and Cambridge Boat-race. Anyhow, there weren't many crossing this morning. We were sitting abaft the funnel, and there was hardly anybody between our two chairs and the gate leading to the second-class.
The second-class deck was fairly full. There the poor "seconds" sat, like animals in a zoo, behind a bar, for us superior mortals to stare at. They were seated oddly, on bags or undersized stools, so that they looked like wrong-doers in the stocks. The very funnel (which soared up from the midst of the first-class deck) showed its contempt by visiting them with a copious and increasing plague of large black grits, until they were sootier than the damned in hell. And after all, had not each and every one of them committed the deadly sin of being either unwilling or unable to pay the extra half-crown or so which would have made them, for three or four glorious hours, the equals of such notables as myself and the future Lady Ruddington? They had the air of accepting their punishment as just.
I picked out two unabashed and unassociated males, either of whom might be Susan's "Him." Keeping my eyes still on the second-class deck, but directing my voice towards Susan's cheek, I asked:
"Which?"
"The gentleman that's staring so, Miss."
"Can't you see there are two staring?" I said. "Which do you mean? Is it the one with the peaked cap and the gilt buttons--the one that's rubbing the back of his head against the side of the life-boat?"
"Oh, no, Miss! It's the gentleman with the cigar and the thick stockings."
The fact that the puffer of the cigar was staring at us without the slightest attempt at dissimulation made it easier for me to take him in from top to toe. The top was hidden in a grey cloth cap, and the toe in a brown boot of a large size. The creature was large-handed, large-featured, and (as I afterwards found) large-laughed and large-voiced. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, continued downwards by the thick grey stockings which had vied with the cigar in Susan's regard. There was a bold ring on the little (or, rather, on the smallest) finger of his left hand. His whole port and mien were idle and evil; and never in my life have I seen more horrid legs.
At a first glance his coarseness was so evidently the coarseness of a low-bred shopman or bookie, that I nearly turned on Susan to rebuke her sharply for wasting my time. But, at a second glance, I became conscious of a sickening doubt. Had I not seen this identical coarseness before, in very high places?
Apart from his one unilluminating letter to Susan, all my meagre knowledge of Lord Ruddington has been collected at second or third hand. Both Alice and I have heard that he is reticent, aloof, rather studious; and the stray reports of him which have reached Traxelby have been pretty much to the same effect. But our informants may have been wrong. Or, as our information is a year old, Lord Ruddington may have changed for the worse. If so, he has galloped downhill at the devil's own pace.
When I had seen a good deal more than enough, I turned my back on him pointedly, and said to Susan:
"Move your chair a little--the way the boat's going. The wind can't hurt you."
Visibly loth, Susan shifted her chair.
"What makes you think it is he, Susan?" I demanded.
"I don't know, Miss," said Susan.
"Come, now. There must be something."
"No, Miss," answered Susan. "It's just a dreadful feeling that keeps coming over me."
"Then the sooner you put the dreadful feeling on one side, the better," I said unpleasantly. "I hardly call it complimentary to Lord Ruddington that you should mistake him for a man like that."
Susan began her new pout--the bride-elect pout that was never in Susan's world till last Thursday. It annoyed me.
"Why," I said, "if that's Lord Ruddington, all I can say is that poor Gibson is fit to be a duke or a prince beside him."
Susan was touched in a raw place. She pouted worse than ever. I couldn't help saying:
"One has only to look at his legs!"
"I was thinking, Miss," said the bride-elect, "that they was rather nice."
She actually turned her head, and had begun to take quite a deliberate peep at the rather nice legs, when I addressed her sharply.
"Susan," I said, "so long as you're with me, you'll be so good as to behave yourself properly. I'm surprised."
She recalled her wanton glance at once, and blushed suitably and sufficiently. Gibson is only partly right about Susan's head being turned. If it were turned more than a very, very little, she wouldn't be able to obey so fully and promptly and shamefacedly when I whistle her straying fancy back to heel.
"What have you done with those two magazines?" I asked. "Why don't you read them? If you don't look at him, he won't look at you."
My dutiful Susan did her best. So did I. But my best was no better than Susan's. Try as I would, I couldn't restrain myself from darting an occasional glance at the brute in grey to see if he was still staring; and, try as I might, I couldn't ignore the fact that Susan was doing the same. At the end of about ten minutes, we did it at the same moment.
"You're looking again, Susan," I snapped angrily. It was mean of me and dishonest, I know. Besides, it was taking an ungenerous advantage of my powers as Susan's mistress. But I had to save my dignity. And Susan would have done the same in my place.
Susan hung her head.
"I'm very sorry, Miss," she said. "I was really trying not to, Miss. But it's such a dreadful feeling. I feel as if Imustlook."
"Susan," I said ingeniously, "we will suppose, just for a moment, that the creature is Lord Ruddington. For your sake, and his own sake, and everybody's sake, I hope and believe he isn't. But let us suppose he is."
"Yes, Miss," said Susan patiently.
"Susan, I put it to you. If heisLord Ruddington, what will he think of you for casting sheep's eyes at him, and looking up and looking down, and blushing, and all the rest of it?"
"I don't think it's him as ought to complain, Miss," said Susan, "seeing it's him that's making me do it."
"You don't see what I mean. If he's Lord Ruddington, he knows that you're Susan, and he can hardly help looking at you, though I must say he isn't treating you as he would a lady. But when it's a case ofyoulooking at him, it's different. You see, you're not supposed to have any idea it's Lord Ruddington. All you've got to go by is 'a dreadful feeling'--which is nothing at all. So what must he think of you, when he sees you making eyes at a perfect stranger? He must think you've got glances and blushes for every man who chooses to stare at you."
Susan did not see my point clearly. Indeed, the more I laboured it, the less clearly I saw it myself. Besides, if this was really and truly Lord Ruddington, my attempt at crediting him with superfine feelings was either hypothetical or ludicrous.
"I'm very sorry, Miss," said Susan from the depths of her immeasurable docility. And then we got through another half-hour of pretending to look at magazines, while we were cunningly looking at the creature who was fixedly looking at us.
When it became intolerable, I said to Susan:
"I'm determined not to move. One mustn't even seem to be beaten by such rudeness. But do, for goodness' sake, put it out of your head that it can possibly be Lord Ruddington. What would Lord Ruddington be doing, travelling second-class?"
"I suppose, Miss," answered Susan, so promptly that she must have already thought it out, "he's come after Me. And he thought we shouldn't guess it was him if he rode in the second-class."
I suddenly felt that I had had heaps more than enough of the whole sordid business. I had felt for an hour that Susan knew a little more than she cared to admit. Probably she was right, and this was indeed Lord Ruddington. If so, everything was plain. This coarse-grained young rake's desire of Susan's country freshness and innocence was something even more detestable than the familiar infatuation of some weedy young lordling with a dressy and exuberant and altogether outrageous chorus-girl in town. I felt as if a rosy veil of illusion had been drawn away from life, and it almost turned me faint and sick. The worst of the affair was that Susan, with her wholesome instincts, was not revolted as she ought to have been, even by that which she did not understand.
"Susan," I said abruptly, "I'm not at all satisfied. You keep talking about a dreadful feeling, which is all sheer nonsense. I feel perfectly certain you know something about that man down there that you haven't told me."
"The only thing, Miss----"
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I didn't think there was anything much in it, Miss."
"What? In what?"
"Only that he came out through that little gate when you were downstairs, Miss, changing the money. It was before they locked the gate--before the guard looked at the tickets, just after the boat started."
"What did he say to you?"
"He didn't say anything, Miss," replied Susan regretfully. "All he did was he looked at these bags, Miss, and stood over them till he'd read the names on the labels enough to learn them by heart, and where we were going as well. It was that that gave me such a dreadful feeling. Then the guard came and asked him what he was doing in the first-class, and looked at his ticket, and said it would be four-and-six more; and, with that, he went back again through the gate."
"Susan," I said, "I am really very angry. You ought to have told me this at once. Help me to put these things together. You know how I hate it; but we are going below."
We didn't go below; but we went as far forward as we could, and sat gazing southward until a little low moan of joy from a French-woman at my side told me that she had caught sight of the faint white ramparts of France.
As the cliffs rose higher from the sea and spread widelier to the east and west, my spirits rose and expanded with them. If Lord Ruddington was following us, there was his insult to me as well as his designs upon Susan to be dealt with. So long as we were cramped up on a ship, he had the advantage of us; but with the hugeness of France unfolding before me, I felt myself his match, and began spoiling for a fight.
I didn't have to wait long. As we entered Dieppe harbour, a sailor unlocked the gate of the second-class pen, and the inmates streamed out all over the main deck. Susan was for hurrying to swell the serried mass of Britons who invariably fight like Bushmen to be first on the gangway. But I kept her in her place, and we were among the last to disembark.
Ruddington--if it's truly he--was waiting for us at the Customs. He had got his own bag passed and chalk-marked already. I was prepared for developments, but not for what actually followed. Ignoring me, with the coolest insolence, he marched straight up to Susan, clawed carelessly at his cloth cap, and said:
"Can I be of any assistance?"
Susan shrank under my wing, all crimson confusion. I turned on him sharply.
"What is it you want?" I demanded.
He coloured up; having, I suppose, some poor remnant of shame after all. Then he stammered:
"I thought I might be of some assistance."
"Thank you," I said. "None is needed." And I turned my back.
When we had got everything through, we went into the buffet, and drank thin tea out of thick cups, while He stood at the bar with a long glass of something-and-soda. Susan had been so thoroughly cowed into speechlessness and good behaviour that I was able to take counsel with myself in peace.
We had deposited the trunks in theconsigneuntil Monday, the day I had intended to resume the journey to Sainte Véronique. The bags were piled up at Susan's feet, labelled with the labels He had so coolly looked at. I wished my writing wasn't so legible. No doubt he had memorized the address--Hôtel du Cheval d'Or, Dieppe.
All the way to Newhaven in the train, my poor little week-end time-table had seemed so lovely. Saturday, 4 P.M., arrive at the Cheval d'Or; 4.15 P.M., a bath and change; 5 P.M., a peep into St. Jacques andune petite promenadealong the front; 6.30 P.M., a short and early dinner, with asole Normande, acaneton Rouennais, a bit of Neufchatel cheese, some wild strawberries, and a broad-based, high-soaring, unemptiable carafe of cider; 8 P.M., this diary (with, I devoutly hoped, not a word in it about Susan); 9 P.M., bed; Sunday, a little dash upon Rouen, a run round the churches, and back for seven-o'clock dinner at the Cheval d'Or; Monday, 8.30 A.M., depart for Sainte Véronique. But now the dream was shattered. The gilt was off the Cheval d'Or, and he was the one horse in all France that I might not mount.
I sat and debated whether it would be best to go to one of the other Dieppe hotels, sending the Cheval d'Or the price of the rooms by post, or to climb straight into the Paris train and spend the night in Rouen. At last I decided that we had better stick to Dieppe and go to the Astor, where their idea of welcoming you to Normandy is to try and make you believe you're at the Carlton, and where you can't drink cider without feeling that you're a perfect monster of parsimony. It was maddening. But it had to be faced.
He drained the last drop of his something-and-soda and strode out quickly with his bag--doubtless to entrench himself in good time at the Cheval d'Or. When He was safely off the premises, I went to the platform door to find a porter. Behind the excited crowd of officials who implore you to take your seat for Paris, I espied their rivals--that silent band, with the names of hotels gilt-lettered on their caps, whose dumb eloquence pleads with you to remain in Dieppe. I had almost caught the "Astor" man's eye, when a face I dimly remembered pushed itself into sight. The face looked at me from under a cap inscribed "Hôtel du Cheval d'Or." It was Pierre, that best of porters. He knew me. I was too late.
I've learned a lesson and drawn a moral. Whenever I've forgotten, or been too lazy, to write beforehand to an hotel, I never once remember coming to the smallest harm. But whenever I've been a paragon of methodicalness and have given two or three days' notice, how often haven't I found myself shoved away into a back room or an annexe? If only I hadn't wired to the Cheval d'Or last night, I could have tossed Pierre a pleasant look and have gone off to the Astor, leaving Ruddington all alone in his glory.
Pierre had us and our bags in his omnibus in a twinkling; and, five minutes later, we were in the very muzzle of the Cheval d'Or. Out flew Madame Legendre, all smiles and hearty welcomes, and it is the simple-literal truth that, at the same moment, Justine was haling a perfectly adorable new-pluckedcanetoninto her kitchen by his neck.
Something forced me to glance up to the sunny stuccoed walls and snowy-curtained casements of the main hotel building on the left-hand side of the court. A man was leaning out of a second-floor window. When he caught sight of me, he swiftly drew in his head. It was He!
My mind made itself up in a moment. I plunged boldly into an extensive and variegated falsehood. I declared that when I telegraphed last night, I didn't know that some great friends of mine were at the Astor. It was the greatest disappointment to me not to stay, as arranged, at the Cheval d'Or. On my way back to England from Sainte Véronique, I would be sure to pay Madame Legendre at least a week's visit. Meanwhile, could Madame, as an exceptional favour, allow Pierre to carry us round to the Astor?
The long and short of it is that, so far, I have outwitted him; and here I am, spending my first French night in an English hotel. As one might as well be damned for fifty fibs as for one, I have told Madame Legendre that I want to pass all my time with my friends here at the Astor; and that if any one who knows me inquires, ever so pressingly, she isn't to acknowledge that she has the faintest idea where I've gone. She's promised. As for Pierre, I have bought him body and soul for ten francs, cash down; and if Ruddington begins asking questions he'll be told that the English lady and her maid have changed their minds and gone on to Paris.
Alas, poor dreams! I have just eaten a Paris dinner and have sent it down with London claret. And I'm going to sleep in an English bedroom, instead of in a French one. I did so want a French one, with a curtained bed and a pudgy quilt, and an Empire mirror over the mantelpiece, to say nothing of a gilt clock, and two bronze horses, and four or five nice pious pictures of martyrs all stuck full of arrows. But one can't have everything; and it's enough for me that I've beaten Ruddington to-day, as I shall beat him to-morrow and every other day until I can believe that he's something better than a libertine cad.
He's done me one good turn, at any rate. Scribbling down all this has made me deliciously drowsy. So now to make up all those arrears of sleep.