So it was. They were found together under the hedgerow; the horse was alive, though its back was broken, and a shot the only mercy. Sir Thomas was quite dead.
That night I carried my papers back to the office, and satisfied myself, as my duty was, that the existing will lay in its place in the office safe; since the morning that document had, so to say, gone up in the world very much. So had Miss Gladwin. She was mistress of all.
AS may be imagined, the situation evoked a great deal of sympathy and occasioned an even greater quantity of talk. Killed four days before his wedding! The poor little bride! She had lost so much more than merely Sir Thomas! The general opinion of the Bittleton Club, which may be taken as representative of the views of the county, was that Miss Gladwin ought to “do something” for Miss Tyler. There was much difference as to the extent of this suggested generosity: almost every figure between five thousand and fifty thousand pounds had its supporters. I think that of the entire roll of members only two had no proposal to submit (hypothetically) to Miss Gladwin. One was myself, tongue-tied by my position as her lawyer; the other was Spencer Fullard, who did nothing but smoke and tap his leg with his walking-stick while the question was under discussion. I remembered his summary of the lady—“hard, but a sportsman.” The hard side might indicate that she would leave the situation as fate had made it. What did the sportsman in her say? I found myself wondering what Captain Fullard’s views were, supposing he had taken the trouble—which, however, seemed to be a pleasure to his fellow-members—to arrive at any.
To tell the truth, I resented the gossip about her all the more because I could not stifle an inward feeling that if they had known her as well as I did—or, perhaps I should say, had seen her as often as I had (which is a safer way of putting it when a woman’s in the case)—they would have gossiped not less, but more. She was strange, and, I suppose, hard, in her total ignoring of the idea that there was any such question at all as that which kept the Bittleton clubmen—and of course their wives—so much on the gog. Nettie Tyler did not leave Worldstone Park. It may be assumed that her billswere paid, and probably she had pocket-money. There the facts of the case came to a sudden stop. Had Beatrice Gladwin turned her into a “companion”? Anybody who chose to put it in that light was, on the apparent facts, extremely hard to contradict or to blame, but, as I felt, not at all hard to be annoyed at. Well, I had always hated the Tyler project.
Meanwhile Miss Gladwin was exhibiting, as I had foreseen she would, extraordinary efficiency; and her efficiency gave me plenty of work, besides the routine and not small business incident on the transmission of so considerable an estate as Sir Thomas’s. She was going in for building as soon as the death duties were out of the way; meanwhile she gathered the reins of her affairs into her own hands and regulated every detail very carefully. Sir Thomas, like many men successful in large concerns, had been easy-going about his private interests. I was constantly at Worldstone Park, often spending from Saturday to Monday there, and devoting the Sunday, less church time, to its mistress’s service. She was good enough to treat me with great candour, and discussed all things very openly—except Miss Nettie Tyler.
And what of Miss Nettie Tyler? I do not consider—and I speak with no favourable prejudice—that that young lady’s behaviour was open to very serious criticism. It surprised me favourably. I admit that she was meek; now and then I thought her rather obtrusively meek. But then she might naturally have been crushed; she might well have been an insupportably mournful companion. She was neither. I could not call her helpful, because she was one of the helpless so far as practical affairs go. But she was reasonably cheerful, and she put forward no claim of any sort whatsoever. She did not appear to think that Beatrice ought to “do anything” for her beyond what she was doing; and that, to my certain knowledge, did not include the gift of even the smallest of all the varioussums suggested at the Bittleton Club. All you could say was that the lady who was to have been mistress of Worldstone Park still lived there, and made for the moment remarkably little difference. When one comes to think it over, this was really immensely to her credit. She might have made life there impossible. Or did she know that in such a case Miss Gladwin would send her away quite calmly? Let us give credit where credit is possible, and adopt the more favourable interpretation. Things went very well indeed in a very difficult situation—till Spencer Fullard made his entry on the stage.
His coming made a difference from the very first. I think that the two girls had been living in a kind of numbness which prevented them from feeling as acutely as they naturally might the position in which the freak of fate had placed them. Each lived in thought till he came—in the thought of what had been and would have been; to neither had the actual become the truly real. There had been a barrier between them. Nettie’s excellent behaviour and Beatrice’s remarkable efficiency had alike been masks, worn unconsciously, but none the less and by no less sufficient disguises. They had lived in the shadow of the death. Fullard brought back life—which is to say, he brought back conflict.
Nothing was further from his original idea. Like Sir Thomas, he was a descendant-worshipper—born to it, moreover, which Sir Thomas had not been. I was his high priest, so, of course, I knew what he was about. He came to woo the rich Miss Gladwin, picking up his wooing (he had excellently easy manners) just at the spot where he had dropped it when Sir Thomas Gladwin announced his engagement to Miss Nettie Tyler. “Dropped” is a word too definite. “Suspended” might do, or even “attenuated.” He was a captain—let us say that he had called a halt to reconnoitre his ground, but had not ordered a retreat. Events had cleared the way for him. He advanced again.
Should I blame him? My father would have blessedhim, though he might have advised him to lay an egg and die. No; Worldstone was rich enough to warrant his living, but of Gatworth there was left an annual income of hardly eight hundred pounds. But three hundred years in the county behind it! Three hundred years since the cadet branch migrated from Gloucestershire, where the Fullards had been since the Flood! It was my duty to bless his suit, and I did. It was no concern of mine that he had, in confidence, called Miss Gladwin “hard.” He had called her a “sportsman,” too. Set one off against the other, remembering his position and his cult.
Sir Thomas had been dead a year when Fullard and I first spent a Sunday together at Worldstone Park. He had been there before; so had I: but we had not chanced to coincide. It was May, and spring rioted about us. The girls, too, had doffed some of their funereal weeds; Nettie wore white and black, Beatrice black and white. Life was stirring in the place again. Nettie was almost gay, Beatrice no longer merely efficient. For the first time I found it possible to slip a dram of pleasure into the cup of a business visit. Curiously enough, the one person who was, as I supposed, there on the pleasantest errand, wore the most perturbed aspect. The fate of lovers? I am not sure. I have met men who took the position with the utmost serenity. But if one were uncertain to whom one was making love? The notion was a shock at first.
The girls went to church in the morning; Fullard and I walked round and round the garden, smoking our pipes. I expatiated on Miss Gladwin’s remarkable efficiency. “A splendid head!” I said with enthusiasm.
“A good-looking pair in their different ways,” was his somewhat unexpected reply.
“I meant intellectually,” I explained, with a laugh.
“Miss Tyler’s no fool, mind you,” remarked the captain.
I realised that his thoughts had not been with myconversation. Where had they been? In my capacity of high priest, I went on commending Miss Gladwin. He recalled himself to listen, but the sense of duty was obvious. Suddenly I recollected that he had not met Nettie Tyler before Sir Thomas died. He had been on service during the two years she had lived in Worldstone village.
AFTER lunch we all sat together on the lawn. Yes, life was there, and the instinct for life, and for new life. Poor Sir Thomas’s brooding ghost had taken its departure. I was glad, but the evidence of my eyes made me also uneasy. The situation was not developing on easy lines.
With his ears Fullard listened to Beatrice Gladwin; with his eyes he watched the girl who was to have been her all-powerful stepmother, who was now her most humble dependant. I saw it—I, a man. Were the girls themselves unconscious? The idea is absurd. If anybody were unconscious, it was Fullard himself; or, at least, he thought his predicament undetected. I suggested to Nettie that she and I might take a walk: a high priest has occasionally to do things like that when there is no chaperon about. She refused, not meekly now, but almost pertly. Beatrice raised her eyes for a moment, looked at her, and coloured ever so slightly. I think we may date the declaration of war from that glance. The captain did not see it: he was lighting a cigarette. None the less, the next moment he rose and proposed to accompany me himself. That did almost as well—how far I had got into the situation!—and I gladly acquiesced. We left the two ladies together, or, to be precise, just separating; they both, it appeared, had letters to write.
I should say at once that Spencer Fullard was one ofthe most honest men I have ever known (besides being one of the best-looking). If he came fortune-hunting, it was because he believed that pursuit to be his duty—duty to self, to ancestors, and, above all, to descendants. But, in truth, when he came first, it had not been in unwilling obedience to duty’s spur. He had liked Miss Gladwin very much; he had paid her attentions, even flirted with her; and, in the end, he liked her very much still. But there is a thing different from liking—a thing violent, sudden, and obliterating. It makes liking cease to count.
We talked little on our visit to the home farm. I took occasion once more to point out Miss Gladwin’s efficiency. Fullard fidgeted: he did not care about efficiency in women—that seemed plain. I ventured to observe that her investment of money on the estate was likely to pay well; he seemed positively uncomfortable. After these conversational failures, I waited for him. We were on our way back before he accepted the opening.
“I say, Foulkes,” he broke out suddenly, “do you suppose Miss Tyler’s going to stay here permanently?”
“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t she?”
He swished at the nettles as he made his next contribution to our meagre conversation. “But Beatrice Gladwin will marry some day soon, I expect.”
“Well?”
I was saying little, but at this point Fullard went one better. He just cocked his eye at me, leaving me to read his meaning as I best could.
“In that case, of course, she’d be sent away,” said I, smiling.
“Kicked out?” He grumbled the question, half under his breath.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Everything would be done kindly, no doubt.”
“Not fair on the chap, either,” he remarked after some moments. I think that my mind supplied theunspoken part of his conversation quite successfully: he was picturing the householdà trois; he himself was, in his mind’s eye, “the chap,” and under the circumstances he thought “the chap” ought not to be exposed to temptation. I agreed, but kept my agreement, and my understanding, to myself.
“What appalling bad luck that poor little girl’s had!”
“One of them had to have very bad luck,” I reminded him. “Sir Thomas contrived that.”
He started a little. He had forgotten the exceedingly bad luck which once had threatened Miss Gladwin, the girl he had come to woo. The captain’s state of feeling was, in fact, fairly transparent. I was sorry for him—well, for all of them—because he certainly could not afford to offer his hand to Nettie Tyler.
Somewhere on the way back from the home farm I lost Captain Spencer Fullard. Miss Tyler’s letters must have been concise; there was the gleam of a white frock, dashed here and there with splashes of black, in the park. Fullard said he wanted more exercise, and I arrived alone on the lawn, where my hostess sat beside the tea-table. Feeling guilty for another’s sin, as one often does, I approached shamefacedly.
She gave me tea, and asked, with a businesslike abruptness which I recognised as inherited, “What are they saying about me?”
That was Gladwin all over! To say not a word for twelve months, because for twelve months she had not cared; then to blurt it out! Because she wanted light? Obviously that was the reason—the sole reason. She had not cared before; now something had occurred to make her think, to make her care, to make the question of her dealings with Miss Tyler important. I might have pretended not to understand, but there was a luxury in dealing plainly with so fine a plain-dealer; I told her the truth without shuffling.
“On the whole, it’s considered that you would bedoing the handsome thing in giving her something,” I answered, sipping my tea.
She appreciated the line I took. She had expected surprise and fencing; it amused and pleased her to meet with neither. She was in the mood (by the way, we could see the black-dashed white frock and Fullard’s manly figure a quarter of a mile away) to meet frankness with its fellow.
“She never put in a word for me,” she said, smiling. “With father, I mean.”
“She doesn’t understand business,” I pleaded.
“I’ve been expected to sympathise with her bad luck!”
So had I—by the captain, half-an-hour before. But I did not mention it.
“The Bittleton Club thinks I ought to—to do something?”
I laughed at her taking our club as the arbiter. She had infused a pretty irony into her question.
“It does, Miss Gladwin.” My answer maintained the ironical note.
“Then I will,” said she, with a highly delusive appearance of simplicity.
I could not quite make her out, but it came home to me that her secret resentment against Nettie Tyler was very bitter.
She spoke again in a moment: “A word from her would have gone a long way with father.”
“That’s all in the past, isn’t it?” I murmured soothingly.
“The past!” She seemed to throw doubt on the existence of such a thing.
The captain’s manly figure and the neat little shape in white and black were approaching us. The stress of feeling has to be great before it prevents sufferers from turning up to tea. Miss Gladwin glanced toward her advancing guests, smiled, and relighted the spirit-lamp under the kettle. I suppose I was looking thoughtful,for the next moment she said, “Rather late in the day to do anything? Is that what’s in your mind? Will they say that?”
“How can I tell? Your adherents say you’ve been like sisters.”
“I never had a sister younger and prettier than myself,” said she. She waved her hand to the new arrivals, now close on us. “I nearly had a stepmother like that, though,” she added.
I did not like her at that moment; but is anybody attractive when he is fighting hard for his own? Renunciation is so much more picturesque. She was fighting—or preparing to fight. I had suddenly realised the position, for all that the garden was so peaceful, and spring was on us, and Nettie’s new-born laugh rang light across the grass, so different from the cry we once had heard from her lips in that place.
Beatrice Gladwin looked at me with a suddenly visible mockery in her dark eyes. She had read my thoughts, and she was admitting that she had. She was very “hard.” Fullard was perfectly right. Yet I think that if she had been alone at that moment she might have cried. That was just an impression of mine; really she gave no tangible ground for it, save in an odd constraint of her mouth. The next moment she laughed.
“I like a fight to be a fair fight,” she said, and looked steadily at me for a moment. She raised her voice and called to them: “Come along; the tea’s getting cold.” She added to me, “Come to my room at ten to-morrow, please.”
The rest of the evening she was as much like velvet as it was in a Gladwin to be. But I waited. I wanted to know how she meant to arrange her fair fight. She wanted one. A sportsman, after all, you see.
SHE was not like velvet when we met the next morning after breakfast in her study: her own room was emphatically a study, and in no sense a boudoir. She was like iron, or like the late Sir Thomas when he gave me instructions for his new will and for the settlement on his intended marriage with Miss Nettie Tyler. There was in her manner the same clean-cut intimation that what she wanted from me was not advice, but the promptest obedience. I suppose that she had really made up her mind the day before—even while we talked on the lawn, in all probability.
“I wish you, Mr Foulkes,” she said, “to be so good as to make arrangements to place one hundred thousand pounds at my disposal at the bank as soon as possible.”
I knew it would be no use, but my profession demanded a show of demur. “A very large sum just now—with the duties—and your schemes for the future.”
“I’ve considered the amount carefully; it’s just what appears to me proper and sufficient.”
“Then I suppose there’s no more to be said,” I sighed resignedly.
She looked at me with a slight smile. “Of course you guess what I’m going to do with it?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so. You ought to have it properly settled on her, you know. It should be carefully tied up.”
The suggestion seemed to annoy her.
“No,” she said sharply. “What she does with it, and what becomes of it, have nothing to do with me. I shall have done my part. I shall be—free.”
“I wish you would take the advice of somebody you trust.”
That softened her suddenly. She put her hand out across the table and pressed mine for a moment. “I trust you very much. I have no other friend I trustso much. Believe that, please. But I must act for myself here.” She smiled again, and with the old touch of irony added, “It will satisfy your friends at the Bittleton Club?”
“It’s a great deal too much,” I protested, with a shake of the head. “Thirty would have been adequate; fifty, generous; a hundred thousand is quixotic.”
“I’ve chosen the precise sum most carefully,” Miss Gladwin assured me. “And it’s anything but quixotic,” she added, with a smile.
A queer little calculation was going on in my brain. Wisdom (or interest, which you will) and twenty-five thousand a year against love and three thousand—was that, in her eyes, a fair fight? Perhaps the reckoning was not so far out. At any rate, love had a chance—with three thousand pounds a year. There is more difference between three thousand pounds and nothing than exists between three thousand and all the rest of the money in the world.
“Is Miss Tyler aware of your intentions?”
“Not yet, Mr Foulkes.”
“She’ll be overwhelmed,” said I. It seemed the right observation to offer.
For the first time, Miss Gladwin laughed openly. “Will she?” she retorted, with a scorn that was hardly civil. “She’ll think it less than I owe her.”
“You owe her nothing. What you may choose to give——”
Miss Gladwin interrupted me without ceremony “She confuses me with fate—with what happened—with her loss—and—and disappointment. She identifies me with all that.”
“Then she’s very unreasonable.”
“I daresay; but I can understand.” She smiled. “I can understand very well how one girl can seem like that to another, Mr Foulkes—how she can embody everything of that sort.” She paused and then added: “If I thought for a moment that she’d be—what wasyour foolish word?—oh yes, ‘overwhelmed,’ I wouldn’t do it. But I know her much too well. You remember that my adherents say we’ve been like sisters? Don’t sisters understand each other?”
“You’re hard on her—hard and unfair,” I said. Her bitterness was not good to witness.
“Perhaps I’m hard; I’m not unfair.” Her voice trembled a little; her composure was not what it had been at the beginning of our interview. “At any rate, I’m trying to be fair now; only you mustn’t—you must not—think that she’ll be overwhelmed.”
“Very well,” said I. “I won’t think that. And I’ll put matters in train about the money. You’ll have to go gently for a bit afterwards, you know. Even you are not a gold mine.” She nodded, and I rose from my chair. “Is that all for to-day?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” she said. “You’re going away?”
“Yes, I must get back to Bittleton. The office waits.”
She gave me her hand. “I shall see you again before long,” she said. “Remember, I’m trying to be fair—fair to everybody. Yes, fair to myself too. I think I’ve a right to fair treatment. I’m giving myself a chance too, Mr Foulkes. Good-bye.”
Her dismissal was not to be questioned, but I should have liked more light on her last words. I had seen enough to understand her impulse to give Nettie Tyler a fair field, to rid her of the handicap of penury, to do the handsome thing, just when it seemed most against her own interest. That was the sportsmanlike side of her, working all the more strongly because she disliked her rival. I saw too, though not at the time quite so clearly, in what sense she was trying to be fair to Captain Spencer Fullard: she thought the scales were weighted too heavily against the disinterested—shall I say the romantic?—side of that gentleman’s disposition. But that surely was quixotic, and she had denied quixotism. Yet it was difficult to perceive how shewas giving herself a chance, as she had declared. She seemed to be throwing her best chance away; so it appeared in my matter-of-fact eyes. Or was she hoping to dazzle Fullard with the splendour of her generosity? She had too much penetration to harbour any such idea. He would think the gift handsome, even very handsome, but he would be no more overwhelmed than Nettie Tyler herself. Even impartial observers at Bittleton had talked of fifty thousand pounds as the really proper thing. If Fullard were in love with Nettie, he would think double the amount none too much; and if he were not—well, then, where was Beatrice Gladwin’s need for fair treatment—her need to be given a chance at all? For, saving love, she held every card in the game.
I went back to Bittleton, kept my own counsel, set the business of the money on foot, and waited for the issue of the fair fight. No whisper about the money leaked through to the Bittleton Club; but I heard of a small party at Worldstone Park, and Spencer Fullard was one of the guests. Therefore battle was joined.
THE following Saturday fortnight theBittleton Pressscored what journalists call a “scoop” at the expense of the rival and Radical organ, theAdvertiser. Such is the reward of sound political principle! Here is the paragraph—“exclusive,” the editor was careful to make you understand:
We are privileged to announce that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly be solemnised between Captain Spencer Fullard, D.S.O., of Gatworth Hall, and Henrietta, daughter of the late Rev. F. E. Tyler, Vicar of Worldstone. We extend, in the name of the county, our cordial congratulations to the happy pair. Captain Fullard is the representative of a name ancientand respected in the county, and has done good service to his King and country. The romantic story of the lady whose affections he has been so fortunate as to win will be fresh in the minds of our readers. As we sympathised with her sorrow, so now we may with her joy. We understand that Miss Gladwin of Worldstone Park, following what she is confident would have been the wish of her lamented father, the late much-respected Sir Thomas Gladwin, Bart., M.P., D.L., J.P., C.A., is presenting the prospective bride with a wedding present which in itself amounts to a fortune. Happy they who are in a position to exercise such graceful munificence and to display filial affection in so gracious a form! It would be indiscreet to mention figures, but rumour has not hesitated to speak of what our gay forefathers used to call “a plum.” We are not at liberty to say more than that this in no way overstates the amount.
We are privileged to announce that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly be solemnised between Captain Spencer Fullard, D.S.O., of Gatworth Hall, and Henrietta, daughter of the late Rev. F. E. Tyler, Vicar of Worldstone. We extend, in the name of the county, our cordial congratulations to the happy pair. Captain Fullard is the representative of a name ancientand respected in the county, and has done good service to his King and country. The romantic story of the lady whose affections he has been so fortunate as to win will be fresh in the minds of our readers. As we sympathised with her sorrow, so now we may with her joy. We understand that Miss Gladwin of Worldstone Park, following what she is confident would have been the wish of her lamented father, the late much-respected Sir Thomas Gladwin, Bart., M.P., D.L., J.P., C.A., is presenting the prospective bride with a wedding present which in itself amounts to a fortune. Happy they who are in a position to exercise such graceful munificence and to display filial affection in so gracious a form! It would be indiscreet to mention figures, but rumour has not hesitated to speak of what our gay forefathers used to call “a plum.” We are not at liberty to say more than that this in no way overstates the amount.
Whereupon, of course, the Bittleton Club at once doubled it, and Miss Gladwin’s fame filled the air.
This was all very pretty, and it must be admitted that Beatrice Gladwin had performed her task in a most tactful way. For reasons connected with the known condition of the finances of the Gatworth Hall estate, it sounded so much better that Miss Gladwin’s present should come as a result of the engagement than—well, the other way round. The other way round would have given occasion for gossip to the clubmen of Bittleton. But now—Love against the World, and an entirely unlooked-for bonus of—“a plum,” as the editor, with a charming eighteenth-century touch, chose to describe the benefaction. That was really ideal.
Really ideal; and, of course, in no way at all correspondent to the facts of the case. The truth was that Miss Beatrice Gladwin had secured her “fair fight”—and, it seemed, had lost it very decisively and very speedily. As soon as it was reasonably possible—and made so by Miss Gladwin’s action—for Fullard to think of marrying Nettie Tyler, he had asked her to be his wife. To which question there could be only one answer. Miss Gladwin had given away too much weight; she should have quartered that “plum,” I thought.
But that would not have made a “fair fight”? Perhaps not. Perhaps a fair fight was not to be made at all under the circumstances. But the one thing which, above all, I could not see was the old point that had puzzled me before. It might be fair to soften the conflict between Captain Fullard’s love and Captain Fullard’s duty as a man of ancient stock. It might be fair to undo some of fate’s work and give Nettie Tyler a chance of the man she wanted—freedom to fight for him—just that, you understand. But where came in the chance for herself of which Beatrice Gladwin had spoken?
As I have said, I was Captain Fullard’s lawyer as well as Miss Gladwin’s, and he naturally came to me to transact the business incident on his marriage. Beatrice Gladwin proved right: he was not overwhelmed, nor, from his words, did I gather that Miss Tyler was. But they were both highly appreciative.
The captain was also inclined to congratulate himself on his knowledge of character, his power of reading the human heart.
“Hard, if you like,” he said, sitting in my office arm-chair; “but a sportsman in the end, as I told you she was. I knew one could rely on her doing the right thing in the end.”
“At considerable cost,” I remarked, sharpening a pencil.
“It’s liberal—very liberal. Oh, we feel that. But, of course, the circumstances pointed to liberality.” He paused, then added:
“And I don’t know that we ought to blame her for taking time to think it over. Of course it made all the difference to me, Foulkes.”
There came in the captain’s admirable candour. Between him and me there was no need—and, I may add, no room—for the romantic turn which theBittleton Presshad given to the course of events; that was for public consumption only.
“But for it I couldn’t possibly have come forward—whatever I felt.”
“As a suitor for Miss Tyler’s hand?” said I.
The captain looked at me; gradually a smile came on his remarkably comely face.
“Look here, Foulkes,” said he very good-humouredly, “just you congratulate me on being able to do as I like. Never mind what you may happen to be thinking behind that sallow old fiddle-head of yours.”
“And Miss Tyler is, I’m sure, radiantly happy?”
Captain Fullard’s candour abode till the end. “Well, Nettie hasn’t done badly for herself, looking at it all round, you know.”
With all respect to the late Sir Thomas, and even allowing for a terrible shock and a trying interval, I did not think she had.
Miss Gladwin gave them a splendid wedding at Worldstone. Her manner to them both was most cordial, and she was gay beyond the wont of her staid demeanour. I do not think there was affectation in this.
When the bride and bridegroom—on this occasion again by no means overwhelmed—had departed amidst cheers, when the rout of guests had gone, when the triumphal arch was being demolished and the rustics were finishing the beer, she walked with me in the garden while I smoked a cigar. (There’s nothing like a wedding for making you want a cigar.)
After we had finished our gossiping about how well everything had gone off—and that things in her house should go off well was very near to Beatrice Gladwin’s heart—we were silent for a while. Then she turned to me and said: “I’m very content, Mr Foulkes.” Her face was calm and peaceful; she did not look so hard.
“I’m glad that doing the handsome thing brings content. I wonder if you know how glad I am?”
“Yes, I know. You’re a good friend. But you’re making your old mistake. I wasn’t thinking just thenof what you call the handsome thing. I was thinking of the chance that I gave myself.”
“I never quite understood that,” said I.
She gave a little laugh. “But for that ‘handsome thing,’ he’d certainly have asked me—he’d have had to, poor man—me, and not her. And he’d have done it very soon.”
I assented—not in words, just in silence and cigar smoke.
She looked at me without embarrassment, though she was about to say something that she might well have refused to say to any living being. She seemed to have a sort of pleasure in the confession—at least an impulse to make it that was irresistible. She smiled as she spoke—amused at herself, or, perhaps, at the new idea she would give me of herself.
“If he had,” she went on—“if he had made love to me, I couldn’t have refused him—I couldn’t, indeed. And yet I shouldn’t have believed a word he was saying—not a word of love he said. I should have been a very unhappy woman if I hadn’t given myself that chance. You’ve been a little behind the scenes. Nobody else has. I want you to know that I’m content.” She put her hand in mine and gave me a friendly squeeze. “And to-morrow we’ll get back to business, you and I,” she said.
IHAD known her for some considerable time before I came to know him. Most of their acquaintance were in the same case; for to know him was among the less noticeable and the less immediate results of knowing her. You might go to the house three or four times and not happen upon him. He was there always, but he did not attract attention. You joined Mrs Clinton’s circle, or, if she were in a confidential mood, you sat with her on the sofa. She would point out her daughter, and Muriel, attired in a wonderful elaboration of some old-fashioned mode, would talk to you about “Mamma’s books,” while Mrs Clinton declared that, do what she would, she could not prevent the darling from reading them. Perhaps, when you had paid half-a-dozen visits, Mr Clinton would cross your path. He was very polite, active for your comfort, ready to carry out his wife’s directions, determined to be useful. Mrs Clinton recognised his virtues. She called him an “old dear,” with a fond pitying smile on her lips, and would tell you, with an arch glance and the slightest of shrugs, that “he wrote too.” If you asked what he wrote, she said that it was “something musty,” but that it kept him happy, and that he never minded being interrupted, or even having nowhere to write, because Muriel’s dancing lesson occupied the dining-room, “and I really couldn’t have him in my study. One must bealoneto work, mustn’t one?” She could not be blamed for holding her work above his; there was nothing at all to show for his; whereas hers not only brought her a measure of fame, as fame is counted, but also doubled the moderate private income on which they had startedhousekeeping—and writing—thirteen or fourteen years before. Mr Clinton himself would have been the last to demur to her assumption; he accepted his inferiority with an acquiescence that was almost eagerness. He threw himself into the task of helping his wife, not of course in the writing, but by relieving her of family and social cares. He walked with Muriel, and was sent to parties when his wife was too busy to come. I recollect that he told me, when we had become friendly, that these offices made considerable inroads on his time. “If,” he said apologetically, “I had not acquired the habit of sitting up late, I should have difficulty in getting forward with my work. As it happens, Millie doesn’t work at night—the brain must be fresh forherwork—and so I can have the study then; and I am not so liable to—I mean, I have not so many other calls then.”
I liked Clinton, and I do not mean by that that I disliked Mrs Clinton. Indeed I admired her very much, and her husband’s position in the household seemed just as natural to me as it did to himself and to everybody else. Young Gregory Dulcet, who is a poet and a handsome impudent young dog, was felt by us all to have put the matter in a shape that was at once true in regard to our host, and pretty in regard to our hostess, when he referred, apparently in a casual way, to Mr Clinton as “the Prince Consort.” Mrs Clinton laughed and blushed; Muriel clapped her hands and ran off to tell her father. She came back saying that he was very pleased with the name, and I believe that very possibly he really was. Anyhow, young Dulcet was immensely pleased with it; he repeated it, and it “caught on.” I heard Mrs Clinton herself, with a half-daring, half-modest air, use it more than once. Thus Mrs Clinton was led to believe herself great: so that she once asked me if I thought that there was any prospect ofThe Quarterly“doing her.” I said that I did not see why not. Yet it was not a probable literary event.
Thus Mr Clinton passed the days of an obscure useful life, helping his wife, using the dining-room when dancing lessons did not interfere, and enjoying the luxury of the study in the small hours of the morning. And Mrs Clinton grew more and more pitiful to him; and Muriel more and more patronising; and the world more and more forgetful. And then, one fine morning, as I was going to my office, the Prince Consort overtook me. He was walking fast, and he carried a large, untidy, brown-paper parcel. I quickened my pace to keep up with his.
“Sorry to hurry you, old fellow,” said he, “but I must be back in an hour. A fellow’s coming to interview Millie, and I promised to be back and show him over the house. She doesn’t want to lose more of her time than is absolutely necessary: she’s in the thick of a new story, you see. And Muriel’s got her fiddle lesson, so she can’t do it.”
“And what’s brought you out with the family wash?” I asked in pleasantry, pointing to the parcel.
The Prince Consort blushed (though he must have been forty at least at this date), pulled his beard, and said:
“This? Do you mean this? Oh, this is—well, it’s a little thing of my own.”
“Of your own? What do you mean?” I asked.
“Didn’t Millie ever tell you that I write too? Well, I do when I can get a few hours. And this is it. I’ve managed to get a fellow to look at it. Millie spoke a word for me, you know.”
I do not know whether my expression was sceptical or offensive, but I suppose it must have been one or the other, for the Prince Consort went on hastily:
“Oh, I’m not going to be such an ass as to pay anything for having it brought out, you know. They must do it on spec. or leave it alone. Besides, they really like to oblige Millie, you see.”
“It doesn’t look very little,” I observed.
“Er—no. I’m afraid it’s rather long,” he admitted.
“What’s it about?”
“Oh, it’s dull, heavy stuff. I can’t do what Millie does, you see. It’s not a novel.”
We parted at the door of the publisher who had been ready to oblige Mrs Clinton, and would, I thought, soon regret his complaisance; and I went on to my office, dismissing the Prince Consort and his “little thing” from my mind.
I went to the Clintons’ about three months’ later, in order to bid them farewell before starting for a holiday on the Continent. They were, for a wonder, without other visitors, and when we had talked over Mrs Clinton’s last production, she stretched out her hand and pointed to the table.
“And there,” she said, with a little laugh, “is Thompson’s” (the Prince Consort’s Christian name is Thompson) “magnum opus. Vincents’ have just sent him his advance copies.”
The Prince Consort laughed nervously as I rose and walked to the table.
“Never mind, papa,” I heard Muriel say encouragingly. “You know Mr George Vincent says it’s very good.”
“Oh, he thought that would please your mother,” protested the Prince Consort.
I examined the two large thick volumes that lay on the table. I glanced at the title page: and I felt sorry for the poor Prince Consort. It must have been a terrible “grind” to write such a book—almost as bad as reading it. But I said something civil about the importance and interest of the subject.
“If you really don’t mind looking at it,” said the Prince Consort, “I should like awfully to send you a copy.”
“Oh yes! You must read it,” said Mrs Clinton. “Why,I’mgoing to read—well, some of it! I’ve promised!”
“So am I,” said little Muriel, while the Prince Consort rubbed his hands together with a sort of pride which was, on its other side, the profoundest humility. He was wondering, I think, that he should have been able to produce any book at all—even the worst of books—and admiring a talent which he had not considered himself to possess.
“I’m going to worry everybody who comes here to buy it—or to order it at Mudie’s, anyhow,” pursued Mrs Clinton. “What’s written in this house must be read.”
“I hope Vincents’ won’t lose a lot over it,” said the Prince Consort, shaking his head.
“Oh well, they’ve made a good deal out of me before now,” laughed his wife lightly.
I did not take the Prince Consort’s book away with me to the Continent. Whatever else it might be, it was certainly not holiday reading, and it would have needed a portmanteau to itself. But the reverberation of the extraordinary and almost unequalled “boom” which the book made reached me in the recesses of Switzerland. I came onThe Timesof three days before in my hotel, and it had three columns and a half on Mr Thompson Clinton’s work. The weeklyBudgetwhich my sister sent to me at Andermatt contained, besides a long review, a portrait of the Prince Consort (he must have sat to them on purpose) and a biographical sketch of him, quite accurate as to the remarkably few incidents which his previous life contained. It was this sketch which first caused me to begin to realise what was happening. For the sketch, after a series of eulogies (which to my prepossessed mind seemed absurdly extravagant) on the Prince Consort, reached its conclusion with the following remark:—“Mr Thompson Clinton’s wife is also a writer, and is known in the literary world as the author of more than one clever and amusing novel.” I laid down theBudgetwith a vague feeling that a revolution had occurred. It was now Mrs Clinton who “wrote too.”
I was right in my feeling, yet my feeling was inadequate to the reality with which I was faced on my return to England. The Prince Consort was the hero of the hour. I had written him a line of warm congratulation, and I settled at once to the book, not only in order to be able to talk about it, but also because I could not, without personal investigation, believe that he had done all they said. But he had. It was a wonderful book—full of learning and research, acute and profound in argument, and (greatest of all surprises) eminently lucid, polished, and even brilliant in style; irony, pathos, wit—the Prince Consort had them all. I laid the second volume down, wondering no longer that he had become an authority, that his name appeared in the lists of public banquets, that he was quoted now by one, now by the other, political party, and that translations into French and German were to be undertaken by distinguishedsavants.
And of course bothThe QuarterlyandThe Edinburghhad articles—“did him,” as his wife had phrased it. Upon which, being invited by Mrs Clinton to an evening party, I made a point of going.
There were a great many people there that night. A large group was on the hearthrug. I am tall, and looking over the heads of the assembly I saw the Prince Consort standing there. He was smiling, still rather nervously, and was talking in quick eager tones. Everyone listened in deferential silence, broken by murmurs of “Yes, yes,” or “How true!” or “I never thought of that!” And Muriel held the Prince Consort’s hand, and looked up at him with adoration in her young eyes. I rejoiced with the Prince Consort in his hour of deserved triumph, but I did not, somehow, find Muriel as “pretty a picture” as a lady told me later on that she was. Indeed, I thought that the child would have been as well—or better—in bed. I turned round and looked for Mrs Clinton. Ah, there she was, on her usual sofa. By her side sat Lady Troughton; nobodyelse was near. Mrs Clinton was talking very quickly and vivaciously to her companion, who rose as I approached, gave me her hand, and then passed on to join the group on the hearthrug. I sat down by Mrs Clinton, and began to congratulate her on her husband’s marvellous triumph.
“Yes,” said she, “do you see he’s in both the quarterlies?”
I said that such a tribute was only natural.
“And it’s selling wonderfully too,” she went on. “You may imagine how much obliged Vincents’ are to me for sending him there!”
“Did you know he was doing it?” I asked.
“Oh, I knew he was working at something. Muriel used to be always chaffing him about it.”
“She doesn’t chaff him now, I should think.”
“No,” said Mrs Clinton, twisting a ring on her finger round and round. Suddenly the group opened, and the Prince Consort came through, leading Muriel by the hand. He marched across the room, followed by his admirers. I rose, and he stood close by his wife, and began to talk about her last novel. He said that it was wonderfully clever, and told us all to get it and read it. Everybody murmured that such was their intention, and a lady observed:
“How charming for you to be able to provide your husband with recreation, Mrs Clinton!”
“Papa doesn’t care about novels much, really,” said Muriel.
“You do, I suppose, young lady?” asked someone.
“I like papa’s book better,” the child answered, and we all laughed, Mrs Clinton leading the chorus with almost exaggerated heartiness.
And then an enthusiastic woman must needs see where Mr Thompson Clinton (the Prince Consort bid fair to be double-barrelled before long) worked. She would take no denial, and at last Mrs Clinton rose, and, in spite of her husband’s protests, led the way to thestudy. I had been in the room a little while before I went abroad. It was much changed now. A row of Mrs Clinton’s novels, indeed, still stood on the top of the whatnot, but her “litter” (it had been her own playful name for her manuscripts and other properties) had vanished. Large, fat, solemn books, Blue-books, books of science, of statistics, and other horrors dominated the scene.
“And to think that the great book was actually written in this very room!” mused the enthusiastic woman in awestruck accents. “I shall always be glad to have seen it.”
Again we murmured assent; and the enthusiastic woman, with an obviously sudden remembrance of Mrs Clinton, turned to her, and said:
“Of course you don’t work in the same room?”
“Oh, I do my little writing anywhere,” smiled Mrs Clinton.
“In the dining-room, generally,” added Muriel “when it’s not wanted you know.”
“Ah, well, you don’t need such complete quiet as Mr Thompson Clinton must have to think out his books, do you?” asked the enthusiastic woman, with a most amiable smile.
“There’s plenty of thought in my wife’s books,” said the Prince Consort.
“Oh yes, of thatsort,” conceded the enthusiastic woman.
Then we went back to the drawing-room, and the worshippers gradually took their leave, till only Lady Troughton and I were left. The child Muriel looked at her watch.
“Papa’s got to go on to a party at the——,” she begun.
“There’s no hurry, my dear; no hurry at all,” interposed the Prince Consort.
“And, anyhow, I’m not going out, Muriel,” said Mrs Clinton. “I’m not asked there, you know.”
Yet Lady Troughton and I said “Good-bye.” The Prince Consort came downstairs with us, and made us renew our promises to procure his wife’s novel. “It’s really a striking book,” said he. “And, look here, Tom; just write her a line, and tell her how much you like it, will you? You’re sure to like it, you know.”
Lady Troughton stopped on the doorstep, and looked him full in the face. She said nothing; neither did he. But when they shook hands I saw her squeeze his. Then she was good enough to offer me a lift in her carriage, and I handed her in and followed myself. We drove a quarter of a mile or so in silence, and when we had gone thus far Lady Troughton made what appeared to me to be the only remark that could possibly be made.
“Poor little goose!” said Lady Troughton.
“DO remember what’s expected of her!” cried my sister Jane.
It was not the first time that she had uttered this appeal; I daresay she had good cause for making it. I had started with the rude masculine idea that there was nothing expected—and nothing in particular to be expected—of the girl, except that she should please herself and, when the proper time came, invite the rest of us to congratulate her on this achievement.
Jane had seen the matter very differently from the first. She was in close touch with the Lexingtons and all their female friends and relatives; she was imbued with their views and feelings, and was unremitting in her efforts to pass them on to me. At least she made me understand, even if I could not entirely share, what was felt at female headquarters; but I was not going to let her see that. I did not want to take sides in the matter, and had no intention of saying anything that Jane could quote either to Lady Lexington or to Miss Constantine herself.
“What is expected of her?” I asked carelessly, taking my pipe out of my mouth.
“Nobody exactly presses her—well, there’s nobody who has the right—but of course she feels it herself,” Jane explained. She knitted her brows and added, “It must be overwhelming.”
“Then why in the world doesn’t she do it?” I asked. Here I was, I admit, being aggravating, in the vulgarsense of that word. For Jane’s demeanour hinted at the weightiest, the most disturbing reasons, and I had in my heart very little doubt about what they were.
“Can’t you see for yourself?” she snapped back pettishly. “You were dining there last night—have you no eyes?”
Thus adjured—and really Jane’s scorn is sometimes a little hard to bear—I set myself to recover the impressions of the dinner-party. The scene came back easily enough. I remembered that Katharine Constantine and Valentine Hare had once more been sent in together, and had once more sat side by side. I remembered also that Lady Lexington had once more whispered to me, when I arrived, that the affair was “all but settled,” and had once more said nothing about it when I left. I remembered watching the pair closely.
True, I was placed, as a friend of the family, between Miss Boots, the Lexingtons’ ex-governess, and Mr Sharples, Lady Lexington’s latest curate (she always has one in tow; some of the earlier ones are now in a fair way to achieve gaiters), so that there was nothing very likely to distract my attention from the centre of interest. But I should have watched them, anyhow. Who could be better to watch? Katharine, with her positive incisive beauty (there was nothing of the elusive about her; some may prefer a touch of it); the assurance of manner which her beauty gave, and the consciousness of her thousands enhanced; her instinctive assumption of being, of being most indisputably, Somebody; and to-night, as it seemed, a new air about her, watchful, expectant, and telling of excitement, even if it stopped short of nervousness—Katharine, with all this, had a claim to attention not seriously challenged by Miss Boots’ schoolroom reminiscences, or Mr Sharples’ views on Church questions of the day.
And Valentine too, the incomparable Val! Of course I watched him, as I always have, when fortunateenough to be thrown into his company, with a fascinated inquiring interest, asking myself always whether I was a believer or whether scepticism crept into my estimate. Val, however, demands, as the old writers were fond of saying, a fresh chapter to himself. He shall have it, or at least a section.
But before ending this one, for the sake of symmetry and of my reputation for stage management, also in order to justify at the earliest possible moment the importance which Jane attached to the events of the evening, let me add that just beyond me, on the other side of Miss Boots, and consequently quite remote from Miss Constantine, sat a short young man with a big round bullet of a head: it looked as if it might be fired out of a cannon at a stone wall, with excellent results from the besiegers’ point of view. This was Oliver Kirby, and I have to own at once that the more than occasional glances which Miss Constantine directed, or allowed to stray, towards our end of the table were meant, as my observation suggested before the evening was out, for Kirby, and not, as I had for some happy moments supposed, for me. I am never ashamed of confessing to an amiable sort of mistake like that.
WITHOUT present prejudice to the question of his innermost personality, Val was at least a triumph of externals. Perhaps I should say of non-essentials—of things which a man might not have, and yet be intrinsically as good a man—but, having which, he was, for all outside and foreign purposes, a man far more efficient. Val was, as I shall indicate in a moment, a bit of a philosopher himself, so he could not with reason object to being thus philosophically considered. Birth had been his discreet friend—a friend in setting him in the inner ring, among the families which survive, peaks ofaristocracy, above the flood of democracy, and are more successful than Canute was in cajoling the waves; discreet in so ordering descent that, unless a robust earl, his uncle, died prematurely, Val had time to lead the House of Commons (or anything of that sort) before suffering an involuntary ascension, which might or might not be, at the political moment, convenient. He had money, too—a competence without waiting for his uncle’s shoes. He had no need to hunt a fortune: it was merely advisable for him, and natural too, to annex one under temptations not necessarily unromantic. Nobody could call Miss Constantine necessarily unromantic.
So much for birth, with all the extraordinary start it gives—a handicap of no less than fifteen years, one might be inclined to say, roughly generalising on a comparison of the chances of the “born” and of the bourgeois. Now, about brains. If you come to think of it, brains were really a concession on Val’s part; he could have achieved the Cabinet without them—given a clever Prime Minister, at least. But he had them—just as splendid shop-window brains as his birth was flawless under the most minute Heralds’ College inspection. There was, indeed, a lavishness about his mental endowment. He ventured to have more than one subject—a dangerous extravagance in a rising statesman. North Africa was his professional subject—his foreign affairs subject. But he was also a linguist, an authority on French plays, and a specialist on the Duc de Reichstadt. Also he had written a volume of literary essays; and, finally, to add a sense of solidity to his intellectual equipment, he was a philosopher. He had written, and Mr Murray had published, a short book called “The Religion of Primitive Man.” This work he evolved on quiet evenings in his flat off Berkeley Square in two months of an early winter in London. All that can be said about it is that it sounded very probable, and set forth in exceedingly eloquent language what primitive man ought to have believed, even if he did not, becauseit led to a most orthodox, if remote, conclusion. Whether he did or not, Val, and most other people, had neither time nor inclination to discover. That would, in fact, have needed a lot of reading. After all, Val might plead the example of some eminent metaphysicians.
Birth, brains—now comes the rarest of Val’s possessions, one that must be handled most delicately by one who would do Val justice at any cost. I mean Val’s beauty. Val himself bore it lightly, with a debonair depreciation which stopped only, but definitely, short of unconsciousness. He had hereditary claims to it; a grandmother had attracted—and by a rarer touch of distinction repelled—royalty. But Val made it all his own. A slim figure, bordering on six feet; aquiline features, a trifle ruddy in hue; hands long and slender; above all, perhaps, a mass of black hair touched with white—ever so lightly silver-clad. The greyness proclaimed itself premature, and brought contrast to bear on the youthfulness of the face beneath—a face the juvenility of which survived the problems of North Africa and his triumphs in theà priori. Add to this, a fine tradition of schoolboy and university athletics, and—well, a way with him of which women would talk in moments of confidence.
Speaking quite seriously, I cannot suppose that such a fascinating person has often appeared; never, surely, a more decorative? And it was “all but settled”! Why, then, those glances toward our end of the table? Because they were not for me, as I have already acknowledged. Kirby? The bullet-head, with its close-cropped wire-thick hair? Could that draw her eyes from the glories of Val’s sable-silver crown? These things are unaccountable; such really appeared to be the case.
AFTER dinner I used the freedom of old acquaintance to ask Lady Lexington precisely what she meant by saying that it—the alliance between Miss Constantine and Valentine Hare—was “all but settled.” We chanced to be alone in the small drawing-room; through the curtained archway we could see the rest of the company formed into groups. Val was again by Miss Constantine’s side; Kirby was now standing facing them, and apparently doing most of the talking.
“He hasn’t asked her in so many words yet,” said Lady Lexington; “but he will soon, of course. It’s been practically settled ever since she came to stay here—after her father’s death, you know. And it’s an ideal arrangement.”
“Suppose she refuses him?”
“I sha’n’t suppose anything so ridiculous, George,” said my friend sharply. “I hope I have more sense! What girl would refuse Valentine?”
“It would be heterodox,” I admitted.
“It would be lunacy, stark lunacy. Even for her—I admit she has a right to look high—but even for her it will be a fine match. He’s got everything before him. And then look how handsome, how fascinating he is!” She laughed. “Old as I am, I wouldn’t trust myself with him, George!”
“I haven’t met Kirby here before,” I observed, perhaps rather abruptly.
“Mr Kirby? Oh, he’s quite aprotégéof Frank’s. We met him in Switzerland last winter, and Frank and he did all sorts of unsafe things together—things you oughtn’t to do in winter.”
“He probably stops the avalanches with his head.”
“I really don’t know where he comes from or who he is, but he’s in the Colonial Office, and Frank says they think enormous things of him there. I like him,but, do you know, he’s rather hard to keep up a conversation with. He always seems to say the last thing about a subject first.”
“Very bad economy,” I agreed.
“Some people—well, I have heard people say it’s hardly polite—when they’re just thinking of something to say themselves, you know——”
“He probably can’t help it,” I pleaded.
“Katharine seems to like him, though, and I daresay she’ll get Val to give him a lift in the future.”
“You’re treating it as quite settled.”
“Well, it really is; I feel sure of that. It might happen any—— Why, look there, George! Suppose it happened to-night!”
Lady Lexington’s air of pleasurable flutter was occasioned by a movement in the next room. Miss Constantine was passing from the drawing-room into the library beyond, Val holding the door for her. Kirby had not moved, but now stood looking at her with a smile. Just as she passed through the door she turned, looked at him, and made the slightest little grimace. I read it as defiance—playful defiance. Whether I was right in that or not, it was, beyond all doubt, a confidential communication of some sort. If “it” were indeed going to be “settled,” the moment seemed an odd one for the exchange of that secret signal with Mr Kirby; for her grimace was in answer to his smile, his smile the challenge that elicited her grimace. Yes, they were in communication. What about? I got no further than an impression that it was about Valentine Hare. I remembered the glances at dinner, and mentally corrected the little misapprehension which I have already acknowledged. But had the signals been going on all the evening? About Valentine Hare?
“I shall wait for news with great interest,” I said to Lady Lexington.
She made no direct answer. Looking at her, I perceivedthat she was frowning; she appeared, indeed, decidedly put out.
“After all,” she said reflectively, “I’m not sure I do like Mr Kirby. He’s rather familiar. I wonder why Frank brings him here so much.”
From which I could not help concluding that she, too, had perceived the glances toward my end of the table, Kirby’s smile, and Katharine Constantine’s answering grimace. From that moment, I believe, a horrible doubt, an apprehension of almost incredible danger, began to stir in her mind. This, confided to Jane, had inspired my sister’s gloomily significant manner.
AWEEK passed by without my getting any news from Lady Lexington. My next advices came, in fact, from Jane. One morning she burst into my room when I was reading the paper after breakfast. I had been out late the night before, and had not seen her since yesterday at lunch. Her present state of excitement was obvious.
“She’s asked for time to consider!” she cried. “Imagine!”
“The dickens she has!” I exclaimed. Of course I guessed to whom she was referring.
“Ah, I thought that would startle you!” Jane remarked, with much gratification. “I was at the Lexingtons’ yesterday. She is queer.”
I saw that Jane wanted me to ask questions, but I always prefer having gossip volunteered to me; it seems more dignified, and one very seldom loses anything in the end. So I just nodded, and relighted my pipe. Jane smiled scornfully.
“You’ll go there yourself to-day,” she said. “I know you.”
“I was going, anyhow—to pay my dinner call.”
“Of course!” She was satisfied with the effect of her sarcasm—I think I had betrayed signs of confusion—and went on gravely: “You can imagine how upset they all are.”
“But she only proposes to consider.”
“Well, it’s not very flattering to beconsidered, is it? ‘I’ll consider’—that’s what one says to get out of the shop when a thing costs too much.”
I had to ask one question. I did it as carelessly as possible. “Did you happen to see Miss Constantine herself?”
“Oh yes; I saw Katharine. Isawher, because she was in the room part of the time, and I’m not blind,” said Jane crossly.
“I gather that she hardly took you into her full—her inner—confidence?”
Jane’s reply was impolite in form, but answered my question substantially in the affirmative. She added: “Lady Lexington told me that she won’t say a word about her reasons. You won’t find it a cheerful household.”
I did not. Jane was right there. I daresay my own cheerfulness was artificial and spasmodic: the atmosphere of a family crisis is apt to communicate itself to guests. It must not be understood that the Lexingtons, or Miss Boots, or Mr Sharples, who was there again, were other than perfectly kind to Katharine. On the contrary, they overdid their kindness—overdid it portentously, in my opinion. They treated her as though she were afflicted with a disease of the nerves, and must on no account be worried or thwarted. If she had said that the moon was made of green cheese they would have evaded a direct contradiction—they might just have hinted at a shade of blue. She saw this; I can quite understand that it annoyed her very much. For the rest, Lady Lexington’s demeanour set the cue: “It must end all right; meanwhile we must bear it.”
She and Mr Sharples and Miss Boots were all goingto an afternoon drawing-room meeting, but I was asked to stay and have tea. “You’ll give him a cup of tea, won’t you, Katharine?” And did my ears deceive me, or did Lady Lexington breathe into my ear, as she shook hands, the words, “If you could say a word—tactfully!”? I believe she did; but Jane says I dreamed it—or made it up, more likely. If she did say it, it argued powerfully for her distress.
I had known Katharine Constantine pretty well for three or four years; I had, indeed, some claim to call myself her friend. All the same, I did not see my way to broach the engrossing subject to her, and I hardly expected her to touch on it in talk with me. My idea was to prattle, to distract her mind with gossip about other people. But she was, I think, at the end of her patience both with herself and with her friends. Her laugh was defiant as she said:
“Of course you know all about it? Jane has told you? And of course you’re dying to tell me I’m a fool—as all the rest of them do! At any rate, they let me see they think it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s talk of anything else. I’ve got no right——”
“I give you the right. You’re interested?”
“Oh, I can’t deny that. I’m human.”
She was looking very attractive to-day; her perplexity and worry seemed to soften her; an unwonted air of appeal mitigated her assurance of manner; she was pleasanter when she was not so confident of herself.
“Well, I should rather like to put the case to a sensible man—and we’ll suppose you to be one for the moment.” She laughed more gently as I bowed my thanks. “On the one side is what’s expected of me——”
“Jane’s phrase!” I thought to myself.
“What all the world thinks, what I’ve thought for a long while myself, what he thinks—in fact, everything. And, I tell you, it’s a good deal. It is even with men, isn’t it?”
“What’s expected of us? Yes. Only unusual men can disregard that.”
“It’s worse with women—the weight of it is much heavier with women. And am I to consider myself unusual? Besides, I do like him enormously.”
“I was wondering when you would touch on that point. It seems to me important.”
“Enormously. Who wouldn’t? Everybody must. Not for his looks or his charm only. He’s a real good sort too, Mr Wynne. A woman could trust her heart with him.”
“I’ve always believed he was a good sort—and, of course, very brilliant—a great career before him—and all that.” She said nothing for a moment, and I repeated thoughtfully: “Astonishingly brilliant, to be sure, isn’t he?”
She nodded at me, smiling. “Yes, that’s the word—brilliant.” She was looking at me very intently. “What more have you to say?” she asked.
“A good heart—a great position—a brilliant intellect—well, what more is there to say? Unless you permit me to say that ladies are sometimes—as they have a perfect right to be—hard to please.”
“Yes, I’m hard to please.” Her smile came again, this time thoughtful, reminiscent, amused, almost, I could fancy, tender. “I’ve been spoilt lately,” she said. Then she stole a quick glance at me, flushing a little.
I grew more interested in her; I think I may say more worthily interested. I knew what she meant—whom she was thinking of. I passed the narrow yet significant line that divides gossip about people from an interest in one’s friends or a curiosity about the human mind. Or so I liked to put it to myself.
“I must talk,” she said. “Is it very strange of me to talk?”
“Talk away. I hear, or I don’t hear, just as you wish. Anyhow, I don’t repeat.”
“That is your point, you men! Well, if it were between a great man and a nobody?”
“The great man I know—we all do. But the nobody? I don’t know him.”
“Don’t you? I think you do; or perhaps you know neither? If the world and I meant just the opposite?”
She was standing now, very erect, proud, excited.
“It’s a bad thing to mean just the opposite from what the world means,” I said.
“Bad? Or only hard?” she asked. “God knows it’s hard enough.”
“There’s the consolation of the—spoiling,” I suggested. “Who spoils you, the great man or the nobody?”
She paid no visible heed to my question. Indeed she seemed for the moment unconscious of me. It was October; a small bright fire burned on the hearth. She turned to it, stretching out her hands to the warmth. She spoke, and I listened. “It would be a fine thing,” she said, “to be the first to believe—the first to give evidence of belief—perhaps the finest thing to be the first and last—to be the only one to give everything one had in evidence.” She faced round on me suddenly. “Everything—if one dared!”
“If you were very sure——” I began.
“No!” she interrupted. “Say, if I had courage—courage to defy, courage for a great venture!”
“Yes, it’s better put like that.”
“But people don’t realise—indeed they don’t—how much it needs.”
“I think I realise it a little better.” She made no comment on that, and I held out my hand. “I should like to help, you know,” I said, “but I expect you’ve got to fight it out alone.”
She pressed my hand in a very friendly way, saying, “Any single human being’s sympathy helps.”
That was not, perhaps, a very flattering remark, but it seemed to me pathetic, coming from the proud, therich, the beautiful Miss Constantine. To this she was reduced in her struggle against her mighty foe. Any ally, however humble, was precious in her fight against what was expected of her.