Mary’s badly mastered nervousness melted somewhat. “Oh, Camelia—mayI?” her face lighted to an almost charming eagerness—a charm that our æsthetic heroine was quick to recognize. “MayI?”
“May you? No, you little goose,” Camelia said good-humoredly. “Upon my word, Mary, you should have had your portrait painted at that moment; you never looked so—significant. Are youso anxious to get rid of me then?” The charming look had crumbled into inextricable confusion.
“Oh, Camelia, how can you?—how could you think——?”
“Now, Mary, imaginative efforts are bad for you; don’t indulge them.”
“I hoped—I only wanted——”
“Yes, of course, you want me to be happy; and very nice it is of you too. Be patient, Mary; you shall congratulate me some day. I haven’t decidedwhenthat shall be. I haven’t really quite decidedhowI shall be happy—there are so many ways—the choice of a superlative is perplexing. When I choose you need not come to me, I promise you.” Camelia rose, stretching her arms above her head, and smiling very kindly at her cousin.
Her own words made her feel comfortable. Still smiling, she put her arm around Mary’s neck and kissed her. “I shall tell youimmediately. Now run to bed, dear, foryoulook pale.” When Mary was gone, Camelia finished undressing, and got into bed in a frame of mind much reassured as to her own intrinsic merit.
THE little moonlit episode had very thoroughly mended the rift within the lute. Camelia’s seeming frankness of confessional confidence more than atoned for every doubting qualm. Sir Arthur evidently put doubts and distresses behind him. He allowed himself to be wholly in love. He wondered resentfully at himself for the mixed impulses he had known, since all were now merged in one fixed determination.
The country influences of green trees and summer sky seemed to have breathed a heretofore unrealized gentleness into his fair one. Her playful sallies, her little audacities, delighted him now unreservedly, for under the tantalizing shifting and shimmering of surface moods, the translucent depths of a loyal and lovely nature, were at last fully revealed to him.
Camelia felt the resultant ardor hovering during all their constant companionship, but she evaded it. The conquest had been so easy, was so complete, that fitness seemed to require a compensatory dallying. The atmosphere of adoration, submissive in its certainty of ultimate success, felt as flatteringly around her as the warm sweetness of a summer breeze. Conquest was delightful, so was dallying, so was her own indecision; that was the mostdelightful part of all. She felt, too, in the loving warmth that encompassed her, a consolation, a refuge from cold and rugged depreciation.
Perior had not reappeared since the musicalmêlée, and, while enjoying the sunny harbor where she rocked so peacefully, Camelia was conscious that thoughts about that rough, that unsympathetic sea outside preoccupied her amidst the kinder waters. Her gaiety was therefore a little forced, absent-minded, in a sense a mask; her gentler mood was the result of inner cogitations, so involved at times as to give to her manner a dreamy sweetness. Her moral snubbing, though she rejected it as undeserved, subdued her.
Lady Henge’s vanity was of no petty or immovable order. Far from antagonizing, Perior’s judgment had aroused in her an anxious self-doubt, an anxious respect for her candid critic. Despite Camelia’s sympathy—for Camelia stuck to her colors, entrenched herself behind a staunch fidelity to a false position, listened with absorption to frequent renderings of the “Thalassa,” thoughtfully discussed its iconoclastic merits, the high value of its full flavored modernity, and felt a certain ethical elevation from these painful sacrifices to the only constancy permitted her—despite this steady sympathy, Lady Henge perversely longed for a further expression of unsympathetic opinion from the ruthless Perior. And one morning she told Camelia that she had written to him, had asked him to fulfil his promise, to bring some music of his choosing that might, with his aid, be useful to her.
“I had hoped to see him every day,” she owned,and Camelia realized the power of a negative attitude—how flat beside it, how feeble, was her exaggeratedly affirmative one. All her pretty conciliations were as nothing to Lady Henge beside the stinging interest of Perior’s dislike.
“I think he may help me about so many things, I so often feel a helplessness in self-expression; the idea is there—but the form! the form! ah, my dear, art, after all, is form.” (This piece of information was certainly bitter to our martyrized heroine.)
“As you said, his severity may, to a certain extent, be conservatism, academic narrowness, but I have always heard of him as widely appreciative.”
Camelia could answer for the width of appreciation that her resentment had falsified on the unlucky night of the first performance; she remembered now, with a little flush, that her saddling of him with tastes not his own must have seemed to him the culmination of spiteful pettiness. And then he had not rejoined—had not defended himself, even against that intimation of academics opposed to his dearly loved Schumann. Camelia could soothe herself with an “I don’t care! He deserved it. He was horrid;” but all the same the memory brought a hotness to her cheeks. She felt very angry, too, with Lady Henge, and, while smiling pleasantly, found some satisfaction in various cynical mental comments on the weighty intricacy of her cap, and the vast stupidity of her self-absorption.
“Do you know, my dear, that phrase,” and Lady Henge struck it out demonstratively from the piano near which she stood; “that phrase does sound a little weak.” Weak! Camelia could have cappedthe criticism very pungently. With a good deal of disgust at a situation which had so neatly turned the tables upon her, she said, “Mr. Perior may tell you so; I really can’t.” Her fate evidently was to support Lady Henge by a fraternity in inferior taste; and to be branded with inferior taste, even in Lady Henge’s eyes, was certainly rather galling. She had not bargained for it at all, nor dreamed that Lady Henge’s complacency would go down like a ninepin before Perior’s brutal missile. Her little perjury had not been in the least worth while.
Perior, having the grace to look somewhat embarrassed, arrived next morning with an impressive roll of music, and Camelia laughed, with some acidity it must be confessed, as she heard in the drawing-room the convincing energy of his demonstrations. Fragments of the poorpoème symphonique, panting from their cruel dissection, reached her ears while she strolled about the lawns with Sir Arthur.
She foresaw that Lady Henge would prove a humble convert, and that she herself, if not to be convicted of gross insincerity, must remain gibbeted in a stubborn unconversion.
“Your mother is very patient,” she said, as, from the distant piano, the dogged repetition of a phrase emphasized its feeble absurdity. “Mr. Perior as mentor is in his element.”
Sir Arthur laughed with a good-humored recollection of his own political rebuff at Perior’s hands.
“He is uncompromisingly honest. If you ask for his advice he’ll give it to you.”
“Give it to you unasked sometimes,” said Camelia.
Sir Arthur had told her all about that lost cause, and all about his plans for the future. There was a very delightful plan for the very near future; the next session would decide the fate of the Factory Bill that went by her lover’s name, and Camelia, under her attentive quietness, felt a heaving sigh of ambition gather. Sir Arthur’s grave eagerness showed that after his winning of herself, his political campaign filled the chief place in his hopes and thoughts. Her interest delighted him, and the intelligence of her comments.
He had himself an almost reverent belief in the bill, and Camelia’s sympathetic affirmatives seemed to chime deliciously with his own deep, active pity for the dim, toiling masses the bill was to reach and succor. Such a common object was a sanctification; he could hardly, he felt, have loved a woman who did not feel his own deep pity. They talked now of the coming struggle, of the rather dubious success of the second reading that might yet be enhanced for the third.
“And do you know,” he said, “Perior, positively Perior, approves; he is buckling on his armor for the final fray. An individuality like that counts, you know. A few leaders in theFridaywould rally many waverers.”
Camelia flushed suddenly when he said this; it delighted her sense of proprietorship in Perior to hear his praise—to hear that for others, too, he counted. And yet a touch of pain came with the delight, reminding her that under present conditions the delight was very generous, and proprietorship very unassured.
How he evaded it! Yes, he certainly was horrid; but her breath came quickly, and with a deft persistence she kept Sir Arthur still talking of him, finding in his answers to her questions on his youth glimpses of Perior’s.
“Always generous, always intolerant, always tripping into ditches while star-gazing,” said Sir Arthur; “he has an exaggerated strain in him; it must be that Irish ancestress. He feels everything more acutely than thicker-skinned mortals, sees everything, the good and the bad, magnified—a trifle grotesquely. But it is a noble nature;” and he went on, as they walked back and forth over the lawn, Perior’s pianoforte exposition, firmly insistent, coming to their ears at broken intervals: “Perior is staunch on individualism, as you know; believes in the hygienic value to the race of the combat—a savage creed, I tell him; but he has amended it; he is not one jot afraid of seeming inconsistent; he owns to the scientific logic of our attitude. I was afraid he would accuse us of socialistic methods, tyrannical kindness, State intervention,” and so from Perior Sir Arthur went back to the all-absorbing topic of the bill; he could allow the bill to absorb him. For all Camelia’s evasions and smiling warnings to patience, he was deliciously sure of the ultimate end of all. He could afford to be patient with the luminous sympathy of her eyes upon him, afford to talk of the unfortunate women-workers whose long hours the kind tyranny of the bill would restrict, while this woman listened with such a sweet chiming of pity.
“If you could only count on a fair followingamong the Liberals,” Camelia said, phrasing his keenest anxiety, “horrid egotists! They all have factories, I suppose. Mr. Rodrigg may wrest your dubious majority from you; he is the lion in your path, isn’t he? and he has a whole town of factories. What chance has a moral conviction against a town of factories? And he is such a bull-dog; I did wrong to dignify him by the leonine simile.”
“Such a clever chap, too,” said Sir Arthur; “bull-dog cleverness, I mean.”
“And bull-dogs are so dear,” Camelia said, as a small brindled member of the race, his head haloed by a ferociously bristling collar, came bounding to them over the lawn. “Dear, precious beastie,” she put her hand on the dog’s head as he stood on his hind-legs to greet her, “we must indeed find another epithet for Mr. Rodrigg, not that I dislike him, you know. He shares some of your opinions,” she added rather roguishly.
“Not one, I fear.”
“Yes, one,” she insisted. Sir Arthur’s eyes dwelt on her charming look; it carried him into vagueness as he asked—
“What one?” not caring at all for Mr. Rodrigg’s community of taste, and smiling at her loveliness.
“I think he is rather fond of me,” Camelia owned. Sir Arthur could afford a generous laugh.
“Poor old Rodrigg! He has then a vulnerable point in his armor?”
“Yes, indeed, yes. I don’t know that it amounts to a weakness. I fear I couldn’t wheedle him. But, you might convince him, and I might help,—and, he is coming down next week.” She laughed out at his look of surprise. “That is news, isn’t it?”
In her very heart of hearts Camelia was rather complacently convinced that Mr. Rodrigg’s fondnessdidamount to a weakness. Mr. Rodrigg’s devotion was in our young lady’s fastidious opinion his one redeeming quality. She had kindly, but thoroughly, she thought, nipped in the bud certain too aspiring attempts; but the man was all the more her friend.
His devotion was built upon a fine hopelessness that really dignified him.
She was an Egeria who hovered above him, gently smiling at his earthiness. Yes, she was kind; for Mr. Rodrigg was a most important person—emphatically, personally important just now, it seemed; and though Camelia’s thoughts of him were merely humorously tolerant, she felt quite sure of a wealth of unreturned friendship, ready to transmute itself into golden action at her bidding. She could but pride herself a little upon her intellectual influence over her unpresumptuous Numa, and thought that she could, through that dignified influence alone, by all means wheedle him, if wheedling became necessary. Sir Arthur would hardly approve of these personal methods, and therefore he need not know of the little game that might win his cause; a perfectly innocent game, she assured herself, since it hurt no one and helped Sir Arthur; and if Mr. Rodrigg were to be convinced, Sir Arthur must fancy himself sole winner.
He did not seem to recognize the possibility, forafter his pause of surprise he laughed again, saying, “Is he coming onmyaccount?”
“Not onhis, I am sure!”
“You know, it won’t do any good,” he smiled fondly at her, as one smiles at the folly of a loved woman; “Rodrigg is too deeply pledged, has his whole party behind him. I could no more convince him, even in these enchanted premises, than in the dry precincts of the House. Political conversions are very rare.”
“But youmayconvert him,” Camelia urged. “I will give you every opportunity.”
“And it is rather unfair, you know.” Sir Arthur paused in their strolling to look at her face, half shadowed in the sunlight by the brim of her white hat. “He perhaps imagines that he is coming for purposes far removed from the political.”
“Oh no, no, no. I tell you, dear Sir Arthur, that—well—since you must have it—I refused him. He hasn’t a hope; I pinched the last pangs out of him a long time ago. In fact, I let him see that I found his audacity rather funny than piteous. I have laughed him into most submissive platonics. He will come, because he really is my friend, and really likes me; and I want him to come, because he must like you.”
“Camelia!” Sir Arthur had used her name more than once of late, and she let it pass with a half-merry, half-menacing little glance.
“You dear little schemer,” he added. Though spoken in tenderest teasing, Camelia was just enough conscious of a certain applicability to say with some quickness—
“Notreally. You know I’m not. I only want to help you—legitimately, I would not lift my little finger to win your cause if you did not want me to.”
“Really, I know you’re not!” Sir Arthur’s voice retained the teasing quality, but the tenderness had deepened; Camelia was listening all the while to those dogged passages from the piano. They ceased now, and a certain gravity and determination of look that had succeeded Sir Arthur’s last words quite justified a sudden retreat.
“I must go and make Mr. Perior stop to lunch. One only gets him out of his lair by force and wheedling! I wheedlehim!” She left Sir Arthur rather disconsolately cut short, and ran off to the house, her own words ringing reassuringly in her ears. Yes, she could wheedle him. Despite unreason, stupid unreason, despite rebellious crossness and pretended indifference, she had the mastery. He cared so much; that was the fundamental fact that upheld Camelia’s assurance; he cared enough to be very angry. He would try to hide his anger of course. Her heart had beaten rather quickly when Sir Arthur’s face took on that look of resolve—she was not ready, not quite sure, not yet, but flight from his purpose had been only a secondary impulse. She must see Perior. She ran through the morning-room and met him coming down the stairs, and panting a little, laughing a little, she leaned against the banisters and opposed his passage.
“Well, have you taught her how bad it is?”
“I think I have,” said Perior, looking over Camelia’s head at the open doorway. She stood aside to let him join her.
“What have you to teach me this morning—caballero de la triste figura?” she said as he came down the stairs and stood beside her.
“I don’t propose to teach you anything. I am not responsible for you.”
Camelia had not analyzed his probable mood incorrectly; he was angry, and he was trying to hide his anger, fearing for his self-control. But more than that—though this the acute Camelia had never quite divined—he was feeling very unhappy. That he was angry she saw, however, with a little thrill of triumph running through her veins. Smiling an even smile she said, slipping her hand through his arm—
“Ah! but youareresponsible. Come into the morning-room.”
“Is Lady Paton there?” Perior asked gloomily.
“Yes.” Camelia had seen her mother and Mary walking safely away into the garden with Gwendolen Holt and Lady Tramley. She threw open the door and ushered him in.
PERIOR surveyed the emptiness; it hardly surprised him, and well understanding her determination to wheedle him, he felt an added strength of determination not to be wheedled.
“What have you got to say, now that you’ve got me here?” he asked, putting down his music and looking at her.
“You bandersnatch!” Camelia still held his arm. “I am sure you look like a bandersnatch; a biting, snarling creature. You have a trulysnatchingway of speaking.”
“What have you got to say, Camelia?” Perior repeated, withdrawing his arm from the circling clasp upon it.
“I have got to say that you must stay to lunch.”
“Well, I can’t do that.”
“Then you may sit down and talk to me a little—scold me if you like; do you feel like scolding me?”
“I have never scolded you, Camelia,” said Perior, knowing that before her lightness his solemnity showed to disadvantage; but he would be nothing but solemn, ludicrously solemn if necessary.
“You were never sure I deserved it, then,” said Camelia, stooping to gather up her dog for a swift kiss, and laughing over his round head at Perior’s stiffness; “else you would have done your duty, I am sure—you never forget your duty.”
“Thanks; your recognition is flattering.”
“There, my pet, go—poor Sir Arthur is lonely, go to him,” said Camelia, opening the window for Siegfried’s exit, “you know your sarcasm doesn’t impress me one bit—not one bit,” she added.
“I don’t fancy that anything I could say would impress you,” Perior replied, eyeing her little manœuvres, “and since I have seen Siegfried receive his kiss, I really must go,” and at this Perior took up his music with decision; to see him assuming indifference so badly was delightful to Camelia.
“Whywere you so rude to poor Lady Henge the other evening?” she demanded, couching her lance and preparing for the shock of encounter; “you were hideously rude, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Perior still eyed her, his departure effectually checked.
“Then, why were you?”
“Because you lied.”
“Oh, what an ugly word!” cried Camelia lightly, though with a little chill, for the unpleasant sincerity of Perior’s look she felt to be more than she had bargained for. “What a big, ungainly word to fling at poor little me! You should eschew such gross elementary forms of speech, Alceste; really, they are not becoming.”
“I hate lies,” said Perior tersely, thinking, as he spoke, that by the logic of the words he should hate Camelia too—for what was she but unmitigated falseness personified? He had lost his nervousness, now that the moment for plain speaking had arrived.
“And you callthata lie?”
“I call it a lie.” She considered him gravely.
“I tried to give pleasure, you tried to give pain.”
“I tried to restore the balance.”
“I cannot think it wrong to slight the truth a little—from mere kindness.”
“And I think it wrong to lie. And,” Perior added, his voice taking on an added depth of indignant scorn, “you lied to Arthur; I saw you.”
“You saw!” Camelia could not repress a little gasp.
“I saw that he caught your humorous and hospitable comments on his mother’s performance, and I saw your cajolery afterwards. I am sure I can’t imagine how you hoodwinked him. It was neatly done, Camelia.”
Camelia felt herself growing pale, losing the victor’s smiling calm. Here he was brutally voicing the very scruples she had laid to rest after moments of most generous self-doubt—atoning moments, as she felt. The playful game in which she would tease him into comprehension—absolution, had been turned into an ugly punishment. The wrinkled rose leaves of self-accusation that had disturbed her serenity had actually—in his hands—grown into thorny branches, and he was whipping her with them. She had never felt so at a loss, for she could not laugh.
“You would have had me pain him too!” she cried, her anger vindictively seeking a retaliatory lash. “Well, you are a prig!—an insufferable prig! I did nothing wrong!—except mistake your sense of humor.”
This was certainly on her side a less dignified colloquy than the one with the looking-glass; she fancied that Perior looked with some curiosity at her anger.
“Was it wrong to smile at you, then?” she said.
“Yes, it was wrong.” Perior had all the advantage of calm, and she was helplessly aware that her excitement fortified his self-control.
“I thought the piece funny. Was I to tell her so?”
“You should have kept still about it. You mocked your guest behind her back and flattered her to her face. That is mean, despicable,” said Perior, planting his slashes very effectively.
“To laugh with you was like laughing to myself,” said Camelia, steadying her lips, and wondering vaguely if victory might not yet be wrested from this humiliation; his inflexible cruelty forced from her that half appeal. “It was merely thinking aloud, and to tell a few kindly little fibs—as every woman does, a hundred times a day—is not flattery.”
“To gain a person’s liking on false pretences is base; and I don’t care how many women do it—nor how often they do it. I shan’t argue with you, Camelia. We don’t see things alike. Follow your own path, by all means; it will lead you to success no doubt, and for a nature like yours there will be no bitterness in such success.”
He looked away from her now, as if, despite her immunity from it, he felt that bitterness. He felt it, though she did not. He looked away in thedepth of his disgust and pain, conscious, though, of the golden blur of her hair, the indistinct oval of her face, the cool vague gray of her linen dress, as she stood still, not far from him. Camelia felt herself trembling. She beat off his cruel injustice—but it was hurting her—it was making her helpless.
“For what success do you imply that I am scheming?” she asked, and even while she spoke angry tears rushed to her eyes. To be misjudged was a new sensation; a hot self-pity smarted within her.
Perior did not see the tears, for he still looked away, saying in a voice that showed how clearly cut, how definitely perceived was the conviction, “The success of marrying a man you love little enough to lie to. Henge could not forgive you if he knew that you had lied to him and to his mother, yet he adores you—you have that on false pretences too. There is the truth for you, Camelia; and, upon my soul, I am sorry for Arthur. I pity him from the bottom of my heart.”
“How dare you! how dare you!” cried Camelia, bursting into tears. “It is false—false—false!”
Taken aback, Perior stared blankly at her. It was the first time that he had reduced her to weeping. “Oh, Camelia!” he stood still—he would not approach her; he felt that since she could cry her helplessness was fully armed, and he quite helpless; his supremacy robbed of all value.
“Every word you say is false!” she said, returning his stare defiantly, while the tears rolled down her cheeks. “I amnotscheming to marry him!I have not let him propose to me yet! I am not sure that I shall; I am not sure that I shall accept him, and if I do, it will be because I love him!”
Perior hardly believed her, and yet he was much confused, especially as with a fresh access of sobs her face quivered in the pathetic grimace of loveliness distorted; before that the real issue of the situation seemed slipping away; her repudiation of the greater dishonesty effaced, for the moment, the smaller; he had nothing to say—she probably believed in herself; and those helpless sobs were so touching to him that, notwithstanding his unappeased anger against her, he could have gone to her and taken her in his arms to comfort her, at any cost—even at the cost of seeming to ask pardon. He did not do this, however, but said, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, Camelia; you mustn’t cry. I’m glad you feel it in that way; I am glad you can cry over it.” He did not go to her, but his very attitude of nervous hesitation told Camelia that he was worsted—at least worsted enough for the practical purposes of the moment.
She got out her handkerchief and dried her eyes, still feeling very sore-hearted, very much injured; but when the tears were gone she came up to him saying, while she looked at him with all the victorious pathos of wet lashes and trembling lips, “You are not kind to me, Alceste.”
He moved away from her a little, but took her hands. “Because you are naughty, Célimène.”
“I will be good. I won’t tell fibs.”
“A very commendable resolution.”
“You mock me. You won’t believe a liar.”
“Don’t, please don’t speak of it again, Camelia.”
“Say you are sorry for having said it.”
“Oh, you little rogue!” Taking her face between his hands he studied it with a sad curiosity. “I am sorry for havinghadto say it.”
“Oh, prig, prig, prig.” She smiled at him now from the narrow frame, her own delicious smile.
“And bandersnatch if you will,” said Perior, shaking her gently by the shoulders, and putting her away with a certain resignation.
“My good old bandersnatch!Dearold bandersnatch! After all, I need a bandersnatch, don’t I, to keep me straight? Yes, I forgive you. I must put up with you, and you must put up with me, fibs and all—fibs, do you hear, not lies. Oh, ugly word!” She clasped her hands on his arm, poor Perior! “And you will stay to lunch?”
“No, I won’t stay to lunch,” said Perior, smiling despite himself.
“Why?”
“I am busy.”
“You are a prig, you know,” said Camelia, as if that summed up the situation conclusively.
WHETHER Camelia were decided on accepting Sir Arthur or not, every one else, under a waiting silence, considered the engagement an accomplished fact. Poor Mr. Merriman departed disconsolately when the reality of his utter ruin forced itself upon his unwilling understanding. Sir Harry contemplated the hopeless situation more compliantly, oscillated for a few days between feeble despair and jocular resignation, and then finding it impossible to utterly tear himself away from his charmer’s magnetic presence, he settled down to a melancholy flirtation with Mrs. Fox-Darriel that masked his inability to retreat. Lord and Lady Tramley went on to another visit, and the poet who wrote the virile poems and believed in the joy of life, finding Miss Paton less sympathetic than usual, penned a laconic, psychological verselet for her benefit, and departed.
Camelia seemed rather vague in the furtherance of hospitable projects, and the merest trickle of visitors went through the house, affecting very slightly the really placid routine.
Lady Paton’s whole personality expanded in prettiest contentment; the calm so far surpassed her expectations, and Camelia seemed very happy. Lady Paton could but take for granted her happiness.
Camelia was living the most poetical moment of life; she made no confidences; but Lady Paton’s trust walked in a sadly sweet dream where her daughter’s courtship mingled with tearful memories of her own. Charles Paton’s smile; the first fluttering consciousness that the smile came oftenest for her; she still blushed as she remembered the moment when he had murmured to her as they danced that she had the prettiest throat in England; it had seemed so daring to little Miss Fairleigh, who had read her first novel only six months before; the very memory still had the glamour of daring. And Camelia was feeling all those tremulous delights, with their deep undercurrent of sacred solemnity.
Camelia was not demonstrative, Lady Paton had sighed over the accepted fact, but she could trace all such natural emotions on Sir Arthur’s face when he watched or spoke to her daughter. She already felt a maternal tenderness for him, and his exquisite courtesy, that already implied rights, was nothing less than filial.
Lady Henge’s dignified intellectuality she found indeed rather awesome, but she hoped by careful listening to expand her powers of comprehension, and Lady Henge delivered her expositions of social ethics with a pleasant faith in their tonic effect upon the suppressed mind of her hostess—
“Suppressed, repressed, Arthur, not shallow,” she said to her son, “and you could not ask a daintier, truer gentlewoman for your wife’s mother, dear.” Lady Henge sighed just a little—though quite resigned to the future—for the Duchess of Amshire’s mind was neither suppressed nor shallow,but as expansive and capable an organ as her own, and infinitely sympathetic. Lady Elizabeth, too!—Lady Elizabeth, who had worked at shirt-making in the slums for two weeks, and had caught typhoid fever at it—even Camelia’s sunny charm could not efface the thought of Lady Elizabeth’s almost providential fitness. But in spite of inevitable regrets Lady Henge was resigned, and the two mothers got on together very pleasantly, since moulding capability can hardly carp at a gentle, clay-like receptivity.
Mr. Rodrigg seemed the only new guest intended for any permanence of stay. He duly arrived at the given date and hour, a punctual man, very much aware of his own importance, and of the importance to him, and to others, of every moment.
And Mr. Rodrigg was really a very important personage and his moments weighty with significance. And this iron-gray, middle-aged man had not at all foolishly fallen in love with the brilliant Miss Paton. A wife so beautiful, so capable, so charming, would be the finishing touch to his influence; matter-of-fact motives may well have underlain Mr. Rodrigg’s amorous determination, which Camelia thought so effectually snuffed out. But indeed Mr. Rodrigg’s determination was far too strong to credit hers. His self-confidence smiled kindly upon a pretty coquetry. The exquisite grace of Camelia’s rebuff—she had almost thought it worthy of publicity, so felicitous had been its delicate sweep round a corner dangerous to friendship—had merely impressed Mr. Rodrigg’s unappreciative bluntness with a reassuring conviction of trifling and postponement.
The lightness of touch, the deft cleverness upon which our poor Titania so prided herself, were surveyed in this instance by an ass’s head; the effect she thought so prettily made was quite missed, and she herself its only spectator.
The portentousness of Arthur Henge’s presence at Enthorpe did not in the least weigh with Mr. Rodrigg against the final choice he considered as expressed in Lady Paton’s invitation. Miss Paton had put him off—but she had not let him go; so Mr. Rodrigg interpreted the Egeria attitude; she demanded patience—and she should have it. She was too clever a girl to tolerate whining commonplaces; she would appreciate his whimsical calm; he would not whine—he would wait and humor her.
She liked to have important people about her, and Mr. Rodrigg explained Sir Arthur very much as Camelia had explained Mr. Rodrigg. It was platonic friendliness—quite hopeless. He realized that Camelia might dally with his own hopes, that skill might be necessary to win her finally, and he intended to be very skilful, to show no jealousy or carping that might indispose her towards his future marital authority. And Mr. Rodrigg hardly felt the fitness of jealousy. He was, he thought, a cleverer man than Henge, a man of more intrinsic weight. Henge had a light and pretty talent, spoke with conviction, but was not the man to sway the world with socialism rewarmed in Tory saucepans; whereas Europe trembled at Mr. Rodrigg’s nod, at least so Mr. Rodrigg, not unreasonably, was convinced. The “good match” theory in explanation of Camelia’s motives only fortified his own quiet consciousness of supremacy. He quite gave Camelia credit for an undazzled directness of vision that would surely apprise her of the side on which her bread was most thickly buttered. So Mr. Rodrigg arrived in an atmosphere of blue-books and business unavoidable, though with a minor effect of a great mind unbending to lighter mundanities. His face was typically British; ruddy, with broad features clearly hewn; keen eyes, a tight mouth, and an expression of sagacious toleration of things in general.
Camelia met him with her prettiest air of mutual understanding that would warrant the neatest epigrams. Her penetration of Mr. Rodrigg’s character had never quite realized his tenacious conceit.
He had been anxious, he had been hurt; but he had never imagined that Camelia thought him hopeless. Her complacent conviction of intellectual conquest was far indeed from his suppositions; the results of her Italian reading had been adroitly thrown into his speech as a piece of pretty flattery, that a great man might harmlessly permit himself towards a wilful, easily flattered woman. So the two stupidities met quite unconscious one of the other.
Mr. Rodrigg was to stop for a fortnight at least, and as Sir Arthur had to absent himself at intervals during the period, Camelia was all the more content. She feared that Sir Arthur’s attitude of independence and non-expectancy might antagonize Mr. Rodrigg. She relied upon her own arguments, her own flattering influence. She sat up late at night cramming the pamphlets, reports, and books withwhich Sir Arthur supplied her. The resultant pallor at breakfast deepened the effect of an intellectual atmosphere in which she wrapped herself serenely. Mr. Rodrigg smiled, paternally almost, and with his most tolerant calm, upon these efforts. He cut her a large slice of cold beef at the side-board and advised her to take a glass of port; “You mustn’t tire yourself, you know, my dear young lady.”
He rather resented Henge’s evident influence when he saw how deeply Camelia was determined on the bill, but not really troubled by it. Camelia’s fervor of sympathy seemed really personal; girlish emotionalism, a futile but pretty pity quite interpreted her tenacity. He was rather pleased that she should be on the side of the factory women, though anxious to explain to her that the logic of his own position need not exclude that partiality.
He thought it safer, however, to argue as little as possible, and listened attentively and pleasantly, quite willing to go this far in humoring. Meanwhile Camelia’s delay in announcing an engagement imposed a general silence; no one spoke of Sir Arthur as an accepted lover, and Mr. Rodrigg might perhaps be pardoned if no such instinctive intimation penetrated his thick self-confidence. Sir Arthur coming down for a Saturday and Sunday in Mr. Rodrigg’s visit, and going off again on a Monday, rather avoided an encounter.
Mr. Rodrigg himself good-humoredly introduced the subject of the bill one evening in the smoking-room, and they talked of it amicably and impersonallyfor a little while. But after this talk Sir Arthur said to Camelia—
“I see very plainly where he stands. He will be firmly against me; his reticence doesn’t conceal that.”
“Are you sure?” asked Camelia. She herself was not at all sure. In a walk with Mr. Rodrigg that morning she had certainly observed promising leaf-blades break the stiff soil of his non-committal attitude. Camelia did not imagine that her own beaming smile might well allure those vernal symptoms.
“Quite sure,” said Sir Arthur, who was really getting rather tired of Mr. Rodrigg and his utility, “and—now that I won’t see you again until next Thursday—won’t you talk of something as far removed from the bill as possible.”
“That would be a very uninteresting something,” said Camelia. “No, I can think of nothing but politics just now. Whose fault is that, pray? Did you see the report Mr. Dobson sent me this morning? You don’t want to see it! Fie, you lukewarm reformer. Now pray be patient—we will talk of something else on Thursday, perhaps.” So she warded him off, conscious always of that trembling retreat when the momentous question approached her. She was almost glad when Sir Arthur was gone again. At all events, she would make a good fight for his cause whether or no she accepted him.
“And you are on our side too, are you not?” she said to Perior, for Perior, more silent than ever, and revolving inner cogitations on his own laxity, still made an almost daily visit.
He owned that he was on “their side.”
“And you will support us in theFriday.”
“I am going to do my best.”
“But not because I ask you!” laughed Camelia, who still felt a little soreness since that uncomfortable interview where she had so much surprised herself. She was still rather resentful, and sorry that her tears might have implied confession. She was conscious now of a touch of defiance behind the light smiling of her eyes as he owned that her asking formed no compulsory element in his decision.
“Don’t you think that Mr. Rodrigg may be malleable?” Camelia pursued, “Sir Arthur is to convert him, you know.”
“You or Sir Arthur?” She laughed at this. “Would it be terribly wicked if I tried my hand at it?”
“It would be terribly useless,” Perior remarked; but Camelia looked placidly unconvinced.
“I am justified in trying, am I not?”
“That depends;” Perior was decidedly cautious.
“Since I believe thoroughly in the bill; since only intellectual forces will be brought to bear on our stodgy friend,—there is nothing of the lobbyist in it.”
“I am sure that Henge wouldn’t like it,” said Perior, with the certain coolness he always evinced in speaking to her of Sir Arthur.
“Why not?”
“It would put him in a false position towards Rodrigg. Rodrigg will imagine that you are bribing him.”
“Bribinghim!” Camelia straightened herself.
“Yes; that the price paid for his apostasy will be your hand,” and this indeed was exactly what Mr. Rodrigg, with some alarm, was beginning to think.
“Apostasy! If the creature won’t be sincerely convinced we don’t want him!” cried Camelia.
“Very well, you have my opinion of the matter.” Perior’s whole manner had of late been particularly irksome to Camelia.
Lady Henge meanwhile, seeing her son’s foe within the gates, most seriously and conscientiously, and openly, made good her opportunity. She took her mental mastery far more gravely than Camelia took hers, and poor Mr. Rodrigg began to think that he was asked to pay a heavy price for his hymeneal visit when Lady Henge cornered him in the drawing-room and stupefyingly admonished him. Lady Henge’s arguments were all based on superbly moral grounds, and levelled with severity at the iniquity of individualistic theories, which she demonstrated to be scientifically and ethically unsound. He at times found it very difficult to keep his temper. But under the exquisite warmth of Camelia’s urgency his hopes were high. He could regard with humoring half compliances this pretty whim of his pretty Camelia. Camelia would have raged could she have known Mr. Rodrigg’s real impressions—impressions accompanied by the fatherly tolerance of that “pretty Camelia.”
SIR ARTHUR was back again on Thursday, alertly conscious of a half promise, and he intended to put it to the test while he and Camelia rode together in the afternoon. The party was made up: Mrs. Fox-Darriel, Gwendolen Holt, Sir Harry, and another young man—but Camelia did not go. The horses were already before the door, and she, fully equipped in riding costume, engaged before her mirror on the final details of veil and gloves, when Perior rode up; Camelia saw him through the window, and heard him decline to join their party, as he had come for Mary. Mary was not a good rider, nor could she be urged beyond the dullest trot, and Perior’s refusal was no doubt on her account. Poor Alceste! Condemned to Mary for a whole afternoon! In a rapid change of project Camelia dashed out of her habit and into her prettiest white dress, sent down a note to Sir Arthur pleading sudden headache, and commanding him to go without her, saw the five depart obediently, and placidly descended to capture Perior. Mary was getting ready; Camelia, as she passed her room, saw her sewing a button on a glove, her habit laid in readiness on the bed. Camelia would have liked her ride; it was only from the impulsive wish for ten or fifteen minutes with Perior that she had sacrificed it, and she sawwith satisfaction that Mary would take quite that time.
“Well, how do you do?” she said, finding him as usual in the morning-room, “Ithinkwe have got him,” she added, picking up the threads of their last conversation.
“That is Rodrigg, of course,” said Perior, looking with a pleasure he could not conceal at her charming appearance. He felt for a moment like telling her that in that dress she was bewitchingly pretty, but checked the impulse with some surprise at it.
“Yes, I argued out the whole third clause with him yesterday,” said Camelia, smiling her happiest smile, for she was quite conscious of those unspoken words.
“Dear me!”
“He seemed impressed—though you are not. Sit down.”
“He seemed what he was not, no doubt—I haven’t the faculty.” Perior spoke quite good-temperedly. Indeed, Camelia’s political manœuvres did not displease him—consoled him in a sense. There was a pretty folly about them quite touching, and her earnestness seemed to vouch for some real feeling.
“Why should you imagine that he pretends?” she asked, taking the place beside him on the sofa and leaning forward, her arms on her knees.
“The man wants to please you,” said Perior, looking at her white hands hanging idly together. He wondered again whether egotism or a real fondness for Arthur moved her.
The long delay of the engagement excited andmade him nervous. It had usually been so easy to see through Camelia, and he did not like the perplexity. Still, the thought that she hesitated pleased him; she would accept Arthur, doubtlessly, but at least she would imagine that she cared for him. Camelia had gained some moral value in his eyes from that pause.
“Why should you imagine that he pretends?” she asked, feeling delightedly that the atmosphere was much less chilling than usual.
“The man wants to please you.”
“Well, and what then?”
“He expects to marry you.”
“Nonsense!” she said with a laugh of truest sincerity.
“Tell him that you are engaged to Arthur, and see.” Perior’s curiosity made that little probe, and the eyes of both showed a mutual self-consciousness; both thought of the last scene in the morning-room.
“I can’t make the experiment yet, even to please you,” said Camelia, satisfied that her cheeks showed no rising color. “Mr. Rodrigg is really attached to me. He would do a great deal for me.”
“Your smile for all reward.”
“Exactly.”
“You are a goose, Camelia.”
But she was pleasing him; her conceit amused him almost tenderly, and he laughed.
“You think me fatuous, no doubt,” said Camelia, laughing too.
“Yes, rather fatuous. Not as clear-sighted as usual.”
“Mr. Rodrigg knows that I could never marryhim,” said Camelia more gravely; “he can only hope for my smile, and, if he helps me through, I shall always smile.”
“I don’t credit Mr. Rodrigg with the faintest flavor of such humility.”
Camelia’s smile, confidently unconvinced, now shifted to a humorous little grimace. “He never really hoped. As though Icouldhave married a man with a nose like that!”
“I maintain that he does so hope—despite his nose; an excellently honest nose it is too.”
“So broad at the tip! as though he had flattened it against adverse forces all his life. It is a plebeian trait, an inheritance from money-getting ancestors who held theirs conscientiously to the grindstone.”
“Mine should show the peculiarity,” and Perior rubbed it, “it has been ground persistently.”
“Ah—a merely acquired tendency; besides, you are not going to ask me to marry you—so you may carry your nose fearlessly.” Camelia’s eye, despite the light audacity of her tone, fixed him with a certain alert hardness.
Perior bowed, his hand on his heart. “Thanks for the intimation. I shall carry it quite fearlessly, I assure you.”
Camelia laughed. “But I like your nose,” said she, leaning towards him; and, very much as a kitten gives a roguish paw-tap, she drew a finger briskly down the feature in question.
Perior grew a little red, and drew back rather sharply.
“What a staid person you are,” said Camelia, quite unabashed; “you don’t take a complimentgracefully, Alceste; not that it was a compliment, exactly, since your nose is not at all handsome; a poor thing but to my taste. I like its dominant ruggedness, and that nice lift in the bridge.”
“Well, Camelia, I came to take Mary out riding, you know,” said Perior, who still showed signs of uneasiness under her scrutiny.
“Yes, I know; you are so good to Mary. She is getting ready.”
Camelia contemplated Perior’s paternal relation towards Mary most unsuspectingly, yet she really did not like it. She could not like anything that withdrew a very important tributary from the river-like receptivity of her existence. Mary’s narrow channel was quite unmeet for such a complimentary contribution, and Camelia was sincerely convinced of the mere charitableness of Perior’s attitude. Then, above all, Perior was her own especial property; Mary might profit by him when she did not feel the want of him, and this afternoon she wanted him—very much, as it now struck her. To have sacrificed her ride for this bare ten minutes had been hardly worth while. She had not looked beyond the impulse of the moment, and the lonely hours stretched in long inconsistency before her. She thought of them now with some surprised dismay, and her eyes, still contemplating Perior’s nose, grew vague with conjecture. Perior certainly, despite his latter severity, would rather spend his afternoon with her than with Mary. He could not own to it, of course, nor would she force him to such an issue; but it might be managed—pleasantly for every one, for all three. Camelia’s life, so widein its all embracing objectivity, had little time for self-analysis, little time therefore for putting herself in other people’s places. Her lack of sympathy was grounded on a lack of all self-knowledge. Therefore her mind turned the matter quickly in the direction that best suited the desire of the moment, good and bad being to Camelia external facts that either pleased or displeased herself, and she said without one inner compunction, “Shall I hurry her up? And I must see that she puts her hat on properly. Mary has an unerring instinct for the unbecoming.”
“Has she?” said Perior, in the tone that Camelia well understood as being altogether unencouraging and perhaps disgusted. “Don’t hurry her. I can wait.”
“See how unkindly I dress my best impulses,” said Camelia, smiling. “I really want to help her, and to make her smart and tidy. A few touches of my fingers about Mary’s unfurnished forehead, and her face assumes a certain grace and prettiness. Alceste, you must not take my flippancyau grand sérieux—you are in danger of becoming ridiculous, Alceste, I warn you of it.” She had certainly succeeded in making “Alceste” smile, and with a reassured and reassuring wave of the hand she left him, delighted with her own ability for forcing him to swallow her naughtinesses—for swallow them he must; she would feign nothing for him; she would exaggerate even the defects he saw so solemnly. She was quite sure now that she must not be left alone, and that Perior must spend the afternoon with her. She ran upstairs quickly, conscious of howprettily she sprang from stair to stair, of how charmingly with its silk and muslin rustle her white dress swayed about her, conscious even of the distinguished elegance of her white hand gliding up the hand rail; for Camelia had always time for these æsthetic notes, and her grace, her dress, and her hand were so many reasons for keeping Perior to admire them. Mary was quite ready, and looking really nice; a pretty color, and the dull fairness of her hair smoothed neatly beneath her hat.
Camelia did not think of Mary as an obstacle to be callously pushed aside; but as an insignificance rather, quite as well satisfied with the barrel-organ equivalent she would offer, as with the orchestra that Camelia intended to keep for herself, since she had the supreme right of appreciation.
Indeed she hardly thought of Mary at all, as she acted surprise on the threshold.
“Were you going with them? They are gone, dear!”
Mary turned from the mirror, her habit skirt falling from her arm; on her face a dismal astonishment, that Camelia, absorbed in the mental completion of her arrangement, hardly noticed.
“Sir Arthur, Gwendolen, the others—you were going out with them.” She scarcely knew why she hedged her position with this pretence of ignorance. But Mary’s face brightened happily.
“Oh no, Mr. Perior is going with me. You haven’t seen him, then. He came for me.”
Camelia had the barrel-organ all in readiness, and prepared to roll it forward without delay.
“Oh! did he? Well, Mary, I have another planfor you this afternoon, you will like it just as well, I know. I promised Mrs. Grier to make that charitable round of visits to her poor people with her this afternoon. We were to go to the almshouses, and I have a basket of sweets for the children in Copley, and now I must give up going because of this dreadful headache, and knowing that nothing would please you more——.”
It was quite true that Camelia had made the appointment with Mrs. Grier, but on agreeing to go out riding with Sir Arthur, she had intended to ride to Mrs. Grier’s house and make charming apologies—of which Sir Arthur’s tyrannous monopoly would bear the brunt. By her present plan both Mary and Mrs. Grier would be pleased. She congratulated herself on her thoughtful dexterity. Mary liked Mrs. Grier so much, liked almshouses and poor children, and especially liked the distributing of goodies among them; Mary gained everything by the little shuffle, and she was not at all prepared for a certain stiffening and hardening in her cousin’s expression. “It is a lovely basket, and tea and curates galore,” she added, turning on the final roulade of the barrel-organ, rather wondering, for the coldness of Mary’s look was apparent, though Camelia did not divine the underlying confusion.
Mary was well trained in self-abnegation, but she turned her eyes away without replying for a moment: “Could you not send word to Mrs. Grier?” she asked.
Camelia felt quite a shock of surprise at the tone, and a sense of injury that hardened her in advance against possible opposition.
“Oh, it is too late, my dear—she would be terribly disappointed—and the children—and the tea prepared for me—the people invited. Why, Mary, don’t you want to go?”
“I wanted the ride,” said Mary in a low voice; and growing very red she added, “I am afraid Mr. Perior will think me rude.”
“Oh, I will make your excuses!” Camelia, in all the impetus of her desire, was much vexed by this ungrateful doggedness.
“Mr. Perior and I could ride over and explain,” Mary added.
Camelia had never met in her cousin such opposition, and a certain dryness mingled with the real grievance in her voice as she said—
“Is your heart so set on this ride, Mary? Mr. Perior will take you out again, and you know that the pleasure is always rather one-sided, since he particularly likes a good gallop across country. It isn’t quite like you, I think, to disappoint a friend like Mrs. Grier—you are so fond of Mrs. Grier, I thought.”
During this speech Mary’s face grew crimson. Setting her lips, she began quickly to draw off her gloves; Camelia felt suddenly a sense of discomfort.
“You will enjoy it, I am sure, Mary.”
Mary made no reply, and silently unbuttoned her coat.
“I beg of you, Mary, not to go if you are going to feel aggrieved about it. I do not see what I am to do. I thought it would be quite a treat for you.”
“Thanks, Camelia.”
“You will go, then?”
“Oh yes, Camelia.”
Camelia felt more and more uncomfortable; her object was gained and she could hardly relinquish it, but she wanted to hurry away from the unpleasing contemplation of this badly-tempered instrument. She lingered, however.
“You are right to keep on that straw hat—it is very becoming to you. Here, let me draw your hair forward a little. Now you will make conquests, Mary! The basket is in my dressing-room on the little table. Shall I order the dog-cart for you?”
“Thanks very much, Camelia.”
“Mary, you make me feel—horridly!”
Camelia could not check that impulse. “Do youmind? You see that I can’t get out of it; you see that it wouldn’t do—don’t you? I hope you don’t reallymind.”
“Oh no; I was a little disappointed, it was very thoughtless—very ungrateful.” The conventional humility rasped Camelia’s discontent. “And you will tell Mr. Perior?—you will explain?”
“Yes, yes, dear.”
Mary was now so completely divested of riding attire that Camelia left her with the assurance of having effected her purpose most thoroughly. But alas! it had rather lost its savor. As she slowly descended the stairs she realized that the game, though worth the candle, perhaps, had been decidedly spoiled by the candle’s unmanageable smoking and guttering. Mary’s decided sullenness had been quite an unlooked-for feature in the little scheme; it had involved her in a web ofpetty falsities for which Perior would have scorned her.
Remembering that to account comfortably for Mary’s absence she must lie to him, she came to a sudden standstill outside the door of the morning-room. How badly she had managed everything! She did not want to lie to him. Why had not Mary been delighted to go—as she should have been? Only the thought of Mary’s general disagreeableness fortified her a little.
Perior was still sitting on the sofa, abstractedly staring at the floor, as she entered.
“Oh, Camelia,” he said disappointedly.
“Only Camelia.” She felt herself, to her dismay and disgust, growing red.
“Where is Mary?”
“I have come to make Mary’s excuses. She can’t go—is so sorry.” With an effort she regained her composure. After all, he would never dream that to be with him she had sent off Mary, and the sudden seeing of the matter in that absolving light relieved her; it was rather to her credit, so seen, and her fondness for Perior really touching.
“Can’t go?” he repeated staring. “Why she sent me word that she would be ready in twenty minutes.”
“She had forgotten an engagement with Mrs. Grier; I was to have gone—” (it was as well to be as near the truth as possible), “but couldn’t because of my headache—I have a horrible headache. I would have put her off, but the engagement was one of a sort Mary especially likes, a round of village visits to the almshouses, and poor children,and afterwards tea and curates galore—” Camelia realized that with a confused uninventiveness she was repeating her own words to Mary. “Mary likes tea and likes curates,” she went on, pushed even further by that sense of confusion—she had never told her old friend so many lies, “and the curates like Mary, and no doubt one day she will see her way to making a choice among them.” Her voice was smooth, and certainly left no cranny for suspicion, yet Perior still stared.
“What a vacuous look!” laughed Camelia, wishing that she had not been forced to cross quite so many Rubicons.
“I feel sure that Mary has been sacrificing herself—as usual,” he said slowly.
“Sacrificing herself? Conceited man! Do you weigh yourself against half-a-dozen curates—reinforced by tea and sandwiches?”
“Mary likes our rides immensely—and I never saw any signs of a fondness for curates.”
“No, but a fondness for Mrs. Grier, almshouses, tea, curates, and the Lady Bountiful atmosphere combined.”
Perior looked absently out of the window; presently he said, “I don’t think she is looking over well—you know her father died of consumption.”
“Don’t; he was my uncle!” Camelia exclaimed. “Still, my chest is as sound as a drum.” She gave it a reassuring thump.
“That must be very comforting to you, personally, but is Mary’s?”
She looked at him candidly.
“You foolish, fussy old person! Mary is solidly,stolidly well; who could associate the lilies and languors of illness with Mary? You are trying to poetize Mary’s prose to worry me, but you can’t rhyme it, I assure you.”
“I don’t know about that!” Perior was again, for a moment, silent. “I don’t think Mary has a very gay time of it,” he said, speaking with a half nervous resolution, as though he had often wished to speak and kept back the words. “She doesn’t go out much with you in London, does she?”
Camelia did not like his tone, but she replied with lightness, “Not much, Mary is a home-keeping body. She is not exactly fitted for worldly gaieties, and she understands it perfectly.”
“How trying for Mary”—the nervousness was quite gone now—once he had broached a delicate subject Perior could handle it with little compunction.
“Mary is very happy, if you please. She adores me, and is devoted to Mamma. Mamma is certainly nicer to her than I am—that is an affair of temperament, for Mary does bore me tremendously—I think she knows that she does, but she adores me, since I don’t deserve it—the way of the world—a horrid place—I don’t deny it.”
“Happy Mary! allowed to adore your effulgence—but at a distance—since she bores you, and knows she does!” And over his collar Camelia could observe that Perior’s neck had grown red. She joined him at the window, and said, looking up at his face—
“Why do you force me to such speeches? I am not responsible for the inequalities of nature—though I recognize them so cold-bloodedly. The contrast does not hurt her, for she is a good, contented little soul, and then—for nature does give compensations—she has no keen susceptibilities;” she locked her hands on his shoulder, and smiling at him, “Come, you know that I am fond of Mary. You should have seen how prettily I arranged her hair to-day—it would have softened your heart towards me. Come, we are not going to quarrel again.”
Perior’s eye turned on her, certainly softened in expression, “By no means, I hope,” and he smiled a little, “especially as I must be off—since I have missed my ride.”
Camelia’s face at this unlooked-for consummation took on an expression of sincerest dismay.
“Going! you will leave me all alone! They have all gone!”
Perior laughed, looking at her now with the same touch of irrepressible pleasure she could usually count on arousing.
“Poor little baby! and it has a headache, too?”
“Yes, it has; please stay with it.”
She was quite sure that he wanted to stay; indeed, Camelia’s certainty of Perior’s fundamental fondness for her was an article of faith untouched by doubt.
“Very well, you want to show off your dress, I see.” Perior’s smile in its humoring coyness was charming; Camelia felt that she quite adored him when he so smiled at her. “A very pretty dress it is; I have been taking it in.”
“And we will have tea in the garden,” saidCamelia, in tones of happy satisfaction, “and you will see how good I am—when you are good to me. And I’ll tell you all about the people who are coming—for I must have more of them—droves of them; in batches, artistic batches, ‘smart’ batches, intellectual batches, political batches. You and I will look at them.”
“Thanks; you don’t limit me to a batch then?”
They were still standing near the window, and she kept a hand on his shoulder, and looked at him now with the gravity that made her face so strange.
“No, dear Alceste, you know I don’t.”
He returned her look, smiling with a little constraint.
“We must be more together,” Camelia went on, “we must take up our studying. No, Mr. Rodrigg, I can’t walk with you this morning, I am reading the Agamemnon with Mr. Perior.” Camelia’s eyes, mouth, the delicately long lines of her cheek, quivered with the half malicious, half tender smile that tilted every curve and every shadow from calm to roguery.
“How Mr. Rodrigg will hate me, to be sure,” said Perior, who at that moment felt that he would like to kiss his bunch of primroses—an illusion of dewiness possessed him.
“And now for tea under the copper beech. And I will read to you. What shall I read? It will be quite like old days!”
“When we were young together,” said Perior, smiling at her so fondly that she felt deliciously reassured as to everything.
The gods always helped a young lady who helpedherself. Such had been Camelia’s experience in life, even when she helped herself to other people’s belongings.
At all events, with hardly a qualm of conscience, Camelia enjoyed the afternoon she had wrested from poor Mary.
The tea-table was duly installed under the wide shade of the copper-beech. Perior carried out an armful of books and reviews from which to choose. They drank their tea and ate their bread and butter, and Camelia read aloud from theRevue des Deux Mondes. And it cannot be denied that Perior, sitting in the cool green shadow, listening to the perfect French accent, looking at the white figure sprinkled with the pale shifting gold that filtered through the leaves above them, enjoyed himself a great deal more than he would have done with Mary. Truly at times the way of transgressors is very easy.