There was a jar upon the great staircase, the sound thrilling through the silence, of a slip upon some hardened plank, and Evelyn awoke with a start from a troubled doze. She drew her shawl close round her, for it was very cold, the coldest moment of the night just before dawn. She had drawn the curtain half over the library door, that the light might not betray her, and it was only by the dim rays of the night lamp in the hall that she could distinguish the dark figure going softly towards the door. He had his hand upon it when she stole out quietly and caught his arm in her hands.
“Archie! where are you going? You are not going out at this hour of the night?”
“Is it you, Mrs. Rowland?” he said with a start. “If I had known that anybody was up, I should not have come this way.”
“Thank God you did not know. Archie, where are you going out of your father’s house?”
“My father’s house!” he said with a faint laugh. “But why go over it again? you were there and you heard the whole.”
“And you heard me?”
“You! I was not thinking of you,” he said with a contempt which was purely matter of fact and natural, meaning no offence.
“Nevertheless you heard what I said.”
He paused a little and then said, “Yes, I supposeI did. I remember something, but what does all that matter now?”
“It matters having a friend always at hand, to note everything. Oh my boy, don’t go. Stay and work it out—stay and prove who has done it. Archie, take my advice.”
“Why should I, Mrs. Rowland? I have always thought you were my enemy.”
“Very falsely, very falsely!” she cried. “Archie, I promised to your mother I would do all to you that a woman who was not your mother could do.”
“You promised to my mother! What do you know about my mother? It is getting late and I should be on the road: let me go.”
She was holding his arm with both her hands. And she was not his enemy. His heart was charged with wrath, and grievious against her, but he would not think she was his enemy any more—and his mother—the name startled him, and there was something in the close contact with this beautiful lady and the pressure of her hands, that gave Archie a bewildered new sensation in the midst of his rage and misery. The very sense of her superiority—that superiority that had been so humiliating, so sore a subject, and her beauty which he had never appreciated, but which somehow came in to amaze yet touch him, as with the deep curves round her anxious eyes, pale with watching and trouble, she held him and kept him back on the threshold of the friendless world, all evident in the surprise which penetrated through Archie’s wretchedness. Was it a promiseof something better at the bottom of the deepest wrong of them all?
“I don’t know what you mean—about my mother—” he said.
“I promised her,” said Evelyn, the tears dropping from her eyes, “when I first caught sight of this house, which should have been hers,—I promised her, that you should be cared for, as if she were here.”
“What was that?” he said, “something touched me—what was that? Who is it? Is there some one playing tricks here?”
He worked himself out of her grasp, turning to the other side, where there was no one nor anything to be seen. It was the darkest hour of the night, and the coldest and most dreary, though indeed, it was already morning, and in many a humble house about the inhabitants were already awake and stirring. But there was a stillness in the deserted hall, as if some one had died there, and all the revellers had fled from the deserted place. He searched about the side of the hall, peering and groping in the feeble miserable light, but came back to where Evelyn stood, coming close to her, shivering, with a scared and blanched face.
“Somebody touched me, on my shoulder,” he said in a very low voice.
“You have had no sleep. Your nerves are excited. Go back, go back, my poor boy, to your bed and sleep.”
“No, never when that has been said against me—never—if there was not another house in the world.”
“Archie, my dear, we must keep our sense and ourheads clear. Whoever has done it, must know and be on the watch to escape, and you must see that you must be cleared: it must be made quite plain as the light of day.”
“I will never be cleared,” he said shaking his head. “My father will never say that he was wrong, and how should I find out? I am not clever to be a detective. There are things that are never found out. No, there’s no light of day for me. Aunt Jane will take me in, and I will go to the foundry and work, as he did. But I will never be the man he was,” the boy said with a sort of forlorn pride in the father who had thrown him off. “Mark you, I think maybe you are good as well as bonnie, and far better than the like of us. If I had known sooner, it might have been different. Let me go.”
“Oh boy, boy! you must be cleared, and you won’t stay and do it,” she cried, grasping his arm again.
He unloosed her hands with a certain roughness yet tenderness. “Let me go,” he said. “I will go, there is nobody on earth that can stop me.” He undid the iron bar that held the door with fierce haste, paying no attention to her pleadings, and flung the big door open, letting in the chill morning air, which sped like a messenger unseen swiftly through the hall and up the stairs, and driving Mrs. Rowland back with a chill that went to her heart.
Archie stepped out into the dark world. Over the mouth of the loch where the current of the great river swept its waters in, there was a faint trembling of whiteness, which meant a new day. He did not feelthe cold or any shock from it, but instead of hurrying forth as might have been looked for, lingered, standing outside a moment, with his face turned towards that lightness in the east. Evelyn wrapped her shawl more closely round her and followed him, standing upon the step of the door to make a last effort. But he paid no attention to what she said. He stood lingering on the gravel absorbed in his own thoughts. Then he came up to her again close, as if he had for the first time remarked her presence. “Do you think,” he said, “it could beher, to give me heart?” and then without waiting for a reply, he turned away.
Cold and startled and shivering, Evelyn watched his retiring figure till it was lost in the darkness, and then closed the door, with a heart that was fluttering and sick in her breast. He had said many strange things—things which almost made it possible that he was not so innocent as she thought, and yet he was innocent, he must be innocent! She crossed the dark hall with a tremor in her weariness and exhaustion. It needed not the darkness to veil an ethereal spirit. Had Mary been there?
Nota word was said of Archie in the house of Rosmore until the tired and still sleepy party assembled to breakfast. Evelyn, who had not closed her eyes till daylight, had slept late, and had not been disturbed; and her husband had no opportunity of questioningher, had he been disposed, until they met at the breakfast-table. The rest of the party were all assembled when she came in—Rowland himself invisible behind his newspaper, and taking no notice, while the others were talking as gaily as usual, without any sign of being moved by any knowledge of a catastrophe. Eddy Saumarez indeed had dark lines under his eyes, but his talk was endless as ever. He gave Mrs. Rowland a quick and keen look of investigation as she came in, but Eddy was the last person in her thoughts, and she did not even observe the glance. The conversation, in due course of the table, ran on without much interruption from the strangers, who dropped in one by one, and to whom the mistress of the house gave all her care.
“Archie was magnificent with Lady Jean,” said Eddy. “I never saw anything so good as his bow. He put his feet together like a French dandy of the last century. We’ve lost the art in our degenerate days.”
“Oh,” said Marion, “that was nothing wonderful, for it was a Frenchman that we got our dancing from, Archie and me. He used to play a little fiddle and caper about. Some people thought he was old-fashioned—the MacColls—but they were just as ignorant! He taught me that way of doing my steps, you know”—And Marion sprang up, lifting a fold of her dress to exhibit a neat foot pointed in a manner which presumably her former partner had admired.
“Oh yes, I know—you danced young Cameron’s heart away. As for mine, it is well known I have gotnone. But did you see him in the reel? By Jove, he sprang a foot from the floor.”
“Who is him?” said Rosamond—“Mr. Rowland or Mr. Cameron—you might make your descriptions more clear.”
“Oh Archie! No. He wanted lightness perhaps a little in the waltzes, but the reels he performed like one to the manner born.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marion, “that he was more born to one than to the other. We’ve danced very few reels, if that is what you mean. Waltzes and polkas, and so forth, is what we were learned to dance—just like other people. But it is true that Archie was never so good at it as—”
Marion paused with a feeling of her stepmother’s eyes upon her, though indeed Mrs. Rowland was far too much occupied by the other guests, even had her mind been less troubled, to have any perception of the chatter going on at her side.
“It is savage,” said Rosamond, “but it has a kind of sense in it; whereas going round and round is delirious, but it has none. One enjoys dancing very much, but one is rather ashamed of it after it is over. Why should one spend hours doing nothing but go round and round? When you look on and don’t dance, it is silly beyond anything in the world.”
“I dare say the wall flowers think so,” said Eddy. “But they would not if they could get partners.”
“That is the worst of it,” said Rosamond reflectively. “Probably they are far the nicest people in the room. I thought last night we were all like thelittle figures on the barrel-organ that used to play under our nursery windows, going round and round till it made one giddy to see them. And to think that people with other things in their minds should go like that a whole evening; and all the trouble that was taken to prepare for them, and all the trouble to make things rational again, and only know perhaps in the midst of all the nonsense—”
“What—in the midst of all the nonsense, Miss Saumarez?” said Mr. Rowland, suddenly laying down his paper, which had much the effect of a gun suddenly fired into the midst of them, for it was very rarely that he interfered in the conversation of the young members of the party. His face, which always had a weatherbeaten tone, was flushed and redder than usual, which is the unattractive way in which some middle-aged people show their trouble, instead of the more interesting method of young folk.
“Oh nothing,” said Rosamond a little startled, and answering like any shy girl suddenly finding herself called to book. She recovered her courage, however, and continued: “I mean it looks silly to see everybody twirling and twirling as if they had nothing to do or think of, when they must have things to think of, even in the midst of a ball.”
Rowland threw down his paper and rose from his seat. “You are about right, however you came about your knowledge,” he said, and walking to the window stood with his large back turned towards them, staring out and seeing nothing; indeed, as the windows of thedining-room looked only into the shrubberies, there was nothing but trees and bushes to see.
“It is not the fashion,” said Eddy, “to wear your heart on your sleeve, thank heaven. And society’s the best of discipline in that way. When a man’s hit, he must blubber out loud before the crowd like a child; I am always at my funniest when I’m hardest hit—and as for the Governor, Rose, you know when he’s bad by the way he laughs at everything. By the way,” cried Eddy, “what’s become of Rowland, the lazy beggar? doesn’t he mean to come downstairs to-day?”
“Archie was always lazy in the morning,” said Marion, “we never could get him up.”
“Young Mr. Rowland should have a long allowance,” said a lady who had been absorbed in her letters, “for he had double work last night. He was ubiquitous, finding partners, finding places, doing everything. You should have heard Lady Jean. He fairly won her heart.”
“And mine too,” cried Lady Marchbanks from the other end of the table, who was known to copy Lady Jean faithfully in all her strongly expressed opinions.
“That would show, according to Saumarez,” said a young man laughing, “that to show himself so lively, he must have had something on his mind.”
Rowland turned round from the window at which he stood, and gave a keen look at the careless young speaker who had just appeared, then returned to his contemplation of the somewhat gloomy landscape without.
“Are you studying the weather, James?” said Evelyn from her place at the head of the table.
“That’s not a subject that repays contemplation in this country, Mrs. Rowland,” said Sir John Marchbanks with his mouth full.
“It wants variety, it’s always raining: the glass may say what it likes, but you’re sure of that.”
“The glass,” said another gentleman, strolling towards the window to join the laird, “has little effect in this district. But just for the fun of the thing, Rowland, what does it say?”
James Rowland was not a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, but neither had he that super-admirable discipline of society which rouses the spirits to special force in order to conceal a calamity. He turned round upon the inquirer somewhat sharply: “The fun of the thing? I see no fun in the thing. Corn still out on those high-lying fields, and frost in the air, and the glass falling: it’s not funny to me.”
Nothing was funny to him at that moment, to look at his flushed and clouded face. He had held himself in for some time, but the tension was unbearable. Was Archie coming, and all as usual? was he sulking in his room? was he—terrible question—gone; gone for ever out of his father’s house? His trouble took, as in so many middle-aged minds, the form of acute irritation. And yet he did his best to restrain himself.
“Oh, that’s true,” said the other, somewhat disconcerted. “Perhaps we don’t think enough of the poor bodies’ bit fields. But they should learn better than to put corn there. You will find no decent farmer doing that.”
“Corn’s but a delusion at the best, in these days,” said a country gentleman with a sigh.
“But if we are going out to take you your luncheons to the hill,” cried the pretty Miss Marchbanks, “we must be sure of the weather. Oh, I am not going out upon the hill if it rains, to go over my ankles in every bog.”
Rowland had turned from the window and was looking round the table with a faint hope of finding his son there. He had tried to smooth out his troubled countenance, and at this speech he contrived to smile. “I will go and consult the big glass in the hall for your satisfaction, Miss Marchbanks,” he said.
“Oh, do, do! how kind you are! and we’ll all come too,” cried the girl. But he did not wait for this undesirable result. What a relief it was to escape, to get beyond reach of all those inquisitive looks, to reach the shelter of the room which no one invaded. He hid himself behind the heavy curtains and the closed door, only in time to escape the invasion of the light-hearted company, whose voices and footsteps he could hear coming after him. He had purposely refrained from asking any questions about Archie, not willing to betray his uneasiness to the servants. His wife had remained long downstairs after him, but even with her, who knew everything, he was reluctant to ask any questions; and she had been asleep when he was roused by the movement in the house to the shining of a new day. He knew nothing—nothing from the time when, with angry despair, he had gone upstairs and wavered for a moment at Archie’s door. All he had wanted then was to pour out upon the boy the bitterness of his heart. But now the snatches of broken sleep whichhad come to him refreshing him against his will, and the enforced quiet of the night, and the new beginning of the day, had worked their natural effect. A longing came into his mind to dream it all over again, to see if perhaps there might be any fact to support the boy’s vehement and impassioned denial. No, no, he said to himself, there could be no proof—none! Some disgraceful secret must lie beneath. It was not in Archie’s nature (which was kind enough—the fool had a good heart and faithful enough to his friends) to have refused to help his old comrade without some reason. Perhaps, Rowland thought, this was to do that—the fool! he had no sense about money. It might have been for this purpose—a good purpose; a thing he had himself taunted him for not doing. The perspiration came out in great beads on his brow—a cold dew of pain. Could it be for this that he had made himself a criminal? or had he not done it at all? But that was impossible. Who else could have done it? It would be easy for him whose own handwriting resembled his father’s, whose appearance with so large a cheque would have occasioned no suspicion. It had been a little pleasure to Rowland, and warmed his heart with a sensation of the mysterious bond of nature, to find that, though he had nothing to do with his son’s education, Archie’s handwriting had resembled his. And now the recollection struck him like a sharp blow. And then the son—who could wonder that he came with so large a cheque? But no, it was not he that had cashed the cheque, for it had been wondered over, and young Farquhar—confound young Farquhar!—no doubt someshady puppy doing well, good as they always are these fellows to contrast with—— He had thrown himself into his chair, but now he got up again and walked about the room. That the bank people should be so anxious to cover young Farquhar at the cost of Archie—It was not that; he knew there was something wanted to complete the logic of that, but it came to the same thing. To transfix his own heart with ten thousand wounds, to ruin the boy—for what was it but ruin to the boy, whatever came of it, not a trick and frolic as the young fool pretended to think, but ruin, ruin, all the same—for the sake of young Farquhar, to save a little delay in his advancement! Good Lord! how disproportioned things were in this life!
He was standing by the fire, idly looking at the calendar on his mantelpiece, which marked the date 25th of October, a date he never forgot, when the door was cautiously opened and Saunders, the butler, came in, closing it again carefully after him. There was something in the man’s eyes which already told half his tale.
“Lo, this man’s face, like to a title leaf,Foretells the nature of the tragic volume.”
“Lo, this man’s face, like to a title leaf,Foretells the nature of the tragic volume.”
“Lo, this man’s face, like to a title leaf,Foretells the nature of the tragic volume.”
Rowland did not probably know these lines or anything like them, but he watched Saunders’ approach with the same feeling. The butler came quite up to him and spoke in a low voice, as if he were afraid of being heard. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said; “I thought I had better let you know; Mr. Archibald, sir,—I’m thinking he has been called away suddenly.”
“What?” cried Rowland, holding by the marble of the chimney piece, and feeling as if a touch would bring him down.
“Mr. Archibald, sir—I’m thinking he must have had some sudden call. His room is lying in great disorder, and his bed has not been slept in this night.”
He held by the marble of the chimney-piece for a full minute before he came to himself; and then his lips hanging a little loose, his voice a little thick—“Do you mean that my son—is not in the house?”
“He’s had some sudden call,” said the man, with instinctive endeavours to lessen the shock. “He’s left no message. And there’s the gentlemen all intent upon the shooting, and the ladies to go with their luncheon——”
Rowland paused for another minute before he spoke. Then he said, “Mr. Archie had to start very early for Glasgow on business. It was only settled last night—something about that messenger, you remember, Saunders, that came into the middle of the ball and looked so frightened.” His voice became easier as it went on, and he laughed at this recollection. “As I could not go myself, I sent my son. He may be detained a day or two. Just go to Mr. Saumarez and ask him, with my compliments, if he would take Mr. Archie’s place. Is Roderick ready?”
“Oh, yes, sir; quite ready and waiting. It’s a thought late: all the gentlemen have been a little late this morning.”
“What can you expect, Saunders, after a ball? Youcan tell Mrs. Rowland I would like to see her as soon as she has a moment to spare.”
It was so then; without remedy. Archie had gone—gone—not fled; that could never be said of him; gone to wait for the police coming to arrest him for forgery, as if that would ever be. God! his boy—Mary’s boy—the only son; whom the ladies had been praising so for his conduct last night; whom Lady Jean, they said—Lady Jean who was so ill to please, who was not an easy person—and he was gone. Rowland felt his heart in his breast as heavy as a stone. It had been beating very irregularly, sometimes loudly, sometimes quieted down for a moment, now it seemed to stop and lie heavy, like a stone. He waited till he heard the ladies’ voices die away, the men come out to the door where Roderick was awaiting them, and saw the start from his window, himself unseen, feeling a kind of contempt in his misery for the men who are so easily amused. Old men, too: Sir John, as old as himself, so easily amused! but then, perhaps, there was no son in this case to make his father’s life a burden to him. “Has he daughters?” old Lear said, as if a man had no right to be mad who had not. As for Sir John, tramping along in his knickerbockers, an older man than Rowland, he had no son; and yet the father, unhappy, felt a sort of contempt for him so easily amused, while others were too sick at heart to bear the light. He went out of his room when the coast was clear, and went to Archie’s room, which lay in the disorder it had been found in by the servant who went to call him in the morning: the drawers allopen, the things thrown about. Nothing could be more dismal than the aspect of the room in this abandonment. It is terrible at all times to enter the empty room of any one whom we love, especially when its owner is sick or in trouble. The unused bed cold, as if it were never to be employed more; the air of vacancy; the emptiness and silence, have an effect of suggestion more overwhelming than any simple fact. And Archie’s room was not only empty, it was abandoned. His father turned over the things upon the table in the miserable preoccupation of his mind, not knowing what he did, and then lifted a handful of papers, including Archie’s cheque-book, which was lying there. How careless of Archie, he said, mechanically, as he carried them away. There was no real intention of carrying them away. He had not, indeed, thought on the subject at all, but took them up almost unawares.
Evelyn put her hand within his arm as he crossed the hall to his room, and accompanied him there. She told him that Archie had gone, but in what temper and disposition, softened, as she thought and hoped, and he listened with his head bent down, saying nothing. He was angry, yet he was soothed that she should be on Archie’s side. “You take his part against your husband,” he said roughly, but he loved her better for it than if she had taken his part against his son. There are artifices of the heart which it is well to know. And he sat heavily thinking for some time after she had ended her tale. Then he said abruptly, “I gave you yon cheque to keep. Give it me back, please.”
Evelyn opened the drawer of a little ornamental escritoire, in which she had locked that fatal paper, and gave it to her husband. Rowland was a strong man, and he was not emotional, but the sight of the two round marks which were on the paper with broken edges, when the tears had pleaded unawares with their weight of saltness and bitterness the rage and horror of the boy accused, was more than he could bear. He put it down hastily on the table, and for a moment covered his face with his hands. Those tears which anguish and shame had forced from his boy’s eyes—who could have seen them unmoved? There was a relenting, a melting, a thawing of horrible ice about his heart. “If he was guilty,” he said, in a faltering voice. “Evelyn, if he was guilty, do you think——”
She went and stood behind him, drawing his head against her breast. “You could but forgive him,” she said, very low; “at the worst—at the worst.”
“Come,” he said, after that moment of emotion; “it is just a question of business after all.Thiswas never taken from any book of mine. You see the difference—.” He opened a drawer and drew out his cheque-book, pointing to her the numbers. The cheque was numbered in much more advanced numerals than Mr. Rowland’s book. “That’s nothing in itself,” he added, “for I might have borrowed a cheque from some one, or got it at the bank, if I had been wanting for money then. I might have got it from—anybody that banks there. Archie—I might have got it from Archie.” As he spoke his eye fell suddenly uponhis son’s cheque-book which he had brought from the empty room. He took it up and opened it almost with a smile. But the first glance struck him with a strange alarm. He gave a frightened look up at her, throwing back his head for a moment, then began slowly to turn over the pages. What an office that was! Evelyn stood behind, looking over his shoulder, feeling that the moment of intolerable crisis had come.
The smile was fixed upon his face; it changed its character, and got to be the cynical smile of a demon upon that honest face. Over and over went the quivering long leaves of the pink cheques in his trembling fingers, and then——
“James, James!”
He put it in the place from which it had been torn, a scrap of the perforated line had been left on the side of the foil, and fitted with the horrible precision of such things. He laid it there exact, rag to rag, then gave her a triumphant glance, and broke into a fit of dry and awful laughter, such as the trembling woman, whom he pushed away from him, had never heard before.
“There!” he said, “there! and what do you think of that, and your brave young hero now?”
It seemed to Evelyn as if her spirit and courage were entirely gone from her, and she could never hold up her head again. She had recoiled when he pushed her away, but now came tremblingly back, and looked at it as at a death warrant. Ah! no delusion—no fancy—it was as clear as the cold dreary daylight thatpoured in upon them through the great window—as clear as that Mary’s boy, who had looked so honest, who had faced his accuser with such rage of upright indignation, who had approached with such an unsuspecting look of innocence, as clear as that the boy——
“No, no, no!” she cried out. “I will not believe my senses, James! There is something in it more than we know.”
“Ay!” he said, “Ay, I well believe that—something more than you and me know, or perhaps could understand—though he’s but twenty. Do you hear, Evelyn—only twenty, with plenty of time——”
“Yes,” she cried, clasping her husband’s hand, upon which her tears fell heavily, “plenty, plenty of time, thank God, to repent.”
“To do more, and to do worse,” he said, “repent! I believe in that when I see it—but never before. Plenty of time to drag down my honour to the dust—to make my name a byeword—to lay my pride low. Oh, plenty of time for that, and a good beginning.”
He took a large envelope out of one of the drawers of the table at which he was sitting, and methodically arranging the cheque in the place from which it had been torn, at the end of the book, placed the cheque-book in the envelope, and fastening it up, locked it into a private drawer.
“There!” he said, “that is done with, Evelyn. We’ll say no more about it. We’ll just disperse, my dear, you to your farm and me to my merchandize. The incident is over. It’s ended and done with. If wecan forget it, so much the better. It’s not very long to have had the delusion of a—a—son in the house. It’s well it has been so short a time. Now that chapter’s closed, and there’s no more to be said.”
“James! you will not abandon the boy for the first error—the first slip?”
“Error—slip! I would like to know what kind of a moral code you have,” he said with a smirk. “An error would be—perhaps staying out too late at night—perhaps forgetting himself after dinner. I would not cast him off for a slip like that. And if he asks me for money, he shall have it, enough to keep him. But as for the slip of a lad of twenty who signs another man’s name to a cheque for a thousand pounds——”
“Oh, what does the sum matter?” she cried.
“The sum matters—nothing. I would have made a coat of thousand pounds, like old Jacob in the Bible. Ay, that and more. But never mind, it’s all passed and over, Evelyn. My dear, you have behaved through it all like an angel. God bless you for it. Now go away and leave me to my business, and we will never mention it again.”
“I do not consent to that, James. I will mention him many times again.”
“Then you will force me to keep out of your reach, my dear,” her husband cried. And yet he was thankful to her for what she said, thankful to the bottom of his heart.
Thus Archie disappeared, and the waters closed over his head—but not silently or without commotion. The men went out to the hill and made tolerable butnot very good bags; the ladies took them their luncheon, and there was a very merry party among the heather, but when two came together they asked each other, “What has become of the son?” or “What have they done with Archie?” and the incident was as far from being ended as human incident ever was.
Ifany one thinks that such events can come to pass in a house, and the servants remain unaware of the movement and commotion, I can only say that these persons are little acquainted either with human nature, or the peculiar emotions and interests called forth by domestic service. As certain members are kept in exercise by certain kinds of action, so there are certain sets of mental and moral fibres that are moved by the differing conditions of existence, and no one is more completely and continuously in operation than those of interest, curiosity, and that mixture of liking and opposition which naturally actuate one set of human creatures towards the other set of human creatures who are immediately over them, and control and occupy all their movements. It gives something of the interest of a continual drama to life, to watch the complicated play of human fate going on so near, in circumstances so intimate that it is scarcely possible not to enter into a certain partizanship, and take sides. Thus there were some of the servants who were all for Mr. Archie, and had an instinctive certainty that hewas being unjustly treated and ill-used, and some who held for the master, with a conviction that a young son was never to be trusted, and was apt to go astray, as the sparks fly upward, by force of nature. Singularly enough, though Mrs. Rowland was a considerate and kind mistress, good to everybody, and taking a much greater interest in the members of her household than either father or son, nobody took her side: partly because she was, more or less, like themselves, a sort of spectator, not one of the first actors in the drama; and still more because she was the stepmother, and naturally, according to all traditions, a malignant element doing harm to both. The items of fresh information which were brought to the upper servants by Saunders, and which percolated through the house by means of an observant footman, were eagerly seized by the attendant crowd, and rapidly classified under fact or guess, according to its kind, until the superstructure was very remarkable. Naturally, the servants’ hall knew far better what Mr. Rowland was going to do than he himself did, and had settled the career of Archie in every particular before he had more than the most rudimentary idea of it himself.
It is a very poor and shabby thing to gossip with servants as to the habits and peculiarities of their masters: nothing can be more true than this. But it is very difficult for a lady not to hear, as she can scarcely help hearing, the word dropt by her maid—or for a man to arrest in time the revelation that falls from his attendant in respect to the disturbed condition of a house. “How could there be much comfort in thehouse, my lady, when there was a terrible scene in the middle of the night, and poor Mr. Archie never in his bed at all, but gone out of the house by break of day.” You have to be quick indeed, and very much on your guard, to prevent the woman, as she stands behind you, from letting loose such an expression as this before you can stop her. And still less is a man able to check the valet who thinks it so very queer that a gentleman should have arrived late on business, and come scared-like into the ball-room all in his travelling things. “And they do say, sir, that that’s why young Mr. Rowland has disappeared this morning, though the house is full of company.” How can you restrain or ignore these communications from the back-stairs? Consequent upon a number of such communications was the resolution taken by everybody at Rosmore to arrange their departure as early as possible on the second day. All felt confused and troubled in the dreary rooms in the evening, where there was nobody to lead the revels, and where the master of the house scarcely took any pains to conceal the preoccupation of his mind. Nobody could have known, except by the anxious glance she threw now and then at her husband, by Mrs. Rowland’s bearing that anything was wrong, and Marion was in her usual spirits, ready to do a little solid flirtation (for the young men complained of Marion that she was far from being light in hand) with any candidate: but Rowland gave so broken an attention to what was going on, mingled in the conversation so abruptly, and fell into such silences between, that it was easy to see how little accomplishedhe was in the art of living, according to its highest social sense. Whether it was that, or the hints from below stairs, which had reached more or less every member of the party, it was certain that it was a party very little at its ease. One or two of the bolder guests asked directly for Archie, if he was expected home that evening, if he was likely to be long detained by his business, etc.; the more timid did not mention his name. “What is the best thing to do,” they asked each other privately, “when there is trouble of that kind in a house?” Lady Marchbanks, who was not generally supposed to be a very wise woman, here spoke with authority out of the depths of a great experience, being a woman with many brothers, sons, and nephews, and full of knowledge on such points. “I always ask,” she said, “just as if I were sensible of nothing—just as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a young man to be suddenly called away on business, when it is well known he has no business, and his father’s house full of guests. It’s the kindest way,” Lady Marchbanks said, and she had occasion to know. But they were all unanimous in finding reasons why they must depart next morning after their delightful visit. Interesting as human complications are to all spectators, there are few people who think it right to stay on in manifest presence of trouble in the house.
There was one, however, who excelled himself in friendly devotion to his hosts, and that was Eddy Saumarez, who took upon himself, only with far greater ability than Archie could have shown, the work of the son of the house. There was every appearance that it would havebeen a very dull and embarrassing evening but for Eddy, who flung himself into the middle of affairs like a hero. He sang, he talked, he arranged a rubber in one corner, a game in another, of that semi-intellectual kind which is such a blessed resource in a country-house, and has the happy effect of making dull people think themselves clever. Eddy himself was too clever not to be infinitely bored by such contrivances, but he forgot himself and stood up like a hero, asking the most amusing questions and giving the wittiest answers when it was his turn to be badgered, and keeping the company in such a state of stimulation that even the heaviest grew venturesome, and made themselves ridiculous with delight, for the amusement of the rest. He even drew a smile from Rowland, who was too restless for whist, but who came more than once within Eddy’s wilder circle of merriment, and was cheated into a momentary forgetfulness. When the party dispersed, having passed, instead of the dull hours they had most of them anticipated, an unusually animated evening, Rowland came up and laid his heavy hand on Eddy’s shoulder. The young man started like a criminal, grew red and grew pale, and for once in his life was so disconcerted that he had not a word to say. And yet Rowland’s address was of the most flattering kind. “I can’t tell how much I’m obliged to you,” his host said. “You’ve been the life of the house since ever you came, Eddy, my man. And to-night I don’t know what we should have done without you. My wife will tell you the same thing. You’ve been the saving of us to-night. If ever I can serve you in anything—Lord! I would have done that for her, on account of her interest in you. But remember now, that on your own account, if I ever can be of any service——”
Eddy shrank back from that touch. He would not meet Rowland’s eye. He faltered in his answer, he that was always so ready. “I don’t deserve that you should speak to me so,” he stammered out. “I—I’ve done nothing, sir. All that I can ask is your forgiveness for—for—inflicting so long a visit upon you.”
“Is that all?” said Rowland, with a laugh. “Then I hope you’ll make your offence double, and give me twice as much to forgive you. Are you bound for the smoking-room now?”
“Perhaps I had better go,” said Eddy, carefully watching the other’s eyes.
“Do, my good lad. I had a disturbed night, and I’m out of the habit of keeping late hours. I will not appear myself, if you are going—though I dare say they will all go soon to their beds to-night.”
“Good night, sir,” said Eddy, “I hope you’ll sleep well.” There was almost a tender tone in the youth’s voice.
“Oh, I’ll sleep well enough. I always sleep. Good night—and thank you again, Eddy, for backing me up.”
As for Evelyn, she pressed his hand with a grateful look, and said also, “Thank you, Eddy,” in a soft tone, which, for some reason or other, seemed more than Eddy could bear. He almost tore his hand from hers, and turned his back upon her as though she had insulted him, which filled Mrs. Rowland with astonishment; but when there were so many things of importance to think of, what did Eddy’s look matter? She was glad when the girls too said good night, and left her alone with her husband—who, however, was in no humour for conversation.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “I can always sleep, thank God. Evelyn, if you ever write to that lad’s father——”
“I never do, James.”
“Well, you might, my dear. It would have been no offence to me. I’m not one to sin against my mercies, as if I did not know when I had got a good woman. But you might say the lad had been a real stand-by. When you have a son, and the like of that can be said, it’s a pity that a man should not have the satisfaction——” He broke off with a sigh, and walked up and down the room with his hands deeply thrust into his pockets, and then pulled the heavy curtains aside and looked out. It was one of the windows under the colonnade just where the view was—the view through the trees over the triumphant Clyde, with its towns and hills beyond. There was a faint glimmer of light in sky and water, which showed where the opening was. Ah! this, which had been the star of his life for so many years—to what had it turned when it was granted to his eager desire?
“James! there is nothing to prevent you from having that satisfaction—yet.”
He looked at her and burst into a hoarse laugh—then, as she essayed to speak again, stamped his foot on the carpet in impatience and hurried away.
An hour later there was a knock at Rosamond’s door in the stillness of the early withdrawal which last night’s dissipation had made general throughout the house. Rosamond was sitting in her dressing-gown before her fire—thinking of many things, and particularly of her father’s last letter, which lay open upon the little table beside her.
“Stay as long as you can,” Mr. Saumarez said. “It’s the best chance you can have at present to see a little society, and keep Eddy on the straight.”
Rosamond was not happy, she could not have told why. It was not that Archie was of any importance to her, but there is something in the atmosphere of a disturbed and unhappy house, which reflects itself in the consciousness of the most indifferent guest. She could not think what he could have done. The offence of which his father had convicted him the other day in the hall, of having refused money to a friend, was of all reproaches in the world the most extraordinary to Rosamond. She thought with a laugh that was irrestrainable, of what her own father’s remark would have been, and the high tone of indignation he would have assumed at the folly, nay the criminality, of throwing money away. “Where do you expect to get more?” he would have asked with righteous wrath, had his son been suspected of such a miserable weakness. But, to do him justice, Eddy had no guilty inclinations that way. Curiously enough, while Rosamond laughed with the surprised contempt, yet respect, of the poor for Rowland’s liberality, which had, in spite of herself, the aspect of “swagger” in the girl’s eyes—she felt, at the same time, something of the same astonishment, mingledwith disappointment, that Archie should have laid himself open to such a reproach. “I should have thought he would have given away—everything he had,” Rosamond said to herself—not as praise, but as a characteristic feature of Archie’s nature, as she conceived it—and she was disappointed that he had not carried out her idea of him, notwithstanding that she believed such a procedure to be folly of the deepest dye.
She was considerably startled by the knock at the door, and still more by seeing Eddy in the silk smoking-suit, which was too thin for this locality. It was perhaps that flimsy dress which made him look so pinched and cold, and he came in with eager demonstration of his delight at the sight of her fire.
“Mine’s gone out an hour ago,” he said, “let’s get a good warm before we go to bed.”
“You have come from the smoking-room,” she said; “you will fill my room with the smell of your cigarettes. I hate the smell of the paper worse than the tobacco.”
“Oh, you’re always hating something,” said Eddy vaguely. And then he added, standing with his back to the fire, looking down upon her in her low chair—“It won’t matter how it smells, for to-morrow we ought to go.”
“To go!” she cried in astonishment. “What new light have you got on the subject? for I have heard nothing of this before.”
“Never mind what you’ve heard,” said Eddy. “Circumstances have arisen—altogether beyond my control,” he added with a laugh at the familiar words. “In short, if you must know it, Rose, I can’t stay here any longer, and that is all there is about it,” he said.
“Do you mean now that Archie has got into disgrace? How has he got into disgrace? I can’t think what he can have done.”
“I mean—that and other things. How should I know what he has done? Some of his father’s fads. But in every way we’d better go: everybody is going, and I’m dead-tired of the place. There is not a single thing to do. We shot every bird on the hill to-day, and more—and after this burst there won’t be a soul in the house for months. Probably they have themselves visits to pay. I tell you we’d better go to-morrow, Rose.”
“They say nothing about visits to pay,” said Rosamond, bewildered. “Mrs. Rowland said to-day she hoped we would stay as long as we pleased: and father is of opinion that if we can hang on for another month—well, he says so. It saves so much expense when the house is shut up.”
“But I tell you I am not going to do it,” said Eddy, “whatever the governor chooses to say. You can if you please, but I shan’t. You may stay altogether if you please. Marry Archie, it would not perhaps be such a bad spec.; and become the daughter of the house.” He laughed, but there was not much mirth in his laugh.
“You need not be insulting at least,” said his sister. “And as for the daughter of the house—the less there is said on that subject the better, if you are going away.”
“Why! do you think she would mind?” he asked. “Mind you, she is not so simple as you think. I don’t believe she cares. If she did, that might be a sort of a way: but mind what I say, Rose—that girl will not marry anybody till she’s been at court and seen the world. She might like me a little perhaps—but if she saw her way to anything better—as Heaven knows she might do easily enough. Oh, I don’t make myself any illusions on that subject! She would drop me like a shot.”
“As you would her,” said Rosamond, with an air of scorn.
“Precisely so; but unless I’m very far mistaken, we meet—that little Glasgow girl and I, that am the fine flower of civilisation—on equal ground.”
“So much the better for her if it is so,” said Rosamond.
“Am I saying anything different? only I don’t think there’s the least occasion to be nervous about little May.”
There was a pause here, and for a moment or two nothing was said. A little hot colour had come on Rosamond’s face. Was she perhaps asking herself whether Archie was as easily to be let down as his sister, and likely to emancipate himself as lightly? But on this subject, at least, she never said a word. She broke silence at last by saying, with a sigh—
“We have nowhere to go.”
“Nonsense: we have the house to go to. I don’t say it will be very comfortable. Old Sarah is not acordon bleu.”
“As if I cared about the cooking!”
“But I do,” said Eddy; “and the one that doeswill naturally have more to suffer than the one that doesn’t; but thank heaven, there’s the club—and I dare say we shall get on. The end of October is not so bad in town. There’s always some theatre open—and a sort of people have come back.”
“Nobody we know—and we have not a penny;—and father will be so angry he will send us nothing. And they are so willing to have us here; why, I heard Mr. Rowland say to you——”
“Never mind what you heard Rowland say,” said Eddy, almost sullenly. “You can stay if you like. But I won’t, and I can’t stop here. Oh! it’s been bad enough to-day! I wouldn’t go through another, not for——” Here he stopped and broke forth into a laugh, which stopped again suddenly, leaving him with a dark and clouded countenance—“a thousand pounds!”
“I don’t understand you, Eddy,” said Rosamond, with an anxious look. “You have not been borrowing money? What do you mean by a thousand pounds?”
“Do you think,” said Eddy with a short laugh, “that any one would lend me a thousand pounds? That shows how little you girls know.”
“If I don’t know, it would be strange,” said Rosamond, with a sigh, “seeing how dreadfully hard it has been to get money since ever I can remember. And there is no telling with people like Mr. Rowland. Didn’t you hear him coming down upon Archie for not giving his money to some one who was ill? Fancy father talking like that to one of us!”
“The circumstances have no analogy,” said Eddy. “In the first place, we have no money to give: andwe want hundreds of things that money could buy. Archie and fellows like him are quite different—they want nothing, and they’ve got balances at their bankers; not that he has much of that, poor beggar, after all.”
“What do you mean, Eddy?”
“Well, I mean he’s a good sort of fellow if he weren’t such a fool;—and I could have thrown some light on his refusal, perhaps, if they had asked me.”
“Oh, why didn’t you, Eddy!—when his father was so vexed and so severe.”
“It was none of my business,” said the young man. “And Archie is not a fellow who likes to be interfered with. If I had suggested anything, he would probably have turned upon me.”
“And what was it?” said Rosamond; “what was the light you could have thrown?”
“Oh, I don’t mean to tell you,” cried Eddy; “you have nothing to do with it that I can see. And it is of no use telling his father, for he’s in a far deeper hole now. Poor old Archie—he is an ass, though, or he would never have got into such a mess as he is in now. He never can strike a blow in his own defence, and never will; but look here, Rose,” cried Eddy, “all this jawing will make it no better; I am going to-morrow, whatever you may choose to do. I can’t stop another night here.”
“Youmusthave something to do with it. I am sure you have something on your conscience, Eddy. You have got a conscience somewhere, though you pretend not. It is you that has got Archie into trouble!—you have been tempting him and leading him away. That day in Glasgow! Ah, now I see!”
“What do you see?” cried Eddy, contemptuously; but his sallow face betrayed a sharp, sudden rising of colour. He did not look at her, but kicked away a footstool with some vehemence, on which a moment before he had rested his foot.
“Let’s hear!” he said, “what fine thing do you see?”
“You must have got—gambling, or something,” she said, feeling to her heart the inadequacy of the words to express the great terror and incoherent suggestion of evil that had come into her mind, she knew not how.
“Gambling—with Archie!” her brother burst into a loud laugh. “One might as well try to gamble with Ben Ros, or whatever that beast of a hill is called. I broke all my toes going up him to-day. No, my dear Rose; you will have to try again,” Eddy said.
She looked at him with eyes full of consternation and horror. It was incredible to Rosamond that Archie should have done anything to merit such condemnation: but it was not at all incredible to her that Eddy should have got him into mischief. She looked at her brother as if she could have burst through the envelope of his thoughts with her intent and searching eyes.
“Eddy, Iknowyou have something to do with it,” she said.
“That proves nothing,” said Eddy; “you know what you think only.”
“I don’t know what I think! I think terrible things, but I can’t tell what they are. Oh, Eddy, this was such a quiet house when we came into it! They might not be very happy, but there was no harm. And Archie had begun to please his father. I know he tried. And they have been very kind to us—the ball last night was as much for us as for their own children.”
“It was to get themselves into favour in the county—it was neither for us nor for them.”
Rosamond was herself so much accustomed to measure everything in this way, and to have it so measured, that she had no protest to make.
“But we had all the benefit,” she said. “We were made the chief along with Marion and Archie. And Mr. Rowland has shown how much he thinks of you, Eddy—he has made you his deputy.”
“Yes, to save himself trouble,” said Eddy; “to amuse his guests—is that a great sign of kindness? It was kindness to himself. But if they had been as kind as—whatever you please, what would that matter? I cannot stand any more of it, and I am going away.”
“But you have no money,” she said.
“Oh yes; I have a little—enough to take us back to town, if you please—and to get me a few chops at the club till the governor turns up—who has a right to feed me at least until I come of age.”
“You must have got it out of Archie,” said Rosamond, her cheeks burning, springing from her seat, and standing between him and the door, as if to force an explanation. But Eddy only smiled.
“For a right down odious supposition—an idea that has neither sense nor possibility in it, commend me to a girl and a sister! How could I get it out of Archie? What had Archie to give? I think you must be taking leave of your senses,” he said.
Was it so?—Was it merely a sympathetic sense of the trouble in the house, and sorrow for Archie, whatever might be the cause of his banishment? Or was it some sense of guilt, some feeling that it was he who had led Archie away, and who ought to share in the penalty? But, to tell the truth, Rosamond could not identify any of these fine feelings with Eddy. He was not apt to feel compunctions: perhaps to take him at his word was the safest way.
Nextmorning, a rattle of pebbles thrown against the window, roused Marion, who was by nature an early riser, and who had been dressed for some time, though she had not gone downstairs. She opened the window, and saw Eddy below, making signs to her and pointing towards a path which led into the woods, across a broad stripe of sunshine. Eddy stood and basked in this light, making gestures, as if in adoration of the sun. He did not call to her, for in the clear morning air, his voice might have reached other ears than hers. But Marion called to him lightly, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” with no fear of any thing that could be said. She was not disturbed by the unceremonious characterof his appeal to her attention. Marion’s antecedents made it a very natural thing, and no way to be reprehended, that a lad should call to his lass in this way. She ran downstairs, delighted with the summons, and joined him, almost hoping that Miss Marchbanks might see from her window and feel the superiority of the daughter of the house.
“What might you be wanting, rousing people when perhaps they were in their beds?” said Marion.
“You were not in your bed. I know you get up early. Let’s have a ramble,” said Eddy, “before any one knows.”
“Oh, is that all? but we can ramble wherever you please; and when the people are gone,” said Marion, with a sigh, “we’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“Do you wish that the people were not going, May?”
“I never said, sir, that you were to call me May.”
“No, but you did not prohibit it. I cannot call you Miss Marion, like the servants, or Miss Rowland, like young Marchbanks.”
As he assumed the tone of young Marchbanks when he said this, Marion received it with a burst of laughter. There was nothing particularly amusing in the tone or manners of young Marchbanks, but a mimic has always an easy triumph.
“Alas,” said Eddy, instantly changing his tone, and taking her hand to draw it through his arm, “though they were all going away this moment, it would not be much advantage to us, May, for I must go too, this very day.”
“You, going, Eddy!” this exclamation burst from her in spite of herself. She hastened to add, “Mr. Saumarez, I did not know you were going. Do you really—really mean—” the tears came into her eyes.
He had drawn her hand through his arm, and held it with his other hand. “I can’t stay longer,” he said. “How can I stay longer? There is Archie gone, who might be supposed my attraction: and I daren’t go and say to your father what my real attraction is.”
“Oh that is nothing to me,” said Marion, with a toss of her head, “about your real attraction. Nobody is asking you—you are just welcome to stay or—welcome to go: it is whatever you please.”
“You know very well,” he said, resisting her attempt to snatch away her hand, “that I would never go if I could help it, unless I could carry you off with me; if I could do that, I should not mind.”
“And you know very well,” said Marion, “that you will never do that.”
“I suppose I ought to know; but there are some things that one never can learn. When a man thinks of a girl night and day, he naturally feels that the girl might give a moment now and then to thoughts of him.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Marion, tossing her head, “I’ve had people that thought about me before now, but I never troubled my head to think of them.”
“You are as heartless as a stone,” said Eddy. “It is of no use speaking to you, for you are past feeling. One might as well fall in love with a picture, or a dummy in a milliner’s shop.”
“Dummy yourself!” cried Marion, highly indignant, giving him a shake with the hand that was on his arm.
And then they both burst out laughing together. As a matter of fact, though they understood each other extraordinarily well, and made no false representations of each other as lovers are in the habit of doing, there was a little love at bottom between this curious pair.
“Do you know what has been the row about Archie?” said Eddy, after a little pause.
“It’s something about money,” said Marion; “he has been spending his own money that was given him to spend—and he has not sent it to a poor student, as papa thought he would. But I would like to know why he should? The student should have stayed at home, and then his own people would have been obliged to help him. If Archie were to give up his money to all the poor students, what would be the use of giving him money at all. If I were in his place I am sure I would just give what I please, and keep a good share to myself. It is just ridiculous to give you money, and then say you are to give it away.”
“Is that the only reason?” said Eddy; “I thought there had been enough of that.”
“Oh I don’t know if it’s the only reason. I will go back to the house if it’s only Archie you want to hear about. You can ask Mrs. Rowland, she is your great friend, or Saunders, that looks so wise and knows everything. But for me, I am going back to the house.”
“I only ask,” said Eddy, tightening his hold on her hand, “to keep it off a little longer; for how am I to say good-bye—not knowing how we may meet again—for I know what’s in your thoughts, May. You think I’m well enough to play with while there’s nobody here, but when you come up to town and everybody is at your feet——”
“Oh such ridiculous nonsense,—everybody at my feet! who would be at my feet? no person! You speak as if I were a Duke’s daughter.”
“You are better than most Duke’s daughters. You will marry a Duke if you please, with that little saucy face of yours, and mints of money.”
“I hope I will not be married for my money,” said Marion: “though of course there’s something in that,” she added seriously. “I’ll not deny that it has to be reckoned with. Papa would not be pleased if all his work came to nothing, and I got just a nobody.”
“Like me,” said Eddy.
“I never said like you. There might be other things—Papa likes you, you see.”
“And you, May? Oh May, you little witch! I wish—I wish I only wanted to marry you for your money—then I should not feel it as I do now.”
“You wouldn’t like to marry me without my money,” Marion said.
“Wouldn’t I,—try me! though all the same I don’t know very well how we should live,” Eddy said.
“And I never said I would marry you at all—or any person,” said Marion. “Maybe I will never marry at all.”
“Oh that’s so likely!”
“Well it is not likely,” Marion admitted candidly, “but you never know what may happen. And,” she added, “if Archie is to be put out of his share, and everything come to me, then whether I liked it or not, I would have to think first what was doing most justice to papa.”
Eddy, in spite of his self-control, turned pale. “Archie,” he said, in a tone of horror, “put out of his share!”
Marion gave him a keen, investigating look. “When a man has two children,” she said, “and one of them flies in his face every time he can, and the other is very careful always to do her duty, whether it is pleasing herself or not, I would not wonder at anything, for my part. He might like the son best for the name and all that, but if the lassie would do him most justice? I am not saying if it would be a good thing or not. But the man might see that in the one there would be no credit, but plenty in the other. I am thinking of it just in a general way,” Marion said.
“Then good-bye to me,” said Eddy, “if you were to be a great heiress—and Archie! Good life!” he let her hand go, and, cold though the morning air was, wiped the moisture from his forehead. “I’d better take a header into the loch and be done with it,” he said.
“You will not do that, Mr. Eddy, for you like yourself best: though perhaps you may like Archie a little—or, perhaps, me.”
“Perhaps even you!” cried Eddy. “Perhaps I do, or I shouldn’t have stayed down here in the north for a month with nothing to do. You are a dreadful little thing to talk quietly of tossing me over after all that has passed, like an old glove. And to take Archie’s place, as if it were nothing, as if it were the most natural thing in the world!”
“And is it not?” said Marion. “I never would have done a thing to harm Archie. It is none of my doing; but if it opens papa’s eyes, and makes him ask who will do him the most credit—him, that would never be anything but a common lad at the best, or me, that might be at the Queen’s court, and do him great justice.”
Eddy clapped his hands together, with a quick laugh. “Marry the Duke,” he said.
“Well,” said Marion, with dignity, “and if I did that? What more would it be than I would deserve, and doing great justice to papa!”
Eddy stood for a moment looking at her, with a curious mixture of pain which was quite new to him, in being thus left out of Marion’s cold-blooded philosophy, and of cynical amusement, tempered by wonder at the progress this very young and apparently simple person had made in the mystery of worldliness. He had the sensation, too, of having done it all, of having wrought that ruin to Archie which might place Archie’s sister in a position to balk his own plans and humiliate himself. He had meant to have the upper hand himself in all the arrangements between them. He had meant, indeed, this very morning to bind her by a quasi engagement, while leaving himself free forwhatever eventualities might come. But Marion, with these cool, matter-of-fact dispositions, had turned the tables upon Eddy. And he was discomposed besides to find that it actually hurt him. He, the accomplished man of the world that he was, so infinitely above Marion in experience and knowledge! it gave him a confused pang which he could not understand, to find that he was no more to her than half-an-hour before he had believed her to be to him. He was more or less stunned by that sensation, which was unexpected, and stood vaguely gazing at her, coming to himself before he could reply. “I don’t find much place for me in all this,” he said, ruefully. He could have laughed at his own discomfiture if he had not been so ridiculously wounded and sore.
It was perhaps a sign that she was not very sure of herself, but she did not look at him, which also took away one of Eddy’s weapons. She walked on quite calmly by his side, looking straight before her, neither to the right hand nor the left.
“What was your place in it, Mr. Eddy?” she said, “except just as a friend: and there is no difference in that. You’re still a friend—unless you have changed your mind.”
“May! you are a little witch! you’re a—Come, you know this is all nonsense,” said Eddy; “I never pretended to be a friend.”
“Well, perhaps you never were—to Archie, at least,” said Marion.
“What do you know about Archie? What have I done to Archie? I never intended—I never thought ofharming him: I could swear it,” cried Eddy, in great excitement; “never! never! I’ve done a heap of wrong things,” he put up his hand to his throat with a gasp as for breath, “I’ve done enough to—sink me for ever. I know I have: you needn’t say anything with your little set face that I was silly enough to care for. But I never meant to ruin Archie, nor harm him, never! I’ll go to your father, and tell him——”
“What will you tell him?” cried Marion, to whom nothing but her own share in Eddy’s expressions seemed of any importance. “That we’ve perhaps been very silly, you and me?—but you the most, for I was never meaning what you thought. I am not a person to let myself go,” said the girl, folding her hands. “I was just willing to be very friendly—but no more. All the rest was just—your fun. I thought you cared for nothing but fun. And I’m not averse to that myself,” she said, turning her face to his with the provoking and saucy smile which Eddy had so completely understood, yet which—was it possible—he had fallen a victim to all the same. It was Marion who had the upper hand. She was not averse to the fun, but she did not mean to compromise her future for Eddy, any more than Eddy up to this moment had intended to do for her. But Marion thought it best now to conciliate him, that he might not rush off and compromise matters by making proposals to her father, which was all she thought of. As for those wild words about Archie, Marion did not even pretend to inquire what they meant.
He went to Mrs. Rowland as soon as he could geta chance after the leave-taking of so many of her guests. “You will have to shake hands with me, too, presently,” he said. “I am going off to-night.”
“You, Eddy?” Evelyn’s face grew longer and graver with a certain dismay. “I was calculating upon you to keep us cheerful,” she said. “Why must you go?”