Chapter Fifteen.The World is Stuffed with Sawdust.The Ravenhills kept house economically in South Kensington. True it is that the economies of life are among its heaviest expenditures, but necessity had not forced them into that dismal position. They lived prettily, and cared little for what they could not have. The house was charming, though the furniture might not have fetched much at a sale, the transforming genius, taste, not being marketable. Fresh chintzes and flowers, with old white Dresden, and Mrs Ravenhill’s watercolours on the walls, kept brightness even in the land of fog. The very morning after their return Millie came into the drawing-room and dropped a handful of flowers on a tray where glasses waited. She flitted about, setting a glass here and a glass there, until the room began to recover the homelike aspect which had been wanting. Millie from time to time contemplated it, her head on one side. Darting out of the room, she returned with certain Norwegian treasures, for which room had to be found. A queerly-painted old wooden bowl with horse-head handles was whisked from table to table, until it rested on a high stool. A small model of a spinning-wheel went to live under a minute palm. Spoons joined a silver family. All was arranged when Mrs Ravenhill came in from more prosaic domestic duties, and smiled at Millie’s haste. Looking at the bowl, she admired the arrangement, but begrudged the stool.“So few things as there were in the room vacant for emergencies!”“It was made for it; and it looks happier already. I have always felt for the poor thing waiting for stray uses; with only once a week a cup or a book bestowed upon it.”“Well—!” Mrs Ravenhill resigned the point. “And soon we shall want a reminder or two, for once again under the shadow of the butcher and baker, I doubt fjords and mountains being real.”Millie allowed this to pass. “They will be turning homewards by this time,” she remarked.“Who? Oh, the Martyns. And they have the crossing before them. There we have the advantage.”“I liked theCeylon,” said Millie.“Do you mean you would go through it again?”The girl was bending over a flower-glass: she closed her eyes, a throb of warm blood filled her veins.“Oh, yes,” she said fervently.“You must go without me, then. I thought going and coming both horrible. And I don’t consider that we were very lucky in our companions.”A disclaimer sprang to Millie’s lips, though she forced it back.“Don’t you?”“Mr Wareham improved, but he was absent-minded and oblivious. However, they will all seem nicer looked at from a distance, and we are not likely to meet any of them often again.” Mrs Ravenhill’s cheerful prophecy pierced her child’s heart. Millie’s humble little desire reached no further than to the joy of seeing him now and then, but its roots ran deep, and to have them wrenched at so cruelly was sharp pain. It would have been worse had not her faith in Wareham flown to arms at this attack upon his word, for he had said he would call and see them, and nothing would have induced her to doubt him. Why should she? Mrs Ravenhill’s enmity—too strong a word—was due to an unacknowledged fear which now and then invaded her motherly heart. She imagined that in flinging a small dart at Wareham she was taking a wise precaution, unconscious that every attack sent Millie running to his side, eager for defence. He had been in her thoughts as she made the room look its prettiest that morning; she imagined this and that catching his eye, and provoking a smile of association. At the idea she smiled herself.“We managed very well with our holiday, I think,” said Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully, “for by coming back early we shall have a beautifully peaceful time. We will enjoy ourselves, Millie, and do a number of nice things for which one has no leisure in summer and no weather in winter.”Millie agreed.“I suppose really there is no one left in London?”No one, her mother earnestly hoped.The bell at this moment seemed to tinkle a satire on their hopes, and Millie’s heart gave such a throb that she sent a guilty glance at Mrs Ravenhill, feeling as if she had betrayed herself. Mrs Ravenhill lifted her eyebrows by way of asking who it could be; they heard a quick step, not the step of a servant, the door was opened impetuously, and the next moment a girl was kissing Millie, and uttering disconnected interjections.“Fanny!” cried Mrs Ravenhill, “I thought you were in Scotland.”“And I thought you were in Norway, and came just to find out your address. The luck of it! When did you come? Where do you come from? Do you stay?”“Yesterday, from Norway, and to stay. Put you? You in London in August!”“For my sins, I said as I came along, but with you here it has already lost its penitential aspect, and I don’t think half so meanly of myself. That’s the worst of goodness. A reaction comes.”She dragged Millie down beside her on a settee, both hands clasping her arm; she looked a child, not quite what is called pretty, but sparkling with fun and life, her eyes grey Irish, with a fringe of dark lashes. These eyes eagerly devoured the other girl’s face. It was an old habit, and Millie used to present herself smilingly for inspection.“Well?”“Well,—oh, you needn’t tell me you’ve enjoyed yourself, for of course you have,” she said musingly.“In spite of horrid crossings,” put in Mrs Ravenhill.“Were they horrid?”Millie observed that her mother found them so.“Yes, you’ve enjoyed yourself, you needn’t tell me, and yet—”“Yet what?”It was Mrs Ravenhill who put the question. “There’s something. You’re not quite the same.”“To be always the same one must be carved in stone,” remarked Millie. “I’m sunburnt, which proves I am not a statue. But you? It is our turn to ask questions. How came you in London?”Lady Fanny sighed and folded her hands.“Because the world is stuffed with sawdust. Imagine Milborough having the baseness to throw me over when he had promised me a cruise in his yacht! I was so cross that I felt I must do something disagreeable in order to keep up my position of martyr, so I proposed to come and spend a week with my old governess, Miss Burton. If I talk like a lesson-book, forgive me. I ask questions because I am sick of answering them.”“You will come here at once,” said Mrs Ravenhill, with decision.“May I? Delightful. I had meant to go into Shropshire to-morrow, but I will send Ward by herself, and joyfully stay. By the way, where do you think that Milborough is gone? To Norway. I intended to telegraph to Bergen and tell you so. And of course that added to my injury, for I had counted upon meeting you round some corner in the most unexpected manner.”Her spirits rose, she flashed fun upon them, and told stories to her own discredit with mirthful mimicry. Then she fluttered round the room, noticing what was new, and discovering all manner of similes for the stool which at last had found a use.“It has a little the air of Milborough taking the head dowager in to supper. But I’ll never pity Milborough again. He has behaved too ill!”Millie asked why he had failed.“He was snubbed by a certain young lady, and revolted against women. This is an attempt to break away, and have only men on board; and how dull they’ll be! I picture the poor bored creatures stretched about on the deck, sleeping and eating, their wits in leading-strings. What can they talk about, with not even a newspaper to suggest topics? I shall be revenged.”She must hear everything at once, and everything meant especially whom they had met. Mr Grey she knew, but her interest in Anne Dalrymple was shown impetuously by a burst of ejaculations and questions. She had heard so much, admired, blamed, wondered in a breath! Anne’s last engagement and its abrupt ending had brought a chatter of tongues upon her. Lady Fanny’s admiration for the way she moved forbade her to condemn what certainly required excuses; she laughed at her own illogical reasons, but clung to them.“To see her dance is a dream,” she declared. “I could forgive anything for the delight of watching her. And you looked at her for a fortnight!”When she had Millie up-stairs alone she returned to the subject.“Tell me more about Miss Dalrymple. They say men find her irresistible.”“I dare say,” said Millie, with a little reserve. But the next moment a smile stole into her face. “Who do you think we left with her?”“Who?”Lady Fanny sat on the edge of the bed, her sparkling face eager with animation.“Mr Forbes.”“No!”“True, I assure you. He was going further north with them.”“Then it will all come on again. It must. She could not have allowed him to join them if he was to be dismissed again.”“So I fancied.”“So you know, I should think. The very idea would be preposterous. They will come home re-engaged. Such an odd position!” Millie’s heart joyfully echoed the conviction. She did not venture to talk about it to her mother, who might guess too much, but to her friend, with whom no fencing was necessary, she might play round the subject at her pleasure. Wareham’s name had not as yet been mentioned, but Lady Fanny had a curious interest in Miss Dalrymple, and her persuasion that now she would be captured and led to marriage, Millie felt to be so reasonable that she was not troubled with misgivings as to the pleasure with which her heart responded. To most of us persuasion is another word for doubt, but Fanny was young enough to be convinced of her persuasions. She wished to hear more, all that Millie could tell her, and drew her conclusions with swift security. If ever she had been disposed to blame, she forgave her sister-woman amply.“Of course she liked him throughout, she did not know her own heart!” she cried with enthusiasm. “Poor thing, how I can feel for her!”If there was a certain incongruity in the epithet as applied to Anne, Millie did not quarrel with it.“And I like him, I like him too! He has shown himself above the common herd. Men are so petty in their unforgivingness, so vain of pretending to be marble! He is the more of a hero, for not setting up to be other than flesh and blood. He will win her, you will see! unless—”“Unless what?”“I was going to say unless there should be any one she likes better, but there can’t be, or she would not have allowed him to remain with them. No, no, it is going to be the romance of the year. Lucky Millie, to have been let into it!”She looked at her enviously. Millie laughed and feared she had not sufficiently recognised the romance when face to face with it. Fanny’s questions were not at an end.“The first meeting! That would have told one, that would have been delightful to see. Where was it?”Millie hesitated, but not even to her friend would she relate what had actually happened.“I believe he met her as she landed. She missed the steamer, and had to follow in a boat.”“Alone?”“No. Mr Wareham was luckily with her.TheMr Wareham.”“Oh, and Hugh Forbes’ friend. That explains. Of course he had something to do with bringing them together again. I could not think how it had been managed, and, my clear, your stories always wanted detail. When it was your turn to tell one, do you recollect how invariably I had to come to the rescue?” She kissed her. “But it’s a blessing to see your dear little face again. If I’d stayed on at Miss Burton’s, she’d soon have had me in the corner. And now that I’m here, I’ll forgive Milborough. At least, I’ll forgive him if he falls in with all your people, and brings home a report of how things are going with Miss Dalrymple and Hugh Forbes. He’s such a dear boy!”“Lord Milborough?”“Hugh Forbes. It’s unselfish of me to wish him to marry her, but I do.”Millie joined in the aspiration, liking to remember what her mother said of Fanny’s quick penetration, and forgetting that here only a part had been offered for her inspection. Such as it was it gave an interest to Norway which their visitor might not otherwise have felt, and Millie was ready, not only to harp on the theme, but to play as many variations as she pleased. The weather changed to wet; in London this is scarcely a drawback, but it may be turned into an excuse. Millie made it an excuse. Her mother grew uneasy at such want of energy; where was the use of imbibing draughts of Norwegian air if the after-results came to no more? Lady Fanny pleaded for indulgence in laziness, the most fascinating pursuit in the world, when you gave yourself up to it.“Give yourself up to it when you are as old as I am,” cried Mrs Ravenhill, provoked, only to be told that nothing could be thoroughly mastered which was not learnt young.Lady Fanny, indeed, had by this time gathered more than Millie suspected. She had been sharp enough to note a change, and once that had struck her, would not rest until she had got to the bottom of it. When she expressed a wish to see Mr Wareham, whose novels she liked, Millie remarked indifferently that he had talked of calling while he was in London, and the hint was responded to by a fervent hope that they might not have such ill-luck as to miss him.“I dare not tell your mother, she would despise my weakness. Support me, dear, when I protest against being trotted out. London is unwholesomely stuffy, the only fresh air to be met with in August is in one’s own house, and I can’t live without fresh air.”She was more open in her confidences than her friend, and enlivened the time by description of more than one admirer. According to her, she had met with instances when their affections had shot up with a growth as amazing as that of Jack’s beanstalk. One meeting sufficed, then the proposal followed like a flash, with not even a decent interval for appearances’ sake.“Milborough thinks they are afraid of losing a dividend.”“And you have learnt all this at twenty!” groaned Mrs Ravenhill. But she had to own that Lady Fanny’s warm-heartedness had not suffered. What was most to be feared was that experience would have wrecked her faith in genuine liking, and that the jests she caught up for defence would be turned against her own heart.Millie believed that her penetration would extract the real from the counterfeit.“For another,” Mrs Ravenhill agreed. But she feared horror of shams would make her suspicious where her affections were concerned. An old playmate would have the best chance, or possibly a man like Mr Wareham, who, she was ready to allow, had sterling qualities.“Perhaps they will meet,” said Millie demurely. “He spoke of coming here.”“Oh, he will have other things to think about. No, I am only using him as a type of the man Fanny might respect and trust, poor child! It’s a terribly trying position with her fortune, and no father or mother, and Lord Milborough not so steady as he should be.”As the first days passed, Millie felt each evening that the chances for his coming were by so much doubled, and her spirits rose, but when five had slipped by, they sank in waters of dejection. She fought heroically to prevent their loss being discovered, and succeeded fairly, helped by Lady Fanny, who loved fighting of any sort, especially on the side of woman, and was firing her soul with blame of Wareham. She flung herself into the breach with chatter of brilliant nonsense, for which a laugh was sufficient answer, and Millie, who was so ashamed of the unreasonableness of her suffering, that the idea of its being observed was agony, comforted herself with the assurance that she had joined gaily in the conversation, and betrayed nothing.
The Ravenhills kept house economically in South Kensington. True it is that the economies of life are among its heaviest expenditures, but necessity had not forced them into that dismal position. They lived prettily, and cared little for what they could not have. The house was charming, though the furniture might not have fetched much at a sale, the transforming genius, taste, not being marketable. Fresh chintzes and flowers, with old white Dresden, and Mrs Ravenhill’s watercolours on the walls, kept brightness even in the land of fog. The very morning after their return Millie came into the drawing-room and dropped a handful of flowers on a tray where glasses waited. She flitted about, setting a glass here and a glass there, until the room began to recover the homelike aspect which had been wanting. Millie from time to time contemplated it, her head on one side. Darting out of the room, she returned with certain Norwegian treasures, for which room had to be found. A queerly-painted old wooden bowl with horse-head handles was whisked from table to table, until it rested on a high stool. A small model of a spinning-wheel went to live under a minute palm. Spoons joined a silver family. All was arranged when Mrs Ravenhill came in from more prosaic domestic duties, and smiled at Millie’s haste. Looking at the bowl, she admired the arrangement, but begrudged the stool.
“So few things as there were in the room vacant for emergencies!”
“It was made for it; and it looks happier already. I have always felt for the poor thing waiting for stray uses; with only once a week a cup or a book bestowed upon it.”
“Well—!” Mrs Ravenhill resigned the point. “And soon we shall want a reminder or two, for once again under the shadow of the butcher and baker, I doubt fjords and mountains being real.”
Millie allowed this to pass. “They will be turning homewards by this time,” she remarked.
“Who? Oh, the Martyns. And they have the crossing before them. There we have the advantage.”
“I liked theCeylon,” said Millie.
“Do you mean you would go through it again?”
The girl was bending over a flower-glass: she closed her eyes, a throb of warm blood filled her veins.
“Oh, yes,” she said fervently.
“You must go without me, then. I thought going and coming both horrible. And I don’t consider that we were very lucky in our companions.”
A disclaimer sprang to Millie’s lips, though she forced it back.
“Don’t you?”
“Mr Wareham improved, but he was absent-minded and oblivious. However, they will all seem nicer looked at from a distance, and we are not likely to meet any of them often again.” Mrs Ravenhill’s cheerful prophecy pierced her child’s heart. Millie’s humble little desire reached no further than to the joy of seeing him now and then, but its roots ran deep, and to have them wrenched at so cruelly was sharp pain. It would have been worse had not her faith in Wareham flown to arms at this attack upon his word, for he had said he would call and see them, and nothing would have induced her to doubt him. Why should she? Mrs Ravenhill’s enmity—too strong a word—was due to an unacknowledged fear which now and then invaded her motherly heart. She imagined that in flinging a small dart at Wareham she was taking a wise precaution, unconscious that every attack sent Millie running to his side, eager for defence. He had been in her thoughts as she made the room look its prettiest that morning; she imagined this and that catching his eye, and provoking a smile of association. At the idea she smiled herself.
“We managed very well with our holiday, I think,” said Mrs Ravenhill cheerfully, “for by coming back early we shall have a beautifully peaceful time. We will enjoy ourselves, Millie, and do a number of nice things for which one has no leisure in summer and no weather in winter.”
Millie agreed.
“I suppose really there is no one left in London?”
No one, her mother earnestly hoped.
The bell at this moment seemed to tinkle a satire on their hopes, and Millie’s heart gave such a throb that she sent a guilty glance at Mrs Ravenhill, feeling as if she had betrayed herself. Mrs Ravenhill lifted her eyebrows by way of asking who it could be; they heard a quick step, not the step of a servant, the door was opened impetuously, and the next moment a girl was kissing Millie, and uttering disconnected interjections.
“Fanny!” cried Mrs Ravenhill, “I thought you were in Scotland.”
“And I thought you were in Norway, and came just to find out your address. The luck of it! When did you come? Where do you come from? Do you stay?”
“Yesterday, from Norway, and to stay. Put you? You in London in August!”
“For my sins, I said as I came along, but with you here it has already lost its penitential aspect, and I don’t think half so meanly of myself. That’s the worst of goodness. A reaction comes.”
She dragged Millie down beside her on a settee, both hands clasping her arm; she looked a child, not quite what is called pretty, but sparkling with fun and life, her eyes grey Irish, with a fringe of dark lashes. These eyes eagerly devoured the other girl’s face. It was an old habit, and Millie used to present herself smilingly for inspection.
“Well?”
“Well,—oh, you needn’t tell me you’ve enjoyed yourself, for of course you have,” she said musingly.
“In spite of horrid crossings,” put in Mrs Ravenhill.
“Were they horrid?”
Millie observed that her mother found them so.
“Yes, you’ve enjoyed yourself, you needn’t tell me, and yet—”
“Yet what?”
It was Mrs Ravenhill who put the question. “There’s something. You’re not quite the same.”
“To be always the same one must be carved in stone,” remarked Millie. “I’m sunburnt, which proves I am not a statue. But you? It is our turn to ask questions. How came you in London?”
Lady Fanny sighed and folded her hands.
“Because the world is stuffed with sawdust. Imagine Milborough having the baseness to throw me over when he had promised me a cruise in his yacht! I was so cross that I felt I must do something disagreeable in order to keep up my position of martyr, so I proposed to come and spend a week with my old governess, Miss Burton. If I talk like a lesson-book, forgive me. I ask questions because I am sick of answering them.”
“You will come here at once,” said Mrs Ravenhill, with decision.
“May I? Delightful. I had meant to go into Shropshire to-morrow, but I will send Ward by herself, and joyfully stay. By the way, where do you think that Milborough is gone? To Norway. I intended to telegraph to Bergen and tell you so. And of course that added to my injury, for I had counted upon meeting you round some corner in the most unexpected manner.”
Her spirits rose, she flashed fun upon them, and told stories to her own discredit with mirthful mimicry. Then she fluttered round the room, noticing what was new, and discovering all manner of similes for the stool which at last had found a use.
“It has a little the air of Milborough taking the head dowager in to supper. But I’ll never pity Milborough again. He has behaved too ill!”
Millie asked why he had failed.
“He was snubbed by a certain young lady, and revolted against women. This is an attempt to break away, and have only men on board; and how dull they’ll be! I picture the poor bored creatures stretched about on the deck, sleeping and eating, their wits in leading-strings. What can they talk about, with not even a newspaper to suggest topics? I shall be revenged.”
She must hear everything at once, and everything meant especially whom they had met. Mr Grey she knew, but her interest in Anne Dalrymple was shown impetuously by a burst of ejaculations and questions. She had heard so much, admired, blamed, wondered in a breath! Anne’s last engagement and its abrupt ending had brought a chatter of tongues upon her. Lady Fanny’s admiration for the way she moved forbade her to condemn what certainly required excuses; she laughed at her own illogical reasons, but clung to them.
“To see her dance is a dream,” she declared. “I could forgive anything for the delight of watching her. And you looked at her for a fortnight!”
When she had Millie up-stairs alone she returned to the subject.
“Tell me more about Miss Dalrymple. They say men find her irresistible.”
“I dare say,” said Millie, with a little reserve. But the next moment a smile stole into her face. “Who do you think we left with her?”
“Who?”
Lady Fanny sat on the edge of the bed, her sparkling face eager with animation.
“Mr Forbes.”
“No!”
“True, I assure you. He was going further north with them.”
“Then it will all come on again. It must. She could not have allowed him to join them if he was to be dismissed again.”
“So I fancied.”
“So you know, I should think. The very idea would be preposterous. They will come home re-engaged. Such an odd position!” Millie’s heart joyfully echoed the conviction. She did not venture to talk about it to her mother, who might guess too much, but to her friend, with whom no fencing was necessary, she might play round the subject at her pleasure. Wareham’s name had not as yet been mentioned, but Lady Fanny had a curious interest in Miss Dalrymple, and her persuasion that now she would be captured and led to marriage, Millie felt to be so reasonable that she was not troubled with misgivings as to the pleasure with which her heart responded. To most of us persuasion is another word for doubt, but Fanny was young enough to be convinced of her persuasions. She wished to hear more, all that Millie could tell her, and drew her conclusions with swift security. If ever she had been disposed to blame, she forgave her sister-woman amply.
“Of course she liked him throughout, she did not know her own heart!” she cried with enthusiasm. “Poor thing, how I can feel for her!”
If there was a certain incongruity in the epithet as applied to Anne, Millie did not quarrel with it.
“And I like him, I like him too! He has shown himself above the common herd. Men are so petty in their unforgivingness, so vain of pretending to be marble! He is the more of a hero, for not setting up to be other than flesh and blood. He will win her, you will see! unless—”
“Unless what?”
“I was going to say unless there should be any one she likes better, but there can’t be, or she would not have allowed him to remain with them. No, no, it is going to be the romance of the year. Lucky Millie, to have been let into it!”
She looked at her enviously. Millie laughed and feared she had not sufficiently recognised the romance when face to face with it. Fanny’s questions were not at an end.
“The first meeting! That would have told one, that would have been delightful to see. Where was it?”
Millie hesitated, but not even to her friend would she relate what had actually happened.
“I believe he met her as she landed. She missed the steamer, and had to follow in a boat.”
“Alone?”
“No. Mr Wareham was luckily with her.TheMr Wareham.”
“Oh, and Hugh Forbes’ friend. That explains. Of course he had something to do with bringing them together again. I could not think how it had been managed, and, my clear, your stories always wanted detail. When it was your turn to tell one, do you recollect how invariably I had to come to the rescue?” She kissed her. “But it’s a blessing to see your dear little face again. If I’d stayed on at Miss Burton’s, she’d soon have had me in the corner. And now that I’m here, I’ll forgive Milborough. At least, I’ll forgive him if he falls in with all your people, and brings home a report of how things are going with Miss Dalrymple and Hugh Forbes. He’s such a dear boy!”
“Lord Milborough?”
“Hugh Forbes. It’s unselfish of me to wish him to marry her, but I do.”
Millie joined in the aspiration, liking to remember what her mother said of Fanny’s quick penetration, and forgetting that here only a part had been offered for her inspection. Such as it was it gave an interest to Norway which their visitor might not otherwise have felt, and Millie was ready, not only to harp on the theme, but to play as many variations as she pleased. The weather changed to wet; in London this is scarcely a drawback, but it may be turned into an excuse. Millie made it an excuse. Her mother grew uneasy at such want of energy; where was the use of imbibing draughts of Norwegian air if the after-results came to no more? Lady Fanny pleaded for indulgence in laziness, the most fascinating pursuit in the world, when you gave yourself up to it.
“Give yourself up to it when you are as old as I am,” cried Mrs Ravenhill, provoked, only to be told that nothing could be thoroughly mastered which was not learnt young.
Lady Fanny, indeed, had by this time gathered more than Millie suspected. She had been sharp enough to note a change, and once that had struck her, would not rest until she had got to the bottom of it. When she expressed a wish to see Mr Wareham, whose novels she liked, Millie remarked indifferently that he had talked of calling while he was in London, and the hint was responded to by a fervent hope that they might not have such ill-luck as to miss him.
“I dare not tell your mother, she would despise my weakness. Support me, dear, when I protest against being trotted out. London is unwholesomely stuffy, the only fresh air to be met with in August is in one’s own house, and I can’t live without fresh air.”
She was more open in her confidences than her friend, and enlivened the time by description of more than one admirer. According to her, she had met with instances when their affections had shot up with a growth as amazing as that of Jack’s beanstalk. One meeting sufficed, then the proposal followed like a flash, with not even a decent interval for appearances’ sake.
“Milborough thinks they are afraid of losing a dividend.”
“And you have learnt all this at twenty!” groaned Mrs Ravenhill. But she had to own that Lady Fanny’s warm-heartedness had not suffered. What was most to be feared was that experience would have wrecked her faith in genuine liking, and that the jests she caught up for defence would be turned against her own heart.
Millie believed that her penetration would extract the real from the counterfeit.
“For another,” Mrs Ravenhill agreed. But she feared horror of shams would make her suspicious where her affections were concerned. An old playmate would have the best chance, or possibly a man like Mr Wareham, who, she was ready to allow, had sterling qualities.
“Perhaps they will meet,” said Millie demurely. “He spoke of coming here.”
“Oh, he will have other things to think about. No, I am only using him as a type of the man Fanny might respect and trust, poor child! It’s a terribly trying position with her fortune, and no father or mother, and Lord Milborough not so steady as he should be.”
As the first days passed, Millie felt each evening that the chances for his coming were by so much doubled, and her spirits rose, but when five had slipped by, they sank in waters of dejection. She fought heroically to prevent their loss being discovered, and succeeded fairly, helped by Lady Fanny, who loved fighting of any sort, especially on the side of woman, and was firing her soul with blame of Wareham. She flung herself into the breach with chatter of brilliant nonsense, for which a laugh was sufficient answer, and Millie, who was so ashamed of the unreasonableness of her suffering, that the idea of its being observed was agony, comforted herself with the assurance that she had joined gaily in the conversation, and betrayed nothing.
Chapter Sixteen.Straws.By Sunday Millie had given up all thought of seeing Wareham. He had told her that his stay in London could not exceed a few days, business might keep him there so long, but he had even talked of a quicker escape, and laughed at his probable solitude and discomfort at a club where workmen would be in possession, and he’d be hunted out of his favourite corners. The difference in comfort between a train on and off the line, he declared. “Women manage better in their worst domestic emergencies, but man is a helpless animal.”“From what you have told me, though, you have liked to rough it in other places?” Millie remarked in wonder.“To rough it—yes. That is easy enough. To be uncomfortable in the midst of luxury is quite another matter, and there I rebel. If the best cook in London is in the kitchen, why should I dine on a burnt chop?”He laughed as he said it, and she consoled herself for what seemed the blemish of self-indulgence in her hero, by the conviction that he spoke in jest. But it came back to her, and she reflected with a sigh that he had probably found his conditions irksome, and fled from them. She was spared shock to vanity, for she had never thought of her own attractions as strong enough to influence his staying, and it had only been a modest hope that they had become so friendly that he would keep his promise to see them which was disappointed. When Sunday afternoon came, it was not expectation which held her at home, but a dislike to Miss Burton, to whose house Lady Fanny, accompanied by Mrs Ravenhill, had dutifully betaken herself. She sat with a book on her lap, languidly idle, when Wareham was introduced. Pleasure leapt into her eyes.“We thought you were gone!”“Only delayed and busy.”“You have been able to endure your club?”He laughed. “I have not had the time to consider my miseries. I dare say they have been of the worst. How is Mrs Ravenhill? Your maid said that she was at home, and I hoped in this weather!”“I expect her every moment. You know she never minded weather, for as to that we seem to have left all that is delightful in Norway. You have not heard from them?” Wareham laughed.“I see you have already forgotten the fate of letters, how slowly they get out of your delightful country! Besides, I expect none.” He looked healthy and in good spirits. Millie’s own rose. She pointed out all the treasures to him; he had seen them before, but already they had acquired memories, which is but another word for history. This came from Stavanger, that from Odde.“But nothing from Gudvangen, which was the nicest place of all,” she cried.“Pity that strawberries are not solid reminiscences,” he said, laughing, whereupon she ventured a bantering remark upon his own experiences.“You nearly had too much of my nicest place.”“Very nearly.”His tone did not encourage her to continue, and she was sensitive to all its changes, yet the subject attracted her inevitably. If she left it, it was only in appearance. Wareham, on his part, was always freshly struck with the fact that she was prettier than he imagined, and as he wanted to forget Anne, he carefully impressed the discovery upon himself. A heart which had suddenly grown restless was something new to him, for many years he had declared that it would trouble him no more, and from its quiet vantage-point had discoursed philosophically and wisely to Hugh and his fellows. It is bewildering to conceive yourself standing on a solid hill, and to find yourself shot into the air by a volcano, and Wareham was annoyed both with the volcano and with Anne. Away from her, her power waned; he admitted her charm, but could weigh it against this or that, and face probabilities. What he told himself was, that it was, after all, probable that Hugh would win the day. His youth, his impetuosity, and the liking she acknowledged, would all stand him in good stead. Vanity might whisper that she had shown decided marks of preference for himself, but if he had had the chance, it was very certain that he had put it behind him. Even—and here there came another restless throb—even if Hugh were once more dismissed, she was not likely to forget what almost amounted to rejection of her overtures.He did not repent. He thought of her as a splendid woman, dwarfing others, but at any cost to himself he was glad to have been true to his friend. What he did writhe under, and heartily wish he could undo, was the letter, the pursuing letter, by this time probably in Hugh’s hands. His first act, on reaching London, had been to go to Hugh’s club and ask for his letters, hoping that he might thus intercept his own. All that he learnt, however, was that those that had reached had been already forwarded. Vexation—more than vexation—he might feel and did, but for the letter there was no recall.Therefore, nothing remained but to wait and leave matters as they were. And his blood had cooled. Away from her, he could even imagine obeying wise dictates, and resigning her, though she might be free; nevertheless he was conscious all the while that once remove the restraint, and his heart might again astonish him by independent action.Meanwhile he was glad to find that he liked being with Millie. Towards her he felt calm friendliness, and the sensation was as refreshing as cool air to a fevered head. He thought of her as some one to whom he could talk without dread of misconception, the idea that she liked him had never entered his mind; the companionship which might easily have proved irksome had not chafed, because she and Mrs Ravenhill were careful to avoid anything which had the appearance of a fetter.The two were chatting gaily when Mrs Ravenhill and Lady Fanny returned. Fanny had pointed, in dumb show, to a man’s hat in the hall, and lifted her eyebrows interrogatively. Questions in a small house were to be avoided. Mrs Ravenhill shook her head. Fanny had already guessed, but the mother had no more thought of Wareham than of any other accidental acquaintance, and expressed her astonishment upon seeing him.“I hardly thought you would have found us out, or, indeed, that you would have stayed on in town.”“You have not flown yourselves?”“Oh, women, women! They do not require all that a man demands; besides, a house is an anchor, and we only occasionally drag ours. Let me introduce you to Lady Fanny Enderby.”The ground was gone over again, and the possibility of Lord Milborough falling in with the friends they had left discussed. Lady Fanny promptly showed her interest in Miss Dalrymple.“And I hear that Mr Forbes is of the party, so now one knows what to expect.”In spite of philosophy, Wareham felt keen inclination to fall foul of this assurance. Mrs Ravenhill said briskly that she hoped things might turn out well for the young man, for there was something very attractive about him. She asked Wareham whether he would dine with them on the following day, with a sort of apology.“We don’t give dinner-parties, but we have shared a good many indifferent meals together of late.”“Thank you—I am afraid I am leaving London to-morrow,” he said hesitatingly. The next moment he added—“After all, I don’t see why I shouldn’t afford myself the pleasure. I will put off going until Tuesday.”Lady Fanny drew her own conclusions, and they were favourable. For a man to stay in London for the sake of dining with three women, she felt, spoke volumes. Her own experience in signs was so much more extensive than that of either Mrs Ravenhill or Millie, that she looked on them from heights as a professor would look at a tyro, and smiled at the mothers unconsciousness, and at Millie’s—to her—evident perturbation. She longed to cry at her—“Dear, don’t be a goose! Take your due, or you will never have it!” but comforted herself with the reflection that perhaps Wareham was used to women who expected much, and that Millie’s absence of assertion might constitute her charm. The censor thought it bad for him, and her fingers tingled with the wish to teach a lesson, but it must be remembered that she judged him as an incipient lover; and that her haste for the happiness of her beloved Millie led her to jump at unwarrantable conclusions. They would have amazed Wareham, who felt that here he was free from the heated atmosphere in which he had lived of late.Prudent Fanny avoided comments, of which she knew the danger. She contented herself with remarking that evening to Mrs Ravenhill—“I am so glad you asked Mr Wareham to dine. I am sure it was a tribute to my curiosity.”“To be candid, I believe it was because I thought I must, after having seen so much of him in Norway, but I am glad if it pleases you. Were you really curious to meet him?”“Of course I was. Ever since I heard that you had travelled with Miss Dalrymple and Mr Wareham, I have felt that life had been unfairly generous to you for a whole fortnight, and I was so dull all that time! The most humdrum people you ever saw were collected at Thorpe. Whatever wits I possessed before were sat upon, and the poor things don’t yet know whether they may peep out again.”Millie remarked that she appeared to have amused herself.“No, no, no such thing! Neither myself nor any one else. And there were you with an author, a beauty, and a revived romance. How could you come away?”Mrs Ravenhill laughed.“We didn’t feel necessary.”“And you brought the author.”“Yes. If Millie’s ideas were correct, the poor man had nothing for it but to fly.”“Why?” Lady Fanny pricked her ears.“She fancied he had lost his heart to Miss Dalrymple. I don’t know, I am sure, if she was right, but it is quite possible. According to you, Fanny, such matters don’t take long, now-a-days.”Lady Fanny had received a shock, though she carried it off stoutly.“Oh, no, not long. Buthisheart is safely buttoned up under his waistcoat; trust me! Admire her, he would, he must—that doesn’t include loving. Besides—his friend! Why it would be base, dishonourable! Millie, you are an uncharitable little ignoramus, to take such ideas into your head.”And Millie was content to think so.The next day was brilliantly fine, and they were to go to tea at the Tower, and as Lady Fanny had never seen it, the sights were to be pointed out to her beforehand by a special warder. They went by Underground, and on the way to the South Kensington station, a gentleman doubtfully crossed the road, and was struck by amazement at finding himself before Lady Fanny. Mrs Ravenhill perceived that he was a clergyman, tall, and, at this moment, pink. He began to stammer vague sentences, mixtures of pleasure, astonishment, apology, Lady Fanny surveying him with a frown.“What could bring you to London at such a time?” she exclaimed severely, and introduced him as Mr Elliot, Mrs Ravenhill gathered that he came from the neighbourhood of Thorpe, and inspiration led her to see in him a supporter for Mr Wareham that evening, with the want of which her mind had been troubled. She asked him to dinner, as an acquaintance of Lady Fanny’s, and increasing pinkness did not prevent his absolutely leaping at the proposal. But when they had left him, Fanny fell upon her.“What possessed you? The idea of being saddled with Mr Elliot! He will sit mute.”“He might do worse. But I am not afraid. You will make him talk.”“I? Not I! I have no patience with him. He is the most preposterous man!”“Fanny, you’re not really vexed?” whispered Millie, as they went down the steps. Her friend darted a look at her. They had to fall into single file, and there was a rush for the train.On a fine autumn afternoon there is no more delightful spot in London than the Tower. The great river flows by, alight with sunshine, crowded with life; and here as elsewhere, privilege leads to pleasant paths. They strolled where they pleased, and lingered. The river front held them long. Transforming sunshine softened stones and the old tragedies which clung to them; as for the green, it was so inviting a spot that Fanny declared it made her wish to be beheaded there. She flashed here and there in her most fitful mood. Millie could not make her out; she herself declared that the sun intoxicated her, yet once the other girl imagined that she caught a gleam of tears in the grey eyes, swept out of sight the next moment. Something was amiss. Perhaps she would rather go home. Millie did not dare put the question, but she flung out a rope.“This tea? Must we go to it?”“Must we! How soon may we? was in my mind,” said Fanny promptly. “Sympathy with Guy Fawkes has exhausted me, and my ideas drop greedily to the level of tea-cakes. Come, Mrs Ravenhill.”No more suspicion of a tear. Millie, happy herself, believed she had been mistaken, and amused herself by watching how the young men of the party drifted to Fanny’s side. She flung sparkling sentences about, and told one or two stories with irresistible mimicry. The Tower was talked of, and the old traditions which are not permitted to live on, even there; history was compared to a captive balloon, kept floating before our eyes till a prick collapses it.“More like an old picture, gaily painted over. We bring our turpentine and away flies the decorative colour, leaving truth dingy,” said Lady Fanny.“The warders of the Tower are placed there to prevent either catastrophe,” said young Sir Walter Holford. “They have strict orders to admit neither dynamite nor Professor Winter.”“Is he dangerous?”“Destructive. If any man can pull down Church and State, there you have him.”“And he looks so amiable! Once I met him, and he fascinated me with the history of our own village, until I saw it in all its developments.”“Yes, he can be graphic, when he is not shy,” remarked an old gentleman.Lady Fanny instantly inveighed against shy men.“They spoil conversation,” he agreed.“Their own lives, and other people’s.”Millie thought of the pink clergyman, and was sorry that her mother had been so precipitate, but could not understand rancour on the part of her friend, whose heart was so kind that she would have expected pity. Going home, Fanny was silent, and Mrs Ravenhill openly wished they had a quiet evening before them instead of two gentlemen to entertain.She delivered this sentiment as they reached the door. Fanny murmured to herself—“Dear blind woman!” while she went wearily up-stairs. She wanted to be alone, she was afraid that Millie would follow her, but she did not. Each girl was on the defensive, conscious of something in her heart, which she was pressing back, and inclined to avoid the other. Lady Fanny did not come down until the two guests had arrived; her greetings were formal. She swept the room, and discovered that Millie had been at work with dainty touches, which somehow vexed her. As for Mr Elliot, he became hopelessly embarrassed in his attempts to explain what had brought him to London, until Mrs Ravenhill took pity on him and engaged him gently, while Wareham was left to the two girls.He was conscious of a curious dual feeling, as if he had two natures, the one persuading the other against its will. He almost believed that his short sharp fever was at an end, and encouraged the pleasure he took in Millie’s society as offering proof of returning reason. It was true that the sight of the girl, the sound of her voice, now and again recalled some incisive remark of Anne’s. He recollected, for instance, that she had called her “an embodied conscience,” but the remembrance was free from disturbance. Once, however, quite unreasonably, for the talk was of a lately written book, a vision of Anne, radiant as the morning, standing between walls of rye in the rocky little path at Haare, flashed upon him, and for the moment he saw nothing else. It cost him a wrench to come back, and he turned almost eagerly to Millie. Metaphorically, she was the shield to present between himself and distracting memories. Fanny was neglected, and smiled.“Talk, talk,” she said to herself, “for the more you get below the surface, the better you will appreciate her. But if I thought Miss Dalrymple was a rival, I should try to crush poor Millie’s incipient liking.”She was uneasy, but there was nothing for it but to keep on the watch for the blowing of straws. And her other side engaged one ear. Mr Elliot was talking, and talking coherently, to Mrs Ravenhill. Fanny caught a sentence and smiled.“Sense, thank heaven!” she went on. “Why on earth can’t he keep to it?”She was forced, presently, into closer contact. Mrs Ravenhill became a little annoyed at having the stranger so persistently thrown on her hands; dinner, and Fanny’s near neighbourhood, gave her an opportunity for insisting upon her sharing in the conversation.“You did not tell me, Fanny,” she said, “that Mr Elliot was so near a neighbour of yours at Thorpe.”“It is difficult to believe it, at times,” said Fanny demurely. She flung him a glance through her long lashes, under which he became incoherent.“Not—not near enough, and the road is de—delightfully muddy,” he stammered.“Delightfully, when you are in search of an excuse! I did not know that men were so afraid of mud. No, no, Mrs Ravenhill, if you want to know the truth, it is that one must be a pauper to be worthy of Mr Elliot’s friendship. With parish pay and a craving for grocery tickets, you might hope to be the object of his warm regard, but other people are not even believed to possess souls.”Mrs Ravenhill was surprised. The words jested, but there was a sting at their back unlike Lady Fanny, who never wilfully hurt.“She is giving you a good character.” She smiled at Mr Elliot, by way of offering consolation, and Fanny tossed out her next words in a sharper tone.“Why? For supposing that incomes preclude souls? That’s the way with your clergymen. Rich people have pockets, but no souls; or if they do possess any poor shrivelled little things, they can be left to take care of themselves.”“No, no, Lady Fanny,” protested her victim, pinker than ever. “You forget. They—they have other opportunities.”“Do you mean being sat next to at dinner?” Her eyes smiled at him an invitation to say more, to use his; as he was silent, she drummed the table with impatient fingers, and dropped her voice. “What brought you to London?”“There was—there is—question of a living.”“Offered?”“Yes.”“And accepted?”“I—I hardly know—I believe it may be.”Silence. Then—“Where?”“In Oxfordshire.”“And good? I mean good as we mercenary people weigh goodness?”“Oh, yes.” He ventured to look directly at her. “You—you think I should take it?”She turned her head away. A smile was on her lips, and she mimicked his hesitation slightly.“I—I think that’s a matter you must decide for yourself.”His voice gained confidence.“Laugh at me as much as you like, if only you will advise me. That is why I came to London.”It was Lady Fanny’s turn to look discomposed.“Hush!” she said, under her breath, and glancing at Mrs Ravenhill. “I do think that you shy men, when once you speak, become absolutely audacious. Pray how should I advise?”“Am I fit? You know me.”This time she laughed out.“I don’t indeed. You must go to your old people for a character. Very possibly they might give you one.”“And if—if that question were answered,” he went on hesitatingly, “there are others—”She cried impatiently—“I don’t believe you ever would be without them.” But by this time Mrs Ravenhill, thinking that Lady Fanny had had enough of her silent neighbour, struck in with an observation.Wareham and Millie were in full tide of talk. Released from the usual daily remarks of travel, they had touched on many subjects, and reached books. He found she had read a good deal, and with delicate observation. Miss Dalrymple’s taste was of stronger calibre, and she admired what Millie shrank from; but he recognised that this was not so much from the timidity he expected, as from finding what was bad, ugly, and unsympathetic. Millie steered carefully away from Wareham’s own books; he caught himself, however, reflecting gratefully that he had never written anything he should be ashamed for her to read.Lady Fanny played in the evening, wishing, as she said, to promote conversation. Perhaps it was also to afford a cover for Mr Elliot’s silence; certain it is that he subsided into a chair which commanded a view of the piano, and uttered no sound. Mrs Ravenhill asked Wareham where he was going when he left London, more for the sake of saying something than from interest. He named Wales, as a place where he had never been and which seemed to offer advantages, among them that of being easily got out of.“Failure can be remedied in an hour,” he said, with a laugh at himself. “I dare say I shall drift back to London before I have long been out of it.”Mrs Ravenhill did not even say, “Come and see us.” She was indifferent, little dreaming how hopefully Millie hung on the suggestion.When Wareham left, Mr Elliot, by a superhuman effort, managed also to take his leave. He had said no more to Fanny, but his eyes must have expressed entreaty, for she remarked, on shaking hands, that if chance brought him in that direction again, she would be there a few days longer.“Fanny!” cried Millie, reproachfully, as the door closed.“Yes—terrible, isn’t it? But the poor man is lost in London. One must do what one can. How hot it is!” And she went singing to the window, and out on the balcony.The night was fine. Wareham and his companion walked the length of the park instead of calling a hansom. Away from bewildering woman Mr Elliot could talk quietly and sensibly; he told Wareham that a living was awaiting decision, and Wareham honoured the young fellow for the manner in which he discussed it, half envied the enthusiasm with which he spoke of his work. They parted friendly, Mr Elliot to strike off to the Marble Arch, Wareham to make his way slowly down Piccadilly, twinkling with lights even in August.He felt more at peace than he had felt of late; hailing the return of common-sense as a sick man hails convalescence. Anne Dalrymple had filled his mind so that other women were dwarfed by her to nothingness; now he was able, he thought, to relegate them to their true proportion. The longer he reflected upon the state of affairs he had left behind, the more fully he was convinced that Hugh would regain his lost position, the two would return to England engaged, and Anne would not descend to another fit of freakishness.To have broken his own chains by that time would be to regain his self-respect, to look Hugh frankly in the face, laugh, if he laughed, at a transient folly. Now and then, it is true, thought glanced off to the other possibility, and dizziness warned him of danger. For, if Hugh were rejected—Wareham found himself once more at Anne’s side; with a flutter of Love’s wings, away went the defences he had built up round his heart, tumbling into pitiable ruin, and the traitor heart rejoicing. This was not like the victory of common-sense; he pulled himself together, and dragged back his scattered forces, marshalling Millie in the van, praising her delicate unobtrusiveness, and applauding himself for appreciating it. The dimple, even, was hauled up to the rescue. Nothing was more charming, more womanly than a dimple. By the time he slept, he was satisfied to have regained his position. He slept well, too, another proof of foolish Love defeated. Avaunt, teasing boy, too feeble to overthrow real resistance!By morning a capricious rain was falling, washing the blackened leaves. Wareham was not leaving until the afternoon; he took a turn in Saint James’s Park, to have a look at the wood-pigeons there, before going to his club for letters. A telegram awaited him. The name of Martyn as sender awoke no association until he read—“Forbes ill. Some one should come. Bergen, August 17th.”He had scarcely finished before he remembered that Hugh’s sister was in Germany, and old Sir Michael incapacitated from moving by rheumatism. Another reflection, as instantaneous, reminded him that the Hull steamer started that evening. There was no question. He sent a telegram to Sir Michael, drove to his rooms, where fortunately his man had his things ready, and caught the train for Hull.
By Sunday Millie had given up all thought of seeing Wareham. He had told her that his stay in London could not exceed a few days, business might keep him there so long, but he had even talked of a quicker escape, and laughed at his probable solitude and discomfort at a club where workmen would be in possession, and he’d be hunted out of his favourite corners. The difference in comfort between a train on and off the line, he declared. “Women manage better in their worst domestic emergencies, but man is a helpless animal.”
“From what you have told me, though, you have liked to rough it in other places?” Millie remarked in wonder.
“To rough it—yes. That is easy enough. To be uncomfortable in the midst of luxury is quite another matter, and there I rebel. If the best cook in London is in the kitchen, why should I dine on a burnt chop?”
He laughed as he said it, and she consoled herself for what seemed the blemish of self-indulgence in her hero, by the conviction that he spoke in jest. But it came back to her, and she reflected with a sigh that he had probably found his conditions irksome, and fled from them. She was spared shock to vanity, for she had never thought of her own attractions as strong enough to influence his staying, and it had only been a modest hope that they had become so friendly that he would keep his promise to see them which was disappointed. When Sunday afternoon came, it was not expectation which held her at home, but a dislike to Miss Burton, to whose house Lady Fanny, accompanied by Mrs Ravenhill, had dutifully betaken herself. She sat with a book on her lap, languidly idle, when Wareham was introduced. Pleasure leapt into her eyes.
“We thought you were gone!”
“Only delayed and busy.”
“You have been able to endure your club?”
He laughed. “I have not had the time to consider my miseries. I dare say they have been of the worst. How is Mrs Ravenhill? Your maid said that she was at home, and I hoped in this weather!”
“I expect her every moment. You know she never minded weather, for as to that we seem to have left all that is delightful in Norway. You have not heard from them?” Wareham laughed.
“I see you have already forgotten the fate of letters, how slowly they get out of your delightful country! Besides, I expect none.” He looked healthy and in good spirits. Millie’s own rose. She pointed out all the treasures to him; he had seen them before, but already they had acquired memories, which is but another word for history. This came from Stavanger, that from Odde.
“But nothing from Gudvangen, which was the nicest place of all,” she cried.
“Pity that strawberries are not solid reminiscences,” he said, laughing, whereupon she ventured a bantering remark upon his own experiences.
“You nearly had too much of my nicest place.”
“Very nearly.”
His tone did not encourage her to continue, and she was sensitive to all its changes, yet the subject attracted her inevitably. If she left it, it was only in appearance. Wareham, on his part, was always freshly struck with the fact that she was prettier than he imagined, and as he wanted to forget Anne, he carefully impressed the discovery upon himself. A heart which had suddenly grown restless was something new to him, for many years he had declared that it would trouble him no more, and from its quiet vantage-point had discoursed philosophically and wisely to Hugh and his fellows. It is bewildering to conceive yourself standing on a solid hill, and to find yourself shot into the air by a volcano, and Wareham was annoyed both with the volcano and with Anne. Away from her, her power waned; he admitted her charm, but could weigh it against this or that, and face probabilities. What he told himself was, that it was, after all, probable that Hugh would win the day. His youth, his impetuosity, and the liking she acknowledged, would all stand him in good stead. Vanity might whisper that she had shown decided marks of preference for himself, but if he had had the chance, it was very certain that he had put it behind him. Even—and here there came another restless throb—even if Hugh were once more dismissed, she was not likely to forget what almost amounted to rejection of her overtures.
He did not repent. He thought of her as a splendid woman, dwarfing others, but at any cost to himself he was glad to have been true to his friend. What he did writhe under, and heartily wish he could undo, was the letter, the pursuing letter, by this time probably in Hugh’s hands. His first act, on reaching London, had been to go to Hugh’s club and ask for his letters, hoping that he might thus intercept his own. All that he learnt, however, was that those that had reached had been already forwarded. Vexation—more than vexation—he might feel and did, but for the letter there was no recall.
Therefore, nothing remained but to wait and leave matters as they were. And his blood had cooled. Away from her, he could even imagine obeying wise dictates, and resigning her, though she might be free; nevertheless he was conscious all the while that once remove the restraint, and his heart might again astonish him by independent action.
Meanwhile he was glad to find that he liked being with Millie. Towards her he felt calm friendliness, and the sensation was as refreshing as cool air to a fevered head. He thought of her as some one to whom he could talk without dread of misconception, the idea that she liked him had never entered his mind; the companionship which might easily have proved irksome had not chafed, because she and Mrs Ravenhill were careful to avoid anything which had the appearance of a fetter.
The two were chatting gaily when Mrs Ravenhill and Lady Fanny returned. Fanny had pointed, in dumb show, to a man’s hat in the hall, and lifted her eyebrows interrogatively. Questions in a small house were to be avoided. Mrs Ravenhill shook her head. Fanny had already guessed, but the mother had no more thought of Wareham than of any other accidental acquaintance, and expressed her astonishment upon seeing him.
“I hardly thought you would have found us out, or, indeed, that you would have stayed on in town.”
“You have not flown yourselves?”
“Oh, women, women! They do not require all that a man demands; besides, a house is an anchor, and we only occasionally drag ours. Let me introduce you to Lady Fanny Enderby.”
The ground was gone over again, and the possibility of Lord Milborough falling in with the friends they had left discussed. Lady Fanny promptly showed her interest in Miss Dalrymple.
“And I hear that Mr Forbes is of the party, so now one knows what to expect.”
In spite of philosophy, Wareham felt keen inclination to fall foul of this assurance. Mrs Ravenhill said briskly that she hoped things might turn out well for the young man, for there was something very attractive about him. She asked Wareham whether he would dine with them on the following day, with a sort of apology.
“We don’t give dinner-parties, but we have shared a good many indifferent meals together of late.”
“Thank you—I am afraid I am leaving London to-morrow,” he said hesitatingly. The next moment he added—“After all, I don’t see why I shouldn’t afford myself the pleasure. I will put off going until Tuesday.”
Lady Fanny drew her own conclusions, and they were favourable. For a man to stay in London for the sake of dining with three women, she felt, spoke volumes. Her own experience in signs was so much more extensive than that of either Mrs Ravenhill or Millie, that she looked on them from heights as a professor would look at a tyro, and smiled at the mothers unconsciousness, and at Millie’s—to her—evident perturbation. She longed to cry at her—“Dear, don’t be a goose! Take your due, or you will never have it!” but comforted herself with the reflection that perhaps Wareham was used to women who expected much, and that Millie’s absence of assertion might constitute her charm. The censor thought it bad for him, and her fingers tingled with the wish to teach a lesson, but it must be remembered that she judged him as an incipient lover; and that her haste for the happiness of her beloved Millie led her to jump at unwarrantable conclusions. They would have amazed Wareham, who felt that here he was free from the heated atmosphere in which he had lived of late.
Prudent Fanny avoided comments, of which she knew the danger. She contented herself with remarking that evening to Mrs Ravenhill—
“I am so glad you asked Mr Wareham to dine. I am sure it was a tribute to my curiosity.”
“To be candid, I believe it was because I thought I must, after having seen so much of him in Norway, but I am glad if it pleases you. Were you really curious to meet him?”
“Of course I was. Ever since I heard that you had travelled with Miss Dalrymple and Mr Wareham, I have felt that life had been unfairly generous to you for a whole fortnight, and I was so dull all that time! The most humdrum people you ever saw were collected at Thorpe. Whatever wits I possessed before were sat upon, and the poor things don’t yet know whether they may peep out again.”
Millie remarked that she appeared to have amused herself.
“No, no, no such thing! Neither myself nor any one else. And there were you with an author, a beauty, and a revived romance. How could you come away?”
Mrs Ravenhill laughed.
“We didn’t feel necessary.”
“And you brought the author.”
“Yes. If Millie’s ideas were correct, the poor man had nothing for it but to fly.”
“Why?” Lady Fanny pricked her ears.
“She fancied he had lost his heart to Miss Dalrymple. I don’t know, I am sure, if she was right, but it is quite possible. According to you, Fanny, such matters don’t take long, now-a-days.”
Lady Fanny had received a shock, though she carried it off stoutly.
“Oh, no, not long. Buthisheart is safely buttoned up under his waistcoat; trust me! Admire her, he would, he must—that doesn’t include loving. Besides—his friend! Why it would be base, dishonourable! Millie, you are an uncharitable little ignoramus, to take such ideas into your head.”
And Millie was content to think so.
The next day was brilliantly fine, and they were to go to tea at the Tower, and as Lady Fanny had never seen it, the sights were to be pointed out to her beforehand by a special warder. They went by Underground, and on the way to the South Kensington station, a gentleman doubtfully crossed the road, and was struck by amazement at finding himself before Lady Fanny. Mrs Ravenhill perceived that he was a clergyman, tall, and, at this moment, pink. He began to stammer vague sentences, mixtures of pleasure, astonishment, apology, Lady Fanny surveying him with a frown.
“What could bring you to London at such a time?” she exclaimed severely, and introduced him as Mr Elliot, Mrs Ravenhill gathered that he came from the neighbourhood of Thorpe, and inspiration led her to see in him a supporter for Mr Wareham that evening, with the want of which her mind had been troubled. She asked him to dinner, as an acquaintance of Lady Fanny’s, and increasing pinkness did not prevent his absolutely leaping at the proposal. But when they had left him, Fanny fell upon her.
“What possessed you? The idea of being saddled with Mr Elliot! He will sit mute.”
“He might do worse. But I am not afraid. You will make him talk.”
“I? Not I! I have no patience with him. He is the most preposterous man!”
“Fanny, you’re not really vexed?” whispered Millie, as they went down the steps. Her friend darted a look at her. They had to fall into single file, and there was a rush for the train.
On a fine autumn afternoon there is no more delightful spot in London than the Tower. The great river flows by, alight with sunshine, crowded with life; and here as elsewhere, privilege leads to pleasant paths. They strolled where they pleased, and lingered. The river front held them long. Transforming sunshine softened stones and the old tragedies which clung to them; as for the green, it was so inviting a spot that Fanny declared it made her wish to be beheaded there. She flashed here and there in her most fitful mood. Millie could not make her out; she herself declared that the sun intoxicated her, yet once the other girl imagined that she caught a gleam of tears in the grey eyes, swept out of sight the next moment. Something was amiss. Perhaps she would rather go home. Millie did not dare put the question, but she flung out a rope.
“This tea? Must we go to it?”
“Must we! How soon may we? was in my mind,” said Fanny promptly. “Sympathy with Guy Fawkes has exhausted me, and my ideas drop greedily to the level of tea-cakes. Come, Mrs Ravenhill.”
No more suspicion of a tear. Millie, happy herself, believed she had been mistaken, and amused herself by watching how the young men of the party drifted to Fanny’s side. She flung sparkling sentences about, and told one or two stories with irresistible mimicry. The Tower was talked of, and the old traditions which are not permitted to live on, even there; history was compared to a captive balloon, kept floating before our eyes till a prick collapses it.
“More like an old picture, gaily painted over. We bring our turpentine and away flies the decorative colour, leaving truth dingy,” said Lady Fanny.
“The warders of the Tower are placed there to prevent either catastrophe,” said young Sir Walter Holford. “They have strict orders to admit neither dynamite nor Professor Winter.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Destructive. If any man can pull down Church and State, there you have him.”
“And he looks so amiable! Once I met him, and he fascinated me with the history of our own village, until I saw it in all its developments.”
“Yes, he can be graphic, when he is not shy,” remarked an old gentleman.
Lady Fanny instantly inveighed against shy men.
“They spoil conversation,” he agreed.
“Their own lives, and other people’s.”
Millie thought of the pink clergyman, and was sorry that her mother had been so precipitate, but could not understand rancour on the part of her friend, whose heart was so kind that she would have expected pity. Going home, Fanny was silent, and Mrs Ravenhill openly wished they had a quiet evening before them instead of two gentlemen to entertain.
She delivered this sentiment as they reached the door. Fanny murmured to herself—“Dear blind woman!” while she went wearily up-stairs. She wanted to be alone, she was afraid that Millie would follow her, but she did not. Each girl was on the defensive, conscious of something in her heart, which she was pressing back, and inclined to avoid the other. Lady Fanny did not come down until the two guests had arrived; her greetings were formal. She swept the room, and discovered that Millie had been at work with dainty touches, which somehow vexed her. As for Mr Elliot, he became hopelessly embarrassed in his attempts to explain what had brought him to London, until Mrs Ravenhill took pity on him and engaged him gently, while Wareham was left to the two girls.
He was conscious of a curious dual feeling, as if he had two natures, the one persuading the other against its will. He almost believed that his short sharp fever was at an end, and encouraged the pleasure he took in Millie’s society as offering proof of returning reason. It was true that the sight of the girl, the sound of her voice, now and again recalled some incisive remark of Anne’s. He recollected, for instance, that she had called her “an embodied conscience,” but the remembrance was free from disturbance. Once, however, quite unreasonably, for the talk was of a lately written book, a vision of Anne, radiant as the morning, standing between walls of rye in the rocky little path at Haare, flashed upon him, and for the moment he saw nothing else. It cost him a wrench to come back, and he turned almost eagerly to Millie. Metaphorically, she was the shield to present between himself and distracting memories. Fanny was neglected, and smiled.
“Talk, talk,” she said to herself, “for the more you get below the surface, the better you will appreciate her. But if I thought Miss Dalrymple was a rival, I should try to crush poor Millie’s incipient liking.”
She was uneasy, but there was nothing for it but to keep on the watch for the blowing of straws. And her other side engaged one ear. Mr Elliot was talking, and talking coherently, to Mrs Ravenhill. Fanny caught a sentence and smiled.
“Sense, thank heaven!” she went on. “Why on earth can’t he keep to it?”
She was forced, presently, into closer contact. Mrs Ravenhill became a little annoyed at having the stranger so persistently thrown on her hands; dinner, and Fanny’s near neighbourhood, gave her an opportunity for insisting upon her sharing in the conversation.
“You did not tell me, Fanny,” she said, “that Mr Elliot was so near a neighbour of yours at Thorpe.”
“It is difficult to believe it, at times,” said Fanny demurely. She flung him a glance through her long lashes, under which he became incoherent.
“Not—not near enough, and the road is de—delightfully muddy,” he stammered.
“Delightfully, when you are in search of an excuse! I did not know that men were so afraid of mud. No, no, Mrs Ravenhill, if you want to know the truth, it is that one must be a pauper to be worthy of Mr Elliot’s friendship. With parish pay and a craving for grocery tickets, you might hope to be the object of his warm regard, but other people are not even believed to possess souls.”
Mrs Ravenhill was surprised. The words jested, but there was a sting at their back unlike Lady Fanny, who never wilfully hurt.
“She is giving you a good character.” She smiled at Mr Elliot, by way of offering consolation, and Fanny tossed out her next words in a sharper tone.
“Why? For supposing that incomes preclude souls? That’s the way with your clergymen. Rich people have pockets, but no souls; or if they do possess any poor shrivelled little things, they can be left to take care of themselves.”
“No, no, Lady Fanny,” protested her victim, pinker than ever. “You forget. They—they have other opportunities.”
“Do you mean being sat next to at dinner?” Her eyes smiled at him an invitation to say more, to use his; as he was silent, she drummed the table with impatient fingers, and dropped her voice. “What brought you to London?”
“There was—there is—question of a living.”
“Offered?”
“Yes.”
“And accepted?”
“I—I hardly know—I believe it may be.”
Silence. Then—
“Where?”
“In Oxfordshire.”
“And good? I mean good as we mercenary people weigh goodness?”
“Oh, yes.” He ventured to look directly at her. “You—you think I should take it?”
She turned her head away. A smile was on her lips, and she mimicked his hesitation slightly.
“I—I think that’s a matter you must decide for yourself.”
His voice gained confidence.
“Laugh at me as much as you like, if only you will advise me. That is why I came to London.”
It was Lady Fanny’s turn to look discomposed.
“Hush!” she said, under her breath, and glancing at Mrs Ravenhill. “I do think that you shy men, when once you speak, become absolutely audacious. Pray how should I advise?”
“Am I fit? You know me.”
This time she laughed out.
“I don’t indeed. You must go to your old people for a character. Very possibly they might give you one.”
“And if—if that question were answered,” he went on hesitatingly, “there are others—”
She cried impatiently—“I don’t believe you ever would be without them.” But by this time Mrs Ravenhill, thinking that Lady Fanny had had enough of her silent neighbour, struck in with an observation.
Wareham and Millie were in full tide of talk. Released from the usual daily remarks of travel, they had touched on many subjects, and reached books. He found she had read a good deal, and with delicate observation. Miss Dalrymple’s taste was of stronger calibre, and she admired what Millie shrank from; but he recognised that this was not so much from the timidity he expected, as from finding what was bad, ugly, and unsympathetic. Millie steered carefully away from Wareham’s own books; he caught himself, however, reflecting gratefully that he had never written anything he should be ashamed for her to read.
Lady Fanny played in the evening, wishing, as she said, to promote conversation. Perhaps it was also to afford a cover for Mr Elliot’s silence; certain it is that he subsided into a chair which commanded a view of the piano, and uttered no sound. Mrs Ravenhill asked Wareham where he was going when he left London, more for the sake of saying something than from interest. He named Wales, as a place where he had never been and which seemed to offer advantages, among them that of being easily got out of.
“Failure can be remedied in an hour,” he said, with a laugh at himself. “I dare say I shall drift back to London before I have long been out of it.”
Mrs Ravenhill did not even say, “Come and see us.” She was indifferent, little dreaming how hopefully Millie hung on the suggestion.
When Wareham left, Mr Elliot, by a superhuman effort, managed also to take his leave. He had said no more to Fanny, but his eyes must have expressed entreaty, for she remarked, on shaking hands, that if chance brought him in that direction again, she would be there a few days longer.
“Fanny!” cried Millie, reproachfully, as the door closed.
“Yes—terrible, isn’t it? But the poor man is lost in London. One must do what one can. How hot it is!” And she went singing to the window, and out on the balcony.
The night was fine. Wareham and his companion walked the length of the park instead of calling a hansom. Away from bewildering woman Mr Elliot could talk quietly and sensibly; he told Wareham that a living was awaiting decision, and Wareham honoured the young fellow for the manner in which he discussed it, half envied the enthusiasm with which he spoke of his work. They parted friendly, Mr Elliot to strike off to the Marble Arch, Wareham to make his way slowly down Piccadilly, twinkling with lights even in August.
He felt more at peace than he had felt of late; hailing the return of common-sense as a sick man hails convalescence. Anne Dalrymple had filled his mind so that other women were dwarfed by her to nothingness; now he was able, he thought, to relegate them to their true proportion. The longer he reflected upon the state of affairs he had left behind, the more fully he was convinced that Hugh would regain his lost position, the two would return to England engaged, and Anne would not descend to another fit of freakishness.
To have broken his own chains by that time would be to regain his self-respect, to look Hugh frankly in the face, laugh, if he laughed, at a transient folly. Now and then, it is true, thought glanced off to the other possibility, and dizziness warned him of danger. For, if Hugh were rejected—Wareham found himself once more at Anne’s side; with a flutter of Love’s wings, away went the defences he had built up round his heart, tumbling into pitiable ruin, and the traitor heart rejoicing. This was not like the victory of common-sense; he pulled himself together, and dragged back his scattered forces, marshalling Millie in the van, praising her delicate unobtrusiveness, and applauding himself for appreciating it. The dimple, even, was hauled up to the rescue. Nothing was more charming, more womanly than a dimple. By the time he slept, he was satisfied to have regained his position. He slept well, too, another proof of foolish Love defeated. Avaunt, teasing boy, too feeble to overthrow real resistance!
By morning a capricious rain was falling, washing the blackened leaves. Wareham was not leaving until the afternoon; he took a turn in Saint James’s Park, to have a look at the wood-pigeons there, before going to his club for letters. A telegram awaited him. The name of Martyn as sender awoke no association until he read—“Forbes ill. Some one should come. Bergen, August 17th.”
He had scarcely finished before he remembered that Hugh’s sister was in Germany, and old Sir Michael incapacitated from moving by rheumatism. Another reflection, as instantaneous, reminded him that the Hull steamer started that evening. There was no question. He sent a telegram to Sir Michael, drove to his rooms, where fortunately his man had his things ready, and caught the train for Hull.
Chapter Seventeen.The Result of Incoherence.Millie, with shame at her own appropriation, which, looked back upon, appeared excessive, decided that Fanny had been bored that night, and no wonder, with so floundering an acquaintance thrust upon her! She admired her friend, penitently, for that last offer of a plank of refuge, and hoped that bashfulness might prevent his accepting it.“Why were you so kind, Fanny?” she remonstrated. “I am sure you had done all that could have been expected of you!”“Oh, and more. He never expects,” said Lady Fanny, musingly. “One ought to do something for the helpless. You, at any rate, might be obliged to him.”It was Mrs Ravenhill who asked why?Lady Fanny considered that he made a second centre of conversation, and, cried out at, maintained her assertion.“First you have to discover what he has to say, and then to help him to say it. It is very absorbing.”“I think you might have been more helpful, then,” Mrs Ravenhill remarked, smiling. “For a long time you left him to me, and what did I know of what he had to say! And I don’t approve of your laughing at him, for he is a good man, and carries it in his face.”“Is goodness pink?” asked Fanny, with an innocent air. The next moment she cried out, “Oh, don’t listen to me! Good? He is better than all of us put together. The poor love him. You don’t know how he has changed the place where he has been working. Even Milborough hasn’t a word to say against him. There was a young fellow at Huntsdon going to the bad as fast as he could, and Mr Elliot got hold of him and never let go again—that’s the only way of describing it. It was splendid. And then one makes much of these little trifles, as if they mattered! as if they could compare with the real thing!”And once more Milly caught a gleam in the grey Irish eyes, which, if it had been possible, looked like tears.Mrs Ravenhill, suddenly enlightened, was beginning to say something in praise of such a character, when Fanny interrupted her.“No. He’s absurd, ridiculous!” she cried, and tore him to tatters.This was at breakfast. Afterwards, when Millie was alone with her mother, she flew at her with questions. What did she think? Was it possible? Mrs Ravenhill was as much at sea as herself. Everything pointed to unlikelihood, yet nothing else seemed to explain those rushing words with which Fanny had painted a noble nature. They talked amazedly. The last person they would have expected! Mrs Ravenhill was more quickly reconciled than Millie.“If she respects him, I have no fear; and what else can have attracted her? I hope he does not think of her fortune, but I should not suspect him.”“No, no! But a man that she laughs at!”“It is her revenge on her own heart. I can hardly fancy Milborough approving, still—in a year she will be her own mistress. And, after all, Millie, we may have gone too far. It may be no more than girlish enthusiasm. You know, as well as I, how quickly Fanny is stirred by what she admires, and, poor child, Thorpe has not too much of that! If I were you, I would say nothing to her until she speaks herself.”Not a word did Fanny breathe, and perhaps was unconscious of having betrayed feeling. A suggestion made that she might not care to accompany Mrs Ravenhill and Millie for some shopping, she set aside, declaring that with fashion changing every week, she must make the most of being at head-quarters. Mrs Ravenhill satisfied herself by leaving word, unknown to her, that if Mr Elliot appeared they would be at home for tea. However, the precaution was useless, for he did not come, and Fanny made no remark.By the next day, Mrs Ravenhill, now on the look-out for signs, convinced herself that her guest was restless, and earned off Millie. Fanny, left to herself, wandered about the house, and peeped over the stairs when a hesitating ring sounded, declaring that it must be his.“He cannot even ring like other people, he turns it into an apology,” she cried, angry with every shortcoming. But when only a card followed the ring she grew uneasy, beginning to fear she knew not what, wandered on the landing, watched from the balcony. “This living?—he is in the tortures of doubt; so am I. It would make all the difference; perhaps provide him with a tongue, at least give me an excuse. An excuse! Now, Fanny the coward, Fanny the worldly”—she scourged herself with scorn—“what excuse do you want? You know him—that he is worth a hundred of those butterfly nonentities who are suggested as appropriate husbands—yet you have not the courage of your convictions.” Then, with a laugh, she relented from her fierceness. “When the courage of convictions includes something extremely like having to offer oneself, one may be forgiven hesitation—”At this point Mr Elliot was announced, and Fanny coloured as furiously as if she had been caught in the act she was contemplating. She even descended to an untruth by implication of surprise.“You are the most surprising person! Who would have expected you to be still in London!”“Did you think I had left?”Mr Elliot was no longer shy, and his look, fixed on hers, was as frank and open as a child’s. Lady Fanny fidgeted, and confessed—“No, no, I did not.”“I could not have gone without seeing you. Do you recollect what I said I wanted?” Fanny nodded, and remarked that it could only be a question of what he wished himself.“Scarcely that,” he said, without looking at her. “But circumstances have forced me into decision without asking your advice.”She leant forward eagerly.“I am very glad. I hope you asked nobody. Why should you hesitate? It was offered to you because you were the best man. The best man should have it. Yes, I am glad, for it shows that they can appreciate—”She stopped, fearing to have said too much. He fingered a paper-knife on the table, and eyed the floor. When he spoke, it was with a certain stiffness.“I shall always be sensible of the kindness—the undeserved kindness. It has made me more ashamed of my own failures than ever before—”“Oh, no,” cried Lady Fanny, happy enough to jest once more, “I forbid your growing more retiring. Go on, please, go on; never mind the failures. I dare say your letter of acceptance was as full of apologies as if you were a fraud.”“I—I—” he became nervous again, but recovered himself. “I have refused.”“Refused!” Her voice was tragic.“I could do nothing else.”“Why, why? What possessed you!”“There was another.”“Another? What other?” She grew ashamed of her eagerness, and sat back in her chair trying to look unconcerned. “Of course I have no right to ask.”This roused him. He looked at her like a man who had been struck. “You are the one, the only person—forgive me, I don’t know what I am saving.”She looked away. “If you were kindly to explain what you have done, and why?”“Yes, yes, I came here to do so. When—when I had seen you on Monday night, I thought—I fancied—yes, I determined to accept the offer. There seemed no reason against it, except the doubt whether I should not be filling the place of another man who would be better fitted. But—one may carry that fear too far—”Fanny played with a flower. “Is it possible!”“I thought so,” he said humbly. “The offer came unsought, and it did not appear to me that I should be right to reject it until to-day. To-day I had a letter.”“From the Duke?”“No. From the wife of a man who, it appears, hoped to have had the living.”“Men hope easily.”“He had grounds. The Duke replied to him that if he had not offered it already to me, he should have been glad to have assisted him.”“He had applied for it! What becomes of your scruples in such a case?”“They belong only to myself. Heaven forbid that I should judge a man who has worked on a pittance, and is saddled with half-a-dozen children.”“Oh, of course!” cried Lady Fanny pettishly. “I wanted to hear that conclusion. Are you certain there are only six?” He went on, unheeding.“There can be no doubt that he wants it more. And he is a good man. I know him. He will work the parish well.”“Pray, are you aware that the Duke never offers a second living to a man who has refused one?”“I should not expect it.”“And you do not care! It is nothing to you that—”So far Fanny’s words rushed, then she suddenly stopped and crimsoned. He drew a hard breath, and was silent, and with him silence said more than speech. She interpreted it as a declaration that he knew what he was renouncing.After what seemed to her a long time she forced herself to say—“Have you absolutely decided?”“I could do nothing else. You—you disapprove?”“I? It concerns yourself only.”“Yes—of course!”He sighed and stood up. Lady Fanny’s foot impatiently patted the carpet. She turned her head away, and remarked that he had probably consulted his friends before making a wreck of his prospects.“There is no one to consult,” he returned. “If my father had lived, he, I think, would have bid me do as I am doing. It has helped me, to remember that.”“I don’t think you appear to require consolation,” said Fanny airily, and hated herself for her cruelty. She used it as a spur, wanting him to say more, but he only answered—“One should not.”“You prefer to be a curate all your life?”“Prefer? No. I am dishonest if I give you that impression, but in this case there was nothing else to be done.”“I wonder how many people would have thought so! Well, as I have said more than once, you must please yourself. For the sake of a man whom you have never seen, and on account of a few quixotic scruples, you give up your own advancement, and disappoint all—all your friends.”The words were indignant, but the voice trembled. He made a step towards her, checked himself, and drew back. The hand with which he grasped a chair tightened its hold as he said slowly—“Try to think of me kindly.”“You go back to Huntsdon?”“For a time, a short time. Afterwards I shall look out for work in London.”“Oh!”She turned away her head, then, as he offered his hand, remarked, “You will not stay to tea?”He would not. Something was murmured of an appointment, and before she quite realised that he had said good-bye, she heard the front door slam. She flew to the window only to see a black back disappearing, rushed up to her room, bolted the door, and sobbed on her bed, scolding herself the while. “He has behaved splendidly as usual, and I not a good word to throw him when I love him better than ever. I would not have had him do differently, no, not for all the livings in England, but I haven’t the grace to say so, and have sent the poor fellow away with a sore heart. What does Milborough’s opinion matter? In a year I can do as I like, marry a chimney-sweep, I suppose, if it pleases me, with only a chorus of protesting uncles and aunts to fear. Be honest, you stupid little thing, and own that it is your own pride, your own odious contemptible pride which stood in your way! For Lady Fanny Enderby to marry a curate without prospects, for no better reason than that he is a good man, and she loves him, when all the while, only a finger lifted, and there you have a budding Duke at her feet, certainly not the best of men, and certainly not beloved!”To be fair, she trotted out this youth before her judgment, and tried to credit him with what virtues might charitably be hoped to be his. Opposite, she set up John Elliot, at his pinkest, when she thought she hated him, and looked at the pair with coldly discriminative eyes. To the eye, goodness would have kicked the beam, but that her heart flung its weight into the balance, and was big enough to carry the day. She sat up, sighed, bathed her eyes, and dismissed the young lord, frankly owning that she wished he and the other could have changed places. Heigh-ho! and the worst of it was, that after that day he might have no more to say to her.When Mrs Ravenhill and Millie came home, Lady Fanny sat with her back to the light, and asked questions with an immense show of interest. She laughed immoderately over the slenderest materials for mirth, avoiding allusion to her own visitor until suddenly dragging in the subject.“By the way there has been a visitor—Mr Elliot.”“His card is down-stairs,” said Mrs Ravenhill. “You saw him?”“Saw, and quarrelled with him.”“Why?”“He came to London to accept a living, and some man’s wife has written to say she wants it for her husband.”“Well?”“You needn’t ask,” said Lady Fanny, with asperity, “or, you wouldn’t need to ask if you knew Mr Elliot. Of course he means to hand over the offer to him.”There was silence, then Mrs Ravenhill said gently—“I think your Mr Elliot must be a very fine fellow, Fanny, and I’m beginning to be proud of knowing him.”“That’s the only pride left to me.” She broke down, and buried her face in a sofa cushion. Millie was by her side in a moment, with her hand in both hers.“Dearest, clearest Fanny!”“Idiotic Fanny!—Say anything you like—Nothing would be foolish enough.—And I do detest shy men”—with a gasp between each sentence, and a laugh at the end.Mrs Ravenhill slipped out of the room.“There! Now I have spoilt your mother’s tea.”“She had finished. Fanny, tell me, are you going to marry him?”“Oh, I suppose so,”—sighing. The next moment she had pushed Millie aside, started up, and stared blankly at her friend. “Good gracious!”“What is it?” cried Millie in alarm.“I had forgotten! He has never asked me. Isn’t that necessary?”“Perhaps words aren’t necessary?”“Oh, they are—unfortunately—for now nothing will ever work him up to say them. I’m not sure that he could have done it with a living at his back, but now, not a word! Martyrdom, self-denial, all the discomforts of life! Perhaps if I were to have small-pox, or to tumble into the fire and be horribly scarred—otherwise!—Oh, Millie, when you fall in love, avoid excellence. The inconvenience of it!”Millie murmured something consolatory, but Fanny broke in with a quick shake of the head.“My dear, I know all you’re feeling, wondering what I find in him to like—attraction of opposites, isn’t there such an expression? There ought to be. I don’t expect you to sympathise, I only ask one thing.”“Anything!” Millie kissed her.“Don’t call him worthy. That’s what they’ll all do, I know, those of them who try to approve. ‘Fanny has chosen a very worthy man.’ To hear that, I really believe would make me hate him.”She had the promise. Satisfied on this point, she began to talk about him, his simplicity, earnestness, unworldliness. “So unlike us all. And now, what he has just done, though it has driven me distracted, isn’t it splendid? Tell me, do you know any other man who would be so disinterested?”Challenged, Millie flung a mental glance at Wareham, but finding it impossible to set the two men side by side, signified her admiration, thinking it unnecessary to allude to its qualifications. After Fanny had glorified her idol for a little, she fell back upon the difficulty. He would never, never propose. What was to be done? Somebody must move.“Somebody must,” Millie acknowledged. “Can’t he take a hint?”“Never.”“Would you like mother to write?”“And get her into a scrape with Milborough and all of them? No.”“She might ask him to luncheon—to breakfast?”“He would arrive at eight. Besides—oh, no, no!”Her head was buried again. When she lifted it, it was to remark—“The morning is so cold-blooded! If there was only some excuse!”“I dare say mother has a paper to be signed before a clergyman,” said Millie hopefully. “And they’re all taking holidays. I’ll go and see.”Fanny called anxiously after her—“Not a word of me!”Reluctantly Mrs Ravenhill consented, though she declined to offer the bait of a signature. She felt that Fanny’s love must be real, since it could not have sprung from imaginary causes.“And the man is a gentleman,” she said.Millie sighed and owned amazement.“So that no one has really the right to object. I have long wished her to marry, and her own heart is more to be trusted than Milborough. He shall be asked to luncheon, and shall have his opportunity. Whether he’ll take it!”This communicated to Fanny by Millie, she was dolefully certain that he would not come.“Don’t you think he may read encouragement?”“Dear man, yes! But he’ll think himself bound to quash encouragement. And if he should come, and turns pink—I shall inevitably be cross. This is your doing, Millie! I’ll—”She threatened.“What?”“Do the same for you some day.”There was a pause before the answer came, and Fanny prophesied disaster. At first he had left London; when that idea was abandoned it was for the certainty that she had so disgusted him at the last interview that he would have no more to do with her.“The more right I thought him, the more disagreeable I became. My dear, depend upon it, he is blessing his stars for his escape. And his mind once made up, no little inveiglements of luncheon will move him. Millie, what possessed me to be such a wretch?”Her presentiments were unfounded. Mr Elliot wrote to accept, and Fanny’s mood varied between mirth which sparkled sometimes through tears, and a dignity which her friends found comic. When he arrived, she was in her room. Millie went to fetch her, and was told that it was no use, she should not come down.“Two shy people will be ridiculously unmanageable, and you shan’t be saddled with them. Besides, I suppose he is roseately triumphant?”A happy inspiration made Millie assure her that he looked as if he had not slept for a week. Lady Fanny fidgeted.“Absurd!”“I only answer your question.”“Well, go. I will see about it. But don’t expect me,” she called after her, warningly.Luncheon was announced before she appeared, with dignity in the ascendant. She hardly glanced at Mr Elliot, and her embarrassment was greater than his, for he carried the look of a man who had been through the worst, and has nothing to fear. Ice all round and about. Mrs Ravenhill and Millie made heroic efforts to warm the chilly atmosphere, but do what they would, it enveloped them Fanny without a tongue had changed to lead and to a stranger.The dreary meal ended, Mrs Ravenhill rose. “Millie and Fanny will take you up-stairs, Mr Elliot,” she said, “for I have to go out.” Up spoke Fanny.“Mayn’t I come with you?”“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs Ravenhill, provoked. Then, to her amazement, Mr Elliot’s voice was heard.“There is something I should be glad of an opportunity of saying, if Lady Fanny could give me five minutes.”And, “Certainly she will,” interposed Mrs Ravenhill again. “The drawing-room is at your service. Come, Millie.”Fanny’s feet dragged all the way up-stairs. She marched into the drawing-room, and sat stiffly on a seat by the window; tried to say something jesting, and failed. All that she got out was—“Well?”“Forgive me if I speak of my own feelings. It is for the first and last time,” he said hurriedly.A slight movement of her head.“I—I am quite aware that they have no excuse, except in the law of our nature; one must love what is lovable, however wide the distance. Your kindness, your sweetness—”His voice shook, but he controlled it, and she was aware of the effort. “I don’t want to talk of anything except just to tell you what, even with the gap between us hopelessly widening, I think you should know. If I could have fairly accepted this living, without harming another man, I had a wild dream of trying whether my love could have won some crumb of hope. I would have waited years, a lifetime, but I meant to try to win your heart at last. That is at an end. Since I have been in town I have made inquiries—to stay at Huntsdon would be impossible—I—I am not strong enough—I have accepted an offer of work in London. Forgive me for troubling you. It seemed to me that this much I might say. You may trust to my giving you no more annoyance. I am very grateful to you for letting me speak.”He stood looking down upon her, and all Fanny’s composure had returned, and with it her powers of teasing. She leaned back in the chair, and glanced up at him with a wicked smile in her eyes.“Oh, don’t thank me. If you only knew how glad I am to hear your plans!”“They please you?”She evaded the question.“I admire your rapidity. It is all settled then? Perhaps you don’t return to Huntsdon at all?”“It is necessary until my successor comes.” He spoke quietly, but his face was that of a man braced to meet strokes. Suddenly he put out his hand. “Good-bye, Lady Fanny.” She rose, without taking his hand, and leaned against the window.“You have decided so much that I should like to know if you have fixed upon a house?”“A house? Where? In London?”“In your new parish, of course.”“I have not thought of it.”“And that’s lucky,” she said, with a smile which sent his head spinning.“Why?” The word broke from him.“I should hate a house I did not choose for myself.”“You!—Fanny!” He made a step nearer, but checked himself, gripping the back of a chair, and breathing the words—“You are cruel!”She darted a look at him.“Do you want me to retract?”He became incoherent.“You—you know I daren’t think of what I want—”“You might.”“Fanny!”She leaned forward a little, her lips curved into a smile.“Well?”For answer he caught her to him with a cry, and another “Fanny!”When she was released, she put an anxious question.“Tell me the truth. It was really you who proposed?”But he had grown audacious.“What does it matter?”“It matters a great deal, for I had been screwing myself up to do it, in case you were too shy, but I really believe it would have killed me. Didn’t you see how uncomfortable I was?”“I, you mean. I was wretched.”“Cool enough to speak. And of course when you said that if only this and that had happened, you would have asked me to marry you, it was exactly the same as asking me to do it now.”“Was it?” His tone was blissful. Then a cloud swept over him. “Poverty—can you face it?”Lady Fanny shook her head dolefully. He stepped back.“No? But I am poor. No, of course not. I have been very wrong.”She put her hand shyly on his arm.“Dear, we shan’t be poor, unless—” Her smile returned. “What do you call poverty?”“I suppose we ought to have some hundreds a year?” he said, with gloom.“Oh, more.”“More? Then indeed I have done wrongly. My income will not reach four.”Her tone mimicked his.“And you give away three-quarters. You must be the worst match in the country.”“Oh no,” he said simply. “Till now I always thought that I was rather rich. But I see now that of course you want more—coming from Thorpe and its luxuries, and—I am ashamed at my selfishness.”“I don’t wonder. But let us see. You know I have something.”“Have you? Enough to give you a little of what you have been accustomed to?”“That, and a few pounds over for you, which you may spend on beef-tea and flannel.” The murmurs which followed were incoherent. Lady Fanny said afterwards to Millie—“For pity’s sake, let no one tell him I have three thousand a year. If he doesn’t fly from England in dismay, he will want me to build two or three cathedrals at least. And now to prepare for the family wrath. At any rate Milborough can’t say much. He should have taken me to Norway.”
Millie, with shame at her own appropriation, which, looked back upon, appeared excessive, decided that Fanny had been bored that night, and no wonder, with so floundering an acquaintance thrust upon her! She admired her friend, penitently, for that last offer of a plank of refuge, and hoped that bashfulness might prevent his accepting it.
“Why were you so kind, Fanny?” she remonstrated. “I am sure you had done all that could have been expected of you!”
“Oh, and more. He never expects,” said Lady Fanny, musingly. “One ought to do something for the helpless. You, at any rate, might be obliged to him.”
It was Mrs Ravenhill who asked why?
Lady Fanny considered that he made a second centre of conversation, and, cried out at, maintained her assertion.
“First you have to discover what he has to say, and then to help him to say it. It is very absorbing.”
“I think you might have been more helpful, then,” Mrs Ravenhill remarked, smiling. “For a long time you left him to me, and what did I know of what he had to say! And I don’t approve of your laughing at him, for he is a good man, and carries it in his face.”
“Is goodness pink?” asked Fanny, with an innocent air. The next moment she cried out, “Oh, don’t listen to me! Good? He is better than all of us put together. The poor love him. You don’t know how he has changed the place where he has been working. Even Milborough hasn’t a word to say against him. There was a young fellow at Huntsdon going to the bad as fast as he could, and Mr Elliot got hold of him and never let go again—that’s the only way of describing it. It was splendid. And then one makes much of these little trifles, as if they mattered! as if they could compare with the real thing!”
And once more Milly caught a gleam in the grey Irish eyes, which, if it had been possible, looked like tears.
Mrs Ravenhill, suddenly enlightened, was beginning to say something in praise of such a character, when Fanny interrupted her.
“No. He’s absurd, ridiculous!” she cried, and tore him to tatters.
This was at breakfast. Afterwards, when Millie was alone with her mother, she flew at her with questions. What did she think? Was it possible? Mrs Ravenhill was as much at sea as herself. Everything pointed to unlikelihood, yet nothing else seemed to explain those rushing words with which Fanny had painted a noble nature. They talked amazedly. The last person they would have expected! Mrs Ravenhill was more quickly reconciled than Millie.
“If she respects him, I have no fear; and what else can have attracted her? I hope he does not think of her fortune, but I should not suspect him.”
“No, no! But a man that she laughs at!”
“It is her revenge on her own heart. I can hardly fancy Milborough approving, still—in a year she will be her own mistress. And, after all, Millie, we may have gone too far. It may be no more than girlish enthusiasm. You know, as well as I, how quickly Fanny is stirred by what she admires, and, poor child, Thorpe has not too much of that! If I were you, I would say nothing to her until she speaks herself.”
Not a word did Fanny breathe, and perhaps was unconscious of having betrayed feeling. A suggestion made that she might not care to accompany Mrs Ravenhill and Millie for some shopping, she set aside, declaring that with fashion changing every week, she must make the most of being at head-quarters. Mrs Ravenhill satisfied herself by leaving word, unknown to her, that if Mr Elliot appeared they would be at home for tea. However, the precaution was useless, for he did not come, and Fanny made no remark.
By the next day, Mrs Ravenhill, now on the look-out for signs, convinced herself that her guest was restless, and earned off Millie. Fanny, left to herself, wandered about the house, and peeped over the stairs when a hesitating ring sounded, declaring that it must be his.
“He cannot even ring like other people, he turns it into an apology,” she cried, angry with every shortcoming. But when only a card followed the ring she grew uneasy, beginning to fear she knew not what, wandered on the landing, watched from the balcony. “This living?—he is in the tortures of doubt; so am I. It would make all the difference; perhaps provide him with a tongue, at least give me an excuse. An excuse! Now, Fanny the coward, Fanny the worldly”—she scourged herself with scorn—“what excuse do you want? You know him—that he is worth a hundred of those butterfly nonentities who are suggested as appropriate husbands—yet you have not the courage of your convictions.” Then, with a laugh, she relented from her fierceness. “When the courage of convictions includes something extremely like having to offer oneself, one may be forgiven hesitation—”
At this point Mr Elliot was announced, and Fanny coloured as furiously as if she had been caught in the act she was contemplating. She even descended to an untruth by implication of surprise.
“You are the most surprising person! Who would have expected you to be still in London!”
“Did you think I had left?”
Mr Elliot was no longer shy, and his look, fixed on hers, was as frank and open as a child’s. Lady Fanny fidgeted, and confessed—
“No, no, I did not.”
“I could not have gone without seeing you. Do you recollect what I said I wanted?” Fanny nodded, and remarked that it could only be a question of what he wished himself.
“Scarcely that,” he said, without looking at her. “But circumstances have forced me into decision without asking your advice.”
She leant forward eagerly.
“I am very glad. I hope you asked nobody. Why should you hesitate? It was offered to you because you were the best man. The best man should have it. Yes, I am glad, for it shows that they can appreciate—”
She stopped, fearing to have said too much. He fingered a paper-knife on the table, and eyed the floor. When he spoke, it was with a certain stiffness.
“I shall always be sensible of the kindness—the undeserved kindness. It has made me more ashamed of my own failures than ever before—”
“Oh, no,” cried Lady Fanny, happy enough to jest once more, “I forbid your growing more retiring. Go on, please, go on; never mind the failures. I dare say your letter of acceptance was as full of apologies as if you were a fraud.”
“I—I—” he became nervous again, but recovered himself. “I have refused.”
“Refused!” Her voice was tragic.
“I could do nothing else.”
“Why, why? What possessed you!”
“There was another.”
“Another? What other?” She grew ashamed of her eagerness, and sat back in her chair trying to look unconcerned. “Of course I have no right to ask.”
This roused him. He looked at her like a man who had been struck. “You are the one, the only person—forgive me, I don’t know what I am saving.”
She looked away. “If you were kindly to explain what you have done, and why?”
“Yes, yes, I came here to do so. When—when I had seen you on Monday night, I thought—I fancied—yes, I determined to accept the offer. There seemed no reason against it, except the doubt whether I should not be filling the place of another man who would be better fitted. But—one may carry that fear too far—”
Fanny played with a flower. “Is it possible!”
“I thought so,” he said humbly. “The offer came unsought, and it did not appear to me that I should be right to reject it until to-day. To-day I had a letter.”
“From the Duke?”
“No. From the wife of a man who, it appears, hoped to have had the living.”
“Men hope easily.”
“He had grounds. The Duke replied to him that if he had not offered it already to me, he should have been glad to have assisted him.”
“He had applied for it! What becomes of your scruples in such a case?”
“They belong only to myself. Heaven forbid that I should judge a man who has worked on a pittance, and is saddled with half-a-dozen children.”
“Oh, of course!” cried Lady Fanny pettishly. “I wanted to hear that conclusion. Are you certain there are only six?” He went on, unheeding.
“There can be no doubt that he wants it more. And he is a good man. I know him. He will work the parish well.”
“Pray, are you aware that the Duke never offers a second living to a man who has refused one?”
“I should not expect it.”
“And you do not care! It is nothing to you that—”
So far Fanny’s words rushed, then she suddenly stopped and crimsoned. He drew a hard breath, and was silent, and with him silence said more than speech. She interpreted it as a declaration that he knew what he was renouncing.
After what seemed to her a long time she forced herself to say—
“Have you absolutely decided?”
“I could do nothing else. You—you disapprove?”
“I? It concerns yourself only.”
“Yes—of course!”
He sighed and stood up. Lady Fanny’s foot impatiently patted the carpet. She turned her head away, and remarked that he had probably consulted his friends before making a wreck of his prospects.
“There is no one to consult,” he returned. “If my father had lived, he, I think, would have bid me do as I am doing. It has helped me, to remember that.”
“I don’t think you appear to require consolation,” said Fanny airily, and hated herself for her cruelty. She used it as a spur, wanting him to say more, but he only answered—
“One should not.”
“You prefer to be a curate all your life?”
“Prefer? No. I am dishonest if I give you that impression, but in this case there was nothing else to be done.”
“I wonder how many people would have thought so! Well, as I have said more than once, you must please yourself. For the sake of a man whom you have never seen, and on account of a few quixotic scruples, you give up your own advancement, and disappoint all—all your friends.”
The words were indignant, but the voice trembled. He made a step towards her, checked himself, and drew back. The hand with which he grasped a chair tightened its hold as he said slowly—
“Try to think of me kindly.”
“You go back to Huntsdon?”
“For a time, a short time. Afterwards I shall look out for work in London.”
“Oh!”
She turned away her head, then, as he offered his hand, remarked, “You will not stay to tea?”
He would not. Something was murmured of an appointment, and before she quite realised that he had said good-bye, she heard the front door slam. She flew to the window only to see a black back disappearing, rushed up to her room, bolted the door, and sobbed on her bed, scolding herself the while. “He has behaved splendidly as usual, and I not a good word to throw him when I love him better than ever. I would not have had him do differently, no, not for all the livings in England, but I haven’t the grace to say so, and have sent the poor fellow away with a sore heart. What does Milborough’s opinion matter? In a year I can do as I like, marry a chimney-sweep, I suppose, if it pleases me, with only a chorus of protesting uncles and aunts to fear. Be honest, you stupid little thing, and own that it is your own pride, your own odious contemptible pride which stood in your way! For Lady Fanny Enderby to marry a curate without prospects, for no better reason than that he is a good man, and she loves him, when all the while, only a finger lifted, and there you have a budding Duke at her feet, certainly not the best of men, and certainly not beloved!”
To be fair, she trotted out this youth before her judgment, and tried to credit him with what virtues might charitably be hoped to be his. Opposite, she set up John Elliot, at his pinkest, when she thought she hated him, and looked at the pair with coldly discriminative eyes. To the eye, goodness would have kicked the beam, but that her heart flung its weight into the balance, and was big enough to carry the day. She sat up, sighed, bathed her eyes, and dismissed the young lord, frankly owning that she wished he and the other could have changed places. Heigh-ho! and the worst of it was, that after that day he might have no more to say to her.
When Mrs Ravenhill and Millie came home, Lady Fanny sat with her back to the light, and asked questions with an immense show of interest. She laughed immoderately over the slenderest materials for mirth, avoiding allusion to her own visitor until suddenly dragging in the subject.
“By the way there has been a visitor—Mr Elliot.”
“His card is down-stairs,” said Mrs Ravenhill. “You saw him?”
“Saw, and quarrelled with him.”
“Why?”
“He came to London to accept a living, and some man’s wife has written to say she wants it for her husband.”
“Well?”
“You needn’t ask,” said Lady Fanny, with asperity, “or, you wouldn’t need to ask if you knew Mr Elliot. Of course he means to hand over the offer to him.”
There was silence, then Mrs Ravenhill said gently—
“I think your Mr Elliot must be a very fine fellow, Fanny, and I’m beginning to be proud of knowing him.”
“That’s the only pride left to me.” She broke down, and buried her face in a sofa cushion. Millie was by her side in a moment, with her hand in both hers.
“Dearest, clearest Fanny!”
“Idiotic Fanny!—Say anything you like—Nothing would be foolish enough.—And I do detest shy men”—with a gasp between each sentence, and a laugh at the end.
Mrs Ravenhill slipped out of the room.
“There! Now I have spoilt your mother’s tea.”
“She had finished. Fanny, tell me, are you going to marry him?”
“Oh, I suppose so,”—sighing. The next moment she had pushed Millie aside, started up, and stared blankly at her friend. “Good gracious!”
“What is it?” cried Millie in alarm.
“I had forgotten! He has never asked me. Isn’t that necessary?”
“Perhaps words aren’t necessary?”
“Oh, they are—unfortunately—for now nothing will ever work him up to say them. I’m not sure that he could have done it with a living at his back, but now, not a word! Martyrdom, self-denial, all the discomforts of life! Perhaps if I were to have small-pox, or to tumble into the fire and be horribly scarred—otherwise!—Oh, Millie, when you fall in love, avoid excellence. The inconvenience of it!”
Millie murmured something consolatory, but Fanny broke in with a quick shake of the head.
“My dear, I know all you’re feeling, wondering what I find in him to like—attraction of opposites, isn’t there such an expression? There ought to be. I don’t expect you to sympathise, I only ask one thing.”
“Anything!” Millie kissed her.
“Don’t call him worthy. That’s what they’ll all do, I know, those of them who try to approve. ‘Fanny has chosen a very worthy man.’ To hear that, I really believe would make me hate him.”
She had the promise. Satisfied on this point, she began to talk about him, his simplicity, earnestness, unworldliness. “So unlike us all. And now, what he has just done, though it has driven me distracted, isn’t it splendid? Tell me, do you know any other man who would be so disinterested?”
Challenged, Millie flung a mental glance at Wareham, but finding it impossible to set the two men side by side, signified her admiration, thinking it unnecessary to allude to its qualifications. After Fanny had glorified her idol for a little, she fell back upon the difficulty. He would never, never propose. What was to be done? Somebody must move.
“Somebody must,” Millie acknowledged. “Can’t he take a hint?”
“Never.”
“Would you like mother to write?”
“And get her into a scrape with Milborough and all of them? No.”
“She might ask him to luncheon—to breakfast?”
“He would arrive at eight. Besides—oh, no, no!”
Her head was buried again. When she lifted it, it was to remark—
“The morning is so cold-blooded! If there was only some excuse!”
“I dare say mother has a paper to be signed before a clergyman,” said Millie hopefully. “And they’re all taking holidays. I’ll go and see.”
Fanny called anxiously after her—“Not a word of me!”
Reluctantly Mrs Ravenhill consented, though she declined to offer the bait of a signature. She felt that Fanny’s love must be real, since it could not have sprung from imaginary causes.
“And the man is a gentleman,” she said.
Millie sighed and owned amazement.
“So that no one has really the right to object. I have long wished her to marry, and her own heart is more to be trusted than Milborough. He shall be asked to luncheon, and shall have his opportunity. Whether he’ll take it!”
This communicated to Fanny by Millie, she was dolefully certain that he would not come.
“Don’t you think he may read encouragement?”
“Dear man, yes! But he’ll think himself bound to quash encouragement. And if he should come, and turns pink—I shall inevitably be cross. This is your doing, Millie! I’ll—”
She threatened.
“What?”
“Do the same for you some day.”
There was a pause before the answer came, and Fanny prophesied disaster. At first he had left London; when that idea was abandoned it was for the certainty that she had so disgusted him at the last interview that he would have no more to do with her.
“The more right I thought him, the more disagreeable I became. My dear, depend upon it, he is blessing his stars for his escape. And his mind once made up, no little inveiglements of luncheon will move him. Millie, what possessed me to be such a wretch?”
Her presentiments were unfounded. Mr Elliot wrote to accept, and Fanny’s mood varied between mirth which sparkled sometimes through tears, and a dignity which her friends found comic. When he arrived, she was in her room. Millie went to fetch her, and was told that it was no use, she should not come down.
“Two shy people will be ridiculously unmanageable, and you shan’t be saddled with them. Besides, I suppose he is roseately triumphant?”
A happy inspiration made Millie assure her that he looked as if he had not slept for a week. Lady Fanny fidgeted.
“Absurd!”
“I only answer your question.”
“Well, go. I will see about it. But don’t expect me,” she called after her, warningly.
Luncheon was announced before she appeared, with dignity in the ascendant. She hardly glanced at Mr Elliot, and her embarrassment was greater than his, for he carried the look of a man who had been through the worst, and has nothing to fear. Ice all round and about. Mrs Ravenhill and Millie made heroic efforts to warm the chilly atmosphere, but do what they would, it enveloped them Fanny without a tongue had changed to lead and to a stranger.
The dreary meal ended, Mrs Ravenhill rose. “Millie and Fanny will take you up-stairs, Mr Elliot,” she said, “for I have to go out.” Up spoke Fanny.
“Mayn’t I come with you?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs Ravenhill, provoked. Then, to her amazement, Mr Elliot’s voice was heard.
“There is something I should be glad of an opportunity of saying, if Lady Fanny could give me five minutes.”
And, “Certainly she will,” interposed Mrs Ravenhill again. “The drawing-room is at your service. Come, Millie.”
Fanny’s feet dragged all the way up-stairs. She marched into the drawing-room, and sat stiffly on a seat by the window; tried to say something jesting, and failed. All that she got out was—
“Well?”
“Forgive me if I speak of my own feelings. It is for the first and last time,” he said hurriedly.
A slight movement of her head.
“I—I am quite aware that they have no excuse, except in the law of our nature; one must love what is lovable, however wide the distance. Your kindness, your sweetness—”
His voice shook, but he controlled it, and she was aware of the effort. “I don’t want to talk of anything except just to tell you what, even with the gap between us hopelessly widening, I think you should know. If I could have fairly accepted this living, without harming another man, I had a wild dream of trying whether my love could have won some crumb of hope. I would have waited years, a lifetime, but I meant to try to win your heart at last. That is at an end. Since I have been in town I have made inquiries—to stay at Huntsdon would be impossible—I—I am not strong enough—I have accepted an offer of work in London. Forgive me for troubling you. It seemed to me that this much I might say. You may trust to my giving you no more annoyance. I am very grateful to you for letting me speak.”
He stood looking down upon her, and all Fanny’s composure had returned, and with it her powers of teasing. She leaned back in the chair, and glanced up at him with a wicked smile in her eyes.
“Oh, don’t thank me. If you only knew how glad I am to hear your plans!”
“They please you?”
She evaded the question.
“I admire your rapidity. It is all settled then? Perhaps you don’t return to Huntsdon at all?”
“It is necessary until my successor comes.” He spoke quietly, but his face was that of a man braced to meet strokes. Suddenly he put out his hand. “Good-bye, Lady Fanny.” She rose, without taking his hand, and leaned against the window.
“You have decided so much that I should like to know if you have fixed upon a house?”
“A house? Where? In London?”
“In your new parish, of course.”
“I have not thought of it.”
“And that’s lucky,” she said, with a smile which sent his head spinning.
“Why?” The word broke from him.
“I should hate a house I did not choose for myself.”
“You!—Fanny!” He made a step nearer, but checked himself, gripping the back of a chair, and breathing the words—“You are cruel!”
She darted a look at him.
“Do you want me to retract?”
He became incoherent.
“You—you know I daren’t think of what I want—”
“You might.”
“Fanny!”
She leaned forward a little, her lips curved into a smile.
“Well?”
For answer he caught her to him with a cry, and another “Fanny!”
When she was released, she put an anxious question.
“Tell me the truth. It was really you who proposed?”
But he had grown audacious.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal, for I had been screwing myself up to do it, in case you were too shy, but I really believe it would have killed me. Didn’t you see how uncomfortable I was?”
“I, you mean. I was wretched.”
“Cool enough to speak. And of course when you said that if only this and that had happened, you would have asked me to marry you, it was exactly the same as asking me to do it now.”
“Was it?” His tone was blissful. Then a cloud swept over him. “Poverty—can you face it?”
Lady Fanny shook her head dolefully. He stepped back.
“No? But I am poor. No, of course not. I have been very wrong.”
She put her hand shyly on his arm.
“Dear, we shan’t be poor, unless—” Her smile returned. “What do you call poverty?”
“I suppose we ought to have some hundreds a year?” he said, with gloom.
“Oh, more.”
“More? Then indeed I have done wrongly. My income will not reach four.”
Her tone mimicked his.
“And you give away three-quarters. You must be the worst match in the country.”
“Oh no,” he said simply. “Till now I always thought that I was rather rich. But I see now that of course you want more—coming from Thorpe and its luxuries, and—I am ashamed at my selfishness.”
“I don’t wonder. But let us see. You know I have something.”
“Have you? Enough to give you a little of what you have been accustomed to?”
“That, and a few pounds over for you, which you may spend on beef-tea and flannel.” The murmurs which followed were incoherent. Lady Fanny said afterwards to Millie—
“For pity’s sake, let no one tell him I have three thousand a year. If he doesn’t fly from England in dismay, he will want me to build two or three cathedrals at least. And now to prepare for the family wrath. At any rate Milborough can’t say much. He should have taken me to Norway.”