A PROPOSAL
A sleety rain was falling, but, despite the cold, St. Quentin’s couch was
drawn up close beneath the mullioned windows of the library, from which
he could look out upon the green expanse of Park and the mighty trees,
which had seen generations of his family reign their reign at the great
old Castle, and die.
The present owner’s face was sad enough, as he gazed out on the splendid
prospect, beautiful even in the bareness of winter and the dreariness of
rain.
At his elbow lay an invalid writing-desk and a sheet of paper, on which
the words were written: “Dear Fane—Cut the timber from....” He had gone
no further, though he had started that letter to his agent when Sir
Algernon had left him an hour ago.
A sentence kept rising up before him whenever he took up his pen to
write, a sentence which, though spoken more than five years ago, was
fresh as though he heard it yesterday.
“_We’ve never let the timber go, my boy._”
Yes, he remembered that his father had paid his, St. Quentin’s, debts
by care and economy, but without sacrificing any of the splendid trees,
which were the pride of the county. “_We’ve never let the timber go, my
boy._” He turned his head with an impatient sigh and flung the paper down
again, staring from the rain-washed window gloomily.
As he looked aimlessly enough, something crossed his line of vision that
made him start into a sudden interest and life.
Two ladies, wrapped in waterproofs and wrestling with refractory
umbrellas, passed beneath his window, carrying a large basket. In spite
of sleet and rain they walked fast as though in a hurry, and quickly
disappeared amid the trees, though not before Sydney’s cousin had
recognised the scarlet tam-o’-shanter and long tail of refractory brown
hair, blown every way.
“What on earth can the child be thinking of to go out on such an
afternoon!” St. Quentin said to himself, and he rang sharply for Dickson.
“Where has Miss Lisle gone?”
“I will enquire, my lord.”
The servant vanished, but returned in a few minutes with the
information—“Miss Lisle and Miss Osric have gone down to the village,
my lord. Miss Lisle holds a sewing meeting for the village women on two
afternoons a week, my lord.”
St. Quentin considered this information, then enquired, “Is Lady
Frederica in?”
“I will enquire, my lord.”
“If she is disengaged, ask if she could spare me five minutes.”
Dickson withdrew, and shortly afterwards Lady Frederica tripped in,
looking as though she considered somebody very much to blame for the
dreariness of the afternoon.
“Aunt Rica,” said her nephew, “did you know of this preposterous idea of
Sydney’s—teaching old women to sew or something, on a beastly afternoon
like this?”
“Oh, yes, she asked my leave to do something of the kind,” Lady Frederica
answered, with a yawn. “She said something, I remember, about the people
being poor and miserable here, and wanting to help them, and you having
told her you could do nothing. All she wanted was to do something or
another for the women—I forget what—but I know it did not seem to me
likely to damage her figure or complexion. Oh, I see, you don’t like it,
but girls _will_ amuse themselves, St. Quentin, and slumming is quite
_the_ last thing, you know!”
A remembrance of the girl’s earnest face as they talked on Christmas Day
came over her cousin. How keen the child had been over the rebuilding of
those cottages, which were a disgrace to him, he knew, and not the only
blot by a long way on the great St. Quentin estates. So that was why
she wished to change her watch. Why on earth couldn’t he have seen, and
given her the money, instead of leaving her to sacrifice her own little
treasures for the benefit of his tenants! Having failed to persuade him
to do his duty by them, she was trying, with the little means she had, to
do it for him. He crushed that unfinished letter to his agent impatiently
between his fingers. The order he had been about to give him became if
possible more distasteful than it had been before. How _could_ he cut
off all chance of doing something for his wretched tenants! And yet—and
yet—what else was left for him to do but write?
“Well, St. Quentin, if you don’t want me any more I’ll go back to my
novel,” Lady Frederica said with another yawn. “You’re most depressing
company, my dear boy; almost as depressing as the weather!”
“Thanks awfully for coming,” he said absently. She turned to leave him;
as she did so her eye fell upon the crumpled paper on the floor.
“St. Quentin,” she cried sharply, “you’re _not_ telling Mr. Fane to cut
down timber, are you? Gracious, what would your poor dear father have
said!”
“What I feel,” he said bitterly, “that it’s a very good thing my reign is
near its end.... Don’t stay if you’d rather not, Aunt Rica.”
She was by no means unwilling to leave him for the more cheerful company
of a novel in her own private sitting-room, where the fire was bright and
the chairs very comfortable. Left once more to himself, he snatched up
a pen, took a fresh sheet of paper, and began again, “Dear Fane”; then
paused.
Sydney’s words on Christmas Day kept rising up before him, instead of
those which he meant to write.
“_Can you do nothing for the cottages?_”
“Nothing,” he said half aloud; “and yet—she thought me brave!”
His letter had progressed no further when Dickson came in an hour
later, as the short winter’s afternoon drew towards its close. With an
exclamation at the cold, the man wheeled his master’s couch to the fire,
which he stirred noiselessly into a blaze, brought him some tea, and lit
his reading-lamp.
“Miss Lisle in yet?” asked St. Quentin.
“I will enquire, my lord.” This was Dickson’s almost invariable answer.
“Miss Lisle has not yet returned, my lord,” he informed St. Quentin after
a voyage in search of her.
“Ask her to come to me when she does.”
“Yes, my lord.” Dickson closed the door softly, and St. Quentin was left
alone. He made no attempt to go on with his letter, but stared idly in
the fire, listening intently. In about ten minutes the door opened and
Sir Algernon strolled in.
“You!” said St. Quentin, in a tone which was not expressive of the
keenest pleasure.
“Yes, I, old man. I want to talk to you. By the way, have you sent that
note to Fane about the timber?”
“No.”
“You haven’t?”
“No; the truth is, Bridge, I’m getting rather sick of this blackmailing
business.”
“You are?” Sir Algernon surveyed the weary, impatient face in silence
for a minute. “I wonder if you’d like to try another tack,” he suggested
softly. “I’ve had a good deal of cash out of you one way and another, and
now you’re—er—er——”
“Dying,” his host supplied the word.
“Well, going to send in your checks some time pretty soon, I suppose?”
Sir Algernon amended. “Look here, I know the estate’s heavily encumbered
and all that, but I’m not a mercenary man, and the girl’s pretty——”
“Of whom are you speaking?”
“Why, Sydney.”
“Kindly leave her name alone: we’re not talking of her.”
“Aren’t we? You’re a bit out, old chap. What I have to say _does_ concern
her, as it happens. What do you say to this, Quin? I’ll give my word not
to squeeze you further, and, what’s more, I’ll burn a certain letter
that we know of here—before your eyes—if you’ll swear to make a match
between that little girl and me. You won’t have opposition to contend
with, I imagine. She’s too much of a child to have any violent fancies
elsewhere, especially since you and Lady Frederica between you choked off
the chemist’s assistant. I’d have made running with a bit myself this
last fortnight, only she’s always about in cottages and accompanied by
the governess. The combination is a little too much for me to swallow,
specially when the cottages are _yours_, my dear chap. So I’ll leave you
to do the courting for me, since she evidently looks on you _in loco
parentis_. Eh, if she knew a little more about you she wouldn’t be so
keen to pin her faith upon you, would she?”
“Have you any more to say?” enquired St. Quentin.
“No—I think that’s about all. You won’t be altogether sorry to save your
timber, eh, Quin?”
“Not on your terms, thank you, Bridge.”
“Eh, what? Oh! you don’t believe I have the letter; there it is.”
He pulled out two or three envelopes from a pocket-book. “That’s it,” he
said, “inside that thumbed grey envelope; the other is the letter that
you wrote me before settling to pay up—talking a lot of high faluting
about expecting me to believe your innocence for the sake of auld lang
syne, etc., as if I should be such a fool!”
“Destroy that letter, anyhow,” St. Quentin said, his thin hands
clenching. “It’s a bit of a mockery to keep it now. I still believed in
you more or less when I wrote it, you see.”
Sir Algernon laughed easily. “You were always a bit of a fool, Quin, from
Eton days onwards. As you say, I may as well get rid of this precious
production of yours. There’s not much sentiment left nowadays about our
intercourse with one another, is there? and I’ve nearly muddled it with
the jockey’s before now. Here goes!—Stop, let me just make sure I’ve
got the right one; yes, that’s it, the cream-coloured envelope with ‘Re
Quin’ on the back. Aren’t I a model man of business, eh? There goes your
letter to me into the flames, old chap, and yours to Duncombe back into
my pocket-book until you choose to have it follow suit!”
“I don’t choose.”
“What?”
“I reject most absolutely your proposal, thank you. I’ve been a fool and
worse, but I’m not quite the cad that comes to. I’d sooner see her marry
that young Chichester!”
Sir Algernon’s face wore no very amiable expression. “Is that your final
answer?” he said.
“It is.”
“You _don’t_ mean to help me marry Sydney?”
“No, and what’s more, I don’t intend to have you in the Castle any
longer. You’re not fit to associate with a girl like that. The
Chichesters have brought her up the right way, anyhow, and I don’t intend
to have you with her any longer. You must go—and—how much do you ask for
destroying Duncombe’s letter, for good and all? I won’t have the child
blackmailed when I’m gone. You must destroy the letter in my sight this
time. How much payment do you want to do what any decent chap would have
done long ago?”
An ugly look was on the handsome face before him. “You’ll have to pay
this time, my boy,” Sir Algernon said slowly; “well, rather heavily.”
“How much?”
Sir Algernon, without moving from his lounging posture in the arm-chair,
named a sum which made St. Quentin start with indignation.
“You are well aware I can’t pay that, or half it!” he cried.
“Well, don’t, then! I daresay Miss Lisle will be a little less stingy,
when she comes of age, and I enquire if she would like the letter
published.”
St. Quentin’s hands clenched over one another.
“Don’t be such a fool, old chap,” his companion said, rising and coming
close to him. “I don’t really want to be hard upon you. Give me your word
you’ll manage the match, and I’ll destroy the letter on the spot, and,
what’s more, turn over a new leaf as well. You needn’t be afraid she
won’t be happy—I’ll reform when I marry that little girl.”
“Have done with Sydney, please. I’d sooner see her dead than married to
you!”
“Pay up, then,” sneered Sir Algernon.
“_Can you do nothing for the cottages?_”
“_We’ve never let the timber go, my boy._”
“_Can you do nothing for the cottages?_”
Without answering Sir Algernon, St. Quentin seized pen and paper, and
began again—
“DEAR FANE—
“Cut the timber from....”
The knock at the door was unheard by both, and neither noticed Sydney’s
entrance.
She had changed her wet clothes, but her hair hung straight and damp
about her face. The face itself was bright with exercise, and looked a
strange contrast to the faces of the two men in the lamp-lit library.
“You sent for me?” she said, going straight up to her cousin.
“Yes, dear, but it doesn’t matter now,” he said. “Go back to Miss Osric.”
She looked at him. “You are very tired, St. Quentin! Let me write that
letter for you.”
She laid her hand upon the desk. “You ought not to be bothered with
letters when you are so tired, and,” with a reproachful glance at Sir
Algernon, “I am _sure_ that you ought not to talk business any longer.”
“It’s not the talking which has tired him, Miss Lisle,” said Sir
Algernon; “it’s the thought of something rather disagreeable he must do,
unless you care to save him from it!”
“Hold your tongue, Bridge!” said St. Quentin, but Sydney had already made
a quick step towards Sir Algernon.
“Will you tell me, please, what I can do to save my cousin’s trouble?”
she said simply. “I would do anything I could for him.”
[Illustration: “‘I do not believe one word you say against my cousin!’”
(Page 195)]
“Sydney!” cried St. Quentin hoarsely, but Sir Algernon had sprung forward
and caught the girl’s hands in his. “Sydney! would you? Shall I tell
you?”
Her cousin’s voice behind her made her start; it was so full of
concentrated fury. “Let her go, you scoundrel! Sydney, leave the room,
dear; that man isn’t fit to speak to you!”
She pulled her hands away, and stood between the two, trembling from
head to foot. Sir Algernon lost in his anger the last vestige of his
self-control.
“If I’m unfit to speak to her, what are you, St. Quentin?” he snarled. “A
cheat—a liar—a trickster—a——”
“How dare you!” Sydney cried, flinging herself on her knees beside her
cousin’s couch as though to protect him. “Leave the room, please!”
“You wouldn’t cling about him if you knew what I know. What everybody
else shall shortly know!” Sir Algernon said between his teeth. “He is——”
Sydney had left childhood behind her as she faced him with clear,
scornful eyes that met his fearlessly.
“You need not trouble to say any more,” she said, “for I do not believe
one word that you say against my Cousin St. Quentin!”
In the stillness that followed a footman knocked and came in with a
something on a salver. “A telegram for Sir Algernon, my lord,” he said.
Sir Algernon tore it open and read it, changing colour as he did so, then
crumpled it and tossed it into the very heart of the blazing fire. “I
have to write an answer for the post,” he said. “Au revoir, Quin; we’ll
finish our talk when reluctantly deprived of Miss Lisle’s society. Miss
Lisle, if you still doubt what I said about St. Quentin, ask _him_ what I
meant. _He_ knows.”
He went out hurriedly.