VAL'S DILEMMA.
It was a mild day in spring. The air was balmy, but the skies were grey
and lowering; and as a gentleman strolled across a field adjoining
Hartledon Park he looked up at them more than once, as if asking whether
they threatened rain.
Not that he had any great personal interest in the question. Whether the
skies gave forth sunshine or rain is of little moment to a mind not at
rest. He had only looked up in listlessness. A stranger might have taken
him at a distance for a gamekeeper: his coat was of velveteen; his boots
were muddy: but a nearer inspection would have removed the impression.
It was Lord Hartledon; but changed since you last saw him. For some time
past there had been a worn, weary look upon his face, bespeaking a mind
ill at ease; the truth is, his conscience was not at rest, and in time
that tells on the countenance.
He had been by the fish-pond for an hour. But the fish had not shown
themselves inclined to bite, and he grew too impatient to remain.
Not altogether impatient at the wary fish, but in his own mental
restlessness. The fishing-rod was carried in his hand in pieces; and he
splashed along, in a brown study, on the wet ground, flinging himself
over the ha-ha with an ungracious movement. Some one was approaching
across the park from the house, and Lord Hartledon walked on to a gate,
and waited there for him to come up. He began beating the bars with the
thin end of the rod, and--broke it!
"That's the way you use your fishing-rods," cried the free, pleasant
voice of the new-comer. "I shouldn't mind being appointed purveyor of
tackle to your lordship."
The stranger was an active little man, older than Hartledon; his features
were thin, his eyes dark and luminous. I think you have heard his
name--Thomas Carr. Lord Hartledon once called him the greatest friend he
possessed on earth. He had been wont to fly to him in his past dilemmas,
and the habit was strong upon him still. A mandate that would have been
peremptory, but for the beseeching terms in which it was couched, had
reached Mr. Carr on circuit; and he had hastened across country to obey
it, reaching Hartledon the previous evening. That something was wrong,
Mr. Carr of course was aware; but what, he did not yet know. Lord
Hartledon, with his natural vacillation, his usual shrinking from the
discussion of unpleasant topics relating to himself, had not entered upon
it at all on the previous night; and when breakfast was over that
morning, Mr. Carr had craved an hour alone for letter-writing. It was the
first time Mr. Carr had visited his friend at his new inheritance; indeed
the first time he had been at all at Hartledon. Lord Hartledon seated
himself on the gate; the barrister leaned his arms on the top bar whilst
he talked to him.
"What is the matter?" asked the latter.
"Not much."
"I have finished my letters, so I came out to look for you. You are not
changed, Elster."
"What should change me in so short a time?--it's only six months since
you last saw me," retorted Hartledon, curtly.
"I alluded to your nature. I had to worm the troubles out of you in the
old days, each one as it arose. I see I shall have to do the same now.
Don't say there's not much the matter, for I am sure there is."
Lord Hartledon jerked his handkerchief out of his pocket, passed it over
his face, and put it back again.
"What fresh folly have you got into?--as I used to ask you at Oxford. You
are in some mess."
"I suppose it's of no use denying that I am in one. An awful mess, too."
"Well, I have pulled you out of many a one in my time. Let me hear it."
"There are some things one does not like to talk about, Carr. I sent for
you in my perplexity; but I believe you can be of no use to me."
"So you have said before now. But it generally turned out that I was of
use to you, and cleared you from your nightmare."
"All those were minor difficulties; this is different."
"I cannot understand your 'not liking' to speak of things to me. Why
don't you begin?"
"Because I shall prove myself worse than a fool. You'll despise me to
your heart's core. Carr, I think I shall go mad!"
"Tell me the cause first, and go mad afterwards. Come, Val; I am your
true friend."
"I have made an offer of marriage to two women," said Hartledon,
desperately plunging into the revelation. "Never was such a born idiot
in the world as I have been. I can't marry both."
"I imagine not," quietly replied Mr. Carr.
"You knew I was engaged to Miss Ashton?"
"Yes."
"And I'm sure I loved her with all my"--he seemed to hesitate for a
strong term--"might and main; and do still. But I have managed to get
into mischief elsewhere."
"Elster's folly, as usual. What sort of mischief?"
"The worst sort, for there can be no slipping out of it. When that fever
broke out at Doctor Ashton's--you heard us talking of it last night,
Carr--I went to the Rectory just as usual. What did I care for fever?--it
was not likely to attack me. But the countess-dowager found it out--"
"Why do they stay here so long?" interrupted Thomas Carr. "They have been
here ever since your brother died."
"And before it. The old woman likes her quarters, and has no settled
home. She makes a merit of stopping, and says I ought to feel under
eternal obligation to her and Maude for sacrificing themselves to a
solitary man and his household. But you should have heard the uproar
she made upon discovering I had been to the Rectory. She had my room
fumigated and my clothes burnt."
"Foolish old creature!"
"The best of it was, I pointed out by mistake the wrong coat, and
the offending one is upstairs now. I shall show it her some day. She
reproached me with holding her life and her daughter's dirt-cheap, and
wormed a promise out of me not to visit the Rectory as long as fever was
in it."
"Which you gave?"
"She wormed it out of me, I tell you. I don't know that I should have
kept it, but Dr. Ashton put in his veto also; and between the two I was
kept away. For many weeks afterwards I never saw or spoke to Anne. She
did not come out at all, even to church; they were so anxious the fever
should not spread."
"Well? Go on, Val."
"Well: how does that proverb run, about idleness being the root of all
evil? During those weeks I was an idle man, wretchedly bored; and I fell
into a flirtation with Maude. She began it, Carr, on my solemn word of
honour--though it's a shame to tell these tales of a woman; and I joined
in from sheer weariness, to kill time. But you know how one gets led on
in such things--or I do, if you, you cautious fellow, don't--and we both
went in pretty deep."
"Elster's folly again! How deep?"
"As deep as I well could, short of committing myself to a proposal. You
see the ill-luck of it was, those two and I being alone in the house. I
may as well say Maude and I alone; for the old woman kept her room very
much; she had a cold, she said, and was afraid of the fever."
"Tush!" cried Thomas Carr angrily. "And you made love to the young lady?"
"As fast as I could make it. What a fool I was! But I protest I only did
it in amusement; I never thought of her supplanting Anne Ashton. Now,
Carr, you are looking as you used to look at Oxford; get your brow smooth
again. You just shut up yourself for weeks with a fascinating girl, and
see if you wouldn't find yourself in some horrible entanglement, proof
against such as you think you are."
"As I am obliged to be. I should take care not to lay myself open to the
temptation. Neither need you have done it."
"I don't see how I was to help myself. Often and often I wished to have
visitors in the house, but the old woman met me with reproaches that I
was forgetting the recent death of my brother. She won't have any one now
if she knows it, and I had to send for you quietly. Did you see how she
stared last night when you came in?"
Mr. Carr drew down his lips. "You might have gone away yourself, Elster."
"Of course I might," was the testy reply. "But I was a fool, and didn't.
Carr, I swear to you I fell into the trap unconsciously; I did not
foresee danger. Maude is a charming girl, there's no denying it; but
as to love, I never glanced at it."
"Was it not suspected in town last year that Lady Maude had a liking for
your brother?"
"It was suspected there and here; I thought it myself. We were mistaken.
One day lately Maude offended me, and I hinted at something of the sort:
she turned red and white with indignation, saying she wished he could
rise from his grave to refute it. I only wish he could!" added the
unhappy man.
"Have you told me all?"
"All! I wish I had. In December I was passing the Rectory, and saw it
dismantled. Hillary, whom I met, said the family had gone to Ventnor. I
went in, but could not learn any particulars, or get the address. I
chanced a letter, written I confess in anger, directing it Ventnor only,
and it found them. Anne's answer was cool: mischief-making tongues had
been talking about me and Maude; I learned so much from Hillary; and Anne
no doubt resented it. I resented that--can you follow me, Carr?--and I
said to myself I wouldn't write again for some time to come. Before that
time came the climax had occurred."
"And while you were waiting for your temper to come round in regard to
Miss Ashton, you continued to make love to the Lady Maude?" remarked Mr.
Carr. "On the face of things, I should say your love had been transferred
to her."
"Indeed it hadn't. Next to Anne, she's the most charming girl I know;
that's all. Between the two it will be awful work for me."
"So I should think," returned Mr. Carr. "The ass between two bundles of
hay was nothing to it."
"He was not an ass at all, compared with what I am," assented Val,
gloomily.
"Well, if a man behaves like an ass--"
"Don't moralize," interrupted Hartledon; "but rather advise me how to get
out of my dilemma. The morning's drawing on, and I have promised to ride
with Maude."
"You had better ride alone. All the advice I can give you is to draw back
by degrees, and so let the flirtation subside. If there is no actual
entanglement--"
"Stop a bit, Carr; I had not come to it," interrupted Lord Hartledon, who
in point of fact had been holding back what he called the climax, in his
usual vacillating manner. "One ill-starred day, when it was pouring cats
and dogs, and I could not get out, I challenged Maude to a game at
billiards. Maude lost. I said she should pay me, and put my arm round her
waist and snatched a kiss. Just at that moment in came the dowager, who I
believe must have been listening--"
"Not improbably," interrupted Mr. Carr, significantly.
"'Oh, you two dear turtle-doves,' cried she, 'Hartledon, you have made me
so happy! I have seen for some weeks what you were thinking of. There's
nobody living I'd confide that dear child to but yourself: you shall have
her, and my blessing shall be upon you both.'
"Carr," continued poor Val, "I was struck dumb. All the absurdity of the
thing rose up before me. In my confusion I could not utter a word. A man
with more moral courage might have spoken out; acknowledged the shame and
folly of his conduct and apologized. I could not."
"Elster's folly! Elster's folly!" thought the barrister. "You never had
the slightest spark of moral courage," he observed aloud, in pained
tones. "What did you say?"
"Nothing. There's the worst of it. I neither denied the dowager's
assumption, nor confirmed it. Of course I cannot now."
"When was this?"
"In December."
"And how have things gone on since? How do you stand with them?"
"Things have gone on as they went on before; and I stand engaged to
Maude, in her mother's opinion; perhaps in hers: never having said myself
one word to support the engagement."
"Only continued to 'make love,' and 'snatch a kiss,'" sarcastically
rejoined Mr. Carr.
"Once in a way. What is a man to do, exposed to the witchery of a pretty
girl?"
"Oh, Percival! You are worse than I thought for. Where is Miss Ashton?"
"Coming home next Friday," groaned Val. "And the dowager asked me
yesterday whether Maude and I had arranged the time for our marriage.
What on earth I shall do, I don't know. I might sail for some remote land
and convert myself into a savage, where I should never be found or
recognized; there's no other escape for me."
"How much does Miss Ashton know of this?"
"Nothing. I had a letter from her this morning, more kindly than her
letters have been of late."
"Lord Hartledon!" exclaimed Mr. Carr, in startled tones. "Is it possible
that you are carrying on a correspondence with Miss Ashton, and your
love-making with Lady Maude?"
Val nodded assent, looking really ashamed of himself.
"And you call yourself a man of honour! Why, you are the greatest
humbug--"
"That's enough; no need to sum it up. I see all I've been."
"I understood you to imply that your correspondence with Miss Ashton had
ceased."
"It was renewed. Dr. Ashton came up to preach one Sunday, just before
Christmas, and he and I got friendly again; you know I never can be
unfriendly with any one long. The next day I wrote to Anne, and we have
corresponded since; more coolly though than we used to do. Circumstances
have been really against me. Had they continued at Ventnor, I should have
gone down and spent my Christmas with them, and nothing of this would
have happened; but they must needs go to Dr. Ashton's sister's in
Yorkshire for Christmas; and there they are still. It was in that
miserable Christmas week that the mischief occurred. And now you have
the whole, Carr. I know I've been a fool; but what is to be done?"
"Lord Hartledon," was the grave rejoinder, "I am unable to give you
advice in this. Your conduct is indefensible."
"Don't 'Lord Hartledon' me: I won't stand it. Carr?"
"Well?"
"If you bring up against me a string of reproaches lasting until night
will that mend matters? I am conscious of possessing but one true friend
in the world, and that's yourself. You must stand by me."
"I was your friend; never a truer. But I believed you to be a man of
honour."
Hartledon lifted his hat from his brow; as though the brow alone were
heavy enough just then. At least the thought struck Mr. Carr.
"I have been drawn unwittingly into this, as I have into other things. I
never meant to do wrong. As to dishonour, Heaven knows my nature shrinks
from it."
"If your nature does, you don't," came the severe answer. "I should feel
ashamed to put forth the same plea always of 'falling unwittingly' into
disgrace. You have done it ever since you were a schoolboy. Talk of the
Elster folly! this has gone beyond it. This is dishonour. Engaged to one
girl, and corresponding with her; making hourly love for weeks to
another! May I inquire which of the two you really care for?"
"Anne--I suppose."
"You suppose!"
"You make me wild, talking like this. Of course it's Anne. Maude has
managed to creep into my regard, though, in no common degree. She is very
lovely, very fascinating and amiable."
"May I ask which of the two you intend to marry!" continued the
barrister, neither suppressing nor attempting to soften his indignant
tones. "As this country's laws are against a plurality of wives, you will
be unable, I imagine, to espouse them both."
Hartledon looked at him, beseechingly, and a sudden compassion came over
Mr. Carr. He asked himself whether it was quite the way to treat a
perplexed man who was very dear to him.
"If I am severe, it is for your sake. I assure you I scarcely know what
advice to give. It is Miss Ashton, of course, whom you intend to make
Lady Hartledon?"
"Of course it is. The difficulty in the matter is getting clear of
Maude."
"And the formidable countess-dowager. You must tell Maude the truth."
"Impossible, Carr. I might have done it once; but the thing has gone on
so long. The dowager would devour me."
"Let her try to. I should speak to Maude alone, and put her upon her
generosity to release you. Tell her you presumed upon your cousinship;
and confess that you have long been engaged to marry Miss Ashton."
"She knows that: they have both known it all along. My brother was the
first to tell them, before he died."
"They knew it?" inquired Mr. Carr, believing he had not heard correctly.
"Certainly. There has been no secret made of my engagement to Anne. All
the world knows of that."
"Then--though I do not in the least defend or excuse you--your breaking
with Lady Maude may be more pardonable. They are poor, are they not, this
Dowager Kirton and Lady Maude?"
"Poor as Job. Hard up, I think."
"Then they are angling for the broad lands of Hartledon. I see it all.
You have been a victim to fortune-hunting."
"There you are wrong, Carr. I can't answer for the dowager one way or the
other; but Maude is the most disinterested--"
"Of course: girls on the look-out for establishments always are. Have it
as you like."
He spoke in tones of ridicule; and Hartledon jumped off the stile and led
the way home.
That Lord Hartledon had got himself into a very serious predicament, Mr.
Carr plainly saw. His good nature, his sensitive regard for the feelings
of others, rendering it so impossible for him to say no, and above all
his vacillating disposition, were his paramount characteristics still: in
a degree they ever would be. Easily led as ever, he was as a very reed
in the hands of the crafty old woman of the world, located with him. She
had determined that he should become the husband of her daughter; and was
as certain of accomplishing her end as if she had foreseen the future.
Lord Hartledon himself afterwards, in his bitter repentance, said, over
and over again, that circumstances were against him; and they certainly
were so, as you will find.
Lord Hartledon thought he was making headway against it now, in sending
for his old friend, and resolving to be guided by his advice.
"I will take an opportunity of speaking to Maude, Carr," he resumed. "I
would rather not do it, of course; but I see there's no help for it."
"Make the opportunity," said Mr. Carr, with emphasis. "Don't delay a day;
I shall expect you to write me a letter to-morrow saying you've done it."
"But you won't leave to-day," said Hartledon, entreatingly, feeling an
instant prevision that with the departure of Thomas Carr all his courage
would ignominiously desert him.
"I must go. You know I told you last night that my stay could only be
four-and-twenty hours. You can accomplish it whilst I am here, if you
like, and get it over; the longer a nauseous medicine is held to the lips
the more difficult it is to swallow it. You say you are going to ride
with Lady Maude presently; let that be your opportunity."
And get it over! Words that sounded as emancipation in Val's ear. But
somehow he did not accomplish it in that ride. Excuses were on his lips
five hundred times, but his hesitating lips never formed them. He really
was on the point of speaking; at least he said so to himself; when Mr.
Hillary overtook them on horseback, and rode with them some distance.
After that, Maude put her horse to a canter, and so they reached home.
"Well?" said Mr. Carr.
"Not yet," answered Hartledon; "there was no opportunity."
"My suggestion was to make your opportunity."
"And so I will. I'll speak to her either to-night or to-morrow. She chose
to ride fast to-day; and Hillary joined us part of the way. Don't look as
if you doubted me, Carr: I shall be sure to speak."
"Will he?" thought Thomas Carr, as he took his departure by the evening
train, having promised to run down the following Saturday for a few
hours. "It is an even bet, I think. Poor Val!"
Poor Val indeed! Vacillating, attractive, handsome Val! shrinking,
sensitive Val! The nauseous medicine was never taken. And when the
Ashtons returned to the Rectory on the Friday night he had not spoken.
And the very day of their return a rumour reached his ear that Mrs.
Ashton's health was seriously if not fatally shattered, and she was
departing immediately for the South of France.