The audacity of her response--the curious audacity of shyness--seemed to
him extraordinary only when, later, he thought it over. "I dare say it
isn't a very high kind of love--but there was no question of its being
that--from the first. Was there?"
"All the more reason then why she should have kept where she belonged."
"Yes, of course. And yet it's difficult for love to keep itself where it
belongs when it's very--very consuming."
He leaned back in his chair, eying her. If he spoke roughly it was only
because she had roused all his emotions on his own behalf, as well as a
faint subconscious interest in herself. "Look here, Miss Bland. How much
do you know about this?"
"Oh, I know all about it," she assured him, hurrying to explain, in
answer to something she saw in his face: "Uncle Emery didn't tell me. I
read it first in the papers--you remember there was a lot of talk about
it in the papers--and then every one was talking of it. I couldn't help
knowing. Uncle Emery," she added, "only told me one tiny little thing,
which couldn't do any one any harm."
"And that was--?"
"Miss Clare's address. I asked him for it when I found that I--that I
wanted to go and see her."
"And why on earth should you want to go and see her--a young girl like
you?"
Her blush was like a color from outside reflected in the soft luster of
her skin as a tint of sunset may be caught by the petals of certain
white flowers.
"I had a reason. It wasn't doing any one any harm," she repeated, "not
even you." In further self-defense she added: "Uncle Emery didn't
disapprove, and I've never told Aunt Zena. But I've always been glad I
went--very."
"Why?"
"Because she's a sort of charge of Uncle Emery's, for one thing--since
you've put her in his care. I help _him_ a little bit. And then the
sister she lives with--you knew we'd got her to live with her sister,
didn't you?--isn't very kind to her. It's just the money. And then," she
continued, the soft color deepening, "I had another reason--more
personal--that I'd rather not say anything about."
"I can't imagine anything in the whole bad business that could be
personal to you."
"No, of course you can't. It's only personal by association--by
imagination, probably." She made nothing clearer by adding: "You know
I'm not really Uncle Emery's niece, or Aunt Zena's."
He nodded.
"I don't know who my mother was. But whoever she was--I'm sorry for
her."
He began to get her idea. "You're probably quite wrong," he said,
kindly; "and until you know you're right I shouldn't let fancies of that
sort run away with me."
"Oh, I don't. And yet you can see that when I meet any one like Maggie
Clare--well, I don't feel superior to her. It's like being a
gipsy--George Eliot's Fedalma, for instance--adopted by a kind family,
but knowing she's a gipsy just the same."
He brought his knowledge of the world to bear on her. "I assure you
you're not in the least like that kind of gipsy."
"Neither was Fedalma like her kind; and yet when she could do something
for them she went to them and did it."
"How old are you?" he said, abruptly, asking the same question which but
a few weeks before Noel Ordway had put to Edith, and in much the same
way.
"We call it twenty-three--because we keep my birthday on the date on
which Uncle Emery and Aunt Zena took me; but I must be nearer
twenty-five."
He looked at her more attentively than he had ever done. She was not
really shy; she wasn't even reserved; but she was repressed--repressed
as any one might be who lived under the weight of Mrs. Bland's
protesting, grudging kindliness. It came back to him now, the tone in
which she had said, a year earlier, that she couldn't be called mother
by a child who didn't belong to her. How that must have been "rubbed in"
to the poor girl before him! Other things, too, came back to him,
especially on Bland's part certain stolen moments of tenderness toward
the girl, that had been interrupted in Chip's presence by a peremptory
voice, saying, "Now, Emery, don't spoil the child," or "Lily, dear,
_can't_ you find anything better to do than tease your uncle?" In it all
Chip had found two subjects of wonderment: first, the strange egoism of
this middle-aged woman who could see nothing in the expansion of her
husband's affections but what was stolen from herself; and then, the
extraordinary freak of marital loyalty that could keep a man like Emery
Bland, with his refinement and his knowledge of the world, true to a
woman whom he had once loved, no doubt, in a youthful way, but who was
now his inferior by every token of character. A good enough woman she
was of her kind; but it was no more her husband's kind than it was that
of the gods immortal. What was the secret that kept these unequal
yoke-fellows together, sympathetic, and tolerably happy, when he and
Edith, who were made for each other, had by some force of mutual
expulsion been thrust apart? Bland himself was of the type which, in the
language that was almost more familiar to him than English, Chip would
have called _charmeur_; and yet he deferred to this second-rate woman,
and considered her, and even loved her in a placid, steady-going way,
submitting at times to her dictation. Chip couldn't understand it. If he
himself had been married to Mrs. Bland--But that was unthinkable. What
wasn't unthinkable, and yet became the more bewildering the more he
tried to work the problem out, was that he himself had failed to keep
for his own the woman who suited him in every respect, whose love he
possessed and who possessed his, who was happy with him and he with her,
while Emery Bland had contrived to make the most of the estimable but
rather coarse-grained lady who sat at the head of his table, and have a
truly enviable life with her. No one could be more keenly aware of the
lady's shortcomings, which lay within the realm of taste and
intelligence, than Bland himself. What was his secret? Was it a
principle, or was it nothing but a lucky accident? Was it something in a
cast of character or a tenet of a creed, or was it what any one could
emulate?
These thoughts and questions passed rapidly through Chip's mind, not for
the first time, during the two or three minutes in which there was no
sound about them but the murmur of the brook, the humming of insects,
and the whisper of the summer wind through millions of trees.
He reverted to Maggie Clare, the timbre of his voice again growing
harder. "What's the matter with her?"
She was singularly gentle. "I suppose it could be described most
accurately as a broken heart."
He flushed hotly. "Oh, don't say that," he cried, as if he had been
stung.
"I shouldn't say it if it didn't answer your question."
"_I_ didn't break her heart," he declared, in sharp aggressiveness of
self-defense.
"Oh no. Even she doesn't think so. The poor thing hasn't much mind left,
as you know; but what she has is concentrated on that point--that you
were not to blame in anything. Please don't think that I'm in any way
hinting at such an accusation."
He looked at her stupidly. "Then if her heart's broken, what's broken
it?"
"The circumstances, I suppose. You don't seem to understand that the
poor soul must long ago have reached a point where her love for you was
absolutely the only thing she had."
Again he seemed to shake himself, as though to rid his body of something
that had fastened on it. "I never _asked_ her to love me like that. I
never _wanted_ it."
She smiled, faintly and sweetly. "Oh, well, that wouldn't make any
difference. Love gives itself. It doesn't wait for permission. I should
think you'd have known that."
He leaned forward, an arm resting on one knee. While he reflected he
broke into the tuneless, almost inaudible, whistling Edith used to know
so well. "I said I'd never see her again," he muttered, as the result of
his meditation.
"May I ask if that was a promise to any one, or if it was something you
just said to yourself and about which you'd have a right to change your
mind?"