"WHO KNOWS WHY LOVE BEGINS?"
The time was drawing near. The corn was cut and carried on many a broad
sweep of hot chalky soil, and "summer's branding sun" had burnt up the
thin grass on the wide bare down, where never shadow of tree or bush
made a cool spot in the expanse of light and heat and dryness. The
mysterious immemorial stones yonder on Salisbury Plain stood up against
a background of cloudless blue; and the windows of the cathedral in the
valley glittered and flashed in the sunshine. Only in the sober old
close, and the venerable gardens of a bygone generation, within hedges
that dead hands had planted, trees whose growth dead eyes had watched,
was there coolness or shelter, or the gentle slumberous feeling of
summer afternoon in its restful perfection.
Here, in an antique drawing-room, Mrs. Mornington and her niece were
taking tea, after a morning with tailor and dressmaker.
"There never was such a girl for not-caringness as this girl of mine,"
said Mrs. Mornington, with a vexed air. "If it had not been for me, I
don't think she would have had a new frock in her trousseau, and as she
is a very prim personage about _lingerie_, and has a large stock of
Parisian prettiness in that line, there would really have been nothing
to buy."
"Rather a relief, I should think," laughed Mrs. Canon, who was giving
them tea.
"A most delightful state of things," asserted Mrs. Sub-Dean, proud
mother of half a dozen daughters, in which opinion agreed a county
lady, also rich in daughters.
"Ah, you are all against me!" said Mrs. Mornington; "but there is
a great pleasure in buying things, especially when one is spending
somebody else's money."
"Poor papa!" sighed Suzette. "My aunt forgets that he is not Crœsus."
"Look at that girl's wretched pale face!" cried Mrs. Mornington. "Would
any one think that she was going to be married to a most estimable
young man, and the best match in the neighbourhood--except one?"
At those two last words, Suzette's cheeks flamed crimson, and the
feminine conclave looking at her felt she was being cruelly used by
this strong-minded aunt of hers.
"I don't think the nicest girls are ever very keen about their
trousseau," said the county lady, with a furtive glance at a buxom
freckled daughter, who had lately become engaged, and who had already
begun to discuss house-linen and frocks, with a largeness of ideas that
alarmed her parents.
"Yes; but there is a difference between caring too much and not caring
at all. Suzette would be married in that white gingham she is wearing
to-day, if I would let her."
"Pray don't teaze people about my frocks, auntie. If you can't find
something more interesting to talk about, we had better go away," said
Suzette, with a pettishness which was quite unlike her; but it must
be owned that to be made the object of a public attack in feminine
convocation was somewhat exasperating.
Mrs. Mornington was not to be put down. She went on talking of frocks,
though one of the daughters of the house carried Suzette off to the
garden--an act of real Christian charity, if she had not spoilt her
good work by beginning to talk of Suzette's lover.
"I can quite fancy your aunt must be rather boring sometimes," she
said. "But _do_ tell me about Mr. Carew. I thought him so nice the
other day at the flower-show, when you introduced him to me."
"What can I tell you about him? You have seen him--and I am glad you
thought him nice."
"Yes; but one wants to know more. One wants to know what he is
like--from your point of view."
"But how could you see him from my point of view? That's impossible."
"True! A casual acquaintance could never see him as he appears to
you--to whom he is all the world," said the Canon's daughter, who
was young and romantic, having lived upon church music and Coventry
Patmore's poetry.
"There's my aunt showing them patterns of my frocks!" exclaimed
Suzette, irritably, glancing in at the drawing-room, where Mrs.
Mornington sat, the centre of a little group, handing scraps of stuff
out of her reticule.
The scraps were being passed round and peered at and pulled about by
everybody, with a meditative and admiring air. An African savage,
seeing the group, would have supposed that some act of sortilege was
being performed.
"It is rather an ordeal being married," said the Canon's daughter,
thinking sadly of a certain undergraduate who was down-hearted about
his divinity exam., and upon whose achieving deacon's orders within a
reasonable time depended the young lady's matrimonial prospects.
She sighed as she thought of the difference in worldly wealth between
that well-meaning youth and Allan Carew; and yet here was the future
Mrs. Carew pale and worried, and obviously dissatisfied with her lot.
* * * * *
When those gowns had been ordered, Suzette felt as if it were another
link forged in the iron chain which seemed to weigh heavier upon her
every day of her life.
She had promised, and she must keep her promise. That was what she was
continually saying to herself. Those words were woven into all her
thoughts. Allan was so good, so true-hearted! Could she disappoint and
grieve him? Could she be heartless, unkind, selfish--think of herself
first and of him after--snatch at the happiness Fate offered her,
and leave him out in the cold? No, better that she should bear her
lot--become his wife, live out her slow, melancholy days, his faithful
servant and friend, honouring him and obeying him, doing all that woman
can do for man, except loving him.
Those meteoric appearances of Geoffrey's had made life much harder
for Suzette. She might have fought against her love for him more
successfully perhaps had he been always near; had she seen him almost
daily, and become accustomed to his presence as a common incident in
the daily routine; but to be told that he was in the far north of
Scotland, yachting with a friend; and then to be startled by his voice
at her shoulder, murmuring her name in Discombe Wood; and to turn round
with nervous quickness to see him looking at her with his pale smile,
like a ghost--or to be assured that he was salmon-fishing in Connemara,
and to see him suddenly sauntering across the lawn in the July dusk,
more ghostlike even than in the woods, as if face and form were a
materialization which her own sad thoughts had conjured out of the
twilight.
He would take very little trouble to explain his unlooked-for
return. Scotland was too hot; the North Sea suggested a vast sheet of
red-hot iron, blown over by a south wind that was like the breath of
a blast-furnace. Ireland was a place of bad inns and inexorable rain;
and there were no fish, or none that he could catch. He had come home
because life was weariness away from home. He feared that life meant
weariness everywhere.
The days were hurrying by, and now Mrs. Mornington talked everlastingly
of the wedding, or so it seemed to Suzette, who in these latter days
tried to avoid her aunt as much as was consistent with civility, and
fled from the Grove to Discombe as to a haven of peace. Mrs. Mornington
loved to expatiate upon the coming event, to bewail her niece's
indifferentism, to regret that there was to be no festivity worth
speaking of, and to enlarge upon the advantages of Allan's position and
surroundings, and Suzette's good fortune in having come to Matcham.
"Your father might have spent a thousand pounds on a London season,
and not have done half so well for you," she said conclusively.
The General nodded assent.
Certainly, between them they had done wonderfully well for Suzette.
From this worldly wisdom the harassed girl fled to the quiet of
Discombe, where the peaceful silence was only broken by the deep broad
stream of sound from the organ, touched with ever-growing power by Mrs.
Wornock. Suzette would steal softly into the music-room unannounced,
and take her accustomed seat in the recess by the organ, and sit
silently listening as long as Mrs. Wornock cared to play. Only when the
last chord had died away did the two women touch hands and look at each
other.
It was about a week after that wearying day in Salisbury when Suzette
seated herself by the player in this silent way, and sat listening to
a funeral march by Beethoven, with her head leaning on her hand, and
not so much as a murmur of praise for music or performer stirring the
thoughtful quiet of her lips. When the last pianissimo notes, dropping
to deepest bass, had melted into silence, Mrs. Wornock looked up and
saw Suzette's face bathed in tears--tears that streamed over the pallid
cheeks unchecked.
Geoffrey's mother started up from the organ, and clasped the weeping
girl to her breast.
"Poor child! poor child! He was right, then? You are not happy."
"Happy! I am miserable! I don't know what to do. I don't know what
would be worst or wickedest. To disappoint him, or to marry him, not
loving him!"
"No, no, no! you must not marry, not if you cannot love him. But you
are sure of that, Susie? Are you sure you don't love him? He is so
good, so worthy to be loved, as his father was--years ago. Why should
you not love him?"
"Ah, who can tell?" sighed Suzette. "Who knows why love begins, or
how love gets the mastery? I let myself be talked into thinking I
loved him. I always liked him--liked his company--was grateful for
his attentions, respected him for his fine nature, and then I let him
persuade me that this was love; but it wasn't--it never was love.
Friendship and liking are not love; and now that the fatal day draws
near I know how wide a difference there is between love and liking."
"You must not marry him, Suzette. You know I would not willingly
say one word that would tell against Allan Carew's happiness. I
love him almost as dearly as I love my own son; but when I see you
miserable--when I see Geoffrey utterly wretched, I can no longer keep
silence. This marriage must be broken off."
"Allan will hate me; he will despise me. What can he think me?--false,
fickle, unworthy of a good man's love."
"You must tell him the truth. It will be cruel, but not so cruel as to
let him go on believing in you, thinking himself happy, living in a
fool's paradise. Will you let me speak for you, Suzette?--let me do
what your mother might have done had she been here to help you in your
need?"
Suzette was speechless with tears, her face hidden on Mrs. Wornock's
shoulder. The door was opened at this moment, and the butler announced
Mr. Carew.
Allan had approached the group by the organ before either Mrs. Wornock
or Suzette could hide her agitation. Their tears, the way in which they
clung to each other, told of some over-mastering grief.
"Good God! what is the matter? What has happened?" he exclaimed.
"Nothing has happened, Allan; yet there is sorrow for all of us--sorrow
that has been coming upon us, though some of us did not know it.
Suzette, may I tell him--now, this moment?"
"May you tell me? Tell me what?" questioned Allan. "Suzette, speak to
me--you--you--no one else!"
Fear, indignation, despair were in his tone. He caught hold of
Suzette's arm, and drew her towards him, looking searchingly at the
pale, tear-stained face; but she shrank from his grasp, and sank on her
knees at his feet.
"It is my miserable secret--that must be told at last. I have tried--I
have hoped--I honour--I respect you--Allan. But our hearts are not our
own; we cannot guide or govern their impulses. My heart is weighed down
with shame and misery, but it is empty of love. I cannot love you as
your wife should. If I keep my word, I shall be a miserable woman."
"You shall not be that," he said sternly--"not to make me the happiest
man in creation. But don't you think," with chilling deliberation,
"this tragedy might have been acted a little earlier? It seems to me
that you have kept your secret over carefully."
"I have been weak, Allan, hopelessly, miserably weak-minded. I tried to
do what was best. I did not want to disappoint you----"
"Disappoint me? Why, you have fooled me from the first! Disappoint
me? Why, I have built the whole fabric of my future life upon this
rotten foundation! I was to be happy because of your love; my days and
years were to flow sweetly by in a paradise of domestic peace, blest
by your love. And all the time there was no such thing. You did not
love me; you had never loved me; you were only trying to love me; and
the hopelessness of the endeavour is brought home to you now--at this
eleventh hour--three weeks before our wedding-day. Suzette, Suzette,
never was woman's cruelty crueller than this of yours!"
She was in floods of tears at his feet, her head drooping till her brow
almost touched the ground. He left her kneeling there, and rushed away
to the garden to hide his own tears--the tears of which his manhood was
ashamed, the passionate sobs, the wild hysterical weeping of the sex
that seldom weeps. He found a shelter and a hiding-place in an angle
of the garden, where there was a side walk shut in by close-cropped
cypress walls, and here Mrs. Wornock found him presently, sitting on
a marble bench, with his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his
hands.
She seated herself at his side, and laid her hand gently on his.
"Allan, dear Allan, I am so sorry for you," she said softly.
"I am very sorry for myself. I don't seem to need anybody's pity. I
think I can do all the grieving."
"Ah, that is the worst of it. Nobody's sympathy can help you."
"Not yours," he answered almost savagely; "for, at heart, you must
be glad. My dismissal makes room for some one else--some one whose
interests are dearer to you than mine could ever be."
"There is no one nearer or dearer to me than you, Allan--no one--not
even my own son. You have been to me as a son--the son of the man I
fondly loved, whose face I was to look upon only once--once after those
long years in which we were parted. I have loved you as a part of my
youth, the living memory of my lost love. Ah, my dear, I had to learn
the lesson of self-surrender when I was younger than you. I loved him
with all my heart and mind, and I gave him up."
"You did wrong to give him up. He himself said so. But there is no
parallel between the two cases. This girl has let me believe in her.
I have lived for a year in this sweet delusion--a bliss no more real
than the happiness of a dream. She would have loved me; she would have
married me; all would have been well for us but for your son. When he
came, my chance was blighted. He has charms of mind and manner which
I have not--like me, they say, but ten times handsomer. He can speak
to her with a language that I have not. Oh, those singing notes on the
violin; that long-drawn lingering sweep of the bow, like the cry of a
spirit in paradise--an angelic voice telling of love ethereal--love
released from clay; those tears which seemed to tremble on the strings;
that loud, sudden sob of passionate pain, which came like a short,
sharp amen to the prayer of love! I could understand that language
better than he thought. He stole her love from me--set himself
deliberately to rob me of my life's happiness."
"It is cruel to say that, Allan. He is incapable of treachery, of
deliberate wrong-doing. He is a creature of impulse."
"Meaning a creature with whom self is the only god. And in one of
his impulses he told Suzette of his love, even in plainer words than
his Stradivarius could tell the story; and from that hour her heart
was false to me. I saw the change in her when I came back--after my
father's death."
"You are unjust to him, Allan, in your grief and anger. Whatever his
feelings may have been, he has fought against them. He has made himself
almost an exile from this house."
"He has been biding his time, no doubt; and now that I have had the
_coup de grace_ he will come back."