THE CAPTAIN'S LETTER
A few days later, Madeline received a letter from Captain Tregony, which
contained a carefully-worded, though very definite, proposal of
marriage. Gervase had been only too pleased to carry out his father's
suggestion. The prospect of fingering at an early date a few of her
surplus dollars was a very tempting one. He was not particularly in love
with her. He had got through the sentimental age, so he believed.
Moreover, he had seen so much of life and the world, and had had such a
wide and varied experience of feminine kind that he was not likely to be
carried off his feet by a pretty face or engaging manners.
Nevertheless, if he was to marry at all--and since he was an only son
and heir to a title and estates, marriage seemed a very obvious
duty--then there was no one, all things considered, he would sooner take
to his heart and endow with all his worldly goods than Madeline Grover.
She was very young, very pretty, very sweet-tempered, and, best of all,
very rich; and he knew no one else who possessed such a combination of
excellencies.
It had been a great relief to him when he went out to America to make
the acquaintance of John Grover's daughter, to discover that she was
such an unspoiled child of nature. He had been haunted by the fear that
she might be ugly or ignorant or uneducated. Hence, when he found a
charming school-girl, ingenuous, unsophisticated, impressionable, he
heaved a big sigh of relief, and set to work at once to make a
favourable and an abiding impression.
He would have proposed then and there had he considered it politic to do
so. His father, however, who was his chief adviser, would not hear of
it. "You will spoil the whole game if you do," Sir Charles insisted.
"Make a good impression now, and let time and absence deepen it. She
will put a halo round your head after a few weeks' absence, and eagerly
look forward to the next meeting."
In this Sir Charles showed his knowledge of human nature, especially of
feminine human nature.
Gervase had hinted that, if he was not getting old, he was getting
distinctly older, that the crows'-feet were very marked about his eyes,
and that his hair was getting decidedly thin.
"My dear boy," Sir Charles said, affectionately, "that is all in your
favour. If she were eight or nine and twenty, she might cast longing
eyes on the youths, but a girl of seventeen always dotes on an elderly
man. Always! I don't know why it should be so, but I simply state a
fact. Girls have not a particle of reverence or even respect for youths
of twenty-one or two. They sigh for a man who bears the scars of years
and battle."
So Gervase went away to India, leaving his father to work the oracle for
him at home. On the whole, Sir Charles's forecast had proved correct.
Things had turned out much as he anticipated they would.
Madeline read the Captain's letter with a distinct heightening of
colour. She was still weak and a little inclined to be hysterical. Her
adventure on the cliffs had shaken her nerves to an extent she was only
just beginning to realise.
She closed her eyes after she had put the letter back in the envelope,
and tried to think. The Captain's proposal had not surprised her in the
least, while the manner of it was just what she had expected. He had
used just the right words and said neither too much nor too little.
She admired him for his reticence, and for his strength in holding
himself so well in check, and yet there was a passionate earnestness in
his well-chosen words that revealed the depth of his affection, as well
as his determination to win.
Very adroitly and diplomatically also he had hinted of the good time
they might have together. They would not settle down in a sleepy place
like St. Gaved. They would have a town house, and perhaps a
shooting-box in Scotland, and when tired of the United Kingdom they
would travel on the Continent--Paris, Vienna, Monte Carlo, Florence,
were delightful places to visit, and to tarry in for a few weeks or
months. The common work-a-day world might roar and fret and toil and
perspire, but they would live in a serener atmosphere, undisturbed by
the jar and strife that went on around them.
It was a very fair and enticing picture that his words conjured up, and
one that she had often pictured for herself. This was the future that
her friends, in conjunction with a kindly Providence, had shaped for
her. There seemed nothing for her to do but say "Yes." It was all in the
piece. Her life had been beautifully planned, and planned without effort
or contrivance by anybody. The current had borne her along easily and
gently to the inevitable union with Gervase Tregony.
His face and form came up before her again as she last saw him. How
handsome he looked in his uniform! How fierce his eyes were when he
looked at other people, how gentle when he looked at her! Some people
might think his voice harsh and raucous, but there was an undertone of
music in it for her. It was the voice of a hero, of a man born to
command. Its echoes seemed to be in the air even now.
And yet for some reason her heart did not respond as it once did. Was it
that her nerves had been shaken--that she had not quite got over the
shock of the adventure? Something had happened during the last few days,
but what it was she could not quite understand. The life of pleasure, to
which she had looked forward, undisturbed by a single note of human
pain, did not appeal to her, for some reason, as once it did. A new
ingredient had been dropped into the cup, a new thought had come into
her brain, a new impulse had shaken her heart.
Had she looked at death so closely that life could never be the same to
her again, or was it that she looked at life more truly and steadily?
Had a change come over other people, or was the change wholly in
herself? That something had happened she was certain, but what it was,
was a question she could not definitely answer.
Of one thing, however, she was sure. If the letter had come three or
four days sooner, it would have found her in a wholly different frame of
mind. Hence, whatever the change was, it was compassed by these few
days.
Her meditations were disturbed by a knock at the door, and a moment
later Dr. Pendarvis entered. "Ah! you are better this morning," he said,
in his bright, cheery fashion. "Now, let me feel your pulse." And he
drew up a chair and sat down by her side.
"A little inclined to be jumpy still, eh? Ah, well, you had rather a
nasty experience. But you'll be all right again in a few days."
"I think I am all right now," she said, with a smile. "Don't you think I
might go out of doors?"
"Well, now, what do you think yourself?" he questioned, stroking his
chin and smiling.
"I'm just a little shaky on my feet," she answered, "but I guess that
would go off when I got into the fresh air."
"And how about the bruises?"
"Oh, they are disappearing one by one."
"And how far do you think you could walk?"
"I don't know, but I do know it's awfully dull being in the house."
"And do you want to go anywhere in particular?" he asked innocently, and
he glanced at her furtively out of the corner of his eye.
"Oh, no!" she answered, blushing slightly; "or, at any rate, not just
yet. Of course, when I get stronger I shall be glad to walk into St.
Gaved again."
"You ran into it last time," he said, laughing. "What a day of
adventures you had to be sure!"
"I was compelled to run," she said, averting her eyes and looking out of
the window; "he would have drowned if I hadn't."
"Exactly. And it was touch and go by all accounts. He couldn't have held
out many minutes longer."
"And is he going on all right, doctor?" She turned her eyes suddenly
upon him, and waited with parted lips for his answer.
"Well, about as well as can be expected," he answered, slowly, "taking
all the circumstances into account."
"And is he suffering much pain?"
"A good deal I should say. In fact, that is inevitable."
"He must wish me far enough."
"It depends how far that is, I should say," and the old doctor chuckled.
"You've not heard him heaping maledictions on my defenceless head?"
"No, I have not," he answered, with a satirical smile; "but then you see
he's not given to expressing his thoughts in public."
"Exactly. I guess his thoughts about me would not bear repeating in any
polite society."
"That is possible," the old doctor said, pursing his lips, and looking
thoughtful.
"I suppose no one sees him yet?"
"Well, Chester or I myself see him every day--sometimes twice."
"I intend seeing him myself soon."
"You do?"
"Yes I do. There's nothing wrong in it, is there?"
"Why do you ask that question?"
"Because you've got such stupid notions about propriety in this country.
In fact, few things seem to be regarded as proper except what is highly
improper. I'm constantly stubbing my toes against the notice tablets,
'keep off the grass,' the dangerous places are left without warning."
The doctor laughed.
"Isn't it true what I'm saying?" she went on. "Half the people seem to
be straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Directly you propose to do
some perfectly innocent thing, if it should happen to be unconventional,
you are met with shocked looks and outstretched hands and cries of
protest. I'm getting rather tired of that word 'proper.'"
"But Society must have some code to regulate itself by," he said, with
an air of pretended seriousness.
"Aren't the Ten Commandments good enough?" she questioned.
"Well, hardly," he said, in a tone of banter. "You see they are a bit
antiquated and out of date. Society, as at present constituted, must
have everything of the most modern type. And modernity is not able to
tolerate such an antiquated code as the Decalogue."
"What do you mean by Society?" she questioned.
"Ah! now you have cornered me," he said, with a laugh. "But just at the
moment I was thinking of the idle rich. Men and women who have more
money than they know how to spend, and more time than they know how to
kill. The people who have never a thought beyond themselves, who live to
eat and dress, and pander to the lowest passions of their nature. Who
will spend thousands on a dinner fit only for gourmands, while the
people around them are dying of hunger. Who waste in folly and luxury
and vice what ought to go for the uplifting of the downtrodden and
neglected. It is a big class in England, and a growing class, recruited
in many instances from across the water----"
"You mean from my country?" she questioned.
"Yes, from your country," he said, with a touch of indignation in his
voice, "they come bringing their bad manners and their diamonds, and
they hang round the fringe of what is called the 'Smart Set,' and they
bribe impecunious dowagers and such like to give them introductions, and
they worm their way into the big houses, and God alone knows what
becomes of them afterwards. I have a brother who has a big practice in
the West-end. You should hear him talk----"
"If people are rich," Madeline retorted warmly, "they have surely the
right to enjoy themselves in their own way so long as they do no wrong."
"Enjoy themselves," he snorted. "Is enjoyment the end of life?--and such
enjoyment! Has duty no place in the scheme of existence? Because people
have grown rich through somebody else's toil----"
"Or through their own toil," she interrupted.
"Or through their own toil--if any man ever did it--are they justified
in wasting their life in idle gluttony, and in wasteful and wanton
extravagance?"
"Extravagance is surely a question of degree," she replied. "A hundred
dollars to one man may be more than ten thousand to another."
"I admit it. But your idle profligate, whether man or woman, is an
offence."
"What do you mean by profligate?"
"I mean the creature who lives to eat and drink and dress. Who shirks
every duty and responsibility, who panders to every gluttonous and
selfish desire. Who hears the cry of suffering and never helps, who
wastes his or her substance in finding fresh sources of so-called
enjoyment, or discovering new thrills of sensation."
"But we surely have a right to enjoy ourselves?"
"Of course we have. But not after the fashion of swine. We are not
animals. We are men and women with intellectual vision and moral
responsibility. The true life lies along the road of duty and help and
goodwill."
"Yes, I agree with you in that. But I do not like to hear anyone speak
slightingly of my country people."
"For your country and your people as a whole, I have the greatest
respect. But every country has its snobs and its parasites; and it is
humbling that our own great army of idle profligates should receive
recruits from the great Republic of the West."
When Dr. Pendarvis had gone Madeline sat for a long time staring out of
the window, but seeing nothing of the fair landscape on which her eyes
rested. She tried to recall what it was that led their conversation into
such a serious channel. To say the least of it, it was not a little
strange that he should have taken the hazy and nebulous efforts of her
own brain, and shaped them into clear and definite speech. The life of
ease and pleasure and self-indulgence to which she had looked forward
with so much interest and with such childish delight, he had denounced
with a vigour she had half resented, and which all the while she felt
answered to the deepest emotions of her nature.
She took the Captain's letter from the envelope and read it again. It
was a most proper letter in every respect. There was not a word or
syllable that anyone could take the slightest exception to. The
love-making was intense and yet restrained, the pleading eloquent and
even tender, the prospect pictured such as any ordinary individual would
hail with delight. What was it that it lacked?
It seemed less satisfying since her talk with the doctor than before.
The Captain pleaded for an answer by return of post. He wanted to have
the assurance before he left India for home. He was tired of roughing it
and wanted to look forward to long years of domestic peace. If the
engagement were settled now they would be able to set up a house of
their own soon after his return.
She put away the letter after reading it through twice, and heaved a
long sigh.
"If it had come a week ago," she said to herself, "I should have
answered 'Yes' without any misgiving. But now, everything seems
changed. Perhaps I shall feel differently when I get out of doors
again."
On the following day she took a ramble in the rose garden, and sat for
an hour on the lawn in the sunshine. On the second day she strayed into
the plantation beyond the park, and on the third day she ventured on to
the Downs, and came at length to the high point on the cliffs where she
first met Rufus Sterne. Here she sat down and looked seaward, and
thought of home and all that had happened since she left it.
The plan of her life which had looked so clear was becoming more and
more hazy and confused. Was Providence interposing to upset its own
arrangements? Was she to tread a different path from what she had
pictured.
The fresh air brought the colour back to her cheeks again, and vigour to
her limbs, but it did not clear away the mists that hung about her brain
and heart. The Captain's letter remained day after day unanswered.
"If I were engaged to the Captain," she said to herself, reflectively,
"It might not be considered proper for me to call on Rufus Sterne. But
while I am free, I am free. He saved my life, and it would be mean of me
not to call. So I shall follow my heart"; and she rose to her feet and
turned her steps towards home.