"It is going to be more difficult even than I fancied. After all, I
almost wish that I had written. Bah! I am a coward! Better to face it
once and for all." Then, to her, "Lady Griswold, who _once_ was Helen."
Before she could interpose, he added, "There is something I wish
particularly to say to you."
"To me?" She caught her breath. "Ronald! What is it?"
He saw she caught her breath. It made him awkward. He began to
blunder,--
"I trust that what I am about to say to you will not--cause you to feel
annoyed."
"Annoyed! As though anything which you could say to me could cause me
to feel annoyed! Ronald, how little you know me after all."
He wished to Heaven that she knew him better.
"I can only hope that, when you have heard me out, you will not think
that I have, in any way, misled you."
"Misled me! As though you had misled me, as though you could mislead
me--Ronald."
Mr Ferguson was a cool and a courageous man. But his courage almost
failed him then. He felt that he was face to face with the most
difficult and the most delicate task that he had ever had to face in
all his life. The look which was in this woman's eyes, which was on her
face, which was, so to speak, all over her, was, to him, nothing less
than terrible. He would rather have encountered a look of the deadliest
hatred than the love-light which was in her eyes. As a rule, in his way
he was a diplomatist. Now, his diplomacy wholly failed him. He
struggled from blunder on to blunder.
"I feel that--that, in this matter, I may not, myself, have been wholly
free from blame--"
"Blame? You have not been free from blame? I will not have you say that
you have been to blame in anything, I will not let you say it, Ronald."
"But--"
"But me no buts! If there has been blame, then it has been wholly mine.
But, Ronald, you will not blame me--now?"
"If you will permit me to explain--"
"Oh, yes, I will permit you to explain. Will you do it standing up? I
would rather, since you ask my permission, that you make your
explanation sitting at my side. I would rather, Ronald, have it so?"
It was maddening. Did she mean to compel him to play the brute?
"Lady Griswold, I--I must really beg you to hear me, without
interruption, to an end."
"Ronald! Is that your House of Commons manner when the Opposition won't
be still?"
He was a man whom it was notoriously, exceedingly difficult to
irritate. But he was beginning then to be conscious of an unwonted
feeling of irritation.
"I am simply here, Lady Griswold, to inform you that I propose to
marry."
"Propose to marry! Is that the way in which you speak of it? And you do
really think that it is news to me--after all your letters? Ronald!
Ronald!"
It was inconceivable that a woman could be such a fool. Yet it was so.
There was a rapturous suggestion in her voice which, literally,
frightened him. The devil fly away with those letters of his! If ever
he even dropped so much as a shadow of a hint again! She actually began
to woo him. She came to him, she took both his hands in hers, she
looked into his eyes--how she looked into his eyes! And he--he almost
wished that he had no eyes to look into.
"Ronald! Ronald!" With what an unspoken eloquence of meaning she
pronounced his name. "News to me? Rather--I will say it, after all
these years--tidings of great joy. News to me! I will make you my
confession, sir, in full." Why did he not nip her confession in the
bud? Why did he stand there as if spellbound? He was speechless. A bolt
seemed to have come out of the blue, and to have struck him dumb. And
she went on,--
"For eighteen years, my lord, I have dreamed of this--this one hour. I
cannot tell whether I am a wicked woman, or whether I am not. I tell
you just how it has been with me. I have done what seemed to me to be
my duty, from day to day, from month to month, yes, from year to year,
and I do not think that anyone has ever heard me once repine. But all
the time it has seemed that I, my own self, have been far away, and I
watched and waited till I could join my own self--where you were. I
knew that this day would come. I knew it, with a sure and a certain
knowledge, all along. You see, Ronald, I knew you. I think it is that
knowledge which kept me young. For I am young. I still am young,
Ronald, in every sense. Indeed, I have sometimes feared that I am too
young to be a fitting mate for a leader among men. Ronald, love of my
life, speak to me, my dear."
He was looking away--down at the floor. He was standing in front of
her, wearing the hang-dog air of a convicted criminal. He spoke to her.
"It is Inez." That is what he said.
She did not catch his meaning. Perhaps she did not distinctly catch his
words. "Inez? What is Inez? Inez has nothing to do with us, my dear."
"Whom I am going to marry."
She looked at him as if she were dimly trying to realise what, by any
possibility, could be his meaning. She seemed almost to think that
great joy had caused him to lose his mental equilibrium, as it most
certainly had caused her to lose hers. She put out her hands, as if he
were a child, and advanced them towards his face.
"Ronald--kiss me,--after all these years."
Then the man blazed up. He seized her wrists just as her fingers
touched his cheeks. He broke into a fury. "Don't."
She looked at him askance.
"Ronald--won't you kiss me?"
Still he could not tell it to her, not face to face. He roughly dropped
her hands. He turned away. She looked at him in wondering amazement.
"Ronald, what do you mean?"
Then he turned to her. On his face there was that expression of
resolution with which, in certain of his moods, the House of Commons
was beginning to be very well acquainted.
"Lady Griswold, the purpose of my visit was to inform you that, with
your permission, I propose to do myself the honour of marrying your
daughter Inez."
Still she did not understand him.
"Ronald, what--what do you mean?"
She compelled him to be brutal, or, at least, it seemed to him that she
compelled him.
"Lady Griswold, you must forgive my saying that you have made what I
had hoped would be the happiest hour of my life one of the bitterest.
If you had permitted me to speak at first you would have spared us both
much pain. It would be absurd for me to pretend that I do not
understand your meaning. You seem to take it for granted that things
are to be with us as they were before the war. You appear to be wholly
oblivious of the fact that eighteen--or is it nineteen?--years ago you
jilted me."
"Jilted you? I--Ronald--I--I jilted you?"
"It is always my desire to use the most courteous and the gentlest
language which will adequately convey my meaning. I know not how you
may gloze it to yourself. To me it seems simply that--you promised to
marry me, and you married Sir Matthew Griswold."
"But--Ronald--I--I have explained--just--how it was."
"Madam, did I require your explanation?"
She shrunk away, cowering as if she were some wild, frightened thing.
"But--but you wrote and asked me to come home."
"Lady Griswold, if you will refer to the letters of mine to which you
are alluding, you will perceive that I merely suggested that it was
possible that you might find more congenial surroundings in England
than in Mexico."
"You--you meant more than that. And, Ronald--Ronald, I haven't ceased
to love you all the time!"
"Lady Griswold, you compel me to use what may seem to be the language
of discourtesy. How was I to know that, married to one man, you loved
another? When you married him you died to me. I thought that, for me,
all love was dead. But when I saw your daughter Inez--I have a
constitutional objection to use the language of violence, or of
passion. It is a plain statement of the naked truth that, when I saw
your daughter Inez, that instant I knew that for me all love was not
yet dead. It may appear to you that I have known her but a short time.
Too short a time for knowledge. But I will say to you what I would not
say to all the world. I seem to have known her--yes, certainly for
years. I must certainly have known her in my dreams. I could have drawn
her portrait, which would have been her very duplicate, instinct with
all but life before she came into this room."
"Indeed. Is--is that so, Ronald?"
"I must have loved her in the spirit before I met her in the flesh. I
must have done. And the strangest part of it all is that she seems,
also, to have loved me."
"I do not think that that is strange, though the whole affair is,
perhaps, a little strange."
"So, Lady Griswold, I have come to crave your permission to make your
child my wife."
"I see. You want to marry Inez. Now--now I understand. Well, Ronald, I
think I have known you long enough to be able to trust you with my
child." The door opened to admit Miss Griswold. "Inez, the strangest
thing has happened, which I am sure will overwhelm you with surprise.
Mr Ferguson actually tells me that he loves you."
How we can smile, some of us, both men and women, when our very hearts
are weeping gouts of blood. It is a curious illustration of the dual
personality which is in each of us.
"My dear mother, that is no news. I know he loves me!"
"And what is even stranger, he tells me that you love him."
"That thing is less strange even than the other. I have loved him--oh,
for years. Really, since the hour I was born. I believe that I was
predestined to love him when I still was in the womb of time. I
certainly have loved him for eighteen years, dear mother."
"For eighteen years? How odd! Well, Mr Ferguson, you will make her
happy--always happy--won't you? And, Inez, you will be a good wife
to--to Ronald? And so may every happiness be yours, you foolish pair!"
And before they suspected her intention, Lady Griswold had departed
deftly.