“Has he been _breaking_----?” the girl asked in horror.
Mrs. Gracedew laughingly tapped her heart. “Yes, we’ve had a
scene! He went up again to your father.”
Cora was disconcerted. “Papa’s not there. He just came down to me
by the other way.”
“Then he can join you here,” said Mrs. Gracedew with instant
resignation. “I’m going.”
“Just when I’ve come back to you--at the risk,” Cora made bold to
throw off, “of again interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone,
your conversation with Captain Yule?”
But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. “I’ve nothing to say to
Captain Yule.”
Cora picked it up for another toss. “You had a good deal to say a few
minutes ago!”
“Well, I’ve said it, and it’s over. I’ve nothing more to say
at all,” Mrs. Gracedew insisted. But her announcement of departure
left her on this occasion, as each of its predecessors had done, with
a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. “What has become of my
delightful ‘party’?”
“They’ve been dismissed, through the grounds, by the other
door. But they mentioned,” the girl pursued, “the probable arrival
of a fresh lot.”
Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival of interest as fairly
amounted to yearning. “Why, what times you have! _You_,” she
nevertheless promptly decreed, “must take the fresh lot--since the
house is now practically yours!”
Poor Cora looked blank. “Mine?”
Her companion matched her stare. “Why, if you’re going to marry
Captain Yule.”
Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. “I’m _not_ going to marry
Captain Yule!”
Her friend as quickly paled again. “Why on earth then did you tell me
only ten minutes ago that you were?”
Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. “I told you
nothing of the sort. I only told you”--she was almost indignantly
positive--“that he had been ordered me!”
It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away to indulge an emotion that
presently put on the form of extravagant mirth. “Like a dose of
medicine or a course of baths?”
The girl’s gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. “As a remedy
for the single life.” Oh, she had mastered the matter now! “But I
won’t take him!”
“Ah, then, why didn’t you let me know?” Mrs. Gracedew panted.
“I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted
us.” Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not
stupid. “It’s just to let you know that I’m here now.”
Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew,
suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion’s fixed
eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. “Excuse me--I
misunderstood. I somehow took for granted----!” She stopped, a trifle
awkwardly--suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably
seen it.
“You took for granted I’d jump at him? Well, you can take it for
granted I won’t!”
Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. “You
prefer the single life?”
“No--but I don’t prefer _him_!” Cora was crystal-bright.
Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding;
it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish--which she then did,
however, with immense eagerness. “You prefer someone else?”
Cora’s promptitude dropped at this, and, starting to hear it, as
you might well have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she
abruptly moved away. A minute’s sense of her scruple was enough for
Mrs. Gracedew: this was proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and
high benevolence with which that lady went on. She had looked very
hard, first, at one of the old warriors hung on the old wall, and
almost spoke as if he represented their host. “He seems remarkably
clever.”
Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped about. “Then why
don’t you marry him yourself?”
Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. “Well, I’ve got fifty
reasons! I rather think one of them must be that he hasn’t happened
to ask me.”
It was a speech, however, that her visitor could easily better. “I
haven’t got fifty reasons, but I _have_ got one.”
Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a stroke of wit. “You mean
your case is one of those in which safety is _not_ in numbers?” And
then on Cora’s visibly not understanding: “It _is_ when reasons are
bad that one needs so many!”
The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the
simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. “My reason is
awfully good.”
Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. “I see. An older friend.”
Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time
practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew’s extended
encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing
out. “I’ve been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice,
to tell you about him!” It came in a small clear torrent, a soft
tumble-out of sincerity. “After we parted--you and I--at the station,
he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him
which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in
a state of ignorance that I don’t know whether to regard as desirable
or dreadful.”
Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the
old family solicitor. “You want me then to _inform_ your father?”
It was a wonderful intonation.
Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly have become under this
touch the prodigal with a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look
out of a blurred office window-pane at a grey London sky; then she
broke away. “I really don’t know _what_ I want. I think,” she
honestly admitted, “I just want kindness.”
Mrs. Gracedew’s expression might have hinted--but not for too
long--that Bedford Row was an odd place to apply for it; she appeared
for an instant to make the revolving office-chair creak. “What do you
mean by kindness?”
Cora was a model client--she perfectly knew. “I mean help.”
Mrs. Gracedew closed an inkstand with a clap and locked a couple of
drawers. “What do you mean by help?”
The client’s inevitable answer seemed to perch on the girl’s lips:
“A thousand pounds.” But it came out in another, in a much more
charming form. “I mean that I love him.”
The family solicitor got up: it was a high figure. “And does he love
_you_?”
Cora hesitated. “Ask _him_.”
Mrs. Gracedew weighed the necessity. “Where is he?”
“Waiting.” And the girl’s glance, removed from her companion and
wandering aloft and through space, gave the scale of his patience.
Her adviser, however, required the detail. “But _where_?”
Cora briefly demurred again. “In that funny old grotto.”
Mrs. Gracedew thought. “Funny?”
“Half-way from the park gate. It’s very _nice_!” Cora more
eagerly added.
Mrs. Gracedew continued to reflect. “Oh, I know it!” She spoke as
if she had known it most of her life.
Her tone encouraged her client. “Then will you see him?”
“No.” This time it was almost dry.
“No?”
“No. If you want help----” Mrs. Gracedew, still musing, explained.
“Yes?”
“Well--you want a great deal.”
“Oh, so much!”--Cora but too woefully took it in. “I want,” she
quavered, “all there is!”
“Well--you shall have it.”
“All there is?”--she convulsively held her to it.
Mrs. Gracedew had finally mastered it. “I’ll see your father.”
“You dear, delicious lady!” Her young friend had again encompassed
her; but, passive and preoccupied, she showed some of the chill of
apprehension. It was indeed as if to meet this that Cora went earnestly
on: “He’s intensely sympathetic!”
“Your father?” Mrs. Gracedew had her reserves.
“Oh, no--the other person. I so believe in him!” Cora cried.
Mrs. Gracedew looked at her a moment. “Then so do I--and I like him
for believing in _you_.”
“Oh, he does that,” the girl hurried on, “far more than Captain
Yule--I could see just with one glance that _he_ doesn’t at all. Papa
has of course seen the young man I mean, but we’ve been so sure
papa would hate it that we’ve had to be awfully careful. He’s the
son of the richest man at Bellborough, he’s Granny’s godson, and
he’ll inherit his father’s business, which is simply immense. Oh,
from the point of view of the things he’s _in_”--and Cora found
herself sharp on this--“he’s quite as good as papa himself. He
has been away for three days, and if he met me at the station, where,
on his way back, he has to change, it was by the merest chance in the
world. I wouldn’t love him,” she brilliantly wound up, “if he
wasn’t nice.”
“A man’s always nice if you _will_ love him!” Mrs. Gracedew
laughed.
Her young friend more than met it. “He’s nicer still if he
‘will’ love _you_!”
But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. “Nicer of course than if he
won’t! But are you sure this gentleman _does_ love you?”
“As sure as that the other one doesn’t.”
“Ah, but the other one doesn’t know you.”
“Yes, thank goodness--and never shall!”
Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the girl’s meeting her
eyes turned away with a quick laugh. “You mean of course till it’s
too late.”
“Altogether!” Cora spoke as with quite the measure of the time.
Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, appeared to accept her
showing. “Then what’s the matter?” she impatiently asked.
“The matter?”
“Your father’s objection to the gentleman in the grotto.”
Cora now for the first time faltered. “His name.”
This for a moment pulled up her friend, in whom, however, relief seemed
to contend with alarm. “Only his name?”
“Yes, but----” Cora’s eyes rolled.
Her companion invitingly laughed. “But it’s enough?”
Her roll confessingly fixed itself. “_Not_ enough--that’s just the
trouble!”
Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. “What then _is_ it?”
Cora faced the music. “Pegg.”
Mrs. Gracedew stared. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing to speak of.” The girl was quite candid now. “Hall.”
“Nothing before----?”
“Not a letter.”
“Hall Pegg?” Mrs. Gracedew had winced, but she quickly recovered
herself, and, for a further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to
form the sound only with her mind. The sound she formed with her lips
was, after an instant, simply “Oh!”
It was to the combination of the spoken and the unspoken that Cora
desperately replied. “It sounds like a hat-rack!”
“‘Hall Pegg’? ‘Hall Pegg’?” Mrs. Gracedew now made it, like
a questionable coin, ring upon the counter. But it lay there as lead
and without, for a moment, her taking it up again. “How many has your
father?” she inquired instead.
“How many names?” Miss Prodmore seemed dimly to see that there was
no hope in that. “He somehow makes out five.”
“Oh, that’s _too_ many!” Mrs. Gracedew jeeringly declared.
“Papa unfortunately doesn’t think so, when Captain Yule, I believe,
has six.”
“Six?” Mrs. Gracedew, alert, looked as if that might be different.
“Papa, in the morning-room, told me them all.”
Mrs. Gracedew visibly considered, then for a moment dropped
Mr. Pegg. “And what _are_ they!”
“Oh, all sorts. ‘Marmaduke Clement----’” Cora tried to recall.
Mrs. Gracedew, however, had already checked her. “I see--‘Marmaduke
Clement’ will do.” She appeared for a minute intent, but, as with
an energetic stoop, she picked up Mr. Pegg. “But so will yours,”
she said, with decision.
“Mine?--you mean _his_!”
“The same thing--what you’ll _be_.”
“Mrs. Hall Pegg!”--Cora tried it, with resolution, loudly.
It fell a little flat in the noble space, but Mrs. Gracedew’s manner
quickly covered it. “It won’t make you a bit less charming.”
Cora wondered--she hoped. “Only for papa.”
And what was _he_? Mrs. Gracedew by this time seemed assentingly to
ask. “Never for _me_!” she soothingly declared.
Cora took this in with deep thanks that gripped and patted her
companion’s hand. “You accept it more than gracefully. But if you
could only make _him_----!”
Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. “‘Him’? Mr. Pegg?”
“No--he naturally _has_ to accept it. But papa.”
She looked harder still at this greater feat, then seemed to see
light. “Well, it will be difficult--but I will.”
Doubt paled before it. “Oh, you heavenly thing!”
Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by this appreciation, went a
step further. “And I’ll make him _say_ he does!”
Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. “Oh, if I could only hear
him!”
Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. “It will be enough if
_I_ do.”
Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt accommodation, gave the
comfortable measure of her faith. “Yes--I think it will.” She was
quite ready to retire. “I’ll give you time.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Gracedew; “but before you give me time
give me something better.”
This pulled the girl up a little, as if in parting with her secret she
had parted with her all. “Something better?”
“If I help you, you know,” Mrs. Gracedew explained, “you must
help me.”
“But how?”
“By a clear assurance.” The charming woman’s fine face now gave
the real example of clearness. “That if Captain Yule should propose
to you, you would unconditionally refuse him.”
Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only that. “With my dying
breath!”
Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. “Will you make it even
a promise?”
The girl looked about her in solid certainty. “Do you want me to
sign----?”
Mrs. Gracedew was quick. “No, don’t sign!”
Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. “Then what shall I do?”
Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few vague steps faced her
again. “Kiss me.”
Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had scarce been sealed
before the younger of the parties was already at the passage to the
front. “We meet of course at the station.”
Mrs. Gracedew thought. “If all goes well. But where shall you be
meanwhile?”
Her confederate had no need to think. “Can’t you guess?”
The bang of the house-door, the next minute, so helped the answer to
the riddle as fairly to force it, when she found herself alone, from
her lips. “At that funny old grotto? Well,” she sighed, “I _like_
funny old grottos!” She found herself alone, however, only for a
minute; Mr. Prodmore’s formidable presence had darkened the door from
the court.