Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.
“Your energy, my dear lady, is not the least of many attributes.”
Lady Cantourne looked up from her writing-desk with her brightest smile.
Sir John Meredith was standing by the open window, leaning against the
jamb thereof with a grace that had lost its youthful repose. He was
looking out, across a sloping lawn, over the Solent, and for that
purpose he had caused himself to be clad in a suit of blue serge. He
looked the veteran yachtsman to perfection--he could look anything in
its season--but he did his yachting from the shore--by preference from
the drawing-room window.
“One must keep up with the times, John,” replied the lady, daintily
dipping her quill.
“And 'the times' fills its house from roof to cellar with people who
behave as if they were in a hotel. Some of them--say number five on
the first floor, number eleven on the second, or some of the atticated
relatives--announce at breakfast that they will not be home to lunch.
Another says he cannot possibly return to dinner at half-past seven, and
so on. 'The times' expects a great deal for its money, and does not even
allow one to keep the small change of civility.”
Lady Cantourne was blotting vigorously.
“I admit,” she answered, “that the reaction is rather strong; reactions
are always stronger than they intend to be. In our early days the
formalities were made too much of; now they are--”
“Made into a social hash,” he suggested, when she paused for a word,
“where the prevailing flavour is the common onion of commerce! Now, I'll
wager any sum that that is an invitation to some one you do not care a
screw about.”
“It is. But, Sir John, the hash must be kept moving; cold hash is not
palatable. I will tell you at once, I am inviting young Semoor to fill
the vacancy caused by Mr. Oscard's departure.”
“Ah! Mr. Oscard proposes depriving us of his--society.”
“He leaves to-morrow. He only came to say good-bye.”
“He moves on--to some other hostelry?”
“No! He is going to--”
She paused, so that Sir John was forced to turn in courteous inquiry and
look her in the face.
“Africa!” she added sharply, never taking her bright eyes from his face.
She saw the twitching of the aged lips before his hand got there to hide
them. She saw his eyes fall before her steady gaze, and she pitied him
while she admired his uncompromising pride.
“Indeed!” he said. “I have reason to believe,” he added, turning to the
window again, “that there is a great future before that country; all the
intellect of Great Britain seems to be converging in its direction.”
Since his departure Jack's name had never been mentioned, even between
these two whose friendship dated back a generation. Once or twice Sir
John had made a subtle passing reference to him, such as perhaps no
other woman but Lady Cantourne could have understood; but Africa was,
so to speak, blotted out of Sir John Meredith's map of the world. It was
there that he kept his skeleton--the son who had been his greatest pride
and his deepest humiliation--his highest hope in life--almost the only
failure of his career.
He stood there by the window, looking out with that well-bred interest
in details of sport and pastime which was part of his creed. He braved
it out even before the woman who had been a better friend to him than
his dead wife. Not even to her would he confess that any event of
existence could reach him through the impenetrable mask he wore before
the world. Not even she must know that aught in his life could breathe
of failure or disappointment. As it is given to the best of women
to want to take their sorrows to another, so the strongest men
instinctively deny their desire for sympathy.
Lady Cantourne, pretending to select another sheet of note-paper,
glanced at him with a pathetic little smile. Although they had never
been anything to each other, these two people had passed through many
of the trials to which humanity is heir almost side by side. But neither
had ever broken down. Each acted as a sort of mental tonic on the other.
They had tacitly agreed, years before, to laugh at most things. She saw,
more distinctly than any, the singular emptiness of his clothes, as if
the man was shrinking, and she knew that the emptiness was of the heart.
Sir John Meredith had taught his son that Self and Self alone reigns in
the world. He had taught him that the thing called Love, with a capital
L, is nearly all Self, and that it finally dies in the arms of Self. He
had told him that a father's love, or a son's, or a mother's, is merely
a matter of convenience, and vanishes when Self asserts itself.
Upon this principle they were both acting now, with a strikingly
suggestive similarity of method. Neither was willing to admit to the
world in general, and to the other in particular, that a cynical theory
could possibly be erroneous.
“I am sorry that our young friend is going to leave us,” said Sir John,
taking up and unfolding the morning paper. “He is honest and candid, if
he is nothing else.”
This meant that Guy Oscard's admiration for Millicent Chyne had never
been concealed for a moment, and Lady Cantourne knew it.
“He interests me,” went on the old aristocrat, studying the newspaper;
and his hearer knew the inner significance of the remark.
At times she was secretly ashamed of her niece, but that esprit de corps
which binds women together prompted her always to defend Millicent. The
only defence at the moment was silence, and an assumed density which did
not deceive Sir John--even she could not do that.
In the meantime Miss Millicent Chyne was walking on the sea-wall at the
end of the garden with Guy Oscard. One of the necessary acquirements of
a modern educational outfit is the power of looking perfectly at home
in a score of different costumes during the year, and, needless to say,
Miss Chyne was finished in this art. The manner in which she wore her
sailor-hat, her blue serge, and her neat brown shoes conveyed to
the onlooker, and especially the male of that species (we cannot
in conscience call them observers), the impression that she was a
yachtswoman born and bred. Her delicate complexion was enhanced by the
faintest suspicion of sunburn and a few exceedingly becoming freckles.
There was a freedom in her movements which had not been observable in
London drawing-rooms. This was Diana-like and in perfect keeping with
the dainty sailor outfit; moreover, nine men out of ten would fail to
attribute the difference to sundry cunning strings within the London
skirt.
“It is sad,” Millicent was saying, “to think that we shall have no more
chances of sailing. The wind has quite dropped, that horrid tide is
running, and--this is your last day.”
She ended with a little laugh, knowing full well that there was little
sentiment in the big man by her side.
“Really,” she went on, “I think I should be able to manage a boat in
time, don't you think so? Please encourage me. I am sure I have tried to
learn.”
But he remained persistently grave. She did not like that gravity;
she had met it before in the course of her experiments. One of the
grievances harboured by Miss Millicent Chyne against the opposite sex
was that they could not settle down into a harmless, honest flirtation.
Of course, this could be nothing but a flirtation of the lightest and
most evanescent description. She was engaged to Jack Meredith--poor
Jack, who was working for her, ever so hard, somewhere near the
Equator--and if Guy Oscard did not know this he had only himself to
blame. There were plenty of people ready to tell him. He had only to
ask.
Millicent Chyne, like Guy, was hampered at the outset of life by
theories upon it. Experience, the fashionable novel, and modern cynicism
had taught her to expect little from human nature--a dangerous lesson,
for it eases responsibility, and responsibility is the Ten Commandments
rolled into a compact whole, suitable for the pocket.
She expected of no man--not even of Jack--that perfect faithfulness in
every word and thought which is read of in books. And it is one of the
theories of the day that what one does not expect one is not called upon
to give. Jack, she reflected, was too much a man of the world to expect
her to sit and mope alone. She was apparently incapable of seeing the
difference between that pastime and sitting on the sea-wall behind a
large flowering currant-tree with a man who did not pretend to hide the
fact that he was in love with her. Some women are thus.
“I do not know if you have learnt much,” he answered. “But I have.”
“What have you learnt?” she asked in a low voice, half-fascinated by the
danger into which she knew that she was running.
“That I love you,” he answered, standing squarely in front of her,
and announcing the fact with a deliberate honesty which was rather
startling. “I was not sure of it before, so I stayed away from you for
three weeks; but now I know for certain.”
“Oh, you mustn't say that!”
She rose hastily and turned away from him. There was in her heart a
sudden feeling of regret. It was the feeling that the keenest sportsman
sometimes has when some majestic monarch of the forest falls before his
merciless rifle--a sudden passing desire that it might be undone.
“Why not?” he asked. He was desperately in earnest, and that which
made him a good sportsman--an unmatched big-game hunter, calm and
self-possessed in any strait--gave him a strange deliberation now, which
Millicent Chyne could not understand. “Why not?”
“I do not know--because you mustn't.”
And in her heart she wanted him to say it again.
“I am not ashamed of it,” he said, “and I do not see why I should not
say it to you--or to any one else, so far as that goes.”
“No, never!” she cried, really frightened. “To me it does not matter so
much. But to no one else--no, never! Aunt Marian must not know it--nor
Sir John.”
“I cannot see that it is any business of Sir John's. Of course, Lady
Cantourne would have liked you to marry a title; but if you cared for me
she would be ready to listen to reason.”
In which judgment of the good lady he was no doubt right--especially if
reason spoke with the voice of three thousand pounds per annum.
“Do you care for me?” he asked, coming a little closer.
There was a whole world of gratified vanity and ungratified curiosity
for her in the presence of this strong man at her elbow. It was one
of the supreme triumphs of her life, because he was different from the
rest. He was for her what his first tiger had been for him. The danger
that he might come still nearer had for her a sense of keen pleasure.
She was thoroughly enjoying herself, and the nearest approach that men
can experience to the joy that was hers is the joy of battle.
“I cannot answer that--not now.”
And the little half-shrinking glance over her shoulder was a low-minded,
unmaidenly invitation. But he was in earnest, and he was, above all, a
gentleman. He stood his ground a yard away from her.
“Then when,” he asked--“when will you answer me?”
She stood with her back turned towards him, looking out over the smooth
waters of the Solent, where one or two yachts and a heavy black schooner
were creeping up on the tide before the morning breeze. She drummed
reflectively with her fingers on the low stone wall. Beneath them a few
gulls whirled and screamed over a shoal of little fish. One of the birds
had a singular cry, as if it were laughing to itself.
“You said just now,” Millicent answered at length, “that you were not
sure yourself--not at first--and therefore you cannot expect me to know
all at once.”
“You would know at once,” he argued gravely, “if it was going to be no.
If you do not say no now, I can only think that it may be yes some
day. And”--he came closer--he took the hand that hung at her
side--conveniently near--“and I don't want you to say no now. Don't say
no! I will wait as long as you like for yes. Millicent, I would rather
go on waiting, and thinking that it is going to be yes, even if it is no
after all.”
She said nothing, but she left her hand in his.
“May I go on thinking that it will be yes until I come back?”
“I cannot prevent your thinking, can I?” she whispered, with a tender
look in her eyes.
“And may I write to you?”
She shook her head.
“Well--I--I--Now and then,” he pleaded. “Not often. Just to remind you
of my existence.”
She gave a little laugh, which he liked exceedingly, and remembered
afterwards.
“If you like,” she answered.
At this moment Lady Cantourne's voice was heard in the distance, calling
them.
“There!” exclaimed Millicent. “We must go at once. And no one--no one,
mind--must know of this.”
“No one shall know of it,” he answered.