HER HOUR OF TRIUMPH.
Now Herbert was taking part in the match, and Ruth was in the ladies'
tent, trying not to think of Christina, who was playing a single-wicket
game in another place. But Erskine Holland was rolling the rectory court
gloomily and quite alone, and he was tired of Essingham. Not only had
the day kept fine in spite of its threats, but toward the end of the
afternoon it turned out very fine indeed, and the light became excellent
for lawn tennis, because there was nobody to play with poor Erskine.
Even the good Willoughby was on the accursed field over yonder; and he
mattered least. Ruth was there. Tiny was there. Herbert was not only
there, but playing for Lord Manister, who was notoriously short of men.
One can hardly wonder at Erskine's condemnation of his brother-in-law,
out of his own mouth, as a stultified young fraud in the matter of Lord
Manister. As to the girls, some old tenets of his concerning women in
general returned to taunt him for the ship-wreck of his holiday at
least. Yet Ruth had but plotted for her sister's advancement, not her
own. Whether Christina cared in the least for the man whom she evidently
meant to marry, if she could, was, after all, Christina's own affair.
Erskine had only heard her disparage him behind his back--at which
Herbert himself could not beat her--whereas Ruth had at least been
openly in favor of the fellow from the very first. But if Herbert was a
fraud, what was the name for Tiny? Clearly the only trustworthy person
of the three was Ruth, who at least--yet alone--was consistent.
To this conclusion, which was not without its pleasing side, Erskine
came with his eyes on the ground he was rolling. But as he pushed the
roller toward the low stone wall dividing the lawn from the churchyard,
into which the balls were too often hit, one came whizzing out of it for
a change, and struck the roller under Erskine's nose. And leaning with
her elbows on the low wall, and her right hand under her chin, as though
it were the last right hand that could have flung that ball, stood the
girl for whom a bad enough name had yet to be found.
"Where on earth did you spring from?" Holland asked, a little brusquely,
as he stopped for a moment and then rolled on toward the wall.
"If you mean the ball," replied Tiny, "it must be the one we lost the
last time we played. I have just found it among the graves, and it
slipped out of my hand."
"I meant you," said Erskine, with an unsuccessful smile; and he pushed
the roller close up to the wall, and folded his arms upon the handle.
"Oh, I have come from the hall by the forbidden path over Gallow Hill;
but it seems that wasn't meant for us, and at any rate I have leave to
use it whenever I like." She was puzzling him, and she knew it, but she
met his eyes with a mysterious smile for some moments before adding:
"You can't think what a view there is from the top of the hill--I mean a
view of the hall. Just now the sun was blazing in all the windows, like
the flash of a broadside from an old two-decker; you see it made such an
impression on me that I thought of that for your benefit."
Erskine acknowledged the benefit rather heavily with a nod.
"What have you done with Ruth?"
"To the best of my belief she is watching the match; at least she was an
hour ago."
"Something _has_ happened!" exclaimed Erskine Holland, starting upright
and leaving the roller handle swinging in the air like an inverted
pendulum. His eyes were unconsciously stern; those of the girl seemed to
quail before them.
"Something has happened," she admitted to the top of the wall. "I
suppose you would get to know sooner or later, so I may as well tell you
myself now. The fact is Lord Manister has just proposed to me."
Erskine dropped his eyes and shrugged slightly; then he raised them to
the setting sun, and tried to look resigned; then, with a noticeable
effort, he brought them back to her face, and forced a smile.
"I'm not surprised. I saw it coming, though I hardly expected it so
soon. Well, Tiny, I congratulate you! He is about the most brilliant
match in England."
"Quite the most, I thought?"
"And I am sure he is a first-rate fellow," added Erskine with vigor,
regretting that he had not said this first, and disliking what he had
said.
"Oh, he is a very good sort," acknowledged Tiny to the wall.
"So you ought to be the happiest young woman in the world, as you are
perhaps the luckiest--I mean in one sense. And I congratulate you, Tiny,
I do indeed!"
To clinch his congratulations he held out his hand, from which she
raised her eyes to him at last--with the look of a cabman refusing his
proper fare.
"And I took you for the most discerning person I knew!" said Tiny very
slowly.
"You don't mean to say----"
His eagerness and incredulity arrested his speech.
"I _do_ mean to say."
"That you have--refused him?"
Tiny nodded. "With thanks--not too many."
They stared at one another for some moments longer. Then Erskine sat
down on the roller and folded his arms and looked extremely serious,
though already the corners of his mouth were beginning to twitch.
"Now, you know, Tiny, I'm _in loco parentis_ as long as you're in
England. In this one matter you've no business to chaff me. Honestly,
now, is it the truth that Lord Manister has asked you to marry him, and
that you have said him nay?"
"It is the truest truth I ever uttered in my life. I refused him
point-blank," added Tiny, with eyes once more lowered, as though the
memory were not unmixed with shame, "and before his own mother!"
"In the presence of Lady Dromard?"
She nodded solemnly, but with a blush.
"Good Lord!" murmured Erskine. "And I was ass enough to think you were
leading him on!"
She whispered, "And so I was."
For one moment Erskine stared at her more seriously than ever; then the
reaction came, and she saw him shaking. He shook until the tears were in
his eyes; and when he was rid of them he perceived the same thing in
Tiny's eyes, but obviously not from the same cause.
"_I_ don't think it's such a joke," said the girl, in the voice of one
pained when in pain already. "I am pretty well ashamed of myself, I can
tell you. If you really consider yourself responsible for me I think you
might let me tell you something about it; for you must tell Ruth--I
daren't. But if you're going to laugh ... let me tell you it's no
laughing matter to me, now I've done it."
"Forgive me," said Holland instantly; "I am a brute. Do tell me anything
you care to; I promise not to laugh unless you do. And I might be able
to help you."
"Ah, you would if anybody could; but nobody can; I have behaved just
scandalously, and I know it as well as you do, now that it's too late.
Yet I wish that you knew all about it, Erskine!" She looked at him
wistfully. "You understand things so. Would it bore you if I were to
tell you how the whole thing happened?"
The gilt hands of the church clock made it ten minutes to six when
Erskine shook his head and bent it attentively. When the hour struck he
had opened his mouth only once, to answer her question as to how much he
knew of her affair with Lord Manister in Melbourne. He had known for a
day and a half as much as Ruth knew; and he did not learn much more now,
for the girl could speak more freely of recent incidents, and dwelt
principally on those of that afternoon, beginning with Lady Dromard's
extraordinary attentiveness on the cricket field.
"I felt there was something behind that, though I didn't know what; I
could only be sure that she had her eye on me. However, I took a
tremendous vow to face whatever came without moving a muscle. I think I
succeeded, on the whole, but I was on the edge of a panic when she took
me upstairs. I wanted to clear! I had qualms!"
She was startlingly candid on another point.
"I also made up my mind to behave as prettily as possible, just to show
her. I was really pleased with the interest she seemed to take in what I
told her about the bush, and I was quite delighted to see a galar again.
But I needn't have made the fuss I did in taking it out of its cage;
that was purely put on, and all the time I was mortally afraid that it
would peck me. Yet I suppose," added Tiny, after some moments, "you
won't believe me when I tell you that I am ashamed of all that already?"
Erskine declared that there was nothing in the world to be ashamed of;
on the contrary, in his opinion she was perfectly justified in all she
had done. With kind eyes upon her, he added what he very nearly meant,
that he was proud of her; and his remark wrought a change in her
expression which convinced him finally that at least she was not proud
of herself.
"Ah, you weren't there, Erskine," said Christina sadly, her blue eyes
clouded with penitence; "you don't know how kind poor Lady Dromard was
with all her dodges! She said it would be more comfortable to have tea
up there. Comfortable was the last thing I felt in my heart, but I never
let her see that; and besides, I didn't as yet guess what was coming.
Even when she wanted me to tell her my own name, I couldn't be sure that
she suspected me. I wasn't sure until she asked me whether the girl had
got over it, when I knew from her voice. And I saw then that she really
rather liked me, and half wished it to be; and I was sorry because I
liked her; and though I spoke my mind to her about her son, I should
have made a clean breast of everything to her if he hadn't come in just
then. I should have told her straight that I didn't care _that_ for
him--not now--and that I had been flirting with him disgracefully just
to try to make him smart as I had smarted. That's the whole truth of
it, Erskine; and I meant to tell her so in another second, because I
couldn't stand her kissing me and crying, and all that. I should have
been crying myself next moment. But just then _he_ came in, and I
remembered everything. I remembered, too, what she had had to do with
it, on her own showing; and when I saw what she wanted me to say I think
I became possessed."
Her brother-in-law was very curious to know all that Christina had said,
but she would not tell him. She merely remarked that he would think all
the worse of her if he knew, even though at the moment she could hardly
remember any one thing that she had said. Then she paused, and recalled
a little, and the little made her blush.
"I didn't come well out of it," she declared.
Erskine threw discredit on her word in this particular matter; he
sniffed an extravagant remorse.
"Talk of hitting a man when he's down!" exclaimed Tiny miserably. "I hit
Lady Dromard when the tears were in her eyes, and Lord Manister when he
was hitting himself. He took it splendidly. He is a gentleman. I don't
care what else he is--lord or no lord, he would always be a perfect
gentleman. What's more, I am very sorry for him."
"Why on earth be sorry for him?" asked Erskine with a touch of
irritation; for when Tiny spoke of Lady Dromard's tears, her own eyes
swam with them; and to do a thing like this and start crying over it the
moment it was done seemed to Erskine a bad sign. The event was so very
fresh, and so entirely contrary to his own most recent apprehensions,
that at present his only feeling in the matter was one of profound
satisfaction. But the symptoms she showed of relenting already
interfered not a little with that satisfaction, while, even more than by
the remark that had prompted his question, he was alarmed by her answer
to it:
"Because I believe he does care for me, a little bit, in his own way--or
he thinks he does, which comes to the same thing; and because, when
all's said and done, I have treated him like a little fiend!"
"My good girl!" said Holland uneasily, "I should remember how he treated
you."
"Ah, no," answered Christina, shaking her head; "I have remembered that
far too long as it is. That's ancient history."
"Well, be sorry for him if you like; be sorry for yourself as well."
That was the best advice that occurred to him at the moment, but it set
her off at a tangent.
"I should think I am sorry for myself--I should be sorry for any girl
who could so far forget herself!" cried Christina, speaking bitterly and
at a great pace. "Shall I tell you the sort of thing I said? When I told
him I could not possibly believe in his really caring for me, after the
way in which he left Melbourne without so much as saying good-by to me
or sending me word that he was going, he said it wasn't then he really
loved me, but now. So I told him I was sorry to hear it, as in my case
it might perhaps have been then, but it certainly wasn't now. I actually
said that! Then Lady Dromard spoke up. She had been staring at me
without a word, but she spoke up now, and it served me right. I can't
blame her for being indignant, but she didn't say half she could have
said, and it was more what she implied that sticks and stings. It didn't
sting then, though; I was thinking of all the talk out there. It was
when Lord Manister stopped her, and held out his hand to me and said,
'Anyway you forgive me now? I thought you _had_ forgiven me'--it was
then I began to tingle. I said I forgave him, of course; and then I
bolted. But I was sorry for him, and I _am_ sorry for him, whatever you
say, for I had cut him to the heart.... And he looked most awfully nice
the whole time!"
With these frivolous last words there came a smile: the normal girl
shone out for an instant, as the sun breaks through clouds; and Erskine
took advantage of the gleam.
"To the heart of his vanity--that's where you cut. You've humiliated him
certainly; but surely he deserved it? In any case, you've given young
Manister the right-about; and upon my soul that's rather a performance
for our Tiny! I should only like to have seen it."
"It's good of you to call me your Tiny," returned the young girl rather
coldly. "But don't talk to me about performances, please, unless you
mean disgraceful performances. I wish I had never come to England--I
wish I was back in Australia--I wish I was up at the station!" she
cried with sudden passion. "I am miserable, and you won't understand me;
and Ruth couldn't if she tried."
"My dear girl," Erskine said in rather an injured tone, "surely you're a
little unfair on us both? Ruth will understand when I tell her; and as
for me--I think I understand you already."
"Not you!" answered Tiny disdainfully. "You call it a performance! You
treat it as a joke!" And she left him, with the tears in her eyes.
He watched her enter the garden by the little gate lower down, and
saunter toward the house with lagging steps. The low sun streamed upon
her drooping figure. Even at that distance, and with her face hidden
from him, she seemed to Erskine the incarnation of all that was wayward
and willful and sweet in girlhood. And her tears and temper made her
doubly sweet, as the rain draws new fragrance from a flower; but they
had also made her doubly difficult to understand. One moment he had seen
her plainly, as in the lime light; in another, she had retired to a
deeper shade than before. The explanation of her conduct toward Lord
Manister had been a sufficiently startling revelation, yet a perfectly
lucid one; but what of this prompt transition to tears and penitence?
The only interpretation which suggested itself to Erskine was one that
he refused to entertain. He preferred to attribute Christina's present
state of mind to mere reaction; if the reaction had taken a rather
hysterical form, that, perhaps, was not to be wondered at. Moreover,
this seemed to be indeed the case; for the girl was seen no more that
day, save by Ruth, who by night was perhaps the most disappointed person
in the parish; only she managed to conceal her disappointment in a way
that it was impossible not to admire.
Nevertheless dinner at the rectory was a dismal meal, and the more so
for the high spirits of Herbert, which, meeting with no response, turned
to silence. Poor Herbert happened to have distinguished himself in the
match, which, indeed, he had been largely instrumental in winning for
his side; but neither Ruth nor her husband showed any interest in his
exploit, and Tiny was not there. Erskine was no cricketer; Herbert hated
him for it, and made a sullen attack on the claret. But at length it
dawned upon him that there was some special reason for the silence and
glum looks at either end of the table, for which Christina's alleged
headache would not in itself account; and when Ruth left the table early
to look after Tiny, he said bluntly to Erskine:
"You're enough to give a fellow the blues, the pair of you! What's
wrong? Have I done anything, or has Tiny?"
Erskine temporized, pushing forward the claret. "I understand _you_ have
done something," he said with a first approach to geniality; "but, upon
my word, old fellow, I don't know what it is. I couldn't listen, for the
life of me; and you must forgive me. Tiny's upset, and that's upset
Ruth, which I suppose has upset me in my turn. Please call me names--I
deserve them--and then tell me again what you have done."
Herbert did not require two invitations to do this. He had not only
acquitted himself brilliantly, but there was a peculiar piquancy in his
success; he had saved the side which had treated him with unobtrusive
but galling contempt until the last moment, when he opened their eyes,
and their throats too. They had put him to field at short leg; during
the intervals, after the fall of a wicket, not one of them had spoken a
word to him, save good-natured Mr. Willoughby; and they had sent him in
last, with hopeless faces, when there were many runs to get. The good
batsmen, beginning with Lord Manister, had mostly failed miserably. The
Honorable Stanley Dromard, who had been in fine form all the week, had
alone done well; and he was still at the wicket when Herbert whipped in,
with his ears full of gratuitous instructions to keep his wicket up, and
not to try to hit the professional, and his heart full of other designs.
Those instructions were given without much knowledge of this young
Australian, who took a sincere delight in disregarding them. He had hit
out from the very first, particularly at the professional, who disliked
being hit, and who was also somewhat demoralized by the extreme respect
with which he had been treated by preceding batsmen. There were thirty
runs to make when Herbert went in, and in a quarter of an hour he made
them nearly all from his own bat, exhibiting an almost insolent amount
of coolness and nerve at the crisis. The best of it was that no one had
considered it a crisis when he went in; but his truculent batting had
immediately made it one, and ultimately, in a scene of the greatest
excitement, of which Herbert was the hero, an almost certain defeat had
been converted into a glorious victory. All this was confirmed by the
local newspaper next day; considering his achievement and his character,
the hero himself told his tale with modesty.
"He bowled like beggary," he concluded, in allusion to the discomfited
professional; "but I tell you, old toucher, we were too many measles for
him!"
"They were more civil to you after that?"
"My oath!" said Herbert complacently. "Those Eton jokers kicked up
hell's delight! Stanley Dromard shook hands with me between the wickets,
and said I ought to be going up to Trinity; but he's a real good
sportsman, with less side than you'd think. His governor, the earl,
congratulated me in person--you bet I felt it down my marrow! He wants
to know how it is I'm not playing for the Australians. The only man who
didn't say a word to me was that dam' fool Manister."
"Ah, he was on the ground, then?"
"He turned up as I went in; and when I came out he didn't look at me.
Who the blazes does he think he is? I'm as good a man as him, though I'm
a larrikin and he's a twopenny lord. I don't care what he is, I had the
bulge over him to-day--he made four!"
"Perhaps someone else has had the bulge over him, too," suggested
Erskine gently.
"Has someone?"
Erskine nodded.
"Our Tiny?"
"Yes; he has asked her to marry him, and she has refused him on the
spot."
Herbert shot out of his chair.
"So're you crackin'! I thought something was _wrong_, man? O Lord, this
is a treat!"
"It's a treat she didn't prepare one for. I had visions of a very
different upshot."
"Aha! you never know where you have our Tiny. No more does old Manister.
Oh, but this is a treat for the gods!"
"I told Tiny it was a performance," Erskine said reflectively; "it
struck me as one, and I was trying to cheer her up--but that wasn't the
way."
"No? She's a terror, our Tiny!" murmured Herbert, with a running
chuckle. "Now I know why the brute was so civil to me the first time I
met him in these parts. Even then my hand itched to fill his eye for
him, but I didn't say anything, because Tiny seemed on the job herself.
To think this was her game! I must go and shake hands with her. I must
go and tell her she's done better than filling up his eye."
"Don't you," said Erskine quietly. "I wouldn't say much to her
afterward, either, if I may give you a hint. She doesn't take quite our
view of this matter. Not that we can pretend that ours is at all a nice
view of it, mind you; only I really do regard it as a bit of a
performance on our Tiny's part, and I should like to have seen it."
"By ghost, so should I! And seriously," added Herbert, "he deserved all
he's got. I happen to know."