“No bad news, I hope?”
“None, thanks.”
It is at the breakfast-table next morning that this question and answer
are exchanged. They are the result of the wire which has just been
handed to Lavinia, and which she continues looking at, long after she
must have mastered its contents--so long that the hostess’s curiosity
conquers her good breeding, and makes her take for granted sender and
subject.
“Does Mr. Rupert say by what train he and Sir George are returning?”
There is a pause, though slightly perceptible.
“They cannot get back to-day; the papers were not ready for their
signature, after all.”
“The law’s delay! We all know something about that,” says Mr. Prince,
looking up with a smile of elaborate sympathy from his porridge. “Will
legislation ever effect anything towards----?”
“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,” cries Mrs. Prince, cutting
ruthlessly into her husband’s speculation. “Since there is nobody to go
back to, what sense is there in your going back?”
* * * * *
“I have only _one_ little hint to give you, dear,” says Mrs. Prince,
escorting her visitor to the wounded man’s door, and in a tone tinged
with apology; “but you know what an impracticable patient Féo is, and we
must give in to sick people’s whims, as she was always impressing upon
us about Captain Binning.”
“Yes?”
“Well, dear, it is too silly and exacting of her; but she complains that
there were three quarters of an hour between your first and second
visits to her yesterday, and forty-five minutes between your second and
third.”
“Were there?” rather blankly.
“If the same thing happens to-day, she threatens to get up and go and
see for herself what’s happening. Dr. Roots tells her he will not answer
for the consequences if she does; but she snaps her fingers at him.
However,” with reassurance, “my one confidence is in her _colour_!”
* * * * *
They meet without the elation of yesterday, their eyes shirking each
other, and their hands taking for granted that contact is superfluous.
Half a score of subjects had yesterday succeeded her refusal of his
suggested gift; but the sting of that rebuff still inflames their
memories.
“This is an uncovenanted mercy!” he says, with a rather strained smile.
“I was afraid that I had seen the last of you.”
“I heard from my people, that they cannot get back to-day.”
“So you stay here?”
“Yes.”
There is a lifelessness in the little dialogue, she expressing no
regret, and he no gladness. When the eyes, dropped upon her work--she
had no work yesterday--give him an opportunity of covert observation, he
sees that her large eyelids look thickened as if with tears or watching.
“The law is a very odd thing, isn’t it?” she says presently in a
staccato key.
“I have never had many dealings with it.”
“It is the only vehicle to which civilization has not given C-springs
and indiarubber tires. It still jolts and lumbers along as it did three
hundred years ago.”
His look asks for an explanation of her forced yet commonplace analogy,
and she goes on.
“In the matter of marriage settlements for instance, both sides may be
perfectly at one as to the disposition of the money; and yet the law
insists on finding flaws and making difficulties.”
“I suppose it does.”
“Some hitch of the kind is detaining my uncle and Rupert.”
She cannot be more uncomfortably conscious that the explanation is
superfluous and uncalled for, than is he that her trite reflections and
unasked-for introduction of her financial affairs are the stairs by
which she is climbing to some aimed-at goal. In her next sentence she
attains it.
“Talking of marriages reminds me----” Even when the door to which she
has been looking is reached, it seems hard to open.
“Yes?”
“I have been thinking that I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For the spirit in which I received a very kind suggestion you made.”
“What suggestion?”
It is needless to say that he knows as well as she what was the
contemned overture; yet--for Love is by no means a kindly god--he cannot
deny himself the luxury of seeing her run up the red pennon of shame
into her cheeks. But when he notes what uphill work it is to her to give
the asked-for explanation, and how conscientiously she does it, his
heart smites him with an acuteness that brings its own retribution.
“To give me a wedding present.”
“I was sorry that I had put you to the pain of refusing.” His tone is
very gentle, and not in the least rancorous.
“Do you know why I refused?”
“I had a twinge of my old misgivings.”
For a moment--so complete is her innocence of the motive hinted at--she
looks at sea. Then his meaning flashes painfully upon her. He supposes
that from the causer of Bill’s death no member of Bill’s family can
bring him or herself to accept a gift.
“Whatever your misgiving was, it was wrong,” she says, the eager desire
to reassure him giving her a momentary glibness in conspicuous contrast
to the lameness of her former speech. “You could not possibly have
guessed the real reason; it would have required a more than human
intuition.”
“Are you going--are you able to tell it me?”
“Yes, now.” She pauses a moment, as if to collect herself, and set her
facts in order. “I must explain to you,” she says, “that my marriage is
not like other marriages.”
“I do not understand.”
It would be better taste, as he feels, to allow her to tell her tale to
its end, without remark; but she makes a slight halt, and the delay is
unendurable.
“I mean that it is no occasion for festivity or present-giving. I
intended no slight to you; I only saw that you misunderstood.”
This time he has himself better in hand, for no comment follows; but
she, verifying by one snatched look the miserable mystification of his
face, hurries out her next words.
“It is the carrying out of a bargain made almost further back than
memory can reach.”
“Do you mean----”--whether it be through the weakness of his body or the
rebellion of his spirit, the words are spoken almost below his
breath--“that you have tied yourself for life by a childish promise to
another child?”
She draws up head and neck in a way that he feels to convey a dignified
reproof.
“There is no question of tying. I am doing it absolutely of my own free
will. All my life I have known that for me there was to be no another
man than Rupert; and all his life he has known that for him there was to
be no other woman than me!”
If any incredulity born of experience or observation invades the soul of
Rupert’s brother man at this large assertion, no sign of it appears. He
only waits blankly.
“I am up to my neck in debt to them--to both of them!” goes on the poor
girl, losing something of her collectedness, and torn between the
knowledge that wisdom bids her leave the picture of her past and future
without further touches; and the impossibility of not making it clear to
her pale hearer, that love--lover-love--has no part in the scheme of her
existence. “I am up to my neck in debt to them, and this is the first
instalment I have ever been able to pay!”
“I see.”
She sighs, and throws out her arms as if tossing away something irksome.
“Now let us talk of something else.”
But a topic, thus ordered up, comes with a limp; and they get lamely
enough through the next hour; the bulletins to Féodorovna are delivered
with a punctuality unknown on happier yesterday. It is only gradually
that comfort and fluency return to them, the knowledge of the one
subject which has to be skirted round, making all others seem dangerous.
The war-map hung at the foot of the bed proves their best ally. In
moving its pins and flags, and making out, with the nearest approach to
accuracy, the scene of Captain Greene’s exploit, they grow almost easy
and almost garrulous.
“What have you been talking about?” is the first question put by Miss
Prince on the next scrupulously paid visit of report made by the
amateur nurse.
Féodorovna has managed to fidget her temperature up to a higher point
than yesterday’s, and the orange of her face is patched with the
flushings of fever.
“About the war.”
“What about the war?”
“I have been moving the pins and flags on the war-map, in accordance
with to-day’s news.”
“You ought not to let him mention the war.”
“I think it would be worse harm to forbid him. He would only brood the
more over Captain Greene’s wounds.”
“You seem to be much better informed on the subject than I am”--very
fretfully. “What else have you talked about?”
“Nothing much.”
“I hope you have not told him that my temperature has gone up.”
“No.”
“Of course he asked?”
“Of course.”
It is with the weight of this falsehood upon her soul that Lavinia
returns to her charge. It does not sit very heavily, and is probably not
a falsehood at all, since all the inquiries in question have, no doubt,
been addressed to Nurse Blandy or Mrs. Prince, before her own appearance
on the scene. And whether because a little of the former awkwardness
makes him glad of a topic ready to his hand, or that his conscience
smites him with an earlier negligence, he really does put the orthodox
query this time.
“Well, how is she?”
Lavinia shakes her head. “Poor thing! I am afraid her overhaste to be
well will very much retard her cure. You had better take warning by
her!”
There is a pretty admonishment in her voice, and in the face, which is
gentled beyond its never ungentle wont by a diminution of colour. He
rolls his head about on the pillow.
“Am I in such overhaste to be well? Or do I only pretend it?”
“I do not think you are a very good hand at pretending,” she answers,
with a flickering smile.
* * * * *
And now the day is done. Has some new Joshua issued a contrary command
to that which the first one sent over the wrecked Syrian town, and bid
the sun double his speed to the west?
“Sleep well,” Lavinia says.
At his request, and by the condescension of Nurse Blandy, she has gone
in to bid him good night at her own bedtime, and long after her services
have been dispensed with. The electric light is out, and the moonlight,
for whose continued admission during another few minutes he has begged,
sleeps in faintly glorious bars and islands on the bed. Long and ghostly
he lies there, and ghostly she leans over him. The pallid interrupted
light--so interrupted that in a second either of them can withdraw from
it under the shield of darkness--gives them a confidence and
expansiveness unknown throughout the day. They feel something of the
freedom of two innocently tender spirits freed from the shams and
prohibitions of the flesh.
“Sleep well!”
She is stooping over him to enable her to see him, and one hand lies on
the turned-over sheet. It looks so unearthly that he must think there is
no contravention of rules made for the material and the real in carrying
it to his ghostly lips. But the unspiritual contact, novel and most
sweet, effectually breaks through the etherial figment.
“Do not wish me ‘sleep:’ wish me a blessed lying dream!”
* * * * *
How deep is Lavinia’s thankfulness that Miss Prince’s ignorance of this
irregular interview saves her from the awful necessity of at once
accounting for and relating it. She reaches her own room, trembling and
unstrung. So complete has been her fidelity to Rupert, unconscious of
the unusual in its absoluteness, that no man has ever before kissed even
her hand, the hand which is so often a wicket-gate leading to the palace
of the lips. By the electric light she looks at her right hand--it was
the right--which has been desecrated, is it? or for ever ennobled?--her
practical, capable right hand, beautiful in shapely strength; and her
first feeling is one of regret that it is not more satin-soft, more
smoothly worthy of his lips. Shame that at such a crisis--for to her
inexperience it seems one--so unworthy an impulse should predominate,
burns hotly. But, all the same, the regret holds its own, and keeps its
original start.
The “dazzled morning moon” and the uprising sun find her still a
watcher.
“I have lost a whole night’s sleep because a sick man kissed my hand out
of gratitude,” she says to herself, when her eyes at length close upon
the already roseing clouds. “That is sensible!”
Waking brings with it a healthier view of the episode that had cost her
such a vigil--brings an effort to deride herself for attaching so much
importance to what was doubtless a very commonplace form of
acknowledgment. Her yesterday’s explanation returns with a certain power
of soothing upon her conscience. It showed more than doubtful taste in
her to volunteer it; but, at all events, he now knows that her marriage
with Rupert is an unalterable certainty, and that lover-love has no part
in it. Why it should be unendurable to leave an acquaintance of a
fortnight’s standing under the belief that she is influenced by the
ordinary motives, she omits to asks herself. But it is with a brave face
of open friendliness that she presents herself at his bedside, and he
asks himself by what juggle it had seemed to him that last night her
spirit had kissed his in the moonlight.
In the afternoon she returns to Campion Place, bidding her patient
good-bye with staid kindness, but making no mention of a possible
return. She is on the doorstep, with a bright face to welcome back “her
men.”
The young horse, which Sir George is driving, shies badly at barking
Geist, with a foolish pretence of not recognizing him as his own family
dog; and Lavinia would give anything that her eyes had not flown
suspiciously to Rupert, to note whether his hand is nervously gripping
the side of the dog-cart.
It is fortunate for her that both her travellers are too much occupied
with their own misadventures to ask her many questions about the
disposition of her time. The trip has been neither satisfactory nor
final. An entry in a baptismal registry is not to be found, and a
second, if not a third visit to the lawyers will probably be necessary.
Two dull evenings have been passed at a hotel, as Sir George, with his
usual ingenuity in making life as disagreeable to himself as he can, has
morosely refused to spend them at any place of entertainment; and
Rupert--as seems a matter of course to them all--has foregone his own
friends and pastimes to keep him company.
The only bright spots in their history appear to be that Rupert, who to
his other graces adds a connoisseurship in old silver, has picked up a
George III. Loving-cup at a shop in the Strand for an old song; and that
Sir George has met with some patterns of wall-paper that please him for
two rooms which have not been used of late years, and in whose doing-up
he takes an interest in striking contrast to his usually absolute
indifference to the internal details of his household.
“They would make a nursery look nice and bright,” he says, displaying
them to his niece, and speaking with that uncompromising outspeaking of
his hopes, which has often before inflamed her cheeks.
It is with an inward convulsion of dismay that she realizes how
enormously her repulsion for the topic, thus introduced with Saxon
simplicity, has grown since it was last broached to her. Yet she must
get used to it. She has never hitherto flinched from the necessary and
the actual. There _will_ be, in all human probability, a nursery; there
_will_ be children; and they will be hers--theirs.
“Yes, very bright and pretty.”
He looks at her with a touch of solicitude, though without a grain of
suspicion.
“Have you got a cold? I always tell you that you go too thinly clad.”
“No, thanks; not in the least. Why do you think so?”
“Your voice sounded hoarse, as if your tonsils were relaxed.”
But Lavinia’s tonsils are all right.