“A côté du bonheur”
“All these things are against me!”
Seven days are gone since Lavinia was called upon to exult over the
nursery hangings, and there is no exultation, even feigned, in the tone
with which she quotes to herself the words of Jacob, running over in her
head what “these things” are. It is “against her” that the search for
the missing baptismal entry, now complicated by doubt as to the
whereabouts of the register in which it was made, has motived another
absence on the part of her bridegroom and uncle. It is against her that
this fact has come to Mrs. Prince’s ears, and has brought a hailstorm of
invitations, entreaties, and reproaches about Miss Carew’s head. It is
against her that Féodorovna, having with a headstrong insanity, even
stronger than her vanity, insisted on visiting Binning, has succeeded in
improving upon her original malady by an attack of pneumonia, and
brought herself to death’s door.
As she unquietly paces the garden at Campion Place, waiting for the
Princes’ victoria to convey her to the Chestnuts, Lavinia, dolefully
probing her conscience, asks it which of the causes that have added
their weight to each other till their momentum has grown irresistible,
can be, in any common fairness, laid at her door; and she can detect no
unjust bias in her own favour in the “not one” that answers her inward
inquisition.
On the elms’ little leaves in the giant espaliered hedge that parts her
from the churchyard is the glisten of that sunshine that has just been
luring them into life; on the dazzling emerald grass “nice-eyed”
wagtails are walking with balanced tails at the foot of the old grey
wall which, on the left side of the demesne, drops down a matter of ten
feet to the croquet lawn below. She, looking absently over, can see the
large-flowered periwinkle staring up at her, and the heaven-shaming blue
of the forget-me-not fringe. The sight of the latter blossoms causes her
a twinge of discomfort. She had worn a little bunch of them in her white
coat, and at his leave-taking, a quarter of an hour ago, Rupert had
deliberately unpinned and annexed them. Could he have intended any
rebuke or admonishment by an action unlike him in its something of cool
ownership? Yet there was certainly nothing of overweening confidence or
masterdom in the words with which he had answered her at the moment,
sincerely meant and felt--
“This is really too bad.”
“Has absence made the heart grow fonder?” he asks, with a light
lip-raillery, which the restrained yet legible wistfulness of his eyes
contradicts. “When I see a wave of hatred coming on, I shall know what
remedy to apply.”
She has taught him to be sparing of endearments. Yet even he must expect
some trifling kindness at parting. It weighs upon her conscience after
he is gone that she had deftly chosen a moment when the butler was
passing through the hall to bid him her final good-bye.
“All these things are against me!”
Yet even while she repeats the Biblical phrase aloud, to give it greater
solidity, a sense of her own hypocrisy comes hotly home to her.
All these things are against her. But is there nothing for her too?
Isn’t the May month for her? and the temporary freedom assured to her
fifteen minutes ago? and her own heart, capering and curvetting, under
all its pack-load of scruples and compunctions?
“For” and “against.” In what a double and contradictory sense is she
using both prepositions! She pulls herself up muddled and uneasy, yet
helped out of her puzzle by the delicious egotistical noise a thrush is
making on a bough near by, insisting on telling all passers-by, at the
top of his voice, how well his suit has thriven. A phrase out of one of
Keats’ Letters recurs to her _àpropos_ of a like feathered Anacreon--
“That thrush is a fine fellow. I hope he has made a good choice this
year.”
Happy thrush, to be in a position to make a choice! Daily, or almost
daily, as have been Lavinia’s visits to the wounded man, she never fails
before each one to feel afresh the same almost sick excitement as to the
precise method of their meeting. To a not very observant onlooker there
would not seem to be much variety in their salutations, but to her now
practised eye and ear, there lies an infinite range of gradations
between the clouded gladness of his mute, yet how legible, “It is very
good of your owner to lend you to me for yet another hour!” and the
equally mute uncalculating exultation that knows no to-morrow of “You
are here!”
To-day she might have spared herself the daily fever of her speculation,
since their meeting is to fall out in quite a new manner, and under safe
conditions of large chaperonage. Captain Binning is no longer either in
bed or in the room which has been the scene of their whole acquaintance.
He has been moved several hours ago into the adjoining room, and now
lies on a sofa drawn up to the window. He is still pillow-backed and
more than semi-recumbent; but he is “up” and the first step has been
taken towards the fulfilment of Dr. Roots’ promise.
Lavinia’s heart first bounds and then drops stone-like at the sight.
Thank God, he has reached the first milestone on the high-road to health
and vigour. How many more will take him beyond her ken? No man can fight
the enemies of his country in bandages and a nightingale, but from grey
flannel to khaki is but a step! Captain Binning is, as one glance at the
_mise en scène_ informs her, giving a housewarming in honour of his
convalescence. The prudence of the step may be doubted, but that it is
being enjoyed by guests and host is indubitable.
In compliance with his request, backed by their own much urgency, the
rector’s wife has brought her young family to be presented to the first
live hero they have ever seen, and all have arrived laden with the
objects that seem to them most likely to support his spirits. With their
usual eager kindheartedness, they have stripped their walls and
dressing-tables of the photographs of the adored generals, and disposed
them for exhibition within easy reach of Captain Binning’s eye and hand.
Phillida has brought the new poodle, who wears the portraits of as many
military men as can be induced to stick there, in midget size, in his
hair, and Daphne introduces a female dove, in whom the friends of
General Pole-Carew would be surprised to recognize that son of Mars.
Mrs. Darcy sits by the sofa-side, putting in an observation when she has
the chance, but, with her usual wise easy-goingness, not attempting to
arrest the flow of enraptured questions which she knows that a word or a
sign from her can at once check, and which evokes such amused answers as
cannot be produced by the weary or the overdone.
At the moment of Lavinia’s entry two inquiries are shooting from as many
eager mouths at her patient, “Have you kept the bullet?” and “How often
have you spoken to Bobs?” Half a dozen sparkling eyes await the answer;
since, though Christopher has returned to school, little Serena is here,
and staring with the rest. Surprise that one who has hitherto been so
obligingly ready with his responses should now remain silent and look
oddly over the tops of their hats instead of answering, makes them turn
their own necks to discover the cause, and in the next moment they are
surrounding Miss Carew, and liberally sharing their delightful gains in
knowledge with her.
“Oh, Lavy! _Did_ you know that Captain Binning has the same Christian
name as Bobs?”
Lavinia did know it, as well as a good many other facts about the object
of the children’s interest, which he is less likely to have imparted to
them; but she is spared the necessity of owning it by Captain Binning,
who puts in, with a laugh whose altered quality puzzles the keen-eared
young people--
“It is so far down in my long string that it scarcely counts.”
“Captain Binning has three Christian names,” explains Daphne, in kind
elucidation; and Phillida hastens to strike in glibly, before her sister
can anticipate her--
“Edward Carruthers Frederick Binning.”
“Two too many,” says the owner of the names, laughing again. But, as the
children remark to their mother in the waggonette on their homeward
road, claiming her confirmation of the fact, there is still something
odd about him.
She shuts their mouths unexpectedly. “It was his civil way of letting
you know that he was tired! You know that with strangers and invalids a
little of you goes a long way.”
The explanation is not flattering, but is received without offence.
The Rectory adieux to the newly found hero are made much earlier than
his votaries think at all necessary or desirable. But though a few
moments before Lavinia’s entry, he had stoutly denied the accusation of
fatigue and the offer of departure, a quarter of an hour later he tamely
acquiesces in both.
“You will come again soon, and bring the Siege Train,” he says at
parting, and with something that might be compunctious in his tone, to
the disappointed children; “and I’ll tell you all I know about Bobs. I
do not think it is nearly as much as you know yourselves,” he adds
laughing.
He shakes hands with Phillida and Daphne, and kisses Serena and the
poodle--the latter by request--and they are gone.
Strong emotion is often the unexpected parent of platitude. It is the
mind at ease that has leisure to sharpen the epigram and fire the
_bon-mot_, and nothing can be more banal than the short phrases
exchanged between the young pair whom the departure of the Darcys has
left quivering and tingling with a sense of each other’s proximity.
“What capital children!”
“Yes, aren’t they?”
“And she, the mother, is one of the best, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.”
A pause.
Lavinia can go no farther than this bald assent in praise of her chosen
friend, for the oppression of shyness that crushes and gags her. It is
of this metamorphosed, dressed, transformed man, passing so visibly out
of the province of the nurse, despite his crutches and his pallor, that
she feels a timidity none the less overmastering for her knowledge of
its senselessness. That he sees it, the uncertainty of the tone which
utters what sounds like a reproach sufficiently proves.
“Why were you so unwilling to own that you knew my Christian names? It
was not a very compromising admission.”
“Not very,” she answers with a wavering laugh; “but to-day I feel as if
I must sit up, and ‘make strange’ with you. The person _I_ knew lay
meekly flat on his back, and did not dare to call his soul his own; when
he sits up and gives a party, I realize that my jurisdiction has ended.”
“_Has_ it?”
The question is followed by a silence so full of electricity that both
feel the necessity of running up a lightning conductor. Both begin a
sentence at the same moment, and each breaks it off on realizing the
other’s intention. Each begs the other to continue the interrupted
phrase, and each asseverates that it was not worth ending. It is Binning
who is finally persuaded to reissue from his mint the coin whose
valuelessness he has spent so much breath in asserting.
“I was only going to say that if I have already become such a bogey--so
unrecognizable--when once I am on my legs again, I shall have to be
formally reintroduced to you.”
“It will not be worth while.” Even as she makes it Lavinia realizes the
folly of her speech, opening up, as it does, the subject of their
fast-approaching separation; but before her forces can come up to
relieve it, the traitor within her has rushed the position, and once
again the electric current runs perilously strong.
* * * * *
As the young Darcys have always been taught to say what they mean, and
mean what they say, they credit their acquaintance with a like
simplicity and veracity; and, having been invited by Captain Binning to
come again soon, and bring the Siege Train, see no reason why they
should not repeat their visit in compliance with a request, whose
sincerity it never occurs to them to doubt, with the least possible
delay. Thanks to the drag placed upon their ardour by a discreeter
parent, a decent interval of three or four days is allowed to elapse
before they reappear in triumph, equipped with all the munitions of war.
“You will find him in the garden,” Mrs. Prince says to her young
visitors, waving her _en tout cas_ in the direction indicated--“there
among those lilacs. He is out for the first time in a wheeled
chair--quite an event for him, poor lad!” Then, as they fly off in eager
obedience to the direction given, she adds, _sotto voce_, to Mrs. Darcy,
“If you could give them--Binning and Lavinia, I mean--a hint to stay
within range of Féo’s windows. She likes to be able to watch them.”
But the rector’s wife must have forgotten to fulfil the delicate
commission entrusted to her, since when, an hour later, Mrs. Prince
joins the party, ostensibly to see on her own account how they are
getting on, but in reality irefully despatched by her daughter to
investigate the causes of their being completely out of sight, she finds
them all grouped in a fragrant close of blossoming shrubs round the
wheeled chair, whence Binning is conducting the Relief of Ladysmith.
That the carrying out of that operation has reduced all the forces
engaged--male and female, grown-up people and children--to the same
level of excited juvenility, is proved by the fact that, at the moment
of Mrs. Prince’s advent, Captain Binning and Miss Carew are contesting,
with raised voices and heightened colours, the possession of the one
cannon that shoots silver _bonbons_. For the moment they have entirely
lost sight of their own dangerously tender relations to each other, and
are disputing in real anger about the possession of a ridiculous toy.
“You have come just in time to prevent manslaughter,” says Mrs. Darcy,
rising from her knees with a humorously shamefaced air. “We had to
shelter here from the wind,” she adds in rather guilty explanation. “I
think we are going to have another cold snap.”
Either the “cold snap” alluded to, or one brought by Mrs. Prince
herself, presently disperses the party, and the Darcys retreat with such
precipitation as to leave the object of strife behind them on the grass.
Lavinia picks it up and eyes it unseeingly, conscious only that the
voluble chaperonage of the last hour is withdrawn, and that in the green
privacy of their lilac-scented bower nothing is left to protect them
from each other. It will be for only a minute or two that the delicious
awkwardness of their first _tête-à-tête_ amid the glad May greenness of
trees, and the erotic suggestions of wedded blackbirds will last--only
till the servant who drew the chair to its present harbour can be
recalled and instructed to drag it up and down along the broad terrace
walk between the sundial and the fountain, in the bald publicity of all
the house’s front windows, and within range of the still bedded
Féodorovna’s eye.
“I withdraw my claim,” Binning says magnanimously, with a half-laugh.
“So do I!” rejoins she, relieved.
“Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it!”
“And to think that we should have been within an inch of a serious
quarrel over _such_ an object!” she cries, tossing the gem of the
Rectory Siege Train disdainfully away. “Our first quarrel!”
At that--the phrase seeming ill pitched on and suggestive, both lapse
into awkwardness, out of which, and also out of their bird-haunted
brake, a footman presently expels them, lugging the one and compelling
the other, since she is still on duty, into the stare of the afternoon
sun on the shadeless terrace, which, or Mrs. Darcy’s “cold snap,” soon
tires the invalid so much that he asks to be taken indoors.
He revives before long, however, when comfortably extended on his sofa,
and removed from the heady influences of the lilac perfume and the
blackbirds’ song--three amorous cocks apparently courting one hen--he
and his companion have settled down into the at all events surface
peacefulness of their normal relation of nurse and patient. She has
proposed reading aloud to him, and, though he has not accepted the offer
with much eagerness, being no great bookman, and, like most men,
disliking having his reading done for him, she persists, contrary to her
usual gentle habit of following his every suggestion, and guessing every
unuttered wish. After all, the manœuvre has its advantages, and he lies
resigned, exploring the chart of her dear face, and making several new
and delightful little discoveries.
An interruption soon occurs in the shape of a letter for
Lavinia--arrived by the afternoon post, overlooked in passing through
the hall, and now brought her by a servant. Her colour changes as she
recognizes the handwriting. There must be something very wrong in her
“State of Denmark,” as she has time to realize in a flash of
compunction, for her to feel as she does, that there is an indecency in
her reading a letter from Rupert under Binning’s eyes. Yet she must read
it at once, too, since the fact of his writing implies something
unusual, as he and his father are to return to-morrow morning, and she
has never encouraged nor he permitted himself love-letters written only
for love’s sake. Asking leave of her companion, formally yet with
hurried uneasiness she opens and reads the missive, seen at the first
glance to be unaccountably long. The man, to put her at ease and make
her feel free from observation, picks up the dropped volume; but over
its top, or through its boards--since such little miracles are of easy
performance to that most bogus of blind beggars, god Eros--he sees that,
whatever her news may be, it is of an oversetting nature.
“They are not coming home to-morrow.”
This cannot be what has upset her. There must be something more.
“Has the baptismal register not turned up yet?”
“Yes, it was found on Thursday in St. Mary Abbotts.”
He must wait her time.
“My uncle is laid up ill in London.”
“Gout?”
“Yes; but not simple gout. He felt an attack coming on, and dosed
himself with the very strong remedies which the doctor has always
forbidden him; got a chill on the top of that; and now he has driven it
in.”
“And has sent for you to nurse him?”
“No; he will not hear of it.”
She shuts herself up into her letter, and he gets nothing more out of
her for a while. She has even moved quite away from him to a distant
window; still with that odd sense of immodesty in reading it while his
eyes are upon her.
“I know what your impulse will be,” Rupert writes; “but you must resist
it. It is not _façon de parler;_ but he would be seriously annoyed by
your coming up. It seems difficult to believe it, knowing as we have
done all our lives his absolute carelessness about money; but it is,
nevertheless, true that of late his one idea has been to screw and
pinch in every possible way for----”
The “for” is carefully erased; and the object of Sir George’s
parsimonies left unstated; but had it been printed on a poster in
letters six feet high, Lavinia could not have read more clearly that it
is for those terrible unescapeable younger children of hers that Sir
George is lopping his little luxuries.
“The thought that your presence would swell the bill at this ‘d----d
pot-house’ as he calls it, would do more to retard his cure than even
your ministrations could counteract; so stay where you are, and look
after Binning, to whom please give my love. You know that among the many
feminine graces for which you despise me, the gift of nursing is not the
least!”
Then follows a postscript: “The poor old fellow caught his chill walking
with me through yesterday’s storm, to save the expense of a cab or bus
to a jeweller’s in the City, about an enamelled girdle he is having made
for you; and which I have been helping him to design. Now that it is too
late, he is unnaturally good and obedient--a state of things I hope to
maintain by encouraging the terror under which he labours of not being
well by the 28th.”
Such was certainly not Rupert Campion’s intention in writing this
letter, yet the impression derived from it by his _fiancée_ is that
never were so many unpleasant facts and suggestions crowded into four
sides of a sheet of note-paper. Her uncle is seriously ill, and she is
not to be allowed to go to him because he is saving all his money for
her and Rupert’s younger children. He has contracted his illness in the
quest of an expensive ornament for her, which will add one more link to
the enormous chain of obligations which is tying up her liberty with
ever tighter and tighter knots. Rupert has given an added proof of his
hopelessly unmanly tastes by designing the jewel. In a dreadful flash of
prophetic insight, she sees him, in the terrible matter-of-fact freedom
of married life, sitting with his arm round her waist, and quoting
Waller--
“That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind.”
He has sent his “love” with school-girl effusiveness to Binning; and,
last and worst offence, he has alluded to the 28th!
For some moments the girl stands looking vaguely out at the rhododendron
belts and azalea beds, the lawns and _parterres_, with a horrible
feeling of hatred and physical nausea towards the man with whom she is
to pass her life. Then the horror is transferred to herself, and strong
reaction follows. She thrusts the letter into her pocket, goes back to
her former seat, and picks up the book. Her action seems to forbid
question or intrusion. But in a moment or two she lays down the volume,
and makes her expiation. It does not look like one at first.
“Do not you think that complete unselfishness is the highest as well as
the rarest quality that a man can possess?”
He is so much taken aback by the triteness and apparent irrelevance of
the question, that she is able to enlarge uninterrupted upon her
dog’s-eared theme.
“I mean do not you think that it is to be set far above generosity, or
endurance, or courage, or any of that sort of showy virtues?”
“Are they showy?”
“They get a great deal more _kudos_, at any rate!” she retorts, with a
heat he does not understand. “Do not you agree with me?”
“I do not think I ever thought about it,” he answers bluntly. “If I had,
I should have taken for granted that unselfishness included all the
others.”
“How?”
“Well, take pluck for instance. If a man were perfectly unselfish, he
would never cast a thought to his own skin.”
“I do not at all agree with you,” rejoins she, almost rudely. “There is
no relation whatever between them: the one is the loftiest of moral
qualities; the other is purely physical, a mere matter of nerves and
muscles, and beef and beer.”
He lies looking at her in puzzled pain, jaded with the effort to follow
the windings of her inexplicable mood.
“You will wonder what is the motive of this flat tirade,” she says with
a laugh that has neither mirth nor music in it. “I must explain that I
have had one more proof that Rupert is the most selfless being God ever
created.”
Binning takes the wind out of her sails. “He gave me that impression;”
and the only net result of the expiation is to put them both out of
spirits and temper for the rest of the evening.