The minister and Evan Sinclair came to say good-bye; the minister has
accepted our approaching departure with his usual philosophy. "You
would soon tire of this place in the winter-time," he said. "And even
looking at it from the other point of view, I believe that summer
visitors should not prolong their stay above a few months. I admit
that we have enjoyed your sojourn amongst us; but were you and your
sister to become residenters in the place, our intercourse would have
to be reconstructed from the foundation." The minister crossed his
legs, and, without being pressed to continue the subject, he went on:
"There is a certain conventionality, not to say forbearance, admitted
and allowed between friends with whom one's acquaintance is to be
short; but there is a basis stronger than that upon which any lengthy
friendship must be made."
"And that basis?" I asked.
"That basis, I take it," said the minister, "should be a
straightforward disregard for one another. I do not believe in
politeness between near neighbours; it cannot last."
"I had hoped," said Palestrina, pouting a little, "that you would all
miss us, Mr. Macorquodale."
"We shall miss you," said the minister quickly, but with judgment. "We
shall see the merits as well as the demerits of the case. For
instance, one of your friends cost me a sovereign for a favourite
charity of hers."
Evan Sinclair said very kindly, blinking his fair eyelashes in a shy
way, "Well, I know I shall miss you. The place will seem very dull
with only Alexander and me left in it."
"_I_ shall have my wife," said the minister brutally.
"Yes," said Sinclair; "and her mother! You have kept that pretty dark
from us, Taurbarrels."
"It is only a visit," said Mr. Macorquodale shortly. And he went on in
a truculent tone, "And I need not have her unless I want to."
"I hear she is strict," murmured Evan. "I hope you will be allowed to
look out of the window on the Sabbath, my man."
"I am master in my own house," said Mr. Macorquodale magnificently.
"Believe me," said Evan, "that's a courtesy title, supported by no
valid claim, and still less precedent. A man never has been master of
his own house when there is a mistress in it. I remember when my
brother got married he had just your very ideas, and he gave his wife
the keys of the linen-press and the store-cupboard, 'But the rest of
the bunch,' he said, 'I keep to myself.' And he put them all in his
pocket. It was not six months after that," said Evan, "that I went to
stay with them, and I heard him ask my sister-in-law if she would mind
his having two pocket-handkerchiefs on Sundays."
Palestrina and I were alone, for Ellicomb had left us a few days
before, and we hear from the Jamiesons that he is a daily visitor at
their house. Thomas and Anthony were out shooting, and Mrs. Fielden
had gone for a walk over the hills.
"I have a thousand things to do," said Palestrina, when Evan and the
minister had departed.
"I also have a thousand things to do," I replied.
"Don't tire yourself," said Palestrina. "What are you going to do?"
"I am going to re-write my diary," I said.
"But, my dear," said Palestrina, "that would be the work of months."
"I am only going to correct all the mistakes I have made in it," I
replied; and I took my book and a pen, and went and sat in the little
room on the ground-floor which they call my den.
We once had an old aunt, Palestrina and I, who kept a diary all her
life, and when any of the relatives whom she mentioned in its pages
came to die, she used to go through all the back numbers of her journal
and insert affectionate epithets in front of the names of the deceased.
For instance (my aunt's existence was not marked by any thrilling
events), the entry would perhaps be as follows: "Maria was late for
breakfast this morning. In the afternoon she had her singing-lesson,
and afterwards we did some shopping, when Maria tried on her new gown."
But the amended entry after Maria's death would be, "Our darling Maria
was (a little) late for breakfast this morning; in the afternoon she
had her singing-lesson"--and here would probably be a footnote praising
Maria's voice--"afterwards we did some shopping, and"--Maria struck
out--"my sweet girl tried on her new gown." Any one's death, or even a
successful marriage of one of the family, would cause her to revise and
correct her diary in this way, and she used to fan the wet ink with a
piece of blotting-paper to make it dry black, and thus prevent
posterity from knowing that the words written over the lines were an
afterthought induced by subsequent events.
It was manifestly an unfair way of keeping a diary. But I can claim
her example and hereditary taint as an excuse for my own dishonesty
this afternoon. I read through my diary with a sense of utter shame,
and wherever I found, for instance, that I had said that Mrs. Fielden
was frivolous, or even that she raised her eyebrows in an affected way,
I corrected the misstatement by the light of the magnificent discovery
I had made that Mrs. Fielden was faultless, and that I loved her. Oh,
the beauty of this woman and her blessed kindness! the cunning with
which she conceals her unselfishness, and her ridiculous attempts at
pretending she is frivolous or worldly.
Alas! there were so many misstatements to correct, and so many dear
adjectives to fill in, that I was not halfway through my task before
Mrs. Fielden herself tapped at the window and looked in.
I believe I must have grinned foolishly, but what I wanted to do was to
stretch out my arms to the beautiful vision, framed in the hectic
Virginian creeper round the window, and call out to her to come to me.
Mrs. Fielden came in for a minute, and said with the adorable lift of
the eyebrows: "I have been educating a pair of young boots by walking
through all the bogs on the hillside. Listen, they are quite full of
water." She raised herself on her toes with a squelching sound of the
leather, and gave one of her joyous soft laughs.
"You must change directly," I said, with an idiotic sense of
proprietorship.
"When I have done so I think I shall come and have tea with you," said
Mrs. Fielden. And of course then I knew that she had come home early
on purpose to have tea with me, and that probably she had given up
something else which she wanted to do, in order that she might sit by
me when I was alone--because of course I have found Mrs. Fielden out
now, and exposed her hypocrisy.
Fortunately she took nearly a quarter of an hour to change her wet
boots, and this gave me time to ask myself why I was behaving like a
raving idiot, because I had found out that Mrs. Fielden was absolutely
perfect, and that I loved her.
It was quite the worst quarter of an hour that I have ever spent,
because in it I had time to remember that I was a crippled man with one
leg, and that Mrs. Fielden was a beautiful young woman whom of course
every one loved, and that she owned an old historical place called
Stanby, and probably--I realized this also--that she would continue to
come over and sit with a dull man and bewilder him with her beauty and
her kindness only so long as he did not allow her to know the supremely
impertinent fact that he had fallen in love with her.
I must plead ill-health, and a certain weakness of nerve which no doubt
always follows a surgical operation, for the fact that I turned round
and put my face in the pillows for a moment and groaned.
Mrs. Fielden came in in my favourite pale-blue gown which she sometimes
wears when she changes her frock at tea-time. She came and took a seat
beside me, and as she never hurriedly plunges into a conversation we
sat silent for a time. The afternoon was darkening now, and the light
of a blazing fire leaped and played upon her pale-blue dress, and
turned her brown hair to a sort of red-gold.
Mrs. Fielden thinks she is the only person in the world who can make up
a fire. And she is perfectly right. She arranged the logs with a long
brass poker, shifting them here and there, while her dear face glowed
in the light of the fire. She is not a luxurious woman, in spite of
being surrounded always by luxury. For instance, she stands and walks
in a very erect way, and I have never seen her stuff a lot of sofa
cushions at her back in a chair, nor lounge on a sofa. Her glorious,
buoyant health seems to exempt her from need of support or ease, and
her figure is too pretty for lounging.
When she had finished arranging the logs she put down the poker and
looked at me with that dear kindliness of hers, and said in her pretty
voice, "What have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?"
"The minister and Evan Sinclair came up to say good-bye," I said.
"And since then?"
I took my diary, which still lay on my knee, and hid it under the sofa
cushions.
"Since then," I said, "I have been correcting--that is, writing my
diary."
"Oh, the diary!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden delightedly. "I had forgotten
about that!"
"No, you hadn't," I said to myself. "It is only part of your wilful,
uncomprehendable, untranslatable charm that makes you pretend sometimes
that you have no memory. As a matter of fact, you knew from the first
that it would be a relief to an egotistical grumbler to get rid of his
spleen sometimes on blue ruled essay paper, and so you set him a task
to do, and you have often wondered since how he is getting on with it.
"I think I must see the diary," said Mrs. Fielden.
"That you certainly shall not," I said; and I pushed the book still
farther under the sofa cushions--just as if it was necessary to fight
with Mrs. Fielden for anything, or any use either!
"I thought you promised," said Mrs. Fielden.
"If I did I have changed my mind," I said firmly.
"You know you mean all the time to let me see it," said Mrs. Fielden.
"I know I do not mean to let you see it for even a minute of time," I
replied.
One of Mrs. Fielden's special odd little silences fell between us.
"No," I said to myself. "I will _not_ say I am sorry. I will _not_
say I have been a brute, I will _not_ feel a desire to comfort her,
even if her eyes have the wistful look in them."
Mrs. Fielden sat still and looked into the fire.
What unexpected thing will she do next, I wonder? Will she suddenly
burst out laughing, or will she turn and take every bit of manhood out
of me by smiling? Or shall I find, when I turn and look at her face,
simply that she has gone to sleep?
Good heavens! What if she should be crying?
In an agony of compunction I turned and looked at her; and Mrs. Fielden
not only smiled, but held out her hand for the book.... I rummaged
underneath the sofa cushions, and passed it over to her. She bent
forward till the firelight from the blazing logs fell full on the open
page, and she read every one of those corrected lines. She saw where I
had once put "affected" I had now put "beautiful," and for "frivolous"
I put a "lovely gaiety," and she read till she came to the last
correction of all. I had run a line through the words "Mrs. Fielden
came to sit with me," and had written over it, "My darling came to see
me----"
Then Mrs. Fielden closed the book, and left her chair where she had
been sitting. She crossed the hearthrug quite slowly till she reached
my sofa. And then she kneeled down and took both my hands in her dear
strong ones, and looked at me with misty blue eyes, like wet
forget-me-nots. "But, Hugo dear," she said, "why did you not tell me
long ago?"
THE END.
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
BY Miss MACNAUGHTAN.
THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M'NAB.
THE DUENNA OF A GENIUS. M. E. Francis.
OWD BOB. Alfred Ollivant.
EIGHT DAYS. R. E. Forrest.
LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET. Miss Braddon.
THE OCTOPUS. Frank Norris.
THE PIT. Frank Norris.
MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, Etc. Booth Tarkington.
WOODSIDE FARM. Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
WHITE FANG. Jack London.
THE PRINCESS PASSES. C. N. & A. M. Williamson.
THE MAN FROM AMERICA. Mrs. H. de la Pasture.
SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. "Q"
INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS. A. and E. Castle.
IF YOUTH BUT KNEW! A. and E. Castle.
MATTHEW AUSTIN. W. E. Norris.
HIS GRACE. W. E. Norris.
THE AMERICAN PRISONER. Eden Phillpotts.
THE HOSTS OF THE LORD. Mrs. F. A. Steel.
THE LADY OF THE BARGE. W. W. Jacobs.
THE GOD IN THE CAR. Anthony Hope.
QUISANTE. Anthony Hope.
THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY. Anthony Hope.
THE KING'S MIRROR. Anthony Hope.
THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. Sir G. Parker.
AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH. Sir G. Parker.
THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG. Sir G. Parker.
MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE. Mrs. Humphry Ward
HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE. Mrs. Humphry Ward.
ROBERT ELSMERE. Mrs. Humphry Ward.
CLEMENTINA. A. E. W. Mason.
THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS. C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.
THE WAGES OF SIN. Lucas Malet.
_Etc., Etc._
_NELSON'S LIBRARY._