THE DILEMMA OF WOLFENDEN
Wolfenden was evidently absolutely unprepared to see the girl whom he
found occupying his own particular easy chair in his study. The light
was only a dim one, and as she did not move or turn round at his
entrance he did not recognise her until he was standing on the hearthrug
by her side. Then he started with a little exclamation.
"Miss Merton! Why, what on earth----"
He stopped in the middle of his question and looked intently at her. Her
head was thrown back amongst the cushions of the chair, and she was fast
asleep. Her hat was a little crushed and a little curl of fair hair had
escaped and was hanging down over her forehead. There were undoubtedly
tear stains upon her pretty face. Her plain, black jacket was half
undone, and the gloves which she had taken off lay in her lap.
Wolfenden's anger subsided at once. No wonder Selby had been perplexed.
But Selby's perplexity was nothing to his own.
She woke up suddenly and saw him standing there, traces of his amazement
still lingering on his face. She looked at him, half-frightened,
half-wistfully. The colour came and went in her cheeks--her eyes grew
soft with tears. He felt himself a brute. Surely it was not possible
that she could be acting! He spoke to her more kindly than he had
intended.
"What on earth has brought you up to town--and here--at this time of
night? Is anything wrong at Deringham?"
She sat up in the chair and looked at him with quivering lips.
"N--no, nothing particular; only I have left."
"You have left!"
"Yes; I have been turned away," she added, piteously.
He looked at her blankly.
"Turned away! Why, what for? Do you mean to say that you have left for
good?"
She nodded, and commenced to dry her eyes with a little lace
handkerchief.
"Yes--your mother--Lady Deringham has been very horrid--as though the
silly papers were of any use to me or any one else in the world! I have
not copied them. I am not deceitful! It is all an excuse to get rid of
me because of--of you."
She looked up at him and suddenly dropped her eyes. Wolfenden began to
see some glimmerings of light. He was still, however, bewildered.
"Look here," he said kindly, "why you are here I cannot for the life of
me imagine, but you had better just tell me all about it."
She rose up suddenly and caught her gloves from the table.
"I think I will go away," she said. "I was very stupid to come; please
forget it and---- Goodbye."
He caught her by the wrist as she passed.
"Nonsense," he exclaimed, "you mustn't go like this."
She looked steadfastly away from him and tried to withdraw her arm.
"You are angry with me for coming," she said. "I am very, very sorry; I
will go away. Please don't stop me."
He held her wrist firmly.
"Miss Merton!"
"Miss Merton!" She repeated his words reproachfully, lifting her eyes
suddenly to his, that he might see the tears gathering there. Wolfenden
began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable.
"Well, Blanche, then," he said slowly. "Is that better?"
She answered nothing, but looked at him again. Her hand remained in his.
She suffered him to lead her back to the chair.
"It's all nonsense your going away, you know," he said a little
awkwardly. "You can't wonder that I am surprised. Perhaps you don't know
that it is a little late--after midnight, in fact. Where should you go
to if you ran away like that? Do you know any one in London?"
"I--don't think so," she admitted.
"Well, do be reasonable then. First of all tell me all about it."
She nodded, and began at once, now and then lifting her eyes to his,
mostly gazing fixedly at the gloves which she was smoothing carefully
out upon her knee.
"I think," she said, "that Lord Deringham is not so well. What he has
been writing has become more and more incoherent, and it has been very
difficult to copy it at all. I have done my best but he has never seemed
satisfied; and he has taken to watch me in an odd sort of way, just as
though I was doing something wrong all the time. You know he fancies
that the work he is putting together is of immense importance. Of course
I don't know that it isn't. All I do know is that it sounds and reads
like absolute rubbish, and it's awfully difficult to copy. He writes
very quickly and uses all manner of abbreviations, and if I make a
single mistake in typing it he gets horribly cross."
Wolfenden laughed softly.
"Poor little girl! Go on."
She smiled too, and continued with less constraint in her tone.
"I didn't really mind that so much, as of course I have been getting
a lot of money for the work, and one can't have everything. But just
lately he seems to have got the idea that I have been making two copies
of this rubbish and keeping one back. He has kept on coming into
the room unexpectedly, and has sat for hours watching me in a most
unpleasant manner. I have not been allowed to leave the house, and
all my letters have been looked over; it has been perfectly horrid."
"I am very sorry," Wolfenden said. "Of course you knew though that it
was going to be rather difficult to please my father, didn't you? The
doctors differ a little as to his precise mental condition, but we are
all aware that he is at any rate a trifle peculiar."
She smiled a little bitterly.
"Oh! I am not complaining," she said. "I should have stood it somehow
for the sake of the money; but I haven't told you everything yet. The
worst part, so far as I am concerned, is to come."
"I am very sorry," he said; "please go on."
"This morning your father came very early into the study and found a
sheet of carbon paper on my desk and two copies of one page of the work
I was doing. As a matter of fact I had never used it before, but I
wanted to try it for practice. There was no harm in it--I should have
destroyed the second sheet in a minute or two, and in any case it was so
badly done that it was absolutely worthless. But directly Lord Deringham
saw it he went quite white, and I thought he was going to have a fit. I
can't tell you all he said. He was brutal. The end of it was that my
boxes were all turned out and my desk and everything belonging to me
searched as though I were a house-maid suspected of theft, and all the
time I was kept locked up. When they had finished, I was told to put my
hat on and go. I--I had nowhere to go to, for Muriel--you remember I
told you about my sister--went to America last week. I hadn't the least
idea what to do--and so--I--you were the only person who had ever been
kind to me," she concluded, suddenly leaning over towards him, a little
sob in her throat, and her eyes swimming with tears.
There are certain situations in life when an honest man is at an obvious
disadvantage. Wolfenden felt awkward and desperately ill at ease. He
evaded the embrace which her movement and eyes had palpably invited, and
compromised matters by taking her hands and holding them tightly in his.
Even then he felt far from comfortable.
"But my mother," he exclaimed. "Lady Deringham surely took your part?"
She shook her head vigorously.
"Lady Deringham did nothing of the sort," she replied. "Do you remember
last time when you were down you took me for a walk once or twice and
you talked to me in the evenings, and--but perhaps you have forgotten.
Have you?"
She was looking at him so eagerly that there was only one answer
possible for him. He hastened to make it. There was a certain lack of
enthusiasm in his avowal, however, which brought a look of reproach into
her face. She sighed and looked away into the fire.
"Well," she continued, "Lady Deringham has never been the same since
then to me. It didn't matter while you were there, but after you left it
was very wretched. I wrote to you, but you never answered my letter."
He was very well aware of it. He had never asked her to write, and her
note had seemed to him a trifle too ingenuous. He had never meant to
answer it.
"I so seldom write letters," he said. "I thought, too, that it must have
been your fancy. My mother is generally considered a very good-hearted
woman."
She laughed bitterly.
"Oh, one does not fancy those things," she said. "Lady Deringham has
been coldly civil to me ever since, and nothing more. This morning she
seemed absolutely pleased to have an excuse for sending me away. She
knows quite well, of course, that Lord Deringham is--not himself; but
she took everything he said for gospel, and turned me out of the house.
There, now you know everything. Perhaps after all it was idiotic to come
to you. Well, I'm only a girl, and girls are idiots; I haven't a friend
in the world, and if I were alone I should die of loneliness in a week.
You won't send me away? You are not angry with me?"
She made a movement towards him, but he held her hands tightly. For the
first time he began to see his way before him. A certain ingenuousness
in her speech and in that little half-forgotten note--an ingenuousness,
by the bye, of which he had some doubts--was his salvation. He would
accept it as absolutely genuine. She was a child who had come to him,
because he had been kind to her.
"Of course I am not angry with you," he said, quite emphatically. "I am
very glad indeed that you came. It is only right that I should help you
when my people seem to have treated you so wretchedly. Let me think for
a moment."
She watched him very anxiously, and moved a little closer to him.
"Tell me," she murmured, "what are you thinking about?"
"I have it," he answered, standing suddenly up and touching the bell.
"It is an excellent idea."
"What is it?" she asked quickly.
He did not appear to hear her question. Selby was standing upon the
threshold. Wolfenden spoke to him.
"Selby, are your wife's rooms still vacant?"
Selby believed that they were.
"That's all right then. Put on your hat and coat at once. I want you to
take this young lady round there."
"Very good, my lord."
"Her luggage has been lost and may not arrive until to-morrow. Be sure
you tell Mrs. Selby to do all in her power to make things comfortable."
The girl had gone very pale. Wolfenden, watching her closely, was
surprised at her expression.
"I think," he said, "that you will find Mrs. Selby a very decent sort of
a person. If I may, I will come and see you to-morrow, and you shall
tell me how I can help you. I am very glad indeed that you came to me."
She shot a single glance at him, partly of anger, partly reproach.
"You are very, very kind," she said slowly, "and very considerate," she
added, after a moment's pause. "I shall not forget it."
She looked him then straight in the eyes. He was more glad than he would
have liked to confess even to himself to hear Selby's knock at the door.
"You have nothing to thank me for yet at any rate," he said, taking her
hand. "I shall be only too glad if you will let me be of service to
you."
He led her out to the carriage and watched it drive away, with Selby on
the box seat. Her last glance, as she leaned back amongst the cushions,
was a tender one; her lips were quivering, and her little fingers more
than returned his pressure. But Wolfenden walked back to his study with
all the pleasurable feelings of a man who has extricated himself with
tact from an awkward situation.
"The frankness," he remarked to himself, as he lit a pipe and stretched
himself out for a final smoke, "was a trifle, just a trifle, overdone.
She gave the whole show away with that last glance. I should like very
much to know what it all means."