TOO LATE!
George Fordyce was listening to a maternal lecture the morning after a
dance, at which he had been distributing his attentions very freely
among the most attractive of the young ladies present. The breakfast was
nearly an hour late, and mother and son partook of it alone, Mr. Fordyce
being in London on business, and the fair Julia not yet out of bed.
'It's all your nonsense, mother,' said George imperturbably. 'I didn't
pay special court to anybody except Clara. She was the best dancer in
the room and very nearly the handsomest girl.'
'You should have pity on Clara, my dear,' his mother said indulgently.
'You know she is fond of you; she can't hide it, poor thing, and it is a
shame to pay her too much attention in public, when it can't come to
anything.'
'I can't help it if girls will be silly,' was the complacent reply.
'Clara is all very well as a cousin, but I'd like more spirit in a
wife.'
'It strikes me you will get enough of it if you should be successful
where we wish you to be successful,' said his mother, with a keen glance
across the table. 'Gladys Graham is a very self-willed piece of
humanity. Your Aunt Isabel told me only yesterday of her absurd fad to
have common girls visiting her at Bourhill. It is quite time somebody
took her firmly in hand, or she will become that insufferable kind of
person, a woman with a mission to set the world right.'
George emptied his coffee-cup, and returned his mother's look with one
equally steady and keen.
'There is no use going on at me, mother. I've done all I can do in the
meantime. I asked her, and she'--
'Did not refuse you, I hope?' exclaimed Mrs. Fordyce, with a gasp.
'Well, not quite; she said I must leave her alone for a long time, and I
mean to. It isn't pleasant for a fellow to be sat on by a
girl--especially,' he added, with a significant shrug, 'when he isn't
used to it.'
'I wish you would tell me when all this happened. You have been very
close about it, George,' his mother said reproachfully.
'I wish I had remained close; but now that I've let the cat out, I may
as well tell the whole tale. It was only a fortnight ago--that Saturday
afternoon I was down at Bourhill. I had no intention of committing
myself when I went, but somehow I got carried away, and asked her. I
believe I should have had a more favourable answer, but a confounded
maid came in with tea--as they always do when nobody wants them.'
'And what did she say?' queried Mrs. Fordyce, in breathless interest.
'Faith, I can't remember exactly,' George replied, and his mother was
more than astonished to see his cheek flushing. 'I know she asked me to
wait, and not to bother her. I believe she'll have me in the end.
Anyhow, I mean to have her, and it's the same thing, isn't it?'
'I hope it may be; but if you take my advice, my dear, don't leave her
alone too much, in case somebody else more enterprising and not so
easily repulsed should step in before you. If I were a man I wouldn't
walk off for a girl's first No.'
'You don't know a blessed thing about what you're talking of, mother,'
replied George, with calm candour. 'If you were a man, and had a girl
looking at you with a steady stare, and telling you to get out, well, I
guess you'd get out pretty quick, that's all.'
Mrs. Fordyce laughed.
'Well, perhaps so; but it is very important that you should follow up
your advantage, however slight it may be. It would be a most desirable
alliance. Think of her family; it would be a splendid connection. You
would be a county gentleman, to begin with.'
'And call myself Fordyce Graham? Eh, mother?' said George lazily. 'There
are worse sounding names. But Gladys herself affects to have no pride in
her long descent; that very day she was quoting to me that rot of Burns
about rank being only the guinea stamp, and all that sort of thing. All
very well for a fellow like Burns, who was only a ploughman. It has done
Gladys a lot of harm living in the slums; it won't be easy eradicating
her queer notions, I can tell you.'
'Oh, after she is married, if you take her well in hand, it will be easy
enough,' said his mother confidently. 'She did not give you a positive
refusal, then?'
'No; but I'm not going to make myself too cheap,' said George; 'it
seldom pays in any circumstances--in dealings with women, never. They
set all the more store by a fellow who thinks a good deal of himself.'
'Then you should be very successful,' said Mrs. Fordyce, with a smile.
'Well, remember that nothing will give your father and me greater
pleasure than to hear that you are engaged to Gladys Graham.'
'Well, I'd better get out of this. Twenty minutes to eleven! By Jove,
wonder what the governor would say if he were to pop in just now?
Thunder's not in it.'
So the amiable and self-satisfied George took himself off to the mill,
and all day long thought much of his mother's advice, and somehow he
felt himself being impelled towards paying another visit to Bourhill.
Out of that visit arose portentous issues, which were to have the
strongest possible influence upon the future of Gladys Graham. He found
her in a lonely and impressionable mood, and left the house, to his own
profound astonishment, an accepted lover.
That very evening, after he was gone, Gladys sat by the fire in her
spacious drawing-room, turning upon her third finger the diamond ring
George Fordyce had transferred from his own hand to hers, whispering as
he did so that she should soon have one worthier of her. Watching the
flashing of the stone in the gleaming firelight, she wondered to see
tears, matching the diamonds in brilliance, falling on her gown. She did
not understand these tears; she did not think herself unhappy, though
she felt none of that passionate, trembling joy which happy love, as she
had heard and read of it, is entitled to feel. She realised that she had
taken a great and important step in life, and that it seemed to weigh
upon her, that was all. In her loneliness she longed passionately for
some sympathetic soul to lean upon. Miss Peck had gone back to the fen
country to see a dying friend, and for some days she had heard nothing
of Teen, who was pursuing in Glasgow her search for the lost and
mysterious Liz. In the midst of the strange reverie she heard footsteps
on the stair, and presently a knock came to the door. As it was opened,
the silver chimes of the old brass clock rang seven.
'Mr. Hepburn.'
Gladys sprang up, struck by the familiar name, yet not expecting to
behold her old companion in the flesh, and there he was, standing
modestly, yet with so much manliness and courage in his bearing, that
she could not forbear a little cry of welcome as she ran to him with
outstretched hands. It seemed as if her prayer for the sympathy of one
who understood her was answered far beyond any hope or expectations she
had cherished regarding it.
'Oh, Walter, I am so very glad to see you! It is so good of you to come.
I have so often wished to see you here. Come away, come away!'
The accepted lover, at that moment being whirled back by express train
to Glasgow, would not have approved of those warm words, nor of the
light shining all over the girl's sweet face as she uttered them. But he
would have been compelled to admit that in Gladys's old companion of the
slums he had no mean rival. The St. Vincent Street tailor had done his
duty by his eccentric customer, and not only given him value for his
money, but converted him, so far as outward appearance goes, into a new
man. Philosophers and cynics have from time to time had their fling at
the tyranny of clothes, but it still remains an undisputed fact that a
well-dressed man is always much more comfortable and self-respecting
than an ill-dressed one. When Walter Hepburn beheld the new man the
tailor had turned out, a strange change came over him, and he saw in
himself possibilities hitherto undreamed of. He realised for the first
time that he looked fitter than most men to win a woman's approval, and
I am quite safe in saying that Gladys owed this totally unlooked-for
visit entirely to the St. Vincent Street tailor.
'So very glad to see you,' she repeated, and she thought it no treachery
to her absent lover to keep hold of the hand she had taken in greeting.
'And looking so nice and so handsome! Oh, Walter, now I am no longer
unhappy about you, for I see you have awakened at last to a sense of
what you ought to be.'
It was a tribute to clothes, but it sank with unalloyed sweetness into
the young man's heart.
'You are very kind to me, Gladys, and I do not deserve any such welcome.
I was afraid, indeed, that you might refuse to see me, as you would be
perfectly justified in doing.'
'Oh, Walter,' she said reproachfully, 'how dare you say such a thing?
Refuse to see you, indeed! Do sit down and tell me everything. Do you
know, it is just my dinner hour, and you shall dine with me; and how
delightful that will be. I thought of sending down to say I didn't wish
any dinner, it is so lonely eating alone.'
'Where is the lady who lives with you? You had a lady, hadn't you?'
'Yes--Miss Peck. She has gone back to Lincoln to see her aunt who is
dying, and I am quite alone, though to-morrow I expect one of Mr.
Fordyce's daughters. And now, tell me, have you heard anything of Liz?'
The voice sank to a grave whisper, and her eyes grew luminous with
anxiety and sympathetic concern.
'Nothing,' Walter answered, with a shake of his head, 'and I have been
inquiring all round, too. My father and mother have never seen or heard
anything of her. I think you must have made a mistake that night in
Berkeley Street.'
'If it was not Liz, it was her ghost,' said Gladys quite gravely. 'I
cannot understand it. But, come, let us go down-stairs. You ought to
offer me your arm, Walter. I cannot help laughing when I think of Mrs.
Fordyce, she would be so horrified were she to see me now. She tries so
hard to make me quite conventional, and she isn't able to do it.'
'She may be right, though,' said Walter, and though he would have given
worlds for the privilege, he dared not presume to take Gladys at her
word and offer her his arm. But they went into the dining-room side by
side; and at the table, Gladys, though watching keenly, detected very
little of the old awkwardness, none at all of that blunt rudeness of
speech and manner which had often vexed her sensitive soul. For the
first time for many many months Walter permitted himself to be at ease
and perfectly natural in his manner, and the result was entirely
satisfactory; self-consciousness is fatal to comfort always. Gladys wore
a black gown of some shimmering soft material, with a quaint frill of
old lace falling over the low collar, a bunch of spring snowdrops at her
belt, and her lovely hair bound with the black velvet band which none
could wear just in the same way--a very simple, unostentatious home
toilet, but she looked, Walter thought, like a queen. Possessed of a
wonderful tact, Gladys managed, while the meal progressed, to confine
the conversation to commonplace topics, so that the servant who attended
should not be furnished with food for remark. Both were glad, however,
to return to the drawing-room, where their talk could be quite
unrestrained.
'And now you are going to tell me everything about this wonderful
metamorphosis,' she said merrily,--'every solitary thing. When did it
dawn upon you that even a handsome man is utterly dependent on his
tailor?'
There was at once rebuke and approval conveyed in this whimsical speech,
which made Walter's face slightly flush.
'It dawned upon me one day, looking in at a shop window where I could
see myself, that I was a most disreputable-looking object, quite
eligible to be apprehended as an able-bodied vagrant.'
'How delightful! I hope the shock was very bad, because you deserved it.
Now that you have come back clothed and in your right mind, I am not
going to spare you, Walter, and I will say that after my last visit to
Colquhoun Street I quite lost hope. It is always the darkest hour before
the dawn, somebody has said.'
'If I'd thought you cared'--Walter began, but stopped suddenly; for
Gladys turned from the table, where she was giving her attention to some
drooping flowers, and her look was one of the keenest wonder and
reproach.
'Now you are weak, Walter, trying to bring your delinquencies home to
me,' she said, with the first touch of sharpness he had ever seen in
her. 'It has been your own fault entirely all along, and I have never
had a solitary bit of sympathy for you, and I don't know, either, what
you meant by going on in any such manner.'
'I didn't understand it myself then; I seemed goaded on always to be a
perfect brute when you came. But I believe I understand it now, and
perhaps it would be better if I did not.'
He spoke with considerable agitation, which Gladys affected not to
notice, while her white fingers touched the drooping blossoms tenderly,
as if sympathising with them that their little day was over.
'Suppose you enlighten me, then?' she said, gaily still; then suddenly
seeing his face, her own became very white.
'I don't dare,' he said hoarsely, 'it is too much presumption; but it
will perhaps make you understand and feel for me more than you seem to
do. Don't you see, Gladys, that it is my misery to care for you as
happier men care for the woman they ask to marry them?'
There was a moment's strained silence, then Gladys spoke in a low,
sobbing voice,--
'It is, as I said, Walter, too late, too late! I have promised to marry
another man.'
[Illustration]