WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
All the eagerness died out of Walter's face, and he turned away
immediately as if to leave the room. But Gladys prevented him; her face
still red with the hot flush his passionate words had called up, she
stood before him, and laid her hand upon his arm.
'You will not go away now, Walter, just when I hope we are beginning to
understand each other. Do sit down for a little. There is a great deal
left to us,--we can still be friends,--yes, a great deal.'
'It will be better for me to go away,' he said, not bitterly nor
resentfully, but with a quiet manliness which made the heart of Gladys
glow with pride in him, though it was sore with another feeling she did
not quite understand.
'By and by, but not yet,' she said coaxingly. 'Besides, you cannot get a
train just now, even if you were at the station this moment. You shall
be driven into Mauchline in time for the nine-fifteen, and that is an
hour hence. I cannot let you go now, Walter, for I do not know when I
shall see you again.'
She spoke with all the frank, child-like simplicity of the old time, and
he turned back meekly and took his seat again, though it seemed for the
moment as if all brightness and energy had gone out of him. Her hands
trembled very much as they resumed their delicate task among the
flowers, and her sweet mouth quivered too, though she tried to speak
bravely and brightly as before.
'Do tell me, Walter, what you are thinking of doing now that your
business has become so prosperous. Don't you think you have lived quite
long enough in that dingy Colquhoun Street?'
'Perhaps so. I had thoughts of leaving it, but it is a great thing for a
man to be on the premises. Your uncle would not have approved of my
leaving the place so soon. Colquhoun Street was good enough for him all
his days,' said Walter, striving to speak naturally, and only partially
succeeding.
'Ah, yes, poor man; but just think how much he denied himself to give me
all this,' she said, with a glance round the beautiful room. 'How much
happier he and I would have been with something a little lower than
this, and a little higher than Colquhoun Street. It often makes me sad
to think of the poverty of his life and the luxury of mine.'
'But you were made for luxurious living,' was Walter's quick reply. 'You
never looked at home in the old place. This suits you down to the
ground.'
'Do you think so?' Gladys gave a little melancholy smile. 'Yet so
contradictory are we, that sometimes I am not at all happy nor contented
here, Walter.'
'You ought to be very happy,' he replied a trifle sharply. 'You have
everything a woman needs to make her happy.'
'Perhaps so, and yet'--
She paused, and hummed a little scrap of song which Walter did not
catch.
'I am becoming quite an accomplished violinist, Walter,' she said
presently. 'I have two lessons every week; once Herr Döller comes down,
and once I go up. Would you like to hear me play, or shall we talk?'
'I don't know. It would really be better for me to go away. I can walk
to the station; the walk will do me good.'
'I will not allow you to walk nor go away, Walter, even if you are as
cross as two sticks; and I must say I feel rather cross myself.'
They were playing with edged tools, and Gladys was keenly conscious of
it. Her pulses were throbbing, her heart beating as it had never beat in
the presence of the man to whom she had plighted her troth that very
day. A very little more, and she must have given way to hysterical
sobbing, she felt so overwrought; and yet all the while she kept on her
lips that gay little smile, and spoke as if it were the most natural
thing in the world that they should be together. But when Walter
remained silent, she came forward to the hearth quickly, and, forgetting
that what was fitting in the old days was not permissible in the new,
she slipped on one knee on the rug, and suddenly, laying her head down
on his knee, began to cry.
'Gladys, get up! For God's sake, get up, or I can't hold my tongue. This
is fearful!'
The word was none too strong. The solitary and absorbing passion of his
life, a pure and honest love for that beautiful girl, surged in his
soul, and his face betrayed the curb he was putting on himself. He had
had but a poor upbringing, and his code of honour had been self-taught,
but he was manly enough to be above making love to another man's
promised wife.
'Don't make it any harder for me,' he said hoarsely. 'I know you are
sorry for me. You have been always an angel to me, even when I least
deserved it; but this is not the way to treat me to-night. Let me away.'
'Let me be selfish, Walter, just this one night,' she said, in a low,
broken voice. 'I don't know why I am crying, for it is a great joy to me
that you are here, and that I know now, for ever, that you feel as you
used to do before this cruel money parted us; there are not in all the
world any friends like the old. Forgive me if I have vexed you.'
She rose up and met his glance, which was one of infinite pity and
indescribable pathos. The greatest sorrow, the keenest disappointment
which had ever come to Walter, softened him as if with a magic touch,
and revealed to her his heart, which was, at least, honest and true in
every throb.
'You can never vex me, though I have often vexed you. I need scarcely
say I hope you will be happy with the one you have chosen. You deserve
the very best in the world, and even the best is not good enough for
you.'
A faint smile shone through the tears on the girl's face.
'What has changed you so, Walter? It is as if a whirlwind had swept over
you.'
'I have never changed in that particular,' he answered half gloomily. 'I
have always thought the same of you since the day I saw you first.'
'Oh, Walter, do you remember our little school in the evenings, with
Uncle Abel dozing in the chimney-corner, and your difficulties over the
arithmetic? Very often you asked me questions I could not answer, though
I am afraid I was not honest enough always to say I did not know.
Sometimes I gave you equivocal answers, didn't I?'
'I don't know; all I know is, that I shall never forget these days,
though they can never come again, answered Walter. 'I am learning German
this winter, and I like it very much.'
'How delightful! If you go on at this rate, in a very short time I shall
be afraid to speak to you, you will have grown such a grand and clever
gentleman.'
Walter gave his head a quick shake, which made the waved mass of his
dark hair drop farther on his brow. A fine brow it was, square, solid,
massive, from beneath which looked out a pair of clear eyes, which had
never feared the face of man. He looked older than his years, though his
face was bare, except on the upper lip, where the slight moustache
appeared to soften somewhat the sterner line of the mouth. Yes, it was a
good, true face, suggestive of power and possibility--the face of an
honest man. Then his figure had attained its full height, and being
clothed in well-made garments, looked very manly, and not ungraceful.
Gladys admired him where he stood, and inwardly contrasted him with a
certain other youth, who devoted half his attention to his personal
appearance and adornment. Nor did Walter suffer by that comparison.
'Must you go away?' she asked wistfully, not conscious how cruel she was
in seeking to keep him there when every moment was pointed with a
sorrowful regret, a keen anguish of loss which he could scarcely endure.
'And when will you come again?'
'Oh, I don't know. I can't come often, Gladys; it will be better not,
now.'
'It is always better not,' she cried, with a strange petulance. 'There
is always something in the way. If you knew how often I want to talk to
you about all my plans. I always think nobody quite understands us like
those whom we have known in our early days, because then there can
never be any pretence or concealment. All is open as the day. Is it
impossible that we can still be as we were?'
'Quite impossible.' His answer was curt and cold, and he was on his feet
again, moving towards the door.
'But why?' she persisted, with all the unreason of a wilful woman. 'May
a woman not have a friend, though he should be a man?'
'It would not be possible, and _he_ would not like it,' he said
significantly; and Gladys flushed all over, and flung up her head with a
gesture of defiance.
'He shall not dictate to me,' she said proudly. 'Well, if you will go,
you will, I suppose, but you shall not walk; on that point I am
determined.' She rang the bell, gave her order for the carriage, and
looked at him whimsically, as if rejoicing in her own triumph. 'I am
afraid I am becoming quite autocratic, Walter, so many people have to do
exactly as I tell them. If you will not come, will you write to me
occasionally, then? It would be delightful to get letters from you, I
think.'
Never was man so subtlely flattered, so tempted. Again he bit his lip,
and without answering, he took a handsome frame from the piano, and
glanced indifferently at the photograph he held.
'Is this the man?' he asked at hazard, and when Gladys nodded, he looked
at it again with keener interest. It was the same picture of George
Fordyce in his hunting-dress which Gladys had first seen in the
drawing-room at Bellairs Crescent.
'A grand gentleman,' he said, with a faint note of bitterness in his
tone. 'Well, I hope you will be happy.'
This stiff, conventional remark appeared to anger Gladys somewhat, and
for the first time in her life she cast a reproach at him.
'You needn't look so resigned, Walter. Just cast your memory back, and
think of some of the kind things you have said to me when we have met
since I have left Colquhoun Street. If you think I can forget, then you
are mistaken. They will always rankle in my mind, and it is only natural
that I should feel grateful, if nothing else, to those who are a little
kinder and more attentive to me. A woman does not like to be ignored.'
At that moment a servant appeared to say the carriage waited, and Walter
held out his hand to say good-bye. Hope was for ever quenched in his
heart, and something in his eyes went to the heart of Gladys, and for
the moment she could not speak. She turned silently, motioned him to
follow her from the room, and then stood in the hall, still silently,
till he put on his greatcoat. Woman-like, in the midst of her strange
agitation she did not fail to notice that every detail of his attire was
in keeping, and that pleased well her fastidious taste. When the servant
at last opened the door, the cool wind swept in and ruffled the girl's
hair upon her white brow.
'Good-bye, then. You will write?' she said quickly, and longing, she did
not know why, to order the servant to withdraw.
'If there is anything to write about, perhaps I will,' he answered,
gripped her hand like a vice, and dashed out. Then Miss Graham, quite
regardless of the watchful eyes upon her, went out to the outer hall,
and her sweet voice sounded through the darkness, 'Good-bye, dear
Walter,' and, putting her white fingers to her lips, she threw a kiss
after him, and ran into the house, all trembling, and when she reached
the drawing-room she dropped upon her knees by a couch and fell to
weeping, though she did not know why she wept.
[Illustration]