ETHEL REMONSTRATES.
The house in which the Kenyons resided was built on the same pattern as
Mr. Brooke's, but it was in some respects very unlike Mr. Brooke's place
of residence. Maurice's consulting-room and dining-room corresponded,
perhaps, to Mr. Brooke's dining-room and study: it was upstairs where
the difference showed itself. Ethel's drawing-room was like herself--a
little whimsical, a little bizarre; pretty, withal, and original, and
somewhat unlike anything one had ever seen before. She was fond of
novelties, and introduced the latest fashions in draperies or china or
screens as soon as she could get hold of them; and the result was
occasionally incongruous, though always bright and cheerful-looking.
It was the incongruity of the ornaments and arrangements which chiefly
struck the mind of Oliver Trent as he entered Ethel's drawing-room one
afternoon, and stumbled over a footstool placed where no footstool ought
to be.
"I wish," he began, somewhat irritably, as he touched Ethel's forehead
with his lips, "that you would not make your room quite so much like a
fancy fair, Ethel."
Ethel raised her eyebrows. "Why, Oliver, only the other day you said how
pretty it was!"
"Pretty! I hate the word. As if 'prettiness' could be taken as a test of
what was best in art."
"My room isn't 'art,'" pouted Ethel; "it's _me_."
The sentence might be ungrammatical, but it was strictly true. The room
represented Ethel's character exactly. It was odd, quaint, striking, and
attractive. But Oliver was not in the mood to see its attractiveness.
"It is certainly a medley," he replied, with some incisiveness. "How
many styles do you think are represented in the place? Japanese,
Egyptian, Renaissance, Louis Quinze, Queen Anne, Early Georgian----"
"Oh, no! please don't go on!" cried Ethel, with mock earnestness. "_Not_
Early Georgian, please! Anything but that!"
"It is all incongruous and out of taste," said Oliver, in an
ill-tempered tone, and then he threw himself into a deep, comfortable
lounging chair, and closed his eyes as if the sight of the room were too
much for his nerves.
Ethel remained standing: her pretty _mignonne_ figure was motionless;
her bright face was thoughtful and overcast.
"Do you mean," she said, quietly, "that I am incongruous and out of
taste too!"
There was a new note in her voice. Usually it was light and bird-like:
now there was something a little more weighty, a little more serious,
than had been heard in it before. Oliver noted the change, and moved his
head restlessly; he did not want to quarrel with Ethel, but he was ill
at ease in her presence, and therefore apt to be exceedingly irritable
with her.
"You wrest my words, of course," he answered. "You always do. There's no
arguing with--with--a woman."
"With _me_ you were about to say. Don't spare me. What other accusations
have you to bring!"
"Accusations! Nonsense!"
"It is not nonsense, Oliver." Her voice trembled. "I have felt for some
time that all was not right between us. I can't shut my eyes. I must
believe what I see, and what I feel. We must understand one another."
Oliver's eyes were wide open now. He began to see that he had gone a
little too far. It would not do to snub Ethel too much--at least before
the marriage. Afterwards--he said to himself--he should treat her as he
felt inclined. But now----
"You are mistaken, Ethel," he said, in a tone of half appeased vexation
which he thought very effective. "What on earth should there be wrong
between us! Open your eyes and your ears as much as you like, my dear
child, but don't be misled by what you feel. The wind is in the
East,--remember. You feel a chill, most probably, and you put your
_malaise_ down to me."
His tone grew more affectionate as he spoke. He wanted her to believe
that he had been suffering from a mere passing cloud of ill-temper, and
that he was already ashamed of it.
"I feel the effects of the weather myself," he said. "I have been
horribly depressed all day, and I have a headache. Perhaps that is why
the brightness of your room seemed to hurt my eyes. You know that I
always like it when I am well."
He looked at her keenly, hoping that this reference to
possible-ill-health might bring the girl to his feet, as it had often
done before in the case of other women; but it did not seem to produce
the least effect. She stood silent, immobile, with her eyes still fixed
upon the floor. Silence and stillness were so unusual in one of Ethel's
vivacious temperament, that Oliver began to feel alarmed.
"Ethel," he said, advancing to her, and laying his hand upon hers, "what
is wrong? What have I done?"
She shook her head hastily, but made no other reply.
"Look at me," he said, softly.
And then she lifted her eyes. But they wore a questioning and not a
trustful look.
"Ethel, dearest, what have I done to offend you? It cannot be my silly
comment on your room that makes you look so grave? Believe me, dear, it
came only from my headache and my bad temper. I am deeply sorry to have
hurt you. Only speak--scold me if you like--but do not keep me in this
suspense."
He was skilled in the art of pleading. His pale face, usually so
expressionless, took on the look of almost passionate entreaty.
Ethel was an actress by profession--perhaps a little by nature also--but
she was too essentially simple-hearted to suspect her friends of acting
parts in private life, and indeed trusted them rather more implicitly
than most people trust their friends. It had been a grief to her to
doubt Oliver's faith for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears, while
they flashed also with indignation, as she replied,
"You must know what I mean. I have felt it for a very long time. You do
not care for me as you used to do."
"Upon my soul, I do!" cried Oliver, very sincerely.
"Then you never cared for me very much."
This was getting serious. Oliver had no mind to break off his
engagement. He reserved the right to snub Ethel without giving offence.
If this was an impracticable course to pursue, it was evident that he
must abandon it and eat humble pie. Anything rather than part from her
just now. He had lost the woman he loved: it would not do to lose also
his only chance of winning a competency for himself and immunity from
fear of want in the future.
"Ethel," he said, softly, "you grieve me very much. I acknowledge my
faults of temper--I did not think you mistook then for a want of love."
"I do not think I do. It is something more real, more tangible than
that."
"What is it, dear?"
She paused, then looked keenly into his face. "It seems to me, Oliver,
that Lesley Brooke has won your heart away from me."
He threw back his head and laughed--a singularly jarring and unpleasant
laugh, as it seemed to her. "What will you imagine next?" he said.
"Imagine? Have I imagined it? Isn't it true that you have been at her
house almost every day for the last three or four weeks? Do you come
here as often? Is it not Lesley that attracts you?--not me!"
"Oh, so you are jealous!"
"Yes, I suppose I am. It is only natural, I think."
They faced each other for a moment, defiantly, almost fiercely. There
was a proud light in Ethel's eyes, a compression of the lips which told
that she was not to be trifled with. Oliver stood pale, with frowning
brows, and eyes that seemed to question both the reality of her feeling
and the answer that he should make to her demand. It was by a great
effort of self-control that at last he answered her with calmness--
"I assure you, Ethel, you are utterly mistaken. What have I in common
with a girl like Miss Brooke--one of the most curiously ignorant and
wrong-headed persons I ever came across? Can you think for a moment that
I should compare her with you?--_you_, beautiful and gifted and cultured
above most women?"
"That is nothing to the point," said Ethel, quickly. "Men don't love
women because of their gifts and their culture."
"No," he rejoined, "but because of some subtle likeness or
attractiveness which draws one to the other. I find it in you, without
knowing why. You--I hoped--found it----"
His voice became troubled; he dropped his eyes. Ethel trembled--she
loved him, poor girl, and she thought that he suffered as she had
suffered, and she was sorry for him. But her outraged pride would not
let her make any advance as yet.
"I may be a fatuous fool," said Oliver, after an agitated pause, "but I
thought you loved me."
"I do love you," cried Ethel, passionately.
"And yet you suspect me of being false to you."
"Not suspect--not suspect"--she said, incoherently, and then, was
suddenly folded in Oliver's arms, and felt that the time for reproach or
inquiry had gone by.
She was not sorry that matters had ended in this way, although she felt
it to be illogical. With his kisses upon her mouth, with the pressure of
his arm enfolding her, it was almost impossible for her to maintain, in
his presence, a doubt of him. It was when he had gone that all the facts
which he had ignored came back to her with torturing insistence, and
that she blamed herself for not having refused to be reconciled to him
until she had ascertained the truth or untruth of a report that had
reached her ears.
With a truer lover she might have gone unsatisfied to her dying day. A
faithful-hearted man might never have perceived where she was hurt; he
would not have been astute enough to discover that he might heal the
wound by a few timely words of explanation. Oliver, keenly alive to his
own interests, reopened the subject a few days later of his own accord.
They had completely made up their quarrel--to all outward appearance, at
any rate--and were sitting together one afternoon in Ethel's obnoxious
drawing-room. They had been laughing together at some funny story of
Ethel's associates at the theatre, and to the laughter had succeeded a
silence, during which Oliver possessed himself of the girl's hand and
carried it gently to his lips.
"Ethel," he said, softly, "what made you so angry with me the other
day?"
"Your bad behavior, I suppose!" she said, trying to treat the matter in
her usual lively fashion.
"But what _was_ my misbehavior? Did it consist in going so often to the
Brookes'?"
"Oh, what does it matter?" exclaimed Ethel, petulantly. "Didn't we agree
to forgive and forget? If we didn't, we ought to have done. I don't want
to look back."
"But you are doing an injustice to me. Ethel, I dare not say to you that
I _insist_ on knowing what it was. But I very strongly _wish_ that you
would tell me--so that I might at least try to set your mind at rest."
"Well," said Ethel, quickly, "if you _must_ know--it was only a bit of
gossip--servants gossip. I know all that can be said respecting the
foolishness of listening to gossip from such a source--but I can't help
it. One of the maids at Mr. Brooke's----"
"Sarah?" asked Oliver, with interest. "Sarah never liked me."
"Who, it was not Sarah.--it was that maid of Lesley's--Kingston her name
is, I believe--who said to one of our servants one day that you went
there a great deal oftener than she would like, if she were in my place.
There! I have made a full confession. It was a petty spiteful bit of
gossip, of course, and I ought not to have listened to it--but then it
seemed so natural--and I thought it might be true!"
"What seemed natural?" said Oliver, who, against his will, was looking
very black.
"Why, that you should like Lesley; she is the sweetest girl I ever came
across."
In his heart Oliver echoed that opinion, but he felt morally bound to
deny it.
"You say so only because you have never seen yourself! My darling, how
could you accuse me merely on servants' evidence!"
"Is there _no_ truth in it, Oliver?"
"None in the least."
"But you do go there very often!"
Then Oliver achieved a masterpiece of diplomacy. "My dear Ethel," he
said, "I will go there no more until you go with me. I will not set foot
in the house again."
He knew very well that Mr. Brooke would not admit him. It was clever to
make a virtue of necessity.
"No, no, please don't do that! Go as often as you please."
"It was simply out of kindness to a lonely girl. I played her
accompaniments for her sometimes, and listened to her singing. But as
you dislike it, Ethel, I promise you that I will go there no more."
"Oh, Oliver, forgive me! I don't doubt you a bit. Do go to see Lesley as
often as you can. I should _like_ you to do it. Go for my sake."
But Oliver was quite obdurate. No, he would not go to the Brookes'
again, since Ethel had once objected to his going. And on this pinnacle
of austere virtue he remained, thereby reducing Ethel to a state of
self-abasement, which spoke well for his chances of mastery in the
married life which loomed before him.