"Miss Clonmell, you are young, and I feel that it is only fair to you
that you should know--what he and I have been to one another."
"Please, I have no desire to know anything of the kind. It is no
business of mine. I would rather not--much rather not--hear any more.
Please, please stop before you say things you will wish unsaid half an
hour afterwards--please."
"You've got to listen to me whether you like it or not," Mrs. Atwood
exclaimed passionately. "You think he is in love with you. I know him;
it is merely a passing glamour. Your youth, your music--your--oh, what
shall I call it--have carried him off his feet, but it will pass; his
heart, what there is of it, belongs to me."
"But you're married, Mrs. Atwood, so what would you be doing with his
heart? even if it is as you say."
"_Married!_" Mrs. Atwood repeated bitterly--"married! so I was when he
first knew me, but that didn't prevent his falling in love with me."
"I fear," said Lallie gravely, "that he is a very unfortunate young man,
and if he has done his best to cure himself of such a hopeless
attachment it's not you who should stand in the way of his doing so."
"Confront me with him," Mrs. Atwood cried furiously; "ask him whether
what I say is true or not, and you'll soon see."
"My dear Mrs. Atwood, I shouldn't dream of doing such a thing. It is an
unpleasant affair altogether, and the sooner it's buried in oblivion the
better for all concerned."
"But, girl, I love him! Can't you understand? I love him!"
"I'm very sorry," said Lallie.
"But what are you going to do?" cried Mrs. Atwood, her voice vibrant and
shrill with irritation. "The matter can't rest here. What are you going
to do?"
"Nothing whatever. I never let it affect me when people tell me tales
about others. I wasn't intended to know this. If Mr. Ballinger wants
me to know it, he'll tell me himself."
"You mean that what I have told you won't affect your feelings towards
him in any way?"
"Mrs. Atwood, I am really very sorry for you, but I can't see that
Sidney Ballinger is called upon to go single all his life just because
he was in love with you once and has got over it. He can't marry you if
you've got a husband already, and it's much better he shouldn't go
hanging round you any more--better for both of you. Don't you see that
it is?"
"You don't understand," wailed Mrs. Atwood. "You take the common,
narrow, early Victorian view of the whole situation. Does he owe me
_nothing_ for the years I have loved him?"
"If I had loved a man for years," said Lallie softly, "I don't think I
should talk about his debt to me."
"You don't know what you would do. If you were a woman, instead of a
child incapable of understanding any great passion, you would know.
Will you give him back to me, I ask you? Will you give him back to me?"
"Nothing can do that except his own will."
"But will you stand out of the way, refuse him, have nothing more to do
with him? Promise me."
A moment before, Lallie had looked frightened, and Mrs. Atwood thought
she could be bullied. She stood over the girl, menace in her eyes and
hatred in her heart. She caught Lallie by the shoulder and shook her.
She made a great mistake.
A moment before Lallie had been very sorry for her, though she despised
her and thought her shameless. But now--she shook off Mrs. Atwood's
hand and she, too, stood up.
"I will promise nothing," she said haughtily. "You have no possible
right to ask it."
The two women stood looking at each other. Mrs. Atwood breathless,
panting, almost beside herself with excitement; Lallie quiet and
dignified.
The clock struck three.
"I think we have said all there is to say on this subject," Lallie said
coldly. "I really would rather not hear any more."
She crossed the room and held the door open, and in silence Mrs. Atwood
passed through it.
Lallie seized her coat and hat, fiercely stabbed in her big pins and ran
down stairs to the drawing-room, where she knew Sidney Ballinger would
be waiting.
So he was, and Mrs. Atwood was with him. The tears were running down her
cheeks. He was white and evidently very angry. His mouth, usually so
weak and amiable, had taken on a cruel look--the sort of snarl that
curls the lips back from the teeth as in an angry animal.
Lallie stopped short and looked from one to the other.
"I have told her, Sidney," sobbed Mrs. Atwood. "I thought it only right
that she should know all we had been to one another--how greatly we
loved, how----"
He turned upon her furiously.
"I never loved you. From its first inception the whole thing was false
and pretentious, as you are yourself. I was only a boy when you got
hold of me. I never really cared for you."
Lallie moved a little nearer Mrs. Atwood.
"Believe me, Lallie," he went on, "I never cared for her, and now she
won't leave me alone. I care more for your very shoe-lace----"
"Stop!" It was Lallie who spoke. "How dare you speak to her like that?
Oh, you----"
Mrs. Atwood covered her face with her hands and fled from the room.
"Listen to me, Lallie! Don't let her come between us."
He spoke in sobbing gasps and caught at one of Lallie's hands. She drew
it away.
"She has not come between us," she said scornfully; "it is yourself.
You might have told me that it had all been the worst thing possible,
and I could have forgiven you. Who am I to judge a man? But not this.
You went back on her. You put her to open shame before me. You are a
coward, Mr. Ballinger."
"Lallie, think of the provocation! What right had she to come thrusting
in with her grievances--wholly imaginary grievances--upon the most
beautiful and sacred thing in my whole life. Let us come out and forget
her. You will come, won't you? You won't let her spoil everything?"
"I told you before, Mrs. Atwood had no power to spoil anything. I
wasn't even sorry for her when _she_ told me; but you-- No, Mr.
Ballinger, I could never trust you. You went back on her."
And Lallie turned and left him standing in the middle of the Pinnels
drawing-room, thinking bitter thoughts.
Who could have dreamt she would have taken such a curious line? That
she should be shocked, distressed, indignant, was to be expected--it was
what he dreaded. But she was none of these things. The affair with
Mrs. Atwood seemed to pass her by. She blamed him because he didn't own
up, because he was cruel to Eileen Atwood when he denied that he had
ever cared for her. He had cared, as much as it was in him to care at
all--then. Now, he was absolutely truthful when he had said that
Lallie's shoe-string was more to him than Eileen Atwood's whole body.
But it had not pleased Lallie. Women were incomprehensible. He knew
that Lallie did not love him, but he had believed that he could make her
love him in time. She was so affectionate, so passionately grateful for
kindness: surely, surely she must respond some day if only he got his
chance.
Had this horrible woman ruined it entirely? He felt that he could gladly
have strangled Mrs. Atwood with his own hands: yet his knees bent under
him and his pulses were thundering in his ears. He went into the
deserted dining-room and mixed himself a stiff whisky-and-soda, and
drank it at a draught. He felt better after it and more hopeful.
Poor little Lallie! It had been a horrid scene. He wouldn't appeal to
her again--not just now while she was still angry, but in
Hamchester--thank Heaven! she would be somewhere within reach where he
could see her sometimes. Perhaps by and by, when she had cooled down,
she would listen to reason. By the way, he might go and see that
schoolmaster fellow who was acting as her guardian. The Chesters said
he was a very decent chap, quite a man of the world. Ballinger thought
he might just give a hint that there had been unpleasantness about
another woman, and a tolerant, broad-minded man--the Chesters said he
was that--would say something sensible to Lallie, and it would have
weight. She was forever quoting him. She'd probably take it from him.
It never occurred to Sidney Ballinger that a guardian of any sort could
regard him other than in the most favourable light. After all, eight
thousand a year is eight thousand a year, and "I'm not a bad chap or
wastrel. There's nothing against me really," he reflected.
By tea-time he was able to take quite an optimistic view of the
situation.
*CHAPTER XXI*
Nearly three weeks later, Tony Bevan sat on a seat in the sun watching
"Pots." It was Thursday afternoon and there was an "extra half."
In front of him, standing with legs wide apart, very conscious of a new
covert coat and gaiters, stood Punch; a round diminutive Punch all by
himself, and overjoyed at his isolation. His family were at least three
seats away.
When a covert coat, if it is to be a coat at all, necessarily reaches
almost to one's knees, it is difficult to thrust one's hands in
knickerbocker pockets. So Punch found it. He tried both, he tried
hard, but the coat would bunch out all round like a frill, so he
contented himself with one. With the other he occasionally shaded his
eyes, as though the watery November sun was too strong for him.
Sitting on the same seat with "Mitta Bevan," as Punch called him, were
two boys--big boys. Punch liked big boys; they were generally quite
friendly.
Presently he turned to Tony and said politely:
"I hope I don't o'scure your view."
The big boys made queer muffled sounds, but Tony said gravely:
"Well, if you _could_ stand, just a little to the left--or better still,
won't you come and sit with us? You'd see just as well."
Punch came, and was duly ensconced between Tony and one of the boys,
with a share of rug over his short legs.
"Where's Lallie?" he asked; "she's not been to see us for ages, nor to
sing for me."
"Lallie is coming home the day after to-morrow. Are you glad? _I_ am,"
said Tony, and he looked it.
"Why did she go away so long for?"
"Well, you see, the lady she was staying with begged her to stay on and
on, and she's very fond of that lady; but she's really coming home on
Saturday."
"Will she come to see me on Saturday?"
"I'm not sure. You see she mightn't get home very early, but I think
she'll come and see you on Sunday afternoon if you'll be at home."
"I'll be at home," said Punch firmly; "I won't go to the children's
service with Pris and Prue."
"I don't think she'd come during service time."
"I'd better not go lest she did," Punch insisted. "I like Lallie."
"I think we all like Lallie," said Tony, and one of the "big boys"
sitting on the seat murmured: "And so say all of us," and nudged his
comrade.
Letter after letter had come from Lallie deferring her return. First it
was that--"there are five hundred little red names to sew on Claude
Chester's garments before he returns to Egypt. Mrs. Chester seems to
imagine that there's something magical about those names, and that they
will in some mysterious fashion prevent Claude losing his clothes, which
he does at the rate of about an outfit a year. I should think that the
whole of the Egyptian Army is taking a wear out of Claude's vests and
things, judging by the amount he takes out and the few and holey
garments he brings back. Mrs. Chester says it hurts her eyes to thread
needles, and she's a poor old woman with no daughter; and what would I
be tearing back to Hamchester for where no one particularly wants me
(that's not true, is it?) when I can be of use here? So I really think
I'd better stay till the names are all firmly attached, but it won't
take long."
Then, after the little red names were all sewed on, Mrs. Chester got an
exceedingly bad cold and had to stay in bed; and of course Lallie had to
stay on at Pinnels to look after her.
But she was really coming home to-morrow. Tarrant was getting up every
day for an hour or two, and it seemed only in keeping with the general
pleasantness of things that B. House should already have scored six
points to nil.
One thing about Lallie's letter puzzled Tony. She never so much as
mentioned Ballinger. If she had given him his _congé_, this was natural
enough and like Lallie; but if not, what did it mean?
At half-past five that evening Sidney Ballinger's card was brought in to
him.
He never saw people in the drawing-room if he could possibly help it.
He never knew why he hated it so till Lallie commented upon its
stiffness. He received Sidney Ballinger in his study.
"Nervous, poor chap," was Tony's mental comment, as his guest came in.
He did his best to set him at his ease; supplied him with cigarettes;
offered him tea; whisky-and-soda; both refused.
"I dare say," said Ballinger, "that Miss Clonmell told you I hoped you
would allow me to call. Is she at home?"
Tony looked rather surprised.
"She returns on Saturday; I thought you were at Pinnels also."
"I left last Monday fortnight, and I haven't heard from Miss Clonmell
since. I thought she was coming back next day."
"Been having good hunting with the Cockshots?" asked Tony.
"Pretty fair. Mr. Bevan, it's no use beating about the bush; you know,
I have no doubt, why I am here and why I have ventured to call upon you.
When I went to Pinnels three weeks ago I fully intended to ask Miss
Clonmell to be my wife--to ask her again. She told you that I had
already proposed to her?"
"She didn't tell me. Her father did though."
"Well, I didn't ask her again at Pinnels: not in so many words; I never
got the chance."
"That was unfortunate," said Tony, and in spite of himself his eyes
twinkled.
"It was d--d unfortunate. I'll make a clean breast of it. There was
another woman there--a married woman--with whom I had had a foolish
flirtation in my salad days--when I was at Cambridge. You know the
sort; older than I am, and horribly tenacious."
Ballinger paused. Tony smoked thoughtfully but said nothing to help him
out. "A bit of a Goth," thought Ballinger, and took up his tale again.
"Well, she made a scene. Told Lallie all about it, and before me, too;
and naturally Lallie--Miss Clonmell--was upset, and she wouldn't listen
to me after that."
"But why do you tell me all this?" asked Tony, and took his pipe out of
his mouth.
"You see, sir, I know that Miss Clonmell has a very high opinion of you;
that you have, in fact, enormous influence over her; and it seemed to me
that if you would tell her it really wasn't anything so very bad."
"Wasn't it anything so very bad?"
"I assure you no-- Folly if you like, egregious folly; but it might
have happened to any one. If you could tell Miss Clonmell that you have
seen me, that I have told you the whole thing, and that you think she
ought to forgive me--that she ought not to let it ruin both our lives."
"That's the point," said Tony. "Will it ruin Miss Clonmell's life if
she continues to take an adverse view of the circumstance you have just
related? Or is it only of your own life you are thinking?"
"I believe I could make her happy," said Ballinger gloomily.
"I have no doubt you would do your best to do so, but one can never tell
what view a woman may take of such things; and I'm not sure that they
aren't often perfectly right. Still, in Lallie's case, she has had a
different bringing up from most girls. You can never depend on her
taking the conventional view. There is probably hope for you--_if_ she
cares."
"A very big if," groaned Ballinger.
"If she doesn't care, I can't see how what you have told me would affect
her one way or other." Tony took up his pipe again and stared steadily
into the fire.
Ballinger stared at him. How much did he know? Had Lallie written
about it to him? She probably would, and that's why he said that about
not taking the conventional view. He didn't make it very easy for a
fellow. Ballinger cleared his throat.
"May I," he asked, "depend upon you to put my case as favourably as
possible before Miss Clonmell?"
"I can't promise that. You see, to be perfectly candid, I know next to
nothing about you, except that you are well off and that Fitz Clonmell
likes you; but I will certainly point out to Miss Clonmell that it would
be a pity to let an affair of that sort--you said it was entirely ended,
I think; had been for some time--stand in the way where there was any
solid prospect of happiness. I can't truly say I'm glad you told me of
this, for I'm not. It puts a horrid lot of responsibility on me, and an
old bachelor is hardly the adviser one would choose for a girl in
affairs of this kind."
* * * * *
"I'll put the common-sense view before Lallie, as I promised," Tony
wrote to Fitz Clonmell that night; "but your Sidney Bargrave Ballinger
is too much of a 'Tomlinson' for my taste."
*CHAPTER XXII*
"My heart, my heart is like a singing bird,
Whose nest is in a watered shoot,"
sang Lallie, and Tony Bevan had set his study door open to listen.
There was no doubt whatever that Lallie was supremely glad to be back at
B. House. Even Miss Foster had, at dinner that night, thawed into a
semblance of geniality; the girl's pleasure was so manifest, her high
spirits so infectious.
Now, alone in the drawing-room, she sang song after song, and, unlike
Lallie's songs as a rule, not one of them was sad.
"Because my love, my love has come to me,"
she carolled.
The melody--exulting, triumphant, a very pæan of rapture, young, glad,
valorous--so entirely expressed Tony's own feeling that it drew him with
irresistible force, and he went to her.
She did not pause in her song, but sang on with ever-increasing abandon;
and Tony, leaning against the end of the piano and watching her, was
hard put to it not to tell her there and then what she was to him.
But he was not given to act on the impulse of the moment, and even
before the last glad notes had died away there came the old chilling
consciousness of the disparity between them: a disparity not of age
only, but of temperament. Tony was very humble-minded. On such rare
occasions as he thought about himself at all he did not, like Sidney
Ballinger, tell himself he "was not a bad fellow." He was only too
conscious of his many defects and shortcomings. He hoped he did his
best according to his lights, but he acknowledged that those lights were
neither brilliant nor searching. And just as there was for Lallie
something incongruous in the fact that he was a schoolmaster, so there
was for himself something almost ridiculous in the fact that he, of all
people in the world, should be hopelessly in love with one so elusive
and so complex as was the lady of his dreams.
For just as no mortal on earth could ever be sure what Lallie would do
next, Tony least of all: so she and the world in general had a habit of
depending upon Tony Bevan and always expecting from him a certain kind
of conduct. Nor were they ever disappointed.
"I wonder," said Lallie, looking across the piano at him, "whether you
are half as glad to see me as I am to get back."
"Don't I look glad?"
"You always do that; but then, that might only be kindness and
politeness on your part. I seem to have been away years."
"You went for three days and stayed three weeks. Were all the outfit,
and colds, and dire need for your presence genuine, or was it merely
that you were having a good time and wanted to stay at Pinnels?"
"I did have a good time at Pinnels: I always do; but I should have been
back long ago had it not been that Mrs. Chester really seemed to want
me."
"Mrs. Chester's desire is not incomprehensible, but I hope you are not
going away for any more long week-ends, or the holidays will be here,
and then----"
"Then I pick up Paddy at the Shop dance, and we both go to Ireland for
Christmas; and if you think Aunt Emileen will be sufficient chaperon,
reinforced by Paddy, we shall be pleased to see you."
"But I'm supposed to be a chaperon myself."
"Not at all," Lallie said emphatically. "Have you forgotten the dreadful
fuss you made because Miss Foster wasn't here when I first came?"
"Ah, but that was different--I have to be away so much here. By the
way, have you nothing to say to me, in my capacity of chaperon--Uncle
Emileen, if you like--as to the momentous decision you told me you would
be called upon to make while you were at Pinnels."
"Tony, dear"--Lallie spoke in a whisper, looking delightfully demure and
mischievous--"I was never called upon to make any decision at all. I
suppose it was conceit on my part to think I should have to do it.
Anyway, I hadn't to, and it saved a lot of trouble."
"Is that quite true, Lallie?"
"In the letter absolutely; in the spirit--well, it takes a lot of
explaining when you come to such subtleties. And sometimes one can't
explain without bringing in other people who'd perhaps rather be left
out."
"Who were the other guests at Pinnels besides you and Mr. Ballinger?"
"A young lady--a young lady after Miss Foster's own heart, I'm sure; so
inconspicuous and characterless, she reminded me of the man in the
pantomime who is always running across the stage with a parcel and gets
knocked down and disappears only to be knocked down next time he crosses
the stage with the same inevitable parcel. I'm not sure whether she was
the man or the parcel, but she really doesn't come into the story."
"Yes; and who else?"
"Three Chester boys--all nice; there never was a nicer family. And then
there was a Mrs. Atwood."
"What was she like?"
"She, Tony, was the kind of person described by their relations as
'highly strung'; she uses immense long words, of Greek origin if
possible--at least Billy Chester said so, and he ought to know, being
just fresh from Oxford."
"Does Mrs. Chester like your Mr. Ballinger?"
"Why do you call him 'my' Mr. Ballinger? He's nothing of the sort. Yes,
Mrs. Chester does like him; she knew him when he was quite young and
used to come for the holidays to the uncle who left him all the money,
and she was dreadfully sorry for him."
"Who? Ballinger or the uncle?"
"Mr. Ballinger, of course. His parents died when he was quite little,
and this uncle and aunt brought him up. There was an aunt then, a
dreadful aunt, who thought that everything in the least pleasant was
wicked. She considered all games a waste of time. Novels and poetry
were an invention of the devil, and such people as the kind, good, merry
Chesters 'dangerous companions.' So the poor boy had rather dismal
holidays. The only thing she thought good about Rugby was a volume of
Dr. Arnold's sermons. Oh, he had a poor time of it."
"Still, they sent him to a good school and then to the 'Varsity. They
didn't do very badly by him."
"The aunt died before he went to Cambridge, and his uncle became much
more human. For one thing he was awfully pleased because Mr. Ballinger
was so quiet and industrious. _He_ didn't waste his time playing
cricket and getting blues and things, and so he got a splendid degree--a
something first! Are you listening, Tony?"
"I am, most attentively, and it strikes me that if that young man had
spent a little more of his time playing games, he might not have got
into the particular kind of mischief he did get into--mischief that is
apt to make things very uncomfortable later on."
All the time she was talking Lallie had been playing very softly in
subdued accompaniment to her remarks. Now she suddenly ceased, and
sitting up very straight stared hard at Tony, who still lounged against
the other end of the piano devouring her with his eyes.
"What do you mean, Tony?"
"I mean, Lallie, that a young man is apt to pay dearly for a sentimental
friendship with a lady of 'highly strung' temperament."
"Where in the world did you hear anything about it?"
"Now where do you think?"
"You don't mean to say that he has actually been to see you and told you
himself?"
"That is precisely what I do mean; and having heard the story, I feel it
my duty to ask you not to be too hard on the fellow--not to let it
influence your decision one way or other; especially now that you have
told me of his boyhood, would I beg you to judge leniently."
Lallie's little face grew set and hard, her grey eyes darkened, and the
soft curves of her chin took on stern, purposeful lines.
"Just tell me this," she said. "Did he, when he described the somewhat
stormy interview with Mrs. Atwood, give you to understand that it was
his _flirtation_ with the lady that I objected to? Did he say that
now?"
"Well, naturally."
"Then he lied."
"Lallie, my dear child!"
"Since _he_ has chosen to confide in you--though why, Heaven only
knows--I will tell you exactly what happened. She made a scene, and he
behaved like a brute to her; and it's because he behaved like a brute
that I will have nothing more to do with him. He went back on her,
Tony; denied that he'd ever cared a toss for her, and before me, too."