AN AFTER-DINNER DISCUSSION.
Mr. Pryor, aloft in his pulpit in Mitchelhurst church, with a
sounding-board suspended above his head, was preaching about the
Amalekites to a small afternoon congregation. The Amalekites had
happened to come out of that drawer in his writing-table of which Mr.
Hayes had spoken, and perhaps did as well as anything else he could have
found there. He was getting over the ground at a tolerable pace, in
spite of an occasional stumble, and was too much absorbed in his
manuscript to be disturbed by an active trade in marbles which was going
on in the front row of the Sunday scholars. Indeed, to Mr. Pryor's
short-sighted eyes, his listeners were very nearly as remote as the
Amalekites themselves.
Some of the straw-plaiting girls, whose fingers seemed restless during
their Sunday idleness, were nudging and pulling each other, or turning
the leaves of their hymnbooks, or smoothing their dresses. A labourer
here and there sat staring straight before him with a vacant gaze. A
farmer's wife devoted the leisure moments to thinking out one or two
practical matters, over which she frowned a little. The clerk, in his
desk, attended officially to the Amalekites, but that was all.
Barbara and Reynold were apart from all the rest in the square,
red-lined pew which had always belonged to the Rothwells. When they
stood up their heads and Reynold's shoulders were visible, but during
the sermon no one could see the occupants of the little inclosure except
the preacher.
Reynold had established himself in a corner, with his head slightly
thrown back and his long legs stretched out. Barbara, a little way off,
had her daintily-gloved hands folded on her lap, and sat with a demurely
respectful expression while the voice above them sent a thin thread of
denunciation through the drowsy atmosphere. Harding did not dislike it.
Anything newer, more real, more living, would have seemed unsuited to
the dusty marble figures which were the principal part of the
congregation in that corner of the church. He had knelt down and stood
up during the service, always with a sense of union between his own few
years of life and the many years of which those monuments were memories;
and the old prayers, the "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O
Lord," had fallen softly on his ears. Perils and dangers seemed so far
from that sleepy little haven where he hoped to live his later days, and
to come as a grey-haired man, when all the storms and struggles were
over, and hear those words Sunday after Sunday in that very pew.
Barbara, from under her long lashes, stole a meditative, questioning
glance at him while he was musing thus, and the glance lingered. The
young fellow's head rested against the faded red baize, his eyes were
half closed, his brows had relaxed, his mouth almost hinted a smile. He
was not conscious of her scrutiny, and, seeing his face for the first
time as a mere mask, she suddenly awoke to a perception of its beauty.
Overhead, it appeared that the Amalekites typified many evil things, and
were by no means so utterly destroyed as they should have been. Mr.
Pryor intended his warnings to be as emphatic as those of the fierce old
prophet, and he drew a limp white finger down the faded page lest he
should lose his place in the middle. Time had made the manuscript a
little unfamiliar. "My brethren," said the plaintive voice from beneath
the sounding-board, "we must make terms--ahem!--we must _never_ make
terms with these relentless enemies who lie in wait for us as for the
Israelites of old. Remember"--he turned a leaf and felt the next to
ascertain if it were the last. It was not, and he hurried his
exhortation a little, finding it long, yet afraid to venture on leaving
anything out. Meanwhile a weary Sunday-school teacher awoke to sudden
energy, plunged into the midst of the boys, and captured more marbles
than he could hold, so that two or three escaped him and rolled down the
aisle, amid a general manifestation of interest. The luckless teacher
was young and bashful, and the rolling marbles seemed to him to fill the
universe with reverberating echoes.
The vicar reached the goal at last, and gave out a hymn. Then the young
people in the red-lined pew appeared once more, Miss Strange singing,
Reynold looking round to deepen and assure his recollection of that
afternoon. When he found himself in the churchyard, passing under the
black-boughed yews with Barbara, he broke the silence. "I shall be far
enough away next Sunday."
It was so strange to think that by the next Sunday his work would have
begun, the work which he so loathed and so desired. He had directed his
letter to his uncle at his place a few miles out of town, where Mr.
Harding always went from Saturday to Monday, and he remembered as he
spoke that the old gentleman would have received it that morning.
Reynold pictured a little triumph over his surrender, but he did not
care. Something--it could hardly be Mr. Pryor's sermon--had sweetened
his bitter soul, and he did not care. He felt as if that little corner
of Mitchelhurst church had become an inalienable possession of his, and
he could enter into it at any time wherever he might chance to be.
Barbara was sympathetic, but slightly pre-occupied. If young Harding had
understood women a little better he would certainly have perceived the
pre-occupation, but as it was he only saw the sympathy. When they got
back to the Place she delayed him in the garden, as if she too felt the
charm of that peaceful afternoon and regretted its departure. They
loitered to and fro on the wide gravel path, where grass and weeds
encroached creepingly from the borders, and paused from time to time
watching the sun as it went down. At last, when there was only a band of
sulphur-coloured light on the horizon, Barbara turned away with a sigh.
Reynold did not understand her reluctance to go in. In truth she was
uneasy at the thought of the long evening which her uncle and he must
spend in the same room. Mr. Hayes had come down in a dangerous mood
that morning, not showing any special remembrance of Harding's offence
of the night before, but seeming impartially displeased with everything
and everybody. If ill-temper were actual fire, his conversation would
have been all snaps and flashes like a fifth of November. Letters
absorbed his attention at breakfast, but Barbara perceived that they
only made him crosser than before. Happily, however, since a storm of
rain hindered the morning's church-going, he went to his study to write
his answers, and was seen no more till lunch-time, after which the
weather cleared, and the young people walked off together to hear about
the Amalekites. Reynold had no idea how anxiously Barbara had been
sheltering him all day under her little wing, but now the sun was down,
there was no help for it, they must go in and face the worst. She had
paused and looked up at him as if she were about to say something before
they left the garden, but nothing came except the little sigh which he
had heard.
Even when they went in, fate seemed a little to postpone the evil
moment. Harding, coming down-stairs, saw a light shining through the
door of a small room--the book-room, as it was sometimes called. A
glance as he passed showed Barbara, with an arm raised above her head,
taking a volume from the shelf. "Can I help you?" he asked, pausing in
the doorway.
"Oh, thank you, but I think this is right." She examined the title-page.
The window shutters were closed, the room was dusky with its lining of
old brown leather bindings, and Barbara's candle was just a glow-worm
glimmer of brightness in it. "You might put those others back for me if
you would. I can manage to take them down, but it isn't so easy to put
them up again."
Tall Reynold rendered the required service quickly enough, while she
laid the book she had chosen with some others already on the table, and
began to dust them. It was an old-fashioned writing-table, with a
multitude of little brass-handled drawers. The young man took hold of
one of these brass handles, and noticed its rather elaborate
workmanship. "Look inside," said the girl, as she laid her duster down.
The drawer was full of yellowing papers, old bills, and miscellaneous
scraps of various kinds. She pulled out a few, and they turned them over
in the gleam of candle-light. "Butcher, Christmas, 1811," said Barbara,
"and here is a glazier's bill. What have you got?"
"To sinking and bricking new well, 32 ft. deep," Reynold replied. "It is
in 1816. To making new pump, 38 ft. long."
"Why, that must be the old pump by the stables," said Barbara. "Look at
this receipt, 'for work Don accorden to Bill?'"
"There seem to be plenty of them. Are the other drawers full too?"
"Yes, I think so. You had better take one as a souvenir."
"No, thank you." He smiled as he thrust the bills he held down among the
dusty bundles in the drawer, and brushed his finger tips fastidiously.
"Souvenirs ought to be characteristic. A receipted bill would be a very
respectable souvenir, but I'm afraid it would convey a false impression
of the Rothwells."
She looked away, a little perplexed and dissatisfied. It seemed to her
that the future master of Mitchelhurst should not talk in that fashion
of his own people, and she did not understand that the slight bitterness
of speech was merely the outcome of a life of discontent. He hardly knew
how to speak otherwise. "I suppose they would have paid everybody if
they hadn't had misfortunes," she said.
"No doubt. We would most of us pay our bills if we had nothing else to
do with the money."
"Well," Barbara declared with a blush, "the next Rothwell will pay _his_
bills, I know."
"We'll hope so." His smile apparently emboldened her, for she looked up
at him. "Mr. Harding," she began.
"Well?"
She put her hand to her mouth with an irresolute gesture, softly
touching her red lips. "Oh--nothing!" she said.
"Nothing?" he questioned. But at that moment there was a call. "Barbara!
Barbara! are you stopping to _write_ those books?"
She turned swiftly, caught them up and was gone, sending an answering
cry of "Coming, uncle--coming!" before her.
Reynold lingered a little before he followed her, to wonder what that
something was that was nothing.
When he went in he found Mr. Hayes and Barbara both industriously
occupied with their reading, after the fashion of a quiet Sunday in the
country. He took up the first volume that came to hand, threw himself
into a chair, and remained for a considerable time frowning and musing
over the unread page. Mr. Hayes turned his pages with wearisome
regularity, but after a while Barbara laid her _Good Words_ on her lap
and gazed fixedly at the window, where little could be seen but the
reflection of the lamp in the outer darkness. The silence of the room
seeming to have become accustomed to this change of attitude, the
slightest possible movement of her head brought Reynold within range. He
moved, and she was looking at the window, from which she turned quite
naturally, and met his glance. Her fingers were playing restlessly with
her little gold cross, and Harding said, "Your talisman!"
No word had been spoken for so long that the brief utterance came with a
kind of startling distinctness.
"My talisman still, thanks to you," Barbara replied.
The absurdity of his misfortune was a little forgotten, and the fact of
his service remained, so Harding almost smiled as he rejoined--
"I say 'thanks to it' for my introduction."
Mr. Hayes knitted his brows, and looked from one to the other with
bright, bead-like eyes. When, a minute later, a maid came to the door,
and asked to speak to Miss Strange, he waited till his niece was gone,
and then sharply demanded--
"What was that about a talisman?"
"That little cross Miss Strange wears. She calls that her talisman."
"Indeed! Why that particular cross?"
"It belonged to her godmother, I believe," said Harding.
The old gentleman stared, and then considered a little.
"Her godmother, eh? Why," he began to laugh, "her godmother--what does
Barbara know about her?"
"I think she said she was named after her----"
"So she was."
"And that her mother told her she was the most beautiful woman she ever
knew----"
"That's true enough. She _was_ beautiful, and clever, and accomplished,
no doubt about that. One ought to speak kindly of the dead, they say.
Well, she was beautiful, and if ever there was a selfish, heartless
coquette----"
"Hey!" said Reynold, opening his eyes. "Is that speaking kindly of the
dead?"
"Very kindly," with emphasis.
"But Miss Strange's mother----"
"Well, I should think she must have begun to find her friend out before
she died. I don't know, though; Mrs. Strange isn't over wise, she may
contrive to believe in her still. I wonder what Strange would say, if he
ever said anything! So that is Barbara's talisman! Not much _virtue_ in
it, anyhow; but I dare say it will do just as well. There have been some
queer folks canonised before now."
He ended with a chuckling little laugh. Evidently he knew enough of the
earlier Barbara to see something irresistibly comic in the girl's
tenderness for this little relic of the past.
Harding was grimly silent. Barbara's fancy might be foolish, but since
she cherished it, he hated to hear this ugly little mockery of her
treasure, and he had found a half-acknowledged satisfaction in the
remembrance that the little cross was a link between himself and her.
Now, when she came into the room again, and Mr. Hayes compressed his
lips, and glanced from the little ornament to his visitor, and then to
his book again, in stealthy enjoyment of his joke, the other felt as if
there were something sinister in the token. He wished Barbara would not
caress it as she stood by the fire. He would have liked to throw it down
and tread it under foot.
There might have been some malignant influence in the air that day, for
Barbara will wonder as long as she lives what made her two companions
insist on talking politics at dinner. She did not like people to talk
politics. She had never looked out the word in the dictionary, and
perhaps she might not have objected to a lofty discussion of "the
science of government, that part of ethics which consists in the
regulation and government of a nation or state." She looked upon talking
politics as a masculine diversion, which consisted in bandying violent
assertions about Mr. Gladstone. It never led, of course, to any change
of opinion, but it generally made people raise their voices, and
interrupt one another, and get red in the face. As far as her
opportunities of observation went, Barbara had judged pretty correctly.
Her uncle held what he called his political creed solely as a means of
enjoyable argument. He considered himself an advanced Liberal, but he
had so many whims and hobbies that he was the most uncertain of
supporters. No one held his views, and if, by some inconceivable chance,
he had convinced an adversary, he would have been very uncomfortable. He
would have felt himself crowded out of his position, and would have
retired immediately to less accessible ground, and defied his disciple
to climb up after him. When he had arranged his opinions he was obliged
to find ingenious methods of escaping their consequences. For instance,
with some whimsical recollection of the one passion of his life, he
chose to hold advanced views about Woman's Rights, which disgusted his
country neighbours. Woman was, in every respect but physical strength,
the natural equal of man. She was to be emancipated, to vote, to take
her place in Church and State--when Mr. Hayes was dead. At present she
was evidently dwarfed and degraded by long ages of man's oppressive
rule, and needed careful education, and a considerable lapse of time, to
raise her to the position that was hers by right. Meanwhile she must be
governed, not as an inferior, on that point he spoke very strongly
indeed, but as a minor not yet qualified to enter into possession of her
inheritance, and he exerted himself, in rather a high-handed fashion, to
keep her in the proper path. The woman of the future was to do exactly
what she pleased, but the woman of the present--Barbara--was to do as
she was told, and not talk about what she did not understand. By this
arrangement Mr. Hayes was able to rule his womankind, and to deny the
superiority of his masculine acquaintances.
It was precisely this question that came up at dinner-time. Harding had
no real views on political matters; he was simply a Conservative by
nature. He had none of the daring energy which snatches chances in
periods of change; his instinct was that of self-defence, to hold rather
than to gain; to gather even the rags of the past about him, with the
full consciousness that they were but rags, rather than to throw himself
into the battle of the present. It was true that he was going to work
for Mitchelhurst and Barbara, but the double impulse had been needed to
conquer his shrinking pride. That a man should be hustled by a mixed and
disorderly crowd was bad enough, but that a woman should step down into
it, should demand work, should make speeches, and push her way to the
polling-booth, was in Harding's eyes something hideously degrading and
indecent. As to the equality of the sexes, that was rubbish. Man was to
rule, and woman to maintain an ideal of purity and sweetness. Education,
beyond the simple old-fashioned limits, tended only to unsex her.
He would have opposed Mr. Hayes's theories at any time, but they cut him
to the quick just then, when he had felt the grace of womanhood, when a
woman had passed into his life and transformed it. The old man was
airily disposing of the destinies of the race in centuries to come, the
young man was fighting for his own little future. He could not rule the
world. Let it roar and hurry as it would, but never dare to touch his
wife and home. What did the man mean by uttering his hateful doctrines
in Barbara's hearing? Her bright eyes came and went between the
speakers, and Reynold longed to order her away, to shut her up in some
safe place apart, where only he might approach her.
He need not have been anxious. There was no touch of ambition in the
girl's tender feminine nature to respond to her uncle's arguments. She
did not want to vote, and wondered why women should ever wish to be
doctors or--or--anything. Her eager glances betokened uneasiness rather
than interest. Indeed the inferior being, scenting danger, had tried to
turn the conversation before the terrible question of Woman's Rights had
been mentioned at all. She had endeavoured to talk about a lawn-tennis
ground rather than the aspect of Irish affairs. Harding did not know
much about lawn-tennis, but he was quite ready to talk about it, just as
he would have talked about crewel-work, if she had seemed to wish it.
Mr. Hayes, however, pooh-poohed the little attempt at peace.
"What is the good of planning the ground now?" he said. "And who cares
for lawn-tennis?"
"I do," said the girl. "It's much more amusing than talking about Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Parnell."
"That's all you know about it," her uncle retorted. "Now if you had been
educated--"
"Oh yes, of course," she replied, with desperate pertness. "You are
always talking about the woman of the future--I dare say she will _like_
to see people make themselves hot and disagreeable, arguing about
Ireland." She made a droll little face of disgust. "Well, she may, but I
don't!"
"Perhaps the woman of the future will be hot and disagreeable too,"
Harding suggested.
"_You_ might not find her agreeable," said Mr. Hayes drily. "She would
be able to expose the fallacy of your views pretty clearly, I fancy."
"Well," Barbara struck in hurriedly, amazed at her own boldness, "we get
hot enough over tennis sometimes, but nobody is ever so cross over that,
as men are when they argue."
"Good heavens!" said Mr. Hayes. "To think that women, who rightfully
should share man's most advanced attainments and aspirations--" and off
he went at a canter over the beaten ground of many previous discussions.
Barbara looked from him to young Harding. His dark eyes were ominous, he
was only waiting, breathlessly, till Mr. Hayes should be compelled to
pause for breath. "I hope you don't mean to imply, sir--" he began, and
Barbara perceived that not only had she failed to avert a collision, but
that, by her thoughtless mention of the woman of the future, she had
introduced the precise subject on which the two men were most furiously
at variance. Thenceforward she merely glanced from one to the other as
the noisy battle raged, watching in dumb suspense as one might watch the
rising of a tide. Mr. Hayes had been thoroughly cross all day, and had
not forgiven Reynold's rudeness of the evening before. Under cover of
his argument he was saying all the irritating things he could think of,
while Harding's harsher voice broke through his shrill-toned talk with
rough contradictions.
After a time Barbara was obliged to leave them, and she went back to the
drawing-room with a sinking heart. She had been uneasy the night before,
but that was nothing to this. How earnestly she wished Mr. Pryor back
again! She was pitiless, she would have flung the gentle flaccid little
clergyman between the angry combatants without a moment's hesitation, if
she could only have brought him there by the force of her desire.
Happily for Mr. Pryor, however, he was safe in his study, putting away
the Amalekites at the bottom of the drawer, till their turn should come
again.
At last when Barbara was in despair at the lateness of the hour, she
sent one of the maids to tell the gentlemen that coffee was ready, and
crept into the hall behind her messenger to hear the result. At the
opening of the door there was a stormy clamour, and then a sudden
silence. It was closed again, and the maid returned. "Master says, Miss,
will you send it in?" The last hope was gone, she could do nothing more
but pour out the coffee, and wish with all her heart it were an opiate.
She was as firmly convinced as Reynold himself of the vast superiority
of men, but these intellectual exercises of theirs upset her dreadfully.
If only it had been Mr. Scarlett! He had a light laughing way of holding
her uncle at arm's length, avowing himself a Conservative simply as a
matter of taste, and fighting for the old fashions which Mr. Hayes
denounced, because he wanted something left that he could make verses
about. Barbara, as she stood pensively on the rug, recalled one occasion
when Adrian Scarlett put forward his plea. He was sitting on the sill of
the open window, with the evening sky behind his head, and while he
talked he drew down a long, blossomed spray of pale French honeysuckle.
"Oh yes, I'm a Conservative," he said; "there are lots of things I want
to conserve--all the picturesqueness, old streets, and signs, and
manor-houses, old customs, village greens, fairs, thatched cottages,
little courtesying maidens, old servants, and men with scythes and
flails, instead of your new machines." She remembered how Mr. Hayes had
interrupted him with a contemptuous inquiry whether there was not as
much poetry to be found on one side as on the other. "Oh yes," he had
assented, idly swinging his foot, "as fine on your side no doubt, or
finer. You have the Marseillaise style of thing to quicken one's pulses.
Yes, and I came across a bit the other day, declaring--
'_Que la Liberte sainte est la seule deesse,
Que l'on n'adore que debout._'"
The words, uttered in the sudden fulness of his clear, rounded tones,
seemed to send a great wave of impulse through the quiet room. Barbara
could recall the sharp "Well, then?" with which Mr. Hayes received it.
"Ah, but not for me," young Scarlett had answered. "You don't expect me
to write that kind of thing? It isn't in me. No, I want to rhyme about
some little picture in an old-fashioned setting--Pamela, or Dorothy,
or--or Ursula, walking between clipped hedges, or looking at an old
sun-dial, or stopping by a basin rimmed with mossy stone to feed the
gold fish. Or dreaming--and she must not be a Girton young woman--I
couldn't imagine a Girton young woman's dreams!"
And so the argument ended in laughter. If only it could have been Adrian
Scarlett instead of Reynold Harding in the dining-room that night!
Barbara's apprehensions would all have vanished in a moment. But Mr.
Scarlett was gone, ("He _might_ have said good-bye," thought Barbara,)
and the pleasant time was gone with him. The window was closed and
shuttered, and the honeysuckle, a tangle of grey stalks, shivered in the
wind outside.
She tried to amuse herself with _Good Words_ again, but failed. Then she
went to the piano, but had no better success there. She was listening
with such strained attention, that to her ears the music was only
distracting and importunate noise. As a last resource she bethought her
of a half-finished novel which she had left in her bed-room. She had not
intended to go on with it till Monday, but she _would_, and she ran
up-stairs with guilty eagerness to fetch it.
She was coming back along the passage with the book in her hand, when
she heard the opening and shutting of doors below, and the quick fall of
steps. In another moment Reynold Harding came springing up the wide
stairs to where she stood. There was a lamp at the head of the
staircase, and as he passed out of the dusk into its light, she could
see his angry eyes, and she knew the veins which stood out upon his
forehead, looking as if the blood in them were black.
He saw her just before he reached the top, and stopped short. For a
moment neither spoke, then he drew a long breath, and laid his hand upon
the balustrade.
"Miss Strange," he said, "I'm going away."
Barbara hardly knew what she had expected or feared, but this took her
by surprise.
"Going? Not now?" she exclaimed in amazement.
"Not to-night--it is too late. I _must_ stop for the night. I can't help
myself. But the first thing to-morrow morning."
"Oh, why?"
"I can't stay under the roof of a man who has insulted me as your uncle
has done. It is impossible that we should meet again," said Reynold. His
speech seemed to escape in fierce little jets of repressed wrath. "I'm
not accustomed--I ought never to have come here!"
"Oh!" cried Barbara, in a tone of pained reproach.
He was silent, looking fixedly at her. The meaning of what he had said,
and the fatal meaning of what he had done, came upon him, arresting him
in the midst of his passion. All his fire seemed suddenly to die down
to grey ashes. What madness had possessed him?
They faced each other in the pale circle of lamplight, which trembled a
little on the broad, white stairs. Reynold, stricken and dumb, grasped
the balustrade with tightening fingers. Barbara leaned against the
white-panelled wall. She was the first to speak.
"Oh!" she said in a low voice. "That _you_ should be driven out of
Mitchelhurst!"
"Don't!" cried he. "God! it was my own fault!"
"What was it? What did you quarrel about?"
"Do I know?" Reynold demanded. "Ask him! Perhaps he can remember some of
the idiotic jangling. Why did we begin? Why did we go on? I don't
believe hell itself could be more wearisome. I was sick to death of it,
and yet something seemed to goad me on--I couldn't give in! It was my
infernal temper, I suppose."
"Oh I am so sorry!" Barbara whispered.
"He shouldn't have spoken to me as he did, when I was his guest at his
own table," young Harding continued. "But after all, he is an old man, I
ought to have remembered that. Well, it's too late; it's all over now!"
"But is it too late? Can't anything be done?"
He almost smiled at the feminine failure to realise that the night's
work was more than a tiff which might be made up and forgotten.
"Kiss and make friends--eh?" he said. "Will you run and fetch your
uncle?"
The leaden little jest was uttered so miserably that Barbara only sighed
in answer.
"No," said the young man, "it's all over. Even if I could apologise--and
I can't--I couldn't sit at his table again. It wouldn't be possible. No,
I must go!"
"And you are sorry you ever came!"
"Don't remind me of that! I'm just as sorry I came here as that I ever
came into the world at all."
The old clock in the dusky hall below struck ten slow strokes.
"This will be good-night and good-bye," said Harding. "I shall be gone
before you are down in the morning."
Even as he spoke he was thinking how completely his bitter folly had
exiled him from her presence.
"You are going home?"
"Home? Well, yes, I suppose so. By the way, I don't know that I shall go
home to-morrow. I may have to stay another day in Mitchelhurst. That
depends--I shall see when the morning comes. Your uncle's jurisdiction
doesn't extend beyond the grounds of the Place, I suppose. I won't
trespass, he may be very sure of that, and I won't stay in the
neighbourhood any longer than I can help. Only, you see, this is rather
a sudden change of plans."
"I am so sorry," the girl repeated. "I hate to think of your going away
like this. I'm ashamed!"
"No! no! I'm rightly served, though you needn't tell Mr. Hayes I said
so. I was fool enough to let my temper get the upper hand, and I must
pay the penalty. How I _could_ be such an inconceivable idiot--but
that's neither here nor there. It was my own fault, and the less said
about it the better."
Barbara shook her head.
"No, it was my fault."
This time Harding really smiled, drearily enough, but still it was a
smile.
"Yours?" he said. "That never occurred to me. How do you make it out?"
"Well," she said, looking down, and tracing a joint of the stone with
the tip of her little embroidered slipper, "it was partly my fault,
anyhow."
This "partly" seemed to point to something definite.
"How do you mean?" he asked, looking curiously at her.
"I knew he was cross," she said. "I knew it this morning as soon as he
came down, and he generally gets worse and worse all day. He isn't often
out of temper like that--only now and then. I dare say he will be all
right to-morrow, or perhaps the day after."
"That's a little late for me!" said Harding.
"So you see it _was_ my fault. I ought to have told you."
"Well, perhaps if you had, I might have been a trifle more on my guard.
I don't know, I'm sure. Yes, I wish you had happened to warn me! But you
mustn't reproach yourself, Miss Strange, it wasn't your fault. You
didn't know what I was, you couldn't be expected to think of it."
"But I _did_ think of it!" Barbara cried remorsefully.
"You did?"
"Yes, I was thinking of it all day. Oh how I _wish_ I had done it! But I
wasn't sure you would like it--I didn't know. I thought perhaps it might
seem"--she faltered--"might seem as if I thought that you----"
"I see!" Reynold answered in his harshest voice. "I needn't have told
you just now that I had a devil of a temper!"
Barbara drew herself up against the wall with her head thrown back, and
gazed blankly at him.
"Oh, don't be afraid!" he said with a laugh. "I'm not going to _hit_
you!"
"Don't talk like that!" she cried. "Oh! there's uncle coming!" and
turning she fled back to her own room. Harding heard the steps below,
and he also went off, not quite so hurriedly, but with long strides,
and vanished into the shadows. The innocent cause of this alarm crossed
the hall, from the drawing-room to the study, banging the doors after
him, and the lamplight fell on the deserted stairs.
Harding struck a light and flung himself into a chair. Barbara's words
and his own mocking laughter seemed still to be in the air about him.
The silence and loneliness bewildered him, he could not realise that his
chance of speech had escaped him, and that Barbara's entreaty must
remain unanswered. Her timid self-reproach had stabbed him to the heart.
That the poor little girl should have trembled and been silent, lest he
should speak harshly, and then that she should blame herself so bitterly
for her cowardice--it was a sudden revelation to Reynold of the ugliness
of those black moods of his. One might have pictured the evil power
broken by the shock of this discovery and leaving shame-stricken
patience in its place, or, at least, one might have imagined strenuous
resolutions for the days to come. But Reynold's very tenderness was
mixed with wrath; he cursed the something in himself, yet not himself,
which had frightened Barbara, he could not feel that _he_ was
answerable. That she, of all the world, should judge him so, filled his
soul with a burning sense of wrong.
"How _could_ you think it?" he pleaded with her in his thoughts, "my
dear, how _could_ you think it?" And yet he did not blame her. Ah God!
what a bitter, miserable wretch he had been his whole life through! Why
had no woman ever taught him how to be gentle and good? He blamed
neither Barbara nor himself, but a cruel fate.
It was not till late, when he had collected his things, and made all
ready for his departure in the morning, that he remembered that he would
not see her again, that he absolutely could not so much as speak a word
to make amends. He must cross the threshold of the old house as early as
he possibly could, his angry pride would not allow him a moment's delay,
and what chance was there that she would be up and dressed by then? It
was maddening to think of the long slow hours which they would pass
under the same roof, each hour gliding away with its many minutes. And
in one minute he could say so much, if but one minute were granted him!
"But it won't be," he said sullenly, as he lay down till the dawn should
come, "it isn't likely." And he ground his teeth together at the
remembrance of the many minutes spent in wrangling with Mr. Hayes, while
Barbara waited alone.
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Transcriber's note continued:
In general every effort has been made to replicate the original text as
faithfully as possible, including some instances of no longer standard
spelling. However, obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.
Hyphenation has been standardized. The following changes were made to
repair apparently typographical errors (in both cases, the letter 't'
was missing although a space had been left for it):
p. 131 "My grandfather is an importan man"
'importan ' changed to 'important'
p. 274 "he could not realise tha his"
'tha ' changed to 'that'