A New Event.
“Have you--forgotten me--then?”
“Forgotten you!” cried Edgar.
Heaven help him!--he did not advance nor take her hands, which she held
out, kept back by his honour and promise--till he saw that her eyes were
full of tears, that her lips were quivering, unable to articulate
anything more, and that her figure swayed slightly, as if tottering.
Then all that was superficial went to the winds. He took her back
through the half-lighted passage, supporting her tenderly, to Mr.
Tottenham’s room. The door closed behind them, and Gussy turned to him
with swimming eyes--eyes running over with tears and wistful happiness.
She could not speak. She let him hold her, and looked up at him, all her
heart in her face. Poor Edgar was seized upon at the same moment, all
unprepared as he was, by that sudden gush of long-restrained feeling
which carries all before it. “Is this how it is to be?” he said, no
louder than a whisper, holding her fast and close, grasping her slender
arm, as if she might still flee from him, or revolt from his touch. But
Gussy had no mind to escape. Either she had nothing to say, or she was
still too much shaken to attempt to say it. She let her head drop like a
flower overcharged, and leaned on him and fell a-sobbing--fell on his
neck, as the Bible says, though Gussy’s little figure fell short of
that, and she only leaned as high as she could reach, resting there like
a child. If ever a man came at a step out of purgatory, or worse, into
Paradise, it was this man. Utterly alone half an hour ago, now companied
so as all the world could not add to him. He did not try to stop her
sobbing, but bent his head down upon hers, and I think for one moment
let his own heart expand into something which was like a sob too--an
inarticulate utterance of all this sudden rapture, unexpected, unlooked
for, impossible as it was.
I do not know which was the first to come to themselves. It must have
been Gussy, whose sobs had relieved her soul. She stirred within his
arm, and lifted her head, and tried to withdraw from him.
“Not yet, not yet,” said Edgar. “Think how long I have wanted you, how
long I have yearned for you; and that I have no right to you even now.”
“Right!” said Gussy, softly--“you have the only right--no one can have
any right but you.”
“Is it so?--is it so? Say it again,” said Edgar. “Say that I am not a
selfish hound, beguiling you; but that you will have it so. Say you will
have it so! What I will is not the question--it is your will that is my
law.”
“Do you know what you are saying--or have you turned a little foolish?”
said the Gussy of old, with a laugh which was full of the tears with
which her eyes were still shining and bright; and then she paused, and
looking up at him, blushing, hazarded an inquiry--“Are you in love with
me now?” she said.
“Now; and for how long?--three years--every day and all day long!” cried
Edgar. “It could not do you any harm so far off. But I should not have
dared to think of you so much if I had ever hoped for this.”
“Do not hold me so tight now,” said Gussy. “I shall not run away. Do you
remember the last time--ah! we were not in love with each other then.”
“But loved each other--the difference is not very great,” he said,
looking at her wistfully, making his eyes once more familiar with her
face.
“Ah! there is a great difference,” said Gussy. “We were only, as you
said, fond of each other; I began to feel it when you were gone. Tell me
all that has happened since,” she said, suddenly--“everything! You said
you had been coming to ask me that dreadful morning. We have belonged to
each other ever since; and so much has happened to you. Tell me
everything; I have a right to know.”
“Nothing has happened to me but the best of all things,” said Edgar,
“and the worst. I have broken my word; I promised to your mother never
to put myself in the way; I have disgraced myself, and I don’t care. And
this has happened to me,” he said low in her ear, “my darling! Gussy,
you are sure you know what you are doing? I am poor, ruined, with no
prospects for the moment----”
“Don’t, please,” said Gussy, throwing back her head with the old pretty
movement. “I suppose you don’t mean to be idle and lazy, and think me a
burden; and I can make myself very useful, in a great many ways. Why
should I have to think what I am doing more than I ought to have done
three years ago, when you came to Thornleigh that morning? I had done my
thinking then.”
“And, please God, you shall not repent of it!” cried the happy young
man--“you shall not repent it, if I can help it. But your mother will
not think so, darling; she will upbraid me with keeping you back--from
better things.”
“That will be to insult me!” cried Gussy, flaming with hot, beautiful
anger and shame. “Edgar, do you think I should have walked into your
arms like this, not waiting to be asked, if I had not thought all this
time that we have been as good as married these three years? Oh! what am
I saying?” cried poor Gussy, overwhelmed with sudden confusion. It had
seemed so natural, so matter-of-fact a statement to her--until she had
said the words, and read a new significance in the glow of delight which
flashed up in his eyes.
Is it necessary to follow this couple further into the foolishness of
their mutual talk?--it reads badly on paper, and in cold blood. They had
forgotten what the hour was, and most other things, when Mr. Tottenham,
very weary, but satisfied, came suddenly into the room, with his head
full of the Entertainment. His eyes were more worn than ever, but the
lines of care under them had melted away, and a fatigued, half-imbecile
smile of pleasure was hanging about his face. He was too much worn out
to judge anyone--to be hard upon anyone that night. Fatigue and relief
of mind had affected him like a genial, gentle intoxication of the
spirit. He stopped short, startled, and perhaps shocked for the moment,
when Edgar, and that white little figure beside him, rose hastily from
the chairs, which had been so very near each other. I am afraid that,
for the first moment, Mr. Tottenham felt a chill of dread that it was
one of his own young ladies from the establishment. He did not speak,
and they did not speak for some moments. Then, with an attempt at
severity, Mr. Tottenham said,
“Gussy, is it possible? How should you have come here?”
“Oh! uncle, forgive us!” said Gussy, taking Edgar’s arm, and clinging to
it, “and speak to mamma for us. I accepted him three years ago, Uncle
Tom. He is the same man--or, rather, a far nicer man,” and here she gave
a closer clasp to his arm, and dropped her voice for the moment, “only
poor. Only poor!--does that make all the difference? Can you tell me any
reason, Uncle Tottenham, why I should give him up, now he has come
back?”
“My dear,” said Mr. Tottenham, alarmed yet conciliatory, “your
mother--no, I don’t pretend I see it--your mother, Gussy, must be the
best judge. Earnshaw, my dear fellow, was it not understood between us?
I don’t blame you. I don’t say I wouldn’t have done the same; but was it
not agreed between us? You should have given me fair warning, and she
should never have come here.”
“I gave Lady Mary fair warning,” said Edgar, who felt himself ready at
this moment to confront the whole world. “I promised to deny myself; but
no power in the world should make me deny Gussy anything she pleased;
and this is what she pleases, it appears,” he said, looking down upon
her with glowing eyes. “A poor thing, sir, but her own--and she chooses
it. I can give up my own will, but Gussy shall have her will, if I can
get it for her. I gave Lady Mary fair warning; and then we met
unawares.”
“And it was all my doing, please, uncle,” said Gussy, with a little
curtsey. She was trembling with happiness, with agitation, with the
mingled excitement and calm of great emotion; but still she could not
shut out from herself the humour of the situation--“it was all my doing,
please.”
“Ah! I see how it is,” said Mr. Tottenham. “You have been carried off,
Earnshaw, and made a prey of against your will. Don’t ask me for my
opinion, yes or no. Take what good you can of to-night, you will have a
pleasant waking up, I promise you, to-morrow morning. The question is,
in the meantime, how are you to get home? Every soul is gone, and my
little brougham is waiting, with places for two only, at the door. Send
that fellow away, and I’ll take you home to your mother.”
But poor Gussy had very little heart to send her recovered lover away.
She clung to his arm, with a face like an April day, between smiles and
tears.
“He says quite true. We shall have a dreadful morning,” she said,
disconsolately. “When can you come, Edgar? I will say nothing till you
come.”
As Gussy spoke there came suddenly back upon Edgar a reflection of all
he had to do. Life had indeed come back to him all at once, her hands
full of thorns and roses piled together. He fixed the time of his visit
to Lady Augusta next morning, as he put Gussy into Mr. Tottenham’s
brougham, and setting off himself at a great pace, arrived at Berkeley
Square as soon as they did, and attended her to the well-known door.
Gussy turned round on the threshold of the house where he had been once
so joyfully received, but where his appearance now, he knew, would be
regarded with horror and consternation, and waved her hand to him as he
went away. But having done so, I am afraid her courage failed, and she
stole away rapidly upstairs, and took refuge in her own room, and even
put herself within the citadel of her bed.
“I came home with Uncle Tottenham in his brougham,” she said to Ada,
who, half-alarmed, paid her a furtive visit, “and I am so tired and
sleepy!”
Poor Gussy, she was safe for that night, but when morning came what was
to become of her? So far from being sleepy, I do not believe that,
between the excitement, the joy, and the terror, she closed her eyes
that whole night.
Mr. Tottenham, too, got out of the brougham at Lady Augusta’s door; his
own house was on the other side of the Square. He sent the carriage
away, and took Edgar’s arm, and marched him solemnly along the damp
pavement.
“Earnshaw, my dear fellow,” he said, in the deepest of sepulchral tones,
“I am afraid you have been very imprudent. You will have a _mauvais
quart d’heure_ to-morrow.”
“I know it,” said Edgar, himself feeling somewhat alarmed, in the midst
of his happiness.
“I am afraid--you ought not to have let her carry you off your feet in
this way; you ought to have been wise for her and yourself too; you
ought to have avoided any explanation. Mind, I don’t say that my
feelings go with that sort of thing; but in common prudence--in justice
to her----”
“Justice to her!” cried Edgar. “If she has been faithful for three
years, do you think she is likely to change now? All that time not a
word has passed between us; but you told me yourself she would not hear
of--anything; that she spoke of retiring from the world. Would that be
wiser or more prudent? Look here, nobody in the world has been so kind
to me as you. I want you to understand me. A man may sacrifice his own
happiness, but has he any right to sacrifice the woman he loves? It
sounds vain, does it not?--but if she chooses to think this her
happiness, am I to contradict her? I will do all that becomes a man,”
cried Edgar, unconsciously adopting, in his excitement, the well-known
words, “but do you mean to say it is a man’s duty to crush, and balk,
and stand out against the woman he loves?”
“You are getting excited,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Speak lower, for
heaven’s sake! Earnshaw; don’t let poor Mary hear of it to-night.”
There was something in the tone in which he said _poor_ Mary, with a
profound comic pathos, as if his wife would be the chief sufferer, which
almost overcame Edgar’s gravity. Poor Mr. Tottenham was weak with his
own sufferings, and with the blessed sense that he had got over them for
the moment.
“What a help you were to me this afternoon,” he said, “though I daresay
your mind was full of other things. Nothing would have settled into
place, and we should have had a failure instead of a great success but
for you. You think it was a great success? Everybody said so. And your
poor lady, Earnshaw--your--friend--what of her? Is it as bad as you
feared?”
“It is as bad as it is possible to be,” said Edgar, suddenly sobered. “I
must ask further indulgence from you, I fear, to see a very bad business
to an end.”
“You mean, a few days’ freedom? Yes, certainly; perhaps it might be as
well in every way. And money--are you sure you have money? Perhaps it is
just as well you did not come to the Square, though they were ready for
you. Do you come with me to-night?”
“I am at my old rooms,” said Edgar. “Now that the Entertainment is over,
I shall not return till my business is done--or not then, if you think
it best.”
“Nothing of the sort!” cried his friend--“only till it is broken to poor
Mary,” he added, once more lachrymose. “But, Earnshaw, poor fellow, I
feel for you. You’ll let me know what Augusta says?”
And Mr. Tottenham opened his door with his latch-key, and crept upstairs
like a criminal. He was terrified for his wife, to whom he felt this bad
news must be broken with all the precaution possible; and though he
could not prevent his own thoughts from straying into a weak-minded
sympathy with the lovers, he did not feel at all sure that she would
share his sentiments.
“Mary, at heart, is a dreadful little aristocrat,” he said to himself,
as he lingered in his dressing-room to avoid her questions; not knowing
that Lady Mary’s was the rash hand which had set this train of
inflammables first alight.
Next morning--ah! next morning, there was the rub!--Edgar would have to
face Lady Augusta, and Gussy her mother, and Mr. Tottenham, who felt
himself by this time an accomplice, his justly indignant wife; besides
that the latter unfortunate gentleman had also to go to the shop, and
face the resignations offered to himself, and deadly feuds raised
amongst his “assistants,” by the preliminaries of last night. In the
meantime, all the culprits tried hard not to think of the terrible
moment that awaited them, and I think the lovers succeeded. Lovers have
the best of it in such emergencies; the enchanted ground of recollection
and imagination to which they can return being more utterly severed from
the common world than any other refuge.
The members of the party who remained longest up were Lady Augusta and
Ada, who sat over the fire in the mother’s bed-room, and discussed
everything with a generally satisfied and cheerful tone in their
communings.
“Gussy came home with Uncle Tottenham in his brougham,” said Ada. “She
has gone to bed. She was out in her district a long time this morning,
and I think she is very tired to-night.”
“Oh, her district!” cried Lady Augusta. “I like girls to think of the
poor, my dear--you know I do--I never oppose anything in reason; but why
Gussy should work like a slave, spoiling her hands and complexion, and
exposing herself in all weathers for the sake of her district! And it is
not as if she had no opportunities. I wish _you_ would speak to her,
Ada. She _ought_ to marry, if it were only for the sake of the boys; and
why she is so obstinate, I cannot conceive.”
“Mamma, don’t say so--you know well enough why,” said Ada quietly. “I
don’t say you should give in to her; but at least you know.”
“Well, I must say I think my daughters have been hard upon me,” said
Lady Augusta, with a sigh--“even you, my darling--though I can’t find it
in my heart to blame you. But, to change the subject, did you notice,
Ada, how well Harry was looking? Dear fellow! he has got over his little
troubles with your father. Tottenham’s has done him good; he always got
on well with Mary and your odd, good uncle. Harry is so good-hearted and
so simple-minded, he can get on with anybody; and I quite feel that I
had a good inspiration,” said Lady Augusta, with a significant nod of
her head, “when I sent him there. I am sure it has been for everybody’s
good.”
“In what way, mamma?” said Ada, who was not at all so confident in
Harry’s powers.
“Well, dear, he has been on the spot,” said Lady Augusta; “he has
exercised an excellent influence. When poor Edgar, poor dear fellow,
came up to me to-night, I could not think what to do for the best, for I
expected Gussy to appear any moment; and even Mary and Beatrice, had
they seen him, would have made an unnecessary fuss. But he took the hint
at my first glance. I can only believe it was dear Harry’s doing,
showing him the utter hopelessness--Poor fellow!” said Lady Augusta,
putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh! my dear, how inscrutable are
the ways of Providence! Had things been ordered otherwise, what a
comfort he might have been to us--what a help!”
“When you like him so well yourself, mamma,” said gentle Ada, “you
should understand poor Gussy’s feelings, who was always encouraged to
think of him--till the change came.”
“That is just what I say, dear,” said Lady Augusta; “if things had been
ordered otherwise! We can’t change the arrangements of Providence,
however much we may regret them. But at least it is a great comfort
about dear Harry. How well he was looking!--and how kind and
affectionate! I almost felt as if he were a boy again, just come from
school, and so glad to see his people. It was by far the greatest
pleasure I had to-night.”
And so this unsuspecting woman went to bed. She had a good night, for
she was not afraid of the morrow, dismal as were the tidings it was
fated to bring to her maternal ear.