HOW JUDITH'S STAGE MANIA HAD COOLED. TROUT BEND, AND A TICKLISH
INTERVIEW. HALF-A-MILE OFF TEA. A DISCUSSION ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
The story has scarcely room for anything that was said or done at Royd
until two days after the reunion that closed the last chapter. All it
wants may be told in a few words. Challis was sulky all the rest of the
first evening, and would not admit it to himself. Judith was dignified,
glittering, and universal; talked to everybody, whereas Challis wanted
her to talk to him. She was judicious, no doubt--woman of the world,
and so on--but was it necessary to carry it so far? Surely Marianne in
the background safeguarded the situation?
The party made itself at home rapidly, having begun at an advantage
from previous experience. On the third day after its arrival any
two members of it were ripe for arranging their day in each other's
pockets, and treating their hosts as a sort of lay inn-keepers of
benevolent dispositions, but quite negligible. Challis had taken the
latter at their word when they said he was to stop in his room and
write all day if he liked. He had brought his MS. of "Estrild" with
him, and had made up his mind to complete it. The play would have its
value, even if the Estrild he had set his heart on, and had written the
part for, decided on not attempting it.
For a doubt had crept into the scheme as it stood when Challis paid
that visit to the sprained-ankle patient in Grosvenor Square. Something
had influenced Judith since then; probably some passage of arms with
her family. At least, so Challis surmised. But she had told him next
to nothing, so far. Her passing lameness had occasioned a break in
tentative readings of the play, in which others than herself had taken
part; and during this interruption it had been evident that the young
lady's ambition to fly in the face of Society and family tradition had
undergone a change. But the invitation to Royd at Whitsuntide remained
in black and white, and could not be gainsaid.
Therefore, Challis had found himself on that well-remembered lawn, as
recorded in our last chapter, at the time appointed, with no misgiving
on him at the moment as to the cordiality of his welcome. Nothing had
happened to create one. But as the hours grew to a day, and then to
days, he began to be conscious somehow that his hosts had towards him a
feeling they were too well-bred to show; and not only that, but that an
indefinable discomfort had arisen between himself and Judith. Something
had flawed the relation that each called friendship, and refrained from
speculating about any other designation for. He had recognized this
consciousness for the first time at that moment beside the carriage.
And the reason he so readily accepted her ladyship's permission to
indulge his inspirations _ad libitum_ in his own room was that he felt
it was a sort of release to him to do so. Was it a release for them
also?--for Judith?
If this visit was to be no more than the fulfilment of an invitation
to which his hosts stood pledged, let him work it out like a term of
penal servitude, and go his ways at the end of it. But he chafed at the
impossibility of challenging the position in any way. How in the name
of common-sense could he say to the Baronet or her ladyship, "I see
through your persistent amiability of manner that your feelings towards
this eminent author are not the same to a nicety as they were six
months since, and I should like to review the situation with you, with
a view to the removal of misunderstandings"?
Still less was it possible to say to Judith, "You know that an
indescribable change of manner has come over you in your demeanour
towards your humble admirer, and he would give worlds to know the
cause of it. But, in consideration of a certain effect you have upon
him, of a certain exaltation he experiences in your presence, a
certain depression at your absence, a very certain exasperation at any
suspicion of a slight to him in favour of another male, he much doubts
his powers of self-command through an explanatory interview. So he
cannot ask questions. But if you could, with your womanly tact, frame
some communication that would let him know what-the-anything it is all
about, he would feel very grateful."
The position was a delicate one, with that necessity in the background
for locking his heart up tight, for the sake of Polly Anne, of
whom--odd though it may seem--he never lost sight. Only he never
actually formulated an admission of its delicacy. The nearest approach
to it was when a sudden image of Mr. John Eldridge flashed across his
mental bioscope, shut one of its eyes, and said, "Rather ticklish,
Master Titus--eh?"
Very few people will understand the odd freaks of Challis's mind, but
it is useless to write this story and omit them.
There was only one thing he was absolutely clear about. Nothing
the word _dishonourable_ would apply to was admissible into any
hypothetical drama his mind would construct, to cut the--rather
hypothetical, please!--Gordian knot of his relation to Judith.
He pictured himself to himself as potentially Don Juan, Captain
Macheath, Silenus, or the late Prince Regent, as far as his normal
ideas of morality went; but _he_ was one thing, mind you, and Judith
was another! She, being what she was, made any speculations in that
department irrelevant. They did not arise from any question before the
House. Besides--her position! Think of it!
He never contrasted his estimation of Judith now with his rough
valuation of her at first sight. Just a handsome woman--the fine
contents of an expensive, well-cut dress--a fit mate for fifty thousand
a year, deer-forests in Scotland, houses in Park Lane, opera-boxes,
and newspaper paragraphs! If he had done so, might he not have
suspected, in the exaggeration of thought that placed her above and
beyond suspicion, an element of danger more formidable to him than the
imaginary laxity he was so ready to credit himself with. He might at
least have seen the moral imbecility of what was virtually an appeal
to Judith's self-respect and integrity to protect him from his own
weakness. Perhaps he had subcutaneous misgivings of the correctness of
his insight into her character when he decided that it would never do
to tempt confidences of a personal nature.
If a friendship between a man and a woman is to remain contented with
itself, seeking neither promotion nor dissolution, there must not be
present in it, on the part of either, any longing to gain power over
the other. Our own belief is that if Miss Arkroyd's self-love had not
felt hurt at what seemed to her a too ready acceptance by Challis of
the position in which a slight change in her manner had placed him, he
might have paid his visit to Royd, gone back home, and maybe pretended
to himself that the still waters of his inner soul had never been
ruffled by Judith or any other fashionable enchantress. But a woman's
pleasure in the power of her beauty is like that of dram-drinking.
She may "swear off," as Rip Van Winkle did, a thousand times--but
she will go back and do it again, or die for it. How can she help
it, when a glance, a movement, a slight inexplicable intonation of
her voice, is enough to bring back to bondage the idiot that thinks
he has broken free? Why should she try to help it, from the point of
view of self-interest, when she believes--as Judith did, without
misgiving--that she can throw her end of the chain away at any moment,
and wash her hands of that booby, and go on to another?
Judith believed her position was security itself, and was a little
piqued at the readiness with which Challis had jumped at the permission
to withdraw into his own sanctum. Whatever behaviour of her own had
influenced this readiness, she resented it as an interruption to an
assertion of power she was beginning to feel herself entitled to. Like
the dram-drinker, she could not do without it. So, after three days of
cordial civility, too dexterous to indite as a change of front, and
equally dexterous postponement of Estrild for some future discussion,
the young lady, without explanation, resumed the half-familiar,
half-patronizing tone Challis had become accustomed to in Grosvenor
Square.
Some three days later it happened that this household decided on a
sort of picnic known to it as "half-a-mile-off tea." A houseful of
able-bodied servants made this festivity, which was exactly what its
name implies, easily possible. All the most critical tea-drinker
could want had gone before, and the house-party, or most of it, was
straggling across the parkland to Fern Hollow, the place appointed.
Challis and Judith were accidentally last.
A chance left him the only hearer of a voice dropped languidly for the
benefit of his ears alone. "Let these noisy people go on in front,
Scroop," said its owner to him; and then, in reply to his amused look
at hearing himself so addressed, "I knew I should do it in the end,
because of the newspaper reviews. Do you mind my calling you Scroop now
and then, by accident?"
"Nothing can please me better," said he. "Biggest compliment you can
pay me!" It started the soul-brush afresh, and he had to settle whether
it was to be submission or protest. He fancied he could manage the
latter even though he acknowledged the voice, that continued, "Suppose
we go by Trout Bend! It's nonsense hurrying. The tea can wait. Or
we can have fresh made." This was concession, both in the proposed
_tête-à-tête_, and something in the familiarity of treatment, which
seemed to savour more of the Hermitage than Grosvenor Square. But it
was only the simple vocabulary common to all tea-worlds; they are above
class distinctions.
"Suppose we do," said Challis. And they did.
Trout Bend is a small incident in Geography. But it has a quality in
common with--for instance--the Arctic Circle. It is always the same.
Its lower segment has the same merry ripple over the same stones, and
its upper one spreads to the same pools, that foster here and there
each year the very selfsame bulrushes, to all appearance. And in the
middle of the best one--the one, that is, that lends itself best to
self-deception on the part of the fisherman--the fish that leaped last
year, when you were looking at it and wondering how deep it was in
the middle, does it again, and doesn't bore you. Because if he did,
you wouldn't watch for him a third time. Only then he _doesn't_ do it
again, and that does bore you. And where the pools end and the ripples
begin are the same infatuated stepping-stones, that think they can bear
your weight, and can't. And then you become spell-bound on them as they
wobble, and are rescued by extended walking-sticks from either side,
and get across quite dry, or only a very little water in one shoe.
It was all the same this time, certainly, as when Challis was here in
the autumn; all but a black swimming-bird, who had nodded a great deal,
and surprised him, but not his companion--it was Athelstan Taylor--by
diving suddenly and never coming up. The Rector had explained the ways
of water hens, and that this slyboots was still under some floating
rubbish, with her nose out for breath. Challis remembered wondering
whether the whole of this class of birds was feminine, and watercocks
only existed in connection with the Company. There was none this
time--neither cock nor hen--and the open pastureland this side the
beech-covert was all ablaze with buttercups in the high grass. For the
fallow-deer found their pasture farther from the house, and never a
little tail wagged on a dappled back in sight of Challis and Judith as
they crossed the bridge--one slice of an elm-tree, with the outline on
it of its trunk of a hundred years ago.
"I suppose you know the legend of this bridge and the convict," said
the lady, turning to the gentleman.
"What legend of this bridge and what convict?" His inattention to his
words was shown in the way he echoed them--sounds without meaning.
"You must have heard it. When he was a boy--the convict--he was sent
with a small package containing a ring to a lady at Tallack's Gate--one
of the Cazenoves, I think it was--and on the way he thought it would be
good fun to have a look inside his parcel. So he got the ring out, and,
standing near this bridge, dropped it. He hunted for it in vain, and
then, in terror of his mishap, ran away. I never quite understood it,
but I suppose in those days they convicted people very easily...."
"Much more than now! Was this chap convicted?"
"Yes--and sent to Botany Bay. Twenty years after, having served his
time, he came back to England, married, and lived to be an old man, but
always under a ban. One day he came here, to this spot, with a grown-up
daughter to whom he then told the whole tale for the first time. When
he finished he said to her: 'I was standing just where you are when I
dropped it.' She said, 'Here on the ground, or here on the bridge,'
and touched the plank with her parasol. The point of it slipped into a
knothole in the wood, and when she drew it out, something glittered on
it. It was the ring."
Challis was in the habit of inventing horrors for serials, and had
had some success. But it chanced that he had never before heard this
story--which, by the way, is told in connection with more than one
locality in England--and he envied the master-hand that had fashioned
it. He told in exchange the tale of the man who brought what he thought
was his wife out of a house on fire, too black for recognition by his
scorched and dazzled eyesight, and sat with his hand in hers till
a strange voice came from the lips, and asked if the lady had been
got out, naming his wife. "But your story is more probable," he in
conclusion. "A man would know...."
"Know his own wife's hand? Of course he would! But are we under any
obligation to sup full of horrors on a day like this?" Her voice was
that of indifference, dismissing an unpleasant topic. Challis slightly
resented its placidity, which looked as if the horrors had been easily
digested, at least. It seemed to him to do injustice to a sweetness of
disposition he chose to consider inseparable from the beautiful eyelids
at ease under a slight protest of raised brows--the beautiful lips that
waited unclosed for an answer to their question.
"What do you prefer me to talk about?" said he. "The crops? The
weather?"
"Nonsense, Scroop!" She paused in her walk, so that he had either to
look round at her or show no wish to know why. "I suppose you must
have guessed," she said, without logical continuity. A request for
explanation would have been warranted.
But Challis was in no mind for make-believe. He took her meaning,
which he knew quite well, for granted. "I have had my suspicions,"
said he. "But I could not catechize, as you seemed so silent. Tell me
now!... Which is it?--mother--father?--sister?... Is it Sibyl?--or the
Bart?--or the _madre_?" The way in which these familiar designations
were accepted as a matter of course showed how their relations of last
September had defined and strengthened themselves.
"All three. At least--I ought to be fair--my father least of all! Indeed
I believe that if an instance could be found of any lady of William the
Conqueror's taking part in a Court performance, he would concede the
point altogether. Has he spoken to you about it?... Well!--of course he
wouldn't do that. But has he 'approached the subject'? Of course, that
is what he would do--'approach the subject.'"
"No--no one has said a word about it. But I guessed, soon after I came
down, that the play was doomed. I did not at first suppose it was
your family, as a matter of course. I thought you might have settled
to throw it up on your own account." She made a sort of impatient
disclaimer--a head-shake that flung that possibility aside, and
forgot it. But she said nothing, and he continued: "There was a row,
I suppose? Don't tell me more about it than you like. Don't tell me
anything if you...."
"I prefer to tell you. Who is there that I can talk to about it if
not to you?" This was the soul-brush again; and again Challis's inner
consciousness gasped at the choice he had to make between giving way
to a luxury, a dangerous intoxication, and attempting to freeze the
conversation down to a safe temperature.
Duty dictated a struggle for the latter. He affected a manner of
equable unconcern fairly well. "No one," said he, "unless you were
to make a confidante of...." He stopped short of saying "Marianne,"
conscious of difficulties ahead. But he could shelve the side-issue,
and fall back on the previous question with a sense of getting out of
shoal water. "There _was_ a row, then ... well--a warm discussion,
suppose we say? It's more refined, certainly. What form did it take?"
"Then we mustn't go so quick," said Judith. "Or I shan't have time."
She was inconsecutive; but it was clear, when she paused in her walk
through the long grass, that it was for an anchorage. "Suppose we sit
down a little here," she said. "Unless you mind?" Challis didn't.
"Here" was an oak trunk that must have said to itself when it was a
sapling--four hundred years ago, maybe--"I will see to it, when I am
grown up, that my roots shall live above ground, and be thick with
moss; and one shall be horizontal and a seat for a king, who shall lean
against me contented. But he shall go, that lovers may come; and they
shall make up _my_ contentment, and I shall hear their voices in the
twilight." Challis half made this little legend as he took his place by
Miss Arkroyd on that tree-trunk. But he fought shy of the sequel their
presence suggested--what word ought his fancy to supply as the tree's
imaginary speech about themselves? He shrank from it, and he knew the
reason why. It was because, as his own disordered passion grew, as he
found himself more and more at loggerheads with his lot, he became more
and more alive to the danger of relying on this woman _her_self as his
protection against _him_self. How if _she_ gave way, too?
As far as any conscious loss of self-control at that moment went, on
the part of Miss Judith Arkroyd, Challis need not have fretted. Never
was a young woman more perfectly cool and collected, more equal to any
occasion that might arise in connection with a love of power that she
just felt this man was a satisfactory lay-figure for. That best defines
all the feeling she had on his account--so far.
She resumed the conversation where the question of anchorage had
interrupted her. "I don't think we have rows in our family, in the
ordinary sense of the word. That is, if I understand it rightly....
No!--I know what you are going to say. It has nothing to do with that
repose that marks the caste of Vere de Vere. It is entirely individual
and local. We have our quarrels, of course, but they take the form of
distant civility, entirely due, as I understand, to our self-respect.
There is nothing we Arkroyds respect more than ourselves, not even the
Bill of Rights or the Protestant Succession...."
Challis interrupted: "But the distant civility, this time?..."
"Followed naturally on my telling Sibyl that the first act of Estrild
was ready for rehearsal. She merely said she supposed I must go my own
way. But that day after lunch she allowed me to leave the apartment
first. It had been a cold lunch, as far as emotions went; and I knew,
when Sibyl stood courteously on one side to let me pass, what was
coming. So I wasn't the least surprised to find a letter from my mother
on the dressing-table next morning."
"A letter from your mother!" Challis's tone was puzzled, awaiting
enlightenment. Judith was not to be hurried, though. For one thing,
she was engaged with a beetle, who wanted either to go home or to get
farther away from home. She had been heading off his successive rushes
in different directions with an ungloved hand, which he always refused
to crawl upon. The perseverance she gave to this seemed not altogether
without its charm to her companion.
"He seems to be praying for those that despitefully use him," she said,
referring to the action of his antennæ. Then, without discontinuing her
amusement, she went back to the conversation. "Yes--a letter, with 'My
dearest daughter' at the beginning, and 'Your affectionate mother'
at the end. Do you not believe me? It's quite true--all my family do
it! In fact, it was a long time before I found out that other families
didn't do it, too. I can tell you this letter all through."
Then in a semi-humorous, indifferent way she gave alternately its
actual wording and the upshot of some of its passages. Lady Arkroyd
hoped she had been misinformed about her daughter's intentions. She was
aware that she had no longer any legal control over her, and she made
no appeal to anything but her good feeling. She would not comment on
the character of the associates with whom her daughter would probably
be brought in contact. She would limit what she had to say entirely to
the underlined deep grief that Sir M. and herself would experience if
their child persisted in a course which could only lead to degradation
and disgrace. She then forgot her promise to say nothing against
the profession, and gave a brief sketch of it founded on Hogarth's
"Strolling Players." After which she wound up with an exhortation
to her daughter not to break her father's underlined heart in his
underlined old age. "And so on," said Judith, in placid conclusion,
still continuing her persecution of the beetle. Challis's infatuation
believed that all this was _parti pris_--mere bravado; and that his
insight saw truly a hinterland of devoted affection to her parents, and
consideration for the comfort of beetles. Such is the power of beauty!
"And that letter determined you to give up the drama?"
"Oh no!--it was only the beginning of it. I wrote in reply, saying I
was sorry to give pain to such an exemplary parent as my papa--that was
not the wording, only the sense--but that I had made up my mind, and
was not prepared to disappoint you in order to keep up the traditions
of a rather dreary respectability. I said you had written this part
for me, and I had promised to play it, and that ended the matter. My
ancestors had always kept their promises, and I should keep mine. I
laid a good deal of stress on Sibyl." At this point the beetle got away
cleverly, threatening a break in the conversation. This was not what
Challis wanted.
"I don't understand," said he. "Why 'stress on Sibyl'?"
"I mean on Sibyl's being allowed to indulge all her fancies, at any
cost; and to take up trade, too--a thing that our ancestors would not
have tolerated for a moment. Why is the Great Idea to be capitalized
with thousands?..."
"And Shakespeare's trade discountenanced? I see, and agree in the main.
I suppose they said it wasn't a trade--the Great Idea?"
"They did. Sibyl said it was Guilds and Crafts, and Mediæval, and
quite another thing. Perhaps it is; I don't know. But I'm sure '_Sibyl
Arkroyd, Limited_' is neither Mediæval nor Guilds, and that's what they
propose to call it."
"It sounds like six three-farthings, and pay at the desk. They can
hardly be in earnest."
"Well, I don't know! People of--of condition are getting to take such
curious views of things. It's nothing nowadays for a Countess to
promise punctual attention to orders. Was it you told me there was a
Curate who preached a Sermon on the New Atheism in its relation to
Socialism?... No?--oh, then, it was somebody else!"
Challis suspected that Judith was talking in this way to defer telling
him the upshot of the family discussion. He said nothing, and the
flight of a heron filled out a lapse into silence which followed. And
then Judith, who had risen from the tree-root to watch the vanishing
bird, turned to Challis, and resumed:
"Shall we go on?... Oh, what was I talking about? Sibyl and the Great
Idea. Well!--you see, the thing worked out like this: Papa had been
wavering a good deal about financing the Great Idea, and Sir Spender
Inglis had become very restive indeed, and was ready to jump at any
excuse for backing out of his undertaking. He saw his opportunity, and
pointed out--like Mr. Brownrigg--that my logic was irresistible, and
that it was impossible to forbid my appearing on the boards if Sibyl
was to be allowed to go behind the counter. A recent slump in Kaffirs
had fostered economical impulses, I suppose. Anyhow, if I surrender the
stage conditionally, my parent will keep his money in his pocket."
"Won't Sibyl Limited get it somewhere else?"
"She thinks she will, and my brother thinks so, no doubt. But will
they? Perhaps you know about these things. I don't."
"I know little or nothing," said Challis. "But I understand that
the chief point is settled. You won't play Estrild." There was no
affectation of unconcern in his manner now.
The two walked on together along the river-brink of Trout Bend in
silence; until, leaving the river, a path, winding through scattered
gorse and fern, brought them in sight of the picnic party in the shade
of a great beech, the vanguard of the deep woods beyond. Then Judith
stopped and said: "I suppose you are angry with me?"
To which Challis replied, with vexation in his voice: "I could have
forgiven you more than that." Said as a politeness this speech would
have meant, "That is a mighty small matter to forgive you for." Said
with a gasp, or something like it, it meant, to Judith's ears, that she
had been winding that skein--this man's life, you see!--too quickly
round her finger. He might become embarrassing.
"You will find another Estrild," she said. An attempt at a laugh
failed, and its failure was worse than its omission would have been.
"I shall not try," said he. And then his evil genius saw his chance,
and made Alfred Challis conceive that he could, for the release of his
soul, make a false fetch of what he would have liked to say, in terms
of a parallel line of thought. "I care little or nothing for the play
for its own sake. My interest was in your presentation of the leading
part." The words were safe, so far as they went--might have been spoken
to a male actor who had taken another engagement. But he could not
leave it there. That Evil Genius must needs make him go on speaking,
with more and more betrayal of the great share she whom he addressed
had personally in his visible chagrin. Visible in the restless movement
of his hand about his face. And audible in the way he crushed his
words out, cut them short on their last letter, threw them behind him:
"Listen to me, and believe what I say. I count the play not worth
completion now. With you the life goes out of it. It has become nothing
for me." Then his voice fell, and whatever it had of petulance settled
down to determination. "As for what is written of the play, I tell
you plainly, I shall destroy it. At least, it shall never be acted by
anyone else.... Stop one minute, and let me finish. I have not a word
or a thought of blame for you, Judith Arkroyd. It was a mad idea--the
whole thing! Now I see plainly that it never could have been. Let us
forget it--all!"
The face that he spoke to was none the less beautiful that its owner
was frightened at his vehemence. It continued to be--to this fool of
a man who had not the courage to run away from it, but who was not at
liberty to love it--the face of six months ago that had been growing
on him ever since. He would almost have been thankful--though he
would not confess it to himself--for visible flaws in it; a squint, a
twist, an artificial tooth or two betraying their extraction, or their
predecessors'. A wig would have spelt salvation, as the Press puts it.
As for Judith, she was perfectly alive, by now, to the sub-intents of
meaning woven into Challis's speech, for the easement of a feeling
he could neither tell nor conceal. "Let us forget it all!" was so
overtense in emphasis, if referring only to a disappointment about
a part in a play, that it scarcely left room for an equable society
response. Her tone of voice had to keep at bay any hint of a meaning
that might have betrayed both into a recognition of the precipice they
were so close to. As might have been expected, she lost her presence
of mind, and overdid it. "I can't see any occasion for hysterics about
it," said she. "Of course, I am awfully sorry, and all that sort of
thing. But we live in a world, after all! And I suppose one must
sometimes accommodate one's views to the necessities of Society....
Oh dear!--these people are quite close." She referred to their near
approach to the assembled tea-drinkers, some of whom, at peace with
all mankind under its influence, were scattering abroad through the
neighbouring woods and dingles, discussing religious education and the
fighting power of nations, pigeon-shooting, and Psychical Research.
"We came away from the tree too soon," Challis said. "Can't we turn?..."
"Suppose we do. We can go round the coppice.... What was I saying?
Oh--about Society! Don't you think it is so? One has to reckon with
one's Social Duties. So I'm told."
"We could have thought of Society before," Challis said, rather
sullenly. And then he felt brutal. "No, Judith Arkroyd, I won't say
that. Forgive me! All I mean is--it was all just as true--what you say
about Society--six months ago as it is now. The mistake was then."
A small thing in his speech unnerved Judith--the way he used her
full name. This was the second time he had done so. It seemed to
imply some new aspect of their relation--the throwing aside of some
veil--the recognition of some discarded formality. She was no longer
"Miss Arkroyd"; and "Judith" would have been either patronage or
impertinence. In her case there was no professional name to build a
half-way house to familiarity on.
She dropped her worldly tone as misplaced or useless, as she said:
"I had at one time half thought I would leave you to finish the play
before I cried off. But should I have done you any service? I thought
not, in the end, and I wished to get it over."
He said: "It _is_ over now. No harm is done. I would not have had it
otherwise."
She replied: "Your work will not be lost. You will think better of
it--better about destroying it, I mean. You will finish it, I hope."
"No--I think I shall probably destroy it. I hate having incomplete
manuscripts hanging about. They keep me always in doubt whether to go
on with them or not."
"Then give this one the benefit of the doubt, and finish it. Come!"
She tried to _leggierire_ the tone of the conversation, but it was
a failure--worse than a failure, by the speech that followed on its
provocation.
"I can have no woman play the leading part but you. It was written
for you, and I have kept you in my mind as I wrote. I...." And then
Alfred Challis stopped dead. But his speech, had he let it all out of
his heart, would have been: "I have kept you in my mind, and now you
will not leave it. You have crept into its secret corners, and rise
up between me and my duty at every turn. It is not for nothing that
those eyes of yours have flashed through every syllable of my very
commonplace blank verse, that that voice of yours has filled out my
imagination of a dozen soliloquies complying with the highest canons of
dramatic art, that that hand of yours has caressed undeserving tyrants
and stabbed innocent persons on insufficient provocation!" It would
have been all this, for he would not have been himself if he had kept
back his constant sense of the ridiculous, a term in which his mind
included himself as a prime factor. But he said never a word further
than what we have reported. Only the last particle, "I," as good as
contained all the rest.
Judith understood it all now--all that was needed--and began to
find her breath and the pulsation of her heart--things one usually
forgets--forcing themselves on her attention. Why need the former catch
and trip, and clip or magnify her words? Could not the last keep still?
Plague take human nature! To think that she, Judith Arkroyd, mistress
of herself in her own conceit, should be thus upset; unable to steer
her ship out of the currents of a semi-flirtation--granted, that much,
Sibyl!--with a middle-aged scribbler, who meant to be bald, in a year
or so!
Had Challis dared to look at her at that moment, he would have seen
that she had lost colour, as she stopped beside a hawthorn with some
pretence of gathering the pink may-bloom. No one gathers may without a
knife, and what Judith really did was to get a passing stay, against
a slight dizziness, from a hand rested on a bough in easy reach. The
gathering pretence sanctioned Challis's half-dozen paces in advance.
But he did not look back at her--and it was well for him, perhaps, so
beautiful was she against the may-tree--nor she at him. She knew, and
he knew she knew.
Both were so conscious of their mutual consciousness that they tacitly
agreed to say nothing. But there was a difference of feeling due to
their positions. Challis could not live with a Tantalus cup held to
his lips, and was, moreover, constantly stung with the injustice to
Marianne of admission of--entertainment of--submission to love for
another woman. Poor dear old Marianne, at home there by herself! So he
honestly wished to fly--fly from himself if you like to put it so--from
Judith, at any rate, as her beauty had become insupportable, and to his
home as a haven by preference, just to live this folly down and forget
it.
And as for the young woman--well!--she didn't want to lose Challis
altogether. She could see no reason why a sort of affectionate
friendship should not be cherished between them, not she! It was in the
nature of the animal, and it may be Challis had been entirely at fault
in casting the part of Estrild, whom he had certainly not portrayed as
a person who would be content, like Bunthorne, with a vegetable love.
It may be also that the cold-blooded faculty Sibyl objected to in her
sister was part of this nature. A pleasure in disconcerting married
folks' confidence in each other may belong to systems without a heart.
Only, biters are sometimes bit.
Whether or not what this lady said next, after the two had walked,
a little way apart, exchanging neither look nor speech, until the
tea-party came again in view--for they had made the circuit of the
coppice-wood--whether this had anything to do with her wish to avoid a
complete separation from her literary friend or not, we cannot guess.
It may have, and yet she herself may not have known it.
"Marianne has never answered my letter," she said. "You knew I had
written?"
"No," he replied. "I did not. What had you to say to Marianne?"
"I wrote to beg her earnestly once more to change her mind, and pay us
a visit. We do wish her to come."
"What good would it do?" His question vexed Judith. Why could he not
help her at least to shut her eyes to a change in their relation each
had to know of, yet to seem, in self-defence, to ignore the other's
knowledge of? He evidently had no intention of doing so.
"What good?" she repeated. "What an odd way of putting it, Scroop!
Why--of course--only that it would be pleasant, and that we should be
glad to have her! I always feel that I should like to know her better,
for my own part." Her pique at his want of tact had been a bracing
stimulus, and enabled her to put their talk more on its old footing.
The subdued tone gave place to what was almost like that of those
thoughtless, unembarrassed groups they were drawing so near to. How
free from care everyone else does seem when one meets him out!
Of course, she threw off their late conversation--washed her hands of
it--quicker than he could. But by the time they came within hearing
of the nearest group, and heard the word _denominational_, and knew
thereby that religious education was under discussion, Challis had
shaken off the gloom or distraction that made his answer ring so false:
"You are kindness itself to Marianne. I wish she were more tractable."
Those were his words. They had sounded rather civil than true or
heart-felt. But behind them, inexplicably, was a feeling akin to
gratitude to Judith, who had somehow made it easier to his mind to go
back to Marianne without a shock. Not that it would have been good form
in him to acknowledge it!
In the pre-Shakespearian days of Love, did ever a King Solomon, we
wonder, feel grateful to the last Hareem capture for a courtesy shown
to a disused, tolerated survival of other days?
Challis was intercepted by the group of heated discutients, saturated
with religious education. Judith passed on without looking at him,
merely referring to the abstract truth, "There is tea," and leaving his
teawardness to develope itself at leisure, or die of neglect. The huge
boarhound left a sweet biscuit to meet her, and after exchanging a few
words and a kiss, made believe that he had found her in the wilderness,
and brought her in safety to refreshments, which it was distinctly
understood that he was to share.
The conclave on religious education, like Polly's employers after Sukey
had taken the kettle off again--presumably--had all had tea, and were
horridly indifferent about anyone else going without.
They were confident they might rely on Mr. Challis's impartiality to
distinguish between things that to the casual observer might seem
identical; to assign due weight to considerations which the superficial
observer would overlook; and to sift and examine evidence which the
prejudiced observer would be only too prone to reject.
Mr. Challis, appealed to to give an impromptu casting-vote on a
variety of subjects, felt impartial and flattered. He could only
contribute, he said, an absolute freedom from bias on the question of
religious education. He regretted his total absence of information, the
possession of which, in however small a degree, always adds weight
to the decisions of the most unbiassed judgment. However, it soon
became clear that all that was asked of him was that he should listen
impartially to all three disputants, and hold his tongue _sine die_
while they talked sixteen to the dozen. As he was not in a humour for
talking, he had no objection to this.