George Goring was never so confident in himself as when he was fighting
an apparently losing game; and the refusal of Mildred to come to him, a
refusal based, as he supposed, on nothing but an insurmountable
prejudice against doing what was not respectable, struck him as a stage
in their relations rather than as the end of them. He did not attempt to
see her until the close of the Easter Vacation. People began to couple
their names, but lightly, without serious meaning, for Goring being
popular with women, had a somewhat exaggerated reputation as a flirt.
When a faithful cousin hinted things about him and Mrs. Stewart to Lady
Augusta, she who believed herself to have seen a number of similar
temporary enslavers, put the matter by, really glad that a harmless
nobody should have succeeded to Maud Langham with her dangerous
opinions.
Ian Stewart on his side was barely acquainted with Goring. Sir John
Ireton and the newspapers informed him that George Goring was a flashy,
untrustworthy politician; and the former added that he was a terrible
nuisance to poor Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta. That such a man could
attract Mildred would never have occurred to him.
The fear of Milly's return, which she could not altogether banish, still
at times checked and restrained Mildred. Could she but have secured
Tims's assistance in keeping Milly away, she would have felt more
confident of success. It was hopeless to appeal directly to the
hypnotist, but her daring imagination began to conceive a situation in
which mere good sense and humanity must compel Tims to forbid the return
of Milly to a life made impossible for her. She had not seen Tims for
many weeks, not since the Easter Vacation, which had already receded
into a remote distance; so far had she journeyed since then along the
path of her fate. Nor had she so much as wondered at not seeing Tims.
But now her mind was turned to consider the latent power which that
strange creature held over her life, her dearest interests; since how
might not Milly comport herself with George?
Then it was that she realized how long it had been since Tims had crept
up the stairs to her drawing-room; pausing probably in the middle of
them to wipe away with hasty pocket-handkerchief some real or fancied
trace of her foot on a carpet which she condemned as expensive.
Mildred had written her a note, but it was hardly posted when the door
was flung open and Miss Timson was formally announced by the
parlor-maid. Tony, who was looking at pictures with his mother, rose
from her side, prepared to take a hop, skip, and jump and land with his
arms around Tims's waist. But he stopped short and contemplated her
with round-eyed solemnity. The ginger-colored man's wig had developed
into a frizzy fringe and the rest of the coiffure of the hour. A large
picture hat surmounted it, and her little person was clothed in a vivid
heliotrope dress of the latest mode. It was a handsome dress, a handsome
hat, a handsome wig, yet somehow the effect was jarring. Tony felt
vaguely shocked. "Bless thee! Thou art translated!" he might have cried
with Quince; but being a polite child, he said nothing, only put out a
small hand sadly. Tims, however, unconscious of the slight chill cast by
her appearance, kissed him in a perfunctory, patronizing way, as ladies
do who are afraid of disarranging their veils. She greeted Mildred also
with a parade of mundane elegance, and sat down deliberately on the
sofa, spreading out her heliotrope skirts.
"You can run away just now, little man," she said to Tony. "I want to
talk to your mother."
"How smart you are!" observed Mildred, seeing that comment of some kind
would be welcome. "Been to Sir James Carus's big party at the Museum, I
suppose. You're getting a personage, Tims."
"I dare say I shall look in later, but I shouldn't trouble to dress up
for that, my girl. Clothes would be quite wasted there. But I think one
should always try to look decent, don't you? One's men like it."
Mildred smiled.
"I suppose Ian would notice it if I positively wasn't decent. But, Tims,
dear, does old Carus really criticise your frocks?"
For indeed the distinguished scientist, Miss Timson's chief, was the
only man she could think of to whom Tims could possibly apply the
possessive adjective. Tims bridled.
"Of course not; I was thinking of Mr. Fitzalan."
That she had for years been very kind to a lonely little man of that
name who lived in the same block of chambers, Mildred knew,
but--Heavens! Even Mildred's presence of mind failed her, and she
stared. Meeting her amazed eye, Tims's borrowed smile suddenly broke its
bounds and became her own familiar grin, only more so:
"We're engaged," she said.
"My dear Tims!" exclaimed Mildred, suppressing an inclination to burst
out laughing. "What a surprise!"
"I quite thought you'd have been prepared for it," returned Tims. "A bit
stupid of you not to guess it, don't you know, old girl. We've been
courting long enough."
Mildred hastened to congratulate the strange bride and wish her
happiness, with all that unusual grace which she knew how to employ in
adorning the usual.
"I thought I should like you to be the first to know," said Tims,
sentimentally, after a while; "because I was your bridesmaid, you see.
It was the prettiest wedding I ever saw, and I should love to have a
wedding like yours--all of us carrying lilies, you know."
"I remember there were green stains on my wedding-dress," returned
Mildred, with forced gayety.
Tims, temporarily oblivious of all awkward circumstances, continued,
still more sentimentally:
"Then I was there, as I've told you, when Ian's pop came to poor old M.
Poor old girl! She was awfully spifligatingly happy, and I feel just the
same now myself."
"Well, it wasn't I, anyhow, who felt 'awfully spifligatingly happy' on
that occasion," replied Mildred, with a touch of asperity in her voice.
Tims, legitimately absorbed in her own feelings, did not notice it. She
continued:
"I dare say the world will say Mr. Fitzalan had an eye on my money; and
it's true I've done pretty well with my investments. But, bless you! he
hadn't a notion of that. You see, I was brought up to be stingy, and I
enjoy it. He thought of course I was a pauper, and proposed we should
pauper along together. He was quite upset when he found I was an
heiress. Wasn't it sweet of him?"
Mildred said it was.
"Flora Fitzalan!" breathed Tims, clasping her hands and smiling into
space. "Isn't it a pretty name? It's always been my dream to have a
pretty name." Then suddenly, as though in a flash seeing all those
personal disadvantages which she usually contrived to ignore:
"Life's a queer lottery, Mil, my girl. We know what we are, we know not
what we shall be, as old Billy says. Who'd ever have thought that a
nice, quiet girl like Milly, marrying the lad of her heart and all that,
would come to such awful grief; while look at me--a queer kind of girl
you'd have laid your bottom dollar wouldn't have much luck, prospering
like anything, well up in the Science business, and now, what's ever so
much better, scrumptiously happy with a good sort of her own. Upon my
word, Mil, I've half a mind to fetch old M. back to sympathize with me,
for although you've said a peck of nice things, I don't believe you
understand what I'm feeling the way the old girl would."
Mildred went a little pale and spoke quickly.
"You won't do that really, Tims? You won't be so cruel to--to every
one?"
"I don't know. I don't see why you're always to be jolly and have
everything your own way. Oh, Lord! When I think how happy old M. was
when she was engaged, the same as I am, and then on her
wedding-day--just the same as I shall be on mine."
Mildred straightened out the frill of a muslin cushion cover, her head
bent.
"Just so. She had everything _her_ own way that time. I gave her that
happiness, it was all my doing. She's had it and she ought to be
content. Don't be a fool, Tims--" she lifted her face and Tims was
startled by its expression--"Can't you see how hard it is on me never to
be allowed the happiness you've got and Milly's had? Don't you think I
might care to know what love is like for myself? Don't you think I might
happen to want--I tell you I'm a million times more alive than
Milly--and I want--I want everything a million times more than she
does."
Tims was astonished.
"But it's always struck me, don't you know, that Ian was a deal more in
love with you than he ever was with poor old M."
"And you pretend to be in love and think that's enough! It's not enough;
you must know it's not. It's like sitting at a Barmecide feast, very
hungry, only the Barmecide's sitting opposite you eating all the time
and talking about his food. I tell you it's maddening, perfectly
maddening--" There was a fierce vehemence in her face, her voice, the
clinch of her slender hands on the muslin frill. That strong vitality
which before had seemed to carry her lightly as on wings, over all the
rough places of life, had now not failed, but turned itself inwards,
burning in an intense flame at once of pain and of rebellion against its
own pain.
Tims in the midst of her happiness, felt vaguely scared. Mildred seeing
it, recovered herself and plunged into the usual engagement talk. In a
few minutes she was her old beguiling self--the self to whose charm Tims
was as susceptible in her way as Thomas the Rhymer had been in his.
When she had left, and from time to time thereafter, Tims felt vaguely
uncomfortable, remembering Mildred's outburst of vehement bitterness on
the subject of love. It was so unlike her usual careless tone, which
implied that it was men's business, or weakness, to be in love with
women, and that only second-rate women fell in love themselves.
Mildred seemed altogether more serious than she used to be, and Milly
herself could not have been more sympathetic over the engagement. Even
Mr. Fitzalan, when Tims brought him to call on the Stewarts was not
afraid of her, and found it possible to say a few words in reply to her
remarks. Tims's ceremonious way of speaking of her betrothed, whom she
never mentioned except as Mr. Fitzalan, made Ian reflect with sad humor
on the number of offensively familiar forms of address which he himself
had endured from her, and on the melancholy certainty that she had never
spoken of him in his absence by any name more respectful than the plain
unprefixed "Stewart." But he hoped that the excitement of her engagement
had wiped out of her remembrance that afternoon when poor Milly had
tried to return. For he did not like to think of that moment of weakness
in which he had allowed Tims to divine so much of a state of mind which
he could not unveil even to himself without a certain shame.