THEOPHILUS GOTOBED. HOW A TENOR AND A SOPRANO VANISHED. HOW GWEN
ANNOUNCED HER INTENDED MARRIAGE. PRACTICAL ENCOURAGEMENT. AUNT
CONSTANCE AND MR. PELLEW, AND HOW THEY WERE OLDER THAN ROMEO,
JULIET, GWEN, AND MR. TORRENS. HOW THEY STAYED OUT FIVE MINUTES
LONGER, AND MISS DICKENSON CAME ACROSS THE EARL WITH A CANDLE-LAMP.
HOW GWEN'S FATHER KNEW ALL ABOUT IT. NEVERTHELESS THE EARL DID NOT
KNOW BROWNING. BUT HE SUSPECTED GWEN OF QUIXOTISM, FOR ALL THAT.
ONE'S TONGUE, AND THE CHOICE BETWEEN BITING IT OFF OR HOLDING IT.
HOW GWEN HAD BORROWED LORD CUMBERWORLD'S PENCIL. MRS. BAILEY AND
PARISIAN PROFLIGACY
The galaxy of wax lights had illuminated the Jacobean drawing-room long
enough to have become impatient, if only they had had human souls,
before the first conscientious previous person turned up dressed for
dinner, and felt ashamed and looked at a book. He affected superiority
to things, saying to the subsequent conscientious person:--"Seen
this?--'The Self-Renunciation of Theophilus Gotobed?'--R'viewers sayts
'musing;" and handing him Vol. I., which he was obliged to take. He just
looked inside, and laid it on the table. "Looks intristin'!" he said.
It was bad enough, said Mr. Norbury to Cook sympathetically in
confidence, to put back three-quarters of an hour, without her ladyship
making his lordship behindhander still. This was because news travelled
to the kitchen--mind you never say anything whatever in the hearing of a
servant!--that their two respective ships were in collision in the
Lib'ary; _harguing_ was the exact expression. It was the heads of the
household who were late. Lady Gwendolen apologized for them, saying she
was afraid it was her fault. It was. But she didn't look penitent. She
looked resplendent.
The two couples who had parted company, being anxious to advertise their
honourable conduct, executed a quartet-without-music in extenuation of
what appeared organized treachery. The soprano and tenor had lost sight
of the alto and basso just on the other side of Clocketts Croft, where
you came to a stile. They had from sheer good-faith retraced their steps
to this stile and sat on it reluctantly, in bewilderment of spirit,
praying for the spontaneous reappearance of the wanderers. These latter
testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor assist the soprano
over this stile, and that then the couple had disappeared to the right
through the plantation of young larches, and they had followed them
along a path of enormous length with impenetrable arboriculture on
either hand, without seeing any more of them, and expected to find them
on arriving. The tenor and soprano gave close particulars of their
return along this self-same path. All the evidence went to show that a
suspension of natural laws had taken place, the simultaneous presence of
all four at that stile seeming a mathematical certainty from which
escape was impossible.
Guilty conscience--so Gwen thought at least--was discernible in every
phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham
and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her
middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any
nonsense? That was the truncated inquiry Gwen's mind made.
She herself was radiant, dazzling, in the highest spirits. But her
mother was silent and pre-occupied, and rather impatient with her more
than once during the evening. The Earl was the same, minus the
impatience.
This was because of two very short colloquies under pressure, between
Gwen's departure upstairs and the Countess's overdue appearance at
dinner. The first began in the lobby outside Gwen's room, where her
mother overtook her on her way to her own. Here it is in full:
"Oh--there you are, child! What a silly you were not to come! How's your
headache?... I do wish your father would have those stairs altered. It's
like the ascent of Mount Parnassus." Buckstone was presenting a
burlesque of that name just then, and her ladyship may have had it
running in her head.
"It wasn't a real headache--only pretence. Come in here, mamma. I've
something to say.... No--I haven't rung for Lutwyche yet. _She's_ all
right. Come in and shut the door."
"Why, girl, what's the matter? Why are you...?"
"Why am I what?"
"Well--twinkling and--breathing and--and altogether!" Her ladyship's
descriptive power is fairly good as far as it goes, but it has its
limits.
"I don't believe I'm either twinkling or breathing or altogether....
Well, then--I'm whatever you like--all three! Only listen to me, mamma
dear, because there's not much time. I'm going to marry Adrian Torrens.
There!"
"Oh--my dear!" It is too much for the Countess after those stairs! She
sinks on a chair clutching her fingers tight, with wide eyes on her
daughter. It is too terrible to believe. But even in that moment Gwen's
beauty has such force that the words "A blind man!--never to see it!"
are articulate in her mind. For her child never looked more
beautiful--one half queenly effrontery, her disordered locks against the
window-light making a halo of rough gold round a slight flush its wearer
would resent the name of shame for; the other half, the visible
flinching from confession she would resent still more for justifying it.
"Why--do you know anything against him?"
"Darling!--you might marry anybody, and you know it."
"Oh yes; I know all about it. I prefer this one. But _do_ you know
anything against him?"
"Only ... only his _eyes_!... Oh dear! You know you said so yourself
yesterday--that the sight was destroyed...."
"Who destroyed his sight? Tell me that!"
"If you are going to take that tone, Gwendolen, I really cannot talk
about it. You and your father must settle it between you somehow. It was
an accident--a very terrible accident, I know--but I must go away to
dress. It's eight.... Anyhow, _one_ thing, dear! You haven't given him
any encouragement--at least, I _hope_ not...."
"Given him any what?"
"Any practical encouragement ... any ..."
"Oh yes--any quantity." She has to quash that flinching and brazen it
out. One way is as good as another. "I didn't tell him to pull my hair
down, though. I didn't mind. But if he had been able to see I should
have been much more strict."
"Gwen dear--you are perfectly ... _shameless_!... Well--you are a very
odd girl...." This is concession; oddity is not shamelessness.
"Come, mamma, be reasonable! If you can't see anybody and you mayn't
touch them, it comes down to making remarks at a respectful distance,
and then it's no better than acquaintance--visiting and leaving cards
and that sort of thing.... Come in!" Lutwyche interrupted with hot
water, her expression saying distinctly:--"I am a young woman of
unimpeachable character, who can come into a room where a titled lady
and her daughter are at loggerheads, no doubt about a love-affair, and
can shut my eyes to the visible and my ears to the audible. Go it!"
Nevertheless, the disputants seemed to prefer suspension of their
discussion, and the elder lady departed, saying they would both be late
for dinner.
This was the first short colloquy. The second was in the Earl's
dressing-room, from which he was emerging when his wife, looking scared,
met him coming out in _grande tenue_ through the district common to
both, the room Earls and Countesses had occupied from time immemorial.
He saw there was some excitement afoot, but was content to await the
information he knew would come in the end. Tacit reciprocities of
misunderstanding ensuing, he felt it safest to say:--"Nothing wrong, I
hope?" This is what followed:
"I think you might show more interest. I have been very much startled
and annoyed.... But I must tell you later. There's no time now."
"I think," says his lordship deferentially, "that, having mentioned it,
it might be better to ..."
"I suppose you mean I oughtn't to have mentioned it.... Starfield, I
cannot possible wear that thick dress to-night. It's suffocating. Get
something thinner.... Oh, well--if I must tell you I must tell you! Go
back in your room a minute while Starfield finds that dress.... Oh
no--_she's_ not listening ... never mind _her_! There, the door's shut!"
"Well--what _is_ it?"
"It's Gwen. However, I dare say it's only a flash in the pan, and she'll
be off after somebody else. If only my advice had been taken he never
would have come into the house...."
"But who _is_ he, and what is _it_?"
"My dear, I'll tell you if you'll not be so impatient. It's this young
Torrens.... Yes--now you're shocked. So was I." For no further
explanations are necessary. When one hears that "it" is John and Jane,
one knows.
"But, Philippa, are you sure? It seems to me perfectly incredible."
"Speak to her yourself."
"She's barely seen him; and as for him, poor fellow, he has never seen
_her_ at all." The rapidity of events seems out of all reason to a
constitutionally cautious Earl.
"My dear, how unreasonable you are! If he could _see_ her, of course,
she wouldn't think of him for one moment. At least, I suppose not."
"I _cannot_ understand," says the bewildered Earl. And then he begins
repeating her ladyship's words "If--he--could ..." as though inviting a
more intelligible repetition. This is exasperating--a clear insinuation
of unintelligibility.
"Oh dear, how slow men are!" The lady passes through a short phase of
collapse from despair over man's faculties, then returns to a difficult
task crisply and incisively. "Well, at any rate, you can see _this_? The
girl's got it into her head that the accident was _our_ fault, and that
it's _her_ duty to make it up to him."
"But, then, she's not really in love with him, if it's a self-denying
ordinance."
The Countess is getting used to despair, so she only shrugs a submissive
shoulder and remarks with forbearance:--"It is _no_ use trying to make
you understand. Of course, it's _because_ she is in love with him that
she is going in for ... what did you call it?..."
"A self-denying ordinance."
"_I_ call it heroics. If she wasn't in love with him, do you suppose she
would want to fling herself away?"
"Then it isn't a self-denying ordinance at all. I confess I _don't_
understand. I must talk to Gwen herself."
"Oh, talk to her by all means. But don't expect to make any impression
on her. I know what she is when she gets the bit in her teeth. Certainly
talk to her. I really must go and dress now...."
"Stop one minute, Philippa...."
"Well--what?"
"Apart from the blindness--poor fellow!--is there anything about this
young man to object to? There's nothing about his family. Why!--his
father's Hamilton Torrens, that was George's great friend at Christ
Church. And his mother was an Abercrombie...."
"I can't go into that now." Her ladyship cuts Adrian's family very
short. Consider her memories of bygones! No wonder she became acutely
alive to her duties as a hostess. She had created a precedent in this
matter, though really her husband scarcely knew anything about her
_affaire de coeur_ with Adrian's father thirty years ago. It was not a
hanging matter, but she could not object to the young man's family after
such a definite attitude towards his father.
Here ends the second short colloquy, which was the one that caused the
Earl to be so more than usually absent that evening. It had the opposite
effect on her ladyship, who felt better after it; braced up again to
company-manners after the first one. Gwen, as mentioned before, was
dazzling; superb; what is apt to be called a cynosure, owing to
something Milton said. Nevertheless, the Shrewd Observer, who happened
in this case to be Aunt Constance, noticed that at intervals the young
lady let her right-hand neighbour talk, and died away into
preoccupation, with a vital undercurrent of rippled lip and thoughtful
eye. Another of her shrewd observations was that when the Hon. Percival,
referring to Mr. Torrens, still an absentee by choice, said:--"I tried
again to persuade him to come down at feeding-time, but it was no go,"
Gwen came suddenly out of one dream of this sort to say from her end of
the table, miles off:--"He really prefers dining by himself, I know,"
and went in again.
It was this that Aunt Constance referred to in conversation with Mr.
Pellew, at about half-past ten o'clock in that same shrubbery walk. They
had cultivated each other's absence carefully in the drawing-room, and
had convinced themselves that neither was necessary to the other. That
clause having been carried nem. con., they were entitled to five
minutes' chat, without prejudice. Neither remembered, perhaps, the
convert to temperance who decided that passing a public-house door _a
contre-coeur_ entitled him to half-a-pint.
"How did you get on with little Di Accrington?" the lady had said. And
the gentleman had answered:--"First-rate. Talked to her about _your_
partner all the time. How did you hit it off with him?" A sympathetic
laugh over the response: "Capitally--he talked about _her_, of course!"
quite undid the fiction woven with so much pains indoors, and also as it
were lighted a little collateral fire they might warm their fingers at,
or burn them. However, a parade of their well-worn seniority, their old
experience of life, would keep them safe from _that_. Only it wouldn't
do to neglect it.
Mr. Pellew recognised the obligation first. "Offly amusin'!--young
people," said he, claiming, as the countryman of Shakespeare, his share
of insight into Romeo and Juliet.
"Same old story, over and over again!" said Aunt Constance. They posed
as types of elderliness that had no personal concern in love-affairs,
and could afford to smile at juvenile flirtations. Mr. Pellew felt
interested in Miss Dickenson's bygone romances, implied in the slight
shade of sentiment in her voice--wondered in fact how the doose this
woman had missed her market; this was the expression his internal
soliloquy used. She for her part was on the whole glad that an intensely
Platonic friendship didn't admit of catechism, as she was better pleased
to leave the customers in that market to the uninformed imagination of
others, than to be compelled to draw upon her own.
The fact was that, in spite of its thinness and slightness, this
Platonic friendship with a mature bachelor whose past--while she
acquitted him of atrocities--she felt was safest kept out of sight, had
already gone quite as near to becoming a love-affair as anything her
memory could discover among her own rather barren antecedents. So there
was a certain sort of affectation in Aunt Constance's suggestion of
familiarity with Romeo and Juliet. She wished, without telling lies, to
convey the idea that the spinsterhood four very married sisters did not
scruple to taunt her with, was either of her own choosing or due to some
tragic event of early life. She did not relish the opposite pole of
human experience to her companion's. Of course, he was a bachelor
nominally unattached--she appreciated that--just as she was a spinster
very actually unattached. But all men of his type she had understood
were alike; only some--this one certainly--were much better than others.
Honestly she was quite unconscious of any personal reason for assigning
to him a first-class record.
Attempts to sift the human mind throw very little light upon it, and the
dust gets in the eyes of the story. Perhaps that is why it cannot give
Miss Dickenson's reason for not following up her last remark with:--"And
will go on so, I suppose, to the end of time!" as she had half-intended
to do, philosophically. Possibly she thought it would complicate the
topic she was hankering after. It would be better to keep that
provisionally clear of subjects made to the hand of writers of plays.
She would not go beyond hypnotic suggestion at present. She approached
it with the air of one who dismisses a triviality.
"It seems Mr. Adrian Torrens is a musician as well as a poet."
"Had they been playing the piano?"
"Really, Mr. Pellew, how absurd you are! Where does 'they' come in?"
"Oh--well--a--of course--I thought you were referring to ..."
"_Whom_ did you suppose I was referring to?" Aggressive equanimity here
that can wait weeks, if necessary.
"Torrens and my cousin Gwen! Be hanged if I can see why I shouldn't
refer to them!"
"Do so by all means. I wasn't, myself; but it doesn't matter. It was
Nurse Bailey told Lutwyche, whom I borrow from Gwen sometimes, that Mr.
Torrens was a great musician."
"How does Nurse Bailey know?"
"He was playing to her quite beautiful in the drawing-room just before
her young ladyship came in. And then Mrs. Bailey went upstairs to write
a letter because there was plenty of time before the post."
"Can't say I believe Nurse Bailey's much of a dab at music." Mr. Pellew
was reflecting on the humorous background of Miss Dickenson's
character, clear to his insight in her last speech. "But it was just
post-time when we got back from the flower-show.... What then? Why, her
young ladyship must have been there long enough for Mrs. Bailey to write
a letter."
"Is that the way you gossip at your Club, Mr. Pellew?"
"Come, I say, Miss Dickenson, that's too bad! I merely remark that a
lady and gentleman must have had plenty of time for music, and you call
it 'gossip.'"
"Precisely."
"Well, I say it's a jolly shame!... You don't suppose there _is_
anything there, do you?" This came with a sudden efflux of seriousness.
Aunt Constance had landed her fish and was blameless. Nobody could say
she had been indiscreet. She, too, could afford to be suddenly serious.
"I don't mind saying so to you, Mr. Pellew," she said, "because I know I
can rely upon you. But did you notice at dinner-time, when you said you
had tried to persuade Mr. Torrens to come down, that Gwen took upon
herself to answer for him all the way down the table?"
"By Jove--so she did! I didn't notice it at the time. At least, I mean I
did notice it at the time, but I didn't take much notice of it.
Well--you know what I mean!" As Miss Dickenson knows perfectly well, she
tolerates technical flaws of speech with a nod, and allows Mr. Pellew to
go on:--"But, I say, this will be an awful smash for the family. A blind
man!" Then he becomes aware that a conclusion has been jumped at, and
experiences relief. "But it may be all a mistake, you know." Aunt
Constance's silence has the force of speech, and calls for further
support of this surmise. "They haven't had the time. She has only known
him since yesterday. At least he had never seen her but once--he told me
so--that time just before the accident."
"Gwen is a very peculiar girl," says the lady. "A spark will fire a
train. Did you notice nothing when we came in from the flower-show?"
"Nothing whatever. Did you?"
"Little things. However, as you say, it may be all a mistake. I don't
think anything of the time, though. Some young people are volcanic. Gwen
might be."
"I saw no sign of an eruption in him--no lunacy. He chatted quite
reasonably about the division on Thursday, and the crops and the
weather. Never mentioned Gwen!"
"My dear Mr. Pellew, you really are quite pastoral. Of course, Gwen is
exactly what he would _not_ mention."
Mr. Pellew seems to concede that he is an outsider. "You think it was
Love at first sight, and that sort of thing," he says. "Well--I hope it
will wash. It don't always, you know."
"Indeed it does not." The speaker cannot resist the temptation to
flavour philosophy with a suggestion of tender regrets--a hint of a
life-drama in her own past. No questions need be answered, and will
scarcely be asked. But it is candid and courageous to say as little as
may be about it, and to favour a cheerful outlook on Life. She is bound
to say that many of the happiest marriages she has known have been
marriages of second--third--fourth--fifth--_n_th Love. She had better
have let it stand at that if she wanted her indistinct admirer to screw
up his courage then and there to sticking point. For the Hon. Percival
had at least seen in her words a road of approach to a reasonably tender
elderly avowal. But she must needs spoil it by adding--really quite
unconsciously--that many such marriages had been between persons in
quite mature years. Somehow this changed the nascent purpose kindled by
a suggestion of _n_th love in Autumn to a sudden consciousness that the
conversation was sailing very near the wind--some wind undefined--and
made Mr. Pellew run away pusillanimously.
"By-the-by, did you ever see the Macganister More man that died the
other day? Married the Earl's half-sister?"
"Never. Of course, I know Clotilda perfectly well."
"Let's see--oh yes!--she's Sister Nora. Oh yes, of course I know
Clotilda. She's his heiress, I fancy--comes into all the property--no
male heir. She'll go over to Rome, I suppose."
"Why?"
"Always do--with a lot of independent property. Unless some fillah cuts
in and snaps her up."
"Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any woman with
an identity of her own?"
"Well, I only go by what I see. If they don't marry they go over to
Rome--when there's property--dessay I'm wrong.... What o'clock's
that?--ten, I suppose. No?--well, I suppose it must be eleven, when one
comes to think of it. But it's a shame to go in--night like this!" And
then this weak-minded couple impaired the effect of their little
declaration of independence of the united state--the phrase sounds
familiar somehow!--by staying out five or six minutes longer, and going
in half an hour later; two things only the merest pedant would declare
incompatible. But it kept the servants up, and Miss Dickenson had to
apologise to Mr. Norbury.
How many of us living in this present century can keep alive to the fact
that the occupants of country-mansions, now resplendent with an electric
glare which is destroying their eyesight and going out suddenly at
intervals, were sixty years ago dependent on candles and moderator
lamps, which ran down and had to be wound up, and then ran down again,
when there was no oil. There was no gas at the Towers; though there
might have been, granting seven miles of piping, from which the gas
would have escaped into the roots of the beeches and killed them.
Even if there had been, it does not follow that Miss Dickenson, in full
flight to her own couch, would not have come upon the Earl in the lobby
near Mr. Torrens's quarters, with a candle-lamp in his hand, which he
carried about in nocturnal excursions to make sure that a great
conflagration was not raging somewhere on the premises. He seemed, Miss
Dickenson thought, to be gazing reproachfully at it. It was burning all
right, nevertheless. She wished his lordship good-night, and fancied it
was very late. The Earl appeared sure of it. So did a clock with clear
ideas on the subject, striking midnight somewhere, ponderously. The lady
passed on; not, however, failing to notice that the lamp stopped at a
door on the way, and that its bearer was twice going to knock thereat
and didn't. Then a dog within intimated that he should bark presently,
unless attention was given to an occurrence he could vouch for, which
his master told him to hold his tongue about; calling out "Come in!"
nevertheless, to cover contingencies.
The passer-by connected this with Gwen's behaviour at dinner, and other
little things she had noticed, and meant to lie awake on the chance of
hearing his lordship say good-night to Mr. Torrens, perhaps illuminating
the situation. But resolutions to lie awake are the veriest gossamer,
blown away by the breath that puts the bedside candle out. Miss
Dickenson and Oblivion had joined hands some time when his lordship said
good-night to Mr. Torrens.
He had found him standing at his window, as though the warm night-air
was a luxury to him, in the blue silk dressing-gown he had affected
since his convalescence. There was no light in the room; indeed, light
would have been of no service to him in his state. He did not move, but
said: "I suppose I ought to be thinking of turning in now, Mrs. Bailey?"
"It isn't Mrs. Bailey," said the Earl. "It's me. Gwen's father."
"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Adrian, starting back from the window. "I
thought it was the good creature. I had given you up, Lord Ancester--it
got so late." For his lordship had made a visit of inquiry and a short
chat with this involuntary guest an invariable finish to his daily
programme, since the latter recovered consciousness. "I'm afraid there's
no light in the room," said Adrian. "I told 'Rene to blow the candles
out. I can move about very fairly, you see, but I never feel safe about
knocking things down. I might set something on fire." If he had had his
choice, he would rather not have had another interview with his host
until he was at liberty to confess all and say _peccavi_. Even "Gwen's
father's" announcement of himself did not warrant his breaking his
promise.
"There is no light," said the visitor, "except mine that I have brought
with me. I expected to find you in the dark--indeed, I was afraid I
might wake you out of your first sleep. I came because of Gwen--because
I felt I _must_ see you before I went to bed myself." He paused a
moment, Adrian remaining silent, still at a loss; then continued:--"This
has been very sudden, so sudden that it has quite ..."
Then Adrian broke out:--"Oh, how you must be blaming me! Oh, what a
_brute_ I've been!..."
"No--no, no--_no!_ Not that, not that _at all_! Not a word of blame for
anybody! None for you--none for Gwen. But it has been so--so sudden...."
Indeed, Gwen's father seems as though all the breath, morally speaking,
had been knocked out of his body by this escapade of his daughter's.
For, knowing from past experience the frequent tempestuous suddenness of
her impulses, and convinced that Adrian in his position neither could
nor would have shown definitely the aspirations of a lover, his image of
their interview made Gwen almost the first instigator in the affair.
"Why, you--you have hardly _seen_ her----" he says, referring only to
the shortness of their acquaintance, not to eyesight.
Adrian accepts the latter meaning without blaming him. "Yes," he says,
"but see her I _did_, though it was but a glimpse. I tell you this, Lord
Ancester--and it is no rhapsody; just bald truth--that if this day had
never come about.... I mean if it had come about otherwise; I might have
gone away this morning, for instance ... and if I had had to learn, as I
yet may, that this black cloud I live in was to be my life for good, and
all that image I saw for a moment of Gwen--Gwen in her glory in the
light of the sunset, for one moment--one moment!..." He breaks down over
it.
The Earl's voice is not in good form for encouragement, but he does his
best. "Come--come! It's not so bad as all that yet. See what Merridew
said. Couldn't say anything for certain for another three months.
Indeed he said it might be more, and yet you might have your sight back
again without a flaw in either eye. He really said so!"
"Well--he's a jolly good fellow. But what I mean is, what I was going to
say was that my recollection of her in that one moment would have been
the one precious thing left for me to treasure through the
pitch-darkness.... You remember--or perhaps not--that about a hand's
breadth of it--the desert, you know--shining alone in the salt leagues
round about...."
"N-no. I don't think I do. Is it ... a ... Coleridge?"
"No--Robert Browning. He'd be new to you. You would hardly know him.
However, I should try to forget the rest of the desert this time."
The Earl did not follow, naturally, and changed the subject. "It is very
late," he said, "and I have only time to say what I came to say. You may
rely on my not standing arbitrarily in the way of my daughter's wishes
when the time comes--and it has not come yet--for looking at that side
of the subject. It can only come when it is absolutely certain that she
knows her own mind. She is too young to be allowed to take the most
important step in life under the influence of a romantic--it may be
Quixotic--impulse. I have just had a long talk with her mother about it,
and I am forced to the conclusion that Gwen's motives are not so unmixed
as a girl's should be, to justify bystanders in allowing her to act upon
them--bystanders I mean who would have any right of interference.... I
am afraid I am not very clear, but I shrink from saying what may seem
unfeeling...."
"Probably you would not hurt me, and I should deserve it, if you did."
"What I mean is that Gwen's impulse is ... is derived from ... from, in
short, your unhappy accident. I would not go so far as to say that she
has schemed a compensation for this cruel disaster ... which we need
hardly be so gloomy about yet awhile, it seems to me. But this I do
say"--here the Earl seemed to pick up heart and find his words
easier--"that if Gwen has got that idea I thoroughly sympathize with
her. I give you my word, Mr. Torrens, that not an hour passes, for me,
without a thought of the same kind. I mean that I should jump at any
chance of making it up to you, for mere ease of mind. But I have nothing
to give that would meet the case. Gwen has a treasure--herself! It is
another matter whether she should be allowed to dispose of it her own
way, for her own sake. Her mother and I may both feel it our duty to
oppose it."
Adrian said in an undertone, most dejectedly: "You would be right. How
could I complain?" Then it seemed to him that his words struck a false
note, and he tried to qualify them. "I mean--how could I say a word of
any sort? Could I complain of any parents, for trying to stop their girl
linking her life to mine? And such a life as hers! And yet if it were
all to do again, how could I act otherwise than as I did a few hours
since. Is there a man so strong anywhere that he could put a curb on his
heart and choke down his speech to convention-point, if he thought that
a girl like Gwen ... I don't know how to say what I want. All speech
goes wrong, do what I will."
"If he thought that a girl like Gwen was waiting for him to speak out?
Is that it?... Oh--well--not exactly that! But something of the sort,
suppose we say?" For Adrian's manner had entered a protest. "Anyhow I
assure you I quite understand my Gwen is--very attractive. But nobody is
blaming anybody. After all, what would the alternative have been? Just
some hypocritical beating about the bush to keep square with the
regulations--to level matters down to--what did you call
it?--convention-point! Nothing gained in the end! Let's put all that on
one side. What _we_ have to look at is this--meaning, of course, by
'we,' my wife and myself:--Is Gwen really an independent agent? Is she
not in a sense the slave of her own imagination, beyond and above the
usual enthralment that one accepts as part of the disorder. I myself
believe that she is, and that the whole root and essence of the business
may be her pity for yourself, and also I should say an exaggerated idea
of her own share in the guilt...."
"There _was_ none," Adrian struck in decisively. "But I understand your
meaning exactly. Listen a minute to this. If I had thought what you
think possible--well, I would have bitten my tongue off rather than
speak. Why, think of it! To ask a girl like that to sacrifice herself to
a cripple--a half-cripple, at least...."
"Without good grounds for supposing she was waiting to be asked," said
the Earl; adding, to anticipate protest:--"Come now!--that's what we
mean. Let's say so and have done with it," to which Adrian gave tacit
assent. His lordship continued:--"I quite believe you; at least, I
believe you would rather have held your tongue than bitten it off. I
certainly should. But--pardon my saying so--I cannot understand ... I'm
not finding fault or doubting you ... I _cannot_ understand how you came
to be so--so ... I won't say cocksure--let's call it sanguine. If there
had been time I could have understood it. But I cannot see where the
time came in."
Adrian fidgetted uneasily, and felt his cheeks flush. "I can answer for
when it began, with me. I walked across that glade from Arthur's Bridge
quite turned into somebody else, with Gwen stamped on my brain like a
Queen's head on a shilling, and her voice in my ears as plain as the
lark's overhead. But whether we started neck and neck, I know not. I do
know this, though, that I shall never believe that if I had been first
seen by her in my character as a corpse, either she or I would ever have
been a penny the wiser."
"You are the wiser?--quite sure?" The Earl seemed to have his doubts.
"Quite sure. Do you recollect how 'the Duke grew suddenly brave and
wise'? He was only the 'fine empty sheath of a man' before. But it's no
use quoting Browning to you."
"Not the slightest. I suppose he was referring to a case of love at
first sight--is that it?... It is a time-honoured phenomenon, only it
hardly comes into practical politics, because young persons are so
secretive about it. I can't recollect any lady but Rosalind who
mentioned it at the time--or any gentleman but Romeo, for that matter.
Gwen has certainly kept her own counsel for three weeks past."
"Dear Lord Ancester, you are laughing at me...."
"No--no! No, I wouldn't do that. Perhaps I was laughing a little at
human nature. That's excusable. However, I understand that you _are_
cocksure--or sanguine--about the similarity of Romeo's case. I won't
press Gwen about Rosalind's. Of course, if she volunteers information, I
shall have to dismiss the commiseration theory--you understand me?--and
suppose that she is healthily in love. By healthily I mean selfishly. If
no information is forthcoming, all I can say is--the doubt remains; the
doubt whether she is not making herself the family scapegoat, carrying
away the sins of the congregation into the wilderness."
"You know I think that all sheer nonsense, whatever Gwen thinks? She may
think the sins of the congregation are as scarlet. To me they are white
as wool."
"The whole question turns on what Gwen thinks. Believing, as I do, that
my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin of mine, I have no
course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at least to postpone
irrevocable action until it is certain that she is animated by no such
motive. I might advocate that you and she should not meet, for--suppose
we say--a twelvemonth, but that I have so often noticed that absence
not only 'makes the heart grow fonder,' as the song says, but also makes
it very turbulent and unruly. So I shall leave matters entirely
alone--leave her to settle it with her mother.... Your sister knows of
this, I suppose?"
"Oh yes! Gwen told her of it across the table at dinner-time."
"Across the table at dinner-time? _Imp_-ossible!"
"Well--look at this!" Adrian produces from his dressing-gown pocket a
piece of paper, much crumpled, with a gilt frill all round, and holds it
out for the Earl to take. While the latter deciphers it at his
candle-lamp, he goes on to give its history. Irene had been back very
late from the Mackworth Clarkes, and had missed the soup. She had not
spoken with Gwen at all, and as soon as dessert had effloresced into
little _confetti_, had been told by that young lady to catch, the thing
thrown being the wrapper of one of these, rolled up and scribbled on.
"She brought it up for me to see," says Adrian, without thought of cruel
fact. Blind people often speak thus.
The Earl cannot help laughing at what he reads aloud. "'I am going to
marry your brother'--that's all!" he says. "That's what she borrowed
Lord Cumberworld's pencil for. Really Gwen _is_...!" But this wild
daughter of his is beyond words to describe, and he gives her up.
If the Duke's son had not been honourable, he might have peeped and
known his own fate. For he had been entrusted with this missive, to hand
across the table to Irene lower down. Lady Gwendolen ought to have given
it to Mr. Norbury, to hand to Miss Torrens on a tray. That was Mr.
Norbury's opinion.
When the Earl looked up from deciphering the pencil-scrawl, he saw that
Adrian's powers were visibly flagging; and no wonder, convalescence
considered, and such a day of strain and excitement. He rose to go,
saying:--"You see what I want--nothing in a hurry."
Adrian's words were slipping away from him as he replied, or tried to
reply:--"I see. If I were to get my eyes back, Gwen might change her
mind." But he failed over the last two letters. Mrs. Bailey, still in
charge, lived on the other side of a door, at which the Earl tapped,
causing a scuttling and a prompt appearance of the good creature, who
seemed to have an ambush of grog ready to spring on her patient. It was
what was wanted.
"Remember this, Mr. Torrens," said his lordship, when a rally encouraged
him to add a postscript, "that in spite of what you say, I feel just as
Gwen does, that the blame of your mishap lies with me and mine--with me
chiefly...."
"All nonsense, my lord! Excuse my contradicting you flatly. Your
instruction, not expressed but implied, to old Stephen, was clearly
_not_ to miss his mark. If he had killed Achilles you _would_ have been
responsible, as Apollo was responsible for the arrow of Paris.... Yes,
my dear, we were talking about you." This was to the collie, who woke up
from deep sleep at the sound of his name, and felt he could mix with a
society that recognised him. But not without shaking himself violently
and scratching his head, until appealed to to stop.
The Earl let further protest stand over, and said good-night, rather
relieved at the beneficial effect of the good creature's ministrations.
The excellent woman herself, when the grog was disposed of, facilitated
her charge's dispositions for the night, and retired to rest with an
ill-digested idea that she had interrupted a conversation about the
corrupt gaieties of a vicious foreign capital, inhabited chiefly by
atheists and idolaters.
* * * * *
The Countess's long talk with her husband, wedged in between an early
abdication of the drawing-room and the sound of Gwen laughing
audaciously with Miss Torrens on the staircase, and more temperate
good-nights below, had tended towards a form of party government in
which the Earl was the Liberal and her ladyship the Conservative party.
The Bill before the House was never exactly read aloud, its contents
being taken for granted. When the Countess had said, in their previous
interview, first that it was Gwen, and then that it was this young
Torrens, she had really exhausted the subject.
Nevertheless she seemed now to claim for herself credit for a clear
exposition of the contents of this Bill, in spite of constant
interruptions from a factious Opposition. "I hope," she said, "that, now
that I have succeeded in making you understand, you will speak to Gwen
yourself. I suppose she's not going to stop downstairs all night."
The Earl also supposed not. But even in that very improbable event the
resources of human ingenuity would not be exhausted. He could, for
instance, go downstairs to speak to her. But other considerations
intervened. Was her ladyship's information unimpeachable? Was it
absolutely impossible that she should have been misled in any
particular? Could he, in fact, consider his information official?
The Countess showed unexampled forbearance under extreme trial. "My
dear," she said, "how perfectly absurd you are! How can there be any
doubt of the matter? Listen to me for one moment and think. When a girl
insists on talking to her mother when both are late for dinner, and have
hardly five minutes to dress, and says flatly, 'Mamma dear, I am going
to marry So-and-so, or So-and-so'--because it's exactly the same thing,
whoever it is--how can there be any possibility of a mistake?"
"Very little, certainly," says the Earl reflectively. He seemed to
consider the point slowly. "But it can hardly be said to be exactly the
same thing in all cases. This case is peculiar--is peculiar."
"I can't see where the peculiarity comes in. You mean his eyes. But a
girl either is, or is not, in love with a man, whether he has eyes in
his head or not."
"Indisputably. But it complicates the case. You must admit, my dear,
that it complicates the case."
"You mean that I am unfeeling? Wouldn't it be better to say so instead
of beating about the bush? But I am nothing of the sort."
"My dear, am I likely to say so? Have you ever heard me hint such a
thing? But one may be sincerely sorry for the victim of such an awful
misfortune, and yet feel that his blindness complicates matters. Because
it does."
"I'm not sure that I understand what you are driving at. Perhaps we are
talking about different things." This is not entirely without
forbearance--may show a trace of uncalled-for patience, as towards an
undeserved conundrum-monger.
"Perhaps we are, my dear. But as to what I'm driving at. Can you recall
what Gwen said about his eyes?"
"I think so. Let me see.... Yes--she said did I know anything against
him. I said--nothing except his eyes. And then she said--I recollect it
quite plainly--'Who destroyed his sight? Tell me that!'"
"What did you answer to that?"
"I refused to talk any longer, and said you and she must settle it your
own way."
"Nothing else?"
"Oh--well--nothing--nothing to speak of! Lutwyche came worrying in with
hot water."
The Earl sat cogitating until her ladyship roused him by saying "Well!"
rather tartly. Then he echoed back:--"Well, Philippa, I think possibly
you are right."
"Only possibly!"
"Probably then. Yes--certainly probably!"
"What about?"
"I thought I understood you to say that, in your opinion, Gwen had got
it into her head that ..."
"Oh dear!... There--never mind!--go on." She considered her husband a
prolix Earl, sometimes.
"... That the accident was _our_ fault, and that it was _her_ duty to
make it up to him."
"Of course she has. What did you suppose?"
"I supposed she might have--a--fallen in love with him. I thought you
thought so, too, from what you said."
"My dear Alexander, shall I never make you understand?" Her ladyship
only used the long inconvenient name to emphasize rhetoric, which she
did also in this instance by making every note _staccato_. "Gwen, has,
fallen, in, love, with, Mr. Torrens, because, we, _did it_? _Now_ do you
see?"
"She has a--mixture of motives, in fact?"
"Absolutely none whatever! She's over head and ears in love with him
_because_ his eyes are out. No other reason in life! What earthly good
do you think the child thinks she could do him if she _didn't_ love him?
Men will never understand girls if they live till Doomsday."
The Earl did not grapple with the problems this suggested; but
reflected, while her ladyship waited explicitly. At last he said:--"It
certainly appears to me that if Gwen's ... predilection for this man
depends in any degree on a mistaken conviction of duty, the only course
open to us is to--to temporise--to deprecate rash actions and
undertakings. Under the circumstances it would be impossible to condemn
or find fault with either. It is perfectly inconceivable that poor
Torrens--should have--should have taken any initiative...."
"Oh, my dear, what nonsense! Of course, Gwen did that. She proposed to
him when I was away at the flower-show...."
"Philippa--how _can_ you? How would such a thing be _possible_?
Really--_really!_ ..."
"Well, _really really_ as much as you like, but any woman could propose
to a blind man--a little way off, certainly--only I don't know that Gwen
..." However, the Countess stopped short of her daughter's reference to
a respectful distance and card-leaving.
It was at this point that Gwen and Irene were audible on the stairs,
suggesting the lateness of the hour. The Earl said:--"I think I shall go
and see Torrens as soon as there's quiet. I have gone to him every
evening till now. I may speak to him about this." To which her ladyship
replied:--"Now mind you put your foot down. What I am always afraid of
with you is indecision." He made no answer, but listened, waiting for
the last disappearance couchwards. Then he went to his room for his
hand-lamp, as described, and after satisfying himself about that
conflagration's non-existence, was just in time to cross Miss Dickenson,
a waif overdue, and wonder what on earth had made that very spirit and
image of all conformity guilty of such a lapse.
Then followed his interview with Mr. Torrens already detailed. Perhaps
the foregoing should have come first. If ever you retell the tale you
can make it do so. But whatever you do be careful to insist on that
point of not talking before the servants. Dwell on the fact that Miss
Lutwyche went straight to the Servants' Hall, after putting a finishing
touch on her young ladyship, and said to the housekeeper:--"You'll be
very careful, Mrs. Masham, to say nothing whatever about her young
ladyship and Mr. Torrenson"; it being one of her peculiarities to alter
the names of visitors on the strength of alleged secret information, to
prove that she was in the confidence of the family. To which Mrs. Masham
replied:--"Why not be outspoken, Anne Lutwyche?" provoking, or
licensing, further illumination on the subject; with the result that in
half an hour the household was observing discreet silence about it, and
exacting solemn promises of equal discretion from acquaintances as
discreet as itself. But there were words between Mrs. Starfield, the
Countess's abettor in dressing, and Miss Lutwyche; the former having
found herself forestalled in her theory of the argument in the Lib'ary,
which she had reported as the cause of delay, by the latter's prompt
expression of cautious reserve, and having accused her of throwing out
hints and nothing to go upon. Whereupon the young woman had indignantly
repudiated the idea that a frank nature like hers could be capable of an
underhand _insinuendo_, and had felt a great and just satisfaction with
her powers of handling her mother-tongue.