what I am. Lady Lundie and I correspond on excellent terms; but we run
in different grooves, and we see each other as seldom as possible. My
story,” continued the pleasant old man, with a charming frankness which
leveled all differences of age and rank between Arnold and himself,
“is not entirely unlike yours; though I _am_ old enough to be your
grandfather. I was getting my living, in my way (as a crusty old Scotch
lawyer), when my brother married again. His death, without leaving a son
by either of his wives, gave me a lift in the world, like you. Here I
am (to my own sincere regret) the present baronet. Yes, to my sincere
regret! All sorts of responsibilities which I never bargained for are
thrust on my shoulders. I am the head of the family; I am my niece’s
guardian; I am compelled to appear at this lawn-party--and (between
ourselves) I am as completely out of my element as a man can be. Not a
single familiar face meets _me_ among all these fine people. Do you know
any body here?”
“I have one friend at Windygates,” said Arnold. “He came here this
morning, like you. Geoffrey Delamayn.”
As he made the reply, Miss Silvester appeared at the entrance to the
summer-house. A shadow of annoyance passed over her face when she saw
that the place was occupied. She vanished, unnoticed, and glided back to
the game.
Sir Patrick looked at the son of his old friend, with every appearance
of being disappointed in the young man for the first time.
“Your choice of a friend rather surprises me,” he said.
Arnold artlessly accepted the words as an appeal to him for information.
“I beg your pardon, Sir--there’s nothing surprising in it,” he returned.
“We were school-fellows at Eton, in the old times. And I have met
Geoffrey since, when he was yachting, and when I was with my ship.
Geoffrey saved my life, Sir Patrick,” he added, his voice rising, and
his eyes brightening with honest admiration of his friend. “But for
him, I should have been drowned in a boat-accident. Isn’t _that_ a good
reason for his being a friend of mine?”
“It depends entirely on the value you set on your life,” said Sir
Patrick.
“The value I set on my life?” repeated Arnold. “I set a high value on
it, of course!”
“In that case, Mr. Delamayn has laid you under an obligation.”
“Which I can never repay!”
“Which you will repay one of these days, with interest--if I know any
thing of human nature,” answered Sir Patrick.
He said the words with the emphasis of strong conviction. They were
barely spoken when Mr. Delamayn appeared (exactly as Miss Silvester
had appeared) at the entrance to the summer-house. He, too, vanished,
unnoticed--like Miss Silvester again. But there the parallel stopped.
The Honorable Geoffrey’s expression, on discovering the place to be
occupied, was, unmistakably an expression of relief.
Arnold drew the right inference, this time, from Sir Patrick’s language
and Sir Patrick’s tones. He eagerly took up the defense of his friend.
“You said that rather bitterly, Sir,” he remarked. “What has Geoffrey
done to offend you?”
“He presumes to exist--that’s what he has done,” retorted Sir Patrick.
“Don’t stare! I am speaking generally. Your friend is the model young
Briton of the present time. I don’t like the model young Briton. I
don’t see the sense of crowing over him as a superb national production,
because he is big and strong, and drinks beer with impunity, and takes a
cold shower bath all the year round. There is far too much glorification
in England, just now, of the mere physical qualities which an Englishman
shares with the savage and the brute. And the ill results are beginning
to show themselves already! We are readier than we ever were to practice
all that is rough in our national customs, and to excuse all that is
violent and brutish in our national acts. Read the popular books--attend
the popular amusements; and you will find at the bottom of them all a
lessening regard for the gentler graces of civilized life, and a growing
admiration for the virtues of the aboriginal Britons!”
Arnold listened in blank amazement. He had been the innocent means
of relieving Sir Patrick’s mind of an accumulation of social protest,
unprovided with an issue for some time past. “How hot you are over it,
Sir!” he exclaimed, in irrepressible astonishment.
Sir Patrick instantly recovered himself. The genuine wonder expressed in
the young man’s face was irresistible.
“Almost as hot,” he said, “as if I was cheering at a boat-race, or
wrangling over a betting-book--eh? Ah, we were so easily heated when
I was a young man! Let’s change the subject. I know nothing to the
prejudice of your friend, Mr. Delamayn. It’s the cant of the day,” cried
Sir Patrick, relapsing again, “to take these physically-wholesome men
for granted as being morally-wholesome men into the bargain. Time will
show whether the cant of the day is right.--So you are actually coming
back to Lady Lundie’s after a mere flying visit to your own property? I
repeat, that is a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of a landed
gentleman like you. What’s the attraction here--eh?”
Before Arnold could reply Blanche called to him from the lawn. His color
rose, and he turned eagerly to go out. Sir Patrick nodded his head with
the air of a man who had been answered to his own entire satisfaction.
“Oh!” he said, “_that’s_ the attraction, is it?”
Arnold’s life at sea had left him singularly ignorant of the ways of the
world on shore. Instead of taking the joke, he looked confused. A deeper
tinge of color reddened his dark cheeks. “I didn’t say so,” he answered,
a little irritably.
Sir Patrick lifted two of his white, wrinkled old fingers, and
good-humoredly patted the young sailor on the cheek.
“Yes you did,” he said. “In red letters.”
The little gold lid in the knob of the ivory cane flew up, and the old
gentleman rewarded himself for that neat retort with a pinch of snuff.
At the same moment Blanche made her appearance on the scene.
“Mr. Brinkworth,” she said, “I shall want you directly. Uncle, it’s your
turn to play.”
“Bless my soul!” cried Sir Patrick, “I forgot the game.” He looked about
him, and saw his mallet and ball left waiting on the table. “Where are
the modern substitutes for conversation? Oh, here they are!” He bowled
the ball out before him on to the lawn, and tucked the mallet, as if it
was an umbrella, under his arm. “Who was the first mistaken person,” he
said to himself, as he briskly hobbled out, “who discovered that human
life was a serious thing? Here am I, with one foot in the grave; and the
most serious question before me at the present moment is, Shall I get
through the Hoops?”
Arnold and Blanche were left together.
Among the personal privileges which Nature has accorded to women, there
are surely none more enviable than their privilege of always looking
their best when they look at the man they love. When Blanche’s eyes
turned on Arnold after her uncle had gone out, not even the hideous
fashionable disfigurements of the inflated “chignon” and the tilted hat
could destroy the triple charm of youth, beauty, and tenderness beaming
in her face. Arnold looked at her--and remembered, as he had never
remembered yet, that he was going by the next train, and that he was
leaving her in the society of more than one admiring man of his own age.
The experience of a whole fortnight passed under the same roof with her
had proved Blanche to be the most charming girl in existence. It was
possible that she might not be mortally offended with him if he told her
so. He determined that he _would_ tell her so at that auspicious moment.
But who shall presume to measure the abyss that lies between the
Intention and the Execution? Arnold’s resolution to speak was as firmly
settled as a resolution could be. And what came of it? Alas for human
infirmity! Nothing came of it but silence.
“You don’t look quite at your ease, Mr. Brinkworth,” said Blanche. “What
has Sir Patrick been saying to you? My uncle sharpens his wit on every
body. He has been sharpening it on _you?”_
Arnold began to see his way. At an immeasurable distance--but still he
saw it.
“Sir Patrick is a terrible old man,” he answered. “Just before you
came in he discovered one of my secrets by only looking in my face.” He
paused, rallied his courage, pushed on at all hazards, and came headlong
to the point. “I wonder,” he asked, bluntly, “whether you take after
your uncle?”
Blanche instantly understood him. With time at her disposal, she would
have taken him lightly in hand, and led him, by fine gradations, to the
object in view. But in two minutes or less it would be Arnold’s turn to
play. “He is going to make me an offer,” thought Blanche; “and he has
about a minute to do it in. He _shall_ do it!”
“What!” she exclaimed, “do you think the gift of discovery runs in the
family?”
Arnold made a plunge.
“I wish it did!” he said.
Blanche looked the picture of astonishment.
“Why?” she asked.
“If you could see in my face what Sir Patrick saw--”
He had only to finish the sentence, and the thing was done. But the
tender passion perversely delights in raising obstacles to itself. A
sudden timidity seized on Arnold exactly at the wrong moment. He stopped
short, in the most awkward manner possible.
Blanche heard from the lawn the blow of the mallet on the ball, and the
laughter of the company at some blunder of Sir Patrick’s. The precious
seconds were slipping away. She could have boxed Arnold on both ears for
being so unreasonably afraid of her.
“Well,” she said, impatiently, “if I did look in your face, what should
I see?”
Arnold made another plunge. He answered: “You would see that I want a
little encouragement.”
“From _me?_”
“Yes--if you please.”
Blanche looked back over her shoulder. The summer-house stood on an
eminence, approached by steps. The players on the lawn beneath were
audible, but not visible. Any one of them might appear, unexpectedly, at
a moment’s notice. Blanche listened. There was no sound of approaching
footsteps--there was a general hush, and then another bang of the mallet
on the ball and then a clapping of hands. Sir Patrick was a privileged
person. He had been allowed, in all probability, to try again; and he
was succeeding at the second effort. This implied a reprieve of some
seconds. Blanche looked back again at Arnold.
“Consider yourself encouraged,” she whispered; and instantly added, with
the ineradicable female instinct of self-defense, “within limits!”
Arnold made a last plunge--straight to the bottom, this time.
“Consider yourself loved,” he burst out, “without any limits at all.”
It was all over--the words were spoken--he had got her by the hand.
Again the perversity of the tender passion showed itself more strongly
than ever. The confession which Blanche had been longing to hear, had
barely escaped her lover’s lips before Blanche protested against it! She
struggled to release her hand. She formally appealed to Arnold to let
her go.
Arnold only held her the tighter.
“Do try to like me a little!” he pleaded. “I am so fond of _you!_”
Who was to resist such wooing as this?--when you were privately fond of
him yourself, remember, and when you were certain to be interrupted in
another moment! Blanche left off struggling, and looked up at her young
sailor with a smile.
“Did you learn this method of making love in the merchant-service?” she
inquired, saucily.
Arnold persisted in contemplating his prospects from the serious point
of view.
“I’ll go back to the merchant-service,” he said, “if I have made you
angry with me.”
Blanche administered another dose of encouragement.
“Anger, Mr. Brinkworth, is one of the bad passions,” she answered,
demurely. “A young lady who has been properly brought up has no bad
passions.”
There was a sudden cry from the players on the lawn--a cry for “Mr.
Brinkworth.” Blanche tried to push him out. Arnold was immovable.
“Say something to encourage me before I go,” he pleaded. “One word will
do. Say, Yes.”
Blanche shook her head. Now she had got him, the temptation to tease him
was irresistible.
“Quite impossible!” she rejoined. “If you want any more encouragement,
you must speak to my uncle.”
“I’ll speak to him,” returned Arnold, “before I leave the house.”
There was another cry for “Mr. Brinkworth.” Blanche made another effort
to push him out.
“Go!” she said. “And mind you get through the hoop!”
She had both hands on his shoulders--her face was close to his--she was
simply irresistible. Arnold caught her round the waist and kissed her.
Needless to tell him to get through the hoop. He had surely got through
it already! Blanche was speechless. Arnold’s last effort in the art of
courtship had taken away her breath. Before she could recover herself a
sound of approaching footsteps became plainly audible. Arnold gave her a
last squeeze, and ran out.
She sank on the nearest chair, and closed her eyes in a flutter of
delicious confusion.
The footsteps ascending to the summer-house came nearer. Blanche opened
her eyes, and saw Anne Silvester, standing alone, looking at her. She
sprang to her feet, and threw her arms impulsively round Anne’s neck.
“You don’t know what has happened,” she whispered. “Wish me joy,
darling. He has said the words. He is mine for life!”
All the sisterly love and sisterly confidence of many years was
expressed in that embrace, and in the tone in which the words were
spoken. The hearts of the mothers, in the past time, could hardly
have been closer to each other--as it seemed--than the hearts of the
daughters were now. And yet, if Blanche had looked up in Anne’s face at
that moment, she must have seen that Anne’s mind was far away from her
little love-story.
“You know who it is?” she went on, after waiting for a reply.
“Mr. Brinkworth?”
“Of course! Who else should it be?”
“And you are really happy, my love?”
“Happy?” repeated Blanche “Mind! this is strictly between ourselves. I
am ready to jump out of my skin for joy. I love him! I love him! I love
him!” she cried, with a childish pleasure in repeating the words. They
were echoed by a heavy sigh. Blanche instantly looked up into Anne’s
face. “What’s the matter?” she asked, with a sudden change of voice and
manner.
“Nothing.”
Blanche’s observation saw too plainly to be blinded in that way.
“There _is_ something the matter,” she said. “Is it money?” she added,
after a moment’s consideration. “Bills to pay? I have got plenty of
money, Anne. I’ll lend you what you like.”
“No, no, my dear!”
Blanche drew back, a little hurt. Anne was keeping her at a distance for
the first time in Blanche’s experience of her.
“I tell you all my secrets,” she said. “Why are _you_ keeping a secret
from _me?_ Do you know that you have been looking anxious and out of
spirits for some time past? Perhaps you don’t like Mr. Brinkworth? No?
you _do_ like him? Is it my marrying, then? I believe it is! You fancy
we shall be parted, you goose? As if I could do without you! Of course,
when I am married to Arnold, you will come and live with us. That’s
quite understood between us--isn’t it?”
Anne drew herself suddenly, almost roughly, away from Blanche, and
pointed out to the steps.
“There is somebody coming,” she said. “Look!”
The person coming was Arnold. It was Blanche’s turn to play, and he had
volunteered to fetch her.
Blanche’s attention--easily enough distracted on other
occasions--remained steadily fixed on Anne.
“You are not yourself,” she said, “and I must know the reason of it. I
will wait till to-night; and then you will tell me, when you come into
my room. Don’t look like that! You _shall_ tell me. And there’s a kiss
for you in the mean time!”
She joined Arnold, and recovered her gayety the moment she looked at
him.
“Well? Have you got through the hoops?”
“Never mind the hoops. I have broken the ice with Sir Patrick.”
“What! before all the company!”
“Of course not! I have made an appointment to speak to him here.”
They went laughing down the steps, and joined the game.
Left alone, Anne Silvester walked slowly to the inner and darker part of
the summer-house. A glass, in a carved wooden frame, was fixed
against one of the side walls. She stopped and looked into it--looked,
shuddering, at the reflection of herself.
“Is the time coming,” she said, “when even Blanche will see what I am in
my face?”
She turned aside from the glass. With a sudden cry of despair she flung
up her arms and laid them heavily against the wall, and rested her head
on them with her back to the light. At the same moment a man’s figure
appeared--standing dark in the flood of sunshine at the entrance to the
summer-house. The man was Geoffrey Delamayn.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
THE TWO.
He advanced a few steps, and stopped. Absorbed in herself, Anne failed
to hear him. She never moved.
“I have come, as you made a point of it,” he said, sullenly. “But, mind
you, it isn’t safe.”
At the sound of his voice, Anne turned toward him. A change of
expression appeared in her face, as she slowly advanced from the back
of the summer-house, which revealed a likeness to her moth er, not
perceivable at other times. As the mother had looked, in by-gone days,
at the man who had disowned her, so the daughter looked at Geoffrey
Delamayn--with the same terrible composure, and the same terrible
contempt.
“Well?” he asked. “What have you got to say to me?”
“Mr. Delamayn,” she answered, “you are one of the fortunate people of
this world. You are a nobleman’s son. You are a handsome man. You are
popular at your college. You are free of the best houses in England.
Are you something besides all this? Are you a coward and a scoundrel as
well?”
He started--opened his lips to speak--checked himself--and made an
uneasy attempt to laugh it off. “Come!” he said, “keep your temper.”
The suppressed passion in her began to force its way to the surface.
“Keep my temper?” she repeated. “Do _you_ of all men expect me to
control myself? What a memory yours must be! Have you forgotten the time
when I was fool enough to think you were fond of me? and mad enough to
believe you could keep a promise?”
He persisted in trying to laugh it off. “Mad is a strongish word to use,
Miss Silvester!”
“Mad is the right word! I look back at my own infatuation--and I can’t
account for it; I can’t understand myself. What was there in _you_,”
she asked, with an outbreak of contemptuous surprise, “to attract such a
woman as I am?”
His inexhaustible good-nature was proof even against this. He put his
hands in his pockets, and said, “I’m sure I don’t know.”
She turned away from him. The frank brutality of the answer had not
offended her. It forced her, cruelly forced her, to remember that she
had nobody but herself to blame for the position in which she stood at
that moment. She was unwilling to let him see how the remembrance
hurt her--that was all. A sad, sad story; but it must be told. In her
mother’s time she had been the sweetest, the most lovable of children.
In later days, under the care of her mother’s friend, her girlhood
had passed so harmlessly and so happily--it seemed as if the sleeping
passions might sleep forever! She had lived on to the prime of her
womanhood--and then, when the treasure of her life was at its richest,
in one fatal moment she had flung it away on the man in whose presence
she now stood.
Was she without excuse? No: not utterly without excuse.
She had seen him under other aspects than the aspect which he presented
now. She had seen him, the hero of the river-race, the first and
foremost man in a trial of strength and skill which had roused the
enthusiasm of all England. She had seen him, the central object of the
interest of a nation; the idol of the popular worship and the popular
applause. _His_ were the arms whose muscle was celebrated in the
newspapers. _He_ was first among the heroes hailed by ten thousand
roaring throats as the pride and flower of England. A woman, in an
atmosphere of red-hot enthusiasm, witnesses the apotheosis of Physical
Strength. Is it reasonable--is it just--to expect her to ask herself,
in cold blood, What (morally and intellectually) is all this worth?--and
that, when the man who is the object of the apotheosis, notices her, is
presented to her, finds her to his taste, and singles her out from the
rest? No. While humanity is humanity, the woman is not utterly without
excuse.
Has she escaped, without suffering for it?
Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own
secret--the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl,
whom she loves with a sister’s love. Look at her, bowed down under a
humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the
surface--now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value--now,
when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was
there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken,
who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so
cultivated, so refined--what, in Heaven’s name, could _you_ see in him?
Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even
remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too--that you
waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took
his seat, with the others, in the boat--that your heart was like to jump
out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last
hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her
remorse, she will not even seek for _that_ excuse for herself. Is there
no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from
such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the
pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere
and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has
repented--you have the authority of the Divine Teacher for it--is
your fellow-creature, purified and ennobled. A joy among the angels of
heaven--oh, my brothers and sisters of the earth, have I not laid my
hand on a fit companion for You?
There was a moment of silence in the summer-house. The cheerful tumult
of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the
hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet
against the ball. Inside, nothing but a woman forcing back the bitter
tears of sorrow and shame--and a man who was tired of her.
She roused herself. She was her mother’s daughter; and she had a
spark of her mother’s spirit. Her life depended on the issue of that
interview. It was useless--without father or brother to take her
part--to lose the last chance of appealing to him. She dashed away
the tears--time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman’s
existence--she dashed away the tears, and spoke to him again, more
gently than she had spoken yet.
“You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius’s place,
not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me.
You would not have come to-day, if I had not written to you to insist on
it. Is that the treatment I have deserved?”
She paused. There was no answer.
“Do you hear me?” she asked, advancing and speaking in louder tones.
He was still silent. It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt.
The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face. He
met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front. Feeling nervous about
the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden--now that he
stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself. He
was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its
case--composed enough to set that little matter right before other
matters went any farther. He took the case out of one pocket, and the
pipe out of another.
“Go on,” he said, quietly. “I hear you.”
She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow. If she had had the
strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the
summer-house.
“How dare you use me in this way?” she burst out, vehemently. “Your
conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!”