THE SUITOR AND THE SUED
Miss Jane Chartres was a most emphatic talker, because she
believed everything she said. Not that she always knew beforehand
that what she might be going to say was true; but as soon as she
found herself saying anything she believed it firmly from the
moment of its announcement. If free-thinking people ever ventured
to express a doubt that she might have been misinformed, she gave
them her authorities. As the number of witnesses to Miss Jane's
word was much too great to admit of their being named separately,
she quoted them in the lump, and would silence at once the loudest
infidel with a superemphatic, 'Everybody says so,' or 'Everybody
does it.'
Miss Jane, being so well acquainted with the sayings and doings of
everybody, had been forced to the belief, without knowing French,
and with the inconsistency of genius, that everybody was a fool.
She did not publish this dogma from the house-tops, but she did
most sincerely believe it. About the time that she saw her way
clearly to believe in the foolishness of everybody, another faith
began to dawn upon her--a faith that she was the only individual
in the world who was not a fool. It should hardly be called a
faith either: for it never assumed the brightness and consistency
of belief, but remained in an uncertain, nebulous condition,
perhaps because she never really set herself to examine into the
truth of the matter, allowing a sort of flickering halo of
infallibility to play about the picture of herself which she
beheld in her own mind.
Although she believed that it behoved everybody else, male and
female, being fools, to marry, she had come to the conclusion that
it behoved her, being in a measure a wise woman, to remain single.
This opinion, like all her other opinions--her constant opinions,
that is--had been of gradual growth. It was generally supposed
that it had fairly taken root about her thirtieth year, when a
certain lawyer, who had been a great friend presumably of her
brother, discontinued his visits to Snell House, and took to wife
the wealthy widow of a game-dealer. It was understood that time
had made four prior attempts with the help of a mill-owner, a
wealthy farmer, a minister, and a retired colonel, to dibble this
opinion with regard to herself and marriage into the soil of Miss
Jane's mind. On the marriage of the lawyer with the game-dealer's
widow, time made a furious stab with his persevering instrument,
and the hardy opinion took a strong hold, and grew, and
flourished, and put forth a flower. The opinion was that she ought
not to marry; the flower, that she was made for a higher end than
to be the wife of any man. The fragrance of this flower was
grateful to her. However, she never forgot that it was only the
blossom of an opinion, liable to be uprooted, and not the
sculptured ornament of an impossible-to-be-disestablished faith.
At the time when our story begins--the middle of July, 1880--Miss
Jane had been absolute mistress of Snell House for three months,
her brother William, a bachelor, with whom she had lived for a
number of years, having died suddenly in the spring. A stroke of
apoplexy had overtaken him while walking alone, as his habit was,
on the shore road. His brother, Henry Chartres, was in India at
the time, having gone out when a young man to push his fortune.
Within five years he had secured by his own energy, and with some
monetary help from his brother, a partnership in a lucrative
business. He then married a lady of some means, who brought him
only one child, a daughter, called Muriel, after her mother. As is
the custom, the girl was brought to the home-country to be
educated, her father taking a six months' holiday for the purpose
of seeing her safely installed in his brother's house, where she
was to remain for some time, in order to become acclimatised,
before going to her first boarding-school, and also that she might
not feel so sorely her separation from her father and mother, as
she would have done had she gone at once among strangers. Shortly
after the return of Henry Chartres to India his wife died. He at
once determined to give up business and return to Scotland, where
the society of his daughter and relatives would console him for
the loss of his wife. But a crisis in the affairs of the Calcutta
house of which he was a principal kept him in India. His foresight
and resource were absolutely necessary for the weathering of the
storm; and he found the relief, which he had been about to seek in
Scotland, in an unreserved devotion to business. When he had
re-established the credit of his firm more securely than ever, it
became apparent that, were he to retire, the consequences might be
disastrous for his partners, as his name had come to be synonymous
with stability. It was, therefore, not until ten years after the
death of his wife that he felt himself at liberty to give up
business. The news of his brother's death arrived just as he had
begun to arrange his affairs. In reply to a telegram from his
sister, he bade her expect him in July; and announced in his first
letter that he would manage to reach Scotland about the middle of
the month.
The lands of Snell consist of a bit of moor and a park. They had
been bought in the beginning of last century by the first notable
member of the west country Chartreses, a branch of an old
Perthshire family. Miss Jane Chartres refused altogether to admit
that she knew anything of the derivation of her ancestor's wealth;
and we, therefore, think it needless to refer further to the
subject. The wall which bounded Snell Park on the north stood
about fifty yards from the edge of a moderately high cliff
overlooking the Firth of Clyde. The top of this wall was four feet
from the ground within the park, and a little over six feet above
the road without. The road was private, and scarcely better than a
foot-path.
For three months, then, Miss Jane Chartres, whose character has
been indicated above, whose age is left to the reader's charity,
had exercised despotic power over Snell House, moor, park, and
north wall. But liberties had been taken with that wall, and with
an old tree that grew against it. The reader shall hear the
history of these dreadful doings from Miss Jane's own lips. She
was there, beside the tree, on the afternoon of July 15; and, with
her, her friend Mr. Alec Dempster, a very wealthy youth of thirty,
with no past--the brother of Emily Dempster, Miss Jane's one bosom
friend, whose place in her affections, vacant by death, he
supplied in a sort of interim capacity as well as a man with no
past, and no possibility of ever having one, could be expected to
do.
'Well, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane, 'aren't you dying with
wonder to know why I've brought you here?'
'Dying?' said Mr. Dempster, whose voice was a reminiscence of some
mechanical sound, one couldn't exactly say which; 'dying is such a
strong expression that it almost--eh--ah--expresses the degree of
my wonder.'
Mr. Dempster moved his head spirally, slowly and regularly from
the top to the bottom of something, as he spoke. That was the
great peculiarity of Mr. Dempster: he was like something.
Everything about him, from his boots to his manners, bore
indefinable resemblances to other things; but the moment a simile
seemed securely anchored in some characteristic of his appearance
or conduct the characteristic would undulate into something so
incongruous with the simile that the latter was like a pair of
spectacles on a lynx. One thing only he insisted on reproducing
with some degree of regularity of form: the spiral wriggle of his
head--extending occasionally into his body--which always
accompanied the effort to speak, and sometimes occurred alone.
'Read that,' said Miss Jane, handing Mr. Dempster a letter.
Mr. Dempster, mildly astonished and looking like something very
foolish, did as he was directed.
'MY DARLING FRANK,--Meet me to-morrow at five, at the low wall.
It's half-past ten, and I am very sleepy. I've been reading
history to aunt since eight. I am beginning to dream already,
before I am asleep. It's a happy dream--about you! It will become
bright and plain when I get to sleep. Good-night,
sweetheart.--Your own MURIEL.'
'What do you think of that?' snapped Miss Jane; and Mr. Dempster
looked in all directions hurriedly, as if a whip had been cracked
about his ears.
'It's--it's very frank,' he said.
'Very,' went on Miss Jane. 'Look at that.'
She pointed to the bole of the huge elm beneath whose boughs they
were standing, indicating a little space denuded of the ivy which
covered the rest of the trunk, and extended along the four great
arms, and up among the smaller branches of the tree.
Mr. Dempster bored his nose into the uncovered bark, studied it
from several points of view, bending and curvetting and bridling
with as much ado as if he had been an antiquary in presence of a
newly-discovered inscription.
'"M C, F H,"' he said at length; 'inside a heart--very pretty
and--ah--suggestive; but--commonplace.'
Mr. Dempster's pauses, however arbitrary, were impressive.
'Do you know whose these initials are?' Miss Jane asked.
'I haven't the remotest idea.'
'"M C," Muriel Chartres; "F H," Frank Hay.'
'Ah!'
Dempster leant against an arm of the tree and regarded Miss Jane
blankly. He had arrived from Edinburgh that day at her summons, to
meet Mr. Chartres, who was expected in the afternoon, and to
prosecute his suit for the hand of Muriel. This was a dash of cold
water right in his face. He hadn't a word to say, and scarcely any
breath to say one.
'You know Mr. Hay,' Miss Jane said. 'You remember, William used to
patronise him.'
'The foundling! Why, the fellow hasn't a penny!' exclaimed
Dempster.
'Ah, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane more sweetly than her wont,
'presumption is poverty's next door neighbour, wealth and modesty
often go hand in hand.'
Dempster at once applied this aphoristic compliment to himself, as
he was intended to do; but he horrified Miss Jane by bowing
emphatically in acknowledgment, and he outraged her further by
endeavouring to pay her back in kind:
'A thorough acquaintance with the world generally accompanies the
single life.'
That was his period, and he imagined he had acquitted himself
fairly well. But dissatisfaction lowered in Miss Jane's brow. He
proceeded with stammering haste to mend matters:
'Especially the single female--eh--ah----'
An angry flush drew him up. Still, he went at it again headlong,
smiling too, and in as suave a tone as he could command:
'Wisdom is an old maid--I mean--Minerva was unmarried.'
Everybody knows people like Mr. Dempster. We are accustomed to
their shifting similitudes, their inability to express themselves,
their pretensions, and their good nature. In fact, we do not
regard them--we do not recognise that they are peculiar; and when
we see one of them singled out and reproduced--on the stage, for
example--however faithfully, we call it caricature. Miss Jane had
a very narrow circle of acquaintances. The Chartreses, indeed,
were all proud originals. For several generations they had mingled
little in society, preferring to retain their angularities of
character in all the ruggedness of nature, rather than submit to
the painful process of grinding on the social wheel, by which
jagged, dull-veined flints are smoothed and polished. Miss Jane
could not tolerate ordinary people. Dempster was the only
commonplace character in whom she had any interest. His visits to
Snell House had been hitherto few and short, and she had never got
accustomed to his genial stupidity. Ineptitude with Miss Jane was
an almost unpardonable offence. She remembered, however, in the
confusion to which he had reduced her, much necessity in the past
for self-denial and longsuffering on his account, and, having a
real regard for him, she calmed her troubled soul, saying to
herself, 'He means well.' And then aloud:
'Now, Mr. Dempster, this is the low wall Muriel speaks of. This
letter I found here.'
She pushed aside some large ivy leaves in one of the forks of the
elm, and deposited the letter in a deep, natural crevice--the
bottom of which was quite invisible, although easily reached by
the hand.
'How did you know to search there?' asked Dempster.
'Because I knew Muriel was in love.'
'Did she tell you?'
'No, no; this was the way of it.'
Miss Jane was in her element. She leant against the bole of the
tree and folded her arms across her belt.
'I observed that she had acquired a habit of going about with her
eyebrows absurdly elevated, with a languishing look in her eyes,
and with her lips just touching each other; but evidently ready at
a moment's notice to open and sigh, or to compress and kiss. I
knew very well what these signs meant in a girl of her age. Just
raise your eyebrows, Mr. Dempster.'
Mr. Dempster raised his eyebrows.
'No, no! not to the extent of expressing astonishment, but in this
way. See.'
Miss Jane suited the action to the word.
'When you raise your eyebrows that way your eyes can't help a
languishing expression. Then this is the way her mouth was.'
Miss Jane made a _moue_.
'If you don't care to do it before me, do it when you are alone,
and you will find that raising your eyebrows and looking at
nothing, and preparing the lips to open, will produce in you a
relaxed, sentimental, self-pitying kind of feeling, which is
pretty like what romantic girls feel when they are in love. Of
course, in Muriel's case it was the feeling which produced the
expression, and not the expression the feeling; but I know very
well that an assumption of the expression can produce the feeling,
and that it always conveys the idea of that feeling to those who
see it. It's the same with all feelings.'
The whole man Dempster had listened to this exposition, and burst
out earnestly, 'Miss Chartres, your experience amazes me! Your
observation is that of a keen--eh--ah--observer; and your
discernment is truly marvellous!'
He always tried to talk in newspaper paragraphs, but his efforts
were seldom attended with the success they merited.
Miss Jane shrugged her shoulders and continued: 'My suspicions
were confirmed yesterday. I followed her here and secured this
letter. I thought it right that you, as a suitor for Muriel's
hand, favoured by me, and doubtless to be favoured by her father,
should be informed of the matter.'
'You overpower me with kindness,' blurted Dempster. 'And you'll
stand by me, Miss Chartres? You'll be my go-between--I mean my
bulwark, my bottle-holder?' He was full of imagery, but he
qualified it, saying plaintively: 'I can't express myself lucidly
and vividly, like you; but everybody knows I mean well.'
'I think we understand each other, Mr. Dempster,' said Miss Jane,
looking at her watch. 'A quarter to five. We'd better go. Muriel
will be here immediately. Of course I haven't told her that I have
discovered this clandestine correspondence. I shall put the matter
into her father's hands this very day, and leave him to deal with
her.'
Dempster assented to this as a wise proceeding. 'It would hardly
do to watch the meeting here, I suppose--that is, if there is a
meeting,' he said, as they left the wall.
'To play the spy, Mr. Dempster! No, not that.'
The ivy-clad elm in which Miss Jane had found Muriel's letter, and
in which she now left it forgetfully, was believed by the
school-boys to mark the burial-place of a Roman general. It
certainly looked as if it might be fourteen hundred years old, or
even as old as the Christian era. It was a worthy peer of the
Mongewell, Chipstead, and Spratborough elms, by the hoary
roughness of its bark, where that could be seen, by its portly
waist, and wide-spread arms, drooping gracefully to the ground, by
its magnificent cone of foliage, and its fathomless depth of
green. How pleasant Muriel found it to stand under, to lean
against, to delight her eyes with its shapeliness, and bathe her
sight in its ocean of colour! And then, with all its old-world
dignity, how tender it was! How safe in its arms she felt! She
could think and dream there like Nature herself, conscious and
glad that the elm knew all about it. When she forced her way among
the drooping boughs up to the mighty bole, she was sure that the
tree thrilled with happiness, and she heard it
murmuring--murmuring under its spicy breath. No wonder she made it
her trysting-tree!
As soon as Miss Jane and Dempster returned to the house, Muriel,
who had been lying on the lawn pretending to read a newspaper,
arose, and, still apparently engrossed by the news, took a
circuitous route to the elm. When she got beyond the range of
prying eyes, the deceptive newspaper was folded, and, carrying it
in one hand behind her, and in the other swinging by the strings
her garden-hat, she sped along, fearful lest Frank should have to
wait. Half over the wall she stretched herself, and looked up and
down the road. She was first. She leant against the tree and gazed
before her. She felt perfectly happy. He was sure to come; and
that was the horizon--the end of the world. There was nothing
beyond the little quarter of an hour that was dawning like a new
era. She would hardly be so happy when he, the sun of it, came to
kiss her.
Now she looked out through the screen of leaves, softening the
light upon their scabrous cheeks, and showering it like dew from
their downy breasts, and saw, latticed by the wiry, corky branches
and bright brown callow twigs, the violet Firth, smooth, velvety,
the pasture of white gulls, whose cries come faintly up; glimpses
of the opposite shore, with the sparkling houses of the summer
towns; the lordly sweep of the entrance to Loch Long; the purple
misty crowns of the Cobbler and Ben Donich; and the sky; and a
shadow--
'Frank!'
'How glad I am to find you here!' he said. 'I was foolish enough
to fear you mightn't come.'
'Why did you doubt? I never missed meeting you yet.'
'Then you expected me! I was sure at the bottom of my heart that
you would be here.'
'Did I expect you! What are you thinking of? There's something the
matter. How could you possibly be afraid that I mightn't come
after I had asked you to meet me?'
'But you didn't ask me.'
'Oh! Did you not get my message?'
'No; and I visited our letter-box last night and this morning.'
She tore her arm from his, and plunged her hand into the fork of
the tree. A shock passed through her as she felt her letter. She
knew in a moment it had been violated. The thought that another
than he for whom it was intended had read it thrilled her with an
exquisite pang. Her whole face and neck flushed crimson. She drew
out the paper, crushed it small, and thrust it into her pocket.
'The mean, shameful spy!' she hissed.
Youth has no mercy in a case of this kind.
'See,' she continued, panting, 'I put it here this morning at
eight. It was gone at ten. Now it is here again. The traitor!'
'Is it a man?' asked Frank.
'No! It's----'
She had grown pale, and she blushed again. She looked at him with
flickering eyelids. The foolish fellow's pride in Muriel at that
moment made him heartsick; the lump was in his throat, and, had he
been unobserved, the moisture which stood in his eyes would have
overflowed. Even in the first wild anger at betrayal she would not
betray again. He placed his arm about her and she sobbed; one sob,
and then one tear out of each eye; and with that she mastered
herself.
'Frank,' she said, as if the discovery had not been made, 'you
know my father will be here to-day. He may have come while I've
been talking to you. Will you speak to him to-night? I don't want
to have a secret from him. Will you? You needn't be frightened. I
haven't seen him since I was nine; but I know that he's like you,
gentle and manly--just a gentleman. Make up your mind now--quick,
quick, quick! And let me away, or I'll be late for dinner.'
And so it was arranged that they should see each other at the
low-walk again at eight that evening, lest there should be any
reason why Frank might not speak at once to Mr. Chartres.