DEAD SEA APPLES
It was late October, and Chris was riding harder than ever, and on
the principle, as he told himself grimly, of "lucky in horses,
unlucky in love," was having success after success, not only as a
jockey, but a trainer, and bid fair to have a good stable of his own
before long.
Gay had gone abroad with indecent suddenness immediately after her
engagement, dragging the Professor with her, and forbidding Carlton
to accompany them, because "she wanted a little time with Frank,
since she was so soon to leave him." Yet, when at last she came
back, after three months' absence, and then only because her brother
insisted on it, Carlton was never able to get a moment alone with
her, try as he might.
The devices she had used to stave off his proposal she used with
fourfold skill to avoid being alone with him, she who had detested
society, surrounded herself at all hours with it; even when she had
to choose the decorations for the house he had taken in Norfolk
Street, she took Effie Bulteel with her; the jewels he gave her, she
never wore.
She treated her new tie as a purely nominal one, appeared careless
and fancy-free; but she meant to go through with her bargain all the
same, and a date in December had been actually fixed for the wedding,
when the Professor with his usual inconvenience, fell ill.
Gay always declared that the trouble began with his discovery of a
wonderful new microbe, that after due blazonment in the medical
press, turned out to be something quite different to what it
pretended to be, and, as she expressed it, sat up on its squirmy
tail, making insulting faces at its non-discoverer. Frank took the
matter so much to heart as to be at first hesitatingly ailing, then
with considerably less hesitation, and as it entailed no effort,
really ill for some time.
Nature was exacting her toll for his unhealthy, sedentary life, with
its late hours, and lack of exercise, and all the tenderness for
which Gay in those days had no other outlet, expended itself on him.
She was a most devoted nurse, but to Carlton it almost looked as if,
like the little boys and old Sam Weller's coach, the Professor had
done it "a-purpose," when he lingered so unconscionably long a time
over his convalescence, and the beautiful house in Norfolk Street
still lacked a mistress.
It would be a cold, practical mistress, who never gave its master a
kiss, or word of love, or welcome, and who as wife might reasonably
be expected to be still more the "woman with no nonsense about her,"
that Gay evidently nowadays aspired to be.
Some men like brilliant women, hard and bright, others prefer hearts
warm and tender. Carlton was one of these last, for, as Lossie had
divined, there was a great capacity for romantic love in the man.
Sometimes when most starved for sympathy, for appreciation where he
had the right to expect it, he remembered the hot flood of devotion,
of passion, that Lossie had poured out on him, and shivered in the
isolation to which Gay from the first had banished, and rigorously
kept him.
The heart makes its own decisions--Gay's had made hers in that
passionate cry, "Come back, for I love you, Chris," and Carlton had
thought that he knew better than her heart what was good for her, and
reaped his reward in an automaton that talked, and smiled, and
conducted itself with perfect grace and decorum, but that was not Gay.
It was the other Gay he wanted--the girl so full of life, and charm,
and sparkle--the girl who could give brave kisses, and love with the
thoroughness she put into everything that she did, the delicious
comrade, the trusty counsellor, the dear household fairy who had the
knack of creating a home wherever she might be, and that he had not
hitherto found.
Well, he would not find it now--"for without hearts, there is no
home"--and his town and country houses would be well ordered by a
capable house-mistress, cold and uninterested, when the Professor,
who seemed to be in no hurry, set her free to assume her duties as
wife.
Oddly enough, Lossie seemed the happiest of the three, and having
made her supreme appeal to Carlton, had apparently forgotten all
about it. She met him without embarrassment, was friendly without
effort--sometimes he rubbed his eyes, and thought he must have
dreamed that vivid scene with her in Gay's den; yet he found himself
thinking of it more often as time went on, and sometimes searched her
intensely blue eyes for even a trace of the memory of it. But he
found none--if Lossie, indeed, were playing a game, she played it
magnificently well.
She neither sought nor avoided him, was quite pleasant, but
profoundly indifferent, when they met at Connaught Square or
elsewhere, and, most damning proof of all that she had ceased to
value his opinion, permitted herself slight lapses in manner, and
carelessnesses in dress before him. She even yawned occasionally in
his face, treating him, as he said angrily to himself, like some
damned old woman rather than the man whom she most wished to
please--but did she?
He came to the conclusion that her outbreak had been a fit of nerves,
combined with an interested desire to share his very handsome
fortune, and that having failed, she thought no more about him, but
decided to turn her attention elsewhere, the opportunity for doing so
occurring very shortly after his own engagement.
For the unexpected had happened. Mrs. Elkins was being dressed by
her maid to go to her lawyers, there to sign a fresh will she had
made, by which she left everything to her favourite of the moment,
and away from George Conant, who had annoyed her, when in the mirror,
the woman saw the old lady's face contorted, terrible, with the most
ghastly look of fear in her eyes, and though she struggled and fought
dumbly for hours, she never spoke again.
George flew to Lossie the moment he was certain of what he had to
offer her, and she accepted him on the spot, to his intense joy,
while Gay so warmly encouraged the pair at her house, that Carlton
one day complained bitterly of the ubiquity of that "grinning idiot,"
George Conant, who certainly since his accession to fortune, was more
than ever like a Cheshire cat.
"He is an excellent match," said Gay coldly, "and what is better, he
adores Lossie--I don't see why they should not be very happy. She
will be the prettiest woman in his regiment, and have no end of a
good time."
Could this be Gay speaking--Gay who at one time had been all heart
and no head, who was now all head and no heart?
"I should have thought," he said, "that love might have some voice in
the matter. No woman, surely, could love George Conant--
"Oh," said Gay bitterly, "when a girl can't marry the man she loves,
she may just as well marry the man who loves her"--and Carlton winced.
He knew that he had taken a mean advantage of Gay, and was deeply
humiliated, not only in his honour, but his pride, for by way of
being a vain man, the simultaneous and utter indifference of both
girls, hit him hard. Lossie had only wanted him for his fortune,
going to extremest lengths to obtain it--Gay had wanted neither him
nor his money, and accepted him only in a fit of passionate anger
against Chris, of which she had instantly repented. Yet there was a
tenacity of purpose, as of love, about the man, that forbade his
throwing up the game.
As at every turn Lossie and Captain Conant seemed to cross his path,
the one all beauty and (affected) happiness, the other all grin and
possessiveness, a sombre rage, with more of heartache in it than he
imagined, seized him. For many a man only misses a slighted love
when, barred from his own hearth-fires, he turns in his extremity to
it, only to find cold ashes, and Carlton in those days felt very
chilly and lonely indeed.
Aunt Lavinia had been anything but well lately. One day, speaking to
Gay of the Professor, who, like most doctors, was very nervous about
himself, she said:
"Ah, my dear, when we are young, we only _fear_ we have complaints,
when we are old, we hope so."
Gay looked at her, startled.
"Do you find life such a grind, auntie?" she said, rather
falteringly, knowing whose fault it was that "Laddie" was riding more
recklessly than ever, and how Lavinia suffered over it, for he was
the dearest thing in the whole world to her, as perhaps _now_ she was
the dearest thing to him.
"Well, my dear," said Lavinia quaintly, "life goes on with ups and
downs, with long oases of worry, stagnation, and brief thrills of
pleasure, until one day, we suddenly awaken to find people packing up
in all directions--some have gone without our noting it, or saying
farewell, others are in too great a hurry to think of us. Then in a
panic, we decide to call together our friends of long ago, to come
and make merry with us, and half the invitations come back to us,
with 'gone away' scrawled across them. Then we rub our eyes, and
realise that our going away time is near also, and henceforth we
don't trouble much about the affairs of life, only how to get
ourselves off decently, and in order."
Gay stooped and kissed the sweet little face, but was far from
understanding _then_.
Rensslaer had been away during the autumn, hunting at Spa, then he
had been shooting grizzlies in one place, and lions in another, but
with late November, he was back again, and the first thing he did was
to persuade Gay and the fairly convalescent Professor, to come and
stay with him at Elsinore, where Frank spent his whole time in the
library, save when dragged out for a drive.
Gay was abroad all day, either hunting with Rensslaer, or about those
stables of whose inmates she never wearied, and once she found her
way alone to St. Swithin's Court, going soft-footed over the house
that was to have been hers--hers and Chris's....
It was very quaint, and old, and beautiful, and she peopled it with
happy folk, and happy voices, not all grown up. Standing in the
empty rooms, with doors hanging melancholy on their hinges, she saw
it a nest of warmth, and love, and laughter, heard the cheery voice,
the ringing tread that made the sweetest music in all the world to
her--felt with a passion of longing, Chris's arm round her shoulder,
and his hard, lean young face pressed close to hers....
She came to herself with a start, and there rushed over her the
memory of a big house in town, all swept and garnished, waiting for
her to walk in, and take possession.... She covered her eyes with
her hands as if to shut out the face of the man who would share it
with her.... strange that what held all Heaven to Lossie, should be
so hateful to herself ... for both would have regarded the world well
lost for the man they loved, yet the world, not that particular man,
was to be their portion.
The girls were better friends now than they had ever been, greatly to
the delight of Lavinia (who held a brief for unsatisfactory people),
for generous Gay had come to understand Lossie better now, discovered
how much worse her bark was than her bite.
Selfish she undoubtedly was, and in some things unprincipled, but,
like many other idle, clever women, who have no hobby to occupy their
time, no great love, no real work to sweeten their lives, she had
turned her unused energies into mischief, talked scandal, done
spiteful things, mainly for want of something better to do.
Certainly she had many things to embitter her that Gay had not, for
by her own recent experiences, Gay knew that suffering of a certain
kind does not ennoble, on the contrary, it tends to deteriorate the
character, and ruin the temper. With the ease of mind that wealth
brings, Lossie might develop into a very different woman--and
yet--and yet--now and again would come to Gay flashes of insight, in
which she seemed to see poor blundering George Conant, a mere
hopeless pawn in the game that Lossie was playing with such
consummate audacity and skill.