“I saw her too.
Yes, but you must not love her.
I will not, as you do; to worship her,
As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess;
I love her as a woman.”
A decent-looking woman opened the door of the house in Hercules
Buildings, and ushered Mr. Dalbrook up two flights of stairs to the
small back-room in which Mercy Porter had lived her lonely life from
year’s end to year’s end. The tasteful arrangement of that humble
chamber struck Theodore at the first glance. He had seen such rooms
at Cambridge, where an undergraduate of small means had striven to
work wonders with a few shabby old sticks that had done duty for
half-a-dozen other undergraduates, and which had been but of poorest
quality when they issued, new and sticky with cheap varnish, from the
emporium of a local upholsterer.
Mercy was very pale, and although she received her visitor with
outward calmness, he could see that she had not yet recovered from
yesterday’s agitation.
“What induced you to take so much trouble to betray me, Mr.
Dalbrook?” she asked.
“Betray is a very hard word, Miss Porter.”
“You don’t suppose that I believed yesterday’s meeting was
accidental? You took the trouble to bring Lady Cheriton across my
path in order to satisfy your curiosity about my identity. Was that
generous?”
“God knows that it was meant in your best interests. I knew that
Lady Cheriton was your true and loyal friend—that she had more of
the mother’s instinct than your real mother, and that no pain could
possibly come to you from any meeting with her. And then I had a very
serious reason for bringing you together. It was absolutely necessary
for me to make sure of your identity.”
“Why necessary? What can it matter to you who I am?”
“Everything. I am the bearer of a very generous offer from Lord
Cheriton—and it was essential that I should make that offer to the
right person.”
Mercy’s face underwent a startling change at the sound of Lord
Cheriton’s name. She had been standing by the window in a listless
attitude, just where she had risen to receive her visitor. She
drew herself suddenly to her fullest height, and looked at him with
flushed cheeks and kindling eyes.
“I will accept no generosity from Lord Cheriton,” she said. “I want
nothing from him except to be let alone. I want nothing from Lady
Cheriton except her sympathy, and I would rather have even that at a
distance. You have done the greatest harm you could do me in bringing
me face to face with my old life.”
“Believe me I had but one feeling, anxiety for your happiness.”
“What is my happiness to you?” she retorted, almost fiercely. “You
are playing at philanthropy. You can do me no good—you may do me
much evil. You see me contented with my life—accustomed to its
hardships—happy in the possession of one true friend. Why come to me
with officious offers of favours which I have never sought?”
“You are ungenerous, and unjust. From the first hour of our
acquaintance I saw that you were of a different clay to that of
the women among whom I found you—different by education, instinct,
associations, family history. How could I help being interested in
one who stood thus apart? How could I help wanting to know more of so
exceptional a life?”
“Yes, you were interested, as you might have been in any other
wreck—in any derelict vessel stranded on a lonely shore, battered,
broken, empty, rudderless, picturesque in ruin. It was a morbid
interest, an interest in human misery.”
He stated his commission plainly and briefly. He told her that it
was Lord Cheriton’s earnest wish to provide for her future life—that
he was ready, and even anxious, to settle a sum of money which
would ensure her a comfortable income for the rest of her days. He
urged upon her the consideration of the new happiness, and larger
opportunities of helping others, which this competence would afford
her; but she cut him short with an impatient movement of her head.
“Upon what ground does he base his generous offer?” she asked coldly.
“Upon the ground of his interest in your mother and yourself—an
interest which it is only natural for him to feel in one who was
brought up on his estate, and whose father was his friend. It may be
also that he feels himself in some wise to blame for the great sorrow
of your life.”
“Tell him that I appreciate his noble contempt for money, his
readiness to shed the sunshine of his prosperity upon so remote an
outcast as myself; but tell him also that I would rather starve to
death, slowly in this room, than I would accept the price of a loaf
of bread from his hands. Do not hesitate to tell him this, in the
plainest form of speech. It is only right that he should know the
exact measure of my feelings towards him.”
After this Theodore could only bow to her decision and leave her.
“Lord Cheriton is my cousin, and a man whom I have every reason to
regard with affection and respect,” he began.
She interrupted him sharply.
“He has never denied the cousinship, never treated you as the dirt
under his feet—never looked down upon you from the altitude of his
grandeur, with insufferable patronage——”
“Never. He has been most unaffectedly my friend, ever since I can
remember.”
“Then you are right to think well of him—but you must let me have
my opinion in peace, even although you are of his blood and I
am——nothing to him. Good-bye. Forgive me if I have been ungracious
and ungrateful. I have no doubt you meant well by me—only I would
so much rather be let alone. It did me no good to see Lady Cheriton
yesterday. My heart was tortured by the memories her face recalled.”
She gave him her hand, the thin white hand, with taper fingers worn
by constant work. It was a very pretty hand, and it lay in his strong
grasp to-day for the first time, so reserved had been her former
greetings and farewells. He looked at the delicate hand for a moment
or two before he let it go, and from the hand upwards to the fair,
finely-cut face, and the large, dark grey eyes. That look of his
startled her, the hollow cheeks flushed, and the eyelids fell beneath
his steady gaze.
“Good-bye, Mercy,” he said, gently, “let me call you Mercy, for the
sake of the link between us—the link of common recollections, and the
sad secrets of the past.”
“Call me what you like. It is not very probable we shall meet often.”
“You are very stubborn, cruel to yourself, and more cruel to those
who want to help you. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” she echoed, almost in a whisper.
He went out into the shabby street haunted by those sad uplifted
eyes, and the hollow cheeks faintly flushed with delicate bloom. How
lovely she must have been in her dawning womanhood, and how closely
she must have kept at home in the cottage by the west gate, seeing
that he who had been so frequent a guest at Cheriton had never once
met her there!
He was not satisfied to submit to this total failure of his mission
without one further effort. He went from Hercules Buildings to
Wedgewood Street, and saw his admirable Sarah Newton, into whose
attentive ear he poured the story of Mercy’s obstinacy.
“She is a strange girl—a girl who could live in closest friendship
with me all this time, and never tell me the secret of her past
life,” said Miss Newton thoughtfully. “Why she should be so perverse
in her refusal of Lord Cheriton’s offer I can’t imagine—but you may
depend she has a reason.”
* * * * *
Theodore escorted Lady Cheriton back to Dorsetshire by the afternoon
train, but they parted company at Wareham Station, he going on to
Dorchester, where his sisters received him with some wonderment at
his restlessness.
“It is rather a farce for you and Mr. Ramsay to make engagements
which you never intend to keep,” said Sophia peevishly; and it
was thereupon expounded to him that he and his friend had pledged
themselves to be present at a certain tennis party upon the previous
afternoon.
“I’m very sorry we both forgot all about it,” he apologized, “but I
don’t suppose we were missed.”
“I don’t suppose you would have been,” answered his sister sulkily,
“if there had been half a dozen decent young men at the party; but
as Harrington preferred the office to our society or our friends,
and as there were only three curates and one banker’s clerk at Mrs.
Hazledean’s, you and Mr. Ramsay would at least have been _something_.”
“It is hardly worth any man’s while to endure an afternoon’s
boredom—to fetch and carry teacups in a sweltering sun, and play
tennis upon an unlevel lawn, if he is only to count for _something_,
a mere make-weight.”
“Oh, you young men give yourselves such abominable airs nowadays,”
retorted Sophy, with a manner which implied that the young men of
former generations had been modesty incarnate. “As for your friend,
he has made a mere convenience of this house.”
“As how, Sophy?”
“I don’t think the fact requires explanation. First he goes to the
Priory, and then to Cheriton, and then he is off to London, and then
he is to be back on Saturday in order to lunch at the Priory on
Sunday. If that is not making an hotel of your father’s house I don’t
know what is.”
“Perhaps I have been too unceremonious, forgetting that I no longer
live here, that it behoves me now, perhaps, to act in all things as
a visitor. It was I who made the engagements, Sophy. You must not be
angry with Ramsay.”
“I am not angry. It cannot matter to me how Mr. Ramsay treats this
house. No doubt he thinks himself a great deal too clever for our
society, although we are not _quite_ so feather-headed as most girls.
He finds metal more attractive at the Priory.”
“What do you mean, Sophy?”
“That he is over head and ears in love with Juanita. It does not need
a very penetrating person to discover that.”
“What nonsense! Why, he has not seen her above three times.”
“Quite enough for a young man of his vehement character.”
“What can have put such an idea into your head?”
“His way of talking about her—the expression of his face when he
pronounces her name—the questions he asked me about her, showing the
keenest interest in even the silliest details. What kind of a girl
was she before she married, and how long had she known Sir Godfrey
before they were engaged, and had their love been a grand passion
full of romance and poetry, or only a humdrum kind of affection
encouraged by their mutual relations? Idiotic questions of that kind
could only be asked by a man who was in love. And then how eagerly he
snapped at your suggestion that he should go with you to the Priory
next Sunday.”
“It may be as you think,” Theodore answered gravely. “I know his
fervid temperament about most things; but I did not think he was the
kind of man to fall in love—upon such very slight provocation.”
“She may have given more encouragement than you suppose,” said Sophy.
“He is the kind of man that a frivolous, half-educated girl would
think attractive. _She_ would never find out the want of depth under
that arrogant, self-assured manner. However, she has asked Janet and
me for next Sunday, and I shall soon see how the land lies. You were
always unobservant.”
Theodore did not try to vindicate his character as an observer,
albeit he knew no look or tone of his cousin’s was likely to escape
him; that even sharp-eyed malevolence could never watch her more
closely than love would watch out of his eyes.
Yes; it was not unlikely that Cuthbert admired her too much for his
own peace. He recalled words which had passed unnoticed when they
were together. Poor Cuthbert! He felt he had done wrong in exposing
his friend to such an ordeal. Who could know her and not love her?