MR. ELY DEPARTS
Mr. Ely returned to town on the following morning, and Miss Truscott
was an engaged young woman. The interval between the moment of her
becoming engaged and the departure of the gentleman was not--we are
rather at a loss for the proper word to use--let us put it, was not
exactly so pleasant as it might have been.
Although the man and the maid had plighted troth they certainly did
not seem like lovers; they scarcely even seemed to be friends. The
position seemed to be a little strained. Mr. Ely noticed this as the
day wore on. He resented it.
In the garden after dinner he relieved his mind. The lady was seated,
the admirable Pompey on her knee, so engaged in reading as to appear
wholly oblivious that the gentleman was in her neighbourhood. For some
time Mr. Ely fidgeted about in silence. The lady did not appear even
to notice that. At last he could keep still no longer.
"You seem very fond of reading?"
"I am." The lady did not even take her eyes off her book to answer
him, but read tranquilly on.
"I hope I'm not in your way."
"Not at all"; which was true enough. He might have been miles away for
all the notice the lady appeared to take of him.
"One has to come into the country to learn manners."
"One has to come into the country to do what?"
As if conscious that he was skating on thin ice, Mr. Ely endeavoured
to retrace his steps.
"Considering that only this morning you promised to be my wife, I
think that you might have something to say."
Partially closing the book, but keeping one slender finger within it
to mark the place, the lady condescended to look up.
"Why should you think that?"
"I believe it is usual for persons in our situation to have something
to say to each other, but I don't know, I'm sure."
The lady entirely closed her book and placed it on a little table at
her side. "What shall we talk about?"
The gentleman was still. Under such circumstances the most gifted
persons might have found it difficult to commence a conversation.
"Are you interested in questions of millinery?"
"In questions of millinery!"
"Or do you take a wider range, and take a living interest in the
burning questions of the progress of revolution and the advance of
man?"
Mr. Ely felt clear in his own mind that the lady was chaffing him, but
he did not quite see his way to tell her so.
"I'm fond of common sense."
"Ah, but common sense is a term which conveys such different meanings.
I suppose, that, in its strictest definition, common sense is the
highest, rarest sense of all. I suppose that you use the term in a
different way."
This was exasperating. Mr. Ely felt it was.
"I suppose you mean that I'm a fool."
"There again--who shall define folly? The noblest spirits of them all
have been by the world called fools."
Miss Truscott gazed before her with a rapt intensity of vision, as
though she saw the noble spirits referred to standing in the glow of
the western sky.
"I must say you have nice ideas of sociability."
"I have had my ideas at times. I have dreamed of a social intercourse
which should be perfect sympathy. But they were but dreams."
Mr. Ely held his peace. This sort of thing was not at all his idea of
conversation. It is within the range of possibility to suspect that
his idea of perfect conversation was perfect shop--an eternal
reiteration of the ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs of stocks and
shares. However that might be, it came to pass that neither of these
two people went in a loverlike frame of mind to bed. But this acted
upon each of them in different ways.
For instance, it was hours after Miss Truscott had retired to her
chamber before the young lady placed herself between the sheets. For a
long time she sat before the open window, looking out upon the
star-lit sky. Then she began restlessly pacing to and fro. All her
tranquillity seemed gone.
"I have been ill-mannered--and a fool!"
And again there was that hysteric interlacing of her hands which
seemed to be a familiar trick of hers when her mind was much
disturbed.
"I have made the greatest mistake of all. I have promised myself to a
man I--loathe."
She shuddered when she arrived at that emphatic word.
"A man with whom I have not one single thing in common; a man who
understands a woman as much as--less than Pompey does. I believe that
selfish Pompey cares for me much more. A man whose whole soul is bound
up in playing conjuring tricks with stocks and shares. And where are
all my dreams of love? Oh! they have flown away!"
Then she threw herself upon the bed and cried.
"Oh, Willy! Willy! why have you been false? If you had been only true!
I believe that I am so weak a thing that if you should call to me
to-morrow, I would come."
After she had had enough of crying--which was only after a very
considerable period had elapsed--she got up and dried her eyes--those
big eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him Mr. Ely could not
understand!
"What does it matter? I suppose that existence is a dead level of
monotony. If even for a moment you gain the heights, you are sure to
fall, and your state is all the worse because you have seen that there
are better things above."
This was the lady's point of view. The gentleman's was of quite
another kind. As he had said, sentiment was not at all his line. When
he reached his room, he wasted no time getting into bed. While he
performed his rapid toilet he considered the situation in his own
peculiar way.
"That's the most impudent girl I ever met."
This he told himself as he took off his coat.
"I like her all the better for it, too."
Here he removed his vest.
"She doesn't care for me a snap--not one single rap. I hate your
spoony kind of girl, the sort that goes pawing a man about. If she
begins by pawing you she'll be pawing another fellow soon. Oh! I've
seen a bit of it, I have!"
Here he removed his collar and tie.
"What I want's a woman who can cut a dash--not the rag-bag sort, all
flounces and fluster--but a high-toned dash, you know. The sort of
woman that can make all the other women want to have her life; who can
sit with two hundred other women in a room and make 'em all feel that
she doesn't know that there's another person there. By Jove! she'd do
it, too!"
Mr. Ely laughed. But perhaps--as he was a sort of man who never
laughed, in whom the bump of humour was entirely wanting--it would be
more correct to describe the sound he made as a clearing of the
throat. At this point he was engaged in details of the toilet into
which it would be unwise to enter. But we really cannot refrain from
mentioning what a very little man he looked in his shirt. Quite
different to the Mr. Ely of the white waistcoat and frockcoat.
The next morning he took his departure. He had been under the painful
necessity of spending one day away from town; he could not possibly
survive through two. In fact he tore himself away by the very earliest
train--in his habits he was an early little man--not with reluctance
but delight: by so early a train, indeed, that he had left long before
his lady-love came down. Mrs. Clive did the honours and sped the
parting guest. She, poor lady, was not used to quite such early hours
and felt a little out of sorts, but she did her best.
"Shall I give dear Lily a message when you are gone?"
Mr. Ely was swallowing ham and eggs as though he were engaged in a
match against time. A healthy appetite for breakfast was one of his
strong points.
"Tell her that dog of hers is ever so much too fat."
Pompey, who was at that moment reclining on a cushion on the rug, was
perhaps a trifle stout--say about as broad as he was long. Still, Mrs.
Clive did not like the observation all the same.
"Pompey is not Lily's dog, but mine."
"Ah! then if I were you, I'd starve the beggar for a week."
Mrs. Clive bridled. If she had a tender point it was her dog.
"I can assure you, Mr. Ely, that the greatest care is taken in the
selection of dear Pompey's food."
"That's where it is, you take too much. Shut him in the stable, with a
Spratt's biscuit to keep him company."
"A Spratt's biscuit!--Pompey would sooner die!"
"It wouldn't be a bad thing for him if he did. By the look of him he
can't find much fun in living--it's all that he can do to breathe. It
seems to me every woman must have some beast for a pet. An aunt of
mine has got a cat. Her cat ought to meet your dog. They'd both of
them be thinner before they went away."
It is not surprising that Mr. Ely did not leave an altogether pleasant
impression when he had gone. That last allusion to his aunt's cat
rankled in the old lady's mind.
"A cat! My precious Pompey!" She raised the apoplectic creature in her
arms; "when you have such an objection to a cat! It is dreadful to
think of such a thing, even when it is spoken only in jest."
But Mr. Ely had not spoken in jest. He was not a jesting kind of man.
When Miss Truscott made her appearance she asked no questions about
her lover. If he had sent a message, or if he indeed had gone, she
showed no curiosity upon these points at all. She seemed in a dreamy
frame of mind, as if her thoughts were not of things of life but of
things of air. She dawdled over the breakfast-table, eating nothing
all the while. And when she had dismissed the meal she dawdled in an
easy chair. Such behaviour was unusual for her, for she was not a
dawdling kind of girl.