“Surely,” I said, “you don’t mean to infer that when Sir Percival
spoke to you yesterday he speculated on such a result as you have just
mentioned?”
Her frank, fearless face answered for her before she spoke.
“Do you think I would remain an instant in the company of any man whom
I suspected of such baseness as that?” she asked angrily.
I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out on me in that way. We
see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession.
“In that case,” I said, “excuse me if I tell you, in our legal phrase,
that you are travelling out of the record. Whatever the consequences
may be, Sir Percival has a right to expect that your sister should
carefully consider her engagement from every reasonable point of
view before she claims her release from it. If that unlucky letter
has prejudiced her against him, go at once, and tell her that he has
cleared himself in your eyes and in mine. What objection can she urge
against him after that? What excuse can she possibly have for changing
her mind about a man whom she had virtually accepted for her husband
more than two years ago?”
“In the eyes of law and reason, Mr. Gilmore, no excuse, I daresay. If
she still hesitates, and if I still hesitate, you must attribute our
strange conduct, if you like, to caprice in both cases, and we must
bear the imputation as well as we can.”
With those words she suddenly rose and left me. When a sensible woman
has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer,
it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she
has something to conceal. I returned to the perusal of the newspaper,
strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe and Miss Fairlie had a secret
between them which they were keeping from Sir Percival, and keeping
from me. I thought this hard on both of us, especially on Sir Percival.
My doubts—or to speak more correctly, my convictions—were confirmed
by Miss Halcombe’s language and manner when I saw her again later in
the day. She was suspiciously brief and reserved in telling me the
result of her interview with her sister. Miss Fairlie, it appeared,
had listened quietly while the affair of the letter was placed before
her in the right point of view, but when Miss Halcombe next proceeded
to say that the object of Sir Percival’s visit at Limmeridge was to
prevail on her to let a day be fixed for the marriage she checked all
further reference to the subject by begging for time. If Sir Percival
would consent to spare her for the present, she would undertake to give
him his final answer before the end of the year. She pleaded for this
delay with such anxiety and agitation, that Miss Halcombe had promised
to use her influence, if necessary, to obtain it, and there, at Miss
Fairlie’s earnest entreaty, all further discussion of the marriage
question had ended.
The purely temporary arrangement thus proposed might have been
convenient enough to the young lady, but it proved somewhat
embarrassing to the writer of these lines. That morning’s post had
brought a letter from my partner, which obliged me to return to town
the next day by the afternoon train. It was extremely probable that I
should find no second opportunity of presenting myself at Limmeridge
House during the remainder of the year. In that case, supposing Miss
Fairlie ultimately decided on holding to her engagement, my necessary
personal communication with her, before I drew her settlement, would
become something like a downright impossibility, and we should be
obliged to commit to writing questions which ought always to be
discussed on both sides by word of mouth. I said nothing about this
difficulty until Sir Percival had been consulted on the subject of the
desired delay. He was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the request
immediately. When Miss Halcombe informed me of this I told her that
I must absolutely speak to her sister before I left Limmeridge, and
it was, therefore, arranged that I should see Miss Fairlie in her own
sitting-room the next morning. She did not come down to dinner, or join
us in the evening. Indisposition was the excuse, and I thought Sir
Percival looked, as well he might, a little annoyed when he heard of it.
The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, I went up to Miss
Fairlie’s sitting-room. The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and came
forward to welcome me so readily and prettily, that the resolution to
lecture her on her caprice and indecision, which I had been forming
all the way upstairs, failed me on the spot. I led her back to the
chair from which she had risen, and placed myself opposite to her. Her
cross-grained pet greyhound was in the room, and I fully expected a
barking and snapping reception. Strange to say, the whimsical little
brute falsified my expectations by jumping into my lap and poking its
sharp muzzle familiarly into my hand the moment I sat down.
“You used often to sit on my knee when you were a child, my dear,” I
said, “and now your little dog seems determined to succeed you in the
vacant throne. Is that pretty drawing your doing?”
I pointed to a little album which lay on the table by her side and
which she had evidently been looking over when I came in. The page that
lay open had a small water-colour landscape very neatly mounted on it.
This was the drawing which had suggested my question—an idle question
enough—but how could I begin to talk of business to her the moment I
opened my lips?
“No,” she said, looking away from the drawing rather confusedly, “it is
not my doing.”
Her fingers had a restless habit, which I remembered in her as a child,
of always playing with the first thing that came to hand whenever any
one was talking to her. On this occasion they wandered to the album,
and toyed absently about the margin of the little water-colour drawing.
The expression of melancholy deepened on her face. She did not look
at the drawing, or look at me. Her eyes moved uneasily from object
to object in the room, betraying plainly that she suspected what my
purpose was in coming to speak to her. Seeing that, I thought it best
to get to the purpose with as little delay as possible.
“One of the errands, my dear, which brings me here is to bid you
good-bye,” I began. “I must get back to London to-day: and, before
I leave, I want to have a word with you on the subject of your own
affairs.”
“I am very sorry you are going, Mr. Gilmore,” she said, looking at me
kindly. “It is like the happy old times to have you here.”
“I hope I may be able to come back and recall those pleasant memories
once more,” I continued; “but as there is some uncertainty about the
future, I must take my opportunity when I can get it, and speak to you
now. I am your old lawyer and your old friend, and I may remind you,
I am sure, without offence, of the possibility of your marrying Sir
Percival Glyde.”
She took her hand off the little album as suddenly as if it had turned
hot and burnt her. Her fingers twined together nervously in her
lap, her eyes looked down again at the floor, and an expression of
constraint settled on her face which looked almost like an expression
of pain.
“Is it absolutely necessary to speak of my marriage engagement?” she
asked in low tones.
“It is necessary to refer to it,” I answered, “but not to dwell on it.
Let us merely say that you may marry, or that you may not marry. In the
first case, I must be prepared, beforehand, to draw your settlement,
and I ought not to do that without, as a matter of politeness, first
consulting you. This may be my only chance of hearing what your wishes
are. Let us, therefore, suppose the case of your marrying, and let me
inform you, in as few words as possible, what your position is now, and
what you may make it, if you please, in the future.”
I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then told
her exactly what her prospects were—in the first place, on her coming
of age, and in the second place, on the decease of her uncle—marking
the distinction between the property in which she had a life-interest
only, and the property which was left at her own control. She listened
attentively, with the constrained expression still on her face, and her
hands still nervously clasped together in her lap.
“And now,” I said in conclusion, “tell me if you can think of any
condition which, in the case we have supposed, you would wish me to
make for you—subject, of course, to your guardian’s approval, as you
are not yet of age.”
She moved uneasily in her chair, then looked in my face on a sudden
very earnestly.
“If it does happen,” she began faintly, “if I am——”
“If you are married,” I added, helping her out.
“Don’t let him part me from Marian,” she cried, with a sudden outbreak
of energy. “Oh, Mr. Gilmore, pray make it law that Marian is to live
with me!”
Under other circumstances I might, perhaps, have been amused at this
essentially feminine interpretation of my question, and of the long
explanation which had preceded it. But her looks and tones, when she
spoke, were of a kind to make me more than serious—they distressed me.
Her words, few as they were, betrayed a desperate clinging to the past
which boded ill for the future.
“Your having Marian Halcombe to live with you can easily be settled by
private arrangement,” I said. “You hardly understood my question, I
think. It referred to your own property—to the disposal of your money.
Supposing you were to make a will when you come of age, who would you
like the money to go to?”
“Marian has been mother and sister both to me,” said the good,
affectionate girl, her pretty blue eyes glistening while she spoke.
“May I leave it to Marian, Mr. Gilmore?”
“Certainly, my love,” I answered. “But remember what a large sum it is.
Would you like it all to go to Miss Halcombe?”
She hesitated; her colour came and went, and her hand stole back again
to the little album.
“Not all of it,” she said. “There is some one else besides Marian——”
She stopped; her colour heightened, and the fingers of the hand that
rested upon the album beat gently on the margin of the drawing, as if
her memory had set them going mechanically with the remembrance of a
favourite tune.
“You mean some other member of the family besides Miss Halcombe?” I
suggested, seeing her at a loss to proceed.
The heightening colour spread to her forehead and her neck, and the
nervous fingers suddenly clasped themselves fast round the edge of the
book.
“There is some one else,” she said, not noticing my last words, though
she had evidently heard them; “there is some one else who might like
a little keepsake if—if I might leave it. There would be no harm if I
should die first——”
She paused again. The colour that had spread over her cheeks suddenly,
as suddenly left them. The hand on the album resigned its hold,
trembled a little, and moved the book away from her. She looked
at me for an instant—then turned her head aside in the chair. Her
handkerchief fell to the floor as she changed her position, and she
hurriedly hid her face from me in her hands.
Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever
laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age
and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!
In the distress that she caused me I forgot the years that had passed,
and the change they had made in our position towards one another. I
moved my chair close to her, and picked up her handkerchief from the
carpet, and drew her hands from her face gently. “Don’t cry, my love,”
I said, and dried the tears that were gathering in her eyes with my own
hand, as if she had been the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago.
It was the best way I could have taken to compose her. She laid her
head on my shoulder, and smiled faintly through her tears.
“I am very sorry for forgetting myself,” she said artlessly. “I have
not been well—I have felt sadly weak and nervous lately, and I often
cry without reason when I am alone. I am better now—I can answer you as
I ought, Mr. Gilmore, I can indeed.”
“No, no, my dear,” I replied, “we will consider the subject as done
with for the present. You have said enough to sanction my taking the
best possible care of your interests, and we can settle details at
another opportunity. Let us have done with business now, and talk of
something else.”
I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes’ time
she was in better spirits, and I rose to take my leave.
“Come here again,” she said earnestly. “I will try to be worthier of
your kind feeling for me and for my interests if you will only come
again.”
Still clinging to the past—that past which I represented to her, in my
way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers! It troubled me sorely to see her
looking back, at the beginning of her career, just as I look back at
the end of mine.
“If I do come again, I hope I shall find you better,” I said; “better
and happier. God bless you, my dear!”
She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed. Even
lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave of her.
The whole interview between us had hardly lasted more than half an
hour—she had not breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the
mystery of her evident distress and dismay at the prospect of her
marriage, and yet she had contrived to win me over to her side of the
question, I neither knew how nor why. I had entered the room, feeling
that Sir Percival Glyde had fair reason to complain of the manner in
which she was treating him. I left it, secretly hoping that matters
might end in her taking him at his word and claiming her release. A man
of my age and experience ought to have known better than to vacillate
in this unreasonable manner. I can make no excuse for myself; I can
only tell the truth, and say—so it was.
The hour for my departure was now drawing near. I sent to Mr. Fairlie
to say that I would wait on him to take leave if he liked, but that he
must excuse my being rather in a hurry. He sent a message back, written
in pencil on a slip of paper: “Kind love and best wishes, dear Gilmore.
Hurry of any kind is inexpressibly injurious to me. Pray take care of
yourself. Good-bye.”
Just before I left I saw Miss Halcombe for a moment alone.
“Have you said all you wanted to Laura?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “She is very weak and nervous—I am glad she has you
to take care of her.”
Miss Halcombe’s sharp eyes studied my face attentively.
“You are altering your opinion about Laura,” she said. “You are readier
to make allowances for her than you were yesterday.”
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words
with a woman. I only answered—
“Let me know what happens. I will do nothing till I hear from you.”
She still looked hard in my face. “I wish it was all over, and well
over, Mr. Gilmore—and so do you.” With those words she left me.
Sir Percival most politely insisted on seeing me to the carriage door.
“If you are ever in my neighbourhood,” he said, “pray don’t forget
that I am sincerely anxious to improve our acquaintance. The tried and
trusted old friend of this family will be always a welcome visitor in
any house of mine.”
A really irresistible man—courteous, considerate, delightfully free
from pride—a gentleman, every inch of him. As I drove away to the
station I felt as if I could cheerfully do anything to promote the
interests of Sir Percival Glyde—anything in the world, except drawing
the marriage settlement of his wife.