MR. MARRABLE AGAIN.
The doctor was troubled by the slowness of the girl’s convalescence,
and by her own lack of a strong desire to get well again. He
recommended change for one thing, and cheerful society. Now the one
was as difficult to get as the other. Change could only be got by
sacrificing a situation to the disadvantages of which Mrs. Abercarne
had grown accustomed, while its advantages she appreciated more every
day. Cheerful society seemed more out of the question still.
It was therefore with a feeling almost of gratitude that Mrs.
Abercarne, while sitting by her daughter’s sofa one morning, heard that
Miss Lilith Graham-Shute was downstairs, and that she wanted to know if
she could see Miss Abercarne.
“Show her up, Corbett,” said Mrs. Abercarne. And turning to Chris, she
said: “You would like to see her, my dear, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Chris.
The two girls, indeed, had felt a mutual attraction, and had only been
prevented by the fierce enmity which raged between their respective
mothers from becoming very good friends indeed.
When Lilith came in, smiling, bright-eyed, cheery, and suffering from
a valiant attempt to subdue her usual exuberance of voice and manner,
her entrance was like a ray of sunshine. She came to the side of the
sofa on tip-toe, which was quite unnecessary, and caused her to be so
unsteady of gait that she knocked over a basket of flowers which had
been placed on a little stand beside the sofa.
“Oh, look what I’ve done!” she cried, as she stooped down in haste to
repair the mischief.
“Oh, you needn’t trouble about those things!” cried Chris,
ungratefully, with a little look which girls’ freemasonry enabled
Lilith to understand.
Miss Graham-Shute’s big brown eyes grew round with delight at the
prospect of a little bit of interesting gossip, if they should get a
chance to be alone together. She nodded discreetly, as she went down on
her knees to rearrange the scattered daffodils and lilies of the valley.
“I’m such a clumsy creature!” cried she, in feigned distress. “Donald
always says I’m like a bull in a china shop. Oh!” she cried, as she
buried her little _retroussé_ nose in a bunch of Parma violets, “I
should like to be ill if I could get such attentions bestowed upon me!
You _are_ a lucky girl, Chris! And an ungrateful one too!” she added in
a lower voice, with a glance at Mrs. Abercarne, whose back was for the
moment turned.
“You can have the flowers, if you like,” said Chris quickly. “Yes, do
take them,” she added, eagerly as Lilith made a gesture of refusal, “I
shall be so glad if you will. They--they are too strongly scented,”
she added, as an excuse, as she noticed a look of pain and annoyance on
her mother’s face.
“Oh, well, they are not too strongly scented for me,” said Lilith,
drily. “Thank you awfully, dear. I’ll be sure to remember to bring back
the basket.”
“No, don’t; keep it, I don’t want to see any of it again.”
She spoke petulantly, for the handsome gift had been accompanied by a
message from Mr. Bradfield, almost demanding permission to see her.
Then Mrs. Abercarne, moved to wrath, spoke:
“I think you are very ungrateful, Chris. Those flowers were sent from
Covent Garden expressly for you, and at great expense.”
She was not unwilling to annoy the Graham-Shutes, by proving in what
high estimation “the Abercarnes” were held at Wyngham House.
“Chris, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, you really ought,” said
Lilith, gaily, as she got up from her knees. “Now, don’t let me knock
anything else over. You haven’t any silver tables, or anything of that
sort, luckily.”
She glanced merrily round her, in all innocence; but Mrs. Abercarne,
always rather too ready to feel insulted, chose to consider this speech
as a barbed one.
“No; unfortunately we are not rich enough to buy unnecessary things,”
she said acidly; “and we are not refined enough to look upon silver
tables as necessaries.”
“You needn’t talk at me as if I were mamma, Mrs. Abercarne,” cried
Lilith, brightly. “I know we buy unnecessary things, and leave the
necessary ones unbought. I know we spend money on toys which are
supposed to be ancient silver, when in reality they are modern pewter,
and have to darn our gloves. I know we do lots of things which are
foolish, and get us laughed at, but, after all, you _can_ laugh at us,
and you ought to be grateful for that!”
The girl’s sense of fun was infectious, and Chris laughed aloud. Lilith
went on:
“The latest--no, not the very latest craze, but the latest but one, is
for me to blossom out into a great dramatic writer, and to buy a house
for us all in Kensington Palace Gardens. Mamma says I am brimming over
with talent (and perhaps I am, but it hadn’t troubled me much till it
was pointed out to me), and there is a dearth of dramatists, and I am
to ‘supply a long-felt want,’ as the advertisements say. And all on the
strength of my little play the other day, which, by-the-bye, I have
sent up to a London manager to read. Of course, I’m hoping he’ll take
it, but it seems almost too good to be possible, doesn’t it?”
The girl spoke playfully, but with just enough wistfulness in her tone
for the other ladies to see that she was full of the most forlorn
of all forlorn hopes. Mrs. Abercarne began to perceive that even
Graham-Shutes may be human, moved with like passions to our own.
And when Corbett appeared again, asking if she could speak to Mrs.
Abercarne for a minute, that lady left the room with the pleasant
consciousness that the visit of the lively girl was doing Chris good.
No sooner were they alone, than Lilith drew near to her companion
mysteriously.
“Chris, tell me, is it true that you don’t like Mr. Bradfield, and
don’t mean to marry him if he asks you?”
“Indeed it is,” answered Chris hotly, with more energy than she had
shown since the beginning of her illness. “I wouldn’t marry him if he
were the richest and the most charming person in the world!”
“Then I think you’re very silly.”
Chris laughed a little.
“It’s lucky Mrs. Graham-Shute can’t hear you say so.”
Lilith burst into a laugh of delightful merriment.
“Yes, indeed it is,” she admitted heartily. “It’s the greatest dread of
her life that you should become Mrs. John Bradfield, of Wyngham House.
And nothing will induce her to believe that you are not trying to bring
it about. For my own part,” she went on, prosaically, as Chris shook
her head, “I should think much better of you if you were.”
Chris looked at her in amazement.
“What? This from _you_!” cried she. “They do say, you know, that you
are always in love, and always with somebody who hasn’t any money at
all.”
“Well, I suppose they’re right. Men who have money _are_ always horrid,
aren’t they? Still, if one of the horrid creatures were to ask me, I
should have to have him, I suppose,” she went on with a sigh. “And as
no girl can ever fall in love with a rich man, I may just as well be in
love with a poor man first, and know something of the sentiment.”
“Who is it now?” asked Chris, smiling, and rather interested.
“Oh, it’s still the same one, the mysterious stranger I saw in the
barn on the evening of the _tableaux vivants_.”
“What!” said Chris, turning suddenly crimson, while the tears rushed
into her eyes. “It is more than two months since then. This is
constancy indeed.”
“It’s so easy to be constant down here,” sighed Lilith. “And I admit
that I might have wavered a little before now in my devotion if I
hadn’t seen, or thought I had seen, my handsome stranger in town the
other day, when I went up with mamma to do some shopping.”
To her astonishment, Chris sprang up from her sofa in great excitement.
“You saw him? You saw him?” cried she, all her old animation in her
face, the old ring in her voice.
Lilith looked at her in amazement.
“Why, Chris, who was he? You pretended you didn’t know.”
But the light had already died out of her companion’s eyes. Sighing
heavily she answered:
“Indeed it was true that I did not then know whom you meant. And if you
did really see him yesterday, why, then he was not the person I have
since supposed him to have been.”
Lilith, who had heard rumours of the flirtation, or attachment between
Chris and the alleged lunatic, was full of interest and curiosity.
“Why, Chris,” said she, “was that the person they called Mr. Richard?
If so, I don’t wonder you liked him better than cousin John.”
But Chris would confess nothing, and rather irritated Lilith by her
reticence.
“What do people say about him? How do they account for his having
disappeared?”
“Well,” said Lilith, lowering her voice, “they say that he set the
place on fire in order to escape, and that he’ll come back some day and
murder cousin John!”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Chris, sharply. “A lunatic might do that,
but not Dick.”
“Dick, oh!” said Lilith, raising her eyebrows. “You have confessed
something at any rate, now, haven’t you?”
But for answer Chris burst into tears, so that Mrs. Abercarne,
returning, looked at Lilith with stern reproach.
“I’m so sorry,” said Lilith, penitently; “but, Mrs. Abercarne, it’s
really better for her to cry than to lie all day looking as if she
wanted to! And oh! I’d nearly forgotten what I came for; mamma sent me
to borrow a box of sardines.”
Mrs. Abercarne suppressed a smile at this characteristic errand.
“I’m afraid we haven’t such a thing in the house,” she said. “A friend
of Mr. Bradfield’s has just arrived from town unexpectedly, so we have
been running our eyes over the stores to see what we could give him to
eat to stave off his hunger until Mr. Bradfield comes home to luncheon.”
“Who is it, mother?” asked Chris, in whom Mrs. Abercarne noted this
curiosity as a sign that Lilith’s visit had done her good.
“Oh, the unfortunate person who sprained his ankle on Christmas day.”
“Mr. Marrable!” Chris clasped her hands with a fresh access of
excitement. “Mother, let me see him at once. Do let me.”
Both the other ladies were a good deal surprised at this demand, and
the vehemence with which it was expressed. But there was no resisting
her importunity; and therefore, as soon as Lilith had reluctantly taken
her departure, Mr. Marrable, as shy and nervous as ever, was shown up
into the Chinese-room.
He expressed his delight at the honour Miss Abercarne had done him
by admitting him, and was proceeding to utter some old-fashioned
compliments which he had been preparing on the way upstairs, when
Chris, by a look at her mother, induced that lady to leave the room.
Then the girl turned to Mr. Marrable, and exhibited a sudden energy
which startled that rather flaccid gentleman.
“Mr. Marrable,” she said imperiously, “I have heard you talk of an old
friend of yours and Mr. Bradfield’s, named Gilbert Wryde.”
At the mention of the name, Mr. Marrable started violently.
“Yes, yes, er--er--I may have mentioned him; I say I may have mentioned
him,” he answered feebly, looking round as if he hoped to find a way of
escape.
“This Gilbert Wryde had a son, I think you said?”
“Oh, my goodness!” murmured poor Mr. Marrable; and then, seeing that
she was determined, he admitted that he might have mentioned that too.
“Tell me, and tell me the truth, mind,” continued the young girl,
earnestly, “when you knew that son, years ago that was, of course, when
he was a child, was there anything the matter with him?”
Mr. Marrable stared at her piteously, as if feeling he could hope for
no mercy from this excited female.
“Nothing,” murmured he feebly, “nothing of any consequence, that is to
say, beyond, of course, being deaf and dumb.”
To his horror, the young lady sprang up with a wild cry, clasping her
hands as if she had received a revelation.
“Deaf--and--dumb!”
And, uttering these words, she sank back fainting on the sofa.