which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine.
"--For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I--that Margaret, I should
say,--would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since
they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,--Miss
Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper
introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if--if you
really care to see them."
My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had
not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now
reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me
from Selwoode.
"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was
older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's
benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for
corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss
Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly
unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good
Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!"
But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd
care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in
gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw
out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those
yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and
statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a
formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your
eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those
flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four
books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I
would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens,
Miss Beechinor!"
And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me.
"This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over
the wall, Mr. Townsend."
It was Peter's cigarette-case.
"Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would
have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an
unbirthday present from a quite old friend."
She turned it over in her hand.
"It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it
stand for Poor Idiot Boy?"
"Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly
Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so
good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a
friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would
embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved
the subject aside.
"Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell
me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added
'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity."
Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact
with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser
hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the
pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas."
And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth
I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter,
and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from
the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day.
3
But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some
three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively
inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in
the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a
trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity
and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis,
you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!"
I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had
climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to
outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came.
"What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why,
it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a
bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort
of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been
named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that,
Avis--dear?"
And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I
repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto.
"Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, _dear_ Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each
one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why
are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you
ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds
like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told
you that as yet unbotanised flower was a _Calycanthus arithmelicus_? And
why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard
to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what
nearly happened when you pouted!"
I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament.
"It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at
least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had
firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of
preposterous notions--"
Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It
was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and
I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an
extremely lucky book.
Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!"
For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's _Journey's End_--serving
as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine
fashion,--lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle,
fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters
M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of
flourishes and irrelevant tendrils.
"Now M. E. A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for
Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin
uncommonly well. I wonder now--?"
I wondered for a rather lengthy interval.
"So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert
Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at
your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard
a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'--ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I
would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was
wealthy--"
I presently flung back my head and laughed.
"Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my
true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is
rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end.
Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in
particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will
have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her
door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her
in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a
future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if
she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have
me--why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of
all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be
immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy.
Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so
much money!"
All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable.
25.
_He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode_
"Well?" said Peter.
"Well?" said I.
"What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was
she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have
you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is
suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral."
And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered.
"His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while
doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I
daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently
upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his
intellect."
"Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous
method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable
this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another
cropper in your fortune-hunting."
"Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human!
I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have
been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in
the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting
things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed
overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I
have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your
extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I
have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and
commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as
they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature
comic-opera chorus. And besides that--"
"Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?"
"And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing."
And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected
that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and
remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I
have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had
died, two years ago.
2
The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the
wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy.
"For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely
possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or
have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to
suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary,
if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I
return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy
gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a _gage d'amour_. And, in that
event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she
will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you
know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very
fine logician?"
Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely
possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which
case--Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest
name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named
Margaret--extraordinarily queer,--because Margaret has always been my
favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of
a prophet."
3
But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me.
"You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to
disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!"
"You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural
thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you
forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in--or, to be more accurate,
climbed up,--to return it."
She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my
pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings.
"You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one
of the two he will marry."
"Forman tells me he has no notion, himself."
"Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories
are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and
handkerchiefs and dead flowers--"
Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly,
and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing.
And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal
functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes--" said its owner.
"Yes?" she queried, innocently.
"--so humpy," I complained.
"Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on
them!"
The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon.
4
By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I
happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at
luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be
on time for their meals.
I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place
during the next day or so.
It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of
simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most
ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more
prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently,
a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise
or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers.
As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench,
and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall.
"On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all
picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance."
"Ruins!"--and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,--"I am a comparatively
young man."
As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well
preserved."
"--and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either."
"No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard,
is more apt to figure in family ones."
"A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered
only by the mentally dishonest."
"--Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade."
"I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?"
"Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon
you! You would make an excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought
to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt _me_, Mr. Townsend."
I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what
they were.
5
"Avis--"
"You must not call me that."
"Why not? It's your name, isn't it"
"Yes,--to my friends."
"Aren't we friends--Avis?"
"We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend."
"Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't
we--Avis?"
"Why--why, I am sure I don't know."
"Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,--I know.
And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going
to be--. friends. We are going to be--"
"We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste.
"Good-morning, Mr. Townsend."
6
Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me:
"I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is
quite impossible we should ever be anything else."
"And why, Avis?"
"Because--"
"That"--after an interval--"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So,
suppose we say this June?"
Another interval.
"Well, Avis?"
"Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr.
Townsend."
"Avis, we are not discussing roses."
"Well, they _are_ pretty."
"Avis!"--reproachfully.
Still another interval.
"I--I hardly know."
"Avis!"--with disappointment.
"I--I believe--"
"Avis!"--very tenderly.
"I--I almost think so,--and the horrid man looks as if he thought so,
too!"
There was a fourth interval, during which the girl made a complete and
careful survey of her shoes.
Then, all in a breath, "It could not possibly be June, of course, and
you must give me until to-morrow to think about November," and a sudden
flutter of skirts.
I returned to Gridlington treading on air.
7
For I was, by this time, as thoroughly in love as Amadis of Gaul or
Aucassin of Beaucaire or any other hero of romance you may elect
to mention.
Some two weeks earlier I would have scoffed at the notion of such a
thing coming to pass; and I could have demonstrated, logically enough,
that it was impossible for Robert Etheridge Townsend, with his keen
knowledge of the world and of the innumerable vanities and whims of
womankind, ever again to go the way of all flesh. But the problem, like
the puzzle of the Eleatic philosophers, had solved itself. "Achilles
cannot catch the tortoise," but he does. It was impossible for me to
fall uncomfortably deep in love--but I had done so.
And it pricked my conscience, too, that Margaret should not know I was
aware of her identity. But she had chosen to play the comedy to the end,
and in common with the greater part of trousered humanity, I had, after
all, no insuperable objection to a rich wife; though, to do me justice,
I rarely thought of her, now, as Margaret Hugonin the heiress, but
considered her, in a more comprehensive fashion, as the one woman in the
universe whose perfections triumphantly overpeered the skyiest heights
of preciosity.
26.
_He Assists in the Diversion of Birds_
We met, then, in the clear May morning, with what occult trepidations I
cannot say. You may depend upon it, though, we had our emotions.
And about us, spring was marshaling her pageant, and from divers nooks,
the weather-stained nymphs and fauns regarded us in candid, if
preoccupied, appraisement; and above us, the clipped ilex trees were
about a knowing conference. As for the birds, they were discussing us
without any reticence whatever, for, more favoured of chance than
imperial Solomon, they have been the confidants in any number of such
affairs, and regard the way of a man with a maid as one of the most
matter-of-fact occurrences in the world.
"Here is he! here is she!" they shrilled. "See how they meet, see how
they greet! Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring!" And that we
two would immediately set to nest-building, they considered a foregone
conclusion.
2
I had taken both her firm, warm hands in salutation, and held them, for
a breathing-space, between my own. And my own hands seemed to me two
very gross, and hulking, and raw, and red monstrosities, in contrast
with their dimpled captives, and my hands appeared, also, to shake
unnecessarily.
"Now, in a moment," said I, "I am going to ask you something very
important. But, first, I have a confession to make."
And her glad, shamed eyes bemocked me. "My lord of Burleigh!" she softly
breathed. "My liege Cophetua! _My_ king Cophetua! And did you think,
then, I was blind?"
"Eh?" said I.
"As if I hadn't known from the first!" the girl pouted; "as if I hadn't
known from the very first day when you dropped your cigarette case! Ah,
I had heard of you before, Peter!--of Peter, the misogynist, who was
ashamed to go a-wooing in his proper guise! Was it because you were
afraid I'd marry you for your money, Peter?--poor, timid Peter! But, oh,
Peter, Peter, what possessed you to take the name of that notorious
Robert Townsend?" she demanded, with uplifted forefinger. "Couldn't you
think of a better one, Peter?--of a more respectable one, Peter? It
really is a great relief to call you Peter at last. I've had to try so
hard to keep from doing it before, Peter."
And in answer, I made an inarticulate sound.
"But you were so grave about it," the girl went on, happily, "that I
almost thought you were telling the truth, Peter. Then my maid told
me--I mean, she happened to mention casually that Mr. Townsend's valet
had described his master to her as an extraordinarily handsome man. So,
then, of course, I knew you were Peter Blagden."
"I perceive," said I, reflectively, "that Byam has been somewhat too
zealous. I begin to suspect, also, that kitchen-gossip is a mischancy
petard, and rather more than apt to hoist the engineer who employs it.
So, you thought I was Peter Blagden,--the rich Peter Blagden? Ah, yes!"
Now the birds were caroling on a wager. "Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?"
they sang. "Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet, to meet in the spring."
But the girl gave a wordless cry at sight of the change in my face. "Oh,
how dear of you to care so much! I didn't mean that you were _ugly_,
Peter. I just meant you are so big and--and so like the baby that they
probably have on the talcum-powder boxes in Brobdingnag--"
"Because I happen to be really Robert Townsend--the notorious Robert
Etheridge Townsend," I continued, with a smile. "I am sorry you were
deceived by the cigarette-case. I remember now; I borrowed it from
Peter. What I meant to confess was that I have known all along you were
Margaret Hugonin."
"But I'm not," the girl said, in bewilderment. "Why--Why I _told_ you I
was Avis Beechinor."
"This handkerchief?" I queried, and took it from my pocket. I had been
absurd enough to carry it next to my heart.
"Oh--!" And now the tension broke, and her voice leapt to high, shrill,
half-hysterical speaking.
"I am Avis Beechinor. I am a poor relation, a penniless cousin, a
dependent, a hanger-on, do you understand? And you--Ah, how--how funny!
Why, Margaret _always_ gives me her cast-off finery, the scraps, the
remnants, the clothes she is tired of, the misfit things,--so that she
won't be ashamed of me, so that I may be fairly presentable. She gave me
eight of those handkerchiefs. I meant to pick the monograms out with a
needle, you understand, because I haven't any money to buy such
handkerchiefs for myself. I remember now,--she gave them to me on that
day--that first day, and I missed one of them a little later on. Ah,
how--how funny!" she cried, again; "ah, how very, very funny! No, Mr.
Townsend, I am not an heiress,--I'm a pauper, a poor relation. No, you
have failed again, just as you did with Mrs. Barry-Smith and with Miss
Jemmett, Mr. Townsend. I--I wish you better luck the next time."
I must have raised one hand as though in warding off a physical blow.
"Don't!" I said.
And all the woman in her leapt to defend me. "Ah no, ah no!" she
pleaded, and her hands fell caressingly upon my shoulder; and she raised
a penitent, tear-stained face toward mine; "ah no, forgive me! I didn't
mean that altogether. It is different with a man. Of course, you must
marry sensibly,--of course you must, Mr. Townsend. It is I who am to
blame--why, of _course_ it's only I who am to blame. I have encouraged
you, I know--"
"You haven't! you haven't" I barked.
"But, yes,--for I came back that second day because I thought you were
the rich Mr. Blagden. I was so tired of being poor, so tired of being
dependent, that it simply seemed to me I could not stand it for a moment
longer. Ah, I tell you, I was tired, tired, tired! I was tired and sick
and worn out with it all!"
I did not interrupt her. I was nobly moved; but even then at the back of
my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to this girl, so
young and desirable, and now so like a plaintive child who has been
punished and does not understand exactly why.
"Mr. Townsend, you don't know what it means to a girl to be poor!--you
can't ever know, because you are only a man. My mother--ah, you don't
know the life I have led! You don't know how I have been hawked about,
and set up for inspection by the men who could afford to pay my price,
and made to show off my little accomplishments for them, and put through
my paces before them like any horse in the market! For we are poor, Mr.
Townsend,--we are bleakly, hopelessly poor. We are only hangers-on, you
see. And ever since I can remember, she has been telling me I must make
a rich marriage--_must_ make a rich marriage--"
And the girl's voice trailed off into silence, and her eyes closed for a
moment, and she swayed a little on her feet, so that I caught her by
both arms.
But, presently, she opened her eyes, with a wearied sigh, and presently
the two fortune-hunters stared each other in the face.
"Ah, sweet! what is sweeter?" sang the birds. "Can you see, can you see,
can you see? It is sweet, sweet, sweet!" They were extremely gay over
it, were the birds.