“O,” he said, “but he will listen to you, I know! Because I am
unhappy, and you are unhappy, and I love you so, Nanny, and he is my
best friend. Try to explain to him, dear, the difficulty of your
case.”
This novel enlargement on our relations, his and mine, vaguely annoyed
me.
“Why should there be any?” I put in impatiently. “Our friend can give
you great social and other advantages, Miss Nolan. If he is decided on
this course—you don’t dislike him, I think—forgive me, I can see no
reason for objection on _your_ part.”
She rose, as if scared, to her feet. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hush!” he said. “Be just to me, and try to tell him.”
He left the room and the house; and I was in two minds about following
him. Was ever man put in a more ridiculous position? Yet the look of
the girl gave me pause. She seemed to me to be yet only half awake;
and indeed, I think, that is something to understate the case.
“Well,” I said stumblingly, as she stood before me. “You heard what he
said, Miss Nolan?”
I was not sympathetic. I knew it. Perhaps, having once asserted
myself, I might have grown so. But she would not give me the
opportunity. In the meantime, I did not feel the less the full force
of this mismatch.
She put her hand in a lost way to her forehead.
“I will try,” she said, in a low voice, “because he asked me.
There—there was a great trouble—O! it was so far back. I can’t
remember it—and then everything went.”
“He is willing, it appears, to take that interval, that trouble, on
trust,” I said. “He only asks you, it seems, to repay his confidence.
What you are is what he desires. Cannot you consider yourself new-born
into his love?” (I positively sneered the word to myself.)
“There is something stands between us,” she only murmured helplessly.
“He doesn’t admit it for himself,” I insisted irritably. “It might be
the ruin of his career, of his position, as foreseen by his friends. I
suppose he wishes to assure you that that counts for nothing with him,
if by any chance the bar between you lies in your dim consciousness of
such a sentiment.”
I had been brutal, I admit it. I can only palliate my behaviour by
confessing that it was intended to sound the first note of my moral
surrender to the appeal of those poor, pain-troubled eyes. Now, at
least, I had got my shaft home. She looked up at me with a light of
amazed knowledge in her face.
“Thank you,” she said. “I knew there was a right reason; and all the
time I have been hunting for a fancied one.”
I suffered an instant reaction to dismay. I had had no right whatever
to make this point. Whatever my private opinion of Valentine’s folly,
I had allowed myself to be accredited his ambassador.
“Come; it is no reason at all,” I said. “There is no such thing as a
misalliance in love” (I threw this atrocious sop to my own panic). “If
only the practical bar between you could be as easily disposed of.”
“The practical bar?”
She turned upon me with a piteous pain in her voice. I had opened a
door of release to her, I suppose, and before she could escape shut it
again in her face. I was stumbling weakly on an explanation, when
suddenly from somewhere above the baby began to wail. Instantly her
face assumed the strangest expression—a sort of exalted hardness. She
put up her hand, listened a moment, then, without another word, glided
from the room. I am ashamed to say that I seized the opportunity to
put an instant period to my visit.
I expected to meet Valentine loitering without; but to my relief he
did not appear. So I went on my way fuming. What right had the man to
try to inveigle me into seeming to sanction his idiotcy by claiming me
its advocate? He wanted to buy justification, I suppose. There are
certain natures which cannot properly relish their own grief or
happiness unless a witness be by to report upon them. Such was
Valentine’s, I thought; and the thought did not increase my respect
for my friend. I fancied I had already plumbed the shallows of that
pretentious reserve, and was angry and half contemptuous that he had
so soon revealed himself to me. There was certainly something
attractive about the girl; but—well, _he_ had not been the first to
discover the fact, and, when all was said, his infatuation showed him
a fool in my eyes.
That evening, when I was sitting alone writing, she suddenly stood
before me. My first shock of amazement was followed by a glow of fury.
I felt that I was being persecuted.
“Well, what is it?” I said harshly.
“I only wanted to tell you,” she said low, panting as if she had run;
“I wanted you to tell _him_ that—that I know now what it is. I found
out the moment I left you; and I came to say—but you were gone.”
“Well?”
“It is the child, sir.”
“Yes, you are quite right—it is the child.”
No sooner had I said it, than I felt the weight of my self-commitment.
Had she discovered—remembered all? Did she conceive the impediment as
associated with some scandal attaching to the ineffable Aunt Mim? or
was the baby, in her clouded soul, but an unattachable changeling,
which had come to disrupt the kind order of things and brand their
household with a curse?
“Yes, it is the child,” I said, and leaned my forehead into my hand
while I frowned over the problem.
She made no answer. When I looked up at the end of a minute, she was
gone.
I started to my feet, and went up and down. I made no attempt to
follow. “It is better,” I thought angrily, “to let this stuff ferment
in its own way. I could have given no other answer.”
At the twentieth turn I saw Valentine before me, and stopped abruptly.
“Well,” he said; “were you able to get it out of her?”
“What?” I asked defiantly.
“The reason—the impediment, you know?” he answered.
“Sit down, Valentine,” I said. “I will tell you the truth. I hinted
that the _mésalliance_ might be her unconscious consideration.”
“She is not so proud,” he said quietly; “though I’m unworthy to buckle
her little shoe for her.”