As soon as I saw Mrs. Meldrum I of course broke out. "Is there anything
in it? _Is_ her general health--?"
Mrs. Meldrum checked me with her great amused blare. "You've already
seen her and she has told you her wondrous tale? What's 'in it' is what
has been in everything she has ever done--the most comical, tragical
belief in herself. She thinks she's doing a 'cure.'"
"And what does her husband think?"
"Her husband? What husband?"
"Hasn't she then married Lord Iffield?"
"Vous-en-etes la?" cried my hostess. "Why he behaved like a regular
beast."
"How should I know? You never wrote me." Mrs. Meldrum hesitated,
covering me with what poor Flora called the particular organ. "No, I
didn't write you--I abstained on purpose. If I kept quiet I thought you
mightn't hear over there what had happened. If you should hear I was
afraid you would stir up Mr. Dawling."
"Stir him up?"
"Urge him to fly to the rescue; write out to him that there was another
chance for him."
"I wouldn't have done it," I said.
"Well," Mrs. Meldrum replied, "it was not my business to give you an
opportunity."
"In short you were afraid of it."
Again she hesitated and though it may have been only my fancy I thought
she considerably reddened. At all events she laughed out. Then "I was
afraid of it!" she very honestly answered.
"But doesn't he know? Has he given no sign?"
"Every sign in life--he came straight back to her. He did everything to
get her to listen to him, but she hasn't the smallest idea of it."
"Has he seen her as she is now?" I presently and just a trifle awkwardly
enquired.
"Indeed he has, and borne it like a hero. He told me all about it."
"How much you've all been through!" I found occasion to remark. "Then
what has become of him?"
"He's at home in Hampshire. He has got back his old place and I believe
by this time his old sisters. It's not half a bad little place."
"Yet its attractions say nothing to Flora?"
"Oh Flora's by no means on her back!" my fried declared.
"She's not on her back because she's on yours. Have you got her for the
rest of your life?"
Once more Mrs. Meldrum genially glared. "Did she tell you how much the
Hammond Synges have kindly left her to live on? Not quite eighty pounds
a year."
"That's a good deal, but it won't pay the oculist. What was it that at
last induced her to submit to him?"
"Her general collapse after that brute of an Iffield's rupture. She
cried her eyes out--she passed through a horror of black darkness. Then
came a gleam of light, and the light appears to have broadened. She went
into goggles as repentant Magdalens go into the Catholic church."
"In spite of which you don't think she'll be saved?"
"_She_ thinks she will--that's all I can tell you. There's no doubt that
when once she brought herself to accept her real remedy, as she calls it,
she began to enjoy a relief that she had never known. That feeling, very
new and in spite of what she pays for it most refreshing, has given her
something to hold on by, begotten in her foolish little mind a belief
that, as she says, she's on the mend and that in the course of time, if
she leads a tremendously healthy life, she'll be able to take off her
muzzle and become as dangerous again as ever. It keeps her going."
"And what keeps you? You're good until the parties begin again."
"Oh she doesn't object to me now!" smiled Mrs. Meldrum. "I'm going to
take her abroad; we shall be a pretty pair." I was struck with this
energy and after a moment I enquired the reason of it. "It's to divert
her mind," my friend replied, reddening again a little, I thought. "We
shall go next week: I've only waited to see how your mother would be
before starting." I expressed to her hereupon my sense of her
extraordinary merit and also that of the inconceivability of Flora's
fancying herself still in a situation not to jump at the chance of
marrying a man like Dawling. "She says he's too ugly; she says he's too
dreary; she says in fact he's 'nobody,'" Mrs. Meldrum pursued. "She says
above all that he's not 'her own sort.' She doesn't deny that he's good,
but she finds him impossibly ridiculous. He's quite the last person she
would ever dream of." I was almost disposed on hearing this to protest
that if the girl had so little proper feeling her noble suitor had
perhaps served her right; but after a while my curiosity as to just how
her noble suitor _had_ served her got the better of that emotion, and I
asked a question or two which led my companion again to apply to him the
invidious term I have already quoted. What had happened was simply that
Flora had at the eleventh hour broken down in the attempt to put him off
with an uncandid account of her infirmity and that his lordship's
interest in her had not been proof against the discovery of the way she
had practised on him. Her dissimulation, he was obliged to perceive, had
been infernally deep. The future in short assumed a new complexion for
him when looked at through the grim glasses of a bride who, as he had
said to some one, couldn't really, when you came to find out, see her
hand before her face. He had conducted himself like any other jockeyed
customer--he had returned the animal as unsound. He had backed out in
his own way, giving the business, by some sharp shuffle, such a turn as
to make the rupture ostensibly Flora's, but he had none the less
remorselessly and basely backed out. He had cared for her lovely face,
cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been her poor little
delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damn it, with the
monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just what had let him
in. He had in the judgment of his family done everything that could be
expected of him; he had made--Mrs. Meldrum had herself seen the letter--a
"handsome" offer of pecuniary compensation. Oh if Flora, with her
incredible buoyancy, was in a manner on her feet again now it was not
that she had not for weeks and weeks been prone in the dust. Strange
were the humiliations, the forms of anguish, it was given some natures to
survive. That Flora had survived was perhaps after all a proof she was
reserved for some final mercy. "But she has been in the abysses at any
rate," said Mrs. Meldrum, "and I really don't think I can tell you what
pulled her through."
"I think I can tell _you_," I returned. "What in the world but Mrs.
Meldrum?"
At the end of an hour Flora had not come in, and I was obliged to
announce that I should have but time to reach the station, where I was to
find my luggage in charge of my mother's servant. Mrs. Meldrum put
before me the question of waiting till a later train, so as not to lose
our young lady, but I confess I gave this alternative a consideration
less acute than I pretended. Somehow I didn't care if I did lose our
young lady. Now that I knew the worst that had befallen her it struck me
still less as possible to meet her on the ground of condolence; and with
the sad appearance she wore to me what other ground was left? I lost
her, but I caught my train. In truth she was so changed that one hated
to see it; and now that she was in charitable hands one didn't feel
compelled to make great efforts. I had studied her face for a particular
beauty; I had lived with that beauty and reproduced it; but I knew what
belonged to my trade well enough to be sure it was gone for ever.