"IT IS DONE WITH."
After the departure of Haworth and Murdoch, Mr. Ffrench waited for some
time for his daughter's appearance. He picked up a pamphlet and turned
over its leaves uneasily, trying to read here and there, and making no
great success of the effort. He was in a disturbed and nervous mood, the
evening had been a trial to him, more especially the latter part of it
during which Haworth sat on the other side of the table in his usual
awkwardly free and easy posture, his hands in his pockets, his feet
thrust out before him. His silence and the expression he wore had not
been of a kind to relieve his companion of any tithe of the burden which
had gradually accumulated upon his not too muscular shoulders. At the
outset Ffrench had been simply bewildered, then somewhat anxious and
annoyed, but to-day he had been stunned. Haworth's departure was an
immense relief to him. It was often a relief to him in these days. Then
he heard Murdoch descend the stairs and leave the house, and he waited
with mingled dread and anxiousness for Rachel's coming. But she did not
make her appearance. He heard her walk across the room after Murdoch
left her, and then she did not seem to move again.
After the lapse of half an hour he laid his pamphlet aside and rose
himself. He coughed two or three times and paced the floor a
little--gradually he edged toward the folding doors leading into the
front room and passed through them.
Rachel stood at one of the windows, which was thrown open. She was
leaning against its side and looking out into the night. When she turned
toward him something in her manner caused in Ffrench an increase of
nervousness amounting to irritation.
"You wish to say something to me," she remarked. "What is it?"
"Yes," he answered. "I wish to say something to you."
He could not make up his mind to say it for a moment or so. He found
himself returning her undisturbed glance with an excited and bewildered
one.
"I--the fact is"--he broke forth, desperately, "I--I do not understand
you."
"That is not at all singular," she replied. "You have often said so
before."
He began to lose his temper and to walk about the room.
"You have often chosen to seem incomprehensible," he said, "but _this_
is the most extraordinary thing you have done yet. You--you must know
that it looks very bad--that people are discussing you openly--_you_ of
all women!"
Suddenly he wheeled about and stopped, staring at her with more
uncertainty and bewilderment than ever.
"I ought to know you better," he said, "I do know you better than to
think you capable of any weakness of--of that kind. You are _not_
capable of it. You are too proud and too fond of yourself, and yet"----
"And yet what?" she demanded, in a peculiar, low voice.
He faltered visibly.
"And yet you are permitting yourself to--to be talked over
and--misunderstood."
"Do you think," she asked, in the same voice, "that I care for being
'talked over?'"
"You would care if you knew what is said," he responded. "You do not
know."
"I can guess," she replied, "easily."
But she was deadly pale and he saw it, and her humiliation was that she
_knew_ he saw it.
"What you do," he continued, "is of more consequence than what most
women do. You are not popular. You have held yourself very high and have
set people at defiance. If you should be guilty of a romantic folly, it
would go harder with you than with others."
"I know that," she answered him, "far better than you do."
She held herself quite erect and kept her eyes steadily upon him.
"What is the romantic folly?" she put it to him.
He could not have put it into words just then if his life had depended
upon his power to do it.
"You will not commit it," he said. "It is not in you to do it, but you
have put yourself in a false position, and it is very unpleasant for
both of us."
She stopped him.
"You are very much afraid of speaking plainly," she said. "Be more
definite."
He flushed to the roots of his hair in his confusion and uneasiness.
There was no way out of the difficulty.
"You have adopted such a manner with the world generally," he
floundered, "that a concession from you means a great deal. You--you
have been making extraordinary concessions. It is easy to see that this
young fellow is madly enamored of you. He does not know how to conceal
it, and he does not try. You have not seemed to demand that he should.
You have let him follow you, and come and go as his passion and
simplicity prompted him. One might say you had encouraged him--though
encouraged seems hardly the word to use."
"No," she interrupted, "it is not the word to use."
"He has made himself conspicuous and you too, and you have never
protested by word or deed. When he was in danger you actually risked
your life for him."
"Great heaven!" she ejaculated.
The truth of what he said came upon her like a flash. Until this moment
she had only seen the night from one stand-point, and to see it from
this one was a deadly blow to her. She lost her balance.
"How dare you?" she cried breathlessly. "I was mad with excitement. If I
had stopped to think----"
"You usually do stop to think," he put in. "That was why I was amazed.
You did a thing without calculating its significance. You never did so
before in your life. You know that it is true. You pride yourself upon
it."
He could have said nothing so bitter and terrible. For the moment they
had changed places. It was he who had presented a weakness to her. She
did pride herself upon her cool power of calculation.
"Go on!" she exclaimed.
"He has been here half the day," he proceeded, growing bolder. "You were
out in the garden together all the afternoon--he has only just left you.
When you contrast his position with yours is not _that_ an extraordinary
thing? What should you say if another woman had gone so far? Two years
ago, he was Haworth's engineer. He is a wonderful fellow and a genius,
and the world will hear of him yet. _I_ should never think of anything
but that if I were the only individual concerned, but you--you treated
him badly enough at first."
She turned paler and paler.
"You think that I--that I----"
She had meant to daunt him with the most daring speech she could make,
but it would not complete itself. She faltered and broke down.
"I don't know what to think," he answered desperately. "It seems
impossible. Good heavens! it is impossible!--you--it is not in your
nature."
"No," she said, "it is not."
Even in that brief space she had recovered herself wholly. She met his
glance just as she had met it before, even with more perfect _sang
froid_.
"I will tell you what to think," she went on. "I have been very dull
here. I wished from the first that I had never come. I hate the people,
and I despise them more than I hate them. I must be amused and
interested, and they are less than nothing. The person you speak of was
different. I suppose what you say of him is true and he is a genius. I
care nothing for that in itself, but he has managed to interest me. At
first I thought him only absurd; he was of a low class and a common
workman, and he was so simple and ignorant of the world that he did not
feel his position or did not care. That amused me and I led him on to
revealing himself. Then I found out that there was a difference between
him and the rest of his class, and I began to study him. I have no
sentimental notions about his honor and good qualities. Those things do
not affect me, but I have been interested and the time has passed more
easily. Now the matter will end just as it began,--not because I am
tired of him or because I care for what people say, but because I think
it is time,--and I choose that it should. It is done with from
to-night."
"Good heaven!" he cried. "You are not going to drop the poor fellow like
that?"
"You may call it what you please," she returned. "I have gone as far as
I choose to go, and it is done with from to-night."
Mr. Ffrench's excitement became something painful to see. Between his
embarrassment as a weak nature before a strong one,--an embarrassment
which was founded upon secret fear of unpleasant results,--between this
and the natural compunctions arising from tendencies toward a certain
refined and amiable sense of fairness, he well-nigh lost all control
over himself and became courageous. He grew heated and flushed and burst
forth into protest.
"My dear," he said, "I must say it's a--a deuced ungentlemanly
business!"
Her lack of response absolutely inspired him.
"It's a deuced ill-bred business," he added, "from first to last."
She did not reply even to that, so he went on, growing warmer and
warmer.
"You have taunted me with being afraid of you," he said, "though you
have never put it into so many words. Perhaps I have been afraid of you.
You can make yourself confoundedly unpleasant at times,--and I may have
shrunk from saying what would rouse you,--but I must speak my mind about
this, and say it is a deucedly cruel and unfair thing, and is unworthy
of you. A less well-bred woman might have done it."
A little color rose to her cheek and remained there, but she did not
answer still.
"He is an innocent fellow," he proceeded, "an unworldly fellow; he has
lived in his books and his work, and he knows nothing of women. His
passion for you is a pure, romantic one; he would lay his world at your
feet. Call it folly, if you will,--it _is_ folly,--but allow me to tell
you it is worthy of a better object."
He was so astonished at his own daring that he stopped to see what
effect it had produced.
She replied by asking a simple but utterly confounding question.
"What," she said, "would you wish me to do?"
"What would I wish you to do?" he stammered. "What? I--I hardly know."
And after regarding her helplessly a little longer, he turned about and
left the room.