This was the very light and airy beginning of a friendship which was to
ripen into serious and even appalling results. Wyndham was a man who
found it very easy to make girls like him. He had so many sisters of
his own that he understood their idiosyncrasies, and knew how to humor
their little failings, how to be kind to their small foibles, and how
to flatter their weaknesses. More than one girl had fallen in love with
this handsome and attractive young man. Wyndham was aware of these
passionate attachments, but as he could not feel himself particularly
guilty in having inspired them, and as he did not in the slightest
degree return them, he did not make himself unhappy over what could not
be cured. It puzzled him not a little to know why girls should be so
silly, and how hearts could be so easily parted with--he did not know
when he questioned his own spirit lightly on the matter that the day of
retribution was at hand. He lost his own heart to Valentine without
apparently having made the smallest impression upon this bright and
seemingly volatile girl.
On that very first night in the old library Wyndham left his heart at
the gay girl's feet. He was seriously in love. Before a week was out he
had taken the malady desperately, and in its most acute form. It was
then that a change came over his face, it was then for the first time
that he became aware of the depths of his own nature. Great abysses of
pain were opened up to him--he found himself all sensitiveness, all
nerves. He had been proud of his rather athletic bringing-up, of his
intellectual training. He had thought poorly of other men who had
given up all for the sake of a girl's smile, and for the rather
doubtful possession of a girl's fickle heart. He did not laugh at them
any longer. He spent his nights pacing his room, and his days haunting
the house at Queen's Gate. If he could not go in he could linger near
the house. He could lounge in the park and see Valentine as she drove
past, and nodded and smiled to him brightly. His own face turned pale
when she gave him those quick gay glances. She was absolutely
heart-whole--a certain intuition told him this, whereas he--he found
himself drivelling into a state bordering on idiotcy.
Almost all men have gone through similar crises, but Wyndham at this
time was making awful discoveries. He was finding out day by day the
depths of weakness as well as pain within him.
"I'm the greatest fool that ever breathed," he would say to himself.
"What would Lilias say if she saw me now? How often she and I have
laughed over this great momentous matter--how often we have declared
that we at least would never lose ourselves in so absurd a fashion.
Poor Lilias, I suppose her turn will come as mine has come--I cannot
understand myself--I really must be raving mad. How dare I go to Mr.
Paget and ask him to give me Valentine? I have not got a halfpenny in
the world. This money in my pocket is my father's--I have to come to
him for every sixpence! I am no better off than my little sister Joan.
When I am ordained, and have secured the curacy of
Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, I shall have exactly L160 a year. A large sum
truly. And yet I want to marry Valentine Paget--the youngest heiress of
the season--the most beautiful--the most wealthy! Oh, of course I must
be mad--quite mad. I ought to shun her like the plague. She does not in
the least care for me--not in the least. I often wonder if she has got
a heart anywhere. She acts as a sort of siren to me--luring me
on--weakening and enfeebling my whole nature. She is a little flirt in
her way, but an unconscious one. She means nothing by that bright look
in her eyes, and that sparkling smile, and that gay clear laugh. I
wonder if any other man has felt as badly about her as I do. Oh, I
ought to shun her--I am simply mad to go there as I do. When I get an
invitation--when I have the ghost of a chance of seeing her--it seems
as if thousands of invisible ropes pulled me to her side. What is to
come of it all? Nothing--nothing but my own undoing. I can never marry
her--and yet I must--I will. I would go through fire and water to hold
her to my heart for a moment. There, I must have been quite mad when I
said that--I didn't mean it. I'm sane now, absolutely sane. I know what
I'll do. I won't dine there to-night. I'll send an excuse, and I'll run
down to the old rectory until Monday, and get Lilias to cure me."
The infatuated young man seized a sheet of notepaper, dashed off an
incoherent and decidedly lame excuse to Mr. Paget, and trembling with
fear that his resolution would fail him even at the eleventh hour,
rushed out and dropped the letter into the nearest pillar-box. This
action was bracing, he felt better, and in almost gay spirits, for his
nature was wonderfully elastic. He took the next train to Jewsbury, and
arrived unexpectedly at the pleasant old rectory late on Saturday
evening.
The man who is made nothing of in one place, and finds himself
absolutely the hero of the hour in another, cannot help experiencing a
very soothed sensation. Valentine Paget had favored Gerald with the
coolest of nods, the lightest of words, the most indifferent of
actions. She met him constantly, she was always stumbling up against
him, and when she wanted him to do anything for her she issued a brief
and lordly command. Her abject slave flew to do her bidding.
Now at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold the slave was in the position of master,
and he could not help enjoying the change.
"Augusta, wheel that chair round for Gerald. Sit there. Gerald,
darling--oh, you are in a draught. Shut the door, please, Marjory.
Joan, run to the kitchen, and tell Betty to make some of Gerald's
favorite cakes for supper. Is your tea quite right, Gerry; have you
sugar enough--and--and cream?"
Gerald briefly expressed himself satisfied. Lilias was superintending
the tea-tray with a delicate flush of pleasure on her cheeks, and her
bright eyes glancing moment by moment in admiration at her handsome
brother. Marjory had placed herself on a footstool at the hero's feet,
and Augusta, tall and gawky, all stockinged-legs, and abnormally thin
long arms, was standing at the back of his chair, now and then
venturing to caress one of his crisp light waves of hair with the tips
of her fingers.
"It is too provoking!" burst from Marjory,--"you know, Lilias, we can't
put Gerald into his old room, it is being papered, and you haven't
half-finished decorating the door. Gerry, darling, you might have let
us know you were coming and we'd have worked at it day and night. Do
you mind awfully sleeping in the spare room? We'll promise to make it
as fresh as possible for you?"
"I'll--I'll--fill the vases with flowers--" burst spasmodically from
Augusta. "Do you like roses or hollyhocks best in the tall vases on the
mantel-piece, Gerry?"
"By the way, Gerald," remarked the rector, who was standing leaning
against the mantel-piece, gazing complacently at his son and daughters,
"I should like to ask your opinion with regard to that notice on
Herring's book in the _Saturday_. Have you read it? It struck me as
over critical, but I should like to have your opinion."
So the conversation went on, all adoring, all making much of the
darling of the house. Years afterwards, Gerald Wyndham remembered that
summer's evening, the scent of the roses coming in at the open window,
the touch of Marjory's little white hand as it rested on his knee, the
kind of half-irritated, half-pleased thrill which went through him when
Augusta touched his hair, the courteous and proud look on the rector's
face when he addressed him, above all the glow of love in Lilias'
beautiful eyes. He remembered that evening--he was not likely ever to
forget it, for it was one of the last of his happy boyhood, before he
took upon him his manhood's burden of sin and sorrow and shame.
After tea Lilias and Gerald walked about the garden arm-in-arm.
"I am going to confess something to you," said the brother. "I want
your advice, Lilly. I want you to cure me, by showing me that I am the
greatest fool that ever lived."
"But you are not, Gerald; I can't say it when I look up to you, and
think there is no one like you. You are first in all the world to
me--you know that, don't you?"
"Poor Lil, that is just the point--that is where the arrow will pierce
you. I am going to aim a blow at you, dear. Take me down from your
pedestal at once--I love someone else much, much better than I love
you."
Lilias' hand as it rested on Gerald's arm trembled very slightly. He
looked at her, and saw that her lips were moving, and that her eyes
were looking downwards. She did not make any audible sound, however,
and he went on hastily:--
"And you and I, we always promised each other that such a day should
not come--no wonder you are angry with me, Lil."
"But I'm not, dear Gerald--I just got a nasty bit of jealous pain for a
minute, but it is over. I always knew that such a day would come, that
it would have to come--if not for me, at least for you. Tell me about
her, Gerry. Is she nice--is she half--or a quarter nice enough for
you?"
Then Gerald launched into his subject, forgetting what he supposed
could only be a very brief sorrow on Lilias' part in the enthralling
interest of his theme. Valentine Paget would not have recognized the
portrait which was drawn of her, for this young and ardent lover
crowned her with all that was noble, and decked her with attributes
little short of divine.
"I am absolutely unworthy of her," he said in conclusion, and when
Lilias shook her head, and refused to believe this latter statement, he
felt almost angry with her.
The two walked about and talked together until darkness fell, but,
although they discussed the subject in all its bearings, Gerald felt by
no means cured when he retired to rest, while Lilias absolutely cried
herself to sleep.
Marjory and she slept in little white beds, side by side.
"Oh, Lil, what's the matter?" exclaimed the younger sister, disturbed
out of her own sweet slumbers by those unusual tokens of distress.
"Nothing much," replied Lilias, "only--only--I am a little
lonely--don't ask me any questions, Maggie, I'll be all right in the
morning."
Marjory was too wise to say anything further, but she lay awake herself
and wondered. What could ail Lilias?--Lilias, the brightest, the gayest
of them all. Was she fretting about their mother. But it was seven
years now since the mother had been taken away from the rectory
children, and Lilias had got over the grief which had nearly broken her
child-heart at the time.
Marjory felt puzzled and a little fearful,--the evening before had been
so sweet,--Gerald had been so delightful. Surely in all the world there
was not a happier home than Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. Why should Lilias
cry, and say that she was lonely?