HUMBLE PIE.
The success of reticence is great. Mr. Bonamy and his nephew, as they
went home to tea after their victory, plumed themselves not a little
upon the proof of this which they had just given Mr. Clode. They said
little, it is true; even to one another, but more than once Mr. Bonamy
chuckled in a particularly dry manner, and at the top of the street
Jack made an observation “You think the archdeacon was satisfied?” he
asked, turning to his companion for a moment.
“Absolutely,” quoth Mr. Bonamy; and he strode on with one hand in his
pocket, his coat-tails flying, and his money jingling in a manner
inimitable by any other Claversham person.
At tea they were both silent upon the subject, but the lawyer presently
let drop the fact that the earl had accepted the rector’s resignation.
Jack, watchfully jealous, poor fellow, yet in his jealousy loyal to the
core, glanced involuntarily at Kate to see what effect the news
produced upon her; and then glanced swiftly away again. Not so swiftly,
however, that the change in the girl’s face escaped him. He saw it
flush with mingled pride and alarm, and then grow grave and thoughtful.
After that she kept her eyes averted from him, and he talked busily to
Daintry. “I must be leaving you to-morrow,” he said by-and-by, as they
rose from the table.
“You will be coming back again?” Mr. Bonamy answered, interrupting a
loud wail from Daintry. It should be explained that Jack had not stayed
through the whole of these weeks at Claversham, but had twice left for
some days on circuit business. Mr. Bonamy thought he was meditating
another of these disappearances.
“I should like to do so,” Jack answered quietly, “but I must get back
to London now.”
“Well, your room will be ready for you whenever you like to come to
us,” Mr. Bonamy replied with crabbed graciousness. And he fully meant
what he said. He had grown used to Jack’s company. He saw, too, the
change his presence had made in the girls’ lives, and possibly he
entertained some thoughts of a greater change which the cousin might
make in the life of one of them.
So he was sorry to lose Jack. But Daintry was inconsolable. When she
and Kate were alone together she made her moan, sitting in a great
chair three sizes too big for her, with her legs sprawling before her,
her hands on the chair-arms, and her eyes on the fire. “Oh, dear, what
shall we do when he is gone, Kate?” she said disconsolately. “Won’t it
be miserable?”
Kate, who was bending over her work, and had been unusually silent for
some time, looked up with a start and a rush of color to her cheeks.
“When who is gone—oh, you mean Jack!” she said rather incoherently.
“Of course I do,” Daintry answered crossly. “But you never did care for
Jack.”
“You have no right to say that,” Kate answered quickly, letting her
work drop for the moment. “I think Jack is one of the noblest, the most
generous—yes,” she continued quickly, “the bravest man I have ever
known, Daintry.”
Her voice trembled, and Daintry saw with surprise that her eyes were
full of tears. “I never thought you felt like that about him,” the
younger girl answered penitently.
“Perhaps I did not a little while back,” Kate answered gently, as she
took up her work again. “I know him better now, that is all.”
It was quite true. She knew him better now. A fellow-feeling makes us
wondrous kind. Love, which blinds our eyes to some things, opens them
to others. Had Jack offered Kate “Their Wedding Journey” now she might
still have asked him to change the book for another, but assuredly she
would not have told him it sounded silly, nor hurt his feelings by so
much as a look.
It was quite true that she thought him all she said, that her eyes grew
moist for his sake. But his was the minute only; the hour was
another’s. Daintry, proceeding to speculate gloomily on the dulness of
Claversham without Jack, thought her sister was attending to her,
whereas Kate’s thoughts were far away now, centred on a fair head and a
bright boyish face, and a solitary room in which she pictured Reginald
Lindo sitting alone and despondent, the short-lived brilliance of his
Claversham career already extinguished. What were his thoughts, she
wondered. Was he regretting—for the strongest have their hours of
weakness—the step he had taken? Was he blaming her for the advice she
had given? Was he giving a thought to her at all, or only planning the
new life on which he must now enter—forming the new hopes which must
henceforth cheer him on?
Kate let her work drop and looked dreamily before her. Assuredly the
prospect was a dull and uninviting one. Before _his_ coming there had
always been the unknown something, which a girl’s future holds—a
possibility of change, of living a happier, fuller life. But now she
had nothing of this kind before her. He had come and robbed her even of
this, and given her in return only regret and humiliation, and a few—a
very few—hours of strange pleasure and sunshine and womanly pride in a
woman’s influence nobly used. Yet would she have had it otherwise? No,
not for all the unknown possibilities of change, not though Claversham
life should stretch its dulness unbroken through a century.
She was sitting alone in the dining-room next morning, Mr. Bonamy being
at the office, and Daintry out shopping, when the maid came in and
announced that Mr. Lindo was at the door and wished to see her. “Are
you sure that he did not ask for Mr. Bonamy?” Kate said, rising and
laying down her work with outward composure and secret agitation.
“No; he asked particularly for you, miss,” the servant answered,
standing with her hand on the door.
“Very well; you can show him in here,” Kate replied, casting an eye
round her, but disdaining to remove the signs of domestic employment
which met its scrutiny. “He has come to say good-by,” she thought to
herself; and she schooled herself to play her part fitly and close the
little drama with decency and reserve.
He came in looking very thoughtful. She need not have feared for her
father’s papers, her sister’s dog’s-eared Ollendorf, or her own sewing.
He did not so much as glance at them. She thought she saw business in
his eye, and she said as he advanced, “Did you wish to see me or my
father, Mr. Lindo?”
“You, Miss Bonamy,” he answered, shaking hands with her. “You have
heard the news, I suppose?”
“Yes,” she replied soberly. “I am so very sorry. I fear—I mean I regret
now, that when you——”
“Asked for advice”—he continued, helping her out with a grave smile. He
had taken the great leather-covered easy-chair on the other side of the
fireplace, and was sitting forward in it, toying with his hat.
“Yes,” she said, coloring—“if you like to put it in that very
flattering form—I regret now that I presumed to give it, Mr. Lindo.”
“I am sorry for that,” he answered, looking up at her as he spoke.
She felt herself coloring anew. “Why?” she asked rather tremulously.
“Because I have come to ask your advice again. You will not refuse to
give it me?”
She looked at him in surprise; with a little annoyance even. It was
absurd. Why should he come to her in this way? Why, because on one
occasion, when circumstances had impelled him to speak and her to
answer, she had presumed to advise—why should he again come to her of
set purpose? It was ridiculous of him. “I think I must refuse,” she
said gravely and a little formally. “I know nothing of business.”
“It is not upon a matter of business,” he answered.
She uttered a sigh of impatience. “I think you are very foolish, Mr.
Lindo. Why do you not go to my father?”
“Well, because it is—because it is on a rather delicate matter,” he
answered impulsively.
“Still I do not see why you should bring it to me,” she objected, with
a flash in her gray eyes, and many memories in her mind.
“Well, I will tell you why I bring it to you,” he answered bluntly.
“Because I acted on your advice the other day; and that, you see, Miss
Bonamy, has put me in this fix; and—and, in fact, made other advice
necessary, don’t you see?”
“I see you are inclined to be somewhat ungenerous,” she answered. “But
if it must be so, pray go on.”
He rose slowly and stood leaning against the mantel-shelf in his
favorite attitude, his foot on the fender. “I will be as short as I
can,” he said, a nervousness she did not fail to note in his manner.
“Perhaps you will kindly hear me to the end before you solve my problem
for me. It will help me a little, I think, if I may put my case in the
third person. Miss Bonamy”—he paused on the name and cleared his
throat, and then went on more quickly—“a man I know, young and keen,
and at the time successful—successful beyond his hopes, so that others
of his age and standing looked on him with envy, came one day to know a
girl, and, from the moment of knowing her, to admire and esteem her.
She was not only very beautiful, but he thought he saw in her, almost
from the first hour of their acquaintance, such noble and generous
qualities as all men, even the weakest, would fain imagine in the woman
they love.”
Kate moved suddenly in her chair as if to rise. Then she sat back
again, and he went on.
“This was a weak man,” he said in a low voice. “He had had small
experience; let that be some excuse for him. He entered at this time on
a new field of work in which he found himself of importance and fancied
himself of greater importance. There he had frequent opportunities of
meeting the woman I have mentioned, who had already made an impression
on him. But his head was turned. He discovered that for certain small
and unworthy reasons her goodness and her fairness were not recognized
by those among whom he mixed, and he had the meanness to swim with the
current and to strive to think no more of the woman to whom his heart
had gone out. He acted like a cur, in fact, and presently he had his
reward. Evil times came upon him. The position he loved was threatened.
Finally he lost it, and found himself again where he had started in
life—a poor curate without influence or brilliant prospects. Then—it
seems an ignoble, a mean, and a miserable thing to say—he found out for
certain that he loved this woman, and could imagine no greater honor or
happiness than to have her for his wife.”
He paused a moment, and stole a glance at her. Kate sat motionless and
still, her lips compressed and her eyes hidden by their long lashes,
her gaze fixed apparently on the fire. Save that her face was slightly
flushed, and that she breathed quickly, he might have fancied that she
did not understand, or even that she had not heard. When he spoke
again, after waiting anxiously and vainly for any sign, his voice was
husky and agitated. “Will you tell me, Miss Bonamy, what he should do?”
he said. “Should he ask her to forgive him and to trust him, or should
he go away and be silent?”
She did not speak.
“Kate, will you not tell me? Can I not hope to be forgiven?” He was
stooping beside her now, and his hand almost touched her hair.
Then, at last, she looked up at him. “Will not my advice come a little
late?” she whispered tremulously and yet with a smile—a smile which was
at once bright and tearful and eloquent beyond words.
Afterward she thought of a dozen things she should have said to
him—about his certainty of himself, about her father; but at the time
none of these occurred to her. If he had come to her with his hands
full, it would certainly have been otherwise. But she saw him poor
through his own act, and her pride left her. When he took her in his
arms and kissed her, she said not a word. And he said only, “My
darling!”
* * * * *
The rich can afford to be niggardly. Lindo did not stay long, the
question he had to put once answered, his claim to happiness once
allowed. When Mr. Bonamy came in half an hour later, he found Kate
alone. There was an austere elation in his eye which for a moment led
her to think that he had heard her news. His first words, however,
dispelled the idea. “I have just seen Lord Dynmore,” he said, taking
his coat-skirts on his arms and speaking with a geniality which showed
that he was moved out of his every-day self. “He has—he has
considerably surprised me.”
“Indeed?” said Kate, blushing and conscious, half-attentive and half
given up to thinking how she should tell her own tale.
“Yes. He has very much surprised me. He has asked me to undertake the
agency of his property in this part of the country.”
Kate dropped her sewing in genuine surprise “No?” she said. “Has he,
indeed?”
Mr. Bonamy, pursing up his lips to keep back the smile of complacency
which would force its way, let his eyes rove round the room. “Yes,” he
said, “I do not mind saying here that I am rather flattered. Of course
I should not say as much out of doors.”
“Oh, papa, I am so glad,” she cried, rising. An unwonted softness in
her tone touched and pleased him.
“Yes,” he continued, “I am to go over to the park to-morrow to lunch
with him and talk over matters. He told me something else which will
astonish you. He has behaved very handsomely to Mr. Lindo. It seems he
saw him early this morning, after having an interview with the
archdeacon, and offered him the living of Pocklington, in
Oxfordshire—worth, I believe, about five hundred a year. He is going to
give the vicar of Pocklington the rectory here.”
Kate’s face was scarlet. “But I thought—I understood,” she stammered,
“that Mr. Clode was to be rector here?”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Bonamy, with some asperity. “The whole thing was
settled before ten o’clock this morning. Mary told me at the door that
Lindo had been here since, so I supposed he had told you something
about it.”
“He did not tell me a word of it!” Kate answered impulsively, the
generous trick her lover had played breaking in upon her mind in all
its fulness. “Not a word of it! But papa”—with a pause and then a rush
of words—“he asked me to be his wife, and I—I told him I would.”
For a moment Mr. Bonamy stared at his daughter as if he thought she had
lost her wits. Probably since his boyhood he had never been so much
astonished. “I was talking of Mr. Lindo,” he said at length, speaking
with laborious clearness. “You are referring to your cousin, I fancy.”
“No,” Kate said, striving with her happy confusion. “I mean Mr. Lindo,
papa.”
“Indeed! indeed!” Mr. Bonamy answered after another pause, speaking
still more slowly, and gazing at her as if he had never seen her
before, nor anything at all like her. “You have a good deal surprised
me. And I am not easily surprised, I think. Not easily, I think.”
“But you are not angry with me, papa?” she murmured rather tearfully.
For a moment he still stared at her in silence, unable to overcome his
astonishment. Then by a great effort he recovered himself. “Oh, no,” he
said, with a smack of his old causticity, “I do not see why I should be
angry with you, Kate. Indeed, I may say I foretold this. I always said
that young man would introduce great changes, and he has done it. He
has fulfilled my words to the letter, my dear!”