The Harboroughs' and Talbot's invitation to the Manor had been for a fortnight. Of that fortnight fully a week has already elapsed. To the house which comes next in the Harboroughs' autumn programme John Talbot has, by some strange oversight, not been asked. For this reason--to mark her indignation at so flagrant a departure from the code of civilised manners--Betty shows every symptom of an intention to throw up her engagement.
But for once Mr. Harborough's love of sport exceeds his pliability. From a house which possesses some of the best grousing on the Yorkshire moors, not even the fact that his wife's admirer is not bidden to share it can keep him; and what is more, as it is an old-fashioned house which expects to see husband and wife together, he will make Betty go too.
Talbot's engagements are more elastic. By an easy readjustment of them he might spare another seven days to his present quarters. It is true that Lady Roupell has not as yet definitely asked him to prolong his visit, but he knows that she is hardly aware whether he goes or stays; and as to Freddy, he is always brimming over with an easy hospitality which costs him nothing, and makes every one say what a good fellow he is.
A whole week of absolute freedom, afternoons as well as mornings; a whole week during which he need not pretend to be jealous--pretend to be fond--pretend to be everything that he once was, and is not, and never will be again! It is possible, too, that Jacob may have a relapse. In that case, a whole week of mowing, of clipping edges, of picking lavender, and gathering groundsel for the cage-birds! He knows that there must always be eleven bits gathered, because there are eleven birds, and she cannot bear one to be without. He smiles softly at this tender-hearted puerility of hers.
And meanwhile, since she has made it clear to him that she does not desire any more of his immediate company, he keeps himself away for two whole days. What business has he, who can never claim any rights over her, to expose her, by his assiduities, to the coarse gossip of a gaping village?
But though his eye is not enriched by her, her presence and her words are with him night and day. One of her sentences rings for ever in his ears--'God gives us all a best, if we will only look for it.' Look for it as he may, how can he find his best? and finding, how dare he take hold of and make it his? His best! The best for him--does not it apparently stare him in the face?
To shake off this chain that was once of flowers, and is now of cold eating iron, and to walk the world a free man, free for honest work and honest love. Ay, but to the riveting of that chain there went an oath, from which the mere fact of his having grown tired of wearing its fetters does not, in his opinion, release him. He is bound by an engagement the more perversely sacred, because none can hold him to it.
Only by her with whom it was made can he be emancipated from it; and for that emancipation how can he ask her? How can he go to her and say, 'I have grown tired of you; I have grown fond of another woman. Let me go!'
It is only as a free gift from her hand that he can accept his dismissal; and, of the improbability of her ever making him that gift, his sinking spirit assures him. It is not only vanity and habit that tie her to him. Deep in his heart he knows that, cold wife, partial mother, bad friend as she is, to him she has been, and is, a fond and faithful lover; that, if he were but to hold up his finger, she would toss to the winds position, diamonds, toilettes, admirers, everything that for her life holds of valuable, to face opprobrium and poverty by his side. He knows that he and Franky are the two things in the world she really loves, and for whom her foolish heart beats as truly under its worldly 'fluther' of lace and satin as did ever Cornelia's for her Gracchi, or Lucretia's for her lord.
It is absolutely impossible that he can cut her adrift. Bitterly unsatisfactory, wrong, senseless, and now oppressive as is the connection that binds him to her, he must hope for none other, none better, none dearer, as long as her and his lives last.
Such being the case, is not it the height of unwisdom to himself, perhaps of injustice to that other woman, that he should seek her company with the consciousness of a heart he dare not give, and a hand he dare not offer?
This is the question that dings perpetually in his ears, as he lies down and as he rises up, as he walks moody and alone in the park, as he answers Lily's startling questions, and evades her broad hints; or listens to Betty's anathemas of her man-milliner, or her petulant lamentations over the expected loss of his society during the ensuing week.
He has not yet answered it on the third day after his last visit to the little Red House, when he meets Peggy in the lane, staggering under a philanthropic load of framed lithographs, which he helps her to carry to the workhouse, and to hang up on the walls, whose dreary monotony of whitewash they agreeably and gaudily vary. He has not yet answered it the next day, when he carries a message to her from Lady Roupell, a message which must be preposterously long, since it takes two hours and a half to deliver; he has not yet answered it on the day after, nor on the day after that again, which is the last of the Harboroughs' visit.
On the afternoon of that day some business has brought Peggy reluctantly up to the Manor, where she had not appeared for above a week. John and Lily, as is but civil, escort her home again! It is true that Miss Harborough has had a near shave, at the moment of setting off, of being recaptured by her nurse--a danger from which she has been rescued only by her own presence of mind, a presence of mind made all the acuter by her excessive desire to flirt with John, and to overhear what--unintended for Lilyan ears--he has to say to his companion.
'Oh, Miss Lambton!' cries she, pulling down Peggy's face in order to whisper importantly into her ear; 'do not you think I had better come with you? There are the stiles! I do not see,' with an affectation of excessive delicacy, 'how you are to get over the stiles with only John Talbot!'
Her plea is admitted as sound.
They all three spend a long dawdling afternoon at the Little House. They take the fox out for a run in the field on his chain; and in his joy he gallops round and round, tying all their legs together, even throwing Miss Harborough down--an accident which fills her with delight. He offers to play with Mink, who growls, and receives his advances with such hauteur that he has to be reminded of the humility of his own beginnings, and of the Dogs' Home. The snubbed fox throws himself on the sward and pants, swishing his brush from side to side like a cross cat. Then they restore him to his prison, at which he opens his red mouth wide, making little angry wild noises.
After they have done with the fox, they have still the garden to water; the kittens in the hayloft--to which they ascend, on the joint invitation of Alfred and Lily--to see; peas to throw to the pretty prosy pigeons, long-windedly courting in fans and pouts, and prism-coloured throats on the dove-cot roof. And when at length her guests take their tardy leave, Peggy is insensibly lured, step by step, into accompanying them more than half-way home.
Into what could not such an evening lure one? Through a barley-field first; all the pale spears slanting westward in the level sun; then a field of old pasture, knapweeds purpling, little hawkweed clocks telling the time in fairyland, loitering buttercups. Then a hedgerow with woody nightshade and long blue vetch; then the green night of a little wood. Though the sun is nearing his declension, the delicious smell that all day long he has compelled the grass and the flowers to bring him, in odorous tribute, still tarries, making the air rich--acre, as the French say; a word for which there is no precise English equivalent. On the farther side of the tiny forest they part; if so short a severance can indeed be called to part. Are not they to meet again in an hour or so, at that dinner-party at the Manor, to which both Peggy and Prue are bidden? and even if it were not so, have not they to-morrow, and again to-morrow, and yet to-morrow again, to look forward to? This being so, why is it that such a curious last-time feeling clings to Talbot as he crosses the park with his little chattering comrade, making him turn his head again and again in futile seeking towards the sylvan gate whence his tall and white-gowned friend has already disappeared?
On entering the house, and going through an upper passage to his room, he is accosted by Betty's maid, who tells him that her ladyship's headache is better; that she is on the sofa in Lady Roupell's boudoir, and that she has expressed a wish to see him as soon as he comes in. He follows with a guilty conscience and a sinking heart. Has he for one moment of his long blissful afternoon remembered the headache, to which alone he owed his freedom; the headache genuine enough--though it took its birth from mortification and spleen--to keep her stretched in pain and solitary darkness the livelong day? She is in semi-darkness still, her windows closed (a headache always makes her chilly); not a glint of apricot cloud or suave blue sky-field reaching her. A sense of pity, largely touched with remorse, comes over him, as he takes her hand, and says softly:
'You are better at last? Come, that is well!'
She leaves her hand, languid and rather feverish, lying in his.
'It is time that I should be better!' she says, with an impatient sigh. 'What a day I have had!--our last day!' There is such genuine grief and regret in the accent with which she pronounces the three final words that his remorse deepens; but that increase of self-reproach does not make it the least more possible to him to echo her lamentation. 'I asked Julie how often you had been to inquire after me,' continues she, turning her eyes, innocent to-day of their usual black smouches, interrogatively upon him; 'she said she could not remember.'
Talbot blesses the wisely ambiguous maid; and, to hide his confusion, stoops his head over the hand, which he still--since it is evidently expected of him--holds.
'I wish my inquiries could have made you better,' says he, taking--and feeling with shame that he is taking--a leaf out of Julie's book. 'I am afraid that you will not be able to come down to dinner.'
'Oh, but I shall!' returns she sharply. 'Why do you think I shall not? Is the wish father to the thought?'
He laughs constrainedly, taking refuge in what is often the best disguise, truth.
'Yes, that is it!'
'Milady would never forgive me,' pursues she, rolling her head restlessly about upon the cushions, 'if I left her to struggle with the natives alone; I am sure I have not the heart to struggle with any one! Oh, how miserable I am! John!'--laying her other hand on his, and clasping it between both hers--'how am I to get through the next fortnight?'
Talbot wonders whether the burning blush that he feels searing him all through his body shows in his face, whether he looks the double-faced cur that he feels. Probably he does not, or else the faint light helps him; for she goes on unsuspiciously:
'You have never told me where you have decided to go to-morrow--to the Mackintoshes or the Delaneys? If you ask my advice,' with a rather showery smile, 'I should say the Delaneys; for you will be less well amused there, and have more time to think of me! Remember that you have not given me your address; give it me now, lest you should forget it!'
The tug of war has come. He would rather have put it off until her headache was gone--until he could meet her upon more equal terms. What chance has a man against a woman lying on a sofa with her eyes full of tears, and a handkerchief wetted with eau-de-Cologne tied round her aching brows? None. His hesitation is so obvious that she cannot but notice it.
'Well,' she says, with some sharpness, 'why do not you answer me? Where is the difficulty?'
He laughs artificially.
'The difficulty,' he says, trying to speak carelessly--'the difficulty is that there is no difficulty. You have my address already. I am going to stay here!'
He has deposited his box of dynamite: he has now only to wait for the explosion. But for twenty or thirty heart-beats she remains entirely silent, and, at the end of that time, only repeats his own words:
'To--stay--here!'
'Yes.'
Another silence. He begins to wish that the explosion would come. It would at least be better than this. She has sat up on her sofa, and pushed back the wet bandage from her damp and straightened hair. She has neither belladonna nor rouge. He has always strongly deprecated and even reviled the use of either; and yet he cannot help thinking, though he hates himself for so thinking, that she looks old and haggard without them.
'And this,' says she at last, speaking between her teeth in a low voice, 'is your delicate way of intimating to me that I am superseded!'
He has risen to his feet. They stand staring each at each in the twilight room, the one not whiter than the other. How much worse it is than he had feared! Close outside the window a robin is piping blithely. A stupid wonder flashes across his mind as to whether he is one of those for whom Peggy scatters crumbs on her window-sill.
'I think that that is a question not worth answering,' he replies, trying to speak calmly.
'But all the same it must be answered,' rejoins she, with symptoms of rising excitement. 'You shall not leave the room until it is answered.'
'Will you please to repeat it then in a more intelligible form?' asks he, with a forced composure.
For a moment she glares at him with dead-white face and shining eyes; then, rising from her sofa, flings herself into his arms.
'How can you expect me to say such words twice?' cries she, bursting into a tempest of tears; 'but if it is so, tell me the truth. You have always blamed me for not speaking truth; learn your own lesson: tell me the truth. Is it all over--all at an end?'
She has withdrawn herself again from him, and now stands holding him at arm's length, a hand upon each shoulder, her dimmed eyes fixed upon his face, searching for the least sign of faltering or evasion upon it. But she finds none.
'You know,' he answers, in a low quiet voice, whose gentleness is the cover for a bottomless depression, 'that there will never be an end to it until you make one.'
Something in his tone dries her tears.
'Then why do you want to stay here?' asks she, her voice still shaking from her late gust of passion.
He is silent. Her words find an echo in his own heart. Why indeed? Seen in the hell-light of his renewed bondage, his plan for that one little halcyon week ahead seems to him to have been a monstrosity of folly and unreason. How could he, for even a moment, have entertained it?
Betty has sat down again upon the sofa; and wiping rather viciously the eyes in which an ireful light is flashing, she says softly, as if she were saying something rather pleasant:
'I am sure you would not wish to hurt her, or blight her young affections; and yet it seems to me that you are on the high-road to do both.'
He writhes, but he could not speak, if flaying alive were to be the penalty of his dumbness.
'I do not think'--still in that silky key--'that you have any right to turn the poor thing's head with attentions such as she has probably never received before.'
At that he laughs out loud, and insultingly:
'Turn her head! Ha! ha!'
'It is very amusing, no doubt,' rejoins Betty, her false suavity giving way to a most real fury, breast heaving, and colour rising, 'and such hilarity becomes you extremely; but, as she has probably never seen any one more attractive than the village apothecary, it would be no great excess of coxcombry on your part to suppose that you might be his successful rival.'
But this taunt fails to extract any reply. Exasperated by her insuccess in driving him into angry speech, she goes on:
'I do not think you have had to complain of her rigour; how many days'--with an innocent air of inquiry--'has she allowed you to mow her lawn, and milk her cow, and feed her pig for her? Six? Seven? I suppose you have been with her to-day, too?'
At that he unwisely abandons his fortress of silence, and speaks:
'You had better ask Lily; you have set her on more than once as a spy. Have your child in and ask her!'
To this cold and withering taunt her own weaker sarcasms succumb; and again abandoning all self-control, she bursts into an agony of weeping, burying her head in the sofa-cushions, and convulsed from head to foot by her sobs.
'Is it any wonder,' she moans, 'that I do not want to see the only thing I have in the world go from me? What am I saying?'--pulling herself up suddenly--'how dare I say the only thing? have not I my Franky? I shall always have my Franky!'
The grief of her tone is so poignant and so real that his heart softens to her, despite her former gibes. He lays his hand upon her shoulder.
'What is all this about?' he asks kindly. 'You know as well as I do that you will have me--such as I am--as long as you choose to keep me!'
'Then you will not stay here?' cries she precipitately, quitting her desperate posture, and springing back with startling suddenness into life and animation again; 'then you will go to-morrow?'
There is a pause. He walks to the window. Through it there comes the peaceful sound of bleating sheep; and the distant sharp bark of a little dog. Can it be Mink? He has a sharp bark. Poor little Mink! He will probably never see Mink again. And to-morrow, according to Peggy, Mink had promised to tell them all about the Dogs' Home!
He smiles transiently at the recollection of her childish jest. How many things they were to have done to-morrow! Then he walks slowly back from the window and says:
'I will go to-morrow!'
Perhaps there is something in the tone of this concession which takes away from the value of it, for Betty begins to sob again; this time more in wrath than in sorrow.
'I do not think you need make such a favour of it; I do not think it is much to ask, considering all things--considering how I have com--com--compromised my reputation for your sake for the last five years!' cries she hysterically.
He does not defend himself; only a thought, whose want of generosity shocks him, flashes across his mind, that that was already a fait accompli when he had first made her acquaintance.
'We know that there is no harm in our friendship,' pursues she, a slight red staining her tear-washed cheeks; 'but nobody else knows it. The world is always only too pleased to think the worst, and in one sense'--again mastered by her emotion--'it is right! I would have given up anything--everything for you--you know I would! and you--you--will give up nothing for me, not even such a trifle as this!'
Once again pity gets the upper hand of him; but a pity crossed by such a bottomless regret and remorse at having let himself slide into this tangled labyrinth of wrong, when honour and dishonour have changed coats, and he does not know which is which, as the Lost Souls in Hell, if such there be, might feel in looking back upon their earthly course.
'You are right,' he says; 'we must do the best we can for each other! We must not make life harder for one another than it already is. I will do what you wish! I ought! I will! Such a trifle, too!'
