“Has he been breaking----?” the girl asked in horror.
Mrs. Gracedew laughingly tapped her heart. “Yes, we’ve had a scene! He went up again to your father.”
Cora was disconcerted. “Papa’s not there. He just came down to me by the other way.”
“Then he can join you here,” said Mrs. Gracedew with instant resignation. “I’m going.”
“Just when I’ve come back to you--at the risk,” Cora made bold to throw off, “of again interrupting, though I really hoped he had gone, your conversation with Captain Yule?”
But Mrs. Gracedew let the ball quite drop. “I’ve nothing to say to Captain Yule.”
Cora picked it up for another toss. “You had a good deal to say a few minutes ago!”
“Well, I’ve said it, and it’s over. I’ve nothing more to say at all,” Mrs. Gracedew insisted. But her announcement of departure left her on this occasion, as each of its predecessors had done, with a last, with indeed a fresh, solicitude. “What has become of my delightful ‘party’?”
“They’ve been dismissed, through the grounds, by the other door. But they mentioned,” the girl pursued, “the probable arrival of a fresh lot.”
Mrs. Gracedew showed on this such a revival of interest as fairly amounted to yearning. “Why, what times you have! You,” she nevertheless promptly decreed, “must take the fresh lot--since the house is now practically yours!”
Poor Cora looked blank. “Mine?”
Her companion matched her stare. “Why, if you’re going to marry Captain Yule.”
Cora coloured, in a flash, to the eyes. “I’m not going to marry Captain Yule!”
Her friend as quickly paled again. “Why on earth then did you tell me only ten minutes ago that you were?”
Cora could only look bewildered at the charge. “I told you nothing of the sort. I only told you”--she was almost indignantly positive--“that he had been ordered me!”
It sent Mrs. Gracedew off; she moved away to indulge an emotion that presently put on the form of extravagant mirth. “Like a dose of medicine or a course of baths?”
The girl’s gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. “As a remedy for the single life.” Oh, she had mastered the matter now! “But I won’t take him!”
“Ah, then, why didn’t you let me know?” Mrs. Gracedew panted.
“I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted us.” Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not stupid. “It’s just to let you know that I’m here now.”
Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew, suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion’s fixed eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. “Excuse me--I misunderstood. I somehow took for granted----!” She stopped, a trifle awkwardly--suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably seen it.
“You took for granted I’d jump at him? Well, you can take it for granted I won’t!”
Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. “You prefer the single life?”
“No--but I don’t prefer him!” Cora was crystal-bright.
Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding; it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish--which she then did, however, with immense eagerness. “You prefer someone else?” Cora’s promptitude dropped at this, and, starting to hear it, as you might well have seen, for the first time publicly phrased, she abruptly moved away. A minute’s sense of her scruple was enough for Mrs. Gracedew: this was proved by the tone of soft remonstrance and high benevolence with which that lady went on. She had looked very hard, first, at one of the old warriors hung on the old wall, and almost spoke as if he represented their host. “He seems remarkably clever.”
Cora, at something in the sound, quite jumped about. “Then why don’t you marry him yourself?”
Mrs. Gracedew gave a sort of happy sigh. “Well, I’ve got fifty reasons! I rather think one of them must be that he hasn’t happened to ask me.”
It was a speech, however, that her visitor could easily better. “I haven’t got fifty reasons, but I have got one.”
Mrs. Gracedew smiled as if it were indeed a stroke of wit. “You mean your case is one of those in which safety is not in numbers?” And then on Cora’s visibly not understanding: “It is when reasons are bad that one needs so many!”
The proposition was too general for the girl to embrace, but the simplicity of her answer was far from spoiling it. “My reason is awfully good.”
Mrs. Gracedew did it complete justice. “I see. An older friend.”
Cora listened as at a warning sound; yet she had by this time practically let herself go, and it took but Mrs. Gracedew’s extended encouraging hand, which she quickly seized, to bring the whole thing out. “I’ve been trying this hour, in my terrible need of advice, to tell you about him!” It came in a small clear torrent, a soft tumble-out of sincerity. “After we parted--you and I--at the station, he suddenly turned up there, and I took a little quiet walk with him which gave you time to get here before me and of which my father is in a state of ignorance that I don’t know whether to regard as desirable or dreadful.”
Mrs. Gracedew, attentive and wise, might have been, for her face, the old family solicitor. “You want me then to inform your father?” It was a wonderful intonation.
Poor Cora, for that matter too, might suddenly have become under this touch the prodigal with a list of debts. She seemed an instant to look out of a blurred office window-pane at a grey London sky; then she broke away. “I really don’t know what I want. I think,” she honestly admitted, “I just want kindness.”
Mrs. Gracedew’s expression might have hinted--but not for too long--that Bedford Row was an odd place to apply for it; she appeared for an instant to make the revolving office-chair creak. “What do you mean by kindness?”
Cora was a model client--she perfectly knew. “I mean help.”
Mrs. Gracedew closed an inkstand with a clap and locked a couple of drawers. “What do you mean by help?”
The client’s inevitable answer seemed to perch on the girl’s lips: “A thousand pounds.” But it came out in another, in a much more charming form. “I mean that I love him.”
The family solicitor got up: it was a high figure. “And does he love you?”
Cora hesitated. “Ask him.”
Mrs. Gracedew weighed the necessity. “Where is he?”
“Waiting.” And the girl’s glance, removed from her companion and wandering aloft and through space, gave the scale of his patience.
Her adviser, however, required the detail. “But where?”
Cora briefly demurred again. “In that funny old grotto.”
Mrs. Gracedew thought. “Funny?”
“Half-way from the park gate. It’s very nice!” Cora more eagerly added.
Mrs. Gracedew continued to reflect. “Oh, I know it!” She spoke as if she had known it most of her life.
Her tone encouraged her client. “Then will you see him?”
“No.” This time it was almost dry.
“No?”
“No. If you want help----” Mrs. Gracedew, still musing, explained.
“Yes?”
“Well--you want a great deal.”
“Oh, so much!”--Cora but too woefully took it in. “I want,” she quavered, “all there is!”
“Well--you shall have it.”
“All there is?”--she convulsively held her to it.
Mrs. Gracedew had finally mastered it. “I’ll see your father.”
“You dear, delicious lady!” Her young friend had again encompassed her; but, passive and preoccupied, she showed some of the chill of apprehension. It was indeed as if to meet this that Cora went earnestly on: “He’s intensely sympathetic!”
“Your father?” Mrs. Gracedew had her reserves.
“Oh, no--the other person. I so believe in him!” Cora cried.
Mrs. Gracedew looked at her a moment. “Then so do I--and I like him for believing in you.”
“Oh, he does that,” the girl hurried on, “far more than Captain Yule--I could see just with one glance that he doesn’t at all. Papa has of course seen the young man I mean, but we’ve been so sure papa would hate it that we’ve had to be awfully careful. He’s the son of the richest man at Bellborough, he’s Granny’s godson, and he’ll inherit his father’s business, which is simply immense. Oh, from the point of view of the things he’s in”--and Cora found herself sharp on this--“he’s quite as good as papa himself. He has been away for three days, and if he met me at the station, where, on his way back, he has to change, it was by the merest chance in the world. I wouldn’t love him,” she brilliantly wound up, “if he wasn’t nice.”
“A man’s always nice if you will love him!” Mrs. Gracedew laughed.
Her young friend more than met it. “He’s nicer still if he
‘will’ love you!”
But Mrs. Gracedew kept her head. “Nicer of course than if he won’t! But are you sure this gentleman does love you?”
“As sure as that the other one doesn’t.”
“Ah, but the other one doesn’t know you.”
“Yes, thank goodness--and never shall!”
Mrs. Gracedew watched her a little, but on the girl’s meeting her eyes turned away with a quick laugh. “You mean of course till it’s too late.”
“Altogether!” Cora spoke as with quite the measure of the time.
Mrs. Gracedew, revolving a moment in silence, appeared to accept her showing. “Then what’s the matter?” she impatiently asked.
“The matter?”
“Your father’s objection to the gentleman in the grotto.”
Cora now for the first time faltered. “His name.”
This for a moment pulled up her friend, in whom, however, relief seemed to contend with alarm. “Only his name?”
“Yes, but----” Cora’s eyes rolled.
Her companion invitingly laughed. “But it’s enough?”
Her roll confessingly fixed itself. “Not enough--that’s just the trouble!”
Mrs. Gracedew looked kindly curious. “What then is it?”
Cora faced the music. “Pegg.”
Mrs. Gracedew stared. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing to speak of.” The girl was quite candid now. “Hall.”
“Nothing before----?”
“Not a letter.”
“Hall Pegg?” Mrs. Gracedew had winced, but she quickly recovered herself, and, for a further articulation, appeared, from delicacy, to form the sound only with her mind. The sound she formed with her lips was, after an instant, simply “Oh!”
It was to the combination of the spoken and the unspoken that Cora desperately replied. “It sounds like a hat-rack!”
“‘Hall Pegg’? ‘Hall Pegg’?” Mrs. Gracedew now made it, like a questionable coin, ring upon the counter. But it lay there as lead and without, for a moment, her taking it up again. “How many has your father?” she inquired instead.
“How many names?” Miss Prodmore seemed dimly to see that there was no hope in that. “He somehow makes out five.”
“Oh, that’s too many!” Mrs. Gracedew jeeringly declared.
“Papa unfortunately doesn’t think so, when Captain Yule, I believe, has six.”
“Six?” Mrs. Gracedew, alert, looked as if that might be different.
“Papa, in the morning-room, told me them all.”
Mrs. Gracedew visibly considered, then for a moment dropped Mr. Pegg. “And what are they!”
“Oh, all sorts. ‘Marmaduke Clement----’” Cora tried to recall.
Mrs. Gracedew, however, had already checked her. “I see--‘Marmaduke Clement’ will do.” She appeared for a minute intent, but, as with an energetic stoop, she picked up Mr. Pegg. “But so will yours,” she said, with decision.
“Mine?--you mean his!”
“The same thing--what you’ll be.”
“Mrs. Hall Pegg!”--Cora tried it, with resolution, loudly.
It fell a little flat in the noble space, but Mrs. Gracedew’s manner quickly covered it. “It won’t make you a bit less charming.”
Cora wondered--she hoped. “Only for papa.”
And what was he? Mrs. Gracedew by this time seemed assentingly to ask. “Never for me!” she soothingly declared.
Cora took this in with deep thanks that gripped and patted her companion’s hand. “You accept it more than gracefully. But if you could only make him----!”
Mrs. Gracedew was all concentration. “‘Him’? Mr. Pegg?”
“No--he naturally has to accept it. But papa.”
She looked harder still at this greater feat, then seemed to see light. “Well, it will be difficult--but I will.”
Doubt paled before it. “Oh, you heavenly thing!”
Mrs. Gracedew after an instant, sustained by this appreciation, went a step further. “And I’ll make him say he does!”
Cora closed her eyes with the dream of it. “Oh, if I could only hear him!”
Her benefactress had at last run it to earth. “It will be enough if I do.”
Cora quickly considered; then, with prompt accommodation, gave the comfortable measure of her faith. “Yes--I think it will.” She was quite ready to retire. “I’ll give you time.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Gracedew; “but before you give me time give me something better.”
This pulled the girl up a little, as if in parting with her secret she had parted with her all. “Something better?”
“If I help you, you know,” Mrs. Gracedew explained, “you must help me.”
“But how?”
“By a clear assurance.” The charming woman’s fine face now gave the real example of clearness. “That if Captain Yule should propose to you, you would unconditionally refuse him.”
Cora flushed with the surprise of its being only that. “With my dying breath!”
Mrs. Gracedew scanned her robust vitality. “Will you make it even a promise?”
The girl looked about her in solid certainty. “Do you want me to sign----?”
Mrs. Gracedew was quick. “No, don’t sign!”
Yet Cora was so ready to oblige. “Then what shall I do?”
Mrs. Gracedew turned away, but after a few vague steps faced her again. “Kiss me.”
Cora flew to her arms, and the compact had scarce been sealed before the younger of the parties was already at the passage to the front. “We meet of course at the station.”
Mrs. Gracedew thought. “If all goes well. But where shall you be meanwhile?”
Her confederate had no need to think. “Can’t you guess?”
The bang of the house-door, the next minute, so helped the answer to the riddle as fairly to force it, when she found herself alone, from her lips. “At that funny old grotto? Well,” she sighed, “I like funny old grottos!” She found herself alone, however, only for a minute; Mr. Prodmore’s formidable presence had darkened the door from the court.
