“You are not going, Mr. Haldane?” said Susan. “Tea will be in directly. You must have some tea. You know I am rather proud of my tea. It is the only thing a pauper with one servant can be proud of.”
“I — I have an engagement in the City,” Haldane answered rather vaguely, moving towards the door, but with his eyes on Grace Perivale’s pale face.
“The City? Why, the City will be dead asleep before you can get there.”
“True. You are very kind. I know how good your tea is.” He put down his hat, and dropped into a chair near the sofa where Lady Perivale had seated herself.
“I hope you are not one of those horrid men who make believe to like tea, and then go about reviling one for offering it to them,” said Susan, who foresaw a dead silence.
“Oh no; I am a genuine tea-drinker. The male tea-drinker is by no means a rare animal.”
“When are you going to write another novel, Mr. Haldane?” asked Susan, while the inimitable parlourmaid, in a Parisian cap, was bringing in the tea-tray.
“You have been good enough to make that inquiry two or three times a year, for the last five years. I know you think it flatters my vanity.”
“And I shall go on asking the same question. When? When? When?” handing him a cup and saucer, which he carried, with the cream-jug, to Lady Perivale, without relaxing the stiffness that had come over his manner when she entered the room.
But the moment had come when he must speak to her, or seem absolutely uncivil.
“Don’t you think there are novelists enough between Central Europe and London without my pushing into the field, Lady Perivale?” he asked.
“Oh, but you have been in the field, and have won your battle. I think everybody would like another story from the author of ‘Mary Deane.’”
“You do not consider how easily people forget,” he said.
“Oh yes, I do,” she answered, moved by that faint tremor in his voice which a less interested hearer might not have observed. “You yourself are an instance. It is just a year since you called upon me one afternoon — when Colonel Rannock and I were playing a duet. I suppose our music frightened you, for you stayed hardly five minutes, and you have been unconscious of my existence ever since.”
She was determined to speak of Rannock, to let him see that the name was not difficult of utterance; but she could not help the sudden flame-spot that flew into her cheeks as she spoke it.
“Perhaps I had an idea that you did not want me,” he said; and then his heart sickened at the thought that this woman, whom he had honoured and admired, whose face had haunted his solitary hours, whose beauty still attracted him with a disquieting charm, was possibly a woman of lost character, whom no self-respecting man could ever dream of as a wife.
He took two or three sips out of the Swansea teacup which Susan handed him, put it down hurriedly, snatched his hat, shook hands with his hostess, bowed to Lady Perivale, and had left the house before even the most alert of parlourmaids could fly to her post in the hall.
“Well, Susan,” said Grace, when the door had closed upon him. “Don’t you think you have done a vastly clever thing?”
“Anyhow, I would rather have done it than left it undone!” her friend answered savagely, furious at Haldane’s conduct.
“What on earth possessed you to bring that man and me together?”
“I wanted you to meet. I know you like him, and I know he worships you.”
“Worships! And he would scarcely hand me a cup of tea — did it as if he were carrying food to a leper! Worship, forsooth! When it’s evident he believes the worst people say of me.”
“Perhaps he takes the scandal more to heart than another man would, because you have been his bright particular star.”
“Nonsense! I know he used to like coming to my house — he used to jump at my invitations, I thought it was because I always had pretty people about me, or that it was on account of my chef. But as for anything more — —”
“Well, there was something more. He was deeply in love with you.”
“Did he tell you so?”
“He is not that kind of man. But he and I have been pals ever since I came to London. I taught a sister of his when his people lived in Onslow Square — a sister he adored. She married a soldier, and died in India a year after her marriage, and Arthur likes to talk to me about her. She was very fond of me, poor girl. And then, last year, I found that he liked to talk about you — and I know the inside of people’s minds well enough to know most of the things they don’t tell me.”
“If he cared for me last year why didn’t he ask me to marry him?”
“Because he is, comparatively speaking, a poor man, and you are rich.”
“It’s all nonsense, Sue. If he cared for me — in that way — he could never condemn me upon an idle rumour.”
“You allow nothing for jealousy. He thought you were encouraging Rannock, and that you meant to marry him.”
“And I had refused the wretch three times,” said Grace, despairingly.
“What was the good of refusing him if you let him hang about you — lunch at your house twice a week — dance attendance upon you at Ascot and Henley?”
“Yes, it was foolish, I suppose. Everybody can tell me so, now it is too late. Good-bye, Sue. Don’t lay any more traps for me, please. Your diplomacy doesn’t answer.”
“I’m sorry he behaved like a bear; but I am glad you have met, in spite of his coldness. I know he loves you.”
“And you think that an ostracized person like me ought to be grateful for any man’s regard?”
“No, Grace; but I think Arthur Haldane is just the one man whose affection you value.”
“I have never said as much to you.”
“There was no necessity. Don’t be down-hearted, dear. Things will right themselves sooner than you think.
“I am not down-hearted. I am only angry. Good-bye. Come to lunch to-morrow if you”
want me to forgive you.”
“ I’ll be there. I believe I am more appreciative of your chef than Arthur Haldane ever was.”
CHAPTER VII.
“There’s a woman like a dewdrop, she’s so purer than the purest;
And her noble heart’s the noblest, yes, and her sure faith’s the surest:
And this woman says, ‘ My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,
Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark’s heart’s outbreak tuneless,
If you loved me not!’ And I, who — (ah, for words of flame!) adore her!
Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her.”
LADY PERIVALE’S victoria was standing at Miss Rodney’s gate, but before she could step into it her path was intercepted by the last person she expected to see at that moment, though he had so recently left her. It was Haldane, who had been pacing the avenue in front of Miss Rodney’s windows, and who crossed the road hurriedly as Grace came out of the gate.
“Will you let your carriage wait while you walk with me for a few minutes in the Park, Lady Perivale?” he asked gravely. “I have something to say to you — that — that I want very much to say,” he concluded feebly, the man whose distinction of style the critics praised finding himself suddenly at a loss for the commonest forms of speech.
Grace was too surprised to refuse. She gave a tacit assent, and they crossed the road side by side, and went into the Park, by a turnstile nearly opposite Miss Rodney’s house. They walked along the quiet pathway between two rows of limes that were just beginning to flower, and through whose leafy boughs the evening light showed golden. They walked slowly, in a troubled silence, neither of them venturing to look at the other, yet both of them feeling the charm of the hour, and that more subtle charm of being in each other’s company.
“Lady Perivale, when I left Miss Rodney’s drawing-room just now, my mind was so overwhelmed with trouble that I wanted to be alone — wanted time to think. I have been pacing this pathway ever since, not long, perhaps, in
actual moments, but an age in thought, and — and — the end of it all is that, in the most profound humility and self-contempt, I have to implore your pardon for having suffered my thoughts to wrong you. My judgment has been to blame — not my heart. That has never wavered.”
“Oh, Mr. Haldane, was it worth while to apologize? You have acted like all my other society friends — except one. People who have known me ever since my marriage choose to believe that I have made myself unworthy of their acquaintance. I cannot call it friendship, for no friend could believe the story that has been told of me.”
“You cut me to the heart. No friend, you say! And I — I who have so honoured you in the past, I was fool enough to believe the slander that was dinned into my ear, chapter and verse, with damning iteration. I struggled against that belief — struggled and succumbed — because people were so sure of their facts, and because — well, I confess, I believed the story. But I thought there might have been a marriage — that for some reason of your own you wanted to keep it dark. I could not think of you as other people thought, but I believed that you were lost to me for ever. I had seen Rannock at your house, seen him about with you — and — and I thought you cared for him.”
“You were mistaken. I know now that I was foolish in receiving him upon such a friendly footing.”
“Only because the man is unworthy of any woman’s confidence or regard. Lady Perivale, I think last year you must have had some suspicion that I was fighting a battle with my own heart.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“I must be a better actor than I fancy myself if you did not know that I loved you.”
“I can see no reason for fighting battles — if — if that were so.”
“Can you not? You don’t know — or you did not know then — how malevolent the world can be — this modern world, which measures everything in life by its money value. You are rich, and I have just enough to live upon comfortably without watching my bank-book. From the society point of view I am a pauper.”
“What would other people’s opinion matter if I knew you were sincere?”
“Yes, that is the question. That was why I kept silence. My pride could not endure that you should rank me with such men as Rannock. And there were others of the class pursuing you — ruined spendthrifts, to whom your fortune would mean a new lease of profligate pleasures. I saw Rannock favoured by you — —”
“He was never favoured. I liked his society because he was unlike the rest of the world. I was sorry for him, for his disappointment, his lost opportunities. I thought him a brokenhearted man.”
“Broken-hearted? Yes, that is the reprobate’s last card; and unfortunately it often wins the game. Broken-hearted! — as if that battered heart could break! A man who has lived only to do mischief, a man whose friendship meant ruin for younger and better men.”
“Women know so little of men’s lives.”
“Not such women as you.”
“I confess that he interested me. He seemed a creature of whim and fancy, fluctuating between wild fun and deepest melancholy. I thought no unkindly feeling hen I refused to marry him, as other men had done whom I once thought my friends.”
“Rannock looks longer ahead than other men. Be sure he did not love you for your refusal, and that he hung on in the hope you would change your mind. No man of that stamp was every a woman’s friend.”
“Don’t let us talk of him. I hate the sound of his name.”
“Yet you pronounced it so bravely just now in Miss Rodney’s drawing-room, and looked me in the face, as if you defied me to think ill of you.”
“Well, it was something like a challenge perhaps. And did that convince you?”
“You convinced me. I rushed from the house in a tumult of wonder and doubt. But I had seen you, and could not go on doubting. Your eyes, your voice, the pride in your glance, the pride of wounded innocence, defiant, yet pathetic! Who that had seen you could go on doubting? Lady Perivale — Grace — can you forgive a jealous fool who made his love for you a rod to scourge him, whose thoughts have been cruel to you, but, God knows, how much more cruel to himself?”
“I am glad you are beginning to think better of me,” she answered quietly.
“Beginning! I have not the shadow of a thought that wrongs you. I am humbled in the dust under your feet. I ask for nothing but to be forgiven, to be restored to your friendship, to help you as a friend, brother, father might help you, in any difficulty, in any trouble.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, holding out her hand to him; and their hands met in a firm and lingering grasp, which meant something more than everyday friendliness.
“I am very glad you trust me, in the face of that odious rumour,” she said. “I confess that I felt your unkindness — for it was unkind to hold yourself aloof like other people whose friendship I had never particularly valued. As to their preposterous story about me, it would be easy to answer it with an alibi, since I was at my villa on the Italian Riviera from November to April, and have not seen Colonel Rannock since the last Goodwood, when we were both in Lady Carlaverock’s house party.”
They walked up and down the little avenue of limes till the golden light took a rosier glow and shone upon a lower level, and until Lady Perivale’s servants thought she had gone home in somebody else’s carriage, and forgotten that her own was waiting for her.
She told Haldane all that had happened to her since her return to London — her indignation, her contempt for her false friends, Lady Morning-side’s kindness, her engagement of Faunce, the detective, and her hope that she would be able to refute the slander in a court of law.
“Everybody in London has seen my disgrace, and everybody in London must know of my rehabilitation,” she said; and then, in a contemptuous tone, “Is it not absurd that I must take all this trouble simply because another woman happens to be like me?”
“And because a man happens to be a villain. I believe the thing was a deep-laid scheme of Rannock’s.”
“But why should he do such a vile thing?”
“Because he wanted to be even with you — that would be his expression — for your refusing to marry him.”
“Oh, surely no man could be capable of anything so diabolical.”
“I know a good deal about Rannock’s antecedents, and I believe he could.”
“But, even if he were capable of such baseness, how could he plan the thing so as to be met by people who know me?”
“That was not difficult. He had only to watch the papers, and throw himself in people’s way. He knew that wherever he went there would be travellers who knew you. He chose Algiers, Corsica, Sardinia, as less public than Cannes or Nice, and so affected an air of avoiding the rush of tourists. God forgive me, if I wrong the man — I hate him too much to reason fairly about him, but the fact of his absence from London this season counts against him. It looks as if, having fired his shot, he kept himself clear of the consequences.”
“Nobody would have cut him if he had been in London!” Lady Perivale said scornfully.
“Not more than usual. He was not liked — by the best people!”
“No! But he was so clever, so amusing, played the ‘cello divinely — and he flattered me by telling me his troubles, and how hardly the world had used him. I thought him a victim. Oh, what an idiot I have been!”
“No, no. You have only been not quite a woman of the world.”
“And I thought I was one. I thought I had learnt everything in my half-dozen years of society, and that the pristine simplicity of my father’s parsonage was a thing of the past. And I suffered myself to be talked about, my name bandied about.”
“Give me the privilege of your friendship till you think me worthy of a dearer bond, and I will protect you from all the errors of unworldliness I would not have you one jot more of a worldling than you are. I have worldly wisdom enough for both of us — the wisdom of Mayfair and Belgravia, which the angels call folly.”
He took her to her ca
rriage, but he did not ask to be allowed to call upon her.
“I shall be leaving town shortly,” he said, “but I hope we may meet in the autumn.”
“Are you going abroad?”
“I think so, but I have not determined the direction. I will write to you from — wherever I am — if you will allow me.”
“I shall be pleased to hear from you,” she answered gently “I am very glad we are friends again.”
On this they clasped hands and parted, lovers half avowed.
Grace went home radiant. She had always liked him. It might be that she had always loved him. His coldness had cut her to the heart, yet now that he was at her feet again, she respected him for having held himself aloof while there was a shadow of doubt in his mind. The fortune-hunter would have taken advantage of her isolation, and pursued her all the more ardently while she was under a cloud. And she was touched by his surrendering at once to her personal influence, to the eyes and voice that he loved. He could not meet her face to face, and go on doubting her.
CHAPTER VIII.
“All we that are called women, know as well
As men, it were a far more noble thing
To grace where we are graced, and give respect
There, where we are respected: yet we practise
A wilder course, and never bend our eyes
On men with pleasure, till they find the way
To give us a neglect; then we, too late,
Perceive the loss of what we might have had,
And dote to death.”
MR.FAUNCE’S profession, more especially since he left Scotland Yard, had lain for the most part among the upper classes. He had been employed in delicate investigations that had brought him in touch with some of the mightiest in the land, and he knew his peerage almost as well as if his own name had been recorded in that golden book. His aristocratic clients found him as kindly and sympathetic as he was shrewd and trustworthy. He never made the galled jade wince by a tactless allusion. He always took an indulgent view of the darkest case when he discussed it with the delinquent’s family. He could turn a father’s wrath to pity by his shrewd excuses for a son’s misconduct, making forgery appear only a youthful ebullition, proceeding rather from want of thought than want of honesty. But he was always on the side of the angels, and always urged generous dealing when a woman was in question. If wrongs had to be righted, a breach of promise case quashed, Faunce was always the victim’s advocate. His tactfulness soothed the offended parent’s pride, the betrayed husband’s self-respect, People liked him and trusted him; and the family skeleton was brought out of the cupboard, and submitted freely to his inspection.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 990
