Tacitly, and unavowedly, each was plotting for opportunities of being with the other, and neither could be certain whether the other was acting deliberately or not. The situation was delightful to Portia, but Arthur found it too unsettling to be altogether pleasant after his years of completely self-centred bachelordom. In fact, it became at last unbearable. He knew that he must put his fortune to the test. He waited for an opportunity.
It came, as opportunities will. They had had rather a wasted morning, without the sign of a fox, and at last the hounds were put into a big covert which lay under the lea of a little hill. The General suggested to Portia that they should ride to its summit, as from there they could see at once on which side the hounds broke out. She agreed, and while the rest of the field waited about in the valley, the two moved off alone, as he had intended. On their way, they crossed a lane, in which they unexpectedly came upon a dancing bear and its leaders. Portia’s horse sniffed, started, kicked up its heels, and set off at a gallop down the road. It looked very wicked, and as the General saw it go, he doubted, and with justice, whether Portia would be able to keep her seat. He rallied to the opportunity for a deed of gallantry, though he did not know quite what to do. Clearly, if he followed down the road, the clattering of hoofs behind it would only madden Portia’s horse still further, and yet to await events too near the bear might frighten his own gentle steed. He therefore trotted down the field, on the opposite side of the hedge, but in the direction taken by Portia. He had not gone far when, with his heart in his mouth, he saw her horse leap over into the field a short way in front of him. It was riderless. He drew up, thinking it unwise to bring his own horse too near to any animal so completely out of hand, but to his relief he soon saw that it began to graze quietly a few yards away. Draped upon the pommel of the saddle was something ominously like a funeral pall. He dismounted, tied his own horse to a gate, and cautiously approached the runaway. He soon saw to his dismay that the object which had evoked such gloomy associations in his mind, was nothing more or less than the apron of Portia’s safety habit. Filled with forebodings, he peered through the hedge and espied the girl lying by the roadside a few feet away, and clad only in her breeches.
Arthur Fanshawe was nothing if not a gentleman. He realized that the situation demanded not only courage but tact. He could nerve himself to catch the horse, and to disentangle the habit skirt from it, but it would be an awkward matter to approach a young lady in so embarrassing a déshabille. Still, it was obvious that no gentleman could leave her lying thus beside the open road. He approched the horse, addressing it in soothing tones. It paid no attention to him, but went on eating grass while he secured the habit skirt. Taking this in his two hands, he held it as a screen between himself and Portia, and thus carrying it, he went swiftly towards her and threw it over her knees. The action was performed with the courtly grace of Sir Walter Raleigh placing his cloak before the Virgin Queen; and, having achieved it, the General found himself kneeling beside a decently clad and recumbent figure. He gazed anxiously into Portia’s face. She looked a little dazed, but did not seem to be in pain.
‘My dearest girl, where are you hurt?’ he asked in real anxiety.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
‘I feel a bit shaken,’ she said, ‘but I think there’s no great harm done. I alighted on my sit-down-upon, and as I’m pretty well padded there, I expect no bones are broken.’
The General could not but blush at the saucy audacity of the modern girl; but he was modern himself, so he was not actually shocked by Portia’s words. They did, however, slightly disconcert him, and for the moment he could not think of a suitable reply.
‘Can’t you get up?’ he asked at last.
‘I expect I can, but I don’t feel exactly inclined to, as yet.’
She moved into a sitting position, leaning her back against the bank. He sat down beside her. In the distance they heard the sound of the hounds going away. The fox had broken out on the far side of the covert, and the hunt had left them behind.
‘What has happened to our horses?’ Portia asked.
‘Tied up in the field. They are all right. You don’t feel up to riding home yet, do you?’ He obviously didn’t want her to go.
‘I’m quite comfortable here for the moment,’ she answered, gratified by the rapturous gaze of those fat ardent eyes.
‘You would be wise to stay here quietly for a bit,’ said the General, and he took one of Portia’s hands between his own, and began to fondle it.
She made no effort to withdraw it.
His mind ran over the events of the past quarter of an hour. They were sharply telescoped together in dramatic confusion, and he hardly knew what had actually happened. He saw again the fiery eyes of Portia’s horse as it made off; he heard the frantic clattering of its hoofs: he remembered how he had snatched the habit from the saddle: and now he was here, beside the girl whom he felt that he had rescued.
‘I can never be thankful enough that I was here to save you when you fell,’ he said; and he honestly began to believe that he had been.
Portia could not remember seeing him at the time, but she liked to think that this great man had gallantly risked his life for hers.
‘I hardly remember what did happen,’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘You must have lost consciousness for a time.’
‘I believe I did.’
‘It was indeed a miraculous escape,’ said Arthur fervently.
A few minutes earlier, Portia had thought that she remembered slipping sideways off her saddle when her horse had swerved suddenly towards the field. Now she realized that she must have been delirious. The truth was obviously far more exciting. She must have had a terrific accident which had made her unconscious, so that she had forgotten the details of her valiant rescue by the General.
‘Do tell me the whole story,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember anything.’
‘There’s not much to tell,’ he answered modestly. ‘I expect you hardly saw that brute of a dancing bear which set your horse off. (By the way, those scoundrelly gypsies have not heard the last of this.) Well, off you went, at a wild gallop down the lane, and I saw at once that no woman could control an animal so maddened with terror. I shall never forget that sight. I wish I could. He went like the wind, his nostrils dilated, his eyes glaring, and every nerve in his body at strain. I felt at that moment that there was no hope for your life, and … God knows what that meant to me,’ he added in a lowered tone. He could not continue, but he silently pressed the hand which was still clasped in his; and then, bending gently over it, he kissed it very reverently.
Portia was deeply moved.
‘He has saved my life at the risk of his own,’ she thought. This was indeed a wonderful adventure.
‘Go on,’ she murmured. ‘I want to hear everything. What did you do?’
‘My part was a very unimportant one,’ he replied, and this, at least, was a candid admission. ‘I could not follow you down the road, as the sound of my horse’s hoofs would have terrified your horse still more. But I saw in what direction you were being carried, and I set off across the field to cut you off. Mercifully I was in time. I heard you coming down the lane. I dismounted, and waited. It was a sight to make the stoutest heart quail. You were still sitting magnificently, your head thrown back, your balance perfect; but that beast was beyond the power of human hands to control. I waited for you, and saw the frenzied creature give a violent swerve and rise at the hedge. You were within an inch or two of those murderous stakes.’ Here he pointed towards some sharp stakes which stood up out of the hedge, and must inevitably have torn the inside out of any horse or rider. ‘My heart stood still,’ he said, ‘but I did my little best. Just avoiding his hoofs, I caught at his bridle, and succeeded in dragging him a foot or two to one side. He just missed the stakes, and jumped into the field. As you passed me, I caught you in my arms, and dragged you from the saddle. My part was nothing.… Nothing.… But you are safe.’<
br />
He could say no more. His voice vibrated. This thrilling scene had indeed been enacted in his mind as he rode down the field after Portia; and now he lived through it. It had surely happened.
Portia was immensely excited by the story. This was indeed a hunting accident on the grand scale, and with a most romantic termination.
‘How can you say your part was nothing when you have saved my life? And you might easily have been killed yourself.’
‘I could have asked nothing better, if I had been too late to rescue you. My life would then have had no value left for me.’
He paused after these words, to allow their full import to go home.
Portia was silent.
‘He’s going to propose,’ she was thinking. ‘I must not say anything which might put him off.’
‘Dearest Portia,’ said Arthur, when the silence had been given time to make its full emotional effect, ‘I must speak. What I am going to say has been long in my mind, but the past half hour has taught me that I can risk no longer delay. I have felt a diffidence about asking you to become my wife, because I am only too well aware of the difference in our ages. It seemed impossible that you should love one who is so much your senior. And yet … I flatter myself that the years of my life may have given me something more worthy of your acceptance than could be offered you by some thoughtless youth who still has his spurs to win. I did my little part in the great war. My life has not been altogether without its distinction. Such as it is, I offer it to you. Will you link your own with it?’
‘But I have never thought of you as an old man,’ said Portia graciously.
‘No. Probably not. Certainly hardly as an old man. But still I have more years to my credit than you have.’
‘I have always thought you so wonderful, to be so young, and to have done so much.’
‘Then you don’t think it would be altogether impossible …?’
‘It would be altogether impossible to say NO,’ said Portia archly.
He drew her to him.
‘Then you do love me?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she answered, and was folded into his arms.
He realized that he was passionately in love.
Chapter Twenty-Six
WHAT are we to do about it?’ said Alethea. She put down the letter from General Fanshawe which Nicholas had given her to read, and she gave her husband a look in which horror struggled with amusement. The General had brought Portia home the previous afternoon, and had very modestly withdrawn before she had had time to tell her parents the story of how he had saved her life. Before they reached the house, the lovers had agreed that the actual request for Portia’s hand should be made to her parents by letter. This somewhat formal demand gave an added dignity to the proposal, and Portia felt that it had become almost royal in its procedure.
Alethea had put her daughter to bed when she got home, and had sent for the doctor. No injuries could be discovered, and as the accident had apparently been very nearly a fatal one, it seemed that Arthur must have shown great courage and readiness in emergency. Nicholas and Alethea could neither of them help being rather surprised when they heard of his gallantry, and they felt that they had perhaps misjudged him in the past. He was after all a plucky old fellow for his age.
And now came this pretentious and pompous proposal, which proved that the gallant General was still the Arthur Fanshawe of old days.
‘We can’t allow her to marry that old woman, can we?’ Alethea exclaimed.
‘You mustn’t call him an old woman this morning, when only last night we decided that he was after all a most dashing young fellow.’
‘I know. But now I begin to disbelieve that story altogether. He can’t have done all that, and then go home to write a letter like this. Think what a terrible husband he would make.’
‘What will she say about it?’ asked Nicholas.
‘He says here that she has accepted him,’ said Alethea, turning back to the letter, which she still held in her hand. ‘But I must say I think it was unfair of him to propose to her, as he must have done, just after he had saved her life—or after she thought he had. What could she say but Yes? But if we agree, I shall feel that I’m taking part in the slaughter of the innocents.’
‘Don’t affront a young lady of the twentieth century by calling her an innocent.’
‘But really, she can’t know what he is like.’
‘She has seen a good deal of him,’ said Nicholas. ‘ I think before we discuss it, we must find out what she does feel about him.
‘I have a certain diffidence about approaching the subject, after my own lurid past with her adorer,’ said Alethea, with a grimace.
‘To us it seems farcical enough,’ said Nicholas, ‘ but she may not agree with us. And I believe he is serious.’
‘I’m sure of it. He never could be anything else, especially where he himself is concerned. But whatever Portia says, I really don’t think we can allow it. Could one condemn a daughter to a fate which one couldn’t possibly contemplate for oneself?’
‘That’s quite another thing. You were not in love with him, and you seem to have told him so pretty plainly.’
‘But can she be?’
‘You must ask her that.’
Alethea did not like the prospect, but she went to find her daughter.
Portia was waiting for her, her face lit with a proud smile of self-satisfied anticipation. To Alethea her attitude was almost incredible. She had not imagined that Arthur could appear to anyone as anything but the buffoon which she and Nicholas had always considered him. In their eyes, he was simply ridiculous. And here was Portia, their own child, living under their own roof, and accepting this absurd creature at his own valuation. She took him as seriously as he took himself, and was immensely proud of her conquest. Alethea advised that the engagement should not be announced immediately, but that Portia should first give herself time to know the General a little better than she did, but this suggestion was received with scorn. Portia explained that superficial as Alethea’s own acquaintance with General Fanshawe might be, one gets to know a man very differently directly he is in love with one. It was an intimate understanding of this kind which existed between Portia and her admirer. Alethea hesitated as to whether she ought not now to admit that she too was not without experience of Arthur in love; but she felt too much ashamed to confess it. She could only say that perhaps Portia’s feelings were more those of gratitude than love. It would be difficult to feel altogether indifferent towards a man who had just saved one in a horrid accident, and yet that emotion might not be the love which would last a lifetime.
‘I am not the kind of person to be carried away by sudden emotion,’ said Portia, in her most superior manner. ‘And as a matter of fact, we have cared for each other for some time. To you and daddy it is probably a surprise, but I have known for a long time that this was coming.’
She made Alethea feel very young and inexperienced, and quite unworthy to give advice to so mature a person as her daughter. Portia insisted that it was quite unreasonable to think of any postponement of the engagement. She intended immediately to wear an engagement ring.
Arthur had the grace to appear somewhat embarrassed when he first approached Alethea in the capacity of a prospective son-in-law, but she was obviously ready to allow their earlier relationship to fall into oblivion. He guessed that she now looked upon her refusal of his offer as one of those youthful mistakes which most people try, for their own peace of mind, to forget. Her manner was staidly parental; and while Nicholas discussed business with Arthur, she sat by with a quiet aloofness which might have disconcerted a more sensitive man, but which Arthur interpreted as the expression of matronly satisfaction. There seemed to be no valid reason for refusing to consent to the engagement, so Portia was not denied the gratification of appearing in the neighbourhood as the heroine of what seemed to her to be a very romantic love affair.
Meanwhile, Hans was having a busy winter. When he got back to Cairn
Gorm, and turned over the canvases which had given him such delight in the painting, each one of them seemed to him incredibly childish and amateur. The only ones he liked were those which he had just finished, or those upon which he was still actually at work; and he wanted to throw out everything, else, and to paint an entirely new set of pictures for his exhibition. He was filled with apprehension at the thought of his work being shown to the critical world, and he almost quarrelled with Mr. Crosby, who insisted that the final selection of the pictures to go to London should rest with himself. He thought that the actual development of the boy’s talent was both remarkable and interesting, and he meant to show, not only Hans’ latest work, but a series of studies which would make a record of his student life. For by now, Mr. Crosby had no doubt that his pupil was on the way to becoming a really great man. And his style was already very mature for his age, as from the time he was ten years old, he had worked steadily at the technique of his art, and had never been allowed to waste his time.
The exhibition opened early in May, but Hans did not go to London for it. He was really exhausted by his strenuous work of the past months, and he was glad to go to Brokeyates for a rest. But, in any case, he felt nothing but horror at the idea of being in the gallery to overhear the remarks of strangers about his pictures. He preferred to stay in the country, and forget, if he could, that they were being shown.
This decision accorded with Mr. Crosby’s desire. He didn’t want Hans in London. He hoped that the pictures would be judged on their own merits, with no personal bias to influence opinion. He gave no information as to the age of the artist, or as to his family. Hans’ address did not appear in the catalogue. And above all, Mr. Crosby was determined that no one should know that the pictures were painted by a dwarf. If this had been known, Hans would have had no chance of being looked upon as anything but a curious freak.
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