Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Mamie watched him idly, as his hands shot out towards her, crossed as he drew them steadily back and turned at the wrist to feather the oar as they touched his chest. Then her gaze wandered down stream towards the other shore, and she tried to make out the roof of the Fearings’ house above the trees.

  “George,” she said suddenly, “will you be angry?”

  “I am never angry,” answered her cousin. “What are you going to do now? If you mean to jump out of the boat I will have a line ready.”

  “No. I am not going to jump out of the boat. But I am so afraid you will be angry, after all. It is something I want to ask you. I am sure you will not like it!”

  “One way of not making me angry would be not to ask the question,” observed George, with a quiet smile.

  “But I want to ask you so much!” exclaimed the young girl, with an imploring look that made George’s smile turn into a laugh. He had laughed more than once lately, in a very natural manner.

  “Out with it, Mamie!” he cried, pulling his sculls briskly through the water. “I shall not be very angry, I daresay, and I have fallen out of the habit of eating little girls. What is it?”

  “Why do you never go and see the Fearings, George? You used to be there so much.”

  George’s expression changed, though he continued to row with the same even stroke. His face grew very grave and he unconsciously glanced across the river toward the place at which Mamie had looked.

  “I knew you would be angry!” she said in a repentant tone.

  “No,” George answered, “I am not angry. I am thinking.”

  He was, indeed, wondering how much of the truth the girl knew, and he was distrustful enough to fancy that she might have some object in putting the question. But Mamie was not diplomatic like her mother. She was simple and natural in her thoughts, and unaffected in her manner. He glanced at her again and saw that she was troubled by her indiscretion.

  “Did your mother never tell you anything about it all?” he asked after a long pause.

  “No. I only heard what everybody heard — last May, when the thing was talked about. I wondered — that is all — I wondered whether you had cared very much — for her.”

  Again there was a long silence, broken only by the even dipping of the oars and the soft swirl as they left the water.

  “I did care,” George answered at last. “I loved her very dearly.”

  He did not know why he made the confession. He had never said so much to any one except his own father. If he had guessed what Mamie felt for him, he would assuredly not have answered her question.

  “Are you very unhappy, still?” asked the young girl in a dreamy voice.

  “No. I do not think I am unhappy. I am different from what I was — that is all. I was at first,” he continued, without looking at his companion, of whose presence, indeed, he seemed scarcely conscious. “I was unhappy — yes, of course I was. I had loved her long. I had thought she would marry me. I found that she was indifferent. I shall never go and see her again. She does not exist for me any more — she is another person, whom I do not wish to know. I have loved and been disappointed, like many a better man, I suppose.”

  “Loved and been disappointed!” repeated the young girl in a very low voice, that hardly reached his ear. She was looking down, carelessly tying and untying the ends of the tiller-ropes.

  “Yes. That is it,” he said as though musing on something very long past. “You know now why I do not go there.”

  Then he quickened his stroke a little, and there was a sombre light in his dark eyes that Mamie could not see, for she was still looking down. She was glad that she had asked the question, seeing how he had answered it. There was something in his tone which told her that he was not mistaken about himself, and that the past was shut off from the present in his heart by a barrier it would be hard to break down.

  “Do you think you can ever love again?” she asked, after a while, looking suddenly into his face.

  “No,” he answered, avoiding her eyes. “I shall never love any woman again — in the same way,” he added after a moment’s pause.

  When he looked at her, she was very pale. He remembered all at once how she had changed colour and burst into tears some weeks earlier, sitting in that same place before him. Something was passing in her mind which he could not understand. He was very slow to imagine that she loved him. He was so dull of comprehension that he all at once began to fancy she might be more fond of Constance Fearing than he had guessed, that she might be her friend, as Totty was, and that the two had brought him to their country-house in the hope of soothing his anger, reviving his hopes, and bringing him once more into close relations with the young girl who had cast him off. The idea was ingenious in its folly, but his ready wrath rose at it.

  “Are you very fond of her, Mamie?” he asked, bending his heavy brows and speaking in a hard metallic voice.

  The blood rushed into the girl’s face as she answered, and her grey eyes flashed.

  “I? I hate her! I would kill her if I could!”

  George was completely confused. His explanation of Mamie’s behaviour had flashed upon him so suddenly that he had believed it the true one without an attempt to reason upon the matter. Now, it was destroyed in an instant by the girl’s angry reply. When one young woman says that she hates another, it is tolerably easy to judge from her tone whether she is in earnest or not. Though he was still sorely puzzled, the cloud disappeared from George’s face as quickly as it had come.

  “This is a revelation!” he exclaimed. “I thought you and your mother were devoted to them both.”

  “It would be like me, would it not?” Mamie emphasised her words with an angry little laugh.

  “It is not like you to hate people so savagely,” George observed, looking at her closely.

  “I should always hate anybody who hurt you — and I can hate, with all my heart!”

  “Are you so fond of me as that?”

  George thought that the girl was becoming every moment harder to understand. It had seemed a very natural question, since they had known each other and loved each other like brother and sister for so long. But he saw that there was something the matter. There was a frightened look in Mamie’s grey eyes which he had never seen before, as though she had come all at once upon a great and unexpected danger. Then all the outline of her face softened wonderfully with a strange and gentle expression under the young man’s gaze. She had never been pretty, save for her eyes and her alabaster skin. For one moment, now, she was beautiful.

  “Yes,” she said in an uncertain voice, “I am very fond of you — more fond of you than you will ever know.”

  Her secret was out, though she did not realise it. Then for the first time in George’s life, though he was nearly thirty years of age, he looked on the face of a woman who loved him with all her heart, and he knew what love meant in another, as he had known it in himself.

  The sun was going down behind the western hills and the dark water was very smooth and placid as he dipped his sculls noiselessly into the surface. He rowed evenly on for some minutes without speaking. Mamie was looking into the stream and drawing her white, ungloved hand along the glassy mirror.

  “Thank you, Mamie,” he said at last, very gently and kindly.

  Again there was silence as they shot along through the purple shadows.

  “And you, are you fond of me?” asked the young girl, looking furtively towards him, then blushing and gazing once more into the depths of the stream. George started slightly. He had not thought that the question would come.

  “Indeed I am,” he answered. He thought he heard a sigh on the rising evening breeze. “I grow more fond of you every day,” he added quietly, though he felt that he was very far from calm.

  So far as he had spoken, his words had been truthful. He was becoming more attached to Mamie every day, and she was beginning to take the place that Constance had occupied in his doings if not in his thoughts. But there was not a spar
k of love in his growing affection for her, and the discovery he had just made disturbed him exceedingly. He had never blamed himself for anything he had done in his intercourse with Constance Fearing, but he accused himself now of having misled the innocent girl who loved him and of having then, by a careless question, drawn from her a confession of what she felt. It flashed upon him suddenly that he had taken Constance’s place, and Mamie had taken his; that he had been thoughtless and cruel in all he had said and done during the last two months, and that she might well reproach him with having been heartless. A thousand incidents flooded his memory and crowded together upon his brain, and each brought with it a sting to his sense of honour. He had inadvertently done a great harm, and it had been done since his coming to the country. Before that, Mamie had felt for him exactly what he still felt for her, a simple, open-hearted affection. Remembering the brief struggle that had taken place in his mind before he had accepted Totty’s invitation, he accused himself of having known beforehand what would happen, and of having weakly yielded because he had liked the prospect of leading so luxurious an existence. What surprised him, however, and threw all his reflections out of balance was that Totty herself should not have foreseen the disaster, Totty the diplomatic, Totty the worldly, Totty the covetous, who would as soon have given her daughter to one of her servants as to penniless George Wood! It was past comprehension. Yet, in spite of his distress, he could hardly repress a smile as he imagined what Totty’s rage would be, should he marry Mamie and carry her off before the eyes of her horrified parent. Sherrington Trimm, himself, would be as well satisfied with him as with any other honest man, if he were sure of Mamie’s inclinations.

  Now, however, something must be done at once. He was not a weak creature, like Constance Fearing, to hesitate for months and years, practising a deception upon himself which he had not the courage to carry to the end. He even regretted the last words he had spoken, and which had been prompted by a foolish wish not to hurt the girl’s feelings. It would have been better if he had left them unsaid. The situation must be defined, the harm arrested, if it could not be undone, and should it seem necessary, as it probably would, he himself must leave the place on the following morning. He opened his mouth to speak, but the blood rushed to his face and he could not articulate the words. He was overcome with shame and remorse and he would have chosen to do anything, to undergo any humiliation rather than this. But in a moment his strong nature gathered itself and grew strong, as it always did in the face of great difficulties. He hated hesitation and he would not hesitate, cost what it might. He was not cowardly, and he would not be afraid.

  “Mamie,” he said, suddenly, and he wondered how his voice could be so gentle, “Mamie, I do not love you.”

  He had expected everything, except what happened. Mamie looked into his eyes, and once again in the evening light the expression of her love transfigured her half pretty face and lent it a completeness of beauty such as he had never seen.

  “Have you not told me that, dear?” she asked, half sadly, half lovingly. “It is not new. I have known it long.”

  George stared at her for a moment.

  “I feared I had not said it clearly,” he answered in low tones.

  “Everything you have done and said has told me that, for two months past. Do not say it again.”

  “I must go away from this place. I will go to-morrow.”

  She looked up with startled eyes.

  “Go away? Leave me? Ah, George, you will not be so unkind!”

  The situation was certainly as strange as it was new, and George was very much confused by what was happening. His resolution to make everything clear was, however, as unbending as before.

  “Mamie,” he said, “we must understand each other. Things must not go on as they have gone so long. If I were to stay here, do you know what I should be doing? I should be acting towards you as Constance Fearing acted with me, only it would be much worse, because I am a man, and I have no right to do such things, as women have.”

  “It is different,” said the young girl, once more looking down into the water.

  “No, it is not different,” George insisted. “I have no right to act as though I should ever love you, to make you think by anything I do or say, that such a thing is possible. I am a brute, I know. Forgive me, Mamie, dear. It is so much better that everything should be clearly understood now. We have known each other so long, and so well — —”

  “Nothing that you can say will make it seem right to me that you should go away — —”

  “It is right, nevertheless, and if I do not do it, as I should, I shall never forgive myself — —”

  “I will forgive you.”

  “I shall hate myself — —”

  “I will love you.”

  “I shall feel that I am the most miserable wretch alive.”

  “I shall be happy.”

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  GEORGE HAD ROWED to a point where a deep indentation in the shore of the river offered a broad expanse of water in which there was but little current. He rested on his oars, bending his head and leaning slightly forward. It seemed very hard that he should suddenly be called upon to decide so important a question as had just arisen, at the very moment when he was writing the most difficult and interesting part of his book. To go away was not only to deprive himself of many things which he liked, and among those Mamie’s own society had taken the foremost place of late; it meant also to break the current of his ideas and to arrest his own progress at the most critical juncture. He remembered with loathing the days he had spent in his little room in New York, cudgelling his inert brain and racking his imagination for a plot, a subject, for one single character, for anything of which he might make a beginning. And he looked back to a nearer time, and saw how easily his mind had worked amidst its new and pleasant surroundings. It is no wonder that he hesitated. Only the artist can understand his own interest in his art; only the writer, and the writer of real talent, can tell what acute suffering it is to be interrupted in the midst of a piece of good work, while its success is still uncertain in the balance of his mind and while he still depends largely upon outward circumstances for the peace and quiet which are necessary to serious mental labour.

  George was not heroic, though there was a touch of quixotism in his nature. The temptation to stay where he was, had a force he had not expected. Moreover, whether he would or not, the expression he had twice seen in Mamie’s face on that afternoon, haunted him and fascinated him. He experienced the operation of a charm unknown before. He looked up and gazed at the young girl as she sat far back in the stern of the boat. She was not pretty, or at most, not more than half pretty. Her mouth was decidedly far too large, and her nose lacked outline. She had a fairly good forehead; he admitted that much, but her chin was too pointed and had little modelling in it, while her cheeks would have been decidedly uninteresting but for the extreme beauty of her complexion. She was looking down, and he could not see the grey eyes which were her best feature, but it could not be denied that the long dark drooping lashes and the strongly marked brown eyebrows contrasted very well with the transparent skin. Her hair was not bad, though it was impossible to say whether those little tangled ringlets were natural or were produced daily by the skilful appliance of artificial torsion. If her mouth was an exaggerated feature, at least the long, even lips were fresh and youthful, and, when parted, they disclosed a very perfect set of teeth. All this was true, and as George looked, he summed up the various points and decided that when Mamie wore her best expression, she might pass for a pretty girl.

  But she possessed more than that. The catalogue did not explain her wonderful charm. It was not, indeed, complete, and as he glanced from her downcast face to the outlines of her shapely figure, he felt the sensation a man experiences in turning quickly from the examination of a common object, to the contemplation of one that is very beautiful. Psyche herself could have boasted no greater perfection of form and grace than belonged to this girl
whose features were almost all insignificant. The triumph of proportion began at her throat, under the small ears that were set so close to the head, and the faultless lines continued throughout all the curves of beauty to the point of her exquisite foot, to the longest finger of her classic hand. Not a line was too short, not a line too long, there was no straightness in any one, and not one of them all followed too strong a curve.

  George thought of Constance and made comparisons with a coolness that surprised himself. Constance was tall, straight, well grown, active; slight, indeed, but graceful enough, and gifted with much natural ease in motion. But that was all, so far as figure was concerned. George had seen a hundred girls with just the same advantages as Constance, and all far prettier than his cousin. Neither Constance nor any of them could compare with Mamie except in face. His eye rested on her now, when she was in repose, with untiring satisfaction, as his sight delighted in each new surprise of motion when she moved, whether on horseback, or walking, or at tennis. She represented to him the absolute ideal of refined animal life, combined with something spiritual that escaped definition, but which made itself felt in all she did and said.

  When he thought of depriving himself for a long time of her society, he discovered that he admired her far more than he had suspected. It was admiration, but it was nothing more. He felt no pain at the suggestion of leaving her, but it seemed as though he were about to be robbed of some object familiar to him, to keep which was a source of unfailing, though indolent, satisfaction. He could not imagine himself angry, if some man of his acquaintance had married Mamie the next day, provided that he might talk to her as he pleased and watch her when he liked. There was not warmth enough in what he felt for her to kindle one spark of jealousy against any one whom she might choose for a husband.