by Grant Allen
“But is that just?” Elsie asked quietly, a slight shade coming over her earnest face.
“My dear Miss Challoner,” Warren Relf put in hastily, “have you known Massinger so many years without finding out that he’s always a great deal better than he himself pretends to be? I know him well enough to feel quite confident he’ll read every word of that novel through to-night, if he sits up till four o’clock in the morning to do it; and he’ll let the London people have their review in time, if he telegraphs up every blessed word of it by special wire to-morrow morning. His wickedness is always only his brag; his goodness he hides carefully under his own extremely capacious bushel.”
Hugh laughed. “As you know me so much better than I know myself, my dear boy,” he replied easily, “there’s nothing more to be said about it. I’m glad to receive so good a character from a connoisseur in human nature. I really never knew before what an amiable and estimable member of society hid himself under my rugged and unprepossessing exterior.” And as he said it, he drew himself up, and darting a laugh from the corner of those sad black eyes, looked at the moment the handsomest and most utterly killing man in the county of Suffolk.
When Elsie and Winifred went up to their own rooms that evening, the younger girl, slipping into Elsie’s bedroom for a moment, took her friend’s hands tenderly in her own, and looking long and eagerly into the other’s eyes, said at last in a quick tone of unexpected discovery: “Elsie, he’s awfully nice-looking and awfully clever, this Oxford cousin of yours. I like him immensely.”
Elsie brought back her eyes from infinity with a sudden start. “I’m glad you do, dear,” she said, looking down at her kindly. “I wanted you to like him. I should have been dreadfully disappointed, in fact, if you didn’t. I’m exceedingly fond of Hugh, Winnie.”
Winifred paused for a second significantly; then she asked point-blank: “Elsie, are you engaged to him?”
“Engaged to him! My darling, what ever made you dream of such a thing? — Engaged to Hugh! — engaged to Hugh Massinger! — Why, Winnie, you know, he’s my own cousin.”
“But you don’t answer my question plainly,” Winifred persisted with girlish determination. “Are you engaged to him or are you not?”
Elsie, mindful of Hugh’s frequent declarations, answered boldly (and not quite untruthfully): “No, I’m not, Winifred.”
The heiress of Whitestrand stroked her friend’s hair with a sigh of relief. That sigh was blind. Girl though she was, she might clearly have seen with a woman’s instinct that Elsie’s flushed cheek and downcast eyes belied to the utmost her spoken word. But she did not see it. All preoccupied as she was with her own thoughts and her own wishes, she never observed at all those mute witnesses to Elsie’s love for her handsome cousin. She was satisfied in her heart with Hugh’s and Elsie’s double verbal denial. She said to herself with a thrill in her own soul, as a girl will do in the first full flush of her earliest passion: “Then I may love him if I like! I may make him love me! It won’t be wrung to Elsie for me to love him!”
CHAPTER VII.
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
That same night, as the Squire and Mrs. Meysey sat by themselves toward the small hours after the girls had unanimously evacuated the drawing-room discussing the affairs of the universe generally, as then and there envisaged, over a glass of claret-cup, the mother looked up at last with a sudden glance into the father’s face, and said in a tone half-anxious, half-timid: “Tom, did it happen to strike you this afternoon that that handsome cousin of Elsie Challoner’s seemed to take a great fancy to our Winifred?”
The Squire stirred his claret-cup idly with his spoon. “I suppose the fellow has eyes in his head,” he answered bluntly. “No man in his senses could ever look at our little Winnie, I should think, Emily, and not fall over his ears in love with her.”
Mrs. Meysey waited a minute or two more in silent suspense before she spoke again; then she said once more, very tentatively: “He seems a tolerably nice young man, I think, Tom.”
“Oh, he’s well enough, I dare say,” the Squire admitted grudgingly.
“A barrister, he says. That’s a very good profession,” Mrs. Meysey went on, still feeling her way by gradual stages.
“Never heard so in my life before,” the Squire grunted out. “There are barristers and barristers. He gets no briefs. Lives on literature, by what he tells me: the next door to living upon your wits, I call it.”
“But I mean, it’s a gentleman’s profession, anyhow, Tom, the bar.”
“Oh, the man’s a gentleman, of course, if it comes to that a perfect gentleman; and an Oxford man, and a person of culture, and all that sort of thing I don’t deny it He’s a very presentable fellow, too,- in his own way; and most intelligent: understands the riparian proprietors’ question as easy as anything. You can ask him to dinner whenever you choose, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
Mrs. Meysey called another halt for a few seconds before she reopened fire, still more timidly than ever. “Tom, do you know I rather fancy he really likes our Winifred?” she murmured, gasping.
“Of course he likes our Winifred,” the Squire repeated, with profound conviction in ever’7d 7 tone of his voice. “I should like to know who on earth there is that doesn’t like our Winifred! Nothing new in that. I could have told you so myself. Go ahead with it, then. What next, now, Emily?”
“Well, I think, Tom, if I’m not mistaken, Winifred seemed rather inclined to take a fancy to him too, somehow.”
Thomas Wyville Meysey laid down his glass incredulously on the small side-table. He didn’t explode, but he hung fire for a moment. “You women are always fancying things,” he said at last, with a slight frown. “You think you’re so precious quick, you do, at reading other people’s faces. I don’t deny you often succeed in reading them right. You read mine precious often, I know, when I don’t want you to that I can swear to. But sometimes, Emily, you know you read what isn’t in them. That’s the way with all decipherers of hieroglyphics. They see a great deal more in things than ever was put there. You remember that time when I met old Hillier down by the copse yonder.”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” Mrs. Meysey admitted, checking him at the outset with an astute concession. She had cause to remember the facts, indeed, for the Squire reminded her of that one obvious and palpable mistake about the young fox-cubs at least three times a week, the year round, on an average. “I was wrong that time; I know I was, of course. You weren’t in the least annoyed with Mr. Hillier. But I think I don’t say I’m sure, observe, dear but I think Winifred’s likely to take a fancy in time to this young Mr. Massinger. Now, the question is, if she does take a fancy to him a serious fancy and he to her what are you and I to do about it?”
As she spoke, Mrs. Meysey looked hard at the lamp, and then at her husband, wondering with what sort of grace he would receive this very revolutionary and upsetting suggestion. For herself though mothers are hard to please it may as well be admitted offhand, she had fallen a ready victim at once to Hugh Massinger’s charms and brilliancy and blandishments. Such a nice young man, so handsome and gentlemanly, so adroit in his talk, so admirable in his principles, and though far from rich, yet, in his way, distinguished! A better young man, darling Winifred was hardly likely to meet with. But what would dear Tom think about him? she wondered. Dear Tom had such very expansive not to say Utopian ideas for Winifred thought nobody but a Duke or a Prince of the blood half good enough for her: though, to be sure, experience would seem to suggest that Dukes and Princes, after all, are only human, and not originally very much better than other people. Whatever superior moral excellence we usually detect in the finished product may no doubt be safely set down in ultimate analysis to the exceptional pains bestowed by society upon their ethical education.
The Squire looked into his claret-cup profoundly for a few seconds before answering, as if he expected to find it a perfect Dr. Dee’s divining crystal, big with hints as to his daughter’s future; and then he bu
rst out abruptly with a grunt: “I suppose we must leave the answering of that question entirely to Winnie.”
Mrs. Meysey did not dare to let her internal sigh of relief escape her throat; that would have been too compromising, and would have alarmed dear Tom. So she stifled it quietly. Then dear Tom was not wholly averse, after all, to this young Mr. Massinger. He, too, had fallen a victim to the poet’s wiles. That was well; for Mrs. Meysey, with a mother’s eye, had read Winifred’s heart through and through. But we must not seem to give in too soon. A show of resistance runs in the grain with women. “He’s got no money,” she murmured suggestively.
The Squire flared up. “Money!” he cried, with infinite contempt, “money! money! Who the dickens says anything to me about money? I believe that’s all on earth you women think about. Money indeed! Much I care about money, Emily. I dare say the young fellow hasn’t got money. What then? Who cares for that? He’s got money’s worth. He’s got brains; he’s got principles; he’s got the will to work and to get on. He’ll be a judge in time, I don’t doubt If a man like that were to marry our Winifred, with the aid we could give him and the friends we could find him, he ought to rise by quick stages to be anything you like Lord Chancellor, or Postmaster-General, or Archbishop of Canterbury, for the matter of that, if your tastes happen to run in that direction.”
“He hasn’t done much at the bar yet,” Mrs. Meysey continued, playing her fish dexterously before landing it.
“Hasn’t done much! Of course he hasn’t done much! How the dickens could he? Can a man make briefs for himself, do you suppose? He’s given himself up, he tells me, to earning a livelihood by writing for the papers. Penny-a-lining; writing for the papers. He had to do it. It’s a pity, upon my word, a clever young fellow like that he understands the riparian proprietors’ question down to the very ground should be compelled to turn aside from his proper work at the bar to serve tables, so to speak to gain his daily bread by penny-a-lining. If Winifred were to take a fancy to a young man like that, now.”
The Squire paused, and eyed the light through his glass reflectively.
“He’s very presentable,” Mrs. Meysey went on, rearranging her workbox, and still angling cleverly for dear Tom’s indignation.
“He’s a man any woman might be perfectly proud of,” the Squire retorted in a thunderous voice with a firm conviction.
Mrs. Meysey followed up her advantage persistently for twenty minutes, insinuating every possible hint against Hugh, and leading the Squire deeper and deeper into a hopeless slough of unqualified commendation. At the end of that time she said quietly: “Then I understand, Tom, that if Winifred and this young Massinger take a fancy to one another, you don’t put an absolute veto on the idea of their getting engaged, do you?”
“I only want Winnie to choose for herself,” the Squire answered with prompt decision. “Not that I suppose for a moment there’s anything in this young fellow’s talking a bit to her. Men will flirt, and girls will let ’em. Getting engaged, indeed! You count your chickens before the eggs are laid. A man can’t look at a girl nowadays, but you women must take it into your precious heads at once he wants to go straight off to church and marry her. However, for my part, I’m not going to interfere in the matter one way or the other. I’d rather she’d marry the man she loves, and the man who loves her, whenever he turns up, than marry fifty thousand pounds and the best estate in all Suffolk.”
Mrs. Meysey had carried her point with honors. “Perhaps you’re right, my dear,” she said diplomatically, as who should yield to superior wisdom. It was her policy not to appear too eager.
“Perhaps, I’m right!” the Squire echoed, half in complacency and half in anger. “Of course I’m right. I know I’m right, Emily. Why, I was reading in a book the other day a most splendid appeal from some philosophic writer or other about making fewer marriages in future to please Mamma, and more to suit the tastes of the parties concerned, and subserve the good of coming generations. I think it was an article in one of the magazines. It’s the right way, I’m sure of that; and in Winifred’s case I mean to stick to it.”
So, from that day forth, if it was Hugh Massinger’s intention or desire to prosecute his projected military operations against Winifred Meysey’s hand and heart, he found at least a benevolent neutral in the old Squire, and a secret, silent, but none the less powerful domestic ally in Mrs. Meysey. It is not often that a penniless suitor thus enlists the sympathies of the parental authorities, who ought by precedent to form the central portion of the defensive forces, on his own side in such an aggressive enterprise. But with Hugh Massinger, nobody ever even noticed it as a singular exception. He was so clever, so handsome, so full of promise, so courteous and courtly in his demeanor to young and old, so rich in future hopes and ambitions, that not the Squire alone, but everybody else who came in contact with his easy smile, accepted him beforehand as almost already a Lord Chancellor, or a Poet Laureate, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, according as he might choose to direct his talents into this channel or that; and failed to be surprised that the Meyseys or anybody else on earth should accept him with effusion as a favored postulant for the hand of their only daughter and heiress. There are a few such universal favorites here and there in the world: whenever you meet one, smile with the rest, but remember that his recipe is a simple one Humbug.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ROADS DIVIDE.
Hugh stopped for two months or more at Whitestrand, and during all that time he saw much both of Elsie and of Winifred. The Meyseys introduced him with cordial pleasure to all the melancholy gaities of the sleepy little peninsula. He duly attended with them the somnolent garden-parties on the smooth lawns of neighboring Squires: the monotonous picnics up the tidal stream of the meandering Char; the heavy dinners at every local rector’s and vicar’s and resident baronets; with all the other dead-alive entertainments of the dullest and most stick-in-the-mud corner of all England. The London poet enlivened them all, however, with his never-failing flow of exotic humor, and his slow, drawled-out readiness of Pall-Mall repartee. It was a comfort to him, indeed, to get among these unspoiled and unsophisticated children or nature; he could palm off upon them as original the last good thing of that fellow Hatherley’s from the smoking-room of the Cheyne Row Club, or fire back upon them, undetected, dim reminiscences of pungent chaff overheard in brilliant West-end drawing-rooms. And then, there were Elsie and Winifred to amuse him; and Hugh, luxurious, easy-going, epicurean philosopher that he was, took no trouble to decide in his own mind even what might be his ultimate intentions toward either fair lady, satisfied only, as he phrased it to his inner self, to take the goods the gods provided for the passing moment, and to keep them both well in hand together. “How happy could I be with either,” sings Captain Macheath in the oft-quoted couplet, “were t’other dear charmer away.” Hugh took a still more lenient view of his personal responsibilities than the happy-go-lucky knight of the highway; he was quite content to be blest, while he could, with both at once, asking no questions, for conscience sake, of his own final disposition, marital or otherwise, toward one or the other, but leaving the problem of his matrimonial arrangements for fate, or chance, to settle in its own good’ fashion.
It was just a week after his arrival at Whitestrand that he went up one morning early to the Hall. Elsie and Winifred were seated together on a rug under the big tree, engaged in reading one novel between them.
“You must wish Winifred many happy returns of the day,” Elsie called out gaily, looking up from her book as Hugh approached them. “It’s her birthday, Hugh; and just see what a lovely, delightful present Mr. Meysey’s given her!”
Winifred held out the present at arm’s length for his admiration. It was a pretty little watch, in gold and enamel, with her initials engraved on the back on a broad shield. “It’s just a beauty! I should love one like it myself!” Elsie cried enthusiastically. “Did you ever see such a dear little thing? It’s keyless too, and so exquisitely finished. It really
makes me feel quite ashamed of my own poor old battered silver one.”
Hugh took the watch and examined it carefully. He noted the maker’s name upon the dial, and, opening the back, made a rapid mental memorandum of the number. A sudden thought had flashed across him at the moment. He waited only a few minutes at the Hall, and then asked the two girls if they could walk down into the village with him. He had a telegram to send off, he said, which he had only just at that moment remembered. Would they mind stepping over with him as far as the post office?
They strolled together into the sleepy High street. At the office, Hugh wrote and sent off his telegram. It was addressed to a well-known firm of watchmakers in Ludgate Hill. “Could you send me by to-morrow evening’s post, to address as below, a lady’s gold and enamel watch, with initials ’E. C, from H. M.,’ engraven on shield on back, but in every other respect precisely similar to Xo. 2479 just supplied to Mr. Meysey, of Whitestrand Hall? If so, telegraph back cash price at once, and check for amount shall be sent immediately. Reply paid. Hugh Massinger, Fisherman’s Rest, Whitestrand, Suffolk.”
Before lunch-time the reply had duly arrived: “Watch shall be sent on receipt of check. Price twenty-five guineas.” So far, so good. It was a fair amount for a journeyman journalist to pay for a present; but, as Hugh shrewdly reflected, it would kill two birds with one stone. Day after to-morrow was Elsie’s birthday. The watch would give Elsie pleasure; and Hugh, to do him justice, thoroughly loved giving pleasure to anybody, especially a pretty girl, and above all Elsie. But it could also do him no harm in the Meyseys’ eyes to see that, journeyman journalist as he was, he was earning enough to afford to throw away twenty-five guineas on a mere present to a governess-cousin. There is a time for economy, and there is a time for lavishness. The present moment clearly came under the latter category.
On the second morning, true to promise, the watch arrived by the early post; and Hugh took it up with pride to the Hall, to bestow it in a casual way upon breathless and affectionate Elsie. He took it up for a set purpose. He would show these purse-proud landed aristocrats that his cousin could sport as good a watch any day as their own daughter. The Massingers themselves had been landed aristocrats not presumably purse-proud in their own day in dear old Devonshire; but the estates had disappeared in houses and port and riotous living two generations since; and Hugh was now proving in his own person the truth of the naif old English adage “When land is gone and money spent, then laming is most excellent.” Journalism is a poor sort of trade in its way; but at any rate an able man can earn his bread and salt at it somehow. Hugh didn’t grudge those twenty-five guineas; he regarded them, as he regarded his poems, in the light of a valuable long investment. They were a sort of indirect double bid for the senior Meysey’s respect, and for Winifred’s fervent admiration. When a man is paying attentions to a pretty girl, there’s nothing on earth he desires so much as to appear in her eyes lavishly generous. A less abstruse philosopher, however, might perhaps have bestowed his generosity direct upon Winifred in propria persona: Hugh, with his subtle calculation of long odds and remote chances, deemed it wiser to display it in the first instance obliquely upon Elsie. This was an acute little piece of psychological by-play. A man who can make a present like that to a poor cousin, with whom he stands upon a purely cousinly footing, must be, after all, not only generous, but a ripping good fellow into the bargain. How would he not comport himself under similar circumstances to the maiden of his choice, and to the wife of his bosom?
