by Grant Allen
‘To break what to me, my child?’ Hubert asked, astonished.
‘Why, this!’ Sabine cried, pacing on before the eyes of all that assembled company with her face on fire, but trying to look as if nothing particular was the matter, ‘that it can never, never, never be, though I shall break my heart over it.’
‘My dear girl,’ Hubert interposed, with masculine common-sense, ‘you’re surely mistaken. So far from this new move making things more impossible for us, it makes them really ten times easier. Especially,’ he added, with a rising blush, ‘if certain contingencies should occur hereafter.’
‘How easier?’ Sabine asked, forcing a doubtful smile to hide her confusion.
‘Why, before your father’s decision,’ Hubert answered, ‘it would have been almost hopeless for me to try to gain his consent. He looked so much higher — as he judges of high — he never aimed at smaller game than Bertie Montgomery. Even now it’ll be hard, of course; your father always treats men in my position as if it were absolutely impossible for them to look upon his daughter with anything but the most distant and dim respect — he dangles you before our eyes like forbidden fruit; he envelops you in a perfect Polynesian taboo — meaning us to regard you much as a groom-in-waiting might regard his princesses. But still it’s just conceivable now, where before it was inconceivable. He’ll grumble, of course, and he’ll refuse, and he’ll storm; but by opposing a steady front of passive resistance to all his assaults, you may at last overcome his objections and wring out a consent from him.’
Sabine glanced back at him with a quivering face. She stood too near realities at last to coquet or pretend or play at coyness any longer. ‘It isn’t that,’ she answered sadly. ‘I don’t so much mind about that. What’s a father to me? If I loved a man and meant to marry him — which I never yet said I did in any case — I’d marry him whether a thousand fathers opposed it and objected to it, or whether they didn’t. I’d marry him if neither of us had a penny to bless ourselves with. I’d marry him if he and I had to live our lives long in a hovel together. I’d marry him and I’d stand by him. But, oh! Hubert, what I couldn’t endure, what I couldn’t face, is this — that after never having openly accepted you before all this came, I should make it possible for people to say I accepted you when ... when I’d tried, and failed, to make myself a Duchess!’
‘But you’ve always loved me, Sabine. You’ve always loved me. You’ve never admitted it, I know. You’ve never told me so. But all along, in spite of all your rebuffs, I’ve felt sure in my heart you really loved me.’
They had turned aside down one of the shady little side-alleys now, and were less seen of men. Sabine looked in his face again, this time unreservedly. The day for coquetry was past, she felt. She stood face to face at last with the need for plain speaking. ‘I always loved you, Hubert,’ she burst out, with a passionate access of truth. ‘Yes, I always loved you; I never meant to do more than play at refusal, at rejection, at indecision. I always loved you, and I meant you all along to see I loved you. But the rest of the world didn’t see it or know it. I wish they had. They thought I was trying my best to catch the Duke. And, indeed, I played with him; I liked to draw him on and hold him off at once. I’m ashamed to say it now — it was so mean and small of me — but I wanted the vulgar triumph of being asked, and refusing him. It was wicked of me, of course. I’m suffering my punishment now. But, Hubert, I did it half for you. I wanted to be able to say before him and all the world, “I care for none of these common things — rank, wealth, position, family, title; I care only to throw myself, with my heart alone, into the open arms of the man that really loves me.”’
‘And why can’t you throw yourself now, Sabine?’ the young man asked pleadingly.
Sabine Venables gazed back at him with eyes half dim with tears. ‘I can’t,’ she said slowly. ‘I can’t ever now. If I was to do it at all, I should have done it before. As things have turned out, my pride won’t let me. Not pride for myself alone, Hubert; pride for you and for your sake, too. I feel it like this. I wouldn’t let people think I thought you in any way anything less than the highest. I wouldn’t let them think I would marry you now when I wouldn’t marry you before. I wouldn’t do my own heart the cruel injustice of even seeming ever to have slighted you. I wouldn’t let you or myself feel that I played fast and loose with you when I was the great heiress of the season, and rushed into your arms as a sort of second choice when I was brought down to the level of a mere ordinary person.’
Hubert Harrison looked at her, seized by a sudden inspiration. ‘Sabine,’ he said, with a quick resolve, ‘I ask you point-blank — now — at once — will you marry me?’
‘What do you mean, Hubert?’
‘Will you marry me immediately, before anything else happens? Will you take me as I am? Will you go with me this very moment to your father and say you have chosen me?’
The girl’s heart fluttered, and her face grew white, but she answered with a gulp, ‘No, never now. All that’s over. Whatever comes, I must never marry you. Hubert, let me say it just this once — I may say the truth now — I meant to take you, as it were, to do you honour. I meant to let people feel, “She can pick where she will. She’s a great heiress. She’s rich; she’s handsome” — I know I’m handsome— “she’s made much of, flattered, the catch of the season. She might have taken money, a title, diamonds, position, influence, a coronet — what she would, almost. But she prefers a Man — a Man for his own sake, because he’s the best and noblest and truest she can find, and she honours herself by accepting his offer.” That’s how I wanted to accept you before all the world; and I would have married you so, and loved you dearly. I shall love you still, Hubert,’ and her voice faltered strangely, ‘as long as I live. How much I love you, I never told you before. I tell you now, without reserve. But I can never marry you.’
Hubert hesitated. ‘Oh, how good you are!’ he said, flushing. ‘But by-and-bye you’ll think better of all this, Sabine. You’ll grow accustomed to the change, and in time you’ll marry me. When a woman once tells a man she loves him, she has said the last word. I know enough for that. In time you’ll marry me.’
‘Never,’ Sabine repeated firmly. ‘For your own sake, never. I wouldn’t do you the wrong of seeming to decline upon you, instead of rising towards you. I shall love you always, Hubert — love you till I die — but I can never marry you. And now we must go back, for there are papa and Mrs. Bouverie-Barton looking for me.’
Three days later Thorndyke Venables and Woodbine Weatherley were duly joined together in holy matrimony, by three clergymen abreast, at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, and Sabine looked on with a set smiling face at the hateful ceremony that finally dethroned her.
That afternoon Woodbine, in her going-away dress, flung herself for a moment into Sabine’s arms.
‘Oh, Sabine,’ she cried, with a passionate embrace, ‘you must love me. You must kiss me. If you look at me like that, I don’t know what I shall do. I can’t bear to seem like a stranger and an interloper in the house. Sabine, Sabine, you’d forgive me if only you knew how much I loved him.’
She was such a feeble, frail, poor, shrinking little thing, and her cry was so natural, so genuine, so pitiful, that, angry as Sabine was, she couldn’t be angry with Woodbine. She clasped the new stepmother in her arms with a mechanical clasp, and tried to soothe and comfort her. ‘Woodbine,’ she answered, smoothing the frightened girl’s hair with her caressing hand, ‘you know it’s been hard for me, you can understand it yourself; no girl on earth ever liked it; it isn’t in human nature not be vexed; but I’ll try to get over it. I’ll try to be myself with you. You’re a gentle little thing, and I always loved you. Forgive me, you too, and I’ll try to get over it.’
But more than that she couldn’t find it in her heart to say just then, even to that poor, fragile, appealing creature, for, indeed, the blow was a very severe one for her.
CHAPTER XVII.
COUNCIL OF WAR.
A year
passed away, with all its trivial events, and much water had run under the bridge before any other great change occurred in the Hurst Croft household. But about twelve months afterwards, one bright summer afternoon, Arthur Roper, Esquire, in his most gentlemanly tweed suit, sat taking his ease, cigarette in mouth, in a private room of a highly respectable London hotel; while opposite him, in a padded chair, with her demure hat stuck far back on her head, and her eminently proper little brown veil tossed carelessly aside on the table, Miss Venables’ maid lolled loosely about in a most unbecoming attitude, and bandied repartee of a very doubtful sort with the head of the profession.
An hour or two before, Miss Venables’ maid, an austere young person, notable even among her own class for the exquisite precision of the coils and plaits of her back hair, had stood respectfully erect in Miss Venables’ presence, and, dropping her sweet, low voice to a deferential key, had asked quietly, on the very best grounds, for the exceptional favour of an afternoon’s holiday.
‘I had a letter this morning from my aunt in London, miss,’ the irreproachable young person remarked, crossing her hands in front of her with the suavity of her kind; ‘and she says my poor mother was taken worse again last night with a fresh seizure — worse than she’s been at all since she was first paralyzed, in fact; and I thought, if it wouldn’t inconvenience you, and you could manage to spare me, I should like so much to run up for a few hours to-day to go home to see her, getting back in good time to do your hair for dinner.’
‘Very well, Williams,’ Sabine Venables answered, in perfect innocence; ‘and if there’s anything you’d like the cook to get ready for her, you know — beef-tea, or jelly, or anything of that sort — you can ask her, if you wish, to make some for you to take with you.’
The irreproachable Williams drew herself up with mingled gratitude and dignity. ‘Thank you, miss,’ she said, ‘but my mother has everything she can require at home, of any sort, thanks. My brothers and I take care she wants for nothing that can make her more comfortable. We get her port wine and everything she can need. But we thank you all the same, miss, and I’m much obliged for the leave. I wouldn’t have asked you at all, if it weren’t that there’s a train down from Victoria that’ll bring me back in very good time to do your hair; and I couldn’t bear to think my dear mother should feel I was any ways neglectful of her.’
But as she lolled there now in her padded chair, the very picture of careless ease and abandonment, with her hat and her respectability pushed aside together, the closest observer would hardly have taken her for the same demure person who, a few hours earlier, had stood so straight and looked so deferential, with the stereotyped air of the superior upper servant, in Sabine Venables’ dressing-room at Hurst Croft, near Leatherhead.
‘So you think it’ll come off on Monday night, then, Bess?’ Mr. Arthur Roper inquired, with profound interest, holding his cigarette in his hand, and blowing out his smoke with pensive attention.
‘Oh dear yes — Monday night for certain,’ Miss Pomeroy responded, for it was indeed she. ‘And the thing’ll be as easy as lying, or even easier.’
‘You’re a good one at a plan, and no mistake,’ Mr. Roper went on, eyeing close the sketch Miss Pomeroy had drawn up for him on a sheet of paper. ‘Dressing-table there: jewel case here; upon my word, Bess, one would think, to look at it, you’d been articled to an architect.’
Miss Pomeroy smiled a pleased smile. Praise is always dear to the female heart. ‘Well, it is a good ground-plan,’ she admitted, with modest pride. ‘I took some pains over it, especially as to the windows.’
‘The windows are devilish handy — there’s no doubt about that,’ Mr. Roper observed, musing, still gazing at the sketch. ‘I had a good look at them all round on Tuesday. I like these new-fashioned Queen Anne houses for that. Progress — progress — the æsthetic revival! They’re built with some regard for the convenience of the profession. Always some nice little picturesque ledges and projecting out-buildings to help a man up by, and always some pretty little leaded panes of coloured glass in the bedroom casements you can cut through with your knife as soon as look at ’em. None of that confounded bother about jemmies and centre-bits, which are always compromising; no grinding through plate-glass with a glazier’s diamond, and having the loose bits tumble in on the floor to rouse the household. Queen Anne’s the lady! Why, there’s many a fine old bare and square country mansion I know of — worst style of art — Elizabethan and so forth — where a man might go prepared with rope ladders, and skeleton-keys, and sectional crows, and all the latest scientific implements and accoutrements of the trade, and he couldn’t get inside — no, not if he were to waste the whole blessed night over it. I hate such bad style! There’s no doubt in the world at all about it; we’ve made immense advances of late in England in the art of architecture.’
Miss Pomeroy laughed — a laugh that was easy and free and debonair. ‘Well, you’ll have no difficulty on Monday, anyhow,’ she said, with a good-humoured nod. ‘If it comes to that, the Cassowary’s so careless of her jewellery (we call her the Cassowary for her stately tread) I could walk off with it any day myself without the slightest trouble, if it weren’t for my character. But, of course, my character ain’t to be trifled with that way. It’s a great deal better, for form’s sake, there should be a regular burglary, and everything should be done in the correctest style — window cut through, door locked inside, tools left lying about in a heap on the dressing-room floor, all the open evidences of a forcible entry. That’s the sort of thing that takes with the public. No suspicion thrown upon anybody inside. A regular, downright, desperate cut-throat burglary.’
Mr. Roper looked up with an appreciative smile. ‘Bess,’ he murmured half aloud, ‘you’re a jewel, you are! You’re always the same. I do admire you!’
Miss Pomeroy rose and dropped a small mock curtsey. ‘I’m glad to have obtained your approbation, sir,’ she said saucily, ‘and shall endeavour, by a strict attention to business, to merit in future a continuance of the same.’
‘Well, upon my word,’ Mr. Roper added, smiling, ‘I hardly know how I’d ever get along at all without you.’
‘You’d do a great deal better if you’d give up all the others, and make an honest woman of me, and settle down quietly in a respectable way of life as a first-class operator,’ Miss Pomeroy said regretfully. ‘We’re throwing away our talents, that’s just what we’re doing. We could make much more and be a deal more comfortable if we took up with circulars or something like that — Mrs. Gordon Bailey’s line of business, for example.’
The head of the profession eyed his boots thoughtfully. ‘The fact of it is, Bess,’ he answered, after a long pause, ‘I can’t give up all the others. It goes against my religious convictions, don’t you see. You must take a man’s religion into count. I’m a Jew by descent, a Christian by education, and a Mohammedan by predilection — so I can’t help myself. I’ve got to go on. No man can be blamed for his religious convictions.’
‘Well, there’s none of them could be of use to you like I could,’ Miss Pomeroy retorted, not without some faint tinge of asperity in her voice. ‘But, anyhow, business is business; and here’s the way I look at it. We must make sure of details. You get in by this window marked with a cross on the plan; there’s no mistaking it. It’s the landing window, don’t you see; and then you go up these stairs, one flight in front of you. The first room on the right’s the one marked A, and the things are all kept in the top left drawer of the dressing-table.’
‘There’ll be nobody about?’ Mr. Roper said, once more inspecting the architectural plan.
‘Oh dear no, there’ll be nobody about. I can answer for that. They’ll all be hanging around loose in Dear Woodbine’s part of the house, you may be certain.’ And Miss Pomeroy gave the words, ‘Dear Woodbine’ in Old Affability’s own precise manner, for, like all her kind, she was a capital mimic. ‘Dear Woodbine’s rooms are away over in the opposite wing. The Cassowary took care of that, you may
be sure; she wasn’t going to be put too near her mamma-in-law. Old Affability’ll be there, too; he’ll be hanging about in the Blue Room, rubbing his hands nervously, and talking about Dear Woodbine’s intellectual graces. He’s a gentleman of a great deal of soul, when you get to know him, is Old Affability. He talks this way.’ And Miss Pomeroy went off at a tangent into a delicious caricature of the typical British Philistine’s intellectual conversation, when he passed from the consideration of Portuguese Threes and warmed up into flights of wooden eloquence on the subject of the highest charms of female society.
The head of the profession, tilting his chair and laughing, regarded her with eyes of unmixed approval. ‘Well, you are a rare one, Bess!’ he cried, delighted. ‘I never did meet anybody so good at rapid changes of front as you are. When you go into a private house to push your inquiries into the number and disposition of the family jewels, you’re propriety itself. You look as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I’m sure, when I saw you on Tuesday in the garden at Hurst Croft, walking like Priscilla the Puritan maiden behind the stately Cassowary, and passing me by without so much as a glimmer of recognition in your eye, I said to myself, “That girl’s a treasure.”’
‘I’m always acknowledged to be a Perfect Treasure, as long as I stop,’ Miss Pomeroy put in parenthetically, with a graceful smile. ‘I’ve often heard ’em say so, when I wasn’t listening.’
‘That’s just it,’ her admirer went on confidently. ‘You make ’em believe you’re a regular model of all that a prim Prue of a lady’s-maid ought to be. And then, when you come back and break loose again into your own nature, hang me if you ain’t enough to kill a cat with laughing. You’re plastic, that’s where it is, don’t you see; you’re absolutely plastic.’
