April's Lady Part 36

"I am not so learned as you are, but----Well, I'm an 'impecunious one,'

in all conscience. I couldn't carry it out. I only wish," tenderly, "I could."

"With whom?" icily. As she asks the question she turns deliberately and looks him steadily in the eyes. Something in her regard disconcerts him, and compels him to think that the following up of the "little thing" is likely to prove difficult.

"How can you ask me?" demands he with an a.s.sumption of reproachful fondness that is rather overdone.

"I do, nevertheless."

"With you, then--if I must put it in words," says he, lowering his tone to the softest whisper. It is an eminently lover-like whisper; it is a distinctly careful one, too. It is quite impossible for Mrs. Connolly, sitting behind, to hear it, however carefully she may be attending.

"It is well you cannot put your fortune to the touch," says Joyce quietly; "if you could, disappointment alone would await you."

"You mean----?" ask he, somewhat sharply.

"That were it possible for me to commit such a vulgarity as to run away with any one, you, certainly, would not be that one. You are the very last man on earth I should choose for so mistaken an adventure. Let me also add," says she, turning upon him with flashing eyes, though still her voice is determinately low and calm, "that you forget yourself strangely when you talk in this fashion to me." The scorn and indignation in her charming face is so apparent that it is now impossible to ignore it. Being thus compelled to acknowledge it he grows angry. Beauclerk angry is not nice.

"To do myself justice, I seldom do that!" says he, with a rather nasty laugh. "To forget myself is not part of my calculations. I can generally remember No. One."

"You will remember me, too, if you please, so long as I am with you,"

says Joyce, with a grave and very gentle dignity, but with a certain determination that makes itself felt. Beauclerk, conscious of being somewhat cowed, is bully enough to make one more thrust.

"After all, Dysart was right," says he. "He prophesied there would be rain. He advised you not to undertake our ill-starred journey of--yesterday." There is distinct and very malicious meaning in the emphasis he throws into the last word.

"I begin to think Mr. Dysart is always right," says Joyce, bravely, though her heart has begun to beat furiously. That terrible fear of what they will say to her when she gets back--of their anger--their courteous anger--their condemnation--has been suddenly presented to her again and her courage dies within her. Dysart, what will he say? It strikes even herself as strange that his view of her conduct is the one that most disturbs her.

"Only, beginning to think it? Why, I always understood Dysart was immaculate--the 'couldn't err' sort of person one reads of but never sees. You have been slow, surely, to gauge his merits. I confess I have been even slower. I haven't gauged them yet. But then--Dysart and I were never much in sympathy with each other."

"No. One can understand that," says she.

"One can, naturally," with the utmost self-complaisance. "I confess, indeed," with a sudden slight burst of vindictiveness, "that I never liked Dysart; idiotic sort of fool in my estimation, self-opinionated like all fools, and deucedly impertinent in that silent way of his. I believe," with a contemptuous laugh, "he has given it as his opinion that there is very little to like in me either."

"Has he? We were saying just now he is always right," says Miss Kavanagh, absently, and in a tone so low that Beauclerk may be excused for scarcely believing his ears.

"Eh?" says he. But there is no answer, and presently both fall into a silent mood--Joyce because conversation is terrible to her, and he because anger is consuming him.

He had kept up a lively converse all through the earlier part of their drive, ignoring the depression that only too plainly was crushing upon his companion, with a view to putting an end to sentimentality of any sort. Her discomfort, her unhappiness, was as nothing to him--he thought only of himself. Few men, under the circ.u.mstances, would have so acted, for most men, in spite of all the old maids who so generously abuse them, are chivalrous and have kindly hearts; and indeed it is only a melancholy specimen here and there who will fail to feel pity for a woman in distress. Beauclerk is a "melancholy specimen."

CHAPTER XXV.

"Man, false man, smiling, destructive man."

"Who breathes, must suffer, and who thinks, most mourn; And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born."

"Oh! my dear girl, is it you at last?" cries Lady Baltimore, running out into the hall as Joyce enters it. "We have been so frightened! Such a storm, and Baltimore says that mare you had is very uncertain. Where did you get shelter?"

The very warmth and kindliness of her welcome, the utter absence of disapproval in it of any sort, so unnerves Joyce that she can make no reply; can only cling to her kindly hostess, and hide her face on her shoulder.

"Is that you, Mrs. Connolly?" says Lady Baltimore, smiling at mine hostess of the Baltimore Arms, over the girl's shoulder.

"Yes, my lady," with a curtsey so low that one wonders how she ever comes up again. "I made so bould, my lady, as to bring ye home Miss Joyce myself. I know Misther Beauclerk to be a good support in himself, but I thought it would be a raisonable thing to give her the company of one of her own women folk besides."

"Quite right. Quite," says Lady Baltimore.

"Oh! she has been so kind to me," says Joyce, raising now a pale face to turn a glance of grat.i.tude on Mrs. Connolly.

"Why, indeed, my lady, I wish I might ha' bin able to do more for her; an' I'm sorry to say I'd to put her up in a small, most inconvenient room, just inside o' me own."

"How was that?" asks Lady Baltimore, kindly. "The inn so full then?"

"Fegs 'twas that was the matther wid it," says Mrs. Connolly, with a beaming smile. "Crammed from cellar to garret."

"Ah! the wet night, I suppose."

"Just so, my lady," composedly, and with another deep curtsey.

Lady Baltimore having given Mrs. Connolly into the care of the housekeeper, who is an old friend of hers, leads Joyce upstairs.

"You are not angry with me?" says Joyce, turning on the threshold of her room.

"With you, my dear child? No, indeed. With Norman, very! He should have turned back the moment he saw the first symptom of a storm. A short wetting would have done neither of you any harm."

"There was no warning; the storm was on us almost immediately, and we were then very close to Falling."

"Then, having placed you once safely in Mrs. Connolly's care, he should have returned himself, at all hazards."

"It rained very hard," says Joyce in a cold, clear tone. Her eyes are on the ground. She is compelling herself to be strictly just to Beauclerk, but the effort is too much for her. She fails to do it naturally, and so gives a false impression to her listener. Lady Baltimore casts a quick glance at her.

"Rain, what is rain?" says she.

"There was storm, too, a violent storm; you must have felt it here."

"No storm should have prevented his return. He should have thought only of you."

A little bitter smile curls the girl's lips: it seems a farce to suggest that he should have thought of her. He! Now with her eyes effectually opened, a certain scorn of herself, in that he should have been able so easily to close them, takes possession of her. Is his sister blind still to his defects, that she expects so much from him; has she not read him rightly yet? Has she yet to learn that he will never consider any one, where his own interests, comforts, position, clash with theirs?

"You look distressed, tired. I believe you are fretting about this,"

says Lady Baltimore, with a little kindly bantering laugh. "Don't be a silly child. n.o.body has said or thought anything that has not been kindly of you. Did you sleep last night? No. I can see you didn't.

There, lie down, and get a little rest before luncheon. I shall send you up a gla.s.s of champagne and a biscuit; don't refuse it."

She pulls down the blinds, and goes softly out of the room to her boudoir, where she finds Beauclerk awaiting her.

He is lounging comfortably on a satin fauteuil, looking the very _beau ideal_ of pleasant, careless life. He makes his sister a present of a beaming smile as she enters.

"Ah! good morning, Isabel. I am afraid we gave you rather a fright; but you see it couldn't be helped. What an evening and night it turned out!

By Jove! I thought the water works above were turned on for good at last and for ever. We felt like the Babes in the Wood--abandoned, lost. Poor, dear Miss Kavanagh! I felt so sorry for her! You have seen her, I hope,"