April's Lady Part 65

"Forgive me!" cries he, in a stifled tone. "Have mercy on me, Joyce!--I love you--I swear it! Do not cast me adrift! All I have said or done I regret now! You said I should regret, and I do."

Something in his abas.e.m.e.nt disgusts the girl, instead of creating pity in her breast. She shakes herself free of him by a sharp and horrified movement.

"You must go home," she says calmly, yet with a frowning brow, "and you must not come here again. I told, you it was all useless, but you would not listen. No, no; not a word!" He has risen to his feet, and would have advanced toward her, but she waves him from her with a sort of troubled hatred in her face.

"You mean----" begins he, hoa.r.s.ely.

"One thing--one thing only," feverishly--"that I hope I shall never see you again!"

CHAPTER XLVIII.

"When a man hath once forfeited the reputation of his sincerity he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood."

When he is gone Joyce draws a deep breath. For a moment it seems to her that it is all over--a disagreeable task performed, and then suddenly a reaction sets in. The scene gone through has tried her more than she knows, and without warning now she finds she is crying bitterly.

How horrible it all had been. How detestable he had looked--not so much when offering her his hand (as for his heart--pah!) as when he had given way to his weak exhibition of feeling and had knelt at her feet, throwing himself on her mercy. She placed her hands over her eyes when she thought of that. Oh! she wished he hadn't done it!

She is still crying softly--not now for Beauclerk's behavior, but for certain past beliefs--when a knock at the door warns her that another visitor is coming. She has not had time or sufficient presence of mind to tell a servant that she is not at home, when Miss Maliphant is ushered in by the parlor maid.

"I thought I'd come down and have a chat with you about last night," she begins in her usual loud tones, and with an a.s.sumption of easiness that is belied by the keen and searching glance she directs at Joyce.

"I'm so glad," says Joyce, telling her little lie as bravely as she can, while trying to conceal her red eyelids from Miss Maliphant's astute gaze by pretending to rearrange a cushion that has fallen from one of the lounges.

"Are you?" says her visitor, drily. "Seems to me I've come at the wrong moment. Shall I go away?"

"Go! No," says Joyce, reddening, and frowning a little. "Why should you?"

"Well, you've been crying," says Miss Maliphant, in her terribly downright way. "I hate people when I've been crying; but then it makes me a fright, and it only makes you a little less pretty. I suppose I mustn't ask what it is all about?"

"If you did I don't believe I could tell you," says Joyce, laughing rather unsteadily. "I was merely thinking, and it is the simplest thing in the world to feel silly now and then."

"Thinking? Of Mr. Beauclerk?" asks Miss Maliphant, promptly, and without the slightest idea of hesitation. "I saw him leaving this as I came by the upper road! Was it he who made you cry?"

"Certainly not," says Joyce, indignantly.

"It looks like it, however," says the other, her masculine voice growing even sterner. "What was he saying to you?"

"I really do think----" Joyce is beginning, coldly, when Miss Maliphant stops her by an imperative gesture.

"Oh, I know. I know all about that," says she, contemptuously. "One shouldn't ask questions about other people's affairs; I've learned my manners, though I seldom make any use of my knowledge, I admit. After all, I see no reason why I shouldn't ask you that question. I want to know, and there is no one to tell me but you. Was he proposing to you, eh?"

"Why should you think that?" says Joyce, subdued by the masterful manner of the other, and by something honest and above board about her that is her chief characteristic. There is no suspicion, either, about her of her questions being prompted by mere idle curiosity. She has said she wanted to know, and there was meaning in her tone.

"Why shouldn't I?" says she now. "He came down here early this afternoon. He goes away in haste--and I find you in tears. Everything points one way."

"I don't see why it should point in that direction."

"Come, be open with me," says the heiress, brusquely, in an abrupt fashion that still fails to offend. "Did he propose to you?"

Joyce hesitates. She raises her head and looks at Miss Maliphant earnestly. What a good face she has, if plain. Too good to be made unhappy. After all, why not tell her the truth? It would be a warning.

It was impossible to be blind to the fact that Miss Maliphant had been glad to receive the dishonest attentions paid to her every now and then by Beauclerk. Those attentions would probably be increased now, and would end but one way. He would get Miss Maliphant's money, and she--that good, kind-hearted girl--what would she get? It seems cruel to be silent, and yet to speak is difficult. Would it be fair or honorable to divulge his secret?

Would it be fair or honorable to let her imagine what is not true? He had been false to her--Joyce (she could not blind herself to the knowledge that with all his affected desire for her he would never have made her an offer of his hand but for her having come in for that money)--he would therefore be false to Miss Maliphant; he would marry her undoubtedly, but as a husband he would break her heart. Is she, for the sake of a word or two, to see her fall a prey to a mere pa.s.sionless fortune-hunter? A thousand times no! Better inflict a little pain now rather than let this girl endure endless pain in the future.

With a shrinking at her heart, born of the fear that the word will be very bitter to her guest, she says, "Yes;" very distinctly.

"Ha!" says Miss Maliphant, and that is all. Joyce, regarding her anxiously, is as relieved as astonished to see no trace of grief or chagrin upon her face. There is no change at all, indeed, except she looks deeply reflective. Her mind seems to be traveling backward, picking up loose threads of memory, no doubt, and joining them together.

A sense of intense comfort fills Joyce's soul. After all; the wound had not gone deep; she had been right to speak.

"He is not worth thinking about," says she, tremulously, _apropos_ of nothing, as it seems.

"No?" says Miss Maliphant; "then what were you crying about?"

"I hardly know. I felt nervous--and once I did like him--not very much--but still I liked him--and he was a disappointment."

"Tell you what," says Miss Maliphant, "you've hit upon a big truth. He is not worth thinking about. Once, perhaps, I, too, liked him, and I was an idiot for my pains; but I shan't like him again in a hurry. I expect I've got to let him know that, one way or another. And as for you----"

"I tell you I never liked him much," says Joyce, with a touch of displeasure. "He was handsome, suave, agreeable--but----"

"He was, and is, a hypocrite!" interrupts Miss Maliphant, with truly beautiful conciseness. She has never learned to mince matters. "And, when all is told, perhaps nothing better than a fool! You are well out of it, in my opinion."

"I don't think I had much to do with it," says Joyce, unable to refrain from a smile. "I fancy my poor uncle was responsible for the honor done me to-day." Then a sort of vague feeling that she is being ungenerous distresses her. "Perhaps, after all, I misjudge him too far," she says.

"Could you?" with a bitter little laugh.

"I don't know," doubtfully. "One often forms an opinion of a person, and, though the groundwork of it may be just, still one is too inclined to build upon it and to rear stories upon it that get a little beyond the actual truth when the structure is completed."

"Oh! I think it is he who tells all the stories," said Miss Maliphant, who is singularly dull in little unnecessary ways, and has failed to follow Joyce in her upstairs flight. "In my opinion he's a liar; I was going to say '_pur et simple_,' but he is neither pure nor simple."

"A liar!" says Joyce, as if shocked. Some old thought recurs to her. She turns quickly to Miss Maliphant. The thought grows into words almost before she is aware of it. "Have you a cousin in India?" asks she.

"In India?" Miss Maliphant regards her with some surprise. Why this sudden absurd question in an interesting conversation about that "Judas"? I regret to say this is what Miss Maliphant has now decided upon naming Mr. Beauclerk when talking to herself.

"Yes, India."

"Not one. Plenty in Manchester and Birmingham, but not one in India."

Joyce leans back in her chair, and a strange laugh breaks from her. She gets up suddenly and goes to the other and leans over her, as though the better to see her.

"Oh, think--think," says she. "Not a cousin you loved? Dearly loved? A cousin for whom you were breaking your heart, who was not as steady as he ought to be, but who----"

"You must be going out of your mind," says Miss Maliphant, drawing back from her. "If you saw my Birmingham cousins, or even the Manchester ones, you wouldn't ask that question twice. They think of nothing but money, money, money, from morning till night, and are essentially shoppy. I don't mind saying it, you know. It is as good to give up, and acknowledge things--and certainly they----"

"Never mind them. It is the Indian cousin in whom I am interested," says Joyce, impatiently. "You are sure, sure that you haven't one out there?

One whom Mr. Beauclerk knew about? And who was in love with you, and you with him. The cousin he told me of----"