Miss Bretherton Part 5

'Well!' said Kendal, laughing, balancing himself on the table facing Wallace. 'That's a tempting prospect! But if I don't help you out you'll give in, I know; you're the softest of men, and I don't want you to give in.'

'Yes, of course I shall give in,' said Wallace, with smiling decision.

'If you don't want me to, suppose you take the responsibility. I've known you do difficult things before; you manage somehow to get your own way without offending people.'

'H'm,' said Kendal; 'I don't know whether that's flattering or not.' He began to walk up and down the room again cogitating. 'I don't mind trying,' he said at last, 'in a very gingerly way. I can't, of course, undertake to be brutal. It would be impossible for any one to treat _her_ roughly. But there might be ways of doing it. There's time to think over the best way of doing it. Supposing, however, she took offence?

Supposing, after Sunday next, she never speaks to either of us again?'

'Oh!' said Wallace, wincing, 'I should give up the play at once if she really took it to heart. She attaches one to her. I feel towards her as though she were a sister--only more interesting, because there's the charm of novelty.'

Kendal smiled. 'Miss Bretherton hasn't got to that yet with me. Sisters, to my mind, are as interesting as anybody, and more so. But how on earth, Wallace, have you escaped falling in love with her all this time?'

'Oh, I had enough of that last year,' said Wallace abruptly, rising and looking for his overcoat, while his face darkened; 'it's an experience I don't take lightly.'

Kendal was puzzled; then his thoughts quickly put two and two together.

He remembered a young Canadian widow who had been a good deal at Mrs.

Stuart's house the year before; he recalled certain suspicions of his own about her and his friend--her departure from London and Wallace's long absence in the country. But he said nothing, unless there was sympathy in the cordial grip of his hand as he accompanied the other to the door.

On the threshold Wallace turned irresolutely. 'It will be a risk next Sunday,' he said; 'I'm determined it shan't be anything more. She is not the woman, I think, to make a quarrel out of a thing like that.'

'Oh no,' said Kendal; 'keep your courage up. I think it may be managed.

You give me leave to handle _Elvira_ as I like.'

'Oh heavens, yes!' said Wallace; 'get me out of the sc.r.a.pe any way you can, and I'll bless you for ever. What a brute I am never to have asked after your work! Does it get on?'

'As much as any work can in London just now. I must take it away with me somewhere into the country next month. It doesn't like dinner-parties.'

'Like me,' said Wallace, with a shrug.

'Nonsense!' said Kendal; 'you're made for them. Good-night.'

'Good-night. It's awfully good of you.'

'What? Wait till it's well over!'

Wallace ran down the stairs and was gone. Kendal walked back slowly into his room and stood meditating. It seemed to him that Wallace did not quite realise the magnificence of his self-devotion. 'For, after all, it's an awkward business,' he said to himself, shaking his head over his own temerity. 'How I am to come round a girl as frank, as direct, as unconventional as that, I don't quite know! But she ought not to have that play; it's one of the few good things that have been done for the English stage for a long time past. It's well put together, the plot good, three or four strongly marked characters, and some fine Victor Hugoish dialogue, especially in the last act. But there is extravagance in it, as there is in all the work of that time, and in Isabel Bretherton's hands a great deal of it would be grotesque: nothing would save it but her reputation and the get-up, and that would be too great a shame. No, no; it will not do to have the real thing swamped by all sorts of irrelevant considerations in this way. I like Miss Bretherton heartily, but I like good work, and if I can save the play from her, I shall save her too from what everybody with eyes in his head would see to be a failure!'

It was a rash determination. Most men would have prudently left the matter to those whom it immediately concerned, but Kendal had a Quixotic side to him, and at this time in his life a whole-hearted devotion to certain intellectual interests, which decided his action on a point like this. In spite of his life in society, books and ideas were at this moment much more real to him than men and women. He judged life from the standpoint of the student and the man of letters, in whose eyes considerations, which would have seemed abstract and unreal to other people, had become magnified and all-important. In this matter of Wallace and Miss Bretherton he saw the struggle between an ideal interest, so to speak, and a personal interest, and he was heart and soul for the ideal.

Face to face with the living human creature concerned, his principles, as we have seen, were apt to give way a little, for the self underneath was warm-hearted and impressionable, but in his own room and by himself they were strong and vigorous, and would allow of no compromise.

He ruminated over the matter during his solitary meal, planning his line of action. 'It all depends,' he said to himself, 'on that,--if what Wallace says about her is true, if my opinion has really any weight with her, I shall be able to manage it without offending her. It's good of her to speak of me as kindly as she seems to do; I was anything but amiable on that Surrey Sunday. However, I felt then that she liked me all the better for plain-speaking; one may be tolerably safe with her that she won't take offence unreasonably. What a picture she made as she pulled the primroses to pieces--it seemed all up with one! And then her smile flashing out--her eagerness to make amends--to sweep away a harsh impression--her pretty gratefulness--enchanting!'

On Sat.u.r.day, at lunch-time, Wallace rushed in for a few minutes to say that he himself had avoided Miss Bretherton all the week, but that things were coming to a crisis. 'I've just got this note from her,' he said despairingly, spreading it out before Kendal, who was making a sc.r.a.ppy bachelor meal, with a book on each side of him, at a table littered with papers.

'Could anything be more prettily done? If you don't succeed to-morrow, Kendal, I shall have signed the agreement before three days are over!'

It was indeed a charming note. She asked him to fix any time he chose for an appointment with her and her business manager, and spoke with enthusiasm of the play. 'It cannot help being a great success,' she wrote; 'I feel that I am not worthy of it, but I will do my very best.

The part seems to me, in many respects, as though it had been written for me. You have never, indeed, I remember, consented in so many words to let me have _Elvira_. I thought I should meet you at Mrs. Stuart's yesterday, and was disappointed. But I am sure you will not say me nay, and you will see how grateful I shall be for the chance your work will give me.'

'Yes, that's done with real delicacy,' said Kendal. Not a word of the pecuniary advantages of her offer, though she must know that almost any author would give his eyes just now for such a proposal. Well, we shall see. If I can't make the thing look less attractive to her without rousing her suspicions, and if you can't screw up your courage to refuse--why, you must sign the agreement, my dear fellow, and make the best of it; you will find something else to inspire you before long.'

'It's most awkward,' sighed Wallace, as though making up his perplexed mind with difficulty. 'The great chance is that by Agnes's account she is very much inclined to regard your opinion as a sort of intellectual standard; she has two or three times talked of remarks of yours as if they had struck her. Don't quote me at all, of course. Do it as impersonally as you can--'

'If you give me too many instructions,' said Kendal, returning the letter with a smile, 'I shall bungle it. Don't make me nervous. I can't promise you to succeed, and you mustn't bear me a grudge if I fail.'

'A grudge! No, I should think not. By the way, have you heard from Agnes about the trains to-morrow?'

'Yes, Paddington, 10 o'clock, and there is an 8.15 train back from Culham. Mrs. Stuart says we're to lunch in Balliol, run down to Nuneham afterwards, and leave the boats there, to be brought back.'

'Yes, we lunch with that friend of ours--I think you know him--Herbert Sartoris. He has been a Balliol don for about a year. I only trust the weather will be what it is to-day.'

The weather was all that the heart of man could desire, and the party met on the Paddington platform with every prospect of another successful day.

Forbes turned up punctual to the moment, and radiant under the combined influence of the sunshine and of Miss Bretherton's presence; Wallace had made all the arrangements perfectly, and the six friends found themselves presently journeying along to Oxford, at that moderated speed which is all that a Sunday express can reach. The talk flowed with zest and gaiety; the Surrey Sunday was a pleasant memory in the background, and all were glad to find themselves in the same company again. It seemed to Kendal that Miss Bretherton was looking rather thin and pale, but she would not admit it, and chattered from her corner to Forbes and himself with the mirth and _abandon_ of a child on its holiday. At last the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford rose from the green, river-threaded plain, and they were at their journey's end. A few more minutes saw them alighting at the gate of the new Balliol, where stood Herbert Sartoris looking out for them. He was a young don with a cla.s.sical edition on hand which kept him up working after term, within reach of the libraries, and he led the way to some pleasant rooms overlooking the inner quadrangle of Balliol, showing in his well-bred look and manner an abundant consciousness of the enormous good fortune which had sent him Isabel Bretherton for a guest. For at that time it was almost as difficult to obtain the presence of Miss Bretherton at any social festivity as it was to obtain that of royalty. Her Sundays were the objects of conspiracies for weeks beforehand on the part of those persons in London society who were least accustomed to have their invitations refused, and to have and to hold the famous beauty for more than an hour in his own rooms, and then to enjoy the privilege of spending five or six long hours on the river with her, were delights which, as the happy young man felt, would render him the object of envy to all at least of his fellow-dons below forty.

In streamed the party, filling up the book-lined rooms and startling the two old scouts in attendance into an unwonted rapidity of action. Miss Bretherton wandered round, surveyed the familiar Oxford luncheon-table, groaning under the time-honoured summer fare, the books, the engravings, and the sunny, irregular quadrangle outside, with its rich adornings of green, and threw herself down at last on to the low window-seat with a sigh of satisfaction.

'How quiet you are! how peaceful! how delightful it must be to live here!

It seems as if one were in another world from London. Tell me what that building is over there; it's too new, it ought to be old and gray like the colleges we saw coming up here. Is everybody gone away--"gone down"

you say? I should like to see all the learned people walking about for once.'

'I could show you a good many if there were time,' said young Sartoris, hardly knowing however what he was saying, so lost was he in admiration of that marvellous changing face. 'The vacation is the time they show themselves; it's like owls coming out at night. You see, Miss Bretherton, we don't keep many of them; they're in the way in term time. But in vacation they have the colleges and the parks and the Bodleian to themselves, and you may study their ways, and their spectacles, and their umbrellas, under the most favourable conditions.'

'Oh yes,' said Miss Bretherton, with a little scorn, 'people always make fun of what they are proud of. But I mean to believe that you are _all_ learned, and that everybody here works himself to death, and that Oxford is quite, quite perfect!'

'Did you hear what Miss Bretherton was saying, Mrs. Stuart?' said Forbes, when they were seated at luncheon. 'Oxford is perfect, she declares already; I don't think I quite like it: it's too hot to last.'

'Am I such a changeable creature, then?' said Miss Bretherton, smiling at him. 'Do you generally find my enthusiasms cool down?'

'You are as constant as you are kind,' said Forbes, bowing to her; 'I am only like a child who sighs to see a pleasure nearing its highest point, lest there should be nothing so good afterwards.'

'Nothing so good!' she said, 'and I have only had one little drive through the streets. Mr. Wallace, are you and Mrs. Stuart really going to forbid me sight-seeing?'

'Of course!' said Wallace emphatically. 'That's one of the fundamental rules of the society. Our charter would be a dead letter if we let you enter a single college on your way to the river to-day.'

'The only art, my dear Isabel,' said Mrs. Stuart, 'that you will be allowed to study to-day, will be the art of conversation.'

'And a most fatiguing one, too!' exclaimed Forbes; 'it beats sight-seeing hollow. But, my dear Miss Bretherton, Kendal and I will make it up to you. We'll give you an ill.u.s.trated history of Oxford on the way to Nuneham. I'll do the pictures, and he shall do the letterpress. Oh! the good times I've had up here--much better than he ever had'--nodding across at Kendal, who was listening. 'He was too proper behaved to enjoy himself; he got all the right things, all the proper first-cla.s.ses and prizes, poor fellow! But, as for me, I used to scribble over my note-books all lecture-time, and amuse myself the rest of the day. And then, you see, I was up twenty years earlier than he was, and the world was not as virtuous then as it is now, by a long way.'

Kendal was interrupting, when Forbes, who was in one of his maddest moods, turned round upon his chair to watch a figure pa.s.sing along the quadrangle in front of the bay-window.

'I say, Sartoris, isn't that Camden, the tutor who was turned out of Magdalen a year or two ago for that atheistical book of his, and whom you took in, as you do all the disreputables? Ah, I knew it!

"By the p.r.i.c.king of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes."

That's not mine, my dear Miss Bretherton; it's Shakespeare's first, Charles Lamb's afterwards. But look at him well--he's a heretic, a real, genuine heretic. Twenty years ago it would have been a thrilling sight; but now, alas! it's so common that it's not the victim but the persecutors who are the curiosity.'

'I don't know that,' said young Sartoris. 'We liberals are by no means the c.o.c.ks of the walk that we were a few years ago. You see, now we have got nothing to pull against, as it were. So long as we had two or three good grievances, we could keep the party together and attract all the young men. We were Israel going up against the Philistines, who had us in their grip. But now, things are changed; we've got our own way all round, and it's the Church party who have the grievances and the cry. It is we who are the Philistines and the oppressors in our turn, and, of course, the young men as they grow up are going into opposition.'

'And a very good thing, too!' said Forbes. 'It's the only thing that prevents Oxford becoming as dull as the rest of the world. All your picturesqueness, so to speak, has been struck out of the struggle between the two forces. The Church force is the one that has given you all your buildings and your beauty, while, as for you liberals, who will know such a lot of things that you're none the happier for knowing--well, I suppose you keep the place habitable for the plain man who doesn't want to be bullied. But it's a very good thing the other side are strong enough to keep you in order.'