Once Aboard the Lugger Part 15

Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued: "So many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wife in such an emergency--the length of time you have been with us; the unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one of ourselves, in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothing you, going out of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!"

The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by this astonishing revelation of her love, a.s.sumed an air in keeping--an air of some pain but no surprise at such ingrat.i.tude. She warmed to this husband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could at least champion her upon occasion.

Mary cried: "But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; I fell."

Mrs. Chater said _"Fell!"_ With sublime forbearance she added, "Never mind; the incident is past."

"Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out--you had asked me to see the name of the street--when the horse stumbled."

"It is curious," said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, "that you managed to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt."

"Very, very curious," Mr. Chater echoed.

How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: "I--"

"Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down."

Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. "My dear, do; I will send you a hot-water bottle."

His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him to task. "Send a fiddlestick," she rapped; "on a boiling day like this!"

She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, pa.s.sed from the room.

CHAPTER III.

Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.

Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted, eau- de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull the tumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.

About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched it in the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she had learned to take buffetings.

To be dispa.s.sionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upon a wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching face whom now she saw in the gla.s.s as a second person whose sufferings might be coldly regarded and dissected.

It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to be philosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to wax impatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden by troubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, we can school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as one person, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chiding that figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.

With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave that Mary-in-the- gla.s.s who stood before her a healthy reproof.

"The ridiculous thing you did," Mary-in-the-gla.s.s was told--"the ridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinking about--about Ireland."

The mouth of Mary-in-the-gla.s.s ominously twitched.

"There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think about that. Whatever's the use of it?"

Mary-in-the-gla.s.s could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.

"Does it do you any good? Does it do _them_ any good, do you suppose, to know that you can never think of them without making yourself unhappy?"

Mary-in-the-gla.s.s attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.

"I'm not saying you are _never_ to think of them. Goodness knows what I should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you are happy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you choose to be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whining anywhere near them--understand? You only make them unhappy and make your troubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs.

Chater, you must be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab brought her back! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that little worm of a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of crying over it?"

Mary-in-the-gla.s.s could. The successive recollections induced the prettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.

Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was just now very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s. For, merged in her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable line of thought could be pursued--a delectable line, since along this trail was to be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her wild ejection from the cab.

Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.

Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s essayed her best to prevent the interview.

"Poof!" Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s, that cold young person, sneered.

"Poof! You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whom you will never again see, and from whose recollections you have most certainly pa.s.sed unless to be recalled as a joke-- perhaps to some other girl!" (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters these Marys-outside-the-gla.s.s.) "Why, you must be a donkey to think about him! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too utterly ridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall the figure you must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you must have looked like as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw?

Pretty sight, eh? And can you imagine the expression on your face as you banged into his arms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you?

And can you by any means realise the idiot you must have looked when Mrs. Chater came up and swept you off like an escaped puppy, recaptured and in for a whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you?

You didn't happen to peep back through the little window at the back of the cab and see him laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked...."

And so on. This was the att.i.tude of that cold, calculating, dispa.s.sionate Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s. But Mary smothered the voice-- would not hear a word of it. Completely she became Mary-in-the-gla.s.s, that sentimental young woman, and in that personality tripped along the path of thought where stood her stranger.

Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took again his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check gave her replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note, struck again the light in his eyes.

Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her tender heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate anguish. None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was a stranger--suddenly encountered, as suddenly left--who in her mind had appropriated a track which she was eager to make a well-beaten path. Why?

But Mary-in-the-gla.s.s, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid them mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her stranger, stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.

There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter. Mary- in-the-gla.s.s, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed out that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose that you will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly wander; one has some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same streets, crossing daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit of a chalked line. Mary-in-the-gla.s.s, therefore, constructing a re- encounter, happened to be strolling along the scene of the accident, and lo! there was he!

Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s, that cold young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square where the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for their walk; holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at the particular hour of the catastrophe--the only time of day at which, according to the chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to find the stranger in the same spot.

But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away Mary-outside-the-gla.s.s; became again Mary-in-the-gla.s.s. And they are impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-gla.s.s. They will approach an unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields beyond.

So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all the favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in them; introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her dear companion.

It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by her s.e.x's natural desire to be loved for itself alone--not for big behaviour.

CHAPTER IV.

Excursions In A Nursery.

The loud bang of a door was the gong that called Mary back from those pleasant fields. They whirled from her, leaving her in sudden realisation of the material.

She glanced at the clock.