Red Pottage Part 50

"Nor I," gasped Mr. Gresley, "but he did. I suppose he did not want to offend the Bishop. And when I expostulated with him, and reminded him of what he had advised only the day before, he said that was about a letter, not a book, as if it mattered which it was. It was the principle that mattered. But they neither of them would listen to me. I said I had offered to help to rewrite it, and the Bishop became quite fierce. He said I might as well try to rewrite Regie if he were in his coffin. And then he mentioned, casually, as if it were quite an afterthought, that Hester had sold it for a thousand pounds. All through, I knew he was really trying to hurt my feelings, in spite of his manner, but when he said _that_ he succeeded."

Mr. Gresley groaned.

"A thousand pounds!" said Mrs. Gresley, turning white. "Oh, it isn't possible!"

"He said he had seen the publisher's letter offering it, and that Hester had accepted it by his advice. He seemed to know all about her affairs.

When he said that, I was so distressed I could not help showing it, and he made rather light of it, saying the money loss was the least serious part of the whole affair, but, of course, it is the worst. Poor Hester, when I think that owing to me she has lost a thousand pounds. Seventy pounds a year, if I had invested it for her, and I know of several good investments, all perfectly safe, at seven per cent.--when I think of it it makes me absolutely miserable. We won't talk of it any more. The Bishop sat with his head in his hands for a long time after the Archdeacon had gone, and afterwards he was quite kindly again, and said we looked at the subject from such different points of view that perhaps there was no use in discussing it. And we talked of the Church Congress until the fly came, only he seemed dreadfully tired, quite knocked up.

And he promised to let us know first thing to-morrow morning how Hester was. He was cordial when we left. I think he meant well. But I can never feel the same to Archdeacon Thursby again. He was quite my greatest friend among the clergy round here. I suppose I shall learn in time not to have such a high ideal of people, but I certainly thought very highly of him until to-day."

Mr. Gresley sat upright, and put away his handkerchief with decision.

"One thing this miserable day has taught us," he said, "and that is that we must part with Fraulein. If she is to become impertinent the first moment we are in trouble, such a thing is not to be borne. We could not possibly keep her after her behavior to-day."

CHAPTER XLIV

If two lives join, there is oft a scar. --ROBERT BROWNING.

Rachel left Westhope Abbey the day after Lord Newhaven's funeral, and returned to London. And the day after that Hugh came to see her, and proposed, and was accepted.

He had gone over in his mind a hundred times all that he should say to her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, in a hoa.r.s.e, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and she said "Yes" immediately.

She had not intended to say so--at least, not at first. She had made up her mind that it would be only right to inform him that she was fourteen months older than he (she had looked him out in Burke where she herself was not to be found); that she was "old enough to be his mother"; also that she was of a cold, revengeful temper not calculated to make a home happy, and several other odious traits of character which she had never dreamed of confiding to any of the regiment of her previous lovers.

But the only word she had breath to say when the time came was "Yes."

Rachel had shivered and hesitated on the brink of a new love long enough. Her anxiety about Hugh had unconsciously undermined her resistance. His confession had given her instantly the confidence in him which had been wanting. It is not perfection that we look for in our fellow-creatures, but for what is apparently rarer, a little plain dealing.

How they rise before us!--the sweet reproachful faces of those whom we could have loved devotedly if they had been willing to be straightforward with us; whom we have lost, not by our own will, but by that paralysis of feeling which gradually invades the heart at the discovery of small insincerities. Sincerity seems our only security against losing those who love us, the only cup in which those who are worth keeping will care to pledge us when youth is past.

Rachel was not by nature _de celles qui se jettent dans l'amour comme dans un precipice_. But she shut her eyes, recommended her soul to G.o.d, and threw herself over. She had climbed down once--with a.s.sistance--and she was not going to do that again. That she found herself alive at the bottom was a surprise to her, but a surprise that was quickly forgotten in the constant wonder that Hugh could love her as devotedly as it was obvious he did.

Women would have shared that wonder, but not men. There was a home ready made in Rachel's faithful, dog-like eyes, which at once appealed to the desire of expansion of empire in the heart of the free-born Briton.

Hugh had, until lately, considered woman as connected with the downward slope of life. He would have loudly disclaimed such an opinion if it had been attributed to him; but nevertheless it was the key-note of his behavior towards them, his belief concerning them which was of a piece with his cheap cynicism and dilettante views of life. He now discovered that woman was made out of something more than man's spare rib.

It is probable that if he had never been in love with Lady Newhaven, Hugh would never have loved Rachel. He would have looked at her, as many men did, with a view to marriage and would probably have dismissed her from his thoughts as commonplace. He knew better now. It was Lady Newhaven who was commonplace. His worldliness was dropping from him day by day as he learned to know Rachel better.

Where was his cynicism now that she loved him?

His love for her, humble, triumphant, diffident, pa.s.sionate, impatient by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him entirely. He remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making a magnificent match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as she knew well.

December came in bleak and dark. The snow did its poor best, laying day after day its white veil upon the dismal streets. But it was misunderstood. It was sc.r.a.ped into murky heaps. It melted and then froze, and then melted again. And London groaned and shivered on its daily round.

Every afternoon Hugh came, and every morning Rachel made her rooms bright with flowers for him. The flower shop at the corner sent her tiny trees of white lilac, and sweet little united families of hyacinths and tulips. The time of azaleas was not yet. And once he sent her a bunch of daffodils. He knew best how he had obtained them.

Their wild, sweet faces peered at Rachel, and she sat down faint and dizzy, holding them in her nerveless hands. If one daffodil knows anything, all daffodils know it to the third and fourth generation.

"Where is he?" they said. "That man whom you loved once? We were there when he spoke to you. We saw you stand together by the attic window. We never say, but we heard, we remember. And you cried for joy at night afterwards. We never say. But we heard. We remember."

Rachel's secretary in the little room on the ground-floor was interrupted by a tap at the door. Rachel came in laden with daffodils.

Their splendor filled the gray room.

"Would you mind having them?" she said, smiling, and laying them down by her. "And would you kindly write a line to Jones telling him not to send me daffodils again. They are a flower I particularly dislike."

"Rachel?"

"Hugh!"

"Don't you think it would be better if we were married immediately?"

"Better than what?"

"Oh, I don't know; better than breaking it off."

"You can't break it off now. I'm not a person to be trifled with. You have gone too far."

"If you gave me half your attention, you would understand that I am only expressing a wish to go a little further, but you have become so frivolous since we have been engaged that I hardly recognize you."

"I suit myself to my company."

"Are you going to talk to me in that flippant manner when we are married. I sometimes fear, Rachel, you don't look upon me with sufficient awe. I foresee I shall have to be very firm when we are married. When may I begin to be firm?"

"Are these such evil days, Hugh?"

"I am like Oliver Twist," he said. "I want more."

They were sitting together one afternoon in the fire-light in silence.

They often sat in silence together.

"A wise woman once advised me," said Rachel at last, "if I married, never to tell my husband of any previous attachment. She said, Let him always believe that he was the first

That ever burst Into that silent sea.

I believe it was good advice, but it seems to me to have one drawback--to follow it may be to tell a lie. It would be in my case."

Silence.