Scarlet and Hyssop Part 25

"Your mother does not know I have come," said he. "I should have told her, but I thought she would probably have forbidden me."

"Indeed she would not," said Maud. "She would certainly have encouraged you."

"That would have been just as bad," said Anthony.

Suddenly Maud felt stimulated. During all this fortnight neither the gardeners nor the dogs had said anything so interesting. She sat down again.

"I should like you to explain that," she said, without confessing to herself that explanation was unnecessary or that she wished to hear him explain.

"You are sure?" he said.

"Quite."

"It is this, then," said he--"we have both been put in a false position.

We have been urged to marry each other, and you have refused me. It has not been fair on either of us. In spite of the pressure which has been put upon you, you have refused me; in spite of the pressure put upon me, I want nothing else in the world but that you should marry me. Mind, I quite sympathize with you, for if there is anything in the world which would make one wish never to see a person again, it is to have that person persistently hurled at one. I have been hurled at you. That is one of the reasons why I came here, to tell you that I sympathize with you. I am afraid people have made me an uncommon nuisance to you."

Anthony paused, raised his eyes a moment, and saw that Maud was looking at him steadily, with grave consideration in her face. He felt, rightly, that never before had she given him such favourable attention.

"I am not such a c.o.xcomb as to suppose that you would have given me a different answer if you had not quite naturally been 'put off' by the way in which you have been treated," he continued; "but I do ask you to remember that I have scarcely had a fair chance. Please try to think that it has not been my fault."

"No; it has been my mother's," said Maud.

"Yes, it has been her fault. I suppose she thought that continued perseverance would have some effect. It may or may not have had the opposite effect to what she intended, but certainly not that."

"It has had the opposite effect," said Maud.

"Are you sure?"

"I am now."

"Can you try and banish it from your mind?"

"I will try."

Anthony, again looked at her, and his heart hammered against his ribs.

But even though he scarcely felt master of himself, he did not lose his wisdom and press this point further.

"I do not hope to win you," he said, "by making myself importunate, and perhaps, now I think of it, it was not wise of me to come. But I am not sorry I came; nor do I give up hope. Very likely that is presumptuous of me; but for myself, I am sure that I shall not change."

He sat on the ground playing with the ear of one of the dogs, but as he said these last words his fingers made a sudden violent movement, and the dog whimpered. "There, there!" he said, and fell to stroking it again quietly.

"You said that this was one of the reasons why you came," said Maud.

"What was the other?"

"There was only one other. I wanted to see you. I was drawn by cords,"

he said.

"Poor Mr. Anthony," said she very quietly, and there was no shade of irony in her voice.

"Thank you for that," he said.

Maud lifted her feet off the ground, and swung gently to and fro in the hammock. She was naturally very reserved, and in matters of the emotions still extraordinarily ignorant, and it would have puzzled her to say exactly what she felt now. It was no tearing or violent emotion, no storm, but rather the strong, serene press of a flowing tide.

Hitherto the human race, whether considered individually or collectively, had not much occupied her, but something now within her quickened and stirred and moved, and she was certainly at this moment not indifferent to this plain young man who was so modest and so self-a.s.sured. There was more about him to be learned than she had known, and that book just opening promised to interest her. Of pa.s.sion she felt no touch, but her "poor Mr. Anthony" had contained authentic pity.

"You are quite right," she said. "Your various advantages have been constantly told me by my mother. All the things which seemed to her such excellent causes why I should marry you seemed to me to be very bad causes indeed; but they were represented to me as most urgent. I did not find them so." She paused, and Anthony said nothing, feeling that some further word was on her lips. "I like you," she said at length. "Come and have tea."

The moment she had said it she was afraid that he would do something stupid, look fervent, even seize her hand. But she need not have been afraid. Anthony rose at once.

"Oh, do let us have tea," he said; "I am longing for it."

Maud's relief was great.

"It was stupid of me," she said. "Won't you have a whisky-and-soda? You must be awfully thirsty."

"No, I should prefer tea, thanks," he said. "I hate drinks at odd times.

How lovely your garden looks!"

"Yes; but it's still rather backward. The chestnut-flowers should be out by now, and they are still hardly budding."

"How can you remember that?"

"Oh, if one takes an interest in things, it is difficult to forget about them," said Maud.

"That is perfectly true," remarked Anthony.

Soon after tea he left again, and took the white riband of the Bath Road back into London. He could not help telling himself that he had prospered beyond all expectation; and if he had been, as he had told Maud, not hopeless before, he was, it may be supposed, on the sunny side of hope now. But he intended to stop, once and for all, the risk of mismanagement on the part of others, and having reached home he went straight to his mother's room.

"I've been down to Windsor," said he, "and I had tea with Maud Brereton--alone."

"You haven't got a spark of proper pride, Anthony," said his mother with some heat. "To go dangling and mooning after a girl who's refused you flat! I wonder what she sets up to be!"

"I think she sets up to be herself," said Anthony. "It is rather rare. I like it. But I want to manage my own affair in my own way. I particularly wish Lady Brereton not to say a word more of any kind to Maud. I should like you to tell her so if you have an opportunity."

"Why, I'm sure she's been as eager as anybody," said Lady Maxwell.

"I shall not succeed with her because her mother wishes it," said Anthony. "I'll play my hand alone, please."

In London, in the meantime, the fact that Maud had refused him had become generally known, and London, with that admirable subst.i.tute for altruism which is so characteristic of it, and consists in vividly concerning one's self with those things that do not in the least concern one, had been very voluble on the subject. There was scarcely any divergence in the views expressed, and everybody was agreed that it was a terrible thing for poor Mildred to find she had for a daughter so obstinate and wrong-headed a girl. "Why, the Maxwells roll, my dear--simply roll! Of course, Maud is wonderfully good-looking, and no doubt lots of other men will be after her, but why not have accepted Anthony provisionally? It is always so easy to let it be understood, if anything else turned up, that a young girl like that hadn't known her own mind----"

On the top of this there leaked out the fact that Marie Alston had strongly dissuaded her from it, and the world, with the agility and restlessness of monkeys, leaped to the new topic. Really Marie was getting a little too strong! It was all very well to scatter those amusing and general criticisms on people in general, and take the unworldly pose; but when it came to putting her finger in the wheels of the Society watch, so to speak, and stopping them from turning, it was too much. How on earth were struggling mothers to hope to get their daughters happily--yes, happily--married, if idealistic snowflakes were ready to descend upon them at street corners and forbid the banns. Over this Society grinned and showed its teeth for a little while, and then was off again on a fresh tack. How would Mildred behave to Marie? Here there were wheels within wheels, and the upshot was that Society was not at all sure that there had not been a break on one side or the other between Jack and her. Given that certain things had come to Marie's ear, it would account for everything. What an ingenious revenge, too, on Marie's part! Really, she was a person of brains. It required cool thinking to hit upon a _riposte_ like that.

After this, sensation came hard on the heels of sensation. Mildred began to be mentioned in the same breath as Jim Spencer, and, far more remarkable, Jack began to be mentioned in the same breath as his wife.

They had dined out together twice last week; they had been together to party after party. How curious and interesting! A complete resorting of the cards, and without any fuss whatever; and the honour, as usual, in Marie's hand. In one _partie_ she had recaptured her husband, shunted off her admirer on to Mildred, scored heavily against her, all the time with her nose in the air, as unapproachable and distinguished as ever.

But meanwhile Lady Ardingly sat like a spider in the middle of her web.

The threads had extended farther than even she had originally planned, but she did not object in the least to that. And when people came and told her the news, she was less severe than usual.

"Ah, my dear!" she would say, "how you fly about, and gather honey and all sorts of curious other things! And I sit here. I never know anything except what you are good enough to come and tell me. And so Jack is _amourache_ again of his wife? So charming, is she not? Let us play Bridge immediately."