Starvecrow Farm Part 64

"Just as you like," she murmured at last.

"Oh, but I wish to do what you like!" he replied, with a little more warmth; but still awkwardly and with constraint.

"So do I," she replied.

"I shall stay then," he answered. And he lifted a small dish from the hearth and carried it to the table. "I had Mrs. Gilson's orders to keep this hot for you," he said.

"It was very kind of you."

"I am afraid," more lightly, "that it was fear of Mrs. Gilson weighed on me as much as anything."

He returned to the hearth when he had seen her seated. And she began her breakfast with her eyes on the table. With the first draught of coffee a feeling of warmth and courage ran through her; and he, standing with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his eyes on the mirror, saw the change in her.

"The boy is better," he said suddenly. "I think he will do now."

"Yes?"

"I think so. But he will need great care. He will not be able to leave his bed for a day or two. We found your brooch pinned inside his clothes."

"Yes?"

He turned sharply and for the first time looked directly at her.

"Of course, we knew why you put it there. It was good of you. But why--don't you ask after him, Henrietta?" in a different tone.

She felt the colour rise to her cheeks--and she wished it anywhere else.

"I saw him this morning," she murmured.

"Oh!" he replied in surprise. And he turned to the mirror again. "I see."

She began to wish that he would leave her, for his silence made her horribly nervous. And she dared not start a subject herself, because she could not trust her voice. The hands of the white-faced clock jerked slowly on, marking the seconds, and accentuating the silence.

She grew so nervous at last that she could not lift her eyes from her plate, and she ate though she was scarcely able to swallow, because she dared not leave off.

It did not occur to her that Anthony Clyne was as ill at ease as she was; and oppressed, moreover, to a much greater degree by the memory of certain scenes which had taken place in that room. Her nervousness was in part the reflection of his constraint. And his constraint arose from two feelings widely different.

The long silence was becoming painful to both, when he forced himself to break it.

"I am so very, very deeply beholden to you," he said, in a constrained tone, "that--that I must ask you, Henrietta, to listen to me for a few minutes--even if it be unpleasant to you."

She laughed awkwardly.

"If it is only," she answered, "because you are beholden to me--that--that you feel it necessary to thank me at length, please don't. You will only overwhelm me."

"It is not for that reason only," he said. And he knew that he spoke, much against his will, with dreadful solemnity. "No. Naturally we must have much to say to one another. I, in particular, who owe to you----"

"Please let that be," she protested.

"But I cannot. I cannot!" he repeated. "You have done me so great a service, at a risk so great, and under circ.u.mstances so--so----"

"So remarkable," she cried, with something of her old girlish manner, "that you cannot find words in which to describe them! Then please don't." And then, more seriously: "I did not do what I did to be thanked."

"Then why?" he asked quickly. "Why did you do it?"

"Did you think," she protested, "that I did it to be thanked?"

"No, but--why did you do it, Henrietta?" he asked persistently. "Such a risk, such men, such circ.u.mstances, might have deterred any woman.

Nay, almost any man."

She toyed with her teaspoon; there had come a faint flush of colour into her cheeks.

"I think it was--I think it was just to reinstate myself," she murmured.

"You mean?"

"You gave me to understand," she explained, "that you thought ill of me. And I wished you to think well of me; or better of me, I should say, for I did not expect you to think quite well of me after--you know!" in some confusion.

"You wished to be reinstated?"

"Yes."

"I wonder," he said slowly, "how much you mean by that."

"I mean what I say," she answered, looking at him.

"Yes, but do you mean that you--wish to be reinstated altogether?"

She did not remove her eyes from his face, but she blushed to the roots of her hair.

"I am not sure that I understand," she said with a slight air of offence.

"No?" he said. "And perhaps I did not quite mean that. What I did mean, and do mean, what I am hoping, what I am looking forward to, Henrietta----" and there he broke off.

He seemed to find it necessary to begin again:

"Perhaps I had better explain," he said more soberly. "You told me that morning by the lake some home-truths, you remember? You showed me that what had happened was not all your fault; was perhaps not at all your fault. And you showed me this with so much energy and power, that I went away with the first clear impression of you I had had in my life. Yes, with the feeling that I had never known you until then." He dropped his eyes, and looked thoughtfully at something on the table.

"And one of the things I remember best, and which I shall always remember, was your saying that I had never paid any court to you."

"It was true," she said, in a low voice.

And she too did not look at him, but kept her eyes bent on the spoon with which she toyed.

"Yes. Well, if you will let the old state of things be so far reinstated as to--let me begin to pay my court to you now, I am not confident, I am very far from confident, that I can please you. I am rather old, for one thing"--with a rueful laugh--"to make love gracefully, and rather stiff and--political. But owing to the trouble I have brought upon you in the past----"

"I never said but that we both brought it!" Henrietta objected suddenly.

"Well, whoever brought it----"