The Crown of Life Part 25

"I am as glad, almost, as you can be," he said. "Malvern, I never was there."

"So healthy, my brother says! And Shakespeare's country, you know; we shall go to Stratford, which I have never seen. I have a feeling that I really shall get better. Everything is more hopeful."

Piers recalled Olga's mysterious hints about her mother. Glancing at the worn face, with its vivid eyes, he could easily conceive that this ill-health had its cause in some grave mental trouble.

"Have you met your brother?" she asked.

"My brother? Oh no!" was the careless reply. Then on a sudden thought, Piers added, "You don't keep up your acquaintance with him, do you?"

"Oh--I _have_ seen him--now and then----"

There was a singular hesitancy in her answer to the abrupt question.

Piers, preoccupied as he was, could not but remark Mrs. Hannaford's constraint, almost confusion. At once it struck him that Daniel had been borrowing money of her, and the thought aroused strong indignation. His own hundred and fifty pounds he had never recovered, for all Daniel's fine speeches, and notwithstanding the fact that he had taken suggestive care to let the borrower know his address in Russia. Rapidly he turned in his mind the question whether he ought not to let Mrs. Hannaford know of Daniel's untrustworthiness; but before he could decide, she launched into another subject.

"So this is to be your place of business? Here you will sit day after day. If good wishes could help, how you would flourish! Is it orthodox to pray for a friend's success in business?"

"Why not? Provided you add--so long as he is guilty of no rascality."

"That, _you_ will never be."

"Why, to tell you the truth, I shouldn't know how to go about it. Not everyone who wishes becomes a rascal in business. It's difficult enough for me to pursue commerce on the plain, honest track; knavery demands an expertness altogether beyond me. Wherefore, let us give thanks for my honest stupidity!"

They chatted a while of these things. Then Piers, grasping his courage, uttered what was burning within him.

"When is Miss Derwent to be married?"

Mrs. Hannaford's eyes escaped his hard look. She murmured that no date had yet been settled.

"Tell me--I beg you will tell me--is her engagement absolutely certain?"

"I feel sure it is."

"No! I want more than that. Do you know that it is?"

"I can only say that her father believes it to be a certain thing. No announcement has yet been made."

"H'm! Then it isn't settled at all."

Piers sat stiffly upon his chair. He held an ivory paperknife, which he kept bending across his knee, and of a sudden the thing snapped in two.

But he paid no attention, merely flinging the handle away. Mrs.

Hannaford looked him in the face; he was deeply flushed; his lips and his throat trembled like those of a child on the point of tears.

"Don't! Oh, don't take it so to heart! It seems impossible--after all this time----"

"Impossible or not, it _is_!" he replied impetuously. "Mrs. Hannaford, you will do something for me. You will let me come down to Malvern, whilst she is with you, and see her--speak with her alone."

She drew back, astonished.

"Oh! how can you think of it, Mr. Otway?"

"Why should I not?" he spoke in a low and soft voice, but with vehemence. "Does she know all about me?"

"Everything. It was not I who told her. There has been talk----"

"Of course there has"--he smiled--"and I am glad of it. I wished her to know. Otherwise, I should have told her. Yes, I should have told her!

It shocks you, Mrs. Hannaford? But try to understand what this means to me. It is the one thing I greatly desire in all the world, shall I be hindered by a petty consideration of etiquette? A wild desire--you think. Well, the man sentenced to execution clings to life, clings to it with a terrible fierce desire; is it less real because utterly hopeless? Perhaps I am behaving frantically; I can't help myself. As that engagement is still doubtful--you admit it to be doubtful--I shall speak before it is too late. Why not have done so before? Simply, I hadn't the courage. I suppose I was too young. It didn't mean so much to me as it does now. Something tells me to act like a man, before it is too late. I feel I _can_ do it. I never could have, till now."

"But listen to me--do listen! Think how extraordinary it will seem to her. She has no suspicion of----"

"She has! She knows! I sent her: a year ago, a poem--some verses of my writing, which told her."

Mrs. Hannaford kept silence with a face of distress.

"Is there any harm," he pursued, "in asking you whether she has ever spoken of me lately--since that time?"

"She has," admitted the other reluctantly, "but not in a way to make one think----"

"No, no! I expected nothing of the kind. She has mentioned me; that is enough. I am not utterly expelled from her thoughts, as a creature outlawed by all decent people----"

"Of course not. She is too reasonable and kind."

"That she is!" exclaimed Piers, with a pa.s.sionate delight on his visage and in his voice. "And she would _rather_ I spoke to her--I feel she would! She, with her fine intelligence and n.o.ble heart, she would think it dreadful that a man did not dare to approach her, just because of something not his fault, something that made him no bit the less a man, and capable of honour. I know that thought would shake her with pity and indignation. So far I can read in her. What! You think I know her too little? And the thought of her never out of my mind for these five years! I have got to know her better and better, as time went on. Every word she spoke at Ewell stayed in my memory, and by perpetual repet.i.tion has grown into my life. Every sentence has given me its full meaning. I didn't need to be near her to study her. She was in my mind; I heard her and saw her whenever I wished; as I have grown older and more experienced in life, I have been better able to understand her. I used to think this was enough. I had--you know--that exalted sort of mood; Dante's Beatrice, and all that! It _was_ enough for the time, seeing that I lived with it, and through it. But now--no! And there is no single reason why I should be ashamed to stand before her, and tell her that--What I feel."

He checked himself, and gloomed for an instant, then continued in another tone:

"Yet that isn't true. There _are_ reasons--I believe no man living could say that when speaking of such a woman as Irene Derwent. I cannot face her without shame--the shame of every man who stands before a pure-hearted girl. We have to bear that, and to hide it as best we can."

The listener bent upon him a wondering gaze, and seemed unable to avert it, till his look answered her.

"You will give me this opportunity, Mrs. Hannaford?" he added pleadingly.

"I have no right whatever to refuse it. Besides, how could I, if I wished?

"When shall I come? I must remember that I am not free to wander about.

If it could be a Sunday----"

"I have forgotten something I ought to have told you already," said Mrs. Hannaford. "Whilst she was on her travels, Irene had an offer from someone else."

Piers laughed.

"Can that surprise one? Should I wonder if I were told she had fifty?"

"Yes, but this was not of the ordinary kind. You know that Mr. Jacks is well acquainted with Trafford Romaine. And it was Trafford Romaine himself."

The news did not fail of its impression. Piers smiled vaguely, and on the smile came a look of troubled pride.

"Well, it is not astonishing, but it gives me a better opinion of the man. I shall always feel a sort of sympathy when I come across his name. Why did you think I ought to know?"