the_love_affairs_of_pixie.txt Part 18

"If it'll please you better, I'll begin to howl this minute! I don't often, but when I do, it seems as if I could never stop. I _thought_,"

Pixie added reproachfully, "when a girl was engaged the man thought her perfect, and everything she did, and she sat listening while he sang her praises from morn to night. But _you_ find fault--"

"I don't call it finding fault to wish you would show more feeling!

It's the best sort of compliment, if you could only see it."

"I like my compliments undiluted, not wrapped up in reproaches, like powder in jam. Besides, you're fairly complacent yourself! I heard you telling Geoffrey that you expected to have a real good time."

"And suppose I did? What about that? Would you prefer me to be lonely, and miserable?"

"Oh _dear_!" cried Pixie poignantly; "we're quarrelling! Whose fault was it? Was it mine? I'm sorry, Stanor. _Don't_ let's quarrel! I want you to be happy. Could I love you if I didn't do that? I want it more than anything else. Honor is coming to-morrow, and I shall ask her to look after you for me. She knows so many people, and is so rich that she has the power to help. She will be glad to have you so near. _Why_ is she going home so _soon_, Stanor? I thought--"

"So did we all, but it's fallen through somehow. I met Carr in town looking the picture of woe, but, naturally, he didn't vouchsafe any explanation. Honor will probably unburden herself to you to-morrow."

"She will. If she doesn't I shall ask her," said Pixie calmly. "I'm crossed in love myself, so I can understand. It's no use trying to sympathise till you've had a taste of the trouble yourself. Has it ever occurred to you to notice the mad ways most people set about sympathising? Sticking needles all over you while they're trying to be kind. Sympathising is an art, you know, and you have to adapt it to each person. Some like a little and some like a lot, and some like cheering up, and others want you to cry with them and make the worst of everything, and then it's off their minds and they perk up. Bridgie and I used to think sometimes of hiring ourselves out as professional sympathisers, for there seems such a lack of people who can do it properly."

"Suppose you give me a demonstration now! You haven't been too generous in that respect, Pixie."

Pixie looked at him, her head on one side, her eyes very intent and serious.

"You don't _need_ it," she said simply, and Stanor looked hurt and discomfited, and cast about in his mind for a convincing retort which should prove beyond doubt the pathos of his position, failed to find it, and acknowledged unwillingly to himself that as a matter of fact he _was_ very well satisfied with the way in which things were going.

Pixie was right--she usually _was_ right; it might, perhaps, be more agreeable if on occasions she could be judiciously blind! He adopted the pained and dignified air which experience had taught him was the surest method of softening Pixie's heart, and in less than a minute she was hanging on his arm and contradicting all her former statements.

Stanor was very much in love as he travelled back to town that day, and the two years of waiting seemed unbearably long. Perhaps, if he got on unusually well, the Runkle might be induced to shorten the probation.

He would sound him at the end of the first year.

The next day Honor Ward made a farewell visit to the Hall, and took lunch with the family in the panelled dining-room, where she had joined in many merry gatherings a few weeks before. Pixie saw the brown eyes flash a quick glance at the place which had been allotted to Robert Carr, but except for that glance there was no sign of anything unusual in either looks or manner. Honor was as neat, as composed, as a.s.sured in manner as in her happiest moments, and the flow of her conversation was in no wise moderated. Her hurried departure was explained by a casual "I guessed I'd better," which Mr and Mrs Hilliard accepted as sufficient reason for a girl who had no ties, and more money than she knew how to use. Even Pixie's lynx-eyes failed to descry any sign of heart-break. But when the meal was over and the two girls retired upstairs for a private chat, Honor's jaunty manners fell from her like a cloak, and she crouched in a corner of the sofa, looking suddenly tired and worn. For the moment, however, it was not of her own affairs that she elected to speak.

"Pat-ricia," she began suddenly, turning her honey-coloured eyes on her friend's face with a penetrating gaze, "I guess this is about the last real talk you and I are going to get for a good long spell. There's no time for fluttering round the point. What I've got in my mind I'm going to _say_! What in the land made you get engaged to Stanor Vaughan?"

"Because he asked me, of course!" replied Pixie readily, and the American girl gave a shrug of impatience.

"If another man had asked you, then, it would have been just the same.

You would have accepted him for, the same reason!"

Pixie's head reared proudly; her eyes sent out a flash.

"That's horrid, and you _meant_ it to be! I shan't answer your questions if you're going to be rude."

"I'm not rude, Patricia O'Shaughnessy. You're a real sweet girl, and I want you should be as happy as you deserve, which you certainly won't be if you don't take the trouble to understand your own heart. What's all this nonsense about being bound and not bound, and waiting for two years without writing, he on one side of the ocean, and you on another? I can understand an old uncle proposing it--it's just the sort of scheme an old uncle _would_ propose--but it won't work out, Patricia, you take my word for that!"

"Thank you, my dear, I prefer to take my own; and he's _not_ old. He has the most beautiful eyes you ever beheld. What do you suppose Stanor would say if he knew you were talking to me like this?"

"I'm not saying a word against Stanor! Who could say a word against such an elegant creature? He's been a good friend to me, and he's going to make a first-rate man when he gets to work, and has something to think about besides his beautiful self. America'll knock the nonsense out of him. At the end of two years, it will be another man who comes home, a _man_ instead of a boy, just as you will probably be a woman instead of a girl. It's the most critical time in life, when that change is taking place, and you'd better believe I know what I'm talking about. If I were in your place I'd move mountains, Patricia, if mountains had to be moved, but I'd make sure that the man I loved didn't go through it apart from me!"

"But if the mountain happened to be an uncle, and the uncle had done everything, and was willing to go on doing everything, and was older and wiser, and knew better than you? Oh, dearie me," concluded Pixie impatiently, "_everybody_ seems against me! I'm lectured and thwarted on every side, I've not been brought up to it, and it's most depressing.

And it's not a bit of good, either; it's my own life, and I shall do as I like. And what about yourself, me dear? You are very brave about lecturing me. Suppose _I_ take a turn! Why are you going back to America and leaving Robert Carr behind? What have you been doing to him?"

"I asked him to marry me, and he refused."

Pixie sat stunned with surprise and consternation. Honor's voice had been flat and level as usual, not a break or quiver had broken its flow, but there was a pallor round the lips, a sudden sharpening of the features, which spoke eloquently enough, and smote the hearer to the heart.

"Oh, me dear, forgive me!" she cried deeply. "I'm ashamed. Don't say any more. I'd no right to ask."

"I meant to tell you. I'd have told you in any case. You guessed how it was when we were here. You can't be in love like that and _not_ show it.--I thought of him all day; I dreamt of him all night ... when he was out of the room I was wretched; when he came in I knew it by instinct; before I could see him I knew it! In a crowded room I could hear every word he said, see every movement. ... When I was sitting alone, and heard his voice in the distance, my heart leapt--it made me quite faint.

I _loved_ him, Pixie!"

Pixie sat staring with startled gaze. She did not speak, and for a moment it seemed that her thoughts had wandered from the story on hand, for her eyes had an _inward_ look, as though she were puzzling out a problem which concerned herself alone. She started slightly as Honor again began to speak, and straightened herself with a quick air of attention.

"Sometimes I thought he loved me too, but he was not the sort of man who would choose to marry an heiress. My money stood between us. So I ...

I tried to make it easier by showing him ... how I felt. When we went back to London he said good-bye, and refused my invitations, but I met him by accident, and," she straightened herself with a gesture of pride, "I am not ashamed of what I did. It would have been folly to sacrifice happiness for the sake of a convention ... I _asked_ him--"

"And?"

"_He cared_!" Honor said softly. "I had my hour, Pixie, but it was _only_ an hour, for at the end we got to business, and that wrecked it all. I've told you about my factory. Over here in England, when people have looked at me through monocles, there _have_ been times when I've been ashamed of pickles, but at home I'm proud! Father started as a working lad, and built up that great business, brick by brick. Three thousand 'hands' are employed in the factory, but they were never 'hands' to him, Patricia, they were _souls_! He'd been a working man himself, and there was not one thing in their lives he didn't know and understand. One of the first things I can remember, right away back in my childhood, is being taken to a window to see those men stream past, and being told they were my friends and that I was to take care of them.

He had no airs, my pappa; he never gave himself frills, or pretended to be anything different from what he was--there was only one thing he was proud of, and that was that his men were the happiest and most contented in the States. When he died he left me more than his money, he left me his _men_!"

Honor paused, her eyes bright with suppressed feeling, and Pixie, keen as ever to appreciate an emotional situation, drew a fluttering breath.

"Yes, yes! How beautiful! How fine! All those lives ... Honor, aren't you proud?"

"I've told you before, my dear. The best part of me is proud and glad, but we're pretty complex creatures, and I guess a big duty is bound to come up against a pleasure now and then. At the moment I was speaking of, it was one man against three thousand, and the one man weighed down the scale."

"But ... but I don't understand." Pixie puckered her brows in bewilderment. "Why couldn't you have both?"

"I thought I could, Patricia. I calculated, as my work was full-fledged, and his had hardly begun, that he would be willing to come over with me. It's a pretty stiff proposition for a woman to run a big show like that, and I'd have been glad of help. _He_ allowed I'd have to sell up and keep house for him in England, and make a splash among the big-wigs to help him in his career. He put it as politely as he knew how, but he made me understand that it was beneath his dignity to live in America and work in pickles, and he guessed if I sold out I could find a buyer who would look after the men as well as or better than I did myself. So--" she waved her small white hands--"there we were! He wouldn't, and I couldn't! That's the truth, Patricia. I could _not_! I don't dispute that another person might not manage as well as I, that's not the question. It's my work, it's my responsibility; those men were left to _me_, and I can't desert. So the dream's over, my dear, and I'm going back to real hard life."

Pixie nodded, the big tears standing in her eyes.

"I should have done the same. He didn't love you _enough_."

Honor gave a quivering laugh.

"He said the same of me. Couldn't seem to see any difference between the two 'give-ups'; but there _is_ a difference, Patricia. Well, my dear, that's the end of it. We said good-bye, and there's no reason why we should meet again. ... Our lives lie in different places, and it's no use trying to join them."

"Honor, dear, are you very unhappy?"

Honor's neat little features puckered in a grimace.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say I feel exactly gay, Patricia, but don't you worry about me. I'll come up smiling. You wouldn't have me pine for the sake of a man who wouldn't have me when he got the chance? I guess Honor P Ward has too much grit for that!"

Pixie nodded slowly.

"But you mustn't be too hard on him, Honor--It's natural to want to live in one's own country, and he loves _his_ work just as you do yours.

He'll be a judge some day--chins like that always _do_ succeed--and ambition means so much to a man. You might have been pleased for your own sake; but would you have thought more of _him_ as a _man_ if he'd thrown it all up and lived on your pickles?"

Honor brought her eyebrows together in a frown.

"Now, Pixie O'Shaughnessy, don't you go taking his part! I guess I've got about as much sense of justice as most, and in a few months' time I'll see the matter in its right light, but for the moment I'm injured, and I _choose_ to feel injured; and I expect my friends to feel injured too. I've offered myself to an Englishman, and he's refused to have me.

There's no getting; away from that fact, and it's not a soothing experience for a free-born American. I'm through with Englishmen from this time forth!"