Tristram of Blent Part 10

He shrugged his shoulders wearily and relapsed into silence. Silence there was till, a minute or two later, it was broken by a little sob from Mina Zabriska. He turned his head toward her; then he took hold of her arm and twisted her face round to him. The tears were running down her cheeks.

"I'm so, so sorry," she murmured. "I didn't mean to; and I did it! And now--now I can't stop it. You needn't believe me if you don't like, but I'm--I'm miserable and--and frightened."

He flung his cigar into the water and put his hands in his pockets. So he stood watching her, his body swaying a little to and fro; his eyes were suspicious of her, yet they seemed amused also, and they were not cruel; it was not such a look as he had given her when they parted by the Pool.

"If it were true?" she asked. "I mean, couldn't Lady Tristram somehow----?"

"If what was true? Oh, the nonsense you told Duplay?" He laughed. "If it was true, I should be a n.o.body and n.o.body's son. I suppose that would amuse you very much, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have come to Merrion for nothing then! But as it isn't true, what's the use of talking?"

He won no belief from her when he said that it was not true; to her quick mind the concentrated bitterness with which he described what it would mean to him showed that he believed it and that the thought was no new one; in imagination he had heard the world calling him many times what he now called himself--if the thing were true. She drew her cloak round her and shivered.

"Cold?" he asked.

"No. Wretched, wretched."

"Would you like to see my mother?"

"You wouldn't let her see me?"

"She's asleep, and the nurse is at supper--not that she'd matter. Come along."

He turned and began to walk quickly toward the house; Mina followed him as though in a dream. They entered a large hall. It was dark, save for one candle, and she could see nothing of its furniture. He led her straight up a broad oak staircase that rose from the middle of it, and then along a corridor. The polished oak gleamed here and there as they pa.s.sed candles in brackets on the wall, and was slippery under her unaccustomed feet. The whole house was very still--still, cool, and very peaceful.

Cautiously he opened a door and beckoned her to follow him. Lights were burning in the room. Lady Tristram lay sleeping; her hair, still fair and golden, spread over the pillow; her face was calm and unlined. She seemed a young and beautiful girl wasted by a fever; but the fever was the fever of life as well as of disease. Thus Mina saw again the lady she had seen at Heidelberg.

"She won't wake--she's had her sleeping draught," he said; and Mina took him to mean that she might linger a moment more. She cast her eyes round the room. Over the fireplace, facing the bed, was a full-length portrait of a girl. She was dressed all in red; the glory of her white neck, her brilliant hair, and her blue eyes rose out of the scarlet setting. This was Addie Tristram in her prime; as she was when she fled with Randolph Edge, as she was when she cried in the little room at Heidelberg, "Think of the difference it makes, the enormous difference!"

"My mother likes to have that picture there," Harry explained.

The sleeping woman stirred faintly. In obedience to a look from Harry, Mina followed him from the room, and they pa.s.sed downstairs and through the hall together in silence. He came with her as far as the bridge.

There he paused. The scene they had left had apparently stirred no new emotion in him; but Mina Zabriska was trembling and moved to the heart.

"Now you've seen her--and before that you'd seen me. And perhaps now you'll understand that we're the Tristrams of Blent, and that we live and die that." His voice grew a little louder. "And your nonsense!" he exclaimed; "it's all a lie. But if it was true? It's the blood, isn't it, not the law, that matters? It's her blood and my blood. That's my real t.i.tle to Blent!"

In the midst of his lying he spoke truth there, and Mina knew it. It seemed as though there, to her, in the privacy of that night, he lied as but a matter of form; his true heart, his true purpose, and his true creed he showed her in his last words. By right of blood he claimed to stand master of Blent, and so he meant to stand.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, yes. G.o.d help you to it." She turned and left him, and ran up the hill, catching her breath in sobs again.

Harry Tristram stood and watched her as long as he could see her retreating figure. There were no signs of excitement about him; even his confession of faith he had spoken calmly, although with strong emphasis.

He smiled now as he turned on his heel and took his way back to the house.

"The Major must play his hand alone now," he said; "he'll get no more help from her." He paused a moment. "It's a funny thing, though. That's not really why I took her up."

He shook his head in puzzle; perhaps he could hardly be expected to recognize that it was that pride of his--pride in his mother, his race, himself--which had made him bid Mina Zabriska look upon Lady Tristram as she slept.

VII

THE MOMENT DRAWS NEAR

Not knowing your own mind, though generally referred to as an intellectual weakness and sometimes as a moral fault, is none the less now and then a pleasant state to live in for a while. There is a richness of possibility about it, a variety of prospects open, a choice of roads each in its own fashion attractive. Besides, you can always tell yourself that it is prudent to look all round the question and consider all alternatives. The pleasure, like most pleasures, is greater when it comes once in a way to a person unaccustomed to it. Janie Iver had been brought up to know her own mind; it was the eleventh commandment in the Iver household. Iver entertained the intellectual, his wife the moral objection to shilly-shallying; their daughter's training, while conducted with all kindness, had been eminently sensible, and early days had offered few temptations to stray from the path of the obviously desirable. The case was different now; riches brought a change, the world revealed its resources, life was spreading out its diverse wares. Janie was much puzzled as to what she ought to do, more as to what she wanted to do, most of all as to what she would in the end do--unless indeed the fact that she was puzzled continued to rank as the greatest puzzle of all.

Naturally the puzzles were personified--or the persons made into puzzles. Men became lives to her, as well as individuals--the Tristram, the Duplay, the Broadley life; her opinion of the life complicated her feeling toward the person. The Tristram life attracted her strongly, the life of the great lady; Harry had his fascination too; but she did not think that she and Harry would be very happy together, woman and man.

She was loth to let him go, with all that he meant; perhaps she would have been secretly relieved if fate had taken him away from her. The Duplay life promised another sort of joy: the Major's experience was world-wide, his knowledge various, his conversation full of hints of the unexplored; she would be broadening her life if she identified it with his. Yet the Major was an approximate forty (on one side or the other), in a few years would seem rather old, and was not even now capable of raising a very strong sentiment; there too she would be taking rather the life than the man. Lastly there was that quiet Broadley life, to be transformed in some degree, doubtless, by her wealth, but likely to remain in essentials the peaceful homely existence which she knew very well. It had little to set against the rival prospects; yet there was a feeling that in either of the other two existences she would miss something; and that something seemed to be Bob Broadley himself.

She found herself thinking, in terms superficially repugnant to convention, that she would like to pay long visits to the other men, but have Bob to come home to when she was inclined for rest and tranquillity. Her perplexity was not strange in itself, but it was strange and new to her; imbued with the parental views about shilly-shallying, she was angry with herself and inclined to be ashamed.

The excuse she had made to Mina Zabriska did not acquit her in her own eyes. Yet she was also interested, excited, and pleasantly awake to the importance which her indecision gave her.

Judged from the outside, she was not open to blame in her att.i.tude toward Harry; he was not in love with her, and hardly pretended to be.

She met him fairly on a friendly footing of business; he was the sinner in that, while what she offered was undoubtedly hers, what he proposed to give in return was only precariously his.

Nor had Duplay any cause of complaint in being kept waiting; he would be held exceedingly lucky not to be sent to the right-about instantly. But with Bob Broadley the matter was different. On the subtle question of what exactly const.i.tutes "encouragement" (it is the technical term) in these cases it is not perhaps necessary to enter; but false hopes might, no doubt, arise from her visits to Mingham, from her habit of riding up the road by the river about the time when Bob would be likely to be riding down it, or of sauntering by the Pool on the days when he drove his gig into Blentmouth on business--all this being beyond and outside legitimate meetings at Fairholme itself. Unless she meant to marry him she might indeed raise hopes that were false.

Yes, but it did not seem as though she did. Bob was humble. She had tyrannized over him even before the Ivers grew so very rich. (They had begun in a small villa at Blentmouth--Miss Swinkerton lived there now.) It was natural that she should tyrannize still. He saw that she liked to meet him; grateful for friendship, he was incredulous of more. His disposition may plead in excuse for her; whatever she did, she would not disappoint a confident hope.

But she was always so glad to see him, and when she was with him, he was no perplexity, he was only her dear old friend. Well, and one thing besides--a man whom it was rather amusing to try to get a compliment out of, to try to torment into a manifestation of devotion; it was all there; Janie liked to lure it to the surface sometimes. But Bob was not even visibly miserable; he was always equable, even jolly, with so much to say about his horses and his farm that sentiment did not always secure its fair share of the interview. Janie, not being sentimental either, liked all this even while it affronted her vanity.

"Send the gig home and stay and talk," she commanded, as he stopped by her on the road; he was returning from Blentmouth to Mingham and found her strolling by the Pool. "I want to speak to you."

He had his bailiff with him--they had been selling a cow--and left him to take the gig home. He shook hands with frank cordiality.

"That's awfully nice of you," he said. "What about?"

"Nothing in particular," said she. "Mayn't I want it just generally?"

"Oh, well, I thought you meant there was something special. I've sold the cow well, Miss Janie."

"Bother the cow! Why haven't you been to Fairholme?"

"Well, in fact, I'm not sure that Mr Iver is death on seeing me there too often. But I shall turn up all right soon."

"Have you been going about anywhere?"

"No. Been up at Mingham most of the time."

"Isn't that rather lonely?"

"Lonely? Good Heavens, no! I've got too much to do."

Janie glanced at him; what was to be done with a man who treated provocative suggestions as though they were sincere questions? If he had not cared for her now! But she knew he did.

"Well, I've been very dull, anyhow. One never sees anybody fresh at Fairholme now. It's always either Mr. Tristram or Major Duplay."

"Well, I shouldn't be very fresh either, should I?" The names she mentioned drew no sign from him.