With Edged Tools Part 4

"I may mention," he said, with a dangerous suavity, "that I still hold to my opinion."

Jack Meredith rose, without haste. This, like the interview of the previous night, was conducted upon strictly high-bred and gentlemanly lines.

"And I to mine," he said. "That is why I took the liberty of calling at this early hour. I thought that perhaps we might effect some sort of a compromise."

"It is very good of you to make the proposal." Sir John kept his fingers away from his lips by an obvious exercise of self-control. "I am not partial to compromises: they savour of commerce."

Jack gave a queer, curt nod, and moved towards the door. Sir John extended his unsteady hand and rang the bell.

"Good-morning," he said.

"Graves," he added, to the servant who stood in the doorway, "when you have closed the door behind Mr. Meredith, bring up breakfast, if you please."

On the doorstep Jack Meredith looked at his watch. He had an appointment with Millicent Chyne at half-past eleven--an hour when Lady Cantourne might reasonably be expected to be absent at the weekly meeting of a society which, under the guise and nomenclature of friendship, busied itself in making servant girls discontented with their situations.

It was only eleven o'clock. Jack turned to the left, out of the quiet but fashionable street, and a few steps took him to Piccadilly. He went into the first jeweller's shop he saw, and bought a plain diamond ring.

Then he walked on to keep his appointment with his affianced wife.

Miss Millicent Chyne was waiting for him with that mixture of maidenly feelings of which the discreet novelist only details a selection. It is not customary to dwell upon thoughts of vague regret at the approaching withdrawal of a universal admiration--at the future necessity for discreet and humdrum behaviour quite devoid of the excitement that lurks in a double meaning. Let it, therefore, be ours to note the outward signs of a very natural emotion. Miss Chyne noted them herself with care, and not without a few deft touches to hair and dress. When Jack Meredith entered the room she was standing near the window, holding back the curtain with one hand and watching, half shyly, for his advent.

What struck her at once was his gravity; and he must have seen the droop in her eyes, for he immediately a.s.sumed the pleasant, half-reckless smile which the world of London society had learnt to a.s.sociate with his name.

He played the lover rather well, with that finish and absence of self-consciousness which only comes from sincerity; and when Miss Chyne found opportunity to look at him a second time she was fully convinced that she loved him. She was, perhaps, carried off her feet a little--metaphorically speaking, of course--by his evident sincerity.

At that moment she would have done anything that he had asked her. The pleasures of society, the social amenities of aristocratic life, seemed to have vanished suddenly into thin air, and only love was left. She had always known that Jack Meredith was superior in a thousand ways to all her admirers. More gentlemanly, more truthful, honester, n.o.bler, more worthy of love. Beyond that, he was cleverer, despite a certain laziness of disposition--more brilliant and more amusing. He had always been to a great extent the chosen one; and yet it was with a certain surprise and sense of unreality that she found what she had drifted into. She saw the diamond ring, and looked upon it with the beautiful emotions aroused by those small stones in the female breast; but she did not seem to recognise her own finger within the golden hoop.

It was at this moment--while she dwelt in this new unreal world--that he elected to tell her of his quarrel with his father. And when one walks through a maze of unrealities nothing seems to come amiss or to cause surprise. He detailed the very words they had used, and to Millicent Chyne it did not sound like a real quarrel such as might affect two lives to their very end. It was not important. It did not come into her life; for at that moment she did not know what her life was.

"And so," said Jack Meredith, finishing his story, "we have begun badly--as badly as the most romantic might desire."

"Yes, theoretically it is consoling. But I am sorry, Jack, very sorry. I hate quarrelling with anybody."

"So do I. I haven't time as a rule. But the old gentleman is so easy to quarrel with, he takes all the trouble."

"Jack," she said, with pretty determination, "you must go and say you are sorry. Go now! I wish I could go with you."

But Meredith did not move. He was smiling at her in evident admiration.

She looked very pretty with that determined little pout of the lips, and perhaps she knew it. Moreover, he did not seem to attach so much importance to the thought as to the result--to the mind as to the lips.

"Ah!" he said, "you do not know the old gentleman. That is not our way of doing things. We are not expansive."

His face was grave again, and she noticed it with a sudden throb of misgiving. She did not want to begin taking life seriously so soon. It was like going back to school in the middle of the holidays.

"But it will be all right in a day or two, will it not? It is not serious," she said.

"I am afraid it is serious, Millicent."

He took her hand with a gravity which made matters worse.

"What a pity!" she exclaimed; and somehow both the words and the speaker rang shallow. She did not seem to grasp the situation, which was perhaps beyond her reach. But she did the next best thing. She looked puzzled, pretty, and helpless.

"What is to be done, Jack?" she said, laying her two hands on his breast and looking up pleadingly.

There was something in the man's clear-cut face--something beyond aristocratic repose--as he looked down into her eyes--something which Sir John Meredith might perhaps have liked to see there. To all men comes, soon or late, the moment wherein their lives are suddenly thrust into their own hands to shape or spoil, to make or mar. It seemed that where a clever man had failed, this light-hearted girl was about to succeed. Two small clinging hands on Jack Meredith's breast had apparently wrought more than all Sir John's care and foresight. At last the light of energy gleamed in Jack Meredith's lazy eyes. At last he faced the "initiative," and seemed in no wise abashed.

"There are two things," he answered; "a small choice."

"Yes."

"The first and the simplest," he went on in the tone of voice which she had never quite fathomed--half cynical, half amused--"is to pretend that last night--never was."

He waited for her verdict.

"We will not do that," she replied softly; "we will take the other alternative, whatever it is."

She glanced up half shyly beneath her lashes, and he felt that no difficulty could affright him.

"The other is generally supposed to be very difficult," he said. "It means--waiting."

"Oh," she answered cheerfully, "there is no hurry. I do not want to be married yet."

"Waiting perhaps for years," he added--and he saw her face drop.

"Why?"

"Because I am dependent on my father for everything. We could not marry without his consent."

A peculiar, hard look crept into her eyes, and in some subtle way it made her look older. After a little pause she said:

"But we can surely get that--between us?"

"I propose doing without it."

She looked up--past him--out of the window. All the youthfulness seemed to have left her face, but he did not appear to see that.

"How can you do so?"

"Well, I can work. I suppose I must be good for something--a bountiful Providence must surely have seen to that. The difficulty is to find out what it intends me for. We are not called in the night nowadays to a special mission--we have to find it out for ourselves."

"Do you know what I should like you to be?" she said, with a bright smile and one of those sudden descents into shallowness which he appeared to like.

"What?"

"A politician."

"Then I shall be a politician," he answered, with loverlike promptness.

"That would be very nice," she said; and the castles she at once began to build were not entirely aerial in their structure.

This was not a new idea. They had talked of politics before as a possible career for himself. They had moved in a circle where politics and politicians held a first place--a circle removed above the glamour of art, and wherein Bohemianism was not reckoned an attraction. She knew that behind his listlessness of manner he possessed a certain steady energy, perfect self-command, and that combination of self-confidence and indifference which usually attains success in the world. She was ambitious not only for herself but for him, and she was shrewd enough to know that the only safe outlet for a woman's ambition is the channel of a husband's career.