“Your energy, my dear lady, is not the least of many attributes.”
Lady Cantourne looked up from her writing-desk with her brightest smile. Sir John Meredith was standing by the open window, leaning against the jamb thereof with a grace that had lost its youthful repose. He was looking out, across a sloping lawn, over the Solent, and for that purpose he had caused himself to be clad in a suit of blue serge. He looked the veteran yachtsman to perfection—he could look anything in its season—but he did his yachting from the shore—by preference from the drawing-room window.
“One must keep up with the times, John,” replied the lady, daintily dipping her quill.
“And 'the times' fills its house from roof to cellar with people who behave as if they were in a hotel. Some of them—say number five on the first floor, number eleven on the second, or some of the atticated relatives—announce at breakfast that they will not be home to lunch. Another says he cannot possibly return to dinner at half-past seven, and so on. 'The times' expects a great deal for its money, and does not even allow one to keep the small change of civility.”
Lady Cantourne was blotting vigorously.
“I admit,” she answered, “that the reaction is rather strong; reactions are always stronger than they intend to be. In our early days the formalities were made too much of; now they are—”
“Made into a social hash,” he suggested, when she paused for a word, “where the prevailing flavour is the common onion of commerce! Now, I'll wager any sum that that is an invitation to some one you do not care a screw about.”
“It is. But, Sir John, the hash must be kept moving; cold hash is not palatable. I will tell you at once, I am inviting young Semoor to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. Oscard's departure.”
“Ah! Mr. Oscard proposes depriving us of his—society.”
“He leaves to-morrow. He only came to say good-bye.”
“He moves on—to some other hostelry?”
“No! He is going to—”
She paused, so that Sir John was forced to turn in courteous inquiry and look her in the face.
“Africa!” she added sharply, never taking her bright eyes from his face.
She saw the twitching of the aged lips before his hand got there to hide them. She saw his eyes fall before her steady gaze, and she pitied him while she admired his uncompromising pride.
“Indeed!” he said. “I have reason to believe,” he added, turning to the window again, “that there is a great future before that country; all the intellect of Great Britain seems to be converging in its direction.”
Since his departure Jack's name had never been mentioned, even between these two whose friendship dated back a generation. Once or twice Sir John had made a subtle passing reference to him, such as perhaps no other woman but Lady Cantourne could have understood; but Africa was, so to speak, blotted out of Sir John Meredith's map of the world. It was there that he kept his skeleton—the son who had been his greatest pride and his deepest humiliation—his highest hope in life—almost the only failure of his career.
He stood there by the window, looking out with that well-bred interest in details of sport and pastime which was part of his creed. He braved it out even before the woman who had been a better friend to him than his dead wife. Not even to her would he confess that any event of existence could reach him through the impenetrable mask he wore before the world. Not even she must know that aught in his life could breathe of failure or disappointment. As it is given to the best of women to want to take their sorrows to another, so the strongest men instinctively deny their desire for sympathy.
Lady Cantourne, pretending to select another sheet of note-paper, glanced at him with a pathetic little smile. Although they had never been anything to each other, these two people had passed through many of the trials to which humanity is heir almost side by side. But neither had ever broken down. Each acted as a sort of mental tonic on the other. They had tacitly agreed, years before, to laugh at most things. She saw, more distinctly than any, the singular emptiness of his clothes, as if the man was shrinking, and she knew that the emptiness was of the heart.
Sir John Meredith had taught his son that Self and Self alone reigns in the world. He had taught him that the thing called Love, with a capital L, is nearly all Self, and that it finally dies in the arms of Self. He had told him that a father's love, or a son's, or a mother's, is merely a matter of convenience, and vanishes when Self asserts itself.
Upon this principle they were both acting now, with a strikingly suggestive similarity of method. Neither was willing to admit to the world in general, and to the other in particular, that a cynical theory could possibly be erroneous.
“I am sorry that our young friend is going to leave us,” said Sir John, taking up and unfolding the morning paper. “He is honest and candid, if he is nothing else.”
This meant that Guy Oscard's admiration for Millicent Chyne had never been concealed for a moment, and Lady Cantourne knew it.
“He interests me,” went on the old aristocrat, studying the newspaper; and his hearer knew the inner significance of the remark.
At times she was secretly ashamed of her niece, but that esprit de corps which binds women together prompted her always to defend Millicent. The only defence at the moment was silence, and an assumed density which did not deceive Sir John—even she could not do that.
In the meantime Miss Millicent Chyne was walking on the sea-wall at the end of the garden with Guy Oscard. One of the necessary acquirements of a modern educational outfit is the power of looking perfectly at home in a score of different costumes during the year, and, needless to say, Miss Chyne was finished in this art. The manner in which she wore her sailor-hat, her blue serge, and her neat brown shoes conveyed to the onlooker, and especially the male of that species (we cannot in conscience call them observers), the impression that she was a yachtswoman born and bred. Her delicate complexion was enhanced by the faintest suspicion of sunburn and a few exceedingly becoming freckles. There was a freedom in her movements which had not been observable in London drawing-rooms. This was Diana-like and in perfect keeping with the dainty sailor outfit; moreover, nine men out of ten would fail to attribute the difference to sundry cunning strings within the London skirt.
“It is sad,” Millicent was saying, “to think that we shall have no more chances of sailing. The wind has quite dropped, that horrid tide is running, and—this is your last day.”
She ended with a little laugh, knowing full well that there was little sentiment in the big man by her side.
“Really,” she went on, “I think I should be able to manage a boat in time, don't you think so? Please encourage me. I am sure I have tried to learn.”
But he remained persistently grave. She did not like that gravity; she had met it before in the course of her experiments. One of the grievances harboured by Miss Millicent Chyne against the opposite sex was that they could not settle down into a harmless, honest flirtation. Of course, this could be nothing but a flirtation of the lightest and most evanescent description. She was engaged to Jack Meredith—poor Jack, who was working for her, ever so hard, somewhere near the Equator—and if Guy Oscard did not know this he had only himself to blame. There were plenty of people ready to tell him. He had only to ask.
Millicent Chyne, like Guy, was hampered at the outset of life by theories upon it. Experience, the fashionable novel, and modern cynicism had taught her to expect little from human nature—a dangerous lesson, for it eases responsibility, and responsibility is the Ten Commandments rolled into a compact whole, suitable for the pocket.
She expected of no man—not even of Jack—that perfect faithfulness in every word and thought which is read of in books. And it is one of the theories of the day that what one does not expect one is not called upon to give. Jack, she reflected, was too much a man of the world to expect her to sit and mope alone. She was apparently incapable of seeing the difference between that pastime and sitting on the sea-wall behind a large flowering currant-tree with a man who did not pretend to hide the fact that he was in love with her. Some women are thus.
“I do not know if you have learnt much,” he answered. “But I have.”
“What have you learnt?” she asked in a low voice, half-fascinated by the danger into which she knew that she was running.
“That I love you,” he answered, standing squarely in front of her, and announcing the fact with a deliberate honesty which was rather startling. “I was not sure of it before, so I stayed away from you for three weeks; but now I know for certain.”
“Oh, you mustn't say that!”
She rose hastily and turned away from him. There was in her heart a sudden feeling of regret. It was the feeling that the keenest sportsman sometimes has when some majestic monarch of the forest falls before his merciless rifle—a sudden passing desire that it might be undone.
“Why not?” he asked. He was desperately in earnest, and that which made him a good sportsman—an unmatched big-game hunter, calm and self-possessed in any strait—gave him a strange deliberation now, which Millicent Chyne could not understand. “Why not?”
“I do not know—because you mustn't.”
And in her heart she wanted him to say it again.
“I am not ashamed of it,” he said, “and I do not see why I should not say it to you—or to any one else, so far as that goes.”
“No, never!” she cried, really frightened. “To me it does not matter so much. But to no one else—no, never! Aunt Marian must not know it—nor Sir John.”
“I cannot see that it is any business of Sir John's. Of course, Lady Cantourne would have liked you to marry a title; but if you cared for me she would be ready to listen to reason.”
In which judgment of the good lady he was no doubt right—especially if reason spoke with the voice of three thousand pounds per annum.
“Do you care for me?” he asked, coming a little closer.
There was a whole world of gratified vanity and ungratified curiosity for her in the presence of this strong man at her elbow. It was one of the supreme triumphs of her life, because he was different from the rest. He was for her what his first tiger had been for him. The danger that he might come still nearer had for her a sense of keen pleasure. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, and the nearest approach that men can experience to the joy that was hers is the joy of battle.
“I cannot answer that—not now.”
And the little half-shrinking glance over her shoulder was a low-minded, unmaidenly invitation. But he was in earnest, and he was, above all, a gentleman. He stood his ground a yard away from her.
“Then when,” he asked—“when will you answer me?”
She stood with her back turned towards him, looking out over the smooth waters of the Solent, where one or two yachts and a heavy black schooner were creeping up on the tide before the morning breeze. She drummed reflectively with her fingers on the low stone wall. Beneath them a few gulls whirled and screamed over a shoal of little fish. One of the birds had a singular cry, as if it were laughing to itself.
“You said just now,” Millicent answered at length, “that you were not sure yourself—not at first—and therefore you cannot expect me to know all at once.”
“You would know at once,” he argued gravely, “if it was going to be no. If you do not say no now, I can only think that it may be yes some day. And”—he came closer—he took the hand that hung at her side—conveniently near—“and I don't want you to say no now. Don't say no! I will wait as long as you like for yes. Millicent, I would rather go on waiting, and thinking that it is going to be yes, even if it is no after all.”
She said nothing, but she left her hand in his.
“May I go on thinking that it will be yes until I come back?”
“I cannot prevent your thinking, can I?” she whispered, with a tender look in her eyes.
“And may I write to you?”
She shook her head.
“Well—I—I—Now and then,” he pleaded. “Not often. Just to remind you of my existence.”
She gave a little laugh, which he liked exceedingly, and remembered afterwards.
“If you like,” she answered.
At this moment Lady Cantourne's voice was heard in the distance, calling them.
“There!” exclaimed Millicent. “We must go at once. And no one—no one, mind—must know of this.”
“No one shall know of it,” he answered.