The Lady Paramount

by Henry Harland

  XIII

  "Well, you 've had a good sousing--had you a good walk?" asked thelittle brisk old woman, in her pleasant light old voice.

  "Yes--to Blye, or nearly," said Anthony. "The rain only caught ustowards the end. But what I stand in need of now is your sympathy andcounsel."

  She sat back in a deep easy chair, her pretty little hands folded inher lap, her pretty little feet, in dainty slippers, high-heeled andsilver-buckled, resting on a footstool. It was a pretty as well as akind and clever face that smiled enquiringly up at him, from under hersoft abundance of brown hair.

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "Nothing much. I 'm merely in love," he answered.

  Miss Sandus sat forward.

  "In love? That's delightful. Whom with? With me? Is this adeclaration? Or a confidence?"

  She fixed him with her humorous bright old eyes.

  "It's both. Of course, I 'm in love with you. Everyone who knows youis that," he predicated. "But also," he added, on a key of profoundmelancholy, "if you will forgive my forcing the confidence upon you,also with _her_."

  He glanced indicatively ceilingwards.

  "H'm," Miss Sandus considered, looking into the fire, "also with _her_."

  "Yes," said Anthony.

  "H'm," repeated Miss Sandus. "You go a bit fast. How long have youknown her?"

  "All my life. I never lived until I knew her," he averred.

  "It was inevitable that you should say that--men always say that," thelady generalised. "I heard it for the first time fifty-five years ago."

  "Then, I expect, there must be some truth in it," was Anthony'sdeduction. "Anyhow, I have known her long enough. One does n't need_time_ in these affairs. One recognises a perfect thing--onerecognises one's affinity. One knows when one is hit. I 'm in lovewith her. Give me your sympathy and counsel."

  "You have my sympathy. What counsel do you wish?"

  "What shall I do?" asked Anthony. "Drown myself? Take to drink?"

  "I should n't drown myself," said Miss Sandus. "Drowning is so wet andchilly; and I 'm told it's frightfully unbecoming, into the bargain.As for drink, I hear it's nothing like what it's cracked up to be."

  "I daresay it is n't," admitted Anthony, with a sigh. "I supposethere's not the ghost of a chance for me?" he gloomed.

  "H'm," said Miss Sandus.

  "I suppose it would be madness on my part to speak to her?" he pursued.

  "That would depend a good deal, I should think, on the nature of whatyou said," his counsellor suggested, smiling.

  "If I said point-blank I loved her--?"

  Miss Sandus looked hard at the fire, her brows drawn together,pondering. Her brows were drawn together, but the _vis comica_ playedabout her lips.

  "I think, if I were in your place, I should try it," she decided atlast.

  "_Would_ you?" said Anthony, surprised, encouraged. But, in a second,despondency had closed round him again. "You see," he signified, "thesituation is uncommonly delicate--one 's at a double and twisteddisadvantage."

  "How so?" Miss Sandus asked, looking up.

  "She's established here for the summer. I, of all men, must n't be theone to make Craford impossible for her."

  "I see," said Miss Sandus. "Yes, there's that to be thought of."

  "There 's such a deuced lot of things to be thought of," said he,despairingly.

  "Let's hear the deuced lot," said the lady, with business-likecheerfulness.

  "Well, to begin with," he brought out painfully, "there 's the factthat she 's rich."

  "Yes, she's rich," conceded Miss Sandus. "Does that diminish herattractions?"

  "You know what I mean," groaned Anthony, with no heart for trifling.

  "For the matter of that, are n't you rich yourself?" Miss Sandusretorted.

  "Rich!" he cried. "I totter on the brink of destitution."

  "Oh?" she murmured. "I 'd imagined you were by way of being rather anextensive land owner."

  "So I am," said he. "And my rather extensive lands, what withshrinkages and mortgages, with wages, pensions, subscriptions, andgeneral expenses,--I doubt if they yield a net income of fifteenhundred a year. And I 've not a stiver else in the world."

  "Poor, poor young man," she laughingly commiserated him. "And yet Ihardly think you 're poor enough to let the fact of her wealth weighwith you. If a man has enough for himself, it does n't matter how muchmore his wife may have, since he 'll not depend upon her for hissupport. I should n't lie awake o' nights, bothering about the moneyquestion."

  Anthony got up, and stood at the end of the fireplace, with his elbowon the mantel.

  "You 're awfully good," he said, looking down at the gracious littleold figure in the easy chair.

  "I 'm an old woman," said she. "All old women love a lover. You renewthe romance of things for us. You transport us back, a century or so,to our hot youth, when George the Third was king, and we were loversourselves. _Et in Arcadia ego_--but I 've lost my Greek."

  "You 'll never lose your Pierian," said Anthony, bowing.

  He took her hand, bent over it, and touched it with his lips.

  "If flattery can make friends, you 'll not lack 'em," said she, with apretty, pleased old blush.

  "But I 've not yet emptied my sack," said he, relapsing into gloom."There's a further and perhaps a greater difficulty."

  "Let's hear the further difficulty," cheerily proposed Miss Sandus.Then, as he appeared to hesitate, "Has it anything to do with herformer marriage?"

  "You divine my thoughts," he replied, in an outburst. "Yet," he morelightly added, "you know, I don't in the least believe in her formermarriage. She seems so--well, if not exactly girlish, so young, soimmaculately fresh, it's impossible to believe in. None the less, ofcourse, it 's an irrevocable fact, and it's a complication. I must n'tintrude on sacred ground. If she still grieves . . ."

  A gesture conveyed the rest.

  "Look here," said Miss Sandus, abruptly. "I'm going to betray a trust.Think what you will of me, I 'm going to violate a confidence. Shedoes n't grieve, she has never grieved. Your intuitions about her areright to the letter. She was never married, except in name--it waspurely a marriage of convenience--the man was a complete nonentity.Don't ask me the whys and the wherefores. But make what you will ofthat which I 've been indiscreet enough to tell you."

  "I think you are an angel out of Heaven," cried Anthony, with ardour."If you could know the load you have lifted from my heart, the balm youhave poured into it."

  "If you have n't wealth," Miss Sandus went on, summing the issue up,"you have a good position and--a _beau nom_. You have more than oneindeed, if all I hear be true. You 're both of the old religion, you're both at the mating age. In every way it would be a highly suitablematch. Wait for a good occasion--occasion's everything. Waitfor--what does the poet say?--for the time and the place and the lovedone all together, and tell her that you love her. And now--here comesthe tea."

  And with the tea came Susanna, in a wonderful rustling blue-greyconfection of the material that is known, I believe, as _voile_; andimmediately after Susanna, Adrian.