Hester experienced that sudden emotion which may result either in tears or laughter at the cruel anguish brought upon her brother by the momentary experience of what he so ruthlessly inflicted.
"He talked me down," said Mr. Gresley, his voice shaking. "He opposed me in my own school-room. Of course, I blame myself for asking him to speak. I ought to have inquired into his principles more thoroughly, but he took me in entirely by saying one thing in this room and the exact opposite on the platform."
"I thought his views were the same in both places," said Hester, "and, at the time, I admired you for asking him to speak, considering he is a vine-grower."
"A what?" almost shrieked Mr. Gresley.
"A vine-grower. Surely you know he has one of the largest vineyards in South Australia?"
For a moment Mr. Gresley was bereft of speech.
"And you knew this and kept silence," he said at last, while Mrs. Gresley looked reproachfully, but without surprise, at her sister-in-law.
"Certainly. What was there to speak about? I thought you knew."
"I never heard it till this instant. That quite accounts for his views. He wants to push his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is working for his interests. I understand it all now. He has undone the work of years by that speech for the sake of booking a few orders. It is contemptible. I trust, Hester, he is not a particular friend of yours, for I shall feel it my duty to speak very strongly to him if he comes again."
But Dick did not appear again. He was off and away before the terrors of the Church could be brought to bear on him.
But his memory remained green at Warpington.
"They do say," said Abel to Hester a few days later, planting his spade on the ground, and slowly scraping off upon it the clay from his nailed boots, "as that Muster Vernon gave 'em a dusting in the school-yard as they won't forget in a hurry. He said he could not speak out before the women folk, but he was noways nesh to pick his words onst he was outside. Barnes said as his tongue 'ud 'ave raised blisters on a hedge stake. But he had a way with him for all that. There was a deal of talk about him at market last Wednesday, and Jones and Peg is just silly to go back to Australy with 'im. I ain't sure," continued Abel, closing the conversation by a vigorous thrust of his spade into the earth, "as one of the things that fetched 'em all most wasn't his saying that since he's been in a hot climate he knowed what it was to be tempted himself when he was a bit down on his luck or a bit up. Pratts would never have owned to that." The village always spoke of Mr. Pratt in the plural without a prefix. "I've been to a sight of temperance meetings, because," with indulgence, "master likes it, tho' I always has my glass, as is natural. But I never heard one of the speakers kind of settle to it like that. That's what the folks say; that for all he was a born gentleman he spoke to 'em as man to man, not as if we was servants or childer."
Chapter XIX
*
Le bruit est pour le fat.
La plainte est pour le sot.
L'honnête homme trompé
S'en va et ne dit mot.
—M. DELANONI
"And so you cannot persuade Miss Gresley to come to us next week?" said Lord Newhaven, strolling into the dining-room at Westhope Abbey, where Rachel and Dick were sitting at a little supper-table laid for two in front of the high altar. The dining-room had formerly been the chapel, and the carved stone altar still remained under the east window.
Lord Newhaven drew up a chair, and Rachel felt vaguely relieved at his presence. He had a knack of knowing when to appear and when to efface himself.
"She can't leave her book," said Rachel.
"Her first book was very clever," said Lord Newhaven, "and, what was more, it was true. I hope for her own sake she will outgrow her love of truth, or it will make deadly enemies for her."
"And good friends," said Rachel.
"Possibly," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at her, and almost obliged to believe that she had spoken without self-consciousness. "But if she outgrows all her principles, I hope, at any rate, she won't outgrow her sharp tongue. I liked her ever since she first came to this house, ten years ago, with Lady Susan Gresley. I remember saying that Captain Pratt; who called while she was here, was a 'bounder.' And Miss Gresley said she did not think he was quite a bounder, only on the boundary-line. If you knew Captain Pratt, that describes him exactly."
"I wish she had not said it," said Rachel, with a sigh. "She makes trouble for herself by saying things like that. Is Lady Newhaven in the drawing-room?"
"Yes, I heard her singing 'The Lost Chord' not ten minutes ago."
"I will go up to her," said Rachel.
"I do believe," said Lord Newhaven, when Rachel had departed, "that she has an affection for Miss Gresley."
"It is not necessary to be a detective in plain clothes to see that," said Dick.
"No. It generally needs to be a magnifying-glass to see a woman's friendship, and then they are only expedients till we arrive, Dick. You need not he jealous of Miss Gresley. Miss West will forget all about her when she is Mrs. Vernon."
"She does not seem very keen about that," said Dick, grimly. "I'm only marking time. I'm no forwarder than I was."
"Well, it's your own fault for fixing your affections on a woman who is not anxious to marry. She has no objection to you. It is marriage she does not like."
"Oh, that's bosh!" said Dick. "All women wish to be married, and if they don't they ought to."
He felt that an invidious reflection had been east on Rachel.
"All the same, a man with one eye can see that women with money, or anything that makes them independent of us, don't flatter us by their alacrity to marry us. They will make fools of themselves for love—none greater—and they will marry for love. But their different attitude towards us, their natural lords and masters, directly we are no longer necessary to them as stepping-stones to a home and a recognized position, revolts me. If you had taken my advice at the start, you would have made up to one among the mob of women who are dependent on marriage for their very existence. If a man goes into that herd he will not be refused. And if he is it does not matter. It is the blessed custom of piling everything on to the eldest son, and leaving the women of the family almost penniless, which provides half of us with wives without any trouble to ourselves. Whatever we are, they have got to take us. The average dancing young woman living in luxury in her father's house is between the devil and the deep sea. We are frequently the devil; but it is not surprising that she can't face the alternative—a poverty to which she was not brought up, and in which she has seen her old spinster aunts. But I suppose in your case you really want the money?"
Dick looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven.
"I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie," continued the latter, "because I dislike being kicked. But, Dick, listen to me. You have not," with sudden misgiving, "laid any little matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?"
"No; I was not quite such a fool as that."
"Well! Such things do occur. Moonlight, you know, etc. I was possessed by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my wife's friends know, and probably her maid. But, seriously, Dick, you are not making progress, as you say yourself."
"Well!" rather sullenly.
"Well, on-lookers see most of the game. Miss West may—I don't say she is—but if things go on as they are for another week she may become slightly bored. That was why I joined you at supper. She had had, for the time, enough."
"Of me?" said Dick, reddening under his tan.
"Just so. It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it should be avoided beforehand. Are you really in earnest about this?"
Dick delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain platitudes.
"Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a condensed form before a clergyman. In the meanwhile—"
"In the meanwhile I had better clear out."
"Yes; I don't enjoy saying so in the presence
of my own galantine and mayonnaise, but that is it. Go, and—come back."
"If you have a Bradshaw," said Dick, "I'll look out my train now. I think there is an express to London about seven in the morning, if you can send me to the station."
"But the post only comes in at eight."
"Well, you can send my letters after me."
"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to leave till the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring your immediate presence in London. You are not going to let a woman know that you leave on her account."
"You are very sharp, Cackles," said Dick, drearily. "And I'll take a leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing. But I expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London."
Rachel was vaguely relieved when Dick went off next morning. She was not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, which in due season became "marked," and then resulted in proposals neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed when she thought of Dick, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was aware that Dick was in deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost unconsciously, was accumulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she "would be in it."
Chapter XX
*
Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est le pardon qu'elle a fait naître dans votre âme. . . . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accru la simplicité, la confiance plus haute, l'étendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrivé.—MAETERLINCK.
Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion. It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked. Perhaps also her gentle, unassuming manner was not an unpleasant change after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts.
The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting them, just as the really wicked people, who give vivâ voce invitations, goad us into crevasses of lies, for which, if there is any justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it, he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the whole subject.
"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of his hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest attention. "Community of goods. People don't see that if everything were divided up to-day, and everybody was given a shilling, by next week the thrifty man would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift would be penniless. Community of goods is impossible as long as human nature remains what it is. But I can't knock that into people's heads. I spoke of it once to Lord Newhaven, after his speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was more educated and a shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually are, and that he would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he only said my arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away."
It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester and Rachel arranged to meet by stealth.
They were sitting luxuriously in the short grass, with their backs against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes.
"I wish I had met this Mr. Dick five or six years ago," said Rachel, with a sigh.
Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love disaster.
"Dick always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end."
Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.
"Dick is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester, dispassionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him in a little patent safe of his own."
"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture," said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. Dick."
There was a short silence.
"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal experience. I keep before my mind that other men are not like him. I know they aren't, but yet—somehow I think they are. I am frightened."
Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.
"Do you still consider, after these four years, that he did you an injury?"
Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the distant hills.
"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away. I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now, looking back, such a dreadful waste."
"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins.'"
"You mean it did me good," said Rachel, "and that he was a kind of benefactor in disguise. I dare say you are right, but you see I don't take a burning interest in my own character. I don't find my mental stand-point—isn't that what Mrs. Loftus calls it?—very engrossing."
"He was a benefactor, all the same," said Hester, with decision. "I did not think so at the time, and if I could have driven over him in an omnibus I would have done so with pleasure. But I believe that the day will come when you will cover that grave with a handsome monument, erected out of gratitude to him for not marrying you. And now, Rachel, will you forgive me beforehand for what I am going to say?"
"Oh!" said Rachel, ruefully. "When you say that I know it is the prelude to something frightful. You are getting out a dagger, and I shall be its sheath directly."
"You are a true prophet, Rachel."
"Yes, executioner."
"My dear, dear friend, whom I love best in the world, when that happened my heart was wrung for you. I would have given everything I had, life itself—not that that is saying much—to have saved you from that hour."
"I know it."
"But I should have been the real enemy if I had had power to save you, which, thank God! I had not. That hour had to be. It was necessary. You may not care about your own character, but I do. There is something stubborn and inflexible in you—the seamy side of your courage and steadfastness—which cannot readily enter into the feelings of others or put itself in their pla
ce. I think it is want of imagination—I mean the power of seeing things as they are. You are the kind of woman who, if you had married comfortably some one you rather liked, might have become like Sybell Loftus, who never understands any feeling beyond her own microscopic ones, and who measures love by her own small preference for Doll. You would have had no more sympathy than she has. People, like Sybell, believe one can only sympathize with what one has experienced. That is why they are always saying, 'as a mother,' or 'as a wife.' If that were true the world would have to get on without sympathy, for no two people have the same experience. Only a shallow nature believes that a resemblance in two cups means that they both contain the same wine. Sybell believes it, and you would have been very much the same, not from lack of perception, as in her case, but from want of using your powers of perception. If you had not undergone an agonized awakening, all the great realities of life—love, hatred, temptation, enthusiasm—would have remained for you as they have remained for Sybell, merely pretty words to string on light conversation. That is why I can't bear to hear her speak of them, because every word she says proves she has not known them. But the sword that pierced your heart forced an entrance for angels, who had been knocking where there was no door—until then."
Silence.
"Since when is it that people have turned to you for comfort and sympathy?"
No answer.
"Rachel, on your oath, did you ever really care for the London poor until you became poor yourself, and lived among them?"
"No."
"But they were there all the time. You saw them in the streets. It was not as if you only heard of them. You saw them. Their agony, their vice, was written large on their faces. There was a slum almost at the back of that great house in Portman Square where you lived many years in luxury with your parents."
"Don't," said Rachel, her lip trembling.
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