by F. Anstey
‘I ought to have known,’ I said gratefully; ‘you are too sweet and generous not to forgive. But you will tell him soon—will you not? You won’t keep me or—or him longer in suspense than you can help?’
‘Isn’t he coming this afternoon?’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose I shall have an opportunity of seeing him then—and in the meantime, my dear, you must contrive to control your impatience.’
Hugh Dallas did come that afternoon, to find us sitting on the lawn in the shade, as on his first visit to Tansted. I thought him paler, and though we shook hands as if we had parted on the most ordinary and amicable terms, he avoided looking at me, preferring, it seemed, to read his answer in Evelyn’s face rather than mine. But for this I was grateful, for I had been afraid that my countenance would betray me only too clearly.
It was evident that he was struck at once by her marvellous recovery of health and animation. I thought he gathered that it was of good omen for him, for he scarcely took his eyes from her face, and his own brightened.
‘You look at me as if you had never seen me before!’ she said laughing.
‘I could almost believe some miracle had happened to you,’ he replied. ‘I certainly never saw you looking so wonderfully well before.’
‘I feel as if I had been given a fresh lease of life,’ she said. ‘But if there has been anything miraculous about it, it is Stella you have to thank for it.’
‘Miss Maberly?’ he cried, and then he looked at me for the first time, and I saw anxiety, bewilderment, I know not what, conflict of hope and fear passing over his face, before I turned my eyes away.
He said something to her in so low a tone that it escaped me, but I gathered that she was playfully declining to enlighten him any further just then, and shortly afterwards tea was brought out and Mrs Maitland joined us, when he was obliged to wait for a more convenient moment.
I sat silent, but very happy, especially after I noted the eagerness with which he accepted Evelyn’s invitation to dine at Tansted that evening. I knew that I should not have to be cruel to him or to myself very much longer.
I laughed inwardly when Mrs Maitland, under the transparent pretext of consulting me on the arrangement of the flowers at table, drew me into the house.
‘I thought we would leave them to themselves a little, my dear,’ she confided to me, ‘because this time, I really think— This wonderful change in her, you know. Depend upon it, she has been fretting and making herself ill all this time because she couldn’t make up her mind whether she cared enough for him—and now her last doubts have disappeared, her health and spirits have come back immediately. Last night was evidently the crisis.’
I humoured her, with a secret enjoyment of the surprise that awaited the unsuspecting lady, and of the very different result that she was so innocently helping to further, but I was only too glad to leave Hugh in Evelyn’s hands. An hour or so later I watched him from my window riding down the avenue on his way home to dress, and thought I detected a buoyant hopefulness in the air with which he sat his horse.
He knew the truth now, or as much of it as Evelyn had thought fit to tell him; he understood at last that he need not fear another repulse from me.
How lovingly I lingered over dressing that evening, with a tender, unfamiliar delight in adorning myself for his eyes. I put on my prettiest gown; I felt a glad pride in the knowledge that I was looking even better than I could have hoped.
I was ready. I went across to Evelyn’s room and found her standing before the long mirror. I was positively startled as I realised how wondrously lovely she was in her pale shimmering gown, her fair neck and shoulders set off by deep flounces of lace which fell over her breast and arms, one hand hovering like a white butterfly over her golden head as she gave the final touch to the ornament in her hair. I had never seen her look so bewitchingly beautiful; even the maid who stood by was staring at her in a sort of fascination.
When she had been sent out of the room, I went up to Evelyn and put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Does he know?’ I whispered. ‘You have told him?’
She laughed. ‘I could hardly tell him you were dying of love for him—could I, Stella? But I said as much as I could for you, and I fancy he is beginning to suspect that he has been extraordinarily blind. I should not be surprised if he found an opportunity of coming to a better understanding with you before long—’
‘How can I thank you? I shall owe it all to you. And—I love him so much, Evelyn. If I could make you understand what it means to me?’
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I understand. You owe me nothing at all. And, as those are probably the wheels of his dog-cart6 I hear, perhaps you will leave off crushing my poor lace and we will go downstairs.’
I was hoping that there would be something—a glance, a pressure of the hand—by which Hugh Dallas would convey to me when we met that he was conscious that the cloud between us had lifted, though, as I told myself the moment after, I might have guessed that delicacy would prevent him from seeming to take anything for granted until he had heard it from my own lips. It might have been my own fault, too, for I was oppressed then and throughout the dinner by the old constraint, which I was furious with myself for being unable to conquer.
I was horribly nervous, and he seemed scarcely less embarrassed; now and then I could see him glance at Evelyn with an air of appeal and almost reproach, as if he suspected that she had misled him by giving any encouragement.
But I am not sure that I did not find, before the meal came to an end, that the artificial constraint between us had a subtle charm of its own, which I would not have lost just yet. So soon now—perhaps before the last sunset gleam had quite died out of the sky—all misunderstanding would be removed; there was a piquancy in keeping up this pretence of coldness until the last moment, a delicious flattery in the sight of the suspense and anxiety from which he so evidently suffered.
And at last the moment came. Evelyn had proposed that we should go into the garden after dinner, and, linking her arm in Mrs Maitland’s, she had contrived to draw her away to a distant part of the grounds, so as to give Hugh the opportunity she had promised. He was not slow in availing himself of it. He came over to the corner of the lawn in which I was sitting, drew up a chair beside mine, and sat down. For some little time he was silent, and, though I could scarcely see his face in the deepening shadow under the branches, I could tell that he was deeply moved.
I felt no impatience for him to speak; it was enough that he was there, close by me. I lay back in my chair in dreamy content. The western sky was passing from saffron to citron-green and deep luminous blue, the flower borders glowed dimly through the falling veil of dusk, the martins were flitting noisily in and out of their nests under the gables, a cricket chirped incessantly somewhere in the house, and the bats swooped and wheeled through the warm air, uttering tiny shrill cries. It all seemed a sort of peaceful prelude to the supreme hour at hand—the hour that was to bring me the full assurance of the love I had hungered for.
And presently he spoke, in a low voice which trembled and faltered at times, as if, even yet, he could hardly believe in his good fortune.
‘Tell me,’ he began, ‘is it true—what I have heard this afternoon? That you are no longer my enemy, that, in spite of what happened yesterday afternoon, we are to be friends after all?’
‘I—I never was your enemy, really,’ I said. ‘It was all a mistake. I—I misunderstood. I asked Evelyn to—to explain to you.’
‘What can I say to you? You have made me very happy. If you knew what despair I was in last night—how little I thought that there was any hope of gaining your approval!’
‘Forget yesterday,’ I said softly, ‘forget what I have been to you before you knew, only tell me that Evelyn has made you understand, that you really are the happier for it. I want to be quite, quite sure of that.’
And then he began to speak of Evelyn, and gradually, as he dwelt on her sweetness and fascination, a deadly suspicion stole over me that I w
as duping myself once more—that in some way Evelyn had played me false.
For some time I tried to think that I must have heard wrongly; nothing so hideous could be. I kept myself under control, and drew him on until I knew the truth.
I don’t remember the exact form in which he conveyed it. He was very diplomatic; he did not say in so many words that his love for me had been a passing fancy, that he accepted his rejection as final, and was grateful to me for reading his heart more truly than he had known it himself. But that was what he made me understand, nevertheless. I had to hear how, in that single afternoon, Evelyn had beguiled and enslaved him utterly, how all his hopes now lay in winning her, and how he felt, notwithstanding, that there was some indefinable change in her attitude towards him which made him despair of touching her heart.
And I listened to all these rhapsodies of his—which were not for me. I listened and gave no sign of suffering, though the solid earth seemed sinking away beneath my feet, and the sky above the black tree tops to open and shut in livid fire; there was a loud ringing in my ears, and I found myself gripping the arms of my chair with such force that the bamboo splinters pierced the palms of my hands, and perhaps kept me from fainting, which was my dread.
No, I would not faint; he should not have the satisfaction of seeing that I cared; it was all over—whatever he had felt for me, he felt it no longer; whether Evelyn had deliberately fooled and betrayed me or not, it could make no difference, she had won him from me all the same—my short, mad, beautiful dream was dead now, and nothing, nothing would bring it back.
So I schooled myself to make such replies as were necessary. I spoke and even laughed once or twice, and my voice sounded quite naturally; or if there was a note of heartbreak at times, he was not likely to detect it. How should he, when his thoughts were so far from me?
I think I was glad when Mrs Maitland came towards us. ‘Evelyn asked me to fetch her a cloak,’ she said. ‘Shall I bring you out yours too, Miss Maberly?’
‘Thank you, no,’ I said. ‘I am quite happy and comfortable without it. And why should you go when I daresay Mr Dallas will take Evelyn her cloak and spare you the trouble.’
I had no desire to keep him there any longer. I believe I wanted to torture myself by seeing how eagerly he would accept a pretext for rejoining Evelyn, and if so, I was gratified.
‘How good you are to me!’ he said in an undertone, as he rose, and Mrs Maitland sank into the chair he had left and began to purr apologetically.
‘It was really getting so late, my dear,’ she said, ‘I felt that it was time to do something. Dear Evelyn seems so strange to-night—this afternoon I was almost certain she had decided to take him, and now she has been positively neglecting him all this while. However, it’s a comfort to see that you have got over your dislike to him—you seem to be quite good friends now?’
‘Quite,’ I said.
‘It was so clever and sweet of you to understand my little hint about the cloak and send him to her.’
I looked across the lawn, and saw his indistinct form hastening to the spot where Evelyn’s gown glimmered faintly through the gloom.
‘He was only too glad to go,’ I said.
‘Yes, poor fellow, he is more hopelessly in love than ever—it is Evelyn I can’t feel certain about. She has been talking so lightly and capriciously about him, so unlike her usual self. Still I hope and believe it will all end in the right way. And now she can feel that he has your approval, it must have a great influence on her—don’t you think so, my dear?’
So Mrs Maitland flowed on in conjecture and comment, and I sat and answered automatically, with an icy ache at my heart.
And yet, even then, I had not lost faith in Evelyn. She could not have deliberately misled me. She would be horrified and indignant when she discovered the change in his feelings, she would remonstrate with him, do all in her power to check and cure his infatuation—perhaps, who knew? he would come back to me in time.
So I longed to tell her everything and to have the assurance that, if I had lost all else, her loyal and tender sympathy was still left.
Later that evening, after Hugh Dallas had started to drive home, the opportunity came. Mrs Maitland had gone upstairs, leaving Evelyn and myself in the drawing-room. She was moving about the room, restlessly taking up and replacing books and knick-knacks, and singing little snatches of song under her breath, with occasional side-glances at me of curiosity or challenge, until I could bear the suspense no longer.
‘Sit down,’ I cried; ‘you know there is something we must talk over together!’
‘So late?’ she said, ‘and after such an exhausting evening! I warn you, Stella, that if it is anything very serious I shall in all probability fall asleep.’
She let herself sink gracefully into the nearest couch, with her hands lightly linked behind her neck and her eyes gleaming through their narrowed lids.
‘It is serious enough for me,’ I said; ‘Evelyn, I have found out to-night that Hugh doesn’t love me any more—it is all over!’
‘After proposing and being rejected—let me see—only yesterday, wasn’t it? It seems an unusually rapid recovery. I’m afraid you must have put your refusal in such plain words that his vanity was too much for his passion.’
‘I never meant to refuse him—you know all that was a mistake!’
‘It is very unfortunate, but if he has chosen to take you at your word, I scarcely see what is to be done.’
‘You promised to make him understand that—that—ah! you haven’t told him!’
‘He understands that you have reconsidered your disapproval of him and are ready to look upon him as a friend.’
‘And was that all you told him?’
‘Would you have had me tell him more when he was so obviously contented with less? I left it to you to attempt to relight his burnt-out fires, my dear, and I regret to find that you do not appear to have been successful, though you will do me the justice to admit that I gave you an excellent opportunity.’
‘I did not try,’ I said; ‘he made me see that it was quite useless. Evelyn, he told me that it is you he loves now.’
‘That is very interesting, though I’m afraid it is not such a surprise to me as it evidently is to you.’
‘But you won’t let him?’
‘How can I prevent it? It is bad taste on his part, no doubt, but you have given him his liberty.’
‘I did not know what I was doing. Evelyn, you know I never meant it. And I love him, I can’t live without him. Ah, give him back to me.’
‘Is it not just possible that he may not wish to be handed over?’
‘It is not too late even yet,’ I pleaded. ‘You could make him come back if you would; if you only would!’
‘Why should I? He happens to be quite the best-looking and most attractive person I have met for a long while; and if he pays me the compliment of falling in love with me, I, at all events; don’t intend to reward him with frowns.’
‘You have made him fall in love with you,’ I said violently. ‘You set yourself to bewitch him, to make him forget me. I trusted you and you betrayed me. Yes, I see that now!’
She unlaced her hands and leant forward with her eyes wide open and fixed on me with malicious mockery.
‘Are you quite the person to reproach anybody with treachery?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’ I stammered.
‘Merely that I think I remember hearing only this morning of a person who, for reasons of her own, allowed, with full knowledge of the consequences, her dearest friend to be given a drug that would probably prove fatal.’
I shrank back under the gaze of those brilliant, malignant eyes. ‘Evelyn,’ I cried, ‘as Heaven is my judge, I did not know, I did not think of the danger until it was too late.’
‘Qui veut la fin veut les moyens!’7 she said. ‘If your conscience acquitted you, why did you accuse yourself of the crime as you did this morning?’
‘You cannot be cruel enoug
h to use my own words against me like that?’ I said, trembling violently. ‘Whatever I accused myself of in the state of mind I was in then, it went no further than a passing thought. How could it be called a crime when I did nothing?’
‘I am not an authority on morals,’ she said, ‘but the distinction between actually administering a poison and allowing it to be given by another when a word would have prevented it, seems to me rather fine drawn. I’m afraid that, morally speaking, you must be considered a murderess, my dear Stella—a very charming and interesting one, I admit, but still a murderess.’
‘You know I am not that. Why, you are better and stronger to-day than you have ever been—the chloral has done you no harm.’
‘Me?’ she said, smiling. ‘None whatever. But that does not affect the main fact.’
I threw myself at her feet sobbing. ‘Evelyn, I can’t bear it. I can’t—I can’t. What has changed you like this, and made you hard and cynical when you were so forgiving and sweet only a few hours ago? Is it I who have done it all? For pity’s sake, don’t say these cruel, terrible things to me, not even if I have deserved them. I won’t reproach you any more. I will own you are not to blame if Hugh has come to love you best. I give him up. I will be content, if only I have you. Be a little kind to me, Evelyn! Don’t taunt and torture me with the past. Try to forgive me. Tell me that I have not lost the dearest, the only friend I had in the world. Be my own dear Evelyn once more!’
She thrust me away from her with a little gesture of petulant anger. ‘Get up, Stella,’ she said, ‘why do you talk this nonsense to me? What is the use of pretences between us? Are you really such a fool as to try to deceive yourself? You know very well that I can never be your own dear Evelyn, as you call her, now; you know very well why—or,’ she added, with a sudden peal of pitiless laughter, ‘is it really possible that you have failed to grasp the situation yet? Is this ignorance of yours genuine? Let me look at your face and see.’