by Grant Allen
Thistleton looked down, a little bit crestfallen.
“Well, I know it’s presumptuous of me,” he said with a shy air, just emboldened by his eagerness. “A Sheffield cutler’s son has no right to ask a — a lady of birth and rank to be his wife, offhand; but I thought, Miss Gascoyne—”
Faith cut him short with an impatient gesture. Was this mauvaise comédie of her father’s baronetcy to pursue her like an evil fate though life even in these its supremest moments?
“I didn’t mean that,” she cried, leaning eagerly forward, and looking up at him with a little appealing glance for mercy. “Surely, Mr. Thistleton, you must have known yourself I didn’t mean that. But you are so much richer and better brought up than me, and you move in such a very different society. I — I should be ashamed myself of publicly disgracing you.”
Thistleton glanced across at her with a curiously doubtful, half incredulous air.
“Why, how much at cross-purposes we all live!” he said, with a little awkward laugh. “I’ve been wanting all day to speak out my mind to you, and I’ve been afraid all along, for I thought you’d think me so very presuming. And I’d made up all kinds of pretty things to say to you, don’t you know, about trying to live up to your level, and all that sort of thing — because you’re so clever, and so brilliant, and so much above me in every way; and now, as soon as ever I open my mouth, you knock me down at once with a regular stunning back-hander like that, and I don’t know where on earth to begin or go on again. I can’t one bit remember what I meant to say to you. I thought if, after I took my degree, and went to the bar in London — my father wants me to go to the bar, just as a nominal thing, you see, because it’s so very respectable; but, of course, he’ll make me a handsome allowance for all expenses — I thought, if I lived in town, and kept up a good establishment, and made a home fit for you, you might perhaps when you got to know me a little better, think me not quite altogether beneath you. And, to tell you the truth, Miss Gascoyne, to make security doubly sure, I wrote to my father day before yesterday, telling him everything about your brother and yourself; and saying that I thought of venturing to ask you to marry me, and I got this telegram in reply from my people last night — you can see it if you like; it’s rather long of it’s sort; my father’s always just a trifle extravagant in the matter of telegraphing.”
Faith bit her lip as she took the telegram from the blond young man; the whole thing, in spite of her agitation, was so supremely ridiculous!— “Your mother and I have read your letter with satisfaction and pleasure,” the telegram said, “and are delighted to see you think of looking so high in that matter. We are gratified at the choice you have made of companions. And now in another more important relation: it would be a very proud thing for us if at the close of our career, which has been long and prosperous, we could see our dear boy the brother-in-law of a man of title. You may be sure we would do everything to make you both happy. Don’t delay on any account to ask the young lady as soon as possible, if a fitting occasion for doing so should arise. And, if she accepts you, take any credit necessary to make her a suitable present of whatever object you think desirable. Let us know the lady’s answer at once by telegram.” —
Faith handed it back to him with a burning face. Her hands trembled. “It’s all so strange to me,” she murmured, bewildered.
“At any rate,” Thistleton cried, “your objection’s answered beforehand, you see. So far as any difference in position goes, both my parents and I looked at that question exactly opposite from the way you look at it.”
“I see,” Faith answered, looking down all fiery red, and with her soul one troubled whirlwind within her.
“Then what do you answer me?” Thistleton asked, taking her hand in his. “Faith — may I call you Faith? — you struck me so dumb by taking such a topsy-turvy view of our relations, that I hadn’t got words to tell you what I wanted. But I love you, Faith, and I want you to marry me.”
Faith let her hand lie unresistingly in his, but turned away her face, still hot and fiery. “You — you are very kind, Mr. Thistleton,” she answered.
“But that’s not what I want,” Thistleton put in, leaning forward once more. “Faith, I want you to tell me you’re ready to marry me.”
“No,” Faith answered resolutely, “I can’t. Never, never, never,”
“Why?” Thistleton asked, dropping her hand all at once. She let it hang idle at her side as if sorry he had dropped it.
“Because — I mustn’t,” Faith answered, all aglow.
“Don’t you like me?” Thistleton asked with a very wistful look. “O Faith, I’ve been watching you ever since you came to Oxford, and I really began to think you did like me, just a little.”
“I like you very much,” Faith answered, trembling. “I never was — so flattered — at anything in my life as that — that you should think me worthy to marry you.”
“Oh, don’t say that!” the young man cried in a voice of genuine distress. “It hurts me to hear you talk like that. It’s so upside down, somehow. Why, Faith, I lay awake trembling all last night, wondering how I could ever venture to ask you — you who are so beautiful, and good, and clever. I was afraid to speak to you. Only my love could have emboldened me to speak. And when I did ask you at last, I blurted it out point blank like a schoolboy, because I felt you so much above me that I hardly dared to mention such a thing in your presence.”
Faith smiled a troubled smile. “You’re very good,” she said. “I like you ever so much, Mr. Thistleton. I should like to sit here with you — always.”
“Then why won’t you marry me?” Thistleton cried eagerly.
Faith pulled about the forget-me-nots ostentatiously once more. “I hardly know myself yet,” she answered. “It’s all so new. It’s come as such a surprise to me. I haven’t had time to collect my thoughts. I only know in a dim sort of a way that it’s quite, quite impossible.”
“Don’t you think you could love me?” Thistleton asked very low.
Faith looked at him as he sat there in his manly boating suit — so much more of a man than anybody she had ever before dreamt of — and then she thought of the infants. “I could — like you a great deal, I’m sure,” she answered slowly. “It isn’t that, Mr. Thistleton. It isn’t that at all. If — if I yielded to my own heart,” she spoke very low, “perhaps I might say to you yes at once—”
Before she could finish her sentence she felt an arm placed boldly round her shapely waist, and two eager lips pressed hard against hers. She rather fancied Mr. Thistleton was kissing her. “If you say as much as that,” the blond young man cried out triumphantly, “you have said all. I don’t mind any more now. Faith, Faith, you belong to me.”
Faith struggled to be free so hard that Thistleton let her go, and sat looking at her admiringly. “Mr. Thistleton,” she said with quiet dignity, “you must never do that again. I like you very much; but I told you just now I can never marry you.”
“And I asked you why,” Thistleton retorted with the audacity begotten of love; “and you’d no good reason to give me; so I say, on the contrary, you’ll have to marry me.”
Faith drew a long breath and pulled herself together. The reasons why it was impossible came clearer to her now. They dawned slowly on her mind. She leaned back and explained them one by one to Thistleton — her father’s calling; the family poverty; her mother’s need for somebody to help her; his own future in life; the impossibility of keeping in two societies at once anywhere.
But Thistleton, with the unsconscionable ardor of youth, would listen to none of these lame excuses. As for her father, he said, he was a British baronet, and what better father-in-law any member of a north country business house could possibly want he was at a loss to discover. As to the family poverty, that was all the more reason why the family should restore itself to its proper position by marrying into other families that had more money than brains, and more land than ancestry. When Paul came into his title — which he hoped wouldn�
�t be for many years yet — they’d be none the prouder than they were of him now, with his cleverness, and his industry, and his fine high character.
“But still, you know,” he said, coming back to the one undeniable truth of logic, “a baronet’s a baronet.”
As Faith seemed disinclined to dispute that self-evident specimen of an identical proposition, Thistleton went on to remark that Faith, if married, could do a great deal more to help her mother than in school with the infants: that his own future would be all the more assured in society’s eyes if he allied himself to a member of a titled family; and that, as his father wanted him to go into Parliament finally, he wished to have a wife who would be a credit and an aid to him in that arduous position. Finally, when Faith urged the difficulty of mixing in two societies at once, Thistleton looked her back very gravely in the face, and remarked with a solemnity that fairly made her laugh:
“And the governor, you know, doesn’t always get his tongue quite straight round his most slippery h’s. Yet he might have been in Parliament more than once if he had liked. Why, the floor of the House is literally strewn nowadays, they say, with the members’ aspirates.”
They sat there long, debating and fencing, Faith confident that the idea was wholly impracticable, and Thistleton determined that Faith should say yes to him. But, at last, when time had gone too far, they rose and Thistleton fired one parting shot before rejoining Mrs. Douglas at the shore by the row boats. “At least,” he said, “I suppose I may write to you?”
Faith hesitated for a moment. She couldn’t forego that innocent pleasure. “Well, yes,” she said falteringly, “you may write to me if you like. As Mr. Solomons says, ‘without prejudice,’ you may write to me.”
The blond young man smiled triumphant. “Well, that settles it,” he exclaimed with delight. “I shall telegraph back this evening to the governor.”
“And what’ll you say?” Faith asked, not wholly displeased.
“The lady accepts, but defers for the present,” Thistleton answered boldly.
“But I don’t accept,” Faith cried. “Oh, you mustn’t say that, Mr. Thistleton. Mr. Thistleton, I distinctly said no to you.”
The professor came upon them before Thistleton could reply. “My dear young truants,” he said, beaming hard on Faith through his benevolent pince-nez, “where on earth have you been hiding yourselves? I come as ambassador from the court of Mrs. Grundy. My wife has been looking for you any time this half-hour.”
As they rowed home that evening down the calm blue stream, everybody noticed that Isabel Boyton, who was one of the guests, had lost her irrepressible good spirits for once, and seemed tired and moody. She sat silent in the stern, with her arms around Nea Blair’s waist, and hardly even flashed out a saucy retort when the professor chaffed her upon her unexpected taciturnity.
But when she reached her rooms at the Mitre, in the dusk, that night, she flung her arms wildly about her mother’s neck, and cried out aloud, “Oh, momma, momma, do you know what’s happened? He proposed to Nea Blair to-day — and she’s accepted him?”
“How do you know, darling?” her mother asked, soothing her.
“I could see it,” Isabel cried. “I’m sure of it! I know it! And oh, momma, it was the title and the fun of the thing I thought of at first; no more than that; but, in the end, it was himself. I love him! I love him!”
Your American girl is the coquette pushed to its utmost limit. Who wants her, may go; but who shows himself indifferent to her charms and dollars she would die to win him.
That night, when Thistleton met Faith at the Christ Church concert, he slipped a little packet unobstrusively into her hand. Faith would have returned it, but she couldn’t without attracting attention. She opened it in her own room, after Nea had left her — Nea who had come with kisses and tears to bid her good-night, but not to tell her about her episode with Paul. It contained a short note — a very short note — and a tiny jeweler’s case. The note said:
“MY DARLING FAITH: I was always a dutiful and obedient son, and I’ve felt compelled to-night to obey my father’s instructions. He said I was to buy you a suitable present, and I send it herewith. I might have chosen a diamond or something of the sort, but then I know you wouldn’t have worn it. This little ring will be more really serviceable. Your own grateful and devoted, — C. H. T.
“P. S. — Enclosed telegram just arrived from Sheffield.”
Faith looked at the ring. It was simple and pretty enough; but what she liked best was his thoughtfulness in sending her those five small pearls instead of anything more showy and therefore more unsuitable. Then she turned to the telegram:
“We congratulate you warmly. We are pleased and proud. Please send a photograph.”
CHAPTER XXII.
MISS BOYTON PLAYS A CARD.
NEXT morning, as Nea was busy packing, Faith burst unexpectedly into her room with a sudden impulse. To say the truth, girl that she was, she couldn’t resist the temptation of showing Nea her ring, though she said nothing as yet about the note that accompanied it. Nea admired it with a placid sigh. It would be long before Paul could give her such a ring. Not that she wanted one, of course; nobody was less likely to think that than Nea; but then, poor Paul must feel the difference so keenly!
She folded up the dress that lay stretched on the bed, and laid it neatly into her small portmanteau. Faith glanced at it all at once with a sharp glance of surprise.
“Why, Nea,” she cried, taking it out once more and holding it in her hand, “whatever do you call this, you bad, bad creature?”
Nea blushed a guilty blush of conscious shame. She was caught in the act — fairly found out. It was an evening-dress she had never worn all the time she was at Oxford.
Faith looked down into the portmanteau once more, and there in its depths caught a passing glimpse of yet another one.
“Oh, Nea,” she cried, half-tearful with vexation, taking it out in turn, “this is really too wicked of you. You had these two nice evening-gowns here all the time, and you’ve only worn the old cashmere ever since you’ve been here on purpose not to be better dressed than I was!”
Nea gazed at these two mute witnesses to her guilt with an uncomfortable glance. Her tender little conscience would have smitten her greatly had she allowed that simple explanation of Faith’s to pass unqualified.
“It wasn’t altogether that,” she answered, fixing her eyes on the carpet. “It was partly on your account, Faith, I don’t deny, that I wouldn’t wear them; but partly, also” — she hesitated for a second— “to tell you the truth, I didn’t want — your brother to think I was — well — so very much more expensively dressed than you were.”
She said it so simply that Faith guessed the rest, and made no answer, save to fling her arms round Nea’s neck and kiss her passionately. For now she felt they were almost sisters.
They drove to the station together, and went up — both third — in the same train to Paddington. There they parted, Nea to Cornwall, Faith to Waterloo, for Hillborough and the infants.
Her dream was over. She must go back now to the workaday world again.
But always with that ring and note in her pocket. For she dared not wear the ring; that would attract attention. Still, what a difference it made to her life! It would sweeten the days with the infants to feel it furtively from time to time. It would bring the dream back to her, and she would work the more easily.
Thistleton and Paul had come down to see them off at the station, and with them Miss Boyton and her inseparable momma. Poor Isabel couldn’t deny herself the pleasure of watching her victorious rival safe out of Oxford, and waving her a farewell from Paul’s side of the platform. Not out of any ill-will or unkindness — of that Isabel was wholly incapable — but simply as a sort of salve to her own feelings. Nea had engaged Paul’s heart, and Isabel accepted her defeat with good grace. Not only did she bear Nea no grudge for having thus wholly ousted her, but she kissed her a kiss of exceptional tenderness, and presse
d her hand with a friendly pressure as she entered the carriage. Nea knew what the kiss and pressure meant. Among women words are very seldom necessary to pass these little confidences from one to the other.
From the station Isabel walked back to the Mitre with Thistleton, allowing her momma to take possession of Paul. She had reasons of her own for this peculiar arrangement. She wanted, in fact, to apply once more that familiar engine, the common pump, to Thistleton. And the blond young man, being by nature a frank and confiding personage, was peculiarly susceptible to the pumping operation.
When they reached the Mitre, Isabel deposited the obedient momma in her own room.
“I’m going a turn round the Meadow with Mr. Thistleton,” she said abuptly.
“You’ve a lecture at twelve, Thistleton, haven’t you?” Paul asked, anxious to spare his friend Miss Boyton’s society if he didn’t want it.
“Oh, I’ll cut the lecture,” Thistleton answered good-humoredly. “It’s Aristotle’s Ethics; and I daresay Aristotle don’t mind being cut. He must be used to it now after so many centuries. Besides, a just mean between excessive zeal and undue negligence was his own ideal, you know. He should be flattered by my conscientious carrying out of his principles. I haven’t missed a lecture for a whole week now. I think it’s about time I should begin to miss one.”
For, in fact, the blond young man vaguely suspected, from what Isabel had told him on her way from the station, she hoped to benefit the Gascoyne family, and taking now a profound interest in all that concerned that distinguished house, of which, in spite of Faith’s disclaimer, he almost considered himself at present a potential member, he was anxious to learn what her scheme might be, and to see how far it might be expected to lighten the burden of the family difficulties. Isabel, however, was too thoroughbred an American to let Thistleton see too much of her own intentions. She led him dexterously to the round seat in Christ Church Meadows that overlooks the Cherwell, and, seating him there at close quarters, proceeded to work the pump-handle with equal skill and vigor. She succeeded so well that even Armitage himself, the past master in the art of applied hydrostatics, could hardly have surpassed her. At the end of an hour she had got out of Thistleton almost all he knew about the strange compact between the Gascoynes and Mr. Solomons. Motives of delicacy, indeed, restrained the blond young man from mentioning the nature of the security on which Mr. Solomons reposed his hopes of ultimate repayment — Paul’s chance of marrying an heiress. He thought such a disclosure might sound a - trifle personal, for the name and fame of Isabel’s prospective dollars had been noised abroad far and wide both in Mentone and in Oxford. Nor did he allude in passing to his own possible future relations with the heir-apparent to the baronetcy and his handsome sister. Other personal motives tied his tongue there; while as to the state of affairs between Nea and Paul he knew or guessed far less than Isabel herself did. But with these few trifling exceptions, he allowed the golden-haired Pennsylvanian to suck his brains of all his private acquaintance with the Gascoyne affairs, being thoroughly convinced, like an innocent, good young man that he was, that Isabel could desire this useful knowledge for no other purpose than to further the designs of the Gascoyne family. If Mme. Ceriolo had got hold of a young man like Thistleton, she might have twisted him round her little finger; and used his information to very bad account; fortunately the American heiress had no plans in her head but such as deserved the unsuspicious undergraduate’s most perfect confidence.