No one should ever feel his pulse, or hers, at night. Gwen was none the better for doing it. Nor did she benefit by an operation which her mind called looking matters calmly in the face. It consisted in imaginary forecasts of a _status quo_ that was to come about. She had to skip some years as too horrible even to dream of; years needed to live down the worst raw sense of guilt, and become hardened to inevitable life. Then she filled in her _scenario_ with Sir Adrian Torrens, the blind Squire of Pensham Steynes, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, a dummy with no great vitality, constructed entirely out of a ring on Mr.
Torrens's finger and an allusion of Irene's to the Miss Gertrude Abercrombie, whose skill in needlework surpassed Arachne's. Gwen did not supply this lady with a sufficiently well-marked human heart. Perhaps the temptation to make her clever and shrewd but not sympathetic, not quite up to her husband's deserts, was irresistible. It allowed of an unprejudiced consciousness of what she, Gwen, would have been in this dummy's situation. It allowed latitude to a fancy that portrayed Lady Gwendolen Whatever-she-had-become--because, of course, _she_ would have to marry some fool--as the staunch and constant friend of the family at Pensham. Her devotion to the dummy when in trouble--and, indeed, she piled up calamities for the unhappy lady--was monumental; an example to her sex. And when, to the bitter grief of her devoted husband, the dummy died--all parties being then, at a rough estimate, forty--and she herself, his dearest friend, stood by the dummy's grave with him, and, generally speaking, sustained him in his tribulation, a disposition to get the fool out of the way grew strong enough to make its victim doubt her own vouchers for her own absolute disinterestedness. She turned angrily upon her fancies, tore them to tatters, flung them to the winds.
One does this, and then the pieces join themselves together and reappear intact.
She was no nearer sleep after looking matters calmly in the face, that way, for a full hour. Similar trials to dramatize a probable future all ended on the same lines, and each time Gwen was indignant with herself for her own folly. What was this man to her, whom she had seen twice?
Little enough!--she pledged herself to it in the Court of Conscience!
What was she to him, who had spoken with her twice certainly; but _seen_ her--oh, how little! Why, _she_ had seen _him_ more, of the two, if one came to close quarters with Time. See how long he was stooping over that unfortunate dog-chain!
Sitting up in bed in the dim July dawn, wild-eyed in an unshepherded flock of golden locks, this young lady was certainly surpassingly beautiful. She was revolving in her poor, aching head a contingency she had not fully allowed for. Suppose--merely to look other things in the face, you see!--suppose there were _no_ dummy! What chance would the poor fellow have then of winning the love of any woman, with those blind eyes in his head? Gwen got up restlessly and went to the casement, meeting a stream of level sunlight that the swallows outside in the ivy were making the subject of comment, and stood looking out over the leagues of the ancient domain of her forefathers. "Gwen o' the Towers"--that was her name. It seemed to join chorus with her own answer to the last question, to her satisfaction.
To offer the consolation of her love, to give all she had to give, to this man as compensation for the great curse that had fallen on him through the fault of her belongings, seemed to her in her excited state easy and nowise strange--mere difficulty of the negotiation apart. She elected to shut her eyes to a fact we and the story can guess--we are so shrewd, you see!--and to make a parade in her own eyes of a self-renunciation approaching that of Marcus Curtius. If only the gulf would open to receive her she would fling herself in. She ignored the dissimilarities of detail in the two cases, especially the conceivable promised land at the bottom of _her_ gulf. The Roman Eques had nothing but death and darkness to look forward to.
The difficulties of the scheme shot across her fevered conception of it.
How if, though he was not affianced to the dummy, or any other lay figure she might provide, his was a widowed heart left barren by the hand of Death? How if some other disappointment had marred his life?--some passion for a woman who had rashly accepted somebody else before meeting him? This happens we know; so did Gwen, and was sorry.
How if some minx--Lutwyche's expression--had bewitched him and slighted him? He might nurse a false ideal of her till Doomsday. Men did sometimes, _coeteris paribus_. But how could she--how _could_ she?...
Anyhow, Gwen might have seen her way through that difficulty with a fair chance. But--to be invisible!
The morning sun had been at variance with some flames, hard to believe clouds, and had just dispersed them so successfully that their place in the heavens knew them no more. His rays, unveiled, bore hard upon the blue eyes, sore with watching, of the girl a hundred million miles off, and drove her from her casement. Gwen of the Towers fell back into the room, all the flowing lawn of the most luxurious _robe-de-nuit_ France could provide turned to gold by the touch of Phoebus. She paused a moment before a mirror, to glance at her pallor in it, and to wonder at the sunlight in the wealth of its setting of ungroomed, uncontrollable locks. It was not vanity exactly that provoked the despairing thought:--"But he will never see me--never!" A girl would have been a hypocrite indeed who could shut her eyes to what Gwen saw in that looking-glass. She knew all about it--had done so from babyhood.
Some relaxation of the mind gave Morpheus an opportunity, and he took such advantage of a willing victim that Lutwyche, coming three hours later, scarcely knew how to deal with the case, and might have been uneasy at such an intensive cultivation of sleep if she had been a nervous person. But she was prosaic and phlegmatic, and held to the general opinion that nothing unusual ever happened. So she was content to make a little extra noise; and, when nothing came of it, to go away till rung for. That was how Gwen came to be so late at breakfast that morning.
CHAPTER XX
HOW THE HON. PERCIVAL GAVE MISS DICKENSON HIS ACCOUNT OF THE BLIND MAN. HOW THAT ANY YOUNG MAN SOEVER IS GLAD THAT ANY YOUNG LADY SOEVER ISN'T _FIANCEE_, EXCEPT SHE BE UGLY. MISS DICKENSON'S EFFRONTERY. HOW MR. PELLEW SAID "POOH!" IRENE'S ABSENCE, VISITING.
EVERYONE'S ELSE ABSENCE, EXCEPT THE BLIND MAN'S, GWEN'S, AND MRS.
BAILEY'S, WHO HAD A LETTER TO WRITE
The Hon. Percival Pellew had not been at the Towers continuously throughout the whole three weeks following the accident. The best club in London could not have spared him as long as that. He had returned to his place in the House a day or two later, had voted on the Expenses at Elections Bill, and had then gone to a by-election in Cornwall to help his candidate to keep his expenses at a minimum. His way back to the club did not lie near Ancester Towers, but he reconciled a renewal of his visit there to his conscience by the consideration that an unusually late Session was predicted. A little more country air would do him no harm, and the Towers was the best club in the country.
He had had absolutely no motive whatever for going there, outside what this implies. Unless, indeed, something else was implied by his pledging his honour to himself that this was the case. Self-deception is an art that Man gives a great deal of attention to, and Woman nearly as much.
The Countess said to him, on the evening of his reappearance in time to dress for dinner:--"Everybody's gone, Percy--I mean everybody of your lot a fortnight ago." Whereto he replied:--"How about the wounded man?"
and her ladyship said:--"Mr. Torrens? Oh yes, Mr. Torrens is here still and his sister--they'll be here a few days longer.... There's nobody else. Yes, there's Constance Dickenson. Norbury, tell them to keep dinner back a little because of Mr. Pellew." This was all in one sentence, chiefly to the butler. She ended:--"All the rest are new," and the gentleman departed to dress in ten minutes--long ones probably. This was two or three evenings before Miss Dickenson saw that glow-worm in the garden. Perhaps three, because two are needed to account for the lady's attitude about that cigar, and twelve hours for a coolness occasioned by her ladyship's saying in her inconsiderate way:--"Oh, you are quite old friends, you two, of course--I forgot." Only fancy saying that a single lady and gentleman were "quite old friends"! Both parties exhibited mature courtesy, enriched with smiles in moderation. But for all that their relations painfully resembled civility for the rest of that evening.
However, whatever they were then, they were reinstated by now; that is to say, by the morning after Gwen's bad night. Eavesdrop, please, and overhear what you can in the arbutus walk, half-way through the Hon.
Percival's first cigar.
The gentleman is accounting for something he has just said. "What made me think so was his being so curious about our friend Cumberworld. As for Gwen, I wouldn't trust her not to be romantic. Girls are."
The lady speaks discreetly:--"Certainly no such construction would have occurred to me. One has to be on one's guard against romantic ideas.
She might easily be--a--_eprise_, to some extent--as girls are...."
"But spooney, no! Well--perhaps you're right."
"I don't know whether I ought to say even that. I shouldn't, only to you. Because I know I can rely on your discretion...."
"Rather. Only you must admit that when she appeared this morning--and last night--she was looking ..."
"Looking what?"
"Well ... rather too statuesque for jollity."
"Perhaps the heat. I know she complains of the heat; it gives her a headache."
"Come, Miss Dickenson, that's not fair. You know it was what _you_ said began it."
"Began what?"
"Madam, what I am saying arises naturally from ..."
"There!--do stop being Parliamentary and be reasonable. What you mean is--have those two fallen head over ears in love, or haven't they?"
Discussions of this subject of Love are greatly lubricated by exaggeration of style. It is almost as good as a foreign tongue. She continued more seriously:--"Tell me a little more of what Mr. Torrens said."
"When I saw him this morning?" Mr. Pellew looked thoughtfully at what was left of his cigar, as if it would remind him if he looked long enough, and then threw it abruptly away as though he gave it up as a bad job. "No," he said, falling back on his own memory. "It wasn't what he said. It was the way of saying it. Manner is incommunicable. And he said so little about her. He talked a good deal about Philippa in a chaffy sort of way--said she was exactly his idea of a Countess--why had one such firm convictions about Countesses and Duchesses and Baronets and so on? It led to great injustice, causing us to condemn nine samples out of ten as Pretenders, not real Countesses or Duchesses or Baronets at all.
He was convinced his own dear dad was a tin Baronet; or, at best, Britannia-metal. Alfred Tennyson had spoken of two sorts--little lily-handed ones and great broad-shouldered brawny Englishmen. Neither would eat the sugar nor go to sleep in an armchair with the _Times_ over his head. _His_ father did both. I admitted the force of his criticism, but could not follow his distinction between Countesses and Duchesses.
Duchesses were squarer than Countesses, just as Dukes were squarer than Earls."
"I think they are," said Miss Dickenson. She shut her eyes a moment for reflection, and then decided:--"Oh yes--certainly squarer--not a doubt of it!" Mr. Pellew formed an image in his mind, of this lady fifteen years ago, with its eyes shut. He did not the least know why he did so.
"Torrens goes on like that," he continued. "Makes you laugh sometimes!
But what I was going to say was this. When he had disposed of Philippa and chaffed Tim a little--not disrespectfully you know--he became suddenly serious, and talked about Gwen--spoke with a hesitating deference, almost ceremoniously. Said he had had some conversation with Lady Gwendolen, and been impressed with her intelligence and wit. Most young ladies of her age were so frivolous. He was the more impressed that her beauty was undeniable. The brief glimpse he had had of her had greatly affected him artistically--it was an Aesthetic impression entirely. He overdid this."
Miss Dickenson nodded slightly in confidence with herself. _Her_ insight jotted down a brief memorandum about Mr. Pellew's, and the credit it did him. That settled, she recalled a something he had left unfinished earlier. "You were asking about Lord Cumberworld, Mr. Pellew?"
"Whether there was anything afoot in that quarter? Yes, he asked that, and wanted to know if Mrs. Bailey, who had been retailing current gossip, was rightly informed when she said that there was, and that it was going to come off. He was very anxious to show how detached he was personally. Made jokes about its 'coming off' like a boot...."
"Stop a minute to see if I understand.... Oh yes--I see. 'If there was anything afoot.' Of course. Go on."
"It was a poor quip, and failed of its purpose. His relief was too palpable when I disallowed Mrs. Bailey.... By-the-by, that's a rum thing, Miss Dickenson,--that way young men have. I believe if I did it once when I was a young fillah I did it fifty times."
"Did what?"
"Well--breathed free on hearing that a girl wasn't engaged. Doesn't matter how doosid little they know of her--only seen her in the Park on horseback, p'r'aps--they'll eat a lot more lunch if they're told she's still in the market. Fact!"
Miss Dickenson said that no doubt Mr. Pellew knew best, and that it was gratifying to think how many young men's lunches her earlier days might have intensified without her knowing anything about it. The gentleman felt himself bound to reassure and confirm, for was not the lady _passee_? "Rather!" said he; this favourite expression this time implying that the name of these lunches was no doubt Legion. An awkward sincerity of the lady caused her to say:--"I didn't mean that." And then she had to account for it. She was intrepid enough to venture on: "What I meant was, never being engaged," but not cool enough to keep of one colour exactly. It didn't rise to the height of embarrassment, but something rippled for all that.
A cigar Mr. Pellew was lighting required unusual and special attention.
It had a mission, that cigar. It had to gloss over a slight flush on its smoker's cheeks, and to take the edge off the abruptness with which he said,--"Oh, gammon!" as he threw a Vesuvian away.
He picked up the lost thread at the point of his own indiscreet excursion into young-manthropology--his own word when he apologized for it. "Anyhow," said he, "it struck me that our friend upstairs was very hard hit. He made such a parade of his complete independence. Of course, I'm not much of a judge of such matters. Not my line. I understand that he has been prorogued--I mean his departure has. He's to try his luck at coming downstairs this evening after feeding-time. He funks finding the way to his mouth in public. Don't wonder--poor chap!"
Then this lady had a fit of contrition about the way in which she had been gossiping, and tried to back out. She had the loathsome meanness to pretend that she herself had been entirely passive, a mere listener to an indiscreet and fanciful companion. "What gossips you men are!" said she, rushing the position boldly. "Fancy cooking up a romance about this Mr. Torrens and Gwen, when they've hardly so much as," she had nearly said, "set eyes on each other"; but revised it in time for press. It worked out "when she has really only just set eyes on him, and chatted half an hour."
Mr. Pellew's indignation found its way through a stammer which expressed the struggle of courtesy against denunciation. "Come--hang it all!" said he. "It wasn't _my_ romance.... Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't yours either. Only--play fair, Miss Dickenson. Six of the one and half a dozen of the other! Confess up!"
The lady assumed the tone of Tranquillity soothing Petulance. "Never mind, Mr. Pellew!" she said. "You needn't lie awake about it. It doesn't really matter, you know.... _Have_ you got the right time? Because I have to be ready at half-past eleven to drive with Philippa. I promised.... What!--a quarter past? I must run." She looked back to reassure possible perturbation. "It really does _not_ matter between _us_," said she, and vanished down the avenue.