"Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any woman with an identity of her own?"
"Well, I only go by what I see. If they don't marry they go over to Rome--when there's property--dessay I'm wrong.... What o'clock's that?--ten, I suppose. No?--well, I suppose it must be eleven, when one comes to think of it. But it's a shame to go in--night like this!" And then this weak-minded couple impaired the effect of their little declaration of independence of the united state--the phrase sounds familiar somehow!--by staying out five or six minutes longer, and going in half an hour later; two things only the merest pedant would declare incompatible. But it kept the servants up, and Miss Dickenson had to apologise to Mr. Norbury.
How many of us living in this present century can keep alive to the fact that the occupants of country-mansions, now resplendent with an electric glare which is destroying their eyesight and going out suddenly at intervals, were sixty years ago dependent on candles and moderator lamps, which ran down and had to be wound up, and then ran down again, when there was no oil. There was no gas at the Towers; though there might have been, granting seven miles of piping, from which the gas would have escaped into the roots of the beeches and killed them.
Even if there had been, it does not follow that Miss Dickenson, in full flight to her own couch, would not have come upon the Earl in the lobby near Mr. Torrens's quarters, with a candle-lamp in his hand, which he carried about in nocturnal excursions to make sure that a great conflagration was not raging somewhere on the premises. He seemed, Miss Dickenson thought, to be gazing reproachfully at it. It was burning all right, nevertheless. She wished his lordship good-night, and fancied it was very late. The Earl appeared sure of it. So did a clock with clear ideas on the subject, striking midnight somewhere, ponderously. The lady passed on; not, however, failing to notice that the lamp stopped at a door on the way, and that its bearer was twice going to knock thereat and didn't. Then a dog within intimated that he should bark presently, unless attention was given to an occurrence he could vouch for, which his master told him to hold his tongue about; calling out "Come in!"
nevertheless, to cover contingencies.
The passer-by connected this with Gwen's behaviour at dinner, and other little things she had noticed, and meant to lie awake on the chance of hearing his lordship say good-night to Mr. Torrens, perhaps illuminating the situation. But resolutions to lie awake are the veriest gossamer, blown away by the breath that puts the bedside candle out. Miss Dickenson and Oblivion had joined hands some time when his lordship said good-night to Mr. Torrens.
He had found him standing at his window, as though the warm night-air was a luxury to him, in the blue silk dressing-gown he had affected since his convalescence. There was no light in the room; indeed, light would have been of no service to him in his state. He did not move, but said: "I suppose I ought to be thinking of turning in now, Mrs. Bailey?"
"It isn't Mrs. Bailey," said the Earl. "It's me. Gwen's father."
"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Adrian, starting back from the window. "I thought it was the good creature. I had given you up, Lord Ancester--it got so late." For his lordship had made a visit of inquiry and a short chat with this involuntary guest an invariable finish to his daily programme, since the latter recovered consciousness. "I'm afraid there's no light in the room," said Adrian. "I told 'Rene to blow the candles out. I can move about very fairly, you see, but I never feel safe about knocking things down. I might set something on fire." If he had had his choice, he would rather not have had another interview with his host until he was at liberty to confess all and say _peccavi_. Even "Gwen's father's" announcement of himself did not warrant his breaking his promise.
"There is no light," said the visitor, "except mine that I have brought with me. I expected to find you in the dark--indeed, I was afraid I might wake you out of your first sleep. I came because of Gwen--because I felt I _must_ see you before I went to bed myself." He paused a moment, Adrian remaining silent, still at a loss; then continued:--"This has been very sudden, so sudden that it has quite ..."
Then Adrian broke out:--"Oh, how you must be blaming me! Oh, what a _brute_ I've been!..."
"No--no, no--_no!_ Not that, not that _at all_! Not a word of blame for anybody! None for you--none for Gwen. But it has been so--so sudden...."
Indeed, Gwen's father seems as though all the breath, morally speaking, had been knocked out of his body by this escapade of his daughter's.
For, knowing from past experience the frequent tempestuous suddenness of her impulses, and convinced that Adrian in his position neither could nor would have shown definitely the aspirations of a lover, his image of their interview made Gwen almost the first instigator in the affair.
"Why, you--you have hardly _seen_ her----" he says, referring only to the shortness of their acquaintance, not to eyesight.
Adrian accepts the latter meaning without blaming him. "Yes," he says, "but see her I _did_, though it was but a glimpse. I tell you this, Lord Ancester--and it is no rhapsody; just bald truth--that if this day had never come about.... I mean if it had come about otherwise; I might have gone away this morning, for instance ... and if I had had to learn, as I yet may, that this black cloud I live in was to be my life for good, and all that image I saw for a moment of Gwen--Gwen in her glory in the light of the sunset, for one moment--one moment!..." He breaks down over it.
The Earl's voice is not in good form for encouragement, but he does his best. "Come--come! It's not so bad as all that yet. See what Merridew said. Couldn't say anything for certain for another three months.
Indeed he said it might be more, and yet you might have your sight back again without a flaw in either eye. He really said so!"
"Well--he's a jolly good fellow. But what I mean is, what I was going to say was that my recollection of her in that one moment would have been the one precious thing left for me to treasure through the pitch-darkness.... You remember--or perhaps not--that about a hand's breadth of it--the desert, you know--shining alone in the salt leagues round about...."
"N-no. I don't think I do. Is it ... a ... Coleridge?"
"No--Robert Browning. He'd be new to you. You would hardly know him.
However, I should try to forget the rest of the desert this time."
The Earl did not follow, naturally, and changed the subject. "It is very late," he said, "and I have only time to say what I came to say. You may rely on my not standing arbitrarily in the way of my daughter's wishes when the time comes--and it has not come yet--for looking at that side of the subject. It can only come when it is absolutely certain that she knows her own mind. She is too young to be allowed to take the most important step in life under the influence of a romantic--it may be Quixotic--impulse. I have just had a long talk with her mother about it, and I am forced to the conclusion that Gwen's motives are not so unmixed as a girl's should be, to justify bystanders in allowing her to act upon them--bystanders I mean who would have any right of interference.... I am afraid I am not very clear, but I shrink from saying what may seem unfeeling...."
"Probably you would not hurt me, and I should deserve it, if you did."
"What I mean is that Gwen's impulse is ... is derived from ... from, in short, your unhappy accident. I would not go so far as to say that she has schemed a compensation for this cruel disaster ... which we need hardly be so gloomy about yet awhile, it seems to me. But this I do say"--here the Earl seemed to pick up heart and find his words easier--"that if Gwen has got that idea I thoroughly sympathize with her. I give you my word, Mr. Torrens, that not an hour passes, for me, without a thought of the same kind. I mean that I should jump at any chance of making it up to you, for mere ease of mind. But I have nothing to give that would meet the case. Gwen has a treasure--herself! It is another matter whether she should be allowed to dispose of it her own way, for her own sake. Her mother and I may both feel it our duty to oppose it."
Adrian said in an undertone, most dejectedly: "You would be right. How could I complain?" Then it seemed to him that his words struck a false note, and he tried to qualify them. "I mean--how could I say a word of any sort? Could I complain of any parents, for trying to stop their girl linking her life to mine? And such a life as hers! And yet if it were all to do again, how could I act otherwise than as I did a few hours since. Is there a man so strong anywhere that he could put a curb on his heart and choke down his speech to convention-point, if he thought that a girl like Gwen ... I don't know how to say what I want. All speech goes wrong, do what I will."
"If he thought that a girl like Gwen was waiting for him to speak out?
Is that it?... Oh--well--not exactly that! But something of the sort, suppose we say?" For Adrian's manner had entered a protest. "Anyhow I assure you I quite understand my Gwen is--very attractive. But nobody is blaming anybody. After all, what would the alternative have been? Just some hypocritical beating about the bush to keep square with the regulations--to level matters down to--what did you call it?--convention-point! Nothing gained in the end! Let's put all that on one side. What _we_ have to look at is this--meaning, of course, by 'we,' my wife and myself:--Is Gwen really an independent agent? Is she not in a sense the slave of her own imagination, beyond and above the usual enthralment that one accepts as part of the disorder. I myself believe that she is, and that the whole root and essence of the business may be her pity for yourself, and also I should say an exaggerated idea of her own share in the guilt...."
"There _was_ none," Adrian struck in decisively. "But I understand your meaning exactly. Listen a minute to this. If I had thought what you think possible--well, I would have bitten my tongue off rather than speak. Why, think of it! To ask a girl like that to sacrifice herself to a cripple--a half-cripple, at least...."
"Without good grounds for supposing she was waiting to be asked," said the Earl; adding, to anticipate protest:--"Come now!--that's what we mean. Let's say so and have done with it," to which Adrian gave tacit assent. His lordship continued:--"I quite believe you; at least, I believe you would rather have held your tongue than bitten it off. I certainly should. But--pardon my saying so--I cannot understand ... I'm not finding fault or doubting you ... I _cannot_ understand how you came to be so--so ... I won't say cocksure--let's call it sanguine. If there had been time I could have understood it. But I cannot see where the time came in."
Adrian fidgetted uneasily, and felt his cheeks flush. "I can answer for when it began, with me. I walked across that glade from Arthur's Bridge quite turned into somebody else, with Gwen stamped on my brain like a Queen's head on a shilling, and her voice in my ears as plain as the lark's overhead. But whether we started neck and neck, I know not. I do know this, though, that I shall never believe that if I had been first seen by her in my character as a corpse, either she or I would ever have been a penny the wiser."
"You are the wiser?--quite sure?" The Earl seemed to have his doubts.
"Quite sure. Do you recollect how 'the Duke grew suddenly brave and wise'? He was only the 'fine empty sheath of a man' before. But it's no use quoting Browning to you."
"Not the slightest. I suppose he was referring to a case of love at first sight--is that it?... It is a time-honoured phenomenon, only it hardly comes into practical politics, because young persons are so secretive about it. I can't recollect any lady but Rosalind who mentioned it at the time--or any gentleman but Romeo, for that matter.
Gwen has certainly kept her own counsel for three weeks past."
"Dear Lord Ancester, you are laughing at me...."
"No--no! No, I wouldn't do that. Perhaps I was laughing a little at human nature. That's excusable. However, I understand that you _are_ cocksure--or sanguine--about the similarity of Romeo's case. I won't press Gwen about Rosalind's. Of course, if she volunteers information, I shall have to dismiss the commiseration theory--you understand me?--and suppose that she is healthily in love. By healthily I mean selfishly. If no information is forthcoming, all I can say is--the doubt remains; the doubt whether she is not making herself the family scapegoat, carrying away the sins of the congregation into the wilderness."
"You know I think that all sheer nonsense, whatever Gwen thinks? She may think the sins of the congregation are as scarlet. To me they are white as wool."
"The whole question turns on what Gwen thinks. Believing, as I do, that my child may be sacrificing herself to expiate a sin of mine, I have no course but to do my best to prevent her, or, at least to postpone irrevocable action until it is certain that she is animated by no such motive. I might advocate that you and she should not meet, for--suppose we say--a twelvemonth, but that I have so often noticed that absence not only 'makes the heart grow fonder,' as the song says, but also makes it very turbulent and unruly. So I shall leave matters entirely alone--leave her to settle it with her mother.... Your sister knows of this, I suppose?"
"Oh yes! Gwen told her of it across the table at dinner-time."
"Across the table at dinner-time? _Imp_-ossible!"
"Well--look at this!" Adrian produces from his dressing-gown pocket a piece of paper, much crumpled, with a gilt frill all round, and holds it out for the Earl to take. While the latter deciphers it at his candle-lamp, he goes on to give its history. Irene had been back very late from the Mackworth Clarkes, and had missed the soup. She had not spoken with Gwen at all, and as soon as dessert had effloresced into little _confetti_, had been told by that young lady to catch, the thing thrown being the wrapper of one of these, rolled up and scribbled on.
"She brought it up for me to see," says Adrian, without thought of cruel fact. Blind people often speak thus.
The Earl cannot help laughing at what he reads aloud. "'I am going to marry your brother'--that's all!" he says. "That's what she borrowed Lord Cumberworld's pencil for. Really Gwen _is_...!" But this wild daughter of his is beyond words to describe, and he gives her up.
If the Duke's son had not been honourable, he might have peeped and known his own fate. For he had been entrusted with this missive, to hand across the table to Irene lower down. Lady Gwendolen ought to have given it to Mr. Norbury, to hand to Miss Torrens on a tray. That was Mr.
Norbury's opinion.
When the Earl looked up from deciphering the pencil-scrawl, he saw that Adrian's powers were visibly flagging; and no wonder, convalescence considered, and such a day of strain and excitement. He rose to go, saying:--"You see what I want--nothing in a hurry."
Adrian's words were slipping away from him as he replied, or tried to reply:--"I see. If I were to get my eyes back, Gwen might change her mind." But he failed over the last two letters. Mrs. Bailey, still in charge, lived on the other side of a door, at which the Earl tapped, causing a scuttling and a prompt appearance of the good creature, who seemed to have an ambush of grog ready to spring on her patient. It was what was wanted.
"Remember this, Mr. Torrens," said his lordship, when a rally encouraged him to add a postscript, "that in spite of what you say, I feel just as Gwen does, that the blame of your mishap lies with me and mine--with me chiefly...."
"All nonsense, my lord! Excuse my contradicting you flatly. Your instruction, not expressed but implied, to old Stephen, was clearly _not_ to miss his mark. If he had killed Achilles you _would_ have been responsible, as Apollo was responsible for the arrow of Paris.... Yes, my dear, we were talking about you." This was to the collie, who woke up from deep sleep at the sound of his name, and felt he could mix with a society that recognised him. But not without shaking himself violently and scratching his head, until appealed to to stop.
The Earl let further protest stand over, and said good-night, rather relieved at the beneficial effect of the good creature's ministrations.
The excellent woman herself, when the grog was disposed of, facilitated her charge's dispositions for the night, and retired to rest with an ill-digested idea that she had interrupted a conversation about the corrupt gaieties of a vicious foreign capital, inhabited chiefly by atheists and idolaters.
The Countess's long talk with her husband, wedged in between an early abdication of the drawing-room and the sound of Gwen laughing audaciously with Miss Torrens on the staircase, and more temperate good-nights below, had tended towards a form of party government in which the Earl was the Liberal and her ladyship the Conservative party.
The Bill before the House was never exactly read aloud, its contents being taken for granted. When the Countess had said, in their previous interview, first that it was Gwen, and then that it was this young Torrens, she had really exhausted the subject.
Nevertheless she seemed now to claim for herself credit for a clear exposition of the contents of this Bill, in spite of constant interruptions from a factious Opposition. "I hope," she said, "that, now that I have succeeded in making you understand, you will speak to Gwen yourself. I suppose she's not going to stop downstairs all night."