Sir Hamilton had very few demeanours open to him. The most obvious one was that of the courteous host, flattered to receive such a visitor on any terms, especially proud and cordial in view of the prospect of a connection between the families. He maintained a penitential attitude under the depressing shadow of the absence of his better half, which certainly was made the most of by both; somewhat artificially, a perceptive visitor might have said, if one had been there to see. The jeremiads over this unfortunate misadventure must have lasted fully ten minutes before a lull came; for the gentleman could catch no other wind in his sails, and had to let out every reef to move at all.
Lady Ancester was not inclined to lose time. "I am particularly sorry not to see Lady Torrens," she said, "because I really wanted to have a serious talk with her.... Yes, about the boy and girl--your boy and my girl." A curious consciousness almost made her wince. Think how easily either of the young lovers might have been a joint possession! If one, then both, surely, minus their identities and the _status quo_? It was like sudden unexpected lemon in a made dish.
The worst of it was--not that each thought the same thing at the same moment; that was inevitable--but that each knew the other's thought. The Baronet fell back on mere self-subordination. Automatically non-existent, he would be safe. "Same thing--same thing--Lady Torrens and myself! Comes to the same thing whether you say it to me or to her.
Repeat every word!... Of course--easier to talk to her! But comes to the same thing." He abated himself to a go-between, and was entrenched.
The Countess affected an easy languor to say:--"I really don't feel able to say what I want straight off. You know I never used to be able"--she laughed a deprecatory laugh--"in the old Clarges Street days. Besides, your man is coming in and out with tea and things. When he's done, I'll go on."
The sudden reference to the time-when of that old passionate relation contained an implication that it was not unspeakable _per se_--although its threat had been that it would do its worst as a cupboard-skeleton--but only owing to the childish silliness of a mere calf-love, a reciprocal misapprehension soon forgotten. Treated with contempt, its pretensions to skeletonhood fell through. Moreover, that pending tea had helped to a pause; showing the speaker to be quite collected, and mistress of the situation.
The little episode had put the Baronet more at his ease. He thought he might endeavour to contribute to general lubrication on the same lines.
By-the-by, he had met Maurice Tyrawley last week in London--just back from India--been away much longer than our men usually--Lady Ancester would remember Maurice Tyrawley--man with a slight stammer--sister ran away with her father's groom? Her ladyship remembered Maurice very well.
And was that really true about Kathleen Tyrawley? Well--that was interesting! Was she alive? Oh dear yes--living in Tavistock Square--fellah made money, somehow. That was _very_ interesting. If the Countess had Kathleen's address, she would try to call on her, some time. What was her name? Hopkins. Oh--Hopkins! She felt discouraged, and not at all sure she should call on her, any time. But she did not say so. An entry of Mrs. Hopkins's address and full name followed, on some painfully minute ivory tablets. The Countess was sure to find the place, owing to her coachman's phenomenal bump of locality. Was Colonel Tyrawley married?... Oh--Major Tyrawley! Yes, he was married, and had some rumpus with his wife. Etcetera, etcetera.
This sort of thing served its turn, as did the tea. But both became things of the past, and left the course clear. Provided always that the servant did not recrudesce! "Is he gone?" said the Countess. "If he isn't, I can wait."
"He won't come back now."
"Very well. Then I can go on. I want to talk about our girl and boy....
I don't think there need be any nonsense between Us, Sir Hamilton?"
"About our boy and girl? Why should there?" Best not to add:--"Or anything else," on the whole!
"I am speaking of his eyesight only. Please understand that I should not oppose my daughter's wishes on any other ground."
"But I am to understand that you _do_ oppose them?"
The Countess held back her answer a few seconds, to take a last look at it before sending it to press. Then she said decisively:--"Yes." She made no softening reservation. She had already said why.
He considered it his duty to soften it for her. "On the ground of his eyesight.... This is a sad business.... I gather that you empower me to repeat to my wife that you are--quite naturally, I admit--are unreconciled.... Or, at least, only partly reconciled to----"
"Unreconciled. I won't make any pretences, Sir Hamilton. I do _not_ think there need be any nonsense between us. I am the girl's mother, and it is my duty to speak plain, for her sake."
"My wife will entirely agree with you."
"I hope so. But I am not sorry that I should have an opportunity of speaking freely to you. This is the first I have had. I wish you to know without disguise exactly how this marriage of Gwen and your Adrian--if it ever comes off--will present itself to me, as the girl's mother."
Sir Hamilton inclined his head slightly, which may have meant:--"I am prepared to listen to you as the boy's father, and his mother's proxy."
"As the girl's mother," repeated the lady. "I shall continue to think, as I think now, that there is an _unreal_ element in my daughter's ... a ... regard for your son."
"An unreal element! Very often is, in young ladies' predilections for young gentlemen."
The Countess rushed on to avoid a complex abstract subject, with pitfalls galore. "Which may very well endanger her future.... Well!--may endanger the happiness of both.... I don't mean that she isn't in love with him--whatever the word means, and sometimes one hardly knows. I mean now that she is under an influence which may last, or may not, but which might never have existed but for ... but for the accident."
"My wife has said the same thing, more than once." Her ladyship could have dispensed with this constant reference to the late Miss Abercrombie. She felt that it put her at a disadvantage.
"And the Earl entirely agrees with me," said she. For why should her ladyship not play a card of the same suit? "There is something I want to say, and I don't know how to say it. But _he_ said it the other day, and I felt exactly as he did. He said, as near as I recollect:--'If I had twenty daughters to give away, I would not grudge one to poor Adrian, if I thought it would do something to make up for the wrong I have done him....'"
Sir Hamilton interrupted warmly. "No, Lady Ancester, no! I cannot allow that to be said! We have never thought of it that way. We do not think of it that way. We never shall think of it that way. It was an accident, pure and simple. It might have happened to _his_ son, on my bit of preserved land. All the owners about shoot stray dogs."
"But if it had, and you had had a mad daughter--because Gwen is a mad girl, if ever there was one--who got a Quixotic idea like this in her head, you would have felt exactly as my husband does."
"Should I? Well--I suppose I should. No, I don't think I should....
Well--at least...!"
"At least, what?"
"At least, if I had supposed that ... that Irene, for instance"--Sir Hamilton's mind required a tangible reality to rest upon--"that Irene was head over ears in love with some man...." He did not seem to have his conclusion ready.
"And you _are_ convinced that my daughter is head over ears, in love with your son? Is that it?" The Countess spoke rather coldly, and Sir Hamilton felt uncomfortable. "It seems to me that the whole thing turns on that. Are you certain that you have not _allowed_ yourself to be convinced?"
"Allowed myself--I'm not sure I understand."
"With less proof, I mean, than her parents have a right to ask for--less than you would have asked yourself in the reverse case?"
Sir Hamilton felt more uncomfortable. He ought to have answered that he was very far from certain. But an Englishman is nothing if not a prevaricator; he calls it being scrupulously truthful. "I have no right to catechize Lady Gwendolen," said he.
"And her parents have, of course. I see. But if her parents, _are_ convinced--as I certainly am in this case, and I think my husband is, almost--that there is an unreal element on Gwen's side, it ought to ...
to carry weight with you."
"It would carry weight. It does carry weight. But ... However, I must talk to Lady Torrens about this." He appeared very uncomfortable indeed, and was visibly flushed. But that may have been the red glow of a dying fire in the half-light, or half-darkness, striking his face as he rested his elbow on the chimney-piece, while its hand wandered from his brow to his chin, expressing irresolute perplexity. Until, as she sat silent, as though satisfied that he could have now no doubt about her wishes, he spoke again, abruptly. "I wish you would tell me exactly what you suppose to be the case."
She addressed herself to explicit statement. "I believe Gwen is acting under an unselfish impulse, and I do not believe in unselfish impulses.
If a girl is to run counter to the wishes of her parents, and to obvious common sense, at least let her impulse be a selfish one. Let her act entirely for her own sake. Gwen made your son's acquaintance under peculiar circumstances--romantic circumstances--and, as I know, instantly saw that his eyesight might be destroyed and that the blame would rest with her family...."
"No, L-Lady Ancester"--he stumbled somehow over the name, for no apparent reason--"I deny that. I protest against it...."
"We need not settle that point. Your feeling is a generous one. But do let us keep to Gwen and Adrian." Her ladyship went on to develop her view of the case, not at all illogically. Her objection to the marriage turned entirely on Adrian's blindness--had not a particle of personal feeling in it. On the contrary, she and her husband saw every reason to believe that the young man, with eyes in his head, would have met with a most affectionate welcome as a son-in-law. This applied especially to the Earl, who, of course, had seen more of Adrian than herself. He had, in fact, conceived an extraordinary _entichement_ for him; so much so that he would sooner, for his own sake purely, that the marriage should come off, as the blindness would affect him very little. But his duty to his daughter remained exactly the same. If there was the slightest reason to suppose that Gwen was immolating herself as a sacrifice--something was implied of an analogy in the case of Jephtha's daughter, but not pressed home owing to obvious weak points--he had no choice, and she had no choice, but to protect the victim from herself.
If they did not do so, what was there to prevent an irrevocable step being taken which might easily lead to disastrous consequences for both?
"You must see," said Gwen's mother very earnestly, "that if my daughter is acting, as my husband and I suppose, from a Quixotic desire to make up to your son for the terrible injury we have done him ... No protests, please!... it is our business to protect her from the consequences of her own rashness--to stand between her and a possible lifelong unhappiness!"
"But what," said the perplexed Baronet, "can _I_ do?" A reasonable question!
"If you can do nothing, no one can. The Earl and myself are so handicapped by our sense of the fearful injury that we have--however unintentionally--inflicted on your son, that we are really tied hand and foot. But you can at least place the case before Adrian as I have placed it before you, and I appeal to you to do so. I am sure you will see that it is impossible for my husband or myself to say the same thing to him."
"But to what end? What do you suppose will come of it? What ... a ...
what difference will it make?"
"It _will_ make a difference. It _must_ make a difference, if your son is made fully aware--he is not, now--of the motives that may be influencing Gwen." The Countess was not at all confident of her case, in respect of any definite change it would produce in the bearing of Adrian towards his _fiancee_, and still less of any effect such change would produce upon that headstrong young lady, if once she suspected its cause. But she had confidence in her memories of the rather stupid middle-aged gentleman of whom, as a young dragoon, she had had such very intimate experience. He was still sensitively honourable, as in those old days--she was sure of that. Unless, indeed, he had changed very much morally, as he had certainly done physically. He would shrink from the idea of his son profiting by an heroic self-devotion of the daughter of a man who was no more to blame for his son's mishap than he himself would have been in the counter-case he had supposed. And he would impress her view of the position on his son. It would have no visible and immediate result now, but how about the six months at Vienna? Might it not be utilised to undermine that position during those six months of fascinating change? She pictured to herself an abatement of what her mind thought of as "the heroics" in the first six weeks.
At least, she could see, at this moment, that she had gained her immediate end. The uneasiness of the Baronet was visible in all that can show uneasiness in a not very expressive exterior--restlessness of hand and lips, and the fixed brow of perplexity. "Very good--very good!" he was saying, "I will talk to my wife about it. You may depend on me to do what I can. Only--if you are mistaken...."
"About Gwen? If I am, things must take their own course. But I think it will turn out that I am right.... That is all, is it not? I am truly sorry not to have seen Lady Torrens. I hope she will be better.... Oh yes--it's all right about the time. They know I am coming, at Poynders.
And I should have time to dress for dinner, anyhow. Good-bye!" Her ladyship held out a decisive hand, that said:--"Curtain."
But Sir Hamilton did not seem so sure the performance was over. "Half a minute more, L-Lady Ancester," said he; and he again half-stumbled over her name. "I am rather slow in expressing myself, but I have something I want to say."