I
MARY, breakfasting late and at leisure, before her ride at eleven, had propped the Morning Post against the coffee-pot. Milly was arranging roses in a blue bowl.
“I’m miserable!” Mary suddenly proclaimed. She had let her eyes stray to the column devoted to marriage and the giving in marriage, and at last she had flung the paper away from her.
“Get on with your breakfast,” said the practical Milly. “I’ve really no patience with you.”
Mary rose from the table with big trouble in her face.
“You’re a gaby,” said Milly, scornfully. “If everybody was like you there’d be no carrying on the world at all. You’re absurd. Mother is quite annoyed with you, and so am I.”
“I’m simply wretched.” The tone was very far from that of the fine resolute creature whom Milly adored.
The truth was Mary had been following a policy of drift and it was beginning to tell upon her. Nearly a week had gone since the visit to Laxton had disclosed a state of things which had trebly confounded confusion. Besides, that ill-timed pilgrimage had given duty a sharper point, a keener edge, but as yet she had not gathered the force of will to meet the hard logic of the matter squarely.
In spite of a growing resolve to make an end of a situation that all at once had become intolerable, she had weakly consented to ride that morning with Jack as usual. So far he had proved the stronger, no doubt because two factors of supreme importance were on his side. One was the promise into which very incautiously she had let herself be lured, to which he had ruthlessly held her, the other the simple fact that she was deeply in love with him. It had been very perilous to temporize, yet having been weak enough to do so, each passing day tightened her bonds. The little scheme had failed. Laxton had caused not the slightest change in his attitude; he was not the kind of man to be influenced by things of that kind; only a simpleton like herself would expect him to be! No, the plain truth was he was set more than ever on not giving her up, and it was going to be a desperate business to compel him. To make matters worse his attraction for her was great. There was a force, a quality about him which she didn’t know how to resist. When they were apart she made resolves which when they were together she found herself unable to keep. The truth was, the cry of nature was too strong.
Milly looked up from her roses to study a picture of distraction.
“You odd creature.” A toss of a sagacious head.
The charge was admitted frankly, freely, and fully.
“I don’t understand you in the least.” A wrinkling of a pert nose.
“I don’t understand myself.”
Milly looked at her wonderingly. “I really don’t. You are quite beyond me. If you were actually afraid of these people, which I don’t for a moment think you are, one might begin to see what’s at the back of your absurd mind.”
“Why don’t you think I’m afraid of them?” Mary in spite of herself was a little amused by the downrightness.
The question brought her right up against an eye of very honest admiration.
“Because, Miss Lawrence, it simply isn’t in you to be afraid of anybody.”
Princess Bedalia shook a rueful head. “You say that because you don’t know all. I’m in a mortal funk of Bridport House.”
“That I won’t believe,” said the robust Milly. “And if a fit of high-falutin’ sentiment, for which you’ll get not an ounce of credit, causes you to throw away your happiness, and turn your life into a sob-story, neither my mother nor I will ever forgive you, so there!”
“You seem to forget that I am the housekeeper’s niece.”
“As though it mattered.” The pert nose twitched furiously. “As though it matters a row of little apples. You are yourself—your big and splendid self. Any man is lucky to get you.”
But the large, long-lashed eyes were full of pain. “We look at things so differently. I can’t explain what I mean or what I feel, but I want to see the whole thing, if I can, as others see it.”
“We are the others—mother and I,” said Milly, stoutly. “But as we are not titled snobs with Bridport House stamped on our notepaper, I suppose we don’t count.”
“That’s not fair.” A curious look came into Mary’s face, which Milly had noticed before and, for a reason she couldn’t explain, somehow resented. “They have their point of view and it’s right that they should have. Without it they wouldn’t be what they are, would they?”
“You speak as if they were better than other people.”
“Why, of course.”
“I shall begin to think you are as bad as they are,” Milly burst out impatiently. “You are the oddest creature. I can understand your not going where you are not wanted, but that’s no reason why you should fight for the other side.”
“I want them to have fair play.”
“It’s more than they mean you to have, any way.”
“One oughtn’t to say that.” The tone had a quaint sternness, charming to the ear, yet with a great power of affront for the soul of Milly.
“Miss Lawrence,” said that democrat, “you annoy me. If you go on like this before mother she’ll shake you. The trouble with you”—a rather fierce recourse to a cigarette—“is that you are a bit of a prig. You must admit that you are a bit of a prig, aren’t you now?”
“More than a bit of one,” sighed Mary. And then the light of humor broke over her perplexity. In the eyes of Milly this was her great saving clause; and in spite of an ever-deepening annoyance with her friend for the hay she was making of such amazingly brilliant prospects, she could not help laughing at the comic look of her now.
“You are much too clever to take things so seriously,” said Milly. “You are not the least bit of a prig in anything else, and that’s why you made me so angry. Be sensible and follow your luck. Jack should know far better than you. Besides, if you didn’t mean to keep your word, why did you give it?”
This was a facer, as the candid Milly intended it to be.
“Because I was a fool.” At the moment that seemed the only possible answer.
II
The argument had not gone farther when a rather strident “coo-ee” ascending from the pavement below found its way through the open window.
“Diana, you are wanted.” The impulsive Milly ran on to the little balcony to wave a hand of welcome to a young man in the street.
It was the intention, however, of the young man in the street, as soon as he could find someone to look after his horses, to come up and have a talk with Mary. To the quick-witted person to whom he made known that resolve, he seemed much graver than usual. It hardly required any special clairvoyance on the part of Milly to realize that something was in the wind.
Three minutes later, Jack had found his way up and Milly had effaced herself discreetly. This morning that warrior was not quite the serenely humorous self whom his friends found so engaging. Recent events had annoyed him, disquieted him, upset him generally, and the previous afternoon they had culminated in a long and unsatisfactory interview at Bridport House.
Those skilled in the signs might have told, from the young man’s manner, that he had cast himself for a big thinking part. This morning he was “all out” for diplomacy. He would like Mary to know that his back was to the wall, and that he must be able to count on her implicitly in the stern fight ahead; but the crux of the problem was, and for that reason he felt such a great need of cunning, if he let her know the full force and depth of the opposition the effect upon her might be the reverse of what he intended. Even apart from the stab to her pride, she was quite likely to make it a pretext for further quixotism. Therefore, Mr. John Dinneford had decided to walk very delicately indeed this morning.
His Grace, it appeared, had asked to see the lady in the case. Jack, however, scenting peril in the request, had by no means consented lightly to that. Diplomacy, assuming a very large D, had promptly assured him that his kinsman and fiancée were far too much birds of a feather; their method of looking at large issues was ominously alike. Mary had developed what Jack called “the Aunt Sanderson viewpoint” to an alarming degree. Aunt Sanderson, no doubt, had acquired it in the first place from the fountain head; its authenticity therefore made it the more perilous.
“Uncle Albert sends his compliments and hopes you’ll be kind enough to go and see him.” The statement was made so casually that it was felt to be a masterpiece of the non-committal. He would defy anyone to tell from his tone how he had fought the old wretch, how he had tried to outwit him, how he had done his damnedest to short-circuit a most mischievous resolve.
“Now.” The diplomatist took her boldly by a very fine pair of shoulders, and so made a violent end of the pause which had followed the important announcement. “Whatever you do, be careful not to give away the whole position. There’s a cunning old fox to deal with, and if he finds the weak spot, we’re done.”
“You mean he thinks as I do?”
“I don’t say he does exactly, but, of course, he may. When you come to Bridport House, you are up against all sorts of crassness.”
“Or common sense, whichever you choose to call it,” said the troubled Mary.
“Don’t you go playing for them.” He shook the fine shoulders in a masterful colonial manner. “If you do, I’ll never forgive you. Bridport House can be trusted to take very good care of itself. We’ve got to keep our own end going. If we have really made up our minds to get married, no one has a right to prevent us, and it’s up to you to let his Grace know that.”
Again came the look of trouble. “But suppose I don’t happen to think so?”
“I think so for you. In fact, I think it so strongly that I intend to answer for both.”
She could not help secretly admiring this cool audacity. At any rate, it was the speech of a man who knew his own mind, and in spite of herself it pleased her.
“Now, remember.” Once more the over-bold wooer resorted to physical violence: “You simply can’t afford to enjoy the luxury of your fine feelings in this scene of the comedy. As I say, he’s a cunning old fox and he’ll play on them for all he’s worth.”
“But why should he?”
“Because he knows you are Mrs. Sanderson’s niece.”
“In his opinion that would make one the less likely to have them, wouldn’t it?” She tried very hard to keep so much as a suspicion of bitterness out of her tone, yet somehow it seemed almost impossible to do that.
“He’s not exactly a fool. Nobody knows better than he that your Aunt Sanderson is more royalist than the king. And my view is that he and she have laid their heads together in order to work upon your scruples.”
“Pray, why shouldn’t they? Isn’t it right that they should?”
“There you go!” he said sternly. “Now, look here.” In the intensity of the moment his face was almost touching hers. “I’m next in at Bridport House, so this is my own private funeral. But I just want to say this. A man can’t go knocking about the world in the way I have done without getting through to certain things. And as soon as that happens one no longer sees Bridport House at the angle at which it sees itself. White marble and precedence were all very well in the days of Queen Victoria, but they won’t build airships, you know.”
“I never heard of a duchess building airships.”
“It’s the duke who is going to do the building. The particular hobo I’m figuring on has got to take a hand in all sorts of stunts at this moment of the world’s progress which will make his distinguished forbears turn in their graves, no doubt. It seems to me he’s got to do a single on the big time, as they say in vaudeville, and the finest girl in the western hemisphere must keep him up to his job.”
“‘Some’ talk,” said Mary, with a smile rather drawn and constrained.
“You see”—the force of his candor amused her considerably—“I’ve drawn a big prize in the lottery, and if I let myself be robbed of it by other people’s tomfool tricks, I’m a guy, a dead-beat, an out and out dud.”
“But don’t you see,” she urged, laughing a little, although suffering bitterly, “how cruel it would be for them, poor souls? We must think of them a little.”
“Why should they come in at all?”
“I really think they ought, poor dears. After all, they stand for something.” She recalled their former talk on this vexed subject.
“What do they stand for?—that’s the point. They are an inbred lot, a mass of conceit and silly prejudice. I’m sorry to give them away like this, but, after all, they are only very distant relations to whom I owe nothing, and they have a trick of annoying me unspeakably.”
“I won’t have you say such things.” The stern line of a truly adorable mouth was a delight, a challenge. “You are one of them, whether you want to be or whether you don’t, and it’s your duty to stand by them. Noblesse oblige, you know.”
“And that means a scrupulous respect for the feelings of other people, if it means anything. No, let us see things as they are and come down to bedrock.” And as the Tenderfoot spoke after this manner, he took a hand of hers in each of his in a fashion at once whimsical, delicate, and loverlike. Somehow he had the power to put an enchantment upon her. “You’ve got to marry me whatever happens.”
“Oh, don’t ask me to do that.” Black trouble was now in her eyes. “Don’t ask me to go where I’m not wanted.”
“Certainly you shan’t. We can do without Bridport House, and if they can do without us, by all means let ’em.”
“But they are in a cleft stick, aren’t they? If you insist, they will simply have to climb down, and that’s why it would be cruel to make them. Don’t be too hard upon them—please!” A sudden change of voice, rich and surprising, held him like magic. “Somehow they don’t quite seem to deserve it. They have their points. And they are really rather big and fine if you see them as I do.”
“They are crass, conceited, narrow, ossified. They think the world was made for ’em, instead of thinking they were made for the world. It’s time they had a lesson. And you and I have got to teach ’em.” He took her wrists and drew her to him. “We’ve got to larn ’em to be toads—you and me.”
“On these grounds you command me!” The flash of glorious eyes was a direct challenge.
“No, on these—you darling.” And he took her in his arms and held her in a grip of iron.
III
“Please, please!”
Reluctantly he let her go—provisionally and on sufferance.
But there was something in her face that looked like fear. The observant lover saw it at once, and the invincible lover tried to dispel it.
“Why take it tragically?” he said. “It’s a thing to laugh at, really.”
She shook a solemn head. “We must think of them—you must at any rate. You are all they have, and you are bound to play for them as well as you know how—aren’t you, my dear?” The soft fall of her voice laid a siren’s spell upon him. His eyes glowed as he looked at her.
“No, I don’t see it in that way,” he said. “Somehow I can’t. It’s my colonial outlook, I daresay—anyhow there it is—simply us two. The bedrock of the matter is you and me? And when you get down to that, other people don’t come in, do they?”
Again she shook a head rather woeful in its defiance. “Poor Aunt Harriet came to me yesterday. I wish you could have seen her. This means the end of the world for her. She almost went down on her knees to implore me not to marry you.”
The Tenderfoot snorted with impatience. “That’s where this old one-horse island gets me all the time. Things are all wrong here. They’re positively medieval.”
“You forget”—the tone of the voice was stern dissent—“she’s been thirty years a servant in the Family.”
“That should make her all the prouder to see her niece married to the head of it.” He was determined to stand his ground.
“Yes, but she understands what it means to them. She has thought herself into their skins; she lives and moves and has her being in Bridport House. Dear soul, it makes me weep to think of her! She almost forced me to give you up.”
“You can’t do that, not on grounds of that kind.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because I won’t let you.” She was bound to admire this masculine decision. “Your Aunt Sanderson is a woman of fine character and Uncle Albert has a great regard for her, but why let ourselves be sidetracked by prejudice? You see this is the call of the blood, and—under Providence!—it means the grafting of a very valuable new strain upon a pretty effete one. I mean no disrespect to Bridport House, but look what the system of intermarriage has done for it. From all one hears poor Lyme was better out of the world than in it. And that parcel of stupid women! And, of course, I should never have been here at all if another couple of consumptive cousins hadn’t suddenly decided to hand in their checks. So much for the feudal system, so much for inbreeding and marrying to order. No, it won’t do!”
In spite of her own deep conviction, she could not hope to shake such force and such sincerity. She was bound to admit the strength of his case. But the power of his argument left her in a miserable dilemma, from which there seemed but one means of escape. There must be no half-measures.
“Let us be wise and make an end now,” she said very softly.
“It’s not playing fair if you do,” was the ruthless answer. “Besides, as I say, Uncle Albert wants to see you.”
“I am quite sure it would be far better to end it all now.”
“You must go and see Uncle Albert before we decide upon anything,” he said determinedly.
“I don’t mind doing that, if really he wishes it.” There was a queer little note of reverence in her tone, which the Tenderfoot, having intelligently anticipated, was inclined to resent as soon as he heard it. “I don’t know why he should trouble himself with me, but I’ll go as he asks me to. But whatever happens we can’t possibly get married, unless——”
“Unless what?” he demanded sternly.
“Unless the head of the house gives a full and free consent, and of course he’ll never do that.”
“It remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, no, it’s all so clear. Poor Aunt Harriet has made me realize that. I never saw anyone so upset as she was yesterday; she nearly broke down, poor dear. She has made me see that there is so much at stake for them all, that it simply becomes one’s duty not to go on.”
“Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish!” The Tenderfoot suddenly became tempestuous. “Mere parochialism, I assure you. I’ve been back six months, and every day it strikes me more and more what a lot we’ve got to learn. Our so-called social fabric is mainly bunkum. Half the prejudice in these islands is a mere cloak for damnable incompetence. Forgive my saying just what is in my mind, but this flunkeyism of ours—try to keep the daggers out of your eyes, my charmer!—fairly gets one all the time. In one form or another one’s always up against it.”
“It isn’t flunkeyism at all.” The air of outrage was nothing less than adorable.
“Let me finish——”
“Under protest!” Her face was aglow with the light of battle.
“It’s perfectly absurd to take a mere pompous stunt like Bridport House at its own valuation.”
“I won’t have you vulgar—I won’t allow you to be vulgar!”
“Be it so, Miss Prim—but I don’t apologize. One’s uncles, cousins, aunts, they are all alike, whether they are yours or mine. They simply grovel before material greatness—the greatness that comes of money—that begins and ends with money.”
“Don’t be rude, sir!” The stamp of a particularly smart riding boot, and a flash of angry eyes were as barbs to this fiat.
“They are all so set on things that don’t matter a bit, that they lose sight altogether of the one thing that is really important.”
“Pray, what is that?” The eyes held now a lurking, troubled smile; for him at that moment, their fascination verged upon the tragic.
Suddenly both the slender wrists were seized by this forcible thinker. “Why the time spirit, you charmer. And that just asks one simple question. Do you love me—or do you not?”
IV
She tried to keep her eyes from his.
“You can’t hide the truth,” he cried triumphantly. “And if you think I’m going to lose you for the sake of some stupid piece of prejudice you don’t know what it means to live five years in God’s own country.”
She seemed to shrink into herself. “Don’t you see the impossibility of the whole thing?” she gasped.
“Frankly, I don’t, or I wouldn’t be such a cad as to badger you. If you marry me an effete strain is going to be your debtor. Just look at them—poor devils! Look at the two who died untimely. That’s the feudal system of marriage working to a logical conclusion. And if I put it squarely to my kinsman, Albert John, who is by no means a fool, he’d be the first to admit it. No, it doesn’t matter what your arguments are, if you override the call of the blood sooner or later there’s bound to be big trouble.”
The conviction of the tone, the urgency of the manner were indeed hard to meet. From the only point of view that really mattered it was impossible to gainsay him, and she was far too intelligent to try. Suddenly she broke away from him and in a wretched state of indecision and unhappiness flung herself into a chair.
“The whole thing’s as clear as daylight.” Pitilessly he followed up the advantage he had won. “There’s really no need to state it. And once more, to come down to bedrock, far better to make an end of Bridport House and all that it stands for—just what it does stand for I have not been able to make out—than that it should perpetuate a race of inbred incompetents who are merely a fixed charge on the community.”
“Oh, you don’t see—you don’t see!” The words were rather feeble, and rather wild, but just then they were all she could offer. Yet in spite of herself, and in spite of the half-promise the intensely unhappy Aunt Harriet had wrung from her on the previous afternoon, the clear-cut determination of this young man, his force and his breadth, his absolute conviction were beginning to tell heavily.
“You are going to Bridport House to have a word with my kinsman. And if you’re true blue—and I know you are that—you will make him see honest daylight. And it ought to be easy, because he has only to look at you—the finest thing up to now that has found its way on to this old planet, in order to realize that he’s right up against it.”
He knew his own mind and she didn’t know hers. Such a man was terribly hard to resist.
“He says any morning at twelve. I suggest tomorrow.”
“You insist?” She was struggling helplessly in meshes of her own weaving.
“I insist. And my last word is that if you let the old beast down us, as of course he’ll try to do, I go back to B. C. and remain a single man to the end of my days. And I’m not out for that, as long as there is half a chance of something better. So that’s that.” In the style of the great lover he laid a hand on each shoulder, looked into the troubled eyes and kissed her. “And now, if you please, we will witch the world with noble horsemanship.”