CHAPTER XIII.
KIND INQUIRIES.
“So you’ll be going this day week?” remarked Mrs. Gabb, as she bustled in with the lamp. “And I’m sure I can’t wonder; it’s lonely-like for you being here in this room by yourself, and London is where most people goes to—it sort of sucks ’em in.”
“Yes; people who have to earn their bread have a better chance of doing so in London.”
“You’ll go in for governessing, I suppose?”
“No. I’m afraid I am not sufficiently accomplished.”
“Laws! I should have thought you was. But it’s a hard life, and poor pay, and often bad usage. And you do sing beautiful. Your voice sort of gives me a lump in my throat, and many’s the night Gabb and I, and sometimes a friend or two, have stood on the stairs, and listened to you a-playing and singing to that guitar. I’m sure you’d take splendidly at one of the music ’alls, if you could only dance a bit! Stop; what’s that, now? There’s a knock at the door, and the girl’s out.” And she rushed down-stairs, and in a very few seconds I was astonished to hear a manly foot in the passage, and she ushered in “Mr. Somers.”
He looked rather embarrassed, and very grave; whilst I, though almost speechless with surprise, was collected enough as I put down my sewing and rose to meet him.
“Miss Hayes, I hope you will pardon me,” he said, “for intruding on you at this hour and in this way; but I felt that writing would be useless, and that I must see you face to face. I am sure I need not tell you how much I feel for your loss, nor how shocked I was to hear of Mrs. Hayes’s death. I believe I actually passed her funeral, when I imagined her to be alive and well.”
“Yes, you did. Won’t you sit down?” I said.
“We only heard the news last night. I was in hopes that my mother would have brought you back with her in the carriage to-day, insisted on your accompanying her. I told her she must take no refusal, but—but”—and he hesitated, and his eyes fell from mine—“I am greatly distressed to learn that you and she have had a most unfortunate misunderstanding—only a misunderstanding—it cannot be more. I know you both. I know my mother; she is absolutely incapable of giving offense; and I trust that I may say that I know you too.”
“You may, if you please. But sometimes I don’t know myself,” I answered recklessly.
“Perhaps you were not yourself to-day. I did not hear what occurred, only this, that my mother returned without you, and she assured me that you absolutely refused to receive any kindness at her hands.”
What garbled story had she laid before him? Should I tell him the truth? No; it would humiliate him, and he had always been most loyal to us.
“Is this correct?” he inquired, in a low voice.
“Yes. I need not enter into unpleasant details, for Lady Hildegarde is your mother. But she has hurt my feelings most deeply.”
“I’m afraid she has an unfortunate manner sometimes; but she means well. She has had a lot of trouble lately. My father has been ailing for a long time, and we have been most unlucky in some money matters, and she is worried and perhaps a little brusque and sharp. I wish you understood one another.”
We understood one another to admiration. I was keenly alive to Lady Hildegarde’s family politics: how it was absolutely necessary that this young man—her son, so eagerly making her excuses to me—was bound, by every family law, to marry his cousin (and my cousin), Dolly Chalgrove—the marriage meant mental ease, suitability, prosperity, fortune. A marriage with me, which she bitterly but needlessly dreaded, meant a miserable, poverty-stricken mésalliance. Yes; I acknowledge that. It was a notorious fact that Mr. Somers was not a squire of dames. Lady Polexfen had magnified his attentions to me. Hence her coldness and neglect of Emma, her eagerness to transport me to the Colonies, her lies to her son, and her stern determination to keep us apart—wide apart.
“And so you will not accept my mother’s friendship?” he pursued.
I shook my head with an emphasis that was some relief to my feelings, although it was not an act of courtesy to my visitor.
“Well,” and he rose as he spoke, a very tall figure in our little low room, “you surely will not taboo me, Miss Hayes?” he asked appealingly. “I received great kindnesses, without question, from your father and mother. I knew your father better than you did yourself. You have told me that you have no relatives in this country.”
“None that I know,” I quibbled, “or that know of me.”
“Yes; you said so. Now, I hope you won’t think I am taking an awful liberty if I ask you what are your plans?”
“On the contrary, it is very kind of you to inquire. I am going to London in a few days, back to our old lodgings. I shall then look about for something to do. I should not care to be a nursery governess, nor, as my landlady suggests, sing and dance at a music-hall.”
“A music-hall!” His elbow swept a little saucer crash into the fender—he was too big for our room. “The woman must be mad!”
“Yes; she confesses that she has often listened outside on the landing when I played my guitar and sang, and thinks I would ‘take,’ as she calls it.”
“But——”
“But you need not be at all alarmed. I shall find some post, perhaps as clerk—I am clever at figures—perhaps as secretary. Mr. Blunt, the rector, will give me a character. I have only myself to please—no one’s wishes to consult.”
As I spoke, he had been fingering the little ornaments on the chimney-piece, with his head half turned away. Then he suddenly confronted me, and said—
“Miss Hayes, I hope what I am going to say will not startle you very much.”
I became cold all over, and my heart beat fast. Was he going to offer me money? I laid down my work to conceal my trembling hands, and looked up in his face.
“You will make me very happy if you will marry me.”
I sat for a moment speechless; then I also rose to my feet, and said in a low voice—I could not get it to sound, somehow—
“You cannot be in earnest, Mr. Somers.”
“I am in earnest—in deadly earnest, Miss Hayes.”
“You have seen me five times.”
“And every time I met you I have liked you better than the last. It began that day at the Stores. I am not a bit susceptible. I never felt drawn to any one in such a way. I have met heaps and heaps of girls, nice ones too and pretty, and gone away and forgotten them in half a day; but you I never forgot. Your memory, your face, came all the way with me out to South America, came back with me; and when I saw you sweeping down the stairs at the Moate that night, I said to myself, ‘Here she comes—my fate!’ My poor old governor has made an awful muddle of our affairs, and we are dreadfully hard up; but I can take one of the farms, and work it myself.” He paused suddenly, and looked at me expectantly.
“Mr. Somers,” I began, “you have—I have—” Then in a sudden burst the words came—“What you ask is impossible.”
“Why?” he questioned softly.
“There is Miss Chalgrove,” I replied, still more softly.
“Oh, that old story!” with a shrug. “It would be an ideal match from the parents’ point of view, to combine the title and property with the money; but we have to be considered. Thank God, we are not crowned heads, who must only consult the welfare of the State. In the first place, my cousin Dolly does not care a straw about me. I am her cousin, comrade, and old friend. She would not marry me for anything. She says she knows me too well; it would be extremely uninteresting and monotonous! Then, I would not marry her; she is a very good fellow, but too much of a handful for any man. She has been riding a brute of a horse in the teeth of every one of her relations, male and female, and I heard to-day that he has given her rather a nasty fall, and she says it’s nothing; but she is so plucky, she always makes light of everything that happens to herself. Well, you see, Miss Chalgrove is no obstacle.”
“No, but there is Lady Hildegarde. If I were to marry you, I should only add to her troubles, and possibly she to mine. You cannot say that your mother would approve of your engagement to a girl you have only met five times, and who is both penniless and friendless?”
He made no immediate answer to this difficult question, and I added—
“She and I do not love one another.”
“But if you love me, Gwendoline, that is the main question. God knows, I love you!”
“You pity me, I am sure; and pity——”
“No, I don’t,” he broke in impetuously, “not in that sense, and I don’t believe in that fusty old saying.”
“And you know nothing about me. You have seen so little of me,” I urged.
“With regard to some people, a little goes a long way. Oh, good heavens, I don’t mean that!”
“I don’t think you know what you mean,” I answered remorselessly.
“Yes, I do; but I am not quick and brilliant like you. I am doing my best to tell you that you are everything in the world to me—more than father, mother, money. I meant that the little I saw of you went a long way to making me care for you; and you are laughing at my blunders, and raising objections. The real, true, and only obstacle is not Lady Hildegarde nor Miss Chalgrove, but Miss Hayes herself. She does not care a brass button about me—any fool can see that!”
He had actually worked himself into a passion.
“You are wrong,” I replied gravely. “The objections are insurmountable. I can never marry you; but I do care for you, and I can promise you one thing—that I will never, never marry any one else——”
“But me—” (seizing my hand before I was aware). “Then, you will promise that, on your word of honor?”
“Yes; I will never marry any one—but you.”
“And when?”
“When your mother asks me to be her daughter-in-law,” I whispered.
His face fell, and he hastily released me, as at this moment, without knock or cough, the door was flung open, and Miss Skuce burst into the room, with a newspaper in her hand.
“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Somers? I had no idea you were here. Don’t you remember me? I’m Miss Skuce—Dr. Skuce’s sister; he attends the Abbey servants, you know.”
Mr. Somers—who looked very black indeed—merely bowed. Was Miss Skuce abashed? No, not a whit; though even she must have seen that she was greatly de trop.
“So sorry to hear that Miss Chalgrove has met with an accident in the hunting-field. I saw it in the paper. How anxious you must be. I trust it’s not serious.”
“No, I believe not”—surveying her with cold curiosity.
“Well, it said that the horse fell on her”—sitting down, and apparently anxious to thresh out the subject at her leisure.
“Miss Hayes,” he said, turning to me, “I shall hope to see you again before you leave.”
He hesitated, reluctant to depart: he had so much to say to me! Then he shook hands, and, with an extremely cool bow to my visitor, walked out of the room. As the door closed after him, she jumped to her feet and cried—
“I saw him coming in. He has been here fully twenty minutes! It’s not at all comme il faut to be receiving men. I knew you would be dreadfully uncomfortable, and so I trotted over. He had no business to call on you. He is a most overbearing-looking young man, and I can’t abide him! He always seems as if he didn’t see me. What brought him? What did he want—eh?”
Oh, this woman—with her pitiless curiosity, her keen little questioning eyes, coming just after my late most trying interview—was quite insupportable! I could have stood up and screamed. I was overwrought, fagged, heartsore. I had had nothing to eat all day but a cup of tea and a slice of toast, for Lady Hildegarde’s pro-luncheon visit had effectually destroyed my appetite for my humble meal.
Still, I struggled for composure and forbearance, and offered a blank wall of impenetrability to Mrs. Gabb and Miss Skuce’s storm of questions; for Mrs. Gabb had entered with the tea-tray, and a friendly determination to know “what brought young Mr. Somers at that hour of the night?”
“It is but barely five,” I answered; “and he came to pay me a visit of condolence. He knew Mrs. Hayes very well in India.”
“It’s a most unusual thing,” said Miss Skuce, suspiciously. “I wonder what his mother would say to it?”
At last I got rid of my pair of tormentors. They found that I was indisposed to be communicative. I pleaded (with truth) that I had a dreadful headache. So they departed together—to wonder, suggest, protest, and to discuss me, whilst I turned down the lamp, threw myself on the sofa, and cried comfortably for a couple of hours.