CHAPTER II.
ADIEU.
“Are you not a long time getting to the Hall?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn innocently. “It looked so very near when I was at the top of the tree. I am afraid I must be dreadfully heavy, after all. Do let me try to walk.”
“Not for the world; you might injure yourself for life,” he replied. “I could have hurried a little more, only that I was afraid of shaking you.”
Of course he could. Lady Gwendolyn knew that as well as he did, and smiled to herself. Surely he deserved that she should play with him a little, when for two long years he had kept her in suspense as to the state of his feelings, and had only betrayed them by accident now.
“You carry me beautifully,” she said, with her most gracious air. “You must be wonderfully strong.”
“I used to be; but I have seen my best days, you know.”
“I don’t know. What age are you?” she asked, in her usual downright way.
“Nearly thirty-four.”
“Say thirty-three; there is no need to anticipate. I shall be twenty next week; but I mean to call myself nineteen until twelve o’clock on Monday night. When I reach twenty-five I shall pause there for four or five years, and then go on as slowly as possible, counting every other year, until I am awfully old, and then I sha’n’t mind.”
“Would you really mind now if you were—thirty, say?”
“Yes—I should,” she replied, with great decision.
“Then how dreadfully you must feel for me, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“I don’t think it signifies about a man’s age, unless he is beginning to get infirm. But you have plenty of good years before you yet, Colonel Dacre.”
“I hope you are a true prophet, Lady Gwendolyn. I can assure you that, so far, I have only seen the dark side of life.”
“And yet to outsiders you always seem such a very fortunate person.”
“Do I? Why?”
“You have plenty of money, a fine old property, health to enjoy your advantages; and, therefore, as the world argues, you are an exceedingly fortunate person.”
“Of course, I forgot,” he said bitterly; “money is everything in this world; and yet how little it can buy—of what one values most, I mean.”
“Why, it buys diamonds!” exclaimed Lady Gwendolyn naïvely.
“And you value them more than anything?”
“Well, they are property,” said her ladyship, with a provoking laugh. “I get tired of an ornament so soon; it is nice to know I can dispose of it to advantage, and buy something that pleases me better with the money.”
“Lady Gwendolyn, I give you notice that I don’t believe a word you are saying.”
“No?”
“No, I do not believe you to be so bad as you make yourself out,” he pursued, with indignant emphasis, for he was trying to convince himself as well as to shame her. “But I cannot understand the pleasure of shocking people.”
“Because you are not sensational.”
“Heaven forbid!” he ejaculated fervently.
“Why ‘Heaven forbid?’ There is nothing so delightful. I should die of ennui down here, if it weren’t for an occasional tragedy or surprise.”
“It is to be hoped you won’t have one too many,” he answered gravely.
She lifted her mutinous face from his shoulder to look into his eyes, and then subsided back into her warm shelter, smiling an odd, keen, satisfied little smile, which seemed to say: “You belong to me so thoroughly now that, whatever I may say or do, you cannot break your bonds.”
And, alas! it was only too true. He knew this himself by his undiminished longing to crush her into his arms—to carry her away to some quiet corner of the earth, where she might belong to him undisputed, and satisfy his whole being with the sweetness of her presence. For this he would have resigned gladly all the advantages she had just been enumerating; for this he would have sacrificed everything but his honor, and hope of heaven.
“Well,” she said, after a long pause, “why don’t you talk?”
“I have nothing to say, Lady Gwendolyn, that would be sufficiently tragical, or surprising, either, to amuse you,” he answered, with indulgent irony.
“I am not so sure of that. Do you know what somebody told me once?”
“Somebody must have told you so many things at different times.”
“But I mean about you?”
“I am no Œdipus, Lady Gwendolyn,” he answered; and, though he constrained himself to speak coolly, his lips went white.
“That you have a secret in your life—a skeleton in your cupboard,” she said, in a quick breath, that showed that she was speaking with a purpose, and not out of mere audacity and carelessness. “Is it true?”
He seemed to swallow down a great lump in his throat before he could answer her; and then his voice was strangely hoarse, and unlike his natural tones.
“Do you ask this out of curiosity only, Lady Gwendolyn?”
It was her turn to steady her voice before she responded:
“No—at least, not exactly.”
“Then tell me your motive?”
And, unconsciously, in his eagerness he stooped over her, until his lips touched her hair.
“I—I want to know,” she stammered out.
“That is not a reason.”
“It is the best I can give you.”
“The best you can give me would be the true one.”
“A woman does not like to confess that she is curious,” she said evasively.
“Then it is curiosity?”
“I did not say so.”
“You implied it, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“Don’t you know that speech was given to us to enable us to conceal our thoughts, Colonel Dacre?”
“You are fencing the question. I wish you would be frank with me for once.”
“It is a great mistake to be frank. You only put weapons into your enemies’ hands for them to wound you with.”
“But you are not obliged to be frank with enemies, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“If once people get into the habit, it is very difficult to break it off. Besides, who is to discriminate between friend and foe?”
“I thought a woman’s wonderful instinct always helped her there.”
“Not always. For instance”—saucily—“I have never been able to discover yet whether you like me or not.”
“Then you must be extraordinarily obtuse,” he answered, in the same tone.
“I acknowledged as much just now.”
But at this moment they reached the Hall, in spite of Colonel Dacre’s lingering, and he carried her carefully over the threshold, and placed her on the sofa in a small room, which had once been his mother’s boudoir, and where the pretty things a refined woman likes to collect around her lay about in elegant profusion.
“Now I will go and speak to my housekeeper, and place you in her charge during my absence,” he said; and was moving toward the door, when she put out her hand and detained him.
“Colonel Dacre, will you do me a great favor?”
“A dozen if I had the chance,” he answered, with more vehemence than he was conscious of.
“I don’t want any one to know I am here until you return.”
“Oh, but, Lady Gwendolyn, it is impossible that I should leave you without assistance.”
“Not if I prefer it?” she asked, with her most persuasive accent.
“When people want things that are bad for them we generally serve them, in spite of themselves, by a denial.”
“Yes; but this is not really bad for me. My foot has entirely ceased to pain me, and what I want now is simply rest and quiet. I know Mrs. Whittaker, and she is a terrible gossip. I could not stand her in my best moments; now she would irritate me beyond endurance.”
Seeing him still hesitate, she added, in a decided tone:
“Very well, then, if she comes, or any fuss is made in the house, I will hop home, somehow, Colonel Dacre. There will be an astonishing story abroad to-morrow if Mrs. Whittaker is taken into our confidence——”
“But how is this to be avoided?” he interrupted.
“Very easily indeed. Lady Teignmouth will come to fetch me presently, and how should your servants know that we did not arrive together?”
“You forget that we shall have to account for Doctor Thurlow’s sudden visit.”
“I don’t see any need for that. You are not surely bound to keep your servants au courant as to all your movements.”
“That is about the last thing I should think of as a rule. I trouble myself very little about what they think; but I am naturally sensitive for you, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“If that is the case, you must see that my proposition is a good one. The servants are less likely to talk if they have nothing to talk about.”
“You don’t do justice to their inventive faculties, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“I don’t profess to understand them much,” she answered, with the hauteur of a true patrician. “I always hear that they are very unsatisfactory people; but I am sufficiently fortunate, I suppose, for I don’t often change my maids.”
“And I never change mine,” he said, laughing. “I always find the same faces here when I return from my travels. But are you quite determined to banish Mrs. Whittaker, Lady Gwendolyn?”
“Entirely. I infinitely prefer to be alone; and as I am free from pain, and perfectly composed, I really don’t see what I could do with her if she were here, except listen to your praises.”
“And that would be too trying.”
“I never said so; but, as you advocate frankness, I will admit that I would rather the pleasure were postponed.”
“Sine die, I suppose?”
“Colonel Dacre, you are too spiteful! I won’t listen to you any longer.”
And she turned her face to the wall, with a resolute air.
He went down on one knee, and said in a tragical tone:
“I cannot depart without your forgiveness. There is a deep pit on the Teignmouth Road, and, blinded by despair, I should be sure to fall into it! There is also a swift river beyond. You will not, surely, send me forth to certain destruction?”
She gave him her hand, and his lips fastened on it eagerly, passionately. She kept her face averted still, but she did not chide him, and a faint tremor went through her whole frame. Then slowly she turned her head, and, looking him straight in the eyes, said softly:
“You have not told me your secret yet.”
He sprang to his feet abruptly, as if he had been stung.
“Who told you I had a secret?” he asked, in a stifled voice.
“Some one.”
“Is it impossible that ‘some one’ should lie?”
“Tell me it is so, and I will believe you.”
Dead silence.
“Do you hear me, Colonel Dacre?”
“Yes, I hear you, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“Then answer something,” she added, in an impatient tone.
Again he was mute.
She snatched her hand away from him, and turned her face to the wall once more.
“I understand you, Colonel Dacre. You have a secret, and one you would be ashamed to tell me.”
“Is that a necessary inference?” he inquired, in a low, constrained voice.
“I think so.”
“Perhaps you are too prejudiced to be just.”
“I don’t know why I should be. You and I were always good friends, in the social sense of the term. For instance, you always asked me for two or three dances when we met at a ball, and sometimes you even took me down to supper. I have even known you to shelter me from the sun by holding my parasol at a garden-party; and once you so far sacrificed yourself as to play croquet at my desire. After that I never allowed myself to doubt your devotion, I assure you; and I am surprised you should think I could be prejudiced against you.”
“Can you never be serious?” he said painfully.
“I am serious now.”
“I should be sorry to think so.”
“Why? I have not said anything bad, have I?”
“No; but if your seriousness is so much like jest, how is one ever to know which you mean it to be?”
“You must wait for circumstances to enlighten you.”
“How long?”
“That depends upon—circumstances.”
“You are very enigmatical, Lady Gwendolyn, and, as I said before, I am no Œdipus.”
“Then you give me up?” she said, laughing.
“As a riddle, yes. There never was a man yet who could fathom a woman, from Adam downward.”
“It was never intended that you should, evidently, or Eve would not have been allowed to set such a precedent. Weakness is often obliged to seem like duplicity in self-defense.”
“Do you call yourself weak? Physical strength is not the greatest, after all, or Una would never have tamed the lion.”
“If you lapse into allegory, I am undone,” she said gaily. “I am no ‘scholar,’ as the poor people say. What little my governesses managed to teach me I have forgotten long ago.”
“And yet, I heard you translate a Latin epigram very creditably the other day.”
“Nonsense! Colonel Dacre. Your ears deceived you. I should have been so exhausted mentally by the effort that I should not have been able to frame an intelligible sentence for at least a year afterward, and you see I am quite rational to-day.”
He rose with an impatient, weary air. It seemed as if she were such an incorrigible trifler, and had so thoroughly accustomed herself to look on the ridiculous side of everything, that now she could not be serious even if she wished.
And yet she was so lovely; and what better excuse did a man ever need for such folly?
“‘If to her share a thousand errors fall,
Look in her face and you forget them all,’”
the colonel muttered to himself, rather grimly, as he furtively examined the delicate profile which was just sufficiently out of the straight Greek line to give it more piquancy without losing the grace of the model.
Though she was somewhat above the middle height, she might have worn Cinderella’s glass slipper with ease, and her hand was so small, and soft, and plump, it seemed to melt in your grasp.
Altogether, she was the only woman yet who had ever entirely satisfied him. Others had charmed him for a time, but he had never learned to love them because somehow they had always managed to disenchant him before he reached that point. But he had only to see Lady Gwendolyn to tumble headlong, foolishly in love; and though he had been struggling to get out of bondage ever since, each month seemed to strengthen his chains.
Now he had surrendered at discretion, and felt himself at the mercy of this black-browed witch of a woman, who seemed to think it a pleasant pastime to break the hearts of those who loved her.
Having almost reached the door, he came back to say wistfully:
“Do you forgive me for disobeying you, Lady Gwendolyn?”
“No,” she answered shortly and sternly; for she was given to these Protean changes of mood. “You have not told me your secret.”
“Why will you harp upon that miserable subject? I do not question you upon your past.”
“You have no right,” she said haughtily.
A sudden glow crept into his face; his eyes shone with triumph.
“You think that you have a right to know mine, then, Lady Gwendolyn?”
She saw then what inference she had favored, and grew crimson to the very roots of her hair under his searching, impassioned gaze. Amazed at her own embarrassment, she answered petulantly:
“I wish you would let me rest, Colonel Dacre. I might as well have had Mrs. Whittaker if you were going to gossip like this.”
“I beg your pardon,” he answered, with a formal bow; “I forget that I might be boring you. What message shall I give Lady Teignmouth from you?”
“None whatever, thank you. Say what you think fit. She is sure to be shocked, anyhow, for she is the most unmitigated prude I ever knew; but she will recover herself in time, I dare say. Will you kindly hand me a book before you go?”
He chose one that he thought would interest her, placed it on a little table beside her sofa, with very evident pleasure in the service, and then, remembering Lot’s wife, he left the room without once looking back.
Lord Teignmouth’s park adjoined his, and he had not far to go; but, on reaching the house, he heard, to his dismay, that his lordship and wife had driven out together to make some calls, and were not expected home until six o’clock.
Of course he could not confide his errand to the butler, and, therefore, he simply said that he would call again later, and took his way toward the village. But, as luck would have it, Doctor Thurlow was also absent, having been sent for a few minutes before he arrived; and, as his patient lived nearly eight miles off, there was not much chance of his being back for an hour and a half, at least.
Colonel Dacre began to think that everything was conspiring to drive him crazy. He might reasonably have counted upon taking back one of the three people he had gone to fetch, and so setting Lady Gwendolyn right with the world, supposing her adventure got wind; and not knowing what to do now, he decided to walk back to the Hall as quickly as possible, and hear what his guest wished done.
He began to see now that it was a mistake to have taken her there at all. If he had only carried her into Bates’ house, nothing could possibly have been said—only that people always think of these brilliant expedients when it is too late to carry them into effect, and as it had not suggested itself to Lady Gwendolyn she could hardly blame him for his forgetfulness.
He had left the door ajar, and stole into the house unperceived. Perhaps in his heart of hearts he was not sorry that he should have another tête-à-tête with Lady Gwendolyn, though he would not have confessed as much even to himself, so anxious was he to be honorable even in thought.
The door of the little boudoir where he had left her was shut fast, and he knocked softly thrice without receiving any answer. At last, fancying that the girl must have fallen asleep, he opened it with a certain hesitation and peered in, naturally glancing first toward the sofa, where he had seen her last, reclining helplessly back among the cushions.
She was not there.
Somewhat alarmed now, he walked boldly in, and searched even behind the curtains, thinking, perhaps, her ladyship was coquetting with his fears, and enjoying his discomfiture from her hiding-place. But she was not there, or anywhere, so far as he could perceive, and he paused in great perplexity. Had the Teignmouths chanced to call while he was away, and carried her off?
This seemed the most feasible solution of the mystery, considering the state she was in, and he was about to adopt it, when he suddenly caught sight of a little three-cornered note lying on the table which he had placed beside Lady Gwendolyn’s couch.
It was addressed to “Colonel Dacre,” and, tearing it open eagerly, he read the following words, whose expressiveness was only equaled by their laconicism:
“I have found out your secret at last. Adieu.”