The Hoyden

by Duchess

CHAPTER XX.

HOW MARGARET STARTS AS A SPECIAL PLEADER, AND IS MUCH WORSTED IN HER ARGUMENT; AND HOW A SIMPLE KNOCK AT THE HALL DOOR SCATTERS ONE BEING WHO DELIGHTS IN WAR.

"I think you ought to see your husband," says Margaret.

It is a bombshell! Tita withdraws her arms from round Margaret's neck and looks at her like one seeing her for the first time. It is plain to Margaret that she is very angry.

Poor Margaret! She feels torn in twain. Rylton, as has been said, had called twice during the past ten days, but on neither of those occasions had seen Tita. Tita, indeed, had obstinately refused to come downstairs, even though Margaret had gone up to fetch her. Margaret had not forgotten that occasion. She had found the girl in her room.

"Never, never, never!" said Tita, in answer to all her entreaties, who had screwed herself into the farthest corner of her room between a wardrobe and a table—a most uncomfortable position, but one possessed of certain advantages. It would be difficult, for example, to dislodge her from it. And she gave Margaret the impression, as she entered the room, that she thought force was about to be resorted to.

"It is your duty to come downstairs and see him," Margaret had said.

She always brought in poor Duty, who certainly must have been fagged to death at that time.

"I hate him!" said Tita rebelliously, and now with increased venom, as she saw that Margaret only had come to the assault. "Go down and tell him that."

"This is dreadful," said poor Margaret, going to the door.

But even now the little miscreant wedged in between the furniture was not satisfied.

"Tell him I hope I'll never see him again!" said she, calling it out loudly as though afraid Margaret might not hear and deliver her words.

"I shall certainly deliver no such message," said the latter, pausing on the threshold and waxing wroth. Even the worm will turn, they say, though I confess I never saw one that did. "You can tell him that yourself, some day, when you see him!"

But this parting shaft had only made Tita laugh. "See him! She would die first!"

Margaret had gone down with a modified edition of this rencontre to Rylton, and Rylton had shrugged his shoulders. He could not disguise from Margaret the fact, however, that he was chagrined. He had seen through the modifying, of course, and had laughed—not very merrily—and told Margaret not to ruin her conscience on _his _account. He had lived with Tita long enough to know the sort of message she would be sure to send.

Margaret mumbled something after that, never very clear to either of them, and Rylton had gone on to say that he was going down to the country for a month. He was starting on Monday next. He had said all that on Thursday, and this is Tuesday. There is a sense of relief, yet of regret, in Margaret's heart as she tells herself that he is well out of town. But now, certainly, is the time to work on Tita's sense of right and wrong. Rylton will come back at the end of the month, and when he does, surely—surely his wife should be willing to, at all events, receive him as a friend. The gossip surrounding these two people, so dear to her, is distressing to Margaret, and she would gladly have put an end to it. The whole thing, too, is so useless, so senseless. And as for that affair of Marian's Bethune's—she has no belief in that. It has blown over—is dead. Killed—by time.

"See him?" says Tita at last, stammering.

"Yes, when he comes back. You have a month to think about it. He has gone to the country."

"A very good thing too," says Tita, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"I hope he will stay there."

"But he won't," says Margaret in despair. "He returns to town in June. Tita, I hope—I do hope you will be sensible, and consent to see him then."

"Does he want to see me?" asks Tita.

Here Margaret is posed. Rylton had certainly known, that day she had gone up to Tita's room to bring her down, what her errand was, but he had not asked her to go upon it. He had expressed no desire, had shown no wish for a meeting with his wife.

"My dear—I——"

"Ah, you make a bad liar, Meg!" says Tita; "you ought to throw up the appointment. You aren't earning your salary honestly. And, besides, it doesn't matter. Even if he were _dying _to see me, I should still rather die than see him."

"That is not a right spirit, to——"

"I expect my spirit is as right as his," says Tita rebelliously, "and," with a sudden burst of indignation that does away with all sense of her duty to her language, "a thousand times righter for the matter of that. No, Margaret! No—no—no! I will not see him. Do you think I ever forget——"

"I had hoped, dearest, that——"

"It is useless to hope. What woman would forgive it? I knew he married me without loving me. That was all fair! He told me that. What he did not tell me was the vital thing—that he loved someone else."

"You should never have married him when he told you he did not love you."

"Why not?" warmly. "I knew nothing of love; I thought he knew nothing of it either. Love seemed to me a stupid sort of thing (it seems so still). I said to myself that a nice strong friendship would be sufficient for me——"

"Well?"

"Well, so it would—only he felt no friendship. He felt nothing but his love for that odious woman! I couldn't stand that."

"You stood it for a long time, Tita—if it ever existed."

"Yes; I know. I didn't seem to care much at first, but when he grew rude to me about Tom—— Well, I knew what that meant."

"If you knew, you should have kept your cousin at a greater distance."

"Nonsense, Margaret! what do you mean by that?" Tita has turned a pair of lustrous eyes upon her—eyes lit by the fire of battle—not battle with Margaret, however, but with memory. "You honestly think that he believed I was in love with Tom?"

"I do. And I think he was jealous."

Tita bursts out laughing. There is little music in her mirth.

"And now I'll tell you what I think. That he was glad to pretend to believe I was in love with Tom, because he hoped to get rid of me, and after that to marry his cousin."

"Tita! I shall not listen to you if you say such things. How dare you even think them? Maurice is incapable of such a design."

"In my opinion, he is capable of anything," retorts Maurice's wife, without a trace of repentance. She looks long at Margaret, and then dropping gracefully upon a pouf at Margaret's feet, says sweetly, "He's a beast!"

"Oh, Tita! I don't know why I love you," says Margaret, with terrible reproach.

At this Tita springs to her feet, and flings her arms round Miss Knollys. Presently she leans back and looks at her again, still, however, holding her with her arms. Her small face, so woeful a while ago, is now wreathed in smiles; it even suggests itself to Margaret that she is with difficulty suppressing a wild outbreak of mirth—a suppression meant, no doubt, as a concession to Margaret's feelings.

"I'll tell you," whispers she. "You love me because you would be the most ungrateful wretch on earth unless you did. You give me some of your love; I give you all mine. I have no one else."

"That is your own fault," says Margaret, still trying to scold her, actually believing she is doing it, whilst with her eyes and mouth she is smiling at her.

"Not another word, not one," says Tita. "And promise me you won't ask me to see him again. I hate him! He sets my nerves on edge. I think he is actually ugly."

"I think you must have forgotten what he is like by this time."

"No, I don't. One doesn't forget a nightmare in a hurry."

"Tita, really——"

"There! I'll be good. I'll consign him to the lowest depths and never dig him up again. And so he has left town? What a blessed relief! Now I can go out and enjoy myself. Let us go out, Meg! Let us——what's that?"

She stands transfixed in the middle of the room, Margaret opposite her. Both seem stricken into marble.

A knock at the door, loud, sharp, resounding—a knock well known to both.

"And you said he was gone to the country," says Tita, in a low whisper filled with deepest suspicions.

"He said so. I believed it. It must be a mistake," says Margaret.
"He certainly said so."

They have lost some moments over their fear and astonishment. The sound of a rapidly approaching footstep, quite as well known to them as the knock, rouses both to a sense of desperation.

"What on earth shall I do?" says Tita, who is now as white as a sheet.

"Stay and see him," says Margaret, with sudden inspiration.

"Stay! Do you think I should stay for one moment in the room with him? No! I shall go in there," pointing to the next room that opens out of this with folding-doors, "and wait until he goes away."

She has hardly time to reach this seclusion when the door is thrown wide, and Sir Maurice is announced.

"Nobody with you?" says he, glancing somewhat expectantly around him. "I fancied I heard someone. So glad to find you alone!"

"Yes—yes—perhaps it is better," says Margaret vaguely, absently, thinking always of the little firebrand in that room beyond, but so near, so fatally near.

"Better? You mean——"

"Well, I mean that Tita has only just left the room," says Margaret desperately.

"She—is in there, then?" pointing towards the folding-doors.

"Yes. Do speak low. You know she—I can't disguise from you,
Maurice, that she——"

Margaret hesitates.

"Hates me? I'm quite aware of that." A long pause. "She is well, I hope?" frigidly.

"I think so. She looks well, lovely indeed—a little pale, perhaps. Maurice," leaning across and whispering cautiously, "why don't you try to make a reconciliation of some sort? A beginning might lead to the happiest results, and I am sure you do care for her—and—do try and make up with her."

"You must be out of your mind!" says Maurice, springing to his feet, and to poor Margaret's abject fear speaking at the top of his lungs. "With her, when she deliberately deserted me of her own accord—when——"

"Oh, hush, hush!" says Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather die than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the chinks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it. "She'll hear you!" gasps Margaret.

"I don't care if she does," says Maurice indignantly, but he calms down for all that, and consents to sit in a chair as far from the folding-doors as possible. "You have misjudged me all through," says he.

"I think not—I hope not. But I will say, Maurice, that I think you began your marriage badly, and—you should not have——"

"Have what?"

"Asked Marian to stay with you."

"That was"—gloomily—"a mistake. I admit that. But have I nothing to complain of?"

"Nothing, I honestly believe."

Her tone is so honest (Margaret herself is so sweetly honest all through) that he remains silent for a moment. It is, however, a constrained silence. The knowledge that Tita is standing or sitting, laughing or frowning, behind those boards over there, disturbs him in spite of himself.

"Well, I have often thought that, too," says he, "and yet I have often thought—the other thing. At all events, you cannot deny that he was in love with her."

"Why should I deny that? To me"—with a reproachful glance at him—"she seems like one with whom many might be in love."

"Oh, you are a partisan!" says he irritably, rising abruptly, and preparing to pace the room.

Margaret catches his coat as he goes by her.

"I entreat, I implore you to be quiet. It is so slight a partition," says she. "Do sit down like a dear boy and talk softly, unless"—wistfully and evidently hopefully—"you want to go away."

"Well, I don't," says he grimly.

He reseats himself. An extraordinary fascination keeps him in this room, even in face of the fact that the mistress of it is plainly longing for his departure. She has even openly hinted at it. And the fascination? It lies there behind the folding-doors. There is no romance in it, he tells himself; it is rather the feeling of an enemy who knows his foe to be close by. He turns to Margaret.

"Why did she refuse that money?"

"Why did you refuse hers?"

"Pshaw! You're evading the question. To take half of her little pittance! I wonder you can even suggest the thing. It—it is almost an insult," says he, reddening to his brows.

"I didn't mean it," says Margaret quickly, the more so that she thinks he is going to walk the room again. "Of course you could not have taken it."

"And yet I did take her money," says he miserably; "I wish to heaven now I hadn't. Then it seemed a fair exchange—her money for my title; it is done every day, and no one thinks anything of it—but now—— It was a most cursed thing," says he.

"It would have been nothing—nothing," says Margaret eagerly, "if you had been heart-whole. But to marry her, loving another, that was wrong—unpardonable——"

"Unpardonable!" He looks at her with a start. What does she mean? Is he beyond pardon, indeed? Pardon from—— "That's all over," says he.

"It wasn't over then!"

"I don't know——" He gets up and walks to the window in an agitated fashion, and then back again. "Margaret, I don't believe I ever loved her."

Margaret stares at him.

"You are talking of Marian?"

"Yes; Marian. If I did love her, then there is no such thing as love—love the eternal—because I love her no longer."

"It is not that," says Margaret; "but love can be killed. Poor love!" she sighed. "Marian of her own accord has killed yours."

There is a long pause; then: "Well, I'm glad of it," says he.

He lifts his arms high above his head, as a man might who yawns, or a man might who has all at once recognised that he is rid of a great encumbrance.

"I suppose you did not come here to discuss your love affairs with
Marian," says Margaret, a little coldly.

In a strange sort of way she had liked Marian, and she knew that Marian, in a strange sort of way, clung to her. And, besides, to say love could be killed! It was tantamount to saying love could die! Has her love died? Colonel Neilson had been with her a good deal since her return to town, and there had been moments of heart-burning, when she had searched her heart indeed, and found it wanting—wanting in its fixed determination to be true for ever to the dear dead beloved. And such a miserable wanting, a mere craving to be as others are—to live in the life of another, to know the warmth, the breath of the world's sunshine—to love, and be loved again.

No wonder Margaret is angry with Rylton for bringing all these delinquencies into the light of certainty.

"No," says Sir Maurice moodily. "I came here to see you."

"You told me you intended leaving town yesterday."

"Yes, I know. I meant it. But I've changed my mind about stopping in the country—at least, I'm running down to The Place for the night to see after some business with the agent, but I'll be back to-morrow."

"Really, you must forgive me if I say I don't think much of your mind," says Margaret, who is still a little sore over her own reflections.

"I don't think much of it myself," says Rylton, with increasing gloom.

At this abject surrender Margaret's tender heart relents.

"I believe all you have told me," says she; "and I suppose I'm glad of it, although—Well, never mind that. Marian deserves no pity, but still——"

"Pshaw!" says he. "What has Marian got to do with it? Marian never cared that about me." He makes an expressive movement with his fingers—a little snap. "I know now that Marian only played with me. I amused her. I was the plaything of an hour."

"You wrong her there, Maurice."

"Do I? How? They tell us"—with a bitter smile—"that if a woman loves a man she will cling to him through all things—poverty, ill-repute, even crime. But poverty, the least of these things, daunted her."

"She had known so much poverty——"

"Are you pleading her cause now?" says Maurice, with a slight smile. "You plead it badly. The very fact of her knowing it so well should not have deterred her from trying it again with the man she loved. I offered to throw up everything for her, to go abroad, to work, to wrestle with fortune for her sake, but she——" He stops, and draws a long breath. "Well, it is over," says he.

"That is. But your future life——"

"I'm not a favourite of gods, am I?" says he, laughing. "My future life! Well, I leave it to them. So Tita is looking well?"

"Yes; quite well. A little pale, I said."

"She never had much colour. She never speaks of me, I suppose?"

"Sometimes—yes."

Rylton looks down at the carpet, and then laughs a little awkwardly.

"I expect I had better not inquire into it," says he. "It is a general remark, yet it is _all _question."

"Of course, she remembers things," says Margaret nervously.

If he were to make another scene, to prance up and down the room, and talk at the top of his lungs, there is no knowing what may not happen, considering who is standing behind those folding-doors.

"We can all remember things," says Sir Maurice, rising and holding out his hand. He bids her good-bye. As he gets to the door he looks back. "Tell her I didn't like to keep her in durance vile longer than was necessary," says he.

With this parting shot, he goes down the stairs and out of the house.