Chapter Twenty One.
A few days after the dance at the Hall Doctor Fairbridge motored out from Rushleigh to pay a call upon Mrs Chadwick. Nominally the call was upon Mrs Chadwick; the object of his visit, however, was to see her niece. It was an object shared by so many that his chance of getting Peggy alone seemed very uncertain. It would appear as though every one were bent on frustrating his attempts to draw her aside from the rest; as though Peggy herself abetted them in their unkind design.
There were staying in the house a number of young people of both sexes. It seemed to Doctor Fairbridge that many of the girls were quite amiable and charming; nevertheless, the majority of the men evinced a predilection for Peggy’s society, which predilection, since he shared in it, he might better have understood.
When a man has made up his mind that he wants to marry; when, moreover, he is equally decided in his selection of his future wife, there is on the face of it no reason for delay. Doctor Fairbridge was fully determined on both points; he was also conscious of the danger of delay in the case of a girl so popular as Peggy; therefore he decided to press his suit on the first opportunity, and he hoped the opportunity would present itself that afternoon. Since it showed no likelihood of offering itself, since Peggy betrayed no readiness to assist him, desperation emboldened him to ask her to go with him into the conservatory for a few minutes’ private talk.
“Oh!” murmured Peggy, changing colour, “that sounds so dreadfully mysterious.”
She accompanied him, nevertheless. Mrs Chadwick, looking after them as they passed through the glass doors and stepped into the moist and enervating atmosphere of the fernery, which led out from the long drawing-room, looked anxious. She was so certain as to what Doctor Fairbridge intended saying, and so uncertain what Peggy would say in response, that she felt strongly tempted to propose a general move in the same direction. But for the conviction that putting off the inevitable is not to put an end to it, she would have proposed this; instead she diverted the general attention by starting one of her inimitable anecdotes; and in the uproarious laughter which greeted the story the retreat of Peggy and her cavalier was successfully covered.
The sound of the merriment penetrated to the fernery, and brought a smile of sympathy to Peggy’s lips. She looked for some response at her companion, but Doctor Fairbridge was so extraordinarily grave that the brightness faded from Peggy’s face and left her serious too, and a little embarrassed by the silence which fell between them, which he appeared unequal to break. She started to talk in a professional manner about the ferns; but Doctor Fairbridge had no intention of wasting his time on horticultural matters, and he plunged forthwith into the subject he had so keenly at heart. A little halting in his speech, and less assured in manner than when he had solicited the interview, he stood before Peggy, and looked earnestly into the wilful grey eyes, which at the moment were serious enough.
“Miss Annersley,” he began—and finding this address too formal for the occasion, hastily substituted her Christian name—“Peggy, I think you can’t be altogether unprepared for what I am about to say. You must know by now how things are with me. I love you. I have loved you ever since I first met you.”
He spoke as though the meeting had taken place years before instead of two months ago.
“Tell me,” he added, with eager persuasiveness, “do you like me?... just a little?”
Now Peggy was a young woman who had listened to such confidences often, and who, by reason of the numbers of her admirers, had grown hardened to their appeals. She found them, however, sufficiently embarrassing to cause her to regret, not so much wounding her lovers, as the trouble she was put to in order to wound them as little as possible. It showed a want of consideration on the part of the men she wished to be friendly with when they made that agreeable condition no longer possible. Youth and beauty in a woman handicap her in the matter of masculine friendship; yet eliminate the disqualifying attributes, and the difficulty of friendship with the opposite sex is even greater. The position therefore becomes well-nigh impossible.
Peggy looked back at the young man with such disconcerting candour in the grey eyes that he began to feel somewhat foolish and found himself reddening awkwardly. A girl when she receives a proposal of marriage has no right to appear so composed.
“I like you so well,” Peggy answered him quietly, “that I hope you won’t say anything more. It’s—such a pity,” she faltered, losing something of her former calmness, “to spoil everything. Let us take a mutual liking for granted, and leave it at that.”
This sounded like a brilliant inspiration, but was in reality a repetition of a suggestion made on a similar occasion to an entirely different suppliant. The experience of its ill-success on the former occasion might have prepared her for its inefficacy now, but it was the only thing which flashed into her mind at the moment, and she said it a little breathlessly in the hope that it would decide Doctor Fairbridge in favour of retreat. It failed, however, of the desired effect. He caught at the leaf of a palm near his arm and began unthinkingly on its destruction, not looking at the mischievous work of his fingers, but staring at Peggy.
“I can’t leave it at that,” he said. “It—it isn’t liking with me. I love you. I... Please be patient with me, Miss Annersley. I find it so difficult to express all I feel. Of course, I can’t expect that you should love me as I love you... How should you? But I am hoping that perhaps—in time—”
He broke off, so manifestly at a loss in face of the discouragement he read in her indifferent look, so awkward and disturbed and reproachful at her lack of reciprocity, that he found it impossible to proceed with his appeal. He had, in rehearsing the interview in bed on the previous night, brought it to such an entirely different issue that the situation as it actually befell found him unprepared. The virile eloquence of the previous night did not fit the present occasion.
“I want to marry,” he finished lamely.
That, in the circumstances, was an unfortunate admission. A gleam, expressive of amusement rather than of tenderness, shone in Peggy’s eyes.
“I know,” she said. “You told me so before... on account of the practice.”
He glared at her, flushed and angry.
“Hang the practice!” he said rudely. “I want to marry you.”
This bomb, which had been clumsily preparing from the outset, exploded with little effect. Peggy certainly lowered her eyes, and the warm blood mounted to her cheeks; but she did not appear overwhelmed by this frank declaration. It was, indeed, whatever emotion swayed the speaker, so shorn of sentiment in itself that the girl was relieved of any fear she might have entertained of hurting him with a refusal. Had she been as much in love with him as he had professed to be with her, her answer would still have been “No.”
“I am sorry,” she said, a trifle unsympathetically. “I don’t, you see, want to marry you.”
“Don’t say ‘no’ without at least considering my proposal,” he urged blankly. “I’ll wait—as long as you wish. But I can’t take ‘no’ like that. I’ve never wanted anything in all my life as I want you. Don’t be so unkind, Peggy, as to refuse me a little hope. I’m an ass, I know. And perhaps I have been a little abrupt—”
“Well, a little,” agreed Peggy.
“Do you mind,” she added quickly, seeing him clutch desperately at a second palm-leaf in his agitation, “keeping to the leaf you have already spoiled?”
He dropped the worried leaf as though it had stung him, and half turned from her.
“You are heartless,” he exclaimed with bitterness, taking his defeat ill, recognising that it was a defeat even while he refused to accept her answer as final. He had been so confident of success that his failure was the more humiliating in consequence of his former assurance.
“I feel certain,” he resumed more quietly, “that later you will be a little sorry for your unkindness to me. I never loved anyone till I met you. I love you very earnestly.”
“I’m sorry,” said Peggy again. “I would be a little more sympathetic if I knew how. But, you see, I have never been in love in my life.”
“I think I could teach you to love,” he said, in all good faith. “I am going to try.”
She laughed.
“I never had any aptitude,” she said, “unless it was for gardening. You had better give me up, Doctor Fairbridge, as hopeless, and find an abler pupil.”
“I shall never,” he pronounced solemnly, “give you up. I do not change. I have met the one woman in the world for me. Oh, Miss Annersley,” he added, ceasing to be rhetorical and becoming therefore a much more interesting study to Peggy, “don’t be too hard on a fellow. I won’t bother you any more now. But one day I hope you will listen to me more patiently, and be a little kinder to me. I’m awfully keen on this.”
“Yes,” said Peggy. “I wish you weren’t. I’m just going to forget all you’ve said, and we will go on being friendly. I am a good deal keener on friendship than on the other relationship.”
“Are you?” he said, surprised, as though that were an attitude he had never contemplated before; that he found, indeed, difficult to reconcile with his ideas of girls. “I’m not. But the half loaf, you know... I will content myself with that for the present—only for the present.”
How, he wondered, when he returned with Peggy to the drawing-room—which he would have preferred not to do, and only agreed to on her showing him that it might be remarked if he left without taking leave in the usual manner—had he been deceived into making such a miscalculation? Clearly Peggy was a heartless little flirt. She had assuredly encouraged him. He was conscious as he entered the drawing-room in her wake of a slight diminution in his regard for her. There is nothing like a wound to the pride for clearing a man’s vision.
“For goodness’ sake,” exclaimed Peggy, looking back at him over her shoulder as he emerged behind her through the glass doors, “don’t wear so long a face. It will be remarked.”
Doctor Fairbridge, who felt little inclination towards cheerfulness, mended his expression none the less; but the smile which he summoned to his aid was rather forced.
“I can’t act,” he said reproachfully. “You’ve hurt me. I’m feeling sore, Miss Annersley.”
“Don’t be silly,” Peggy admonished him. “You needn’t look sore, anyhow.”
She led him towards her sister, and left him with her, feeling assured that Sophy would administer an anodyne; Sophy had helped to heal wounds of her making before. She had the knack of putting a man in better conceit with himself; it is a knack which springs from the dictates of a kindly nature.
Peggy herself joined a group of young people who were listening with sceptical amusement to the history of the Hall ghost which Mr Errol, newly arrived, was relating. Peggy seated herself near him.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked.
“Well,” he replied with gravity, “there is so much which is incomprehensible that I cannot discredit things merely because I fail to understand them.”
She looked at him with interest, while the scepticism of the rest strove courteously to efface itself.
“I heard of the ghost from Robert,” she announced. “Hannah has seen it. But Robert didn’t seem to know very much about it. It is respectable to have a ghost. I hope it is a pleasant one.”
“There are two,” he said.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Peggy. “Two misty apparitions! Hannah doesn’t own to seeing two. I might be able to stand one, but two would be the death of me. Who are they?”
“One is a hound,” he explained; “the other is a lady. They have been seen walking on the terrace in the dusk. They walk the length of the terrace and back, look towards the west, and disappear.”
“And then does something awful happen?” inquired one of the listeners.
“No; I never heard that anything happened. Nor does the apparition appear regularly. It has only been seen about three times, and always after dusk.”
“I shall watch for it,” said Peggy. “I am not in the least alarmed now I know there is a dog. I have never been afraid of a living dog; I couldn’t fear a dead dog. I feel nearly as brave as Robert.”
She described, almost in Robert’s own words, and with a droll mimicry of Robert’s manner, his professed contempt for what he could put his hand through and his gruesome familiarity with old bones. Robert was so well known a figure in Moresby, was known even to the guests staying at the Hall, that Peggy’s imitation of the sexton’s manner provoked the merriment of all her hearers. The vicar was as greatly amused as the rest.
“Robert may be very brave in the matter of ghosts,” he said; “but I have known him quail before something not usually considered terrifying.”
“What is that?” inquired Peggy.
“A woman,” he answered, and met her eyes and smiled.