Chapter Twenty Five.
It is a sad moment in a woman’s life when she realises that she does not possess the heart of the man she loves. If one may use a sordid simile in this connexion, her position resembles that of the owner of a beautiful home in possession of which the bailiff has been placed through the indiscretion of another. In this instance Honor was in possession with full power to hold, and without personal interest in the value of what she held, and what she would never claim for her own. But her right robbed the other of all the joy of ownership. An empty jewel casket has little intrinsic value, and stands only as a reminder of the precious thing it was intended to contain.
It was impossible for Brenda to hide altogether from Matheson the difference which his confidence had made to her. She endeavoured to maintain their former relations of pleasant and intimate comradeship, but he detected behind the assumed brightness of her manner the increasing restraint, the shy reserve, beneath which she sought to cloak her feelings, and the pain of her disappointment. He realised with considerable dismay that his matrimonial plans were in danger of further defeat. The fear of defeat goaded him and gave a keener edge to his desire. He could not, he found on making the attempt, reconcile himself to the thought of losing her. For one entire, unforgettable week he refrained from going near her. He had no means of discovering whether she missed him, but he missed her almost intolerably. In the end he threw over his resolves and went in search of her.
Again it was on a Sunday that he sought her after his brief avoidance. On the previous afternoon he had been at the Aplins. Something he heard there stripped his last scruple from him and determined him to see Brenda on the morrow. Mrs Aplin had pressed him to stay to dinner, and he had stayed; he did not know why; he had not wished to, and he had demurred on account of being in flannels. They waived the matter of dressing. No one would dress, Mrs Aplin announced; the girls would merely change their blouses.
The change had been somewhat elaborate, and only stopped short of being full evening dress. Instead of rousing his admiration, as had been intended, it kept alive a consciousness of his own negligent attire, which did not add to his enjoyment. He had never felt so unutterably bored with the inconsequent chatter of Rosie, nor more annoyed with May’s noisy performance on the piano. She sang popular songs with choruses in which every one joined; and when this form of amusement wearied they all repaired to the billiard-room, just to knock about the balls, Mrs Aplin said, beaming, thoroughly satisfied, having started the young people playing games, that they were having a good time.
Before he left she contrived with an openness that was not diplomatic to get a few words alone with him. Her insistence on a little private talk robbed her confidences of the air of being casual which she had intended to give them, and prepared him against surprises.
“The girls monopolise you,” she said pleasantly. “I never seem to get the opportunity for a talk.”
He wondered what was coming and felt apprehensive; but his wildest conjectures could not anticipate what she had it in mind to say. She started on irrelevant topics, wandered rather aimlessly from one subject to another, and finally came to her point.
“I am so pleased you came to-day,” she said. “We began to feel neglected. The girls tell me they see you sometimes in town; and of course at the theatre last week... I don’t think you saw us though. You were with the Uptons.”
“I saw you,” he answered, and felt himself flushing awkwardly. “But I wasn’t sure... I thought perhaps... You see, Miss Aplin told me there was a little difficulty...” He looked at her squarely and shifted his ground. “It was a jolly fine play, wasn’t it? And the acting was quite good.”
“I thought it a little sensational,” she replied, and disposed of that, smiling at him with almost maternal solicitude as she added: “It was thoughtful of you to consider my prejudices. Having girls, you see, I have to be very careful. But I am sorry for Brenda Upton. She is thrown with undesirable associates, and has been talked about in connexion with men. Her mother is always striving to get her married. That sort of thing is very bad for a girl; and with their history they ought to be so careful. She is naturally anxious to marry for the sake of a home; and I hope she will succeed in finding some honest man in her own sphere who will overlook what is undesirable in her past. She is not after all responsible for her father’s failings.”
“I should think not,” he answered, with a curtness he was unable to prevent. He felt almost uncontrollably angry. He apprehended quite clearly that Mrs Aplin was desirous of warning him against a mésalliance, and he considered it not only an unwarranted impertinence, but a mischievous and scurrilous aspersion of Brenda’s reputation. “I doubt whether any man of average common sense would think twice about that,” he said.
“You know her quite intimately, I suppose?” she ventured.
“Yes,” he answered, and added with a certain dry malice: “I imagine I am the only man in connexion with whom she has ever been talked about.”
“Really, Mr Matheson!” Her tone was as shocked as her look. He laughed savagely.
“Oh! it’s an entirely innocuous scandal. To be honoured with Miss Upton’s friendship is a guarantee of discretion. Believe me, you have been doing her a grave injustice.”
“I don’t wish to be unjust.” Mrs Aplin surveyed him with displeased, protesting eyes. “And I am sure if I had known you were such great friends I wouldn’t have spoken. But I know so much more of them than you can possibly know.”
“I know only good of her,” he returned quietly, and was immeasurably relieved that May should choose that moment for breaking in upon their talk, which he felt was getting altogether beyond his patience.
“You look,” she said, assuming a graceful pose by the head of the sofa upon which she leaned, “abnormally serious. I believe mother has been fault finding. Come and sit over here, and I’ll comfort you.”
He laughed, and answered her jestingly; but he did not avail himself of the invitation. That was the general idea in that house, that a man must be comfortably placed, and submit to being petted. Possibly some men liked petting, but that sort of thing was not in his line.
“It’s getting late,” he said, with an attentive eye on the clock, the big hand of which seemed to drag with such exasperating slowness. He felt grateful for the first time in their acquaintance to Mrs Aplin for silencing her daughter’s protests against his leaving so soon.
“Whatever did you say to him to make him so huffy?” Rosie asked when he had gone. “I always knew he had a horrid temper.”
“I warned him against that Upton girl. Those people are shameless in their pursuit of him. But he wouldn’t hear a word. If he spends all his spare time with the girls in the cafés, I don’t think it advisable to ask him out here any more.”
“It will be a triumph for her if she succeeds in marrying him,” May opined.
“Oh! he won’t marry her. Men don’t marry those sort of girls.”
As an outcome of that unfortunate talk Matheson went the following afternoon in search of Brenda. It was a cold dark day. A south-east gale was blowing, and the town was enveloped in a sticky dust that clung to the clothes and hair. Grit and small pebbles were carried by the force of the wind and stung the unprotected faces of the few pedestrians who ventured abroad in the teeth of the gale. The clouds hung dense and low upon the mountain, pouring over the rocky sides with the effect of cascades of foam tumbling over a precipice. Matheson, with his head down, buffetted against the gale, and arrived damp and rather breathless at his destination. He was early. He had timed his arrival in the hope of getting Brenda to himself. He asked for Brenda on being admitted. She came to him almost immediately, and it was manifest from her manner that his visit was unexpected.
She shook hands, looked out at the lowering sky and the waving branches of the trees, and smiled.
“You are brave to venture out in this,” she said.
“I’ve been lonely for a week,” he replied, as though that explained everything, as perhaps it did; “an earthquake couldn’t have kept me away to-day.”
The wind rattled the window, and flung a shower of tiny stones against the glass.
“God! how it blows!” he cried. He drew her to the sofa, and seated himself beside her.
“I’m not in the way, am I? You weren’t lying down?”
“No.” She laughed brightly. “I don’t do those nice reposeful things even on a Sunday afternoon. Mother is resting though, and I imagine every one else in the house. There is nothing much to do with a black south-easter blowing.”
“We won’t disturb them,” he said, and smiled at her. “I am needing at the moment only you. You don’t mind if I stay?”
She looked surprised at this question, and answered in the negative.
“You’ve made me dependent on you somehow,” he explained. “I’ve never felt so intolerably lonely as during this past week. You ought not to teach me to rely on you and then send me into banishment. It isn’t kind.”
“But,” she protested quickly, a soft amazement in her voice, “I never suggested that I didn’t wish to see you.”
“I know,” he said, “but...”
He paused, and regarded her fixedly. Their eyes met for a moment; then she turned her gaze from his deliberately and looked out through the window, an expression of distressed embarrassment sweeping over her face. He stretched an arm along the back of the sofa behind her and leaned slightly towards her.
“That isn’t enough,” he said—“not as things stand. You see, I can’t always have your comradeship that way. The time will come—it’s approaching now—when my work will take me away from here. What’s the good of friendship then? When I go, I’ll miss you—as I have missed you this week. I can’t face it. I’ve grown to want you. I want to keep you with me. There’s only one way to do that, and I’m not sure you’ll agree to it. Had I been sure I’d have said all this weeks ago. But you... you haven’t let me somehow. You’ve held me off. And since that day at the Monument I’ve been conscious of—a sort of estrangement. You made me feel that I haven’t enough to offer—”
“No,” she interrupted sharply. “Surely not that?”
The tears rose in her eyes: slowly they overflowed and rolled down her cheeks. She made no effort to stay them. She sat still with her face averted and wept silently.
“I’m a clumsy fool,” he said; “I hurt you without intending it. And you’re so sweet and kind... Dear, if you will marry me I will do everything a man can do to make you happy.”
Never one word of love! ... Not one word of love had he ever let fall in all their talks together. She dropped her quivering face suddenly between her hands to hide its sorrow from him.
“All that I have to give is yours,” she whispered—“everything... If all my love can help you just a little I will be glad. I’ve loved you—from that first morning when you spoke to me on the beach.”
He put his arms about her and drew her close and held her, still weeping, with her face hidden upon his shoulder—giving all of herself to him, taking the little that he offered, because she was a woman in love who must have denied the crumbs of his affection.
“I couldn’t bear to lose you,” she sobbed... “I couldn’t bear it. I’ve thought I couldn’t marry you even if you wished it, but—I can’t—give you up.”
Without answering her, he kissed her, if not with passion, with a great tenderness and an almost reverential gratitude; and in his heart he resolved that he would make good to her in every way in which it was humanly possible for the one thing which he could not give her—that which was given already, and which no one can give twice—the pure flame of a first passion. The love which he had for her was the steady glow which succeeds the fierce upward flash of the white flame that leaps from the heart and leaves behind only memories.