CHAPTER XXXIV.—ON THE MESSAGE OF THE LILY.
WALKING Westward to his rooms, he enjoyed once again the same feeling of exultation, which had been his on the evening of the return from the seal-hunt. He felt that she was wholly his.
He had done all that was in his power to show her how very much better it would be for her to part from him and never to see him again—how much better it would be for her to marry the wealthy and distinguished man who had, out of the goodness of his heart, expressed to her a deep sympathy for his, Harold’s, unfortunate condition of dependence upon a wicked father. But he had not been able to convince her that it would be to her advantage to adopt this course.
Yet, instead of feeling deeply humiliated by reason of the failure of his arguments, he felt exultant.
“She is mine—she is mine!” he cried, when he found himself alone in his room in St. James’s. “There is none like her, and she is mine!”
He reflected for a long time upon her beauty. He thought of Mrs. Mowbray, and he smiled, knowing that Beatrice was far lovelier, though her loveliness was not of the same impressive type. One did not seem to breathe near Beatrice that atmosphere heavy with the scent of roses, which Mrs. Mowbray carried with her for the intoxication of the nations. Still, the beauty of Beatrice was not a tame thing. It had stirred him, and it had stirred other men.
Yes, it had stirred Edmund Airey—he felt certain of it, although he did not doubt the truth of Mrs. Mowbray’s communication on this subject.
Even though Edmund Airey had been in a plot with Helen, still Harold felt that he had been stirred by the beauty of Beatrice.
He thought over this point for some time, and the conclusion that he came to was, that he could easily find out if Edmund meant to play no more important a rôle than that of partner in Helen Craven’s plot. It was perfectly clear, that if Edmund had merely acted as he had done at the suggestion of Helen, he would cease to take any further interest in Beatrice, unless it was his intention to devote his life to carrying out the plot.
In the course of some weeks, he would learn all that could be known on this point; but meantime his condition was a peculiar one.
He would have felt mortified had he been certain that Edmund Airey had not really been stirred by the charm of Beatrice; but he would have been somewhat uneasy had he felt certain that Edmund was deeply in love with her. He trusted her implicitly—he felt certain of himself in this respect. Had he not a right to trust her, after the way in which she had spoken to him—the way in which she had given herself up to him? But then he felt that he had made use of such definite arguments to her, in pointing out the advisability of their parting, as caused it to be quite possible that she might begin to perceive—after a year or two of waiting—that there was some value in those arguments of his, after all.
By the time that he had dined with some people, who had sent him a card on his return to London, and had subjected himself to the mortifying influence of some unfamiliar entrées, and a conversation with a woman who was the survivor of the wreck of spiritualism in London, he was no longer in the exultant mood of the afternoon.
“A Fool’s Paradise—a Fool’s Paradise!” he murmured, as he sat in an easy-chair, and gazed into his flickering fire.
It had been very glorious to think that he was beloved by that exquisite girl—to think of the kisses of her mouth; but whither was the love leading him?
His father’s words could not be forgotten—those words which he had spoken from beneath the eiderdown of his bed at Castle Innisfail; and Harold knew that, should he marry Beatrice, his father would certainly carry out his threat of cutting off his allowance.
Thus it was that he sat in his chair feeling that, even though Beatrice had refused to be separated from him, still they were as completely parted by circumstances as if she had immediately acknowledged the force of his arguments, and had accepted, his invitation to say good-bye for ever.
Thus it was that he cried, “A Fool’s Paradise—a Fool’s Paradise!” as he thought over the whole matter.
What were the exact elements of the Paradise in which his exclamation suggested that he was living, he might have had some difficulty in defining.
But then the site of the original Paradise is still a matter of speculation.
The next day he went to take lunch with her and her father—he had promised to do so before he had left her, when they had had their interview.
It so happened, however, that he only partook of lunch with Beatrice; for Mr. Avon had, he learned, been compelled to go to Dublin for some days, to satisfy himself regarding a document which was in a library in that city.
Harold did not grumble at the prospect of a long afternoon by her side; only he could not help feeling that the ménage of the Avon family was one of the most remarkable that he had ever known. The historical investigations of Mr. Avon did not seem to induce him to take a conventional view of his obligations, as the father of an extremely handsome girl—assuming that he was aware of the fact of her beauty—or a pessimistic view of modern society. He seemed to allow Beatrice to be in every way her own mistress—to receive whatever visitors she pleased; and to lay no narrow-minded prohibition upon such an incident as lunching tête-à-tête with a young man, or perhaps—but Harold had no knowledge of such a case—an old man.
He wondered if the historian had ever been remonstrated with on this subject, by such persons as had not had the advantage of scrutinizing humanity through the medium of state papers.
Harold thought that, on the whole, he had no reason to take exception to the liberality of Mr. Avon’s system. He reflected that it was to this system he was indebted for what promised to be an extremely agreeable afternoon.
What he did not reflect upon, however, was, that he was indebted to Mr. Avon’s peculiarities—some people would undoubtedly call the system a peculiar one—for a charmingly irresponsible relationship toward the historian’s daughter. He did not reflect upon the fact, that if the girl had had the Average Father, or the Vigilant Mother, to say nothing of the Athletic Brother, he would not have been able, without some explanation, to visit her, and, on the strength of promising to love her, to kiss her, as he had now repeatedly done, on the mouth—or even on the forehead, which is somewhat less satisfying. Everyone knows that the Vigilant Mother would, by the application of a maternal thumb-screw which she always carries attached to her bunch of keys, have extorted from Beatrice a full confession as to the incidents of the seal-hunt—all except the hunting of the seals—and that this confession would have led to a visit to the study of the Average Father, in one corner of which reposes the rack, in working order, for the reception of the suitor. Everyone knows so much, and also that the alternative of the paternal rack, is the fist of the Athletic Brother.
But Mr. Harold Wynne did not seem to reflect upon these points, when he heard the lightly uttered excuses of Beatrice for her father’s absence, as they seated themselves at the table in the large dining-room.
His practised eye made him aware of the fact that Beatrice understood what he considered to be the essentials of a recherché lunch: a lunch appeals to the eye; but wine appeals to other senses than the sense of seeing; and the result of his judgment was to convince him that, if Mr. Avon was as careless in the affairs of the cellar as he was in the affairs of the drawing-room, he was to be congratulated upon having about him someone who understood still hock at any rate.
In the drawing-room, she busied herself in arranging, in Wedgwood bowls, some flowers that he had brought her—trifles of sprawling orchids, Eucharis lilies, and a fairy tropical fern or two, all of which are quite easy to be procured in London in October for the expenditure of a few sovereigns. The picture that she made bending over her bowls was inexpressibly lovely. He sat silent, watching her, while she prattled away with the artless high spirits of a child. She was surely the loveliest thing yet made by God. He thought of what the pious old writer had said about a particular fruit, and he paraphrased it in his own mind, saying, that doubtless God could make a lovelier thing, but certainly He had never made it.
“I am delighted to have such sweet flowers now,” she cried, as she observed, with critical eyes, the effect of a bit of flaming crimson—an orchid suggesting a flamingo in flight—over the turquoise edge of the bowl. “I am delighted, because I have a prospect of other visitors beside yourself, my lord.”
“Other visitors?” said he. He wondered if he might venture to suggest to her the inadvisability of entertaining other visitors during her father’s absence.
“Other visitors indeed,” she replied. “I did not tell you yesterday all that I had to tell. I forget now what we talked about yesterday. How did we put in our time?”
She looked up with laughing eyes across the bowl of flowers, that she held up to her face.
“I don’t forget—I shall never forget,” said he, in a low voice.
“You must never forget,” said she. “But to my visitors—who are they, do you fancy? Don’t try to guess, for if you should succeed I should be too mortified to be able to tell you that you were right. I will tell you now. Three days ago—while we were still on the Continent—Miss Craven called. She promised faithfully to do so at Castle Innisfail—indeed, she suggested doing so herself; and I found her card waiting for me on my return with a few words scrawled on it, to tell me that she would return in some days. I don’t think that anything should be in the same bowl with a Eucharis lily—even the Venus-hair fern looks out of place beside it.”
She had strayed from her firebrand orchids to the white lilies.
“You are quite right, indeed,” said he. “A lily and you stand alone—you make everything else in the world seem tawdry.”
“That is not the message of the lily,” said she. “But supposing that Miss Craven should call upon me to-day—would you be glad of such a third person to our party?”
“I should kill her, if she were a thousand times Helen Craven,” said he, with a laugh. “But she is only one visitor; who are the others?”
“Oh, there is only one other, and he is interesting to me only,” she cried. “Yes, I found Mr. Airey’s card also waiting for me, and on it were scrawled almost the very words that were on Miss Craven’s card, so that he may be here at any moment.” Harold did not say a word. He sat watching her as her hands mingled with their sister-lilies on the table. Something cold seemed to have clasped his heart—a cold doubt that made him dumb.
“Yes,” she continued; “Mr. Airey asked me one night at Castle Innisfail to let him know where we should go after leaving Ireland.”
“Yes,” said he, in a slow way; “I heard him make that request of you.”
“You heard him? But you were taking part in the tableaux in the hall.”
“I had left the platform and had strayed round to one of the doors. You told him where you were going?”
“I told him that we should be in this house in October, and he said that he would make it a point to be in town early in October, though Parliament was not to sit until the middle of January. He has kept his word.”
“Yes, he has kept his word.”
Harold felt that cold hand tightening upon his heart. “I think that he was interested in me,” continued the girl. “I know that I was interested in him. He knows so much about everything. He is a close friend of yours, is he not?”
“Yes,” said Harold, without much enthusiasm. “Yes, he was a close friend of mine. You see, I had my heart set upon going into Parliament—upon so humble an object may one’s aspirations be centred—and Edmund Airey was my adviser.”
“And what did he advise you to do?” she asked.
“He advised me to—well, to go into Parliament.” He could not bring himself to tell her what form exactly Edmund Airey’s advice had assumed.
“I am sure that his advice was good,” said she. “I think that I would go to him if I stood in need of advice.”
“Would you, indeed, Beatrice?” said he. He was at the point of telling her all that he had learned from Mrs. Mowbray; he only restrained himself by an effort.
“I believe that he is both clever and wise.”
“The two do not always go together, certainly.”
“They do not. But Mr. Airey is, I think, both.”
“He has been better than either. To be successful is better than to be either wise or clever. Mr. Airey has been successful. He will get an Under-Secretaryship if the Government survives the want of confidence of the Opposition.”
“And you will go into Parliament, Harold?”
He shook his head.
“That aspiration is past,” said he; “I have chosen the more excellent career. Now, tell me something of your aspirations, my beloved.”
“To see you daily—to be near you—to—”
But the enumeration of the terms of her aspirations is unnecessary.
How was it that some hours after this, Harold Wynne left the house with that cold feeling still at his heart?
Was it a pang of doubt in regard to Beatrice, or a pang of jealousy in regard to Edmund Airey?