NEW LIGHTS ON OLD SUBJECTS
Danby returned to Jersey immediately after seeing Cynthia to London. She would not allow him to go to Lafer until she had smoothed the way with the Admiral; and being so far as yet unable to realise his happiness, that the moment she vanished he thought she must be a vision, he went back to the Kerrs as tangible proofs to the contrary.
He also wished to hear more about her. She had said nothing of her surroundings, and when he referred to Kerr on the one momentous point as her guardian pro tem., he had been struck by something odd in his look; while Mrs. Kerr declared, with what sounded a hysterical sob, that she would never chaperon a young lady again. He was too much accustomed to the unaccountable in the moods of all sorts and conditions of men to attach much importance to an indirect impression. Still it was expedient to be practical and to prepare himself for unlooked-for conditions. Until he met her he was far indeed from any intention of marrying, and his means were such that the last thing that occurred to him was to speculate about hers. It had delighted her to find her heiress-ship was unsuspected.
In his inmost nature Danby had developed diplomacy. He knew it, and often told himself he had missed his vocation; he should have been either a Jesuit or an ambassador. It was the one moral slur which the keen old grief had branded on his soul. He mistrusted, and would never trust again except after the tests of a tactician who knew his ends so surely that he could afford to conceal them. Here his favourite author—Bacon—had fostered knowledge. He knew how 'to lay asleep opposition and to surprise,' how to 'reserve to himself a fair retreat,' and how to 'discover the mind of another.' On these principles he had for many years studied all men. In this spirit he had digested the Kerrs. Only with Cynthia they had failed him. He had thought that if he ever married it would be in this spirit; subtle analysis and synthesis should determine his choice. If judgment threatened desertion he would refortify himself by apparent withdrawal. Experience had not tended to make him fear defeat; he might have married before this had he met with more discouragement. But should such a paradox as discouragement invade his path he would use his arts, his subtleties, his perceptions, and, without flatteries, succeed. Flatteries he loathed. He loathed the women who would have them. His chief delight in the woman of the future was that she too would loathe them, indeed would probably not understand them.
But when he saw Cynthia his tactics failed him. She was simple, she was single-minded and transparent—such a woman as he had not conceived; in fact the paradox. He fell in love, but she did not perceive it. Do what he would to show her his feeling, she never did perceive it until he asked her to do so. Afterwards he reproached her a little for a blindness that might have eternally daunted him, but that had he not got speech with her he would have written.
'Oh, Lucius!' she said, 'I know whom I like; I don't think I could like any one who was not good, so I let myself like. But as for more, I never could until I were asked. Then I should know in a moment if I could.
He knew her so well now that he knew too this was true; she could not seek or even think herself sought.
In returning to Jersey he had, however, another object besides proximity to the Kerrs. He wanted to see the Pitons.
When he left India the previous year he intended to go there at once. Since receiving the note from Clothilde Hugo in which she broke off her engagement to him by the news that she had that day married another man, he had not named her or communicated with any one who could give him information about her. But to return to England and choose some place to settle in without knowing whether she were living and where she lived, was a thing he would not do. He could not analyse his own feelings on the matter, he did not consider it worth while to do so; it was resolution rather than reason that fixed in his mind the idea of seeing the Pitons. He chose to make it a point of principle to avoid all risk of seeing her again.
At first when he found the Kerrs were going there, it seemed that everything was arranging itself naturally for his convenience. He could call at Rocozanne in the incidental manner of an old acquaintance who found himself accidentally in the neighbourhood, and follow up his inquiries by naming his engagement. But his ignorance of the conventionalities surrounding a lady's position baffled him. He followed the Kerrs to Jersey, and finding himself in the same hotel, met Cynthia again at once and at once proposed. He was greatly surprised when she told him the next day that she was going home. He thought he had displeased her. But Mrs. Kerr approved so warmly, in fact was evidently so relieved, that he realised his mistake. He could only acquiesce and do as she wished. He was so absorbed in her that a previous possibility of Clothilde being settled in St. Helier's where he might at any moment meet her, which had occurred to him while travelling after the Kerrs, never occurred to him again.
Ambrose Piton was sitting on the sea-wall at Rocozanne with his hat tilted over his eyes and his hands stuffed into his pockets when Douce, their old maid-servant, brought him Danby's visiting card. He glanced at it and whistled, then looked at Douce. He saw that she had recognised the visitor.
'Much changed, eh?' he asked.
'No, much the same, white and black, but his eyes very still.'
'By Jove, I wish he hadn't come. Well, show him out here.'
'No need for him to freeze me,' he thought, 'since he can't fly out under this odd turn of affairs. But the question is, does he know or does he want to know? If he wants to know, he'll soon know more than he wants. It's a beastly shame. I hate these scurvy tricks of Fate.'
He got up as Douce reappeared. Yes, he would have known Danby again anywhere. His was the physique which time affects little. Ambrose, though the younger man, was suddenly conscious of a tendency to corpulency and a rolling gait. He surveyed this trim cut-and-dry Anglo-Indian with apparent indifference, while Danby fixed his gaze in return and yet seemed to watch the glitter of the ripples in the sun in the bay beyond. Ambrose was nervous, but preferred to feel amused rather than impressed.
'We'll have chairs if you don't care for the wall,' he said. 'I prefer the wall. One can swing one's legs, an immense luxury of energy to an idle man.'
He did not think Danby would take to the wall, but he did. His surprise was, however, modified by his not throwing his legs over, but sitting sideways, balanced by one foot pressing the turf. Ambrose returned to his old position, reflecting upon him as much clipped in manner as quenched in expression. He said a few nothings, while Danby looked from the house to the churchyard and thought how the fuchsias had grown and how many more graves there were.
Ambrose watched him from the shadow of his hat-brim. He detested palaver, and Danby could only be there to say something personal. He was not the man to make himself ridiculous by coming out from St. Helier's, after so many years, to talk of cows and cabbages, the pear crop, or even the last mail-boat disaster. But how in Heaven's name was he to lead up to Clothilde? He suspected that his knowledge of future complications was the greater, and it seemed hardly fair that Danby should have to finesse. Naturally he would resent his own tactics when unexpected disclosures should prove Ambrose's perception of them.
'I may be a clumsy fellow,' thought Ambrose, 'but here goes for honesty! I needn't look at him—in fact this glitter dazzles my eyes to that extent that shut them I must now and then unless I mean to go blind.'
He stretched out his hand to a pile of books, newspapers, and reviews on the wall beside him and drew a letter from the pages of the Quarterly. Danby's attention was attracted, and he followed his movements as he opened it and smoothed it on his knee.
'This is from my cousin Anna,' he said, clearing his voice and controlling his fever of nervousness. 'She often writes to us, having a warm partiality for old friends. It's rarely though that she has much more than home news to give from Lafer'—he felt rather than saw Danby's surprise as this name fell on his ears—'it's an out-of-the-world sort of place, and she only has her sister's children to talk about. But this morning—yes, I've just received it, she tells me of Miss Marlowe's engagement to you. She does not say "to you," and apparently hasn't the slightest recollection of the name, but she calls you by name and mentions you as being in Jersey, in fact——'
'But how—where is the connection? I don't understand this. Do you know Miss Marlowe?' said Danby, unable any longer to remain silent.
'I do,' said Ambrose. 'She was here the other day. She came to call upon us the day after she arrived in the Islands with her friends. She had told Anna she would, and my father was greatly pleased. She spoke then of wintering here. But it seems she is going home unexpectedly.'
'She is gone. I saw her to London and returned yesterday. But I hope to follow her soon and to see the Admiral. Still, Piton, I don't understand how you are all connected. Miss Hugo now, how does she know her intimately?'
'Oh, very intimately,' said Ambrose, feeling that he was on the sharp edge of a precipice. 'She seems to have made a friend of her. She barely named Mrs. Severn though; she——'
'And who is Mrs. Severn?' said Danby in a remarkably slow and dry voice as he faced him straight.
Ambrose knew that he knew who Mrs. Severn was, but that he was also determined to have the clear-cut truth uttered.
'She's my half-cousin, Clothilde, you know. She married to Lafer, Old Lafer. Her husband is the Admiral's agent,' he said. Under his breath he added a strong expletive.
He did not glance at Danby, but was fully conscious of the intense penetration with which his eyes were riveted on him.
They sat in silence, and Danby continued to look at him. But now it was unconsciously. He was for the time morally paralysed. He simply could not turn his head for the tension on his brain. Every word had struck home with sledge-hammer force; but to realise at once all they involved was impossible.
Ambrose again was apparently absorbed in the bay. He swung his legs and scanned the horizon for passing ships. A spy-glass lay beside him. He took it up and examined a schooner that was rounding Noirmont with all sails set and silver in the sunshine. Then he put it down, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, broke into a low whistle.
'Upon my soul, if I were a woman I'd be weeping,' he thought. He longed to turn sharply, clap Danby on the back and say, 'Cheer up, old man! It's a flabbergasting coincidence, would make a cynic swear; but by Jove you've been reserved for good luck in the end.'
However, he dare not. He knew intuitively that Danby looked an 'old man' at that moment, that his face was drawn and gray. Moreover, he never had been one with whom it was easy to jest. His actions had too clearly borne the stamp of earnestness; there had been an energy of life about him, expressed in few words but impressed on every circumstance in which Ambrose had seen him, that involuntarily expelled banter as profane. No! he had done his part. It was best to ignore his own perception of the dramatic.
He sat on, blinking at the dazzle of the twinkling ripples.
And at last Danby turned and looked at them too.
The afternoon was slipping by. Danby took out his watch, he had been an hour at Rocozanne, had lost the chance of catching one train, and unless he caught the next would miss table d'hôte at Bree's. But he wished to miss table d'hôte. It would suffice to be back in time for a few words with Kerr over their last cigars.
'Spend the evening with us,' said Ambrose, feeling inspired.
'Thanks,' said Danby.
They sat on until tea was announced. Mr. Piton, a cheery, gnome-like little old man, though acquainted with the whole complication of Danby's affairs, ignored every interest that did not bear on Indian statistics. Over these he developed an insatiable curiosity. Ambrose, listening in amused laziness, realised for once that impersonality only is needed to divert tropical heat from the emotional to the matter-of-fact. He now felt himself cool though broiling in the Indian sun with Danby in a linen suit and puggaree. Danby was equal to the occasion. He could dismiss personal feeling. He had had all his life a passion for accuracy, which circumstances had fostered by sending him out to our great Oriental Empire, where different races and religions swarm. He had set himself to master its antagonistic facts. Work there gradually gave him wealth, position, and after a few years a tone of level self-satisfaction, not, strictly speaking, to be called happiness, yet not far from that. He was grateful, and left with a mind encyclopediacally stored with details of its internal fibre. Nothing thus could have soothed him better than this talk with Mr. Piton. It carried him back to old absorbing interests, and eased the tension on a capacity for emotion whose slumber he had, until this afternoon, mistaken for death.
It was late when he got back to St. Helier's, but as he crossed the street to Bree's he recognised Kerr standing in the portico. He reached him just as he threw away his cigar-end. Kerr was looking down, but when he uttered his name he glanced up quickly. Afterwards he told his wife that there was a living tone in his voice that had convinced him he was not, after all, a mummy.
'I want a word with you,' Danby said with a strange new eagerness that became in him almost inarticulation. 'It's a preposterous question to ask, but I really am in the dark—who is Miss Marlowe?'
Kerr stared at him, not understanding. His loathing for what he thought the jugglery of the question expressed itself in his face. Danby saw it. For a moment a dangerous gleam of anger scintillated in his eyes—but after all was it not the way of the world to judge by the evil construction rather than the good? There was also an element of absurdity in the question as sincere. He had been so keenly conscious of this as to guard his ignorance from Ambrose Piton.
'I do not take Miss Marlowe for an impostor,' he said, smiling. 'I know she is herself, but who are her people? I have concluded she was one of a family, had probably sisters, elder sisters. As it happens, we have not entered upon questions of relations yet beyond her grandfather. Excuse me, but I am obliged to inquire—are they above the average in any way—socially, I mean? Is there anything particular in her circumstances?'
'She is an heiress,' said Kerr. 'The Marlowes are county people with fine estates in Yorkshire and Dumfries. Her father was an only child, she is the same, and there is no entail.'
He reflected a moment upon the electrified expression in Danby's face, and seeing it ebb to an involuntary shade of distaste he threw reserve to the winds.
'Come out,' he said. 'It's easier to talk walking, and it's necessary that we should prove ourselves two sensible beings.'
He put his arm through Danby's, and they went down the steps again on to the pavement. They walked the length of the street in silence. Then as they turned and slackened their pace, he loosened his hold and laughed.
'I'd a strong wish to run for Theo,' he said; 'but I also wished to resist it. That's why I took forcible possession. She might have thought you a humbug; I don't. But look here, my good fellow, you've not got to look like that. You must remember you chose to keep yourself in the dark. I would have answered any question at any moment, but as you asked none, I concluded you knew what you were about through other sources—herself, perhaps. Besides which neither Theo nor I knew anything about it. We were completely taken by surprise. Theo, you see, I'm not sure you know, found letters at Athens with the sad news of her only sister's widowhood, and I fear she did not think sufficiently about Cynthia for some time after. Cynthia was in our care. If I'd known what you were about, I'd have made matters square by advising you to address Admiral Marlowe; but until the other day when we ran up against you here, Cynthia and I, you remember, as we were starting for Elizabeth Castle, I had not the faintest suspicion of your intentions. Cynthia, of course, said nothing; and, considering your attachment, you obtruded yourself very little. Cynthia has had many offers of marriage. I believe she has had a horror of being married for her money; the fact of your ignorance will delight her—has done in fact, for she named it to Theo. But it's been a blow to my wife, Danby; and, human-like, she's not ready just now to think the best of you. Her brother has been attached to Cynthia for many years, and so long as she was attached to no one else he would not have ceased to hope to win her. You must know that there's that in Cynthia which inspires a very deep, and more, a very pure passion.'
Danby nodded, and stopping, lit a cigarette with fingers that slightly trembled. The flicker of the match threw an instant's light on his face and showed it as deathly pale. Kerr's good opinion of him was momentarily rising.
'There's a fund of womanly self-respect in her which is not in these days the distinguishing characteristic of the sex,' said Kerr, as they went slowly on again. 'She has wished to marry and be married for love; the latter rather a difficulty in her case. You have done it, Danby. There's nothing for it now but to pocket your pride. You'll have to pocket the Marlowe rent-roll, perhaps to become Danby-Marlowe, if the Admiral cuts up rough and dictatorial. He's been accustomed to a man-of-war and uncompromising discipline, you know. But if any one can keep things smooth, Cynthia can. Be patient and subservient, it'll be a wise discretion. And one thing is certain——' he stopped abruptly.
'What is that?' said Danby, and was astonished to find that his voice was scarcely audible.
Kerr laughed.
'I've no business to dissect her feelings,' he said. 'But she's a woman one must think about somehow, not merely bow to and pass. I daresay you felt it from the first. It's the same with every one. We went out the other day to St. Brelade's; don't know whether you know it, pretty place! She wanted to see some people, relatives of their agent's, I believe; one of them was a very canny old man. He just felt the same about her and expressed it to Theo; one watches her.'
'Yes?'
'Well, I've watched her. I saw how it was. I told Theo, but she wouldn't see it. The fact is, Danby, you are her choice; she has deliberately chosen you. Don't you see it all?' he laughed again, awkwardly.
Danby felt himself to be dense. He could not be sure that he did. Kerr grasped his arm again.
'Upon my word I feel quite sentimental,' he said. 'But one wants her to be happy. She's the sort of creature to whom one would say "All happiness attend you!" yes, by divine right too. The fact is she cares for you tremendously. It would break her heart if things went wrong. Just you fall in with the Admiral's exactions for her sake. Don't be a fool.'
They had reached the portico of Bree's again. Both threw away their cigarette-ends, avoiding looking at each other. They went within, Kerr in advance. Others were in the hall. Peter, the head waiter, was flourishing a serviette, and imparting voluble information regarding the regulations of the hotel to a lady who always travelled with 'darling creatures' in the shape of two dachshund dogs, who always had the air of not knowing what was expected of them. Danby walked past them all, abstractedly. Then suddenly he turned, and going back to where Kerr was hanging up his hat, took his hand. 'I swear I will,' he said.
Kerr went off to bed, pondering deeply. He told Theo all, and was vexed by her unresponsiveness to his new-born enthusiasm. She still chose to consider Danby self-interested. Kerr swore he was not. He asked himself why and how—with that force of emotion that he had seen in his eyes, lurking under the ice of his manner; that absence of self-seeking, where measured tones had seemed to narrow his opinions within the circle of his own being—Danby had waited so long to love? That he did love now he had no longer a doubt.
'He worships her just as Tony does,' he thought. 'He's not veneered, it's high-mindedness. By Jove, what a look he had, deathly white. He's wrapped up in her. Well, well, it's another case of the old old story at its best.'
And he had feared that Cynthia was making a mistake! Faith had failed him with both.
