CHAPTER II.—WORSE AND WORSE.
The Major fervently wished that the ground would open and swallow him. Here was a third lady to pacify and to convince that a mistake had been made. He could see that she was in a more exasperated state even than Mrs Joseph, and likely to be as blind as Mrs John. The complication was becoming utterly bewildering, and he felt that his brain would not endure much more of it. How could such simple letters as his—made studiously cautious in their statements—evoke such wildly erroneous interpretations? He would rather have faced a whole battalion of mutinous Sikhs or infuriated Afghans than have had to go through the inevitable interview with this beautiful girl.
As soon as she reached the Major’s side, she clutched his arm as if it were that of her natural protector, and turned sharply upon Maynard: ‘Now, sir, will you leave me alone? Major Dawkins will conduct me to my aunt, and will, if necessary, protect me from your importunities.’
‘But Nelly, I only want to know what is my fault? How have I given you cause for treating me in this way?’ pleaded Maynard. ‘I am positive that none can exist except in your own imagination. I am sure the Major will tell you that it is not fair to condemn a man without hearing his defence—without even telling him what he is accused of.’
‘If you are a gentleman, you will defer further discussion of the subject until you see my aunt, Mrs Joseph Elliott.’
Had they been alone, the lover would doubtless have acted differently; but to have such words addressed to him in the presence of another man left no alternative. He bowed and retired, hurt and angered by this injustice of his betrothed. Whatever her reason for this outburst might be, he was resolved that it should be promptly explained. He was a straightforward young fellow, and not one to rest for a moment in doubt as to the meaning of her conduct.
The brief scene had closed before the Major could find his voice. ‘Call him back,’ he said agitatedly—‘call him back before it is too late.’
‘I certainly will not,’ replied the lady with a movement of the head as if about to look behind, suggesting that she half-hoped to see him still following. But he was not.
‘Then I must. I cannot allow you to distress yourself and a fine fellow like that in consequence of my blunder.’
She stopped and faced him with an expression of supercilious wonder. By this little movement she could look without appearing to turn for the purpose of looking whether or not Maynard had really obeyed her. ‘I do not understand you, Major Dawkins,’ she said with a faint note of chagrin in her musical voice—for Maynard really was not in sight.
‘Of course you cannot. How could you? The letter you have got was not meant for you. I wrote it to another lady, and I beg you to give it back to me, so that no further mischief may come of it.’
‘Another lady! Then I am not the only one he thinks of?’ (She was quoting from the letter.)—‘Oh, Major Dawkins, this is too much. Please, let me go to the house, and do not say another word about it until I have had time to recover and to think.’
The Major stood aghast; he had put his foot in it again. ‘But you are taking me up in quite a wrong way. Certainly you are the only one Maynard thinks of; but he is not the man referred to in the letter. Do give it back to me; and when you are calmer, everything will be explained.’
He pleaded very earnestly; but his object was defeated by the ingenuity on which he had congratulated himself. He had mentioned no names in any of the epistles. The mind of each lady on reading the one she received naturally fastened upon the man in whom she was most interested, and the Major’s excited attempts at explanation failed to make the error clear to them. Their unreasonableness was painful to him; and if he had been less anxious about remedying his error, he would have laughed at it.
‘For whom, then, was the letter written?’ asked Nellie, her indignation now turning against the Major, as she reflected how cruel and how foolish Stanley Maynard would think her if she had accused him of falsehood on no other ground than that she had received a misdirected letter from a friend. ‘I must insist upon an answer.’
‘You really must not insist upon my telling you. I accept all the blame; and it would be another wicked blunder on my part to give you my friend’s name.’
‘In that case, I must decline to return the letter until we are in the presence of my aunt and Mr Maynard.—Meanwhile, I need not trouble you to escort me to the house.’ Nellie walked proudly away; but the poor girl was ready to cry with vexation and with regret for the hastiness of temper which had characterised her conduct towards Stanley Maynard. In the moment of repentance, however, came the remembrance of the words which had distracted her. ‘I want to save you’ (wrote the Major) ‘from a grave misunderstanding.’ (‘Very kind indeed,’ she interjected.) ‘He who is, I know, dearest to you, thinks only of you. Consider his impulsive nature, and pardon his temporary aberration.’ (‘What could that mean, if not that he had been making love to somebody else?’ she asked bitterly. Had she not herself seen how barefacedly he flirted with Mrs John, until she had a tiff with him on the subject? If he could dare so much before her eyes, what might he not do when unchecked by her presence?) ‘Be merciful to him,’ the note proceeded, ‘as hitherto, and you will have your reward. I mean to take the first available opportunity of talking to him after my arrival at Todhurst, and am confident that he will be promptly brought to reason.’
Was not that enough to rouse the spirit of any girl who had proper pride, which means self-respect? Nellie thought in her anger that it was more than enough. No doubt the Major had talked to him, and having brought him to reason, was now anxious to screen him by telling her that it was all a mistake—that the letter had been intended for somebody else! But she was frightened by this conclusion. Surely the Major could not tell a deliberate falsehood! He might not have meant to do so, and yet do it in the excitement of the moment, in order to soothe her. That must be the way of it; and what an indignity that it should be necessary for a friend to plead for her with the man to whom she had promised her hand!
Her thoughts alternated between the hope that it was all a mistake and the fear that it was not. So she went to her room, cried, had a headache, and excused herself from joining the family at luncheon.
The Major was out of breath and out of patience as he gazed helplessly after the retreating form of Nellie Carroll. Nobody would listen to him; everybody seemed determined to believe that he had entered into a diabolic conspiracy to wreck the happiness of the house of Elliott. What on earth could there be in any of his letters to cause such a commotion, even when they had got into the wrong hands? He had assured every one that there was only a misunderstanding, and he had promised all round to set it right. But they would not give him a chance. He had a good mind to order Hollis to pack up for the next train to London. That, however, would be cowardly, and he was not a coward. He would see the thing out to the bitter end. He lifted his head with an air of resolution, and the bitter end he saw at that moment was represented by the wealthy spinster, Miss Euphemia Panton. She was standing at a little distance, glaring at him severely through her gold-rimmed pince-nez. The Major had reason to believe that he had found favour in her eyes, and he thought with intense relief: ‘Well, here is somebody at last who will give me a word of sympathy, and talk sensibly with me.’
She, too, had reason to believe that she had found favour in the Major’s eyes, and was pleased accordingly. But on the present occasion, as he tripped hopefully towards her (he tripped somewhat less gracefully than usual, on account of his recent excessive exercise), she made no responsive movement; the pince-nez was not lowered, and the severe expression remained. She had been observing him pleading with all the ardour of a lover to Miss Carroll; and she had no doubt whatever of the meaning of his evidently eager speech: he was in love with the minx, and he had been only pretending to care for Miss Euphemia! No lady can submit to be trifled with in matters of affection, and least of all ladies who have arrived at what may be called the ‘undiscovered decade’ in feminine history. She had passed into that realm of mystery, and was indeed one of its oldest inhabitants; and when nature would have lifted her out of it into the peaceful land of resigned old-maidenism, she sought the aid of art in order to keep her place in the still hopeful region. She availed herself of the modern elixirs of youth, and flattered herself that she did so with complete success. She, at their first meeting, noted that the Major trafficked with the same beneficent powers. He on his side made a similar observation regarding her. Strange to say, this fact constituted a bond of sympathy between them; but Miss Euphemia believed that the Major was unaware of her secret, and he was satisfied that she had no suspicion of his; whilst each pitied the other for not being more expert in the use of dyes and cosmetics. Thus they became special friends, and found so much pleasure in each other’s society, that a matrimonial climax seemed not improbable, the lady having a sufficient dowry to dispose satisfactorily of the important problem of ways and means.
‘Thank goodness, you are here, Miss Panton,’ exclaimed the Major in the full confidence of her sympathy in his miserable position. ‘I have got myself into a most abominable mess by an act of stupidity which, although reprehensible, is excusable.’
The lady answered not a word. She was nearly a head taller than he, and she continued to survey him through her glasses as if he had been some zoological specimen.
He had been hot enough before; he was chilled to the marrow now. He could scarcely believe his senses. Would she, too, desert him in this crisis?
‘Miss Panton,’ he stammered, ‘I hoped—that is, I believed that you would show me some consideration. I suppose Mrs Joseph has been speaking to you; but if you will only listen to a few words of explanation, you will understand me.’
‘I think, Major Dawkins, I have to-day observed enough on the tennis-lawn and here, to enable me to understand you perfectly without Mrs Joseph Elliott’s assistance or yours.’ The words were icicles. She dropped her pince-nez and walked away.
The Major was speechless. He trembled or shivered with dismay. Lifting a hand to his brow, he felt the heads of cold perspiration on it, and at the same moment the gong sounded for luncheon. Good heavens! Horrible idea!—the effect of all this excitement and perspiration must be to change the colour of his hair! And true enough it was beginning to show a marked shade of gray-green at the roots. He must get to his room to repair the damage before he appeared at the luncheon table. ‘Desperate ills need desperate remedies.’
Luncheon at Todhurst was, except in the hunting season, like the family gathering of other days, when the mid-day meal was the chief one. There were blithe interchanges of the morning’s experiences, pleasant intercourse with some of the elder members of the nursery, and a homely ease which was not always found at the late dinner, when formal company-manners had to be assumed, so far as they could be in the genial presence of Squire Elliott. All this was changed on the fatal day on which the Major’s misdirected letters had been delivered. The Squire sat at one end of the table, evidently in an ill-humour; his spouse, Mrs Joseph, at the other end, doing her best not to show the wrath which was in her bosom. Mrs John was suppressing her natural gaiety and desire to make fun of the whole party, whilst she was pathetically earnest in her endeavours to soothe the perturbed spirit of her lord. The latter was irritable and gloomy, accepting her attentions most ungraciously. Stanley Maynard ate and looked as if he were savagely devouring an enemy. Miss Euphemia sat like a post, playing with her knife and fork rather than eating. Nellie was not present.
The Major was late in taking his place, and was flustered in consequence, even more than he might have been under the circumstances. He felt the gloom which pervaded the place, and he was made painfully conscious of the fact that he was the cause of it. He was generally regarded as an acquisition to any party, for he had a special knack of setting conversations ‘going,’ a more useful quality than that which constitutes a ‘good talker.’ The latter demands everybody’s attention, and bores the greater part of his audience; the former enables everybody to speak, and thus produces the agreeable feeling of self-satisfaction in having personally contributed to the enjoyment of the hour.
With desperate heroism, he endeavoured to break the spell which tied the tongues of his companions. He told one of his best stories, the point of which had never failed to set the table in a roar of laughter. Lugubrious grimaces were the only response. He tried another anecdote, with the same result. He descended to the lowest depths of convivial intercourse; he propounded a conundrum, and the eldest of the girls immediately answered it with the addition of the galling commentary: ‘I knew that long ago.’ In his present condition of absolute helplessness, he wished to goodness the child would remember another conundrum, and give it for his benefit, if not for that of the company. Probably, she would have done so, had not the mother’s eye been upon her, suggesting the austere maxim, ‘Children should be seen, not heard.’
The Major took another tack. He put questions to his host about the moors, about the horses, about the hounds, and about the cause of Tally-ho’s illness—any one of which topics would at another time have started the Squire into a gallop of chat. He would have compared the seasons as affecting the moors for twenty years past; he would have detailed the pedigree and merits of every horse in his stables; he would have repeated endless anecdotes about the hounds; and as to the illness of Tally-ho, he would have gone into the most minute particulars as to its cause, his treatment, and the probable result.
But on this day all was in vain. The Major’s suggestive queries were responded to by: ‘Don’t know,’ ‘Much the same as usual,’ ‘Hope for the best,’ and, ‘I daresay the brute will come round.’
When they rose from the table, the Major thanked heaven that this trial was over. The Squire, with a curious mingling of awkwardness and suppressed ill-temper, utterly opposed to his habitually jovial manner, advanced to his unhappy guest: ‘I want to see you in the library in about half an hour,’ he said, and walked out of the room.
‘That’s a comfort,’ thought the Major. ‘I shall have a man with some common-sense to hear me.’
Meanwhile, he would have liked to speak a few words of consolation to Maynard; but that gentleman met his advances with somewhat repellent politeness.
‘If you want to speak to me about the trouble you have made between Miss Carroll and me, you will have ample opportunity to do so when we meet in the library,’ he said, and strolled out to the lawn to seek the soothing influence of a cigar.
Then the Major wished to discharge the duty he had so rashly undertaken, which was to bring the morbidly suspicious John Elliott to reason. He was only now realising the difficulty of the task; and he presently had a decisive indication that it was likely to be one he could not accomplish. He had barely uttered half-a-dozen words of his well-intentioned admonition which was to precede his explanation of ‘the incident,’ when John Elliott peevishly interrupted him: ‘I have promised not to discuss this subject until we are in the library.’
So, he was to meet the three of them. So much the better; they were men, and they would give him a patient hearing. Still, he would have liked a little private talk with John Elliott before the meeting in the library, which was assuming the character of a sort of court-martial. There were things to say to him which could only be uttered when they were conversing confidentially. For instance, he could not say to him before others: ‘You have been accusing Mrs John of behaviour unbecoming your wife; you have magnified the circumstance of her allowing young Maynard to kiss her under the mistletoe last Christmas, until you have come to believe that every time she says a friendly word to him or smiles on him, she is false to you. You have even gone so far as to think of employing a private detective to watch them. Now, my dear friend, do get all that confounded nonsense out of your head. Remember that she has known Maynard from his boyhood; and although she is not old enough to be his mother, she still looks on him as a boy, and he regards her as an elder sister. She is naturally frank, and naturally treats him with more frankness than she does other men. You know that she long ago set her heart upon making a match between him and Nellie Carroll, both being suitable in every respect; and she has succeeded. What do you think will happen if your absurd fancies get wind? Why, there will be a general rupture—a split in the camp which may separate the young folk, and, possibly, you and Mrs John, who has been and is devoted to you.’
There, that would have brought him to reason, if he had a scrap of sense left. But it could not be spoken in the presence of others. Very likely, suspicious John would ask him how he came to know all this, and the question would be troublesome—a thousand times more troublesome since all the letters had got into the wrong hands. The one for John Elliott had reached Mrs Joseph, instead of the simple intimation of the date of the Major’s arrival; that for Nellie had been delivered to Mrs John, and Mrs John’s to Nellie. It was awkward.
‘As to the question,’ the Major reflected: ‘I got the information from Matt Willis, the brother of Mrs John; and he made me promise not to mix him up in the affair. He got the information from John Elliott himself, who complained to his brother-in-law about the way his wife was carrying on with Maynard. Matt had an unconquerable antipathy to family squabbles, and would not interfere; but thinking that something should be done to shut John up before serious harm came of his insane suspicions, he asked me, as the friend of the family, to put things right. Like a fool, I consented; and the blame of all the trouble falls on me! Am I to blame?—Stop a minute. By Jove!—it is John Elliott who is the author of the whole mischief, and I’ll tell him so.’
Greatly consoled by the discovery that he was not the original culprit in causing what promised to be a serious breach in the relationships of valued friends, the Major was prepared to face the court-martial before which he was presently to stand. Ay, and he would have no nonsense about the affair. He would tell Squire Joseph bluntly that Mrs Joseph had taken possession of a letter which did not belong to her. He would tell Maynard to go and speak to Nellie, and assure her, as he had done, that she had misinterpreted the letter she had received, even if it had been intended for her; and he would tell John Elliott that he must either speak to him in private, or take the consequence of his speaking in the presence of the Squire and Stanley Maynard.