SO VERY UNATTRACTIVE!
"Yes," meditated pretty Mrs. Hart; "I suppose it would be invidious to pass her over and ask the other three, but I would so much rather have them."
"Cannot you ask the whole four?" suggested her sister.
"Does it not strike you as being almost too much of a good thing? You see, our space is not unlimited."
"Ask the three eldest," said Bertie Paine decidedly.
"But I do not want her. What use is she? She can sing, certainly, but you cannot keep her singing all the evening; and the rest of the time she neither talks nor flirts. And she is altogether so very unattractive," ended Mrs. Hart, despondently.
"Who is it?" asked the handsomest man in the room, strolling up to the group by the window. "Who is this unfortunate lady? I always feel such sympathy with the unattractive, as you know."
"Naturally," laughed Mrs. Hart. "The individual in question is a Miss Mildmay, a plain person and the eldest of four sisters."
"Mildmay? Who are they? I used to know people of that name, and there were four girls in the family. One of them—her name was Minnie, I remember—promised to grow up very pretty."
"So she is; Minnie is the third. They are certainly your friends, Mr. Ratcliff. They are all pretty but the eldest, and all their names begin with M: Margaret, Miriam, Minnie, and Maud. Absurd, is it not?"
"Somebody had a strong fancy for alliteration. So Miss Mildmay is plain?"
"Very plain, very dull, very uninteresting," said Mrs. Hart and her sister in a breath. "Much given to stocking-knitting and good works."
"And good works comprise?" quoth Mr. Ratcliff, interrogatively.
"She sat up every night for a week with Blanche Carter's children when they had diphtheria, and saved their lives by her nursing," said Elsie Paine indignantly. "That is the woman that those good people sneer at. You are not fair to her, Mrs. Hart. She has a sweet face when you come to know her."
"There, you have put Elsie up," cried mischievous Bertie. "No more peace for you here, Mrs. Hart. Come out into the garden with me, and postpone this question in favour of tennis."
The conclave broke up and Mark Ratcliff said and heard no more of Margaret Mildmay. He betook himself to solitude and cigars, and as he strode over the breezy downs he wondered what a predilection for stocking-knitting and good works might signify in the once merry girl, and if they might be possibly a form of penance for past misdeeds.
"She did behave abominably," he said to himself, flinging a cigar-end viciously away into a patch of dry grass, which ignited and required much stamping before it consented to go out. "Yes, she behaved abominably, and at my time of life I might amuse myself better than in thinking of a fickle girl. Poor Margaret! stockings and good works—she might have done as well taking care of me!"
Then he lit another cigar, put up a covey of partridges, remembered how he used to shoot with Margaret's father, told himself that there was no fool like an old fool—not referring to Mr. Mildmay in the least—and took himself impatiently back into the town.
And there he did a very dishonourable thing.
A bowery lane ran at the bottom of the gardens attached to a row of scattered villas, picturesque residences inhabited by well-to-do people; and along the bank were placed benches here and there, inviting the passer-by to rest.
From one of the gardens came the sound of quiet voices, one of which he knew, though it had been unheard for years. He sat himself deliberately down upon the bench conveniently near the spot, and hearkened to what that voice had to say.
"Sing to me, Margaret, dear," pleaded the other speaker. "I am selfish to be always wanting it, I know, but it will not be for long now, and if you do not sing me 'Will he Come?' I shall keep on hearing it till I have to try to sing it myself, and that hurts."
"Hush, Ailie. You know I will sing," and Mark Ratcliff held his breath in surprise as the notes of the song rose upward.
Margaret used to sing, but not like this. Every note was like a winged soul rising out of prison. He had never heard such a voice before. No wonder that Mrs. Hart had said that she could sing, and no wonder that this sick girl wanted to hear it. By the way, this was one of the good works, of course!
"Rest to the weary spirit,
Peace to the quiet dead,"
repeated Ailie as the song died away. "He never came, Margaret, and he never will come to me. It may be wicked, but I could die gladly if I could see him first and know that he had not betrayed me. It is terrible to lie drifting out into the dark without a word from him!"
"Dear Ailie, why do you make me sing this wretched song? Why do you try to dwell on the thought of faithless loves? Have patience a little; your letters may yet find him."
"Too late. In time for him to drop a tear over my grave and tell you that he never meant to hurt me," cried the girl hysterically. "Oh, Margaret! Why do I tell you all the anguish that eats upon my heart? If you could only know the comfort you are to me! the blessed relief of lying in your arms and telling you what nobody else could forgive or understand! You are the best person I know, and yet you never make me feel myself lost beyond redemption."
"You are talking nonsense, darling," said the voice of the very dull person.
"Am I, you pearl of womanhood? What would you say if I told you all the fancies I have about you? Ah, Margaret, I do not want to know that you have had your heart broken by a false lover!"
"My dear, I was always a plain and unattractive person, just as I am at this day," answered Margaret in a voice of infinite gentleness. "But why should you not know? There are more faithless than faithful lovers, may be; the one I had grew tired of so dull a person and he went away. That was all."
Then the two women moved away towards the house and the garden lay in silence.
Mark Ratcliff sat stiff with astonishment.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed at last. "She flings all the blame on me! The whole treachery was hers, and this is positively the coolest thing that ever I heard. Faithless lover, indeed! When she dismissed me with actual insult! But a woman with such a voice might do almost anything, you plain and unattractive Miss Mildmay!"
He lit another cigar, rose in leisurely fashion and sought the way to the front entrances of the villas. Under the shade of the horse-chestnuts, which his critical eye decided to be, like himself and Margaret, approaching the season of the sere and yellow leaf, he loitered, smoking and watching, and counting up the years since he had waited and watched for the same person before.
At last the right door opened and down the steps came a very sober-looking and unconscious lady. She was thinking of nothing but the dying girl from whom she had just parted.
"Margaret!"
She started violently. She knew the voice well enough, but after these years it was impossible that it should be sounding here.
"Margaret!" he said again imperatively.
"Mr. Ratcliff," she faltered. "I did not expect to see you again."
"Your expectations seem to be a little curious," he replied, surveying her coolly. "There is a great deal that you have to explain to me. What do you mean by calling me a false lover?"
"Who told you that I accused you of falsehood?" she asked, dropping the book she was carrying in her surprise. "If I did you could scarcely contradict me, but this is not quite the place for such discussions."
He possessed himself of the book and led the way to the public gardens, where the principal walks offered privacy enough at an hour when most of the world was busy over tennis. Children and nursemaids do not count as intruders on privacy.
"See here, Margaret, I was eavesdropping under the garden-fence, while you talked with your sick friend, and I heard you giving me a famously bad character. At least," suddenly recollecting himself, "unless I have made a fool of myself, and it was somebody else you meant."
Margaret said nothing.
"Had you ever any other love?"
"Never," said she, and the colour flew up into her pale face. She did not at all understand the accusation brought against her, or the fierceness of the accuser.
"Then apologise at once for the charge you have brought against me."
She looked up at him with knitted brows. She wanted to look at him, but her eyes would drop again immediately.
"Are you not unreasonable?" she asked. "Years ago you made love to me. Then you went away. Your father was ill, and you could not choose but go, but you gave me to understand that you were coming back to me. You never came. Do you call that faithfulness?"
"I wrote."
"Never."
"Margaret!" he cried indignantly. "I wrote and had your answer. Are you dreaming?"
"You never wrote. In my life I never wrote to you."
"Good heavens! When I have your letter in my pocket! I wrote to you asking if I might come back as your accepted lover, and you sent me this in return," said he, giving her the paper for which he had searched his pocket-book.
She took it and looked it over. When she gave it back her glance was fixed far away over the miraculous river that ran with mimic waterfalls through the gardens, and she was ghastly pale.
"I did not write that," she said. "You ought to have known it."
"It is your signature and your hand."
"It is like my hand. I never signed myself M. Mildmay. How could I, when we were all M. Mildmay?"
A light broke in upon him. They were all M. Mildmay, of course, and he remembered a long-forgotten feud with Miriam. He bit his lip and stamped his foot angrily. What a fool he had been!
"I am sorry," said Margaret humbly. "For all the world I would not have insulted you, and it is cruel that you should have had to think it of me. I do apologise for any share I have had in it."
Her heart and throat were almost bursting with agony as she spoke in those quiet tones, and he stamped away up the path with his back to her.
"Margaret!" he said, coming back and seizing her hands. "I thought I was case-hardened, but just tell me that you loved me then!"
"I love you now," she answered, crying a little. "I am not of the sort that changes in the matter of loving. Is it bold to say that, and I so unattractive?"
"Hang your unattractiveness! Margaret, just say, 'I love you, Mark Ratcliff,' and set me some atoning penance for my idiocy. You do not know what a curse that vile paper has been to me," and he shot the offending missive into the foolish little river and broke into vigorous and ungraceful language with regard to the writer.
"Hush, hush!" cried Margaret, in deep distress. "She is my sister, and she could not know how much it meant to me."
"Of course not! And what did it matter to her that I must go hungry and thirsty all these years, cursing the whole of womankind because you had tricked me!"
"Oh, why did you distrust me?" exclaimed she sorrowfully, leaning back against the holly arbour in which they had sheltered, and bursting into downright weeping.
"What an amiable desire you evince to throw the fault on me, Margaret," and he drew her hands from her face very gently; "must there be tears now that I have found you again? Forgive me, dear. I was worse than a fool to doubt you, but now we will leave room for no more possibilities of trouble and parting. I am going to find out that other poor distrusted beggar, your friend Ailie's lover, and let him know what you women accuse him of, and when I come back, we shall see!"
"See what?" gasped Margaret.
"What we shall see!" he returned, triumphantly.
"Awfully sorry to have been late for dinner, Mrs. Hart," said Mr. Ratcliff, without the least appearance of distress, when he joined the ladies in the drawing-room; "I was unavoidably detained. By the way, your party is not for another month, I think?"
"No," she replied, wondering why her handsome friend looked so gleefully mischievous. "I have fixed upon the thirtieth; I do not want to clash with Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Clarence."
"Then I am commissioned to tell you that you may invite all the Misses Mildmay, without the least inconvenience. Miss Mildmay the undesirable will not be in a position to accept your invitation. It is anticipated that she will then be on her wedding tour as Mrs. Mark Ratcliff."
"Good gracious! How sudden!" exclaimed Mrs. Hart, opening her pretty blue eyes to their widest extent; and for the life of her she could not help adding under her breath, "And she so very unattractive!"