CHAPTER XV.
A MESSAGE.
Frank King could never exactly define what peculiarities of mind, or person, or manner it was that had so singularly attracted him in Nan Beresford, though he had spent many a meditative hour on board ship in thinking about her. In any case, that boyish fancy was one that a few years' absence might very well have been expected to cure. But the very opposite had happened. Perhaps it was the mere hopelessness of the thing that made him brood the more over it, until it took possession of his life altogether. He kept resolutely abroad, so that he had but few chances of falling in love with somebody else, which is the usual remedy in such cases. When at length he was summoned home, about the first news that reached him was of Nan's contemplated marriage. He was not surprised. And when he consented to go down to Brighton with her brother, it was that he might have just one more glimpse of one whom he always had known was lost to him. He had nothing to reproach her or himself with. It was all a misfortune, and nothing more. But his life had been changed for him by that mere boyish fancy.
Then came that wonderful new hope. Nan was away; Nan was impossible; but here was the very counterpart of Nan; and why should he not transfer all that lingering love and admiration from the one sister to the other who so closely resembled her? It was the prompting of despair as much as anything else. He argued with himself. He tried to make himself believe that this was really Nan—only grown a year or so older than the Nan whom he had last seen at Como. Of course there must be differences; people changed with the changing years. Sometimes he turned away, so that he might only hear her; and her voice was like Nan's.
Now, if Frank King was busy persuading himself that this transference of affection was not only natural and possible, but indeed the easiest and simplest thing in the world, it must be admitted that he obtained every help and encouragement from Madge Beresford herself. She was more than kind to him; she was attentive; she professed great respect for his opinions; and she did her best to conceal—or rather let us say subdue—her bad temper. And they were very much together during these two or three days. Frank King, being on such intimate terms of friendship with Mr. Tom, had almost become an inmate of the house. His being carried off to lunch, when they met him in the rooming, was a matter of course. Then he watched Madge paint, and listened to Edith's music; or they all went downstairs and played billiards, and by that time it was the hour for the afternoon promenade. It was no matter to them that December afternoons are short, and sometimes cold; one's health must be preserved despite the weather; and then again, Brighton looked very picturesque in the gathering dusk, with the long rows of her golden lamps. To observe this properly, however, you ought to go out on the pier; and although at that hour at that time of the year there is not a human being to be found there, that need not interfere with your appreciation of the golden-lit spectacle.
Moreover, Mr. Tom was a tyrant. When he had settled that Captain King might as well remain to dinner, instead of going away to dine by himself at his hotel, it was no use for Captain King to resist. And then Tom's invitation, for mere courtesy sake, had to be repeated by Lady Beresford, and prettily seconded by the two girls. No such favours, be it observed, were showered on the effervescent Roberts or on young Thynne; Mr. Tom had taken the sailor suitor under his protection; there was to be a distinction drawn.
One night, just after Frank King had left, Tom and his sister were by themselves in the billiard-room.
'I want to speak to you, Madge,' said he, in a tone that meant something serious.
'Very well, then.'
'Now, none of your airs and pretence,' he said. 'You needn't try to gammon me.'
'If you would talk English, one might understand you,' she said, spitefully.
'You understand me well enough. When you were on the pier, this morning your eyes were just as wide open as anybody's. And again this afternoon, when you were up on the Marine Parade.'
Madge flushed a little, but said nothing.
'You know as well as anybody that that fellow Hanbury is hanging about,' said Tom, regarding her with suspicion. 'He is always loitering round, dodging after you. And I won't have it. I'll write to the Chief Clerk if he doesn't mind.'
'I don't suppose the Chief Clerk and the Vice-Chancellor and the whole lot of them,' said Madge, pretending to be much interested in the tip of her cue, 'can expel a person from Brighton who is doing no harm.'
'Doing no harm? If you didn't encourage him, do you think he'd hang about like that? If he knew distinctly you wanted him to be off, do you think he'd spend his time slinking about the streets? I believe he has been writing to you again.'
This was quite a random shot, but it told.
'He sent me one letter—not in his own handwriting,' Madge confessed, diffidently.
'Show it to me!'
'I can't. I burned it. I was afraid. Tom, you wouldn't get the poor fellow into trouble!'
'I've no patience with you!' he said angrily. 'Why can't you be fair and aboveboard? Why don't you send the fellow about his business at once——'
'Well, I have.'
'Why don't you settle the thing straight? You know Frank King wants to marry you: anybody can see that. Why don't you have him, and be done with it?'
Madge turned away a little, and said with a very pretty smile,
'And so I would, if he would ask me.'
Well, Mr. Tom thought he knew something of the ways of womankind, from having been brought up among so many; but this fairly took his breath away. He stared at her. He laid down his cue.
'Well, I'm smashed,' he said at length. And then he added slowly, 'I'm glad I've got nothing to do with you women. I believe you'd roast any fellow alive, and then cut him into bits for fourpence-half-penny. It isn't more than three months since you were crying your eyes out about that fellow Hanbury——'
'You were as anxious as any one he should be sent away,' retorted Madge. 'It appears I can't please every one. Perhaps, on the whole, it would be as well to continue the game, for I only want three to be out.'
Tom gave up. He continued the game, and played so savagely and so well that poor Madge never got her three. And he did not recur to that subject except to say the last thing at night, as the girls were leaving—
'Look here, Madge, that fellow Hanbury had better take care.'
'I suppose he can look after himself,' said Madge. 'I have nothing to do with him. Only you can't expect me not to be sorry for him. And how am I to send him away when I dare not speak to him? And do you think the streets of Brighton belong to me?'
Tom again gave up, but was more convinced than ever that women were strange creatures, who could not be straightforward even when they tried. From that and similar generalisations, however, he invariably excepted Nan. Nan did not belong to womankind as considered as a section of the human race. Nan was Nan.
The next afternoon Captain King called to say good-bye. He found the girls very busy over Christmas cards. Madge was painting little studies of flowers for exceptionally favoured people, and she invited him to look over these.
'They are very pretty,' he said. 'I hope the people who are fortunate enough to get them will value them. I mean they are not like ordinary Christmas cards.'
'Oh, if you like them,' said Madge, modestly, 'you might take one for yourself.'
'May I?' he said, regarding her, 'and may I choose the one?'
'Oh yes, certainly,' she answered,
'I know the one I should like to take,' he said, still regarding her.
'This one.'
It was a little bit of forget-me-not, very nicely painted—from memory.
He showed it to her.
'May I take this one with me?' he said.
'Yes,' she answered, in a very low voice, and with her eyes cast down.
After that there was a brief silence, only broken by the sound of Miss Edith's pen, that young lady being at the other side of the table addressing envelopes.
Captain Frank went back to Wiltshire, greatly treasuring that bit of cardboard, and making it the basis of many audacious guesses at the future. Nan came home from Lewes for Christmas; and Madge was particularly affectionate towards her.
'What pretty flowers you have!' Nan said, just after she had arrived—the first time, indeed, she went into the dining-room.
'Yes,' Madge answered, 'Captain King sent me flowers once or twice, and some of them have kept very well. But I wish they wouldn't wire them.'
Nan turned away quickly towards the window, and said nothing.
Then Tom went down to Wiltshire, and was most warmly received at Kingscourt. Also pretty Mary Coventry, who was still staying in the house, was kind to this handsome, conceited boy; and he was rather smitten; but he kept a tight hold on himself.
'No,' he said to himself, 'I'm not going to marry any woman; I know too much about them.'
He had a royal time of it altogether; but most of all he enjoyed the quieter days, when he and Frank King went shooting rabbits on the heath. It was sharp, brisk work in the cold weather, better than standing in wet ploughed fields outside woods and waiting until both toes and fingers got benumbed. There was no formality in this business, and no ladies turning up at lunch, and no heart-breaking when one missed. Frank King was excessively kind to him. Not caring very much for shooting himself, he was content to become Mr. Tom's henchman; and they got on very well together. Further, in the smoking-room at night these two were thrown on each other's conversation—for old Mr. King did not smoke—and it was remarkable how interesting Captain King found his friend's talk. It was mostly about Madge and her sisters; and Frank King listened eagerly, and always would have Mr. Tom have another cigarette, while he was busy drawing imaginative pictures, and convincing himself more and more that Madge was no other than Nan, and that life had begun again for him, with all sorts of beautiful possibilities in it. For he could not be blind to the marked favour that the young lady had shown him; and he had long ceased to have any fear of the shadowy Hanbury who was skulking somewhere unregarded in the background.
At length one night Captain Frank, in a burst of confidence, told Mr.
Tom all about it, and asked him to say honestly what he thought the
chances were. Would Lady Beresford have any objection? Would Miss
Margaret consider he had not known her sufficiently long or intimately?
What was Mr. Tom's own opinion?
Mr. Tom flushed uneasily.
'I—well, you see—I keep out of that kind of thing as a rule. Women have such confounded queer ways. You're sure to put your foot into it if you intermeddle. These girls are always worrying people about their sweethearts—all but Nan. I wish to goodness they were all married; my life is made a burden to me amongst them.'
'But what do you think, Beresford? Haven't you any opinion? What would you do in a similar case?'
'I?' said Mr. Tom, with a laugh, 'I suppose I should ask the girl; and if she didn't like to say yes, she could do the other thing.'
'But—do you think there would be a chance?'
'Write and see,' said Mr. Tom, with another laugh; further than that he would not interfere.
Frank King considered for a time; and at last boldly determined to act on this advice. He sat up late that night, concocting a skilful, cautious, appealing letter; and as he re-wrote it carefully, all by himself, in the silence, it seemed to him almost as if he were beseeching Nan to reconsider the verdict she had given at Bellagio more than three years before. Life would begin all over again if only she would say yes. Sometimes he found himself thinking of that ball in Spring Gardens; and of her startled shyness, and of her winning confidence, and anxious wish to please; until he recollected that it was Madge to whom he was writing, and that Madge had never been to the ball at all.
This fateful missive was left to be despatched the first thing in the morning; and at the very least there must needs be two or three days' interval. But it cannot be said that he passed this time in terrible anxiety. He was secretly hopeful; so much so that he had begged Mr. Tom, who ought to have gone back before this time, to wait another day or so. His private reason was that he hoped to accompany Madge's brother to Brighton.
All the same, the crisis of a man's life cannot approach without causing some mental disturbance, even in the most hopeful. Long before the Kingscourt family had assembled round the breakfast-table, Frank King had ridden over, on these two or three cold mornings, to the postal town, which was nearly two miles off, so that he should not have to wait for the arrival of the bag. And at last came a letter with the Brighton postmark. He glanced at the handwriting, and thought it was Madge's. That was enough. He put it in his pocket without opening it; went out and got on his horse; and went well outside the little town into the quietude of the lanes before putting his hand into his pocket again and taking the letter out.
No, he was not very apprehensive about the result, or he could not have carried the letter thus far unopened. But all the same the contents surprised him. He had expected, at the worst, some mild refusal on the ground of haste; and, at the best, an evasive hint that he might come to Brighton and talk to Lady Beresford. But all the writing on this sheet of paper consisted of two words, 'From Madge;' and what accompanied them was a bit of forget-me-not—not painted, this time, but a bit of the real flower. It was a pretty notion. It confessed much, without saying much. There was a sort of maiden reticence about it, and yet kindness, and hope. What Frank King did not know was this—that it was Nan Beresford who had suggested that answer to his letter.
He never knew how he got home that morning. He was all in a tempest of eagerness and delight; he scarcely lived in to-day—it was next day. It was the future that seemed to be around him. He burst into his friend's bed-room before the breakfast gong had sounded.
'Beresford, I'll go with you whenever you like now. Whenever you like.
I'm going to Brighton with you, I mean.'
'Oh, that's it, is it?' said Mr. Tom, without looking up—he was tying his shoes.
'I've heard from your sister, you know——'
'I thought so. It's all right then, is it?'
'I hope so. I'm very glad it's settled. And you know I don't want to turn you out of the house; but you've been very kind, waiting a day or two longer; and I should like to get to Brighton at once.'
'I'll start in five minutes if you like,' said Mr. Tom, coolly, having finished with his shoes. 'And I suppose I ought to congratulate you. Well, I do. She's a very good sort of a girl. Only——'
He hesitated. It was inauspicious.
'What do you mean?' said Captain Frank.
'Well, I've seen a good deal about women and their goings on, don't you know?' said Mr. Tom, with a sort of shrug. 'They're always changing and chopping and twisting about. The best way is to marry them offhand, and take the nonsense out of them.'
Captain Frank laughed. This was not at all alarming. And when it became secretly known that Captain Frank was immediately going to Brighton to secure his promised bride, there was a great, though discreet rejoicing at Kingscourt; and even pretty Mary Coventry came with her demure and laughing congratulations; and Mr. Tom was made more of than ever during the few hours longer that he remained in the house. Frank King had not time to think about Nan now; it was Madge Beresford who had sent him that bit of forget-me-not.