Barren Honour: A Novel

by George A. Lawrence

"Rather an unnecessary question of Max's, dear Mildred. He ought to know, by this time, that his friends are quite as welcome here as my own. As it happens, we have ample room for those two guns during the early (the word was marked) part of September. So many anxious parents will be contending for the possession of Clydesdale, that he will scarcely waste his golden time here beyond a fortnight. Few men are fonder of being persecuted with the attentions of your sex than that very eligible Earl. I believe he thinks it is no use being the parti of England if you don't reap its advantages, before as well as after marriage. I dare say Bertie will stay longer; the mothers, at all events, don't hunt him. I hope he will, for there's no pleasanter boy in a house, and his detrimentalism won't hurt us here. Will you write at once and say that we shall be charmed to see them all?"

Those last words were spoken with rather an unnatural distinctness; it seemed as though it cost the Squire an effort to utter them, and he left the room almost immediately, muttering something about "people waiting for him in his study." After a few minutes more of insignificant conversation not worth recording, the cousins, too, went out to get ready for their ride. Lady Mildred stayed her hand for a moment—she was crumbling bread into cream, carefully, for the Maltese dog's luncheon—and looked after them with a pensive expression on her face, in which mingled a shade of pity. Just so much compassion may have softened, long ago, the rigid features of some abbess on her tribunal, when after pronouncing the fatal Vade in pace, she saw an unhappy nun led out between the executioners, to expiate her broken vows.

Whatever might be Miss Vavasour's failings, dilatoriness in dressing was certainly not one of them; she would have won her wager that morning; and yet it would have puzzled the severest critic to have found a fault of omission or commission in her costume as she stood in the recess of one of the windows of the great hall, waiting for the horses and her cousin. He joined her almost immediately, though, and Helen's eyes sparkled more brilliantly, as she remarked a letter in his hand.

"I always quote you and Pauline," Wyverne said, "when people keep their horses at the door for an hour by Shrewsbury clock; but you have outdone yourselves to-day. You deserve a small recompense—la voilà. It must be a satisfaction to a minor prophetess to find her prediction perfectly realized. My beautiful Sybil! I don't grudge you your triumph, especially as I did not contradict you on the point. The oldest and ugliest of the sisterhood never made a better guess at truth. Read that. I shall give 'my lady' the sense of it; but I don't think I shall show it her."

It was Bernard Haldane's answer, and it ran thus:

My dear Alan,—I thank you for your letter, because I am sure it was courteously meant, and, I believe, disinterestedly too; though, as you are my nearest male relation, it might naturally be expected that I should do or promise something on an occasion like this. I wish you to understand plainly, and once for all, that, in the event of your intended marriage taking place, you need anticipate no assistance whatever from me, present or future, before or after my death. I think it best to enter into no explanations and to give no reasons, but simply to state the fact of my having so determined. I have given up congratulating people about anything; but, were it otherwise, I should reserve such formalities for some more auspicious occasion. Neither am I often astonished; but I had the honour of knowing Lady Mildred Vavasour slightly many years ago, and I own to being somewhat surprised at her sanctioning so romantically imprudent an engagement. I will not inflict any sermon upon you; it is only to their heirs that old men have a right to preach. It is unlikely that we shall meet or correspond often again. After what I have written, it seems absurd to say, "I wish you well." Nevertheless—it is so.

Believe me,
Very faithfully yours,
Bernard Haldane.

There was disappointment certainly on the beautiful face, but it sprung from a very different cause from that to which Wyverne naturally assigned it. Helen had expected the perusal of a more delicate handwriting. The quaint cynical letter did not interest her much under the circumstances; however she read it through, and as she gave it back, there was a smile on her proud lip partaking as much of amusement as of disdain.

"Let us give credit where credit is due," she said. "I believe it cost Mr. Haldane some pains to compose that answer, short as it is. If you ever speak to him about it, will you say that we considered it very terse and straightforward, and rather epigrammatic? Don't show it to mamma, though. I wonder when she knew Mr. Haldane? Is it not odd that she never alluded to it when his name has been mentioned? Ah, there are the horses at last. Alan, do you see Maimouna arching that beautiful neck of hers? I am certain she is thinking of me. I defy the crossest of uncles to spoil my ride to-day. Will he yours?"

Every shade of bitterness had passed away, and the sunniest side of Helen's nature—wayward and wilful at times, but always frank and honest and affectionate—showed itself before she finished speaking.

Reader of mine, whether young or old—suppose yourself, I beseech you, to be standing, with none to witness your weakness, by the side of the Oriana of the hour; let the loveliest of dark eyes be gazing into yours, full of provocative promise, till their dangerous magnetism thrills through brain and nerve and vein, and then—tax your imagination or your memory for Alan Wyverne's answer. You will write it out better than I, and it will be a charity to the printer; for, were it correctly set down, it would be so curiously broken up as to puzzle the cleverest compositor of them all.