“It won’t do, William; you know very well how cross you always are now, at least with me, not that I mind it much, but there’s no denying.”
“You accused me of that before, and I said I was sorry. I—perhaps I am. I’m going away, and everything breaking up, you know, and you must make allowances. I used not to be cross long ago, and I’m not changed. No—I’m the same—I never said an unkind word to you, Vi, all the time when you were a little thing, and if ever I speak differently now, it is not from unkindness, only that things have gone wrong with me, and I’ve seen something of the world; and things happen to sour one, and—I don’t know—but I’m not changed. You mustn’t think it now that I’m going away. I’m such a fool, I’m such a beast, I can’t help talking bitterly sometimes, and sometimes I think I am a—a fiend almost, but I hope I am not as bad as I seem.”
So spoke this Penruddock, who fancied himself soured for life, and soliloquised at times in the vein of Elshender of Muckle-stane Muir, but still cherished at the age of three-and-twenty some sparks of his original humanity.
“There goes Tom with my things to the gate. Yes, it ought to be here now,” said William looking at his watch. “I’ll send you something pretty from Paris if you let me; nothing very splendid you know, only a little reminder such as a poor beggar like me, can offer,” and he laughed, not very merrily. “And I shall hear all the news from Aunt Dinah, and send her all mine; and I like flowers. I always remember the Gilroyd flowers along with you. You were always among them, you know, and will you give me that little violet—a namesake? No one ever refuses a flower, it is the keepsake everyone gets for the asking.”
“Here it is,” said Violet, with a little laugh, but looking not mockingly, but a little downward and oddly, and William placed it very carefully in a recess of his complicated purse, that was a cardcase also, and I know not what else beside. He was on the point of saying something very romantic and foolish, but suddenly recollected himself, and pulled up at the verge just before he went over.
“This is a souvenir of very old days, you know,” said William, remembering Trevor, and how humiliating because vain any love-making of his own must prove, “of a very early friend—one of your earliest. Wasn’t I?”
“Yes, so you were, a very good-natured friend, and very useful. Sometimes a little bit prosy, you know, always giving me excellent advice; and I think I always, often at least, listened to your lectures with respect. But why is it, will you tell me who know everything, that gentlemen always ask for a rose or a violet, or a flower of some sort, as a keepsake? Nothing so perishable. Would not a thimble or even a slipper be better? I suppose you have us all in what you used to call a hortus siccus, brown roses, and yellow violets, and venerable polyanthuses, thoroughly dried up and stiff as chips, and now and then with a sort of triumph review your prisoners, and please yourselves with these awful images of old maidhood. How can we tell what witchcrafts go on over our withering types and emblems. Give me back my violet and you shall have a hair-pin instead.”
“Many thanks; I’ll keep my violet, however. It may grow dry and brown to other eyes, to mine it will never change. Just because it is an enchanted violet, and there is a spell upon my eyes as often as I look on it, and the glow and fragrance will never pass away.”
“Very good song, and very well sung! only I suspect that’s the usual speech, and you asked for the violet for an opportunity of making it.”
At this moment Aunt Dinah entered the room accompanied by old Winnie Dobbs, supporting a small hamper tray fashion. William recognised the old commissariat of Gilroyd in this nutritious incumbrance, against which he had often and vainly protested, as he now did more faintly by a smile and lifting his hands.