She laughed, but the laugh had a forced, unnatural sound. Elma saw with dismay a glimmer of tears in the golden eyes.
Chapter Twenty Three.
For a whole week the battle raged; the battle between youth and age, love and the world. Elma pleaded for patience and self-restraint, Geoffrey urged defiance and independence; Mrs Ramsden quoted Scripture, and made constant reference to serpents’ teeth, while Madame remained charmingly satirical, refusing to treat the matter otherwise than as a joke, laughing at Geoffrey’s rhapsodies, and assuring him that he was suffering from an attack of sun, from which recovery would be swift and certain. Rupert Guest and Cornelia hurried to and fro on the outskirts of the fray, in the character of aides-de-camp carrying messages, and administering encouragement and consolation. Every morning Cornelia sat in conclave with her friend in the prosaic Victorian drawing-room which took the place of the turret chamber of romance. Elma would not condescend to hold stolen interviews with her lover, while both families so strongly opposed the engagement, so she shut herself up in the house, growing daily whiter and thinner, wandering aimlessly from room to room, and crying helplessly upon her bed. It was as a breath of fresh mountain air when Cornelia appeared upon the scene, bearing always the same terse, practical advice—“Make sure of your own mind, and—stick to it!”
The colour came back to Elma’s face as she listened, and hope revived in her heart. She declared anew that nothing in the world should separate her from Geoffrey; that she would be true to him to the last day of her life. Cornelia repeated these touching vows in conclave with Guest behind the shrubbery of the Park, and then he went off post-haste to the Manor, to cheer Geoffrey with the news of the steadfast loyalty of his fiancée. Second-hand assurances soon pall, however, on the youthful lover, and after a week had passed by, Geoffrey suddenly waxed desperate, and announced that he would not submit to the separation for another hour. He was perfectly capable of choosing his own wife, Elma was of age, and at liberty to decide for herself. He would go down to The Holt that very afternoon and have it out with the old lady, once for all. If his mother liked to accompany him, so much the better. She and Mrs Ramsden could each have their say, and then he and Elma would have theirs. For his part he warned them that no arguments could move him from his point, but they might see what they would do with Elma! Perhaps they could persuade Elma to give him up!
He smiled as he spoke, in proud, self-confident fashion, but Madame looked at him thoughtfully, smoothed the ruffles on her sleeves, and replied in her sweetest tones—
“Dear boy, yes! quite a good idea. Let us talk it over like sensible people. Elma has such truly nice feelings.—I feel sure we may trust her decision!”
Geoffrey sat him down forthwith to indite a letter to his love, warning her of the ordeal ahead in a couple of lines, and enlarging on his own devotion for the rest of the sheet, which missive was entrusted to Guest when he paid his daily visit to the Manor. “I mean to put an end to this nonsense, once for all,” the Squire declared firmly. “You must be sick of trotting to and fro with these everlasting messages, but there won’t be any more need for them after to-day.”
Guest expressed his gratification, and started forth on his return journey profoundly depressed in spirit. With the end of the strife would end his daily meetings with Cornelia, which alone kept him in Norton. Miss Briskett’s attitude on the occasion of his one call at The Nook had not encouraged him to repeat the experiment. He smiled to himself whenever he recalled the picture of the heavily-furnished room, the sharp-faced spinster, with her stiff, repellent manner, and the slim figure of Cornelia sitting demurely in the background, drooping her eyes to the ground whenever her aunt looked in her direction, and wrinkling her nose at him in pert little grimaces when the good lady’s back was turned, so that he had had hard work to preserve his gravity. Since that evening they had met daily in the shrubbery of the Park, though only for a few minutes at a time, for Cornelia steadily refused to sit down, or to linger by his side in a manner which would suggest that the assignation was on her behalf, as well as that of her friend.