When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

His uncomfortable silence, instead of the response in kind her ladyship had hoped for, interfered a little with the development of her detachment. She judged it better to wind up the interview, and did it with spirit. "There, now, Hamilton, don't talk—because I know exactly what you are going to say. Shake hands upon it—a good shake, you know!—don't throw it away!"

How very different are those two ways of offering a hand, the tender one and the graspy one. The Countess's stopped out of its glove to emphasize the latter, and did it so frankly and effectually that it cleared the air, in which the smell of fire had been perceptible, as in a room where a match has gone out.

He had, as she said, twice very nearly called her by her old familiar name of the Romeo and Juliet days. Nevertheless, when he gave her his hand, saying:—"Perfectly right—perfectly right, Lip! That's the way to look at it," he threw in the name stiffly. It was under tutelage, not spontaneously uttered. Letting it come before would have given him a better position. But then, how if she had disallowed it? There was no end to the ticklishness of their relation.

A modus vivendi was, however, established. She could recapitulate without endangering it. "You will try to make Adrian see Gwen's motives as I see them. It is quite possible that it will make no difference in the end. If so, we must bow to the decrees of Providence, I suppose. But I am sure you agree with me that he ought not to remain in the dark. As I dare say you know, I am taking Gwen to Vienna for a time. If they are both of a mind at the end of that time—well, I suppose it can't be helped! But you must not be—I see you are not—surprised at my view of the case."

Sir Hamilton assented to everything, promised everything, saw the lady into her carriage, and returned, uncomfortable, to review his position before the drawing-room fire in solitude. He did not go upstairs to the nerve case. He would let his visitor die down before he discharged that liability. He broke a large coal, and made a flare, and rang the bell for lights, to show how little the late interview had thrown him out of gear. But it had done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancester was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not—for that was what he read between her lines—she had left something indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it was there, for all that.

Just one little tender squeeze of that beautiful hand, instead of that candid, overwhelming wrestler's grip and double-knock handshake, would have been so delightful.

He caught himself thinking more of his handsome visitor and her easy self-mastery, compared with his own awkwardness and embarrassment, than of her errand and the troublesome task she had devolved on him of illuminating his son's mind about the possible self-sacrificial motives of her daughter. His thoughts would wander back to their Romeo and Juliet period, and make comparisons between this now of worldly-wise maturities and the days when he would have been the glove upon that hand, that he might touch that cheek. He recalled his first meeting with the fascinating young beauty in her first season, at a moonlight dance on a lawn dangerously flanked with lonely sheltered avenues and whispering trees; and the soft rose-laden air of a dawn that broke on tired musicians and unexhausted dissipation, and his headlong reckless surrender to her irresistible intoxication; and, to say the truth, the Juliet-like acknowledgment it met with. He would have been better pleased, with the world as it was now, if less of that Juliet had been recognisable in this mature dame. The thought made him bite his lip. He exclaimed against his recognition perforce, and compelled himself to think of the question before the house.

Yes—he could quite understand why the girl's parents should find it difficult to say to his son:—"We know that Gwen is giving her love to make amends for a wrong, as she thinks, done by ourselves; and whatever personal sacrifice we should be glad to make as compensation for it, we have no right to allow our daughter to imperil her happiness." But he had a hazy recollection of Adrian's telling him something of the Earl himself having mooted this view of the subject at the outset of the engagement; and, hearing no more of it, had supposed the point to be disposed of. Why did Lady Ancester wish to impress it on him now?

Then it gradually became clearer, as he thought it out, that it would have been impossible to form conclusions at once. The Earl had no doubt expressed a suspicion at first. But his daughter would never have confessed her motives to him. What more likely than that her mother should gradually command her confidence, and see that Adrian could not arrive at a full appreciation of them without an ungracious persistence on the part of herself and her husband, unless it were impressed on him by some member of the young man's family? His father, naturally.

He felt perceptibly gratified that Gwen's mother should take it for granted that he would feel as she did about the injustice to her daughter of allowing her to sacrifice herself to make amends for a fault of her parents. It was a question of sensitive honour, and she had credited him rightly with possessing it. At least, he hoped so. And though he was certainly not a clever man, the Squire of Pensham was the very soul of fair play. His division of the County knew both facts. Now, it seemed to him that it would be fairer play on his part to throw his influence into the scale on the side of the Countess, and protest against the marriage unless some guarantee could be found that there was no heroic taint in the bride's motives. In this he was consciously influenced by the thought that his side would suffer by his own action, so his own motives were tainted. A chivalric instinct, unbalanced by reasoning power, is so very apt to decide—on principle—against its owner's interests. Behind this there may have been a saving clause, to the effect that the young people might be relied on to pay no attention to their seniors' wishes, or anything else. Gwen was on her way to twenty-one, and then parental authority would expire. Meanwhile a little delay would do no harm. For the present, he could only rub the facts into his son, and leave them to do their worst. He would speak to him at the next opportunity.