Part 19

“But I do talk to you. I talk too much. Perhaps I’m afraid of boring you,” he said.

“You know perfectly well that that’s a preposterous subterfuge,” said she. “You’ve got something on your mind. You’re keeping something back.” She paused for a second; then, softly, wistfully, “Tell me what it is, Will, please.” And she looked eagerly, pleadingly, into his eyes.

He looked away from her. “Upon my word, there’s nothing to tell,” he said, but his tone was a little forced.

She broke into a merry peal of laughter, looking at him now with eyes that were derisive.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“At you, Will,” said she. “What else could you imagine?”

“I’m flattered to think you find me so amusing.”

“Oh, you’re supremely amusing. ’Refrain thou shalt; thou shalt refrain!’ Is that your motto, Will? If I were a man, I’d choose another. ’Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold!’ That should be my motto if I were a man.”

“But as you’re a woman———” he began.

“It’s my motto, all the same,” she interrupted. “Do you mean to say you’ve not discovered that yet? Oh, Will, if I were you, and you were I, how differently we should be employing this heaven-sent summer’s afternoon.” She gazed at the sky, and sighed.

“What should we be doing?” asked he.

“That’s a secret. Pray the fairies to-night to transpose our souls, and you’ll know by to-morrow morning—if the fairies grant your prayer. But in the meanwhile, you must try to entertain me. Tell me another story.”

“I can’t think of any more stories till I’ve had my tea.”

“You shan’t have any tea unless you earn it,” she stipulated. “Now that Madame Dornaye’s no longer present, you can tell me of some of your grown-up love affairs, some of your flesh-and-blood ones.”

“I’ve never had a grown-up love affair,” he said.

“Oh, come! you can’t expect me to believe that,” she cried.

“It’s the truth, all the same.”

“Well, then, it’s high time you should have one,” was her conclusion. “How old did you say you were?”

“I’m thirty-three.”

She lifted up her hands in astonishment. “And you’ve never had a love affair! Fi donc! I’m barely twenty-eight, and I’ve had a hundred.”

“Have you?” he asked, a little ruefully.

“No, I haven’t. But everybody’s had at least one. So tell me yours.”

“Upon my word, I’ve not had even one,” he reiterated.

“It seems incredible. How have you contrived it?”

“The circumstances of my birth contrived it for me. It would be impossible for me to have a love affair with a woman I could love,” he said.

“Impossible? For goodness sake, why?” she wondered.

“What woman would accept the addresses of a man without a name?”

“Haven’t you a name? Methought I’d heard your name was William Stretton.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Then permit me to remark,” she answered him, “that what you mean is quite superlatively silly. If you loved a woman, wouldn’t you tell her so?”

“Not if I could help it.”

“But suppose the woman loved you?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t come to that.”

“But suppose it had come to that?” she persevered. “Suppose she’d set her heart upon you? Would it be fair to her not to tell her?”

“What would be the good of my telling her, since I couldn’t possibly ask her to marry me?”

“The fact might interest her, apart from the question of its consequences,” Johannah suggested. “But suppose she told you? Suppose she asked you to marry her?”

“She wouldn’t,” said he.

“All hypotheses are admissible. Suppose she should?”

“I couldn’t marry her,” he declared.

“You’d find it rather an awkward job refusing, wouldn’t you?” she quizzed. “And what reasons could you give?”

“Ten thousand reasons. I’m a bastard. That begins and ends it. It would dishonour her, and it would dishonour me; and, worst of all, it would dishonour my mother.”

“It would certainly not dishonour you, nor the woman you married. That’s the sheerest, antiquated, exploded rubbish. And how on earth could it dishonour your mother?”

“For me to take as my wife a woman who could not respect her?” Will questioned. “My mother’s memory for me is the sacredest of sacred things. You know something of her history. You know that she was in every sense but a legal sense my father’s wife. You know why they couldn’t be married legally. You know, too, how he treated her—and how she died. Do you suppose I could marry a woman who would always think of my mother as of one who had done something shameful?”

“Oh, but no woman with a spark of nobility in her soul would or could do that,” Johannah cried.

“Every woman brought up in the usual way, with the usual prejudices, the usual traditions, thinks evil of the woman who has had an illegitimate child,” asserted he.

“Not every woman. I, for instance. Do you imagine that I could think evil of your mother, Will?” She looked at him intensely, earnestly.

“Oh, you’re entirely different from other women. You’re——” But he stopped at that.

“Then—just for the sake of a case in point—if I were the woman you chanced to be in love with, and if I simultaneously chanced to be in love with you, you could see your way to marrying me?” she pursued him.

“What’s the use of discussing that?”

“For its metaphysical interest. Answer me.”

“There are other reasons why I couldn’t marry you.”

“I’m not good-looking enough?” she cried.

“Don’t be silly.”

“Not young enough?”

“Oh, I say! Let’s talk of something reasonable.”

“Not old enough, perhaps?”

He was silent.

“Not wise enough? Not foolish enough?” she persisted.

“You’re foolish enough, in all conscience,” said he. “Well, then, why? What are the reasons why you couldn’t marry me?”

“What is the good of talking about this?” he groaned.

“I want to know. A man has the hardihood to inform me to my face that he’d spurn my hand, even if I offered it to him. I insist upon knowing why.” She feigned high indignation.

“You know why. And you know that ’spurn’ is very far from the right word,” was his rejoinder.

“I don’t know why. I insist upon your telling me,” she repeated, fierily.

“You know that you’re Sir William Silver’s heiress, I suppose,” he suggested.

“Oh, come! that’s not my fault. How could that matter?”

“Look here, I’m not going to make an ass of myself by explaining the obvious,” he declared.

“I daresay I’m very stupid, but it isn’t obvious to me.”

“Well, then, let’s drop the subject,” he proposed.

“I’ll not drop the subject till you’ve elucidated it. If you were in love with me, Will, and I were in love with you, how on earth could it matter, my being Sir William Silvers heiress?”

“Wouldn’t I seem a bit mercenary’ if I asked you to marry me?”

“Oh, Will!” she remonstrated. “Don’t tell me you’re such a prig as that. What! if you loved me, if I loved you, you’d give me up, you’d break my heart, just for fear lest idiotic people, whose opinions don’t matter any more than the opinions of so many deep-sea fish, might think you mercenary! When you and I both knew in our own two souls that you really weren’t mercenary’ in the least! You’d pay me a poor compliment, Will. Isn’t it conceivable that a man might love me for myself?”

“You state the case too simply. You make no allowances for the shades and complexities of a man’s feelings.”

“Bother shades and complexities. Love burns them up. Your shades and complexities are nothing but priggishness and vanity,” she asserted hotly. “But there! I’m actually getting angry over a purely supposititious question. For, of course, we don’t really love each other the least bit, do we, Will?” she asked him softly.

He appeared to be giving his whole attention to the rolling of a cigarette; he did not answer. But his fingers trembled, and presently he tore his paper, spilling half the tobacco in his lap.

Johannah watched him from eyes full of languid, half mocking, half pensive laughter.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed again, by-and-by.

He looked at her; and he had to catch his breath. Lying there on the turf, the skirts of her frock flowing round her in a sort of little billowy white pool, her head deep in the scarlet cushion, her black hair straying wantonly where it would about her face and brow, her eyes lambent with that lazy, pensive laughter, one of her hands, pink and white, warm and soft, fallen open on the grass between her and her cousin, her whole person seeming to breathe a subtle scent of womanhood, and the luxury and mystery of womanhood—oh, the sight of her, the sense of her, there in the wide green stillness of the summer day, set his heart burning and beating poignantly.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed, “I wish the man I am in love with were only here.”

“Oh! You are in love with some one?” he questioned, with a little start.

“Rather!” said she. “In love! I should think so. Oh, I love him, love him, love him. Ah, if he were here! He wouldn’t waste this golden afternoon as you’re doing. He’d take my hand—he’d hold it, and press it, and kiss it; and he’d pour his soul out in tumultuous celebration of my charms, in fiery avowals of his passion. If he were here! Ah, me!”

“Where is he?” Will asked, in a dry’ voice.

“Ah, where indeed? I wish I knew.”

“I’ve never heard you speak of him before,” he reflected.

“There’s none so deaf as he that will not hear. I’ve spoken of him to you at least a thousand times. He forms the staple of my conversation.”

“I must be veryy deaf indeed. I swear this is absolutely news to me.”

“Oh, Will, you are such a goose—or such a hypocrite,” said she. “But it’s tea-time. Help me up.”

She held out her hand, and, he took it and helped her up. But she tottered a little before she got her balance (or made, at least, a feint of doing so), and grasped his hand tight as if to save herself, and all but fell into his arms.

He drew back a step.

She looked straight into his eyes. “You’re a goose, and a hypocrite, and a prig, and—a dear,” she said. V.

Their tea was served in the garden, and whilst they were dallying over it, a footman brought Johannah a visiting-card.

She glanced at the card; and Will, watching her, noticed that a look of annoyance—it might even have been a look of distress—came into her face.

Then she threw the card on the tea-table, and rose. “I shan’t be gone long,” she said, and set out for the house.

The card lay plainly legible under the eyes of Will and Madame Dornaye. “Mr. George Aymer, 36, Boulevard Rochechouart” was the legend inscribed upon it.

“Tiens,” said Madame Dornaye; “Jeanne told me she had ceased to see him.”

Will suppressed a desire to ask, “Who is he?”

But Madame Dornaye answered him all the same.

“You have heard of him? He is a known personage in Paris, although English. He is a painter, a painter of great talent; very young, but already decorated. And of a surprising beauty—the face of an angel. With that, a thorough-paced rascal. Oh, yes, whatever is vilest, whatever is basest. Even in Montmartre, even in the corruptest world of Paris, among the lowest journalists and painters, he is notorious for his corruption. Johannah used to see a great deal of him. She would not believe the evil stories that were told about him. And with his rare talent and his beautiful face, he has the most plausible manners, the most winning address. We were afraid that she might end by marrying him. But at last she found him out for herself, and gave him up. She told me she had altogether ceased to see him. I wonder what ill wind blows him here.”

Johannah entered the drawing-room.

A man in grey tweeds, the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour gleaming in his buttonhole, was standing near a window: a man, indeed, as Madame Dornaye had described him, with a face of surprising beauty—a fine, clear, open-air complexion, a clean-cut, even profile, a sensitive, soft mouth, big, frank, innocent blue eyes, and waving hair of the palest Saxon yellow. He could scarcely have been thirty; and the exceeding beauty of his face, its beauty and its sweetness, made one overlook his figure, which was a trifle below the medium height, and thick-set, with remarkably square, broad shoulders, and long arms.

Johannah greeted him with some succinctness. “What do you want?” she asked, remaining close to the door.

“I want to have a talk with you,” he answered, moving towards her. He drawled slightly; his voice was low and soft, conciliatory, caressing almost. And his big blue eyes shone with a faint, sweet, appealing smile.

“Would you mind staying where you are?” said she. “You can make yourself audible from across the room.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, his smile brightening with innocent wonder.

“Afraid? You do yourself too much honour. One does not like to find oneself in close proximity with objects that disgust one,” she explained.

He laughed; but instead of moving further towards her, he dropped into a chair. “You were always brutally outspoken,” he murmured.

“Yes; and with advancing years I’ve become even more so,” said Johannah, who continued to stand.

“You’re quite sure, though, that you’re not afraid of me?” he questioned.

“Oh, for that, as sure as sure can be. If you’ve based any sort of calculations upon the theory that I would be afraid of you, you’ll have to throw them over.”

He flushed a little, as if with anger; but in a moment he said calmly, “You’ve come into a perfect pot of money since I last had the pleasure of meeting you.”

“Yes, into something like eight thousand a year, if the figures interest you.”

“I never had any head for figures,” he answered, smiling. “But eight thousand sounds stupendous. And a lovely place, into the bargain. The park, or so much of it as one sees from the avenue, could not be better. And I permitted myself to admire the façade of the house and the view of the sea.”

“They’re not bad,” Johannah assented.

“It’s heart-rending,” he remarked, “the way things are shared in this world. Here are you, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, you who have done nothing all your life but take your pleasure; and I, who’ve toiled like a galley-slave, I remain as poor as any church-mouse. It’s monstrous.”

Johannah did not answer.

“And now,” he went on, “I suppose you’ve settled down and become respectable? No more Bohemia? No more cakes and ale? Only champagne and truffles? A County Family! Fancy your being a County Family, all by yourself, as it were! You must feel rather like the reformed rake of tradition—don’t you?”

“I mentioned that I am not afraid of you,” she reminded him, “but that doesn’t in the least imply that I find you amusing. The plain truth is, I find you deadly tiresome. If you have anything special to say to me, may I ask you to say it quickly?”

Again he flushed a little; then again, in a moment, answered smoothly, “I’ll say it in a sentence. I’ve come all the way to England, for the purpose of offering you my hand in marriage.” And he raised his bright blue eyes to her face with a look that really was seraphic.

“I decline the offer. If you’ve nothing further to keep you here, I’ll ring to have you shown out.”

Still again he flushed, yet once more controlled himself. “You decline the offer! Allons donc! When I am prepared to do the right thing, and make an honest woman of you.”

“I decline the offer,” Johannah repeated.

“That’s foolish of you,” said he.

“If you could dream how remotely your opinion interests me, you wouldn’t trouble to express it,” said she.

His anger this time got the better of him. He scowled, and looked at her from the corners of his eyes. “You had better not exasperate me,” he said in a suppressed voice.

“Oh,” said she, “you must suffer me to be the mistress of my own actions in my own house. Now—if you are quite ready to go?” she suggested, putting her hand upon the bell-cord.

“I’m not ready to go yet. I want to talk with you. To cut a long business short, you’re rich. I’m pitiably poor. You know how poor I am. You know how I have to live, the hardships, the privations I’m obliged to put up with.”

“Have you come here to beg?” Johannah asked.

“No, I’ve come to appeal to your good-nature. You refuse to marry me. That’s absurd of you, but—tant pis! Whether you marry me or not, you haven’t the heart to leave me to rot in poverty, while you luxuriate in plenty. Considering our oldtime relations, the thing’s impossible on the face of it.”

“Ah, I understand. You have come here to beg,” she said.

“No,” said he. “One begs when one has no power to enforce.”

“What is the use of these glittering aphorisms?” she asked wearily.

“If you are ready to behave well to me, I’ll behave handsomely to you. But if you refuse to recognise my claims upon you, I’m in a position to take reprisals,” he said very quietly.

Johannah did not answer.

“I’m miserably, tragically poor; you’re rich. At this moment I’ve not got ten pounds in the world; and I owe hundreds. I’ve not sold a picture since March. You have eight thousand a year. You can’t expect me to sit down under it in silence. As the French attorneys phrase it, cet état de choses ne peut pas durer.”

Still Johannah answered nothing.

“You must come to my relief,” said he. “You must make it possible for me to go on. If you have any right feeling, you’ll do it spontaneously. If not—you know I can compel you.”

“Oh, then, for goodness’ sake, compel me, and so make an end of this entirely tedious visit,” she broke out.

“I’d immensely rather not compel you. If you will lend me a helping hand from time to time, I’ll promise never to take a step to harm you. I shall be moderate. You’ve got eight thousand a year. You’d never miss a hundred now and then. You might simply occasionally buy a picture. That would be the best way. You might buy my pictures.”

“I should be glad to know definitely,” remarked Johannah, “whether I have to deal with a blackmailer or a bagman.”

“Damn you,” he exploded, with sudden savagery, flushing very red indeed.

Johannah was silent.

After a pause, he said, “I’m staying at the inn in the village—at the Silver Arms.”

Johannah did not speak.

“I’ve already scraped acquaintance with the parson,” he went on. Then, as she still was silent, “I wonder what would become of your social position in this County if I should have a good long talk about you with the parson.”

“To a man of your intelligence, the solution of that problem can surely present no difficulty,” she replied wearily.

“You admit that your social position would be smashed up?”

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put it together again,” she said.

“I’m glad to find at least that you acknowledge my power,” said he.

“You have it in your power to tell people that I was once inconceivably simple enough to believe that you were an honourable man, that I once had the inconceivable bad taste to be fond of you. What woman’s character could survive that revelation?”

“And I could add—couldn’t I?—that you once had the inconceivable weakness to become my mistress?”

“Oh, you could add no end of details,” she admitted.

“Well, then?” he questioned.

“Well, then?” questioned she.

“It comes to this, that if you don’t want your social position, your reputation, to be utterly smashed up, you must make terms with me.”

“It’s a little unfortunate, from that way of looking at it,” she pointed out, “that I shouldn’t happen to care a rush about my social position—as you call it.”

“I think I’ll have a good long talk with the parson,” he said.

“Do by all means,” said she.

“You’d better be careful. I may take you at your word,” he threatened.

“I wish you would. Take me at my word—-and go,” she urged.

“You mean to say you seriously don’t care?”

“Not a rush, not a button,” she assured him.

“Oh, come! You’ll never try to brazen the thing out,” he exclaimed.

“I wish you’d go and have your long talk with the parson,” she said impatiently.

“It would be so easy for you to give me a little help,” he pleaded.

“It would be so easy for you to ’smash up’ my reputation with the parson,” she rejoined.

“You never used to be close-fisted. It’s incomprehensible that you should refuse me a little help. Look. I’m willing to be more than fair. Give me a hundred pounds, a bare little hundred pounds, and I’ll send you a lovely picture.”

“Thank you, I don’t want a picture.”

“You won’t give me a hundred pounds—a beggarly hundred pounds?” He looked incredulous.

“I won’t give you a farthing.”

“Well, then, by God, you jade,” he cried, springing to his feet, his face crimson, “by God, I’ll make you. I swear I’ll ruin you. Look out!”

“Are you really going at last?” she asked brightly.

“No, I’m not going till it suits my pleasure. You’ve got a sort of bastard cousin staying here with you, I’m told,” he answered.

“I would advise you to moderate your tone or your language,” said she. “If my sort of bastard cousin should by any chance happen to hear you referring to him in those terms, he would not be pleased.”

“I want to see him,” said he.

“I would advise you not to see him,” she returned.

“I want to see him,” he insisted.

“If you really wish to see him, I’ll send for him,” she consented. “But it’s only right to warn you that he’s not at all a patient sort of man. If I send for him, he will quite certainly make things disagreeable for you.”

“I’m not afraid of him. You know well enough that I’m not a coward.”

“My cousin is more than a head taller than you are,” she mused. “He would be perfectly able and perfectly sure to kick you. If there’s any other possible way of getting rid of you, I’d rather not trouble him.”

“I think I had better have a talk with your cousin, as well as with the parson,” he considered.

“I think you had better confine your attentions to the parson. I do, upon my word,” she counselled him.

“I am going to make a concession,” said Aymer. “I’m going to give you a night in which to think this thing over. If you care to send me a note, with a cheque in it, so that I shall receive it at the inn by to-morrow at ten o’clock, I’ll take the next earliest train back to town, and I’ll send you a picture in return. If no note comes by ten o’clock, I’ll call on the parson, and tell him all I know about you; and I’ll write a letter to your cousin. Now, good day.”

Johannah rang, and Aymer was shown out. VI

“|I shan’t be gone long,” Johannah had said, when she left Madame Dornaye and Will at tea in the garden; but time passed, and she did not come back. Will, mounting through various stages and degrees of nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, at last said, “What on earth can be keeping her?” and Madame Dornaye replied, “That is precisely what I am asking myself.” They waited a little longer, and then, “Shall we go back to the house?” he suggested. But when they reached the house they found the drawing-room empty, and—no trace of Johannah.

“She may be in her room. I’ll go and see,” said Madame Dornaye.

More time passed, and still no Johannah. Nor did Madame Dornaye return to explain her absence.