Part 12

"Confound her! Will you promise?"

"I can't promise, but I'll try; there! Only you must be amusing and agreeable."

"I'm only too afraid of being amusing. You generally seem to find me that. I should like you to take me very seriously indeed--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Atwood, what did you say?"

The Primrose meeting was well attended. A noble earl, chief landowner in the neighbourhood, made a speech which mainly consisted of "hems" and "ers" interspersed with platitudes about Empire and Tariff Reform. The Unionist candidate spoke wittily and well, and certain local magnates said the things local magnates usually do say. Then came the lighter part of the evening's business--songs and recitations. Lallie sang her topical ditty with immense _flair_. She looked so small, and slim, and young in her really beautiful French frock, with pearls in her hair and round her slender throat, that the hearts of the audience went out to her before she opened her mouth. But when she did begin to sing, when the big rich voice rolled out the ridiculous words with the marvellously clear articulation that was one great charm in Lallie's singing, she made every point with an archness that was delicious, that seemed to take each member of the audience into her confidence, while that confidence implied entire trust in their general shrewdness and clear-sightedness.

At the triumphant conclusion the whole house rose at her and demanded an encore with such noise and persistency that there was nothing for it but to indulge them.

The organist of Fareham Church presided at the piano as accompanist, and they saw him seemingly protest or expostulate at the song she gave him, but Lallie was evidently peremptory, and it was to be that or nothing. When she came forward to the front of the platform there was a sudden silence as, without any prelude, very softly, every note clear and poignantly sad, there fell upon the astonished ears of that comfortable English company:

"Oh, Paddy, dear, and did you hear the news that's going round?"

Not one word could be missed or misunderstood.

"I met with Napper Tandy, and he tuk me by the hand, And, says he, 'How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?'"

How, indeed? A little uncomfortable doubt as to their dealings with that most distressful country assailed even the most cock-sure politician in that audience.

"Oh, the wearing of the green," sang Lallie, her heart in her voice. The monotonous, melancholy tone, charged full in every measured cadence with the sorrow of a people, held the good Fareham folk against their wills.

The clever Conservative candidate sat forward in his chair on the platform, his elbow on his knee, his hand shading his keen eyes as he stared fixedly at the little figure who worked this strange miracle.

It was over.

Fareham took a long breath and ventured upon subdued applause. For a moment there was a perceptible and uncomfortable pause. Then Billy Chester leapt to his feet and saved the situation.

"He was glad," he said, "that the lady who had just been delighting them with her great gift of song had reminded them of Ireland and her wrongs. One thing above all others was needed to right those wrongs; to set Ireland in her place among the kingdoms of the Empire; to give her prosperity, self-respect, and peace within her own borders. This remedy they had in their hands if they would only use it--the institution of a judicious system of Tariff Reform. For no part of the Empire would it do so much as for Ireland." Billy showed how it could be brought about. He quoted statistics by the yard, he made jokes, he put Fareham on good terms with itself again, and the meeting broke up with a special vote of thanks to Miss Clonmell for her delightful music.

"Lallie, you horrid little Fenian, what on earth possessed you to sing that song to-night of all nights?" Mrs. Chester demanded as they drove home.

"It seemed to me," Lallie replied grimly, "that there was an intolerable deal of sack to very little bread throughout the proceedings. So I thought I'd give them a little bread--black bread and bitter, but wholesome."

"But for Billy it might have been very awkward indeed," Mrs. Chester continued.

"Perhaps," Mrs. Atwood suggested, "that natural instinct of the artist to make a sensation at all costs was too strong for Miss Clonmell. She certainly attained her object. The faces of the people were an interesting study."

No one spoke for a moment, but Mrs. Chester, who was sitting next Lallie, suddenly felt for the girl's hand under the rug and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

"You're a sad pickle," she whispered, "you always were."

"I must speak up for my country when I get the chance," Lallie said aloud. "It isn't often I find myself upon a political platform, but I really believe I could sway the multitude better than most of them. If only I'd danced an Irish jig, I believe I could have got the whole of them to vote for Home Rule."

*CHAPTER XX*

On Sunday morning Lallie got a letter from Tony telling her how ill Tarrant was. She read the letter over and over again, feeling restless and unhappy. She wanted Tony. She would have liked to go back to B. House that minute, to comfort him.

"When I was at B. House I was homesick for Bridget, and now I'm here I'm homesick for Tony. Shall I always be homesick, I wonder?" Lallie pondered.

She felt curiously nervous and ill at ease. Sidney Ballinger's inevitable proposal was hanging over her, and she was no nearer any decision as to her own answer. It was all very well "to be nice" to him just to annoy Mrs. Atwood, as it plainly did; but quite another matter to make up her mind "to be nice to him for ever and ever," as she considered would be her duty if she accepted him. She wished she could talk it over with Tony once more.

Mrs. Chester insisted that her husband should take Mrs. Atwood to service at Fareham church while the rest of the party went with her to the church in the village.

Mrs. Atwood protested against the motor being had out on her account, but her hostess was firm; and as she had, when they first met, expressed such an ardent desire to behold that ancient building, she could hardly now declare that she no longer felt any inclination to gaze upon its beauties.

"Won't you come too, Miss Clonmell?" she asked, as arrangements were being made in the hall after breakfast.

"Lallie is coming with me," Mrs. Chester said firmly, without giving her guest a chance to reply. "Every one is coming with me except you and my husband. Then the vicar won't miss him so much."

All through the service Lallie thought of College chapel and longed to be there. From her seat in the gallery she could see Tony, and she liked to look down at him and admire his decorous demeanour. She always regarded his schoolmastering as something quite apart from himself, and now, although she had been living in B. House for nearly six weeks, she still thought that when he was what she called "stiff" it was only a manner adopted for the benefit of the boys.

Her Tony Bevan was the Tony of the holidays, in shabby Norfolk jacket and old fishing-hat. She never quite got over her first amusement at his sober Sunday garb and college gown. But even in this she liked him. She liked him amazingly. Her eyes were very soft and kind as she pictured Tony, stalwart and grave, leaning back in his college stall. And Ballinger, watching her, wondered what would be her thoughts, and hoped they might be of him.

They all walked back from church together meeting the motor as it turned into the drive. Mrs. Atwood and Mr. Chester got out and the whole party went round the gardens before lunch.

"Remember, we meet in the drawing-room at three--no one's ever there on Sunday afternoon; you promised me a walk, you know--don't forget," Ballinger contrived to say to Lallie as they neared the house. She nodded without speaking, and Mrs. Atwood who was close behind them--she generally was--heard his reminder and noted Lallie's silent acquiescence.

Her face was very sombre as she slowly went upstairs to take off her hat.

She was leaving next day, and she was no nearer any explanation with Sidney Ballinger than before she came. They had assuredly met once more, but even her vanity hardly helped her to believe that the meeting had, for him, been fraught with any pleasure.

Like Miss Foster, she considered Lallie "a designing girl," and blamed her for Sidney's coldness.

"If I could only see him alone," was the thought that repeated itself over and over again in her head; and the reflection that it was Lallie--and not she--who would see him alone that very afternoon became unbearable. Something must be done.

In winter at Pinnels, bedroom fires are lit before lunch on Sundays, and ladies retire to their rooms immediately after, nominally to write letters. Most people sleep, but that afternoon Lallie felt unusually wide-awake. She drew up a chair to the fire, intending to read till it should be time for her walk with Ballinger, but the printed page conveyed nothing to her mind. She was in that state of acute nervous tension when definite occupation of any kind seems impossible, and every smallest sound is magnified tenfold.

"I'll get it over," said Lallie to herself. "Nothing will induce me to marry him, but I'll get it over."

Presently there came a very soft rap upon her door. Mrs. Atwood followed the knock and, shutting the door behind her, came over to Lallie.

"May I sit down?" she said. "I very much want to have a few minutes' conversation with you, and this seemed the best opportunity."

She was pale, and there was an atmosphere about her of suppressed storm. Lallie hoisted a mental umbrella while she politely begged her guest to be seated, and awaited developments.

"You have, I think," said Mrs. Atwood, "known Mr. Ballinger for about a year?"

"Just about," said Lallie.

"I have known him for nearly seven."

"Really," Lallie remarked.

"Miss Clonmell, you are young, and I feel that it is only fair to you that you should know--what he and I have been to one another."

"Please, I have no desire to know anything of the kind. It is no business of mine. I would rather not--much rather not--hear any more. Please, please stop before you say things you will wish unsaid half an hour afterwards--please."

"You've got to listen to me whether you like it or not," Mrs. Atwood exclaimed passionately. "You think he is in love with you. I know him; it is merely a passing glamour. Your youth, your music--your--oh, what shall I call it--have carried him off his feet, but it will pass; his heart, what there is of it, belongs to me."

"But you're married, Mrs. Atwood, so what would you be doing with his heart? even if it is as you say."

"_Married!_" Mrs. Atwood repeated bitterly--"married! so I was when he first knew me, but that didn't prevent his falling in love with me."

"I fear," said Lallie gravely, "that he is a very unfortunate young man, and if he has done his best to cure himself of such a hopeless attachment it's not you who should stand in the way of his doing so."

"Confront me with him," Mrs. Atwood cried furiously; "ask him whether what I say is true or not, and you'll soon see."

"My dear Mrs. Atwood, I shouldn't dream of doing such a thing. It is an unpleasant affair altogether, and the sooner it's buried in oblivion the better for all concerned."

"But, girl, I love him! Can't you understand? I love him!"

"I'm very sorry," said Lallie.

"But what are you going to do?" cried Mrs. Atwood, her voice vibrant and shrill with irritation. "The matter can't rest here. What are you going to do?"

"Nothing whatever. I never let it affect me when people tell me tales about others. I wasn't intended to know this. If Mr. Ballinger wants me to know it, he'll tell me himself."

"You mean that what I have told you won't affect your feelings towards him in any way?"

"Mrs. Atwood, I am really very sorry for you, but I can't see that Sidney Ballinger is called upon to go single all his life just because he was in love with you once and has got over it. He can't marry you if you've got a husband already, and it's much better he shouldn't go hanging round you any more--better for both of you. Don't you see that it is?"

"You don't understand," wailed Mrs. Atwood. "You take the common, narrow, early Victorian view of the whole situation. Does he owe me _nothing_ for the years I have loved him?"

"If I had loved a man for years," said Lallie softly, "I don't think I should talk about his debt to me."

"You don't know what you would do. If you were a woman, instead of a child incapable of understanding any great passion, you would know. Will you give him back to me, I ask you? Will you give him back to me?"

"Nothing can do that except his own will."

"But will you stand out of the way, refuse him, have nothing more to do with him? Promise me."

A moment before, Lallie had looked frightened, and Mrs. Atwood thought she could be bullied. She stood over the girl, menace in her eyes and hatred in her heart. She caught Lallie by the shoulder and shook her. She made a great mistake.

A moment before Lallie had been very sorry for her, though she despised her and thought her shameless. But now--she shook off Mrs. Atwood's hand and she, too, stood up.

"I will promise nothing," she said haughtily. "You have no possible right to ask it."

The two women stood looking at each other. Mrs. Atwood breathless, panting, almost beside herself with excitement; Lallie quiet and dignified.

The clock struck three.

"I think we have said all there is to say on this subject," Lallie said coldly. "I really would rather not hear any more."

She crossed the room and held the door open, and in silence Mrs. Atwood passed through it.

Lallie seized her coat and hat, fiercely stabbed in her big pins and ran down stairs to the drawing-room, where she knew Sidney Ballinger would be waiting.

So he was, and Mrs. Atwood was with him. The tears were running down her cheeks. He was white and evidently very angry. His mouth, usually so weak and amiable, had taken on a cruel look--the sort of snarl that curls the lips back from the teeth as in an angry animal.

Lallie stopped short and looked from one to the other.

"I have told her, Sidney," sobbed Mrs. Atwood. "I thought it only right that she should know all we had been to one another--how greatly we loved, how----"

He turned upon her furiously.

"I never loved you. From its first inception the whole thing was false and pretentious, as you are yourself. I was only a boy when you got hold of me. I never really cared for you."

Lallie moved a little nearer Mrs. Atwood.

"Believe me, Lallie," he went on, "I never cared for her, and now she won't leave me alone. I care more for your very shoe-lace----"

"Stop!" It was Lallie who spoke. "How dare you speak to her like that? Oh, you----"

Mrs. Atwood covered her face with her hands and fled from the room.

"Listen to me, Lallie! Don't let her come between us."

He spoke in sobbing gasps and caught at one of Lallie's hands. She drew it away.

"She has not come between us," she said scornfully; "it is yourself. You might have told me that it had all been the worst thing possible, and I could have forgiven you. Who am I to judge a man? But not this. You went back on her. You put her to open shame before me. You are a coward, Mr. Ballinger."

"Lallie, think of the provocation! What right had she to come thrusting in with her grievances--wholly imaginary grievances--upon the most beautiful and sacred thing in my whole life. Let us come out and forget her. You will come, won't you? You won't let her spoil everything?"

"I told you before, Mrs. Atwood had no power to spoil anything. I wasn't even sorry for her when _she_ told me; but you-- No, Mr. Ballinger, I could never trust you. You went back on her."

And Lallie turned and left him standing in the middle of the Pinnels drawing-room, thinking bitter thoughts.

Who could have dreamt she would have taken such a curious line? That she should be shocked, distressed, indignant, was to be expected--it was what he dreaded. But she was none of these things. The affair with Mrs. Atwood seemed to pass her by. She blamed him because he didn't own up, because he was cruel to Eileen Atwood when he denied that he had ever cared for her. He had cared, as much as it was in him to care at all--then. Now, he was absolutely truthful when he had said that Lallie's shoe-string was more to him than Eileen Atwood's whole body. But it had not pleased Lallie. Women were incomprehensible. He knew that Lallie did not love him, but he had believed that he could make her love him in time. She was so affectionate, so passionately grateful for kindness: surely, surely she must respond some day if only he got his chance.

Had this horrible woman ruined it entirely? He felt that he could gladly have strangled Mrs. Atwood with his own hands: yet his knees bent under him and his pulses were thundering in his ears. He went into the deserted dining-room and mixed himself a stiff whisky-and-soda, and drank it at a draught. He felt better after it and more hopeful.

Poor little Lallie! It had been a horrid scene. He wouldn't appeal to her again--not just now while she was still angry, but in Hamchester--thank Heaven! she would be somewhere within reach where he could see her sometimes. Perhaps by and by, when she had cooled down, she would listen to reason. By the way, he might go and see that schoolmaster fellow who was acting as her guardian. The Chesters said he was a very decent chap, quite a man of the world. Ballinger thought he might just give a hint that there had been unpleasantness about another woman, and a tolerant, broad-minded man--the Chesters said he was that--would say something sensible to Lallie, and it would have weight. She was forever quoting him. She'd probably take it from him.

It never occurred to Sidney Ballinger that a guardian of any sort could regard him other than in the most favourable light. After all, eight thousand a year is eight thousand a year, and "I'm not a bad chap or wastrel. There's nothing against me really," he reflected.

By tea-time he was able to take quite an optimistic view of the situation.

*CHAPTER XXI*

Nearly three weeks later, Tony Bevan sat on a seat in the sun watching "Pots." It was Thursday afternoon and there was an "extra half."

In front of him, standing with legs wide apart, very conscious of a new covert coat and gaiters, stood Punch; a round diminutive Punch all by himself, and overjoyed at his isolation. His family were at least three seats away.

When a covert coat, if it is to be a coat at all, necessarily reaches almost to one's knees, it is difficult to thrust one's hands in knickerbocker pockets. So Punch found it. He tried both, he tried hard, but the coat would bunch out all round like a frill, so he contented himself with one. With the other he occasionally shaded his eyes, as though the watery November sun was too strong for him.

Sitting on the same seat with "Mitta Bevan," as Punch called him, were two boys--big boys. Punch liked big boys; they were generally quite friendly.

Presently he turned to Tony and said politely:

"I hope I don't o'scure your view."

The big boys made queer muffled sounds, but Tony said gravely:

"Well, if you _could_ stand, just a little to the left--or better still, won't you come and sit with us? You'd see just as well."

Punch came, and was duly ensconced between Tony and one of the boys, with a share of rug over his short legs.

"Where's Lallie?" he asked; "she's not been to see us for ages, nor to sing for me."

"Lallie is coming home the day after to-morrow. Are you glad? _I_ am," said Tony, and he looked it.

"Why did she go away so long for?"

"Well, you see, the lady she was staying with begged her to stay on and on, and she's very fond of that lady; but she's really coming home on Saturday."

"Will she come to see me on Saturday?"

"I'm not sure. You see she mightn't get home very early, but I think she'll come and see you on Sunday afternoon if you'll be at home."

"I'll be at home," said Punch firmly; "I won't go to the children's service with Pris and Prue."

"I don't think she'd come during service time."

"I'd better not go lest she did," Punch insisted. "I like Lallie."

"I think we all like Lallie," said Tony, and one of the "big boys" sitting on the seat murmured: "And so say all of us," and nudged his comrade.

Letter after letter had come from Lallie deferring her return. First it was that--"there are five hundred little red names to sew on Claude Chester's garments before he returns to Egypt. Mrs. Chester seems to imagine that there's something magical about those names, and that they will in some mysterious fashion prevent Claude losing his clothes, which he does at the rate of about an outfit a year. I should think that the whole of the Egyptian Army is taking a wear out of Claude's vests and things, judging by the amount he takes out and the few and holey garments he brings back. Mrs. Chester says it hurts her eyes to thread needles, and she's a poor old woman with no daughter; and what would I be tearing back to Hamchester for where no one particularly wants me (that's not true, is it?) when I can be of use here? So I really think I'd better stay till the names are all firmly attached, but it won't take long."

Then, after the little red names were all sewed on, Mrs. Chester got an exceedingly bad cold and had to stay in bed; and of course Lallie had to stay on at Pinnels to look after her.

But she was really coming home to-morrow. Tarrant was getting up every day for an hour or two, and it seemed only in keeping with the general pleasantness of things that B. House should already have scored six points to nil.

One thing about Lallie's letter puzzled Tony. She never so much as mentioned Ballinger. If she had given him his _congé_, this was natural enough and like Lallie; but if not, what did it mean?

At half-past five that evening Sidney Ballinger's card was brought in to him.

He never saw people in the drawing-room if he could possibly help it. He never knew why he hated it so till Lallie commented upon its stiffness. He received Sidney Ballinger in his study.

"Nervous, poor chap," was Tony's mental comment, as his guest came in. He did his best to set him at his ease; supplied him with cigarettes; offered him tea; whisky-and-soda; both refused.

"I dare say," said Ballinger, "that Miss Clonmell told you I hoped you would allow me to call. Is she at home?"

Tony looked rather surprised.

"She returns on Saturday; I thought you were at Pinnels also."

"I left last Monday fortnight, and I haven't heard from Miss Clonmell since. I thought she was coming back next day."

"Been having good hunting with the Cockshots?" asked Tony.

"Pretty fair. Mr. Bevan, it's no use beating about the bush; you know, I have no doubt, why I am here and why I have ventured to call upon you. When I went to Pinnels three weeks ago I fully intended to ask Miss Clonmell to be my wife--to ask her again. She told you that I had already proposed to her?"

"She didn't tell me. Her father did though."

"Well, I didn't ask her again at Pinnels: not in so many words; I never got the chance."

"That was unfortunate," said Tony, and in spite of himself his eyes twinkled.

"It was d--d unfortunate. I'll make a clean breast of it. There was another woman there--a married woman--with whom I had had a foolish flirtation in my salad days--when I was at Cambridge. You know the sort; older than I am, and horribly tenacious."

Ballinger paused. Tony smoked thoughtfully but said nothing to help him out. "A bit of a Goth," thought Ballinger, and took up his tale again.