Part 7

Marcus stepped out into the fresh, cool air with a sigh of deepest thankfulness. Even the girl who trod the red-bricked path beside him he could forgive for daring to fall in love with him. The mother for trying to catch him he should never forgive; but there was something attractive about Rosie. “Shall we sit here?” she asked when they reached the sands. He would rather she had left it to him to choose the place; but in full view of the whole watering-place and that a favourite one, there should be no immediate danger. Under the shelter of a rock they sat. Yes—she was attractive—he could see no reason why she should marry as the old lady in the bath-chair had imagined she should. Surely there must be something between Marcus Maitland and that other man? Rose knew how to be quiet, which was a great thing in woman.—She stuck out her feet. Her shoes? Bad shape; and her stockings? They weren’t quite right. He didn’t see what was wrong exactly—unless it was that the other sides of the seams showed through—but still she was very attractive: her simplicity was engaging. Well-shaped shoes were after all a matter—a question of money.

“It’s funny you should be Mr. Maitland, isn’t it?” she said, digging her heels into the soft sand and looking up at him under her long, dark eyelashes.

“It would be far funnier if I was not—funnier to me, at all events.”

“Yes, of course: you are so amusing, aren’t you?”

“Am I? I don’t think so.” He was open to conviction.

“Yes, you are—I’m serious—don’t you think you are?”

“Amusing?”

“Yes.”

“I never thought so.”

“Well, you are—and I’m sure you are—kind too!”

“Are you, why?” Unconsciously, perhaps, Marcus put on the kindest face in the world—an absurd face it was, but Rose was looking the other way.

“You look it,” she said softly.

Marcus said she had said he looked so many things, amongst them a widower.

“Oh, I am so glad you are not that.” The tragic eyes were turned upon him—they were positively wells of deep thankfulness.

“Why?” He was terrified—yet, fascinated, he must know why.

She said she would have hated him to be unhappy.

“But,”—he was getting very uncomfortable: he wished Shan’t would come and bury him in the sand, as she was wont to do—deep, deep, deep. “But,” he went on desperately, “I might not have been unhappy—”

“Not if your wife had died? I should have hated that—I mean I should hate you to be—shallow. I know you would have been heart-broken: I should wish you to be.” That settled it, once and for all—

“Why?” Marcus felt he was now paddling in pathos. He saw himself a widower walking to church with a child on either side: their hands in his.

“Because I want you to think rather wonderfully of marriage—and married life.”

Marcus said hastily that he could not think of them at all.

“Why—you must—for my sake. You will—if I ask you to.”

“Because there are reasons” (there were none, of course) “I can never marry.”

“I—am—so sorry—” There was a terrific silence—an impossible silence.

She broke it gently—broke it as softly as the waves broke upon the sands. “But you won’t mind if I do?”

“My dear child, of course not—do you want to?” This was a marvellous way out.

She said, Yes, but she could not do it without him.

He asked what he had to do with it, and she said, “More than you know,” which he was willing enough to admit!—So far as he could see he had nothing to do with it.

“Much more than you know,” she repeated.

She drew up her feet. They were very pretty slim feet, he discovered. He liked the shoes even, except that they were white. He didn’t really like white shoes. She clasped her hands round her knees. He liked her hands, particularly liked them. They were long and delightfully brown. He didn’t mind brown hands—not a bit—at the seaside.

“Whom do you want to marry?” he asked, feeling a sudden rush of tenderness towards this dark-eyed girl, and a slight resentment towards the man she would marry. This girl had found him both sympathetic and amusing. If Diana thought him amusing she would never tell him so.

“That’s the curious part of the whole thing—I heard from some one this morning.”

“The some one?” said Marcus, with marvellous intuition. He really was sympathetic, he felt the glow of it himself.

“Yes, and he said you were here—”

“Why did he say that?” What business had any one to say Marcus Maitland was anywhere—even if he were? He hated his movements discussed.

“Because you are, I suppose.”

“Yes, yes, of course. But how does he know?”

“He’s in your office—isn’t it extraordinary?”

“Very—and what is he in my office? And my office, by the way, is so little mine. I have left the business—”

“Yes—I know! It’s rather a pity, from our point of view.”

“It was hardly worth the trouble of getting to know me?” suggested Marcus.

“No—I don’t mean that—but although he doesn’t see you now, he knew you in America—he was sent over there for a year or two—”

“What position does he hold?”

“He’s getting on very well—for his age wonderfully well—but I thought if you could just tell me what his prospects are—I might tell my mother—and she would give her consent, I am sure—if I could just say he was getting on wonderfully well—and—”

“What’s his name?”

“Flueyn—pronounced Flynn—he said you never got it right.”

“Does he? I’m sorry. Flueyn? Why, he’s a most excellent fellow. I remember him.”

“Will—he—get on?”

“Yes—of course—bound to—”

“How—much a year will he get on?”

Marcus thought for a moment—Flueyn—excellent chap—fine big fellow—he had rather a terrible laugh: too boisterous in private life, he should say. But he didn’t know him in private life—no question of knowing him—very good worker—very keen—it was quite possible he would get on. But why did this girl want to marry him?

“How—much—?” The tragic eyes were turned upon him; they were pleading eyes, dangerous eyes—the red lips trembled a little—dangerous too—very. How much was going to make such a tremendous difference—the hands tensely clasped said that: the eyes clouded expressed that—the parted lips meant that.

“Of course—I would do anything within my power—but I am not in a—”

“Don’t say that.”

“Don’t cry—it will be all right—tell your mother it will be all right—don’t thank me.”

“How _can_ I thank you?”

“By not thanking me—Flueyn’s an excellent chap—no, I won’t come and have cocoa, thank you. I never drink it at night. You will be all right? Then you will forgive me if I go home; I have letters to write. I won’t forget, only don’t build on it—because—”

“I have built—it’s finished—all but the roof.”

Marcus looked at her—there were tears in her eyes. “Please don’t look so—happy,” he said; “it frightens me.”

On his way back to the hotel, he called in to see Mrs. Sloane. She was delighted to see him and to hear his news.

“Tell me all about it—begin at the very beginning. Tell me first about the young man.”

“He’s very big and I should say wonderfully healthy: has lots of hair—fair! It stands on end at the slightest provocation. He laughs, I should imagine, tremendously. Out of office hours he would be boisterous, I am sure of that—but none of her family will mind—‘Auntie’ wouldn’t hear him if he wasn’t. He plays games, I believe—I don’t know what else to tell you. You see I didn’t know him—I didn’t even know how to pronounce his name.”

“But you ought to have known him. He sounds so eminently desirable.”

“For her—yes, but he would jar upon you a thousand times a day.”

“That would be my fault—it’s a bad thing for a woman when she grows too fragile, too exotic, to stand a boisterous laugh. You are very gentle, my friend, to an old woman.... I told Shan’t I felt very old to-day, and she said, so kindly: ‘You’re not so old as Moses would have been if he had lived.’”

She put out her hand and Marcus took it and held it as delicately and as carefully as he would have held a vase of the Ming period.

“The Flueyns must be happy,” she said. “You will see that they are.”

“I have very little influence—really.”

“Is that quite true?”

“Not quite.”

Mrs. Sloane said that was rather a comfort to her because she had a confession to make. She had not been quite—well, truthful herself. Marcus was a little alarmed. He could not imagine an elderly woman in a bath-chair departing in any way from the path of goodness and righteousness. He asked what she had to confess and asked it so charmingly that she vowed he had missed his vocation in life. “You would forgive so nicely,” she explained.

“Hardly as nicely as you would tell a—lie,” he suggested.

“A lie is perhaps a little too strong—no, I suppose it’s not—I led you to believe I did not know Shan’t, whereas I know her very well: and of course I know Elsie. I live in Bestways, and I have known her for a long time, and the longer I know her the better I love her. Now, am I forgiven?”

“The best thing I have heard of her is that you are her friend,” said Marcus.

“How nice of you—to tell an untruth so charmingly! But tell me why you dislike each other so much? It was in order to find out if Elsie was justified in her ridiculous attitude towards you that I did not tell you who I was.”

“Does she really dislike me?” asked Marcus. “Why should she? I have never done anything to her.”

Mrs. Sloane asked him if he hadn’t made the children rather fond of him.

“But surely she couldn’t mind that?”

“Why do you dislike her?”

“I don’t; but she is always trying to keep the children away from me.”

“I see very little difference between you,” said Mrs. Sloane; and after what she had said about Elsie, Marcus was obliged to say he was glad of that.

When Marcus reached the hotel he was met by the hall porter, who astonished him by saying: “I’m a family man myself, sir, you will excuse me—but will you go upstairs at once? I was told to say—_directly_ you came in.”

Marcus went upstairs. Over the banisters at each landing hung an anxious housemaid. Each housemaid expressed her relief at seeing him, each begged him to hurry. Each assured him the lift was working. He had been in too great a hurry to remember the lift. When he got near his room a voice broke upon his ear—a long wail—the cry of one in great distress; the wail spoke loudly of Irish blood in the veins of her who wailed. It was the voice of his niece. Infuriated old women glanced at him through half-opened doors. “What had he been doing gallivanting about at night?” they seemed to say and no doubt they would have liked to add: “If he had left the mother he might at least stay with the child.”

“Shan’t,” he called, “I’m coming.” He passed lady’s-maids gathered together, and strode into Shan’t’s room. Then and there he decided that he had never seen a child cry—never imagined a child could cry—not the child of any one belonging to him—as this child cried. It was impossible that anything could cry so terribly. Tears poured down her face: her eyes were screwed up. It was a horrible exhibition showing a deplorable lack of self-restraint.

“Shan’t, stop!” He sat down beside her, he shook her gently—nothing made any difference. “I’m here, your Uncle Marcus is here—”

This was why there were people in the world who didn’t love children. They had seen them like this.

“I don’t want him—I want my darlin’—Aunt Elsie—”

“No, Shan’t, you don’t. You are at the seaside with your darling uncle.”

“I’m—not—I won’t be at the seaside. I want my darlin’ Aunt Elsie.”

“Shan’t—listen!” He tried to take her in his arms. She became rigid, unbendable—unbreakable—“Shan’t—!”

“I—want—my—darlin’ Aunt—Elsie.”

The management sent up to say, Would the young lady be quiet? There was an elderly gentleman above her—and an old lady below her—who could get no sleep.

“Shan’t—be quiet!”

“Nasty Uncle Marcus!”

“Shan’t—listen—”

But she refused to listen—she wriggled away under the bedclothes.

“What do you want, Shan’t?”

She emerged from under the bedclothes.

“I want my darlin’ Aunt Elsie.”

“But you can’t have her—she’s miles away. Would you like the kind lady who played with you on the sands?”

“She’s dead!” cried Shan’t—wailing afresh.

“No—she’s not. Look here, will you be good if I fetch her?”

“Will she bring my darlin’ crab—what was on the sands—?”

“Yes—yes—”

“W—ill—you fet-ch—her?”

“Yes.”

Marcus was off downstairs, three steps at a time—scattering housemaids as he went, out on to the sea-front, and finally reached the Madders’ door just as the cocoa was pronounced ready. “Oh, you’re just in time!” they all cried, as he came into the room. “Rose, fetch another cup and a spoon; no, you must share spoons.”

“What is it?” asked Rose, who was quick to see that something was wrong.

“It’s Shan’t, she won’t go to sleep—she does nothing but cry—will you come—and bring a crab?”

To which unusual request Rose made no objection. “Sandy,” she cried, “lend me a crab!”

“All right—there’s one under the sofa. Move, will you, Auntie, there’s a crab—hold hard—it’s in a bucket—it won’t bite.”

Marcus apologized to the assembled family, begged them to forgive him, didn’t wait to be assured of their ready forgiveness, but was off in the wake of Rose. As he had run down the pavement in London after Diana, so he now ran down the red-brick path after Rose. She ran less lightly, perhaps, than Diana had run, but then she was less lightly dressed. She ran just as fast—horribly fast. His life had become a restless and strenuous one. Arrived at the hotel he and Rose went up in the lift. He noticed the water from the pail streaming down the front of her skirt; he never thought of the poor crab as he tried to dry it. She begged him not to; he mustn’t wet his handkerchief. He said it was already wet with the tears of Shan’t—soaked!

They found Shan’t sitting up in bed. The storm was passing; the waves of her sobs were breaking—the moaning of the outgoing tide was still to be heard. Rose was on her knees beside the bed, and in one moment her arms were round the child. Marcus turned away; he could not have said why, except that somehow or other he felt as if it were Flueyn’s right before any other man’s to see Rose as she looked now—altogether adorable like this—he had never seen her so desirable.

He felt he ought not to be listening to the crooning of that voice, even to the absurd things she was saying—they were women’s secrets he was overhearing; he was a listener on the threshold of a door he had deliberately closed in his life.

After the storm there came peace. Shan’t was whispering: every now and then came the backwash of a sob—but peace followed it. He seemed to see the golden reflection of the setting sun on the wet sands. Shan’t was putting her fingers in and out of the button-holes in the girl’s knitted coat and was smiling up into her face. Rose was wiping away the tears from the child’s face. Shan’t was shyly promising to be good—never to cry any more? She nodded. Rose persuaded her to lie down. Shan’t insisted that she must say good-night to the crab. This was accomplished—poor crab! She must then pray for the crab and for all little crabs. This was done. By degrees she fell asleep, and until Rose was quite certain that nothing would awaken her she knelt beside her. Marcus watched her for a moment, then turned away and walked to the window. He felt lonely. There was silence except for the sound of the waves breaking on the shore beneath the window, very softly. The world, with Shan’t, had fallen gently to sleep and the waves sang a lullaby.

“She’s all right,” whispered Rose; “there will be some one near if she wakes?”

Marcus nodded.

“Then I shall go home—give me that poor crab.”

Marcus was afraid it was dead. Rose said all Sandy’s pets died young. They walked back to the lodgings together, in silence.

At the door he stopped. “I can’t thank you,” he said.

“There’s nothing to thank me for—I love children.”

“There is one thing I want to say—it will be all right with Flueyn.”

He asked her not to thank him, he said there was nothing to thank him for. She laughed, then added shyly, “How little you know!”

XI

_A dog may be a dog and something more; A man beside a dog may be a bore!_

Shan’t had gone back to her aunt. Diana was with her aunt and Marcus was alone. He felt the position to be an absurd one. Why should he be separated from two nieces because an aunt, on the other side, chose to behave in a jealous and absurd manner? It was quite possible, if he could see the aunt, that she might in talking tell him, quite unconsciously, if Diana were in love or not? It was ridiculous he shouldn’t know, if he wished to know—and if she knew. With all her faults the aunt, no doubt, was fond of the children. Why shouldn’t he go down and see her? So he got a Bradshaw and looked up trains—he would have gone by car, but he had told Diana that Tooke wasn’t—what had he said?—strong enough to do the distance? He forgot what he had said, he had been vexed at the time—and he found it was possible to get to the aunt by twelve o’clock on any morning, so why not to-morrow? He should write to say he was coming—no, he would take her by surprise; see her as she really was.

When a woman deliberately sets out to weed on a summer’s day she will know, if she has any imagination, that her face will be likely to redden under the exertion, be it wonted or unwonted; further, that she will not be looking her best if her niece’s uncle should chance to call upon her. Elsie Carston’s imagination might have gone so far as to expect a red face under given circumstances, but never a visit, under any, from Diana’s disagreeable uncle. Yet this thing happened. Her small parlour-maid came to tell her so. She whispered it, hoarse from suppressed excitement. She vowed he was standing looking “amazed-like” at the “blue vawse.”

“Tell him,” said Elsie, “he must wait till my face is less red”—never dreaming that Rebecca would be so silly; but Rebecca was. She went back to the drawing-room and she said, “Miss Carston is so red in the face, sir, will you please to wait?”

And Marcus, if not pleased, waited. He had kept people waiting himself, and never for a more excellent reason. He hated women with red faces. That was one of Diana’s greatest charms—the unvarying beauty of her complexion. Ah—Diana? Where was she—and Shan’t, too? Why didn’t the tiresome aunt come? A bumptious woman is not complete unless she has a red face—a danger signal; so she might just as well come as she was, as she always was, and would always be.

The moments crept on—still he waited. He paced up and down the room until he was giddy, and he felt for the bears in the Zoo as he had never felt before. He realized the daily round of their discomfort now. This, then, was where Diana lived: with this furniture? Well, it wasn’t bad—of its kind. It was rough, of course. The grandfather’s clock, that ticked so insistently, must have stood in a deaf cottager’s kitchen. The gate-legged table had been undoubtedly cursed by many a lusty farmer and his sons for the multitude and distribution of its legs.

The furniture was well kept. There was that to the aunt’s credit, or to her servants’. He wondered if she had any more like the absurd creature who had conveyed, with the utmost solemnity, that ridiculous message. There couldn’t be such another in the world.

Back to the blue vase. It seemed familiar. Ridiculous place to keep it—on a bracket—meaningless. The Staffordshire china? Rubbish. How easily women were taken in! So long as the piece was an imbecile lamb or an impossible cottage, she was satisfied. No doubt she had bought the lamb because it was a “duck,” and the cottage because it was a “lamb.” He could hear her. She had been wise to keep to white walls. If she had attempted colour she must have gone wrong. He liked the chintz. It was in keeping. Red flowers on a highly glazed surface.

Why didn’t she come? It was the worst form of discourtesy to keep any one waiting. Where had she got the mezzotints? Or rather how? Left to her by a relative who had bought them cheap years ago, anticipating their value. She would tell him so—tiresome! He didn’t care how she had got them. They were nice enough, though. First state, eh? Open letters? He walked from one to the other. Cut edges? Here was one with the margin nibbled by a mouse—just what he should have expected to happen to the print belonging to a red-faced woman. Needlework pictures? Quite amusing! Country-house sale, he suspected: and a Downman? People do get these things somehow or other. She had withstood the lure of the hand-coloured print. Books? What did the woman read? He was on all fours trying to discover when the door opened and to his intense astonishment he heard a woman’s voice say, “Lie down, Marcus!” He rose instead—anything rather than obey—and found himself face to face with Aunt Elsie. What had been the use of waiting? Her face was still red.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I forgot; do forgive me—Marcus is my dog.”

Grey eyes! They looked at him, and he remembered that years ago they had distinctly said: “Beaten!” They challenged him now—“Goth!” it was coming back to him; “Vandal!—nice, grey-eyed woman—ignorant woman!” he repeated to himself. “Your gloves,” he said involuntarily.

“You would think I never wore them,” she said, holding out her sunburnt, shapely hands for his inspection, “but I do.”

“You wore them then—and the wrong kind. That’s what I so disliked about you. You took that vase in gloved hands—dogskin-gloved hands—”

“Oh, it was you, was it?” said Elsie. “You looked so angry and I couldn’t explain—I knew it wasn’t a good vase—yes, I did—”

“Then why—”

“Forgive me one moment, there’s Dinah—”

“Oh,” said Marcus, “delightful—” thinking she had said Diana.

“No, Dinah—my dog—she’s got Marcus’s ball, she knows she mustn’t—please wait—if Peggy comes in, send her to her dinner, will you?”

“How? What shall I do?”

“Just say, ‘Marky’s got Peggy’s dinner’—and she’ll fly!”

Off went Aunt Elsie, leaving Marcus to deal with Peggy—another dog, he supposed. “Marky’s got Peggy’s dinner!” He was hanged if he would say it. A moment later the door opened and Rebecca looked in: “You haven’t got Peggy, have you, sir?”

Marcus said he had not.

“She’s so excited at your coming, sir, she was tearing round the lawn like mad, just now—here she is!” Peggy tore into the room; tore round it two or three times, slipping, skidding on rugs, as she went. “Call her!” said Marcus.

“It’s no use, sir, not till she’s got accustomed to the excitement of you—”

“Tell her ‘Marky has got her lunch,’ or dinner; whatever meal you like to call it.”

“It wouldn’t be any use, sir, not when she’s wild over your coming like she is now.”

When Elsie came back, she had the grace to apologize, but it was evident she had no idea how badly she had behaved, or how impossible the dogs had been. Marcus thought that dogs must, at least, be obedient. Elsie said she was really very sorry, and as she spoke she marshalled the dogs and sent them off to their various dinners: then she came back, looked at him, and said he was exactly what she had always known he was.

“What is that?” he asked: it was rash of him to ask.

“Frightfully obstinate, for one thing.”

“And what else?”

“Heaps of things—but about this vase—an old lady I was very fond of sent me up to buy that vase for her—_if_ it had a mark upon it that she had made as a girl—a scratch. If it had not, I was not to buy it.”

Marcus said he was bewildered, he did not understand.

“You will if you listen,” said Elsie. “Her father had a collection of Chinese porcelain and he sold it. One piece, she told him, had been given to her, when she was a girl, by a young man with whom she was in love. Her father disputed her claim, and the vase was sold with the rest of the collection. She was middle-aged then. When she heard the collection was to be sold again—it was forty years since her father had parted with it, and she had grown to be a very old woman—she wanted to buy back that one piece.”

“Feminine persistence,” said Marcus.