The Hoyden by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (best value ebook reader TXT) 📖

said nothing, nothing! _Have_ I, now?" appealing to her with great drenched eyes. "But I can go on no longer. He hates me."

"Oh, hush, hush, Tita!"

"He does! He was unkind to me all to-day. He is always unkind to me. He _hates_ me, and he--loves her."

"I don't think so. I don't, really. Sit down, darling," says Margaret, in great agitation.

"I know he does. Did you see that he would hardly speak to me this evening, and----"

"I thought it was you who would not speak to him."

"Oh no, no! I was longing to speak to him. I can't bear being bad friends with _anyone;_ but, of course, I could not go up to him, and tell him so; and he--what did _he_ do?--he spent the whole evening with Mrs. Bethune in the conservatory."

"Tita, I assure you he was not alone with her then. Mrs. Chichester----"

"I don't care about his being alone with her," says Tita, whose mind is as fresh as her face. "He was _with_ her all the evening; you know he was. Oh, how I hate that woman!"

"Tita, listen----"

"Yes; I hate her. And----" She stops and lays her hands on Margaret's arm and looks piteously at her. "Do you know," says she, "I used _not_ to hate people. I thought once I hated my uncle, but I didn't know. It was nothing like this. It is dreadful to feel like this."

There is poignant anguish in the young voice. It goes to Margaret's heart.

"Tita, be sensible," says she sharply. "Do you think all the misery of the world is yours?"

"No, no," faintly. "Only _my_ portion is so heavy."

She bursts into tears.

"Good heavens!" says Margaret distractedly, caressing her and soothing her. "What a world it is! Why, _why_ cannot you and Maurice see how delightful you both are? It is an enigma. No one can solve it. Tita darling, take heart. Why--why, if Marian were so bad as you think her--which I pray God she isn't--still, think how far you can surpass her in youth, in charm, in beauty."

"Beauty!"

The girl looks up at Margaret as if too astonished to say more.

_"Certainly_ in beauty," firmly. "Marian in her best days was never as lovely as you are. Never!"

"Ah! Now I know you love me," says Tita very sadly. "You alone think that." She pauses, and the pause is eloquent. "Maurice doesn't," says she.

"Maurice is a fool" is on Margaret's lips, but she resists the desire to say it to Maurice's wife, and, in the meantime, Tita has recovered herself somewhat, and is now giving full sway once more to her temper.

"After all, I don't care!" exclaims she. "Why should I? Maurice is as little to me as I am to him. What I _do_ care about is being scolded by him all day long, when I have quite as good a right to scold him. Oh, better! He has behaved badly, Margaret, hasn't he? He should never have married me without _telling_ me of--of her."

"I think he should have told you," says Margaret, with decision. "But I think, too, Tita, that he has been perfectly true to you since his marriage."

"True?"

"I mean--I think--he has not shown any special attention to Marian."

"He showed it to-night, any way," rebelliously.

"He did not indeed. She asked him to show her the chrysanthemums, and what could he do but go with her to the conservatory? And I particularly noticed that as he passed Mrs. Chichester he asked her to come and see them too."

"He didn't ask me, at all events," says Tita.

"Perhaps he was afraid; and, indeed, Tita"--very gently--"you are not so altogether blameless yourself. You talked and played cards the whole night with Mr. Hescott."

"Oh, poor old Tom! That was only because I had been unkind to him in the morning, and because"--ingenuously--"I wanted to pay out Maurice."

Margaret sighs.

"It is all very sad," says she.

"It is," says Tita, tears welling up into her eyes again--a sign of grace that Margaret welcomes.

"Well, go to bed now, darling; and, Tita, if Maurice says anything to you--anything----"

"Cross--_I_ know!" puts in Tita.

"Promise me you will not answer him in anger, do promise me! It makes me so unhappy," says Margaret persuasively, kissing the girl, and pressing her in her arms.

"Oh! _Does_ it? I'm sorry," says Tita, seeing the real distress on Margaret's sweet face. "There! He may say what he likes to me, I shan't answer him back. Not a word! A syllable! I'll be as good as gold!"

She kisses Margaret fondly, and leaves the room.

Outside, in the long corridor, the lamps are beginning to burn dimly. It is already twelve o'clock. Twelve strokes from the hall beneath fall upon Tita's ear as she goes hurriedly towards her own room. It is the midnight hour, the mystic hour, when ghosts do take their nightly rounds!

This is not a ghost, however, this tall young man, who, coming up by the central staircase, meets her now face to face.

"Tita! Is it you?"

"Yes, yes," says Tita, trying to hurry past him.

If Tom has come up from the smoking-room, of course the others will be coming too, and, on the whole, she is not as well got up as usual. It is with a sort of contempt she treats the charming gown in which she is now clothed. And yet she has hardly ever looked lovelier than now, with her eyes a little widened by her late grief, and her hair so sweetly disturbed, and her little slender form showing through the open folds of the long white gown that covers her.

"Don't go. Don't!" says Tom Hescott; his tone is so full of poignant anguish that she stops short. "Stay a moment." In his despair he has caught a fold of her gown. To do him fair justice, he honestly believes that she hates her husband, and that she is thoroughly unhappy with him. Unhappy with great cause. "I am going--you know that, and--I have a last word to say. I tried to say it this afternoon--out there--you know--in the shrubberies, and when you wouldn't listen--I--I respected that. I respected you. But--a time may come when you"--hurriedly--"may not always choose to live this wretched life. There will be a way out of it, Tita--a way not made by _you!"_

Tita suddenly feels very cold, chilled to her heart's core. She had listened so far as if stunned; but now she wakes, and the face of Marian Bethune seems to look with a cold sneer into hers.

"And after that," goes on Hescott, "if--if----" He breaks down. "Well, if _that_ comes, you know I--_love_ you, Tita."

He tries to take her hand.

"Don't touch me!" says Tita vehemently. She pushes his hand from her; such a disdainful little push. "Oh, I thought you really _did_ love me," says she, "but not like _this!"_ Suddenly a sort of rage and of anger springs to life within her. She turns a face, singularly childish, yet with the sad first break of womanhood upon it, to his. "How _dare_ you love me like this?" says she.

"Tita, listen to me----"

"No. Not I! You must be a _fool_ to talk to me like this. Of what use is it? What good? If you loved me for ever, what good could come of it? I don't love you! Ah!"--she catches her breath and looks straight at him with an undying sense of indignation--"Maurice was right about you, and I was wrong. He saw through you, I didn't. I"--with a little inward glance into her own feelings--"I shan't forgive you for _that,_ either!"

"You mean----"

"It really doesn't matter," says Tita, cruel for the first time in all her sweet young life. The light is so dim that she cannot see his face distinctly. Perhaps if she had, she would have been kinder. "I mean nothing. Only go; go at once! Do you _hear?"_

Her childish voice grows imperious.

"I am going," says Hescott dully--"in the morning."

"Oh! I'm glad"--smiting her hands together--"by the _early_ train?"

"The earliest!"

Hescott's soul seems dying within him. All at once the truth is clear to him, or, at least, half of it. She may not love her husband, but, beyond all question, love for him--Hescott--has never entered into her mind.

"And a good thing too!" says Tita wrathfully. "I hope I shall never see you here again. I could never bear to look at you after this!" She is standing trembling with agitation before him, like one full-filled with wrath. "To-day--I shall not forget _that._ To-day--and that story"--she stops as if choking--"what did you _mean_ by telling that story?" demands she, almost violently. "Everyone there knew what you meant. It dragged me down to the ground. I hated you for it! You invented it. You _know_ you did, just to humiliate _him!_ You think Maurice hates me, but he doesn't. It is a lie!" She pauses, her lovely eyes aflame. "It is a lie!" she repeats passionately.

"If so----" begins Hescott, but in so low a tone, and so dead, that she scarcely heeds it.

"And to call me an angel before them all. Ah! I could read through you. So could everyone. It was an insult! I _won't_ be called an angel. I am just what Maurice is, and no more. I wonder Maurice didn't _kill_ you--and he would, only you were his guest. So would I--only----"

She breaks off. The tears are running down her cheeks. She makes a little swift turn of her body towards him.

"Oh, Tom! and I did so believe in _you!"_

There is a short silence fraught with misery for one soul, at all events.

"Believe in me still," says Tom Hescott, in a queer, low tone. "Believe in me now--and for ever--to"--with passionate fondness--"the last moment of your life." He draws his breath sharply. "And now good-bye."

He struggles with himself, and, failing in the struggle, catches her suddenly to his breast, and there holds her to his heart for half a minute, perhaps.

Then he releases her. It is all over. He had not even tried to kiss her. He goes swiftly past her into the gloom beyond the dying lamp, and is lost.

Tita stands as if stricken dumb. For a second only. _Then_ she is conscious of a hand being laid on her arm, of her being forcibly led forward to her own room, of the door being closed behind her.

She turns and looks up at Rylton. His eyes are blazing. He is dangerously white across cheeks and nose.

"There shall be an end of this!" says he.


CHAPTER XV.

HOW JEALOUSY RUNS RIOT IN OAKDEAN; AND HOW MARGARET TRIES TO THROW OIL UPON THE WATERS; AND HOW A GREAT CRASH COMES, WITH MANY WORDS AND ONE SURPRISE.


Tita has wrenched herself from his grasp.

"Of _what?"_ demands she.

"Do you think you can hoodwink me any longer? There shall be an end of it--do you hear?" Rylton's face, as she now sees it in the light of the lamps in her room, almost frightens her. "I've had enough of it!"

"I don't understand you!" says Tita, standing well away from him, her face as white as ashes.

As for _his_ face----

"Don't you?" violently. "Then I shall explain. I've had enough of what ruins men's lives and honours--of what