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

one of the worst things the word offers; but to be very rich is not well, Tita. It clogs the mind; it takes one away from the very meaning of life. Money hardens the soul; it keeps one away from touch with the inner circle of humanity--from the misery, the sorrow, the vice! It is bad to be too rich."

"Yet you are rich, Margaret!"

"Yet--yes; and it frightens me," says she, in a low tone.

Tita rubs her cheek softly against hers.

"Yet _you_ are not far from the kingdom of God!" says she.

The little kittenish gesture and the solemn phrase! Margaret presses Tita to her. What a strange child she is! What a mixture!

"Neither are you, I trust," says she.

"So you see riches have got nothing to do with it," says Tita, breaking into a gay, irresistible little laugh.

Miss Knollys laughs too, in spite of herself, and then grows suddenly very grave. There is something she must say to Tita.


CHAPTER XX.

HOW MARGARET STARTS AS A SPECIAL PLEADER, AND IS MUCH WORSTED IN HER ARGUMENT; AND HOW A SIMPLE KNOCK AT THE HALL DOOR SCATTERS ONE BEING WHO DELIGHTS IN WAR.


"I think you ought to see your husband," says Margaret.

It is a bombshell! Tita withdraws her arms from round Margaret's neck and looks at her like one seeing her for the first time. It is plain to Margaret that she is very angry.

Poor Margaret! She feels torn in twain. Rylton, as has been said, had called twice during the past ten days, but on neither of those occasions had seen Tita. Tita, indeed, had obstinately refused to come downstairs, even though Margaret had gone up to fetch her. Margaret had not forgotten that occasion. She had found the girl in her room.

"Never, never, never!" said Tita, in answer to all her entreaties, who had screwed herself into the farthest corner of her room between a wardrobe and a table--a most uncomfortable position, but one possessed of certain advantages. It would be difficult, for example, to dislodge her from it. And she gave Margaret the impression, as she entered the room, that she thought force was about to be resorted to.

"It is your duty to come downstairs and see him," Margaret had said.

She always brought in poor Duty, who certainly must have been fagged to death at that time.

"I hate him!" said Tita rebelliously, and now with increased venom, as she saw that Margaret only had come to the assault. "Go down and tell him that."

"This is dreadful," said poor Margaret, going to the door.

But even now the little miscreant wedged in between the furniture was not satisfied.

"Tell him I hope I'll never see him again!" said she, calling it out loudly as though afraid Margaret might not hear and deliver her words.

"I shall certainly deliver no such message," said the latter, pausing on the threshold and waxing wroth. Even the worm will turn, they say, though I confess I never saw one that did. "You can tell him that yourself, some day, when you see him!"

But this parting shaft had only made Tita laugh. _"See him!_ She would die first!"

Margaret had gone down with a modified edition of this _rencontre_ to Rylton, and Rylton had shrugged his shoulders. He could not disguise from Margaret the fact, however, that he was chagrined. He had seen through the modifying, of course, and had laughed--not very merrily--and told Margaret not to ruin her conscience on _his _account. He had lived with Tita long enough to know the sort of message she would be sure to send.

Margaret mumbled something after that, never very clear to either of them, and Rylton had gone on to say that he was going down to the country for a month. He was starting on Monday next. He had said all that on Thursday, and this is Tuesday. There is a sense of relief, yet of regret, in Margaret's heart as she tells herself that he is well out of town. But _now,_ certainly, is the time to work on Tita's sense of right and wrong. Rylton will come back at the end of the month, and when he does, surely--surely his wife should be willing to, at all events, receive him as a friend. The gossip surrounding these two people, so dear to her, is distressing to Margaret, and she would gladly have put an end to it. The whole thing, too, is so useless, so senseless. And as for that affair of Marian's Bethune's--she has no belief in that. It has blown over--is dead. Killed--by time.

"See him?" says Tita at last, stammering.

"Yes, when he comes back. You have a month to think about it. He has gone to the country."

"A very good thing too," says Tita, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I hope he will stay there."

"But he won't," says Margaret in despair. "He returns to town in June. Tita, I hope--I do hope you will be sensible, and consent to see him then."

"Does he want to see me?" asks Tita.

Here Margaret is posed. Rylton had certainly _known,_ that day she had gone up to Tita's room to bring her down, what her errand was, but he had not asked her to go upon it. He had expressed no desire, had shown no wish for a meeting with his wife.

"My dear--I----"

"Ah, you make a bad liar, Meg!" says Tita; "you ought to throw up the appointment. You aren't earning your salary honestly. And, besides, it doesn't matter. Even if he were _dying _to see me, I should still rather die than see him."

"That is not a right spirit, to----"

"I expect my spirit is as right as his," says Tita rebelliously, "and," with a sudden burst of indignation that does away with all sense of her duty to her language, "a thousand times righter for the matter of that. No, Margaret! No--no--no! I will _not_ see him. Do you think I ever forget----"

"I had hoped, dearest, that----"

"It is useless to hope. _What_ woman would forgive it? I knew he married me without loving me. That was all fair! He told me that. What he did not tell me was the vital thing--that he loved someone else."

"You should never have married him when he told you he did not love you."

"Why not?" warmly. "I knew nothing of love; I thought he knew nothing of it either. Love seemed to me a stupid sort of thing (it seems so still). I said to myself that a nice strong friendship would be sufficient for me----"

"Well?"

"Well, so it would--only he felt no friendship. He felt nothing but his love for that odious woman! I couldn't stand that."

"You stood it for a long time, Tita--if it ever existed."

"Yes; I know. I didn't seem to care much at first, but when he grew rude to me about Tom---- Well, I knew what _that_ meant."

"If you knew, you should have kept your cousin at a greater distance."

"Nonsense, Margaret! what do you mean by that?" Tita has turned a pair of lustrous eyes upon her--eyes lit by the fire of battle--not battle with Margaret, however, but with memory. "You honestly think that he believed I was in love with Tom?"

"I do. And I think he was jealous."

Tita bursts out laughing. There is little music in her mirth.

"And now I'll tell you what _I_ think. That he was _glad_ to pretend to believe I was in love with Tom, because he hoped to get rid of me, and after that to marry his cousin."

"Tita! I shall not listen to you if you say such things. How dare you even think them? Maurice is incapable of such a design."

"In my opinion, he is capable of anything," retorts Maurice's wife, without a trace of repentance. She looks long at Margaret, and then dropping gracefully upon a _pouf_ at Margaret's feet, says sweetly, "He's a beast!"

"Oh, Tita! I don't know _why_ I love you," says Margaret, with terrible reproach.

At this Tita springs to her feet, and flings her arms round Miss Knollys. Presently she leans back and looks at her again, still, however, holding her with her arms. Her small face, so woeful a while ago, is now wreathed in smiles; it even suggests itself to Margaret that she is with difficulty suppressing a wild outbreak of mirth--a suppression meant, no doubt, as a concession to Margaret's feelings.

"I'll tell you," whispers she. "You love me because you would be the most ungrateful wretch on earth unless you did. You give me _some_ of your love; I give you all mine. I have no one else."

"That is your own fault," says Margaret, still trying to scold her, actually believing she is doing it, whilst with her eyes and mouth she is smiling at her.

"Not another word, not one," says Tita. "And promise me you won't ask me to see him again. I hate him! He sets my nerves on edge. I think he is actually _ugly."_

"I think you must have forgotten what he is like by this time."

"No, I don't. One doesn't forget a nightmare in a hurry."

"Tita, really----"

"There! I'll be good. I'll consign him to the lowest depths and never dig him up again. And so he has left town? What a blessed relief! Now I can go out and enjoy myself. _Let_ us go out, Meg! Let us----_what's that?"_

She stands transfixed in the middle of the room, Margaret opposite her. Both seem stricken into marble.

A knock at the door, loud, sharp, resounding--a knock well known to both.

"And you _said_ he was gone to the country," says Tita, in a low whisper filled with deepest suspicions.

"He said so. I believed it. It must be a mistake," says Margaret. "He _certainly_ said so."

They have lost some moments over their fear and astonishment. The sound of a rapidly approaching footstep, quite as well known to them as the knock, rouses both to a sense of desperation.

"What on earth shall I do?" says Tita, who is now as white as a sheet.

"Stay and see him," says Margaret, with sudden inspiration.

"Stay! Do you think I should stay for one moment in the room with him? No! I shall go in there," pointing to the next room that opens out of this with folding-doors, "and wait until he goes away."

She has hardly time to reach this seclusion when the door is thrown wide, and Sir Maurice is announced.

"Nobody with you?" says he, glancing somewhat expectantly around him. "I fancied I heard someone. _So_ glad to find you alone!"

"Yes--yes--perhaps it is better," says Margaret vaguely, absently, thinking always of the little firebrand in that room beyond, but so near, so fatally near.

"Better? You mean----"

"Well, I mean that Tita has only just left the room," says Margaret desperately.

"She--is in there, then?" pointing towards the folding-doors.

"Yes. _Do_ speak low. You know she--I can't disguise from you, Maurice, that she----"

Margaret hesitates.

"Hates me? I'm quite aware of that." A long pause. "She is well, I hope?" frigidly.

"I think so. She looks well, lovely indeed--a little pale, perhaps. Maurice," leaning across and whispering cautiously, "why don't you try to make a reconciliation of some sort? A beginning might lead