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

reproach, "would have told a dozen lies for you in a minute."

"Well, I don't want you to," says Miss Knollys. "By-the-bye, he is not going out of town, after all."

"No?" with studied indifference. "Then I suppose we may expect to hear that Mrs. Bethune will be in town shortly?"

"I really do think, Tita, that you ought to refrain from speeches like that. They are unworthy of you, and they are not true. Whatever infatuation Maurice felt for Marian Bethune in the past, lies in the past. Only to-day he told me----"

"Told you?"

Tita leans eagerly forward.

"That if he ever _had_ loved her--and he seemed now to doubt that--he loved her no longer."

"Just shows how fickle he is," says Tita, with supreme scorn.

"Of course, if you are determined to misjudge him in _every_ way----"

"It is he who misjudges me!" She gets up and walks impatiently from Margaret to the window and back again. "How could he say I deliberately deserted him?"

Margaret looks at her. It suddenly occurs to her what a blessed thought that was of hers to take him out of hearing to the far end of the room.

"You heard that, then?"

Tita starts and turns crimson.

"Oh, that!" stammers she. "Well, I--I couldn't help it. I was near the door, and he spoke very loudly, and----"

"And you heard," says Margaret, suppressing some amusement. "Quite so. Well, you did leave him, you see."

"Not until he drove me to it by his cruelty, his wicked suspicions. You know that, Margaret."

"Oh! I know he behaved like a stupid boy," says Margaret impatiently.

"Ah, _darling_ Meg! I _knew_ you would take my part."

"And you," mercilessly, "behaved like a silly baby."

Tita flings herself into a chair with a petulant gesture.

"He has won you over to his side. I knew, when he took you down to the end of the room, where I could hear nothing, that he was going to poison your mind against me."

Miss Knollys gives way once more to ill-timed mirth.

"So you were _looking,_ too?" says she.

"I--no. Oh _no._ I--I only"--growing crimson--"wanted to see whether you were safe. You had stopped talking, and I know how violent he can be, and," with a gasp, "I just looked once to see that you were alive."

"Tita," says Miss Knollys solemnly, "when I want those dozen lies told for me in a minute, I shan't ask _you_ to tell them."


CHAPTER XXII.

HOW MAURICE SMOKES A CIGAR, AND MUSES ON MANY THINGS; HOW HE LAMENTS HIS SOLITUDE; AND HOW AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR COMES TO HIM.


"It is the mynd that maketh good or ill," says the old poet. Sir Maurice, sitting here in the library at The Place, feels _his_ "mynd" far from happy. He has finished his business with the agent, and now there lies before him a long, dull evening in which to think on many things.

He is comfortable enough. His mother is well away, somewhere in Essex, and so he has the house to himself. The fire is burning very nicely--these May evenings are often chilly--and the cigar he is smoking is excellent. The dinner has been excellent, too. Astonishing, considering the shortness of the notice and what servants are. And yet--yet he feels dull to the last degree.

Over and over again his mind runs back to his morning's interview with Margaret. He would have stifled such returns, but they are beyond him. His brain insists on making photographs of Margaret's drawing-room, with its screens here and its pots there, and the tall jar filled with the sweet-scented flowers of early summer. The photographs go farther than that, too. One prominent object in all of them are the folding-doors at the end of the room.

It seems to him, as he angrily flicks the ash off the end of his cigar, that he had seen nothing but those folding-doors. His eyes had been riveted upon them. He--it was absurd, of course--but he had in a way seen through them--seen _her_--that little faithless, stormy child, who is playing the very mischief with his life.


"Ask not her name;
The light winds whisper it on every hand."


That is the worst of it! Rylton gets up, and begins to pace the room. Her name--her face---- He cannot get rid of them. They seem to haunt him! And what has he _done_ that she should so deride and scorn him? Say he was in fault about Marian Bethune. Well, he _was_--grossly in fault, if you like, so far as his having kept silence about his love for her before his marriage. But afterwards! He had little or nothing to reproach himself with afterwards. His married life had been blameless so far as Marian had been concerned. He had often wondered, indeed, about that--about that strange coldness he had felt when she had come to stay with them--with Tita and him. He had looked forward to her coming, and when she came--it was a sort of blank! At the time he hated himself for it, but it was not to be overcome. However, it was Marian's own doing. That last time when she had refused him, he had understood her. Love with her took a second place. Money held the reins.

Up and down, up and down the room he goes, smoking and thinking.


"She
Whom the gods love--tranquillity--"


is far from him to-night. Why had Tita run away when he went in? Margaret had told him plainly that she would not see him; she had almost allowed that she hated him, and certainly her whole conduct points that way. What is to be the end of it, then? Is he to be bound to her, and she to him, until kindly Death drops in to release them one from the other? And never a word between them all the time! It sounds ghastly! He flings his cigar into the fire, and, seating himself on the edge or the table, gives himself up a prey to evil prognostications.

His thoughts wander, but always they come back to those folding-doors, and the possible vision behind them.

Such a tender vision! Half child, half woman, wholly sweet, yet a little tyrant in her own way. The vision behind the folding-doors grows brighter. A little thing, slender, beautiful, with such bright, earnest eyes, and her lips just smiling and apart, and the soft rings of hair lying on the white forehead. Behind those doors--were the eyes glad, or angry, as they so often were--with him? With Margaret, no doubt, they were always bright. She loved Margaret, but him she never loved. Why should she? Had _he_ loved her?

It is a terrible question, and all in a moment the answer to it comes to him--an answer almost as terrible. He had thought of it, trifled with it, played with it, this question. But now he _knows!_ Yes, he does love her. Her, and her only.

He is still sitting at the table thinking. His head is bent a little down, his hands are resting on the table behind him. Will she ever forgive or forget?


"My love is like the sea,
As changeful and as free;
Sometimes she's angry, sometimes rough,
Yet oft she's smooth and calm enough--
Ay, much too calm for me!"


The pretty words come to him as if describing her; "sometimes she's angry": with him she had been often angry, but now, looking back on it, what sweetest anger it had been, anger that cried aloud for tender arms in which to sink and lose itself for ever. Oh, if only--only--she would be angry with him once again, he might so argue with her that she would forgive him, and, perhaps, take him, worthless as he is, to that warm heart of hers.

Mechanically he slips from the table to a standing position. He will be in town to-morrow. He will make one last effort to see her. Margaret will aid him, and, after all, what is there to separate them? Hescott is in South Africa (there was nothing in that really--he had made an ass of himself over that, more or less). And Marian Bethune? Well, Tita must know by this time that that old folly is at an end for ever--even Marian herself has tired of it.

He turns slowly; the door has opened behind him. The lamp is a little low, and he has to look closely into the gloom at the end of the room to see who has come in. One of the servants, no doubt. He looks again.

"The post, Peter?" says he expectantly. But it is not Peter who comes forward.

_ "Maurice!"_ says Marian Bethune, in a tone that is barely above a whisper.

She is with him now, her hands upon his arms, her eyes riveted upon his.


CHAPTER XXIII.

HOW RYLTON'S EVIL GENIUS COMES TO HIM AND SPEAKS SWEET TREACHERIES WITHIN HIS EAR; AND HOW HE RENOUNCES HER AND ALL HER DEEDS.


"You!" says Rylton. His voice is as low as her own, and strange--it sounds strange even to himself. Her hands are lying on his arms--the little hands he used to call snowflakes long ago. Great heaven! _how_ long ago!

He does not repulse her--that is beyond him--but in this new strange voice of his there is assuredly no welcome. He feels choking. The dead past is so horribly dead that he cannot bear to look upon it. He feels cold--benumbed. What is he to say to her, or she to him? Must this battle be fought? And through all this weary wondering there is ever present with him a strong fear.

If Tita should hear of this--if she should learn that Marian was here to-night--with him--alone! His heart sinks within him. Not all the waters of Jordan could wash him clean in her eyes.

A sudden anger against this woman rises within him. Has she not been his undoing from first to last? Gently, but with determination, he lifts her fingers from his arms.

"Is this wise?" says he.

"No one can know. _No_ one," says she hurriedly. "I have arranged it all. I am staying with the Heriots, and when I heard at dinner that you would be here to-night, I felt that I _should_--_must_ see you."

She flings back the soft furred cloak that is enfolding her with a little rapid movement, as though stifling. It falls in a loose mass at her feet, and leaves her standing before him a very picture of beauty perfected. Beauty ripe, yet fresh!

All in black! From head to foot black clothes her. In her hair jet stars are shining, round her neck jet sparkles, making more fair the sweet fair flesh beneath; and her gown that clings around her shapely limbs as though it loves them, is black, too, and glittering with black beads.

She is looking her loveliest. Maurice takes a step towards her. Nature (as poor a thing at times as it is often grand) compels this step, then suddenly he stops. All at once, from the shadow of the room, the memory of a small, sweet, angry, frowning little face stands out.

"Still----" begins he.

"You need not be uneasy about me," says Marian, in the full egotism of her nature, still believing herself as dear to him as in those old days when he