His voice became troubled; he dropped his eyes. Ethel trembled--she loved him, poor girl, and she thought that he suffered as she had suffered, and she was sorry for him. But her outraged pride would not let her make any advance as yet.
"I may be a fatuous fool," said Oliver, after an agitated pause, "but I thought you loved me."
"I do love you," cried Ethel, pa.s.sionately.
"And yet you suspect me of being false to you."
"Not suspect--not suspect"--she said, incoherently, and then, was suddenly folded in Oliver"s arms, and felt that the time for reproach or inquiry had gone by.
She was not sorry that matters had ended in this way, although she felt it to be illogical. With his kisses upon her mouth, with the pressure of his arm enfolding her, it was almost impossible for her to maintain, in his presence, a doubt of him. It was when he had gone that all the facts which he had ignored came back to her with torturing insistence, and that she blamed herself for not having refused to be reconciled to him until she had ascertained the truth or untruth of a report that had reached her ears.
With a truer lover she might have gone unsatisfied to her dying day. A faithful-hearted man might never have perceived where she was hurt; he would not have been astute enough to discover that he might heal the wound by a few timely words of explanation. Oliver, keenly alive to his own interests, reopened the subject a few days later of his own accord.
They had completely made up their quarrel--to all outward appearance, at any rate--and were sitting together one afternoon in Ethel"s obnoxious drawing-room. They had been laughing together at some funny story of Ethel"s a.s.sociates at the theatre, and to the laughter had succeeded a silence, during which Oliver possessed himself of the girl"s hand and carried it gently to his lips.
"Ethel," he said, softly, "what made you so angry with me the other day?"
"Your bad behavior, I suppose!" she said, trying to treat the matter in her usual lively fashion.
"But what _was_ my misbehavior? Did it consist in going so often to the Brookes"?"
"Oh, what does it matter?" exclaimed Ethel, petulantly. "Didn"t we agree to forgive and forget? If we didn"t, we ought to have done. I don"t want to look back."
"But you are doing an injustice to me. Ethel, I dare not say to you that I _insist_ on knowing what it was. But I very strongly _wish_ that you would tell me--so that I might at least try to set your mind at rest."
"Well," said Ethel, quickly, "if you _must_ know--it was only a bit of gossip--servants gossip. I know all that can be said respecting the foolishness of listening to gossip from such a source--but I can"t help it. One of the maids at Mr. Brooke"s----"
"Sarah?" asked Oliver, with interest. "Sarah never liked me."
"Who, it was not Sarah.--it was that maid of Lesley"s--Kingston her name is, I believe--who said to one of our servants one day that you went there a great deal oftener than she would like, if she were in my place.
There! I have made a full confession. It was a petty spiteful bit of gossip, of course, and I ought not to have listened to it--but then it seemed so natural--and I thought it might be true!"
"What seemed natural?" said Oliver, who, against his will, was looking very black.
"Why, that you should like Lesley; she is the sweetest girl I ever came across."
In his heart Oliver echoed that opinion, but he felt morally bound to deny it.
"You say so only because you have never seen yourself! My darling, how could you accuse me merely on servants" evidence!"
"Is there _no_ truth in it, Oliver?"
"None in the least."
"But you do go there very often!"
Then Oliver achieved a masterpiece of diplomacy. "My dear Ethel," he said, "I will go there no more until you go with me. I will not set foot in the house again."
He knew very well that Mr. Brooke would not admit him. It was clever to make a virtue of necessity.
"No, no, please don"t do that! Go as often as you please."
"It was simply out of kindness to a lonely girl. I played her accompaniments for her sometimes, and listened to her singing. But as you dislike it, Ethel, I promise you that I will go there no more."
"Oh, Oliver, forgive me! I don"t doubt you a bit. Do go to see Lesley as often as you can. I should _like_ you to do it. Go for my sake."
But Oliver was quite obdurate. No, he would not go to the Brookes"
again, since Ethel had once objected to his going. And on this pinnacle of austere virtue he remained, thereby reducing Ethel to a state of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, which spoke well for his chances of mastery in the married life which loomed before him.
CHAPTER XXII.
LADY ALICE"S PHILANTHROPY.
Meanwhile, Lady Alice Brooke, in pursuit of her new fancy for philanthropy and the sick poor, had wandered somewhat aimlessly into other wards beside those set apart for women and children--at first the object of her search. She strayed--I use the word "strayed" designedly, for she certainly did not do it of set purpose--with one of the nurses into accident wards, into the men"s wards, where her flowers and fruits and gentle words made her welcome, and where the bearded masculine faces, worn sometimes by pain and privation of long standing, appealed to her sensibilities in a new and not altogether unpleasant way.
For Lady Alice was a very feminine creature, and liked, as most women do like, to be admired and adored. She had confessed as much when she told the story of her life to her daughter Lesley. And she had something less than her woman"s due in this respect. Caspar Brooke had very honestly loved and admired her, but in a protective and slightly "superior" way.
The earl, her father, belonged to that conservative portion of the aristocratic cla.s.s which treats its womankind with distinguished civility and profoundest contempt. In her father"s home Lady Alice felt herself of no account. As years increased upon her, the charm of her graceful manner was marred by advancing self-distrust. In losing (as she, at least, thought) her physical attractions, she lost all that ent.i.tled her to consideration amongst the men and women with whom she lived. She had no fixed position, no private fortune, nothing that would avail her in the least when her father died; and the gentle coldness of her manner did not encourage women to intimacy, or invite men to pay her attentions that she would scorn. In any other situation, her natural gifts and virtues would have fairer play. As a spinster, she would still have had lovers; as a widow, suitors by the dozen; as a happily married woman she would have been courted, complimented, flattered, by all the world. But, as a woman merely separated from a husband with whom she had in the first instance eloped, living on sufferance, as it were, in her father"s house, "neither maid, wife, nor widow," she was in a situation which became more irksome and more untenable every year.
To a woman conscious of such a jar in her private life, it was really a new and delightful experience to find herself in a place where she could be of some real use, where she was admired and respected and flattered by that unconscious flattery given us sometimes by the preference of the sick and miserable. The men in one of the accident wards were greatly taken with Lady Alice. There was her t.i.tle, to begin with; there were her gracious accents, her graceful figure, her gentle, beautiful face.
The men liked to see her come in, liked to hear her talk--although she was decidedly slow, and a little irresponsive in conversation. It soon leaked out, moreover, that material benefits followed in the wake of her visits. One man, who left the hospital, returned one day to inform his mates that, "the lady" had found work for him on her father"s estate, and that he considered himself a "made man for life." The attentions of such men who were not too ill to be influenced by such matters were henceforth concentrated upon Lady Alice; and she, being after all a simple creature, believed their devotion to be genuine, and rejoiced in it.
With one patient, however, she did not for some time establish any friendly relations. He had been run over, while drunk, the nurses told her, and very seriously hurt. He lay so long in a semi-comatose condition that fears were entertained for his reason, and when the mist gradually cleared away from his brain, he was in too confused a state of mind for conversation to be possible.
Lady Alice went to look at him from time to time, and spoke to the nurse about him; but weeks elapsed before he seemed conscious of the presence of any visitor. The nursing sister told the visitor at last that the man had spoken and replied to certain questions: that he had seemed uncertain about his own name, and could not give any coherent account of himself. Later on, it transpired that the man had allowed his name to be entered as "John Smith."
"Not his own name, I"m certain," the nurse said, decidedly.
"Why not?" Lady Alice asked, with curiosity.
"It"s too common by half for his face and voice," the Sister answered, shrewdly. "If you look at him or speak to him, you"ll find that that man"s a gentleman."
"A gentleman--picked up drunk in the street?"
"A gentleman by birth or former position, I mean," said the Sister, rather dryly. "No doubt he has come down in the world; but he has been, at any rate, what people call an educated man."
Lady Alice"s prejudices were, stirred in favor of the broken-down drunkard by this characterization; and she made his acquaintance as soon as he was able to talk. Her impression coincided with that of the Sister. The man had once been a gentleman--a cultivated, well-bred man, from whom refinement had never quite departed. Over and above this fact there was something about him which utterly puzzled Lady Alice. His face recalled to her some one whom she had known, and she could not imagine who that some one might be. The features, the contour the face, the expression, were strangely familiar to her. For, by the refining forces which sickness often applies, the man"s face had lost all trace of former coa.r.s.eness or commonness: it had become something like what it had been in the days of his first youth. And the likeness which puzzled Lady Alice was a very strong resemblance to the patient"s sister, Rosalind Romaine.
Lady Alice was attracted by him, visited his bedside very often, and tried to win his confidence. But "John Smith" had, at present, no confidence to give. Questions confused and bewildered him. His brain was in a very excitable condition, the doctor said, and he was not to be tormented with useless queries. By the time his other injuries had been cured, he might perhaps recover the full use of his mind, and could then give an account of himself if he liked. Till then he was to be let alone; and so Lady Alice contented herself with bringing him such gifts as the authorities allowed, and with talking or reading to him a little from time to time in soothing and friendly tones. It was to be noted that before long his eyes followed her with interest as she crossed the ward; that his brow cleared when she spoke to him, and that all her movements were watched by him with great intentness. In spite of this she could not get him to reply with anything but curtness to her inquiries after his health and general welfare; and it was quite a surprise to her when one day, on her visit to him, he accosted her of his own accord.
"Won"t you sit down?" he said suddenly.
"Thank you. Yes, I should like to sit and read to you a little if you are able----"
"It isn"t for that," he said, interrupting her unceremoniously; "it"s because I have something special to say to you. If you"ll stoop down a moment I"ll say it--I don"t want any one else to hear."