"I am not so sure of that. I almost think that you do mean it. You have told me that you intend to become my wife. If, after that, you wilfully make me miserable, will not that be unfair?"
"I am not making you miserable,--certainly not wilfully."
"Did that letter which you wrote to me from Westmoreland mean anything?"
"George, do not strive to make me think that it meant too much."
"If it did, you had better say so at once."
But Alice, though she would have said so had she dared, made no answer to this. She sat silent, turning her face away from his gaze, longing that the meeting might be over, and feeling that she had lost her own self-respect.
"Look here, Alice," he said, "I find it very hard to understand you.
When I look back over all that has pa.s.sed between us, and to that other episode in your life, summing it all up with your conduct to me at present, I find myself at a loss to read your character."
"I fear I cannot help you in the reading of it."
"When you first loved me;--for you did love me. I understood that well enough. There is no young man who in early life does not read with sufficient clearness that sweetest morsel of poetry.--And when you quarrelled with me, judging somewhat harshly of my offences, I understood that also; for it is the custom of women to be hard in their judgement on such sins. When I heard that you had accepted the offer made to you by that gentleman in Cambridgeshire, I thought that I understood you still,--knowing how natural it was that you should seek some cure for your wound. I understood it, and accused myself, not you, in that I had driven you to so fatal a remedy." Here Alice turned round towards him sharply, as though she were going to interrupt him, but she said nothing, though he paused for her to speak; and then he went on. "And I understood it well when I heard that this cure had been too much for you. By heavens, yes! there was no misunderstanding that. I meant no insult to the man when I upset his little toy just now. I have not a word to say against him. For many women he would make a model husband, but you are not one of them. And when you discovered this yourself, as you did, I understood that without difficulty. Yes, by heavens! if ever woman had been driven to a mistake, you had been driven to one there." Here she looked at him again, and met his eyes. She looked at him with something of his own fierceness in her face, as though she were preparing herself to fight with him; but she said nothing at the moment, and then he again went on. "And, Alice, I understood it also when you again consented to be my wife. I thought that I still understood you then. I may have been vain to think so, but surely it was natural. I believed that the old love had come back upon you, and again warmed your heart. I thought that it had been cold during our separation, and I was pleased to think so. Was that unnatural? Put yourself in my place, and say if you would not have thought so. I told myself that I understood you then, and I told myself that in all that you had done you had acted as a true, and good, and loving woman. I thought of you much, and I saw that your conduct, as a whole, was intelligible and becoming." The last word grated on Alice"s ears, and she showed her anger by the motion of her foot upon the floor. Her cousin noted it all, but went on as though he had not noted it. "But now your present behaviour makes all the rest a riddle. You have said that you would be my wife, declaring thereby that you had forgiven my offences, and, as I suppose, rea.s.suring me of your love; and yet you receive me with all imaginable coldness.
What am I to think of it, and in what way would you have me behave to you? When last I was here I asked you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true pa.s.sion had come upon him; that he had forgotten his rascaldom, and his need of her money, and that he was punishing her with his whole power of his vengeance for the treatment which he had received from her. "I asked you for a kiss. If you are to be my wife you can have no shame in granting me such a request. Within the last two months you have told me that you would marry me. What am I to think of such a promise if you deny me all customary signs of your affection?" Then he paused again, and she found that the time had come in which she must say something to him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I asked you for a kiss."]
"I wonder you cannot understand," she said, "that I have suffered much."
"And is that to be my answer?"
"I don"t know what answer you want."
"Come, Alice, do not be untrue; you do know what answer I want, and you know also whether my wanting it is unreasonable."
"No one ever told me that I was untrue before," she said.
"You do know what it is that I desire. I desire to learn that the woman who is to be my wife, in truth, loves me."
She was standing up, and so was he also, but still she said nothing.
He had in his hand the little rule which she had told him that he might take, but he held it as though in doubt what he would do with it. "Well, Alice, am I to hear anything from you?"
"Not now, George; you are angry, and I will not speak to you in your anger."
"Have I not cause to be angry? Do you not know that you are treating me badly?"
"I know that my head aches, and that I am very wretched. I wish you would leave me."
"There, then, is your gift," said he, and he threw the rule over on to the sofa behind her. "And there is the trumpery trinket which I had hoped you would have worn for my sake." Whereupon something which he had taken from his waistcoat-pocket was thrown violently into the fender, beneath the fire-grate. He then walked with quick steps to the door; but when his hand was on the handle, he turned. "Alice," he said, "when I am gone, try to think honestly of your conduct to me."
Then he went, and she remained still, till she heard the front door close behind him.
When she was sure that he was gone, her first movement was made in search of the trinket. I fear that this was not dignified on her part; but I think that it was natural. It was not that she had any desire for the jewel, or any curiosity even to see it. She would very much have preferred that he should have brought nothing of the kind to her. But she had a feminine reluctance that anything of value should be destroyed without a purpose. So she took the shovel, and poked among the ashes, and found the ring which her cousin had thrown there. It was a valuable ring, bearing a ruby on it between two small diamonds. Such at least, she became aware, had been its bearing; but one of the side stones had been knocked out by the violence with which the ring had been flung. She searched even for this, scorching her face and eyes, but in vain. Then she made up her mind that the diamond should be lost for ever, and that it should go out among the cinders into the huge dust-heaps of the metropolis. Better that, though it was distasteful to her feminine economy, than the other alternative of setting the servants to search, and thereby telling them something of what had been done.
When her search was over, she placed the ring on the mantelpiece; but she knew that it would not do to leave it there,--so she folded it up carefully in a new sheet of note-paper, and put it in the drawer of her desk. After that she sat herself down at the table to think what she would do; but her head was, in truth, racked with pain, and on that occasion she could bring her thoughts to no conclusion.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Mr. Cheesacre"s Disappointment.
When Mrs. Greenow was left alone in her lodgings, after the little entertainment which she had given to her two lovers, she sat herself down to think seriously over her affairs. There were three paths open before her. She might take Mr. Cheesacre, or she might take Captain Bellfield--or she might decide that she would have nothing more to say to either of them in the way of courting. They were very persistent, no doubt; but she thought that she would know how to make them understand her, if she should really make up her mind that she would have neither one nor the other. She was going to leave Norwich after Easter, and they knew that such was her purpose. Something had been said of her returning to Yarmouth in the summer. She was a just woman at heart, and justice required that each of them should know what was to be his prospect if she did so return.
There was a good deal to be said on Mr. Cheesacre"s behalf.
Mahogany-furnitured bedrooms a.s.sist one"s comfort in this life; and heaps of manure, though they are not brilliant in romance, are very efficacious in farming. Mrs. Greenow by no means despised these things; and as for the owner of them, though she saw that there was much amiss in his character, she thought that his little foibles were of such a nature that she, as his wife, or any other woman of spirit, might be able to repress them, if not to cure them. But she had already married for money once, as she told herself very plainly on this occasion, and she thought that she might now venture on a little love. Her marriage for money had been altogether successful. The nursing of old Greenow had not been very disagreeable to her, nor had it taken longer than she had antic.i.p.ated. She had now got all the reward that she had ever promised herself, and she really did feel grateful to his memory. I almost think that among those plentiful tears some few drops belonged to sincerity. She was essentially a happy-tempered woman, blessed with a good digestion, who looked back upon her past life with contentment, and forward to her future life with confidence. She would not be greedy, she said to herself. She did not want more money, and therefore she would have none of Mr.
Cheesacre. So far she resolved,--resolving also that, if possible, the mahogany-furnitured bedrooms should be kept in the family, and made over to her niece, Kate Vavasor.
But should she marry for love; and if so, should Captain Bellfield be the man? Strange to say, his poverty and his scampishness and his lies almost recommended him to her. At any rate, it was not of those things that she was afraid. She had a woman"s true belief in her own power, and thought that she could cure them,--as far as they needed cure. As for his stories about Inkerman, and his little debts, she cared nothing about that. She also had her Inkermans, and was quite aware that she made as good use of them as the Captain did of his.
And as for the debts,--what was a man to do who hadn"t got any money?
She also had owed for her gloves and corsets in the ante-Greenow days of her adventures. But there was this danger,--that there might be more behind of which she had never heard. Another Mrs. Bellfield was not impossible; and what, if instead of being a real captain at all, he should be a returned ticket-of-leave man! Such things had happened. Her chief security was in this,--that Cheesacre had known the man for many years, and would certainly have told anything against him that he did know. Under all these circ.u.mstances, she could not quite make up her mind either for or against Captain Bellfield.
Between nine and ten in the evening, an hour or so after Mr. Cheesacre had left her, Jeannette brought to her some arrowroot with a little sherry in it. She usually dined early, and it was her habit to take a light repast before she retired for the night.
"Jeannette," she said, as she stirred the lumps of white sugar in the bowl, "I"m afraid those two gentlemen have quarrelled."
"Oh, laws, ma"am, in course they have! How was they to help it?"
Jeannette, on these occasions, was in the habit of standing beside the chair of her mistress, and chatting with her; and then, if the chatting was much prolonged, she would gradually sink down upon the corner of a chair herself,--and then the two women would be very comfortable together over the fire, Jeannette never forgetting that she was the servant, and Mrs. Greenow never forgetting that she was the mistress.
"And why should they quarrel, Jeannette? It"s very foolish."
"I don"t know about being foolish, ma"am; but it"s the most natural thing in life. If I had two beaux as was a-courting me together, in course I should expect as they would punch each other"s heads.
There"s some girls do it a purpose, because they like to see it. One at a time"s what I say."
"You"re a young thing, Jeannette."
"Well, ma"am--yes; I am young, no doubt. But I won"t say but what I"ve had a beau, young as I look."
"But you don"t suppose that I want beaux, as you call them?"
"I don"t know, ma"am, as you wants "em exactly. That"s as may be.
There they are; and if they was to blow each other"s brains out in the gig to-night, I shouldn"t be a bit surprised for one. There"s nothing won"t quiet them at Oileymead to-night, if brandy-and-water don"t do it." As she said this, Jeannette slipt into her chair, and held up her hands in token of the intensity of her fears.
"Why, you silly child, they"re not going home together at all. Did not the Captain go away first?"
"The Captain did go away first, certainly; but I thought perhaps it was to get his pistols and fighting things ready."
"They won"t fight, Jeannette. Gentlemen have given over fighting."
"Have they, ma"am? That makes it much easier for ladies, no doubt.
Perhaps them peaceable ways will come down to such as us in time.