After dinner Trix was not visible; but the door of the little boudoir beyond stood half-open, and very soon Newhaven edged his way through.
Almost at the same moment Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth pa.s.sed out of the window and began to walk up and down the gravel. n.o.body but myself appeared to notice these remarkable occurrences, but I watched them with keen interest. Half an hour pa.s.sed and then there smote on my watchful ear the sound of a low laugh from the boudoir. It was followed almost immediately by a stranger sound from the gravel walk. Then, all in a moment, two things happened. The boudoir door opened, and Trix, followed by Newhaven, came in smiling; from the window entered Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth. My eyes were on the curate. He gave one sudden comprehending glance towards the other couple; then he took the widows hand, led her up to Dora, and said, in low yet penetrating tones, "Will you wish us joy, Mrs. Polton?" The Squire, Rippleby, and Algy Stanton were round them in an instant. I kept my place, watching now the face of Trix Queenborough. She turned first flaming red, then very pale. I saw her turn to Newhaven and speak one or two urgent imperative words to him. Then, drawing herself up to her full height, she crossed the room to where the group was a.s.sembled round Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives.
"What"s the matter? What are you saying?" she asked.
Mrs. Wentworth"s eyes were modestly cast down, but a smile played round her mouth. No one spoke for a moment. Then Jack Ives said, "Mrs.
Wentworth has promised to be my wife. Miss Queenborough."
For a moment, hardly perceptible. Trix hesitated; then, with the most winning, touching, sweetest smile in the world, she said, "So you took my advice, and our afternoon walk was not wasted after all!"
Mrs. Polton is not used to these fine flights of diplomacy; she had heard before dinner something of what had actually happened in the afternoon; and the simple woman positively jumped. Jack Ives met Trix"s scornful eyes full and square.
"Not at all wasted," said he with a smile. "Not only has it shown me where my true happiness lies, but it has also given me a juster idea of the value and sincerity of your regard for me, Miss Queenborough."
"It is as real, Mr. Ives, as it is sincere," said she.
"It is like yourself, Miss Queenborough," said he, with a little bow; and he turned from her and began to talk to his fiancee.
Trix Queenborough moved slowly towards where I sat. Newhaven was watching her from where he stood alone on the other side; of the room.
"And have you no news for us?" I asked, in low tones.
"Thank you," she said haughtily; "I don"t care that mine should be a pendant to the great tidings about the little widow and the curate."
After a moment"s pause she went on:
"He lost no time, did he? He was wise to secure her before what happened this afternoon could leak out. n.o.body can tell her now."
"This afternoon?"
"He asked me to marry him this afternoon."
"And you refused?"
"Yes."
"Well, his behavior is in outrageously bad taste, but---"
She laid a hand on my arm, and said in calm level tones,
"I refused him because I dared not have him; but I told him I cared for him, and he said he loved me. And I let him kiss me. Good-night, Mr.
Wynne."
I sat still and silent. Newhaven came across to us. Trix put out her hand and caught him by the sleeve.
"Fred," she said, "my dear honest old Fred, you love me, don"t you?"
Newhaven, much embarra.s.sed and surprised, looked at me in alarm. But her hand was in his now, and her eyes imploring him.
"I should rather think I did, my dear," said he.
I really hope that Lord and Lady Newhaven will not be very unhappy, while Mrs. Ives quite worships her husband, and is convinced that she eclipsed the brilliant and wealthy Miss Queenborough. Perhaps she did--perhaps not. There are, as I have said, great qualities in the curate of Poltons, but I have not quite made up my mind precisely what they are. I ought, however, to say that Dora takes a more favorable view of him and a less lenient view of Trix than I. That is perhaps natural. Besides, Dora does not know the precise manner in which the curate was refused. By the way, he preached next Sunday on the text, "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light."
A THREE-VOLUME NOVEL
It was, I believe, mainly as a compliment to me that Miss Audrey Liston was asked to Poltons. Miss Liston and I were very good friends, and my cousin Dora Polton thought, as she informed me, that it would be nice for me to have someone I could talk to about "books and so on." I did not complain. Miss Liston was a pleasant young woman of six-and-twenty; I liked her very much except on paper, and I was aware that she made it a point of duty to read something at least of what I wrote. She was in the habit of describing herself as an "auth.o.r.ess in a small way." If it were pointed out that six three-volume novels in three years (the term of her literary activity at the time of which I write) could hardly be called "a small way." she would smile modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were told that the English language embraced no such word as "auth.o.r.ess," she would smile again and say that it ought to, a position towards the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess, I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked from ten to one every day while she was at Poltons; how much she wrote is between her and her conscience.
There was another impeachment which Miss Liston was hardly at the trouble to deny. "Take my characters from life!" she would exclaim.
"Surely every artist (Miss Liston often referred to herself as an artist) must!" And she would proceed to maintain--what is perhaps true sometimes--that people rather liked being put into books, just as they liked being photographed, for all that they grumble and pretend to be afflicted when either process is levied against them. In discussing this matter with Miss Liston I felt myself on delicate ground, for it was notorious that I figured in her first book in the guise of a misogynistic genius; the fact that she lengthened (and thickened) my hair, converted it from an indeterminate brown to a dusty black, gave me a drooping mustache, and invested my very ordinary work-a-day eyes with a strange magnetic attraction, availed nothing; I was at once recognized, and, I may remark in pa.s.sing, an uncommonly disagreeable fellow she made me. Thus I had pa.s.sed through the fire. I felt tolerably sure that I presented no other aspect of interest, real or supposed, and I was quite content that Miss Liston should serve all the rest of her acquaintance as she had served me. I reckoned they would last her, at the present rate of production, about five years.
Fate was kind to Miss Liston, and provided her with most suitable patterns for her next piece of work at Poltons itself. There were a young man and a young woman staying in the house--Sir Gilbert Chillington and Miss Pamela Myles. The moment Miss Liston was appraised of a possible romance; she began the study of the protagonists. She was looking out, she told me, for some new types (if it were any consolation--and there is a sort of dignity about it--to be called a type, Miss Liston"s victims were always welcome to so much), and she had found them in Chillington and Pamela. The former appeared to my dull eye to offer no salient novelty; he was tall, broad, handsome, and he possessed a manner of enviable placidity. Pamela, I allowed, was exactly the heroine Miss Liston loved--haughty, capricious, difficile, but sound and true at heart (I was mentally skimming Volume I.). Miss Liston agreed with me in my conception of Pamela, but declared that I did not do justice to the artistic possibilities latent in Chillington; he had a curious attraction which it would tax her skill (so she gravely informed me) to the utmost to reproduce. She proposed that I also should make a study of him, and attributed my hurried refusal to a shrinking from the difficulties of the task.
"Of course," she observed, looking at our young friends who were talking nonsense at the other side of the lawn, "they must have a misunderstanding."
"Why, "of course"," said I, lighting my pipe. "What should you say to another man?"
"Or another woman?" said Miss Liston.
"It comes to the same thing," said I. (About a volume and a half I meant.)
"But it"s more interesting". Do you think she"d better be a married woman?" And Miss Liston looked at me inquiringly.
"The age prefers them married," I remarked.
This conversation happened on the second day of Miss Liston"s visit, and she lost no time in beginning to study her subjects. Pamela, she said, she found pretty plain sailing, but Chillington continued to puzzle her. Again, she could not make up her mind whether to have a happy or a tragic ending. In the interests of a tender-hearted public, I pleaded for marriage-bells.
"Yes, I think so," said Miss Liston, but she sighed, and I think she had an idea or two for a heart-broken separation, followed by mutual, life-long, hopeless devotion.
The complexity of young Sir Gilbert did not, in Miss Liston"s opinion, appear less on further acquaintance; and indeed, I must admit that she was not altogether wrong in considering him worthy of attention. As I came to know him better, I discerned in him a smothered self-appreciation, which came to light in response to the least tribute of interest or admiration, but was yet far remote from the aggressiveness of a commonplace vanity. In a moment of indiscretion I had chaffed him--he was very good-natured--on the risks he ran at Miss Liston"s hands; he was not disgusted, but neither did he plume himself or spread his feathers. He received the suggestions without surprise, and without any attempt at disclaiming fitness for the purpose; but he received it as a matter which entailed a responsibility on him. I detected the conviction that, if the portrait was to be painted, it was due to the world that it should be well painted; the subject must give the artist full opportunities.
"What does she know about me?" he asked, in meditative tones.
"She"s very quick; she"ll soon pick up as much as she wants," I a.s.sured him.
"She"ll probably go all wrong," he said, sombrely; and of course I could not tell him that it was of no consequence if she did. He would not have believed me, and would have done precisely what he proceeded to do, and that was to afford Miss Liston every chance of appraising his character and plumbing the depths of his soul.
I may say at once that I did not regret this course of action; for the effect of it was to allow me a chance of talking to Pamela Myles, and Pamela was exactly the sort of a girl to beguile the long pleasant morning hours of a holiday in the country. No one had told Pamela that she was going to be put in a book, and I don"t think it would have made any difference had she been told. Pamela"s att.i.tude towards books was one of healthy scorn, confidently based on admitted ignorance. So we never spoke of them, and my cousin Dora condoled with me more than once on the way in which Miss Liston, false to the implied terms of her invitation, deserted me in favor of Sir Gilbert, and left me to the mercies of a frivolous girl. Pamela appeared to be as little aggrieved as I was. I imagined that she supposed that Chillington would ask her to marry him some day before very long, and I was sure she would accept him; but it was quite plain that, if Miss Liston persisted in making Pamela her heroine, she would have to supply from her own resources a large supplement of pa.s.sion. Pamela was far too deficient in the commodity to be made anything of, without such reinforcement, even by an art more adept at making much out of nothing than Miss Liston"s straightforward method could claim to be.
A week pa.s.sed, and then, one Friday morning, a new light burst on me.
Miss Liston came into the garden at eleven o"clock and sat down by me on the lawn. Chillington and Pamela had gone riding with the squire, Dora was visiting the poor. We were alone. The appearance of Miss Liston at this hour (usually sacred to the use of the pen), no less than her puzzled look, told me that an obstruction had occurred in the novel. Presently she let me know what it was.
"I"m thinking of altering the scheme of my story, Mr. Wynne," said she.
"Have you ever noticed how sometimes a man thinks he"s in love when he isn"t really?"
"Such a case sometimes occurs," I acknowledged.