"No," I answered her, humbly. "I go out so little."
"Indeed?" with an odd smile not too kindly. "I wish--no I don"t--that we could say the same. We are engaged, I think"--she paused, her attention divided between myself and Boccherini"s minuet, the low strains of which she was sending through the room--"for every afternoon--this week--except Sat.u.r.day. By the way, Mr. Herapath--do you remember what was the name--Bab told me you called her?"
"Bonnie Bab," I answered absently. My thoughts had gone forward to Sat.u.r.day. We are always dropping to-day"s substance for the shadow of tomorrow; like the dog--a dog was it not?--in the fable.
"Oh, yes, Bonnie Bab," she murmured softly. "Poor Bab!" and suddenly she cut short Boccherini"s music and our chat by striking a terrific discord and laughing at my start of discomfiture. Every one took it as a signal to leave. They all seemed to be going to meet her next day, or the day after that. They engaged her for dances, and made up a party for the play, and tossed to and fro a score of laughing catch-words, that were beyond my comprehension. They all did this, except myself.
And yet I went away with something before me--the call upon Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Quite unreasonably I fancied that I should see her alone.
And so when the day came and I stood outside the opening door of the drawing-room, and heard voices and laughter behind it, I was hurt and aggrieved beyond measure. There was a party, and a merry one, a.s.sembled; who were playing at some game as it seemed to me, for I caught sight of Clare whipping off an impromptu bandage from her eyes, and striving by her stiffest air to give the lie to a pair of flushed cheeks. The close-shaven man was there, and two men of his kind, and a German governess, and a very old lady in a wheel-chair, who was called "grandmamma," and Miss Guest herself looking, in the prettiest dress of silvery plush, as bright and fair and graceful as I had been picturing her each hour since we parted.
She dropped me a stately courtesy. "Will you be blindfold, or will you play the part of Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs, Mr. Herapath, while I say "Fudge!" or will you burn nuts and play games with this gentleman--he is neighbour Flamborough? You will join us, won"t you?
Clare does not so misbehave every day, only it is a wet afternoon and so cold and wretched, and we did not think there would be any more callers--and tea will be up in five minutes."
She did not think there would be any more callers! Something in her smile belied the words and taught me that she had thought--she had known--that there would be one more caller--one who would burn nuts and play games with her, though Rome itself were afire, and Tooley Street and the Mile End Road to boot.
It was a simple game, and not likely, one would say, to afford much risk of that burning of the fingers, which gave a zest to the Vicar of Wakefield"s nuts. One sat in the middle blindfolded, while the rest disguised their own or a.s.sumed each other"s voices, and spoke one by one some gibe or quip at his expense. When he succeeded in naming the speaker, the detected satirist put on the poke, and in his turn heard things good--if he had a conceit of himself--for his soul"s health.
The _role_ presently fell to me, and proved a heavy one, because I was not so familiar with the others" voices as were the rest; and Miss Guest--whose faintest tones I thought I should know--had a wondrous knack of cheating me, now taking off Clare"s voice, and now--after the door had been opened to admit the tea--her father"s. So I failed again and again to earn my relief. But when a voice behind me cried with well-feigned eagerness--
"How nice! Do tell me all about a fire!"--then, though no fresh creaking of the door had reached me, nor warning been given of an addition to the players, I had no doubt who spoke, but exclaimed at once, "That is Bab! Now I cry you mercy. I am right this time. That was Bab!"
I looked for a burst of applause such as had before attended a good thrust home, but none came. On the contrary, with my words so odd a silence fell upon the room that it was clear that something was wrong.
And I pulled off my handkerchief in haste, repeating, "That was Bab, I am sure."
But if it was, I could not see her. And what had come over them all?
Jack"s face wore a provoking smile, and his friends were bent upon sn.i.g.g.e.ring. Clare looked startled, and grandmamma gently t.i.tillated, while Miss Guest, who had risen and turned away towards the windows, seemed to be annoyed with some one. What was the matter?
"I beg every one"s pardon by antic.i.p.ation," I said, looking round in a bewildered way; "but have I said anything wrong?"
"Oh, dear no," cried the fellow they called Jack, with a familiarity that was in the worst taste--as if I had meant to apologise to him!
"Most natural thing in the world!"
"Jack, how dare you?" Miss Guest exclaimed, stamping her foot.
"Well, it seemed all right. It sounded natural, I am sure. Well done, I thought."
"Oh, you are unbearable! Why don"t you say something, Clare? Mr.
Herapath, I am sure that you did not know that my name was Barbara."
"Certainly not," I cried. "What a strange thing!"
"But it is, and that is why grandmamma is looking shocked, and Mr.
Buchanan is wearing threadbare the friend"s privilege of being rude. I forgive you if you will make allowance for him. And you shall come off the stool of repentance and have your tea first, since you are the greatest stranger. It is a stupid game after all!"
She would hear no apologies from me. And when I would have asked why her sister bore the same name, and so excused myself, she was intent upon tea-making, and the few moments I could with decency add to my call gave me no opportunity. I blush to think how I eked them out; by what subservience to Clare, by what a slavish anxiety to help Jack to m.u.f.fins--each piece I hoped might choke him! How slow I was to find hat and gloves, calling to mind with terrible vividness, as I turned my back upon the circle, that again and again in my experience an acquaintance begun by a dinner had ended with the consequent call. And so I should have gone--it might have been so here--but the door-handle was stiff, and Miss Guest came to my aid, as I fumbled with it. "We are always at home on Sat.u.r.days, if you like to call, Mr. Herapath,"
she murmured carelessly--and I found myself in the street.
So carelessly she had said it that, with a sudden change of feeling, I vowed I would not call. Why should I? Why should I worry myself with the sight of other fellows parading their favour? With the babble of that society chit-chat, which I had often scorned, and--still scorned, and had no part or concern in. They were not people to suit me, or do me good. I would not go, I said, and I repeated it firmly on Monday and Tuesday; on Wednesday I so far modified it that I thought at some distant time I would leave a card--to avoid discourtesy. On Friday I preferred an earlier date as wiser and more polite, and on Sat.u.r.day I walked shame-faced down the street and knocked and rang, and went upstairs--to taste a pleasant misery. Yes, and on the next Sat.u.r.day too, and the next, and the next; and that one when we all went to the theatre, and that other one when Mr. Guest kept me to dinner. Ay, and on other days that were not Sat.u.r.days, among which two stand high out of the waters of forgetfulness--high days indeed--days like twin pillars of Hercules, through which I thought to reach, as did the seamen of old, I knew not what treasures of unknown lands stretching away under the setting sun. First that Wednesday on which I found Barbara Guest alone and blurted out that I had the audacity to wish to make her my wife; and then heard, before I had well--or badly--told my tale, the wheels of grandmamma"s chair outside.
"Hush!" the girl said, her face turned from me. "Hush, Mr. Herapath.
You don"t know me, indeed. You have seen so little of me. Please say nothing more about it. You are under a delusion."
"It is no delusion that I love you, Barbara!" I cried.
"It is!" she repeated, freeing her hand. "There, if you will not take an answer--come--come at three to-morrow. But mind, I promise you nothing--I promise nothing," she added feverishly. And she fled from the room, leaving me to talk to grandmamma as best, and escape as quickly, as I might.
I longed for a great fire that evening, and failing one, I tired myself by tramping unknown streets of the East End, striving to teach myself that any trouble to-morrow might bring was but a shadow, a sentiment, a thing not to be mentioned in the same breath with the want and toil of which I caught glimpses up each street and lane that opened to right and left. In the main, I failed; but the effort did me good, sending me home tired out, to sleep as soundly as if I were going to be hanged next day, and not--which is a very different thing--to be put upon my trial.
"I will tell Miss Guest you are here, sir," the man said. I looked at all the little things in the room which I had come to know well--her work-basket, the music upon the piano, the table-easel, her photograph. And I wondered if I were to see them no more, or if they were to become a part of my everyday life. Then I heard her come in, and turned quickly, feeling that I should learn my fate from her greeting.
"Bab!" The word was wrung from me perforce. And then we stood and looked at one another, she with a strange pride and defiance in her eyes, though her cheek was dark with blushes, and I with wonder and perplexity in mine. Wonder and perplexity that grew into a conviction, a certainty that the girl standing before me in the short-skirted brown dress with tangled hair and loose neck-ribbon was the Bab I had known in Norway; and yet that the eyes--I could not mistake them now, no matter what unaccustomed look they might wear--were Barbara Guest"s!
"Miss Guest--Barbara," I stammered, grappling with the truth, "why have you played this trick upon me?"
"It is Miss Guest and Barbara now," she cried, with a mocking courtesy. "Do you remember, Mr. Herapath, when it was Bab? When you treated me as a toy, and a plaything, with which you might be as intimate as you liked; and hurt my feelings--yes, it is weak to confess it, I know--day by day, and hour by hour?"
"But surely, that is forgiven now?" I said, dazed by an attack so sudden and so bitter. "It is atonement enough that I am at your feet now!"
"You are not," she retorted. "Don"t say you have offered love to me, who am the same with the child you teased at Breistolen. You have fallen in love with my fine clothes, and my pearls and my maid"s work!
not with me. You have fancied the girl you saw other men make much of.
But you have not loved the woman who might have prized that which Miss Guest has never learned to value."
"How old are you?" I said, hoa.r.s.ely.
"Nineteen!" she snapped out. And then for a moment we were both silent.
"I begin to understand now," I answered as soon as I could conquer something in my throat. "Long ago when I hardly knew you, I hurt your woman"s pride; and since that you have plotted----"
"No, you have tricked yourself!"
"And schemed to bring me to your feet that you might have the pleasure of trampling on me. Miss Guest, your triumph is more complete than you are able to understand. I loved you this morning above all the world--as my own life--as every hope I had. See, I tell you this that you may have a moment"s keener pleasure when I am gone."
"Don"t! Don"t!" she cried, throwing herself into a chair and covering her face.
"You have won a man"s heart and cast it aside to gratify an old pique.
You may rest content now, for there is nothing wanting to your vengeance. You have given me as much pain as a woman, the vainest and the most heartless, can give a man. Good-bye."
With that I was leaving her, fighting my own pain and pa.s.sion, so that the little hands she raised as though they could ward off my words were nothing to me. I felt a savage delight in seeing that I could hurt her, which deadened my own grief. The victory was not all with her lying there sobbing. Only where was my hat? Let me get my hat and go. Let me escape from this room wherein every trifle upon which my eye rested awoke some memory that was a pang. Let me get away, and have done with it all.
Where was the hat? I had brought it up. I could not go without it. It must be under her chair by all that was unlucky, for it was nowhere else. I could not stand and wait, and so I had to go up to her, with cold words of apology upon my lips, and being close to her and seeing on her wrist, half hidden by fallen hair, the scar she had brought home from Norway, I don"t know how it was that I fell on my knees by her and cried--
"Oh, Bab, I love you so! Let us part friends."
For a moment, silence. Then she whispered, her hand in mine, "Why did you not say Bab to begin? I told you only that Miss Guest had not learned to value your love."
"And Bab?" I murmured, my brain in a whirl.
"She learned long ago, poor girl!"