"Her maid was below."
"And this happened...?"
"Yesterday, after dark. My Ned--Captain Ma.r.s.ett encourages him to be familiar. I should be the lowest of women if I feared the threats of such a reptile of a man. I could tell you more. I can"t always refuse his visits, though if Ned knew the cur he is! Captain Ma.r.s.ett is easy-going."
"I should like to know where he lives."
She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about with a card, handing it, quite aware that it was a charge of powder.
Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said; and especially they seemed a cover to the bald and often spotty language leaping out of her, against her better taste, when her temper was up.
"Somewhere not very distant," said Dartrey perusing. "Is he in the town to-day, do you know?"
"I am not sure; he may be. Her name..."
"Have no fear. Ladies" names are safe."
"I am anxious that she may not be insulted again."
"Did she show herself conscious of it?"
"She stopped speaking: she looked at the door. She may come again--or never! through that man!"
"You receive him, at his pleasure?"
"Captain Ma.r.s.ett wishes me to. He is on his way home. He calls Major Worrell my pet spite. All I want is; not to hear of the man. I swear he came yesterday on the chance of seeing--for he forced his way up past my servant; he must have seen Miss Radnor"s maid below."
"You don"t mean, that he insulted her hearing?"
"Oh! Captain Fenellan, you know the style."
"Well, I thank you," Dartrey said. "The young lady is the daughter of my dearest friends. She"s one of the precious--you"re quite right. Keep the tears back."
"I will." She heaved open-mouthed to get physical control of the tide.
"When you say that of her!--how can I help it? It"s I fear, because I fear... and I"ve no right to expect ever... but if I"m never again to look on that dear face, tell her I shall--I shall pray for her in my grave. Tell her she has done all a woman can, an angel can, to save my soul. I speak truth: my very soul! I could never go to the utter bad after knowing her. I don"t--you know the world--I"m a poor helpless woman!--don"t swear to give up my Ned if he does break the word he promised once; I can"t see how I could. I haven"t her courage. I haven"t--what it is! You know her: it"s in her eyes and her voice. If I had her beside me, then I could starve or go to execution--I could, I am certain. Here I am, going to do what you men hate. Let me sit."
"Here"s a chair," said Dartrey. "I"ve no time to spare; good day, for the present. You will permit me to call."
"Oh! come"; she cried, out of her sobs, for excuse. They were genuine, or she would better have been able to second her efforts to catch a distinct vision of his retreating figure.
She beheld him, when he was in the street, turn for the district where Major Worrell had his lodgeings. That set her mind moving, and her tears fell no longer.
Major Worrell was not at home. Dartrey was informed that he might be at his Club.
At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to London and being expected down in the afternoon. Colonel Sudley named the train: an early train; the major was engaged to dine at the Club. Dartrey had information supplied to him concerning Major Worrell and Captain Ma.r.s.ett, also Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett. She had a history. Worthy citizens read the description of history with interest when the halo of Royalty is round it. They may, if their reading extends, perceive, that it has been the main turbid stream in old Mammon"s train since he threw his bait for flesh. They might ask, too, whether it is likely to cease to flow while he remains potent. The lady"s history was brief, and bore recital in a Club; came off quite honourably there. Regarding Major Worrell, the tale of him showed him to have a pa.s.s among men. He managed cleverly to get his pleasures out of a small income and a "fund of anecdote." His reputation indicated an anecdotist of the table, prevailing in the primitive societies, where the art of conversing does not come by nature, and is exercised in monosyllabic undertones or grunts until the narrator"s well-masticated popular anecdote loosens a digestive laughter, and some talk ensues. He was Ma.r.s.ett"s friend, and he boasted of not letting Ned Ma.r.s.ett make a fool of himself.
Dartrey was not long in shaping the man"s character: Worrell belonged to the male birds of upper air, who mangle what female prey they are forbidden to devour. And he had Miss Radnor"s name: he had spoken her name at the Club overnight. He had roused a sensation, because of a man being present, Percy Southweare, who was related to a man as good as engaged to marry her. The major never fell into a quarrel with sons of n.o.bles, if he could help it, or there might have been a pretty one.
So Colonel Sudley said.
Dartrey spoke musing: "I don"t know how he may cla.s.s me; I have an account to square with him."
"It won"t do in these days, my good friend. Come and cool yourself; and we"ll lunch here. I shan"t leave you."
"By all means. We"ll lunch, and walk up to the station, and you will point him out to me."
Dartrey stated Major Worrell"s offence. The colonel was not astonished; but evidently he thought less of Worrell"s behaviour to Miss Radnor in Mrs. Ma.r.s.ett"s presence than of the mention of her name at the Club: and that, he seemed to think, had a shade of excuse against the charge of monstrous. He blamed the young lady who could go twice to visit a Mrs.
Ma.r.s.ett; partly exposed a suspicion of her. Dartrey let him talk. They strolled along the parade, and were near the pier.
Suddenly saying: "There, beside our friend in clerical garb: here she comes; judge if that is the girl for the foulest of curs to worry, no matter where she"s found." Dartrey directed the colonel"s attention to Nesta and Mr. Barmby turning off the pier and advancing.
He saluted. She bowed. There was no contraction of her eyelids; and her face was white. The mortal life appeared to be deadened in her cold wide look; as when the storm-wind banks a leaden remoteness, leaving blown s.p.a.ce of sky.
The colonel said: "No, that"s not the girl a gentleman would offend."
"What man!" cried Dartrey. "If we had a Society for the trial of your gentleman!--but he has only to call himself gentleman to get grant of licence: and your Society protects him. It won"t punish, and it won"t let you. But you saw her: ask yourself--what man could offend that girl!"
"Still, my friend, she ought to keep clear of the Ma.r.s.etts."
"When I meet him, I shall treat him as one out of the law."
"You lead on to an ultimate argument with the hangman."
We "ll dare it, to waken the old country. Old England will count none but Worrells in time. As for discreet, if you like!--the young lady might have been more discreet. She"s a girl with a big heart. If we were all everlastingly discreet!"
Dartrey may have meant, that the consequence of a prolonged conformity would be the generation of stenches to shock to purgeing tempests the tolerant heavens over such smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas about movement; about the good of women, and the health of his England. The feeling of the hopelessness of pleading Nesta"s conduct, for the perfect justification of it to son or daughter of our impressing conventional world--even to a friend, that friend a true man, a really chivalrous man--drove him back in a silence upon his natural brotherhood with souls that dare do. It was a wonder, to think of his finding this kinship in a woman. In a girl?--and the world holding that virgin spirit to be unclean or shadowed because its rays were shed on foul places? He clasped the girl. Her smitten clear face, the face of the second sigh after torture, bent him in devotion to her image.
The clasping and the worshipping were independent of personal ardours: quaintly mixed with semi-paternal recollections of the little "blue b.u.t.terfly" of the days at Craye. Farm and Creckholt; and he had heard of Dudley Sowerby"s pretensions to; her hand. Nesta"s youthfulness cast double age on him from the child"s past. He pictured the child; pictured the girl, with her look of solitariness of sight; as in the desolate wide world, where her n.o.ble compa.s.sion for a woman had unexpectedly, painfully, almost by transubstantiation, rack-screwed her to woman"s mind. And above sorrowful, holy were those eyes.
They held sway over Dartrey, and lost it some steps on; his demon temper urgeing him to strike at Major Worrell, as the cause of her dismayed expression. He was not the happier for dropping to his nature; but we proceed more easily, all of us, when the strain which lifts us a foot or two off our native level is relaxed.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII. A PAIR OF WOOERS
That ashen look of the rise out of death from one of our mortal wounds, was caused by deeper convulsions in Nesta"s bosom than Dartrey could imagine.
She had gone for the walk with Mr. Barmby, reading the omen of his tones in the request. Dorothea and Virginia would have her go. The clerical gentleman, a friend of the Rev. Abram Posterley; and one who deplored poor Mr. Posterley"s infatuation; and one besides who belonged to Nesta"s musical choir in London: seemed a safe companion for the child.
The grand organ of Mr. Barmby"s voice, too, a.s.sured them of a devout seriousness in him, that arrested any scrupulous little questions. They could not conceive his uttering the nonsensical empty stuff, compliments to their beauty and what not, which girls hear sometimes from inconsiderate gentlemen, to the having of their heads turned. Moreover, Nesta had rashly promised her father"s faithful servant Skepsey to walk, out with him in the afternoon; and the ladies hoped she would find the morning"s walk to have been enough; good little man though Skepsey was, they were sure. But there is the incongruous for young women of station on a promenade.
Mr. Barmby headed to the pier. After pacing up and down between the briny gulls and a polka-band, he made his way forethoughtfully to the gla.s.s-sheltered seats fronting East: where, as his enthusiasm for the solemnity of the occasion excited him to say, "We have a view of the terraces and the cliffs"; and where not more than two enwrapped invalid figures were ensconsed. Then it was, that Nesta recalled her antic.i.p.ation of his possible design; forgotten by her during their talk of her dear people: Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, and the Yatts, and Simeon Fenellan, Peridon and Catkin, and Skepsey likewise; and the very latest news of her mother. She wished she could have run before him, to spare him. He would not notice a sign. Girls must wait and hear.
It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on to the sinking into its fellow; and onward again for the swell and the weariful lapse; and up at last bursting to the sheet of white. The far-heard roar and the near commingled, giving Mr. Barmby a semblance to the powers of ocean.
At the first direct note, the burden of which necessitated a pause, she pet.i.tioned him to be her friend, to think of himself as her friend.
But a vessel laden with merchandize, that has crossed wild seas for this particular port, is hardly to be debarred from discharging its goods on the quay by simple intimations of their not being wanted. We are precipitated both by the aim and the tedium of the lengthened voyage to insist that they be seen. We believe perforce in their temptingness; and should allurement fail, we fall back to the belief in our eloquence. An eloquence to expose the qualities they possess, is the testification in the promise of their excellence. She is to be induced by feeling to see it. We are asking a young lady for the precious gift of her hand.