For they were secretly engaged. It was during one of their early drives, in the canva.s.sing of the first election, that he had lost his head one June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been despatched on a message to a farm-house. Alicia was in her most daring and provocative mood, tormenting and flattering him by turns; the reflections from her rose-colored parasol dappling her pale skin with warm color; her beautiful ungloved hands and arms, bare to the elbow, teasing the senses of the man beside her. Suddenly he had thrown his arm round her, and crushed her to him, kissing the smooth cool face and the dazzling hair. And she had nestled up to him and laughed--not the least abashed or astonished; so that even then, through his excitement, there had struck a renewed and sharp speculation as to her twenty-four hours"
engagement to the Curate, in the spring of the year; as to the privileges she must have allowed him; and no doubt to others before him.
At that time, it was tacitly understood between them that no engagement could be announced. Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canva.s.sers; though she faced the mob with him at Hartingfield, on the occasion of the first disturbance there in June, and had stood beside him, vindictively triumphant on the day of his first hard-won victory, she would wear no ring, and she baffled all inquiries, whether of her relations or her girl friends. Her friendship with her cousin Oliver was n.o.body"s concern but her own, she declared, and all they both wanted was to be let alone.
Meanwhile she had been shaken and a little frightened by the hostile feeling shown toward her, no less than Oliver, in the first election.
She had taken no part in the second, although she had been staying at Tallyn all through it, and was present when Oliver was brought in, half fainting and agonized with pain, after the Hartingfield riot.
Oliver, now lying with closed eyes on his sofa, lived again through the sensations and impressions of that first hour: the pain--the arrival of the doctor--the injection of morphia--the blessed relief stealing through his being--and then Alicia"s face beside him. Delivered from the obsession of intolerable anguish, he had been free to notice with a kind of exultation the tears in the girl"s eyes, her pale tremor and silence.
Never yet had Alicia wept for _him_ or anything that concerned him.
Never, indeed, had he seen her weep in his whole life before. He triumphed in her tears.
Since then, however, their whole relation had insensibly and radically changed; their positions toward each other were reversed. Till the day of his injury and his defeat, Marsham had been in truth the wooed and Alicia the wooer. Now it seemed to him as though, through his physical pain, he were all the time clinging to something that shrank away and resisted him--something that would ultimately elude and escape him.
He knew well that Alicia liked sickness and melancholy no more than he did; and he was constantly torn between a desire to keep her near him and a perception that to tie her to his sick-room was, in fact, the worst of policies.
Persistently, in the silence of the hot room, there rang through his brain the questions: "Do I really care whether she stays or goes?--do I love her?--shall I ever marry her?" Questions that were immediately answered, it seemed, by the rise of a wave of desolate and desperate feeling. He was maimed and ruined; life had broken under his feet. What if also he were done forever with love and marriage?
There were still some traces in his veins of the sedative drug which had given him a few hours" sleep during the night. Under its influence a feverish dreaminess overtook him, alive with fancies and images. Ferrier and Diana were among the phantoms that peopled the room. He saw Ferrier come in, stoop over the newspaper on the floor, raise it, and walk toward the fire with it. The figure stood with its back to him; then suddenly it turned, and Marsham saw the well-known face, intent, kindly, a little frowning, as though in thought, but showing no consciousness of his, Oliver"s, presence or plight. He himself wished to speak, but was only aware of useless effort and some intangible hinderance. Then Ferrier moved on toward a writing-table with drawers that stood beyond the fireplace. He stooped, and touched a handle. "No!" cried Oliver, violently--"no!" He woke with shock and distress, his pulse racing. But the feverish state began again, and dreams with it--of the House of Commons, the election, the faces in the Hartingfield crowd. Diana was among the crowd--looking on--vaguely beautiful and remote. Yet as he perceived her a rush of cool air struck on his temples, he seemed to be walking down a garden, there was a scent of limes and roses.
"Oliver!" said his mother"s voice beside him--"dear Oliver!"
He roused himself to find Lady Lucy bending over him. The pale dismay in her face excited and irritated him.
He turned away from her.
"Is Nixon come?"
"Dearest, he has just arrived. Will you see him at once?"
"Of course!" he said, angrily. "Why doesn"t Richard do as he"s told?"
He raised himself into a sitting posture, while Lady Lucy went to the door. The local doctor entered--a stranger behind him. Lady Lucy left her son and the great surgeon together.
Nearly an hour later, Mr. Nixon, waylaid by Lady Lucy, was doing his best to compromise, as doctors must, between consideration for the mother and truth as to the Son. There was, he hoped, no irreparable injury. But the case would be long, painful, trying to everybody concerned. Owing to the mysterious nerve-sympathies of the body, the sight was already affected and would be more so. Complete rest, certain mechanical applications, certain drugs--he ran through his recommendations.
"Avoid morphia, I implore you," he said, earnestly, "if you possibly can. Here a man"s friends can be of great help to him. Cheer him and distract him in every way you can. I think we shall be able to keep the pain within bounds."
Lady Lucy looked piteously at the speaker.
"And how long?" she said, trembling.
Mr. Nixon hesitated. "I am afraid I can hardly answer that. The blow was a most unfortunate one. It might have done a worse injury. Your son might be now a paralyzed invalid for life. But the case is very serious, nor is it possible yet to say what all the consequences of the injury may be. But keep your own courage up--and his. The better his general state, the more chance he has."
A few minutes more, and the brougham had carried him away. Lady Lucy, looking after it from the window of her sitting-room, knew that for her at last what she had been accustomed to describe every Sunday as "the sorrows of this transitory life" had begun. Till now they had been as veiled shapes in a misty distance. She had accepted them with religious submission, as applying to others. Her mind, resentful and astonished, must now admit them--pale messengers of powers unseen and pitiless!--to its own daily experience; must look unprotected, unscreened, into their stern faces.
"John!--John!" cried the inner voice of agonized regret. And then: "My boy!--my boy!"
"What did he say?" asked Alicia"s voice, beside her.
The sound--the arm thrown round her--were not very welcome to Lady Lucy.
Her nature, imperious and jealously independent, under all her sweetness of manner, set itself against pity, especially from her juniors. She composed herself at once.
"He does not give a good account," she said, withdrawing herself gently but decidedly. "It may take a long time before Oliver is quite himself again."
Alicia persisted in a few questions, extracting all the information she could. Then Lady Lucy sat down at her writing-table and began to arrange some letters. Alicia"s presence annoyed her. The truth was that she was not as fond of Alicia as she had once been. These misfortunes, huddling one on another, instead of drawing them together, had in various and subtle ways produced a secret estrangement. To neither the older nor the younger woman could the familiar metaphor have been applied which compares the effects of sorrow or sympathy on fine character to the bruising of fragrant herbs. Ferrier"s death, sorely and bitterly lamented though it was, had not made Lady Lucy more lovable. Oliver"s misfortune had not--toward Lady Lucy, at any rate--liberated in Alicia those hidden tendernesses that may sometimes trans.m.u.te and glorify natures apparently careless or stubborn, brought eye to eye with pain.
Lady Lucy also resented her too long exclusion from Alicia"s confidence.
Like all the rest of the world, she believed there was an understanding between Oliver and Alicia. Of course, there were reasons for not making anything of the sort public at present. But a mother, she thought, ought to have been told.
"Does Mr. Nixon recommend that Oliver should go abroad for the winter?"
asked Alicia, after a pause. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, her slender feet hanging, and the combination of her blue linen dress with the fiery gold of her hair reminded Lady Lucy of the evening in the Eaton Square drawing-room, when she had first entertained the idea that Alicia and Oliver might marry. Oliver, standing erect in front of the fire looking down upon Alicia in her blue tulle--his young vigor and distinction--the carriage of his handsome head--was she never to see that sight again--never? Her heart fluttered and sank; the prison of life contracted round her.
She answered, rather shortly.
"He made no plan of the kind. Travelling, in fact, is absolutely forbidden for the present."
"Poor Oliver!" said Alicia, gently, her eyes on the ground. "How _horrid_ it is that I have to go away!"
"You! When?" Lady Lucy turned sharply to look at the speaker.
"Oh! not till Sat.u.r.day," said Alicia, hastily; "and of course I shall come back again--if you want me." She looked up with a smile.
"Oliver will certainly want you; I don"t know whom he could--possibly--want--so much." Lady Lucy spoke the words with slow emphasis.
"Dear old boy!--I know," murmured Alicia. "I needn"t be long away."
"Why must you go at all? I am sure the Treshams--Lady Evelyn--would understand--"
"Oh, I promised so faithfully!" pleaded Alicia, joining her hands. "And then, you know, I should be able to bring all sorts of gossip back to Oliver to amuse him."
Lady Lucy pressed her hand to her eyes in a miserable bewilderment. "I suppose it will be an immense party. You told me, I think, that Lady Evelyn had asked Lord Philip Darcy. I should be glad if you would make her understand that neither I, nor Sir James Chide, nor any other old friend of Mr. Ferrier can ever meet that man on friendly terms again."
She looked up, her wrinkled cheeks flushed with color, her aspect threatening and cold.
"Of course!" said Alicia, soothingly. "Hateful man! I too loathe the thought of meeting him. But you know how delicate Evelyn is, and how she has been depending on me to help her. Now, oughtn"t we to go back to Oliver?" She rose from her chair.
"Mr. Nixon left some directions to which I must attend," said Lady Lucy, turning to her desk. "Will you go and read to him?"
Alicia moved away, but paused as she neared the door.
"What did Mr. Nixon say about Oliver"s eyes? He has been suffering from them dreadfully to-day."
"Everything is connected. We can only wait."