"Thank you. You _do_ understand. At the moment Stanor may perhaps be inclined to question the wisdom of my programme, but I think in after years he will, as you say, look back. The fact remains, however, that he has not yet tackled the real business of life. He has had, with my concurrence, plenty of change and variety, which I believe in the end will prove of service in his life"s work, and he has stood the test.
Many young fellows of his age would have abused their opportunities. He has not done so. My only disappointment has been that he has developed no definite taste, but has been content to flit from one fancy to the next, always carried away by the latest novelty on the horizon."
Once again she tilted her head and scanned him with her wide, clear eyes.
"You mean _Me_?" she said quickly. "I"m the "Latest Novelty!" You mean that he"ll change about me, too? Isn"t that what you mean?"
"My dear--Miss O"Shaughnessy," (incredible though it appeared, Stephen had been on the verge of saying "Pixie," pure and simple) "you leap too hastily to conclusions. I am afraid I must appear an odious person!
Believe me, I had no intention of rushing into the very heart of this matter as we have done. My plan was to call upon your sister and explain to her my position--"
""Tis not my sister"s business, "tis mine," interrupted Pixie firmly.
"And it would be a waste of time talking to her, for she"d agree with every word you said. They don"t _want_ me to be engaged. They think I"m too young. If you have anything to say, say it to _Me_. _I"m_ the person to be convinced."
She settled herself more comfortably as she spoke, turning towards him with one arm resting on the back of the bench, and her head leaning against the upturned hand. The sun shone on her face through the flickering branches. No, she was not pretty; not in the least the sort of girl Stanor was accustomed to fancy. Yet there was something extraordinarily attractive about the little face, with its clear eyes, its wide, generous mouth, its vivacity of expression. Already, after a bare ten minutes" acquaintance, Stephen Glynn so shrank from the prospect of hurting Pixie O"Shaughnessy that it required an effort to keep an unflinching front.
"I agree with your people," he said resolutely, "that you and Stanor are too young, and that this matter has been settled too hastily. Apart from that, I should object to any engagement until he has proved his ability to work for a wife. I have a position in view for him in a large mercantile house in New York. After a couple of years" experience there he would come back to the London house, and, if his work justified it, I am prepared to buy him a partnership in the firm. He would then be his own master, free to do as he chose, but for these two years he must be free, with no other responsibility than this work."
"You think," queried Pixie slowly, "that I should interfere ... that he would do his work better without me?"
"It"s not a question of thinking, Miss O"Shaughnessy. I am not content to think. I want to make _sure_ that Stanor will settle seriously to work and keep in the same mind. He is a good fellow, a dear fellow, but, hitherto at least, he has not been stable."
"He has never been engaged before?"
"Not actually. I have been forewarned in time to prevent matters reaching that length. Twice over--"
A small hand waved imperiously for silence.
"I don"t _think_," said Pixie sternly, "that you have any right to tell me things like that. If Stanor wants me to know, he can tell me himself. It"s his affair. I am not at all curious." She drew a fluttering breath, and stared down at the ground, and a silence followed during which Stephen was denouncing himself as a hard-hearted tyrant, when suddenly a minute voice spoke in his ear--
"Were they--_pretty_?"
It was impossible to resist the smile which twitched at his lips.
Unpleasant as was the nature of his errand, he, the most unsmiling of men, had already twice over been moved to merriment. Stephen was reflecting on the incongruity of the fact, when Pixie again answered his unspoken retort.
"It"s not curiosity, it"s interest. _Quite_ a different thing! And even if they _were_, it"s much more serious when a man cares for a girl for her--er--mental attractions, because they go on getting better, instead of fading away like a pretty face. It"s very difficult to know what is right. ... I"ve promised Stanor, and he has promised me, and it seems a poor way of showing that you know your own mind, to break your word at the beginning!"
"I don"t ask you to break your word, Miss O"Shaughnessy; only to hold it in abeyance. I am speaking in Stanor"s interests, which we have equally at heart. I know his character--forgive me!--better than you can do, and I am asking you to help me in arranging a probation which I _know_ to be wise under the circ.u.mstances. Let him go to New York a free man; let him work and show his mettle, and at the end of two years, if you are both of the same mind, I will give you every help in my power: but meantime there must be no engagement, no _tie_, no regular correspondence. You must both be perfectly free. I am sorry to appear hard-hearted, but these are my conditions, and I can"t see my way to alter them."
"Well--why not?" cried Pixie unexpectedly. "What"s two years? They"ll pa.s.s in no time. And men hate writing. Stanor will be relieved not to have to bother about the mails. He can do without letters. He will know that I am waiting." She held out her hand with a sudden, radiant smile. "And _you_ will be pleased! It is the least we can do to consider your wishes. If I persuade Stanor--if I send him away alone to work," the small fingers tightened ingratiatingly over his, "you _will_ like me, won"t you? You will think of me as a real niece?"
Stephen Glynn"s deep blue eyes stared deeply into hers. He did not deliberately intend to put his thoughts into speech; if he had given himself a moment to think he would certainly not have done so, but so strong was the mental conviction that the words seemed to form themselves without his volition.
"You don"t love him! You could not face a separation so easily if you loved him as you should..."
For the first time a flash of real anger showed itself on Pixie"s face.
Her features hardened; the child disappeared and he caught a glimpse of the woman that was to be.
"What right have you to say that?" she asked deeply. "You prove to me that it would be for Stanor"s good to wait, and then say I cannot love him because I agree! _You_ love him, yet you can hurt him and bring him disappointment when you feel it is right. I understood that, so I was not angry, but in return you might understand _me_!"
"Forgive me!" cried Stephen. "I should not have said it. You deserved a better return for your kindness. I suppose I must seem very illogical, but it did not occur to me that the two cases were on a parallel. The love of a _fiancee_ is not as a rule as well balanced as that of an uncle, Miss O"Shaughnessy!"
"It _ought_ to be," a.s.serted Pixie. "It ought to be everything that another love is, and more! A man"s future wife ought to be the person of all others to be reasonable, and unselfish, and logical where he is concerned, even if it means separation for a _dozen_ years."
No answer. Stephen gazed blankly into s.p.a.ce as if unconscious of her words.
"_Oughtn"t_ she?"
"Er--theoretically, Miss O"Shaughnessy, she _ought_!"
"Very well, then. I am proud that I _am_, and so ought you to be, too.
... It"s strange how I"m misunderstood! My family say the same thing-- Esmeralda, Geoffrey, Stanor himself, and it hurts, for no one before has ever doubted if I could love..." She was silent for a minute, twisting her fingers together in restless fashion, then looking suddenly into his face she asked: "What do you know about it to be so sure? Have _you_ ever been in love?"
Stephen flushed.
"Never. No. I was--My accident cut me off from all such things."
"What a pity! She would have helped you through." She smiled into his eyes with a beautiful sweetness. "Well, Mr Glynn, if I am too reasonable to please you, perhaps Stanor will make up for it. You mayn"t find it so easy to influence _him_."
"I"m sure of that. I look forward to a stiff time, but if you are on my side we shall bring him round. Now perhaps I had better continue my way to the house and see Mrs Hilliard. This is pre-eminently your business, as you say, but still--"
"She"ll expect it! Yes--" Pixie rose to her feet with an air of depression--"and she"ll _crow_! They"ll _all_ crow! It"s what they wanted, and when you come and lay down an ultimatum, they"ll rejoice and triumph." Her small face a.s.sumed an aspect of acute dejection. "That"s the worst of being the youngest. ... It"s a trying thing when your family insist on sitting in committees about your own affairs, when you understand them so much better yourself. I"m not even supposed to understand the feelings of my own heart without a sister to translate them for me. Shouldn"t you think, now, a girl of twenty--nearly twenty-one--is old enough to know that?"
"I don"t think it is a foregone conclusion. More things than years go to the formation of character, Miss O"Shaughnessy, and if you will allow me to say so, you seem to me very young for your age."
"_I_ always was," sighed Pixie sadly. "They"ve said that all my life.
Some people always _are_ young, and some are old. There was a girl at school, middle-aged at thirteen, poor creature, and had been from her birth. My sister Bridgie will never be more than seventeen if she lives to a hundred, and I mean myself to stick at twenty. It doesn"t mean trying to look younger than you are, or being ashamed of your age, and silly, and frivolous: it"s just keeping your _heart_ young!"
The man, who was young in years and old in heart, looked down at the girl with a very sad smile. She spoke as if it were such an easy thing to do: he knew by bitter experience that under such circ.u.mstances as his own it was of all tasks the most difficult. To stand aside during the best years; to see the tide of life rush by, and have no part in the great enterprise; and then to regain his powers when youth had pa.s.sed, and the keen savour of youth had died down into a dull indifference; to be dependent for love on the careless affection of a lad,--how was it possible for a man to keep his heart warm in such circ.u.mstances as these?
"Life has been kind to you," he answered dryly, and Pixie flung him a quick retort--
"I have been kind to _it_! If I"d chosen I might have found it hard enough. We were always poor. I never remember a time when I hadn"t to pretend and make up, because it was impossible to get what I wanted.
Then I was sent to school, and I hated going, and my father died when I was away, and they told me the news with not a soul belonging to me anywhere near, and I loved my father _far_ more than other girls love theirs! ... Then we left Knock. ... If _you"d_ lived in a castle, and gone to a villa in a street, with a parlour in front and a dining-room behind looking out on the kitchen wall, _you_ wouldn"t talk about life being kind--!
"I was in France for years being educated, and not able to repine because it was a friend and she"d taken me cheaply. Perhaps you"d say that was luck, and an advantage, and it _was_, but all the same it"s hard on a young thing to have to enjoy herself in a foreign language, and spend the holidays with a maiden lady and a snuffy old _Pere_, because there wasn"t enough money to come home. Yes," concluded Pixie, with a smirk of satisfaction, "I"ve had my trials, and now I"m to be crossed in love, and have my young lover rent from me. ... You couldn"t have the audacity to call life easy after that!"
Stephen tried valiantly to look sympathetic, but it was useless; he was obliged to smile, and Pixie smiled with him, adding cheerily--
"Anyway, it"s living! ... And I do love it when things happen. It"s so _dreadfully_ interesting to be alive."
The man who was old before his time looked down upon the girl with a wistful glance. Small as she was, insignificant as she had appeared at first sight, he had never seen any one more intensely, vitally alive.
Her tiny feet skimmed the ground, her tiny head reared itself jauntily on the slender neck, the brilliance of her smile, the embracing kindliness of her glance more than compensated for the plainness of her features. Like most people who made the acquaintance of Pixie O"Shaughnessy, Stephen Glynn was already beginning to fall under her spell and marvel at the blindness of his first impression. She was _not_ plain; she was _not_ insignificant; she was, on the contrary, unusually fascinating and attractive!
"But she does not love him," Stephen repeated to himself. "She does not know what love means. When she does--when she has grown into a woman, and understands--what a wife, what a companion she will make!"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
THINKING ALIKE.