To Love

"Good-bye," she said, "I am sorry you should have been troubled to come and that you should have had to go through this sort of scene."

"Good-bye," was all he could answer.

At the door he turned to look back at her. "If you should need help of any sort at any time," he said, "will you send for me? I should like to feel you were going to do that."

"I cannot promise," she answered, "you see, I shall probably be leaving here quite soon."

And with that he had to be content to leave her.

CHAPTER VI

"And bending down beside the glowing bars Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

Mabel had shampooed her mother"s hair, following out with unending patience the minute instructions which the process always involved. She had rinsed it in four relays of hot water, two of lukewarm and one of cold; she had dried it with the hard towel for the scalp and the soft towel for the hair. She had rubbed brilliantine in to give it the approved gloss. The whole proceeding had lasted fully two hours; now she stood and brushed out the long fine threads of grey turning to silver with just the steady gentle pressure which was necessary and which, according to Mrs. Grant, no one but Mabel was capable of producing.

Mrs. Grant liked to have her hair brushed for half an hour after a shampoo, it soothed the irritated nerves. From behind her mother"s back Mabel could see her own face in the gla.s.s, the sallow cheeks flushed from her exertions, the grey, black-lashed eyes tired and a little angry. Once, long ago, during one of their journeys on the continent, there had been a young naval officer who had loved Mabel for those grey eyes of hers. He had raved about the way the lashes lay like a fringe of shadow round them. He had called them "Dream Eyes," and once he had kissed the lids close shut over them with hard, pa.s.sionate kisses.

Whenever Mabel looked at her eyes in the gla.s.s she thought of Jack Donald. She had loved him and she had sent him away because of Mother.

He had only been able to offer her his love and the pay of a lieutenant in the Navy; he had not even shown that he liked Mother, he had resented the way Mabel slaved for her. Of course the outlook had been absurd, and Mrs. Grant had said so very plainly. If Mabel married it would have to be someone wealthy someone elderly enough to understand that Mother must live with them. But when he went he took with him all the dreams of Mabel"s life; she never looked out into the future to make plans now, she could only look back into the past that held her memories.

"I hope," said Mrs. Grant suddenly breaking in on her thoughts, "that d.i.c.k does not fall in love with this young lady at the Manor."

"Why not?" asked Mabel, "he must fall in love sooner or later."

"Well, then, it must be later and with someone who has a great deal of money. We are quite badly enough off as it is."

"You and I could go away again on our own," suggested Mabel, "you know you said the other day that Wrotham was getting on your nerves."

"Don"t be ridiculous," snapped Mrs. Grant, "I should like to know what you think we should live on once d.i.c.k has a wife. You say you won"t marry Mr. Jarvis or anyone else."

"No," Mabel admitted, "but because I won"t marry it hardly seems fair that we should stand in the way of d.i.c.k"s doing so."

"What do you intend to imply by "standing in the way"? Really Mabel, sometimes I wonder if you have any love for me, you so habitually and wilfully misconstrue my sentences. Surely it is permissible" (Mrs.

Grant"s sigh was a model of motherly affection) "for a mother to wish to keep her son, her eldest born, to herself for a little longer. One loses them so once they marry."

Mabel concealed a swift, rather bitter, smile. "I did not mean to misconstrue anything," she said, "only just the other day I was thinking that perhaps we did rather hamper d.i.c.k. He is twenty-seven, you know; it is funny he has never wanted to marry."

"He is waiting for the right girl," Mrs. Grant sighed again.

"And if he happens to find her," thought Mabel to herself, there was no use saying the words aloud, "we are to do our best to prevent him having her. Poor old d.i.c.k." Her eyes waked to sudden, vivid affection as she thought of him.

She ran downstairs presently, Mrs. Grant having retired to rest after exertions, to meet d.i.c.k just coming in. He had done a round of visits after his call at the Manor house. Visits which had included one to the Rendles" cottage, where he had seen the princ.i.p.al figure of last night"s tragedy laid out, as her mother said, for decent burial, "even though it baint a going to be Christian."

The girl had been dressed in something white; white flowers, great beautiful-headed chrysanthemums, lay between her folded hands and against her face. She had been a handsome girl, death had robbed her of her vivid colouring, but it had given her in its stead something dignified and withdrawn, a look of suffering and yet great peace.

Mrs. Rendle was more resigned too this morning; she had cried her heart quiet through the night.

"Bridget is better so," she could confide to d.i.c.k as he stood looking down at the girl, "the shame is done away with, sir, and G.o.d will look to the sin. I hold there ain"t much to fear there, even though they won"t bury her in the churchyard."

"No, I don"t think there is much to fear," he agreed. "I am sorry about the burial, Mrs. Rendle, I have tried to argue the matter out with the vicar."

"Oh, that is not to be helped," she answered. "G.o.d will rest her soul wherever she be. Miss Rutherford sent those flowers," she added, "she was rare set agin Bridget to begin with, but she be softened down."

That brought the other tragedy which he had witnessed this morning back to his mind. Not that he had really forgotten it. The picture of Joan, her head high, her cheeks flushed, was one that had imprinted itself very strongly upon his memory. He had given up trying to understand how such a thing could have happened, his own vague happy thoughts of her stirred wistfully behind the new knowledge. And he could not dismiss her altogether from the throne he had designed for her to occupy. There must be some explanation; if only he had not been such an absolute stranger perhaps she would have told him a little more, have given him a chance to understand.

"Well," asked Mabel, "is she nice, d.i.c.k, did you like her?" Her eyes were quick to notice the new shadow of trouble on his face.

"Very nice, I think," he answered, hoping his voice sounded as indifferent as he meant it to, "but I really did not see much of her and she is going back to London almost at once." He went past her on into the dining-room. "Is lunch nearly ready," he asked, "I have got to catch that 2.5, you know."

"I"ll see about it," Mabel said, "Mother is having hers upstairs."

She turned away to comply, but all the time she was hurrying up the maidservant, and later, while she and d.i.c.k sat opposite each other, rather silent, through lunch, her eyes and mind were busy trying to read the secret of d.i.c.k"s manner. The girl had impressed him strongly, that was evident, but why should she have occasioned this gloom in d.i.c.k who so very rarely allowed anything or anybody to ruffle his cheery good humour?

He rode off without letting her glean any explanation, and Mabel wandered into the drawing-room to get it ready for Mrs. Grant"s descent. Had d.i.c.k really fallen in love? She remembered once before when he had been about eighteen or nineteen, how there had been a girl whom he had rather shyly confessed himself enamoured of. But since the damsel had been quite five years his senior the romance, to Mabel"s relief, had faded away. Yet if d.i.c.k were ever really to fall in love it would be a deep and unshakable tie; he would be as his father had been, all faithful to the one woman in his life.

It was remembering her father that suddenly brought Mabel"s thoughts back to her mother whose absorbing personality had stood so like a giant shadow across all their lives. Would d.i.c.k"s love be strong enough to fight against his sense of duty and mother"s selfishness, for most certainly mother would not help him to achieve his desire unless it ran along the same lines as her own. And if mother prevailed what would life mean for d.i.c.k? The same dry empty dreariness that her own days contained, the restless hopes that died too hard, the unsatisfied, cruel dreams? No, no! She had not fought to save her own happiness, but she would fight to the last inch to save d.i.c.k"s.

Almost as if in answer to her heart"s wild outcry the front-door bell rang, and looking up she saw the short stout figure which of late had taken to haunting her thoughts on the door-step.

Mr. Jarvis was an elderly man inclined to be fat, with round, heavy face, very thick about the jaws and unpleasantly small eyes. Yet the expression of the man"s face was not altogether disagreeable and a certain shrewd humour showed in the lines of his mouth. He had lived for forty-two years in Wrotham, travelling twice a year to London in connection with his business, but never venturing further afield. His house, a magnificent farm building, lay about twelve miles away on the other side of Wrotham station. It had come down to him through generations of Jarvises, he was reputed to be marvellously wealthy, and he had no shyness about admitting the fact. His favourite topics of conversation were money and horses. He had never married, village gossip could have given you lurid details as to the why and the wherefore had you been willing to listen. Mr. Jarvis himself would have put it more plainly. The only woman he had ever had the least affection for had neither expected nor desired matrimony; she had been content to live with him as his housekeeper. This woman had been dead three years when Jarvis first met Mabel. Quite apart from the fact that of late he had been feeling that it was time he got married, Jarvis had been attracted to Mabel from the first. She was such a contrast to the other women he had known; he admired enormously her slim delicacy, her faintly coloured face, her grey eyes. He liked her way of talking, too, and the long silences which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession.

He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and again, to watch her always.

d.i.c.k"s impression was that Mabel hated the man. He disliked him himself, which perhaps coloured his view, for hate was not quite what Mabel felt.

Had Mr. Jarvis been content to just like her she would have tolerated and more or less liked him. She had thought him, to begin with, a funny, in a way rather pathetic, little man. Ugly, and Mabel had such an instinctive sympathy for anything ugly or unloved. So, to begin with, she had been kind to him; then one day Mrs. Grant had opened her eyes to the evident admiration of the man, mentioning at the same time that from the money point of view he would be a good match, and suddenly Mabel had known that she was afraid. Afraid, without exactly knowing why, very much as is the hapless sheep on his way to the slaughter-house.

As the maid ushered in Mr. Jarvis a minute or two later this feeling of fear caught at Mabel"s heart, and in answer to its summons the warm blood flushed to face and neck as she stood up to receive him.

"I am early," stammered the man, his eyes on her new-wakened beauty, for it was only in her lack of colour that Mabel"s want of prettiness lay, "but I came on purpose, I wanted to catch you alone."

Mabel took what was almost a despairing look at the clock. "Mother won"t be down for quite half an hour," she said, "so you have succeeded. Shall we stay here or will you come down to the garden? I want to show you my Black Prince rose, it is not doing at all well."

She moved to the window which opened doorways on to the garden, but Mr.

Jarvis made no attempt to follow her.

"Let us stay here," he said, "what I have got to say won"t take long and we can do the roses afterwards when Mrs. Grant is about. I guess you could help me a bit if you only chose to," he went on, his voice curiously gruff and unready, "but you won"t, you won"t even look at me.

I suppose those great grey eyes of yours hate the sight of me, and I am a d.a.m.ned fool to put my heart into words. But I have got to," she heard him move close to her and how quickly he was breathing, "I love you, you pale, thin slip of a girl, I want you as a wife, will you marry me?"

The silence when he had finished speaking lay heavy between them. Mabel let him take her hand, though the moist warmth of his gave her a little shudder of aversion, but by no strength of will could she lift her eyes to look at him. She stood as immovable as a statue and the man, watching her from out of his small shrewd eyes, smiled a little bitterly.

"You hate the thought like poison," he said, "yet you don"t throw off my hand or yell out your "No." Something is in the balance then. Well, marry me for my money, Mabel. I had rather it were love, but if there is anything about me that can win you, I am not going to give you up."

That flicked at her pride and the honesty of it appealed to her. She lifted her eyes and for the first time she became aware of the real kindness that lay in his.

"I have never hated you," she said slowly, "but I don"t and can"t love you. Will you take that as your answer?"