Tristram of Blent Part 71

"Very well. But before you go, a word about you! Sit down, please." She obeyed his rather imperative gesture. "I've been meek," he smiled. "I've admitted all you said about me. And now, please, a word about you!"

"About me? What is there to say about me? Oh, you're going back to that old story about my pride again!"

Once more he looked long at her face. It was flushed and rebellious, it gave no hint of yielding to any weapon that he had yet employed.

"I'm not going to speak of your pride, but of your incredible meanness,"

said he.

"What?" cried Cecily, rudely startled and sitting bolt upright.

"There's no harm in plain speaking, since we're going to part. Of your extraordinary meanness, Cecily--and really it's not generally a fault of the Tristrams."

"Perhaps you'll explain yourself," she said, relapsing into cold disdain, and leaning back again.

"I will. I mean to. Just look at the history of the whole affair." He rose and stood opposite her, constraining her to look at him, although her att.i.tude professed a lofty indifference. "Here was I--in possession!

I was safe. I knew I was safe. I was as convinced of my safety as I am even now--when it's beyond question. Was I frightened? Ask Mina, ask Duplay. Then you came. You know what I did. For your sake, because you were what you are, because I had begun to love you--yes, that's the truth of it--I gave it all to you. Not this place only, but all I had.

Even my name--even my right to bear any name. n.o.body and nameless, I went out of this house for you."

He paused a little, took a pace on the gra.s.s, and returned to her.

"What ought you to have felt, what ought you to have prayed then?" he asked. "Surely that it should come back to me, that it should be mine again?"

"I did," she protested, stirred to self-defence. "I was miserable. You know I was. I couldn't stay here for the thought of you. I came to London. I came to you, Harry. I offered it to you."

"It's you who are deceiving yourself now. Yes, you came and offered it to me. Did you want, did you pray, that it might be mine again by no gift of yours but by right? Did you pray that the thing should happen which has happened now? That you should be turned out and I should be put in? Back in my own place, my proper place? That I should be Tristram of Blent again? Did you pray for that?"

He paused, but she said nothing. Her face was troubled now and her eyes could not leave his.

"You were ready to play Lady Bountiful to me, to give of your charity, to make yourself feel very n.o.ble. That was it. And now----" His voice became more vehement. "And now, look into your heart, look close! Look, look! What's in your heart now? You say I've cheated you. It's true. Is that why you're angry, is that why you won't live with me? No, by heaven, not that, or anything of the kind! Will you have the truth?"

Again she made no answer. She waited for his words.

"Are you rejoiced that mine's my own again, that I'm back in my place, that I'm Tristram of Blent, that it belongs to me? That I take it by my own incontestable right and not of your hand, by your bounty and your charity? Are you so rejoiced at that that you can forgive me anything, forgive the man you love anything? Yes, you do love me--You're welcome to that, if you think it makes it any better. It seems to me to make it worse. No, you can't forgive me anything, you can't forgive the man you love! Why not? I'll tell you why! Shall I? Shall I go on?"

She bowed her head and clasped her hands together.

"You hate my having come to my own again. You hate its being mine by right and not by your bounty. You hate being Lady Tristram only because I've chosen to make you so. And because you hate that, you won't forgive me, and you say you won't live with me. Yes, you're angry because I've come to my own again. You hate it. Look in your heart, I say, and tell me that what I say isn't true, if you can."

She made no answer still. He came a step closer and smote his fist on the palm of his other hand, as he ended:

"You called me a liar. I was a liar. But, by G.o.d, you're a curmudgeon, Cecily!"

For a moment longer she looked at him, as he stood there in his scornful anger. Then with a low moan she hid her face in her hands. The next minute he turned on his heel, left her where she sat, and strode off into the house.

Mina and Neeld--now at their sweets--heard his step and exchanged excited glances. He walked up to the head of the table, to Cecily's chair, plumped down into it, and called out to Mason, "Something to eat and some champagne."

"Yes, sir," said Mason in a flurry.

"Oh, by-the-bye, you can say 'my Lord' again. The lawyers blundered, and there's been a mistake."

The astonished Mason began to express felicitations. Harry was petulantly short with him.

"Oh, shut up that, my dear man, and give me some champagne." He drank a gla.s.s off and then observed, "I hope you two have had a decent dinner?"

He had the manner of a host now.

"I--I hadn't much appet.i.te," stammered Neeld.

"Well, I'm hungry anyhow," and he fell to on his beef, having waved soup and fish aside impatiently. "Tell them all downstairs what I've told you, Mason, but for heaven's sake don't let there be any fuss. Oh, and I suppose you'd better keep something hot for Lady Tristram."

Mason's exit was hastened by the consciousness of his commission. The moment he was gone Mina broke out:

"Where's Cecily?"

"I left her on the lawn," said Harry, frowning hard but eating heartily.

"You've told her?"

"Yes, I've told her."

"And what did she say?" The Imp's utterance was jerky from her perturbation.

"Look here, Mina, mightn't you go and ask her? It's a long story, and I'm deuced hungry, you know."

Mina needed no further permission. She rose and flew. Neeld, though uncertain what was expected of him, sat on, nervously eating gooseberries--a fruit which rarely agreed with him. Harry drank a second gla.s.s of champagne and his brow relaxed, although he was still thoughtful.

"I--I hope all has gone well?" Neeld ventured to inquire.

"I scarcely know. The interview took rather an unexpected turn." He spoke as though the development had surprised him and he could hardly trace how it had come about. "The whole thing will be settled very soon," he added. "Have a gla.s.s of port, Mr Neeld? It'll do you more good than those gooseberries."

Neeld laid a ready hand on the decanter, as he asked,

"Is--er--Lady Tristram not coming in to dinner?"

"Really I don't know. She didn't mention it." His thoughts seemed elsewhere. "Was I wrong to tell Mason to give me the t.i.tle?" he asked.

"Ought I to wait till I've formally established my claim?"

"Since it's quite clear, and there's no opposition from--from the dispossessed claimant----" Neeld smiled feebly and sipped his port.

"That's what I thought; and it's as well to put things on a permanent basis as soon as possible. When once that's done, we shall think less about all this troublesome affair." He sat silent for a few minutes, while Neeld finished his wine. "I'm going to have some cheese. Don't you wait, Mr Neeld."

Old Neeld was glad to escape; he could not understand his host's mood and was uneasy in talk with him. Moreover it seemed that the great question was being decided in the garden and not in the dining-room. To the garden then he betook himself.

Harry smoked a cigarette when his meal was done, twisting his chair round so that he could see Addie Tristram's picture. He reviewed his talk with Cecily, trying to trace how that unexpected turn in it had come about and at what point the weapon had sprung into his hand. He had used it with effect--whether with the effect he desired he did not yet know. But his use of it had not been altogether a ruse or an artifice.

His sincerity, his vehemence, his very cruelty proved that. He had spoken out a genuine resentment and a righteous reproach. Thence came the power to meet Cecily's taunts in equal battle and to silence her charges of deceit with his retort of meanness.

"And we were married to-day! And we're d.a.m.nably in love with one another!" he reflected. "I suppose we should seem queer to some people."

This was a great advance toward an outside view of the family. Certainly such an idea had never occurred to Addie; she had always done the only possible thing! "Now what will she do?"