A Great Success Part 9

"You're very kind--" he groaned--"awfully kind. I'm ashamed you should have seen--such a thing. n.o.body can help me--thank you very much. I am engaged to that lady--I've promised to marry her. Oh, she's got any amount of evidence. I've been an a.s.s--and worse. But I can't get out of it. I don't mean to try to get out of it. I promised of my own free will. Only I've found out now I can never live with her. Her temper is fiendish. It degrades her--and me. But you saw! She has made my life a burden to me lately, because I wouldn't name a day for us to be married.

I wanted to see my father quietly first--without my mother knowing--and I have been thinking how to manage it--and funking it of course--I always do funk things. But what she did just now has settled it--it has been blowing up for a long time. I shall marry her--at a registry office--as soon as possible. Then I shall separate from her, and--I hope--never see her again. The lawyers will arrange that--and money!

Thank you--it's awfully good of you to want to help me--but you can't--n.o.body can."

Doris had drawn her companion into her uncle's small dining-room and closed the door. She listened to his burst of confidence with a puzzled concern.

"Why must you marry her?" she said abruptly, when he paused. "Break it off! It would be far best."

"No. I promised. I--" he stammered a little--"I seem to have done her harm--her reputation, I mean. There is only one thing could let me off.

She swore to me that--well!--that she was a good woman--that there was nothing in her past--you understand--"

"And you know of nothing?" said Doris, gravely.

"Nothing. And you don't think I'm going to try and ferret out things against her!" cried the youth, flus.h.i.+ng. "No--I must just bear it."

"It's your parents that will have to bear it!"

His face hardened.

"My mother might have prevented it," he said bitterly. "However, I won't go into that. My father will see I couldn't do anything else. I'd better get it over. I'm going to my lawyers now. They'll take a few days over what I want."

"You'll tell your father?"

"I--I don't know," he said, irresolutely. She noticed that he did not try to pledge her not to give him away. And she, on her side, did not threaten to do so. She argued with him a little more, trying to get at his real thoughts, and to straighten them out for him. But it was evident he had made up such mind as he had, and that his sudden resolution--even the ugly scene which had made him take it--had been a relief. He knew at last where he stood.

So presently Doris let him go. They parted, liking each other decidedly.

He thanked her warmly--though drearily--for taking an interest in him, and he said to her on the threshold:

"Some day, I hope, you'll come to Crosby Ledgers again, Mrs.

Meadows--and I'll be there--for once! Then I'll tell you--if you care--more about it. Thanks awfully! Good-bye."

Later on, when "Miss Flink," in a state of sulky collapse, had been sent home in her taxi, Doris, Bentley, and Miss Wigram held a conference. But it came to little. Bentley, the hater of "rows," simply could not be moved to take the thing up. "I kept her from scalping him!--" he laughed--"and I'm not due for any more!" Doris said little. A whirl of arguments and projects were in her mind. But she kept her own counsel about them. As to the possibility of inducing the man to break it off, she repeated the only condition on which it could be done; at which Uncle Charles laughed, and Alice Wigram fell into a long and thoughtful silence.

Doris arrived at home rather early. What with the emotions of the day, the heat, and her work, she was strangely tired and over-done. After tea she strolled out into Kensington Gardens, and sat under the shade of trees already autumnal, watching the mult.i.tude of children--children of the people--enjoying the nation's park all to themselves, in the complete absence of their social betters. What ducks they were, some of them--the little, grimy, round-faced things--rolling on the gra.s.s, or toddling after their sisters and brothers. They turned large, inquisitive eyes upon her, which seemed to tease her heart-strings.

And suddenly,--it was in Kensington Gardens that out of the heart of a long and vague reverie there came a flash--an illumination--which wholly changed the life and future of Doris Meadows. After the thought in which it took shape had seized upon her, she sat for some time motionless; then rising to her feet, tottering a little, like one in bewilderment, she turned northwards, and made her way hurriedly towards Lancaster Gate. In a house there, lived a lady, a widowed lady, who was Doris's G.o.dmother, and to whom Doris--who had lost her own mother in her childhood--had turned for counsel before now. How long it was since she had seen "Cousin Julia"!--nearly two months. And here she was, hastening to her, and not able to bear the thought that in all human probability Cousin Julia was not in town.

But, by good luck, Doris found her G.o.dmother, perching in London between a Devons.h.i.+re visit and a Scotch one. They talked long, and Doris walked slowly home across the park. A glory of spreading sun lay over the gra.s.sy glades; the Serpentine held reflections of a sky barred with rose; London, transfigured, seemed a city of pearl and fire. And in Doris's heart there was a glory like that of the evening,--and, like the burning sky, bearing with it a promise of fair days to come. The glory and the promise stole through all her thoughts, softening and trans.m.u.ting everything.

"When _he_ grows up--if he were to marry such a woman--and I didn't know--if all _his_ life--and mine--were spoilt--and n.o.body said a word!"

Her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to be walking with Arthur through a world of beauty, hand in hand.

How many hours to Pitlochry? She ran into the Kensington house, asking for railway guides, and peremptorily telling Jane to get down the small suitcase from the box-room at once.

PART III

CHAPTER V

"'Barbarians, Philistines, Populace!'"

The young golden-haired man of letters who was lounging on the gra.s.s beside Arthur Meadows repeated the words to himself in an absent voice, turning over the pages meanwhile of a book lying before him, as though in search of a pa.s.sage he had noticed and lost. He presently found it again, and turned laughing towards Meadows, who was trifling with a French novel.

"Do you remember this pa.s.sage in _Culture and Anarchy_--'I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic cla.s.s from the Philistines proper, or middle cla.s.s, name the former, in my own mind, _the Barbarians_. And when I go through the country, and see this or that beautiful and imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape, "There," I say to myself, "is a great fortified post of the Barbarians!"'"

The youth pointed smiling to the fine Scotch house seen sideways on the other side of the lawn. Its turreted and battlemented front rose high above the low and spreading buildings which made the bulk of the house, so that it was a feudal castle--by no means, however, so old as it looked--on a front view, and a large and roomy villa from the rear.

Meadows, looking at it, appreciated the fitness of the quotation, and laughed in response.

"Ungrateful wretch," he said--"after that dinner last night!"

"All the same, Matthew Arnold had that dinner in mind--_chef_ and all!

Listen! 'The graver self of the Barbarian likes honours and consideration; his more relaxed self, field-sports and pleasures.'

Isn't it exact? Grouse-driving in the morning--bridge, politics, Cabinet-making, and the best of food in the evening. And I should put our hostess very high--wouldn't you?--among the chatelaines of the 'great fortified posts'?"

Meadows a.s.sented, but rather languidly. The day was extremely hot; he was tired, moreover, by a long walk with the guns the day before, and by conversation after dinner, led by Lady Dunstable, which had lasted up to nearly one o'clock in the morning. The talk had been brilliant, no doubt. Meadows, however, did not feel that he had come off very well in it. His hostess had deliberately pitted him against two of the ablest men in England, and he was well aware that he had disappointed her. Lady Dunstable had a way of behaving to her favourite author or artist of the moment as though she were the fancier and he the c.o.c.k. She fought him against the other people's c.o.c.ks with astonis.h.i.+ng zeal and pa.s.sion; and whenever he failed to kill, or lost too many feathers in the process, her annoyance was evident.

Meadows was in truth becoming a little tired of her dictation, although it was only ten days since he had arrived under her roof. There was a large amount of lethargy combined with his ability; and he hated to be obliged to live at any pace but his own. But Rachel Dunstable was an imperious friend, never tired herself, apparently, either in mind or body; and those who could not walk, eat, and talk to please her were apt to know it. Her opinions too, both political and literary, were in some directions extremely violent; and though, in general, argument and contradiction gave her pleasure, she had her days and moods, and Meadows had already suffered occasional sets-down, of a kind to which he was not accustomed.

But if he was--just a little--out of love with his new friend, in all other respects he was enjoying himself enormously. The long days on the moors, the luxurious life indoors, the changing and generally agreeable company, all the thousand eas.e.m.e.nts and pleasures that wealth brings with it, the skilled service, the motors, the costly cigars, the wines--there was a Sybarite in Meadows which revelled in them all. He had done without them; he would do without them again; but there they were exceedingly good creatures of G.o.d, while they lasted; and only the hypocrites pretended otherwise. His sympathy, in the old poverty-stricken days, would have been all with the plaintive American--"There's d-----d good times in the world, and I ain't in 'em."

All the same, the fleshpots of Pitlochry had by no means put his wife out of his mind. His incurable laziness and procrastination in small things had led him to let slip post after post; but that very morning, at any rate, he had really written her a decent letter. And he was beginning to be anxious to hear from her about the yachting plan. If Lady Dunstable had asked him a few days later, he was not sure he would have accepted so readily. After all, the voyage might be stormy, and the lady--difficult. Doris must be dull in London,--"poor little cat!"

But then a very natural wrath returned upon him. Why on earth had she stayed behind? No doubt Lady Dunstable was formidable, but so was Doris in her own way. "She'd soon have held her own. Lady D. would have had to come to terms!" However, he remembered with some compunction that Doris did seem to have been a good deal neglected at Crosby Ledgers, and that he had not done much to help her.

It was an "off" day for the shooters, and Lady Dunstable's guests were lounging about the garden, writing letters or playing a little leisurely golf on the lower reaches of the moor. Some of the ladies, indeed, had not yet appeared downstairs; a sleepy heat reigned over the valley with its winding stream, and veiled the distant hills. Meadows's companion, Ralph Barrow, a young novelist of promise, had gone fast asleep on the gra.s.s; Meadows was drowsing over his book; the dogs slept on the terrace steps; and in the summer silence the murmur of the river far below stole up the hill on which the house stood, and its soft song held the air.

Suddenly there was a disturbance. The dogs sprang up and barked. There was a firm step on the gravel. Lady Dunstable, stick in hand, her short leather-bound skirt showing boots and gaiters of the most business-like description, came quickly towards the seat on which Meadows sat.

"Mr. Meadows, I summon you for a walk! Sir Luke and Mr. Frome are coming. We propose to get to the tarn and back before lunch."

The tarn was at least two miles away, a stiff climb over difficult moor.

Meadows, startled from something very near sleep, looked up, and a spirit of revolt seized upon him, provoked by the masterful tone and eyes of the lady.

"Very sorry, Lady Dunstable!--but I must write some letters before luncheon."

"Oh no!--put them off! I have been thinking of what you told me yesterday of your scheme for your new set of lectures. I have a great deal to say to you about it."