Part 16 (2/2)
”Possible,” Rufus admitted. ”The boy is fond of you. Yes: he loves you.
I have noticed him, and I can certify to that. I may also remark that he wants a deal of love in return. No doubt, miss, you have observed that circ.u.mstance yourself?”
Regina resented this last inquiry as an outrage on propriety. ”What next will he say?” she thought to herself. ”I must put this presuming man in his proper place.” She darted another annihilating look at him, as she spoke in her turn. ”May I ask, Mr.--Mr.----?”
”Dingwell,” said Rufus, prompting her.
”May I ask, Mr. Dingwell, if you have favoured me by calling here at the request of Mr. Goldenheart?”
Genial and simple-minded as he was, eagerly as he desired to appreciate at her full value the young lady who was one day to be the wife of Amelius, Rufus felt the tone in which those words were spoken. It was not easy to stimulate his modest sense of what was fairly due to him into a.s.serting itself, but the cold distrust, the deliberate distance of Regina's manner, exhausted the long-suffering indulgence of this singularly patient man. ”The Lord, in his mercy, preserve Amelius from marrying You,” he thought, as he rose from his chair, and advanced with a certain simple dignity to take leave of her.
”It did not occur to me, miss, to pay my respects to you, till Amelius and I had parted company,” he said. ”Please to excuse me. I should have been welcome, in my country, with no better introduction than being (as I may say) his friend and well-wisher. If I have made a mistake--”
He stopped. Regina had suddenly changed colour. Instead of looking at him, she was looking over his shoulder, apparently at something behind him. He turned to see what it was. A lady, short and stout, with strange wild sorrowful eyes, had noiselessly entered the room while he was speaking: she was waiting, as it seemed, until he had finished what he had to say. When they confronted each other, she moved to meet him, with a firm heavy step, and with her hand held out in token of welcome.
”You may feel equally sure, sir, of a friendly reception here,” she said, in her steady self-possessed way. ”I am this young lady's aunt; and I am glad to see the friend of Amelius in my house.” Before Rufus could answer, she turned to Regina. ”I waited,” she went on, ”to give you an opportunity of explaining yourself to this gentleman. I am afraid he has mistaken your coldness of manner for intentional rudeness.”
The colour rushed back into Regina's face--she vibrated for a moment between anger and tears. But the better nature in her broke its way through the const.i.tutional shyness and restraint which habitually kept it down. ”I meant no harm, sir,” she said, raising her large beautiful eyes submissively to Rufus; ”I am not used to receiving strangers. And you did ask me some very strange questions,” she added, with a sudden burst of self-a.s.sertion. ”Strangers are not in the habit of saying such things in England.” She looked at Mrs. Farnaby, listening with impenetrable composure, and stopped in confusion. Her aunt would not scruple to speak to the stranger about Amelius in her presence--there was no knowing what she might not have to endure. She turned again to Rufus. ”Excuse me,” she said, ”if I leave you with my aunt--I have an engagement.” With that trivial apology, she made her escape from the room.
”She has no engagement,” Mrs. Farnaby briefly remarked as the door closed. ”Sit down, sir.”
For once, even Rufus was not as his ease. ”I can hit it off, ma'am, with most people,” he said. ”I wonder what I've done to offend your niece?”
”My niece (with many good qualities) is a narrow-minded young woman,”
Mrs. Farnaby explained. ”You are not like the men she is accustomed to see. She doesn't understand you--you are not a commonplace gentleman.
For instance,” Mrs. Farnaby continued, with the matter-of-fact gravity of a woman innately inaccessible to a sense of humour, ”you have got something strange on your hair. It seems to be melting, and it smells like soap. No: it's no use taking out your handkerchief--your handkerchief won't mop it up. I'll get a towel.” She opened an inner door, which disclosed a little pa.s.sage, and a bath-room beyond it. ”I'm the strongest person in the house,” she resumed, returning with a towel in her hand, as gravely as ever. ”Sit still, and don't make apologies.
If any of us can rub you dry, I'm the woman.” She set to work with the towel, as if she had been Rufus's mother, making him presentable in the days of his boyhood. Giddy under the violence of the rubbing, staggered by the contrast between the cold reception accorded to him by the niece, and the more than friendly welcome offered by the aunt, Rufus submitted to circ.u.mstances in docile and silent bewilderment. ”There; you'll do till you get home--n.o.body can laugh at you now,” Mrs. Farnaby announced.
”You're an absent-minded man, I suppose? You wanted to wash your head, and you forgot the warm water and the towel. Was that how it happened, sir?”
”I thank you with all my heart, ma'am; I took it for pomatum,” Rufus answered. ”Would you object to shaking hands again? This cordial welcome of yours reminds me, I do a.s.sure you, of home. Since I left New England, I've never met with the like of you. I do suppose now it was my hair that set Miss Regina's back up? I'm not quite easy in my mind, ma'am, about your niece. I'm sort of feared of what she may say of me to Amelius. I meant no harm, Lord knows.”
The secret of Mrs. Farnaby's extraordinary alacrity in the use of the towel began slowly to show itself now. The tone of her American guest had already become the friendly and familiar tone which it had been her object to establish. With a little management, he might be made an invaluable ally in the great work of hindering the marriage of Amelius.
”You are very fond of your young friend?” she began quietly.
”That is so, ma'am.”
”And he has told you that he has taken a liking to my niece?”
”And shown me her likeness,” Rufus added.
”And shown you her likeness. And you thought you would come here, and see for yourself what sort of girl she was?”
”Naturally,” Rufus admitted.
Mrs. Farnaby revealed, without further hesitation, the object that she had in view. ”Amelius is little more than a lad, still,” she said. ”He has got all his life before him. It would be a sad thing, if he married a girl who didn't make him happy.” She turned in her chair, and pointed to the door by which Regina had left them. ”Between ourselves,” she resumed, dropping her voice to a whisper, ”do you believe my niece will make him happy?”
Rufus hesitated.
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