Part 14 (1/2)
”Yes, from your country,” he said, with a touch of indignation in his voice, ”they come bringing their bad manners and their diamonds, and they hang round the fringe of what is called the 'Smart Set,' and they bribe impecunious dowagers and such like to give them introductions, and they worm their way into the big houses, and G.o.d alone knows what becomes of them afterwards. I have a brother who has a big practice in the West-end. You should hear him talk----”
”If people are rich,” Madeline retorted warmly, ”they have surely the right to enjoy themselves in their own way so long as they do no wrong.”
”Enjoy themselves,” he snorted. ”Is enjoyment the end of life?--and such enjoyment! Has duty no place in the scheme of existence? Because people have grown rich through somebody else's toil----”
”Or through their own toil,” she interrupted.
”Or through their own toil--if any man ever did it--are they justified in wasting their life in idle gluttony, and in wasteful and wanton extravagance?”
”Extravagance is surely a question of degree,” she replied. ”A hundred dollars to one man may be more than ten thousand to another.”
”I admit it. But your idle profligate, whether man or woman, is an offence.”
”What do you mean by profligate?”
”I mean the creature who lives to eat and drink and dress. Who s.h.i.+rks every duty and responsibility, who panders to every gluttonous and selfish desire. Who hears the cry of suffering and never helps, who wastes his or her substance in finding fresh sources of so-called enjoyment, or discovering new thrills of sensation.”
”But we surely have a right to enjoy ourselves?”
”Of course we have. But not after the fas.h.i.+on of swine. We are not animals. We are men and women with intellectual vision and moral responsibility. The true life lies along the road of duty and help and goodwill.”
”Yes, I agree with you in that. But I do not like to hear anyone speak slightingly of my country people.”
”For your country and your people as a whole, I have the greatest respect. But every country has its sn.o.bs and its parasites; and it is humbling that our own great army of idle profligates should receive recruits from the great Republic of the West.”
When Dr. Pendarvis had gone Madeline sat for a long time staring out of the window, but seeing nothing of the fair landscape on which her eyes rested. She tried to recall what it was that led their conversation into such a serious channel. To say the least of it, it was not a little strange that he should have taken the hazy and nebulous efforts of her own brain, and shaped them into clear and definite speech. The life of ease and pleasure and self-indulgence to which she had looked forward with so much interest and with such childish delight, he had denounced with a vigour she had half resented, and which all the while she felt answered to the deepest emotions of her nature.
She took the Captain's letter from the envelope and read it again. It was a most proper letter in every respect. There was not a word or syllable that anyone could take the slightest exception to. The love-making was intense and yet restrained, the pleading eloquent and even tender, the prospect pictured such as any ordinary individual would hail with delight. What was it that it lacked?
It seemed less satisfying since her talk with the doctor than before.
The Captain pleaded for an answer by return of post. He wanted to have the a.s.surance before he left India for home. He was tired of roughing it and wanted to look forward to long years of domestic peace. If the engagement were settled now they would be able to set up a house of their own soon after his return.
She put away the letter after reading it through twice, and heaved a long sigh.
”If it had come a week ago,” she said to herself, ”I should have answered 'Yes' without any misgiving. But now, everything seems changed. Perhaps I shall feel differently when I get out of doors again.”
On the following day she took a ramble in the rose garden, and sat for an hour on the lawn in the suns.h.i.+ne. On the second day she strayed into the plantation beyond the park, and on the third day she ventured on to the Downs, and came at length to the high point on the cliffs where she first met Rufus Sterne. Here she sat down and looked seaward, and thought of home and all that had happened since she left it.
The plan of her life which had looked so clear was becoming more and more hazy and confused. Was Providence interposing to upset its own arrangements? Was she to tread a different path from what she had pictured.
The fresh air brought the colour back to her cheeks again, and vigour to her limbs, but it did not clear away the mists that hung about her brain and heart. The Captain's letter remained day after day unanswered.
”If I were engaged to the Captain,” she said to herself, reflectively, ”It might not be considered proper for me to call on Rufus Sterne. But while I am free, I am free. He saved my life, and it would be mean of me not to call. So I shall follow my heart”; and she rose to her feet and turned her steps towards home.
CHAPTER X
A VISITOR