Part 43 (1/2)
”What secrets?”
”I found her--one day--with a picture--she was crying over. It--it was some one she had been in love with--I am certain it was--a handsome, dark man. And I _begged_ her to tell me--and she just got up and went away. So then I took my own line!”
Hester furiously dashed away the tears she had not been able to stop.
Meynell's look changed. His voice grew strangely pitiful and soft.
”Dear Hester--if you knew--you couldn't be unkind to Aunt Alice.”
”Why shouldn't I know? Why am I treated like a baby?”
”There are some things too bitter to tell,”--he said gravely--”some griefs we have no right to meddle with. But we can heal them--or make them worse. You”--his kind eyes scourged her again--”have been making everything worse for Aunt Alsie for a long time past.”
Hester shrugged her shoulders pa.s.sionately, as though to repel the charge, but she said nothing. They moved on in silence for a little. In Meynell's mind there reigned a medley of feelings--tragic recollections, moral questionings, which time had never silenced, perplexity as to the present and the future, and with it all, the liveliest and sorest pity for the young, childish, violent creature beside him. It was not for those who, with whatever motives, had contributed to bring her to that state and temper, to strike any note of harshness.
Presently, as they neared the end of the woody path, he looked up again.
He saw her sitting sullenly on the gently moving horse, a vision of beauty at bay. The sight determined him toward frankness.
”Hester!--I have told you that if you go on flirting with Philip Meryon you run the risk of disgrace and misery, because he has no conscience and no scruples, and you are ignorant and inexperienced, and have no idea of the fire you are playing with. But I think I had better go farther. I am going to say what you force me to say to you--young as you are. My strong belief is that Philip Meryon is either married already, or so entangled that he has no right to ask any decent woman to marry him. I have suspected it a long time. Now you force me to prove it.”
Hester turned her head away.
”He told me I wasn't to believe what you said about him!” she said in her most obstinate voice.
”Very well. Then I must set at once about proving it. The reasons which make me believe it are not for your ears.” Then his tone changed--”Hester!--my child!--you can't be in love with that fellow--that false, common fellow!--you can't!”
Hester tightened her lips and would not answer. A rush of distress came over Meynell as he thought of her movement toward Philip in the garden.
He gently resumed:
”Any day now might bring the true lover, Hester!--the man who would comfort you for all the past, and show you what joy really means. Be patient, dear Hester--be patient! If you wanted to punish us for not making you happy enough, well, you have done it! But don't plunge us all into despair--and take a little thought for your old guardian, who seems to have the world on his shoulders, and yet can't sleep at nights, for worrying about his ward, who won't believe a word he says, and sets all his wishes at defiance.”
His manner expressed a playful and reproachful affection. Their eyes met.
Hester tried hard to maintain her antagonism, and he was well aware that he was but imperfectly able to gauge the conflict of forces in her mind.
He resumed his pleading with her--tenderly--urgently. And at last she gave way, at least apparently. She allowed him to lay a friendly hand on hers that held the reins, and she said with a long bitter breath:
”Oh, I know I'm a little beast!”
”My old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas don't allow me to apply that epithet to young women! But if you'll say 'I want to be friends, Uncle Richard, and I won't deceive you any more,' why, then, you'll make an old fellow happy! Will you?”
Slowly she let her cold fingers slip into his warm, protecting palm as he smiled upon her. She yielded to the dignity and charm of Meynell's character as she had done a thousand times before; but in the proud, unhappy look she bent upon him there were new and disquieting things--prophecies of the coming womanhood, not to be unravelled. Meynell pressed her hand, and put it back upon the reins with a sigh he could not restrain.
He began to talk with a forced cheerfulness of their coming journey--of the French _milieu_ to which she was going. Hester answered in monosyllables, every now and then--he thought--choking back a sob. And again and again the discouraging thought struck through him--”Has this fellow touched her heart?”--so strong was the impression of an emerging soul and a developing personality.
Suddenly through the dispersing trees a light figure came hurriedly toward them. It was Alice Puttenham.
She was pale and weary, and when she saw Hester, with Meynell beside her, she gave a little cry. But Meynell, standing behind Hester, put his finger on his lips, and she controlled herself. Hester greeted her without any sign of emotion; and the three went homeward along the misty ways of the park. The sun had been swallowed up by rising fog; all colour had been sucked out of the leaves and the heather, even from the golden glades of fern. Only Hester's hair, and her white dress as she pa.s.sed along, uplifted, made of her a kind of luminous wraith, and beside her, like the supports of an altar-piece, moved the two pensive figures of Meynell and Alice.
From a covert of thorn in the park, a youth who had retreated into its shelter on their approach watched them with malicious eyes. Another man was with him--a sheepish, red-faced person, who peered curiously at the little procession as it pa.s.sed about a hundred yards away.