Part 62 (1/2)
”Hester!” he broke out, ”don't let's talk about this any more--it's d.a.m.ned nonsense! Let's talk about ourselves. Hester!--darling!--I want to make you happy!--I want to carry you away. Hester, will you marry me at once? As far as the French law is concerned, I have arranged it all.
You could come with me to a certain Mairie I know, to-morrow, and we could marry without anybody having a word to say to it; and then, Hester, I'd carry you to Italy! I know a villa on the Riviera--the Italian Riviera--in a little bay all orange and lemon and blue sea. We'd honeymoon there; and when we were tired of honeymooning--though how could any one tire of honeymooning, with you, you darling!--we'd go to South America. I have an opening at Buenos Ayres which promises to make me a rich man. Come with me!--it is the most wonderful country in the world.
You would be adored there--you would have every luxury--we'd travel and ride and explore--we'd have a glorious life!”
He had caught her hands again, and stood towering over her, intoxicated with his own tinsel phrases; almost sincere; a splendid physical presence, save for the slight thickening of face and form, the looseness of the lips, the absence of all freshness in the eyes.
But Hester, after a first moment of dreamy excitement, drew herself decidedly away.
”No, no!--I can't be such a wretch--I can't! Mamma and Aunt Alice would break their hearts. I'm a selfish beast, but not quite so bad as that!
No, Philip--we can meet and amuse ourselves, can't we?--and get to know each other?--and then if we want to, we can marry--some time.”
”That means you don't love me!” he said, fiercely.
”Yes, yes, I do!--or at least I--I like you. And perhaps in time--if you let me alone--if you don't tease me--I--I'll marry you. But let's do it openly. It's amusing to get one's own way, even by lies, up to a certain point. They wouldn't let me see you, or get to know you, and I was determined to know you. So I had to behave like a little cad, or give in.
But marrying's different.”
He argued with her hotly, pointing out the certainty of Meynell's opposition, exaggerating the legal powers of guardians, declaring vehemently that it was now or never. Hester grew very white as they wandered on through the forest, but she did not yield. Some last scruple of conscience, perhaps--some fluttering fear, possessed her.
So that in the end Philip was pushed to the villainy that even he would have avoided.
Suddenly he turned upon her.
”Hester, you drive me to it! I don't want to--but I can't help it.
Hester, you poor little darling!--you don't know what has happened--you don't know what a position you're in. I want to save you from it. I would have done it, G.o.d knows, without telling you the truth if I could; but you drive me to it!”
”What on earth do you mean?”
She stopped beside him in a clearing of the forest. The pale afternoon sun, now dropping fast to westward, slipped through the slender oaks, on which the red leaves still danced, touched the girl's hair and shone into her beautiful eyes. She stood there so young, so unconscious; a victim, on the threshold of doom. Philip, who was no more a monster than other men who do monstrous things, felt a sharp stab of compunction; and then, rushed headlong at the crime he had practically resolved on before they met.
He told her in a few agitated words the whole--and the true--story of her birth. He described the return of Judith Sabin to Upcote Minor, and the narrative she had given to Henry Barron, without however a word of Meynell in the case, so far at least as the original events were concerned. For he was convinced that he knew better, and that there was no object in prolonging an absurd misunderstanding. His version of the affair was that Judith in a fit of excitement had revealed Hester's parentage to Henry Barron; that Barron out of enmity toward Meynell, Hester's guardian, and by way of getting a hold upon him, had not kept the matter to himself, but had either written or instigated anonymous letters which had spread such excitement in the neighbourhood that Lady Fox-Wilton had now let her house, and practically left Upcote for good.
The story had become the common talk of the Markborough district; and all that Meynell, and ”your poor mother,” and the Fox-Wilton family could do, was to attempt, on the one hand, to meet the rush of scandal by absence and silence; and on the other to keep the facts from Hester herself as long as possible.
The girl had listened to him with wide, startled eyes. Occasionally a sound broke from her--a gasp--an exclamation--and when he paused, pursued by almost a murderer's sense of guilt, he saw her totter. In an instant he had his arm round her, and for once there was both real pa.s.sion and real pity in the excited words he poured into her ears.
”Hester, dearest!--don't cry, don't be miserable, my own beautiful Hester! I am a beast to have told you, but it is because I am not only your lover, but your cousin--your own flesh and blood. Trust yourself to me! You'll see! Why should that preaching fellow Meynell interfere?
I'll take care of you. You come to me, and we'll show these d.a.m.ned scandal-mongers that what they say is nothing to us--that we don't care a fig for their cant--that we are the masters of our own lives--not they!”
And so on, and so on. The emotion was as near sincerity as he could push it; but it did not fail to occur, at least once, to a mind steeped in third-rate drama, what a ”strong” dramatic scene might be drawn from the whole situation.
Hester heard him for a few minutes, in evident stupefaction; then with a recovery of physical equilibrium she again vehemently repulsed him.
”You are mad--you are _mad_! It is abominable to talk to me like this.
What do you mean? 'My poor mother'--who is my mother?”
She faced him tragically, the certainty which was already dawning in her mind--prepared indeed, through years, by all the perplexities and rebellions of her girlhood--betraying itself in her quivering face, and lips. Suddenly, she dropped upon a fallen log beside the path, hiding her face in her hands, struggling again with the sheer faintness of the shock. And Philip, kneeling in the dry leaves beside her, completed his work, with the cruel mercy of the man who kills what he has wounded.
He asked her to look back into her childhood; he reminded her of the many complaints she had made to him of her sense of isolation within her supposed family; of the strange provisions of Sir Ralph's will; of the arrangement which had made her Meynell's ward in a special sense.