Part 7 (2/2)

'You are n.o.bleness itself!' he cried, from the depths of his heart. 'I feel as if I had been the merest pedant and blunderer--the most incapable, clumsy idiot.'

She smiled, but she could not answer. And in a few more moments voices and steps could be heard approaching, and the scene was over.

CHAPTER VI

The Sunday party separated at Paddington on the night of the Nuneham expedition, and Wallace and Eustace Kendal walked eastward together. The journey home had been very quiet. Miss Bretherton had been forced to declare herself 'extremely tired,' and Mrs. Stuart's anxiety and sense of responsibility about her had communicated themselves to the rest of the party.

'It is the effect of my long day yesterday,' she said apologetically to Forbes, who hovered about her with those affectionate attentions which a man on the verge of old age pays with freedom to a young girl. 'It won't do to let the public see so much of me in future. But I don't want to spoil our Sunday. Talk to me, and I shall forget it.'

Wallace, who had had his eyes about him when she and Eustace Kendal emerged from the wood in view of the rest of the party, was restless and ill at ease, but there was no getting any information, even by a gesture, from Kendal, who sat in his corner diligently watching the moonlight on the flying fields, or making every now and then some disjointed attempts at conversation with Mrs. Stuart.

At the station Miss Bretherton's carriage was waiting; the party of gentlemen saw her and Mrs. Stuart, who insisted on taking her home, into it; the pale, smiling face bent forward; she waved her hand in response to the lifted hats, and she was gone.

'Well?' said Wallace, with a world of inquiry in his voice, as he and Kendal turned eastward.

'It has been an unfortunate business,' said Kendal abruptly. 'I never did a thing worse, I think, or spent a more painful half-hour.'

Wallace's face fell. 'I wish I hadn't bored you with my confounded affairs,' he exclaimed. 'It was too bad!'

Kendal was inclined to agree inwardly, for he was in a state of irritable reaction; but he had the justice to add aloud, 'It was I who was the fool to undertake it. And I think, indeed, it could have been done, but that circ.u.mstances, which neither you nor I had weighed sufficiently, were against it. She is in a nervous, shaken state, mentally and physically, and before I had had time to discuss the point at all, she had carried it on to the personal ground, and the thing was up.'

'She is deeply offended, then?'

'Not at all, in the ordinary sense; she is too fine a creature; but she talked of the ”contempt” that you and I feel for her!'

'Good heavens!' cried Wallace, feeling most unjustly persuaded that his friend had bungled the matter horribly.

'Yes,' said Kendal deliberately; '”contempt,” that was it. I don't know how it came about. All I know is, that what I said, which seemed to me very harmless, was like a match to a mine. But she told me to tell you that she made no further claim on _Elvira_. So the play is safe.'

'D---- the play!' cried Wallace vigorously, a sentiment to which perhaps Kendal's silence gave consent. 'But I cannot let it rest there. I must write to her.'

'I don't think I would, if I were you,' said Kendal. 'I should let it alone. She looks upon the matter as finished. She told me particularly to tell you that she was _not_ vexed, and you may be quite sure that she isn't, in any vulgar sense. Perhaps that makes it all the worse. However, you've a right to know what happened, so I'll tell you, as far as I remember.'

He gave an abridged account of the conversation, which made matters a little clearer, though by no means less uncomfortable, to Wallace. When it was over, they were nearing Vigo Street, the point at which their routes diverged, Wallace having rooms in the Albany, and Kendal hailed a hansom.

'If I were you,' he said, as it came up, 'I should, as I said before, let the thing alone as much as possible. She will probably speak to you about it, and you will, of course, say what you like, but I'm pretty sure she won't take up the play again, and if she feels a coolness towards anybody, it won't be towards you.'

'There's small consolation in that!' exclaimed Wallace.

'Anyhow, make the best of it, my dear fellow,' said Kendal, as though determined to strike a lighter key. 'Don't be so dismal, things will look differently to-morrow morning--they generally do--there's no tremendous harm done. I'm sorry I didn't do your bidding better. Honestly, when I come to think over it, I don't see how I could have done otherwise. But I don't expect you to think so.'

Wallace laughed, protested, and they parted.

A few moments later Kendal let himself into his rooms, where lights were burning, and threw himself into his reading-chair, beside which his books and papers stood ready to his hand. Generally, nothing gave him a greater sense of _bien-etre_ than this nightly return, after a day spent in society, to these silent and faithful companions of his life. He was accustomed to feel the atmosphere of his room when he came back to it charged with welcome. It was as though the thoughts and schemes he had left warm and safe in shelter there started to life again after a day's torpor, and thronged to meet him. His books smiled at him with friendly faces, the open page called to him to resume the work of the morning--he was, in every sense, at home. Tonight, however, the familiar spell seemed to have lost its force. After a hasty supper he took up some proofs, pen in hand. But the first page was hardly turned before they had dropped on to his knee. It seemed to him as if he still felt on his arm the folds of a green, fur-edged cloak, as if the touch of a soft cold hand were still lingering in his. Presently he fell to recalling every detail of the afternoon scene,--the arching beech trees, the rich red and brown of the earth beneath, tinged with the winter sheddings of the trees, the little raised bank, her eyes as she looked up at him, the soft wisps of her golden brown hair under her hat. What superb, unapproachable beauty it was! how living, how rich in content and expression!

'Am I in love with Isabel Bretherton?' he asked himself at last, lying back on his chair with his eyes on the portrait of his sister. 'Perhaps Marie could tell me--I don't understand myself. I don't think so. And if I were, I am not a youngster, and my life is a tolerably full one. I could hold myself in and trample it down if it were best to do so. I can hardly imagine myself absorbed in a great pa.s.sion. My bachelor life is a good many years old--my habits won't break up easily. And, supposing I felt the beginnings of it, I could stop it if reason were against it.'

He left his chair, and began to pace up and down the room, thinking. 'And there is absolutely no sort of reason in my letting myself fall in love with Isabel Bretherton! She has never given me the smallest right to think that she takes any more interest in me than she does in hundreds of people whom she meets on friendly terms, unless it may be an intellectual interest, as Wallace imagines, and that's a poor sort of stepping-stone to love! And if it were ever possible that she should, this afternoon has taken away the possibility. For, however magnanimous a woman may be, a thing like that rankles: it can't help it. She will feel the sting of it worse to-morrow than to-day, and, though she will tell herself that she bears no grudge, it will leave a gulf between us. For, of course, she must go on acting, and, whatever depressions she may have, she must believe in herself; no one can go on working without it, and I shall always recall to her something harsh and humiliating!'

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