Mr. Jervis, Vol. 3 (of 3)

It was about eight o’clock in the morning, and Mrs. Brande, as she put the last touches to her toilet, was certain that she heard a man’s (a gentleman’s) voice in the verandah. Pelham was from home; who could it be at such an hour? Some one come for “Chotah Hazree.” Well, Honor would look after him! Ten minutes later she came out, flourishing in her hand a freshly unfolded handkerchief, and gave quite a little gasp of pleasure as she recognized Mark Jervis. He was leaning against the stone pillar of the verandah talking earnestly to her niece, and his pony was waiting at the steps.

“Why, I do declare, this is a pleasure,” she cried; “a sight for sore eyes! Where have you been hiding yourself this ten days?”

But somehow her exuberant delight was instantly quenched, when she caught sight of the faces of the two young people. Mark looked strangely agitated and as if he had but just recovered from some all but mortal sickness. Honor, her bright, happy Honor, was as smileless and white as death.

“I have come,” said Jervis, advancing with an outstretched hand, “to say good-bye.”

“Dear, dear, dear!” waving away his salute. “You have not said, ‘How do you do?’ to me yet!”

“No, I’m afraid I am very stupid to-day. I don’t intend to have any secrets from you, Mrs. Brande.”

“Oh, I know your secret, so does every one,” nodding. “I think you might have given us a little hint.”

“You mean about the money; and I would have done so only my hands were tied.”

“And your cunning cousin never let on!”

“No, but that is not what I have to tell you——”

“Then come into the drawing-room and sit down like a Christian, and send the pony round.”

He shook his head emphatically as he said, “I can only wait a short time. I am going off now to a place forty miles away, to live with my father.”

“Your father!” she repeated, incredulously.

“Yes, my uncle adopted me when my father married again. My father is Major Jervis, he has lived in these hills for some years. I never knew his whereabouts until recently. The night of the ball he sent for me, he believed that he was dying, and I went off at once—I found him very ill, and quite alone and desolate. I am going to keep him company for the rest of his days. You see, he has no one in the world belonging to him but me.”

“Well, I declare!” said Mrs. Brande, after a pause. “It is awfully good of you, that I will say; but if you are your uncle’s adopted son, how will he take it?”

“Badly, I am afraid, but I cannot be in two places; my uncle has a wife, and heaps of friends, and money, and first rate health.”

“Make your father come in to Shirani; we will put him up; and why not get him to go home?”

“It would be of no use to urge him to either step; he is a fixture in his present home for as long as he lives.”

“Well, at least you will often come in and see us—you are not a fixture!” she urged eagerly.

“Mrs. Brande, you are very good—I shall never forget all your kindness to me—but as far as I can see, I shall never come back to Shirani again. My father could not spare me, for one thing—and for another,” and there was a ring of passion in his voice as he added, “I could not endure it. Think of me, as companion to an invalid, with every moment occupied,” and here his words sounded a little husky. “Do not tempt me.”

“Oh, Mark, my boy, I am so sorry!” she exclaimed; “to think that this is good-bye—that we shall not see you again.”

Mark told himself that this so-called underbred, vulgar woman had accepted the news of the shattering of her niece’s fortune in a manner that no duchess could have surpassed. Apparently it was not the loss of position, of thousands a year, that had cut her up—she had stood that with marvellous stoicism—it was the loss of Mark himself!

“You know, of course, what my hopes were,” he said, glancing towards Honor, who stood at the far end of the verandah, gazing out at what—? “There is an end to them now. Some explanation is due to you and Mr. Brande, and I will write. She need never know all. Let people in Shirani suppose what they please, as long as it does not reflect on her. Our engagement was never given out—it was a mere matter of hours. My father is peculiar, he wishes to keep his name and existence a secret—you will understand all—later on.”

“I remember him well,” said Mrs. Brande; “such a handsome fellow, and so fond of society, and so popular. His second wife—I have seen her—a dark person, with——Well, she is dead; let her rest. Oh, Mark, I suppose this must be. But is there not some way out of this trouble, some loophole, some alternative? Surely you would not sacrifice my poor Honor and yourself for nothing?” And her still pretty blue eyes swam in tears.

“No, Mrs. Brande, you may rely on me in that. To hold to Honor—I give up Honor. May she come as far as the gate with me?”

“Yes, she may, to be sure.”

“And give me something—you have no photograph, I know—just to show that we part friends?” And he looked at her appealingly.

Mrs. Brande, who had been crying, deliberately wiped her eyes, and threw both her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was no mere playful threat this time! The dirzee, who had just arrived, and was slowly unfolding his mat, could hardly believe his senses. He told the scandal in the bazaar that evening, and was laughed to scorn for his pains!

The young couple, closely followed by syce and pony, walked slowly to the gate; ay, and up the road.

“I little thought how I should next see you, and what I should have to tell you, when we last parted at this very gate,” he said at last.

“You are giving up a fortune and great prospects, I know, Mark, because you find your duty lies out here; you are giving up the world and going into banishment. But, Mark, I prepare you, that I am going to say something”—with a catch of her breath—“that may lower me in your eyes; still I will venture. Surely you need not give up me. Please”—speaking forcibly—“hear my reasons. I am accustomed to a very quiet life at home. I was brought up in poverty; I shall make a capital poor man’s wife. You say your father’s affairs are in a fearful muddle, and that he has but an annuity. I can nurse him, read to him, walk out with him, and amuse him; I will be very good to your father. I don’t want society, or new dresses, or anything, or any one—but you, Mark. I know that I am shamefully bold and unmaidenly—it would kill Mrs. Grundy to hear me—but I believe you think that I shall mind your dull, lonely jungle life; that I shrink from poverty. You are quite mistaken; I shall enjoy it with you. Do not say ‘No,’ Mark, even if we must wait. I am ready to wait—ten, twenty years—thirty years,” concluded this reckless young woman.

She was waiting now for his answer, white and trembling from the force of her own emotion.

“Honor, I know you will pity me,” he began at last, “pity me, when I tell you that I must say ‘No.’ I must face this life alone. God bless you, and give you a double share of happiness—your own, and what might have been mine. I have lately learnt something”—and his pale face grew ashy grey—“that will prevent my ever calling any woman ‘wife.’ The sacrifice I am bound to make is bitter; yes, bitter as death. I am not going to sacrifice you; you must forget me, darling. You have all your young life before you; put me out of your mind—gradually, sorrowfully, tenderly—as if I was dead.”

“I shall never do that, Mark. Tell me; may I write to you?”

“No!” was the most unexpected and chilling reply.

“But yes, as your sister?” she pleaded, boldly.

He shook his head.

“I could never come to think of you as my sister.”

“At least you will give me your address? Once, we were to have spent our lives together; now, I may not even know where I am to think of you as spending yours.”

“You had much better not think of me at all,” he answered, with a tremor in his voice.

“I must, and I shall. Be quick and tell me.”

“My father calls himself Mr. Jones; he lives beyond Hawal Ghât, about forty miles away, and I must be with him before dark. By-the-by, I have kept your fan; it may seem an odd notion, but you will understand. And now I must go.”

Hearing the sound of clattering hoofs and gay laughing voices rapidly approaching, he held her hand in his but for one second and dropped it. Then the syce hurrying forward with the pony, he mounted and galloped off. No—he never looked back.

Honor stood for a moment as in a sort of trance; then she turned and leaned against the palings, which bordered a pine-forest sloping to the road. The gay riding party cantering past, rather wondered to see Miss Gordon without her hat, evidently looking for something in the wood. They had no time to stop and ask her what it was that she had lost?

They would have been rather astonished if they could have learnt the truth—that she had just that moment lost her lover,—and for ever. They might have guessed at a tragedy of the kind, had they seen her white set face, and the expression of the clenched hands that grasped the palings. But they did not see, nor did they suspect any connection between Miss Gordon looking into a wood, and a momentary vision of a young fellow on a bay pony, who had flashed up a side path, before they could identify either man or beast.

Honor, with a perfectly colourless face, walked up to her aunt, who was still softly sobbing in the drawing-room, and leaning her hand upon her shoulder, said in a strange emotionless voice—

“It is all over, auntie. We have said good-bye for ever.”

She stooped and kissed her, and went and shut herself up in her own room, from which she did not emerge for several hours; and then the girl who did appear was a different Honor Gordon.