Proper pride

The morning after the ball, neither Mary nor Alice appeared at breakfast, nor did they descend till nearly luncheon-time. Helen Mayhew’s portly figure was filling up a goodly portion of the open window, as she looked out on the terrace at Reginald playing with Maurice.

“Come here, Alice,” she said, as Alice languidly entered the room. “Is it not a pretty sight to see Reginald with his little boy?”

Alice approached and looked over her shoulder, and saw her husband leaning against the balustrade and making a small boat for Maurice, who, perched up beside him on the broad parapet, was watching his proceedings with the most lively interest, occasionally making suggestions and talking ceaselessly; the most thorough understanding between the pair was evident. Both faces were equally intent on the work in hand, and the resemblance between them was more striking than ever. Suddenly Reginald glanced up and saw Helen; lifting Maurice in his arms, he came closer to the window.

“Look at my boat,” cried Maurice, waving it towards her; “it’s going to be painted blue, and I’m to sail it this evening—he is going to show me;” ruffling up his father’s short locks with small tanned fingers.

Reginald set him down, and glanced from him to Helen with a smile of unbounded pride, but catching sight of Alice the smile died away, and nodding her a cool good-morning, he turned away and led Maurice up the steps into the house.

“Why does he treat me so?” whispered Alice indignantly. “He never speaks of the child to me, and scarcely notices him when I am present, although he is my child—I am his mother; he spends hours with Maurice alone, and Maurice adores him. What does he mean? Is he afraid I would be jealous?”

“Ask him, my dear, ask him. Here he is, and here is luncheon,” she answered gaily.

“What shall we do this afternoon?” was the question that went round the table. “It’s too hot to ride, too hot for tennis. What shall we do?”

“Go and eat fruit in the garden,” suggested Geoffrey serenely.

“What, the whole afternoon?” exclaimed Reginald aghast.

“Let us first gather some fruit, and then go for a walk up to the top of Beecher’s Hill,” put in Miss Ferrars.

“Energetic young person! I admire, but I decline to emulate your pedestrian powers,” said Geoffrey, putting up his eye-glass and gazing at her with calm approval.

“To Beecher’s Hill we will go by all means,” assented Helen. “I am quite in the humour for a nice stroll.”

“It’s a pretty steep stroll I can tell you! Don’t expect me to pull you up the hill.”

“I never expect any politeness from you, Geoffrey,” she replied with a smile. “What a lazy, good-for-nothing boy you are! Let us all go and get ready; by the time we start it will be nearly four o’clock.”

“But it would be madness to start now,” expostulated Alice; “think of toiling uphill in this broiling sun! Wait till it is a little cooler.”

“The walk in the sun will do Helen good. She wants severe exercise badly,” said Geoffrey, looking at her dispassionately. “If you were to put on a couple of sealskin jackets, Reginald’s poshteen, and my frieze ulster, you would be wise.”

“You are raving, my good Geoffrey! Too much dancing has affected your reason,” replied Mrs. Mayhew.

“I have method in my madness at any rate—the symmetry of your figure at heart,” responded the young man, with an air of deep interest.

“I’m not a bit stouter than Mrs. Russell, whom you profess to admire so much.”

“I don’t admire her at all! She is like a bolster tied in the middle,” remonstrated Geoffrey vehemently. “She has a figure like a cottage loaf.”

“You may as well make him a present of the last word, Helen,” observed Alice, taking her by the arm and leading her out of the room. “There is no use arguing with him, he has such a tongue, and he is utterly unscrupulous as to what he says.”

“People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” shouted Geoffrey.

“There!” exclaimed Alice, stopping with one foot on the stairs, “I knew it! I told you he would have the last word. No one can silence him but Reginald, and, to quote Geoffrey’s own language, he shuts him up beautifully.”

Five o’clock found the walking party reclining in various luxurious attitudes on the top of Beecher’s Hill—they had evidently but recently arrived. Alice and Geoffrey had scooped out a comfortable nest in the side of a haycock, without loss of time, and were resting after their joint labours.

Under an adjoining “wind” were the remainder of the party. Helen, much out of breath, was fanning herself with feverish energy; Mark presented a grotesque appearance, with loosened necktie, his head covered by a large straw hat, under which he had inserted an enormous cabbage-leaf, which drooped gracefully over his eyes. Prone at his feet lay Reginald, his hands clasped behind his head, his hat tilted far over his forehead—he looked the very embodiment of lazy comfort. Alice turned her attention for some time to the prospect that lay beneath her eyes—a truly English scene. Their own park was immediately below; beyond that, deeply embedded in trees, and merely discovering itself by the smoke from its cottages, a pretty little hamlet tried to conceal itself; then came golden corn-fields, the spire of a Norman church, the steeple at Manister; a long low range of purple hills framed the horizon. It was a lovely summer’s evening, the air was so clear one could see for miles; it was so still, that various curious insects in the grass and the booming of homeward-bound bees alone broke the silence.

Something tickling her neck made Alice abruptly turn her head; it was Geoffrey, of course, with a long piece of spear-grass, with which he had been diligently chasing hay-spiders. “Alice,” he whispered, “let us go over quietly and topple the whole of the haycock over them, it will be no end of fun. I don’t know which will be the most furious, Reginald or Helen. Come along,” holding out his hand encouragingly; “it is an innocent pastime for an idle moment.”

“No, no, Geoffrey; you had better not, mind——”

“Well, will you promise to engage them in lively conversation whilst I go behind and loosen the whole concern? When I cough I advise you to move.”

“I’ll have nothing to say to it. Do you think I am a school-girl? I’m too old for such nonsense!” cried Alice irritably.

“I think you are in one of your tempers, that’s what I think,” returned her cousin in a tone of candid conviction.

“If you think so you are very much mistaken. You may dismiss that notion from your mind.”

“I’m sincerely glad to hear it. What was that you were saying to Reginald last night in the conservatory when I came on the scene? He did not look a bit too well pleased to see me? Alice, have you ever begged his pardon for the way you treated him once upon a time? Tell me all about it; I know you are yearning to unbosom yourself to me,” he added with an air of frank companionship, and sitting closer to her.

“Geoffrey, your impertinence is really intolerable!” exclaimed Alice haughtily, and colouring with anger. “You quite forget yourself!”

“Ah, I thought you were in a bad humour just now,” he drawled; “I know all the symptoms so well from sad experience; so does Reginald, I am sure.”

“Don’t dare to speak to me, you have no right to talk to me in such a way, and I won’t listen to you!” exclaimed Alice with flashing eyes.

“Little Spitfire!” ejaculated Geoffrey, surveying her crimson cheeks with calm derision.

Whereupon Alice indignantly turned her back upon him and withdrew into her own corner of the nest, where she sat in silent, dignified retirement. She could see that the others were spending their time far more agreeably, and sincerely wished that she was one of the party, but her pride forbade her to move. Mary was evidently telling them an amusing story with much animation and gesticulation. A low but highly appreciative laugh from Reginald, as the tale concluded, showed that he had been an attentive listener. Raising himself on his elbow, he contributed his share to the general entertainment in a few short sentences; whatever he had said found entire favour with his audience, and elicited peals of applauding laughter from all three, as he once more subsided, and drew his hat over his eyes.

“He never thinks it worth his while to amuse me now,” thought Alice, with a half-envious, half-wistful glance in that direction.

“I’m being devoured alive by midges!” suddenly exclaimed Geoffrey, jumping up and waving his handkerchief madly to and fro. “How you can stand them I can’t imagine; they are in my hair!”—with frenzied rubbing of his lint-white locks—“my ears, my eyes! I shall go out of my mind if I stay here any longer! I say, Alice, can I speak to you now?”

“Depends altogether upon the topic you are going to broach,” replied Alice in a frosty tone.

“Don’t look so grumpy, my dear little girl,” reaching out a hand to help her to rise, and of which she availed herself.

quoted Geoffrey, dragging her into a perpendicular position.

“Come along down to the river and see if there are any trout rising.”

“There are none to rise.”

“There must be, it’s just their supper-time. Well, anything is better than squatting in the hay for the delectation of the insect world; come and look for a bees’-nest down in the bottom of the meadow.”

The hunt for the bees’-nest was fruitless. Alice, for one, brought neither zeal nor energy to the task. As they dawdled slowly homewards, Geoffrey suddenly said, as if struck by a brilliant idea:

“By Jove! next Tuesday the grouse shooting commences, the glorious twelfth! I don’t know how I’m to break the news to you, Alice; but on Monday we must part. Old Macfarlane has asked me this year, thank the kind fates, and his moors and his shooting are simply—supreme. He asked Rex too, and was awfully keen about getting him, knowing him to be such a good gun—the old boy takes no end of pride out of his big bags—and only fancy,” standing in the pathway, and declaiming, with one waving arm, “he is not going. Did you ever know such a duffer? Imagine his refusing the primest shooting north o’ Tweed! And for what? He gives no reason, and I can’t even hazard a guess. It certainly can’t be on your account,” contemplating his cousin with a cool, deliberate, speculative stare.

“If the question baffles your acute imagination, of course it is utterly beyond mine,” returned Alice, with an emphatic shake of her lovely head and a perceptible increase of colour. “See, Geoff,” she added eagerly, “the others are all going through the wood. We may as well go too; I want some moss and ferns for the dinner-table.”

Having joined the rest of the party, a general search for ferns commenced, and they were gradually moving homewards, when a masterly manœuvre of Geoffrey’s left Alice and Reginald to bring up the rear alone—a most unpremeditated tête-à-tête.

As they crossed a rustic bridge that spanned a small but rapid torrent, they paused and looked down at the foam sailing along in solid-looking blocks; at the wet and mossy rocks, and the small noisy waterfall.

“How I should like to go down there and dabble!” said Alice, taking off her gloves.

In pulling off the left one she also drew off her wedding-ring, which instantly disappeared in the current below.

She looked after it, or rather at the spot where it had fallen in, in silent consternation; then, turning to her husband with awestruck face, exclaimed:

“My ring is gone! What am I to do?”

“I’m sure I can’t say,” he replied coldly.

“Can’t you fish it up some way—if you were to wade in?” she cried excitedly.

“I don’t know what you call wading, but the water there is at least nine feet deep, and your ring is probably a quarter of a mile off by this time,” he answered, with provoking indifference.

“But what am I to do for my wedding-ring?” she urged piteously, looking down at her hand with burning cheeks.

“Buy another, I conclude; you can get one for a guinea or thirty shillings. It depends upon whether you like them thick or thin. This will be your third, so you must have quite a settled opinion on the subject,” he replied, calmly aiming bits of gravel at a particular rock in the torrent below.

Certainly this was not encouraging behaviour; nevertheless, she braced up her courage, and determined to make one more attempt to recover her original ring.

“Give me my own ring, Reginald.”

“I have already told you, Alice, that I will not,” he returned, still pursuing his amusement.

“And will you never take me back as your wife?” she asked almost inaudibly.

“What do you mean?” he inquired, arresting himself in the act of taking aim, and turning towards her at last.

“What I say,” she replied with more firmness.

“I shall be only too glad to take you back, as you call it, now—this instant.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yes, of course I do; but have you not something to say to me besides,” he asked, looking at her anxiously.

Was ever anyone so blind to the right employment of great opportunities?

“No,” she replied innocently; “what more can I say than I have already said? I have nothing to say.”

“Than what you have already said!” he cried indignantly. “You dare to allude to it? you are not ashamed of it?”

“No,” she faltered, much bewildered.

Her husband scarcely heard her. His face was dark with passion; his voice vibrated with intense emotion as he added:

“Such a gratuitous repetition of insult I never heard of. You want an answer to your question; you want to know when I shall take you back? I give it to you in one word: never”—a long pause, during which Alice stood dazed and stupefied—she felt as if a dark wave of trouble had overwhelmed her senses. “The day after to-morrow,” he proceeded firmly, “I am going to Looton. I shall take Maurice with me, to keep me company. You have had him for more than three years, remember,” he replied to the remonstrance he saw in her eyes. “I will send him back to you when I go down to Northampton, and you may keep him for the next four years.”

“What do you mean, Reginald?” interrupted Alice, struggling hard for composure, and fixing on him a strained, eager gaze.

“I mean that until Maurice is seven he may stay with you; after that time I hope to have returned from India, and settled down at Looton, and I intend to have him to live with me. I am not going to be a wanderer all my life; I owe some duties to my people, as well as to my country. You will not mind parting with Maurice. You have shown me to-night plainly that you are utterly heartless.”

“Do I understand,” she faltered, supporting herself by the railing, “that you will take Maurice from me in four years’ time?”

“Yes; legally I have a right to do so.”

“I don’t believe it,” she cried passionately. “No law could be so wicked as to deprive me of my only child. What a cruel hard-hearted man you are to say such things to me. Can you be the Reginald Fairfax I married? Your voice and appearance are identical, but otherwise you are as different as night and day. He was only too good to me, he loved me far better than I deserved.”

“He did indeed,” interrupted her husband grimly.

“You,” she pursued almost fiercely, “have a heart like stone, a tongue like a sword. You are stern, harsh, implacable, tyrannical; you can’t be the same.”

“You are right,” he answered decisively; “I am not the original Reginald Fairfax; I am an older and wiser, if not better man. My illusions have been dispelled, my susceptibilities blunted, my eyes rudely opened. I know you to be an extraordinary combination of caprice, obstinacy, and inconsistency.” He broke off, and looked at her with a mixture of contempt and indignation; he dared not trust to speech.

“I don’t know what you mean; I have abased myself sufficiently, my conscience tells me,” she replied, with quivering lips. “You thrust me aside with scorn, and even add that you will take my child from me.” Here her grief overcame all considerations, and covering her face with her hands she burst into tears.

There was a very dark look on her husband’s face as he surveyed her for some moments in silence; he was extremely angry with her; he thought she had befooled him again, played with his feelings as a cat with a mouse. He was wounded to the heart and bitterly disappointed. Each day he had been lingering on in hopes of one word of regret. With even one he would have been satisfied. To tell him she thought the same as ever was too much; it was inconceivable, it was impossible, it was maddening. “She must be a born actress,” he thought as he stood opposite her. “This grief is all feigned.” Still, as he watched the tears trickling through her fingers he relented somewhat. In the first place he could not endure to see any woman crying, much less Alice. She little knew what a powerful weapon she was using against him. As he looked at her slight figure, heaving with half-suppressed sobs, his conscience smote him. He was hard, cruel, and tyrannical. After all she was only a girl, and a very frail, delicate one too. Was this the way to guard her as the apple of his eye, to restore her to health, to study every wish?—scarcely.

“Alice,” he said, gently removing her hands, “don’t cry like this; I can’t bear to see you.”

“Then, why do you make me cry?” she sobbed plaintively.

“I won’t do it again,” offering her his handkerchief; her own had gone home in Geoffrey’s charge, filled with moss and roots. “I never saw you cry before, and I hope I never shall again.”

“Then you won’t take Maurice from me,” she pleaded, raising her tear-stained face to his, with a look of passionate supplication.

“No, but you will lend him to me sometimes.”

“Ye-es,” very dubiously; “but you can always come here to see him.”

“Pardon me, I never intend coming here again. Once I leave I shall never return.”

“Never return!” The words seemed to echo and vibrate through the dim leafy silence of the surrounding trees.

“Oh, Reginald!”

“Now, Alice, you are never going to be so foolish as to cry for that,” he asked roughly.

Sobs. What was he to do with her?

“Alice, why are you crying? You promised me that you would not.”

They were now walking home; but Alice’s supply of tears seemed unlimited. This was a new and alarming experience.

“Alice,” he repeated, “you promised me you would not cry any more.”

“Yes, but you promised”—gasp—“you would not make me cry”—gasp. “I know you think me no better than a baby, but I can’t help it—I can’t, indeed.”

More very bitter tears.

“Well,” said he, in despair, “if I come here for a few days at Christmas, will you be satisfied?”

“Yes,” she faintly whispered.

“Then dry your eyes; don’t let me see another tear. You have had your own way altogether, have you not?—tyrant as I am!”

“Yes,” she replied, with a sickly smile.

She looked so pale, dishevelled, and wan, that he felt absolutely guilty as he gazed at her forlorn-looking face.

Silently and rapidly they pursued the woodland path, where barely two might walk abreast. Above them the trees had laid their heads together, and combined in league to keep out the sun. A stillness weighed on the surrounding woods; the wind had died away; the birds were silent. Not more silent than the bronzed young soldier and the pale agitated girl, who walked together, side by side.

Alice was in hopes of reaching her room unseen. But no such good fortune was in store for her. On the stairs she came face-to-face with Geoffrey, who, calmly surveying her tear-stained cheeks, gave a long and eloquent whistle, and chanted, as he passed downstairs:

On entering the library, he found Reginald making lame excuses for Alice’s non-appearance to Helen, who was pouring out tea. He boldly walked over to him and whispered right into his ear:

“You’ve been bullying her, I see.”

Reginald’s indignant negative was completely thrown away on Geoffrey, who had already seated himself at the tea-table, under the shelter of Helen’s protection. So ended this disastrous walk.

Alice’s reflections as she stood at her window in the gloaming were not of a very rose-coloured hue. All that she most valued in this world—her husband’s love—had slipped from her grasp. The efforts she made to be reconciled were utterly in vain; a cool, determined indifference met and repulsed all her advances; advances which she afterwards blushed to remember, and propitiated her wounded pride by increased haughtiness and reserve.

“It was hard to realise that he was her husband,” she thought, as very, very bitter tears welled up into her eyes. With what distant politeness and formality he treated her! If he unintentionally touched her, or brushed against her, he apologised as ceremoniously as if she were a stranger. He treated her as such, even though he had promised to be her friend. What would she not give to recall the reception she had given him? Too late to think of that now! he had taken her at her word—they were strangers. How would it all end? No matter what occurred, she could not well be more miserable than she was—a despised, disowned, detested wife!