Red Pottage Part 20

"No. It generally needs to be a magnifying-gla.s.s to see a woman's friends.h.i.+p, and then they are only expedients till we arrive, d.i.c.k. You need not he jealous of Miss Gresley. Miss West will forget all about her when she is Mrs. Vernon."

"She does not seem very keen about that," said d.i.c.k, grimly. "I'm only marking time. I'm no forwarder than I was."

"Well, it's your own fault for fixing your affections on a woman who is not anxious to marry. She has no objection to you. It is marriage she does not like."

"Oh, that's bos.h.!.+" said d.i.c.k. "All women wish to be married, and if they don't they ought to."

He felt that an invidious reflection had been east on Rachel.

"All the same, a man with one eye can see that women with money, or anything that makes them independent of us, don't flatter us by their alacrity to marry us. They will make fools of themselves for love--none greater--and they will marry for love. But their different att.i.tude towards us, their natural lords and masters, directly we are no longer necessary to them as stepping-stones to a home and a recognized position, revolts me. If you had taken my advice at the start, you would have made up to one among the mob of women who are dependent on marriage for their very existence. If a man goes into that herd he will not be refused. And if he is it does not matter. It is the blessed custom of piling everything on to the eldest son, and leaving the women of the family almost penniless, which provides half of us with wives without any trouble to ourselves. Whatever we are, they have got to take us. The average dancing young woman living in luxury in her father's house is between the devil and the deep sea. We are frequently the devil; but it is not surprising that she can't face the alternative--a poverty to which she was not brought up, and in which she has seen her old spinster aunts. But I suppose in your case you really want the money?"

d.i.c.k looked rather hard at Lord Newhaven.

"I should not have said that unless I had known it to be a lie,"

continued the latter, "because I dislike being kicked. But, d.i.c.k, listen to me. You have not," with sudden misgiving, "laid any little matrimonial project before her this evening, have you?"

"No; I was not quite such a fool as that."

"Well! Such things do occur. Moonlight, you know, etc. I was possessed by a devil once, and proposed by moonlight, as all my wife's friends know, and probably her maid. But, seriously, d.i.c.k, you are not making progress, as you say yourself."

"Well!" rather sullenly.

"Well, on-lookers see most of the game. Miss West may--I don't say she is--but if things go on as they are for another week she may become slightly bored. That was why I joined you at supper. She had had, for the time, enough."

"Of me?" said d.i.c.k, reddening under his tan.

"Just so. It is a matter of no importance after marriage, but it should be avoided beforehand. Are you really in earnest about this?"

d.i.c.k delivered himself slowly and deliberately of certain plat.i.tudes.

"Well, I hope I shall hear you say all that again some day in a condensed form before a clergyman. In the meanwhile--"

"In the meanwhile I had better clear out."

"Yes; I don't enjoy saying so in the presence of my own galantine and mayonnaise, but that is it. Go, and--come back."

"If you have a Bradshaw," said d.i.c.k, "I'll look out my train now. I think there is an express to London about seven in the morning, if you can send me to the station."

"But the post only comes in at eight."

"Well, you can send my letters after me."

"I dare say I can, my diplomatist. But you are not going to leave till the post has arrived, when you will receive business letters requiring your immediate presence in London. You are not going to let a woman know that you leave on her account."

"You are very sharp, Cackles," said d.i.c.k, drearily. "And I'll take a leaf out of your book and lie, if you think it is the right thing. But I expect she will know very well that the same business which took me to that infernal temperance meeting has taken me to London."

Rachel was vaguely relieved when d.i.c.k went off next morning. She was not, as a rule, oppressed by the attentions she received from young men, which in due season became "marked," and then resulted in proposals neatly or clumsily expressed. But she was disturbed when she thought of d.i.c.k, and his departure was like the removal of a weight, not a heavy, but still a perceptible one. For Rachel was aware that d.i.c.k was in deadly earnest, and that his love was growing steadily, almost unconsciously, was acc.u.mulating like snow, flake by flake, upon a mountain-side. Some day, perhaps not for a long time, but some day, there would be an avalanche, and, in his own language, she "would be in it."

CHAPTER XX

Si l'on vous a trahi, ce n'est pas la trahison qui importe; c'est le pardon qu'elle a fait naitre dans votre ame... . Mais si la trahison n'a pas accru la simplicite, la confiance plus haute, l'etendue de l'amour, on vous aura trahi bien inutilement, et vous pouvez vous dire qu'il n'est rien arrive.--MAETERLINCK.

Rachel and Hester were sitting in the shadow of the church-yard wall where Hester had so unfortunately fallen asleep on a previous occasion.

It was the first of many clandestine meetings. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley did not realize that Hester and Rachel wished to "talk secrets," as they would have expressed it, and Rachel's arrival was felt by the Gresleys to be the appropriate moment to momentarily lay aside their daily avocations, and to join Hester and Rachel in the garden for social intercourse. The Gresleys liked Rachel. Listeners are generally liked.

Perhaps also her gentle, una.s.suming manner was not an unpleasant change after the familiar nonchalance of the Pratts.

The two friends bore their fate for a time in inward impatience, and then, not without compunction, "practised to deceive." Certain obtuse persons push others, naturally upright, into eluding and outwitting them, just as the really wicked people, who give _viva voce_ invitations, goad us into creva.s.ses of lies, for which, if there is any justice anywhere, they will have to answer at the last day. Mr. Gresley gave the last shove to Hester and Rachel by an exhaustive harangue on what he called socialism. Finding they were discussing some phase of it, he drew up a chair and informed them that he had "threshed out" the whole subject.

"Socialism," he began, delighted with the polite resignation of his hearers, which throughout life he mistook for earnest attention.

"Community of goods. People don't see that if everything were divided up to-day, and everybody was given a s.h.i.+lling, by next week the thrifty man would have a sovereign, and the spendthrift would be penniless.

Community of goods is impossible as long as human nature remains what it is. But I can't knock that into people's heads. I spoke of it once to Lord Newhaven, after his speech in the House of Lords. I thought he was more educated and a shade less thoughtless than the idle rich usually are, and that he would see it if it was put plainly before him. But he only said my arguments were incontrovertible, and slipped away."

It was after this conversation, or rather monologue, that Hester and Rachel arranged to meet by stealth.

They were sitting luxuriously in the short gra.s.s, with their backs against the church-yard wall, and their hats tilted over their eyes.

"I wish I had met this Mr. d.i.c.k five or six years ago," said Rachel, with a sigh.

Hester was the only person who knew about Rachel's previous love disaster.

"d.i.c.k always gets what he wants in the long run," said Hester. "I should offer to marry him at once, if I were you. It will save a lot of trouble, and it will come to just the same in the end."

Rachel laughed, but not light-heartedly. Hester had only put into words a latent conviction of her own which troubled her.

"d.i.c.k is the right kind of man to marry," continued Hester, dispa.s.sionately. "What lights he has he lives up to. If that is not high praise, I don't know what is. He is good, but somehow his goodness does not offend one. One can condone it. And, if you care for such things, he has a thorough-going respect for women, which he carries about with him in a little patent safe of his own."

"I don't want to marry a man for his qualities and mental furniture,"

said Rachel, wearily. "If I did I would take Mr. d.i.c.k."

There was a short silence.

"I am sure," said Rachel at last, "that you do not realize how commonplace I am. You know those conventional heroines of second-rate novels, who love tremendously once, and then, when things go wrong, promptly turn into marble statues, and go through life with hearts of stone? Well, my dear, I am just like that. I know it's despicable. I have straggled against it. It is idiotic to generalize from one personal experience. I keep before my mind that other men are _not_ like _him_. I know they aren't, but yet--somehow I think they are. I am frightened."

Hester turned her wide eyes towards her friend.

"Do you still consider, after these four years, that _he_ did you an injury?"

Rachel looked out upon the mournful landscape. The weariness of midsummer was upon it. A heavy hand seemed laid upon the brow of the distant hills.

"I gave him everything I had," she said, slowly, "and he threw it away.

I have nothing left for any one else. Perhaps it is because I am naturally economical," she added, smiling faintly, "that it seems now, looking back, such a dreadful waste."

"Only in appearance, not in reality," said Hester. "It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless pa.s.sion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so.

Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, s.h.i.+rking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long-run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of all the reins.'"