To-morrow? Part 23

"Yes. I have just said so."

My hand closed involuntarily on the back of the chair till the basket-work creaked. She heard it, and felt perhaps, also, the sudden tension in the arm beneath her head. She raised her eyes with a gleam of the old desire in them: they were soft, and her voice was gentle, with out any mockery in it now, as she said,--

"I am excessively sorry about it, Victor, but you may trust me. I will give you some certain date the moment I can, when I am better. You can't think I would voluntarily defer it, do you?"

The whole lovely, inert form heaved a little as she spoke; the eyelids and nostrils in the up-turned face quivered, the lips parted, and, convinced, I bent over her with a hurried, desperate murmur.

"No! no! But, then, when? How long? Is it days, weeks, or the end of the season?"

"Yes; I should think about the end. I can not fix it nearer. It is bad taste to press me any farther."

She lifted her head from my arm and sat up right, though even then, after a minute, her figure drooped languidly towards the side of the chair, and she doubled one of her white, round arms on the wicker-work to form a support. I stood silent, irritated, disappointed, perplexed, biting my lips in nervous, absent-mindedness. She spoke twice to me without my hearing what her words were, and I had to apologise.

"I was only saying I should like you to see the "Death of Hyacinthus"

now it is finished: see the result of last year's efforts and the cause of this year's ill-health!"

"Certainly; I want to see it very much. When may I?"

"To-morrow, if you like, but I want you to see the Academy first. I should like you to come to it prejudiced, with your eyes full of all the successful pictures of the year."

"Is it not at the Academy, Lucia?"

"Don't look so apprehensive!" she said, with a slight laugh. "It has not been rejected--simply, I could not get it finished in time for presentation. I was ill, and it just missed this season by a very little."

"And now, what are you going to do with it?"

"I must offer it next year, that's all."

"What a disappointment for you!"

"Yes, I should have thought so some time ago; but I seem to be much more apathetic now to everything. Each year that one lives one gets to expect less and less from life, and one grows more philosophic, more contented with what is thrown in one's way, and less disappointed when one's hopes and expectations are not realised. Judging by those things which we do gain and enjoy and experience the worth lessness of, I suppose we learn by degrees to infer that others so longed-for and coveted would prove as valueless if possessed."

Her voice was low and tired, and had the sound of suppressed tears in it.

"You are in a depressed frame of mind," I said.

"Yes;" then, with a cynical smile, "hysteric, as I told you. Well, will you come to-morrow about eleven, and then afterwards we can come back here to criticise 'Hyacinthus'?"

"Yes; I shall be delighted."

"I think mama is going to take our carriage, so come in yours, will you?"

"Very good," I answered, and there was a long silence. Not broken, in fact, until there was the stir of some of the guests leaving.

As the third or fourth left the room, I came round and took her hand as I stood in front of her.

"Good-night, Lucia, I hope you may be granted all the sleep you have stolen from me," I said gently; then, partly influenced by the contact of that delicious hand, and prompted by my own impulse, and partly deliberately to excite, if possible, her own instincts as allies to fight for me, I pressed it hard as I added,--

"On how many more nights is this hated formula, 'Good-night,' to be said between us? Minimise them, my darling, for my sake!"

Into the tone I allowed to enter all the strength of my feelings at the moment. She only coloured painfully up to the heavy eyes, whether from confusion or pleasure or pa.s.sion I could not tell. She made no answer, and the soft, captive hand struggled faintly to be free.

We were surrounded the next instant by the press of talking, laughing guests pa.s.sing down to the door, and I could do nothing but drop her hand and leave her with a composed face, and my brain feeling literally on fire. The perplexity, mystery, uncertainty, and irritation which Lucia's illness and manner had poured suddenly in upon the elation, the a.s.sured triumph, the excited expectations and eager desire with which I had come, produced a state of thought in which I hardly recognised my reasoning being.

I made my way over to Mrs. Grant with the conventional smile, and then, once without the drawing-room, hurried down to the door and the night air. In the hall I recognised, standing waiting for his carriage, a familiar figure. It was a man I had known intimately in India: he was home now on furlough, and as friends we were often invited to the same houses.

"I say, d.i.c.k," I said, as I came up to him, "it's a lovely night. Are you game for a walk? If so, send the carriage home and come with me round to my place. I want your advice and condolences."

We were at the foot of the stairs. The other men and women had collected nearer the door.

"Condolences! Why, yesterday you told me congratulations were the order of the day!" he answered in a tone of good-natured raillery.

"They are so no longer," I answered, gloomily. "My head is simply splitting too. I can't think where I get these confounded headaches," I muttered, pus.h.i.+ng the hair up off my forehead, and wis.h.i.+ng I could push off some of the oppressing ideas. "Are you coming with me, d.i.c.k?"

He looked at me attentively, and possibly seeing the excitement I tried to suppress, and the flush it drove to my face, he debated my sobriety.

I think he came to the right conclusion, for the next moment he said,--

"Yes; I'll come. Just let me get my over coat and tell the coachman."

I had the same thing to do, and we met a second or two later at the bottom of the steps, and turned to walk towards my place. As we walked down the street he slipped his arm in mine and said,--

"You seem frightfully upset. What has happened?"

"That's just what I want to know!" I answered. "If I knew I should not so much mind, but this is what I hate about women, they never will speak out nor come to the point. It is the one great fault of the s.e.x.

I despise it utterly. It can do no good, and it is most annoying and irritating to a person who has a right to confidence."

"My dear fellow," he said, soothingly, "you can't expect your fiancee, if that's what you mean, to be so uncommonly direct in speech as you are! You have a way of very much going to the point in everything, but you won't find it in other people, even throwing women out of the question."

"What is the use of wrapping things up in mystery? But women delight in it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by hints, suggestions, ambiguous terms, allusions, phrases that may mean anything or nothing, and then leave at the end, in obscurity, the whole matter, which could have been explained and made perfectly clear and settled on a satisfactory basis in a few short sentences. It's a petty, abominable trait in their character."

d.i.c.k raised his eyebrows considerably.

"She has offended, evidently," he said.

"Offended? She simply tortured me all this evening, either intentionally or involuntarily. She said too little and too much. And her manner was worse than her words. I could not make out whether she was telling me the truth or a series of delicate excuses; she herself did not calculate on my believing. Everything she said to-night, if proved false, she might justify to-morrow by saying, 'Oh, well, of course, I never thought you would take that seriously; I thought you would understand that was a euphemism to save your feelings, and so on; you know one does not say to a person's face one is tired of him and wishes the thing off.' That is what she may say afterwards, or, of course, what she told me may be the truth. It may be an excuse that sounds like the truth, or the truth that sounds like an excuse. She contrived to leave it confoundedly indistinct, and that is what I complain of."

"You haven't given me any clue yet as to what the conversation was,"

d.i.c.k said quietly as we paced down the silent street.

My head seemed reeling with pain and the blood that flowed to it. The moonlight, and the black shadows it deepened, jumped together before my eyes.

"The accursed upshot of it was that she won't have anything to do with our marriage at present," I returned.

"Oh! And what reason did she a.s.sign?"

"After considerable hesitation she said her health; but, as I say, she would not speak out, and such an excuse between us is monstrous!"

"After considerable hesitation she said her health; but, as I say, she would not speak out, and such an excuse between us is monstrous! Ours is not a formal 'mariage de convenance;' it lies with ourselves. She is obviously not seriously ill; if she hesitates on her own account she must know she has nothing to fear from me; if she hesitates on mine, then it is folly and nonsense. I don't care about anything! I don't care what is the matter with her, I would marry her if she were dying, rotting of leprosy to-morrow!"