A Young Man's Year. Hope Anthony
actually, if without intention, maintaining a barrier round his inner self, refusing to abandon the protective aloofness of a proud and sensitive nature. Was he changing from this to the opposite extreme – to that most open, intimate, exposed, and unprotected creature, a lover? Well as she had known him, she had not thought of him as that. But her mind fastened on the idea eagerly; it appealed to more than one side of her nature.
"As a rule I just can't talk about myself," he said once. "How is it that I can to you?"
"It's because I love you, and in your heart you know it," she wanted to say, but she answered, laughing, "I've always been rather a good listener."
"If you tell most people a single thing about yourself, they bombard you with a dozen silly questions. Now you never do that."
"That's because I'm afraid of you, if you only knew it," she wanted to say, but she answered merrily, "I find out more by my way in the end, don't I?"
For every step forward his feelings had taken, hers had taken ten. She knew it and was not ashamed; she gloried in it. From the moment she had come over to his side, making herself his champion and asking for his gratitude in return, her heart had brooked no compromise. Hers was a mind quick of decision, prompt in action. To romance she brought the qualities of business. A swift rush of feeling had carried her to the goal; she watched him now following in her steps, and was tremulously careful not to anticipate by an iota the stages he had yet to pass. She marvelled that she had not loved him from the beginning, and almost convinced herself that she had. She could scarcely persuade herself to accept even now the signs of his nascent love.
Thus in truth, though all unknown to him, she did the wooing. Her answer was ready before his question. She watched and waited with a passivity that was to a man of his disposition her best lure. Some of this fine caution she learnt from her observation of him, and some of it from Sidney Barslow's taunt. She subdued her natural coquetry lest, even in eyes the most unfriendly and malicious, it should seem forwardness. She gave always just a little, little less than his words and eyes asked. Schooling herself after this fashion, modelling her behaviour to what she conceived to be his ideals, she sought to win him. If she succeeded she would achieve not only her heart's desire, but a great triumph over those disturbing doubts. His approval would, she felt, set on her the stamp that she longed to wear – the social diploma to which she aspired. A fine slap in the face for Sidney Barslow it would be, for instance!
Arthur's generous impulse, the desire to show himself a warm and grateful friend to his champion, was merged now in a great and absorbing contentment. It prevented him from considering how an engagement and a marriage would consort with his prospects and his career; it narrowed his vision of his own life and mind to the present moment. He had got what he had been pining for – that intimate and (so to say) ministering sympathy which a man perhaps can get, and certainly can ask, from a woman only. That had been a need so great that its satisfaction seemed to satisfy all the needs of his being, and deluded him into thinking that all his instincts and aspirations asked no more than this, that his keen appetite for beauty could be fed on her vivacious prettiness, that all his impulses, wayward, fanciful, sometimes extravagant, could be lulled to sleep by the spell of her shrewd and pleasant common sense. It made him forget that the prime function of a lover and his supreme expression lie in giving, and that the woman truly makes the man in love with her when she makes him give all he has and think that he is giving brass for gold. But if this it is to be a lover, Arthur Lisle was no lover now; if this it is to be a lover, Marie Sarradet had never seen and scarce imagined one.
But the spring sunshine, the impulses of youth, the ministering sympathy blinded his eyes. He seemed to have all because he liked so much that which he had. Gaily and happily, with that fine gallantry which she so admired, on he came, step by step. She grew secure.
By now father and brother were on the alert. They had canvassed the matter in all its bearings. Raymond was Arthur's enthusiastic adherent. Old Mr. Sarradet affected reserve and doubt; he complained that the suitor was far from rich. But in his heart he was delighted at the prospect. He admired Arthur, he believed in his abilities, he thought the marriage would be a "step up" for his darling daughter – and perhaps for her family. Above all he saw the time draw near when he should enjoy the greatest pleasure that he had to look forward to in life – surprising Marie by the handsome dimensions of her dowry. He hugged the thought of it; he loved her, and he knew she was a good woman of business. It would be a great moment when she saw in him, at one and the same moment, a more munificent father and a cleverer man of business than ever she had thought. Incidentally the disclosure might cause Master Raymond to realise what very considerable things he stood to lose if he did not mind what he was about. The old fellow had no real thought of disinheriting his son, but he loved the power his money gave him, and would now and again flourish the sword that he would have been most loth to use.
So all things promised bravely – Marie, the tender diplomatist, held a winning hand and was playing it well. Leave her to the skill that her heart taught her, and the game was won!
Among the accidents of life are relatives appurtenant to but ordinarily outside of the family circle. Mr. Sarradet owned one – an elder sister – in his eyes, by early memory and tradition, exceptionally endowed with the knowledge of the way to look after girls, and the proper things to be done in the interest of their dignity and virtue. She came up from Manchester, where she lived, to have her teeth seen to – not that there were not excellent dentists in Manchester, but her father had always gone to Mr. Mandells of Seymour Street and she had a fancy to go to Mr. Mandells's son (of Seymour Street still) – and stayed with her brother from Friday to Tuesday. Having seen what she saw, and had her doubts, and come to her own conclusions, she sat up late on Monday night, sat up till Arthur Lisle had departed and Marie was between the sheets, and even Raymond had yawned himself on to bed; and then she said abruptly to her brother Mr. Sarradet:
"It's a settled thing, I suppose, though it's not announced yet?"
Mr. Sarradet passed his hand over his hair-brush of a head, and pulled his moustache perplexedly. "I suppose it is," he answered lamely, quite conscious that Mrs. Veltheim possessed knowledge and commanded deference, but conscious also that, up to now, matters had gone on very well without her.
"You suppose!" said the lady. The two words carried home to a conscience hitherto guiltily easy. But Mrs. Veltheim left nothing to chance; she rammed the charge in. "If dear Marie had a mother!"
She alarmed the cautious old bourgeois– to the point of protesting that he felt no alarm whatever.
"He's a gentleman." He took a sip at his toddy. "No girl in the world has more self-respect." Another sip ended in "Perfect confidence!" vaguely murmured.
"Young men are young men."
"Not at all! I don't believe it of him for a minute." His protest was against the insinuation which even an identical proposition may carry.
"I rescued my Harriet just in time!"
"Damn your Harriet, and I wish you'd go back to Manchester!" It was not what he said to his respected sister. "Cases differ," was the more parliamentary form his answer took.
But the seed was sown before Mrs. Veltheim did go back to Manchester. It germinated in the cautious suspicious soul of the old shopkeeper, so trustful of a man's credit till the breath of a suspicion blew upon it, then so acute to note every eddying current of the air. He grew minded to confront Arthur Lisle with the attitude of Mrs. Veltheim – a lady for whom Arthur, on the strength of one evening's acquaintance, had conceived a most profound aversion.
She was a fat woman – broad, heavy, fair and florid, married to an exceedingly prosperous German. To Mr. Sarradet her opinion was, like her person, weighty; not always agreeable, but never unimportant. To Arthur she was already – before ever he had conceived of her as having or being entitled to have an opinion about him, his sentiments, or his intentions – an appreciable drawback, though not a serious obstacle, to the alliance which he was contemplating. He was, in fine, extremely glad that she and her husband, whom he defined and incarnated with all his imagination's power of vividness, lived in Manchester. If they too had dwelt in Regent's Park, it would not have been the same place to him. Collateral liabilities would have lurked round every corner.
By now, and notwithstanding