Whatsoever a Man Soweth. Le Queux William
do you really mean to marry Ellice?” I asked seriously. “Is he – well, such a very particular friend?”
“He proposed to me a fortnight ago after the Jardines’ dance, and I refused him – I always refuse, you know,” and she smiled again.
She was as gay and merry as usual, yet there was about her face a look of strange anxiety that greatly puzzled me.
“Then you’ve had other offers?”
“Of course, but mostly from the undesirables. Oh! you would laugh if you could hear them laying open their hearts, as they call it,” she said gaily. “Why does a man call his love his secret – as though he’d committed some awful crime? It is most amusing, I can assure you. Mason and I have some good laughs over it very often.”
“But you surely don’t tell your maid such things?” I said, surprised, but knowing well her hoydenish spirit.
“Indeed I do. Mason enjoys the joke just as much as I do.”
“Ah! Tibbie,” I said reproachfully, “you are a sad breaker of men’s hearts! By Jove! you are so good-looking that if I didn’t know you I, too, should fall in love with you.”
“Why don’t you? That’s just what I want. Then we should marry and live happy ever after. It would be so delightful. I’d marry you to-morrow, dear old boy, if you wished,” she declared unblushingly.
“And regret it the day after,” I laughed. “Why, Tibbie, you know how horribly badly off the poor old governor left me – a bare thousand a year when all expenses of Netherdene are paid. The place is an absolute white elephant, shabby, worn out, dilapidated – certainly not the house to take a bride to. I haven’t been up there for nearly two years. A cotton-spinner in Oldham rents the shoot, and his cheque is always helpful.”
“Yes,” she remarked thoughtfully, gazing down upon the oak floor, “Netherdene certainly isn’t a very cheerful spot. It would make a nice home for incurables, or a lunatic asylum. Why don’t you try and form a company, or something in the City, and run it? Other fellows do.”
“What’s the use?” I asked. “I’m no hand at business; I only wish I were. Then I could make money. Now, I only wander about and spend it.”
“Well, you have a decent time, so what more can you want?” she asked, looking at me with those wonderful eyes that had caused many a man’s head to reel. “You ought, after all, to be satisfied, and thank your stars you’re not worse off.”
“You’re not satisfied yourself, even though you are one of the most popular girls in town?” I said. “You want a husband.”
“I shouldn’t want one if the mater gave me a decent allowance. I hate to be continually borrowing from Cynthia when the mater has plenty and Jack is throwing it away on the Stock Exchange. He’s always learning of good things from his friends, but they generally result in losses.”
A silence fell between us for some moments, broken only by the slow, solemn ticking of the long old clock near by.
“And so, Tibbie, you intend to marry Ellice!” I remarked at last, looking straight into her handsome face. Yes; after all, there was an indescribable sweetness in her manner, whatever the world might say regarding her.
“It’s a secret. I’ve told nobody; therefore you’ll not say a word, will you?”
“Certainly not. But I congratulate you. Winsloe is, I believe, a real good fellow, and I can only hope you will love him.”
“I shall learn to love him in time, I suppose,” she answered. “Look! there he is!”
And glancing down I saw the well-set-up figure, in drab tweeds with his gun across his shoulder, striding over the park, together with her brother Jack, my old friend Eric Domville, Lord Wydcombe, and several ladies of the house-party in shooting kit, followed by the keepers and dogs.
“Tibbie,” I said, seriously, turning to her. “You know we’ve known each other many years. I was your first sweetheart, and afterwards your friend. I am still your firm friend, and as such I may be permitted to give you a single word of advice – to urge you not to marry that man unless you really love him.”
“I know, my dear old Wilfrid,” she said, smiling prettily. “You are such a philosopher. You ought to have been a parson. Nowadays women don’t marry for love. They unfortunately put that away with their short skirts. They marry for convenience.”
And she gazed again out of the lead-lighted window.
“But is it wise of you? Remember I am still your platonic friend, and have every regard for your future happiness. To serve you I am always ready. That you know. Only command me, Tibbie.”
She hesitated for a moment, then turning to me with that strange, anxious look upon her countenance, an expression most unusual for her, she said in a low, intense voice, —
“I wonder if I might actually take you at your word, Wilfrid. I wonder if – if – ” and she hesitated, pursing her lips, and I saw that her hand trembled.
“Of course I’m always ready to assist you,” I said, somewhat surprised at her sudden change of manner.
“Ah! no!” she gasped, suddenly pale to the lips, a strange look of terror in her eyes. “My secret! I am very foolish. I cannot tell it to you – you of all men. It is too terrible. You would hate me!”
“Your secret!” I echoed. “What secret, Tibbie? Tell me?”
But she turned away from me, and covering her white face with her hands, burst into a flood of tears.
Chapter Two.
Reveals a Woman’s Secret
That evening, as I changed for dinner in the quaint old tapestried room, with its ancient carved four-poster and green silk hangings, I reflected deeply.
What, I wondered, was Tibbie’s secret?
That it was something she feared to reveal to me was quite plain, and yet were we not firm, confidential friends? It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell me, and to ask my help, yet on reflection she realised that her confession would estrange us. What could its nature possibly be?
Her manner had so entirely and quickly changed, that more than once I had wondered whether she had witnessed something, or seen some person from the window, and that the sight had struck terror into her heart. Was she conscience-stricken? I recollected how she had suddenly turned from the window, and how ashen her face had gone in a single instant.
What was her secret?
I, Wilfrid Hughes, confess that I admired her, though I was in no way a lady’s man. I was comparatively poor. I preferred to lead a wandering life as an independent bachelor, pursuing my favourite antiquarian studies, than to settling down to the humdrum existence of a country gentleman with the appended J.P. and D.L. after one’s name. I had just enough to make both ends meet, and while Netherdene was let I occupied, when not travelling on the Continent, a decently comfortable set of chambers in Bolton Street. My friend Tibbie Burnet was, without a doubt, one of the smartest unmarried girls in London, a woman whose utter disregard of all the laws of conventionality would ten years ago have shocked, but which, alas! now was regarded as the height of chic and smartness. Half-a-dozen times report had engaged her, but all rumours had proved false, while one could scarcely take up an illustrated paper without finding a photograph or paragraph concerning her. Hundreds of girls envied her, of course, therefore it was not after all surprising that evil tongues were ready to say bitter things of her. Every woman who is popular, be it in merry Mayfair or tattling Tooting, blasé Belgravia or busy Brixton, is sure to make a host of enemies. There is no more bitter enmity in this world of ours than the jealousy between woman and woman.
So I had always dismissed the stories I had heard in various quarters concerning Tibbie as unjust and untrue. One rumour, however, a strange, faint echo, had reached me in a curious roundabout way while staying at a country house up in Yorkshire, and of late it had caused me to pause and wonder