Robert Orange. John Oliver Hobbes
three met at the house of an irreproachable Marchesa. They became friends. Miss Carillon's aunt, who was a maiden lady with means, succumbed to the fascinating eloquence of an amateur connoisseur of antique gems. In her new character of fiancée, she found it inconvenient to chaperon a young niece. She joined a widowed friend, and gladly assented to the suggestion that dear Agnes should visit Mrs. Rennes in Paris. The Bishop saw no impediment to the plan. He had been at Oxford with the late Archibald Rennes, an odd fellow but high-minded. Mrs. Rennes was the daughter of a General Hughes-Drummond. Every one knew the Hughes-Drummonds. They were very good people indeed. The Bishop hoped that Agnes would enjoy herself, give her kind friend as little trouble as possible, and come home fully restored in spirits. He forgot David. It may be that others omitted to mention him. The Bishop was not pleased when the rumour reached him that this artist was included in the party. What were his habits? What were his prospects? Were his artistic talents such that he might reasonably hope to become a Royal Academician and maintain an establishment? What class of pictures did he paint? Were they lofty in tone? Did they exalt and purify the mind? Would they make good engravings—such engravings as one might hang on one's walls? The correspondence and the questions were endless. David spent a week end at the Episcopal Palace, and behaved so well that he became frightened at his own capabilities for John Bullism. He was a little annoyed, too, to find himself at ease in a British home circle. The Bishop was, at all events, satisfied. Agnes was enchanted, and, transfigured by unconscious passion, looked more beautiful than ever. David enjoyed the services in the cathedral; he liked the quiet Sunday afternoon, he was impressed by Dr. Carillon's real earnestness in the pulpit. The visit was a great success. Before he left, he begged Agnes to write to him “when she could spare the time.” The young man had tried everything except a Platonic friendship with a lovely girl. He fancied that he found in Agnes Carillon that purity coupled with magnetism which makes such experiments attractive. They corresponded regularly, but they did not meet again for several months. When he returned, a little tired of platonism, letter-writing, intellectuality, and longing a great deal for the sight of her face, he found her engaged to Lord Reckage. So nature revenges itself. He detected a certain triumph and also a certain deep reproach in her gaze. She insisted that she was more than happy, but something under these words seemed to murmur—“You have spoilt our lives.” Her manner, nevertheless, never altered. She was invariably sympathetic, gracious, delicately emotional. In letters she signed herself, “Yours affectionately, Agnes Carillon.”
“How I should like to paint you in this light!” he said, all at once. “That is the dress I love best. Don't wear it often.” The remark was slight enough as a pretty speech within the bounds of flirtation, but the tone in which he uttered it meant more, and the girl's womanly instinct told her that the dangerous limit in their “friendship” had been reached. He saw her turn pale. She looked away from him, and swallowed thoughts which were far more bitter than any words she could have spoken.
“You never used to say these things,” she exclaimed at last; “why do you say them now?”
“I thought them—always,” he answered. “But I am a Pagan. I tried to keep my Paganism for others, and what you would call ‘the best in me’ for you. You may be able to understand. Anyhow, I made a mistake—a terrible mistake. It was a false position, and I couldn't maintain it. Now I don't even want to maintain it. Then it was a kind of vanity. I mean that time when I was at the Palace. I had been reading a lot of beautiful unreal stuff about the soul. I thought I had reached a very high place. Of course I had—because nothing is higher or purer than real human love. But I wouldn't call it love. So I went abroad, and wrote any amount of ‘literature’ to you. And all the time Reckage was here—asking you, wisely enough, to marry him. And you, wisely enough, accepted him.”
Agnes sat still, with her eyes down, cold, silent, forbidding. She did not understand him. She had neither the knowledge of life, nor the imagination, which could make such understanding possible. But she saw in his look that he loved her, that he was unhappy. She knew that Reckage had never shown so much feeling. Yet had she not given her word to Reckage? Was it not irrevocable? Was Rennes behaving well in speaking out—too late? Was it too late? A torrent of questions poured into her mind. She dragged off her gloves, and spread out her hands, which were slim and white, and stared at her sapphire engagement ring.
“A weak man submits to destiny,” said Rennes, “a strong one makes his own. It is what we think of ourselves which determines our fate. If I regard myself as a poor creature, I shall, no doubt, act the part of a poor creature. But,” he added, with an ironical smile, “it is never too late to give up one's prejudices. I can't stand by and look on any longer. I intend to leave England for some years. I hope we may never meet again. Don't answer me, because there is nothing for you to say. You have been perfectly kind, perfectly charming, perfectly consistent. You have never deceived me and you have never deceived yourself.”
She interrupted him:
“I hope not. Oh, I hope I have never deceived myself—or you.”
“I was grateful for your friendship,” he said. “I can't be grateful for it now.”
Agnes drew a long breath and murmured random words about the “time.” Was it getting late?
“Yes,” replied Rennes, “too late. Did I ever tell you why my father, with all his prospects, became a drawing-master? He told me that he had suffered so much learning why he could never paint, nor hope to paint, that he was determined to devote his knowledge to the service of apprentices. It seemed to him such an awful thing to mistake one's vocation. Now I feel that one of us—perhaps both of us, you and I, are doing even a worse thing. We are deliberately throwing happiness to the dogs.”
“I don't think so,” said Agnes, in a trembling voice. “There is duty, you know; that is something higher than happiness, I believe.”
“Are you so sure?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I envy you. I don't even know what you mean by duty. It seems to me another name for the tyranny of false sentiment.”
“Don't disturb my ideas,” she exclaimed, with an appealing gesture. “Don't say these things. They make me wretched. I can't afford to doubt and question. One must have a few permanent rules of conduct.”
“But if they are fantastic, capricious, insincere?”
“I can't argue. I am not clever. I will not change my views. I dare not. It would make me hate you.”
“You are the slave of convention.”
“That may be. That is safer, after all, than being the slave of some other will stronger than my own. Why do you try to disturb my life—now—after so many really happy months of friendship?”
“Were they so happy? Agnes, were they happy?”
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said, at last; “relatively, yes.”
“It is quite true. Good women drive us to the bad ones.”
“Oh! what can you mean? Surely we are saying too much. We shall reproach ourselves later. I live, again and again, through one conversation. The phrases come into my mind with every possible shade of significance.”
She pushed back her hat, and pressed her hand to her brow, which was contracting nervously as she spoke.
“I don't wish to be altered by any change in principle,” she continued, “nor distracted, from my plain obligations, into other interests. I daresay I sound quite heartless and odd. I daresay you won't like me any more.” Her voice faltered, but her lips remained precise. “But one must know one's mind—one must. You don't know yours; that is the whole trouble, David.”
She had never called him by his Christian name before, and now the forced sternness of her tone gave it almost the accent of a farewell.
“Perhaps we have helped each other,” she went on; “at all events, you have taught me how to look at things. You are clever and original and all that. I am rather commonplace,