"You speak feelingly, Claud," she said.

"Do I?" said the young man. He lowered his eyes to the carpet, and blushed, smiling a little.

"Claud!" vehemently cried his sister, "you are in love!"

"If I am, it is with my eyes open. I am not a boy, Mab."

"No, indeed; but who can she be. Won't you tell me, dear?"

"I can't tell you, because I'm afraid I am in the ign.o.ble case of loving without return. You see," he faltered, "there is nothing very heroic about me--nothing that I ever said or did, as far as I know, would ent.i.tle me to the slightest respect from any woman with a high standard.

Look at my life. What have I done with it? Just nothing. Why, Kathleen mavourneen," cried he, diving down to the rug, and catching the warm white child in his arms, "the most onerous of my duties has been to carry you up to bed on my shoulder, hasn't it?"

"Claud, my dear old man, you mustn't! Why, what an untold comfort you have been to me when Edwar--when I could not have lived but for you!"

cried Mab, the tears splashing on her cheeks. "I envy your wife! She will have the most constant, loving care of any woman under heaven--you will be an ideal husband--the longer she is married the better she will learn to appreciate you!"

"I never shall have a wife at all, Mab, if I cannot get this one," said Claud, with a ring of determination in his voice which was quite new.

Lady Mabel contemplated him for a moment.

"Is she rich, Claud?"

"No," said he, laughing a little.

"So I expected. Trust you never to love a rich woman. You would sit down and a.n.a.lyse your feelings till you became perfectly certain that some greed of gain mingled with your affection. But, my dear boy, forgive the pathos of the inquiry, but how should you propose to set up housekeeping?"

"I should take a post--cut the Bar and take a post."

"Charming, but who will offer the post?"

"A friend of mine," was the mysterious reply.

"Percivale, of course. Well, I suppose he has influence. Poor fellow! I could wish him to have a happier future than seems to me to lie before him."

"Tell you, Mab, you take too serious a view. I will sketch his married career for you. The first six weeks will be bliss unutterable, because he will himself turn on his own rose-colored light upon everything and everybody, and his bride will be beautiful, amiable, and pa.s.sive. Then will come a disillusioning, sharp and bitter. He will be most fearfully upset for a time, there will be a period of blank horror, of astonishment, of incredulity, almost of despair. Then will dawn the period when the bridegroom will discover that his wife is neither the angel he first took her for, nor the fiend she afterwards seemed, but a very middling, earthly young person, with youth and beauty in her favor.

Once wide awake from the dream that was to have lasted for ever, he will pull himself together, and find life first tolerable, then pleasant; but for the remainder of his days he will never be in love with his wife again, even for a moment. Now in my case----"

He had never mentioned his love before to anyone; in fact, until last night's talk with Percivale he had scarcely been sure of it himself. To use his own metaphor, his friend had stirred the smouldering hot coals, and they had burst into blaze at last. The earth and air were full of Wynifred. The end of life seemed at present to consist in the fact that she was coming to dine that night.

His sister's thoughts still ran on Percivale.

"Claud," she said, "do you really think it will be as bad as that?"

"More or less, I am afraid so. He is a man with such a very high ideal--with a rect.i.tude of purpose, a purity of motive which do not belong to our century. Miss Brabourne _must_ disappoint him. But she is very young, and one can never prophesy exactly ... marriage sometimes alters a girl completely, and his nature is such a strong one, it must influence hers. I think she is a little in awe of him, which is an excellent thing; though how long such awe will last when she discovers that his marital att.i.tude is sheer prostration before her, I cannot tell. Besides, he does not really require that she shall love him, only that she shall permit him to love her as much as he will; at present, at least, such an arrangement will just suit her."

As he spoke the words, the door opened to admit Elsa herself.

She entered, looking such a picture of girlish grace and sweetness as more than accounted for Percivale's subjugation. She wore the semi-cla.s.sic robe of white and gold, in which Mr. Miles had chosen to paint her; and, as it was an evening dress, she had covered her shoulders with a long white cloak, lined with palest green silk.

"Oh!" she stopped short, laughing. "Good-morning, Mr. Cranmer! I did not know you were here. I feel so crazy, dressed up like this in broad daylight. I wonder if I might be rude enough to ask you to turn out for a few minutes? I want to speak to Lady Mabel."

CHAPTER XLII.

He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That fears to put it to the touch To win or lose it all!

_Marquess of Montrose._

Lady Mabel's dinner-party was a very cultured but also a somewhat unconventional one. Twelve was the number of guests, and all of them were young, lively, and either literary, scientific, artistic, or otherwise professional.

Wynifred had been invited, as Jacqueline's penetration had divined, solely on the score of "Cicely Montfort's" success.

If there was one thing that Lady Mabel loved, it was a gathering of this sort: where everything imaginable was discussed, from anthropomorphism to the growing of tobacco in England--from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the latest _opera bouffe_. The relations of her ladyship's husband would have had a fit could they have peeped from the heights of their English starch and propriety at the _mixed_ company in Bruton Street. But, not greatly to his wife's regret, Colonel Wynch-Frere's health had entailed a sojourn in Egypt for the winter, and his relations were conspicuous by their absence. Claud, her unconventional, happy-go-lucky brother, made all the host she required. However little he might care for the young actors and journalists who adored his sister, he was always genially ready to shake hands and profess himself glad to see them; and when his eldest brother, the earl, complained to him of Mabel's vagaries, he would merely placidly reply that he did not see why the poor girl should not have some pleasure in her life--let her take it how she pleased.

Her ladyship was, of course, a holder of that unwritten axiom which governs modern culture, _Intelligence implies infidelity_.

If she met anyone who had read, or thought, on any subject whatever, she took it for granted that they had decided that the gospels were spurious, and St. Paul, as Festus discovered, beside himself. Of course she, in common with everyone else equally enlightened, kindly conceded the extreme beauty of the gospel narrative and the great force of St.

Paul's reasoning on false premises--as furnishing a kind of excuse to those people who had ignorantly accepted them as a Divine message for so long.

The great charm of holding these opinions was that she found so many to sympathise with her, and she had invited a selection of these to dinner that night, sure that the conversation would be most interesting and instructive. Concerning Wynifred's views on this point she had no definite knowledge. "Cicely Montfort" spoke of Christianity as still a vital force, and of the Church Catholic as bearing a Divine charter to the end of time; but, of course, Christianity is a very artistic theme, with highly dramatic possibilities, and the most utter unbeliever may use it effectively to suit the purposes of fiction. Anyway, Lady Mabel's breadth of view constrained her to hope the best--to expect enlightenment until ignorance and superst.i.tion had been openly avowed; so she invited Miss Allonby to dinner.

Her pretty drawing-room was as complete as taste could make it; she herself was a study, as she stood on the fur hearth-rug, receiving her friends, with all her Irish grace of manner.

Wynifred was in anything but high spirits when she arrived. To begin with, she was overworked. In her anxiety to render Osmond independent, she had been taxing her strength to its utmost limits all the winter through. In the next place, she was angry with herself for having accepted the invitation; she thought that it showed a want of proper pride on her part. Finally she was very unhappy over herself, on account of her utter failure to drive the thought of Claud Cranmer from her heart. Her self-control seemed gone. She had exacted too much from the light heart of girlhood--had employed her powers of concentration too unsparingly. Now the mainspring had suddenly failed; she felt weak and frightened.

What was to be done if her hold over herself should give way altogether?

A nervous dread was upon her. If her old power over her feelings was gone, on what could she depend? All the way to Bruton Street she was calling up her pride, her maidenliness, everything she could think of to sustain her; yet all the time with a secret consciousness that it was like applying the spur to a jaded horse--sooner or later she must stumble, and fall exhausted.

She looked worn and pale as she entered the room. Claud took note of it.

Had he been on the brink of falling in love, it might have checked him; but, as he was already hopelessly in that condition, it merely inspired him with tenderness unutterable. It no longer mattered to him whether she were plain or pretty, youthful or worn; whatever she was, he loved her.

It so happened that she was obliged, after just greeting him, to take a seat at the further side of the room, and politeness forced him to continue the discussion on Swinburne into which he had been drawn by the last new poetess, a pretty little woman with soft eyes and a hard mouth, who was living separated from her husband, but most touchingly devoted to her two children. She was a spiritualist, and had written a book to prove that Shakespeare was of the same following, so that her conversation was, as will be divined, deeply interesting.

Wyn, for a few minutes, sat without speaking to anybody, taking in her surroundings gradually. It seemed as if things were on a different footing--as if all were changed since the old days at Edge. Claud, in his simple faultless evening attire, with his smooth fair head under the light of a yellow silk lamp-shade, and the last new book balanced carelessly between his fingers as he leaned forward in his low chair, was in some indefinable way a different Claud from him who had stood with her in the garden of Poole Farm in the glowing twilight of the early summer night, which had brought back life to Osmond.

The room was a ma.s.s of little luxuries--trifles too light and various to be describable, all the nameless elegancies of modern life, with its superfluities, its pretence of intellect, its discriminating taste. It was not exactly the impression of great wealth which was conveyed--that, as a rule, is self-a.s.sertive. Here the arrangement was absolutely unconscious; there was no display, it was rather a total ignorance of the value of money--the result of a condition of life where poverty in detail was unknown. Lady Mabel had often experienced the want of money, but that meant money in large quant.i.ties; she had been called upon to forego a London season; she had never felt it necessary to deny herself a guinea's-worth of hot-house flowers.

Wynifred sat in the circle of delicate light, feeling in every fibre of her nature the rest and delight of her surroundings. The craving for beautiful things, for ease and luxury, always so carefully smothered, was wide awake to-night. Lady Mabel seemed environed in an atmosphere of her own. The short skirts and thick boots which she had used in Devonshire were things of the past. Her thick white silk gown swept the rug at her feet, her emeralds flashed, her clumps of violets made the air sweet all round her. It was something alien from the seamy side of life which the girl knew so well. That very day she had travelled along Holborn, in an omnibus, weary but hopeful, from an interview with her publisher. Now the idea of that dingy omnibus, of the yellow fog, muddy streets, dirty boots, and tired limbs;--of the lonely, ungirlish battling for independence, sent through her a weak movement of false shame. It was repented of as soon as felt; but the sting remained. It was not wise of her to visit in Bruton Street. What had she in common with Lady Mabel, or--Lady Mabel's brother? Her unpretentious black evening dress, though it fitted well, and showed up the delicate skin which was one of her definite attractions, seemed to belong to a lower order of things than the mist of lace, silk, sparkles, and faint perfume which clad her hostess.

No, she was not wise, she told herself, in the perturbation of her spirits. What besides discontent could she achieve here?

This unhappy frame of mind lasted about a quarter-of-an-hour. Then she began to call herself to order. Lady Mabel's attention was diverted by a young man who was yearning to rave with her over the priceless depths of truth revealed in the latest infidel romance, and the fearless manner in which the devoted author had stripped Christianity of its superst.i.tions, to give it to the world in all its uninspired simplicity. Like the auth.o.r.ess of the book in question, Lady Mabel had imbibed her Strauss and her Hegel somewhat late in life, as well as a good deal late in her century. Doctrines burst upon her with all the force of novelty which, in the year 1858, a champion of Christianity had been able calmly to describe as "a cla.s.s of objections which were very popular a few years ago, and are not yet entirely extinguished."

The calm disapproval with which Miss Allonby found that it was natural to listen to the two speakers restored to her a little of her waning self-respect. A wave of peace crept into her soul. Social distinctions seemed very small when coupled with the thought of that divinity so lightly discussed and rejected in this pretty drawing-room. A movement at her side interrupted her thoughts. Claud had moved to the seat next her.

"I wonder how you like Belfont in 'The Taming of the Shrew?'" he said, as though purposely to turn her attention from what she could not avoid hearing.