The silence that followed was embarra.s.sing to Harvey. He broke it by abruptly changing the subject.

'Have you practised long today?'

'No,' was the absent reply.

'I thought you looked rather tired, as if you had been working too hard.'

'Oh, I don't work too hard,' said Alma impatiently.

'Forgive me. I remember that it is a forbidden subject.'

'Not at all. You may ask _me_ anything you like about myself. I'm not working particularly hard just now; thinking a good deal, though.

Suppose you let me have your thoughts on the same subject. No harm. But I dare say I know them, without your telling me.'

'I hardly think you do,' said Rolfe, regarding her steadily. 'At all events'--his voice faltered a little--'I'm afraid you don't.'

'Afraid? Oh'--she laughed--'don't be afraid. I have plenty of courage, and quite enough obstinacy. It rather does me good when people show they have no faith in me.'

'You didn't understand,' murmured Harvey.

'Then make me understand,' she exclaimed nervously, moving in the chair as if about to stand up, but remaining seated and bent forward, her eyes fixed upon him in a sort of good-humoured challenge. 'I believe I know what you mean, all the time. You didn't discuss me with Mamma, as I suspected, but you think about me just as she does.--No, let me go on, then you shall confess I was right. You have no faith in my powers, to begin with. It seems to you very unlikely that an everyday sort of girl, whom you have met in society and know all about, should develop into a great artist. No faith--that's the first thing. Then you are so kind as to have fears for me--yes, it was your own word. You think that you know the world, whilst I am ignorant of it, and that it's a sort of duty to offer warnings.'

Harvey's all but angry expression, as he listened and fidgeted, suddenly stopped her.

'Well! Can you deny that these things are in your mind?'

'They are not in my mind at this moment, that's quite certain,' said Harvey bluntly.

'Then, what is?'

'Something it isn't easy to say, when you insist on quarrelling with me. Why do you use this tone? Do I strike you as a pedagogue, a preacher--something of that sort?'

His energy in part subdued her. She smiled uneasily.

'No. I don't see you in that light.'

'So much the better. I wanted to appear to you simply a man, and one who has--perhaps--the misfortune to see in _you_ only a very beautiful and a very desirable woman.'

Alma sat motionless. Her smile had pa.s.sed, vanishing in a swift gleam of pleasure which left her countenance bright, though grave. In the same moment there sounded again a rat-tat at the outer door. Through his whirling senses, Harvey was aware of the threatened interruption, and all but cursed aloud. That Alma had the same expectation appeared in her moving so as to a.s.sume a more ordinary att.i.tude; but she uttered the word that had risen to her lips.

'The misfortune, you call it?'

Harvey followed her example in disposing his limbs more conventionally; also in the tuning of his voice to something between jest and earnest.

'I said _perhaps_ the misfortune.'

'It makes a difference, certainly.' She smiled, her eyes turned to the door. '_Perhaps_ is a great word; one of the most useful in the language.--Don't you think so, Mamma?'

Mrs. Frothingham had just entered.

CHAPTER 11

The inconceivable had come to pa.s.s. By a word and a look Harvey had made real what he was always telling himself could never be more than a dream, and a dream of unutterable folly. Mrs. Frothingham's unconscious intervention availed him nothing; he had spoken, and must speak again.

For a man of sensitive honour there could be no trilling in such a matter as this with a girl in Alma Frothingham's position. And did he not rejoice that wavering was no longer possible?

This was love; but of what quality? He no longer cared, or dared, to a.n.a.lyse it. Too late for all that. He had told Alma that he loved her, and did not repent it; nay, hoped pa.s.sionately to hear from her lips the echoed syllable. It was merely the proof of madness. A shake of the head might cure him; but from that way to sanity all his blood shrank.

He must consider; he must be practical. If he meant to ask Alma to marry him, and of course he did, an indispensable preliminary was to make known the crude facts of his worldly position.

Well, he could say, with entire honesty, that he had over nine hundred pounds a year. This was omitting a disburs.e.m.e.nt of an annual fifty pounds, of which he need not speak--the sum he had insisted on paying Mrs. Abbott that she might be able to maintain Wager's children. With all the difficulty in the world had he gained his point. Mrs. Abbott did not wish the children to go into other hands; she made it a matter of conscience to keep them by her, and to educate them, yet this seemed barely possible with the combat for a livelihood before her. Mrs.

Abbott yielded, and their clasp of hands cemented a wholesome friendship--frank, unsuspicious--rarest of relations between man and woman. But all this there was certainly no need of disclosing.

At midnight he was penning a letter. It must not be long; it must not strike the lyrical note; yet a.s.suredly it must not read like a commercial overture. He had great difficulty in writing anything that seemed tolerable. Yet done it must be, and done it was; and before going to bed he had dropped his letter into the post. He durst not leave it for reperusal in the morning light.

Then came torture of expectancy. The whole man aching, sore, with impatience; reason utterly fled, intellect bemused and baffled; a healthy, competent citizen of nigh middle age set all at once in the corner, crowned with a fool's cap, twiddling his thumbs in nervous fury. Dolorous spectacle, and laughable withal.

He waited four-and-twenty hours, then clutched at Alma's reply. 'Dear Mr. Rolfe,--Will you come again next Wednesday?' That was all. Did it amuse her to keep him in suspense? The invitation might imply a fulfilment of his hopes, but Alma's capriciousness allowed no certainty; a week's reflection was as likely to have one result as another. For him it meant a week of solitude and vacancy.

Or would have meant it, but for that sub-vigorous element in his character, that saving strain of practical rationality, which had brought him thus far in life without sheer overthrow. An hour after receiving Alma's enigmatical note, he was oppressed by inertia; another hour roused him to self-preservation, and supplied him with a project.

That night he took the steamer from Harwich to Antwerp, and for the next four days wandered through the Netherlands, reviving his memories of a journey, under very different circ.u.mstances, fifteen years ago.

The weather was bright and warm; on the whole he enjoyed himself; he reached London again early on Wednesday morning, and in the afternoon, with a touch of weather on his cheek, presented himself at Alma's door.

She awaited him in the drawing-room, alone. This time, he felt sure, no interruption was to be feared; he entered with confident step and a cheery salutation. A glance showed him that his common-sense had served him well; it was Alma who looked pale and thought-worn, who betrayed timidity, and could not at once command herself.

'What have you been doing?' she asked, remarking his appearance.

'Rambling about a little,' he replied good-humouredly.

'Where? You look as if you had been a voyage.'

'So I have, a short one.'

And he told her how his week had pa.s.sed.

'So that's how you would like to spend your life--always travelling?'

'Oh no! I did it to kill time. You must remember that a week is something like a year to a man who is waiting impatiently.'

She dropped her eyes.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. But I never thought you very impatient. You always seemed to take things philosophically.'

'I generally try to.'

There was a pause. Alma, leaning forward in her chair, kept her eyes down, and did not raise them when she again spoke.