Love's Logic and Other Stories/What Was Expected of Miss Constantine
WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF MISS CONSTANTINE
Chapter One
DO you remember what's expected of her!" cried my sister Jane.
It was not the first time that she had uttered this appeal; I daresay she had good cause for making it. I had started with the rude masculine idea that there was nothing expected—and nothing in particular to be expected—of the girl, except that she should please herself and, when the proper time came, invite the rest of us to congratulate her on this achievement.
Jane had seen the matter very differently from the first. She was in close touch with the Lexingtons and all their female friends and relatives; she was imbued with their views and feelings, and was unremitting in her efforts to pass them on to me. At least she made me understand, even if I could not entirely share, what was felt at female headquarters; hut I was not going to let her see that. I did not want to take sides in the matter, and had no intention of saying anything that Jane could quote either to Lady Lexington or to Miss Constantine herself.
"What is expected of her?" I asked carelessly, taking my pipe out of my mouth.
"Nobody exactly presses her—well, there's nobody who has the right—but of course she feels it herself," Jane explained. She knitted her brows and added, "It must be overwhelming."
"Then why in the world doesn't she do it?" I asked. Here I was, I admit, being aggravating, in the vulgar sense of that word. For Jane's demeanor hinted at the weightiest, the most disturbing reasons, and I had in my heart very little doubt about what they were.
"Can't you see for yourself?" she snapped back pettishly. "You were dining there last night—have you no eyes?"
Thus adjured—and, really, Jane's scorn is sometimes a little hard to bear—I set myself to recover the impressions of the dinner-party. The scene came back easily enough. I remembered that Katharine Constantine and Valentine Hare had once more been sent in together, and had once more sat side by side. I remembered also that Lady Lexington had once more whispered to me, when I arrived, that the affair was "all but settled," and had once more said nothing about it when I left. I remembered watching the pair closely.
True, I was placed, as a friend of the family, between Miss Boots, the Lexingtons's ex-governess, and Mr. Sharples, Lady Lexington's latest curate (she always has one in tow; some of the earlier ones are now in a fair way to achieve gaiters), so that there was nothing very likely to distract my attention from the center of interest. But I should have watched them, anyhow. Who could be better to watch? Katharine, with her positive, incisive beauty (there was nothing of the elusive about her; some may prefer a touch of it); the assurance of manner which her beauty gave, and the consciousness of her thousands enhanced: her instinctive assumption of being, of being most indisputably, Somebody; and to-night, as it seemed, with a new air about her, both watchful, expectant, and telling of excitement, even if it stopped short of nervousness—Katharine, with all this, had a claim to attention not seriously challenged by Miss Boots's school-room reminiscences, or Mr. Sharples's views on church questions of the day.
And Valentine, too, the incomparable Val! Of course I watched him, as I always have, when fortunate enough to be thrown into his company, with a fascinated, inquiring interest, asking myself always whether I was a believer or whether skepticism crept into my estimate. Val, however, demands, as the old writers were fond of saying, a fresh chapter to himself. He shall have it, or at least a section.
But before ending this one, for the sake of symmetry and of my reputation for stage-management, also in order to justify at the earliest possible moment the importance which Jane attached to the events of the evening, let me add that just beyond me, on the other side of Miss Boots, and consequently quite remote from Miss Constantine, sat a short young man with a big, round bullet of a head: it looked as if it might be fired out of a cannon at a stone wall, with excellent results, from the besiegers' point of view. This was Oliver Kirby, and I have to own at once that the more than occasional glances which Miss Constantine directed, or allowed to stray, toward our end of the table were meant, as my observation suggested before the evening was out, for Kirby, and not, as I had for some happy moments supposed, for me. I am never ashamed of confessing to an amiable sort of mistake like that.
Chapter Two
WITHOUT present prejudice to the question of his innermost personality, Val was at least a triumph of externals. Perhaps I should say of non-essentials—of things which a man might not have, and yet be intrinsically as good a man—but, having which, he was, for all outside and foreign purposes, a man far more efficient. Val was, as I shall indicate in a moment, a bit of philosopher himself, so he could not with reason object to being thus philosophically considered. Birth had been his discreet friend—a friend in setting him in the inner ring, among the families which survive, peaks of aristocracy, above the flood of democracy, and are more successful than Canute was in cajoling the waves, discreet in so ordering descent that, unless a robust earl, his uncle, died prematurely, Val had time to lead the House of Commons (or anything of that sort) before suffering an involuntary ascension, which might or might not be, at the political moment, convenient. He had money, too—a competence without waiting for his uncle's shoes. He had no need to hunt a fortune: it was merely advisable for him, and natural, too, to annex one under temptations not necessarily unromantic. Nobody could call Miss Constantine necessarily unromantic.
So much for birth, with all the extraordinary start it gives—a handicap of no less than fifteen years, one might be inclined to say, roughly generalizing on a comparison of the chances of the "born" and of the bourgeois. Now, about brains. If you come to think of it, brains were really a concession on Val's part; he could have achieved the cabinet without them—given a clever Prime Minister, at least. But he had them just as splendid shop-window brains as his birth was flawless under the most minute Herald's College inspection. There was, indeed, a lavishness about his mental endowment. He ventured to have more than one subject—a dangerous extravagance in a rising statesman. North Africa was his professional subject—his foreign affairs subject. But he was also a linguist, an authority on French plays, and a specialist on the Duc de Reichstadt. Also he had written a volume of literary essays; and, finally, to add a sense of solidity to his intellectual equipment, he was a philosopher. He had written, and Mr. Murray had published, a short book called "The Religion of Primitive Man." This work he evolved on quiet evenings in his flat off Berkeley Square in two months of an early winter in London. All that can be said about it is that it sounded very probable, and set forth in exceedingly eloquent language what primitive man ought to have believed, even if he did not, because it led to a most orthodox, if remote, conclusion. Whether he did or not, Val, and most other people, had neither time nor inclination to discover. That would, in fact, have needed a lot of reading. After all, Val might plead the example of some eminent metaphysicians.
Birth, brains—now comes the rarest of Val's possessions, one that must be handled most delicately by one who would do Val justice at any cost. I mean Val's beauty. Val himself bore it lightly, with a debonair deprecation which stopped only, but definitely, short of unconsciousness. He had hereditary claims to it; a grandmother had attracted—and by a rarer touch of distinction repelled—royalty. But Val made it all his own. A slim figure, bordering on six feet; aquiline features, a trifle ruddy in hue; hands long and slender; above all, perhaps, a mass of black hair touched with white—ever so lightly silver-clad. The grayness proclaimed itself premature, and brought contrast to bear on the youthfulness of the face beneath—a face the juvenility of which survived the problems of North Africa and his triumphs in the à priori. Add to this, a fine tradition of schoolboy and university athletics, and—well, a way with him of which women would talk in moments of confidence.
Speaking quite seriously, I cannot suppose that such a fascinating person has often appeared; never, merely a more decorative? And it was "all but settled"? Why, then, those glances toward our end of the table? Because they were not for me, as I have already acknowledged. Kirby? The bullet-head, with its close-cropped wire-thick hair? Could that draw her eyes from the glories of Val's sable-silver crown? These things are unaccountable; such really appeared to be the case.
Chapter Three
AFTER dinner I used the freedom of old acquaintance to ask Lady Lexington precisely what she meant by saying that it—the alliance between Miss Constantine and Valentine Hare—was "all but settled." We chanced to be alone in the small drawing-room; through the curtained archway we could see the rest of the company formed into groups. Val was again by Miss Constantine's side; Kirby was now standing facing them, and apparently doing most of the talking.
"He hasn't asked her in so many words yet," said Lady Lexington; "but he will soon, of course. It's been practically settled ever since she came to stay here—after her father's death, you know. And it's an ideal arrangement."
"Suppose she refuses him?"
I sha'n't suppose anything so ridiculous, George," said my friend, sharply. "I hope I have more sense. What girl would refuse Valentine?"
"It would be heterodox," I admitted.
"It would be lunacy, stark lunacy. Even for her—I admit she has a right to look high—but even for her it will be a fine match. He's got everything before him. And then look how handsome, how fascinating, he is!" She laughed. "Old as I am, I wouldn't trust myself with him, George!"
"I haven't met Kirby here before," I observed, perhaps rather abruptly.
"Mr. Kirby? Oh, he's quite a protégé of Frank's. We met him in Switzerland last winter, and Frank and he did all sorts of unsafe things together—things you oughtn't to do in winter."
"He probably stops the avalanches with his head?"
"I really don't know where he comes from or who he is, but he's in the Colonial Office, and Frank says they think enormous things of him there. I like him, but, do you know, he's rather hard to keep up a conversation with. He always seems to say the last thing about a subject first."
"Very bad economy," I agreed.
"Some people—well, I have heard people say it's hardly polite—when they're just thinking of something to say themselves, you know"
"He probably can't help it," I pleaded.
"Katharine seems to like him, though, and I daresay she'll get Val to give him a lift in the future."
"You're treating it as quite settled."
"Well, it really is; I feel sure of that. It might happen any—why, look there, George! Suppose it happened to-night!"
Lady Lexington's air of pleasurable flutter was occasioned by a movement in the next room. Miss Constantine was passing from the drawing-room into the library beyond, Val holding the door for her. Kirby had not moved, but now stood looking at her with a smile. Just as she passed through the door she turned, looked at him, and made the slightest little grimace. I read it as defiance—playful defiance. Whether I was right in that or not, it was, beyond all doubt, a confidential communication of some sort. If "it" were indeed going to be "settled," the moment seemed an odd one for the exchange of that secret signal with Mr. Kirby; for her grimace was in answer to his smile, his smile the challenge that elicited her grimace. Yes, they were in communication. What about? I got no further than an impression that it was about Valentine Hare. I remembered the glances at dinner, and mentally corrected the little misapprehension which I have already acknowledged. But had the signals been going on all the evening? About Valentine Hare?
"I shall wait for news with great interest," I said to Lady Lexington.
She made no direct answer. Looking at her, I perceived that she was frowning; she appeared, indeed, decidedly put out.
"After all," she said reflectively, "I'm not sure I do like Mr. Kirby. He's rather familiar. I wonder why Frank brings him here so much."
From which I could not help concluding that she, too, had perceived the glances toward my end of the table, Kirby's smile, and Katharine Constantine's answering grimace. From that moment, I believe, a horrible doubt, an apprehension of almost incredible danger, began to stir in her mind. This, confided to Jane, had inspired my sister's gloomily significant manner.
Chapter Four
A WEEK passed by without my getting any news from Lady Lexington. My next advices came, in fact, from Jane. One morning she burst into my room when I was reading the paper after breakfast. I had been out late the night before, and had not seen her since yesterday at lunch. Her present state of excitement was obvious.
"She's asked for time to consider!" she cried. "Imagine!"
"The dickens she has!" I exclaimed. Of course I guessed to whom she was referring.
"Ah, I thought that would startle you!" Jane remarked, with much gratification. "I was at the Lexingtons's yesterday. She is queer."
I saw that Jane wanted me to ask questions, but I always prefer having gossip volunteered to me; it seems more dignified, and one very seldom loses anything in the end. So I just nodded, and relighted my pipe. Jane smiled scornfully.
"You'll go there yourself to-day," she said. "I know you."
"I was going, anyhow—to pay my dinner call."
"Of course!" She was satisfied with the effect of her sarcasm—I think I had betrayed signs of confusion—and went on gravely: "You can imagine how upset they all are."
"But she only proposes to consider."
"Well, it's not very flattering to be considered, is it? 'I'll consider'—that's what one says to get out of the shop when a thing costs too much."
I had to ask one question. I did it as carelessly as possible. "Did you happen to see Miss Constantine herself?"
"Oh, yes; I saw Katharine. I saw her, because she was in the room part of the time, and I'm not blind," said Jane, crossly.
"I gather that she hardly took you into her full—her inner—confidence?"
Jane's reply was impolite in form, but answered my question substantially in the affirmative. She added: "Lady Lexington told me that she won't say a word about her reasons. You won't find it a cheerful household."
I did not. Jane was right there. I daresay my own cheerfulness was artificial and spasmodic: the atmosphere of a family crisis is apt to communicate itself to guests. It must not be understood that the Lexingtons, or Miss Boots, or Mr. Sharples, who was there again, were other than perfectly kind to Katharine. On the contrary, they overdid their kindness—overdid it portentously, in my opinion. They treated her as though she were afflicted with a disease of the nerves, and must on no account be worried or thwarted. If she had said that the moon was made of green cheese, they would have evaded a direct contradiction—they might just have hinted at a shade of blue. She saw this; I can quite understand that it annoyed her very much. For the rest, Lady Lexington's demeanor set the cue: "It must end all right; meanwhile we must bear it."
She and Mr. Sharpies and Miss Boots were all going to an afternoon drawing-room meeting, but I was asked to stay and have tea. "You'll give him a cup of tea, won't you, Katharine?" And did my ears deceive me, or did Lady Lexington breathe into my ear, as she shook hands, the words, "If you could say a word—tactfully!" I believe she did; but Jane says I dreamed it, or made it up, more likely. If she did say it, it argued powerfully for her distress.
I had known Katharine Constantine pretty well for three or four years; I had, indeed, some claim to call myself her friend. All the same, I did not see my way to broach the engrossing subject to her, and I hardly expected her to touch on it in talk with me. My idea was to prattle, to distract her mind with gossip about other people. But she was, I think, at the end of her patience both with herself and with her friends. Her laugh was defiant as she said:
"Of course you know all about it? Jane has told you? And of course you're dying to tell me I'm a fool—as all the rest of them do! At any rate, they let me see they think it."
"I don't want to talk about it. Let's talk of anything else. I've got no right"
"I give you the right. You're interested?"
"Oh, I can't deny that. I'm human."
She was looking very attractive to-day; her perplexity and worry seemed to soften her; an unwonted air of appeal mitigated her assurance of manner; she was pleasanter when she was not so confident of herself.
"Well, I should rather like to put the case to a sensible man—and we'll suppose you to be one for the moment." She laughed more gently as I bowed my thanks. "On the one side is what's expected of me"
"Jane's phrase!" I thought to myself.
"What all the world thinks, what I've thought for a long while myself, what he thinks—in fact, everything. And, I tell you, it's a good deal. It is even with men, isn't it?"
"What's expected of us? Yes. Only unusual men can disregard that."
"It's worse with women—the weight of it is much heavier with women. And am I to consider myself unusual? Besides, I do like him enormously."
"I was wondering when you would touch on that point. It seems to me important."
"Enormously. Who wouldn't? Everybody must. Not for his looks or his charm only. He's a real good sort, too, Mr. Wynne. A woman could trust her heart with him."
"I've always believed he was a good sort—and, of course, very brilliant—a great career before him—and all that." She said nothing for a moment, and I repeated thoughtfully: "Astonishingly brilliant, to be sure, isn't he?"
She nodded at me, smiling. "Yes, that's the word—brilliant." She was looking at me very intently. "What more have you to say?" she asked.
"A good heart—a great position—a brilliant intellect—well, what more is there to say? Unless you permit me to say that ladies are sometimes—as they have a perfect right to be—hard to please."
"Yes, I'm hard to please." Her smile came again, this time thoughtful, reminiscent, amused, almost, I could fancy, tender. "I've been spoilt, lately," she said. Then she stole a quick glance at me, flushing a little.
I grew more interested in her; I think I may say more worthily interested. I knew what she meant—whom she was thinking of. I passed the narrow yet significant line that divides gossip about people from an interest in one's friends or a curiosity about the human mind. Or so I liked to put it to myself.
"I must talk," she said. "Is it very strange of me to talk?"
"Talk away. I hear, or I don't hear, just as you wish. Anyhow, I don't repeat."
"That is your point, you men! Well, if it were between a great man and a nobody?"
"The great man I know—we all do. But the nobody? I don't know him."
"Don't you? I think you do; or perhaps you know neither? If the world and I meant just the opposite?"
She was standing now, very erect, proud, excited.
"It's a bad thing to mean just the opposite from what the world means," I said.
"Bad? Or only hard?" she asked. "God knows it's hard enough."
"There's the consolation of the—spoiling," I suggested. "Who spoils you, the great man or the nobody?"
She paid no visible heed to my question. Indeed, she seemed for the moment unconscious of me. It was October; a small bright fire burned on the hearth. She turned to it, stretching out her hands to the warmth. She spoke, and I listened. "It would be a fine thing," she said, "to be the first to believe—the first to give evidence of belief—perhaps the finest thing to be the first and last—to be the only one to give everything one had in evidence." She faced round on me suddenly. "Everything—if one dared!"
"If you were very sure—" I began.
"No!" she interrupted. "Say, if I had courage—courage to defy, courage for a great venture!"
"Yes, it's better put like that."
"But people don't realize—indeed, they don't—how much it needs."
"I think I realize it a little better." She made no comment on that, and I held out my hand. "I should like to help, you know," I said, "but I expect you've got to fight it out alone."
She pressed my hand in a very friendly way, saying, "Any single human being's sympathy helps."
That was not, perhaps, a very flattering remark, but it seemed to me pathetic, coming from the proud, the rich, the beautiful Miss Constantine. To this she was reduced in her struggle against her mighty foe. Any ally, however humble, was precious in her fight against what was expected of her.
Chapter Five
MISS CONSTANTINE'S suppression of names, and her studious use of the hypothetical mood in putting her case, forbade me saying that she had told me that in her opinion Valentine Hare was a nobody and Oliver Kirby a great man, although the world might be pleased to hold just the opposite view. Still less had she told me that, in consequence of this opinion of hers, she would let the nobody go and cling to the great man; she had merely discerned and pictured that course of action as being a very splendid and a very brave thing—more splendid and brave, just in proportion to the world's lack of understanding. Whether she would do it remained exceedingly doubtful; there was that heavy weight of what was expected of her. But what she had done, by the revelation of her feelings, was to render the problem of whether she would embrace her great venture or forgo it one of much interest to me. The question of her moral courage remained open; but there was now no question as to her intellectual courage. Her brain could see and dared to see—whether or not she would dare to be guided by its eyes. Her achievement was really considerable—to look so plainly, so clearly and straight, through all externals; to pierce behind incomparable Val's shop-window accomplishments, his North Africa, his linguistic accomplishments, Duc de Reichstadt, French plays, literary essays, even his supremely plausible and persuasive "Religion of Primitive Man" (which did look so solid on a first consideration)—to go right by all these, and ask what was the real value of the stock in the recesses of the shop! And, conversely, to pick up bullet-headed Kirby from the roadside, so to speak, to find in him greatness, to be "spoilt" (she, the rich, courted beauty!) by being allowed to hear the thuds of his sledge-hammer mind, to dream of giving "everything" to his plain form and face because of the mind they clothed, to think that thing the great thing to do, if she dared—yes, she herself stood revealed as a somewhat uncommon young woman.
Her appraisement of Val I was not inclined to dispute; it coincided with certain suspicions which I myself had shamefacedly entertained, but had never found courage to express openly. But was she right about Kirby? Had we here the rare "great man"? Concede to her that we had, her case was still a hard one. Kirby had no start; he was in a rut, if I may say so with unfeigned respect to the distinguished service to which he belonged—an honorable, useful rut, but, so far as personal glory or the prospects of it went, a rut, all the same. Unless some rare chance came—they do come now and then, but it was ill to gamble on one here—his main function would be to do the work, to supply the knowledge secretly, perhaps, to shape a policy some day in the future, but tulit alter honores. Not to him would the public raise their cheers, and posterity a statue. Her worship of him must be, in all likelihood, solitary, despised, and without reward. Would it be appreciated as it ought to be by her hero himself? But here, perhaps, I could not get thoroughly into the skin of the devotee: the god is not expected to be overwhelmed by his altars and his sacrifices—his divinityship is merely satisfied.
"Mr. Hare is behaving splendidly," Jane reported to me. She had a constant—apparently a daily—report of him from Lady Lexington, his unremitting champion. Indeed, the women were all on his side, and it was surprising how many of them seemed to know his position; I cannot help thinking that Val, in his turn, had succumbed to the temptations of sympathy. They spoke of him as of a man patient under wrong, amiable and forgiving through it all, puzzled, bewildered, inevitably hurt, yet with his love unimpaired and his forgiveness ready.
"Do you suppose," I asked Jane, "that he's got any theory why she hesitates?"
"Theory! Who wants a theory? We all know why."
"Oh, you do, do you?" My "exclusive information" seemed a good deal cheapened. "Has she told you, may I ask?"
"Not she; but she goes every afternoon, just after lunch, to Mrs. Something Simpson's—that's the man's aunt. She lives in a flat in Westminster, and he goes from his office to lunch at his aunt's every day, now."
While I had been musing, Jane had been getting at the facts.
"Val knows that?"
"Of course Lady Lexington told him. Let's have fair play, anyhow!" said Jane, rather hotly.
"What does he say about it?"
"He's perfectly kind and sweet; but he can't, of course, quite conceal that he's"—Jane paused, seeking a word. She flung her hands out in an expressive gesture, and let me have it—"Stupefied." A moment later she added, "So are we all, if it comes to that."
"If one dared!" Katharine Constantine's words came back. They were all stupefied at the idea. Would she dare to pile stupefaction on stupefaction by confronting them with the fact?
In the course of the next few days the Powers That Be in the land took a hand—doubtless an entirely unconscious one—in the game. A peer died; his son, going up to the House of Lords, vacated the post of Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Amid a chorus of applause and of flattering prophecies Valentine Hare was appointed in his place. I met, at one of my clubs, a young friend who had recently entered the Colonial Office, and he told me that the new member of the administration's secretary would in all probability be Oliver Kirby. "And it'll give him a bit of a chance to show what he's made of," said my young friend, with the kindly patronage of youth.
But, under present circumstances, it might create a slight awkwardness, say, about lunch-time, mightn't it? I doubted whether that appointment would be made.
Chapter Six
NOW I come to my share in this history. I confess that I approach it with doubt and trembling; but it has to be told here. It will never be told anywhere else—certainly not at the Lexingtons', nor above all, for my peace' sake, to my sister Jane.
The following day was a Sunday, and, according to a not infrequent practice of mine, I took a walk in Hyde Park in the morning—in the early hours before the crowd turned out. The place was almost deserted, for the weather was raw and chilly; but there, by some supernatural interposition, as I am convinced, whether benign or malignant only the passage of years can show, in a chair at the corner of the Row sat Oliver Kirby. I stopped before him and said "Hello!"
I had forgotten how entirely formal our previous acquaintance had been, perhaps because I had been thinking about him so much.
He greeted me cordially, indeed, gladly, as I fancied, and, when I objected to sitting in the chilly air, he proposed to share my walk. I mentioned the secretaryship, remarking that I understood it was a good thing for a man to get. He shrugged his shoulders, then turned to me, and said with a sudden twinkle lighting up his eyes, "One might be able to keep our friend straight, perhaps."
"You think he needs it?"
"It's only a matter of time for that man to come a cropper. The first big affair he gets to handle, look out! I'm not prejudiced. He's a very good fellow, and I like him—besides being amused at him. But what I say is true." He spoke with an uncanny certainty.
"What makes you say it?"
Kirby took my arm. "The man is constitutionally incapable of thinking in the right order. It's always the same with him, I don't care whether it's an article about North Africa or that book of his about primitive man. He always—not occasionally, but always—starts with his conclusion and works backward to the premises. North Africa ought to be that shape—it is! Primitive man ought to have thought that—he did! You see? The result is, that the facts have to adapt themselves to these conclusions of his. Now, that habit of mind, Wynne, makes a man who has to do with public affairs a dangerous and pernicious fool. He oughtn't to be allowed about. What, I should like to know, does he think the Almighty made facts for? Not to be looked at, evidently!"
I was much refreshed by this lively indignation of the intellect. But, "You're quite sure you're not prejudiced?" said I.
"I said it all in a review of his book before I ever met him, or came into"
"Conflict with him?" I ventured to interpose.
He looked at me gravely. I thought he was going to tell me to mind my own business. I have so little that I never welcome that injunction. Then he smiled.
"I forgot that I'd met you at the Lexingtons'," he said.
"I don't think you need have told me that you'd forgotten."
"Well, I had," said he, staring a little.
"But you needn't have said so—needn't have put it that way."
"Oh!" He seemed to be considering quite a new point of view.
"Not that I'm offended. I only point it out for your good. You expect people to be too much like you. The rest of us have feelings"
"I've feelings, Wynne," he interrupted quickly.
"Fancies——"
"Ah, well—perhaps those, too, sometimes."
"Fears——"
He squeezed my arm. "You've struck me the right morning," he said.
"Think what you're asking of—the person we mean."
"She's to give me her answer after lunch to-day."
"I believe it will be 'No'—unless you can do something."
He looked at me searchingly. "What's in your mind?" he asked. "Out with it! This is a big thing to me, you know."
"It's a big thing to her. I know it is. Yes, she has said something to me. But I think she'll say 'No', unless—well, unless you treat her as you want Val Hare to treat North Africa and primitive man. Apply your own rules, my friend. Reason in the right order!"
He smiled grimly. "Develop that a little," he requested, or, rather, ordered.
"It's not your feelings, or your traditions, or your surroundings, that count now. And it's not what you think she ought to feel, nor what she ought as a fact to feel, nor even what she's telling herself she ought to be brave enough and strong enough to feel. It's what she must feel, has been bred to feel, and in the end does feel. What she does feel will beat you unless you find a way out."
"What does she feel?"
"That it's failure, and that all the other girls will say so—failure in the one great opportunity of her life, in the one great thing that's expected of her; that it's final; that she must live all her life a failure among those who looked to her for a great success. And the others will make successes! Would it be a small thing for a man? What is it to a girl?"
"A failure, to marry me? You mean she feels that?"
"Facts, please! Again facts! Not what you think you are, or are sure you are, or are convinced you could be; just what you are—Mr. Kirby of the Colonial Office, lately promoted—it is promotion, isn't it?—to be secretary to——"
"Stop! I just want to run over all that," he said.
At, and from, this point I limit my liability. I had managed to point out—it really was not easy to set up to tell him things—where I thought he was wrong. Somehow, amid my trepidation, I was aware of a pleasure in talking to a splendidly open and candid mind. He was surprised that he had been wrong—that touch of a somewhat attractive arrogance there was about him—but the mere suspicion of being wrong made him attentive to the uttermost. Tell him he hadn't observed his facts, and he wouldn't, he couldn't, rest till he had substantiated, or you had withdrawn, the imputation. But, as I say, to suggest the mistake was all I did. I had no precise remedy ready; I believe I had only a hazy idea of what might be done by a more sympathetic demeanor, a more ample acknowledgment of Miss Constantine's sacrifices—a notion that she might do the big thing if he made her think it the enormous thing, aren't girls even that sometimes? The sower of the seed is entitled to some credit for the crop; after all, though, the ground does more. I take none too much credit for my hint, nor desire to take too much responsibility.
He caught me by the arm and pulled me down on to a bench—a free seat just by the east end of the Serpentine.
"Yes, I see," he said. "I've been an ass. Just since you spoke, it's all come before me—in a sort of way it grew up in my mind. I know how she feels now—both ways. I only knew how she felt about my end of the thing before. I was antagonistic to the other thing. I couldn't see Val as a sort of Westminster Abbey only for the living—that's the truth. Never be antagonistic to facts—you've taught me that lesson once more, Wynne." He broke into a sudden amused smile. "I say, if your meddling is generally as useful as it has been to me, I don't see why you shouldn't go on meddling, old chap."
I let that pass, though I should have preferred some such word as "interpose" or "intervene," or "act as an intermediary." I still consider that I had been in some sense invited—well, at any rate, tempted—to—well, as I have suggested, intervene.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"Settle it," replied Mr. Oliver Kirby, rising from the bench.
He might have been a little more communicative. It is possible to suggest that. As a matter of fact, he was the best part of the way to Hyde Park Corner before I realized that I was sitting alone on the bench.
Chapter Seven
HAD Kirby been at my elbow, his bullet-head almost audibly pricing my actions, relentlessly assessing them, even while he admitted that they had done him good, I imagine that I should not have gone. His epithet rankled. I a meddler! I can only say that it is a fortunate circumstance that he never knew Jane.
However, I did call on Lady Lexington that afternoon, and found just a snug family party—that was what my hostess called it. In fact, besides myself, the only outsider was Valentine Hare; and could he be called an outsider? His precise appellation hung in suspense. Talk was intimate and bright.
In view of Val's appointment, it was natural that it should turn on the Colonies. Val himself hinted that the Foreign Office would have given more scope for his specialty (he meant North Africa, not the "Religion of Primitive Man"); but Miss Constantine was hot on the Colonies, going so far, indeed, as to get out an atlas and discuss thousands of square miles, and wheat-belts, and things like that. Once or twice I fancied that the new Under-Secretary would have been glad not to be quite so new; a few days of coaching from, say, Kirby (Had she had—? At lunch? No; it was hardly thinkable; he couldn't have taken that moment to instruct her) would have equipped him better for her excellently informed conversation. As for poor Lexington, he broke down entirely when she got out to Assiniboia and Saskatchewan, and said frankly that in his opinion there was more of Canada than any man could be expected to know about. That did not seem to be at all Miss Constantine's view. She was stopped only by the ocean. I am not sure that a vaulting ambition did not confederate Japan.
Val was delighted. Miss Constantine was so cordial, so interested, so congratulatory on his appointment. There was, as it seemed to me, a serenity in her manner which had recently been lacking—a return of her old assurance, softened still, but not now by the air of appeal: it was rather by an extreme friendliness. Val must have felt the friendliness, too, I think, for he expanded wonderfully, discoursing with marvelous fecundity, and with a knowledge as extensive as it was indefinite, of the British possessions beyond the seas. All said and done, he knew a lot more than I did; but, then, I was not his competitor.
So we got on splendidly together. Lady Lexington beamed, her lord warmed himself happily. Miss Constantine was graciousness itself, Val basked and blossomed—and I wondered what the deuce had happened at Mrs. Something Simpson's flat in Westminster. (Her real name was Whitaker Simpson, and I believe Jane knew it quite well.)
Yes, she was monstrously friendly—distrust that in your mistress whether wooed or won. She would do everything for Val that afternoon, except be left alone with him. The Lexingtons went,—you can hardly stop people going in their own house; Miss Boots and Mr. Sharpies, who were both there, went—to church. I tried to go, but she wouldn't let me. Her refusal was quite obvious: Val—he was impeccable in manners—saw it. After precisely the right interval he rose and took his leave. I had the atlas on my knees then (we had got back to Assiniboia), and I studied it hard; but, honestly, I couldn't help hearing. The tones of her voice, at least, hinted at no desire for privacy.
"Once more a thousand congratulations—a thousand hopes for your success," she said, giving him her hand, as I suppose—my eyes were on the atlas.
"After that, I shall feel I'm working for you," he replied gallantly. No doubt his very fine eyes pointed the remark.
"Shall you?" she said, and laughed a little. "Oh, you'll—I'll write you a note quite soon—to-morrow or Tuesday. I won't forget. And—good-by!"
"To-morrow or Tuesday? That's certain?" His voice had an eagerness in it now.
"Yes, certain. I won't forget. And—good-by!"
"Good-by!" he said, and I heard the door open.
"A thousand hopes!" she said again.
I suppose he made some response, but in words he made none. The door closed behind him.
I put the atlas on the sofa by me, got up, and went to her.
"I suppose I may go now, too?" I said.
"How clever you're growing, Mr. Wynne! But just let him get out of the house. We mustn't give it away."
A moment or two we stood in silence. Then she said: "You understand things. You shall have a note too—and a thousand hopes. And—good by!"
Not a suspicion of the meaning of this afternoon's scene crossed my mind, which facts proved me, I daresay, to be very stupid. But Val was hardly likely to see more clearly, and I can't altogether justify the play she made with the atlas and Assiniboia. As an exercise in irony, however, it had it's point.
Chapter Eight
I DO not know what was in Val's note: more of good-by, and more than a thousand hopes, I imagine. Is it fanciful to mark that she had always said "hope" and never "confidence?" Mine I got on the Friday, and it bade me be at a certain corner of a certain street at ll.30. "Where you will find me. Say nothing about it." It was a little hard to say nothing whatever to Jane.
I went and met them at the corner—Mrs. Something Simpson, Kirby, and Miss Constantine. Thence we repaired to a registry office, and they (I do not include Mrs. Simpson) were married. They were to sail from Liverpool that afternoon, and we went straight from the office to Euston. I think it was only when the question of luggage arose that I gasped out, "Where are you going?"
"To Canada," said Kirby, briskly.
"For your trip?"
"For good and all," he answered. "I've got leave—and sent in my resignation."
"And I've sent in my resignation, too," she said. "Mr. Wynne, try to think of me as only half a coward."
"I—I don't understand," I stammered.
"But it's your own doing," he said. "Over there she won't be a failure all her life!"
"Not because I've married him, at any rate," Katherine said, looking very happy.
"I told you I should settle it—and so I did," Kirby added. "And I'm grateful to you. I'm always grateful to a fellow who makes me understand."
"Good heavens!" I cried, "you're not making me responsible?"
"For all that follows!" she answered, with a merry laugh. "Yes!"
That's all very well, but suppose he gets to the top of the tree, as the fellow will, and issues a Declaration of Independence? At least he'll be Premier, and come over to a conference some day. Val will be secretary for the Colonies, probably (unless he has come that cropper). There's a situation for you! Well, I shall just leave town. I daresay I sha'n't be missed.
Lady Lexington carried it off well. She said that, from a strain of romance she had observed in the girl, the marriage was just what was to be expected of Katharine Constantine.