The Lady of the Pool/Chapter 9
Chapter IX
Two Men of Spirit
“The fact is,” observed Lord Thrapston complacently, “the girl very much resembles me in disposition.”
Calder’s eyes grew larger and rounder.
“Do you really think so?” he asked anxiously.
“Well, this little lark of hers—hang me, it’s just what I should have enjoyed doing fifty years ago.”
“Ah—er—Lord—Thrapston, have you noticed the resemblance you speak of in any other way?”
“That girl, except that she is a girl, is myself over again—myself over again.”
“The deuce!”
“I beg your pardon, Calder; I grow hard of hearing.”
“Nothing. Lord Thrapston. Look here, Lord Thrapston”
“Well, well, my dear boy?”
“Oh, nothing; that is”
“But she’ll be all right in your hands, my boy. You must keep an eye; on her, don’t you know: she’ll need a bit o’ driving; but I really don’t see why you should come to grief. I don’t, ’pon my soul. No. With tact on your part, you might very well pull through.”
“How d’ye mean tact, Lord Thrapston?”
“Oh, amuse her. Let her travel; give her lots of society; don’t bother her with domestic affairs. Don’t let her feel she’s under any obligation. That’s what she kicks against. So do I; always did.”
Calder pulled his mustache. Lord Thrapston had briefly sketched the exact opposite of his ideal of married life.
“The fact is,” continued the old man, “the boy’s an uncommon handsome boy. She can’t resist that. No more can I; never could.”
There chanced to be a mirror opposite Calder, and he impartially considered himself. There was, he concluded, every prospect of Miss Glyn resisting any engrossing passion for him.
“It’s very good of you to have told, me all about it,” he remarked, rising. “I’ll think it over.”
“Yes, do. Of course, I admit she’s given you a perfectly good reason for breaking off your engagement if you like. Mind that. We don’t feel aggrieved, Calder. Act as you think best. We admit we’re in the wrong, but we must stand by what we’ve done.”
“I shouldn’t like to give her any pain.”
“Pain! Oh, dear me, no, my dear boy. She won’t fret. Make your mind easy about that.”
Calder felt a sudden impulse to disclose to Lord Thrapston his secret opinion of him, and he recollected, with a pang, that in the course of so doing he would have to touch on more than one characteristic shared by the old man and Agatha. Where were his visions of a quiet home in the country, of freedom from the irksome duties of society, of an obedient and devoted wife, surrounded by children and flanked by jampots? He had once painted this picture for Agatha, shortly after she had agreed to that arrangement which she declined to call a promise of marriage; and it occurred to him now that she had allowed the subject to drop without any expression of concurrence. He took leave of Lord Thrapston and went for a solitary walk. He wanted to think. But the position of affairs was such that other persons also felt the need of reflection, and Calder had not been walking by the Row very long before, lifting his eyes, he saw a young man approaching. The young man was not attired as he ought to have been: he wore a light suit, a dissolute necktie, and a soft wideawake crammed down low on his head. He had obviously forsworn the vanities of the world and was wearing the willow. He came up to Calder and held out his hand.
“Wentworth,” he said, “I left you rudely the other day. I was doing you an injustice. I have heard the truth from Mrs. Blunt. You are free from all blame. We—we are fellow-sufferers.”
His tones were so mournful that Calder shook his hand with warm sympathy, and remarked, “Pretty rough, on us both, ain’t it?”
“For me,” declared Charlie, “everything is over. My trust in woman is destroyed; my pleasure in life is”
“Well, I don’t feel A1 myself, old chap,” said Calder.
“I have written to—to her, to say good-by.”
“No, have you, though?”
“What else could I do? Wentworth, do you suppose that, even if she was free, I would think of her for another moment? Can there be love where there is no esteem, no trust, no confidence?”
“I was just thinking that when you came up,” said Calder.
“No, at whatever cost, I—every self-respecting man—must consider first of all what he owes to his name, to his family, to his—Wentworth, to his unborn children.”
Calder nodded.
“You, of course,” pursued Charlie, “will be guided by your own judgment. As to that, the circumstances seal my lips.”
“I don’t like it, you know,” said Calder.
“As regards you, she may or may not have excuses. I don’t know; but she wilfully and grossly deceived me. I have done with her.”
“Gad, I believe you’re right, Merceron, old chap! A chap ought to stand up for himself, by Jove! You’d never feel safe with her, would you, by Jove?”
“Good-by,” said Charlie suddenly. “I leave Paddington by the 4.15.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Hell—I mean home,” answered Charlie.
Calder beat his stick against his leg.
“I can’t stay here either,” he said moodily.
Charlie stretched out his hand again.
“Come with me,” said he.
“Eh? what?”
“Come with me; we’ll forget her together.”
Calder looked at him.
“Well, you are a good chap. Dashed if I don’t. Yes, I will. We’ll enjoy ourselves like thunder. But I say, Merceron, I—I ought to write to her, oughtn’t I?”
“I am just going to write myself.”
“To—to say good-by, eh?”
“Yes.”
“I shall write and break it off.”
“Come along. We’ll go to your rooms and got the thing done, and then catch the train. My luggage is at the station now.”
“It won’t take me a minute to get mine.”
“Wentworth, I’m glad to be rid of her.”
“All—oh, well—so am I,” said Calder.
Late that evening the butler presented Miss Agatha Glyn with two letters on a salver. As her eye fell on the addresses, she started. Her heart began to beat. She sat and looked at the two momentous missives.
“Now which,” she thought, “shall I read first? And what shall I do, if they are both obstinate?”
There was another contingency which Miss Glyn did not contemplate.
After a long hesitation, she took up Charlie’s letter, and opened it. It was very short, and began abruptly without any words of address:
“I have received your letter. Your excuses make it worse. I could forgive everything except deceit. I leave London to-day. Good-by.—C. M.”
“Deceit!” cried Agatha. “How dare he? What a horrid boy!”
She was walking up and down the room in a state of great indignation. She had never been talked to like that in her life before. It was ungentlemanly, cruel, brutal. She flung Charlie’s letter angrily down on the table.
“I am sure poor dear old Calder won’t treat me like that!” she exclaimed, taking up his letter.
It ran thus:
“My dear Agatha:—I hope you will believe that I write this without any feeling of anger towards you. My regard for you remains very great, and I hope we shall always be very good friends; but, after long and careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the story Lord Thrapston told, me shows conclusively what I have been fearing for some time past—namely, that I have not been so lucky as to win a real affection from you, and that we are not likely to make one another happy. Therefore, thanking you very much for your kindness in the past, I think I had better restore your liberty to you. I shall hear with, very great pleasure of your happiness. I leave town to day for a little while, in order that you may not be exposed to the awkwardness of meeting me.
“Always your most sincerely,
“Calder Wentworth.”
Agatha passed her hand across her brow; then she re-read Calder’s letter, and then Charlie’s. Yes, there, was not the least doubt about it! Both of the gentlemen had—well, what they had done did not admit of being put into tolerable words. With a little shriek, Agatha flung herself on the sofa.
The door opened and Lord Thrapston entered.
“Well, Aggy, what’s the news? Still bothered by your two young men? Hullo! what’s wrong?”
“Read them!” cried Agatha, with a gesture towards the table.
“Eh? Read what? Oh, I see.”
He sat down at the table and put on his glasses. Agatha turned her face towards the wall; for her also everything was over. For a time no sound was audible save an occasional crackle of the note-paper in Lord Thrapston’s shaking fingers. Then, to Agatha’s indescribable indignation, there came another sort of crackle—a dry, grating, derisive chuckle—from that flinty-hearted old man, her grandfather.
“Good, monstrous good, ’pon my life!” said he.
“You’re laughing at me!” she cried, leaping up.
“Well, my dear, I’m afraid I am.”
“Oh, how cruel men are!”
“H’m! They’re both men of spirit evidently.”
“Calder I can just understand. I—perhaps I did treat Calder rather badly”
“Oh, you go so far as to admit that, do you, Aggy?”
“But Charlie! Oh, to think that Charlie should treat me like that!” and she threw herself on the sofa again.
Lord Thrapston sat quite still. Presently Agatha rose, came to the table, and took up her two letters. She looked at them both; and the old man, seeming to notice nothing, yet kept his eye on her.
“I shall destroy these things,” said she; and she tore Calder’s letter into tiny fragments, and flung them on the fire. Charlie’s she crumpled up and held in her hand.
“Good-night, grandpapa,” she said wearily, and kissed him.
“Good-night, my dear,” he answered.
And, whatever she did when she went upstairs, Lord Thrapston was in a position to swear that Charlie’s letter was not destroyed in the drawing-room.