Moth and Rust; Together with Geoffrey's Wife and The Pitfall. Mary Cholmondeley

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СКАЧАТЬ said Mrs. Trefusis, blinking her eyes, "I won't say I won't try. You can always get round me, Anne. Oh! my dear, dear child, if it might only have been you. But of course, just because I had set my heart upon it, I was not to have it. That has been my life from first to last. If I might only have had you. You think me a cross, bitter old woman, and so I am: God knows I have had enough to make me so. But I should not have been so to you."

      "You never are so to me. But you see my affections are—is not that the correct expression?—engaged."

      "But you are not."

      "No. I am as free as air. That is where the difficulty comes in."

      "Where is the creature now?"

      "In Paris. The World chronicles his movements. That is why I take in the World. If he had been in London this week, I should not—be here at this moment."

      "I suppose he is enormously run after?"

      "Oh yes! By others as well as by me; by tons of others younger and better looking than I am."

      "Now, Anne, I am absolutely certain that you have never run a yard after him."

      "I have never appeared to do so," said Anne, with her faint, enigmatical smile. "The proprieties have been observed. At least by me they have. But I have covered a good deal of ground, nevertheless."

      "I don't know what he is made of."

      "Well, he is made of money for one thing, and I have not a shilling. He knows that."

      "He ought to be only too honoured by your being willing to think of him. In my young days a man of his class would not have had a chance."

      "Millionaires get their chance nowadays."

      "Then why doesn't he take it?"

      "Because," said Anne, her lip quivering, "he thinks I like him for his money. He has got that firmly screwed into his head."

      "As if a woman like you would do such a thing."

      "Women extremely like me are doing such things all the time. How is he to know I am different?"

      "He must be a fool."

      "He does not look like one."

      "No," said Mrs. Trefusis meditatively, "I must own he does not. He has a bullet head. I saw him once at the Duchess of Dundee's last summer. He was pointed out to me as the biggest thing in millionaires since Barnato. But I must confess he was the very last person in the world whom I should have thought you would have looked at—for himself, I mean."

      "That is what he thinks."

      "He is so very unattractive."

      "He is an ugly, forbidding-looking man of forty," said Anne, who had become very pale.

      "I should not go as far as that," said Mrs. Trefusis, somewhat disconcerted.

      "Oh! I can for you!" said Anne, her quiet eyes flashing. "He is all these things. He is exactly what I would rather not have married. And I think he knows that instinctively, poor man! But in spite of all that, in spite of everything that repels me, I know that we belong to each other. He did not choose to like me, or I to like him. I never had any choice in the matter. When I first saw him I recognised him. I had known him all my life. I had been waiting for him always without knowing it. I never really understood anything till he came. I did not fall in love with him; at least, not in the way I see others do, and as I once did myself years ago. I am not attracted towards him. I am him. And he is me. One can't fall in love with oneself. He is my other self. We are one. We may live painfully apart as we are doing now—he may marry some one else: but the fact remains the same."

      Mrs. Trefusis did not answer. Love is so rare that when we meet it we realise that we are on holy ground.

      "You and he will marry some day," she said at last.

      Her thoughts went back to her own youth, and its romantic love and marriage. There was no romance here as she understood it, nothing but a grim reality. But it almost seemed as if love could go deeper without romance.

      "I do not see how a misunderstanding can hold together between you."

      "You forget mother," said Anne.

      Mrs. Trefusis had momentarily forgotten her closest friend, the Duchess of Quorn, that notorious match-making mother of a quartette of pretty, well-drilled daughters, all of whom were now advantageously married except Anne—the eldest. And if Anne was not at this moment wedded to George Trefusis it was not owing to want of zeal on the part of both mothers. Mrs. Trefusis was irrevocably behind the scenes in Anne's family.

      "Mother ought by nature to have been a man and a cricketer," said Anne, "instead of the mother of many daughters. She is 'game' to the last, she is a hard hitter, and she will run till she drops on the chance of any catch. But her bowling is her strong point. Young men have not a chance with her. Her style may not be dignified, but her eye is extraordinary. Harry Lestrange did his silly, panic-stricken best, but—he is married to Cecily now."

      "Did he really try to get out of it?"

      "He did. He liked Cecily a little; he had certainly flirted with her when she came in his way, but he never made the least effort to meet her, and he did not want to marry her."

      "And Cecily?"

      "Cecily did not dislike him. She was only nineteen, and she had—so she told me—always hoped for curly hair; and of course Harry's is quite straight, what little there is of it. She shed a few tears about that, but she did as she was told. They are a nice-looking young couple. They write quite happily. I daresay it will do very well. But, you see, unfortunately, Harry was a friend of Mr. Vanbrunt's, and I know Harry consulted him as to how to get out of it. Well, directly mother's attention was off Harry, she found out about Mr. Vanbrunt; how I don't know, but she did. Poor mother! she has a heart somewhere. It is her sporting instincts which are too strong for her. When she found out, she came into my room and kissed me, and cried, and said love was everything, and what did looks matter, and, for her part, if a man was a good man, she thought it was of no importance if he had not had a father. Think of mother's saying that, after marrying poor father? But she was quite sincere. Mother never minds contradicting herself. There is nothing petty about her. She cried, and I cried too. We seemed to be nearer to each other than we had been for years. I was the last daughter left at home, and she actually said she did not want to part with me. I think she felt it just for the moment, for she had had a good deal of worry with some of the sons-in-law, especially Harry. But after a little bit she came to herself, and she gave me such advice. Oh, such advice! Some of it was excellent—that was the worst of it—but it was all from the standpoint of the woman stalking the man. And she asked me several gimlet questions about Mr. Vanbrunt. She said I had not made any mistake so far, but that I must be very careful. She was like a tiger that has tasted blood. She said it was almost like marrying royalty—marrying such wealth as that. I believe he has a property in Africa rather larger than England. But she said that I was her dear child, and she thought it might be done. I implored her not to do anything—to leave him alone. But the truth is, mother had been so successful that she had got rather beyond herself, and she fancied she could do anything. Father had often prophesied that some day she would overreach herself. However, nothing would stop her. So she settled down to it. You know what mother's bowling is. It did for СКАЧАТЬ