VII
Peterkin
HEN poor Muggeridge died and left his money to her sister, Drusilla thought with me that the habits of saving and careful frugality were rooted too deeply in Anne for her to get any real good or pleasure out of the great and sudden change in her fortunes. And the magical and radiant transformation it effected in her was almost a shock to us. I suppose it raised new hopes in her sordid little heart by what Georgie told me afterward of the things that happened that night of the dance, and Drusilla and I were both glad afterward that Matthew Arnold's health had driven us at that time to Marybeach. I am thankful that we had no share in the thing.
"Don't you have to be very careful now, Georgie?"
"What on earth do you mean?"
Georgie flung round and faced her defiantly. This promenade on the terrace with Anne was none of his arranging; but Diana was upstairs with his mother; it was too early to dress, and so here he was, entrapped for half-an-hour at least.
"Why should I be careful?"
She smiled.
"Well—Diana is particular, don't you think?"
"We won't discuss Diana, thank you." His tone was slightly uneasy.
"Nonsense!" Anne laughed. "I've known you long enough and well enough, to discuss anything with you, and I was at school with Diana. The question is, does she know you?"
He stared at her uneasily.
"She has been very well brought up, Georgie. She always says and does the proper thing, you know, and she likes her friends to say and do the proper things. She lives in a high moral atmosphere all the time. When I think of what she must expect of the man she is to marry I—well, of course you know all this?"
"Suppose you talk of something pleasant for a change!" Georgie growled.
"I am thinking of your future happiness," Anne murmured as they turned. "She will be happy of course with such a kind, honorable, constant lover as you, Georgie."
Georgie gazed at the open windows, with hunted eyes.
"It must be delightful," Anne pursued, "to be engaged to a girl like Diana. A girl who always defers so charmingly to the opinion of the world at large. She is so sweetly conventional, isn't she?"
"She's not a cat!" Georgie muttered.
"When you were engaged to me, Georgie, I knew all your faults, and took you as you were—"
"You rubbed them in often enough," he cried.
She ignored this.
"Does Diana know of all your faults? Have you made a clean breast of everything to her? Because if you haven't, I would advise you not to. I don't think you have somehow. I have a sort of feeling that you wouldn't be engaged now if you had."
"Every chap," Georgie said quickly, "kicks up his heels some time or other. I'm not the only fellow who's played the goat a bit. I've given up that sort of tomfoolery now."
Anne sighed.
"I liked you better before you grew wise, Georgie."
"It's hardly a case of your liking now." Georgie got his own back brutally. "When a man meets a girl like Diana, he naturally feels that he wants to settle down and leave all his careless habits behind him."
"With the other things he has forgotten to care about—betting, for instance, and poker, and bridge, and—and me. Have you mentioned your many engagements to Diana, by the way? If you haven't, don't! I don't fancy somehow
"I liked you better before you grew wise, Georgie"
that it would be as amusing to her as it is to the rest of us. She has high principles, you see. Even a friendship with Diana has its disadvantages. She expects so much of one that it is difficult to live up to her ideals, don't you think? It's rather a strain sometimes to reach the high-water mark of her approval. But of course you never feel like that."
"We needn't rake up the past like this," he said hastily. "And I would rather you didn't say anything more against Di. She's altered my whole life. A man must have some one to reverence; to idealize; to put on a pedestal, don't you know. She's changed me from a lazy, good-for-nothing beggar into—" he hesitated.
"Into what, Georgie?"
"She's made me buck up, and given me something to live for."
"Herself?"
"She found me"—Georgie rushed into strange, wild metaphor—"wallowing in muddy waters; muddy with lost ideals and half-forgotten schemes; She found me pulled down by the remembrance of the thousands of good intentions I'd never carried out and been paving the way with; only held up by a few longings for something better."
"You're getting quite eloquent!" Anne murmured admiringly. "You've developed that gift of metaphor since you were engaged to me. Were there any broken promises in that muddy water, Georgie?"
But Georgie had worked himself up.
"Diana is an angel from Paradise compared with all the other girls I've—"
"Been engaged to?" she asked softly. "Of course. But even to angels there are some drawbacks. When Diana came along and picked you out of that muddy water full of broken promises and things, did she shake all the mud off your clothes before she led you into paths of light ? Because if there is one little speck left, you must hide it from her. It isn't likely, of course, but still you never know. Diana wouldn't understand that that kind of mud sometimes sticks. Do you ever put your money an a dead cert now, Georgie?"
"Don't try to be funny," Georgie spoke rudely with a scarlet face.
"I'm only playing up to you," Anne said lightly. "I've always played up to you, haven't I? I must give up the habit. Does Diana love you well enough to take the mud with you? Do you think she would love you if you forged a cheque, or swore out loud when your motor broke down?"
"Yes," said Georgie, firmly. "And I'm not going to forge a cheque, so we needn't discuss the question."
"Would her heart still be true to you if you told her suddenly that you'd become a Plymouth Brother, or a Particular Baptist, do you suppose?"
Georgie looked at his watch and thanked his stars that it was seven o'clock.
"I'm going in, Anne."
With ill-concealed joy he turned towards the house.
"Wait," Anne said, with a curious choking sound in her throat.
"Georgie," she said, "you mustn't mind my laughing at you. You do rather lend yourself to it, don't you? And I really do want you to be happy. About Diana. Don't put her love to any severe test if you can help it. I'm afraid it wouldn't make much of a show beside her principles and her strong sense of duty. If I were you I wouldn't tell her about—well, about me." Her voice broke.
Georgie, always soft-hearted, turned quickly and stared at her face in the fading light. Her brown eyes, usually so quiet and critical, were full of tears.
"Don't, Anne." He laid his hand on her arm. "Don't, for goodness sake. I'm a brute, I know I am. I'm not worth it. I—"
"No." Anne's dark eyes met his troubled blue ones. "I don't think you are."
He flushed.
"But I'm not quite such a hound as you think me. I'm not deceitful. I couldn't help changing, but I've not tried to hide it. I told Diana that I had been engaged to you once, and to—to other people. And I told her that the sight of her had driven every other woman off the earth, as far as I was concerned."
Anne made a hasty effort to speak, but he went on firmly.
"I told her how badly I'd behaved to you and—the others. I said how sorry I was to have behaved in that way, and she forgave me. She said she was very sorry for you too."
"Oh!"
Anne wrenched away her arm and hurried into the house, speechless with some emotion Georgie could not fathom, and, much perturbed, he stayed behind on the terrace for a minute or two.
There was to be a dance after dinner that night, and hundreds of brightly colored Chinese lanterns lent romance and mystery to the garden, and made the darkness visible, down the shadowy paths.
"Time I went up to dress," Georgie said at last. "And I never noticed that Di was so beastly proper. I suppose I don't always notice things that other people do. Anne's prettier than she used to be. I did notice that. It doesn't seem to matter much what women say, if they aren't pretty."
But all the time he was dressing, Anne's words rankled in his ingenuous mind: "Do you ever put your money on a dead cert?" Did he?
He laughed uneasily.
That was one of the things he had promised Di. That he would give up betting.
"I love horses," she had said. "To have, and to ride and drive they're ripping. They're better than any old motor, Georgie. But when it comes to backing them, they're a snare of the devil."
He remembered this now. In her curious mixture of Puritanism and schoolboy slang she had once given him a lecture on his bad habits.
"She told me that backing horses was the first step in the broad path which leads to destruction," he murmured moodily, groping for his collar stud. " Said she had reason to know… How can she? I suppose the old chap's been making a plunge. It's a rotten hole to be in."
It was. Two days before, Georgie, forgetting his promise, had put twenty pounds on Peterkin. And Peterkin had won.
"Ten to one she'll never hear about it," he thought. "I shall never be able to explain why I did it. She's so beastly particular about these things."
He peered down through the open window at the dusky garden.
Some of the girls were sauntering up and down the terrace already. He noticed how prettily their flimsy, shimmering dresses caught the lights; clear green, glowing yellow, and delicate blue, from the swaying lanterns, and then he saw Diana.
She smiled up at his window.
"Hurry up, Georgie!" cried she.
In her hair and in the lace at her breast, she wore his flowers. How pretty she was; how dear! Georgie nodded and drew in.
"I can't tell her," he said miserably, "and I can't be a damned coward either. She said we weren't to have any secrets from each other. I'll tell her while we're dancing. No. I'm hanged if I'll put the thing off."
He tore a sheet of paper out of his pocket book and scrawled a few hasty lines.
I can't speak to you till I've told you something. I broke my promise to you and backed Peterkin. He won by two lengths, but I sha'n't have a happy moment till I hear you've forgiven me. I know I was a mean hound to forget, and it's worrying me to death.
Yours always,
He put it into an envelop, and asked a maid he met in the passage to give it to Diana at once.
He was early in the drawing-room, and when Diana came in with Anne, Georgie found that it fell to his unhappy lot to take down an important cousin. So he saw nothing of his sweetheart while dinner lasted, but in the drawing-room afterwards he picked a program from a tray and went up to her. She was very grave, and in her white cloudy dress looked pale. She gazed steadily into his face as he drew near, and he wondered what had driven the roses from her cheeks so quickly. They had been in full bloom on the terrace before dinner. He waited silently for her to speak.
"I can't speak to you now," she said in a low voice. "I—I haven't had time to think things over yet."
Georgie stared, then laughed uneasily.
"Is it a hanging matter?" he asked lightly. "I'm frightfully sorry Di, and all that sort of thing, don't you know. I'm sorry I'm such an awful backslider."
"Don't!" She spoke sharply. "Go away. I can't talk to you now."
"But Di—"
She stopped him again.
"Don't explain," she said. "I can't bear it. I only want you to go away. Oh, do go away."
Georgie gazed wretchedly at her determined face.
"Aren't you even going to dance with me, Di?"
She made an impatient sound.
"Dance with you? To-night? Are you mad, Georgie? I—I wonder you dare! No—I'm not going to dance with you. And now, will you please go?"
Bewildered, wounded, even indignant, he turned away without another word. For Diana to be so unforgiving! so hard! so narrow! It was incredible. Diana who loved him so. Georgie was a spoilt boy, and never in his life had he had such a snubbing. His program was still empty, but he didn't want to dance now. Gloomily he walked across the room, to the open window, and stared blankly out. If it had been any house but his mother's he would have gone away at once, and the thought of his duty dances, the miles of small talk he would have to listen to, and originate, appalled him.
This was the first time he had seen the light of life go out utterly and entirely, and it was not easy to bear, impossible to dissemble, his misery. Because he loved her, he told himself. This was not a passing fancy like the others. Di was different; had always been different. If she gave him up, he had done with girls. And it was for so little. How beastly it was of the band to play "Trésor d 'Amour." They had agreed to dance that together always.
"What is it, Georgie?"
Anne's voice sounded quite kind. He looked at her impatiently, and wondered again what she had done to make herself look so pretty. Her dress was yellow, sweet sunshiny yellow, and her hair was waved high, with gold colored pansies in it.
"Is it Peterkin?" said Anne.
Georgia stared. Anne dropped her program, and he picked it up, to hold it unthinkingly in his hand.
"I was with Diana when she got your absurd note, Georgie. She let me read it."
"No?" His face reddened.
"Yes. You don't mind, do you? It's a pity you wrote it, because Diana didn't understand. She never does understand very well, you know; not backsliding. She is so good herself; her pedestal is such a very high one. She can't make allowances for us sinners, my poor Georgie."
"What did she say?"
"Say?" Anne arranged her pansies. "Oh, she said a lot of things. I don't remember her words exactly. She seemed to think she has been a fool to try to pluck such a brand from the burning as you. She seemed to think that she ought to have known better than to try to bring such a very black sheep back to the fold. I think—"
"What do you think?"
"Why, I think she almost wishes she had left you in that muddy water."
"Good Lord!" he gave her such a glance of abject misery that she smiled.
"Cheer up, Georgie. You always could console yourself, you know, even in the bitterest moments. Drown your sorrows in dancing. The room is full of delightful girls."
"Ugh!" Georgie shuddered. Anne's eyes radiant, and mysterious, puzzled him. "I don't want any delightful girls. Give me your program!"
"You're not very polite," she said with a smile. " And you've got my program already."
He laughed recklessly.
"So I have." He scribbled his initials down the card. "Anne, you always understood me. Even when you tried to reform me, you weren't narrow. Even—"
"Give me back my program, Georgie. You're the host. You've taken enough. You—"
"Rot!" he said. "We'll dance together.
"At ten o'clock next morning, Georgie, after a sound, healthy night's rest proper to his years, woke up and remembered.
"Oh my hat!" he said; and rushed hastily to his cold bath. Unluckily a cold bath helps rather than retards memory, and Georgie's ejaculation as he brushed his short hair was: "Good Lord!" A couple of withered yellow pansies had suddenly caught his appalled eye. He was amazed to find that this memory, such as it was, had taken away all desire for breakfast, and he went straight out of doors with a longing for fresh breezes.
He avoided the terrace and rose-garden with its possibility of girls, and turned to the orchard and plantation beyond. It was hardly a happy spot to choose, for it was there that he had once helped Diana to dig up primroses. She had wanted to make his mother's kitchen-garden pretty, and Georgie wanted what she wanted, so they had planted the primroses together, and together laughed at a contemptuous, and indignant gardener. Now he felt that he hated the memory of the wood and those primroses He sat down on the little plank seat he had put up for her, and stared moodily at the ground.
"What an infernal mess I've made of everything," said he to the thrushes and linnets.
Lightly a hand was laid on his shoulder.
"Have you?" Anne asked.
"Yes," he said sulkily, without looking up.
"Are you very miserable, Georgie?"
"It's a rotten world." He flung a piece of bark at a noisy wren.
"Oh!" Anne caught her breath. "You are very cruel, Georgie. Cruel and hard."
"Call me anything you like!" cried he. "Heap it on. And it isn't hardness, anyhow, that's brought me to this!"
Anne was silent
"I suppose," she said at last. "This means that—it is still Diana, I suppose?"
"Yes, "said Georgie, "it will always be Diana!"
He raised his moody eyes and looked at her. Little, and pale, and plain; had he been mad last night?
"You look fagged." He tried to speak kindly. "Why did you get up?"
"I didn't sleep," she said in a low voice: "I was awake for hours, thinking. I had time to think over a good many things. Do you—Georgie, do you remember what you said last night?"
"Most of it"—in a miserable voice. Then suddenly he stood up beside her.
"I'm not going back on my word, Anne. I'm not much catch, but I'm still yours if you'll take me as I am. I'm not such a rotter as to go back on my word a second time. I—"
She stopped him with a quick cry.
"Don't! nothing happened last night. I have forgotten last night. I shall always forget it. Please remember that you are still engaged to Diana."
He stared at her stupidly.
"Many a time," Anne said in a low voice, "I have helped you out of your muddles. Perhaps—who knows but I might even help you out of this one."
"Nothing can help me now," said he hopelessly. And she left him to curse his gloomy fate. But that fate was kinder than he thought and was hurrying fast towards him.
"Georgie!"
He sprang up, brushed his hand across his eyes that he might the better see across the orchard, and found to his shame and horror that they were wet, with tears for Diana. I have always thought that he was fonder of that girl than Drusilla would allow.
"Georgie!"
Something white was crossing in and out of the apple tree shadows, and as it drew nearer he saw that little specks and flecks of light dappled a girl's fair hair through the trees. It was of course Diana.
"Di."
"Oh, Georgie!" Her eyes were smiling at him as he plunged through the trees to meet her. "I've come to apologize for last night. I was a horrid little wretch to you last night."
"Di!" Stupidly he repeated her name.
"Anne has explained," she said happily.
"Explained? What on earth—"
"She told me yesterday before dinner, that you and she still loved each other. I knew, of course, that you had once been engaged, and when she said that now, you regretted—me, I—oh Georgie—"
"Good heavens!" Georgie was thunderstruck.
"When I looked out of my window last night," Diana said, "you were holding her hand. I saw you. But it's all right now. Anne has just been in to tell me that it was all a mistake. She misunderstood you, she said."
"Misunderstood!" Georgie gasped.
"She was right?" Diana cried, pale with sudden fear. "She did misunderstand you?"
"Yes," said Georgie in a curious voice, "I think she did."
"Ten minutes ago," Diana smiled, "she gave me this poor little note of yours. She promised one of the maids to give it to me last night, and forgot all about it till this morning. I have only just read it."
"Where is Anne?" Georgie asked earnestly.
Diana's face fell.
"She went straight home. I am sorry, but she said she felt that it was best for her to go."
"On the whole," said Georgie grimly, "I think it perhaps was."
"It was rather careless of her, don't you think?"
With some difficulty Georgie refrained from saying what he thought of Anne's carelessness.
"What about Peterkin?" he asked quickly. "I broke my promise, Di? What about Peterkin?"
"Peterkin?" Diana blushed and laughed. "Oh Georgie, I'm afraid I don't always practice what I preach. You see I had six pairs of gloves and a half-a-crown on Peterkin myself."