The Two Magics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1898)/Covering End/Chapter 5
V
The girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, straight upon the wonderful lady. "I've come back to you—I want to speak to you!" The need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly immense. "May I confide in you?"
Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both astonished and amused. "You too?" she laughed. "Why it is good we come over!"
"It is, indeed!" Cora gratefully echoed. "You were so very kind to me and seemed to think me so curious."
The mirth of her friend redoubled. "Well, I loved you for it, and it was nothing moreover to what you thought me!"
Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial—she only presented her frank high colour. "I loved you. But I'm the worst!" she generously added. "And I'm solitary."
"Ah, so am I!" Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with emphasis. "A very queer thing always is solitary! But, since we have that link, by all means confide."
"Well, I was met here by tremendous news." Cora produced it with a purple glow. "He wants me to marry him!"
Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to follow. "'He' wants you?"
"Papa, of course. He has settled it!"
Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. "Settled what?"
"Why, the whole question. That I must take him."
Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. "But, my dear, take whom?"
The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. "Why, Captain Yule, who just went up."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. "Oh!" she repeated, looking straight away.
"I thought you would know," Cora gently explained.
Her friend's eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. "I didn't know." Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. "Has Captain Yule asked you?"
"No, but he will"—Cora was clear as a bell. "He'll do it to keep the house. It's mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back."
Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it spread. "By marrying you?" she quavered.
Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the subject. "By giving me his name and his position. They're awfully great, and they're the price, don't you see?" she modestly mentioned. "My price. Papa's price. Papa wants them."
Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. "But his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful politics!"
Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. "You know about his dreadful politics? He's to change them," she recited, "to get me. And if he gets me———"
"He keeps the house?"—Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up.
Cora continued to show her schooling. "I go with it—he's to have us both. But only," she admonishingly added, "if he changes. The question is—will he change?"
Mrs. Gracedew appeared profoundly to entertain it. "I see. Will he change?"
Cora's consideration of it went even further. "Has he changed?"
It went—and the effect was odd—a little too far for her companion, in whom, just discernibly, it had touched the spring of impatience. "My dear child, how in the world should I know?"
But Cora knew exactly how anyone would know. "He hasn't seemed to care enough for the house. Does he care?"
Mrs. Gracedew moved away, passed over to the fireplace, and stood a moment looking at the old armorial fire-back she had praised to its master—yet not, it must be added, as if she particularly saw it. Then as she faced about: "You had better ask him!"
They stood thus confronted, with the fine old interval between them, and the girl's air was for a moment that of considering such a course. "If he does care," she said at last, "he'll propose."
Mrs. Gracedew, from where she stood in relation to the stairs, saw at this point the subject of their colloquy restored to view: Captain Yule was just upon them—he had turned the upper landing. The sight of him forced from her in a flash an ejaculation that she tried, however, to keep private—"He does care!" She passed swiftly, before he reached them, back to the girl and, in a quick whisper, but with full conviction, let her have it: "He'll propose!"
Her movement had made her friend aware, and the young man, hurrying down, was now in the hall. Cora, at his hurry, looked dismay—"Then I fly!" With which, casting about for a direction, she reached the door to the court.
Captain Yule, however, at this result of his return, expressed instant regret. "I drive Miss Prodmore away!"
Mrs. Gracedew, more quickly still, eased off the situation. "It's all right!" She had embraced both parties with a smile, but it was most liberal now for Cora. "Do you mind, one moment?"—it conveyed, unmistakeably, a full intelligence and a fine explanation. "I've something to say to Captain Yule."
Cora stood in the doorway, robust against the garden-light, and looking from one to the other. "Yes—but I've also something more to say to you."
"Do you mean now?" the young man asked.
It was the first time he had spoken to her, and her hesitation might have signified a maidenly flutter. "No—but before she goes."
Mrs. Gracedew took it amiably up. "Come back, then; I'm not going." And there was both dismissal and encouragement in the way that, as on the occasion of the girl's former retreat, she blew her a familiar kiss. Cora, still with her face to them, waited just enough to show that she took it without a response; then, with a quick turn, dashed out, while Mrs. Gracedew looked at their visitor in vague surprise. "What's the matter with her?"
She had turned away as soon as she spoke, moving as far from him as she had moved a few moments before from Cora. The silence that, as he watched her, followed her question would have been seen by a spectator to be a hard one for either to break. "I don't know what's the matter with her," he said at last; "I'm afraid I only know what's the matter with me. It will doubtless give you pleasure to learn," he added, "that I've closed with Mr. Prodmore."
It was a speech that, strangely enough, seemed but half to dissipate the hush. Mrs. Gracedew reached the great chimney again; again she stood there with her face averted; and when she finally replied it was in other words than he might have supposed himself naturally to inspire. "I thought you said he gave you time."
"Yes; but you produced just now so deep an effect on me that I thought best not to take any." He appeared to listen to a sound from above, and, for a moment, under this impulse, his eyes travelled about almost as if he were alone. Then he completed, with deliberation, his statement. "I came upon him right there, and I burnt my ships."
Mrs. Gracedew continued not to meet his face. "You do what he requires?"
The young man was markedly, consciously caught. "I do what he requires. I felt the tremendous force of all you said to me."
She turned round on him now, as if perhaps with a slight sharpness, the face of responsibility—even, it might be, of reproach. "So did I—or I shouldn't have said it!"
It was doubtless this element of justification in her tone that drew from him a laugh a tiny trifle dry. "You're perhaps not aware that you wield an influence of which it's not too much to say———"
But he paused at the important point so long that she took him up. "To say what?"
"Well, that it's practically irresistible!"
It sounded a little as if it had not been what he first meant; but it made her, none the less, still graver and just faintly ironical. "You've given me the most flattering proof of my influence that I've ever enjoyed in my life!"
He fixed her very hard, now distinctly so mystified that he could only wonder what different recall of her previous attitude she would have looked for. "This was inevitable, dear madam, from the moment you had converted me—and in about three minutes too!—into the absolute echo of your raptures."
Nothing was, indeed, more extraordinary than her air of having suddenly forgotten them. "My 'raptures'?"
He was amazed. "Why, about my home."
He might look her through and through, but she had no eyes for himself, though she had now quitted the fireplace and finally recognised this allusion. "Oh, yes—your home!" From where had she come back to it? "It's a nice tattered, battered old thing." This account of it was the more shrunken that her observation, even as she spoke, freshly went the rounds. "It has defects of course"—with this renewed attention they appeared suddenly to strike her. They had popped out, conspicuous, and for a little it might have been a matter of conscience. However, her conscience dropped. "But it's no use mentioning them now!"
They had half an hour earlier been vividly present to himself, but to see her thus oddly pulled up by them was to forget on the spot the ground he had taken. "I'm particularly sorry," he returned with some spirit, "that you didn't mention them before!"
At this imputation of inconsequence, of a levity not, after all, without its excuse, Mrs. Gracedew was reduced, in keeping her resentment down, to an effort not quite successfully disguised. It was in a tone, nevertheless, all the more mild in intention that she reminded him of where he had equally failed. "If you had really gone over the house, as I almost went on my knees to you to do, you might have discovered some of them yourself!"
"How can you say that," the young man asked with heat, "when I was precisely in the very act of it? It was just because I was that the first person I met above was Mr. Prodmore; on which, feeling that I must come to it sooner or later, I simply gave in to him on the spot—yielded him, to have it well over, the whole of his point."
She listened to this account of the matter as she might have gazed, from afar, at some queer object that was scarce distinguishable. It left her a moment in the deepest thought, but she presently recovered her tone. "Let me then congratulate you on at last knowing what you want!"
But there were, after all, he instantly showed, no such great reasons for that. "I only know it so far as you know it! I struck while the iron was hot—or at any rate while the hammer was."
"Of course I recognise"—she adopted his image with her restored gaiety—"that it can rarely have been exposed to such a fire. I blazed up, and I know that when I burn———"
She had pulled up with the foolish sense of this. "When you burn?"
"Well, I do it as Chicago does."
He also could laugh out now. "Isn't that usually down to the ground?"
Meeting his laugh, she threw up her light arms. "As high as the sky!" Then she came back, as with a scruple, to the real question. "I suppose you've still formalities to go through."
"With Mr. Prodmore?" Well, he would suppose it too if she liked. "Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!"
This sketch of them made her wonder. "You mean they'll take so very, very long?"
He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. "Every hour, every month, that I can possibly make them last!"
She was with him here, however, but to a certain point. "You mustn't drag them out too much—must you? Won't he think in that case you may want to retract?"
Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore under this delusion, and with a success that had a quick, odd result. "I shouldn't be so terribly upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did!"
His manner, with its slight bravado, left her proportionately shocked. "Oh, it would never do to give him any colour whatever for supposing you to have any doubt that, as one may say, you've pledged your honour."
He devoted to this proposition more thought than its simplicity would have seemed to demand; but after a minute, at all events, his intelligence triumphed. "Of course not—not when I haven't any doubt!"
Though his intelligence had triumphed, she still wished to show she was there to support it. "How can you possibly have any—any more than you can possibly have that one's honour is everything in life?" And her charming eyes expressed to him her need to feel that he was quite at one with her on that point.
He could give her every assurance. "Oh, yes—everything in life!"
It did her much good, brought back the rest of her brightness. "Wasn't it just of the question of the honour of things that we talked awhile ago—and of the difficulty of sometimes keeping our sense of it clear? There's no more to be said therefore," she went on with the faintest soft sigh about it, "except that I leave you to your ancient glory as I leave you to your strict duty." She had these things there before her; they might have been a well-spread board from which she turned away fasting. "I hope you'll do justice to dear old Covering in spite of its weak points, and I hope above all you'll not be incommoded———"
As she hesitated here he was too intent. "Incommoded———?"
She saw it better than she could express it. "Well, by such a rage———!"
He challenged this description with a strange gleam. "You suppose it will be a rage?"
She laughed out at his look. "Are you afraid of the love that kills?"
He grew singularly grave. "Will it kill———?"
"Great passions have!"—she was highly amused.
But he could only stare. "Is it a great passion?"
"Surely—when so many feel it!"
He was fairly bewildered. "But how many———?"
She reckoned them up. "Let's see. If you count them all———"
"'All'?" Clement Yule gasped.
She looked at him, in turn, slightly mystified. "I see. You knock off some. About half?"
It was too obscure—he broke down. "Whom on earth are you talking about?"
"Why, the electors———"
"Of Gossage?"—he leaped at it. "Oh!"
"I got the whole thing up—there are six thousand. It's such a fine figure!" said Mrs. Gracedew.
He had sharply passed from her, to cover his mistake, and it carried him half round the hall. Then, as if aware that this pause itself compromised him, he came back confusedly and with her last words in his ear. "Has she a fine figure?"
But her own thoughts were off. "'She'?"
He blushed and recovered himself. "Aren't we talking———"
"Of Gossage? Oh, yes—she has every charm! Good-bye," said Mrs. Gracedew.
He pulled, at this, the longest face, but was kept dumb a moment by the very decision with which she again began to gather herself. It held him helpless, and there was finally real despair in his retarded protest. "You don't mean to say you're going?"
"You don't mean to say you're surprised at it? Haven't I done," she luminously asked, "what I told you I had been so mystically moved to come for?" She recalled to him by her renewed supreme survey the limited character of this errand, which she then in a brisk familiar word expressed to the house itself. "You dear old thing—you're saved!"
Clement Yule might on the other hand, by his simultaneous action, have given himself out for lost. "For God's sake," he cried as he circled earnestly round her, "don't go till I can come back to thank you!" He pulled out his watch. "I promised to return immediately to Prodmore."
This completely settled his visitor. "Then don't let me, for a moment more, keep you away from him. You must have such lots"—it went almost without saying—"to talk comfortably over."
The young man's embrace of that was, in his restless movement, to roam to the end of the hall furthest from the stairs. But here his assent was entire. "I certainly feel, you know, that I must see him again." He rambled even to the open door and looked with incoherence into the court. "Yes, decidedly, I must!"
"Is he out there?" Mrs. Gracedew lightly asked.
He turned short round. "No—I left him in the long gallery."
"You saw that, then?"—she flashed back into eagerness. "Isn't it lovely?"
Clement Yule rather wondered. "I didn't notice it. How could I?"
His face was so woeful that she broke into a laugh. "How couldn't you? Notice it now, then. Go up to him!"
He crossed at last to the staircase, but at the foot he stopped again. "Will you wait for me?"
He had such an air of proposing a bargain, of making the wait a condition, that she had to look it well in the face. The result of her doing so, however, was apparently a strong sense that she could give him no pledge. Her silence, after a moment, expressed that; but, for a further emphasis, moving away, she sank suddenly into the chair she had already occupied and in which, serious again and very upright, she continued to withhold her promise. "Go up to him!" she simply repeated. He obeyed, with an abrupt turn, mounting briskly enough several steps, but pausing midway and looking back at her as if he were after all irresolute. He was in fact so much so that, at the sight of her still in her chair and alone by his cold hearth, he descended a few steps again and seemed, with too much decidedly on his mind, on the point of breaking out. She had sat a minute in such thought, figuring him clearly as gone, that at the sound of his return she sprang up with a protest. This checked him afresh, and he remained where he had paused, still on the ascent and exchanging with her a look to which neither party was inspired, oddly enough, to contribute a word. It struck him, without words, at all events, as enough, and he now took his upward course at such a pace that he presently disappeared. She listened awhile to his retreating tread; then her own, on the old flags of the hall, became rapid, though, it may perhaps be added, directed to no visible end. It conveyed her, in the great space, from point to point, but she now for the first time moved there without attention and without joy, her course determined by a series of such inward throbs as might have been the suppressed beats of a speech. A real observer, had such a monster been present, would have followed this tacit evolution from sign to sign and from shade to shade. "Why didn't he tell me all?—But it was none of my business!—What does he mean to do?—What should he do but what he has done?—And what can he do, when he's so deeply committed, when he's practically engaged, when he's just the same as married—and buried?—The thing for me to 'do' is just to pull up short and bundle out: to remove from the scene they encumber the numerous fragments—well, of what?"
Her thought was plainly arrested by the sight of Cora Prodmore, who, returning from the garden, reappeared first in the court and then in the open doorway. Mrs. Gracedew's was a thought, however, that, even when desperate, was never quite vanquished, and it found a presentable public solution in the pieces of the vase smashed by drivers and just then, on the table where he had laid them, catching her eye. "Of my old Chelsea pot!" Her gay, sad headshake as she took one of them up pronounced for Cora's benefit its funeral oration. She laid the morsel thoughtfully down, while her visitor seemed with simple dismay to read the story.