CHAPTER IX.
THAT MISCHIEVOUS CUPID.
"For boys say, Love me or I die."
UNIVERSITY examinations are not things to be postponed with polite little notes like inconvenient balls or picnics. And, given the early days of December, and a young man who steadfastly refused to acknowledge this fact, what use was it even to trouble to scan the lists?
Of course Philip was plucked.
In October he had brought down his father's wrath upon him by failing to get through in a class examination; and any one who had had experience of the Captain's would have thought that would have been quite enough to make him take a good place at the end of his second year.
But, as I said, his name was conspicuous by its absence.
"Oh, Philip!" Nell said, an accent of reproach on the first syllable; "and even that stupid Burton boy is through."
"Oh, Pip!" said Meg. "What will father say?"
It was the day the lists were out at the university, and Philip had just communicated the agreeable intelligence to his sisters in the midst of his third pipe after dinner.
And the strange part was, he did not seem to care twopence—the orthodox measure of indifference.
He lolled back on the lounge, and made fantastic figures with the smoke from his pipe; he did not even seem to hear what the girls were saying.
And when he came out of his father's study, after a mauvais quart d'heure of unusual elasticity, there was not a trace of repentance on his face, nothing but obstinacy in his eyes, and lips all pursed up for a careless whistle when the distance from the room should be respectable enough.
But later on in the evening Meg caught a glimpse of his face when he thought he was quite unobserved, and its restless, unhappy look gave her a curious feeling of surprise and anxiety.
She remembered all at once that she had quite forgotten of late to take an interest in this eldest brother of hers.
The "time o' day" that it was just now in her life made it excusable, perhaps. She had a latchkey to a little heaven of her own, where she might retreat whenever earth grew troublous or commonplace; sometimes she stayed there too long and grew forgetful. And though she had taken Poppet as her special charge, and formed endless resolutions as to her future treatment of poor, prodigal Bunty, she had let Pip slip away.
He was from home so much was the excuse she made to herself now—at lectures most of the day, and no one knew where in the evening; how could she be all she should to him? She had kept a sisterly eye on his clothes, darned all manner of sweet little dreams into the heels and toes of his socks, and even embroidered him a 'varsity cap so that he should not be jealous of the one she had worked for Alan.
But there she had stopped, and it struck her suddenly to-night that this big, tall fellow with the manly shoulders and boyish, unhappy face was almost as a stranger to her.
Where had all his fun, his schoolboy teasings, his high spirits and absurdities, gone to? Surely it was only yesterday he used to pull their hair and slaughter their dolls and come for three servings of pudding!
She gazed at him with great earnestness as he sat motionless at the table, looking, not at the book before him, but straight opposite at the wall where Poppet had spilt the ink; and it came to her with a strange pang of pain that Pip, dear old madcap, merry Pip, was a man.
All the young light had gone from his eyes; they were graver, sterner than the boy's eyes, and yet full of a troubled unrest. Then his mouth was firmer, and it was not only the soft, dark line of an incipient moustache that made it seem so; the careless laughter lines around it no longer showed, his very lips seemed to have grown straighter.
But even as Meg watched, all her heart in her eyes, those same lips unclosed, and a half tremulous curve of pain appeared at each corner and made them look very boyish again. He put up his hand and pushed his crisp hair away from his forehead with a weary gesture. She could look no longer.
She went up to the table and slipped an arm round his shoulder.
"Dear old fellow," she said; "oh, I am so sorry about the exam."
"The exam.!" he repeated. "Oh, you needn't bother, old girl; I don't care. What's an exam. fifty years hence?"
His lips were under his own control again.
The girl's arm went from his shoulder to his neck. "Dear Pip, I wish you'd tell me things sometimes; don't shunt me altogether because I'm only your sister. Pip, couldn't you tell me? I know you're in trouble; couldn't I help a bit? Dear old fellow, there's nothing I wouldn't do." Such an earnest, loving voice it was.
But he freed his neck, and put her away almost roughly.
"Help me!" he said bitterly; "you're the last in the world who would. Yes, I'm in trouble, perhaps; but it's a trouble you girls and Esther would do your best to increase."
Meg's eyes filled, but she would not be repulsed. "Try me," she said. "Is it gambling, Pip? Are you in need of money? Is it debts? Have you done anything you daren't tell father?" She put her arm round his shoulder again; but he stood up hastily and pushed her aside.
"It's nothing you can help, Meg. No, it's none of those things. As to telling you, I'd sooner cut my tongue out! There, I didn't mean to hurt you," for Meg's lips had trembled; "but oh, it would be impossible for you to understand. Why, you'd be the first to be against me." He went over to the door, and picked up his straw hat from the side-table on the way.
Meg followed him. "Sha'n't you ever tell me?" she said. "Not to-night, perhaps, as you don't want to, but another time Pip; indeed, you shouldn't be disappointed in me. Just promise you'll tell me another time."
"You'll know before the month's out," he said, and laughed half wildly as he closed the door behind him. As a matter of fact, a trivial accident happened, and she knew before the next day was out.
They were having afternoon tea down near the river, and it being Sunday afternoon and pleasantly cool, the Captain had strolled down with Esther, and was seated on the grass leisurely examining some letters that had come by the Saturday afternoon's post and been laid aside. There was a bill amongst them that he had had no part in making, a tailor's bill, with what seemed to him superfluous blazers, flannels, and such things, down. On ordinary occasions he would only have grumbled moderately and as a matter of duty, for Pip was not particularly extravagant. But to-day, with his son's recent failure fresh in his mind, he felt he could be explosive with perfect justice. So he despatched Peter up to the house to request Pip's immediate presence. Pip was on the point of going out, and came with a half-aggrieved, half-aggressive look on his face.
But before there was time for even the preliminaries of warfare, Essie created a diversion by tumbling out of the moored boat in which she and Poppet were sitting into the deep, clear water of the river.
Pip's coat was off before any one had even time to scream, he flung it into Meg's lap right over the teacups, and was swimming out to the little dark bobbing head in less time than it takes to write it.
Nellie and Poppet had screamed, a strange, strangled cry had broken from Esther's lips, and the Captain had put his arm round her and said, "Don't be foolish, she's quite safe," in a sharp voice; but his face was white under its bronze,—this little saucy-faced baby daughter of his had crept closer to his heart than any of his other children.
Of course she was quite safe. Here was Pip scrambling up the bank again, and holding her up in his arms, a little dripping figure in a white frock and pinafore, one foot quite bare, the other with only the sock on.
Such gurgling little sobs of fright and relief she gave, such leaps and shudders of joy and terror, as they carried her up to the house wrapped in her father's coat.
But now she was safe and unhurt Meg did not follow the rest of the family into the bedroom with her. Instead she went into her own, and sank down on the ottoman at the bed foot, white to the lips and trembling like an old, old woman,—not on Essie's account, the danger had been so short-lived, but in that breathless moment something terrible had come to her knowledge.
[Illustration: "A LITTLE DRIPPING FIGURE IN A WHITE FROCK AND PINAFORE."]
I told you Pip had thrown his coat to her over the tea-things; it had fallen on her lap with a jerk, and the contents of one pocket had been precipitated on to the tray.
A tobacco pouch, a fountain pen, and a pipe she had replaced hastily. A letter had fallen face upwards—even in the confusion she had seen it was addressed to "Miss Mabelle Jones," in her brother's bold writing.
But the thing that had taken all the colour and life from her face, she had not put back in the pocket at all, when Pip had taken the coat. She held it at the present time in her tightly shut, trembling hand, and every minute the horror in her eyes deepened. Then she said, "Pip!" in a low, wailing voice, and opened her hand and looked again at the thing.
The tissue paper was still there, and on its whiteness, shining bravely up into the wild eyes above it, lay a little gold wedding-ring.
There was a step outside her door—Pip's step; he had been to his room to change to dry things, and was coming back. For a minute he stopped, and Meg went paler than ever; then he went on, along the passage and down the staircase.
She could hear him in the lower hall,—could he be going out again? She started to her feet as the door banged, and went hastily over to the window. No; he had his old tennis cap on, and was going very slowly across the grass towards the river, his eyes searching the ground. He had evidently missed it already, and surmised it had fallen from the pocket, either as he carried his coat to the house or when he flung it to Meg. She gave him just time to get down to the water, and then, with the small, terrible thing tightly held in her hand, she went almost blindly down the stairs and over the grass after him.
He was kneeling down just beside the tea-things, groping about in the long grass.
"Have you lost anything?" Meg asked, in a voice that seemed to have no connection with herself, so faint and far away it sounded.
"Er—only the stem of my pipe," Pip said, a dull flush on his forehead.
He overturned a cup, spilt the milk into the biscuit barrel, and said something under his breath.
"Is this what you have lost, Pip?"
Meg's voice came in almost a whisper, with a note of great yearning in it,—oh, if only he would laugh, and give a ridiculously simple explanation of it all! She hardly dared to look at his face for fear of what she should find there; her hand, outstretched to him with the gold circle on its palm, trembled like a leaf.
The scarlet leaped up into his face as if he had been a girl; his very brow and neck and ears were deeply dyed. He snatched the ring from the little soft palm, and held it in his own closed hand; his eyes were like coals on fire.
But Meg faced him quietly; all her courage gathered in her hands now the need had come.
"You were going to marry the little dressmaker, Philip," she said.
He told her a lie, two or three lies; then he abused her violently for her interference and prying; then, kneeling as he was, he put both his arms round her waist and prayed her, if she had any love for him, not to try to ruin the happiness of his life.
Oh the young, wild, passionate face, the imploring words! It almost broke Meg's heart to see him. Such a boy again,—oh, surely not a man now,—not twenty yet, and so headstrong. She felt years and years older than he—felt almost as if she were his mother, and he a child begging to play with the fire.
Strange wisdom came to her. She neither railed nor mocked, reproached nor wept. "And after you are married, what then, Pip?" she said, her voice quite even. "Fifty pounds a year won't go very far; and I suppose father will stop even that."
He flung back his head with its crisp waves and curls, the light came into his eyes.
"I can work," he said, and smiled proudly.
Meg looked merely thoughtful.
"Of course you can," she said; "but of course you will get a bare nothing at first. And, Pip, excuse me saying it, aren't you rather selfish? You might be able to rough it; but wouldn't it be very hard on her? Dear Pip, haven't you too much pride to ask any woman in the world to be your wife, and not have a penny to offer her or a house to take her to?"
This was a new view of the case to Pip. It had certainly not occurred to him it was hard on her; all the sacrifice had seemed on his side, and he had rejoiced to make it.
"She doesn't mind; she knows I'd have to begin from the beginning," he said, half sulkily.
"But wouldn't she rather wait? There is every chance of a bright future before you, as you know, Pip, with all the influence father has. Pip, I am sure she would rather wait and come to you when you are able to take her proudly before every one, than marry you now and make you sink into a fifth-rate clerk for the rest of your life."
She held her head on one side argumentatively; the colour was beginning to creep back into her cheeks.
As for Pip, he was both surprised and sobered at her moderation. She had not said a word against the girl he loved, she had not been contemptuous; she was only laying before him, clearly and rationally, what he had seen and refused to see himself.
The conversation spread itself out over hours; dusk was beginning to fall before they turned to go in again. It would take half this book to narrate everything that was said, but in the end the victory was to Meg.
When it came to the crisis she had been very firm.
Unless he would promise her, before God and before heaven, before their dead mother and all he held holy, not to marry the girl secretly, she should immediately inform his father, who, until he was of age, could make the thing impossible.
If, on the other hand, he would go back to his old life and work with all his will, as it was only right and just he should do, and if at the end of two years he was just as much in love with her as ever, and if there was nothing against her but her lowly position, then she, Meg, would withdraw her opposition, and even do all she could to help him forward. She felt safe.
"Think how much better you will know each other by then," she said cheerfully, as they walked back to the house, both feeling they had been near a volcano's edge. "Why, how long have you known her, Pip?"
And his answer was the least bit shamefaced.
"Three months—nearly four, at least."
He had the unpleasant feeling of having been conquered; but deep in his secret heart there was relief; that it had been taken out of his hands. He had known he was making shipwreck of his life, known he was bringing bitter trouble upon his family by this hot haste; but Mabel (with two l's and an e) had been so insistent about an immediate marriage, and he so deeply in love and fearful of losing her, that he had felt the world was well lost.
And what Meg said was very true. It would be more manly of him to work first, and take a wife when he had something to keep her on.
His Spanish castles raised themselves rapidly against the early evening sky. He would work for two or three years as never man worked yet, and marry "Mabelle" at the end of that time; then he would take her to England that she might grow a little more educated and polished (oh, Pip, Pip!), and then bring her back and present her proudly to Esther and his father and sisters.
His face looked quite young and bright again by the time they reached the front door.
"You're a well-meaning little thing, Meg," he said, and kissed her patronisingly; it was not in nature that he should feel quite proper gratitude.
Meg drew a series of long breaths of relief as she took off her hat upstairs and smoothed her hair for tea.
"Oh, who would have brothers?" she asked her image in the glass; but it only looked back at her and smiled mournfully.