CHAPTER III
THE NEW LOVER
A success it proved to be—the dinner-party—but it was neither Claire nor yet Lady Starkie who made it one. It was Nicholas Harding himself. His laugh was louder and more infectious than ever, his face an even healthier pink, and his little jokes were both felicitous and incessant, even when he was busy carving the haunch. He cracked several at the expense of Ministers, and two or three at his own.
“I only hope one thing,” said he, pausing in those obsolete labours. “I only hope they send me to Botany Bay! My friend Daintree has promised to give me another chance there as chief butler in his establishment. And so I may hope—ha! ha! —to carve my way back to decent society—ha! ha! ha!”
The spirit of such jests made up for the letter. The party had been so carefully chosen that nothing offended or fell flat, and the general good-humour never flagged. Even Claire had light-hearted moments during dinner. Daintree had taken her in, and he talked to her so much about his lovely, lonely home on Port Jackson’s shores (once the subject was started) that he quite forgot to carve the fowls which had been placed in front of him, and a reprimand from the head of the table set everybody laughing. Daintree joined in with what grace he might; he was too self-conscious to enter into the spirit of such chaff, and very soon he was once more edifying Claire by talking entirely about himself in his deep, confidential, serious voice. The girl struck him as less sympathetic than he had ever known her. Of course, her wits were all at nine o’clock and the meadow gate. But Daintree put his own construction upon her altered manner, and tore his nails beneath the table-cloth, and made up his sombre mind to a bold, immediate course.
So when Claire had left a drawing-roomful of ladies under her aunt’s providential wing, and had set a first trembling foot upon the lawn behind the house, a long swift stride overtook her, and there was Daintree at her side—with the night’s wine-bibbing but just begun.
“Mr. Daintree!” she exclaimed aghast.
“Yes! I also have escaped,” he said. “I made my excuses. The room was hot, but your father understood. I wanted to talk to you.”
“To me? Why, you have been talking to me for the last two hours!”
And, emboldened by very nervousness, she looked up at him with a shake of her ringlets unwittingly coquettish; and he down on her with all the devouring desire of his gloomy, passionate soul. Upon the lawn there was no light save that from a dozen of brilliant windows; and Claire’s face was to it, and Daintree’s back. Yet it might have been the other way about, for her emotion he never saw, while his was but too apparent to her keener woman’s eye.
“You came out for a breath of air,” said he. “Let me come with you.”
“I was going to the arbour,” she replied. “I left a book there this afternoon.”
It was true enough; but the arbour was on the way to the paddock gate; she had left her book there for a cunning excuse against some such need as this. And now he was coming with her; she could not prevent it; and Tom already at the gate!
They walked in silence across the smooth damp grass. It was a summer night come a month too soon, and with the greater fragrance from the porous earth. The stars were white and bright, and the air so mild and sweet that the Southern Cross might have twinkled with the rest. Daintree stood aside at the arbour steps, then followed Claire and filled the doorway with his powerful frame.
“I wanted to speak to you,” he repeated pointedly, as she found her book. “I say your father understood. I had spoken to him already. Claire—Claire—will you be my wife?”
The book dropped.
“Mr. Daintree!” she gasped, and took a terrified step towards the obstructed doorway.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, entering immediately. “There, you are free to run away. Yet I think you will hear me out. Your attention, at all events, I may claim without presumption!”
“Oh, yes,” said Claire. “I will listen—I will listen.” She knew that touchy tone of his so well; but it was dropped now in a moment.
“God bless you for that,” he broke out, hoarsely—“even for that! Only listen to me; that is all I ask. I know I am not a likely sort of man for a young girl like you. I am years older than you are. I look older still—I’m a hundred at heart—but you would make a new man of me. I should be born again. Oh, listen, for pity’s sake, and let me speak my heart! It has been bursting with love of you so long! Whatever your answer, you must hear me out. Claire, I am not a bad man—I really am not; but I have never been myself all these years. My life has been all bitterness, my very soul is steeped in it. Everything has been disappointment, disillusion, disgust, and distrust! You know the sort of life I have led—a wanderer, an exile like Byron, an outcast from my own home. It has spoiled me. I know that well enough. I have never had a chance; but you would give me one. You would make the man I might have been before this. I have talent—perhaps something more—I may say so freely to you. I spoke of Byron. I am nearer him than any man alive. There are those who do not put me second. But all my powers have been wasted, like my life; how that had been wasted I never knew until I met you. Claire—my darling!—you have made a new man of me as it is. I am no longer the bitter fellow I was when first God brought you into my life. You have changed me; you have changed all life and all the world. You are the one thing left in either that is all good, all pure, all noble; and I want you, I want you, I want you with all my heart and soul and being! Come to me, and by your help I may still leave the world the better and the richer for my presence; leave me lonely, and I am lost and ruined both here and in the world to come!”
He ceased; and Claire heard him shaking all over in a palsy of passionate desire. His passion frightened her, and yet won somewhat of her respect without for a moment blinding her to its glaring egotism. It was none the less genuine on that account; on the contrary, there was a convincing honesty in the utter absence of altruistic pretensions; and, for the rest, Claire did feel herself the possessor of a certain power for good over this man. But that power could only go out from her with her love. And that love belonged already to a spirit as wild as Daintree’s, but lighter, brighter, and if not incomparably braver and manlier, then changed indeed.
She rose and laid a hand upon the trembling arm, and very gently said: “You have paid me the greatest compliment, Mr. Daintree, which they say a man can pay a woman. You know that I like you. Indeed there is no one for whom I feel a heartier sympathy. But love you I do not—it is best to be perfectly frank.”
“You do not!” he only said.
“And I never can.”
“Why never?” he cried irritably. “What do you mean by saying that? Is my family not good enough for you? Am I not clever enough?” In the midst of his love-making he had lost his temper, but Claire was at once too proud and too kind to rebuke this ebullition; and presently he continued in a merely injured tone, “It isn’t as if I was obliged to go back to New South Wales. Why should I? It would be a wretched place for you, and I am sick of it. I thought I could never bear this cruel old country again; but I could—I can—with you!” He would not see that he had got his answer. An overweening vanity was among his salient faults.
“It can never be,” repeated Claire, decidedly.
“But why never? That’s what I can’t fathom. There is no one else, is there?”
“There—is.”
In an instant he dropped the hand which he had just taken, and which she had not the heart to withdraw. His trembling ceased. She heard him breathing hard and through his teeth.
“I might have known it!” he said bitterly at length; and that was all.
“You could not—” she was beginning penitently, but he cut her short.
“I could!” he cried. “It has been so all my life; disappointment has been my daily bread. No doubt it was ordained and is all for the best! Anything else might turn my brain!”
“I am very sorry,” murmured poor Claire. “I am more sorry than I can ever say.”
“You may be,” was the quick retort. “You had this and that to gain.”
The girl’s blood was up at last; her lips parted and her eyes flashed; but she could not condescend to his weapons. “I am going back to the house,” was all she said, as she caught up her rustling skirts. “Excuse me, Mr. Daintree.”
“No, I shall not excuse you!” he answered, barring her way. “It is you who must excuse me first. God forgive me, I never meant to say such things! I hardly know what I am saying. I am wild and mad for love of you, Claire. And I shall win you yet—I shall win you yet—even if I have to wait a lifetime! You were made for me. I refuse to do without you. He shall not have you, whoever he is! And you must forgive me for that, too,” he added, with sudden humility, and he stood aside. “But it is none the less a fact!” he hissed as suddenly through his teeth.
They were his last words; she did not heed them, but gave him her warm soft hand in the kindest manner imaginable.
“We will forgive each other,” she said gently, “as we pray to be forgiven ourselves!”
And so she left him on the arbour steps—a pillar of vain and gloomy passion— indistinct in the starlight, but quivering again—all six feet and fifteen stone of him—with the grievous burden of his stubborn love.