The Soft Side (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900)/The Given Case/Chapter 2
II
At Pickenham, on the Saturday night, it came round somehow to Philip Mackern that Barton Reeve was to have been of the party, and that Mrs. Despard's turning up without him—so it was expressed—had somewhat disconcerted their hostess. This, in the smoking-room, made him silent more to think than to listen—he knew whom he had 'turned up' without. The next morning, among so many, there were some who went to church; Mackern always went now because Miss Hamer had told him she wished it. He liked it, moreover, for the time: it was an agreeable symbol to him of the way his situation made him good. Besides, he had a plan; he knew what Mrs. Despard would do; her situation made her good too. The morning, late in May, was bright, and the walk, though short, charming; they all straggled, in vivid twos and threes, across the few fields—passing stiles and gates, drawing out, scattering their colour over the green, as if they had the 'tip' for some new sport. Mrs. Despard, with two companions, was one of the first; Mackern himself, as it happened, quitted the house by the side of Lady Orville, who, before they had gone many steps, completed the information given him the night before.
'That's just the sort of thing Kate Despard's always up to. I'm too tired of her!'
Phil Mackern wondered. 'But do you mean she prevented him———?'
'I asked her only to make him come—it was him I wanted. But she's a goose: she hasn't the courage———'
'Of her reckless passion?' Mackern asked, as his companion's candour rather comically dropped.
'Of her ridiculous flirtation. She doesn't know what she wants—she's in and out of her hole like a frightened mouse. On knowing she's invited he immediately accepts, and she encourages him in the fond thought of the charming time they'll have. Then at the eleventh hour she finds it will never do. It will be too "marked"! Marked it would certainly have been,' Lady Orville pursued. 'But there would have been a remedy!'
'For her to have stayed away?'
Her ladyship waited. 'What horrors you make me say!'
'Well,' Mackern replied, 'I'm glad she came. I particularly want her.'
'You?—what have you to do with her? You're as bad as she!' his hostess added, quitting him, however, for some other attention, before he had need to answer.
He sought no second companion—he had matter for thought as he went on; but he reached the door of the church before Mrs. Despard had gone in, and he observed that when, glancing back, she saw him pass the gate, she immediately waited for him. She had turned off a little into the churchyard, and as he came up he was struck with the prettiness that, beneath the old grey tower and among the crooked headstones, she presented to the summer morning.
'It's just to say, before any one else gets hold of you, that I want you, when we come out, to walk home with me. I want most particularly to speak to you.'
'Comme cela se trouve!' Mackern laughed. 'That's exactly what I want to do to you!'
'Oh, I warn you that you won't like it; but you will have, all the same, to take it!' Mrs. Despard declared. 'In fact, it's why I came,' she added.
'To speak to me?'
'Yes, and you needn't attempt to look innocent and interesting. You know perfectly what it's about!' With which she passed into church.
It scarce prepared the young man for his devotions; he thought more of what it might be about—whether he knew or not—than he thought of what, ostensibly, he had come for. He was not seated near Mrs. Despard, but he appropriated her, after service, before they had left the place; and then, on the walk back, took care they should be quite by themselves. She opened fire with a promptitude clearly intended to deprive him of every advantage.
'Don't you think it's about time, you know, to let Margaret Hamer alone?'
He found his laugh again a resource. 'Is that what you came down to say to me?'
'I suppose what you mean is that in that case I might as well have stayed at home. But I can assure you,' Mrs. Despard continued, 'that if you don't care for her, I at least do. I'd do anything for her!'
'Would you?' Philip Mackern asked. 'Then, for God's sake, try to induce her to show me some frankness and reason. Knowing that you know all about it and that I should find you here, that's what determined me. And I find you talking to me,' he went on, 'about giving her up. How can I give her up? What do you mean by my not caring for her? Don't I quite sufficiently show—and to the point absolutely of making a public fool of myself—that I don't care for anything else in life?'
Mrs. Despard, slightly to his surprise and pacing beside him a moment in silence, seemed arrested by this challenge. But she presently found her answer. 'That's not the way, you know, to get on at the Treasury.'
'I don't pretend it is; and it's just one of the things that I thought of asking you to bring home to her better than any one else can. She plays the very devil with my work. She makes me hope just enough to be all upset, and yet never, for an hour, enough to be—well, what you may call made strong; enough to know where I am.'
'You're where you've no business to be—that's where you are,' said Mrs. Despard. You've no right whatever to persecute a girl who, to listen to you, will have to do something that she doesn't want, and that would be most improper if she did.'
'You mean break off———?'
'I mean break off—with Mr. Grove-Stewart.'
'And why shouldn't she?'
'Because they've been engaged three years.'
'And could there be a better reason?' Philip Mackern asked with heat. 'A man who's engaged to a girl three years without marrying her—what sort of a man is that, and what tie to him is she, or is any one else, bound to recognise?'
'He's an extremely nice person,' Mrs. Despard somewhat sententiously replied, 'and he's to return from India—and not to go back, you know—this autumn at latest.'
'Then that's all the more reason for my acting successfully before he comes—for my insisting on an understanding without the loss of another week.'
The young man, who was tall and straight, had squared his shoulders and, throwing back his massive, fair head, appeared to proclaim to earth and air the justice of his cause. Mrs. Despard, for an instant, answered nothing, but, as if to take account of his manner, she presently stopped short. 'I think I ought to express to you my frank belief that for you, Mr. Mackern, there can be nothing but loss. I'm sorry for you, to a certain point; but you happen to have got hold of a girl who's incapable of anything dishonourable.' And with this—as if that were settled—she resumed her walk.
Mackern, however, stood quite still—only too glad of the opportunity for emphasis given him by their pause; so that after a few steps she turned round. 'Do you know that that's exactly on what I wanted to appeal to you? Is she the woman to chuck me now?'
Mrs. Despard, all face and figure in the mild brightness, looked at him across the grass and appeared to give some extension to the question of what, in general at least, a woman might be the woman to do. 'Now?'
'Now. After all she has done.'
Mrs. Despard, however, wouldn't hear of what Margaret Hamer had done; she only walked straight off again, shaking everything away as Mackern overtook her. 'Leave her alone—leave her alone!'
He held his tongue for some minutes, but he swished the air with his stick in a way that made her presently look at him. She found him positively pale, and he looked away from her. 'You should have given me that advice,' he remarked with dry derision, 'a good many weeks ago!'
'Well, it's never too late to mend!' she retorted with some vivacity.
'I beg your pardon. It's often too late—altogether too late. And as for "mending,"' Mackern went on almost sternly, 'you know as well as I that if I had—in time, or anything of that sort—tried to back out or pull up, you would have been the first to make her out an injured innocent and declare I had shamefully used her.'
This proposition took, as appeared, an instant or two to penetrate Mrs. Despard's consciousness; but when it had fairly done so it produced, like a train of gunpowder, an audible report. 'Why, you strange, rude man!'—she fairly laughed for indignation. 'Permit me not to answer you: I can't discuss any subject with you in that key.'
They had reached a neat white gate and paused for Mackern to open it; but, with his hand on the top, he only held it a little, fixing his companion with insistence and seemingly in full indifference to her protest. 'Upon my soul, the way women treat men———!'
'Well?' she demanded, while he gasped as if it were more than he could express.
'It's too execrable! There's only one thing for her to do.' He clearly wished to show he was not to be humbugged.
'And what wonderful thing is that?'
'There's only one thing for any woman to do,' he pursued with an air of conscious distinctness, 'when she has drawn a man on to believe there's nothing she's not ready for.'
Mrs. Despard waited; she watched, over the gate, the gambols, in the next field, of a small white lamb. 'Will you kindly let me pass?' she then asked.
But he went on as if he had not heard her. 'It's to make up to him for what she has cost him. It's simply to do everything.'
Mrs. Despard hesitated. 'Everything?' she then vaguely asked.
'Everything,' Mackern said as he opened the gate. 'Won't you help me?' he added more appealingly as they got into the next field.
'No.' She was as distinct as himself. She followed with her eyes the little white lamb. She dismissed the subject. 'You're simply wicked.'