Man and Maid

Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.

As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.

“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.

“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”

Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.

“This is your doing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich – the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till – till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone – and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day. You will, if there’s any justice in the world!”

He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable.

“I am extremely sorry,” he said, “but after all, there’s very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you’ve succeeded. He evidently ‘loves you for yourself alone.’ Write and tell him to come back: he’ll come.”

“How little you know him,” she said, “after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don’t mind, it’s true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don’t mean that – ” She hid her face in her hands.

“Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know. I will bring him back to you – I swear it! Only trust me.”

“You can’t,” she said; “it’s all over.”

“Let me tell you something. If you hadn’t had this money – but if you hadn’t had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don’t tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!”

“It’s no good,” she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him.

“Could I do anything?”

“You’re her friend,” he said. “Miss Grant, I’m going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk – but I’ve no right to bother you.”

“I’ll come,” said Constance. “I’ll come by-and-by when I’ve cleared lunch away. It’s no bother. As you say, I’m her friend.”

III

Rosamund stayed on at the little house behind the sea-wall, and she wrote letters, long and many, which accumulated on the mantel-piece of the rooms in the Temple. Andrew found them there when he returned to town in the middle of October. The room was cheerless, tenantless, fireless. He lit the gas and looked through his letters. He did not dare to open those which came from her. There were bills, invitation cards, a returned manuscript or two, a cheque for a magazine article, and a letter in Stephen’s hand-writing. It was dated a fortnight earlier.

“Dear old Chap,” it ran, “I’m off to my father’s. I can’t bear it. I can’t face you or any one. I wish to God I’d never told you anything about Rosamund Rainham’s money. There isn’t any money: it was all in the Crystal Oil Co. No one had the least idea that it wasn’t good, but I feel as if I ought to have known. There’s a beggarly hundred or so in consols: that’s the end of her million. It wasn’t really my fault, of course. She doesn’t blame me. – Yours,

    “Stephen Guillemot.”

Then he opened her letters – read them all – in the order of the dates on the postmarks, for even in love Andrew was an orderly man – read them with eyes that pricked and smarted. There were four or five of them. First, the frank pleading of affection, then the coldness of hurt pride and love; then, doubts, wonderings. Was he ill? Was he away? Would he not at least answer? Passionate longing, tender anxiety breathed in every word. Then came the last letter of all, written a fortnight ago:

“Dear Andrew, – I want you to understand that all is over between us. I know you wished it, and now I see you are right. I could never have been anything to you but your loving friend,

    “Rosamund.”

He read it through twice; it was a greater shock to him than Stephen’s letter had been. Then he understood. The Millionairess might stoop to woo a poor lover whose pride had fought with and conquered his love: the girl with only a “beggarly hundred in consols” had her pride too.

The early October dusk filled the room. Andrew caught up the bag he had brought with him, slammed the door, and blundered down the stairs. He caught a passing hansom in Fleet Street and the last train to Lymchurch.

A furious south-wester was waiting for him there. He could hardly stand against it – it blew and tore and buffeted him, almost prevailing against him as he staggered down the road from the station. The night was inky black, but he knew his Lymchurch every inch, and he fought it manfully, though every now and then he was fain to cling to a gateway or a post, and hold on till the gust had passed. Thus, breathless and dishevelled, his tie under his left ear, his hat battered in, his hair in crisp disorder, he reached at last the haven of the little porch of the house under the sea-wall.

Rosamund herself opened the door; her eyes showed him two things – her love and her pride. Which would be the stronger? He remembered how the question had been answered in his own case, and he shivered as she took his hand and led him into the warm, lamp-lighted room. The curtains were drawn; the hearth swept; a tabby cat purred on the rug; a book lay open on the table: all breathed of the sober comfort of home. She sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at him. Neither spoke. It was an awkward moment.

Rosamund broke the silence.

“It is very friendly of you to come and see me,” she said. “It is very lonely for me now. Constance has gone back to London.”

“She has gone back to her teaching?”

“Yes; I wanted her to stay, but – ”

“I’ve heard from Stephen. He is very wretched; he seems to think it is his fault.”

“Poor, dear boy!” She spoke musingly. “Of course it wasn’t his fault. It all seems like a dream, to have been so rich for a little while, and to have done nothing with it except,” she added with a laugh and a glance at her fur-trimmed dress, “to buy a most extravagant number of white dresses. How awfully tired you look, Andrew! Go and have a wash – the spare room’s the first door at the top of the stairs – and I’ll get you some supper.”

When he came down again, she had laid a cloth on the table and was setting out silver and glass.

“Another relic of my brief prosperity,” she said, touching the forks and spoons. “I’m glad I don’t have to eat with nickel-plated things.”

She talked gaily as they ate. The home atmosphere of the room touched Dornington. Rosamund herself, in her white gown, had never appeared so fair and desirable. And but for his own mad pride he might have been here now, sharing her pretty little home life with her – not as her guest, but as her husband. He flushed crimson. Blushing was an old trick of his – one of those that had earned him his feminine nickname of Dora, and in the confusion his blushing brought him, he spoke.

“Rosamund, can you ever forgive me?”

“I forgive you from my heart,” she said, “if I have anything to forgive.”

But in her tone was the resentment of a woman who does not forgive. Yet he had been right. He had sacrificed himself; and if he had chosen to suffer? But what about the blue lines under her dear eyes, the hollows in her dear face?

“You have been unhappy,” he said.

“Well,” she laughed, “I wasn’t exactly pleased to lose my fortune.”

“Dear,” he said desperately, “won’t you try to forgive me? It seemed right. How could I sacrifice you to a penniless – ”

“I’d enough for both – or thought I had,” she said obstinately.

“Ah, but don’t you see – ”

“I see that you cared more for not being thought mercenary by Stephen than – ”

“Forgive me!” he pleaded; “take me back.”

“Oh no” – she tossed her bright head – “Stephen might think me mercenary; I couldn’t bear that. You see you are richer than I am now. How much did you tell me you made a year by your writing? How can I sacrifice you to a penniless – ”

“Rosamund, do you mean it?”