Man and Maid

“And you’re ashamed of it, – Socialist?” he asked with a sneer, and his eyes were fierce on her burning face.

“I’m not! Row home, please. Or I’ll take the sculls if you’re tired, or your shoulder hurts. I don’t want to talk to you any more. You tried to trap me into telling a lie. You don’t understand anything at all. And I’ll never forgive you.”

“Yes, you will,” he said to himself again and again through the silence in which they plashed down the river. But when he was alone in his cottage, the truth flew at him and grappled him with teeth and claws. He loved her. She loved, or had loved – or might have loved – or might love – his brother. He must go: and the next morning he went without a word. He left a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque in lieu of notice; and letter and cheque were signed with his name in full.

He went back to the old life, but the taste of it all was gone. Shooting parties, house parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier than ever, and surer of all things: how could these charm one whose fancy, whose heart indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden or by a quiet river with a young woman who had served in a tobacconist’s shop, and who would be some day his brother’s wife?

The days were long, the weeks seemed interminable. And all the time there was the white house, as it had been; there were mother and daughter living the same dainty, dignified, charming life to which he had come so near. Why had he ever gone there? Why had he ever interfered? He had meant to ensnare her heart just to free his brother from an adventuress. An adventuress! He groaned aloud.

“Oh, fool! But you are punished!” he said; “she’s angry now – angrier even than that evening on the river, for she knows now that even the name you gave her to call you by was not the one your own people use. This comes of trying to act like an ass in a book.”

The months went on. The Brydges woman rallied him on his absent air. She spoke of dairymaids. He wondered how he could ever have found her amusing, and whether her vulgarity was a growth, or had been merely hidden.

And all the time Celia and the white house were dragging at his heart-strings. Enough was left of the fool that he constantly reproached himself for having been, to make him sure that had he had no brother, had he met her with no duty to the absent to stand between them she would have loved him.

Then one day came the South African mail, and it brought a letter from his brother, the lad who had had the sense to find a jewel behind a tobacconist’s counter, and had trusted it to him.

The letter was long and ineffective. It was the postscript that was vital.

“I say, I wonder whether you’ve seen anything of Susannah? What a young fool I was ever to think I could be happy with a girl out of a shop. I’ve met the real and only one now – she’s a nurse; her father was a clergyman in Northumberland. She’s such a bright little thing, and she’s never cared for any one before me. Wish me luck.”

John Selborne almost tore his hair.

“Well, I can’t save him across half the world! Besides – ”

At thirty-seven one should have outgrown the wild impulses of youth. He said this to himself, but all the same it was the next train to Yalding that he took.

Fate was kind; at Yalding it had almost always been kind. The glow of red firelight shone out over the snow through the French window among the brown jasmine stalks.

Mrs Sheepmarsh was out, Miss Sheepmarsh was at home. Would he step this way?

He stepped into the presence of the girl. She rose from the low chair by the fire, and the honest eyes looked angrily at him.

“Look here,” he said, as the door closed between them and the maid-servant, “I’ve come to tell you things. Just this once let me talk to you; and afterwards, if you like, I can go away and never come back.”

“Sit down,” she said coldly. “I don’t feel friends with you at all, but if you want to speak, I suppose you must.”

So then he told her everything, beginning with his brother’s letter, and ending with his brother’s letter.

“And, of course, I thought it couldn’t be you, because of your being called Celia; and when I found out it really was you, I had to go away, because I wanted to be fair to the boy. But now I’ve come back.”

“I think you’re the meanest person I ever knew,” she said; “you thought I liked your brother, and you tried to make me like you so that you might throw me over and show him how worthless I was. I hate you and despise you.”

“I didn’t really try,” he said miserably.

“And you took a false name to deceive us.”

“I didn’t: it really is my second name.”

“And you came here pretending to be nice and a gentleman, and – ” She was lashing herself to rage, with the lash of her own voice, as women will. John Selborne stood up suddenly.

“Be quiet,” he said, and she was quiet. “I won’t hear any more reproaches, unless – Listen, I’ve done wrong – I’ve owned it. I’ve suffered for it. God knows I’ve suffered. You liked me in the summer: can’t you try to like me again? I want you more than anything else in the world. Will you marry me?”

“Marry you,” she cried scornfully; “you who – ”

“Pardon me,” he said. “I have asked a question. Give me no for an answer, and I will go. Say yes, and then you may say anything else you like. Yes or no. Shall I go or stay? Yes or no. No other word will do.”

She looked at him, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing with indignation. A world of scorn showed in the angle of the chin, the poise of her head. Her lips opened. Then suddenly her eyes met his, and she knew that he meant what he said. She covered her face with her hands.

“Don’t – don’t cry, dear one,” he said. “What is it? You’ve only to choose. Everything is for you to decide.”

Still she did not speak.

“Good-bye, then,” he said, and turned. But she caught at him blindly.

“Don’t – don’t go!” she cried. “I didn’t think I cared about you in the summer, but since you went away, oh, you don’t know how I’ve wanted you!”

“Well,” he said, when her tears were dried, “aren’t you going to scold me?”

“Don’t!” said she.

“At least tell me all about my brother – and why he thought you would be so ready to marry him.”

“That? Oh, that was only his conceit. You know I always do talk to people in railway carriages and things. I suppose he thought it was only him I talked to.”

“And the name?”

“I – I thought if I said my name was Susannah he wouldn’t get sentimental.”

“You ‘took a false name to deceive him’?”

“Don’t – oh, don’t!”

“And the tobacco shop?”

“Ah – that rankles?” She raised her head to look at him.

“Not it,” he answered coolly. “I simply don’t believe it.”

“Why? But you’re quite right. It was a woman in my district in London, and I took the shop for her for three days, because her husband was dying, and she couldn’t get any one else to help her. It was – it was rather fun – and – and – ”

“And you wouldn’t tell me about it, because you didn’t want me to know how proud you were of it.”

“Proud? Ah, you do understand things! The man died, and I had given her those three days with him. I wasn’t proud, was I? – only glad that I could. So glad – so glad!”

“But you let my brother think – ”

“Oh yes, I let him think it was my trade; I thought it might make him not be silly. You see, I always knew he couldn’t understand things.”