Mr. Witt's Widow: A Frivolous Tale

“You damned fool! Are you drunk?” he hissed into his ear. “Everybody’s looking.”

It was true. Everybody was.

“All the better,” Gerald blurted out. “I’ll thrash him – ”

Tommy Myles ranged up and passed his hand through the angry man’s other arm.

“Can’t you go, George?” asked Vane.

“No,” said George, calmly; “not till he’s quiet.”

The hush that had fallen on the room attracted Mrs. Pocklington’s attention. In a moment, as it seemed, though her movements were as a rule slow and stately, she was beside them, just in time to see Gerald make a violent effort to throw off Vane’s detaining hand.

“I cannot get anybody to go into the music-room,” she said; “and the signora is waiting to begin. Mr. Neston, give me your arm, and we will show the way.” Then her eyes seemed to fall for the first time on George. “Oh, you here too, Mr. George? Laura is looking for you everywhere. Do find her. Come, Mr. Neston. Mr. Vane, go and give your arm to a lady.”

The group scattered, obedient to her commands, and everybody breathed a little sigh, half of relief, half of disappointment, and told one another that Mrs. Pocklington was a great woman.

“In another second,” said Tommy Myles, as he restored himself with a glass of champagne, “it would have been a case of Bow Street!”

“I think it fairly amounts to a fracas,” said Mr. Espion to himself; and as a fracas, accordingly, it figured.

CHAPTER IX.

GERALD NESTON SATISFIES HIMSELF

On the following morning, Lord Tottlebury sat as arbitrator, gave an impartial consideration to both sides of the question, and awarded that George should apologise for his charges, and Gerald for his violence. Lord Tottlebury argued the case with ability, and his final judgment was able and conclusive. Unfortunately, however, misled by the habit before mentioned of writing to the papers about matters other than those which immediately concerned him, Lord Tottlebury forgot that neither party had asked him to adjudicate, and, although Maud Neston was quite convinced by his reasoning, his award remained an opinion in vacuo; and the two clear and full letters which he wrote expressing his views were consigned by their respective recipients to the waste-paper basket. Each of the young men thanked Lord Tottlebury for his kind efforts, but feared that the unreasonable temper displayed by the other would render any attempt at an arrangement futile. Lord Tottlebury sighed, and sadly returned to his article on “What the Kaiser should do next.” He was in a hurry to finish it, because he also had on hand a reply to Professor Dressingham’s paper on “The Gospel Narrative and the Evolution of Crustacea in the Southern Seas.”

After his outburst, Gerald Neston had allowed himself to be taken home quietly, and the next morning he had so far recovered his senses as to promise Sidmouth Vane that he would not again have recourse to personal violence. He said he had acted on a momentary impulse – which Vane did not believe, – and, at any rate, nothing of the kind need be apprehended again; but as for apologising, he should as soon think of blacking George’s boots. In fact, he was, on the whole, well pleased with himself, and, in the course of the day, went off to Neaera to receive her thanks and approval.

He found her in very low spirits. She had been disappointed at the failure of her arrangement with George, and half inclined to rebel at Gerald’s peremptory veto on any attempt at hushing up the question. She had timidly tried the line of pooh-poohing the whole matter, and Gerald had clearly shown her that, in his opinion, it admitted of no such treatment. She had not dared to ask him seriously if he would marry her, supposing the accusation were true. A joking question of the kind had been put aside as almost in bad taste, and, at any rate, ill-timed. Consequently she was uneasy, and ready to be very miserable on the slightest provocation. But to-day Gerald came in a different mood. He was triumphant, aggressive, and fearless; and before he had been in the room ten minutes, he broached his new design – a design that was to show conclusively the esteem in which he held the vile slanders and their utterer.

“Be married directly! Oh, Gerald!”

“Why not, darling? It will be the best answer to them.”

“What would your father say?”

“I know he will approve. Why shouldn’t he?”

“But – but everybody is talking about me.”

“What do I care?”

It suits some men to be in love, and Gerald looked very well as he threw out his defiance urbi et orbi. Neaera was charmed and touched.

“Gerald dear, you are too good – you are, indeed, – too good to me and too good for me.”

Gerald said, in language too eloquent to be reproduced, that nobody could help being “good” to her, and nobody in the world was good enough for her.

“And are you content to take me entirely on trust?”

“Absolutely.”

“While I am under this shadow?”

“You are under no shadow. I take your word implicitly, as I would take it against gods and men.”

“Ah, I don’t deserve it.”

“Who could look in your eyes” – Gerald was doing so – “and think of deceit? Why do you look away, sweetheart?”

“I daren’t – I daren’t!”

“What?”

“Be – be – trusted like that!”

Gerald smiled. “Very well; then you shan’t be. I will treat you as if – as if I doubted you. Then will you be satisfied?”

Neaera tried to smile at this pleasantry. She was kneeling by Gerald’s chair as she often did, looking up at him.

“Doubted me?” she said.

“Yes, since you won’t let your eyes speak for you, I will put you to the question. Will that be enough?”

Poor Neaera! she thought it would be quite enough.

“And I will ask you, what I have never condescended to ask yet, dearest, if there’s a word of truth in it all?” Gerald, still playfully, took one of her hands and raised it aloft. “Now look at me and say – what shall be your oath?”

Neaera was silent. This passed words; every time she spoke she made it worse.

“I know,” pursued Gerald, who was much pleased with his little comedy. “Say this, ‘On my honour and love, I am not the girl.’”

Why hadn’t she let him alone with his nonsense about her eyes? That was not, to Neaera’s thinking, as bad as a lie direct. “On her honour and love!” She could not help hesitating for just a moment.

“I am not the girl, on my honour and love.” Her words came almost with a sob, a stifled sob, that made Gerald full of remorse and penitence, and loud in imprecations on his own stupidity.

“It was all a joke, sweetest,” he pleaded; “but it was a stupid joke, and it has distressed you. Did you dream I doubted you?”

“No.”

“Well, then, say you knew it was a joke.”

“Yes, dear, I know it was, – of course it was; but it – it rather frightened me.”

“Poor child! Never mind; you’ll be amused when you think of it presently. And, my darling, it really, seriously, does make me happier. I never doubted, but it is pleasant to hear the truth from your own sweet lips. Now I am ready for all the world. And what about the day?”

“The day?”