The Woman with One Hand, and Mr. Ely's Engagement

After she had had enough of crying-which was only after a very considerable period had elapsed-she got up and dried her eyes-those big eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him Mr. Ely could not understand!

"What does it matter? I suppose that existence is a dead level of monotony. If even for a moment you gain the heights, you are sure to fall, and your state is all the worse because you have seen that there are better things above."

This was the lady's point of view. The gentleman's was of quite another kind. As he had said, sentiment was not at all his line. When he reached his room, he wasted no time getting into bed. While he performed his rapid toilet he considered the situation in his own peculiar way.

"That's the most impudent girl I ever met."

This he told himself as he took off his coat.

"I like her all the better for it, too."

Here he removed his vest.

"She doesn't care for me a snap-not one single rap. I hate your spoony kind of girl, the sort that goes pawing a man about. If she begins by pawing you she'll be pawing another fellow soon. Oh! I've seen a bit of it, I have!"

Here he removed his collar and tie.

"What I want's a woman who can cut a dash-not the rag-bag sort, all flounces and fluster-but a high-toned dash, you know. The sort of woman that can make all the other women want to have her life; who can sit with two hundred other women in a room and make 'em all feel that she doesn't know that there's another person there. By Jove! she'd do it, too!"

Mr. Ely laughed. But perhaps-as he was a sort of man who never laughed, in whom the bump of humour was entirely wanting-it would be more correct to describe the sound he made as a clearing of the throat. At this point he was engaged in details of the toilet into which it would be unwise to enter. But we really cannot refrain from mentioning what a very little man he looked in his shirt. Quite different to the Mr. Ely of the white waistcoat and frockcoat.

The next morning he took his departure. He had been under the painful necessity of spending one day away from town; he could not possibly survive through two. In fact he tore himself away by the very earliest train-in his habits he was an early little man-not with reluctance but delight: by so early a train, indeed, that he had left long before his lady-love came down. Mrs. Clive did the honours and sped the parting guest. She, poor lady, was not used to quite such early hours and felt a little out of sorts, but she did her best.

"Shall I give dear Lily a message when you are gone?"

Mr. Ely was swallowing ham and eggs as though he were engaged in a match against time. A healthy appetite for breakfast was one of his strong points.

"Tell her that dog of hers is ever so much too fat."

Pompey, who was at that moment reclining on a cushion on the rug, was perhaps a trifle stout-say about as broad as he was long. Still, Mrs. Clive did not like the observation all the same.

"Pompey is not Lily's dog, but mine."

"Ah! then if I were you, I'd starve the beggar for a week."

Mrs. Clive bridled. If she had a tender point it was her dog.

"I can assure you, Mr. Ely, that the greatest care is taken in the selection of dear Pompey's food."

"That's where it is, you take too much. Shut him in the stable, with a Spratt's biscuit to keep him company."

"A Spratt's biscuit! – Pompey would sooner die!"

"It wouldn't be a bad thing for him if he did. By the look of him he can't find much fun in living-it's all that he can do to breathe. It seems to me every woman must have some beast for a pet. An aunt of mine has got a cat. Her cat ought to meet your dog. They'd both of them be thinner before they went away."

It is not surprising that Mr. Ely did not leave an altogether pleasant impression when he had gone. That last allusion to his aunt's cat rankled in the old lady's mind.

"A cat! My precious Pompey!" She raised the apoplectic creature in her arms; "when you have such an objection to a cat! It is dreadful to think of such a thing, even when it is spoken only in jest."

But Mr. Ely had not spoken in jest. He was not a jesting kind of man.

When Miss Truscott made her appearance she asked no questions about her lover. If he had sent a message, or if he indeed had gone, she showed no curiosity upon these points at all. She seemed in a dreamy frame of mind, as if her thoughts were not of things of life but of things of air. She dawdled over the breakfast-table, eating nothing all the while. And when she had dismissed the meal she dawdled in an easy chair. Such behaviour was unusual for her, for she was not a dawdling kind of girl.

CHAPTER VI

THE WOOING IN THE WOOD

In the afternoon she took a book and went for a ramble out of doors. It was a novel of the ultra-sentimental school, and only the other day the first portion of the story had impressed her with the belief that it was written by a person who had sounded the heights and depths of life. She thought differently now. It was the story of a woman who, for love's sake, had almost-but not quite-thrown her life away This seemed to her absurd, for, in the light of her new philosophy, she thought she knew that the thing called love was non-existent in the world. And for love's sake to throw one's life away!

It was not until she reached a leafy glade which ran down to the edge of the cliff that she opened the book. She seated herself on a little mossy bank with her back against the trunk of a great old tree, and placed the book on her knees. After she had read for a time she began to be annoyed. The heroine, firmly persuaded that life without love was worthless, was calmly arranging to sacrifice as fine prospects as a woman ever had, so as to enable her to sink to the social position of her lover, an artisan. The artisan belonged to the new gospel which teaches that it is only artisans who have a right to live. He was a wood-engraver, she was the daughter of a hundred earls. As a wood-engraver-who declined to take large prices for his work-he considered that she was in an infinitely lower sphere than he: a state of degradation to be sorrowed over at the best. So she was making the most complicated arrangements to free herself from the paternity-and wealth-of the hundred earls.

Miss Truscott became exceedingly annoyed at the picture of devotion presented by these two, and threw the book from her in disgust.

"What nonsense it all is! How people do exaggerate these things. I don't believe that love makes the slightest difference in anybody's life. I do believe that people love a good dinner, or a pretty frock, or ten thousand pounds a year, but anything else-!" She shrugged her shoulders with a significant gesture. "There may be weak-minded people somewhere who believe in love, but even that sort is the love that loves and rides away. As for love in married life! In the present state of society, if it did exist it is quite clear to me that it would be the most uncomfortable thing about the whole affair. Mr. Ely is a sensible man. He wants a wife, not a woman who loves him. That's the royal road to marriage!"

As Miss Truscott arrived at this conclusion, she rose from her mossy seat and shook herself all over, as if she were shaking off the last remnants of her belief in love.

"Miss Truscott!"

She stood amazed, motionless, with a curious, sudden fascination as the sound of a voice fell on her ears. It came again.

"Miss Truscott, won't you turn and look at me?"

She turned and looked, and there was a man. She seemed wonderstruck. A very perceptible change came over her. She became more womanly as she looked: softer, more feminine. The scornful look passed from her eyes and face and bearing. She became almost afraid.

"Mr. Summers! Is it you?"

It was a new voice which spoke, a voice which Mr. Ely would never live to hear. And in it there was a hidden music which was sweeter that the music of the birds.

"Yes, Miss Truscott, it is I."

He held out his hand. She timidly advanced, and he advanced a step, and their two hands met. And their eyes met, too. And both of them were still. Then she gently disengaged her hand, and looked at the bracken at her feet.

"Some spirit of the wild wood must have led me. I have come straight up from the station here. It must have been some curious instinct which told me where you would be found."

"Oh, I am often here-you know that I am often here."

"I know you used to be."

"I think that most of my habits are still unchanged. And where have you been this great, long time? I thought that you would never come again."

"Did you think that? Is that true?"

He leaned forward. He spoke in a low, eager, insistent tone, which, for some cause, made the blood surge about the region of her heart, and made her conscious that new life was in her veins.

"Oh! I did not think of it at all. Out of sight is out of mind, you know!"

"And I have been thinking of you all the time. You have been with me in my dreams both day and night. Your face has stared at me from every canvas which I touched. You were at the end of every brush. Everything I tried to paint turned into you. I thought my heart would burst at the anticipation of meeting you again."