The King's Stratagem, and Other Stories

Returning home, Maitland found himself again with Joan. The heat and pleasure of the chase had for the time melted his reserve and thawed his resolution. He talked well and freely to her of a great London hospital over which one of the house surgeons had recently taken him; of the quiet and orderliness of the lone, still wards; of the feeling that came over him there that life was all suffering and death; and how quickly in the bustle of the London streets, where the little world of the hospital seemed distant and unreal, this impression faded away. She listened eagerly, and he, tasting a stealthy and stolen pleasure in seeing how deep and pitiful the gray eyes could grow, prolonged his tale.

"I have enjoyed hearing about it so much," she said gratefully, as they entered the village. And indeed she had passed several people upon the road without a word of greeting. "I hope to be a nurse soon. The dear mother does not think me old enough yet."

"You are going to be a nurse!" he said in tones of such incredulous surprise that the amusement which first appeared in her face changed to annoyance.

"Why not? One does not need a knowledge of art and the newest books for that," she sharply answered.

"Perhaps not," he said feebly. "But after such a life as this, it-the change I mean-would be so complete."

She looked at him, an angry gleam in her eyes, and the color high in her cheeks.

"Do you think, Mr. Maitland, that because we run wild-oh, no, you have not said so-and seem to do nothing but enjoy ourselves, we are incapable of anything beyond hunting and playing tennis, and feeding the dogs and the hens and the chickens? That we cannot have a thought beyond pleasure, or a wish to do good like other people-people in London? That we can never look beyond Blore-though Blore, I can tell you, would manage ill without some of us! – nor have an aspiration above the kennels and the-and the stables? If you do think so, I trust you are wrong."

He would have answered humbly, but she was gone into the house in huge indignation, leaving our friend strangely uncomfortable. It was just twenty-four hours since his arrival: the opinion of one at least of the madcaps had ceased to be a matter of indifference to him. The change occurred to himself as he mounted the stairs, so that he laughed when alone in his room and resolved to keep away from that girl for the future. How handsome she had looked when she was flying out at him, and how generous seemed her anger even at the time! Somehow the prospect of the four days he had still to spend at Blore was not so depressing as at first. Certainly the vista was shortened by one day, and that may have been the reason.

Meanwhile Maggie, in her sister's bedroom, had much to say of the day's doings. "Didn't he go well? My word! he is not half so stiff as I thought him. I believe he'd be a very good fellow if he had some of the conceit taken out of him."

"I think he's insufferable," was the chilling answer from Joan; "he considers us savages, and treats us as such."

"He may consider us fit for the Zoo, if he likes; it won't hurt us," quoth Maggie indifferently. With which Joan expressed neither assent nor dissent, but brushed her hair a little faster.

Maitland did not for a moment abandon his fresh resolution. Still he thought he owed it to himself to set the matter right with the young lady before he stiffened anew. As he descended he met her running up two steps at a time.

"Miss Joan, I am afraid I vexed you just now," he said, with grave humility. "Will you believe it unintentional-stupid, on my part, and grant me your pardon?"

"Oh, dear!" she cried gayly. "We are not used to this here. It is quite King Cophetua and the beggar maid." She dropped him a mock courtesy, and held out her hand in token of amity, when the full signification of what she had said rushed into her mind and flooded her face with crimson. Without another word or look she fled upstairs, and he heard her door bang behind her.

Mr. Charles Maitland, after this rencontre, went down smiling grimly. In the hall he stood for a moment in deep thought; then sagely shook his head several times at a stuffed fox and joined the party in the drawing room.

The next day and the next passed with surprising quickness, as the latter days of a visit always do. In another forty-eight hours Maitland's would be over. Yet singularly enough his spirits did not rise, as he expected they would, at the near prospect of release. As he closed his bedroom door he had a vision of a pair of gray eyes smiling into his, and his palm seemed still to tingle with the touch of a soft, warm hand. He had kept his resolution well-small credit to him. Joan had seemed to avoid him since her unlucky speech upon the stairs; when she did speak to him her words, or more often her tone, stung him, and he smarted under a sense that she repaid with interest the small account in which he was inclined to hold the family generally. He resented her veiled contempt with strange bitterness, so that Agnes remarked with her usual candor that he and Joan never spoke to one another save to "jangle." Afterward, walking on the lawn, some line about "sweet bells jangled out of tune," ran in his head. The girl was a vixen, he said to himself, yet he tried to imagine how tender and glorious the great gray eyes, that he only knew as cold or saucy or defiant, could be when their depths were stirred by love. But his imagination failing to satisfy even himself, he went to put on his beagling dress in the worst of humors.

Possibly this made him a trifle reckless, for a promising run ended in ten minutes so far as he was concerned, in a sprained ankle. In jumping over a low fence into a lane his one foot came down sideways on a large stone upon which some pauper had scamped his work, and the mischief was done. The ominous little circle that hunting men know so well soon gathered round him, and he was helped to his feet, or rather foot. Then Agnes fetched the carriage, and he was driven back to Blore. Now, under the circumstances, what could Mrs. Quaritch, without an arrière pensée in the world, do but press him to stay until at least he could put the foot to the ground? Nothing. And what could he do but consent? At any rate, that is what he did.

So he was established in the drawing room, a pretty, cozy room, and told himself it was a terrible nuisance. But, for a cripple confined to a couple of rooms, and surrounded by uncongenial people, without a single new magazine or a word of the world's gossip, he kept up his spirits wonderfully well. The ways of the three girls, and the calm approval of their sedate mother, could not fail to amuse him. Lying there and seeing and hearing many things which would not have come to his knowledge as a mere visitor, he found them not quite what he had judged them to be. He missed Joan one morning, and when with an unconscious fretfulness he inquired the reason, learned that she had been sitting up through the night with an old servant who was ill in the village. He said some word about it to her-very diffidently, for she took his compliments but ill at all times; now she flamed out at him with twice her ordinary bitterness and disdain, and punished him by taking herself out of the room at once.

"Confound it!" he cried, beating up his pillow fiercely, "I believe the girl hates me."

Did he? and did she?

Then he fell into a fit of musing such as men approaching thirty, who have lived in London, are very apt to indulge in. A club was not everything, be it as good as it might be. And life was not a lounge in Bond Street and Pall Mall, and nothing more. He thought how dull a week spent on his sofa in the Adelphi would have been, even with the newest magazines and the fifth and special Globes. In three days was his birthday-his twenty-ninth. And did the girl really hate him? It was a nice name, Joan; Dubs, umph! Dubs? Joan? And so he fell asleep.

How long he slept and whether he carried something of his dreams into his waking he could only guess, but he was aroused by a singular sensation-singular in that, though once familiar enough, it was now as strange to him as the sight of his dead mother's face. If his half-recalled senses did not deceive him, if he was not still dreaming of Joan, the warm touch of a pair of soft lips was yet lingering upon his forehead, the rustle of a dress very near his ear yet sounded crisply in it. And then someone glided from him, and he heard a hasty exclamation and opened his eyes dreamily. By the screen which concealed the door and sheltered him from its draughts was standing Joan, a-tiptoe, poised as in expectation, something between flight and amusement in her face, her attitude full of unconscious grace. He was still bewildered, and hardly returned from a dreamland even less conventional than Blore. Without as much surprise as if he had thought the matter out-it seemed then almost a natural thing-he said:

"You shall have the gloves, Dubs, with pleasure."

The girl's expression, as he spoke, changed to startled astonishment. She became crimson from her hair to her throat. She stepped toward him, checked herself, then made a quick movement with her hand as if about to say something, and finally covered her face with her hands and fled from the room. Before he was wide awake he was alone.

At first he smiled pleasantly at the fire, and patted Roy, Joan's terrier, who was lying beside him, curled up snugly in an angle of the sofa. Afterward he became grave and thoughtful, and finally shook his head very much as he had at the stuffed fox in the hall. And so he fidgeted till Roy, who was in a restful mood, retired to the hearthrug.

It would be hard to describe Joan's feelings that afternoon. She was proud, and had begun by resenting for all of them the ill-concealed contempt of Tom's London friend-this man of clubs and chit-chat. She was quite prepared to grant that he was different from them, but not superior. A kind of contempt for the veneer and polish which were his pride was natural to her, and she showed this, not rudely nor coquettishly, but with a hearty sincerity. Still, it is seldom a girl is unaware of admiration, and rare that she does not in secret respect self-assertion in the male creature. This man knew much too, and could tell it well, that was strange and new and delightful to the country maiden. If he had any heart at all-and since he was from London town she supposed he had not, though she granted him eyes and fine perceptions of the beautiful-she might have, almost, some day, promised herself to like him, had he been of her world-not reflecting that this very fact that he was out of her world formed the charm by which he evoked her interest. As things were, she more than doubted of his heart, and had no doubt at all that between their worlds lay a great, impassable, unbridgeable abyss.

But this afternoon the dislike, which had been fading day by day along with those feelings in another which had caused it, was revived in its old strength upon the matter of the kiss. Alone in her own room the thought made her turn crimson with vexation, and she stamped the floor with annoyance. He had made certain overtures to her-slender and meaningless in all probability. Still, if he could believe her capable after such looks and words as he had used-if after these he thought her capable of this, then indeed, were there no abyss at all, he could be nothing to her. Oh, it was too bad, too intolerable! She would never forgive him. How indeed could she be anything to him, if she could do such a thing, as dreadful, as unmaidenly to her as to the proudest beauty among his London friends. She told herself again that he was insufferable; and determined to slap Roy well, upon the first opportunity, if that mistaken little pearl of price would persist in favoring the stranger's sofa.

Until this was cleared up she felt her position the very worst in the world, and yet would not for a fortune give him an opportunity of freeing her from it. The very fact that he addressed her with, as it seemed, a greater show of respect, chafed her. Agnes, with a precocious cleverness, a penetration quite her own, kept herself and her dog, Jack o' Pack alias Johnny Sprawn, out of her sister's way, and teased her only before company.

But at last Maitland caught Miss Joan unprotected.

"I hope that these are the right size, Miss Joan-they are six and a quarter," he said boldly, yet with, for a person of his disposition and breeding, a strange amount of shamefacedness; producing at the same time a pair of gloves, Courvoisier's best, many-buttoned, fit for a goddess.

"I beg your pardon?" she said, breathing quickly. But she guessed what he meant.

"Let me get out of your debt."

"Out of my debt, Mr. Maitland?" taking the gloves mechanically.

"Please. Did you think I had forgotten? I should find it hard to do that," he continued, encouraged and relieved by having got rid of the gloves, and inattentive at the moment to her face. Yet she looked long at him searchingly.

"I have found it hard to understand you," she said at last, with repressed anger in voice and eye; "very hard, Mr. Maitland; but I think I do so now. Do you believe that it was I who kissed you when you were asleep on Wednesday afternoon? Can you think so? You force me to presume it is so. Your estimate of my modesty and of your own deserts must differ considerably. I had not the honor. Your gloves" – and she dropped them upon the floor as if the touch contaminated her, the act humiliating the young gentleman at least as much as her words-"you had better give to Agnes, if you wish to observe a silly custom. They are due to her, not to me. I thank you, Mr. Maitland, for having compelled me to give this pleasant explanation."

She turned away with a gesture of such queenly contempt that our poor hero-now most unheroic, and dumb as Carlyle would have had his, only with mortification and intense disgust at his stupidity-amazed that he could ever have thought meanly of this girl, "who moved most certainly a goddess," had not a word to express his sorrow. A hero utterly crestfallen! But at the door she looked back, for some strange reason known perchance to female readers. The gloves were on the floor, just beyond his reach-poor, forlorn, sprawling objects, their fingers and palms spread as in ridiculous appeal. As for him, he was lying back on the sofa, in appearance so crushed and helpless that the woman's pity ever near her eyes moved her. She went slowly back, and picked up the gloves, and put them on the table where he could take them.

"Miss Joan," he said, in a tone of persistence that claimed a hearing, and, starting far from the immediate trouble, was apt to arouse curiosity; "we are always, as Agnes says, jangling-on my side, of course, is the false note. Can we not accord better, and be better friends?"

"Not until we learn to know one another better," she said coldly, looking down at him, "or become more discerning judges."

"I was a fool, an idiot, an imbecile!" She nodded gravely, still regarding him from a great height. "I was mad to believe it possible!"

"I think we may be better friends," she responded, smiling faintly, yet with sudden good humor. "We are beginning to know-one another."

"And ourselves," almost under his breath. Then, "Miss Joan, will you ever forgive me? I shall never err again in that direction," he pleaded. "I am humiliated in my own eyes until you tell me it is forgotten."

She nodded, and this time with her own frank smile.

Then she turned away and did leave the room, this time taking Roy with her. Her joyous laughter and his wild, excited barking proclaimed through the length and breadth of Blore that he was enjoying the rare indulgence of a good romp on the back lawn. It was Roy's day.

And can a dog ever hope for a better day than that upon which his mistress becomes aware that she is also another's mistress: becomes aware that another is thinking of her and for her, nay, that she is the very center of that other's thoughts? What a charming, pleasantly bewildering discovery it is, this learning that for him when she is in the room it is full, and wanting her it is empty, be it never so crowded; that all beside, though they be witty or famous, or what they will, or can or would, are but lay figures, umbræ, shadow guests in his estimation. She learns with strange thrills, that in moments of meditation will flash to eye and cheek, that her slightest glance and every change of color, every tone and smile, are marked with jealous care; that pleasure which she does not share is tasteless, and a dinner of herbs, if she be but at a far corner, is a feast for princes. That is her dog's day, or it may be his dog's day. It is a pleasant discovery for a man, mutatis mutandis; but for a girl, a sweet, half fearful consciousness, the brightest part of love's young dream-even when the kindred soul is of another world, and an abyss, wide, impassable, unbridgeable lies between.

But these things come to sudden ends sometimes. Sprains, however severe, have an awkward knack of getting well. Swellings subside from inanition, and doctors insist for their credit's sake that the stick or ready arm be relinquished. Certainly a respite or a relapse-call it which you will-is not impossible with care, but it is brief. A singular shooting pain, not easily located with exactness, but somewhere in the neighborhood of the calf, has been found useful; and a strange rigidity of the tendon Achilles in certain positions may gain a day or two. But at last not even these will avail, and the doubly injured one must out and away from among the rose leaves. Twice Maitland fixed his departure for the following morning, and each time when pressed to stay gave way, after so feeble, so ludicrous a resistance, if it deserved the name, that Agnes scarcely concealed her grimace, and Joan looked another way. She did not add anything to the others' hospitable entreaties. If she guessed what made Maggie's good-night kiss so fervent and clinging, she made no sign and offered no opening.

In the garden next morning, Maitland taxed her with her neutrality. It was wonderful how his sense of humor had become developed at Blore.

"I thought that you did not need so much pressure as to necessitate more than four people's powers of persuasion being used," she answered, in the same playful spirit. "And besides, now you are well enough, must you not leave?"

"Indeed, Miss Joan?"

"And go back to your own way of life? It is a month since you saw the latest telegrams, and there is a French company at the Gaiety, I learn from the Standard. We have interests and duties, though you were so hard of belief about them, at Blore, but you have none."

"No interests?"