The Dilemma/Chapter LVI
CHAPTER LVI.
Yorke arrived at "The Beeches" only a few minutes before dinner-time. Everybody had retired to dress, and the blaze of lights and array of extra waiters bustling about betokened a party, while the presence of the gentlemanly-looking person in the hall proclaimed that Mr. Hanckes was among the guests; but Mr. Peevor came out to greet him, receiving the apologies which Yorke made for his unceremonious departure in quite an apologetic manner. "Pray do not mention it, colonel; business is business, of course, and must be attended to; I am a business man myself, you know. I have to go to town myself to-morrow; treating you quite unceremoniously, you see. But I am so glad that you have been able to return in time for dinner, as we have a few friends whom I should like to introduce to you. So sorry there was no carriage to meet you at the station: if we could have guessed you were coming by that train, I should have made a point of sending one. Those flies are so cold and drafty."
On descending to the blue drawing-room, Yorke found a large party assembled, including Mr. Hanckes, who had come down by the previous train, and he had barely time to pay his greetings to the ladies of the family when dinner was announced. Although the occasion did not lend itself to love-passages, for Lucy was surrounded by visitors, it would have been easy for a lover during the brief moment while he held her hand in his to exchange signals with the eyes that would have been easily understood; but although she cast a timid inquiring glance at her hero, as if to learn in what mood to find him, it met with no response. Poor Lucy showed only too plainly that she was so much in love as to be ready to accept her lover on his own terms; and in his present mood he was cruel enough to take advantage of his conquest. Perchance the absence of difficulty in winning it had robbed the prize of its value. He did not even notice that she was taken in to dinner by Mr. Hanckes. It fell to him to give his arm to the hostess; and sitting at the same side of the long table as Lucy, and at the other end of it, she could not see him, and he sat moody and preoccupied, not caring to watch her. This eating and drinking, all this pomp and display, and waste of food and wine, and show and glitter, jarred harshly on his senses, as he contrasted the forlorn condition of his two friends so close at hand, and he was in no humour for small-talk and civility. But Mrs. Peevor was at no time a great talker; and after a few necessary commonplaces about the children, and a polite reference to the business which called him away, she was sufficiently occupied in watching the progress of the feast. The lady on his right was one of those numerous members of society who go persistently to dinner-parties without the least intention of amusing or being amused, and on this occasion was allowed full liberty to gratify her tastes. But, long and dreary though the meal was to Yorke, the sitting in silence and inaction through the long courses seemed preferable to moving away; and when the ladies left the room — Lucy casting back as she passed out a timid glance, to which he merely answered with an empty smile — Mr. Peevor moved up to his wife's seat, and accepted his languid attention as sufficient encouragement to launch into the domestic price-current with a degree of havering persistence that rendered a listener superfluous, and was easily led on to protract the sitting to a much greater length than usual, till even some of the ten decanters showed signs of exhaustion. Yorke, as he well knew, had a duty to do in the drawing-room. To meet Lucy again otherwise than on the new footing justified by what had passed the day before, would be cruel and cowardly. Yet because in his present mood it was a duty and no more, what had still to be done seemed now distasteful. Was it because the events of the last few hours had brought back so vividly the day-dreams of his early manhood, and that he shrank from the effort of finally casting off the bonds which he had worn so long that they had grown to be a part of himself? Or was it the reason which he put before himself as the real one, that to be indulging at such a time in schemes for his own happiness was a selfish desecration of old friendship for the two unhappy persons for whose sufferings he professed to feel so deeply? Whatever the real cause, it was at any rate a sort of relief that the gentlemen sat unusually long over their wine, not moving to the yellow drawing-room till it was nearly time for the visitors' carriages to arrive. Even then Mr. Peevor insisted on bringing up the different male guests to be introduced to him — middle-aged gentlemen all apparently connected in some way with the city; and then on taking him round to be introduced to their various partners, matrons of more or less ample figure, as his (Mr. Peevor's) distinguished friend, Colonel Yorke, the Victoria-Cross man, and so forth. And on this occasion he was almost glad to have to go through the ceremony; it gave him an excuse for avoiding Lucy, although he could not help noticing how distraught she looked, as she interrupted the conversation in which Mr. Hanckes was engaging her to steal a troubled glance in his direction. Poor little Lucy! The first real gentleman as it seemed to her that she had ever met, and a hero to boot, this noble creature who had won her simple heart almost from the first moment he had looked at her, this splendid being she had fondly believed to have also fallen in love with herself! but the cup of bliss seemed now to be shattered almost before she had raised it to her lips, and for the first time in her short life, tranquil and tame, she felt all the pangs of real unhappiness.
Even when the guests, except Mr. Hanckes, who was to stop for the night, had taken their departure, and their party was reduced to half-a-dozen persons — for Miss Maria had not come down-stairs this evening — he engaged Miss Cathy in conversation in quite another part of the large room. Miss Cathy had taken advantage of the thaw to go out hunting that morning, and was full of regrets at his absence; there had been two capital runs, and so forth, although mostly over Sunfern Common, which was not like the grass country: and Yorke found it easy to keep the conversation to that subject, Mr. Hanckes coming up to join, and expressing his sympathy with Yorke in having lost his day's 'unting; for although not a hunting-man himself, he could understand how much the colonel would have enjoyed it, especially in such company. Such a pity too for Miss Cathy to have been obliged to go alone. For Mr. Hanckes had made up his mind that Yorke's attentions were paid to the horsewoman of the family, as became a military man, and was therefore quite easy about his presence in the house. Lucy meanwhile sat in a corner looking over an album of photographs which she had seen a hundred times before.
But when the ladies rose to say goodnight, and Yorke, who was standing near the door, opened it for them, Lucy's face as she passed out, the last of the three ladies, looked so pitiful — he had held out his hand, which she took without raising her eyes — that he relented from his selfish preoccupation.
"Lucy," he said, in a low voice, following her into the hall, "I have to ask your pardon for a hundred sins this evening; but I have been meeting with some very dear friends who are in sore trouble, and I could not shake off the effect it has produced. Can you forgive me if I tell you so much?" and at the look which accompanied these words, and which Lucy's now upraised eyes received, the poor girl's face brightened up at once, and she stood irresolute returning his smile, while the tears of joy came up to relieve the anxious little heart. True, this was not quite what she had expected love-making to be; but then she had not yet quite got over her awe of her lover, and to know that he was her lover seemed sufficient happiness.
She stood still in the hall, waiting for something more to be said, or perhaps trying to say something herself; while Cathy, who had left the room just before her, divining possibly that the conversation was of an interesting nature, had hurried up the staircase and was now out of sight.
"But we must not stand here," continued Yorke with a smile, "or Mr. Hanckes will be jealous;" and Lucy tripped off, her heart dancing with joy.
"Certainly," thought Yorke, as he watched her graceful little figure retreating, the rich brown hair and the handsome toilet seeming to be in keeping with the luxurious surroundings of the scene, "if a man may be satisfied with a pretty face, and a loving heart, and a sweet temper, I must be an ill-conditioned fellow to feel any misgivings."
The die was cast now at any rate, but he felt in no humour for an interview that night with Mr. Peevor; nor was a convenient opportunity afforded for doing so. Mr. Hanckes retired at once, announcing himself to be an early sleeper; and Mr. Peevor apologetically proposed that there should be no billiards that evening, as he had to go to town himself early next day on business. So Yorke sought his room to think over the strange incongruity of his position. So long believing himself to be inconsolable, and now to be establishing new interests, and to have found real happiness in his grasp at last, at the very time when he found himself again in Olivia's presence — to be making love to another woman when his first love, the only woman he used to think whom he ever could love, was in loneliness and suffering hard by. And there came up, too, the sense that a new duty must now fall upon him. He could not minister to Olivia's wants. In her deserted condition anything like familiarity must be guarded against as leading to possible misconception; but could he reconcile it to his duty to be taking his pleasure while Falkland, was hiding his sufferings in some lonely retreat? Was it not his plain duty to devote himself so long as his leave lasted to companionship with Falkland's wrecked fortunes? Life was now very sweet to Yorke; and it was with a full sense of the extent of the sacrifice that he resolved to make it, if Falkland on the morrow should show any disposition for his companionship. But this must not prevent his coming to an understanding with Lucy's father. That was a plain duty too.
But Yorke's was not the age for broken nights, and while arranging his plans for the morrow he soon fell asleep.