Wilmay and Other Stories of Women/Wilmay

by Barry Pain

 

WILMAY

 

 

 

Chapter I.

Philip Amory was only twenty years old when he decided to leave England. He had no relations to consult, and his guardian never opposed him in anything, but his friends—of which in spite of his eccentricities he had many—were indignant. He was leaving Cambridge in the middle of his career there, and the career had promised to be very brilliant. He was going to Queensland, and Queensland is a long way off. I told him that if he went there he might just as well die, and on the whole I should prefer the death. What made it more irritating was that he never gave one solid reason for going to Queensland, or even for leaving England at all. A man's friends can hardly allow him to make a fool of himself without providing themselves with some plausible explanation, and accordingly we said that there was a woman in the case. It was not a very satisfactory explanation, because, if there was a woman in the case, we certainly did not know who the woman was.

At first he wrote to me frequently. At the end of six months I got one long letter from him, of which the first half was all about horse-breaking, to which he seemed to have given much attention, while the remainder of the letter was occupied with a proposal for a new reading in a passage in one of the "Agamemnon" choruses. To this letter there was a postscript, "I have married." He did not say whom he had married, or give any other information. I wrote to inquire and to congratulate, and sent him silver candlesticks.

He never answered that letter or acknowledged the present I had no further news of him until a little more than a year afterwards, when I happened to see in a paper the announcement of the death of his wife. I wrote to express my sympathy, and he never answered that letter either. I made allowance for his erratic nature, but my patience was considerably tried. Years went by, and then one day I got a short note from him:—

 

"Dear Edward,—You never told me what you thought of that reading in the 'Agamemnon' which I proposed to you. I wish you would. Do you happen to want to buy—or to know anybody who wants to buy—a quantity of precious opals? Try to answer this at once.—Yours ever,

"Philip Amory."

 

To this I replied:—

 

"Dear Phil,—Since you first wrote on the 'Agamemnon,' I have forgotten my Greek, but without acquiring in its place any desire to buy opals, or any knowledge of any one with that desire. You have treated me abominably, and eccentricity does not excuse you. Come back to England, and I will forgive you—but correspondence with you is hopeless.—"Yours ever,

"Edward Derrimer."

 

One more year passed, and then one morning a letter was brought me with the postmark of Ayshurst, a little Buckinghamshire village. It ran:—

 

"Dear Edward,—You declined—rightly, I think—to correspond with me. My faults as a correspondent are due to several causes. I write letters which I afterwards forget to post. I do not send news of myself, because it is impossible for me to realise that people must be told things about me which I do not require to be told about myself. Also, I have been very busy. However, you said that if I returned to England you would forgive me, and I have returned. I am thirty-two years old, and I have done my roaming. I shall not leave England again.

"I have bought Sinden, and settled here with Wilmay. You remember that I once told you at Cambridge that I knew of a little spot which I meant to buy one day. That was Sinden—an Elizabethan house and about forty acres of freehold. The garden is a dream. Wilmay and I want you to come down to-morrow and stay for any period not less than one lunar month. For the sake of old times come, and bring my absolution with you.—Yours ever,

"Philip Amory."

"P.S.— Wilmay is the child. Now, that's a case in point. How was I to realise that you require to be told that, when I never require to be told it myself?"

 

I hesitated, but the appeal to old times decided me. I wrote him a long letter, abused him for all his little failings, and said that I would most certainly come on the morrow, and my train would arrive at seven in the evening.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

As I stood on the platform, watching the receding train that I had just missed, I suppose that I felt and spoke like an angry man, for the porter mildly suggested that it was not his fault, and that he did not make the trains.

"How long is it to the next? Half an hour?"

"Full an hour."

I thought of putting off my visit until the morrow rather than dislocate my host's dinner-hour. But my bag was packed, and it did not seem worth while to go back after I had once started. To fill in the time I strolled out into the street, found a telegraph office, and sent off ninepence-halfpennyworth of my best apologies to Philip. Then it occurred to me that I might buy a present for Wilmay. It was characteristic that even now Philip had never mentioned whether Wilmay was a boy or a girl, but at ten years old the sexes have much in common. I passed at shop where they sold French chocolates, and bought enough to account satisfactorily for my existence to Wilmay—boy or girl. Children mostly like you to produce some such evidence that your life is not quite purposeless.

I found Philip waiting for me on the station platform at Sinden. It was twelve years since we had met, and our conversation at first was, while his servant was looking after my luggage, incoherent—a volley of mixed questions and answers. His dog-cart was waiting outside the station, but Sinden was within ten minutes' distance, and at my suggestion we walked. Philip was wonderfully little changed by twelve years, as far as personal appearance went. He had looked, perhaps, older than his years at twenty; at thirty-two he looked younger than he was. He was a handsome man—tall, dark, clean-shaven, with the build of an athlete. He occasionally made little gestures while he talked—a habit, by the way, which he had never had while we were at Cambridge.

"Well," I said, as we walked, "you don't look old enough to be the father of a child of ten."

"Yes," he said, "Wilmay is ten."

"And is Wilmay a boy or a girl?"

"A girl, of course. Upon my soul, you don't know the simplest things."

I made the obvious retort, and he tried further to explain his erratic and abominable conduct.

"I know I should have written more often and told you about myself. But then some of your letters absolutely demanded an answer, and that sort I never can answer, and I wasn't always interesting enough to write about. Oh! look here, you shall ask me anything you like at dinner. I will make up all arrears of information then. By the way, do you like children?"

"You remind me of a girl who once asked me if I liked poetry. There are children and children."

"Well, yes; Wilmay is the other kind."

A short avenue of limes brought us up to the front door. My luggage had already arrived, and had been taken up to my room. The man who unpacked it took out four largish boxes of chocolate, and placed them with solemnity in a regular line on the table. You get a good deal of chocolate for a pound or so. I selected a box which was covered with purple satin, and had a heart in gold on the top.

"Do you know if Miss Wilmay has gone to bed?" I asked.

"I believe not, sir. I will inquire for you."

He brought back word that she had not yet gone to bed.

"Then would you have this box taken to her, from Mr. Derrimer, with his love?"

That was the introductory or ingratiating offering. I reserved two boxes with which to revivify my popularity from time to time, and one as a farewell offering. The man brought back a message that Miss Wilmay desired to thank me very much for the present and the message.

 

 

Chapter II.

Philip Amory and I were alone at dinner. He talked delightfully, told stories by the dozen, described bush life and mining life, told me a heap of those little interesting things that travellers forget to put in their books, but told me nothing at all about himself. I thought, perhaps, that he was waiting until the servants had gone. But even then he told me very little, and I hardly liked to accept his invitation to question him. I knew that he had married, and that his wife had died a little more than a year afterwards, shortly after Wilmay's birth. It was quite possible that even after a lapse of ten years he might feel himself unable to speak of that time. However, he did refer to it once, as we sat smoking in the library.

"Why don't you get married?" he asked me.

"That is what Bertha is always saying to me."

Bertha was my worldly sister, Mrs. Enterland, at that time thoroughly enjoying her second year of widowhood. "I can only tell you what I always tell Bertha—that, so far, I have never had the opportunity."

"You have no resolve against it?"

"Those that resolve against it incontinently marry the housemaid and drop out. No, I've no resolve. But I am thirty-two, and I have escaped so far, and I hope—humbly and with bated breath I hope."

So far we had both spoken flippantly enough. But now he said, quite seriously, looking away from me, "You are quite right; never marry. A man who marries, in the way that young men marry, risks loss. It becomes his greatest sorrow to remember his greatest happiness. He wants to curse God and die, and perhaps there are reasons why he cannot die. Never marry, never love."

There was a long pause. I did not know what to say.

"While I am speaking of this," he resumed, "I want to say that you sent me two letters, for which I have never thanked you, old man. But I was grateful for those letters, and I should like——"

"It is not necessary. It's all right. I understand perfectly."

"Then we will not speak of this again. If a man means to go on, and I mean to go on for another thirty or forty years, and the insurance people seem to think there's a chance of it—if, I say, a man means to go on, he must, by the time he has passed thirty, have got some sort of control over his own thoughts. He must be able to say to himself, 'Such-and- such an episode is closed; you must not think of this; you must not remember that.'"

"Can any man control his own thoughts?"

It is a popular fallacy that he cannot. I do, and many men do. I believe that most men of my age with the average history—or a history ever so little worse than the average—must either learn to do that, or must go mad. But enough—we will talk of other things."

Perhaps it was because I had not his facility for putting things out of my mind. Certainly, although we did talk of other things, for some time we spoke with some seriousness and constraint. Gradually we got back to the old manner.

"Do you remember," he said, "that I wrote to you about some opals? You took that solemnly—at the foot of the letter. It was only my way of conveying to you the news that I was dealing in opals. I had fifteen hundred pounds' worth of them lying on the big table at which I sat when I wrote to you. But I didn't mean that I wanted you to find me a market for them."

"When you write to a man who is in a bad temper, underline anything which is not to be taken seriously, and tell him you've done it. Then he may possibly understand you. However, you did well with your opals, if Sinden is the result."

"Not as well as I should have done. Opals do not fetch their real value yet—they will, but at present they don't. I tried other things, too, but we needn't go into the details of my money-grubbing. Not being a Crœsus like yourself, I had to grub, and did grub. It would have been too absurd for Wilmay not to have had anything she wanted. However, it's over now."

It is, perhaps, as well that I should explain that I was not a Crœsus. I had an annual income of £1100 a year, and no prospect that it would ever be increased. Indeed, as it was derived in part from the rent of agricultural land, it promised to grow less.

I asked him how long he had been at Sinden.

"I have been here," he answered, "one week to-day. I have only been in England a fortnight. I had an agent here watching for a chance to buy Sinden for me, and as soon as he cabled to me that he had got it I returned."

I was rather surprised. There was nothing in the furniture or arrangements of the house which indicated so recent an occupation. There was nothing temporary or makeshift I said as much, and he explained that he had been lucky in making people do things for him the way he wanted them done. He said that on the next day he and Wilmay would show me the place.

"Tell me about Wilmay," I said. "What is she like?"

He turned his head, smiled, and told me to see for myself.

I looked round. I had not heard a sounds but the library door opened and Wilmay stood there. After all these years I have but to close my eyes, and I can still see Wilmay as I saw her then—a white figure standing in the dark doorway.

She was in a long white nightgown. Her feet were bare, exquisitely shaped, looking as if they were made of rose-petals. Her hair, of the palest gold, hung down below her waist. Her deep blue child's eyes were fixed on her father and myself. In one hand she carried the box of chocolates, the other hand was stretched out as she came forward. She had the face of an angel.

"Wilmay," said her father, "this is Edward—Mr. Edward Derrimer."

She shook hands with me without the least shyness.

"Your Uncle Edward," I said, "if I may have that honour, a sort of supernumerary, unofficial uncle."

"I would sooner call you just Edward, if I may. I don't like the word 'uncle,' or the word meals,' or 'ulcer,' oh, and there are some other words too! The sound of them is so bad."

"By all means call me Edward. And what am I to call you—Will?"

"Never!" she laughed. "Nobody calls me that. Always Wilmay."

She made herself comfortable in a low lounge chair, and opened the purple box.

"It's so hot to-night, and I couldn't sleep. So I thought I would come downstairs just as I was, and try to find you. I did send a message, but I wanted to thank you myself for this lovely box and the chocolates. How did you know that I liked chocolates?"

"It was a wild guess of mine."

"It was quite right. See, I've eaten half a row already. If," she added, pensively, "I were to eat four more, I should be ill."

I looked for some proper and conventional display of paternal authority. None came. Her father sat and watched her and me with an amused smile. I therefore took it upon myself to suggest that the box should be closed until the morrow. I did not want to have the death of the child on my conscience.

"Oh no!" she said. "As four would perhaps make me ill, I shan't eat four. I shall eat three."

And she did. Then she said that her father had told her that I was a fine musician.

I suggested some slightly milder term as being more likely to come within a hundred miles of the truth. Philip would have called any man a musician who was capable of playing a Beethoven sonata with any approach to correctness and feeling. It was generous of him, but misleading. But Wilmay was not to be denied. She said that she wanted me to make some music for her.

Philip rose, apparently taking it for granted that I should do what the child wanted.

"We must come into the next room, then," he said. "There's a piano there."

It was a good instrument.

"It was tuned yesterday," said Wilmay, "by a man who smelt of sherry and told me to trot along. 'Trot along' has a bad sound, too."

I sat down to the piano, and did not in the least know what to play. It occurred to me that nursery rhymes might possibly appeal, and I tried some of them. When I had finished Wilmay came up to the piano and said, "Do you know this?" She hummed a scrap of the Tannhauser March. She hummed in tune.

"Yes," I said.

"Would you please play it?"

"Well," I said, "on a piano you can't—but no matter, I'll do my best"

If she had asked me to give her some idea of a Mendelssohn organ sonata on a penny whistle, Philip would have expected me to comply without a murmur.

When I had finished she put both arms round my neck, kissed me impulsively, said "Good night," and ran out of the room.

"Well," said Philip, when she had gone.

"Yes," I said, "Wilmay is the other kind."

"By the way," I added, when we had gone back to the library and lit our cigars, "I am not a father, and I have no experience of children. At the same time, if I let things pass without comment, I may be made an accessory after the fact, or something equally unpleasant. Do you allow a child of ten to get out of bed and catch her death of cold by wandering about the house with only her nightgown on? Do you allow her to execute that wandering barefooted, when she may tread on a tin-tack, get blood-poisoning, and die of it? Do you allow her to ruin her health by sitting up until long after eleven, or to shatter what seems at present a quite useful digestion by unrestricted and excessive indulgence in chocolates? Forgive these questions—but I have still some rudiments of a conscience."

Philip laughed and told me I was an old woman. The night was very warm, and she would not—and knew she would not—catch cold. The floor of the house was not—and she knew it was not—composed of inverted tin-tacks. Also Philip himself regarded it as foolish to stop in bed when you could not sleep. He pointed out that the "excessive indulgence" was not proved, and that it was I who had put the temptation in her way. "But after all," he said, "I never allow or forbid. In Wilmay's case it is not necessary, and in the case of almost all children it is nothing like so necessary as is supposed."

"What? You have theories of the education of children as well as of horse-breaking."

"I have pretty much the same theory in both cases—the least possible interference with the ordinary development of nature. I have studied wild men and wild horses. I have found in both something valuable that the common method of education and civilisation kills."

"From what I've read of primitive people, I should say that generally they were chiefly remarkable for dirtiness, ignorance, and brutality."

"Well, if you yourself lived among the Esquimaux, or if you were at the mines in a time of bad drought, you would not wash. The struggle for life brings out as much brutality here as you'll find among the Apaches, but in different forms. But don't misunderstand me—I did not say no interference with nature at all. I said the least possible. In the case of the horse, the least possible means quite a good deal, though less than is generally supposed. In the case of the child in general, the least possible interference means but little interference."

"But that question of ignorance—children are ignorant, and they don't want to learn. They have to be made to learn."

"I answer you in your own words—there are children and children. Tm not trying to push my point to an extreme. I have no illusions about it. There are many children—boys especially—who won't learn anything if they can help it. But it's our own fault because we begin by ordering them about and saying, 'Obey me and learn this,' when if we could show them that the particular knowledge was to their pleasure and advantage, Nature herself would urge them to acquire it."

"I know you've broken horses. Have you educated children? or is this merely your habit of theorising?"

"I have more or less educated Wilmay. She could ride long before she could read. She did not begin to learn to read until two years ago. I used to read Hans Anderson to her. One day it struck her that if she knew how to read, she would be able to read Hans Anderson when I was not there. So she wanted to learn—and did learn with unusual rapidity. Six months ago she decided that she would learn to write."

"Do you do the actual teaching?"

"No. Wilmay's woman, Mrs. Blayd, does that. I don't teach—I only stop other people from teaching until the right time comes. There are no regular lesson-hours for Wilmay—she begins work when she likes and stops when she likes."

"In fact she does everything she likes—has never learned self-control, or methodical habits, or regard for the feeling of others, and has been absolutely spoiled by a father who sits up of nights inventing theories to cover his own laziness, weakness, and eccentricity."

He laughed cheerfully. "Wait and see," he said. "Wilmay's not faultless, but before you have been here a month you will own that my system is the right system—for her at any rate."

I never did make this humiliating confession to him. When some weeks later he asked me for it, I contented myself with saying that Wilmay was apparently a child who could not be spoiled, even by a father with a mass of mad theories.

 

 

Chapter III.

We sat very late that night talking, and when we separated we mutually agreed that ten o'clock or thereabouts would be the right hour for breakfast. However, I woke at six, went to sleep, and woke again once every ten minutes until shortly after seven, and then rang my bell and got up. When I was dressed I went downstairs and out into the garden. I found Wilmay there, and she came up to look after me. She shook hands, and asked me if I wouldn't like to have breakfast at once.

"No, thanks," I said, "the excellent Carter has just asked me the same question. But I've had some tea, and I'd rather wait until your father comes down. Have you had breakfast?"

"Not yet; I thought I would have breakfast with you two this morning."

I said that would be charming.

She took me off to see the garden and the stables. On the way it occurred to her that it would be pleasant to have breakfast on the lawn.

"We do sometimes, when it's a good morning like this."

I thought the idea capital. She called up an under-gardener, and said with much dignity—

"Would you kindly go up to the house, and let Carter know that we should like breakfast on the lawn this morning?"

It was very quaint—I was amused. While she was showing me her own pony she suddenly asked if I considered that music was as difficult to learn as writing.

I said that it was more difficult, more heart-breaking. I ought really, in self-defence, to have put it much stronger than this. I had guessed what would happen. I had made her want to learn music, and she would learn it, and—this was the horror of it—I was to give her her first lessons. I had always been in the habit of saying that I believed there must be a special reward hereafter for music-masters, because in this life they have to suffer more than other men.

It was at breakfast-time that the moment arrived when I felt that I had either to consider myself a brute or to offer to teach Wilmay the piano. I set my teeth, and made the offer. She thanked me, and said that it would be lovely, but that she must not bother me and take up my time. That, of course, finished it. By the end of breakfast I was imploring as a privilege to be allowed to teach Wilmay the piano, and Wilmay was sweetly and graciously consenting. I told Philip afterwards that I thought in common decency he ought to have protested, and said firmly that he would not allow any guest of his to be turned into a music-master in his house. He smiled and said that he could not see it.

"Very well, then," I answered, "I will have regular hours for those lessons, and keep to them, and break up your go-as-you-please system."

At this he only smiled again. Wilmay and I decided upon regular hours, and sometimes we kept to them. I may, perhaps, have forgotten about them three or four times—not more. As I pointed out to Philip, it was better than not even attempting to be regular.

Wilmay was an excellent pupil. She learned very quickly, but then she worked of her own accord far harder than most children would have worked under compulsion. I do not pretend that these lessons were an unmixed joy to me. I doubt if elementary lessons on the piano to a child of ten are ever an unmixed joy to anybody. But I had expected that they would be very much worse. Wilmay really loved music. As a reason for my existence, music seemed to do even better than chocolates, though probably those four boxes helped to solve the problem.

I chaffed Philip occasionally about his system of educating a child by leaving out the education and allowing her to do as she liked. But, speaking seriously, that system had answered admirably with Wilmay. It seemed to have given her a spirit, an independence, a readiness of initiative that one very rarely finds in children of that age. She knew what to do. And, I confess it, she was not spoiled. She seemed to have an innate sweetness, tenderness, and unselfishness of nature that was proof against spoiling. She gave orders to the servants just as Philip would have done, and the servants were apparently instructed to take her orders as his own, but I never heard her give a dictatorial or unreasonable order, or omit to thank a servant who had done anything for her. Her own woman, Mrs. Blayd, was devoted to her. Mrs. Blayd was a blend of nurse, governess, and lady's maid, and also rather gave one the impression that she was a lady herself. She was a middle-aged woman, very quiet and reserved. Philip told me that she had been with Wilmay ever since her birth.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

During the next three years I saw Philip and Wilmay fairly frequently. Sometimes I went down to Ayshurst. Once or twice my married sister, Mrs. Enterland, had Philip and Wilmay to stay with her at her house in Mayfair. Bertha is a worldly little woman, with few ideals, and those mostly wrong, but before she began to be worldly she had a kind heart, and there are still traces of it left. I had talked to her about Philip and Wilmay, and she was eager to know them. I put it off as long as I could, because Bertha is the very opposite of Philip, and I thought the meeting would be a failure. But Bertha insisted, and the meeting was not a failure. It was a toss-up whether Bertha would decide that Philip was "Colonial" or "very interesting." Philip was a good-looking man, and he dressed well when he was in London, and he saved her from being swindled over some carriage-horses, and he spent money extravagantly, and he had a history which he did not tell her or anybody else. These things taken together made him in her eyes very interesting. Of course, there never was any doubt at all about Wilmay. She charmed everybody and never knew it.

It was when Wilmay was just fourteen that I had asked her and Philip to come and stop with me at a little cottage that I had on the river. There was no river at Ayshurst, and both of them were fond of boating. On the morning of the day when they should have arrived I received a telegram from Philip—

"Come to Sinden at once. Most urgent."

 

 

Chapter IV.

I started for Ayshurst, of course, as soon as I received the telegram. Had Philip been an ordinary man, the telegram would have worried me a good deal. As it was, I was by no means sure that he intended me to take it seriously, and that he would not laugh at me on my arrival. Even if he meant me to come, it was quite possible that it was for some perfectly trivial object. In short, I knew that it might mean anything or nothing.

I had telegraphed back to say by what train I was coming. The dog-cart was waiting for me at Ayshurst, and one glance at the face of the man who drove it was enough to make me ask him what was wrong at Sinden. He told me that there had been a bad accident, that Philip had been terribly hurt, and that it was very doubtful whether he would still be alive on my arrival The man drove hard, and and there was no time to tell me the details before we were at the door of the house.

The door was opened at once, before I could knock or ring, not by Carter, but by an old gentleman with his cuffs turned back. He was self-possessed, but he spoke quickly.

"Mr. Derrimer?"

"Yes. You are the doctor?"

"I am Dr. Ingwold. You are just in time. He says that he cannot die until he has seen you."

"There is no hope?"

"None. There never has been. I have been here since the early morning, when it happened, but I can only make the pain rather less for him. You had better go in to him at once."

"Yes." I went towards the staircase. The doctor touched me on the shoulder.

"Not upstairs," he said. "He is in the study. It would have been cruelty to carry him any further than was necessary."

We went down a passage to the study. At the door the doctor said—

"There is a nurse there, but she will come and wait outside with me. He was conscious when I left him."

Within I heard a faint repeated groan.

I entered the room. A bed had been put there, and the nurse was just turning away from it with a glass in her hand. Little details in the room seemed as if they would be noticed by me even against my will. There was a black morocco hand-bag on the table, bearing the initials R.H.I. in gilt. I found myself puzzled, and then decided that it must belong to the doctor. There was a faint smell of some anæsthetic—I wondered what it was. I noticed a grotesque design in vermilion on an old brown leather screen—was surprised that everything was in order, and that the room was so little changed. All this passed through my mind in a second, as I stepped from the door to the bedside. The nurse came up to me and asked me to go quite close to the bed so that he need only speak in a whisper. Then she slipped out of the room.

Philip lay on the bed. There was only a sheet over him. His torn and broken body could not bear the weight of heavy bed-clothes. A bandage over his forehead had a fantastic effect like a turban. There was death in his face, and death in his changed voice. He did not move, but his eyes turned to me.

"Thank you for having come, Edward. Everything else is settled. I waited only to see you. I wanted to asked you if you would be Wilmay's guardian?"

"Yes. You should have been sure of that."

"I was, but I wanted to ask it. And you'll do the best you can for her?"

"All that I can."

"That's good of you. She was here a little while ago, but I wouldn't let her stay—scenes like this aren't—we just said good-bye. You take charge of everything. All papers are in the safe in the library, and Mrs. Blayd will give you the keys." There was a long pause, and then he said, "I'm so sorry that I cannot give you my hand."

I could not answer. I put one hand lightly on his shoulder, watching his face to be sure that it did not hurt him. He seemed to become drowsy, his eyes closed, and I do not think he knew any longer that I was in the room. His voice was much weaker; he spoke at intervals, but I did not always hear what he said. Once I caught the words "a long day," and afterwards and then it becomes much more quiet." Sometimes I heard Wilmay's name. He may have thought that he was speaking to her. Then his lips moved no more, and in the stillness I only heard a watch ticking as if it had gone mad, seeming now to grow louder and now fainter, sometimes to stop for a second and then to hurry on again.

"Philip," I said.

He made no sign that he had heard me. I stepped softly to the door and opened it. The doctor, the nurse, and Mrs. Blayd were waiting outside. The doctor and nurse went into the room now, and I waited with Mrs. Blayd. She was a hard-featured woman, a woman with an immobile face that gave no token of her feelings. I asked her how Wilmay was.

"She is lying down now, sir. She does not speak, and she seems worn out. The rest will do her good, I hope."

"I hope so."

The door opened, and the doctor came out, closing the door behind him. "It is all over," he said. His look of relief was undisguised. "Can you see me in the library in a few minutes, Mr. Derrimer?" he asked.

"Certainly," I said. "I will wait for you there." The doctor went back into the room, and I turned to Mrs. Blayd. "Shall I——" I began.

"I think," she said, "that it would be better if I told Wilmay. And—there are other little things to be done—some orders—I could see after all that for you."

I thanked her.

"And would you tell Wilmay that I will come up and see her, if she would like it?"

"Yes, sir, I will tell her. But I do not think she would wish to see anybody at all just now. Shall I press her to——"

"No, no. It must be just as she likes. But you will let her know that I am here."

I went into the library, thought for a moment, and then wrote a note to my married sister, telling her what had happened, and asking her to come on the morrow. I rang, and had the letter sent off to the post. It was a warm summer day, but I had turned strangely cold. I sat and shivered, waiting for the doctor. It was an hour before he came—it seemed to me to be much longer.

He apologised for having kept me waiting. He had been detained.

"A fool of a housemaid had violent hysterics and another of the maids followed the lead. However, they're all right now, and professionally there is nothing more for me to do. But I should like to stop here to-night, because I think I can be of assistance to you. I knew Amory well—very well, considering that I knew him only during the last three years. If I can do anything to carry out his wishes now, I am glad to have the opportunity. He asked me to stop with you, and he gave me some directions. Will you have me?"

"It is very kind of you," I said. "Frankly I do not even know what has to be done on such occasions. I shall be glad both of your advice and companionship. But will it not be taking up too much of your time?"

"Not at all. My assistant can very well look after my regular practice; this is quite a small village, and there is not very much to do. I leave most of it to my assistant generally. Then that is settled."

He rang the bell. "Carter, I shall be stopping here to-night. Could you send a message across to my house to tell my man to pack my things and bring them here?"

And then he turned to me. "And what have you done so far?"

"Hardly anything. I have written to my married sister, Mrs. Enterland."

"Yes. Amory spoke of her to me sometimes."

"I think she will come here to-morrow. She is very fond of Wilmay, and I fancy that Wilmay would be quite willing to go away with her."

"That, I think, is quite right. Indeed I shall think it quite right if you take her away altogether. She is an impressionable child, and should be away from the scene—from anything that reminds her. But we shall all miss her here."

"Do you know how she is?"

"I have just asked Mrs. Blayd. She says that she is not ill, but keeps to her room—will not see any one."

He mentioned to me some papers in the library safe, of which Mrs. Blayd has the keys.

"I should, perhaps, look over them to see if there is anything which needs immediate attention."

"Yes, that should be done to-night. Amory often told me that he wished to be cremated, and with as little fuss as possible, but there may be further directions."

A servant brought in a message that Mrs. Blayd would be much obliged if I could speak to her for a minute.

"Very well," I said; "I will see Mrs. Blayd in the dining-room."

She handed me the keys, hesitated, and then said—

"It was about Wilmay, sir, that I wanted to speak."

"Well?"

"She is not in the house, and I do not know where she has gone."

 

 

Chapter V.

"I don't understand," I said. "Do you know why she has gone?"

"The same thing happened once before, sir, about two years ago. She was very angry with herself for something, and she went away like this. She was away then for eight hours."

"Eight hours? Was she not found and brought back before that?"

"Mr. Amory would not permit any one to go and look for her. He told me she was free to go in and out as she liked, and that she was able to take care of herself. He said, too, that if inquiries were made about her, she would become the subject of a good deal of silly talk in the village, and neither he nor Wilmay would like that. She went in the morning, and it was after dinner when she returned. No one but Mr. Amory and myself knew of it, and neither of us said anything to her about it."

"Yes, yes, Mrs. Blayd," I said; "but the case is different now. The poor child is half mad with grief. What you have told me makes me very anxious. And it is already getting late. I think a search should be made for her, with all possible discretion, of course, and without creating talk. But still it seems to me that something must be done."

"Very well, sir," said Mrs. Blayd, but she said it doubtfully.

"Well," I said, "you have known Wilmay from her birth. What do you think yourself—what do you really think?"

"I think that if we found her now it would be of no good. She is not herself. If we let her have her way, she will stop out to-night, but she will come back to-morrow morning. She does not forget those who are fond of her. She would come back if it were only for your sake, sir, or my own, I feel sure of it."

It seemed to me to be rather a difficult position. If I did not go to find Wilmay and bring her back, I was not taking proper care of her; and if I did, I was acting contrary to the wishes of her dead father.

"Wait," I said to Mrs. Blayd. "I shall ask Dr. Ingwold what he thinks would be best."

The doctor was of the same opinion as Mrs. Blayd. "It may do her some slight temporary harm to stop out all night, but—well, I know her, and I think it more likely to do her good." So we settled that, at any rate, until to-morrow morning nothing should be done.

From Dr. Ingwold, later in the same evening, I heard some details of the accident.

"It is the old story," said the doctor. "Your nervous, timid whip, who does not really understand horses, never comes to any harm. He takes no risks. It is the men who really can drive, who really can do a good deal with a horse, that always try to do just a little more, and have the accidents. In the early morning Philip had driven out with a horse that had already been a good deal of trouble to him. But it was a valuable animal, and he was anxious to finish its education. He took no one with him, and he said to the groom who brought the horse round that he should drive to the station, as he had some inquiries to make there. The groom noticed that, because he knew the horse would not stand sight or sound of a railway train, and knew that Philip was well aware of it too. It was three miles away from the railway station that Philip was afterwards found; there was a steep embankment there at one side of the road, with a white painted wood fence by way of protection. Cart, horse, and man were found at the bottom of this embankment, and the fence, which seems to have been rotten, was all broken down. Philip did not explain exactly how it happened, he said only that he thought it had been mostly his own fault."

Dr. Ingwold was of great assistance to me, and took on himself the trouble of all the horrible business connected with death. As it grew later, and Wilmay did not return, I again became very anxious about her. I was afraid that she might come back and find the house shut up and everybody asleep. I arranged, in consequence, that I would sit up that night in the library. The library windows opened on to the upper terrace of the garden. I drew the shutters back from these windows, and had the lamp placed near them, so that at whatever hour Wilmay returned she might be able to see that I was still up. The doctor went to bed, but said that he would be down very early in the morning to take my place, and give me a chance of an hour or two's sleep.

I had found in the safe several papers addressed to me. I put them on the table by the lamp, drew up my chair, lit my pipe, and began to open and read them. There was a terrible quiet in the house, almost as if the inanimate house knew that a dead man was lying there. So much did this idea impress me that the rustling of the papers, or the noise made by the shifting of my chair, seemed to be like a profanity. One gets into a nervous imaginative state when one is emotionally worn out and then sits up late at night.

All the time that I was reading I was also listening intently. If the branches outside moved in the light wind, the sound seemed changed to Wilmay's voice, and I looked up from the papers. At any moment I was ready to hear her step on the gravel outside, to open the window, and call to her. But she never came. The long hours wore on, tediously long, until the dawn came, and outside in the garden the whispered chirpings of the birds broke into full song in the sunlight.

Amongst the papers there was a copy of his will, the will itself being in the charge of his solicitors. I knew that he had arranged for his solicitors to act as his executors, because we had often referred to this. "I may," he used to say, "have bored people during my lifetime. I will go further, and say that when I have got on to any of my hobbies, such as precious stones, or emendations in the 'Agamemnon,' or horse-breaking"—and this by no means exhausted the list of his special subjects—"I must have bored people. In fact, I've seen them get restless, and smile, and try to look intelligent, and have known that I was boring them and yet been unable to stop it. But I don't mean to go on boring posthumously. I don't mean to ask a man of leisure to do badly for nothing what a man of business can be paid to do well." I did not even glance over the will that night. I am not precisely a sentimentalist, but I was in no hurry to find out what money the dead man had, or what he had done with it.

There was a long letter, addressed to me, and dated only a couple of months before. It began by referring to the uncertainty of life, "even for a man living as quietly, carefully, and unexcitingly as myself." It went on with his request that I would be Wilmay's guardian, and here, when I would have welcomed the most minute and elaborate directions, he gave none, or next to none. There were only a few suggestions. One, which had already occurred to me, was that Wilmay should go to live with my sister, Mrs. Enterland. He also suggested that, though it might become necessary now to put restrictions on her in some ways, she should still be allowed to work out her own education just as she liked. In concluding, he gave me a little—a very little—information. His wife's maiden name had been Wilmay Forland; she had died very soon after her daughter's birth. "She was the best woman in the world," he wrote, simply, "and, I think, one of the most beautiful. I had no opportunity to get her portrait painted, and we both disliked photographs. That has not mattered, for I have always remembered her, and, as the younger Wilmay grows up, I think you will be able to see what her mother was like." He went on to say that after his death he believed that Wilmay would have no other relation living, though there might possibly be one—her mother's brother. "This man's name was Charles Forland. Before I arrived on the scene I am afraid he was in far from comfortable circumstances. He had already spent his own small capital and the greater part of his sister's. He was still getting money from her, from time to time, in order that he might in future, as he phrased it, 'adopt a quite different course.' But these sums were of necessity small, and apparently, after paying for his bare livelihood and the few little luxuries that he felt he could fancy, they left no margin for the adoption of the quite different course. In addition to this, his sister had entirely ceased to believe in him or respect him. His conduct was not, it is true, of a kind to make one think that he respected himself, but it was always quite obvious that he liked others to respect him, and would do anything to secure that respect except deserve it. When I appeared on the scene, I was fortunately able to change his circumstances. I wrote him cheques. As I became richer, I wrote him larger cheques. I cannot claim that I have ever been able to write him cheques so large as to make him feel justified in the adoption of the quite different course. But I have enabled him to live in comparative affluence without working for it. The only thing that he was required to do for it was to abstain from seeing my wife or daughter, and to see me only on pay-day, when he called for his cheque. I do not say that I respected him or believed in him, as he would have liked. But I paid him to keep away, which he seemed to like still better. The last time I saw him was at Sinden, rather more than three years ago. He had called to suggest that he had been put to great personal inconvenience and expense by my move to England, and that the price of his passage both ways should be added to the customary amount of his cheque. It struck me at the time that he gave every promise that he would die of drink in the course of the year. But I did not like to be too sanguine about it; Charles Forland rarely stuck to any one thing for long. Since then I have not seen him, and I am quite sure he is dead. If he had been alive, he would have been to me for money, and the absence of any demands from him is equivalent to his certificate of death. It was, I confess, always amazing to me that he and Wilmay were brother and sister, children of the same parents. But such things happen. He has never seen my daughter Wilmay since she was a baby, by the way, and Wilmay neither recollects him nor knows of his existence. She had better not be told about him. Should he turn up again—but he will not. As I say, I have the equivalent of his death certificate. But do not let me imply that Charles Forland had no good points. He blackmailed me for having married his sister, and he would do no kind of work, and later in life he seems to have become excessively intemperate. But he was a handsome man, a good talker, and occasionally a wit—a man by no means without charm."

I read the whole of that letter with great interest twice over. I glanced through some of the other papers. At five o'clock I heard footsteps overhead, and then Dr. Ingwold came down and entered the library to take my place, sending me up to bed at once.

 

 

Chapter VI.

I had not expected to sleep, but I fell asleep at once. I suppose I was about tired out. For rather over two hours I slept soundly, and then woke suddenly, with a start, with the idea that I had just heard Wilmay call me loudly by my name. It was, of course, a delusion—I had been dreaming. But though I recognised that, I was unable to go to sleep again, and rose.

I joined the doctor at breakfast. Wilmay had not returned. For the first time the doctor looked a little hesitating, a little less as if he knew exactly the right thing to do, and was perfectly able to do it. We sent for Mrs. Blayd, and had a long talk with her. She told us of two or three places near, where Wilmay had always been fond of going, and where she might possibly be found now. I decided that we would try those places first, and that then if we did not find her, there was no help for it, and a regular search would have to be instituted with all the assistance that we could get. To this Mrs. Blayd quite agreed; like the doctor, she was beginning to get nervous. The poor woman had, it appeared, herself been up most of the night, and looked worn and ill.

The morning was glorious—a cool wind, a brilliant sun, and the country as beautiful as if no one had ever died or been unhappy. The doctor and I decided to go first to a plantation standing on the ridge of a low hill about a mile away from Sinden. He went up the plantation on one side of this ridge, and I on the other. We were out of sight of each other, but within call. One's footsteps were absolutely noiseless on the soft white sand of the narrow winding path. At the first turn in this path my search was over. Wilmay was coming down the path towards me. She carried a great bunch of wild roses tied together with the riband that she had taken from her hair. The dust had powdered thick on her little tan shoes; her pretty hands had been a little torn and scratched by the brambles. Her face was white, and her lips almost colourless. She smiled when she saw me, and called me by my name.

"Wilmay," I said, "poor little Wilmay! I am glad I have found you."

"I was coming back," she said.

"You very nearly frightened us."

"Yes, I have been thinking about that. I would not have been away so long only I wanted to get quite quiet again. That is why I came here, where there isn't anybody. I will be good now."

"It's all right, dear; I didn't mean to find fault with you. It's all right now that we have got you back again. Aren't you very tired?"

"Not very. I slept for a little time, until the sun on my eyes woke me. Then I got these." She held out the roses.

"They are lovely," I said.

She put them in my hand. "I want you to give them to my father with my dearest love. I shall not see him any more, not any more now." Her voice was wistful and sad, but quite steady. I think she had made up her mind not to cry any more—that she thought it might distress us to see her crying.

We walked a few steps further, and I was just going to tell her that I had the doctor with me, when she said—

"I've suddenly got tired, Edward. Will you—help me a little?"

I caught her in my arms as she fainted, and put her down on the grass by the path. In a minute I had the doctor by her side. He had come prepared for this emergency, and he soon revived her. When her eyes opened again, she seemed surprised to see him.

"I thought it was Edward," she said.

"It was—I am here too."

"I'm so sorry—but I can walk again now."

We would not let her walk, and I carried her the rest of the way.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Before mid-day Bertha arrived, and I was never more glad to see her. She had given up a host of social engagements, and was prepared to give up any number more for Wilmay's sake. It was the greatest sacrifice that could have been demanded of her, and she made it most willingly. She heard from me, and heard with composure, of Philip's death, but she could not bear to hear how Wilmay had gone away to the plantation "where there isn't anybody," and how I had found her. She stopped me, and said that a crying woman would be of no good in the house, and she would hear the rest some other time. She spent most of her time that day with Wilmay, and two days afterwards gave up the rest of the London season and took Wilmay away to the sea. Wilmay was quite willing to go; she had grown very fond of Bertha.

They spent the whole of that winter abroad together, and I was with them some part of the time. Youth is recuperative; one blow may take its strength and spirit and gladness for a time, but youth will have them all back. Wilmay became the old Wilmay again, saw life with her blue eyes as bright as before, rode her pony, learned to swim and to fence, and chattered the prettiest French without ever learning it at all.

"She is at the awkward age," said Bertha some time afterwards to me, "but with the awkwardness left out. In a few years' time I shall have to begin to think——" Bertha paused. "A beauty, four thousand a year, and the sweetest nature in the world. She ought to do very well."

"There's a splendid auctioneer lost in you," I said.

Bertha said that was merely rude.

"Well," I said, "at any rate wait until the time comes."

"Of course I never breathe a word to her about it—my lord the guardian."

"I should think not. And when the time comes, remember that Wilmay has not an atom of worldliness in her nature."

"Nor have I," retorted Bertha, "only a little common sense."

"You can call it what you like, but I won't have her—when the time does come—forced into anything, however brilliant."

"You don't understand these things," said my sister, with a sigh of resignation; "but as the child's not yet sixteen, you needn't begin to trouble your guardianish mind just yet."

On Wilmay's sixteenth birthday, she, Bertha, and myself dined together at Bertha's house. There was no one else there. We had dined together in that way many a time before, but this evening—this evening for the first time—it was different

 

 

Chapter VII.

"Mrs. Enterland desired me to say, sir, that she would be down directly," said Carter, as he opened the drawing-room door.

Carter and Mrs. Blayd had both been taken into my sister's service—Carter, of course, as butler, and Mrs. Blayd as maid to Wilmay, and housekeeper, occasional secretary, and several other things to my sister. She had no fixed position, and my sister said that she was a treasure.

I waited a few minutes in the drawing-room. It was the usual fashionable mixture of things ancient and modern, and just as much too full and too feminine as every other drawing-room in the district. Then Bertha entered looking mysterious and pleased, which she was, and much younger than thirty-five, which she was not. She shook me warmly by the hand, kissed me, and exclaimed, "Edward, we've got a surprise for you."

"Yes?" I said. "Then, of course, you needn't trouble to apologise."

"Why, I've hardly kept you waiting a second. The fact is that it didn't come until the last moment—oh, I've nearly let the secret out."

"Let it quite out. You won't be happy until you've done it. Besides, I hate surprises. They're all alike—something goes pop and hurts you, and then everybody else laughs. I think they're shockingly vulgar myself."

"But this surprise isn't at all like that. It's beautiful."

"Well, how's Wilmay? And where's Wilmay?"

"Wilmay's very well indeed, and quite charmed with your present, and you won't see her just yet—that's part of the secret."

"You've hidden her behind a curtain or a screen or somewhere. And she'll jump out and scream, and the ghastly part of it is that you'll both of you think it funny. When is it going to happen?"

Carter announced that dinner was served.

"It's not going to happen at all, and Wilmay's much too old to care about such stupid childish games. Take me into the dining-room, and you shall behold her."

In the dining-room Wilmay was standing at one end of the table. She was a transformed Wilmay. Hitherto she had worn her hair down; now her hair was up and done in the latest and correctest fashion. Hitherto, on the occasions when she had dined downstairs with Bertha and myself, she had worn something which I called a "kid's compromise," but I believe is known as a demi-toilette. Now she was in a regular dinner-dress, white, low, and long. Round her neck was the string of pearls that I had given her. She looked very shy and rather pleased; she smiled and blushed. I made a low obeisance, kissed her hand, and begged to be allowed the honour of congratulating Miss Amory on her birthday.

Wilmay was protesting, and thanking me for the pearls as we sat down to dinner. Wilmay, as my sister had arranged, took the place of the hostess, and Bertha and myself sat on either side of her.

"Well?" said Bertha, "and what might my lord the guardian happen to be thinking of us?"

"At the first shock—I mean, at the first enchantment—I can think only of myself. Wilmay, tell the truth. How old are you?"

"I'm sixteen, please, Edward. No, that's not right, I'm in my seventeenth year."

"And I'm really in my thirty-ninth year, and I'm considered to be young for my age; have always felt young until now. Now I feel that I am one hundred and four. I see the babe for which I bought chocolates——"

"But, Edward," interrupted Wilmay, "I was not a babe; I was ten years old."

"A very young ten, and wore on the occasion when I first met you a somewhat unconventional costume."

Wilmay laughed and blushed. It was as though some one had given her the power of blushing for a birthday present. She had never been in the least self-conscious before.

"And now," I said, "what a change is here!"

"Not really changed," Wilmay pleaded. "My hair's done differently, and I've got a new dress, but I'm still just the same—the same, but in disguise."

But she was not just the same—and she was never just the same again. The twilight of childhood was passing, and the dawn was coming—the dawn, and the day, and the night.

The dinner was amusing enough. Bertha was always, more or less, a bright woman. Wilmay laughed more quietly, it seemed to me, than usual, and talked less. Some of the things she said were serious to the verge of sentimentality, and, of course, we laughed at her for them mercilessly. She had been reading stories and seeing plays, and she said that it seemed as if life were very sad, but that the sadness was in some ways rather nice. And then she was compelled to laugh at herself.

Bertha said that I was not to be long over my cigarette, because I was going to play to them.

"No, I think not," I said. "Your piano's never in tune; and you cover it with a sort of brocade tablecloth, pot palms, photographs, majolica, and mess generally, because you think it looks pretty."

"Speak to him, Wilmay!" said Bertha. "Explain to him!"

"The piano's perfectly all right, Edward," said Wilmay, laughing, "and you may have the things taken off it, if you like. But while you're in my house you're expected—to—to behave as such."

"I accept the rebuke in the spirit in which it is offered, and in five minutes I will do myself the honour to wait upon her—as my tailor says."

But when I got into the drawing-room, somehow or other we all three began to talk, and we went on talking until I rose to go. I had promised to meet some men at the club. Then Wilmay said that I must stop a little longer, and play, because it was her birthday. So I stopped and played them Chopin waltzes and nocturnes, and they went through the usual raptures. It was late rather when at last I stood in the hall putting on my coat. Wilmay followed me from the drawing-room into the hall.

"Has Mr. Derrimer's cab got a lamp inside it?" she asked Carter. Carter believed so. "Then," she said, giving me a little note, "you may have this to read as you go home. Good night, again."

The note ran as follows:—

 

"Dear Edward,—I am writing this in my bedroom before dinner. I know I shan't be able to thank you half enough for those lovely pearls, and I want to thank you again and again. You are always so kind to me.—Ever your loving

"Wilmay

 

I put the note in my pocket. For a few minutes I mused absent-mindedly, and then I noticed that the cab had nearly reached the club. I made the man turn round and drive me home instead.

 

 

Chapter VIII.

Bertha did not bring Wilmay out, definitely and formally, until she was seventeen. During the year before I had got into the habit of going rather often to Bertha's house. Bertha loved good music for ten minutes. It was essential that the music should be good and that it should not last longer than ten minutes. So she used to send me with Wilmay to St. James's Hall, while she enjoyed at home what she called "the rare luxury of not hearing a concert." Sometimes I rode in the Park with Wilmay. In one way and another I saw a good deal of her.

Bertha was widening the scope of her ambition for Wilmay.

"You may not know it," she said to me "but Wilmay is probably at this moment the most beautiful girl in the world."

"I don't know all the others," I said. "But Wilmay looks all right."

"Looks all right! I've been through ten London seasons without seeing anything like her."

"Ten London seasons, or even more—we're getting very old, Bertha, very, very old."

"You can be old, if you like," replied Bertha. "Age is no crime in a man. But I'm not old, and I won't be. Ah," she sighed, "if I could only be Wilmay for one season! I wonder if she knows what a perfectly heavenly time she is going to have."

Bertha had some grounds for her extravagant praise. Wilmay's beauty was unusual and remarkable. In the street, as she went unconsciously past, people turned to look at her. In the theatre or at concerts, though she dressed quietly and her own attention was always wholly given to the play or the music, she made something like a sensation. That eccentric but charming old lady, Lady Harston, met Wilmay by chance at Bertha's house, and was much impressed When she left she shook Wilmay warmly by the hand, and said, "Good-bye, my dear, and thank you."

"But why do you thank me?" Wilmay asked.

"Because I have seen the face of an angel."

Wilmay asked me afterwards what she had meant. I told her that I did not know, and that Lady Harston was more or less mad. But I might just as well have told her the truth, for it was impossible to spoil her. I think she knew that she was very beautiful, and I suppose she was glad of it. But compliments on her beauty, however delicate and indirect, bored her when they came from women and frightened or displeased her when they came from men.

Bertha gave a dance soon after Wilmay came out. Certainly, that night Wilmay hardly looked like a flesh-and-blood mortal, an ordinary thing that danced and could be taken down to supper. Her beauty was not of this world. It was not only that her features were perfect in shape, and that the colouring of her eyes and hair and skin was so lovely; she had a rare sweetness of expression, an expression that is only found with an absolutely unselfish and noble nature. I saw Stenling, the portrait-painter, looking at her with undisguised and reverent admiration. Later in the evening Bertha touched me on the arm.

"Isn't she splendid?" she said.

"Who?"

"Wilmay, of course," Bertha went on, speaking rapidly in a low voice. "Everybody's talking of her. Stenling's in a great state of excitement. He goes about saying, 'Either I paint Miss Amory or I die.' But I mustn't wait here"—and before I could reply she passed on.

Wilmay gave me two dances. I danced the first with her, and we sat out the second.

"It's good of you, Wilmay," I said, "to take pity on the aged and infirm like this."

"Do you know, Edward," she said, "that you've always been the same age ever since I've known you. You've not changed in the least. You'll never be old."

"It's my fixed intention to be forty next year."

"But you've not changed, and I have. And women get old so quickly—it's very sad. Yes, of course I am young enough now. But"—she stretched out her hands—"I feel the nasty little slippery moments running through my fingers and laughing, and I can't hold them."

"Wilmay," I said, "this will not do at all. Your time is now. The night is yours—a night of triumph. You must be very happy."

She smiled. "I am not really very miserable. But I'm not very happy either."

"Why not?"

"I'm—I don't know—restless. Did you ever want something and yet not know what it was?"

I reflected, and said that I knew what she meant.

There was a moment's pause, and then she said—

"You must not tell Bertha that I am not quite absolutely happy, because she would not understand as you do, and it would distress her. I should not like that; I'd do anything for Bertha, you know, and anything wouldn't be half enough."

Yes, that was precisely what I was afraid of—that Wilmay would do anything for Bertha, even to the imperilling of her own happiness.

"Besides," Wilmay went on, "it is really nothing—a fit of sentimentality. Why don't you laugh at me, Edward?"

"To-night," I said, "you are too beautiful to be laughed at?"

She looked at me with wide-open, troubled eyes.

"Or else," I said, "perhaps I've grown too sentimental myself to do any laughing."

I left the dance early, and went home. But it was long after that before I went to bed. I had to make up my mind one way or the other, and I found it difficult. The decision came at last, and it only remained for me to act upon it, and as far as possible to avoid the weakness of pitying myself. When my man called me in the morning, he was a little surprised to be told that we should leave for Paris that night.

In the afternoon I went round to Bertha's house. Wilmay was out. Lady Harston was taking her to some picture-gallery. "Which," as Bertha remarked, "is all very well when you're very young. But, personally, I don't go to picture-galleries the afternoon after a dance."

Bertha looked at me up and down. "What's the matter with you? What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Nothing. Never been fitter."

"Well, you don't look it. Go home, and then go to bed."

"No," I said, "I shall go home, and then go to Paris."

Bertha got up, walked to the window, and looked out.

"Going to be away long?"

"Oh, some little time, I believe."

Bertha sighed. "You won't think me unsisterly, but I'm not altogether sorry to hear it."

"Unsisterly? Why, only a near blood relation could have said that. And why are you glad?"

"I think you know."

"And I'm positive I don't."

She crossed the room, and sat down again.

"It's not on my account, of course," she said. "I shall miss you very much. You've been most useful and obliging whenever I've given a dinner or anything, and I'm not ungrateful. I like nothing better than to have you here. I'm sure Wilmay will miss you too. But—well——"

"Ah! We come to it at last."

"Well, don't you think that you've been too much with Wilmay of late? You go everywhere with her. It might look—can't you see for yourself?"

"It might look as if I were her guardian. I am."

"And it may look something quite different. It may make people think that you yourself are engaged to her, or about to be engaged to her—prevent a suitable man from coming forward—do Wilmay a lot of harm, while it can do you no good. Where is the sense of it? Wilmay is fond of you very much as a child is fond of her father. What your feelings towards her are, I don't pretend to know. But if you carry on anything approaching a flirtation with her, you behave very meanly and badly, and of course you cannot possibly marry her."

"You put ideas into one's head. Let me think it over. By what law of this land or any other land am I forbidden to marry Wilmay, if we both decide on that?"

"You are forbidden by your own feelings."

"I have none."

"Please be serious. You are twenty-two years older than Wilmay—much too old. You are also much too poor; you have about a quarter of the money that Wilmay has. With her wonderful beauty she ought to make a brilliant marriage. Youth, wealth, high rank—she ought to have all of them, and you know it, and you have none of them. Besides, what would the world say? That you had taken advantage of your position as her guardian to serve your own interests rather than hers. And the world would be right."

"And yet you have told me to marry money."

"No; I did mention a lady—two ladies—who might have made you happy, would certainly have accepted you, and happened to have money. That is a very different thing. Ah, if you could only have taken my advice then!"

"I couldn't have married both, unless I'd arranged for the sentences to run consecutively—that's the right phrase, I believe—and I didn't care to make invidious distinctions. And now, my dear Bertha, you can curb your feverish imagination. I am not going to marry Wilmay. I am going to Paris to-night, which, as you will see in your calmer moments, is not the same thing."

"Can you take nothing seriously? Of course, I did not seriously suppose that you wanted to marry Wilmay, but her future's a very grave question, and I don't see why I should be laughed at because I am so anxious to do the best I possibly can for her."

"Well then, I will speak seriously. You have your own idea of a brilliant marriage, and I do not think your idea is Wilmay's, and I'm absolutely certain that it's not mine. Remind yourself that there are such things as unhappy duchesses."

"My dear Edward, I'm not a snob. I only say that one can't give up common sense altogether."

"At any rate, I am not going to have Wilmay forced into any marriage. She must be left free. For goodness' sake don't make plots and schemes for her."

"You're really rather crude, Edward. One does not force people nowadays. I might, perhaps, advise, if I felt quite sure I was right. There could be no harm in that."

"True, you've advised me to marry your own selections, and there's been no harm in it. Because, you see, I have not married them. But with Wilmay it is different. She knows nothing of men or of marriage; she is as innocent as a baby, and she is devoted to you. She might let herself be persuaded—in fact, I should think your advice would be much more dangerous than if you point-blank commanded her to marry the nearest duke. However, when the time comes I shall have something to say, you will remember. And in the mean time I'm not here to quarrel with you, but to say good-bye."

"I never quarrel," said Bertha, with her most charming smile. "Good-bye, Edward. Come to London occasionally, you know. You ought to do that, just to see that I'm not standing over Wilmay with a horse-whip and making her marry the wrong people. I will say good-bye to her for you, and explain, when she comes back."

 

 

Chapter IX.

For nearly two years after this I never saw Wilmay. Of course I did not spend the whole of this time at Paris. I did occasionally come to London, and it was more by chance than from intention that I did not meet Wilmay there. For some few months I travelled in Italy. During this period I composed an opera, and it was produced, and had a certain measure of success—that is to say, it was not nearly as good as I had meant it to be, but it benefited me financially. It was the first money of importance that I had ever earned, and I endeavoured to feel that it degraded me, but could not manage it. However, I am quite conscious that I am the fool of this story and not the hero, and that it is better to write of other people.

Let me first of all do justice to Bertha. A very great person indeed, who was sixty-five years old, but looked more, was good enough to approve of Wilmay. He even decided to share his greatness with her, and—with the mad impetuosity so common at that age—sent his sister to talk it over with Bertha. Bertha expressed herself as being much complimented, but was afraid that she was unable to give the great person any encouragement. The great person thought it over, and the mature wisdom of his sixty-five years spared him the trouble of being refused by Wilmay. Bertha felt that she had done well, and sighed. Wilmay laughed. Bertha occasionally sent me a selection, and told me that she had found the very man for Wilmay. At first this used to make me rather nervous. But I soon discovered that Wilmay never allowed any of these very men to get as far as a proposal. I grew more easy in my mind; it seemed as if Bertha would be compelled to let Wilmay choose her own husband.

Only twice did Wilmay in person actually receive a proposal. The first proposal was from a young novelist, a man of good family, but no means. He seems to have been really very much in love with Wilmay. He compelled her to hear him, even though he told her at the time that he knew there was no hope for him. Wilmay refused him definitely and finally, but she did not laugh this time. On the contrary, as she told me in her letter about it, she cried. "He turned white, and fidgeted with his hands, and began sentences which he couldn't finish. And then he was so humble, and didn't seem to think anything about himself, and his eyes were so sad. I couldn't help crying, and I do hope I'll never have anything of that kind happen to me again." Bertha was exceedingly angry with this young man. After his refusal, he went very much to the bad, which without doubt was quite romantic of him, though it would probably have paid him better to have written a novel.

The second proposal was from a young baronet, Sir Vincent Carrone, and this proposal Wilmay accepted. As I have done justice to Bertha let me also do justice to Sir Vincent. He was a man of twenty-eight, good-looking, and sufficiently wealthy. He was honestly in love with Wilmay, and in most respects he was a fine fellow. He was not clever, but neither was he appallingly stupid. He was a straight man, with a good reputation and a liking for country life and sport. Before the proposal took place I had a letter from Bertha about him. He had said nothing to her, but he was paying very marked attention to Wilmay, and Bertha felt sure that he would ask Wilmay to marry him. I replied that if Wilmay was really fond of the man, and accepted him, nothing could be more satisfactory, but that in the mean time Bertha had better not interfere. How far she did interfere, if at all, I have never learned since nor wished to learn.

Bertha announced to me the engagement in a letter of six rhapsodic pages. She was quite certain that Wilmay would be very happy. Sir Vincent was so good, and so kind, and—but there was no end to her praise of him. I am quite sure that at this time, as at all other times, Bertha only desired Wilmay's happiness. If she influenced Wilmay at all it was only with the view of securing that happiness. She concluded by saying that Wilmay would also write to me, but that she was very shy in speaking or writing of the engagement.

The letter from Wilmay was much shorter, and I did not quite like it. There was an almost pathetic reiteration that she hoped, or she believed, that she was going to be happy. But there was no statement that she actually was happy then. She, too, praised Vincent, but almost in the same terms that Bertha used, as if she were repeating a lesson. She did not describe, and, of course, I had not expected her to describe, the circumstances of the proposal; but I was surprised that the greater part of the letter was about Bertha, and not about herself or her lover. I was not quite satisfied, and yet I seemed to have no definite ground for interference I did my best to eliminate any personal feelings of my own, and look at the thing fairly, and I found nothing to support my objection but some infinitesimal things that Bertha would have laughed at. Indeed, Bertha herself had partly explained the tone of Wilmay's letter.

A week later the engagement was publicly announced; the marriage was to take place six months afterwards. Wilmay had written to me frequently since I had left England, often upbraiding me for stopping away so long, asking me why I did it, and telling me to come back. Now, in three months, I had only two short notes from her. They were written far less freely and familiarly than her old letters, and though there was an assumption of lightheartedness all through them, they did not give me the impression that she was happy. As the six months drew to an end, I heard very little of Wilmay. The trousseau was being purchased, preparations were being made for the marriage, wedding presents were pouring in; Wilmay had no time to write, and Bertha only sent short scrappy notes written in the greatest haste. It was about three weeks before the wedding that I returned to England to complete some necessary business arrangements.

I arrived in London in the morning. I had not told Bertha what day I should come, but in the afternoon I started out to call on her. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and I found the walk through the park pleasant after the hour that I had just spent in a dry solicitor's dusty office. As I walked along Bertha's victoria met me. Bertha and Wilmay were both in it, and neither of them saw me, Wilmay was laughing. That laugh consoled me. Everything was all right then, and I had been worrying myself for nothing.

As Bertha and Wilmay were both out, it was obviously of no good to go on to Bertha's house. To sit in her mistaken drawing-room and wait for her would have been merely tiresome. So I went back home, meaning to call on Bertha again later in the afternoon. My flat is on the first floor, and as I walked up the steps to it I passed a handsome middle-aged gentleman, who was peering about him uncertainly. He caught me up again on the landing, just as I drew my latchkey from my pocket, stared at me hard, and then raised his hat.

"I think," he said, "I must be speaking to Mr. Derrimer—Mr. Edward Derrimer."

"Yes," I said, "that is my name."

He was carefully dressed and rather gave me the idea that all his clothes were absolutely new. His hair was dark brown, and beginning to grow grey; he wore a short waxed moustache, and touched the ends of it nervously from time to time. His deep-set blue eyes watched me narrowly. He began to pull a card-case from his pocket, and then said—

"But I think you must know me, Mr. Derrimer."

"It's unpardonable, but my memory——"

"Perhaps I should have said that you must have heard of me. Wilmay would not recall me, but Philip Amory, who was very, very kind to me—though in some respects he sadly misunderstood me—must have mentioned my name."

In a second the scene flashed back on my memory. I saw myself sitting in the library at Sinden, with the table drawn up near to the window, and the lighted lamp on it, reading that letter of Philip's to me. The phrase "adopt a quite different course" came back to me.

I held out my hand. "You are Wilmay's uncle."

He bowed and smiled. "I am. I have been particularly anxious to see you. I thought it best to see you first."

"Won't you come in?" I said. And we passed together into the room I used as my study.

 

 

Chapter X.

"I am afraid," said Charles Forland, nervously, "that you must find my presence a little embarrassing."

"Not at all," I lied civilly.

"I should like to assure you that I have no feelings of resentment against you whatever. It is not your fault that my poor brother-in-law gave you a position—the position of Wilmay's guardian—which should have been mine. With all his kindness to me he misunderstood me, and I gather from his solicitors, whom I have just left, that at the last he did not even mention my name in his will."

"I happen to know that he believed you to be dead."

"Yes, I dare say it was my fault." He spoke with more confidence now. His manner was by no means bad. He was not quite the suave hypocrite that I had expected; indeed, he showed one or two touches of cynicism that rather amused me. "However, I, his brother-in-law, received nothing; you, a stranger, benefited considerably."

"Did the solicitors tell you that?"

"Do solicitors ever tell you anything that you want to know? A man, however, does not make you the guardian of his child and——"

"There is no mystery about it. If you want to know, Philip left me his library and his cellar. I'm sorry it should annoy you."

"But, Mr. Derrimer, it does not annoy me. I have been trying to explain that, though under the circumstances I might feel resentment, I feel none. In fact, it is to you, as Wilmay's guardian, that I come first. I might have gone to Wilmay or Sir Vincent—of course I have read in the papers of the impending marriage—but I went to Philip's solicitors, and, learning from them that you were Wilmay's guardian, decided to apply to you first."

"What have you been doing all the time that you were away?"

"I cannot tell you all the details. Shortly after I last saw Philip—it was an occasion on which he had very much exasperated me—I left England for America. I had resolved not to permit Philip to advance any more money own, which hitherto had been unremunerative, but still contained great promises. I resolved to adopt a quite different course. I said to myself that I would now make a fortune for myself and for no one else, and leave Philip out of it. As I say, at the time I was exasperated against Philip."

As I have said, the man was not exactly a hypocrite; he was a swindler who began by deceiving himself.

"Did you ever eat a Compactum Dinner?" he asked.

"No. I don't understand."

"It was a novelty in canned goods. A tin with four compartments—soup in the first, fish in the second, roast meat in the third, and vegetables in the last. A Compactum Dinner, sufficient for one person, could at one time have been purchased in London for a shilling."

"No doubt," I said, "it was very good, but what's it got to do with it?"

"Good? It was bad. I may say that it was damned bad. And I ought to know, for I invented it, manufactured it, exported it, made a fortune over it, went bankrupt over it, and was finally brought so low that I once tried to eat it. And in that sentence I've given you the history of three years. My next bankruptcy was three years later, and very unexpected. My third——"

"Never mind," I said drearily, "going into all the bankruptcies."

"I merely wanted to show you that I did work and struggle, whatever Philip said of my idleness. Philip also said that I should die of drink, and in a moment of irritation expressed the hope that I would do it soon. I must show you that his version of my character was not the right one. I have my self-respect."

"All right," I said, "I see that you don't drink now, Mr. Forland. But had we not better come to business? Why have you applied to me?"

"Because I thought it possible that you might not wish me to apply to Wilmay or Sir Vincent."

"Shall I speak quite plainly?"

"Certainly."

"I should prefer that you never saw either, and never communicated with either in any way.

"Yes," he said, "you have spoken plainly, and I will speak as plainly. I have no recollection of Wilmay, and I have never seen Sir Vincent Carrone. As far as my affection for them is concerned, it does not matter one straw to me if I never see either, and they are left in ignorance of my existence. It is on a point of principle that I should see them. I feel myself a debtor to them; it is my duty, and I feel it to be my duty, to repay them every penny of the money that my sister and Philip advanced to me. I have kept a note of the exact sum, six thousand five hundred pounds, and I wish to repay it."

For the moment I was very much surprised, but it was only for a moment.

"I need not say that I have not the money," he went on. "But they can very well afford to advance me the thousand that will enable me to get that and much more. I am her mother's brother, and her father was exceedingly kind to me until an unfortunate misunderstanding. I have a claim."

"Look here," I said, "you have told me you once made a fortune. Why didn't you repay then?"

"I was on the point of doing so. But I was extending my business at the time. Extend a business too far, and it breaks—er—like—elastic. Mine broke."

I walked up and down the room. For Wilmay's sake I had to get this man out of England. I would speak to Sir Vincent about him, because I knew he would take a common-sense view of the case, and because it seemed unfair not to tell him. But I wanted to keep Forland away from Wilmay, and not to let the relationship become publicly known.

"Where would you go, if you had money?" I asked.

"Coolgardie," he replied, without the least hesitation.

"Well," I said, "I'm glad you came to me. Wilmay has no power at present to give you the money. Sir Vincent wouldn't give you it. I can, and I will. I'm going to write a cheque for two hundred, and I will pay the balance of eight hundred pounds to you in instalments of one hundred every three months. Should you, during that period, at any time return to England, or communicate in any way with Wilmay or Sir Vincent Carrone, the remainder due to you will be stopped."

He said that he was reluctant to take money from me, as he felt that on me personally he had no claim whatever. He hoped that I would regard it as an investment—simply as an investment. In short, he accepted the arrangement, and pocketed the cheque.

"And now," he said, "you must dine with me."

For the fun of the thing, I did dine with him, and I have never been better entertained. He told stories about himself, and I have no doubt that he lied, but he lied most amusingly. He kept a glass of wine by his side at dinner, but he never touched it, and drank only water.

A few days afterwards I had the pleasure of seeing him off.

"Pardon me," he said at the last moment, "but I know you better now, and I want to ask you something. You have heard Philip speak of me, apparently—you have now had an opportunity of judging for yourself. Do you think I am a damned blackguard?"

I replied that we were all the creatures of circumstances. He sighed, and seemed dissatisfied.

To Sir Vincent I merely said that Wilmay, though she did not know it, had an uncle who was a bad lot.

"So've I," he answered. "Everybody's got a bad egg of a relation somewhere."

"Well," I said, "this particular egg is on its way to Coolgardie at present. Its favourite pastimes are borrowing money and occasionally entering on some weird business and going bankrupt. If it should ever apply to you, I want you to do nothing until you have consulted me."

"Very well, as you like. But, I say, couldn't one do anything for the poor beggar?"

"Very good of you, but it's really not necessary. At present he's provided for. I mentioned it because it was the particular wish of her father that Wilmay should never see this man or know of his existence. She is sensitive—it would humiliate and distress her. I thought a word to you——"

"Of course. Much obliged to you. The world's too bad for Wilmay anyhow, and the less she knows of the badness the better."

 

 

Chapter XI.

It was about a week before this conversation took place that I saw Wilmay for the first time (with the exception of that momentary glimpse in the Park) since my return to England. It was at Bertha's house in the morning. I had sent word that I was coming, and I found them both in the morning-room. Bertha looked very young and quite pretty, and greeted me with much sisterly effusiveness. Wilmay took my hand, and looked away from me, and said, "Edward, I am so glad—so glad that you have come back."

As we talked I watched Wilmay. The glimpse that I had had of her in the Park had been deceptive. Driving in the fresh wind must have brought the colour to her cheeks, and I suppose even if one is sad at heart one still laughs passably well in public if one's companion says an amusing thing. Now she was very pale, and when she was not talking or conscious that any one was looking at her, her expression was wistful and her eyes seemed fixed on something far away.

"Wilmay," I said, "are you really quite well?"

"Oh, quite!"

"There is nothing the matter with her," said Bertha; "but she is tired. She has to go about so much, and see so many people. There are Carrones innumerable, all anxious to inspect her."

"If she's quite well," I said, "she doesn't look it. And unless she can manage to look it, she shan't be married at all."

"Please do not let us talk about me any more," said Wilmay. "I want to know all about the opera. We've heard it, of course. Everybody's heard it, and everybody's talking of it But I want to hear the history of it."

"And I'm sick to death of the opera," I replied, "and I want to hear the history of your engagement."

But on that point Wilmay was absolutely mute, and let Bertha answer for her.

As the days went on, and I saw more of Wilmay, I grew more uneasy. She admired Sir Vincent, and was fond of him in a way, but it did not strike me that she was in love with him. Sometimes I thought I saw a doubt on his honest, handsome face. Sometimes even Bertha herself would look a little anxious when she spoke of Wilmay.

The time sped—flew, it seemed to me—more swiftly to catastrophe, as a moth to a flame. It was less than a week before the day fixed for the marriage that I got a note from Wilmay in the afternoon:—

 

"Dear Edward,—We were to have dined with Lady Harston to-night, but Lady Harston has been the angel to have one of her neuralgic attacks (poor dear!) and put every one off. We have a night's peace. Bertha and you and I dine together here, and you play to us afterwards. You will, won't you? Not even Vincent will be here. We are quite alone, and we both want to see you. Do be good to your loving Bertha and Wilmay."

 

I went, of course. When I got into the drawing-room I noticed that the piano was no longer used like the back yard of a curiosity-shop, but was allowed to be merely a piano.

"No," said Bertha, "you needn't give me the credit or the discredit of it. That's Wilmay. I suppose when you've written great operas you expect that kind of homage?"

"I have not written great operas, but I have a tiresome and offensive sister: which sounds like Ollendorf, but is only the gospel truth. Wilmay, I am indebted to you. I will talk to you, to the entire exclusion of that elderly female at whose house you board."

"Oh, do stop!" cried Bertha. "You shouldn't say things like that to any one with any imagination. I feel as if I lived in Bloomsbury, and charged extra for the boots. I feel old, and dishonest, and haggard."

"Do you?" I said. "Well, we realize the truth about ourselves sooner or later."

"Very well," Bertha retorted, "I shall ring and order Mr. Derrimer's carriage."

"Mr. Derrimer came in a cab," I replied, "and he will not go until he has had dinner, anyhow. And, by the way——"

Carter opened the door, I gave my arm to Wilmay, and we passed into the dining-room. We were all three in a state of pleasant but foolish high spirits. Wilmay was particularly audacious; her eyes were very bright, and her colour a little feverish. She told us a beautiful story of how she had really composed that opera, but I had stolen it, and she had never exposed me in order to save me the pain of knowing that I had for my ward a girl whose guardian was a thief. But all through dinner she never made the least allusion to her approaching marriage, and when Bertha spoke of it Wilmay at once changed the subject.

After dinner I went to the piano. The evening of Wilmay's sixteenth birthday came back to my mind. She was wearing the string of little pearls that I had given her then. At first I looked at her from time to time as I played. She sat half in shadow, her lips a little parted, her eyes fixed. There had always been something of another world about her, and to-night as she sat listening to the music she seemed more than ever ethereal, spiritual. Her marriage turned to an insult, a tragedy, in my mind. I took my eyes from her, and became lost in the music. I was playing the Chopin nocturne that I had played on the night of her birthday.

Suddenly I heard a rustling of dresses. The door opened, and closed again quickly. I stopped playing and looked up. Bertha and Wilmay had gone, and I was alone in the room. An indefinable sense of horror and pain came over me. I was glad when a minute or so later Bertha came back again. She looked troubled.

"What is the matter?" I asked. "What has happened?"

"Did you not see?"

"No."

"Wilmay began to cry, and got up. I went out with her, and I've left her upstairs. She told me to come down again."

"Is she still crying?"

"Yes; she is lying on her bed and sobbing violently. She does not seem able to tell me what's the matter with her. Indeed, she says that nothing's the matter."

"There must be some explanation."

"See is in a nervous, over-wrought state, and music always has a great effect upon her. But I do not understand it myself. I have never seen her lose her self-control like this before. And I thought that at dinner she seemed unusually bright and happy."

"Is any one with her now?"

"Yes; I think Mrs. Blayd is there." Bertha sighed. "Oh, this is horrible!" she exclaimed, petulantly.

There was a long pause. Bertha sat with her head on her hand. I paced the room, and then stopped. Before I could speak Bertha burst out—

"I know what you're going to say, Edward, I know what you're going to say."

"Very likely," I replied, "but I shall say it. Wilmay's marriage must not take place. She is not in love with Vincent. You must break it off. There is time yet, and you or I must do it.

"I don't know whether it will surprise you, but since your return, only a few days ago, I asked Wilmay if she would like me to break it off. She said most emphatically that she would not hear of it, that she had considered everything when she accepted. She even asked me not to speak of it again. But to-night, just now when I took her upstairs, I did hint at it. She would only say, 'No! no!' and once, 'Why must I make people unhappy?' It's not my fault, is it? I am so fond of Wilmay."

Bertha looked at me with tears in her eyes.

"No," I said, "you need not blame yourself. I am glad you suggested it. Now we can do nothing—she is no longer a child, and she must make her own choice. But somehow I can't bring myself to think that this marriage is really going to take place."

It never did take place. On the morning before the day, I received a note from Bertha asking me to come round at once. I found Bertha looking white and ill, with a letter in her hands.

"Wilmay has gone," she said at once.

"Gone?"

"Yes; left London. Thank heaven, she has Mrs. Blayd with her! She went early this morning, before I was up, and this note was brought to me."

I took the note and glanced through it.

"In the night, Bertha, I found that I could not do it. I had to go away. I got up and found Mrs. Blayd, and talked to her, and we shall leave London early this morning. I have written to Vincent. And I will write to you again, when I know where we shall be. Will you please let me be quite alone for some time? Oh, dear Bertha, I do love you so much. Do, do forgive me! As soon as you get the address, write and tell me that you are not angry. I cannot help it I should go mad if I didn't go away."

I had a long talk with Bertha. It was publicly announced that owing to the illness of Miss Amory her marriage with Sir Vincent Carrone was postponed. Later and more gradually it became known that the marriage would not take place at all.

Vincent behaved finely. He would not allow any one to say a word against Wilmay, and quarrelled lastingly with his own brother on the subject. To me he said, "Edward"—by this time he had got into the habit of calling me by my first name—"it's bad, but it's best for her. She tried to love me, I know that. If I can ever do anything, in some other way, to make her happy, you will let me know. That is really all I want now—it is horrible to think of her as being unhappy, and that I am the cause of it."

He had the luck some five years afterwards to be killed in the hunting-field.

 

 

Chapter XII.

When Wilmay and Mrs. Blayd left London, they went to Starley, a south-coast village where, I believe, Mrs. Blayd had some relations. Before they had been there very long, what had been merely an excuse became the actual fact. Wilmay was seriously ill. Bertha and I went down to Starley then, and took a specialist with us. He said that in some respects the case puzzled him, but he seemed quite hopeful, and suggested Mentone for the winter. I saw Wilmay only for a few minutes on this occasion, and she spoke very little. It was terrible to see the change that had taken place in her.

Bertha and Wilmay went away together. I remained in London, working hard at my second opera. I heard frequently from Bertha, and the reports of Wilmay's health grew worse and worse. She was longing to get back to England, and her greatest desire was to live at Sinden again. After a good deal of consultation it was decided to let her have her own way, supposing that I could make the necessary arrangements. At this time Sinden was let on lease, and when the tenant was asked to give up the remainder of his lease he first laughed at me, and then got angry and said that he was insulted. However, Wilmay was wealthy enough to allow me to use a form of argument which does not often fail, and it did not fail in this case. So in the spring Bertha and Wilmay came back to the house where Philip Amory died. Bertha refused to leave Wilmay now—even for the delights of the London season.

About this time I had a letter from Charles Forland. I had heard from him once before, but that was merely to give the name of the bank to which he wished me to pay the money to his credit This second letter was very different, and a great surprise to me. It returned me all the money that I advanced to him with five per cent. interest. It also enclosed one thousand pounds, which was to be paid to Wilmay as a first instalment in discharge of the debt which he had incurred to her father.

"It may be," he wrote, "that when I am poor I am a blackguard, but I am quite certain that when I am rich I am a sentimentalist. For of course I am under no legal obligation to pay Wilmay anything. I choose to consider myself in debt to her, but the money advanced to me by her parents was (as I always explained to them, though latterly they always refused to listen) advanced in order that I might invest it for them at my discretion, and not as a loan. The trouble was that in those days I had no discretion. Even afterwards, when I had the superb idea of the Compactum Dinner, I was not discreet, or I should have kept the money that I made. One lives and learns. I am now perfectly discreet. I have written to Wilmay, you will be sorry to hear, to explain myself to her. It is a pity the marriage was broken off."

I wrote to thank him, returning his five per cent., and explaining that I was not a money-lender. I also said that there was no necessity on earth for him to write to Wilmay, and I was very sorry he had done it.

Wilmay's health had seemed to improve with marvellous rapidity at Sinden. Bertha was very hopeful, and in high spirits. She wrote to me to say that Wilmay had heard from her uncle, and that she took it quietly, asked a few questions about him, and then seemed not to think about it any more. Wilmay wanted me to come down to Sinden, and Bertha pressed me most warmly to come too, I had been thinking over things, and I had decided what I would do.

Firstly, I went down to Sinden. Wilmay looked very delicate and sweet; she was less weak than I had expected, and loved to sit out in the sun in the garden on warm days. I talked to her a little, and then I had a longer talk with the doctors, and I think they told me more than they had told Bertha. Then, when Wilmay was asleep upstairs, and Bertha and I were alone together, I said to Bertha—

"Do you know that I love Wilmay—that I have been in love with her ever since she grew out of childhood?"

Bertha paused before she answered.

"Once, years ago, I feared it. Then I did not think so any longer."

"I believe," I said, "that I shall tell her now."

"Yes," said Bertha, quietly. "Tell her."

On the next day, when I was sitting in the garden with Wilmay, she spoke of her uncle.

"I know what you did for me," she said. "You wanted to spare me pain and humiliation, and you were going to pay a thousand pounds just for that little thing. I can't speak about it, but I must thank you."

"But, Wilmay, as it happens, I did not pay a penny. Let's forget about that man. It's nothing."

"Edward, why have you always been so good to me? I'm not worth it, and I give you ever so much trouble."

"Do you remember, Wilmay," I said, "that shortly after you came out I went away for years, and did not see you? Do you know why I went?"

"Why?"

"Because I was growing old, because I was not the man who should marry you, and because I loved you."

"Edward! Edward!" she cried breathless.

"Don't mind about it, dear; it can't matter now."

"Matter? It matters all the world. Oh, haven't you seen? I didn't want you to see, but in spite of that——"

"Wilmay, darling, I have always loved you. I love you now."

She sighed, and held out her hands to me. I drew her close to me, and looked down into her eyes.

•⁠•⁠•⁠•⁠•

Wilmay said that she was going to be quite well again now. That was terrible for me to hear, who had been made almost sure that she would not be long with us. But for a time it went on—that delusion of growing health and strength. And with all their sadness, these were the happiest months of my life, and Wilmay said that they were the happiest of her own—happy, though there was in them the solemnity of love and the solemnity of the approaching end. Once only did she speak of Vincent at this time, and once again shortly before her death, when she said that she wanted to know that he had forgiven her. She did know that before she died.

Of those months I cannot write. They need not words but music.

Before the winter the change came, very suddenly and very rapidly. A sea voyage was spoken of and abandoned. She knew that she was going to die.

"And let me die quietly," she pleaded, "with Edward near me. We have been away from each other so long."

As the end drew near, and she grew weaker and weaker, a change seemed to come over all in the house too, for they all loved her. Customary formalities and restraints gave way, and there were ghastly mixtures of tragedy and farce. I remember that old Carter broke down once, and apologized for it. Bertha tried to answer him kindly, but without losing her dignity, and then she began to cry too. She found herself taking his hand, for the first time in her life.

Wilmay died in her sleep. We had the first snow of the winter that night. It fell heavily, and in the morning all the fields were glistening white as if Wilmay …

If you have ever loved, you will imagine, and you will know that I cannot write any more.