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“Turn from her—I—I—turn from her—her?” he cried. “Oh, let me have the chance—you will give me the chance?”
She shook her head.
“Then what am I to do?” he said. “Would you counsel me to remain passive—to allow her to marry that man whom she detests and to send her a wedding present? A diamond star would be a nice present, wouldn’t it? or a wheat sheaf—I saw one the other day—set with pearls and diamonds?”
“Oh, you are talking now just as she talked—so wildly—so wickedly. Cannot you see that just at this moment you are both beyond the control of reason? You say things to me now that you do not mean—she did the same. If you were to meet now you would say things to her—she would say things to you—you would part from her forever.”
“I would be calm. I would remember that everything depended on my being calm.”
“Ah, you think so. But you cannot be calm even to me. And you did not see her as I saw her just now.”
“Would to heaven that I had the chance.”
“Do not say that. You would drown yourself there.”
(They had reached the Round Pond.)
He walked along in silence by her side—in silence and with bowed head.
“I know what will happen,” he said at last: “she will soon become reconciled to her fate. She will soon come to think that he is part of her life and I shall cease to be in any thought of hers. Well, perhaps that is the best thing that could happen. But I thought that she was not like other women. I fancied that when she knew... But you will see her again? You will tell her that I must see her—surely she will let me say good-bye to her.”
“I can say nothing. But you must not see her now. Wait for a day or two. Oh, cannot you trust her to bear you in mind for a day or two? Did she not say that she loved you?”
“And she does—I know that she does. Oh, it is the old story—the old story. Her father has forced her into this.”
Amber could say nothing. She thought that it would be better for her not to go into the question of the antiquity of the story of a girl promising to marry a rich man, and her parents endeavouring to marry her to a poor one—that was the summary of the love story of Josephine West.
He walked in silence—comparative silence—by her side until they reached the road once more. At the entrance to her home, he said humbly:
“My dear Miss Severn, I feel that you have given me good advice. I will obey you—I will make no attempt to see her for some days. I knew that I should be right in coming to you. You will forgive me for the wild way I talked to you.”
“If you had not talked in that way I would never speak to you again,” said Amber, giving him her hand.
Amber ran upstairs to her room and threw herself not upon the little sofa in her dressing-room but upon the bed in her bedroom. She was guided in the right direction. She knew perfectly well that the cry which was coming was too big for a sofa—it was a bed-sized cry.
She lay in her tears for more than an hour, and no one went near her to disturb her. Emotions were recognised as possible in this household—emotions and moods and sulks—and no member of the household—ancillary or otherwise—was allowed to interfere with another.
Her mother was fortunate in having been at one time of her life of the same age as Amber, and she had a pretty good notion of how it was that her daughter did not come downstairs for tea. Lady Severn had heard her daughter’s comments upon the announcement of Josephine’s engagement, and having herself noticed the expression on the faces of her guests at The Weir on their return together from their stroll, she had no great difficulty in understanding how it was possible that Amber might be having a good cry after visiting her friend Josephine.
It was, however, Sir Creighton who, before dinner, asked Amber if she had learned anything by her visit to Josephine. He appeared quite anxious to know all that there was to be known on the subject of Josephine’s engagement to Mr. Clifton; but for that matter he took quite as much interest as his wife, in the incidents of their social life. Even the humblest essays in elementary biology had a certain attraction about them, he was accustomed to say.
Amber gave him a spasmodic account of her call upon Josephine, and of her subsequent overtaking of Pierce and his confession during their stroll in the Park.
“Just think of it,” she said by way of summing up. “Just think of it: she acknowledged to Mr. Winwood on Monday that she loved him, and yet to-day she allows it to be announced in the papers that she is to be married to the other man! Was there ever anything so terrible since the world began?”
“Never—never,” said he. “Nothing of such terrible significance to Josephine and Winwood has been heard of since the world began. There is a good deal in this business which is not easy to understand without the aid of a trustworthy key to the motives of men and women and political adventurers. If she had promised in secret long ago to marry Clifton, the secret being kept a secret because of the unlikelihood of her father’s giving his consent to the engagement, what, I should like to know, has occurred during the past few days to make Clifton perceive that her father would give his consent? You got a hint from Josephine on this point—or that fool of a mother of hers—did she say nothing that would suggest a compact—a reciprocal treaty, these politicians would call it—between Mr. West and Mr. Clifton?”
Amber laughed scornfully.
“Lady Gwendolen talked about the new opera cloaks,” said she.
“A topic well within her grasp,” said Sir Creighton. “If I wished for any information regarding the possibilities of longevity among certain esoteric developments of the opera cloak I think I would apply to Lady Gwendolen. She is, one might say, the actuary of the opera cloak: she can calculate, upon the theory of averages, the duration of life of such ephemera.”
“Yes; but what is to be done,” said Amber, who perceived the danger of drifting into phrases and fancying that because a good sentence has been made, there is no need for further action.
Sir Creighton walked to a window and stood in front of it with his hands in his pockets.
