Tiny Luttrell Part 16

Now he spoke tenderly.

"Say it, in any case," said Ruth, who had been uncommonly calm.

"Then I am afraid she is making up to him, if you must know."

"Which is absurd," said Ruth lightly; but in her anxiety to remain cool she forgot to seem surprised; and that was a mistake.

"I wonder if you really think so?" said her husband very quietly. "If you do I can't agree with you; I wish I could."

"You must!" cried Ruth desperately. "Do you know how many dances she gave him to-night?"

Erskine knew only of one; his eyes rested on the remains of her programme lying on the floor in many fragments.

"Well, that one was the lot!" he was informed severely. "And pray did you count how many times she spoke to him the other evening when we dined at the hall?"

"Not often, I grant you; I noticed that."

"Yet you think she is making up to him!"

"It's a strong way of putting it, I know," said Erskine reluctantly; "but really I can't think of any other. I wonder you don't realize that there are more ways of making up to a man than the dead-set method.

Can't you see that a far more effective method is a little judicious snubbing and avoiding, which is coquetry? You take my word for it, that's the touch for a man like Manister, who is probably accustomed to everything but being snubbed and avoided. Then you speak of the one dance she gave him. Now I happen to know that they didn't dance it at all; they spent the time under the stars, for it was my misfortune to see them and their misfortune not to see me."

"Well?" whispered Ruth; and though she had never been so dark until now, that whisper would have drawn his lantern to her real hopes and fears.

"I only saw them for an instant: I bolted; so I may easily be wrong; but it struck me that our Tiny was making up for her snubbing and avoiding.

It has since occurred to me that they must have known each other rather well in Melbourne--rather better, at any rate, than you have ever led me to suppose."

As a woman's last resource, Ruth aimed a stone at his temper.

"So that's it!" she exclaimed viciously.

"That's what?"

"The secret of your bad temper."

"Well, to be kept in the dark doesn't sweeten a man, certainly," Erskine answered, in a tone, however, that was far from bitter. "Then one can't help feeling disappointed with Tiny; and in this matter--to be frank with you at last--I am just a little disappointed in you too, my dear."

"I always knew you would be," said Ruth dolefully. For her stone had missed, and there was no more fight in her.

"Now don't be a goose. It's only in this one matter, in which--I can't help telling you--I don't think you've been perfectly straight with me."

"Oh, indeed!" cried Ruth, as her spirit made one spurt more. It was the last. The next moment she was weeping.

It annoys most men to make a woman cry. Those who do not become annoyed make impetuous atonement, partly, no doubt, to drown the hooting in their own heart. But Erskine could not feel himself to blame, and though he spoke very kindly, his kindness was too nearly paternal, and he spoke with his elbow on the chimney-piece. He told Ruth not to do that. He pointed out to her that there was no crime in her want of candor concerning her sister's affairs, which were certainly no business of his. Only, if there really had been something between Christina and Lord Manister in Melbourne--if, for instance, Mrs. Willoughby had gossiped unwittingly to Christina about none other than Christina herself--Erskine put it to his wife that she might have done more wisely to place him in a position silently to appreciate such capital jokes. He would have said nothing; but as it was he might easily have said much to imperil the situation; in fact, he had been in a false position all along, more especially at the hall. But that was all. There was really nothing to cry about. Perhaps to give her the fairest opportunity to compose herself, Erskine crossed the room and drew back the curtains to let in the gray morning; for the birds had long been twittering.

But Ruth had been waiting for the touch of his hand, and he had only given her kind words. She looked up, and saw through her tears his form against the gray window, as he shut down the sash. The lamp burnt faintly, and in the two wan lights it was a chamber of misery, in which one could not sit alone. Ruth rose and ran to Erskine, and laid her hands upon his arm.

"It is raining," he said, without looking at her tears. "I knew we were in for a break up of the fine weather."

"Never mind the rain!" Ruth cried piteously, with her face upon his coat. "Will you forgive me now if I tell you everything that I know--everything? It isn't much, because Tiny has been almost as close with me as I have been with you."

"My dear," he said, patting her head at last, and with his arms around her lightly, "you both had a perfect right to be close."

"But suppose I've been at the bottom of the whole thing? Suppose I turn out a horrid little intriguer--what then?"

She waited eagerly, and the pause seemed long.

"Well, you won't have been intriguing for yourself," sighed Erskine--so that her face rose on his breast, as on a wave.

And then, playing nervously with a b.u.t.ton of his coat, Ruth confessed all. As she spoke she gathered confidence, but not enough to watch his face. That was turned to the gray morning, and looked as gray as it. The fine weather had indeed broken up, and Essingham had lost its savor for Erskine Holland.

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE LADIES' TENT.

And yet, even at the time she made it, Ruth little dreamt how deeply her confession both galled and revolted her husband. He forgave her very kindly in the end, and that satisfied her lean imagination. Perhaps there was not much to forgive. There was enough, at all events, to trouble Erskine (to whom the best excuse there was for her was the least likely to suggest itself); but the matter soon ceased to trouble Erskine's wife, because his smile was as good-tempered as before. He seemed, indeed, to think no more about it. When Ruth would speak confidentially of her hopes and wishes for Tiny (as though Erskine had been in her confidence all the time), he would chat the matter over with interest, which was the next best thing to sympathy. He had to do this oftener than he liked during the next twenty-four hours; for Ruth really thought that excessive candor now was a more or less adequate atonement for an excessive reserve in the past. Moreover, she genuinely enjoyed talking openly at last of the matter which had concerned her so long and so severely in secret.

"Don't you think he means it?" she asked her husband several times.

"I am afraid he thinks he does," was one of Holland's answers.

"That's your way of admitting it," rejoined Ruth, who could bear his repudiation of her desires for the sake of his a.s.sent to her opinion, which Erskine was too honest to withhold. "Of course he means it. Have you noticed how he watches her?"

"I have noticed it once or twice."

"And did you see him watching his mother, the night we dined there, to see what impression Tiny made upon her?"

"So you spotted that!" Erskine said curiously, not having given his wife the credit for such acute perception. "Well, I own that I did, too; and that was worse than his watching Tiny. This is a youth with a well-known weakness for his mamma. She has probably more influence over him than any other body in the world. I am prepared to bet that it was she, and she alone, who whistled him back from Australia. Now though she did it partly by her singing--which, by the way, was rather cheap for our Tiny--there's no doubt at all about the impression Tiny has made upon Lady Dromard; and that's the worst of it."

"The worst of it! as if he was beneath her!" said Ruth mockingly. "Or is it that you think her too terribly beneath him?"

"Tiny," said Erskine, shaking his head, "is beneath no man that I have yet come across."

"Then what can you have against it? Is it that you think she will grow so grand that we shall see no more of her! If so, it shows how much you know of our Tiny. Or do you think him too high and mighty to be honest and true? I don't profess to know much about it," continued Ruth scornfully, being stung to eloquence by his perversity, "but I should have said an honest man and his love might be found in a castle, sometimes, as well as in a cottage!"

"'Hearts just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowly air of Seven Dials,'" quoted Erskine, with a laugh. "I grant all that; but if you want to know, my point is that Tiny would be thrown away on Belgrave Square! She is far too funny and fresh, and unlike most of us, to thrive in that fine soil; she would need to be clipped and pruned and trimmed in the image of other people. And that would spoil her. Whatever else she may be, she's more or less original as she stands. She's not a copy now; but she will have to become one in Belgrave Square."

"She _will_ have to become one!" cried Ruth, jumping at the change of mood. "Then you think that Tiny means it, too?"

"I am afraid she means to marry him," said Erskine, with a sigh. "I have visions of our Tiny ours no more, but my Lady Manister, and Countess Dromard in due course."

So delighted was Ruth with his opinion on this point that his other opinions had no power to annoy her; and in her joy she told him once more, and with much impulsive feeling, how sorry she was for having kept him in the dark so willfully and so long. She called him an angel of good temper and forbearance, and undertook to reward his generosity by never hiding another thing from him in her life. And she would never, never vex him again, she said--so earnestly that he thought she meant it, as indeed she thought herself, for half a minute.

"But you mean to go to the match to-morrow?" he asked her wistfully.