Tiny Luttrell Part 29

"But surely you are not going this year?"

"We are--before Christmas."

As Tiny spoke her glance went to the window: she was very anxious to see the snow before she sailed, but none had fallen yet, though December had come in dull and raw.

"But your people here must be very much against that?"

"They were, but now it is settled."

"You must have promised to come back!"

Christina seemed surprised.

"Yes, I said I would come back some day."

"And you shall!" cried Manister pa.s.sionately. "You shall come back as my wife! Do you suppose I am going to stop short at this, when but for your brother you would have been mine to-day? I don't mean to say he has influenced you, except by going back so soon; you love Australia, and you must needs go back with him. Then go! I told you to take six months; you have taken one of them. When the other five are up I am coming to you again wherever you may be. Till then I will take no answer; and whatever it may be in the end I bow to it--I bow to it!"

His pa.s.sion surprised and even moved Christina; but his humility stirred up in her soul a contempt which mingled strangely with her pity. Women of spirit cannot admire the man who will submit to anything at their hands. Christina would willingly have given admiration in exchange for the love in which she was beginning to believe; it would have pleased her sense of justice, it would have promoted her self-respect to make some such small payment on account. With Manister's patience she had none at all. She was disappointed in him. Her foot tapped angrily on the fender.

"But I don't want you to wait!" exclaimed Christina ungraciously. "I have told you so already."

"Still I mean to do so, and it serves me right."

This touched her generosity.

"Ah, don't say that!" she cried earnestly. "Oh, Lord Manister, I have forgotten all old scores--I never think of them now! The balance has been the other way so long; and I do not deserve another chance."

"Ah, but Tiny--darling--it is I who am asking for that!"

His tone compelled her to meet his gaze--its intensity made her wince.

"You believe in me!" he cried joyously. "Say only that you believe in me, and I will go away now. I will go away happy and proud--to wait--for you."

Then Tiny laid her little hand on his arm, and her eyes that had filled with tears answered him to his present satisfaction. He held her hand for just a few seconds before he went, and in kindness she returned his pressure. Then the shutting of the front door down below made her realize that he was gone. And she had time to dry her eyes and to gather herself together before Ruth, whose hopes had been dead some days, came into the room with a dejected mien and pointedly abstained from asking questions.

"If it interests you to hear it," Tiny said lightly, "I am converted to your creed at last; I believe in Lord Manister!"

"But you are not engaged to him," Ruth said wearily; "I see you are not."

"I am not; but he insists on waiting. If only he wasn't so tame! But I can't help believing in him now; and that settles it."

"Nothing is settled until you are engaged," said the matter-of-fact sister, with a sigh.

"Nevertheless I'm going to try with all my might to care for him, now that I see that he must really care for me. And let me tell you that I shall consider myself all the more bound to him because I haven't _said_ yes, and because we're _not_ actually engaged!"

"Yes?" said the other incredulously. "That is so like you, Tiny!"

And Ruth almost sneered.

CHAPTER XIX.

COUNSEL'S OPINION.

The worst of it all was this: that the young man himself had not invariably that confidence in his own affections which displayed itself so bravely and so convincingly at a psychological moment. Not that Manister was insincere, exactly. If you come to think of it, you may deceive others with perfect innocence, having once deceived yourself.

And this was exactly what had happened.

There was one distinctive feature of the case: away from Christina Luttrell the poor fellow had already had his doubts of himself; in her presence those doubts were as certain to evaporate as snowflakes in the warmth of the sun.

Even as he went down Mrs. Holland's stairs Manister was joined by certain invisible companions--the misgivings that had made their escape as Christina entered the room. They had waited for him on the landing outside the door. They led and followed him downstairs. They linked arms with him in the street. They stifled him in his hansom, which they boarded ruthlessly. In one of the silent rooms of the club to which he drove they talked to him silently, sitting on the arms of his saddle-back chair and arguing all at once. Powerless to shake them off he was forced to bear with them, to hear what they had to say, to answer them where he could.

Mingling with the importunate voices of his inner consciousness were the remembered words of the girl. She had asked him whether he had never burst out laughing as the affair presented itself in certain lights; he did so now, silently, it is true, but with exceeding bitterness. She had told him that it was not enough that he should feel willing to wait for her when they were together; and now that he had left her, though so lately, he was certainly less inclined to be patient. She had suggested that he was more fascinated than in love; and already he knew that her suggestion had given shape and utterance to a vague suspicion of his own soul. She had gone so far as to hint at the possible secret of his infatuation, and there again she had hit the mark; though apart from her talent of torture her sweet looks and charming ways had been strong wine to Manister from the first. Still her snubs had piqued his pa.s.sion in the beginning of things out in Melbourne; and here in Europe she had virtually refused him three times. Modest he might be, and yet know that this were a rare experience for such as himself at the hands of such as Tiny Luttrell. On the whole, the experience was sufficiently complete as it stood; yet he could not help wis.h.i.+ng to win; indeed, he had gone too far to draw back, and for that reason alone the idea of defeat in the end was intolerable to him. And this was the one spring of his actions which seemed to have escaped Christina's notice; the others she had detected with an acuteness which made him wonder, for the first time, whether on her very merits she would be a comfortable person to live with, after all.

Gradually, however, these echoes of the late interview grew fainter in his ears, and its upshot came home to Manister with sensations of chagrin sharper than any he had endured in all his life before. His feelings when refused by this girl in the previous August, and under peculiarly humiliating circ.u.mstances, were enviable compared with his feelings now. Then he had deserved his humiliation--at least he was generous enough to say so--and he had taken what he called his punishment in a very manly spirit. But the desire to win had sent him on a secret mission to Cintra, on the chance of seeing her there, and his present feelings reminded him of those with which he had beaten his retreat from Portugal. For he had gone there for a final answer, and had come back without one; and to-day he had suffered afresh that selfsame humiliation, only in an aggravated form, and more voluntarily than ever.

She had never asked him to wait; he had offered on both occasions to wait six months--nay, he had insisted on waiting. Even now, within a couple of hours after the event, he could scarcely credit his own weakness and stultification. He was by no means so weak in affairs wherein the affections played no part. He firmly believed that no other woman could have twisted him round her finger as this one had done. But here, perhaps, we have merely the everyday spectacle of a young man discerning exceptional excuses for a realized infirmity; and the point is that Manister realized his weakness this evening as he had never done before. The girl herself had made him look inward. She had suggested fascination, not love. That suggestion stuck painfully. Yet he was not sure.

Never had he felt so horribly unsure of himself; in the midst of his self-distrust there came to him, suddenly, the recollection that she distrusted him no longer, and there was actually some comfort in this thought, which is strange when you note its fellows, but due less to the contradictoriness of human nature than to the supremacy of a young man's vanity. He stood well with her now. She believed in him at last. Propped up by these reflections, he began almost to believe in himself. At least a momentary complacency was the result.

The improvement in his spirits allowed Lord Manister to give heed to another portion of his organism which had for some time been inviting him to go into another room and dine. Now he did so, with a sharp eye for acquaintances, whom he had no desire to meet. For this reason he had driven to the club which he had joined most recently; it was not a young man's club, so he felt fairly safe from his friends. Yet he had hardly ordered his soup, and was searching the wine list for the choice brand which the circ.u.mstances seemed to demand, when a heavy hand dropped upon his shoulder, and his glance leapt from the wine list to the last face he expected or wished to see--that of his kinsman Captain Dromard.

Captain Dromard was a cousin of the present earl, and notoriously the rolling stone of his house. Manister had seen him last in Melbourne, and ever since had borne him a grudge which he was not likely to forget. Had he dreamt that the captain (who had been last heard of in Borneo) was in London, Manister would have shunned this club in order to avoid the risk of meeting him; but it seemed that Captain Dromard had landed in England only that morning: and they dined together, of course; and Manister made the best of it. His kinsman was a big, grizzled, florid man, with an imperial, and with a comic wicked cut about him which made one laugh.

But he retained an unpleasant trick of treating Manister as a mere boy: for instance, he was in time to choose the brand, and, as he said before the waiter, to prevent Manister from poisoning himself. He was, however, an entertaining person, and at his best to-night, being wont to delight in London for a day or two before realizing the infernal qualities of the climate and arranging fresh travels. But Manister was not entertained; he tried to appear so, but the captain saw through the pretense, and immediately scented a woman. There were reasons why the rolling stone was particularly good at detecting this element--which always interested him. His interest was unusual in the present instance, owing to certain reminiscences of Manister in Melbourne during his own flying visit to that port. It was during a subsequent week-end in England that Captain Dromard had alarmed the countess, with a result of which he was as yet unaware; but he did not hesitate to make inquiries now, and he began by asking Manister how he had managed to get out of the sc.r.a.pe in which he had left him.

"I remember no sc.r.a.pe," said Manister stiffly.

"You don't? Well, perhaps I put it too strongly," conceded the captain.

"We'll say no more about it, my boy. Devilish pretty little thing, though; remember her well, but could never recall her name. By the bye, I'm afraid I terrified your mother over that; feared she was going to cable you home next day; was sorry I spoke."

"So was I," Manister said dryly, but, by an effort, not forbiddingly, so that the captain saw no harm in raising his gla.s.s.

"Well, here's to the lady's health, my boy, whoever she was, and wherever she may be!"

Manister smiled across his gla.s.s and drained it in silence. There was a glitter in his young eyes which made it difficult for the captain to drop the subject finally. Manister had been drinking freely, without becoming flushed, which is another sign of trouble. The captain could not help saying confidentially:

"You know, Harry, your mother was so keen for you to marry one of old Acklam's daughters. That's what frightened her. But it is to come off some day, isn't it?"

"Can't say," said Lord Manister.

"It ought to, Harry. I like to see a young fellow with your position marry properly, and settle down. I don't know which of the Garths it is, but I've always heard one of 'em was the girl you liked."

"Suppose the girl you like won't marry you?" Manister exclaimed, with a sudden change of manner, and in the tone of one consulting an authority.

"Well, there's an end on't."

"Ah, but suppose she can't make up her mind?"