Robert Orange Part 17

"Indeed!" said Sara thoughtfully. "Did you give him many sittings?"

"He knows my face pretty well. We are acquaintances of some years'

standing. Papa has a high opinion of him."

"And you?"

"I am no judge. Women can know so little about men."

"I don't agree with you there. They are far more conventional than we are. They are trained in batches, thousands are of one pattern--especially in society. But each woman has an individual bringing-up. She is influenced by a foreign governess, or her mother, or her nurse. This must give every girl peculiar personal views of everything. That is why men find us hard to understand. We don't understand each other; we suspect each other: we have no sense of comrades.h.i.+p."

"Perhaps you are right," said Agnes, rather sadly. "Yet our troubles all seem to arise from the fact that we cannot manage men. It matters very little really whether we can manage women. With women, one need only be natural, straightforward, and unselfish. You can't come to grief that way. But with men, it is almost impossible to be quite natural. As for being straightforward, don't they misconstrue our words continually? And when one tries to be unselfish, they accuse one of hardness, coldness, and everything most contrary to one's feelings. Of course," she added quickly, "I speak from observation. I have nothing to complain of myself."

"Of course not. Neither have I. I have grown up with most of my men friends. I had no mother, and I exhausted dozens of governesses and masters, I am sure I was troublesome, but I had an instinctive horror of becoming narrow-minded and getting into a groove. My English relations bored me. My foreign ones made my dear papa jealous and uncomfortable."

"Then you liked them?" said Agnes at once.

"Enormously. You see, I am always an alien among English people."

Agnes, following an instinct of kindness, pressed her arm and murmured, "No, no."

"Yes, my dear, yes. And this is why I am devoted to Mr. Disraeli, and so much interested in Robert Orange. We three are citizens of the world."

"But English people who have lived, for any length of time, abroad are quite as sensible and tolerant as you are. Take Mr. Rennes, of whom we are just speaking."

"To be sure. But artists and poets are like stars--they belong to no land. A strictly national painter or a strictly national poet is bound to be parochial--a kind of village pump. And you may write inscriptions all over him, and build monuments above him, but he remains a pump by a local spring. David Rennes is a genius."

"I am glad you think so," said Agnes, with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks. "I wonder whether he will ever be an Academician?"

"Would you feel more sure of his gifts--in that case?"

There was a slight note of sarcasm in the question.

"It is stupid of me, I know," said Agnes frankly, "but one can't help feeling rather shy until one's opinions are officially endorsed."

"How Britis.h.!.+"

"I suppose it is my bringing-up. It sounds very feeble. I often feel that if I once began--really began--to think for myself I wouldn't stick at anything."

"That is British, too," said Sara, laughing. "You are a true _Jane_ Bull! But as you are going to marry a public man, that is as well. Your life will have many absorbing interests."

"Oh yes," returned Agnes; "I hope to help Beauclerk in his const.i.tuency, and with the members of his a.s.sociation."

"So far as I can make out they are a weak, selfish lot, but these qualities do not affect the question of his duties toward them."

"You express, better than I could, my own feeling. I fear they don't always appreciate his motives."

"Beauclerk," said Sara slowly, "is impulsive. He is never afraid of changing his mind. Many people are called firm merely because they haven't the moral courage to own their second thoughts."

Agnes drew a long sigh, slackened her pace, and stood looking at the strange, autumnal lights in the sky, the martins flying over the paddocks toward the wood, and the crescent moon which already shone out above them.

"I suppose it does mean lack of courage, half the time," she said at last; "and yet how disastrous it is to wonder about the wisdom of any decision once arrived at, of any step once taken! I daresay every one shrinks a little at first from the responsibility of undertaking another person's happiness."

"Not every one," replied Sara; "the generous ones only."

"You have known Beauclerk ever since he was a boy, haven't you?" asked Agnes.

"Yes. He was such a handsome lad, and he has always been the same."

"I am devoted to him," said Agnes. "I am proud to think that he has chosen me for his wife. But one thought is perpetually coming up in my mind: Shall I be able to make him happy? A girl, as a rule, seems to believe that she can make a man happy merely by loving him. Again and again friends of mine have married in this idea. And the hope seldom answers."

She spoke very quietly, yet there was great feeling, even great bitterness in her tone. She was thinking of David Rennes. Sara had a curious magnetism which attracted all those with whom she came into friendly relations. Being imaginative, though never inquisitive, her quick sympathies rendered the most trivial interchange of ideas an emotional exercise. This power, which would have made her a successful actress, found its usual outlet in her pianoforte playing, which affected her hearers as only extraordinary nervous and pa.s.sionate force can affect people. She had neither the patience nor the sternness of mental quality which is required in a creative genius: the little songs and poems which she sometimes composed were insipid to an astonis.h.i.+ng degree. Hers were the executant's gifts, and the fascination which she exerted over men and women depended wholly on the natural charm of a temperament made up of fire and honey. Agnes had always regarded Lady Sara as an odd but chivalrous girl. The stories told in society about her eccentric tastes, sayings, and doings were never to her heart's discredit, no matter how much they puzzled, or dismayed, the conventional set into which she had been born. It was felt that she could be trusted, and, although many were afraid of her brains, no one had ever known her to betray a confidence, to injure another woman's reputation, to show the least spite, or to insist upon an undue share of men's attention. The s.e.x may, and do, pardon the first three sins, but the last has yet to find its atoning virtue. All declared that Sara, with many shortcomings, was neither a poacher nor a grabber. Girls consulted her in their love troubles, and not a few owed their marriages to her wise arbitration. She had the gypsy's spell. Thus it happened, therefore, that Agnes, who was habitually reserved, found herself thinking aloud in the presence of this mysterious but not hostile personality.

"When does Beauclerk return from the North of France?" asked Sara.

"He is coming back with Mr. Orange next Wednesday. I had a letter this morning." Her voice grew husky, and with evident agitation she halted once more.

"You know Beauclerk so well," she said at last, "that I want to ask you something, and you must answer me truly--without the least dread of giving offence--because a great deal may depend on what you tell me. Do you think he seems altogether settled in his mind?"

Sara guessed, from the nature of the question, that the truth in this case would be a relief--not a blow.

"He doesn't seem quite himself--if you understand me," she said, without hesitation.

Agnes caught her arm a little more closely and walked with a lighter step.

"I don't think we love each other sufficiently for marriage," she exclaimed; "his last letter was so affectionate and so full of kindness that it brought tears to my eyes. I saw the effort under it all. We are making a tragic mistake. We drifted into it. We were such good friends, and we felt, I daresay, that it was our duty to love each other. His family were pleased and so were mine. We seem to have pleased everybody except ourselves. Not that I ever expected the joy and stuff, and inward feelings which one reads of. I am too sensible for that. But I wanted to feel _established_--whereas we are both, in reality, rather upset. I am sure of this."

"Perhaps when you see each other----"

"Our letters are far more satisfactory than our meetings. I know he is fond of me."

"You couldn't doubt that. It is wors.h.i.+p."

"I can say, at any rate, that I am so sure of his affection that it gives me no pain--not the least--to miss the--the other quality."

"My dear, you are not in love with him, or you couldn't be so resigned."

"I suppose you are right. I have never told him that I loved him. He has never asked me. Perhaps he took it for granted. As for me, I thought that the respect and esteem I felt would do."

Sara shook her head.

"Not for us. We are different, I know, but we have hearts. We can suffer, we can endure, we can be resigned, we can be everything except uncertain, or luke-warm. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," said Agnes, and she laughed a little. "It isn't my way," she went on, "to talk like this about myself. Yet I can't help seeing that all this keeping silence, and disguising facts from one's own reason, is actually weak. I don't want to be weak. It isn't English. I don't want to be supine. That isn't English either. I want to be just and square all round--in my dealings with others and in my dealings with my own conscience. Papa has always taught us a great deal about individual liberty, and freedom of will. I am beginning to wonder what liberty means."

"That's the first step toward a great change."

The young girl set her lips, and looked steadfastly before her, as though she would pierce the gathering twilight with her bright and candid eyes.