April's Lady Part 64

Happy circ.u.mstance! Surely the fates favor him. They always have, by the by--sure sign that he is deserving of good luck.

Thanks. Miss Kavanagh, then. His compliments, and hopes that she is not too fatigued to receive him.

The maid, having shown him into the drawing-room, retires with the message, and presently the sound of little high-heeled shoes crossing the hall tells him that Joyce is approaching. His heart beats high--not immoderately high. To be uncertain is to be none the less unnerved--but there is no uncertainty about his wooing. Still it pleases him to know that in spite of her fatigue she could not bring herself to deny herself to him.

"Ah! How good of you!" says he as she enters, meeting her with both hands outstretched. "I feared the visit was too early! A very _betise_ on my part--but you are the soul of kindness always."

"Early!" says Joyce, with a little laugh. "Why you might have found me chasing the children round the garden three hours ago. Providentially,"

giving him one hand, the ordinary one, and ignoring his other, "their father and mother were bound to go to Tisdown this morning or I should have been dead long before this."

"Ah!" says Beauclerk. And then with increasing tenderness. "So glad they were removed; it would have been too much for you, wouldn't it?"

"Yes--I dare say--on the whole, I believe I don't mind them," says Miss Kavanagh. "Well--and what about last night? It was delightful, wasn't it?" Secretly she sighs heavily, as she makes this most untruthful a.s.sertion.

"Ah! Was it?" asks he. "I did not find it so. How could I when you were so unkind to me?"

"I! Oh, no. Oh, surely not!" says she anxiously. There is no touch of the coquetry that might be about this answer had it been given to a man better liked. A slow soft color has crept into her cheeks, born of the knowledge that she had got out of several dances with him. But he, seeing it, gives it another, a more flattering meaning to his own self love.

"Can you deny it?" asks he, changing his seat so as to get nearer to her. "Joyce!" He leans toward her. "May I speak at last? Last night I was foiled in my purpose. It is difficult to say all that is in one's heart at a public affair of that kind, but now--now----"

Miss Kavanagh has sprung to her feet.

"No! Don't, don't!" she says earnestly. "I tell you--I beg you--I warn you----" She pauses, as if not knowing what else to say, and raises her pretty hands as if to enforce her words.

"Shy, delightfully shy!" says Beauclerk to himself. He goes quickly up to her with all the n.o.ble air of the conqueror, and seizing one of her trembling hands holds it in his own.

"Hear me!" he says with an amused toleration for her girlish _mauvaise honte_. "It is only such a little thing I have to say to you, but yet it means a great deal to me--and to you, I hope. I love you, Joyce. I have come here to-day to ask you to be my wife."

"I told you not to speak," says she. She has grown very white now. "I warned you! It is no use--no use, indeed."

"I have startled you," says Beauclerk, still disbelieving, yet somehow loosening the clasp on her hand. "You did not expect, perhaps, that I should have spoken to-day, and yet----"

"No. It was not that," says Miss Kavanagh, slowly. "I knew you would speak--I thought last night would have been the time, but I managed to avoid it then, and now----"

"Well?"

"I thought it better to get it over," says she, gently. She stops as if struck by something, and heavy tears rush to her eyes. Ah! she had told another very much the same as that. But she had not meant it then--and yet had been believed--and now, when she does mean it, she is not believed. Oh! if the cases might be reversed!

Beauclerk, however, mistakes the cause of the tears.

"It--get what over?" demands he, smiling.

"This misunderstanding."

"Ah, yes--that! I am afraid,"--he leans more closely toward her,--"I have often been afraid that you have not quite read me as I ought to be read."

"Oh, I have read you," says she, with a little gesture of her head, half confused, half mournful.

"But not rightly, perhaps. There have been moments when I fear you may have misjudged me----"

"Not one," says she quickly. "Mr. Beauclerk, if I might implore you not to say another word----"

"Only one more," pleads he, coming up smiling as usual. "Just one, Joyce--let me say my last word; it may make all the difference in the world between you and me now. I love you--nay, hear me!"

She has risen, and he, rising too, takes possession of both her hands.

"I have come here to-day to ask you to be my wife; you know that already--but you do not know how I have wors.h.i.+ped you all these dreary months, and how I have kept silent--for your sake."

"And for 'my sake' why do you speak now?" asks she. She has withdrawn her hands from his. "What have you to offer me now that you had not a year ago?"

After all, it is a great thing to be an accomplished liar. It sticks to Beauclerk now.

"Why! Haven't you heard?" asks he, lifting astonished brows.

"I have heard nothing!"

"Not of my coming appointment? At least"--modestly--"of my chance of it?"

"No. Nothing, nothing. And even if I had, it would make no difference. I beg you to understand once for all, Mr. Beauclerk, that I cannot listen to you."

"Not now, perhaps. I have been very sudden----"

"No, never, never."

"Are you telling me that you refuse me?" asks he, looking at her with a rather strange expression in his eyes.

"I am sorry you put it that way," returns she, faintly.

"I don't believe you know what you are doing," cries he, losing his self-control for once in his life. "You will regret this. For a moment of spite, of ill-temper, you----"

"Why should I be ill-tempered about anything that concerns you and me?"

says she, very gently still. She has grown even whiter, however, and has lifted her head so that her large eyes are directed straight to his.

Something in the calm severity of her look chills him.

"Ah! you know best!" says he, viciously. The game is up--is thoroughly played out. This he acknowledges to himself, and the knowledge does not help to sweeten his temper. It helps him, however, to direct a last shaft at her. Taking up his hat, he makes a movement to depart, and then looks back at her. His overweening vanity is still alive.

"When you do regret it," says he--"and I believe that will be soon--it will be too late. You had the goodness to give me a warning a few minutes ago--I give you one now."

"I shall not regret it," says she, coolly.

"Not even when Dysart has sailed for India, and then 'the girl he left behind him' is disconsolate?" asks he, with an insolent laugh. "Ha! that touches you!"

It had touched her. She looks like a living thing stricken suddenly into marble, as she stands gazing back at him, with her hands tightly clenched before her. India! To India! And she had never heard.

Extreme anger, however, fights with her grief, and, overcoming it, enables her to answer her adversary.

"I think you, too, will feel regret," says she, gravely, "when you look back upon your conduct to me to-day."

There is such gentleness, such dignity, in her rebuke, and her beautiful face is so full of a mute reproach, that all the good there is in Beauclerk rises to the surface. He flings his hat upon a table near, and himself at her feet.