The Tree of Knowledge Part 32

"I ought to apologize for saying anything," he said, deprecatingly, "but that is a pretty obvious case, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

He suddenly aimed one of his shafts of ridicule at her.

"A novelist and so un.o.bservant?"

"Oh, no," said Wyn, gravely, leaning forward, her chin on her hand, and still following the couple with her eyes. "I am not un.o.bservant."

"Yet you don't see that your brother is attracted?"

"I see it quite well."

"Your tone implies dissatisfaction. Don't you like Miss Brabourne?"

"You ask home questions; I hardly feel able to answer you. I know so little of her."

He arched his eyebrows.

"Is hers such a very intricate character?"

"I don't know about intricate; perhaps not, but it is remarkably undeveloped."

"Don't you like what you have seen of her?"

Wyn hesitated.

"I think I ought not to make her the subject of discussion; it doesn't seem quite kind."

"I beg your pardon, it is my fault. I have been trying to make you talk about her, because I honestly wanted your opinion. I have studied the young lady in question a good deal; but I am one who believes that you should go to a woman to get a fair opinion of a woman."

"What!" cried Wyn, with animation. "Take care! You could not mean that, surely! It is too good to be true. Have I at last discovered a man who believes that woman can occasionally be impartial--who is not convinced that the female mind is swayed exclusively by the two pa.s.sions of love and jealousy? This is really refres.h.i.+ng! Yes, I do believe you are right. A woman should be judged by the vote of her own s.e.x. Of course, one particular woman's opinion of her may very likely be bia.s.sed. I don't pretend to say that women are not sometimes spiteful--I have known those who were. But to say that some fair young girl will be deliberately tabooed by all the girls she knows, simply because she happens to be attractive to gentlemen, is a fiction which is the monopoly of the male novelist. I have never known a woman really unpopular among women without very good cause for it."

"Exactly. Well, this being so, I shall attach great weight to your opinion of Miss Elsa."

"In that case, I had far better not give it; besides, I am only one woman, and the fact that my brother is evidently much attracted by the subject of our conversation is very likely to make my judgment one-sided. You know, I think n.o.body good enough for Osmond."

"Most natural; yet I would go bail for the candor of your judgment."

"Would you? I am not sure whether I would. I have not much to go upon,"

she said, musingly.

"You have allowed me to gather this much--that you are not particularly favorably impressed," he said, cunningly. "You had better give me your reasons."

She made a protesting gesture.

"It is not fair--I have said nothing," she answered. "I tell you I can form no opinion worth having. I only know two points concerning Elsa--she is very beautiful and very unsophisticated. I don't know that, in my eyes, to be unsophisticated is to be charming; I know it is so in the opinion of many. I should say that where the instincts of a nature are n.o.ble, it _is_ very delightful to see those impulses allowed free and natural scope--no artificial restraint--no repression; but I think,"

she continued, slowly, "that some natures are better for training--some impulses decidedly improved by being controlled."

"I should think Miss Brabourne had been controlled enough, in all conscience."

"No," said Wyn, "she has only not been allowed to develop. The Misses Willoughby have never taught her to restrain one single impulse, because they have failed to recognise the fact that she has impulses to restrain. They do not know her any better than I do--perhaps not so well."

"Very likely," said Claud; "I see what you mean. You think it would be unjust to her to p.r.o.nounce on a character which has had, as yet, no chance of self-discipline?"

"Exactly," agreed Wyn, with a sigh of relief at having partly evaded this narrow questioning. She did not like to say to him what had struck her several times in her intercourse with Elsa, namely, that there was a certain want in the girl's nature--a something lacking--an absence of traits which in a disposition originally fine would have been pretty sure to show themselves.

Wynifred was anxious for Osmond. She had never seen him seriously attracted before. Claud did not know, as she did, how significant a fact was his present exclusive devotion, and was naturally not aware of the consistency with which the young artist had always held himself aloof from the aimless flirtations which are so much the fas.h.i.+on of the day.

In the present state of society it needs a clever man to steer clear of the charge of flirting, but Osmond Allonby had done it, whilst eminently sociable, and avowedly fond of women's society, he had managed that his name should never be coupled on the tongues of the thoughtless with that of any girl he knew.

But now----! Every rule and regulation which had hitherto governed his life seemed swept away. Old limits, old boundaries were no more. The power of marshalling his emotions and finding them ready to obey when he cried "Halt!"--a power he possessed in common with his sister Wynifred--was a thing of the past. Even Wyn's loving eyes, following him so sympathetically, could not guess the completeness of his surrender.

All the deep, carefully-guarded treasure of his love was ready to be poured out at the feet of the golden-haired, white-robed Elsa at his side. He would not own to himself that his attachment was likely to prove a hopeless one. With the swiftness of youth in love, his thoughts had ranged over the future. He was making a career--Wyn was following his example, in her own line. Jacqueline and Hilda were too pretty to remain long unmarried.

Concerning Elsa's heiress-s.h.i.+p he was not half so well-informed as Claud Cranmer. But indeed the question of ways and means only floated lightly on the top of the deep waves of feeling that filled his soul. His Elaine seemed to him a creature from another sphere--isolated, innocent, and wilful as the Maid of Astolat herself. Probably few young men in the modern Babylon could have brought her such an unspent, single-hearted, ideal devotion; his love was hardly that of the nineteenth century.

The only difficulty he experienced, in walking at her side, was to check himself, to so curb his pa.s.sion as to be able to talk lightly to her; and, even through his most ordinary remarks, there ran a vibration, a thrill of feeling, "the echo in him broke upon the words that he was speaking," and perhaps communicated itself to the mood of the uncomprehending girl.

"Now," he said, as after several minutes' silence they seated themselves at last, sheltered from sun and breeze, under the shadow of a chalk cliff. "Now at last I claim your promise."

"My promise?"

"Yes, you know what I asked you when we met to-day. You were looking like Huldy in the American poem,

'All kind o' smily round the lips, An' teary round the lashes.'

You said that when we were alone you'd tell me why. What was it?"

A flash of sudden, angry resentment crossed the girl's fair face, and tears again welled up to the edges of her limpid eyes. Osmond thought he had never seen anything so lovely as her expression and att.i.tude. If one could but paint the quick, panting heave of a white throat, the quiver of a sad, impetuous mouth.

"You can guess--it was the usual thing--G.o.dfrey," she said, struggling to command her voice, but in vain. She could say no more, but turned her face away from him, swallowing tears.

Osmond felt a sudden movement of helpless indignation, which almost carried him away. He mentally applied the brake before he could answer rationally.

"It is abominable--unheard of!" was the calmest expression he could think of. "Something must be done--quickly too! I should like to wring the insolent little beggar's neck for him! What did he do, to-day?"

For answer she pushed up her sleeve, showing him two livid bruises on a dazzlingly white arm--an arm with a dimpled round elbow.

"I caught him smoking in the stable, which is forbidden because of setting fire to the straw," she faltered, "and I told him he ought not to do it, so he did what he calls the 'screw.' You don't know how it hurts!"

Osmond's wrath surmounted even his love.

"But why don't you box his ears--why don't you give him a lesson--cowardly little beggar!" he cried. "You are bigger than he, Miss Brabourne, you ought to be more than a match for him!"

A burst of tears came.

"I don't even know how to hit," she sobbed, childishly. "I don't know anything that other people know; and, if I tell of him, he pays me out so dreadfully! He puts frogs in my bed, and takes away my candle, and the other night he dressed up in a sheet, and made phosphorous eyes, and nearly frightened me out of my senses, and I don't dare tell because--because he would do something even worse if I did! Oh, you don't know what he is. He catches birds and mice, and cuts them up alive--he says he is going to be a doctor, and he is practising vivisection; and he makes me look while he is doing it--if I don't he has ways of punis.h.i.+ng me. He made me smoke a cigar, and I was so terribly sick, and he made me steal the sideboard keys, and get whiskey for him, and said if I did not he would tell aunts something that would make them forbid me to come to the picnic. He was tipsy last night," she shuddered, "really tipsy. He made me help him up to his room, and tell aunts he was not well, and could not come down to supper. Oh!" she burst out, "you don't know what my life is! He makes me miserable! I hate him!

But I daren't tell, you don't know what he would do if I told!" Her face crimsoned with remembrance of insult. "I _can't_ tell you the worst things, I can't!" she cried, "but he is dreadful. Every little thing I say or do, he remembers, and seems to see how he can make me suffer for it. I have no peace, day or night; and he is so good when aunts are there. They don't know how wicked he is."