Peccavi

"You can do what you like," said Carlton; "but the boy shall not hear you using that language to me. So you will never get a better opportunity than you have." And his nostrils curled as he bent his defenceless head over that of the boy, and pressed a little harder with his thumbs.

The other gnashed his teeth, and his great hand tightened on his stick. But he could not strike like that. And his enemy knew it; trust him to know when he was safe!

"I'm not going to prison for ye," said Musk, "if that's what you want. I daresay you'd think that worth a crack on the head to get me locked up for a bit; well, then, you shan't. Do you leave go o' the kid, and I won't swear no more."

The effort at self-control was plain enough, as Carlton looked up, without complying all at once.

"One moment," he said. "You sent him here yourself, I think?"

"What, the child?"

"Yes."

"I didn't send him. He was pestering me to come. So at last I gave him leave to do as he liked."

"In order that you might follow and abuse me in front of him!"

"I'll tell no lies," said Musk, sturdily. "I meant to let him hear what I thought of you, and I won't deny it."

Carlton looked a little longer upon the broad face between the steely bristles and the silvery hair; it had aged nothing in these years which had been as twenty to himself; and for the moment there was all the old rugged dignity in its independent purpose and honest unrelenting hate. A bargain had been in Carlton's mind, but at the last he decided to trust his enemy instead.

"It's all right, Georgie," he whispered: "we are not really angry with each other. Run away and play."

"But I don't want to!"

"You must," said Carlton, and rose without taking further notice of the child. "Mr. Musk," he said, in a low voice but firm, "is it to be like this between us to the bitter end?"

"That is."

"I do not ask your forgiveness – "

"Glad to hear it."

"I only ask – in pity's name – to be allowed to do something for the boy!"

Musk moved a muscle at last, and his eyes came close together with a gleam. "I daresay you do," said he.

"But will you not listen – "

"I'm listening now, ain't I?"

"Ah, but not to my prayer! I see it in your face; you have no pity. God knows how little I deserve! Yet it's little enough that I ask: only to see him sometimes, and not even to see him if you set your face against it. I would be content – at least I would try to be – if I knew he was going to good schools, if – if I might have hand or voice in his life. You say I have no rights. That is my punishment; a new one, that I never felt until I saw the boy for the first time the other day; but if you knew how I have felt it since! If you knew what it would be to me to do anything – give anything – "

"I knew that were comun," said Musk, nodding to himself.. "So you'd like to do the handsome, would you?" His whole face became suddenly suffused, as with walnut-juice; the very whites of his eyes seemed white no longer, while the pupils shrank to steel points in their midst. "I know you!" he cried, beside himself again; "but don't you try them games with me. That's your line, that is – buy your way back! You'd buy it with the parish, by making them a church; and you'd buy it with the boy, by making things for him; but that's what you never shall do, not while I live to prevent it.. What you got there, George? You give that here!"

It was the sandstone head with the sunken eyes, and Georgie was clinging to it in his trouble underneath the scaffolding; in an instant Musk had seized it from him, and dashed it with all his might against the wall, so that the soft stone flew into a dozen pieces. It was like blood to a wild beast: the demon of destruction broke loose in Jasper Musk.

"And that's how I'd treat the rest of your damned handiwork," he roared, "if I was the village! I'd have no church of your building; I'd bring that down about your ears right quick!" His wild eye lit upon the wooden centre of the unfinished arch, and "This is what I'd do," he shouted, lunging at the woodwork with his heavy stick. "Hypocrite! Pharisee! Disgrace to God and man! Leper as – "

But the centre had been dealt a heavy thrust, as from a battering ram, with each expression; with each it had bulged a little; but the last lunge drove the whole framework from under the unfinished arch, which came crashing down amid a yellow cloud. Musk shuffled backward in time to save his toes; for an instant then both he and Carlton stood aghast.

Robbed of his latest treasure, and moreover having seen it smashed to atoms before his eyes, Georgie had been howling lustily when the crash came: when the yellow cloud lifted he lay silent enough, in a little brown heap below the scaffolding, and already the blood was through his hair.

Carlton had him in his arms that instant.

"He's insensible," he said quietly. "A nasty scalp wound, and may be more. What day is this?"

"Wednesday."

Musk did not know what he was saying, but the cool question had elicited a correct though unconscious reply.

"Wednesday used to be the doctor's day at the dispensary – "

"And is still," cried Musk, coming to his senses.

"Then one of us must run for him."

"I can't run!"

"Then you must hold him while I do. Stop! I'll take him to the house; you must bathe his head while I'm gone."

Another minute and the boy lay in the rectory study, upon the little bed in which Carlton had fought death and won three years before; yet another, and up limped Jasper, crooked with pain, out of breath, but gasping for news of Georgie as though he had been a week on the way.

"Has he come to yet?"

"No, and there's a lot of blood. We must stop it if we can. Wait till I get a sponge and some water."

Jasper Musk was bending over the boy, looking huger than ever upon his knees, when Carlton returned to the room.

"What have I done?" he was muttering. "What have I done? What have I done?"

"Nothing that you could help," replied Carlton, briskly. "Now you keep squeezing this sponge out over his head – never mind the bed – till I get back."

Georgie lay insensible for hours. It was not the loss of blood, which looked much worse than it was, and ceased altogether with the dressing of the wound. There was, however, somewhat serious concussion underneath; and Dr. Marigold bluntly refused to guarantee the event.

"The pity is to move him," he grumbled towards night. "But is there anybody here who could nurse the boy?"

"Only myself," said Carlton, who had been quiet and quick to help all the afternoon.

The doctor shot an upward glance through his shaggy white eyebrows.

"Well, you're handy enough, I must say; and, as we know, the very devil to do things single-handed; but this you couldn't do. No, I'd like to take him straight to the infirmary, only I'm on horseback."

"There are traps in the village."

"They would jolt too much."

"Then let me carry him."

"It's five miles."

"Never mind. I could do it. And he shouldn't jolt – he shouldn't jolt!"

The mellow voice that had charmed the countryside in bygone years, it fell and quivered with infinite tenderness and love, and it sped to the heart of the gaunt old doctor. So this time Marigold raised his whole head, and his look was open, prolonged, and penetrating.

"No, no, Mr. Carlton," he said at length, and in the tone of old times. "It might do no good, after all. But I'll tell you what you shall do: you shall carry him to the Flint House, and I'll spend the night there if I must."

All this while Jasper Musk was sitting stunned and staring in the rector's chair. He had not moved for an hour, nor did he now until Carlton touched him on the shoulder.

"We are going, Mr. Musk. I am carrying Georgie to your house."

Musk raised a ghastly face.

"He isn't dead?"

"No."

"Nor going to die?"

"God forbid! But the danger is great. The doctor is going to stay with him all night."

And there was a touch of jealousy in his tone, lost upon Jasper Musk, but not on him who inspired it. Silently they left the house, and stole down the drive in the blue twilight. Carlton led, treading almost on tip-toe, as if not to wake a child that only slept in his arms. And so they came to the Flint House, its master limping on the doctor's arm.

"Go in, Mr. Carlton," said Marigold. "There's no one else to carry him upstairs."

And he detained Jasper below.

"You must let that man stay till he is out of danger," the doctor said.

"Why must I?"

"Because I am not justified in staying all night; and he will look after the boy as you and your wife cannot, and as no one else will, now that Miss Gleed is away."

Jasper bowed sullenly to his fate. But the doctor was not done.

"Besides," said he, his kind hand on the other's arm; "besides, he feels this as much as you do, and God knows he's gone through enough! To-day, I tell you candidly, but for him your little lad would be in a worse way than he is. Now don't you think after this that all of us – even you – might begin to be just a little less hard – even on him?"

XXIV

GLAMOUR AND RUE

Georgie's lady was meanwhile enjoying her life in Leipzig, and the more keenly since she had gone abroad without any thought of pleasure, but only to work. This was characteristic of Gwynneth Gleed. She was not light-hearted enough for a young girl; there had been too much sorrow in her early years, too little sympathy in those that came after; natural joy she had never known. A born delight in books, a blind appreciation of the country, a passion for music, and the love of one little child; these were the pleasures of Gwynneth in her twentieth year; nor as yet did they include that zest in the present, that joy of merely living, that healthy appetite for admiration, that proper pride in one's own person, that catholicity of liking for one's fellow-creatures, which are of the very spirit and essence of youth. And to youth Gwynneth added something at least akin to beauty; but never knew it until she came to live among strangers in a strange land.

These strangers, who were mostly English, and many of them young students like herself at the Conservatoire, were singularly kind to Gwynneth from the first. In some ways they were the best friends the girl ever had. They taught her the duty of gaiety at her time of life, and the absolute necessity of a certain amount of vanity in every human being. Gwynneth was given to understand that she had more to be vain about than most. Attracted themselves by the uncommon girl with the fine eyes and the shy manner, her new friends did much to mitigate the latter by making the very most of her looks and accomplishments, and seeing to it that Gwynneth did the same. She was not allowed to dress as she liked in Leipzig, nor to spend the whole of a fine afternoon at her piano, nor to be out of anything that was going on. The gaieties of the English colony were of a simple character in themselves, but they were Gwynneth's high-water-mark in dissipation, and ere long she was throwing herself into them with that enthusiasm which she brought to every pursuit. She had learnt to waltz remarkably well, and to talk brightly about nothing in particular to the acquaintance of a minute's standing. She was none the less assiduous at her practising and her harmony, and was still capable of immediate and immense excitement over this poet or that composer; but these were no longer her only topics. Nor was a holland pinafore and the small urchin it contained entirely forgotten in these days. Gwynneth wrote to Georgie oftener than to anybody else in England. And yet it was to the theatres and a real ball or so that she first looked forward upon her return.

Lady Gleed was much more than agreeably disappointed in the new Gwynneth; herself incapable of seeing beneath the thinnest surface, she could scarcely believe it was the same girl. Gwynneth was better-looking and had more to say for herself than had ever appeared possible to Lady Gleed, who decided to keep her niece in town for the rest of the season, if not to present so creditable a débutante at the next drawing-room. And a much more critical person, her son Sidney, coming up from Cambridge for a night, was not less favourably impressed.

Gleed of Trinity, a third-year man, was in his turn a vast improvement upon the private scholar who had seldom addressed a syllable to Gwynneth in his holidays, but had gone past whistling with his dogs. He was now a really handsome little man, with a clear brown skin and a moustache as mature as his manner; looked and spoke like a man of thirty; and could be amusing enough with his sly satire and his ready repartee. Cynical this youth must always be, but the cynicism was more good-humoured and less ill-natured than formerly, and not abhorrent in the man as it had been in the boy. At all events it amused Gwynneth, who was furthermore surprised and excited to find that Sidney had read quite a number of great books, and rather entertained than otherwise by his blasphemous opinions of many of them. So they had something in common after all; and Sidney was certainly very attentive and gay and nice-looking.

It was in the drawing-room in Hyde Park Place, during an hour which went very quickly, that Gwynneth made these discoveries; she was still too simple to remark, much less read, the calculating droop of Sidney's eyelids or the veiled preoccupation of the hereditary stare.

"I wonder if you'd care to have a look at Cambridge," at last said Sidney, in the purely speculative tone.

"Like to? I'd love it!" cried Gwynneth at once.

Sidney paused, without relaxing his stare. She was certainly very animated. Sidney was not sure that he cared for quite so much animation with so little cause.

"I shouldn't wonder if you did rather like it," he proceeded, "in May-week – which never is in May, you know."

"Oh? When is it?"

"The week after next. There'll be heaps going on. Races every afternoon – "

"And don't you steer your boat?" interrupted Gwynneth, a partisan on the spot.

Sidney smiled.

"I cox it, Gwynneth; and if we aren't head of the river we shall not be very far off. But it isn't only the races; there are all sorts of other things, a good match, garden-parties galore, and a dance every night."

"You dance there!"

"Yes," said Sidney; "do you?"

"Rather!"

"Get some in Leipzig?"

"All that there was to get."

"They dance well out there?"

"I don't know."

"But you do, of course?"

Gwynneth saw the drift of this examination, and showed that she saw it, but Sidney liked her the better for her dry reply:

"You'd better try me."

"You'd better try me," he rejoined adroitly.

"Very well," said Gwynneth. "Here?"

"Come on," said Sidney, his eyes sparkling, his brown skin a warmer hue; and in an instant they were threading their way between the cumbrous chairs and tiny tables of the big room, ploughing through its heavy pile, he in patent leather boots, she in her walking shoes, and not so much as a piano-organ in the street to set the time. Yet, even under these conditions, a turn was enough for Sidney, though he did not want to stop, and was very quick in asking whether he would do.

"You know you will," said Gwynneth, forgetting everything in the prospect of so excellent a partner.

"And you dance rippingly," declared her cousin; "by Jove, I wish we could have you at the First Trinity ball!"

So did Gwynneth; but, instead of betraying further eagerness, sat down at the piano, and, saying it was nothing without the music, forthwith treated Sidney to snatch after snatch of the waltzes of the hour, rendering each with a brilliance of touch and a delicacy of execution alike worthy of a better cause. A year ago Gwynneth would not have done this.

Sidney, his hands in his pockets, but a sparkle still in his eyes, stood watching her without a word until the end.

"Look here," he then announced, "you've simply got to come, and that's all about it. Of course the mater couldn't get away, but Lydia isn't so full up, and I should think she'd jump at it. I'll write to her and fix it up. There's a piano in our rooms, and we'll have it tuned for you; no, we'll get a grand in for the week; and the whole court will be full of men listening."

"Who are 'we'?" inquired Gwynneth.

"Oh, I share rooms with another fellow; an Eton man; you'll like him."

And once more Sidney looked a little critically at his cousin, as though he wanted to be quite sure that the Eton man would like her. But at this moment the dressing-gong threw him into consternation. It appeared that he was dining out at some club, had come up for this dinner, was only sleeping in the house, and would be gone first thing in the morning. So he had better say good-bye; and did so with rather unnecessary warmth, Gwynneth thought; nevertheless, it was the dullest evening she had yet spent in Hyde Park Place, though there was a little dinner-party there also, after which the inevitable performance by Gwynneth was received with the customary acclamation.

It may be supposed that the girl was not enchanted with the prospect of Lydia for chaperone; but she determined thus early to allow nothing to interfere with her enjoyment of the Cambridge festivities. So when Mrs. Goldstein came in her carriage on the next day but one, to say that she supposed they must go, not that she was keen upon it herself, but to please Sidney, and also because she thought it only right for young girls like Gwynneth to have a good time while they could, the latter tried to seem as grateful as though every word of Lydia's did not irritate or repel her. She there and then received dictatorial instructions as to dresses requisite for the week, and undertook to follow them to the letter. It was not a congenial attitude for Gwynneth to assume, but she also was at present bent upon that "good time" which her cousin recommended. Lydia, on the other hand, cultivated the air of one who is personally past all that. She seldom smiled, but yet had a certain secret fondness for excitement. Gwynneth feared that she was far from happy; she seemed dissatisfied with her position in society, and spoke disrespectfully (when she did speak) of the dark, dapper, capable man of business, her indulgent husband.

There came a time when Gwynneth Gleed would have given much to forget the merriest week of her life, but the memory of the next few days was not to be destroyed. The girl never forgot the narrow streets teeming with exuberant youth, the narrow river in similar case, the crush and rush and uproar on the banks, the procession of boats flashing past, each with an eight in which Gwynneth took no interest, but a ninth who had always the same calm, brown, clean-cut face in her mind's eye. How well he looked, swinging with his crew, he in his blazer, cool and malicious, doing his part with splendid precision if only they did theirs! One night they made their bump right opposite the boat in which Gwynneth stood on tiptoe; and Sidney's smile at the supreme moment was one of her vivid recollections; and her little scene with Lydia another, which she brought upon herself by cheering as loud as any of the men. Sidney seemed very popular. Gwynneth was so proud to be seen with him, especially when he wore his battered mortar-board and blue gown, which appealed in some foolish way to her own vague intellectual aspirations. And she looked down upon all the gowns that were not blue.

But everything in Cambridge did appeal to Gwynneth, from the anthem and the chancel-roof in King's Chapel to luncheon with Sidney and the Eton man in Old Court. Lydia was for ever reproving her cousin's enthusiasm; but Gwynneth was enjoying herself too much to resent anything that Mrs. Goldstein could say. At the outset, however, a close observer might have caught even Sidney with a cocked eyebrow, and the eye beneath upon the Eton man; the girl was so frank and unsophisticated in the display of her delight; but the Eton man seemed to admire it in her, and Sidney gave up looking like that. The Eton man was twice his height, could sing, and swore that nobody had ever played his accompaniments as Gwynneth did; but he was not in any boat, and he could not compare with Sidney as a partner. Nevertheless, his attentions and attractions had more to answer for than anybody knew.

Gwynneth had thought Sidney very nice in town, but at Cambridge he was perfect. He was a thorough little man of the world, unconscious, unconcerned, whereas many of the men whom Gwynneth met were scarcely worthy of the name. Sidney did things like a prince, having an enviable allowance, and a very good idea of the way in which things should be done. And his arrangements were masterly; no day like the last, or next; and the whole a whirl of gaiety and excitement literally intoxicating to one whose experience of this kind was so limited as poor Gwynneth's. It all ended with the First Trinity ball. There is no need to dilate on the astonishing magnificence of this revel; it was the most memorable and splendid of them all; and the Backs by night, with a moon in the heaven above and another in the water below, and grey old gables salient in its light, and the Guards' Band in the faint distance, that ought to have been so loud and near; all this was even more entrancing than the ball itself, and Gwynneth moved as in a dream. She had had the audacity to divide her dances between Sidney and the Eton man; but one of them was given cause to complain towards the end, and the more so since the girl had never looked so radiant in her life. The next day Gwynneth and Lydia (who would not speak to her) were to return to town. It had never been arranged that Sidney was to accompany them; yet he did; and before evening there was trouble in Hyde Park Place.

Sir Wilton would not hear of it at first; he was soon obliged to do that. But he stood firm in refusing his consent to a formal engagement between Sidney and his first cousin, and found an unexpected ally in Gwynneth herself. The girl was paying for her week's delirium by a deeper depression than her face betrayed or her heart admitted. Already she was beginning to disappoint her cousin. But this was too much.

"You agree with him?" gasped Sidney. "You'd rather not be engaged? Then why, my darling, did you ever say 'yes'?"

"It wasn't to that question, dear," said Gwynneth, colouring.

"It amounted to the same thing."

"It will amount to the same thing," Gwynneth said earnestly; "at least I hope and pray that it may. But, of course, it's quite true that we're both very young; and at least it's within the bounds of possibility that – one or other of us might – some day – change."

"Speak for yourself," said Sidney, with a taunting bitterness.

"Dear, if you'll believe me, I'm thinking quite as much of you. At twenty-two you would tie yourself for life!"

"That's my look-out," said Sidney, grandly. "Age isn't everything, and I'm not a boy; anyhow I know my own mind, if you don't know yours."

Gwynneth's eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, why did you tell me you cared for me?" she exclaimed. "Why did you make me say I cared for you? It was true – it was true – but we seem to have spoilt it by putting it into words. Oh, I was so happy before you spoke! I never was so happy as all last week. I could have gone on like that – I was so happy. And now it's all different already; you are, and I am."

Sidney was watching her tears unmoved, for she had made him reflect. All at once he saw his heartlessness, and next moment he was kissing her tears away; vowing there was no difference in him; but, if it was otherwise with her, well, then, let them consider everything unsaid, and start afresh.

Gwynneth shook her head. Her eyes were dry again and full of thought.

"No, dear, we can't do that; and you mustn't think I am not happy in your love, because I am. Only, there seemed to be such a spell between us before we were sure of each other. But perhaps it's always like that."

In the end they were engaged, but it was not to be a public engagement for six months. Meanwhile Sidney returned to Cambridge for the Long, having taken only a part of his degree; and Gwynneth quickly recovered her reputation as a reformed character in the eyes of Lady Gleed, who was less against the match than her husband, and who took the girl to innumerable parties, each of which Gwynneth made a determined effort to enjoy as thoroughly as the first half of the First Trinity ball.