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Philiberta: A Novel

Chapter XXXIII. The Ways of Women

Chapter XXXIII. The Ways of Women.

To marry Leslie Hugill Miss Fitzroy had made up her mind, though the idea had never entered therein until the moment when she announced her determination. Edgar Paget's reluctant vague invitation to his home, as she interpreted it, stung her to the quick.

'I will marry someone who will give me the right to be invited and welcomed anywhere,' she said to herself, biting her lips and clenching her hands; and then Leslie Hugill came up the garden path, and she spoke as we have heard to Edgar Paget.

'Mrs. Himmons said you were disengaged,' said Leslie Hugill, with an air of elaborate apology for unintentional intrusion.

'Mrs. Himmons was perfectly right,' said Miss Fitzroy, sweetly. 'I am quite disengaged. Mr. Paget is gone, as you see.'

'Just so,'said Leslie, and then he drew a corner of his handsome blonde beard in his mouth and gnawed it savagely.

'And I regret to say,' remarked Miss Fitzroy, 'that this was Mr. Paget's last visit for the present; he is going away.'

'You must be sorry,' said Leslie emphatically.

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'I am,' returned Miss Fitzroy, with equal emphasis. 'I shall miss him dreadfully.'

'No doubt of it. You couldn't well help missing a man who has spent every possible hour in your drawing-room for the last two months.'

'Exactly. But my chief regret for his departure,' said Miss Fitzroy, with that dulcet inflection of voice that to those who knew her well always foretold a sting, 'is because I lose in him a gentleman from my too limited circle of real friends. One who would never forget himself to the disgraceful extent of counting the hours spent by another at my house—or, at least, one who would never be guilty of the bad taste of making me acquainted with the result of his calculations.'

Leslie shrank off miserably to a chair, looking for all the world like dog Pompo after a beating. Poor Leslie! he was so easily punished, so readily snubbed, and such a keen sufferer in the process.

'I beg your pardon. I do really,' he said.

Miss Fitzroy looked at his flushed cheeks and vexed eyes, and relented.

'Do you know, I wanted to ask a favour of you to-day, if you had showed any amiability.'

'Miss Fitzroy, do ask me. Upon my word, I'll never be such an unamiable brute again.'

'Then will you take me to St. Kilda this afternoon. Mr. Hugill?'

'I shall be delighted,' he exclaimed, rising impetuously. 'Shall we go at once?'

'Oh, there's no occasion for such desperate hurry, you know.'

'Yes, there is. Some d——I mean, some of your friends will be looking in and preventing your going.'

'Oh no, they won't. I never let anyone prevent me from doing as I like, and I have set my mind upon St. Kilda to-day. I don't play to-night, you know, and I won't be guilty of the folly peculiar to my craft, that of stifling among an audience on an off night as a cheerful change from stifling and slaving on the boards.'

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'May I go for the trap?'

'Yes, I will be ready by the time you come back.'

He returned presently with a buggy and pair of fiery high-stepping grey horses, the very sight of which thrilled the actress's heart with delight.

'Don't mind about me,' she said, as Leslie strove to keep the animals steady and help her in at the same time; 'I can manage very well,' clambering in skilfully but hazardously over the wheel. 'Oh, but this is delicious! How I love fast horses! But for goodness' sake don't collide with anything, Mr. Hugill. Damages are so expensive.'

'Oh, I dare say I'll manage to steer clear of everything,' said Leslie, turning the corner of Russell Street into Bourke Street, and, in the next second, the Royal Mail corner into Swanston Street with a swift dash that startled even the usual loafers congregated thereabout.

'Mind!' cried Miss Fitzroy in alarm, as the buggy came within an ace of shaving off the near wheel of a cab. But Leslie knew what he was doing, and, being proud of himself as a good whip, was determined to show off a little.

Down Swanston Street, at a tremendous pace, towards Prince's Bridge.

'Oh, do walk over the bridge, Mr. Hugill, or the police will stop you.'

'Defy them to—while I'm behind this pair,' said Leslie, crossing the bridge like a flash and careering along dusty St. Kilda Road at a good 2.40 trot. 'I'll wager you,' said Leslie, 'that those police couldn't even swear to the colour of the horses, we passed them so quickly.'

'You have no right to break the rules like that,' said Miss Fitzroy. 'It sets such a bad example. Besides, you frightened me with your recklessness; my heart was in my mouth.'

But she was laughing and enjoying the speed all the same.

'I am so sorry,' said Leslie penitently, trying to rein in a little.

'Oh, don't, I beg! You have done all the harm you can do; it is no use going slow now. Besides, it is simply splendid.

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Oh, Mr. Hugill, it was good and clever of you to get such a grand pair of horses.'

'Don't mention it,' said Leslie, colouring with pleasure.

'Then I won't,' said Miss Fitzroy, laughing wickedly, 'though why you should mind my mentioning it I don't know.'

Leslie stole a side glance at her.

'You are always making fun of a fellow,' said he.

But she was in reality admiring him with all her heart and eyes. Leslie was thoroughly at home with horses, and had with them a free-handed style not common to townsmen. The look of power, of suppressed force and strength, that he wore now, that expressed itself in the very actions of his handsome hands and turn of his firm wrists, touched Madge Fitzroy with a novel sensation. She was very womanly in her worship of might and strength combined with masculine beauty.

'We shall sight the sea in a few minutes,' said Leslie; 'I can feel the breath of it now, cannot you?'—'Yes.'—'Miss Fitzroy, will you grant me a favour to-day?'

'Provided it is an easy and reasonable one.'

'I think it is.'—'Well then?'

'I want you to come and see my mother.'

'When?'—'To-day—now.'

'Does your mother know that you are acquainted with me?'

'Of course she does. I often speak of you. Why?'

'Oh, because young men as a rule don't take their mothers into their confidence about their friendship with a burlesque actress. Still less do they dream of effecting art introduction.'

Leslie turned to look at her, and the horses, divining with peculiar equine instinct that his eyes were not upon them, seized the opportunity to dance an impromptu schottische preparatory to an attempt to kick everything into eternal splinters.

'I hardly ever know,' said Leslie, when he had asserted his dominion successfully again, 'I hardly ever know when you are in earnest, or when you are only indulging your passion for satirical jesting.'

'Well, just for once I was in earnest,' said Miss Fitzroy. 'It is not usual for men to wish to introduce me into their home circles.'—'No?'

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'No; and it is just as well. Such introductions would almost certainly result in unpleasantness on both sides.'

'But why?'

'If you really don't understand, Mr. Hugill I am afraid it will not be easy for me to explain. You see, the Bohemian presence is generally offensive to respectability, and the atmosphere of respectability utterly oppressive to the Bohemian; and so the two are better apart.'

'But Bohemians can be respectable, can't they?'

'Now, spare me! I hate the very name of respectability. I would as soon be called "homely" as "respectable." The one means ugliness, the other perfect detestableness. I belong to Bohemia, Mr. Hugill, and that is, thank Heaven! outside the pale of respectability.'

'What uncomfortable, stinging things you contrive to say sometimes, Miss Fitzroy!'

'Do I? Perhaps. I have learnt a great many things in my life, Mr. Hugill,' she said, looking up at his vexed face, 'that might, for everybody's comfort, better have been left unstudied. Among the rest I have learnt to sting.'

'But I don't see what I have done that you should try to sting me.'

'I didn't try. I never need to try. Stinging does not cost me any effort, any more than it does a scorpion.'

'Now, look here,' said Leslie, facing round at all risks of what the horses might do, 'look here, Miss Fitzroy, I don't quite follow the drift of all you say. There's a bitterness in almost every speech of yours that hurts me, and that I shall never be able to understand. But when you come to talking badly about yourself, and comparing yourself with scorpions, I must pull up short—I must indeed, because I can't bear it. I am a clumsy brute at explaining myself, but if you only knew, Miss Fitzroy, if you only knew what you are to me—if you would only—' He stopped, and Madge looked about as if for some means of escape.

'I must have a little more time to think,' she said to herself. 'There is the sea!' she exclaimed aloud. 'Look at that tiny lovely yacht out there, skimming the waves like a white bird.'

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'Miss Fitzroy, will you let me drive you round to our place to see ray mother?'

'No. I should like you to drive me back to town now, please.'

'Oh, but that's shameful! You made me clearly understand that you would spend the evening at St. Kilda, as you were not engaged at the theatre.'

'Yes, but I had forgotten that your friends lived down here, else I would never have proposed to come at all. I wanted to come and put up at an hotel for an hour or two, and walk on the beach in the moonlight, as I have often done before—with gentlemen,' said Miss Fitzroy, defiantly.

Leslie bit his lips.

'We will do that if you prefer it, then,' he said. 'I will drive round to the George.'

'No, we will go back to town, please.'

'Miss Fitzroy, what have I done to annoy you?'— 'Nothing.'

'Why did you come out with me if you hate me so desperately?'

'If I had hated you very desperately, I should not have come.'

'Why are you determined to go back to town?'

'Because my sense of the unbecoming forbids me to flirt about with you here, with your mother in such close proximity.'

'You confess that you only mean flirtation with me, then?'

'I never mean anything more with anybody.'

'Not even with Paget, for instance?'

'Stop the horses, Mr. Hugill.'

He did so, being surprised into it by the suddenness and strangeness of the request. Next instant Miss Fitzroy, flushed and angry, stood in the dusty road.

'I will bid you good-afternoon, Mr. Hugill,' she said, with a bow of elaborate politeness. 'I did not come out with you to be insulted.' She turned and walked rapidly along the esplanade towards the railway station. A boy was passing the buggy at a leisurely pace on horseback.

'Are you going into town?' asked Leslie of him.— 'Yes, sir.'

'Can you drive a pair?'—'Well, I could try, sir.'

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'Then fasten your horse behind the buggy and jump in here. Now, if you drive this lot safely into town to Glasscock's stables, I'll give you £5. If you smash up and get killed, I'll pay your funeral expenses, and meantime here's a sovereign. If you are alive to-morrow at three, come to Glasscock's, and you will find me there.'

The lad grinned. 'I think I'll win the fiver, mister.'

'I hope you may. Off with you now!'

Miss Fitzroy, felling rather ashamed, and, of course, all the more indignant for that, was making the best of her way to the station.

'We shall have to go back by train now,' said Leslie Hugill, overtaking her before she had travelled many yards. 'I have sent someone else with the buggy.' His tone was quiet, his manner cool, determined, even masterful. Madge was too surprised to speak. Hitherto he had been always so submissive, so reverential, so devotedly humble, so easily crushed; this change in him startled her.

'He will control me as he controlled the horses,' she thought.

They reached the station to find it quite empty and deserted. There would not be another train to town for half an hour. They sat down on a bench and looked at each other. Then Madge Fitzroy's annoyance suddenly gave way before a sense of the utter ludicrousness of it all, and she laughed outright. But there was no answering laugh from Leslie. His face was very white, his eyes full of trouble.

'Mr. Hugill,' said Madge, with a penitent inflection of voice, 'I have acted most foolishly, and I have spoilt all your pleasure today, I know. I am sorry now.'

'Don't trouble about my pleasure of to-day, Miss Fitzroy,' he said quietly; 'you have spoilt more than that; you have spoilt my life. Or rather, I—I have spoilt it for myself through you; you are not to blame. You are not to blame for my loving you. Good God! how I have loved you, and hoped against hope that you might care a little more for me than for him.'

'Him! Whom on earth are you talking about?'—'Paget.'

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'There again! How dare you affront me with an accusation of caring for a man who is married?'

'Is Pager, married?' he said, his voice almost failing him in his eagerness and hope.

'Of course he is. You must have known it.'

He turned his face away, that she might not see how glad—how pitifully, painfully glad he was.

'No, I did not know it,' he answered slowly, after a while.

'I owe you an apology, Miss Fitzroy. How to put it into words I don't know, I feel so ashamed of myself.'

'Then don't try,' said Madge, impatiently. 'We have both made fools of ourselves to-day. Pray let us endeavour to forget the unpleasant fact.'

'But I have more to say,' said Leslie, recovering himself and a little of the air of dominion that had at first startled her. 'I came out to-day with the fixed resolution of knowing the best or worst that could befall me from you, Miss Fitzroy, What you have told me just now has made the way easier for me. You can tell me now all I want in one word—in a simple answer to a simple question. Will you be my wife?'

'Yes,' said Madge Fitzroy.

The suddenness of it shocked him.

'You—you think you care for me, then?' he asked timidly.

'You said my answer need be only one word,' she said.

'And that is all I want, dear,' he answered quickly, putting out his hands to her with a gesture expressive of perfect trust and gratitude—an air of yielding all his life gladly for her to do as she would with it. 'That is all I want, my dear—my dear, forgive me.'

Madge Fitzroy burst into a passion of tears; she herself did not know why. There was something so new and noble about this perfect love and trust offered to her; something about the man who offered so far above and beyond her and all she had ever known or believed. And she was going to marry him only that such men as Edgar Paget might not be ashamed to introduce her to their wives; that she might hold her own against the world she hated.

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'Oh, I wish I had never come here to-day!' she cried.

Leslie, puzzled but happy, took her home in the train, and, with a fine sense of chivalrous delicacy, bade her good-bye at her own threshold.

'God bless you, dear,' he said; and the words, or the tone, or something suggested by them, set her crying passionately again.

In a week the strangeness of it all had worn off both of them. Leslie's happiness was like a perpetual radiance within and around him. Madge was silent and quiet; she seemed subdued, but still happy. At last Leslie induced her to visit his mother. Her reluctance to do so was a pain and perplexity to him. When she did consent he was glad beyond measure. Mrs. Hugill never quitted her post beside her husband now. He needed her always with him to help him to stave off a little longer the mortal foe that was fighting him so hardly and so surely into the grave. When Madge Fitzroy saw the poor, bleached-looking invalid—the pitiful wreck of what had once been as young and as strong, as handsome and as fair, as Leslie, and saw the small grey, faded woman, with such loving, watchful eyes, such tender, ready hands, hovering with such earnest yearning of despairing love over this ruin of the lord of her youth and life, she nearly broke down again—she felt unable to bear the vision. 'If I were only so good a woman,' she groaned within herself. 'If I were only not such a vile wreck of all womanly truth and goodness, I might——'

'Leslie has told me all about you,' said Mrs. Hugill, breaking in upon her thoughts with a gentle, faded smile. The two were alone for a moment, Leslie having just carried his father into another room for sunlight. 'I hope you will be very good to Leslie, Miss Fitzroy. He loves you better than he loves me now,' with a touch of tender jealousy in the grey face and soft voice.

'It would be a very wicked and cruel thing for a heartless, worldly woman, with a life full of evil experience that had made her very soul evil and turned her all to spite and selfishness and falsehood—it would, be a wicked thing for such a page 228woman to marry such a man as Leslie, Mrs. Hugill, would it not?'

'It would be a very cruel thing,' answered Mrs. Hugill, with sudden suspicion and resentment. 'It would be the cruellest thing such a woman could do.'

'I know it would,' said Madge chokingly, and just then Leslie called them.

That night when she was parting from him she made him almost mad with her tenderness and sorrowfulness.

'Kiss me, love,' she said, quoting from a poem—'Ogier the Dane'—they had both been reading. 'Kiss me, love; for who knoweth what thing cometh after death?'

'Don't talk of death—don't say the word!' he exclaimed, drawing her close to his heart breathlessly. 'We cannot die—being so happy.'

'There are more ways of dying than one,' she said. 'It is death, worse than the real death, to put away your happiness from you.'

'But who would be foolish enough to do that?' he asked, smiling. And then she bade him leave her.

'Only till to-morrow, love,' he said, 'and in a little while now you will be mine, so that I may never have to leave you again.'

And on the morrow this was all he found of her:

'Farewell, Leslie; I love you too well to wrong you. When I tell you that the only good, true action of my life is this—of leaving you, you will be a little sorry for me, will you not?—even though you may despise me, and be glad of your escape.'

He was like one distraught.

'I will find her if she is on the face of the earth,' he said. 'Oh, my love—my love, how could you do this to me!'

His mother told him the words that had passed between her and the actress. 'If she knows she is unworthy of you, my son——'

'Don't say it, mother; it kills me. Look you, mother, I care nothing for what she may have done, or may have been. I would not believe evil of her if an angel told me; but suppose all the evil and worst of evil were true of her, it is the same to me. I page 229love her. I want her. She is more than earth and heaven to me, and I will never rest till I find her.'

When he learned that she had sailed for England he hastened to secure his passage by the next ship. And then, when his mother, bent and grey and old—with sorrow rather than years—knelt to him and besought him that he would not leave her alone to face that darkness of death that was coming every day and every hour more near, be yielded despairingly and stayed, knowing that life for him henceforth was a broken, hopeless, hapless affair.