Odd thing! The rain nosed out by the man of weather came to pass. But it delayed for a week or more, which was time enough for many other prophecies to be fulfilled. When, however, it did come it struck her imagination. She awoke late from a night of deep sleep to hear it thudding on roof and balcony and to see, when she looked out, the heavy trees of Berkeley-square streaming like waterweed under a sluice. Here and there a cruising hansom thrashed a way through, now and again a milk-cart. The butcher-boys wore their baskets on their heads. Her first conscious thought was of Senhouse, bare-crested to the wild weather. It would be wild in the open, and, of course, he was in the open. On some wide common, perhaps, facing the gale, with the rolling collar of his jersey flacking like ship’s cordage. Ah, to be there with him, sharing the joy of battle! It was with a sense of suddenly leaving the wholesome, great air for that of a hot-house that she turned to her breakfast tray and pile of letters. She picked up the first of them; the hand was Tristram’s. A letter from him, and a visit, were now daily events. A letter to him, also, must be written daily, and somehow delivered.
This one was cavalier in tone. “Sweetheart,—I must see you, if only to arrange how best we may meet. What a storm last night! But what a clear blue promise before us! I shall be in the Burlington Arcade—Gardens end—at noon. Come.” “Tr.”
Even she, never yet free from her early subjection to him, felt that this was not how lovers write to their sovereign ladies. An assignation—and in such a place—proposed to Mrs. Germain! She coloured high and clear. He had done what she could never have believed possible; he had really offended her. Nothing in the whole world could have persuaded her to go.
But by-and-by that sophistry which is ever at hand to clinch a woman’s argument the way she wants it to travel, modified her view, suggested a duty. Insolent, arrogant, exorbitant lover that he was, he must be taught his place. He should see her inaccessible; he should see her cold profile as she drove by him without so much as a turn of the head. Perhaps then he would know that she was not a village girl at his disposal. Perhaps. Thus, at least, she reasoned—and thus she did. The brougham was ordered for a quarter to twelve—she kept it fifteen minutes, and then gave the order, “Bank.” Her bank was that of England, and stands in Burlington Gardens.
She had no real errand there, but she feigned one. A cheque was to be cashed. The footman was to take it—and even as she gave it him she saw Tristram at the mouth of the Arcade—in an overcoat to his ankles, his wet umbrella in his hand.
She sat rigid in her place, wide-eyed for events. While looking at Musters’s careful back it was perfectly possible to see her lover at his post. He was watching her intently, she knew; but he did not move. He did not intend to go a step out of his way to meet her. True, he had walked to the Arcade—he, who lived in the Albany! A most cavalier lover, this.
The game went on . . . the minutes passed. The footman came back with her money and waited for orders. She named a shop—a jeweller’s close by, in Vigo-street. Jinny Middleham was to be married, to a Mr. Podmore, a clergyman, and must have a present. How happily things turned out; the cheque would serve. The touch of Musters’s whip caused the hoofs to clatter on the asphalt; the brougham lunged forward and swept her by the shameful trysting-place. She peered sideways as she passed; Duplessis, looking full upon her, did not even lift his hat. Nor, during the hour she spent, fingering enamels, rivières, and rings, did he appear at the shop-door. When she went by the Arcade on her return he was not there. She felt strongly the sensation of escape, and was surprised to be so free from disappointment. Senhouse came back to his own place in her thoughts—he and the wind on the heath. Both good things.
But in the afternoon, at about six o’clock, her cavalier was ushered into her drawing-room, where she sat alone, and stood by the door looking at her until the man had gone out. Then he crossed the room quickly, came straight to her, knelt, took both her hands and kissed them.
He humbled himself. She hardly knew him for the same man. And he did the thing handsomely, too, named himself grievous things, exalted her, wouldn’t hear of any excuse. Her generosity, easily moved, was all on his side in a few minutes. She could not hear him accuse himself. Perhaps he had been thoughtless; but she had had no right, she said, to be so angry.
Finally, she wouldn’t listen. “If you go on talking so wildly,” she told him, “I shall begin to think you don’t mean it.” And then he did explain.
It appeared that there had been reason in what he had proposed. A certain delicacy taught him that he could not continue calling at the house after what had happened. That could hardly fail to appease her. His seeming insult, then, had really been intensely prompted by his fear of insulting her. She considered this with hanging head.
“Mind you, Molly,” he went on, being master of her hand, “I can’t withdraw one word of what was forced out of me that night; I can’t wish undone one single act. I adore you, and I must tell you so; I love you, and must show my love.” Here he kissed her. “The question is, how and when am I to see you. See you I must and will. I wanted to talk to you about that—and how was I to do it? Would you have had me ask you to my rooms?”
It did occur to her here that a better place could have been found, since they met most nights in the week in somebody’s house; but she put the cavil by as unworthy. Since he was in her husband’s house, however, not disturbed unduly by the delicacy which had troubled him overnight, it would be as well to hear what he suggested.
“I’m not going to be unreasonable,” he told her; “............