October was in, mild and languorous; the trees dripped all day, the mist seemed unable to lift itself from the low-lying city. Mary grew restless and discontented. The usual things happened, but had ceased to entertain. Mr. Bloxam, after taking her for excursions by water, had one day proposed that she should take tea with his people, prosperous hucksters in the town. She agreed—to find out very soon that she was on exhibition, on approval, you might say. Mrs. Bloxam, the mother, addressed her particular inquiries, Mr. Bloxam, the father, gave her a carnation out of the conservatory. Shortly afterwards Mr. Bloxam, the son, made her another proposition, and was exceedingly surprised that she did not jump at it. Can such things be? he inquired, looking about. She had shaken her head at him very gently when she told him that really she couldn’t. It was charmingly done, with kindness, but complete finality. That he saw. He told her that his heart was broken, that she saw before her a man beaten down. “It is dreadful,” he said. “My mother liked you so much. She is hard to please. I suppose you wouldn’t care to think it over?”
Again she shook her head. A Mr. Bloxam of Exeter! If he only knew, or could be made to know! “No, no,” she said. “I sha’n’t alter. But I hope we are not to be bad friends.”
Mr. Bloxam had bowed, and said, “I should be most happy”—and one sees what he meant. “My mother, you know, won’t like it. Naturally she is partial. She will say that you led me on.”
“Then she will say what is very untrue,” cried Mary, with flashing eyes, “and I hope you will tell her so. It is very hard if I may not have friends without being accused of ridiculous things.”
“Girls do them, you know,” said Mr. Bloxam dubiously. “I’ve met with several cases.”
“If you are likely to include this among them, I must ask you to let me go,” she said with spirit; “but perhaps you would like to give me some tea first.”
Mr. Bloxam, murmuring about the sacred rites of hospitality, assured her that he would; and they parted on good terms. He told her that he intended to travel; and indeed he did afterwards go to Weston-super-Mare for a month.
The unfortunate but absurd episode taught her to be circumspect with the literary curate. He, however, was of a more cautious temperament, and went away for his holiday with no more pronounced symptom than a promise to send her picture postcards from the Cathedral cities which he purposed visiting. “You may like to have these afterwards,” he darkly said, and then took himself away on a bicycle.
The year was come to a critical point for her. About this time Halfway House would be plodding its way to the West, its owner, loose-limbed and leisurely, smoking on the tilt. Almost any day now it might pass by Exeter, or through it; almost any day she might come plump upon it—and what was to happen to her then? Could she endure the year’s round, or know him by her Cornish sea, in her white cottage on the cliff, and stay here nursing her wound, feeling the throb and the ache? It seemed impossible—and yet women do such things. It was almost the worst of her plight that she knew she could do it. It was in her blood to do it. The poor were like that: dumb beasts.
And now the delicacy which she had felt at first, and which had kept her away from Land’s End, became a tyrant, as the temptations grew upon her. It prevented her riding afield by any road leading into Exeter from the East. She had a bicycle; more, she had a certain way of bringing him directly to her side. He had taught her. The patteran. But no! She couldn’t. So she worked on doggedly, with the fret and fever in her bones; and day by day October slipped into November; the days slipped off as the wet leaves fell.
Early in November, on a day of sunny weather, Polly Merritt announced a visitor, who followed her immediately into the room, his straw hat under his left arm, his right hand held out.
“A gentleman to see Miss Middleham, if you please,” says Polly Merritt, and Mary had sprung up, with her hand to her side.
“It’s the tall one, mother, not the windy one,” was explained in the kitchen, but Mrs. Merritt, sniffing, had declared they were all the same.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Polly. “But this gentleman talks like asking and having, if you want my opinion.”
The riot in her breast was betrayed by her shining eyes and the quick flood of colour from neck to brows; but he played the man of the world so well that she was able to recover herself.
He made his excuses for breaking in upon her. He had been going through Exeter in any case. It was hardly to be resisted, she would allow. He owned that Horace Wing had given him the clue. “Poor Horace, you hurt him. It took two months’ hard talking in town and at least a month of surmise in Scotland before Horace could find strength enough to own up to the fact that he had met you, that you had bowed—and bolted. He mentioned it with tears in his eyes, as an extreme case. He had heard you book to Exeter—second single.” Then he looked at her and smiled. “But why Miss Middleham?”
“Why not?” she echoed him bravely. “I had to be somebody.”
“Weren’t you person enough?”
“Ah, yes, I was too much of a person, I was almost a personage. I was never happy in that disguise. My clothes never fitted me.”
“You should let other people judge of that. If you would like my opinion of your clothes, for instance——”
She shook her head, without speaking. He tried a more direct attack.
“You forgive me for coming?”
She suspected a tenderness. “Oh, it is very kind of you. I don’t have many visitors. I am glad to see you.”
“That’s good. May I see you again, then, while I can?”
She inquired: “Are you likely to be here long?”
A light hand was necessary now. “Oh, dear no—unfortunately. A day or two at the outside; time to buy cartridges. You remember the Ogmores? I am due at Wraybrook on the seventh. Pheasants. But until then——”
This was the fourth, you see. He would be horribly in the way. “I am occupied a good part of the day,” she told him. “I have pupils.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really! Have you—” he flushed, and leaned forward. “Have you renounced your——?”
“Not in so many words,” she said. “I have simply dropped it. Nobody knows where I am.”
“You knew that I had formally renounced mine?”
She had not known that. There was an implication in it—which she had run here to avoid; and here it was. “Did you?” she said shortly. “I’m not surprised.”
“Of course not,” he agreed. “You could not expect me to do anything else. And you have done precisely the same. That, also, I took leave to expect.” He saw concern gather in her eyes, broke off abruptly, and plunged into gossip. “Does your late world interest you still? Do you want to hear the news? Palmer Lovell’s engagement, for instance? A princess of Italy, I give you my word—a Donna Teresa Scalchi, rather a beauty, and a great shrew. Palmer can bite a bit, too. That will end in tears. And Hertha de Speyne marries abroad. Morosov, an anarchist of sort. They can collect plants in Siberia—” he broke off again, remembering that others had collected plants in Siberia. Watching her, he saw that she remembered it, too. “Oh, and old Constantine and I have kissed; we are fast friends. Once more I write speeches, which he mangles. He’s to be at Wraybrook, waiting for me. He can’t bear me out of his sight—he’s like an elderly wife. Frightful nuisance, of course—but I hope you are pleased.”
She looked at him for a moment. “Of course I am pleased. I always wanted you to succeed.”
He rattled on. She had never seen him in such good spirits or manners. When he left her after an hour she was quite at her ease. He said that, if he might, he would come in the evening, and take her for a walk. It would do her good; and as for him she might have pity upon a fellow at a loose end, with nothing on earth to do but buy cartridges.
When he had gone she sat still, looking at her hands in her lap. Could she maintain herself for three days? Already she felt the fences closing in—she had felt them, as they moved, though never once had she been able to hold up her hand or say, Stop: that you may not assume. Tristram was master of implication, and her master there. Throughout his airy monologue he had taken her for granted—her and her origin, her humility, her subservience to his nod, her false position with Germain, her false position now. Why, his very amiability, his deference to her opinion, his tentative approach—what were these but implications of his passion for her, a passion so strong that it could bend his arrogant back, and show a Tristram Duplessis at the feet of a Mary Middleham? She writhed, she burned to feel these things, and to be powerless against such attack. And he was to come again this evening, and every day for three days he was to come—and no help for her, she must fall without a cry. Yes, without a cry; for she was cut off from her friend, by the very need she had of him. What was she to do? What could she do—but fall?
She struggled. At three o’clock in the afternoon she told Polly Merritt that if the gentleman called again he was to be told that Miss Middleham was not well and had gone to bed. Polly wondered, but obeyed. “Lovers’ tricks!” quoth Mrs. Merritt. “That’ll bring him to the scratch.” It did. He received the news at the door, with an impassive face—all but for his eyes, ............