PAGE 14
The Path Of Duty
by
“You say you don’t think she behaved well” (he naturally wished to defend her). “But I dare say you don’t understand her position. Perhaps you would n’t behave any better in her place.”
“It’s very good of you to imagine me there!” I remarked, laughing.
“It’s awkward for me to say. One doesn’t want to dot one’s i’s to that extent.”
“She would be delighted to marry you. That’s not such a mystery.”
“Well, she likes me awfully,” Mr. Tester said, looking like a handsome child. “It’s not all on one side; it’s on both. That’s the difficulty.”
“You mean she won’t let you go?–she holds you fast?”
But the poor fellow had, in delicacy, said enough, and at this he jumped up. He stood there a moment, smoothing his hat; then he broke out again: “Please do this. Let her know–make her feel. You can bring it in, you know.” And here he paused, embarrassed.
“What can I bring in, Mr. Tester? That’s the difficulty, as you say.”
“What you told me the other day. You know. What you have told me before.”
“What I have told you–?”
“That it would put an end to Joscelind! If you can’t work round to it, what’s the good of being–you?” And with this tribute to my powers he took his departure.
VII.
It was all very well of him to be so flattering, but I really did n’t see myself talking in that manner to Lady Vandeleur. I wondered why he didn’t give her this information himself, and what particular value it could have as coming from me. Then I said to myself that of course he had mentioned to her the truth I had impressed upon him (and which by this time he had evidently taken home), but that to enable it to produce its full effect upon Lady Yandeleur the further testimony of a witness more independent was required. There was nothing for me but to go and see her, and I went the next day, fully conscious that to execute Mr. Tester’s commission I should have either to find myself very brave or to find her strangely confidential; and fully prepared, also, not to be admitted. But she received me, and the house in Upper Brook Street was as dismal as Ambrose Tester had represented it. The December fog (the afternoon was very dusky) seemed to pervade the muffled rooms, and her ladyship’s pink lamplight to waste itself in the brown atmosphere. He had mentioned to me that the heir to the title (a cousin of her husband), who had left her unmolested for several months, was now taking possession of everything, so that what kept her in town was the business of her “turning out,” and certain formalities connected with her dower. This was very ample, and the large provision made for her included the London house. She was very gracious on this occasion, but she certainly had remarkably little to say. Still, she was different, or at any rate (having taken that hint), I saw her differently. I saw, indeed, that I had never quite done her justice, that I had exaggerated her stiffness, attributed to her a kind of conscious grandeur which was in reality much more an accident of her appearance, of her figure, than a quality of her character. Her appearance is as grand as you know, and on the day I speak of, in her simplified mourning, under those vaguely gleaming lambris, she looked as beautiful as a great white lily. She is very simple and good-natured; she will never make an advance, but she will always respond to one, and I saw, that evening, that the way to get on with her was to treat her as if she were not too imposing. I saw also that, with her nun-like robes and languid eyes, she was a woman who might be immensely in love. All the same, we hadn’t much to say to each other. She remarked that it was very kind of me to come, that she wondered how I could endure London at that season, that she had taken a drive and found the Park too dreadful, that she would ring for some more tea if I did n’t like what she had given me. Our conversation wandered, stumbling a little, among these platitudes, but no allusion was made on either side to Ambrose Tester. Nevertheless, as I have said, she was different, though it was not till I got home that I phrased to myself what I had detected.