Part 21 (1/2)
They stared at one another for some moments longer. Then Erskine sat down on the roller and folded his arms and looked extremely serious, though already the corners of his mouth were beginning to twitch.
”Now, you know, Tiny, I'm _in loco parentis_ as long as you're in England. In this one matter you've no business to chaff me. Honestly, now, is it the truth that Lord Manister has asked you to marry him, and that you have said him nay?”
”It is the truest truth I ever uttered in my life. I refused him point-blank,” added Tiny, with eyes once more lowered, as though the memory were not unmixed with shame, ”and before his own mother!”
”In the presence of Lady Dromard?”
She nodded solemnly, but with a blush.
”Good Lord!” murmured Erskine. ”And I was a.s.s enough to think you were leading him on!”
She whispered, ”And so I was.”
For one moment Erskine stared at her more seriously than ever; then the reaction came, and she saw him shaking. He shook until the tears were in his eyes; and when he was rid of them he perceived the same thing in Tiny's eyes, but obviously not from the same cause.
”_I_ don't think it's such a joke,” said the girl, in the voice of one pained when in pain already. ”I am pretty well ashamed of myself, I can tell you. If you really consider yourself responsible for me I think you might let me tell you something about it; for you must tell Ruth--I daren't. But if you're going to laugh ... let me tell you it's no laughing matter to me, now I've done it.”
”Forgive me,” said Holland instantly; ”I am a brute. Do tell me anything you care to; I promise not to laugh unless you do. And I might be able to help you.”
”Ah, you would if anybody could; but n.o.body can; I have behaved just scandalously, and I know it as well as you do, now that it's too late.
Yet I wish that you knew all about it, Erskine!” She looked at him wistfully. ”You understand things so. Would it bore you if I were to tell you how the whole thing happened?”
The gilt hands of the church clock made it ten minutes to six when Erskine shook his head and bent it attentively. When the hour struck he had opened his mouth only once, to answer her question as to how much he knew of her affair with Lord Manister in Melbourne. He had known for a day and a half as much as Ruth knew; and he did not learn much more now, for the girl could speak more freely of recent incidents, and dwelt princ.i.p.ally on those of that afternoon, beginning with Lady Dromard's extraordinary attentiveness on the cricket field.
”I felt there was something behind that, though I didn't know what; I could only be sure that she had her eye on me. However, I took a tremendous vow to face whatever came without moving a muscle. I think I succeeded, on the whole, but I was on the edge of a panic when she took me upstairs. I wanted to clear! I had qualms!”
She was startlingly candid on another point.
”I also made up my mind to behave as prettily as possible, just to show her. I was really pleased with the interest she seemed to take in what I told her about the bush, and I was quite delighted to see a galar again.
But I needn't have made the fuss I did in taking it out of its cage; that was purely put on, and all the time I was mortally afraid that it would peck me. Yet I suppose,” added Tiny, after some moments, ”you won't believe me when I tell you that I am ashamed of all that already?”
Erskine declared that there was nothing in the world to be ashamed of; on the contrary, in his opinion she was perfectly justified in all she had done. With kind eyes upon her, he added what he very nearly meant, that he was proud of her; and his remark wrought a change in her expression which convinced him finally that at least she was not proud of herself.
”Ah, you weren't there, Erskine,” said Christina sadly, her blue eyes clouded with penitence; ”you don't know how kind poor Lady Dromard was with all her dodges! She said it would be more comfortable to have tea up there. Comfortable was the last thing I felt in my heart, but I never let her see that; and besides, I didn't as yet guess what was coming.
Even when she wanted me to tell her my own name, I couldn't be sure that she suspected me. I wasn't sure until she asked me whether the girl had got over it, when I knew from her voice. And I saw then that she really rather liked me, and half wished it to be; and I was sorry because I liked her; and though I spoke my mind to her about her son, I should have made a clean breast of everything to her if he hadn't come in just then. I should have told her straight that I didn't care _that_ for him--not now--and that I had been flirting with him disgracefully just to try to make him smart as I had smarted. That's the whole truth of it, Erskine; and I meant to tell her so in another second, because I couldn't stand her kissing me and crying, and all that. I should have been crying myself next moment. But just then _he_ came in, and I remembered everything. I remembered, too, what she had had to do with it, on her own showing; and when I saw what she wanted me to say I think I became possessed.”
Her brother-in-law was very curious to know all that Christina had said, but she would not tell him. She merely remarked that he would think all the worse of her if he knew, even though at the moment she could hardly remember any one thing that she had said. Then she paused, and recalled a little, and the little made her blush.
”I didn't come well out of it,” she declared.
Erskine threw discredit on her word in this particular matter; he sniffed an extravagant remorse.
”Talk of hitting a man when he's down!” exclaimed Tiny miserably. ”I hit Lady Dromard when the tears were in her eyes, and Lord Manister when he was. .h.i.tting himself. He took it splendidly. He is a gentleman. I don't care what else he is--lord or no lord, he would always be a perfect gentleman. What's more, I am very sorry for him.”
”Why on earth be sorry for him?” asked Erskine with a touch of irritation; for when Tiny spoke of Lady Dromard's tears, her own eyes swam with them; and to do a thing like this and start crying over it the moment it was done seemed to Erskine a bad sign. The event was so very fresh, and so entirely contrary to his own most recent apprehensions, that at present his only feeling in the matter was one of profound satisfaction. But the symptoms she showed of relenting already interfered not a little with that satisfaction, while, even more than by the remark that had prompted his question, he was alarmed by her answer to it:
”Because I believe he does care for me, a little bit, in his own way--or he thinks he does, which comes to the same thing; and because, when all's said and done, I have treated him like a little fiend!”
”My good girl!” said Holland uneasily, ”I should remember how he treated you.”