The Woman with One Hand, and Mr. Ely's Engagement

Mrs. Clive was speechless. She looked at Miss Truscott with imploring eyes. But that young lady was tranquilly engaged with the contents of her plate.

"Poor girl!"

It was a study to see Mr. Ely's face when the old lady made this innocent remark.

"I beg your pardon! What did you say?"

"I said, poor girl! I hope she has done nothing wrong."

"Who's done nothing wrong?"

"The young lady you mentioned. Miss Bertha, I think you said. I am not acquainted with her surname."

Mr. Ely was silent. He was not a man gifted with a keen sense of humour, and was not at all clear in his own mind that the old lady was not amusing herself at his expense. Mrs. Clive, conscious that something was wrong, went painfully plodding on.

"I trust, Mr. Ely, that I have not, unintentionally, said something to hurt your feelings. Is the young lady a friend of yours?"

"What young lady?"

Mr. Ely placed his knife and fork together, with a little clatter, on his plate. Was she at it again? This was more than a man could stand.

"Miss Bertha-the young lady you mentioned."

"Bertha's not a lady."

"Not a lady! Dear me! One of the lower classes! I perceive! Now I understand. Ah, I'm afraid that from them anything may be expected nowadays."

Mr. Ely turned pink, not with suppressed mirth, but with what was very much like rage. For some moments an unprejudiced spectator might have debated in his own mind as to whether he was not about to be profane. But if it were so, he conquered his impious tendency, and adopted another line of conduct instead. He rose from his seat. "If you will allow me, I'll go outside for a change of air"; and without waiting for the required permission he marched through the French window out on to the lawn. The old lady turned to her niece-

"My dear Lily, what have I said or done?"

"My dear aunt, I believe that Bertha, in the slang of the Stock Exchange, signifies the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. I suspect that Mr. Ely imagines that you have been amusing yourself at his expense."

Mrs. Clive was aghast.

"Go to him, Lily. Don't leave him alone in his present state of mind. He might return at once to town!"

Miss Truscott rose with her most tranquil air.

"We might survive his departure if he did."

But her aunt was shocked.

"Lily, it pains me to hear such language from your lips. You are now approaching one of the most solemn moments of your life. Rise to the occasion, child, and show that, although still a child in years, you have within you the wherewithal with which to make a woman in good time."

Miss Truscott looked as if she could have said something if she would, but she refrained. She left the room without a word.

CHAPTER IV

MR. ELY WOOES

The interview between Mr. Ely and the object of his heart's devotion was not so solemn as it might have been. Possibly that was in a measure owing to what had gone before. But it must be owned that Miss Truscott's mood was hardly attuned to the occasion. We must also, at the same time, allow that Mr. Ely's demeanour was hardly that of the ideal wooer.

"Your aunt seems to have a nice idea of business! I've heard a few things, but she beats all! I thought she was getting at me, upon my word I did!"

This was scarcely the remark with which to open a tender interview. Miss Truscott said nothing. She was seated in a low garden-chair, hatless, her little feet peeping from under the hem of her summer gown. She seemed sufficiently cool just then, but her silence did not appear to be altogether to Mr. Ely's liking. He himself did not seem to be as cool as he might have been.

"I believe, Miss Truscott, that Mr. Ash has told you what's brought me here."

Mr. Ely's tone seemed even waspish-not loverlike at all.

"Indeed!" Miss Truscott just parted her lips and let the word drop out, that was all.

"May I ask what I am to understand by that?"

Just then a fat white dog, of the doormat species, appeared on the top of the steps. Miss Truscott addressed this animal-

"Pompey! Pompey! Good dog! Come here!"

The "good dog" referred to slowly waddled across the grass, and on reaching Miss Truscott's chair was raised to the seat of honour upon that lady's knee.

"Are you interested in dogs, Mr. Ely? If so, I am sure you must like Pompey. He generally bites strangers at first, but perhaps after a time he won't bite you!"

"I'll take care he doesn't get a chance-either first or last."

"Why not? He bit a piece of cloth out of the Curate's trousers the other day, but Mr. Staines says that he doesn't think his teeth quite met in the calf of his leg."

Mr. Ely gasped. His temperature seemed rapidly to increase.

"I did not come here to talk about dogs: and you'll excuse my mentioning that you have not yet informed me as to whether Mr. Ash has told you what I did come for."

"Let me see!" Miss Truscott took out her guardian's letter and referred to it before Mr. Ely's distended eyes. "Hum-hum-Pompey, lie down! There, now Pompey has torn it all to bits!" As indeed the animal had, and was now chewing some of the fragments as though they were a sort of supplementary meal. "What shall I do? Pompey has the most extraordinary taste. It runs in the family, I think. Do you know that his mother once ate nearly the whole of a pair of my old shoes?"

Mr. Ely wiped his brow. He was becoming very warm indeed. He seated himself in another garden chair. For a moment he contemplated drawing it closer to Miss Truscott's side, but the thought of Pompey and his extraordinary taste-which ran in his family-induced him to refrain.

"Miss Truscott, I'm a business man, and I like to do things in a business kind of way."

Mr. Ely paused. He felt that he was feeling his way. But the young lady disarranged his plans.

"By the way, Mr. Ely, have you been up Regent Street just lately?"

"Been up Regent Street?"

"Can you tell me if there are any nice things in the shop-windows?"

Mr. Ely did not exactly gasp this time. He choked down something in his throat. What it was we cannot say.

"Miss Truscott, I'm a business man-"

"You said that before." The words were murmured as Miss Truscott stroked Pompey's woolly head.

"Said it before! I say it again! I wish you'd allow me to get right through."

"Right through what?"

"Right through what! Right through what I have to say!"

"Oh, go on, pray. I hope I haven't interrupted you?"

"Interrupted me!" Mr. Ely snorted; no other word will describe the sound he made. "I say, I'm a business man-"

"Third time of asking!"

Mr. Ely got up. He looked very cross indeed. Pompey snarled. That faithful animal seemed to scent battle in the air.

"Well, I'm-hanged!"

We fear that Mr. Ely would have preferred another termination, but he contented himself with "hanged." Miss Truscott looked up. She allowed her long, sweeping eyelashes gradually to unveil her eyes. She regarded Mr. Ely with a look of the sweetest, most innocent surprise.

"Mr. Ely! Whatever is there wrong?"

Mr. Ely was obliged to take a step or two before he could trust himself to speak. As he was sufficiently warm already the exercise did not tend to make him cool. Under the circumstances, he showed a considerable amount of courage in coming to the point with a rush.

"Miss Truscott, I want a wife!"

"You want a what?"

"A wife! Don't I say it plain enough? I want a wife!"

"I see. You want a wife." With her calmest, coolest air Miss Truscott continued stroking Pompey's head. "Did you notice how they are wearing the hats in town?"

Mr. Ely sprang-literally sprang! – about an inch and a half from the ground. "What the dickens do I know about the hats in town?"

"Mr. Ely! How excited you do get! I thought everybody knew about the hats in town-I mean, whether they wear them on the right side or the left."

Mr. Ely was not an excitable man as a rule, but he certainly did seem excited now. His handkerchief, which he had kept in his hand since the commencement of the interview, he had kneaded into a little ball which was hard as stone.

"Miss Truscott, I'll-I'll give a sovereign to any charity you like to name if you'll stick to the point for just two minutes."

"Hand over the sovereign!"

Mr. Ely was taken aback. Miss Truscott held out her small, white hand with a promptitude which surprised him.

"I-I said that I would give a sovereign to any charity you like to name if you'll stick to the point for just two minutes."

"Cash in advance, and I'll keep to any point you like to name for ten."

Mr. Ely was doubtful. Miss Truscott looked at him with eyes which were wide enough open now. Her hand was unflinchingly held out. Mr. Ely felt in the recesses of his waistcoat pocket. He produced a sovereign purse, and from this sovereign purse he produced a coin.

"It's the first time I ever heard of a man having to pay a sovereign to ask a woman to be his wife!"

"Hand over the sovereign!" She became possessed of the golden coin. "This sovereign will be applied to the charitable purpose of erecting a monument over Pompey's mother's grave. Now, Mr. Ely, I'm your man."

Mr. Ely seemed a little subdued. The business-like way in which he had been taken at his word perhaps caused him to feel a certain respect for the lady's character. He reseated himself in the garden-chair.

"I've already said that I want a wife."

"Do you wish me to find you one? I can introduce you to several of my friends. I know a young lady in the village, aged about thirty-eight, who has an impediment in her speech, who would make an excellent companion for your more silent hours."

"The wife I want is you."

"That is very good of you, I'm sure."

There was a pause. The lady, with a little smile, tranquilly tickled Pompey with the sovereign she had earned. The gentleman fidgeted with his handkerchief.

"Well, Miss Truscott, am I to be gratified?"

"Why do you want me? Won't some one else do as well?"

Immediately the gentleman became a little rose.

"May I ask you for an answer to my question?"

"You haven't asked me a question yet."

"Will you be my wife?"

The question was put in a rather louder key than, in such cases, is understood to be the rule. Miss Truscott raised her head, and for some moments kept her glance fixed upon the gentleman, as though she were trying to read something in his face. Then she lowered her glance and made answer thus-

"Frankly-you say you are a business man-let us, as you suggest, understand each other in a business kind of way. In asking me to be your wife, you are not asking for-love?"

As she spoke of love her lips gave just the tiniest twitch.

"I believe that a wife is supposed to love her husband-as a rule."

"In your creed love comes after marriage?"

"At this present moment I'm asking you to be my wife."

"That's exactly what I understand. You're not even making a pretence of loving me?"

"Miss Truscott, as you put it, I'm a business man. I have money, you have money-"

"Let's put the lot together and make a pile. Really, that's not a bad idea on the whole." It was the young lady who gave this rather unexpected conclusion to his sentence. Then she looked at him steadily with those great eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him he could not understand. "I suppose that all you want from me is 'Yes'; and that in complete indifference as to whether I like you or do not?"

"If you didn't like me you wouldn't be sitting here."

"Really, that's not a bad idea again. You arrive at rapid conclusions in your own peculiar way. I suppose if I told you that I could like a man-love him better than my life-you would not understand."

"That sort of thing is not my line. I'm not a sentimental kind of man. I say a thing and mean a thing and when I say I'll do a thing it's just as good as done."

"Then all you want me to be is-Mrs. Ely?"

"What else do you suppose I want you to be? It's amazing how even the most sensible women like to beat about the bush. Here have I asked you a good five minutes to be my wife, and you're just coming to the point. Why can't you say right out-Yes or No."

Miss Truscott shrugged her shoulders.

"I suppose it doesn't matter?"

"What doesn't matter?"

"What I say."

"By George, though, but it does!"

Miss Truscott leaned her head back in her chair. She put her hand before her mouth as if to hide a yawn. She closed her eyes. She looked more than half asleep.

"Then I will."

"Will what?"

"Say 'Yes.'"

"You mean that you will be my wife? It's a bargain, mind!"

"It is a bargain. That's just the proper word to use."

"That's all right. Then I'll send a wire to Ash to let him know it's done."

"Yes, send a wire up to town to let him know it's done."

Mr. Ely moved towards the house. From her voice and manner Miss Truscott still seemed more than half asleep; but hers was a curious kind of sleepiness, for in the corner of each of her closed eyelids there gleamed something that looked very like a drop of diamond dew. Prosaic people might have said it was a tear.

CHAPTER V

MR. ELY DEPARTS

Mr. Ely returned to town on the following morning, and Miss Truscott was an engaged young woman. The interval between the moment of her becoming engaged and the departure of the gentleman was not-we are rather at a loss for the proper word to use-let us put it, was not exactly so pleasant as it might have been.

Although the man and the maid had plighted troth they certainly did not seem like lovers; they scarcely even seemed to be friends. The position seemed to be a little strained. Mr. Ely noticed this as the day wore on. He resented it.

In the garden after dinner he relieved his mind. The lady was seated, the admirable Pompey on her knee, so engaged in reading as to appear wholly oblivious that the gentleman was in her neighbourhood. For some time Mr. Ely fidgeted about in silence. The lady did not appear even to notice that. At last he could keep still no longer.

"You seem very fond of reading?"

"I am." The lady did not even take her eyes off her book to answer him, but read tranquilly on.

"I hope I'm not in your way."

"Not at all"; which was true enough. He might have been miles away for all the notice the lady appeared to take of him.

"One has to come into the country to learn manners."

"One has to come into the country to do what?"

As if conscious that he was skating on thin ice, Mr. Ely endeavoured to retrace his steps.

"Considering that only this morning you promised to be my wife, I think that you might have something to say."

Partially closing the book, but keeping one slender finger within it to mark the place, the lady condescended to look up.

"Why should you think that?"

"I believe it is usual for persons in our situation to have something to say to each other, but I don't know, I'm sure."

The lady entirely closed her book and placed it on a little table at her side. "What shall we talk about?"

The gentleman was still. Under such circumstances the most gifted persons might have found it difficult to commence a conversation.

"Are you interested in questions of millinery?"

"In questions of millinery!"

"Or do you take a wider range, and take a living interest in the burning questions of the progress of revolution and the advance of man?"

Mr. Ely felt clear in his own mind that the lady was chaffing him, but he did not quite see his way to tell her so.

"I'm fond of common sense."

"Ah, but common sense is a term which conveys such different meanings. I suppose, that, in its strictest definition, common sense is the highest, rarest sense of all. I suppose that you use the term in a different way."

This was exasperating. Mr. Ely felt it was.

"I suppose you mean that I'm a fool."

"There again-who shall define folly? The noblest spirits of them all have been by the world called fools."

Miss Truscott gazed before her with a rapt intensity of vision, as though she saw the noble spirits referred to standing in the glow of the western sky.

"I must say you have nice ideas of sociability."

"I have had my ideas at times. I have dreamed of a social intercourse which should be perfect sympathy. But they were but dreams."

Mr. Ely held his peace. This sort of thing was not at all his idea of conversation. It is within the range of possibility to suspect that his idea of perfect conversation was perfect shop-an eternal reiteration of the ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs of stocks and shares. However that might be, it came to pass that neither of these two people went in a loverlike frame of mind to bed. But this acted upon each of them in different ways.

For instance, it was hours after Miss Truscott had retired to her chamber before the young lady placed herself between the sheets. For a long time she sat before the open window, looking out upon the star-lit sky. Then she began restlessly pacing to and fro. All her tranquillity seemed gone.

"I have been ill-mannered-and a fool!"

And again there was that hysteric interlacing of her hands which seemed to be a familiar trick of hers when her mind was much disturbed.

"I have made the greatest mistake of all. I have promised myself to a man I-loathe."

She shuddered when she arrived at that emphatic word.

"A man with whom I have not one single thing in common; a man who understands a woman as much as-less than Pompey does. I believe that selfish Pompey cares for me much more. A man whose whole soul is bound up in playing conjuring tricks with stocks and shares. And where are all my dreams of love? Oh! they have flown away!"

Then she threw herself upon the bed and cried.

"Oh, Willy! Willy! why have you been false? If you had been only true! I believe that I am so weak a thing that if you should call to me to-morrow, I would come."

After she had had enough of crying-which was only after a very considerable period had elapsed-she got up and dried her eyes-those big eyes of hers, whose meaning for the life of him Mr. Ely could not understand!

"What does it matter? I suppose that existence is a dead level of monotony. If even for a moment you gain the heights, you are sure to fall, and your state is all the worse because you have seen that there are better things above."

This was the lady's point of view. The gentleman's was of quite another kind. As he had said, sentiment was not at all his line. When he reached his room, he wasted no time getting into bed. While he performed his rapid toilet he considered the situation in his own peculiar way.

"That's the most impudent girl I ever met."

This he told himself as he took off his coat.

"I like her all the better for it, too."

Here he removed his vest.

"She doesn't care for me a snap-not one single rap. I hate your spoony kind of girl, the sort that goes pawing a man about. If she begins by pawing you she'll be pawing another fellow soon. Oh! I've seen a bit of it, I have!"

Here he removed his collar and tie.

"What I want's a woman who can cut a dash-not the rag-bag sort, all flounces and fluster-but a high-toned dash, you know. The sort of woman that can make all the other women want to have her life; who can sit with two hundred other women in a room and make 'em all feel that she doesn't know that there's another person there. By Jove! she'd do it, too!"

Mr. Ely laughed. But perhaps-as he was a sort of man who never laughed, in whom the bump of humour was entirely wanting-it would be more correct to describe the sound he made as a clearing of the throat. At this point he was engaged in details of the toilet into which it would be unwise to enter. But we really cannot refrain from mentioning what a very little man he looked in his shirt. Quite different to the Mr. Ely of the white waistcoat and frockcoat.

The next morning he took his departure. He had been under the painful necessity of spending one day away from town; he could not possibly survive through two. In fact he tore himself away by the very earliest train-in his habits he was an early little man-not with reluctance but delight: by so early a train, indeed, that he had left long before his lady-love came down. Mrs. Clive did the honours and sped the parting guest. She, poor lady, was not used to quite such early hours and felt a little out of sorts, but she did her best.

"Shall I give dear Lily a message when you are gone?"

Mr. Ely was swallowing ham and eggs as though he were engaged in a match against time. A healthy appetite for breakfast was one of his strong points.

"Tell her that dog of hers is ever so much too fat."

Pompey, who was at that moment reclining on a cushion on the rug, was perhaps a trifle stout-say about as broad as he was long. Still, Mrs. Clive did not like the observation all the same.

"Pompey is not Lily's dog, but mine."

"Ah! then if I were you, I'd starve the beggar for a week."

Mrs. Clive bridled. If she had a tender point it was her dog.

"I can assure you, Mr. Ely, that the greatest care is taken in the selection of dear Pompey's food."

"That's where it is, you take too much. Shut him in the stable, with a Spratt's biscuit to keep him company."

"A Spratt's biscuit! – Pompey would sooner die!"

"It wouldn't be a bad thing for him if he did. By the look of him he can't find much fun in living-it's all that he can do to breathe. It seems to me every woman must have some beast for a pet. An aunt of mine has got a cat. Her cat ought to meet your dog. They'd both of them be thinner before they went away."

It is not surprising that Mr. Ely did not leave an altogether pleasant impression when he had gone. That last allusion to his aunt's cat rankled in the old lady's mind.

"A cat! My precious Pompey!" She raised the apoplectic creature in her arms; "when you have such an objection to a cat! It is dreadful to think of such a thing, even when it is spoken only in jest."

But Mr. Ely had not spoken in jest. He was not a jesting kind of man.

When Miss Truscott made her appearance she asked no questions about her lover. If he had sent a message, or if he indeed had gone, she showed no curiosity upon these points at all. She seemed in a dreamy frame of mind, as if her thoughts were not of things of life but of things of air. She dawdled over the breakfast-table, eating nothing all the while. And when she had dismissed the meal she dawdled in an easy chair. Such behaviour was unusual for her, for she was not a dawdling kind of girl.

CHAPTER VI

THE WOOING IN THE WOOD

In the afternoon she took a book and went for a ramble out of doors. It was a novel of the ultra-sentimental school, and only the other day the first portion of the story had impressed her with the belief that it was written by a person who had sounded the heights and depths of life. She thought differently now. It was the story of a woman who, for love's sake, had almost-but not quite-thrown her life away This seemed to her absurd, for, in the light of her new philosophy, she thought she knew that the thing called love was non-existent in the world. And for love's sake to throw one's life away!

It was not until she reached a leafy glade which ran down to the edge of the cliff that she opened the book. She seated herself on a little mossy bank with her back against the trunk of a great old tree, and placed the book on her knees. After she had read for a time she began to be annoyed. The heroine, firmly persuaded that life without love was worthless, was calmly arranging to sacrifice as fine prospects as a woman ever had, so as to enable her to sink to the social position of her lover, an artisan. The artisan belonged to the new gospel which teaches that it is only artisans who have a right to live. He was a wood-engraver, she was the daughter of a hundred earls. As a wood-engraver-who declined to take large prices for his work-he considered that she was in an infinitely lower sphere than he: a state of degradation to be sorrowed over at the best. So she was making the most complicated arrangements to free herself from the paternity-and wealth-of the hundred earls.

Miss Truscott became exceedingly annoyed at the picture of devotion presented by these two, and threw the book from her in disgust.