The Three Miss Kings

One afternoon, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and Eleanor paid calls, Elizabeth and Patty went for the last time to Myrtle Street, to pack up the bureau and some of their smaller household effects in preparation for the men who were to clear the rooms on the morrow. Mr. Yelverton accompanied them, and lingered in the small sitting-room for awhile, helping here and there, or pretending to do so. For his entertainment they boiled the kettle and set out the cheap cups and saucers, and they had afternoon tea together, and Patty played the Moonlight Sonata; and then Elizabeth bade her husband go and amuse himself at his club and come back to them in an hour's time. He went, accordingly; and the two sisters pinned up their skirts and tucked up their sleeves, and worked with great diligence when he was no longer there to distract them. They worked so well that at the end of half an hour they had nothing left to do, except a little sorting of house linen and books. Elizabeth undertaking this business, Patty pulled down her sleeves and walked to the window; and she stood there for a little while, leaning her arm on the frame and her head on her arm.

"Paul Brion is at home, Elizabeth," she said, presently.

"Is he, dear?" responded the elder sister, who had begun to think (because her husband thought it) that it was a pity Paul Brion, being so hopelessly cantankerous, should be allowed to bother them any more.

"Yes. And, Elizabeth, I hope you won't mind – it is very improper, I know – but I shall go and see him. It is my last chance. I will go and say good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre, and then I will run up to his room and speak to him – just for one minute. It is my last chance," she repeated; "I shall never have another."

"But, my darling – "

"Oh, don't be afraid" – drawing herself up haughtily – "I am not going to be quite a fool. I shall not throw myself into his arms. I am simply going to apologise for cutting him on Cup Day. I am simply going to set myself right with him before I go away – for his father's sake."

"It is a risky experiment, my dear, whichever way you look at it. I think you had better write."

"No. I have no faith in writing. You cannot make a letter say what you mean. And he will not come to us – he will not share his father's friendship for Kingscote – he was not at home when you and Kingscote called on him – he was not even at Mrs. Aarons's on Friday. There is no way to get at him but to go and see him now. I hear him in his room, and he is alone. I will not trouble him long – I will let him see that I can do without him quite as well as he can do without me – but I must and will explain the horrible mistake that I know he has fallen into about me, before I lose the chance for the rest of my life."

"My dear, how can you? How can you tell him your true reason for cutting him? How can you do it at all, without implying more than you would like to imply? You had better leave it, Patty. Or let me go for you, my darling."

But Patty insisted upon going herself, conscientiously assuring her sister that she would do it in ten minutes, without saying anything improper about Mrs. Aarons, and without giving the young man the smallest reason to suppose that she cared for him any more than she cared for his father, or was in the least degree desirous of being cared for by him. And this was how she did it.

Paul was sitting at his table, with papers strewn before him. He had been writing since his mid-day breakfast, and was half way through a brilliant article on "Patronage in the Railway Department," when the sound of the piano next door, heard for the first time after a long interval, scattered his political ideas and set him dreaming and meditating for the rest of the afternoon. He was leaning back in his chair, with his pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, and his legs stretched out rigidly under the table, when he heard a tap at the door. He said "Come in," listlessly, expecting Betsy's familiar face; and when, instead of an uninteresting housemaid, he saw the beautiful form of his beloved standing on the threshold, he was so stunned with astonishment that at first he could not speak.

"Miss – Miss Yelverton!" he exclaimed, flinging his pipe aside and struggling to his feet.

"I hope I am not disturbing you," said Patty, very stiffly. "I have only come for a moment – because we are going away, and – and – and I had something to say to you before we went. We have been so unfortunate – my sister and brother-in-law were so unfortunate – as to miss seeing you the other day. I – we have come this afternoon to do some packing, because we are giving up our old rooms, and I thought – I thought – "

She was stammering fearfully, and her face was scarlet with confusion and embarrassment. She was beginning already to realise the difficulty of her undertaking.

"Won't you sit down?" he said, wheeling his tobacco-scented arm-chair out of its corner. He, too, was very much off his balance and bewildered by the situation, and his voice, though grave, was shaken.

"No, thank you," she replied, with what she intended to be a haughty and distant bow. "I only came for a moment – as I happened to be saying good-bye to Mrs. M'Intyre. My sister is waiting for me. We are going home directly. I just wanted – I only wanted" – she lifted her eyes, full of wistful appeal, suddenly to his – "I wanted just to beg your pardon, that's all. I was very rude to you one day, and you have never forgiven me for it. I wanted to tell you that – that it was not what you thought it was – that I had a reason you did not know of for doing it, and that the moment after I was sorry – I have been sorry every hour of my life since, because I knew I had given you a wrong impression, and I have not been able to rectify it."

"I don't quite understand – " he began.

"No, I know – I know. And I can't explain. Don't ask me to explain. Only believe," she said earnestly, standing before him and leaning on the table, "that I have never, never been ungrateful for all the kindness you showed us when we came here a year ago – I have always been the same. It was not because I forgot that you were our best friend – the best friend we ever had – that I – that I" – her voice was breaking, and she was searching for her pocket-handkerchief – "that I behaved to you as I did."

"Can't you tell me how it was?" he asked, anxiously. "You have nothing to be grateful for, Miss Patty – Miss Yelverton, I ought to say – and I cannot feel that I have anything to forgive. But I should like to know – yes, now that you have spoken of it, I think you ought to tell me – why you did it."

"I cannot – I cannot. It was something that had been said of you. I believed it for a moment, because – because it looked as if it were true – but only for a moment. When I came to think of it I knew it was impossible."

Paul Brion's keen face, that had been pale and strained, cleared suddenly, and his dark eyes brightened. He was quite satisfied with this explanation. He knew what Patty meant as well as if there had been but one word for a spade, and she had used it – as well, and even better than she could have imagined; for she forgot that she had no right or reason to resent his shortcomings, save on the ground of a special interest in him, and he was quick to remember it.

"Oh, do sit down a moment," he said, pushing the arm-chair a few inches forward. He was trying to think what he might dare to say to her to show how thankful he was. It was impossible for her to help seeing the change in him.

"No," she replied, hastily pulling herself together. "I must go now. I had no business to come here at all – it was only because it seemed the last chance of speaking to you. I have said what I came to say, and now I must go back to my sister." She looked all round the well-remembered room – at the green rep suite, and the flowery carpet, and the cedar chiffonnier, and the Cenci over the fire-place – at Paul's bookshelves and littered writing-table, and his pipes and letters on the chimney-piece, and his newspapers on the floor; and then she looked at him with eyes that would cry, though she did her very best to help it. "Good-bye," she said, turning towards the door.

He took her outstretched hand and held it "Good-bye – if it must be so," he said. "You are really going away by the next mail?"

"Yes."

"And not coming back again?"

"I don't know."

"Well," he said, "you are rich, and a great lady now. I can only wish with all my heart for your happiness – I cannot hope that I shall ever be privileged to contribute to it again. I am out of it now, Miss Patty."

She left her right hand in his, and with the other put her handkerchief to her eyes. "Why should you be out of it?" she sobbed. "Your father is not out of it. It is you who have deserted us – we should never have deserted you."

"I thought you threw me over that day on the racecourse, and I have only tried to keep my place."

"But I have told you I never meant that."

"Yes, thank God! Whatever happens, I shall have this day to remember – that you came to me voluntarily to tell me that you had never been unworthy of yourself. You have asked me to forgive you, but it is I that want to be forgiven – for insulting you by thinking that money and grandeur and fine clothes could change you."

"They will never change me," said Patty, who had broken down altogether, and was making no secret of her tears. In fact, they were past making a secret of. She had determined to have no tender sentiment when she sought this interview, but she found herself powerless to resist the pathos of the situation. To be parting from Paul Brion – and it seemed as if it were really going to be a parting – was too heartbreaking to bear as she would have liked to bear it.

"When you were poor," he said, hurried along by a very strong current of emotions of various kinds, "when you lived here on the other side of the wall – if you had come to me – if you had spoken to me, and treated me like this then– "

She drew her hand from his grasp, and tried to collect herself. "Hush – we must not go on talking," she said, with a flurried air; "you must not keep me here now."

"No, I will not keep you – I will not take advantage of you now," he replied, "though I am horribly tempted. But if it had been as it used to be – if we were both poor alike, as we were then – if you were Patty King instead of Miss Yelverton – I would not let you out of this room without telling me something more. Oh, why did you come at all?" he burst out, in a sudden rage of passion, quivering all over as he looked at her with the desire to seize her and kiss her and satisfy his starving heart.

"You have been hard to me always – from first to last – but this is the very cruellest thing you have ever done. To come here and drive me wild like this, and then go and leave me us if I were Mrs. M'Intyre or the landlord you were paying off next door. I wonder what you think I am made of? I have stood everything – I have stood all your snubs, and slights, and hard usage of me – I have been humble and patient as I never was to anybody who treated me so in my life before – but that doesn't mean that I am made of wood or stone. There are limits to one's powers of endurance, and though I have borne so much, I can't bear this. I tell you fairly it is trying me too far." He stood at the table fluttering his papers with a hand as unsteady as that of a drunkard, and glaring at her, not straight into her eyes – which, indeed, were cast abjectly on the floor – but all over her pretty, forlorn figure, shrinking and cowering before him. "You are kind enough to everybody else," he went on; "you might at least show some common humanity to me. I am not a coxcomb, I hope, but I know you can't have helped knowing what I have felt for you – no woman can help knowing when a man cares for her, though he never says a word about it. A dog who loves you will get some consideration for it, but you are having no consideration for me. I hope I am not rude – I'm afraid I am forgetting my manners, Miss Patty – but a man can't think of manners when he is driven out of his senses. Forgive me, I am speaking to you too roughly. It was kind of you to come and tell me what you have told me – I am not ungrateful for that – but it was a cruel kindness. Why didn't you send me a note – a little, cold, formal note? or why did you not send Mrs. Yelverton to explain things? That would have done just as well. You have paid me a great honour, I know; but I can't look at it like that. After all, I was making up my mind to lose you, and I think I could have borne it, and got on somehow, and got something out of life in spite of it. But now how can I bear it? – how can I bear it now?"

Patty bowed like a reed to this unexpected storm, which, nevertheless, thrilled her with wild elation and rapture, through and through. She had no sense of either pride or shame; she never for a moment regretted that she had not written a note, or sent Mrs. Yelverton in her place. But what she said and what she did I will leave the reader to conjecture. There has been too much love-making in these pages of late. Tableau. We will ring the curtain down.

Meanwhile Elizabeth sat alone when her work was done, wondering what was happening at Mrs. M'Intyre's, until her husband came to tell her that it was past six o'clock, and time to go home to dress for dinner. "The child can't possibly be with him," said Mr. Yelverton, rather severely. "She must be gossiping with the landlady."

"I think I will go and fetch her," said Elizabeth. But as she was patting on her bonnet, Patty came upstairs, smiling and preening her feathers, so to speak – bringing Paul with her.

CHAPTER XLVII.

A FAIR FIELD AND NO FAVOUR

When Mrs. Duff-Scott came to hear of all this, she was terribly vexed with Patty. Indeed, no one dared to tell her the whole truth, and to this day she does not know that the engagement was made in the young bachelor's sitting-room, whither Patty had sought him because he would not seek her. She thinks the pair met at No. 6, under the lax and injudicious chaperonage of Elizabeth; and, in the first blush of her disappointment and indignation, she was firmly convinced, though too well bred to express her conviction, that the son had taken advantage of the father's privileged position to entrap the young heiress for the sake of her thirty thousand pounds. Things did not go smoothly with Patty, as they had done with her sister. Elizabeth herself was a rock of shelter and a storehouse of consolation from the moment that the pair came up to the dismantled room where she and her husband were having a lovers' tête-à-tête of their own, and she saw that the long misunderstanding was at an end; but no one else except Mrs. M'Intyre (who, poor woman, was held of no account), took kindly to the alliance so unexpectedly proposed. Quite the contrary, in fact. Mr. Yelverton, notwithstanding his late experiences, had no sympathy whatever for the young fellow who had flattered him by following his example. The philanthropist, with all his full-blown modern radicalism, was also a man of long descent and great connections, and some subtle instinct of race and habit rose up in opposition to the claims of an obscure press writer to enter his distinguished family. It was one thing for a Yelverton man to marry a humbly-circumstanced woman, as he had himself been prepared to do, but quite another thing for a humbly-circumstanced man to aspire to the hand of a Yelverton woman, and that woman rich and beautiful, his own ward and sister. He was not aware of this strong sentiment, but believed his objections arose from a proper solicitude for Patty's welfare. Paul had been rude and impertinent, wanting in respect for her and hers; he had an ill-conditioned, sulky temper; he lived an irregular life, from hand to mouth; he had no money; he had no reputable friends. Therefore, when Paul (with some defiance of mien, as one who knew that it was a merely formal courtesy) requested the consent of the head of the house to his union with the lady of his choice, the head of the house, though elaborately polite, was very high and mighty, and – Patty and Elizabeth being out of the way, shut up together to kiss in comfort in one of the little bedrooms at the back – made some very plain statements of his views to the ineligible suitor, which fanned the vital spark in that young man's ardent spirit to a white heat of wrath. By-and-by Mr. Yelverton modified those views, like the just and large-hearted student of humanity that he was, and was brought to see that a man can do no more for a woman than love her, be he who he may, and that a woman, whether queen or peasant, millionaire or pauper, can never give more than value for that "value received." And by-and-by Paul learned to respect his brother-in-law for a man whose manhood was his own, and to trust his motives absolutely, even when he did not understand his actions. But just at first things were unpleasant. Mr. Yelverton touched the young man's sensitive pride, already morbidly exercised by his consciousness of the disparity between Patty's social position and fortunes and his own, by some indirect allusion to that painful circumstance, and brought upon himself a revengeful reminder that his (Mr. Yelverton's) marriage with Elizabeth might not be considered by superficial persons to be entirely above suspicion. Things were, indeed, very unpleasant. Paul, irritated in the first rapture of happiness, used more bad language (in thought if not in speech) than he had done since Cup Day, when he went back to his unfinished article on Political Patronage; Patty drove home with a burning sense of being of age and her own mistress; and Elizabeth sat in the carriage beside her, silent and thoughtful, feeling that the first little cloud (that first one which, however faint and small, is so incredible and so terrible) had made its appearance on the hitherto stainless horizon of her married life.

Mrs. Duff-Scott, when they got home, received the blow with a stern fortitude that was almost worse than Mr. Yelverton's prompt resistance, and much worse than the mild but equally decided opposition of that punctilious old gentleman at Seaview Villa, who, by-and-by, used all his influence to keep the pair apart whom he would have given his heart's blood to see united, out of a fastidious sense of what he conceived to be his social and professional duty. Between them all, they nearly drove the two high-spirited victims into further following the example of the head of the house – the imminent danger of which became apparent to Patty's confidante Elizabeth, who gave timely warning of it to her husband. This latter pair, who had themselves carried matters with such a very high hand, were far from desiring that Paul and Patty should make assignations at the Exhibition with a view to circumventing their adversaries by a clandestine or otherwise untimely marriage (such divergence of opinion with respect to one's own affairs and other people's being very common in this world, the gentle reader may observe, even in the case of the most high-minded people).

"Kingscote," said Elizabeth, when one night she sat brushing her hair before the looking-glass, and he, still in his evening dress, lounged in an arm-chair by the dressing-table, talking to her, "Kingscote, I am afraid you are too hard on Patty – you and the Duff-Scotts – keeping her from Paul still, though she has but three days left, and I don't believe she will stand it."

"My dear, we are not hard upon her, are we? It is for her sake. If we can tide over these few days and get her away all right, a year or two of absence, and all the new interests that she will find in Europe and in her changed position, will probably cure her of her fancy for a fellow who is not good enough for her."

"That shows how little you know her," said Elizabeth, with a melancholy smile. "She is not a girl to take 'fancies' in that direction, and having given her heart – and she has not given it so easily as you imagine – she will be as faithful to him – as faithful" – casting about for an adequate illustration – "as I should have been to you, Kingscote."

"Perhaps so, dear. I myself think it very likely. And in such a case no harm is done. They will test each other, and if they both stand the test it will be better and happier for them to have borne it, and we shall feel then that we are justified in letting them marry. But at present they know so little of each other – she has had no fair choice of a husband – and she is too good to be thrown away. I feel responsible for her, don't you see? And I only want her to have all her chances. I will be the last to hinder the course of true love when once it proves itself to be true love."

"We did not think it necessary to prove our love – and I don't think we should have allowed anybody else to prove it – by a long probation, Kingscote."

"My darling, we were different," he said, promptly.

She did not ask him to explain wherein they were different, he and she, who had met for the first time less than four months ago; she shared the usual unconscious prejudice that we all have in favour of our own sincerity and trustworthiness, and wisdom and foresight, and assumed as a matter of course that their case was an exceptional one. Still she had faith in others as well as in herself and her second self.

"I know Patty," she said, laying her hair brush on her knee and looking with solemn earnestness into her husband's rough-hewn but impressive face – a face that seemed to her to contain every element of noble manhood, and that would have been weakened and spoiled by mere superficial beauty – "I know Patty, Kingscote, better than anyone knows her except herself. She is like a little briar rose – sweet and tender if you are gentle and sympathetic with her, but certain to prick if you handle her roughly. And so strong in the stem – so tough and strong – that you cannot root her out or twist her any way that she doesn't feel naturally inclined to grow – not if you use all your power to make her."

"Poor little Patty!" he said, smiling. "That is a very pathetic image of her. But I don't like to figure in your parable as the blind genius of brute force – a horny-handed hedger and ditcher with a smock frock and a bill-hook. I am quite capable of feeling the beauty, and understanding the moral qualities of a wild rose – at least, I thought I was. Perhaps I am mistaken. Tell me what you would do, if you were in my place?"

Elizabeth slipped from her chair and down upon her knees beside him, with her long hair and her long dressing-gown flowing about her, and laid her head where it was glad of any excuse to be laid – a locality at this moment indicated by the polished and unyielding surface of his starched shirt front. "You know I never likened you to a hedger and ditcher," she said, fondly. "No one is so wise and thoughtful and far-sighted as you. It is only that you don't know Patty quite yet – you will do soon – and what might be the perfect management of such a crisis in another girl's affairs is likely not to succeed with her – just simply and only for the reason that she is a little peculiar, and you have not yet had time to learn that."

"It is time that I should learn," he said, lifting her into a restful position and settling himself for a comfortable talk. "Tell me what you think and know yourself, and what, in your judgment, it would be best to do."

"In my judgment, then, it would be best," said Elizabeth, brief interval given up to the enjoyment of a wordless tête-à-tête, "to let Patty and Paul be together a little before they part. For this reason – that they will be together, whether they are let or not. Isn't it preferable to make concessions before they are ignominiously extorted from you? And if Patty has much longer to bear seeing her lover, as she thinks, humiliated and insulted, by being ignored as her lover in this house, she will go to the other extreme – she will go away from us to him – by way of making up to him for it. It is like what you say of the smouldering, poverty-bred anarchy in your European national life – that if you don't find a vent for the accumulating electricity generating in the human sewer – how do you put it? – it is no use to try to draw it off after the storm has burst."

"Elizabeth," said her husband, reproachfully, "that is worse than being called a hedger and ditcher."