“This is very extraordinary,” said Mr. Lind irresolutely. “Is it some foolish quarrel, or what is the matter? Pray let us have no more unpleasantness.”
“You need fear none from me,” said Douglas. “I do not propose to continue my acquaintance with Miss Lind.”
“Mr. Douglas has proposed to marry me; and I have refused him,” said Marian. “He has lost his temper and insulted me. I think you ought to tell him to go away.”
“Gently, Marian, gently. What am I to believe about this?”
“What I have told you,” said Douglas, “I confirm on my honor, which you can weigh against the pretences of a twice perjured woman.”
“Sholto!”
“I have to speak plainly on my own behalf, Mr. Lind. I regret that you were not in a position this morning to warn me of your daughter’s notable secret.”
“If it is a secret, and you are a gentleman, you will hold your tongue,” interposed Elinor, sharply.
“Papa,” said Marian: “I became engaged yesterday to Mr. Conolly. I told Mr. Douglas this in order to save him from making me a proposal. That is the reason he has forgotten himself. I had not intended to tell you so suddenly; but this misunderstanding has forced me to.”
“Engaged to Mr. Conolly!” cried Mr. Lind. “I begin to fear that —— Enga — —” He took breath, and continued, to Marian: “I forbid you to entertain any such engagement. Sholto: there is evidently nothing to be gained by discussing this matter in hot blood. It is some girlish absurdity — some — some — some—”
“I apologize for having doubted the truth of the excuse,” said Douglas; “but I see that I have failed to gauge Miss Lind’s peculiar taste. I beg you to understand, Mr. Lind, that my pretensions are at an end. I do not aspire to the position of Mr. Conolly’s rival.”
“You are already in the position of Mr. Conolly’s unsuccessful rival; and you fill it with a very bad grace,” said Elinor.
“Pray be silent, Elinor,” said Mr. Lind. “This matter does not concern you. Marian: go to your room for the present. I shall speak to you afterwards.”
Marian flushed, and repressed a sob. “I wish I were under his protection now,” she said, looking reproachfully at Douglas as she crossed the room.
“What can you expect from a father but hostility?” said Elinor, bitterly. “You are a coward, like all your sex,” she added, turning to Douglas. Then she suddenly opened the door, and passed out through it with Marian, whilst the housemaids fled upstairs, the footman shrank into a corner of the landing, and the page hastily dragged the cook down to the kitchen.
The two men, left together in the drawingroom, were for some moments quite at a loss. Then Mr. Lind, after a preliminary cough or two, said: “Sholto: I cannot describe to you how shocked I am by what I have just heard. I am deeply disappointed in Marian. I trusted her implicitly; but of course I now see that I have been wrong in allowing her so much liberty. Evidently a great deal has been going on of which I had not any suspicion.”
Douglas said nothing. His resentment was unabated; but his rage, naturally peevish and thin in quality, was subsiding, though it surged back on him at intervals. But now that he no longer desired to speak passionately, he would not trust himself to speak at all. Suddenly Mr. Lind broke out with a fury that astonished him, preoccupied as he was.
“This — this fellow must have had opportunities of thrusting himself into her society of which I knew nothing. I thought she barely knew him. And if I had known, could I have suspected her of intriguing with an ill-bred adventurer! Yes, I might: my experience ought to have warned me that the taint was in her blood. Her mother did the same thing — left the position I had given her to run away with a charlatan, disgracing me without the shadow of an excuse or reason except her own innate love for what was low. I thought Marian had escaped that. I was proud of her — placed un — unbounded confidence in her.”
“She has struck me a blow,” said Douglas, “the infernal treachery —— .” He checked himself, and after a moment resumed in his ordinary formal manner. “I must leave you, Mr. Lind. I am quite unable at present to discuss what has passed. Any conventional expressions of regret would be —— Goodnight.”
He bowed and left the room. Mr. Lind, taken aback, did not attempt to detain him or even return his bow, but stood biting his lips with a frown of discomfiture and menace. When he was alone, he paced the room several times. Then he procured some writing materials and sat down before them. He wrote nothing, but, after sitting for some time, he went upstairs. Passing Marian’s room he listened. The sharp voice and restless movements of his niece were the only sounds he heard. They seemed to frighten him; for he stole on quickly to his own room, and went to bed. Even there he could hear a shrill note of conversation occasionally from the opposite room, where Marian was sitting on a sofa, trying to subdue the hysteria which had been gaining on her since her escape from the balcony; whilst Elinor, seated on the corner of a drawer which projected from the dressing-table, talked incessantly in her most acrid tones.
“Henceforth,” she said, “Uncle Reginald is welcome to my heartiest detestation. I have been waiting ever since I knew him for an excuse to hate him; and now he has given me one. He has taken part — like a true parent — against you with a self-intoxicated fool whom he ought to have put out of the house. He has told me to mind my own business. I shall be even with him for that some day. I am as vindictive as an elephant: I hate people who are not vindictive: they are never grateful either, only incapable of any enduring sentiment. And Douglas! Sholto Douglas! The hero, the Newdigate poet, the handsome man! What a noble fellow he is when a little disappointment rubs his varnish off! I am glad I called him a coward to his face. I am thoroughly well satisfied with myself altogether: at last I have come out of a scene without having forgotten the right thing to say. You never see people in all their selfishness until they pretend to love you. See what you owe to your loving suitor, Sholto Douglas! See what you owe to your loving father, Reginald Lind!”
“I do not think that my father should have told me to leave the room,” said Marian. “It was Sholto’s place to have gone, not mine.”
“Mr. Lind, who has so suddenly and deservedly descended from ‘papa’ to ‘my father,’ judiciously sided with the stronger and richer party.”
“Nelly: I shall be as unhappy after this as even Sholto can desire. I feel very angry with papa; and yet I have no right to be. I suppose it is because I am in the wrong. I deceived him about the engagement.”
“Bosh! You didnt tell him because you knew you couldnt trust him; and now you see how right you were.”
“Even so, Nelly, I must not forget all his past care of me.”
“What care has he ever taken of you? He was very little better acquainted with you than he was with me, when you came to keep house for him and make yourself useful. Of course, he had to pay for your board and lodging and education. The police would not have allowed him to leave you to the parish. Besides, he was proud of having a nice, pretty daughter to dispose of. You were quite welcome to be happy so long as you did not do anything except what he approved of. But the moment you claim your independence as a grown woman, the moment you attempt to dispose of yourself instead of letting him dispose of you! Bah! I might have been my father’s pet, if I had been a nonentity. As it was, he spared no pains to make me miserable; and as I was only a helpless little devil of a girl, he succeeded to his heart’s content. Uncle Reginald will try to do exactly the same tomorrow, he will come and bully you, instead of apologizing as he ought. See if he doesnt!”