“Why?” he said, turning angrily upon her. “Am I a fish, or a musical box? Why have I less right to the common ties of social life than another man?”
“Of course you have as much right.” she said, surprised that her remark should have hurt him. “But I have known you so long as you are at present—”
“What am I at present?”
“A sort of inspired hermit,” she replied, undaunted. “It seems as if marriage would he an impossible condescension on your part. That is only a fancy, I know. If you could find any woman worthy of you and able to make you happy, I think you ought to marry. I should be delighted to see you surrounded by a pack of naughty children. You would never be an ogre any more then.”
“Do you think I am an ogre, then? Eh?”
“Sometimes. To-day, for instance, I think you are decidedly ogreish. I hope I am not annoying you with my frivolity. I am unusually frivolous to-day.”
“Hm! You seem to me to be speaking to the point pretty forcibly. So you would like to see me married?”
“Happily married, yes. I should be glad to think that your lonely, gloomy lodging was changed for a cheerful hearth; and that you had some person to take care of your domestic arrangements, which you are quite unfit to manage for yourself. Now that you have suggested the idea, it grows on me rapidly. May I set to work to find a wife for you?”
“Of course it does not occur to you,” he said, with unabated ill humor, “that I may have chosen for myself already — that I might actually have some sentimental bias in the business, for instance.”
Mary, much puzzled, put on her spectacles, and tried to find from his expression whether he was serious or joking. Failing, she laughed, and said, “I don’t believe you ever gave the matter a thought.”
“Just so. I am a privileged mortal, without heart or pockets. When you wake up and clap your hands after the coda of Mr Jack’s symphony, you have ministered to all his wants, and can keep the rest to yourself, love, money, and all.”
She could no longer doubt that he was in earnest: his tone touched her. “I had no idea—” she began. “Will you tell me who it is; or am I not to ask?”
He grinned in spite of himself. “What do you think of Mrs Simpson?” said he.
Mary’s mood had taken so grave a turn that she was for a moment unable to follow this relapse into banter.
“But,” she said, looking shocked, “Mr Simpson is alive.”
“Hence my unhappiness.” said Jack, with a snarl, disgusted at her entertaining his suggestion.
“I suppose,” she said slowly, after a pause of some moments, “that you mean to make me feel that I have no business with your private affairs. I did not mean—”
“You suppose nothing of the sort,” said he, losing his temper. “When have I concealed any of my affairs from you?”
“Then you do not really intend to — I mean, the person you said you were in love with, is a myth.”
“Pshaw! I never said I was in love with anyone.”
“I might have known as much if I had thought for a moment. I am very dull sometimes.”
This speech did not satisfy Jack. “What do you mean by that,” he said testily. “Why might you have known? I never said I was in love, certainly. Have I said I was not in love?
“Come,” she said gaily. “You shall not play shuttlecock with my brains any longer. Answer me plainly. Are you in love?”
“I tell such things as that to sincere friends only.”
Mary suddenly ceased to smile, and made no reply.
“Well, if you are my friend, what the devil do you see in my affairs to laugh at? You can be serious enough with other people.”
“I did not mean to laugh at your affairs.”
“What are you angry about?”
“I am not angry. moment ago you reproached me because I thought you wished to repel my curiosity. The reproach seemed to me to imply that you considered me a friend worthy of your confidence.”
“So I do.”
“And now you tell me that I am an insincere friend.”
“I never said anything of the kind.”
“You implied it. However, there is no reason why you should tell me anything unless you wish to. I do not complain, of course; your affairs are your affairs and not mine. But I do not like to be accused of insincerity. I have always been as sincere with you as I know how to be.”
For the next minute Jack walked on in silence, with his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent towards the ground. They were crossing a treeless part of the park, unoccupied save by a few sooty sheep. The afternoon sun had driven the loiterers into the shade; and there was no sound except a distant rattle of traffic from the north, and an occasional oar-splash from the south. Jack stopped, and said without looking up: “Tell me this. Is all that business between you and Herbert broken off and done with?”
“Completely.”
“Then listen to me,” he said, taking an attitude in which she had seen him once or twice before, when he had been illustrating his method of teaching elocution. “I am not a man to play the part of a lover with grace. Nature gave me a rough frame that I might contend the better with a rough fortune. Nevertheless I have a heart and affections like other men; and those affections have centred themselves on you.” Mary blanched, and looked at him in terror. “You are accustomed to my ardent temper; but I do not intend that you shall suffer from bad habits of mine, engendered by a life of solitude and the long deferring of my access, through my music, to my fellow creatures. No: I am aware of my failings, and shall correct them. You know my position; and so I shall make no boast of it. You may think me incapable of tenderness,but I am not: you will never have to complain that your husband does not love you.” He paused and looked at Mary’s face.
She had never had a thought of marrying Jack. Now that he had asked her to do so she felt that refusal would cause a wound she dared not inflict: she must must sacrifice herself to his demand. To fill the empty place in Jack’s heart seemed to her a duty laid on her. She summoned all her courage and endurance to say yes with the thought that she would not live long. Meanwhile, Jack was reading her face.
“I have committed my last folly,” he said, in a stirring voice, but with. his habitual abruptness. “Henceforth I shall devote myself to the only mistress I am fitted for, Music. She has not many such masters.
Mary, yielding to an extraordinary emotion, burst into tears.
“Come,” he said: “it is all over. I did not mean to to frighten you. I have broken with the world now; and my mind is the clearer and the easier for it. Why need you cry?”
She recovered herself, trying to find something to say to him. In her disquietude she began to speak before her agitation had subsided. “It is not,” she said with difficulty, “that I am ungrateful or insensible. But you do not know how far you stand beyond other—”
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly. “I understand. You are right: I have no business in the domestic world, and must stick to music and Mrs Simpson to the end of the chapter. Come along; and think no more of it. I will put you into a cab and send you home.”
She turned with him; and they went together towards the Marble Arch: he no longer moody, but placid and benevolent: she disturbed, silent, and afraid to meet his gaze. It was growing late. One of the religious congregations which hold their summer meetings in the park had assembled; and their hymn could be heard, softened by distance. Jack hummed a bass to the tune, and looked along the line of trees that shut out the windows