Robert Orange
"A weak man submits to destiny," said Rennes, "a strong one makes his
own. It is what we think of ourselves which determines our fate. If I
regard myself as a poor creature, I shall, no doubt, act the part of a
poor creature. But," he added, with an ironical smile, "it is never too
late to give up one's prejudices. I can't stand by and look on any
longer. I intend to leave England for some years. I hope we may never
meet again. Don't answer me, because there is nothing for you to say.
You have been perfectly kind, perfectly charming, perfectly consistent.
You have never deceived me and you have never deceived yourself."
She interrupted him:
"I hope not. Oh, I hope I have never deceived myself--or you."
"I was grateful for your friendship," he said. "I can't be grateful for
it now."
Agnes drew a long breath and murmured random words about the "time." Was
it getting late?
"Yes," replied Rennes, "too late. Did I ever tell you why my father,
with all his prospects, became a drawing-master? He told me that he had
suffered so much learning why he could never paint, nor hope to paint,
that he was determined to devote his knowledge to the service of
apprentices. It seemed to him such an awful thing to mistake one's
vocation. Now I feel that one of us--perhaps both of us, you and I, are
doing even a worse thing. We are deliberately throwing happiness to the
dogs."
"I don't think so," said Agnes, in a trembling voice. "There is duty,
you know; that is something higher than happiness, I believe."
"Are you so sure?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I envy you. I don't even know what you mean by duty. It seems to me
another name for the tyranny of false sentiment."
"Don't disturb my ideas," she exclaimed, with an appealing gesture.
"Don't say these things. They make me wretched. I can't afford to doubt
and question. One must have a few permanent rules of conduct."
"But if they are fantastic, capricious, insincere?"
"I can't argue. I am not clever. I will not change my views. I dare not.
It would make me hate you."
"You are the slave of convention."
"That may be. That is safer, after all, than being the slave of some
other will stronger than my own. Why do you try to disturb my
life--now--after so many really happy months of friendship?"
"Were they so happy? Agnes, were they happy?"
She hesitated.
"Yes," she said, at last; "relatively, yes."
"It is quite true. Good women drive us to the bad ones."
"Oh! what can you mean? Surely we are saying too much. We shall reproach
ourselves later. I live, again and again, through one conversation. The
phrases come into my mind with every possible shade of significance."
She pushed back her hat, and pressed her hand to her brow, which was
contracting nervously as she spoke.
"I don't wish to be altered by any change in principle," she continued,
"nor distracted, from my plain obligations, into other interests. I
daresay I sound quite heartless and odd. I daresay you won't like me any
more." Her voice faltered, but her lips remained precise. "But one must
know one's mind--one _must_. You don't know yours; that is the whole
trouble, David."
She had never called him by his Christian name before, and now the
forced sternness of her tone gave it almost the accent of a farewell.
"Perhaps we have helped each other," she went on; "at all events, you
have taught me how to look at things. You are clever and original and
all that. I am rather commonplace, and I never have new or surprising
thoughts. The more I learn, the more I grow attached to the ordinary
ways. Once you called me the ideal _bourgeoise_. You were right."
"Not entirely," said Rennes. "You think too much."
"You taught me that. I never used to consider people or notions. I
accepted them without criticism."
"The madness of criticism has entered into you," he said. "It is the
worst, most destructive thing on earth."
"How could I have accepted you--as my friend--without it?" she asked.
"You puzzled me. I tried to understand you. No one had ever puzzled me
before. No one, you may be quite sure, will ever puzzle me, in the same
degree, again."
She gave him a long, tearful glance, in which defiance, reproach,
determination, and a certain cruelty shone like iron under water. He
made a movement toward her. The strength of his more emotional nature
might have made a final assault--not uselessly--on her assumed
"reasonableness." No appeal, no threat could have moved her from the
mental attitude she had decided on--the duty of keeping her word to Lord
Reckage. But she might have been urged to the more candid course of
ascertaining how far his lordship's true happiness was really involved
in the question. At that moment, however, Mrs. Rennes came into the
room. She gave a little cry of surprise when she saw her son. Then she
kissed Agnes, and sat down, looking anxiously from one to the other with
something not unlike grief, not unlike jealousy.
Her life and habits of thought were simple, but she had been highly
educated. She was an accomplished linguist, a good musician, a most
intelligent companion. Things which she could not comprehend she would,
at least, accept on faith. There had never been the shadow of a quarrel
between David and herself. But she felt, by intuition, that Agnes
Carillon had, in some way, affected his life, his work, his whole
nature. She could not blame her, because she knew nothing definite about
the understanding which existed, plainly enough, between her son and
this young lady. She had a horror, however, of flirtation and flirts. It
seemed to her that, under all this talk and correspondence on art,
poetry, scenery, and the like, there was a strong under-current of
emotion. So she smiled upon Agnes with a certain reserve, as though she
were not quite sure whether she had any great reason to feel delighted
at her call. At a glance from David, however, her look softened into
real friendliness.
"I was so surprised to see Mr. Rennes here," said Agnes.
"I am surprised, too," said the older woman.
A restraint fell upon all three. David walked about the room, looking
for things he did not want, and asking questions he did not wish
answered, although he hoped they would interest his mother. But his
spirits soon flagged. The conversation became trivial and absurd.
"Where are you staying?" asked Mrs. Rennes.
"I am with Pensee Fitz Rewes," said Agnes; "she has gone in the carriage
to do a little shopping. She will send it here for me."
The carriage was at that instant announced. David went down the stairs
with Agnes and handed her in. He said nothing. Mrs. Rennes watched the
pair from the window and nodded her farewell with much gravity. When
David returned to her, he found her reading peacefully Trollope's last
novel. It was for these graces that he loved her most. He scribbled
letters at her writing-table for the next hour. Then he spoke--
"I am going," said he, "to the East. I need a change. I suppose it will
mean six months."
"But how you will enjoy it!"
"And what will you do?"
"I live from day to day, my dear. I am quite contented."
"This journey is not a mere caprice. I have been contemplating it for
some time," he said.
Mrs. Rennes' hair was white and her long, equine countenance, sallow.
When her feelings were stirred, she showed it only by a cloudy pallor
which would steal over her face as a kind of veil--separating her from
the rest of mortals.
"One has to get away from England," continued Rennes: "one has to get
away from one's self."
"And where is your self now?" she asked, not venturing to look at him.
"With that girl," he answered, suddenly; "with that girl."
"Do you love her?"
"I don't know. I suppose I do. Oh! I would love her if I could ever be
absolutely sincere. But this I do know--I can't see her married to that
fellow Reckage. So I must go away."
"I am afraid she is a coquette--a serious coquette, my dear boy."
"She is nothing of the kind. She is a true woman. Don't talk about
her."
CHAPTER VIII
Sara had spent the morning crying bitterly, in bed. Her letter to the
Duke of Marshire was on the table by her side. From time to time she had
taken it up, turned it over, shed fresh tears, and reproached herself
for indecision. She held at bay every thought of Robert Orange, and
formed the resolve of banishing him from her mind for ever. When the
time came to dress for luncheon, she brightened a little, for the
prospect of disguising her true feelings in the presence of Lord Reckage
and Pensee appealed to that genius for mischief which animated the whole
current of her life. _To baffle the looker-on_ seemed not merely a great
science, but the one game of wits which could never lose its interest.
She was not insincere. She thought that lies, as a rule, were clumsy
shifts, and abominable. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly
conscious of her talent for misleading others, she had never brought
herself to think well of deception. She would have liked to feel that
her heart was an open book for her friends to read. It would have been
pleasant, she believed, if all could have known always that she
practised a delicate art and played, consummately, fine comedy whenever
she found spectators. But a solitary, mismanaged childhood, and the
constant sense of being in many ways a foreigner, had taught her the
penalty of frankness where sympathy could not supply, from its own
knowledge, the unutterable half which makes up every confidence. The
bitter pleasures of a conscience which caresses its worst burden were
the only real ones of her daily existence. When she could say, at the
end of the day, "I have fooled them all: they think I am happy, I am
not: they think Reckage amuses me, he doesn't. They think I delight in
these dull dinners and balls, I hate them," a sort of exultation--the
pride of a spirit singing under torture--would fill her whole being. All
youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of this instinct of
dissimulation. The world--to a young mind--appears controlled by
elderly, suspicious, hateful custodians ever on the alert to capture, or
thwart, every high enterprise and every passionate desire. There seems a
vast conspiracy against happiness--the withered, dreary wiseacres in
opposition to the joy, the daring, the beauty, the reckless vitality of
souls still under the spell of spring. When poor Sara could escape from
town into the country, mount her horse, and tear through a storm, the
neighbours compared her to a witch on a broomstick, and, shaking their
heads, would foresee much sipping of sorrow by the spoonful in the
future of Lord Garrow. To-day, however, the young lady assumed her most
demure expression, and received the guests at luncheon as though she had
never learnt the meaning of tears nor joined the gale in spirit.
Sir Piers Harding was the last to arrive. He was a thick-set, livid man
with an unyielding smile and the yellow eyes of one whom rich diet
rather than an angry god had rendered melancholy.
"You haven't changed in the least," he said, considering Lord Garrow
with some resentment.
"Ah, well!" replied his lordship, "eleven years do not make much
difference at my time of life. You, however, are decidedly greyer. Where
have you been hiding yourself? I think you were foolish to leave
England. Gladstone was remarking but the other day, 'Harding was always
so cocksure.' 'And wasn't he right?' said I. 'Of course,' said he; 'and
that was the worst of him. He _was_ right. Who could stand it?' That's
the world. It's devilish unappreciative of the truth."
Reckage, much bored by the old men, stood by Pensee's chair, where he
could watch Sara and angle for her glance. When it happened that she
smiled at him a little--either in mere friendship or mockery--he felt a