Part 27

"That's women's old nonsense," observed Duplay, twirling his mustache knowingly. "They often fall in love with young men and always try to pass it off by calling them boys."

"Of course I haven't your experience, uncle," she rejoined, passing into the sarcastic vein.

"And if you are," he went on, reverting to the special case, "I don't see why you make his path smooth to Janie Iver."

"Some people are capable of self-sacrifice in their love."

"Yes, but I shouldn't think you'd be one of them," said the Major rather rudely. He looked at her curiously. Her interest in Harry was unmistakable, her championship of him had become thorough-going, fierce, and (to the Major's mind) utterly unscrupulous. Was he faced with a situation so startlingly changed? Did his niece object to turning Harry off his throne because she harbored a hope of sharing it with him? If that were so, and if the hope had any chance of becoming a reality, Duplay would have to reconsider his game. But what chance of success could there be? She would (he put it bluntly in his thoughts) only be making a fool of herself.

The Imp screwed up her little lean face into a grimace which served effectually to cover any sign of her real feelings. She neither admitted nor denied the charge levied against her. She was bewildering her uncle, and she found, as usual, a genuine pleasure in the pursuit. If she were also bewildering herself a little with her constant thoughts of Harry Tristram and her ardent championship of his cause, well, in the country there is such a thing as being too peaceful, and up to the present time the confusion of feeling had been rather pleasant than painful.

"I don't really know what I feel," she remarked the next moment. "But you can read women, uncle, you've often said so, and I dare say you really know more about what I feel than I do myself." A grossness of innocence was her new assumption. "Now judging from what I do and look--that's the way to judge, isn't it, not from what I say?--what do you think my real inmost feelings are about Mr Tristram?"

If the Major had been asked what his real inmost feelings about his niece were at the moment, he would have been at some difficulty to express them decorously. She was back at fifteen--a particularly exasperating child of fifteen. Her great eyes, with their mock gravity, were fixed on his irritated face. He would have agreed absolutely with Mr Cholderton's estimate of the evil in her, and of its proper remedy.

Wherein Duplay was derided his niece made very plain to him; wherein his words had any effect was studiously concealed. Yet she repeated the words when he had, with a marked failure of temper, gone his way and slammed the door behind him. "In love with Harry Tristram!" Mina found the idea at once explanatory and picturesque. Why otherwise was she his champion? She paused (as they say) for a reply. How better could she draw to herself a part and a share in the undoubtedly romantic situation in which she grouped the facts of the case? By being in love with Harry she became part of the drama; and she complicated the drama most delightfully. Janie knew nothing--she knew everything. Janie hesitated--what if she did not hesitate? A big role opened before her eyes. What if it were very unlikely that Harry would reciprocate her proposed feelings? The Imp hesitated between a natural vexation and an artistic pleasure. Such a failure on his part would wound the woman, but it would add pathos to the play. She became almost sure that she could love Harry; she remained uncertain whether he should return the compliment. And, after all, to be Lady Tristram of Blent! That was attractive. Or (in case Harry suffered defeat) to be Lady Tristram of Blent in the sight of heaven (a polite and time-honored way of describing an arrangement not recognized on earth, and quite adaptable to the present circumstances); that had a hardly less alluring, and at least a rarer, flavor. The Imp looked down on Blent with an access of interest. Monsieur Zabriska had left her with unexhausted reserves of feeling. Moreover she could not be expected to help her uncle if she were seriously attached to Harry. The moral of all this for the Major was that it is unwise to suggest courses of action unless you are willing to see them carried out, or channels of emotion unless you are prepared to find them filled.

"Some people are capable of self-sacrifice in their love." That would mean being his champion still, and letting him marry Janie Iver. She did not object much to her own part, but she cavilled suddenly at Janie's--or at Harry's relation to Janie. Would it be better to share adversity with him? Perhaps. But, after all, she did not fancy him in adversity. The third course recommended itself--victory for him, but not Janie. Who then?

At this point Mina became sensible of no more than the vaguest visions, not at all convincing even to herself. By a sad deficiency of imagination, she could give no definiteness to a picture of Harry Tristram making love. He had never, to her mind, looked like it with Janie Iver, even while he had purported to be doing it. He never looked like it at all, not even as though he could do it. Stay, though! That new way of his, which she had marked when he came up the hill to thank her for the flowers, was an exception. But the new way had been for his mother's sake. Now a man cannot be in love with his mother. The question grew more puzzling, more annoying, more engrossing still.

While full of these problems, refusing indeed to be anything else, Mina was surprised by a visit from Miss Swinkerton, who sought a subscription for the scheme of which an inadequate account has already been given. Miss Swinkerton (for some reason she was generally known as Miss S., a vulgar style of description possessing sometimes an inexplicable appropriateness) was fifty-five, tall and bony, the daughter of a Rear-Admiral, the sister of an Archdeacon. She lived for good works and by gossip. Mina's sovereign (foreigners will not grasp the cheap additional handsomeness of a guinea) duly disbursed, conversation became general--that is to say, they talked about their neighbors.

"A hard young man," said Miss S. (Why be more genteel than her friends?) "And if Janie Iver thinks he's in love with her----"

"What do you mean by being in love, Miss Swinkerton?"

Miss Swinkerton had always been rather surprised, not to say hurt, when the Catechism asked for an explanation of what she meant by the Lord's Prayer. This question of Mina's was still more uncalled for.

"You know enough English, my dear----"

"It's not a question of English," interrupted Mina, "but of human nature, Miss Swinkerton."

"When I was a girl there were no such questions."

"What about Lady Tristram, then?"

There was flattery in this, ten or fifteen years of flattery. Miss S. was unmoved.

"I am happy to say that Lady Tristram never called at Seaview." Miss S.'s house was called Seaview--Sea-Backview would have been a more precise description.

"I call him in love with Janie Iver. He must want to marry her or----"

"They do say that money isn't very plentiful at Blent. And there'll be the Death Duties, you know."

"What are they?" asked Mina.

"Like stamps," explained Miss S., vaguely. "For my part, I think it's lucky he is what he is. There's been enough of falling in love in the Tristram family. If you ask me who is in love with her, of course it's poor young Broadley. Well, you know that, as you're always driving up to Mingham with her."

"We've only been three or four times, Miss Swinkerton."

"Six, I was told," observed Miss S., with an air of preferring accuracy. "Oh, I should be very pleased to see him married to Janie--Mr Tristram, I mean, of course--but she mustn't expect too much, my dear. Where's your uncle?"

"At Fairholme, I expect," answered the Imp demurely. As a matter of fact the Major had gone to Exeter on a business errand.