Chapter Thirteen. The Old Love and the New.

I drew back crushed and humiliated.

Her tone of withering scorn showed that she no longer looked upon me with favour.

“For years I have loved you, Muriel,” I said in as calm a tone as I could, “but I have feared to speak until to-day. Now that I have declared the truth cannot you trust me?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head determinedly. “It is useless. I cannot love you.”

“Then you have tried and failed?” I gasped in dismay, looking into her white, agitated face.

“Yes, I have tried,” she answered after a pause.

“And do you doubt me?” I demanded quickly.

“Without mutual confidence there can be no love between us,” she responded in a dismal tone.

“But why can you not trust me? Surely I have given you no great offence?” I said, bewildered at her strange attitude.

“I regret that you should have declared love to me, that’s all,” she answered, quite philosophically.

“Why? Is it such a very extraordinary proceeding?”

“Yes,” she replied petulantly. “You know well that marriage is entirely out of the question. What would your friends say if you hinted at such a thing?”

“The opinion of my friends is nothing to me,” I replied. “I am fortunately not dependent upon them. No. I feel sure that is not the reason of your answer. You have some secret reason. What is it, Muriel?”

“Have I not already told you that I am loved?”

“And you reciprocate this man’s love?” I said harshly.

She made no response, but I saw in this silence an affirmative.

“Who is he?” I inquired quickly.

“A stranger.”

“And you have confidence in him?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and her breast heaved and fell quickly.

“No, no,” she cried at last. “Say no more. This subject is painful to both of us. Do not let us discuss it.”

“But I love you,” I again repeated. “I love you, Muriel!”

“Then forget me,” she answered, in a low, hoarse voice. “Forget me; for we can in future be only acquaintances—not even friends.”

“Then you have promised your lover to end your friendship with me. He is jealous of me!” I cried. “Come, speak the truth,” I added harshly.

“I have spoken the truth,” she responded, in a voice rather calmer than before.

“And you discard my love?” I said, in tones of bitter reproach.

“Yes,” she said, “it is true. I discard your love. You have spoken, and I give you my answer straightforwardly, much as it pains me.”

“But will you not reconsider?” I urged. “When you reflect that I love you, Muriel, better than all the world besides, that I will do all in my power to secure your happiness, that you shall be my sole thought night and day, will your heart not soften towards me? Will you never reflect that you treated me, your oldest friend, a little unfairly?”

“If in the future I reproach myself, I alone shall bear the pricks of conscience,” she answered, with surprising calmness.

“And this, then, is your decision?”

“Yes,” she replied, in a blank, monotonous voice. “I am honoured by your offer, but am compelled to decline it.”

Her words fell as a blow upon me. I had been confident, from the many little services she had rendered me, the interest she had taken in the arrangement of my bachelor’s quarters, and her eagerness always to please me, that she loved me. Yet her sudden, inexplicable desire to end our friendship shattered all my hopes. She loved another. It was my own fault, I told myself. I had neglected her too long, and it was but what I might have expected.

In silence we walked on, emerging at length into the high road, and turning into that well-known hostelry the Greyhound, where we had tea in that great room so well patronised by excursionists on Sundays. We talked but little, both our hearts being too full for words. Our utterances were mere trivialities, spoken in order that those around us should not remark upon our silence. It was a dismal meal, and I was glad when we emerged again and entered the well-kept gardens of Hampton Court, bright with their beds of old-world flowers.

I was never tired of wandering through that historic, time-mellowed, old pile, where the sparrows twitter in the quiet court-yards, the peacocks strut across the ancient gardens, and the crumbling sundials mark the time, as they have done daily through three centuries.

In my gloomy mood, however, I fear I answered her chatter abruptly in monosyllables. It struck me as strange that she could so quickly forget and become suddenly light-hearted. Indeed, it seemed as though she were glad that the ordeal she had feared had passed, and was delighted with her freedom.

The bright air of the riverside was fresh and exhilarating, but the sun soon went down, and when it grew chill we took train back to Waterloo, and drove to Frascati’s, where we dined.

“And is this actually to be our last dinner together?” I asked, as the soup was brought, for I recollected the many snug little meals we had eaten together in times gone by, and how she had enjoyed them as a change after the eternal joints of beef or mutton as supplied to the assistants at Madame Gabrielle’s.

“It must be,” she sighed.

“And you do not regret?”

Her lips quivered, and she glanced at me without replying.

“There is some mystery in all this, Muriel,” I said, bending across to her earnestly. “Why do you refuse to explain to me?”

“Because I cannot. If I could, I would.”

“Then if after to-night we are to part,” I went on bitterly, “mine will be a dismal future.”

“You have your own world,” she said. “You will quickly forget me among your gay friends, as you have already forgotten me times without number.”

I could not bear her reproaches; her words cut me to the quick.

“No. I have never forgotten you,” I protested quickly. “I shall never forget.”

“Did you not utter those same words to that woman who fascinated you a few months ago?” she suggested with a slight curl of the lip.

“If I did, it was because I was beneath the spell of her beauty—a beauty so mysterious as to be almost supernatural,” I answered. “I love you nevertheless,” I added in a low tone, so that none should overhear. “I swear I do.”

“It is useless,” she exclaimed, with a frown of displeasure. “Further discussion of the subject will lead to no alteration of my decision. You know me well enough to be aware that if I am determined no argument will turn me from my purpose.”

“But my future depends upon you, Muriel,” I cried in despair. “Through years—ever since the old days in Stamford—I have admired you, and as time has progressed, and you have become more beautiful and more refined, my admiration has developed into a true and honest love. Will you never believe me?”

“No,” she answered. “I can never believe you. Besides, we could never be happy, for our paths in life will lie in very different directions.”

“That’s all foolish sentiment,” I exclaimed. “I have to ask permission of no one as to whom I may marry. Why will you not reconsider this decision of yours? You know well—you must have seen long, long ago—that I love you.”

“I have already told you my intention,” she responded with a frigidity of manner that again crushed all hope from my heart. “To-night must be our last night together. Afterwards we must remember one another only as acquaintances.”

“No, no!” I protested. “Don’t say that.”

“It must be,” she responded decisively. All argument appeared useless, so I remained silent.

It was nine o’clock before we left the restaurant, too early for her to return to Madame Gabrielle’s, therefore at my invitation she accompanied me to my chambers, and sat with me in my sitting-room for a long time. So long had we been platonic friends that I could not bring myself to believe that that was really her farewell visit. She sat in the same chair in which Aline had sat on the first night when she had so strangely come into my life, and now again she chatted on merrily, as in the old days, inquiring after mutual friends in Stamford, and what changes had been effected in sleepy, lethargic Duddington. I had told her all the latest gossip of the place, when suddenly I observed—

“Just now everybody in the village is taken up with the new curate.”

“No curate gets on well for very long with old Layton,” she remarked. “Mr Farrar was a splendid preacher, and they said it was because the rector was jealous of his talents that he got rid of him.”

“Yes, Farrar was a clever fellow, but Yelverton, the new man, is an awfully good chap. He was at college with me, and you may judge my astonishment when I met him, after years of separation, in my mother’s drawing-room.”

“What did you say his name was?” she inquired, with knit brows.

“Yelverton—Jack Yelverton,” I answered.

“Yelverton!” She uttered the name in a strange voice, and seemed to shrink at its pronouncement.

“Yes. He’s a thoroughly good fellow. He was in London—believes in social reform among the poor, and all that sort of thing. Do you know him?”

“I—well, yes. If it is the same man, I’ve heard of him. He did a lot of good down in the East End somewhere,” she answered evasively.

“I suppose all the girls will be running after him,” I laughed. “It’s really extraordinary what effect a clerical collar has upon some girls; and mothers, too, for the matter of that.”

“They think the Church a respectable profession, perhaps,” she said, joining in my laughter.

“Well, if you’re a clergyman you are not compelled to swindle people; a proceeding which nowadays is the essence of good business,” I said. “The successful commercial man is the fellow who is able to screw the largest amount of profits out of his customers; the rich stockbroker is merely a lucky gambler; and the company promoter is but a liar whose ingenuity is such that by exaggeration he obtains money out of the public’s pockets to float his bubble concerns. It is difficult indeed nowadays to find an honest man in trade, and the professions are not much better off. Medicine is but too often quackery; the law has long been synonymous with swindling; parliamentary Honours are too often the satisfying of unbounded egotism; and the profession of the Church is more often than not followed by men to whom a genteel profession is a necessity, whose capabilities are not sufficient to enable them to enter journalism or literature, and who profess in the pulpit what they don’t practise in private life.”

She laughed again.

“That’s a sweeping condemnation,” she declared. “But there’s a great deal of truth in it. Trade is mostly dishonest, and the more clever the rogue the larger the fortune he amasses.”

“Yes,” I argued; “the man who has for years gained huge profits from the public—succeeded in hoodwinking them with some patent medicine, scented soap, or other commodity out of which he has made eighty per cent, profit—is put forward as the type of the successful business man. There is really no morality in trade in these days.”

“And this Mr Yelverton is actually curate of Duddington,” she said pensively. “Strange that he should go and bury himself down there, isn’t it?”

“He hasn’t been well,” I said. “Work in the slums has upset his health. He’s a good fellow. Not one of those who go in for the Church as an easy means of obtaining five or six hundred a year and a snug parsonage, but an earnest, devout man whose sole object is to do good among his fellow-creatures. Would that there were more of his sort about.”

Thus we chatted on. It seemed as though she knew more of Yelverton than she would admit, and that she had learned with surprise of his whereabouts.

Only once again, when she rose to go, I spoke to her of the great sorrow at my heart, and then alone with her in the silence of my room I implored her to reciprocate my love.

She stood motionless, allowing her hand to rest in mine, while I reiterated my declaration of affection. But when I had finished she withdrew her hand firmly, and with a negative gesture burst into tears.

I saw how agitated she was, how she trembled when her white hands came into contact with mine.

She tried to escape me, but I would not release her. Loving her as I did, I was determined that she should not slip away from me. Surely, I urged, I, her oldest friend, had a right to her rather than a stranger whom she had only known a few brief weeks. She was unjust to me.

Suddenly, while I was imploring earnestly that she would hesitate before thus casting my love aside, the clock of St. Martin’s struck the half-hour.

She glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece, exclaiming—

“See! It is half-past eleven! I must go at once. I shall be locked out now, as it is. I’ve been late so often recently. You know how strict our rules are.”

“But tell me that I may hope, Muriel. Only tell me that I may hope.”

“It is useless,” she answered hastily, twisting free her hand, and re-arranging her veil at the mirror. “I have told you. Let me go.”

“No, no! You shall not, unless you promise me. I love you, Muriel. You shall not pass out of my life like this.”

“It will be midnight before I get back,” she cried distressed. “I had no idea it was so late as this!”

“Your business matters not. To me your love is all—everything.”

She stood erect before me, statuesque, queenly, looking upon me with her dark-brown eyes, in which I thought I detected a glance of pity. But it was only for an instant. Her face suddenly grew hard and set. There was a look of firm determination, which told me that my hope could never be realised; that she had spoken the truth; that she loved another.

“Good-bye,” she said, in a voice half-choked with emotion, and as she put forth her hand I grasped it and pressed it to my lips.

“Good-bye, Muriel,” I murmured, with a bitterness felt in the depths of my soul. “But may I not go with you to your door?”

“No,” she responded, “I shall take a cab. Good-bye.”

And as the tears again rose in her eyes she turned and went out.

I heard Simes saluting her a moment later, then the outer door closed, and I sat motionless, staring before me fixedly. I had, during that afternoon, awakened to the fact that I loved her; but it was, alas! too late. Another had supplanted me in her affections.

She had left me hopeless, crushed, grief-stricken, and desolate.

Next day passed drearily, but on the next I sent Simes along to Madame Gabrielle’s with a note in which I asked Muriel to see me again, making an appointment to meet her at Frascati’s that evening. “Let me see you once more,” I wrote, “if for the last time. Do not refuse me, for I think always of you.”

In half an hour my man returned, and by his face I knew that something unusual had occurred.

He had my note still in his hand.

“Well,” I said inquiringly, “have you brought an answer?”

“Miss Moore is no longer there, sir,” he answered, handing me back the note.

“Not there?” I exclaimed, surprised.

“No, sir. I saw the head saleswoman, and she told me that the young lady was not now in their employ.”

“Not in their employ?” I echoed, starting up. “Has she left?”

“It appears, sir, that on Sunday night she broke one of the rules, which says that no assistant may be out after eleven o’clock. She arrived at midnight, and was yesterday morning instantly dismissed. They told me that she took her belongings and went away without scarcely uttering a word except to complain of the extremely harsh treatment she had received. The manager of the firm was, however, inexorable, for it appears that other assistants had constantly been breaking the rule, and only a week ago a serious warning was posted up in the dining-room. Miss Moore was therefore dismissed as an example to the others.”

“It’s infamous!” I cried. “Then no one knows where she now is?”

“No, sir. I made inquiries, but no one could tell me where I might probably find her. She was, they say, heartbroken at this treatment.”

I said nothing, but taking the note, slowly tore it into tiny fragments.

The woman I loved so well was now cast upon the pitiless world of London, without employment, without friends, and probably without money. Yet where to look for her I knew not.

By her manner when we had parted, I felt confident that her natural pride would not allow her to seek my assistance. She would, I knew, suffer in silence alone rather than allow me to help her.

When I thought of the harshness of this firm she had served so diligently and well, I grew furious. It was unjust to discharge a girl instantly and cast her on the world in that manner. It was infamous.