LITMIR.BIZ

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fire, 'I would rather chat for half an hour.'

      She spoke of the weather, frosty, but tonic; bad for the last days of hunting, good for the farmer and the country, let us hope.

      Redworth nodded assent. It might be surmised that he was brooding over those railways, in which he had embarked his fortune. Ah! those railways! She was not long coming to the wailful exclamation upon them, both to express her personal sorrow at the disfigurement of our dear England, and lead to a little, modest, offering of a woman's counsel to the rash adventurer; for thus could she serviceably put aside her perplexity awhile. Those railways! When would there be peace in the land? Where one single nook of shelter and escape from them! And the English, blunt as their senses are to noise and hubbub, would be revelling in hisses, shrieks, puffings and screeches, so that travelling would become an intolerable affliction. 'I speak rather as an invalid,' she admitted; 'I conjure up all sorts of horrors, the whistle in the night beneath one's windows, and the smoke of trains defacing the landscape; hideous accidents too. They will be wholesale and past help. Imagine a collision! I have borne many changes with equanimity, I pretend to a certain degree of philosophy, but this mania for cutting up the land does really cause me to pity those who are to follow us. They will not see the England we have seen. It will be patched and scored, disfigured … a sort of barbarous Maori visage—England in a New Zealand mask. You may call it the sentimental view. In this case, I am decidedly sentimental: I love my country. I do love quiet, rural England. Well, and I love beauty, I love simplicity. All that will be destroyed by the refuse of the towns flooding the land—barring accidents, as Lukin says. There seems nothing else to save us.'

      Redworth acquiesced. 'Nothing.'

      'And you do not regret it?' he was asked.

      'Not a bit. We have already exchanged opinions on the subject. Simplicity must go, and the townsman meet his equal in the countryman. As for beauty, I would sacrifice that to circulate gumption. A bushelful of nonsense is talked pro and con: it always is at an innovation. What we are now doing, is to take a longer and a quicker stride, that is all.'

      'And establishing a new field for the speculator.'

      'Yes, and I am one, and this is the matter I wanted to discuss with you, Lady Dunstane,' said Redworth, bending forward, the whole man devoted to the point of business.

      She declared she was complimented; she felt the compliment, and trusted her advice might be useful, faintly remarking that she had a woman's head: and 'not less' was implied as much as 'not more,' in order to give strength to her prospective opposition.

      All his money, she heard, was down on the railway table. He might within a year have a tolerable fortune: and, of course, he might be ruined. He did not expect it; still he fronted the risks. 'And now,' said he, 'I come to you for counsel. I am not held among my acquaintances to be a marrying man, as it's called.'

      He paused. Lady Dunstane thought it an occasion to praise him for his considerateness.

      'You involve no one but yourself, you mean?' Her eyes shed approval. 'Still the day may come … I say only that it may: and the wish to marry is a rosy colouring … equal to a flying chariot in conducting us across difficulties and obstructions to the deed. And then one may have to regret a previous rashness.'

      These practical men are sometimes obtuse: she dwelt on that vision of the future.

      He listened, and resumed: 'My view of marriage is, that no man should ask a woman to be his wife unless he is well able to support her in the comforts, not to say luxuries, she is accustomed to.' His gaze had wandered to the desk; it fixed there. 'That is Miss Merion's writing,' he said.

      'The letter?' said Lady Dunstane, and she stretched out her hand to press down a leaf of it. 'Yes; it is from her.'

      'Is she quite well?'

      'I suppose she is. She does not speak of her health.'

      He looked pertinaciously in the direction of the letter, and it was not rightly mannered. That letter, of all others, was covert and sacred to the friend. It contained the weightiest of secrets.

      'I have not written to her,' said Redworth.

      He was astonishing: 'To whom? To Diana? You could very well have done so, only I fancy she knows nothing, has never given a thought to railway stocks and shares; she has a loathing for speculation.'

      'And speculators too, I dare say!'

      'It is extremely probable.' Lady Dunstane spoke with an emphasis, for the man liked Diana, and would be moved by the idea of forfeiting her esteem.

      'She might blame me if I did anything dishonourable!'

      'She certainly would.'

      'She will have no cause.'

      Lady Dunstane began to look, as at a cloud charged with remote explosions: and still for the moment she was unsuspecting. But it was a flitting moment. When he went on, and very singularly droning to her ear: 'The more a man loves a woman, the more he should be positive, before asking her, that she will not have to consent to a loss of position, and I would rather lose her than fail to give her all—not be sure, as far as a man can be sure, of giving her all I think she's worthy of': then the cloud shot a lightning flash, and the doors of her understanding swung wide to the entry of a great wonderment. A shock of pain succeeded it. Her sympathy was roused so acutely that she slipped over the reflective rebuke she would have addressed to her silly delusion concerning his purpose in speaking of his affairs to a woman. Though he did not mention Diana by name, Diana was clearly the person. And why had he delayed to speak to her?—Because of this venture of his money to make him a fortune, for the assurance of her future comfort! Here was the best of men for the girl, not displeasing to her; a good, strong, trustworthy man, pleasant to hear and to see, only erring in being a trifle too scrupulous in love: and a fortnight back she would have imagined he had no chance; and now she knew that the chance was excellent in those days, with this revelation in Diana's letter, which said that all chance was over.

      'The courtship of a woman,' he droned away, 'is in my mind not fair to her until a man has to the full enough to sanction his asking her to marry him. And if he throws all he possesses on a stake … to win her—give her what she has a right to claim, he ought. … Only at present the prospect seems good. … He ought of course to wait. Well, the value of the stock I hold has doubled, and it increases. I am a careful watcher of the market. I have friends—brokers and railway Directors. I can rely on them.'

      'Pray,' interposed Lady Dunstane, 'specify—I am rather in a mist—the exact point upon which you do me the honour to consult me.' She ridiculed herself for having imagined that such a man would come to consult her upon a point of business.

      'It is,' he replied, 'this: whether, as affairs now stand with me—I have an income from my office, and personal property … say between thirteen and fourteen hundred a year to start with—whether you think me justified in asking a lady to share my lot?'

      'Why not? But will you name the lady?'

      'Then I may write at once? In your judgement. … Yes, the lady. I have not named her. I had no right. Besides, the general question first, in fairness to the petitioner. You might reasonably stipulate for more for a friend. She could make a match, as you have said … ' he muttered of 'brilliant,' and 'the highest'; and his humbleness of the honest man enamoured touched Lady Dunstane. She saw him now as the man of strength that she would have selected from a thousand suitors to guide her dear friend.

      She caught at a straw: 'Tell me, it is not Diana?'

      'Diana Merion!'

      As soon as he had said it he perceived pity, and he drew himself tight for the stroke. 'She's in love with some one?'

      'She is engaged.'

      He bore it well. He was a big-chested fellow, and that excruciating twist within of the revolution of the wheels of the brain snapping their course to grind the contrary to that of the heart, was revealed in one short lift and gasp, a compression of the tremendous change he underwent.

      'Why

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