Miss Maxwell's affections; a novel

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A " V ^ o 0 t

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Chapter I

Lady Julia was only judging from precedent when she supposed that the next face Miss Maxwell saw would cure her of her unfortunate attachment to France Woodford.

She was scarcely to blame if she thought that her niece took her conquests lightly. Miss Maxwell had been attracted by each in turn of the four men who had proposed for her hand during the two years that she had been under Lady Julia’s wing at Eastwood. In the first instance she had dallied, uncertain as a bird or a butterfly; but in the end her refusal had been given with decision and equanimity.

Of the lovers of Gertrude, one has since married and was consoled. He has little bearing upon the story, and he can remain without a name. Another was George Brabant, a neighboring young squire ; the third a certain Johnny Harwood, an unencumbered little bachelor, who was desirable in every way.

Before any of these, Gertrude had fancied herself in love with one Bobin Wakefield; and it was upon this instance that Lady Julia based her convictions with re-

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gard to the nature and strength of Miss Maxwell’s affections. The Wakefield episode had begun in the London days when Gertrude was living with an uncle. The end of it, at least, had come under Lady Julia’s direct observation, and she drew her conclusions. There was nothing against young Robin, be it understood, but the fact that he had not a penny to call his own. He told Gertrude, of course, that he would never care for any one else ; and she said that it was not so serious as all that. At the same time it was quite sufiiciently serious, and only the admirable worldly wisdom of her aunt prevented her from binding herself to him by and for what Lady Julia called “ one of those hopeless engagements that drag their weary length through years, and leave you in the end with crow’s-feet at the eyes and all your prospects gone.”

Lady Julia further said :

‘‘You are the prettiest girl in the county. You will find that you can have half the men at your feet for the nod of your head. Don’t make a bad match at twentythree, whatever you may do later.”

So poor Robin Wakefield was sent about his business, and he went to India to grow tea and perhaps marry a begum.

It was after that that Lady Julia commenced her county campaign. Gertrude thought just then that she was unhappy for her penniless lover, and she was unresponsive.

“For goodness’ sake!” said her aunt, sharply — “for goodness’ sake, try and cheer up. You know as well as I do that you don’t feel very deeply. It isn’t in you, and you are not half as miserable as you pretend.”

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I am,” said Gertrude, “twice as miserable.”

Then Lady Julia took another course. Let us give her credit for a certain insight into character. She looked at her niece for some moments in a contemplative sort of way.

“ No,” she said, after a pause of long scrutiny ; “ no, I am sure of it. I am sure I am right. If it suited you I shouldn’t mind ; but I do not think — I say I do not think — depression becomes your type of face.”

Lady Julia began this little speech very slowly, and with the air of a critic who weighs each word. She ended it with a run. Miss Maxwell listened in silence. She would not give her aunt the satisfaction of letting her see her smile ; but she went up to her room, and sat down before the glass.

She looked at her face, at her eyes that were brown with a russet tinge like the color of an autumn leaf, at her mouth with the precise red lips and the white teeth. It was a pity not to laugh sometimes, wasn’t it ? Her head, with the hair that was soft and dry and curly, was very daintily set upon the slender throat. Why carry it so listlessly ?

She rose, satisfied that her aunt was right.

Lady Julia smiled to herself, and, like the man on the stile, she continued to smile. But she should have known that one must not argue from the teaching of a single case, nor even sometimes from that of two or three. The inference to be drawn from the instances of Wakefield, of the unnamed man who married and was consoled, of Harw^ood, of Brabant, and of yet another of wliom we shall hear presently, was as misleading as it could be, and perhaps Lady Julia was justified in smil-

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ing. Tlie meeting with France Woodford was in this wise :

He was staying at the manor, and his aunt gave a dinner-party to which Lady Julia and Miss Maxwell were invited. It was, perhaps, because he was different from the men whom Gertrude was in the habit of meeting in the county that he interested her at once. His voice attracted her before she saw him at all. He was talking to some one in the inner room when, with Lady Julia, she went into the drawing-room. The sound of a voice unknown to her and with an unusually sweet tone arrested her attention, and she looked round to see the speaker.

He came in presently with young Harwood, and at dinner he sat opposite to her ; and several times Miss Maxwell found herself looking in his direction. It was possibly a proof of her interest in him that she remarked that, beyond the casual glances inevitable to his position as her vis-a-vis^ he only looked steadily at her twice. On each of these two occasions she felt his eyes upon her, and, with the knowledge of her own beauty. Miss Maxwell had a vague sense of surprise that having looked he should not have looked more often. It was as the party sat down and began or continued conversation that she knew that in his survey of the table Woodford paused for some moments at herself; and again, when Mr. Woodford caught Lady Julia’s eye, Gertrude was conscious that he looked at her as she passed him with her nose in the air in that attitude that had gained for her in the county her reputation for pride. She knew that his eyes followed her from the room.

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The drawing-room was full of the scent of flowers. The window was open, and Mrs. Woodford closed it in a somewhat fussy way that was habitual to her before sitting down beside Lady Julia.

She began to speak of her nephew, and Miss Maxwell did her best to listen. A girl had fastened herself onto her ; and Gertrude, in her effort to hear what was said, made her answers somewhat at random.

“ Ranching,” she heard. “ Home for a few mouths. . . . Hasn’t made it pay. . . . Big losses which he couldn’t very well afford.”

Miss Maxwell saw that her aunt’s interest in the young man dwindled at once. Her own did not. She had vague ideas about ranching, gathered ii^ the most part from songs and magazine articles. The background of a life in the West was full of suggestion : days in the saddle; loneliness and vast expanses; friendships between man and man ; a sun setting beyond the line of the prairie grass ; the lowing of cattle ; the shouting of the boys.

She strung these things together in a sentence without a verb, and was nearly satisfied that she knew exactly what everything was like. There were boys, weren’t there? You called them cowboys, and they had long whips, and they shouted “ Cooee !” (or was that in Australia ?). Anyway, it was very interesting.

Miss Maxwell was not even pretending to pay any attention now to the girl who continued to talk to her.

The men came in presently, and France Woodford was introduced to her. He had easy manners, and the frankest eyes she had ever seen. He kept them upon her as he spoke to her, and she knew why he had looked

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at her so little at dinner. Miss Maxwell, as an acknowledged beauty, was accustomed to attract a certain notice.

France Woodford was rather above the middle height, and he was strongly and very neatly built. His broad shoulders, and the muscle that stood out in the calf of the leg that was crossed over the other, spoke to the healthiness of his life. This was also confirmed by his ruddy skin and his sound, white teeth. He had a wellproportioned head, with dark -brown hair, which was cleanly parted and brushed off a square forehead. His eyes were gray, and the eyebrows very level. His nose was straight, and the small brown mustache did not hide the sensitive lips.

In every detail France Woodford was well finished. There was not a bit of slovenly work in his composition ; his ears were small, and placed with a due regard to that exactness of measurement that gave to his features their balance ; his hands were shapely, if brown from work and a Western sun; and his feet and ankles were slender — he had no ugly side.

Miss Maxwell and he talked of nothing in particular, but this did not seem to Miss Maxwell to matter, so long as he was content to sit opposite to her and to let her look at him. She found that she was a year older than he, and, as they were both under twenty-six, this gave her a certain advantage. After they had arrived at the question of ages, they drifted into more intimate acquaintance. He told her something of his life. There were joys in its freedom, and a loneliness and a sense of exile that she could well realize ; and there were hardships, too, that she could vaguely guess. Then they neared a stage at which the emotions come into play.

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He told her of a friend who had died on the ranch, away from his own people, and Miss Maxwell felt that she could imagine a case in which she could have envied the friend who lay in his Western grave, because he had died holding Woodford’s hand, and because his death could bring that look of sullen sorrow into his face.

‘‘ And we buried him, poor old Bruff — Broughton his name was, Broughton Essex, and Bruff evolved itself for short. I saw his mother to-day. I had a letter for her from him. My God, how that woman cared for him ! I stayed with her for an hour, giving his messages and telling her of all he said. It seems so odd that he should have been the one to die. It might so easily have been myself, for I had the fever first, and there would have been no one to mind — ”

“What do you mean?” said Miss Maxwell, “every one who knew you would have cared.”

“ Like that ?” he said, lightly. “ There is no one really to care. Brufi would have cared, though — poor Brufi. He was my friend always. Such a good chap he was — the truest friend a man ever had. I wish you could have seen him — ”

He broke ofi with a short laugh.

“Why should I tell you all this? It can’t interest you. You scarcely even know me.”

“ I think I do, though,” said Miss Maxwell, “ and it does interest me, whether it seems probable or not.”

Some one was playing, and the air, one of those waltzes that are played low in the sadder scenes of a modern play, stirred Gertrude’s imagination. Incidentally, as she remarked that it was the girl who had talked to her after dinner who was sitting at the piano, it occurred to

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Miss Maxwell that perhaps she had been unjust in thinking her tiresome. At this moment she was distinctly contributing to the effect of a conversation. Incidentally, also, Miss Maxwell saw that little Harwood leaned over her as she played. He was one of her own most persistent admirers, and a smile hovered even now about the corners of her mouth as a recollection came to her of having kissed him of her own accord, telling him to be a good boy and not to “ bother,” when, for the second time, he had proposed to her, and she had refused him. There had come a pause.

‘‘ Where does Mrs. Essex — your friend’s mother — live?” said Gertrude.

She asked the question, not so much because she wished to know — it never occurred to her then that the man who had died in his far-off land could ever affect her own fate — as because she liked to hear that tone of tenderness that came into Woodford’s voice when he spoke of his friend.

“In London — in Grosvenor Place. She seems very rich, but I think she would change places with the veriest beggar-woman to have her son back.”

He paused again.

“You must forgive me for being so gloomy. Miss Maxwell. You see, I have been there to-day, and it has brought back the whole thing to me. Here is Lady Julia”

Miss Maxwell supposed her aunt was becoming uneasy.

Chapter II. V

The carriage was announced soon after this, and Lady Julia and her niece made their adieus. Woodford went with them to the door. Miss Maxwell carried home the impression he left upon her as he stood on the steps in the moonlight and waved his hand to her as she put up the window.

Lady Julia said :

“Dear me, that was as dull an evening as I ever spent. What a stupid man that was who took me in to dinner — Colonel Blane, Mrs. Woodford’s brother. I don’t like her champagne ; and did you remark how salt the soup was?”

“I never take soup,” said Miss Maxwell, “and you could not expect me to confess that I knew anything of champagne, even if I did. I didn’t find it dull.”

“You looked very well,” said Lady Julia, “and that is what is so provoking of you. You always look your best when there is no occasion for it. By-the-way, I wish you wouldn’t talk to one man the whole evening. It gives wrong impressions.”

“But I liked him,” said Miss Maxwell, with candor and to disarm suspicion. “I wish you would ask him to dinner. He amused me.”

“You didn’t look as if you were talking of anything that was very amusing. You both looked so serious, I thought I had better separate you. He was rather good-looking.”

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‘‘Yes, I tliink lie was,” said Miss Maxwell.

It is so well to be frank sometimes.

“ I suppose I must ask him over some day,” said Lady Julia. “There is one good thing about you, Gertrude, you will never be in love with any one but yourself.”

“That may have its advantages,” said Miss Maxwell, and she smiled to herself in the dark.

Lady Julia went to sleep in her corner after that, and her niece sat up wide awake and looked at the hedges and the trees that were white in the moonlight. She thought of France Woodford, and wondered whether the rest of the party had broken up, and whether he had talked to the Miss Ransom he had taken in to dinner as he had talked to her. The horses were trotting briskly; the lamps looked pale in the brightness of the night.

Lady Julia slept comfortably till the carriage turned into the park. Then she woke up a little cross. She said that she was glad to get back to her own house. -

A letter for Miss Maxwell was lying on the hall table. She knew the handwriting well, and, to her regret, she was half prepared for the contents, which ran thus :

“Aldershot, 26th July.

“My Dear Miss Maxwell, — We have quite suddenly been ordered to Malta, and, as I have to start in a fortnight, that must plead excuse for me for any precipitancy in this letter. I will come to the point at once. You know quite well that I love you. I as good as told you so the night of your county ball. I have struggled against all this for a hundred reasons, but I find, in the end, that I cannot leave the country without knowing

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what one calls one’s ‘fate.’ I am not going to bother you with a long letter. You are not in love with me. I am neither blind enough nor sufficiently conceited to imagine that you are ; but I know that you like me, and if you think that you like me well enough to marry me, you will make me one of the happiest men in England. I am not rich, as you know, but I am in a position to keep a wife, and to promise you that, so far as lies in my power, you shall not miss any of the luxuries to which you have been accustomed. I shall await your answer with what patience I can command. I preferred to write rather than to go to you in person, because it will be easier for you to answer me on paper. I should not wish to overpersuade you into what you might regret afterwards. May I remind you of three very happy days last year? I think you were happy in them, too. I shall not ever forget them myself, and I believe, whatever your answer may be, that what began then for me will last always, and I shall care for you to the end. If there is any hope for me, I would rather that you did not write at once; but if not, will you remember that I wait in suspense? Yours, ever devotedly,

“Edwakd K^nutsfoed.”

Miss Maxwell read this letter through. Her maid loitered about the room, and she told her to go to bed. After that, still holding the letter in her hand, she stood at her window for nearly an hour before she began to undress. The warm air blew in, and with it the fragrance of the roses that hung heavily upon the wall below. The moon was over the woods, and the garden was black and white. There were sounds in the country

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night that Gertrude heard as her senses became sharpened. A bat flitted by. A rook woke and cawed once from the elms. There was a rustle in the trees when the branches were stirred by the faintest summer breeze, and sometimes Gertrude heard the stealthy movement of an insect under the leaves of the ivy.

Miss Maxwell noted all these things and thought of Edward Knutsford, and of a time when she had said to herself that if he asked her to marry him, she would not say him nay. He begged her to remember three days. She had not forgotten them. A certain humbleness in the tone of his letter touched her. He seemed to take her refusal of him almost for granted, and to ask her only to answer him deflnitely, that he might know. She thought of a morning’s skating with him in the winter ; of a long walk on crisp roads ; of a dinner-party ; of the ball at Parkhurst, when the words that trembled upon his lips had not been spoken. She was interested ; she was stirred by what she had read in his face, nothing more; yet if those words had then been spoken. . . . She interrupted her thought with one of France.

Gertrude always admitted that her aunt read character with very fair, and in some instances remarkable, accuracy; but she knew also that there were sides of her own to which Lady Julia was entirely blind. She knew that one day love might not be for her the slight and passing thing of which her aunt deemed her alone capable. Later, she was able to make allowances for Lady Julia, who judged according to lights which Miss Maxwell herself had done her best to darken.

That the affections did not count for much in the eyes of the mistress of Eastwood she had long discovered ; so

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the fact that she was not in love with Edward Knutsford would have carried small weight with her aunt if he had been eligible in other respects. Miss Maxwell had often heard Lady Julia congratulate herself upon her success in marrying another niece, Kate Lane, to Lord Beckenham. Lady Beckenham and Gertrude were friends as well as cousins, and Gertrude knew that if ever a wife had good reason for unhappiness that wife was Lady Beckenham.

Lady Julia professed to be of opinion that Lady Beckenham ought to think herself very fortunate. If it had not been for certain diplomacy at Eastwood, Beckenham would never have been brought up to the scratch (Lady Julia was colloquial), and then Kate would have married that little barrister she was so much in love with, and she would now be living in a semidetached stucco neighborhood or the wilds of farther Bayswater.

Miss Maxwell argued that if Kate could have been happy with her little barrister in Camberwell or Kamschatka, why not ? As it was, she was miserable with a husband who was not even faithful to her.

Lady Julia was shocked. At Gertrude’s age she had not known the meaning of such an expression. Kate was thought a very lucky girl. Besides, what nonsense it was for Gertrude to talk in that way — Gertrude, who cared more for looking smart .and being admired than for all the sentiment in the world.

A recollection of all this roused Miss Maxwell’s antagonism. She liked Edward Knutsford. She had even a certain tenderness for him, and from her aunt’s point of view he was not eligible. She left the window, and pondering deeply she took up her pen to write to him.

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She was accustomed to act on her own responsibility. Then once more she remembered Woodford.

Her head rested on her hand, and she played idly with her pen upon the paper. She drew faces and lines and curves and other wanton devices. In the end she wrote and refused. She was conscious of saying in the letter all the usual things. It was hideously stereotyped, she thought, to express her sense of the honor Captain Knutsford had done her, and to regret that she could not marry him. But she ended with very real protestations of eternal friendship.

“ I do like you,” -she wrote ; I have always liked you, and I always shall, but not in such a way as to permit my marrying you. It would not be fair either to you or to myself. Please believe that I shall always think of you as a dear friend, and after this do not drop me altogether.” She signed herself his “affectionate Gertrude Maxwell.”

Possibly the day before she might have found that she liked him well enough to marry him. She went to sleep thinking of France Woodford.

Chapter III

The sun was pouring into the dining-room when Gertrude came down to breakfast the next morning. It flashed upon the silver kettle which sang merrily over the blue flame of the spirit-lamp, and the surface of every shining object threw forth borrowed rays. The windows were open, and Gertrude went out for a few

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minutes upon the terrace. The sun caught her brown hair, and found in it a tinge of burnished copper. She put her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. A thin blue mist was on the hills, and over the meadows hung the haze of the dew that was being absorbed. The skyhad no cloud. It was clear, blue, and infinitely high. Tiny points sparkled like diamonds in the gravel of the terrace. On the steps a snail had left a trail of silver. The air was full of the hum of insect life. Drops of water stood on spiders’ webs and in the cups of the flowers.

Lady Julia Maxwell came to the window.

“ Come in to breakfast !” she cried.

She had a somewhat metallic voice which carried a long way. Gertrude had walked to the farther end of the terrace. She was picking heliotrope, and she walked slowly back to the dining-room, shaking the dew from the little bunch as she went.

Lady Julia was cross, and complained again of Mrs. Woodford’s champagne.

“ I knew it would disagree with me,” she said.

The answer to this was so very obvious that Gertrude made none, but contented herself with a smile.

A wasp now flew in through the open window and buzzed round the marmalade. Lady Julia tried to kill it, and it very naturally stung her. Gertrude felt inclined to take the part of the wasp, and she tried not to laugh at the expression of injury on her aunt’s face. She bound up the smarting hand, and, by way of taking the sufferer’s thoughts off herself, she told her of Knutsford’s letter.

Lady Julia writhed.

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“ I know it will swell,” she said, I know it will. What did he write to you about ? Betty’s hand swelled right up her arm to the shoulder, and she had to carry it in a sling, and had to wear a high dress for weeks. Horrid little beast ! and I was only going to kill it with my pocket-handkerchief. Is there any ammonia in the house ? The wasp is dead, anyway.^ Is he still at Aidershot?”

Gertrude shook the questions in this speech free of extraneous matter.

“ I dare say there is some ammonia in the house-keeper’s room. I will ring and tell Parker to ask. Captain Knutsford is still at Aldershot. He wrote to tell me that his regiment has been ordered abroad, and he starts for Malta next week.”

Possibly Lady Julia’s hand was really hurting her. She was certainly very cross.

“ With how many more of your friends do you keep up a correspondence?” she asked. “Every man who has known you a week seems to think he may write to you. I never wrote to any one but my brothers when I was a girl.”

“ I am afraid you are in great pain,” said Gertrude, with sympathy. She helped herself to some mushrooms to hide her smile, and she buttered a piece of toast. “ He wrote to ask me to marry him,” she said, presently.

The sting sank into unimportance. The butler answered the bell, and when Miss Maxwell explained to him that her aunt had been stung by a wasp, and told him to ask the house-keeper if she had any ammonia. Lady Julia said that it did not matter. Parker with-

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drew, and Gertrude found herself smiling again as she went on with her breakfast.

“ Dear me, child, what chances you have !’^ said Lady Julia, with interest; “I do not mean that this is such a very good catch. But how well you go down ! It is evidently only a question of your being seen. I think, if nothing happens before next year, I must give you a season in town. It would be an awful exertion, but I really think it would be worth while. What it is to have a good appearance !”

“ I hope it isn’t only my appearance,” said Gertrude. She was pleased though, for, after all, your appearance is the only thing in which you can have no hand. The rest you can do for yourself. “ You can make yourself good,” she was thinking ; “ you can never make yourself pretty, speaking generally.”

“ You mustn’t throw yourself away on Captain Knutsford,” continued Lady Julia, helping herself to. coffee, and forgetting that her hand was quite disabled; “I don’t think he would do at all. Ho, Gertrude, you must make a really good marriage. There is no reason why you shouldn’t. Indeed, there is every reason why you should. And the fact that you are a sufficiently sensible girl not to fall in love on your own account makes it not only possible, but even probable, that you will.”

Miss Maxwell had it on the tip of her tongue to say that that was because hitherto she had not met the right man. She might even have added that she would not trust very much to her supposed coldness if — She refrained, however, being wise in her generation, and she went on with her breakfast.

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The gardeners had begun to mow the lawn, and the air throbbed with the jerking noise of the machine. The sweetest country scents were in the air that came in througli the open window, and the insects kept up a steady humming round the flowers. A butterfly fluttered in and alighted on the table-cloth, where the sun bathed his yellow wings as he opened and closed them.

Gertrude began to make plans for the morning. She would walk to the village, she thought, and post her letter, and then she would go up into the woods. She could fancy how the sun would slant down through the trees and reveal the colors of moss and root and leaf —