Beatrice Ashleigh

Front matter

-IV

A i vw

V V

II

A FTER his first visit to the house, Beatrice met Frederick Hurst fairly frequently. He was present at several social functions which she attended under the able chaperonage of the Hon. Mrs. Enfield, a woman for whom Mr. Ashleigh entertained a profound admiration and liking, based on what grounds he could not have explained had he been put to it: beyond the virtue of a kindly nature, she was a frivolous, worldly minded woman, with only one idea in regard to girls, which was to marry them well. She favoured the French theory that love develops after marriage if the marriage prove suitable in other respects. It had not developed in her own case ; but she admitted compensations.

The suitable settlement of Beatrice was her chief concern after the settlement of her own daughter. The business of arranging the lives of two well-favoured girls occupied her fully and agreeably. It never entered her thoughts that either could disappoint her by arranging her life independently; and in the case of her own daughter she had no reason for apprehension. Elbe was entirely amenable to the maternal guidance, being lazy and unemotional, and preferring the easy path in life. Since she was pretty and popular, particularly with middle-aged men, Mrs. 18

Enfield felt no anxiety on her account. She had already settled in her own mind on the man she desired for her future son-in-law; and it was a high tribute to her determination that eventually she secured him, in view of the fact that marriage was a condition he had not considered, and had little inclination towards.

Ellie had been at college with Beatrice, and was her particular chum. She was also a chum of Charlie Ashleigh. The latter, who was studying for the Indian Civil Service, and whose prospects were at best doubtful, entertained a hopeless attachment for her — hopeless because, though Ellie liked him, and though Mrs. Enfield was really fond of him, he knew very well that the latter would never sanction an engagement between him and her daughter. Mrs. Enfield refused to take Charlie seriously. No one took Charlie seriously; since he did not take himself seriously, this was not surprising. In any case, he could not have provided for a wife ; he could not at that stage provide for himself.

Mr. Ashleigh was well satisfied to leave his daughter in Mrs. Enfield’s capable charge. He was something of a recluse himself. Though no one suspected him of delicacy, he was far from being a strong man. He had had a seizure some years previously, and it had made him nervous about himself. He was therefore grateful to Mrs. Enfield for taking up Beatrice; and he encouraged his daughter to regard Mrs. Enfield’s house as a second home. He wanted Beatrice to enjoy life, to make the most of her youth and her beauty. He supposed that eventually she would marry; but he did not concern himself on that point. If he ever gave the matter thought it was to hope that she would marry the right man ; that, in his opinion, was more important than a brilliant match. He wanted her to be happy. He knew Mrs. Enfield’s views, because she had unfolded them to him.

“With Beatrice’s face,” she told him, “she should make a great marriage. Girls with wit and beauty are scarce. You mustn’t encourage an indifference to ambition. She is too young to realise the importance of these things.”

“Dear lady, I place her in your hands,” he had answered. “But Beatrice will go her own way. She always has done so.”

And Beatrice was pursuing her own way, unsuspected by Mrs. Enfield. It was not the road of ambition she followed; it was not either a happy road; there were many rebuffs to be encountered along the difficult path Had Hurst been readier of response, Mrs. Enfield must inevitably have discovered Beatrice’s secret; but Beatrice was too proud to show her preference for a man who displayed not the slightest interest in herself. She seemed rather to avoid him; and it was this avoidance which, as he grew to know her better, led Hurst first to seek her out as a relief from the readier welcome of other women. He found her society restful. She never seemed to resent it when he sat beside her in silence; neither made any obvious effort to entertain the other. When they came upon a long pause it had not the embarrassing effect which a conversational cul-de-sac produces usually. Frequently these silences ended with a reflective look at one another and a quiet smile which prefaced some commonplace remark. Hurst never apologised for his dulness; Beatrice would have shown surprise if he had. She was glad when these moody fits of his brought him to her side, melancholy though his society proved at these times. It was a mute testimony to his recognition of her sympathetic understanding that he sought her companionship when out of tune with the rest of his world.

Hurst was home from India on sick leave, following a severe attack of jungle fever. He hated the life out there, he told her, and hoped to get transferred. He wasn’t particularly keen on soldiering anyway; it was all routine, and nothing doing. A scrap would brighten things up ; but the nations were falling asleep in sleek complacency, and letting their arms grow rusty. He felt that he could better justify his existence in some profession in which he wasn’t a cipher.

“Not that it’s particularly worth justifying,” he added. “One wonders sometimes what one is born for. One is launched upon life irrespective of one’s wishes. If I’d been given a choice I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t be here. Would you?” he asked, meeting her smiling eyes fully with a morose curiosity in his own.

“Yes, I think I would have adventured that far,” she answered. “I’m interested in life.”

“Are you? It bores me. That’s why I’m such a failure, I suppose, socially. A man who can’t interest himself must be fairly poor company, that’s certain. It’s awfully good of you to listen to my grousing so patiently. Why do you?”

Again he turned his face towards her and regarded her with increased interest, and with a closer scrutiny, a scrutiny that took in every detail of the fair face, leaning back against the cushion of the chair, quietly observant of him. He noted the amber lights in the dark eyes, the pretty curve of the smiling lips, the way in which her hair waved low over the temples, and the sheen of it where the light caught its bright surfaces ; noted too the quick warm colour in her cheeks, and the fair transparency of her skin. She was, he decided, and felt surprised that he had not discovered it before, very beautiful.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “how life has hurt you to cause you to talk as you do. Don’t think,” she added hastily on observing that he changed colour, “that I am curious. I’m not. I’m merely trying to explain why the grousing doesn’t worry me. Life isn’t always kind, I know ; though it has dealt kindly with me. I could wish that everyone had so good a time. But knocks mould a man’s character.”

“Do they?” He laughed briefly. “It’s rather an ugly mould. I imagine it depends largely on a man’s temperament how he takes the knocks. If he’s a good footballer he comes up smiling, and never resents a kick; if he isn’t, he grouses.”

“The majority of Englishmen are good footballers,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

“I used to believe so. But I take it I’m rotten bad at everything,” he replied.

Shortly after this talk Hurst called at the house, to Beatrice’s pleased surprise. It was the first time he had visited there independently. When Edward

Ashleigh had been in town for a few days he had come once or twice in his company, but he had not called formally. He was shy, and at first obviously ill at ease. His manner conveyed the impression that he regretted having yielded to this social impulse and wasted a fine afternoon.

It was unfortunate that on this same afternoon other callers dropped in — a succession of them. They were mostly young people. Charlie had turned up for tea with Earlton, whom he had met casually and invited to return with him ; and Elbe Enfield was there, flirting in a corner with her faithful admirer. Beatrice had not seen Earlton since the days when she had been his pupil. The memory of the unfortunate episode which had terminated his tutorship was in the minds of both when they shook hands. A reminiscent smile shone in Beatrice’s eyes, in his was open admiration.

“Eve always hoped we should meet again,” she said. “It’s ages ago — over six years — since I plagued your patience beyond endurance. Do you remember what a virago I was at fourteen?”

“I remember you as a very interesting pupil,” he replied guardedly.

She laughed a little at that, and the laugh set him entirely at his ease. She remembered — he saw that — and the memory did not affront her.

“You were sometimes aggressive,” he ventured. “But you were a good sportsman.”

“I was sorry afterwards,” she said ; and vague and irrelevant though the remark sounded, he apprehended her meaning. “It wasn’t such fun at college as I expected. None of us seemed quite sincere. We posed. I wonder ... I suppose that’s life, in a sense. We affected ideals . . . borrowed what we admired in other people, and lost sight of our individuality.”

“That’s a fault of the public school system,” he said — “to reflect rather than shine independently. But I think you have managed to retain something of your individuality. I catch glimpses.”

“A remnant, perhaps,” she allowed, and looked pleased. “Anyway, I expect the discipline was good for me. That was the part I liked least.”

He seemed amused at this admission, and regarded her with greater attentiveness.

“That’s where you always bested me,” he said. “Your sex generally contrives to set masculine authority at naught.”

“You don’t all recognise that,” she retorted.

“We don’t always allow it,” he corrected. “To affect not to see the weak spots is to strengthen one’s position.”

“Another form of posing,” she said, smiling.

“I am glad you don’t despise sincerity,” he said. “Quite recently I heard truth described; as bourgeois. It was insisted that one could only be truthful at the sacrifice of tact.”

“I should not have supposed that tact and insincerity were synonymous terms,” Beatrice said.

“No,” he answered. “The most tactful people I have happened across have been entirely honest. But the dishonest person seldom scruples to apply an engaging term as a euphony for a degenerate quality. A man told me the other day that I was growing bald.

I consider that unnecessarily tactless; but I am persuaded that it was an honest expression of his opinion. A consultation with my giass corroborated the statement. All truth-tellers are not therefore diplomatic.”

“Luxuriance in hair is apt to rob the brain of its nourishment,” Beatrice remarked consolingly.

“Ah!” he said, and smoothed the back of his hair reflectively. “You prove to me that tact and sincerity are inseparable.”

It was at this moment that Beatrice became aware of Hurst's entrance. She turned as the door opened, smiling, some light response to Earlton’s remark on her lips. The smile widened and spread to her eyes on perceiving who the newcomer was, and a faint increase of colour showed in her cheeks.

Earlton turned also, in some curiosity to discover who was responsible for the abrupt detachment of interest from himself which he was sensible of in Beatrice’s manner, and for the swift, glad look of welcome he detected in her eyes. His glance following hers, he saw standing in the doorway a man of good physique, dark, almost swarthy of complexion, with a resolute, handsome face, and good eyes — eyes that were sombre and somewhat furtive in expression, as though they reflected the embarrassment which gripped Hurst when the door opened upon this unexpected gathering of people, and he came forward reluctantly to the accompaniment of talk and laughter, which hung for a space at his appearance, and went on again after the momentary check in cheerful disregard of the interruption.

“I didn’t know you had a party on,” he said to

Beatrice in an aggrieved voice, rather as though he considered she had got these people together for the purpose of vexing him, as though she ought to have been better prepared for his coming, even though she had not known of it beforehand.

“I haven’t,” she answered brightly. “These are all chance callers. You must outstay them. Come over to the table and have some tea.”

He followed her, and stood beside her when she gave him his cup, and held it in his hand.

“I’m an awful duffer at this kind of thing,” he said. “I hoped I should find you alone. But I suppose you aren’t alone very often.”

“Try again some other day and you will find your surmise wrong. My father and I generally have tea alone — when I’m in,” she added. “But I’m awfully glad you came to-day.”

“I’m beginning to be glad too,” he said, meeting her eyes and smiling.

It passed through his mind to wonder what there was in this girl which set him so quickly at his ease, and made him pleased to be with her. She did not resemble her brother in the least, and yet some quality common to both, that quality which had caused him to chum readily with Edward Ashleigh, appealed to him equally in her. He could not give it a name. It was something instinctive to which his own nature responded. If she had been a man he would have wanted to chum with her.

It was surprising in consideration of the fragmentary nature of their intercourse how intimate they were becoming; almost from the first they had adopted the conversational freedom of accepted friendship. He felt, without understanding why, grateful to her. Girls as a rule did not interest him ; she had not interested him at one time. He retained a hazy remembrance of having experienced impatience when compelled to entertain her in those early days of their acquaintance; it had been only when he grasped that she did not require to be entertained, that she was, even when silent, intensely companionable and sympathetic, that he had begun to take any pleasure in her society. He had believed that only married or middle-aged women could be so unaffectedly agreeable. The majority of girls wanted to be amused, were obviously athirst for compliments. The effort to talk down to the frivolous level of feminine intelligence had always bored him. He recognised no sensible reason for it. That his own sex was responsible for this state of things never occurred to him. Girls adapt themselves with extraordinary ease to the role which seems to be expected of them. Beatrice, representing the more evolved type of woman, appealed to Hurst strongly. He did not realise why she appealed to him; he only knew that apart from admiring her he enjoyed being with her.

“I’ve thought a lot about you/’ he said unexpectedly, “since our talk the other night. . . . But I expect you’ve forgotten all that.”

“I’ve a better memory than you give me credit for,” she answered.

“I talked a lot of rot,” he said, glancing at her swiftly to mark the effect of his words. “I’m sure I must have bored you. I came to-day in the hope of effacing a bad impression, and I’m afraid I’ve begun by creating fresh ones. It suggests a kink in the nature of a man when he doesn’t love his kind.”

“It suggests to me rather a mistaken belief,” she replied. “You don’t allow yourself to find out whether you love it or no.”

He looked her straight in the eyes.

“Please introduce me to the most lovable person beside yourself in the room,” he said, “and I will experiment.”

She conducted him forthwith to the corner where Elbe Enfield sat with Charlie, and, to the latter’s amazed indignation, claimed his help in dispensing tea.

“They’ve all had tea,” he expostulated, as he followed her across the room. “It isn’t playing the game, Bee. I suppose it’s attributable to your gender that you can’t see another girl enjoying herself without wanting to spoil sport.”

“Was Ellie enjoying herself?” she asked innocently.

Charlie grinned.

“She would rather talk to me than to that fellow anyway,” he said confidently. “I was proposing to her at the moment of your inopportune arrival ”

“Proposing!” Beatrice scoffed. “You! I wonder how many times you have asked her to marry you ?”

“If you weren’t so fond of jumping in on an unfinished sentence you would have realised that my proposal had nothing to do with matrimony,” he returned airily. “Your insistence on a single application of a term which has a wide significance is distinctly feminine. I was proposing that she should invite me to lunch with them to-morrow. I’ll have to return to her presently for her answer.”

Ill

' | 'HE oddest thing in life, perhaps the most inexplicable and unaccountable, certainly the most irrelevant, is the emotion which is described as passionate love. Some people affect to disapprove of the word passion ; but love without passion, however beautiful in itself, is a sexless quality, a quality which in essence is nothing beyond itself, which leads nowhere. Without passion the world might very well come to a finish, and plainly that is inconsistent with the scheme of creation.

It is impossible to state precisely what constitutes the attraction between two persons meeting casually, as dozens of persons meet without feeling any special interest in one another. Suddenly from out the crowd one person stands forth in the eyes of another, and the rest form into a background, an unimportant but essential setting, throwing into stronger relief the vital characteristics of the principal. The person who has once taken the centre of the stage can never again merge with the crowd.

For Beatrice, Frederick Hurst stood out from the rest, a significant, dominant figure — a figure which filled the spaces in her orderly mind and directed all her waking thoughts towards itself. There was created in her a restless longing for his presence, which their brief meetings left unsatisfied. What she found 30 in Hurst to attract her so intensely she never attempted to explain — could not have explained had she tried to ; but she had no doubt at all in her mind that she wanted him, wanted to marry him, — to give herself to him, all that was best in herself, — to have him beside her always in the intimate satisfying relations of ordinary daily life. But, though it was plain to her that Hurst was beginning to care for her, she was vaguely conscious of a growing reluctance on his part towards yielding to this attraction. He was fighting against the domination of an overmastering passion, fighting half-heartedly, avoiding temptation one day with inflexible determination, and the next capitulating feebly, putting himself voluntarily in the way of temptation once more.

Matters reached a climax during the summer. Hurst made one of a house-boat party, got together for the Henley week. He had known beforehand that Beatrice was to be among the guests, and he had seriously debated the question of joining the party, had decided at first not to do so, and then in a reckless moment had flung aside every consideration but one, and had yielded to that — an unconquerable desire to meet her again.

It was a small party, mainly on account of the limited accommodation ; and the hostess had selected her guests with the same regard for harmony which Noah displayed in preparation for his lengthy voyage. She had also hired a number of small boats, and these were moored to the Stella's stern, and ran parallel with the bank in an inviting string for the use of the Stella's passengers, who, following the rule of

Hobson’s choice, took each his boat in succession with a disregard for preference, and rowed away with the day’s companion.

Hurst usually contrived — and since she aided him in this, it was not a difficult matter — to secure Beatrice for his partner. At his suggestion she rose earlier than the other women, and was out rowing with him every morning at six. Tanned with the sun and the summer wind, and flushed with exertion, for she insisted generally on using the oars, aglow with simple enjoyment of the present, Beatrice was far lovelier in Hurst’s eyes than she had appeared in London amid the more artificial surroundings in which he had known her hitherto. Reclining at his ease in the stern, with the ropes held loosely in his hands, he watched the glad young face and noted its unconscious happiness, noted the quiet content in her eyes as they met his — the ready, responsive smile. And while he watched her he reflected, with rage in his heart, and a quick, shamed disgust at himself, on a certain ugly episode in his life, too recent to be relegated to the background — a sordid story of fascination and gratified vanity, and a weak succumbing to impulses that were not even dominating.

Why, he wondered with a savage sense of impotence, had he been such an egregious fool as to take Edward Ashleigh into his confidence? He had made a muddle of things; there was no doubt about that. And he was adding to the muddle. He was falling in love — blind, passionate love. It was the real thing, this: it wasn’t merely admiration for a beautiful face; it was something finer than that — something that stirred and touched him, and made him desire to be worthier of this girl’s unquestioning trust; made him profoundly ashamed of what had formerly appeared to him as rather a creditable adventure, an intrigue with a quality of dash and knight-errantry about it which had contributed a sense of splendid daring to an otherwise sordid affair. He hated it now — hated the memory of it. Always when he looked into Beatrice’s eyes the memory returned and haunted him. This morning, while he sat watching her, with the sunlight bathing her warmly and playing tantalisingly in her eyes, it seemed to him that another pair of eyes were reflected in hers, and stared back at him in mocking derision. On the pretext of consulting his watch, he averted his gaze abruptly, and, seeing the time, sat up straighten

“We shall be late for breakfast,” he said. “You’ll have to work.”

“There will be no breakfast for either of us if you go to sleep over the steering,” she returned, bending to the sculls. “We nearly stuck on that sandbank.”

“I shouldn’t mind if we stuck there all day,” he answered. “If you disparage my navigation I’ll make for the first sandbank that offers, and fix her firmly in the mud.”

“Steer for a good-looking one, then, where we can lie among the bulrushes and muse.”

“That’s rather a pretty idea,” he said. . . . “It only needs the moonlight to be perfect. What would it suggest to you? — all among the rushes, eh?’’

“Moses,” she answered promptly.

“Moses!” he repeated in disgust.

“Yes. I thought everyone knew about him, and his early association with bulrushes. I suppose it would suggest to you only ham and eggs deferred? I’m not so prosaic.”

“No,” he retorted. “You are so abnormally sentimental that the average man might hesitate to venture among bulrushes with you.”

She laughed softly.

“You can get a chaperon to-morrow, if you feel uneasy,” she said.

Abruptly Hurst leaned towards her, a swift unaccountable gleam in his eyes, the blood showing dully beneath the bronze of his skin where it mounted to his temples. The emotion that gripped him was sufficiently powerful to render him indifferent to appearances; he was so intent upon her that he lost sight of the fact that, even at that hour, they had not the river to themselves. The faintly surprised inquiry in Beatrice’s eyes acted as a check.

“Look here!” he said. “There’s a moon to-night.

. . . Will you come with me? — there’s a little spot we passed up one of the reaches. There are bulrushes, and the willows hang over the water, and . . . Will you come — after dinner?”

She rowed for a moment in silence and avoided the gaze of his eager eyes. A strange shyness held her. She wanted to agree to his proposal, wanted to stroll beneath the willows with him in the moonlight ; but a certain new quality in his voice and manner startled her; she felt, and was at a loss to understand why she should feel it, a little afraid of him.

“You aren’t going to refuse?” he said, watching her closely, reading the indecision in her face, bent on overruling any difficulty that seemed to offer to the hindrance of his arrangement.

She looked at him then swiftly, a little flushed and uncertain still, but obviously yielding. It was evident to her that to refuse to go would disappoint him keenly. Instinctively she realised that the adjustment of their future relations depended on her present decision.

“I’ll go — if we can manage it,” she said doubtfully.

He smiled confidently.

‘That will be all right,” he said, and sat back with the air of a man who has achieved his purpose and is thoroughly contented.

Having gained her consent, Hurst did not concern himself with the difficulty of getting her away from the other guests after dinner. He meant to manage it somehow. To do so unobserved was impossible. In the evenings the Stella's party assembled on deck, and each guest was expected to contribute to the entertainment of the rest. The day being devoted to boating, everyone was sufficiently tired after dinner to prefer to remain on board ; and the little line of boats trailing from the Stella’s stern was seldom requisitioned after sunset. Therefore that evening when Hurst began hauling in one of the boats, his action elicited comment.

“What’s the fellow after?” a man standing beside her asked Beatrice.

Beatrice was leaning with her elbows on the rail, looking down at the mirrored reflection of starlit sky in the river beneath. The question, seeming to her to suggest that the speaker somehow connected Hurst’s occupation with herself, caused her some embarrassment. She looked round slowly, and, with her gaze on the tall figure in the boat, answered :

“We are going for a pull. There are parts of the river we have a fancy to see by moonlight.”

“Oh!” he said, and smiled comprehendingly. “I should never have suspected Hurst of being poetical.”

“Why not attribute the poetry to me? There is nothing which appeals to me more powerfully than the effect of moonlight on water.”

“You get that from here,” he said.

“For that matter,” she replied, “one can get it in a puddle, or a bucket of water even. I’m in search of contrasts. There are reaches — unsuspected backwaters, and tiny creeks, where the moonlight filters through the trees and shows between the rushes, leaving patches of unrelieved blackness. I haven’t seen it. I am going to see it to-night. I know it is all as I picture it. One finds those shadowed places on the brightest days.”

“I’d enjoy the sound of that better,” he remarked, “if it were myself you were proposing to go with. There is a quality in moonlight that is heady. You’ve been imbibing it.”

She laughed.

“Ah! my head will stand the test all right,” she answered; “it’s entirely well balanced.”

They moved aft as Hurst brought the boat alongside. Her companion helped her step into it, and remained looking down on them while Beatrice seated herself in the stern, and Hurst shipped the sculls and pushed off.

“I don’t call it altogether fair, old man,” he called to Hurst reproachfully. “You are robbing the company of its chief vocalist. Selfishness is detestable.”

“You have a chance of practising an opposite virtue,” Hurst retorted, and pulled away from the Stella with long, swinging strokes.

“The best-looking girl on board,” the other murmured complainingly, and turned to face his hostess, who joined him and stood watching with him the little boat gliding swiftly away over the moonlit waters, the lantern at her bows swinging gaily and reflecting warmly on the ripples which the boat made in her passage.

“I hate monopolists,” he said.

“In that case,” she returned soothingly, “you don’t envy either of them; they’re both monopolists.”

“Oh ! as for that,” he replied, “I daresay Miss Ash leigh would be agreeable to an exchange of escort.”

“I confess I haven’t detected any dissatisfaction on her part with the present escort,” she said. “I don’t think I ever saw two people more unaffectedly pleased with one another. Don’t you like to see people enjoying themselves?”

“Yes,” he answered — “when I happen to be of the number.”

“And aren’t you?” she asked.

He smiled engagingly.

“Under existing conditions, yes,” he replied, and turned and walked with her along the lighted deck.

“It wasn’t so difficult to manage, you see,” Hurst said when, well away from the Stella , he slackened the pace on the boat, and, pulling a leisurely stroke, found time to study the dim outline of his companion’s face, and the sheen of the moonlight on the bright, uncovered hair.