Chapter XXXII: Dead Sea Apples

It was late October, and Chris was riding harder than ever, and on the principle, as he told himself grimly, of "lucky in horses, unlucky in love," was having success after success, not only as a jockey, but a trainer, and bid fair to have a good stable of his own before long.

Gay had gone abroad with indecent suddenness immediately after her engagement, dragging the Professor with her, and forbidding Carlton to accompany them, because "she wanted a little time with Frank, since she was so soon to leave him." Yet, when at last she came back, after three months' absence, and then only because her brother insisted on it, Carlton was never able to get a moment alone with her, try as he might.

The devices she had used to stave off his proposal she used with fourfold skill to avoid being alone with him, she who had detested society, surrounded herself at all hours with it; even when she had to choose the decorations for the house he had taken in Norfolk Street, she took Effie Bulteel with her; the jewels he gave her, she never wore.

She treated her new tie as a purely nominal one, appeared careless and fancy-free; but she meant to go through with her bargain all the same, and a date in December had been actually fixed for the wedding, when the Professor with his usual inconvenience, fell ill.

Gay always declared that the trouble began with his discovery of a wonderful new microbe, that after due blazonment in the medical press, turned out to be something quite different to what it pretended to be, and, as she expressed it, sat up on its squirmy tail, making insulting faces at its non-discoverer. Frank took the matter so much to heart as to be at first hesitatingly ailing, then with considerably less hesitation, and as it entailed no effort, really ill for some time.

Nature was exacting her toll for his unhealthy, sedentary life, with its late hours, and lack of exercise, and all the tenderness for which Gay in those days had no other outlet, expended itself on him. She was a most devoted nurse, but to Carlton it almost looked as if, like the little boys and old Sam Weller's coach, the Professor had done it "a-purpose," when he lingered so unconscionably long a time over his convalescence, and the beautiful house in Norfolk Street still lacked a mistress.

It would be a cold, practical mistress, who never gave its master a kiss, or word of love, or welcome, and who as wife might reasonably be expected to be still more the "woman with no nonsense about her," that Gay evidently nowadays aspired to be.

Some men like brilliant women, hard and bright, others prefer hearts warm and tender. Carlton was one of these last, for, as Lossie had divined, there was a great capacity for romantic love in the man. Sometimes when most starved for sympathy, for appreciation where he had the right to expect it, he remembered the hot flood of devotion, of passion, that Lossie had poured out on him, and shivered in the isolation to which Gay from the first had banished, and rigorously kept him.

The heart makes its own decisions--Gay's had made hers in that passionate cry, "Come back, for I love you, Chris," and Carlton had thought that he knew better than her heart what was good for her, and reaped his reward in an automaton that talked, and smiled, and conducted itself with perfect grace and decorum, but that was not Gay.

It was the other Gay he wanted--the girl so full of life, and charm, and sparkle--the girl who could give brave kisses, and love with the thoroughness she put into everything that she did, the delicious comrade, the trusty counsellor, the dear household fairy who had the knack of creating a home wherever she might be, and that he had not hitherto found.

Well, he would not find it now--"for without hearts, there is no home"--and his town and country houses would be well ordered by a capable house-mistress, cold and uninterested, when the Professor, who seemed to be in no hurry, set her free to assume her duties as wife.

Oddly enough, Lossie seemed the happiest of the three, and having made her supreme appeal to Carlton, had apparently forgotten all about it. She met him without embarrassment, was friendly without effort--sometimes he rubbed his eyes, and thought he must have dreamed that vivid scene with her in Gay's den; yet he found himself thinking of it more often as time went on, and sometimes searched her intensely blue eyes for even a trace of the memory of it. But he found none--if Lossie, indeed, were playing a game, she played it magnificently well.

She neither sought nor avoided him, was quite pleasant, but profoundly indifferent, when they met at Connaught Square or elsewhere, and, most damning proof of all that she had ceased to value his opinion, permitted herself slight lapses in manner, and carelessnesses in dress before him. She even yawned occasionally in his face, treating him, as he said angrily to himself, like some damned old woman rather than the man whom she most wished to please--but did she?

He came to the conclusion that her outbreak had been a fit of nerves, combined with an interested desire to share his very handsome fortune, and that having failed, she thought no more about him, but decided to turn her attention elsewhere, the opportunity for doing so occurring very shortly after his own engagement.

For the unexpected had happened. Mrs. Elkins was being dressed by her maid to go to her lawyers, there to sign a fresh will she had made, by which she left everything to her favourite of the moment, and away from George Conant, who had annoyed her, when in the mirror, the woman saw the old lady's face contorted, terrible, with the most ghastly look of fear in her eyes, and though she struggled and fought dumbly for hours, she never spoke again.

George flew to Lossie the moment he was certain of what he had to offer her, and she accepted him on the spot, to his intense joy, while Gay so warmly encouraged the pair at her house, that Carlton one day complained bitterly of the ubiquity of that "grinning idiot," George Conant, who certainly since his accession to fortune, was more than ever like a Cheshire cat.

"He is an excellent match," said Gay coldly, "and what is better, he adores Lossie--I don't see why they should not be very happy. She will be the prettiest woman in his regiment, and have no end of a good time."

Could this be Gay speaking--Gay who at one time had been all heart and no head, who was now all head and no heart?

"I should have thought," he said, "that love might have some voice in the matter. No woman, surely, could love George Conant--

"Oh," said Gay bitterly, "when a girl can't marry the man she loves, she may just as well marry the man who loves her"--and Carlton winced.

He knew that he had taken a mean advantage of Gay, and was deeply humiliated, not only in his honour, but his pride, for by way of being a vain man, the simultaneous and utter indifference of both girls, hit him hard. Lossie had only wanted him for his fortune, going to extremest lengths to obtain it--Gay had wanted neither him nor his money, and accepted him only in a fit of passionate anger against Chris, of which she had instantly repented. Yet there was a tenacity of purpose, as of love, about the man, that forbade his throwing up the game.

As at every turn Lossie and Captain Conant seemed to cross his path, the one all beauty and (affected) happiness, the other all grin and possessiveness, a sombre rage, with more of heartache in it than he imagined, seized him. For many a man only misses a slighted love when, barred from his own hearth-fires, he turns in his extremity to it, only to find cold ashes, and Carlton in those days felt very chilly and lonely indeed.

Aunt Lavinia had been anything but well lately. One day, speaking to Gay of the Professor, who, like most doctors, was very nervous about himself, she said:

"Ah, my dear, when we are young, we only _fear_ we have complaints, when we are old, we hope so."

Gay looked at her, startled.

"Do you find life such a grind, auntie?" she said, rather falteringly, knowing whose fault it was that "Laddie" was riding more recklessly than ever, and how Lavinia suffered over it, for he was the dearest thing in the whole world to her, as perhaps _now_ she was the dearest thing to him.

"Well, my dear," said Lavinia quaintly, "life goes on with ups and downs, with long oases of worry, stagnation, and brief thrills of pleasure, until one day, we suddenly awaken to find people packing up in all directions--some have gone without our noting it, or saying farewell, others are in too great a hurry to think of us. Then in a panic, we decide to call together our friends of long ago, to come and make merry with us, and half the invitations come back to us, with 'gone away' scrawled across them. Then we rub our eyes, and realise that our going away time is near also, and henceforth we don't trouble much about the affairs of life, only how to get ourselves off decently, and in order."

Gay stooped and kissed the sweet little face, but was far from understanding _then_.

Rensslaer had been away during the autumn, hunting at Spa, then he had been shooting grizzlies in one place, and lions in another, but with late November, he was back again, and the first thing he did was to persuade Gay and the fairly convalescent Professor, to come and stay with him at Elsinore, where Frank spent his whole time in the library, save when dragged out for a drive.

Gay was abroad all day, either hunting with Rensslaer, or about those stables of whose inmates she never wearied, and once she found her way alone to St. Swithin's Court, going soft-footed over the house that was to have been hers--hers and Chris's....

It was very quaint, and old, and beautiful, and she peopled it with happy folk, and happy voices, not all grown up. Standing in the empty rooms, with doors hanging melancholy on their hinges, she saw it a nest of warmth, and love, and laughter, heard the cheery voice, the ringing tread that made the sweetest music in all the world to her--felt with a passion of longing, Chris's arm round her shoulder, and his hard, lean young face pressed close to hers....

She came to herself with a start, and there rushed over her the memory of a big house in town, all swept and garnished, waiting for her to walk in, and take possession.... She covered her eyes with her hands as if to shut out the face of the man who would share it with her.... strange that what held all Heaven to Lossie, should be so hateful to herself ... for both would have regarded the world well lost for the man they loved, yet the world, not that particular man, was to be their portion.

The girls were better friends now than they had ever been, greatly to the delight of Lavinia (who held a brief for unsatisfactory people), for generous Gay had come to understand Lossie better now, discovered how much worse her bark was than her bite.

Selfish she undoubtedly was, and in some things unprincipled, but, like many other idle, clever women, who have no hobby to occupy their time, no great love, no real work to sweeten their lives, she had turned her unused energies into mischief, talked scandal, done spiteful things, mainly for want of something better to do.

Certainly she had many things to embitter her that Gay had not, for by her own recent experiences, Gay knew that suffering of a certain kind does not ennoble, on the contrary, it tends to deteriorate the character, and ruin the temper. With the ease of mind that wealth brings, Lossie might develop into a very different woman--and yet--and yet--now and again would come to Gay flashes of insight, in which she seemed to see poor blundering George Conant, a mere hopeless pawn in the game that Lossie was playing with such consummate audacity and skill.