why?" asked Jean, looking along the dark, uninviting road. "They'll wonder what's become of us, and tea will be ready, and Mrs. Hope doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"Never mind," said Lord Bidborough, his tone somewhat desperate. "I've got something I want to say to you, and this may be my only chance. Jean, could you ever—I mean, d'you think it possible—oh, Jean, will you marry me?"
Jean backed away from him, her mouth open, her eyes round with astonishment. She was too much surprised to be anything but utterly natural.
"Are you asking me to marry you? But how ludicrous!"
The answer restored them both to their senses.
Lord Bidborough laughed ruefully and said, "Well, that's not a pretty way to take a proposal," while Jean, flushed with shame at her own rudeness, and finding herself suddenly rather breathless, gasped out, "But you shouldn't give people such frights. How could I know you were going to say anything so silly? And it's my first proposal, and I've got on goloshes!"
"Oh, Jean! What a blundering idiot I am! I might have known it was a wrong moment, but I'm hopelessly inexperienced, and, besides, I couldn't risk waiting; I so seldom see you alone. Didn't you see, little blind Jean, that I was head over ears in love with you? The first night I came to The Rigs and you spoke to me in your singing voice I knew you were the one woman in the world for me."
"No," said Jean. "No."
"Ah, don't say that. You're not going to send me away, Penny-plain?"
"Don't you see," said Jean, "I mustn't let myself care for you, for it's quite impossible that I could ever marry you. It's no good even speaking about such a thing. We belong to different worlds."
"If you mean my stupid title, don't let that worry you. A second and the Socialists alter that! A title means nothing in these days."
"It isn't only your title: it's everything—oh, can't you see?"
"Jean, dear, let's talk it over quietly. I confess I can't see any difficulty at all—if you care for me a little. That's the one thing that matters."
"My feelings," said Jean, "don't matter at all. Even if there was nothing else in the way, what about Davie and Jock and the dear Mhor? I must always stick to them—at least until they don't need me any longer."
"But Jean, beloved, you don't suppose I want to take you away from them? There's room for them all…. I can see you at Mintern Abbas, Jean, and there's a river there, and the hills aren't far distant—you won't find it unhomelike—the only thing that is lacking is a railway for the Mhor."
"Please don't," said Jean. "You hurt me when you speak like that. Do you think I would let you burden yourself with all my family? I would never be anything but a drag on you. You must go away, Richard Plantagenet, and take your proper place in the world, and forget all about Priorsford and Penny-plain, and marry someone who will help you with your career and be a fit mistress for your great houses, and I'll just stay here. The Rigs is my proper setting."
"Jean," said Lord Bidborough, "will you tell me—is there any other man?"
"No. How could there be? There aren't any men in Priorsford to speak of."
"There's Lewis Elliot."
Jean stared. "You don't suppose Lewis wants to marry me, do you? Men are the stupidest things! Don't you know that Lewis…."
"What?"
"Nothing. Only you needn't think he ever looks the road I'm on. What a horrid conversation this is! It's a great mistake ever to mention love and marriage. It makes the nicest people silly. I simply daren't think what Jock would say if he heard us. He would be what Bella Bathgate calls 'black affrontit.'"
"Jean, will it always matter to you more than anything in the world what David and Jock and Mhor think? Will you never care for anyone as you care for them?"
"But they are my charge," Jean explained. "They were left to me. Mother said, before she went away that last time, 'I trust you, Jean, to look after the boys,' and when father didn't come back, and Great-aunt Alison died, they had only me."
"Can't you adopt me as well? Do you know, Penny-plain, I believe it is all the fault of your Great-aunt Alison. You are thinking that on your death-bed you will like to feel that you sacrificed yourself to others——"
"Oh," cried Jean, "did Pamela actually tell you about Great-aunt Alison? That wasn't quite fair."
"She wasn't laughing. She only told me because she knew I was interested in every detail of your life, and Great-aunt Alison explains a lot of things about her grand-niece."
Jean pondered on this for a little and then said:
"Pam once said I was on the verge of being a prig, and I'm not sure that she wasn't right, and it's a hateful thing to be. D'you think I'm priggish, Richard Plantagenet? Oh no, don't kiss me. I hate it…. Why do you want to behave like that? It isn't nice."
"I'm sorry, Jean."
"And now your voice sounds as if you did think me a prig … Here we are at last, and I simply don't know what to say kept us."
"Don't say anything: leave it to me. I'll be sure to think of some lie. Do you realise that we are only ten minutes behind the others?"
"Is that all?" cried Jean, amazed. "It seems like hours."
Lord Bidborough began to laugh helplessly.
"I wonder if any man ever had such a difficult lady," he said, "or one so uncompromisingly truthful?"
He rang the bell, and as they stood on the doorstep waiting, the light from the hall-door fell on his face, and Jean, looking at him, suddenly felt very low. He was going away, and she might never see him again. The fortnight he had been in Priorsford had given her an entirely new idea of what life might mean. She had not been happy all the time: she had been afflicted with vague discontents and jealousies such as she had not known before, but at the back of them all she was conscious of a shining happiness, something that illuminated and gave a new value to all the commonplace daily doings. Now, as in a flash, while they waited for the door to open, Jean knew what had caused the happiness, and realised that with her own hand she was shutting the door on the light, shutting herself out to a perpetual twilight.
"If only you hadn't been a man," she said miserably, "we might have been such friends."
A servant opened the door and they went in together.
CHAPTER XVII
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
