So they stood a little, with more, for the minute, passing between them than either really could say. She might have flung down a glove that he decided on the whole, passing his hand over his head as the seat of some confusion, not to pick up. Again, but flushed as well as smiling, he sought the easiest cover. “You’re here, I think, madam, to be a memory for all my future!”
Well, she was willing, she showed as she came nearer, to take it, at the worst, for that. “You’ll be one for mine, if I can see you by that hearth. Why do you make such a fuss about changing your politics? If you’d come to Missoura Top, you’d change them quick enough!” Then, as she saw further and struck harder, her eyes grew deep, her face even seemed to pale, and she paused, splendid and serious, with the force of her plea. “What do politics amount to, compared with religions? Parties and programmes come and go, but a duty like this abides. There’s nothing you can break with”--she pressed him closer, ringing out--“that would be like breaking _here_. The very words are violent and ugly--as much a sacrilege as if you had been trusted with the key of the temple. This _is_ the temple--don’t profane it! Keep up the old altar kindly--you can’t set up a new one as good. You _must_ have beauty in your life, don’t you see?--that’s the only way to make sure of it for the lives of others. Keep leaving it to _them_, to all the poor others,” she went on with her bright irony, “and heaven only knows what will become of it! Does it take one of _us_ to feel that?--to preach you the truth? Then it’s good, Captain Yule, we come right over--just to see, you know, what you may happen to be about. We know,” she went on while her sense of proportion seemed to play into her sense of humour, “what we haven’t got, worse luck; so that if you’ve happily got it you’ve got it also for _us_. You’ve got it in trust, you see, and oh! we have an eye on you. You’ve had it so for me, all these dear days that I’ve been drinking it in, that, to be grateful, I’ve wanted regularly to _do_ something.” With which, as if in the rich confidence of having convinced him, she came so near as almost to touch him. “Tell me now I shall have done it--I shall have kept you at your post!”
If he moved, on this, immediately further, it was with the oddest air of seeking rather to study her remarks at his ease than to express an independence of them. He kept, to this end, his face averted--he was so completely now in intelligent possession of her own. The sacrifice in question carried him even to the door of the court, where he once more stood so long engaged that the persistent presentation of his back might at last have suggested either a confession or a request.
Mrs. Gracedew, meanwhile, a little spent with her sincerity, seated herself again in the great chair, and if she sought, visibly enough, to read a meaning into his movement, she had as little triumph for one possible view of it as she had resentment for the other. The possibility that he yielded left her after all as vague in respect to a next step as the possibility that he merely wished to get rid of her. The moments elapsed without her abdicating; and indeed when he finally turned round his expression was an equal check to any power to feel she might have won. “You have,” he queerly smiled at her, “a standpoint quite your own and a style of eloquence that the few scraps of parliamentary training I’ve picked up don’t seem at all to fit me to deal with. Of course I don’t pretend, you know, that I don’t _care_ for Covering.”
That, at all events, she could be glad to hear, if only perhaps for the tone in it that was so almost comically ingenuous. But her relief was reasonable and her exultation temperate. “You haven’t even seen it yet.” She risked, however, a laugh. “Aren’t you a bit afraid?”
He took a minute to reply, then replied--as if to make it up--with a grand collapse. “Yes; awfully. But if I am,” he hastened in decency to add, “it isn’t only Covering that makes me.”
This left his friend apparently at a loss. “What else is it?”
“Everything. But it doesn’t in the least matter,” he loosely pursued. “You may be quite correct. When we talk of the house your voice comes to me somehow as the wind in its old chimneys.”
Her amusement distinctly revived. “I hope you don’t mean I roar!”
He blushed again; there was no doubt he was confused. “No--nor yet perhaps that you whistle! I don’t believe the wind does either, here. It only whispers,” he sought gracefully to explain; “and it sighs----”
“And I hope,” she broke in, “that it sometimes laughs!”
The sound she gave only made him, as he looked at her, more serious. “Whatever it does, it’s all right.”
“All right?”--they were sufficiently together again for her to lay her hand straight on his arm. “Then you promise?”
“Promise what?”
He had turned as pale as if she hurt him, and she took her hand away. “To meet Mr. Prodmore.”
“Oh, dear, no; not yet!”--he quite recovered himself. “I must wait--I must think.”
She looked disappointed, and there was a momentary silence. “When have you to answer him?”
“Oh, he gives me time!” Clement Yule spoke very much as he might have said, “Oh, in two minutes!”
“_I_ wouldn’t give you time,” Mrs. Gracedew cried with force--“I’d give you a shaking! For God’s sake, at any rate”--and she really tried to push him off--“go upstairs!”
“And literally _find_ the dreadful man?” This was so little his personal idea that, distinctly dodging her pressure, he had already reached the safe quarter.
But it befell that at the same moment she saw Cora reappear on the upper landing--a circumstance that promised her a still better conclusion. “He’s coming down!”
Cora, in spite of this announcement, came down boldly enough without him and made directly for Mrs. Gracedew, to whom her eyes had attached themselves with an undeviating glare. Her plain purpose of treating this lady as an isolated presence allowed their companion perfect freedom to consider her arrival with sharp alarm. His disconcerted stare seemed for a moment to balance; it wandered, gave a wild glance at the open door, then searched the ascent of the staircase, in which, apparently, it now found a coercion. “I’ll go up!” he gasped; and he took three steps at a time.
V
The girl threw herself, in her flushed eagerness, straight upon the wonderful lady. “I’ve come back to you--I want to speak to you!” The need had been a rapid growth, but it was clearly immense. “May I confide in you?”
Her instant overflow left Mrs. Gracedew both astonished and amused. “You too?” she laughed. “Why it _is_ good we come over!”
“It is, indeed!” Cora gratefully echoed. “You were so very kind to me and seemed to think me so curious.”
The mirth of her friend redoubled. “Well, I loved you for it, and it was nothing moreover to what you thought _me_!”
Miss Prodmore found, for this, no denial--she only presented her frank high colour. “I loved _you_. But I’m the worst!” she generously added. “And I’m solitary.”
“Ah, so am I!” Mrs. Gracedew declared with gaiety, but with emphasis. “A _very_ queer thing always _is_ solitary! But, since we have that link, by all means confide.”
“Well, I was met here by tremendous news.” Cora produced it with a purple glow. “He wants me to marry him!”
Mrs. Gracedew looked amiably receptive, but as if she failed as yet to follow. “‘He’ wants you?”
“Papa, of course. He has settled it!”
Mrs. Gracedew was still vague. “Settled what?”
“Why, the whole question. That I must take him.”
Mrs. Gracedew seemed to frown at her own scattered wits. “But, my dear, take _whom_?”
The girl looked surprised at this lapse of her powers. “Why, Captain Yule, who just went up.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Gracedew with a full stare. “Oh!” she repeated, looking straight away.
“I thought you would know,” Cora gently explained.
Her friend’s eyes, with a kinder light now, came back to her. “I didn’t know.” Mrs. Gracedew looked, in truth, as if that had been sufficiently odd, and seemed also to wonder at two or three things more. It all, however, broke quickly into a question. “Has Captain Yule asked you?”
“No, but he _will_”--Cora was clear as a bell. “He’ll do it to keep the house. It’s mortgaged to papa, and Captain Yule buys it back.”
Her friend had an illumination that was rapid for the way it spread. “By marrying you?” she quavered.
Cora, under further parental instruction, had plainly mastered the subject. “By giving me his name and his position. They’re awfully great, and they’re the price, don’t you see?” she modestly mentioned. “_My_ price. Papa’s price. Papa wants them.”
Mrs. Gracedew had caught hold; yet there were places where her grasp was weak, and she had, strikingly, begun again to reflect. “But his name and his position, great as they may be, are his dreadful politics!”
Cora threw herself with energy into this advance. “You _know_ about his dreadful politics? He’s to change them,” she recited, “to get _me_. And if he gets me----”
“He keeps the house?”--Mrs. Gracedew snatched it up.
Cora continued to show her schooling. “I go _with_ it--he’s to have us both. But only,” she admonishingly added, “if he changes. The question is--_will_ he change?”