Bath Tangle

“I think I must have loved you from the moment I saw you.”

“Oh, no, no! Hector, think what you are saying! You love Serena! All these years you have loved her!”

“I have loved a dream. A sickly, sentimental dream which only a moonstruck fool could have created! The vision I cherished—it was not of Serena! She was never like it!”

“No, not like your dream, but better by far!” she said quickly,

“Yes, better by far! She is a grand creature! I admire her, I honour her, I think her the most beautiful woman I ever beheld—but I do not love her!”

She pressed a hand to her temple. “How can this be? Oh, no it is not possible! It could not be!”

“Do you believe me to be mad?” he asked, coming away from the window. “How can I make you understand?” He sat down opposite to her, and dropped his head into his hands. “It wasn’t madness, but folly! When I knew her first—oh, I was head over ears in love with her! as ridiculous an object, I suppose, as that wretched boy I found with you just now! Separated from her, joining my regiment, as I did in the Peninsula, seeing no women other than camp-followers and Spanish peasants for months, there was nothing to banish Serena’s image from my memory. It was not enough to remember her: insensibly I laid coat upon coat of new and more dazzling paint upon my image! Her face I could not alter; her self I did! Perhaps I never knew it!” He looked up, a painful smile twisting his lips. “Were you ever given laudanum for an aching tooth, Fanny? Enough to make you believe your dreams were real? That was what Serena’s image was to me. Then—I met her again.” He paused, and sank his head in his hands again, and groaned. “Her face, more lovely even than I remembered it! her smiling eyelids, the music in her voice, her witchery, the very grace of her every movement—all, all as I had remembered them! I was in love again, but still in that insane dream! The woman beneath what blinded my eyes was a stranger to me. My image I had endowed with my own thoughts, my own tastes: Serena and I have scarcely a thought in common, and our tastes—” He broke off, with a mirthless laugh. “Well, you must know how widely divergent they are!”

“I know that you have sometimes been surprised—even disappointed, but you have been happy! Surely you have been happy?” Fanny said imploringly.

“I have been happy because of you,” he replied. Today I know that. I did not before. I was like a man dazzled by strong sunlight, and when my eyes grew accustomed, and I saw a landscape less perfect than I had imagined it, I shut them. I didn’t think it possible that my feeling for Serena could change. That you were the woman I loved I never knew until I had you in my arms, and realized that to let you go would be to tear the heart out of my chest.”

She rose quickly, and knelt beside him, putting her arms round him. “And mine! Oh, Hector, Hector, and mine! Oh, how wicked I have been! For I knew how much I loved you!”

They clung together, her head on his shoulder, his hand holding it there. Her tears fell silently; when she spoke again her voice had a resolute calm. “It cannot be, my dearest.”

“No. I know it. Well for you to be saved from such a contemptible clodpole as I have proved myself to be!” he said bitterly.

She drew his hand from her cheek, and held it. “You must not talk so. Or speak to me of what might have been. We must neither of us think of that ever again. Hector, we could not—!”

“You need not tell me so. In me, it would be infamous!”

“You will learn to be happy with Serena—indeed, you will, dearest! Just now it seems as though—but we shall grow accustomed, both of us! Where there is no question of dislike, one does, you see. I—I know that. Serena must never so much as suspect this!”

“No,” he said hopelessly.

She could not forbear to put her hand up, lightly stroking his waving fair hair. “There is so much in Serena that is true, not a part of your image! Her courage, and her kindness, and her generosity—oh, a thousand things!” She tried to smile. “You will forget you were ever so foolish as to love me, even a little. Serena is cleverer than I am, and so much more beautiful!”

He took her face between his hands, and looked deep into her eyes. “Cleverer, and more beautiful, but so much less dear!” he said, in an aching voice. He let her go. “Don’t be afraid! I have been a fool, but I hope I am a man of honour.”

“I know, oh, I know! You have been a little shocked to find that Serena is not quite what you thought her, but you will recover, and you will wonder at yourself for not having perceived at once how much more worth loving she is than that stupid image you made! And she loves you, Hector!”

He was silent for a moment, staring at his clenched hands, but presently he raised his eyes to Fanny’s again, in a searching, questioning look. “Does she?” he asked.

She was amazed. “But, Hector—! Oh, how can you doubt it, when she has even said she will relinquish her fortune only to please you?”

He sighed. “Yes. I was forgetting. But it has sometimes seemed to me—Fanny, are you sure it is not Rotherham whom she really loves?”

“Rotherham?” The blankest incredulity sounded in Fanny’s voice. “Good God, what makes you think such a thing?”

“I didn’t think it. But when he came here—afterwards—the suspicion crossed my mind that it was so.”

“No, no, she could not! Oh, if you had ever heard what she says of her engagement to him you would not entertain such thoughts! They cannot meet without falling out! And he! Did you think he loved her still?”

“No,” he said heavily. “I saw no sign—it did not occur to me. He made no attempt to prevent our engagement. On the contrary! He behaved to me with a forbearance, indeed, a kindness, which I neither expected nor felt that I deserved! And his own engagement was announced before he knew of Serena’s.”

There was another long silence. Fanny rose to her feet. “She doesn’t care for him. Oh, I am sure she could not! It is the feeling for a man who was her father’s friend! If it were so—and you too—!”

He too rose. “She shall never, God helping me, know the truth! I must go. How I am to face her I know not! Fanny, I cannot do it immediately! There is some business at home which I should have attended to long since. I’ll go away. Inform her that I called to tell her I had a letter from my agent, that I mean to leave by the mail-coach this afternoon!” He glanced at the gilded clock on the mantelshelf. “It leaves Bath at five o’clock, docs it not? I have just time to pack my portmanteau, and to catch it.”

“It will not do!” she cried. “If you go away like this, what must she think?”

“I shall come back. Tell her that it is only for a few days! I must have time to collect myself! Just at this moment—” He broke off, caught her hands, and kissed them passionately, uttering: “My darling, my darling! Forgive me!” Then, without another word, or a backward look, he strode quickly out of the room.

16

When Serena returned to Laura Place, it was nearly three hours later, and Fanny had had time to compose herself. She had fled to the security of her bedchamber as soon as blue had heard the front door slam behind the Major, and had given way to uncontrollable despair The violence of her feelings left her so exhausted that even in the midst of her agitating reflections, she fell asleep. She awoke not much refreshed, but calm, and if her spirits could not be other than low and oppressed and her cheeks wan, there were no longer signs to be seen in her face of a prolonged bout of crying.

Serena came in to find her seated in the window-embrasure, with a book lying open on her knee. “Fanny, have you been picturing me kidnapped, or lost, or dead on the road? I am filled with remorse, and why I ever consented to go to Wells with that stupid party I cannot imagine! I might have known it would be too far for comfort or enjoyment! Indeed, I did know it, and allowed myself and you to be victimized merely because Emily wanted to go, and could not unless I took her. Or so I thought, but, upon my soul, I fancy Mrs Beaulieu would have accepted her with complaisance even though she had met her but once before in her life! Her good-nature is really excessive: such a parcel of ramshackle people as she had permitted to join the party I never companied with in my life before! I assure you, Fanny, that with the exception of her own family, the Aylshams,