Chapter VIII. " I THINK IT INDISCREET, FRANK !"

Otago Witness, Issue 1188, 5 September 1874, Page 18

Chapter VIII. " I THINK IT INDISCREET, FRANK !"

" Fob all her external mildness, May has a nasty temper of her own, I'm mire of that," Gertrude says, as she lounges about Kate's room, watching the latter packing up the few remaining trifles which are still scattered about. Then Miss Forest goes on to tell her cousin of the resentful manner in which the Constables have received the tidings of Frank's intention of paying a visit to his uncle. " Trying to tie a man to her apronstring in that way is so foolish," she says in conclusion, and she looks interrogatively at Kate as she says it, Kate makes no response. Apparently she is fully absorbed in counting over her small stock of trinkets. But Gertrude is not tc be easily turned out of the conversational groove in which she has placed herself. "I should go on a very different plan if I were engaged," Gertrude goes on ; " I should let the man feel himself to be as free as air ; Wouldn't you 1" Thus directly addressed, Kate looks up and says-^ " I think that 1 should do everything that is directly opposed to what Miss Con- 1 stable does ; etui J4pn'twcmd« athefi

feeling annoyed with Frank about this sudden resolve to go away." " She is foolish to show it though, isn't she ?" Gertrude persists. " He's bound to her hard and fast ; her pettishness may make him tug at his chain, but, as mamma was saying just now, he can't break it." " A man ' can' do whatever he pleases in that way, I should think," Kate Bays calmly, but her lips quiver. If Frank " can't " break the chain which binds him to May Constable, then has he behaved very weakly, perfidiously, and cruelly to Kate Mervyn. " Not with the Constable family on one side of him and mamma on the other," Gertrude laughs out, " besides, I don't think that his aversion to the marriage is violent enough, to urge him to take such a decided step as breaking his engagement would be. He's no reason to do either, you know ; she's not a bit sillier or more tedious than she was in those days of rapture when he proposed to her." "Only he has had time to find her out," Kate says, carelessly, rising from her knees as she speaks. "I wish I hadn't agreed to go by such a late train, [Gertrude; I wish the 'good-byes' weie over, for you have all been very kind to I me, dear, and I wish I was gone l" Large genuine tears are rolling down Kate's cheeks. She lias not slept for the last two or three nights, and she has had a vast amount of emotional feeling to contend against during the day. She knows that though she is parting in peace with her aunt, and her aunt's family, now, it will be "War to the knife between them when they next meet, if Frank does i break his present bonds. This conviction galls her, for, as she says, " they have been very kind to her." Nevertheless Frank is dearer to her than his family, and she knows how it will go with her, if Frank doea accompany her back to that quiet little country h »me of hers, wherein he will have nothing to do but make love. " We shall miss you terribly," Gertrude answers, touohed into something like sincerity by the pathos Kate has employed. ' ' I wish you were May Constable, only you deserve something better than the uncommonly light love which is the only article Frank has to bestow. What - fun it has been to be sure,'* she continues, " to watch the elastic way in which Frank loves and unloves ! He used to tumble into a grand passion one night in every week at least, and come out perfectly cured the next morning. " Kate's tears ceased flowing, and she looks her cousin very steadily in the face as she says — "You want me to think Frank more fickle than he is, for some reason or other, Gertrude ; but I've got my own opinion of him, and 1 shall stand by it, I think, until Frank himself gives me cause to alter it." " Oh ! well, dear, please yourself, "Misa Forest replies. " I thought, perhaps, that a word in season might send you home happier. Just remember this, though, Kate," she adds, putting her hands on Kate's shoulders, frankly and kindly : " I shall keep my own counsel ; I shall not say a word- of this to mamma or Marian." Kate makes one faint struggle to keep her secret. The struggle is proved ineffectual on the spot. " A word of what, Gertrude ?" she asks. "I didn't begin the conversation with the idea of making discoveries, Kate, dear," Gertrude says ; "I began it to pass away the time, till mamma thinks fit to summon me to read to Captain Bellairs ; but I have made discoveries while we have been talking. Kate, you're a goose ; you're worlds too good for Frank, though he's a very nice fellow. Let May have him in joeace." ! "I wouldn't move a hair's breadth to take him from hex'," Kate says, with an | angry, white face ; and, even as she says it, she remembers how many hairs' breadths she has moved already on her way to win him ! How pitiful it all is, after all ! The .evasion, the mockery, and | the snare ! " Go back to smiling Somersetshire, and beam legally upon some acting hunting squire, or aomo amiable, rich , rectorNo !" with sudden compunction " that wouldn't suit you, Kate s would it ?" " I didn't think I could breathe in such a peri eot air as the rich rectory would . probably be ; and I don't want to be held ' a little dearer than his horse' only by a hunting squire. Spare yourself the trouble of mapping out a future for me ; I should never travel by your plan." She says this with a weary air of irritability that is a new thing in her. Frank's going home with her will be a fatal step, indeed, if nothing more comes of it than the pleasant pastime of love-making for him, and the piteously painful position of being ultimately left by him for cold prudence sake, for hex*. Better, far better, that she should forego the sweet delight | of his society in the present, than that he should get to love it better, to find it essential to her heart's peace, and then to be bereft of it ! So she reasons with herBelf for a weary, hopeless minute. Then she remembers all her own potent oharms, all her own winning love, and she banishes all fear of May, all doubt of Frank from her mind. Frank, meanwhile, has been driven by his mother's strong will, and his own weak desire to smooth over matters, to an interview with May, in which he has to say farewell^ and offer an explanation as to why he is compelled to say it for a time. He has been received with sad serenity by Mrs. Constable— Who has no manner of right to sit in judgment upon him, he instantly recollects— and with a great deal of spurious dignity by May, r 'TJw dove cm peck, tm no iabtoflto,' r *

he tells himself, 1 with a laugh, as ' May looks up with overdone surprise when he enters, and says — " I hadn't the least idea of seeing any one this morning. When people call out of season, they must expect to be very badly entertained." " But if I hadn't intruded on you this morning, I shouldn't have seen you at all, May." Then he flounders on awkwardly enough, into the first falsehood he feels himself obliged to tell in the matter, and adds ; "I couldn't have come in the evening, as I have to go down to my uncle s to-day on family business." " Really !" May says, with elaborate indifference, drawing a little biisket of flowers towards her as she speaks, and altering the position of a few of their leaves and tendrils. " Mamma, these flowers are not half so good as thoae we get from the place in Baker-street." " I have been so much worried to-day, that I hardly remember where I sent James for the flowers," Mrs. Constable rejoins, plaintively. " And James iB just like the rest of the world, very apt to forget his duty for his pleasure. I've no doubt but, that he went to the nearest place, in order to save himself trouble." " Very natural thing to do in this blazing hot weather," Frank says, defending the guilty James, simply because he feels that the speech is a side thrust at himself. " Come May," he goes on, getting himself a little nearer to his liege lady, " are you not going to offer a fellow a little pity, i? nothing else, when you hear that he has to take himself for several hot hours in a hot train, for the sake of business." % May's round pale blue eyes en&c a little flash ; May's rosebud foolish mouth purses itself up unpleasantly ; May's manner, which is not fascinating at the best of times, grows stiff with angry jealousy as Bhe answers — " I'm sure you wouldn't put yourself to any inconvenience, unless you were to be rewarded for it, Frank, so I can't pity you a bit ; I'm not Billy enough, whatever you and other people may think, to believe that you don't like going very much indeed," " Then you think my business is either profitable, or pleasurable V he asks, rising up, and leaning over her laughingly, as he thinks, "I'm getting through it much easier than I expected." Alas ! for him, he is not out of the wood yet. " Please don't ' crumple my frill, Frank," she says with maidenly severity. " I wish you'd sit still in your chair, it's so difficult to talk to people when they're fidgetting about ; it does give the impression of a person being so uneasy in society, too." Frank ceases to crumple the frill, and Mrs. Constable takes up the parable. "I always think it such a pity," she says, " that some friend does not point out disagreeable little tricks arid habits to people ; that Miss Mervyn, now, her way of moving up and down a room is most objectionable, most' objectionable !" "Oh ! I wasn't thinking of Miss Mervyn," May says, petulantly, " one doesn't expect country bred girls to know what they're about when they go into society ; but I don't want Frank to take up the family failing." " Write me a handbook of etiquette, and I will read it," Frank says, good humouredly, " but excuse my talking it just now, as I have something else to say." Then he goes on to explain to May, that business may keep him down in the country for a fortnight or three weeks. She listens to the rather halting expla-n nation in angry silence, with an almost \ insulting air of not believing it; A gleam of good humour from her at this juncture, a little effort to please him, a slight appearance of seeming to have trust in him, would win him from his purpose of going away with Kate, and breaking off his engagement with May. But the latter does not know this, therefore she gives vent to her natural disposition, which is not the gentlest and most generous in the world, and in answer to his remark, eayc-^* " Pray don't think it necessary to explain any portion of your business to me. I thoroughly understand it already." " I am glad that yo\i do," he says, with good-humoured provoking calm, and then Mrs. Constable joins in the conversation in a bustling, domineering, interfering way that is infinitely disagreeable to a man. " I think it indiscreet, Frank, to say the leaafc of it, that you, an engaged man, should go travelling about with that young lady aloiie." " That young lady is my nearest relation, after my mother* and sisters," he 1 says, quietly. His resolution to have' done with May is deepening every moment, but he is fully determined not to do or say anything that may be twisted into an act or word of, discourtesy. " The relationship is all rubbish," May says, and Frank feels that he is not proud of her diction. "However that may be, it is time for" me to be off now," he says, and he rises, and goes over to May, wondering whether, in the moment of parting, she will relent a little, hold up her face to be kissed, and so sap his determination. She does nothing of the kind; " Good* bye, if you are going," she says, barely giving him the tips of her fingers, and resolutely turning from him to the rearranging of her flowers again. So he goes from her with a cool hand-claep only 1 by which to remember their hour of parting, andfthinks, with a throbbing heart, of how Kate's tiny hand will thrill within his own, whdn he tells h&r that he is both true and free. "I think it indiacfeet, Frank, andt k crupl into the bargain," Mm Constable Mp, m to Mhoft, half in wpt, te

he passes by her chair and tenders her his hand. "I can't help it," he says, rather doggedly, "if offence is taken when none is intended, what can a fellow do ?" Then he says' something more about having barely time to catch his train, and gets himself out of the presence of his betrothed without further let or hindrance. Fortunately for him he has but little time "allowed him in his mother's house, before the moment arrives when theyi must start. "Have you made it right with May ?" Mrs. Forest asks in a low voice. "You must tell me that, Frank. I will not be kept in the dark. " "I told her that I was obliged to go, and she turned sulky about it," he answers, carelessly. " Take your own way," his mother replies, with an angry movement of her head and hands, " take your own way — and suffer for it." " Good bye, mother; ; look after Bellairs," he says, quietly, in response. Then he adds, as unconcernedly as he can, " Where's Kate ? fche mustn't loiter about any, longer, or she'll miss her train." " I wish I had never seen my brother's child ; I wish she had never been born," Mrs. Forest responds, bitterly. "It's too late for that wish to be efficacious now," he laughs; " have you said good-bye to her, mother ?" "Don't let me see her again," she rejoins, and he is glad to accept her terms, and get his cousin away without further intercourse with his disappointed mother. The pair are very silent, very conskflHied, very awkward, as they drive dofl^ to the station. The bustle and confusion on the platform serve, for a marvel, as a sedative to both of them ; and by the time they are seated in the carriage, and the train has puffed off, they are outwardly composed. For a wonder, the man is the first to speak. " J've had a hard time of it this morning, dear," he says, bending his head nearer to her, and she replies, " Weakness to be wrath with weakness; but I can't help feeling sure that you have stirred up strife for nothing; still— l'll never blame you." (To be contvnued,)