Chapter VII: Jerry's Last Appeal

'The last time we three shall ride out of this gate together. Whenever I do anything with a conviction that it is for the last time, I always feel unconsciously a kind of sadness come over me. What do you think, Jerry?'

The speaker was Goring, as he, Dalton, and Jerry Wilmot quitted the North Camp on horseback and separated--the two former, in hunting costume, to have a 'spin' with the Royal Buckhounds, the latter to the household at Wilmothurst, to which an hour or two more brought him by train; and to the last interview with his mother, one brief enough--too brief for Jerry's taste, as he found Lady Wilmot--afternoon tea over--preparing to pay some carriage visits in the vicinity.

Her French maid, Mademoiselle Florine, was in the act of dressing her ladyship's hair, and, as that was a very important matter, she could barely turn her head to bid farewell to Jerry, who stood near her looking irresolute, reproachful, and wistful with his heart and his eyes full together.

Lady Julia Wilmot, whilom a graceful beauty--a handsome woman still--had a theory that worry of any kind told unfavourably on the female face, that thought wrinkled the forehead, puckered the eyes and mouth, and consequently she never thought or worried herself about anything, and therefore was wonderfully young-looking and smooth-visaged for her years--being one of the best preserved women in England.

She had a marquise air of bygone days about her, as the flattering Mademoiselle Florine often said, and suggesting to her mind patches and powdered hair, a long stomacher, hoop or sacque, and pomander ball.

'Actually going, and to that horrid place, my poor boy,' she said, without quite turning her face towards him. 'You should have gone into the Guards, Jerry, and have done your soldiering in Pall Mall and at Windsor.'

'The Guards, mother,' exclaimed Jerry, as he thought of his mortgages. 'Before I return, if I ever return at all, you may have to cut down the Wilmot woods, and put down your carriages and horses.'

'Why, and for what?'

'To pay Mr. Chevenix his overdue interest.'

'Don't talk of him. I detest his name. By the way, Twesildown calls there occasionally, I believe, the result of your introduction at the ball--and has given the girl a huge fox-terrier.'

'A fox-terrier. Curious present for a lady.'

'Very suitable in this instance, I should say.'

'And now, mother dearest--good-bye.'

Her cold manner and frigid kiss from her half-turned face, as Florine brushed out her hair, pained him. He gave her another farewell glance, and as he saw her slim figure, her perfect feet and hands, her placid face and still magnificent hair, which Mademoiselle Florine was deftly manipulating, he felt that all her retention of apparent youth was due to her utter want of heart; and, after receiving a somewhat effusive kiss from Cousin Emily, he thought of betaking himself to the path that led to the house of Mr. Chevenix.

Albeit, used as he was to his aristocratic mother's fashionable demeanour and coldness of heart, Jerry's grew sore at the general mode and tenor of his farewell under all the circumstances. Thus he clung more fondly to the hope that Bella Chevenix might be more tender, and send him away with kindly thoughts of home and Old England.

He passed through the drawing-room, where his mother and cousin had just had their afternoon tea. It was flooded with sunlight, and the delicate Wedgwood china, and silver tea equipage, were yet on the blue velvet gipsy table. It was a magnificent apartment; flowers from the conservatory were in old-fashioned china bowls on the marble consoles, and in rich majolica jardinières between the windows; and Jerry sighed as he gave a farewell glance and turned away.

His mother might be deprived of all that luxury ere he returned to look upon it again, if--as he said before--he ever returned at all; for many were doubtless doomed to leave their bones amid the primeval forests that overshadowed the Prah river and the wild jungles of horrible Coomassie.

The somewhat pert Mademoiselle Florine, who looked as if she had no objection should the handsome Jerry have kissed her, began to sob when he withdrew, an emotion which 'my Lady' at once snubbed by a calm, steady, and enquiring stare, for she was a cold, proud woman, who, with all her remains of undoubted beauty, had outlived all the memory of her youth, and the genial impulses of her youth, if she ever had them. And she had to the fullest extent that which a writer curiously styles 'the intense vulgarity which passes by the name of high-breeding.'

Remembering--he had never forgotten it--the tenor of his last conversation with Bella Chevenix and the way in which it ended, it was not without a doubt whether he could see her if alone, and with a certain clamorous emotion in his heart, that Jerry Wilmot--the usually jolly and unabashed Jerry--approached the great red-bricked square villa that overlooked the village green, and the walls of which were covered by masses of Virginia creepers, roses, and clematis in summer.

'Mr. Chevenix was out--had ridden over to Langley Park,' was the response of the domestic who received Jerry's card.

'Ah, considers it his own property, like the other places, no doubt,' was the thought of Jerry, without anger, however.

'Miss Chevenix?'

'Is at home, sir.'

Another moment, and he was face to face with the smiling and brilliant Bella, who received him with somewhat of a flutter. A hot colour swept through the girl's soft face, and, retiring as suddenly, left her rather pale.

'I hope I don't intrude on you,' said Jerry, seized with a curious access of bashfulness. 'I find you sitting, full of thought, with your head on one side, like a canary.'

'Was I?' said she, caressing a great fox-terrier, with a plated collar--Twesildown's present, no doubt, thought Jerry.

The latter had called in the hope of having a solemn leave-taking, if not something better--one of those eternal adieux peculiar, he thought, to heroes and heroines in novels and plays; thus he was rather bewildered to find that Bella began to run on in a style of conversation (adopted to cover her own nervousness or chagrin) that was 'sparkling;' thus she chatted away, without waiting for answers, on subjects culled from the society papers, fashionable journals, and so forth, leaving him for a time, as he thought, 'unable to get a word in, even edgeways,' till he announced to her that 'the battalion had received its letters of readiness, and that the route had come.'

At these tidings her manner and colour changed at once, and her voice and eyes softened, as she said,

'And you are really going away?'

'At last!'

'To Ashanti.'

'Yes, to Ashanti,' he replied.

Each seemed as if afraid to trust themselves to words of their own. What he was doing while he spoke he scarcely knew; but he was trying to fit on the top of his fingers in succession a tiny silver thimble picked from her work-basket, and in every case without success.

The doubts in the mind of each still kept the cold cloud between them--she believing that the love he might speak of again was prompted by worldly selfishness combating with family pride: he fearing that she received his love as inspired by fear of the mortgages alone.

'Surely this is very sudden?' said she, after a pause.

'Oh no, we have expected a move for some time past--you will miss me, I hope?'

'We have not seen much of you lately.'

'However, I should like to take with me into my place of exile--for such I deem it--a knowledge, a hope that you did miss me a little.'

Bella was about to reply, what she knew not, but a choking emotion came into her white, slender throat. Jerry saw the emotion, and gathering courage, said,

'Do you remember, Bella, that more than once I had struggled with the love with which you had inspired me till I could keep the secret no longer.'

Jerry was still on the wrong tack, and was again terribly misunderstood. Bella's pride and indignation came again to her aid, and she replied, with a haughty smile,

'I am not likely to forget, Captain Wilmot: women do not forget such speeches, or when a friend takes up the _rôle_ of a lover; but, after what you _did_ say, we can never be the same to each other again.'

'What did I say?' he exclaimed, regarding her earnestly and wistfully. 'I remember that I made you an honest and straight-forward avowal of the love that was in my heart, Bella.'

'Perhaps--but I only remember the terms in which you did make it,' replied Bella, in whose mind the unfortunate and misconstrued term 'contempt of his world' was rankling.

'Once again, Bella,' said he, with his hand stretched out towards her, and a great expression of entreaty in his eyes--'will you be my wife--will you marry me?'

'It cannot be,' said she, with a firmness that was not entirely assumed; 'but let us part friends.'

'Nothing more?' he asked, sadly.

'Nothing more,' she replied, in a choking voice.

In her angry pride of heart, one moment she had gone near to hating him, but she does not hate him now--oh, far, far from it, when looking upon the handsome and earnest face, as perhaps she may be doing for the last time, but, so far as her words go, she is as unyielding as ever. A little indignation at her hardness began to gather in Jerry's heart, and he said, in a light tone of reproach,

'Of course, it is too much to expect an English girl to give up--on a sudden, too--the comforts of an English home, the prospect of a season in London and another at Brighton, to broil with a poor devil on the Gold Coast, and share a South African bungalow.'

Bella took a peculiar view of this speech, and believed it was a sudden way of 'shelving herself,' as she had refused him. She knew nothing of the military etiquette and iron rule that prevented an officer from quitting in any way after letters of readiness came, and thought that Jerry might retire when he pleased, marry and keep his wife at home. She gave a little disdainful smile and remained silent, so Jerry spoke again--

'When I was a big boy in knickerbockers, and you were a little girl in short frocks, we used to be like Paul and Virginia in the Wilmot Woods.'

'Well, Paul and Virginia have grown up, and the young lady has come to her senses.'

'If the gentleman has not.'

'He has come to his senses too, and has his eyes very wide open indeed.'

'She is referring to those infernal mortgages,' thought Jerry (which was the case), 'and how shall I ever undeceive her?'

'In our boy and girl time you would have trusted me,' he urged.

'Perhaps, but I did not know you as I do now, and the world you live in.'

'The past, Bella----'

'Is past, Captain Wilmot; let us not refer to it again. I do not understand you.'

'May I--can I--dare I explain?' he began, impetuously.

'Certainly not--there is nothing I wish explained,' said she, warmly, though tears were in her eyes, and, as they seemed to be almost 'sparring now,' Jerry rose to withdraw, yet lingered, with a heavy, loving, and angry heart, and said,

'To me you are in no way what you were once, Bella, and what I hoped you might have been. When I was last in Wilmothurst I saw that puppy Twesildown hovering about; surely you--you don't encourage him?'

This was a blunt and unfortunate speech, for Bella's brown eyes sparkled as she asked, hotly,

'How dare you think, much less ask, if I would encourage anyone?'

'I don't know--pardon me; I scarcely know what I think or what I say.'

'So it seems.'

Both were standing now, but apart. Oh, how Jerry longed to take her in his arms and pour his farewell kisses on her lips and hair and eyes; but this was not to be.

'How hard you are with me!' said he, after a pause.

'Have you deserved that I should be otherwise?'

'My mother has said----'

'Oh, I am infinitely obliged to Lady Julia for her opinion of me, of course,' said Bella, cresting up her beautiful head; 'but what has she said of me?'

'That you are the greatest flirt in Hampshire, and that, young as you are, you have flirted with every man that came near you.'

'I think you must know more of me than she does, and may know how much of all this is true; but she told me the same of you, and even more, and that she could not get you off to your regiment soon enough.'

'Why?' asked Jerry, with surprise.

'Because of a _tendresse_ for her own maid; and that you have been making love to every woman and girl since. But all this gossip does not concern me, so let the conversation end. You came to bid me good-bye?'

'Yes,' said Jerry, in a hard tone.

'Had you not better bid papa good-bye too? I think I heard him come in.'

She put her hand upon the bell.

'Stay one moment--stay!' he said, imploringly.

She looked down and played nervously with the silver bangles on her wrists, some of them the gift of Jerry in happier moments.

'Consider once again,' said he, brokenly; 'think of what my life will be apart from you. Will you dream of me when I am gone?'

'Why should I dream--and dreams come unbidden?'

'Think of me, then?'

'A waste of time surely. I shall have much to think of--papa and my poor people.'

'Why do you speak like this to me?' he said, with a flash of indignation. 'Is it because each day sees me a poorer and your father a richer man? or has another touched your heart?'

An angry smile curled her lip at this question. She recollected the scene in the conservatory, and remembered it has been said that 'a woman never yields an inch, however innocently and generously, to a man that he does not suspect her, sooner or later, of having given way in a similar manner to some man who has come _earlier_.'

'I listen to all this too late. I know your motive. I thank you for the honour you condescend to do me, but let the matter end,' said Bella, while a shuddering sigh escaped her pale lips, for her respiration came in little proud gasps and her heart throbbed painfully--painfully for the part that pride inspired, and a doubt of the purity of Jerry's love, though at the time loving him dearly herself. It was every way a curious situation, and at last Jerry took up his hat and gloves.

'We have been somewhat apart of late,' said he; 'yet I do not wish--that--that we should part coldly.'

'Oh no; why should we?' she asked, in her sweetest tone. 'I am,' she thought, 'in reality--but for the encumbrances on his estate--nothing more to him than all the other girls he has talked to, laughed with, and flirted with, as his cold hard mother told me. So let me be on my guard--on my guard!'

'You will--most probably--be married before I return, if I ever return at all, which God only can foresee,' he said.

'I may never marry,' said Bella, with a curious ring in her voice.

'But you _will_ think of me, Bella, won't you--broiling and fighting in far away Africa--won't you? I would not like to think that you quite forgot me.'

'Nor shall I,' said she, making a super-human effort to repress her tears.

'Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

He was gone--gone, and no kiss was exchanged between those two--only a clinging pressure of the hand, and that was all!

Could it be that, after all, he was no more to her--through her misconception and doubt of him--than a stick or a stone? If her assumed calm covered--as it really did--a sore, sore heart, how was he to know it?

With her hands interlaced above her head, as if to stay the throbbing of her brain, and her swelling eyes cast upward, she said, in a husky voice,

'If I have erred, oh! may heaven protect him, and make his life happy in some other way!'

However, she did not say with another.

When Jerry was fairly gone, it seemed to Bella that an unnatural stillness--a hush fell over all the house. She threw open a window to court the cool atmosphere, for her temples were hot and quivering; she could hear the murmur of the stream and the rustle of the trees, in shadow now, as the sun had crept round to the back of the house, and a gloom was falling on the landscape, even as a gloom was sinking on her heart; and she began to upbraid herself with hardness and cruelty, and to feel she might never know rest again.

And Jerry's voice lingered in her ears, as the expression of his face clung to her memory, and, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, she wailed in her heart--

'Oh, he is going away, and I have acted a cruel part to him--away to face death, and our parting seems like a farewell of the dying; and his love for me may be true, tender, and honest, after all! If so, what will he--what must he think of me? But it is over and done with--over and done with now!'

And she took refuge in floods of bitter, bitter tears. When, for good or for evil, for love and for peace, should she see Jerry Wilmot again? Too probably, never more!