The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [100]
Hope mastered pain, and reality mastered both, when, with the conventionality of situation to which life sometimes condescends, there came steps on the gravel, and looking up she saw that Hawkins was coming towards her. Her heart stopped and rushed on again like a startled horse, but all the rest of her remained still and almost impassive, and she leaned her head over her book to keep up the affectation of not having seen him.
“I saw your dress through the trees as I was coming up the drive,” he said after a moment of suffocating silence, “and so—” he held out his hand, “aren’t you going to shake hands with me?”
“How d’ye do, Mr. Hawkins?” she gave him a limp hand and withdrew it instantly.
Hawkins sat down beside her, and looked hard at her half-averted face. He had solved the problem of her treatment of him last night in a way quite satisfactory to himself, and he thought that now that he had been sharp enough to have found her here, away from Miss Mullen’s eye, things would be very different. He had quite forgiven her her share in the transgression; in fact, if the truth were known, he had enjoyed himself considerably after she had left Mrs. Beattie’s party, and had gone back to Captain Cursiter and disingenuously given him to understand that he had hardly spoken a word to Miss Fitzpatrick the whole evening.
“So you wouldn’t dance with me last night,” he said, as if he were speaking to a child; “wasn’t that very unkind of you?”
“No it was not,” she replied, without looking at him.
“Well, I think it was,” he said, lightly touching the hand that held the novel.
Francie took her hand sharply away.
“I think you are being very unkind now,” he continued; “aren’t you even going to look at me?”
“Oh yes, I’ll look at you if you like,” she said, turning upon him in a kind of desperation; “it doesn’t do me much harm, and I don’t suppose it does you much good.”
The cool, indifferent manner that she had intended to assume was already too difficult for her, and she sought a momentary refuge in rudeness. He showed all the white teeth, that were his best point, in a smile that was patronisingly free from resentment.
“Why, what’s the matter with her?” he said caressingly. “I believe I know what it’s all about. She’s been catching it about that day in the launch! Isn’t that it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Hawkins,” said Francie, with an indifferent attempt at hauteur; “but since you’re so clever at guessing things I suppose there’s no need of me telling you.”
Hawkins came closer to her, and forcibly took possession of her hands. “What’s the matter with you?” he said in a low voice; “why are you angry with me? Don’t you know I love you?” The unexpected element of uncertainty sharpened the edge of his feelings and gave his voice an earnestness that was foreign to it.
Francie started visibly; “No, I know you don’t,” she said, facing him suddenly, like some trapped creature; “I know you’re in love with somebody else!”
His eyes flinched as though a light had been flashed in them. “What do you mean?” he said quickly, while a rush of blood darkened his face to the roots of his yellow hair, and made the veins stand out on his forehead; “who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me,” she said, with a miserable satisfaction that her bolt had sped home; “but I know it’s true.”
“I give you my honour it’s not!” he said passionately; “you might have known better than to believe it.”
“Oh yes, I might,” she said with all the scorn she was master of; “but I think it ‘twas as good for me I didn’t.” Her voice collapsed at the end of the sentence, and the dry sob that rose in her throat