CHAPTER V.
"WELL?" asked Isabel eagerly, "what does Mr. Hardyman say? Does he thinkhe can cure Tommie?"
Moody answered a little coldly and stiffly. His dark, deeply-set eyesrested on Isabel with an uneasy look.
"Mr. Hardyman seems to understand animals," he said. "He lifted thedog's eyelid and looked at his eyes, and then he told us the bath wasuseless."
"Go on!" said Isabel impatiently. "He did something, I suppose, besidestelling you that the bath was useless?"
"He took a knife out of his pocket, with a lancet in it."
Isabel clasped her hands with a faint cry of horror. "Oh, Mr. Moody! didhe hurt Tommie?"
"Hurt him?" Moody repeated, indignant at the interest which she felt inthe animal, and the indifference which she exhibited towards the man(as represented by himself). "Hurt him, indeed! Mr. Hardyman bled thebrute--"
"Brute?" Isabel reiterated, with flashing eyes. "I know some people, Mr.Moody, who really deserve to be called by that horrid word. If you can'tsay 'Tommie,' when you speak of him in my presence, be so good as to say'the dog.'"
Moody yielded with the worst possible grace. "Oh, very well! Mr.Hardyman bled the dog, and brought him to his senses directly. I amcharged to tell you--" He stopped, as if the message which he wasinstructed to deliver was in the last degree distasteful to him.
"Well, what were you charged to tell me?"
"I was to say that Mr. Hardyman will give you instructions how to treatthe dog for the future."
Isabel hastened to the door, eager to receive her instructions. Moodystopped her before she could open it.
"You are in a great hurry to get to Mr. Hardyman," he remarked.
Isabel looked back at him in surprise. "You said just now that Mr.Hardyman was waiting to tell me how to nurse Tommie."
"Let him wait," Moody rejoined sternly. "When I left him, he wassufficiently occupied in expressing his favorable opinion of you to herLadyship."
The steward's pale face turned paler still as he said those words.With the arrival of Isabel in Lady Lydiard's house "his time hadcome"--exactly as the women in the servants' hall had predicted. At lastthe impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew thepassion of love misplaced, ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman whowas young enough to be his child. He had already spoken to Isabelmore than once in terms which told his secret plainly enough. But thesmouldering fire of jealousy in the man, fanned into flame by Hardyman,now showed itself for the first time. His looks, even more than hiswords, would have warned a woman with any knowledge of the natures ofmen to be careful how she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced,Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thoughtof the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr. Hardyman to speakfavorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you arenot jealous of him, Mr. Moody?"
Moody was in no humor to make allowances for the unbridled gayety ofyouth and good spirits.
"I hate any man who admires you," he burst out passionately, "let him bewho he may!"
Isabel looked at her strange lover with unaffected astonishment. Howunlike Mr. Hardyman, who had treated her as a lady from first to last!"What an odd man you are!" she said. "You can't take a joke. I'm sure Ididn't mean to offend you."
"You don't offend me--you do worse, you distress me."
Isabel's color began to rise. The merriment died out of her face; shelooked at Moody gravely. "I don't like to be accused of distressingpeople when I don't deserve it," she said. "I had better leave you. Letme by, if you please."
Having committed one error in offending her, Moody committed another inattempting to make his peace with her. Acting under the fear that shewould really leave him, he took her roughly by the arm.
"You are always trying to get away from me," he said. "I wish I knew howto make you like me, Isabel."
"I don't allow you to call me Isabel!" she retorted, struggling to freeherself from his hold. "Let go of my arm. You hurt me."
Moody dropped her arm with a bitter sigh. "I don't know how to deal withyou," he said simply. "Have some pity on me!"
If the steward had known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he wouldnever have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at theunpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is thatall you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!"She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into thepockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! His face turned palerand paler--he writhed under it.
"For God's sake, don't turn everything I say to you into ridicule!" hecried. "You know I love you with all my heart and soul. Again and againI have asked you to be my wife--and you laugh at me as if it was a joke.I haven't deserved to be treated in that cruel way. It maddens me--Ican't endure it!"
Isabel looked down on the floor, and followed the lines in the patternof the carpet with the end of her smart little shoe. She could hardlyhave been further away from really understanding Moody if he had spokenin Hebrew. She was partly startled, partly puzzled, by the strongemotions which she had unconsciously called into being. "Oh dearme!" she said, "why can't you talk of something else? Why can't we befriends? Excuse me for mentioning it," she went on, looking up at himwith a saucy smile, "you are old enough to be my father."
Moody's head sank on his breast. "I own it," he answered humbly. "Butthere is something to be said for me. Men as old as I am have made goodhusbands before now. I would devote my whole life to make you happy.There isn't a wish you could form which I wouldn't be proud to obey. Youmust not reckon me by years. My youth has not been wasted in a profligatelife; I can be truer to you and fonder of you than many a younger man.Surely my heart is not quite unworthy of you, when it is all yours.I have lived such a lonely, miserable life--and you might so easilybrighten it. You are kind to everybody else, Isabel. Tell me, dear, whyare you so hard on _me?_"
His voice trembled as he appealed to her in those simple words. He hadtaken the right way at last to produce an impression on her. She reallyfelt for him. All that was true and tender in her nature began to risein her and take his part. Unhappily, he felt too deeply and too stronglyto be patient, and give her time. He completely misinterpreted hersilence--completely mistook the motive that made her turn aside for amoment, to gather composure enough to speak to him. "Ah!" he burst outbitterly, turning away on his side, "you have no heart."
She instantly resented those unjust words. At that moment they woundedher to the quick.
"You know best," she said. "I have no doubt you are right. Remember onething, however, that though I have no heart, I have never encouragedyou, Mr. Moody. I have declared over and over again that I could onlybe your friend. Understand that for the future, if you please. There areplenty of nice women who will be glad to marry you, I have no doubt.You will always have my best wishes for your welfare. Good-morning.Her Ladyship will wonder what has become of me. Be so kind as to let mepass."
Tortured by the passion that consumed him, Moody obstinately kept hisplace between Isabel and the door. The unworthy suspicion of her, whichhad been in his mind all through the interview, now forced its wayoutwards to expression at last.
"No woman ever used a man as you use me without some reason for it," hesaid. "You have kept your secret wonderfully well--but sooner or laterall secrets get found out. I know what is in your mind as well as youknow it yourself. You are in love with some other man."
Isabel's face flushed deeply; the defensive pride of her sex was upin arms in an instant. She cast one disdainful look at Moody, withouttroubling herself to express her contempt in words. "Stand out of myway, sir!"--that was all she said to him.
"You are in love with some other man," he reiterated passionately. "Denyit if you can!"
"Deny it?" she repeated, with flashing eyes. "What right have you to askthe question? Am I not free to do as I please?"
He stood looking at her, meditating his next words with a sudden andsinister change to self-restraint. Suppres
sed rage was in his rigidlyset eyes, suppressed rage was in his trembling hand as he raised itemphatically while he spoke his next words.
"I have one thing more to say," he answered, "and then I have done. IfI am not your husband, no other man shall be. Look well to it, IsabelMiller. If there _is_ another man between us, I can tell him this--heshall find it no easy matter to rob me of you!"
She started, and turned pale--but it was only for a moment. The highspirit that was in her rose brightly in her eyes, and faced him withoutshrinking.
"Threats?" she said, with quiet contempt. "When you make love, Mr.Moody, you take strange ways of doing it. My conscience is easy. You maytry to frighten me, but you will not succeed. When you have recoveredyour temper I will accept your excuses." She paused, and pointed to thetable. "There is the letter that you told me to leave for you when Ihad sealed it," she went on. "I suppose you have her Ladyship's orders.Isn't it time you began to think of obeying them?"
The contemptuous composure of her tone and manner seemed to act on Moodywith crushing effect. Without a word of answer, the unfortunate stewardtook up the letter from the table. Without a word of answer, he walkedmechanically to the great door which opened on the staircase--turned onthe threshold to look at Isabel--waited a moment, pale and still--andsuddenly left the room.
That silent departure, that hopeless submission, impressed Isabel inspite of herself. The sustaining sense of injury and insult sank, as itwere, from under her the moment she was alone. He had not been gone aminute before she began to be sorry for him once more. The interview hadtaught her nothing. She was neither old enough nor experienced enoughto understand the overwhelming revolution produced in a man's characterwhen he feels the passion of love for the first time in the maturity ofhis life. If Moody had stolen a kiss at the first opportunity, she wouldhave resented the liberty he had taken with her; but she would havethoroughly understood him. His terrible earnestness, his overpoweringagitation, his abrupt violence--all these evidences of a passion thatwas a mystery to himself--simply puzzled her. "I'm sure I didn't wish tohurt his feelings" (such was the form that her reflections took, in herpresent penitent frame of mind); "but why did he provoke me? It is ashame to tell me that I love some other man--when there is no other man.I declare I begin to hate the men, if they are all like Mr. Moody. Iwonder whether he will forgive me when he sees me again? I'm sure I'mwilling to forget and forgive on my side--especially if he won't insiston my being fond of him because he is fond of me. Oh, dear! I wish hewould come back and shake hands. It's enough to try the patience of asaint to be treated in this way. I wish I was ugly! The ugly ones havea quiet time of it--the men let them be. Mr. Moody! Mr. Moody!" She wentout to the landing and called to him softly. There was no answer. He wasno longer in the house. She stood still for a moment in silent vexation."I'll go to Tommie!" she decided. "I'm sure he's the more agreeablecompany of the two. And--oh, good gracious! there's Mr. Hardyman waitingto give me my instructions! How do I look, I wonder?"
She consulted the glass once more--gave one or two corrective touches toher hair and her cap--and hastened into the boudoir.