Mary of Marion Isle. Генри Райдер Хаггард

thought of everybody and everything but herself. Oh! indeed she was a pearl above price, a woman whom a king might be glad to marry, an angel, one almost too good for this world. And she had let him kiss her, not once but often, and he knew – oh! full surely – that never, never would she have allowed this unless her heart told her that he was the one man on earth to whom she wished to give that holy right.

      He walked back to Justice Street treading so lightly that figuratively he seemed to float, a precious sensation which is granted occasionally to the young. Mrs. Josky saw him coming from her point of vantage on the doorstep and, like Dr. Somerville Black, at once diagnosed the case.

      «He’s been and gone and done it,» she said to herself. «Poor young man!»

      Then she fled to prepare the supper.

      A little later she arrived with that meal to find Andrew gazing rapturously at the ceiling.

      «Anything wrong with the plaster, Mr. West?» she asked, «or are you expecting an angel to come down into Justice Street, because if so, I fancy you will have to wait a long while.»

      «I was only thinking, Mrs. Josky.»

      «What of? Medicines and such-like?» Then her eye fell upon the rose. «You had better put it in water,» she said, pointing to that flower, «for I think you’ve seen the best of it. Or perhaps you would like to press it, for then, being wired, it will hold together a long time, until you want to throw it away or get another.»

      «That’s a good idea,» said Andrew, and going to a shelf he took down a massive medical work (it chanced to be on diseases of the heart), and reverently deposited the rose between the pages.

      «Better put some tissue-paper round it,» suggested Mrs. Josky, «or it will stain the pretty picture» (which was one of the pectoral cavity cut open to reveal the organs within).

      Again Andrew obeyed while Mrs. Josky watched him gloomily.

      «Is that a very rare sort of rose, Mr. West,» she asked while she pretended to arrange the plates, «that you take such particular care of it? Or is there some other reason?»

      Andrew could resist no longer. He must communicate his joy, and here was an ideal confidante, one who would triumph with him, and understand.

      «There is another reason, Mrs. Josky,» he said solemnly. «This flower means a great deal to me; it is the gift of the lady whom I love.»

      «Is it, indeed, Mr. West? Well, it is pretty and it didn’t cost her much, but does the lady love you?»

      «Oh! yes, I think so. There are some things which young and innocent girls don’t say right out, you know, Mrs. Josky. But in view of what passed —» and he paused.

      «Ah! kisses and the rest, I suppose. I’ve heard of them before, I have indeed. But what did pass, Mr. West? If you feel moved to tell me, I’ll tell you what I think.»

      So Andrew told her at great length and with an extraordinary wealth of detail, nor, although it agonized her to know that the chops were getting cold, did Mrs. Josky attempt to cut him short.

      «I forgot,» said Andrew, when at length the history came to an end. «I promised secrecy; however, as you don’t know who the lady is, it doesn’t matter.»

      «No, I don’t know, so of course it doesn’t matter. But I was trying to think this business out, Mr. West. You are kind of engaged to some one you met suddenlike, but she isn’t engaged to you?»

      «No, now you mention it, Mrs. Josky, not exactly engaged.»

      «In short, the hook’s in your mouth, but not in hers, and a year hence you are to find out whether she likes the taste of the bait.»

      «I should never have thought of calling it a hook, Mrs. Josky.»

      «Of course not, nobody does who is the right side of thirty. But somehow I didn’t treat Josky like that, all take and no give, so to speak; and what’s more, I don’t think he would have stood it, if I had, for he wasn’t romantic, wasn’t Josky. ’Now you make up your mind, Emma,’ he said to me, ’for I’ve got five minutes to spare for this job and no longer.’»

      «Perhaps,» suggested Andrew, «the temperament of the late Mr. Josky and my own differ somewhat.»

      «There ain’t no doubt about that, Mr. West. They differs a lot. Well, there it is, you’ve gone through the top and one day you’ll come out at the bottom, and then you’ll know how you like it. Everybody does that kind of thing; why, I did myself before I met Josky. And now I’ll take those chops down and warm them up.»

      «I don’t want any chops,» murmured Andrew.

      «But you’ll eat them all the same to support you through the trials of this mortal life,» and she departed, leaving him wondering.

      Somehow the tale of his perfect romance had not been as enthusiastically received as he could have hoped. But then Mrs. Josky was – well, Mrs. Josky, and could hardly be expected to understand.

      As a matter of fact that good woman understood with almost painful clearness.

      «She’s a baggage, is that Rose Watson,» she said, addressing a vagrant black-beetle in the kitchen which she had failed to squash, «with no more heart than a dead heifer. She’s keeping him hanging on, poor boy, while she looks round to see if she can’t do better. Well, after all, her looks are her fortune, as the saying goes, and she mustn’t be blamed if she takes them to the highest market. Still, I’m sorry for him, poor boy, for he thinks the world of her. It’s just like the measles and he’s got to get through with them, and that’s all there is about it.»

      Three days later Andrew went to tea again at Red Hall, but somehow never got a word alone with Rose, for Sister Angelica and a friend were constantly in evidence, and however long he sat seemed determined to sit longer. On the famous Elizabethan table, however, he observed a new set-out of china which, being a young man of taste and having some knowledge of such things, he was well aware must have been as costly as it was beautiful.

      «What a pretty tea-service,» he remarked.

      «Yes,» replied Rose, colouring. «Isn’t it kind of Doctor Somerville Black? He sent them to me with a charming note to make up for those which he broke in the passage.»

      «Oh!» said Andrew. «I thought Sister Angelica broke them by running the tray into his back.»

      «Yes, I did,» said Angelica, «it was so dark with all the doors shut and no gas lit.»

      Then the subject dropped, but Andrew left the rest of his tea undrunk in the lovely Sèvres cup. Rose observed it as she observed everything, and took an opportunity to touch his hand and give him one of her most angelic glances. Also, when he went away, she pressed it and gave him another heavenly look, and once more he walked home on air, yet feeling as if there were something just a little wanting. Also, he wished that the opulent Somerville Black would keep his antique Sèvres tea-services to himself.

      As time went on he wished it a great deal more, since Somerville Black always seemed to be about the place. His interest in the young woman with the three personalities was apparently insatiable; also, it spread to other of Dr. Watson’s cases. As it happened, however, Andrew saw very little of him. Chance, or something else, so arranged matters that they did not come across each other. Once they met upon the doorstep of Red Hall when the jovial doctor favoured him with a jest or two, asking him which member of the «floral kingdom» attracted his attention in the house. At first Andrew could not understand the riddle, but afterwards remembered that there is a plant called Angelica and another named Rose. Occasionally he saw the fine carriage drawn by high-stepping horses speeding down the Whitechapel streets and inside of it caught sight of the doctor, looking more imposing and larger than ever in a resplendent fur-lined coat. One cold day, about this time too, he met Rose in the street, and noticed that she also was wearing a very beautiful long fur garment made of the finest sealskin with a collar and cuffs apparently of sable, which became her graceful figure very well indeed. He told her so, whereon she coloured and changed the subject. Afterwards he remembered that his cousin Clara had a somewhat similar coat which their uncle, Lord Atterton, had given to her and that