第40章

"I wish I could have stayed, Ayala. I am more tranquil than you, and could have borne it better.""It is bad. It is one of the houses -- but not the lowest. Ican eat my heart out here, peaceably, and die with a great needle in my hand and a towel in my lap. But if I were to marry him I should kill myself the first hour after I had gone away with him. Things! What would things be with such a monster as that leaning over one? Would you marry him?" In answer to this, Lucy made no immediate reply. "Why don't you say? You want me to marry him. Would you?""No."

"Then why should I?"

"I could not try to love him."

"Try! How can a girl try to love any man? It should come because she can't help it, let her try ever so. Trying to love Tom Tringle!

Why can't you try?"

"He doesn't want me."

"But if he did? I don't suppose it would make the least difference to him which it was. Would you try if he asked?""No."

"Then why should I? Am I so much a poorer creature than you?""You are a finer creature. You know that I think so.""I don't want to be finer. I want to be the same.""You are free to do as you please. I am not -- quite.""That means Isadore Hamel."

"I try to tell you all the truth, Ayala; but pray do not talk about him even to me. As for you, you are free; and if you could -- ""I can't. I don't know that I am free, as you call it." Then Lucy started, as though about to ask the question which would naturally follow. "You needn't look like that, Lucy. There isn't anyone to be named.""A man not to be named?"

"There isn't a man at all. There isn't anybody. But I may have my own ideas if I please. If I had an Isadore Hamel of my own I could compare Tom or Mr Traffick, or any other lout to him, and could say how infinitely higher in the order of things was my Isadore than any of them. Though I haven't an Isadore can't I have an image? And can't I make my image brighter, even higher, than Isadore? You won't believe that, of course, and I don't want you to believe it yourself. But you should believe it for me. My image can make Tom Tringle just as horrible to me as Isadore Hamel can make him to you." Thus it was that Ayala endeavoured to explain to her sister something of the castle which she had built in the air, and of the Angel of Light who inhabited the castle.

Then it was decided between them that Lucy should explain to Aunt Emmeline that Ayala could not make a prolonged stay at Queen's Gate. "But how shall I say it?" asked Lucy.

"Tell her the truth, openly. 'Tom wants to marry Ayala, and Ayala won't have him. Therefore, of course, she can't come, because it would look as though she were going to change her mind --which she isn't.' Aunt Emmeline will understand that, and will not be a bit sorry. She doesn't want to have me for a daughter-in-law.

She had quite enough of me at Rome."

All this time the carriage was waiting, and Lucy was obliged to return before half of all that was necessary had been said.

What was to be Ayala's life for the future? How were the sisters to see each other? What was to be done when, at the end of the coming summer, Lucy should be taken first to Glenbogie and then to Merle Park? There is a support in any excitement, though it be in the excitement of sorrow only. At the present moment Ayala was kept alive by the necessity of her battle with Tom Tringle, but how would it be with her when Tom should have given up the fight? Lucy knew, by sad experience, how great might be the tedium of life in Kingsbury Crescent, and knew, also, how unfitted Ayala was to endure it. There seemed to be no prospect of escape in future. "She knows nothing of what I am suffering", said Ayala, "when she gives me the things to do, and tells me of more things, and more, and more! How can there be so many things to be done in such a house as this?" But as Lucy was endeavouring to explain how different were the arrangements in Kingsbury Crescent from those which had prevailed at the bijou, the offended coachman sent up word to say that he didn't think Sir Thomas would like it if the horses were kept out in the rain any longer. Then Lucy hurried down, not having spoken of half the things which were down in her mind on the list for discussion.