CHAPTER IX.

Indecision.

Do I love you? Can I prove you More than all the world to me? Thus I ponder, and I wonder What my true reply must be.

One afternoon, early in the season following Paul's visit to Elton Manor, he and Isabel were seated under a tree in Kensington Gardens. It was one of those days when spring pretends that it is summer, and the parks pretend that they are the country, and all the world pretends that it is young again: nevertheless Paul's face was very serious.

"Miss Carnaby," he said, "I want to speak to you."

Isabel shrugged her shoulders. "I'm sorry for that; and you look such a 'potent, grave and reverend seignior,' that I feel certain you are going to say something disagreeable. Now do think twice before you speak."

"I have thought twice--and twice a million times over."

"Twice a million times over--I wonder how much that is. I cannot do the sum myself, I am such a poor adder--or ought I to say a poor addist? A poor adder sounds so poisonous and serpenty, doesn't it?"

But Paul would not laugh. "Won't you listen to me?" he asked.

"I suppose I have no alternative, as you have paid the penny for my chair, and I am partaking of your hospitality for the time being. But it really is a pity to use up such a lovely afternoon in speaking seriously; serious speaking--like bagatelle--ought to be reserved as an amusement for wet days."

"I really want to speak to you," persisted Paul, "I am not joking."

"My dear sir, I never for a moment imagined you were. Your expression just now would grace a mute at a funeral. And yet you take the trouble to inform me that you are not joking. You might as well have taken the trouble to inform me that you were not swimming, or painting, or driving a cab."

"It really isn't kind of you to go on like this, Miss Carnaby."

"And it really isn't kind of you to spoil such a lovely afternoon by speaking seriously."

Paul did not answer, so Isabel rattled on: "Now you are sulking, and if there is one thing I hate more than another it is a sulky temper. I'd rather have a squint than a sulky temper any day. Besides, dark men should never look sulky, it isn't becoming to them; it gives a lurid, thundery sort of expression to their faces."

Paul still remained silent, but Isabel did not dare to do so for a moment. "Isn't it a jolly afternoon?" she continued; "and these gardens look perfectly lovely. But I hope it isn't going to be too hot for the Wallingfords' ball next week. I can't bear a hot ball-room; your face gets so red, and your fringe goes out of curl, and altogether you look like one of Turner's sunsets in the National Gallery. At least I do, and I can't bear to feel I'm looking like a sunset. Why don't you smile when a lady talks to you? It is positively refrigerating to talk to a man with an expression like yours. Why don't you smile like a little gentleman, as the nursemaids around us would say?"

"Because I am not amused."

"That is very rude of you! And you are generally such a prettily behaved person. You don't seem to be listening to me, either."

"I'm not," said Paul, "I'm thinking about something else."

"Fie, fie, Master Seaton! whatever will your mamma say when you get home?" cried Isabel, shaking her finger at him.

"When you have quite finished I should like to have my innings," said Paul grimly, "but I don't in the least wish to hurry you."

"You are the most unappreciative man I ever talked to!"

"Look here, Miss Carnaby, it isn't fair to treat a fellow like this. Will you listen to me or will you not? because if you won't I'm going away."

Isabel looked to see if he were in earnest; when Paul was in earnest she knew by experience other people had to be in earnest too.

"All right," she sighed. "Say your say."

Paul's face grew very white. "I never made love to a woman before, and I never shall again, so I am a poor hand at the business. But you know how I love you; and I want to know if you will be my wife."

"Oh, Mr. Seaton!"

"I can't tell you what you are to me," continued Paul; "but you know as well as I do that I've cared for nothing in the world but you ever since that evening at Esdaile. You have seen how I have hungered for a kind word from you, and how I have starved when it pleased your whim to withhold it from me. You have seen all this and it has amused you. But I think it has done something more than amuse you, or else I shouldn't be speaking like this to you to-day. Am I right, Isabel?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"I didn't mean to speak yet, but I simply cannot go on like this any longer. The thought of you comes between me and everything else, till I cannot carry on my work or do my duty for thinking of you. Sometimes I think you really care a bit, and then I am lifted up to heaven; and sometimes I think you have merely been playing with me all the time, and then I am plunged in the depths of despair. I must know one way or the other. This suspense is killing me."

"Poor boy!" said Isabel gently.

"No; I don't want your pity or your friendship. I want your love or nothing at all. If I cannot have that, I must do my best to put you out of my life altogether. I will not go on like this."

"Still our friendship is very nice," said Isabel weakly.

"It isn't enough for me. It unsettles me and takes away my peace of mind, without giving me happiness in return. I feel that I could do anything with you to help me; I feel I could do something without you altogether; but I know I can do nothing as long as I am tortured by seeing daily my heart's desire, and not knowing if it can ever be mine or not."

"I wonder my friendship doesn't please you more," said Isabel with some pique. "Other men have found it both satisfying and stimulating."

Paul smiled scornfully. "Not the men who have loved you as I love you," he said.

"Other men love me as much as you do," persisted Isabel.

"Then let them love you, and let me go," replied Paul roughly. "I may be poor and obscure, and a nobody in your world, but I'm a man all the same, and I'll let no fine lady make a plaything of me."

"You are very unkind!"

"I am very unhappy."

Isabel pouted. "It is your own fault if you are. I'm sure I am nice enough to you to please the most exacting man."

"But I don't thank you for mere niceness. Can't you understand? You are nice to all the men that admire you; but there are some things a fellow can't and won't share. I am asking for bread----"

"And therefore when diamonds and rubies fall from my lips you call them stones," concluded Isabel flippantly.

Paul's face grew stern. "Don't laugh at me," he said, "it is doing both yourself and me an injustice. If you cannot love me, tell me so, and let me go out of the sight of your face and live my own life as best I can; and if you can love me, tell me so, and make me the happiest man this side Paradise. But for pity's sake don't play with me."

Isabel's eyes filled with tears. "Please forgive me," she said. "It was horrid of me, but I did not mean it."

"I know you didn't," replied Paul, and his voice shook. "Oh! my darling, do you think I don't realize all that I am asking of you? Do you think I don't know all that you will have to give up if you marry a poor man like me? But I want you, dear, and I cannot do without you."

"You have always been very good to me," said Isabel.

"Tell me--I cannot bear the suspense any longer--is there any chance for me?"

Isabel looked Paul full in the face. "I will tell you the truth," she said, "I owe you that, at any rate. The best side of me does love you, and wants always to be with you, and knows that I can never be a really good woman apart from you. But there is another side of me which cares for rank and wealth and power, and fights against your influence all the time."

Paul's eyes were very pitiful. "I understand," he said.

"The question is," continued Isabel, "which of my two selves is the stronger--the one that loves you or the one that doesn't. And you must leave me to fight it out by myself."

"Yes," answered Paul, "that is but fair and just. I will wait another week patiently; but after that I must know my fate once and for all."

"And you must always remember," added Isabel, "that the self that is on your side is my best self; and that if I decide against you, I shall be choosing evil rather than good."

"Aunt Caroline," said Isabel to Lady Farley the next day, "Paul Seaton has asked me to be his wife."

"I knew he would," replied her aunt, "men with chins like his never make love without meaning it."

"I am to give him his answer in a week; and I want you to advise me."

"My dear child, I dare not give advice on so important a matter. You are twenty-seven, and therefore old enough to know your own mind, and to please yourself."

"I mean to please myself, Aunt Caroline; but I want you to help me to find out what will please me."

"I will do all I can in that line with pleasure; but the decision must rest with you alone. Tell me your _pros_ and _cons_."

Isabel thought for a moment. "The _pros_ are that he is a good man, and a gentleman, and I love him, and he has the nicest eyes in the whole world."

Her aunt smiled. "And the _cons_?"

"The _cons_ are that he has neither money nor position, and would be considered a poor match in the world in which I live."

"Do you think you would be happy with him?" asked Lady Farley.

"Radiantly so. He is so clever that I should let him make up my mind upon every subject. I think it must be lovely to have a husband to make up one's mind for one!"

"Some women prefer making up the husband's mind for him. It is merely a matter of taste, my dear Isabel. The only thing to be avoided is two separate minds in a house, each making itself up."

"I know," laughed Isabel, "a sort of William-and-Mary business."

"Exactly."

"What should you do if you were in my place, Aunt Caroline?"

"Personally, it would not amuse me to marry Mr. Seaton; on the contrary, it would bore me considerably, he is so didactic and so overpoweringly in earnest; but that is no reason why it should not amuse you."

"It wouldn't amuse me to marry Uncle Benjamin, you see; and yet it amuses you."

"Not always, my dear; I have known it have quite an opposite effect. But then your uncle is a G.C.B. and a rich man, and those things amuse me a good deal."

"But love ought to count for something," said Isabel timidly.

"Of course it ought; I am allowing for that; but it counts a good deal more with some women than it does with others, and a woman should take this into consideration. Some women positively enjoy a little mild starvation flavoured with romance."

"I should, I think."

"Then take it, my dear," said Lady Farley, "positive starvation is always, I believe, indigestible; but the moderate starvation, which your own comfortable little income would allow of, might prove quite a treat to people who like picnics."

"By 'moderate starvation' I suppose you mean doing one's own hair and buttoning one's own boots?"

"Yes, and everything else _en suite_. This again is a matter of taste, and each must please herself; but what I cannot stand is a woman who deliberately chooses love in a cottage, and then throws the cottage in her husband's teeth, and omits the love. Make your choice, I say; but when you have made it, stick to it."

"I have no patience with girls who will marry poor men, and then quarrel with them for being poor," agreed Isabel.

"Neither have I."

"If I married Paul, I should never be nasty to him afterwards because he wasn't rich."

"I should hope you would not," said Lady Farley. "I should be ashamed of having brought you up if you were. But that is all the more reason for not being in a hurry."

"I know it is."

"I also think, my dear Isabel, that among the _cons_, you should reckon up the fact that Lord Wrexham is very much in love with you, and that you might be a peeress if you were so minded."

"Yes."

"You should also make a note that Society will invite Lady Wrexham to dinner, but Mrs. Paul Seaton only to the reception afterwards."

Isabel winced. "I know that also."

"Then, my dear child, there is no more to be said. This is the evidence: it is for you to consider the verdict."

And Isabel did consider it to the exclusion of every other subject; and grew pale and wan with the conflict betwixt her contending inclinations. But--true to her order--she fulfilled all her social engagements, and talked and laughed as courageously as ever.

The Marchioness of Wallingford's ball was one of the events of the season--and it fell on the eve of the day when Isabel was to give Paul his final answer. Yet the girl was as undecided as ever when she donned her war-paint.

During the evening she sat out a dance with Lord Bobby. He and Isabel had become firm and fast friends since he had confided to her his attachment to her cousin Violet, and she had sympathized with him.

"You don't look very flourishing," said Lord Bobby kindly, as they sat together under the shelter of a huge palm. "Has any one been bullying you?"

"Life in general has been bullying me," replied Isabel sadly.

"How vile of it! I never thought so badly of life before. It certainly won't be worth living if it begins to be rude to you; I shall have to give it the cut direct by committing suicide, if it insults you again."

"Oh! Bobby, do help me," cried Isabel, with a sudden impulse laying a beseeching little hand on his arm. "You are so young and foolish, and everybody else is so old and wise. I'm old and wise too, and I'm sick of it."

"Poor little girl, what is wrong?"

"Paul Seaton wants me to marry him, and I want it too--but I'm not sure if I've the courage to make such a bad match. I know I'm a wretch to feel like that, but that is how I feel."

Bobby's pleasant face grew grave. "I know," he said.

"The good part of me loves him, but the worldly part of me loves money and position and pleasure, and I don't know which is in the majority."

"If you were only a Government instead of a woman, you'd find out by means of a dissolution," remarked his lordship: "then try the same method."

"How do you mean?" asked Isabel, looking puzzled.

"In the event of your dissolution what should you do?"

"If I were dying do you mean? Oh! then, of course, I should care only for Paul; and money and all that would matter nothing to me."

"Then why not apply the dissolution test to a woman as well as to a Government?" suggested Lord Robert.

"There is a good deal in what you say. I feel sure that if I sent Paul away my heart would cry out for him sooner or later."

"Then why not let it cry now, when there is a chance of an _R.S.V.P._?"

"Because I am afraid to give up all the rank and pleasure and luxury that have made life so pleasant to me. It is selfish of me, I know, but I can't help it."

"You seem in a regular fix!" said Lord Bobby with much sympathy.

"Every one I consult is so old and wise, and knows so well the value of outside things. Does everybody grow worldly as they grow older, I wonder?"

"Everybody except mothers," answered Bobby simply. "They never get old or wise or anything horrid."

"But I haven't got a mother," said Isabel, with a little catch in her voice.

"Poor little girl!" said Bobby, and there were tears in his honest blue eyes.

"You see," continued Isabel, "if I marry Paul, the frivolous side of me may come to the front when it is too late, and I may spoil his life by becoming a dissatisfied and grumbling wife."

Bobby nodded.

"While, on the other hand, if I let him go, I shall become hard and shallow and worldly, and the best part of my nature will die of starvation. Oh! Bobby, what am I to do?"

Bobby thought profoundly for several seconds; then he said: "Seaton is a good fellow, there is no doubt of that; but the question just now is not what is he in himself, but how much does he count for in your estimate of life?"

"That is just what I want to find out," sighed Isabel.

"Look here!" continued Bobby; "when he comes into a room does it seem to you as if the place was full of pink light, and the band was playing 'God save the Queen' outside?"

"Yes, yes, it feels just like that," assented Isabel eagerly.

"Then if you've got to that stage, you mustn't let him go; there is only one course open to you. When you feel like that, you can't of course be sure that you'll be happy with that particular person; but you may be certain that you'll be utterly miserable without him."

"There is my next partner searching for me," said Isabel, rising from her seat. "Thank you, Bobby; how you have helped me!"

A few days after Lady Wallingford's ball, Lady Esdaile called upon her sister-in-law.

"My dear Caroline," she began, "is it true that Isabel has engaged herself to that young Seaton?"

"Perfectly true," replied Lady Farley with a sigh.

"How funny of her! He isn't at all well off; but Isabel has got her own money, so that won't matter as much as it might if she hadn't anything; though I can't help feeling it is a poor match for a girl who has been run after as much as Isabel."

"Isabel is old enough to please herself."

"Of course she is, Caroline; I'd been married for ages and ages when I was as old as Isabel. But please don't think I'm saying anything against Mr. Seaton, because I'm not. He is a dear man, and no one knows how adorable he was once when Dick was ill. I was always confusing the gargle with the medicine, and wanting to give the dear boy the wrong one by mistake; but Mr. Seaton never once mistook them for each other. Wasn't it awfully clever of him?"

"He is generally considered to be a clever man," remarked Lady Farley drily.

"I know he is; and so good and religious too. Of course it is awfully nice for a man to be clever and religious and all that, but it seems a funny reason for marrying him, don't you think?"

Lady Farley smiled satirically. "Funnier than if he were rich or had a title," she said.

"But Isabel always was rather original, Caroline. I wonder if she will be happy with Mr. Seaton."

"That is the idea, I believe. Of course one cannot tell yet how it will work out."

"And you will miss her, I dare say," continued Lady Esdaile, not noticing that her sister-in-law winced at this remark, "it will quite be like losing a daughter. I should mind dreadfully if Violet were to get married--and yet I should mind more if she didn't, I think. It really is difficult to know always what one does want."

"And still more difficult to get it," added Lady Farley.

"I never know which one hates the most--the men who want to marry your daughter or the men who don't. They both seem tiresome somehow, don't they, Caroline?"

"My dear Constance, all men are more or less tiresome."

"I know," replied Lady Esdaile feelingly, "and so silly about their dinners. Richard says our new cook is 'a woman of one gravy,' and he wants me to speak about it to the housekeeper; but if ever I do speak about things it always ends in unpleasantness, and I'd far rather make Richard angry than one of the servants; so I shan't interfere."

Lady Farley smiled.

"It takes all my courage," continued Lady Esdaile, "to scold my own maid about things that really matter--such as the way she does my hair and puts my clothes on; and I really have none to spare for dinners, and things like that. But I do wonder if Isabel will be happy. I should think a small house would feel pokey, even with a really nice man like Mr. Seaton. Shouldn't you?"

"Stuffy to a degree, I should imagine. Especially if one knew that one might be reigning as Lady Wrexham at Vernacre instead."

And Lady Farley sighed again; for she had been very proud of Isabel.