"Don't tell that to me. No unmarried man could have written such a eulogy of marriage without being on the brink of it." Perhaps she was dead? It ran through the town that she was dead. Some knew which cemetery.
The very first lady Mr. Sandys ever took in to dinner mentioned this rumour to him, not with vulgar curiosity, but delicately, with a hint of sympathy in waiting, and it must be remembered, in fairness to Tommy, that all artists love sympathy. This sympathy uncorked him, and our Tommy could flow comparatively freely at last. Observe the delicious change.
"Has that story got abroad?" he said simply. "The matter is one which, I need not say, I have never mentioned to a soul."
"Of course not," the lady said, and waited eagerly.
If Tommy had been an expert he might have turned the conversation to brighter topics, but he was not; there had already been long pauses, and in dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling on any faggot rather than let the fire go out. "It is odd that I should be talking of it now," he said musingly.
"I suppose," she said gently, to bring him out of the reverie into which he had sunk, "I suppose it happened some time ago?"
"Long, long ago," he answered. (Having written as an aged person, he often found difficulty in remembering suddenly that he was two and twenty.)
"But you are still a very young man."
"It seems long ago to me," he said with a sigh.
"Was she beautiful?"
"She was beautiful to my eyes."
"And as good, I am sure, as she was beautiful."
"Ah me!" said Tommy.
His confidante was burning to know more, and hoping they were being observed across the table; but she was a kind, sentimental creature, though stout, or because of it, and she said, "I am so afraid that my questions pain you."
"No, no," said Tommy, who was very, very happy.
"Was it very sudden?"
"Fever."
"Ah! but I meant your attachment."
"We met and we loved," he said with gentle dignity.
"That is the true way," said the lady.
"It is the only way," he said decisively.
"Mr. Sandys, you have been so good, I wonder if you would tell me her name?"
"Felicity," he said, with emotion. Presently he looked up. "It is very strange to me," he said wonderingly, "to find myself saying these things to you who an hour ago were a complete stranger to me. But you are not like other women."
"No, indeed!" said the lady, warmly.
"That," he said, "must be why I tell you what I have never told to another human being. How mysterious are the workings of the heart!"
"Mr. Sandys," said the lady, quite carried away, "no words of mine can convey to you the pride with which I hear you say that. Be assured that I shall respect your confidences." She missed his next remark because she was wondering whether she dare ask him to come to dinner on the twenty-fifth, and then the ladies had to retire, and by the time he rejoined her he was as tongue-tied as at the beginning. The cork had not been extracted; it had been knocked into the bottle, where it still often barred the way, and there was always, as we shall see, a flavour of it in the wine.
"You will get over it yet; the summer and the flowers will come to you again," she managed to whisper to him kind-heartedly, as she was going.
"Thank you," he said, with that inscrutable face. It was far from his design to play a part. He had, indeed, had no design at all, but an opportunity for sentiment having presented itself, his mouth had opened as at a cherry. He did not laugh afterwards, even when he reflected how unexpectedly Felicity had come into his life; he thought of her rather with affectionate regard, and pictured her as a tall, slim girl in white. When he took a tall, slim girl in white in to dinner, he could not help saying huskily:
"You remind me of one who was a very dear friend of mine. I was much startled when you came into the room."
"You mean some one who is dead?" she asked in awe-struck tones.
"Fever," he said.
"You think I am like her in appearance?"
"In every way," he said dreamily; "the same sweet--pardon me, but it is very remarkable.