IX

Durant's time was up, but the Colonel had pressed him to stay

another week. He was affectionate; he was firm; he would take no

refusal. He dwelt on the advantages of a prolonged visit. "A little

change," said he, "does us all good. You young fellows are apt to

get into a groove. But you seem brighter since you came. I think

we've shaken you up a bit."

Indeed, at no time had there been room for any doubt as to the

sincerity of his welcome. Though he was so determined to shake

Durant up, to get him out of his groove, and give him fresh ideas,

he betrayed a pitiable dependence on the young fellow. He endeavored

to meet youth on its own ground; he made piteous experiments in the

frivolous. More than once Durant had suspected that the poor

gentleman had asked him down as a protection from the terrors of his

own society. His intellectual resources were evidently giving out.

The barometer was stationary; a fortnight's almost persistent

sunshine had dried up the source of ideas. Having gutted the

_Nineteenth Century_, his mind seemed to be impotently raging for

fresh matter to destroy. He repeated himself eternally; the same

phrases were always in his mouth. "A fad, a theory, a name for

ignorance." "Don't tell me; it's an insult to my intelligence!"

Durant could have been sorry for him if he had not been so

infinitely sorry for himself.

On Monday morning Frida Tancred was herself again; not her old self,

but the new one that Durant had learned to know and tolerate. She

sought him out after breakfast and seconded the Colonel's

invitation.

"If you could possibly stop, Mr. Durant, I wish you would. I'm

asking a favor. My cousin, Georgie Chatterton, is coming down on

Wednesday to stay. I don't know how long. I've never seen her

before, and she's a young girl."

Frida's voice expressed a certain horror.

"Well, what of that?"

"If there's one thing on earth that I'm afraid of, it's a young

girl. If you could only stay on just to amuse her a little, to help

her through her first week! You see, it'll be so desperately dull

for her if you don't."

He laughed; there was no other way of responding to the _naivete_ of

the request.

"It doesn't really seem fair to ask her when she hasn't an idea--I

can't think why father did it. Perhaps he didn't. It's odd, but I've

noticed that, when anything like this happens, Mrs. Fazakerly is

always at the bottom of it."

Another lurid light on Mrs. Fazakerly!

"Was Mrs. Fazakerly at the bottom of his asking me?"

She smiled. "To tell you the honest truth, she was. Not but what he

is delighted to have you here. I don't know when I've seen him so

happy, so interested in anyone. But, you see, he's fearfully

conservative; he can't bear to take the first step in anything."

He saw. The Colonel might be as conservative as he pleased; but the

old order was changing; Coton Manor was on the eve of a revolution.

He saw it all clearly, that deep-laid plot of Mrs. Fazakerly's. He

had been asked down at her suggestion to keep Frida Tancred out of

the way for the moment, or, better still, forever. He had not risen

to the occasion; his time was up, so Miss Chatterton was to be

invited to take his place. Yet, when he came to think of it, so

simple a scheme, the mere substitution of one cat's paw for another,

hardly did justice to Mrs. Fazakerly's imagination. Was she still

convinced of his dawning passion for Miss Tancred? Had she doubts as

to Miss Tancred's willingness or power to return it? and had she

suggested that he should be pressed to prolong his stay in the hope

that the rival presence of the young girl would act as the spark

that fires the mine, kindling Miss Tancred's emotions and revealing

her to herself?

Meanwhile Miss Tancred's one idea was to make use of him, to hand

over the young girl to him and be rid of her. Her former offer of

the black mare on the condition that he stayed another week appeared

now as a grim jest, a cynical wager. This time she was in earnest.

Whereas, if she had been in love with him----

Weighing these matters in his sensitive brain, Durant conceived a

violent hatred of Mrs. Fazakerly and her plot, together with a

corresponding determination to stay on, if only to prove to that

ingenious lady that she was hopelessly mistaken. Any hasty movement

on his part would but confirm her in her absurd suspicions, while

his actual flight would be the most flattering testimony to the

profundity of her insight. He was not going to behave like the

victim to a desperate infatuation for Miss Tancred. He would stay

on, and Mrs. Fazakerly would see that nothing came of her

psychological intrigue.

How far the Colonel was her accomplice he had no idea. The old

fellow was a gentleman when all was said and done, and it was more

than likely that he contented himself with a gentlemanly

acquiescence. His dignity might possibly not refuse to draw a profit

either way from the transaction. Durant could reckon on Miss

Tancred, having returned to his original opinion of her. There was

not enough womanhood in her for ordinary elemental jealousy; as for

passion, he had decided that she was as innocent of understanding as

she was incapable of inspiring it. A sentimental coxcomb might beat

a precipitate retreat because he thought or fancied that his hostess

was in love with him, and he would probably call his ridiculous

conduct chivalry; it was more becoming in a gentleman to ignore the

painful circumstance. For all these reasons he determined to stay.

His acceptance of their renewed invitation gave evident pleasure to

the Colonel and Miss Tancred and very little annoyance to himself.

He had grown used to Coton Manor as a prisoner grows used to his

cell. He had, as he had feared, tied himself to the place by

beginning serious work in it. He was too well pleased with his

landscape studies of the neighborhood to leave them unfinished; and,

as it happened, he had plenty of time to give to them, for the

Colonel was pretty constantly engaged with Mrs. Fazakerly. (Here

again he traced the delicate hand of that lady. She had seen that,

if any guest was to remain at Coton Manor, a limit must be put to

the Colonel's opportunities for tormenting him.) Durant had ceased

to long for distraction; he was sufficiently entertained by the

situation itself.

X

If he had been on the lookout for distraction, he would have found

it in Georgie Chatterton. At Miss Tancred's request he went with her

to the station to meet the expected guest. It was evidently thought

that his presence would break the shock of her arrival.

It proved an unnecessary precaution. The young girl presented a

smiling face at the carriage window--the Tancred face, somewhat

obscured by a mass of irrelevant detail, sandy hair, freckles, a

sanguine complexion, and so on. She jumped out on to the platform

with a joyous cry of "Fridah!" She embraced "Fridah" impetuously,

and then kept her a moment at arm's length, examining her dubiously.

"You don't seem a bit glad to see me," was her verdict. She smiled

gaily at Durant, and held out a friendly hand. All the way up from

the station she conversed with them in a light-hearted manner.

Thus:--

"What do you people do down here?"

"Ask Mr. Durant; he'll tell you that we vegetate all day and play

whist all night."

"Oh, do you? Well, you know, I shan't. My goodness, Frida! is that

your house? Whatever is it like? A Unitarian chapel, or the Carlton

Club, or, stop a bit--you don't bury people in it, do you?" Then, as

it occurred to her that she might have hurt her cousin's feelings by

her last suggestion, she added, "It's rather a jolly old mausoleum,

though. I wonder what it's like inside."

If Miss Chatterton had any premonition of her own approaching death

by boredom, and had seen in Coton Manor more than a mere passing

resemblance to a tomb, she was neither awestruck nor downcast at the

prospect of dissolution. She flung herself into the vault as she had

flung herself onto the platform, all glowing with pleasurable

anticipation. To Durant there was something infinitely sad in the

spectacle of this young creature precipitating herself into the

unknown with such reckless and passionate curiosity. The whole long

evening through he could discover no diminution of her mood, her

gleeful determination to enjoy herself among the shades. She

behaved to Colonel Tancred as if he had been a celebrity whose

acquaintance she had long desired to make, a character replete with

interest and romantic charm. She greeted Mrs. Fazakerly with a

joyous lifting of the eyebrows, as much as to say, "What! another

delightful person?"

And she was observant in her way, too. When Miss Tancred put a hand

on her shoulder and said, "It will be horribly dull for you,

Georgie; you'll have nothing to do but talk to Mr. Durant," she

replied, "H'm! Mr. Durant looks as if he had been talked to all his

life. I shall talk to you, Frida."

All through dinner she managed to preserve her spirits, her air of

being among the most curious and interesting people. Durant wondered

how on earth she kept it up. She seemed one of those fortunate

beings whose vivacity is so overpowering that it can subdue even

dulness to itself. She made the Colonel look strangely old; beside

her Mrs. Fazakerly seemed suddenly to become dull and second-rate,

to sink into the position of an attendant, a fatuous chorus, a giddy

satellite. Her laughter swallowed up Mrs. Fazakerly's as a river in

flood devours its tributaries; her spirits quenched Mrs. Fazakerly's

as a blaze licks up a spasmodic flicker. It pleased Durant to look

at her, the abandonment of her manners was in such flagrant

contradiction with the Roman regularity of her Tancred face. Owing,

perhaps, to some dash of the Tancred blood in her, she was neither

pretty nor witty; yet she contrived to get her own way with

everybody. Durant accounted for it by her sheer youth, the obstinacy

of her will to live.

In twenty-four hours she had put a stop to Frida's disappearances,

to Durant's sketching, and to the Colonel's intellectual

conversation; and this she did by behaving so as to make these

things impossible. In short, she had taken possession of her cousin

and her black mare, of the Colonel and his cigarettes, of Mrs.

Fazakerly and her books, of everybody and everything except Durant.

She was friendly with him, but somehow her friendliness was

infinitely more unflattering than Miss Tancred's former apathy. It

implied that he was all very well in his way, but that she had seen

too many of his sort to be greatly excited about him; while in Frida

Tancred, now, she had found something absolutely and uniquely new.

She was not going to be put off with Durant; she fastened herself

upon Frida, and refused to let her go; she did the thing she had

said she would do--without absolutely ignoring her fellow-guest, she

talked to Frida or at Frida or for Frida alone. And yet, strangely

enough, by dint of much observation she had detected a subtle

resemblance between them, and she proclaimed her discovery with her

natural frankness.

It was the second evening of her stay, and the three were sitting

out on the lawn together. She had been looking long and earnestly at

her mysterious kinswoman.

"Frida, you really are a sort of cousin, aren't you?"

"So I've always been told."

"And Mr. Durant, is he a sort of cousin, too?"

"I never heard that."

"I'm afraid I have not the honor."

"That's odd. I thought he must be."

"Why?" asked Miss Tancred.

"Oh, because there's a likeness somewhere. Not in the face exactly,

but--yes, there! Keep that expression on your face one minute, Mr.

Durant; now don't you see it?"

"See what?"

"It--the likeness. He looks terribly reserved somehow--a sort of

wild-horses-shan't-draw-it-out-of-me expression, and yet so

fearfully restless; and that's just like you."

There was an embarrassed silence; and then Miss Chatterton again

raised her cheerful voice.

"I say, Frida! you might tell me exactly what I'm in for. Are you

two going to be horribly intellectual and clever and that sort of

thing?"

"I'm not," said Miss Tancred.

"I'm not," echoed Durant.

"Thank Heaven! Because you both look as if you'd a tremendous lot in

you. I wonder if you'll ever let it out."

"Not if we can help it," said Durant.

"There you are again! If you're not Frida's first cousin, you ought

to be."

Durant smiled; he wondered whether the idea was more than the random

frolicking of Miss Chatterton's brain. She was evidently a young

woman of perception; but her perceptions had wings, and she threw

them off from her in a manner altogether spontaneous, impersonal and

free. It was nothing to her if they brushed against the truth

sometimes in their irresponsible flight.

"You don't mind all these personal remarks, do you?"

"Not in the least," said Miss Tancred.

"For my part I rather like them," said Durant; but they both

carefully avoided each other's eyes.