Hubert Lepel had accepted his sister's invitation to Beechfield Hall for
two nights only; but, as he had given her to understand, he was quite
ready to come again, supposing of course that she made his visit
agreeable to him. So far--an hour and a half after his first arrival--it
had not been very agreeable. He had been obliged to allude to a matter
which was highly unpleasant to him, and he had had to stand by while his
sister burst into quite unnecessary and incomprehensible tears. He was
not so soft-hearted a man as he had been eight years ago, and he told
himself impatiently that he could not stand much more of this kind of
thing.
For the last three years he had been, as Florence had said, almost
always out of England. When his search for Jane Wood proved a failure,
he had taken a strong dislike for a time to London life and London ways.
He had been making money by his literary work, and was well able to
afford himself a little recreation. He went to Egypt therefore, and to
India, took a look at China and Japan, and came home by way of South
America. He did not care to go too much in beaten tracks; and during his
absence he wrote a book or two which were fairly successful, and a play
which made a great sensation. He had come back to London now, and was at
work upon another play, on which great hopes had been founded. If it
were as successful as the first, there was every likelihood of his
becoming a rich man. He had got his head fairly above water, and meant
to keep it there; he conceived that he had brooded too long over the
past.
He had seen little Dick Vane when he first arrived, and he had spent
nearly two hours with Florence; but he had not yet encountered the
General or the General's niece and adopted daughter, Enid Vane. The two
had gone out riding, and did not return until after five o'clock.
"Just in time for tea!" said the General, in a tone of profound
satisfaction. "I thought that we were later. And how do you find
yourself, Hubert, my dear boy? Why, I declare I shouldn't have known
you! Should you, Enid? He is as brown as a Hindoo."
"Would you have known me?" said Hubert, with a smile at the girl who had
followed her uncle into the room, and now gave him her hand by way of
greeting. The smile was forced in order to conceal a momentary twitch of
his features, which he could not quite control at the first sight of
Sydney Vane's daughter; but it looked natural enough.
The girl raised her eyes to his face with a shy sweet smile.
"I am afraid that I don't remember very well," she said; and Hubert
thought that he had never seen anything much prettier than her smile.
She was seventeen, and looked so fair, so delicate, in her almost
childish loveliness of outline and expression, that Florence's white
skin became haggard and hard in comparison. Her slight figure was
displayed to full advantage by a well-made riding-habit, and under her
correct little high hat her golden hair shone like sunshine. There was a
soft color in her cheeks, a freshness on her smiling lips, that made the
observer long to kiss them, as if they belonged to some simple child.
Her manner too was almost that of a child--frank, naive, direct, and
unembarrassed; but in her eyes there lurked a shadow which contradicted
the innocent simplicity of her expressive countenance. If was not a
shadow of evil, but of sadness, of a subdued melancholy--the sadness of
a girl whose life had been darkened in early life by some undeserved
calamity. It was a look that redeemed her face from the charge of
inanimateness that might otherwise have been brought against it, and
gave it that faintly sombre touch which was especially fascinating to a
man like Hubert Lepel.
He continued to talk to the General, who had questions to ask him
concerning his travels and his friends; but his eyes followed the
movements of the girl as she stepped quietly about the room, pouring out
tea for one, carrying cake and biscuits to another. Twice he sprang up
to assist her, but was met with a smile and a shake of the head from
her, and the assurance from her uncle that Enid liked waiting on
people--he need not try to take her vocation from her. He had to sit
down again, and thought, half against his will, of that other
Enid--Tennyson's Enid, in her faded gown--and of Prince Geraint's desire
to kiss the dainty thumb "that crossed the trencher as she set it down."
He at least was no Geraint, he said to himself, to win this gentle
maiden's heart. But he watched her nevertheless, with a growing
admiration which was not a little dangerous.
With a faint cynical smile Florence noted the direction of his eyes. As
soon as her husband and his niece entered the room, she had lapsed into
the graceful indolent silence which seemed habitual to her. Enid brought
her a cup of tea, and ministered to her wants with assiduity and
gentleness of manner, though, as Hubert thought, with no great show of
affection; and Florence accepted the girl's attentions with perfect
equanimity and a caressing word of two of thanks. And yet Hubert
fancied--he knew not why--that there was no look of love in Flossy's
drooping eyes.
"Please may I come in?" said Master Dick's small treble at the door. He
was a fair, blue-eyed little fellow, but not much like either his father
or his mother, thought Hubert, as the child stood in the doorway and
looked rather doubtfully into the room.
Florence's brow contracted for a moment.
"Why are you not having your nursery-tea?" she said. "We do not want you
here unless we send for you."
"I want to see uncle Hubert," persisted the boy stolidly.
Hubert held out his hand to him with a smile that children still found
winning.
"Come in, little man," he said. "I want to see you too."
Dick marched in at once, still, however, keeping an eye fixed upon his
mother. There was something almost like fear in the look; and it was
noticeable that neither the General nor Enid spoke to invite him into
the room.
"You may come in," Florence said at last, very coldly--almost as one
might speak to a grown person whom one had strong reason to
dislike--"but you cannot stay more than five minutes. You are not wanted
here."
"Oh, come, I think we all want him!" said Hubert good-humoredly. "I wish
to make my nephew's acquaintance, at any rate. I have something for him
in my portmanteau up-stairs."
Florence made a sudden and, as it seemed, involuntary gesture, and
knocked down a vase of flowers on the table at her right hand. There was
some confusion in consequence, as the flowers had to be gathered up and
the fragments of the broken vase collected, so that Hubert had little
opportunity of talking to his nephew. And, as soon as "the fuss," as he
mentally called it, was over, Mrs. Vane said, in her coldest, slowest
voice--
"Now, Dick, you may go to the nursery. Say good-night."
"Good-night?" questioned Hubert. "Why, he does not go to bed at this
hour in the afternoon, does he?"
"He goes at half-past six or seven," replied Florence. "Pray do not
interfere with nursery regulations, my dear Hubert."
"I shall see more of him to-morrow, I suppose," said Hubert, smiling at
the child's wistful face as he went from one to another to say
good-night.
Little Dick's eyes lit up at once, but the light in them died out when,
on tip-toe, as if afraid of disturbing her, he approached his mother.
Hubert thought that there was a touch of something odd in the manner of
everyone present, and was glad to see that Enid's kisses and whispered
words of endearment brought a flush of pleasure to the child's delicate
cheeks before he turned away.
The General then took possession of the visitor and marched him off to
look at the stables. The old man had recovered all his old cheeriness
and heartiness of manner; there was a little more feebleness in his gait
than there used to be, and he walked with a stick, but Hubert was
pleased to see that his eyes were bright, and to find him loquaciously
inclined. The shock of Sydney's death had not seriously affected him,
and Hubert was conscious of a thrill of relief at the sight of his
evident health and happiness. Considering that Mr. Lepel believed
himself to have closed his heart against the past, he was singularly
open to attacks of painful memory. He was annoyed by his own readiness
to be hurt, and almost wished that he had not come to Beechfield.
He saw neither of the ladies again till dinner time, when he thought
that Enid looked even lovelier in her simple white frock than in her
riding-habit. He observed her a good deal at dinner, and made up his
mind that she was the very model of an ideal heroine--sweet, gentle,
pure-minded, intelligent--all that a fresh young English girl should be.
The type did not attract him greatly; but it was just as well to study
so perfect a specimen when he had one at hand; he wanted to introduce a
girl of this sort into his next novel, and he preferred portraiture to
mere invention. He would keep the novel in mind when he talked to her;
it would perhaps prevent any dwelling on unpleasant subjects--for, oh,
how like the girl's eyes were to those of her dear father!
So he sat by the piano after dinner while Enid played dreamy melodies,
that soothed the General into slumber, and then he persuaded her to walk
with him in the moonlight on the terrace, and talked to her of his
strange adventures in foreign lands until the child thought that she had
never heard anything half so wonderful before. And, as they passed and
repassed the windows, they were watched by Florence Vane with eyes that
gleamed beneath her heavy eyelids, with the narrow intentness of the
emerald orbs belonging to her favorite white cat. She had never looked
more as if she were silently following some malevolent design, than when
she watched the couple on the terrace on that moonlit night.
Enid very quickly made friends with Mr. Lepel--so quickly indeed that
she was led to confide some of her most private opinions to him before
he had been much more than twenty-four hours at Beechfield Hall. It was
anent little Dick and his mother that the first confidence took place.
The whole party had been having tea under the great beech-tree on the
lawn, and after a time Enid and Hubert were left alone by the others.
They chatted gaily together, he answering her eager questions about
London and Paris and Berlin, she catechising him with an eagerness which
amused and interested him. Presently they saw Dick running towards them
across the lawn. A white figure at one of the windows on the terrace, a
call to the boy, and Dick's wild career was arrested. He stood still for
a moment, then turned slowly towards the house, breaking into a childish
wail of grief as he did so. Hubert stopped short in the sentence that he
was addressing to his young cousin, and looked after the boy.
"What is the matter with the poor little chap?" he asked.
Enid's eyes were fixed anxiously upon the window where the white figure
had appeared.
"Florence called him," she said, in a very small voice.
"And why should the fact of his mother's calling him make him cry?"
"Florence thinks it best to be strict," said Enid, still with unnatural
firmness of manner. "He is running away from his nurse now, I know; and
I suppose he will be sent to bed directly after tea for doing so--as he
was yesterday."
"Was he? Poor little beggar! Was that the reason why he looked so
miserable and you were all so solemn? What had he done?"
"He came into the drawing-room without permission. He was let off very
easily because you were there, but I have known his mother punish him
severely for doing so."
"But, good heavens," said Hubert, rising from his seat, and leaning
against the trunk of the beech-tree, while he looked down at Enid with
an expression of utter perplexity, "why on earth should the child have
so little freedom; and why should Florence be so hard on him? She must
be altered! She was never fond of children, but she was too indolent to
be severe. Was not that your experience of her when you were a child?"
"Yes," said Enid, but too hesitatingly to give Hubert all the assurance
that he wished for--"yes; she did not take much trouble about what I
did. It is different with her own child."
"Surely she loves her own child better than she loved other
children--better even than you!" said Hubert, with the soft intonation
that turned the words into a compliment. "It is natural in a mother."
"One would think so," said the girl. Then, as if moved by a sudden
impulse, she spoke hurriedly, with her beautiful eyes full of tears.
"Oh, cousin Hubert"--it was thus that she had addressed him ever since
her babyhood--"do not think that I am unkind to Florence--I do not mean
it unkindly--but it does seem sometimes as if she really hated her
little boy! Poor little Dick has never known what it is to have a
mother's love. I am so sorry for him! I know what it is to be
motherless." Hubert averted his face, and gazed into the distance. "I
have lived many years without either father or mother," said the girl,
in a tone the simple pathos of which seemed to pierce her hearer's
heart, "but at any rate I remember what it was to have their love."
She wondered why Hubert stood motionless and irresponsive; it was not
like him to be so silent when an appeal was made to his sympathy. She
colored rosy red, with the instinctive fear that she had gone too far,
had said something of which he did not approve, and she tried, in her
naive unconsciousness of ill, to put the matter straight.
"But I have been very happy," she said earnestly. "Florence has always
been kind, and dear mamma herself could not have done more for me. It is
only that she seems cold and severe with Dick---- Dear cousin Hubert, I
hope you are not angry with me for saying what I have said about your
sister?"
He was obliged to look at her when she addressed him thus directly. She
was surprised by the expression of pain--bitter humiliating pain--upon
his face. Was it sympathy for her loss, she wondered, or grief for
little Dick's position, or distress at her accusation of Florence that
caused his face to wear that look of positive anguish? She could not
tell.
"Angry?" he said, stretching out his hand and laying it tenderly on her
own, while the pain in his eyes softened into a melancholy as
inscrutable as the pain. "Could I ever be angry with you, Enid? Poor
little lonely motherless child! Heaven knows, if I could protect you
from sorrow or pain henceforth, I would do so at the cost of my life!"
He withdrew his hand and walked away somewhat abruptly, without once
looking round. Enid remained where he had left her, pale with emotion,
overpowered by a feeling that was neither joy nor fear, but which
partook of both.