"ONE WAY OF LOVE"
Among the neighbours there was none more assiduous in the matter of
calls and other friendly manifestations than Mr. Huntly
Withells--emphasis on the "ells"--who lived at Guiting Grange, about a
couple of miles from Wren's End. Mr. Withells was settled at the Grange
some years before Miss Janet Ross left her house to Jan, and he was
already a person of importance and influence in that part of the county
when Anthony Ross and his daughters first spent a whole summer there.
Mr. Withells proved most neighbourly. He had artistic leanings himself,
and possessed some good pictures; among them, one of Anthony's, which
naturally proved a bond of union. He did not even so much as sketch,
himself--which Anthony considered another point in his favour--but he
was a really skilled photographer, possessed the most elaborate cameras,
and obtained quite beautiful results.
Since Jan's return from India he had completely won her heart by taking
a great many photographs of the children, pictures delightfully natural,
and finished as few amateurs contrive to present them.
It was rumoured in Amber Guiting that Mr. Withells' views on the
subject of matrimony were "peculiar"; but all the ladies, especially the
elderly ladies, were unanimous in declaring that he had a "beautiful
mind."
Mrs. Fream, the vicar's wife, timidly confided to Jan that Mr. Withells
had told her husband that he cared only for "spiritual marriage"--
whatever that might be; and that, as yet, he had met no woman whom he
felt would see eye to eye with him on this question. "He doesn't approve
of caresses," she added.
"Well, who wants to caress him?" Jan asked bluntly.
Meg declared there was one thing she could not bear about Mr. Withells,
and that was the way he shook hands, "exactly as if he had no thumbs. If
he's so afraid of touching one as all that comes to, why doesn't he let
it alone?"
Yet the apparently thumbless hands were constantly occupied in bearing
gifts of all kinds to his friends.
In appearance he was dapper, smallish, without being undersized, always
immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather
sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore
double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them.
His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the
licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with
flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was
considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not
quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon
life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella
lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was
really first class; but he was also skilled in every known form of
Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be dining out.
As regards food he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of
fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for
ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples
made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat
numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly
meritorious in possessing so many. This made his entertainment at any
meal a matter of agitated consideration among the ladies of Amber
Guiting.
Nevertheless, he kept an excellent and hospitable table himself, and in
no way forced his own taste upon others. He disliked the smell of
tobacco and hardly ever drank wine, yet he kept a stock of excellent
cigars and his cellar was beyond reproach.
He had been observing Jan for several years, and was rapidly coming to
the conclusion that she was an "eminently sensible woman." Her grey hair
and the way she had managed everything for her father led him to believe
that she was many years older than her real age. Recently he had taken
to come to Wren's End on one pretext and another almost every day. He
was kind and pleasant to the children, who amused and pleased
him--especially little Fay; but he was much puzzled by Meg, whom he had
known in pre-cap-and-apron days while she was staying at Wren's End.
He couldn't quite place Meg, and there was an occasional glint in her
queer eyes that he found disconcerting. He was never comfortable in her
society, for he objected to red hair almost as strongly as to a smell of
apples.
He really liked the children, and since he knew he couldn't get Jan
without them he was beginning to think that in such a big house as the
Grange they would not necessarily be much in the way. He knew nothing
whatever about Hugo Tancred.
Jan satisfied his fastidious requirements. She was dignified, graceful,
and, he considered, of admirable parts. He felt that in a very little
while he could imbue Jan with his own views as to the limitations and
delicate demarcations of such a marriage as he contemplated.
She was so sensible.
Meanwhile the object of these kind intentions was wholly unaware of
them. She was just then very much absorbed in her own affairs and
considerably worried about Meg's. For Captain Middleton's week-end was
repeated on the following Saturday and extended far into the next week.
He came constantly to Wren's End, where the children positively adored
him, and he seemed to possess an infallible instinct which led him to
the village whensoever Meg and her charges had business there.
On such occasions Meg was often quite rude to Captain Middleton, but the
children and William more than atoned for her coldness by the warmth of
their welcome, and he attached himself to them.
In fact, as regards the nursery party at Wren's End, Miles strongly
resembled William before a fire--you might drive him away ninety and
nine times, he always came thrusting back with the same expression of
deprecating astonishment that you could be other than delighted to see
him.
Whither was it all tending? Jan wondered.
No further news had come from Hugo; Peter, she supposed, had sailed and
was due in London at the end of the week.
Then Mr. Huntly Withells asked her one afternoon to bicycle over to see
his spring irises--he called them "_irides_," and invariably spoke of
"_croci_," and "_delphinia_"--and as Meg was taking the children to tea
at the vicarage, Jan went.
To her surprise, she found herself the sole guest, but supposed she was
rather early and that his other friends hadn't come yet.
They strolled about the gardens, so lovely in their spring blossoming,
and it happened that from one particular place they got a specially good
view of the house.
"How much larger it is than you would think, looking at the front," Jan
remarked. "You don't see that wing at all from the drive."
"There's plenty of room for nephews and nieces," Mr. Withells said
jocularly.
"Have you many nephews and nieces?" she asked, turning to look at him,
for there was something in the tone of his voice that she could not
understand.
"Not of my own," he replied, still in that queer, unnatural voice, "but
you see my wife might have ... if I was married."
"Are you thinking of getting married?" she asked, with the real interest
such a subject always rouses in woman.
"That depends," Mr. Withells said consciously, "on whether the lady I
have in mind ... er ... shall we sit down, Miss Ross? It's rather hot in
the walks."
"Oh, not yet," Jan exclaimed. She couldn't think why, but she began to
feel uncomfortable. "I must see those Darwin tulips over there."
"It's very sunny over there," he objected. "Come down the nut-walk and
see the _myosotis arvensis_; it is already in bloom, the weather has
been so warm.
"Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued seriously, as they turned into the
nut-walk which led back towards the house, "we have known each other for
a considerable time...."
"We have," said Jan, as he had paused, evidently expecting a reply.
"And I have come to have a great regard for you...."
Again he paused, and Jan found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy
while you're thinking--it saves time," but she preserved an outward
silence.
"You are, if I may say so, the most sensible woman of my acquaintance."
"Thank you," said Jan, but without enthusiasm.
"We are neither of us quite young"--(Mr. Withells was forty-nine, but it
was a little hard on Jan)--"and I feel sure that you, for instance,
would not expect or desire from a husband those constant outward
demonstrations of affection such as handclaspings and kisses, which are
so foolish and insanitary."
Jan turned extremely red and walked rather faster.
"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Ross," Mr. Withells continued, looking
with real admiration at her downcast, rosy face--she must be quite
healthy he thought, to look so clean and fresh always--"I lay down no
hard-and-fast rules. I do not say should my wife desire to kiss me
sometimes, that I should ... repulse her."
Jan gasped.
"But I have the greatest objection, both on sanitary and moral grounds
to----"
"I can't imagine anyone _wanting_ to kiss you," Jan interrupted
furiously; "you're far too puffy and stippled."
And she ran from him as though an angry bull were after her.
Mr. Withells stood stock-still where he was, in pained astonishment.
He saw the fleeing fair one disappear into the distance and in the
shortest time on record he heard the clanging of her bicycle bell as she
scorched down his drive.
"Puffy and stippled"--"Puffy and stippled"!
Mr. Withells repeated to himself this rudely personal remark as he
walked slowly towards the house.
What could she mean?
And what in the world had he said to make her so angry?
Women were really most unaccountable.
He ascended his handsome staircase and went into his dressing-room, and
there he sought his looking-glass, which stood in the window, and
surveyed himself critically. Yes, his cheeks _were_ a bit puffy near the
nostrils, and, as is generally the case in later life, the pores of the
skin were a bit enlarged, but for all that he was quite a personable
man.
He sighed. Miss Ross, he feared, was not nearly so sensible as he had
thought.
It was distinctly disappointing.
* * * * *
For the first mile and a quarter Jan scorched all she knew. The angry
blood was thumping in her ears and she exclaimed indignantly at
intervals, "How dared he! How dared he!"
Then she punctured a tyre.
There was no hope of getting it mended till she reached Wren's End, when
Earley would do it for her. As she pushed her bicycle along the lane she
recovered her sense of humour and she laughed. And presently she became
aware of a faint, sweet, elusive perfume from some flowering shrub on
the other side of somebody's garden wall.
It strongly resembled the smell of a blossoming tree that grew on Ridge
Road, Malabar Hill. And in one second Jan was in Bombay, and was
standing in the moonlight, looking up into a face that was neither puffy
nor stippled nor prim; but young and thin and worn and very kind. And
the exquisite understanding of that moment came back to her, and her
eyes filled with tears.
Yet in another moment she was again demanding indignantly, "How dared
he!"
She went straight to her room when she got in, and, like Mr. Withells,
she went and looked at herself in the glass.
Unlike Mr. Withells, she saw nothing there to give her any satisfaction.
She shook her head at the person in the glass and said aloud:
"If that's all you get by trying to be sensible, the sooner you become a
drivelling idiot the better for your peace of mind--and your vanity."
The person in the glass shook her head back at Jan, and Jan turned away
thoroughly disgusted with such a futile sort of _tu quoque_.