TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.
"Mrs. Hugh Holker, at home, Saturday, May 29th, 3 to 6.30. Chetwood
Court; tennis."
Cyril Waring read it out with a little thrill of triumph. To
be sure, it was by no means certain that Elma would be there; but
still, Chetwood Court was well within range of Tilgate town, and
Montague Nevitt felt convinced, he said, the Holkers were friends
of the Cliffords and the Kelmscotts.
"For my part," Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on
his fork as he spoke, "I'm not going all that way down to Chetwood
merely to swell Mrs. Holker's triumph."
"I wouldn't if I were you," Cyril answered, with quiet incisiveness.
He hadn't exactly fallen in love with Elma at first sight, but he
was very much interested in her, and it struck him at once that
what interested him was likely also to interest his twin brother.
And this is just one of those rare cases in life where a man prefers
that his interest in a subject should not be shared by any other
person.
Before Saturday, the 29th, arrived, however, Guy had so far changed
his mind in the matter, that he presented himself duly with Nevitt
at Waterloo to catch the same train to Chetwood station that Cyril
went down by.
"After all," he said to Nevitt, as they walked together from the
club in Piccadilly, "I may as well see what the girl's like, anyhow.
If she's got to be my sister-in-law--which seems not unlikely now--I'd
better have a look at her beforehand, so to speak, on approbation."
The Holkers' grounds were large and well planted, with velvety lawns
on the slope of a well-wooded hill overlooking the boundless blue
weald of Surrey. Nevitt and the Warings were late to arrive, and
found most of the guests already assembled before them.
After a time Guy found himself, to his intense chagrin, told off by
his hostess to do the honours to an amiable old lady of high tonnage
and great conversational powers, who rattled on uninterruptedly in
one silvery stream about everybody on the ground, their histories
and their pedigrees. She took the talking so completely off his
hands, however, that, after a very few minutes, Guy, who was by
nature of a lazy and contemplative disposition, had almost ceased
to trouble himself about what she said, interposing "indeeds" and
"reallys" with automatic politeness at measured intervals; when
suddenly the old lady, coming upon a bench where a mother and
daughter were seated in the shade, settled down by their sides in
a fervour of welcome, and shook hands with them both effusively in
a most demonstrative fashion.
The daughter was pretty--yes, distinctly pretty. She attracted Guy's
attention at once by the piercing keenness of her lustrous dark
eyes, and the delicate olive-brown of her transparent complexion.
Her expression was merry, but with a strange and attractive undertone,
he thought, of some mysterious charm. A more taking girl, indeed,
now he came to look close, he hadn't seen for months. He congratulated
himself on his garrulous old lady's choice of a bench to sit upon,
if it helped him to an introduction to the beautiful stranger.
But before he could even be introduced, the pretty girl with the
olive-brown complexion had held out her hand to him frankly, and
exclaimed in a voice as sunny as her face--
"I don't need to be told your friend's name, I'm sure, Mrs. Godfrey.
He's so awfully like him. I should have known him anywhere. Of
course, you're Mr. Waring's brother, aren't you?"
Guy smiled, and bowed gracefully; he was always graceful.
"I refuse to be merely MR. WARING'S BROTHER," he answered, with
some amusement, as he took the proffered hand in his own warmly.
"If it comes to that, I'm Mr. Waring myself; and Cyril, whom you
seem to know already, is only my brother."
"Ah, but MY Mr. Waring isn't here to-day, is he?" the olive-brown
girl put in, looking around with quite an eager interest at the
crowd in the distance. "Naturally, to me, he's THE Mr. Waring, of
course, and you are only MY Mr. Waring's brother."
"Elma, my dear, what on earth will Mr. Waring think of you?"
her mother put in, with the conventional shocked face of British
propriety. "You know," she went on, turning round quickly to Guy,
"we're all so grateful to your brother for his kindness to our girl
in that dreadful accident the other day at Lavington, that we can't
help thinking and talking of him all the time as our Mr. Waring. I'm
sorry he isn't here himself this afternoon to receive our thanks.
It would be such a pleasure to all of us to give them to him in
person."
"Oh, he is about, somewhere," Guy answered carelessly, still
keeping his eye fixed hard on the pretty girl. "I'll fetch him
round by-and-by to pay his respects in due form. He'll be only too
glad. And this, I suppose, must be Miss Clifford that I've heard
so much about."
As he said those words, a little gleam of pleasure shot through
Elma's eyes. Her painter hadn't forgotten her, then. He had talked
much about her.
"Yes, I knew who you must be the very first moment I saw you," she
answered, blushing; "you're so much like him in some ways, though
not in all.... And he told me that day he had a twin brother."
"So much like him in some ways," Guy repeated, much amused. "Why,
I wonder you don't take me for Cyril himself at once. You're the
very first person I ever knew in my life, except a few old and very
intimate friends, who could tell at all the difference between us."
Elma drew back, almost as if shocked and hurt at the bare suggestion.
"Oh, dear no," she cried quickly, scanning him over at once with
those piercing keen eyes of hers; "you're like him, of course--I
don't deny the likeness--as brothers may be like one another. Your
features are the same, and the colour of your hair and eyes, and
all that sort of thing; but still, I knew at a glance you weren't
my Mr. Waring. I could never mistake you for him. The expression
and the look are so utterly different."
"You must be a very subtle judge of faces," the young man answered,
still smiling, "if you knew us apart at first sight; for I never
before in my life met anybody who'd seen my brother once or twice,
and who didn't take me for him, or him for me, the very first time
he saw us apart. But then," he added, after a short pause, with
a quick dart of his eyes, "you were with him in the tunnel for a
whole long day; and in that time, of course, you saw a good deal
of him."
Elma blushed again, and Guy noticed in passing that she blushed
very prettily.
"And how's Sardanapalus?" she asked, in a somewhat hurried voice,
making an inartistic attempt to change the subject.
"Oh, Sardanapalus is all right," Guy answered, laughing. "Cyril
told me you had made friends with him, and weren't one bit afraid
of him. Most people are so dreadfully frightened of the poor old
creature."
"But he isn't old," Elma exclaimed, interrupting him with some
warmth. "He's in the prime of life. He's so glossy and beautiful.
I quite fell in love with him."
"And who is Sardanapalus?" Mrs. Clifford asked, with a vague maternal
sense of discomfort and doubt. "A dog or a monkey?"
"Oh, Sardanapalus, mother--didn't I tell you about him?" Elma cried
enthusiastically. "Why, he's just lovely and beautiful. He's such
a glorious green and yellow-banded snake; and he coiled around my
arm as if he'd always known me."
Mrs. Clifford drew back with a horror-stricken face, darting across
at her daughter the same stealthy sort of look she had given her
husband the night after Elma's adventure.
"A snake!" she repeated, aghast, "a snake! Oh, Elma! Why, you never
told me that. And he coiled round your arm. How horrible!"
But Elma wasn't to be put down by exclamations of horror.
"Why, you're not afraid of snakes yourself, you know, mother," she
went on, undismayed. "I remember papa saying that when you were at
St. Kitts with him you never minded them a bit, but caught them in
your hands like an Indian juggler, and treated them as playthings,
so I wasn't afraid either. I suppose it's hereditary."
Mrs. Clifford gazed at her fixedly for a few seconds with a very
pale face.
"I suppose it is," she said slowly and stiffly, with an evident
effort. "Most things are, in fact, in this world we live in. But
I didn't know YOU at least had inherited it, Elma."
Just at that moment they were relieved from the temporary embarrassment
which the mention of Sardanapalus seemed to have caused the party,
by the approach of a tall and very handsome man, who came forward
with a smile towards where their group was standing. He was military
in bearing, and had dark brown hair, with a white moustache; but he
hardly looked more than fifty for all that, as Guy judged at once
from his erect carriage and the singular youthfulness of both face
and figure. That he was a born aristocrat one could see in every
motion of his well-built limbs. His mien had that ineffable air
of grace and breeding which sometimes marks the members of our old
English families. Very much like Cyril, too, Guy thought to himself,
in a flash of intuition; very much like Cyril, the way he raised
his hat and then smiled urbanely on Mrs. Clifford and Elma. But
it was Cyril grown old and prematurely white, and filled full with
the grave haughtiness of an honoured aristocrat.
"Why, here's Colonel Kelmscott!" Mrs. Clifford exclaimed, with a
sigh of relief, not a little set at ease by the timely diversion.
"We're so glad you've come, Colonel. And Lady Emily too; she's over
yonder, is she? Ah, well, I'll look out for her. We heard you were
to be here. Oh, how kind of you; thank you. No, Elma's none the
worse for her adventure, thank Heaven! just a little shaken, that's
all, but not otherwise injured. And this gentleman's the brother
of the kind friend who was so good to her in the tunnel. I'm not
quite sure of the name. I think it's---"
"Guy Waring," the young man interposed blandly. Hardly any one
who looked at Colonel Kelmscott's eyes could even have perceived
the profound surprise this announcement caused him. He bowed without
moving a muscle of that military face. Guy himself never noticed
the intense emotion the introduction aroused in the distinguished
stranger. But Mrs. Clifford and Elma, each scanning him closely
with those keen grey eyes of theirs, observed at once that, unmoved
as he appeared, a thunderbolt falling at Colonel Kelmscott's feet
could not more thoroughly or completely have stunned him. For a second
or two he gazed in the young man's face uneasily, his colour came
and went, his bosom heaved in silence; then he roped his moustache
with his trembling fingers, and tried in vain to pump up some
harmless remark appropriate to the occasion. But no remark came to
him. Mrs. Clifford darted a furtive glance at Elma, and Elma darted
back a furtive glance at Mrs. Clifford. Neither said a word, and each
let her eyes drop to the ground at once as they met the other's.
But each knew in her heart that something passing strange had
astonished Colonel Kelmscott; and each knew, too, that the other
had observed it.
Mother and daughter, indeed, needed no spoken words to tell these
things plainly to one another. The deep intuition that descended
to both was enough to put them in sympathy at once without the need
of articulate language.
"Yes, Mr. Guy Waring," Mrs. Clifford repeated at last, breaking
the awkward silence that supervened upon the group. "The brother
of Mr. Cyril Waring, who was so kind the other day to my daughter
in the tunnel."
The Colonel started imperceptibly to the naked eye again.
"Oh, indeed," he said, forcing himself with an effort to speak at
last. "I've read about it, of course; it was in all the papers....
And--eh--is your brother here, too, this afternoon, Mr. Waring?"