‘Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of
feelings and compound of discords as any polysyllable in the
language.’
Involuntarily, unconsciously, all their eyes follow his, to the trees in
the Cottage grounds.
And there
‘All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.’
A profound silence falls on the group. Captain Lennox, whose eyeglass is
immovably fixed on something in the distance, is the first to break it.
‘Almost it does!’ says he, mimicking the poet’s lachrymose drawl to a
nicety. But no one laughs; they are all too engrossed with what they
see, peeping out shyly from between the branches of those trees below,
that seem to belong to the Rectory, meeting them as they do, and
mingling with them so closely that one loses memory of the road that
runs between. ‘I feel as if I saw one now. How do you feel, Forster?’
Sir William laughs.
‘A charming Hamadryad beyond dispute,’ says he.
Charming indeed! Crowned by the leaves that hang above her head, Ella’s
face is looking out at them like some lovely vision. Her face only can
be seen, but that very distinctly. To her, unfortunately, it had seemed
quite certain that she could not be seen at all. It was so far away, and
they would be talking and thinking, and it was so hard to resist the
desire to see them. Carew had insisted on her being asked to join their
party, and Susan had begged and implored, but Ella had steadfastly
refused to accept the invitation. And then Susan had remembered that
strange minute or two during her luncheon at the Park, and the evident
anxiety of Mr. Wyndham that Mrs. Prior should know nothing about Ella,
and had refrained from further pressing.
Now again this uncertain certainty occurs to Susan, and she makes a
little eager gesture, hoping that Ella will see her and take the hint
and go away. But, alas! Ella is not looking at her, or at Carew, or
anyone, except—strange to say—at Mrs. Prior.
There is an intensity in her gaze that even at such a distance Susan,
who is eminently sympathetic, divines.
‘It’s her bonnet!’ thinks Susan hurriedly; she had, indeed, been
immensely struck by Mrs. Prior’s head-gear on her arrival. Such a tall
aigrette, and such big wings at the sides! Again she makes little passes
in the air, meant for Ella’s benefit, but again in vain. Turning with a
view to enlisting Carew’s help, she finds herself close to Wyndham.
His face is livid. He is, indeed, consumed with anger. Good heavens, is
the girl bent on his undoing? Is she determined wilfully to add to the
already too _risqué_ situation?
‘Carew might do something,’ whispers she to him softly. ‘He might run
across and tell her she can be seen, or——’
She looks round for Carew, and Wyndham follows her lead, to see Carew
behind an escallonia bush, waving his arms frantically in the air. There
is intense anxiety in the boy’s air, but something else too. There is,
as Wyndham can see, heartfelt admiration; and beyond all doubt the
admiration outweighs the anxiety. He is conscious of a sensation of
annoyance for a moment, then his thoughts come back to the more pressing
need. He looks at Susan, and then expressively at Mrs. Prior, and Susan,
in answer to his evident entreaty, goes quickly to her, and suggests
softly a little stroll through the old orchard; but Mrs. Prior
peremptorily puts her aside, and, taking a step forward, comes up to
Wyndham, and looks straight at him in a questioning fashion, at which—as
though by the removal of Mrs. Prior’s eyes from hers Ella all at once
ceases to be under some strange spell—the charming head between the
sycamore-trees disappears from view, and no more is seen of Mr. Jones’s
Hamadryad.
‘“Though lost to sight, to memory dear!”’ breathes Captain Lennox
sentimentally. ‘I feel I shall remember that goddess of the grove as
long as I live.’
The tiny excitement is at an end for most of the guests, and they are
now chatting gaily again of petty nothings, all except Mrs. Prior, who
is still looking at Wyndham.
‘Who is that girl?’ asks she, in a low but firm tone. Wyndham would have
spoken, but Carew breaks angrily into the conversation. His heart is
sore, his boyish indignation at its height. Surely there had been
disrespect in their tone as they spoke of Ella! He had specially
objected to that word ‘Hamadryad.’
‘She is a young lady who has taken Mr. Wyndham’s cottage,’ says he, in
his clear young voice, ‘and a friend of my sister’s.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘I congratulate you, Paul’—turning a
withering glance on him—‘on your taste in tenants!’
The evening lights are falling—falling softly, tenderly, but surely. The
crows are sailing home to their beds in the elm-trees, cawing as they
come. The tall hollyhocks are growing indistinct, the tenderer colours
fading into white. There is a rising odour of damp, sweet earth upon the
air. Lady Forster is making little signs of departure—not hurried signs,
by any means; she seems, indeed, rather reluctant to say good-bye, but
Mrs. Prior has said something to her, on which she has risen, the others
following her example. There is no doubt about Mrs. Prior’s anxiety to
go. With her face set like a flint, she is already bidding Miss Barry a
stiff farewell, and is waiting with ill-concealed impatience for Lady
Forster.
‘Good-bye, Susan,’ says Crosby, coming up at this moment to the slim
maiden who bears that name. ‘Though you deserted me so shamelessly a
while ago, I bear you no ill-will. I understood the action. It was a
guilty conscience drove you to it. I asked you a simple question, and
you refused to answer it. I ask it again now.’ A pause, during which
Susan taps her foot on the ground, and tries to assume a puzzled air
that would not have deceived a boy. ‘And you still refuse,
Susan?’—tragically. ‘Is it that you can’t?’
‘Can’t what?’—blushing fatally.
‘Can’t say that the redoubtable James is nothing to you.’
‘I suppose you want to drive me away again,’ says Susan demurely.
‘That subterfuge won’t answer a second time. Don’t dream of it. If you
attempt to fly me now, I warn you that I shall grapple with that blue
tie round your neck, and—you wouldn’t like a scene, Susan, would you?
Come, is he nothing to you?’
‘I really wonder,’ says Susan, struggling with a desire for laughter
that brightens up her pretty eyes and curves the corners of her lips,
‘that after all I have said before you should still persist in this
nonsense.’
‘That still is no answer. I don’t even know if it is nonsense. I begin
to suspect you of being a diplomatist, Susan.’
‘I am not,’ says she, a little indignantly. ‘I am nothing in the world
but what you see—just Susan Barry.’
‘And that means—shall I tell you what that means?’ He is smiling
lightly, easily, but a good deal of heartfelt passion can lie behind a
smile. ‘Shall I?’
This is another question. But Susan, softly glancing, puts that question
by.
‘What, no answer to anything?’
‘Not to silly things.’ She shakes her head. ‘Besides, it’s my turn now.
Do you’—she lays her hand lightly on his arm and looks cautiously round
her—‘do you think it—is all right?’
‘All right? How should I know? You refuse to answer me, and what do I
know of James?’
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Her soft voice shows irritation, and her hand trembles on
his arm as if she would dearly like to shake him. ‘I begin to hate
James.’
‘Ah, now we get near the answer,’ says he. ‘I feel better. Go on. What’s
to be all right?’
‘You saw Ella—Mr. Wyndham’s tenant, you know—in the tree over there a
little time ago. What do you think about it? I thought Mrs. Prior looked
put out. But what can it matter to her who is living there? Did she want
the Cottage?’
‘It seems a fair solution of the problem,’ says Crosby thoughtfully,
and, after all, truthfully enough. Certainly Mrs. Prior has worked for
eighteen months, not only for the Cottage, but for the owner of the
Cottage and all the rest of his possessions for her daughter.
‘But she won’t be disagreeable to poor Ella, will she?’
‘Won’t she, if she gets the chance!’ thinks Crosby. ‘Must see that she
doesn’t get it, though. No, no; of course’—out aloud.
‘And you think it doesn’t matter her being seen; that nothing will come
of it?’
‘Only a most infernal row,’ thinks Crosby again, but says: ‘Naturally
nothing. Besides, Mrs. Prior is going home to-morrow.’
‘Oh, I’m glad of that,’ says Susan. ‘I didn’t like her expression when
she saw Ella. And now I must go; Lady Forster wants to say good-bye to
me.’ She turns, then runs back again. ‘Oh, a moment. Tell me’—looking at
him eagerly, but shyly—‘you—do you really think it has gone off—well?’
The eyes are so anxious that Crosby feels it is impossible to jest here.
This little party has seemed a great deal to her—quite a tremendous
event in her calm, isolated life.
‘I heard Katherine say just now,’ says he, ‘that she had never enjoyed
herself so much in all her life!’ And if he hadn’t heard Katherine say
that, I hope it will be forgiven him.
‘And—and the others?’
‘“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,”’ quotes he solemnly. ‘In
my opinion you will have to get up the sergeant and all his merry men to
turn them out.’
‘Oh, now!’ says Susan, with a lovely laugh, that has such sweet and open
gratification in it, ‘that’s too much. And you’—anxiously—‘you weren’t
dull?’
He pauses; then: ‘I don’t think so.’ He pauses again, as if to more
religiously search his memory. ‘I really don’t think so!’
At this Susan laughs with even greater gaiety than before, and he laughs
too, and with a little friendly hand-clasp they part.
It doesn’t take the Barrys—that is, Susan, Dom, Carew, and Betty—a
second after their guests have gone, to scamper down the road to the
little green gate and beat upon it the tattoo that is the signal between
them and Ella. And it takes only another moment for Ella herself to open
the gate cautiously, whereupon she finds herself instantly with her
hands full of cakes and fruit and sweets that they have brought her from
their party, leaving the rest to the children, who had really behaved
remarkably well all through the afternoon, thanks to the sombre Jacky,
who had kept them under his unflinching eye.
‘Well, we’re alive,’ cries Betty. ‘Rather the worse for wear, but still
in the land of the living. And, really, it went off miraculously
well—for us. Not even a fly in the cream. You saw us, I know. How did we
look?’
‘Oh, it was all so pretty—so pretty!’ says Ella, a little sadly,
perhaps, but with enthusiasm that leaves nothing to be desired. ‘Yes, of
course I saw you. I climbed up the tree. But’—nervously, looking at
Susan—‘I’m afraid they saw me.’
‘Certainly they saw you,’ says Carew, a little hotly. ‘Why shouldn’t
they?’
‘Oh no! I didn’t want that. I am sorry,’ says Ella, with evident
distress. ‘I thought I was quite safe there—that no one could see me.
But—Susan—did Mr. Wyndham see me?’
‘Yes,’ says Susan gently. Ella’s distress at once growing deeper, she
goes on hurriedly: ‘But, as Carew says, why not? It is your own
place—your own tree—and I have always said you ought to come out and mix
with us.’
‘No, no!’—hurriedly. All at once it seems to her that she must tell
Susan the whole truth; how it is with her, and her horror of being
discovered by that man, and the past sadness of her life, and the
present loneliness of it. But not now; another time, when they are quite
alone.
‘The poet saw you, at all events,’ says Dom. ‘He’s not quite right in
his head, poor old chap! and he got very mixed. He thought you were a
Hindoo idol——’
‘Dominick!’ Betty turns upon him indignantly. ‘How disgracefully
ignorant you are! After all papa’s teaching! Hamadryads aren’t Hindoo
idols. They are lovely things. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’
‘I am—I am,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, with resignation. ‘I really don’t
think I shall pass any exam.’
‘You don’t try,’ says Susan, with a slight touch of anger. ‘You don’t
put your mind into your work. And it is such a shame towards father. Why
don’t you try?’
‘He does try!’ says Betty angrily. She is so evidently on the
defensive—on the side of the prisoner at the bar—that they all stare, a
matter that brings her to her senses in a hurry. She to defend Dom, with
whom she is always at daggers drawn! A gleam of pleasure in Dom’s eyes
enrages her, and brings the crisis.
‘He does try,’ repeats she. ‘But’—with a glance at Dom meant to reduce
him to powder—‘he has no brains.’
The glance is lost. Dom comes up smiling.
‘You’ve got it,’ says he. And then, ‘Anyway, Miss Moore, our only poet
thought you were a sylvan goddess. Will that do, Betty? Didn’t he,
Carew?’
‘He’s a fool,’ says Carew morosely.
‘Did you notice him, Ella?’ asks Betty. ‘A little man with a dismal eye
and a nose you could hang your hat on? If poets are all like that,
defend me from them! He goes about as if he was searching for a corner
in which to weep, and he looks as if——’
‘“’E don’t know where ’e are,”’ quotes Dom.
‘Yes, I saw him. He was sitting near you, Susan; and I saw Mr. Wyndham,
and——’ She pauses, and a faint colour steals into her cheeks. ‘Susan,
who was that woman with the high things in her bonnet?’
‘High things!’ Susan looks puzzled, and Ella goes on to describe Mrs.
Prior’s bonnet with more extreme accuracy.
‘That was Mrs. Prior—Mr. Wyndham’s aunt. Fancy your noticing her! Do you
know, Ella, I can’t bear her, or her daughter. They are all so—so
unreal—so cruel, I think——’
But Ella is hardly listening. Her eyes are troubled. She is
thinking—thinking.
‘It is strange,’ says she at last, ‘but, somehow, it seems to me as if I
had seen her before. Not here—not now—but long, long, long ago.’ She
makes a little movement of her hands as if driving something from her,
then looks at Susan. ‘It is nonsense, of course.’ She is very pale, and
her smile is dull and lifeless. ‘But—I have seen her somewhere in my
past—or someone like her; but not so cold—so cruel.’
‘She is Mr. Wyndham’s aunt,’ says Susan again. ‘Perhaps the likeness you
see lies there.’
‘Perhaps so. But no, he is not like her,’ says the girl earnestly. ‘No,
it is not Mr. Wyndham she reminds me of.’
‘My goodness, Susan,’ says Betty suddenly, ‘perhaps we should not have
left all those cakes with the children. They will make themselves ill,
and we shall have a horrid time to-morrow.’
‘Oh, and Bonnie!’ says Susan, paling. She kisses Ella hurriedly and
races home again up the quiet little shadowy road, without waiting for
the slower coming of those behind her.