"Vous me quittez, n'ayant pu voir
Mon ame a travers mon silence."
VICTOR HUGO.
It was Saturday morning. The few guests had departed by an early train.
The painter cast a backward glance at Overleigh and the two figures
standing together in the sunshine on the grey green steps which, with
their wide hospitable balustrade, he had sketched so carefully. He was
returning to the chastened joys of domestic life in London lodgings; to
his pretty young jaded, fluffy wife, and fluffy, delicate child; to the
Irish stew, and the warm drinking-water, and the blistered gravy of his
home-life. Sordid surroundings have the sad power of making some lives
sordid too. It requires a rare nobility of character to rise permanently
above the dirty table-cloth, and ill-trimmed paraffin-lamp of poor
circumstances. Poverty demoralizes. A smell of cooking, and, why I know
not, but especially an aroma of boiled cabbage, can undermine the
dignity of existence. A reminiscence of yesterday on the morning fork
dims the ideals of youth.
As he drove away between the double row of beeches, with a hand on his
boarded picture, the poor painter reflected that John was a fortunate
kind of person. The dogcart was full of grapes and peaches and game.
Perhaps the power to be generous is one of the most enviable attributes
of riches.
"Poor fellow!" said John, as he and Di turned back into the cool gloom
of the white stone hall.
"He has given granny the sketch of me," said Di. "He is a nice man, but
after the first few days he hardly spoke to me, which I consider a bad
sign in any one. It shows a want of discernment; don't you think so?
Alas! we are going away this afternoon. I wish, John, you would try and
look a little more moved at the prospect of losing us. It would be
gratifying to think of you creeping on all-fours under a sofa after our
departure, dissolved in tears."
John winced, but the reflections of the night before had led to certain
conclusions, and he answered lightly--that is, lightly for him, for he
had not an airy manner at the best of times--
"I am afraid I could not rise to tears. Would a shriek from the
battlements do?"
"I should prefer tears," said Di, who was in a foolish mood this
morning, in which high spirits take the form of nonsense, looking at
her cousin, whose sedate and rather impenetrable face stirred the latent
mischief in her. "Not idle tears, John, that 'I know not what they
mean,' you know, but large solemn drops, full man's size, sixty to a
teaspoonful. That's the measure by granny's medicine-glass."
She looked very provoking as she stood poising herself on her slender
feet on the low edge of the hearthstone, with one hand holding the stone
paw of the ragged old Tempest lion carved on the chimney-piece. John
looked at her with amused irritation, and wished--there is a practical
form of repartee eminently satisfactory to the masculine mind which an
absurd conventionality forbids--wished, but what is the good of wishing?
"I must go and pack," said Di, with a sigh; "and see how granny is
getting on. She is generally down before this. You won't go and get
lost, will you, and only turn up at luncheon?"
"I will be about," said John. "If I am not in the library, look for me
under the drawing-room sofa."
Di laughed, and went lightly away across the grey and white stone flags.
There was a lamentable discrepancy between his feelings and hers which
outraged John's sense of proportion. He went into the study and sat down
there, staring at the shelves of embodied thought and speculation and
aspiration with which at one time he had been content to live, which,
now that he had begun to live, seemed entirely beside the mark.
* * * * *
Mrs. Courtenay was a person of courage and endurance, but even her
powers had been sorely tried during the past week. She had been bored to
the verge of distraction by the people of whom she had taken such a
cordial leave the night before. There are persons who never, when out
visiting, wish to retire to their rooms to rest, who never have letters
to write, who never take up a book downstairs, who work for deep-sea
fishermen, and are always ready for conversation. Such had been the
departed. Miss Fane herself, for whom Mrs. Courtenay professed a certain
friendship, was a person with whom she would have had nothing in common,
whom she would hardly have tolerated, if it had not been for her nephew.
But for him she was willing to sacrifice herself even further. She had
seen undemonstrative men in love before now. Their actions had the same
bald significance for her as a string of molehills for a mole-catcher.
She was certain he was seriously attracted, and she was determined to
give him a fair field, and as much favour as possible. That Di had not
as yet the remotest suspicion of his intentions she regarded as little
short of providential, considering the irritating and impracticable turn
of that young lady's mind.
Di entered her grandmother's room, and found that conspirator sitting up
in bed, looking with rueful interest at a boiled egg and untouched rack
of toast on a tray before her. Mrs. Courtenay always breakfasted in bed,
and could generally thank Providence for a very substantial meal.
"Take the tray away, Brown," said Mrs. Courtenay, with an effort.
"Why, you've not touched a single thing, ma'am," remarked Brown,
reproachfully.
"I have drunk a little coffee," said Mrs. Courtenay, faintly.
"Granny, aren't you well?" asked Di.
Brown removed the tray, which Mrs. Courtenay's eyes followed regretfully
from the room.
"I am not _very_ well, my love," she replied, adjusting her spectacles,
"but not positively ill. I had a threatening of one of those tiresome
spasms in the night. I dare say it will pass off in an hour or two."
Di scrutinized her grandmother remorsefully.
"I never noticed you were feeling ill when I came in before breakfast,"
she said.
"My dear, you are generally the first to observe how I am," returned
Mrs. Courtenay, hurriedly. "I was feeling better just then, but--and we
are due at Carmyan to-day. It is very provoking."
Di looked perturbed.
"The others are gone," she said; "even the painter has just driven off.
Do you think you will be able to travel by the afternoon, granny?"
"I am afraid _not_," said Mrs. Courtenay, closing her eyes; "but I
think--I feel sure I could go to-morrow."
"To-morrow is Sunday."
"Dear me! so it is," said Mrs. Courtenay, with mild surprise. "To-day is
Saturday. It certainly is unfortunate. But after all," she continued,
"it could not have happened at a better place. Miss Fane is a
good-natured person and will quite understand, and John is a relation.
Perhaps you had better tell Miss Fane I am feeling unwell, and ask her
to come here; and before you go pull down the blinds half-way, and put
that sheaf of her 'lost tribes' and 'unicorns' and 'stone ages' on the
bed."
* * * * *
What induced John to spend the whole of Saturday afternoon and the
greater part of a valuable evening at a small colliery town some twenty
miles distant, it would be hard to say. The fact that some days ago he
had arranged to go there after the departure of his guests did not
account for it, for he had dismissed all thought of doing so directly
he heard that Di and Mrs. Courtenay were staying on. It was not
important. The following Saturday would do equally well to inspect a
reading-room he was building, and the new shaft of one of his mines,
about the safety of which he was not satisfied. Yet somehow or other,
when the afternoon came, John went. Up to the last moment after luncheon
he had intended to remain. Nevertheless, he went. The actions of persons
under a certain influence cannot be predicted or accounted for. They can
only be chronicled.
John did not return to Overleigh till after ten o'clock. He told himself
most of the way home that Miss Fane and Di would be sure not to sit up
later than ten. He made up his mind that he should only arrive after
they had gone to bed. As he drove up through the semi-darkness he looked
eagerly for Di's window. There was a light in it. He perceived it with
sudden resentment. She _had_ gone to bed, then. He should not see her
till to-morrow. John had a vague impression that he was glad he had been
away all day, that he had somehow done rather a clever thing. But
apparently he was not much exhilarated by the achievement. It lost
somewhat in its complete success.
And Mrs. Courtenay, who heard the wheels of his dogcart drive up just
after Di had wished her "Good night," said aloud in the darkness the one
word, "Idiot!"