"I've done Uncle Charles a button-hole, and put it in his water-bottle,"
said Molly, in an important _affairé_ whisper, as she came into Ruth's
room a few minutes before dinner, where Ruth and her maid were
struggling with a black-lace dress. "Mrs. Jones, you must be very quick.
Why do you have pins in your mouth, Mrs. Jones? James has got his coat
on, and he is going to ring the bell in one minute. I told him you had
only just got your hair done; but he said he could not help that. Uncle
Charles,"--peeping through the door--"is going down now, and he's got on
a beautiful white waistcoat. He's brought that nice Mr. Brown with him
that unpacks his things and plays on the concertina. Ah! there's the
bell;" and Molly hurried down to give a description of the exact stage
at which Ruth's toilet had arrived, which Ruth cut short by appearing
hard upon her heels.
"It is a shame to come in-doors now, isn't it?" said Charles, as he was
introduced and took her in to dinner in the wake of Lady Mary and Ralph.
"Just the first cool time of the day."
"Is it?" said Ruth, still rather pink with her late exertions. "When I
heard the dressing-bell ring across the fields, and the last gate would
not open, and I found the railings through which I precipitated myself
had been newly painted, I own I thought it had never been so hot all
day."
"How trying it is to be forgotten!" said Charles, after a pause. "We
have met before, Miss Deyncourt; but I see you don't remember me. I gave
you time to recollect me by throwing out that little remark about the
weather, but it was no good."
Ruth glanced at him and looked puzzled.
"I am afraid I don't," she said at last. "I have seen you playing polo
once or twice, and driving your four-in-hand; but I thought I only knew
you by sight. When did we meet before?"
"You have no recollection of a certain ball after some theatricals at
Stoke Moreton, which you and your sister came to as little girls in
pigtails?"
"Of course I remember that. And were you there?"
"Was I there? Oh, the ingratitude of woman! Did not I dance three times
with each of you, and suggest chicken at supper instead of lobster
salad? Does not the lobster salad awaken memories? Surely you have not
forgotten that?"
Ruth began to smile.
"I remember now. So you were the kind man, name unknown, who took such
care of Anna and me? How good-natured you were!"
"Thanks! You evidently do remember now, if you say that. I recognized
you at once, when I saw you again, by your likeness to your brother
Raymond. You were very like him then, but much more so now. How is he?"
Ruth's dark gray eyes shot a sudden surprised glance at him. People had
seldom of late inquired after Raymond.
"I believe he is quite well," she replied, in a constrained tone. "I
have not heard from him for some time."
"It is some years since I met him," said Charles, noting but ignoring
her change of tone. "I used to see a good deal of him before he went
to--was it America? I heard from him about three years ago. He was
prospecting, I think, at that time."
Ruth remembered that Charles had succeeded his father about three years
ago. She remembered also Raymond's capacities for borrowing. A sudden
instinct told her what the drift of that letter had been. The blood
rushed into her face.
"Oh, he didn't--did he?"
The other three people were talking together; Lady Mary, opposite, was
joining with a bland smile of inward satisfaction in the discussion
between Ralph and Evelyn as to the rival merits of "Cochin Chinas" and
"Plymouth Rocks."
"If he did," said Charles, quietly, "it was only what we had often done
for each other before. There was a time, Miss Deyncourt, when your
brother and I both rowed in the same boat; and both, I fancy, split on
the same rock. It was not so long since--"
There was a sudden silence. The chicken question was exhausted. It
dropped dead. Charles left his sentence unfinished, and, turning to his
brother, the conversation became general.
* * * * *
In the evening, when the others had said good-night, Charles and Ralph
went out into the cool half-darkness to smoke, and paced up and down on
the lawn in the soft summer night. The two brothers had not met for some
time, and in an undemonstrative way they had a genuine affection for
each other, which showed itself on this occasion in walking about
together without exchanging a word.
At last Charles broke the silence. "I thought, when I settled to come
down here, you said you would be alone!" There was a shade of annoyance
in his tone.
"Well, now, that is just what I said at the time," said Ralph, sleepily,
with a yawn that would have accommodated a Jonah, "only I was told I did
not understand. They always say I don't understand if they're set on
anything. I thought you wanted a little peace and quietness. I said so;
but Aunt Mary settled we must have some one. I say, Charles," with a
chuckle of deep masculine cunning, "you just look out. There's some
mystery up about Ruth. I believe Aunt Mary got Evelyn to ask her here
with an eye to business."
"I would not do Aunt Mary the injustice to doubt _that_ for a moment,"
replied Charles, rather bitterly; and they relapsed into silence and
smoke.
Presently Ralph, who had been out all day, yawned himself into the
house, and left Charles to pace up and down by himself.
If Lady Mary, who was at that moment composing herself to slumber in the
best spare bedroom, had heard the gist of Ralph's remarks to his
brother, I think she would have risen up and confronted him then and
there on the stairs. As it was, she meditated on her couch with much
satisfaction, until the sleep of the just came upon her, little recking
that the clumsy hand of brutal man had even then torn the veil from her
carefully concealed and deeply laid feminine plans.
Charles, meanwhile, remained on the lawn till late into the night. After
two months of London smuts and London smoke and London nights, the calm
scented darkness had a peculiar charm for him. The few lights in the
windows were going out one by one, and thousands and thousands were
coming out in the quiet sky. Through the still air came the sound of a
corn-crake perpetually winding up its watch at regular intervals in a
field hard by. A little desultory breeze hovered near, and just roused
the sleepy trees to whisper a good-night. And Charles paced and paced,
and thought of many things.
Only last night! His mind went back to the picture-gallery where he and
Lady Grace had sat, amid a grove of palms and flowers. Through the open
archway at a little distance came a flood of light, and a surging echo
of plaintive, appealing music. It was late, or rather early, for morning
was looking in with cold, dispassionate eyes through the long windows.
The gallery was comparatively empty for a London gathering, for the
balconies and hall were crowded, and the rooms were thinning. To all
intents and purposes they were alone. How nearly--how nearly he had
asked for what he knew would not have been refused! How nearly he had
decided to do at once what might still be put off till to-morrow! And he
_must_ marry; he often told himself so. She was there beside him on the
yellow brocade ottoman. She was much too good for him; but she liked
him. Should he do it--now? he asked himself, as he watched the slender
gloved hand swaying the feather fan with monotonous languor.
But when he took her back to the ball-room, back to an expectant, tired
mother, he had not done it. He should be at their house in Scotland
later. He thought he would wait till then. He breathed a long sigh of
relief, in the quiet darkness now, at the thought that he had not done
it. He had a haunting presentiment that neither in the purple heather,
any more than in a London ball-room, would he be able to pass beyond
that "certain point" to which, in divers companionship, with or without
assistance, he had so often attained.
For Charles was genuinely anxious to marry. He regarded with the
greatest interest every eligible and ineligible young woman whom he came
across. If Lady Mary had been aware of the very serious light in which
he had considered Miss Louisa Smith, youngest daughter of a certain
curate Smith, who in his youth had been originally extracted from a
refreshment-room at Liverpool to become an ornament of the Church, that
lady would have swooned with horror. But neither Miss Louisa Smith, with
her bun and sandwich ancestry, nor the eighth Lord Breakwater's young
and lovely sister, though both willing to undertake the situation, were
either of them finally offered it. Charles remained free as air, and a
dreadful stigma gradually attached to him as a heartless flirt and a
perverter of young girls' minds from men of more solid worth. A man who
pleases easily and is hard to please soon gets a bad name
among--mothers. I don't think Lady Hope-Acton thought very kindly of
him, as she sped up to Scotland in the night mail.
Perhaps he was not so much to blame as she thought. Long ago, ten long
years ago, in the reckless days of which Lady Mary had then made so
much, and now made so little, poor Charles had been deeply in love with
a good woman, a gentle, quiet girl, who after a time had married his
brother Ralph. No one had suspected his attachment--Ralph and Evelyn
least of all--but several years elapsed before he found time to visit
them at Atherstone; and I think his fondness for Molly had its origin in
his feeling for her mother. Even now it sometimes gave him a momentary
pang to meet the adoration in Molly's eyes which, with their dark
lashes, she had copied so exactly from Evelyn's.
And now that he could come with ease on what had been forbidden ground,
he had seen of late clearly, with the insight that comes of
dispassionate consideration, that Evelyn, the only woman whom he had
ever earnestly loved, whom he would have turned heaven and earth to have
been able to marry, had not been in the least suited to him, and that to
have married her would have entailed a far more bitter disappointment
than the loss of her had been.
Evelyn made Ralph an admirable wife. She was so placid, so gentle,
and--with the exception of muddy boots in the drawing-room--so
unexacting. It was sweet to see her read to Molly; but did she never
take up a book or a paper? What she said was always gracefully put
forth; but oh! in old days, used she in that same gentle voice to utter
such platitudes, such little stereotyped remarks? Used she, in the palmy
days that were no more (when she was not Ralph's wife), so mildly but so
firmly to adhere to a pre-conceived opinion? Had she formerly such fixed
opinions on every subject in general, and on new-laid eggs and the
propriety of chicken-hutches on the lawn in particular? Disillusion may
be for our good, like other disagreeable things, but it is seldom
pleasant at the time, and is apt to leave in all except the most
conceited natures (whose life-long mistakes are committed for our
learning) a strange self-distrustful caution behind, which is mortally
afraid of making a second mistake of the same kind.
Charles suddenly checked his pacing.
And yet surely, surely, he said to himself, there were in the world
somewhere good women of another stamp, who might be found for diligent
seeking.
He turned impatiently to go in-doors.
"Oh, Molly! Molly!" he said, half aloud, gazing at the darkened windows
behind which the body of Molly was sleeping, while her little soul was
frisking away in fairy-land, "why did you complicate matters by being a
little girl?" With which reflection he brought his meditations to a
close for the night.