During the whole of the following week Dare appeared no more at
Slumberleigh. Mrs. Alwynn, whose time was much occupied as a rule in
commenting on the smallest doings of her neighbors, and in wondering why
they left undone certain actions which she herself would have performed
in their place, Mrs. Alwynn would infallibly have remarked upon his
absence many times during every hour of the day, had not her attention
been distracted for the time being by a one-horse fly which she had seen
go up the road on the afternoon of the day of Dare's last visit, the
destination of which had filled her soul with anxious conjecture.
She did not ascertain till the following day that it had been ordered
for Mrs. Smith, of Greenacre; though, as she told Ruth, she might have
known that, as Mr. Smith was going for a holiday with Mrs. Smith, and
their pony lame in its feet; that they would have to have a fly, and
with that hill up to Greenacre she was surprised one horse was enough.
When the question of the fly had been thus satisfactorily settled, and
Mrs. Alwynn had ceased wondering whether the Smiths had gone to Tenby or
to Rhyl (she always imagined people went to one or other of these two
places), her whole attention reverted to a screen which she was making,
the elegance and novelty of which supplied her with a congenial subject
of conversation for many days.
"There is something so new in a screen, an entire screen of Christmas
cards," Mrs. Alwynn would remark. "Now, Mrs. Thursby's new screen is all
pictures out of the _Graphic_, and those colored Christmas numbers. She
has put all her cards in a book. There is something rather _passy_ about
those albums, I think. Now I fancy this screen will look quite out of
the common, Ruth; and when it is done, I shall get some of those
Japanese cranes and stand them on the top. Their claws are made to twist
round, you know, and I shall put some monkeys--you know those droll
chenille monkeys, Ruth--creeping up the sides to meet the cranes. I
don't honestly think, my dear"--with complacency--"that many people will
have anything like it."
Ruth did not hesitate to say that she felt certain very few would.
Mrs. Alwynn was delighted at the interest she took in her new work. Ruth
was coming out at last, she told her husband; and she passed many happy
hours entirely absorbed in the arrangement of the cards upon the panels.
Ruth, thankful that her attention had been providentially distracted
from the matter that filled her own thoughts, in a way that surprised
and annoyed her, sorted, and snipped, and pasted, and decided weighty
questions as to whether a goitred robin on a twig should be placed next
to a smiling plum-pudding, dancing a polka with a turkey, or whether a
congealed cross, with "Christian greeting" in icicles on it, should
separate the two.
To her uncle Ruth told what had happened; and as he slowly wended his
way to Vandon on the day fixed for the tenant's dinner, Mr. Alwynn mused
thereon, and I believe, if the truth were known, he was sorry that Dare
had been refused. He was a little before his time, and he stopped on the
bridge, and looked at the river, as it came churning and sweeping below,
fretted out of its usual calm by the mill above. I think that as he
leaned over the low stone parapet he made many quiet little reflections
besides the involuntary one of himself in the water below. He would have
liked (he was conscious that it was selfish, but yet he _would_ have
liked) to have Ruth near him always. He would have liked to see this
strange son of his old friend in good hands, that would lead him--as it
is popularly supposed a woman's hand sometimes can--in the way of all
others in which Mr. Alwynn was anxious that he should walk; a way in
which he sometimes feared that Dare had not made any great progress as
yet. Mr. Alwynn felt at times, when conversing with him, that Dare's
life could not have been one in which the nobler feelings of his nature
had been much brought into play, so crude and unformed were his ideas of
principle and responsibility, so slack and easy-going his views of life.
But if Mr. Alwynn felt an occasional twinge of anxiety and misgiving
about his young friend, it speedily turned to self-upbraiding for
indulging in a cynical, unworthy spirit, which was ever ready to seek
out the evil and overlook the good; and he gradually convinced himself
that only favorable circumstances were required for the blossoming forth
of those noble attributes, of which the faintest indications on Dare's
part were speedily magnified by the powerful lens of Mr. Alwynn's
charity to an extent which would have filled Dare with satisfaction, and
would have overwhelmed a more humble nature with shame.
And Ruth would not have him! Mr. Alwynn remembered a certain passage in
his own youth, a long time ago, when somebody (a very foolish somebody,
I think) would not have him either; and it was with that remembrance
still in his mind that he met Dare, who had come as far as the lodge
gates to meet him, and whose forlorn appearance touched Mr. Alwynn's
heart the moment he saw him.
There was not time for much conversation. To his astonishment Mr. Alwynn
found Dare actually nervous about the coming ordeal; and on the way to
the Green Dragon, where the dinner was to be given, he reassured him as
best he could, and suggested the kind of answer he should make when his
health was drunk.
When, a couple of hours later, all was satisfactorily over, when the
last health had been drunk, the last song sung, and Dare was driving Mr.
Alwynn home in the shabby old Vandon dog-cart, both men were at first
too much overcome by the fumes of tobacco, in which they had been
hidden, to say a word to each other. At last, however, Mr. Alwynn drew a
long breath, and said, faintly:
"I trust I may never be so hot again. Drive slowly under these trees,
Dare. It is cooling to look at them after sitting behind that steaming
volcano of a turkey. How is your head getting on? I saw you went in for
punch."
"Was that punch?" said Dare. "Then I take no more punch in the future."
"You spoke capitally, and brought in the right sentiment, that there is
no place like home, in first-rate style. You see, you need not have been
nervous."
"Ah! but it was you who spoke really well," said Dare, with something of
his old eager manner. "You know these people. You know their heart. You
understand them. Now, for me, I said what you tell me, and they were
pleased, but I can never be with them like you. I understand the words
they speak, but themselves I do not understand."
"It will come."
"No," with a rare accession of humility. "I have cared for none of these
things till--till I came to hear them spoken of at Slumberleigh by you
and--and now at first it is smooth, because I say I will do what I can,
but soon they will find out I cannot do much, and then--" He shrugged
his shoulders.
They drove on in silence.
"But these things are nothing--nothing," burst out Dare at last, in a
tremulous voice, "to the one thing I think of all night, all day--how I
love Miss Deyncourt, and how," with a simplicity which touched Mr.
Alwynn, "she does not love me at all."
There is something pathetic in seeing any cheerful, light-hearted animal
reduced to silence and depression. To watch a barking, worrying, jovial
puppy suddenly desist from parachute expeditions on unsteady legs, and
from shaking imaginary rats, and creep, tail close at home, overcome by
affliction, into obscurity, is a sad sight. Mr. Alwynn felt much the
same kind of pity for Dare as he glanced at him, resignedly blighted,
handsomely forlorn, who but a short time ago had taken life as gayly and
easily as a boy home for the holidays.
"Sometimes," said Mr. Alwynn, addressing himself to the mill, and the
bridge, and the world in general, "young people change their minds. I
have known such things happen."
"I shall never change mine."
"Perhaps not; but others might."
"Ah!" and Dare turned sharply towards Mr. Alwynn, scanning his face with
sudden eagerness. "You think--you think, possibly--"
"I don't think anything at all," interposed Mr. Alwynn, rather taken
aback at the evident impression his vague words had made, and anxious
to qualify them. "I was only speaking generally; but--ahem! there is one
point, as we are on the subject, that--"
"Yes, yes?"
"Whether you consider any decision as final or not"--Mr. Alwynn
addressed the clouds in the sky--"I think, if you do not wish it to be
known that anything has taken place, you had better come and see me
occasionally at Slumberleigh. I have missed your visits for the past
week. The fact is, Mrs. Alwynn has a way of interesting herself in all
her friends. She has a kind heart, and--you--understand--any little
difference in their behavior might be observed by her, and might
possibly--might possibly"--Mr. Alwynn was at a loss for a word--"be, in
short, commented on to others. Suppose now you were to come back with me
to tea to-day?"
And Dare went, nothing loath, and arrived at a critical moment in the
manufacture of the screen, when all the thickest Christmas cards
threatened to resist the influence of paste, and to curl up, to the
great anxiety of Mrs. Alwynn.
One of the principle reasons of Dare's popularity was the way in which
he threw his whole heart into whatever he was doing, for the time; never
for a long time, certainly, for he rarely bored himself or others by
adherence to one set of ideas after its novelty had worn off.
And now, as if nothing else existed in the world, and with a grave
manner suggesting repressed suffering and manly resignation, he
concentrated his whole mind on Mrs. Alwynn's recalcitrant cards, and
made Ruth grateful to him by his tact in devoting himself to her aunt
and the screen.
"Well, I never!" said Mrs. Alwynn, after he was gone. "I never did see
any one like Mr. Dare. I declare he has made the church stick, Ruth, and
'Blessings on my friend,' which turned up at the corners twice when you
put it on, and the big middle one of the kittens skating, too! Dear me!
I am pleased. I hope Mrs. Thursby won't call till it's finished. But he
did not look well, Ruth, did he? Rather pale now, I thought."
"He has had a tiring day," said Ruth.