Féodorovna has ejected her so early that she need not go home at once.
This is Lavinia’s first thought on getting outside the house. It is but
rarely that Miss Carew is not wanted in her own little _milieu_; but
to-day she would be superfluous. Her uncle and Rupert are busy with the
lawyer, who has come down from London--busy over settlements: a
settlement upon herself; provision for the younger children--her younger
children, hers and Rupert’s! If she walk very fast, perhaps she may
outwalk this last thought. But it is a good walker; it keeps up with
her. Possibly she might lose it in the wood. The idea results in a
_détour_, which will involve passing through a portion of it. The word
“wood” is perhaps a misnomer, for the grown trees are few and sparse;
and yet by what other name can you describe these silvan miles of young
chestnut, oak, and birch growths, that every ten years fall beneath the
hatchet, to continually renew their tireless upspringing? Where only
recently amputated stumps remain, the flowers grow far the lushest.
She pauses on reaching a spot where a quarter-acre of ground is utterly
given over to the innocent loveliness of the cuckoo-flower, dog-violet,
primrose, “firstborn child of Ver,” and purpling wood anemone. She
stands looking down at them, as if she had never seen them before; as if
these lowly, lifelong friends were the new-seen blossoms of a nobler
planet. What has happened to her senses, that she sees and hears and
smells with such three-fold keenness? Why does she feel so startlingly
alive? The wonder drives Rupert’s younger children successfully into the
background of her mind. Yet this bounding new consciousness of the
splendour of life--life actual, this bursting irrepressible life of the
field and the woodland--and life possible--cannot answer, when the
roll-call of emotions is called, to the name of pleasure.
Life possible!--it is a hooded anonymous thing, that she dare not
interrogate. In its presence her thoughts draw in their antennæ, like a
sea-creature’s suddenly touched. She starts away from the little
woodland garden, and walks hurriedly on, down a rough cart-track, rutty
and caked with the winter’s dried mud. Foolish extravagant analogies and
comparisons dart through her brain--not only dart, but tarry and pitch
tents there. Her life has been like this parched wintry road--a dull
track for heavy-wheeled days to grind and plough along; now it has
turned suddenly into a blossoming brake. Her eyes lift themselves in a
frightened rapture to where the descending sun’s beams thread with
evening light the lovely thin green of the birches, exquisitely breaking
and shaming the tardier chestnuts.
“It is the spring!” she says to herself. “It has always made me feel
drunk!”
But the long vista of branches, all brownly, redly, greenly bursting,
with opulent variety of ideas, ahead of her, tells her that she lies.
* * * * *
Sir George is on the look out for her when she reaches home, and the
sight of his familiar figure, coupled with a remorseful fear of having
been wanted and not been within reach--an almost unparalleled occurrence
in her history--pulls her down to fact and earth again, without a
moment’s delay. Yet a single glance at her uncle’s face tells her that,
despite her truancy, she finds him in the best possible of humours.
“And where have you been gadding, miss?” he asks, in a tone that reveals
the highest complacency of which one so habitually gloomy is capable.
“I thought you were busy with Mr. Ingram,” she answers, involuntarily
shirking the question.
“And so we have been,” returns he, his sombre face breaking into a
smile; “both Rupert and I! And very glad you ought to be that we have.”
“Ought I?”
“I was determined that you should have no excuse for wishing to hurry me
off,” continues Sir George, with rather acrid pleasantry, that has yet
every intention of being agreeable. “After all, what do I want?--a crust
and a glass of Marsala, an armchair and a pipe. So I have made over the
whole of his mother’s money to Rupert, and he has settled every penny of
it on you and your children.”
For a moment or two Lavinia is quite silent. Possibly surprise at her
uncle’s flight of imagination in the matter of the exiguity of his own
needs; possibly also choking gratitude; and possibly, again, the sudden
confrontation with the younger children, whom she had thought to have
buried in the wood, keep her dumb.
“You are very good to me,” she answers at last, in a tone which sounds
to herself the _ne plus ultra_ of thankless flatness; but in which her
hearer happily recognizes only an acknowledgment, faltering from the
excess of its obligation.
“Whom else have we got to be good to but our little Mosquito?” he asks,
using the perfectly inappropriate pet-name which has always indicated
the high-water mark of his favour. “And now that we have her safe for
life--I have sometimes had my misgivings as to our doing that--we must
do what we can for her; yes, we must do what we can for her!”
There is always something oppressive in the lightness of the habitually
heavy, in the jollity of the habitually morose; and Sir George’s elation
sits like lead upon his niece’s heart. She reproaches herself bitterly
for it. Has not her whole life’s aim been to make him happy? And now
that by his manner he is showing a cheerfulness higher than he had ever
enjoyed even before the news of Bill’s death reached him, by what odious
perversity are her own spirits dropping down to zero? Her one
consolation is that he departs complacently, without the dimmest
suspicion of her mental attitude. With Rupert--Rupert, who knows her
like the palm of his own hand--her task will be incalculably harder. It
has to be undertaken almost immediately; for her betrothed at once takes
his father’s place.
“Has he told you?” asks the young man, coming up to her, as she stands
slowly pulling off her gloves by the needless drawing-room fire. “Isn’t
it splendid of him? He would have stripped himself even more entirely if
I had let him--to the bone, in fact.”
The speaker’s eyes, sometimes gently cynical, are alive and shining with
recent emotion, gratitude, and pleasure. In them she also reads the
desire for an embrace. Why she does not meet it with the not
particularly reluctant acquiescence that is usual to her, she could not
tell you, if you had asked her. With tactful self-denial, Rupert at once
resigns his pretensions to a congratulatory kiss.
“He called me ‘my boy’ over and over again!” he says, with a
gratification none the less intense for being quiet. “You know that I
always feel as if I could die a hundred deaths for him, when he calls me
‘my boy.’”
“You are a ‘Boy’ and I am a ‘Mosquito’!” replies she, with what she
feels to be a hateful dry laugh. Hitherto one of the qualities she has
most admired in her cousin has been the gentle forgivingness and
self-restraint which has characterized his attitude towards his
father--the filial piety, which has survived so many buffets. Now she
tells herself that the sentiment which makes his voice quiver is
hysterical, and that a man’s tears should not be so near his eyes. No
one but Rupert, however--and she trusts that not even he--would read
these harsh comments between the lines of the hastily candid “Yes, I
know you would,” with which she supplements her first utterance.
Does his changing the subject mean that he comprehends? Impossible! Yet
he does change it.
“Rather an unlucky thing has happened,” he says, in a voice that has
altered, like his theme. “You have heard me mention Dubary Jones?”
For a moment she looks perfectly vague, then, “Of course I have! He
introduced you to the editor of the _Flail_; and he writes poetry
himself?”
It is the measure of how far her thoughts have strayed from Rupert and
his group of æsthetics, that she should be so painstakingly detailed in
proving that they have come back.
“His translations of Verlaine were very remarkable, if you remember,”
replies Rupert, kindly jogging her memory. It needs the assistance
given, presenting for the time a perfect blank as to what the bard in
question’s bid for immortality consists of. “I have had a wire from him,
asking me to put him up for the night. He is staying with the
Tanquerays. He has been of great use to me in various ways, and I did
not quite like to refuse him.”
Between each sentence the young man makes a slight pause, as if to give
room for an expression of approval or acquiescence, but it is not before
the full stop at the end that Lavinia is ready.
“Of course you accepted him? You were perfectly right. What else could
you do?”
“It is a nuisance that it should have happened at this moment. My father
will not be able to endure him; as I have often told you about him--he
is _like me, only more so_!” Rupert smiles rather humorously, relieved
at her acceptance of his news.
She gives a smile too; but there is a shudder under it--a shudder which
recurs more than once during the dinner and evening that follow, when,
faithful to her lifelong profession of buffer, she draws the
conversation of Mr. Dubary Jones upon herself, to avert the catastrophe
that must ensue if it is directed to Sir George. In a party of four it
is no easy task to prevent the talk becoming general; but ably seconded
by Rupert, and by the exercise of ceaseless vigilance, attention, and
civility, Miss Carew succeeds in securing the couple of _tête-à-têtes_,
by which only a thunderbolt can be warded off. But while kindly and
graciously smiling, listening, and asking, Rupert’s descriptive phrase,
“_like me, only more so_,” drips like melted lead upon her heart. Does
she indeed see before her what Rupert will come to in the ten years by
which his friend is richer than he? Is this his logical
conclusion?--this little decadent, who is trying to fit his conversation
to a hostess whom he suspects of being sporting?
“How delightful hunting must be!”
She assents, “Very.”
“And shooting! That must be so exciting!”
Again she acquiesces with creditable gravity, adding that salmon-fishing
is considered by many people to be the most engrossing of sports.
For a moment he looks nonplussed, and at a loss for a suitable
rejoinder; but quickly recovering himself, says brightly--
“Oh yes, it must be great fun, skipping from rock to rock.”
This evidence of how clearly he has grasped the nature of the amusement
alluded to, finishes her for a while; but she presently recovers, as he
has done, and for the rest of dinner they continue under the almost
insuperable difficulties indicated, the class of conversation which he
supposes suited to her capacity and tastes; nor does she care to
undeceive him.
After all, contemptible and uncongenial as he is, and hideous as is the
thought that the rudiments of him lie in Rupert, Lavinia has reason to
be grateful to the translator of Verlaine. But for him she would have
had to undergo a close interrogatory as to her visit of the afternoon.
She catches herself up in mid-congratulation. Why should it be to
undergo? Why should she mind retailing the little incidents which must
be of equal interest to all three of them? What that is not good and
touching is there to tell--whether it be the man’s affecting fear lest
he should be unendurable in all their eyes, or the heroic patience with
which he bears the cruel kindness of Féodorovna’s terrible
ministrations? Yet she cannot help a feeling of discreditable relief
that the tale which must be told is by the stranger’s presence deferred
till next morning.
And next morning, sure enough, the demand for it comes. An early train
removes Mr. Dubary Jones, and Sir George having dismissed him with the
comparatively Christian observation that he wonders what Rupert can see
in such a despicable little worm, and having added the still more
Christian rider that he supposes all tastes are respectable, gladly
changes the subject for the dreaded one--now better prepared for than it
was last evening.
“So you saw Binning! Come into the study, and tell me all about him.”
She tells him all, repeats almost word for word the little talk--_how_
little!--that had passed between them, keeping back for herself only the
one tiny episode of the wood anemones. Sir George is perfectly
indifferent to flowers, and could not enter into a sick man’s craving
for their grace and perfume. Talk with her uncle has throughout her life
meant judicious suppressions; yet this one small kept-back piece of the
price of her land makes her feel like Ananias.
“He said much the same sort of thing to me,” is her hearer’s
half-disappointed comment. “No doubt he will repeat it to Rupert
to-day.”
“Is Rupert going to see him to-day?”
“I have made a point of it. I confess I rather wonder that the proposal
did not emanate from himself! If the poor fellow has this idea in his
head, that we shrink from him, we must do all we can to drive it out.”
Lavinia nods slightly. Difficulties loom vaguely ahead of her, born of
this utterance, yet her heart feels suddenly light. Can it be because a
vista of possible repetitions of yesterday open before her?
“And though I may not rate our society very highly,” pursues Sir George,
with one of his scarce smiles, “I think it may, perhaps, compare not
unfavourably with Féo’s.”
Lavinia turns to go, thinking her task ended, and relieved that it is
over. But another awaits her.
“Stop!” says Sir George. “Why are you in such a hurry to run away? I
have not half done with you yet.” There is great kindness, and the
unwonted pleasure of being conscious that he is about to give pleasure
in his voice, and in the gesture with which he draws towards him and
opens one after another half a dozen obviously not new jewel-cases.
“They have not seen the light for nearly twenty years,” he says, passing
his hand with a movement that is almost a caress over the faded velvet
of one of them. “I suppose the settings are old-fashioned, but I believe
the stones are good; I know that the pearls are. Garrard took five years
collecting them one by one! The--the person who last wore them was very
proud of them.”
It is the nearest approach Sir George has ever made towards mentioning
his departed wife to Lavinia, and she listens in reverent silence.
He has taken the string of pearls from its long-occupied bed, and,
holding it between his fingers, eyes it pensively. Then, stretching hand
and necklace out to her, he says, in a voice of command, whose harshness
is the cover for an emotion that it angers him should have escaped from
its two decades of prison in his heart--
“Put it on! Wear it always!”
She obeys; but her fingers, usually quick and clever, fumble over the
diamond clasp.
“I would not give it you till I was quite sure we had really got hold of
you!” continues Sir George, regarding with evident satisfaction the
jewels--a little discoloured and damaged by their long incarceration,
but still beautiful, as they circle his niece’s throat. “Until lately I
have had my doubts, but I have been watching. I often notice things,
more than you think”--with a shrewd look--“I saw how out of spirits you
were in Rupert’s absence, and how you brightened up when he returned,
and I said to myself, ‘It is all right.’ So don’t say anything
more”--almost pushing her to the door, in obvious dread and yet
expectation of the tide of her thanks that must wash over him--“but take
them with you, and be off!”
“Am I to say _nothing_?” she stammers.
“Nothing! Actions speak louder than words! Marry Rupert, and give me a
grandson as quick as you can!”