Only six days off! And the return of her “men” is only five hours off!
Between these two dates how can any one be expected to keep their
sanity? There would have been a better chance for her if Féodorovna had
not come to stir the furnace of her misery into whitest heat, with the
elegant drawing-room poker of her fatuous confession. Among
preoccupations of such incomparably deeper gravity, it adds one more
pang to Lavinia’s horror of herself to find that the wonder whether or
how nearly Miss Prince accomplished that embrace which Lavinia looks
upon as a dastardly theft upon herself, keeps a foremost place in her
mind. Yet meanwhile she goes machine-like through her preparations,
attending with nice accuracy to every detail that forecasting affection
could plan and execute for the comfort of a dear home-coming invalid.
She even carries out a little surprise--devised a while, how
miraculously little a while ago!--to lighten her uncle’s sombre spirit,
always specially inclined to fault-finding and depression after any
small absence. And when it is finished, she regards it with a feeling of
being a very Judas, inwardly classing it with his kiss, and with Jael’s
draught of milk.
The five hours have dwindled to four, to three, to two, to one. The
time-measure has changed to that of minutes, and of even them how few
are left! For the solitary “once” of its shambling existence, the 4.38
must have been punctual, and the young horse must have flown! With this
last reflection mixes itself another little one, odious in its
spitefulness, that perhaps Rupert is less nervous as to that animal’s
shying properties when they are hidden from him by his being in the
brougham, or that at all events, his superior fear of his father will
hinder him from betraying alarm. Her latest thought of him before
meeting is an uncharitable one; and now they are here! With her
Judas-face dressed in false smiles--this is the position as inwardly
classified by herself--she meets them on the doorstep. It is her
betraying arm that Sir George chooses to lean upon, as he gets, with the
feeble deliberation of ill-shaken-off sickness, out of the carriage.
“No, no; you may be off!” he says, ungratefully pushing away his son’s
gently offered aid. “You never were anything but a makeshift!”
Sir George’s pleasantries have always had a disagreeable flavour, and to
be known as pleasantries only by experts; but that this is meant for one
neither of the young people, intimately acquainted with the hall-mark,
and not for a moment to be taken in by imitations, however close, fails
to recognize; so they all smile. It is on Lavinia’s left arm that her
uncle is leaning--a circumstance to which is due a comment on his part
which she could well have spared.
“Why, your heart is knocking like a hammer! I did not know that a
mosquito had a heart.”
The touched intonation with which he utters the phrase shows her that he
attributes her palpitation entirely to the joyful emotion caused by his
return, and how absolutely unsuspicious he is of any other possible
cause for it; and her impersonation of Judas appears to herself more
lifelike than ever, as she answers with a desperate playfulness--
“You have learnt a new fact in natural history.”
Rupert does not immediately follow the slow little procession to the
study, whither Sir George, with a nostalgia for his own chair, chooses
to be led, occupied, doubtless, with directions to the servants; and
there is time for the “surprise” to be detected and admired, and for
several anthems of thanksgiving, not worded exactly as the rector would
have done them in church, on the part of Sir George on having at last
escaped from the d----d pot-house before his son rejoins them. As he
enters the room, Rupert’s father is in the act of asking how the newly
papered “nurseries” look; and, on Lavinia’s faltering avowal that she
has not seen them since they were finished, starts irritably up,
announcing his intention of immediately visiting them, to see whether
the papers are well hung, or exhibit seams between the strips, as had
been the case with Hodges’ work in the offices last year.
It is in vain that both Rupert and Lavinia entreat him to defer his
survey till after tea. With a reproachful observation, that “if you want
a thing done you must do it yourself,” he sets off, and the young man
and girl follow, offering him attentions which he ignores. The sight of
well-executed work restores him to good humour, and he keeps his young
people dancing attendance on him for some time, to admire at their
leisure, and with what countenances they may, the airy spaces where
their problematical offspring are to sport. Fear of betraying the
loathing that the idea of her own possible motherhood brings with it,
perhaps partially dulls Lavinia’s sense of that repulsion. Tea-time
brings another ordeal with it.
“I cannot say that you do much credit to the Princes’ cuisine,” says Sir
George, taking stock of his niece more closely than he has yet done,
having, in fact, ordered her to move the skilfully interposed
tea-kettle, or her own chair, so as to enable him to do so. “You must
have lost quite a stone in weight since I left home.”
“Don’t you know, sir, that there is nothing that the young woman of
to-day dreads so much as putting on an ounce of superfluous flesh?” asks
Rupert.
Lavinia is thankful to him for his timely interposition; yet it
frightens her. Why should he come to her help? Can he have any intuition
or knowledge of her sore need of it? and by what creepy coincidence has
he used the exact phrase employed by Binning yesterday in connection
with himself: “An ounce of superfluous flesh”? There is in reality
nothing to excite wonder in the employment of so common a turn of
expression; but to a soul so guilty the most ordinary sentence seems
heavy with ominous significance, and she hurries out her own less
tactful repartee with needless treading on the heels of her cousin’s.
“And how many stone have _you_ lost?”
Sir George looks bored. “Thank you, my dear; but we need not bandy
civilities on the subject of our infirmities.” Then with a quick and
determined return to amiability, “Come, let us hear all about poor
Binning? He went yesterday?”
“No; this morning.”
“Poor chap! I should like to have shaken his hand again before he went.
I tried to persuade this slug of a fellow to run down and see the last
of him, but he pretended that he was afraid to leave me. I must tell you
that his filial piety has become a most appalling nuisance, and that he
is like nothing in the world but an old hen with one duckling.”
“I proudly own to the ‘old hen,’ but I fail to see the duckling,”
replies Rupert, with a pleasant slight smile.
Formerly he would have been far too nervous to bandy jokes with his
father, and they would have been stamped upon if he had; but the
answering smile on the elder man’s grim sick face tells Lavinia upon how
much happier terms son and father now are than in any previous period of
their lives. She is the ribbon that ties their hearts together! _She!_
“Was he pretty fit? Did he set off in good spirits?” asks Sir George,
holding on as firmly to the Binning theme as if he knew that he was
passionately desired to loose it.
“Féodorovna did not say.”
“Féodorovna!” repeats he, with that snort of disgust with which he has
never failed to salute Miss Prince’s name ever since the day of her
storming his study.
“Yes; she came here this morning.”
“Whom did she come to console _this_ time?” asks he, jeeringly. “_You?_
Well,” in a changed and softened key, “I dare say she did not make such
a bad shot! I dare say you had grown quite fond of the poor chap from
having nursed him; one _does_ get fond of one’s nurse, with the best
intentions in the world to the contrary,” with a grudgingly affectionate
glance at Rupert.
His son smiles again. (How enviable! how miraculous to have such a
cheerful light heart!)
“You are in a fine flow of conversation!” he says, laying his hand on
the old man’s shoulder. “But you know as well as I do that you will have
to pay dearly for it, if you do not take your usual rest before dinner.
Your room is ready, and _I_ am ready; and _you_ are ready, aren’t you?”
There is authority mixed with the pleasant persuasiveness of the tone,
and with a docility which would have filled Lavinia with amazement in
any other circumstances, Sir George hoists himself out of his chair, and
saying, with an appealing lift of his shaggy eyebrows, “See how I am
bullied!” walks slowly but contentedly off on his son’s arm.
Once again Rupert has come to Lavinia’s rescue. Once again, left behind,
she feels the sense of relief coupled with a great fear. How has he
known the exact moment at which the catechism was becoming unbearable
to her? the exact moment at which to step in? She has a quarter of an
hour in which to supply answers “to taste,” in cookery-book phrase, to
this question, and at the end of that time she has the opportunity of
putting it, if she feels so disposed, to the person to whom it refers;
for he rejoins her.
“I have left him; he will have a better chance of getting to sleep if he
is alone. He is so excited that he will go on talking if he has any one
to listen to him. I could not stop him.”
“And yet you seem to have wonderful power over him! I never saw such a
change!”
She has got behind a cane chair, and is tilting it up, with her hands
clutching the gilt top. She ought not to let him see the sickly
apprehension in her eyes; and yet if she does not, if she allows him to
approach her, if he kisses her, and expects her to kiss him back, by
what hair’s breadth will she be separated from the outcasts in the
street? There is gross exaggeration in the idea, which is weighted by
the offended purity of all her former life; yet there is truth too. But
Rupert’s steps pause far short of her barrier, and there is neither a
claiming of undoubted rights, neither enterprise nor even entreaty in
his eyes.
“Improvement, should you say?” he asks, with cool interest; adding, “How
do you think he looks--better or worse than you expected?”
“Better--worse!” she stammers, contradicting herself, quite put off her
balance by the fraternal ease and matter-of-factness of his tone. It
seems like a return to the blessed brotherly period, before they had
been driven into exchanging the airy chains of their phantom engagement
for the gyves and handcuffs of a real one. After all, he had been driven
into it as much as she! There is balm in the thought. “I mean I cannot
quite make up my mind until he has settled down; he is certainly much
thinner.”
“Yes; his clothes hang a bit loose upon him.”
Lavinia starts; imperceptibly, she hopes. Has Rupert given himself the
word to use no phrase that does not bring Binning in very self before
her? Binning’s clothes, too, hang loose upon him. Lest her start should
_not_ have been imperceptible, she covers it quickly with a remark.
“He seems in excellent spirits.”
“Yes; but we all are that, aren’t we?” He says it simply, and without
any special observation of her to note its effect; and yet once again,
for the third time, that nameless suspicious fear of his having found
her out lays its chilly fingers upon her. “Shall we walk off some of our
exuberant cheerfulness? Do you feel inclined for a stroll?”
Her last “stroll” returns upon her memory with dizzying vividness.
“Isn’t the sun rather hot still?”
“We shall not feel him in the woods, or in Rumsey Brake by the pool.”
Her tilted chair--needless defence--falls on its fore legs with a sharp
noise, dropped from her trembling grasp.
“I do not think I feel woody or poolly.”
“We will go along the high-road, then, the road to Sutton Rivers. There
is always a good deal of traffic along that road--nice carts and
steam-rollers and things!”
A spice of the old light mockery flavours his tone, and she knows that
he has read off like print the misgiving in her mind. If he has read
that, how much more may he not have read too?
The road chosen drops down the hill, and runs through the village. They
pass the beautiful old farm that looks like a manor-house, with its
bronzing walnut trees that wear their spring favours differently from
most others; past schools and open cottage doors, Rupert greeting
shirt-sleeved men with the familiarity born of a lifetime of nods, and
Lavinia saluting matronly women with an intimacy sprung from
maternity-bags. And as she goes, the village tragedies present
themselves for competition with her own. Can that girl who has “gone
wrong,” and is sitting on her parents’ doorstep with her unfathered
child upon her knees, feel a greater weight of remorse and shame than
one kiss has crushed her under? Can the old widow whose last surviving
son was carried off yesterday to the madhouse, feel a deeper, more
irreparable sense of loss than hers?
“Joe Perry was taken away to the asylum yesterday,” she says, imparting
her lugubrious fact, though not the comparison for which she has used
it, to her companion. “He became so violent that it was unavoidable. His
mother, I believe, fought like a tiger to prevent it!”
“Poor soul!”
What fitter ejaculation can he make in answer to such a tale? and yet
her diseased fancy instantly brings to mind that Binning had applied the
same epithet to Féodorovna! As they pass another cottage--
“Carter has gone on the drink again.”
“Has he?”
Yet a third. “Little Harry Brown has got double pneumonia; the doctor
does not think he can save him! He says he has no constitution.”
“Is it to bring down that exuberant cheerfulness of ours that we were
talking of, that you are telling me all these catastrophes?” asks
Rupert, rebelling at last.
“It does seem rather hard to be greeted by such a list of casualties,”
she answers, confused and confounded; “but you see you have been away a
good while--long enough for more than our _usual_ average of disasters
to happen.”
“And is that all? Does little Harry Brown end the catalogue?”
The question is a perfectly natural one, and put as naturally, yet it
sets her trembling again.
“Yes, I think so.”
“If you remember any more, I would rather hear them.”
To that she seems to think no answer needed. They are beyond the village
now, and on that high-road whose sociability he had vaunted to her. For
the time it seems less frequented than he had promised, the workmen
having gone home, and no market-day enlivening it with uncertainly
driving men and gaily-hatted girls, three on a seat, in returning
market-carts. Their only companion is the Spring, in that gaudiest of
her moments when she is about to lose herself in Summer, daring her
elder sister to vie with her sheeted hawthorn, her “golden chains,” her
matchless output of leaf and blossom. And how blessedly different is
each tree and shrub’s idea of spring! How various their method of
expressing it! Some in odorous flower-bunches, some in green tassels,
some in uniformity of colour, some in motley, their varying thoughts are
diversely coloured, bronze and yellow, and dazzling gold-green.
To pause a while seems almost a necessity, yet Lavinia shivers; for
Rupert has stopped and faced her, and there is no one in sight. Has he
lured her hither with an assurance of publicity, only to make his
belated claim upon her? As before, he reads her fear, and answers it.
“No!” he says, stepping back a couple of feet, yet still holding her at
the disadvantage of commanding that full-face view which is so much less
manageable a thing for the purpose of concealment than a profile; “do
not be afraid: there is not the least cause for alarm! I only wanted to
ask you if you are _quite_ sure that little Johnny Brown’s double
pneumonia closes our casualty list?”
Then she knows that he knows.