St. John has arrived; he has jumped down from the dog-cart that brought
him from the station, wrapped up in a huge greatcoat lined with
otter-skin, that makes him look like "three single gentlemen rolled
into one." His nose, always rather a salient point in his face, is
reddened by the east winds, and his eyelids purple with want of sleep,
as he has been travelling night and day--not from any violent hurry to
reach his destination, but because boats and mail-trains suited--from
the South of Ireland, where for the last ten days he has been daily
shooting the wily woodcock, and nightly putting into practice the
excellent resolution expressed in the song of "not going home till
morning," with some rather fast bachelor-friends, who, like himself,
are as yet destitute of household angels, to bring heaven to their
hearths, to take away their cues, blow out their cigars, and reduce
the number of their brandies and sodas. Neither a good-looking nor a
good-tempered young man does he look as he makes his descent. The first
he cannot help--the second he can. His ill-humour is owing partly to a
violent headache; partly to the information, just imparted to him by
the butler, that "the family dines at six o'clock now _reg'lar_--no
difference made whatever company there may be--on account of the old
squire's 'ealth."
Perhaps, had St. John known that a woman was watching his arrival, he
might have endeavoured to smooth his features into an expression of
greater amiability. Had he known that that woman was Esther Craven, the
look of bored annoyance would certainly have given way to a stronger
one, whether of pleasure or pain. Crouched on one of the paintless
window-seats in the China gallery, she watches his coming, as she had
watched his going; only that now she makes no smallest effort to
attract his attention--cowers away rather in the dark, while he stands,
unconscious and grumbling, in the patch of red light that comes through
the open hall-door. He has been here half an hour now--half an hour
spent in the hot airtight saloon, where the giant fire draws a strong
woolly smell from Miss Blessington's winter dress, as she sits right
into the fire--a practice not permitted by the autocrat of Felton, and
consequently largely indulged in by his subjects when away from his
master-eye.
The old squire has requested St. John to come round to his other
side--to draw his chair closer to his--to speak more distinctly. The
old lady has explained to him the exact manner in which the draught
comes through the middle window, and catches her just at the back of
the neck, so that when she wakes in the morning it is so stiff that
she can hardly turn it a quarter of an inch one way or another. Miss
Blessington has expressed one fear that he had had a cold journey
down, and another that he had not been able to get a foot-warmer at
Shoreditch; there were always so shamefully few there, particularly
these afternoon trains, that all the business-men came down from their
offices by. Constance had certainly never spoken a truer word, than in
saying that she and her lover were not fond of public demonstrations;
the question that their acquaintance asked each other was, whether they
were any fonder of private ones.
As the clock strikes half-past five, Miss Blessington rises and floats
away lightly, and without noise, to dress. Not for a kingdom would she
rob one second from the sacred half-hour--all too short already--though
the toilette to be made is only for the benefit of two purblind old
people, who cannot see it, and of a young man who does not know gingham
from "gaze de Chambéry," and who has seen her in short frock and
trousers, in long dress and chignon, in court-dress, in ball-dress, in
walking-dress, in driving-dress, in staying-at-home dress, any thousand
number of times during the last seventeen years.
Momently the hot close atmosphere is making Gerard's headache
worse; momently the prospect of the six-o'clock dinner becomes more
intolerable to him. Heroically, however, he enters into conversation
with his great aunt-in-law elect.
"So you have been trying an experiment, I hear," he says, scratching
the cat's ear and cheek and chin as she successively lifts them to him
for titillation,--"set up a 'companion,' haven't you? Do you find it
work well?"
"You must ask grandpapa," replies the old lady, looking towards her
husband, who, with head sunk on chest, lips protruded, and eyes closed,
seems at the present moment hardly in a condition to be put through a
catechism on any subject; "he has more to say to her than I have. You
see it was too great a strain on dear Constance's strength reading
to him every day, and he dislikes Gurney's reading" (Gurney is the
valet): "he says he never minds his stops, and _bawls_ at him; and so
we thought it better to get a person of more education, who would be
always on the spot, and---"
"And whose strength," interrupts St. John, a little ironically, "unlike
Constance's, would be warranted _un-overworkable?_"
"Exactly," answers the old lady, innocently.
"And she is a satisfactory beast of burden, I hope?" says Gerard,
yawning till the tears come into his eyes; "fetches and carries well?"
"She seems a nice, quiet, ladylike person enough," replies Mrs.
Blessington, leaning back placidly in her chair, with her hands, in
black kid half-gloves, lying folded in her lap--"only, unfortunately,
over-sensitive: those sort of people always are. Why, it was only
yesterday that she rushed from this room with such violence that she
nearly shook Constance and me out of our chairs, because I made some
slight observation about a brother of hers who died lately, and to
whom, it seems, she was much attached. I'm sure I had no intention of
hurting her feelings, poor girl!"
"Girl!" repeats St. John, laughing; "that means a gushing thing of
fifty, I suppose?"
"More like fifteen. By-the-by, she said something the other day about
having known _you_."
"Known me!" cries the young man, opening his quick grey eyes. "Well,
'more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.' I never knew any one in my
life that had a 'companion'--of this sort, I mean. What may my unknown
friend's name be?"
But at this juncture, before the name of his unknown friend can be
confided to him, the old squire, waking up, urgently requests to be
told what they are talking about, which information is communicated,
in a succession of long dull roars, into his good ear. St. John takes
advantage of the diversion to leave the room, and, running upstairs,
knocks at Constance's door.
"Constance!"
"Who's there?" (Voice rather muffled--from under an avalanche of hair
apparently).
"I. Can you come out and speak to me for a minute, if you are not in
too great deshabille?"
"Certainly."
Ordinarily, Miss Blessington is a prude; but to appear for an instant
before her betrothed in light-blue cashmere lined with blue satin, and
her hair in golden rain about her shoulders, is, she thinks, for once
permissible. Has he come to make some demonstration of affection?--to
give her some warmer greeting than the nonchalant handshake with which
they met? Or has he, has he--oh sweeter, warmer thought!--brought her
a present from Ireland? Visions of Irish poplin, Irish lace, bog-oak
and gold, cunningly fashioned together into bracelet or necklace, float
before her mind's eye. In a moment, with a little affected coyness on
her face, she stands before him; stands before him--and he does not
even see her! He has opened one of the rusty casements in the passage,
and thrust his head out, feeling the keen eastern blast blow against
his throbbing brow with a sense of relief. He has evidently no gift
in his hand, nor does he seem to be assailed by any very overpowering
temptation to embrace her, blue and gold and white miracle though she
be. Hearing her he turns, and the expression of his countenance is glum.
"I say, does this sort of thing happen every day?"
"What sort of thing?" (with a little pique at the errand on which she
has been called away from among her cosmetics).
"This feeding, I cannot call it dining, like savages, at mid-day?"
"It is a fancy of my uncle," replies Constance, with the door-handle
still in her hand; "he imagines that, if he dined later, he should not
have time to digest his food before going to bed."
St. John utters an impatient exclamation. "In Heaven's name let him
digest in bed, then; or, if not, let him dine by himself! I'm sure no
one would object to that arrangement. Poor old boy! he can't help it;
but it does take away one's appetite to see a very old man mumbling his
food, like a toothless old dog over a bone."
"I suppose he may dine at what hour he chooses in his own house?" says
Constance, coldly.
"Of course he may. He may go back to the manners and customs of the
ancient British," rejoins Gerard, impatiently; "he may get up in
the middle of the night and paint himself in blue-and-white stripes,
instead of wearing coat and waistcoat, if he chooses--only he can
hardly expect civilized beings to join him."
"I always think it right, on principle, to humour old people's whims,"
answers Constance, taking the high moral tone that she has adopted more
than once since their engagement in any discussion with her lover, a
tone symptomatic of what the postnuptial line of attack is likely to be.
"A very excellent sentiment, my dear," says St. John, a little
mockingly, "worthy of being copied by little boys and girls after
they have mastered straight strokes and pothooks; but to-night I must
request the aged to humour my whim, and my whim is to absent myself
from this symposium. I have got a splitting headache, and am altogether
pretty nearly dead-beat. I have hardly a leg to stand upon: if you
won't take it as a personal insult, I have a good mind to turn in at
once. I have not been in bed, for any time worth speaking of, for the
last ten days."
"Indeed!" replies Constance, freezing up, and looking as though
tortures should not wring from her any question as to what had been the
vicious pursuits that had detained her lover from balmy slumbers. "You
will please yourself of course."
"If every one pleased themselves, and no one else, this would be a
much more passable world to live in," retorts St. John, with a little
misanthropy; "for then each person would get their fair share of
attention neither more nor less, which is what they do not now."
But the last half of his sentence is addressed to himself, as his
madonna has retired again within her shrine.
Meanwhile, for the first time since her brother's death, the
"companion"--the nice, quiet, young ladylike person, whose only
fault is being over-sensitive--is, like Constance, making a toilette.
Since Jack's death she has daily put on her clothes, as a necessary
preliminary to the day's work; but it has been a task full of
weariness--devoid of pleasure. To-night, like Constance, she makes
a toilette, and like Constance, it is for the benefit of the young
man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry." It is not,
however, with any faintest hope that her Sunday frock, any more than
her work-a-day one, will bring back her lost lover to her side, that
she puts the former on. The very strength of her faith in his honour
hinders the possibility of his turning away from the woman he has
promised to marry to any other woman from entering her head. Only,
seeing, as plainly as if it were another's and not her own, the ruin
of the face that meets her, daily and nightly, in the dim oval of the
old glass in its tarnished frame, she wishes that that ruin might be
revealed slowly, and by degrees (not _all at once_), to him that had
once thought her so fair. For this one night, she would fain look like
her old self--would fain be pretty plump Esther Craven, whose face,
dimpled and _débonnaire_, men used to turn round in the street to look
after--instead of the thin depressed "companion," whom if men looked at
at all, it was only to pity her sunken white cheeks and sombre mourning
weeds. Her Sunday frock is a lugubrious combination of cheap black silk
and crape, against which her artistic eye has been revolting ever since
she heard of St. John's coming. A little white tucker will not make
her any the less mindful of Jack. And so she has been devoting most of
the short winter daylight to the inserting of such a tucker, and to
cutting the funereal body square. The alterations have been effected,
now the Sunday frock is on: if it had been costliest velvet or satin,
instead of papery silk at two-and-sixpence a yard, its black could not
have contrasted better with the milkwhite of the long lily throat and
swelling bust. Esther has lost flesh a good deal lately; but, being
small-boned and thoroughly well-made, no unsightly hollows show as yet,
like salt-cellars, beneath her collar-bones--not yet are elbows or
shoulders sharp. Brilliancy of colouring is gone; but the head, arched
like the Clytie's, is still left, and great plenty of night-dark hair
to clothe it. Instead of the unnatural protuberance of a chignon, she
has arranged this hair in the thick plain twists with which in the old
time Miss Blessington's betrothed used--
.......... "to play
Not knowing----,"
and, so playing, spoke in loving commendation of them. In like twists
Miss Blessington herself often disposes her locks--twists purchased by
her for a considerable price from M. Isidore, golden hair being hard to
match, and consequently expensive.
It is five minutes to six. The toilette is finished, and Esther stands
before the glass considering it; but with none of the triumphant
self-content with which a fine woman usually regards the victory
that art and nature, fighting side by side, have achieved on the
battle-field of her face. Colour had been Esther's strong point, and
colour has gone from her; as it goes from a violet sent in a letter,
or from a poppy dried between the leaves of a love-song. A raging
desire for rouge, raddle, plate-powder--anything to bring back that
flower-flush that used to need no persuasion to stay with her--enters
her mind. But neither rouge nor raddle is near, and for plate-powder
she would have to apply to the butler--an effort for which not even
her great wish to appear once more red-cheeked before her ex-lover can
nerve her. Suddenly, her eyes fall on a spray of scarlet geranium,
that, plucked this morning in the conservatory, she has worn all day
in the breast of her dress. A recollection comes to her of having,
when a child, crushed one of those dazzling flowers against the face
of another child, and of having laughed with pleasure at the scarlet
stain. She snatches up eagerly some of the petals, and rubs them on her
cheeks; the hue produced, though too scarlet for nature, is vivid and
beautifying. She sets to work on the other cheek.
Esther is not a very cunning artiste; she has no idea of softening off
edges with cotton-wool--of working deftly from cheekbone downwards. She
is only possessed by a great longing to get back, for this one night,
something of her old brilliancy. And in this she partially succeeds.
The result of her labours is, indeed, a too hectic bloom; but the
bright colour seems to fill up somewhat the hollowed cheeks--seems to
bring back a little of the old childish _débonnaire_ grace. Her labour
ended, she runs downstairs quickly--not giving herself time for remorse
at the meretricious nature of her charms, and listens, trembling all
over, at the saloon-door before entering. There is no sound except
the rolling grunts with which, unheard by himself, the old gentleman
accompanies every respiration. A footman crosses the hall; the
"companion" must not be caught eavesdropping; she turns the door-handle
and goes in.
The old squire, with coat-tails under his arms, standing on tottery
old legs before the fire; the old lady, in her evening-cap, sunk in
armchair and Shetland shawls; Miss Blessington, with blue bands binding
close her waved golden hair, and an expression of face less bland than
usual, on the ottoman. No one else.
"How smart you are, my dear!" the old lady says, not unkindly, her
faded eyes straying slowly over the square-cut bodice, white tucker,
and cabled hair. "Is that in honour of Mr. Gerard?"
"It is rather thrown away if it is," says Mr. Gerard's future owner,
with some temper: "St. John has chosen to make an invalid of himself
to-night, and has gone to bed."
No need now for the geranium dye: a great hot blush bums through
it--burns throat and brow and neck; she has _made herself up_ in vain.
"Gone to bed!" repeats Mrs. Blessington, raising herself a little from
among her pillows--"at _six_ o'clock! Dear me, love, I hope he is not
ill! I thought he seemed rather absent when he was talking to me before
I went to dress; and he left the room so abruptly too! Are you sure,
Constance, that he would not like something sent up to him?"
"He is quite able to take care of himself, I assure you--thanks, aunt,"
replies Constance, not without a vexed ring in her low flute voice. "If
we served him right, we should accept him as the invalid he pretends
himself, and allow him nothing but a little water-gruel or arrowroot."
"It seems so unnatural, a young man going to bed without his dinner;
I'm sure, dear, I hope it is nothing serious," cries the old lady, with
that righteous horror of death and sickness which, by some strange
contrariety, one finds so often amongst the aged, so seldom amongst the
young.
"Nothing more serious than the natural results of ten days' Irish
hospitality," replies Constance, with a laugh, which, though low and
highbred, is not mirthful; "men are so fond of one another's society
when they get together, that they never can take it in moderation. I
dislike bachelor parties particularly."
"He is making the most of his time, my dear--he knows it is short,"
suggests the old lady, smiling and nodding, and looking wise.
"Quite right, too!--quite right! Sensible fellow--knows when he is well
off! So did I when I was his age--eh, Mrs. Blessington?" chimes in the
squire, who, for a wonder, has caught the drift of the talk; chuckling
to himself at the recollection--perfectly clear, though he forgets what
happened yesterday--of the pleasant immoralities that have the weight
of over half a century lying upon them.
"Dinner!" announces the butler, coming close up to his master, and
bawling unnecessarily loud.
"You'll have to be content with the old squire again, Conny, my dear,"
says the old man, putting out his feeble arm; "you'll find the old
fellows are best, after all."
"I quite agree with you, uncle--I think they are," replies Constance,
gravely; and so, the old man supported on one young girl's arm, and the
old woman on another's, the procession toddles solemnly, at a snail's
pace, into the carefully-warmed and shaded dining-room.
"What a brilliant colour you have to-night, Miss Craven!" says
Constance that evening; endeavouring vainly to get a strong light
thrown upon Esther's countenance--the one small lamp, with its deep
green shade, effectually baffling her.
"I went out in the wind, and it caught my face," answers Esther,
hurriedly: involuntarily raising her hands to her cheeks and then
snatching them away again, in the fear that the scarlet dye, staining
them, may betray her secret.
"But there was no wind to-day, and I did not think that you had been
outside the doors?"
"Yes, I was; I went for a run in the park just before dressing-time."
"It must have been quite dark."
"It is never _quite_ dark out-of-doors; total darkness is a human
invention, I think; there is always a sort of _owl_ light."
Constance shrugs her shoulders: "_Chacun à son goût_, I prefer leaving
it to the owls."
"It stifles me staying indoors all day; I have never been used to it."
Miss Blessington unbuttons her great eyes a little: "Really?"
"Yes, really."
"But there was no wind, surely?" persists Constance.
"Not a breath!" replies the other, absently, forgetting her former
excuse for her brilliant face. "There never is any wind worth calling a
wind in these low countries; the winds keep to the mountains, and very
wise of them too."
"But you said it was the wind that had caught your face?" says
Constance, raising herself from her lounging attitude with more
animation than is customary to her.
Esther starts. "Oh! so I did--I forgot; I meant the air, of course."
Constance looks slightly sceptical, but is too well-bred to pursue her
inquiries further; merely saying, languidly, as she rearranges the
cushions upon which her stately shoulders rest posed, "Glycerine-cream
is the best thing in the world for a chapped face."
"Is it?" answers Essie, guiltily conscious that a little cold water is
the only glycerine-cream needed to effect the cure of _her_ chapped
face.
"Have you seen St. John since he came?" asks Constance, presently; the
links that connect his name with her artificially-reddened countenance
being painfully evident to Miss Craven.
"No--yes--no, not to speak to."
"You were out when he came, I suppose, weren't you?"
"No, I was upstairs."
"I have not told him you are here; it will be a surprise to him to meet
an old acquaintance."
Esther gives an involuntary start of dismay. "Why did not you tell
him?" she asks, hurriedly.
"_I!_ Oh, I don't know; I have the worst memory in the world. I have
intended to tell him in every letter, but I have always forgotten."
"Will he stay here long?" asks Miss Blessington's unsuccessful rival,
in a low voice, bending down her head.
"I don't know, I'm sure; he is always so full of engagements, and I
never allow him to refuse a good invitation on my account."
"Will your wedding be soon, Miss Blessington?" (spoken quietly and
firmly).
"I really have not thought about it" (with a little yawn, as if the
subject were rather a wearisome one than otherwise); "'sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.' I don't suppose I shall be given more
than two or three months longer; some time in the spring, I daresay."
"I always think it is a good omen when people are married in the
spring," says the young companion, with a dreamy smile; "when the world
is beginning all over again, it is right that people's new life should
begin with it."
"Do you think so? I don't much believe in omens. May is certainly the
best time for Paris. I have set my heart upon seeing the Grand Prix run
for; unfortunately, St. John hates Paris."
"All men hate all towns, I think, except American men; 'good Americans
when they die go to Paris,' somebody said, didn't they?"
"Did they? It was rather irreverent, don't you think? By-the-by, some
one told me in the summer that you were engaged to be married; is it
true? I hope you won't think me impertinent for asking."
"Not in the least; but it is not true."
"Really? How odd it is the way those sort of reports get about!"
"Very odd; people are singularly fond of pairing their neighbours, but
they don't often hit upon the right pairs."
"Perhaps not," answers Constance, closing her eyes, and looking bored,
whereupon Esther lapses into silence.
Every Jack has his Jill; but my Jill is probably in Siberia or Hong
Kong, and yours is close at hand; so I marry yours, and you, being in
Siberia or Hong Kong, marry mine, and we both rue it to our dying day.