Jasper, as he walked with dawdling gait back to the morning-room—the
ex-cavalry officer always did dawdle, except in the hunting-field or
when race-horses were thundering past the judge’s chair—felt what in
his case did duty for brains to be in a dizzy whirl. He could not
grapple with the mystery which seemed to have chosen Carbery Chase for
its headquarters. The captain was by no means, as has been said, one
of those guileless youths, if such there be, who are slow to think
evil. Shew him a plain, intelligible, sordid motive, and no one could
be quicker in descrying it, no matter how fair a pretence of decorous
honour might be kept up. But this was beyond him. ‘No kith or kin of
mine after all!’ he muttered as he made his way along the thickly
carpeted corridor. ‘I must have been wrong, absurdly wrong all the
time. But why my father should press me so hard on this subject no
fellow could understand. He’s in earnest though, about desiring the
match.’
As he spoke he laid his grasp on the handle of the door of the
morning-room, turned it, and entering, found with a complacent smile,
that Ruth Willis was alone. Captain Denzil was on sufficiently good
terms with himself, but even coxcombs are glad of the confirmatory
suffrages of others; and Jasper felt as though he were under a sort of
obligation to the baronet’s ward for having paid him the compliment of
falling in love with him.
‘I thought,’ said Jasper, as if to apologise for his presence in that
pretty room, where a man seemed incongruous with the surroundings,
‘that my sisters were here.’
‘Shall I call them?’ asked Ruth, with that sweet hypocrisy which girls
only can exhibit, and half-rising from the tiny work-table as she spoke.
‘Pray don’t. _I_ have nothing on earth to say to them, or indeed
to anybody,’ said Jasper. ‘Life drags at Carbery like wheels on a
mud-plastered road. Don’t you find it so too, Miss Willis?’
‘Indeed I do not,’ answered the Indian orphan, taking up the cudgels
gracefully in defence of her guardian’s home. ‘I should be very
ungrateful if I did. It is not every day that a lonely little thing
like myself is taken into the house of a kind dear family of new-old
friends, who cherish and protect, and pet and spoil her, as your good
father and sisters have done, Captain Denzil, to poor little Ruth
Willis.’
She said this so well, did Ruth, in a voice that was slightly tremulous
and with eyes that swam in tears, that Jasper was for the moment fairly
taken in. There was uncommonly little sentiment in his own composition,
but such men as he was, still like women to be softer-hearted than
themselves, and then Miss Willis looked very pretty and delicate and
helpless as she glanced up at him from under the screen of her dark
eyelashes.
‘I can’t stand it, indeed I can’t, if you cry, Miss Willis!’ he said,
drawing a chair up to the tiny work-table. ‘You have found me a sad
bore and a sad plague, I am afraid, since I was stupid enough to do
this at Pebworth races.’
As he spoke he looked down at his arm, which still reposed in its
silken sling, and assumed a melancholy air, although in truth he felt
all but well again. Ruth, from beneath her eyelashes, scanned him more
narrowly than he was aware of.
‘Is he amusing himself at my expense?’ thus ran her quick thoughts. ‘Or
has he been applying thus early in the day to the cherry-brandy in his
hunting-flask, or the contents of the decanters? No; he seems sober,
and civil too. This is a puzzle.’
Miss Willis was justified in her perplexity, for this attention on
Jasper’s part was something new. The captain was not one of those men,
of whom there are no lack, who in a country-house flirt to pass the
time away, as naturally and with as little ulterior design as they
smoke a cigar during their early stroll about the stables or the Home
Farm. He had accepted, as an Eastern despot accepts the homage of his
courtiers, fifty petty kindnesses at Ruth’s hands during his illness,
and had preferred her company to that of Lucy and Blanche simply
because she was cleverer than they, and had the tact not to weary him.
‘I was sorry to see you so much in pain, Captain Denzil, and glad when
I could be of any use,’ answered Ruth, plying her needle with that
demure industry which can be intermitted or resumed with such skilful
effect in the course of a conversation.
‘Yes; and I was bear enough never to thank you, Miss Ruth. May I call
you Ruth?’ said Jasper, as he bent forward and took the girl’s slender
little hand in his. It was the first time that he had ever touched the
hand of Miss Willis, save in the ceremonial salute with which members
of a household meet for the day or part for the night.
‘I like to be called Ruth by my friends,’ returned the baronet’s ward.
‘Dear Blanche and Lucy always call me by my Christian name, and that
pleases me, for I think it proves that they do not any longer regard me
as a stranger. And that is much to me.’
There was a sweet simplicity, a touching pathos in Ruth’s tone not
wholly thrown away on Jasper. He could not quite distinguish whether or
not she were playing a part; but if this were acting, he owned that it
was, of its kind, excellent.
‘I hope you count me among your friends?’ he said, still keeping
captive the little hand that he held.
‘I shall be very pleased to do so,’ returned Ruth, with a downward
droop of her silken eyelashes.
‘I wish I did know how to please you. It’s a lesson I should like to
learn,’ said the captain, with a warmth that surprised himself; but
before Miss Willis could return an appropriate answer, the door opened
so quickly that she had barely time to snatch away her hand from
Jasper’s grasp before his two sisters were in the room. Blanche Denzil
had an open note in her hand, and both girls wore an expression more
animated than usual. Lucy was the first to speak.
‘We want you, Jasper, to drive up with us to High Tor, if you feel
strong enough this morning. Maud has written to Blanche, as she
promised, you know, to let us know when her silver pheasants arrived
from the dealer’s in London; and this note’—and Lucy indicated the
letter in her sister’s hand—‘has just come, begging us to go round and
see the birds made comfortable in their new abode. The day is charming.
You must come with us, indeed.’
‘Pheasants before the First of October gives one leave to shoot them,
are not much in my line,’ said Jasper carelessly. ‘What are _your_
plans for this morning, Miss Willis?’
Ruth with becoming modesty replied that Captain Denzil was only too
good to inquire as to the proceedings of so insignificant a person as
she was. ‘I try to be useful,’ she said. ‘Sometimes Sir Sykes allows
me to read aloud to him the newspapers or a book. If nobody wants me,
I think I shall stroll down to the quiet cool path in the woods beside
the river. It is a favourite haunt of mine.’
‘Well, I’ll walk down there with you, if you don’t mind my cigar, Miss
Willis,’ replied the captain languidly. ‘I don’t want particularly to
go to High Tor, or to go into ecstasies over the fine feathers of a lot
of fancy poultry cooped in a pen and called pheasants.’
‘No, no,’ said Blanche and Lucy with one accord; ‘we are not going
to allow you to play truant to-day. You must come, and so must Ruth.
We never thought of leaving her behind’ (this by-the-bye was the
whitest of white fibs, for up to that moment Ruth’s companionship on
the projected expedition had never once crossed the mind of either
of the sisters); ‘and there is plenty of room for all in the double
basket-carriage.’
‘I shall be bored, and shew it. The De Veres are not a bit in my line.
Harrogate, for instance, I can’t get on with for five minutes—my fault,
I daresay. But he knows nothing and cares nothing about the things
that interest me; and I trouble my head just as little about his model
cottages and reclamation of waste lands and militia drill. The one
subject we have in common is fox-hunting, and even on that we take
somewhat different views.’ This was a long speech for Jasper; but the
concession which it somewhat ungraciously implied was readily accepted
by his jubilant sisters.
‘You forget Lady Gladys,’ said Blanche archly; ‘she would never forgive
us if we appeared without you.’
The double basket-carriage, one of those convenient, roomy, and perhaps
to male eyes ugly vehicles, that do so much good service in country
places, came round in due course, drawn by its pair of strong and
spirited Exmoor ponies, coblike, sturdy little animals, well fitted to
make light of the steep Devonshire roads, yet shewing some of the fire
and fleetness due to their dash of Arab blood. The ‘clothes-basket on
wheels,’ as Jasper irreverently styled it, received its human freight;
Miss Willis, in spite of Blanche’s instances, seating herself meekly
with her back to the horses, and the captain of course beside her. Lucy
took the reins; the smart boy in livery who had been standing at the
ponies’ heads, let go the bridles and sprang deftly to his perch behind
as the light carriage bowled merrily away along the smooth park road.
Never yet, since first she made her appearance at Carbery Chase, had
Ruth looked one half so attractive, in her quaint elfish way, as she
did then, as flashing and animated, her dark eyes saying far more than
did her lips, she conversed with Jasper on the outward drive.
‘I declare,’ thought the captain to himself, ‘if the governor had
been a little more explicit, I wouldn’t mind speaking out. With three
thousand a year, or four—ay, it would require to be four—the thing
might be managed.’