"So fast does a little leaven spread within us--so incalculable is
the effect of one personality on another."--GEORGE ELIOT.
Janey's set face distressed Roger.
Presently he had a brilliant idea. Miss Georges was the person to cheer
her, to tempt her out of her mother's sick-room. So the next time he was
going to Red Riff to inspect some repairs in the roof--the next time was
the same afternoon--he expounded this view at considerable length to
Annette, whom he found thinning the annuals in a lilac pinafore and
sunbonnet in the walled garden.
She sat down on the circular bench round the apple tree while he talked,
and as he sat by her it seemed to him, not for the first time, that in
some mysterious way it was a very particular occasion. There was a
delightful tremor in the air. It suggested the remark which he at once
made that it was a remarkably fine afternoon. Annette agreed, rather too
fine for thinning annuals, though just the weather for her aunts to
drive over to Noyes to call on Mr. Stirling Now that Roger came to look
at Annette he perceived that she herself was part of the delicious
trouble in the air. It lurked in her hair, and the pure oval of her
cheek, and her eyes--most of all in her eyes. He was so taken aback by
this discovery that he could only stare at the sky. And yet if the silly
man had been able to put two and two together, if he had known as much
about human nature as he did about reaping-machines, he would not have
been in the dark as to why he was sitting under the apple tree at this
moment, why he had ordered those new riding-breeches, why he had them on
at this instant, why he had begun to dislike Mr. Black, and why he had
been so expeditious in retiling the _laiterie_ after the tree fell on
it. If he had had a grain of self-knowledge, he would have realized that
there must indeed be a grave reason for these prompt repairs which the
Miss Nevills had taken as a matter of course.
For in the ordinary course of things tiles could hardly be wrested out
of Roger, and drainpipes and sections of lead guttering were as his
life-blood, never to be parted with except as a last resort after a
desperate struggle. The estate was understaffed, underfinanced, and the
repairs were always in arrear. Even the estate bricklayer, ruthlessly
torn from a neighbouring farm to spread himself on the Miss Nevills'
roof, opined to his nephew with the hod, that "Mr. Roger must be
uncommon sweet on Miss Georges to be in such a mortial hurry with them
tiles."
Annette's voice recalled Roger from the contemplation of the heavens.
"I will go down to-day, after tea," she was saying, "and I will persuade
Janey to come and sit in the hay-field. It is such a pretty thing a
hay-field. I've never seen hay in--in what do you call it?"
"In cock."
"Yes. Such a funny word! I've never seen hay in cock before."
Roger smiled indulgently. Annette's gross ignorance of country-life did
not pain him. It seemed as much part of her as a certain little curl on
the white nape of her neck.
Down the lane a child's voice came singing--
"If I could 'ave the one I love,
'Ow 'appy I should be!"
"That's Charlie Nokes," said Roger, feeling he ought to go, and
singularly disinclined to move, and casting about for a little
small-talk to keep him under this comfortable apple tree. "His father
used to sing that song at Harvest Homes before he took to the drink.
Jesse Nokes. He's dead now. He and my cousin Dick, the present squire,
used to get into all kinds of scrapes together when they were boys. I've
seen them climb up that vine and hide behind the chimney-stack when
Uncle John was looking for them with his whip. They might have broken
their necks, but they never thought of that. Poor Jesse! He's dead. And
Dick's dying."
It was the first time Roger had ever spoken to her of the present owner
of Hulver, the black sheep of the family, of whose recklessness and
folly she had heard many stories from his foster-mother, Mrs. Nicholls.
Janey, in spite of their intimacy, never mentioned him.
And partly because he wanted to remain under the apple tree, partly
because he was fond of Janey, and partly because a change of listeners
is grateful to the masculine mind, Roger talked long about his two
cousins, Janey and Dick Manvers: of her courage and unselfishness, and
what a pity it was that she had not been the eldest son of the house.
And then he told her a little of the havoc Dick was making of his
inheritance and of the grief he had caused his mother, and what,
according to Roger, mattered still more, to Janey.
"Janey loved Dick," he said, "and I was fond of him myself. Everybody
was fond of him. You couldn't help liking Dick. There was something very
taking about him. Can't say what it was, but one felt it. But it seems
as if those taking people sometimes wear out all their takingness before
they die, spend it all like money, so that at last there is nothing left
for the silly people that have been so fond of them and stuck so long to
them. Dick is like that. He's worn us all out, every one, even Janey.
And now he's dying. I'm afraid there's no one left to care much--except,
of course----"
He stopped short.
"I've just been to see him in Paris," he went on. "Didn't you live in
Paris at one time? I wonder if you ever came across him?"
Annette shook her head.
"I never met a Mr. Manvers that I know of."
"But he dropped the Manvers when he started his racing-stables. He had
the decency to do that. He always went by his second name, Le Geyt."
"_Le Geyt?_"
"Yes; Dick Le Geyt. Lady Louisa's mother was a Le Geyt of Noyes, you
know, the last of the line. She married Lord Stour, as his second wife,
and had no son. So her daughter, Lady Louisa, inherited Noyes."
"Dick Le Geyt?"
"Yes. Did you ever meet him? But I don't suppose you did. Dick never
went among the kind of people you would be likely to associate with."
Annette was silent for a moment, and then said--
"Yes, I have met him. I used to see him sometimes at my father's
cabaret." She saw he did not know what a cabaret was, and she added, "My
father keeps a public-house in the Rue du Bac." Roger was so astonished
that he did not perceive that Annette had experienced a shock.
"Your father!" he said. "A publican!"
"He was a courier first," she said, speaking with difficulty, like one
stunned but forcing herself to attend to some trivial matter. "That was
how my mother met him. And after her death he set up a little
drinking-shop, and married again--a woman in his own class of life. I
lived with them for a year, till--last September."
"Good Lord!" said Roger, and he said no more. He could only look at
Annette in sheer astonishment. The daughter of a publican! He was deeply
perturbed. The apple tree had quite ceased to be comfortable. He got
slowly to his feet, and said he must be going. She bade him "good-bye"
absently, and he walked away, thinking that no other woman in Lowshire
would have let him go after four o'clock without offering him a cup of
tea.
Just when she thought he was really gone she found he had come back and
was standing before her.
"Miss Georges," he began, awkwardly enough, "I dare say I have no
business to offer advice, but you don't seem to know country-life very
well. Never seen hay in cock before, I think you mentioned. So perhaps
you would not think it cheek of me if I said anything."
"About the hay?"
"No, no. About what you've just told me."
"About my father keeping a public-house?"
"Yes. None of my business,"--he had become plum colour,--"but----"
She looked blankly at him. She felt unable to give him sufficient
attention to help him out. He had to flounder on without assistance.
"If you mentioned that fact to anyone like Miss Black, it would go the
round of the parish in no time."
"Would that matter?"
Roger was nonplussed for a moment. Her ignorance was colossal.
"Some things are better not talked about," he said. "I have been telling
you of poor Dick, but there were things in _his_ life that were better
not talked about, so I did not mention them."
His words transfixed her. Was it possible that he was warning her that
he was aware of her adventure with Dick? At any rate, she gave him her
full attention now.
She raised her eyes to his and looked searchingly at him. And she saw
with a certainty that nothing could shake, that he knew nothing, that he
was only trying to save her from a petty annoyance.
"The Miss Nevills have always been very close about your father," he
added. "You can ask them, but I think you would find they wouldn't be
much pleased if his--profession was known down here. It might vex them.
So many vexatious things in this world that can't be helped, aren't
there? And if there are any that _can_, so much the better. That was all
I came back to say. I should not volunteer it, if I were you. It seemed
to drop out so naturally that I thought you might have said the same to
Miss Black."
"Certainly I might. I do hate concealments of any kind." Annette spoke
with conviction.
"So do I," said Roger whole-heartedly. "I've hushed up too many scrawls
not to hate them. But this isn't a concealment. It's--it's--you see,
Miss Black _does_ run round with her tongue out and no mistake, and
Uncle John's advice when I settled down here as his agent was, 'Never
say more than you must.' So I just pass it on to you, now that you've
settled down at Riff too."
And Roger departed for the second time. She watched him go, and a minute
later heard him ride out of the courtyard.
She sat quite still where he had left her, gazing in front of her, so
motionless that the birds, disturbed by Roger's exodus, resumed
possession of the grass-plot at once.
The plebeian sparrows came hopping clumsily as if they were made of
wood, propped up by their stiff tails. A bulging thrush with wide
speckled waistcoat hastened up and down, throwing out his wing each time
he darted forward. A thin water-wagtail came walking with quick steps,
and exquisite tiny movements of head and neck and long balancing tail. A
baby-wagtail, brown and plump and voracious, bustled after it, shouting,
"More! More!" the instant after its overworked, partially bald parent
had stuffed a billful down its yellow throat.
Annette looked with wide eyes at the old dim house with its latticed
windows and the vine across it--the vine which Dick had climbed as a
lad.
Dick was Mr. Manvers of Hulver.
The baby-wagtail bolted several meals, fluttering its greedy little
wings, while Annette said to herself over and over again, half
stupefied--
"Dick is Mr. Manvers. Dick is Janey's brother."
She was not apprehensive by nature, but gradually a vague alarm invaded
her. She must tell Mrs. Stoddart at once. What would Mrs. Stoddart say?
What would she do? With a slow sinking of the heart, Annette realized
that that practical and cautious woman would probably insist on her
leaving Riff. Tears came into her eyes at the thought. Was it then
unalloyed bliss to live with the Miss Nevills, or was there some other
subtle influence at work which made the thought of leaving Riff
intolerable? Annette did not ask herself that question. She remembered
with a pang her two friends Janey and Roger, and the Miss Blinketts, and
Mrs. Nicholls, and her Sunday-school class, and the choir. And she
looked at the mignonette she had sown, and the unfinished annuals, and
the sweet peas which she had raised in the frame, and which would be out
in another fortnight.
She turned and put her arms round the little old apple tree, and
pressed her face against the bark.
"I'm happy here," she said. "I've never been so happy before. I don't
want to go."