‘A LITTLE WHILE SUCH LIPS AS THINE TO KISS.’
It was midwinter when Jasper Treverton died. Spring had come in all
her glory--her balmy airs and sultry noontides, stolen from summer;
her variety and wealth of wood and meadow blossoms; her snowy orchard
bloom, tinted with carnation; her sweetness and freshness of beauty--a
season to be welcomed and enjoyed like no other season in the changing
year; a little glimpse of Paradise on earth between the destroying
gales of March and the fatal thunderstorms of July. Spring had filled
all the lanes and glades round Hazlehurst with perfume and colour when
John Treverton reappeared in the village, as unexpectedly as if he had
dropped from the skies.
Eliza Sampson was destroying the aphids on a favourite rose tree,
handling them daintily with the tips of her gloved fingers, as if
she loved them, when Mr. Treverton appeared at the little iron gate,
carrying his own portmanteau. He, the heir of all the ages, and of
what signified much more in Miss Sampson’s estimation, an estate worth
fourteen thousand a year.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘Mr. Treverton, how could you? We would have sent the
boy to the station.’
‘How could I do what?’ he asked, laughing at her horrified look.
‘Carry your own portmanteau. Tom will be so vexed.’
‘Tom need know nothing about it, if it will vex him. The portmanteau is
light enough, and I have only brought it from the “George,” where the
’bus dropped me. You see I have taken your brother at his word, Miss
Sampson, and have come to quarter myself upon you for a few days.’
‘Tom will be delighted,’ said Eliza.
She was meditating how the dinner she had arranged for Tom and herself
could be made to do for the heir of Hazlehurst Manor. It was one of
those dinners in which the economical housekeeper delights, a dinner
that clears up every scrap in the larder, and leaves not so much as a
knuckle-bone for the predatory ‘follower,’ male or female, the cook’s
hungry niece, or the housemaid’s young man. A little soup, squeezed,
as by hydraulic pressure, out of cleanly picked bones and odd remnants
of gristle; a dish of hashed mutton, a very small hash, fenced round
with a machicolated parapet of toasted bread; a beefsteak pudding with
a kidney in it, boiled in a basin the size of a breakfast-cup. This
latter savoury mess was intended to gratify Tom, who was prejudiced
against hashed mutton, and always pretended that it disagreed with him.
For _entremets sucrés_ there were a dish of stewed rhubarb and
a mould of boiled rice, wholesome, simple, and inexpensive. It was a
little dinner which did honour to Miss Sampson’s head and heart; but
she felt that it was not good enough for the future lord of Hazlehurst,
a gentleman out of whom her brother hoped to make plenty of money
by-and-by.
‘I’ll go and see about your room while you have a chat with Tom in the
office,’ she said, tripping lightly away, and leaving John Treverton on
the lawn in front of the drawing-room windows, a closely-shorn piece of
grass about fifty feet by twenty-five.
‘Pray don’t give yourself any trouble,’ he called after her; ‘I’m used
to roughing it.’
Eliza was in the kitchen before he had finished his sentence. She
was deep in consultation with the cook, who would have resented
the unannounced arrival of any ordinary guest, but who felt that
Mr. Treverton was a person for whom people must be expected to put
themselves about. He had given liberal vails, too, after his last
visit, and that was much in his favour.
‘We must have some fish, Mary,’ said Eliza, ‘and poultry. It’s
dreadfully dear at this time of year, and Trimpson does impose so, but
we must have it.’
Trimpson was the only fishmonger and poulterer of Hazlehurst, a trader
whose stock sometimes consisted of a pound and a half of salmon, and a
single fowl, long-necked and skinny, hanging in solitary glory above
the slate slab, where the salmon steak lay frizzling in the afternoon
sun, which shone full upon Trimpson’s shop.
‘Well, miss, if I was you, I’d have a pair of soles and a duck to
follow, with the beefsteak pudding for a bottom dish,’ suggested cook;
‘but, lawks, what’s the good of talking? we must have what we can get.
But I saw two ducks in Trimpson’s window this morning when I went up
street.’
‘Put on your bonnet, Mary, and run and see what you can do,’ said
Eliza. And then, while Mary ran off, without stopping to put on her
bonnet, Miss Sampson and the housemaid went upstairs together and took
out lavender-scented linen, and decorated the spare room with all
those pin-trays, china candlesticks, and pomatum pots, which went into
retirement when there was no company.
‘Of course he has come to make her an offer,’ mused Eliza, as she
lingered to give a finishing touch to the room, after the housemaid had
gone downstairs.
‘He has waited a proper time after the old gentleman’s death, and now
he has come down to ask her to marry him, and I dare say they will be
married before the summer is over. It will be rather awkward for her to
throw off such deep mourning all at once, but that’s her own fault for
going into crape, just as if Mr. Treverton had really been her father!
I put it down to pride.’
Miss Sampson had a knack of finding motives for all the acts of her
acquaintance, and those motives were rarely of the best.
John Treverton’s chat with Mr. Sampson did not last more than ten
minutes, friendly, and even affectionate, as was the lawyer’s reception.
‘I see you’re busy,’ said Treverton; ‘I’ll go and have a stroll in the
village.’
‘No, upon my honour, I was just going to strike work. I’ll come with
you if you like.’
‘On no account; I know you haven’t half finished. Dinner at six, as
usual, I suppose. I’ll be back in time for a talk before we sit down.’
And before Mr. Sampson could remonstrate, John Treverton was gone. He
wanted to see what Hazlehurst Manor was like in the clear spring light,
framed in greenery, brightened with all the flowers that bloom in early
May, musical with thrush and blackbird, noisy with the return of the
swallows. Never had he so longed to look upon anything as he longed
to-day to see the home of his ancestors, the home which might be his.
He walked quickly along the village street. Such a quaint little
street, with never one house like another; here a building bulging
forward, with bow windows below and projecting dormers above; there a
house retiring modestly behind a patch of garden; further on an inn set
at right angles with the highway, its chief door approached by a flight
of stone steps that time had worn crooked. Such a variety of chimneys,
such complexities in the way of roofs and gables; but everywhere
cleanliness and spring flowers, and a purer air than John Treverton
had breathed for a long time. Even this queer little village street,
with its dozen shops and its half-dozen public-houses was very fair and
pleasant in his town-weary eyes.
When he left the street he entered a noble high-road, bordered on each
side by a row of fine old elms, which made the turnpike road an avenue
worthy to be the approach to a king’s palace. The Manor-house lay off
this road, guarded by tall gates of florid iron tracery, manufactured
in the Low Countries two hundred years ago. He stopped at the gates
to contemplate the scene, looking at it dreamily, as at something
unreal--a picture that was fair but evanescent, and might vanish as he
gazed.
Between the gates and the house the ground undulated gently. It was
all smooth sward, too small for a park, too irregular for a lawn. A
winding carriage-road, shadowed with fine old trees, skirted the green
expanse, and groups of shrubs here and there adorned it, rhododendrons,
laurels, bay, deodoras, cypresses, all the variety of ornamental
conifers. Two great cedars made islets of shadow in the sunny grass,
and a copper beech, a giant of his kind, was just showing its dark
brown buds. Beyond stood the Manor-house, tall, and broad, and red,
with white stone dressings to door and windows, and a noble cornice, a
house of Charles the Second’s reign, a real Sir Christopher Wren house,
massive and grand in its stern simplicity.
John Treverton roused himself from his waking dream and rang the bell.
A woman came out of the lodge, looked at him, dropped a low curtsey,
opened the gate, and admitted him without a word, as if he were master
there. In her mind he was master, though the trustees paid her wages.
It was an understood thing in the household that Mr. Treverton was
going to marry Miss Malcolm and reign at Hazlehurst Manor.
He walked slowly across the smooth, well-kept grass. Everything was
changed and improved by the altered season. House and grounds seemed
new to him. He remembered the flower-garden on the left of the house,
the cheerless garden without a flower, where he had walked in the bleak
winter mornings, smoking his solitary cigar; he remembered the walled
fruit-garden beyond, to which he had seen that strange guest admitted
under cover of darkness.
The thought of that night scene in the winter disturbed him even
to-day, despite the apparent frankness of Laura’s explanation.
‘I suppose there is a mystery in every life,’ he said, with a sigh;
‘and, after all, what can it matter to me?’
He had heard nothing of the change in Miss Malcolm’s plans, and
supposed the house abandoned to the care of servants. He was surprised
to see the drawing-room windows open, flowers on the tables, and a
look of domesticity everywhere. He went past the house and into the
flower-garden, a garden of the Dutch school, prim and formal, with
long, straight walks, box borders, junipers clipped into obelisks,
a dense yew hedge, eight feet high, with arches cut in it to give
admittance to the adjoining orchard. The beds and borders were a blaze
of red and yellow tulips, which shone out against the verdure of the
close-shorn bowling-green and the tawny hue of the gravel, and made a
feast of vivid colour, like the painted windows of a cathedral. John
Treverton, who had not seen such a garden for years, was almost dazzled
by its homely beauty.
He walked slowly to the end of the long path, looking about him in
dreamy contentment. The sweet, soft air, the sunshine--just at that
quiet hour of the afternoon when the light begins to be golden--the
whistling of the blackbirds in the shrubbery, the freshness and beauty
of all things, steeped his soul in a new delight. His life of late had
been spent in cities, fenced from the beauty of earth by a wilderness
of walls, the glory of heaven screened by smoke, the air thick and foul
with the breath of men. This placid garden scene was as new to him as
if he had come straight from the bottom of a mine.
Presently he stopped, as if struck with a new thought, looked straight
before him, and muttered between clenched teeth:--
‘I shall be a fool if I let it slip from my hand.’
‘It’ meant Hazlehurst Manor, and the lands and fortune thereto
belonging.
He was standing within a few yards of the yew-tree hedge, and just at
this moment the green arch opposite him became the frame of a living
picture, and that a lovely one.
Laura Malcolm stood there, bareheaded, dressed in black, with a basket
of flowers upon her arm--Laura, whom he had no idea of meeting in this
place.
The western sky was behind her, and she stood, a tall, slim figure in
straight, black drapery, against a golden background, like a saint
in an early Italian picture, an edge of light upon her chestnut hair
making almost an aureole, her face in shadow.
For a few moments she paused, evidently startled at the apparition
of a stranger, then recognised the intruder, and came forward and
offered him her hand frankly, as if he had been quite a commonplace
acquaintance.
‘Pray forgive me for coming in unannounced,’ he said; ‘I had no idea I
should find you here. Yet it is natural that you should come sometimes
to look at the old gardens.’
‘I am living here,’ answered Laura. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No, indeed. No one informed me of the change in your plans.’
‘I am so fond of the dear old house and garden, and the place is so
full of associations for me, that I was easily induced to stay when Mr.
Clare told me that it would be better for the house. I am a kind of
housekeeper in charge of everything.’
‘I hope you will stay here all your life,’ said Treverton quickly, and
then he coloured crimson, as if he had said something awful.
The same crimson flush mounted almost as quickly to Laura’s pale cheeks
and brow. Both stood looking at the ground, embarrassed as a schoolboy
and girl, while the blackbirds whistled triumphantly in the shrubbery,
and a thrush in the orchard went into ecstasies of melody.
Laura was the first to recover.
‘Have you been staying long at Hazlehurst?’ she asked, quietly.
‘I only came an hour ago. My first visit was to the Manor, though I
expected to find it an empty house.’
Another picture now appeared in the green frame--a young lady with
a neat little figure, a retroussé nose, and an agreeably vivacious
countenance.
‘Come here, Celia,’ cried Laura, ‘and let me introduce Mr. Treverton.
You have heard your father talk about him. Mr. Treverton, Miss Clare.’
Miss Clare bowed and smiled, and murmured something indefinite. ‘Poor
Edward!’ she was thinking all the while. ‘This Mr. Treverton is awfully
good-looking.’
‘Awfully’ was Miss Clare’s chief laudatory adjective; her superlative
form of praise was ‘quite too awfully,’ and when enthusiasm carried her
beyond herself she called things ‘nice.’ ‘Quite too awfully nice,’ was
her maximum of rapture.
As she rarely left Hazlehurst Vicarage, and knew in all about twenty
people, it is something to her credit that she had made herself
mistress of the current metropolitan slang.
‘I suppose you are staying at the Sampsons?’ she said. ‘Mr. Sampson
is always talking of you. “My friend Treverton,” he calls you, but I
suppose you won’t mind that. It’s rather trying.’
‘I think I can survive even that,’ answered John, who felt grateful to
this young person for having come to his rescue at a moment when he
felt himself curiously embarrassed. ‘Mr. Sampson has been very kind to
me.’
‘If you can only manage to endure him he is an awfully good-natured
little fellow,’ said Miss Clare with her undergraduate air. She
modelled her manners and opinions upon those of her brother, and was in
most things a feminine copy of the Oxonian. ‘But how do you contrive to
get on with his sister? She is quite too dreadful.’
‘I confess that she is a lady whose society does not afford me
unqualified delight,’ said John, ‘but I believe she means kindly.’
‘Can a person with white eyelashes mean kindly?’ inquired Celia, with
a philosophical air. ‘Has not Providence created them like that as a
warning, just as venomous snakes have flat heads?’
‘That is treating the matter rather too seriously,’ said John. ‘I don’t
admire white eyelashes, but I am not so prejudiced as to consider them
an indication of character.’
‘Ah,’ replied Celia, with a significant air, ‘you will know better
by-and-by.’
She was only twenty, but she talked to John Treverton with as assured a
tone as if she had been ages older than he in wisdom and experience of
life.
‘How pretty the gardens are at this season!’ said Treverton, looking
round admiringly, and addressing his remark to Laura.
‘Ah, you have only seen them in winter,’ she answered; ‘perhaps you
would like to walk round the orchard and shrubberies?’
‘I should, very much.’
‘And after that we will go indoors and have some tea,’ said Celia. ‘You
are fond of tea, of course, Mr. Treverton?’
‘I confess that weakness.’
‘I am glad to hear it. I hate a man who is not fond of tea. There is
that brother of mine appreciates nothing but strong coffee without
milk. I’m afraid he’ll come to a bad end.’
‘I am glad you think tea-drinking a virtue,’ said John, laughing.
And then they all three went under the yew-tree arch, into the
loveliest of orchards--an orchard of seven or eight acres--an orchard
that had been growing a century and a half; pears, plums, cherries,
apples; here and there a walnut tree towering above the rest; here and
there a gray old medlar; a pool in a corner overshadowed by two rugged
old quinces; grass so soft, and deep, and mossy; primroses, daffodils;
pale purple crocuses; the whole bounded by a sloping bank on which
the ferns were just unfolding their snaky, gray coils, and revealing
young leaves of tenderest green, under a straggling hedge of hawthorn,
honeysuckle, and eglantine.
Here among the old gnarled trunks, and on the hillocky grass, Mr.
Treverton and the two young ladies walked for about half-an-hour,
enjoying the beauty and freshness of the place, in this sweetest period
of the balmy spring day. Celia talked much, and John Treverton talked
a little, but Miss Malcolm was for the most part silent. And yet John
did not think her dull or stupid. It was enough for him to look at that
delicate, yet firmly-modelled profile, the thoughtful brow, grave lips,
and calm, dark eyes, to know that neither intellect nor goodness was
wanting in her whom his kinsman had designed for his wife.
‘Poor old man,’ he thought, ‘he meant to secure my happiness without
jeopardising hers. If he could have known--if he could have known!’
They returned to the garden by a different arch; they visited the
hot-houses, where the rose-hued azaleas and camellias made pyramids
of vivid colour; they glanced at the kitchen garden with its
asparagus-beds and narrow box-edged borders, its all-pervading odour of
sweet herbs and wallflowers.
‘I am positively expiring for want of a cup of tea,’ cried Celia.
‘Didn’t you hear the church clock strike five, Laura?’
John remembered the six o’clock dinner at The Laurels.
‘I really think I must deny myself that cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The
Sampsons dine at six.’
‘What of that?’ exclaimed Celia, who never would let a man out of her
clutches till stern necessity snatched him from her. ‘It is not above
ten minutes’ walk from here to The Laurels.’
‘What an excellent walker you must be, Miss Clare. Well, I’ll hazard
everything for that cup of tea.’
They went into a pretty room, opening out of the garden, a room with
two long windows wreathed round with passionflower and starry white
clematis--the clematis montana, which flowers in spring. It was not
large enough for a library, so it was called the book-room, and was
lined from floor to ceiling with books--a great many of which had been
collected by Laura. It was quite a lady’s collection. There were all
the modern poets, from Scott and Byron downwards, a good many French
and German books--Macaulay, De Quincey, Lamartine, Victor Hugo--a good
deal of history and belles-lettres, but no politics, no science, no
travels. The room was the essence of snugness--flowers on mantelpiece
and tables, basket-work easy chairs, cushions adorned with crewel-work,
delightful little tables (after Chippendale), and on one of the tables
a scarlet Japanese tea-tray, with the quaintest of old silver teapots,
and cups and saucers in willow-pattern Nankin ware. Laura poured out
the tea, while Celia began to devour hot buttered cake, the very look
of which suggested dyspepsia; but to some weak minds earth has no more
overpowering temptation on a warm spring afternoon than hot buttered
cake and strong tea with plenty of cream in it.
John Treverton sat in one of the low basket arm-chairs--such chairs as
they make in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire--and drank tea as if it
were the elixir of life. He had a strange feeling as he sat in that
chair by the open window, looking across the beds of tulips, above
which the bees were humming noisily--a feeling as if his life were only
just beginning; as if he were a child in his cradle, dimly conscious of
the dawning of existence; no burdens on mind or conscience; no tie or
encumbrance; no engagement of honour or faith; a dead blank behind him;
and before him life, happiness, the glory and freshness of earth, love,
home, all things which fate reserves for the man born to good luck.
This dream or fancy of his was so pleasant that he let it stay with
him while he drank three cups of tea, and while Celia rattled on about
Hazlehurst and its inhabitants, giving him what she called a social
map of the country, which might be useful for his guidance during the
week he proposed to spend there. He only roused himself when the church
clock chimed the three-quarters, and then he pulled himself out of the
basket chair with a jerk, put down his cup and saucer, and wished Laura
good-bye.
‘I shall have to do the distance in ten minutes, Miss Clare,’ he said,
as he shook hands with that vivacious young lady.
‘I’m afraid I ought to have said ten minutes for a bicycle,’ replied
Celia; ‘but the Sampsons won’t mind waiting dinner for you, and I don’t
suppose the delay will hurt their dinner.’
‘It will be nearer for you through the orchard,’ said Laura.
So John Treverton went through the orchard, at the end of which there
was a gate that opened into a lane leading to the high-road. It was the
same lane that skirted the walled fruit-garden, with the little door
that John had seen mysteriously opened that winter night. The sight of
the little wooden door made him curiously thoughtful.
‘I’ll never believe that there was anything approaching guilt in that
mystery,’ he said to himself. ‘No, I have looked into those lovely
eyes of hers, and I believe her incapable of an unworthy thought. Some
poor relation, I dare say--a scamp whom she would have been ashamed of
before the servants, so she received him secretly; doubtless to help
him with money.’
* * * * *
‘What an extraordinary girl you are, Laura!’ said Celia, draining the
teapot. ‘Why did you never tell me that John Treverton was so perfectly
lovely?’
‘My dear Celia, how am I to know what constitutes your idea of perfect
loveliness in a young man? I have heard you praise so many, all
distinctly different. I told you that Mr. Treverton was gentlemanlike
and good-looking.’
‘Good-looking!’ cried Celia. ‘He is absolutely perfect. To see him
sitting in that chair drinking tea and looking dreamily out of the
garden with those exquisite eyes of his! Oh, he is quite too awfully
nice. Do you know the colour of his eyes?’
‘I have not the slightest idea.’
‘They are a greeny-gray--a colour that changes every minute, a tint
between blue and brown; I never saw it before. And his complexion--just
that olive paleness which is so positively delightful. His nose is
slightly irregular in line, not straight enough to be Grecian, and not
curved enough to be aquiline--but his mouth is awfully nice--so firm
and resolute-looking, yet lapsing now and then into dreamy thought. Did
you see him lapse into dreamy thought, Laura?’
Miss Malcolm blushed indignantly; vexed, no doubt, at such foolishness.
‘Really, Celia, you are too ridiculous. I can’t think how you can
indulge in such absurd raptures about a strange man.’
‘Why not about a strange man?’ asked Celia, with her philosophical air.
‘Why should the perfections of a strange man be a forbidden subject?
One may rave about a landscape; one may be as enthusiastic as one
likes about the stars or the moon, the sea, or a sunset, or even the
last popular novel? Why must not one admire a man? I am not going to
put a padlock upon my lips to flatter such an absurd prejudice. As for
you, Laura, it is all very well to sit there stitching at that faded
blackberry leaf--you are putting too much brown in it, I am sure--and
looking the image of all that is demure. To my mind you are more to be
envied than any girl I ever heard of, except the Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood.’
‘Why should I be envied?’
‘Because you are to have a splendid fortune and John Treverton for your
husband.’
‘Celia, I shall be so grateful to you if you will be quite silent on
that subject, supposing that you can be silent about anything.’
‘I can’t,’ said Celia frankly.
‘It is by no means certain that I shall marry Mr. Treverton.’
‘Would you be so utterly idiotic as to refuse him?’
‘I would not accept him unless I could believe that he really liked
me--better than any other woman he had ever seen.’
‘And of course he will; of course he does,’ cried Celia. ‘You know,
as a matter of personal inclination, I would much rather you should
marry poor Edward, who adores the ground you walk upon, and, of course,
adores you much more than the ground. But there is a limpness about
Ted’s character which makes me fear that he will never get on in the
world. He is a clever young man, and he thinks that he has nothing to
do but go on being clever, and write verses for the magazines--which
even I, as his sister, must confess are the weakest dilution of
Swinburne--and that Fame will come and take him by the hand, and lead
him up the steps of her temple, while Fortune will meet him in the
portico with a big bag of gold. No, Laura, dearly as I love Ted, I
should be sorry to see you sacrifice a splendid fortune, and refuse
such a man as John Treverton.’
‘There will be time enough to debate the question when Mr. Treverton
asks me to marry him,’ said Laura gravely.
‘Oh, that will come upon you all in a moment,’ retorted Celia, ‘when
you won’t have me to help you. You had better make up your mind
beforehand.’
‘I should despise Mr. Treverton if he were to make me an offer before
he knew a great deal more of me than he does now. But I forbid you to
talk any more of this, Celia. And now we had better go and walk in the
orchard for half-an-hour, or you will never be able to digest all the
cake you have eaten.’
‘What a pity digestion should be so difficult, when eating is so easy,’
said Celia.
And then she went dancing along the garden paths with the airy
lightness of a nymph who had never known the meaning of indigestion.
Once more John Treverton drove round his late kinsman’s estate,
and this second time, in the sweet spring weather, the farms, and
homesteads, the meadows where the buttercups were beginning to show
golden among the grass, the broad sweeps of arable land where the young
corn was growing tall--seemed to him a hundredfold more fair than they
had seemed in the winter. He felt a keener longing to be the master of
all these things. It seemed to him as if no life could be so sweet as
the life he might lead at Hazlehurst Manor, with Laura Malcolm for his
wife.
The life he might lead----if----
What was that ‘if’ which barred the way to perfect bliss?
There was more than one obstacle, he told himself gloomily, as he paced
the elm avenue on the London road, one evening at sunset, after he had
been at Hazlehurst more than a week, during which week he had seen
Laura very often.
There was, among many questions, the doubt as to Laura’s liking for
him. She might consider herself constrained to accept him, were he to
offer himself, in deference to the wish of her adopted father; but
could he ever feel sure that she really cared for him, that he was the
one man upon earth whom she would choose for her husband?
A flattering whisper which crept into the ear of his mind, like a
caressing breath of summer wind gently fanning his cheek, told him
that he was already something nearer and dearer to this sweet girl
than the ruck of mankind; that her lovely hazel eyes took a new light
and colour at his coming, that their beauty was shadowed with sadness
in the moment of parting from him; that there were tender, broken
tones of voice, fleeting blushes, half smiles, sudden droopings of
darkly-fringed eyelids, and many other more subtle signs, that told of
something more than common friendship. Believing this, what had he to
do but snatch the prize?
Alas! between him and the light and glory of life stood a dark,
forbidding figure, a veiled face, an arm sternly extended to stop the
way.
‘It is not to be thought of,’ he said to himself. ‘I honour her too
much--yes, I love her too well. The estate must go, and she and I must
go on our several ways in the wilderness of life--to meet by chance,
perhaps, half-a-century hence, when we have grown old, and hardly
remember each other.’
It was to be his last evening at Hazlehurst, and he was going to the
Manor-house to bid Laura and her friend good-bye. A very simple act of
politeness, assuredly, yet he hung back from the performance of it, and
walked slowly up and down under the elm trees, smoking a meditative
cigar, and chewing the cud of fancies which were mostly bitter.
At last, just when the topmost edge of the sinking sun dropped below
the dark line of distant woods, John Treverton made up his mind there
was no more time to be lost, if he meant to call at the Manor-house
that evening. He quickened his pace, anxious to find Laura in the
garden, where she spent most of her life in this balmy spring weather.
He felt himself more at ease with her in the garden than when he was
brought face to face with her within four walls. Out of doors there was
always something to distract attention, to give a sudden turn to the
conversation if it became embarrassing to either of them. Here, too,
it was easier to escape Celia’s searching eye, which was so often upon
them indoors, where she had very little to occupy her attention.
He went in at the lodge gate, as usual unquestioned. All the old
servants agreed in regarding him as the future owner of the estate.
They wondered that he asserted himself so little, and went in and out
as if he were nobody. The way to the old Dutch garden was by this time
very familiar to him. He had been there at almost every hour of the
day, from golden noon to gray evening.
As he went round by the house he heard voices, a man’s voice among
them, and the sound of that masculine voice was not welcome to his ear.
Celia’s shrill little laugh rang out merrily, the sky-terrier yapped
in sympathy. They were evidently enjoying themselves very much in the
Dutch garden, and John Treverton felt as if their enjoyment were an
affront to him.
He turned the angle of the house, and saw the group seated on a little
lawn in front of the book-room windows; Laura and Celia in rustic
chairs, a young man on the grass at their feet, the dog dancing round
him. John Treverton guessed at once that the young man was the Edward,
or Ted, about whom he had heard Celia Clare so often discourse; the
Edward Clare who, according to Miss Sampson, was in love with Laura
Malcolm.
Laura half rose to shake hands with her guest. Her face at least was
grave. _She_ had not been laughing at the nonsense which provoked
Celia’s mirth. John Treverton was glad of that.
‘Mr. Clare, Mr. Treverton.’
Edward Clare looked up and nodded--a rather supercilious nod, John
thought, but he did not expect much friendliness from the vicar’s son.
He gave the young man a grave bow, and remained standing by Laura’s
chair.
‘I hope you will forgive my late visit, Miss Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I have
come to wish you “good-bye.”’
She glanced up at him with a startled look, and he fancied--yes, he
dared to fancy--that she was sorry.
‘You have not stopped long at Hazlehurst,’ she said, after a palpable
pause.
‘As if any one would who was not absolutely obliged,’ cried Celia. ‘I
can’t imagine how Mr. Treverton has existed through an entire week.’
‘I assure you that I have not found my existence a burden,’ said
John, addressing himself to Celia. ‘I shall leave Hazlehurst with deep
regret.’
He could not for worlds, in his present mood, have said as much to
Laura.
‘Then you must be one of two things,’ said Celia.
‘What things?’
‘You must be either a poet, or intensely in love. There is my brother
here. He never seems tired of roaming about Hazlehurst. But then he is
a poet, and writes verses about March violets, and the first leafbuds
on the willows, and the reappearance of the May-fly, or the return of
the swallow. And he smokes no end, and he reads novels to an extent
that is absolutely demoralizing. It’s dreadful to see a man dependent
upon Mudie for getting through his life,’ exclaimed Celia, making a
face that expressed extreme contempt.
‘I am not a poet, Miss Clare,’ said John Treverton, quietly; ‘yet I
confess to having been very happy at Hazlehurst.’
He stole a glance at Laura to see if the shot told. She was looking
down, her sweet, grave face pure and pale as ivory in the clear evening
light.
‘It’s very civil of you towards the parish to say as much,’ said Edward
with a veiled sneer, ‘and it is kind of you to shrink from wounding
our feelings as aborigines, but I am sure you must have been ineffably
bored. There is positively nothing to do at Hazlehurst.’
‘I suppose that’s why the place suits you, Ted?’ observed Miss Clare
innocently.
The conversation had an uncomfortable tone which was quite out of
harmony with the soft evening sky, and shadowy garden, where the
flowers were losing their colour as the light declined. John Treverton
looked curiously at the man he knew to be his rival.
He saw a man of about six-and-twenty, of the middle height, slim almost
to fragility, yet with a compactness of form which indicated activity
and possibly strength. Gray eyes inclining to blue, long lashes,
delicately-pencilled eyebrows, a fair complexion, low, narrow brow, and
regular features, a pale brown moustache, more silky than abundant,
made up a face that was very handsome in the estimation of some people,
but which assuredly erred on the side of effeminacy. It was a face that
would have suited the velvet and brocade of one of the French Henry’s
minions, or the lovelocks and jewel-broidered doublet of one of James
Stuart’s silken favourites.
It would have been difficult to imagine the owner of that face doing
any good or great work in the world, or leaving any mark upon his time,
save some petty episode of vanity, profligacy, and selfishness in the
memoirs of a modern St. Simon.
‘Anything new in the evening papers?’ asked Mr. Clare, with a stifled
yawn.
The languid inquiry followed upon a silence that had lasted rather too
long to be pleasant.
‘Sampson had not got his _Globe_ when I left him,’ answered John
Treverton; ‘but in the present stagnation of everything at home and
abroad I confess to feeling very little interest in the evening papers.’
‘I should like to have heard if that unlucky dancer is dead,’ said
Celia.
John Treverton, who had been standing beside Laura’s chair like a man
lost in a waking dream, turned suddenly at this remark.
‘What dancer?’ he asked.
‘La Chicot. Of course you have seen her dance. You happy Londoners
see everything under the sun that is worth seeing. She is something
wonderful, is she not? And now I suppose I shall never see her.’
‘She’s a very handsome woman, and a very fine dancer, in her particular
style,’ answered Treverton. ‘But what did you mean just now when you
talked about her death? She is as much alive as you and I are; at least
I know that her name was on all the walls and she was dancing nightly
when I left London.’
‘That was a week ago,’ said Celia. ‘Surely you saw the account of the
accident in this morning’s _Times_? There was nearly a column
about it.’
‘I did not look at the _Times_. Mr. Sampson and I started early
this morning for a long round. What was this accident?’
‘Oh, quite too dreadful!’ exclaimed Celia. ‘It made my blood run cold
to read the description. It seems that the poor thing had to go up
into the flies, or the skies, or something, hooked on to some moveable
irons--a kind of telescopic arrangement, you know.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Treverton.
‘Well, of course that would be awfully jolly as long as it was safely
done, for she must look lovely floating upwards, with the limelight
shining on her; but it seems the man who had the management of the iron
machine got tipsy, and did not know what he was doing, so the irons
were not properly braced together, and just as she was near the top the
thing gave way and she came down headlong.’
‘And was killed?’ asked John Treverton breathlessly.
‘No, she was not killed on the spot, but her leg was broken--a compound
fracture, I think they call it, and she was hurt about the head, and
the paper said she was altogether in a very precarious state. Now
I have noticed that when a newspaper says that a person is in a
precarious state, the next thing one hears of that person is that he
or she is dead; so that I shouldn’t at all wonder if La Chicot’s death
were in the evening papers.’
‘What a loss to society!’ sneered Edward Clare. ‘I think you are the
most ridiculous girl in the world, Celia, to interest yourself in
people who are as far off your groove as if they were the inhabitants
of the moon.’
‘_Homo sum_,’ said Celia, proud of a smattering of Latin, the
crumbs that had fallen from her brother’s table, ‘and all the varieties
of mankind are interesting to me. I should like to have been a dancer
myself, if I had not been a clergyman’s daughter. It must be an awfully
jolly life.’
‘Delightful,’ exclaimed Edward, ‘especially when it ends abruptly
through the carelessness of a drunken scene-shifter.’
‘I must say good-night and good-bye,’ said John Treverton to Laura. ‘I
have my portmanteau to pack ready for an early start to-morrow morning.
Indeed, I am inclined to go by the mail to-night. It would save me
half-a-day.’
‘The mail leaves at a quarter past ten. You’ll have to look sharp if
you travel by that,’ said Edward.
‘I’ll try it, at any rate.’
‘Good-night, Mr. Treverton,’ said Laura, giving him her hand.
The lively Celia was not going to let him depart with so cold a
farewell. He was a man, and, as such, eminently interesting to her.
‘We’ll all walk to the gate with you,’ she said; ‘it will be better for
us than sitting yawning here, watching the bats skimming across the
flower-beds.’
They all went, and it happened somehow, to John Treverton’s tremulous
delight, that Laura and he were side by side, a little behind the other
two.
‘I am sorry you are obliged to leave so soon,’ said Laura, anxious to
say something vaguely civil.
‘I should go away more happy than I can tell you if I thought my going
could make you sorry.’
‘Oh, I did not mean in such a particular sense,’ she said, with a
little laugh. ‘I am sorry for your own sake that you have to leave the
country, just when it is so lovely, and to go back to smoky London.’
‘If you knew how I hate that world of smoke and all foul things, you
would pity me with the uttermost compassion your kind heart can feel,’
he answered, very much in earnest. ‘I am going from all I love to all I
detest; and I know not how long it may be before I can return; but if
I should be able to come quickly will you promise me a kindly welcome,
Laura? Will you promise to be as glad of my return as I am sorry to go
to-night.’
‘I cannot make any such bargain,’ she said gently, ‘for I cannot
measure your sadness to-night. You are altogether a mysterious person;
I have not even begun to understand you. But I hope you may come back
soon, when our roses are in bloom and our nightingales are singing, and
if their welcome is not enough for you I will promise to add mine.’
There was a tender playfulness in her tone which was unspeakably sweet
to him. They were quite alone, in a part of the carriage-drive where
the trees grew thickest, the shadow of chestnut leaves folding them
round, the low breath of the evening wind whispering in their ears. It
was an hour for tender avowals, for unworldly thoughts.
John Treverton took Laura’s hand, and held it unreproved.
‘Tell me that you do not hate the memory of my cousin Jasper because of
that absurd will,’ he said.
‘Could I hate the memory of one who was so good to me, the only father
I ever knew?’
‘Say then that you do not hate me because of my cousin’s will.’
‘It would be very unchristianlike to hate you for an act of which you
are innocent.’
‘No doubt, but I can imagine a woman hating a man under such
circumstances. You take away your hand. Yes, I feel convinced that you
detest me.’
‘I took away my hand because I thought you had forgotten to let it go,’
said Laura, determined not to be too serious. ‘Will it really make you
more satisfied with yourself if I tell you that I heartily forgive my
adopted father for his will?’
‘Infinitely.’
‘And that, in spite of our ridiculous position towards each other, I do
not quite--hate you.’
‘Laura, you are making me the happiest of men.’
‘But I am saying very little.’
‘If you knew how much it is to me! A world of hope, a world of delight,
an incentive to high thoughts and worthy deeds, a regeneration of body
and soul.’
‘You are talking wildly.’
‘I am wild with gladness. Laura, my love, my darling.’
‘Stop,’ she said suddenly, turning to him with earnest eyes, very pale
in the dim light, now completely serious. ‘Is it me or your cousin’s
estate you love? If it is the fortune you think of, let there be
no stage-play of love-making between us. I am willing to obey your
cousin--as I would have obeyed him living, honouring him and submitting
to him as a father--but let us be true and loyal to each other. Let us
face life honestly and earnestly, and accept it for what it is worth.
Let us be faithful friends and companions, but not sham lovers.’
‘Laura, I love you for yourself, and yourself only. As I live, that is
the truth. Come to me to-morrow penniless, and tell me that Jasper
Treverton’s will was a forgery. Come to me and say: “I am a pauper like
yourself, John, but I am yours,” and see how fond and glad a welcome I
will give you. My dearest, I love you truly, passionately. It is your
lovely face, your tender voice, yourself I want.’
He put his arm round her, and drew her, not unwilling, to his breast,
and kissed her with the first lover’s kiss that had ever crimsoned her
cheek.
‘I like to believe you,’ she said softly, resting contentedly in his
arms.
This was their parting.