Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright was a large, short woman, genial and comfortable,
always anxious to give pleasure and make herself popular. Her husband
had made a great deal of money some years since in ways that were
characterized by his friends as energetic, and by his enemies as
shady. However, nothing very definite had ever been said against him,
so that the charitable could avail themselves, uncontaminated, of his
wealth, and make a merit of their willingness to tolerate its owner.
In himself, he was a quiet and obscure little man, who left the
ordering of daily existence entirely in the hands of his wife; and she,
without vulgarity or snobbishness, had a passion for being liked, for
being surrounded by pleased, approving people. In the neighbourhood of
Brakelond she had already achieved general favour; she was everywhere
hailed as a ‘dear good woman’; the lavish appointments of the house,
the excellence of the cook and cellar, accomplished only less than
her own real kindliness, and the surrounding families all ended by
accepting the new-comer with a good grace, until at last only Brakelond
held itself aloof. And now even Brakelond was about to surrender. Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright, however devoid of sycophantic feelings, could not but
feel that the occasion was a great one. Lady Gundred Darnley, virtual
Duchess of March and Brakelond, was very much the sovereign of the
county, no less by position than by choice, and her first ceremonial
appearance at the Hoope-Arkwright’s board was beyond question an event
of the highest importance. Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright had ordered her best
dinner, donned her best gown and her heartiest smile; she was genuinely
happy, and meant that the festival should be a complete success.
Gundred, at this moment driving towards the house in a blessed glow of
conscious benevolence, could not feel the favour of her visit more than
did Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright.
‘Joe dear,’ said the gratified hostess to her husband, as they stood
together in the empty drawing-room before the arrival of their
guests--‘Joe dear, you will take Lady Gundred, of course. Remember
what an interest she has in the schools and Church bazaars. And don’t
talk about the Duke, whatever you do. She does not like it. There is
nothing--well, positively wrong with the poor Duke, but still, one says
as little about him as one can.’
Mr. Hoope-Arkwright promised obedience. His wife looked around her with
complacency, surveying all the rich perfections of the room. ‘I do
think she will find the place improved,’ she remarked.
The Hoope-Arkwrights’ treatment of the old house that they had bought
from the ruined Restormels had been drastic, though reverent. They had
altered everything, and sternly pretended to have altered nothing,
after the habit of new-comers who have passed from the first crude
stage, of destruction, unto the second crude stage, of imitation. All
the old quaintnesses and beauties had been left, but they had all been
elaborated, done up, polished, painted, exaggerated, until they hardly
knew themselves, and wore the uneasy look of things that had been put
up yesterday for effect. The old house was now like the stage-setting
of an old house; everything wore the painful flamboyancy, the assertive
archaism of the theatre, neat, shining, obtrusive as a new pin. The
armoured figures on the stairs and in the long oaken hall now carried
electric lamps in their mailed fists, and this combination of practical
modern contrivance with respect for antiquity was not only typical of
all the other improvements but also a ceaseless matter of pride to
the new owners of Restormel. Their complacence and their contrivance
were equally characteristic. The same spirit pervaded the house and
made it spick and span, bristling with expensive conveniences from
attic to cellar. The long parlour in which Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright now
stood in expectation of her guests was a great low room panelled in
oak, with leaded casements of dim glass. At least, this is what it had
been. Now it had Art-Nouveau windows with cushioned seats, and a broad
white cornice, behind whose rim lurked electric lights in plutocratic
abundance, shedding a pale, diffused glare, as of a ghostly day. The
scene they shone on was no longer ancient, but ‘antique.’
Everything was overdone; everything was in that strenuous good taste
which is the worst taste of all. The oaken settles, so carved, so
polished, were blatantly unconvincing in their very eagerness to
convince; oaken tables here and there carried silver photograph-frames
and silver bowls of roses. In their devout attempt to preserve
inviolate the antiquity of the house, the Hoope-Arkwrights had scorned
the introduction of a carpet, and the expanse of the floor was now an
artificial skating-rink of parquet, so new and glossy that it might
have served as a mirror, over whose surface were scattered a few
desolate islets of rug that slid treacherously away beneath unwary
feet, carrying their victim in a helpless slide across the room. Under
the tables sat monstrous great green china cats, painted all over with
little roses in patterns and ribbons. Their emerald eyes of glass
glared grimly forth from each lair, and their presence added a neat
note of modern art to the pristine simplicity of the other decorations.
As Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright gazed approvingly around, the door opened, and
two young men came in. One was short and pleasant and plump--clearly
the son of the house; the other was slender, tall, and dark, of
remarkable beauty, both of feature and build. His hostess welcomed him
warmly.
‘I do hope you are not tired after that long walk, Mr. Restormel,’ she
said; ‘I am sure you will be glad of your dinner. The air does give
one an appetite, doesn’t it? I have only walked as far as the garden
to-day, but I declare I feel as famished as a wolf.’
The kind lady screwed up her comfortable features into fanciful
imitation of a famished wolf. The young man smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t often get tired with walking. And then think
what I had to look forward to at the end of it.’
Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright looked conscious for a moment.
‘Ah yes,’ she replied with some feeling. ‘I am afraid we are dreadfully
thoughtless, Mr. Restormel. It must be dreadful for you to come back
here and find a lot of new people kicking about in your own house, as
it were; I do hope you’ll try not to think about it. When Jack told
me how he had met you at Oxford, and who you were, and all about you,
I declare I felt quite shy and uncomfortable at the thought of asking
you to pay us a visit. And to arrive just to-night, too, when we have
got a sort of little dinner-party too. I am sure you must find it very
trying.’
The handsome boy smiled down at her again. She was evidently in anxiety
that he should be happy and set at his ease, though her methods lacked
subtlety. He accepted her sympathy, but diverted her conversation.
‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘we come and go, all of us, and it never does to
bother about what one cannot help. Anyhow, I am sure Restormel never
had jollier, kinder people in it than it has now. Tell me, Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright, who is coming to dinner to-night?’
‘What, has not Jack told you?’ cried the hostess, with a little
inflection of pride, turning to her son. ‘Well, there are Sir Nigel
Pope and his new second wife, and the Martin Massingers with two
sisters, and the Archdeacon and Mrs. Widge, who are staying with them,
and the Lemmingtons, and the Goddards, and the Pooles--yes, and the
Darnleys--from Brakelond, you know, Lady Gundred and her husband.’
‘Oh, Lady Gundred. Of course I have heard all about them. My mother
used to see a good deal of her at one time, before the place was sold.’
‘Oh yes, how stupid I am! I am always forgetting that you know all the
people about far better than we do, though only by hearsay, most of
them. Yes, of course you know about dear Lady Gundred. You will be next
her at dinner, on the other side from my husband. What a comfort! You
will be able to talk to her about old times. I am afraid you will be
in starvation corner, by the way, Mr. Restormel, but I thought--even
before I remembered that you knew her--that you would not mind that if
you were next to dear Lady Gundred.’
‘You must remember,’ answered young Restormel, ‘that the place was sold
when I was only six months old, so I cannot feel that I have any very
intimate acquaintance with Lady Gundred. Tell me some more about her;
what is she like?’
‘The sweetest and best of women, Mr. Restormel. And so pretty. Quite
extraordinary, for she must be--what?--well over thirty, certainly,
and yet she looks quite like a young girl still. Fair, you know, with
a delightful complexion and lovely golden hair, and that kind of
beautiful little figure which never alters. Yes, she must certainly be
over thirty. She has got a son who can’t be less than fifteen. Jack,
surely Jim Darnley is quite fifteen?’
Young Hoope-Arkwright glanced up from the photograph-book with which he
was beguiling the time.
‘What, Jim Darnley? Oh yes, fifteen, at least.’
‘There you are. And his mother looks like his sister still. He is the
dearest boy, Jim Darnley--the simplest, most unaffected creature. And,
of course, he will be Duke of March and Brakelond one of these days,
when his grandfather dies. They are sure to revive the title for him.
But he might be just anybody, and his mother the same. I have always
wondered why she does not make her husband take her own name. But no;
she is such a really good woman that she thinks a wife ought always
to stick to her husband’s name. That shows you what she is. And such
a worker of all good kind works, indefatigable among the poor and the
sick--for ever sending out soup and boots and blankets, you know.
Her life is quite made up of kindnesses. They very, very seldom dine
out, the Darnleys, in the country, so that you are lucky to meet them
here like this to-night. Her husband is a very nice man too. I am
sure you will like them both immensely. But of course she is the most
interesting of the two.’
At this point the other guests began to arrive, and Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright was forced to abandon her dialogue with young
Restormel. She introduced him rather perfunctorily to one or two of the
new arrivals, taking pains to slur over his name until she should have
the opportunity of explaining his identity quietly to them at dinner
or afterwards; then she turned to her hospitable duties, and Jack
Hoope-Arkwright carried off his friend into one of the windows, where
they stood laughing and talking together while the guests gradually
gathered. Then, after a few moments, Ivor Restormel and his host came
back towards the hearth to look at some photograph or ornament that
stood on the primitive oak table that stood close by, and thus it was
that they were once more close at the hostess’s side when at last, in a
significant pause, the butler re-entered. His appearance suggested an
archbishop of sporting tendencies, and he evidently cultivated a nice
sense of drama. His voice boomed sonorous as he announced:
‘Mr. and Lady Gundred Darnley.’
Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright moved forward a step or two.
Minute but majestic, the Lady Gundred Darnley proceeded up the room,
panoplied in perfections, and giving exactly the proper amount of
smiles, of exactly the proper kind, in exactly the proper way, to all
the proper people. At her heels came Kingston, but nobody cared to
look twice at him. Lady Gundred was the star of the evening; as she
entered, she had the double consciousness of not only conferring great
pleasure, but of conferring it in the handsomest and most ungrudging
manner. For in the plenitude of her generosity she had decided that it
was her duty not to fob off poor, kind Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s dinner
with one of her second-best frocks; and now she reaped the reward of
her efforts in the general gaze of delight that greeted her appearance
in one of her smartest gowns, looking incredibly crisp and young in a
beautifully-built harmony of pale blue and pale gold. The frock set
the crown upon the favour of her coming. It was, indeed, very rarely
that the Darnleys dined out in the neighbourhood of Brakelond, and
therefore Gundred was the more ready to emphasize the approval that
her coming was to bestow on Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright in the eyes of all
the county. Dear woman, how good she had been about that bazaar! how
loyally she had turned away her Liberal gardeners! She well deserved
not only to be dined with, but to be dined with in one of one’s decent
gowns. And then one might ask her to tea at Brakelond, and show her
the pictures. Gundred showed herself sweet and kind in the highest
degree, as Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright made her welcome. Her manner always had
a tranquil friendliness and a grace so instinct with placidity that
only the most discerning could have discerned her underlying pride,
in her demeanour’s very negation of pride. Here and there, perhaps,
an acute onlooker might guess that her gentleness was founded on an
intense arrogance unsuspected even by its possessor, on a self-esteem
so tremendous as to have passed beyond all hint of self-assertion
into a Nirvana of apparent unself-consciousness. An ingenious friend
in London, indeed, had once said that, though Gundred’s manner and
signature unfailingly wore the proper style of ‘Gundred Darnley,’ yet
that, reading between the lines, both of manner and signature, one
could always see that it really ran, ‘Gundred March and Brakelond.’
However, her pride was far too cardinal a point of doctrine to be
made the theme of declamation; Gundred never obtruded it, never
lowered its dignity by insisting on it, never allowed it to make her
offensive, except in minute and subtle ways. Now, as she pressed Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright’s hand and commended her kindness, the hostess felt
that never had she met anyone so pleasant and cordial and delightfully
unaffected.
Then Gundred raised her eyes and looked round her to see who else
might be in the room. She saw Sir Nigel, saw the Lemmingtons, saw the
Archdeacon and his wife; she was glad that Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright had
chosen such unexceptionable people to be witnesses of Brakelond’s
condescension. Then her gaze moved on. The next moment she saw somebody
whom instantly, inexplicably, she disliked as she had never before
disliked anyone at first sight. Cool and gracious, Gundred was the last
person in the world to feel unusual emotions; but now, as she looked
at a tall dark young man--a boy of about twenty, he seemed, remarkably
beautiful and attractive--her soul started proudly away in a flurry
of instinctive repulsion. He was unpleasant, that good-looking youth,
altogether unpleasant and odious. She had no notion why this feeling
swept so completely across her mood; it took entire possession of
her. Quickly she averted her eyes, and glanced round the uneventful
circle of the other guests. They, for their part, quite unsuspicious
of Lady Gundred’s sudden outburst of dislike, were concentrating their
admiration on the calm grace of her manner, so exquisitely civilized
and concise. Passions must always be very far from that serene
pleasantness of demeanour. And meanwhile Gundred was busy thinking how
displeasing that young man was, while with soft smiles she responded
to Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s compliments. But suddenly the hostess became
conscious of someone at her side. She turned towards the handsome dark
boy, and before Gundred could see what was to happen, had brought
him forward. ‘Let me introduce you to Lady Gundred Darnley,’ she
said. The young man made a motion as if to put out his hand. Gundred
instantly responded by taking that cruel revenge which is always in a
woman’s power on such occasions. She ignored the hand, gave a glacial
little smile and a glacial little bow. The young man seemed slightly
astonished at this chill, and his eyes met hers for a moment. They were
splendid eyes, those of his--cool, deep, grey, kindly. They glanced
with wonder into the ice of Gundred’s stare, and in that moment she
felt his gaze intolerable, saw things that she mysteriously hated
and dreaded in those grey depths. For once in her life Gundred’s
composure was faintly ruffled. She dropped her glance, and faintly
blushed with annoyance. This is what one got by being generous and
dining with presumptuous people like the Hoope-Arkwrights. Under her
calm, imperturbably smiling exterior Gundred was gravely annoyed. She
moved backwards, away from this unwelcome introduction. Her movement
produced a change in the arrangement of the crowd. Kingston stepped
forward, and came into sight of the tall, slender figure with which his
wife had seemed to be talking. Already he had had a strong conviction
that he knew the back; now that he saw the face, he recognised the
wayfarer whom he had passed on his road that afternoon. And once again,
tyrannous, overwhelming, came the certainty of old acquaintance.
Before, however, he could start a conversation, dinner was announced,
and Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright began to marshal her guests in procession.
Gundred hailed the release with joy, and passed out with gentle majesty
at the head of the cortège.
What, then, was her indignation when, having settled herself at her
host’s right, delicately removed her gloves, unfolded her napkin,
untied the little bundle of pastry faggots that lay before her knotted
up with blue ribbon, she turned towards her other neighbour, and
discovered that he was no other than the strange, beautiful young man
for whom she had conceived so unusually sudden a dislike. She hated
strong emotions, and very rarely indulged them, but this one was beyond
her control--a matter of instinct. In the first flash of revelation,
she felt convinced that this beautiful boy was a corrupter of youth, a
contemner of religion, everything that was bad and horrible; she plumed
herself immediately on the nice discernment that enabled a Christian
woman to divine such things, and made a virtue of the hostility she
harboured. Talk to such a creature she would not. She turned quickly
upon her host, and initiated the usual introductory conversation on the
beauty of the table decorations.
The dinner-table was of a piece with the rest of the restored house.
It was so aggressively old as to be obviously new. It was of that
ancient oak which is for ever modern; and, in deference to primitive
simplicity, it wore no cloth. Glass and silver gleamed down its long
narrow stretch, and in the middle ranged a hedge of roses and orchids
embowered in ferns. Electric light was not permitted to mar its
harmony with any suggestion of modernity. Candles in plain old silver
candlesticks illuminated the table and its guests, shedding a soft and
discreet glamour of pink from beneath their shades of crimson paper.
Gundred commented amiably on the beautiful effect attained.
Mr. Hoope-Arkwright, who left such details to his wife and the
decorators, made what reply he could, and the conversation flowed
placidly along the lines that Gundred loved, developing in the way that
showed her social aptitudes at their best.
‘My wife says that electric light does not do for a dinner-table,’
explained Mr. Hoope-Arkwright. ‘Too harsh a light it sheds, she tells
me. I don’t understand such things myself, but everyone says the
candles and their pink shades are very becoming.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Gundred; ‘one always likes a soft gentle light.
And so clever of dear Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright not to have a tablecloth.
All the glass and silver shows up so well. Such wonderful taste she
has.’
‘Well, I always like a tablecloth myself, you know--seems cleaner,
somehow; but Maggie says it is not the thing in a house like this.’
‘Such a delightful house--yes? And I do think you and dear Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright have been so tactful about it--altering nothing, as it
were, and yet improving everything, and making it so comfortable. It
was very different in the poor Restormels’ time. I can remember what it
was like then.’
Mr. Hoope-Arkwright saw that she had not grasped her other neighbour’s
identity, and as personal explanations are not easy unless one has the
tact to shout them, so that their object may have no suspicion who is
meant, he preferred to turn the conversation into other channels. ‘Are
you fond of flowers, Lady Gundred?’ he asked.
In such temperate dialogues Gundred particularly shone. She was
especially valuable in London for her power of flowing endlessly
and amiably on about matters which could never possibly interest or
stimulate anybody, or arouse difficulties of any sort. She was felt
to be a thoroughly safe guest. So Mr. Hoope-Arkwright’s question gave
her a most favourable opportunity for the display of her favourite
qualities, and she seized upon the topic with joy.
‘Oh yes,’ she answered; ‘I have always been devoted to flowers. Such a
comfort they are--yes? Quiet friends, I always say. One could not live
without them.’
‘Roses, now--do you care particularly for roses?’ pursued Mr.
Hoope-Arkwright.
‘Oh, the queen of flowers,’ she made haste to reply. ‘But, do you know,
I can never quite care for a rose that has no scent. There is something
unnatural about it--no? But these of yours are perfectly lovely, and
how sweet! Do you find the soil good for them here?’
‘Well, as to that I can hardly tell you. I leave such matters to my
wife and the gardener. But they are fine fellows, as you say.’
‘Quite like little pink cabbages--yes? Only so very, very beautiful, of
course. How one loves a rose! And they go so well with the orchids too.
So nice to be able to grow orchids.’
‘Yes, they do run into money, orchids do. You would be astonished at
the prices some of them fetch.’
Gundred thought this a vulgar ostentation, and assumed her mildly
pious air. ‘And I dare say, after all, not half so beautiful as many
a dear little flower of the hedgerows?’ she replied. ‘Money means so
little--yes? I often feel that one’s greatest pleasures are those which
cost us least. The lovely lights on the hills, the roseate hues of
early dawn--these are the joys which no money can buy. How thankful one
ought to be to Heaven for giving us all these healthy pleasures--yes?’
Neither Mr. Hoope-Arkwright nor Gundred herself had any exhaustive
experience of early dawn and its roseate hues. But the sentiment was
improving and laudable. The host, however, was inclined to be prosaic.
‘Well,’ he answered, ‘one need not sniff at money, either, Lady
Gundred. Where would one be without it?’
‘Ah, where indeed?’ sighed Gundred; ‘and yet one never has enough. But
one always likes to feel that there is something higher than money,
Mr. Hoope-Arkwright--yes? Money can give you all these beautiful
flowers, and this delightful house, but can money give happiness, Mr.
Hoope-Arkwright?’
‘Anyway, money can give us most of the things that make up happiness.’
‘Not a tender, loving heart, Mr. Hoope-Arkwright. Not a childlike faith
and simplicity,’ replied Gundred pathetically. ‘And without these
what is life? Our only real happiness lies in doing what one can for
others. And that, I always feel, is the most real and precious use of
money--yes?’
Mr. Hoope-Arkwright’s most characteristic activities had hitherto
lain rather in doing others than in doing things for them. Also, he
had very different views on the use of money from those so correctly
enunciated by Gundred. So he preserved a discreet silence on the
point, and listened unprotesting while she proceeded to enlarge on
the more idyllically beautiful possibilities of life. He inserted ‘Ah
yes,’ and ‘Ah no,’ at intervals into the interstices of her remarks,
and cast about for an early opportunity of taking refuge with his
other neighbour. Mr. Hoope-Arkwright did not really share his wife’s
hospitable instincts, and he did not care two straws about Lady Gundred
Darnley--or, for that matter, about Lady Anybody Anything. ‘To do the
civil’ he saw to be his duty, but the moment that dinner was half
over and his duty duly discharged, he meant to indemnify himself for
his endurance of this dull, pretty woman and her boring platitudes by
having a good time with his other partner, Sir Nigel Pope’s second
wife, a young woman of a gay and kindred spirit. Accordingly, when the
roast peacock had arrived, he seized his moment with great promptitude.
‘Now, that is what I call quite poetic,’ he exclaimed, when Gundred had
finished by saying that she thought a good, useful life was like some
fragrant flower. ‘What do you think, Lady Pope?’
Lady Pope made a prompt, flashing reply, and in another moment was
engaged in a warm duologue with her host; Gundred was left out in
the cold. She felt a certain annoyance at being dropped like this.
Her self-complacence would not, of course, let her know that she
had been dropped. She knew that she had been giving poor dear Mr.
Hoope-Arkwright one of the pleasantest half-hours of his life--a little
uplifting talk with a really refined woman--but still it was just a
trifle tiresome that he should have so very keen a sense of duty.
Evidently it was only the strictest sense of duty that had made him
change partners so precisely at the halfway house of the meal; but
Gundred would have been better pleased if he had not allowed his sense
of duty to be quite so minute and intrusive. Very proper and right, of
course, yet almost too scrupulously right and proper to be altogether
tactful. Then it suddenly occurred to her that she in turn ought to
talk to her horror on the other side. No, that she would not. Duty
and right themselves should not compel her. She stared stonily before
her, eating the peacock with wrathful and mincing precision. She would
hear no preliminaries on her right. She gazed straight out across the
table. Far off she saw her husband looking at her. Watchful interest
and curiosity filled his expression as he glanced from her neighbour
to herself. Perhaps he was wondering why she was not talking to him.
Duty clearly commanded her to. But for once in her life correct,
decorous Gundred would be deaf to the call which she usually heard
and obeyed so sedulously. She nibbled at a pastry faggot, and kept a
stern silence. Her neighbour made two attempts at conversation, but
she answered so coldly as to nip them both in the bud. Then, abruptly,
her attention was caught and riveted. The pink candle-shade in front
of her was tilting to one side, threatening every moment to take fire.
She looked anxiously round to her host for help, but he was by now
far too deeply engaged with Lady Pope. Gundred gazed in annoyance at
the paper shade. Surely it was beginning to smoulder? Ever since the
catastrophe at Brakelond Gundred had disliked fire hardly less than the
burned child, and now her untutored desires would have prompted her
to get up and move away. But she had the martyr-like courage of her
breeding and conventions. She sat there in suspense, smiling, calm, and
altogether smooth to look at. However, there was no need, after all, to
feel so helpless. She must inevitably appeal to the young man on her
right. Speech had become a necessity, though always a distasteful one.
Besides, after all, how absurd to let even so strong an instinct make
one uncivil! Gundred fought down her reluctance bravely, and turned to
her neighbour.
‘Do you think,’ she asked firmly, though in a low, rather strained
voice, ‘that you could lower that shade a little? Do you see, I believe
it will catch fire in a moment--yes?’
No answer followed her appeal. In astonishment she repeated it, and
raised her eyes to her enemy’s face. She was astounded by what she saw
there. She herself had been put out, even alarmed for a minute by the
imminent fate of the candle-shade; but her neighbour’s gaze was fixed
on the point of peril in a set white pallor of pure terror. Never in
her life had she seen such an agony of dread on any human countenance.
The young man, so beautiful, so lithe, so strong, was a monstrous
coward. His face was rigid with fear, his eyes staring horribly. The
sight was indecent in its nude revelation of weakness. In an instant
all Gundred’s courage came back to her, and at the same moment her
hatred for her neighbour was mitigated by a cold ferocity of contempt.
He was still evil and hateful, but now he was contemptible also. He,
a man, to be so terrified of a little burning candle-shade! At that
same moment the shade tilted further, caught, and flamed. Gundred was
conscious that her neighbour’s hands clenched upon his chair in a
convulsive jerk of fright. Calmly, firmly she reached forth her arm,
and crushed the blazing paper into a blackened flake. Servants came
running to sweep up the ashes, and Mr. Hoope-Arkwright confounded
himself in apologies for his neglect. Gundred showed herself perfectly
amiable to her host, but on her other neighbour she would have no mercy.
‘I saw it was going to catch,’ she said gently, ‘and I asked Mr.--this
gentleman, to put it out. But he cannot have heard me, I think.’ She
included both men in her remarks, and spoke in soft, far-reaching tones
that could not escape their attention. Mr. Hoope-Arkwright made some
polite rejoinder, gave her a few compliments, then went back to his
dialogue with Lady Pope. Gundred, reinstated in her own self-esteem,
turned to see what effect her cut had had upon the coward. Had he
winced beneath the lash? Yes, evidently he had. Gundred was justly
pleased. Heaven had made her the instrument of his well-merited
punishment. And now he was trying to make excuses. She would listen, so
as the better to slight them. She offered a coldly acquiescent air as
he began to speak.
‘I am sorry,’ he said in a slow, hesitating voice, hardly yet restored
to equanimity. ‘I am afraid I heard you perfectly.’
Gundred would see no courage in the confession. It was mere effrontery.
‘Yes?’ she replied. There was a pause. ‘Yes?’ repeated Gundred cruelly,
demanding an answer.
The young man went on, speaking with difficulty. Gundred felt a keen
joy in thus dragging the coward through a confession of his cowardice.
To be a man and a coward--that was not punishment enough. He should
also know what a woman thought of him.
‘I ... well, the long and the short of it is, I can’t face fire,’
continued the hesitating, painful voice.
‘You would not make a good soldier--no?’ rejoined Gundred, with a
pinched little smile.
‘Oh, in that way I hope I should be all right. It is flame and smoke
and burning that I cannot face. All my life I have had the fear. I
suppose everyone has a secret horror in their lives. Fire is mine.
I have suffered from it always. You don’t know what it is. It is
something far worse than fear. I am not really afraid of the fire. I
knew how ridiculously harmless that little burning shade would be, but
it was the fire, the flame that made me--well, made me almost sick with
a shrinking--a sort of supernatural repulsion that I cannot explain.’
‘How very unfortunate!’ answered Gundred, deliberately cool and
incredulous in tone. ‘It must be so very inconvenient--yes? People are
sadly apt to misunderstand, don’t you find?’
The young man, however, was a worm only in his tendency to turn.
He flushed, seeing clearly the hard malice of her mood. ‘Very few,
thank Heaven,’ he answered, ‘have ever had the opportunity of
misunderstanding. You have been especially unlucky, and so have I.’
‘Oh, don’t mention it,’ replied Gundred, politely demurring.
‘I must, obviously,’ he went on. ‘You see, one bears one’s secret
horror, whatever it may be, quite alone, telling nobody about it. But
sometimes, once or twice in one’s life, some cursed accident drags it
to the surface, and the horror becomes too bad to bear, and an outsider
gets a glimpse of it. I have been unfortunate in the moment of my
accident, and in the person who saw it, and there is no more to be
said: that is all.’
The young man, the coward, the unmentionable, seemed actually to be
snubbing the brave, the serene, the faultless Lady Gundred Darnley.
This must instantly be put a stop to.
‘One does not like to believe that any man can have a fear too bad to
bear--no?’ inquired Gundred, very gently and softly, as if asking for
the sake of information.
The victim had clearly had enough of this persecution. ‘After all,’ he
said, ‘when one comes to think of it, I suppose you are yourself more
or less responsible for my fears, if anyone is.’
Gundred gave him a blank blue stare.
‘I?’ she questioned in amazement, as if the very suggestion were an
insolent piece of irreverence.
The young man was not abashed, however, and proceeded to make his
position good.
‘You had a ghastly fire at Brakelond many years ago,’ he answered.
‘Somebody was burnt--a cousin of yours, I think. Well, that fire was a
great shock to my mother, and upset her dreadfully. I was the result,
and I am the incarnation of her terrors.’
Gundred hesitated in her enmity, and her manner changed.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said; ‘but I did not quite catch your name
before dinner. But from what you have just said, are you--surely you
must be----’
‘I am Ivor Restormel,’ said the enemy. ‘I was born about twelve hours
after your fire at Brakelond. So you cannot wonder that I carry the
traces of it in my life, as it were. And so, you see, I was right: you
are in some way responsible for my dread of fire. Wasn’t it a careless
servant who set light to the old wooden wing of Brakelond? Well, if it
had not been for that careless servant, I should not have had any dread
or shrinking from fire.’
‘Really,’ said Gundred, hardly heeding him, ‘this is wonderfully
interesting. Then you are poor dear Mary Restormel’s son? I used to
know your mother so well in the days before you were born. And then
the place was sold, of course, to these Hoope-Arkwrights, and I never
saw much of poor dear Mary again. But how very strange to meet you
here--yes?’
Gundred was always faithful to her traditions and her memories. The
stranger came immediately into the hallowed circle of Gundred’s own
class, and no longer suffered the condemnation of the outsider. In
her heart of hearts, Gundred, perhaps, would never surmount her first
mysterious sense of repulsion; but anger, disdain, reproof must at once
be very much modified in the case of a person who now stood revealed
as no longer an unhallowed, nameless member of the Hoope-Arkwright
world, but as poor dear Mary Restormel’s son, with the right divine to
Gundred’s sympathetic loyalty. Her strong and dutiful _esprit de corps_
even prompted her to something resembling an apology.
‘Of course I had no notion who you were,’ she said. ‘What you tell me
is a perfect explanation. How very dreadful for you, though! But I
quite understand your feeling--a simple instinct. Yet, of course, until
one knew who you were, it did seem a little strange--yes?’
Ivor Restormel had ceased to take much interest in the question.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘one is always meeting odd things in life. I only
wish I had escaped that particular oddity. However, I do all I can to
get the better of it, and in a way I have succeeded. I can face flame
more than I could, though it still gives me the same supernatural
creepy feeling. What I have suffered, too, in seeing women smoke is
more than I can express.’
‘Not at all a nice habit, I think,’ replied Gundred. ‘Somehow, it never
seems appropriate or ladylike--no?’
‘Oh, it is not _that_ I mind, but the possibilities are so horrible. A
man wears rough tweeds and things. No spark could settle on them. But
think of the innumerable frills and fluffs and films that a woman has
floating all round her nowadays. A chance spark, and the dropping of a
red cigarette-end, and--ah! it doesn’t bear thinking of.’
He broke off, shuddering, and Gundred could see that at the bare notion
of such a catastrophe the old white, shivering terror had laid hold
of him. She had heard before of these strange, inherited passions,
prenatal, ineradicable, but this was the first instance she had ever
met with, and it filled her with interest now that she realized that
its victim was a man of her own order, and as such, of course, not to
be classed in the common rank of cowards. Her subconscious fear and
dislike of Ivor Restormel still held their place in her mind, but they
had retired to the background of her thought for the moment, leaving
room for the curiosity that his identity and his idiosyncrasy aroused.
‘So very dreadful,’ she murmured, ‘for your poor mother. I had not
realized that dear Mary had been so much upset by that awful fire.
You know, Mr. Restormel, I feel as if we were quite old friends, you
and I. As you say, I cannot help feeling, after all, that we have got
some of the responsibility to bear for the odd feelings that you have
inherited. You have had quite a distressing legacy from those old
wooden rooms at Brakelond--yes?’
Laudably, deliberately friendly, Gundred raised her neat smile to meet
Ivor Restormel’s gaze. He was looking at her full, with his deep grey
eyes, true and honest, and altogether pleasant. Yet, as she met their
glance, suddenly the instinctive hostility surged up into Gundred’s
mind with redoubled strength. Fear and dislike seized her. She could
not bear that glance, could not tolerate her neighbour’s presence. She
turned away her head with a sensation of almost terrified hostility.
What was this imperious repulsion that now held her--the first emotion
that had ever threatened to pass the limits of her self-control? She
could not understand it; never before had she felt anything even
remotely resembling this blind, paradoxical dislike. Perhaps, years
since, her bitter memories of Isabel had been tinged with the same
unreasoning horror, but those far-off qualms had been faint and
colourless compared with the vehement feeling now aroused in her by
this beautiful and harmless stranger. She stiffened herself to show
a firm front; self-contempt began to stir in her. Why, had it come
to this, that she, Lady Gundred Darnley, the model of deportment and
nice tact, now wished publicly to violate her own code, to be rude and
inconsiderate to a person who on all counts, as being unobjectionable,
a fellow-guest, and an equal, claimed her consideration and her
courtesy? Such a lapse could never be permitted. She must fight down
this folly, and be kind to Ivor Restormel through the rest of this
nightmare meal. Then she would leave the house as soon as she could,
and pray Heaven that she might never set eyes on him again.
Ivor Restormel saw something strange in her manner, but took no heed.
He did not in the least care what Lady Gundred Darnley might choose to
think of him. He felt confident that he could in no way have offended
her; further than that his interest in her attitude did not go. The
secret dislikes of one’s acquaintances are incalculable. It is both
hopeless and useless to take such things into one’s consideration. One
can but watch one’s own behaviour to keep it clear of offence, and then
leave the rest to Providence.
‘Brakelond must be wonderfully beautiful,’ continued Ivor Restormel,
amiably manufacturing conversation in the pause made by Gundred’s
sudden lapse into silence, ‘judging by the view of it from here. I
have never seen anything so fairy-like and splendid. I suppose you
have rebuilt the burnt part long ago? All wood, you say it was? Yes, I
have heard so much of that old wing that I feel as if I knew it well,
every step and winding of it. Ugh! what a ghastly death-trap!’ Again he
shuddered at his vivid recollections of a place he had never seen.
Any criticism on her family or its possessions always roused Gundred to
polite animosity. Now the feeling came to her rescue, and armed her
against this dreadful young man who seemed so pleasant and innocuous.
‘It was very interesting and wonderful,’ she answered reprovingly.
‘We all loved it. But, of course, wood is always rather a peril--yes?
Oak panelling is most delightful, but one cannot help feeling it a
responsibility.’
‘I hate the very idea of it,’ replied the other with fervour. ‘Why,
whenever I think of those wooden rooms at Brakelond, I can smell that
horrible cold, old, acrid smell of a burnt-out ruin--the horrible smell
of charred wood, which gets into one’s nostrils and one’s throat.
Sometimes in my life I have had to meet that smell, and whenever I get
a whiff of it, I always have a vision of the wing at Brakelond, all
wrecked and blackened and fallen in, haunted by the dreadful acid fumes
of stale fire and smoke.’
Gundred might have protested further against the quite uncalled-for
vigour of Ivor Restormel’s memory, but at that moment Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright was making efforts to capture her attention from behind
a bower of odontoglossums. She smiled her acquiescence, made some
indifferent remark to her neighbour, and rose to head the departing
procession. Thank Heaven, the ordeal was over, and she had come out of
it safely, without any more loss of self-respect than was involved in
the conception of so incalculable an instinct of hostility. Gundred
felt her self-complacency returning. She knew that it does not matter
what sentiments one may entertain, so long as one gives no sign of
entertaining them. One’s private blemishes are one’s own private
concern alone, provided that one does not let one’s clothes slip down
and reveal them to the world.
Her husband, meanwhile, at the other end of the table had proved
but a tame and uninteresting companion to Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright. His
attention throughout the meal had been fixed at every possible moment
on Gundred’s right-hand partner. For whole long minutes he scanned that
keen, handsome face. Where had he seen it before? Why did he find it so
very much more attractive than even its own intrinsic beauty warranted?
He stared at it, analyzed it, dissected its features. No, collectively
and separately they were quite new to him. He grew more and more
confident that he had never met the young fellow before; otherwise
he must have remembered him. It was not a face to be forgotten. No,
he had never seen it before. And yet the imperious conviction grew
and deepened in him that that face was worn by no stranger--that he
and the boy at the end of the table were in some mysterious way the
oldest of intimate friends. Many years before he had felt the same
passion of recognition when he at last understood what it was he felt
for Isabel; now the same haunting sense of old acquaintance returned
to him, and held him in a firm and inexorable grip. As soon as the
women had all left the room, he carried round his glass, and settled
himself decisively at Ivor Restormel’s side, thereby upsetting all the
post-prandial arrangements, which had been meant to make him the prey
of more interesting and conspicuous men among the guests.
‘We met on the road this afternoon, I think,’ said Kingston; ‘or,
rather, I passed you. You refused to accept a lift.’
Ivor Restormel smiled back at him.
‘It was awfully good of you,’ he replied. ‘I have never been offered a
lift by a motor before. But, you see, I was so close to Restormel, it
would hardly have been worth while.’
‘Are you staying here?’ inquired Kingston, more and more strongly drawn
to this new acquaintance.
‘Yes; Jack Hoope-Arkwright is a great friend of mine. We are at Oxford
together. And, besides, I belong here in a sort of way. The place used
to be my people’s. I am Ivor Restormel.’
The name instantly brought back to Kingston’s mind that deadly accident
which had eventually been the secondary cause of Isabel’s death. He
shuddered. But the link of recollection thus forged seemed to bind
him more closely to young Restormel. The boy had an inexplicably
strong fascination. He was pleasant, he was good-looking, he was well
built; but there was something else. He was more attractive than all
these good qualities could have made him. Kingston took an increasing
pleasure in hearing him speak.
‘I remember all about you,’ answered the older man. ‘My wife used to
know your mother well. It was my wife you have been sitting next to.
Perhaps she told you how she used to know your people.’
Kingston knew Gundred’s devoted loyalty to all old friends and
neighbours, and was anxious to impress Ivor Restormel’s identity upon
her, foreseeing that it would incline her favourably to his sudden plan
of seeing as much as possible of the young fellow.
‘Yes, Lady Gundred soon recognised who I was. But I am afraid she was a
little disappointed in me. I think I could see it.’
Kingston was slightly alarmed. He knew Gundred’s prejudices of
old--soft and mild as milk; hard, ineluctable as iron.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ he replied, with more anxiety than the occasion
appeared to warrant. ‘My wife is always a little cool and non-committal
when she meets people for the first time. You will soon get accustomed
to her.’
It never occurred to him that he was apparently explaining his wife,
more or less apologetically, to a total stranger. Ivor Restormel was
puzzled. His beauty had already made him many sudden friends, had
immensely helped him on his way through life, predisposing everyone in
his favour; but it had never yet kindled such a fire of zeal as seemed
to be developing in Mr. Darnley. He was inclined to be cautious in
acceptance, and during the rest of the meal gave careful, quiet answers
to Kingston’s advances. But Kingston had not the faintest interest
in the boy’s beauty, nor, precisely, in the boy himself. It was the
acquaintance, the old friend in him, that Kingston divined so keenly,
and was eager to investigate more fully. The vehement attraction that
he felt towards Ivor Restormel was something, so to speak, impersonal,
something quite unconnected with the boy’s pleasant manners or
agreeable face. It was an attraction towards something deep and hidden
in the young fellow’s personality, and the attraction grew stronger and
clearer with every minute of their dialogue.
At last the time came to go into the drawing-room. The men rose, and
drifted in knots towards the door. Kingston, as he went, retained
possession of young Restormel, despite the evident anxiety of Mr.
Hoope-Arkwright and Sir Nigel to have a word with Lady Gundred’s
husband.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘How long are you staying with the
Hoope-Arkwrights? Come over to Brakelond, will you? Come over
to-morrow. I should like you to see the place.’
Ivor Restormel accepted the unexpected invitation with thanks. Jack
Hoope-Arkwright, following in their wake, wondered at the precipitate
friendliness of Mr. Darnley. Such sudden hospitality was by no means
in the traditions of Brakelond. A long preliminary purification
was generally necessary before Lady Gundred considered her friends
well tested enough to be invited to the Castle. And here was Ivor
Restormel, after half an hour’s acquaintance, not only asked, but
pressed to come, and to come as soon as possible. Times were changing
indeed. It had taken the Hoope-Arkwrights three years to know the
Darnleys, and eight to be dined with by them.
The rest of the evening passed without event. Gundred, however,
gradually grew displeased with her surroundings. At first she had duly
been throned on the best sofa, and listened to in silent admiration
while she pronounced on the weather, the decadence of decorum in the
servants’ hall, and the proper management of cooks. But ere long Lady
Pope, whom, in her mind, Gundred characterized as a pushing young
person, had begun to cut in frivolously, irreverently, with jokes
and stories. Gundred, who had a faint instinct that all wit was more
or less vulgar, did her best to repress these interruptions; but her
efforts were vain, and soon even her devout hostess was listening and
laughing at Lady Pope’s sallies. Lady Gundred was left rather out of
the picture, and her authoritative comments on cooks began to lose
their hold on the general attention. Then when the men appeared it was
even worse. Lady Pope became the centre of a court; even those who
came to make their dutiful obeisance to Lady Gundred passed hastily
on, after a few pallid words about the weather, to join the cheerful
crowd round the younger woman. Then games were played, largely at Lady
Pope’s instigation; and Gundred, who would have disliked any proposal
that sprung from one whom she now felt herself compelled to regard,
however disdainfully, as a rival, had, further, personal reasons
for disapproving this development. For she sang; and she expected,
accordingly, to be asked to sing. Her music was waiting outside to be
fetched; it would have been obviously proper of Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright
to press her most important guest to perform. But apparently everyone
preferred the thoughtless gaiety of this unprofitable evening to
hearing Lady Gundred discoursing Chaminade in her neat and well-drilled
little flute of a voice, which, as her friends said in extenuation, was
so truly wonderful for a woman of forty.
Finally, to add to all these annoyances, she saw her husband neglecting
everyone else in the room to talk to that young man for whom she
had conceived such a repulsion. She would rather, even, have seen
him spending the time in attendance on that forward Lady Pope. But
Kingston was so distressingly friendly. Actuated by many collaborating
motives, Gundred made haste to ask for her carriage, and showed every
sign of imminent departure, much to the distress of hospitable Mrs.
Hoope-Arkwright. Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright felt that the evening had not
been altogether satisfactory since dinner. Lady Pope had evidently
shone excessively; and the light of Lady Gundred Darnley had been
thereby most unjustly dimmed. It grew plain that Lady Gundred was a
little put out. Gaiety and dignity were hard to combine. Lady Pope
offered the gaiety; Lady Gundred the dignity. And the two ambitions
were irreconcilable; for it was already clear that Lady Gundred could
not amuse--certainly not while Lady Pope was of the party. Grievously
did Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright regret that she had infused the gay and
sparkling element of the young woman into what she had meant to be
the serene if soporific delights of a dinner made illustrious by the
presence of March and Brakelond. But it was now too late for regret,
and no entreaties could soften Lady Gundred’s determination to go.
‘Thanks so much,’ said Gundred sweetly. ‘Such a delightful
evening. We have enjoyed ourselves so much. But we must
really think of the horses. Good-night, Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright.
Good-night--good-night--good-night.’
Scattering bows and farewell condescension like a queen, the Lady
Gundred Darnley moved towards the hall. Kingston obediently followed
her, and soon the door of the brougham was shut upon them, and they
were off. Gundred smoothed out her flounce with a certain pettishness
unusual to her calm temperament.
‘A dreadful house,’ she said decisively, ‘so horribly rich and
new--and the most vulgar and trying people. One wonders how even the
Hoope-Arkwrights contrive to collect such a crew. Surely, Kingston, I
could not have heard you asking one of them to come to Brakelond? Just
as we were leaving. It must have been my fancy, of course.’ She was
sitting very upright, rigid with rectitude, her pale lips compressed,
her pale eyes gleaming scornfully. Kingston felt like a guilty child.
‘Only young Restormel,’ he said. ‘You will like him, Gundred. I am sure
you will like him immensely. He is one of the most attractive people I
have ever met. After all, he is an old neighbour of yours, not like the
Hoope-Arkwrights and the rest of their friends. I made him promise to
come over to-morrow. And then, later on, he might come to stay with us
for a bit. I should like you to see more of him, Gundred. He will be
someone for you to help and befriend.’
A very long silence, leaden and ominous, filled the brougham. Then
Gundred spoke, in a bland, deliberate low voice.
‘Really, Kingston,’ she said, ‘you are almost trying at times.’
Her husband felt himself annihilated. This, from Gundred, was very
heavy rebuke. He made no answer, and they drove on to Brakelond without
another word.