WHY SHOULD HE REFRAIN?
Why should he not marry Colonel Marchant’s daughter? Vansittart asked
himself, in the quiet of those night watches which are said to bring
counsel.
Why should he not marry Eve Marchant? asked Jack Vansittart of
Counsellor Night. He was lord not only of himself but of a handsome
income and a desirable estate. He had nobody to please but himself,
and--well, yes, he wanted to please his mother, even in a matter so
entirely personal as his choice of a wife. She had been so devoted a
mother, and they had loved each other so dearly! In all his life he
had kept only one secret from her--the secret of that night at Venice.
In all his life he had only once told her a lie; when he told her he
had not been in Venice during that last Italian tour. He wanted to
please her, if it were possible, in this most serious question of
his marriage. He knew that she loved him too unselfishly to be sorry
that he should marry, albeit marriage must in some wise lessen their
companionship as mother and son. The major half of his existence
must needs belong to the woman he chose for his wife. His mother was
resigned to take her lesser place in his life, she had often told him,
provided that the wife were worthy.
“Pure as well as beautiful, sprung from an honourable race, reared by a
good mother.”
These were the conditions she had laid upon his choice. What would
she think of Colonel Marchant’s daughter, motherless, the child of a
disreputable father, a girl reared under every social disadvantage; a
girl who had dragged herself up anyhow, according to village gossips; a
girl who had neither accomplishments nor education, and who had shown
herself an audacious flirt, said the village--for Eve’s frank freedom
of speech and manner was the rustic idea of audacity in flirtation? To
talk easily with a man under forty was to be an outrageous flirt. The
rustic idea of a well-conducted young woman was simpering silence.
What would his mother think of such a choice; his mother, who had been
born and bred in just that stratum of English respectability which is
narrowest in its sociology and strongest in its prejudices; his mother,
who belonged to the county families, those deeply rooted children of
the soil to whom the word trade is an abomination; who think that the
Church and the Army were established for the maintenance of their
younger sons, who consider they make a concession when they send a son
to the Bar, and who shudder at the notion of a doctor or a solicitor
issuing from their superior circles? What would Mrs. Vansittart think
of an alliance with the daughter of a man whose name was dishonoured,
who, albeit he too had been born of that elect race, and was
indisputably “county,” had made himself a pauper and an outcast by his
misconduct, and who had lived for the last nine years in a Bohemian and
utterly intolerable manner, spending his time mysteriously in London,
letting his daughters run wild, and having to be summoned for his rates
and taxes?
The charges against Colonel Marchant, as Vansittart had heard them,
were manifold. He had begun life in a marching regiment, without
expectations, had married a lovely girl of low birth, or supposed to
be of low birth, since her pedigree was unknown to Sussex, and her
antecedents and uprising had never been explained or expounded to the
curious in the neighbourhood of the Colonel’s present abode. Within
two years of this marriage he had succeeded, most unexpectedly, by the
death of a young cousin, to a fine estate in Yorkshire, considerably
dipped by previous owners, but still a fine estate, and had immediately
begun a career of extravagance, horse-racing, betting, and disreputable
company, which had ultimately forced him to sell mansion and manor,
farms and homesteads, that had belonged to his family since the
Commonwealth, when the lands of East Grinley were bestowed by Cromwell
on one of his finest soldiers, Major Fear-the-Lord Marchant, an officer
who had helped to turn the fortunes of the day at Marston Moor, and who
had been left for dead on the field of Dunbar.
Colonel Marchant had kept race-horses, and in his latter and worst
days--when ruin was close at hand--had been suspected of shady dealings
in the management of his stud, and had been the subject of a Jockey
Club inquiry, which, albeit not important enough to become a _cause
célèbre_, had left the Colonel with a tarnished reputation on the Turf,
and the dark suspicion of having made a good deal of money by in and
out running. He withdrew from the racing world under a cloud, not quite
cleaned out, for the money he had won in the previous autumn served to
buy the cottage near Fernhurst, and to carry his family from Yorkshire
to Sussex. Here he began life anew, a ruined man, with five young
daughters and an invalid wife.
Of Colonel Marchant’s existence at the Homestead local society had
very little to say, except in a general way that he was not “nice.” He
neglected his daughters, he never went to church, and he was always
in debt. Maiden ladies and old women of the masculine gender used to
speculate upon how long he would be able to go on before his creditors
took desperate measures. How long would Midhurst and Haslemere bear
and forbear with a man who was known to be deep in debt in both towns?
All this and much more had John Vansittart heard from various people
since the night of the hunt ball, for he had laid himself out with
considerable artfulness to hear all he could about the Marchant family.
In the beginning of things, albeit Eve appeared to him in all the
innocent loveliness of Titania, he had told himself that he could not
marry into such a family. Such an alliance would blight his life. He
would have those four sisters upon his shoulders. He would be disgraced
by a disreputable father-in-law.
And now in the night watches he told himself a very different story.
He told himself that he should be a craven and a cur if he allowed Eve
Marchant to suffer for her father’s sins. What was it to him that the
Colonel had squandered his money on third-rate racers, and had been
suspected of in and out running on second-rate racecourses? He loved
the Colonel’s daughter; and as an honest man it was his duty to take
her away from unworthy surroundings. Inclination and honesty pointing
the same way, he was determined to do his duty--yes, even at the risk
of disappointing the mother he loved.
So much for the night watches. He saw before him a fierce battle
between love and prejudice, but he was determined to fight that battle.
The war began while this resolve was yet a new thing.
“So you have been calling at the Homestead, Jack,” said his sister at
luncheon next day.
“Who told you that?” he asked curtly, reddening a little.
“One of those little birds of which we have a whole aviary. I drove
into Midhurst this morning to talk to the fishmonger, and met the two
Miss Etheringtons. They saw you going in at Colonel Marchant’s gate
yesterday afternoon.”
“I wonder they didn’t wait outside to see when I came out again,” said
Vansittart.
“I dare say they would have waited if it had been warmer weather. What
could have induced you to call upon Colonel Marchant? Colonel, indeed!
Colonel of a Yorkshire Volunteer regiment! I don’t believe he was ever
any higher than ensign in the 107th.”
“Very likely not. But I didn’t call upon the Colonel; I called upon my
partners at the hunt ball.”
“And no doubt they received you with open arms!”
“They received me with true Yorkshire hospitality, and gave me some
excellent tea, to say nothing of buttered plum-loaf.”
“And I dare say they were not in the least embarrassed at doing the
honours to a strange young man, without mother, or aunt, or so much as
a governess to keep them in countenance.”
“Why should they require to be kept in countenance? Surely five girls
ought to be chaperon enough for each other?”
“They are the most unconventional young women I ever met with,” said
the eldest Miss Champernowne, who was a good judge of the conventional.
“They are very pretty, poor things,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “It is sad
for them to belong to such a father.”
“You might spare your pity, mother,” exclaimed her son, growing
angry. “I don’t know anything about Colonel Marchant; but I haven’t
the slightest doubt that the things that are said about him in this
neighbourhood are the usual exaggerations and distortions of the truth.
As for his daughters, I never made the acquaintance of five brighter,
healthier, merrier girls. The household is full of interest for me; and
I want you to call at the Homestead with me, mother, and see with your
own eyes what manner of girls Eve Marchant and her sisters are.”
“I call upon them, Jack!” exclaimed his mother. “I, who am only a
visitor here! What good could that do?”
“Plenty of good, if you like. You don’t live quite at the other end of
England. From Haslemere to Liss is not half an hour’s journey; and if
you happen to like Miss Marchant--as I think you will--you might ask
her to visit you at Merewood.”
A light dawned upon the hitherto unsuspecting mother, a light which was
far from welcome. She sat looking at her son dumbly.
“Why not ask the whole five, while you are about it, Mrs. Vansittart?”
said Claudia Champernowne, her thin lips contracting a little, as if
she, too, saw cause for offence in Vansittart’s suggestion.
“My dear Jack, you must know I am the last person in the world to
invite strange young women to my house--young women whose Bohemian ways
would make me miserable,” remonstrated Mrs. Vansittart, severely. “I
can’t think what can have put such an idea into your head.”
“Christian charity, no doubt,” sneered Claudia.
“Well, after all, these girls are not actually disreputable,” pleaded
Lady Hartley, who was always good-natured; “one sees them at all the
omnium gatherums in the neighbourhood, and they don’t behave worse than
the general run of girls. If you had asked me to take notice of them,
Jack, I could understand you--but to bother mother--mother who lives
in another county, and who can’t be supposed to care about taking up
strange girls.”
“So be it, Maud. You shall go with me the next time I call at the
Homestead.”
“What, you are actually going to keep up a calling acquaintance with
the Marchant girls? How very eccentric!”
“Yes, I am going to keep up my acquaintance with the Miss Marchants. I
am going to make myself acquainted with their father. I am going to see
with my own eyes whether Lucifer is quite as black as he is painted,”
answered Vansittart, doggedly.
“You won’t like the Colonel. I am positive upon that point,” said Maud.
“Hubert is an excellent judge of character, and he couldn’t stand the
Colonel; although he felt sorry for the man and tried to be civil to
him. Colonel Marchant is an impossible person.”
“What has he done that makes him impossible?”
“Oh, I really can’t give you the exact details; but they say all sorts
of unpleasant things about him.”
“‘They say.’ We know who ‘they’ are--an unknown quantity, which, when
inquired into, resolves itself into half a dozen old women of both
sexes.”
“Unhappily everybody knows that he is in debt all over the
neighbourhood.”
“He must be a remarkable man to have found a neighbourhood so trustful.”
“Oh, I suppose he pays a little on account from time to time, or he
would not be able to go on anyhow; but really, now, Jack, you can’t
expect me to be on intimate terms with a household of that kind. I am
very glad to have those poor girls at my garden-parties, for they are
pretty and tolerably well-behaved, though their frocks and hats are too
dreadful. What did I tell you Lady Corisande Hawberk called those poor
girls when she saw them here last summer, Claudia?”
“Lady Hartley’s burlesque troupe.”
“Yes, that was it--Lady Hartley’s burlesque troupe! They were all
three dressed differently--and so fine--especially the two younger.
The eldest is a shade more enlightened. One wore cheap black lace
over apricot silk--you are a man, so you don’t know what cheap black
lace means--and a Gainsborough hat. Another was in peach-coloured
cotton--that papery, shiny cotton, which is meant to look like silk,
with a straw sailor hat all over nodding peach-coloured poppies--and
her parasol!--heavens, her parasol! bright scarlet cotton, and six feet
high! Lady Corisande was immensely amused.”
“Is poverty so good a joke?” asked Vansittart, black as thunder.
“Oh, it wasn’t their poverty one laughed at. It was their childlike
ignorance of our world and its ways. If they had all three worn clean
white frocks and neat straw hats they would have looked charming. It
was the effort to be in the height of fashion----”
“With colours and materials three years old,” put in Claudia.
“I tell you it is poverty you laugh at--poverty alone that is
ridiculous. We have arrived at a state of things in which there is
nothing respected or respectable except money. We pretend to honour
rank and ancient lineage, but in our secret hearts we set no value on
either unless sustained by wealth.”
“What a tirade!” cried Lady Hartley, “and all because of a little
good-natured laughter at those girls’ frocks. To think that a pretty
face, which you have seen only twice, should exercise such dominion
over you!”
The ladies left the dining-room in a cluster to put on their hats for
a walk to the ice. Skating was the rage at Redwold Towers, and even
Mrs. Vansittart went to look on. She liked to see her son and daughter
disporting themselves, each an adept in the art; and then there was the
off-chance of meeting the German nurse with the year-old baby somewhere
in the grounds before sunset. The baby had already taken a strong grip
upon the grandmother’s heart.
John Vansittart did not go with the skaters, as it had been his wont
to go. Nor did he offer to keep his mother company in her afternoon
walk. He was in a sullen and resentful mood, resentful of he knew not
what; so he started on a solitary ramble in the Redwold copses, where
he would have only robins and jays and chaffinches, and the infinite
variety of living things whose names he knew not, for his companions.
He was angry with all those talking women, his sister first and
foremost; but most of all was he angry with himself.
Yes, it was her beauty that had caught him, that picture of Titania
delicately fair against the darkly purple night, her pale gold hair,
her sapphire eyes shining in the starlight. Yes, his sister’s flippant
tongue had hit upon the humiliating truth. It was only because this
girl appealed to his fancy that he was so eager and so angry, this girl
whom he had seen the other night for the first time, of whose heart,
character, antecedents, kindred, he knew absolutely nothing. It was
only because she was so lovely in his eyes that he was prepared to
champion her, ready to marry her if she would have him.
“I am a fool,” he told himself, “an arrant fool, a fool so foolish that
even shallow-brained Maud can see my folly. I know nothing of this
girl, absolutely nothing except that surface frankness which passes for
innocence--and which might be assumed by Becky Sharp herself. Indeed,
we are told that it was Becky’s guilelessness which always impressed
people in her favour. May not this girl, daughter of a shady father,
be every bit as clever and far-seeing as Becky Sharp? I dare say she
is laughing at my infatuation already, and wondering how far it will
lead me. Sefton, too! Miss Green said there was an understanding
between them. His manner was certainly a thought too easy. No doubt
she is trying to hook Sefton, a landowner, one of the best matches in
the neighbourhood. And she puts on that stand-offish manner of malice
aforethought, to lead him on by keeping him off. I should be an idiot
if I were to commit myself, without knowing a great deal more about the
young lady. I have been getting absolutely maudlin about the girl. This
is how half the unhappy marriages are made.”
He stopped in his swinging walk, after tramping along the narrow muddy
track at five miles an hour. The ring of the skates, the shouts of boys
playing hockey, sounded clear upon the frosty air. He was not more than
a mile from the pond as the crow flies.
“Sophy said their gowns would be finished this morning,” he mused. “I
wonder whether they will be on the ice this afternoon.”
He tramped the narrow track between the thick growth of oak and fir,
emerged from the copse, and struck out a path across some low-lying
pastures to the lake, which lay in the lowest part of Redwold Park,
and only five minutes’ walk from one of the lodges, where some of the
skaters kept their skates. There were a good many skaters this fine
bright afternoon--an afternoon in which there was no consciousness of
cold, though the atmosphere was twelve degrees below freezing point,
just such a calm, clear atmosphere as Vansittart had often enjoyed
in the Upper Engadine. There were a good many people on the ice--the
villagers at one end of the long irregular-shaped piece of water, the
gentry at the other--a rustic bridge dividing the classes from the
masses. About twenty girls were playing hockey, the three Champernownes
conspicuous among the rest by their fine carriage and sober attire.
Those girls had certainly mastered the art of dress, Vansittart
admitted to himself. They wore black serge gowns, cut to perfection by
a fashionable tailor, black cloth jackets, tight-fitting, severe, with
narrow collar and cuffs of Astrakhan, at a time when Astrakhan was not
everybody’s wear. Their hats were the neatest on the ice--black felt
hats, with the least touch of scarlet in the loose knot of corded
ribbon which was their only trimming. No wings, claws, or beaks; no
anchors, arrows, crescents, or buckles of jet, gilt or steel; none
of those tawdry accessories which sometimes convert a young lady’s
headgear into a museum of curiosities. Long tan gloves, fresh and
perfectly fitting, completed the toilet of the three sisters, who had
early realized the effect that is made in any public assembly by three
handsome girls dressed alike.
Jack Vansittart paced the bank, stopping now and then to watch the
skating, but with no inclination to join the revellers. The walk along
the side of the lake was a pleasant walk, in some parts open to the
water, in other places screened by hazel and alder. Here and there in a
bend of the lake there was a hillock, on which the skaters sat to take
off or adjust their skates, and on which the spectators sometimes stood
to watch the sport.
From this point of vantage Vansittart surveyed the scene, and as he
did so became conscious of a man standing on the opposite side of the
lake, also surveying the scene. A second glance assured him that the
man was Sefton. He had only seen Sefton at the ball, but he could not
be mistaken in that sharp, hooked nose, sallow complexion, and black
beard. It was Sefton, lightly clad, as if prepared for skating, but
holding himself aloof from the throng.
There was a fascination for Vansittart in this solitary spectator,
and it was while watching him that he became aware of a new arrival.
Sefton, whose hawk-like eyes had been looking up and down the lake,
suddenly concentrated his attention on one spot at the end near the
lodge, and as suddenly walked off in that direction. Vansittart
imitated him on his side of the lake, and was speedily enlightened as
to the cause of Sefton’s movements. As he neared the lodge gate he saw
three young women approaching--three young women in blue gowns, widely
different in shade.
Now, the Champernownes and his sister--who talked of chiffons for an
hour at a stretch--had dinned into his brain the fact that blue was
not worn that winter. The colour might be a beautiful colour in the
abstract, the colour of sky and sea, of sapphires and forget-me-nots,
of children’s eyes and running brooks, but it was a colour which
no woman who respected herself would wear. It was “out,” and that
monosyllable meant that it was anathema maranatha.
And behold here came the three girls in their new winter frocks, a
blaze of blue; Sophy splendid in peacock cloth, trimmed with plush that
_almost_ matched; Jenny in uncompromising azure, the blue of Reckitt’s
and the British laundress; Eve less startling in a dark Oxford cloth,
very plainly made, with a little home-made toque of the same stuff.
The fact was that the fashionable drapers were almost giving away
their blue stuffs that January, and the prudent Marchants had been able
to get the best materials at a third of their value.
“And after all it isn’t the colour, but the style of a gown that makes
it fashionable or otherwise,” Sophy had said philosophically, as she
pored over a fashion plate, trying to realize a creation which nobody
ever saw out of that fashion plate.
The girls seemed quite happy in their blue raiment, or at least the
two younger girls, who greeted Vansittart with frank cordiality. Eve
had a somewhat absent air as she shook hands, he thought, though her
sudden blush thrilled him with the fancy that he might not be quite
indifferent to her. He saw her glance away from him while they were
talking, and look right and left, as if expecting to see some one.
Could it be Sefton? Mr. Sefton came across the ice while Vansittart
was asking himself that question, shook hands with the three girls,
and then walked away with Eve along the path, where the hazels and
alders soon hid them from the jealous eyes that followed their steps.
“Miss Green was right,” thought Vansittart; “there is an understanding
between them.”
The two younger girls skipped off to an adjacent bank to put on their
skates, and were soon provided with a pair of youthful admirers, both
clerical, to assist them in the operation. Vansittart stood looking
idly at the hockey-playing for some minutes, quite long enough to allow
Eve and her companion to get a good way towards the further end of the
pond, and then he turned and strolled in the same direction. As he
sauntered on, disgusted with life and the world, which seemed just now
made up of disillusions, he heard slow footsteps approaching him, just
where the path made a sudden bend, footsteps and voices.
They were coming back, those two. They had not prolonged their
_tête-à-tête_. The aspect of affairs was not quite so black as it had
seemed ten minutes ago. He did not purposely listen to what they were
saying. The sharp bend of the path, screened at this point by a clump
of hazels, divided him from them. Short of calling out to them to warn
them of his vicinity he could not have avoided hearing what he did
hear: only five short sentences.
“I am very sorry. It was a false scent,” said Mr. Sefton.
“And we are no nearer knowing anything?”
“No nearer. I sincerely regret your disappointment.”
There was a lingering tenderness in his tone that made Vansittart feel
a touch of the original savage that lives in all of us--a rush of
boiling blood to brain and heart which hints at the hereditary taint
transmitted by bloodthirsty ancestors. A few more steps and he and Miss
Marchant were face to face, as she and her companion turned the corner
of the hazel clump. She looked at him piteously through a veil of tears
as they passed each other. Sefton had power to make her cry. Surely
that implied something more than common acquaintance, nay, even more
than friendship. All the tragedy of an unhappy love affair might be in
those tears.
He looked back. She and Sefton had parted company. He was talking to
some men on the bank. She had joined her sisters on the ice, and was
standing with her skates in her hand, as if debating whether to put
them on or not.
Should he go and entreat to be allowed to kneel at her feet, and do her
knightly service by buckling stiff buckles and battling with difficult
straps? No, he would not be such a slave. Let Sefton wait upon her;
Sefton, who had all her confidence; Sefton, who could bring tears to
those lovely eyes.
Vansittart rambled off across the frozen pasture, turning his back
resolutely upon the noise of many voices, the ringing of many skates.
“It was a false scent.” What could that possibly mean? How in the
language of lovers could that phrase come in? A false scent. “I deeply
regret your disappointment.” What disappointment? Why should she be
disappointed, and Sefton regretful? In any love affair between those
two there could seem no reason for disappointment. The man was free
to marry whom he pleased. Did he mean honourably by this girl; or was
he only fooling her with attentions which were to end in unworthy
trifling? Was he taking a base advantage of her dubious position to
essay the seducer’s part? From all that he had heard of Sefton’s
character Vansittart doubted much that he was capable of a generous
love, or that he was the kind of man to marry a girl whose father was
under a cloud.
And she?--was she weak and foolish, innocently yielding her heart to
a man who meant evil? or was she her father’s daughter, a schemer by
instinct and inclination, like Becky Sharp? Vansittart tried to put
himself in Joe Sedley’s place, tried to realize how a man may see
honesty and sweet simplicity where there are only craft and finished
acting. To poor vain Josh Becky had seemed all truth and girlish
innocence. Only one man of all Becky’s admirers had ever thoroughly
understood her, and that man was Lord Steyne.
Vansittart walked a long way, engrossed by such speculations as
these--at one time inclined to believe that this girl whom he so
ardently admired was all that girlhood should be--inclined to trust her
even in the face of all strange seeming, to trust her and to follow her
footsteps with his reverent love, and if he found her responsive to
that love to take her for his wife, in the teeth of all opposition.
“Why should my mother be made unhappy by such a marriage?” he asked
himself. “If I can prove that Eve Marchant is in no wise injured by her
surroundings, what more do we want? What are the surroundings to my
mother or to me? Even if I had to pension the Colonel for the rest of
his life I should think little of the cost--if it brought me the girl I
love.”
After all, he told himself time was the only test--time must decide
everything. His duty to himself was to possess his soul with patience,
to see as much as he could of the Marchant family without committing
himself to a matrimonial engagement, and without being guilty of
anything that could be deemed flirtation. No, he would trifle with
no woman’s feelings; he would not love and ride away. He would put a
bridle upon his tongue; but he would make it his business to pluck out
the heart of the Marchant mystery. Surely among five girls he could
manage to be kind and friendly without entangling himself with any one
of the five.
Having made out for himself a line of conduct, he walked back to the
lake. The shadows of twilight were creeping over the grass. There
were very few people on the ice. The Marchants had taken off their
skates, and were saying good-bye to the two curates who had been their
attendant swains.
“We have such an awful way to walk if we go by the high-road, and we
must go that way, for the footpath will be snowed up,” said Sophy. “It
will be dark long before we are home.”
The curates had, one an evening school, the other a penny reading,
coming on at half-past seven, so they were fain to say good-night.
Vansittart came up as they parted.
“Let me walk home with you,” he said; “I haven’t had nearly enough
walking.”
“Then what a tremendous walker you must be!” said Jenny; “I saw you
marching over the grass just now as if you were walking for a wager.”
His attendance was accepted tacitly, and presently he and Eve were
walking side by side, in the rear, while the two younger girls
walked on in front, turning round every now and then to join in the
conversation, so that the four made one party.
Eve’s eyes were bright enough now, but she was more silent than she had
been at their tea-drinking, and she was evidently out of spirits.
“I’m afraid you didn’t enjoy the skating this afternoon.”
“Not much. The mornings are pleasanter. We came too late.”
“Shall you come to-morrow morning?”
“Yes; I have promised my young sisters to bring them for a long
morning. They won’t let me off.”
“Do they skate?”
“Hetty skates. The little one only slides. She is a most determined
slider.”
“Does Colonel Marchant never come with you?”
“Never. He does not care about walking with girls.”
“Perhaps it is presumptuous in a bachelor to speculate on domestic
feelings, but I think if I were a widower with five nice daughters my
chief delight would be in going about with them.”
“If you look round among your friends I fancy you will find that kind
of father the exception rather than the rule,” Eve answered, with a
touch of bitterness.
They walked on in silence for a little while after this, she looking
straight before her into the cool grey evening, he stealing an
occasional glance at her profile.
How pretty she was! The pearly complexion was so delicate, and yet so
fresh and glowing in its youthful health. Hygeia herself might have
had just such a complexion. The features, too, so neatly cut, the nose
as clear in its chiselling as if it were pure Grecian, but with just
that little tilt at the tip which gave piquancy to the face. The mouth
was more thoughtful than he cared to see the lips of girlhood, for
those pensive lines suggested domestic anxieties; but when she smiled
or laughed the thoughtfulness vanished, lost in a radiant gaiety that
shone like sunlight over all her countenance. He could not doubt that
a happy disposition, a power of rising superior to small sordid cares,
was a leading characteristic of her nature.
She had natural cheerfulness, the richest dowry a wife can bring to
husband and home. Presently, as he swung his stick against the light
tracery of hawthorn and blackberry, a happy thought occurred to him.
His sister had pledged herself to be kind to these motherless girls.
Her kindness could not begin too soon.
“You are to bring your sisters to the ice to-morrow morning, Miss
Marchant,” he said presently. “What do you call morning?”
“I hope we shall be there before eleven. The mornings are so lovely in
this frosty weather.”
“The mornings are delicious. Come as early as you possibly can. After
two hours’ skating you will be tolerably tired, I should think--though
you walk with the air of a person who does not know what it is to be
tired--so you must all come to lunch with my sister.”
“You are very kind,” said Eve, blushing, and suddenly radiant with her
happiest smile, “but we could not think of such a thing.”
“I understand. You would not come at my invitation. You think I have no
rights in the case. Yet it would be hard if a brother couldn’t ask his
friends to his sister’s house.”
“Friends, perhaps, yes; but we are mere acquaintance.”
“Please don’t say anything so unkind. I felt that we were friends from
the first, you and your sisters and I, from the hour we found you on
the top of the hill, when I mistook you for fairies. However, all the
exigencies of the situation shall be complied with. My sister shall
write to you this evening.”
“Pray, pray don’t suggest such a thing,” entreated Eve, very much in
earnest. “Lady Hartley will think us vulgar, pushing girls.”
“Lady Hartley will think nothing of the kind. She was saying, only a
few hours ago, that she would like to see more of you all. You must all
come, remember--all five. The Champernownes leave by an early train
to-morrow morning,” he added cheerfully; “there will be plenty of room
for you.”
“Are the Miss Champernownes going away?”
“Yes, they go on to a much smarter house, where baccarat is played
of an evening, instead of our modest billiards and whist. My
brother-in-law is a very sober personage. He is not in the movement. It
is my private opinion that those three handsome young ladies have been
unspeakably bored at Redwold Towers.”
“I am very glad they are going,” answered Eve, frankly. “We don’t
know them, so their going or coming ought not to make any difference
to us. But there is something oppressive about them. They are so
handsome, they dress so well, and they seem so thoroughly pleased with
themselves.”
“Yes, there’s where the offence comes in. Isn’t it odd that from
the moment a man or woman lets other people see that he or she
is thoroughly delighted with his or her individuality, talents,
beauty, or worldly position, everybody else begins to detest that
person? A Shakespeare or a Scott must go through life with a seeming
unconsciousness of his own powers, if he would have his fellow-men love
him.”
“I think both Shakespeare and Scott contrived to do so, and that is one
of the reasons why all the world worships them,” said Eve, and on this
slight ground they founded a long conversation upon their favourite
books and authors. He did not find her “cultured.” Of the learning
which pervades modern drawing-rooms--the learning of the _Fortnightly_,
and the _Contemporary_, the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Macmillan_--he
found her sorely deficient. She had read no new books, she knew
nothing of recent theories in art, science, or religion. She knew her
Shakespeare and Scott, her Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer-Lytton, and
had read the poets whom everybody reads. She had never heard of Marlow,
and Beaumont and Fletcher were to her only names. She revelled in
fiction, the old, familiar fiction of the great masters; but history
was a blank. She had not read Froude; she had never heard of Green,
Gardiner, Freeman, or Maine.
“You will find us woefully ignorant,” she explained, when she had
answered in the negative about several books, which to him were of
the best. “We have only had a nursery governess. She was a dear old
thing, but I don’t think you could imagine a more ignorant person.
She came to us when I was six, and she only left us when Peggy was
nine, and she would have stayed on as a kind of Duenna, only she had a
poor, old, infirm mother, and she was the only spinster daughter left,
and so had to go home and nurse the mother. She was very strong upon
the multiplication table, and she was pretty good at French. She knew
La Grammaire des Grammaires by heart, I believe. But as to history
or literature! Even the little we contrived to pick up for ourselves
was enough to enable us to make fun of her. We used to ask her why
Charles the Second didn’t make Erasmus a bishop, or whether Eleanor of
Aquitaine was the daughter or only the niece of Charlemagne. She always
tumbled into any trap we set for her.”
“A lax idea of chronology, that was all,” said Vansittart.
He walked very nearly to the Homestead, and was dead beat by the time
he got back to Redwold Towers. He had been tramping about ever since
luncheon. He and Eve Marchant had done a good deal of talking in that
four-mile walk, but not once had he mentioned Sefton’s name, nor had he
made the faintest attempt to discover the drift of that confidential
conversation of which a few brief sentences had reached his ear. Yet
those sentences haunted his memory, and the thought of them came
between him and all happier thoughts of Eve Marchant.
His sister was considerably his junior, and he had been accustomed to
order her to do this or that from her babyhood upward, she deeming
herself honoured in obeying his caprices. It was a small thing, then,
for him to request her to invite Miss Marchant and all her sisters to
luncheon next day.
“Do you really mean me to ask all three?” questioned Maud, arching her
delicate eyebrows in mild wonder.
“I mean you to ask all five. The little girls are coming to skate
on your pond. Give them a good lunch, Maud. Let there be game and
kickshaws, such as girls like--and plenty of puddings.”
“All five! How absurd!”
“You said you would be kind to them.”
“But five! Well, I don’t suppose the number need make any difference.
What alarms me is the idea of getting too friendly with them--a
dropping in to lunch or tea acquaintance, don’t you know. The girls are
as good as gold, I have no doubt; but they lead such an impossible life
with that impossible father--he almost always away, no chaperon, no
nice aunts to look after them--only an old Yorkshire servant and a bit
of a girl to open the door. It is all too dreadful.”
“From your point of view, no doubt; but lives as dreadful are being led
by a good many families all over England, and out of lives as dreadful
has come a good deal of the intellectual power of the country. Come,
Maud, don’t prattle, but write your letter--just a friendly little
letter to say that I have told you they are coming to skate, and that
you must insist upon their stopping to lunch.”
He had found her in her boudoir just before dressing for dinner, and
in the very act of sealing the last of a batch of letters. She took up
her pen at his bidding, and dashed off an invitation, almost in his own
words, with a thick stroke of the J pen under “insist.”
“Will that do?” she asked.
“Admirably,” said Vansittart, with his hand on the bell. “All you have
to do is to order a groom to ride to the Homestead with it.”
“Hadn’t I better invite Mr. Sefton to meet them?” inquired Maud, with a
malicious little laugh.
“Why?”
“Because he is said to be running after Miss Marchant. I only hope
_pour le bon motif_.”
“However shady a customer Colonel Marchant may be, I shouldn’t think
any man would dare to approach his daughter with a bad motive,” said
Vansittart, sternly.
“The Colonel encourages him, I am told; so I suppose it is all right.”
“You are told,” cried Vansittart, scornfully. “What is this cloud of
unseen witnesses which compasses about village life so that what a
man owes, what a man eats, what a man thinks and purposes are common
topics of conversation for people who never enter his house? It is
petty to childishness, all this twaddle about Colonel Marchant and his
daughters.”
“Jack, Jack!” cried Maud, shaking her head. “I can only say I am sorry
for you. And now run away, for goodness’ sake. We shall both be late
for dinner. I shall only have time to throw on a tea-gown.”
A footman brought Lady Hartley a letter at half-past nine that
evening. Vansittart crossed the drawing-room to hear the result of the
invitation.
“DEAR LADY HARTLEY,
“It is too good of you to ask us to luncheon after skating, and I know
it will be a treat for my young sisters to see your beautiful house,
so I am pleased to accept your kind invitation for the two youngest
and myself. Sophy and Jenny beg to thank you for including them, but
they cannot think of inflicting so large a party as five upon you.
“Very sincerely yours,
“EVE MARCHANT.”
“She has more discretion than you have, at any rate, Jack,” said Maud,
as he read the letter over her shoulder.
“She writes a fine bold hand,” said he, longing to ask for the letter,
the first letter of hers that his eyes had looked upon.
“I’m very sorry the five are not coming,” he went on. “Those two poor
girls will have a scurvy luncheon at home, I dare say--dismal martyrs
to conventionality. You must ask them another day.”
“We’ll see how to-morrow’s selection behave,” answered Maud, with her
light laugh.
* * * * *
Vansittart was on the pathway by the lake before eleven o’clock, and
he had a bad half-hour of waiting before Eve and her two young sisters
appeared at the lodge. He met them near the gates, and they set off for
the ice together.
“I hear you only slide,” he said to the little one, who was red as a
rose after the long walk through the nipping air. “That won’t do. You
must turn over a new leaf to-day, and learn to skate. I’m going to
teach you.”
“That would be lovely,” answered Peggy; “but I’ve got no skates.”
“Oh, but we must borrow a pair or steal a pair. Skates shall be found
somehow.”
“Won’t that be jolly?” cried Peggy.
The skates were found at the lodge, where Vansittart coolly
appropriated a pair belonging to one of the little girls at the
nearest parsonage, and the lesson was given. A lesson was also given
to Eve, who skated fairly well, but not so well as Vansittart after
one winter’s experience in Norway and another in Vienna. Sefton
came strolling on to the ice while they were skating, and tried to
monopolize Miss Marchant; but the young lady treated him in rather
an off-hand manner, greatly to Vansittart’s delight. He hung about
the lake for some time talking to one or another of his neighbours,
most of the young people of the neighbourhood and a good many of the
middle-aged being assembled this fine morning. Towards one o’clock he
came up to Eve, who was playing hockey with a number of girls. “Is the
Colonel at home?” he asked.
“Yes, father came home last night.”
“Then I’ll walk over and see him. It’s a splendid day for a good long
tramp. Let me know when you and your sisters are leaving, that I may
walk with you. That road is uncommonly lonely for girls.”
“You are very kind; but we are never afraid of the road. And to-day
we are not going home for ever so long,” added Eve, joyously. “We are
going to lunch with Lady Hartley.”
“That alters the case,” said Sefton, prodigiously surprised. “Then
I’ll look your father up another day, when I can be of some use as an
escort. I dare say Mr. Vansittart will see you home.”
“Haven’t I told you that we want no escort?” exclaimed Eve,
impatiently. “One would think there were lions between here and
Fernhurst.”
“There are frozen-out gardeners and such-like, I dare say. Quite as bad
as lions,” he answered, as he turned on his heel, jealous and angry.
This fellow was evidently pursuing her with some kind of suit,
Vansittart thought. Could he mean to marry her? Could any man with an
established position in the county mean to ally himself with Colonel
Marchant?
Vansittart had seen the two talking, but had not been near enough
to hear what they said. He rejoiced at seeing Sefton walk away
discomfited. There was anger in the carriage of his head as he turned
away from her. He had been snubbed evidently. But if she snubbed him
to-day, must she not have sometimes encouraged his attentions? He had
all the manner of a man to whom certain rights have been given.
They walked up to the house merrily, over the grey, frosty grass,
Hetty and Peggy running on in front and racing and wheeling like
fox-terriers, so elated by the day’s delights. Peggy had distinguished
herself on her borrowed skates. Her teacher declared she was a born
skater.
Lady Hartley was sunning herself in the broad portico, waiting to
receive her guests. Miss Green had gone out shooting with Sir Hubert
and his party. There were only Mrs. Vansittart, Mrs. Baddington, and
Mr. Tivett at home.
“Only us two men among all you ladies,” said Tivett, cheerily, as they
assembled before the huge wood fire in the drawing-room.
“Hadn’t you better say us one and a half, Gussie?” asked Mrs.
Baddington, laughing. “It seems rather absurd to talk of yourself and
Mr. Vansittart as if you were of the same weight and substance.”
Mr. Tivett, who was half hidden between Hetty and Peggy, received this
attack with his usual amiability. “Never mind weight and substance,” he
said; “in moral influence I feel myself a giant.”
“Not without justification,” said Vansittart. “If you were to compare
Tivett’s reception at a West End tea-party with mine you would see what
a poor thing mere brute force is in an intellectual environment.”
“Oh, they like me,” replied Tivett, modestly, “because I can talk
chiffons. I can tell them of the newest ladies’ tailor--some little
man who lives in an alley, but has found out the way to cut a habit or
a coat, and is going to take the town by storm next season. I can put
them up to the newest shade of bronze or auburn hair--the Princess’s
shade. I can tell them lots of things, and the dear souls know that I
am interested in all that interests them.”
“I never talk to Gussie Tivett without thinking how much nicer a
womanly man is than a manly woman,” said Mrs. Baddington, meditatively.
“Ah, that is because the former imitates the superior sex, the latter
the inferior,” answered Lady Hartley.
Eve sat in the snug armchair where Vansittart had placed her, silent,
but happy, looking about the room and admiring the wonderful mixture
of old and new things; furniture that was really old, furniture that
cleverly reproduced the antique; trifles and modern inventions of
all kinds which make a rich woman’s drawing-room a wonderland for
the dwellers in shabby houses; the tall standard lamps of copper or
brass or wrought iron, with their fantastical shades; the abundance
of flowers and flowering plants and palms, in a season when for the
commonalty flowers are not; all those things made an atmosphere of
luxury which Colonel Marchant’s daughter needs must feel in sharpest
contrast with her own surroundings.
She admired without a pang of envy. She had taken her surroundings for
granted a long time ago; and so long as her father was able to pacify
his creditors by occasional payments, and so long as rates and taxes
got themselves settled without desperate measures, Eve Marchant was at
peace with destiny.
While her senses of sight and scent were absorbing the beauty and
perfume of the room, Mrs. Vansittart came in from a walk with the nurse
and baby, and her son made haste to introduce his sister’s guest.
“Mother, this is Miss Marchant,” he said briefly, and Eve rose blushing
to acknowledge the elder woman’s greeting.
He would not commit himself, forsooth. Why, in the look he gave her as
she rose shyly to take his mother’s hand, in the tenderness of his tone
as he spoke her name, he was committing himself almost as deeply as if
he had said outright, “Mother, this is the woman I love, and I want you
to love her.”
Mrs. Vansittart, prejudiced by much that she had heard of the Marchant
household, could but acknowledge to herself that the Colonel’s eldest
daughter was passing fair, and that this sensitive countenance in
which the bloom came and went at a breath, had as candid and innocent
an outlook as even a mother’s searching eye could desire in the
countenance of her son’s beloved. But then, unhappily, Mrs. Vansittart
had seen enough of the world and its ways to know that appearances
are deceitful, and that many a blushing bride whose drooping head and
gentle bashfulness suggested the innocence that might ride on lions and
not be afraid, has afterwards made a shameful figure in the Divorce
Court.