HE WOULD TAKE HIS TIME.
The luncheon at Redwold Towers was a very sociable meal. Lady Hartley
was at all times a gracious hostess, and she was perhaps a little more
attentive to Colonel Marchant’s daughters than she would have been to
guests of more assured position.
The meal was abundant, and served with the quiet undemonstrative luxury
which steals over the senses like the atmosphere of the Lotos Island,
with its suggestion of a world in which there is neither labour nor
care, no half-empty mustard-pots, or stale bread, or flat beer, or
unreplenished pickle-jars.
There was plenty of game, and there were those appetising kickshaws,
Russian salads, and such-like, which Vansittart had bargained for,
and cold and hot sweets in profusion. Hetty and Peggy eat enormously,
urged thereto by Mr. Tivett, who sat between them; but Eve had no more
appetite than might have been expected in a sensitive girl who finds
herself suddenly in a new atmosphere--an atmosphere of unspoken love,
which wraps her round like a perfume. Vansittart remonstrated with her
for eating so little after a long walk and a morning on the ice; but
she could but see that he eat very little himself, and that all his
time and thoughts were given to her.
The cup of coffee after lunch was the most fragrant she had ever tasted.
“If I could only make such coffee as that father wouldn’t grumble as he
does at his after-dinner cup,” she said.
“The still-room maid always uses freshly roasted coffee,” said Lady
Hartley. “I believe that is the only secret of success.”
She felt in the next moment how foolish it was to talk of still-room
maids to this girl, whose household consisted of two faithful drudges,
and who no doubt had to do a good deal of housework herself.
Miss Marchant had enough savoir faire to depart very soon after
luncheon. She only lingered long enough to look at the flowers which
Mrs. Vansittart showed her, during which brief inspection the elder
lady spoke to her very kindly.
“You are the head of the family, I am told,” she said. “Isn’t that
rather an onerous position for one so young?”
“I was twenty-one last November, and I begin to feel quite old,”
answered Eve; “and then our family is not a difficult one to manage.
My sisters are very good, and accommodate themselves to circumstances.
We live very simply. We have none of those difficulties with servants
which I hear rich people talk about.”
“You and your sisters look wonderfully well and happy,” said Mrs.
Vansittart, interested in spite of herself.
“Yes, I think we are as happy as people can be in a world where
everybody must have a certain amount of trouble,” Eve answered, with
the faintest sigh. “We are very fond of each other, and we have great
fun out of trifles. We contrive to be merry at very little cost. Peggy
and Hetty are very amusing. Oh, how they have eaten to-day! It will be
a long time before they forget Lady Hartley’s banquet.”
“It does children good to go out now and then. They must come again
very soon. I know my daughter will like to have them; but my son and I
are going home almost immediately.”
“Home.” Eve looked a little crestfallen as she echoed the word. “You
don’t live very far off, I think, Mrs. Vansittart?”
“No. Only an hour’s journey. We live in a region of pine and heather;
and I have a garden and an arboretum, which are my delight. But our
country is not any prettier than yours, so I mustn’t boast of it.”
“This is not my country,” said Eve. “I feel like a foreigner here,
though we have lived at the Homestead a good many years. Yorkshire is
my country.”
“But surely you must prefer Sussex. Yorkshire is so far away from
everything.”
The two girls came to Eve and hung about her. They had put on their
gloves and little fur tippets--spoil of rabbit or cat--and were ready
for the start. Mrs. Vansittart noticed their coarse serge frocks, their
homely woollen stockings and village-made boots. They were tidily clad,
and that was all that could be said of them. A village tradesman’s
children would have been smarter; and yet they looked like young ladies.
“These are your two youngest sisters, and you have two older--five
daughters in all,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “Colonel Marchant ought to be
very proud of such a family. And have you no brothers?”
“None in England,” Eve answered, with a touch of sadness, and then
without another moment’s delay she began to make her adieux.
“I am going to see you home, if you will let me,” said Vansittart, in
the hall; “I heard you say that Colonel Marchant is at home, and I
should like to seize the opportunity of making his acquaintance.”
A faint cloud spread itself over Eve’s happy face, and she was somewhat
slow in replying. “I am sure father will be very pleased to see you.”
“And I’m sure you won’t like father when you see him,” cried Peggy, the
irrepressible.
“Peggy, how dare you?” exclaimed Eve.
“Well, but people don’t like him,” urged the resolute damsel. “He ain’t
civil to people, and then we have to suffer for it; for, of course,
people think we’re just as bad. He keeps all his good manners for
London.”
“Peggy, Peggy!”
“Don’t Peggy me. It’s the truth,” protested this dreadful child; and
then she challenged Vansittart boldly, “You like us, Mr. Vansittart, I
know you do; but you’ll never be kind to us any more after you’ve seen
father.”
This gush of childish candour was discouraging, and Vansittart’s heart
sank as he asked himself what manner of man this might be whom he was
thinking of as a father-in-law. Other people had spoken ill of Colonel
Marchant, and he had made light of their disparagement; but this
denunciation from the lips of the eleven-year-old daughter was far more
serious.
“Perhaps the Colonel and I may get on better than you expect, Madam
Peggy,” he said, with a forced laugh; “and allow me at the same time to
suggest that you have forgotten a certain commandment which tells us to
honour our fathers and mothers.”
“Are we to honour any kind of father?” asked Peggy; but Vansittart
was not called upon to answer, for Hetty at that moment descrying a
squirrel, both little girls rushed off to watch his ascent of a tall
beech that grew on the grassy waste by which they were walking.
The walk was a long one, but though there was time for Vansittart
and Eve to talk about many things, time for the two younger girls to
afford many distractions, an undercurrent of thought about the man he
was going to see ran beneath all that light surface talk, and made
Vansittart’s spirit heavy.
“You must not think anything of what Peggy says,” Eve apologized,
directly after that little outbreak of the youngest born. “Father is
irritable sometimes. He can’t endure noise, and Hetty and Peggy are
dreadfully noisy. And our house is so small--I mean from his point of
view. And then he snubs them, poor young things, and they think him
unkind.”
“It is a way we have when we are young,” answered Vansittart gently,
“to take snubs too seriously. If our parents and guardians could only
put themselves inside those small skins of ours they would know what
pain their preachings and snubbings inflict.”
“Father is much to be pitied,” pursued Eve, in a low voice. “His life
has been full of disappointments.”
“Ah, that is a saddening experience,” answered Vansittart, tenderly
sympathetic.
His heart thrilled at the thought that she was beginning to confide in
him, to treat him as a friend.
“His property in Yorkshire was so disappointing. I suppose land has
gone down in value everywhere,” said Eve, rather vaguely; “but in
father’s case it was dreadful. He was forced to sell the estate just
when land in our part of the country was a drug in the market.”
Vansittart had never heard of this cheapness of land in the East
Riding, but he felt that if this account of things were not actual
truth, Eve Marchant fully believed what she was telling him.
“And then his horses, they all turned out so badly.”
“Ungrateful beasts.”
“You can understand that the life we lead at Fernhurst is not a very
happy life for such a man as my father--a sportsman--a man whose youth
was spent in the best society. It is hard for him to be mewed up with a
family of girls. Everything we say and do must jar upon him.”
“Surely not everything. There must be times in which he can take
delight in your society.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not. There are so many of us; and we seem so shallow
and silly to a man of the world.”
“A man of the world. Ah, there’s the difficulty,” said Vansittart,
slightly cynical. “That kind of man is apt to be miserable without the
world.”
After this they talked of other things; lightly, joyously; of the
country through which they were walking; its beasts, and birds, and
flowers, and humble cottage folk; of the places he had seen and the
books she had read, those fictions of the great masters which create
a populace and a world for the dwellers in lonely homes, and provide
companions for the livers of solitary lives. They were at no loss for
subjects, though that well-spring of polite conversation, a common
circle of smart acquaintance, was denied to them. Their talk was as
vivacious as if they had had all London society to dissect.
It was teatime again by the time they arrived at the Homestead. The
lamp was lighted in the family parlour; the round table was spread; the
kettle was hissing on the hob; Sophy and Jenny were sitting on one side
of the fire; and on the other side, in that armchair which Vansittart
had occupied on a previous occasion, sat a man of about fifty, a
man with clear-cut features, silver-grey hair and moustache, and a
querulous expression of countenance.
“What in the name of all that’s reasonable made you stay so late, Eve?”
he grumbled, as his daughters entered. “Both those children will be
laid up with influenza, I dare say, in consequence of your folly.”
Only at this moment did he observe the masculine figure in the rear. He
rose hastily to receive a visitor.
“Mr. Vansittart, father,” explained Eve.
The two men shook hands.
“Girls are so foolish,” said the Colonel, by way of apology for his
lecture. “It was very kind of you to take care of my daughters on the
dark road; but Eve ought not to have stayed so long.”
“We left very soon after luncheon, father; but the days are so short.”
“Not any shorter than they were last week. You have had time to
become familiar with their shortness, and to make your calculations
accordingly.”
“I am sure you didn’t want us, father,” said the sturdy Peggy; “so you
needn’t make a fuss.”
Colonel Marchant gave his youngest born a withering scowl, but took no
further notice of her contumacy.
“Pray sit down, Mr. Vansittart, and take a cup of tea before you tramp
home again. You must be a good walker to make so light of that long
road--for I suppose you came by the road.”
“I am country bred, Colonel Marchant, and am pretty well used to
tramping about, on foot or on horseback.”
“Ah, you live near Liss, Eve told me. Have you good hunting
thereabouts?”
Vansittart mentioned three or four packs of hounds accessible from his
part of the country.
“Ah,” sighed the Colonel, “you young men think nothing of prodigious
rides to cover, and long railway journeys. You hunt with the Vine from
Basingstoke--with the Hambledon from Bishop’s Waltham! You are tearing
about the country all November and December, I have no doubt?”
“Indeed, Colonel, I am not so keen a sportsman as you appear to think.
A couple of days a week content me, while there are any birds to shoot
in my covers.”
“Ah, two days’ hunting and four days’ shooting. I understand. That is
what an Englishman’s life should be, if he lives on his estate. Sir
Hubert tells me you have travelled a good deal?”
“I have wandered about the Continent, on the beaten paths. I cannot
call myself a traveller, in the modern acceptation of the word. I
have never shot lions in Africa, nor have I ever bivouacked among the
hill-tribes in Upper India, nor risked my life, like Burton, in a
pilgrimage to Mecca.”
“Ah, the men who do that kind of thing are fools,” grumbled the
Colonel. “Providence is too good to them when they are allowed to come
home with a whole skin. I have no sympathy with any explorer since
Columbus and Raleigh. After the discovery of America, tobacco, and
potatoes, the rest is leather and prunella.”
“The Australian and Californian gold-fields were surely a good find,”
suggested Vansittart.
“Has all the gold ever found there made you or me a shilling the
richer, Mr. Vansittart? It has reduced the purchasing value of a
sovereign by more than a third, and for men of fixed incomes all the
world over those gold-fields have been a source of calamity. When I was
a lad, a family man who was hard up could take his wife and children
to France or Belgium, and live comfortably on the income he had been
starving on in London. Now, life is dear everywhere--even in an
out-of-the-way hole like this,” concluded the Colonel, savagely.
Vansittart observed him closely as he talked, and was all the better
able to do so, as the Colonel was not given to looking at the person he
addressed. He had a way of looking at the fire or at his boots while he
talked. His enemies called it a hang-dog air.
He had not a pleasant face. It was a face wasted by dissolute habits,
a face in which the lines were premature and deep, lines that told of
discontent and sullen thought. Vansittart could but agree with Hubert
Hartley’s estimate of Colonel Marchant. He was not a nice man. He was
not a man to whom open-hearted men could take kindly.
But he was Eve’s father.
Vansittart had been sorry for her yesterday; sorry for her because of
those narrow means which cut her off from the pleasures and privileges
of youth and beauty. He was sorrier for her to-day, now that he had
seen her father.
He took his tea by the family hearth, which had lost its air of
rollicking happiness and Bohemian liberty. The five girls were all
seated primly at the round table, silent for the most part, while the
Colonel rambled on with his egotistical complaining, in the tones of a
man maltreated alike by his Creator and by society.
“Sir Hubert Hartley has a fine place at Redwold,” he said, “and he got
it dog-cheap. He is a very lucky man.”
“He’s an uncommonly good fellow,” said Vansittart, “and he ought to be
an acquisition to the neighbourhood.”
“Oh, the neighbours take to him kindly,” retorted the Colonel. “He’s
rich--gives good dinners and good wine. That is the kind of thing
country people want. They don’t ask too many questions about a man’s
pedigree when his cellar and his cook are good.”
“My brother-in-law’s pedigree is not one to be ashamed of, Colonel
Marchant.”
“Of course not, my dear fellow. Honest labour, talent, patience,
invention, the virtues of which Englishmen are supposed to be proud.
But you don’t mean to tell me that the Hartleys date from the
Heptarchy, or even came over with the Conqueror. There was a day--when
I was a lad, unless my memory of social matters plays me false--when
county people clung to the traditions of caste, and didn’t bow down to
the golden calf quite so readily as they do now.”
Vansittart could but agree with Peggy as to her father’s demerits. He
stole a glance at the child on the opposite side of the table, but she
was too much absorbed in bread and jam to notice her father’s speech,
or the impression he was making. Eve had a pained look. He felt very
sorry for her as he watched her restless fingers smoothing out the
gloves which lay on the table before her, with a movement that told of
irritated nerves.
He finished his cup of tea, and rose to go; yet lingered weakly, intent
on resolving certain jealous doubts of his, if it were possible.
“I see you are a stickler for blue blood, Colonel Marchant,” he said.
“I conclude that is one of the reasons you like Mr. Sefton, who, as I
hear in the neighbourhood, is by no means a general favourite.”
“Did you ever hear of a man worth anything who was a general
favourite?” grumbled the Colonel. “Yes, I like Sefton. Sefton is
a gentleman to the marrow of his bones--the son and grandson and
great-grandson of gentlemen. His ancestors were gentlemen before Magna
Charta. If you want to know what good blood is, you have a fine example
in Sefton--a staunch friend, a bitter enemy, stand-offish to strangers,
frank and free with the people he likes. He’s the only man in this part
of the country that I can get on with; and I am not ashamed to confess
my liking for him.”
Vansittart watched Eve’s face while her father was praising his friend.
It was a very grave face, almost to pain; but there was no confusion
or embarrassment in countenance or manner. She stood silent, serious,
waiting for her father to say his say, and for the guest to leave. And
then, without a word, she shook hands with Vansittart, who made the
round of the sisters before he was solemnly escorted to the porch by
Colonel Marchant.
He walked home through the fine, clear night, by hedgerows powdered
with snow, through a landscape which was somewhat monotonous in its
black and white, past woods and hills, above which the frosty stars
shone out in almost southern brilliancy.
No, he did not believe that Eve Marchant cared for Wilfred Sefton.
There had been no emotional changes from white to red in the fair face
he studied, only a serious and somewhat anxious expression, as if the
subject were painful to her. No, he had no rival to fear in Sefton; and
yet--and yet--there was some lurking mysteriousness in their relations,
some secret understanding, or why those tears? Why that confidential
conversation, and those stray sentences, which seemed to mean a great
deal? “I sincerely regret your disappointment.” “It was a false scent.”
There must be some meaning deeper than the trivialities of everyday
life in such words as these.
He thought, and gloomily, of Colonel Marchant as a possible
father-in-law. A most unpleasant person to contemplate in that
connection--a soured, disappointed man, at war with society, and quick
to sneer at men whom he disliked only because they were more fortunate
than himself. That he should sneer at Hubert Hartley, a universal
favourite, who from boyhood to manhood had been known to all his
friends and neighbours as “Bertie,” a familiar style which testified
to his popularity! Would Bertie take the hounds on an emergency? Would
Bertie do this or that for the common weal?--Bertie being always relied
on for liberality and good-fellowship. It was intolerable that this
out-at-elbows Colonel should presume to sneer at Bertie Hartley because
the wealth which he dispensed so nobly had been earned in trade.
* * * * *
That second visit to the Homestead had a dispiriting effect, and again
Vansittart told himself that he would take his time; that having
breathed no word of love in Eve Marchant’s ear, he was free to carry
her image away in his heart, and brood over it, and find out in the
course of much sober meditation whether he really loved her well enough
to sacrifice all worldly advantages, and to disappoint his mother and
sister in the great act of marriage, that act upon which hangs the
happiness or misery of all the after life.
A man who has few belongings, and who has been to those belongings as
a hero, has need to give some consideration to his people’s prejudices
before he lead his bride home to the family hearth, where she is to
take her place for ever in the family history, either as an ornament or
a blot upon a fair record.
No, he would go no further. He would not be the slave of a foolish
passion for a lovely face. He was free to come to Redwold Towers
whenever he pleased. He might see Eve Marchant as often as he pleased
in the year that was so young. He would take his time.
And if, while he hesitated and meditated, some bolder wooer were to
appear and snatch the prize--what then? Well, that was a risk which he
must run; but he told himself that the chances were against any suitor
for the daughter’s hand while the father was to the fore. Colonel
Marchant’s children were heavily handicapped in the race of life.