“ONE THREAD IN LIFE WORTH SPINNING.”
Vansittart’s heart was lighter than it had been for a long time, the
day he left Charles Street for Waterloo on his way to Haslemere. He
longed to see Eve Marchant, with all a lover’s longing, and he told
himself that he had tested his own heart severely enough by an absence
of three months, and that he had now only to discover whether the
lady’s heart was in any way responsive to his own. He knew now that his
love for Eve Marchant was no passing fancy, no fever of the moment;
and he also told himself that if he could be fairly assured of her
worthiness to be his wife, he would lose no time in offering himself as
her husband. Of her father’s character, whatever it might be, of her
present surroundings, however sordid and shabby, he would take no heed.
He would ask only if she were pure and true and frank and honest enough
for an honest man’s wife. Convinced on that point, he would ask no more.
An honest man’s wife? Was he an honest man? Was he going to give her
truth in exchange for truth? Was there nothing that he must needs hold
back; no secret in his past life that he must keep till his life’s end?
Yes, there was one secret. He was not going to tell her of his Venetian
adventure. It would grieve her woman’s heart too much to know that the
man she loved had to bear the burden of another man’s blood. Nay, more,
with a woman’s want of logic she might deem that impulse of a moment
murder, and might refuse to give herself to a man who bore that stain
upon his past.
He meant to keep his secret. He could trust Lisa not to betray him.
She and her kinswoman had pledged themselves to silence; and over and
above the obligation of that promise he had bound them both to him by
his services, had made their lives in some wise dependent on his own
welfare. No, he had no fear of treachery from them. Nor had he any
fear of what the chances of time and change might bring upon him from
any other belongings of the dead man--so evidently had his been one
of those isolated existences which drop out of life unlamented and
unremembered. He was safe on all sides; and the one lie in his life,
the lie which he began when he told his mother that he had not been to
Venice, must be maintained steadily, whatever conscience might urge
against it.
Easter came late this year, and April, the sunny, the showery, the
capricious, was flinging her restless lights and shadows over the
meadows and copses as he drove from the station. He had to pass
Fernhurst on his way to Redwold Towers, and it was yet early in the
afternoon as he drove past the quaint little cottage post-office in
the dip of the hill, the tiny graveyard on the higher ground, the
church and parsonage. It was early enough for afternoon-tea, and he
had no need to hurry to Redwold. His sister had sent a groom with a
dog-cart instead of coming to meet him in her capacious landau, a lack
of attention for which he was grateful, since it left him his own
master. He would have been less than human if he had not stopped at the
Homestead, and being in his present frame of mind very human, he pulled
up the eager homeward-going horse at the little wooden gate, and flung
the reins to the groom.
“I am going to make a call here; wait five minutes, and if I am not out
by that time take the horse to the inn and put him up for an hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
How lightly his feet mounted the steep garden path between the trim box
borders! There were plenty of flowers in the garden now--sweet-smelling
hyacinths, vivid scarlet tulips with wide open chalices, half full of
rain; a snowy mesphilus flinging about its frail white blooms in the
soft west wind; a crimson rhododendron making a blaze of colour.
The long, low cottage, with its massive porch, was covered with
flowering creepers, yellow jasmine, pale pink japonica, scented white
honeysuckle. The cottage looked like a bower, and seemed to smile at
him as he went up the path. He had a childish fancy that he would
rather live in that cottage with Eve for his wife than at Merewood,
which was one of the prettiest and most convenient houses of moderate
size in all Hampshire. What dwelling could ever be so dear as this
quaint old cottage, bent under the burden of its disproportionate
thatch, with lattice windows peeping out at odd levels, and with
dormers like gigantic eyes under penthouse lids?
She was at home; everybody was at home, even that undomestic bird, the
Colonel. They were all at tea in their one spacious parlour--windows
open, and all the perfume of flowers and growing hedgerows and budding
trees blowing into the room.
Colonel Marchant welcomed him with marked cordiality. The girls were
evidently pleased at his coming.
“How good of you to call on us on your way from the station!” said
Sophy. “Lady Hartley told us you were to be met by the afternoon train.”
Lo, a miracle! The five Miss Marchants were all dressed alike--severely,
in darkest blue serge. The red Garibaldis, the yellow and brown
stripes, the scarlet, the magenta, the Reckitt’s blue, which had made
their sitting-room a battle-field of crude colours, had all vanished.
In darkest serge, with neat white linen collars, the Miss Marchants
stood before him, a family to whose attire the severest taste could not
object.
Eve was the most silent of the sisters, but she had blushed vividly at
his advent, and she was blushing still. She blushed at every word he
addressed to her, and seemed to find a painful difficulty in handling
the teapot and cups and saucers when she resumed her post at the
tea-tray.
Vansittart asked them for the news of the neighbourhood. How had they
managed to amuse themselves after the frost, when there was no more
skating?
“We were awfully sorry,” said Sophy, “but the hunting men were awfully
glad.”
“And had you any more balls?”
“No public ball--but there were a good many dances,” with half a sigh.
“Lady Hartley gave one just before Lent, the only one to which we were
invited, and I am happy to say it was out and away the best.”
“Lady Hartley has been more than kind to us,” said Eve, finding speech
at last. “She is the most charming woman I ever met. You must be very
proud of such a sister.”
“I am proud to know that you like her,” answered Vansittart, in a low
voice.
He was sitting at her elbow, helping her by handing the cups and
saucers, and very conscious that her hand trembled when it touched his.
“My daughter is right,” said the Colonel, with a majestic air; “Lady
Hartley is the one lady in this neighbourhood--the one womanly woman.
She saw my girls ignored, and she has made it her business to convince
her neighbours that they are a little too good for such treatment.
Other people have been prompt to follow her lead.”
“Oh, but it’s not for that we care. It is Lady Hartley’s friendship we
value, not her influence on other people,” protested Eve eagerly.
“We are going to Redwold to-morrow afternoon,” said Jenny; “but I don’t
suppose we shall see you, Mr. Vansittart. You will be shooting, or
fishing, or something.”
“Shooting there is none, Miss Vansittart. The pheasants are a free and
unfettered company in the copses, among the primroses and dog-violets.
Man is no longer their enemy. And I never felt the angler’s passion
since I fished for sticklebacks in the shrubbery at home.”
The Colonel chimed in at this point, as if thinking the conversation
too childish.
He began to discuss the political situation--the chances of a
by-election which was to come on directly after Easter. He expressed
himself with the ferocity of an old-fashioned Tory. He would give
no quarter to the enemy. He had just returned from Paris, he told
Vansittart, and had seen what it was to live under a mobocracy.
“They have been obliged to shut up one of their theatres--cut short
the run of the finest play that has been produced in the last decade,
simply because their sans culottes object to any disparagement of
Robespierre. There are a dozen incipient Robespierres in Paris at this
day, I believe, only waiting for opportunity to burst into full bloom.”
He had been to Paris, then, thought Vansittart. He could afford to take
his pleasure in that holiday capital, while his daughters were on short
commons at Fernhurst.
“Was Paris very full?” asked Vansittart.
“I hardly know. I met a good many people I know. One meets more
Englishmen than Parisians on the boulevards at this season. April
is the Englishman’s month. Your neighbour, Mr. Sefton, was at the
Continental--in point of fact, he and I went to Paris together.”
This explained matters to Vansittart. No doubt Sefton paid the bills
for both travellers.
“Mr. Sefton is not a neighbour of mine, but of my sister’s,” he said.
“My father and his father were good friends before I was born, but I
know nothing of this gentleman.”
“A mutual loss,” replied the Colonel. “Sefton is a very fine fellow, as
I told you the last time you were here. You can hardly fail to get on
with him when you do make his acquaintance.”
“I saw him at the hunt ball, and I must confess that I was not
favourably impressed by his manner.”
“Sefton’s manner is the worst part of him,” conceded Colonel Marchant.
“He has been spoilt by Dame Fortune, and is inclined to be arrogant.
An only child, brought up in the expectation of wealth, and taught by
a foolish mother to believe that a landed estate and a fine income
constitute a kind of royalty. Sefton might easily be a worse fellow
than he is. For my own part, I cannot speak too warmly of him. He has
been a capital neighbour, the best neighbour we had, until Lady Hartley
was good enough to take a fancy to my girls.”
“I hope you don’t compare Lady Hartley with Mr. Sefton, father,” cried
the impulsive Hetty. “There is more kindness in a cup of tea from Lady
Hartley than in all the game, and fruit, and trout, and things with
which Mr. Sefton loads us.”
“They are enthusiasts, these girls of mine,” said the Colonel, blandly.
“Lady Hartley has made them her creatures.”
“Her name reminds me that I must be moving on,” said Vansittart. “I
hope you will all forgive this invasion. I was anxious to learn how you
all were. It seems a long time since I was in this part of the world.”
“It is a long time,” said Eve, almost involuntarily.
Those few words rejoiced his heart. They sounded like a confession
that she had missed him and regretted him, since those long friendly
walks and talks in the clear cold January afternoons. He had never in
all their conversation spoken to her in the words of a lover, but he
had shown her that he liked her society, and it might be that she had
thought him cold and cowardly when he left her without any token of
warmer feeling than this casual friendship of the roads, lanes, and
family tea-table. To go away, and stay away for three months, and make
no sign! A cruel treatment, if, if, in those few familiar hours, he had
touched her girlish heart by the magnetic power of unspoken love.
He left the Homestead happy in the thought that she was not indifferent
to the fact of his existence; that he was something more to her than a
casual acquaintance.
He was to see her next day; and it would be his own fault if he did
not see her the day after that; and the next, and the next; until the
solemn question had been asked, and the low-breathed answer had been
given, and she was his for ever. All was in his own hand now. He had
but to satisfy himself upon one point--her acquaintance with Sefton,
what it meant, and how far it had gone--and then the rest was peace,
the perfect peace of happy and confiding love.
He was unfilial enough to be glad that his mother was not at Redwold.
There would be no restraining influence, no maternal arm stretched out
to pluck him from his fate. He would be free to fulfil his destiny; and
when the fair young bride was won, it would be easy for her to win her
own way into that motherly heart. Mrs. Vansittart was not a woman to
withhold her affection from her son’s wife.
Lady Hartley appeared in the portico as the cart drove up to the door.
“What a fright you have given me!” she said. “Did anything happen to
the train?”
“Nothing but what usually happens to trains.”
“But you are an hour late.”
“I called on Colonel Marchant. It never occurred to me that you could
be uneasy on my account, or I should not have stopped on the way. I am
very sorry, my dear Maud,” he concluded, as he kissed her in the hall.
“You are not cured of your infatuation, Jack.”
“Not cured, or likely to be cured, in your way. I have heard nothing
but your praises, Maud. You seem to have been a fairy godmother to
those motherless girls.”
“Have I not? How did you like their appearance? Did you see any
improvement?”
“A monstrous improvement. They were all neatly dressed, and in one
colour.”
“That was my doing, Jack.”
“Really! But how did you manage it, without wounding their feelings?”
“My tact, Jack, my exquisite tact,” cried Maud, gaily.
They were in her morning-room by this time, and Vansittart sank into a
low armchair, prepared to hear all she had to tell. Maud had generally
a great deal to say to her brother after an interval of severance.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” she began. “It grieved me to see
those poor girls in their coats of many colours, or rather in their
assemblage of colours among the five sisters, so I felt I must do
something. I was always looking at them, and thinking how much
better I could dress them than they dressed themselves, and quite as
economically, mark you. So one day I said casually that I thought
sisters--youthful sisters understood--looked to particular advantage
when they were all dressed exactly alike, whereupon Eve, who is
candour itself”--Vansittart’s heart thrilled at this praise--“declared
herself entirely of my opinion, but she explained that she and her
sisters had very little money to dress upon, and they were all great
bargain-hunters, and could get most wonderful bargains at the great
drapery sales, if they were not particular in their choice of colours.
‘And that is how we always look like a ragged regiment,’ said Eve, ‘but
we certainly get good value for our poor little scraps of money.’”
“A girl who ought to be dressed like a duchess,” sighed Vansittart.
“Well, on this I read her one of my lay sermons. I told her that so
far from getting good value for her money, she got very bad value for
her money; that she and her sisters, in their thirst for stuff at a
shilling a yard, reduced from three and sixpence, made themselves in
a manner queens of shreds and patches. She was very ready to admit
the force of my reasoning, poor child. And then she pleaded that
her sisters were so young--they had no control over their feelings
when they found themselves in a great drapery show. It seemed a kind
of fairyland, where things were being given away. And then such a
scramble, she tells me, women almost fighting with each other for
eligible bits of stuff and last season’s finery. I told her that I had
hardly ever seen the inside of a big shop, and that I hated shopping.
‘What,’ she cried, ‘you who are rich! I thought you would enjoy it
above all things.’ I told her no; that Lewis and Allanby sent me one
of their people, and I chose my gown from a pattern-book, and the
fitter came and tried it on, and I had no more trouble about it; or
that I went to my dressmaker, and just looked over her newest things in
a quiet drawing-room, without any of the distracting bustle of a great
shop.”
“My sweetest Maud, what a dear little snob she must have thought you!”
“I don’t think she did. She seemed pleased to know my ways. And then
I told her that I should like to see her and her sisters all dressed
alike, in one of my favourite colours; and then I told her that I knew
of a most meritorious family--invented that moment--who were going
to Australia, and whom I wanted to help. ‘In a colony, those bright
colours your sisters wear would be most suitable,’ I said. ‘Will you
make an exchange with me--just in a friendly way--give me as many of
your bright gowns as you can spare, and I will give you a piece of good
serge and a piece of the very best cloth in exchange?’”
“Did she stand that?” asked Vansittart.
“Not very well. She looked at me for a moment or two, blushed
furiously, and then got up and walked to the window, and stood there
with her back towards me. I knew that she was crying. I went over to
her and put my arm round her neck and kissed her as if she had been my
first cousin. I begged her to forgive me if I had offended. ‘I really
want to help those poor girls who are going to Melbourne,’ I said; ‘and
your bargains would be just the thing for them. They could get nothing
half as good for the same money.’ I felt ashamed of myself the next
moment. I had lied so well that she believed me.”
“Never mind, Maud; the motive was virtuous.”
“‘No, they couldn’t,’ she said; ‘not till next July. The sales are
all over.’ And then, after a little more argument, she yielded, and
it was agreed that I should drive over to the Homestead next morning,
and we would hold a review of the frocks and furbelows, and whatever
was suitable for my Australian emigrants I should take, giving the
sisters fair value in exchange. Eve stipulated that it should be
only fair value. Well, the review was capital fun. The girls were
charming--evidently proud of their finery, expatiating upon the
miraculous cheapness of this and that, and the genuineness of the sales
at the best houses. They had sales on the brain, I think. Of course I
left them all the gay frocks suitable for home evenings; but I swooped
like a vulture on their outdoor finery. I had taken a large portmanteau
over with me, and we crammed it with frocks and fichus and Zouave
jackets for my Australians. I am sorry to say the portmanteau is still
upstairs in the box-room. And now, Jack, you know the history of the
serge frocks.”
“You are a dear little diplomatist; but I’m afraid you must have
made Miss Marchant suffer a good deal before your transmutation was
accomplished.”
“My dear Jack, that girl is destined for suffering--of that kind; small
social stings, the sense of the contrast between her surroundings and
those of other girls no better born, only better off.”
“She will marry and forget these evil days,” said Vansittart.
“Let us hope so; but let us hope that she will not marry you.”
“Why should you--or any one--hope that?”
“Because it ain’t good enough, Jack; believe me, it ain’t. She is a
sweet girl--but her father’s character is the opposite of sweet. Hubert
has made inquiries, and has been told, by men on whose good faith he
can rely, that the Colonel is a black-leg; that there is hardly any
dishonourable act that a man can do, short of felony, which Colonel
Marchant has not done. He is well known in London, where he spends the
greater part of his time. He is a hanger-on of rich young men. He shows
them life. He wins their money--and like that other hanger-on, the
leech, he drops away from them when he is gorged and they are empty.
Can you choose the daughter of such a man for your wife?”
“I can, and do choose her, above all other women; and if she is as pure
and true as I believe her to be, I shall ask her to be my wife. The
more disreputable her father, the gladder I shall be to take her away
from him----”
“And when her father is your father-in-law how will you deal with him?”
“Leave that problem to me. I am not an idiot, or a youth fresh from the
University. I shall know how to meet the difficulty.”
“You will not have that man at Merewood, Jack,” cried Maud, excitedly,
“to loaf about my mother’s garden--the garden that is hers now--and to
play cards in my mother’s drawing-room?”
“You are running on very fast, Maud. No; if I marry Eve Marchant be
assured I shall not keep open house for her father. He has not been so
good a parent as to make his claim indisputable.”
“Such a marriage will break mother’s heart,” sighed Maud.
“You know better than that, Maud! You know that only a disreputable
marriage would seriously distress my mother, and there can be nothing
disreputable in a marriage with a good and pure-minded girl. I promise
you that I will not offer myself to Eve Marchant until I feel assured
of her perfect truth. There is only one point upon which I have the
shadow of a doubt. It seemed to me, from certain trifling indications,
that there had been some kind of flirtation between her and Sefton.”
“I cannot quite make that out, Jack,” answered Maud, thoughtfully.
“I have seen them together several times since you left. There is
certainly something, on his side. He pursues her in a manner--contrives
to place himself near her at every opportunity, and puts on a
confidential air when he talks to her. I have watched them closely in
her interest, for I really like her. I don’t think she encourages him.
Indeed I believe she detests him; but she is not as stand-offish as she
might be; and I have seen her occasionally talking very confidentially
with him--as if they had a secret understanding.”
“That’s it,” cried Vansittart, inwardly raging. “There is a secret, and
I must be possessed of that secret before I confess my love.”
“And how do you propose to pluck out the heart of the mystery?”
“In the simplest manner--by questioning Eve herself. If she is the
woman I think her she will answer me truthfully. If she is false and
shifty--why then--I whistle her down the wind, and you will never hear
more of this fond dream of mine.”
“Well, Jack, you must go your own way. You were always my master, and I
can’t pretend to master you now. You’ll have an opportunity of seeing
Eve and Mr. Sefton to-morrow. He is coming to my afternoon. I hope
you’ll be civil to him.”
“As civil as I can. I’ll break no bounds, Maud; but I believe the man
to be a scoundrel. If he were pursuing Eve with any good motive he
would have spoken out before now.”
“Precisely my view of the case. It is shameful to compromise her by
motiveless attentions. There goes the gong. I am glad we have had this
quiet talk. You will not act precipitately, will you, Jack?” concluded
his sister, appealingly, as she moved towards the door.
“I will act as I have said, Maud, not otherwise.”
“Well,” with a sigh, “I believe she will come through the ordeal, and
that I am destined to have her for my sister.”
“You have made her love you already. That leaves less work for you in
the future.”
“Poor mother! She will be woefully disappointed.”
“True,” said Vansittart; “but as I couldn’t marry all her protégées,
perhaps it is just as well I should marry none of them; and be assured
I should not love Eve Marchant if I didn’t believe that she would be a
good and loving daughter to my mother.”
“Every lover believes as much. It is all nonsense,” said Maud, as she
ran off to her dressing-room.
Mr. Sefton made an early appearance at Lady Hartley’s afternoon. He
arrived before the Marchants, and when there were only about a dozen
people in the long drawing-room, and Vansittart guessed by the way he
loitered near a window overlooking the drive that he was on the watch
for the sisters.
Lady Hartley introduced her brother to Mr. Sefton, with the respect
due to the owner of one of the finest estates in the county, a man
of old family and aristocratic connections. Sefton was particularly
cordial, and began to make conversation in the most amiable way, a man
not renowned for amiability to his equals. The Miss Marchants were
announced while he and Vansittart were talking, and Sefton’s attention
began to wander immediately, although he continued the discussion of
hopes and fears about that by-election which was disturbing every
politician’s mind; or which at any rate served as a topic among people
who had nothing to say to each other.
Only two out of the three grown-up sisters appeared, Eve and Jenny.
The more diplomatic Sophy thought she improved her social status by
occasional absence.
Sefton broke away from the conversation at the first opening, and went
straight to Eve, who was talking to little Mr. Tivett, arrived that
afternoon, no holidays being complete in a country house without such a
man as Tivett, with his little thin voice, good nature, and willing to
fetch and carry for the weaker sex.
Vansittart stood aloof for a little while, talking to a comfortable
matron, who was evidently attached to the landed interest, as her
conversation dwelt upon the weather in its relation to agriculture and
the lambing season. He could see that Eve received Sefton’s advances
with coldest politeness. On her part there was no touch of the earnest
and confidential air which had so distressed him that afternoon by the
lake. She talked with Sefton for a few minutes, and then turned away,
and walked into the adjoining room, where the wide French window stood
open to the garden. Vansittart seized his opportunity and followed her.
He found her with her sister, looking at a pile of new books on a large
table in a corner, and he speedily persuaded them that the flower-beds
outside were better worth looking at than magazines and books which
were no less ephemeral than the tulips and hyacinths.
He walked up and down the terrace with them for nearly half an hour,
but never a hint of anything more than lightest society talk gave he
in all that time. He had made up his mind to speak only after gravest
deliberation, only in the calmest hour, when they two should be alone
together under God’s quiet sky; but he so managed matters that Mr.
Sefton had no further opportunity of offering his invidious attentions
to Eve Marchant that afternoon. It was Vansittart who found seats for
her and her sister in the drawing-room; it was Vansittart who carried
their teacups, assisted only by Mr. Tivett, who tripped about with
plates of chocolate biscuits, and buttered buns, with such activity as
to appear ubiquitous.
The next day was Good Friday, a day of long church services and no
visitors. On Saturday Vansittart went to Liss to spend the day with
his mother, and to make a tour of grounds and home farm, a round of
grave inspection which the mother and son took together, and during
which they talked of many things, but not of Eve Marchant. If Mrs.
Vansittart wondered that her son should have chosen to spend the recess
at Redwold rather than at Merewood, she was too discreet to express
either wonder or dissatisfaction. She was going to Charles Street
directly after Easter, and Jack was to join her there for the London
season; so she had no ground for dolefulness in being deprived of his
society for just this one week.
She found him looking well, and, to her fancy, happier than he had
looked for a long time. There was a ring of gaiety in his voice and
laugh which she had missed of late years, and which she heard again
to-day. They lunched together, and she drove him to the station in the
late afternoon.
“It delights me to see you looking so well and so happy, Jack,” she
said, as they walked up and down the platform.
“Does it, mother?” he asked earnestly. “Is my happiness really enough
to gladden you? Are you content that I should be happy in my own way?”
There were some moments of silence, and then she said gravely, “Yes,
Jack, I am content, for I cannot believe that your way would be a
foolish way. You have seen enough of the world to judge between gold
and dross, and you are not the kind of man to plunge wilfully into a
morass, led by false lights.”
“No, no, mother, you may be sure of that. My star shall be a true
star--no Jack o’ Lantern.”
The train steamed in opportunely, and cut short the conversation; but
enough had been said, Vansittart thought, to break the ice; and it
was evident to him that his mother had an inkling of the course which
events were taking.
The next day was Easter Sunday, a day when the morning sun is said
to dance upon the waters; a day when the dawn seems more glorious,
when the flowers that deck the churches seem fairer than mere earthly
flowers, when the swelling chords of the organ and the voices even of
the village choir have a sweetness that suggests the heavenly chorus.
To John Vansittart, at least, among those who worshipped in the village
church that Easter Day, there seemed a gladness in all things--a pure
and thrilling gladness as of minds attuned to holiness and ready to
believe. He had read much of that new and widening school of thought
which is gradually sapping the old foundations and pulling down the old
bulwarks; but there was no remembrance of that modern school in his
mind to-day as he stood up in the village church to join in the Easter
hymn. His thoughts had resumed the simplicity of early years. He was
able to believe and to pray like a little child.
He prayed to be forgiven for that unpremeditated sin of which the world
knew not. He prostrated himself in heart and mind at the feet of the
Christ who died for sinners. But he did not go to the Altar. The Easter
Communion was not for him whose hands were stained with blood.
The Marchants were at the morning service, all five of them, fresh and
blooming after their long walk, a bunch of English roses, redder or
paler as Nature had painted each. Eve, tallest, fairest, loveliest, was
conspicuous among the sisters.
“By Jove! how handsome that girl is!” whispered little Tivett, as he
ducked to put away his hat.
He and Vansittart were sitting apart from the rest, the Redwold pew
being full without them.
“I want to walk home with them after church,” whispered Vansittart,
also intent upon the disposal of the Sunday cylinder. “Will you come
too?”
“With pleasure.”
This was before the service began, before the priest and choir had come
into the chancel.
The service was brief, a service of jubilant hymns and anthem and
short flowery sermon, flowery as the chancel and altar, and pulpit and
font, in all their glory of arums, azaleas, spireas, and lilies of the
valley. The church clock was striking twelve as the major part of the
congregation poured out. There was a row of carriages in the road, two
of them from Redwold Towers; but Vansittart and Tivett declined the
accommodation of landau or waggonette.
“We are going for a long walk,” said Mr. Tivett. “It’s such a perfect
day.”
“But you will lose your lunch, if you go too far.”
“We must risk that, and make amends at afternoon-tea.”
“Tivett,” said Vansittart, when the carriages had driven off, “I am
going to make a martyr of you. It will be three o’clock at the earliest
when we get back to Redwold, and I know you enjoy your luncheon. It’s
really too bad.”
“Do you think I regret the sacrifice in the cause of friendship? There
go the Marchant girls, steaming on ahead. We had better overhaul them
at once. Don’t mind me, Vansittart. I have been doing gooseberry ever
since I wore Eton jackets. Only one word--Is it serious?”
“Very serious--sink or swim--Heaven or Hades.”
“And all in honour?”
“All in honour.”
“Then I am with you to the death. You want a long walk and a long talk
with Miss Marchant; and you want me to take the whole bunch of sisters
off your hands.”
“Just so, my best of friends.”
“Consider it done.”
They overtook the young ladies in the dip of the road, where a
lane branches off to Bexley Hill. Here they stopped to shake hands
all round, and to talk of the church, and the weather--quite the
most exquisite Easter Sunday that any of them could remember, or
could remember that they remembered, for no doubt memory severely
interrogated would have recalled Easter Days as fair.
“Mr. Tivett and I are pining for a long walk,” said Vansittart, “so we
are going to see you home--if you will let us--or, if you are not tied
for time, will you join us in a ramble on Bexley Hill? It is just the
day for the hill--the views will be splendid--and I know that you young
ladies are like Atalanta. Distance cannot tire you!”
“We could hardly help being good walkers,” said Sophy, rather
discontentedly. “Walking is our only amusement.”
Hetty and Peggy clapped their hands. “Bexley Hill, Bexley Hill,” they
cried; “hands up for Bexley Hill.”
There were no hands lifted, but they all turned into the lane.
“We can go a little way just to look at the view,” assented Eve; and
the younger girls went skipping off in their short petticoats, and
the two elder girls were speedily absorbed in Mr. Tivett’s animated
conversation, and Eve and Vansittart were walking alone.
“A little way.” Who could measure distance or count the minutes in such
an exhilarating atmosphere as breathed around that wooded hillside
in the balmy April morning? Every step seemed to take them into a
finer air, and to lift their hearts with an increasing gladness. All
around them rippled the sea of furze and heather, broken by patches
of woodland, and grassy glades that were like bits stolen out of the
New Forest, and flung down here upon this swelling hillside. Here and
there a squatter’s cottage, with low cob wall and steep tiled roof,
stood snug and sheltered in its bit of garden, under the shadow of
a venerable beech or oak--here and there a little knot of children
sprawled and sunned themselves in front of a cottage door. The rest was
silence and solitude, save for the voices of those rare birds which
inhabit forest and common land.
“Gussie,” whispered Vansittart, when they had passed one of these
humble homesteads, and were ascending the crest of the hill, “do you
think you could contrive to lose yourself--and the girls--for half an
hour?”
“Of course I can. You will have to cooey for us when you want to see
our faces again.”
This little conversation occurred in the rear of the five girls, who
had scattered themselves over the hillside, every one believing in her
own particular track as the briefest and best ascent.
Eve had climbed highest of all the sisters, by a path so narrow, and
so hemmed in by bramble and hawthorn, that only one, and that one a
dexterous climber, could mount at a time.
Vansittart followed her desperately, pushing aside the brambles with
his stick. He was breathless when he reached the top, where she stood
lightly poised, like Mercury. The ascent, since he stopped to speak to
Tivett, had taken only ten minutes or so, but when he looked round him
and downward over the billowy furze and rugged hillside there was not
one vestige of Augustus Tivett or the four Miss Marchants in view.
“What can have become of them all?” questioned Eve, gazing wonderingly
around. “I thought they were only just behind me--I heard them laughing
a few minutes ago. Have they sunk into the earth, or are they hiding
behind the bushes?”
“Neither. They are only going round the other side of the hill. They
will meet us on the top.”
“It’s very silly of them,” said Eve, obviously distressed. “There is
always some folly or mischief when Hetty is one of our party. Peggy is
ever so much more sensible.”
“Don’t blame poor Hetty till you are assured she is in fault. I
shouldn’t wonder if it were all Tivett’s doing. You must scold good
little Tivett. I hope you don’t mind being alone with me for a quarter
of an hour. I have been longing for the chance of a little serious talk
with you. Shall we sit down for a few minutes on this fine old beech
trunk? You are out of breath after mounting the hill.”
She was out of breath, but the hill was not the cause. Her colour came
and went, her heart beat furiously. She was speechless with conflicting
emotions--fear, joy, wonder, self-abasement.
They were on the ridge of the hill. In front of them, far away towards
the south stretched the Sussex Downs, purple in the distance, save for
one pale shimmering streak of light which meant the sea. Below them lay
the Sussex Weald, rippling meadows, and the vivid green of spacious
fields where the young corn showed emerald bright in the sun--pools
and winding streamlets, copses and grey fallows, cottage roofs and
village spires, a world lovely enough for Satan to use as a lure for
the tempted.
But for Vansittart that world hardly existed. He had eyes, thoughts,
comprehension for nothing but this girl who sat mutely at his side, the
graceful throat bending a little, the shy violet eyes looking at the
ground.
So far there had been no word of love between them, not one word,
not one silent indication, such as the tender pressure of hands, or
even the looks that tell love’s story. But love was in the air they
breathed, love held them and bound them each to each, and each knew the
other’s secret.
“Miss Marchant,” begun Vansittart with ceremonious gravity, “will
you forgive me if I ask you a few questions which may seem somewhat
impertinent on my part?”
This was so different from what her trembling heart had expected that
she paled as at a sudden danger. He was watching her intently, and was
quick to perceive that pallor.
“I don’t think you would ask me anything really impertinent,” she
faltered.
“Not with an impertinent motive, be assured. Well, I must even risk
offending you. I want you to tell me frankly what you think of Mr.
Sefton.”
At this the pale cheeks flushed, and she looked angry.
“I don’t like him, though he is my father’s friend, and though he is
always very kind--obtrusively kind. He has even offered Sophy and me
his horses to ride--to have the exclusive use of two of his best hacks,
if father would let us ride them; but of course that was out of the
question. We could not have accepted such a favour from any one.”
“Not from any one but an affianced lover,” said Vansittart. “Do you
know, Miss Marchant, when I first saw you and Mr. Sefton together at
the ball I thought you must be engaged.”
“How very foolish of you!”
“He had such an air of taking possession of you, as if he had a
superior claim to your attentions.”
“Oh, that is only Mr. Sefton’s masterful way. He cannot forget the
extent of his acres or the length of his pedigree.”
“But he seems--always--on such confidential terms with you.”
“I have known him a long time.”
“Yes, but his manner--to a looker-on--implies something more than
friendship. Oh, Miss Marchant, forgive me if I presume to question you.
My motive is no light one. Last January by the lake I saw you and that
man meet, with a look on both sides of a preconcerted meeting. I heard,
accidentally, some few words which Mr. Sefton spoke to you, while you
were walking with him by the lake; and those words implied a secret
understanding between you and him--something of deep interest of which
the outer world knew nothing. Be frank with me, for pity’s sake. Speak
openly to me to-day, from heart to heart, if you never speak to me
again. Is not there something more between you and Wilfred Sefton than
an everyday friendship?”
“Yes,” she answered, “there is something more. There _is_ a secret
understanding--not much of a secret, but Mr. Sefton has taken advantage
of it to offer me meaningless attentions which I detest, and which, I
dare say, ill-natured people may talk about. They would be sure to
think that Mr. Sefton could have no serious intentions about me, that
he was only carrying on an idle flirtation.”
“And if he were serious--if he asked you to be his wife?”
“To live in that grand house; to rule over all those acres; to have a
wafer-space on that long pedigree! Could Colonel Marchant’s daughter
refuse such a chance?”
“Would Colonel Marchant’s daughter accept it?”
“Not this daughter,” answered Eve, gaily. “I might hand him on to
Sophy, perhaps. Poor Sophy hankers after the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world.”
Her gaiety delighted her lover. It told of an unburdened conscience--a
heart at peace with itself.
“Tell me what it was you overheard, Mr. Eavesdropper, that afternoon by
the lake?” she asked.
“I heard him say to you, very earnestly, ‘It was a false scent, you
see;’ and then he expressed his sorrow for your disappointment.”
“You have a good memory. I, too, remember those words, ‘It was a false
scent.’ It was. He had need to be sorry for my disappointment, for he
had cheated me with false hopes.”
“About what? About whom?”
“About my brother.”
“Your brother? I did not know you had a brother.”
“We don’t talk about him in a general way. He has been a wanderer over
the earth for many years. He was never with us at Fernhurst. He and my
father had a terrible quarrel before we left Yorkshire--chiefly about
his college debts, I believe. There seemed to be dreadful difficulties
at Cambridge. My father used all his influence to get poor Harold
out of the country, and succeeded in getting him a berth in the Cape
Mounted Police. Parting with him perhaps went nearer to break my
mother’s heart than our loss of home and fortune.”
“It must have been a hard parting.”
“It was indeed hard. He went away in disgrace. My father would not
speak to him or look at him. He lived at the Vicarage during those
last weeks before the ship sailed away with him to Africa. The Vicar
and his wife were very good to him, but everybody felt that he was
under a cloud. I fear--I fear that he had done something very wrong
at Cambridge--something for which he might have been arrested--for he
seemed to be in hiding at the Vicarage. And he left one night, and was
driven over to Hull, where he went on board a boat bound for Hamburg,
and he was to sail from Hamburg for the Cape. My mother and I went to
say good-bye to him that last evening, after dark; the others were too
young to be told anything; they hardly remember him. He kissed us, and
cried over us, and promised mother that for her sake he would try to
do well--that he would bear the hardest life in order to redeem his
character. He promised that he would write to her by every mail. The
dog-cart was at the door while he was saying this. The Vicar came into
the room to hurry him away. I have never seen my brother since that
night.”