Mark Lavendar. "The idea of calling that man a jilt," she thought.
"Look at his eyes; look at his mouth; listen to his voice; there is
truth in them all. Oh for a sight of the girl he jilted! How much it
would explain! No, not altogether, because the careless making of his
engagement would have to be accounted for, as well as the breaking of
it. Unless he did it merely to oblige her--and men are such idiots
sometimes,--then he must have fancied he was in love with her. Perhaps
he is continually troubled with those fancies. Nonsense! you believe
in him, and you know you do." Then aloud she said, sympathetically,
"I'm afraid we are apt to make these little experimental journeys in
youth, when the heart is full of _wanderlust_. We start out on them so
lightly, then they lead nowhere, and the walking back alone is
wearisome and depressing."
"My return journey was depressing enough at first," said Lavendar,
"because the particular She was unkinder to me than I deserved even;
but better counsels have prevailed and I shall soon be able to meet
the reproachful gaze of stout matrons and sour spinsters more easily
than I have for a year past; you see the two families were friends and
each family had a large and interested connection!"
"If the opinion of a comparative stranger is of any use to you," said
Robinette, standing on the rock and scraping her stockinged foot free
of mud, "_I_ believe in you, personally! You don't seem a bit 'jilty'
to me! I'd let you marry my sister to-morrow and no questions asked!"
"I didn't know you had a sister," cried Lavendar.
"I haven't; that's only a figure of speech; just a phrase to show my
confidence."
"And isn't it ungrateful to be obliged to say I can't marry your
sister, after you have given me permission to ask her!"
"Not only ungrateful but unreasonable," said Robinette saucily,
turning her head to look up the river and discovering from her point
of vantage a moving object around the curve that led her to make
hazardous remarks, knowing rescue was not far away. "What have you
against my sister, pray?"
"Very little!" he said daringly, knowing well that she held him in her
hand, and could make him dumb or let him speak at any moment she
desired. "Almost nothing! only that _she_ is not offering me _her_
sister as a balm to my woes."
"She _has_ no sister; she is an only child!--There! there!" cried
Robinette, "the tide is coming up again, and the mud banks off in that
direction are all covered with water! I see somebody in a boat, rowing
towards us with superhuman energy. Oh! if I hadn't worn a white dress!
It will _not_ come smooth; and my lovely French hat is ruined by the
dampness! My one shoe shows how inappropriately I was shod, and
whoever is coming will say it is because I am an American. He will
never know you wouldn't let me go upstairs and dress properly."
"It doesn't matter anyway," rejoined Mark, "because it is only Carnaby
coming. You might know he would find us even if we were at the bottom
of the river."
XIII
CARNABY TO THE RESCUE
At Stoke Revel, in the meantime, the solemn rites of dinner had been
inaugurated as usual by the sounding of the gong at seven o'clock.
Mrs. de Tracy, Miss Smeardon, and Bates waited five minutes in silent
resignation, then Carnaby came down and was scolded for being late,
but there was no Robinette and no Lavendar.
"Carnaby," said his grandmother, "do you know where Mark intended
going this afternoon?"
"No, I don't," said Carnaby, sulkily.
"Your cousin Robinetta,"--with meaning,--"perhaps you know her
whereabouts?"
"Not I!" replied Carnaby with affected nonchalance. "I was ferreting
with Wilson." He had ferreted perhaps for fifteen minutes and then
spent the rest of the afternoon in solitary discontent, but he would
not have owned it for the world.
"Call Bates," commanded Mrs. de Tracy. Bates entered. "Do you know if
Mr. Lavendar intended going any distance to-day? Did he leave any
message?"
"Mr. Lavendar, ma'am," said Bates, "Mr. Lavendar and Mrs. Loring they
went out in the boat after tea. Mr. Lavendar asked William for the
key, and William he went down and got out the oars and rudder,
ma'am."
"Does William know where they went?" asked Mrs. de Tracy in high
displeasure. "Was it to Wittisham?"
"No, ma'am, William says they went down stream. He thinks perhaps they
were going to the Flag Rock, and he says the gentleman wouldn't have a
hard pull, as the tide was going out. But Mr. Lavendar knows the river
well, ma'am, as well as Mr. Carnaby here."
"Then I conclude there is no immediate cause for anxiety," said Mrs.
de Tracy with satire. "You can serve dinner, Bates; there seems no
reason why we should fast as yet! However, Carnaby," she continued,
"as the men cannot be spared at this hour, you had better go at once
and see what has happened to our guests."
"Right you are," cried Carnaby with the utmost alacrity. He was
hungry, but the prospect of escape was better than food. He rushed
away, and his boat was in mid-river before Mrs. de Tracy and Miss
Smeardon had finished their tepid soup.
A very slim young moon was just rising above the woods, but her tender
light cast no shadows as yet, and there were no stars in the sky, for
it was daylight still. The evening air was very fresh and cool; there
was no wind, and the edges of the river were motionless and smooth,
although in mid-stream the now in-coming tide clucked and swirled as
it met the rush. Over at Wittisham one or two lights were beginning to
twinkle, and there came drifting across the water a smell of wood
smoke that suggested evening fires. Carnaby handled a boat well, for
he had been born a sailor, as it were, and his long, powerful strokes
took him along at a fine pace. But although he was going to look for
Robinette and Mark, he was rather angry with both of them, and in no
hurry. He rested on his oars indifferently and let the tide carry him
up as it liked, while, with infinite zest, he unearthed a cigarette
case from the recesses of his person, lit a cigarette, and smoked it
coolly. Under Carnaby's apparent boyishness, there was a certain
somewhat dangerous quality of precocity, which was stimulated rather
than checked by his grandmother's repressive system. His smoking now
was less the monkey-trick of a boy, than an act of slightly cynical
defiance. He was no novice in the art, and smoked slowly and daintily,
throwing back his head and blowing the smoke sometimes through his
lips and sometimes through his nose. He looked for the moment older
than his years, and a difficult young customer at that. His present
sulky expression disappeared, however, under the influence of tobacco
and adventure.
"Where the dickens are they?" he began to wonder, pulling harder.
A bend in the river presently solved the mystery. On a wide stretch of
mud-bank, which the tide had left bare in going out, but was now
beginning to cover again, a solitary boat was stranded.
With this clue to guide him, Carnaby's bright eyes soon discovered the
two dim forms in the distance.
"Ahoy!" he shouted, and received a joyous answer. Robinette and Mark
were the two derelicts, and their rescuer skimmed towards them with
all his strength.
He could get only within a few yards of the rock to which their boat
was tied, and from that distance he surveyed them, expecting to find a
dismal, ship-wrecked pair, very much ashamed of themselves and
getting quite weary of each other. On the contrary the faces he could
just distinguish in the uncertain light, were radiant, and Robinette's
voice was as gay as ever he had heard it. He leaned upon his oars and
looked at them with wonder.
"Angel cousin!" cried Robinette. "Have you a little roast mutton about
you somewhere, we are so hungry!"
"You _are_ a pretty pair!" he remarked. "What have you been and
done?"
"We just went for a row after tea, Middy dear," said Robinette, "and
look at the result."
"You're not rowing now," observed Carnaby pointedly.
"No," said Mark, "we gave up rowing when the water left us, Carnaby.
Conversation is more interesting in the mud."
"But how did you get here? I thought you were going to the Flag Rock?"
demanded Carnaby.
"Is there a Flag Rock, Middy dear? I didn't know," said Robinette
innocently. "It shows we shouldn't go anywhere without our first
cousin once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the
water went away and left us." Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too,
and Carnaby's look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon
them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so
senseless, viewed in any other light.
"It's nearly eight o'clock," he said solemnly. "Perhaps you can form
some idea as to what grandmother's saying, and Bates."
"Well, you're going to be our rescuer, Middy darling, so it doesn't
matter," said Robinette. "Look! the water's coming up."
But Carnaby seemed in no mood for waiting. He had taken off his boots,
and rolled up his trousers above his knees.
"I'd let Lavendar wade ashore the best way he could!" he said, "but I
s'pose I've got to save you or there'd be a howl."
"No one would howl any louder than you, dear, and you know it. Don't
step in!" shrieked Robinette, "I've confided a shoe already to the
river-mud! I just put my foot in a bit, to test it, and down the poor
foot went and came up without its shoe. Oh, Middy dear, if your young
life--"
"Blow my young life!" retorted Carnaby. He was performing gymnastics
on the edge of his boat, letting himself down and heaving himself up,
by the strength of his arms. His legs were covered with mud.
"No go!" he said. "It's as deep as the pit here; sometimes you can
find a rock or a hard bit. We must just wait."
They had not long to wait after all, for presently a rush of the tide
sent the water swirling round the stranded boat, and carried Carnaby's
craft to it.
"Now it'll be all right," said he. "You push with the boat-hook, Mark,
and I'll pull"; but it took a quarter of an hour's pushing and pulling
to get the boat free of the mud.
Except for the moon it would have been quite dark when the party
reached the pier. They mounted the hill in some silence. It was
difficult for Robinette to get along with her shoeless foot; Lavendar
wanted to help her, but she demanded Carnaby's arm. He was sulking
still. There was something he felt, but could not understand, in the
subtle atmosphere of happiness by which the truant couple seemed to be
surrounded; a something through which he could not reach; that seemed
to put Robinette at a distance from him, although her shoulder touched
his and her hand was on his arm. Growing pangs of his manhood assailed
him, the male's jealousy of the other male. For the moment he hated
Mark; Mark talking joyous nonsense in a way rather unlike himself, as
if the night air had gone to his head.
"I am glad you had the ferrets to amuse you this afternoon," said
Robinette, in a propitiatory tone. "Ferrets are such darlings, aren't
they, with their pink eyes?"
"O! _darlings_," assented Carnaby derisively. "One of the darlings
bit my finger to the bone, not that that's anything to you."
"Oh! Middy dear, I am sorry!" cried Robinette. "I'd kiss the place to
make it well, if we weren't in such a hurry!"
Carnaby began to find that a dignified reserve of manner was very
difficult to keep up. His grandmother could manage it, he reflected,
but he would need some practice. When they came to a place where there
were sharp stones strewn on the road, he became a mere boy again quite
suddenly, and proposed a "queen's chair" for Robinette. And so he and
Lavendar crossed hands, and one arm of Robinette encircled the boy's
head, while the other just touched Lavendar's neck enough to be
steadied by it. Their laughter frightened the sleepy birds that night.
The demoralized remnant of a Bank Holiday party would have been,
Lavendar observed, respectability itself in comparison with them; and
certainly no such group had ever approached Stoke Revel before. They
were to enter by a back door, and Carnaby was to introduce them to
the housekeeper's room, where he undertook that Bates would feed them.
Lavendar alone was to be ambassador to the drawing room.
"The only one of us with a boot on each foot, of course we appoint him
by a unanimous vote," said Robinette.
But the chief thing that Carnaby remembered, after all, of that
evening's adventure, was Robinette's sudden impulsive kiss as she bade
him good-night, Lavendar standing by. She had never kissed him before,
for all her cousinliness, but she just brushed his cool, round cheek
to-night as if with a swan's-down puff.
"That's a shabby thing to call a kiss!" said the embarrassed but
exhilarated youth.
"Stop growling, you young cub, and be grateful; half a loaf is better
than no bread," was Lavendar's comment as he watched the draggled and
muddy but still charming Robinette up the stairway.
XIV
THE EMPTY SHRINE
Lavendar had discovered, much to his dismay, that he must return to
London upon important business; it was even a matter of uncertainty
whether his father could spare him again or would consent to his
returning to Stoke Revel to conclude Mrs. de Tracy's arrangements
about the sale of the land.
Affairs of the heart are like thunderstorms; the atmosphere may
sometimes seem charged with electricity, and yet circumstances, like a
sudden wind that sweeps the clouds away before they break, may cause
the lovers to drift apart. Or all in a moment may come thunder,
lightning, and rain from a clear sky, and there is nothing that is apt
to precipitate matters like an unexpected parting.
When Lavendar announced that he had to leave Stoke Revel, two pairs
of eyes, Miss Smeardon's and Carnaby's, instantly looked at Robinette
to see how she received the news, but she only smiled at the moment.
She was just beginning her breakfast, and like the famous Charlotte,
"went on cutting bread and butter," without any sign of emotion.
"Hurrah!" thought the boy. "Now we can have some fun, and I'll perhaps
make her see that old Lavendar isn't the only companion in the
world."
"She minds," thought Miss Smeardon, "for she buttered that piece of
bread on the one side a minute ago, and now she's just done it on the
other--and eaten it too."
"She doesn't care a bit," thought Lavendar. "She's not even changed
colour; my going or staying is nothing to her; I needn't come back."
He had made up his mind to return just the same, if it were at all
possible, and he told Mrs. de Tracy so. She remarked graciously that
he was a welcome guest at any time, and Carnaby, hearing this,
pinched Lord Roberts till he howled like a fiend, and fled for comfort
to his mistress's lap.
"You little coward," said Carnaby, "you should be ashamed to bear the
name of a hero."
"I've mentioned to you before, Carnaby, I think, that I dislike that
jest," said his grandmother, and Carnaby advancing to the injured
beast said, "Yes, ma'am, and so does Bobs, doesn't he, Bobs?" reducing
the lap-dog to paroxysms of fury. "Would it be any better if I called
him _Kitchener_?" hissing the word into the animal's face. "Jealous,
Bobs? Eh? _Kitchener_." This last word had a rasping sound that
irritated the little creature more than ever; his teeth jibbered with
anger, and Miss Smeardon had to offer him a saucer of cream before he
could be calmed down enough for the rest of the party to hear
themselves speak.
"Had you nice letters this morning? Mine were very uninteresting,"
Robinette remarked to Lavendar as they stood together at the doorway
in the sunshine, while Carnaby chased the lap-dog round and round the
lawn.
"I had only two letters; one was from my sister Amy, the candid one!
her letters are not generally exhilarating."
"Oh, I know, home letters are usually enough to send one straight to
bed with a headache! They never sound a note of hope from first to
last; although if you had no home, but only a house, like me, with no
one but a caretaker in it, you'd be very thankful to get them, doleful
or not."
"I doubt it," Mark answered, for Amy's letter seemed to be burning a
hole in his pocket at that moment. He had skimmed it hurriedly
through, but parts of it were already only too plain.
When the others had gone into the house, he went off by himself, and
jumping the low fence that divided the lawn from the fields beyond, he
flung himself down under a tree to read it over again. Carnaby,
spying him there, came rushing from the house, and was soon pouring
out a tale of something that had happened somewhere, and throwing
stones as he talked, at the birds circling about the ivied tower of
the little church.
The field was full of buttercups up to the very churchyard walls. "I
must get away by myself for a bit," Lavendar thought. "That boy's
chatter will drive me mad." At this point Carnaby's volatile attention
was diverted by the sight of a gardener mounting a ladder to clear the
sparrows' nests from the water chutes, and he jumped up in a twinkling
to take his part in this new joy. Lavendar rose, and strolled off with
his hands in his pockets and his bare head bent. The grass he walked
in was a very Field of the Cloth of Gold. His shoes were gilded by the
pollen from the buttercups, his eyes dazzled by their colour; it was a
relief to pass through the stone archway that led into the little
churchyard. To his spirit at that moment the chill was refreshing. He
loitered about for a few minutes, and then seeing that the door was
open, he entered the church, closing the door gently behind him.
It was very quiet in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was
softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a
moment of stillness when he might think things out by himself.
He took out Amy's letter, smoothing it flat on the prayer books before
him, and forced himself to read it through. The early paragraphs dealt
with some small item of family news which in his present state of mind
mattered to Lavendar no more than the distant chirruping of the birds,
out there in the sunshine. "You seem determined to stay for some time
at Stoke Revel," his sister wrote. "No doubt the pretty American is
the attraction. She sounds charming from your description, but my dear
man, that's all froth! How many times have I heard this sort of thing
from you before! Remember I know everything about your former loves."
"You _don't_, then," said Lavendar to himself. Down, down, down at the
bottom of the well of the heart where truth lies, there is always some
remembrance, generally a very little one, that can never be told to
any confidant.
"You will find out faults in Mrs. Loring presently, just like the rest
of them," continued the pitiless writer. (Amy's handwriting was
painfully distinct.) "I must tell you that at the Cowleys' the other
day, I suddenly came face to face with Gertrude Meredith _and Dolly_!
Dolly looks a good deal older already and fatter, I thought. I fear
she is losing her looks, for her colour has become fixed, and she
_will_ wear no collars still, although on a rather thick neck, it's
not at all becoming. I spoke to her for about three minutes, as it was
less awkward, when we met suddenly face to face like that. She laughed
a good deal, and asked for you rather audaciously, I thought. They
live near Winchester now, and since the Colonel's death are pretty
badly off, Gertrude says. Dolly is going to Devonshire to stay with
the Cowleys; you may meet her there any day, remember. It does seem
incredible to me that a man of your discrimination could have been won
by the obvious devotion of a girl like Dolly; but having given your
word I almost think you would better have kept it, rather than suffer
all this criticism from a host of mutual friends."
Lavendar groaned aloud. He had a good memory, and with all too great
distinctness did he now remember Dolly Meredith's laugh. How wretched
it had all been; not a word had ever passed between them that had any
value now. If he could have washed the thought of her forever from his
memory, how greatly he would have rejoiced at that moment.
Well, it was over; written down against him, that he had been what the
world called a jilt and a fool; yes, certainly a fool, but not so
great a one as to follow his folly to its ultimate conclusion, and tie
himself for life to a woman he did not love.
Lavendar was extraordinarily sensitive about the breaking of his
engagement; partly because Miss Meredith herself, in her first rage,
had avowed his responsibility for her blighted future, giving him no
chance for chivalrous behaviour; partly because in all his transient
love affairs he had easily tired of the women who inspired them. He
seemed thirsty for love, but weary of it almost as soon as the draught
reached his lips.
And now had he a chance again?--or was it all to end in disappointment
once more, in that cold disappointment of the heart that has received
stones for bread? It was not entirely his own fault; he had expected
much from life, and hitherto had received very little. But Robinette!
"Let me find all her faults now," he said to himself, "or evermore
keep silent; meantime I hope I am not concealing too many of my
own."
He tried to force himself into criticism; to look at her as a cold
observer from the outside would have done; for that curious Border
country of Love which he had entered has not an equable climate at
all. It is fire and frost alternate; and criticism is either roused
almost to a morbid pitch, or else the faculty is drugged, and nothing,
not even the enumeration of a hundred foibles will awaken it for a
time.
When the cold fit had been upon him the evening before, Lavendar had
said to himself that her manner was too free--that she had led him on
too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he
repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish,
too unthinking, in what she said and did. "But she's a widow after
all, though she's only two and twenty," he went on to himself. "Hang
it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband's grave I
should be moaning at that; and because I see that it is not, I become
critical. There's nothing quite perfect in life!"
He had begun by noticing some little defects in her personal
appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles
matter, here or there? Then he remembered all that he had heard said
about American women. Did those pretty clothes of hers mean that she
would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man
with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her?
and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of
what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale.
"At seventy, say, when I am palsied and she is old and fat, will
romance be alive then? Will such feeling leave anything real behind it
when it falls away, as the white blossoms on Mrs. Prettyman's plum
tree will shrink and fall a fortnight hence?"
He looked about him. On the walls of the little church were tablets
with the de Tracy names; the names of her forefathers amongst them.
Under his feet were other flags with names upon them too; and out
there in the sunshine were the grave-stones of a hundred dead. How
many of them had been happy in their loves?
Not so many, he thought, if all were told, and why should he hope to
be different? Yet surely this was a new feeling, a worthy one, at
last. It was not for her charming person that he loved her; not
because of her beauty and her gaiety only; but because he had seen in
her something that gave a promise of completion to his own nature, the
something that would satisfy not only his senses but his empty heart.
He clenched his hands on the carved top of the old pew in front of
him, which was fashioned into a laughing gnome with the body of a
duck. "And if this should be all a dream," he asked himself again, "if
this should all be false too! Good Lord!" he cried half aloud, "I
want to be honest now! I want to find the truth. My whole life is on
the throw this time!"
There was a moment's silence after he had uttered the words. He got up
and moved slowly down the aisle, opening the door, seeing again the
meadow of buttercups, yellow as gold, and listening again to the
sparrows chirruping in the sunshine outside.
"I have been in that church a quarter of an hour," he said to himself,
"and in trying to dive to the depths of myself and find out whether I
was giving a woman all I had to give, I did not get time to consider
that woman's probable answer, should I place my uninteresting life and
liberty at her disposal."
XV
"NOW LUBIN IS AWAY"