"A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE."
The hunting was nearly over by the time Allan Carew had established
himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud. The selection of half a
dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or
twice a week; and he had revelled in the convenience of express trains
between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty
train service between Fendyke and Cambridge, which made a journey from
his native village a trial of youthful patience.
London was full of pleasant people at this after-Easter season, so
Allan took his time at Tattersall's, saw his friends, dined them, or
dined with them, at those clubs which young men most affect, went to
his favourite theatres, rode in the Park, and saw a race or two at
Sandown, all in the process of buying his horses; but at last the stud
was complete, and his stud-groom, a man he had brought from Suffolk,
the man who taught him to ride, had shaken a wise head, and told his
young master to stop buying.
"You've got just as many as you can use, Mr. Allan," he said, "and if
you buy another one, it 'ud mean another b'y, and we shall have b'ys
enough for me to keep in order as it is."
So Allan held his hand. "And now I am a country gentleman," he said,
"and I must go and live on my acres."
Everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him. He was under none
of the disadvantages of the new man about whom people have to ask
each other, "Who is he?" He came to Matcham with the best possible
credentials. His father was a man of old family, against whose name no
evil thing had ever been written. His mother was an earl's daughter;
and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory
was respected in the neighbourhood--a man of easy temper and open hand,
a kind master, and a staunch friend.
Allan found his hall-table covered with cards when he returned from his
London holiday, and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning
the calls that had been made for the most part in his absence. To a
shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land
would have been terrible--invading unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and
seeing strange faces, wondering which of two matrons was his hostess
and which the friend or sister-in-law--an ordeal as awful as any
mediæval torture; but Allan was not shy, and he accepted the situation
with a winning ease which pleased everybody. When he blundered--and
his blunders were rare--he laughed at his mistake, and turned it
into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes
of small-talk. He had a quick eye, and in a room full of people saw
at a glance the welcoming smile and extended hand which marked his
hostess. "Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood," said everybody;
and the mothers of marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the
acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennett was to cultivate
the irreproachable Bingley.
In the course of that round of visits Allan contrived to find out a
good deal about the neighbourhood which was henceforward to be his home.
He discovered that it was, above all, a hunting neighbourhood; but that
it was also a shooting neighbourhood; and that there was bad blood
between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted
to hunt foxes. From the point of view of the rights of property, the
shooters would appear to be in their right, since they only wanted to
feed and foster birds on their own land; while the hunting-man--were
he but the season-ticket-holding solicitor from Bloomsbury--wanted to
hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man, and to spoil that
other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him,
the season-ticket holder, at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he
affected. But, on the other hand, hunting is a strictly national sport,
and shooting is a selfish, hole-and-corner kind of pleasure; so the
hunting men claimed immemorial rights and privileges as against the
owners of woods and copses, and the hatchers of pheasants.
Allan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at
Matcham. The neighbourhood had taken lately to golf, and that game
had found favour with old and young of both sexes. Everybody could
not hunt, but everybody could play golf, or fancy that he or she was
playing golf, or, at least, look on from a respectful distance while
golf was being played. The golf-links on Matcham Common had therefore
become the most popular institution in the neighbourhood, and the
scarlet coat of the golfer was oftener seen than the fox-hunter in
pink, and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Matcham
contest for the bangles and photograph-frames which the golf club
offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye.
Allan, who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical
exercise, was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club,
and speedily became a familiar figure on the links. Here, as elsewhere,
he met people who told him he was like Geoffrey Wornock, and who
praised Wornock's skill at golf just as other people had praised his
riding or his shooting.
"He seems to be something of a Crichton, this Wornock of yours," Allan
said sometimes, with a suspicion of annoyance.
He was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never
seen--weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence; weary of
being told that the resemblance was in expression rather than in actual
feature; that there was an indefinable something in his face which
recalled Wornock in an absolutely startling manner; while the details
of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Wornock's
face.
"Yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness,"
said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove, a personage in the neighbourhood,
and the cleverest woman among Allan's new acquaintances. "It is the
individuality, the life and movement of the face, that are the same.
The likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and
colour."
There was a curious feeling in Allan's mind by the time this kind of
thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly
everybody he knew in Matcham--a feeling which was partly irritation,
partly interest in the man whose outward likeness to himself might be
allied with some identity of mind and inclinations.
"I wonder whether I shall like him very much, or hate him very much,"
he said to Mrs. Mornington. "I feel sure I must do one or the other."
"You are sure to like him. He is not the kind of man for anybody
to hate," answered the lady quickly; and then, growing suddenly
thoughtful, she added, "You may find a something wanting in his
character, perhaps; but you cannot dislike him. He is thoroughly
likeable."
"What is the something wanting which you have found?"
"I did not say I had found----"
"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak
spot if you had not found it yourself!"
"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs.
Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with
you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which
doctors--speaking of a patient's physical condition--call want of tone.
There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a
boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton
together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this
neighbourhood. I like him--I am sorry for him."
"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"
"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his
mother is, I fear, a poor creature."
"Eccentric, I understand."
"Lamentably so--a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose
society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping
charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to
be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe
in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position
to which she has been elevated."
"Who _was_ Mrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have
heard hints----"
"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted
Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows
who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been
seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her
antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about
seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring
in Bohemia--a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past
sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would
as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife,
but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he
returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married
in Germany--at Dresden, I believe--and who looked much more like dying
within the next five years than he did."
"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"
"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man
to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed
painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very
prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly
to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were
rumours of an alarming kind about her health--her mental health. Our
own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three
generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about
her. 'Was it serious?' people asked--for I suppose you know that in
a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen
at a particular house very often, people _will_ ask questions
of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that.
Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip.
By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to
Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil
was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm
afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one
detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners
and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives,
and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our
men-folk."
"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"
"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only
been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and
heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the
future owner of Discombe to be born in--Grindelwald--at the sign of
the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This
comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was
ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have
been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to
the house in which he ought to have been born--a poor little fragile
Frenchified object, hanging on to a French _bonne_, and speaking
nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the
little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"
Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this
ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she
were describing the events of yesterday.
"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.
"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He
was very active and intelligent--hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He
frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close
friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking
an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of
the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have
let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible,
matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the
clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down
to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing--what
can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as
those?--a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar
to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses?
I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of
her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon
her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in
my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing
to go. What can one do with such a woman?"
"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"
"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression
of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above
the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told
that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and
appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both
organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have
not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."
"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.
"She is interesting--only she won't let one be interested in her."
"Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?"
"Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to
that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the
fields--Filbury parish church--nearly six miles from Discombe, or she
drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes
plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They
had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe."
"I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan.
"Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This
interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint,
remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra
would have been interesting at forty-five."
"I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see
the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am
interested."
"Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you."
"Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"
"Ah, but he is not your double! The village mind is given to
exaggeration. He has not your firm chin, nor your thoughtful brow. His
face is a reminiscence of yours. It is weaker in every characteristic,
in every line. You are the substance, he the reflection."
"Now, you are laughing at my egotism, and developing my vanity."
"No, believe me, no!" protested Mrs. Mornington, gaily. "I see you both
with all your defects and qualities. You have the stronger character,
but you have not Geoffrey's fascinating personality. His very faults
are attractive. He is by no means effeminate; yet there is a something
womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him. He has inherited
his mother's sensitive, dreamy temperament. I feel sure he would see
a ghost if there were one in his neighbourhood. The ghost would go to
him instinctively, as dogs go unbidden to certain people--sometimes
to people who don't care about them; while the genuine dog-lover
may be doing his best to attract bow-wow's attention, and failing
ignominiously."
"Every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Wornock. In a
neighbourhood like this, where everybody is sensible and commonplace
and conventional, excepting always your brilliant self"--Mrs.
Mornington nodded, and put her feet on the fender--"it is so delightful
to meet some one who does not move just on the common lines, and is not
worked by the common machinery."
"You will find nothing common about Geoffrey," said the lady. "I have
known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit, and
he was just as enigmatical to me the day he left for Bombay as he was
on his seventh birthday. I know that he has winning manners, and that I
am very fond of him; and that is all I know about him."
* * * * *
Allan drove to Filbury on the following Sunday, and was in his place
in the little old parish church ten minutes before the service began.
The high oak pews were not favourable to his getting a good view of the
congregation, since, when seated, the top of his head was only on a
level with the top of his pew; but by leaving the door of the pew ajar
he contrived to see Mrs. Wornock as she went up the narrow aisle--nave
there was none, the pews forming a solid square in the centre of the
church. Yes, he was assured that slim, graceful figure in a plain
grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Wornock and no
other. Indeed, the inference was easily arrived at, for the rest of
the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant-farmer and
agricultural-labourer class--the women-folk homely and ruddy-cheeked,
the men ponderous, and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes.
The lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied
the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading-desk--the old
three-decker arrangement, for clerk, parson, and preacher. Mr. Wornock
was patron of the living of Filbury and Discombe, and this large,
square pew had belonged to the Wornocks ever since the rebuilding of
the church in Charles the Second's reign, a year or two after the
manor-house was built, when the estate, which had hitherto been an
outlying possession of the Wornocks, became their place of residence,
and most important property.
Allan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body
of the church--a delicate profile, worn as if with long years of
thoughtfulness; a sweet, sad face that had lost all freshness of
colouring, but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought
and solitude, where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the
mind. A pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face,
Allan thought, when the lady turned towards the organ during the _Te
Deum_, listening to the village voices, which sang truer than
village voices generally do.
Allan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about
nothing particular, on a text in Nehemiah, which suggested not the
faintest bearing on the Christian life--a sermon preached by an elderly
gentleman in a black silk gown, whose eloquence would have been more
impressive had his false teeth been a better fit. After the sermon
there was a hymn, and the old-fashioned plate was carried round by
a blacksmith, whom Allan recognized as a man who had fastened his
hunter's shoe one day at a forge on the outskirts of Filbury, in the
midst of a run; and then the little congregation quietly dispersed,
after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the
lych-gate.
Allan's gig was waiting for him near the gate, and a victoria, on
which he recognized the Wornock crest--a dolphin crowned--stood in the
shade of a row of limes, which marked the boundary of the Vicarage
garden. Allan waited a little, expecting to see Mrs. Wornock come out;
and then, as she did not appear, he re-entered the churchyard, and
strayed among moss-mantled tomb-stones, reading the village names, the
village histories of birth and death, musing, as he read, upon the long
eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives.
The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns
in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the
angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were
more bloom than bush--all these made life to-day a sensuous delight
which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as
to the bliss of living. If it were always thus--a crust of bread and
cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between
bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan
thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon
the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle
undulations between Filbury and Discombe.
What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the
burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing
his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The
carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was
there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the
church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near
the pulpit.
Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the
still air--a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed
by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by
the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan
remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs.
Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave
the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered
after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He
sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music
for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long
rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the
heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the
lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition
of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to
see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle
of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss
and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense
growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of
ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still
youthful form to pass.
In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which
turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle
of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and
transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and
the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow.
Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line--
"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
That expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as
she looked at him; changed to astonishment, interrogation, which
gradually softened to a grave curiosity, an anxious scrutiny. Then, as
if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners, the heavy
eyelids sank, a faint blush coloured the thin cheeks, and she hurried
onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her.
Her footman, in a sober brown livery, was holding the gate open for
her. Her horses were shaking their bridles. She stepped lightly into
the victoria, nodded an adieu to the schoolboy who had blown the organ
bellows, and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane.
"So that is my double's mother. An interesting face, a graceful figure,
and a lady to the tips of her fingers. Whether she is county, or not
county, Geoffrey Wornock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother.
Nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman."
He brooded on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs.
Wornock's face as she looked at him. Clearly she, too, had seen the
likeness which he bore to her son.
"I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far
away," speculated Allan, "or whether she feels kindly towards me for
the sake of that absent son?"
This question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own
hand. Among the letters on Allan's breakfast-table on Wednesday morning
there was one in a strange penmanship, which took his breath away, for
on the envelope, in bold brown letters, appeared the address, Discombe
Manor.
He thrust all his other letters aside--those uninteresting letters
which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from
tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for
him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him--the whole race of
spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter
from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:--
"DEAR SIR,
"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened
by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call
upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we
should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can,
if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your
acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home
on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I
dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will
hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me
of my nearest and dearest.
"I am generally at home in the afternoon.
"Very truly yours,
"E. WORNOCK."
"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no
Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents?
Eliza, perhaps--and she sinks it, thinking it common and
housemaidish--forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name,
does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen--a
milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my
mother's name--graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good
enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been
Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness
of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe
Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish--and I want to see what
Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."
The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of
the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.
The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail
as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park.
The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly
picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled
roof, and level rows of windows--those of the upper story were the
original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower
floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows,
of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk,
beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a
moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses
of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens
surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal
of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the
ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped
hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of
obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of
roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned
perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that
seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the
verdant monotony.
If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even
more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is
dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches,
sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining
panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an
air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs
and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings
flourish at somebody else's expense.
Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of
the building--he noted them, but lost count of their number--keepers'
lodges in the woodland which skirted the park--gardeners' or
dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house;
cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where
gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque
feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of
these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more
obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing
that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges,
and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which
impressed the stranger.
That sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Wornock's had slain the viper envy
in Allan's breast. When first he rode through those woods and over
those undulating pastures and by those gables embowered in roses and
wisteria, or starred with the pale blue clematis, he had felt a certain
sour discontent with his own good fortune, about which people, from
his mother down to the acquaintance of yesterday, prattled and prosed
so officiously. He was sick of hearing himself called a lucky fellow.
Luck, forsooth! what was his luck compared with Geoffrey Wornock's?
That a bachelor uncle of his, having scraped together a modest little
fortune, and not being able to carry it with him to the nether-world,
should have passed it on to him, Allan, was not such a strange event as
to warrant the running commentary of congratulation that had assailed
his ear ever since he came to Matcham. No one congratulated Geoffrey
Wornock. Nobody talked of _his_ good luck. He had been born in
the purple, and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right
to the best things that this earth can give--to a Carolian mansion,
and chase and park, and wide-spreading farms. There seemed to Allan
Carew's self-consciousness an implied disparagement of himself in
the tone which Matcham people took about Geoffrey Wornock. They in a
manner congratulated him on his likeness to the Lord of Discombe Manor,
and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this
resemblance to the local magnate.
To-day, however, Allan forgot all those infinitesimal vexations which
in the beginning of his residence at Matcham had made the name of
Wornock odious to him. His thoughts were full of that pale sad face,
the wasted cheeks, the heavy eyelids, the somewhat sickly transparency
of complexion, the large violet eyes, which lit up the whole face as
with a light that is not of this world. It was the most spiritual
countenance he had ever seen--the first face which had ever suggested
to him the epithet ethereal.
He remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Wornock; her
encouragement of spirit-rapping people and thought-reading people,
and every phase of modern super-naturalism; her passion for music--a
passion so absorbing as almost to pass the border-line of sanity;
at least in the opinion of the commonplace sane. He wondered no
longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting, and
shooting, and dinner-giving, and tea-drinking population scattered
within a radius of eight or ten miles of Discombe; the people with
whom, had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural
lady, she should have been on intimate terms. She was among them, but
not of them, Allan told himself.
"Surely I am not in love with a woman old enough to be my mother!" he
thought, between jest and earnest, as he drove up to the house. "I have
not thought so persistently of any woman since I was sick for love of
the dean's pretty daughter, fairest and last of my calf-loves."
He was not wholly in jest, for during the last three days the lady's
image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on "possession."
It was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him, and as
if he must needs wait until the enchantress who held him in her mystic
bands should unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty.
The hall door stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun. A
large black poodle, with an air of ineffable wisdom, was stretched near
the threshold; a liver-and-white St. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk upon
the grass in front of the steps; and on the broad terrace to the right
of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendour of his tail, and
strutted in stately slowness towards the sun.
"House and garden belong to fairyland," thought Allan. "The enchantress
has but to wave her wand and fix the picture for a century. We may
have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence, and
Mrs. Wornock's age may count as girlhood, when some gay young prince
of fifty-five shall ride through the tangled woodland to awaken the
sleeper. Who can tell? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we
may be.'"