"IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON."
The hall door stood wide open to the sunlight, sufficiently guarded by
that splendid brute, the St. Bernard.
A middle-aged footman in the sober Wornock livery came at the sound of
the bell, the St. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly
eyes, and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability.
Mrs. Wornock was at home. A slow and solemn butler now appeared upon
the scene, and led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall;
and at the end of this corridor, like Vandyke's famous portrait of
Charles the First at Warwick Castle, the full-length portrait of a
young man in a hunting-coat looked Allan Carew in the face.
In spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of
Discombe, the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the
bright white light fairly startled him. For the moment it seemed to him
as if he had seen his own reflection in a cheval-glass; but as he drew
nearer the canvas the likeness lessened, the difference in the features
came out, and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a
reminiscence. Distance was needed to make the illusion, and he could
understand now why his new friends of the hunting-field should have
taken him for Wornock on that first morning when he rode up to them as
a stranger.
The portrait was by Millais, painted with as much _brio_ and
vigour as the better-known picture of the young Marchioness of Huntley.
Mr. Wornock was standing in an old stone doorway, leaning in an easy
attitude against the deep arch of the door, hunting-crop, cigar-case,
and hat on a table in the background, standing where he had stood on
many a winter morning, waiting for his horse.
There was a skylight over this end of the corridor, and the portrait of
the master of the house shone out brilliantly under the clear top-light.
The butler stopped within a few paces of the portrait, opened a low,
old-fashioned door, and ushered Mr. Carew into a spacious room, at
the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window, beyond
which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden, a cypress avenue,
where statues were gleaming here and there in the sunshine. There was
a grand piano on one side of the room, an organ on the other; books
filled every recess. This spacious apartment was evidently music-room
and library rather than drawing-room, and here, amidst books and music,
lived the lonely lady of the house.
She came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the
room, holding out her hand.
"It was very good of you to come so soon," she said, in her low,
musical voice. "I wanted so much to see you--to know you. Yes, you are
very like him. One of those accidental likenesses which are so common,
and yet seem so strange. My husband had a friend who was murdered
because he was like Sir Robert Peel; but my son is not a public man,
and he has no enemies. You will run no risks on account of your
likeness to him.
"I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honour of knowing
Mrs. Wornock," said Allan, taking the seat to which she motioned him,
as she resumed her low chair by the window.
"Indeed, you have no reason. I am a very stupid person. I go nowhere, I
see very few people; and the people I do see are people whom you would
think unworthy of your interest."
"Not if you are interested in them. They cannot be unworthy."
"Oh, I am easily interested! I like strange people. I like to believe
strange things. Your friend, Mrs. Mornington, will tell you that I am a
foolish person."
"You have seen Mrs. Mornington lately?" questioned Allan.
"Yes; she was here yesterday afternoon. She is always bright and
amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She is
always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her
society. She talked of you, but I did not tell her I wanted to make
your acquaintance. She would have offered to make a luncheon-party for
me to meet you--or something dreadful of that kind."
"You have a great dislike to society, Mrs. Wornock?" he asked, keenly
interested.
Her manner was so fresh and simple, almost childlike in its confiding
candour, and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner.
It is the fashion of our day for women of five and forty to look
young, even to girlishness; but most women of five and forty are
considerably indebted to modern art for that advantage. Here there was
no art. The pale, clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the
perfumer's palette. No _poudre des fées_ blanched the delicate
brow; no _rose d'amour_ flushed the cheek; no _eau de Medée_
brightened the large violet eyes. The lines which thought and sorrow
had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised, and in the soft, pale
gold of the hair there were threads of silver. The youthfulness of the
face was in its colouring and expression--the complexion so delicately
fair, the countenance so trustful and pleading. It was the countenance
of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were
unknown.
"You saw my son's portrait in the corridor?" said Mrs. Wornock.
"Yes. It struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture--almost as
powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury, which I remember in the
Millais collection at the Grosvenor."
"But as for the likeness to yourself, now--did that strike you as
forcibly as it has struck other people?"
"I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim, 'That
is I or my brother!' But as I came nearer the picture I saw there was
considerable diversity. To begin with, your son is much handsomer than
I."
"The drawing of his features may be more correct, but you are quite
handsome enough," she answered, with her pretty friendly air, as if she
had been his aunt. "And your face is more strongly marked than his,
just as your voice is stronger," she added, with a sigh.
"Your son is not an invalid, I hope?"
"An invalid! No. But he is not very strong. He could not play football.
He hated even cricket. He is passionately fond of horses, and an ardent
sportsman; but he can be sadly idle. He likes to lie about in the
sunshine, reading or dreaming. I fear he is a dreamer, like his mother."
"He is not like you, in person."
"No."
"He is like his father, no doubt."
"You will see his father's picture, and you can judge for yourself.
Well, we are to be friends, are we not, Mr. Carew? And you will come
to see me sometimes; and if you ever have any little troubles which can
be lightened by a woman's sympathy, you will come and confide them to
me, I hope."
"It will be very sweet to be allowed to confide in so kind a friend,"
said Allan.
"My son will be home for his long leave before the end of the year, and
I want you to make him your friend. He is very amiable," again with a
suppressed sigh. "Come, now it is your turn to tell me something about
yourself. This room tells you all there is to be told about me."
"It tells me you are very fond of music."
"I live for it. Music has been my companion and consoler all my life."
"And I hope you will let me hear you play again some day."
"Again? Ah, I forgot! You were in the churchyard last Sunday while I
was playing. Did you listen?"
"As long as you played. I was under the open window most of the time."
"You are fond of organ music?"
"As fond as an ignorant man may be. I know nothing of the subtleties of
music. I have never been educated up to Wagner or Dvorak. I love the
familiar voices--Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod, Auber even, and I
adore our English master of melody, Sullivan. Does that shock you?"
"Not at all. I will play his cantata for you some day. If you have
nothing better to do with your time this afternoon, I should like to
show you my garden."
"I shall be enchanted. I am enchanted already with that long straight
walk, those walls of cypress and yew, that peacock sunning his emerald
and sapphire plumage by the dial. In such a garden did Beatrice hide
when Hero and her ladies talked of Benedick's passion; in such a garden
did Jessica and Lorenzo loiter under the moonlight."
"I see you love your Shakespeare."
"As interpreted by Irving and Ellen Terry. The Lyceum was the school in
which I learnt to love the bard. An Eton examination in Richard the
Second only prejudiced me against him."
"Mr. Wornock was a great Shakespearian."
They were in the garden by this time--sauntering with slow footsteps
along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk.
At the end of the cypress avenue there was a semicircular recess, shut
in by a raised bank, and a wall of clipped yew, in which, at regular
intervals, there were statues in dark green niches.
"Mr. Wornock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man.
The gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago,"
explained Mrs. Wornock.
Allan noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as "Mr. Wornock."
"That amphitheatre reminds me a little of the Boboli gardens," said
Allan; "but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no public
garden can have."
Three peacocks were trailing their plumage on the long lawns between
the house and the amphitheatre, and one less gorgeous but more
ethereal, a bird of dazzling whiteness, was perched, with outspread
tail, on an angle of the cypress wall.
The lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn, and crossed
the amphitheatre to a stone temple, open on the side fronting the
south-western sun, and spacious enough to accommodate a dozen people.
"If you had a garden-play, how delightfully this temple would serve for
a central point in your stage," said Allan, admiringly.
"People have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play--'Twelfth
Night,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing;' but I have always said no. I
should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden."
"Yet there are people who would think such a place as this created on
purpose for garden-parties, and who would desire nothing better than a
crowd of smart people."
Mrs. Wornock shuddered at the mention of smart people.
"A party of that kind would be misery for me," she said. "And now
tell me about yourself, and your relations. Mrs. Mornington told me
that your father and mother are both living, and that you inherited
Beechhurst from your uncle. I remember seeing Admiral Darnleigh years
and years ago, when everything at Discombe and at Matcham was new to
me. It must be sad for your mother to lose you from her own home."
"My mother is not given to sadness," Allan answered, smiling. "She is
the best and kindest of mothers, and I know she loves me as dearly as
any son need desire; but she is quite resigned to my having my own home
and my own interests. She would argue, perhaps, that were I to marry I
must have a house of my own, and that my establishment at Beechhurst is
only a little premature."
"You are very much attached to your mother?"
"Very much--and to my father."
"Your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the
dearer of the two."
"You have a quick ear for shades of meaning, Mrs. Wornock."
"Pray do not think me impertinent. I am not questioning you out of
idle curiosity. If we are to be friends in the future, I must know and
understand something of your life and your mind. But perhaps I bore
you--perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent."
"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I am deeply touched that you should offer to be
my friend. Be assured I have no reserve, and am willing--possibly too
willing--to talk of myself and my own people. I have no dark corners
in my life. My history is all open country--an uninteresting landscape
enough. But there is no difficult going--there are no bogs or risky
bits over which the inquiring spirit need skim lightly. Your ear did
not deceive you, just now. Fondly as I love my mother, I will freely
confess that the bond that draws me to my father is the stronger
bond. In the parrot jargon of the day, his is the more interesting
'personality.' He is a man of powerful intellect, whose mind has
done nothing for the good of the world--who will die unhonoured and
unremembered except by his familiar friends. There is one question I
have asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think--a
question which I first asked myself when I began to read classics
with him in my school vacations, and which I had not finished asking
myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first-class in
the Honour School. To me it has always been a mystery that a man of
wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly
destitute of ambition. My father was a young man when he married; he is
still in the prime of life; and for six and twenty years he has been
content to vegetate in Suffolk, and has regarded his annual visit to
London as more of an affliction than a relief. It is as if the hands
of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth. I have told
myself again and again that my father's life must have been shadowed
by some great sorrow before his marriage, young as he was when he
married."
Mrs. Wornock listened intently, her head slightly bent, her clasped
hands resting on her knee, her sensitive lips slightly parted.
"You say that your father married young," she said, after a brief
silence, in which she seemed to be thinking over his words. "What do
you call young in such a case?"
"My father was not three and twenty when he married--two years younger
than I am at this present hour--and yet the idea of matrimony has
never shaped itself in my mind. But you must not infer from anything
I have said that my father's has been an unhappy marriage. On the
contrary, he is devoted to my mother, and she to him. I cannot imagine
a better assorted couple. Each supplies the qualities wanting in the
other. She is all movement, impulse, and spontaneousness. He is calm
and meditative, with depths of thought and feeling which no one has
sounded. They are perfectly happy as husband and wife. But there is
a shade of melancholy that steals over my father in quiet, unoccupied
hours, which indicates a sorrow or a disappointment in the past. I have
taken it to mean an unhappy love-affair. I may be utterly wrong, and
the shadow may be cast by a disappointed ambition. It is not unlikely
that a man of powerful intellect and lymphatic temperament should feel
that he had wasted opportunities, and failed in life. It is quite easy
to imagine ambition without the energy to achieve."
She made no comment upon this, but Allan could see in her eager
countenance that she was intensely interested.
"Is your mother beautiful?" she asked timidly.
It seemed a foolish and futile question; and it jarred upon that
serious thought of his parents which had been inspired by her previous
questioning. But, after all, it was a natural question for a woman to
ask, and he smiled as he answered--
"No, my mother is not beautiful. I am not guilty of treason as a son
if I confess that she is plain, since she herself would be the first
to take offence at any sophistication of the truth. She has never
set up for being other than she is. She has a fine countenance and
a fine figure, straight as a dart, with a waist which a girl might
acknowledge without a blush. She dresses with admirable taste, and
always looks well, after her own fashion, exclusive of beautiful
features or brilliant colouring. She is what women call stylish, and
men distinguished. I am as proud as I am fond of her."
"Will she come to see you in your new home?"
"Most assuredly my mother will pay me a visit before the summer is
over, and I shall be charmed to bring you and her together."
"And your father? Will not he come?"
"I don't know. He is very difficult to move. He is like the lichen
on the old stone walls at home. He takes no particular interest in
chairs and tables; he would care not a fig for my new surroundings.
Besides, he saw Beechhurst years ago, when the Admiral was building and
improving. He has no curiosity to bring him here; and as for his son,
he knows he has only to want me for me to be at his side."
After this there came a silence. Certainly Mrs. Wornock was not gifted
as a conversationalist. She sat looking straight before her at the long
perspective of lawn and cypress, broad gravel walk, and narrow grass
plots, all verging to a point at which the old house rose square and
grey, crowned with cupola and bell. The peacocks strutted slowly along
the narrow lawn. The waters of a fountain flashed in the warm sunlight.
It was a garden that recalled Tivoli, or that old grave garden of the
Vatican, with its long level walks and prim flower-beds, in which
the Holy Father takes his restricted airing. In the Vatican pleasure
grounds there are peacocks and clipped hedges, and smooth greensward,
and formal cypress avenues, and quaint arbours; but the hum of Rome,
the echoes of the Papal Barrack, the rush of the Tiber are near; and
not even in that antique garden can there be this summer silence,
profound as in the enchanted isle where it seemeth always afternoon.
"Tell me more about yourself, your childhood, your youth," Mrs. Wornock
asked suddenly, with an air of agitated impatience which took Allan by
surprise.
Mrs. Mornington had prepared him for a certain eccentricity in the
lonely lady of Discombe; but the strangeness of her manner was even
more than he had expected.
"There is very little to tell about my own life," he said. "I have
lived at home for the most part, except when I was at Eton and
Cambridge. My father helped me in all my studies. I never had any other
tutor except at the University. My home life was of the quietest.
Fendyke is twenty miles from Cambridge, but it seems at the end of the
world. The single line of rail that leads to it comes to a full stop.
The terminus stands in the midst of a Dutch landscape--level fields
divided by shallow dykes, a river so straight that it might as well
be a canal, water-mills, pollarded willows, broad clean roads, and
fine old Norman churches large enough for a city, no Sunday trains,
and not many on lawful days. A neat little town, with decent shops,
and comfortable inns, and a market which only awakens from a Pompeian
slumber for an hour or two on Fridays. A land of rest and plenty,
picturesque cottages and trim cottage gardens, an air of prosperity
which I believe is real. So much for our town and surroundings. For the
family mansion picture to yourself a long low house, built partly of
brick and partly of wood, with chimney-stacks that contain brick enough
for the building of respectable houses, and which have defied the gales
sweeping down from the Ural mountains--there is nothing, mark you,
between Fendyke and the Urals--ever since Queen Elizabeth was young
enough to pace a pavan."
"You must be fond of an old house like that."
"Yes, I am very fond of Fendyke. I even love the surrounding country,
though I can but wish Nature had not ironed the landscape with her
mammoth iron. She might have left us a few creases, a wrinkled meadow
here and there."
"I have heard that people born in Norfolk and Suffolk have an innate
antipathy to hills."
"That may be. Indeed, I have noticed in the East Anglians a kind of
stubborn pride in the flatness of their soil. But I have not that
perverted pride in ugliness, since I was not born in Suffolk."
"Indeed!"
"No. My father lived in Sussex--at Hayward's Heath--at the time of his
marriage, and for half a dozen years after my birth. Fendyke came to
him from his maternal grandfather, who left the estate to his daughter
and heiress, and to her son after her, who was to assume the name and
arms of Carew when he succeeded to the property. My father's name was
Beresford."
There was no reply--no further questioning on Mrs. Wornock's part--and
for some minutes Allan abandoned himself to the dreamy silence of the
scene, content to watch the peacocks on the lawn, and to listen to the
splash of the fountains.
Then suddenly the silence surprised him, and he turned to look at
his companion. Her head had fallen back against the wall of the
summer-house, her eyes were closed, and her face was white as death.
She was in a dead faint; and they were at least a quarter of a mile
from the house.
The situation was awkward for Allan, though there was nothing in so
simple a matter as a fainting-fit to surprise him. He knew that there
are women who faint at the smallest provocation, in a crowded room, in
the sunshine, at church, anywhere. Here the sunshine was perhaps to
blame; that delicious pure sunlight in which he had been basking.
He gave a long Australian cooe, long enough and loud enough to have
brought help in the wilderness, and assuredly calculated to attract
some gardener at work within call. Then he bethought himself of the
fountain, and ran to get some water in his hat.
At the first dash of water, Mrs. Wornock opened her eyes, with a little
sobbing sigh, and looked at him as if wondering who and what he was.
"I knew he would have answered my prayer," she murmured brokenly,
"spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."
It seemed a worse kind of faint than Allan had supposed, for now her
mind was wandering.
"I fear the sun was too warm for you," he said, standing before her
in painful embarrassment, half expecting some indication of absolute
lunacy.
"Yes, yes, it was the sun," she answered nervously. "The glare is so
strong this afternoon; and this summer-house is shadeless. I must go
back to the house. It was very foolish of me to faint. I am so sorry. I
hope you won't consider me a very silly person."
"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I have never heard that a fainting-fit on a warm
summer afternoon is a sign of silliness."
"No, it is a thing one cannot help, can one? But it must have been so
unpleasant for you. Ah, here is one of the gardeners," as a man came
hurrying towards her, with a scared countenance. "There is nothing the
matter, Henry. I am quite well now, Mr. Carew, and I can walk back to
the house. And so your father's original name was Beresford. Does he
call himself Beresford-Carew?"
"Yes, in all important documents; but he is a man too careless of forms
to trouble himself much about the first name; and it has fallen into
disuse for the most part, Carew being the name of honour in our county.
He is known at Fendyke and in the neighbourhood simply as Squire Carew.
I sign myself Beresford-Carew sometimes, when I want to distinguish
myself from the numerous clan of Carews in Devonshire and elsewhere.
Will you take my arm to go back to the house?"
"Yes"--timidly and faintly--"I shall be very glad of your support."
She put her hand through his arm, and walked slowly and silently by his
side. Returning consciousness had brought back very little colour to
her face. It had still an almost unearthly pallor. She walked the whole
distance without uttering a word. A faint sigh fluttered her lips two
or three times during that slow promenade, and on her drooping lashes
Allan saw the glitter of a tear. For some reason or other she was
deeply moved; or it might be that her fainting-fits always took this
emotional form. He saw her safely seated on her own sofa, with footman
and maid in attendance upon her, before he took a brief adieu.
"You'll come and see me again, I hope," she said, with a faint smile,
as she gave him her hand at parting.
"I shall be most happy," he murmured, doubtful within himself whether
he would ever hazard a repetition of this agitating finale to an
afternoon call.
To be interrogated about himself and his surroundings, with an eager
curiosity which was certainly startling, and then to find himself
_tête-à-tête_ with an unconscious fellow-creature was an ordeal
that few young men would care to repeat.
When he described his visit next day to Mrs. Mornington, she only
shrugged her shoulders and said decisively, "Hysteria! Too much money,
too much leisure, and no respectable connections. If there is one woman
I pity more than another that woman is Mrs. Wornock."
"If ever I call on her again it must be with you or with my mother,"
said Allan. "I won't face her alone."
Although he came to this decision about the lady, he found himself not
the less disposed to dwell upon her image during the days and weeks
that followed his afternoon at Discombe; and more than once he asked
himself whether there might not be some more cogent reason for her
fainting-fit than the sun's warmth or the sun's glare--whether that
deep interest which she had evinced in all he could tell her of home
and parents might not be founded on something more serious than an idle
woman's idle curiosity.
Could it be that he had lighted upon some trace of that mystery in his
father's past life--that mystery which, without tangible evidence, he
had always imagined as the key-note to his father's character in later
years? She had fainted immediately upon his telling her his father's
former name. Was that a mere coincidence of time, or was the name the
cause of the fainting-fit?
* * * * *
Lady Emily arrived on a visit to her son while he was pondering
this unanswerable question about Mrs. Wornock, and he caught at the
opportunity. He hardly allowed his mother time to inspect his house and
gardens, and the small farm which supplied his larder, and to give her
opinion upon the furnishing of the rooms and the arrangement of the
flower-beds and lawns, before he suggested taking her to call upon his
neighbour at Discombe.
"But why, Allan? why should I call upon this Mrs. Wornock, when I am a
stranger in the land?" argued his mother. "If there is any question of
calling, it is Mrs. Wornock who must call upon me."
"Ah, but this lady is an exception to all rules, mother. She calls upon
hardly anybody, and she has begged me to go and see her, and I feel a
kind of hesitation in going alone--a second time."
He stopped in sudden embarrassment. He did not wish to tell his mother
about the fainting-fit, though he had described the thing freely to
Mrs. Mornington. He had thought more seriously of the circumstance
since that conversation, and he was inclined to attach more importance
to it now than at that time.
"I think you would be interested in Mrs. Wornock, mother," he urged,
after a pause, during which Lady Emily had been pacing the room from
window to wall with the idea of suggesting a bay to be thrown out
where there was now only a flat French casement.
"Allan, you alarm me. I think you must be in love with this eccentric
widow. You told me she was very rich, didn't you? It might not be a bad
match for you."
"Perhaps not, if Mrs. Wornock had any penchant for me; and if I wanted
a wife old enough to be my mother. Do you know that the lady has a son
as old as I am?"
He reddened at the thought of that son, whose likeness to Beresford
Carew was startling enough to surprise Lady Emily, and might possibly
occasion unpleasant suspicions. And yet accidental likenesses are so
common in this world that it would be weak to be scared by such a
resemblance.
Would he be wise in taking his mother to Discombe? Perhaps not. He had
made up his mind to take her there, wisely or foolishly. He wanted to
bring her plain common sense to bear upon Mrs. Wornock's fantastic
temperament.
"My mother is the shrewdest woman I know," he told himself. "She will
read Mrs. Wornock's character much better than I can."
Lady Emily was the soul of good nature, and was particularly free from
the trammels of conventionality; so, when she found her son had the
matter at heart, she waived all question of the caller and the called
upon, and allowed Allan to drive her to Discombe on the afternoon after
her arrival at Beechhurst; and the drive and the approach to the Manor
were very agreeable to her.
"You are really prettier hereabouts than we are in Suffolk," she said
condescendingly; "but you have not our wide expanse of field and
meadow, our open horizon. Those high downs have a cramping effect on
your landscape--they narrow your outlook, and shut you in too much.
Your sunsets must be very poor, in a broken-up country like this."
The weather was more sultry than on Allan's previous visit. Summer had
ripened, the roses were in bloom, and the last purple petal had fallen
in the rhododendron jungle through which they drove to the Manor House.
Mrs. Wornock was at home. Vain for the footman to deny it, even had he
been so minded, for the deep-toned music of the organ was pealing along
the corridor. The chords which begin Beethoven's Funeral March for the
Burial of a Hero crashed out, solemnly and slowly, as Lady Emily and
her son approached the music-room; and when, at the opening of the
door, the player stopped suddenly, the silence was more startling than
the music had been.
Startling, too, to see the fragile form of the player, and the
semi-transparent hands which had produced that volume of sound.
"I had no idea you were so fine a musician, Mrs. Wornock," Lady Emily
said graciously, after the introduction had been got over, the lady of
Discombe standing before her timidly in the broad sunlight from the
open window, so fragile, so youthful-looking, so unlike the mistress
of a great house, and the chief personage in a rustic parish. "My son
was eloquent in your praise, but he forgot to tell me of your musical
talent."
"I don't think I have much talent," answered Mrs. Wornock,
hesitatingly. "I am very fond of music--that is all."
"There is a great deal in that ALL. I wish my love of music--and Allan
knows I prefer a good concert to any other form of entertainment--would
enable me to play as you do, for then I could take the place of the
stupidest organist in England at our parish church."
Lady Emily was making conversation, seeing that Mrs. Wornock's lips
were mute and dry, as if she were absolutely speechless from fright.
A most extraordinary woman, thought Lady Emily, shy to a degree that
bordered on lunacy.
The talk had all to be done by Allan and his mother, since Mrs.
Wornock's share in it was hardly more than monosyllabic. She assented
to everything they said--she contradicted herself over and over again
about the weather, and about the distinguishing features of the
surrounding country. She agreed with Lady Emily that the hills spoiled
the landscape; she assented to Allan's protestation that the hills
were the chief charm of the neighbourhood. She rang for tea, and when
the servants had brought tables and tray and tea-kettle, she sat as in
a dream for ever so long before she became conscious that the things
were there, and that she had a duty to perform. Then she filled the
cups with tremulous hands, and allowed Allan to help her through the
simplest details.
Her obvious distress strengthened Allan's suspicions. There must be
some mystery behind all this embarrassment. Mrs. Wornock could hardly
behave in this way to every stranger who called upon her. Of all women
living no one was less calculated to inspire awe than Lady Emily Carew.
Good humour was writ large upon her open countenance. The milk of human
kindness gave softness to her speech. She was full of consideration for
others.
Distracted by the music of the organ, Lady Emily had not even glanced
at the Millais portrait which faced her as she walked along the
corridor. It was, therefore, with unmixed astonishment that she
observed a photograph on an easel conspicuous on a distant table--a
photograph which she took to be the likeness of her son.
"I see you have given Mrs. Wornock your photo, Allan," she said. "That
is more than you have done for me since you were at the University."
"Go and look at the photo, mother, and you will see I have not been so
wanting in filial duty."
Lady Emily rose and went over to the table in the furthermost window.
"No, I see it is another face; but there is a wonderful look of you.
Pray who is this nice-looking young man, Mrs. Wornock? I may call him
nice-looking with a good grace, since he is not my son. His features
are more refined than Allan's. The modelling of the face is more
delicate."
"That is my son's portrait," answered Mrs. Wornock, "and it is thought
a good likeness. He is like Mr. Carew, is he not? Almost startlingly
like; but the resemblance is less striking in the picture than in the
living face. It is in expression that the two faces are alike."
"I begin to understand why you are interested in my son," said Lady
Emily, smiling down at the face on the easel. "The two young men might
be brothers. Pray how old is this young gentleman?"
"He will be six and twenty in August."
"And Allan was twenty-five last March. And is Mr. Wornock an only son,
like my Allan?"
"Yes. I have only him. When he is away, I am quite alone--except for my
organ and piano. I try sometimes to think they are both alive."
"What a pity you have no daughter! A place like this looks as if it
wanted a daughter. But you and I are in the same desolate condition.
Allan is all I have--and my white farm."
"Mother, why not my white farm and Allan?" said her son laughingly. "If
you knew more of my mother, Mrs. Wornock, if you knew her in Suffolk,
you would be very likely to think the farm first and not second in her
dear love. Perhaps you, too, are interested in farming."
Mrs. Wornock smiled a gentle negative, and gave a glance at the triple
keyboard yonder, which was eloquent of meaning. A glance which seemed
to ask, "Who could waste time upon cowhouse and poultry-yard when all
the master-spirits of harmony are offering their mysteries to the
faithful student?"
* * * * *
"Well, mother, how do you like the mistress of Discombe?" asked Allan,
as they drove homeward.
"She is very refined--rather graceful--dreadfully shy," answered his
mother, musingly; "and I hope you won't be angry with me, Allan, if I
add that she seems to me half an idiot."
"You saw her to-day at a disadvantage," said Allan, and then lapsed
into meditative silence.
Had he not also seen this strange woman at a disadvantage when she
fainted at the mention of his father's name--the name his father
had borne in youth, not the name by which he was known now? Her
fainting-fit might have had no significance in his eyes if it had not
followed upon her eager questioning about his father. And whatever
suspicions had been excited by that first visit were intensified by
Mrs. Wornock's manner in the presence of Lady Emily. Such obvious
embarrassment--a shyness so much more marked than that with which she
had received him on his first visit--could hardly exist without a
deeper cause than solitary habits or nervous temperament.
The likeness between Geoffrey Wornock and himself might have meant no
more than the likeness between Mr. Drummond and Sir Robert Peel; but
that likeness, taken in conjunction with Mrs. Wornock's extraordinary
interest in his father, and most noticeable embarrassment in receiving
his mother, might mean a great deal--might mean, indeed, that the cloud
upon his father's life was the shadow of a lifelong remorse, the dark
memory of sin and sorrow. It might be that within the years preceding
his marriage George Beresford had been involved in a guilty intrigue
with Mr. Wornock's young wife.
To believe this was to think very badly of this gentle creature, who
used the advantages of wealth and position with such modest restraint,
whose only delight in life was in one of the most exalted of life's
pleasures. To believe this was to think Mrs. Wornock a false and
ungrateful wife to a generous husband; and it was to believe George
Beresford a vulgar seducer.
If there is one fallacy to which the non-legal mind is more prone
than another it is its belief in its power to estimate the value of
circumstantial evidence. Allan Carew tried his father and Mrs. Wornock
by the evidence of circumstances, and he found them guilty.
"My mother shall never cross that woman's threshold again!" he decided,
angry with himself for having taken Lady Emily to Discombe.