MORE NEW-COMERS.
Allan recalled the story which Mrs. Mornington had told him of
Mr. Wornock's marriage, and the mysterious birth of his son and
heir--mysterious in that it was a strange thing for an English
gentleman with a fine estate to carry off his wife to a foreign country
before the birth of her first child, and to remain an exile from home
and property until his son was three years old. Mystery of some kind--a
secret sorrow or a secret shame--must have been at the root of conduct
so unusual; and might not that secret include the story of the young
wife's sin?
Allan Carew had heard of husbands so beneficent as to forgive that sin
which to the mind of the average man lies beyond reach of pardon;
husbands who have taken back runaway wives, and set the fallen idol
once again in the temple of home-life; husbands who, knowing themselves
old, ugly, and unlovable, have palliated and pardoned the passionate
impulses of undisciplined girlhood, the sin in which there has been
more of romantic folly than of profligate inclination; husbands who
have asked themselves whether _they_ were not the darker sinners
in having possessed themselves of creatures so lovely and so frail, so
unadapted for a passionless, workaday union with grey hairs and old
age. It might be, Allan thought, that Mr. Wornock was one of these,
and that he had conveyed his young wife away from the scene of her sin
and the influence of her betrayer, and had hidden her shame and his
dishonour in that quiet valley among the snow-peaks and the glaciers.
But if Mrs. Wornock had so sinned in the early days of her married life
there must be people at Matcham who would remember the lover's presence
at Discombe, even although his real character had been undiscovered by
the searching eyes of village censors.
Lady Emily went back to her husband and her farm after a week at
Beechhurst--a pleasant and busy week, in which the mother's experience
and good sense had been brought to bear upon all the details of the
son's household and domestic possessions--plate and linen, glass and
china, books and ornaments.
"If it were not for your smoking-room, or drawing-room, or whatever you
may be pleased to call it, your house would be obviously Philistine,"
said Lady Emily; "but that is a really fine room, and there are some
pretty things in it."
"Some pretty things? Yes, there are a few," answered Allan, laughing
at her tone of patronage. "I was offered five hundred pounds for that
piece of tapestry which hangs in front of the conservatory doors by
a man who thinks himself a judge of such things. The room is full of
treasures from the Summer Palace."
"My brother must have looted in a most audacious manner!"
"No, he bought the things afterwards--mostly from the French sailors,
who were licensed to steal or destroy. I believe the bronzes, and
porcelain, and ivories, and embroideries that the admiral bought for
a few hundreds are worth as many thousands. But there they are, and I
must be very hard up before I disturb them."
* * * * *
Allan called upon Mrs. Mornington the day after his mother's departure,
and was lucky enough to find that lady at home and alone.
She was sitting in her verandah, sewing, with a large basket of plain
work on the ground beside her, and her scissors and other implements on
a wicker-table in front of her. She had a trellis covered with climbing
roses for a background, and a sunny lawn, a sunk fence, and a paddock
dotted with Jersey cows for her outlook.
"I'm at work for the Guild," she said, apologetically, after shaking
hands with Allan, and she went on herring-boning a flannel waistcoat;
a waistcoat of that stout flannel which is supposed to have a kind of
affinity with the skin of the agricultural labourer, although it can be
worn comfortably by no other class.
Allan knew nothing about the Guild, but was accustomed to see Mrs.
Mornington's superfluous energy expending itself in some kind of
needlework. He seated himself in the comfortable armchair to which she
invited him, and prepared himself for a long talk.
Of course he could not begin at once upon the subject of Mrs. Wornock.
That would have to be introduced casually. He talked about his mother,
and her regret at not having been able to stay till the following week,
when Mrs. Mornington was to give a small dance, to which Lady Emily and
her son had been invited.
"She can't be as sorry as I am, or she'd have managed to stay," replied
Mrs. Mornington, in her blunt style.
"She has my father to think of. She is never long away from him."
"Why don't he come too?"
"I hope to get him for a week or so before the summer is over. He
promises to come and look at my surroundings; but he is very much of a
recluse. He lives in his library."
"I dare say he will contrive to come when Philip and I are away on our
August holiday. We always take a month on the Continent just to keep
us in touch with the outside world, and to remind us that the earth
doesn't end on the other side of Salisbury. Do you know why I am giving
this dance?"
"I am sure it is from a conscientious motive--to pay your debts. I find
that most ladies' hospitalities are founded upon a system of exchange
and barter, 'cutlet for cutlet,' as Lady Londonderry called it."
"It is very rude of you to say that--as if women had no real
hospitality! No, Mr. Carew, I owe no one anything in the dancing line;
and I am not making one evening party pay for a whole year's dinners.
I have known that done, I assure you. No, I am turning my house out
of windows, and making poor Phil utterly miserable, for the sake of a
certain young half-French niece of mine, who is coming to live in this
neighbourhood with my brother Bob, her thoroughly English father."
"You mean General Vincent? Some one told me that he was related to you."
"Related? I should think he was related to me! He used to pull my
hair--we wore long plaits in those days, don't you know--with a
ferocity only possible in an elder brother. Poor dear old Bob! I am
monstrously pleased at the idea of having him near me in our old
age. He has been tossed and beaten about the world for the last
thirty years, at home and abroad, and now he is to enjoy enforced
leisure, and the noble income which our country bestows upon a retired
lieutenant-general. He has a little money of his own, fortunately, and
a little more from his wife; so he will be able to live comfortably at
Marsh House--in a very quiet, unpretentious way, _bien entendu_."
"He is a widower, I conclude?"
"Yes; his pretty French wife died fifteen years ago. He met her in
Canada, but she was a Parisian _pur sang_, and of a very good
family. She had gone to Montreal with her mother, to visit some
relations--uncle, cousin, or what-not. It was a very happy marriage,
and Suzette is a very charming girl. She is a Papist"--with a faint
sigh--"which, of course, is a pity. But even in spite of that, she is a
very sweet girl."
"Worthy that you should turn your house out of window in order to
introduce her to the neighbourhood in the pleasantest possible manner,"
said Allan. "My greenhouse is only a bachelor's idea of glass, but any
flowers there shall be sent to add to your decorations--at least, if
you don't despise such poor aid."
"How truly nice of you! Every flower will be useful. I want to make the
rooms pretty, since nothing can make them spacious. Ah, if I had only
the Manor House now--those noble rooms of which Mrs. Wornock makes so
little use!"
Allan seized his opportunity.
"Mrs. Wornock is the most singular woman I ever met!" he exclaimed
quickly, lest Mrs. Mornington should diverge to another subject. "I
took my mother to call upon her----"
"Had she called upon Lady Emily?" asked Mrs. Mornington, surprised.
"No. It was altogether out of order, my mother told me; but I rather
insisted upon her going to Discombe. I wanted her to see Mrs. Wornock;
and I must say that lady's manner was calculated to excite wonder
rather than admiration. I never saw a woman of mature years receive
a visitor so awkwardly. Her shyness would have been remarkable in a
bread-and-butter miss just escaped from the schoolroom."
"That is so like Mrs. Wornock. The ways of society are a foreign
language to her. Had you taken her a German organist with long hair,
or a spiritualist, or an esoteric Buddhist, she would have received him
with open arms--she would have been _simpatica_ to the highest
degree, and would have impressed him with the idea of a sensitive
nature and a temperament akin to genius, while I dare say Lady Emily
thought her a fool."
"She certainly did not give the lady credit for superior intelligence."
"Of course not. She has not even average intelligence in the affairs
of social life. She has lived all these years at Discombe--she
might be in touch with some of the best people in the county--and
she has learnt nothing, except to play the organ. I believe she has
toiled unremittingly at _that_," concluded Mrs. Mornington,
contemptuously.
"I have half forgotten what you told me about her in the first
instance. I think you spoke of a mystery in her early life."
"The only mystery was that old Wornock should have married her, and
that he should have told us nothing about her belongings. Had she been
a lady, we must have heard something about her people in the last five
and twenty years; and yet there is a refinement about her which makes
me think she could not have sprung from the gutter."
"The gutter! No, indeed! She has an air of exceptional refinement.
I should take her to be the offspring of an effete race--a
crystallization. In her early married life, when she and Mr. Wornock
were living together at Discombe, she had friends, I presume. They must
have had visitors occasionally--a house-party?"
"Not they. You must remember that it was not more than six months after
Mr. Wornock brought his young wife home when he took her away again----"
"But in the interim," interrupted Allan, eagerly, "they must have had
visitors in the house! He would be proud to exhibit his pretty young
wife. There must have been men-friends of his coming and going during
that time."
"I think not. He was a dry chip; and I don't think he had made many
friends in the forty years he had reigned at Discombe. I never heard
of any one staying in the house, either at that time or previously.
He was hospitable in a casual way to the neighbourhood while he was
a bachelor--gave a hunt breakfast every winter, and a good many
dinners--but he was not a man to make friends. He was an ardent
politician and an ardent Radical, and would have quarrelled with any
one who wasn't of his way of thinking."
A blank here. No hint of a too-frequent visitor, of one figure standing
out against the quiet background of home-life, of one person whose
coming and going had been marked enough to attract attention.
Allan breathed more freely. It was no prurient curiosity which had led
him to pry into the secrets of the past. He wanted to know the truth;
yet it would have been agony to him to discover anything that would
lessen his reverent admiration for his father, or his belief in his
father's honour and high principle. Sitting idle in the sunshine beside
Mrs. Mornington, he tried to think that there might be nothing more
than eccentricity in Mrs. Wornock's conduct, no indication of a dark
secret in her fainting-fit, or in her embarrassed manner during his
mother's visit.
Mrs. Mornington went back to the subject of her dance--her niece, her
brother, his income, his establishment, and the how much or how little
he could afford to spend. She lamented the dearth of dancing men.
"Both my boys are away," she said, "Luke with his regiment in Burmah,
Fred in London. _He_ might run down for the evening if he liked;
but you know what young men are. Well, perhaps you are more civilized
than Frederick. He pretends to hate dancing-parties; yet, when we spent
a winter at Cannes, he was at a ball nearly every night. He despises my
poor little dance."
"I am sure your little dance will be delightful."
"I hope it will not be dull. I am straining every nerve to make it a
success. I shall have the house full of nice young people, and I shall
have decent music. Only four men, but they will be very good men, and
four will make quite enough noise in my poor little rooms."
Mrs. Mornington's "poor little rooms" included a drawing-room thirty
feet long, opening into a spacious conservatory. There was a wide bay
at the end of the room which would accommodate the grand piano and
the four musicians. Allan had to make a tour of inspection with the
mistress of the house before he left, and to express his approval of
her arrangements.
"There will be a comfortable old-fashioned sit-down supper," she said
finally. "I have asked a good many middle-aged people, and there will
be nothing for _them_ to do but eat."