NOT YET.
Allan was dashed by Suzette's refusal to accept him on any other
footing than that of friendship, and he was angry with himself for
having spoken too soon. The only comfort left him was her willingness
to consider him still her friend; but this was cold comfort, and in
some wise more disheartening than if she had been more angry. Yet in
his musings he could but think that she liked him better than a mere
average acquaintance; while now and then there stole across his mind
the flattering hope that she liked him better than she herself knew. He
recalled all those happy hours they had spent together, with only Mrs.
Wornock to make a third, Mrs. Wornock who so often crept away to her
beloved organ and left them free to loiter in the gardens, or to sit
in one of the deeply recessed windows, talking in whispers, while the
music filled the room, or to stray far off in the stately pleasaunce,
where their light laughter could not disturb the player.
They had talked together often enough and long enough to have explored
each other's minds and imaginations, and they had found that about all
great things they thought alike; while their differences of opinion
about the trifles of life gave them subjects for mirthful argument,
occasions for disagreeing only to end in agreement.
Suzette complained that Allan's university training made all argument
unfair. How could she--an illogical, prejudiced woman, maintain her
ground against a master of dialectics?
In all their companionship he could remember no moments of ennui, no
indication upon the young lady's part that she could have been happier
elsewhere than in his company. This was at least encouraging. The dual
solitude seemed to have been as pleasant to her as it was to him. She
had confided in him in the frankest fashion. She had told him story
after story of her convent life; of her friends and chosen companions.
She had talked to him as a girl might talk to a cousin whom she liked
and trusted; and how often does such liking ripen into love; an
attachment truer and more lasting than that hot-headed love at first
sight, born of the pleasure of the eye, and taking shallowest root in
the mind. Allan's musings ended in a determination to cultivate the
friendship which had not been withheld from him, and to trust to time
for the growth of love.
He was anxious to see Suzette as soon as possible after that premature
avowal which had stirred the calm current of their companionship,
lest she should have time to ponder upon his conduct, and to feel
embarrassed at their next meeting. She had told him that she was going
to the golf-links before breakfast on the following morning; so at
eight o'clock Allan made his appearance on the long stretch of rather
rough common-land which bordered the Salisbury road half a mile from
Beechhurst, and which was distinguished from other waste places by the
little red flags of the golf club.
She was there, as fresh as the morning, in her blue-serge frock and
sailor hat, attended by a small boy, and with the vicar's youngest
daughter for her companion.
She blushed as they shook hands--blushed, and then distinctly laughed;
and the laugh, frank as it sounded, was the laugh of a triumphant
coquette, for she was thinking of her aunt's indignation yesterday
afternoon, and thinking how little it mattered her refusing a man who
was so absolutely her slave. Propose to her again, forsooth? Why, of
course he would propose to her again, and again, and again, as that
foolish young subaltern had done at Simla. Were all men as foolish,
Suzette wondered; and had all young women as much liberty of choice?
She glanced involuntarily at the Vicar's youngest daughter, regarded by
her family as the flower of the flock, but of a very humble degree in
the floral world. A fresh-coloured, pudding-faced girl, with small eyes
and a pug nose, but with a tall, well-developed figure of the order
that is usually described as "fine."
The golf went on in a desultory way, Allan strolling after the
players, and venturing a remark now and then, as suggested by a single
summer's experience at St. Andrews. When the two girls had been
round the course, and it was time to hasten home to their respective
breakfast-tables, he accompanied them on their way, and after having
left Miss Bessie Edgefield at the Vicarage gate he had Suzette all
to himself for something under a quarter of a mile. They met Mrs.
Mornington a little way from Marsh House, sallying out for her morning
conference with butcher and fishmonger, the business of providing Mr.
Mornington's dinner being too important to be left to the hazards
of cook and shopkeeper. It was necessary that Mrs. Mornington's own
infallible eye should survey saddle or sirloin, and measure the
thickness of turbot or sole.
She greeted the two young people with jovial heartiness, and rejoiced
beyond measure at seeing them together. After all, perhaps Suzette had
done well in refusing the first offer. The poor young man was evidently
her slave.
"Or if Geoffrey should fall desperately in love with her," mused Mrs.
Mornington, on her way to the village street, not quite heroic enough
to put the owner of Discombe Manor altogether out of her calculations;
"but, no, I shouldn't care about that. It would be too risky."
That which Mrs. Mornington would not care about was the mental tendency
that Geoffrey might inherit from his mother, whom the strong-minded,
clear-headed lady regarded as a visionary, if not a harmless lunatic.
No! Geoffrey was clever, interesting, fascinating even; but he was
not to be compared with Allan, whose calm common sense had won Mrs.
Mornington's warmest liking.
After that morning on the links, and the friendly homeward walk, Allan
felt more hopeful about Suzette; but he was not the less bent upon
bringing to bear every influence which might help him to win her for
his own, before any other suitor should come forward to dispute the
prize with him. Happily for him, there were few eligible young men in
the neighbourhood, and those few thought more of horses and guns than
of girlhood and beauty.
Lady Emily had promised her son a visit in the autumn. Allan hoped
that his father would accompany her. He wanted to bring Suzette into
the narrow circle of his home life, to bring her nearer to himself by
her liking for his mother and father. With this intent he urged on the
promised visit, delighted at the thought that his mother's presence
would enable him to receive Suzette as a guest in the house where he
hoped she would some day be mistress.
He wrote to his father, reminding him of his assurance that he would
not always remain a stranger to his son's home, and this letter of
his, which dwelt earnestly upon certain unexplained reasons why he was
especially anxious for his father's early presence at Beechhurst, was
not without effect. The recluse consented to leave his library, which
perhaps was no greater sacrifice on his part than Lady Emily made in
leaving her farm. Indeed, one of the inducements which Allan held out
to his mother was the promise of a pair of white peacocks from Mrs.
Wornock, finer and whiter than the birds at Fendyke.
Mr. Carew professed himself pleased with his son's surroundings.
"Your house is like the good man who bequeathed it to you," he said,
after his tour of inspection; "essentially comfortable, solid, and
commonplace. The admiral had a grand solidity of character; but even
your mother will not deny that he was commonplace."
Lady Emily nodded a cheery assent. She always agreed with her husband
on all points that did not touch the white farm. There her opinions
were paramount; and she would not have submitted to dictation in so
much as the ears of a rabbit.
"I could hardly forgive my brother for buying such a house if he
hadn't-----"
"Left it to your son," interrupted her husband.
"No, George, that is not what I was going to say. I could not forgive
his Philistine taste if he had not brought home all those delicious
things from China, and built the Mandarin's room. That is the redeeming
feature which makes the house worth having."
"Every one admits that it is a fine room," said Allan. "There is no
such room in the neighbourhood, except at Discombe."
"Your father must see Discombe, Allan. We must introduce him to Mrs.
Wornock."
"I think not, mother. He would be insufferably bored by a woman who
believes in spirit-rapping, sees visions, and plays the organ for hours
at a stretch."
His father looked at him intently.
"Who is this person?" he asked quickly.
"A rich widow, whose son is lord of the manor of Discombe, one of the
most important places between here and Salisbury."
"And she believes in spiritualism. Curious in a lady living in the
country. I thought that kind of thing had died out with Home, and the
famous article in the _Cornhill Magazine_."
"We have had later prophets. Eglinton, for instance, with his
materializations and his slate-writing. I don't think the
spiritualistic idea is dead yet, in spite of the ridicule which the
outside herd has cast upon it."
"I hope the widow lady is not beguiling you into sharing her delusions,
Allan."
The son had seen a look in the father's face which spoke to him
as plainly as any spoken words. That look had told him that his
description of Mrs. Wornock conjured up some thrilling image in his
father's mind. He saw that startled wondering look come and go, slowly
fading out of the pensive face, as the mind dismissed the thought which
Allan's words had awakened. Surely it was not a guilty look which
had troubled his father's mild countenance--rather a look of awakened
interest, of eager questioning.
"I should hate to see Allan taking up any nonsense of that kind," said
Lady Emily, with her practical air; "but really, if this Mrs. Wornock
were not twenty years older than he, I should suspect him of being in
love with her. She is a pretty, delicate-looking woman, with a shy,
girlish manner, and looks ridiculously young to be the mother of a
grown-up son."
"Oh, she has a grown-up son, has she?" asked Mr. Carew. "She belongs to
this part of the country, I suppose, and is a woman of good family?"
He looked at his son; but, for some reason of his own, Allan parried
the question.
"I know hardly anything about her, except that she is a very fine
musician, and that she has been particularly kind to me," he said.
"There, George," cried Lady Emily. "Didn't I tell you so? The foolish
boy is half in love with her!"
"You will not say that after to-morrow, mother."
"Shall I not? But why?"
"You will lose all interest in to-morrow, if I tell you. Go on
wondering, mother dear, till to-morrow, and to-morrow I will tell you
a secret; but, remember, it is not to be talked about to any one in
Matcham."
"Should I talk of a secret, Allan?"
"I don't know. I have an idea that secrets are the staple of tea-table
talk in a village."
"Poor village! for how much it has to bear the blame; and yet people
are worse gossips in Mayfair and Belgravia."
"Only because they have more to talk about."
* * * * *
Allan had arranged a luncheon-party for the following day. His courage
had failed at the idea of a dinner: the lengthy ceremonial, the fear of
failure if he demanded too much of his cook, the long blank space after
dinner, with its possibility of ennui. Luncheon was a friendlier meal,
and would less heavily tax the resources of a bachelor's establishment;
and then there was the chance of being able to wander about the garden
with Suzette in the afternoon, the hope of keeping her and her father
till teatime, when the other people had gone home; though people do not
disperse so speedily after a country luncheon as in town, and it might
be that everybody would stop to tea. No matter, if he could steal away
with Suzette to look at the single dahlias, in the west garden, fenced
off from the lawn by a high laurel hedge, leaving Lady Emily and Mrs.
Mornington to entertain his guests.
He had asked Mr. and Mrs. Mornington, General Vincent and his
daughter, Mr. Edgefield, the Vicar, and his daughter Bessie (Suzette's
antagonist at golf), Mr. and Mrs. Roebuck, a youngish couple, who
prided themselves on being essentially of the great world, towny,
cosmopolitan, anything but rustic, and who insisted on talking
exclusively of London and the Riviera to people who rarely left their
native gardens and paddocks. Mr. Roebuck had been officiously civil to
Allan, and he had felt constrained to invite him. The invitation was on
Mrs. Mornington's principle of payment for value received.
Allan had invited Mrs. Wornock; he had even pressed her to be of the
party, but she had refused.
"I don't care for society," she said. "I am out of my element among
smart people."
"There will be very little smartness--only the Roebucks, and one may
say of them as Beatrice said of Benedick, 'It is a wonder _they_
will still be talking, for nobody minds _them_.' Seriously now,
Mrs. Wornock, I should like you to meet my father."
"You are very kind, but you must excuse me. Don't think me rude or
ungrateful."
"Ungrateful! Why, it is I who ask a favour."
"But I am grateful for your kindness in wishing to have me at your
house. I will go there some day with Suzette, when you are quite
alone, and you shall show me the Mandarin-room."
"That is too good of you. Mind, I shall exact the performance of that
promise. You are very fond of Suzette, I think, Mrs. Wornock?"
"Yes, I am very fond of her. She is the only girl with whom I have ever
felt in sympathy; just as you are the only young man, except my son,
for whom I have ever cared."
"You link us together in your thoughts."
"I do, Allan," she answered gravely, "and I hoped to see you linked
by-and-by in a lifelong union."
"That is my own fondest hope," he said. "How did you discover my
secret?"
"Your secret! My dear Allan, I have known that you were in love with
Suzette almost from the first time I saw you together--yes, even that
afternoon at the Grove."
"You were very sympathetic, very quick to read my thoughts. I own that
I admired her immensely even at that early stage of our acquaintance."
"And admiration soon grew into love. It has been such happiness for me
to watch the growth of that love--to see you two young creatures so
trustful and so happy together, walking about that old garden yonder,
which has seen so little of youth or of happiness. I felt almost as
a mother might have felt watching the happiness of her son. Indeed,
Allan, you have become to me almost as a second son."
"And you are becoming to me almost as a second mother," he said,
bending down to kiss the slim white hand which lay languidly upon her
open book.
Never till to-day had she called him Allan, never before had she spoken
to him so freely of her regard for him.
"Allan," she repeated softly. "You don't mind my calling you by your
Christian name?"
"Mind! I am flattered that you should so honour me."
"Allan," she repeated again, musingly, "why were you not called George,
after your father?"
"Because Allan is an old family name on my mother's side of the house.
Her father and grandfather and elder brother were Allans."
He left her almost immediately, taking leave of her briefly, with a
sudden revulsion of feeling. That question of hers, and the mention of
his father's name, chilled and angered him, in the very moment when his
heart had been moved by her sympathy and affection.
There was something in the familiar mention of his father's name that
re-awakened those suspicions which he had never altogether banished
from his mind. It was perhaps on this account that he had spoken
slightingly of Mrs. Wornock when Lady Emily suggested that he should
make her known to his father. That question about the name had seemed
to him a fresh link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.
Suzette and her father were the first arrivals at Allan's
luncheon-party. The General was a martinet in the matter of
punctuality; and having taken what he called his _chota haz'ri_
at half-past six that morning, was by no means inclined to feel
indulgently disposed towards dilatory arrivals, who should keep him
waiting for his tiffin; nor could he be made to understand that a
quarter to two always meant two o'clock. The Morningtons appeared at
five minutes before two, the Vicar and his daughter as the clock struck
the hour; and then there followed a quarter of an hour of obvious
waiting, during which Allan showed Suzette the Chinese enamels and
ivories, and the arsenal of deadly swords and daggers displayed against
the wall of the Mandarin-room, while the Morningtons were discussing
with Lady Emily and her husband the merits of Wiltshire as compared
with Suffolk.
This delay, at which General Vincent was righteously angry, was
occasioned by the Roebucks, who sauntered in with a leisurely air at
a quarter-past two; the wife on the best possible terms with herself
and her new tailor gown; the husband puffed up at having read his
_Times_ before any one else, and loquacious upon the merits of
the "crushing reply" made last night by Lord Hatfield at Windermere to
"the abominable farrago of lies" in Mr. Henry Wilkes' oration the night
before last at Kendal.
"I dare say it was a very good speech," said the General, grimly; "but
you might have kept it for after luncheon. It would have been less
injured by waiting than Mr. Carew's joint; if he's going to give us
one."
"Are we late?" exclaimed Mrs. Roebuck, who had endured a quarter of an
hour's agony in front of her cheval glass before the new tailor bodice
could be made to "come to." "Are we really late? How very naughty of
us! Please, please don't be angry, good people. We beg everybody's
pardon," clasping two tightly gloved hands with a prettily beseeching
gesture.
"Don't mention it," said the General. "We all like waiting; but if
Carew has got a mug cook, I wouldn't give much for the state of her
temper at this moment."
"We'll send a pretty message to the cook after luncheon, if she has
been clever enough not to spoil her dishes."
The ladies--Lady Emily and Mrs. Mornington descanting on gardens
and glass all the way--went in a bevy to the dining-room, the men
following, Mr. Roebuck still quoting Lord Hatfield, and the way in
which he had demolished the Radical orator.
"The worst of it is he don't make 'em laugh," said Mr. Mornington.
"Nobody can make 'em laugh as Wilkes does. Town or country, hodge or
mechanic, he knows the length of their foot to a fraction, and knows
what will hit them and what will tickle them."
The cook was sufficiently "mug" to have been equal to the difficulties
of twenty minutes' delay, and the luncheon was admirable--not too many
courses, nor too many dishes, but everything perfect after its kind.
Nor was the joint--that item dear to elderly gentlemen--forgotten,
for after a first course of fish and a second of curry and _crême de
volaille_, there appeared a saddle of Wiltshire mutton, to which the
elderly gentlemen did ample justice, while the ladies, who had lunched
upon the more sophisticated dishes, supplied the greater part of the
conversation.
"My father will quote your cook for the next six months," said Suzette,
by whose side Allan had contrived to place himself during the casual
dropping into seats at the large round table, "for yours is the only
house where he has seen Bombay ducks served with the curry."
"Did you not tell me once that your father has a weakness for those
absurd little fish?"
"Did I really? Was I capable of talking such absolute twaddle?"
"It was not twaddle. It was very serious. It was on a day when I found
you looking worried and absent, unable to appreciate either Mrs.
Wornock's music or my conversation; and, on being closely questioned,
you confessed that the canker at your heart was dinner. The General
had been dissatisfied; the cook was stupid. You had done your
uttermost. You had devoted hours to the reading of cookery-books, which
seemed all of them hopelessly alike. You had studied all his fancies.
You had given him Bombay ducks with his curry----"
"Did I say all that? How silly of me. And how ridiculous of you to
remember."
"Memory is not a paid servant, but a most capricious Ariel. One cannot
say to one's self, I will remember this or that. My memory is as
fugitive as most people's; but there is one thing for which it can be
relied on. I remember everything about you--all you say to me, all you
do--even to the gowns you wear."
Suzette laughed a little and blushed a little; but did not look
offended.
"You had about five minutes' talk with my mother before I took you to
see the enamels. How do you like her?"
"Immensely! Lady Emily is charming. She was telling me about her white
farm."
"It would have been odd if you had escaped hearing of that, even in the
first five minutes."
"I was deeply interested. Lady Emily has promised me some white
bramahs. I am going to start a white poultry-yard. I cannot aspire
higher than poultry; but I am determined that every bird shall be
white."
"Pretty foolishness! And so you like my mother?"
"Very, very much. She is one of those people with whom one feels at
one's ease from the first moment. She looks as if she could not say or
even think anything unkind."
"I don't believe she could do either. And yet she is
human--feminine-human--and can enjoy an interesting scandal--local,
if possible. She enjoys it passively. She does nothing to swell the
snowball, and will hardly help to roll it along. She remains perfectly
passive, and never goes further than to say that she is shocked and
disappointed. And yet I believe she enjoys it."
"It is only the excitement that one enjoys. We had scandals even
in the convent--girls who behaved badly, dishonourably, about their
studies; cheating in order to get a better chance of a prize. I'm
afraid we were all too deeply interested in the crime and the
punishment. It was something to think about and talk about when life
was particularly monotonous."
Lady Emily was watching them from the other side of the table, and
lending rather an indifferent ear to Mr. Roebuck's account of Homburg
and the people he and his wife had met there. They had only just
returned from that exhilarating scene. He could talk of nothing but
H.R.H.'s condescension; the dear duchess; Lady this, Lord the other;
and the prodigious demand there had been for himself and his wife in
the very smartest society.
"Four picnics a day are hardly conducive to the cure of suppressed
gout," said Mr. Roebuck; "and there were ever so many days when we
had to cut ourselves up into little bits--lunching with one party,
taking coffee with another, driving home with somebody else, going to
tea-fights all over the place. Dinner engagements I positively set my
face against. Mimosa and I were there for rest and recuperation after
the season--positively washed out, both of us. You have no idea what a
rag my wife looked when we took our seats in the club train."
Happily for Lady Emily, who had been suffering this kind of thing for
half an hour, the coffee had gone round, and at her first imploring
glance Mrs. Mornington rose and the ladies left the dining-room. Yet
even this relief was but temporary; for Mrs. Roebuck appropriated Lady
Emily in the garden, and entertained her with her own view of Homburg,
which was smarter, inasmuch as it was more exclusive than Mr. Roebuck's.
"A horrid place," said the lady. "One meets all one's London friends
mixed up with a herd of foreign royalties whom one is expected to
cultivate. I used to send Richard to all the gaieties, while I stopped
at home and let my maid-companion read to me. We shall go to Marienbad
next August. If one could be at Homburg without people knowing one was
there, the place might be tolerable."
"I have been told the scenery is very fine," hazarded Lady Emily.
"Oh, the scenery is well enough; but one knows it, and one has seen
so much finer things in that way. When one has been across the
Cordilleras, it is absurd to be asked to worship some poor little hills
in Germany."
"I have seldom been out of Suffolk, except to visit some of my people
in Scotland. Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are quite big enough for me."
"Oh, the Scotch hills are dear things, with quite a character of their
own; and a Scotch deer forest is the finest thing of its kind all over
the world. The duke's is sixty thousand acres--and Dick and I always
enjoy ourselves at Ultimathule Castle--but after being lost in a
snowstorm in the Cordilleras----"
Lady Emily stifled a despairing yawn. Not a word had she been able to
say about her Woodbastwick cows, which she was inwardly comparing
with Allan's black muzzled Jerseys, grazing on the other side of the
sunk fence. Heartfelt was her gratitude to Mrs. Mornington when that
lady suddenly wheeled round from a confidential talk with the Vicar
and interrupted Mrs. Roebuck's journey across the Cordilleras by an
inquiry about the Suffolk branches of the Guild for supplying warm and
comfortable raiment to the deserving poor.
"I hope you have a branch in your neighbourhood," she said.
"Yes, indeed we have. I am a slave to the Guild all the winter. One
can't make flannel petticoats and things in summer, you know."
"_I_ can," retorted Mrs. Mornington, decisively.
"What, on a broiling day in August! when the very sight of flannel puts
one in a fever?"
"I am not so impressionable. The things are wanted in October, and July
and August are quite late enough for getting them ready."
"I subscribe to these institutions," Mrs. Roebuck remarked languidly.
"I never work for them. Life isn't long enough."
"Then you never have the right kind of feeling about your poorer
fellow-creatures," said Mrs. Mornington. "It is the doing something for
them, using one's own hand and eye and thought for the poor toiling
creatures, sacrificing some little leisure and some little fad to
making them more comfortable--it is that kind of thing which brings the
idea of that harder world home to one."
"Ah, how nice it is of you dear ladies to sacrifice yourselves like
that; but you couldn't do it after a June and July in London. If you
had seen what a poor creature I looked when we took our seats in the
club train for Homburg----"
Mrs. Mornington tucked her arm under Lady Emily's and walked her away.
"I want you to tell me all about your farm," she said. And then, in
a rather loud aside, "I can't stand that woman, and I wish your son
hadn't been so conscientious in asking her."
While emptiness and ennui prevailed on the terrace in front of the
Mandarin-room, there were a pair of wanderers in the shrubbery, whose
talk was unleavened by worldliness or pretence of any kind. Allan had
stolen away from the smokers in the dining-room, and was escorting
Suzette and her friend Bessie Edgefield round his modest domain--the
shrubberies, the paddocks nearest the house, which had been planted and
educated into a kind of park; the greenhouse and hothouse, which were
just capacious enough to supply plenty of flowers for drawing-room and
dinner-table, but not to grow grapes or peaches. Everything was on a
modest, unassuming scale. Allan felt that after the mansion and gardens
at Discombe, his house suggested the abode of a retired shopkeeper. A
successful hosier or bootmaker might create for himself such a home.
Wholesale trade, soap, or lucifer matches, or cocoa would require
something far more splendid.
Modest as the place was, the two girls admired, or seemed to admire,
all its details--the conifers of thirty years' growth, the smiling
meadows, the fawn-coloured cows. A sunny September afternoon showed
those fertile pastures and trim gardens at their best. Allan felt
exquisitely happy walking about those smooth lawns and gravel paths
with the girl he loved. At every word of approval he fancied she was
praising the place in which she would be content to live. After that
avowal of his the other day, it seemed to him that her kindness meant
much more than it had meant before she knew her power. She could not
be so cruel as to mock him with the promise of her smiles, her sweet
words, her undisguised pleasure in his company. Yes, he was perfectly
happy. He thought of her refusal the other day as only the prelude to
her acceptance. She had not said "No;" she had only said "Not yet."
Bessie Edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whom Nature
has especially created to be a third party in a love affair; never to
play the heroine in white satin, but always the confidante in white
muslin. She walked beside her friend, placid, silent, save for an
occasional monosyllable, and was of no more account than Suzette's
shadow.
"The Roebucks are taking leave," exclaimed Suzette, looking across the
lawn to the groups on the terrace. "Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you are a
sadly inattentive host."
"Have I neglected you, Miss Vincent?"
"You have neglected Mrs. Roebuck, which is much worse. She will be
talking of your want of _savoir vivre_ all over Matcham."
"Let her talk. She has been boring my mother with a cruelty worthy of
Torquemada. She forgets that torture was illegal in England even in
Bacon's time. See, they are all going away; but you and the General and
Miss Edgefield must stay to tea, even if the Vicar is too busy to stop."
The Vicar had quietly vanished, to resume the round of parish duties,
quite content to leave his Bessie in comfortable quarters. The Roebucks
were going, and the Morningtons were following their example; but
General Vincent had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and
Miss Edgefield desired him to do so.
He was smoking a cheroot, comfortably seated in a sheltered part of
the terrace--a corner facing south, screened from east and north by an
angle of the house, where the Mandarin-room projected from the main
building--and he was absorbed in a discussion of Indian legendary lore
with Mr. Carew, who owned to some knowledge of sanscrit, and had made
Eastern fable and legend an especial study.
Suzette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock, when Allan
insisted on walking home with them, having suddenly discovered that he
had had no walking that day. He had been cub-hunting from seven in the
morning till nine; but he declared himself in need of walking exercise.
Lady Emily went with them to the gate, and parted with Suzette as with
a favourite of long standing. Allan was enraptured to see his mother's
friendliness with the girl he loved; and it was all he could do to
restrain his feelings during the walk to Marsh House.
Perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers, that readiness to laugh
at him and at all things in creation, which held him at a distance.
He had made up his mind that she was to be his--that if she were to
refuse him twenty times in twenty capricious moods of her light and
airy temperament, there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious
feeling, and by that he would win her and hold her.
* * * * *
"You like Miss Vincent, mother?" he asked that evening, when he was
sitting with his father and mother in the Mandarin-room after dinner.
The evening was warm to sultriness, and there were several casements
open in the long window which filled one end of the room; a window with
richly carved sashes and panels of cedar and lattice-work alternating
with the glass. There was another window in the western wall, less
elaborate--a door-window--which formed the usual exit to the garden.
This was closed, but not curtained.
The room was lighted only with shaded lamps, which lighted the tables
and the spaces round them, but left the corners in shadow.
Lady Emily was sitting at one of the tables, her fingers occupied with
a large piece of work, which she carried about with her wherever she
went, and which, to the eye of the uninitiated, never appeared to make
any progress towards completion. It was destined eventually to cover
the grand piano at Fendyke, and it was to be something very rare and
precious in the way of embroidery; the basis a collection of Breton
shawl-pattern handkerchiefs, overlaid by Lady Emily with embroidery in
many-coloured silks and Japanese gold thread. This piece of work was
a devouring monster in the matter of silk, and Lady Emily was always
telling her friends the number of skeins which were required for its
maintenance, and the cost of the gold thread which made so faint an
effect in the Oriental labyrinth of palms and sprigs and arabesques
and medallions.
"I'm afraid I shall never live to finish it," Lady Emily would conclude
with a sigh, throwing herself back in her chair after an hour's
steadfast labour, her eyes fixed in a kind of ecstasy upon the little
corner of palm which she had encrusted with satin stitch and gold; "but
if I _do_, I really think it will repay me for all my trouble."
To-night her mind was divided between her embroidery and her son, who
sat on a three-cornered chair beside her, meekly threading her needles
while he tried to get her to talk about Suzette.
His father was seated almost out of earshot, at a table near the open
window, reading the _Nineteenth Century_ by the light of a lamp
which shone full upon his lowered eyelids, and on the thoughtful brow
and sensitive mouth, as he sat in a reposeful attitude in the low, deep
chair.
"Do I like Miss Vincent?" repeated Lady Emily, when she had turned a
critical corner in the leafy edging of a scroll. "I wonder how often
you will make me tell you that I think her a very--no, Allan, the
light peacock, please--not that dark shade--very sweet girl--bright,
unaffected----"
"And exquisitely lovely," interjected her son, as he handed her the
needleful of silk.
"Ah, there you exaggerate awfully. She is certainly a pretty girl;
but her nose is--well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there
is a fault somewhere in the nose, and her mouth might be smaller;
but, on the other hand, she has fine eyes. Her manners are really
charming--that pretty little Parisian air which is so fascinating in a
high-bred Parisian. But, oh, Allan! can you really mean to marry her?"
"I really mean to try my hardest to achieve that happiness, and I
shall think myself the luckiest man in Wiltshire, or in England, or in
Europe, if I succeed."
"But, Allan, have you reflected seriously? She tells me that she is a
Roman Catholic."
"If she were a Fire-worshipper, I would run the risk of failure in
converting her to Christianity. If she were a Buddhist, I should be
inclined to embrace the faith of Gautama; but since she is only a
conformer to a more ancient form of religion of which you and I are
followers, I don't see why her creed should be a stumbling-block to my
bliss."
Lady Emily shook her head sagely, and breathed a profound sigh.
"Differences of religion are so apt to make unhappiness in married
life."
"I am not religious enough to distress myself because my wife believes
in some things that are incredible to me. We shall both follow the same
Master, both hope for reunion in the same heaven."
"Allan, _she_ believes in Purgatory. Think how inconsistent your
ideas of the future must be."
Allan did not pursue the argument. He was smiling to himself at the
easy way in which he had been talking of his wife--their future,
their very hopes of heaven--making so sure that she was to be his.
He looked at his father, sitting alone with them, but not of them,
and thought of his father's married life as he had seen it ever since
he was old enough to observe or understand the life around him; so
peaceful, so in all things what married life should be; and yet over
all there had been that faint shadow of melancholy which the son had
felt from his earliest years, that absence of the warmth and the
romance of a marriage where love is the bond of union. Here, Allan told
himself, the bond had been friendly regard, convenience, the world's
approval, family interests, and lastly the child as connecting link
and meeting-place of hopes and fears. Love had been missing from the
life of yonder pale student, musing over half a dozen pages of modern
metaphysics.
Allan rose and moved slowly towards that tranquil figure, and feeling
the night air blowing cold as he approached that end of the room, he
asked his father if he would like the windows shut?
"No, thank you, Allan, not on my account," Mr. Carew answered, without
looking up from his book.
Had he looked up, he would have seen Allan standing between the
lamplight and the window like a man transfixed.
A pale wan face had that moment vanished in the outward darkness; a
face which a moment before had been looking in at one of the open
lattices, a face which Allan had recognized at the first glance.
He went to the glass door, opened it quietly, and went out to the
terrace, so quickly and so silently that his disappearance attracted no
attention from father or mother, one absorbed in his book, the other
bending over her work.
The face was the face of Mrs. Wornock; and Mrs. Wornock must be
somewhere between the terrace and the gates. There was no moon, but
the night was clear, and the sky was full of stars. Allan went swiftly
round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window;
but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed
outside the window. The terrace was empty. He went round to the front
of the house, whence the carriage drive wound with a gentle curve to
the gates, between shrubberies of laurel and arbutus, cypress and
deodara.
Yes, the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the
drive as he drew near the porch, a slender figure in dark raiment,
with something white about the head and shoulders. He ran along the
drive, and reached the gate just in time to see Mrs. Wornock's brougham
standing in the road, at a distance of about fifty yards, and to see
Mrs. Wornock open the door and step in. Another moment--affording him
no time for pursuit, had he even wished to pursue her--and the carriage
drove away.
Allan had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct. She had come by
stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet
in the beaten way of friendship.