"SO GREW MY OWN SMALL LIFE COMPLETE."
After the incident of that September night, there was no longer the
shadow of doubt in Allan's mind as to the relations between his father
and the lady at Discombe Manor. That they had known each other and
loved each other in their youth he was now fully convinced. This last
strange act of Mrs. Wornock's was to his mind the strongest link in
the chain of evidence. Whatever the relations between them had been,
guilty or innocent--and fondly as he loved his father, he feared there
had been guilt in that association--it was his duty to prevent any
meeting between them, lest the mere sight of that pale, spiritual face
with its singular youthfulness of aspect, should re-awaken in his
father's breast some faint ghost of the passion that had lived and died
a quarter of a century ago. Nor did his respect for his honest-minded,
trustful-hearted mother permit him to tolerate the idea of friendly
intercourse between her and this mysterious rival from the shadowland
of vanished years. He took care, therefore, to discourage any idea of
visiting the Manor; and he carefully avoided any further talk of Mrs.
Wornock, lest his father's closer questioning should bring about the
disclosure of her identity. His father's manner, when the lady was
first discussed, had shown him very clearly that the description of her
gifts and fancies coincided with the memory of some one known in the
past; but it had been also clear that neither the name of Wornock, nor
the lady's position at Discombe, had any association for Mr. Carew.
If he had known and loved her in the past, he had known and loved her
before she married old Geoffrey Wornock.
His anxiety upon his father's account was speedily set at rest, for
Mr. Carew--after exploring his son's small and strictly popular
library, where among rows of handsomely bound standard works, there
were practically no books which appealed to the scholar's taste--soon
wearied of unstudious ease, and announced a stern necessity for going
to London, where a certain defunct Hebrew scholar's library, lay and
ecclesiastical, was to be sold at Hodgson's. He would put up for a
few days at the old-fashioned hotel which he had used since he was
an undergraduate, potter about among the book-shops, look up some
references he wanted in the Museum Reading-room, and meet his wife at
Liverpool Street on her way home.
Lady Emily, absorbed in her son and her son's love affair, agreed most
amiably to this arrangement.
"Telegraph your day and hour for returning, when you have bought all
the books you want," she said. "I'm afraid you spend more money on
those dreadful old books, which nobody in Suffolk cares a straw about,
than I do on my farm, which people come to see from far and wide."
"And a great nuisance your admirers are, Emily. I am very glad the
Suffolk people are no book-lovers; and I hope you will never hint to
anybody that my books are worth seeing."
"I could not say anything so untrue. Your shelves are full of horrors.
Now Allan's library here is really delightful--_Blackwood's
Magazine_, from the beginning, _Macaulay_, _Scott_,
_Dickens_, _Thackeray_, _Bulwer_, _Lever_,
_Marryat_--and all of them so handsomely bound! I think my brother
showed excellent taste in literature, though I doubt if he ever read
much. But as you seem happier in your library than anywhere else, I
suppose one must forgive you for spending a fortune on books that don't
interest anybody else. And one can't help being a little bit proud of
your scholarship."
And so they kissed and parted, with the unimpassioned kiss of marriage
which has never meant more than affectionate friendship. Lady Emily
stood at the hall door while her husband drove off to the station, and
then turned gaily to her son, and said--
"Now, Allan, I am yours to command. Let me see as much as possible of
that sweet young thing you are in love with. Shall we go and call on
her this afternoon? She has a white cat which may some day provide her
with kittens to distribute among her friends, and, if so, I am to have
one to bring up by hand as I did Snowdrop. You remember Snowdrop?"
Allan kissed his mother before he answered, but not for Snowdrop's sake.
"I have a vague recollection of something white and fluffy hanging to
the skirt of your gown, that I used to tread upon."
"Yes, you were horrid. You very nearly killed him. Shall we go?"
"Please, please, please, mother dearest. I am ready this instant. Three
o'clock. We shall get there at half-past, and if we loiter looking at
white kittens, or the mother of potential kittens, till half-past four,
she will give us tea, and we can make an afternoon of it."
"Hadn't I better put on a bonnet, Allan?"
"No, no. You will go in your hat, just as you are. You will treat her
without the slightest ceremony--treat her as your daughter. Do you
know, mother, I am uncommonly glad you never honoured me with a sister."
"Why, Allan?"
"Because, if I marry Suzette, she will be your only daughter. There
will be no one to be jealous of her, in Suffolk or here."
"What a foolish fancy! Well, give me a daughter as soon as you like. I
am getting old, Allan, and your father's secluded habits leave me very
often alone. His books are more his companions than I am----"
"Ah, but you know how he loves you, mother," interrupted Allan.
They were on their way to the gate by this time, Lady Emily in her
travelling-hat and loose tan gloves, just as she had been going about
the gardens and meadows in the morning, Allan twirling his stick in
very gladness of heart.
They were going to her. If she were out, they would go and find her;
at her aunt's, at the Vicarage, on the links yonder; anywhere but at
Discombe. He hoped she had not gone to Discombe.
"Yes, he is fond of me, I believe, in his own way. There never was a
better husband," Lady Emily answered thoughtfully. "But I know, Allan!
I know!"
"What, mother?"
"I know that I was not his first love--that I was only a _pis
aller_--that there is something wanting in his life, and always must
be till the end. I should brood over it all, perhaps, Allan, and end by
making myself unhappy, if it were not for my farm; but all those living
creatures occupy my mind. One living fox-terrier is worth a whole
picture-gallery."
Suzette was at home. The after-math had been cut in the meadow in front
of Marsh House, a somewhat swampy piece of ground at some seasons,
but tolerably dry just now, after a hot summer. Suzette and Bessie
Edgefield were tossing the scented grass in the afternoon sunshine,
and fancying themselves useful haymakers. They threw down their
hay-forks at the approach of visitors, and there was no more work
done that day, though Allan offered to take a fork. They all sat in
the garden talking, or wandered about among the flowers in a casual
way, and while Bessie and Lady Emily were looking at the contents of
the only greenhouse, Allan found himself alone with Suzette in a long
gravel walk on the other side of the lawn-like meadow, along all the
length of which there was a broad border filled with old-fashioned
perennials that had been growing and spreading and multiplying
themselves for half a century. A row of old medlar and hazel trees
sheltered this border from the north wind, and hid the boundary fence.
"Dear old garden!" cried Allan. "How much nicer an old garden is than a
new one!"
"I hope you don't mean to disparage your garden at Beechhurst. Our
gardener is always complaining of the old age of all things here.
Everything is worn out. The trees, the shrubs, the frames, the
greenhouse. One ought to begin again from the very beginning, he says.
He would be charmed with Beechhurst, where all things are so neat and
trim."
"Cockney trimness, I'm afraid; but if you are satisfied with it, if you
think it not altogether a bad garden----"
"I think it a delightful garden," said Suzette, blushing at that word
"satisfied," which implied so much.
"I am glad of that," said Allan, with a deep sigh of content, as if
some solemn question had been settled. "And you like my mother?"
"Very much indeed. But how you skip from the garden to Lady Emily!"
"And you approve of the Mandarin-room?"
"It is one of the handsomest rooms I ever saw, except in an Indian
palace."
"Then take them, Suzette," he cried eagerly, with his arm round her
waist, drawing the slim figure to his breast, holding and dominating
her by force of will and strength of arm, smiling down at her with
adoring eyes. "Have them, dearest! Mother, garden, room--they are all
your own; for they belong to your very slave. They are at your feet, as
I am."
"Do you call this being at my feet?" she asked, setting herself
suddenly free, with a joyous laugh. "You have a very impertinent way of
offering your gifts."
"Not impertinent--only desperate. I remembered my repulse of the other
day, and I swore to myself that I would hold you in my arms--once, at
least, if only once, even if you were to banish me into outer darkness
the next moment--and I have done it, and I am glad! But you won't
banish me, will you, Suzette? You must needs know how I love you--how
long and patiently I have loved you----"
"Long! patiently! Why, we only met at Midsummer."
"Ah, consider the age that every day on which I did not see you has
seemed to me, and the time would hardly come within your powers of
computation. Suzette, be merciful! say you love me, were it ever so
little. Were it only a love like a grain of mustard-seed, I know it
would grow into a wide and spreading tree by-and-by, and all the days
of my life would be happy under its shelter."
"You would think me curiously inconsistent if I owned to loving you
after what I said the other day," faltered Suzette, looking down at the
flowers.
"I should think you adorable."
She was only serious for a moment, and then her natural gaiety
prevailed.
"Do you know that my aunt lectured me severely when I confessed to
having refused your flattering offer?"
"Did she really? How sweet of her! After that, you cannot refuse me
again. Your aunt would shut you up and feed you upon bread and water,
as fathers and mothers used to do with rebellious daughters in the
eighteenth century."
"I hardly think she would treat me quite so ferociously for saying
'No;' but I think she would be pleased if I were to say 'Yes.'"
"And that means yes, my love, my own!" he cried, in a rapture so swift
and sudden that he had clasped her to his breast and snatched the kiss
of betrothal before she could check his impulsiveness. "You are my
very own," he said, "and I am the happiest man in England. Yes, the
happiest----Did I say in England? What a contemptible notion! I cannot
conceive the idea that anywhere upon this earth there beats a human
heart so full of gladness as mine. Suzette, Suzette, Suzette!" he
repeated tenderly, with a kiss for each comma.
"What a whirlwind you are!" she remonstrated. "And what a rag you are
making of my frock! Oh, Allan, how you have hurried me into this! And
even now I am not quite sure----"
"You are sure that I adore you! What more need my wife be sure of? Oh,
my darling, I have seen wedlock where no love is--only affection and
trustfulness and kindly feeling--all the domestic virtues with love
left out! Dearest, such a union is like a picture to the colour-blind,
like music to the stone-deaf, like a landscape without sunlight. There
is nothing in this world like love, and nothing can make up for love
when love is wanting."
"And nothing can make up for love when love is wanting," repeated
Suzette, suddenly serious. "Oh, Allan! what if I am not sure?--if I
doubt my own feelings?"
"But you can't doubt. My dearest, I am reading the signs and tokens of
love in those eloquent eyes, in those sensitive lips, while you are
talking of doubt. There is no one else, is there, Suzette?" he asked,
with quick earnestness. "No one in the past whose image comes between
you and me?"
"No one, no one."
"In all your Indian experiences?"
"No one."
"Then I am more than satisfied. And now let us go and tell my mother.
She has been waiting for a daughter ever since I was born; and, behold,
at last I am giving her one, the sweetest her heart could desire."
Suzette submitted, and walked by his side in silence while he went in
search of Lady Emily, whom he finally discovered in the poultry-yard
with Bessie Edgefield. Allan's elated air and Suzette's blushes were a
sufficient indication of what had happened; and when mother and son had
clasped hands and looked at each other there was no need of words. Lady
Emily took the girl to her heart and kissed her.
"I hope your father will be pleased, Suzette."
"I don't think he will be sorry."
"And I know Mrs. Mornington will be glad. Allan has her consent in
advance."
"Auntie is a very silly woman," said Suzette, laughingly. And then she
had to endure Bessie Edgefield's congratulations, which were of the
boisterous kind.
"Of course you will let me be bridesmaid," she said, with that vulgar,
practical view of things which wounds the sensitiveness of the newly
betrothed almost as much as an estimate from a furniture dealer, or a
prospectus from an insurance office.