When the taxi drew up at the gate, Maud and Paul and Grisel ran
downstairs.
Moreton Twiss, who was reading and smoking in the corner, did not come
to the window, and Barclay and Jenny leaned out in the wet, watching the
little scene of greeting in the glistening band of light from the open
door.
Finally the house door was banged, and the taxi drove away.
"Shall we go down?" Jenny asked, dancing with excitement. "I do so want
to see Guy!"
"I think we had better wait where we are. If they want us they will come
up here or send for us. Look here, Miss Wick," Barclay went on, struck
by a sudden idea, "I am worried about Grisel. What do you think of her?"
Jenny, whose face was contradictory in that it was at once the face of
an elf, and of a very practical modern girl, sat down on the back of a
chesterfield and looked at him thoughtfully.
"I have been wondering," she said after a pause, "if you noticed it
too."
"Oh, then you _have_ seen?"
"Seen? Why, of course. I have never seen anyone change so in my life.
Everybody says she looks so much better for being at the sea, but she
does not. That's nothing but sunburn, and she is as thin as a herring
and as nervous"--she broke off, looking round for a simile--"as a wild
cat. I was speaking to my brother about her only the other day."
"Ah!" Something in Sir John's voice struck her, and again she looked at
him penetratingly. "What did your brother say?" he went on, meeting her
gaze. "He strikes me as a pretty shrewd fellow."
"He is--or ought to be--but since he became engaged he seems unable to
think of anyone but his blessed Dorothy. He said he thought Grisel
looked very well and seemed extremely happy."
Sir John was silent for a moment, but the peculiarity of his expression
did not escape his observant companion.
"He was very keen on Grisel himself at one time, you know, Oliver was,"
she added, "but they always fight nowadays. Of course, she is not
perfect like his Dorothy, but I don't mind telling you, Sir John, that
if it wasn't for _you_ I should be very sorry that he ever met Dorothy."
"Do you think Grisel could ever have--come to care for your brother?"
Barclay's voice was very quiet and kind, but the girl hesitated for a
moment, eyeing him in a perplexed way before she answered.
"Oh, I am sure I don't know! Rather stupid to talk about it to _you_,
anyway. I suppose----"
"I don't see that at all, and I should really rather like to know your
opinion," he added slowly, "of my defeated rival." After a pause: "I
mean, what do you think would have happened if _he_ had been the
successful one?"
"Well, then," Jenny said, weighing her words and obviously striving for
the exact expression of her thoughts, "I do not think they would have
got on very well if--if you had not come along. You see," she explained
as she smiled in an encouraging way, "Oliver is as clever as the Old
Nick. He is so silly sometimes, and talks in such an idiotic way that
lots of people think he must be a fool, but he isn't; and although he
was so in love with Grisel--and you can hardly believe it now, from the
way he drivels about Dorothy Perkins--but he was in love with
Grisel--there was never any of the 'love is blind' business about him.
He always saw right through her."
"Poor little thing!" Barclay murmured with a laugh. "Anyway, she refused
him!"
"Oh, yes; but he used to go for her about things and tease the life out
of her. That, of course, was good for Grisel. She gets too much
flattery. I do hope," the intelligent little creature went on, so
earnestly that there seemed nothing ridiculous in her assumption of
equality of knowledge and years with her companion, "that you are not
going to spoil her, Sir John!"
"I hope not. So you think that an occasional wigging does her good."
"Rather! It does us _all_ good. I know _I_ get on a high horse every now
and then, and start galloping off, and then Master Oliver cracks his
whip, and down we come in the dust, and I know it is good for me."
He liked her, liked her thoroughly, with her mixture of music and
sharpness; above all, he liked her for not apologising for her perfectly
fair criticism of her friend. He was a man who inclined to be very
impatient of unnecessary apologies.
"Well, well," he said, as, in answer to a message brought up by Jessie,
they went downstairs. "Miss Perkins seems to have played a rather
important part in all our lives, doesn't she? I am afraid my poor
Grisel could never compete with her in the matter of womanly
perfection."
"Oh, I don't suppose Dorothy is as bad--as _good_--as Oliver thinks,"
the girl laughed. "No girl ever was, but still----"
The first thing that met Sir John's eyes as he opened the dining-room
door was Oliver Wick's face. Oliver sat opposite him, and as Jenny went
into the room Barclay stood for a moment watching the scene of greeting
and exclamations and introductions, and it struck him that there was
something very odd in Wick's face as he, too, looked on after kissing
his sister.
The young man looked at once triumphant and touched, and in an odd way,
despite the triumph, hurt.
Barclay's impression that something very strange was going on in the
room strengthened as he advanced to the table. Then Mrs. Walbridge,
whose back had been towards him, and over whose chair Jenny was leaning,
turned and held out her hand. Barclay stared almost open-mouthed, then
he fell back a step, glanced sharply at Wick, whose complexity of
expression had simplified, he saw, to one of sheer pride of achievement
and delight.
It was, indeed, Mrs. Walbridge whose hand her old adorer now held in
his, but it was an entirely new Mrs. Walbridge. A beautifully dressed,
much younger, shyly self-possessed woman, whose faint blush of pleasure
in his plainly-shown surprise gave her an oddly reminiscent look of the
girl in the garden of so many years ago.
Her hair, which since he had found her again had been carelessly
smoothed back, and dulled from lack of care, now shone almost with the
old lustre, and its bewitching curliness was made the highest use of.
Her metamorphosis was so complete and so striking that it would have
been foolish to try to ignore it, and he found himself saying simply as
he released her hand:
"I never should have known you, Mrs. Walbridge." She laughed and bade
him sit down.
"I know," she said, "Paul hardly _did_ know me as I got out of the cab,
did you, Paul?"
"No," the young man answered, "I was never so surprised in my life."
"It is all Oliver's doing," she went on, as she began her interrupted
dinner. "He would have it. Wait till you see some of the things he has
bought me, Maud! He went to all the dressmakers with me, and was so
fussy about my hats that I nearly threw them in his face." But her smile
at the young man across the table was a very loving one.
He beamed back at her in a way that struck the new-comer as being
enviable. He himself felt suddenly very old, very isolated. Violet
Walbridge's husband had been a dismal failure, and her children were
selfish, and spoilt, and not one of them, he had always thought, really
appreciated her, but here was this queer journalistic young man whose
odd gifts were certainly more than intelligence and might easily be the
youthful growth of genius, plainly loving and understanding her like the
most perfect of sons. Barclay envied her.
"I did," Oliver was saying. "With my own hand I did it. With my little
bow and arrow I killed cock sparrow of British clothes and unselfish
indifference! Wait till you see the evening dress we got. My word! And
there's a tea-gown. We had a most unseemly scene over that tea-gown;
nearly came to blows, didn't we, _petite mère_?"
She laughed. "I shall never dare wear it; it's the most unrespectable
looking garment. I only got it to make him stop talking." She went on,
turning to Griselda. "He talked the two saleswomen nearly into collapse,
and the _premier vendeuse_ went and got Madame Carlier herself. His
words flowed, and flowed, like a dreadful, devastating river, and they
were all nearly drowned."
"So you got the tea-gown as a plank to save them," Oliver grinned. "Some
day when we are married, Grisel"--Grisel, started violently, and after a
momentary pause, during which he bit his lip, he went on in an injured
voice, "What is the matter? _Aren't_ you going to be married? I
certainly am! I was going to say, when we are _all_ married I can tell
my wife about our dreadful scenes in the lingerie shop and _chez la
corsetière_. Oh, la, la!"
"Oh, la, la."
Mrs. Walbridge blushed scarlet, and whispered to Maud, who sat next her,
that he had really been dreadful over her night gowns. "The girl who
served us laughed till she was black. I really don't know _what_ she
thought we were!"
Guy, who was more like his mother than any of the others, and who
looked, despite his serious illness, particularly fit and well, now took
up the tale and went on with it.
"He is an awful fellow, really, is Wick, and I can only hope his real
mother has more fight in her than mine."
"She's mine, too, yours is," Wick interrupted, his voice steady, but his
eyes bright. "She has adopted me, and I have adopted her."
"How will Miss Perkins like this new relationship and all that it
entails?" Barclay asked, looking away from Mrs. Walbridge for the first
time for several minutes.
"Oh, she'll be delighted! She's _longing_ to meet Mrs. Walbridge and all
of them, particularly, of course," he added politely, "Grisel."
For some reason everyone at the table turned and looked at Grisel. She
was leaning back in her chair, her face clearly alarmingly white, and
her nose looked pointed.
Paul, who sat next to her, took hold of her hand.
"What is the matter," he asked roughly.
She moved a little and forced herself to speak. "It's my head. I have
felt rather bad all day, haven't I?" she added, turning to Barclay with
pathetic eagerness.
He rose. "Yes, dear, your head was bad before dinner, even. Come, I'll
take you out into the air."
Paul opened the door and Grisel and Barclay went out, and the others
heard the veranda door open and close behind them.
"Grisel looks like the very deuce," nodded Guy gruffly. "Can't think
what you have all been dreaming of to let her get into such a state."
"It really has been frightfully hot," Jenny Wick said explanatorily.
"I've felt like a rag all day, and Grisel isn't nearly so strong as I
am."
Mrs. Walbridge looked anxiously at her eldest daughter.
"How do _you_ think she is, Maud?"
Maud shrugged her shoulders. "She certainly looks bad enough to-night,
but, of course, I have seen very little of her--our being down at
Burnham Beeches--what do you think, Moreton?"
The young doctor hesitated for a moment. "It is her nerves," he said.
"She strikes me as being a bit upset about something. Most probably,
poor kid, it's this affair about--about her father."
Young Wick had stopped eating, and was rolling a bit of bread absently
between his thumb and first finger. His fair eyebrows were twisted into
an odd frown and his mouth was set.
Mrs. Walbridge rose. "I'm going to see if she is all right," she
declared anxiously, but Paul put out a detaining hand.
"Don't, mother, John will look after her. He'll see that she is all
right. Don't worry, she is a bit run down, but that is nothing. I think
I know something that will put everything straight," he added. "I should
have waited for him to tell you himself, but as you are worried he won't
mind my telling you now. You know how anxious he has been to get back to
Argentina?"
"Yes."
"Well, he had a letter to-night from some big official, saying that they
would let him go the moment peace is signed. Peace will certainly be
signed this week, and he will get off I should think next week, and I
believe--mind you, I don't know, only think--that he is going to ask
Grisel to marry him at once and go out with him."
"That's a very good plan," declared Moreton Twiss with all the authority
of the doctor, "the sea journey would put her to rights, better than
anything in the world. Splendid."
"Did he tell you he was going to suggest this?" Mrs. Walbridge asked in
a faltering voice. "Oh, Paul, I don't want her to go so soon."
"Nonsense, mother, you must not be selfish," returned Paul, briskly. "I
was very late getting back to-night, and he picked me up at the corner
in his car and showed me the letter. He didn't exactly suggest it, in
fact, I rather think it was I who asked him if he would not be wanting
her to marry him at once under the circumstances, but I'd like to bet £5
on his doing it at this moment out there in the rain."
As he spoke they heard the outside door closing again, and after a
moment Barclay came into the dining-room alone.
"Grisel has gone upstairs," he said. "Her head is pretty bad. She may
come down later."
They all went up to the girls' room, and shortly after the Twiss' and
the Wicks who were spending the night with the Catherwoods, left, and
the rain having ceased, Paul walked back with them.
When they had gone Mrs. Walbridge, Sir John and Guy sat on for a while
in the pleasant, flower-filled room, and presently Mrs. Walbridge asked
Guy to leave her alone with Sir John, and the young man said
"Good-night," and went out.
Mrs. Walbridge sat very slim and graceful-looking in her new clothes,
and, what was still more remarkable, her new bearing, on the black
chesterfield, and Barclay walked up and down the room restlessly, his
hands behind him, his head sunk thoughtfully on his breast.
Neither of them spoke for a long time, and then Mrs. Walbridge broke the
silence.
"Sir John," she began abruptly, "I do hope you are not going to want to
take Grisel back with you to South America next week?"
He turned. "So Paul has told you?"
"Yes. I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all. That is why I told him."
"He thought--he thought you might be asking her to marry you at
once--while you were on the veranda I mean."
He shook his head. "No, I didn't mention it to her." Then he went on
very deliberately, looking her straight in the face, "Mrs. Walbridge, I
do not wish to marry your daughter."
As soon as she had grasped that she really had heard the words, she
sprang to her feet, years younger in her anger.
"What do you mean?" she cried.
He smiled sadly. "Don't be angry, I have the greatest possible esteem
and admiration for Grisel."
"But you do not wish to marry her?"
"No! I do not."
In those few short days of long ago he had never seen Violet Blaine
angry, and since he had found her again she had seemed so timid, so
flattened by life, that he had been unable to conceive of her in any
mood but that of her daily one of gentle unobtrusive hopelessness; and
now, as she blazed at him, standing there with clenched hands and
shortened breath, he suddenly felt twenty years younger, as if all sorts
of recent things had been only a dream, and that this--this only, was
real.
He looked at her with such plain-to-be-seen satisfaction and admiration,
that she was startled and drew back, losing her bearings, and then he
spoke.
"You and I," he said, "are too old to do anything but speak plainly to
each other; affectations and pretty little pretences are part of the
pageant of youth; we have no right to them. So I will be quite short in
telling you what I have to say. Grisel is a delightful girl as well as
a most beautiful one, but I made a mistake in asking her to marry me. I
do not wish to marry her; I do not love her."
Again her righteous anger blazed up to his curious gratification and
delight, but he went on doggedly.
"I have been trying this afternoon to make her break off the engagement,
but I have failed, so I shall have to do it myself."
"But it is outrageous, abominable! You have no right to treat my
daughter so."
"I have no right," he said, "to treat any woman in the world with less
than entire honesty, and least of all your daughter."
Something in his voice penetrated through her anger into her mind and
mitigated her glance a little as she answered:
"What do you mean? Why least of all my daughter?"
There was a little pause, then his simple words fell very quietly on the
silence. "Because," he said, "for over thirty years I have loved you."
She could not answer for a moment so deep was her amazement, and then,
as so often is the case, she could only repeat his words.
"Loved me!"
"Yes, you. I have never married, never in my life used the word love to
any woman until I met Grisel, and that was because you were always there
in my memory, and there was no room for anyone else."
"But I did not even remember you!"
"No! And you have no idea," he added, smiling sadly, "how after thirty
years those words of yours-'that you did not remember me'--hurt me.
Well, there you are. Such as I am I have been absolutely faithful to my
boyish love for you."
So many different feelings were struggling in her mind that her face was
tremulous with varied fleeting expressions. Her beautiful deep eyes were
wet, and her lips looked fuller and red, more like the lips of a girl
than they had done for years.
"When I met her at Torquay," he went on, looking away from her with
delicacy, "I had no idea she was your daughter. I had never even heard
your married name, but something in her, particularly a trick she has
with her hands, and then the shape of her ears, always recalled you, and
I encouraged myself, deliberately encouraged myself, to fall in love
with her. I very nearly succeeded too," he added smiling. "Who could
not? Such a charming child."
There was a little pause. It had begun to rain again and the soft
pattering sound on the windows filled the air.
"Then I came here and saw you. You, as the years had made you--as the
years of Ferdinand Walbridge had made you," he added, with sudden
firmness.
She looked up still with the odd air of youth in her face. "Poor
Ferdie," she murmured, "he never meant it, you know."
"They never do," he answered dryly. "The very worst husbands are those
who did not mean it."
"Well, then," he went on, after a moment, "I had a good deal of
thinking, one way and another, and it struck me that if I could make her
happy it would make you happy as well. And I tried."
"Oh, you have, you have; you have been so good," she interrupted,
clasping her hands. "It's only that she is not very well."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Surely you must see," he asked slowly, "what
is the matter with her?"
"Then there _is_ something the matter with her?"
"Of course there is. Why, look at her," he rejoined roughly. "She nearly
fainted under your very noses out of sheer misery to-night, and not one
of you saw the reason."
She stared at him, her lips moving faintly, and at last she said:
"What was the reason?"
"Wick, young Wick. She is madly in love with him, and he is worth it."
A worldlier woman or a less wise one might have suspected that Barclay
was using young Wick as a means to help him out of an irksome
engagement, but Mrs. Walbridge knew.
"So I was right," she murmured thoughtfully. "I had begun to think I was
wrong." Then she started, clenching the arms of her chair hard.
"Oh, dear," she cried, "what about Miss Perkins?"
He laughed. "That's the question; what about Miss Perkins? There _is_
something about her; some mystery, I mean. But never mind that now. The
point is this. Grisel has practically refused to break off her
engagement with me, so I shall just have to screw up my courage and
break mine with her. A nasty job."
"You must not mention Oliver to her. It would not be fair, because of
Miss Perkins."
He looked at her curiously. "You don't mean to say that you still think
that Wick cares a button about Dorothy Perkins or anyone else except
Grisel?"
"But if he doesn't--oh, how dreadful it all is--why is he engaged to
her?"
"That I don't know. I shall know by this time to-morrow." He looked at
his watch. "It is only eleven now. I wonder," he went on slowly, "if I
could get him on the telephone? May as well get it over at once."
She told him the number, and acting on certain instructions of his went
to Grisel's room while he was telephoning. The girl was sitting by the
window still dressed, but with her hair plaited in a long tail down her
back, which gave her an odd effect of being a child dressed in some one
else's clothes. "My head was so bad," she explained. "I have been
brushing my hair."
"Good, I am glad you have not gone to bed, darling, for John is still
here and wants to see you in a little while."
"Oh, mother, it's so late."
Mrs. Walbridge kissed her smooth, black, old-fashioned, silky hair. "I
know, dear, but he has had an important telegram, and wishes to speak to
you about it. Oh, look, it has stopped raining, and the moon is coming
out!"
She stood for a while looking out into the delicate gleams of the
rain-soaked garden, and then said gently:
"Grisel, darling, have you seen Miss Perkins yet?"
"No, but he--he showed me the ring he has got for her."
"Yes, I saw it, too. I think that the girl who marries Oliver," the
mother went on, pitifully conscious of the futility of searching for the
most painless words, "will be very, very happy."
Grisel nodded without speaking.
"You see, in Paris, and travelling with him, I--I have got to know him
so well. He--he is a splendid fellow, Grisel, under all his nonsense."
"I know, mother," the girl's voice was very low, and very gentle.
After a moment Mrs. Walbridge went on, going to the back of her
daughter's chair, and stroking her little head with smooth, regular
movements.
"Sometimes I have wished, dear, that you--that you could have cared for
him."
"I!" The girl broke away from her gentle hand and faced her. "What if I
_had_ cared for him? Thank God I didn't; but what if I had? A splendid
kind of love _that_ was to trust--would have been--I mean. Why it was
only a week after--after that time in the drawing-room when he looked so
awful--_not_ a week after that, that he was engaged to this beast of a
Perkins girl. I--I hate him," she cried, suddenly breaking down with an
unreserved voice that at once frightened and relieved her mother.
Kneeling by the window she cried, cried as her mother knew she had not
done for years, her little shoulders shaking, her forehead on the window
sill.
"Hush, dear, you must not cry. Better wash your face and sniff some
camphor. Remember John will be wanting to see you in a few minutes."
Violet Walbridge had forced herself to speak coldly and in a voice
devoid of sympathy, and the effect of this manoeuvre showed in the
girl's rising almost at once and darting into the bathroom. Her mother
heard the roaring of the cold water and stood for a moment listening.
Then, without a word, she went back to Barclay.