Bertie Pemberton stuck close by Beatrix's side as they trotted easily with the crowd up to the wood which was first to be drawn.
"They won't find anything here," he said; "they never do. They'll draw Beeching Copse next. Let's go off there, shall we? Lots of others will."
In her ignorance and his assurance of what was likely to happen, she allowed herself to follow his lead. The 'lots of others' proved to be those of the runners who were knowing enough to run risks so as to spare themselves, and a few experienced horsemen who shared Bertie's opinion; but there were enough of them to make the move not too conspicuous. Bertie found the occasion he wanted, and made use of it at once.
"I say, I know you're a pal of Mollie Walter's," he said. "Is there any chance for me?"
Beatrix was rather taken aback by this directness, having anticipated nothing more than veiled enquiries from which she would gain some amusement and interest in divining exactly how far he had gone upon the road which she thought Mollie was also traversing.
"Why do you ask me that?" she said, after a slight pause. "Why don't you ask her?"
"Well, because I don't want to make a fool of myself. I believe she likes me, but I don't know."
"Do you want me to find out for you, then?" she asked, after another pause.
"I thought you'd give me a tip," he said. "I know you're a pal of hers. I suppose she talks about things to you."
"Of course she talks about things to me."
"Yes? Well!"
She kept silence.
"Is it any good?" he asked again.
"How should I know?" asked Beatrix. "You don't suppose she's confided in me that she's dying for love of you!"
He turned to look at her. Her pretty face was pink, and a trifle scornful. "Oh, I say!" he exclaimed. "What have I said to put you in a bait?"
"Areyouin love with her?" asked Beatrix.
"I should think you could see that, can't you?" he said, with a slight droop. "I don't know that I've taken particular pains to hide it."
"Well then, why don't you tell her so? It's the usual thing to do, isn't it?"
He laughed. "Which brings us back to where we were before," he said.
"I'm not going to give you any encouragement," said Beatrix. "If you really love her, and don't ask her without wanting to know beforehand what she'll say—well, of course, youcan'treally love her."
Somewhat to her surprise, and a little to her dismay,he seemed to be considering this. "Well, I don't want to make a mistake," he said. "I'll tell you how it is. I never seem to get beyond a certain point with her. I know this, that if she'd just give me a little something, I should be head over ears. Then I shouldn't want to ask you or anybody. I should go straight in. That's how it is."
Beatrix was interested in this disclosure. It threw a light upon the mysterious nature of man's love, as inflammable material which needs a spark to set it ablaze. In a rapid review of her own case she saw exactly where she had provided the spark, and the hint of a question came to her, which there was no time to examine into, as to which of the two really comes to a decision first, the man or the woman.
She would not, however, admit to him that it was to be expected of a girl that she should indicate the answer she would give to a question before it had been asked. She also wanted to find out if there was any feeling in his mind that he would not be doing well for himself and his family if he should marry Mollie. On her behalf she was prepared to resent such an idea, and to tell him quite frankly what she thought about it.
"Don't you think she's worth taking a little risk about?" she asked.
"She's worth anything," he said simply, and she liked him for the speech, but stuck to her exploratory purpose.
"If you've made it so plain that you want her," shesaid, "I suppose your people know about it. What do they say?"
"Say? They don't say anything. I've paid attentions to young women before, you know. It's supposed to be rather a habit of mine."
She liked this speech much less. "Perhaps that's why Mollie doesn't accept them with the gratitude you seem to expect of her," she said. "I don't like your way of talking about her."
"Talking about her? What do you mean? I've said nothing about her at all, except that I think she's the sweetest thing in the world. At least I haven't said that, but I've implied it, haven't I? Anyhow, that's what I do think."
"Haven't you thought that about the others you're so proud of having paid attention to?"
"I didn't say I was proud of it. How you do take a fellow up. Yes, perhaps I have thought it once or twice. I don't want to make myself out what I'm not."
He was dead honest, she thought, but still wasn't quite sure that he was worthy of her dear Mollie; or even that he was enough in love with her to make it desirable that he should marry her. But Beatrix, innocent and childish as she was in many ways, had yet seen too much of the world not to have her ideas touched by the worldly aspects of marriage, for others, at least, if not for herself. Bertie Pemberton would be a very good 'match' for Mollie; and she knew already that Mollie 'liked' him, though she had no intention of telling him so.
"Will your people like your marrying Mollie—if you do?" she asked.
"Like it! Of course they'll like it They're devilish fond of her, the whole lot of them. Why shouldn't they like it?"
She didn't answer, and he repeated the question, "Why shouldn't they like it?"
"I thought perhaps they might want you to marry somebody with money, or something of that sort," she said, forced to answer, but feeling as if she had fixed herself with the unworthy ideas she had sought to find in him.
He added to her confusion by saying: "I shouldn't have thought that sort of thing would have come intoyourhead. I suppose what you really mean is that there'd be an idea of my marrying out of my beat, so to speak, if I took Mollie."
"If youtookMollie!" she echoed, angry with herself and therefore more angry with him. "What a way to talk! I think Mollie's far too good for you. Too good in every way, and I mean that. It's only that I know how people of your sortdolook at things—and because she lives in a little cottage and you in a— Oh, you make me angry."
He laughed at her. There was no doubt about his easy temper. "Look here," he said. "Let's get it straight. I'm not a snob, and my people aren't snobs. As for money—well, I suppose it's always useful, if it's there; but if it isn't—well, it's going to be all the more my show. There'll be enough to get along on.If I could have the luck to get that girl for my own, I should settle down here, and look after the place, and be as happy as a king. The old governor would like that, and so would the girls. And they'd all make a lot of her. Everybody about here who knows her likes her, and I should be as proud as Punch of her. You know what she's like yourself. There's nobody to beat her. She's a bit shy now, because she hasn't been about as much as people like you have; but I like her all the better for that. She's like something—I hope you won't laugh at me—it's like finding a jewel where you didn't expect it. She's never been touched—well, I suppose I mean she's unspotted by the world, as they read out in church the other day. I thought to myself, Yes, that's Mollie. She isn't like other girls one may have taken a fancy to at some time or another."
Beatrix liked him again now. They had reached the copse where the next draw would be made, and were standing in a corner at its edge. She stole a glance at him sitting easily on his tall horse and found him a proper sort of man, in spite of his lack of the finer qualities. Perhaps he did not lack them so much as his very ordinary speech and behaviour had seemed to indicate. She had pictured him taking a fancy to Mollie, and willing to gratify it in passing over the obvious differences between his situation in the world and hers. But his last speech had shown him to have found an added attraction in her not having been brought up in his world, and it did him credit, for it meant to himsomething good and quiet towards which his thoughts were turned, and not at all the unsuitability which many men of his sort would have seen in it.
There was a look on his ordinary, rather unmeaning face which touched Beatrix. "I like you for saying that," she said frankly. "It's what anybody who can see things ought to think about darling Mollie. I'm sorry I said just now that you weren't really good enough for her."
He looked up and laughed again, the gravity passing from his face. "Well, itwasrather rough," he said, "though it's what I feel myself, you know. Makes you ashamed of having knocked about—you know what I mean. Or perhaps you don't. But men aren't as good as girls. But when you fall in love with a girl like Mollie—well, you want to chuck it all, and make yourself something different—more suitable, if you know what I mean. That's the way it takes you; or ought to when you're really in love with somebody who's worth it."
She liked him better every moment. A dim sense of realities came to her, together with the faintest breath of discomfort, as her own case, always present with her while she was discussing that of another, presented itself from this angle. She had been very scornful of Bertie's frank admission that there had been others before Mollie. But weren't there always others, with men? If a true love wiped them out, and made the man wish he had brought his first love to the girl, as he so much revered her for bringing hers to him, thenthe past should be forgiven him; he was washed clean of it. It was the New Birth in the religion of Love. Mollie represented purity and innocence to this ordinary unreflective young man, and something good in him went out to meet it, and sloughed off the unworthiness in him. His chance of regeneration had been given him.
"If you feel like that about her," she said, "I don't know what you meant when you said she hadn't given you enough encouragement to make you take the risk with her."
His face took on its graver look again. "I don't know that I quite know what I meant myself," he said. "I suppose—in a way—it's two sorts of love. At least, one is mixed up with the other. Oh, I don't know. I can't explain things like that."
But Beatrix, without experience to guide her, but with her keen feminine sense for the bases of things, had a glimmering. The lighter love, which was all this young man had known hitherto, would need response to set it aflame. He was tangled in his own past. The finer love that had come to him was shrinking and fearful, set its object on a pedestal to which it hardly dared to raise its eyes. It was this sort of love that raised a man above himself and above his past. Again a question insinuated itself into her mind. Had it been given in her own case? But again there was no time to answer it.
There was no time, indeed, for more conversation. A hulloa and a bustle at the further edgeof the wood from which they had come showed it to have contained a prize after all. The stream set that way, and they followed it with the hope of making up for the ground they had lost.
For a time they galloped together, and then there came a fence which Bertie took easily enough, but which to Beatrix was somewhat of an ordeal. She went at it, but her mare, having her own ideas as to how much should be asked of her, refused; and at the beginning of the day, with her blood not yet warmed, Beatrix did not put her at it again. There was a gate a few yards off which had already been opened, and she went through it with others. In the meantime Bertie, to whom it had not occurred that she would not take a fence that any of his sisters would have larked over without thinking about it, had got on well ahead of her, and she did not see him again.
But although their conversation had been cut short, all, probably, had been said that he could have expected to be said. Beatrix thought that there was little doubt now of his proposing to Mollie, and perhaps as soon as he should find an opportunity.
Beatrix, of all three of the girls, was the least interested in hunting. When she realised that the day had opened with a good straight run, and that her bad start had left her hopelessly behind, she gave it up, and was quite content to do so. A little piece of original thinking on her part had led her to take a different line from that followed by most of those who had started late with her, but it had not given her the advantageshe had hoped from it. Presently she found herself quite alone, in a country of wide grass fields and willow-bordered brooks which was actually the pick of the South Meadshire country, if only the fox had been accommodating enough to take to it.
Recognising, after a time, that she was hopelessly lost, and being even without the country lore that would have given her direction by the softly blowing west wind, she gave it up with a laugh and decided to return slowly home. She would anyhow have had a nice long ride, and the feminine spirit in her turned gratefully towards a cosy afternoon indoors with a book, which would be none the less pleasant because it had hardly been earned.
She followed tracks across the fields until she came to a lane and then to a road, followed that till she found crossroads and a signpost, and then discovered that she was going in the opposite direction to that of Abington. So she turned back about a mile, and going a little farther found herself in familiar country and reached home in time for a bath before luncheon.
That was Beatrix's day with the hounds, but she had plenty to think about as she walked and trotted along the quiet lanes.
She felt rather soft with regard to Bertie and Mollie. He had shown himself in a light that touched her, and the conviction, which at one period of their conversation she had quite sincerely expressed to him, that he was not nearly good enough for her chosen friend, she found herself to have relinquished. As the young manwith some reputation for love-making, who had seemed to be uncertain whether he would or he wouldn't, he had certainly not been good enough, nor on that side of him would he ever be good enough. But there had been something revealed that went a good deal deeper than that. Beatrix thought that his love for Mollie was after all of the right sort, and was honouring to her friend. She also thought that she herself might perhaps do something to further it.
As for Mollie, she had found herself somewhat impressed by the young man's statement that she had given him little encouragement. She had seen for herself, watching the pair of them when they had been together, how she had been invited to it. Here again her own experience that had been so sweet to her came in. The man shows himself attracted. He makes little appeals and advances. An aura begins to form round him; he is not as other men. But the girl shrinks instinctively from those advances at first, holding her maiden stronghold. Then, as instinctively, she begins to invite them, and greatly daring makes some fluttering return, to be followed perhaps by a more determined closing up. The round repeats itself, and she is led always further along the path that she half fears to tread, until at last she is taken by storm, and then treads it with no fear at all, but with complete capitulation and high joy.
So it had been with her, and she thought that it should have been so with Mollie, until the tiresome figure of the Vicar, spoiling the delicate poise with hiscrude accusations, presented itself to her. It was that that had made Mollie so careful that she had shut herself off in irresponsiveness, wary and intended, instead of following the fresh pure impulses of her girlhood. She was sure of it, and half wished she had said as much to Bertie, but on consideration was glad that she hadn't. He would have been very angry, and awkwardness might have come of it, for those who were forced to live in proximity to this official upholder of righteousness. He would be sufficiently confounded when what he had shown himself so eager to spoil in the making should result in happiness and accord. If Beatrix, in her loyalty towards youth as against interfering middle-age, also looked forward with pleasure to exhibitions of annoyance at the defeat that was coming to him, she may perhaps be forgiven.
It may be supposed, however, that during that long slow ride home her thoughts were more taken up with her own affair than with that of her friends, which indeed seemed in train to be happily settled in a way that hers was not.
For the first time in all these months, she examined it from a standpoint a little outside herself. She did not know that she was enabled to do this by the fact that her devotion to Lassigny's memory had begun to loosen its hold on her. Her time of love-making had been so short, and her knowledge of her lover so slight, that it was now the memory to which she clung, and was obliged to cling if her love was not to die down altogether. None of this, however, would she have admitted.She had given her love, and in her own view of it she had given it for life.
What she found herself able to examine, in the light of Bertie Pemberton's revelation of himself, was the figure of her own lover, not altogether deprived of the halo with which she had crowned it, but for the first time somewhat as others might see it, and especially her father.
He distrusted Lassigny. Why? She had never admitted the question before, and only did so now on the first breath of discomfort that blew chill on her own heart. Those two sorts of love of which Mollie's lover had dimly seen his own to be compounded—had they both been offered to her? There had been no such shrinking on Lassigny's part as the more ordinary young man had confessed to. He had wooed her boldly, irresistibly, with the sure confidence of a man who knows his power, and what he may expect to get for himself from it. He had desired her, and she had fallen a willing captive to him. She knew that he had found her very sweet, and he had laid at her feet so much that she had never questioned his having laid all. All would have included his own man's past, the full tide of the years and experiences of youth, spent lavishly while she had been a little child, and beginning now to poise its wings for departure. It was the careless waste of youth and of love that Mollie's lover had felt to have been disloyalty to the finer love that had come to him, and turned him from his loud self-confidence to diffidence and doubt. There had been noself-abasement of that sort in Beatrix's lover. He had claimed her triumphantly, as he had claimed and enjoyed other loves. She was one of a series, different from the others insomuch as the time had come for him to settle down, as the phrase went, and it was more agreeable to make a start at that postponed process with love as part of the propulsion than without it. It was not even certain that she would be the last of the series. In her father's view it was almost certain that she wouldn't.
She did not see all of this, by any means, as she rode reflectively homewards. Her knowledge and experience included perhaps a very small part of it as conscious reflection, and there was no ordered sequence of thought or discovery in the workings of her girl's mind. Some progression, however, there was, in little spurts of feeling and enlightenment. She was more doubtful of her lover, more doubtful of the strength of her own attachment to him, more inclined to return to her loving allegiance to her father, whatever the future should hold for her.
This last impulse of affection was the most significant outcome of all her aroused sensibilities. She would not at any time have acknowledged that he had been right and she had been wrong. But she felt the channel of her love for him cleared of obstruction. It flowed towards him. It would be good to give it expression, and gain in return the old happy signs of his tenderness and devotion towards her. She wanted to see him at once, and behave to him as his spoilt loving child,and rather hoped that the fortunes of the chase would bring him home before the rest, so that she might have a cosy companionable little time with him alone.
In the afternoon, as the short winter day began to draw in, having read and lightly slept, her young blood roused her to activity again. She would go and see Mollie, and persuade her to come back to tea with her, so that they could talk confidentially together. Or if she had to stay to tea at Stone Cottage, because of Mrs. Walter, perhaps Mollie would come back with her afterwards.
She put on her coat and hat, and went out as the dusk was falling over the quiet spaces of the park. As she neared the gates she heard the trot of a horse on the road outside, and wondered if it was her father who was coming home. She had forgotten her wish that he would do so, as it had seemed so little likely of fulfilment, but made up her mind to go back with him if it should happily be he.
It was a man, who passed the gates at a sharp trot, not turning his head to look inside them. The light was not too far gone for her to recognise, with a start of surprise, the horsemanlike figure of Bertie Pemberton, whom she had imagined many miles away. The hunt had set directly away from Abington, and was not likely to have worked back so far in this direction. Nor could Abington conceivably be on Bertie's homeward road, even supposing him so far to have departed from his usual habits as to have taken it before the end of the day. What was he doing here?
She thought she knew, and walked on down the road to the village at a slightly faster pace, with a keen sense of pleasure and excitement at her breast. She saw him come out of the stable of the inn, on foot, and walk up the village street at the head of which stood Stone Cottage, at a pace faster than her own.
Then she turned and went back, smiling to herself, but a little melancholy too. She was not so happy as Mollie was likely to be in a very short time.
The Vicar and Mrs. Mercer were drinking tea with Mrs. Walter and Mollie. There had been a revival of late of the old intercourse between the Vicarage and Stone Cottage. Mollie had been very careful. After that conversation with her mother recorded a few chapters back, she had resolutely made up her mind that no call from outside should lure her away from her home whenever her mother would be likely to want her. With her generous young mind afire with tenderness and gratitude for all the love that had been given to her, for the years of hard and anxious toil that had gone to the making of this little home, in which at last she could make some return for her mother's devotion, she had set herself to put her above everything, and had never flinched from sacrificing her youthful desires to that end, while taking the utmost pains to hide the fact that there was any sacrifice at all. She had had her reward in the knowledge that her mother was happier than she had ever been since her widowhood, with an increased confidence in the security she had worked so hard to gain, and even some improvement in health. The poor woman, crushed more by the hard weight of difficult years than by any definite ailment, had seenher hold on her child loosening, and the friendship that had been so much to her becoming a source of strife and worry instead of refreshment. It had been easier to suffer under the thought of what should be coming to her than to make headway against it. She had no vital force left for further struggle, and to rise and take up the little duties of her day had often been too much for her while she had been under the weight of her fear. That fear was now removed, and a sense of safety and contentment had taken its place. She had been more active and capable during this early winter than at any such period since she had gained her freedom.
Part of Mollie's deeply considered duty had been to recreate the intimacy with the Vicar and Mrs. Mercer, and by this time there had come to be no doubt that they occupied first place again in her attentions. Even Beatrix had had to give way to them, but had found Mollie so keenly delighted in her society when she did enjoy it, that, divining something of what was behind it all, she had made no difficulties, except to chaff her occasionally about her renewed devotion to Lord Salisbury.
Mollie never let fall a hint of the aversion she had conceived for the man, which seemed to have come to her suddenly, and for no reason that she wanted to examine. Some change in her attitude towards him he must have felt, for he showed slight resentments and caprices in his towards her; but Mrs. Mercer exulted openly in the return of her allegiance, and if he was not satisfied that it had extended to himself he had no grounds onwhich to express complaint. There was no doubt, at least, that Mollie was more at the disposal of himself and his wife than she had been at any time since the Graftons had come to the Abbey, and he put it down as the result of his wife's visit to Mrs. Walter, which he had instigated if not actually directed. So he accepted the renewal of intimacy with not too bad a face, and neither Mrs. Walter nor Mrs. Mercer conceived it to be less complete between all of them than it had been before.
The Vicar had a grievance on this winter afternoon, which he was exploiting over the tea-table.
"The least that could be expected," he was saying, "when the Bishop of the Diocese comes among us is that the clergy of the neighbourhood should be asked to meet him in a friendly way. Mrs. Carruthers gives a great deal of hospitality where it suits her, and I hear that the whole Grafton family has been invited to dinner at Surley Park to-morrow, as of course was to be expected. They have made a dead set at the lady and she at them, and I suppose none of her parties would be complete without a Grafton to grace it, though it's difficult to see what pleasure she can expect the Bishop to take in meeting a young girl like Barbara, or a mere child like the boy."
"Oh, but elderly men do like to have young things about them, Albert," said Mrs. Mercer; "and as this is a purely private family party I dare say Mrs. Carruthers thought that his lordship would prefer to meet lay people rather than the clergy."
The Vicar's mouth shut down, as it always did in company when his wife made a speech of that sort. She had been a good wife to him—that he would have been the first to admit—but he nevercouldget her to curb her tongue, which, as he was accustomed to say, was apt to run away with her; although he had tried hard, and even prayed about it, as he had once told her.
"Personally," he said stiffly, "I am unable to draw this distinction between lay people and clergy, except where the affairs of the church are concerned, and I must say it strikes me as odd that the wife of a priest should wish to do so. In ordinary social intercourse I should have said that a well-educated clergyman, who happened also to be a man of the world, was about the best company that could be found anywhere. His thoughts are apt to be on a higher plane than those of other men, but that need not prevent him shining in the lighter phases of conversation. I have heard better, and funnier, stories told by clergymen over the dinner-table than by any other class of human beings, though never, I am thankful to say, a gross one."
"Oh, yes, dear," said Mrs. Mercer soothingly. "I like funny stories with a clerical flavour the best of all myself. Do tell Mrs. Walter that one about the Bishop who asked the man who came to see him to take two chairs."
"As you have already anticipated the point of the story," said the Vicar, not mollified, "I think I should prefer to save it for another occasion. I was over atSurley Rectory yesterday calling on poor old Mr. Cooper. You have never met him, I think, Mrs. Walter."
"No," she said. "He has been more or less laid up ever since we came here."
"I am afraid he will never get about again. He seems to me to be on his last legs, if I may so express myself."
No objection being made to his doing so, he went on. "He has done good work in his time. He is past it now, poor old man, but in years gone by he was an example to all—full of energy and good works. I have been told that before he came to Surley, and held a small living somewhere in the Midlands, he did not rest until he had raised the endowment by a hundred pounds a year. That means hard unremitting work, in these days when the laity is apt to keep its purse closed against the claims of the church. I always like to give credit where credit is due, and I must say for old Mr. Cooper that he has deserved well of his generation."
"It is nice to think of his ending his days in peace in that beautiful place," said Mrs. Walter. "When Mollie and I went to call there in the summer I thought I had never seen a prettier house and garden of its size."
"I wish we could have the luck to get the living when old Mr. Cooper does go," said Mrs. Mercer artlessly. "I don't want the old gentleman to die yet awhile, naturally, but he can't be expected to hold out very much longer; he is eighty-four and getting weaker every day.Somebodymust be appointed after him,and I think myself it ought to be an incumbent of the diocese who has borne the heat and burden of the day in a poorly endowed living."
She was only repeating her husband's oft-spoken words, being ready to take his view in all matters, and using his methods of expression as being more suitable than her own. But he was not pleased with the implied compliment. "I wish you wouldn't talk in that way, Gertrude," he said, in an annoyed voice. "Before such friends as Mrs. Walter and Mollie it may do no harm, but if such a thing were said outside it would look as if I had given rise to the wish myself, which is the last thing I should like to be said. If it so befalls me I shall be content to go on working here where Providence has placed me till the end of the chapter, with no other reward but the approval of my own conscience, and perhaps the knowledge that some few people are the better and worthier for the work I have spent a great part of my life in doing amongst them. At the same time I should not refuse to take such a reward as Surley would be if it were offered to me freely, and it were understood that itwasa reward for work honestly done through a considerable period of years. I would not take it under any other conditions, and as for doing anything to solicit it, it would be to contradict everything that I have always stood for."
"Oh, yes, dear," said Mrs. Mercer. "But it wouldn't have done any harm just to have met the Bishop in a friendly way at Surley itself. It might have sort of connected you with the place in his mind.I wish we had been able to keep friends with Mrs. Carruthers, or that Rhoda and Ethel had accepted your offer to preach to-morrow afternoon."
Really, although a devoted helpmate, both in purse and person, this woman was a trial. His face darkened so at her speech that Mrs. Walter struck in hurriedly so as to draw the lightning from the tactless speaker. "The Miss Coopers were hoping the last time they were over here that their brother might be appointed to succeed their father," was her not very sedative effort.
But the lightning was drawn. The lowered brows were bent upon her. "I think it is quite extraordinary," said the Vicar, "that those girls should give themselves away as they do. Really, in these matters there are decencies to be observed. A generation or two ago, perhaps, it was not considered wrong to look upon an incumbency as merely providing an income and a house, just as any secular post might. You get it in the works of Anthony Trollope, a tedious long-winded writer, but valuable as giving a picture of his time. But with the growth of true religion and a more self-devoted spirit on the part of the clergy it is almost approaching the sin of simony to talk about an incumbency in the way those girls do so freely."
"They only said that their brother was very much liked by everybody in the parish," said Mollie, who had seen her mother wince at the attack. "They said if the Bishop knew how suitable he really was, he might look over his youth, and appoint him."
The brows were turned upon Mollie, who was given to understand that such matters as these were beyond her understanding, and that no Bishop who valued his reputation could afford to make such an appointment.
Mollie sat silent under the lecture, thinking of other things. It was enough for her that it was not addressed directly to her mother. Something in her attitude, that may have betrayed the complete indifference towards his views which she had thought her submissively downcast eyes were hiding, must have stung him, for his tone hardened against her, and when he had finished with the question of Surley Rectory, his next speech seemed directed at her, with an intention none of the kindest.
"I'm told that Mrs. Carruthers was seen driving the Bishop over to the meet at Grays this morning," he said. "Of course there would be one or two people there whom he might be glad to meet, but he will have a queer idea of our part of the world if he takes it from people like those noisy Pembertons."
Mollie could not prevent a deep blush spreading over her face at this sudden unexpected introduction of the name. She knew that he must notice it, and blushed all the deeper. How she hated him at that moment, and how she blessed his little wife for jumping in with her "Oh, Albert! Not vulgar, only noisy. And it's all good nature and high spirits. You said so yourself after we had dined there in the summer."
"I think we had better not discuss our neighbours," said Mrs. Walter, almost quivering at her own daring."The Pembertons have shown themselves very kind and friendly towards us, and personally I like them all."
"So do I," said Mollie, rallying to her mother's side. "Especially the girls. I think they're as kind as any girls I've ever met."
The temper of the official upholder of righteousness was of the kind described by children's nurses as nasty. Otherwise he would hardly have fixed a baleful eye upon Mollie, and said: "Are you sure it's the girls you like best?"
It was at that moment that Bertie Pemberton was announced, his heralding ring at the bell having passed unnoticed.
He told Mollie afterwards that he had noticed nothing odd, having been much worked up in spirit himself, and being also taken aback at finding the room full of outsiders, as he expressed it, instead of only Mollie and her mother.
Mrs. Walter, under the combined stress of the Vicar's speech and Bertie's appearance, was near collapse. When she had shaken hands with him she leant back in her chair with a face so white that Mollie cried out in alarm, and going to her was saved from the almost unbearable confusion that would otherwise have been hers. Mrs. Walter rallied herself, smiled and said there was nothing the matter with her but a sudden faintness which had passed off. She wanted to control the situation, and made the strongest possible mental call upon herself to do so. But her strengthwas not equal to the task, and, although she protested, she had to allow herself to be led from the room by Mollie and Mrs. Mercer. She was able, however, to shake hands with Bertie and tell him that Mollie should be down in a minute to give him his tea.
He and the Vicar were left alone. The young man was greatly concerned at Mrs. Walter's sudden attack, which, however, he did not connect with his own arrival, and gave vent to many expressions of concern, of the nature of "Oh, I say!" "It's too bad, you know." "Poor lady! She did look bad, and no mistake!"
The Vicar, actually responsible for Mrs. Walter's collapse, and knowing it, yet felt his anger rising hot and uncontrollable against the intruder. His simple expressions of concern irritated him beyond bearing. He had just enough hold over himself not to break out, but said, in his most Oxford of voices: "Don't you think, sir, that as there's trouble in the house you would be better out of it?"
Bertie paused in his perambulation of the little room, and stared at him. Hostility was plainly to be seen in the way in which he met the look, and he said further: "In any case Mrs. Walter won't be able to come down, and my wife and I will have to be going in a few minutes. You can hardly expect Miss Walter to come and sit and talk alone with you while her mother is ill upstairs."
The Vicar's indefensible attack upon Mollie for herindelicacy in making friends with a young man not acceptable to himself had been hidden from Bertie, but some hint of his attitude had presented itself to him, perhaps by way of his sisters. He had given it no attention, esteeming it of no importance what a man so outside his own beat should be thinking of him. But here he was faced unmistakably with strong and unfriendly opposition, and it had to be met.
Bertie had been at Oxford himself, but had not acquired the 'manner,' whether as a weapon of claimed superiority or of offence. He said, quite directly, "What has it got to do with you whether I go or stay? You heard what Mrs. Walter said?"
"It has this to do with me, sir," said the Vicar, beginning to lose hold over himself, and exhibiting through his habitually clipped speech traces of a long since sacrificed Cockney accent, "that I am the man to whom these ladies look for help and advice in their unprotected lives. I'm not going to see them at the mercy of any young gentleman who pushes himself in, it's plain enough to see why, and gets them talked about."
"Gets who talked about and by who?" asked Bertie, innocent of grammatical niceties, but temperamentally quick to seize a salient point.
His firm attitude and direct gaze, slightly contemptuous, and showing him completely master of himself in face of a temper roused to boiling-point, added fuel to keep that temper boiling, though it wasaccompanied now with trembling of voice and hands, as weakness showed itself to be at its source, and no justified strength of passion.
"Your attentions to Miss Walter have been remarked upon by everybody, sir," continued the furious man. "They are dishonouring to her, and are not wanted, sir. My advice to you is to keep away from the young lady, and not get her talked about. It does her no good to have her name connected with yours. And I won't have her persecuted.Iwon't have it, I say. Do you hear that?"
"Oh, I hear it all right," said Bertie. "They'll hear it upstairs too if you can't put the curb on yourself a bit. What I ask you is what you've got to do with it. You heard what Mrs. Walter said. That's enough for me, and it'll have to be enough for you. All the rest is pure impudence, and I'm going to take no notice of it."
He sat down in a low chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him. This attitude was owing to the tightness of his buckskins at the knee, but it appeared to the Vicar as a deliberate and insulting expression of contempt.
"How dare you behave like that to me, sir?" he cried. "Are you aware that I am a minister of religion?"
"You don't behave much like one," returned Bertie. "I think you've gone off your head. Anyhow, I'm not going to carry on a brawl with you in somebody else's house. I shall be quite ready to come and have it outwith you whenever you like when I leave here—in your vestry, if you like."
"Your manners and speech are detestable, sir," said the Vicar. "You're not fit to come into the house of ladies like these, and if you don't leave it at once—I shall—I shall——"
"You'll what?" asked Bertie. "Put me out? I don't think you could. What I should suggest is that you clear out yourself. You're not in a fit state to be in a lady's drawing-room."
His own anger was rising every moment, but in spite of some deficiencies in brain power he had fairly sound control over the brains he did possess, and they told him that, with two angry men confronted, the one who shows his anger least has an unspeakable advantage over the other.
He was not proof, however, against the next speech hurled at him.
"You are compromising Miss Walter by coming here. If you don't leave off persecuting that young lady with your odious and unwelcome attentions, I shall tell her so plainly, and leave it to her to choose between you and me."
Bertie sprang up. "That's too much," he said, his hands clenched and his eyes blazing. "How dare you talk about my compromising her? And choose between me and you! What the devil do you mean by that?"
The Vicar would have found it hard to explain a speech goaded by his furious annoyance, and what laybehind it. But he was spared the trouble. Mollie came into the room, to see the two men facing one another as if they would be at fisticuffs the next moment. She and Mrs. Mercer coming downstairs had heard the raised voices, and Mrs. Mercer, frightened, had incontinently fled. She had heard such tones from her lord and master before, and knew that she, unfortunately, could do nothing to calm them. Mollie hardly noticed her flustered apology for flight, but without a moment's hesitation went into the room and shut the door behind her.
Bertie was himself in a moment. This was to be his mate; he knew it for certain at that instant, by the way she held her head and looked directly at him as she came into the room. The sudden joy of her presence made the red-faced spluttering man in front of him of no account, and anger against him not worth holding. Only she must be guarded against annoyance, of all sorts and for ever.
He took a step towards her and asked after her mother. If the Vicar had been master enough of himself to be able to take the same natural line, the situation could have been retrieved and he have got out of it with some remains of dignity. It was his only chance, and he failed to take it.
"Mollie," he said, in the dictatorial voice that he habitually used towards those whom he conceived to owe him deference, and had used not infrequently to her in the days when he had represented protective authority to her, "I have told this young man that itisn't fitting that he should be alone here with you, while your mother is ill. She will want you. Besides that, he has acted with gross rudeness towards me. Will you please tell him to go? and I will speak to you afterwards."
Bertie gave her no time to reply. He laughed at the absurd threat with which the speech had ended, and said: "Mr. Mercer seems to think he has some sort of authority over you, Mollie. It's what I came here to ask you for myself. If you'll give it me, my dear, I'll ask him to go, and it will be me that will speak to you afterwards."
It was one of the queerest proposals that a girl had ever had, but confidence had come to him, and the assurance that she was his already. The bliss of capitulation might be postponed for a time. The important thing for the moment was to show the Vicar how matters stood, and would continue to stand, and to get rid of him once and for all.
Mollie answered to his sudden impulse as a boat answers at once to its helm. "Yes," she said simply. "I'll do what you want. Mr. Mercer, I think you have been making mistakes. I'll ask you to leave us now."
She had moved to Bertie's side. He put his hand on her shoulder, and they stood there together facing the astonished Vicar. Something fixed and sure in their conjunction penetrated the noxious mists of his mind, and he saw that he had made one hideous mistake after another. Shame overtook him, and he madeone last effort to catch at the vanishing skirts of his dignity.
"Oh, if it's like that," he said with a gulp, "I should like to be the first to congratulate you."
He held out his hand. Neither of them made any motion to take it, but stood there together looking at him until he had turned and left the room.
Then at last they were alone together.
Grafton got up on Sunday morning and carried his cup of tea along the corridor towards Caroline's room, but met the girls' maid who told him that Miss Beatrix wanted him to go and see her.
He felt a little glow of pleasure at the message. The evening before Beatrix had been very gay and loving with him. They had spent a family evening, talking over the events of the day, and playing a rubber of bridge, which had not been succeeded by another because their talk had so amused them. There had been no shadow of the trouble that had of late overcast their happy family intimacy. Lassigny was as far removed from them in spirit as he was in body. Beatrix had been her old-time self, and in high, untroubled spirits, which kept them all going, as she most of all of them could do if she were in one of her merry extravagant moods. She had said "Good-night, my darling old Daddy," with her arm thrown round his neck, when they had parted at a comparatively early hour, owing to the fatigues of the day. She had not bid him good-night like that for months past, though there had been times when her attitude almost of hostility towards him had relaxed. But for the closing down again that had followed those relaxations hemight have comforted himself with the reflection that the trouble between them was over. But he had become wary. Her exhibition of affection had sent him to bed happy, but on rising in the morning he had set out for Caroline's room and not for hers. He had jibbed at the thought of that photograph of Lassigny, propped for her opening eye.
The summons, however, seemed to show that the respite had not yet run its course, and he went to her gladly.
She was sitting up in bed with a letter in her hand. Her tea-tray was on the table by her side, and Lassigny's photograph was not. But perhaps she had put it under her pillow. She looked a very child, in her blue silk pyjamas, with her pretty fair hair tumbling over her shoulders.
"Such an excitement, Dad," she said, holding up the letter. "I have sent for the others, but I wanted to tell you first. It's Mollie."
The momentary alarm he had felt as to what a letter that brought excitement to Beatrix could portend was dispersed.
"Mollie and Bertie Pemberton," she said by way of further elucidation as he kissed her.
"Oh, they've fixed it up, have they?" he said as he took the letter and sat on the bed to read it. Caroline and Barbara came in as he was doing so. Young George, who had also received a summons, was too deep in the realms of sleep to obey it.
The letter ran: