Jeannie Avesham that afternoon had spoken of him to his mother, saying that, though she did not know him personally, he had been at Oxford with her brother, and the mention of those Oxford days had roused terrible memories in the mind of Mrs. Collingwood, and made her attack on modern fiction bitter and incisive. For he had gone to Oxford with the object of reading theology, and eventually of taking orders, but a day came when he wrote to his father saying he could not do so. He wanted to talk it allover with him, but he feared his decision was irrevocable.
Now it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that his mother would sooner have seen him in his coffin than that he should have written such a letter. It was a complete break-up of her hopes. Her world, hard and narrow as it might be, was all the world she had, and it was overturned. The last straw had been added when he decided to become an artist, and on that occasion she had said to her husband, and had meant it, “He will go to the devil.”
Time, of course, had done something to heal the wound, and in the five years which had passed since then Mrs. Collingwood had in a way grown used to it. But she was naturally rigid and incapable of adapting herself, for any change meant a change in her principles. She prayed for him with her accustomed fervour, but as long as he did not give up his profession she was forced to believe that her prayers, if answered, were answered in a way beyond her comprehension.
By half past nine she had finished her warning against infidel novels, and her husband had finished his sermon for the next day. He read prayers in the dining-room, and afterward they went up together to the drawing-room again, and he played Patience till half past ten. The town was already settling itself to sleep, and only a faint hum of living came in through the windows. They talked for a few minutes on indifferent subjects, and by eleven the house was dark.
“A little military society is so pleasant, is it not?” said Miss Clifford. “That you will find is one of the great advantages of Wroxton, Miss Avesham. We have so many factors in our little world. It is quite a miniature capital. There is the close, there is the town, there is the garrison, and there is the county.”
Miss Clifford spoke in a very quiet voice, and glowed gently as she spoke, turning for approval to her sister Clara, who rode the bicycle a fortnight before up and down Bolton Street.
Clara was forty-two, and her sister a year or two older. They lived in Montrose Villa and they were calling on Jeannie Avesham.
Jeannie gave a little rippling laugh, and pushed back her hair from her forehead. She had been out in the garden with Aunt Em when her callers were announced, and as the drawing-room windows commandedthe mulberry-tree under which they had been sitting, she had not been able to go upstairs to brush her hair, as she was aware of the four mild eyes of the two Miss Cliffords raking her from the windows. Aunt Em had altogether refused to come in, leaving Jeannie to entertain the callers alone. She had expressed a wish, however, that a cup of tea should be sent out to her in the garden, which Jeannie had flatly refused to do. “If you won’t come and help me, you sha’n’t have your tea,” she had said.
But the Miss Cliffords were so refreshing that she was almost glad Aunt Em had not come. She thought she could enjoy them more alone.
“It all sounds delightful,” she said. “You know I have never lived in a country town before; we were either at Morton or in London, and it is all quite new to me. But I love new things.”
“I think you will find the charm of Wroxton grow,” said Miss Clara. “Certainly we all find that it grows on us. My sister and I are always glad to get back after our summer holiday to all our work andinterests. We are very fond of our little centre.”
“I am sure I shall find it charming,” said Jeannie. “Do tell me more. Tell me about the people here. What do you all do?”
“We have charming neighbours,” said Miss Phœbe. “One of them is a relation of yours, is he not—Colonel Raymond?”
“Colonel Raymond?” asked Jeannie. “I don’t know him, I think. What relation is he to us? You see, my mother had so many brothers and sisters. I am really very ignorant about my cousins.”
“He is related through his wife, I think,” said Miss Phœbe. “His wife’s sister, I think, married a Mr. Fortescue.”
Jeannie laughed again.
“Well, I’m not so much to blame,” she said, “for the relationship is not very close. In fact, one is more nearly related to his wife. What is Mrs. Raymond like?”
“A very quiet, sweet woman,” said Miss Clara, “and very unlike her husband. He is a very dashing, military sort of man.”
Jeannie pondered a moment.
“Oh, now I remember,” she said.“I’m sure he called here, while we were settling in. But Arthur and I were undoing the drawing-room carpet, so I had to say we were out. Do tell me some more. What do you all do?”
Miss Clifford looked puzzled.
“We find our days very full,” she said. “Household duties take up a good deal of our time, and then we have our relaxations. My sister’s great hobby is literary work.”
“Oh, Phœbe!” ejaculated Miss Clara, blushing.
“Oh, but how delightful!” put in Jeannie. “Do you write much?”
“Clara has had fourteen poems in the Wroxton Chronicle,” said Miss Phœbe, with proper pride, “and another appears next week.”
“I must get it,” said Jeannie.
“Perhaps, if you are so kind as to take an interest in what I do,” said Miss Clara, “you would allow me, Miss Avesham, to send you a copy. It would be a great pleasure. The editor always sends me half a dozen copies.”
“That would be very nice of you,” saidJeannie. “And what is your hobby, Miss Clifford?”
“My sister plays the mandolin beautifully,” said Miss Clara. “She was a pupil of Professor Rimanez.”
“Why, how charming!” said Jeannie. “Do bring it round here some day, Miss Clifford, and we will have duets. I, too, play a little.”
“It would be a great pleasure,” said Miss Clifford, “but I am only a very poor performer.”
The two Miss Cliffords were thawing like icicles in June. They hardly remembered that they were having tea alone with the daughter and sister of a peer.
“Then there is the Ladies’ Literary Union,” said Miss Clara. “We meet every fortnight, and very improving and sometimes entertaining pieces are read.”
“All the members read papers in turn, I suppose,” said Jeannie.
“Yes, and then we discuss the paper. Next week we have a great treat. Mrs. Collingwood is going to read us a paper on The Downward Tendency of Modern Fiction. Igot the notice this morning. Mrs. Collingwood is a great critic, but rather severe, so my sister and I think.”
“Mrs. Collingwood?” asked Jeannie. “Oh, yes, I remember her; she called the other day. I thought she was rather severe, too. I am afraid she was very much shocked at my not knowing what the Girls’ Friendly Society was. But how should I know? I don’t think there is one in London. Oh, yes, she must be a teetotaler—so my aunt and I thought. Is that so?”
Miss Clifford looked solemn. It was difficult to conceive of any one not knowing that Mrs. Collingwood was a teetotaler.
“Indeed, she is,” she replied. “Would it be inquisitive if I asked what occurred?”
“Not in the least,” said Jeannie. “My aunt only asked me to tell the cook to see that the mulberries were gathered to make mulberry gin. I said I would be sure to remember.”
“Yes, Mrs. Collingwood is very strict,” said Clara. “But she is so practical and so much in earnest. She says that so many books have a tendency to upset people’s faith,and that is very shocking if she is right about it. A friend of hers, she told me, the other day had had her faith very much shaken by reading a free-thinking novel.”
“A free-thinking novel?” said Jeannie. “I don’t think I ever saw one.”
“Well, there is Robert Elsmere,” said Miss Clifford. “I have never read it, but Mrs. Collingwood says that it is terribly upsetting.”
“Of course there is some discussion about theological questions in those books,” said Jeannie, “though I never finished Robert Elsmere. But don’t you think it may have been the fault of Mrs. Collingwood’s friend that her faith was shaken?”
Miss Clifford looked grave.
“Surely not,” she said. “The responsibility must lie with the author. If the book had never been written, no one’s faith would ever have been upset. Don’t you think so?”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Jeannie. “I never really thought about it. Don’t you think we look wonderfully settled in, considering how short a time we have been here?”
Miss Clara clasped her hands.
“It is all quite beautiful,” she said. “And what a lovely garden you have.”
“Yes, it is pretty,” said Jeannie. “And there is a fountain with a basin round it, in which are water-lilies. Arthur says we must give a water picnic there.”
“I had no idea you had so extensive a piece of water,” said Miss Phœbe, gravely.
“Oh, it’s only a joke,” said Jeannie, “and a very small one. Must you be going?”
“We must, indeed,” said Miss Phœbe. “Come, Clara, you would linger here forever unless I tore you away. We have already far exceeded our time, and taken up far too much of Miss Avesham’s.”
The Miss Cliffords walked some little way in silence.
“There is quite an air about the house,” said Miss Clara, at length. “It is quite different from even Colonel Raymond’s, and Mrs. Raymond’s drawing-room always seemed to us so refined.”
“Yes, it was quite different,” said Phœbe, “and I don’t know how it was produced. The piano I saw was just at the sameangle from the wall as ours. I am glad we have got that right, Clara.”
“I think we have too many little things about,” said Clara; “there must be ten vases on our chimneypiece, if there’s one, and I noticed there was only a clock and two candlesticks on Miss Avesham’s. Yet it looked ever so much more furnished than ours. Let us aim at a greater simplicity, Phœbe.”
The two Miss Cliffords lived in what is known as a “highly desirable detached mansion,” and its desirability was much enhanced by its being known as Montrose Villa. It is probable that the owner took his hint from Mrs. Raymond’s happy thought of calling her house “Lammermoor,” but the Miss Cliffords had gone one better, for the last six months they had dated all their letters “Villa Montrose,” and were even thinking of having a die made for their paper and envelopes. “Villa Montrose” sounded much more delightful, and gave, as Miss Clara said, while hanging a reproduction of Carlo Dolci in the front hall, “quite an Italian air to the place.” To the ordinary eye the Villa Montrose was a plain gray house, covered with stucco, but if(as the Miss Cliffords did even when alone) you called stucco, stookko, a perfectly different effect is produced. Similarly, a dwarf fir-tree which stood in the back garden was, rightly considered, a stone-pine, and visions of Tuscan valleys (the Miss Cliffords’ father had once been English chaplain at Florence) rose to the inward eye, with hardly any sense of their being pumped up from a distance. Miss Clara, in fact, got at the kernel of the matter when she said that the atmosphere with which the imagination can invest a place is wholly independent of the materials on which it works.
On the ground floor were four rooms, a drawing-room and dining-room looking out over the room, and at the back two small apartments, known as “the libry” and the studio. The walls of the studio were decorated with quite a quantity of oil pictures by the Miss Cliffords’ father, and an unfinished sketch of his stood on an easel. There was a tiger’s-skin rug on the floor, rather moth-eaten, and some low chairs. The only drawback to the room was that, as there was no fire-place, it was too cold to sit in in winter,and in summer, as it was exposed to the southern sun, and had a large sky-light, you might as well, as Miss Phœbe once remarked with a certain acrimony, make your sitting-room of an oven. But in the more temperate rays of April and September nothing could be more delightful than its temperature, and, even when it was untenantable, there was a pleasure in referring to “the studio.”
The “libry” was simply one mass of books, chiefly consisting of the theological collection of the Miss Cliffords’ father. Here Miss Clara worked every morning from nine till one, and it was in itself an inspiration to be surrounded by books, although she seldom took one from its shelf. When it is said that thirteen of the fourteen original poems by her which had appeared in the Wroxton Chronicle were produced in this room (the fourteenth was produced during an attack of influenza in bed, and was called Depression) it will be seen at once that the actual area of the “libry,” which measured eight feet by ten, was no index to its potentialities, for even Shakespeare’s house at Stratford-on-Avon is no palace, and MissClara, it is hardly necessary to say, was the president of the Ladies’ Literary Union, and was considered rather Bohemian.
Her elder sister, Miss Phœbe, was, as Clara had told Jeannie, musical. She had no sitting-room, for, like Martha, she was cumbered with much serving, and she knew, and was proud to know, that Clara was the genius. But some half of the drawing-room, which would hold five people easily, was known as Phœbe’s corner, and in Phœbe’s corner was a cottage piano and mandolin, and always a vase of flowers. A cabinet photograph of the mandolin teacher, Professor Rimanez, signed “Rimanez,” no less, in the Professor’s own hand, hung on the wall. Phœbe’s corner was full.
The two sisters lived a regular and most harmonious life. Since they never sat idle, they were right in considering that they were busy, and when Miss Phœbe had spent two or three hours every morning in washing the china they had used for breakfast, ordering dinner, and marching through every room in the house, examining towels to see if they required darning, soap to see if it wantedrenewing, and smelling the water in the bed-room bottles, she was glad to seek refreshment about half past twelve by throwing herself into a chair in her corner and playing a Neapolitan air on her mandolin, or, with the soft pedal down for fear of disturbing Clara, trying over a song by Tosti or Pinsuti about “Life of my life, and soul of my soul.”
The tragedy of growing old, in fact, consists, if we look at it more closely, not in growing old, but in remaining young, and their irredeemable youthfulness was the pathetic fact in the lives of the Misses Clifford. The banjo-playing and the writing of youthful lyrics was a true symptom of the age they felt themselves to be, and the streaks of gray in their hair and the wrinkles in their faces were a travesty of their spirits. Since childhood they had led a perfectly serene and untroubled existence, and it was their bodies, the sheaths, and not the sword, which was rusting. They had floated slowly round and round in a backwater of life, and the adventure and romance of living swept by them, making them feel as if they and not the great stream was moving, and if they had been toldthat it was the stream that hurried by them in turmoil and charmed bewilderment, while they were standing still, they would scarcely have credited it. This is a malady most incident to country towns.
But it would be giving a totally erroneous picture of them if the impression was left that they were unhappy or unsatisfied. Herein lay the tragedy of it to the onlooker, but to them the tragedy would begin when they became aware of it. They had aged and narrowed without knowing it. They lived the life they had lived twenty years ago, among those whose days had been distinguished by a similar uniformity, without knowing that twenty years had made a difference in them. Clara always thought that Phœbe was a girl yet, and Phœbe constantly considered that Clara was still a little flighty. Meantime they scored their little successes. Clara was congratulated on her last poem in the Wroxton Chronicle, and Phœbe sang Pinsuti in a quavering voice to the cottage piano. Then when the afternoon party was over (they gave teas at Villa Montrose), Clara would start for a reckless ride onher bicycle, and Phœbe hungered for her return.
Their father had been the rector of a country village near Wroxton, and their great-uncle—a grocer—the mayor of the town. Thus Villa Montrose had a double halo round it; the grocery was sunk in the civil dignitary, and the poverty of the clergyman in the honour of his office. “My father, the rector,” “My great-uncle, the Mayor,” were notable subjects of conversation.
But this evening Miss Phœbe felt more disturbed than she had felt for many years. For many years no fresh friend and no fresh interest had touched the lives of herself and her sister, and the call they had paid on Jeannie, though they talked only on trivial subjects, and looked out on to the familiar spires of the Cathedral, had been strangely exhilarating. The impression had been conveyed to her in some subtle manner that Jeannie’s whole attitude toward life was utterly different to any she had known before. How it had been conveyed to her she could not have told you, but Jeannie’s every word and gesture she saw to be the product of a wholly new idea of life. Her hair had been untidy, yet Miss Clifford knew how different would have been the effect if it had been her own hair which wanted brushing; she lounged in a chair, with one leg crossed over the other, an attitude which Miss Clifford knew from her earliest childhood to be most unladylike, and though her manner had been utterly unstudied, and she did not, as Miss Clifford always did, press her guests to stay when they said they must be going, she gave you the impression that you were welcome.
These thoughts hovered round Miss Clifford’s head as she lay awake that night. Jeannie was so much fresher and vivacious even than Clara, who often talked and laughed more than her elder sister quite liked. How was it that Clara looked rather old and tired beside Jeannie? Could it be because she was so? And Miss Clifford, for her own peace of mind, fell asleep without solving the question.
Jack Collingwoodcame to pay his expected visit to Wroxton early in September, as soon as his father and mother were back from their annual trip to the English Lakes. Canon Collingwood had much enjoyed their time there, and had brought back several tin boxes full of roots of wild marsh-growing plants which he intended to cultivate on the edge of the chalk-stream which ran at the bottom of the garden. He did this every year, and the plants never grew, which did not in the least stand in the way of his doing it again. He had also, as usual, preached an old sermon in Grasmere church, and had written three new ones. His life, indeed, at the Lakes was not less regular than his life at Wroxton; he had been out of doors more and had spent only two hours a day over the study of patristic literature, but he had been out at the same hours, and in at the same hours, andwas quite unaltered. He had worn the same straw-hat at the Lakes that he always wore, and on returning home put it on the top shelf of his mahogany wardrobe, where it reposed for eleven months out of the twelve.
It would be giving a false impression to say that Mrs. Collingwood had enjoyed herself. She took a holiday like medicine, with a view to its after-effects, in order to enable her to return with renewed vigour to the battle with immoral books and people who were not helpful and did not live in closes. In order to attain this end as fully as possible she had spent all her time out of doors, taking long strolls from breakfast till lunch, and a walk with her husband from lunch till tea, on the recognised plan that the best rest for a tired mind is to strenuously overtire the body also. She had continually looked at the beauties of nature also as part of the prescription, and had read a little Wordsworth as she would read a guide-book in a foreign town. In the evening, and sometimes if it was exceedingly wet, she would work, and had produced three G. F. S. leaflets, one of which embodied her lecture on the Downward Tendencies of Modern Fiction. Another was called No Parleyings with the Enemy. In fact, when she and her husband returned, she might be said to be a match for anything.
Jack arrived on a brilliant September afternoon, and, sending his luggage on, walked himself. The old, quaint town seemed to his brisker London eye to be dozing on as peacefully as ever, in a sort of tranquil mediæval drowsiness. From the station, which was on a hill, he could see across the cup-shaped hollow in which lay the red-tiled town. There were no new houses on the way down, and the names above all the old ones were the same. The man who had cut his hair when he was a child stood, as he had always stood, at his door, looking on to the street, with a pair of scissors stuck into the pocket of his white apron, neither balder nor stouter than he used to be. It had always been a matter of wonder to Jack how a man with so bald a head dare have his windows filled full of infallible hair-preservers, but perhaps he was a cynic, and traded with amusement on the fathomless credulity ofman. The very slope of the high street seemed designed for a leisurely folk; it was too steep for a horse to trot either up or down, and the foot-passengers ascended softly like bubbles arising through water, and descended with the same equable motion like pebbles sinking in the sea. Half-way down he branched off through a covered passage leading under a house into the close, and there, too, time seemed to have stood still. A few nursery-maids wheeled contented babies up and down its paths, and children were playing among the grave-stones; the gray pinnacled west front seemed the incarnation of stability. As always, the place asserted its instant charm over him; for the moment as he passed through the grave-yard into the close he would have asked nothing better than to say an eternal good-bye to the froth and bubble of the world and turn the key on his ambitions. It would be necessary, he reflected, to be rid of them, else in a week or two he would be tingling for wider things again and chafing at the slow passage of ungrudged hours. Like all healthily minded young men, he knew he was going to overtopthe world, and the air here was opiate. But for the moment he was in love with tranquility.
Both his father and mother were out when he arrived at the house, and, with the spell of soothing still on him, he sauntered off again, meaning to return home for tea, and leaving the town, struck into a foot-path that led through the water-meadows by the river. It has been stated how his mother regretted that, if he was to be a painter at all, he had not been a landscape-painter, and this afternoon the regret was his also. Portrait-painting, he told himself, was an inspiration which might or might not be at one’s command. For every hundred faces he looked at he only saw one or two that suggested anything. Before now he had caused offence, when given an order for a portrait, by insisting on seeing his sitter before he promised anything, and then declining the task. It was not beauty he looked for in a face, nor was it exactly intelligence. The quality, whatever it was, might be altogether absent in the most admired features, and present in every line of the face when there were, so to speak, nofeatures at all. It was this eternal search for this, the refusal to paint where he did not find it, and a magical brush when he did, that had already given him a somewhat unusual standing among the younger painters of the day. His pictures were few, but, as a natural consequence of the integrity and honesty of his art, his refusal to paint without the conviction that his subject was for him, there was nothing in any of them to show a want of grasp. That everything was proper material for art he did not deny, but he emphatically affirmed that everything was not proper material for each artist.
But, compared to the portrait-painter who thus limited himself, how fortunate, he thought, was the landscape-painter. All trees were paintable if you could paint a tree at all; all clear and running water was beautiful, all clouds “composed.” This green bank on which he wandered, the lower grasses of which waved in the suck of the brilliant stream, the stretch of meadow beyond, tall with loose-strife and the hundred herbs of watery places, the great austern downs beyond with the clump or two of pines, theremnants of the great southern forests of England—what landscape-painter could fail to find his subject in any of these?
He paused on the edge of the stream where the water was running in steadfast haste toward a mill which stood a hundred yards below, and looked long into that translucent coolness. Subaqueous plantations of green weed undulated backward and forward in the thrust of the water like the tail of a poised fish, alternating with bare spaces pebble-sown, but the pebbles were glorified to topaz and amber. Here and there tall tufts of pithy rushes stood breast-high in the water, making strange movements of twitching as the current struck them, causing the smooth crystal to be broken with a sudden dimple. Over the surface from time to time there would run like a wreath of mist a darker line, as if some finger had traced on the stream a letter which the water was trying to efface; then the mark would change from a circle to a half-circle, straighten itself out for a moment, and then be broken. From below came the gush of the mill mixed with the bourdon note of the machinery, and Jack could see therush of water coming out of the dark passage in torrents of white foam, a soda-water of bubbles. There, he knew, the weeds would be altogether different; they would be close as velvet, or moss on a tree, offering little surface to the flood, and not like thick, branching forests, which would be torn away in the mill-race.
He had waited so long looking into the water that he saw it was nearly time to go back, but the attraction of the stream held him by cords, and he could not but go on, just to look at the jubilant water escaping from the prison of the mill and perhaps extend his wandering to a pool he knew of a hundred yards below where the water deepened suddenly and resumed again its sedater going. A plank bridge crossed at the head of this, just below a red brick wall which bounded the garden belonging to the mill. He would go as far as that corner, cross the stream, and return to Wroxton by the path on the other side of the meadows.
So on he went: the channel below the mill was all it should be, and the sun, for his delight, caught the white spray of the plungingriver and hung a broken rainbow on it. This Jack felt was a gift thrown in; he had not anticipated it, and it gave him a thrill of pleasure. Yet, even as he looked, he shook his head. The need of the artist for expression was on him, and he could only tell himself that this was all beautiful, and he wished he was a landscape-painter. And, thinking thus, he turned the corner of the red wall, and stopped.
In the centre of the plank bridge by which he intended to cross was standing a girl opposite him, with a face full of laughter and anxiety, and with her parasol she kept at bay a small retriever puppy who had just left the water, and, still dripping, was evidently coming to his mistress in order to shake himself and receive her congratulations on his having had a swim. Even as Jack turned the corner the puppy began his shake, and to his trained, quick eye the whole scene was as complete and as faithful as an instantaneous photograph. The puppy’s head was already shaken, and down to his shoulders he was black and curly set in a halo of spray, but the shake had not yet touched his back and tail,the hair of which was still shining and close. The girl was also dressed in black; with one hand she drew her skirts away from the dog, with the other she held out her open parasol so that the puppy should be compelled to keep his distance, for the bridge was narrow, and he could hardly pass. Her face, with its wide, laughing eyes set in an expression of agonized dismay, which her smiling mouth contradicted, was a moment’s miracle. Obviously every nerve of her body, every cell, however secret, in her brain was taken up and lost in the amused fear that the puppy would wet her. She had no hat on, and the perfect oval of her face was crowned with the most glorious black hair. And Jack gave a quick-drawn breath. A moment before he had lamented that he was not a landscape-painter; now, for all he cared, the world might be made of Portland cement, if only that girl would laugh and that puppy would shake itself.
The infinite moment was soon over. Even while he stared, oblivious of all else, the puppy had grown curly from nose to tail, the anxiety had faded like a breath from the girl’s face, and she looked up and saw him. She turned and retraced her steps over the plank, and stepped into the meadow, where, only a few yards off, was sitting an oldish lady reading a book. The girl’s hat was lying by her, and there was a tea-basket out, the silver of which twinkled pleasantly in the sun. Jack walked straight past them, and did not look again. He had recorded in his brain all he wanted, and to stop and stare would be not only rude but, what in his present frame of mind was more important, unnecessary. He did not even look round when he heard short, scuffling steps behind him, and impatient barkings, and a voice said, “Toby, come here at once.”
He knew instinctively that it was the girl who had spoken, and not the elder lady, for the voice had thetimbrewhich belonged to that face. Who she was he did not know, and really he did not care. She had given him a vision, and she might disappear again. He would have liked, he longed, in fact, to paint her, but no more, and, except as a sitter, she was nothing to him. He could even, on reflection, have thought twice about that, forhis one moment had been so complete and was so indelible. Perhaps she was aposeuse, startled for once into a genuine emotion, though on so small a matter as the wetting of her gown. It was more than possible that she would never serve him again, though she sat to him for a score of years, as she had served him at that moment. She did not concern him as long as the puppy was not shaking itself close to her, and in that regard she was his already. And as he walked back along the water-meadows he thought no more about the amber pavement of the stream, and envied not any mood of the landscape-painter, for whom a water-meadow held no such exquisite surprises. But the girl was to him no more than a subject, and though the puppy was an essential factor in the scene, he valued it not on the principle of “Love me, love my dog.”
All the way home his vision remained vivid, and in his mind he settled the composition of it. The girl should stand facing full, with the dog almost straight in front of her, cutting the canvas in two by a long black line. Behind should be the green meadow,with a narrow strip of broken ground just indicating the stream bank, and the moment should be when the dog had shaken its head curly again, while the rest of it was still drowned and sleek. And in the joy of creation he laughed aloud and let his pipe go out.
He found his father and mother had both come in, and was told they were having tea in the garden. Canon Collingwood welcomed him warmly, and his mother evidently remembered she was his mother. These first moments were always a little awkward, for Jack was apt to forget how few subjects they had in common, and would pour himself out in matters that were near his life before perceiving that what he said was, if not distasteful to his mother, at any rate alien to her. He did so on this occasion.
“I walked down by the river as I saw you were not in,” he said, “and I was in luck. Just as I turned the corner by the mill I came upon a finished picture. A girl standing on the bridge, keeping off a wet puppy with her parasol. You should have seen her face, beautiful to begin with, laughing in everyline. I never saw anything so complete. I wonder who she was?”
“Some young woman from the town probably,” said his mother, in tones that would have frozen the mercury in a thermometer.
“I wish I had spoken to her now,” continued the unfortunate Jack, “though I didn’t want to at the moment. Anyhow, I remember her face pretty well. Besides, she looked a lady—it might have been awkward.”
“Very awkward,” said his mother.
This time he heard, and the vivacity was struck from his face. But he went on without a pause.
“And did you enjoy your time at the Lakes, father?” he said; “I never answered your letter, I know, but I really was tremendously busy, though that is no excuse. I was painting Mrs. Napier; do you know her, mother? She has a sort of Lady Hamilton face.”
Now Lady Hamilton was not a person whom Mrs. Collingwood desired to have mentioned, and she felt it her duty to change the subject.
“There will be a beautiful sunset,” she said.
Now this was kind. Though torture and chains should not make her allude to any one who even resembled that notorious woman, yet she was willing to talk about subjects in the domain of art, provided only that they were innocent, and might without profanation be mentioned under the shadow of the Cathedral. But as a Christian woman she drew the line at Lady Hamilton.
Canon Collingwood plunged to the rescue.
“Exquisite, quite exquisite,” he said; “that rose-colour is so—so beautiful, and the contrast of it with the blue above is quite—quite beautiful.”
And, exhausted by the effort of making this discerning criticism, he took another cup of tea. Whether conversation could have languished further is unknown, for at the moment the butler came out of the house, followed by Miss Clara Clifford. Mrs. Collingwood welcomed her with a worker’s smile.
“So pleasant to see you,” she said; “youknow my son, I think. We were all enjoying the lovely sunset.”
“Beautiful, is it not?” said Miss Clara, staring at the east. She was always a little nervous about coming to call without her sister, but Phœbe had the tooth-ache, and Villa Montrose smelt as if it were built of creosote. She took a sip of her tea, and laid hands upon her courage.
“And talking of sunset,” she said, “reminds me of what I wanted to say to you, Mrs. Collingwood. May we add your name to our list of patronesses this year for our Annual Art Exhibition? You have been so kind as to permit it before.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Mrs. Collingwood, “for I have always found that the Wroxton Exhibition was so delightful. You must exercise a strict censorship over what you exhibit, and I am sure you do. I remember very clearly seven or eight pictures of Switzerland and several of the Lakes. Surely you remember the picture of Grasmere, William, which was shown last year? I pointed out the original to you when we were there.”
It was one of Mrs. Collingwood’s chiefest pleasures in the artistic line to be able to see the “original” of a picture she had noticed, or to recognise in a picture an “original” she knew. She cared, in fact, more for the fact that a picture represented a place she knew than she did for its merits. She always bought a catalogue when she went to a picture exhibition, and always marked with a cross the pictures which had pleased her most. These would be found to be representations of places she knew. Occasionally, when she knew a place very well, she would have given the picture two crosses, but two crosses in Mrs. Collingwood’s catalogue were as rare as double stars in Baedeker. Any part of Wroxton Cathedral would receive one, and Grasmere had a chance.
This favourable reception of her first request made Miss Clara even bolder. She was afraid that Phœbe might consider her conduct unladylike, but Phœbe was not there. She turned to Jack.
“We should be so much honoured,” she said, “if you could lend us a sketch, a mere sketch. It would be the greatest pleasure,and I would be responsible for its being well hung.”
“I have nothing with me here,” said Jack, “but”—and a thought struck him—“but when must the pictures be sent in by?”
“The exhibition opens in ten days,” said Miss Clifford.
“Certainly then, I shall be charmed,” he said. “It will only be a sketch, you know, but you shall have it this week. Shall I send it to your house?”
Miss Clifford was overwhelmed with gratitude. She looked round, indeed, apprehensively at Mrs. Collingwood, but neither she nor the Canon appeared to have thought her request unmaidenly. The triumph of having secured a sketch by Jack was so great that even Phœbe would probably be lenient.
Jack had come to Wroxton nominally for a holiday, but as soon as Miss Clifford had left he began working at his sketch. He found, as he had hoped, that the scene of the afternoon was very clearly visualized, and by dinner-time he had sketched it out as he meant it to be. He felt an extraordinary delight in the work, and as he progressed with it it became more and more capable of becoming a picture. In fact, before dinner his promised sketch, which he had intended to be an eighteen-inch water-colour, had so changed in scheme that he determined to make an oil picture of it, three feet by two. Whether or not it would be finished in the three days in which he had promised that Miss Clifford should have it was more than doubtful, but he had forgotten Miss Clifford. All he knew was that a picture was in his head.
The face he had drawn with great minuteness, and as he found himself reproducing, with a faithfulness for which he had scarcely dared to hope, the laughing anguish of the girl, it crossed his mind, but for one moment only, that he was doing rather a questionable thing. He had no idea who his subject was. She might or might not be a resident in Wroxton, she might or might not come to the picture exhibition, and then find a portrait of herself; and how she would take it if she did was equally problematical. Jack confessed to himself that he knew nothing whatever ofher. All he had seen was her laugh; she might be able to frown; he did not know.
But the scruple lasted so short a time, and was in itself of so slight a nature, that it never reoccurred. Artists, it is said, do their work in a sort of somnambulism; it seemed to Jack that he worked in a state of intoxication. He lived riotously when the brush was in his hand, his mind sang and shouted as he worked.
Certainly as he progressed with it—and day by day it continued to prosper and live on the canvas—he was frankly surprised at the vividness with which the moment had been impressed upon him. The girl had a moonstone brooch on, the dog a silver collar; the sunlight caught some outlying hairs on her head, and though they were black, it turned them into gold. All these things and a hundred like them he had hardly been conscious of seeing until he began to record them.
On the fourth day it was finished, and as soon as it was dry he sent it to Miss Clifford. The day after he was leaving himself and going back to work, and he seemed to himself to have had no holiday at all. Yet he did notregret it; somehow his occupation had taken hold of his mind, and when he looked at the finished thing he knew that conscious humble pride which alone is sufficient reward to the artist for what he has done.
“It is good,” he said to himself. “I wish I had seen that girl again,” he added.
Phœbehad not been very kind when she heard that her sister had been so bold-faced, as she called it, to ask Jack Collingwood for a sketch. “You don’t know what interpretation might be put on such a thing,” she said, and indeed it was difficult to conjecture. But Clara attributed this severity as much to the tooth-ache as anything else, and in point of fact when the picture arrived, Phœbe, who would usually spend a quarter of an hour over untying a knot rather than cut it, fetched the scissors in less than no time, and behaved as if string was not a precious metal.
“It is kind of him,” said Clara. “See what a size, Phœbe! though perhaps that may be mostly frame. I know artists are very fond of putting large frames on small pictures. Oh, dear, there is another wrapper!”
The picture was undone at last, and the two peered closely into it, in the approved fashion. Suddenly Clara started.
“It’s the corner down by the mill,” she said, “where the foot-bridge crosses the river. And the dog, it’s like the—Phœbe, it’s Miss Avesham and her dog on the bridge by the mill.”
Phœbe looked in silence a moment.
“What is to be done?” she said, at length. “Dear me, yes, it’s a wonderful likeness, too. She is just like that when she laughs.”
“What is the picture called?” said Clara, opening the note which had accompanied it. “In Danger. Oh! I see. The dog is shaking itself, and her dress is in danger of getting wet. How very clever!”
Phœbe had ceased looking at the picture: an affair far more momentous and interesting occupied her.
“I wonder what it all means?” she began.
“You see the dog is shaking itself,” repeated Clara, “and the danger is——”
“I know that,” said Phœbe. “But is there, if I can say so without being indelicate, do you think there is some understanding between Miss Avesham and Mr. Collingwood? Do you suppose she stood to him?How interesting it would have been if we had happened to stroll down there one of these last days and seen him working!”
“No doubt you are right, Phœbe,” said her sister.
“It is not proved,” said Phœbe, modestly, “but it seems likely. We can’t ask Miss Avesham about it, and really I dare not ask Mrs. Collingwood.”
“Ask her about what?”
“Don’t you see, Clara, it would be so awkward if this picture had been done without Miss Avesham’s knowledge. Dear me, how well he has caught the likeness! There is a ring at the bell. Go to the window, Clara, keeping yourself out of sight, and see who it is.”
Clara ambushed herself behind the curtains and peeped out.
“Colonel Raymond,” she whispered, “and Mrs. Raymond.”
“Dear me, how fortunate! I dare say he will know. Tell them to bring tea at once, Clara. He is sure to have heard of it if his cousin is engaged. We’ll show him the picture, and see if he says anything.”
Colonel Raymond was in the best spirits that afternoon. He had at last been to call on the Aveshams, and he considered that his reception had been most gratifying. He had also explained at length his relationship to Jeannie, and all was satisfactory. Mrs. Raymond also was in cheerful mood, since the Colonel had decided to pay calls this afternoon, and thus there was no brisk walk for the children.
The talk soon turned on the picture exhibition, and Clara announced with modest pride that Jack Collingwood had sent them a contribution.
“Indeed, we were just unpacking it when you came, Colonel Raymond,” she said, “and I should so much like to hear your opinion on it.”
The Colonel adjusted his eye-glasses.
“Why, God bless my soul,” he exclaimed, “it’s Jeannie Avesham! Constance, do come here, and look at Mr. Collingwood’s picture of cousin Jeannie. Wonderfully good, is it not? Just caught the look she has when she smiles. She looked just like that at some little story I told her this afternoon, do you remember? And the dog, Toby, dear little Toby. How like! How like!”
Now this was not quite all that the Miss Cliffords wanted, and as Colonel Raymond raised his head from the examination of the picture, Clara looked slyly at him. Now, when Miss Clara looked sly there was no possibility of missing it; she looked sly, so to speak, with both hands. The Colonel, as he often said himself, was a prodigious observer, and he observed this.
“Eh, what?” he began, and then suddenly a possible explanation of Miss Clifford’s slyness came into his mind. He was that nature of a man who cannot endure that any one should know a piece of gossip or news before himself, and he determined to appear at least as well-informed as Miss Clifford.
“Ah, you have heard something, too, Miss Clifford,” he said. “How these things get about! But I understand it is to be kept quite secret at present, except from a few friends. Of course, as long as they are in mourning, you understand—a great thing for the Collingwoods. Puts them among the county families.”
The Colonel raised his eyes to the ceiling as he had observed Miss Fortescue do when she wished to say no more on any subject, and congratulated himself on having come with credit out of that.
Both the Miss Cliffords were bursting with curiosity to hear more, but the Colonel tactfully led the subject round to other topics.
“Jack Collingwood was at Oxford with our cousin Arthur,” he said. “Wonderful place, Oxford; I spent a night there once. It would suit you and your literary tastes, Miss Clara. Plenty of opportunity for study. What a treat, by the way, you gave us in the last Observer. Brought tears into my eyes, positively brought tears into my eyes.”
All this was very pleasant, but, the great secret told, the Miss Cliffords were almost anxious for the departure of the Colonel, for they longed to talk the matter over. The Colonel, however, was in good spirits, and he remained.
“Very pleasant and gratifying it is,” he said, “to see our cousins settling down here in the way they are doing. Jeannie—MissJeannie said to me to-day how much she enjoyed Wroxton.”
“And does Mr. Avesham enjoy it?” asked Miss Clara.
“I have not had an opportunity of talking to him about it,” said the Colonel, cautiously, “but he must be hard to please—he must be hard to please if he does not. What a charming life for a young man! For a few hours a day he has his work, but when that is over, what a choice! A game of whist at the club, the pleasures of the home circle—and Miss Fortescue is such a shrewd, delightful woman—or, or, if his tastes are literary, a call at Villa Montrose.”
“Colonel Raymond, how can you!” cried Miss Clara, in an ecstasy of slyness; “how can you be so wicked?”
“Robert likes his joke,” said Mrs. Raymond, in her colourless voice. “He means nothing, Miss Clifford. Do you, Robert?”
“My dear, a soldier sticks to what he says,” said the Colonel. “Or Arthur can come and take a glass of the best port in the Midlands with Constance and me.”
“Does Mr. Avesham play whist well?” asked Phœbe.
Now if the Colonel was proud of anything it was of his reputation as a whist-player. He was known to play for “points,” a term vague to the Miss Cliffords, but with an undefined air of extravagance and recklessness about it. And though Arthur had never at present had the privilege of playing with the Colonel, the latter answered without a pause.
“A good, sound game,” he said. “Perhaps he does not know the subtleties of the thing as well as—as well as some old stagers at it, but with an hour or two of Cavendish a day, which I am not ashamed myself to spend on it, he will develop into a fine player. Wonderful man, Cavendish. Whist is not a game, it is an institution, a national institution.”
And the Colonel’s chest became gigantic.
“The work of a lifetime,” he went on. “To know whist is the work of a lifetime, and a lifetime not ill-spent. Put it on my tombstone, Constance. I shall not be ashamed of having it on my tombstone, ‘He played agood hand,’ or, let us be more modest, ‘He played a fair hand.’ And now we must tear ourselves away; we must really tear ourselves away. My old cronies will be waiting for me at the club and wondering where I am.”
“Colonel Raymond is very fond of his whist,” said his wife, as if this was a fact new to every one.
It was the custom at Villa Montrose to show the departing guests as far as the front door, not because there was any fear of their appropriating some small articles on their way out, but with the idea of speeding them, and as soon as the door was closed Phœbe and Clara hurried back to the drawing-room.
“Well, it’s the most exciting thing I ever heard,” said Clara, “and how clever of you to have guessed it, Phœbe. I should never have thought of it.”
“Anyhow we can make our minds quite easy about sending the picture to the exhibition,” said Phœbe. “I suppose Miss Avesham told the Colonel about it this afternoon. We must be sure to mention it to no one, Clara. It is only to be known in the familyat present. Dear me, the Honourable Jeannie Avesham to Mr. John Collingwood! Does he become Honourable, too? I rather think he does.”
“There has not been a wedding in Wroxton for years,” said Miss Clara, “at least not in our circle. I wonder what Mrs. Collingwood will say to it. The Colonel said the Collingwoods would become a county family. How I shall long to see the ‘County families’ for next year.”
“It would make a pretty subject for a poem next time you are in the mood,” said Phœbe, “the artist painting his love.”
“I had thought of that,” said Clara, with conscious pride. “It will be difficult, but I shall try.”
“I should recommend the sonnet form,” said Phœbe, as if she was choosing a wallpaper.
Clara considered a moment.
“I saw it as a lyric,” she said, “with a little refrain like some of Miss Rossetti’s. ‘Jeannie, my Jeannie,’ would be a pretty line.”
“No, you must mention no name, at anyrate till the engagement is announced,” said Phœbe. “It would never do.”
“Perhaps you are right, Phœbe,” said the other. “I shall have a long morning’s work to-morrow.”
Colonel Raymond in the meantime was walking to the club, rather quicker than his wont was. He almost forgot to look interesting for the benefit of passers-by in the excitement of possessing, and that by his own extraordinary shrewdness, this family secret. His momentary annoyance at not having been the first to have known it was quite overscored by the delight in knowing it now, and though he had been disposed for a second or two to consider it to be an impertinence on the part of Miss Clifford that she, though indirectly, was the channel by which it was conveyed to him, the anticipation of the flutter he would make at the club more than compensated for it. He did not intend to state the secret boldly; he proposed to make a mystery of it, to set people on the right track, and to refuse to answer any questions, for if there was anything which the Colonel loved more than imparting information in asuperior manner, it was withholding it in the same irritating way.
“I’m late, gentlemen,” he cried, in his bluff, hearty manner, as he entered the smoking-room; “I’m late, and I cry ‘peccavi.’ But it is not altogether my fault. I’ve been down to my cousins at Bolton Street. They all are very much excited about it, of course—why, God bless my soul, I nearly let it out.”
From a dark corner of the room there came a faint rustle as of a paper being folded, and Arthur Avesham’s head looked over the corner of the Evening Standard, and back again, as quick as a lizard.
“But we must get to our whist,” continued the unconscious Colonel. “Whist and wine wait for no men. And, talking of wine, get me a glass of port, a glass of port, waiter, and bring it to the card-room, and don’t be all day about it.”
The Colonel was in rather anexaltémood that afternoon, and just as his bluff heartiness was a shade more pronounced than usual, so, too, were his immoderate remarks when his partner did not play his hand correctly.
“Bumble-puppy, the merest bumble-puppy,” he roared. “It’s a pure waste of time playing a game like this, and to call it whist is a profanation. Ah, we got the odd, did we? I thought you had secured it. You ought to have. That puts us out. Well, well, as we are out I’ll say no more about it, but we ought never to have got out. It’s the principle of the thing for which I go.”
A few minutes later the door opened and Arthur entered. The Colonel was sorting his hand with angry snorts and growls and did not notice his entrance. Arthur took a seat near the table where the Colonel and his party were playing, and watched the game.
The Colonel finished sorting his hand first, and was not apparently satisfied with it, for he burst into a torrent of angry recrimination.
“A waiting game; is this what they call a waiting game? Really, partner, you seem to fall asleep upon your cards. And there are other gentlemen waiting here to take a hand.” And he turned an inflamed face upon Arthur.
There was dead silence. If the Colonel had seen the ghost of his late noble relative he could not have been more shocked. Only a few minutes before he had been talking of his afternoon with his cousins in Bolton Street, and here was one of them, to whom he had never spoken, at his elbow. Arthur seldom went to the club, and, as luck would have it, he and the Colonel had not met before. The Colonel knew Arthur by sight, but the mischief was that Arthur did not know the Colonel. The man of war was up a tree, and his old cronies knew it. But he faced the position like a volunteer.
“Charming little place you have in Bolton Street,” he said, without fury in his voice. “I was there this afternoon paying my respects to Miss Avesham and Miss Fortescue—I and my wife. We claim connection with you through the Fortescues. Ah, my partner has played. A good card, sir, a very good card.”
Arthur glanced at the Colonel, then at the other players. They all exhibited an unnatural absorption in their cards, and he guessed that this connection of his, whoever he mightbe, was in a tight place. He waited till the hand was over, which concluded the rubber.
The Colonel got up impatiently.
“You will take my hand,” he said, “and give these gentlemen another rubber; I have got to go: I must get home early to-night,” and he fairly ran from the room.
Arthur was known to the other three present, and, as he took his seat:
“Who on earth is that God-forsaken man?” he asked.
Mr. Newbolt alone found his tongue.
“Colonel Raymond is his name,” he said.
“I wonder why he went away?” said Arthur, and a sound like a chuckle came from Mr. Hewson.
Threedays after this the picture exhibition opened, and Jeannie and Miss Fortescue, as they strolled out one morning, passed the Guildhall, where placards were up saying that the seventh exhibition of the Wroxton Art Union was now open inside. Jeannie wished to go in. Miss Fortescue was certain that she did not.
“All you will see, Jeannie,” she said, “will be about an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, six pictures of sunrise on the Alps, and some studies of carnations. You can see Wroxton Cathedral and the carnations in our own garden, and you can see sunrise on the Alps in any tomato salad.”
“I bet you a sterling shilling,” said Jeannie, “that there is at least one picture that interests us; I have never yet been to any exhibition in which there was not something I liked to look at. Do you take it, Aunt Em?”
“Done,” said Aunt Em.
It was still early, and only a few people were straying about the room, looking as people do at an exhibition, as if they were lost and wanted to find their way out. But an acre of Wroxton Cathedral, as Aunt Em had said, stopped egress on one side, the spears of rose-tinted Alps on another, and several forbidding portraits on a third. At the far end of the room, however, were some ten or twelve people congregated round one picture.
“That will be the one, Aunt Em,” said Jeannie, “over which I shall win my bet. So we’ll look at it last.”
Miss Fortescue smiled in a superior manner.
“That picture is a bereaved party having tea after a funeral,” said Aunt Em; “I feel it in my bones. Come, Jeannie, here are the tomato salads. That’s a beauty, but a little overripe.”
They strolled slowly toward the far end of the room, and while still they were some way off Mrs. Collingwood detached herself from the group surrounding the chief attraction and came down the room toward them. Her face was a little flushed, and as she caught sight of them she paused, and then shot by them without a word.
“No manners,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “Now we are getting into the carnations.”
Jeannie had bought a catalogue, and turned to the list of artists exhibiting.
“There’s one by Jack Collingwood,” she said. “Now I am safe to win. Arthur wrote to him to-day asking him to come and stay with us. I hope he’ll come: I’ve never seen him. His pictures are splendid. It’s number 8. Oh, that must be the one all those people are standing round. Let’s go and look at it.”
“Tea after a funeral,” said Aunt Em.
No fresh arrivals had come in lately, and by the time they got near the picture there was no one by it. Suddenly Jeannie quickened her pace.
“Aunt Em, come here,” she said.
They stood before the picture for a moment in silence, to which its worth as a work of art alone entitled it. The whole thing was admirable. A stretch of lank, thick grass,starred with meadow-sweet and ragged robin ran from side to side of the canvas. The nearer edge of this was broken away, showing a chalky soil, and from it there ran at a slight angle a couple of wooden planks with a handrail crossing a stream which lay invisible but for a streak of water underneath the chalky bank. A few tall grasses in the immediate foreground round the nearer edge of the plank bridge showed where the stream ended. In the middle of it, cutting the picture nearly in two, was the figure of a girl, dressed in black, hatless, and keeping off a puppy with her parasol. Round the dog was a halo of spray, and he was in the middle of shaking himself, for his head was curly, his flanks and tail still smooth. It was an inimitable representation of a moment. One almost expected to see the halo of spray spread further, and the hind part of the dog grow curly. But if Jack had been successful with the dog, he had surpassed himself in the girl’s figure and face. She lived utterly and entirely in the present, and had no thoughts but amused apprehensions for her dress. Her head was bent forward, following the bend of her armand the parasol, and the face a little foreshortened. But every inch of her laughed.
Jeannie looked at it in silence. Suddenly bending forward and pointing at it (the picture was hung rather low), she laughed too.
“Oh, it is admirable! it is simply admirable!” she cried. “And I never, never heard of such a piece of impertinence in my life. Aunt Em, it’s the best thing I ever saw. Look at the dog; why, Toby would recognise it, I believe. And look at me! Certainly I recognise it. But what cheek! My goodness, what cheek!”
Aunt Em fumbled in her purse.
“A sterling shilling,” she observed, laconically. “Now, Jeannie, it would be more decent if you came away. We will talk about this elsewhere.”
“Oh, one moment,” said Jeannie. “You see, I can’t come here again and look at it, as you can. Aunt Em, I remember the afternoon so well. It was when we had been down at the mill. But how on earth could Mr. Collingwood—Well, I suppose I must go. Oh, Aunt Em, mind you don’t tell Arthur about it. I have my reasons.”
They walked out of the exhibition without looking at the acre of Wroxton Cathedral at all. On the stairs they met Miss Clara Clifford with a load of catalogues going up.
“We’ve just spent a half hour in the exhibition,” said Jeannie, “and I think it is quite excellent. So does Aunt Em. Oh, I don’t think you know Aunt Em, do you? Miss Fortescue, Miss Clifford. And the picture of me by Mr. Collingwood is quite admirable. But it was rather a surprise to me.”
The catalogues extended from Miss Clifford’s chin to nearly the whole stretch of her arms, and bowing was difficult. But it was more difficult not to drop them all at this remark of Jeannie’s.
“A surprise, Miss Avesham?” she cried. “Will you ever forgive me, for I am the secretary? But Colonel Raymond said—” and she paused, looking distressfully at Miss Fortescue.
Jeannie caught the look, and saw that Miss Clifford’s face was the picture of agonized embarrassment.
“Go on, Aunt Em,” she said, “I’ll come after you.”
Miss Fortescue looked at the ceiling in mute appeal, and then marched down the stairs.
“There’s no harm done, Miss Clifford,” said Jeannie; “I assure you I don’t in the least mind. But what did Colonel Raymond say? Oh, take care, the catalogues are slipping.”
It was too late; the pile bulged ominously in the middle, and then fell all ways at once to the ground. Miss Clifford clutched wildly at them as they fell, but the disaster was there.
“We’ll pick them up first,” said Jeannie. “Gracious, what a lot of them! Where do you want them put? Take care, you’re treading on some.”
“I was just taking them to the entrance where people pay,” said poor Miss Clifford. “Please don’t trouble; indeed, it is too good of you.”
Jeannie collected a foot or two of them, and together they deposited them all on the table by the entrance.
“And now, Miss Clifford,” she said, “will you just give me two words with you? First of all I assure you solemnly that I don’t in the least mind the picture being in the exhibition, so if it was you who passed it you can make your mind perfectly easy. But what did Colonel Raymond say about it?”
Miss Clifford looked round as if she was half determined to run away.
“I cannot tell you, Miss Avesham; indeed, I cannot tell you,” she almost moaned.
“Oh, don’t be so distressed,” said Jeannie, with the air of a grown-up person soothing a child. “I am sure I should never be anything but amused at what Colonel Raymond—I mean Cousin Raymond—said. Please tell me.”
Miss Clifford closed her eyes and clenched her hands.
“He said—he said there was some understanding between you and Mr. Collingwood, but that you didn’t wish it to be known yet.”
Jeannie’s smile faded, and a look of intense surprise took its place.
“Colonel Raymond said that?” she asked. “Do you mean he meant we were engaged?”
Miss Clifford shut her mouth very tight, but moved her head as if she was swallowing.
“That we were engaged?” repeated Jeannie, wishing to be quite certain.
Miss Clifford’s lips formed the word “yes,” but no sound issued.
Jeannie sat down on a stone seat at the top of the stairs.
“Cousin Raymond is a very imaginative man,” she said. “Miss Clifford, I have never consciously set eyes on Mr. Collingwood. Oh, yes, I have. I remember now a young man coming round the corner of the mill when Toby was shaking himself. I think that must be he. Now!”
“It is terrible, terrible!” moaned Miss Clifford. “I have never been so ashamed.”
Jeannie was not attending to her particularly.
“Cousin, too,” she said. “He’s no more my cousin than Mrs. Collingwood is.”
“I am very, very sorry,” continued Miss Clifford, in the same low voice.
“Sorry?” said Jeannie. “My dear Miss Clifford, there’s nothing whatever for you to be sorry for. Please believe that. I’m delighted you should have the picture here—I am, really. But please be very careful notto repeat what Colonel Raymond says. I will see that he doesn’t. Good-bye. I must go after my aunt. Please cheer up. Does any one else know?”
“Colonel Raymond is rather fond of talking,” said Miss Clifford, faintly.
“So I should think.”
“He told Phœbe and me not to tell any one. And Mrs. Raymond was there, too.”