TOWARDthe close of the month, Sir Francis Bendibow, having seriously turned the matter over in his mind, wrote a note to his solicitor, Merton Fillmore, asking him whether he could spare time to come over to the bank that afternoon, and have a chat with him. This note he dispatched to Mr. Fillmore by a private messenger, who was instructed to wait for an answer. In half an hour, the messenger returned, and Sir Francis read the following:
“Dear Bendibow—I don’t see my way to come to you to-day. If you have anything particular to say, dine with me at my house this evening at seven o’clock.“Yours truly,“Merton Fillmore.”
“Dear Bendibow—I don’t see my way to come to you to-day. If you have anything particular to say, dine with me at my house this evening at seven o’clock.
“Yours truly,
“Merton Fillmore.”
“Well, perhaps that will answer better, after all,” murmured the baronet, folding the paper up again with sombre thoughtfulness. “He gives a decent dinner, too.” So, punctually at seven o’clock, Sir Francis’ carriage drove up to Mr. Fillmore’s door; the footman gave a loud double knock, and the baronet, in black tights and ruffled shirt, was ushered into his host’s presence.
Though a solicitor, Merton Fillmore was an English gentleman, of Scotch descent on his mother’s side, and more Scotch than English in personal appearance; being of good height and build, lean, bony and high-featured, with well-formed and powerful hands, carefully-groomed finger nails, short reddish whiskers, and bushy eyebrows. His eyes were dark blue, sometimes appearing black; clear and unflinching in their gaze. The head above was well balanced, the forehead very white, and hollowed atthe temples. His movements were quiet and undemonstrative; when speaking at any length, he habitually pressed his clenched right hand into the palm of his left, and kept it there. At the end of a sentence he would make his handsome lips meet together with a grave decisiveness of expression. His voice had unexpected volume and depth; it could be resonant and ear-filling without any apparent effort on the speaker’s part; it could also sink until it was just above a whisper, yet always with a keen distinctness of enunciation that rendered it more audible than mere vociferousness. Soft or melodious it never was; but its masculine fibre and vibration were far from unpleasing to most ears, certainly to most feminine ones. Fillmore, however, was a bachelor; and though still a little on the hither side of forty, he did not seem likely to change his condition. He threw himself with unweariable energy into his profession; it almost monopolized his time and his thoughts. He saw a good deal of society; but he had never, so far as was known, seen any woman who, to his thinking, comprised in herself all the attractions and benefits that society had to offer. He might, indeed, have been considered cold, but that was probably not so much the case as it superficially appeared to be.
That he should have chosen the solicitor’s branch of the legal profession was a puzzle to most people. His social position (his father had been a gentleman, living upon his own income, and there was no economical reason why Merton should not have done the same) would naturally have called him to the Bar. It can only be said that the work of a solicitor, bringing him as it did into immediate contact with the humors, the ambitions, the disputes and the weaknesses of mankind, suited his peculiar genius better than the mere logical partisanship of the barrister. He cared more to investigate and arrange a case than to plead it before a jury. He liked tohave people come to him and consult him; to question them, to weigh their statements against his own insight, to advise them, to take their measure; to disconcert them or to assist them. He by no means cared to bring all the suits on which he was consulted before the court; on the contrary, he uniformly advised his clients to arrange their disputes privately, furnishing them at the same time with such sound reasons for so doing, and with such equitable advice as to a basis of agreement, as to gain for himself the reputation of an arbitrator rather than of an advocate. Nevertheless, whenever it became necessary to push matters to an extremity, the side which Merton Fillmore was known to have espoused was considered to be already half victorious. No other solicitor in London, in fact, had anything like the reputation of Merton Fillmore; he was among his fellows what Mr. Adolphus or Mr. Serjeant Runnington were among barristers. But his acquaintance with the domestic secrets of London fashionable society was affirmed, doubtless with reason, to be more extensive than that of any physician, confidential clergyman or private detective in the metropolis. He held in his hand the reputation and prosperity of many a man and woman whom the world delighted to honor. Such a position is not attained by mere intellectual ability or natural ingenuity; it demands that rare combination of qualities which may be termed social statesmanship, prominent among which is the power of inspiring others with the conviction that their revelations will be at least as safe in the hearer’s possession as in their own; and that he is broadly and disinterestedly tolerant of human frailities. Most men, in order to achieve success and eminence, require the spur of necessity or of ambition; but it is doubtful whether Fillmore would have been so eminent as he was, had either ambition or necessity been his prompter. He loved what he did for its own sake, and not any ulterior object. From the social standpoint he had nothingto desire, and pecuniarily he was independent. What he made with one hand in his profession he frequently gave away with the other; but no one knew the details of his liberality except those who were its object. He seldom spoke cordially of any one; but few were more often guilty of kindly acts. He was a man with whom nobody ventured to take a liberty, yet who spoke his mind without ceremony to every one. No one could presume to call Merton Fillmore his friend, yet no honest man ever found him unfriendly. He was no conventional moralist, but he distinguished sharply between a bad heart and a good one. These antitheses might be produced indefinitely, but enough has been said.
Fillmore lived in a handsome house in the then fashionable district of London. It was one of the best furnished and appointed houses in the town; for Fillmore was a man whose naturally fine taste had been improved by cultivation. During his annual travels on the Continent he had collected a number of good pictures and other works of art, which were so disposed about his rooms as to show that their owner knew what they were. The machinery by which his domestic economy moved was so well ordered as to be invisible; you never remarked how good his servants were, because you never remarked them at all. Once a week he gave dinners, never inviting more than five guests at a time; and once a month this dinner was followed by a reception. People renowned in all walks of life were to be met with there. Lord Byron made his appearance there several times—a young man of splendid eyes and an appalling reputation, which his affable and rather reticent bearing scarcely seemed to justify; Lady Caroline Lamb, who was supposed to be very much in love with him, and to whom his lordship was occasionally rather impolite; William Godwin, a dark little creature, too ugly not to be clever, but rather troublesome to converse with; a tall black-hairedman, superbly handsome, in clerical garb; a man whose great black eyes had seen more trouble than was wholesome for their owner—who, indeed, as Hazlitt once remarked to Fillmore, would probably have been a great deal better if he hadn’t been so damned good; an agreeable little Irish lady, the author of an irretrievably moral work for the young, entitled “Frank”; a small-chinned, lustrous-eyed, smiling, fervent gentleman, who had written a number of graceful essays and poems, and who also, oddly enough, was editor of a terrific Radical journal with a motto from Defoe; a short, rather stout, Italian-looking fellow, with flashing face and forcible gesticulation, the best actor of his day, and a great toper; another stoutish man of a very different complexion, with a countenance like a humanized codfish, thick parched lips that always hung open, pale blue prominent eyes, and an astonishing volubility of philosophical speculative dogmatism; a fastidious, elderly, elegant, womanish, sentimental poetaster named Samuel Rogers, who looked not unlike a diminished Sir Francis Bendibow with the spine taken out; and, in short, a number of persons who were of considerable importance in their own day, and have become more or less so since then. He would be hard to please who could not find some one to his mind in Merton Fillmore’s drawing-room.
Sir Francis Bendibow, on the evening with which we are at present concerned, had a good deal on his mind; but that did not prevent him from enjoying an excellent dinner. He was happy in the possession of a strong and well-balanced physical organization, upon which age and a certain amount of free living in youth had made small inroads. If he had become a trifle stiff or so in his joints, he was still robust and active, and bade fair to outlive many who were his juniors. That injurious chemistry whereby the mind and emotions act upon the animal tissues was but faintly operative with Sir Francis; thoughit is not to be inferred that he was deficient in mental or in a certain kind of emotional vigor. He and Merton Fillmore were on familiar terms with each other—as familiar as the latter ever was a party to. Fillmore had been the legal adviser of the bank for ten years past, and knew more about it, and about Sir Francis himself, than the baronet was perhaps aware of. But the baronet was thoroughly aware of the solicitor’s abilities and force of character, and paid deference thereto, by laying aside, when in his company, the air of courteous superiority which he maintained toward the generality of men. Fillmore’s tendency in discussion was toward terseness and directness; he expressed himself in few words, though ordinarily pausing a few moments on the threshold of a sentence. Sir Francis, on the contrary, inclined to be ornamental, intricate, and wavy; not because he was ignorant that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but because there was an arabesque bias in him, so to speak, that prompted him to shun straightforwardness as if it were a sort of vulgarity. Sometimes, no doubt, and with some men, this method was effective; as the simple person on foot is outdone by the skater, who, at the moment of seeming to accost him face to face, all at once recedes sideways in a wheeling curve that brings him wonderfully behind the other’s shoulder. But it was time thrown away to indulge in such caprioles with a man like Merton Fillmore; and as Sir Francis had the good sense to comprehend this, the two commonly got on together very comfortably.
This evening, however, when the cloth had been drawn, and the servants had disappeared, Fillmore, looking at his guest as he pushed toward him the decanter of claret, perceived that there was something more than usual on his mind. Therefore he said:
“Has that boy of yours been getting into more scrapes?”
“Not he,” answered the baronet, holding his glass upto the light for a moment, and then turning the contents down his throat. “Poor lad, he’s scarce recovered yet from the fall he got off that coach.”
They cracked filberts for a while in silence. At last Fillmore said:
“Is the bank doing well?”
“Oh, if it never does any worse, I ought to be satisfied.”
“You must look out for a partner,” observed Fillmore, after a pause. “Your son will never make a banker. And you won’t live forever.”
“The experience I have had with partners has not been encouraging,” said Sir Francis, with a melancholy smile. “The boy has plenty of brains, but he’s not strong; and, hang it! a spirited young fellow like him must have his fling. Time enough to talk to him about business when he’s seen a bit of the world.”
“He will see a bit of the next world before long, if you don’t keep him better in hand,” said Fillmore. “You ought to get a partner. All men are not Charles Grantleys, if you refer to him. You can do nothing else, unless you intend to marry again.”
“I marry again? Good God, Fillmore! If everybody else were as far from that as I am, the child born to-day would see the end of the world. No, no: I’d sooner give up business altogether. There are times, begad, when I wish I had given it up twenty years ago.”
The baronet said this with so much emphasis that Fillmore, after looking at him for a few moments, said:
“What times are those, Bendibow?”
“It’s rather a long story,” the other replied; and hesitated, wrinkling his forehead. As Fillmore kept silence, he presently resumed: “You know what confidence I have always reposed in you. To others I show myself only as the banker, or the man of the world; but to you, my dear Fillmore, I have always opened myself withoutdisguise. You comprehend my character; and I suppose you would say that I’m a fair average specimen of the genus homo—eh?”
“If you require my opinion of you, I can give it,” replied Fillmore quietly.
“Well, ’tis not often one gets his portrait drawn by an artist like you,” said the baronet laughingly. “ ‘Extenuate naught, nor set down aught in malice,’ as Charley Kean has it. I expect to be edified, I assure you.”
“To begin with, your bank is the last place where I should think of putting my money,” said Fillmore, with deliberation.
“What the dooce...!”
“You may be as prosperous as report says you are,” continued Fillmore; “but you are a gambler to the marrow of your bones. You have put money in ventures which promised cent per cent: but they were carried on at imminent risk of ruin. If you have not been ruined, you have only your luck to thank for it. I like you well enough; and you have made a great success for a man of your beginnings; but you have no more morality than there is in that decanter of claret. Don’t take offense, Sir Francis. The day I find you, or any other man, committing a crime of which no alteration in my circumstances or temperament could have rendered me capable, that day I shall throw up my profession and become a journeyman evangelist. We have always been on friendly terms, and I shall never take advantage of facts about you that have come to my knowledge; but ... well, are you determined to be indignant?”
“Damme, sir, you have insulted me in your own house! I—”
“Don’t be a fool, Bendibow,” interrupted the other coldly. “You have come here to ask my advice, and perhaps my assistance. You can have both, within certain limits; but on condition that you don’t require meto shut my eyes to your character. Technically speaking, I have insulted you; and you may resent it if you like. But as a man of the world, you may remember that I have not spoken in the presence of witnesses; and that if you were blameless, the insult would recoil on myself. Take time to think it over, and then do as best pleases you.”
Sir Francis, however, whatever may have been his other failings, was not slow-witted; and he had already taken his attitude. “You have a damned disagreeable way of putting things, Fillmore,” he said; “you ought to know that something more than logic is necessary to make social intercourse agreeable. It is not so much what you say, as your manner of saying it, that got the better of my temper for a moment. I’m not going to quarrel with you for not believing me to be a saint; you may distrust my financial discretion if you like; but you can’t expect me to be interested in hearing your reasons. Let me try the other claret. I have made my mistakes, and I’ve repented of them, I hope. No man, unless he’s a fool, gossips about his mistakes—why should he? Do you mean to say that I can’t consult you on a matter that annoys me, without your raking up all my follies of the last five and twenty years?”
“My intention was not to alter our relations, but to define them,” Fillmore replied. “As we stand now, we are not likely to misconceive each other. What is this annoyance?”
“It comes from one of my follies that you’ve not been at the pains to remember. But I suppose you know that when Grantley absconded, he left a daughter behind him, whom I adopted; and that ten years ago she married and left England.”
Fillmore nodded.
“She came back a week or two ago,” continued the baronet: “and she acted a little scene at my expense inmy office. It was at my expense in more ways than one. She is a devilish clever woman. She had a grudge against me for not having given her the dowry she wanted at the time of her marriage; and ... well, the upshot of it was that I compounded with her for ten thousand pounds. It was confoundedly inconvenient at the time, too; and after all, instead of banking with us, as she had given us to understand she would, the little rascal has gone to Childs’. Her husband left her a very pretty fortune. There’s not a widow in London better off or better looking than she is.”
“She means to settle here?”
“She does. And I would give a good deal if she had settled in New Zealand instead!”
“From what you have said,” observed Fillmore, after a pause, “I infer that the lady knows something to your discredit.”
“Thank you! It’s not what she knows, but what she may come to know—at least, something might happen which might be very annoying. Hang it, Fillmore, can’t you keep your inferences to yourself? I’m not in the dock—I’m at your table!”
“If I am to understand your story, either you must tell it, or I must guess it.”
“I am telling it, as fast as I can use my tongue,” returned Sir Francis, who was beginning to be demoralized by the lawyer’s imperturbable high-handedness. “To hear you, one would suppose that I was talking in riddles.”
“It may be my obtuseness; but I cannot see why the fact that a good-looking woman, who is your niece and adopted daughter, chooses to live in London, should in itself cause you annoyance.”
“If you will do me the favor to listen to me for a moment, I may be able to explain it. This niece and adopted daughter of mine is ... is not my own daughter, of course.”
“Does any one believe that she is? The lady herself, for example?”
“If she did, I should not be inconvenienced in the way I am. Had I foreseen all contingencies, I should have brought her up in the belief that she was my own daughter. As far as giving her every advantage and indulgence that was in my power is concerned, no daughter of my own could have been treated differently. But though I omitted to disguise from her the fact that she was not my own flesh and blood, I was careful never to enlarge upon the misfortunes of her actual parentage. I never spoke to her about Charles Grantley. Whatever she may have learnt about him did not come from me. I have always discouraged all allusion to him, in fact; but a girl’s curiosity will be gratified even to her own hurt; and Perdita has more than once given me to understand that she knew her father’s name, if not his history.” Here Sir Francis paused, to pour himself out a glass of claret.
“Since the man is dead,” said Fillmore, “and his reputation not of the brightest, her knowing about him can injure no one but herself.”
“Let us put a case,” said the baronet, narrowing his eyes and turning his face toward the ceiling. “Let us suppose she were to say to herself, ‘My father disappeared so many years ago, a fugitive from justice. Some time after, report came of his death. Now, there may be true reports and there may be false reports. Has this report had such confirmation as to put its truth beyond all possibility of question? It has not. It is therefore within the range of possibility that it may be false. Now, whose interest would it be that a false report of that kind should be circulated? Who, and who only, would benefit by it? Who would be relieved by it from an imminent and incessant peril? Whom would its belief enable to begin a new career, unhampered by the delinquenciesof his past? And to do this, perhaps, in the very spot where those former delinquencies had been committed? What—’ ”
“You mean to imply,” interposed Fillmore, “that your adopted daughter believes her father to be living in London?”
“Not so fast, not so fast, my friend! So far as I am aware, the idea has not entered into her mind. I am speaking of possibilities.”
Fillmore gazed at his guest several moments in silence. At length he said: “I will adopt the hypothetical vein, since you prefer it. We will suppose that Grantley is alive and in London, and that his daughter finds it out, and seeks or grants an interview with him. What would be the nature of the inconvenience that would cause you?”
“But surely, my dear Fillmore,” cried the baronet, “you cannot fail to see how awkwardly I should be placed! The man, of course, would have some plausible story or other to tell her. She would believe him and would plead his cause with me. What could I do? To deliver him up to justice would be as much of a hardship and more of a disgrace to me than to him, not to speak of the extremely painful position in which it would place her. Matters would be raked up which were far better left in merciful oblivion. Were I, on the other hand, to allow him to establish himself amongst us, under the assumed name which he would probably have adopted, he would presume upon my tolerance and become an impracticable nuisance. Having once accepted him I should never afterward be able to rid myself of him; he would make himself an actual incubus. The thing would be unendurable either way.”
“It will simplify this affair, Bendibow,” said the lawyer slowly, “if you inform me whether Charles Grantley is in London or not.”
Sir Francis, who looked a good deal flushed and overwrought, tossed off another glass of wine by way of tranquilizing his nerves, and said, “Of course, my dear fellow, I might confide in your discretion. You understand my dilemma ... my object is to prevent—”
“Come, Bendibow, answer my question, or let us change the subject.”
For a moment it seemed probable that the baronet would give vent to the spleen which was doubtless grilling within him; but the moment passed, and he answered rather sullenly, “ ’Tis not likely that I should have been at the pains to prolong this interview had I not good reason to believe that he is in this neighborhood. In fact, the fellow had the audacity to call on me at the bank the other day and introduce himself under the name of Grant.”
“Is he in needy circumstances?”
“No—not as far as I know,” said Sir Francis, wiping his face with his handkerchief. “In fact, now I think of it, the clerk gave me to understand that he had deposited a certain sum in the bank.”
“Did he express an intimation of visiting his daughter?”
“He inquired about her. Of course I did not inform him of her whereabouts; I was but an hour before made acquainted with them myself. The assurance of the man passes belief.”
“It is certainly remarkable, if there is nothing to be added to your account of the events that led to his disappearance. What do you wish me to do?” As the baronet hesitated to reply, the other continued, “Shall I speak with the man and threaten him with the severity of the law unless he departs?”
“No, no—that won’t do at all!” exclaimed Sir Francis with emphasis. “No use saying anything to him; he knows very well that I don’t choose to have any scandal; and if he would keep himself quiet and not attempt to renewany of his former ties or associations, he might go to the devil, for me. I forgave him twenty years ago, on condition that he would take himself off, and I would forgive him now for not keeping to the letter of his agreement, provided he would observe the spirit of it. No, no—it’s the Marquise—it’s Perdita whom we must approach. You can manage her better than I. She won’t suspect you. You must sound her carefully. She’s a doocid clever woman, but you can do it if any man can. If you can induce her to change her residence to some other country, so much the better. Find out what she knows and thinks about this father of hers. If the opportunity offers, paint the devil in all his ugliness. At any cost put all possible barriers in the way of their meeting. That’s the main thing. No use my giving you instructions; you’ll know what to do when you see her, and find out the sort of woman she is. Shall depend on you, my dear Fillmore—your sagacity and friendship and all that. You know what I mean. Use your own judgment. Damme, I can trust a friend!”
“I will think it over, and speak to you again on the subject in a day or two,” said Fillmore, who perceived that the claret had not improved the baronet’s perspicacity or discretion. Moreover, the subject appeared to him to demand more than ordinary reflection. Long after Sir Francis had been bundled into his carriage and sent home, the lawyer sat with folded arms and his chin in his hand, examining the topic of the evening in many lights and from various points of view.
“Never knew an honest man so shy of the malefactor who had swindled him,” he muttered to himself when he went to bed.
MR. GRANT, although he had doubtless been the victim of some bitter experiences, had possessed enough native generosity and simplicity not to have become embittered by them. His youth had known what it is to love, and now his old age was able to take an interest in the loves of others. He had accordingly observed with a great deal of interest the contact of the two young characters with whom chance had associated him; and pleased himself with the notion that they might become man and wife. Being a sagacious old gentleman, however, as well as a benevolent one, he had abstained from making any direct communication of his hopes to the parties most concerned, or even to Mrs. Lockhart. He was well aware that human beings, especially while they are under thirty, object to being guided, even though their guide lead them whither they themselves would go. He rather sought to fathom their peculiarities of character, in order that he might, without their suspecting it, incline them to his purpose. At the first view, the enterprise did not appear a very hopeful one. Beyond that Marion and Philip had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with each other, and were of an age to marry, circumstances seemed rather against the match. They were both poor; Marion could not well be more so, and Philip, save for such income as his poetry might bring him, had no more than enough for his own support. They could scarcely be said to belong to the same class in life, and their outward associations and sympathies were far from being identical. What was more seriousthan all this, however, they were, as a general thing, more inclined to quarrel than to agree. There was a satirical vein in both of them, and neither of them were old enough to forbear giving utterance to a keen remark that happened to come into their minds. In matters affecting the conduct of life, Philip assumed a cynical tone, which Marion never failed to impeach as unworthy and contemptible. There was much subtlety and intricacy in both their characters, but Philip was an inveterate self-analyst, and prone to make the most of his contradictions, while Marion took but a faint interest in herself, and was never inclined to make herself the subject of discussion; she scouted all cut-and-dried rules of behavior, and was far more genuinely reserved, and therefore more abstruse a problem, than Philip. She was almost savagely independent; and Philip, partly because he really put his own independence in jeopardy, attempted to wear a condescending manner toward her, which she altogether resented and laughed to scorn. On the other hand, she was continually making unexpected attacks upon his self-esteem, and exposing his Machiavelism, in a manner that he found it difficult to sustain with equanimity; and the apprehension of these onslaughts diminished his ability to show himself in his truer and more amiable colors. Thus, in one way or another, there was always a surface contention going on between them. Whether the hostility went deeper than the surface it was not easy to decide. No doubt each appreciated the good qualities that the other possessed, as abstract good qualities; but that would not prevent their objecting to the fashion in which the good qualities were called into play. It is not so much what a person is, as how he is it, that determines the opinion his fellows have of him. Marion, for example, felt herself under deep and permanent obligation to Philip for his conduct in relation to Major Lockhart; and she must have perceived that suchan act was worth much more as an indication of character than intrinsically. But had she been questioned on this point, she would probably have said that Mr. Lancaster would be more agreeable if all his acts were as little agreeable as himself. It is beneath the intelligence of any woman—certainly of any young woman—to like a man merely because, upon logical, demonstrative, or syllogistic grounds he deserves it. She is more likely to make his desert a point against him.
Such were some of the obstacles in the way of Mr. Grant’s scheme; and the fact that Philip was handsome and high-bred would have but small weight in determining the choice of a girl like Marion. Philip, on the contrary, was of a fastidious and Aristarchian turn that would incline him to look for visible and palpable charms and graces, as well as mental and moral ones, in the woman of his heart. Now, Marion, as has already been intimated, was by no means pre-eminently beautiful; and it was not among her notions of duty to make the most of such attractions as she had. She was tall, and rather largely made, with a figure finely developed, but not graceful in its movements. Her face had nobility and intelligence, but not comeliness; she was an example of how a woman may have all the elements of good looks except the finishing touches, and yet not appear good looking. Some imperfection of health, not uncommon to girls of her age and temperament, had impaired the smoothness of her complexion; and she had overtaxed her gray eyes by reading at night in bed. She often fell into taciturn moods, when she would hardly speak for days together; at other times she would talk rapidly and at some length, and when, as rarely happened, she was sensible of affection and sympathy, she could be deliciously and fancifully voluble, revealing a rich and tender spirit, original, observant, and keen. But, on the whole, she was more prone to act than to speak; attached
“I TIED THE CARD TO THE GATE ITSELF. NOBODY CAN FAIL TO SEE IT.”“I TIED THE CARD TO THE GATE ITSELF. NOBODY CAN FAIL TO SEE IT.”
importance rather to what others did than to what they said; and could express more, and more subtle things, by deeds than by words. She had a fiery and almost wild temper, but it was never ungenerous or underhand; and she was sensitively and unreasonably proud. There was an almost insane streak in her, showing itself in strange freaks and escapades; she would laugh when she might have wept, and wept but seldom, and then in secret, and obstructedly or revengefully. She enjoyed the unusual aspects of nature and things, and was amused where other women would tremble. There was a vein of mischief in her; but this belonged to the brighter side of her character, and was arch and playful. What she needed, in order to the full health of her body and mind, was more deep and broad mental and moral occupation; what declared itself as ill health being but the effect of unemployed energy reacting upon itself. Her worst faults were perhaps an alert and intractable jealousy, and a readiness perversely to suspect others of insincerity and meanness toward herself. But the latter of these errors was caused by her low opinion of her personal deserts; and the former by her not ignoble zeal for the integrity of honorable and pure emotions, which, though harbored by her, belonged not to her individually, but were to the credit of our general human nature.
That Mr. Grant did not lose heart in face of the difficulties against which he had pitted himself, showed either that he possessed great temerity, or that he could see further than most people into millstones. It was not so much his aim, at first, to force the young people into each other’s society as to talk to each about the other, and about love and marriage; not obtruding his own views, but eliciting and criticising theirs. He was a pleasant man to talk with, for he made his interlocutor talkative; and the topics upon which he chiefly dwelt were such as seldom fail to interest any man or womanwhose heart has not been misused—I will not say by others, or by the world, but—by the owner of it. To hear him, you would have thought that Mr. Grant, so far from desiring to impart information or understanding, was in search thereof, and needed support at every step. For one who had so much an air of cultivation and refinement, he was an amazingly unenlightened old gentleman.
“I remember, when I was a young fellow,” he said one day to Marion, “I held an opinion which was very unfashionable. Indeed, for the matter of that, a good many of my opinions were unfashionable. Since then I have come to reconsider not a few of them. One’s point of view changes as one moves on. Perhaps the notion to which I refer was erroneous, as well as the others.”
“You have not told me what it was,” said Marion.
“I mean, whether or not it is prudent and sensible to marry for love?”
“I don’t think love is a thing about which one ought to be prudent. Because prudence is to be careful not to put yourself to some inconvenience: and love outweighs all the inconveniences in the world ... I should think.”
“Aye; but suppose that, after a while, all the love should be gone, and only the inconvenience left? Then I should wish I had been prudent, shouldn’t I?”
“But a real love never can be gone. It is all there is of you. It must last as long as you do. And when you are gone, prudence is no matter.”
“I would agree with you, my dear, were it possible for us to know love when we see him. I fear there is a great deal of evidence that we do not do that. And though it takes only one person to make that mistake, not all the world can set it right again.”
“That is like Humpty Dumpty,” said Marion, with a laugh. “But I don’t think there can be any mistake about the love we feel. ’Tis like being in the sunshine;we don’t mistake sunshine for moonlight, or starlight, or for all the lamps and candles that ever burned.”
“Ah! then you admit that we may be mistaken in the object for which our love is felt. And that comes to the same thing after all.”
“But I don’t say that; I’m not sure of that,” said Marion thoughtfully, and looking somewhat troubled. “Besides, even if you loved ... some one who did not love you, or was not worthy of your love—still, you know, you would have loved. You could afford to be unhappy after that! If I were a common pebble, and some enchanter transformed me into a diamond, he might crush me afterward: I should have been all I could be.”
Mr. Grant sighed. “You young folk know how to be eloquent,” said he. “And you may be right, my dear—you may be right. I should like to think so. I suppose every one is not born with the power of loving; but, for those who are, what you say may be true. And possibly Providence may so order things—I am an old-fashioned fellow, you see, and believe in Providence—that those who can truly love are never ignobly disappointed. They will have griefs, no doubt—for it would be an empty world that was without those—but not ignoble ones. There may be something purifying and divine in a real love, that makes it like an angel, before whose face all that is base and paltry flees away.” After saying this, Mr. Grant was silent for a little while; and Marion, glancing at his face, fancied that he was thinking of some vanished love of his own, and she would have liked to have asked him about it, but could not find words to do it in. Presently he looked round at her, and said, with a smile:
“You, at any rate, have a right to your belief, my dear. It comes to you by inheritance. Your mother, I am sure, made a love-match.”
“Oh, yes! But mamma was born for such things—tolove and be loved I mean. I sometimes think though, she would not have loved my father so much, if she had not first met Mr. Tom Grantley. She imagined she was in love with him, you know; just for a little while; and he must have been a grand man; he made her heart wake up—he made her know what love was, without making her really love him. So, when she met father, she knew how to give herself to him. Wouldn’t it have been strange if she had married Mr. Grantley? But she would not have been happy. How strange if she had married him! I could not bear to have any other father but my own father; I shall never care for any one as I did for him.”
“Indeed, it would have been strange if she had married Mr. Grantley,” returned the old gentleman musingly. “But as you say, ’tis doubtless better as it is. In my life, many things have happened that I would gladly have averted, or altered: but looking back on them now I can see how they may have been for the best. For instance, I am very fond of you, my dear Marion—you won’t mind me saying this, will you?—and I might wish that I had some substantial right to be fond of you, and to expect you to be fond of me: that you might have been my niece or daughter, or my young sister—my step-sister, let us say. But, after all, I would have nothing altered; and I dare say you will give me, out of free generosity, as much affection as if you were my kinswoman.”
“Oh, at least as much,” said Marion, smiling. “And I might like you even more than I do if there were some good reason why I should not like you so much.”
“I doubt if I have audacity enough to take you at your word ... and yet, I don’t know! I might devise some plot against you which you would only discover after my death; as people leave hampering legacies to their survivors, who are then obliged to grin and bear it. Will you like me better on the mere chance of such a calamity.”
“It is very hard to forgive benefits; and I’m afraid that this is the only sort of calamity you will bring down upon me.”
“But don’t you think there is a point at which independence becomes selfishness?”
“I think it is better to run that risk than the other. It would be for me, I am sure. I don’t believe in myself enough to venture on making a milliner’s block of myself—all my value to be in the fine things that are hung on me. Mamma is always hoping I may get married—she can’t understand that all women are not created marriageable, as she was—and wants me to ‘make the most of my advantages,’ as she calls it. As if I wouldn’t take more pains to appear disagreeable to a man who wanted to marry me than to any one else!”
“You remind me of something Philip Lancaster said the other day. We were speaking of the extraordinary marriages one hears of—the most unlikely people falling in love with each other—and he made the remark that the people best worth knowing were those who refused to be known—or something of that kind; and that probably, in the case of a man marrying a woman—or vice versa—of whom it is asked, ‘What on earth could he see in her?’ the truth is he sees in her what is reserved only for the eyes of love to discern—something too rare and precious to reveal itself at any less magic touch than love’s. It struck me as a good saying; because it rebukes surface judgments of human nature; and develops the symbol of the diamond, which is the most beautiful of all gems, and therefore the least accessible.”
“I should have expected Mr. Lancaster to say that the diamond is the least accessible and therefore the most beautiful—in the finder’s opinion; that is the way he would have put it had he been talking to me.”
“As to that,” replied Mr. Grant, with a smile, “Lancaster, in his dealings with you, reminds me of a youngofficer I once saw carrying despatches in a battle across the line of fire. In his anxiety to show that the imminent peril he was in did not in the least frighten him, he put on such an affected swagger—he was naturally a very modest and unpretentious young fellow—that his most intimate friend would hardly have recognized him. Now, I apprehend that my friend Lancaster’s native simplicity is disguised by a like effort to appear indifferent to your sharp-shooting. ’Tis hardly fair, Marion. It is one thing to hide the graces of one’s own mind and heart; but to force another to disfigure his is less justifiable, methinks!”
“Mr. Lancaster would be amused at the idea of my being unjust to him,” said Marion, reddening and laughing. “He’d be expecting me to criticise the sun at noonday next!”
“There is a difference betwixt appreciating one’s self, and being self-conceited,” replied Mr. Grant. “Lancaster is at the age when a man sees himself rather as a reflection of humanity in general, than as an individual. He has much insight; he detects a great number of traits and qualities in people with whom he comes in contact; and whatever he has the sympathy to detect in others, he fancies he possesses himself. ’Tis a natural misconception; he lacks the experience that will hereafter enable him to distinguish one’s recognition of a quality from one’s ownership of it. The older we grow, the more we find the limits of character contract; we actually become but a small fraction of what we see and understand. And then, it may be, a young man receives a sharper impression from the evil that is in the world than from the good; and that may be the reason why our friend Philip sometimes refers so darkly and ominously to his moral condition. ’Tis not his own wickedness that oppresses him, but that which he has divined in the capacities of human nature. An oldfellow like me prefers to look at the brighter side of mankind; and therefore, perhaps, ceases to take so much interest in himself.”
“It may be all true—I suppose it is,” said Marion, with a great air of indifference. “But Mr. Lancaster probably won’t need my appreciation so long as he is not tired of his own.”
“Ah, my child,” the old gentleman said, with more gravity than he had yet spoken, “we are all foolish and feeble creatures, and ’tis pathetic how we strive—clumsily and mistakenly often, God knows!—to appear wise and strong in one another’s sight. If you would take my word for it, I would tell you our saddest regret at the close of life is that we have been less forbearing and helpful to our fellows than we might have been. And I would have you believe, too, that to do some good is much easier than it seems. It is as easy as to be ironical and self-sufficient. Here is a young man’s soul passing your way on its long journey, not knowing how to ask your womanly sympathy and influence, but much in need of them nevertheless. Perhaps you might say a word or do a deed to him that would make an eternal difference in the path he takes and the goal he reaches. To underrate your power is to wrong both yourself and him. For we know—do we not, my dear?—that the source whence good comes is not in ourselves.”
Marion’s face had grown intensely expressive while Mr. Grant was speaking; her cheeks and forehead flushed, her eyes showed disquietude, and she moved her hands restlessly. Presently she exclaimed, “It is not as you suppose, sir. I don’t feel unkindly to Mr. Lancaster—he was kind to us before he knew us. But it is not my place.... I am a girl ... he would not thank me. There is some one else—he knows Perdita Desmoines; I cannot interfere.” She stood up and moved, as if she intended to leave the room.
Mr. Grant rose and took her hand. “I know of his acquaintance with that lady,” he said; “but I think Philip is neither so young nor so old as you would imply. And the truth is, Marion, you have won my heart, and so has he; and my conscience never feels quite at ease until I have made my friends friends of each other. What else does Providence give them to me for?”
“For their own good, I should imagine,” replied Marion, with a smile.
“Aye—the good I may be the means of their doing each other.”
She shook her head and laughed.
“Though to be sure,” she added, “ ’twould be scarce worth while to count the good they are like to do you!”
“I am too far on in years to begin to count the good you have done me, my dear,” said the old gentleman. And then, as they were at the door, he opened it for her, and she passed out. After closing it again, Mr. Grant took out his snuff-box and helped himself to a pinch with an air of much quiet contentment.
JUNEin England sometimes combines the tender afternoon of spring with the dawning beauty of summer. There is joyful potency in the sunshine, but no white colorless glare; it seems to proceed almost as much from the face of the earth as from the sun. The air, both in light and in shadow, is of an even warmth—the happy medium between heat and cold—which, like perfect health, exhilarates us with so much subtlety that we are hardly aware of it until it is no more. Nature, who has no memory, triumphs over our weary hearts by telling over once more the sweet story, repeated a myriad times, and with such youthful zest as half to beguile us into the belief that it is new indeed. So, too, the infant man begins the heavy journey whose end we know too well, unshadowed by the gloom of our grim experience, shielded from our dreary sophistries by the baby wisdom brought from Heaven, which we can never learn. We know how soon he must lose that shield of light, yet we prolong for him, if we may, the heavenly period. For our human life is a valley, the gloom of whose depths would be too terrible to endure did we not believe that its limits, on either side, bordered on the sky.
Mr. Grant was, perhaps, peculiarly appreciative of the charm of this English season, because he had been so long exiled to the torrid damps of India. One morning, accordingly, when the family were seated round the breakfast-table, with the fresh air and sunshine streaming through the open window, he pulled out of his fob the large old-fashioned gold watch which he always carried, and having consulted it, said:
“ ’Tis now eight o’clock, Mrs. Lockhart. Shall you be ready in an hour?”
To which Mrs. Lockhart, who had all that morning worn upon her gentle countenance an expression of mysterious presage, strangely alien to her customary aspect of guileless amenity, replied, mantling with a smile, “Quite ready, Mr. Grant.”
“At nine o’clock, then, we will set out. Marion, get on your riding-habit; you and Mr. Lancaster must accompany us on horseback.”
Philip and Marion looked inquiringly at each other, and then at their elders, and Philip said: “Is this another Popish plot?”
“Nothing so unsubstantial,” Mr. Grant replied. “Mrs. Lockhart and I are going to drive to Richmond Hill, and Marion and you are to escort us. The carriage and the horses will be at the door an hour hence. So—no cookery and no poetry in this house to-day!”
Marion went round to her mother and kissed her cheek. “But Mr. Grant is having a bad effect on you, mamma,” she said. “You never kept a secret from me before!”
By nine o’clock everything and everybody were ready. Philip, booted and spurred, and with a feather in his steeple-crowned hat, was as handsome as one of the heroes of his own poems, who, indeed, all, more or less, resembled him, and Marion had never looked so well as in her dark blue riding-habit. As for Mrs. Lockhart and Mr. Grant, they were at least as youthful as any of the party, and the June morning glorified them all. The two elder people took their seats in the carriage; Philip helped Marion into her saddle and then leaped into his own; the coachman gathered up his reins and they started off. In a few minutes they were moving along the broad highway toward Kew Bridge, Marion and Philip riding side by side in advance. The tall elms shook green shadows from their rustling leaves, interspersedwith sunbeams and sweet bird-voices; veils of thinnest cloud softened the tender horizon and drew in tranquil arcs across the higher blue. A westerly breeze, coming from the coolness where the dawn was still beginning, breathed past their faces and sent freshness to their hearts. The horses shook their heads and stretched their limbs, and slanted forward anticipative ears. Marion’s cheeks were red and her eyes sparkled.
“I wish Richmond Hill were t’other side the world,” she said, “and we to ride there!”
“I would ride with you as far as that, and then home the other way,” said Philip.
“We should lose our road, perhaps.”
“No matter, if we did not lose each other.”
“Could you write poetry on horseback?”
“ ’Tis better to ride through a poem than to write one.”
“Would this poem be blank verse or rhyme?”
“Rhyme!” cried Philip.
“Why?”
“Because that poem should make Marion rhyme with Philip.”
“Yes—when it is written!”
“I would rather be the author of that poem than of any other.”
Marion laughed. “You would find it very poor prose when it was done.”
“It would turn all my prose into poetry, if I might hope even to begin it. Marion—”
She reined in her horse. “We are going too fast and too far,” she said gravely. “The carriage is almost out of sight.”
“But your mother will trust you with me,” said Philip, looking at her.
“You do not know that; nor whether I care to be trusted.”
“Ah! that is what I fear,” said Philip, biting his lip. “You prefer to ride alone; I don’t.”
“You’re not accustomed to it, perhaps?”
“I have been alone all my life!”
Marion laughed again. “I thought the Marquise Desmoines was a horsewoman,” she said.
Philip blushed; and the carriage having by this time come up, the conversation was carried no further.
But it was impossible to be dispirited on a day like this. The deep smile of a summer morning, though it may seem to mock the dreariness of age, is generally found contagious by youth. The mind must be powerfully preoccupied that can turn its eyes inward, when such a throng of outward loveliness invites it. As the party approached the bridge, a narrow and hump-backed structure, which made up in picturesqueness what it lacked in convenience, the broad reaches of the river came into view, widening down on the left toward distant London, and, on the right, curving round the wooded shores of Kew. The stream echoed with inward tones the blue aloft, varying its clear serenity with a hundred frets and trills of sparkling light. Many boats plied to and fro, oared by jolly young watermen who dreamt not of railways and steam-launches. There were voices of merry-makers, laughter, and calling, after the British fashion, all taking so well the color of the scene as to appear to be its natural utterance; though when, with a finer ear, you caught the singing of the birds, that seemed the natural utterance too. Crossing the bridge, and winding past Kew Green, they began to behold, at the distance of a mile or so, the pleasant town of Richmond grouped betwixt the river and the hill. Leaving a venerable hostelry on the right, and turning sharply westward, carriage and horses trundled and tramped conspicuous along the high-shouldered street; butcher-boys and loafers turned to stare; shop-keepersstood in their doorways, rubbing super-serviceable hands, and smirking invitations; a postboy, standing at the door of the Castle Inn with a pot of ale in his hand, emptied it to Marion’s health; while the neat barmaid who had fetched it for him paused on the threshold with the corner of her apron to her lips, and giggled and reddened at handsome Philip’s nod. Anon they breasted the hill, whose sudden steepness made the horses bob their heads and dig their iron toes sharply into the road. As they mounted to higher air, so did the arc of the horizon seem to mount with them, and the wide levels of rich country lying between retired from verdurous green to remote blue, divided by the lazy curves of glancing Thames. It is the most cultivated prospect in the world, and second to none in wealth and variety of historical association. It gives range and breathing room to the spirits; it has endless comely charm, but it is not inspiring. It is redolent of the humdrum flatness of respectable and prosperous mediocrity. The trees look like smug green cauliflowers; and the blue of the distance seems artificial.
“I am sure there can be nothing so lovely as that in India, Mr. Grant,” said Mrs. Lockhart.
“A bare rock would be lovelier than India to me if it bore the name of England,” he replied. “I thank God that I shall die, after all, within hail of so sweet a plain as that.”
“No!” said Marion, in a low, disturbed voice. Her horse was standing close to that side of the carriage on which Mr. Grant sat, and the word was audible only to him. He looked round at her and added with a smile, “In the fullness of time.”
The coachman began to point out the points of interest: “That’s Twickenham Church, ma’am. Mr. Pope’s willa is a bit furder down. Yonder’s Mr. Orace Walpole’s place. Of a clear day, sir, you may see Winser Cassel, twenty mile off. Hepsom will be that-away, sir.”
“What do you think of it?” Philip asked Marion.
“It has a homely look,” she answered—“home-like, I mean.”
“Yes; we might ride round the world, and not find a better home than that,” said he, pointing down the declivity to a house that stood by the margin of the river, on a smooth green lawn overshadowed by stately elms.
“Or a worse one, maybe!” she returned coldly. But the next moment she glanced at him with a smile that was not so cold.
The party moved on once more, and at the end of a little more climbing, reached the famous inn, which, at that epoch, was a much less grandiloquent structure than it is now, and infinitely more humane toward its guests. The riders dismounted, the horses were led to the stable; and Mr. Grant, having had a confidential consultation with the host and the head waiter, proposed to his friends a ramble in the park. So off they all went, at first in a group; but after a while Mrs. Lockhart wished to sit down on a bench that was wedged between two oaks of mighty girth; and as Mr. Grant seemed equally inclined to repose, Philip presently drew Marion away across the glade. It dipped through a fern-brake, and then sloped upward again to a grove of solemn oaks, each one of which might have afforded house room to a whole family of dryads.
“I remember this grove,” Philip remarked; “I was here long ago—nearly twenty years. I was an Eton boy then. It has changed very little.”
“Less than you have.”
“I sometimes doubt whether I am much changed either. What is it changes a man? His body grows, and he fills his memory with good and bad. But only so much of what he learns stays with him as naturallybelongs to him; the knowledge he gains is only the confirmation of what he knew before. A word is not changed by magnifying it.”
“But if you put in another syllable—?”
“Yes, then it becomes different: either more or less than it was before, or, may be, nonsense. But it is not learning that can put a new syllable into a man.”
“What does, then?”
Philip did not immediately reply; but by-and-by he said, “I believe Providence meant our brains only to show us what fools we are. At least, that’s the most mine have done for me. The more fuel we put into it, and the more light it gives out, the more clearly does it reveal to us our smallness and poverty.”
“Perhaps—if we turn the light against ourselves. But clever people generally prefer to throw light upon the smallness and poverty of others.”
Again Philip paused for several moments; then he said suddenly, his eyes darkening, “By God, were I to be tried for my life, I would not choose you for my judge!”
They were sitting together on the roots of one of the oaks. Marion turned her head slowly and encountered Philip’s look. She put out her hand and touched his, saying, “Forgive me.”
He grasped her hand and held it. At first she made a movement as if to withdraw it; but, meeting his eyes again, she let it remain. She looked away; a long breath, intermittently drawn, filled her bosom. The contact of her hand, sensitive and alive, was more significant than a kiss to Philip. He did not venture to move or to speak; thoughts flew quickly through his mind—thoughts that he could not analyze; but they were born of such emotions as joy, eagerness, self-distrust, the desire to be nobler and better than he had ever been: a feeling of tender pathos. A voice in hisheart kept repeating “Marion! Marion! Marion!” with a sense that everything womanly and sacred was implied in that name. He felt, also, that a sort of accident had brought him nearer to her than he had as yet a right to come: that he must wait, and give her time.
They got up, at last, by a mutual impulse, after how long a time they knew not. They had spoken no words. They looked at each other for a moment, and each beheld in the other something that had not been visible before: there was a certain surprise and softness in the look. The touch of the hands was over; but they seemed to be encircled by a secret sympathy that sweetly secluded them from all foreign approach. The nearness was spiritual, and demanded a degree of physical severance. They moved along, with a space between them, but intimately conscious of each other.
Presently Philip said, “I am changed now; but you see, it was not memory or knowledge that changed me.”
“Do you like the change?” she asked.
“I don’t like to think how much time I have wasted without changing.”
“Perhaps, since it pleases you so well, you’ll want to change again?”
“I’m afraid you will never change!” he returned, with a cadence of half-humorous expostulation. “There’ll be no more change in me this side death.”
As he spoke he looked toward her; she was walking with eyes downcast, a doubtful smile coming and going about her lips. About a hundred yards beyond, in the line of his glance, a man and a woman on horseback passed rapidly across an opening between two groups of trees. Just before they swept out of sight the woman turned her face in Philip’s direction, and immediately made a gesture with her right hand. Whether it were a signal of recognition, or whether it had no reference to him, Philip could not decide. A painful sensationpassed through his mind; but he was glad that the episode had escaped Marion’s notice. Soon after they rejoined Mrs. Lockhart and Mr. Grant; and Marion seemed to be relieved to be once more, as it were, under their protection. The importunity of an ungauged and unfamiliar joy may affect the heart like a danger.
For the rest of the day, accordingly, the four remained together, and, save for some slight intermittent anxiety on Philip’s part, they were all as happy as human beings are apt to be. Marion and Philip said very little to each other, and that of the most conventional description; but an inward smile, that seldom ventured beyond the eyes, illuminated both of them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lockhart certainly, and Mr. Grant apparently, were most comfortably unconscious of anything exceptional having taken place. The serene geniality of the weather was perfectly reflected in the sentiments of those who enjoyed it. When the air of the hill had made them remember that something was to be done at the inn, they betook themselves thither, and were shown into a western room, whose open window gave upon the famous prospect. Here a table was set out and dinner served by a profoundly respectable and unexceptionable waiter, who had the air of having spent his previous life in perfecting himself for this occasion. They had a couple of bottles of very delicate Lafitte; and always, before raising his glass to his lips, Philip lifted his eyes, and quaffed an instant’s sweet intelligence from Marion’s.
“How do you find the wine, Lancaster?” Mr. Grant asked.
“I wish I might never drink any other,” was his reply.
“It is very good, but it goes to my head,” remarked Mrs. Lockhart.
“It goes to my heart,” said Philip.
“All the same, you may feel the worse for it to-morrowmorning,” said Marion, with one of her short laughs.
“A heartache instead of a headache,” smiled Mr. Grant.
“Heartache would come only from being denied it,” Philip rejoined.
“I must try and get you some of it to drink at home,” said guileless Mrs. Lockhart.
“ ’Tis Lafitte—you may get it anywhere,” put in Marion. As she spoke she pushed back her chair from the table, adding, “Come, mamma, we have had enough; let us go out on the terrace.” So she triumphed over Philip in having the last word.
The afternoon was mellowing toward evening by the time the unexceptionable waiter announced that the carriage and horses were waiting. As Philip helped Marion to her seat he said:
“After all, it is not so long a ride round the world, is it?”
She answered: “I don’t know. We are not got home yet, remember.”
Going down the hill, they halted at the spot whence they had first caught the view on ascending, to take a farewell look at it. A noise of hoofs following down the road above caused Philip to look around, and he saw approaching the same lady and gentleman whom he had caught a glimpse of in the park that morning. The blood flew to his face, and he set his teeth against his lips.
The lady, riding up, saluted him with her whip, exclaiming laughingly, “Philip Lancaster, after all! You naughty boy—then itwasyou I saw coming out of the grove, and you would not answer my greeting!”
“Indeed!” was all Philip found to reply.
She reined her horse and extended her hand to him.“Indeed! Yes. But you were always so! ... well, I forgive you because of your poetry.” Here she turned her eyes, which were very bright and beautiful, upon the occupants of the carriage. “Surely I have known this lady,” she murmured. “Madame, are you not Mrs. Lockhart? Oh—then this—yes, this must be Marion!” She clapped her hands together with a sort of child-like gayety. “And you have all forgotten me! You have forgotten Perdita Bendibow!”
Hereupon ensued a sociable turmoil—giving of hands—presentation of Mr. Grant—and of Perdita’s cavalier, who was no other than Tom Bendibow, the hero of the coach-upsetting exploit. But the chief turmoil was in Philip’s mind. Everything passed before his eyes like a dream—and an extremely uncongenial one. Once or twice he glanced at Marion; but she was not looking his way—she was laughing and chatting with the Marquise and Tom Bendibow alternately; there was vivid color in her cheeks. Philip was also aware that the Marquise occasionally spoke to him, or at him, in very friendly and familiar terms. It was charming. And at last she said:
“There, I cannot stay—I am late; but you will come—mind! You have all promised. There will be no one but ourselves. Thursday—a week from this day—at six o’clock. Mr. Grant and all. You will not forget, Mr. Grant?”
“I shall not forget, madame,” he said gravely and courteously.
“And you,ma chère,” she continued, turning to Marion; and then playfully tapping Philip with her whip, “because then we shall be sure of him! Mrs. Lockhart, I have so much to talk to you of your dear husband ... he saved my husband’s life! ... I must kiss you!” She forced her horse to the side of the carriage, and, bending low from the saddle, touched the old lady’s cheek with her lovely lips. The next moment she waserect again. “Come, Tom!” she exclaimed, “we must gallop! Good-by, all of you!” and down the hill they rode at speed.
“How charming and beautiful she is!” said Mrs. Lockhart, smiling with tears in her eyes. “She has a warm heart. She has made the day quite perfect.”
“Yes, she appeared at the right moment,” assented Marion lightly.
In one sense, certainly, Perdita could be said to have been the consummation of the holiday; but, even in a party of four, the same event may have widely different meanings.