VI
THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Among the minor penalties with which fate, presumably solicitous for a true balance, hampers excellence in this world, not alone the acquired excellence, which, being achieved in its teeth, explicably earns its maleficence, but even the natural advantages which were its own unsolicited gift, one, we think, has escaped the attention it deserves. We refer to a certain isolation and lack of touch with their immediateentouragewhich those who are marked for the world's prizes never quite succeed in overcoming, however modestly they wear or anticipate their honors. They are interesting, and for a correct view a certain distance, respectful, (though not necessarily so to them), is judged advisable. Society opens its ranks to receive them, but never quite closes on them again. None who have studied the lives of the giants but will have noticed how rarely a friendship disinterestedly worthy of them came their way, and is not the fatality of beauty, encountering the spoiler where the friend was imagined, a proverb? Fenella had not lived her new life a month before she was aware of a subtle atmosphere which was not treachery and which could not, without begging the question, have been called disrespect, but which partook a little of both. One does not feel a thing less keenly for being unable to exactly define it. Instincts are given women to be acted on, not to be explored. Its manifestations as yet had been only vaguely disquieting. Among the men it was apparent rather as a half jocular reservation of judgment—a determination, in view of possible developments, not to be committed to any one view of her character now, and, above all, never to be in the position of having more knowing brothers administer a rebuke to worldly wisdom. And among the women it took the shape of a coldness in meeting her advances which contrasted puzzlingly with the outspoken admiration that invited them. Poor, warm-hearted, ignorant Fenella! experiencing for the first time the full benefits of the benefit of the doubt.
It might be inevitable, or it might not, that, as day followed day of a visit so rapidly losing its charm, the broad-shouldered figure of the sporting baronet should begin to stand out more and more sympathetically against this background of veiled disrespect and thwarting reserve. It is true that the openness of his first advances had been the thing nearest approaching insult that she could remember, but, such as it was, it was forgiven now and, womanlike, the fault, frankly owned, brought him nearer. More womanlike still, perhaps, she liked him the better because he had been a witness to the old lost love of the summer. He at least saw her in no half light. She did not care greatly if he believed the worst—took a perverse joy, indeed, in believing it was possible he did. She was on her way now to a life where such things were no handicap, to which, indeed, she half suspected they were sometimes the initiation. She was content the knowledge of her own integrity should remain—a secret satisfaction to herself—content to feel it as a dancer of the fervid south, beneath her languorous draperies, may feel the chill of the dagger that she carries thrust through her garter.
He was kind and helpful too, not with the troublesome insistence of a man anxious to make amends for a former mistake, but as though, the ground having been cleared once for all of false conceptions, misunderstanding was no longer likely between them. Mourning and seclusion, she discovered, were comparative terms among country neighbors, and amid the men with whom the house intermittently abounded he showed both a finer creature and a finer gentleman. Once, in the billiard-room, when Warrener the full-blooded hinted that her cheeks lacked roses, and made as if to pour out whiskey for her, Lumsden took the decanter from his hand without a word, and put it back on the wooden ledge that ran round the room. She had come on a message to him from Leslie.
"I'd send one of the maids, Flash, when it's as late as this," he said, simply, as soon as they were in the corridor.
He had adopted Jack's favorite nickname for her when they were alone once and for all, but it was noticeable he never used it in the hearing of a third person. The thing had no importance, but it is a type of the assumptions she was finding it so difficult to resist.
It was he who, after all, taught her to ride. Jack Barbour, to do him justice, was prepared to redeem an old promise so soon as, to use his own words, "the bone was gone out of the ground," but frost followed the snow and held for days after tobogganing had been voted flat, stale and unprofitable. It wasn't Bryan's way to wait. He had more tan and straw laid down over the path, bordered with evergreens, that led from the stable-yard to poor Lady Lulford's steam laundry, and along which the horses were exercised every day. Fenella's heart fluttered and there was no lack in her cheeks of the roses whose absence Warrener deplored as, dressed in a borrowed habit of Leslie's that pinched her unconfined waist sorely, and with her hair in a pigtail again, she put her foot in her master's looped hand. Maids and stable-boys were peeping round the outbuildings.
He flicked the gray mare with his whip, and for more than an hour, letting the rope he held run out to its full length, pulled the animal backward and forward in a kind of "eight" figure. He threw away his cigar, and his voice rang out crisp and decisive as on a barrack square.
"Straight between his ears! Now look down. Can you see the feet? That's right! Now, then, press down in the stirrup as her fore-leg goes out, then lift.Hup! hup!Oh, fine! Coz! you're a fraud. You've learnt before."
"Have I really done so very well?" she asked, when the lesson was over and they were on their way to the stables. She looked up in his face; her own tingling with pleasure at his appreciation.
"I've never seen 'em trot so well the first time." He looked her over critically. "I suppose it's all balance. When we're back in town, I'll mount you and show you lots of things. We'll have a turn in Richmond Park."
She caught her breath at the last two words, as at a positive physical pang. This must be the future, she supposed. Stray ends of pleasure, caught at and let go, an uneasy sense of something missing that could have woven them all into happiness, and now and then, when the nerve was touched, just such a spasm of pain as made her wince now. Lumsden did not notice her. He was looking at a large bay horse with a bandaged ankle that a stableman was leading across the paved yard.
"How's his hock this morning, Collett?"
Collett touched his cap twice. "Walks a bit lame still, I fancy, Sir Bryan."
"What does Brodribb say about him?"
"Well, ye know what Mr. Brodribb be, Sir Bryan. 'E wunt 'ave the harse slung. 'Get the condition right fust,' 'e says."
"Lift up his cloths."
Lumsden rubbed his hand over the lean-barrelled flank and regarded the animal gloomily.
"Bit hide-bound still. Still cooking his food, Collett?"
"Yes, Sir Bryan."
"Feed him on corn a day or two, and let him have the boiled water warm. I'll come down this afternoon and have another look at him. Well, Flash, what do you think of him? Pretty horse, isn't he?"
"He's rather—thin, isn't he, Sir Bryan?"
"Thin?" Bryan looked down banteringly at his little cockney friend in her borrowed riding-habit. "That's a race-horse. That's Saleratus."
On New Year's Eve the Lulford party dined at Chubley, Lady Wills-Pechell's new but much photographed and be-paragraphed castle high up on Spurlock Edge. Despite the roaring log fire, there was quite a baronial rawness in the air of the dining-room, and most of the women came to dinner with lace shawls or spangled Egyptian scarves over their bare shoulders. Toward the end of dinner Lady Wills-Pechell leaned from her chair for a whispered conversation with her right-hand neighbor.
"Miss Barbour," she said. "Oh! I beg your pardon, Leslie; I meant your cousin."
Fenella, who was genuinely absorbed in the technicalities of Snip Hannaford, turned to meet her hostess's unconvincing smile.
"Miss Barbour, a little bird has been very busy lately twittering that you dance. Aren't we to be shown anything before you go back to town?"
"There are too many little birds in S—shire," Bill Arkcoll remarked in a penetrating undertone. "Pity the cold hasn't killed some of them."
Fenella reddened and turned pale by turns.
"Oh, I can't!" she said quickly. She flashed a quick appeal across the table for her cousin's sympathy, but Leslie kept her eyes on her plate. Leslie's manner had been strange lately.
"Oh, but youmust—you really must! Talents oughtn't to be hid. Ought they, Lord Lulford?"
The bearded widower, who had been engaged in demolishing the private reputation of a Liberal leader, turned from the horrified face of the great lady he had taken in to dinner.
"What is it?"
"We're asking your niece to dance here some night before she goes back. She thinks it wouldn't be quite—quite, you know——"
Lulford tugged at his thick beard. "I don't know why you shouldn't, Fenella. We're almost a family party."
"Don't worry the child," Lady Warrener put in, noticing her distress. She had forgotten much that was American, but not the tradition that kindness and consideration are budding womanhood's due.
"Be a sport, Flash," said Jack Barbour, cheerily but unhelpfully.
"We'll persuade her when we've got her in the drawing-room," said Lady Warrener.
"I think," said the chatelaine, "that there's more chance of her being persuaded here. Won'tyoutry, Sir Bryan?" in her sweetest tone.
"It may be a serious matter," said Lumsden, without looking at any one in particular. "Perhaps Miss Barbour's in training."
"Yes," said the lady of the Syringas. "But who's the trainer? That's what we all want to know."
"I've—I've got no clothes."
A smothered laugh, not only from the men.
"My dear child, we've got boxes and boxes of them upstairs—five generations."
There was a crash on a shirt-front, at which every one jumped but Arkcoll. He would have very much liked to see the box belonging to, say, generation three.
"And I've no music. Oh!" moving impatiently, "it's absurd."
Lady Warrener thought she detected a suppressed ambition in the restless movement.
"If you really don't mind, I've got volumes of old dance music over at Captoft. I was going to ask Jack to motor you and Leslie over to-morrow. Couldn't you rummage then?"
Fenella, hard pressed, looked over to Lumsden, as nearly every one had intended she should look. There was the strangest, quizzical expression on his face. It seemed to say:
"Now then! Who said they weren't afraid? First fence, and we're funking already."
"I'll dance," she said abruptly, amid general applause, headed rather shrilly from the top of the table; "but please don't trouble about dresses, Lady Pechell. I'll write to mother to send me my own."
Lumsden came to her side soon after the men entered the drawing-room with such undisguised intention that Lady Warrener, who had been trying to interest her in the dawning intelligence of the miraculous twins, drew away, puzzled and a little shaken in her advocacy.
"Bravo!" Bryan said encouragingly; but the girl did not respond, and he thought he saw a tear roll down one bare arm. Nelly's tears were still larger than ordinary.
"You looked across the table to me just now," he said. "I hope you saw nothing in my face except a wish you should do the best for your own interests."
"It's settled now," said Fenella coldly, after a gulp which she hoped he didn't notice. "Lady Warrener had theChaconnefromIphigénieand I can do myRosettadance to any six-four time. I'll write for the dresses as soon as we get back to Lulford."
Saying which, she got up, grown stately somehow for all her girlish short frock, and crossed the room to where the joyful mother of twins was sitting silently, an expression of diffused and impartial sweetness on her face. She touched her elbow.
"Lady Warrener, won't you go on and tell me some more about your babies? I was really interested?"
The woman looked up, noted the mute appeal in voice and eyes, and, drawing the girl down next her on the couch, took her hand and held it as she chatted.
"Where had I got to? Oh, yes—Bunter said: 'Mother, there's something tickling my red lane.' 'Your red lane, Bunter?' 'Oh, mother,' said Patch, 'he's such a baby. He means hisfroat.' Now wasn't thatsweet. Miss Barbour?Fahncy!And only three years old, both of them. I'm so proud, I simplyboreall my friends. But you love children, don't you, Miss Barbour? How can any onenot?"