Cynthia was now on her way home. Her plans for remaining in Jersey until Christmas fell through. In one letter she mentioned that she had got a nice room in Bree's Hotel, and felt quite settled for three months. In the next, a few days later, she announced her engagement to a man whom she had not before named, and of whom the Admiral and Mrs. Marlowe had never heard. She and her maid were returning at once to Lafer Hall, and Mr. Danby would travel to town with them, and see them off from thence by the North Express.
This was indeed carrying matters with a high hand. The Admiral was dumbfounded. He stormed down to Canon Tremenheere, forgetful, in his anxiety to know if he had had details from Mrs. Kerr, of the trouble he might be in. He vowed Cynthy was a 'matter-of-fact puss.' If he had ever thought she would take him literally, he would not have assured her choice was in her own hands. So there was no letter from Theodosia Kerr? Was she not responsible for Cynthy? Whatever were they all thinking of? Truly it was a mad world, time for him to be in his grave, he couldn't stand such whirligigs, Cynthy might be a teetotum and expect to set them all spinning with her.
'Look here, Anthony,' he said, buzzing round Tremenheere's library like a fly, while Anthony sat with his hands clasped behind his head, and an air of endurance, 'I always thought you'd be the man. I always thought she'd come round. She knows your worth,and you're such a fine fellow compared, for instance, to a little naval tub like myself. But I'll tell you what it is. The very devil gets into these women, good souls though they are, bless 'em, and they either don't know what they want, or won't take the trouble of making up their minds. And to think that after all these years her fancy should be caught like this, all in a jiffy. She's held herself too cheap; it's Cynthy all over, just what she does, thinks nothing of herself. If a beggar smiles upon her she gets a spasm of happiness, and thinks all the world's full of happiness.'
'But how do we know it's been a hasty thing?' said Tremenheere.
'Has Theodosia ever named the fellow?'
'Never. But she doesn't write voluminously.'
'Then of course it has. Just write to Theodosia now, will you? It was her bounden duty to have sent her off home themoment she suspected his pretensions. I'll confess it's a good name is Danby, but bless me! one sees Campbell over a shop door, and Spencer on a costermonger's cart! And an Anglo-Indian too! Don't know anything about them and care less. And then to think she might have had you, letting alone Ushire's son, who'd have made her a countess some day. Really, Anthony, it's fit to turn one's blood; it'll upset my liver, I know. He may be a scamp, a fortune-hunter, a merry-andrew, a married man,' said the Admiral, his imagination running rampant, and his voice taking a higher key as each new possibility occurred to him. He was woe-begone and desperate. 'I can't digest it, Anthony,' he said, settling in one of the windows, and looking limp and hopelessly perplexed; 'I can't digest it. It's not like Cynthy. It's a loss of dignity. And she, with all her charm and her choice, andyouat her beck. It's inconceivable; I can't believe it.'
'She will be home before I can hear from Theo,' said Tremenheere. He was too conscious of his own lack of spirit to marvel at the Admiral's. 'I can't understand her not having written, though. There must have been some mistake over the mails. She ought to have written to you, or rather perhaps Kerr should. But he's such an easy-going fellow, is St. John. However, if I were you, Admiral, I would not distress myself. I don't think Cynthia's judgment will have failed her. We must hope for the best.'
'Hope for the best! That often means getting the worst. The best won't come for our sitting with folded hands, thinking about it. No, no, Anthony, and I'll have none of your confounded aphorisms—"Whatever is, is best," and all that fraternity of philosophy. They're a mental creeping paralysis, that's what they are. I mean to act, to act, Anthony!'
He stamped his foot as he spoke, and screwing his eye-glass into his eye, glared at Tremenheere as though wishing for contradiction for the sake of defying it.
'I would,' said Tremenheere, 'certainly I would, if I were you, Admiral. There will be many considerations in the case of your granddaughter. But wait until she gets home and then be calm, do be calm. Don't alarm her. I don't think it's occurred to her how you will have taken it, how you'll feel it. Letters would only complicate matters by crossing or miscarrying or not reaching. She will soon be home.'
The Admiral was walking up and down the room again. He was listening, but with no intention of heeding until the tone in which these last words were uttered struck on his ears. It was a tone utterly unlike the petulance of his own, that of a man baulked in his dearest desire who foresees nothing but pangs in a proximity where hope hadlong hovered, but whence it had for ever taken flight.
'Anthony,' said the Admiral, reaching him rapidly and putting his hand on his arm, 'I'm a confounded selfish old brute. Here am I screwing into your nerves to save my own. I'm going. Come down with me. The air in your garden'll do you good. But just write to Theodosia, will you?'
Tremenheere nodded as he got up.
He did not want to thwart the Admiral, but it was not for him to probe the matter. He scarcely knew whether he wished Theo had written or was thankful she had not. He was stunned by the news. The Admiral had discharged it at him like a ball from a cannon's mouth; and the more he thought of it, the more intolerable became the burning tension at his heart. He wanted to be alone. He felt unmanned. He had had hard work to reconcile himself to the idea of Cynthia travelling, even though he had faith in Theo'sgood offices and a vague impression that she meant to accomplish something in his favour. But when she was at Lafer he knew he had her near and safe, that she belonged to no one else and was out of range of new admirers. In his own mind he attributed Theodosia's flagrant carelessness to the loss their sister Julia had sustained. Julia Tremenheere, married at seventeen, became a widow fifteen months later, and two years subsequently she married again. Her second husband was also now dead. News of this loss would reach the Kerrs at Athens. He could imagine that Julia's sorrow would deeply affect Theodosia, and that she then overlooked what was happening in her own travelling party. But in the Admiral's present mood he had been careful to keep this in the background; to endure such rough-shod treatment of his sister's grief as well as his own was more than he could do.
Throughout the cruise Theodosia hadwritten to him constantly, keeping him up in all their movements, and inferring her care of his interests. These letters he had answered regularly. Sometimes he enclosed a note for Cynthia. He had done this only the previous day. A verandah ran the length of his house, and was festooned with virginia-creeper whose crimson tints were now resplendent in the glowing autumn sunshine. It was a favourite plant of hers. The last time she called before going away he asked if she would be back in time to see its splendour. Unconscious of Mrs. Kerr's plans, she had said yes, and when he heard she was not coming until Christmas he wrote to upbraid her, hoping that his words might draw from her consent to his soon going out to Jersey, since Mrs. Kerr would now soon propose it.
'My dear Cynthia,' he wrote, 'my garden is in its glory. The verandah is in gala attire. I am convinced that the tendril that touchedyour cheek as the wind swayed it—do you remember—heard your promise, and thinks long of you as I do too, for the whole plant is early crimsoned this year. You know what an exquisite foreground it then forms for the fine mass of the Minster behind it. Are you not coming to be our last rose of summer? Better that, dear Cynthia, than a Christmas rose; that's too cold and pale for my fancy. Don't be our Christmas rose, if I am not to see you before that time—or I shall be chilled by presentiments. Come home and leave Kerr and Theo to coddle each other. Everybody wants you here, as you know.—Faithfully yours, Anthony Tremenheere.'
After the Admiral mounted his horse and rode off he sauntered round to the verandah. He knew the tendril that touched her cheek in spring. He stood and thought of her, picturing her as she then stood by his side. Would she ever visit him again as CynthiaMarlowe, and find occasion for one of their quiet talks?
He thought of his note, she would have started before it reached Theo; surely she would not forward it to her. He felt now with tingling blood that it was lover-like, and they were severed when he wrote it. For one fierce moment he rebelled against the cruelty of that ignorance enfolding our human actions at which it is easy to think that devils must laugh. Bitterness welled in his heart; what is emotion but a pitfall? Then he pulled himself together again. This thing, inconceivable but true, had hung over him for years. Now, the blow had fallen. What he had thought was hope was after all only suspense. Apparently he would not even have to readjust his life. He had prayed for her welfare. If she had chosen well, that prayer would be answered. Friendship should not be sacrificed; her husband, her children, should add to his interests. Hislife-work was on his library table, but it should not conform him into a Dryasdust. He made up his mind to love her still by casting out self.
The next day he heard from Mrs. Kerr. An examination of the post-marks told him that it had been intended he should hear at the same time as the Admiral.
'My dearest Tony,' she wrote, 'I have bad news for you, and I wish with all my heart I had never undertaken Cynthia. I knew she would be attractive, but I didn't think it would be to any purpose on her own score. I had a preconceived idea that our trip would prove to her there was no one like you in the world. And now, my dear old fellow, she has electrified us by announcing her engagement to a man whom we had not recognised as a suitor. We met him first at Ajaccio, then he turned up in Zante, and finally we found him at St. Helier's. Still I suspected nothing. St. John, who was withher when he ran up against them here, did. You know how the colour flies, positivelyfliesinto her cheeks; well, that's how it did, St. John says, when she saw him. He told me, but I pooh-poohed it. She's been so long proof, and there was you. However, everything and everybody but Mr. Danby are forgotten now; St. John says it's a downright case of evangelisation—all her idols are cast to the moles and bats. He teases her dreadfully; she's been wearing her hair with fillets and he says he knows now why, because Mr. Danby was so fond of fillets of kid at Ajaccio. This of course is all nonsense. But what will the Admiral say? I have expostulated with her; I told her she never ought to have been engaged here but have let him come to Lafer. You know what a laugh she has when she's happy; well, she just laughed—"Theo," she said, "your worldly wisdom guards the gardens of the Hesperides." "Gardens of the fiddle-sticks!" said I. But all is useless. She is packing now, and will be home almost before you getthis. St. John says I ought to write to Mrs. Marlowe, but that means the Admiral, and I don't know what I can say, except that it really is no more my fault than that I asked her to come with us. Oh, Tony, my dearest boy, I wish I could see you! But don't make a trouble of it, and do let me know what you think of Mr. Danby.—Yours ever, Theodosia Kerr.'
Tremenheere sat for a long time with this before him. He knew Theo's style of writing, but had excused her when there really was nothing to say—he had not expected the letters of a Disraeli except for egotism. But when there was something to say he had expected she would be able to say it. And here was tragedy made into comedy, a drama slurred out of all proportion. He had wanted to know what she thought of Danby, what Kerr thought of him. And here was judgment thrown on to his shoulders.
'Good God!' he thought, 'how am I to get to know him? That is just what I cannot do until she has married him.'
He tormented himself over that demand for his opinion. What did it mean? Were they dissatisfied? Was Kerr mistrustful? had even Theo misgivings? If they had liked him with genuine hearty British liking, would they not have said so? Was this vagueness intentional—'We don't like him, do you?' He knew that flying of the colour into Cynthia's cheeks; he could hear that joyous laugh of hers. He sat on now, thinking of them. She must be happy. Would she be if she had a doubt of this man? She could not be wholly blinded, he must be sterling if she were so happy.
Then he was seized by a great longing to see her at once, as soon as she arrived, that he might judge for himself. His restlessness was intolerable. He must walk it off. He would go up to Lafer and hear if they hadhad a telegram. Had she reached London? When were they coming on? By what train were they to arrive?
He saw Mrs. Hennifer. The Admiral was out with one of the woodmen; Mrs. Marlowe was not down; she had been so unnerved by the news that she had not been beyond her dressing-room since. They had heard that Cynthia was to arrive that night. He walked to the window and stood a long while silent. Mrs. Hennifer remained in the middle of the room, also standing. An air of unusual indecision was on her face. She did not know how much she dared say of all that was in her mind.
Tremenheere turned at last and looked at her.
'I very much wish to see Cynthia,' he said.
'You must come up to-morrow, or we will drive down.'
'No, neither. I want to see her to-night.Tell the Admiral I'll meet her and put her into the carriage.'
'That will do very well. Mrs. Marlowe can't spare me, and the Admiral is too peremptory in the matter to talk coherently in the carriage.'
'Naturally. I hope he will be gentle with her—you will be at hand, won't you? Some one must meet her too, it would otherwise be so cheerless. Thanks.'
He took up his hat and stick, his eyes meanwhile slowly travelling round the room. It was the morning-room, and opening from the drawing-rooms had often been used in their place as being more cosy after dinner in winter. A little bamboo table with a low chair beside it was hers. How often they had played chess together there, or talked, Cynthia with bright silken work in her hands. It was pain to Mrs. Hennifer to see the sadness of his face. He came up and put his hand out. She took it within both her ownand looked at him earnestly, her thin angular figure relaxing sufficiently to lean slightly towards him.
'Canon, it may never be a marriage,' she said.
'Never a marriage!' he repeated. 'Dear Mrs. Hennifer, that would, I fear, be a grief to her.'
'She must have been a little hasty.'
'But haste does not always entail mistake.'
'She may discover that she has not known sufficient about him. He is some years older than she. She may eventually see herself that it is not desirable.'
'True. It is possible.'
'But improbable, you think. It would entail unpleasantness. Still, the breaking off might be a mutual arrangement; it might.'
He was silent again, struggling with the desperate hope that sprang up anew at the suggestion. It took him unawares. He had determined that Cynthia's manner that nightshould decide the future irrevocably for him. He would fight free of suspense, and suffer no paralysis of indecision. At last he smiled slightly, that smile of a radiance so rarely, softly bright that it fell like a benediction wherever it was bestowed.
'You want to soften things for me,' he said. 'In your goodness of heart, and because you knew her and me as children, and the love that I have had for her since, you do not wish that I should have to bear what is hard. I do find it hard, but I would rather it were a thousand times harder than that sorrow stepped into her path. I love her yet, and shall eternally, but it is and will be with "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control." Let us pray God that there is no mistake, and if she marry Danby it may be a happy marriage.'
Mrs. Hennifer could say no more. It was not expedient that any one but Mrs. Severn and herself should know that LuciusDanby was known to them until Cynthia herself knew. It was not likely that this knowledge was already hers. Mrs. Hennifer felt that if Mrs. Severn were trustworthy it was possible that this good wish of Tremenheere's would be fulfilled. She could scarcely yet reconcile herself to the idea of the match, since her conception of Cynthia's dignity was fastidious. She was convinced, too, that if the Admiral knew that his granddaughter's engagement was to a man who had been engaged to his agent's wife and jilted by her, Danby's proposal would be met with unceremonious and outraged denial.
Tremenheere was early at the station that night. The evenings were now short and the lamps were lit. He walked up and down the platform waiting, his gaze passing from the line whose distant curve was lost in the gloom, to the starlit sky that roofed it. He was a tall thin man, with a slight stoop from the shoulders. Out of doors he wore an Inverness cloak. His complexion was swarthy, his fine cut features were full of sensitive feeling. His head was scholarly, and he wore his slightly curly black hair rather long; his eyes were piercing, the raresmile was an illumination to his whole face. Every one on the platform knew him and his errand; and Wonston already knew also that Miss Marlowe was not going to marry him. The footman from the Hall, lounging in the booking-office, the coachman on his box, each had his knot of gossipers, eager to gather every morsel of the great news that had stirred Wonston to its depths.
And now the train was signalled. He heard the click of the semaphore as it dropped. A few moments more and a cloud of rosy smoke trailed above a dark speck on the line. The bell rang, there was a sudden bustle and wheeling about of trollies, and the train glided in. As it passed him, he saw Cynthia. The light in the carriage shone full upon her face and she was smiling. But she did not see him. He walked alongside of her and opened the door. In spite of endeavour and resolution, his face was aglow with feeling.
'Well, Cynthia!' he said.
Her glance lit upon him with surprise but without embarrassment. She looked delighted to see an old friend, nothing more. His heart sank. He knew then that in spite of himself he had still hoped. He believed all now. Her flying colour, her happy laugh, were not for him.
'You here, Anthony; how kind of you. All quite well at home, I hope?'
He gave her his hand and she jumped down. He hurried her outside. It seemed to him suddenly that he must be looking strange, unlike himself; at any rate every one was pressing forward to look at her. He put her into the carriage. She begged him to come too, they would go round by the Minster. But he preferred to walk. He stood silently with his arm on the door, listening to her account of the Kerrs, until the maid and luggage appeared. Then he leant forward and grasped her hand. He did not speak, he only looked at her—'Noword, no gesture of reproach!' And Cynthia, throwing herself back in the corner of the carriage, suddenly trembled into tears. They flowed for 'the days that were no more,' for the faithfulness that had not won love, for Anthony left alone. Many a path of joy is dewy with such tears; they make it exhale incense.
A little later the Admiral was standing on the hearth-rug in the drawing-room at Lafer, fidgeting alternately with his watch and his white stock. He had dressed more quickly than usual, and instead of lingering in Mrs. Marlowe's room until the gong sounded, had come down in hopes of Cynthia being late after her journey. He wanted a few words with Mrs. Hennifer, who had preserved her calmness during the meeting, while he had been excited and Mrs. Marlowe emotional. Indeed Mrs. Marlowe was going to dine upstairs, but she had charged the Admiral to have private speech with Mrs. Hennifer, and hear what she thought of Cynthy.
The moment she came in he turned to her eagerly. He had fixed his eye-glass, and his face was puckered into the petulant expression consequent upon all its lines converging towards the vacant one. His own scrutiny thus always baffled that of others.
But in this instance Mrs. Hennifer knew scrutiny was superfluous. She had come to a clear conclusion, and felt the Admiral would have to bend to the same. The time they had spent together over the tea-table before Cynthia went to dress had convinced her that the new influence in her life was an absorbing one. Surely it could not be a bad one. She would not believe that disaster was before gay and guileless Cynthia Marlowe. Therefore it was certain that unless any inconceivably serious obstacle stood in the way, they must all bend to her wishes. She was determined to be sanguine that all was well.
She smiled as she crossed the room andsat down opposite the Admiral. The uprightness of her spare figure, on whose shoulders the fringed Oriental silk shawl she always wore seemed to sit with odd easiness, exercised its usual controlling effect upon his fidgetiness. He dropped his eye-glass and allowed a twinkle to eclipse anxiety.
'And now for the benefit of your opinion, my good Mrs. Hennifer.'
'She looks very well and very happy, Admiral.'
'She does, uncommonly, preposterously so.'
'She is scarcely our Cynthia now, I fear. She is what she was at seventeen, with a look in her eyes, a general indefinable air, that proves there is more of her elsewhere. I may say as much to you.'
'Good,' said the Admiral. 'My own impression precisely. Still we must not be carried away by the sentiment of the thing.We must be practical. He may be a pirate, you know. We must have his credentials, know who and what he is. And I shall not allow him to write me yet. We'll try whether Cynthy will cool down; nothing like tactics—sh! here she is!'
They both turned. Cynthia had just opened the door.
She looked radiantly lovely. The vestiges of the years intervening between childhood and womanhood that had chiefly been seamed by struggles to attain emotions such as came readily to other girls, and which she felt should, by duty, if not inclination, come to her, had vanished. Mrs. Hennifer, who alone knew what those struggles had been, and had marvelled at the simple and innocent earnestness with which she had striven to be like other girls, and to accept love and marriage as a matter of course, was alone able to realise the change in her. Before Cynthia went abroad it had become her opinion thatshe would not marry. She was convinced that she was more under the influence of Anthony Tremenheere than she knew, and also that he had now no hopes of winning her. She had looked jaded and perplexed sometimes, as though she understood neither others nor herself, but her general expression had been one of calm, amounting almost to exaltation. Without assuming any habits of unusual goodness, her air, manner, and actions had expressed a spirituality which was subtly diffusive, and seemed to rarify the moral atmosphere round her. Had she been a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Hennifer thought she would have found her vocation in a convent; but for her love of home and passionate attachment to old associations and familiar faces, and her strong sense of hereditary obligations as heiress and landowner, she might have become the brightest and blithest member of a Sisterhood. The groove of routine, the method of loving ministry uncharged by the responsibility of personal fervour, theseseemed best adapted to her. Mrs. Hennifer ceased to imagine that any enthusiasm of feeling was in store for her. She would bless Lafer with her presence all her life, succeeding to the estates and dispensing hospitality and bounty to rich and poor; she would be happy in her loneliness, and in a certain dreaminess that would underlie all her practical energy and clear judgment; she would never feel the need of guidance and reliance on a stronger personality than her own; she would never long for a child, though loving all those with whom she came in contact; she would pass into ripe age and die. Much the same as this would be Anthony Tremenheere's lot; the two lives that might have been one, running apart, in parallel lines, held so by the forces of decorum and conventionality which Cynthia had forged, and then had vaguely and distrustfully chafed against as part of theperplexity of a life which was surely meant to be lucent to its depths.
And here she was a new creature, illumined by the stir of ardent emotions, yet shy in her sense of self-surrender and her hope of perfect joys.
She was wearing a dress of glistening tussore silk, and had delicate safrano roses at her throat and in her waist-band. Her golden hair, rolled back from her brow, was gathered in a loose knot low in her neck. Her face sparkled with animation, her large hazel eyes had lost none of their transparent sincerity. She had a habit of allowing her glance to travel round a room before it fell on the persons occupying it; thus recognition was with her illumination. As she came forward with a buoyant step the old-fashioned harmony of the room enhanced her charm. The white velvet carpet, the faded delicacy of century-old brocade, the soft wax-lights reflected on ormolu and crystal, atonce softened and heightened her loveliness.
And now she looked from the Admiral to Mrs. Hennifer with a smile of artlessly perfect confidence. When she reached them she clasped her hands over his arm as he leant against the mantelpiece and kissed him.
'If I did not know conspirators were not necessarily traitors, I should be afraid of thistête-à-tête,' she said.
He took hold of her hands and held her from him at arm's length, gazing at her long and tenderly.
'And so, Cynthy, you mean to have him in spite of us all?'
'Why in spite of you all? You are not going to be prejudiced against some one you do not know. Wait till you know him, grandpapa.'
'But how am I to know him?'
'You will ask him here, of course—at leastsurely you will?' she said, a look of alarm dawning in her eyes.
'But how can I ask him, as what?'
She blushed rosily.
'He will be writing to you. You want to know him, don't you—you and grandmamma, and you too?' she added, turning to Mrs. Hennifer.
'Cynthy, you are an innocent, a simpleton,' said the Admiral. 'Don't you see what a hocus-pocus you have made? I will ask no man here on the understanding that he may make love to you; no, by George! You haven't thought sufficient of yourself, you never did, and you never will. You have let this Danby make up to you as though you were an ordinary nobody, you've waived all ceremony. I may be old-fashioned in my notions, but he should have asked me before you, and to do that he'd have had to come to Lafer without an invitation, and that's what he'll have to do now. I'll make nopromises until he acts like a man, and then I'll take time to consider if he's a gentleman; yes, by George!'
As he spoke she flushed scarlet, half in shame, half fear; but now her face cleared in an instant, and she laughed, clasping her hands, then flinging them apart, as she had a habit of doing when excited.
'Darling grandpapa,' she said, 'don't you know the north wind always gives me the shivers, it blusters so?'
He pulled one of her little ears.
'Minx, disarming puss, syren!' he said.
The gong had sounded. He gave Mrs. Hennifer his arm, and Cynthia went before them, glancing back over her shoulder as she talked, and giving them glimpses of the eyes whose brightness was again shadowed by that indefinable haze of happy abstraction which had startled them all the moment they saw her. It was so new, so significant, that it told more than she was likely to do by words.
Mrs. Hennifer, on her own part, hoped for enlightening confidences. Cynthia, however, said nothing. The Admiral had a long talk with her, and found her proudly resolute on the main point, but reticent as to details. To her the matter was simple, possessing only such rudimentary elements as a child might invest its joys with. She believed, she trusted, she loved. Somehow, as the Admiral listened, his memory recurred to the old Lindley Murray parsing days at Mrs. Marlowe's knee. Of course he was all they could wish—well, what was he? Had he family, or fortune, or irreproachable moral character? She did not know. But she was sure he had not known she was an heiress. The Kerrs had told him nothing—in fact Theo had told her he had asked nothing; she was dressing in the most simple fashion; she had had no idea he had been attracted until he proposed; he was very quiet—and here she broke off, turning herhead aside to hide her blush, and murmuring something about 'contrasts, and she was such a chatterbox herself.'
The Admiral said little but that he did not wish to hear from Danby at once. He asked her not to receive letters or to write until he gave permission. She was amenable, but it rose from the docility of absolute confidence in another and knowledge of herself.
Then she returned to her old routine—driving with Mrs. Marlowe, riding with the Admiral, walking with her stag-hound. She had all her friends to see. Every one was curious to see her. She was so gay and bright that they scarcely believed her heart was not with them and their interests wholly, as of old. But she wore a ring, a cameo of a Greek head, which, though not significant of more than remembrance, was not a Marlowe heirloom. The Admiral noticed it, but did not venture to ask where she had bought it. And sometimes she would suddenly become silent, and hereyes dilated and became luminous with thought that hovered on the verge of happy dreams.
Once during a walk in Zante, when Danby joined them, she had been in so blithe a mood that at last she began to excuse herself. But he would not hear her.
'It is natural for a guileless heart to be gay; let love subdue it,' he said.
The words had delighted her in her ignorance; how much more now?
Danby returned to Jersey immediately after seeing Cynthia to London. She would not allow him to go to Lafer until she had smoothed the way with the Admiral; and being so far as yet unable to realise his happiness, that the moment she vanished he thought she must be a vision, he went back to the Kerrs as tangible proofs to the contrary.
He also wished to hear more about her. She had said nothing of her surroundings, and when he referred to Kerr on the one momentous point as her guardianpro tem.,he had been struck by something odd in his look; while Mrs. Kerr declared, with what sounded a hysterical sob, that she would never chaperon a young lady again. He was too much accustomed to the unaccountable in the moods of all sorts and conditions of men to attach much importance to an indirect impression. Still it was expedient to be practical and to prepare himself for unlooked-for conditions. Until he met her he was far indeed from any intention of marrying, and his means were such that the last thing that occurred to him was to speculate about hers. It had delighted her to find her heiress-ship was unsuspected.
In his inmost nature Danby had developed diplomacy. He knew it, and often told himself he had missed his vocation; he should have been either a Jesuit or an ambassador. It was the one moral slur which the keen old grief had branded on his soul. He mistrusted, and would never trust againexcept after the tests of a tactician who knew his ends so surely that he could afford to conceal them. Here his favourite author—Bacon—had fostered knowledge. He knew how 'to lay asleep opposition and to surprise,' how to 'reserve to himself a fair retreat,' and how to 'discover the mind of another.' On these principles he had for many years studied all men. In this spirit he had digested the Kerrs. Only with Cynthia they had failed him. He had thought that if he ever married it would be in this spirit; subtle analysis and synthesis should determine his choice. If judgment threatened desertion he would refortify himself by apparent withdrawal. Experience had not tended to make him fear defeat; he might have married before this had he met with more discouragement. But should such a paradox as discouragement invade his path he would use his arts, his subtleties, his perceptions, and, without flatteries, succeed.Flatteries he loathed. He loathed the women who would have them. His chief delight in the woman of the future was that she too would loathe them, indeed would probably not understand them.
But when he saw Cynthia his tactics failed him. She was simple, she was single-minded and transparent—such a woman as he had not conceived; in fact the paradox. He fell in love, but she did not perceive it. Do what he would to show her his feeling, she never did perceive it until he asked her to do so. Afterwards he reproached her a little for a blindness that might have eternally daunted him, but that had he not got speech with her he would have written.
'Oh, Lucius!' she said, 'I know whom I like; I don't think I could like any one who was not good, so I let myself like. But as for more, I never could until I were asked. Then I should know in a moment if I could.
He knew her so well now that he knewtoo this was true; she could not seek or even think herself sought.
In returning to Jersey he had, however, another object besides proximity to the Kerrs. He wanted to see the Pitons.
When he left India the previous year he intended to go there at once. Since receiving the note from Clothilde Hugo in which she broke off her engagement to him by the news that she had that day married another man, he had not named her or communicated with any one who could give him information about her. But to return to England and choose some place to settle in without knowing whether she were living and where she lived, was a thing he would not do. He could not analyse his own feelings on the matter, he did not consider it worth while to do so; it was resolution rather than reason that fixed in his mind the idea of seeing the Pitons. He chose to make it a point of principle to avoid all risk of seeing her again.
At first when he found the Kerrs were going there, it seemed that everything was arranging itself naturally for his convenience. He could call at Rocozanne in the incidental manner of an old acquaintance who found himself accidentally in the neighbourhood, and follow up his inquiries by naming his engagement. But his ignorance of the conventionalities surrounding a lady's position baffled him. He followed the Kerrs to Jersey, and finding himself in the same hotel, met Cynthia again at once and at once proposed. He was greatly surprised when she told him the next day that she was going home. He thought he had displeased her. But Mrs. Kerr approved so warmly, in fact was evidently so relieved, that he realised his mistake. He could only acquiesce and do as she wished. He was so absorbed in her that a previous possibility of Clothilde being settled in St. Helier's where he might at any moment meet her, which had occurred tohim while travelling after the Kerrs, never occurred to him again.
Ambrose Piton was sitting on the sea-wall at Rocozanne with his hat tilted over his eyes and his hands stuffed into his pockets when Douce, their old maid-servant, brought him Danby's visiting card. He glanced at it and whistled, then looked at Douce. He saw that she had recognised the visitor.
'Much changed, eh?' he asked.
'No, much the same, white and black, but his eyes very still.'
'By Jove, I wish he hadn't come. Well, show him out here.'
'No need for him to freeze me,' he thought, 'since he can't fly out under this odd turn of affairs. But the question is, does he know or does he want to know? If he wants to know, he'll soon know more than he wants. It's a beastly shame. I hate these scurvy tricks of Fate.'
He got up as Douce reappeared. Yes,he would have known Danby again anywhere. His was the physique which time affects little. Ambrose, though the younger man, was suddenly conscious of a tendency to corpulency and a rolling gait. He surveyed this trim cut-and-dry Anglo-Indian with apparent indifference, while Danby fixed his gaze in return and yet seemed to watch the glitter of the ripples in the sun in the bay beyond. Ambrose was nervous, but preferred to feel amused rather than impressed.
'We'll have chairs if you don't care for the wall,' he said. 'I prefer the wall. One can swing one's legs, an immense luxury of energy to an idle man.'
He did not think Danby would take to the wall, but he did. His surprise was, however, modified by his not throwing his legs over, but sitting sideways, balanced by one foot pressing the turf. Ambrose returned to his old position, reflecting upon himasmuch clipped in manner as quenched inexpression. He said a few nothings, while Danby looked from the house to the churchyard and thought how the fuchsias had grown and how many more graves there were.
Ambrose watched him from the shadow of his hat-brim. He detested palaver, and Danby could only be there to say something personal. He was not the man to make himself ridiculous by coming out from St. Helier's, after so many years, to talk of cows and cabbages, the pear crop, or even the last mail-boat disaster. But how in Heaven's name was he to lead up to Clothilde? He suspected that his knowledge of future complications was the greater, and it seemed hardly fair that Danby should have to finesse. Naturally he would resent his own tactics when unexpected disclosures should prove Ambrose's perception of them.
'I may be a clumsy fellow,' thought Ambrose, 'but here goes for honesty! I needn't look at him—in fact this glitter dazzles myeyes to that extent that shut them I must now and then unless I mean to go blind.'
He stretched out his hand to a pile of books, newspapers, and reviews on the wall beside him and drew a letter from the pages of theQuarterly. Danby's attention was attracted, and he followed his movements as he opened it and smoothed it on his knee.
'This is from my cousin Anna,' he said, clearing his voice and controlling his fever of nervousness. 'She often writes to us, having a warm partiality for old friends. It's rarely though that she has much more than home news to give from Lafer'—he felt rather than saw Danby's surprise as this name fell on his ears—'it's an out-of-the-world sort of place, and she only has her sister's children to talk about. But this morning—yes, I've just received it, she tells me of Miss Marlowe's engagement to you. She does not say "to you," and apparently hasn't the slightest recollection of the name, but she calls you byname and mentions you as being in Jersey, in fact——'
'But how—where is the connection? I don't understand this. Do you know Miss Marlowe?' said Danby, unable any longer to remain silent.
'I do,' said Ambrose. 'She was here the other day. She came to call upon us the day after she arrived in the Islands with her friends. She had told Anna she would, and my father was greatly pleased. She spoke then of wintering here. But it seems she is going home unexpectedly.'
'She is gone. I saw her to London and returned yesterday. But I hope to follow her soon and to see the Admiral. Still, Piton, I don't understand how you are all connected. Miss Hugo now, how does she know her intimately?'
'Oh, very intimately,' said Ambrose, feeling that he was on the sharp edge of a precipice. 'She seems to have made a friendof her. She barely named Mrs. Severn though; she——'
'And who is Mrs. Severn?' said Danby in a remarkably slow and dry voice as he faced him straight.
Ambrose knew that he knew who Mrs. Severn was, but that he was also determined to have the clear-cut truth uttered.
'She's my half-cousin, Clothilde, you know. She married to Lafer, Old Lafer. Her husband is the Admiral's agent,' he said. Under his breath he added a strong expletive.
He did not glance at Danby, but was fully conscious of the intense penetration with which his eyes were riveted on him.
They sat in silence, and Danby continued to look at him. But now it was unconsciously. He was for the time morally paralysed. He simply could not turn his head for the tension on his brain. Every word had struck home with sledge-hammer force; but to realise at once all they involved was impossible.
Ambrose again was apparently absorbed in the bay. He swung his legs and scanned the horizon for passing ships. A spy-glass lay beside him. He took it up and examined a schooner that was rounding Noirmont with all sails set and silver in the sunshine. Then he put it down, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, broke into a low whistle.
'Upon my soul, if I were a woman I'd be weeping,' he thought. He longed to turn sharply, clap Danby on the back and say, 'Cheer up, old man! It's a flabbergasting coincidence, would make a cynic swear; but by Jove you've been reserved for good luck in the end.'
However, he dare not. He knew intuitively that Danby looked an 'old man' at that moment, that his face was drawn and gray. Moreover, he never had been one with whom it was easy to jest. His actions had too clearly borne the stamp of earnestness; there had been an energy of life about him, expressedin few words but impressed on every circumstance in which Ambrose had seen him, that involuntarily expelled banter as profane. No! he had done his part. It was best to ignore his own perception of the dramatic.
He sat on, blinking at the dazzle of the twinkling ripples.
And at last Danby turned and looked at them too.
The afternoon was slipping by. Danby took out his watch, he had been an hour at Rocozanne, had lost the chance of catching one train, and unless he caught the next would misstable d'hôteat Bree's. But he wished to misstable d'hôte. It would suffice to be back in time for a few words with Kerr over their last cigars.
'Spend the evening with us,' said Ambrose, feeling inspired.
'Thanks,' said Danby.
They sat on until tea was announced. Mr. Piton, a cheery, gnome-like little oldman, though acquainted with the whole complication of Danby's affairs, ignored every interest that did not bear on Indian statistics. Over these he developed an insatiable curiosity. Ambrose, listening in amused laziness, realised for once that impersonality only is needed to divert tropical heat from the emotional to the matter-of-fact. He now felt himself cool though broiling in the Indian sun with Danby in a linen suit and puggaree. Danby was equal to the occasion. He could dismiss personal feeling. He had had all his life a passion for accuracy, which circumstances had fostered by sending him out to our great Oriental Empire, where different races and religions swarm. He had set himself to master its antagonistic facts. Work there gradually gave him wealth, position, and after a few years a tone of level self-satisfaction, not, strictly speaking, to be called happiness, yet not far from that. He was grateful, and left with a mind encyclopediacally stored with details of its internal fibre. Nothingthus could have soothed him better than this talk with Mr. Piton. It carried him back to old absorbing interests, and eased the tension on a capacity for emotion whose slumber he had, until this afternoon, mistaken for death.
It was late when he got back to St. Helier's, but as he crossed the street to Bree's he recognised Kerr standing in the portico. He reached him just as he threw away his cigar-end. Kerr was looking down, but when he uttered his name he glanced up quickly. Afterwards he told his wife that there was alivingtone in his voice that had convinced him he was not, after all, a mummy.
'I want a word with you,' Danby said with a strange new eagerness that became in him almost inarticulation. 'It's a preposterous question to ask, but I really am in the dark—who is Miss Marlowe?'
Kerr stared at him, not understanding. His loathing for what he thought the jugglery of the question expressed itself in his face. Danby saw it. For a moment a dangerous gleam of anger scintillated in his eyes—but after all was it not the way of the world to judge by the evil construction rather than the good? There was also an element of absurdity in the question as sincere. He had been so keenly conscious of this as to guard his ignorance from Ambrose Piton.
'I do not take Miss Marlowe for an impostor,' he said, smiling. 'I know she is herself, but who are her people? I have concluded she was one of a family, had probably sisters, elder sisters. As it happens, we have not entered upon questions of relations yet beyond her grandfather. Excuse me, but I am obliged to inquire—are they above the average in any way—socially, I mean? Is there anything particular in her circumstances?'
'She is an heiress,' said Kerr. 'The Marlowes are county people with fine estates in Yorkshire and Dumfries. Her father was an only child, she is the same, and there is no entail.'
He reflected a moment upon the electrified expression in Danby's face, and seeing it ebb to an involuntary shade of distaste he threw reserve to the winds.
'Come out,' he said. 'It's easier to talk walking, and it's necessary that we should prove ourselves two sensible beings.'
He put his arm through Danby's, and they went down the steps again on to the pavement. They walked the length of the street in silence. Then as they turned and slackened their pace, he loosened his hold and laughed.
'I'd a strong wish to run for Theo,' he said; 'but I also wished to resist it. That's why I took forcible possession. She might have thought you a humbug; I don't. Butlook here, my good fellow, you've not got to look like that. You must remember you chose to keep yourself in the dark. I would have answered any question at any moment, but as you asked none, I concluded you knew what you were about through other sources—herself, perhaps. Besides which neither Theo nor I knew anything about it. We were completely taken by surprise. Theo, you see, I'm not sure you know, found letters at Athens with the sad news of her only sister's widowhood, and I fear she did not think sufficiently about Cynthia for some time after. Cynthia was in our care. If I'd known what you were about, I'd have made matters square by advising you to address Admiral Marlowe; but until the other day when we ran up against you here, Cynthia and I, you remember, as we were starting for Elizabeth Castle, I had not the faintest suspicion of your intentions. Cynthia, of course, said nothing; and, considering your attachment,you obtruded yourself very little. Cynthia has had many offers of marriage. I believe she has had a horror of being married for her money; the fact of your ignorance will delight her—has done in fact, for she named it to Theo. But it's been a blow to my wife, Danby; and, human-like, she's not ready just now to think the best of you. Her brother has been attached to Cynthia for many years, and so long as she was attached to no one else he would not have ceased to hope to win her. You must know that there's that in Cynthia which inspires a very deep, and more, a very pure passion.'
Danby nodded, and stopping, lit a cigarette with fingers that slightly trembled. The flicker of the match threw an instant's light on his face and showed it as deathly pale. Kerr's good opinion of him was momentarily rising.
'There's a fund of womanly self-respect in her which is not in these daysthedistinguishing characteristic of the sex,' said Kerr, asthey went slowly on again. 'She has wished to marry and be married for love; the latter rather a difficulty in her case. You have done it, Danby. There's nothing for it now but to pocket your pride. You'll have to pocket the Marlowe rent-roll, perhaps to become Danby-Marlowe, if the Admiral cuts up rough and dictatorial. He's been accustomed to a man-of-war and uncompromising discipline, you know. But if any one can keep things smooth, Cynthia can. Be patient and subservient, it'll be a wise discretion. And one thing is certain——' he stopped abruptly.
'What is that?' said Danby, and was astonished to find that his voice was scarcely audible.
Kerr laughed.
'I've no business to dissect her feelings,' he said. 'But she's a woman one must think about somehow, not merely bow to and pass.I daresay you felt it from the first. It's the same with every one. We went out the other day to St. Brelade's; don't know whether you know it, pretty place! She wanted to see some people, relatives of their agent's, I believe; one of them was a very canny old man. He just felt the same about her and expressed it to Theo; one watches her.'
'Yes?'
'Well, I've watched her. I saw how it was. I told Theo, but she wouldn't see it. The fact is, Danby, you are her choice; she has deliberately chosen you. Don't you see it all?' he laughed again, awkwardly.
Danby felt himself to be dense. He could not be sure that he did. Kerr grasped his arm again.
'Upon my word I feel quite sentimental,' he said. 'But one wants her to be happy. She's the sort of creature to whom one would say "All happiness attend you!" yes, by divine right too. The fact is she cares foryou tremendously. It would break her heart if things went wrong. Just you fall in with the Admiral's exactions for her sake. Don't be a fool.'
They had reached the portico of Bree's again. Both threw away their cigarette-ends, avoiding looking at each other. They went within, Kerr in advance. Others were in the hall. Peter, the head waiter, was flourishing a serviette, and imparting voluble information regarding the regulations of the hotel to a lady who always travelled with 'darling creatures' in the shape of two dachshund dogs, who always had the air of not knowing what was expected of them. Danby walked past them all, abstractedly. Then suddenly he turned, and going back to where Kerr was hanging up his hat, took his hand. 'I swear I will,' he said.
Kerr went off to bed, pondering deeply. He told Theo all, and was vexed by her unresponsiveness to his new-born enthusiasm.She still chose to consider Danby self-interested. Kerr swore he was not. He asked himself why and how—with that force of emotion that he had seen in his eyes, lurking under the ice of his manner; that absence of self-seeking, where measured tones had seemed to narrow his opinions within the circle of his own being—Danby had waited so long to love? That he did love now he had no longer a doubt.
'He worships her just as Tony does,' he thought. 'He's not veneered, it's high-mindedness. By Jove, what a look he had, deathly white. He's wrapped up in her. Well, well, it's another case of the old old story at its best.'
And he had feared that Cynthia was making a mistake! Faith had failed him with both.