CHAPTER III.
"A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE."
The hunting was nearly over by the time Allan Carew had established himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud. The selection of half a dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or twice a week; and he had revelled in the convenience of express trains between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty train service between Fendyke and Cambridge, which made a journey from his native village a trial of youthful patience.
London was full of pleasant people at this after-Easter season, so Allan took his time at Tattersall's, saw his friends, dined them, or dined with them, at those clubs which young men most affect, went to his favourite theatres, rode in the Park, and saw a race or two at Sandown, all in the process of buying his horses; but at last the stud was complete, and his stud-groom, a man he had brought from Suffolk, the man who taught him to ride, had shaken a wise head, and told his young master to stop buying.
"You've got just as many as you can use, Mr. Allan," he said, "and if you buy another one, it 'ud mean another b'y, and we shall have b'ys enough for me to keep in order as it is."
So Allan held his hand. "And now I am a country gentleman," he said, "and I must go and live on my acres."
Everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him. He was under none of the disadvantages of the new man about whom people have to ask each other, "Who is he?" He came to Matcham with the best possible credentials. His father was a man of old family, against whose name no evil thing had ever been written. His mother was an earl's daughter; and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory was respected in the neighbourhood—a man of easy temper and open hand, a kind master, and a staunch friend.
Allan found his hall-table covered with cards when he returned from his London holiday, and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning the calls that had been made for the most part in his absence. To a shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land would have been terrible—invading unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and seeing strange faces, wondering which of two matrons was his hostess and which the friend or sister-in-law—an ordeal as awful as any mediæval torture; but Allan was not shy, and he accepted the situation with a winning ease which pleased everybody. When he blundered—and his blunders were rare—he laughed at his mistake, and turned it into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes of small-talk. He had a quick eye, and in a room full of people saw at a glance the welcoming smile and extended hand which marked his hostess. "Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood," said everybody; and the mothers of marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennett was to cultivate the irreproachable Bingley.
In the course of that round of visits Allan contrived to find out a good deal about the neighbourhood which was henceforward to be his home.
He discovered that it was, above all, a hunting neighbourhood; but that it was also a shooting neighbourhood; and that there was bad blood between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted to hunt foxes. From the point of view of the rights of property, the shooters would appear to be in their right, since they only wanted to feed and foster birds on their own land; while the hunting-man—were he but the season-ticket-holding solicitor from Bloomsbury—wanted to hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man, and to spoil that other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him, the season-ticket holder, at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he affected. But, on the other hand, hunting is a strictly national sport, and shooting is a selfish, hole-and-corner kind of pleasure; so the hunting men claimed immemorial rights and privileges as against the owners of woods and copses, and the hatchers of pheasants.
Allan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at Matcham. The neighbourhood had taken lately to golf, and that game had found favour with old and young of both sexes. Everybody could not hunt, but everybody could play golf, or fancy that he or she was playing golf, or, at least, look on from a respectful distance while golf was being played. The golf-links on Matcham Common had therefore become the most popular institution in the neighbourhood, and the scarlet coat of the golfer was oftener seen than the fox-hunter in pink, and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Matcham contest for the bangles and photograph-frames which the golf club offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye.
Allan, who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical exercise, was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club, and speedily became a familiar figure on the links. Here, as elsewhere, he met people who told him he was like Geoffrey Wornock, and who praised Wornock's skill at golf just as other people had praised his riding or his shooting.
"He seems to be something of a Crichton, this Wornock of yours," Allan said sometimes, with a suspicion of annoyance.
He was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never seen—weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence; weary of being told that the resemblance was in expression rather than in actual feature; that there was an indefinable something in his face which recalled Wornock in an absolutely startling manner; while the details of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Wornock's face.
"Yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness," said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove, a personage in the neighbourhood, and the cleverest woman among Allan's new acquaintances. "It is the individuality, the life and movement of the face, that are the same. The likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and colour."
There was a curious feeling in Allan's mind by the time this kind of thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly everybody he knew in Matcham—a feeling which was partly irritation, partly interest in the man whose outward likeness to himself might be allied with some identity of mind and inclinations.
"I wonder whether I shall like him very much, or hate him very much," he said to Mrs. Mornington. "I feel sure I must do one or the other."
"You are sure to like him. He is not the kind of man for anybody to hate," answered the lady quickly; and then, growing suddenly thoughtful, she added, "You may find a something wanting in his character, perhaps; but you cannot dislike him. He is thoroughly likeable."
"What is the something wanting which you have found?"
"I did not say I had found——"
"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak spot if you had not found it yourself!"
"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs. Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which doctors—speaking of a patient's physical condition—call want of tone. There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this neighbourhood. I like him—I am sorry for him."
"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"
"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his mother is, I fear, a poor creature."
"Eccentric, I understand."
"Lamentably so—a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position to which she has been elevated."
"WhowasMrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have heard hints——"
"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring in Bohemia—a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife, but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married in Germany—at Dresden, I believe—and who looked much more like dying within the next five years than he did."
"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"
"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were rumours of an alarming kind about her health—her mental health. Our own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about her. 'Was it serious?' people asked—for I suppose you know that in a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen at a particular house very often, peoplewillask questions of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that. Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip. By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives, and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our men-folk."
"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"
"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the future owner of Discombe to be born in—Grindelwald—at the sign of the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to the house in which he ought to have been born—a poor little fragile Frenchified object, hanging on to a Frenchbonne, and speaking nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"
Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she were describing the events of yesterday.
"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.
"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He was very active and intelligent—hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible, matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing—what can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as those?—a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses? I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing to go. What can one do with such a woman?"
"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"
"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."
"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.
"She is interesting—only she won't let one be interested in her."
"Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?"
"Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the fields—Filbury parish church—nearly six miles from Discombe, or she drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe."
"I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan.
"Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint, remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra would have been interesting at forty-five."
"I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am interested."
"Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you."
"Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"
"Ah, but he is not your double! The village mind is given to exaggeration. He has not your firm chin, nor your thoughtful brow. His face is a reminiscence of yours. It is weaker in every characteristic, in every line. You are the substance, he the reflection."
"Now, you are laughing at my egotism, and developing my vanity."
"No, believe me, no!" protested Mrs. Mornington, gaily. "I see you both with all your defects and qualities. You have the stronger character, but you have not Geoffrey's fascinating personality. His very faults are attractive. He is by no means effeminate; yet there is a something womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him. He has inherited his mother's sensitive, dreamy temperament. I feel sure he would see a ghost if there were one in his neighbourhood. The ghost would go to him instinctively, as dogs go unbidden to certain people—sometimes to people who don't care about them; while the genuine dog-lover may be doing his best to attract bow-wow's attention, and failing ignominiously."
"Every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like this, where everybody is sensible and commonplace and conventional, excepting always your brilliant self"—Mrs. Mornington nodded, and put her feet on the fender—"it is so delightful to meet some one who does not move just on the common lines, and is not worked by the common machinery."
"You will find nothing common about Geoffrey," said the lady. "I have known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit, and he was just as enigmatical to me the day he left for Bombay as he was on his seventh birthday. I know that he has winning manners, and that I am very fond of him; and that is all I know about him."
Allan drove to Filbury on the following Sunday, and was in his place in the little old parish church ten minutes before the service began. The high oak pews were not favourable to his getting a good view of the congregation, since, when seated, the top of his head was only on a level with the top of his pew; but by leaving the door of the pew ajar he contrived to see Mrs. Wornock as she went up the narrow aisle—nave there was none, the pews forming a solid square in the centre of the church. Yes, he was assured that slim, graceful figure in a plain grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Wornock and no other. Indeed, the inference was easily arrived at, for the rest of the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant-farmer and agricultural-labourer class—the women-folk homely and ruddy-cheeked, the men ponderous, and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes.
The lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading-desk—the old three-decker arrangement, for clerk, parson, and preacher. Mr. Wornock was patron of the living of Filbury and Discombe, and this large, square pew had belonged to the Wornocks ever since the rebuilding of the church in Charles the Second's reign, a year or two after the manor-house was built, when the estate, which had hitherto been an outlying possession of the Wornocks, became their place of residence, and most important property.
Allan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body of the church—a delicate profile, worn as if with long years of thoughtfulness; a sweet, sad face that had lost all freshness of colouring, but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought and solitude, where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the mind. A pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face, Allan thought, when the lady turned towards the organ during theTe Deum, listening to the village voices, which sang truer than village voices generally do.
Allan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about nothing particular, on a text in Nehemiah, which suggested not the faintest bearing on the Christian life—a sermon preached by an elderly gentleman in a black silk gown, whose eloquence would have been more impressive had his false teeth been a better fit. After the sermon there was a hymn, and the old-fashioned plate was carried round by a blacksmith, whom Allan recognized as a man who had fastened his hunter's shoe one day at a forge on the outskirts of Filbury, in the midst of a run; and then the little congregation quietly dispersed, after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the lych-gate.
Allan's gig was waiting for him near the gate, and a victoria, on which he recognized the Wornock crest—a dolphin crowned—stood in the shade of a row of limes, which marked the boundary of the Vicarage garden. Allan waited a little, expecting to see Mrs. Wornock come out; and then, as she did not appear, he re-entered the churchyard, and strayed among moss-mantled tomb-stones, reading the village names, the village histories of birth and death, musing, as he read, upon the long eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives.
The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were more bloom than bush—all these made life to-day a sensuous delight which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as to the bliss of living. If it were always thus—a crust of bread and cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle undulations between Filbury and Discombe.
What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near the pulpit.
Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the still air—a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs. Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still youthful form to pass.
In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow. Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line—
"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."
That expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as she looked at him; changed to astonishment, interrogation, which gradually softened to a grave curiosity, an anxious scrutiny. Then, as if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners, the heavy eyelids sank, a faint blush coloured the thin cheeks, and she hurried onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her.
Her footman, in a sober brown livery, was holding the gate open for her. Her horses were shaking their bridles. She stepped lightly into the victoria, nodded an adieu to the schoolboy who had blown the organ bellows, and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane.
"So that is my double's mother. An interesting face, a graceful figure, and a lady to the tips of her fingers. Whether she is county, or not county, Geoffrey Wornock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother. Nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman."
He brooded on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs. Wornock's face as she looked at him. Clearly she, too, had seen the likeness which he bore to her son.
"I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far away," speculated Allan, "or whether she feels kindly towards me for the sake of that absent son?"
This question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own hand. Among the letters on Allan's breakfast-table on Wednesday morning there was one in a strange penmanship, which took his breath away, for on the envelope, in bold brown letters, appeared the address, Discombe Manor.
He thrust all his other letters aside—those uninteresting letters which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him—the whole race of spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:—
"DEAR SIR,"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can, if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me of my nearest and dearest."I am generally at home in the afternoon."Very truly yours,"E. WORNOCK."
"DEAR SIR,
"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can, if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me of my nearest and dearest.
"I am generally at home in the afternoon.
"Very truly yours,"E. WORNOCK."
"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents? Eliza, perhaps—and she sinks it, thinking it common and housemaidish—forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name, does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen—a milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my mother's name—graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish—and I want to see what Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."
The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.
The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park. The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled roof, and level rows of windows—those of the upper story were the original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows, of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk, beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the verdant monotony.
If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches, sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings flourish at somebody else's expense.
Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of the building—he noted them, but lost count of their number—keepers' lodges in the woodland which skirted the park—gardeners' or dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house; cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges, and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which impressed the stranger.
That sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Wornock's had slain the viper envy in Allan's breast. When first he rode through those woods and over those undulating pastures and by those gables embowered in roses and wisteria, or starred with the pale blue clematis, he had felt a certain sour discontent with his own good fortune, about which people, from his mother down to the acquaintance of yesterday, prattled and prosed so officiously. He was sick of hearing himself called a lucky fellow. Luck, forsooth! what was his luck compared with Geoffrey Wornock's? That a bachelor uncle of his, having scraped together a modest little fortune, and not being able to carry it with him to the nether-world, should have passed it on to him, Allan, was not such a strange event as to warrant the running commentary of congratulation that had assailed his ear ever since he came to Matcham. No one congratulated Geoffrey Wornock. Nobody talked ofhisgood luck. He had been born in the purple, and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right to the best things that this earth can give—to a Carolian mansion, and chase and park, and wide-spreading farms. There seemed to Allan Carew's self-consciousness an implied disparagement of himself in the tone which Matcham people took about Geoffrey Wornock. They in a manner congratulated him on his likeness to the Lord of Discombe Manor, and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this resemblance to the local magnate.
To-day, however, Allan forgot all those infinitesimal vexations which in the beginning of his residence at Matcham had made the name of Wornock odious to him. His thoughts were full of that pale sad face, the wasted cheeks, the heavy eyelids, the somewhat sickly transparency of complexion, the large violet eyes, which lit up the whole face as with a light that is not of this world. It was the most spiritual countenance he had ever seen—the first face which had ever suggested to him the epithet ethereal.
He remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Wornock; her encouragement of spirit-rapping people and thought-reading people, and every phase of modern super-naturalism; her passion for music—a passion so absorbing as almost to pass the border-line of sanity; at least in the opinion of the commonplace sane. He wondered no longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting, and shooting, and dinner-giving, and tea-drinking population scattered within a radius of eight or ten miles of Discombe; the people with whom, had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural lady, she should have been on intimate terms. She was among them, but not of them, Allan told himself.
"Surely I am not in love with a woman old enough to be my mother!" he thought, between jest and earnest, as he drove up to the house. "I have not thought so persistently of any woman since I was sick for love of the dean's pretty daughter, fairest and last of my calf-loves."
He was not wholly in jest, for during the last three days the lady's image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on "possession." It was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him, and as if he must needs wait until the enchantress who held him in her mystic bands should unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty.
The hall door stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun. A large black poodle, with an air of ineffable wisdom, was stretched near the threshold; a liver-and-white St. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk upon the grass in front of the steps; and on the broad terrace to the right of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendour of his tail, and strutted in stately slowness towards the sun.
"House and garden belong to fairyland," thought Allan. "The enchantress has but to wave her wand and fix the picture for a century. We may have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence, and Mrs. Wornock's age may count as girlhood, when some gay young prince of fifty-five shall ride through the tangled woodland to awaken the sleeper. Who can tell? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.'"