CHAPTER VIII.
NOT YET.
Allan was dashed by Suzette's refusal to accept him on any other footing than that of friendship, and he was angry with himself for having spoken too soon. The only comfort left him was her willingness to consider him still her friend; but this was cold comfort, and in some wise more disheartening than if she had been more angry. Yet in his musings he could but think that she liked him better than a mere average acquaintance; while now and then there stole across his mind the flattering hope that she liked him better than she herself knew. He recalled all those happy hours they had spent together, with only Mrs. Wornock to make a third, Mrs. Wornock who so often crept away to her beloved organ and left them free to loiter in the gardens, or to sit in one of the deeply recessed windows, talking in whispers, while the music filled the room, or to stray far off in the stately pleasaunce, where their light laughter could not disturb the player.
They had talked together often enough and long enough to have explored each other's minds and imaginations, and they had found that about all great things they thought alike; while their differences of opinion about the trifles of life gave them subjects for mirthful argument, occasions for disagreeing only to end in agreement.
Suzette complained that Allan's university training made all argument unfair. How could she—an illogical, prejudiced woman, maintain her ground against a master of dialectics?
In all their companionship he could remember no moments of ennui, no indication upon the young lady's part that she could have been happier elsewhere than in his company. This was at least encouraging. The dual solitude seemed to have been as pleasant to her as it was to him. She had confided in him in the frankest fashion. She had told him story after story of her convent life; of her friends and chosen companions. She had talked to him as a girl might talk to a cousin whom she liked and trusted; and how often does such liking ripen into love; an attachment truer and more lasting than that hot-headed love at first sight, born of the pleasure of the eye, and taking shallowest root in the mind. Allan's musings ended in a determination to cultivate the friendship which had not been withheld from him, and to trust to time for the growth of love.
He was anxious to see Suzette as soon as possible after that premature avowal which had stirred the calm current of their companionship, lest she should have time to ponder upon his conduct, and to feel embarrassed at their next meeting. She had told him that she was going to the golf-links before breakfast on the following morning; so at eight o'clock Allan made his appearance on the long stretch of rather rough common-land which bordered the Salisbury road half a mile from Beechhurst, and which was distinguished from other waste places by the little red flags of the golf club.
She was there, as fresh as the morning, in her blue-serge frock and sailor hat, attended by a small boy, and with the vicar's youngest daughter for her companion.
She blushed as they shook hands—blushed, and then distinctly laughed; and the laugh, frank as it sounded, was the laugh of a triumphant coquette, for she was thinking of her aunt's indignation yesterday afternoon, and thinking how little it mattered her refusing a man who was so absolutely her slave. Propose to her again, forsooth? Why, of course he would propose to her again, and again, and again, as that foolish young subaltern had done at Simla. Were all men as foolish, Suzette wondered; and had all young women as much liberty of choice?
She glanced involuntarily at the Vicar's youngest daughter, regarded by her family as the flower of the flock, but of a very humble degree in the floral world. A fresh-coloured, pudding-faced girl, with small eyes and a pug nose, but with a tall, well-developed figure of the order that is usually described as "fine."
The golf went on in a desultory way, Allan strolling after the players, and venturing a remark now and then, as suggested by a single summer's experience at St. Andrews. When the two girls had been round the course, and it was time to hasten home to their respective breakfast-tables, he accompanied them on their way, and after having left Miss Bessie Edgefield at the Vicarage gate he had Suzette all to himself for something under a quarter of a mile. They met Mrs. Mornington a little way from Marsh House, sallying out for her morning conference with butcher and fishmonger, the business of providing Mr. Mornington's dinner being too important to be left to the hazards of cook and shopkeeper. It was necessary that Mrs. Mornington's own infallible eye should survey saddle or sirloin, and measure the thickness of turbot or sole.
She greeted the two young people with jovial heartiness, and rejoiced beyond measure at seeing them together. After all, perhaps Suzette had done well in refusing the first offer. The poor young man was evidently her slave.
"Or if Geoffrey should fall desperately in love with her," mused Mrs. Mornington, on her way to the village street, not quite heroic enough to put the owner of Discombe Manor altogether out of her calculations; "but, no, I shouldn't care about that. It would be too risky."
That which Mrs. Mornington would not care about was the mental tendency that Geoffrey might inherit from his mother, whom the strong-minded, clear-headed lady regarded as a visionary, if not a harmless lunatic. No! Geoffrey was clever, interesting, fascinating even; but he was not to be compared with Allan, whose calm common sense had won Mrs. Mornington's warmest liking.
After that morning on the links, and the friendly homeward walk, Allan felt more hopeful about Suzette; but he was not the less bent upon bringing to bear every influence which might help him to win her for his own, before any other suitor should come forward to dispute the prize with him. Happily for him, there were few eligible young men in the neighbourhood, and those few thought more of horses and guns than of girlhood and beauty.
Lady Emily had promised her son a visit in the autumn. Allan hoped that his father would accompany her. He wanted to bring Suzette into the narrow circle of his home life, to bring her nearer to himself by her liking for his mother and father. With this intent he urged on the promised visit, delighted at the thought that his mother's presence would enable him to receive Suzette as a guest in the house where he hoped she would some day be mistress.
He wrote to his father, reminding him of his assurance that he would not always remain a stranger to his son's home, and this letter of his, which dwelt earnestly upon certain unexplained reasons why he was especially anxious for his father's early presence at Beechhurst, was not without effect. The recluse consented to leave his library, which perhaps was no greater sacrifice on his part than Lady Emily made in leaving her farm. Indeed, one of the inducements which Allan held out to his mother was the promise of a pair of white peacocks from Mrs. Wornock, finer and whiter than the birds at Fendyke.
Mr. Carew professed himself pleased with his son's surroundings.
"Your house is like the good man who bequeathed it to you," he said, after his tour of inspection; "essentially comfortable, solid, and commonplace. The admiral had a grand solidity of character; but even your mother will not deny that he was commonplace."
Lady Emily nodded a cheery assent. She always agreed with her husband on all points that did not touch the white farm. There her opinions were paramount; and she would not have submitted to dictation in so much as the ears of a rabbit.
"I could hardly forgive my brother for buying such a house if he hadn't——-"
"Left it to your son," interrupted her husband.
"No, George, that is not what I was going to say. I could not forgive his Philistine taste if he had not brought home all those delicious things from China, and built the Mandarin's room. That is the redeeming feature which makes the house worth having."
"Every one admits that it is a fine room," said Allan. "There is no such room in the neighbourhood, except at Discombe."
"Your father must see Discombe, Allan. We must introduce him to Mrs. Wornock."
"I think not, mother. He would be insufferably bored by a woman who believes in spirit-rapping, sees visions, and plays the organ for hours at a stretch."
His father looked at him intently.
"Who is this person?" he asked quickly.
"A rich widow, whose son is lord of the manor of Discombe, one of the most important places between here and Salisbury."
"And she believes in spiritualism. Curious in a lady living in the country. I thought that kind of thing had died out with Home, and the famous article in theCornhill Magazine."
"We have had later prophets. Eglinton, for instance, with his materializations and his slate-writing. I don't think the spiritualistic idea is dead yet, in spite of the ridicule which the outside herd has cast upon it."
"I hope the widow lady is not beguiling you into sharing her delusions, Allan."
The son had seen a look in the father's face which spoke to him as plainly as any spoken words. That look had told him that his description of Mrs. Wornock conjured up some thrilling image in his father's mind. He saw that startled wondering look come and go, slowly fading out of the pensive face, as the mind dismissed the thought which Allan's words had awakened. Surely it was not a guilty look which had troubled his father's mild countenance—rather a look of awakened interest, of eager questioning.
"I should hate to see Allan taking up any nonsense of that kind," said Lady Emily, with her practical air; "but really, if this Mrs. Wornock were not twenty years older than he, I should suspect him of being in love with her. She is a pretty, delicate-looking woman, with a shy, girlish manner, and looks ridiculously young to be the mother of a grown-up son."
"Oh, she has a grown-up son, has she?" asked Mr. Carew. "She belongs to this part of the country, I suppose, and is a woman of good family?"
He looked at his son; but, for some reason of his own, Allan parried the question.
"I know hardly anything about her, except that she is a very fine musician, and that she has been particularly kind to me," he said.
"There, George," cried Lady Emily. "Didn't I tell you so? The foolish boy is half in love with her!"
"You will not say that after to-morrow, mother."
"Shall I not? But why?"
"You will lose all interest in to-morrow, if I tell you. Go on wondering, mother dear, till to-morrow, and to-morrow I will tell you a secret; but, remember, it is not to be talked about to any one in Matcham."
"Should I talk of a secret, Allan?"
"I don't know. I have an idea that secrets are the staple of tea-table talk in a village."
"Poor village! for how much it has to bear the blame; and yet people are worse gossips in Mayfair and Belgravia."
"Only because they have more to talk about."
Allan had arranged a luncheon-party for the following day. His courage had failed at the idea of a dinner: the lengthy ceremonial, the fear of failure if he demanded too much of his cook, the long blank space after dinner, with its possibility of ennui. Luncheon was a friendlier meal, and would less heavily tax the resources of a bachelor's establishment; and then there was the chance of being able to wander about the garden with Suzette in the afternoon, the hope of keeping her and her father till teatime, when the other people had gone home; though people do not disperse so speedily after a country luncheon as in town, and it might be that everybody would stop to tea. No matter, if he could steal away with Suzette to look at the single dahlias, in the west garden, fenced off from the lawn by a high laurel hedge, leaving Lady Emily and Mrs. Mornington to entertain his guests.
He had asked Mr. and Mrs. Mornington, General Vincent and his daughter, Mr. Edgefield, the Vicar, and his daughter Bessie (Suzette's antagonist at golf), Mr. and Mrs. Roebuck, a youngish couple, who prided themselves on being essentially of the great world, towny, cosmopolitan, anything but rustic, and who insisted on talking exclusively of London and the Riviera to people who rarely left their native gardens and paddocks. Mr. Roebuck had been officiously civil to Allan, and he had felt constrained to invite him. The invitation was on Mrs. Mornington's principle of payment for value received.
Allan had invited Mrs. Wornock; he had even pressed her to be of the party, but she had refused.
"I don't care for society," she said. "I am out of my element among smart people."
"There will be very little smartness—only the Roebucks, and one may say of them as Beatrice said of Benedick, 'It is a wondertheywill still be talking, for nobody mindsthem.' Seriously now, Mrs. Wornock, I should like you to meet my father."
"You are very kind, but you must excuse me. Don't think me rude or ungrateful."
"Ungrateful! Why, it is I who ask a favour."
"But I am grateful for your kindness in wishing to have me at your house. I will go there some day with Suzette, when you are quite alone, and you shall show me the Mandarin-room."
"That is too good of you. Mind, I shall exact the performance of that promise. You are very fond of Suzette, I think, Mrs. Wornock?"
"Yes, I am very fond of her. She is the only girl with whom I have ever felt in sympathy; just as you are the only young man, except my son, for whom I have ever cared."
"You link us together in your thoughts."
"I do, Allan," she answered gravely, "and I hoped to see you linked by-and-by in a lifelong union."
"That is my own fondest hope," he said. "How did you discover my secret?"
"Your secret! My dear Allan, I have known that you were in love with Suzette almost from the first time I saw you together—yes, even that afternoon at the Grove."
"You were very sympathetic, very quick to read my thoughts. I own that I admired her immensely even at that early stage of our acquaintance."
"And admiration soon grew into love. It has been such happiness for me to watch the growth of that love—to see you two young creatures so trustful and so happy together, walking about that old garden yonder, which has seen so little of youth or of happiness. I felt almost as a mother might have felt watching the happiness of her son. Indeed, Allan, you have become to me almost as a second son."
"And you are becoming to me almost as a second mother," he said, bending down to kiss the slim white hand which lay languidly upon her open book.
Never till to-day had she called him Allan, never before had she spoken to him so freely of her regard for him.
"Allan," she repeated softly. "You don't mind my calling you by your Christian name?"
"Mind! I am flattered that you should so honour me."
"Allan," she repeated again, musingly, "why were you not called George, after your father?"
"Because Allan is an old family name on my mother's side of the house. Her father and grandfather and elder brother were Allans."
He left her almost immediately, taking leave of her briefly, with a sudden revulsion of feeling. That question of hers, and the mention of his father's name, chilled and angered him, in the very moment when his heart had been moved by her sympathy and affection.
There was something in the familiar mention of his father's name that re-awakened those suspicions which he had never altogether banished from his mind. It was perhaps on this account that he had spoken slightingly of Mrs. Wornock when Lady Emily suggested that he should make her known to his father. That question about the name had seemed to him a fresh link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.
Suzette and her father were the first arrivals at Allan's luncheon-party. The General was a martinet in the matter of punctuality; and having taken what he called hischota haz'riat half-past six that morning, was by no means inclined to feel indulgently disposed towards dilatory arrivals, who should keep him waiting for his tiffin; nor could he be made to understand that a quarter to two always meant two o'clock. The Morningtons appeared at five minutes before two, the Vicar and his daughter as the clock struck the hour; and then there followed a quarter of an hour of obvious waiting, during which Allan showed Suzette the Chinese enamels and ivories, and the arsenal of deadly swords and daggers displayed against the wall of the Mandarin-room, while the Morningtons were discussing with Lady Emily and her husband the merits of Wiltshire as compared with Suffolk.
This delay, at which General Vincent was righteously angry, was occasioned by the Roebucks, who sauntered in with a leisurely air at a quarter-past two; the wife on the best possible terms with herself and her new tailor gown; the husband puffed up at having read hisTimesbefore any one else, and loquacious upon the merits of the "crushing reply" made last night by Lord Hatfield at Windermere to "the abominable farrago of lies" in Mr. Henry Wilkes' oration the night before last at Kendal.
"I dare say it was a very good speech," said the General, grimly; "but you might have kept it for after luncheon. It would have been less injured by waiting than Mr. Carew's joint; if he's going to give us one."
"Are we late?" exclaimed Mrs. Roebuck, who had endured a quarter of an hour's agony in front of her cheval glass before the new tailor bodice could be made to "come to." "Are we really late? How very naughty of us! Please, please don't be angry, good people. We beg everybody's pardon," clasping two tightly gloved hands with a prettily beseeching gesture.
"Don't mention it," said the General. "We all like waiting; but if Carew has got a mug cook, I wouldn't give much for the state of her temper at this moment."
"We'll send a pretty message to the cook after luncheon, if she has been clever enough not to spoil her dishes."
The ladies—Lady Emily and Mrs. Mornington descanting on gardens and glass all the way—went in a bevy to the dining-room, the men following, Mr. Roebuck still quoting Lord Hatfield, and the way in which he had demolished the Radical orator.
"The worst of it is he don't make 'em laugh," said Mr. Mornington. "Nobody can make 'em laugh as Wilkes does. Town or country, hodge or mechanic, he knows the length of their foot to a fraction, and knows what will hit them and what will tickle them."
The cook was sufficiently "mug" to have been equal to the difficulties of twenty minutes' delay, and the luncheon was admirable—not too many courses, nor too many dishes, but everything perfect after its kind. Nor was the joint—that item dear to elderly gentlemen—forgotten, for after a first course of fish and a second of curry andcrême de volaille, there appeared a saddle of Wiltshire mutton, to which the elderly gentlemen did ample justice, while the ladies, who had lunched upon the more sophisticated dishes, supplied the greater part of the conversation.
"My father will quote your cook for the next six months," said Suzette, by whose side Allan had contrived to place himself during the casual dropping into seats at the large round table, "for yours is the only house where he has seen Bombay ducks served with the curry."
"Did you not tell me once that your father has a weakness for those absurd little fish?"
"Did I really? Was I capable of talking such absolute twaddle?"
"It was not twaddle. It was very serious. It was on a day when I found you looking worried and absent, unable to appreciate either Mrs. Wornock's music or my conversation; and, on being closely questioned, you confessed that the canker at your heart was dinner. The General had been dissatisfied; the cook was stupid. You had done your uttermost. You had devoted hours to the reading of cookery-books, which seemed all of them hopelessly alike. You had studied all his fancies. You had given him Bombay ducks with his curry——"
"Did I say all that? How silly of me. And how ridiculous of you to remember."
"Memory is not a paid servant, but a most capricious Ariel. One cannot say to one's self, I will remember this or that. My memory is as fugitive as most people's; but there is one thing for which it can be relied on. I remember everything about you—all you say to me, all you do—even to the gowns you wear."
Suzette laughed a little and blushed a little; but did not look offended.
"You had about five minutes' talk with my mother before I took you to see the enamels. How do you like her?"
"Immensely! Lady Emily is charming. She was telling me about her white farm."
"It would have been odd if you had escaped hearing of that, even in the first five minutes."
"I was deeply interested. Lady Emily has promised me some white bramahs. I am going to start a white poultry-yard. I cannot aspire higher than poultry; but I am determined that every bird shall be white."
"Pretty foolishness! And so you like my mother?"
"Very, very much. She is one of those people with whom one feels at one's ease from the first moment. She looks as if she could not say or even think anything unkind."
"I don't believe she could do either. And yet she is human—feminine-human—and can enjoy an interesting scandal—local, if possible. She enjoys it passively. She does nothing to swell the snowball, and will hardly help to roll it along. She remains perfectly passive, and never goes further than to say that she is shocked and disappointed. And yet I believe she enjoys it."
"It is only the excitement that one enjoys. We had scandals even in the convent—girls who behaved badly, dishonourably, about their studies; cheating in order to get a better chance of a prize. I'm afraid we were all too deeply interested in the crime and the punishment. It was something to think about and talk about when life was particularly monotonous."
Lady Emily was watching them from the other side of the table, and lending rather an indifferent ear to Mr. Roebuck's account of Homburg and the people he and his wife had met there. They had only just returned from that exhilarating scene. He could talk of nothing but H.R.H.'s condescension; the dear duchess; Lady this, Lord the other; and the prodigious demand there had been for himself and his wife in the very smartest society.
"Four picnics a day are hardly conducive to the cure of suppressed gout," said Mr. Roebuck; "and there were ever so many days when we had to cut ourselves up into little bits—lunching with one party, taking coffee with another, driving home with somebody else, going to tea-fights all over the place. Dinner engagements I positively set my face against. Mimosa and I were there for rest and recuperation after the season—positively washed out, both of us. You have no idea what a rag my wife looked when we took our seats in the club train."
Happily for Lady Emily, who had been suffering this kind of thing for half an hour, the coffee had gone round, and at her first imploring glance Mrs. Mornington rose and the ladies left the dining-room. Yet even this relief was but temporary; for Mrs. Roebuck appropriated Lady Emily in the garden, and entertained her with her own view of Homburg, which was smarter, inasmuch as it was more exclusive than Mr. Roebuck's.
"A horrid place," said the lady. "One meets all one's London friends mixed up with a herd of foreign royalties whom one is expected to cultivate. I used to send Richard to all the gaieties, while I stopped at home and let my maid-companion read to me. We shall go to Marienbad next August. If one could be at Homburg without people knowing one was there, the place might be tolerable."
"I have been told the scenery is very fine," hazarded Lady Emily.
"Oh, the scenery is well enough; but one knows it, and one has seen so much finer things in that way. When one has been across the Cordilleras, it is absurd to be asked to worship some poor little hills in Germany."
"I have seldom been out of Suffolk, except to visit some of my people in Scotland. Ben Lomond and Ben Nevis are quite big enough for me."
"Oh, the Scotch hills are dear things, with quite a character of their own; and a Scotch deer forest is the finest thing of its kind all over the world. The duke's is sixty thousand acres—and Dick and I always enjoy ourselves at Ultimathule Castle—but after being lost in a snowstorm in the Cordilleras——"
Lady Emily stifled a despairing yawn. Not a word had she been able to say about her Woodbastwick cows, which she was inwardly comparing with Allan's black muzzled Jerseys, grazing on the other side of the sunk fence. Heartfelt was her gratitude to Mrs. Mornington when that lady suddenly wheeled round from a confidential talk with the Vicar and interrupted Mrs. Roebuck's journey across the Cordilleras by an inquiry about the Suffolk branches of the Guild for supplying warm and comfortable raiment to the deserving poor.
"I hope you have a branch in your neighbourhood," she said.
"Yes, indeed we have. I am a slave to the Guild all the winter. One can't make flannel petticoats and things in summer, you know."
"Ican," retorted Mrs. Mornington, decisively.
"What, on a broiling day in August! when the very sight of flannel puts one in a fever?"
"I am not so impressionable. The things are wanted in October, and July and August are quite late enough for getting them ready."
"I subscribe to these institutions," Mrs. Roebuck remarked languidly. "I never work for them. Life isn't long enough."
"Then you never have the right kind of feeling about your poorer fellow-creatures," said Mrs. Mornington. "It is the doing something for them, using one's own hand and eye and thought for the poor toiling creatures, sacrificing some little leisure and some little fad to making them more comfortable—it is that kind of thing which brings the idea of that harder world home to one."
"Ah, how nice it is of you dear ladies to sacrifice yourselves like that; but you couldn't do it after a June and July in London. If you had seen what a poor creature I looked when we took our seats in the club train for Homburg——"
Mrs. Mornington tucked her arm under Lady Emily's and walked her away.
"I want you to tell me all about your farm," she said. And then, in a rather loud aside, "I can't stand that woman, and I wish your son hadn't been so conscientious in asking her."
While emptiness and ennui prevailed on the terrace in front of the Mandarin-room, there were a pair of wanderers in the shrubbery, whose talk was unleavened by worldliness or pretence of any kind. Allan had stolen away from the smokers in the dining-room, and was escorting Suzette and her friend Bessie Edgefield round his modest domain—the shrubberies, the paddocks nearest the house, which had been planted and educated into a kind of park; the greenhouse and hothouse, which were just capacious enough to supply plenty of flowers for drawing-room and dinner-table, but not to grow grapes or peaches. Everything was on a modest, unassuming scale. Allan felt that after the mansion and gardens at Discombe, his house suggested the abode of a retired shopkeeper. A successful hosier or bootmaker might create for himself such a home. Wholesale trade, soap, or lucifer matches, or cocoa would require something far more splendid.
Modest as the place was, the two girls admired, or seemed to admire, all its details—the conifers of thirty years' growth, the smiling meadows, the fawn-coloured cows. A sunny September afternoon showed those fertile pastures and trim gardens at their best. Allan felt exquisitely happy walking about those smooth lawns and gravel paths with the girl he loved. At every word of approval he fancied she was praising the place in which she would be content to live. After that avowal of his the other day, it seemed to him that her kindness meant much more than it had meant before she knew her power. She could not be so cruel as to mock him with the promise of her smiles, her sweet words, her undisguised pleasure in his company. Yes, he was perfectly happy. He thought of her refusal the other day as only the prelude to her acceptance. She had not said "No;" she had only said "Not yet."
Bessie Edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whom Nature has especially created to be a third party in a love affair; never to play the heroine in white satin, but always the confidante in white muslin. She walked beside her friend, placid, silent, save for an occasional monosyllable, and was of no more account than Suzette's shadow.
"The Roebucks are taking leave," exclaimed Suzette, looking across the lawn to the groups on the terrace. "Mr. Carew, I'm afraid you are a sadly inattentive host."
"Have I neglected you, Miss Vincent?"
"You have neglected Mrs. Roebuck, which is much worse. She will be talking of your want ofsavoir vivreall over Matcham."
"Let her talk. She has been boring my mother with a cruelty worthy of Torquemada. She forgets that torture was illegal in England even in Bacon's time. See, they are all going away; but you and the General and Miss Edgefield must stay to tea, even if the Vicar is too busy to stop."
The Vicar had quietly vanished, to resume the round of parish duties, quite content to leave his Bessie in comfortable quarters. The Roebucks were going, and the Morningtons were following their example; but General Vincent had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and Miss Edgefield desired him to do so.
He was smoking a cheroot, comfortably seated in a sheltered part of the terrace—a corner facing south, screened from east and north by an angle of the house, where the Mandarin-room projected from the main building—and he was absorbed in a discussion of Indian legendary lore with Mr. Carew, who owned to some knowledge of sanscrit, and had made Eastern fable and legend an especial study.
Suzette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock, when Allan insisted on walking home with them, having suddenly discovered that he had had no walking that day. He had been cub-hunting from seven in the morning till nine; but he declared himself in need of walking exercise. Lady Emily went with them to the gate, and parted with Suzette as with a favourite of long standing. Allan was enraptured to see his mother's friendliness with the girl he loved; and it was all he could do to restrain his feelings during the walk to Marsh House.
Perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers, that readiness to laugh at him and at all things in creation, which held him at a distance. He had made up his mind that she was to be his—that if she were to refuse him twenty times in twenty capricious moods of her light and airy temperament, there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious feeling, and by that he would win her and hold her.
"You like Miss Vincent, mother?" he asked that evening, when he was sitting with his father and mother in the Mandarin-room after dinner.
The evening was warm to sultriness, and there were several casements open in the long window which filled one end of the room; a window with richly carved sashes and panels of cedar and lattice-work alternating with the glass. There was another window in the western wall, less elaborate—a door-window—which formed the usual exit to the garden. This was closed, but not curtained.
The room was lighted only with shaded lamps, which lighted the tables and the spaces round them, but left the corners in shadow.
Lady Emily was sitting at one of the tables, her fingers occupied with a large piece of work, which she carried about with her wherever she went, and which, to the eye of the uninitiated, never appeared to make any progress towards completion. It was destined eventually to cover the grand piano at Fendyke, and it was to be something very rare and precious in the way of embroidery; the basis a collection of Breton shawl-pattern handkerchiefs, overlaid by Lady Emily with embroidery in many-coloured silks and Japanese gold thread. This piece of work was a devouring monster in the matter of silk, and Lady Emily was always telling her friends the number of skeins which were required for its maintenance, and the cost of the gold thread which made so faint an effect in the Oriental labyrinth of palms and sprigs and arabesques and medallions.
"I'm afraid I shall never live to finish it," Lady Emily would conclude with a sigh, throwing herself back in her chair after an hour's steadfast labour, her eyes fixed in a kind of ecstasy upon the little corner of palm which she had encrusted with satin stitch and gold; "but if Ido, I really think it will repay me for all my trouble."
To-night her mind was divided between her embroidery and her son, who sat on a three-cornered chair beside her, meekly threading her needles while he tried to get her to talk about Suzette.
His father was seated almost out of earshot, at a table near the open window, reading theNineteenth Centuryby the light of a lamp which shone full upon his lowered eyelids, and on the thoughtful brow and sensitive mouth, as he sat in a reposeful attitude in the low, deep chair.
"Do I like Miss Vincent?" repeated Lady Emily, when she had turned a critical corner in the leafy edging of a scroll. "I wonder how often you will make me tell you that I think her a very—no, Allan, the light peacock, please—not that dark shade—very sweet girl—bright, unaffected——"
"And exquisitely lovely," interjected her son, as he handed her the needleful of silk.
"Ah, there you exaggerate awfully. She is certainly a pretty girl; but her nose is—well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there is a fault somewhere in the nose, and her mouth might be smaller; but, on the other hand, she has fine eyes. Her manners are really charming—that pretty little Parisian air which is so fascinating in a high-bred Parisian. But, oh, Allan! can you really mean to marry her?"
"I really mean to try my hardest to achieve that happiness, and I shall think myself the luckiest man in Wiltshire, or in England, or in Europe, if I succeed."
"But, Allan, have you reflected seriously? She tells me that she is a Roman Catholic."
"If she were a Fire-worshipper, I would run the risk of failure in converting her to Christianity. If she were a Buddhist, I should be inclined to embrace the faith of Gautama; but since she is only a conformer to a more ancient form of religion of which you and I are followers, I don't see why her creed should be a stumbling-block to my bliss."
Lady Emily shook her head sagely, and breathed a profound sigh.
"Differences of religion are so apt to make unhappiness in married life."
"I am not religious enough to distress myself because my wife believes in some things that are incredible to me. We shall both follow the same Master, both hope for reunion in the same heaven."
"Allan,shebelieves in Purgatory. Think how inconsistent your ideas of the future must be."
Allan did not pursue the argument. He was smiling to himself at the easy way in which he had been talking of his wife—their future, their very hopes of heaven—making so sure that she was to be his. He looked at his father, sitting alone with them, but not of them, and thought of his father's married life as he had seen it ever since he was old enough to observe or understand the life around him; so peaceful, so in all things what married life should be; and yet over all there had been that faint shadow of melancholy which the son had felt from his earliest years, that absence of the warmth and the romance of a marriage where love is the bond of union. Here, Allan told himself, the bond had been friendly regard, convenience, the world's approval, family interests, and lastly the child as connecting link and meeting-place of hopes and fears. Love had been missing from the life of yonder pale student, musing over half a dozen pages of modern metaphysics.
Allan rose and moved slowly towards that tranquil figure, and feeling the night air blowing cold as he approached that end of the room, he asked his father if he would like the windows shut?
"No, thank you, Allan, not on my account," Mr. Carew answered, without looking up from his book.
Had he looked up, he would have seen Allan standing between the lamplight and the window like a man transfixed.
A pale wan face had that moment vanished in the outward darkness; a face which a moment before had been looking in at one of the open lattices, a face which Allan had recognized at the first glance.
He went to the glass door, opened it quietly, and went out to the terrace, so quickly and so silently that his disappearance attracted no attention from father or mother, one absorbed in his book, the other bending over her work.
The face was the face of Mrs. Wornock; and Mrs. Wornock must be somewhere between the terrace and the gates. There was no moon, but the night was clear, and the sky was full of stars. Allan went swiftly round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window; but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed outside the window. The terrace was empty. He went round to the front of the house, whence the carriage drive wound with a gentle curve to the gates, between shrubberies of laurel and arbutus, cypress and deodara.
Yes, the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the drive as he drew near the porch, a slender figure in dark raiment, with something white about the head and shoulders. He ran along the drive, and reached the gate just in time to see Mrs. Wornock's brougham standing in the road, at a distance of about fifty yards, and to see Mrs. Wornock open the door and step in. Another moment—affording him no time for pursuit, had he even wished to pursue her—and the carriage drove away.
Allan had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct. She had come by stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet in the beaten way of friendship.