CHAPTER XI.
THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE.
Mrs. Wornock's frank revelation of her girlish love and self-sacrifice lifted a burden from Allan's heart and mind. He had been interested in her, and attracted towards her from that first summer noontide when he studied her thoughtful face in the village church, and when he lingered among the villagers' graves to hear her play. His sympathy had grown with every hour he spent in her society, and he had been deeply grateful for the friendship which had so cordially included him and the girl he loved. It had been very painful to him to believe that this sweet-mannered woman belonged to the fallen ones of the earth, that her graces were the graces of a Magdalen, most painful to think that she was no fitting companion for the girl who had so readily responded to her friendly advances.
The cloud was lifted now, and he felt ashamed of all his past doubts and suspicions. He respected Mrs. Wornock for her refusal to meet his father in the beaten way of friendship. He was touched by the devotion which had brought her creeping to his windows under the cover of night to look upon the face of her beloved. He resolved that he would do all that in him lay to atone for the wrong his thoughts had done her, that he would be to her, indeed, as a second son, and that he would cultivate her son's friendship in a brotherly spirit.
He stopped in the corridor on the morning after that interview to study the portrait of the young man whose likeness to himself had now resolved itself into a psychological mystery, and he could but see that it was a likeness of the mind rather than of the flesh, a resemblance in character and expression far more than in actual lineaments.
"He is vastly my superior in looks," thought Allan, as he studied the lines of that boldly painted face. "He has his mother's finely chiselled features, his mother's delicate colouring. There is a shade of effeminacy, otherwise the face would be almost faultless. And to mistake this face for that! Absurd!" muttered Allan, catching the reflection of his sunburnt forehead, and strongly marked nose and chin, in the Venetian glass that hung at right angles with the picture.
He heard the organ while the butler paused with his hand on the door, waiting to announce the visitor. The simpler music, the weaker touch, told him that the pupil was playing.
"Please don't stop," he cried, as he went in; "I want to hear if the pupil is worthy of her mistress."
Mrs. Wornock came to meet him, and Suzette went on playing, with only a smile and a nod to her sweetheart.
"She is getting on capitally. She has a real delight in music," announced Mrs. Wornock.
"How happy you are looking this morning!"
"I have had good news. My son is on his way home."
"I congratulate you."
"He is coming home for his long leave. I shall have him for nearly a year."
"How happy you will be! I have just been studying his portrait."
"You are so like him."
"Oh, only a rough copy—a charcoal sketch on coarse paper,—nothing to boast of," said Allan, with a curious laugh.
He was watching Suzette, to see if she were interested in the expected arrival. She played on, her eyes intent alternately upon the page of music in front of her, and upon the stops which she was learning to use. There was no stumbling in the notes, or halting in the time. She played the simple legato passages smoothly and carefully, and seemed to pay no heed to their talk.
Allan would have been less than human, perhaps, if his first thought on hearing of Geoffrey's return had not been of the influence he might exercise upon Suzette—whether in him she would recognize the superior and more attractive personality.
"No," he thought, ashamed of that jealous fear which was so quick to foresee a rival, "Suzette has given me her heart, and it must be my own fault if I can't keep it. Women are our superiors, at least in this, that they are not so easily caught by the modelling of a face, or the rich tones of a complexion. And shall I think so meanly of my sweet Suzette as to suppose that my happiness is in danger because some one more attractive than myself appears upon the scene? When we spend our first season in London as man and wife, she will have to run the gauntlet of all the agreeable men in town, soldiers and sailors, actors and painters, ingenuous young adorers and hoary-headed flatterers. The whole army of Satan that maketh war upon innocence and beauty. No, I am not afraid. She has a fine brain and a noble heart. She is not the kind of woman to jilt a lover or betray a husband. I am safe in loving her."
He had need to comfort himself, for the hour of trial was nearer than he thought.
He went to Discombe before luncheon on the morning after he had heard of Geoffrey's return. He went expecting to find Suzette at the organ, and to hear the latter part of the lesson. He was not a connoisseur, but he loved music well enough to love to hear his sweetheart play, and to be able to distinguish every stage of progress in her performance. To-day, however, the organ was silent; the youth who blew the bellows was chasing a wasp in the corridor, and the room into which Allan was ushered was empty.
"The ladies are in the garden, sir," said the butler. "Shall I tell my mistress that you are here?"
"No, thanks, I'll go and look for the ladies."
The autumn morning was bright and mild, and one of the French windows was open.
Allan hurried out to the garden, and looked down the cypress avenue. The long perspective of smooth-shaven lawn was empty. There was no one loitering by the fountain. They were in the summer-house—the classic temple where Mrs. Wornock had sunk into unconsciousness at the sound of his father's name, where he had lived through the most embarrassing experience of his life.
He could distinguish Mrs. Wornock's black gown, and Suzette's terra-cotta frock, a cloth frock from a Salisbury tailor, which he had greatly admired. But there was another figure that puzzled him—an unfamiliar figure in grey—a man's figure.
Never had the grass walk seemed so long, or the temple so remote. Yes, that third figure was decidedly masculine. There was no optical delusion as to the sex of the stranger—no petticoat hidden behind the marble table. As he drew nearer he saw that the intruder was a young man, sitting in a lounging attitude with his arms resting on the table, and his shoulders leaning forward to bring him nearer to the two ladies seated opposite.
He felt that it would be undignified to run, but he walked so fast in his eagerness to discover the identity of the interloper that he was in an undignified perspiration when he arrived.
"Allan, poor Allan, how you have been running!" exclaimed Suzette.
"I was vexed with myself for losing the whole of your organ lesson," said Allan, shaking hands with Mrs. Wornock, and gazing at the stranger as at a ghost.
Yes, it was Geoffrey Wornock. Even his hurried reflections during that hurried walk had told Allan that it must be he, and none other. No one else would be admitted to the familiarity of the garden and summer-house. Mrs. Wornock had no casual visitors, no intimate friends, except Suzette and himself.
"There has been no organ lesson this morning, Allan," Mrs. Wornock told him, her face radiant with happiness. "Suzette and I have been surprised out of all sober occupations and ideas. This son of mine took it into his head to come home nearly a fortnight before I expected him. He arrived as suddenly as if he had dropped from the skies. He did not even telegraph to be met at the station."
"A telegram would have taken the bloom off the surprise, mother," said the man in grey, standing up tall and straight, but slenderly built.
Allan felt himself a coarse gladiatorial sort of person beside this elegant and refined-looking young man. Nor was there anything effeminate about that graceful figure to which an envious critic could take exception. Soldiering had given that air of manliness which can co-exist with slenderness and grace.
"Geoffrey, this is Allan, of whom you know so much."
"They tell me that you and I are very much alike, Mr. Carew," said Geoffrey, with a pleasant laugh, "and my mother tells me that you and I are to take kindly to each other, and in fact she expects to see us by way of being adopted brothers. I don't quite know what that means—whether we are to ride each other's horses, and make free with each other's guns, or go halves in a yacht or a racehorse?"
"I want you to like each other—to be real friends," said Mrs. Wornock, earnestly.
"Then don't say another word about it, mother. Friendship under that kind of protecting influence rarely comes to any good; but I am quite prepared to like Mr. Carew on his own account, and I hope he may be able to like me on the same poor grounds."
He had an airy way of dismissing the subject which set them all at their ease, and steered them away from the rocks and shoals of sentiment. Mrs. Wornock, who had been on the verge of weeping, smiled again, and led Geoffrey off to look at the gardens, and all the improvements which had been effected during his three years' absence, leaving the lovers to follow or not as they pleased.
The lovers stayed in the summer-house, feeling that mother and son would like to be alone; and mother and son strolled on side by side, looking like brother and sister.
"My dearest," said Mrs. Wornock, tenderly, slipping her arm through her son's directly they were really alone, and out of sight, in an old flower-garden walled round by dense hedges of clipped ilex, a garden laid out in a geometrical pattern, and with narrow gravel paths intersecting the flower-beds. The glory of all gardens was over. There were only a few lingering dahlias, and prim asters lifting up their gaudy discs to the sun, and beds of marigolds of different shades, from palest yellow to deepest orange.
"My dearest, how glad I am to have you! I begin to live again now you have come home."
"And I am very glad to be at home, mother," answered her son, smiling down upon her, fondly, protectingly, but with that light tone which marked all he said. "But it seems to me you have been very much alive while I have been away, with this young man of yours who is almost an adopted son."
"My heart went out to him, Geoffrey, because of his likeness to you."
"A dangerous precedent. You might meet half a dozen such likenesses in a London season. It would hardly do for your heart to go out to them all. You would be coming home with a large family—by adoption."
"There is no fear of that. I don't go into society, and I don't think, if I did, I should meet any one like Allan Carew."
Geoffrey could but note the tenderness in her tone as she spoke Allan's name.
"And who is this double of mine, mother; and what is he, and how does he come to be engaged to that dainty, dark-eyed girl?"
"You like Suzette?"
"Yes, I like her—she is a nice, winning thing—not startlingly pretty; but altogether nice. I like the way that dark silky hair of hers breaks up into tiny curls about her forehead—and she has fine eyes——"
"India has made you critical, Geoffrey."
"Not India, but a native disposition, mother dearest. In India we have often to put up with second best in the way of beauty, faded carnations, tired eyes, hollow cheeks; but the young women have generally plenty to say for themselves. They can talk, and they can dance. They are educated for the marriage market before they are sent out."
His mother laughed, and hung on to his arm admiringly. In her opinion, whatever he said was either wise or witty. All his impertinences were graceful. His ignorance was better than other people's knowledge.
"You have not neglected your violin, I hope, Geoffrey?"
"No, mother. My good little Strad has been my friend and comrade in many a quiet hour while the other fellows were at cards, or telling stale stories. I shall be very glad to play the old de Beriot duets again. Your fingers have not lost their cunning, I know."
"I have played a great deal while you were away. I have had nothing else to think about."
"Except Allan Carew."
"He has not made much difference. He comes and goes as he likes—especially when Suzette is here. I sit at my organ or piano and let them wander about and amuse themselves."
"What an indulgent chaperon!"
"I knew what the end must be, Geoffrey. I knew from the first that they were in love with each other. At least I knew from the very first that he was in love with her."
"You were not so sure about the lady?"
"A girl is too shy to let her feelings be read easily; but I could see she liked his society. They used to roam about the garden together like children. They were too happy not to be in love."
"Does being in love mean happiness, mother? Don't you think there is a middle state between indifference and passion—a cordial, comfortable, sympathetic friendship which is far happier than love? It has no cold fits of doubt, no hot fits of jealousy. From your account of these young people, I question if they were ever really in love. Your Carew looks essentially commonplace. I don't give him credit for much imagination."
"You will understand him better by-and-by, dearest."
The mother was looking up at the newly regained son, admiring him, and beginning to fancy that she had done him an injustice in thinking that Allan resembled him. He was much handsomer than Allan, and there was something picturesque and romantic in his countenance and bearing which appealed to a woman's fancy; a look as of the Lovelaces and Dorsets of old, the courtiers and soldiers who could write a love-song on the eve of a bloody battle, or dance a minuet at midnight, and fight a duel at dawn. His manner to his mother was playful and protecting. He had not the air of thinking her the wisest of women, but no one could doubt that he loved her.
The summer-house was empty when they went back to it, and there was a pencilled note on the marble table addressed to Mrs. Wornock.
"Allan is going to see me home in time to give father his tiffin, and I think you and Mr. Wornock will like to have the day to yourselves. I shall come for my organ lesson to-morrow at eleven, unless you tell me to stop away—"Ever, dear Mrs. Wornock, your own"SUZETTE."
"Allan is going to see me home in time to give father his tiffin, and I think you and Mr. Wornock will like to have the day to yourselves. I shall come for my organ lesson to-morrow at eleven, unless you tell me to stop away—
"Ever, dear Mrs. Wornock, your own"SUZETTE."
"Pretty tactful soul! Of course we want to be alone," said Geoffrey, reading the note over his mother's shoulder. "First you shall give me the best lunch that Discombe can provide; and then we will drive round and look at everything. And we will devote the evening to de Beriot. I must go up to town by an early train to-morrow."
"Running away from me so soon, Geoffrey?"
"Now, mother, it's base ingratitude to say that. I've hardly given myself breathing time since I landed at Brindisi, because I wanted to push home to you, first of the very first. I shall only be in London a day or two. I want to see what kind of horses are being sold at Tattersall's, and I may run down to look at the Belhus hunters. Remember I haven't a horse to ride."
"There are your old hunters, Geoffrey?"
"Three dear old crocks. Admirable as pensioners, not to carry eleven stone to hounds. No, mother, I'm afraid there's nothing in your stables that will be good for more than a cover-hack."
Mrs. Wornock sighed faintly in the midst of her bliss. She had a womanly horror of hunting and all its perils, and in her heart of hearts was always on the side of the fox; but she knew that without hunting and shooting Discombe Manor would very soon pall upon her son, dilettante and Jack-of-all-trades though he was. Music alone—passionately as he loved it—would not keep him contented.
Allan and Suzette strolled home under the bright blue sky. These late days in October were the Indian summer of the year, a season in which it was a joy to live, especially in a land where the smoke from domestic hearths curling upward here and there in silvery wreaths from wood fires, only suggested homeliness and warmth, not filth and fog. They sauntered slowly homeward through the rustic lanes, and their talk was naturally of the new arrival.
"Is he the kind of young man you expected him to be?" asked Suzette.
There was no occasion to be more specific in one's mention ofhim. There could but be one young man in their thoughts to-day.
"I don't know that I had formed any expectations about him."
"Oh, Allan, that can't be true! You must have thought about him, after everybody telling you of the likeness. Remember what you told me in our very first dance—how dreadfully bored you had been about him, and how glad you were that I didn't know him."
"My being bored—and I was horribly—was no reason why my imagination should dwell upon him. If I thought of him at all, I thought of him just as he is—the image of his portrait by Millais—and a very good-looking and well set-up young man—so much better looking than my humble self, that I wonder at any one's seeing a likeness between the two faces."
"Is he better looking, Allan? I know I like your face best."
"I'm glad of that, since you will have to put up with my face for a lifelong companion."
"Allan, how grumpily you said that."
"Did I, Suzie? I'm afraid I'm a brute. I am beginning to find out disagreeable depths in my character."
She looked at him with a puzzled air—so sweetly innocent, so free from any backward-reaching thought—that made him happy again. He took up the little hand hanging loose at her side and kissed it.
"Let us drop in upon Aunt Mornington, and ask her for lunch," he said as they came within sight of the Grove. "I don't feel like parting with you just yet, Suzie."
"Quite impossible. I must be at home for father's tiffin."
"I forgot that sacred institution. Well, Suzie, do you think it's possible the General might ask me to share that important meal if he saw me hanging about? We could go to the links afterwards, so that you might have the pleasure of seeing how wildly I can beat the air?"
Suzie laughed her assent to this proposition, and General Vincent, overtaking them five minutes afterwards on his useful hack, sustained an Anglo-Indian's reputation for hospitality by immediately inviting Allan to luncheon.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]