Chapter Five.A Surprise Visit.Clytie opened the gate with the little half-startled look of astonishment in her face which she had so quickly yet carefully planned. The countenance of the visitor, on the other hand, was not free from a reciprocating surprise. He had not bargained on this admission at the hands of one of the daughters of the house—and an uncommonly attractive looking one at that.“Er—my name is Wagram,” he began, raising his hat. “One of your sisters met with something of an accident on our place a few days back, and I thought it would be a satisfaction to know she was none the worse for it. Is Major Calmour at home?”The semi-puzzled look which had rested on Clytie’s face during this speech gave way to a carefully planned light up at its conclusion.“Oh, yes, of course. We heard about that, and your part in it, Mr Wagram. But won’t you come in? My father is somewhere at the back, and will be delighted to thank you in person.” And having uttered this shocking tarradiddle, she ushered him into the drawing-room.Delia rose as he entered, having spent the intervening period in making superhuman efforts to recover her wonted composure. A volume of effusive thanks on the subject of the bicycle aided her efforts still further.“Oh, Mr Wagram, what a lovely machine it is!” she began. “Why, it’s simply perfection. A free wheel, too. I’ve always longed for a free wheel. No, it’s too lovely. When we unpacked it just now, why, I thought I must be dreaming.”“Just now,” she had said. Wagram looked up astonished, and feeling somewhat uncomfortable, fearing lest his arrival at that inopportune moment should wear an appearance as though he had come to be thanked.“Has it only just come?” he said. “Why, it ought to have been delivered nearly a week ago. Gee and Vincent are not usually such dilatory people. I must row them up over it.”“Oh, please don’t,” said Delia. “Why should you take any further trouble about it? You have been too kind already.”“No, no,” he laughed. “By the way, it was just as Perrin said. The gnu must have jumped the palings of the west park. There was no gap or breakdown anywhere.”“Really? But—tell me. Was the Squire very angry?”“Not he. He was relieved to hear you had escaped uninjured. You are none the worse, are you? It was to ascertain that that I took the liberty of calling.”“How kind of you again,” she answered, with a lustrous softness in her eyes that was not studied, and wonderfully attractive. “No; I am not one atom the worse.”“Another thing has been on my conscience ever since, Miss Calmour; and that is, that I should have allowed you to walk all that way home. I ought to have insisted upon your coming on to the Court with me and driving back.”“Oh, but you did try and persuade me, remember; it wasn’t your fault at all. Shall I tell you something, Mr Wagram? I believe the secret of my holding out was that I was more than a little afraid to face the Squire after what had happened.”As a matter of fact, Delia had repented her refusal ever since. Such an opportunity might never recur; and, apart from that, it would have been so much more time to look back to and dwell upon.“You needn’t have been. It was a pity,” he answered.“Yes. And I hear you have some beautiful things at the Court, Mr Wagram—pictures and old relics and all that,” she added half shyly, as the consciousness flashed in upon her that he would take her remark as a direct “fishing” for an invite to come and see them—a misgiving which would not have afflicted her in the slightest degree had he been anybody else in the world. But at that moment the door opened, admitting Clytie, who had returned from a fictitious search for her parent, combined with a renewed command to the retired Bob on no account to show himself, on pain of such disabilities as it was within her power to place him under.“I can’t find father anywhere,” she said. “He must have gone out without telling us. But he may be back any moment now. Oh, that’s my typing work, Mr Wagram,” following his glance. “I’m afraid you’ll think us very untidy. It really has no business littering about in here, but I brought it in because the light is better.”As a matter of fact, she had hurriedly brought it in before going to answer his ring—and that with a purpose.“Ah yes. Ladies have taken to that sort of thing a good deal, I’m told. Do you do much of it?”“Not so much as I should like; only as much as I can get,” laughed Clytie. “We have to do these things—and it all helps.”“And very right and plucky it is of you to do it,” he answered.“That sounds nice. Oh, and, Mr Wagram, if you should know of anybody who wants anything done in that line you might mention me. There are so many people in these days who write, or try to. And, as I said before, it all helps.”Wagram, of course, promised accordingly, at the same time thinking it would be hard if he could not put something in her way. He had known straitened circumstances himself, and the fact of this girl turning her hand to a means of adding to a small income sent her up in his opinion, as she had guessed it would. But Clytie was honestly scheming for Delia this time, and for her she judged it the moment to put in a word.“But Delia is the one who works the hardest,” she said. “My typing is mere child’s play compared with all she does. She has been away a couple of years, and had to come home for a rest.”“Really?” he answered, turning to Delia. “Well, that is plucky of you, Miss Calmour.” And both thought to read in the high approval expressed in his look and tone a shade of regret that she should be exposed to the necessity of being overworked at all.They talked on, and soon their visitor became acquainted with all the family doings—of the third sister, who was away also working; of Bob and another brother in Canada, and three more at school; then of other things, and Wagram was surprised to note how well they talked. He had made up his mind to pay this call from a sense of duty, and had approached it with considerable misgiving. One girl he had already seen, and she had impressed him favourably, yet how would she show up under the circumstances of a surprise visit? For the others he had expected to find very second-rate types, possibly overdressed, certainly underbred; forward and gushing or awkwardly shy. But in these two, each more than ordinarily attractive after her different type, he had found nothing of the kind. There was an ease of manner and entire freedom from affectation about them that fairly astonished him, remembering the repute in which the family was apparently held; and, realising it, they went up in his estimation accordingly. Both were at their best, and knew it.But through it all came the recollection of that action for breach of promise. Which of them was concerned in it, he wondered; or was it the absent one? Well, there was no finding out now. Yet somehow, he did not think it could be Delia. If it were either of these two he would rather think it was Clytie; and then, suddenly, it occurred to him to wonder why on earth he was troubling his head about it at all. He had paid his duty call, and there was an end of the whole matter. But—was there?“Sosorry father was out, Mr Wagram,” said Clytie as he rose to take his leave, “and so will he be. But, perhaps, if you are in Bassingham again and are inclined to drop in for a cup of tea, I know he’ll be delighted.”Wagram, as in duty bound, declared that the pleasure would be mutual. It was strange, he said, that he did not even know Major Calmour by sight; but he was so seldom in Bassingham, and had not been very long at the Court, for the matter of that.“We pulled that off well, Delia,” said Clytie as they returned from seeing their visitor to the gate. “He’s gone away thinking no small beer of us. He had heard all sorts of beastly things said about us, and came to see if they were true, and has come to the conclusion they are not.”“Why do you think that?”Clytie smiled pityingly.“My dear child, I never saw the man yet I couldn’t read like a book, even in matters far more complicated than that, and not often a woman. Never mind. I’ll back you up all I know how if you’ll go on playing up to me as you did just now. Oh, good Lord! there’s the old man, and—he’s ‘fresh.’”For a volley of raucous profanity had swamped her last words, and over the top of the front gate a face was visible—a very red face indeed, surmounted by a hat awry. The profanity was evoked by its utterer’s natural inability to open a locked gate by the simple process of pushing and battering against the same. Delia looked troubled.“Do you thinkhesaw him?” she said. “He’s only just this second gone out.”“Depends which way the old man came. But ‘he’, if you remember, said he’d never set eyes on him.”“Yes; but that’s not to say he never will. And then, on top of that recognition, he’ll be in no lively hurry to wend our way again.”“Leave all that to the future, and chance,” returned Clytie. “Oh, bother! The old man’s blaring away like a calf that has lost its cow. We’d better let him in sharp or he’ll draw a crowd.”The two walked leisurely back to the gate, against which their parent was raining kicks—and curses.“Go easy, dad,” said Clytie. “How the deuce can a fellow open the gate from this side what time you’re banging it in from that? There! Now, come along.”“How the deuce? Look here, you minx, that’s nice sort of feminine language to use to your father, isn’t it? Or to anyone,” he repeated as he walked stiffly and with an ominous swaying gait up the garden path.“And that’s nice sort of masculine language to use to your daughters—and the gate, and things in general, as you were doing just now, isn’t it?” laughed Clytie serenely. “Unless you can plead, with the proverbial Scotchman, that you were only swearing ‘at large.’”“Ha-ha! What a girl it is!” chuckled the old man, with the suspicion of a hiccough. “You ought to go on the stage, dear; you’d make your fortune.”“No doubt. But I’ve got to get there first. I say, dad, who d’you think has just gone?”“Dunno, don’t care; only that I’m devilish glad they have gone. Now I can have a ‘peg.’”“No, you can’t.”“Can’t! What the devil do you mean, Clytie?”“What I say. You’ve had enough of a ‘peg’ to last you till to-night. What you want now is some strong coffee, so come right in and have it.”He grumbled something about not being master in his own house, and a good deal more. But in the end he submitted; for Clytie was the one who ruled him, and, to do her justice, ruled him tactfully and for his good, so far as it lay within her power; whereas Delia was somewhat intolerant of this phase of her parent’s weakness, and adopted towards it a scornful attitude.“Well, dad, you haven’t guessed who has just gone,” went on Clytie.“How the blazes should I know—or care?” snapped the old man. “Some spark of yours, I suppose.”“Haven’t got any just now. Everyone seems ‘off’ me. Delia’s putting my nose clean out of joint,” was the placid reply. “Well, what d’you think of Wagram?”“What?” roared old Calmour, who was just in the quarrelsome stage and was glad of an object whereon to vent it. “He? If I’d been here I’d have kicked him out of the house.”“No, you wouldn’t,” said Delia quickly. “You couldn’t, to begin with.”“What the—what the—?” And as the old man, purple with rage, let off a string of unstudied profanity, both girls put their fingers to their ears.“Let’s know when you’ve blown off steam, dad,” said Clytie, “then we’ll listen to you again.”At last old Calmour, seeing no fun in cursing without an audience, and being, moreover, quite blown, desisted, the resumed thread of his wrath taking the shape of rumbling growls. He would teach that blanked, stuck-up jackanapes—keeping wild beasts to attack his girls on a public road. He didn’t care this or that for any blanked Wagram, even if they owned half the county. He’d knock a thousand pounds damages out of them for that little job. He’d put it in his solicitors’ hands at once, he would, by so and so.“You’ll do nothing of the sort, dad,” said Clytie. “We’ve got a much better plan than that.”“Oh, you have, have you? And what is it?”“Not going to tell you—not yet. Leave it to me, and—keep quiet.”Again he grumbled and swore, but Clytie’s equanimity was proof against such little amenities. She was not going to let her father into their scheme only to have him giving it away in his cups, in this or that saloon bar about the place, not she. At last, drowsy with the combined warmth of the day, his own vehemence, and, incidentally, the liquor he had imbibed, he subsided on a sofa, and snored.He did not look lovely as he lay there, open-mouthed and breathing stertorously, his grey hair all touzled about his red and bloated face. It was hard to realise that he could be the father of these two very attractive girls, yet in his younger days he had been a good-looking man enough. But the effects of poverty and domestic worry, and drink taken to drown the care inseparable therefrom, had made him—well, what he was.
Clytie opened the gate with the little half-startled look of astonishment in her face which she had so quickly yet carefully planned. The countenance of the visitor, on the other hand, was not free from a reciprocating surprise. He had not bargained on this admission at the hands of one of the daughters of the house—and an uncommonly attractive looking one at that.
“Er—my name is Wagram,” he began, raising his hat. “One of your sisters met with something of an accident on our place a few days back, and I thought it would be a satisfaction to know she was none the worse for it. Is Major Calmour at home?”
The semi-puzzled look which had rested on Clytie’s face during this speech gave way to a carefully planned light up at its conclusion.
“Oh, yes, of course. We heard about that, and your part in it, Mr Wagram. But won’t you come in? My father is somewhere at the back, and will be delighted to thank you in person.” And having uttered this shocking tarradiddle, she ushered him into the drawing-room.
Delia rose as he entered, having spent the intervening period in making superhuman efforts to recover her wonted composure. A volume of effusive thanks on the subject of the bicycle aided her efforts still further.
“Oh, Mr Wagram, what a lovely machine it is!” she began. “Why, it’s simply perfection. A free wheel, too. I’ve always longed for a free wheel. No, it’s too lovely. When we unpacked it just now, why, I thought I must be dreaming.”
“Just now,” she had said. Wagram looked up astonished, and feeling somewhat uncomfortable, fearing lest his arrival at that inopportune moment should wear an appearance as though he had come to be thanked.
“Has it only just come?” he said. “Why, it ought to have been delivered nearly a week ago. Gee and Vincent are not usually such dilatory people. I must row them up over it.”
“Oh, please don’t,” said Delia. “Why should you take any further trouble about it? You have been too kind already.”
“No, no,” he laughed. “By the way, it was just as Perrin said. The gnu must have jumped the palings of the west park. There was no gap or breakdown anywhere.”
“Really? But—tell me. Was the Squire very angry?”
“Not he. He was relieved to hear you had escaped uninjured. You are none the worse, are you? It was to ascertain that that I took the liberty of calling.”
“How kind of you again,” she answered, with a lustrous softness in her eyes that was not studied, and wonderfully attractive. “No; I am not one atom the worse.”
“Another thing has been on my conscience ever since, Miss Calmour; and that is, that I should have allowed you to walk all that way home. I ought to have insisted upon your coming on to the Court with me and driving back.”
“Oh, but you did try and persuade me, remember; it wasn’t your fault at all. Shall I tell you something, Mr Wagram? I believe the secret of my holding out was that I was more than a little afraid to face the Squire after what had happened.”
As a matter of fact, Delia had repented her refusal ever since. Such an opportunity might never recur; and, apart from that, it would have been so much more time to look back to and dwell upon.
“You needn’t have been. It was a pity,” he answered.
“Yes. And I hear you have some beautiful things at the Court, Mr Wagram—pictures and old relics and all that,” she added half shyly, as the consciousness flashed in upon her that he would take her remark as a direct “fishing” for an invite to come and see them—a misgiving which would not have afflicted her in the slightest degree had he been anybody else in the world. But at that moment the door opened, admitting Clytie, who had returned from a fictitious search for her parent, combined with a renewed command to the retired Bob on no account to show himself, on pain of such disabilities as it was within her power to place him under.
“I can’t find father anywhere,” she said. “He must have gone out without telling us. But he may be back any moment now. Oh, that’s my typing work, Mr Wagram,” following his glance. “I’m afraid you’ll think us very untidy. It really has no business littering about in here, but I brought it in because the light is better.”
As a matter of fact, she had hurriedly brought it in before going to answer his ring—and that with a purpose.
“Ah yes. Ladies have taken to that sort of thing a good deal, I’m told. Do you do much of it?”
“Not so much as I should like; only as much as I can get,” laughed Clytie. “We have to do these things—and it all helps.”
“And very right and plucky it is of you to do it,” he answered.
“That sounds nice. Oh, and, Mr Wagram, if you should know of anybody who wants anything done in that line you might mention me. There are so many people in these days who write, or try to. And, as I said before, it all helps.”
Wagram, of course, promised accordingly, at the same time thinking it would be hard if he could not put something in her way. He had known straitened circumstances himself, and the fact of this girl turning her hand to a means of adding to a small income sent her up in his opinion, as she had guessed it would. But Clytie was honestly scheming for Delia this time, and for her she judged it the moment to put in a word.
“But Delia is the one who works the hardest,” she said. “My typing is mere child’s play compared with all she does. She has been away a couple of years, and had to come home for a rest.”
“Really?” he answered, turning to Delia. “Well, that is plucky of you, Miss Calmour.” And both thought to read in the high approval expressed in his look and tone a shade of regret that she should be exposed to the necessity of being overworked at all.
They talked on, and soon their visitor became acquainted with all the family doings—of the third sister, who was away also working; of Bob and another brother in Canada, and three more at school; then of other things, and Wagram was surprised to note how well they talked. He had made up his mind to pay this call from a sense of duty, and had approached it with considerable misgiving. One girl he had already seen, and she had impressed him favourably, yet how would she show up under the circumstances of a surprise visit? For the others he had expected to find very second-rate types, possibly overdressed, certainly underbred; forward and gushing or awkwardly shy. But in these two, each more than ordinarily attractive after her different type, he had found nothing of the kind. There was an ease of manner and entire freedom from affectation about them that fairly astonished him, remembering the repute in which the family was apparently held; and, realising it, they went up in his estimation accordingly. Both were at their best, and knew it.
But through it all came the recollection of that action for breach of promise. Which of them was concerned in it, he wondered; or was it the absent one? Well, there was no finding out now. Yet somehow, he did not think it could be Delia. If it were either of these two he would rather think it was Clytie; and then, suddenly, it occurred to him to wonder why on earth he was troubling his head about it at all. He had paid his duty call, and there was an end of the whole matter. But—was there?
“Sosorry father was out, Mr Wagram,” said Clytie as he rose to take his leave, “and so will he be. But, perhaps, if you are in Bassingham again and are inclined to drop in for a cup of tea, I know he’ll be delighted.”
Wagram, as in duty bound, declared that the pleasure would be mutual. It was strange, he said, that he did not even know Major Calmour by sight; but he was so seldom in Bassingham, and had not been very long at the Court, for the matter of that.
“We pulled that off well, Delia,” said Clytie as they returned from seeing their visitor to the gate. “He’s gone away thinking no small beer of us. He had heard all sorts of beastly things said about us, and came to see if they were true, and has come to the conclusion they are not.”
“Why do you think that?”
Clytie smiled pityingly.
“My dear child, I never saw the man yet I couldn’t read like a book, even in matters far more complicated than that, and not often a woman. Never mind. I’ll back you up all I know how if you’ll go on playing up to me as you did just now. Oh, good Lord! there’s the old man, and—he’s ‘fresh.’”
For a volley of raucous profanity had swamped her last words, and over the top of the front gate a face was visible—a very red face indeed, surmounted by a hat awry. The profanity was evoked by its utterer’s natural inability to open a locked gate by the simple process of pushing and battering against the same. Delia looked troubled.
“Do you thinkhesaw him?” she said. “He’s only just this second gone out.”
“Depends which way the old man came. But ‘he’, if you remember, said he’d never set eyes on him.”
“Yes; but that’s not to say he never will. And then, on top of that recognition, he’ll be in no lively hurry to wend our way again.”
“Leave all that to the future, and chance,” returned Clytie. “Oh, bother! The old man’s blaring away like a calf that has lost its cow. We’d better let him in sharp or he’ll draw a crowd.”
The two walked leisurely back to the gate, against which their parent was raining kicks—and curses.
“Go easy, dad,” said Clytie. “How the deuce can a fellow open the gate from this side what time you’re banging it in from that? There! Now, come along.”
“How the deuce? Look here, you minx, that’s nice sort of feminine language to use to your father, isn’t it? Or to anyone,” he repeated as he walked stiffly and with an ominous swaying gait up the garden path.
“And that’s nice sort of masculine language to use to your daughters—and the gate, and things in general, as you were doing just now, isn’t it?” laughed Clytie serenely. “Unless you can plead, with the proverbial Scotchman, that you were only swearing ‘at large.’”
“Ha-ha! What a girl it is!” chuckled the old man, with the suspicion of a hiccough. “You ought to go on the stage, dear; you’d make your fortune.”
“No doubt. But I’ve got to get there first. I say, dad, who d’you think has just gone?”
“Dunno, don’t care; only that I’m devilish glad they have gone. Now I can have a ‘peg.’”
“No, you can’t.”
“Can’t! What the devil do you mean, Clytie?”
“What I say. You’ve had enough of a ‘peg’ to last you till to-night. What you want now is some strong coffee, so come right in and have it.”
He grumbled something about not being master in his own house, and a good deal more. But in the end he submitted; for Clytie was the one who ruled him, and, to do her justice, ruled him tactfully and for his good, so far as it lay within her power; whereas Delia was somewhat intolerant of this phase of her parent’s weakness, and adopted towards it a scornful attitude.
“Well, dad, you haven’t guessed who has just gone,” went on Clytie.
“How the blazes should I know—or care?” snapped the old man. “Some spark of yours, I suppose.”
“Haven’t got any just now. Everyone seems ‘off’ me. Delia’s putting my nose clean out of joint,” was the placid reply. “Well, what d’you think of Wagram?”
“What?” roared old Calmour, who was just in the quarrelsome stage and was glad of an object whereon to vent it. “He? If I’d been here I’d have kicked him out of the house.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Delia quickly. “You couldn’t, to begin with.”
“What the—what the—?” And as the old man, purple with rage, let off a string of unstudied profanity, both girls put their fingers to their ears.
“Let’s know when you’ve blown off steam, dad,” said Clytie, “then we’ll listen to you again.”
At last old Calmour, seeing no fun in cursing without an audience, and being, moreover, quite blown, desisted, the resumed thread of his wrath taking the shape of rumbling growls. He would teach that blanked, stuck-up jackanapes—keeping wild beasts to attack his girls on a public road. He didn’t care this or that for any blanked Wagram, even if they owned half the county. He’d knock a thousand pounds damages out of them for that little job. He’d put it in his solicitors’ hands at once, he would, by so and so.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, dad,” said Clytie. “We’ve got a much better plan than that.”
“Oh, you have, have you? And what is it?”
“Not going to tell you—not yet. Leave it to me, and—keep quiet.”
Again he grumbled and swore, but Clytie’s equanimity was proof against such little amenities. She was not going to let her father into their scheme only to have him giving it away in his cups, in this or that saloon bar about the place, not she. At last, drowsy with the combined warmth of the day, his own vehemence, and, incidentally, the liquor he had imbibed, he subsided on a sofa, and snored.
He did not look lovely as he lay there, open-mouthed and breathing stertorously, his grey hair all touzled about his red and bloated face. It was hard to realise that he could be the father of these two very attractive girls, yet in his younger days he had been a good-looking man enough. But the effects of poverty and domestic worry, and drink taken to drown the care inseparable therefrom, had made him—well, what he was.
Chapter Six.A Solemnity.The chapel belonging to Hilversea Court stood a little back from the main avenue, and was so embowered in fine old trees as to be invisible in summer-time from the main road which skirted the park wall on the outside.From the west front of it, at right angles to the main avenue, there opened out a second avenue, of a good width, and shaded by rows of tall limes extending some four hundred yards, and terminating in a sculptured stone Calvary of sufficient size and proportions as to be plainly discernible even at a distance. This avenue was known as the Priest’s Walk.The origin of the name was by no means clear. Some said it was because successive family chaplains for generations had been in the habit of pacing this avenue while saying their office, or for purposes of combining exercise with meditation; others that tradition had it that in the reign of Elizabeth a refugee priest was arrested there, and being, of course, subsequently martyred, was said to revisit the scene at midnight on the anniversary of his martyrdom, and pace up and down—incidentally, headless. None, however, could say for certain. But the name had stuck—had been there, indeed, beyond the memory of the grandfather of the oldest inhabitant.On this cloudless June afternoon, however, there was nothing reminiscent of tragedy or special manifestation. Quite a throng of people lined the avenue on either side, quiet and expectant, talking but little, and then in subdued tones. Overhead, at intervals, drapings of crimson and white and gold spanned the avenue, as though for the passage of royalty; for it was the octave day of the Feast of Corpus Christi, and the procession customary on that solemnity was about to take place.The occasion was a gala one at Hilversea. As far as possible the day was observed on the estate as a general holiday, and so great was the popularity of the old Squire and his son that even those among their tenants who differed with them in creed would willingly meet their wishes in this respect. Moreover, there was an abundant spread laid out in several large marquees, to which all belonging to the place were welcome, whether they attended the religious observances or not; and this held good of a sprinkling of people from outside, even though drawn thither by no more exalted a motive than that of witnessing a picturesque sight.That it was all this there could be no room for two opinions as the chapel doors were thrown wide and the procession emerged. Headed by the cross-bearer and acolytes came a long double file of white-clothed children wearing veil and wreath, girls from a neighbouring convent school, and a number of choir boys in lace-trimmed cottas and scarlet cassocks, which showed in bright contrast to the more sober black ones of the lay singers; several priests in cassock and cotta, all holding lighted candles; then, preceded by torch-bearers and thurifers, and walking beneath a golden canopy, came the celebrant bearing the Sacred Host in a gleaming sun-shaped monstrance, and attended by deacon and subdeacon, all three richly vested. Several banners, borne aloft at intervals, added a final stroke of picturesqueness to the moving pageant.The demeanour of the onlookers varied only in degrees of reverence, for of the opposite there was none. Headed by the old Squire and such of the house party not officially assisting in the ceremony many fell in behind and followed on. So still was the summer air that the flame of the numerous tapers burned without a flicker, and when a pause occurred in the chanting a perfect chorus of thrush-song from the adjoining woods mingled with the musical clash of censer chains and the tinkle of the canopy bells.Wagram, in cassock and cotta, was acting as master of ceremonies, keeping a careful eye on the line of march with a view to rectifying any tendency to crowding up on the one hand or “gappiness” on the other.“A little quicker, please,” he whispered to a tall, beautiful girl of sixteen, with hair that shone like a flowing golden mantle over her white dress. She was supporting a large banner, and was flanked by two wee tots, similarly attired, holding the tassels. With a nod of the head she complied, and then Wagram, stepping back a pace or two to beckon the others on, brushed against somebody kneeling. Turning to offer a whispered apology he beheld Delia Calmour, who, giving him a little smile and reassuring nod, was occupied in resettling her hat. For a moment he found himself wondering that she should be there at all, then the discharge of his duties drove all thought of her out of his mind.At the far end of the avenue areposoirhad been erected—a temporary throne, abundantly decked with lights and flowers—and here all knelt while theTantum ergowas sung; and the white Host, framed in the flashing sun rays of the jewelled monstrance, gleamed on high as Benediction was given. Then, reforming, the procession, returning, moved forward once more upon its rose-strewn way, singing now the Litany of Loreto, which, being, of course, well known to most of those present, was taken up on all sides, and chorused forth in one great and hearty volume of rhythm.Delia Calmour rose from her knees and joined the increased numbers of those who were following. What had moved her she could not for the life of her have told, but she had found herself bowing down in reverence as low as those around her as the Sacred Host was borne past. Now she followed with the rest. She could not get into the chapel, but in this she fared no worse than nine-tenths of those in whose midst she was. But through the open doors she could distinguish the starry glitter of many lights on or about the high altar, as, in a dead hush, between thunderous waves of organ and chant, the final Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was given.The throng outside began to break up and those from within to come out. The convent children were marshalled forth, two by two, in charge of their attendant nuns, and still Delia lingered. She longed for an opportunity of having a little talk with Wagram, if it were only for a few minutes. She went into the chapel, thick and fragrant with incense. Two acolytes were extinguishing the numerous candles, and her pulse quickened as she saw Wagram, now divested of his cassock and cotta, standing by the sacristy door, pointing out the architectural and ornamental beauties of the interior to a couple of priests, presumably strangers. It was of no use, she decided, and, going outside, she wandered up the decorated avenue again. But before she had gone far she stopped short, striving to curb the thrill of her pulses, to repress the tell-tale rush of colour to her cheeks. A step behind her—and a voice. That was all.“How do you do, Miss Calmour? How quickly you walk. So you have found your way over to our solemnity?”Delia turned at the voice. As they clasped hands she was conscious of an utterly unwonted trepidation. She had just given up all hope of speaking with him. He would be too busy with other things and people to trouble to find her out, even if he had remembered noticing her among the attendance at all, she argued.“Yes; but I had to screw up my courage very considerably to do so,” she returned, flashing up at him a very winning smile. “You see, I had heard that anybody might come.”“Of course. But what were you afraid of? That you would be spirited away and privately burnt at the stake? Or only thumb-screwed?”“No, no—of course not. Don’t chaff me, Mr Wagram; it’s unkind. You ought rather to pity my ignorance. Do you often have a ceremony like that?”“Only once a year hitherto. This ought, strictly speaking, to have been held last Thursday, or Sunday, but we couldn’t make it anything like as imposing on either day. We couldn’t have got the convent school for one thing, nor such a muster of clergy. They can’t conveniently leave their own missions on those days. Now come up to the house. There’s ‘cup’ and all sorts of things going; tea, too, if you prefer it—and I can’t allow you to break away as you did last time. Where did you leave your bicycle?”—with a glance at her skirt.“I stood it against the chapel railing. Will it be safe there?”“We’d better take it along to make sure.”She would not let him get it for her. Someone might detain him if once he left her side. Indeed, she could hardly realise that she was awake and not dreaming. In saying that she had screwed up her courage to come she was speaking the literal truth, and even then would have given up at the last moment but for Clytie, whom, feebly, she had besought to accompany her.“Not I, my dear child,” had been the decisive response. “If I were to get into that crowd some kind soul would be safe to pass the word: ‘Hullo! There’s Damages.’ Then what sort of show would Damages’ little sister have? No, no; you must play this innings off your own bat.”But Delia, to do her justice, had resolved in no way to second her sister’s great and audacious scheme. It made her feel mean to realise that she had even heard it mooted. Her presence there to-day was not due to any wish to further it, but to a legitimate desire not to let slip so good an opportunity of furthering the acquaintance so strangely begun.“I have never seen a more picturesque sight,” she went on as they walked towards the house. “The effect was perfect—the procession moving between these great tree trunks—the avenue all strewn with roses—and all that flash as of gold here and there, and the scarlet and white of the choir boys. And how well they seemed to do it—no fuss or blundering. Did you organise it all, Mr Wagram? You seemed here, there, and everywhere at once.”“I generally do master of ceremonies—a very much needed official, I assure you, on these occasions.”“So I should imagine. And all those little tots in muslin and white wreaths—even the plainest of them looked pretty. Tell me, Mr Wagram, who was that lovely girl who carried one of the banners? She didn’t look as if she belonged to that convent school.”“Yvonne Haldane. No, she doesn’t.”“Is she French?”“There’s nothing French about her but her name, unless that she speaks it uncommonly well. She’s staying with us—she and her father. The peculiarity about them is that they are rarely seen apart.”“Really? How nice. You don’t often find that.” And the speaker’s thoughts reverted to another sort of parent, abusive or maudlin, red-faced, and semi or wholly intoxicated. “But, Mr Wagram, who is the priest who seemed to do all the principal part? Such a fine-looking old man!”“Monsignor Culham. He and my father have known each other all their lives. Ah, here they all are,” as the tall forms of the prelate and his host appeared round the end of the house. With them was a sprinkling of black coats.“I believe I’m a little afraid,” said Delia hesitatingly.“You needn’t be. They are very good-natured men. They wouldn’t wish to burn you for the world. They prefer the ‘Stakes of Smithfield’ with the ‘e’ transposed.”“Now you’re chaffing me again. But, really, I’m always a little shy of ‘the cloth.’ I never know what to talk about.”“Make your mind easy. We shall find the lay element abundantly represented on the lawn, never fear. But first come and say a word or two to my father.”Remembering the episode of the gnu, Delia was a little shy of meeting the old Squire. But she need not have been, for his denunciation of the house of Calmour notwithstanding, his greeting of this scion thereof was all that was kind and cordial.“So this is the famous big game slayer?” he said after a word or two of welcome. “What do you think of that, Monsignor? You don’t meet every day with a young lady who can boast of having shot big game—dropped a fine specimen of the brindled gnu dead in his tracks.”“No, indeed. In South Africa, I suppose?”“South Africa? No. Here—right here. But it was to save someone from being badly gored.”“Which is one more instance to show that pluck and readiness of resource are not prerogatives of our sex entirely,” said the prelate, quick to notice the look of embarrassment which had come over the girl’s face.It was even as Wagram had said, the lay element was represented on the lawn, as a fair sprinkling of sunshades and vari-coloured light summer dresses and hats bore token. Likewise refreshment, and while in process of procuring some for his charge Wagram felt a pull at his sleeve.“Who’s that you’ve got there, Wagram? Is Damages here too?”“Eh? Oh, by the way, Haldane, which of them is Damages?”“Not this one; a sister; the tall one: Clytie, I think they call her.”“Oh! Well, this one isn’t responsible for her sister, and she’s a very nice sort of girl. She’s the heroine of the gnu adventure, you know, and I want Yvonne to go and talk to her a little.”“Of course I will,” said Yvonne, moving off with that intent.“Look at her!” exclaimed Haldane as they watched this tall child cross the lawn; straight, erect, gait utterly free and unstudied, the great golden mantle of her hair rippling below her waist. “Just look at her, Wagram! Did you ever see such a child in your life? And they talk about ‘the awkward age.’ Yvonne never had an awkward age.”“I should think not,” assented Wagram, who ran her father very close in his admiration for the beautiful child.“How many girls of her age,” went on Haldane, “would unhesitatingly go and talk to an entire stranger like that? They’d kick against it, object that they didn’t know what to say, that someone else had better undertake the job, and so on. Yet look at her; she’s as self-possessed as a woman of fifty, and as devoid of self-consciousness as a savage, and she’s talking to the other girl as if she’s known her all her life.”And such, indeed, was the case. So entranced was Delia with the charm of this child-woman that she almost forgot to do justice to the strawberries and champagne cup which Wagram had procured for her, almost forgot furtively to watch Wagram himself as he moved here and there attending to other guests; forgot entirely any littlegêneshe might have felt, remembering that, after all, this was not her world, that she was in a sort of fish-out-of-water state. They talked of bicycling, then of post-card collecting, then of the solemnity they had just witnessed, and here especially the blue eyes would kindle and the whole face light up, and Yvonne would describe graphically and well other and similar ceremonies she had witnessed in some of the great cathedrals of the world. Her listener thought she could have sat there for ever in that atmosphere of refinement and ease; and this lovely child, who had drawn her with such a magnetic fascination—they would probably never hold converse together again. How could they, belonging as they did to different worlds, and in this connection the thought of the atmosphere of Siege House caused her very much of a mental shudder.“Has this little girl been boring you a lot, Miss Calmour?” And Haldane laid an arm round the sunny tresses upon his child’s shoulders.“Boring me! Why, I never was so interested in my life! You and your daughter seem to have been everywhere, Mr Haldane. Boring me!” And with a little, instinctively affectionate impulse she dropped her hand on to that of Yvonne, as though to plead: “Don’t leave me yet.”“We’ve been having a post-card discussion, father; Miss Calmour has a splendid collection. But she holds that post-cards are no good unless they’ve been through the post. I hold they’re no good if they have, because the picture is all spoilt.”“Why not cut the knot of the difficulty by collecting both?” suggested Delia.“Don’t you give her any such pernicious advice, Miss Calmour,” laughed Haldane. “The craze is quite ruinous enough to me as it is. I find myself gently but firmly impelled within a post-card shop every other day or so—sort of metaphorically taken by the ear, don’t you know—on the ground that just one or two are wanted to fill up a vacant space in the corner of a given page. But seldom, if ever, do I quit that shop without becoming liable for one or two dozen.”Delia laughed at this, but Yvonne merely smiled complacently, as though to convey that her parent might think himself lucky at being let down so easily. The latter went on:“Now you are inducing her to do that which makes me fairly quake, for if she adopts the course you recommend she’ll buy the cards at a greater rate than before, and ruin me in postage over and above for the purpose of posting them to herself.”“All safe, father; all safe this time. I wouldn’t have them if they had been through the post.”“Would you care to bring your collection over and compare notes with Yvonne, Miss Calmour? Let me see, we are going back home on Monday. Why not come over to lunch on Tuesday? You have a bicycle—but I forgot, you can hardly carry a lot of post-card books on a bicycle.”“Easily. I have a carrier on the back wheel which has often held a far greater weight,” answered the girl, hardly able to conceal her delight.“Very well, then, that’s settled. But—don’t stop to shoot any more blue wildebeeste on the way.”“Oh, that wretched creature! Am I never to hear the last of it?” laughed Delia, merrily rueful.Two considerations had moved Haldane in the issuing of this invitation—the spontaneous and whole-souled admiration evinced by this girl for Yvonne, and the wistful look on the face of the latter at the propinquity of a good post-card collection which she might not see. He prided himself upon his knowledge of character, too, and watching Delia closely was inclined to endorse Wagram’s opinion. The house of Calmour was manifestly and flagrantly impossible; but this seemed a nice sort of girl, entirely different to the others. Moreover, Yvonne seemed to like her, and Yvonne’s instincts were singularly accurate for her age.“Well, I must be moving,” said Delia, with something like a sinking of the heart. Wagram had disappeared for some time, and the groups on the lawn were thinning out fast. “But I don’t see Mr Wagram anywhere.”“He’s probably in the big tent making them a speech or something,” said Haldane. “There, I thought so,” as a sound of lusty cheering arose at no great distance. “He’s sure to be there. Yvonne will pilot you there if you want to find him. It’s an institution I fight rather shy of,” he added, with a laugh.But a strange repugnance to mingling in a crowd took hold of Delia just then. Would Mr Haldane kindly make her adieux for her? And then, having taken leave of them, she went round to where she had left her bicycle, and was in the act of mounting when—“Hallo, Miss Calmour, are you off already? I’ve been rather remiss, I fear, but you’ve no notion how one gets pulled this way and that way on an occasion of this kind. I hope Yvonne took care of you.”“She did indeed, Mr Wagram. What a perfectly sweet child she is! Do you know, I am to lunch there next week, and compare post-card collections.”“That’ll be very jolly.”“Won’t it? Well now, Mr Wagram, I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much. Oh, but there is one thing I wanted to ask you,” relapsing into shyness. “Might I—er—are people allowed—to attend your chapel here on Sundays? Now and then, I mean.”“Certainly, if there’s room for them,” he answered, looking rather astonished. “It won’t hold a great many, as you might have seen to-day—oh, and, of course, you won’t see anything like the ceremonial you saw to-day.”“I know. Still, I should like to attend occasionally. Then—I may?”“Why, of course. Meanwhile I must look out a pair of thumbscrews that’s likely to fit you. Good-bye.”In the midst of the mutual laugh evoked by this parting jest Delia mounted her bicycle and glided away. She passed groups in the avenue, some, like herself, awheel. Gaining the high road, there was the white gate opening on to the by-road through the park, the scene of the gnu adventure. Then, as by sudden magic, the spell of serenity and peace which had been upon her was removed. She felt restlessly unhappy, in tumultuous revolt. She thought of home, when she should get there; of Bob’s vulgarity, of Clytie’s soft-toned and brutal cynicisms, of her father, thick-voiced and reeling. Worse still, she would probably find him in an even further advanced stage of intoxication, and more or less foul of speech in consequence, and—this is exactly what she eventually did find.
The chapel belonging to Hilversea Court stood a little back from the main avenue, and was so embowered in fine old trees as to be invisible in summer-time from the main road which skirted the park wall on the outside.
From the west front of it, at right angles to the main avenue, there opened out a second avenue, of a good width, and shaded by rows of tall limes extending some four hundred yards, and terminating in a sculptured stone Calvary of sufficient size and proportions as to be plainly discernible even at a distance. This avenue was known as the Priest’s Walk.
The origin of the name was by no means clear. Some said it was because successive family chaplains for generations had been in the habit of pacing this avenue while saying their office, or for purposes of combining exercise with meditation; others that tradition had it that in the reign of Elizabeth a refugee priest was arrested there, and being, of course, subsequently martyred, was said to revisit the scene at midnight on the anniversary of his martyrdom, and pace up and down—incidentally, headless. None, however, could say for certain. But the name had stuck—had been there, indeed, beyond the memory of the grandfather of the oldest inhabitant.
On this cloudless June afternoon, however, there was nothing reminiscent of tragedy or special manifestation. Quite a throng of people lined the avenue on either side, quiet and expectant, talking but little, and then in subdued tones. Overhead, at intervals, drapings of crimson and white and gold spanned the avenue, as though for the passage of royalty; for it was the octave day of the Feast of Corpus Christi, and the procession customary on that solemnity was about to take place.
The occasion was a gala one at Hilversea. As far as possible the day was observed on the estate as a general holiday, and so great was the popularity of the old Squire and his son that even those among their tenants who differed with them in creed would willingly meet their wishes in this respect. Moreover, there was an abundant spread laid out in several large marquees, to which all belonging to the place were welcome, whether they attended the religious observances or not; and this held good of a sprinkling of people from outside, even though drawn thither by no more exalted a motive than that of witnessing a picturesque sight.
That it was all this there could be no room for two opinions as the chapel doors were thrown wide and the procession emerged. Headed by the cross-bearer and acolytes came a long double file of white-clothed children wearing veil and wreath, girls from a neighbouring convent school, and a number of choir boys in lace-trimmed cottas and scarlet cassocks, which showed in bright contrast to the more sober black ones of the lay singers; several priests in cassock and cotta, all holding lighted candles; then, preceded by torch-bearers and thurifers, and walking beneath a golden canopy, came the celebrant bearing the Sacred Host in a gleaming sun-shaped monstrance, and attended by deacon and subdeacon, all three richly vested. Several banners, borne aloft at intervals, added a final stroke of picturesqueness to the moving pageant.
The demeanour of the onlookers varied only in degrees of reverence, for of the opposite there was none. Headed by the old Squire and such of the house party not officially assisting in the ceremony many fell in behind and followed on. So still was the summer air that the flame of the numerous tapers burned without a flicker, and when a pause occurred in the chanting a perfect chorus of thrush-song from the adjoining woods mingled with the musical clash of censer chains and the tinkle of the canopy bells.
Wagram, in cassock and cotta, was acting as master of ceremonies, keeping a careful eye on the line of march with a view to rectifying any tendency to crowding up on the one hand or “gappiness” on the other.
“A little quicker, please,” he whispered to a tall, beautiful girl of sixteen, with hair that shone like a flowing golden mantle over her white dress. She was supporting a large banner, and was flanked by two wee tots, similarly attired, holding the tassels. With a nod of the head she complied, and then Wagram, stepping back a pace or two to beckon the others on, brushed against somebody kneeling. Turning to offer a whispered apology he beheld Delia Calmour, who, giving him a little smile and reassuring nod, was occupied in resettling her hat. For a moment he found himself wondering that she should be there at all, then the discharge of his duties drove all thought of her out of his mind.
At the far end of the avenue areposoirhad been erected—a temporary throne, abundantly decked with lights and flowers—and here all knelt while theTantum ergowas sung; and the white Host, framed in the flashing sun rays of the jewelled monstrance, gleamed on high as Benediction was given. Then, reforming, the procession, returning, moved forward once more upon its rose-strewn way, singing now the Litany of Loreto, which, being, of course, well known to most of those present, was taken up on all sides, and chorused forth in one great and hearty volume of rhythm.
Delia Calmour rose from her knees and joined the increased numbers of those who were following. What had moved her she could not for the life of her have told, but she had found herself bowing down in reverence as low as those around her as the Sacred Host was borne past. Now she followed with the rest. She could not get into the chapel, but in this she fared no worse than nine-tenths of those in whose midst she was. But through the open doors she could distinguish the starry glitter of many lights on or about the high altar, as, in a dead hush, between thunderous waves of organ and chant, the final Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was given.
The throng outside began to break up and those from within to come out. The convent children were marshalled forth, two by two, in charge of their attendant nuns, and still Delia lingered. She longed for an opportunity of having a little talk with Wagram, if it were only for a few minutes. She went into the chapel, thick and fragrant with incense. Two acolytes were extinguishing the numerous candles, and her pulse quickened as she saw Wagram, now divested of his cassock and cotta, standing by the sacristy door, pointing out the architectural and ornamental beauties of the interior to a couple of priests, presumably strangers. It was of no use, she decided, and, going outside, she wandered up the decorated avenue again. But before she had gone far she stopped short, striving to curb the thrill of her pulses, to repress the tell-tale rush of colour to her cheeks. A step behind her—and a voice. That was all.
“How do you do, Miss Calmour? How quickly you walk. So you have found your way over to our solemnity?”
Delia turned at the voice. As they clasped hands she was conscious of an utterly unwonted trepidation. She had just given up all hope of speaking with him. He would be too busy with other things and people to trouble to find her out, even if he had remembered noticing her among the attendance at all, she argued.
“Yes; but I had to screw up my courage very considerably to do so,” she returned, flashing up at him a very winning smile. “You see, I had heard that anybody might come.”
“Of course. But what were you afraid of? That you would be spirited away and privately burnt at the stake? Or only thumb-screwed?”
“No, no—of course not. Don’t chaff me, Mr Wagram; it’s unkind. You ought rather to pity my ignorance. Do you often have a ceremony like that?”
“Only once a year hitherto. This ought, strictly speaking, to have been held last Thursday, or Sunday, but we couldn’t make it anything like as imposing on either day. We couldn’t have got the convent school for one thing, nor such a muster of clergy. They can’t conveniently leave their own missions on those days. Now come up to the house. There’s ‘cup’ and all sorts of things going; tea, too, if you prefer it—and I can’t allow you to break away as you did last time. Where did you leave your bicycle?”—with a glance at her skirt.
“I stood it against the chapel railing. Will it be safe there?”
“We’d better take it along to make sure.”
She would not let him get it for her. Someone might detain him if once he left her side. Indeed, she could hardly realise that she was awake and not dreaming. In saying that she had screwed up her courage to come she was speaking the literal truth, and even then would have given up at the last moment but for Clytie, whom, feebly, she had besought to accompany her.
“Not I, my dear child,” had been the decisive response. “If I were to get into that crowd some kind soul would be safe to pass the word: ‘Hullo! There’s Damages.’ Then what sort of show would Damages’ little sister have? No, no; you must play this innings off your own bat.”
But Delia, to do her justice, had resolved in no way to second her sister’s great and audacious scheme. It made her feel mean to realise that she had even heard it mooted. Her presence there to-day was not due to any wish to further it, but to a legitimate desire not to let slip so good an opportunity of furthering the acquaintance so strangely begun.
“I have never seen a more picturesque sight,” she went on as they walked towards the house. “The effect was perfect—the procession moving between these great tree trunks—the avenue all strewn with roses—and all that flash as of gold here and there, and the scarlet and white of the choir boys. And how well they seemed to do it—no fuss or blundering. Did you organise it all, Mr Wagram? You seemed here, there, and everywhere at once.”
“I generally do master of ceremonies—a very much needed official, I assure you, on these occasions.”
“So I should imagine. And all those little tots in muslin and white wreaths—even the plainest of them looked pretty. Tell me, Mr Wagram, who was that lovely girl who carried one of the banners? She didn’t look as if she belonged to that convent school.”
“Yvonne Haldane. No, she doesn’t.”
“Is she French?”
“There’s nothing French about her but her name, unless that she speaks it uncommonly well. She’s staying with us—she and her father. The peculiarity about them is that they are rarely seen apart.”
“Really? How nice. You don’t often find that.” And the speaker’s thoughts reverted to another sort of parent, abusive or maudlin, red-faced, and semi or wholly intoxicated. “But, Mr Wagram, who is the priest who seemed to do all the principal part? Such a fine-looking old man!”
“Monsignor Culham. He and my father have known each other all their lives. Ah, here they all are,” as the tall forms of the prelate and his host appeared round the end of the house. With them was a sprinkling of black coats.
“I believe I’m a little afraid,” said Delia hesitatingly.
“You needn’t be. They are very good-natured men. They wouldn’t wish to burn you for the world. They prefer the ‘Stakes of Smithfield’ with the ‘e’ transposed.”
“Now you’re chaffing me again. But, really, I’m always a little shy of ‘the cloth.’ I never know what to talk about.”
“Make your mind easy. We shall find the lay element abundantly represented on the lawn, never fear. But first come and say a word or two to my father.”
Remembering the episode of the gnu, Delia was a little shy of meeting the old Squire. But she need not have been, for his denunciation of the house of Calmour notwithstanding, his greeting of this scion thereof was all that was kind and cordial.
“So this is the famous big game slayer?” he said after a word or two of welcome. “What do you think of that, Monsignor? You don’t meet every day with a young lady who can boast of having shot big game—dropped a fine specimen of the brindled gnu dead in his tracks.”
“No, indeed. In South Africa, I suppose?”
“South Africa? No. Here—right here. But it was to save someone from being badly gored.”
“Which is one more instance to show that pluck and readiness of resource are not prerogatives of our sex entirely,” said the prelate, quick to notice the look of embarrassment which had come over the girl’s face.
It was even as Wagram had said, the lay element was represented on the lawn, as a fair sprinkling of sunshades and vari-coloured light summer dresses and hats bore token. Likewise refreshment, and while in process of procuring some for his charge Wagram felt a pull at his sleeve.
“Who’s that you’ve got there, Wagram? Is Damages here too?”
“Eh? Oh, by the way, Haldane, which of them is Damages?”
“Not this one; a sister; the tall one: Clytie, I think they call her.”
“Oh! Well, this one isn’t responsible for her sister, and she’s a very nice sort of girl. She’s the heroine of the gnu adventure, you know, and I want Yvonne to go and talk to her a little.”
“Of course I will,” said Yvonne, moving off with that intent.
“Look at her!” exclaimed Haldane as they watched this tall child cross the lawn; straight, erect, gait utterly free and unstudied, the great golden mantle of her hair rippling below her waist. “Just look at her, Wagram! Did you ever see such a child in your life? And they talk about ‘the awkward age.’ Yvonne never had an awkward age.”
“I should think not,” assented Wagram, who ran her father very close in his admiration for the beautiful child.
“How many girls of her age,” went on Haldane, “would unhesitatingly go and talk to an entire stranger like that? They’d kick against it, object that they didn’t know what to say, that someone else had better undertake the job, and so on. Yet look at her; she’s as self-possessed as a woman of fifty, and as devoid of self-consciousness as a savage, and she’s talking to the other girl as if she’s known her all her life.”
And such, indeed, was the case. So entranced was Delia with the charm of this child-woman that she almost forgot to do justice to the strawberries and champagne cup which Wagram had procured for her, almost forgot furtively to watch Wagram himself as he moved here and there attending to other guests; forgot entirely any littlegêneshe might have felt, remembering that, after all, this was not her world, that she was in a sort of fish-out-of-water state. They talked of bicycling, then of post-card collecting, then of the solemnity they had just witnessed, and here especially the blue eyes would kindle and the whole face light up, and Yvonne would describe graphically and well other and similar ceremonies she had witnessed in some of the great cathedrals of the world. Her listener thought she could have sat there for ever in that atmosphere of refinement and ease; and this lovely child, who had drawn her with such a magnetic fascination—they would probably never hold converse together again. How could they, belonging as they did to different worlds, and in this connection the thought of the atmosphere of Siege House caused her very much of a mental shudder.
“Has this little girl been boring you a lot, Miss Calmour?” And Haldane laid an arm round the sunny tresses upon his child’s shoulders.
“Boring me! Why, I never was so interested in my life! You and your daughter seem to have been everywhere, Mr Haldane. Boring me!” And with a little, instinctively affectionate impulse she dropped her hand on to that of Yvonne, as though to plead: “Don’t leave me yet.”
“We’ve been having a post-card discussion, father; Miss Calmour has a splendid collection. But she holds that post-cards are no good unless they’ve been through the post. I hold they’re no good if they have, because the picture is all spoilt.”
“Why not cut the knot of the difficulty by collecting both?” suggested Delia.
“Don’t you give her any such pernicious advice, Miss Calmour,” laughed Haldane. “The craze is quite ruinous enough to me as it is. I find myself gently but firmly impelled within a post-card shop every other day or so—sort of metaphorically taken by the ear, don’t you know—on the ground that just one or two are wanted to fill up a vacant space in the corner of a given page. But seldom, if ever, do I quit that shop without becoming liable for one or two dozen.”
Delia laughed at this, but Yvonne merely smiled complacently, as though to convey that her parent might think himself lucky at being let down so easily. The latter went on:
“Now you are inducing her to do that which makes me fairly quake, for if she adopts the course you recommend she’ll buy the cards at a greater rate than before, and ruin me in postage over and above for the purpose of posting them to herself.”
“All safe, father; all safe this time. I wouldn’t have them if they had been through the post.”
“Would you care to bring your collection over and compare notes with Yvonne, Miss Calmour? Let me see, we are going back home on Monday. Why not come over to lunch on Tuesday? You have a bicycle—but I forgot, you can hardly carry a lot of post-card books on a bicycle.”
“Easily. I have a carrier on the back wheel which has often held a far greater weight,” answered the girl, hardly able to conceal her delight.
“Very well, then, that’s settled. But—don’t stop to shoot any more blue wildebeeste on the way.”
“Oh, that wretched creature! Am I never to hear the last of it?” laughed Delia, merrily rueful.
Two considerations had moved Haldane in the issuing of this invitation—the spontaneous and whole-souled admiration evinced by this girl for Yvonne, and the wistful look on the face of the latter at the propinquity of a good post-card collection which she might not see. He prided himself upon his knowledge of character, too, and watching Delia closely was inclined to endorse Wagram’s opinion. The house of Calmour was manifestly and flagrantly impossible; but this seemed a nice sort of girl, entirely different to the others. Moreover, Yvonne seemed to like her, and Yvonne’s instincts were singularly accurate for her age.
“Well, I must be moving,” said Delia, with something like a sinking of the heart. Wagram had disappeared for some time, and the groups on the lawn were thinning out fast. “But I don’t see Mr Wagram anywhere.”
“He’s probably in the big tent making them a speech or something,” said Haldane. “There, I thought so,” as a sound of lusty cheering arose at no great distance. “He’s sure to be there. Yvonne will pilot you there if you want to find him. It’s an institution I fight rather shy of,” he added, with a laugh.
But a strange repugnance to mingling in a crowd took hold of Delia just then. Would Mr Haldane kindly make her adieux for her? And then, having taken leave of them, she went round to where she had left her bicycle, and was in the act of mounting when—
“Hallo, Miss Calmour, are you off already? I’ve been rather remiss, I fear, but you’ve no notion how one gets pulled this way and that way on an occasion of this kind. I hope Yvonne took care of you.”
“She did indeed, Mr Wagram. What a perfectly sweet child she is! Do you know, I am to lunch there next week, and compare post-card collections.”
“That’ll be very jolly.”
“Won’t it? Well now, Mr Wagram, I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much. Oh, but there is one thing I wanted to ask you,” relapsing into shyness. “Might I—er—are people allowed—to attend your chapel here on Sundays? Now and then, I mean.”
“Certainly, if there’s room for them,” he answered, looking rather astonished. “It won’t hold a great many, as you might have seen to-day—oh, and, of course, you won’t see anything like the ceremonial you saw to-day.”
“I know. Still, I should like to attend occasionally. Then—I may?”
“Why, of course. Meanwhile I must look out a pair of thumbscrews that’s likely to fit you. Good-bye.”
In the midst of the mutual laugh evoked by this parting jest Delia mounted her bicycle and glided away. She passed groups in the avenue, some, like herself, awheel. Gaining the high road, there was the white gate opening on to the by-road through the park, the scene of the gnu adventure. Then, as by sudden magic, the spell of serenity and peace which had been upon her was removed. She felt restlessly unhappy, in tumultuous revolt. She thought of home, when she should get there; of Bob’s vulgarity, of Clytie’s soft-toned and brutal cynicisms, of her father, thick-voiced and reeling. Worse still, she would probably find him in an even further advanced stage of intoxication, and more or less foul of speech in consequence, and—this is exactly what she eventually did find.
Chapter Seven.Concerning a Derelict.“So that was your heroine of the adventure, Wagram?” said the old Squire as they sat at breakfast the following morning.“Yes. What did you think of her?”“Poor girl.”“Poor girl? Why?” asked Monsignor Culham.“Spells Calmour.”There was a laugh at this.“He is a holy terror, Monsignor,” explained Haldane. “Sort of paints the town red at intervals. The whole lot of them are impossible, yet this girl seems an exception. She’s been away from home a long time, I believe, and, of course, that may account for it.”“Possibly,” said the prelate. “I noticed her yesterday, and she seemed very devout. Are these people Catholics?”“Not they. I don’t suppose they’re anything at all,” answered Haldane.“Old Calmour was very ‘sky blue’ that day I called there,” said Wagram. “He groped right past me, and I was thankful he didn’t know me from Adam. He was certainly ‘talking’ when he couldn’t batter his own gate in.”“They say the girls have to stop their ears tight when he’s ‘fresh,’” said Haldane; “and yet Damages can do a little ‘talking’ off her own from all accounts.”“You wouldn’t think it to look at her,” said Wagram.“That’s just it. But I believe it’s a fact, all the same.”“Well, then, what about this other one?” pursued Wagram mischievously. “She may be just as deceptive, and yet you’ve booked her to lunch at your place next week.”“I rather pride myself on being a student of character,” said Haldane, “and I don’t, somehow, think this case will prove me wrong.”“No; I don’t think so either,” assented Wagram.“I formed a favourable impression of her, too—the mere glimpse I had of her when we met,” said Monsignor Culham. “She certainly is a very pretty girl, and I should think a good one. It might even be that in the fulness of time she should prove the means of salvaging the rest of the family.”“Her brother Bob would take a great deal of salvaging,” said Haldane drily. “Hallo, the child’s late,” he added, with a glance at the clock. “Said she’d be in before this.”“In! Why, I thought she might be sleeping off the effects of her efforts yesterday,” said the Squire.“Not she. She’s adding to them. She’s gone down with Hood to try and capture an early trout.”“Really!” exclaimed Monsignor. “Is she generally successful, Mr Haldane?”“She’s a very fair hand at throwing a fly. Really, though, Monsignor, I’m afraid you’ll think me a doting sort of a driveller on that subject. The fact is, we all spoil her shockingly among us. Wagram doesn’t come far behind me in that line, and the Squire too.”“I’m not surprised,” answered the prelate. “I think she is without exception the dearest child I have ever seen, and the proof of it is she remains unspoiled through it all. Why, there she is.”On the lawn she was standing, just handing her trout rod to the old head keeper, who could not refrain from turning his head with a smile of admiration as he walked away. Then she danced up to the window, the pink flush of health in her cheeks, the blue eyes alight with a mischievous challenge.“Well? What luck, Sunbeam?” said Haldane, who was already at the open window.“Ah—ah! I wasn’t to get any, was I?” she cried ostentatiously, holding down the lid of her creel. “Well—look.”She exhibited a brace of beautiful trout, each something over a pound, but in first-rate condition.“Did you get them yourself?” said Wagram, who liked to tease her occasionally.“Mr Wagram! I shall not speak to you for the whole of to-day—no—half of it.”“I thought possibly Hood might have captured them,” he explained. “Did you say one or both?”“Now it will be the whole of the day.”“Well done, little one. Did they fight much?” said Haldane. “You shall tell us about it presently. Cut away now and titivate, because Wagram was threatening to polish off all the strawberries if you weren’t soon in, and I want you to have some.”“He’d better; that’s all,” was the answer as she danced away, knowing perfectly well that the offender designate would get through the intervening time picking out all the largest and most faultless—looking for her especial delectation. Whereby it is manifest that her father had stated no more than bare fact in asserting that they all combined to spoil her. Equally true, it should be added, was Monsignor Culham’s dictum that they had not succeeded.“Are my censures removed?” said Wagram as Yvonne entered. “Look at all I have been doing for you,” holding up the plate of strawberries.“I don’t know. Perhaps they ought to be. I said I wouldn’t speak to you for the whole day. Well, we’ll make it half the day. I’ll begin at lunch-time.”“Then we’ll say half the strawberries. You shall have the other half at lunch-time.”“Look at that!” she cried. “Claiming pardon by a threat! You can’t do that, can he, Monsignor?”“Certainly not,” answered the prelate, entering thoroughly into the fun of the thing; “not for a moment.”“Roma locuta—causa finita,” pronounced Wagram with mock solemnity, handing her the plate. “Of course, I bow.”“In that case I must treat you with generosity, and will talk to you now, especially as you are dying to know where and how I got my trout. I got them both, then, within fifty yards of each other; one in the hole below Syndham Bridge, the other at the tail of the hole; one with a Wickham’s Fancy, the other with a small Zulu—”“Didn’t Hood play them for—?”“Ssh-h-h! You’ll get into trouble again,” interrupted Yvonne. “You’re repeating the offence, mind.”“Peccavi.”“I’ll forgive you again on one condition: I’m just spoiling for a bicycle ride. You shall take me for one this afternoon.”“Won’t the whole day be enough for you?”“Not quite. The afternoon will, though.”“Well, that’ll suit me to a hair. We’ll make a round, and I’ll look in at Pritchett’s farm; I want to see him about something. What do you think, Haldane? Are you on?”“Very much off, I’m afraid. I sent my machine in to Warren’s to be overhauled. He promised it for yesterday morning, but the traditions of the great British tradesman must be kept up. Wherefore it is not yet here. But you take the child all the same.”At first Yvonne declared she didn’t want to go under the circumstances, but was overruled.“I’ve got to go into Fulkston on business, Sunbeam,” said her father, “so I shall be out of mischief, anyhow. I’ll borrow one of the Squire’s gees, if I may.”“Why, of course,” said the Squire. “You know them all, Haldane. Tell Thompson which you’d rather ride.”Then the conversation turned to matters ecclesiastical, also, as between the two old gentlemen, reminiscent. They had been schoolfellows in their boyhood, but the clean-shaven, clear-cut face of Monsignor Culham, and the white hair, worn rather long, gave him a much older look than the other; yet there was hardly a year’s difference between them. Both had in common the same tall, straight figure, together with the same kindly geniality of expression.“I think I shall invite myself this time next year, Grantley,” said the prelate. “It is really a privilege to take part in such a solemnity as we held yesterday. It makes one anticipate time—very much time, I fear—when such is more the rule throughout the country than an isolated and, of course, doubly valued privilege.”“My dear old friend, I hope you will. Only you must pardon my reminding you that it is for no want of asking on my part that ages have elapsed since you were here. And they have.”“Well, it certainly wasn’t yesterday, and I concede being in the wrong,” rejoined Monsignor Culham. “But I have been in more than one cathedral church where the solemnities were nothing like so carefully and accurately performed. It was a rare pleasure to take part in these.”“Here, Wagram, get up and return thanks,” laughed Haldane. “If it weren’t breakfast-time one would have said that Monsignor was proposing your health.”“The lion’s share of the kudos is due to Father Gayle,” said Wagram. “He and I between us managed to knock together a fairly decent choir for a country place, which includes Haldane, a host in himself, and, incidentally, Yvonne. The rest is easy.”“‘Incidentally Yvonne!’” repeated that young person with mock resentment.“I don’t know about easy,” declared Monsignor Culham. “The fact remains you had got together an outside crowd who weren’t accustomed to singing with each other—over and above your own people.”“Yes; but we sent word to the convent asking them to practise their children in what we were going to sing—and to practise them out of doors, too. For the rest of those who helped us we trusted to their intuitive gumption.”“Ah, that’s a good plan,” said the prelate; “there’s too little care given to that sort of thing. Singers on such an occasion are left to sort themselves. Result: discord—hitches innumerable.”“I know,” said Haldane. “I was on the sanctuary once in a strange church. They were going to have theTe Deumsolemnly sung for an occasion. I asked for a book with the square notation score. They had no such thing in their possession, and the consequence was everyone was dividing up the syllables at his own sweet will. It was neither harmonious nor jubilant.”“I should think not,” assented Wagram emphatically. “Now, there is hardly an outdoor function I have been present at which hasn’t represented to my mind everything that outdoor singing ought not to be. Unaccompanied singing is too apt to sound thin, and if backed up with brass instruments it sounds thinner still. So we dispense with them here, and our oft-repeated and especially final injunction to all hands is: ‘Sing up!’”“Well, it certainly was effective with your singers, Wagram,” pronounced Monsignor Culham, “and I shall cite it as an instance whenever opportunity offers.”“That’s good, Monsignor,” returned Wagram. “We want all round to make everything as solemn and dignified and attractive as possible, as far as our opportunities here allow, especially to those outside; and we have reason to know that good results have followed.”“In conversions?”“Yes. We throw open the grounds to all comers on these occasions, and in the result some who come merely to see a picturesque pageant are impressed, and—inquire further.”“I wonder what proportion of the said ‘all comers’ confine their sense of the picturesque to the tables in the marquee,” remarked Haldane, who was of a cynical bent.“Well, you know the old saying, Haldane—that one of the ways to reach a man’s soul is through his stomach,” laughed the Squire. “Anything in that paper, by the way?”“N-no,” answered Haldane, who had been skimming the local morning paper, while keeping one ear open for the general conversation. “Wait, though—yes, this is rather interesting—if only that it reminds me of a bad quarter of an hour once owing to a similar cause. Listen to this: ‘The R.M.S.Rhodesian, which arrived at Southampton yesterday evening, reports passing a derelict in latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes north, longitude 16 degrees 36 minutes West. The hull was a dull rusty red, and apparently of about 900 or 1000 tons burthen. The vessel was partly submerged, the forecastle and poop being above water. About eight feet of iron foremast was standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it. No name was visible, and the hulk, which had apparently been a long time in the water, was lying dangerously in the track of steamers to and from the Cape.’ I should think so indeed,” continued Haldane with some warmth. “It was just such a derelict that scraped past us one black night when I was coming home in theManchurianon that very line. It was about midnight, and everybody had turned in, but the skipper and I were having a parting yarn on the hurricane deck. We were so close to the thing that the flare of our lights showed it up barely ten yards from us; then it was gone. I asked the skipper what would have happened if we’d hit it straight and square, and he said he was no good at conundrums, but would almost rather have run full speed on against the face of a cliff.”“I suppose there was great excitement in the morning?” said the Squire.“Not any; for the simple reason that nobody knew anything about it. The occurrence was logged, of course, but the skipper asked me not to blab, and I didn’t. Most of the passengers were scary enough over the risks they knew about, he said, and if you told them a lot more that they didn’t many of them would die.”“They oughtn’t to leave a thing like that,” said Wagram. “Why didn’t your captain stop and blow it up, Haldane?”“I asked him, and he said his company didn’t contract for hulk-hunting on dark nights; it contracted to carry Her Majesty’s mails. Probably the skipper of theRhodesianreasoned in exactly the same way about this one.”“It’s as bad as an infernal machine.”“Itisan infernal machine,” said Haldane.
“So that was your heroine of the adventure, Wagram?” said the old Squire as they sat at breakfast the following morning.
“Yes. What did you think of her?”
“Poor girl.”
“Poor girl? Why?” asked Monsignor Culham.
“Spells Calmour.”
There was a laugh at this.
“He is a holy terror, Monsignor,” explained Haldane. “Sort of paints the town red at intervals. The whole lot of them are impossible, yet this girl seems an exception. She’s been away from home a long time, I believe, and, of course, that may account for it.”
“Possibly,” said the prelate. “I noticed her yesterday, and she seemed very devout. Are these people Catholics?”
“Not they. I don’t suppose they’re anything at all,” answered Haldane.
“Old Calmour was very ‘sky blue’ that day I called there,” said Wagram. “He groped right past me, and I was thankful he didn’t know me from Adam. He was certainly ‘talking’ when he couldn’t batter his own gate in.”
“They say the girls have to stop their ears tight when he’s ‘fresh,’” said Haldane; “and yet Damages can do a little ‘talking’ off her own from all accounts.”
“You wouldn’t think it to look at her,” said Wagram.
“That’s just it. But I believe it’s a fact, all the same.”
“Well, then, what about this other one?” pursued Wagram mischievously. “She may be just as deceptive, and yet you’ve booked her to lunch at your place next week.”
“I rather pride myself on being a student of character,” said Haldane, “and I don’t, somehow, think this case will prove me wrong.”
“No; I don’t think so either,” assented Wagram.
“I formed a favourable impression of her, too—the mere glimpse I had of her when we met,” said Monsignor Culham. “She certainly is a very pretty girl, and I should think a good one. It might even be that in the fulness of time she should prove the means of salvaging the rest of the family.”
“Her brother Bob would take a great deal of salvaging,” said Haldane drily. “Hallo, the child’s late,” he added, with a glance at the clock. “Said she’d be in before this.”
“In! Why, I thought she might be sleeping off the effects of her efforts yesterday,” said the Squire.
“Not she. She’s adding to them. She’s gone down with Hood to try and capture an early trout.”
“Really!” exclaimed Monsignor. “Is she generally successful, Mr Haldane?”
“She’s a very fair hand at throwing a fly. Really, though, Monsignor, I’m afraid you’ll think me a doting sort of a driveller on that subject. The fact is, we all spoil her shockingly among us. Wagram doesn’t come far behind me in that line, and the Squire too.”
“I’m not surprised,” answered the prelate. “I think she is without exception the dearest child I have ever seen, and the proof of it is she remains unspoiled through it all. Why, there she is.”
On the lawn she was standing, just handing her trout rod to the old head keeper, who could not refrain from turning his head with a smile of admiration as he walked away. Then she danced up to the window, the pink flush of health in her cheeks, the blue eyes alight with a mischievous challenge.
“Well? What luck, Sunbeam?” said Haldane, who was already at the open window.
“Ah—ah! I wasn’t to get any, was I?” she cried ostentatiously, holding down the lid of her creel. “Well—look.”
She exhibited a brace of beautiful trout, each something over a pound, but in first-rate condition.
“Did you get them yourself?” said Wagram, who liked to tease her occasionally.
“Mr Wagram! I shall not speak to you for the whole of to-day—no—half of it.”
“I thought possibly Hood might have captured them,” he explained. “Did you say one or both?”
“Now it will be the whole of the day.”
“Well done, little one. Did they fight much?” said Haldane. “You shall tell us about it presently. Cut away now and titivate, because Wagram was threatening to polish off all the strawberries if you weren’t soon in, and I want you to have some.”
“He’d better; that’s all,” was the answer as she danced away, knowing perfectly well that the offender designate would get through the intervening time picking out all the largest and most faultless—looking for her especial delectation. Whereby it is manifest that her father had stated no more than bare fact in asserting that they all combined to spoil her. Equally true, it should be added, was Monsignor Culham’s dictum that they had not succeeded.
“Are my censures removed?” said Wagram as Yvonne entered. “Look at all I have been doing for you,” holding up the plate of strawberries.
“I don’t know. Perhaps they ought to be. I said I wouldn’t speak to you for the whole day. Well, we’ll make it half the day. I’ll begin at lunch-time.”
“Then we’ll say half the strawberries. You shall have the other half at lunch-time.”
“Look at that!” she cried. “Claiming pardon by a threat! You can’t do that, can he, Monsignor?”
“Certainly not,” answered the prelate, entering thoroughly into the fun of the thing; “not for a moment.”
“Roma locuta—causa finita,” pronounced Wagram with mock solemnity, handing her the plate. “Of course, I bow.”
“In that case I must treat you with generosity, and will talk to you now, especially as you are dying to know where and how I got my trout. I got them both, then, within fifty yards of each other; one in the hole below Syndham Bridge, the other at the tail of the hole; one with a Wickham’s Fancy, the other with a small Zulu—”
“Didn’t Hood play them for—?”
“Ssh-h-h! You’ll get into trouble again,” interrupted Yvonne. “You’re repeating the offence, mind.”
“Peccavi.”
“I’ll forgive you again on one condition: I’m just spoiling for a bicycle ride. You shall take me for one this afternoon.”
“Won’t the whole day be enough for you?”
“Not quite. The afternoon will, though.”
“Well, that’ll suit me to a hair. We’ll make a round, and I’ll look in at Pritchett’s farm; I want to see him about something. What do you think, Haldane? Are you on?”
“Very much off, I’m afraid. I sent my machine in to Warren’s to be overhauled. He promised it for yesterday morning, but the traditions of the great British tradesman must be kept up. Wherefore it is not yet here. But you take the child all the same.”
At first Yvonne declared she didn’t want to go under the circumstances, but was overruled.
“I’ve got to go into Fulkston on business, Sunbeam,” said her father, “so I shall be out of mischief, anyhow. I’ll borrow one of the Squire’s gees, if I may.”
“Why, of course,” said the Squire. “You know them all, Haldane. Tell Thompson which you’d rather ride.”
Then the conversation turned to matters ecclesiastical, also, as between the two old gentlemen, reminiscent. They had been schoolfellows in their boyhood, but the clean-shaven, clear-cut face of Monsignor Culham, and the white hair, worn rather long, gave him a much older look than the other; yet there was hardly a year’s difference between them. Both had in common the same tall, straight figure, together with the same kindly geniality of expression.
“I think I shall invite myself this time next year, Grantley,” said the prelate. “It is really a privilege to take part in such a solemnity as we held yesterday. It makes one anticipate time—very much time, I fear—when such is more the rule throughout the country than an isolated and, of course, doubly valued privilege.”
“My dear old friend, I hope you will. Only you must pardon my reminding you that it is for no want of asking on my part that ages have elapsed since you were here. And they have.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t yesterday, and I concede being in the wrong,” rejoined Monsignor Culham. “But I have been in more than one cathedral church where the solemnities were nothing like so carefully and accurately performed. It was a rare pleasure to take part in these.”
“Here, Wagram, get up and return thanks,” laughed Haldane. “If it weren’t breakfast-time one would have said that Monsignor was proposing your health.”
“The lion’s share of the kudos is due to Father Gayle,” said Wagram. “He and I between us managed to knock together a fairly decent choir for a country place, which includes Haldane, a host in himself, and, incidentally, Yvonne. The rest is easy.”
“‘Incidentally Yvonne!’” repeated that young person with mock resentment.
“I don’t know about easy,” declared Monsignor Culham. “The fact remains you had got together an outside crowd who weren’t accustomed to singing with each other—over and above your own people.”
“Yes; but we sent word to the convent asking them to practise their children in what we were going to sing—and to practise them out of doors, too. For the rest of those who helped us we trusted to their intuitive gumption.”
“Ah, that’s a good plan,” said the prelate; “there’s too little care given to that sort of thing. Singers on such an occasion are left to sort themselves. Result: discord—hitches innumerable.”
“I know,” said Haldane. “I was on the sanctuary once in a strange church. They were going to have theTe Deumsolemnly sung for an occasion. I asked for a book with the square notation score. They had no such thing in their possession, and the consequence was everyone was dividing up the syllables at his own sweet will. It was neither harmonious nor jubilant.”
“I should think not,” assented Wagram emphatically. “Now, there is hardly an outdoor function I have been present at which hasn’t represented to my mind everything that outdoor singing ought not to be. Unaccompanied singing is too apt to sound thin, and if backed up with brass instruments it sounds thinner still. So we dispense with them here, and our oft-repeated and especially final injunction to all hands is: ‘Sing up!’”
“Well, it certainly was effective with your singers, Wagram,” pronounced Monsignor Culham, “and I shall cite it as an instance whenever opportunity offers.”
“That’s good, Monsignor,” returned Wagram. “We want all round to make everything as solemn and dignified and attractive as possible, as far as our opportunities here allow, especially to those outside; and we have reason to know that good results have followed.”
“In conversions?”
“Yes. We throw open the grounds to all comers on these occasions, and in the result some who come merely to see a picturesque pageant are impressed, and—inquire further.”
“I wonder what proportion of the said ‘all comers’ confine their sense of the picturesque to the tables in the marquee,” remarked Haldane, who was of a cynical bent.
“Well, you know the old saying, Haldane—that one of the ways to reach a man’s soul is through his stomach,” laughed the Squire. “Anything in that paper, by the way?”
“N-no,” answered Haldane, who had been skimming the local morning paper, while keeping one ear open for the general conversation. “Wait, though—yes, this is rather interesting—if only that it reminds me of a bad quarter of an hour once owing to a similar cause. Listen to this: ‘The R.M.S.Rhodesian, which arrived at Southampton yesterday evening, reports passing a derelict in latitude 10 degrees 5 minutes north, longitude 16 degrees 36 minutes West. The hull was a dull rusty red, and apparently of about 900 or 1000 tons burthen. The vessel was partly submerged, the forecastle and poop being above water. About eight feet of iron foremast was standing, and rather more of mizzen-mast, with some rigging trailing from it. No name was visible, and the hulk, which had apparently been a long time in the water, was lying dangerously in the track of steamers to and from the Cape.’ I should think so indeed,” continued Haldane with some warmth. “It was just such a derelict that scraped past us one black night when I was coming home in theManchurianon that very line. It was about midnight, and everybody had turned in, but the skipper and I were having a parting yarn on the hurricane deck. We were so close to the thing that the flare of our lights showed it up barely ten yards from us; then it was gone. I asked the skipper what would have happened if we’d hit it straight and square, and he said he was no good at conundrums, but would almost rather have run full speed on against the face of a cliff.”
“I suppose there was great excitement in the morning?” said the Squire.
“Not any; for the simple reason that nobody knew anything about it. The occurrence was logged, of course, but the skipper asked me not to blab, and I didn’t. Most of the passengers were scary enough over the risks they knew about, he said, and if you told them a lot more that they didn’t many of them would die.”
“They oughtn’t to leave a thing like that,” said Wagram. “Why didn’t your captain stop and blow it up, Haldane?”
“I asked him, and he said his company didn’t contract for hulk-hunting on dark nights; it contracted to carry Her Majesty’s mails. Probably the skipper of theRhodesianreasoned in exactly the same way about this one.”
“It’s as bad as an infernal machine.”
“Itisan infernal machine,” said Haldane.