CHAPTER XIII.
“THE TIME OF LOVERS IS BRIEF.”
When a man is sole master of his estate and thoroughly independent of his kindred, his choice of a wife, if not altogether outrageous and unpardonable, must needs be accepted by his belongings. Vansittart lost not an hour in telling his sister and her husband that henceforth they must look upon Eve Marchant as a very close connection.
“We shall be married at midsummer,” he said, “so you may as well begin to think of her as a sister-in-law.”
Sir Hubert, who was the essence of good nature, received the announcement with unalloyed cordiality.
“She is a bright, frank girl, very pretty, very winning, and very intelligent,” he said. “I congratulate you, Jack—though naturally one would have wished——”
“That she were the daughter of a duke, or that she had half a million of money,” interjected Vansittart. “I understand you. It is a bad match from a worldly point of view. I, who have between three and four thousand a year, should have stood out for other three or four thousand with a wife, and thus solidified my income. I ought at least to have tried America; seen if the heiress market there would have supplied the proper article. Well, you see, Hubert, I am of too impatient a temper for that kind of thing. I have found the woman I can love with all my heart and mind, and I have lost no time in winning her.”
“You are a paladin, Jack—a troubadour—all that there is of the most romantic and chivalrous,” laughed Sir Hubert.
“She is a dear, dear girl,” sighed Maud, “and I could hardly be fonder of her if she were my sister—but it certainly is the most disappointing choice you could have made.”
“Is it? Why, I might have chosen a barmaid.”
“Not you. You are not that kind of man. But except a barmaid—or”—with the tips of her lips—“a chorus girl, you could scarcely have done worse than this. Now, don’t rage and fume, Jack. I tell you I think the girl herself adorable—but four sisters and an impossible father!Quelle corvée!”
“It is acorvéethat need never trouble you,” cried Vansittart, indignantly.
“You are extremely ungrateful. Haven’t I been forming her for you?”
“She needed no forming. She has never been less than a lady—simple and straightforward—never affecting to be rich when she was poor—or to be smarter than her surroundings warranted.”
“Yes, yes, she is perfect, that is understood. She is the betrothedof yesterday, a stage of being which touches the seraphic. But what will you do with her father, and what will you do with her sisters?”
“Her sisters are very good girls, and I hope to treat them in a not unbrotherly fashion. As for her father—there, though the obligation is small, I grant the difficulty may be great. However, I shall know how to cope with it. No miner ever thought to get gold without some intermixture of quartz. The Colonel shall be to me as the gold-digger’s quartz. I shall get rid of him as speedily as I can.”
Through all that Easter week Vansittart lived in the blissful dream which beginneth every man’s betrothal. At such a time as this the dumpiest damsel of the milkmaid type is as fair as she who brought slaughter and burning upon Troy; but for Vansittart’s abject condition there was the excuse of undeniable beauty, and a charm of manner which even village gossip had never disputed. The young ladies who condemned the Miss Marchants en bloc as “bad style” had been fain to confess that Eve had winning ways, which made one almost forgive her cheap boots and mended gloves.
Vansittart was happy. He had promised to join his mother in Charles Street on the Wednesday after Easter; but he wrote to her apologetically on Tuesday, deferring his arrival till the beginning of the following week—and the beginning of a week is a term so lax that it is sometimes made to mean Wednesday.
He was utterly happy. His mother’s letter received on Tuesday morning was grave and kindly, and in no way damped his ardour.
“You have been so good a son to me, my dear Jack, that I should be hard and ungrateful if I murmured at your choice, although that choice has serious drawbacks in surrounding circumstances. You are too honest and frank and true yourself not to be able to distinguish the difference between realities and semblances. I do not doubt, therefore, that your pretty Eve is all you think her. She certainly is a graceful and gracious creature, with a delicate prettiness of the wild rose type, which I prefer greatly to the azalea or the camellia order of beauty. She cannot fail to love you—nor can she fail to be deeply grateful to you for having rescued her from shabby surroundings and a neglectful father. God grant that this step which you have taken—the most solemn act in a man’s life—may bring you the happiness which the marriage of true minds must always bring.”
There was much more, the outpouring of a mother’s love, which ran away with the mother’s pen, and covered three sheets of paper; but even this long letter did not suffice without a postscript.
“P.S.—Miss Marchant spoke to me—incidentally—of a brother, and from her evident embarrassment I fear that the brother is as undesirable a connection as the father. It would be well that youshould know all that is to be known about him before he becomes your brother-in-law; so as to avoid unpleasant surprises in the future.”
Happily the idea of this brother’s existence was already familiar. In their first ramble together as engaged lovers Eve had told Vansittart a great deal about her brother. She dwelt with the younger sister’s fond admiration upon his youthful gifts, which seemed to be chiefly of the athletic order; his riding, his shooting, his rowing, his running: in all which exercises he appeared to have excelled. At Cambridge his chief sins, as Eve knew them, had been tandem driving, riding in steeplechases, with frequent absences at Newmarket. Whatever darker sins had distinguished his college career were but dimly suspected by Eve.
“My father was very proud of him while he was a boy,” Eve told her lover, “but when he grew up, and began to spend money, they were always quarrelling. Poor mother! It was so sad to see her between them—loving them both, and trying to be loyal to both; her poor heart torn asunder in the struggle.”
“And he was fond of you, this brother of yours?” questioned Vansittart, to whom such fondness seemed a redeeming virtue.
“Yes, he was very fond of me; he was always good to me. When there was unhappiness in the dining-room and drawing-room—when Harold was what father called sulky—he used to come to the schoolroom, and sit over the fire roasting chestnuts all the evening. He would go without his dinner rather than sit down with father, and would have some supper brought to the schoolroom at ten o’clock, and my good old governess and I used to share his supper and wait upon him. What merry suppers they were! I was too thoughtless to consider that his being with us meant bad blood between him and father, and unhappiness for my poor mother. She used to look in at the schoolroom door sometimes, and shake her head, and call us naughty children; but I know it was a relief to her to see him eating and drinking and laughing and talking with dear little Mütterchen and me. But I am tiring you with these childish reminiscences.”
“No, love; there is no detail in your past life so trifling that I would not care to know it. I want to feel as if I had known you from your cradle. We will go to see the old place near Beverley some day, if you like, and you shall show me the gardens where you played, the rooms in which you lived. One can always get into another man’s house by a little management.”
That Easter week was a time of loveliest weather. Even the sun and the winds were gracious to these happy lovers, and for them April put on the bloom of May. Vansittart spent almost all his days at the Homestead, or rambling with the sisters, Eve and hewalking side by side, engrossed in each other’s company, as if the world held no one else—the sisters ahead of them or in the rear, as caprice dictated.
Every lane and thicket and hillside between Fernhurst and Blackdown was explored in those happy wanderings; every pathway in Verdley Copse was trodden by those light footsteps; and Henley Hill and its old Roman village grew as familiar to Vansittart as Pall Mall and the clubs. They revelled in the primroses which carpeted all those woodland ways; they found the earliest bluebells, and many a hollow whitened with the fairy cups of the wood-anemone.
One morning, as they were walking over the soft brown carpet of fir needles and withered oak leaves in Verdley Copse, Vansittart opened a little dark-blue velvet box, and showed Eve a ring—a half-hoop of sapphires set with brilliants.
“I chose the colour in memory of the blue flower of happiness that you and I found on the hilltop,” he said, as he put the ring on the third finger of his sweetheart’s slender hand. “If ever you are inclined to be angry with me, or to care for me a little less than you do now, let the memory of the mystical blue flower plead for me, Eve, and the thought of how dearly we loved each other that Easter Sunday years and years ago.”
She gave a faint, shuddering sigh at the image those words evoked.
“Years and years ago! Will this day when we are young and happy ever be years and years ago? It seems so strange!”
“Age is strange and death is stranger; but they must come, Eve. All we have to hope for is that we may go on loving each other to the end.”
After those ramblings in the coppices and over the hill, there was afternoon tea at the Homestead—a feast for the gods. Colonel Marchant, well content with the progress of affairs, had gone to Brighton for the volunteer review, and was not expected home again till the end of the week; so the sisters were sovereign rulers of the house, and afternoon tea was the order of the day. It is doubtful whether dinner had any part in the scheme of their existence at this time. The short-petticoated youngsters generally carried some hunks of currant cake in a basket, and these hunks were occasionally shared with the elder sisters, and even with Vansittart, who went without his luncheon day after day, scarcely knowing that he had missed a meal. Then they all tramped home in their muddy boots—for however blue the sky and however dry the roads there was always plenty of mud in the copses—and then they all sat round the big loo table to what Hetty called a stodgy tea. Stodgy being interpreted meant a meal of cake and toast, and eggs, and bread and jam, and a succession of teapots. Vansittartonly left the Homestead in time to hurry back to Redwold and dress for dinner.
On the Thursday evening the Miss Marchants who were “out” were all bidden to dinner at Redwold, and were to be driven thither by that very fly which had broken down on the crest of the snowy hill. It was a grand occasion, for an invitation to dinner rarely found its way to the Homestead. Cards for garden-parties were the highest form of courtesy to which the Miss Marchants had hitherto been accustomed. And this dinner was to be a solemn affair, for Eve was to appear at it in all the importance of her position as Vansittart’s future wife. Mrs. Vansittart was coming from London for a night or two in order to be present at the festivity, which would be in a manner Eve’s formal acceptance as a member of the family.
It was only on Thursday morning that Vansittart discovered with some vexation that Sefton had been asked to this family dinner. Sir Hubert had met him, and had invited him in a casual way, having not the faintest idea that his society would be displeasing either to Eve or her lover. The first person Eve’s eyes lighted on when she and her sisters entered the drawing-room was Mr. Sefton. He was standing near the door, and she had to pass him on her way to her hostess. He stood waiting until Lady Hartley turned to greet the younger sisters, and then at once took possession of Eve.
“As an old friend I venture to congratulate you most warmly,” he said, holding her hand, after the inevitable shake-hands of old acquaintances. “You have done wonderfully well for yourself. It is really a brilliant match.”
“For me, you mean,” she said, looking at him with an angry light in her eyes. “Why don’t you finish your sentence, Mr. Sefton, and say, ‘for you, Miss Marchant, with your disadvantages’?”
“I am sorry I have offended you.”
“I don’t like to be told I have done well for myself. God has given me the love of a good man. If he were not Mr. Vansittart, but Mr. Smith with only a hundred a year, I should be just as happy.”
Vansittart, that moment approaching, overheard the familiar British patronymic. “What are you saying about Mr. Smith?” he said, remembering how two men, one the slain and the other the slayer, had hidden their identity under that name.
“I was only talking of an imaginary Smith,” she answered, her face lighting up as she turned to her lover. “There is no such person.”
“Come and look at the azaleas,” said Vansittart; “they are worth a visit;” and so, after the lover’s fashion, he who had only parted from her at six o’clock took her away to the conservatory at the other end of the room, and absorbed her into a solitude of azaleas and orange trees.
Mr. Sefton in the mean while was talking to Mrs. Vansittart, andnot having done over well with his congratulation of the future bride, now occupied himself in congratulating the elder lady upon the advantage of having secured so charming a daughter-in-law.
“I quite agree with you,” replied Mrs. Vansittart. “She is very pretty, and altogether charming. The match is not of my making, but I am pleased to see my son happy, and pleased to welcome so fair a daughter. You talk as if you were an old friend of the family. Have you known Colonel Marchant long?”
“Ever since he came to this neighbourhood, nine years ago. He has been good enough to accept any little shooting I have had to offer—and he and I have seen a good deal of each other. I knew his son before I knew him. Harold Marchant and I were at Trinity together.”
“Harold Marchant is dead, I conclude?”
“That is more than I or any of his friends can tell you. He is one of that numerous family—the lost tribe of society—the men who have dropped through.”
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“My dear Mrs. Vansittart, the less said about Harold Marchant the better. If he is dead the good old saying comes in—de mortuis. If he is alive I think the less you, or your son, or your daughter-in-law have to do with him the happier it will be for you.”
“Mr. Sefton, it is not fair to talk to me in this way. I am personally interested in Eve’s brother. What do you mean?”
“Only what I might mean about a good many young men who have lived within the walls that sheltered Bacon and Newton, Whewell and Macaulay. Harold Marchant’s career at Cambridge was a foolish career. Instead of devoting himself to the higher mathematics he gave himself up to hunting, horse-racing, and other amusement of a more dangerous order. He had to leave the University hurriedly—he had to leave the country still more hastily. He has never within my knowledge come back to England. Eve is, or was, passionately attached to him, and to gratify her I have taken a good deal of trouble in trying to find out his present whereabouts and mode of life; but without avail. It is nearly ten years since he left this country. He was then two and twenty years of age. He was last heard of more than five years ago with an exploring party in Mashonaland. He is exactly the kind of young man one would like to hear of in Central Africa, and intending to stay there!”
“Poor Eve; how sad for her!”
“But that is all over now. She has a new love, and will soon forget her brother.”
“I do not think she is so shallow as that.”
“Not shallow, but intense.”
Dinner was announced at this moment, and Sir Hubert came to offer Mrs. Vansittart his arm. He was to have his mother-in-law on his right hand and Eve on his left, and Mr. Sefton was to sit by his hostess on the other side of the table. This ended the conversation about Harold Marchant, and it was not renewed after dinner.