V
MORRIS SEVERING reappears in these pages, after an indifferently successful but lighthearted career at Oxford, not as a disappointed genius, but as an extremely good-looking young man, in love with life, with his own universal popularity, and with the goddess of music.
That he should seriously fall in love with a more earthly divinity was at once Nina’s hope and her terror. She watched the three little girls at Porthlew growing up rapidly, and spent the long vacations with her son abroad or in London. He was very little at Pensevern until the summer when Mrs. Tregaskis took Hazel and Rosamund to London.
Frances Grantham, only sixteen, and delicate, remained at Porthlew with Miss Blandflower “to keep Cousin Frederick company,” Mrs. Tregaskis told her.
Nina was not very much afraid that her son would fall in love with Frances. She was pretty, in a slender, classical style, but lacking in vitality, and though she came up to Pensevern and played tennis and, occasionally, golf, with Morris, she did so with the curious lack of conviction that was characteristic of her dealings with the material world.
From a psychological point of view Frances was infinitely more mature than Rosamund, passionate and unbalanced, or than Hazel, possessed of a sense of humour (which both sisters lacked almost completely), and charming withal; but Nina Severing, with great acumen, decided that only Frances could safely be promoted to the rank of “my little favourite.”
Her little favourite, being idealistic and impressionable, conceived a youthful adoration for Nina’s gentle tones, appealing prettiness, and tuneful graces, and refrained, with a completeness which spoke highly for Nina’s judgment, from transferring any of that adoration to Nina’s son.
As for Morris, it was enough that he once heard Frances Grantham, with transparent sincerity, observe that the modern music she liked best was Mrs. Severing’s highly successful setting of half a dozennouveau genrelyrics, entitled “Underworld.”
“It’s rather odd that only one of them should have inherited the mother’s gift,” observed Nina thoughtfully, after this. “Of course she’s no performer, but that curious instinct forthe right thingis absolutely inborn.”
“I didn’t know Rosamund was musical,” said Morris, purposely and viciously misunderstanding his parent, and moreover making it perfectly clear to that parent’s acute perceptions why he did so. She set her lips together and assumed the look of pale self-control that habitually prefaced her most bitter shafts.
“I’m just telling you thatFrancesis the only one of the two who has any music in her. Rosamund is absolutely devoid of it. If you had any spark of the Divine Fire in you, my dear boy, you could not have helped recognizing it in little Frances, even though she can hardly play a note. But, after all, one doesn’t expect much perception from youth.”
She murmured the last words as though to herself, which added considerably to their effect.
Morris, who was seldom able to think of any satisfactory repartee to his mother’s favourite gibe, hastily decided that a good-humoured indifference would best refute it. He gave a slight laugh, shrugged his shoulders so as to make quite sure that Nina did not miss the point of the laugh, and observed lightly:
“I hear Hazel Tregaskis sings delightfully. She always was good, even as a kid.”
“Quite good,” agreed Nina, with that air of condescension best calculated to irritate her son. “Her voice is a charming one, but, of course, she has tolivebefore she can reallysing.” She hesitated for an instant, since the obvious slighting allusion to youth could hardly be brought in without some appearance of repeating a good effectad nauseam.
Morris, with his usual fatal perception, instantly took advantage of her slightly disconcerted pause, for which he perfectly grasped the reason, to say pleasantly: “I shall be able to judge when I hear her.” Upon which, having established his own perfect competence to form an independent opinion, he hastily left the room.
That night they went to dinner at Porthlew, and he heard Hazel Tregaskis sing.
Her voice, as Nina had said, was charming, and she played her own accompaniments.
Nina sat well in the lamplight, an absorbed, dreamy look on her face, and her long, slight fingers slowly twisting her wedding ring, with a gesture which through long years of conscious pathos, had become habitual to her. Frederick Tregaskis, smaller and more wizened than ever, was frankly asleep in an armchair. His wife, devotedly knitting socks, yet contrived to present an attitude of critical intentness for her daughter’s performance.
Frances was sitting at the open window, her pure, vague gaze fixed unseeingly on the darkened garden without. Morris scarcely glanced at her a moment.
His eyes sought Rosamund, who had been beside him at dinner.
She was sitting, very still, just outside the circle of light cast by the great standard lamp. Morris had already noticed her capacity for extreme stillness, oddly at variance with the restless questing spirit that looked out of her grey eyes, and certain vibrant tones of her singularly beautiful speaking-voice. Watching her motionless profile, Morris thought that the Slavonic type was strangely emphasized in the sharply defined moulding of the salient cheek-bones, sulkily closed lips, and straight black brows. Her skin was very white, and her brown hair thick and silky. Morris thought her very beautiful.
He wondered what her thoughts were, as she leant back in her low chair, immovable. Presently, with that sureness of intuition which is at once a pitfall and a safeguard, Morrisperceived that she was listening—intently, with every fibre of her being drawn tense.
Hazel’s voice was a soprano of no great compass, well-trained, and with an indefinably pathetic quality which gave it charm, but the drawing-room ballads she had chosen to give them seemed to Morris trivial in the extreme. He had hardly been listening.
He wondered what Rosamund Grantham heard in the clear soft notes.
When Hazel had sung once or twice, and had received Nina Severing’s judicious comments with a sort of half-mocking deference that recalled her father’s manner, she turned to Morris.
“Now you’ll play to us, won’t you?” she appealed.
“Do,” cried Bertha heartily. “I haven’t heard you for years, Morris.”
“His execution has improved, of course,” remarked Nina, who was fond of discussing her son’s music in his own presence.
“Bodmin teaching is not all it might be,” was the retort of Morris, addressed to Mrs. Tregaskis. “I’ve had to do the best I can by myself.”
“My dear boy!” protested his mother, with a laugh that to her son’s practised ear betrayed annoyance. “As though you hadn’t had the best lessons obtainable in Paris!”
“Half a dozen—oh yes. They certainly helped me to carry on alone afterwards.”
“You’ve had your mother to help you, my boy; mustn’t forget that,” suddenly said Frederick Tregaskis from his corner. He chuckled a little: “Mustn’t forget that.”
“Doplay something to us, Morris,” interposed Hazel quickly. She looked at him with the eternal laugh dancing in her pretty eyes.
But Morris had turned to Rosamund.
“Shall I?” he asked her, aware of the subtlety of such an appeal.
“Yes,” she said gently, looking at him.
Morris possessed an almost irresistible attraction, one which is sometimes the attribute of weak natures—an exceedingly direct gaze.
He looked straight at Rosamund, and his eyes smiled at her.
“Then I am going to play to you,” he said under his breath, with the lightest possible emphasis. He turned to the piano at once, but not before he had seen the colour surge up into her face.
He gave them the gayest, wildest, most heartrending of Brahms’ Hungarian dances. When he ceased there was silence for a moment. Nina Severing turned so that the lamplight fell on her long lashes, sparkling a little with tears. She always cried a little at music which deserved to be called good, and she had never heard Morris play so well.
“Thank you, Morris,” said Bertha, less exuberantly than usual. “That’s a glorious thing—always rouses the gipsy in me. It’s so full of life and joy and ecstasy.”
“There is something curiouslypoignantunderneath that ecstasy,” murmured Nina, partly to account for the sparkle on her eyelashes and partly to make it clear that Bertie did not by any means know all that there was to be known about Brahms.
“Thank you very much,” softly said Hazel, elliptical, after the fashion of the modern generation.
“It’s your turn again now. Please sing this,” he said, with an engaging mixture of supplication and command in his tone.
He had picked up one of the songs strewing the table, almost at random, but she took it without demur, and advanced to the piano. Under cover of the opening bars he moved straight to where Rosamund sat in the shadow.
His eyes sought hers, with a question in them. For a minute she remained quite still, her dark head bent. Then she raised it, and he saw that her eyes were blazing with intense excitement. “Oh it’s glorious,” she breathed, “to be able to play like that! It takes one right away from—allthis.” She looked contemptuously at her surroundings.
“Do you care so very much?” he asked under his breath. “Is music all that to you?”
“But I’m not musical,” she said with defiant honesty. “It only makes me forget everything else.”
Understanding flashed into Morris’s expressive face. At the same instant Nina turned towards him with a sharp hissing sound of distress and a prolonged “Hush-sh—Morris.”
He was silent instantly.
When Hazel’s song was over Nina Severing asked for her motor.
“It has been so nice, dearest,” she murmured, embracing her hostess. “I’ve missed you too dreadfully all the summer, and now you’ll be off again in a week, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, escorting my two young gadabouts to various country houses. I’m an old-fashioned woman, and don’t let my girls stay away alone, you know, unless I’m very sure of the house they’re going to. One would prefer one’s own chimney-corner, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.”
She laughed cheerily.
“For the matter of that,” cut in Hazel incisively, “I should much prefer the chimney-corner myself, mother, and so would Rosamund. You know how we’ve begged you to let us spend the autumn here in peace.”
“Oh yes, yes, yes,” scoffed her mother good-humouredly. “I’ve heard little girls say that before, my darling.”
Nina, too, laughed softly.
“We mothers make our sacrifices for these young things in spite of themselves,” she declared lightly. “Good-night, Hazel. I hear you dance better than any girl in London. Make the most of your time, my dear. Good-night, Francie dear. Why, you’ve been as quiet as a little mouse all the evening. It’s very hard to play Cinderella, isn’t it, with your two ugly sisters going to the Ball every night?”
They all laughed as though the time-worn allusion hadnot been made with almost daily regularity by Miss Blandflower.
Frederick opened the door and Nina swept gracefully into the hall. Frances ran eagerly for her cloak, and the others came out more slowly.
On the dark threshold of the porch Morris spoke to Rosamund.
“I want to see you—I want to talk to you,” he said urgently. “Can’t I play to you again—just to you all alone? Though for the matter of that I played that Brahms to you. You did know, didn’t you?”
He spoke with an odd inconsequence that was characteristic of his ardent, eager temperament.
“I thought perhaps you did,” she murmured, not coquettishly, but almost sadly, with a sort of uncertainty in her voice.
“Can’t I come over to-morrow? I must come. Where shall I find you?”
“Where’s Morris?” called Bertha Tregaskis.
“Coming,” he cried, and gave Rosamund one look before dashing into the hall.
She did not speak to him again, but he held her hand for an instant at parting and said “Good-night, Rosamund,” blessing the wonderful privilege of childhood which had allowed him always to use her Christian name.
Only a week and she would have gone away again! But doubt and diffidence were almost equally strangers to Morris, and he wove illimitable dreams into that space of eight days as he drove from Porthlew to Pensevern in the dark of an August night.
The following afternoon he went to find Rosamund. She had given him no trysting-place—had not even said that he might come—but Morris knew no uncertainty. He did not go to the house, but sought the shade of the terrace, and found her alone, in the short avenue that led to Bertha’s cherished rock-garden.
She was even paler than usual as she gave him her hand, and Morris, with the intuition that was always his surest guide, greeted her very gently and gravely.
“Where were you going to?” he asked. “May I come with you?”
“I was going into the orchard. It’s cooler there. The others have gone out.”
Morris did not dare to ask her why she had not gone with them. He longed to hear her make the admission that she had been waiting for him, but contented himself with walking beside her in silence as she directed her steps towards the sloping paddock that had been converted into an orchard.
There was a wooden bench set in the furthest corner, and Rosamund sat down there without speaking. Morris flung himself upon the grass.
There was silence.
Then Morris, looking up at her, said:
“Tell me about everything. Everything that the Hungarian dance made you feel last night, and why you say that you’re not musical, and—everything.”
She did not tell him everything. But she told him, with a curious mixture of childish simplicity and of a most unchildish vehemence, a great deal; more even than she knew.
Morris listened, understood in a sort of passion of sympathy, and looked all the while at her beautiful, unsmiling face.
He noticed that she was strangely impersonal. She hardly spoke of people at all, except once, when she said, “I have always got Francie. I love her better than anyone in the world.” Of her guardian she did not say anything. But a lesser intuition than that of Morris Severing would have felt an intense rebelliousness to be the keynote of her whole life at Porthlew.
The magic afternoon sped by, and the shadows lengthened across the grass.
Hazel Tregaskis called “Rosamund!” from the terrace, and they looked at one another with eyes that had suddenly awakened to another reality.
Morris sprang to his feet.
“Thank you, Rosamund,” he said softly.
Suddenly the laugh appeared again in his blue eyes.
“Do you know, we’ve known one another four—five—years, and I’ve never reallyfoundyou till last night!”
“I don’t think I found myself till you played the Hungarian dance,” Rosamund told him seriously.
Hazel did not express any surprise at seeing Morris Severing. He surmised that she would not often express surprise. The charming assurance which characterized her seemed to imply that Hazel Tregaskis would accept or ignore very much as she chose, with little or no reference to any standards but her own.
“Have you come to tea, Morris?” she inquired easily. “Mother’s on the terrace. Isn’t it a shame to think of leaving the garden and everything next week?”
“Yes,” said Morris energetically. “It’s perfectly rotten. Where are you going? Must you go?”
“I suppose so,” she returned, shrugging her shoulders. “We’ve both told mother how much we should prefer to refuse invitations to shooting-parties, but she won’t hear of it.”
“You’ll enjoy them when you’re there,” morosely remarked Morris, with a sudden vision of Rosamund watching some ass bringing down partridges by the dozen. Morris was not a good shot.
“That’s the worst of it!” cried Hazel with mock pathos. “Of course I shall! I always do enjoy going anywhere, and then mother says, ‘What did I tell you?’ Now Rosamund at least has the satisfaction of being consistent. She is quite genuinely bored wherever we go. She didn’t even enjoy going to dances.”
Morris looked much relieved.
“Didn’t you really?” he asked Rosamund.
“Not much,” she admitted.
It was the last satisfaction that he obtained that afternoon. Mrs. Tregaskis, with a readiness born of long habit, made her guest useful by requesting him to roll the tennis lawn, while Rosamund and Frances hunted languidly amongst the bushes for tennis balls lost the previous afternoon. Hazel had prudently disappeared.
“Economy, economy!” shouted Mrs. Tregaskis blithely, and hacked with a racquet at the long grass concealing the roots amongst which possible tennis balls might be imbedded.
Morris wondered if the same admirable virtue caused his hostess to refrain from inviting him to stay and dine at Porthlew that evening, but when she showed no such inclination at seven o’clock he felt obliged to exclaim:
“I say, how late it is! I must be getting back.”
“Give my love to your mother,” said Bertha cordially. “She must come over again before we go up North.”
“I’ll drive her over,” declared Morris with alacrity. “Good-bye.”
All that evening he was haunted by Rosamund’s deep eyes, by the sound of her sweet, serious voice. He told himself exultantly that he had met his ideal, and that he, and he alone was capable of loving her as she should be loved. He also cursed himself as a cold-blooded fool for not having told her then and there of his love. What senseless scruple had restrained him? He resolved to see her again the next day.
Rosamund, that night, lay awake till dawn in an excitement that was as utterly out of proportion as were all her emotions. She told herself, in pure and single-minded earnestness, that this, which was to transmute her life to gold, was different to anything else in the world.
Morris, who had fallen in love before, also told himself, with fiery determination, thatthiswas different to anything else in the world.