CHAPTER XI.

IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

The feeling of curiosity which had actuated Miss Deane in her desire to see her rival, as she called Eleanor Lloyd in her thoughts, had been almost as powerful as that which, for the time being, had made John Pomeroy its slave. When Miss Deane did see Eleanor, she could not help acknowledging to herself that Matthew Kelvin's violent passion for that lady was not without some justification. That Miss Lloyd was indeed very lovely, she at once admitted; for Olive was free from that common feminine failing which refuses to acknowledge that another, and more especially a rival, can be the possessor of superior charms, either of person or mind; and she told herself at once that, as far as mere good looks went, she could not hope to stand the slightest chance in a comparison with Miss Lloyd. So long as Miss Lloyd should remain unmarried, Matthew Kelvin would never look with serious eyes elsewhere; and Olive saw with a sort of savage satisfaction how quickly and readily Mr. John Pomeroy had fallen into the same toils in which the lawyer had been enmeshed before him. Her keen eyes saw that which was suspected by no one else--that a few short hours had indeed sufficed to seal Pomeroy's fate. So far everything had gone well with her; everything had answered her highest expectations. But when she looked on the other side of the question; when she came to ask herself, "Does this girl return this man's love?" she could not feel quite so sanguine as to the result. That Eleanor liked the company of John Pomeroy, and that his conversation interested her, Olive could see clearly enough. But liking is not love, though it is often a big stride on the road towards it. All that was left her to do was to hope for the best and to remain as quietly watchful as she had hitherto been.

Of all these plottings and counter-plottings that were going on under her very nose, poor innocent Lady Dudgeon dreamt nothing. She had long ago made up her mind that her ensuing season in town should be fruitful of much pleasure and much enjoyment to her. But chief of all the pleasures that she looked forward to was that of assisting her darling Eleanor to select--or, better still, of selecting for her--a suitable partner for life. She had not been more than a fortnight in Harley Street before she began to cast wary eyes around, and to make cautious inquiries here and there with respect to the pretensions and positions of certain individuals who, even thus early, had evinced a generous alacrity to sell themselves for life for the sake of twenty thousand pounds--the young lady who was tacked to the money being of course thrown in as an unavoidable necessity.

The interest shown by Lady Dudgeon in the fortunes of Miss Lloyd had its origin in a feeling that dated from the time when Eleanor was little more than a mere child. At the risk of his own life, Jacob Lloyd had succeeded in stopping her ladyship's ponies one day when they were running away with her, and making in a straight line for a very deep gravel-pit that may still be seen close by the edge of Dingley Common. Jacob having been considerably bruised and knocked about in his struggle with the ponies, Lady Dudgeon could do no less than call several times at Bridgeley to inquire after his health. There it was that she first saw Eleanor, at that time a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed child of eight, in short frocks and pinafores. She drew the child to her, looked her fixedly in the face for a moment or two, and then stooped and kissed her. Impulsive Nelly at once flung her arms round Lady Dudgeon's neck. "You _are_ pretty, and I _do_ love you!" she cried; and from that moment her ladyship's heart was won. She would insist upon taking Nelly back to Stammars, and that first visit was but the precursor of several others.

Lady Dudgeon was generally looked upon as a cold-mannered, unimpressionable sort of person, and her strange partiality for Mr. Lloyd's daughter was a surprise to all who knew her--to her husband as much as anyone. But Sir Thomas was eminently good-natured, and he yielded to his wife's whim in this respect as in everything else. Before long, indeed, he grew almost as fond of his Bonnybell, as he called her, as Lady Dudgeon herself. Having no children of his own at this time, he liked very well to have Eleanor about him--he liked to have her tugging at his coat-tails, or banging on his arm, or sitting in front of him on his pony as he rode about the fields looking at his crops or watching his labourers at work.

Even as a child there was about Eleanor Lloyd a native distinction of manner that few people failed to observe. Combined with this was a sweet, fearless freedom--like the fearlessness of a fawn--that sprung from a total unconsciousness of self, and that charmed without being aware of its own existence. At ten years of age Eleanor felt as much at home in Lady Dudgeon's drawing-room, among Lady Dudgeon's fine company, as she did when helping Biddy to make a custard in the kitchen.

Lady Dudgeon's liking for Eleanor did not lessen with years. The child was a frequent visitor at Stammars up to the time that she was sent to Germany to finish her education. And when her two years of absence were over, and she was back again at home, the intercourse was at once resumed, although by this time Lady Dudgeon had two young daughters of her own. After the sudden death of Jacob Lloyd, and the announcement that Eleanor had come into a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, there seemed all the more reason why the bond of intimacy should be drawn still closer: and no one was surprised when it was given out that Miss Lloyd had, for the present, accepted Lady Dudgeon's invitation to live with her at Stammars.

A day or two before the departure of the family for Harley Street, Lady Dudgeon called Eleanor into her bedroom. "My dear," she said, "I am going to show you something that you have never seen before--something that no eyes but my own have seen for years. To you they may, perhaps, seem hardly worth keeping, but they are very precious to me."

She opened a drawer as she spoke, the contents of which were covered with several layers of tissue-paper. When the paper had been carefully removed, there were displayed to Eleanor's view several articles that had evidently belonged to a child. There was a little crimson frock and a sash, a pair of tiny shoes, a broken doll, and part of a necklace of coral beads. Eleanor looked up wonderingly. For the first time in her life she saw tears in the eyes of Lady Dudgeon. "They belonged to my little daughter, whom I lost before I ever saw you. She died when she was four years old. She would just have been your age had she lived. Like you, she was fair and had blue eyes. That first day when I saw you at your father's, it almost seemed to me as if my own lost darling had come back again. I could not help loving you then, dear, and I have loved you ever since."

From the first moment that Gerald Warburton set eyes on Eleanor Lloyd, he made up his mind that, if it were in the possibility of things to do so, he would make her his wife, and from that determination he had never wavered. The more he saw of her the more settled became his conviction that he had never really loved till now. Flirtations he had had, and little love-smarts in plenty. Many a pleasant face had haunted his dreams for a night or two, but never for longer. In his writing-desk were two or three crumpled gloves, a ribbon or two, and at least half a dozen cartes-de-visite: tokens all, as he sometimes said to himself, of how hard he had tried to love, of how often he had fancied himself to be in love, and of the very short space of time it had taken him to discover either what an ass he had made of himself, or what an ass some girl had made of him. Such mementoes are not without a certain amount of instructiveness. Gerald looked upon them in the light of warnings. "How terrible and strange it is to think," he said to himself one day, "that each one of these gages d'amour represents a most foolish moment in my life, a moment that might have been the turning-point of my existence: such a moment as has been the turning-point of many a man's existence! How well one knows the history of such relics A pair of bright eyes, a waltz, a glass of champagne, a glove or a ribbon dropped by accident or design; or else a moonlight ramble capped with some poet's soft nonsense, and a little hand nestling timidly under your arm. Then comes a pressure of the tiny hand, an appealing glance into the bright eyes, a whispered word, and unless your enslaver does not really care for you--in which case nothing but your vanity suffers--your fate is sealed, and the chances are that you wake up next morning to find that, for the sake of an hour's foolish romance, you have bound yourself for life to a person for whom in your heart, you don't care the price of a box of cigars."

So moralized Gerald, as he took his relics out of their resting-place for the last time and dropped them quietly, one by one, into the fire. Without a single pang he saw them flare and shrivel into ashes. Let the dead past bury its dead.

No doubt ever clouded his mind as to the strength and reality of that passion which in these latter days had taken possession of his heart. It was no mere will-o'-the-wisp, to be followed with passionate footsteps through brake and morass, but the Planet of Love itself, serene and beautiful: the lodestar of his life and fortune shining down on him at last with a light that nothing but death could ever again eclipse.

Since that first meeting with Eleanor he had made it his business to see as much of her as the exigencies of his position would allow of his doing. Except when they had company, he generally dined with Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon. He had the happy knack of being able to select topics of conversation that had an interest for both of them. He did his best to please them, and he succeeded, simply that he might be able thereby to see more of Miss Lloyd than he could otherwise have hoped to do. The peculiar circumstances under which Eleanor and he had first met had done more to break the ice between them than a month of ordinary intercourse would have done; besides which, it had supplied them with a subject for conversation that Eleanor seemed never to grow tired of, and one in which our artful Gerald feigned a far deeper interest than he really felt.

Days and weeks had come and gone, and he was still as undecided as ever what steps to take in the matter of the sealed packet. Kelvin still maintained his mysterious silence. Gerald had said to himself that, after having been at Stammars for a little while, after having seen and made the acquaintance of Eleanor, should Kelvin not then have spoken, he would write to him in his real name, and demand some explanation of his unaccountable silence. This would at once force matters to a climax, and he, Gerald, would then be able, in the natural course of events, to assume his proper name and position. But day by day was flitting away, and he still neglected to take this very obvious course. As matters had turned out, he shrank from doing so. He loved this girl with all the strength of his ardent temperament. Should he declare himself, such a declaration would take from her all that she had hitherto deemed her own, all that was most dear to her in life: name, wealth, position--everything. Should his be the hand to knowingly strike her such a blow? The more he thought of it, the more hateful such a proceeding seemed to him. He could never hope to see Love's sweet light dawn in those beautiful eyes were he to smite her thus. And then how much more precious to him would it be to win her love for his own sake, to win it as a poor man, to fight for her against the host of other suitors who would surely come when they should discover what a golden prize was there for the winning; to say no word to her of this thing, but to let her rest in blissful ignorance till their wedding day was come. After that, she might, perchance, learn to love him all the more for his long silence. Thus it was that Gerald argued with himself, and thus it was that to the world at large he was still known as John Pomeroy, secretary to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, at an honorarium of one hundred and fifty guineas per annum.

As Gerald was strolling quietly through Kensington Gardens one day between luncheon and dinner, he was met by Eleanor, who was coming from an opposite direction. They shook hands, and Gerald turned and walked back with her.

"What are you meditating this morning?" asked Eleanor. "A sonnet, or another speech on the Sugar Duties?" She had seen and heard enough to know from what fount it was that Sir Thomas derived the stream of his Parliamentary eloquence.

"Neither anything so sentimental on the one hand, nor anything so prosaic on the other," answered Gerald. "I was better employed in listening to the birds, and in marking how the brown buds were here and there beginning to open themselves to the sun."

"You are easily satisfied. I should have thought that the Ride would have had more attractions for you."

"Not at all. In London, humanity is so plentiful that trees and birds seem sometimes the best of company. In the country, where trees and birds are so common, a fresh face is sometimes a godsend."

"But you, who have been so accustomed to change--to seeing fresh faces and visiting strange places--must surely find it both dull and tedious to spend your days among blue-books and parliamentary reports, wading through columns of dreary statistics, and concocting speeches which another than yourself will deliver?"

"I did find it both dull and tedious at first, but I don't find it so now."

"And why do you not find it so now?"

He would have liked to answer: "Because your presence here has made my work glad. Because I could count no work as slavery if through it I were brought into contact with you. Because, since I have learned to love you, life has assumed for me an altogether different complexion from that which it wore before--is imbued with altogether different purposes and ambitions." But the time was not yet ripe for him to say all this, or even part of it. Some more commonplace answer must be found to her question.

"I think," said he, "it must be because human motives and human purposes are so intimately mingled with the dry bones of politics, that politics exercise such a strange fascination over nearly everyone who is brought into close contact with them. Certainly to me, and that no very long time ago, they seemed the dryest and most uninteresting study to which a man could devote his time."

"But you have seen reason to change your opinion since then?" said Eleanor.

"I have," said Gerald, emphatically. "From the moment I leapt into the arena--from the moment that I ceased to be a looker-on and became a gladiator myself--in the very humblest of positions though it was--my blood seemed to warm to the struggle. I buckled my armour round me with gladness at the thought that I was about to contend with shapes of bone and sinew; that my life need no longer have to content itself with pottering about among the petty dilettanteisms of Art, while never quite certain in my own mind whether it was Nature's intention that I should develop into a man of genius or degenerate into a blockhead."

Eleanor laughed. "Then you think you have found your right groove at last," she said.

"As to the right groove, I don't know that this particular one is better for me than any other in which there would be earnest work to do in which I could take a hearty interest. Certainly I have come to find a degree of interest in what I am now doing that could surprise no one more than it does myself."

"You ought to be in Parliament yourself, Mr. Pomeroy, instead of filling the anomalous position you do now."

"One must learn to creep before one can walk," said Gerald, with a shrug.

"But some people never get beyond creeping.----If I were a man, I should certainly strive to get into Parliament," added Eleanor, a minute or two later. "How easy it is for a man to have a noble ambition!"

"Then you like a man to be ambitious?"

"I could certainly never look up to anyone who was not so."

"I am afraid that you aim your arrow too high for these commonplace days. There are many kinds of ambition that a man may occupy himself with, and yet none of them may be really ignoble: Sir Thomas Dudgeon's, for instance. It is his ambition to breed superior sheep and oxen--and it is decidedly for our benefit that he should do so. I have a friend in Paris who has a crippled sister, and the object of his ambition is the invention of an invalid's chair that shall be superior to any other. These are not large ambitions, but they are certainly very laudable ones."

"If you know the object of a man's ambition, cannot you from that gauge, to a certain extent at least, the quality of his mind?"

"Undoubtedly you can, to a certain extent, as you say. But there are many men who keep their ambitious dreams to themselves as closely as they do their bankbook. When such a man dies, the general verdict is that he might have succeeded very much better in life if he had only had a little more ambition, whereas the probability is that he succeeded so ill because he had too much ambition."

"I hardly follow you," said Eleanor.

"Let us say that such a man's ambition was to stand on the topmost pinnacle of the Jungfrau; and because he felt that he had neither the strength nor the skill requisite to carve his way step by step to the summit, rather than content himself with any lesser altitude, he preferred to sit quietly down, dumb and disappointed, among the ignoble crowd at the bottom."

They walked on for a little while in silence. Gerald kept feasting himself with little side glances at Eleanor's face. And it was a face well worth looking at. A delicate, slightly aquiline nose; two eyes of the deepest and tenderest blue, that put you in mind of an April sky when the clouds have divided after a shower; and massive coils of rich flaxen hair that seemed full of stolen sunshine. Her upper lip had a chiselled fineness of curve and outline rarely found among English women, and this feature it was that gave a special distinction to the character of her face. But far before everything else was a prevailing sweetness of expression--a sweetness that was without insipidity, that only served to heighten that delicate verve--the outcome of an ardent and generous nature--which shone through everything she said and did. She had a small basket on her arm this morning, for she had her pensioners already, and was returning from visiting two of them: a poor old orange woman who had broken her arm through slipping on the ice; and a young mother whose husband lay ill of a fever in the hospital. Gerald, glancing now and again into the beautiful face beside him, felt his heart thrill strangely. He would have dearly liked to fling his arms about her and print a thousand kisses on her lips.

"What is the latest news of the little waif?" asked Gerald suddenly, after a pause.

"I have no news other than that which you know already."

"Then she has not been claimed?"

"No. She is still under Mrs. Nixon's care."

"It is not at all likely that anyone will now come forward and claim her."

"I hope with all my heart that they won't. Those to whom she belonged left her to be found by a stranger, or to perish; and after such an act as that they can hardly want to reclaim her."

"I should think that they would hardly dare do so."

"The law would surely punish a deed so detestable. But I have little fear of anyone coming forward. I feel that the child belongs to me, and to me alone."

"Have I, then, no share in her?" asked Gerald, with a smile.

"It was agreed that you should give your share over to me," answered Eleanor.

"I may at least be allowed to feel a little interest in the child's future fortunes?"

"As deep an interest as you like. You are her preserver, and yours shall be the first name that she shall be taught to speak. But for all that, you must let me claim her as altogether my own."

"Oh, with all my heart. I should make a very poor guardian, I am afraid, for such a wee morsel of humanity."

"I have regular accounts from Mrs. Nixon every two or three days, and next week I am going down to Stammars to see her."

"I wish she only thought half as much of me as she does of that young customer down at Stammars!" said Gerald, rather disconsolately, to himself, when he had parted from Eleanor.

"What has come over you, child?" said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor, two or three days afterwards. "This is the third time this morning that I have caught you in a day-dream. Anyone who did not know better, would certainly say that you were in love."

"Then they would certainly say what was not true," said Eleanor, with a blush and a smile.

"I hope so, I am sure," said her ladyship, emphatically. "I don't think your time has come yet, dear."

Eleanor was used to Lady Dudgeon's phraseology, and did not reply.

No; she certainly was not in love, she said to herself. But it was rather strange how often Mr. Pomeroy had been in her thoughts of late. She had caught herself thinking about him several times: daydreaming, Lady Dudgeon called it. And why should she not think about him? she asked herself. He interested her. There was about him something different from anyone she had ever met before. If only she could have assisted him to get into Parliament, how happy that would have made her! Despite his careless, easy way of talking, she felt sure that he was ambitious. But with only a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and no friends to push him forward, a man's ambitious dreams must perforce be buried in his heart. If only she could endow him with some portion of her wealth!---- But here she broke off with a blush, and made up her mind that for the future she would not think quite so much about Mr. Pomeroy. "I must remember that I am not to think quite so much about him," she said to herself. But the very fact of having to remember this had only the effect of bringing his image more frequently to her mind.