Chapter 8

"You _don't_, then," said Lavendar to himself. Down, down, down at the bottom of the well of the heart where truth lies, there is always some remembrance, generally a very little one, that can never be told to any confidant.

"You will find out faults in Mrs. Loring presently, just like the rest of them," continued the pitiless writer. (Amy's handwriting was painfully distinct.) "I must tell you that at the Cowleys' the other day, I suddenly came face to face with Gertrude Meredith _and Dolly_! Dolly looks a good deal older already and fatter, I thought. I fear she is losing her looks, for her colour has become fixed, and she _will_ wear no collars still, although on a rather thick neck, it's not at all becoming. I spoke to her for about three minutes, as it was less awkward, when we met suddenly face to face like that. She laughed a good deal, and asked for you rather audaciously, I thought. They live near Winchester now, and since the Colonel's death are pretty badly off, Gertrude says. Dolly is going to Devonshire to stay with the Cowleys; you may meet her there any day, remember. It does seem incredible to me that a man of your discrimination could have been won by the obvious devotion of a girl like Dolly; but having given your word I almost think you would better have kept it, rather than suffer all this criticism from a host of mutual friends."

Lavendar groaned aloud. He had a good memory, and with all too great distinctness did he now remember Dolly Meredith's laugh. How wretched it had all been; not a word had ever passed between them that had any value now. If he could have washed the thought of her forever from his memory, how greatly he would have rejoiced at that moment.

Well, it was over; written down against him, that he had been what the world called a jilt and a fool; yes, certainly a fool, but not so great a one as to follow his folly to its ultimate conclusion, and tie himself for life to a woman he did not love.

Lavendar was extraordinarily sensitive about the breaking of his engagement; partly because Miss Meredith herself, in her first rage, had avowed his responsibility for her blighted future, giving him no chance for chivalrous behaviour; partly because in all his transient love affairs he had easily tired of the women who inspired them. He seemed thirsty for love, but weary of it almost as soon as the draught reached his lips.

And now had he a chance again?--or was it all to end in disappointment once more, in that cold disappointment of the heart that has received stones for bread? It was not entirely his own fault; he had expected much from life, and hitherto had received very little. But Robinette!

"Let me find all her faults now," he said to himself, "or evermore keep silent; meantime I hope I am not concealing too many of my own."

He tried to force himself into criticism; to look at her as a cold observer from the outside would have done; for that curious Border country of Love which he had entered has not an equable climate at all. It is fire and frost alternate; and criticism is either roused almost to a morbid pitch, or else the faculty is drugged, and nothing, not even the enumeration of a hundred foibles will awaken it for a time.

When the cold fit had been upon him the evening before, Lavendar had said to himself that her manner was too free--that she had led him on too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish, too unthinking, in what she said and did. "But she's a widow after all, though she's only two and twenty," he went on to himself. "Hang it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband's grave I should be moaning at that; and because I see that it is not, I become critical. There's nothing quite perfect in life!"

He had begun by noticing some little defects in her personal appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles matter, here or there? Then he remembered all that he had heard said about American women. Did those pretty clothes of hers mean that she would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale.

"At seventy, say, when I am palsied and she is old and fat, will romance be alive then? Will such feeling leave anything real behind it when it falls away, as the white blossoms on Mrs. Prettyman's plum tree will shrink and fall a fortnight hence?"

He looked about him. On the walls of the little church were tablets with the de Tracy names; the names of her forefathers amongst them. Under his feet were other flags with names upon them too; and out there in the sunshine were the grave-stones of a hundred dead. How many of them had been happy in their loves?

Not so many, he thought, if all were told, and why should he hope to be different? Yet surely this was a new feeling, a worthy one, at last. It was not for her charming person that he loved her; not because of her beauty and her gaiety only; but because he had seen in her something that gave a promise of completion to his own nature, the something that would satisfy not only his senses but his empty heart.

He clenched his hands on the carved top of the old pew in front of him, which was fashioned into a laughing gnome with the body of a duck. "And if this should be all a dream," he asked himself again, "if this should all be false too! Good Lord!" he cried half aloud, "I want to be honest now! I want to find the truth. My whole life is on the throw this time!"

There was a moment's silence after he had uttered the words. He got up and moved slowly down the aisle, opening the door, seeing again the meadow of buttercups, yellow as gold, and listening again to the sparrows chirruping in the sunshine outside.

"I have been in that church a quarter of an hour," he said to himself, "and in trying to dive to the depths of myself and find out whether I was giving a woman all I had to give, I did not get time to consider that woman's probable answer, should I place my uninteresting life and liberty at her disposal."

XV

"NOW LUBIN IS AWAY"

Lavendar made his adieux after luncheon and went off to London. "Good-bye for the present, Mrs. de Tracy; I shall be back on Wednesday probably, if I can arrange it," he said. "Good-bye, Mrs. Loring," and here he altered the phrase to "Shall I come back on Wednesday?" for his hostess had left the open door.

There was no hesitation, but all too little sentiment, about Robinette's reply.

"Wednesday, at the latest, are my orders," she answered merrily, and with the words ringing in his ears Lavendar took his departure.

"Do you remember that this is the afternoon of the garden party at Revelsmere?" Mrs. de Tracy enquired, coming into the drawing room a few minutes later, where Mrs. Loring stood by the open window. She had allowed herself just five minutes of depression, staring out at the buttercup meadow. How black the rooks looked as they flew about it and how dreary everything was, now that Lavendar had gone! She was woman enough to be able to feel inwardly amused at her own absurdity, when she recognized that the ensuing three days seemed to stretch out into a limitless expanse of dullness. "The village seemed asleep or dead now Lubin was away!" Still, after all, it was an occasion for wearing a pretty frock, and she knew herself well enough to feel sure that the sight of a few of her fellow-creatures even pretending to enjoy themselves, would make her volatile spirits rise like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day.

Miss Smeardon was to be her companion, as Mrs. de Tracy had a headache that afternoon and was afraid of the heat, she said. "What heat?" Robinette had asked innocently, for in spite of the brilliant sunlight the wind blew from the east, keen as a knife. "I shall take a good wrap in the carriage in spite of this tropical temperature," she thought. Carnaby refused point blank to drive with them; he would bicycle to the party or else not go at all, so it was alone with Miss Smeardon that Robinette started in the heavy old landau behind the palsied horse.

Miss Smeardon gave one glance at Mrs. Loring's dress, and Robinette gave one glance at Miss Smeardon's, each making her own comments.

"That white cloth will go to the cleaner, I suppose, after one wearing, and as for that thing on her head with lilac wistaria drooping over the brim, it can't be meant as a covering, or a protection, either from sun or wind; it's nothing but an ornament!" Miss Smeardon commented; while to herself Robinette ejaculated,--

"A penwiper, an old, much-used penwiper, is all that Miss Smeardon resembles in that black rag!"

Carnaby, watching the start at the door, whistled in open admiration as Robinette came down the steps.

"Well, well! we are got up to kill this afternoon; pity old Mark has just gone; but cheer up, Cousin Robin, there's always a curate on hand!"

For once Robinette's ready tongue played her false, and a sense of loneliness overcame her at the sound of Lavendar's name. She gathered up her long white skirts and got into the carriage with as much dignity as she could muster, while Carnaby, his eyes twinkling with mischief, stood ready to shut the door after Miss Smeardon.

"Hope you'll enjoy your drive," he jeered. "You'll need to hold on your hats. Bucephalus goes at such fiery speed that they'll be torn off your heads unless you do."

"Middy dear, you're not the least amusing," said Robinette quite crossly, and with a lurch the carriage moved off.

Miss Smeardon settled herself for conversation. "I'm afraid you will find me but a dull companion, Mrs. Loring," she said, glancing sideways at Robinette from under the brim of her mushroom hat.

"Oh, you will be able to tell me who everyone is," said Robinette as cheerfully as she could.

"I am no gossip," Miss Smeardon protested.

"It isn't necessary to gossip, is it?--but I've a wholesome interest in my fellow creatures."

"And it is well to know about people a little; when one comes among strangers as you do, Mrs. Loring; one can't be too careful--an American, particularly."

Miss Smeardon's voice trailed off upon a note of insinuation; but Robinette took no notice of the remark. She did not seem to have anything to say, so Miss Smeardon took up another subject.

"What a pity that Mr. Lavendar had to leave before this afternoon; he would have been such an addition to our party!"

"Yes, wouldn't he?" Robinette agreed, though she carefully kept out of her voice the real passion of assent that was in her heart.

"Mr. Lavendar is so agreeable, I always think," Miss Smeardon went on. "Everyone likes him; he almost carries his pleasant ways too far. I suppose that was how--" She paused, and added again, "Oh, but as I said, I never talk scandal!"

"Do you think it's possible to be too pleasant?" Robinette remarked, stupidly enough, scarcely caring what she said.

"Well, when it leads a poor girl to imagine that she is loved! I hear that Dolly Meredith is just heart-broken. The engagement kept on for quite a year, I believe, and then to break it off so heartlessly!--I was reminded of it all by coming here. Miss Meredith is a cousin of our hostess, and they met first at Revelsmere when they were quite young."

"There is always a certain amount of talk when an engagement has to be broken off," said Robinette in a cold voice.

"They seemed quite devoted at first," Miss Smeardon began; but Robinette interrupted her.

"The sooner such things are forgotten the better, I think," she said. "No one, except the two people concerned, ever knows the real truth.--Tell me, Miss Smeardon, whom we are likely to meet at Revelsmere? Who is our hostess? What sort of parties does she give?"

Being so firmly switched off from the affairs of Mr. Lavendar and Miss Meredith, it was impossible for Miss Smeardon to talk about them any more, and she had to turn to a less congenial theme.

"We shall meet the neighbours," she told Robinette, "but I am afraid they may not interest you very much. I understand that in America you are accustomed to a great deal of the society of gentlemen. Here there are so few, and all of them are married."

"All?" laughed Robinette.

"Well, there is Mr. Finch, the curate, but he is a celibate; and young Mr. Tait of Strewe, but he is slightly paralysed."

"Why, Carnaby must be quite an eligible bachelor in these parts," said Robinette; but Miss Smeardon was so deadly literal that she accepted the remark as a serious one.

"Not quite yet; in a few years' time we shall need to be very careful, there are so many girls here, but not all of them desirable, of course."

"There are? What a dull time they must have with the Married Men, the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby! I'm glad my girlhood wasn't spent in Devonshire."

Conversation ended here, for the carriage rumbled up the avenue, and Robinette looked about her eagerly. Revelsmere was a nice old house, surrounded by fine sloping lawns and a background of sombre beechwoods. The lawns to-day were dotted with groups of people, mainly women, and elderly at that. As Robinette and Miss Smeardon alighted at the door an elderly hostess welcomed them, and an elderly host led them across the lawn and straightly they fell into the clutches of more and more elderlies.

"It is fairly bewildering!" Robinette cried in her heart; then she saw a bevy of girls approaching; such nice-looking girls, happy, well dressed, but all unattended by their suitable complement of young men.

"For whom do they dress, here? They've a deal of self-respect, I think, to go on getting themselves up so nicely for themselves and the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby," thought Robinette, as she watched them.

Presently another couple came across the lawn; the young woman was by no means a girl, rather heavily built, with a high fixed colour. She was attended by a man. "Not the Celibate certainly," thought Mrs. Loring with a glance at his bullock-like figure, his thick neck, and glossy black hair, "nor the Paralytic; and it's not Carnaby. It must be a new arrival!"

At that moment it began to rain, but nothing daunted, their hostess approached her, and saying pleasantly that she wished to introduce her to Miss Meredith, she left Robinette and the young woman standing together under a spreading tree, and took the gentleman away with her.

The moment that she heard the name, Robinette realized who Miss Meredith was. They seated themselves side by side on a garden bench, and Miss Meredith remarked upon the heat, planting a rather fat hand upon the arm of the garden seat, and surveying it complacently, especially the very bright diamond ring upon the third finger.

After a few preliminary remarks, she asked Mrs. Loring if she were stopping in the neighbourhood.

"Yes, I am staying at Stoke Revel for a short time," Robinette replied; "Mrs. de Tracy is my aunt, or at least I am Admiral de Tracy's niece."

Her companion did not seem to take the least interest in this part of the information, only when Stoke Revel was mentioned she looked around suddenly as if surprised.

They talked upon indifferent subjects, while Robinette, as she watched Miss Meredith, was saying a good deal to herself, although she only spoke aloud about the weather and the Devonshire scenery.

"I will be just, if I can't be generous," she thought. "She has (or she must once have had) a fine complexion. I dare say she is sincere enough; she may be sensible; she might be good-humoured,--when pleased."

"There is going to be a shower," said Miss Meredith, "but I've nothing on to spoil," she added, glancing at Robinette's hat.

Sitting there on the bench, hearing the spitting rain upon the water below them and watching the leaden mists that slowly gathered over the landscape, Robinette fell upon a moment of soul sickness very unusual to her. Miss Meredith too was silent, absorbed in her own thoughts.

"If she had looked even a little different it would have been so much easier to explain," thought Robinette. Then suddenly she glanced up. She saw that her companion's face had softened, and changed. There was a look,--Robinette caught it just for one moment,--such as a proud angry child might have worn: sulky, hurt to the heart, but determined not to cry. Instantly a chord was struck in Robinette's soul. "She has suffered, anyway," she thought. "May I be forgiven for my harsh judgment!"

With a shiver she drew her wrap about her shoulders, and Miss Meredith turned towards her. The expression Robinette had noticed passed from the high-coloured face and left it as before, self-complacent and slightly patronizing. "You seem to feel cold," she said. "I never do; which is rather unfortunate, as I'm just going out to India!"

"Indeed? How soon are you going?"

"In about six weeks. I'm just going to be married, and we sail directly afterwards," said Miss Meredith. "You saw Mr. Joyce, I think, when we came up together a few minutes ago?"

A weight as if of a ton of lead was lifted from Robinette's heart as she spoke. She could scarcely refrain from jumping up to throw her arms about Dolly Meredith's neck and kiss her. As it was, she bubbled over with a kind of sympathetic interest that astonished the other woman. It is only too easy to lead an approaching bride to talk about her own affairs, for she can seldom take in the existence of even her nearest and dearest at such a time, and in a few minutes the two young women were deep in conversation. When a quarter of an hour later Miss Smeardon appeared to tell Robinette that they must be going, she looked up with a start at the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. "Oh, you are here, Mrs. Loring; we couldn't think where you had gone," said Miss Smeardon, acidly.

"And here is Miss Meredith of all people!" she continued, "I thought you were sure to be on the tennis court, Miss Meredith; Mr. Joyce is playing now."

"Oh, we have had such a delightful talk," said Dolly, so flushed with pleasure that Miss Smeardon gazed at her in astonishment.

"If only I knew her well enough to send her a munificent wedding present! How I should love to do so; just to register my own joy," said Robinette to herself. As it was she shook hands very warmly with Miss Meredith before they parted, and when half way across the lawn, looked back again, and waved her hand gaily. Miss Meredith was pacing the grass, and treading heavily beside her, with a very gallant air, was her bullock-like young man.

"Mr. Joyce is quite wealthy," said Miss Smeardon. "I understand that he is an only son too, and will some day inherit a fine property. Miss Meredith is most fortunate, at her age and with her history."

Robinette said nothing. She looked out at the glistening reaches of the river, now shining through the silver mist; at the fields yellow with buttercups, and the folds of the distant hills. As they drove up the lane to the house, the birds, refreshed by the rain, were singing like angels. In her heart too, something was singing as blithely as any bird amongst them all.

"Sometimes, sometimes our mistakes do not come home to roost!" she thought, "but fly away and make nests elsewhere--rich nests in India too!"

"How did you enjoy the party, Cousin Robin?" said Carnaby, who was waiting for them in the doorway. "I had a good tuck-in of strawberries. The ladies were a little young for my taste; just immature girls; no one under sixty, and rather frisky, don't you think? By the way did you see Number One and her millionaire?"

"I don't know what you mean by Number One," said Robinette, haughtily, as she passed in at the door.

"You will, when you're Number Two!" rejoined Carnaby, stooping to pinch Lord Roberts' tail till the hero yelped aloud.

XVI

TWO LETTERS

Lavendar tore up his fourth sheet of paper and began afresh. "Dear Mrs. Loring." No, that would not do; he took another sheet, and began again:--

"My dear Mrs. Loring,--Your commission for old Mrs. Prettyman has taken some little time to execute, for I had to go to two or three shops before finding a chair 'with green cushions, and a wide seat, so comfortable that it would almost act as an anæsthetic if her rheumatism happened to be bad, and yet quite suitable for a cottage room.' These were my orders, I think, and like all your orders they demand something better than the mere perfunctory observance. My own proportions differing a good deal from those of the old lady, it is still an open question whether what seemed comfortable to me will be quite the same to her. I can but hope so, and the chair will be dispatched at once.

"London is noisy and dusty, and grimy and stuffy, and, to one man at least, very, very dull. A boat on Greenshaw ferry seems the only spot in the world where any gaiety is to be found. You can hear the cuckoos calling across the river as you read this, no doubt, and Carnaby is rendered happier than he deserves by being allowed to row you down to tell Mrs. Prettyman about the chair. I feel as if, like the Japanese, I could journey a hundred miles to worship that wonderful tree.--Don't let the blossoms fall until I come!

"There seems a good deal of business to be done. My father unfortunately is no better, so he cannot come down to Stoke Revel, and I shall probably return upon Wednesday morning. A poem of Browning's runs in my head--something about three days--I can't quote exactly.

"If my sister were writing this letter, she would say that I have been very hard to please, and uninterested in everything since I came home. Indeed it seems as if I were. London in this part of it, in hot weather, makes a man weary for green woods, a sliding river, and a Book of Verses underneath a Bough. Well, perhaps I shall have all of them by Wednesday afternoon. You will think I can do nothing but grumble. All the same, into what was the mere dull routine of uncongenial work before, your influence has come with a current of new energy; like the tide from the sea swelling up into the inland river.--I'm at it again! Rivers on the brain evidently.

"I hope meanwhile that Carnaby behaves himself, and is not too much of a bore, and that England,--England in spring at least, is gaining a corner in your heart? Your mother called it home, remember. Yes, do try to remember that!

"Did you go to the garden party? Did you walk? Did you drive? Did you like it? Who was there? Were you dull?"

* * * * *

There was a postscript:--

"I have found the verse from Browning, 'So I shall see her in three days.'

"M. L."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, 19th.

"Dear Mr. Lavendar: First, many thanks for Nurse's armchair, which arrived in perfect order, and is a shining monument to your good taste. She does nothing but look at it, shrouding it when she retires to bed with an old table-cover, to protect it from the night air.

"Whether she will ever make its acquaintance thoroughly enough to sit in it I do not know, but it will give her an enormous amount of pleasure. Perhaps her glow of pride in its possession does her as much good as the comfort she might take in its use.

"Her 'rheumatics' are very painful just now, and I have a good deal to do with Duckie. You remember Duckie? I call her Mrs. Mackenzie, after that lady in The Newcomes who talked the Colonel to death. Mrs. Mackenzie is heavy, elderly, and strong-willed. I am acquainted with every bone, tendon, and sinew in her body, having to lift her into a coop behind the cottage where she will not wake Nurse at dawn with her eternal quacking. She has heretofore slept under Nurse's bedroom window and dislikes change of any kind. So lucky she has no offspring! I tremble to think of what maternal example might do in such a talkative family!