“It is not all I have to forgive myself,” he answered bitterly, disregarding her question. “If only you would hate me, I could hate myself less; but I deserve your contempt. Yet, if you knew what has been in my heart all this time, you would pity one. You have haunted me! I have been good for nothing ever since I came back to England. My people will tell you so, when you get to know them. My mother would tell you in a minute. She has never heard your name ... but she knows there was someone ... she knows there is someone still!”
Christina had colored at last; but, as she colored, the trot of a horse came gratefully to her attentive ears.
“You must think no more about it,” she whispered; and her flush deepened.
“You wipe it all out?” he cried eagerly.
“Of course I do.”
Her eyes met the dogcart at the bend. Herbert was in it.
“And we start afresh?”
He thought he was to get no answer. She was gazing anxiously at Herbert as the trap approached; as it drew up on the bridge she murmured, “I think we had better let well alone,” without looking at Lord Manister. “Herbert, you remember Lord Manister?” she cried aloud in the same breath.
Herbert’s look was not reassuring. He was, in fact, disgusted with all present but the groom, and most of all with himself, for being where he was. Nor was he the young man to trouble to hide his feelings, and he showed them now in so black a look that Christina, who knew him, was filled with apprehension. Thanks to Lord Manister’s tact, that look did not last. Manister, who had his own impression of young Luttrell’s character, and had not to be shrewd to guess the other’s attitude toward himself, brought his most graceful manner to bear on the situation. With Tiny Luttrell, during the bad quarter of an hour which he had deserved and now endured, his best manner had not been at his command; but it returned to him with the return of the dogcart, and in time to do him a service. He had hardly shaken hands with Herbert when he asked him as an Australian, and therefore a judge, his opinion of the mare.
The touch would have been too heavy for an older man; but Herbert was barely twenty, and it flattered him to the marrow. Christina was relieved to hear his knowing but laudatory comments on the mare’s points. She knew that, despite her brother’s aggressive independence, he was susceptible enough to marked civility. This, indeed, he never expected, and he was ever ready to return, with interest, some fancied slight; but Christina had never known him rude to anyone going out of his way to be polite to him, as Lord Manister was doing this morning. She divined that politeness from a nobleman was not less gratifying to Herbert because he happened to have maligned the nobleman with much industry. Herbert’s modest desire was to be treated as an equal by all men, and he was now being treated as an equal by a lord. This was all he required to make him reasonably civil, even to Lord Manister. When Manister asked him, almost deferentially, whether the mare could be taken in the photograph, he offered his lordship a place in it too, the offer being declined, but not without many thanks.
“I’m going to help take it,” Manister laughed. “Mind you don’t move, Luttrell. I’m going to help your sister. Hadn’t you better come too, and leave my man alone in his glory?”
Herbert replied that he would take off the cap or do anything they liked. So the three went down into the meadow, and some infamous negatives resulted later. At the time care seemed to be taken by the photographers, while Lord Manister stood at a little distance, laughing a good deal. He was pressed to stand in the foreground, but not by Christina, and he steadily refused. The conciliation of his enemy seemed assured without that, though he did think of something else to make it doubly sure.
“By the way, Luttrell,” he said as the camera was being packed away, “you’re a cricketer to a certainty — you’re an Australian.”
“I’m very fond of it,” the Australian replied, “but I haven’t played over here; I’ve never had the slant.”
“Well, we play a bit; come over and practice with us.”
Herbert thanked him, declaring that he should like nothing better.
“Lord Manister is a great cricketer,” Christina observed.
“Come over and practice,” repeated his lordship cordially. “The ground isn’t at all bad, considering it was only made last winter, and there’s a professor to bowl to you. We have some matches coming on presently. Perhaps we might find a place for you.”
This was the one thing Lord Manister said which came within measurable distance of offending the touchy Herbert. A minute later they had parted company.
“They might find a place for me,” Herbert repeated as he and Tiny turned toward the village, while Lord Manister drove off in the opposite direction, with another slightly ornamental sweep of his hat. “Might they, indeed! I wouldn’t take it. My troubles about their matches! But I could enjoy a practice.”
“He said he would send over for you next time they do practice.”
Those had been Lord Manister’s last words.
“He did. He is improved. He’s a sportsman, after all. It was decent of him to send back the trap for me. But I didn’t want to get in — I was jolly scotty with myself for getting in. I say, Tiny!”
“Well?”
He had her by the arm.
“I don’t ask any questions. I don’t want to know a single thing. I hope he went down on his knees for his sins; I hope you gave him fits! But look here, Tiny: I won’t say a word about this inside if you’d rather I didn’t.”
“I’d rather you did,” Tiny said at once. “There’s nothing to hide. But — you can be a dear, good boy when you like, Herbs!”
“Can I? Then you can be offended if you like — but he’s on the job now if he never was in his life before!”
“I won’t say I hope he isn’t,” Tiny whispered.
So she was not offended.
CHAPTER VII. THE SHADOW OF THE HALL.
Such was Christina’s first meeting with Lord Manister in his own county. It occurred while his mother’s invitation was exhilarating so many homes, and on the day when the Mundham mail bag would not hold the first draught of prompt replies. Until the garden party itself, however, no one at the rectory saw any more of Lord Manister, who had gone for a few days to the Marquis of Wymondham’s place in Scotland, where he shot dreadfully on the Twelfth and was otherwise in queer form, considering that Miss Garth was also one of the guests. But under all the circumstances it is not difficult to imagine Manister worried and unhappy during this interval; which, on the other hand, remained in the minds of the people at the rectory, Christina included, as the pleasantest part of their month there.
Not that they suspected this at the time. Mrs. Erskine especially found these days a little slow. Having knowledge of Lord Manister’s whereabouts, she was impatient for his return, and the more so because Christina seemed to have forgotten his existence. Christina was indeed puzzling, and on one embarrassing occasion, which with some girls would have led to a scene, she puzzled Ruth more than ever. Ruth tried to follow her presumptive example, and to put aside the thought of Lord Manister for the time being. Her consolation meanwhile was the lively camaraderie between Christina and Erskine, wherein Erskine’s wife took a delight for which we may forgive her much.
“How well you two get on!” she would say gladly to each of them.
“He’s a man and a brother,” Tiny would reply.
To which Ruth was sure to say tenderly: “It’s sweet of you, dear, to look upon him as a brother.
“Ah, but don’t you forget that he’s a man, and not my brother really, but just the very best of pals!” Tiny said once. “That’s the beauty of him. He’s the only man who ever talked sense to me right through from the beginning, so he’s something new. He’s the only man I ever liked without having the least desire to flirt with him, if you particularly want to know! And I don’t believe his being my brother-in-law has anything to do with that,” added the girl reflectively; “it would have been the same in any case. What’s better still,
he’s the only man who ever understood me, my dear.”
“He’s very clever, you see,” observed Ruth slyly, but also in all seriousness.
“That’s the worst of him; he makes you feel your ignorance.”
“I assure you, Tiny, he thinks you very clever.”
“So you’re crackin’!” laughed Tiny; and as the old bush slang filled her mouth unbidden, the smell of a hot wind at Wallandoon came into her nostrils; and there seemed no more to be said.
But that last assurance of Ruth’s was still ringing in her ears when her thoughts got back from the bush. She did not believe a word of it. Yet it was more or less true. Nor was Erskine far wrong in any opinion he had expressed to his wife concerning Christina, of whom, perhaps, he had said even less than he thought.
She was not, indeed, to be called an intellectual girl, in these days least of all. That was her misfortune, or otherwise, as you happen to think. Intellectual possibilities, however, she possessed: raw brain with which much might have been done. Not much can be done by a governess on a station in the back-blocks. Merely in curing the girls of the twang of Australia, more successfully than of its slang, and in teaching Tiny to sing rather nicely, the governess at Wallandoon had done wonders. But gifts that were of more use to Christina were natural, such as the quick perception, the long memory, and the ready tongue with which she defended the doors of her mind, so that few might guess the poverty of the store within. Nor had the governess been able to add much to that store. The liking for books had not come to Christina at Wallandoon; but in Melbourne she had taken to reading, and had reveled in a deal of trash; and now in England she read whatever Erskine put in her hands, and honestly enjoyed most of it, with the additional relish of being proud of her enjoyment. Erskine thought her discriminating, too; but converts to good books are apt to flatter the saviors of their taste, and perhaps her brother-in-law was a poor judge of the girl’s judgment. He liked her for finding Colonel Newcome’s life more touching than his death, and for placing the Colonel second to Dr. Primrose in the order of her gods after reading “The Vicar of Wakefield.” He was delighted with her confession that she should “love to be loved by Clive Newcome,” while her defense of Miss Ethel, which was vigorous enough to betray a fellow-feeling, was interesting at the time, and more so later, when there was occasion to remember it. Similar interest attached to another confession, that she had long envied Œnone and Elaine “because they were really in love.” She seemed to have mixed some good poetry with the bad novels that had contented her in Melbourne. Two more books which she learned to love now were “Sesame and Lilies” and “Virginibus Puerisque.” It was Erskine Holland’s privilege to put each into her hands for the first time, and perhaps she never pleased him quite so much as when she said: “It makes me think less of myself; it has made me horribly unhappy; but if they were going to hang me in the morning I would sit up all night to read it again!” That was her grace after “Sesame and Lilies.”
“Why don’t you make Ruth read too?” she asked him once, quite idly, when they had been talking about books.
“She has a good deal to think about,” Erskine replied after a little hesitation. “She’s too busy to read.”
“Or too happy,” suggested Tiny.
Mr. Holland made a longer pause, looking gratefully at the girl, as though she had given him a new idea, which he would gladly entertain if he could. “I wonder whether that’s possible?” he said at last.
“I’m sure it is. Ruth is so happy that books can do nothing for her; the happy ones show her no happiness so great as her own, and she thinks the sad ones stupid. The other day, when I insisted on reading her my favorite thing in ‘Virginibus — —’”
“What is your favorite thing?” interrupted Erskine.
“‘El Dorado’ — it’s the most beautiful thing you have put me on to yet, of its size. I could hardly see my way through the last page — I can’t tell you why — only because it was so beautiful, I think, and so awfully true! But Ruth saw nothing to cry over; I’m not sure that she saw much to admire; and that’s all because you have gone and made her so happy.”
For some minutes Erskine looked grim. Then he smiled.
“But aren’t you happy too, Tiny?”
“I’m as happy as I deserve to be. That’s good enough, isn’t it?”
“Quite. You must be as happy as you’re pleased to think Ruth.”
“Well, then, I’m not. I should like to be some good in the world, and I’m no good at all!”
“I am sorry to see it take you like that,” said Erskine gravely. “I wouldn’t have thought this of you, Tiny!”
“Ah, there are many things you wouldn’t think of me,” remarked Tiny. She spoke a little sadly, and she said no more. And this time her sudden silence came from no vision of the bush, but from what she loved much less — a glimpse of herself in the mirror of her own heart.
There was one thing, certainly, that none of them would have thought of her; for she never told them of her little quiet meddlings in the village. But I could tell you. Pleasant it would be to write of what she did for Mrs. Clapperton (who certainly seemed to have been unfairly treated) and of the memories that lived after her in more cottages than one. But you are to see her as they did who saw most of her, and to remember that nothing is more delightful than being kind to the grateful poor, especially when one is privately depressed. Little was ever known of the liberties taken by Christina’s generosity, and nothing shall be recorded here. She must stand or fall without that, as in the eyes of her friends. Suffice it that she did amuse herself in this way on the sly, and found it good for restoring her vanity, which was suffering secretly all this time. She would have been the last to take credit for any good she may have done in Essingham. She knew that it wiped out nothing, and also that it made her happier than she would have been otherwise. For though a worse time came later, even now she was not comfortable in her heart. And she had by no means forgotten the existence of Lord Manister, as someone feared.
Ruth, however, put her own conversation under studious restraint during these days, many of which passed without any mention of Lord Minister’s name at the rectory. The distracting proximity of his stately home was apparently forgotten in this peaceful spot. But the wife of one clerical neighbor, a Mrs. Willoughby, who accompanied her husband when he came to play lawn tennis with Mr. Holland, and indeed wherever the poor man went, cherished a grudge against the young nobleman’s family, of which she made no secret. It was only natural that this lady should air her grievance on the lawn at Essingham, whence there was a distant prospect of lodge and gates to goad her tongue. Yet, when she did so, it was as though the sun had come out suddenly and thrown the shadow of the hall across the rectory garden.
“As for this garden party,” cried Mrs. Willoughby, as it seemed for the benefit of the gentlemen, who had put on their coats, and were handing teacups under the trees, “I consider it an insult to the county. It comes too late in the day to be regarded as anything else. Why didn’t they do something when first they came here? They have had the place a year. Why didn’t they give a ball in the winter, or a set of dinner parties if they preferred that? Shall I tell you why, Mr. Holland? It was because the general election was further off then, and it hadn’t occurred to them to put up Lord Manister for the division.”
“They haven’t been here a year, my dear, by any means,” observed Mrs. Willoughby’s husband; “and as for dinner parties, we, at any rate, have dined with them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t boast about it,” answered Mrs. Willoughby, who had a sharp manner in conversation, and a specially staccato note for her husband. “We dined with them, it is true; I suppose they thought they must do the civil to a neighboring rector or two. But as their footman had the insolence to tell our coachman, Mrs. Holland, they considered things had reached a pretty pass when it came to dining the country clergy!’”
“Their footman considered,” murmured Mr. Willoughby.
“
He was repeating what he had heard at table,” the lady affirmed, as though she had heard it herself. “They had made a joke of it — before their servants. So they don’t catch me at their garden party, which is to satisfy our social cravings and secure our votes. I don’t visit with snobs, Mrs. Holland, for all their coronets and Norman blood — of which, let me tell you, they haven’t one drop between them. Who was the present earl’s great-grandfather, I should like to know? He never had one; they are not only snobs but upstarts, the Dromards.”
“At any rate,” Mr. Holland said mildly, “they can’t gain anything by being civil to us. We don’t represent a single vote. We are here for one calendar month.”
“Ah, it is wise to be disinterested here and there,” rejoined Mrs. Willoughby, whose sharpness was not merely vocal; “it supplies an instance, and that’s worth a hundred arguments. Now I shouldn’t wonder, Mr. Holland, if they didn’t go out of their way to be quite nice to you. I shouldn’t wonder a bit. It would advertise their disinterestedness. But wait till you meet them in Piccadilly.”
“Mrs. Willoughby is a cynic,” laughed Erskine, turning to the clergyman, whose wife swallowed her tea complacently with this compliment to sweeten it. To so many minds a charge of cynicism would seem to imply that intellectual superiority which is cheap at the price of a moral defect.
Now Erskine had a lawn tennis player staying with him for the inside of this week; and the lawn tennis player was a fallen cricketer, who had played against the Eton eleven when young Manister was in it; and he ventured to suggest that the division might find a worse candidate. “He was a nice enough boy then,” said he, “and I recollect he made runs; he’s a good fellow still, from all accounts.”
“From all my accounts,” retorted Mrs. Willoughby, refreshed by her tea, “he’s a very fast one!”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 21