But everything in Cambridge did appeal to Gwynneth, from the anthem and the chancel-roof in King’s Chapel to luncheon with Sidney and the Eton man in Old Court. Lydia was for ever reproving her cousin’s enthusiasm; but Gwynneth was enjoying herself too much to resent anything that Mrs. Goldstein could say. At the outset, however, a close observer might have caught even Sidney with a cocked eyebrow, and the eye beneath upon the Eton man; the girl was so frank and unsophisticated in the display of her delight; but the Eton man seemed to admire it in her, and Sidney gave up looking like that. The Eton man was twice his height, could sing, and swore that nobody had ever played his accompaniments as Gwynneth did; but he was not in any boat, and he could not compare with Sidney as a partner. Nevertheless, his attentions and attractions had more to answer for than anybody knew.
Gwynneth had thought Sidney very nice in town, but at Cambridge he was perfect. He was a thorough little man of the world, unconscious, unconcerned, whereas many of the men whom Gwynneth met were scarcely worthy of the name. Sidney did things like a prince, having an enviable allowance, and a very good idea of the way in which things should be done. And his arrangements were masterly; no day like the last, or next; and the whole a whirl of gaiety and excitement literally intoxicating to one whose experience of this kind was so limited as poor Gwynneth’s. It all ended with the First Trinity ball. There is no need to dilate on the astonishing magnificence of this revel; it was the most memorable and splendid of them all; and the Backs by night, with a moon in the heaven above and another in the water below, and grey old gables salient in its light, and the Guards’ Band in the faint distance, that ought to have been so loud and near; all this was even more entrancing than the ball itself, and Gwynneth moved as in a dream. She had had the audacity to divide her dances between Sidney and the Eton man; but one of them was given cause to complain towards the end, and the more so since the girl had never looked so radiant in her life. The next day Gwynneth and Lydia (who would not speak to her) were to return to town. It had never been arranged that Sidney was to accompany them; yet he did; and before evening there was trouble in Hyde Park Place.
Sir Wilton would not hear of it at first; he was soon obliged to do that. But he stood firm in refusing his consent to a formal engagement between Sidney and his first cousin, and found an unexpected ally in Gwynneth herself. The girl was paying for her week’s delirium by a deeper depression than her face betrayed or her heart admitted. Already she was beginning to disappoint her cousin. But this was too much.
“You agree with him?” gasped Sidney. “You’d rather not be engaged? Then why, my darling, did you ever say ‘yes’?”
“It wasn’t to that question, dear,” said Gwynneth, colouring.
“It amounted to the same thing.”
“It will amount to the same thing,” Gwynneth said earnestly; “at least I hope and pray that it may. But, of course, it’s quite true that we’re both very young; and at least it’s within the bounds of possibility that — one or other of us might — some day — change.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Sidney, with a taunting bitterness.
“Dear, if you’ll believe me, I’m thinking quite as much of you. At twenty-two you would tie yourself for life!”
“That’s my look-out,” said Sidney, grandly. “Age isn’t everything, and I’m not a boy; anyhow I know my own mind, if you don’t know yours.”
Gwynneth’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, why did you tell me you cared for me?” she exclaimed. “Why did you make me say I cared for you? It was true — it was true — but we seem to have spoilt it by putting it into words. Oh, I was so happy before you spoke! I never was so happy as all last week. I could have gone on like that — I was so happy. And now it’s all different already; you are, and I am . . .”
Sidney was watching her tears unmoved, for she had made him reflect. All at once he saw his heartlessness, and next moment he was kissing her tears away; vowing there was no difference in him; but, if it was otherwise with her, well, then, let them consider everything unsaid, and start afresh.
Gwynneth shook her head. Her eyes were dry again and full of thought.
“No, dear, we can’t do that; and you mustn’t think I am not happy in your love, because I am. Only, there seemed to be such a spell between us before we were sure of each other. But perhaps it’s always like that.”
In the end they were engaged, but it was not to be a public engagement for six months. Meanwhile Sidney returned to Cambridge for the Long, having taken only a part of his degree; and Gwynneth quickly recovered her reputation as a reformed character in the eyes of Lady Gleed, who was less against the match than her husband, and who took the girl to innumerable parties, each of which Gwynneth made a determined effort to enjoy as thoroughly as the first half of the First Trinity ball.
She seemed always in the highest spirits; and there was no one about her who knew her well enough to know also that this perpetual brightness was hard and unnatural in Gwynneth. Closer observers than Sir Wilton and his wife might indeed have suspected as much; but there was only one occasion upon which Gwynneth betrayed the livelier symptoms of a troubled spirit. This was on her birthday at the beginning of July; upon the breakfast table was a registered packet with the Cambridge post-mark, and in its morocco case Gwynneth presently beheld a richer necklace than she had ever dreamt of possessing as her own. Yet the look in her face was so strange that Lady Gleed was obliged to speak.
“Don’t you like pearls, my dear?”
“Oh! yes, oh! yes.”
“But you don’t look pleased.”
“No more I am!”
And she rushed from the room in unaccountable tears, and upstairs to her own, where she was presently discovered writing a letter at top speed, and crying bitterly as she wrote; it was Lady Gleed herself who discovered her.
“What is the matter, Gwynneth?”
“I am writing to Sidney. I cannot take such presents from him. I am writing to tell him why.”
“I think you are very silly,” said Lady Gleed. “But your uncle wants to see you in his study; that is really why I came up; and I don’t think you’ll be so silly when you have heard what he has to tell you.”
There was an air of mystery about Lady Gleed, who furthermore kissed Gwynneth before they separated on the landing. The girl went downstairs with chill forebodings. Sir Wilton was seated at his massive desk, but rose fussily as she entered, and wheeled up a chair with almost excessive courtesy. Gwynneth had seldom seen him looking so benign.
“I sent for you,” said Sir Wilton, resuming his own seat, “because I have some news for you, Gwynneth, which I am sure you will be as glad to hear as I am to communicate it. It is against the law to dwell upon a lady’s age, but at yours I think you can afford to forgive me. I believe that you are twenty-one to-day?”
Gwynneth had not thought of that before, and at the present moment she could scarcely believe she was no more. She made her admission with a sigh.
“Then for twenty-one years,” pursued Sir Wilton, beaming, “or let us say for as many of them as you can remember, you have, I presume, looked upon yourself as an entirely penniless young lady? That has not been the case; at least it is the case no longer. I — I hope I am not giving you bad news?”
Gwynneth was trembling all over. She had lost every vestige of colour.
“My mother!” she gasped. “Why did she never know?”
“Because, under the terms of your grandfather’s will, nobody but myself was to know anything at all about it until to-day.”
“It was cruel,” cried the girl, in a breaking voice; “it might have kept her here! It makes me not want to hear anything now . . . but of course I must . . . forgive me, please.”
“My dear child,” said Sir Wilton, kindly, “it is natural enough that you should feel that. I can only ask you to believe that I at least had no choice in the matter. And there were reasons; it is too painful to go into them; your father was my brother
, and I had rather say no more. I, for my part, was obliged to fulfil the conditions. I have tried to do my duty. I would gladly have done more, but your dear mother was the most independent woman I ever met. I honoured her for it. But what could I do? I must beg of you, my dear, to look upon the bright side; and, believe me, this business has the very brightest side it is possible to imagine.”
Gwynneth did her best. It was fine to be independent in her turn. But the thought of her mother made her ashamed to touch a penny. And it was a matter of several thousand pounds, invested all these years at compound interest, yet with that absolute safety which distinguished the financial operations of Sir Wilton Gleed.
Sir Wilton could not say off-hand what the present capital would yield if left where it was at simple interest, but he fancied it would work out at seven or eight hundred a year at the very least. And these figures, which sounded fabulous to poor Gwynneth, were obviously in themselves the bright side upon which her uncle had harped. Yet he continued to beam as though there was something more to come, and looked so knowing that Gwynneth was obliged to ask him what it was.
“Can’t you see?” he said. “Can’t you see?”
“It is an immense amount of money. I can’t see beyond that.”
“You heard me say that nobody knew anything at all about it except myself, and, of course, my solicitors?”
“Yes.”
“Even your aunt did not know until I told her just now.”
“Indeed.”
“And Sidney won’t know until you tell him!”
Then Gwynneth saw. Sir Wilton took care that she should. He did not on principle approve of marriages between cousins; he said so frankly; he might be wrong. But there was one thing which made him very proud of his son’s choice. And this was that thing; there were others also upon which Sir Wilton touched with much playful gallantry.
“But perhaps,” said he, “you won’t have anything more to say to the poor lad now!”
XXV
SIGNS OF CHANGE
Georgie was a short head taller, and no pinafore concealed the glories of his sailor suit; but it was still the same baby face, round as the eyes that greeted all comers with the same friendly gaze. His sentences were longer and more ambitiously constructed; but he still said “somekin” and “I wish I would,” and, when excited, “my Jove!” And his lady once more danced attendance by the hour and day together; for Sir Wilton and Lady Gleed were paying visits until September; and Sidney was still understood to be making up for lost time at Cambridge.
Gwynneth had enjoyed the child’s society the year before; now she seemed dependent upon it. She would have him with her daily on one pretext or another, sometimes upon none at all. She said she liked to hear him talk, and that was well, for Georgie’s tongue only rested in his sleep. But now there was often an intrinsic interest in his conversation. He gave Gwynneth many an item of village news which was real news to her. Thus it was from his own lips that she first heard of his accident, on seeing the scar through his hair.
“Course I was in bed,” swaggered Georgie; “I was in bed for years an’ years an’ years — in bed and sensible.”
“Oh, Georgie, do you mean insensible?”
“No, sensible, I tell you.”
“Did you know what was going on?”
“Course I di’n’t, not a bit. How could I fen I was sensible?”
“My poor darling, it might have killed you! How ever did you do it?”
But, as so often happens in such cases, that was what Georgie had never been able to remember. So Gwynneth turned to Jasper Musk, who sat within earshot; it was in the Flint House garden, on the very afternoon of her return.
“That was my fault,” said Jasper, gruffly enough, yet with such a glance at Georgie that Gwynneth was sorry she had broached the subject, and changed it at once.
But she reverted to it as soon as she had Georgie to herself. Who had looked after him when he was ill? She was feeling very jealous of somebody.
“Granny did.”
“No one else?”
“An’ grand-daddy.”
“Was that all, Georgie?”
Gwynneth was very sorry she had ever gone abroad.
“Course it wasn’t all,” said Georgie, remembering. “There was the funny old man from the church.”
“Mr. Carlton?”
“Yes.”
“So he came to see you?”
“Yes, he often. I love him,” Georgie announced with emphasis; “he makes lovely, lovely, lovely faces!”
“And does he ever come now?”
“No, not now, course he doesn’t; he’s too busy buildin’ his church.”
“So he’s building still!”
“Yes, ‘cos he builds wery nicely,” Georgie was pleased to say; “better’n me, he builds, far better’n me.”
“And is he still alone?”
“All alone,” said Georgie; “all alonypony by his own little self!”
And the inconsequent nonsense sent him off into untimely laughter, louder and more uproarious than ever, quite a virile guffaw. But Gwynneth could not even smile. And now when neither listening to Georgie nor haunted by her engagement, Gwynneth began to think of the lonely outcast behind those trees, as she had begun indeed to think of him the spring before last, while her mind and life were yet unfilled by the motley interests which this last year had brought into both.
The thought afflicted her with a sense of personal hardness and cruelty; there was this lonely man, doing the work of ten, not spasmodically, but day after day, and year after year, still unaided and unforgiven by the very people in whose midst and for whose benefit those prodigies of labour were being performed. Gwynneth knew now that there had been some mysterious wickedness before the burning of the church. It was all she cared to know. What crime could warrant such hardness of heart in the face of such devotion, skill, patience, consummate endurance, and invincible determination? These were heroic qualities, no matter what vileness lay beneath or behind them; and the generous capacity for hero-worship was very strong in Gwynneth. She would have honoured this man for his splendid pertinacity, and have wiped all else from the slate. That his own parishioners continued to dishonour him, and that she perforce had to do as they did, made her indignant with them and dissatisfied with herself. So far as Gwynneth was honestly aware, this feeling was a purely impersonal one. It would have been excited by any other being who had achieved the like and been thus rewarded. It is noteworthy, however, that Gwynneth found it necessary to explain the position to herself.
It was strange, too, how her life had impinged upon his, strange because the points of contact had in each case left a disproportionate impression upon her mind. She often thought of them. There was once in the very beginning, when she had actually stopped him in the village to ask the name of the poem from which he had quoted on Sunday. Gwynneth had never told a soul about this, she was so ashamed of her unmaidenly impulse; but she still remembered the look of pleasure that had flashed through his pain, and the kind sad voice which both answered her question and thanked her for asking it. That must have been only a day or two before the fire; the same summer there was the silent scene between them in the drawing-room, when she longed to shake hands with him, to show him her sympathy, but did not dare. Then came the finding of Georgie in the stonemason’s shed, only the spring before last; but Gwynneth found that she had been gauche as usual even then, that she had never risen to any of these occasions, but that her one small attempt to express her sympathy had been nothing less than a piece of tactless presumption on her part. And yet she felt so much!
Well, it was something that Musk had opened his doors to him, if only under pressure of a harrowing occasion; even then it was much, very much, in the prime infidel of the parish. It was a beginning, an example; it might show others the way. Gwynneth presently discovered that it had.
She had not brought Georgie to see the saddler this time, and she was trying to follow that thinker’s harangue
as though she had really come to him for political instruction; but all the while the sound from among the trees distracted her attention and mystified her mind. It was neither the ringing impact of iron upon iron, nor the swish of a sharp steel point through the soft sandstone. It was the drone of a saw, as Gwynneth knew well enough when she asked what the sound was in the first opportunity afforded her.
“That’s the reverend,” said the saddler, dryly.
“It sounds like sawing,” said disingenuous Gwynneth. “Has he reached the roof?”
“Gord love yer, miss, not he!”
Gwynneth was consumed with an interest that she feared to show, especially with the saddler looking at her through his spectacles as others had done when Mr. Carlton supplied the topic of conversation. It was a look that seemed to ask her how much she knew, and it always offended her. She did not want to know what he had done; all her interest was in what he was doing, alone there behind the trees. Yet now she felt that speak she must, if it was only to soften a single heart, in the very slightest degree, towards that unhappy man; and she had come to the saddler with no other purpose.
“Does no one go near him yet?” she asked point-blank.
The saddler leant across his bench; the girl had refused the only chair in the little workshop, and was standing outside at the open window, as all his visitors did.
“You won’t tell Sir Wilton, miss?”
“I shan’t go out of my way to make mischief, Mr. Fuller, if that’s what you mean. But you had better not tell me any secrets,” said Gwynneth, with a coldness that cost her an effort; however, the saddler’s skin was in keeping with his calling.
“Then you can keep that or not,” said he, “as you think fit; but I go and see him now and then, and, what’s more, I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I should think not!” the girl broke out; and Fuller sunned himself in the warmth of fine eyes on fire. “I mean,” stammered Gwynneth, “after all this time, and all he has done!”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 203