Guy summed it up by saying to himself: “If she’d lived, the Titian never would have gone.” But she had died, and left the two men and their conflicting tendencies alone in the old house.... Yes; she had been the right mistress for such a house. Guy was thinking of that now, and knew that the same thought was in his father’s mind, and that his own words had roused it to the pitch of apprehension. Who was to come after her? father and son were both thinking.
“Well, out with it!” Sir Helmsley broke forth abruptly.
Guy straightened himself with a laugh. “You seem to expect a confession of bankruptcy or murder. I’m afraid I shall disappoint you. All I want is to have you ask some people to tea.”
“Ah—? Some ‘people’?” Sir Helmsley puffed dubiously at his cigar. “I suppose they’ve got names and a local habitation?”
“The former, certainly. I can’t say as to the rest. I ran across them the other day in London, and as I know they’re going to spend next Sunday at Allfriars I thought—”
Sir Helmsley Thwarte drew the cigar from his lips, and looked along it as if it were a telescope at the end of which he saw an enemy approaching.
“Americans?” he queried, in a shrill voice so unlike his usual impressive barytone that it had been known to startle servants and trespassers almost out of their senses, and even in his family to cause a painful perturbation.
“Well—yes.”
“Ah—” said Sir Helmsley again. Guy proffered no remark, and his father broke out irritably: “I suppose it’s because you know how I hate the whole spitting tobacco-chewing crew, the dressed-up pushing women dragging their reluctant backwoods-men after them, that you suggest polluting my house, and desecrating our last few days together, by this barbarian invasion—eh?”
There had been a time when his father’s outbursts, even when purely rhetorical, were so irritating to Guy that he could meet them only with silence. But the victory of choosing his career had given him a lasting advantage. He smiled, and said: “I don’t seem to recognize my friends from your description.”
“Your friends—your friends? How many of them are there?”
“Only two sisters—the Miss St. Georges. Lady Richard would drive them over, I imagine.”
“Lady Richard? What’s she? Some sort of West Indian octoroon, I believe?”
“She’s very handsome, and has auburn hair.”
Sir Helmsley gave an angry laugh. “I suppose you think the similarity in our colouring will be a tie between us.”
“Well, sir, I think she’ll amuse you.”
“I hate women who try to amuse me.”
“Oh, she won’t try—she’s too lazy.”
“But what about the sisters?”
Guy hesitated. “Well, the rumour is that the oldest is going to marry Seadown.”
“Seadown—marry Seadown? Good God, are the Brightlingseas out of their minds? It was well enough to get rid of Dick Marable at any price. There wasn’t a girl in the village safe from him, and his father was forever buying people off. But Seadown— Seadown marry an American? There won’t be a family left in England without that poison in their veins.”
Sir Helmsley walked away a few paces and then returned to where his son was standing. “Why do you want these people asked here?”
“I—I like them,” Guy stammered, suddenly feeling as shamefaced as a guilty school-boy.
“Like them!” In the darkness, the young man felt his father’s nervous clutch on his arm. “Look here, my boy—you know all the plans I had for you. Plans—dreams, they turned out to be! I wanted you to be all I’d meant to be myself. The enlightened landlord, the successful ambassador, the model M.P., the ideal M.F.H. The range was wide enough—or ought to have been. Above all, I wanted you to have a steady career on an even keel. Just the reverse of the crazy example I’ve set you.”
“You’ve set me the example of having too many talents to keep any man on an even keel. There’s not much danger of my following you in that.”
“Let’s drop compliments, Guy. You’re a gifted fellow; too much so, probably, for your job. But you’ve more persistency than I ever had, and I haven’t dared to fight your ideas, because I could see they were more definite than mine. And now—”
“Well, sir?” his son queried, forcing a laugh.
“And now—are you going to wreck everything, as I’ve done so often?” He paused, as if waiting for an answer; but none came. “Guy, why do you want those women here? Is it because you’ve lost your head over one of them? I’ve a right to an answer, I think.”
Guy Thwarte appeared to have none ready. Too many thoughts were crowding through his mind. The first was: “How like my father to corner me when anybody with a lighter hand would have let the thing pass unnoticed! But he’s always thrown himself against life head foremost....” The second: “Well, and isn’t that what I’m doing now? It’s the family folly, I suppose.... Only, if he’d said nothing ... When I spoke I really hadn’t got beyond ... well, just wanting to see her again ... and now...”
Through the summer dark he could almost feel the stir of his father’s impatience. “Am I to take your silence as an answer?” Sir Helmsley challenged him.
Guy relieved the tension with a laugh. “What nonsense! I ask you to let me invite some friends and neighbours to tea....”
“To begin with, I hate these new-fangled intermediate meals. Why can’t people eat enough at luncheon to last till dinner?”
“Well, sir, to dine and sleep, if you prefer.”
“Dine and sleep? A pack of strange women under my roof?” Sir Helmsley gave a grim laugh. “I should like to see Mrs. Bolt’s face if she were suddenly told to get their rooms ready! Everything’s a foot deep in dust and moths, I imagine.”
“Well, it might be a good excuse for a clean-up,” rejoined his son good-humouredly. But Sir Helmsley ignored this.
“For God’s sake, Guy—you’re not going to bring an American wife to Honourslove? I shan’t shut an eye tonight unless you tell me.”
“And you won’t shut an eye if I tell you ‘yes’?”
“Damn it, man—don’t fence.”
“I’m not fencing, sir; I’m laughing at your way of jumping at conclusions. I shan’t take any wife till I get back from South America; and there’s not much chance that this one would wait for me till then—even if I happened to want her to.”
“Ah, well. I suppose, this last week, if you were to ask me invite the devil I should have to do it.”
From her post of observation in the window of the housekeeper’s room, Mrs. Bolt saw the two red cigar-tips pass along the front of the house and disappear. The gentlemen were going in, and she could ring to have the front door locked, and the lights put out everywhere but in the baronet’s study and on the stairs.
Guy followed his father across the hall, and into the study. The lamp on the littered writing-table cast a circle of light on crowded book-shelves, on Sienese predellas, and on bold unsteady water-colours and charcoal-sketches by Sir Helmsley himself. Over the desk hung a small jewel-like picture in a heavy frame, with “D. G. Rossetti” inscribed beneath. Sir Helmsley glanced about him, selected a pipe from the rack, and filled and lit it. Then he lifted up the lamp.
“Well, Guy, I’m going to assume that you mean to have a good night’s sleep.”
“The soundest, sir.”
Lamp in hand, Sir Helmsley moved toward the door. He paused—was it voluntarily?—half way across the room, and the lamplight touched the old yellow marble of the carved mantel, and struck upward to a picture above it, set in elaborate stucco scrolls. It was the portrait of a tall thin woman in white, her fair hair looped under a narrow diadem. As she looked forth from the dim background, expressionless, motionless, white, so her son remembered her in their brief years together. She had died, still young, during his last year at Eton—long ago, in another age, as it now seemed. Sir Helmsley, still holding the lifted lamp, looked up too. “She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,” he
said abruptly—and added, as if in spite of himself: “But utterly un-paintable; even Millais found her so.”
Guy offered no comment, but went up the stairs in silence after his father.
XI.
The St. George girls had never seen anything as big as the house at Allfriars except a public building, and as they drove toward it down the long avenue, and had their first glimpse of Inigo Jones’s most triumphant expression of the Palladian dream, Virginia said with a little shiver: “Mercy—it’s just like a gaol.”
“Oh, no—a palace,” Nan corrected.
Virginia gave an impatient laugh. “I’d like to know where you’ve ever seen a palace.”
“Why, hundreds of times, I have, in my dreams.”
“You mustn’t tell your dreams. Miss Testvalley says nothing bores people so much as being told other people’s dreams.”
Nan said nothing, but an iron gate seemed to clang shut in her—the gate that was so often slammed by careless hands. As if anyone could be bored by such dreams as hers!
“Oh,” said Virginia, “I never saw anything so colossal. Do you suppose they live all over it? I guess our clothes aren’t half dressy enough. I told Mother we ought to have something better for the afternoon than those mauve organdies.”
Nan shot a side-glance at the perfect curve of her sister’s cheek. “Mauve’s the one colour that simply murders me. But nobody who sees you will bother to notice what you’ve got on.”
“You little silly, you, shut up.... Look, there’s Conchita and the poodle!” cried Virginia in a burst of reassurance. For there, on the edge of the drive, stood their friend, in a crumpled but picturesque yellow muslin and flapping garden-hat, and a first glance at her smiling waving figure assured the two girls of her welcome. They sprang out, leaving the brougham to be driven on with maid and luggage, and instantly the trio were in each other’s arms.
“Oh, girls, girls—I’ve been simply pining for you! I can’t believe you’re really here!” Lady Richard cried, with a tremor of emotion in her rich Creole voice.
“Conchita! Are you really glad?” Virginia drew back and scanned her anxiously. “You’re lovelier than ever; but you look terribly tired. Don’t she look tired, Nan?”
“Don’t talk about me. I’ve looked a fright ever since the baby was born. But he’s a grand baby, and they say I’ll be all right soon. Jinny, darling, you can’t think how I’ve missed you both! Little Nan, let me have a good look at you. How big your eyes have grown.... Jinny, you and I must be careful, or this child will crowd us out of the running....”
Linked arm in arm, the three loitered along the drive, the poodle caracoling ahead. As they approached the great gateway, Conchita checked their advance. “Look, girls! It is a grand house, isn’t it?”
“Yes; but I’m not a bit afraid any more,” Nan laughed, pressing her arm.
“Afraid? What were you afraid of?”
“Virginia said you’d be as grand as the house. She didn’t believe you’d be really glad to see us. We were scared blue of coming.”
“Nan—you little idiot!”
“Well, you did say so, Jinny. You said we must expect her to be completely taken up with her lords and ladies.”
Conchita gave a dry little laugh. “Well, you wait,” she said.
Nan stood still, gazing up at the noble façade of the great house. “It is grand. I’m so glad I’m not afraid of it,” she murmured, following the other two up the steps between the mighty urns and columns of the doorway.
It was a relief to the girls—though somewhat of a surprise —that there was no one to welcome them when they entered the big domed hall hung with tall family portraits and moth-eaten trophies of the chase. Conchita, seeing that they hesitated, said: “Come along to your room—you won’t see any of the in-laws till dinner”; and they went with her up the stairs, and down a succession of long corridors, glad that the dread encounter was postponed. Miss Jacky March, to whom they had been introduced by Miss Testvalley, had assured them that Lady Brightlingsea was the sweetest and kindest of women; but this did not appear to be Conchita’s view, and they felt eager to hear more of her august relatives before facing them at dinner.
In the room with dark heavy bed-curtains and worn chintz armchairs which had been assigned to the sisters, the lady’s-maid was already shaking out their evening toilets. Nan had wanted to take Miss Testvalley to Allfriars, and had given way to a burst of childish weeping when it was explained to her that girls who were “out” did not go visiting with their governesses. Maids were a new feature in the St. George household, and when, with Miss Jacky March’s aid, Laura Testvalley had run down a paragon, and introduced her into the family, Mrs. St. George was even more terrified than the girls. But Miss Testvalley laughed. “You were afraid of me once,” she said to Virginia. “You and Nan must get used to being waited on, and having your clothes kept in order. And don’t let the woman see that you’re not used to it. Behave as if you’d never combed your own hair or rummaged for your stockings. Try and feel that you’re as good as any of these people you’re going about with,” the dauntless governess ordained.
“I guess we’re as good as anybody,” Virginia replied haughtily. “But they act differently from us, and we’re not used to them yet.”
“Well, act in your own way, as you call it—that will amuse them much more than if you try to copy them.”
After deliberating with the maid and Conchita over the choice of dinner-dresses, they followed their friend along the corridor to her own bedroom. It was too late to disturb the baby, who was in the night-nursery in the other wing; but in Conchita’s big shabby room, after inspecting everything it contained, the sisters settled themselves down happily on a wide sofa with broken springs. Dinner at Allfriars was not till eight, and they had an hour ahead of them before the dressing-gong. “Tell us about everything, Conchita darling,” Virginia commanded.
“Well, you’ll find only a family party, you know. They don’t have many visitors here, because they have to bleed themselves white to keep the place going, and there’s not much left for entertaining. They’re terribly proud of it—they couldn’t imagine living in any other way. At least my father-in-law couldn’t. He thinks God made Allfriars for him to live in, and Frenshaw—the other place, in Essex; but he doesn’t understand why God gave him so little money to do it on. He’s so busy thinking about that, that he doesn’t take much notice of anybody. You mustn’t mind. My mother-in-law’s good-natured enough; only she never can think of anything to say to people she isn’t used to. Dick talks a little when he’s here; but he so seldom is, what with racing and fishing and shooting. I believe he’s at Newmarket now, but he seldom keeps me informed of his movements.” Her aquamarine eyes darkened as she spoke her husband’s name.
“But aren’t your sisters-in-law here?” Virginia asked.
Conchita smiled. “Oh, yes, poor dears; there’s nowhere else for them to go. But they’re too shy to speak when my mother-in-law doesn’t; sometimes they open their mouths to begin, but they never get as far as the first sentence. You must get used to an ocean of silence, and just swim about in it as well as you can. I haven’t drowned yet, and you won’t. Oh—and Seadown’s here this week. I think you’ll like him; only he doesn’t say much either.”
“Who does talk, then?” Nan broke in, her spirits sinking at this picture of an Allfriars evening.
“Well, I do; too much so, my mother-in-law says. But this evening you two will have to help me out. Oh, and the Rector thinks of something to say every now and then; and so does Jacky March. She’s just arrived, by the way. You know her, don’t you?”
“That little Miss March with the funny curls, that Miss Testvalley took us to see?”
“Yes. She’s an American, you know—but she’s lived in England for years and years. I’ll tell you something funny—only you must swear not to let on. She was madly in love with Lord Brighttingsea—with my father-in-law. Isn’t that a good one?” said Conchita with her e
asy laugh.
“Mercy! In love? But she must be sixty,” cried Virginia, scandalized.
“Well,” said Nan gravely. “I can imagine being in love at sixty.”
“There’s nothing crazy you can’t imagine,” her sister retorted. “But can you imagine being in love with Miss March?”
“Oh, she wasn’t sixty when it happened,” Conchita continued. “It was ages and ages ago. She says they were actually engaged, and that he jilted her after the wedding-dress was ordered; and I believe he doesn’t deny it. But of course he forgot all about her years ago; and after a time she became a great friend of Lady Brightlingsea’s, and comes here often, and gives all the children the loveliest presents. Don’t you call that funny?”
Virginia drew herself up. “I call it demeaning herself; it shows she hasn’t any proper pride. I’m sorry she’s an American.”
Nan sat brooding in her corner. “I think it just shows she loves him better than she does her pride.”
The two elder girls laughed, and she hung her head with a sudden blush. “Well,” said Virginia, “if Mother heard that she’d lock you up.”
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