She was looking up at him, obscurely yet intently from under her very dark lashes.
"Well, Mr. March, how is the South Sea market?"
Her glance took him unawares. He felt that she had been watching him and he had not known it.
"I have sold my shares, madam."
He smiled.
"A few days ago I had to put the same question to myself about my work."
"O, why?" she asked.
"Because my shares sold at such an absurd figure that I have more money than I should have saved honestly if I had worked for thirty years."
"I'm glad," she said. "You mean—that it is not necessary for you to work?"
"Yes. Mr. Bowyer—the attorney—sold them for me for fifteen thousand pounds."
She was surprised and delighted, and secretly intrigued by his quaint good fortune.
"And you will go on in the same way just as though nothing had happened?"
"I think so."
"How very wise of you," she said. "And you are not tempted to make a show?"
"I am going to build a house, madam."
"For yourself, of course?"
"No, for Mr. Thomas Nando and Mrs. Mary, a solid, handsome little house with a fine garden."
"That is very generous."
"I owe everything to those two dear people. I am rather happy, madam, at being able to do it."
Her eyes looked at him very kindly.
"I understand that," she said; "but how few of us realize where our true happiness lies. Tell me about the house."
Her soft voice held him. He sat down again in the chair, feeling how delightful it was to be able to talk to her. She put a man at his ease. He was sure that he could tell her things that he would tell to nobody else, for he felt that he was talking to a wonderful creature who was cleverer and wiser than he was. And yet—in her graciousness—she understood and sympathized.
"You know—I was a foundling, madam."
"Yes, I think I had heard that," she said gently.
Her eyes were deep and tranquil, and Jordan's heart blessed her for their tranquillity.
"Thomas Nando and his wife adopted me. They treated me as though I were their own son; in fact, I am their son in all that matters. That's why I am so happy to be able to build this house."
He described the plans to her, confessing that he hoped to copy the room in which they were sitting for the beauty and rightness of its proportions. He went on to speak of Tom Nando's garden, and of the land he was buying, and here—with a kind of inward smile—he broke into another confession.
"That is my passion, madam—land. Rather strange, is it not? Why should I hunger after land?"
"Perhaps it is in your blood?" she said.
He looked at her with a startled and questioning brightness in his steady eyes. She had put an idea into his head, an idea of such suggestiveness that it was like a seed dropped into the soil. The passion for land might be in his blood!
"I had never thought of that," he said with immense seriousness.
She observed him, and there were strange stirrings within her.
"How did you find it out?" she asked.
"I think it came to me, madam, when I began to ride out into the country in the early morning."
"And the hunger is for much land?"
"I confess that it is. Miles of it—woodlands and fields, or wild country, land over which a man can ride free from daybreak to dusk."
"Perhaps—it will come to you, Mr. Jordan."
He smiled full at her.
"Hardly. How could it?"
She was silent, and into the silence came the sound of a horse being pulled up in the road below.
"My brother," she said.
She rose, she crossed to the other window, and smiled down at him.
"Mr. March is here. He has been waiting."
When her brother came into the room she took Captain Phipps's letter from her bosom and held it out to him, while her eyes glanced smilingly aside at Jordan.
"Mr. March brought this."
Stamford read it, and then breaking into a laugh, he turned impulsively on Jordan.
"March, I'm more than obliged to you. What did you do to the fellow?"
"O, I just frightened him," said Jordan; "he will not trouble you any further."
"You must have a terrible eye, man."
"I think," said Mrs. Merris, "that Mr. March has a rather terrible reputation."
"Madam!" said Jordan, laughing.
"I mean with the sword."
And so the incident ended, though Will Stamford insisted on celebrating Captain Phipps's apology and his own escape from a shabby adventure, by giving a dinner in Jordan's honour.
"No time like the moment, March. To-night is the night. Marie you can arrange something, and send out notes and beat up a few friends?"
"I do not know how Mr. Jordan feels about it," she said, "but I think it would be much more charming if we made it a dinner for three, our three selves."
"What do you say, March? The honour is with you. I want the whole story of how you put the thumbscrews on that big rogue."
"I agree with Mrs. Merris," said Jordan.
"Good. We'll drink each other's health in the best bottle of Madeira in London."
Jordan took leave of them till the evening, and walked back to Spaniards Court to tell the Nandos where he was going and to put on his best black suit and a laced shirt and ruffles. He was in a gay mood. He had served his great lady, and she had been very kind and gracious to him, and had made him sit and talk of his own affairs as though they were matters of interest to her. He could have forgiven that big rogue, Captain Phipps, for providing so rare an opportunity for spending himself in Mrs. Mariana's service. Blessed be all bullies!
Jordan found Douce sitting on the blue settee in Mrs. Mary's parlour, and Mrs. Mary had been telling her all about Jordan's fortune and his plans for the new house. Jordan was to be congratulated, and Douce jumped up with what was for her a glowing impulsiveness, and held out her hands.
"O, Mr. Jordan, I'm so glad."
Jordan's gaiety made him behave like a big boy, or like a brother to his little sister. Douce was just a child, and to Jordan her childishness was emphasized by Mrs. Mariana's slender height and beautiful maturity. His head was full of this other woman, her tranquil graciousness, the exquisite texture of her, her clever, laughing eyes, his sense of her standing above him and looking kindly down. But towards Douce there was an unconscious and half-playful bending of his manhood. She was such a little thing, and he was blind to the passionate strength of the little thing's sense of her own dignity.
Instead of taking her hands, he picked her up in his own big hands and held her high in the air, as a romping man holds a child.
"And so am I, Douce; and so am I."
He smiled up at her, but his smile died away.
"Set me down, please," she said, flushing to the brilliance of her hair.
He set her down. She was angry, and her anger puzzled him, so swift and vivid was it. Her eyes were all clouded, her mouth a thin red line. She would not look at him, but, returning to the settee, picked up her mittens and began to pull them on.
Jordan stood helpless. He felt that he had hurt her, without understanding how he had hurt her. There was something in her flushed distress which suggested humiliation, a sudden and bitter realization of what she meant to him and what she did not mean.
"I'm sorry. Douce," said Jordan.
"Don't mention it," she answered.
She stood up; she passed by him with downcast eyes, and going to Mrs. Mary kissed her and turned quickly towards the door. Jordan went to open it for her, but she neither thanked him nor looked at him as she passed out.
Jordan came back to Mary Nando.
"I've offended her," he said. "I never meant anything. I wouldn't hurt her for worlds."
Mrs. Mary looked up from the work which lay in her lap.
"You treated her like a child, Jordan."
Mrs. Mary's eyes returned to her work. She was sorry for Douce, sorry as only a warm-hearted woman can be; but if Jordan was blind, was it not better for both of them that he should remain so?
XXIII
It had been a hot summer's day, and in the cool of the evening Douce walked in her garden. The sun lay behind the great elms and the high hedges, and through the network of dark foliage shot a thousand arrows of light which struck the grass and the flowers and the trunks of the old apple trees. The shadows looked like painted shapes, black and sharp and very still. Under the parlour window a cat was playing with her two kittens, but Douce took no notice of them, having no playfulness in her thoughts. She wandered aimlessly up and down the path along her favourite border, which was all grey and blue and gold with herbs, larkspur and marigold, and sometimes she would pause and look at some flower which glowed with liquid colour—a sapphire or a jasper hung in a ray of light. She herself looked pale under her glowing hair; it was the paleness of expectancy, a lingering at the gate of life for some sound to break the silence.
Old Sylvester was asleep in his chair. Douce glanced in on him once or twice, and saw him with his chin resting on his chest, his high forehead fallen into the shadow. The book that he had been reading had slipped to the floor and lay with some of its pages all crumpled. A little pang of pity stirred in her. How old he was, how helpless! His spectacles—too—were on the floor, and she felt that she ought to go in and rescue them, but as she moved towards the garden door at the back of the house she heard a sound which made her pause as though a hand had touched her heart.
She stood very still. She did not go to see who had come in at the gate. She heard footsteps and they sounded to her like the footsteps of a man. "A month—a whole month," she thought; "perhaps he has come at last." As in a dream she re-lived the days of that month of waiting, those days of aloofness which were to prove to her whether he cared or not, whether he thought of her only as a child. "I will not go there again," she had said; "he shall come to me if he wishes to come."
In those moments of suspense she knew how much she cared and how frail a thing her pride was. Her heart felt smothered, and she pressed her hands to her breasts.
"It must be, it must be," she assured herself, yet doubting it all the while.
Then her dark eyes seemed to grow more dark. She gave a little shiver and shrank against the wall; her eyelids flickered; her whole pose betrayed a bitter sense of unfulfilment, a consciousness of humiliation.
"Sis," a voice called; "Sis! Where are you?"
And yet when she came from behind the house and met him on the stretch of grass between the parlour window and the flower border, her brother saw nothing but the Douce of the workaday world, a slightly austere and grave-eyed little housewife in black mittens and a white frilled cap. She was perfectly calm; she betrayed nothing; she observed more than she was observed. Her impression was that her brother looked worried and ill and thin, and this impression had been with her for several weeks.
"O, there you are!" he said, almost irritably; "I wondered where the devil you had got to."
"It was so hot in the house; the garden is cooler."
"Hot! I have felt like a wet rag all day. Where is father?"
"Asleep in his chair. We did not expect you."
"Well, I suppose not. The streets are filthy, and I thought I would get out of them for an hour or two. I think a chair out here—or, better still, the grass."
He sprawled; he took off his hat and wig, and she noticed his restless movements and the wavering expression of his eyes. He seemed unable to look at anything steadily or for any length of time. He lay prone; he rolled over on his back and stared at the sky; he tried lying on his side propped on his elbow; but in none of these positions could he remain at rest.
She asked him if he would care for some supper.
"No; but I have a thirst."
She suggested raspberry wine.
"Good lord, Sis, that treacly stuff! Now, if you had something bitter, the juice of a lemon."
"You shall have it," she said.
She glanced in at old Sylvester and saw that he was still asleep, and in going to prepare the bitter drink which should quench her brother's thirst she was aware of the qualms of her own bitterness and of a thirst that was not to be quenched. She hardened herself. She suppressed all that nature asked of her and all that life seemed unable to give.
Twilight came. She had taken out a chair for herself, and some of her endless needlework as an excuse and an occupation for her hands. She went on stitching even when she could not see, while Maurice lay on his back, with his hands under his head and one knee crooked over the other. He kept jerking his foot, and the little restless movement irritated her, for she was fighting the bitter restlessness within herself, and trying to drown it in a mood of severe calmness. She was angry with herself and she wanted the anger to pass. From the love which consumed her she wished to escape into a world of insensitive coldness.
"Seen the Nandos lately?" asked her brother from the grass.
The question was like a blow on a painful bruise. She ran her needle into her finger, gave a little spasmodic catching of the breath, and strove for calmness.
"Tsst—it is too dark to see. I've pricked my finger."
She put her finger to her lips and observed him, but the dusk made his face obscure.
"No, not for three or four weeks. Poor Mr. Thomas is growing very old."
Maurice moved restlessly.
"March is quite a rich fellow. I walked round by way of old Nando's garden. They have bought land and are building a house. The foundations are in already."
"I suppose Jordan is building it for his mother and father?"
"So they say. Is that all you know about it, Douce?"
"Quite all," she answered.
Maurice sat up.
"I should have thought there was something else. When a man begins building a house he is thinking of settling down."
"Well, why should not Jordan settle down?"
He looked at her with furtive and momentary intentness.
"Yes, but that means someone to settle down with. Who's the lady?"
"I'm sure I don't know," she said. "Is there a lady?"
Her complete calmness baffled him.
"I thought you might have heard something," he said, for he had his own reasons for hoping that Jordan March might marry his sister.
He did not press her any farther, and to escape from the pain of appearing calm in the face of her own distress. Douce pretended that she heard her father stirring and, rising, entered the house. Sylvester was still asleep, but he woke when she pushed purposely against a chair.
"Who's that?"
"Douce," she said in her most matter-of-fact voice. "Be careful; your spectacles are on the floor. And Maurice is here in the garden. Would you like to go out into the garden, or shall I bring a light here?"
"I'll go out into the garden. Has Maurice been here long?"
"No, not very long. I think he is very tired with the heat."
She lay awake for a long while that night making herself face the too evident truth that her month of waiting had brought her nothing but disillusionment. She had put her hope to the test, lit it like a candle and set it in her window while she sat down to wait and to watch. She had decided that she would not go again to Spaniards Court until Jordan came to her, and the inference was obvious since he did not come. Her intuition had warned her well. She was just a child to him, something a little less than a woman, a little thing who looked too small to hold so big a passion. He did not love her, and indeed she had so weak a lure for him that he could come to Nando's garden, which was less than half a mile away, and yet come no farther. He was more interested in bricks and mortar than he was in her. She made herself realize this, forcing herself to recognize it with a fierce white austerity.
"It is better to be cold," she thought; "
better, far better."
For Jordan was busy with other things, interested in other things, and Douce knew very little about men. Even if a woman grants the ephemeral character of most love affairs, she insists on assuming that her own affair shall be the one great incident in the man's life. Even the veriest philanderer must love her with permanence and as he has never loved any of her predecessors. Douce knew that Jordan had had adventures, and she had been ready to see herself as the tender and final figure closing the door of the last of his adventures.
"Is it that he just does not care, or is it the house, or someone else?"
As a matter of fact, his aloofness was a complex of all three of these conjectures. Jordan had bought his land and chosen his builder, one Mr. Mactavish, a Scotsman, who had a reputation for sense and solidity, and who was rather like the house that Jordan wished to build. "Handsome and solid and not too big." "Good red breek, Mr. March, and the best pine for the panelling." They were a pair of enthusiasts; they stumped the ground together, and measured and planned and argued. Jordan had very definite ideas, and they met with very little harshness, for it appeared that the house which Jordan wished to build was the very sort of house which Mr. Mactavish approved of.
"Umps!" said he, which was his peculiar grunt of sympathetic assent, "you and I will be wanting no long spoons, Mr. March."
The house was to be a red house with stone quoins and cornice, white sashed windows, and white classic porch. Its length was to be twice its height.
"I like a house to sit down comfortably, Mr. Mactavish."
"I agree with ye, Mr. March. I have no manner of use for your lanky, pigeon-chested façades. Give me breadth, sir, in a house and a woman. You will not be getting nearer to heaven by marrying a six-foot shrew."
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