"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who invariably chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and châlets, which Mr. Pratt, in a gracious moment, had "thrown open" to the Gresleys on Sundays, because, as he expressed it, "they must feel so cramped in their little garden."
But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" they went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice near at hand.
As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call ribes; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them. Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, very red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though warned to the contrary.
Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over.
"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to Hester.
As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested that when two is not company three may be.
"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone, sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame. You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with us?"
"I know him," said Hester.
"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little—well rather—"
"Just so," said Hester.
"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent after him."
Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's conversation always interested her.
"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself, "is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to see destroyed."
"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday on purpose."
Rachel and Hester looked on the ground.
"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you, Rachel?"
"I said I thought he was a little nervous."
And what did he talk to you about?"
"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about marriage."
"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so sympathetic. I expect lots of people confide in you about their troubles and love affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor Mr. Tristram! I shall tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, it is just as well he is gone."
"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising unanimity.
Chapter XXIX
*
So fast does a little leaven spread within us—so incalculable is the effect of one personality on another.—GEORGE ELIOT.
Hugh was not ill after what Mr. Gresley called "his immersion," but for some days he remained feeble and exhausted. Sybell quite forgot she had not liked him, insisted on his staying on indefinitely at Wilderleigh, and, undaunted by her distressing experience with Mr. Tristram, read poetry to Hugh in the afternoons and surrounded him with genuine warm-hearted care. Doll was steadily, quietly kind.
It was during these days that Hugh and Rachel saw much of each other, during these days that Rachel passed in spite of herself beyond the anxious impersonal interest which Hugh had awakened in her, on to that slippery much-trodden ground of uncomfortable possibilities where the unmarried meet.
Hugh attracted and repelled her.
It was, alas! easy to say why she was repelled. But who shall say why she was attracted? Has the secret law ever been discovered which draws one man and woman together amid the crowd? Hugh was not among the best men who had wished to marry her, but nevertheless he was the only man since Mr. Tristram who had succeeded in making her think continually of him. And perhaps she half knew that though she had been loved by better men, Hugh loved her better than they had.
Which would prove the stronger, the attraction or the repulsion?
"How can I?" she said to herself, over and over again.
"When I remember Lady Newhaven, how can I? When I think of what his conduct was for a whole year, how can I? Can he have any sense of honor to have acted like that? Is he even really sorry? He is very charming, very refined, and he loves me. He looks good, but what do I know of him except evil? He looks as if he could be faithful, but how can I trust him?"
Hugh fell into a deep dejection after his narrow escape. Dr. Brown said it was nervous prostration, and Doll rode into Southminster and returned laden with comic papers. Who shall say whether the cause was physical or mental? Hugh had seen death very near for the first time, and the thought of death haunted him. He had not realized when he drew lots that he was risking the possibility of anything like that, such an entire going away, such an awful rending of his being as the short word death now conveyed to him. He had had no idea it would be like that. And he had got to do it again. There was the crux. He had got to do it again.
He leaned back faint and shuddering in the deck-chair in the rose-garden where he was lying.
Presently Rachel appeared, coming towards him down the narrow grass walk between two high walls of hollyhocks. She had a cup of tea in her hand.
"I have brought you this," she said, "with a warning that you had better not come in to tea. Mr. Gresley has been sighted walking up the drive. Mrs. Loftus thought you would like to see him, but I reminded her that Dr. Brown said you were to be kept very quiet."
Mr. Gresley had called every day since the accident in order to cheer the sufferer, to whom he had been greatly attracted. Hugh had seen him once, and afterwards had never felt strong enough to repeat the process.
"Must you go back?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Mrs. Loftus and he are great friends. I should be rather in the way."
&nbs
p; And she sat down by him.
"Are you feeling ill?" she said, gently, noticing his careworn face.
"No," he replied. "I was only thinking. I was thinking," he went on, after a pause, "that I would give everything I possess not to have done something which I have done."
Rachel looked straight in front of her. The confession was coming at last. Her heart beat.
"I have done wrong," he said, slowly, "and I am suffering for it, and I shall suffer more before I've finished. But the worst is—"
She looked at him.
"The worst is that I can't bear all the consequences myself. An innocent person will pay the penalty of my sin."
Hugh's voice faltered. He was thinking of his mother.
Rachel's mind instantly flew to Lord Newhaven.
"Then Lord Newhaven drew the short lighter," she thought, and she colored deeply.
There was a long silence.
"Do you think," said Hugh, smiling faintly, "that people are ever given a second chance?"
"Always," said Rachel. "If not here—afterwards."
"If I were given another," said Hugh. "If I might only be given another now in this life I should take it."
He was thinking if only he might be let off this dreadful self-inflicted death. She thought he meant that he repented of his sin, and would fain do better.
There was a sound of voices near at hand. Sybell and Mr. Gresley came down the grass walk towards them.
"London society," Mr. Gresley was saying, "to live in a stuffy street away from the beauties of Nature, its birds and flowers, to spend half my days laying traps for invitations, and half my nights grinning like a fool in stifling drawing-rooms, listening to vapid talk. No, thanks! I know better than to care for London society. Hester does, I know, but then Hester does not mind making up to big people, and I do. In fact—"
"I have brought Mr. Gresley, after all, in spite of Dr. Brown," said Sybell, "because we were in the middle of such an interesting conversation on the snares of society that I knew you would like to hear it. You have had such a dull day with Doll away at his County Council."
That night, as Rachel sat in her room, she went over that half-made, ruthlessly interrupted confidence.
"He does repent," she said to herself, recalling the careworn face. "If he does, can I overlook the past? Can I help him to make a fresh start? If he had not done this one dishonorable action, I could have cared for him. Can I now?"
Chapter XXX
*
"A fool's mouth is his destruction."
The superficial reader of these pages may possibly have forgotten, but the earnest one will undoubtedly remember that in an earlier chapter a sale of work was mentioned which was to take place in the Wilderleigh gardens at the end of August.
The end of August had now arrived, and with it two white tents, which sprang up suddenly one morning, like giant mushrooms, on one of Doll's smooth-shaven lawns. He groaned in spirit as he watched their erection. They would ruin the turf.
"Might as well iron it with a hot iron," he said, disconsolately to Hugh. "But, of course, this sort of thing—Diocesan Fund, eh? In these days we must stand by our colors." He repeated Mr. Gresley's phrase. Doll seldom ventured on an opinion not sanctioned by the ages, or that he had not heard repeated till its novelty had been comfortably rubbed off by his wife or the Gresleys.
The two men watched the proceedings mournfully. They could not help, at least they were told they could not help the women busily engaged in draping and arranging the stalls. They were still at large, but Doll knew, as well as a dog who is going to be washed, what was in store for him in the afternoon, and he was depressed beforehand.
"Don't let yourself be run in," he said, generously to Hugh. "You're not up to it. It takes a strong man to grapple with this sort of thing. Kills off the weakly ones like flies. You lie low in the smoking-room till it's all over."
*
"All I can say is," remarked Mrs. Gresley, as she and Hester led the Vicarage donkey and cart up the drive, heavily laden with the work of many months, "that the Pratts have behaved exceedingly badly. Here they are, the richest people by far in the parish, and they would not even take a stall, they would not even furnish half of one, and they said they would be away, and they are at the Towers, after all. No one likes the Pratts more than I do, or sees their good points as I do, but I can't shut my eyes to the fact that they are the meanest of the mean."
The Pratts had only contributed two "bed-spreads," and a "sheet-sham," and a set of antimacassars. If the reader wishes to know what "bed-spreads" and "sheet-shams" are, let him ask his intended, and let him see to it that he marries a woman who cannot tell him.
Mrs. Pratt had bought the antimacassars for the Towers, and secretly adored them until Ada pronounced them to be vulgar. The number of things which Ada discovered to be vulgar increased every day, and included the greater part of her mother's wardrobe, much to the distress of that poor lady. Mrs. Pratt had reached the size when it is prudent to concentrate a love of bright colors in one's parasol. On this particular afternoon she shed tears over the fact that Ada refused to accompany her if her mother wore a unique garment of orange satin, covered with what appeared to be a plague of black worms.
Of course, the sale of work was combined with a garden-party, and a little after three o'clock carriage after carriage began to arrive, and Sybell, with a mournful, handsome, irreproachably dressed husband, took up her position on the south front to receive her guests.
The whole neighborhood had been invited, and it can generally be gauged with tolerable accuracy by a hostess of some experience who will respond to the call and who will stay away. Sybell and her husband were among those who were not to be found at these festivities, neither were the Newhavens, save at their own, nor the Pontisburys, nor the Bishop of Southminster. Cards had, of course, been sent to each, but no one expected them to appear.
Presently, among the stream of arrivals, Sybell noticed the slender figure of Lady Newhaven, and—astonishing vision—Lord Newhaven beside her.
"Wonders will never cease," said Doll, shaken for a moment out of the apathy of endurance.
Sybell raised her eyebrows, and advanced with the prettiest air of empressement to meet her unexpected guests. No, clearly it was impossible that the two women should like each other. They were the same age, about the same height and coloring; their social position was too similar; their historic houses too near each other. Lady Newhaven was by far the best looking, but that was not a difference which attracted Sybell towards her. On this occasion Sybell's face assumed its most squirrel-like expression, for, as ill-luck would have it, they were dressed alike.
Lady Newhaven looked very ethereal, as she came slowly across the grass in her diaphanous gown of rich white, covered with a flowing veil of thinnest transparent black. Her blue eyes looked restlessly bright; her lips wore a mechanical smile. Rachel, watching her, experienced a sudden pang at her undeniable loveliness. It wounded her suddenly, as it never had done before. "I am a common-looking, square-built woman compared to her," she said to herself. "No wonder he—"
She instinctively drew back as Lady Newhaven turned quickly towards her.
"You dear person," said Lady Newhaven, her eyes moving restlessly over the crowd, "are you still here? Let us go and buy something together. How nice you look," without looking at her. She drew Rachel apart in the direction of the tents.
"Where is he?" she said, sharply. "I know he is here. I heard all about the accident, though Edward never told me. I don't see him."
"He is not in the gardens. He is not coming out. He is still rather knocked up."
"I thought I should have died when I heard it. Ah, Rachel, never love any one. You don't know what it's like. But I must see him. I have come here on purpose."
"So I supposed."
"Edward would come, too. He appeared at the last moment when the carriage came round, though I have never known him to go to a garden-party in his life. But where is he, R
achel?"
"Somewhere in the house, I suppose."
"I shan't know where to find him. I can't be wandering about that woman's house by myself. We must slip away together, Rachel, and you must take me to him. I must see him alone for five minutes."
Rachel shook her head.
Captain Pratt, tall, pale, cautious, immaculate, his cane held along his spinal column, appeared suddenly close at hand.
"Mrs. Loftus is fortunate in her day," he remarked, addressing himself to Lady Newhaven, and observing her fixedly with cold admiration. "I seldom come to this sort of thing, but neighbors in the country must support each other. I see you are on your way to the tents. Pray allow me to carry your purchases for you."
"Oh! don't let me trouble you," said Lady Newhaven, shrinking imperceptibly. But it was no trouble to Captain Pratt, and they walked on together.
Lord Newhaven, who could not have been far off, joined Rachel.
*
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt to Ada, "you might have let me wear my black and orange, after all, for you see Lady Newhaven has something very much the same, only hers is white underneath. And do you see she has got two diamond butterflies on—the little one at her throat and the big one holding her white carnations. And you would not let me put on a single thing. There now, Algy has joined her," continued Mrs. Pratt, her attention quickly diverted from her own wrongs. "Now they are walking on together. How nice he looks in those beautiful clothes. Algy and Lord Newhaven and Mr. Loftus all have the same look, haven't they? All friends together, as I often say, such a mercy among county people. You might walk a little with Lord Newhaven, Ada. It's unaccountable how seldom we see him, but always so pleasant when we do. Ah! he's speaking to Rachel West. They are going to the tents, after all. Well, whatever you may say, I do think we ought to go and buy something, too. Papa says he won't put his hand in his pocket if the Loftuses are to get all the credit, and we ought to have had the choice of having the sale at the Towers, so he sha'n't do anything; but I think it would be nice if we went and bought a little something. Just a five-pound note. You shall spend it, my dear, if you like."
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