Brian walked at her side, saying very little, but not unobservant. He knew a good deal about this Miss Palliser from Bessie’s letters, which had given him a detailed account of her chosen friend. He knew that the damsel had carried on a clandestine flirtation with his cousin, and had been expelled from Mauleverer Manor in consequence; and these facts, albeit Bessie had pictured her friend as the innocent victim of tyranny and wrong, had not given him a favourable opinion of his cousin’s chosen companion. A girl who would meet a lover on the sly, a girl who was ignominiously ejected from a boarding-school, although clever and useful there, could not be a proper person for his cousin to know. He was sorry that Aunt Betsy’s good nature had been stronger than her judgment, and that she had brought such a girl to Kingthorpe as a permanent resident. He had imagined her a flashy damsel, underbred, with a vulgar style of beauty, a superficial cleverness, and all those baser arts by which the needy sometimes ingratiate themselves into the favour of the rich. Nothing could be more different from his fancy picture than the girl by whose side he was walking, under that cloudless sky, where the larks were singing high up in the blue.
What did he see, as he gravely contemplated the lady by his side? A perfect profile, in which refinement was as distinctly marked as beauty of line. Darkly fringed lids drooping over lovely eyes, which looked at him shyly, shrinkingly, with unaffected modesty, when compelled to look. A tall and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown; glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was right, that Aunt Betsy’s judgment, face to face with the actual facts, had been wiser than his own view of the case at a distance. And then, suddenly remembering upon what grounds he was arriving at this more liberal view, he began to feel scornful of himself, after the manner of your thinking man, given to metaphysics.
‘Heaven help me! I am as weak as the rest of my sex,’ he said to himself. ‘Because she is lovely I am ready to think she is good — ready to fall into the old, old trap which has snapped its wicked jaws upon so many victims. However, be she what she may, at the worst she is not vulgar. I am glad of that, for Bessie’s sake.’
He tried to make a little conversation during the rest of the way, asking about different members of the Wendover family, and telling Ida some stray facts about his late wanderings. But she did not encourage him to talk. Her answers were faltering, her manner absent-minded. He began to think her stupid; and yet he had been told that she was a wonder of cleverness.
‘I daresay her talent all lies in her fingers’ ends,’ he thought. ‘She plays Beethoven and works in crewels. That is a girl’s idea of feminine genius. Perhaps she makes her own gowns, which is a higher flight, since it involves usefulness.’
It was only four o’clock when they went in at the little orchard gate, and Miss Wendover could hardly be expected for an hour. What was Ida to do with her guest, unless he kept his word and stayed in the orchard?
‘Shall I send you out the newspapers, or any refreshment?’ she asked.
There were rustic tables and chairs, a huge Japanese umbrella, every accommodation for lounging, in that prettiest bit of the spacious old orchard which adjoined the garden, and here Ida made this polite offer of refreshment for mind or body.
‘No, thank you; I’ll stay here and smoke a cigarette. I can get on very well without newspapers, having lived so long beyond easy reach of them.’
She left him, but glancing back at the garden gate she saw him take a book from his pocket and settle himself in one of the basket chairs, with a luxurious air, like a man perfectly content. This was a kind of thing quite new to her in her experience of the Wendovers, who were not a bookish race.
She went into the house, and made all her little preparations for afternoon tea, filling the vases with freshly-cut flowers, drawing up blinds, arranging book-tables, work-baskets, curtains — all the details of the prettiest drawing-room in Kingthorpe, but walking to and fro all the while like a creature in a dream. She had not half recovered from her surprise, her painful wonder at Brian Wendover’s appearance, at his strange likeness to her ideal knight — strange to her, but not miraculous, since such hereditary faces are to be found after the lapse of centuries.
When all her small duties had been performed she went up to her room, bathed her face and brushed her hair, and put on a fresher gown, and then sat down to read, trying to lose herself in the thoughts of another mind, trying to forget this embarrassment, this sense of humiliation, which had come upon her. She sat thus for half an hour or so, reading ‘The Caxtons,’ one of her favourite novels, and felt a little more composed and philosophical, when the rythmical beat of Brimstone and Treacle’s eight iron shoes told her that Miss Wendover had returned.
She ran to the gate to welcome that kind friend, looking so fresh and bright in her clean white gown that Aunt Betsy saw no sign of the past struggle.
‘Mr. Wendover is here,’ she said, shyly, when Aunt Betsy had kissed her and given her some brief account of the day’s adventures. The rest of the party had been deposited at The Knoll.
‘Whom do you mean by Mr. Wendover, child?’
‘Mr. Wendover of the Abbey. He is reading in the orchard.’
‘Of course, I never saw him without a book in his hand. So he has come back at last. I am very glad. He is a good fellow, a little too reserved and self-contained, too fond of brooding over some beautiful truism of Plato’s when he ought to be thinking of deep drainage and a new school-house; but a good fellow for all that, and always ready with his cheque-book. Let us go and look for him.’
‘You will find him in the orchard,’ said Ida. ‘I will go and hurry on the tea. You must want some tea after your dusty drive.’
‘Dusty!’ exclaimed Miss Wendover; ‘we are positively smothered. Yes. I am dying for my tea; but I must see this nephew of mine first.’
Ida went back to the drawing-room, where everything was perfectly ready, as she knew very well beforehand; but she shrank with a sickly dread from any further acquaintance with the master of Wendover Abbey. She hoped that he and his aunt might say all they had to say to each other in the orchard, and that he would go on to The Knoll to pay his respects to the rest of his relations.
In this she was disappointed. Scarcely had she seated herself before the tea-table when Aunt Betsy and her nephew entered through the open window.
‘You two young people have contrived to get acquainted without my aid,’ said Miss Wendover, cheerily, ‘so there’s no necessity for any introduction. Now, Brian, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Give him some tea, Ida. I believe he is just civilized enough to like tea, in spite of his wanderings.’
‘On account of them you might as well say, Aunt Betsy. I drank nothing but tea in Scandinavia. It was the easiest thing to get.’
Ida’s occupation at the table gave her an excuse for silence. She had only to attend to her cups and saucers, and to listen to Miss Wendover and her nephew, who had plenty to talk about. To hear that deep full voice, with its perfect intonation, was in itself a pleasure — pleasant, also, to discover that Brian Wendover, albeit a famous Balliol man and a Greek scholar after the Porsonian ideal, could still be warmly interested in simple things and lowly folk. She began to feel at ease in his presence; she began to perceive that here was a thoroughly noble nature, a mind so lofty and liberal that even had the man known her pitiful sordid story he would have been more inclined to compassionate than to condemn.
Having recovered her favourite nephew, after so long a severance, Aunt Betsy was in no wise disposed to let him go. She insisted upon his staying to dinner; and before the evening was over Ida found herself quite at home with the dreaded master of the Abbey. At Miss Wendover’s request she played for nearly an hour, and Brian listened with evi
dent appreciation, sitting at his ease just outside the open window, among the roses and lilies of June, under a moonlit sky. It was a calm, peaceful, rational kind of evening, and Ida’s mind was tranquillized by the time it was over; and when she went to her room, after a friendly parting with Miss Wendover’s nephew, she told herself that she was not likely to be often troubled with his society. He was too much a lover of learned solitude to be likely to be interested in the small amusements and occupations of the family at The Knoll — too much in the clouds to concern himself with Aunt Betsy’s various endeavours to improve her poorer neighbours in themselves and their surroundings.
She did not long remain under this delusion. She was busy in the garden, with basket and scissors, trimming away fading roses and cankered buds from the luxuriance of bush and standard, arch and trellis, at eleven o’clock next morning, when she heard the garden gate open, and beheld Mr. Wendover, Bessie, and Urania coming across the lawn.
‘We are going for a botanical prowl in the woods,’ said Bessie, ‘and we want you to come with us. You are always anxious to improve your mind, and here is a grand opportunity for you. Brian is a tremendous botanist, and Mr. Jardine is not an ignoramus in that line.’
‘Oh, then Mr. Jardine is going to prowl too?’ said Ida, smiling at her.
‘Yes, he is going to give himself a holiday, for once in a way. Blanche is packing a basket. She and Eva are to have the car, but the rest of us are going to walk. Come along, Ida, just as you are. We are going to grovel and grub after club-mosses and toad-stools. Your oldest gown is too good.’
‘Please wear a white gown, as you did yesterday,’ said Brian. ‘White has such a lovely effect amidst the lights and shadows of a wood.’
‘Isn’t it rather too violent a contrast?’ argued Urania. ‘A faint sage-green, or a pale gray — or even that too lovely terra-cotta red—’
‘Flower-pot colour!’ screamed Bessie. ‘Horrid!’
‘I should like to go,’ faltered Ida, ‘but I have so much to do — an afternoon class — no, it is quite impossible. Thank you very much for thinking of me, all the same.
‘You utterly disagreeable thing!’ exclaimed Bessie; and at this moment Miss Wendover came upon the scene, from an adjacent green-house, where she had been working diligently with sponge and watering-pot. She heard the rights and wrongs of the case, and insisted that Ida should go.
‘Never mind the afternoon class — I’ll take that. You work hard enough, child; you must have a holiday sometimes.’
‘I had a holiday yesterday, Aunt Betsy; and really I had rather not go.
The day is so very warm, and I have a slight headache already.’
‘Go and lose it in the wood, where Rosalind lost her heart-ache. Nothing like a long ramble when one is a little out of sorts. Go and get rid of your basket, and get your sunshade. Where are you going for your botanising?’
‘All over the world,’ said Bessie; ‘just as fancy leads us. If you will promise to meet us anywhere, we’ll be there.’
‘So be it,’ replied Aunt Betsy. ‘Suppose we arrange a tea-meeting. I will be ready for you by the Queen Beech, in Framleigh Wood, as the clock strikes five, and we will all come home together. And now run away, before the day gets old. Glad to see you unbending for once in a way, Urania.’
Miss Rylance had been curiously willing to unbend this morning, when Bessie ran in and surprised her at her morning practice with the wonderful tidings of Brian’s return. She appeared delighted at the idea of a botanising expedition, though she cared as little for botany as she did for Hebrew. But when a young lady of large aspirations is compelled to vegetate in a village — even after her presentation at court and introduction into society — she is naturally avid for the society of the one eligible man in the parish.
‘Mr. Jardine is coming with us,’ Bessie told her, as a further temptation.
Urania gave her hand a little squeeze, and murmured, ‘Yes, darling, I’ll come: Mr. Jardine is so nice. Will my frock do?’
The frock was of the pre-Raffaelite or Bedford-Parkian order, short-waisted, flowing, and flabby, colour the foliage of a lavender bush, relieved by a broad brick-dust sash. An amber necklace, a large limp Leghorn hat with a sunflower in it, and a pair of long yellow gloves, completed Urania’s costume.
‘Your frock will be spoilt in the woods,’ said Bessie; but Urania did not mean to do much botanical work, and was not afraid of spoiling her frock.
They found Mr. Jardine waiting for them at the churchyard gate, and to him Bessie presented her cousin, somewhat reversing the ceremonial order of things, since Brian Wendover was the patron of the living, and could have made John Jardine vicar on the arising of a vacancy.
Brian and the Curate walked on ahead with Miss Rylance, who seemed bent upon keeping them both in conversation, and Bessie fell back a little way with Ida.
‘You dearest darling,’ she exclaimed, squeezing her arm rapturously.
‘What has happened, Bess? Why such unusual radiance?’
‘Do you suppose I am not glad of Brian’s return?’
‘I thought you liked the other one best?’
‘Well, yes; one is more at home with him, don’t you see. This one was a double-first — got the Ireland Scholarship. Why Ireland, when it was at Oxford he got it? He is awfully learned; knows Greek plays by heart, just as that sweet Mr. Brandram who came last winter to read for the new school-house knows Shakespeare. But I am very fond of him, all the same; and oh, Ida, what a too heavenly thing it would be if he were to fall in love with you!’
‘Bessie!’ exclaimed Ida, with an indignant frown.
‘Don’t look so angry. You should have heard how he spoke of you this morning at breakfast; such praise! Approbation from Sir Hubert What’s-his-name is praise indeed, don’t you know. There’s Shakespeare for you!’ added Bessie, whose knowledge of polite literature had its limits.
‘Bessie, you contrived once — meaning no harm, of course — to give me great pain, to humiliate me to the very dust,’ said Ida, seriously. ‘Let us have no more such fooling. Your cousin is — your cousin — quite out of my sphere. However civil he may be to me, however kindly he may speak of me, he can never be any more to me than he is at this moment.’
‘Very well,’ said Bess, meekly, ‘I will be as silent as the grave. I don’t think I said anything very offensive, but — I apologize. Do you think you would very much mind kissing me, just as if nothing had happened?’
Ida clasped the lovable damsel in her arms and kissed her warmly. And now Mr. Jardine turned back and joined them at the entrance to a wood supposed to be particularly rich in mosses, flowers, and fungi. Urania still absorbed the attention of Mr. Wendover, who strolled by her side and listened somewhat languidly to her disquisitions upon various phases of modern thought.
‘What a beautiful girl Bessie has discovered for her bosom friend,’ he said, presently.
‘Miss Palliser: yes, she is quite too lovely, is she not?’ said Urania, with that air of heartiness which every well-trained young woman assumes when she discusses a rival beauty; ‘but she has not the purity of the early Italian manner. It is a Carlo-Dolci face — the beauty of the Florentine decadence. I was at school with her.’
‘So I understood. Were you great friends?’
‘No,’ replied Miss Rylance, decisively; ‘if we had been at school for as many years as it took to evolve man from the lowest of the vertebrata we should not have been friends.’
‘I understand. The thousandth part of an inch, unbridged, is as metaphysically impassable as the gulf which divides us from the farthest nebula. In your case there was no conveying medium, no sympathy to draw you together,’ said Brian, answering the young lady in her own coin.
She glanced at him doubtfully, rather inclined to think he was laughing at her, if any one could laugh at Miss Rylance.
‘She was frankly detestable,’ said Urania. ‘I endure her here for
Bessie’s sake; just as I would endure the u
ngraceful curves of a
Dachshund if Bess took it into her head to make a pet of one; but at
school I could keep her at a distance.’
‘What has she done to offend you?’
‘Done? nothing. She exists, that is quite enough. Her whole nature — her moral being — is antagonistic to mine. What is your opinion of a young woman who declares in cold blood that she means to marry for money?’
‘Not a pleasant avowal from such lips, certainly,’ said Brian. ‘She may have been only joking.’
‘After events showed that she was in earnest.’
‘How so? Has she married for money? I thought she was still Miss
Palliser?’
‘She is; but that is not her fault. She tried her hardest to secure a husband whom she supposed to be rich.’
And then Miss Rylance told how in frolic mood his penniless cousin had been palmed upon Miss Palliser as the owner of the Abbey; how she had fallen readily into the trap, and had carried on a clandestine acquaintance which had resulted in her expulsion from the school where she had filled the subordinate position of pupil-teacher.
‘I have heard most of this before, from Bessie, but not the full particulars of the practical joke which put Brian Walford in my shoes,’ said Mr. Wendover.
He felt more shocked, more wounded than there was need for him to feel, perhaps; but the girl’s beauty had charmed him, and he was prepared to think her a goddess.
‘How do you know that Miss Palliser did not like my cousin for his own sake?’ he speculated presently. ‘Brian Walford is a very nice fellow.’
‘She did not like him well enough to marry him when she knew the truth,’ replied Urania. ‘I believe the poor fellow was passionately in love with her. She encouraged him, fooled him to the top of his bent, and then flung him over directly she found he was not the rich Mr. Wendover. He has never been to Kingthorpe since. That would show how deeply he was wounded.’
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 813
