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“Mr. Lavendar, ma’am,” said Bates, “Mr. Lavendar and Mrs. Loring they went out in the boat after tea. Mr. Lavendar asked William for the key, and William he went down and got out the oars and rudder, ma’am.”
“Does William know where they went?” asked Mrs. de Tracy in high displeasure. “Was it to Wittisham?”
“No, ma’am, William says they went down stream. He thinks perhaps they were going to the Flag Rock, and he says the gentleman wouldn’t have a hard pull, as the tide was going out. But Mr. Lavendar knows the river well, ma’am, as well as Mr. Carnaby here.”
“Then I conclude there is no immediate cause for anxiety,” said Mrs. de Tracy with satire. “You can serve dinner, Bates; there seems no reason why we should fast as yet! However, Carnaby,” she continued, “as the men cannot be spared at this hour, you had better go at once and see what has happened to our guests.”
“Right you are,” cried Carnaby with the utmost alacrity. He was hungry, but the prospect of escape was better than food. He rushed away, and his boat was in mid-river before Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon had finished their tepid soup.
A very slim young moon was just rising above the woods, but her tender light cast no shadows as yet, and there were no stars in the sky, for it was daylight still. The evening air was very fresh and cool; there was no wind, and the edges of the river were motionless and smooth, although in mid-stream the now in-coming tide clucked and swirled as it met the rush. Over at Wittisham one or two lights were beginning to twinkle, and there came drifting across the water a smell of wood smoke that suggested evening fires. Carnaby handled a boat well, for he had been born a sailor, as it were, and his long, powerful strokes took him along at a fine pace. But although he was going to look for Robinette and Mark, he was rather angry with both of them, and in no hurry. He rested on his oars indifferently and let the tide carry him up as it liked, while, with infinite zest, he unearthed a cigarette case from the recesses of his person, lit a cigarette, and smoked it coolly. Under Carnaby’s apparent boyishness, there was a certain somewhat dangerous quality of precocity, which was stimulated rather than checked by his grandmother’s repressive system. His smoking now was less the monkey-trick of a boy, than an act of slightly cynical defiance. He was no novice in the art, and smoked slowly and daintily, throwing back his head and blowing the smoke sometimes through his lips and sometimes through his nose. He looked for the moment older than his years, and a difficult young customer at that. His present sulky expression disappeared, however, under the influence of tobacco and adventure.
“Where the dickens are they?” he began to wonder, pulling harder.
A bend in the river presently solved the mystery. On a wide stretch of mud-bank, which the tide had left bare in going out, but was now beginning to cover again, a solitary boat was stranded.
With this clue to guide him, Carnaby’s bright eyes soon discovered the two dim forms in the distance.
“Ahoy!” he shouted, and received a joyous answer. Robinette and Mark were the two derelicts, and their rescuer skimmed towards them with all his strength.
He could get only within a few yards of the rock to which their boat was tied, and from that distance he surveyed them, expecting to find a dismal, ship-wrecked pair, very much ashamed of themselves and getting quite weary of each other. On the contrary the faces he could just distinguish in the uncertain light, were radiant, and Robinette’s voice was as gay as ever he had heard it. He leaned upon his oars and looked at them with wonder.
“Angel cousin!” cried Robinette. “Have you a little roast mutton about you somewhere, we are so hungry!”
“You are a pretty pair!” he remarked. “What have you been and done?”
“We just went for a row after tea, Middy dear,” said Robinette, “and look at the result.”
“You’re not rowing now,” observed Carnaby pointedly.
“No,” said Mark, “we gave up rowing when the water left us, Carnaby. Conversation is more interesting in the mud.”
“But how did you get here? I thought you were going to the Flag Rock?” demanded Carnaby.
“Is there a Flag Rock, Middy dear? I didn’t know,” said Robinette innocently. “It shows we shouldn’t go anywhere without our first cousin once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the water went away and left us.” Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too, and Carnaby’s look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so senseless, viewed in any other light.
“It’s nearly eight o’clock,” he said solemnly. “Perhaps you can form some idea as to what grandmother’s saying, and Bates.”
“Well, you’re going to be our rescuer, Middy darling, so it doesn’t matter,” said Robinette. “Look! the water’s coming up.”
But Carnaby seemed in no mood for waiting. He had taken off his boots, and rolled up his trousers above his knees.
“I’d let Lavendar wade ashore the best way he could!” he said, “but I s’pose I’ve got to save you or there’d be a howl.”
“No one would howl any louder than you, dear, and you know it. Don’t step in!” shrieked Robinette, “I’ve confided a shoe already to the river-mud! I just put my foot in a bit, to test it, and down the poor foot went and came up without its shoe. Oh, Middy dear, if your young life–”
“Blow my young life!” retorted Carnaby. He was performing gymnastics on the edge of his boat, letting himself down and heaving himself up, by the strength of his arms. His legs were covered with mud.
“No go!” he said. “It’s as deep as the pit here; sometimes you can find a rock or a hard bit. We must just wait.”
They had not long to wait after all, for presently a rush of the tide sent the water swirling round the stranded boat, and carried Carnaby’s craft to it.
“Now it’ll be all right,” said he. “You push with the boat-hook, Mark, and I’ll pull”; but it took a quarter of an hour’s pushing and pulling to get the boat free of the mud.
Except for the moon it would have been quite dark when the party reached the pier. They mounted the hill in some silence. It was difficult for Robinette to get along with her shoeless foot; Lavendar wanted to help her, but she demanded Carnaby’s arm. He was sulking still. There was something he felt, but could not understand, in the subtle atmosphere of happiness by which the truant couple seemed to be surrounded; a something through which he could not reach; that seemed to put Robinette at a distance from him, although her shoulder touched his and her hand was on his arm. Growing pangs of his manhood assailed him, the male’s jealousy of the other male. For the moment he hated Mark; Mark talking joyous nonsense in a way rather unlike himself, as if the night air had gone to his head.
“I am glad you had the ferrets to amuse you this afternoon,” said Robinette, in a propitiatory tone. “Ferrets are such darlings, aren’t they, with their pink eyes?”
“O! darlings,” assented Carnaby derisively. “One of the darlings bit my finger to the bone, not that that’s anything to you.”
“Oh! Middy dear, I am sorry!” cried Robinette. “I’d kiss the place to make it well, if we weren’t in such a hurry!”
Carnaby began to find that a dignified reserve of manner was very difficult to keep up. His grandmother could manage it, he reflected, but he would need some practice. When they came to a place where there were sharp stones strewn on the road, he became a mere boy again quite suddenly, and proposed a “queen’s chair” for Robinette. And so he and Lavendar crossed hands, and one arm of Robinette encircled the boy’s head, while the other just touched Lavendar’s neck enough to be steadied by it. Their laughter frightened the sleepy birds that night. The demoralized remnant of a Bank Holiday party would have been, Lavendar observed, respectability itself in comparison with them; and certainly no such group had ever approached Stoke Revel before. They were to enter by a back door, and Carnaby was to introduce them to the housekeeper’s room, where he undertook that Bates would feed them. Lavendar alone was to be ambassador to the drawing room.
“The only one of us with a boot on each foot, of course we appoint him by a unanimous vote,” said Robinette.
But the chief thing that Carnaby remembered, after all, of that evening’s adventure, was Robinette’s sudden impulsive kiss as she bade him good-night, Lavendar standing by. She had never kissed him before, for all her cousinliness, but she just brushed his cool, round cheek to-night as if with a swan’s-down puff.
“That’s a shabby thing to call a kiss!” said the embarrassed but exhilarated youth.
“Stop growling, you young cub, and be grateful; half a loaf is better than no bread,” was Lavendar’s comment as he watched the draggled and muddy but still charming Robinette up the stairway.
XIV
THE EMPTY SHRINE
Lavendar had discovered, much to his dismay, that he must return to London upon important business; it was even a matter of uncertainty whether his father could spare him again or would consent to his returning to Stoke Revel to conclude Mrs. de Tracy’s arrangements about the sale of the land.
Affairs of the heart are like thunderstorms; the atmosphere may sometimes seem charged with electricity, and yet circumstances, like a sudden wind that sweeps the clouds away before they break, may cause the lovers to drift apart. Or all in a moment may come thunder, lightning, and rain from a clear sky, and there is nothing that is apt to precipitate matters like an unexpected parting.
When Lavendar announced that he had to leave Stoke Revel, two pairs of eyes, Miss Smeardon’s and Carnaby’s, instantly looked at Robinette to see how she received the news, but she only smiled at the moment. She was just beginning her breakfast, and like the famous Charlotte, “went on cutting bread and butter,” without any sign of emotion.
“Hurrah!” thought the boy. “Now we can have some fun, and I’ll perhaps make her see that old Lavendar isn’t the only companion in the world.”
“She minds,” thought Miss Smeardon, “for she buttered that piece of bread on the one side a minute ago, and now she’s just done it on the other–and eaten it too.”
“She doesn’t care a bit,” thought Lavendar. “She’s not even changed colour; my going or staying is nothing to her; I needn’t come back.”
He had made up his mind to return just the same, if it were at all possible, and he told Mrs. de Tracy so. She remarked graciously that he was a welcome guest at any time, and Carnaby, hearing this, pinched Lord Roberts till he howled like a fiend, and fled for comfort to his mistress’s lap.
“You little coward,” said Carnaby, “you should be ashamed to bear the name of a hero.”
“I’ve mentioned to you before, Carnaby, I think, that I dislike that jest,” said his grandmother, and Carnaby advancing to the injured beast said, “Yes, ma’am, and so does Bobs, doesn’t he, Bobs?” reducing the lap-dog to paroxysms of fury. “Would it be any better if I called him Kitchener?” hissing the word into the animal’s face. “Jealous, Bobs? Eh? Kitchener.” This last word had a rasping sound that irritated the little creature more than ever; his teeth jibbered with anger, and Miss Smeardon had to offer him a saucer of cream before he could be calmed down enough for the rest of the party to hear themselves speak.
“Had you nice letters this morning? Mine were very uninteresting,” Robinette remarked to Lavendar as they stood together at the doorway in the sunshine, while Carnaby chased the lap-dog round and round the lawn.
“I had only two letters; one was from my sister Amy, the candid one! her letters are not generally exhilarating.”
“Oh, I know, home letters are usually enough to send one straight to bed with a headache! They never sound a note of hope from first to last; although if you had no home, but only a house, like me, with no one but a caretaker in it, you’d be very thankful to get them, doleful or not.”
“I doubt it,” Mark answered, for Amy’s letter seemed to be burning a hole in his pocket at that moment. He had skimmed it hurriedly through, but parts of it were already only too plain.
When the others had gone into the house, he went off by himself, and jumping the low fence that divided the lawn from the fields beyond, he flung himself down under a tree to read it over again. Carnaby, spying him there, came rushing from the house, and was soon pouring out a tale of something that had happened somewhere, and throwing stones as he talked, at the birds circling about the ivied tower of the little church.
The field was full of buttercups up to the very churchyard walls. “I must get away by myself for a bit,” Lavendar thought. “That boy’s chatter will drive me mad.” At this point Carnaby’s volatile attention was diverted by the sight of a gardener mounting a ladder to clear the sparrows’ nests from the water chutes, and he jumped up in a twinkling to take his part in this new joy. Lavendar rose, and strolled off with his hands in his pockets and his bare head bent. The grass he walked in was a very Field of the Cloth of Gold. His shoes were gilded by the pollen from the buttercups, his eyes dazzled by their colour; it was a relief to pass through the stone archway that led into the little churchyard. To his spirit at that moment the chill was refreshing. He loitered about for a few minutes, and then seeing that the door was open, he entered the church, closing the door gently behind him.
It was very quiet in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think things out by himself.
He took out Amy’s letter, smoothing it flat on the prayer books before him, and forced himself to read it through. The early paragraphs dealt with some small item of family news which in his present state of mind mattered to Lavendar no more than the distant chirruping of the birds, out there in the sunshine. “You seem determined to stay for some time at Stoke Revel,” his sister wrote. “No doubt the pretty American is the attraction. She sounds charming from your description, but my dear man, that’s all froth! How many times have I heard this sort of thing from you before! Remember I know everything about your former loves.”
“You don’t, then,” said Lavendar to himself. Down, down, down at the bottom of the well of the heart where truth lies, there is always some remembrance, generally a very little one, that can never be told to any confidant.
“You will find out faults in Mrs. Loring presently, just like the rest of them,” continued the pitiless writer. (Amy’s handwriting was painfully distinct.) “I must tell you that at the Cowleys’ the other day, I suddenly came face to face with Gertrude Meredith and Dolly! Dolly looks a good deal older already and fatter, I thought. I fear she is losing her looks, for her colour has become fixed, and she will wear no collars still, although on a rather thick neck, it’s not at all becoming. I spoke to her for about three minutes, as it was less awkward, when we met suddenly face to face like that. She laughed a good deal, and asked for you rather audaciously, I thought. They live near Winchester now, and since the Colonel’s death are pretty badly off, Gertrude says. Dolly is going to Devonshire to stay with the Cowleys; you may meet her there any day, remember. It does seem incredible to me that a man of your discrimination could have been won by the obvious devotion of a girl like Dolly; but having given your word I almost think you would better have kept it, rather than suffer all this criticism from a host of mutual friends.”
Lavendar groaned aloud. He had a good memory, and with all too great distinctness did he now remember Dolly Meredith’s laugh. How wretched it had all been; not a word had ever passed between them that had any value now. If he could have washed the thought of her forever from his memory, how greatly he would have rejoiced at that moment.
Well, it was over; written down against him, that he had been what the world called a jilt and a fool; yes, certainly a fool, but not so great a one as to follow his folly to its ultimate conclusion, and tie himself for life to a woman he did not love.
Lavendar was extraordinarily sensitive about the breaking of his engagement; partly because Miss Meredith herself, in her first rage, had avowed his responsibility for her blighted future, giving him no chance for chivalrous behaviour; partly because in all his transient love affairs he had easily tired of the women who inspired them. He seemed thirsty for love, but weary of it almost as soon as the draught reached his lips.
And now had he a chance again?–or was it all to end in disappointment once more, in that cold disappointment of the heart that has received stones for bread? It was not entirely his own fault; he had expected much from life, and hitherto had received very little. But Robinette!
“Let me find all her faults now,” he said to himself, “or evermore keep silent; meantime I hope I am not concealing too many of my own.”
He tried to force himself into criticism; to look at her as a cold observer from the outside would have done; for that curious Border country of Love which he had entered has not an equable climate at all. It is fire and frost alternate; and criticism is either roused almost to a morbid pitch, or else the faculty is drugged, and nothing, not even the enumeration of a hundred foibles will awaken it for a time.
When the cold fit had been upon him the evening before, Lavendar had said to himself that her manner was too free–that she had led him on too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish, too unthinking, in what she said and did. “But she’s a widow after all, though she’s only two and twenty,” he went on to himself. “Hang it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband’s grave I should be moaning at that; and because I see that it is not, I become critical. There’s nothing quite perfect in life!”
He had begun by noticing some little defects in her personal appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles matter, here or there? Then he remembered all that he had heard said about American women. Did those pretty clothes of hers mean that she would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her? and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when passion has grown stale.
“At seventy, say, when I am palsied and she is old and fat, will romance be alive then? Will such feeling leave anything real behind it when it falls away, as the white blossoms on Mrs. Prettyman’s plum tree will shrink and fall a fortnight hence?”
He looked about him. On the walls of the little church were tablets with the de Tracy names; the names of her forefathers amongst them. Under his feet were other flags with names upon them too; and out there in the sunshine were the grave-stones of a hundred dead. How many of them had been happy in their loves?
Not so many, he thought, if all were told, and why should he hope to be different? Yet surely this was a new feeling, a worthy one, at last. It was not for her charming person that he loved her; not because of her beauty and her gaiety only; but because he had seen in her something that gave a promise of completion to his own nature, the something that would satisfy not only his senses but his empty heart.
He clenched his hands on the carved top of the old pew in front of him, which was fashioned into a laughing gnome with the body of a duck. “And if this should be all a dream,” he asked himself again, “if this should all be false too! Good Lord!” he cried half aloud, “I want to be honest now! I want to find the truth. My whole life is on the throw this time!”
There was a moment’s silence after he had uttered the words. He got up and moved slowly down the aisle, opening the door, seeing again the meadow of buttercups, yellow as gold, and listening again to the sparrows chirruping in the sunshine outside.
“I have been in that church a quarter of an hour,” he said to himself, “and in trying to dive to the depths of myself and find out whether I was giving a woman all I had to give, I did not get time to consider that woman’s probable answer, should I place my uninteresting life and liberty at her disposal.”
XV
“NOW LUBIN IS AWAY”
Lavendar made his adieux after luncheon and went off to London. “Good-bye for the present, Mrs. de Tracy; I shall be back on Wednesday probably, if I can arrange it,” he said. “Good-bye, Mrs. Loring,” and here he altered the phrase to “Shall I come back on Wednesday?” for his hostess had left the open door.
There was no hesitation, but all too little sentiment, about Robinette’s reply.
“Wednesday, at the latest, are my orders,” she answered merrily, and with the words ringing in his ears Lavendar took his departure.
“Do you remember that this is the afternoon of the garden party at Revelsmere?” Mrs. de Tracy enquired, coming into the drawing room a few minutes later, where Mrs. Loring stood by the open window. She had allowed herself just five minutes of depression, staring out at the buttercup meadow. How black the rooks looked as they flew about it and how dreary everything was, now that Lavendar had gone! She was woman enough to be able to feel inwardly amused at her own absurdity, when she recognized that the ensuing three days seemed to stretch out into a limitless expanse of dullness. “The village seemed asleep or dead now Lubin was away!” Still, after all, it was an occasion for wearing a pretty frock, and she knew herself well enough to feel sure that the sight of a few of her fellow-creatures even pretending to enjoy themselves, would make her volatile spirits rise like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day.
Miss Smeardon was to be her companion, as Mrs. de Tracy had a headache that afternoon and was afraid of the heat, she said. “What heat?” Robinette had asked innocently, for in spite of the brilliant sunlight the wind blew from the east, keen as a knife. “I shall take a good wrap in the carriage in spite of this tropical temperature,” she thought. Carnaby refused point blank to drive with them; he would bicycle to the party or else not go at all, so it was alone with Miss Smeardon that Robinette started in the heavy old landau behind the palsied horse.
Miss Smeardon gave one glance at Mrs. Loring’s dress, and Robinette gave one glance at Miss Smeardon’s, each making her own comments.
“That white cloth will go to the cleaner, I suppose, after one wearing, and as for that thing on her head with lilac wistaria drooping over the brim, it can’t be meant as a covering, or a protection, either from sun or wind; it’s nothing but an ornament!” Miss Smeardon commented; while to herself Robinette ejaculated,–
“A penwiper, an old, much-used penwiper, is all that Miss Smeardon resembles in that black rag!”
Carnaby, watching the start at the door, whistled in open admiration as Robinette came down the steps.
“Well, well! we are got up to kill this afternoon; pity old Mark has just gone; but cheer up, Cousin Robin, there’s always a curate on hand!”
For once Robinette’s ready tongue played her false, and a sense of loneliness overcame her at the sound of Lavendar’s name. She gathered up her long white skirts and got into the carriage with as much dignity as she could muster, while Carnaby, his eyes twinkling with mischief, stood ready to shut the door after Miss Smeardon.
“Hope you’ll enjoy your drive,” he jeered. “You’ll need to hold on your hats. Bucephalus goes at such fiery speed that they’ll be torn off your heads unless you do.”
“Middy dear, you’re not the least amusing,” said Robinette quite crossly, and with a lurch the carriage moved off.
Miss Smeardon settled herself for conversation. “I’m afraid you will find me but a dull companion, Mrs. Loring,” she said, glancing sideways at Robinette from under the brim of her mushroom hat.
“Oh, you will be able to tell me who everyone is,” said Robinette as cheerfully as she could.
“I am no gossip,” Miss Smeardon protested.