Adrian gave a long whistle, for astonishment, and was silent. So was Gwen. For this was the third incident of the sort, and what might not happen? Presently he broke the silence, to say:--"At any rate, that leaves Scatcherd a chance. I thought if this was a make-up of my own, it smashed _her_."
"Foolish man! There is more in it than that. You _saw_ old Mrs. Picture.
It was no make-up.... Well?" She paused for his reply.
It came after a studied silence, a dumbness of set purpose. "Oh why--why--is it always Mrs. Picture, or Scatcherd, or Septimius Severus?
Why can it never be Gwen--Gwen--Gwen?"
The attenuated _chaperonage_ of the lady of the house may have been moved by a certain demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:--"I _hope_ we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.'
Because I _should_ have enjoyed _that_." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher aspects of Opera.
CHAPTER XXV
HOW THE EARL ASKED AFTER THE OLD TWINS. MERENESS. RECUPERATIVE POWER. HOW THE HOUSEHOLD HAD ITS ANNUAL DANCE. HOW THE COUNTESS HAD A CRACKED LIP. HOW WAS DR. TUXFORD SOMERS? SIR SPENCER DERRICK.
GENERAL RAWNSLEY. HE AND GWEN'S INTENDED GREAT GRANDMOTHER-IN-LAW.
GWEN HAD NEVER HAD TWINS BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. THE GENERAL'S BROTHER PHILIP. SUPERANNUATED COCKS AND HENS. HOW GWEN HAD DREAMED SHE WAS TO MARRY A KETTLE-HOLDER. HOW MRS. LAMPREY HAD A LETTER FOR GWEN, WHICH TOOK GWEN OFF TO CHORLTON AT MIDNIGHT
When the Earl of Ancester came back to the Towers next day he certainly did look a little boiled down; otherwise, cheerful and collected. "I am quite prepared to endure another Christmas," said he resignedly to Gwen.
"But a little seclusion and meditation is good to prepare one for the ordeal, and Bath certainly deserves the character everybody gives it, that you never meet anybody else there. I suppose Coventry and Jericho have something in common with Bath. I wonder if outcasts can be identified in either. Nothing distinguishes them in Bath from the favourites of Fortune. How are the old ladies?"
This was in the study, where the Earl and his daughter got a quiet ten minutes to recapitulate the story of each during the other's absence. It was late in the afternoon, two hours after his arrival from London. He had been there a day or two to make a show of fulfilling his obligations towards politics; had sat through a debate or two, and had taken part in a division or two, much to the satisfaction of his conscience. "But,"
said he to Gwen, "if you ask me which I have felt most interest in, your old ladies or the Foreign Enlistment Act, I should certainly say the old ladies." So it was no wonder his inquiry about them came early in this recapitulation.
Gwen found herself, to her surprise, committed to an apologetic tone about old Mrs. Picture's health, and maintaining that she was _really_ better intrinsically, although evidently some person or persons unnamed must have said she was worse. She started on her report with every good-will to make it a prosperous one, and got entangled in some trivialities that told against her purpose. Perhaps her last letter to her father, written from Pensham on the night of her arrival there, had given too rose-coloured an account of her visit to Chorlton, and had caused the rather serious headshake which greeted her admission that old Maisie was still a quasi-invalid, on her back from the merest--quite the merest--weakness. The Earl admitted that, as a general rule, weakness might be mere enough to be negligible; but then it should be the weakness of young and strong people, possessed of that delightful property "recuperative power," which does such wonders when it comes to the scratch. Never be without it, if you can help.
The episode of the champagne was reassuring, and gave Hope a helping hand. Moreover, Gwen had just got another letter from Ruth Thrale, brought by Onesimus the bull-cajoler, which gave a very good account on the whole, though one phrase had a damping effect. We were not "to rely on the champagne," as it was "not nourishment, but stimulus." She _must_ be got to take food regularly, said Dr. Nash, however small the quantity. This seemed to suggest that she had fallen back on that vicious practice of starvation. But "my mother" was constantly talking with "mother" about old times, and it was giving "mother" pleasure.
"I wish," said Gwen, as her father went back to "Honoured Lady" for second reading, and possibly second impressions, "I wish that Dr. Nash had written separately. I want to know what he thinks, and I want to know what Ruth thinks. I can mix them up for myself."
The Earl read to the end, and suspended judgment, visibly. "Eighty-one!"
said he. "And how did Granny Marrable take it? You never said in your letters."
"Because I did not see her. Dr. Nash told--at least, he tried to. But I told you about the little boy's letter. She knew it from that."
"I remember.... Well!--we must hope." And then they spoke of matters nearer home; the impending journey to Vienna; a perplexity created by a promise rashly given to Aunt Constance that she should be married from the Ancester town-residence--two things which clashed, for how could this wedding wait till the Countess's return?--and ultimately of Gwen's own prospects. Then she told her father the incident of Adrian's apparent vision of old Mrs. Picture, and both pretended that it was too slight to build upon; but both used it for a superstructure of private imaginings. Neither encouraged the other.
Adrian and his sister were to have returned with Gwen to the Towers to stay till Monday, which was Christmas Day, when their own plum-pudding and mistletoe would claim them at Pensham. This arrangement was not carried out, possibly in deference to the Countess, who was anxious to reduce to a minimum everything that tended to focus the public gaze on the lovers. Gwen was under a social obligation, inherited perhaps from Feudalism, to be present at the Servants' Ball, which would have been on Christmas Eve had that day not fallen on a Sunday. Hence the necessity for her return on the Saturday, and the interview with her father just recorded. The quiet ten minutes filled the half-hour between tea and dressing for a dinner which might prove a scratch meal in itself, but was distinguished by its sequel. A general adjournment was to follow to the great ball-room, which was given over without reserve on this occasion to the revellers and their friends from the environs; for at the Towers nothing was done by halves in those days. There the august heads of the household were expected to walk solemnly through a quadrille with the housekeeper and head butler. Mrs. Masham's and Mr.
Norbury's sense of responsibility on these occasions can neither be imagined nor described. This great event made conscientious dressing for dinner more than usually necessary, however defective the excitement of the household might make the preparation and service thereof.
These exigencies were what limited Gwen's quiet ten minutes with her father within the narrow bounds of half an hour, leaving no margin at all for more than three words with her mother on her way to her own interview with Miss Lutwyche. She exceeded her estimate almost before her ladyship's dressing-room door had swung to behind her.
"Well, mamma dear, I hope you're satisfied."
"I am, my dear. At least, I am not dissatisfied.... Don't kiss me in front, please, because I have a little crack on the corner of my lip."
The Countess accepted her daughter's _accolade_ on an unsympathetic cheek-bone. "What are you referring to?"
"Why--Adrian not coming till to-morrow, of course. What did you suppose I meant?"
"I did not suppose. Some day you will live to acknowledge--I am convinced of it--that what your father and I thought best was dictated by simple common sense and prudence. I am sure Sir Hamilton will not misinterpret our motives. Nor Lady Torrens."
"He's a nice old Bart, the Bart. We are great friends. He likes it. He gets all the kissing for nothing.... What?"
The Countess may have contemplated some protest against the pronounced ratification implied of fatherdom-in-law. She gave it up, and said:--"I was not going to say anything. Go on!"
The way in which these two guessed each other's thoughts was phenomenal.
Gwen knew all about it. "Come, mamma!" said she. "You know the Bart would not have liked it half so much if I had been a dowdy."
"I cannot pretend to have thought upon the subject." If her ladyship threw a greater severity into her manner than the occasion seemed to call for, it was not merely because she disapproved of her beautiful daughter's want of _retenue_, or questionable style, or doubtful taste, or defective breeding. You must bear all the circumstances in mind as they presented themselves to her. Conceive what the "nice old Bart" had been to her over five-and-twenty years ago, when she herself was a dazzling young beauty of another generation! Think how strange it must have been, to hear the audacities of this new creature, undreamed of then, spoken so placidly through an amused smile, as she watched the firelight serenely from the arm-chair she had subsided on--an anchorage "three words" would never have warranted, even the most unbridled polysyllables. "Do you not think"--her dignified mamma continued--"you had better be getting ready for dinner? You are always longer than me."
"I'm going directly. Lutwyche is never ready. I suppose I ought to go, though.... You are not asking after my old lady, and I think you might."
"Oh yes," said her ladyship negligently. "I haven't seen you since you didn't go to church with me. How _is_ your old lady?"
"You don't care, so it doesn't matter. How was Dr. Tuxford Somers?"
"My dear--don't be nonsensical! How can you expect me to gush over about an old person I have not so much as seen?" She added as an afterthought:--"However worthy she may be!"
"You could have seen her quite well, when she was here. Papa did.
Besides, one can show a human interest, without gushing over."
"My dear, I hope I am never wanting in human interest. How is Mrs....
Mrs....?"
"Mrs. Prichard?"
"Yes--how is she? Is she coming back here?"
"Is it likely? Besides, she can't be moved."
"Oh--it's as bad as that!"
"My dear mamma, haven't I told you fifty times?" This was not exactly the case; but it passed, in conversation. "The darling old thing was all but killed by being told...."
"By being told?... Oh yes, I remember! They were sisters, in Van Diemen's Land.... But she's better again now?"
"Yes--better. Oh, here's Starfield, and there's papa in his room. I can hear him. I must go."
At dinner that evening nobody was in any way new or remarkable, unless indeed Sir Spencer and Lady Derrick, who had been in Canada, counted.
There was one guest, not new, but of interest to Gwen. Do you happen to remember General Rawnsley, who was at the Towers in July, when Adrian had his gunshot accident? It was he who was nearly killed by a Mahratta, at Assaye, when he was a young lieutenant. Gwen had issued orders that he should take her in to dinner, when she heard on her arrival that he had accepted her mother's invitation for Christmas.
Consider dinner despatched--the word is suitable, for an approach to haste was countenanced or tolerated, in consideration of the household's festivity elsewhere--and so much talking going on that the old General could say to Gwen without fear of being overheard:--"Now tell me some more about your fellow.... Adrian, isn't he?... He _is_ your fellow, isn't he?--no compliments necessary?"
"He's my fellow, General, to you and all my _dear_ friends. You saw him in July, I think?"
"Just saw him--just saw him! Hardly spoke to him--only a word or two.