"I'm not," said Gwendolen. "Norbury, is breakfast ready? Shall we go in?... Oh no, nothing! Please don't talk to me about it. I mean I'm all right. Ask Sir Coupland to tell you." For the great surgeon had come into the room, and was talking in an undertone to the old butler. Lady Gwendolen added an apology which she kept in stereotype for the non-appearance of her mother at breakfast. The Earl's absence was a usage, taken for granted. Some said he had a cup of coffee in his own room at eight, and starved till lunch.
Other guests appeared, and the usual English country-house breakfast followed: a haphazard banquet, a decorous scrimmage for a surfeit of eggs, and fish, and bacon, and tongue, and tea, and coffee, and porridge, and even Heaven itself hardly knows what. Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for appreciation elsewhere. For Sir Coupland, appealed to, had given a brief intelligent report of the occurrence of the morning. Then followed undertones of conversation apart between him and the Hon. Percival, who had not the heart for a pleasantry, and groups of two or three aside. Lady Gwen alone was silent, leaving the narration entirely to her medical friend, to whom she had told the incident of last evening--her interview with the man now lying between life and death, and the way his body was found by following the dog. She left the room as early as courtesy allowed, and Sir Coupland did not remain long. He had to go and tell the matter to the Earl, he said.
Gwendolen, no doubt, had to do the same to her mother the Countess. It was an awful business.
Said Miss Smith-Dickenson to the Hon. Percival, on the shady terrace, a quarter of an hour afterwards, "He _did_ tell you who the man is, though? Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask?" Other guests were scattered otherwhere, talking of the tragedy. Not a smile to be seen; still, the victim of the mishap was a stranger. It was a cloud under which a man might enjoy a cigar, _quand meme_.
The Hon. Percival knocked an instalment of _caput mortuum_ off his; an inch of ash which had begun on the terrace; so the interview was some minutes old. "Yes," said he. "Yes, he knows who it is. That's the worst of it."
"The worst of it?"
"I don't know of any reason myself why I should not tell you his name.
Sir Coupland only said he wanted it kept quiet till he could see his father, whom he knows, of course. I understand that the family belongs to this county--lives about twenty miles off." The lady felt so confident that she would be told the name that she seized the opportunity to show how discreet she was, and kept silence. _She_ was quite incapable of mere vulgar inquisitiveness, you see. Her inmost core had the satisfaction of feeling that its visible outer husk, Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson, was killing two birds with one stone. The way in which the gentleman continued justified it. "Besides, I know I may rely upon _you_ to say nothing about it." Clearly the effect of her visible, almost palpable, discretion! For really--said the core--this good gentleman never set eyes on my husk till yesterday evening. And he is a Man of the World and all that sort of thing.
Miss Smith-Dickenson knew perfectly well how her sister Lilian--the one with the rolling, liquid eyes, now Baroness Porchammer--would have responded. But she herself mistrusting her powers of gushing right, did not feel equal to "Oh, but how nice of you to say so, dear Mr. Pellew!"
And she felt that she was not cut out for a satirical puss neither, like her sister Georgie, now Mrs. Amphlett Starfax, to whom a mental review of possible responses assigned, "Oh dear, how complimentary we are, all of a sudden!"--with possibly a heavy blow on the gentleman's fore-arm with a fan, if she had one. So she decided on "Pray go on. You may rely on my discretion." It was simple, and made her feel like Elizabeth in "Pride and Prejudice"--a safe model, if a little old-fashioned.
The gentleman pulled at his cigar in a considerative way, and said in a perfunctory one:--"I am sure I may." Nevertheless, he postponed his answer through a mouthful of smoke, dismissing it into the atmosphere finally, to allow of speech determined on during its detention: "I'm afraid it's Adrian Torrens--there can't be two of the name who write poetry. Besides--the dog!"
The lady said "Good Heavens!" in a frightened underbreath, and was visibly shocked. For it is usually someone of whom one knows nothing at all that gets shot accidentally. Now, Adrian Torrens was the name of a man recently distinguished as the author of some remarkable verse. A man of very good family too. So--altogether!... This was the expression used by Miss Smith-Dickenson's core, almost unrebuked. "Of course, I remember the poem about the collie-dog," she added aloud.
"Can you remember the name of the dog? Wasn't it Aeneas?"
"No--Achilles."
"I meant Achilles. Well--his dog's Achilles."
"I thought you said there was no name on the collar."
"No more there was. But I understand that Gwen met him yesterday evening--down by Arthur's Bridge, I believe--and had some conversation with him, I gather."
"Oh!"
"But why? Why 'Oh!'--I mean?"
"I didn't mean anything. Only that she was looking so scared and unhappy at breakfast, and that would account for it."
"Surely ..."
"Surely what?"
"Well--does it want accounting for? A man shot dead almost in sight of the house, and by your own gamekeeper! Isn't that enough?"
"Enough in all conscience. But it makes a difference. All the difference. I can't exactly describe.... It is not as if she had never met him in her life before. _Now_ do you see?..."
"Never met him in her life before?..." The Hon. Percival stands waiting for more, one-third of his cigar in abeyance between his finger-tips.
Getting no more, he continues:--"Why--you don't mean to say?..."
"What?"
"Well--it's something like this, if I can put the case. Take somebody you've just met and spoken to...." But Mr. Pellew's prudence became suddenly aware of a direction in which the conversation might drift, and he pulled up short. If he pushed on rashly, how avoid an entanglement of himself in a personal discussion? If his introduction to this lady had been days old, instead of merely hours, there would have been no quicksands ahead. He felt proud of his astuteness in dealing with a wily sex.
Only he shouldn't have been so transparent. All that the lady had to do was to change the subject of the conversation with venomous decision, and she did it. "What a beautiful dark green fritillary!" said she. "I hope you care for butterflies, Mr. Pellew. I simply dote on them." She was conscious of indebtedness for this to her sister Lilian. Never mind!--Lilian was married now, and had no further occasion to be enchanting. A sister might borrow a cast-off. Its effect was to make the gentleman clearly alive to the fact that she knew exactly why he had stopped short.
But Miss Smith-Dickenson did _not_ say to Mr. Pellew:--"I am perfectly well aware that you, sir, see danger ahead--danger of a delicate discussion of the difference _our_ short acquaintance would have made to me if I had heard this morning that _you_ were shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its owner--or slave--from capture or entanglement by dangerous single women with no property. You would have been perfectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations as an Adonis had been less equivocal." She said no such thing. But something or other--can it have been the jump to that butterfly?--made Mr. Pellew conscious that if she _had_ worded a thought of the kind, it would have been just like a female of her sort. Because he wasn't going to end up that she wouldn't have been so very far wrong.
A name ought to be invented for these little ripples of human intercourse, that are hardly to be called embarrassments, seeing that their _monde_ denies their existence. We do not believe it is only nervous and imaginative folk that are affected by them. The most prosaic of mankind keeps a sort of internal or subjective diary of contemporary history, many of whose entries run on such events, and are so very unlike what their author said at the time.
The dark green fritillary did not stay long enough to make any conversation worth the name, having an appointment with a friend in the air. Mr. Pellew hummed _Non piu andrai farfallon amoroso_, producing on the mind of Miss Dickenson vague impressions of the Opera, Her Majesty's--not displaced by a Hotel in those days--tinctured with a consciousness of Club-houses and Men of the World. This gentleman, with his whiskers and monocular wrinkle responding to his right-eye-glass-grip, who had as good as admitted last night that his uncle was intimate with the late Prince Regent, was surely an example of this singular class; which is really scarcely admissible on the domestic hearth, owing to the purity of the latter. Possibly, however, these impressions had nothing to do with the lady's discovery that perhaps she ought to go in and find out what "they" were thinking of doing this morning. It may be that it was only due to her consciousness that you cannot--when female and single--stand alone with a live single gentleman on a terrace, both speechless. You can walk up and down with him, conversing vivaciously, but you mustn't come to an anchor beside him in silence. There would be a suspicion about it of each valuing the other's presence for its own sake, which would never do.
"Goin' in?" said the Hon. Percival. "Well--it's been very jolly out here."
"Very pleasant, I am sure," said Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson. If either made a diary entry out of this, it was of the slightest. She moved away across the lawn, her skirt brushing it audibly, as the cage-borne skirt of those days did, suggesting the advantages of Jack-in-the-Green's costume. For Jack could leave his green on the ground and move freely inside it. He did not stick out at the top. Mr.
Pellew remained on the shady terrace, to end up his cigar. He was a little disquieted by the recollection of his very last words, which remembered themselves on his tongue-tip as a key remembers itself in one's hand, when one has forgotten if one really locked that box. Why, though, should he not say to a maiden lady of a certain age--these are the words he thought in--that it was very nice on this terrace? Why not indeed? But that wasn't exactly the question. What he had really said was that it _had been_ very nice on this terrace. All the difference!
Miss Dickenson was soon aware what the "they" she had referred to was going to do, and offered to accompany it. The Countess and her daughter and others were the owners of the voices she could hear outside the drawing-room door when at liberty to expand, after a crush in half a French window that opened on the terrace. Her ladyship the Countess was as completely upset as her husband's ancestry permitted--quite white and almost crying, only not prepared to admit it. "Oh, Constance dear,"
said she. "Are you there? You are always so sensible. But isn't this awful?"
Aunt Constance perceived the necessity for a sympathetic spurt. She had been taking it too easily, evidently. She was equal to the occasion, responding with effusion that it was "so dreadful that she could think of nothing else!" Which wasn't true, for the moment before she had been collating the Hon. Percival's remarks and analysing the last one. Not that she was an unfeeling person--only more like everyone else than everyone else may be inclined to admit.
CHAPTER XII
HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WALKED OVER TO THE VERDERER'S HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS. THE ACCIDENT WAS NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN OLD GENERAL WHO MADE A POOR FIGURE AS A CORPSE. HOW THE WOUNDED MAN'S FATHER AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW HE HIMSELF WAS TO BE CARRIED TO THE TOWERS
There was no need for a reason why Lady Gwendolen and her mother should take the first opportunity of walking over to the Lodge, where this man lay either dead or dying; but one presented itself to the Countess, as an addendum to others less defined. "We ought to go," said she, "if only for poor old Stephen's sake. The old man will be quite off his head with grief. And it was such an absolute accident."
This was on the way, walking over the grassland. Aunt Constance felt a little unconvinced. He who sends a bullet abroad at random may hear later that it had its billet all along, though it was so silent about it. As for the girl, she was in a fever of excitement; to reach the scene of disaster, anyhow--to hear some news of respite, possibly. No one had vouched for Death so far.
Sir Coupland was already on the spot, having only stayed long enough to give particulars of the catastrophe to the Earl; but he was not by the bedside. He was outside the cottage, speaking with Dr. Nash, the local doctor from Grantley Thorpe, who had passed most of the night there.
There was a sort of conclusiveness about their conference, even as seen from a distance, which promised ill. As the three ladies approached, he came to meet them.
"Is there a chance?" said the Countess, as he came within hearing.
Only a shake of the head in reply. It quenches all the eagerness to hear in the three faces, each in its own degree. Aunt Constance's gives place to "Oh dear!" and solicitude. Lady Ancester's to a gasp like sudden pain, and "Oh, Sir Coupland! are you quite, _quite_ sure?" Her daughter's to a sharp cry, or the first of one cut short, and "Oh, mamma!" Then a bitten lip, and a face shrinking from the others' view as she turns and looks out across the Park. That is Arthur's Bridge over yonder, where last evening she spoke with this man that now lies dead, and took some note of his great dark eyes in the living glory of the sunset.
As the world and sky swim about her for a moment, even she herself wonders why she should be so hard hit. A perfect stranger! A man she had never before in her life spoken to. And then, for such a moment! But the great dark eyes of the man now dead are upon her, and she does not at first hear that her mother is speaking to her.
"Gwen dear!... Gwen darling!--you hear what Sir Coupland says? We can do no good." She has to touch her daughter's arm to get her attention.
"Well!" The girl turns, and her tears are as plain on her face as its beauty. "That means go home?" says she; and then gives a sort of heart-broken sigh. "Oh dear!" Her lack of claim to grieve for this man cuts like a knife.
"We can do no good," her mother repeats. "Now, can we?"
"No, I see. Suppose we go." She turns as though to go, but either her intention hangs fire, or she only wishes her face unseen for the moment; for she pauses, saying to her mother: "There is old Stephen. Ought we not to see him--one of us?"
"Yes!" says her ladyship, decisive on reflection. "I had forgotten about old Stephen. But _I_ can go to him. You go back!... Yes, dear, you had better go back.... What?"