Buch lesen: «A Young Man's Year», Seite 23

She sat a long while, brooding over his last answer, with her eyes still set on his averted face.

"You mean it'll work out that you're part of the family, and I'm not? Are you going to cut me, Arthur?"

"Oh, no, no!" he cried, turning to her now. "It's monstrous of you to say that! God knows I've no grudge against you! I've owed you too much happiness and – and felt too much for you. And if we must talk of sides, wasn't I always on your side?"

"Yes, but now you're not."

"I'm not against you – indeed I'm not! But if you're away somewhere with – well, I mean, away from us, and we're all together at home – "

"Us! We! Home!" she repeated after him, with a smile of rather sad mockery. "Yes, I suppose I begin to see, Arthur."

"They've made it home to me – especially since my mother's death."

Her resentment passed away. She seemed tranquil now, but sad and regretful. "Yes, I suppose that's the way it'll work," she said. "I shall get farther and farther off, and they'll get nearer and nearer!" She laid her hand on his for a moment, with one of her old light affectionate caresses. "I was silly enough to think that I could keep you, Arthur, somehow, in spite of all that's happened. And I wanted to. Because I'm very fond of you. But I suppose I can't. I'm a spoilt child – to think I could have you as well as all the rest I've got!" She smiled. "Awfully thorough life is, isn't it? Always making you go the whole hog when you think you can go half-way, just comfortably half-way! I don't like it, Cousin Arthur."

"I don't like it either, altogether; but that is the kind of way it gets you," he agreed thoughtfully.

"Still we can be good friends," she said, and then broke away from the conventional words with a quick impatience. "Oh, being good friends is such a different thing from being really friends, though!" She took up her gloves and began to put them on slowly. "I had a letter from Judith just before I came over," she remarked. "She writes every three or four weeks, you know. She said you were down there, and that she and you were having a good time skating."

"Yes, awfully jolly. She's a champion, you know!"

Bernadette was busy with her gloves. She did not see the sudden lighting-up of his eyes, as her words recalled to him the vision of Judith skating, the vivid grace of motion and the triumph of activity, there on the ice down at Hilsey.

"Oh, well, she's been to Switzerland in the winter a lot," said Bernadette carelessly. "I suppose she'd have gone this year, if it hadn't been for – " She raised her eyes again to his, and stopped with a glove half-way on. "Well, if it hadn't been for me, really!" She smiled, and jerked her head impatiently. "How I seem to come in everywhere, don't I? Well, I can't help it! She's got no one else belonging to her, and she used to be a lot with us anyhow."

"Oh, you needn't worry about her; she's quite happy," said Arthur confidently.

"I don't know that I was worrying, though I daresay I ought to have been. But she likes being there. I expect she'll settle down there for good and all." As she went back to her glove-buttoning she added, by way of an after-thought, "Unless she marries."

Knowing the thing that was taking shape in his own heart, and reading his own thoughts into the mind of another, as people are prone to do, Arthur expected here a certain suggestion, was wondering how to meet it, and was in a way afraid of it. He felt a sense of surprise when Bernadette passed directly away from the subject, leaving her after-thought to assume the form of a merely perfunctory recognition of the fact that Judith was a girl of marriageable age and therefore might marry – perhaps with the implication that she was not particularly likely to, however. He was relieved, but somehow a little indignant.

"You've told me hardly anything about yourself," said Bernadette. But here again the tone sounded perfunctory, as though the topic she suggested were rather one about which she ought to inquire than one in which she felt a genuine interest.

"Oh, there's not much to tell. I've sown my wild oats, and now I've settled down to work."

She seemed content with the answer, whose meagreness responded sensitively to her own want of a true concern. She was not really interested, he felt, in any life that he might be living apart from her. She was very fond of him, as she said and he believed; but it was fondness, a liking for his company, an enjoyment of him, a desire to have him about her, had such a thing been still possible; it was not such a love or deep affection as would make his doings or his fortunes in themselves of great importance to her. Where his life was not in actual contact with her own, it did not touch her feelings deeply. Well, she had always been rather like that, taking what she wanted of his life and time, leaving the rest, and paying with her smiles. Well paid too, he had thought himself, and had made no complaint.

He did not complain now either. He had never advanced any claim to more than her free grace bestowed; and what she gave had been to him great. But he felt a contrast. At home – his thoughts readily used that word now – his fortunes were matter for eager inquiry, excited canvass and speculation. His meagre answer would not have sufficed there. Judith and little Margaret had to hear about everything; even old Godfrey fussed about in easy earshot and listened furtively. It was not that Bernadette had changed; there was no reason to blame her, or call her selfish or self-centred. It was the others who had changed towards him, and he towards them, and he in himself. For Bernadette he was still what he had been before the flight – what Judith had once called a toy, though a very cherished one. To himself he seemed to have found, since then, not only a home but a life.

She did not know that; she had not seen it happening. Nobody had told her; probably she would not understand if anyone did – not even if he himself tried to; and the task would be difficult and ungracious. And of what use? It would seem like blame, though he intended none, and against blame she was very sensitive. It might make her unhappy – for she was very fond of him – and what purpose was served by marring ever so little a happiness which, whatever else it might or might not be, was at least hard-won?

She rose. "It must be getting late," she said, "and I'm going to the theatre. And back to Paris to-morrow! I shan't be in London again for a long long while. Well, you'll remember what to tell Godfrey – how I feel about Margaret? And – and anything kind about himself – if you think he'd like it."

"I don't really think I'd better risk that."

She smiled. "No, I suppose not. I'm never mentioned – is that it?"

"Oh, Judith and I talk about you."

"I daresay Judith is very – caustic?"

"Not particularly. Not nearly so caustic as when you were with us!"

"Us! Us! I begin to feel as if I'd run away from you too, Arthur! Though I wasn't your wife, or your mother – or even your chaperon, was I? Well, at the end I did run away a little sooner because of you – you'd found me out! – but I don't think I meant to run away from you for ever. But you belong to Hilsey now – so it seems as if it was for ever. I ran away for ever from Hilsey, all Hilsey – and now you're part of it!"

She was standing opposite to him, with a smile that seemed half to tease him, half to deride herself. She did not seek to hide her sorrow and vexation at losing him; she hardly pretended not to be jealous – he could think her jealous if he liked! Her old sincerity abode with her; she had no tricks.

She looked very charming in his eyes; her sorrow at losing her – he did not know what to call it, but whatever it was that she used to get from his society and his adoration – touched him profoundly. He took one of her gloved hands and raised it to his lips. She looked up at him; her eyes were dim.

"It's turned out rather harder in some ways than I thought it would – making quite a fresh start, I mean. I do miss the old things and the old friends dreadfully. But it's worth it. It was the only thing for me. There was nothing else left to do. I had to do it."

"You're the only judge," he said gently. "Thank God it's turned out right for you!"

She smiled under her dim eyes. "Did you think I should repent? Like those frogs – you remember? – in the fable. King Stork instead of King Log?" She laughed. "It's not like that." She paused a moment. "And Oliver and I aren't to be alone together, I think, Cousin Arthur."

He sought for words, but she put her slim fingers lightly on his lips. "Hush! I don't want to cry. Take me to a taxi – Quickly!"

She spoke no more to him – nor he to her, save to whisper, with a last clasp of her hand before she drove away, "God bless you!"

CHAPTER XXXVI
IN THE SPRING

Yes, it was all true! The events of that Red Letter Day had really happened. When Arthur awoke the next morning, he had a queer feeling of its all being a dream, a mirage born of ambition. No. The morning paper proved it; a glance at his own table added confirmation.

Revolving Time had brought round the Easter vacation again. The last case heard in the Court of Appeal that sittings was Crewdson v. The Great Southern Railway Company, on appeal from Knaresby, j.'s, judgment on the findings of the jury. (The subsequent history of the great Dog Case lay still in the future.) It was a time of political excitement; Sir Humphrey Fynes, k. c., m. p., had chanced the case being reached, and gone off to rouse the country to a proper sense of its imminent peril if the Government continued so much as a day longer in office. Consequently he was not there to argue Miss Crewdson's case. Mr. Tracy Darton, k. c., was there, but he was also in the fashionable divorce case of the moment, and had to address the jury on the respondent's behalf. He cut his argument before the Court of Appeal suspiciously short, and left to his learned friend Mr. Lisle the task of citing authorities bearing on tricky points relating to the subject of Common Carriers. Arthur was in a tremor when he rose – nearly as much frightened as he had been before Lance and Pretyman, jj., a year ago – but his whole heart was with his dog; he grew excited, he stuck to his guns; they should have those authorities if he died for it! He was very tenacious – and in the end rather long perhaps. But the Court listened attentively, smiling now and then at his youthful ardour, but letting him make his points. When they came to give judgment against his contention, they went out of the way to compliment him. The Master of the Rolls said the Court was indebted to Mr. Lisle for his able argument. Leonard, l. j., confessed that he had been for a moment shaken by Mr. Lisle's ingenious argument. Pratt, l. j., quite agreed with what had fallen from My Lord and his learned Brother concerning Mr. Lisle's conduct of his case. Even Miss Crewdson herself, whose face had been black as thunder at Sir Humphrey's desertion and Mr. Darton's unseemly brevity, and whose shoulders had shrugged scornfully when Arthur rose, found a smile for him in the hour of temporary defeat; that she would lose in the end never entered the indomitable woman's head. Then – out in the corridor, when all was over – Tom Mayne patted him on the back, and almost danced round him for joy and pride – it was impossible to recognise in him the melancholy Mr. Beverley – Norton Ward, hurrying off to another case, called out, "Confound your cheek!" and, to crown all, the august solicitor of the Great Southern Railway Company, his redoubtable opponents, gave him a friendly nod, saying, "I was afraid you were going to turn 'em at the last moment, Mr. Lisle!" That his appreciation was genuine Arthur's table proved. There, newly deposited by triumphant Henry, lay a case to advise the Great Southern Railway Company itself.

"Once you get in with them, sir – !" Henry had said, rubbing his hands together and leaving the rest to the imagination.

Such things come seldom to any man, but once or twice in their careers to many. They came to Arthur as the crown of a term's hard work, mostly over Norton Ward's briefs – for Norton Ward had come to rely on him now and kept him busy 'devilling' – but with some little things of his own too; for Wills and Mayne were faithful, and another firm had sent a case also. His neck was well in the collar; his fee book had become more than a merely ornamental appurtenance. Long and hard, dry and dusty, was the road ahead. Never mind! His feet were on it, and if he walked warily he need fear no fatal slip. Letting the case to advise wait – his opinion would not be needed before the latter part of the vacation, Henry said – he sat in his chair, smoking and indulging in pardonably rosy reflections.

"Rather different from what it was this time last year!" said Honest Pride with a chuckle.

A good many things had been rather different with him a year ago, he might have been cynically reminded; for instance the last Easter vacation he had dedicated to Miss Marie Sarradet, and he was not dedicating this coming one to Mrs. Sidney Barslow; and other things, unknown a year ago, had figured on the moving picture of his life, and said their say to him, and gone their way. But to-day he was looking forward and not back, seeing beginnings, not endings, not burying the past with tears or smiles, but hailing the future with a cheery cry of welcome for its hazards and its joys.

Henry put his head in at the door. "Sir Christopher Lance has rung up, sir, and wants to know if you'll lunch with him to-day at one-thirty – at his house."

"Yes, certainly. Say, with pleasure." Left alone again, Arthur ejaculated "Splendid!" Sir Christopher had seen the report in the paper! He read the law reports, of course. A thought crossed Arthur's mind – would they read the law reports at Hilsey? They might not have kept their eye on his case. He folded up the paper and put it carefully in the little bag which he was now in the habit of carrying to and fro between his lodgings and his chambers.

Sir Christopher was jubilant over the report. "A feather in your cap to get that out of Leonard – a crusty old dog, but a deuced fine lawyer!" he said. But the news of the case from the Great Southern Railway Company meant yet more to him. "If they take you up, they can see you through, Arthur."

"If I don't make a fool of myself," Arthur put in.

"Oh, they'll expect you to do that once or twice. Don't be frightened. The dog of yours is a lucky dog, eh? All you've got to do now is to take things quietly, and not fret. Remember that only one side can win, and it's not to be expected that you'll be on the right side always. I think you'll be done over the dog even, in the end, you know."

"Not I!" cried Arthur indignantly. "That Harrogate cur's not our dog, sir."

"Human justice is fallible," laughed the old man. "Anyhow it's a good sporting case. And what are you going to do with yourself now?"

"I'm off to Hilsey for a fortnight's holiday. Going at four o'clock."

"Losing no time," Sir Christopher remarked with a smile.

"Well, it's jolly in the country in the spring, isn't it?" Arthur asked, rather defensively.

"Yes, it's jolly in the spring – jolly anywhere in the spring, Arthur."

Arthur caught the kindly banter in his tone; he flushed a little and smiled in answer. "It was very jolly there in the winter too, if you come to that, sir. Ripping skating!"

"Does all the family skate?"

"No, not all the family." He laughed. "Just enough of it, Sir Christopher."

The old man sat back in his chair and sipped his hock. "Some men can get on without a woman about them but, so far as I've observed you, I don't think you're that sort. If you must have a woman about you, there's a good deal to be said for its being your own wife, and not, as so often happens, somebody else's. May we include that among our recent discoveries?"

"But your own wife costs such a lot of money."

"So do the others – very often. Don't wait too long for money, or for too much of it. Things are jolliest in the spring!"

"I suppose I'm rather young. I'm only twenty-five, you know."

"And a damned good age for making love too!" Sir Christopher pronounced emphatically.

"Oh, of course, if that's your experience, sir!" laughed Arthur.

Sir Christopher grew graver. "Does the wound heal at Hilsey?"

"Yes, I think so – slowly."

"Surgery's the only thing sometimes; when you can't cure, you must cut. At any rate we won't think hardly of our beautiful friend. I don't believe, though, that you're thinking of her at all, you young rascal! You're thinking of nothing but that train at four o'clock."

Arthur was silent a moment or two. "I daresay that some day, when it's a bit farther off, I shall be able to look at it all better – to see just what happened and what it came to. But I can't do that now. I – I haven't time." They had finished lunch. He came and rested his hand on the old man's shoulder. "At any rate, it's brought me your friendship. I can't begin to tell you what that is to me, sir."

Sir Christopher looked up at him. "I can tell you what it is to me, though. It's a son for my barren old age – and I'm quite ready to take a daughter too, Arthur."

Arthur went off by the four o'clock train, with his copy of The Times in his pocket. But out of that pocket it never emerged, save in the privacy of his den, and there it was hidden carefully. Never in all his life did he confess that he had "happened" to bring it down with him. For, on the platform at Hilsey, the first thing he saw was Judith waiting for him. As soon as he put his head out of the window, she ran towards him, brandishing The Times in her hand. No motive to produce his copy, no need to confess that he had brought it!

His attitude towards Judith's copy was one of apparent indifference. It could not be maintained in face of her excitement and curiosity. The report seemed to have had on her much the same effect as skating. She proposed to walk home, and let the car take his luggage, and, as soon as they were clear of the station, she cried, "Now you've got to tell me all – all – about it! What are the Rolls, and who's the Master of them? What's Lord Justice Leonard like? And the other one – what's his name? – Pratt? And what was it in your speech that they thought so clever?"

"I thought perhaps you wouldn't see it," said Arthur, not mentioning that he had taken his own measures to meet that contingency, had it arisen.

"Not see it! Why, I hunt all through those wretched cases every morning of my life, looking for that blessed dog of yours! So I shall, till it's found, or buried, or something. Now begin at the beginning, and tell me just how everything happened."

"I say, this isn't the shortest way home, you know."

"I know it isn't. Begin now directly, Arthur." She had hold of his arm now, The Times still in her other hand. "Godfrey's quite excited too – for him. He'd have come, only he's got a bad cold; and Margaret stayed to comfort him. Begin now!"

His attitude of indifference had no chance. All the story was dragged from him by reiterated "And thens – ?" He warmed to it himself, working up through their lordships, through Miss Crewdson's smile ("She looks an uncommonly nice old girl," he interjected), through Tom Mayne's raptures and Norton Ward's jocose tribute, to the climax of the august solicitor and the case to advise which attested his approval. "That may mean a lot to me," Arthur ended.

"The people you'd been trying to beat!" Her voice sounded awed at the wonder of it. "I should have thought they'd just hate you. I wish I was a man, Arthur! Aren't you awfully proud of it all?"

Well, he was awfully proud, there was no denying it. "I wish the dear old mater could have read it!"

She pressed his arm. "We can read it. I've helped Margaret to spell it out. She's feeling rather afraid of you, now that you've got your name in the paper. And Godfrey's been looking up all the famous Lisles in the County History! You won't have to be doing Frank Norton Ward's work for him now all the time – and for nothing too!"

In vain he tried to tell her how valuable the devilling was to him. No, she thought it dull, and was inclined to lay stress on the way Norton Ward found his account in it. Arthur gave up the effort, but, somewhat alarmed by the expectations he seemed to be raising, ventured to add, "Don't think I'm going to jump into five thousand a year, Judith!"

"Let me have my little crow out, and then I'll be sensible about it," she pleaded.

But he did not in his heart want her sensible; her eyes would not be so bright, nor her cheeks glow with colour; her voice would not vibrate with eager joyfulness, nor her laugh ring so merrily; infectious as Miss Ayesha Layard's own, it was really! Small wonder that he caught the infection of her sanguine pleasure too. Long roads seemed short that evening, whether they led to fame and fortune, or only through the meadows and across the river to Hilsey Manor.

"Now the others will want to hear all about it," said Judith, with something like a touch of jealousy.

The story had to be told again – this time with humorous magniloquence for Margaret's benefit, with much stress on their lordships' wigs and gowns, a colourable imitation of their tones and manner, and a hint of the awful things they might have done to Arthur if he had displeased them – which Margaret, with notions of a trial based on Alice in Wonderland, was quite prepared to believe. Godfrey shuffled about within earshot, his carpet slippers (his cold gave good excuse for them) padding up and down the room as he listened without seeming to listen, and his shy, "Very – very – er – satisfactory to you, Arthur!" coming with a pathetic inadequacy at the end of the recital.

Then – before dinner – a quiet half-hour in his own den upstairs, where everything was ready for him and seemed to expect him, where fresh fragrant flowers on table and chimney-piece revealed affectionate anticipation of his coming, where the breeze blew in, laden with the sweetness of spring, through the open windows. As he sat by them, he could hear the distant cawing of the rooks and see the cattle grazing in the meadows. The river glinted under the setting sun, the wood on the hill stood solid and sombre with clear-cut outline. The Peace of God seemed to rest on the old place and to wrap it round in a golden tranquillity. His heart was in a mood sensitive to the suggestion. He rested after his labours, after the joyful excitement of the last twenty-four hours. So Hilsey too seemed to rest after its struggle, and to raise in kind security the head that had bent before the storm.

He had left his door ajar and had not heard anyone enter. But presently – it may be that he had fallen into a doze, or a state of passive contemplation very like one – he found Judith standing by the arm-chair in which he was reclining – oh, so lazily and pleasantly! She looked as if she might have been there for some little while, some few moments at all events, and she was gazing out on the fairness of the evening with a smile on her lips.

"I've been putting Margaret to bed – she was allowed an extra hour in your honour – and then I just looked in here to see if you wanted anything."

"I shall make a point of wanting as many things as I possibly can. I love being waited on, and I've never been able to get enough of it. I shall keep you busy! Judith, to think that I was once going to desert Hilsey! Well, I suppose we shall be turned out some day." He sighed lightly and humorously over the distant prospect of ejection by Margaret, grown-up, married perhaps, and the châtelaine.

"If you want to know your future, I happen to be able to tell you," said Judith. "Margaret arranged it while she was getting into bed."

"Oh, let's hear this! It's important – most important!" he cried, sitting up.

"If you don't want to go on living here, you're to have a house built for you up on the hill there. On the other side of the wood, I insisted; otherwise you'd spoil the view horribly! But Margaret didn't seem to mind about that."

"Yes, I think I must be behind the wood – especially if I'm to have a modern artistic cottage."

"There you're to live – when you're not in London, being praised by judges – and you're to come down the hill to tea every day of the week."

"It doesn't seem a bad idea – only she might sometimes make it dinner!"

"She'll make it dinner when she's bigger, I daresay. At present, for her, you see, dinner doesn't count."

"Why does she think I mightn't want to go on living here? Is she contemplating developments in my life? Or in her own? And where are you going to live while I'm living on the top of the hill, out of sight behind the wood? Did Margaret settle your future too, Judith?"

"I don't think it occurs to her that I've got one – except just to go on being here. We women – we ordinary women – get our futures settled for us. I think Bernadette settled mine the day she ran away and left poor Hilsey derelict."

He looked up at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Should you put the settling of your fate quite as early as that, Judith?"

She saw what he meant and shook her head at him in reproof, but her eyes were merry and happy.

"Have you thought over that idea of Switzerland in the winter?"

"It's the spring now. Why do you want to think of winter?"

"The thought of winter makes the spring even pleasanter." She smiled as she rested her hand on his shoulder and looked down on his face. "Well, perhaps – if I can possibly persuade Godfrey to come with us."

"If he won't? What are we to do if we can get nobody to go with us?"

She broke into a low gentle laugh. "Well, I don't want to get rusty in my skating. And it's splendid over there." Her eyes met his for a moment in gleeful confession. "Still – the best day's skating I ever had in my life, Arthur, was the first day we skated here at Hilsey."