"Delightful!" said Valentine. "I"ll forgive you, of course; you"ll take the dear old man, and I"ll stay snugly at home. I"m so anxious to finish "Evelina." Have you ever read the book?--Don"t you love Lord Orville?"
"No, I love Evelina best," replied Gerald.
The two pairs of eyes met, both were full of laughter, and both pairs of lips were indulging in merry peals of mirth when Mr. Paget entered the room.
"There you are, Val," he said. "You have introduced yourself to Wyndham. Quite right. Now, was there ever anything more provoking? I have just received a telegram." Here Mr. Paget showed a yellow envelope. "I must meet a business man at Charing Cross in an hour, on a matter of some importance. I can"t put it off, and so. Val, I don"t see how I am to send you to the Terrells all alone. It is too bad--why, what is the matter, child?"
"Too delightful, you mean," said Valentine. "I wasn"t going. I meant to commit high treason to-night. I was quite determined to--now I needn"t.
Do you mean to go to the Terrells by yourself, Mr. Wyndham?"
"The pleasure held out was to go with you and your father," responded Wyndham, with an old-fashioned bow, and again that laughing look in his eyes.
Mr. Paget"s benevolent face beamed all over.
"Go up to the drawing-room, then, young folks, and amuse yourselves,"
he said. "Our good friend, Mrs. Johnstone, will bear you company. Val, you can sing something to Wyndham to make up for his disappointment.
She sings like a bird, and is vain of it, little puss. Yes, go away, both of you, and make the best of things."
"The best of things is to remain here," said Valentine. "I hate the drawing-room, and that dear, good Mrs. Johnstone, if she must act chaperon, can bring her knitting down here. I am so sorry for you, Mr.
Wyndham, but I don"t mean to sing a single song to-night. Had you not better go to the Terrells?"
"No, I mean to stay and read "Evelina,"" replied the obdurate young man.
Mr. Paget laughed again.
"I will send our good friend, Mrs. Johnstone, to make tea for you," he said, and he hurried out of the room.
CHAPTER V.
This was the very light and airy beginning of a friendship which was to ripen into serious and even appalling results. Wyndham was a man who found it very easy to make girls like him. He had so many sisters of his own that he understood their idiosyncrasies, and knew how to humor their little failings, how to be kind to their small foibles, and how to flatter their weaknesses. More than one girl had fallen in love with this handsome and attractive young man. Wyndham was aware of these pa.s.sionate attachments, but as he could not feel himself particularly guilty in having inspired them, and as he did not in the slightest degree return them, he did not make himself unhappy over what could not be cured. It puzzled him not a little to know why girls should be so silly, and how hearts could be so easily parted with--he did not know when he questioned his own spirit lightly on the matter that the day of retribution was at hand. He lost his own heart to Valentine without apparently having made the smallest impression upon this bright and seemingly volatile girl.
On that very first night in the old library Wyndham left his heart at the gay girl"s feet. He was seriously in love. Before a week was out he had taken the malady desperately, and in its most acute form. It was then that a change came over his face, it was then for the first time that he became aware of the depths of his own nature. Great abysses of pain were opened up to him--he found himself all sensitiveness, all nerves. He had been proud of his rather athletic bringing-up, of his intellectual training. He had thought poorly of other men who had given up all for the sake of a girl"s smile, and for the rather doubtful possession of a girl"s fickle heart. He did not laugh at them any longer. He spent his nights pacing his room, and his days haunting the house at Queen"s Gate. If he could not go in he could linger near the house. He could lounge in the park and see Valentine as she drove past, and nodded and smiled to him brightly. His own face turned pale when she gave him those quick gay glances. She was absolutely heart-whole--a certain intuition told him this, whereas he--he found himself drivelling into a state bordering on idiotcy.
Almost all men have gone through similar crises, but Wyndham at this time was making awful discoveries. He was finding out day by day the depths of weakness as well as pain within him.
"I"m the greatest fool that ever breathed," he would say to himself.
"What would Lilias say if she saw me now? How often she and I have laughed over this great momentous matter--how often we have declared that we at least would never lose ourselves in so absurd a fashion.
Poor Lilias, I suppose her turn will come as mine has come--I cannot understand myself--I really must be raving mad. How dare I go to Mr.
Paget and ask him to give me Valentine? I have not got a halfpenny in the world. This money in my pocket is my father"s--I have to come to him for every sixpence! I am no better off than my little sister Joan.
When I am ordained, and have secured the curacy of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, I shall have exactly 160 a year. A large sum truly. And yet I want to marry Valentine Paget--the youngest heiress of the season--the most beautiful--the most wealthy! Oh, of course I must be mad--quite mad. I ought to shun her like the plague. She does not in the least care for me--not in the least. I often wonder if she has got a heart anywhere. She acts as a sort of siren to me--luring me on--weakening and enfeebling my whole nature. She is a little flirt in her way, but an unconscious one. She means nothing by that bright look in her eyes, and that sparkling smile, and that gay clear laugh. I wonder if any other man has felt as badly about her as I do. Oh, I ought to shun her--I am simply mad to go there as I do. When I get an invitation--when I have the ghost of a chance of seeing her--it seems as if thousands of invisible ropes pulled me to her side. What is to come of it all? Nothing--nothing but my own undoing. I can never marry her--and yet I must--I will. I would go through fire and water to hold her to my heart for a moment. There, I must have been quite mad when I said that--I didn"t mean it. I"m sane now, absolutely sane. I know what I"ll do. I won"t dine there to-night. I"ll send an excuse, and I"ll run down to the old rectory until Monday, and get Lilias to cure me."
The infatuated young man seized a sheet of notepaper, dashed off an incoherent and decidedly lame excuse to Mr. Paget, and trembling with fear that his resolution would fail him even at the eleventh hour, rushed out and dropped the letter into the nearest pillar-box. This action was bracing, he felt better, and in almost gay spirits, for his nature was wonderfully elastic. He took the next train to Jewsbury, and arrived unexpectedly at the pleasant old rectory late on Sat.u.r.day evening.
The man who is made nothing of in one place, and finds himself absolutely the hero of the hour in another, cannot help experiencing a very soothed sensation. Valentine Paget had favored Gerald with the coolest of nods, the lightest of words, the most indifferent of actions. She met him constantly, she was always stumbling up against him, and when she wanted him to do anything for her she issued a brief and lordly command. Her abject slave flew to do her bidding.
Now at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold the slave was in the position of master, and he could not help enjoying the change.
"Augusta, wheel that chair round for Gerald. Sit there. Gerald, darling--oh, you are in a draught. Shut the door, please, Marjory.
Joan, run to the kitchen, and tell Betty to make some of Gerald"s favorite cakes for supper. Is your tea quite right, Gerry; have you sugar enough--and--and cream?"
Gerald briefly expressed himself satisfied. Lilias was superintending the tea-tray with a delicate flush of pleasure on her cheeks, and her bright eyes glancing moment by moment in admiration at her handsome brother. Marjory had placed herself on a footstool at the hero"s feet, and Augusta, tall and gawky, all stockinged-legs, and abnormally thin long arms, was standing at the back of his chair, now and then venturing to caress one of his crisp light waves of hair with the tips of her fingers.
"It is too provoking!" burst from Marjory,--"you know, Lilias, we can"t put Gerald into his old room, it is being papered, and you haven"t half-finished decorating the door. Gerry, darling, you might have let us know you were coming and we"d have worked at it day and night. Do you mind awfully sleeping in the spare room? We"ll promise to make it as fresh as possible for you?"
"I"ll--I"ll--fill the vases with flowers--" burst spasmodically from Augusta. "Do you like roses or hollyhocks best in the tall vases on the mantel-piece, Gerry?"
"By the way, Gerald," remarked the rector, who was standing leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing complacently at his son and daughters, "I should like to ask your opinion with regard to that notice on Herring"s book in the _Sat.u.r.day_. Have you read it? It struck me as over critical, but I should like to have your opinion."
So the conversation went on, all adoring, all making much of the darling of the house. Years afterwards, Gerald Wyndham remembered that summer"s evening, the scent of the roses coming in at the open window, the touch of Marjory"s little white hand as it rested on his knee, the kind of half-irritated, half-pleased thrill which went through him when Augusta touched his hair, the courteous and proud look on the rector"s face when he addressed him, above all the glow of love in Lilias"
beautiful eyes. He remembered that evening--he was not likely ever to forget it, for it was one of the last of his happy boyhood, before he took upon him his manhood"s burden of sin and sorrow and shame.
After tea Lilias and Gerald walked about the garden arm-in-arm.
"I am going to confess something to you," said the brother. "I want your advice, Lilly. I want you to cure me, by showing me that I am the greatest fool that ever lived."
"But you are not, Gerald; I can"t say it when I look up to you, and think there is no one like you. You are first in all the world to me--you know that, don"t you?"
"Poor Lil, that is just the point--that is where the arrow will pierce you. I am going to aim a blow at you, dear. Take me down from your pedestal at once--I love someone else much, much better than I love you."
Lilias" hand as it rested on Gerald"s arm trembled very slightly. He looked at her, and saw that her lips were moving, and that her eyes were looking downwards. She did not make any audible sound, however, and he went on hastily:--
"And you and I, we always promised each other that such a day should not come--no wonder you are angry with me, Lil."
"But I"m not, dear Gerald--I just got a nasty bit of jealous pain for a minute, but it is over. I always knew that such a day would come, that it would have to come--if not for me, at least for you. Tell me about her, Gerry. Is she nice--is she half--or a quarter nice enough for you?"
Then Gerald launched into his subject, forgetting what he supposed could only be a very brief sorrow on Lilias" part in the enthralling interest of his theme. Valentine Paget would not have recognized the portrait which was drawn of her, for this young and ardent lover crowned her with all that was n.o.ble, and decked her with attributes little short of divine.
"I am absolutely unworthy of her," he said in conclusion, and when Lilias shook her head, and refused to believe this latter statement, he felt almost angry with her.
The two walked about and talked together until darkness fell, but, although they discussed the subject in all its bearings, Gerald felt by no means cured when he retired to rest, while Lilias absolutely cried herself to sleep.
Marjory and she slept in little white beds, side by side.
"Oh, Lil, what"s the matter?" exclaimed the younger sister, disturbed out of her own sweet slumbers by those unusual tokens of distress.
"Nothing much," replied Lilias, "only--only--I am a little lonely--don"t ask me any questions, Maggie, I"ll be all right in the morning."
Marjory was too wise to say anything further, but she lay awake herself and wondered. What could ail Lilias?--Lilias, the brightest, the gayest of them all. Was she fretting about their mother. But it was seven years now since the mother had been taken away from the rectory children, and Lilias had got over the grief which had nearly broken her child-heart at the time.
Marjory felt puzzled and a little fearful,--the evening before had been so sweet,--Gerald had been so delightful. Surely in all the world there was not a happier home than Jewsbury-on-the-Wold. Why should Lilias cry, and say that she was lonely?