Mrs. Verdon held an untrammelled position in life. She was a rich young widow, uncontrolled, and without children. The death of her little boy had been a greater sorrow than the death of a husband who was much older than herself. Katherine Verdon had adored her child; it was Jamie"s resemblance to her lost darling which had drawn her so strongly towards him. She had been a widow five years, and was in no haste to marry again. Like Queen Elizabeth, she coquetted with her suitors, but these coquetries were of a harmless kind, and never went far enough to set the world talking. She had a great deal of tact and cleverness, and managed all her affairs with graceful dexterity.
She was not really beautiful, but in a woman so fortunately situated a little beauty is made much of. Her figure, tall and slender, had the flexible grace of ribbon-gra.s.s; her little head, regally poised, was almost overweighted with thick braids of satiny hair of pale gold; small features, delicate, if irregular, a colourless, fair skin, and pale-blue eyes, completed this face, which never had a warm tint. Her dress was costly, but always well chosen, and she had so carefully studied herself that she could not put on anything which did not become her.
On that summer evening at Richmond she was at her best. Deliverance from great peril had opened her heart to all good influences. The fear of losing Jamie was set at rest, and it was a fear which had increased as the child grew dearer. She was genial, responsive, full of gentle gaiety and genuine grat.i.tude.
For a whole year Arnold Wayne had listened to the praises of Katherine Verdon, chanted by his cousins the Danforths. They had found fault with him, as all his relations did, for leading an unsettled life, and were always asking when he was going to marry. He had been travelling for three or four years, a.s.sociating with all sorts and conditions of men and women, interesting himself in strange religions, penetrating into regions which few Englishmen had ever visited, and he had reached the mature age of thirty-three without having been very deeply and seriously in love. Of course he had had love affairs. There was an Italian who had held him in her enchantments for a whole winter, not to mention a _gitana_, whose liquid eyes had kept him spell-bound under the walls of the Alhambra, and others, fair and dark, tall and little, who had been--
"The summer pilots of an empty heart Unto the sh.o.r.es of nothing."
But, as he had owned to his innermost self a hundred times, the woman who was to reign over his life had not yet come. Would she ever come? He had asked himself this question on the day when he had seen Elsie with the rector. Certainly, there had been a strange attraction in her face.
It was beautiful, but he had seen beauties by the score; beauties of all lands and of all grades, high and low. It was not Elsie"s beauty which had so strongly moved him, although it was of a type which he especially admired. It was an expression--a something that was wistful and tender in the eyes--a look as of one who was waiting before the fast-shut door of paradise. In time the face might have pa.s.sed out of his memory, but it flashed upon him again at Richmond, and he had a prophetic feeling that his fate had come to him at last.
The boy Jamie, as he saw at once, would be the connecting-link between Elsie and himself. It would be perfectly right in him to call on one who had taken so warm an interest in the nephew of his intimate friend.
Then, too, there had been something said about Miss Neale"s ma.n.u.script, in which his name was mentioned. He felt that he ought to examine the ma.n.u.script, and carry out, as far as he could, the wishes of the writer.
These were the thoughts which came crowding into his mind during the drive home from Richmond. Meanwhile Mrs. Verdon was talking to him in silvery tones, and asking, with pleasant friendliness, whether he had made any plans for the autumn. Jamie, rosy and sleepy, gave him an indolent smile now and then. It was a curious thing, he reflected, that the child should link him to Mrs. Verdon as well as to Miss Kilner. And then he smiled to himself, remembering all that the Danforths had said in this fair widow"s praise. Her carriage set him down in a convenient spot, and he walked away to his chambers in Piccadilly, pondering over the strange adventures of the day.
Mrs. Verdon, although she loved liberty, was not unprotected, and her late husband"s sister--a Mrs. Tell--had lived with her all through the years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of imposing aspect, but easy-tempered and rather lazy. She was past sixty, and looked a majestic matron, with her white hair and lace cap.
Katherine"s whims did not annoy her in the least, and she had taken quite kindly to Jamie. In her inmost heart she did not want her sister-in-law to marry again, and the boy, she thought, would fill up the void in her life, and help to make her contented with her lot.
Mrs. Verdon had a good deal of pleasure in her large house. She found her pictures, chairs, tables, plaques, and hangings quite absorbing sometimes. Many a morning was spent in arranging and rearranging cabinets and mantels, and trying the effect of new draperies; and Mrs.
Tell enjoyed anything that made the time pa.s.s tranquilly away.
The carriage stopped at the door in Portman Square. Sleepy Jamie went toiling up the wide staircase in the dusk, and Mrs. Verdon slowly followed. Everything looked rich and dim; the plants in the great Indian jars filled the hall with sweet scents. Flowers were blooming in every nook. Through a half-drawn _portiere_ there was a glimpse of Mrs. Tell reading in the shaded lamplight.
A motherly woman met Jamie on the landing, and gave him a loving greeting. She had been nurse to Mrs. Verdon"s own child.
"Ready for bed?" she said in her cheery voice. "What pretty dreams you"ll have to-night!"
"Horses ran away," Jamie began, opening his blue eyes. "Went faster than my rocking-horse! Dreadful! Don"t want to go out in the carriage any more."
"Never mind," said nurse, with a little hug, "we won"t talk about runaway horses at bedtime. We"ll just shut our eyes and think of a field of yellow corn, waving, waving, waving."
Elsie had often been troubled with sad visions of Jamie at night. She had pictured him sleeping in rags under an arch, or in some corner of a grimy garret. But fancy had never shown her anything like the dainty little white bed in this s.p.a.cious room.
Gaily-coloured prints decorated the walls, and on a bracket just above the boy"s pillow stood a lovely statuette of an angel, with folded wings and down-bent gracious face. When any visitor came up to see the night-nursery, Jamie would point at once to the figure and say proudly, "My guardian angel."
An hour or two later, when Jamie, rosy and beautiful, was wrapped in the deep sweet sleep of childhood, Mrs. Verdon and her sister-in-law were sitting together after dinner.
"What an eventful day you have had!" said Mrs. Tell, looking up from her knitting in the softly-shaded light. "And what a romantic meeting with Mr. Wayne! Is he all that the Danforths described?"
"Of course not," replied Mrs. Verdon. "They described one of the impossible heroes of fiction. You know, they have a talent for description."
"But isn"t he nice?" Mrs. Tell asked.
"Yes, he is nice. There is something about him that is not commonplace."
She leaned back in her chair with a half-smile, absently toying with a sprig of lemon-plant. Her slender figure looked graceful in a gown of some soft kind of silk, flowered with faint blue and pink.
Looking at her, you somehow imbibed the notion that her hair, eyes, complexion, and dress corresponded with her character. She was faintly coloured. Nothing about her was intense.
A vague thought of this kind flitted through Mrs. Tell"s brain at this moment. She was not a clever woman, but long intercourse with the world had quickened her faculty for observation, and she was much given to studying Katherine.
"Not commonplace," she repeated; "then, of course, you found him very interesting?"
"There was not time to get interested in him," Mrs. Verdon answered.
"Naturally if a man saves one"s life one feels grateful. Perhaps my grat.i.tude has invested him with a fict.i.tious charm."
She spoke with a little mocking air, twisting the sprig of lemon-plant in her long white fingers, and looking down meditatively at the carpet.
"He will follow up his advantage," remarked Mrs. Tell, knitting steadily. "No man ever had a more favourable introduction. I wonder if he knew whose carriage it was when he stopped the horses? It was very well done. Of course, a man who has travelled for years, and gone into all sorts of risky places, is always ready for an emergency. He will call soon."
"He will call soon," echoed the younger widow, still with the little touch of mockery in her tone, "and I shall ask him to dinner. And then, Olivia, you will sit there in your pet chair and watch us both over your knitting-pins. When men come here, you always remind me of Madame Defarge and the dreadful knitting-women of the French Revolution. You have knitted all my admirers into that coverlet you are making. It"s a sort of secret record, I do believe."
She rose, with a slight laugh, suppressed a yawn in saying good-night, and went out of the room with a soft rustle of trailing draperies, leaving Mrs. Tell sitting in the "pet-chair."
CHAPTER XII
_HIS FIRST VISIT_
"The roses bloom while the lady waits, The lark sings high in the blue above; But who will open the golden gates, And let her in to the realms of love?"
Arnold Wayne"s first call upon Elsie was always a very distinct memory to him afterwards. People were beginning to go out of town, and those who remained were haunted by the thought of breezy uplands, or of a blue summer sea breaking lazily on the golden sands. As Arnold walked along All Saints" Street, about five in the afternoon, the chime of a bell ringing for evensong reminded him of his old home at Rushbrook and the grey church close to his gates.
So it came to pa.s.s that he went into Elsie"s presence haunted by memories of his boyhood, and there was nothing in her presence to dispel such memories; something about her seemed to blend with them and harmonise with early a.s.sociations.
She had been sitting by the open window with a book upon her lap, and she rose to meet him, still holding the volume in her hand. She was dressed in a pale-grey gown, and wore a large bunch of heliotrope in the folds of a kerchief of soft muslin knotted at her breast. The quiet little room was flooded with sunshine; the bell kept up its chime; some white pigeons went flying past the window.
"You have made a home here," he said involuntarily; and then he thought of those wise words of Ruskin"s: "Wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold gra.s.s may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is."
"Yes," she answered quietly, "it is a safe nook, where I can be at peace."
"She has known storms, then," was Arnold"s mental comment.
He began to speak of Jamie, and a light came suddenly into her face. It was the greatest relief, she said, to know that the child was happy.
"And Miss Neale"s ma.n.u.script--may I see it?" he asked. "I have always wished that I had known her. When Waring wrote to tell me of his engagement I was abroad. The letter followed me from place to place."
"The ma.n.u.script was discovered by chance. I keep it where I first found it," said Elsie, going to the old table in the corner. She took the roll of paper out of the drawer and put it into his hand. There was perfect silence in the room while he turned over the pages. Elsie had gone back to her window-seat and sat there motionless.
"If they were with us now the world would be all the better for them,"
he said, looking up at last. "I would give a great deal to grasp Waring"s hand again. And Meta--it was best for her to follow him."