"Yes."
"Could anything be more opportune? Now listen to what I have to propose. You want a good holiday in this fine weather. Very well. I must go over to Schonstein at once to see about some alterations and improvements I want made; and I propose to make it worth Mr. Anerley"s while to go with me and superintend part of these improvements. That is an affair of necessity and business on my part and his; but why should you and Mrs. Christmas not accept our convoy over there? Even if you only go as far as one of the Rhine villages, we could see you safely that distance. Or if I could persuade you to come and see my place, such as it is-for a week or two. I think the excursion would be delightful; and if I can"t entertain you as sumptuously as a king, yet I won"t starve you, and I"ll give you the best wine to be bought for good money in Baden."
Will coloured up at the hideous barbarity of the closing sentence; but Miss Brunel answered, good-naturedly:
"You"re very kind indeed, Count; and I am sure the wine must be a great inducement to Mr. Anerley. But if I go anywhere for a holiday, it will be for Mrs. Christmas" sake; and I must see what she says about it first."
"Oh, if it is Mrs. Christmas," said the Count, with a laugh, "I must try to persuade her."
"No; I won"t have any coercion. I will place the matter before her in all its details, and she shall decide. If we don"t go, I hope you"ll have a pleasant journey all the same."
"And as for you, Anerley, what do you say?"
"As our arrangement will be a business matter, we"ll settle it another time," said Will, in a decided tone, which prevented the Count making further reference to buying and selling.
"I won"t take any denial from any one of you," said the Count, with a prodigious laugh. "As for Mrs. Christmas, if that little woman dares to thwart me, I"ll have her portrait published in the ill.u.s.trated papers as the wife of Rip Van Winkle."
With which astounding witticism, the Count proceeded to get on horseback again-a rather difficult matter. Will held the stirrup for him, however; and eventually he shook himself into the saddle.
Annie Brunel had lifted her veil to speak to the Count; and as her companion now saw that there was a good deal of whispering and nodding going on among several knots of riders, he thought it prudent to withdraw himself and her into the Park. From thence they took their way back through Kensington Gardens, and so home.
"Would it look strange in English eyes," asked Miss Brunel, frankly, "if Mrs. Christmas and I, in travelling about, were to visit the Count"s place?"
"I don"t think so," said Will. "And if it did, it wouldn"t matter. I think the party would be a very merry and pleasant one; and you would not allow Mrs. Christmas to feel that for her sake you were moping alone in some dull seaside lodgings. The Count is really very good-natured and kind; and I think you would enjoy the quaint old people and their manners down in the Black Forest."
"Have you been there?"
"Oh, yes. I have had a pa.s.sing glance at every place, pretty nearly.
There you may have a little deer-shooting, if you like: I have seen two ladies go out with guns, though they never did anything beyond letting one of the guns fall and nearly killing a keeper."
"Will it be very expensive going over?" she asked quite navely, as though she had been calculating the propriety of accepting a country engagement.
"Not at all. Are you going to say "Yes"?"
"If Mrs. Christmas does, I will."
CHAPTER XII.
GOOD-BYE.
"Cras ingens iterabimus aequor; do you know what that means, Dove?" asked Will.
"Something dreadful, I suppose," she said.
"_Cras_, on Monday night, _iterabimus_, I must leave, _ingens aequor_, for Germany. Didn"t I say I should never leave England again without you, Dove? But this is only for a week or two, my darling; and it is on business; and I am come to crave your forgiveness and permission."
What did she say? Not one word. But, being seated at the piano just then, and having some knowledge of how she could most easily reach her lover"s heart and make him sorry for his fickleness, she began to play, with great tenderness, with graceful and touching chords, that weird, wild, cruel air, "The Coulin,"-the old Irish air that seems to have in it all the love and agony of parting which mankind has ever experienced.
It is only now and again that humanity has expressed its pain or pa.s.sion in one of those strong audible throbs-as when, for instance, G.o.d put the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ into the bursting heart of Rouget de Lille. One wonders how men live after writing such things.
And as for Will, he never could bear "The Coulin;" he put his hand on her shoulder, and said:
"Don"t play that any more, Dove. That isn"t the parting of love at all-it is the parting of death."
"Ah, why should you say that?" she said, rising and creeping close to him, with tears suddenly starting to her eyes. "Why should you say that, Will? You don"t expect us to be parted _that_ way?"
"Come," he said, leading her out of the drawing-room into the open air.
"The man who wrote "The Coulin" had probably a broken heart; but that is no reason why we should break ours over his misery. My father is teaching Carry and Totty to fish for sticklebacks in the pond; shall we go and help them?"
He had gone down to bid good-bye to St. Mary-Kirby and its people. The warm valley was very tempting at this time; but did not peremptory business call him away? For after the first yellow flush of the b.u.t.tercups had died out of the meadows, they were growing white with the snow of the ox-eye; and the walnut trees were changing from brown to green; and instead of the lilacs, the bushy, red-budded honeysuckle was opening, and burdening the air with its perfume.
Then they had fine weather just then; would it be finer on the Rhine?
The white heat of midday was without haze. Sharp and clear were the white houses, specks only, on the far uplands; the fir-woods lay black against the blinding sky; and down here in the valley the long-gra.s.sed meadows seemed to grow dark in the heat, though there was a light shimmering of sunny green surrounding like a halo each pollard-willow by the riverside. In the clear pools the grey trout threw black shadows on the sand beneath, and lay motionless, with their eyes watching your every movement on the bank. St. Mary-Kirby lay hot and white among the green meadows, and by the side of the cool stream; but the people of St.
Mary-Kirby prayed for rain to swell the fruit of their orchards and fields.
On their way down to a little gate, which, at one end of Mr. Anerley"s garden, allowed you to go out upon a small bank overlooking the pond, Will explained to his companion the necessity for his going abroad, the probabilities of his stay, and so forth. She knew that he was going with Count Schonstein; but she did not know that Annie Brunel was to be of the party. Will had no particular reason for not mentioning the circ.u.mstance; but as he strictly confined himself to the business aspect of the case, Miss Brunel was somehow omitted.
Nor, when they arrived at the pond, and found Mr. Anerley superintending the operations of two young anglers, did he consider it necessary to tell his father that Annie Brunel was going with them. Perhaps she had slipped out of his mind altogether. Perhaps he fancied he had no right to reveal the Count"s private arrangements. At all events, Miss Brunel"s name was not at that time mentioned.
"The stickleback," observed Mr. Anerley, sententiously, when they drew near, "must be of very ancient lineage. Any long-continued necessity on the part of any animal produces a corresponding organ or function; can you explain to me, therefore, why Scotchmen are not born with a mackintosh?"
"No," said Dove.
"Because Nature has not had time to develope it. You observe that my stickleback here, whom I have just caught, has had time to acquire special means of defence and attack. I, a man, can only clumsily use for defence or attack limbs which are properly adapted for other purposes--"
"Which proves that mankind has never experienced the necessity of having specially destructive organs," said Will, to Dove"s great delight.
She knew not which, if either, was right but the philosopher of Chesnut Bank had such a habit of inflicting upon his womankind theories which they did not understand, and could not contradict, that she had a malicious pleasure in witnessing what she supposed was his discomfiture.
"It serves you right, papa," she said. "You presume on our ignorance, when you have only mamma and me. Now you have somebody to talk to you in your own way."
"When I observed," continued Mr. Anerley, "that mankind had no special organ of attack and defence, I ought to have excluded women. The tongue of woman, an educational result which owes its origin to--"
"Don"t let him go on, Dove," said Will, "or he"ll say something very wicked."
"Has papa been talking nonsense to you all day, Carry?" asked Dove.
"No," said the matter-of-fact Carry, "it was the story of the "King of the White Bears.""
"I pghesumed on theigh ignoghance," said Mr. Anerley, mimicking his adopted daughter"s p.r.o.nunciation.
"We must give him up, Dove," said Will. "A man who will employ ridicule in a scientific argument is not worth answering. If he were not my father, I should express my feelings more strongly; as it is--"
Here Mrs. Anerley appeared, her pretty kindly face lit up by some unusual and pleasurable excitement. She was almost out of breath too.