"Which you will do?"
"How could I without telling him about you?"
"Say you went to visit a friend."
"Then he says, "What friend?" with a face as black as thunder. I reply that I won"t be subjected to his suspicions. He retorts that he is not suspicious; but that common-sense, and what not, and what not. I tell him that he dare not talk to a lady of his own cla.s.s in the way he talks to me; and that it is because I am an actress that he is suspicious, taking up the vulgar prejudices against actresses. Now, all the time I have known him, I don"t think we ever pa.s.sed a day without having a quarrel about the profession."
"Your acquaintanceship must have been agreeable?"
"It has. There is nothing both of us like so much as quarrelling and making-up. For my part, I couldn"t bear to have a sweetheart always pleasant, and reasonable, and sensible. I like one who is madly in love, who does extravagant things, who quarrels fearfully, and gets frantic with delight when you let him be friends again."
"But the very last time we spoke of Mr. Glyn you said he and you would never get on together, because he wanted those very virtues of solidity, and common-sense, and manly forbearance. You said he was too like yourself."
"Did I say so? Well, I have a different explanation of it every day. I only know that we perpetually quarrel, and that the making-up of quarrels is very nice."
"What would you do if I were to give you 500 a-year?"
"Go to Paris, and drive in the Bois de Boulogne with a pair of ponies,"
replied Nelly, with admirable precision.
"Wouldn"t you marry Mr. Glyn, leave the stage, and be comfortable in some small house at Hampstead?"
"No," she said, frankly; "I haven"t got the domestic faculty. I should worry his life out in a few months."
"What do you say, then, to going with me to America? I mean to leave England for a long time-for some years-and I shall spend most of the time in America, visiting the places my mother and I used to know."
"You are going to leave England?" said Nelly, looking up with earnest, curious eyes.
"Yes."
"You will forgive my saying it-you have had some peculiar secret from me for a long time-not your coming here, but something quite different. I knew that when you suddenly left the stage, and wouldn"t return, for no reason whatever. Why should _you_ have left the stage, of all people?"
"I left it simply because I got to dislike it-to hate it!"
Nelly Featherstone said nothing, but she was evidently not satisfied with the answer. She remained unusually thoughtful for some time.
"And now you are going to America," she said. "Is there no other reason besides your wish to visit those places you speak of?"
"There is; but it is of no consequence to any one."
CHAPTER x.x.xIX.
"THE COULIN."
The snow that shone and gleamed in the sunlight along the Berkshire hills lay thick in the London squares, and was trampled brown and dry in the London streets; and yet even in the City it was white enough to throw a light upon the faces of the pa.s.sers-by, until commonplace countenances underwent a sort of transfiguration; and there was in the atmosphere a pearly radiance that brightened the fronts of the grey houses, and glimmered into small and dingy rooms.
"Let all the light come in," said Dove, lying in bed, with a strange transparent colour in her cheeks, and a wan l.u.s.tre in her beautiful violet eyes; and when they let the strong light in, it fell on her face, and painted away the shadows under the eyebrows until the head that lay on the soft pillow acquired a strange ethereal glory-a vision coloured with sunlight.
"You haven"t played "The Coulin" for me for a long time now, Dove," said Mr. Anerley.
"You used never to like my playing "The Coulin;" why do you want me to play it now?"
"I wish you were well enough to play anything, my darling."
The girl stretched out her tiny pale hand towards his:
"How you have petted me lately! If I were to get up just now and sing you the song I used to sing you, you wouldn"t laugh at my "meghily" any more, would you?"
"_Meghily, meghily shall I sleep now_"-the words sounded in his ears as the refrain of some spirit-song, heard long ago, in happy times, down in the far-off legendary Kentish Eden, where they had once lived.
"A letter for you, papa," said Mrs. Anerley, entering the room.
"I don"t want it," he said, petulantly and angrily turning away-quarrelling with the mist of bitter tears that rose around his eyes.
She glanced from him to Dove (her kindly eyes brightened as they met the quiet look of the girl), laid the letter down, and left the room again.
Mechanically he took up the letter, opened it, and read it. Before he had finished, however, he seemed to recall himself; and then he read it again from the beginning-carefully, anxiously, with strange surprise on his face. He looked at the envelope, again at the letter, and finally at the bank-note which he held in his hand.
"Dove, Dove!" he said, "look at this! Here is the money that is to take us all down to St. Mary-Kirby again-back to the old house, you know, and your own room upstairs; and in a little while the springtime will be in, and you and I shall go down to the river for primroses, as we used to do. Here it is, Dove-everything we want; and we can go, whenever you brighten up and get strong enough to move."
"But where did you get the money, papa?"
"G.o.d must have looked at your face, my darling, and seen that you wanted to go to St. Mary-Kirby."
"And you have plenty of money, papa, to spend on anything?"
All his ordinary prudence forsook him. Even without that guarantee of the bank-note, he would at once have believed in the genuineness of the letter, so eager was he to believe it for Dove"s dear sake.
"Plenty of money, Dove? Yes. But not to spend on anything. Only to spend on you."
"There was Will"s knock," she said; "he has just come in time to hear the news. But go and tell him in another room, papa, for I am tired."
So he left the room, and, as Will had come in, the two men had a long consultation over this strange letter.
"You need not remain long in suspense, sir," said Will; "write me out a cheque for fifty pounds, and I will take it down to the bank."
"But I have none of the printed cheques of the bank."
"You don"t need one. That is a vulgar error. Any bit of paper with a stamp on it will do."
"But they must know that my signature is genuine."
"True. You must come down with me and see the manager. In any case, we can bear the disappointment, if the thing is a hoax. When you have ascertained that you are a rich man, father, I"ll give you another piece of good news."
Mrs. Anerley was left with Dove, and the two men drove off to the bank.
The manager had expected the visit. He warded off Will"s bold inquiries with a grave silence; he had received certain instructions-it was not his business to say from whom.