"Yes, if I were free, I should tell them both."
Mrs. Stoddart let her knitting fall into her lap, and stared at her companion.
"And what good, in the name of fortune, would come of that?"
"I don"t know that any particular good would come of it, but I should feel happier in my mind. I never had any wish to tell the aunts. I don"t know exactly why, but you don"t somehow want to tell them things. But ever since I"ve known that d.i.c.k was Janey"s brother I"ve wanted to tell her--her and Roger. It seems to come between me and them like a cloud.
You see, they like me, and I like them. There is nothing kept back in _their_ lives, and they think I"m the same as them. I feel as if I ought to tell them."
"But, my dear, if I know anything of people like the Manvers, especially when embedded in the country, it is that they would be terribly shocked, and the disclosure would make an estrangement at once."
"It might," Annette agreed. "I think you"re right. I"m afraid it _would_. But I should like to tell them, all the same."
"They would not be wide-minded enough to understand."
"They"re not wide-minded, I know that, and of course they may feel I"ve been here under false pretences."
"They certainly would. Wouldn"t it be better to do as I advise--to leave Riff? You must lose them either way, Annette. Then why not lose them by going away, instead of telling them first and then having to go away?--for, of course, you could not remain. It would give less pain all round."
Annette locked her hands together.
"I would rather they knew the truth about me."
"The truth!" said Mrs. Stoddart, who, like most shrewd women, did not relish opposition. "The truth! And who will get at the truth if you tell that story of your act of supreme folly? Who will believe that you were not d.i.c.k Le Geyt"s mistress? The truth! Do you think it is the truth about you that I have taken such trouble to conceal?"
"Yes, partly," said Annette. "And I have often wondered lately if it had not been a mistake."
"Why particularly lately?"
"Because of Roger Manvers."
"The young man at the bridge? I wondered whether he was in love with you when we were talking to him. But I did not think it mattered if he was."
"It matters to me."
"You mean you are actually thinking of him? Of course, he is most estimable, and a gentleman, one can see that at a glance, but isn"t he a trifle dull, _borne_?"
"I think I could get on better with a dull person, if he was kind and honourable, than a clever one. I"ve had one clever one--who wasn"t honourable. You see, I"m only good-looking. I"m nothing else. That"s why I like being with the Miss Blinketts and Mrs. Nicholls. I forgot perhaps you don"t know Mrs. Nicholls is the washerwoman. A clever man would get tired of me, or bored with me, and he would expect so much, understandings and discriminations and things which I could not give, or only by a dreadful effort. If I married Roger, he would be pleased with me as I am."
"I have no doubt he would."
"And I should be pleased with him too."
"I am not so sure of that."
"I am, but for some time past I have wished he knew anything there was to know against me."
"Well, but, Annette, you know we agreed--you had my full approval--that you should tell everything to the man you were engaged to."
"I thought that all right at the time--at least, I mean I never thought about it again. But, of course, I did not know Roger then, and I had not realized how cruel it would be to him to go farther and farther, and think more and more of me, and get it firmly rooted in his mind that he would like to marry me,--it takes a long time for him to get his mind fixed,--and then, when I had accepted him and he was feeling very comfortable, to have this--this ugly thing--sprung upon him."
"I don"t see how that can be helped."
"Yes, if he had been told very early in the day, he might have withdrawn,--of course he would have withdrawn if he had believed the worst,--but it would not have cost him much. He would have felt he had had a lucky escape. But as it is," Annette"s voice wavered, "I am afraid Roger will be put to expense."
"Has he said anything?"
"Yes. No. I mean he said something the other day, but it was by the weir, and I know he thought I did not hear. I was listening to the water, and it made a noise. I heard every word, but I did not like to say so, because I saw he was rather surprised at himself, taken aback."
Mrs. Stoddart cogitated.
At last she said, "My dear, I know what is wise, and that is what I have advised you. But I also know that I am a managing woman, and that one must not coerce the lives of others. You are not what is called wise.
And you never will be. But I perceive that you have some kind of course to steer your ship by, and I must even let you steer it. We can"t both stand at the helm, Annette. I think you do not see the rocks ahead, which I have taken such trouble to avoid, but at any rate I have pointed them out. I take my hands off the wheel. I give you back your promise."
Mr. Stirling and Roger were coming through the slender iron gates with their scrolled initials, from which the white hanging cl.u.s.ters of the "Seven Sisters" had to be pushed back to allow them to pa.s.s.
"There are worse things than rocks," said Annette, looking at Roger. But she had become very white.
CHAPTER XXVIII
"Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end."--RABINDRA NATH TAGORE.
Mr. Stirling had no curiosity--that quality which in ourselves we designate as interest in our fellow-creatures, even while we are kneeling at a keyhole.
But his interest in others amounted to a pa.s.sion. He drew slowly through his hand a little chain, looking at each link with kindly compa.s.sion.
The first link had been the expression in Janey"s eyes when his nephew had unconsciously maligned Annette. The sudden relief as from pain, the exultation in those gentle, patient eyes, had brought him instantly to her side as her ally against herself. And in his interview with her, the commonplace pitiful reason had spread itself out before him. She loved some one, probably Mr. Black, or her cousin Roger--at any rate some one who was drifting into love with Annette. He felt confident when he left Janey that she would not use her weapon against Annette as a means to regain her lover--that Annette was safe as far as she was concerned.
Janey was not of those who blindfold their own eyes for long. He had, he knew, removed the bandage from them. That was all that was necessary.
And now here was Roger, kindly, sociable Roger, whom he had always got on with so well,--in spite of the secret contempt of the country-bred man for a man who neither shoots not hunts,--here was Roger suddenly metamorphosed into a laconic poker, hardly willing to exchange a word with himself or Annette at luncheon. Mr. Stirling perceived, not without amus.e.m.e.nt, that Roger was acutely jealous of him, and drew the last link of the chain through his hand. Then it was Roger to whom Janey Manvers was attached, Roger who was in love with Annette? That good-looking Mr.
Black apparently did not come into the piece at all. The situation had, after all, a cla.s.sic simplicity. Two women and one man. He had seen something not unlike it before. And he smiled as he remembered how Miss Blinkett once supplied him unasked with sundry details of the affiancement of her cousin the Archdeacon with the Bishop"s sister, and her anxious injunction when all was divulged that he must not on any account put it into a book. That promise he had kept without difficulty, but not in Miss Blinkett"s eyes, who, when his next novel appeared, immediately traced a marked resemblance between the ardent love-making of the half-Italian hero and the gratified comments of the Archdeacon while allowing himself to be towed into harbour by the blameless blandishments of the Bishop"s sister.
Would Roger in turn think he had been "put in"? Mr. Stirling realized that it was only too likely. For he knew to his cost how deeply embedded in the mind of the provincial male is the conviction that there is nothing like him under the sun. In the novel which Mr. Stirling had recently finished, he had drawn, without a hairbreadth"s alteration, the exact portrait of a married brother-novelist, as an inordinately pompous old maid of literary fame. When the book appeared this character called forth much admiration from the public in general, and the brother-novelist in particular; but it caused a wound so deep and so rankling in the bosom of Aunt Maria that all intercourse was broken off between her and Mr. Stirling for ever, in spite of the fact that he was able to a.s.sure her--only she never believed it--that his novel was in the press before he made her acquaintance. But this is a digression.
Mr. Stirling showed some absence of mind during luncheon, and then owned that he was in a small difficulty about the afternoon. He had promised to drive Mrs. Stoddart and Annette to the old cross at Haliwell. But the victoria only held two comfortably, and the horse which was to have taken him in the dogcart had fallen lame.
"I think I shall commandeer you and your dogcart," he said to Roger.
"Take a few hours" holiday for once, Manvers, and do us all a good turn at the same time. We can put some cushions in your cart, so that Miss Georges will be sufficiently comfortable."
Roger was electrified, but he made no sign. He mumbled something about a foreman, he hung back, he was able to rea.s.sure himself afterwards by the conviction that he had appeared most unwilling, as indeed he did; but very deep down within him he felt a thrill of pleasure. He was tired to death, though he did not know it, of the routine of his life, though he clung to it as a bird will sometimes cling to its cage. He had had enough of farm buildings and wire fencing, and the everlasting drainage of land, the weary water-logged Lowshire land. His eyes became perfectly round, and he looked at his plate with his most bottled-up expression.
But he was pleased. Fortunately for Annette, she knew that. It did not strike him that she might be disconcerted by his apparent unwillingness to escort her. His savage irritation against Mr. Stirling as "a clever chap who could talk a bird out of a tree" was somewhat mollified.
Perhaps, after all, he was interested in Mrs. Stoddart, a widow of about his own age. Roger shot a furtive glance from under his tawny eyelashes at Mrs. Stoddart, suddenly bolted a large piece of peach, and said he thought he could manage it.
It was a still August afternoon, and Roger drove Annette through the sunny countryside. The cool breath of the sea blew softly in their faces, travelling towards them across the low-lying woods and cornfields. For there are few hills in Lowshire. It is a land of long lines: long lines of tidal river and gleaming flats, and immense stretches of clover--clover which is a soft green for half the summer, and then a sea of dim blue pink. The heather and the gorse-land creep almost down among the fields, with here and there a clump of pines taking care of tiny cottages so m.u.f.fled in the gorse that you can only see the upper windows, or keeping guard round quaint little churches with flint towers. And everywhere in the part of Lowshire where the Rieben winds, there are old bridges of red blue brick shouldering up among the b.u.t.tercups, and red cows, with here and there a blue one, standing without legs in the long gra.s.s. And scattered far apart, down deep blackberried lanes, lie the villages of pink-plastered cottages cl.u.s.tering together, red roof by red roof, with a flinty grey church in the midst.
The original artist who designed and painted Lowshire must have always taken a dab of blue in his brush just when he had filled it with red, to do the bridges and the old farms and barns and the cows. For in Lowshire the blues and the reds are always melting into each other like the clover.