"Mrs. Darcy!" exclaimed Robert to his wife after a moment"s perplexity, and they walked quickly to meet her.
Rose and Langham exchanged a few commonplaces till the others joined them, and then for a while the attention of everybody in the group was held by the squire"s sister. She was very small, as thin and light as thistle-down, ill-dressed, and as communicative as a babbling child. The face and all the features were extraordinarily minute, and moreover, blanched and etherealised by age. She had the elfish look of a little withered fairy G.o.dmother. And yet through it all it was clear that she was a great lady. There were certain poses and gestures about her, which made her thread gloves and rusty skirts seem a mere whim and masquerade, adopted, perhaps deliberately, from a high-bred love of congruity, to suit the country lanes.
She had come to ask them all to dinner at the Hall on the following evening, and she either brought or devised on the spot the politest messages from the squire to the new rector, which pleased the sensitive Robert and silenced for the moment his various misgivings as to Mr.
Wendover"s advent. Then she stayed chattering, studying Rose every now and then out of her strange little eyes, restless and glancing as a bird"s, which took stock also of the garden, of the flower-beds, of Elsmere"s lanky frame, and of Elsmere"s handsome friend in the background. She was most odd when she was grateful, and she was grateful for the most unexpected things. She thanked Elsmere effusively for coming to live there, "sacrificing yourself so n.o.bly to us country folk," and she thanked him with an appreciative glance at Langham, for having his clever friends to stay with him. "The squire will be so pleased. My brother, you know, is very clever; oh yes, frightfully clever!"
And then there was a long sigh, at which Elsmere could hardly keep his countenance.
She thought it particularly considerate of them to have been to see the squire"s books. It would make conversation so easy when they came to dinner.
"Though I don"t know anything about his books. He doesn"t like women to talk about books. He says they only pretend--even the clever ones.
Except, of course, Madame de Stael. He can only say she was ugly, and I don"t deny it. But I have about used up Madame de Stael," she added, dropping into another sigh as soft and light as a child"s.
Robert was charmed with her, and even Langham smiled. And as Mrs. Darcy adored "clever men," ranking them, as the London of her youth had ranked them, only second to "persons of birth," she stood among them beaming, becoming more and more whimsical and inconsequent, more and more deliciously incalculable, as she expanded. At last she fluttered off, only, however, to come hurrying back, with little, short, scudding steps, to implore them all to come to tea with her as soon as possible in the garden that was her special hobby, and in her last new summer-house.
"I build two or three every summer," she said. "Now, there are twenty-one! Roger laughs at me," and there was a momentary bitterness in the little eerie face, "but how can one live without hobbies? That"s one--then I"ve two more. My alb.u.m--oh, you _will_ all write in my alb.u.m, won"t you? When I was young--when I was Maid of Honour"--and she drew herself up slightly--"everybody had alb.u.ms. Even the dear Queen herself!
I remember how she made M. Guizot write in it; something quite stupid, after all. _Those_ hobbies--the garden and the alb.u.m--are _quite_ harmless, aren"t they? They hurt n.o.body, do they?" Her voice dropped a little, with a pathetic expostulating intonation in it, as of one accustomed to be rebuked.
"Let me remind you of a saying of Bacon"s," said Langham, studying her, and softened perforce into benevolence.
"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Darcy in a flutter of curiosity.
"G.o.d Almighty first planted a garden," he quoted; "and indeed, it is the purest of all human pleasures."
"Oh, but how _delightful_!" cried Mrs. Darcy, clasping her diminutive hands in their thread gloves. "You must write that in my alb.u.m, Mr.
Langham, that very sentence; oh, how _clever_ of you to remember it!
What it is to be clever and have a brain! But, then--I"ve another hobby----"
Here, however, she stopped, hung her head and looked depressed. Robert, with a little ripple of laughter, begged her to explain.
"No," she said plaintively, giving a quick uneasy look at him, as though it occurred to her that it might some day be his pastoral duty to admonish her. "No, it"s wrong. I know it is--only I can"t help it. Never mind. You"ll know soon."
And again she turned away, when, suddenly, Rose attracted her attention, and she stretched out a thin white bird-claw of a hand and caught the girl"s arm.
"There won"t be much to amuse you to-morrow, my dear, and there ought to be--you"re so pretty!" Rose blushed furiously and tried to draw her hand away. "No, no! don"t mind, don"t mind. I didn"t at your age. Well, we"ll do our best. But your own party is so _charming_!" and she looked round the little circle, her gaze stopping specially at Langham before it returned to Rose. "After all, you will amuse each other."
Was there any malice in the tiny withered creature? Rose, unsympathetic and indifferent as youth commonly is when its own affairs absorb it, had stood coldly outside the group which was making much of the squire"s sister. Was it so the strange little visitor revenged herself?
At any rate Rose was left feeling as if some one had p.r.i.c.ked her. While Catherine and Elsmere escorted Mrs. Darcy to the gate she turned to go in, her head thrown back stag-like, her cheek still burning. Why should it be always open to the old to annoy the young with impunity?
Langham watched her mount the first step or two; his eye travelled up the slim figure so instinct with pride and will--and something in him suddenly gave way. It was like a man who feels his grip relaxing on some attacking thing he has been holding by the throat.
He followed her hastily.
"Must you go in? And none of us have paid our respects yet to those phloxes in the back garden?"
Oh woman--flighty woman! An instant before, the girl, sore and bruised in every fibre, she only half knew why, was thirsting that this man might somehow offer her his neck that she might trample on it. He offers it, and the angry instinct wavers, as a man wavers in a wrestling match when his opponent unexpectedly gives ground. She paused, she turned her white throat. His eyes upturned met hers.
"The phloxes did you say?" she asked, coolly redescending the steps.
"Then round here, please."
She led the way, he followed, conscious of an utter relaxation of nerve and will which for the moment had something intoxicating in it.
"There are your phloxes," she said, stopping before a splendid line of plants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole again; her spirits rose at a bound. "I don"t know why you admire them so much. They have no scent, and they are only pretty in the lump," and she broke off a spike of blossom, studied it a little disdainfully, and threw it away.
He stood beside her, the southern glow and life of which it was intermittently capable once more lighting up the strange face.
"Give me leave to enjoy everything countrified more than usual," he said. "After this morning it will be so long before I see the true country again."
He looked, smiling, round on the blue and white brilliance of the sky, clear again after a night of rain; on the sloping garden, on the village beyond, on the hedge of sweet peas close beside them, with its blooms
"On tiptoe for a flight, With wings of gentle flush o"er delicate white."
"Oh! Oxford is countrified enough," she said indifferently, moving down the broad gra.s.s-path which divided the garden into two equal portions.
"But I am leaving Oxford, at any rate for a year," he said quietly. "I am going to London."
Her delicate eyebrows went up. "To London?" Then, in a tone of mock meekness and sympathy, "How you will dislike it!"
"Dislike it--why?"
"Oh! because--" she hesitated, and then laughed her daring girlish laugh--"because there are so many stupid people in London; the clever people are not all picked out like prize apples, as I suppose they are in Oxford."
"At Oxford?" repeated Langham, with a kind of groan. "At Oxford? You imagine that Oxford is inhabited only by clever people?"
"I can only judge by what I see," she said demurely. "Every Oxford man always behaves as if he were the cream of the universe. Oh! I don"t mean to be rude," she cried, losing for a moment her defiant control over herself, as though afraid of having gone too far. "I am not the least disrespectful, really. When you and Robert talk, Catherine and I feel quite as humble as we ought."
The words were hardly out before she could have bitten the tongue that spoke them. He had made her feel her indiscretions of Sunday night as she deserved to feel them, and now after three minutes conversation she was on the verge of fresh ones. Would she never grow up, never behave like other girls? That word _humble_! It seemed to burn her memory.
Before he could possibly answer she barred the way by a question as short and dry as possible--
"What are you going to London for?"
"For many reasons," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I have told no one yet--not even Elsmere. And indeed I go back to my rooms for a while from here. But as soon as Term begins I become a Londoner."
They had reached the gate at the bottom of the garden, and were leaning against it. She was disturbed, conscious, lightly flushed. It struck her as another _gaucherie_ on her part that she should have questioned him as to his plans. What did his life matter to her?
He was looking away from her, studying the half-ruined, degraded manor house spread out below them. Then suddenly he turned--
"If I could imagine for a moment it would interest you to hear my reasons for leaving Oxford, I could not flatter myself you would see any sense in them. I _know_ that Robert will think them moonshine; nay, more, that they will give him pain."
He smiled sadly. The tone of gentleness, the sudden breach in the man"s melancholy reserve affected the girl beside him for the second time, precisely as they had affected her the first time. The result of twenty-four hours" resentful meditation turned out to be precisely _nil_. Her breath came fast, her proud look melted, and his quick sense caught the change in an instant.
"Are you tired of Oxford?" the poor child asked him, almost shyly.
"Mortally!" he said, still smiling. "And what is more important still, Oxford is tired of me. I have been lecturing there for ten years. They have had more than enough of me."
"Oh! but Robert said----" began Rose impetuously, then stopped, crimson, remembering many things Robert had said.