Being so firmly switched off from the affairs of Mr. Lavendar and Miss Meredith, it was impossible for Miss Smeardon to talk about them any more, and she had to turn to a less congenial theme.
"We shall meet the neighbours," she told Robinette, "but I am afraid they may not interest you very much. I understand that in America you are accustomed to a great deal of the society of gentlemen. Here there are so few, and all of them are married."
"All?" laughed Robinette.
"Well, there is Mr. Finch, the curate, but he is a celibate; and young Mr. Tait of Strewe, but he is slightly paralysed."
"Why, Carnaby must be quite an eligible bachelor in these parts," said Robinette; but Miss Smeardon was so deadly literal that she accepted the remark as a serious one.
"Not quite yet; in a few years" time we shall need to be very careful, there are so many girls here, but not all of them desirable, of course."
"There are? What a dull time they must have with the Married Men, the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby! I"m glad my girlhood wasn"t spent in Devonshire."
Conversation ended here, for the carriage rumbled up the avenue, and Robinette looked about her eagerly. Revelsmere was a nice old house, surrounded by fine sloping lawns and a background of sombre beechwoods. The lawns to-day were dotted with groups of people, mainly women, and elderly at that. As Robinette and Miss Smeardon alighted at the door an elderly hostess welcomed them, and an elderly host led them across the lawn and straightly they fell into the clutches of more and more elderlies.
"It is fairly bewildering!" Robinette cried in her heart; then she saw a bevy of girls approaching; such nice-looking girls, happy, well dressed, but all unattended by their suitable complement of young men.
"For whom do they dress, here? They"ve a deal of self-respect, I think, to go on getting themselves up so nicely for themselves and the Celibate, the Paralytic, and Carnaby," thought Robinette, as she watched them.
Presently another couple came across the lawn; the young woman was by no means a girl, rather heavily built, with a high fixed colour. She was attended by a man. "Not the Celibate certainly," thought Mrs.
Loring with a glance at his bullock-like figure, his thick neck, and glossy black hair, "nor the Paralytic; and it"s not Carnaby. It must be a new arrival!"
At that moment it began to rain, but nothing daunted, their hostess approached her, and saying pleasantly that she wished to introduce her to Miss Meredith, she left Robinette and the young woman standing together under a spreading tree, and took the gentleman away with her.
The moment that she heard the name, Robinette realized who Miss Meredith was. They seated themselves side by side on a garden bench, and Miss Meredith remarked upon the heat, planting a rather fat hand upon the arm of the garden seat, and surveying it complacently, especially the very bright diamond ring upon the third finger.
After a few preliminary remarks, she asked Mrs. Loring if she were stopping in the neighbourhood.
"Yes, I am staying at Stoke Revel for a short time," Robinette replied; "Mrs. de Tracy is my aunt, or at least I am Admiral de Tracy"s niece."
Her companion did not seem to take the least interest in this part of the information, only when Stoke Revel was mentioned she looked around suddenly as if surprised.
They talked upon indifferent subjects, while Robinette, as she watched Miss Meredith, was saying a good deal to herself, although she only spoke aloud about the weather and the Devonshire scenery.
"I will be just, if I can"t be generous," she thought. "She has (or she must once have had) a fine complexion. I dare say she is sincere enough; she may be sensible; she might be good-humoured,--when pleased."
"There is going to be a shower," said Miss Meredith, "but I"ve nothing on to spoil," she added, glancing at Robinette"s hat.
Sitting there on the bench, hearing the spitting rain upon the water below them and watching the leaden mists that slowly gathered over the landscape, Robinette fell upon a moment of soul sickness very unusual to her. Miss Meredith too was silent, absorbed in her own thoughts.
"If she had looked even a little different it would have been so much easier to explain," thought Robinette. Then suddenly she glanced up.
She saw that her companion"s face had softened, and changed. There was a look,--Robinette caught it just for one moment,--such as a proud angry child might have worn: sulky, hurt to the heart, but determined not to cry. Instantly a chord was struck in Robinette"s soul. "She has suffered, anyway," she thought. "May I be forgiven for my harsh judgment!"
With a shiver she drew her wrap about her shoulders, and Miss Meredith turned towards her. The expression Robinette had noticed pa.s.sed from the high-coloured face and left it as before, self-complacent and slightly patronizing. "You seem to feel cold," she said. "I never do; which is rather unfortunate, as I"m just going out to India!"
"Indeed? How soon are you going?"
"In about six weeks. I"m just going to be married, and we sail directly afterwards," said Miss Meredith. "You saw Mr. Joyce, I think, when we came up together a few minutes ago?"
A weight as if of a ton of lead was lifted from Robinette"s heart as she spoke. She could scarcely refrain from jumping up to throw her arms about Dolly Meredith"s neck and kiss her. As it was, she bubbled over with a kind of sympathetic interest that astonished the other woman. It is only too easy to lead an approaching bride to talk about her own affairs, for she can seldom take in the existence of even her nearest and dearest at such a time, and in a few minutes the two young women were deep in conversation. When a quarter of an hour later Miss Smeardon appeared to tell Robinette that they must be going, she looked up with a start at the sound of footsteps on the gravel path.
"Oh, you are here, Mrs. Loring; we couldn"t think where you had gone," said Miss Smeardon, acidly.
"And here is Miss Meredith of all people!" she continued, "I thought you were sure to be on the tennis court, Miss Meredith; Mr. Joyce is playing now."
"Oh, we have had such a delightful talk," said Dolly, so flushed with pleasure that Miss Smeardon gazed at her in astonishment.
"If only I knew her well enough to send her a munificent wedding present! How I should love to do so; just to register my own joy,"
said Robinette to herself. As it was she shook hands very warmly with Miss Meredith before they parted, and when half way across the lawn, looked back again, and waved her hand gaily. Miss Meredith was pacing the gra.s.s, and treading heavily beside her, with a very gallant air, was her bullock-like young man.
"Mr. Joyce is quite wealthy," said Miss Smeardon. "I understand that he is an only son too, and will some day inherit a fine property.
Miss Meredith is most fortunate, at her age and with her history."
Robinette said nothing. She looked out at the glistening reaches of the river, now shining through the silver mist; at the fields yellow with b.u.t.tercups, and the folds of the distant hills. As they drove up the lane to the house, the birds, refreshed by the rain, were singing like angels. In her heart too, something was singing as blithely as any bird amongst them all.
"Sometimes, sometimes our mistakes do not come home to roost!" she thought, "but fly away and make nests elsewhere--rich nests in India too!"
"How did you enjoy the party, Cousin Robin?" said Carnaby, who was waiting for them in the doorway. "I had a good tuck-in of strawberries. The ladies were a little young for my taste; just immature girls; no one under sixty, and rather frisky, don"t you think? By the way did you see Number One and her millionaire?"
"I don"t know what you mean by Number One," said Robinette, haughtily, as she pa.s.sed in at the door.
"You will, when you"re Number Two!" rejoined Carnaby, stooping to pinch Lord Roberts" tail till the hero yelped aloud.
XVI
TWO LETTERS
Lavendar tore up his fourth sheet of paper and began afresh. "Dear Mrs. Loring." No, that would not do; he took another sheet, and began again:--
"My dear Mrs. Loring,--Your commission for old Mrs. Prettyman has taken some little time to execute, for I had to go to two or three shops before finding a chair "with green cushions, and a wide seat, so comfortable that it would almost act as an anaesthetic if her rheumatism happened to be bad, and yet quite suitable for a cottage room." These were my orders, I think, and like all your orders they demand something better than the mere perfunctory observance. My own proportions differing a good deal from those of the old lady, it is still an open question whether what seemed comfortable to me will be quite the same to her. I can but hope so, and the chair will be dispatched at once.
"London is noisy and dusty, and grimy and stuffy, and, to one man at least, very, very dull. A boat on Greenshaw ferry seems the only spot in the world where any gaiety is to be found. You can hear the cuckoos calling across the river as you read this, no doubt, and Carnaby is rendered happier than he deserves by being allowed to row you down to tell Mrs. Prettyman about the chair. I feel as if, like the j.a.panese, I could journey a hundred miles to worship that wonderful tree.--Don"t let the blossoms fall until I come!
"There seems a good deal of business to be done. My father unfortunately is no better, so he cannot come down to Stoke Revel, and I shall probably return upon Wednesday morning. A poem of Browning"s runs in my head--something about three days--I can"t quote exactly.
"If my sister were writing this letter, she would say that I have been very hard to please, and uninterested in everything since I came home.
Indeed it seems as if I were. London in this part of it, in hot weather, makes a man weary for green woods, a sliding river, and a Book of Verses underneath a Bough. Well, perhaps I shall have all of them by Wednesday afternoon. You will think I can do nothing but grumble. All the same, into what was the mere dull routine of uncongenial work before, your influence has come with a current of new energy; like the tide from the sea swelling up into the inland river.--I"m at it again! Rivers on the brain evidently.
"I hope meanwhile that Carnaby behaves himself, and is not too much of a bore, and that England,--England in spring at least, is gaining a corner in your heart? Your mother called it home, remember. Yes, do try to remember that!
"Did you go to the garden party? Did you walk? Did you drive? Did you like it? Who was there? Were you dull?"
There was a postscript:--