One thing she could have done which would have given her immediate extrication, and that which seemed the most natural thing to do. She could have told the truth--told Betsy Wendover all about her unlucky marriage. But she would rather have killed herself than do this one righteous thing; for she thought that if her marriage were once known to Brian"s relations she would be compelled to a.s.sume her natural position as his wife. So long as the marriage remained a secret to all the world except those two whom it most concerned they were free to ignore the tie.
They could live their lives apart; and to the end of time it might be as if such a marriage had never been. Her husband being consentient to this life-long separation, her lot might be fairly happy. She had never tried to penetrate the future. Perhaps to-day for the first time there had flashed into her mind the thought of what a bright and glorious future might have been hers had she not so forfeited her freedom.
Voices, at least half a dozen, all talking at once, told her that the barrow-hunt was winding homewards; gleams of colour athwart the hedges told her that the hunters were in the lane; and in a minute or two Miss Wendover and her young kins-folk appeared, all more or less sunburnt and towzled by their tramp across the downs.
"Found a splendid long barrow," said Bessie, "on a lovely point, one of the finest views in the county. What clever corpses they must have been to pick such glorious spots! Long barrow, long-headed race, dolichocephalic skulls, men of the stone age, eh?" she said, looking at Brian. "You see I know my lesson; but it was very mean of you not to come with us, all the same."
"I wanted you to exercise your own ac.u.men, to cultivate the antiquarian _flair_. Besides, I had a heap of letters to write."
"You only found that out after we had started. You never have letters to write when Ida is with us," said Bessie; a remark which made two people blush. "To think that I had known that spot all my life and never suspected a barrow," she continued. "I thought it was only a convenient bank which Providence had thrown up ready for picnics."
Ida had enough to do now in providing for the wants of half a dozen hungry people. Blanche of the short petticoats was at an age when girls are ogres, distinguished for nothing but the rapidity of their digestion and the length of their legs. There was a demand for jam, and the unsophisticated half-gallon loaf instead of the conventional thin bread and b.u.t.ter.
"Eat as much as you like, dears," said Aunt Betsy, "but remember that your father will expect you to have some appet.i.te at seven."
"We won"t disappoint him," said Bessie; "seven is an hour and half from now. Blanche can do wonders in an hour and a half."
Blanche"s appet.i.te was one of the stock family jokes, like Urania"s tight boots; so there was a laugh, and the others went on eating.
Brian Wendover told them about to-morrow"s excursion. "I shall put four horses into the wagonette," he said. "I almost wish I had a drag to do honour to the occasion; but we must resign ourselves to a wagonette. You will go, of course, Aunt Betsy? and Bessie must come; and I suppose we ought to invite Miss Rylance. She has joined in most of our excursions, and it would be invidious to leave her out of this. And I dare-say Bessie would think the whole thing flat without Mr. Jardine?"
"It"s very kind of you to think of him; but I don"t believe he"ll be able to spare the day," said Bessie.
"We"ll ask him, at any rate, and then you can"t say we"ve used you badly.
That makes a party of six. I"ll go and telegraph to Sir Vernon."
"Will there be lawn-tennis after lunch?" asked Blanche, with a very long face.
"I shouldn"t wonder if there were," answered Brian: "does that mean that you want to go?"
"I shall not have a creature to speak to at home, and I never go anywhere," said Blanche, despairingly.
Both statements were obvious untruths, but no doubt the damsel herself believed them.
"Have you a gown that covers your knees?" asked Aunt Betsy, severely.
"My new frock is awfully long. It only came from the dress-maker"s last week."
"Then you have hardly had time to grow out of it," said Brian.
"Suppose we strain a point, Aunt Betsy, and take her. It will enable us to say, "we are seven.""
"We shall be a tremendous party," said Miss Wendover. "I hope Sir Vernon is a hospitable, easy-going man, and that your intimacy with him warrants such an intrusion."
"I am taking him a cousin," answered Brian, stealing an admiring glance at Ida; "surely that ought to secure our welcome."
"I hope his housekeeper has large ideas about luncheon," said Bessie, "or Blanche"s appet.i.te will throw her out in her calculations. If she is the sort of person who thinks a pair of ducklings and a dish of rissoles substantial fare for a large party, I pity her."
"You"re vastly witty," said Blanche, preparing her final slice of bread and jam; "one would think you lived upon roses and lilies, like the ascetics."
"The poor child means aesthetes," explained Bessie.
"Bother the p.r.o.nunciation! But if people had seen you eating rabbit-pie on the barrow--why a wolf wouldn"t have been in it," concluded Blanche, who acquired her flowers of speech from the Wintonians.
"I"ll go and despatch my telegram," said Brian, taking up his hat.
CHAPTER XVI.
THICKER THAN WATER.
The weather was altogether favourable for the thirty-mile drive. The wagonette with its scratch team and a couple of smart grooms, was at the Homestead gate at ten o"clock, and after picking up Miss Wendover and her companion, went on to The Knoll for Bessie and Blanche, and then to Dr.
Rylance"s for Urania, who had accepted the invitation most graciously.
Kingthorpe was unwontedly excited by this gorgeous apparition, and the inhabitants remained at garden gates and cottage doors while so much as a horse"s tail was visible. Everybody was pleased to see the young squire driving four-in-hand. It had been supposed that as a bookish young man, given over to Greek and Latin, he must needs be a poor hand with horses.
But this morning"s exhibition gave rise to more hopeful views.
"We shall see the squire setting up his coach, and settling down at the Abbey," said one.
"Ay, when he gets married," said another; "that"s what"ll settle he. I believes as him is sweet on that young "ooman at the Homestead. Her be a clipper, her be."
Over the hills and far away went the scratch team--a little fresh, but behaving beautifully. Aunt Betsy sat beside her nephew, and watched his coachmanship with a jealous eye, conscious that she could have kept the team better in hand herself, but still with moderate approval. The girls and the grooms were in the back of the vehicle--Bessie, Blanche, and Ida full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day"s entertainment was too much in Ida"s honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted to see what happened--how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer, when he turned to talk to the girls behind him--now to point out some feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with looks that lingered upon one face, and that face was Ida Palliser"s.
It was a long cross country drive, by rustic lanes and dubious roads, but Mr. Wendover took things easily. He had sent forward a second scratch team over night to a village half way, and here they changed horses, while he and his party spent half an hour pleasantly enough exploring an old gray church and humble graveyard, where the tombstones all bore record of unrenowned lives that had slowly rusted away in a pastoral solitude, Blanche, whose schoolroom appet.i.te was wont to damp its keen edge upon bread and b.u.t.ter at this hour, felt it rather a hard thing that no one proposed a light refection at the lowly inn; but she bore her inward gnawings in silence, conscious of the dignity of a frock which almost reached her ankles, and desirous to prove that she was worthy to be the a.s.sociate of grown-up.
Half way between this village inn and Wimperfield they met a couple of hors.e.m.e.n. These were no other than Sir Vernon and his brother Peter, who had come to meet their guests, and show them the nearest way, which from this point became especially intricate.
Brian walked his team gently up a gentle hill, while Sir Vernon and his brother walked their horses beside him, and during this ascent all necessary introductions were duly made, everybody being properly presented except Blanche, who felt that she was being treated with contumely.
"I am very glad to see you at last, cousin Ida," said Sir Vernon, pleasantly. "I have been hearing of you all my life, but we seemed fated not to meet."
He was a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a frank, fresh-coloured countenance, auburn whiskers, and curly brown hair. His brother was after the same pattern, hair a little lighter, no whiskers, eyes rather a brighter blue. They were as much alike as brothers can be without being mistaken for each other. There was nothing romantic looking about either of them, Bessie thought, regretfully. She would have liked Sir Vernon to have resembled her favourite hero in fiction (the man she always put in confession books), and to have fallen desperately in love with Ida at first sight. And here he was, a most matter-of-fact looking young man, riding behind the wagonette in a provokingly matter-of-fact way.
Yet perhaps there was a providence in this; for if Brian of the Abbey were in love with Ida, as Bessie shrewdly suspected, it would have been a terrible thing for him to have found a rival in a t.i.tled cousin. If Ida were ambitious, the t.i.tle might have turned the scale.
"And I have so set my heart upon having her for my cousin, thought Bessie. "The other Brian was a failure, but this Brian may win the prize."
Mr. Jardine had not been able to leave his parish for a long day; so Bessie had plenty of leisure to speculate upon the possible loves of other people, instead of enjoying the blissfulness of her own love affair.
Wimperfield was a mansion built in the Italian manner which prevailed about a century ago, a style about as uninteresting as any order of domestic architecture, but which makes a house a good feature in a fine landscape. The Corinthian facade of Wimperfield stood boldly out against the verdant slope of a hill, backed and sheltered on either side by woods. Behind that cla.s.sic portico there was the usual prim range of windows, and there were the usual barrack-like rooms. The furniture was of the same heavy and substantial character, rich dark rosewood, amber satin hangings faded by a quarter of a century; Spanish mahogany in dining-rooms and bedrooms; Gillow"s fine workmanship everywhere, but the style dating back to the very infancy of that ancient house.
The large, finely-lighted hall, which looked like the vestibule of some learned inst.i.tute, was adorned with four Carrara marble statues, placid G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses smirking at vacancy, on pedestals of verde antico. The only pictures in the reception-rooms were family portraits, and a few of those large Dutch landscapes, battle scenes, sea-pieces and fruit-pieces, which cry aloud that they are furniture pictures, and have been bought to fit the panelling of the rooms.
But for its n.o.ble situation this temple of English domestic life would have been utterly without charm; but the situation was superb, the gardens were in beautiful order, and the stables, as Aunt Betsy declared after personal inspection, were perfect.
Sir Vernon did the honours of his house in a frank, friendly manner.
He took his guests round the gardens and stables, showed Ida the old nursery in which his father and her father had spent their infancy; the gun-room in which their first guns were carefully preserved; the very rocking-horse on which they had ridden, and which now occupied a recess in an obscure lobby opening into the garden.