"And he says nothing about it. He wished me joy--and he does wish me joy too. I"ve no right to talk to you, to tell you, or anything. I don"t believe people think girls ever mind making men unhappy; but they do."
"If they like the men?" This suggestion at least was not too difficult for him.
"Yes, when they like them, when they"re old friends, you know. I only spoke to him for a moment, I only just met him on the road. I don"t suppose I shall ever talk to him about it, or about anything in particular, again." She squeezed Neeld"s hand a second time, and then withdrew her own.
This was unknown country again for Mr Neeld; his sense of being lost grew more acute. These were not the sort of problems which had occupied his life; but they seemed now to him no less real, hardly less important. It was only a girl wondering if she had done right. Yet he felt the importance of it.
"You can"t help the unhappiness," he said. "You must go to the man you love, my dear."
With a little start she turned and looked at him for an instant. Then she murmured in a perfunctory fashion:
"Yes, I must make the best choice I can, of course." She added after a pause, "But I wish----"
Words or the inclination to speak failed her again, and she relapsed into silence.
As he sat there beside her, silent too, his mind travelled back to what her father had said; and slowly he began to understand. No doubt she liked Harry, even as her father did. No doubt she thought he would be a good husband, as Iver had thought him a good fellow. But it became plain to the searcher after truth that not to her any more than to her father was it nothing that Harry was Tristram of Blent. Her phrases about doing right and making the right choice included a reference to that, even if that were not their whole meaning. She had mentioned her father"s pleasure--everybody"s pleasure. That pleasure would be found largely in seeing her Lady Tristram. What then would she have to say on the question that so perplexed Mr Neeld? Would she not echo Iver"s accusation of fraud against Harry Tristram and (as a consequence) against those who aided and abetted him? Would she understand or accept as an excuse the plea that Neeld had been led away by romance or entrapped into a conspiracy by Mina Zabriska? No. She too would call out "Fraud, fraud!" and he did not blame her. He called himself a fool for having been led away by romance, by unreasoning feeling. Should he blame her because she was not led away? His disposition was to praise her for a choice so wise, and to think that she had done very right in accepting Lord Tristram of Blent. Aye, Lord Tristram of Blent!
Precisely! Deep despair settled on Mr Neeld"s baffled mind.
Meanwhile, Duplay walked home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. And on the whole he had done the Major justice. He had smiled for a moment when he hinted that Duplay and Harry were not very cordial; the Major met him by a straightforward recognition that this was true, and by an indirect admission of the reason. As to this latter Iver had dropped no word; but he would give Duplay a hearing. Now it remained only to bring Mina to reason. If she spoke, the case would be so strong as to demand inquiry. The relief in Duplay"s mind was so great that he could not explain it, until he realized that his niece"s way of treating him had so stuck in his memory that he had been prepared to be turned from Iver"s doors with contumely. Such an idea seemed absurd now, and the Major laughed.
Mina was strange, Duplay never ceased to think that. They had parted on impossible terms; but now, as soon as he appeared, she ran at him with apparent pleasure and with the utmost eagerness. She asked nothing about his expedition either, though she could easily have guessed where he had been and for what purpose. She almost danced as she cried:
"I"ve seen her! I"ve been talking to her! I met her in the meadow near Matson"s cottage, and she asked me the way back to Blent. Uncle, she"s wonderful!"
"Who are you talking about?"
"Why, Cecily Gainsborough, of course. I just remember how Lady Tristram spoke. She speaks the same way exactly! I can"t describe it, but it"s the sort of voice that makes you want to do anything in the world it asks. Don"t you know? She told me a lot about herself; then she talked about Blent. She"s full of it; she admires it most tremendously----"
"That"s all right," interrupted Duplay with a malicious smile. "Because, so far as I can understand, she happens to own it."
"What?" The Imp stood frozen into stillness.
"You"ve been talking to Lady Tristram of Blent," he added with a nod.
"Though I suppose you didn"t tell her so?"
To Lady Tristram of Blent! She had never once thought of that while they talked. The shock of the idea was great, so great that Mina forgot to repudiate it, or to show any indignation at Harry"s claims being pa.s.sed by in contemptuous silence. All the while they talked, she had thought of the girl as far removed from Blent, as even more of a visitor to the countryside than she herself was, a wonderful visitor indeed, but no part of their life. And she was--well, at the least she was heir to Blent! How had she forgotten that? The persistent triumph of Duplay"s smile marked his sense of the success of his sally.
"Yes, and she"ll be installed there before many months are out," he went on. "So I hope you made yourself pleasant, Mina?"
Mina gave him one scornful glance, as she pa.s.sed by him and ran out on to her favorite terrace. There was a new thing to look and to wonder at in Blent. The interest, the sense of concern in Blent and its affairs, which the news of the engagement had blunted and almost destroyed, revived in her now. She forgot the prose of that marriage arrangement and turned eagerly to the poetry of Cecily Gainsborough, of the poor girl there in the house that was hers, unwitting guest of the man who was---- The Imp stopped herself with rude abruptness. What had she been about to say, what had she been about to think? The guest of the man who was robbing her? That had been it. But no, no, no! She did not think that. Confused in her mind by this new idea, none the less she found her sympathy going out to Harry again. He was not a robber; it was his own.
The blood, she cried still, and not the law. But what was to be done about Cecily Gainsborough? Was she to go back to the little house in London, was she to go back to ugliness, to work, to short commons? There seemed no way out. Between the old and the new attraction, the old allegiance and the new claim to homage that Cecily made, Mina Zabriska stood bewildered. She had a taste now of the same perplexity that she had done so much to bring on poor Mr Neeld at Fairholme. Yet not quite the same. He did not know what he ought to do; she did not feel sure of what she wanted. Both stood undecided. Mr Cholderton"s Journal was still at its work of disturbing people"s minds.
But Major Duplay was well content with the day"s work. If his niece had a divided mind she would be easier to bend to his will. He did not care who had Blent, if only it pa.s.sed from Harry. But it was a point gained if Mina could think of its pa.s.sing from Harry to somebody who would be welcome to her there. Then she would tell the story which she had received from her mother, and the first battle against Harry Tristram would be won. The excitement of fighting was on the Major now. He could neither pity the enemy nor distrust his own cause till the strife was done.
Amongst all the indecision there was about, Duplay had the merit of a clear vision of his own purpose and his own desires.
XIII
IN THE LONG GALLERY
The man with whom the fighters and the doubters were concerned, in whose defence or attack efforts and hopes were enlisted, round whom hesitation and struggles gathered, was thinking very little about his champions or his enemies. No fresh whispers of danger had come to Harry Tristram"s ears. He knew nothing of Neeld and could not think of that quiet old gentleman as a possible menace to his secret. He trusted Mina Zabriska and relied on the influence which he had proved himself to possess over her. He did not believe that Duplay would stick to his game, and was not afraid of him if he did. The engagement was accomplished; the big check, or the prospect of it, lay ready to his hand; his formal proofs, perfect so long as they were una.s.sailed, awaited the hour when formal proofs would be required. To all appearance he was secure in his inheritance and b.u.t.tressed against any peril. No voice was raised, no murmur was heard, to impugn the right of the new Lord Tristram of Blent. The object of all those long preparations, which had occupied his mother and himself for so many years, was achieved. He sat in Addie Tristram"s place, and none said him nay.
His mind was not much on these matters at all. Even his engagement occupied him very little. Janie"s letter had arrived and had been read.
It came at mid-day, and the evening found it still unacknowledged. It had broken in from outside as it were, intruding like something foreign into the life that he had begun to live on the evening before Addie Tristram was buried, the evening when for an instant he had thought he saw her phantom by the Pool; a life foreshadowed by the new mood which Mina had noticed in him while Lady Tristram still lived, but brought into reality by the presence of another. It seemed a new life coming to one who was almost a new man, so much of the unexpected in him did it reveal to himself. He had struggled against it, saying that the Monday morning would see an end of this unlooked-for episode of feeling and of companionship. Accident stepped in; Gainsborough lay in bed with a chill and could not move. Harry acquiesced in the necessity of his remaining, not exactly with pleasure, rather with a sense that something had begun to happen, not by his will, but affecting him deeply. What would come of it he did not know; that it would end in a day or two, that it would be only an episode and leave no permanent mark seemed now almost impossible; it was fraught with something bigger than that.
But with what? He had no reasoned idea; he was unable to reason. He was pa.s.sive in the hands of the feelings, the impressions, the fancies that laid hold of him. Addie Tristram"s death had moved him strangely; then came that hardly natural, eerily fascinating reminiscence--no, it was more than that--that re-embodiment or resurrection of her in the girl who moved and talked and sat like her, who had her ways though not her face, her eyes set in another frame, her voice renewed in youthful richness, the very turns of her head, even her old trick of sticking out her foot. He scowled sometimes, he was surprised into laughter sometimes; at another moment he would rebel against the malicious Power that seemed to be having a joke with him; for the most part he looked, and looked, and looked, unwilling to miss a single one of the characteristic touches which had been Addie Tristram"s belongings and which he had never expected to see again after her spirit had pa.s.sed away. And the outcome of all his looking was still the same as the effect of his first impression on the evening before the funeral--a sort of despair. A thing was there which he did not know how to deal with.
And she was so happy, so absurdly happy. She had soon found that he expected no conventional solemnity; he laughed himself at the idea of Addie Tristram wanting people to pull long faces, and keep them long when pulled, because she had laid her burden down and was at peace.
Cecily found she might be merry, and merry she was. A new life had come to her too, a life of river and trees and meadows; deeper than that, a life of beauty about her. She absorbed it with a native thirst. There was plenty of it, and she had been starved so long. She seized on Blent and enjoyed it to the full. She enjoyed Harry too, laughing now when he stared at her and making him laugh, yet herself noting all his ways, his pride, his little lordlinesses--these grew dear to her--his air of owning the countryside, and making no secret of her own pleasure in being part of the family and in living in the house that owned the countryside. It is to be feared that Mr Gainsborough and his chill were rather neglected, but he got on very well with Addie Tristram"s ancient maid; she had the n.o.bility at her fingers" ends and even knew something about their pedigrees. Cecily was free, or a.s.sumed the freedom, to spend her time with Harry, or, if he failed her, at least with and among the things that belonged to him and had belonged to beautiful Addie Tristram who had been like her--so Harry said, and Cecily treasured the thought, teasing him now sometimes, as they grew intimate, with a purposed repet.i.tion of a pose or trick that she had first displayed unconsciously, and found had power to make him frown or smile. She smiled herself in mischievous triumph when she hit her mark, or she would break into the rich gurgle of delight that he remembered hearing from his young mother when he himself was a child. The life was to her all pure delight; she had no share in the thoughts that often darkened his brow, no knowledge of the thing which again and again filled him with that wondering despair.
On the evening of the day when Major Duplay went to Fairholme, the two sat together in the garden after dinner. It was nine o"clock, a close still night, with dark clouds now and then slowly moving off and on to the face of a moon nearly full. They had been silent for some minutes, sipping coffee. Cecily pointed to the row of windows in the left wing of the house.
"I"ve never been there," she said. "What"s that?"
"The Long Gallery--all one long room, you know," he answered.
"One room! All that! What"s in it?"
"Well, everything mostly," he smiled. "All our treasures, and our pictures, and so on."
"Why haven"t you taken me there?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders. "You never asked me," he said.
"Well, will you take me there now--when you"ve finished your cigar?"
There was a pause before he answered, "Yes, if you like." He turned to the servant who had come to take away the coffee. "Light up the Long Gallery at once."
"Yes, my lord." A slight surprise broke through the respectful acceptance of the order.
"It was lighted last for my mother, months ago," Harry said, as though he were explaining his servant"s surprise. "She sat there the last evening before she took to her room."
"Is that why you haven"t taken me there?"
"I expect it is." His tone was not very confident.
"And you don"t much want to now?"
"No, I don"t know that I do." But his reluctance seemed vague and weak.
"Oh, I must go," Cecily decided, "but you needn"t come unless you like, you know."
"All right, you go alone," he agreed.
Window after window sprang into light. "Ah!" murmured Cecily in satisfaction; and Mina Zabriska saw the illumination from the terrace of Merrion on the hill. Cecily rose, waved her hand to Harry, and ran off into the house with a laugh. The next moment he saw her figure in the first window; she threw it open, waved her hand again, and again laughed; the moon, clear for a moment, shone on her face and turned it pale.