In old days the Mercerons had been great folk. They had held the earldom of Langbury and the barony of Warmley. A failure of direct descent in the male line extinguished the earldom; the Lady Agatha was the daughter of the last earl, and would have been Baroness Warmley had she lived. On her death that title passed to her cousin, and continued in that branch till the early days of the present century. Then came another break. The Lord Warmley of that day, a Regency dandy, had a son, but not one who could inherit his honors, and away went the barony to a yet younger branch, where, falling a few years later into female hands, it was merged in a brand-new viscounty, and was now waiting till chance again should restore it to an independent existence. From the Mercerons of the Court it was gone for ever, and the blot on their escutcheon which lost it them was a sore point, from which it behooved visitors and friends to refrain their tongues. The Regent had, indeed, with his well-known good nature, offered a baronetcy to hide the stain; but pride forbade, and the Mercerons now held no titles, save the modest dignity which Charlie’s father, made a K.C.B. for services in the North-West Provinces, had left behind him to his widow. But the old house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in the dining room. She had purposed a like banishment for Lady Agatha; but here Charlie had interceded, and the unhappy beauty hung still behind his mother’s chair and opposite his own. It was just to remember that but for poor Agatha’s fault and fate the present branch might never have enjoyed the honors at all; so Charlie urged to Lady Merceron, catching at any excuse for keeping Lady Agatha. Lady Merceron’s way of judging pictures may seem peculiar, but the fact is that she lacked what is called the sense of historical perspective: she did not see why our ancestors should be treated so tenderly and allowed, with a charitable reference to the change in manners, forgiveness for what no one to-day could hope to win a pardon. Mr. Vansittart Merceron smiled at his sister-in-law and shrugged his shoulders; but in vain. To the smoking-room went the wicked Lord Warmley, and Lady Agatha was remarkably lucky in that she did not follow him.
Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied much, on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and satisfactory settlement of Charlie’s future.
Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past. “Yon wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you’re wasting your time now,” he remarked, when Charlie and he were left alone after dinner.
Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha’s picture. “With a sigh he turned to his uncle.
“That’s all very well,” he said tolerantly, “but what is there for me to do?”
“If you took more interest in country pursuits it might be different. But you don’t hunt, you shoot very seldom——”
“And very badly.”
“And not at all well, as you admit. You say you won’t become a magistrate, you show no interest in politics or—or—social questions. You simply moon about.”
Charlie was vividly reminded of a learned judge whom he had once heard pronouncing sentence of death. His uncle’s denunciation seemed to lack its appropriate conclusion—that he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead. He was roused to defend himself.
“You’re quite wrong, uncle,” he said. “I’m working hard. I’m writing a history of the family.”
“A history of the family!” groaned Mr. Vansittart. “Who wants one? Who’ll read one?”
“From an antiquarian point of view—” began Charlie stoutly.
“Of all ways of wasting time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most futile;” and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an air of finality.
“Now the Agatha Merceron story,” continued Charlie, “is in itself—-”
“Perhaps we’d better finish our talk tomorrow. The ladies will, expect us in the garden.”
“All right,” said Charlie, with much content. He enjoyed himself more in the garden, for, while Lady Merceron and her brother in law took counsel, he strolled through the moonlit shrubberies with Mrs. Marland, and Mrs. Marland was very sympathetically interested in him and his pursuits. She was a little eager woman, the very antithesis in body and mind to Millie Bushell; she had plenty of brains but very little sense, a good deal of charm but no beauty, and, without any counterbalancing defect at all, a hearty liking for handsome young men. She had also a husband in the City.
“Ghost-hunting again to-night, Mr. Merceron?” she asked, glancing up at Charlie, who was puffing happily at a cigar.
“Yes,” he answered, “I’m very regular.”
“And did you see anyone?
“I saw Millie Bushell.”
“Miss Bushell’s hardly ghost-like, is she?”
“We’ll,” said Charlie meditatively, “I suppose if one was fat oneself one’s ghost would be fat, wouldn’t it?”
Mrs. Marland, letting the problem alone, laughed softly.
“Poor Miss Bushell! If she heard you say that! Or if Lady Merceron heard you!”
“It would hardly surprise my mother to hear that I thought Millie Bushell plump. She is plump, you know;” and Charlie’s eyes expressed a candid homage to truth.
“Oh, I know what’s being arranged for you.”
“So do I.”
“And you’ll do it. Oh, you think you won’t, but you will. Men always end by doing what they’re told.”
“Does Mr. Marland?”
“He begins by it,” laughed his wife.
“Is that why he’s not coming till Saturday week?”
“Mr. Merceron! But what was Miss Bushell doing at the Pool? Did she come to find you?”
“Oh, no; just for a walk.”
“Poor girl!”
“Why—it’s good for her.”
“I didn’t mean the walk,”
“I’d blush if there was light enough to make it any use, Mrs. Marland.”
“Oh, but I know there’s something. You don’t go there every evening to look for a dead lady, Mr. Merceron.”
Charlie stopped short, and took his cigar from his mouth.
“What?” he asked, a little abruptly.
“Well, I shall follow you some day, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I met—not Agatha—but——”
“Well?” asked Charlie, with an uncertain smile.
“Why, poor Miss Bushell!”
Charlie laughed and replaced his cigar.
“What are we standing still for?” he said.
“I don’t know. You stopped. She’d be such an ideal match for you.”
“Then I should never have done for you, Mrs. Marland.”
“My dear boy, I was married when you were still in Eton collars.”
They had completed the circuit of the garden, and now approached where Lady Merceron sat, enveloped in a shawl.
“Charlie!” she called. “Here’s a letter from Victor Button. He’s coming to-morrow.”
“I didn’t know you’d asked him,” said Charlie, with no sign of pleasure at the news. Victor had been at school and college with Charlie, and often, in his holidays, at the Court, for he was Sir Victor’s godson. Yet Charlie did not love him. For the rest, he was very rich, and was understood to cut something of a figure in London society.
“Mr. Sutton? Oh, I know him,” exclaimed Mrs. Marland. “He’s charming!”
“Then you shall entertain him,” said Charlie. “I resign him.”
“I can’t think why you’re not more pleased to have him here, Charlie,” remarked Lady Merceron. “He’s very popular in London, isn’t he, Vansittart?”
“I’ve met him at some very good houses,” answered Mr. Vansittart. And that, he seemed to imply, is better than mere popularity.
“The Bushells were delighted with him last time he was here,” continued Lady Merceron.
“There! A rival for you!” Mrs. Marland whispered.
Charlie laughed cheerfully. Sutton would be no rival of his, he thought; and if he and Millie liked one another, by all means let them take one another. A month before he would hardly have dismissed the question in so summary a fashion, for the habit of regarding Millie as a possibility and her readiness as a fact had grown strong by the custom of years, and, far as he was from a passion, he might not have enjoyed seeing her allegiance transferred to Victor Sutton. Certainly he would have suffered defeat from that hand with very bad grace. Now, however, everything was changed.
“Vansittart,” said Lady Merceron, “Charlie and I want to consult you (she often coupled Charlie’s hypothetical desire for advice with her own actual one in appeals to Mr. Vansittart) about Mr. Prime’s rent.”
“Oh, at the old farm?”
“Yes. He wants another reduction.”
“He’ll want to be paid for staying there next.”
“Well, poor man, he’s had to take lodgers this summer—a thing he’s never done before. Charlie, did you know that?”
“Yes,” said Charlie, interrupting an animated conversation which he had started with Mrs. Marland.
“Do you know who they are?” pursued his mother, wandering from Mr. Prime’s rent to the more interesting subject of his lodgers.
“Ladies from London,” answered Charlie.
“Rather vague,” commented Mr. Vansittart. “Young ladies or old ladies, Charlie?”
“Why does he want to know?” asked Mrs. Marland; but chaff had about as much effect on Mr. Vansittart as it would have on an ironclad. He seemed not to hear, and awaited an answer with a bland smile. In truth, he thought Mrs. Marland a silly woman.
“Young, I believe,” answered Charlie, in a careless tone.
“It’s curious I’ve not seen them about,” said Lady Merceron. “I pass the farm almost every day. Who are they, Charlie?”
“One’s a Miss Wallace. She’s engaged to Willie Prime.”
“To Willie? Fancy!”
“H’m! I think,” remarked Mr. Vansittart, “that, from the point of view of a reduction of rent, these lodgers are a delusion. Of course she stays with Prime if she’s going to many his son.”
“Fancy Willie!” reiterated Lady Merceron. “Surely he can’t afford to marry? He’s in a bank, you know, Vansittart, and he only gets a hundred and twenty pounds a year.”
“One blessing of the country is that everybody knows his neighbor’s income,” observed Mr. Vansittart.
“Perhaps the lady has money,” suggested Mrs. Marland. “But, Mr. Merceron, who’s the other lady?”
“A friend of Miss Wallace’s, I believe. I don’t know her name.”
“Oh, they’re merely friends of Prime’s?” Mr. Vansittart concluded. “If that’s all he bases his claim for a reduction on—-”
“Hang it! He might as well have it,” interrupted Charlie. “He talks to me about it for half an hour every time we meet.”
“But, my dear Charlie, you have more time than money to waste—at least, so it seems.”
His uncle’s sarcasm never affected Charlie’s temper.
“I’ll turn him on to you, uncle,” he replied, “and you can see how you like it.”
“I’ll go and call on him tomorrow. You’d better come too, Charlie.”
“And then you can see the ladies from London,” added Mrs. Marland. “Perhaps the one who isn’t young Mr. Prime’s will be interesting.”
“Or,” said Charlie, “as mostly happens in this woeful world, the one who is.”
“I think the less we see of that sort of person at all, the better,” observed Lady Merceron, with gentle decision. “They can hardly be quite what we’re accustomed to.”
“That sort of person!”
Charlie went to bed with the phrase ringing in his horror-struck ears. If to be the most beautiful, the most charming, and the most refined, the daintiest, the wittiest and prettiest, the kindest and the sweetest, the merriest and most provoking creature in the whole world—if to be all this were yet not to weigh against being ‘that sort of person’—if it were not, indeed, to outweigh, banish, and obliterate everything else why, the world was not fit to live in, and he no true Merceron! For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves.
On the evening of the next day, while the sun was still on the Pool, and its waters, forgetful of darker moods and bygone tragedies, smiled under the tickling of darting golden gleams, a girl sat on the broad lowest step of the temple. She had rolled the sleeves of her white gown above her elbow, up well-nigh to her shoulder, and, the afternoon being sultry, from time to time dipped her arms in the water and, taking them out again, amused herself by watching the bright drops race down to her rosy fingertips. The sport was good, apparently, for she laughed and flung back her head so that the stray locks of hair might not spoil her sight of it. On either side of this lowest step there was a margin of smooth level grass, and, being unable as she sat to bathe both arms at once, presently she moved on to the grass and lay down, sinking her elbows in the pond and leaning her face over the edge of it. The posture had another advantage she had not thought of, and she laughed again when she saw her own eyes twinkling at her from the depths. As she lay there a longing came upon her.
“If I could be sure he wouldn’t come I’d dip my feet,” she murmured.
As, however, he had come every evening for a fortnight past the fancy was not to be indulged, and she consoled herself by a deeper dive yet of her arms and by drooping her head till her nose and the extreme fringe of her eyelashes were wetted, and the stray locks floated on either side.
Presently, as she still looked, she saw another shadow on the water, and exchanged with her image a confidential glance.
“You again?” she asked.
The other shadow nodded.
“Why didn’t you come in the canoe?”
“Because people see it.”
It struck her that her attitude was unconventional, and by a lithe complicated movement, whereof Charlie noticed only the elegance and not the details, she swept round and, sitting, looked up at him.
“I know who she was,” she observed.
“She very nearly knew who you were. You oughtn’t to have come to the window.”
“She thought I was the ghost.”
“You shouldn’t reckon on people being foolish.”
“Shouldn’t I? Yet I reckoned on your coming—or there’d have been some more of me in the water.”
“I wish I were an irregular man,” said Charlie.
She was slowly turning down her sleeves, and, ignoring his remark, said, with a question in her tones:
“Nettie Wallace says that Willie Prime says that everybody says that you’re going to marry that girl.”
“I believe it’s quite true.”
“Oh!” and she looked across the Pool.
“True that everybody says so,” added Charlie. “Why do you turn down your sleeves?”
“How funny I must have looked, sprawling on the bank like that!” she remarked.
“Awful!” said Charlie, sitting down.
She looked at him with uneasiness in her eye.
“Nothing but an ankle, I swear,” he answered.
She blushed and smiled.
“I think you should whistle, or something, as you come.”
“Not I,” said Charlie, with decision.
Suddenly she turned to him with a serious face, or one that tried to be serious.
“Why do you come?” she asked.
“Why do I eat?” he returned.
“And yet you were angry the first time.”
“Nobody likes to be caught ranting out poetry especially his own.”
“I believe you were frightened—you thought I was Agatha. The poetry was about her, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not at all a bad poem,” observed Charlie.
“You remember I liked it so much that I clapped my hands.”
“And I jumped!”
The girl laughed.
“Ah, well,” she said, “it’s time to go home.”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Charlie!
“But I’ve promised to be early, because Willie Prime’s coming, and I’m to be introduced to him.”
“Willie Prime can wait. He’s got Miss Wallace to comfort him, and I’ve got nobody to comfort me.”
“Oh, yes. Miss Bushell.”
“You know her name?”
“Yes—and yours—your surname, I mean; you told me the other.”
“That’s more than you’ve done for me.”
“I told you my name was Agatha.”
“Ah, but that was a joke. I’d been talking about Agatha Merceron.”
“Very well. I’m sorry it doesn’t satisfy you. If you won’t believe me—!”
“But your surname?”
“Oh, mine? Why, mine’s Brown.”
“Brown!” re-echoed Charlie, with a tinge of disappointment in his tone.
“Don’t you like it?” asked Miss Agatha Brown with a smile.
“Oh, it will do for the present,” laughed Charlie.
“Well, I don’t mean to keep it all my life. I’ve spent to-day, Mr. Merceron, in spying out your house. Nettie Wallace and I ventured quite near. It’s very pretty.”
“Rather dilapidated, I’m afraid.”
“What’s the time, Mr. Merceron?”
“Half-past six. Oh, by Jove!”
“Well? Afraid of seeing poor Agatha?”
“I should see nobody but you, if you were here. No. I forgot that. I’ve got to meet someone at the station at a quarter-past seven.”
“Oh, do tell me who?”
“You’d be none the wiser. It’s a Mr. Victor Sutton.”
“Victor Sutton!” she exclaimed, with a glance at Charlie which passed unnoticed by him. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“I suppose so. Of my family’s, anyhow.”
“Good-by. I’m going,” she announced.
“You’ll be here to-morrow?”
“Yes. For the last time.”
She dropped this astounding thunderbolt on Charlie’s head as though it had been the most ordinary remark in the world.
“The last time! Oh, Miss—-” No: somehow he could not lay his tongue to that “Miss Brown.”
“I can’t spend all my life in Lang Marsh,” said she.
“Agatha,” he burst out.
“No, no. This is not the last time. Sha’n’t we keep that?” she asked, with a provokingly light-hearted smile.
“You promise to be here to-morrow?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I shall have something to say to you then,” Charlie announced with a significant air.
“Oh, you never lack conversation.”
“You’ll be here at five?”
“Precisely,” she answered with mock gravity; “and now I’m gone!”
Charlie took off his straw hat, stretched out his right hand, and took hers. For a moment she drew back, but he looked very handsome and gallant as he bowed his head down to her hand, and she checked the movement.
“Oh, well!” she murmured; she was protesting against any importance being attached to the incident.
Charlie, having paid his homage, walked, or rather ran, swiftly away. To begin with, he had none too much time if he was to meet Victor Sutton; secondly, he was full of a big resolve, and that generally makes a man walk fast.
The lady pursued a more leisurely progress. Swinging her hat in her hand, she made her way through the tangled wood back to the high-road, and turned towards Mr. Prime’s farm. She went slowly along, thinking perhaps of the attractive young fellow she had left behind her, wondering perhaps why she had promised to meet him again. She did not know why, for there was sure to happen at that last meeting the one thing which she did not, she supposed, wish to happen. However, a promise is a promise. She heard the sound of wheels behind her, and, turning, found the farmer’s spring-cart hard on her heels. The farmer was driving, and by his side sat a nice-looking girl dressed in the extreme of fashion. On the back seat was a young man in a very light suit, with a fine check pattern, and a new pair of brown leather shoes. The cart pulled up.
“We can make room for ye, Miss,” said old Mr. Prime.
Nettie Wallace jumped tip and stood with her foot on the step. Willie Prime jumped down and effected her transfer to the back seat. Agatha climbed up beside the farmer and stretched her hand back to greet Willie. Willie took it rather timidly. He did not quite ‘savvy’ (as he expressed it to himself); his fiancie’s friend was very simply attired, infinitely more simply than Nettie herself. Nettie had told him that her friend was ‘off and on'(a vague and rather obscure qualification of the statement) in the same line as herself—namely, Court and high-class dressmaking. Yet there was a difference between Nettie and her friend.
“Anybody else arrived by the train?” asked Agatha.
“A visitor for the Court. A good-looking gentleman, wasn’t he, Willie?”
Nettie was an elegant creature and, but for the ‘gentleman’ and that slight but ineradicable twang that clings like Nessus’ shirt to the cockney, all effort and all education notwithstanding (it will even last three generations, and is audible, perhaps, now and then in the House of Lords), her speech was correct and even dainty in its prim nicety.
“Ah!” said Agatha.
“His name’s Sutton,” said Willie; “Mr. Charles—young Mr. Merceron—told me so when he was talking to me on the platform.”
“You know young Mr. Merceron?” asked Agatha.
“Why, they was boys together,” interrupted the old farmer, who made little of the refinements of speech. In his youth no one, from the lord to the laborer, spoke grammar in the country. “Used to larn to swim together in the Pool, didn’t you, Willie?”
“I must have a dip there to-morrow,” cried Willie; and Agatha wondered what time he would choose. “And I’ll take you there, Nettie. Ever been yet?”
“No. They—they say it’s haunted, don’t they, Willie?”
“That’s nonsense,” said Willie. London makes a man sceptical. The old farmer shook his head and grunted doubtfully. His mother had seen poor Agatha Merceron; this was before the farmer was born—a little while before—and the shock had come nigh to being most serious to him. The whole countryside knew it.
“Why do you call it nonsense, Mr. Prime?” asked Agatha.
“Oh, I don’t know, Miss—-”
“Miss Brown, Willie,” said Nettie.
“Miss Brown. Anyway, we needn’t go the time the ghost comes.”
“I should certainly avoid that,” laughed Agatha.
“We’ll go in the morning, Nettie, and I’ll have my swim in the evening.”
Agatha frowned. It would be particularly inconvenient if Willie Prime took his swim in the evening.
“Oh, don’t, Willie,” cried Nettie. “She—she might do you some harm.”
Willie was hard to persuade. He was not above liking to appear a daredevil; and the discussion was still raging when they reached the farm. The two girls went upstairs to the little rooms which they occupied. Agatha turned into hers, and Nettie Wallace followed her.
“Your Willie is very nice,” said Agatha, sitting on her bed.
Nettie smiled with pleasure.
“And now that you’ve other company I shall go.”
“You’re going, Miss?”
“Not Miss.”
Nettie laughed.
“I forget sometimes,” she said.
“Well, you must remember just over tomorrow. I shall go next day. I must meet my grandfather in London.”
Nettie offered no opposition. On the contrary, she appeared rather relieved.
“Nettie, did you like Mr. Sutton’s looks?” asked Agatha after a pause.
“He’s too black and blue for my taste,” answered Nettie.
Willie Prime was red and yellow.
“Blue? Oh: you mean his cheeks?”
“Yes. But he’s a handsome gentleman all the same; and you should have seen his luggage! Such a dressing-bag—cost fifty pounds, I daresay.”
“Oh, dear, me,” said Agatha, “Yes, Nettie, I shall go the day after to-morrow.”
“Mr. Merceron asked to be introduced to me,” said Nettie proudly. “And he asked where you were—he said he’d seen you at the window.”
“Did he?” said Agatha negligently; and Nettie, finding the conversation flag, retired to her own room.
Agatha sat a moment longer on the bed.
“What a very deceitful young man,” she exclaimed at last. “I must be a very strict secret indeed. Well, I suppose I should be.”
Mr. Vansittart Merceron was not quite sure that Victor Sutton had any business to call him “Merceron.” He was nearly twenty years older than Victor, and a man of considerable position; nor was he, as some middle-aged men are, flattered by the implication of contemporaneousness carried by the mode of address. But it is hard to give a hint to a man who has no inkling that there is room for one; and when Mr. Vansittart addressed Victor as ‘Mr. Sutton’ the latter graciously told him to “hang the Mister.” Reciprocity was inevitable, and the elder man asked himself, with a sardonic grin, how soon he would be “Van.”
“Coming to bathe, Merceron?” he heard under his window at eight o’clock the next morning. “We’re off to the Pool.”
Mr. Vansittart shouted an emphatic negative, and the two young fellows started off by themselves. Charlie’s manner was affected by the ceremonious courtesy which a well-bred host betrays towards a guest not very well-beloved, but Victor did not notice this. It seldom occurred to him that people did not like him.
“Yes,” he was saying, “I’m just twenty-nine. I’ve had my fling, Charlie, and now I shall get to business.”
Charlie was relieved to find that according to this reckoning he had several more years ‘fling’ before him.
“Next year,” pursued Victor, “I shall marry; then I shall go into Parliament, and then I shall go ahead.”
“I didn’t know you were engaged.”
“No, I’m not, but I’m going to be. I can please myself, you see; I’ve got lots of coin.”
“Oh, yes, but can you please the lady?” asked Charlie.
“My dear boy,” began Victor, “when you’ve seen a little more of the world——
“Here we are,” said Charlie. “Why, hullo! Who’s that?”
A dripping head and a blowing mouth were visible in the middle of the Pool.
“Willie Prime by Jove! ‘Morning Willie;” and Charlie set about flinging off his flannels, Victor following his example in a more leisurely fashion.
Willie Prime was a little puzzled to know how he ought to treat Charlie. ‘Charlie’ he had been in very old days—then Master Charlie (that was Willie’s mother’s doing)—then Mr. Charles. But now Willie had set up for himself. He had played billiards with a lord, and football against the Sybarites, and, incidentally, hobnobbed with quite great people. It is not very easy to assert a social position when one has nothing on, and only one’s head out of water, but Willie did it.
“Good-morning—er—Merceron,” said he.
Victor heard him, and put up his eyeglass in amazement; but he, in his turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie utterly failed to notice the incident.
“Is it cold?” he shouted.
“Beastly,” answered Willie. The man who has got in always tells the man who is going to get in that it is “beastly cold.”
“Here goes!” cried Charlie; and a minute later he was treading water by Willie’s side.
“Miss Wallace all fit?” he asked.
“Thank you, yes, she’s all right.”
“And her friend?”
“All right, I believe.”
“And when is it to be, old fellow?”
“Soon as I get a rise.”
“What?” asked the unsophisticated Charlie, who knew the phrase chiefly in connection with fish.
“A rise of screw, you know.”
“Oh, ah, yes—what a fool I am!” and Charlie disappeared beneath the waves.
When they were all on the bank, drying, Willie, encouraged by not being discouraged (save by Sutton’s silence) in his advances, ventured further, and asked in a joking tone:
“And aren’t you marked off yet? We’ve been expecting to hear of it for the last twelve months.”
“What do you mean’?”
“Why, you and Miss Bushell.”
Charlie struggled through his shirt, and then answered, with his first touch of distance:
“Nothing in it. People’ve got no business to gossip.”
“It’s damned impertinent,” observed Victor Sutton in slow and deliberate tones.
Willie flushed.
“I beg pardon,” he said gruffly. “I only repeated what I heard.”
“My dear fellow, no harm’s done,” cried Charlie. “Who was the fool?”
“Well—in fact—my father.”
The situation was awkward, but they wisely eluded it by laughter. But a thought struck Charlie.
“I say, did your father state it as a fact?”
“Oh no; but as a certainty, you know.”
“When?”
“Last night at supper.”
Charlie’s brow clouded. Miss B—that is, Agatha, was certain to have been at supper. However, all that could be put right in the evening—that one blessed evening left to him. He looked at Willie and opened his mouth to speak; but he shut it again. It did not seem to him that he could question Willie Prime about the lady. She had chosen to tell him nothing, and her will was his law. But he was yearning to know what she was and how she came there. He refrained; and this time virtue really had a reward beyond itself, for Willie would blithely have told him that she was a dressmaker (he called Nettie, however, the manager of a Court modiste’s business), and that would not have pleased Charlie.
It was all very well for Charlie to count on that blessed evening; but he reckoned without his host—or rather without his guests.
The Bushells came to lunch, Millie driving her terrified mother in a lofty gig; and at lunch Millie recounted her vision of Agatha Merceron. She did not believe it, of course; but it was queer, wasn’t it? Victor Sutton rose to the bait at once.
“We’ll investigate it,” he cried. “Merceron,” (he meant the patient Mr. Vansittart), “didn’t yon once write an article on ‘Apparitions’ for Intellect?”
“Yes, I proved there were none,” answered Mr. Vansittart.
“That’s impossible, you know,” remarked Mrs. Marland gently.
“We’ll put you to the proof this very evening,” declared Mr. Sutton.
Charlie started.
“Are you game, Miss Bushell?” continued Victor.
“Ye—yes, if you’ll keep quite near me, answered Millie, with a playful shudder. Charlie reflected how ill playfulness became her, and frowned. But Millie was pleased to see him frown; she enjoyed showing him that other men liked to keep quite near to her.
“Then this evening we’ll go in a body to the Pool.”
“I shall not go,” shuddered Mrs. Marland.
“An hour after sunset!”
“Half an hour. She might be early—and we’ll stay half an hour after. We’ll give her a fair show.”
“Come,” thought Charlie. “I shall get an hour with Agatha.”
“You’ll come, Charlie?” asked Victor.
“Oh, all right,” he answered, hiding all signs of vexation. He could get back by six and join the party. But why was Mrs. Marland looking at him?
The first step, however, towards getting back is to get there, and Charlie found this none so easy. After lunch came lawn-tennis, and he was impressed. Mr. Vansittart played a middle-aged game, and Victor had found little leisure for this modest sport among his more ambitious amusements. Charlie had to balance Millie Bushell, and he spent a very hot and wearying afternoon. They would go on: Victor declared it was good for him, Uncle Van delighted in a hard game (it appeared to be a very hard game to him from the number of strokes he missed), and Millie grew in vigor, ubiquity, and (it must be added) intensity of color as the hours wore away. It was close on five before Charlie, with a groan, could throw down his racquet.
“Poor boy!” said Mrs. Marland.
“Charlie, dear,” called Lady Merceron, who had been talking comfortably to Mrs. Bushell in the shade, “come and hand the tea. I’m sure you must all want some. Millie, my dear, how hot you look!”
“She never will take any care of her complexion, complained Mrs. Bushell.
“Take care of your stom—your health—and your complexion will take care of itself,” observed Mr. Vansittart.
“Charlie! Where; is the boy?” called Lady Merceron again.
The boy was gone. He was flying as fast as his legs would take him to the Pool. Where was that cherished interview now? He could hope only for a few wretched minutes—hardly enough to say good-by once—before he must hustle—yes, positively hustle—Agatha out of sight. He had heard that abominable Sutton remark that they might as well start directly after tea.
He was breathless when he burst through the willows. But there he came to a sudden, a dead stop, and then drew back into shelter again. There on the bank, scarcely a dozen feet from it, sat two people—a. young man with his arm round a young woman’s waist. Willie Prime and Nettie Wallace, “by all that’s damnable!” as Sir Peter says! Charlie said something quite as forcible.
He felt for his watch, but he had left it with his waistcoat on the lawn. What was the time? Was it going quickly or slowly? Could he afford to wait, or must he run round to the road and intercept Agatha? Five minutes passed in vacillation.
“I’ll go and stop her,” he said, and began a cautious retreat. As he moved he heard Willie’s voice.
“Well, my dear, let’s be off,” said Willie.
Nettie rose with a sigh of content, adjusted her hat coquettishly, and smoothed her skirts.
“I’m ready, Willie. It’s been beautiful, hasn’t it?”
They came towards Charlie. Evidently they intended to regain the road by the same path as he had chosen. Indeed, from that side of the Pool there was no choice, unless one clambered round by the muddy bank.
“We must make haste,” said Willie. “Father’ll want his tea.”
If they made haste they would be close on his heels. Charlie shrank back behind a willow and let them go by; then, quick as thought, rushed to his canoe and paddled across—up the steps and into the temple he rushed. She wasn’t there! Fate is too hard for the best of us sometimes. Charlie sat down and, stretching out his legs, stared gloomily at his toes.
Thus he must have sat nearly ten minutes, when a head was put round the Corinthian pilaster of the doorway.
“Poor boy! Am I very late?”
Charlie leapt up and forward, breathlessly blurting out joy tempered by uneasiness.
Agatha gathered the difficulty of the position.
“Well,” said she, smiling, “I must disappear, and you must go back to your friends.”
“No,” said Charlie. “I must talk to you.”
“But they may come any moment.”
“I don’t care!”
“Oh, but I do. Charlie, what’s the matter? Oh, didn’t I ever call you Charlie’ before? Well, Charlie, if you love me (yes, I know!) you’ll not let these people see me.”
“All right! Come along. I’ll take you to the road and come back. Hullo! What’s that?”
“It’s them!” exclaimed the lady.
It was. The pair dived back into the temple. On the opposite bank stood Millie Bushell, Mr. Vansittart, and Victor Sutton.
“Hullo, there, Charlie, you thief!” cried Victor. “Bring that canoe over here. Miss Bushell wants to get to the temple.”
“Hush! Don’t move!” whispered Agatha.
“But they know I’m here; they see that confounded canoe.”
“Charlie! Charlie!” was shouted across in three voices.
“What the devil—,” muttered Charlie.
“They mustn’t see me,” urged Agatha.
Victor Sutton’s voice rose clear and distinct,
“I’ll unearth him!” he cried. “I know the way round. You wait here with Miss Bushell, Merceron.”
“Oh, he’s coming round!”
“I must chance it,” said Charlie, and he came out of hiding. A cry greeted him. Victor was already started, but stopped. Charlie embarked and shot across.
“You villain! You gave us the slip,” cried Uncle Van.
Miss Bushell began quietly to embark. Uncle Van followed her example.
“Oh, Mr. Merceron, you’ll sink us!” cried Millie.
Charlie sat glum and silent. The situation beat him completely.
Uncle Van drew back. Millie seized the paddle and propelled the canoe out from the bank.
“You come round with me, Merceron,” called Sutton, and the two men turned to the path. “No,” added Victor. “Look here, we can climb round here,” and he pointed to the bank. There was a little narrow muddy track, but it was enough.
The canoe was half-way across; the two men—Victor leading at a good pace—were half-way round. Charlie glanced at the window of the temple and caught a fleeting glance of a despairing face. “If you love me, they mustn’t see me!”
“Here, give me the paddle!” he exclaimed, and reached forward for it.
“No, I can do it,” answered Millie, lifting the instrument out of his reach.
Charlie stepped forward—rather, he jumped forward, as a man jumps over a ditch. There was a shriek from Millie; the canoe swayed, tottered, and upset. In a confused mass, Millie Bushell and Charlie were hurled into the water. Victor and Uncle Van, hardly five yards from the steps, turned in amazement.
“Help! help!” screamed Millie.
“Help!” echoed Charlie. “I can’t hold her up. Victor, come and help me! Uncle Van, come along!”
“The devil!” murmured Uncle Van,
“Quick, quick!” called Charlie; and Victor, with a vexed laugh, peeled off his coat and jumped in. Mr. Vansittart stood with a puzzled air. Then a happy thought struck him. He turned and trotted back the way he had come. He would get a rope!
As he went, as Victor reached the stragglers in the water, a slim figure in white, with a smile on her face, stole cautiously from the temple and disappeared in the wood behind. Charlie saw her go, but he held poor Millie’s head remorselessly tight towards the other bank.
And that was the last he saw of the Lady of the Pool.
Millie Bushell landed, her dripping clothes clinging round her. Victor was shivering, for the evening had turned chilly. Uncle Van had a bit of rope from the boat-shed in his hand, and a doubtful smile on his face.
“We’d best get Miss Bushel home,” he suggested, and they started in gloomy procession. Charlie, in remorse, gave Millie his arm.
“Oh, how could you?” she murmured piteously. She was cold, she was wet, and she was sure that she looked frightful.
I—I didn’t do it on purpose, “Charlie blurted out eagerly.
“On purpose! Well, I suppose not,” she exclaimed, bewildered. Charlie flushed. Victor shot a swift glance at him.
Half-way home they met Mrs. Marland and the whole affair had to be explained to her. Charlie essayed the task.
“Still, I don’t see how you managed to upset the canoe,” observed Mrs. Marland.
“No more do I,” said Victor Sutton. Charlie gave it up.
“I’m so sorry, Millie,” he whispered. “You must try to forgive me.”
So, once again, the coast was left clear for Agatha Merceron, if she came that night. But, whether she did or not, the other Agatha came no more, and Charlie’s great resolve went unfulfilled. Yet the next evening he went: alone to the temple, and he found, lying on the floor, a little handkerchief trimmed with lace and embroidered with the name of “Agatha.” This he put in his pocket, thanking heaven that his desperate manoeuvre had kept the shrine inviolate the day before.
“Poor Millie!” said he. “But then I had to do it.”
“I hear,” remarked Lady Merceron a few days later, “that one of Mr. Prime’s friends has left him—not Willie’s young lady—the other.”
“Has she?” asked Charlie.
No one pursued the subject, and, after a moment’s pause, Mrs. Marland, who was sitting next to Charlie, asked him in a low voice whether he had been to the Pool that evening—.
“No,” answered Charlie. “I don’t go every night.”
“Oh, poor dear Miss Bushell!” laughed Mrs. Marland; and, when Charlie looked inquiringly at her, she shook her head.
“You see, I know something of young men,” she explained.