Who, seeking for himself alone, ever entered heaven?
In blessing we are blest.
—C. SEYMOUR.
There is no separation—no Past; Eternity, the Now is
continuous.... The continuity of Now is for ever.
—RICHARD JEFFERIES.
The party from the Crow's Nest were somewhat late in arriving the following evening. Verity made her excuses very prettily.
"It was all darling Babs's fault," she said to Miss Templeton; "she would play instead of going to sleep. Mr. Herrick lost patience at last, and declared he would go on alone."
"I must take my god-daughter in hand, or she will be ruined body and soul," observed Malcolm severely. "Babs is already a domestic tyrant, and screams the house down if any of her fads and fancies are resisted. I am thinking of writing a series of essays on degenerate and irresponsible parents, and the cruelty of modern education in the nursery, which out-Herods Herod." Of course they all laughed at this idea, and then David Carlyon crossed the room to shake hands with Malcolm and to introduce his father.
The two men were curiously alike. The Rev. Rupert Carlyon was an older, shabbier, and more careworn David; but there was the same broad, intellectual brow, the same bright intelligence of expression, and their voices were so strangely similar that if Malcolm had closed his eyes he could not have distinguished between them; they both spoke with the same quickness, and in the same clipping fashion.
Malcolm noticed before the evening was over that David Carlyon looked unusually pale and tired, though he seemed in excellent spirits. Dinah made the same remark to his father.
"Oh, I have been giving that boy of mine a lecture," he said quickly; "he is a perfect spendthrift and prodigal with regard to the midnight oil, and burns both ends of his candle in the most reckless fashion."
"I should not have thought a sleepy little place like Rotherwood would have overtaxed his energies," observed Malcolm in rather a surprised tone.
The elder man shook his head.
"There is always work enough if one looks for it. My son is a sort of medical missionary in his way, and concerns himself with the bodies as well as the souls of his people. The last two nights he has been up until nearly dawn with a stranger—a sort of commercial traveller who has been taken ill at 'The Plough.' It is a sad case: he is quite a young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, unobtrusive acts of good-will and kindness to man, woman, and child; nay, the very dumb animals knew their friend, and would come to him for protection.
The Carlyons took their leave soon after this. Elizabeth walked down to the gate with them. Malcolm thought she looked rather grave when she returned, as though something troubled her, but she would not hear of the party breaking up, and promised Malcolm that she would sing all his favourite songs to his friends, and she kept her word. Malcolm sat in a trance of beatitude while the beautiful voice floated out into the darkness, startling some night-bird in the copse; and Verity's eyes were wet, and she stole closer to her husband, for it seemed to her as though the shadows from the old life were creeping round her; and unseen by any one but Dinah, she leant her cheek against Amias's hand.
"Oh, how can you sing like that!" exclaimed Verity in her naive way, when Elizabeth joined them on the terrace. "You sing right down into people's hearts. Oh, I felt so sad, and then so happy, and the world did not seem wide enough to contain me."
"You must not flatter me," returned Elizabeth, but she was evidently gratified. Then she turned her head to Malcolm, who was behind her, and said in an undertone, "You were quite right, the Jacobis are coming to our party. I have sent them a card this afternoon."
"I hope Miss Templeton approved of my suggestion?"
"Yes, she thought with you that it would be an excellent opportunity of taking stock of the enemy. And Cedric was so pleased. Mr. Herrick," she continued, as they walked down the terrace, "I must tell you that we are charmed with Mrs. Keston. She is a dear little thing, and so fascinating and original, and she looks really pretty to-night."
"No, she is not pretty," returned Malcolm, "but her dress becomes her. We call it Keston's chef d'oeuvre. He always designs her gowns. He is very aesthetic in his tastes, and he knows exactly what suits her. If Verity were left to her own devices, she would be very crude and unfinished."
"He is very proud of her," observed Elizabeth. "It is good to see two such happy people. We like them immensely, and shall hope to see a great deal of them;" and Malcolm was so elated by these encomiums on his friends, and by Elizabeth's gracious friendliness, that he actually suggested that she should walk down the drive with them; but to his secret chagrin she made some excuse.
Half an hour later she entered her sister's room. Dinah was reading as usual, with her little green lamp beside her; but she closed her book and looked up at her inquiringly.
"What is it, Betty?" she said gently. "Something has been troubling you to-night." Then Elizabeth turned aside her face for a moment, but she was not regarding herself in the great mirror. "It concerns David," continued Dinah calmly. Then Elizabeth gave vent to a heavy sigh.
"Yes, it concerns David," she returned. "I have been talking to him, oh so seriously, and to his father too; but it is no use. They will let me do nothing to help them. I wanted to send in a night nurse, but they will have it that it is not necessary. Old Mrs. Roper takes care of the patient by day, and it is only the night."
"But, Betty dear, surely David Carlyon is not going there again to-night?"
"Indeed he is," very sadly. "I heard them arranging it this afternoon. Mr. Carlyon is to relieve him at three. He was so tired that he could scarcely eat his dinner, and he told me that he dared not stay for the music, as I should certainly sing him to sleep. Die," in rather a choked voice, "it is not right. He will kill himself if he goes on like this."
It was evident that Elizabeth was in a depressed mood; perhaps she was tired too. Dinah, who knew her well, quite understood her.
"Don't worry, Betty," she said kindly. "David Carlyon is young enough and strong enough to bear the loss of a few nights' rest, and the fever is not infectious. By all accounts the poor fellow cannot last many days. Tomorrow I will go over to the White Cottage and talk to them both. I shall tell David that he has no right to let his father work so hard during his holiday."
"Tell him we know such a nice woman, Die," and Dinah promised that she would do her very best. But Elizabeth had not wholly eased her mind; she stood looking at her sister rather doubtfully, and then she said abruptly—
"Die, there is something I want to ask you. You heard from Douglas Fraser this morning, did you not?" Then a faint colour came to Dinah's pale cheeks.
"Were you afraid to ask me that before, my dear?" she said with a smile. "But it was my fault; I ought to have told you—this sort of question is not easy even for a sister to ask. Yes, Douglas wrote and Agnes too. Dear little Lettice is so much better. He thinks she will pull through now, thank God! but they nearly lost her."
"Was it so bad as that, Die?" in an awed tone.
"Yes, it has been a terrible illness. They have nurses, of course, but poor Agnes is almost worn out. She is their only girl, and Douglas does so doat on her. He has suffered so—one can read it in every word," and Dinah's voice shook a little.
Perhaps it needed only that to bring Elizabeth's emotion to a culminating point, for to Dinah's surprise she suddenly knelt down and put her arms round her and the tears were running down her face.
"Oh, Die, stop! I cannot bear to hear you—it pains me so—it pains me all over!"
"My darling Bet! Oh, you foolish, foolish Betty!" But Elizabeth was not to be soothed so easily.
"That is why I never mention his name. I try to pretend sometimes that I do not see his handwriting. Oh, Die," caressing her, "how can any woman be such an angel! It is not natural. In your place, under your circumstances, I would never have seen him again."
"Dear Elizabeth," returned Dinah quietly, but her face had grown very white, "you must surely remember that we never met—never thought of meeting—until dear Agnes herself brought us together. Don't you recollect how sweetly she wrote and begged me to be their friend. She said that it would make him happier, and herself too—that she never wished him to forget me; that it was through my influence that he had been brought right and that they were no longer divided in faith. Oh, Betty, I was a happy woman the day I got that letter, and I have been a happy woman since. 'Through pain to peace,'" she went on softly, "I should like those words to be inscribed on my tombstone. To think of the terror and the struggle, the buffeting of all those cruel waves and billows, and then to see land at last! Dearest, how you cry! You will make me cry too, and I have been singing a Te Deum in my heart all day for dear Lettice's sake." Then Elizabeth tried to control her sobs.
"Die, I am quite ashamed of myself. I cannot think what has come to me. Think of a woman of thirty blubbering like a little school-girl! It is not like me, is it, dear? but my heart feels as heavy as lead to-night. Things are going wrong somehow, or is it my fancy?" And then she said a little wildly, "Oh, my darling, if I were only like you!"
"Like me! Oh no, Elizabeth," for Dinah's humility could ill brook this speech.
"But it is no use—I could never reach you. I am so human—a passionate, self-willed woman, who wants her own way in everything; and you, oh, Die, you are miles above me. That is why I love you so—I love you so!"
"Not more than I love you," returned her sister tenderly. "Dear Elizabeth, it is only your generosity that makes you say this, but it is not true. I wish I knew what has upset you so to-night." But Elizabeth made no reply to this; the friendship between the sisters was so perfect that speech did not always seem necessary. When Elizabeth remained silent, Dinah did not repeat her question.
Elizabeth had seated herself on the cushioned window-seat close to Dinah's chair. The little green lamp had been extinguished, and the room was bathed in moon-light. Down below were the dark woodlands. "Let me stay for a little while," Elizabeth had whispered, and then they had both remained silent.
Dinah felt perplexed and troubled by her sister's unusual emotion. Elizabeth's strong, healthy nature was never morbid; her temperament was even and sunshiny, and a depressed mood was a rare thing with her.
Dinah's sweet serenity was vaguely disturbed, and the quiet tears gathered in her eyes. Silence was good for both of them, she thought. When one has lived through a great pain, and by God's grace has conquered, it is better to bury the dead past. Elizabeth's passionate incredulity, the difficulty she felt in understanding her sister's motives, her exaggerated praise, made Dinah wince in positive pain. How could human love misjudge her so! Did not even her nearest and dearest—her own sister-friend—know how often she had striven and failed and fainted under that hard cross that had been laid upon her?
And in truth few women had suffered as Dinah had in the sweet blossom of her early womanhood, and more than once she had been very near the gates of the dark valley whose shadow is the shadow of death.
How she had gloried in her lover—her "Douglas—Douglas, tender and true," as she had called him to herself—in his great intellect and his strong man's heart, in the plan and purpose of his life, with its scientific research and its passionate love of truth!
And then that awful struggle between her affection and her sense of right, the doubts and terrors, the wakeful nights and joyless days, the vast blank of life that stretched before her poor eyes, half-blind with their woman's weeping.
"O Galilaean, Thou hast conquered," were the words that came to her when the crucial test had been passed, and she had parted with her beloved.
Those were sad days at the Wood House, and there were sadder days still at Rome; but she lived through them, and Elizabeth helped her; and so by and bye the light of a new dawn—a little gray and misty perhaps, but still dawn—opened before Dinah's tired eyes.
"I loved much and I prayed much, and God answered my prayers," she said long afterwards.
But the wound was wide and deep and healed slowly, and it was not until Douglas Fraser had married a noble-hearted and beautiful woman, whom he called his Lady of Consolation, that Dinah recovered a measure of her former cheerfulness. But the day she heard that he was no longer an agnostic was always kept by her as a festival. Then indeed the cup of her pure joy seemed full to the very brim.
He had come right, and now all was well with him and with her too. Pain and loss had been his teachers, and great indeed was her reward.
"It was your renunciation and sacrifice that first opened my eyes," he wrote. "I know now how rightly you acted. If I had married you then—if my entreaties had prevailed—I should never have made you happy. My dear Agnes has taught me this." And this cherished letter was Dinah's treasure.
She and Dr. Fraser seldom met—not more than once a year—but from time to time he wrote to her, and his wife and children were very dear to her.
"I cannot understand it," Elizabeth had more than once said. But Dinah could furnish no explanation: she only knew that it was so—that her life was a happy one, and that she asked for nothing more.
Douglas and his wife were her dearest friends, and Lettice, her sweet god-daughter, ranked next to Cedric in her heart.
With so many to love, how could life fail to satisfy her! "And it so short—so short," she would say to herself. "One sees so little of one's friends here; but one will have plenty of time to enjoy them in Paradise."
Continuity of life—continuity of love, this was Dinah's simple creed, but it kept her young and happy.
"Dinah has the secret of perpetual youth," Elizabeth would say to her friend Mrs. Godfrey; but she generally ended with a sigh, "If only I were like her!"
How poor a thing is man! Alas, 'tis true;
I'd half forget it when I chanced on you!
—SCHILLER.
Thy clothes are all the soul thou hast.
—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
The day of the Templeton's garden fete was as bright and cloudless as the heart of man or woman could desire. Verity, who had dressed herself at an unconscionably early hour, sat at an upper window with Babs in her arms, watching brakes and carriages drive past, filled with gaily attired people. Malcolm had issued his sovereign mandate that they must not be amongst the earliest arrivals, and Verity panted with impatience long before she could induce her household tyrants to lay aside pipe and cigarette.
Malcolm was not in a festive mood. He had spent his morning restlessly, pacing up and down the woodlands, with an unread book under his arm. He was secretly chafed and even a little hurt that neither of the sisters had needed his help. He had dropped more than one hint on the previous day, when some errand took him to the Wood House, and he found Elizabeth looking heated and tired, superintending the removal of some furniture.
"You might make use of an idle man," he had said half-jestingly. "I assure you that I am a complete Jack-of-all-trades, and I don't mind 'a scrow,' as old Nurse Dawson calls it." But though Elizabeth smiled, she did not avail herself of this friendly offer; but it was Dinah who gave him the real explanation.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Herrick," she had returned gratefully; "we should have been so glad of your help, only David Carlyon and his father are doing all we want. Mr. Carlyon is so useful, and David spends all his spare time with us."
"David"—in a pondering voice. And Dinah blushed as if she had been guilty of an indiscretion.
"Oh, we only call him that in order to distinguish him from his father—the two Carlyons are so puzzling; but he is an old and a very dear friend, and at my age it does not matter," finished Dinah with her charming smile.
Malcolm had to content himself with this explanation. They were old friends. Yes, of course, and he was a comparatively new one. He expected too much; his demands were unreasonable. Nevertheless Malcolm felt a pang of envy when he saw David Carlyon tearing breathlessly through the woodlands with his arms full of greenery from the vicarage garden, and whistling like a schoolboy.
When at last Malcolm and his friends turned in at the gates of the Wood House that afternoon, they could hear the band playing in the distance. A group of village children were gathered in the road; empty carriages passed them; a smart dog-cart, with four young men, rattled down the drive; and through the openings in the trees the gleam of white dresses looked silvery in the sunlight.
Miss Templeton was standing in the porch to receive her guests. Elizabeth had only just left her, she said, to arrange the tennis tournament. And then, as more guests were arriving, Malcolm left her. The next moment he came upon Cedric; he was looking rather bored and disconsolate. He lighted up, however, at the sight of his friend.
"Here you are at last," he grumbled. "I have been looking all over the place for you. I came down with a lot of our fellows, but Betty has paired them all off for tennis. There are the Kestons, I must go and speak to them." But Malcolm had him by the arm.
"Wait a moment; '"no hurry!" said the Carpenter.' I suppose you brought the Jacobis with you." Then Cedric's face clouded again.
"Oh, Jacobi came right enough—there he is, talking to David—but Miss Jacobi had a bad sick headache, and he would not let her come."
"I am sorry to hear that," returned Malcolm; and he was sorry, for his cleverly-devised plan had been frustrated.
"She was sorry too, poor girl," went on Cedric in a vexed voice. "She had been so looking forward to the Bean-feast ever since Betty's invitation arrived. It is my belief that Jacobi is to blame for the whole thing, for he was rowing her in her room like anything last night. I could hear them through the ceiling going it like hammer and tongs."
"Do you mean to tell me that Miss Jacobi and her brother quarrel?" asked Malcolm in a disgusted voice. Then Cedric looked as if he had said more than he intended.
"No, not quarrel," rather hesitatingly. "It takes two to do that, you know, and Leah—Miss Jacobi, I mean," biting his lip—"is much too fond of her brother to quarrel with him; but Jacobi has a temper, you see."
"Oh, he has a temper, has he?"
"Well, lots of people have, if you come to that," returned Cedric, who evidently repented his frankness. "Jacobi is a decent fellow, but he is hot and peppery, and when things go crooked he lashes out a bit. Something must have vexed him last night, for he came into the drawing-room looking very much put out. Miss Jacobi had just gone upstairs, and he went after her at once."
"And then they quarrelled?"
"Well, not quarrelled exactly; but there was a good deal of talking, don't you know. He kept her up late, and bothered her, and then she got a headache. "But Cedric forbore to tell his friend that he had been so perturbed by the sound of Saul Jacobi's angry voice that he had stolen down the stairs to the passage below. How long he stood there transfixed with fear and pity it was impossible to say. No words reached him—only the harsh, vibrant tones of Saul Jacobi's voice and Leah's low, piteous sobbing.
He might have stood there until morning, but the door suddenly unlatched, and he had only just time to steal away; but before he could enter his room a few words did reach him.
"Oh, Saul, please do not leave me like this. Don't I always do as you wish; only—only I thought you approved; that—that—" but here sobs choked her voice.
"What is the use of turning on the waterworks like this?" muttered her brother angrily. "What fools you women are! A boy like that too!"
"But, Saul, Saul—"
"Yes, I know," sulkily. "I have not changed my mind, but I mean to have my way about to-morrow all the same. If you had been sensible I would have told you my reasons; but you chose to aggravate me, and I said a precious lot more than I meant. There, go to sleep and forget it"—evidently a rough attempt to be conciliatory; but Leah's sad and weary face told its own tale the next morning.
Malcolm did not ask any more questions, and after a few more casual remarks Cedric went off in search of the Kestons, and Malcolm sauntered across the lawn, looking at the various groups in the hope of seeing Elizabeth's tall figure.
Presently he came upon Mr. Jacobi. He was standing by the sun-dial, looking smart and well-groomed in his frock-coat, and a rare orchid in his button-hole. He was contemplating the house with fixed attention. A sudden impulse made Malcolm join him. Mr. Jacobi greeted him with his usual affability, and then, as though by mutual consent, they strolled together in the direction of the rustic bridge.
"Nice sleepy old place this," observed Mr. Jacobi condescendingly. "Seems as though it had been in existence for a hundred years at least. Do you know how long it has belonged to the Templetons?"
"No, I have no idea," returned Malcolm stiffly, for he resented the question. "What a perfect day it is! I am sorry to hear from Templeton that your sister is indisposed."
Mr. Jacobi's eyes narrowed a little; he looked rather sharply at Malcolm.
"Oh, Templeton told you that. Nice fellow—as good a specimen of a young Briton as ever I wish to see; sensible too, and a good companion. Yes, my sister is a bit seedy—a bad sick headache, nothing more. It is in our family; my mother had them, and Leah takes after her. It is hard lines, poor old girl," continued Mr. Jacobi in a feeling tone, "for she was longing to make the Misses Templeton's acquaintance."
Malcolm returned a civil answer, and Mr. Jacobi continued—
"Templeton is a lucky fellow, between you and me and the post," in a jocular tone. "It must be a good thing for him that his sisters have set their faces against matrimony. Nice-looking women, both of them, but in my humble opinion Miss Elizabeth is the most attractive. Templeton let out to Leah the other day that she could have married a dozen times over if she had wished to do so, only she vowed she was cut out for an old maid."
"I don't suppose he knows anything about it," returned Malcolm, feeling this speech was in the worst possible form. It revolted him to hear this man even mention Elizabeth's name—he would give him no encouragement; but Saul Jacobi, who could be dense when he chose, did not drop the subject.
"It is rather a big place for two maiden ladies of uncertain age," he remarked blandly; but this speech irritated Malcolm beyond endurance.
"There is nothing uncertain about the second Miss Templeton's age," he said impatiently; "she is still a young woman." Then it struck him that Mr. Jacobi looked a trifle crestfallen.
"Young, do you call her? Oh no, very mature and sedate, like a middle-aged woman. Gyp Campion told me as a fact—do you know Gyp? he is in the Hussars, and a tiptop swell in the bargain—well, Gyp let out that his brother Owen had proposed to Miss Elizabeth Templeton years ago at Alassio."
"Oh, I daresay," indifferently. "I think I must go back to the house now;" it cost Malcolm an effort to be civil.
"I will walk back with you. What was I saying? Oh, she refused the poor chap, and told him that the holy estate of matrimony had no attraction for her, or some such rubbish. That is why I call Templeton a lucky fellow. There is not a creature belonging to them, except a distant cousin or two in New Zealand, so of course he will come in for everything;" a pause here, and a furtive glance of inquiry; but Malcolm remained mute, and his face might have been a blank wall as far as expression was concerned.
"They have got a pretty penny saved too," went on Mr. Jacobi, not in the least silenced by Malcolm's lack of interest. "Gyp told me a thing or two about that. It seems they had a farm in Cornwall"—here he sniffed at his scentless orchid with an air of enjoyment, a habit of his when his subject interested him. "It was a rotten concern—farm buildings out of repair, and a few scrubby fields with more stones than grass. Miss Templeton was just going to sell it for a mere song when some one discovered tin. My word, those few acres rose in value! Gyp declared they realised quite a small fortune on it. That was only three or four years ago."
"Indeed," returned Malcolm drily; "if you will pardon my speaking plainly, Mr. Jacobi, I do not think the Misses Templeton's business affairs are any concern of ours, and I would prefer to talk on any other subject."
This was too manifest a hint to be disregarded even by the irrepressible Jacobi; but the next minute Malcolm added, "Will you excuse my leaving you, I see some old friends of mine on their way to the Pool, and they will expect me to join them;" but if Malcolm intended to do so, he chose a most circuitous route.
"Rum chap that," observed Saul Jacobi, turning on his heel—"not easy to get any information out of him; looks as though he had swallowed the poker first, and then the tongs as a sort of relish afterwards, and neither of them agreed with him. I wonder what young Templeton saw in him. He lays it on pretty thick too: it is Herrick this and Herrick that, as though he were Solomon in all his glory. Confound his airs and impudence! Let me tell you, my young gentleman," with a sly smile, "that the Misses Templeton's private business is a matter that concerns Saul Jacobi pretty closely."
Meanwhile Malcolm was in a white heat of righteous indignation.
"That wretched little cad, how dare he meddle and pry into the Misses Templeton's family affairs! There is something I mistrust in the man; he is smooth and plausible, but he is crafty too; he is deep—deep—and if I do not mistake, he is clever too."
Then he added, "I must get hold of Cedric; I am not comfortable at his associating with this man. Cedric is as weak as water; he is so easily led, he would be the dupe of any designing person; but the Jacobis will have to reckon with me;" and here Malcolm, who had uttered the last words aloud, stopped and looked rather foolish, as a merry laugh greeted his ear, and Elizabeth, in all the glory of her Paris gown and picture hat, barred the way, and regarded him with her beaming smile.
"Mr. Herrick, you are quite dramatic; Hamlet or the melancholy Jacques could not have been more lost in gloomy meditation. If I may presume to ask the question, why will the Jacobis have to reckon with you?"
"Did I say so?" returned Malcolm, with an uneasy laugh. "I suppose I was thinking aloud. That fellow Jacobi has been rubbing me up the wrong way; he stuck to me like a burr, and I could not get rid of him."
"I had some trouble in shaking him off myself," she owned. "You were quite right, Mr. Herrick, he is not a gentleman, and I dislike his manner excessively; it is too subservient, and he is too soft-tongued. Poor dear Die, I wish you could have seen her face when he paid her a compliment; she looked quite bewildered."
Elizabeth's eyes were dancing with amusement at the recollection, but Malcolm did not respond to her merriment; he felt things were too serious.
"I am not at all easy in my mind," he said, and then Elizabeth looked at him inquiringly. "Jacobi seems to have got a hold on Cedric. He goes back with him to-night, does he not? Ah, I thought so," as Elizabeth nodded. "I must have some talk with him; I shall tell him that I disapprove of the Jacobis, and shall beg him to break off the acquaintance."
"Oh, thank you—thank you!" returned Elizabeth earnestly, and there was a beautiful colour in her face; she even held out her hand impulsively to him, as though her gratitude carried her away. "How good you are to us—a real friend to two lone, lorn women!" and here something twinkled in Elizabeth's eyes; but perhaps she was a little taken aback when Malcolm very quietly and reverently raised the hand to his lips, as though he were vowing knightly service to his liege lady.
"I should ask nothing better than to be your friend," he said in a low voice; but perhaps something in her manner checked him, for he added hastily, "and your sister's too."
It was rather a lame conclusion, but Elizabeth accepted it graciously. "I shall rely on you to help us," she said very seriously; "get him to break with the Jacobis, and Dinah and I will owe you a debt of gratitude."
"Hush! please do not mention names," whispered Malcolm; "some one might overhear us;" but he was too late, Elizabeth's incautious speech had reached an unseen auditor.
Malcolm felt a little ashamed of himself when he remembered his impulsive action. "She will think it so strange," he thought; "she will not understand that it was only the outward and visible sign of my inward reverence." But he was wrong, Elizabeth did understand, and she did not misjudge him.
"He is a high-minded gentleman," she said to herself; and then she sighed and her face grew troubled, "but I wish—I wish he had not done that."
Malcolm found his work cut out for him; for the remainder of the afternoon he was hunting his quarry. But Cedric was never alone. He was either surrounded by a bevy of girls or else Jacobi was beside him. Even Cedric seemed surprised at the tenacity with which his friend and host stuck to him.
"Herrick wants me," he said once; "I will come back to you right enough, old fellow;" but Jacobi still pinioned him.
"We will go together, my dear boy," he said pleasantly. "I have taken a fancy to your Mentor. He seems a clever chap. He is a barrister, isn't he, and literary, and all that sort of thing?"
"I have told you about him often enough," returned Cedric, in rather a surly tone, as though the iron hand under the velvet glove made itself evident. Cedric felt he was being managed and coerced, and he waxed indignant; but Saul Jacobi was more than a match for him, and in spite of all Malcolm's efforts, Cedric went back to Henley without a word of warning.
Malcolm was quite troubled and crestfallen over his failure.
"I did my best," he said to Elizabeth; "I followed him about the whole afternoon, but that fellow stuck to him like a leech."
"So I saw," she returned rather sadly; "it was no fault of yours, Mr. Herrick, I am quite sure of that. Well, we must find some other opportunity." And then Elizabeth smiled at him very kindly, and Malcolm went back to the Crow's Nest feeling somewhat comforted.
Love lies deeper than all words;
And not the spoken but the speechless love
Waits answer, ere I rise and go my way.
—BROWNING.
When in after-years Malcolm Herrick reviewed this portion of his life, he owned to himself that during the five weeks that followed the Templeton Bean-feast he had lived in a fool's paradise—in a state of beatitude that was as unsubstantial and fleeting as the sunset clouds that piled themselves behind the fir woods.
He was very happy, almost pathetically so, and the new wine of youth seemed coursing through his veins. "This is life," he would say to himself; "I have only existed before, but now I am reborn into a new world, and I have learned the secret of all the ages."
Every day his passion for Elizabeth Templeton increased, and the charm and sweetness of her personality attracted him more powerfully. He had never seen any one like her; she was so full of surprises, her nature was so rich, so original, and yet so womanly, that the man whom she blessed with her love could never have grown weary of her society. Without an effort, simply by being herself, a truthful, noble-hearted woman, she had dominated his strong nature and brought him to her feet. Was she conscious of his devotion? This was a question that Malcolm vainly tried to answer, but her manner perplexed and baffled him. She was always kind and friendly, and her cordial welcome never varied, but Malcolm could not flatter himself that he received any special encouragement, or that she regarded him in any other light than a trusted and valued friend. Now and then, when he found himself alone with her, he fancied her manner had changed—that she had become quiet and reserved, as though she were not at her ease with him. Was it only his imagination, he wondered, that she seemed trying to keep him at a distance, as though she were afraid of him? But such was his blindness and infatuation that he drew encouragement even from this.
To Malcolm those summer days were simply perfect. His morning hours were devoted to his literary work, and the essays were taking shape and form under his hand. Never had his brain been clearer; he worked with a facility that surprised himself. "I am inspired," he would whisper; "I have a patron saint of my own now," and he would tell himself that no name could be so sweet to him as Elizabeth. He would murmur it half-aloud as he wandered in the woodlands in the gloaming—"Elizabeth, Elizabeth"—and once as he said it, something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him.
He had not forgotten Anna; he had never forgotten her in his life, for his adopted sister was very dear to him.
Every week he wrote to his mother and also to her—pleasant, chatty letters, full of affection and warm with brotherly kindness. If Anna ever shed tears over them he never knew it.
With what touching humility she acknowledged his thoughtfulness!
"Another letter—how good you are to me!" she would say in her reply. "Mother declares that you spoil me. I read her all your description of the Bean-feast. Oh, if I had only been there! But it is wicked of me to say that."
But later on there was a touch of curiosity, almost a shadow of doubt.
"You say so little about Miss Elizabeth Templeton," she wrote, "and yet you are at the Wood House every day. It is always Miss Templeton. Is it heresy, dear? but I fancy I should like Miss Elizabeth best. Tell me more about her next time you write. I want to see her with your eyes." But Anna pleaded in vain—on the subject of Elizabeth's merits he kept silence.
But it was quite true that he was at the Wood House nearly every day, and that the sisters always welcomed him most kindly. Sometimes he dined there, either alone or with the Kestons; or he would stroll across at tea-time, or oftener in the evening, when they were sitting on the terrace. David Carlyon was often with them; his father had left him by this time. The young men used to look askance at each other in the dim light, and Malcolm would shake hands with the curate rather stiffly.
"Carlyon was there again," he would say to Amias, when he found his friend smoking in the porch. "I don't dislike the fellow, but one may have too much even of a good thing." Then Amias looked at him rather queerly but made no answer.
Caleb Martin and Kit were established comfortably at the cottage under Mrs. Sullivan's motherly wing, and Kit's white pinched little face filled out in the sweet country air.
"She is a different creature," Caleb assured Malcolm. "I wish Ma'am could see her. She is just as happy as the day is long. We are in the woods from morning to night, picking up fir-cones and building with them, and making believe that we are gypsies. She's ready to drop with fatigue before she lets me take her home, and then our good lady scolds us a bit."
"And poor Mrs. Martin is alone in Todmorden's Lane?" remarked Malcolm.
"Lord love you, sir," returned Caleb, "you don't need to be pitying Ma'am; she's glad to be rid of the pair of us. She is whitewashing and papering the rooms. She is a handy woman, is Ma'am, and she says we shall not know the place when we go back. I never knew such a woman for scrubbing and cleaning—it seems to make her happy somehow."
Malcolm made frequent visits to Rotherwood to see Caleb and Kit, and he generally paid them on the days when Elizabeth was at the schools, so that he could walk back with her through the woodlands.
The first time he did this Elizabeth seemed rather surprised, though she offered no objection; but after that she took it as a matter of course, and chatted with him on all manner of subjects. She listened very kindly when Malcolm sounded her on the subject of Kit, and made all sorts of impossible plans for the child's future; and though she laughed at him good-humouredly, and told him that he was a visionary, impracticable person, she soon became serious and brought her shrewd common-sense and feminine wits to his assistance. And so it was that one day he made a proposition that nearly took Caleb's breath away.
Kit must certainly not go back to Todmorden's Lane until she was stronger, he remarked. Miss Templeton and he were fully agreed on this point; the fogs and low-lying mists from the river were harmful to her poor little chest.
Caleb must leave her under Mrs. Sullivan's care. Miss Templeton had made all arrangements, and he would be responsible for the expense. There had been a pitched battle over this point; but for once Elizabeth had been forced to give in, Malcolm had been so stern and masterful.
Caleb should come down for the week-end every three weeks or so, he could promise him that, and a whole week at Christmas. But Caleb looked too much dazed to answer, and there was a misty look in the transparent, light-blue eyes.
"I'm took all of a heap!" he ejaculated at last. "It is not that I don't thank you kindly, sir, for I am pretty nigh choking with gratitude; but you see there is Ma'am to reckon with—if Kit were her own little 'un she couldn't be fonder of her."
"I daresay not," remarked Malcolm, and there was a trace of impatience in his tone; "but, after all, Mr. Martin, you are Kit's father." But Caleb only shook his head doubtfully, and went on in his slow, ruminating way.
"Most folk think that Ma'am is a bad-natured woman because she gives them the rough side of her tongue; but, Lord bless you, her bark's worse than her bite. Her heart is just set on Kit, and she would not hurt a hair of her head in her most contrary moods, when even the black cat won't stay in the place she is making such a scrimmage with the pots and pans. But Kit only laughs. 'It is Ma'am at her music,' she says; 'but it t'aint the sort of music I like.' Yes, indeed, sir, I have heered her say that a score of times."
"Very well, then, you had better go and have a talk with your wife," returned Malcolm.
And Caleb went, and came back to Rotherwood the next day a sadder and a wiser man.
"Well, and what did Mrs. Martin say?" asked Malcolm when he saw Caleb again.
The little cobbler drew his hand across his eyes in an embarrassed fashion; he was evidently trying to recollect something.
"Ma'am sends her humble duty," he answered presently in a sing-song voice, "and she is greatly obliged to you and the kind lady, and Kit may stay along of Mrs. Sullivan—those were her very words, sir."
"Mrs. Martin is a sensible woman then."
"Oh, she is that, sir. She was scolding me all supper-time for not thinking of the child's good. 'You can bring her back if you like, Caleb,' she says, 'and poison her with the filthy fogs, and get her ready for her coffin, poor lamb. And you call yourself a father, Caleb Martin? Drat all such fathers, I say!' She made me clean ashamed of myself, did Ma'am;" and here the little man looked ready to cry.
"Well, Mr. Martin, I do think the child will be better here, and you can come down every three weeks or so to see her—you know we have arranged that—and now and then you can bring your wife too;" and Caleb brightened up at this.
But the day he left Rotherwood he was so lugubrious and tearful that Malcolm felt quite sorry for him; but Kit took a less depressing view.
"I don't want you to go, dad," she said feelingly; "but I like staying along with this good lady," with a friendly nod of her head to Mrs. Sullivan. "I have got a black kitten of my own and a yellow chick, and they are better than dolls because they can love me back. And the ladies from the Wood House are going to take me out for drives—my, won't that be 'eavenly!" Nevertheless Kit shed a few tears when Caleb closed the little gate behind him. "I want to stay here, and I want daddy too," she said rather pitifully.
All these weeks Malcolm had seen nothing of Cedric. His visit to the Jacobis had been prolonged for another ten days, and then he wrote, in high spirits, to tell his sisters that Dick Wallace had invited him to go down to his father's place in Scotland.
"I expect I shall have rare sport there, and stalk a deer or two," he continued. "Dick and I are to go down by the night mail on Thursday, but I will run over to Staplegrove for a few hours. Tell Herrick I will look him up at his diggings."
By some oversight Elizabeth forgot to give Malcolm this message, and Malcolm, who had to go up to town on business, was much chagrined to find that Cedric had called during his absence, and had been greatly disappointed at missing him.
He went across to the Wood House directly after supper, and found the ladies sitting out on the terrace.
Elizabeth was very contrite.
"It was dreadfully careless of me," she confessed; "I meant to have sent you a note last night, but some one called—who was it, Dinah?—and put it out of my head." But Dinah could not recollect that any one had called except David Carlyon, and seemed rather surprised at the question.
"Oh, it must have been Mr. Carlyon," returned Elizabeth; but she coloured slightly. "It was really very stupid of me; Cedric was quite put out about it."
"Oh, well, it cannot be helped," observed Malcolm, philosophically. "Did he say much about the Jacobis?"
"No, he only remarked that they had been very kind, and that he had had a rattling good time. Those were his words, were they not, Die?" and Dinah smiled assent.
"We both asked him a heap of questions, but they seemed to bore him; he was full of his Scotch visit, and would scarcely talk of anything else."
Malcolm was not quite satisfied, but he kept his doubts to himself. Elizabeth, who was as sharp as a needle, looked up at him quickly. "We did our best, I assure you, Mr. Herrick, but he refused to be drawn; he seemed very much excited."
"The Wallaces are a good sort of people, are they not?" was Malcolm's next question.
"Oh yes, they are thoroughly nice;" it was Dinah who answered him. "Sir Richard is charming, and so is Lady Wallace; and of course Dick is an old acquaintance of ours."
"There are some daughters, I believe?"
"Yes, but they are not very young or attractive, poor things," replied Elizabeth—"heavy, podgy sort of girls, but very kind-hearted. By the bye, Die, I wonder if Cedric will come across the Godfreys, they are somewhere in the neighbourhood." And then she explained to Malcolm that Fettercairn Hall, where Sir Richard Wallace lived, was only a few miles from the shooting lodge where the Godfreys were staying; and this fact appeared to give the sisters a good deal of satisfaction.
It was the middle of September now, and Malcolm reflected with some uneasiness that more than half his holiday was over. The Kestons had decided to return to Cheyne Walk in another three weeks or so, and of course he must accompany them; his mother and Anna would be back in town by that time, and his presence would be needed in Lincoln's Inn.
"The shadows of the prison-house," as he called it, began to haunt him, and he counted up his days as jealously as a miser counts his gold.
Every day he saw Elizabeth; and each hour he was alone with her he found it more difficult to keep silence; but as yet he had had himself well in hand. Perhaps something in her manner had sealed his lips, or he feared that the spell of this happy dream would be broken. But during those wakeful summer nights, when that sweet pain kept him restless, he would tell himself that the time had not yet come, that she did not know him well enough.
"She is not a young girl," he would say to himself; "she is a mature woman who knows the world and has thought deeply-why, even to know her is a liberal education." And then he repeated to himself in the darkness those lines of Shelley—
"Her voice was like the voice of his own soul,
Heard in the calm of thought,"
for all the sweet influences of summer and nature had only fed the passion, and every day it seemed to grow stronger and stronger.
"She is my other self, she thinks my thoughts, we have a thousand things in common, how can she help loving me!" he would say when his mood was jubilant and sanguine; but at other times a chill doubt would cross his mind.
"She is different from other women, she will not be easily won, that is why I fear to speak;" but all the same Malcolm registered a mental vow that he would not leave Staplegrove until the decisive words had been spoken.