At The Relton Arms Part 7

"Oh, Digby, did it make you feel all that?"

"There is no doubt," said Lady Joan, loudly, "that our sympathies or our antipathies make us sometimes imagine a likeness where it cannot exist.

I remember when I was a small child and came to stay with my great-uncle here, I used to invent every kind of excuse for going down to the post-office, because I thought the boy behind the counter was like a cousin of mine I had a romantic admiration for at the time. And of course you know how there are some days when everybody in the street reminds you of some one you don't want to meet, and others when you feel you have not the least affinity to your own sister. The fact is, family likeness is all rubbish, like most of the traditions we have grown up with; I mean, there is just as much chance of two strangers being alike, which you have just proved yourself, Mr. Johnson, by supposing Mr.

Raleigh and my little friend Norah to be brother and sister. Shall we go in, now, or would you like another turn round the garden?"

The curate felt he had been sufficiently battered in that one brief stroll to the lake, and he consulted his watch and said he had some work waiting for him at home. So they came back again through the open window, and found Norah still lying on the couch, and the musician on the low chair at her side.

"What a horrid little man," said Lady Joan, when the curate had left.

"Is he?" said Norah, vaguely.

"Oh, I don't think he's bad," said the musician, cheerfully.

Their hostess made a huge effort, and preserved her smile.

"It may be because I had to entertain him," she said, knitting busily at her large white shawl.

"Why didn't you leave him alone?" they asked, with the sublime innocence of the selfish.

"Because that was what you did," she replied.

"Oh, but we thought you were getting on so well with him," said Norah.

"Besides," added Digby, "you need not have asked him into the garden."

"Perhaps I needn't," said Lady Joan, and counted her st.i.tches.

"I am so dreadfully worried about something," she said, presently.

"What about?" they asked, feeling that it had somehow been the atmosphere of the whole day.

"The dilapidation of my pig-styes; Jones says two of them will go on for some time, but the others want repairing. Now, is it worth while to have two repaired, or shall I wait until they all fall to pieces, and put up brick ones?"

"That is a question," said Norah, gravely.

The musician laughed heartily.

"What a fuss ladies make about trifles. If you had a man to manage your affairs--"

"But I haven't," she said quickly, and looked him full in the face; "I thought of getting one, but--it has fallen through."

The musician did not laugh any more, and Norah's big eyes began to shine again. Lady Joan felt she had fully deserved that little bit of revenge.

But it was not amusing enough to carry any further, and she was beginning to weary of the protracted love-making of the day, especially now that she was no longer a princ.i.p.al actor in the play. So she folded up her work elaborately, and pinned it in a white silk handkerchief, and put her hand on her mouth to conceal a yawn.

"It has been the longest day I have ever spent. I suppose it is the weather. Would you shut the piano, Mr. Raleigh? You look tired to death, Norah, and I am going to take you to bed. Come along at once, please."

They all rose to their feet, and there was an embarra.s.sing moment. But Lady Joan took another little bit of revenge here, and kept her arm round Norah's waist, and her sharp eyes on both of them.

"You will come to breakfast to-morrow, and bring Sonny with you? Say good-night and come, Norah, I am so sleepy."

So they all shook hands frigidly, and the musician asked what time breakfast was; and they left him alone in the long drawing-room, and went upstairs. Lady Joan still found him there when she came down again, half-an-hour later; he was at the piano, but he got up as she came in.

"You are the finest woman I ever met," he said with emotion.

She made a gesture of impatience.

"Don't cover me with virtues I don't possess; I can't stand it," she said sharply; she had a very unmusical voice, he thought. "Don't you know that my G.o.d is expediency? It is the only one that is any good for this world. I don't want you to marry Norah, or I should not have come back to the inn to ask you to marry me. Do you suppose my pride suffered nothing by that? However, you are going to marry her because it is absolutely the only way out of it, and I have been obliged to give in to you both. But for Heaven's sake don't imagine I am doing it from unselfishness, or any of that bosh, because I'm not."

"Then you have not forgiven me?" he asked humbly.

"I shall never forgive you," said Lady Joan, decidedly; "is it not an insult that you should suppose me capable of forgiveness?"

"Perhaps it is," said the musician, thoughtfully. "Why was I born so accursedly unlucky?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. But you seem to be going to have all you want now, so it is about time you ceased railing at your fate. I suppose if I were properly unselfish I should efface myself at once, and part from you in an affecting scene. But the people who make affecting scenes are apt to forget that they have got to meet again afterwards as ordinary actors in an ordinary play, and then the memory of the affecting scene makes them sheepish; so I prefer to tell you that I am merely and vulgarly angry with you for inviting me to make a fool of myself. Not that I envy that poor child upstairs either; she doesn't understand you a bit, and you will wound her half-a-dozen times a day.

It is not my affair, however, and you will have to get through it together somehow; I wash my hands of you both."

The musician said he thought they might manage it, perhaps; and Lady Joan pulled down the blind in eloquent silence, and rang the bell. He took the hint and held out his hand.

"Good-night. You will come to breakfast?"

"Since you say so; I always do what you tell me," he said, with truth.

"No, you don't," she contradicted, "or you would never have cajoled me into saying I would marry you. If you had done what I told you to-day all this trouble would not have arisen. How brutally forgetful men are!"

Which was hardly fair of her, he thought, as it was his distinct recollection that she had really ended in asking him to marry her, and had hardly waited for his a.s.sent to the proposal; if she had meant what she said in the castle meadow, and kept to it, there would have been no complications at all. And the musician finished his cigar in the orchard of the "Relton Arms," and came to the conclusion that Lady Joan with all her excellent qualities had an unpleasant amount of worldly wisdom and egoism in her composition, which he had never discovered until he had seen it contrasted with the womanly innocence of his dear little betrothed.

"How brutally forgetful men are!" were the words that remained on the lips of the worldly wise woman all through that hot night in August.

CHAPTER VII.

There were many and various opinions concerning the fresh engagement of the musician. His lady friends could at first hardly believe that he should overlook them all, and choose a wife who was not one of themselves, and had never attended the receptions in the West End studio; but when they learnt that it was not only a fact, but that the date of the marriage was fixed, they at once did their best to meet the situation gracefully by buying the most appropriate wedding presents they could find, in the shape of biscuit boxes shaped like drums, and clocks mounted in lyres. This caused considerable rivalry among his pupils, which was not lessened by their desire to meet his betrothed, and their jealousy when this benefit was vouchsafed to one or another of them; they wondered among themselves whether they would be asked to call, and they allowed the musician to talk about her with a generosity which was three parts diplomacy.

Mrs. Reginald Routh presumed upon her intimacy with the musician so far as to invite Norah to stay with her.

"It has been the wish of my heart to see dear Mr. Digby married," was what she told every one, with her frank smile; "indeed, I have been trying to get him a wife for some years now, only it was so impossible to find one good enough. I have no doubt that Miss Bisley is all that could be desired, and one must leave _something_ to a higher power sometimes; but I cannot help taking a little to my own credit as well, and I am convinced that Mr. Digby would never have thought of looking out for a wife at all if it had not been for my persuasions; he was far too fond of Ibsen, and Schopenhauer, and Bernard Shaw, and all those tiresome people. At all events, I never allowed a week to pa.s.s without asking him to dinner, and the picture of my domestic happiness must have done something for him. Ah, well, my work is done now; and thank G.o.d my ideal of friendship is too high to stand in the way of his marrying, though I have felt towards him like a sister, and it is hard at first to give up my place to another. But at least I know how to be generous, and she shall come and stay with me at once, so that there may be one friend in London for her when she is married. She will _have_ to let me call then! And I shall be able to give her a hint or two about her future husband; I'm sure no one could know him better than I do. No doubt she is one of those artful little dolls who will annoy him until every nerve of his musical soul is on end, and he has to give up composing; and what will posterity do then?"

Mr. Reginald Routh, who never did anything but sign blank checks when he was told, was sent about town to buy the most expensive dessert service he could find; and when he brought back specimens to his invalid wife of choice plates with floral designs, he was sent out again to hunt for more suitable patterns, until the search ended, as his wife had intended it should, in a whole set being ordered from Paris, costing a guinea a plate, and decorated with a dainty design of pink cupids playing trumpets and harps in impossible positions.

The Raleighs, as a family, were glad. Owing to Norah's intervention the subject of Digby's first marriage was allowed to be mentioned, and a new toy was brought to the old manor in the shape of his four-year old son; and as the Squire was not asked to support the child, and as he learned furthermore that Digby's new wife would bring him money, he raised no objection to his marrying again, and allowed himself meanwhile to be completely enslaved by the tyrannical Sonny. The musician's sisters regarded Norah with the feelings of most sisters, excepting the most callous; that is, they wrote affectionately to her, with smiles on their lips and murder at their hearts, and they received affectionate letters in reply, which they declared they could "see through;" they were angry with every one who did not approve of the match, and they told one another gloomily that she was sure to be "designing;" they drew out long descriptions of his intended bride from the musician, and they only smiled when he told them that they would not like her at first, because she was so very different from all their friends. Lady Raleigh, who had always expected her eldest son to marry an opera singer or an actress, openly showed her relief at his engagement to an ordinary gentleman's daughter, who did not play or sing and had no particular talent for anything, who had never wished to be independent and to leave her home, and who went to church on Sunday morning with as much sense of duty and enjoyment as she bestowed on her breakfast.

And when Norah came to stay at Murville Manor, the impression she made was so pleasing that even the suspicious Digby had to acknowledge his engagement was at last going right. The Squire liked her because she never complained when he took her over the biggest duckery in the village, and because she read the whole of his pamphlet called "How to make 50 a year out of ducks," without disagreeing with it. Lady Raleigh liked her because she had always said she would; besides, Norah agreed that England was the only place for Jack. The boys said she "wasn't bad, but wanted backing up at times," which was a kindly criticism considering their bitter disappointment at not having Lady Joan for their sister-in-law. The girls fell in love with her because they could not help it; and their old nurse grudgingly allowed that she "couldn't have been nicer brought up, not if she had been your mamma's own child."