Robinetta Part 14

"You will find out faults in Mrs. Loring presently, just like the rest of them," continued the pitiless writer. (Amy's handwriting was painfully distinct.) "I must tell you that at the Cowleys' the other day, I suddenly came face to face with Gertrude Meredith _and Dolly_!

Dolly looks a good deal older already and fatter, I thought. I fear she is losing her looks, for her colour has become fixed, and she _will_ wear no collars still, although on a rather thick neck, it's not at all becoming. I spoke to her for about three minutes, as it was less awkward, when we met suddenly face to face like that. She laughed a good deal, and asked for you rather audaciously, I thought. They live near Winchester now, and since the Colonel's death are pretty badly off, Gertrude says. Dolly is going to Devonshire to stay with the Cowleys; you may meet her there any day, remember. It does seem incredible to me that a man of your discrimination could have been won by the obvious devotion of a girl like Dolly; but having given your word I almost think you would better have kept it, rather than suffer all this criticism from a host of mutual friends."

Lavendar groaned aloud. He had a good memory, and with all too great distinctness did he now remember Dolly Meredith's laugh. How wretched it had all been; not a word had ever pa.s.sed between them that had any value now. If he could have washed the thought of her forever from his memory, how greatly he would have rejoiced at that moment.

Well, it was over; written down against him, that he had been what the world called a jilt and a fool; yes, certainly a fool, but not so great a one as to follow his folly to its ultimate conclusion, and tie himself for life to a woman he did not love.

Lavendar was extraordinarily sensitive about the breaking of his engagement; partly because Miss Meredith herself, in her first rage, had avowed his responsibility for her blighted future, giving him no chance for chivalrous behaviour; partly because in all his transient love affairs he had easily tired of the women who inspired them. He seemed thirsty for love, but weary of it almost as soon as the draught reached his lips.

And now had he a chance again?--or was it all to end in disappointment once more, in that cold disappointment of the heart that has received stones for bread? It was not entirely his own fault; he had expected much from life, and hitherto had received very little. But Robinette!

"Let me find all her faults now," he said to himself, "or evermore keep silent; meantime I hope I am not concealing too many of my own."

He tried to force himself into criticism; to look at her as a cold observer from the outside would have done; for that curious Border country of Love which he had entered has not an equable climate at all. It is fire and frost alternate; and criticism is either roused almost to a morbid pitch, or else the faculty is drugged, and nothing, not even the enumeration of a hundred foibles will awaken it for a time.

When the cold fit had been upon him the evening before, Lavendar had said to himself that her manner was too free--that she had led him on too quickly; no, that expression was dishonourable and unjust; he repented it instantly; she had been too unself-conscious, too girlish, too unthinking, in what she said and did. "But she's a widow after all, though she's only two and twenty," he went on to himself. "Hang it! I wish she were not! If her heart were in her husband's grave I should be moaning at that; and because I see that it is not, I become critical. There's nothing quite perfect in life!"

He had begun by noticing some little defects in her personal appearance, but he was long past that now; what did such trifles matter, here or there? Then he remembered all that he had heard said about American women. Did those pretty clothes of hers mean that she would be extravagant and selfish to obtain them? Could a young man with no great fortune offer her the luxury that was necessary to her?

and even so, what changes come with time! He had a full realization of what the boredom of family life can be, when pa.s.sion has grown stale.

"At seventy, say, when I am palsied and she is old and fat, will romance be alive then? Will such feeling leave anything real behind it when it falls away, as the white blossoms on Mrs. Prettyman's plum tree will shrink and fall a fortnight hence?"

He looked about him. On the walls of the little church were tablets with the de Tracy names; the names of her forefathers amongst them.

Under his feet were other flags with names upon them too; and out there in the sunshine were the grave-stones of a hundred dead. How many of them had been happy in their loves?

Not so many, he thought, if all were told, and why should he hope to be different? Yet surely this was a new feeling, a worthy one, at last. It was not for her charming person that he loved her; not because of her beauty and her gaiety only; but because he had seen in her something that gave a promise of completion to his own nature, the something that would satisfy not only his senses but his empty heart.

He clenched his hands on the carved top of the old pew in front of him, which was fashioned into a laughing gnome with the body of a duck. "And if this should be all a dream," he asked himself again, "if this should all be false too! Good Lord!" he cried half aloud, "I want to be honest now! I want to find the truth. My whole life is on the throw this time!"

There was a moment's silence after he had uttered the words. He got up and moved slowly down the aisle, opening the door, seeing again the meadow of b.u.t.tercups, yellow as gold, and listening again to the sparrows chirruping in the sunshine outside.

"I have been in that church a quarter of an hour," he said to himself, "and in trying to dive to the depths of myself and find out whether I was giving a woman all I had to give, I did not get time to consider that woman's probable answer, should I place my uninteresting life and liberty at her disposal."

XV

"NOW LUBIN IS AWAY"

Lavendar made his adieux after luncheon and went off to London.

"Good-bye for the present, Mrs. de Tracy; I shall be back on Wednesday probably, if I can arrange it," he said. "Good-bye, Mrs. Loring," and here he altered the phrase to "Shall I come back on Wednesday?" for his hostess had left the open door.

There was no hesitation, but all too little sentiment, about Robinette's reply.

"Wednesday, at the latest, are my orders," she answered merrily, and with the words ringing in his ears Lavendar took his departure.

"Do you remember that this is the afternoon of the garden party at Revelsmere?" Mrs. de Tracy enquired, coming into the drawing room a few minutes later, where Mrs. Loring stood by the open window. She had allowed herself just five minutes of depression, staring out at the b.u.t.tercup meadow. How black the rooks looked as they flew about it and how dreary everything was, now that Lavendar had gone! She was woman enough to be able to feel inwardly amused at her own absurdity, when she recognized that the ensuing three days seemed to stretch out into a limitless expanse of dullness. "The village seemed asleep or dead now Lubin was away!" Still, after all, it was an occasion for wearing a pretty frock, and she knew herself well enough to feel sure that the sight of a few of her fellow-creatures even pretending to enjoy themselves, would make her volatile spirits rise like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day.

Miss Smeardon was to be her companion, as Mrs. de Tracy had a headache that afternoon and was afraid of the heat, she said. "What heat?"

Robinette had asked innocently, for in spite of the brilliant sunlight the wind blew from the east, keen as a knife. "I shall take a good wrap in the carriage in spite of this tropical temperature," she thought. Carnaby refused point blank to drive with them; he would bicycle to the party or else not go at all, so it was alone with Miss Smeardon that Robinette started in the heavy old landau behind the palsied horse.

Miss Smeardon gave one glance at Mrs. Loring's dress, and Robinette gave one glance at Miss Smeardon's, each making her own comments.

"That white cloth will go to the cleaner, I suppose, after one wearing, and as for that thing on her head with lilac wistaria drooping over the brim, it can't be meant as a covering, or a protection, either from sun or wind; it's nothing but an ornament!"

Miss Smeardon commented; while to herself Robinette e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,--

"A penwiper, an old, much-used penwiper, is all that Miss Smeardon resembles in that black rag!"

Carnaby, watching the start at the door, whistled in open admiration as Robinette came down the steps.

"Well, well! we are got up to kill this afternoon; pity old Mark has just gone; but cheer up, Cousin Robin, there's always a curate on hand!"

For once Robinette's ready tongue played her false, and a sense of loneliness overcame her at the sound of Lavendar's name. She gathered up her long white skirts and got into the carriage with as much dignity as she could muster, while Carnaby, his eyes twinkling with mischief, stood ready to shut the door after Miss Smeardon.

"Hope you'll enjoy your drive," he jeered. "You'll need to hold on your hats. Bucephalus goes at such fiery speed that they'll be torn off your heads unless you do."

"Middy dear, you're not the least amusing," said Robinette quite crossly, and with a lurch the carriage moved off.

Miss Smeardon settled herself for conversation. "I'm afraid you will find me but a dull companion, Mrs. Loring," she said, glancing sideways at Robinette from under the brim of her mushroom hat.

"Oh, you will be able to tell me who everyone is," said Robinette as cheerfully as she could.

"I am no gossip," Miss Smeardon protested.

"It isn't necessary to gossip, is it?--but I've a wholesome interest in my fellow creatures."

"And it is well to know about people a little; when one comes among strangers as you do, Mrs. Loring; one can't be too careful--an American, particularly."

Miss Smeardon's voice trailed off upon a note of insinuation; but Robinette took no notice of the remark. She did not seem to have anything to say, so Miss Smeardon took up another subject.

"What a pity that Mr. Lavendar had to leave before this afternoon; he would have been such an addition to our party!"

"Yes, wouldn't he?" Robinette agreed, though she carefully kept out of her voice the real pa.s.sion of a.s.sent that was in her heart.

"Mr. Lavendar is so agreeable, I always think," Miss Smeardon went on.

"Everyone likes him; he almost carries his pleasant ways too far. I suppose that was how--" She paused, and added again, "Oh, but as I said, I never talk scandal!"

"Do you think it's possible to be too pleasant?" Robinette remarked, stupidly enough, scarcely caring what she said.

"Well, when it leads a poor girl to imagine that she is loved! I hear that Dolly Meredith is just heart-broken. The engagement kept on for quite a year, I believe, and then to break it off so heartlessly!--I was reminded of it all by coming here. Miss Meredith is a cousin of our hostess, and they met first at Revelsmere when they were quite young."

"There is always a certain amount of talk when an engagement has to be broken off," said Robinette in a cold voice.

"They seemed quite devoted at first," Miss Smeardon began; but Robinette interrupted her.

"The sooner such things are forgotten the better, I think," she said.

"No one, except the two people concerned, ever knows the real truth.--Tell me, Miss Smeardon, whom we are likely to meet at Revelsmere? Who is our hostess? What sort of parties does she give?"