Roden's Corner Part 13

"Ah!" said that lady, and rang the bell for her maid, to whom she explained that she had a sudden desire to take a promenade this fine morning.

So Tony Cornish walked down the Oude Weg under the trees of that great thoroughfare, with Mrs. Vansittart following him leisurely by one of the side paths, which, being elevated above the road enabled her to look down upon the Englishman and keep him in sight. When he came within view of the broad road that cuts the Scheveningen wood in two and leads from the East Dunes to the West--from the Malgamite Works, in a word, to the cemetery--he sat down on a bench hidden by the trees.

And Mrs. Vansittart, a hundred yards behind him, took possession of a seat as effectually concealed.

They remained thus for some time, the object of a pa.s.sing curiosity to the fish-merchants journeying from Scheveningen to The Hague. Then Tony Cornish seemed to perceive something on the road towards the sea which interested him, and Mrs. Vansittart, rising from her seat, walked down to the main pathway, which commanded an uninterrupted view. That which had attracted Cornish's attention was a funeral, cheap, sordid, and obscure, which moved slowly across the Oude Weg by the road, crossing it at right angles. It was a peculiar funeral, inasmuch as it consisted of three hea.r.s.es and one mourning carriage. The dead were, therefore, almost as numerous as the living, an unusual feature in civil burials.

From the window of the rusty mourning coach there looked a couple of debased countenances, flushed with drink and that special form of excitement which is especially a.s.sociated with a mourning coach hired on credit and a funeral beyond one's means. Behind these two faces loomed others. There seemed to be six men within the carriage.

The procession was not inspiriting, and Cornish's face was momentarily grave as he watched it. When it had pa.s.sed, he rose and walked slowly back towards The Hague. Before he had gone far, he met Mrs. Vansittart face to face, who rose from a seat as he approached.

"Well, _mon ami_," she asked, with a short laugh, "have you had a pleasant walk?"

"It has had a pleasant end, at all events," he replied, meeting her glance with an imperturbable smile.

She jerked her head upwards with a little foreign gesture of indifference.

"It is to be presumed," she said, as they walked on side by side, "that you have been exploring and investigating our--byways. Remember, my good Tony, that I live in The Hague, and may therefore be possessed of information that might be useful to you. It will probably be at your disposal when you need it."

She looked at him with daring black eyes, and laughed. A strong man usually takes a sort of pride in his power. This woman enjoyed the same sort of exultation in her own cleverness. She was not wise enough to hide it, which is indeed a grim, negative pleasure usually enjoyed by elderly gentlemen only. Social progress has, moreover, made it almost a crime to hide one's light under a bushel. Are we not told, in so many words, by the interviewer and the personal paragraphist, that it is every man's duty to set his light upon a candlestick, so that his neighbour may at least try to blow it out?

Cornish had learnt to know Mrs. Vansittart at a period in her life when, as a young married woman, she regarded all her juniors with a matronly goodwill, none the less active that it was so exceedingly new.

She had in those days given much good advice, which Cornish had respectfully heard. Fate had brought them together at the rare moment and in almost the sole circ.u.mstances that allow of a friendship being formed between a man and a woman.

They walked slowly side by side now under the trees of the Oude Weg, inhaling the fresh morning air, which was scented by a hundred breaths of spring, and felt clean to face and lips. Mrs. Vansittart had no intention of resigning her position of mentor and friend. It was, moreover, one of those positions which will not bear being defined in so many words. Between men and women it often happens that to point out the existence of certain feelings is to destroy them. To say, "Be my friend," as often as not makes friendship impossible. Mrs. Vansittart was too clever a woman to run such a risk in dealing with a man in whom she had detected a reserve of which the rest of the world had taken no account. It is unwise to enter into war or friendship without seeing to the reserves.

"Do you remember," asked Mrs. Vansittart, suddenly, "how wise we were when we were young? What knowledge of the world, what experience of life one has when all life is before one!"

"Yes," admitted Cornish, guardedly.

"But if I preached a great deal, I at all events did you no harm," said Mrs. Vansittart, with a laugh.

"No."

"And as to experience, well, one buys that later."

"Yes; and the wise re-sell--at a profit," laughed Cornish. "It is not a commodity that any one cares to keep. If we cannot sell it, we offer it for nothing, to the young."

"Who accept it, at an even lower valuation; and you and I, Mr. Tony Cornish, are cynics who talk cheap epigrams to hide our thoughts."

They walked on for a few yards in silence. Then Tony turned in his quick way and looked at her. He had thin, mobile lips, which expressed friendship and curiosity at this moment.

"What are _you_ thinking?" he asked.

She turned and looked at him with grave, searching eyes, and when these met his it became apparent that their friendship had re-established itself.

"Of your affairs," she answered, "and funerals."

"Both lugubrious," suggested Cornish. "But I am obliged to you for so far honouring me."

He broke off, and again walked on in silence. She glanced at him half angrily, and gave a quick shrug of the shoulders.

"Then you will not speak," she said, opening her parasol with a snap.

"So be it. The time has perhaps not come yet. But if I am in the humour when that time does come, you will find that you have no ally so strong as I. Ah, you may stick your chin out and look as innocent as you like!

You are not easy in your mind, my good friend, about this precious Malgamite scheme. But I ask no confidences, and, _bon Dieu_! I give none."

She broke off with a little laugh, and looked at him beneath the shade of her parasol. She had a hundred foreign ways of putting a whole wealth of meaning into a single gesture, into a movement of a parasol or a fan, such as women acquire, and use upon poor defenceless men, who must needs face the world with stolid faces and slow, dumb hands.

Cornish answered the laugh readily enough. "Ah!" he said, "then I am accused of uneasiness of mind of preoccupation, in fact. I plead guilty. I made a mistake. I got up too early. It was a fine morning, and I was tempted to take a walk before breakfast, which we have at half-past nine, in a fine old British way. We have toast and a fried sole. Great is the English milord!"

They were in Park Straat now, in sight of Mrs. Vansittart's house. And that lady knew that her companion was talking in order to say nothing.

"We leave this morning," continued Cornish, in the same vein. "And we rather flatter ourselves that we have upheld the dignity of our nation in these benighted foreign parts."

"Ah, that poor Lord Ferriby! It is so easy to laugh at him. You think him a fool, although--or because--he is your uncle. So do I, perhaps.

But I always have a little distrust for the foolishness of a person who has once been a knave. You know your uncle's reputation--the past one, I mean, not the whitewash. Do not forget it." They had reached the corner of Oranje Straat, and Mrs. Vansittart paused on her own doorstep. "So you leave this morning," she said. "Remember that I am in The Hague, and--well, we were once friends. If I can help you, make use of me. You have been wonderfully discreet, my friend. And I have not.

But discretion is not required of a woman. If there is anything to tell you, you shall hear from me."

She held out her hand, and bade him good-bye with a semi-malicious laugh. Then she stood in the porch, and watched him walk quickly away.

"So it is Dorothy Roden," she said to herself, with a wise nod. "A queer case. One of those at first sight, one may suppose."

The Rodens, of whom she thought at the moment, were not only thinking, but speaking of her. They had finished breakfast, and Dorothy was standing at the window looking out over the Dunes towards the sea.

Her brother was still seated at the table, and had lighted a cigarette.

Like many another who offers an exaggerated respect to women as a whole, he was rather inclined to Bohemianism at home, and denied to his immediate feminine relations the privileges accorded to their s.e.x in general. He was older than Dorothy, who had always been dependent upon him to a certain extent. She had a little money of her own, and quite recognized the fact that, should her brother marry, she would have to work for her living. In the mean time, however, it suited them both to live together, and Dorothy had for her brother that affection of which only women are capable. It amounts to an affectionate tolerance more than to a tolerant affection. For it perceives its object's little failings with a calm and judicial eye. It weighs the man in the balance, and finds him wanting. This, moreover, is the lot of a large proportion of women. This takes the place of that higher feeling which is probably the finest emotion of which the human heart is capable. And yet there are men who grudge these sufferers their petty triumphs, their poor little emanc.i.p.ation, their paltry wrangler-ships, their very bicycles.

"You don't like this place--I know that," Percy Roden was saying, in continuation of a desultory conversation. He looked up from the letters before him with a smile which was kind enough and a little patronizing.

Patronage is perhaps the armour of the outwitted.

"Not very much," answered Dorothy, with a laugh. "But I dare say it will be better in the summer."

"I mean this villa," pursued Roden, flicking the ash from his cigarette and leaning back in his chair. He had grand, rather tired gestures, which possibly impressed some people. Grandeur, however, like sentiment, is not indigenous to the hearth. Our domestic admirers are not always watching us.

Dorothy was looking out of the window. "It is not a bad little place,"

she said practically, "when one has grown accustomed to its sandiness."

"It will not be for long," said Percy Roden.

And his sister turned and looked at him with a sudden gravity.

"Ah!" she said.

"No; I have been thinking that it will be better for us to move into The Hague--Park Straat or Oranje Straat."

Dorothy turned and faced him now. There was a faint, far-off resemblance between these two, but Dorothy had the better face--shrewder, more thoughtful, cleverer. Her eyes, instead of being large and dark and rather dreamy, were grey and speculative. Her features were clear-cut and well-cut--a face suggestive of feeling and of self-suppression, which, when they go together, go to the making of a satisfactory human being. This was a woman who, to put it quite plainly, would scarcely have been held in honour by our grandmothers, but who promised well enough for her possible granddaughters; who, when the fads are lived down and the emanc.i.p.ation is over and the shrieking is done, will make a very excellent grandmother to a race of women who shall be equal to men and respected of men, and, best of all, beloved of men. Wise mothers say that their daughters must sooner or later pa.s.s through an awkward age. Woman is pa.s.sing through an awkward age now, and Dorothy Roden might be cla.s.sed among those who are doing it gracefully.

She looked at her brother with those wise grey eyes, and did not speak at once.

"Oranje Straat and Park Straat," she said lightly, "cost money."