The Castle Inn Part 17

'Lord, yes; and they had no end of a quarrel downstairs. There is a story about the girl and Dunborough. I'll tell it you some time.'

'I began to think--he was here on your business,' said the doctor.

'He? Oh, no,' Sir George answered without suspicion, and turned to look for his candlestick. 'I suppose that he is in the case I am in--wants something and comes to the fountain of honour to get it.'

And bidding the other good-night, he went to bed; not to sleep, but to lie awake and reckon and calculate, and add a charge here to interest there, and set both against income, and find nothing remain.

He had sneered at the old home because it had been in his family only so many generations. But there is this of evil in an old house--it is bad to live in, but worse to part from. Sir George, straining his eyes in the darkness, saw the long avenue of elms and the rooks' nests, and the startled birds circling overhead; and at the end of the vista the wide doorway, _aed. temp._ Jac. 1--saw it all more lucidly than he had seen it since the September morning when he traversed it, a boy of fourteen, with his first gun on his arm. Well, it was gone; but he was Sir George, macaroni and fashionable, arbiter of elections at White's, and great at Almack's, more powerful in his sphere than a belted earl! But, then, that was gone too, with the money--and--and what was left? Sir George groaned and turned on his pillow and thought of Bland and f.a.n.n.y Braddock. He wondered if any one had ever left the Castle by the suicide door, and, to escape his thoughts, lit a candle and read 'La Belle Helose,' which he had in his mail.

CHAPTER XII

JULIA

It is certain that if Sir George Soane had borne any other name, the girl, after the conversation which had taken place between them on the dingy staircase at Oxford, must have hated him. There is a kind of condescension from man to woman, in which the man says, 'My good girl, not for me--but do take care of yourself,' which a woman of the least pride finds to be of all modes of treatment the most shameful and the most humiliating. The masterful overtures of such a lover as Dunborough, who would take all by storm, are still natural, though they lack respect; a woman would be courted, and sometimes would be courted in the old rough fashion. But, for the other mode of treatment, she may be a Grizel, or as patient--a short course of that will sharpen not only her tongue, but her fingernails.

Yet this, or something like it, Julia, who was far from being the most patient woman in the world, had suffered at Sir George's hands; believing at the time that he was some one else, or, rather, being ignorant then and for just an hour afterwards that such a person as Sir George Soane existed. Enlightened on this point and on some others connected with it (which a sagacious reader may divine for himself) the girl's first feeling in face of the astonishing future opening before her had been one of spiteful exultation. She hated him, and he would suffer. She hated him with all her heart and strength, and he would suffer. There were balm and sweet satisfaction in the thought.

But presently, dwelling on the matter, she began to relent. The very completeness of the revenge which she had in prospect robbed her of her satisfaction. The man was so dependent on her, so deeply indebted to her, must suffer so much by reason of her, that the maternal instinct, which is said to be developed even in half-grown girls, took him under its protection; and when that scene occurred in the public room of the Castle Inn and he stood forward to shield her (albeit in an arrogant, careless, half-insolent way that must have wounded her in other circ.u.mstances), she was not content to forgive him only--with a smile; but long after her companion had fallen asleep, Julia sat brooding over the fire, her arms clasped about her knees; now reading the embers with parted lips and shining eyes, and now sighing gently--for 'la femme propose, mais Dieu dispose.' And nothing is certain.

After this, it may not have been pure accident that cast her in Sir George's way when he strolled out of the house next morning. A coach had come in, and was changing horses before the porch. The pa.s.sengers were moving to and fro before the house, grooms and horse-boys were shouting and hissing, the guard was throwing out parcels. Soane pa.s.sed through the bustle, and, strolling to the end of the High Street, saw the girl seated on a low parapet of the bridge that, near the end of the inn gardens, carries the Salisbury road over the Kennet. She wore a plain riding-coat, such as ladies then affected when they travelled and would avoid their hoops and patches. A little hood covered her hair, which, undressed and unpowdered, hung in a club behind; and she held up a plain fan between her complexion and the sun.

Her seat, though quiet and remote from the bustle--for the Salisbury road is the less frequented of the two roads--was in view of the gates leading to the Inn; and her extreme beauty, which was that of expression as well as feature, made her a mark for a dozen furtive eyes, of which she affected to be unconscious. But as soon as Sir George's gaze fell on her, her look met his frankly and she smiled; and then again her eyes dropped and studied the road before her, and she blushed in a way Soane found enchanting. He had been going into the town, but he turned and went to her and sat down on the bridge beside her, almost with the air of an old acquaintance. He opened the conversation by saying that it was a prodigious fine day; she agreed. That the Downs were uncommonly healthy; she said the same. And then there was silence.

'Well?' he said after a while; and he looked at her.

'Well?' she answered in the same tone. And she looked at him over the edge of her fan, her eyes laughing.

'How did you sleep, child?' he asked; while he thought, 'Lord! How handsome she is!'

'Perfectly, sir,' she answered, 'thanks to your excellency's kindness.'

Her voice as well as her eyes laughed. He stared at her, wondering at the change in her. 'You are lively this morning,' he said.

'I cannot say the same of you, Sir George,' she answered. 'When you came out, and before you saw me, your face was as long as a coach-horse's.'

Sir George winced. He knew where his thoughts had been. 'That was before I saw you, child,' he said. 'In your company--'

'You are scarcely more lively,' she answered saucily. 'Do you flatter yourself that you are?'

Sir George was astonished. He was aware that the girl lacked neither wit nor quickness; but hitherto he had found her pa.s.sionate at one time, difficult and _farouche_ at another, at no time playful or coquettish.

Here, and this morning, she did not seem to be the same woman. She spoke with ease, laughed with the heart as well as the lips, met his eyes with freedom and without embarra.s.sment, countered his sallies with sportiveness--in a word, carried herself towards him as though she were an equal; precisely as Lady Betty and the Honourable f.a.n.n.y carried themselves. He stared at her.

And she, seeing the look, laughed in pure happiness, knowing what was in his mind, and knowing her own mind very well. 'I puzzle you?' she said.

'You do,' he answered. 'What are you doing here? And why have you taken up with that lawyer? And why are you dressed, child--'

'Like this?' she said, rising, and sitting down again. 'You think it is above my station?'

He shrugged his shoulders, declining to put his views into words; instead, 'What does it all mean?' he said.

'What do you suppose?' she asked, averting her eyes for the first time.

'Well, of course--you may be here to meet Dunborough,' he answered bluntly. 'His mother seems to think that he is going to marry you.'

'And what do you think, sir?'

'I?' said Sir George, reverting to the easy, half-insolent tone she hated. And he tapped his Paris snuff-box and spoke with tantalising slowness. 'Well, if that be the case, I should advise you to see that Mr. Dunborough's surplice--covers a parson.'

She sat still and silent for a full half-minute after he had spoken.

Then she rose without a word, and without looking at him; and, walking away to the farther end of the bridge, sat down there with her shoulder turned to him.

Soane felt himself rebuffed, and for a moment let his anger get the better of him. 'D--n the girl, I only spoke for her own good!' he muttered; then reflecting that if he followed her she might remove again and make him ridiculous, he rose to go into the house. But apparently that was not what she wished. He was scarcely on his legs before she turned her head, saw that he was going, and imperiously beckoned to him.

He went to her, wondering as much at her audacity as her pettishness.

When he reached her, 'Sir George,' she said, retaining her seat and looking gravely at him, while he stood before her like a boy undergoing correction, 'you have twice insulted me--once in Oxford when, believing Mr. Dunborough's hurt lay at my door, I was doing what I could to repair it; and again to-day. If you wish to see more of me, you must refrain from doing so a third time. You know, a third time--you know what a third time does. And more--one moment, if you please. I must ask you to treat me differently. I make no claim to be a gentlewoman, but my condition is altered. A relation has left me a--a fortune, and when I met you here last night I was on my way to Bath to claim it.'

Sir George pa.s.sed from the surprise into which the first part of this speech had thrown him, to surprise still greater. At last, 'I am vastly glad to hear it,' he said. 'For most of us it is easier to drop a fortune than to find one.'

'Is it?' she said, and laughed musically, Then, moving her skirt to show him that he might sit down, 'Well, I suppose it is. You have no experience of that, I hope, sir?'

He nodded.

'The gaming-table?' she said.

'Not this time,' he answered, wondering why he told her. 'I had a grandfather, who made a will. He had a fancy to wrap up a bombsh.e.l.l in the will. Now--the sh.e.l.l has burst.'

'I am sorry,' she said; and was silent a moment. At length, 'Does it make--any great difference to you?' she asked navely.

Sir George looked at her as if he were studying her appearance. Then, 'Yes, child, it does,' he said.

She hesitated, but seemed to make up her mind. 'I have never asked you where you live,' she said softly; 'have you no house in the country?'

He suppressed something between an oath and a groan. 'Yes,' he said, 'I have a house.'

'What do you call it?'

'Estcombe Hall. It is in Wiltshire, not far from here.'

She looked at her fan, and idly flapped it open, and again closed it in the air. 'Is it a fine place?' she said carelessly.

'I suppose so,' he answered, wincing.

'With trees, and gardens, and woods?'

'Yes.'

'And water?'