Tristram of Blent Part 21

"Yes. Just by coming here, I think."

"That's what I mean! Things do take hold of you then?"

"This place does apparently," she answered laughing, as she leaned back on the seat, throwing her arm behind her and resting her head on it. She caught him looking at her again with marked and almost startled intensity. He was rather strange with his alternations of apparent forgetfulness and this embarra.s.sing scrutiny.

"Tell me about yourself," he asked, or rather commanded, so brusque and direct was the request.

She told him about the small house and the small life she had led in it, even about the furniture and the bric-a-brac, confessing to her occasional clearances and the deception she had to practise on her father about them. He was very silent, but he was a good listener. Soon he began to smoke, but did not ask leave. This might be rudeness, but seemed a rather cousinly sort of rudeness, and was readily forgiven.

"And suddenly I come to all this!" she murmured. Then with a start she added, "But I'm forgetting your mother's death and what you must feel, and chattering about myself!"

"I asked you to talk about yourself. Is it such a great change to come here?"

"Immense! To come here even for a day! Immense!" She waved her hand a moment and found him following it with his eyes as it moved.

"You don't look," he said slowly, "as if it was any change at all."

"What do you mean?" she asked, interested in what he seemed to suggest.

"You fit in," he murmured, looking up at the house--at the window of Addie Tristram's room. "And you're very poor?" he asked.

"Yes. And you----!"

"Oh, I'm not rich as such things go. The estate has fallen in value very much, you know. But----" He broke off, frowning a little. "Still we're comfortable enough," he resumed.

"I should think so. You'd always have it to look at anyhow. What did you think I should be like?"

"Anything in the world but what you are."

The tone was at once too sincere and too absent for a compliment. Cecily knew herself not to be plain; but he was referring to something else than that.

"In fact I hardly thought of you as an individual at all. You were the Gainsboroughs."

"And you didn't like the Gainsboroughs?" she cried in a flash of intuition.

"No, I didn't," he admitted.

"Why not?"

"A prejudice," answered Harry Tristram after a pause.

She crossed her legs, sticking one foot out in front of her and looking at it thoughtfully. He followed the movement and slowly broke into a smile; it was followed by an impatient shrug. With the feminine instinct she pushed her gown lower down, half over the foot. Harry laughed. She looked up, blushing and inclined to be angry.

"Oh, it wasn't that," he said, laughing again rather contemptuously.

"But----" He rose, took some paces along the lawn, and then, coming back, stood beside her, staring at the Blent and frowning rather formidably.

"Did you see me when I first saw you by the Pool?" he asked in a moment.

"Yes. How you hurried after me!"

Another pause followed, Harry's frown giving way to a smile, but a perplexed and reluctant one. Cecily watched him with puzzled interest--still sitting with her foot stuck out in front of her and her head resting on the bend of her arm; her eyes looked upward, and her lips were just parted.

"Have I been staring at you?" he inquired abruptly.

"Well, yes, you have," she answered, laughing. "But a strange cousin expects to be examined rather carefully. Do I pa.s.s muster among the Tristrams? Or am I all the hated Gainsborough?"

He looked at her again and earnestly. She met the look without lowering her eyes or altering her position in any particular.

"It's too absurd!" he declared, half fretful, half amused. "You're features aren't so very much alike--except the eyes, they are--and your hair's darker. But you move and carry yourself and turn your head as she did. And that position you're in now--why I've seen her in it a thousand times! Your arm there and your foot stuck out----"

His voice grew louder as he went on, his petulant amus.e.m.e.nt giving way to an agitation imperfectly suppressed.

"What do you mean?" she asked, catching excitement from him.

"Why, my mother. That's her att.i.tude, and your walk's her walk, and your voice her voice. You're her--all over! Why, when I saw you by the Pool just now, a hundred yards off, strolling on the bank----"

"Yes?" she half-whispered. "You started, didn't you?"

"Yes, I started. I thought for a moment I saw my mother's ghost. I thought my mother had come back to Blent. And it is--you!"

He threw out his hands in a gesture of what seemed despair.

XII

FIGHTERS AND DOUBTERS

"Miss S. wasn't so far wrong after all!" exclaimed Mina Zabriska, flinging down a letter on the table by her.

It was three days after Addie Tristram's funeral. Mina had attended that ceremony, or rather watched it from a little way off. She had seen Gainsborough's spare humble figure, she had seen too, with an acute interest, the tall slim girl all in black, heavily veiled, who walked beside him, just behind the new Lord Tristram. She had also, of course, seen all the neighbors who were looking on like herself, but who gave their best attention to Janie Iver and disappointed Miss S. by asking hardly any questions about the Gainsboroughs. Little indeed would have been said concerning them except for the fact that Gainsborough (true to his knack of the unlucky) caught a chill on the occasion and was confined to his bed down at Blent. A most vexatious occurrence for Lord Tristram, said Miss S. But one that he ought to bear patiently, added Mrs Trumbler. And after all, both ladies agreed, it would have been hardly decent to turn the Gainsboroughs out on Monday, as it was well known the new lord had proposed.

But the Gainsboroughs were not in Mina's thoughts just now.

"Nothing is to be made public yet--please remember this. But I want you to know that I have just written to Harry Tristram to say I will marry him. I have had a great deal of trouble, dear Mina, but I think I have done right, looking at it all round. Except my own people I am telling only one friend besides you ('Bob Broadley!'

said Mina with a nod, as she read the letter the second time). But I want you to know; and please tell your uncle too. I hope you will both give me your good wishes. I do think I'm acting wisely; and I thought I had no right to keep him waiting and worrying about this when he has so much to think of besides. You must stay at Merrion after I come to Blent.--JANIE."

Barring the matter of the immediate announcement then, Miss S. was justified. Janie had done the obviously right thing--and was obviously not quite sure that it was right. That mattered very little; it was done. It was for Mina Zabriska--and others concerned--to adapt themselves and conform their actions to the accomplished fact. But would Major Duplay take that view? To Mina was intrusted the delicate task of breaking the news to her uncle. It is the virtue of a soldier not to know when he is beaten; of a general not to let others know. To what standard of martial conduct would the Major adhere? This matter of the Major was in every way a nuisance to his niece. In the first place she wanted to think about herself and her own feelings--the one luxury of the unhappy. Secondly she was afraid again. For Harry suddenly seemed to be no protection now, and the horrors threatened by Duplay--the interrogation, the lawyer's office, and the like--recovered their dreadfulness. It had been easy--perhaps pleasant--to suffer for the confidential friend who had opened his heart to her on the hillside. It became less easy and certainly more unpleasant to be sacrificed for Janie Iver's _fiance_. But Mina, though no longer exultant and no more fearless, would be loyal and constant all the same. Should she, after saving others, be herself a castaway? She experienced a longing for the sympathy and support of Mr Jenkinson Neeld. Surely he would stand firm too? He was still at Fairholme. Was he included in Janie's "own people"?

Had he been told the news?

The delicate task! The Imp's temper was far too bad for delicacy; she found a positive pleasure in outraging it. She took her letter, marched into the smoking-room, and threw it to (not to say at) her uncle.

"Read that!" she said and strode off to the window to have a look at Blent. The letter had succeeded, it seemed, in taking away from her life all she wanted, and introducing into it all she did not.

"This is very serious," declared the Major solemnly, "very serious indeed, Mina."

"Don't see how," snapped the Imp, presenting an unwavering back-view to her uncle. "If they like to get married, why is it serious?"