Vera Nevill Part 6

"If you will kindly tell me where I can find them," continued the stranger, very politely, "I will go and get them."

"I am afraid you can't do that," said Vera, with just the vestige of a smile playing upon her face, "because they are at present in my pocket."

"Oh, I beg your pardon;" and the stranger smiled outright.

"But I will let you into the church, if you like; if that is what you wish?" she said, quite simply.

"Yes, if you please." Vera moved up the path to the porch, the gentleman following her. She turned the key in the heavy door and held it open. "If you will go in, please, I will take the keys; I must not leave them in the door." The gentleman went in, and Vera looked at him as he pa.s.sed by.

Most uninteresting! was her verdict as he pa.s.sed her; forty at the very least! What a beautiful situation for an adventure! What a romantic incident! And how excessively tame is the _denouement_! A middle-aged gentleman, tall and slightly bald, with close-cropped whiskers and grave, set features; who on earth could he be? A stranger, evidently; perhaps he was staying at some neighbouring country house, and had walked over to Sutton for the sake of exercise; but what on earth could he want to see the church for!

The stranger stood just inside the door with his hat off, looking at her.

"Won't you come in and show it to me?" he asked, rather hesitatingly.

"The church? oh, certainly, if you like, but there is nothing to see in it." She came in, closing the door behind her, and stood beside him. It did not strike her as unusual or interesting, or as anything, in fact, but the most common-place and unexciting proceeding, that she should do the honours of the church to this middle-aged stranger.

They stood side by side in the centre of the small nave with all the ugly, high, red-cushioned pews around them. Vera looked up and down the familiar place as though she and not he were seeing it for the first time; from the row of whitewashed pillars to the staring white windows; from the hatchment on the plastered walls to the disfiguring gallery along the west end.

"It is very hideous," she said, almost apologetically, "especially the chancel; Mr. Daintree wants to have it restored, but I suppose that can't be done at all now."

"Why can't it be done?"

"Oh, because nothing can be done unless the chancel is pulled down; that belongs to the lay rector, and he has refused to restore it."

"Sir John Kynaston is the lay rector."

"Yes!" Vera looked a little startled; "do you know him?"

The gentleman pa.s.sed his hand over his chin.

"Slightly," he answered, not looking at her.

"It is a pity he cannot be brought to see how necessary it is, for he certainly ought to do it," continued Vera. "You see I cannot help being interested in it because Mr. Daintree is such a good man, and has worked so hard to get up money to begin the rest of the church. He had quite counted upon the chancel being done, and now he is so much disappointed; but, I beg your pardon, this cannot interest you."

"But it interests me very much. Why does not somebody put it in this light to Sir John; he would not surely refuse?"

"My brother-in-law, Mr. Daintree, I mean, did ask him last night, and he would not promise to do anything."

The stranger suddenly left her side and walked up the church by himself into the chancel. He went straight up to the east end and made a minute examination apparently of the wall; after that, he came slowly down again, looking carefully into every corner and cranny from the whitewashed ceiling down to the damp and uneven stone paving at his feet; Vera thought him a very odd person, and wondered what he was thinking about.

He came back to her and stood before her looking at her for a minute. And then he made this most remarkable speech:

"If _you_ were to ask Sir John Kynaston this he would restore the chancel!" he said.

For half-a-second Vera stared at him in blank amazement. Then she turned haughtily round, and flushed hotly with angry indignation.

"There is nothing more to see in the church," she said, shortly, and walked straight out of it.

The stranger had followed her; when they reached the churchyard he said to her, quite humbly,

"I beg your pardon; Miss Nevill; how unlucky I am to have made you angry, to begin with."

Vera looked at him in astonishment. How did he know her name; who was he?

He was looking at her with such a penitent and distressed expression, that for the first time she noticed what a kind face it was. Then, before she could answer him, she saw her brother-in-law over the paling of the vicarage garden, coming towards them.

The stranger saw him, too, and lifted his hat to her.

"Good-bye," he said, rather hastily; "I did not mean to offend you; don't be angry about it;" and, before she could say a word, he turned quickly down the churchyard through the lych-gate into the road, and was gone.

"Vera," said Eustace Daintree, coming leisurely up to her through the garden gate, "how on earth do you come to be talking to Sir John; has he been saying anything to you about the chancel?"

"_Who_ was it? _who_ did you say?" cried Vera, aghast.

"Why, Sir John Kynaston, to be sure. Did you not know it was he?"

She was thunderstruck. "Are you quite sure?" she faltered.

"Why, of course! I saw him only last night, you know. I wonder why he went off in such a hurry when he saw me?"

Vera was walking silently down the garden towards the house by his side.

The thought in her mind was, "If that was Sir John Kynaston, who then is the photograph I found in the writing-table drawer?"

"What did he say to you, Vera? How came you to be talking to him?"

pursued her brother-in-law.

"I only let him into the church. I did not know who he was. I told him the chancel ought to be restored--by himself."

Eustace Daintree looked dismayed.

"How very unfortunate. It will, perhaps, make him still more decided to do nothing."

Vera smiled a little to herself. "I hope not, Eustace," was all she said.

But although she said no word of it to him, she knew at her heart that his chancel would be restored for him.

Late that night Vera sat alone by her fireside, and thought over her morning's adventure; and once again she said to herself, with a little regretful sigh, "Whose, then, was the photograph?" But she put the thought away from her.

After all, she said to herself, it made no difference. He was still Sir John Kynaston of Kynaston Hall, and just as well worth a woman's while to marry. She had made some mistake, that was all; and the real Sir John was not the least romantic or interesting to look at, but Kynaston Hall belonged to him all the same.

They were not very exalted or very much to be admired, these dreams of Vera's girlhood. But neither were they quite so coa.r.s.e and unlovely as would have been those of a purely mercenary woman. She was free from the vulgarity of desiring the man's money and his name from any desire to raise herself above her relations, or to feed her own vanity and ambition at their expense. It was only that, marriage being a necessity for her, to marry anything but a rich man would have been, with her tastes and the habits to which she had been brought up, the sheerest and rankest folly.

She thought she could make a good wife to any man whose life she would like to share--that is to say, a life of ease and affluence. She knew she would make a very bad wife to a poor man. Therefore she determined upon so carving out her own fortunes that she should not make a failure of herself. It was worldly wisdom of the purest and simplest character.

She was as much determined as ever upon winning Kynaston's owner if he was to be won. Only she wished, with a little sigh, that he had happened to be the man in the photograph. She hardly knew why she wished it--but the wish was there.

She sat bending over her fire, with all her soft, dark hair loose about her face and flowing down her back, and her eyes fixed dreamily upon the flames. Her past life came back to her, her old life in the whirl and turmoil of pleasure which had suited her so well. She compared it, a little drearily, with the present; with the humdrum routine of the vicarage; with the parish talk about the old women and the schools; and the small t.i.ttle-tattle about the schoolmaster and the choir, going on around her all day; with old Mrs. Daintree's sharp tongue and her sister's meek rejoinders. She was very tired of it. It did not amuse her.

She was not exactly discontented with her lot. Eustace and her sister were very kind to her, and she loved them dearly; but she did not live their life--she was with them, but not of them. As for herself, for her interests and her delights, they stagnated amongst them all. How long was it to last?

And Kynaston, by contrast, appeared very fair, with its smooth lawns and its terrace walks, and its great desolate rooms, that she would so well understand how to fill with life and brightness; but Kynaston's master counted for very little to her. She knew the power of her own beauty so well. Experience had taught her that Vera Nevill had but to smile and to win; it had been so easy to her to be loved and wooed.