three days before the arrival of gladys le breton, mrs. marchant, lord calverly, and sir john (the damians only did not accept alicia’s invitation), mary odd astonished her brother.
she came into the library early one morning before breakfast. odd was there, writing.
“peter,” she said, “last night, before going to bed, i wrote to mr. apswith and accepted him.”
mary always spoke to the point. peter wheeled round his chair in amazement.
“accepted mr. apswith, mary?”
“yes. i always intended to at some time, and i felt that the time had come.”
mr. apswith, a clever, wealthy m. p., had for years been in love with miss odd. mary was now one-and-thirty, two years older than her brother, and people said that mr. apswith had fallen in love when she first came out twelve years ago. mr. apswith’s patience, perseverance, and fidelity were certainly admirable, but peter, like most people, had thought that as mary had, so far, found no difficulty in maintaining her severe independence, it would, in all probability, never yield to mr. apswith’s ardor.
mary, however, was a person to keep her own counsel. during her father’s lifetime, when much responsibility and many duties had claimed her, she had certainly doubted more than once the possibility of mr. apswith’s ultimate success; there was a touch of the diana in mary, and a great deal of the minerva. but, since her father’s death, since peter’s bridal home-coming, mary often found herself thinking of mr. apswith, her fundamental sympathy with him on all things, her real loneliness and his devotion. they had corresponded for years, and often saw one another. familiarity had not bred contempt, but rather strengthened mutual trust and dependence. a certain tone of late in mary’s letters had called forth from mr. apswith a most domineering and determined love-letter. mary had yielded to it—gladly, as she now realized. yet her heart yearned over peter. he got up now, and kissed her.
“mary, my dear girl”—he could hardly find words—“may you be very, very happy. you deserve it; so does he.”
neither touched, as they talked of the wonderful decision, on the fact that by it peter would be left to the solitary companionship of his wife; it was not a fact to be touched on. mary longed to fling her arms around his neck and cry on his shoulder. her happiness made his missing it so apparent, but she shrank from emphasizing their mutual knowledge.
“we must ask apswith down at once,” said odd. “it’s a busy session, but he can manage a few days.”
“well, peter, that is hardly necessary. i shall go up to london within the week. lady mainwaring asked me to go to paris with her on the 20th. she stops in london for three days. i shall see mr. apswith there, get my trousseau in paris, and be married in july, in about six weeks’ time. delay would be rather silly—he has waited so long.”
“you take my breath away, mary. i am selfish, i own. i don’t like to lose you.”
“it isn’t losing me, peter dear. we shall see a lot of one another. i shall be married from here, of course. mr. apswith will stop with the mainwarings.”
when mary left him, peter resumed his seat, and even went on writing for a few moments. then he put down the pen and stretched himself, as one does when summoning courage. he did not lack courage, yet he owned to himself that mary’s prospective departure sickened him. her grave, even character had given him a sense of supporting sympathy; he needed a sympathetic atmosphere; and alicia’s influence was a very air-pump. poor alicia, thought odd. the sense of his own despair struck him as rather unmanly. he looked out of the open window at the lawn, its cool, green stretches whitened with the dew; the rooks were cawing in the trees, and his thoughts went back suddenly to a certain morning in london, not two months ago, just after the baby’s death and just before alicia’s departure for the riviera.
alicia was lying on the sofa—peter staring at the distant trees, did not see them but that scene—her magnificent health had made lying on sofas very uncharacteristic, and odd had been struck with a gentle sort of compunction at the sight of the bronze head on the pillow, the thin white cheek. his heart was very heavy. the paternal instincts are not said to be strong; odd had not credited himself with possessing them in any elevated form. yet, now that the poor baby was dead, he realized how keen had been his interest in the little face, how keen the half-animal pleasure in the clinging of the tiny fingers, and as he looked at the baby in its small white coffin, he had realized, too, with a pang of longing that the little white face, like a flower among the flowers about it, was that of his child—dead.
on that morning he bent over alicia with something of the lover’s tenderness in his heart, though alicia had very nearly wrung all tenderness out of it.
“my dear girl, my poor, dear girl,” he said, kissing her; and he sat down beside her on the sofa and smoothed back her hair. alicia looked up at him with those wonderful eyes—looked up with a smile.
“oh, i shall be all right soon enough, peter.”
peter put his arm under her head and looked hard at her—her beauty entranced him as it had done from the beginning.
“alicia, alicia, do you love me?” his earnestness pleased her; she felt in it her own power.
“what a thing to ask, peter. did you ever imagine i didn’t?”
“shall it bring us together, my wife, the death of our child? will you feel for my sorrow as i feel for yours, my poor darling?”
“feel for you, peter? why, of course i do. it is especially hard on you, too, losing your heir.”
her look, her words crushed all the sudden impulse of resolve, hope, love even.
“my heir?” peter repeated, in a stumbling tone. “that has nothing to do with it. i wasn’t thinking of that.”
“weren’t you?” said alicia, rather wearily. she felt her weakness, it irked her, and her next words were more fretfully uttered—
“of course i know you feel for me. such a lot to go through, too, and for nothing.” she saw the pain setting her husband’s lips sternly. “i suppose now, peter, that you are imagining i care nothing about baby,” she remarked.
“i hope i am not a brute,” said peter gloomily.
“you hope i’m not, too, no doubt.”
“don’t, don’t, alicia.”
“i felt awfully about it; simply awfully,” alicia declared.
odd, retracing the sorry little scene as he looked from his library windows, found that from it unconsciously he had dated an epoch, an epoch of resignation that had donned good-humor as its shield. alicia could disappoint him no longer.
in the first month of their married life, each revelation of emptiness had been an agony. alicia was still mysterious to him, as must be a nature centered in its own shallowness to one at touch on all points with life in all its manifestations; her mind still remained as much a thing for conjecture as the mind of some animals. but alicia’s perceptions were subtle, and he only asked now to keep from her all consciousness of his own marred life; for he had marred it, not she. he was carefully just to alicia.
mary remained at the manor until all alicia’s guests had arrived. mrs. marchant, an ugly, “smart,” vivacious widow, splendid horsewoman, and good singer; gladys le breton, who was very blonde and fluffy as to head, just a bit made-up as to skin, harmless, pretty, silly, and supposed to be clever.
“clever, i suppose,” mary said to lady mainwaring, “because she has the reputation of doing foolish things badly—dancing on dinner-tables and thoroughly bête things like that. she has not danced on peter’s table as yet.”
miss le breton skirt-danced in the drawing-room, however, very prettily, and peter’s placid contemplation of her coyness irritated mary. miss le breton’s coyness was too mechanical, too well worn to afford even a charitable point of view.
“poor little girl,” said peter, when she expressed her disapproval with some severity; “it is her nature. each man after his own manner; hers is to make a fool of herself,” and with this rather unexpected piece of opinion mary was fully satisfied. as for lord calverly, she cordially hated the big man with the good manners and the coarse laugh. his cynical observation of miss le breton aroused quite a feeling of protecting partisanship in mary’s breast, and his looks at alicia made her blood boil. they were not cynical. sir john fleetinge was hardly more tolerable; far younger, with a bonnie look of devil-may-care and a reputation for recklessness that made mary uneasy. peter was indifferent good-humor itself, but she thought the time might come when peter’s good-humor might fail.
the thought of mr. apswith was cheering; but she hated to leave peter dans cette galère.
peter, however, did not much mind the galère. his duties as host lay lightly on him. he did not mind calverly at billiards, nor fleetinge at the river, where they spent several mornings fishing silently and pleasantly together. fleetinge had only met him casually in london clubs and drawing-rooms, but at close quarters he realized that literary tastes, which might have indicated a queer twist according to sir john and an air of easy confidence in mrs. odd, would not make a definite falling in love with mrs. odd one whit the safer; he rather renounced definiteness therefore, and rather liked peter.
mary departed for london with lady mainwaring, and alicia, as if to show that she needed no chaperonage, conducted herself with a little less gayety than when mary was there.
she rode in the mornings with lord calverly and captain archinard—who had not, as yet, put into execution the hideous economy of selling his horses. in the evening she played billiards in a manly manner, and at odd hours she flirted, but not too forcibly, with lord calverly, sir john, and with captain archinard in the beech-woods, or by lamplight effects in the drawing-room.
peter had not forgotten hilda and the strawberry beds, and one day captain archinard, who spent many of his hours at the manor, was asked to bring his girls to tea.
hilda and katherine found lord calverly and mrs. marchant in the drawing-room with mrs. odd, and their father, after a cursory introduction, left them to sit, side by side, on two tall chairs, while he joined the trio. mrs. marchant moved away to a sofa, the captain followed her, and alicia and lord calverly were left alone near the two children. katherine was already making sarcastic mental notes as to the hospitality meted out to hilda and herself, and hilda stared hard at mrs. odd. mrs. odd was more beautiful than ever this afternoon in a white dress; hilda wondered with dismay if katherine could be right about her. alicia, turning her head presently, met the wide absorbed gaze, and, with her charming smile, asked if they had brought their dogs—
“i saw such a lot of them about at your place the other day.”
“we didn’t know that you expected them to tea. we should have liked to bring them,” said katherine, and hilda murmured with an echo-like effect: “we should have liked to; palamon howled dreadfully.”
that palamon’s despair had been unnecessary made regret doubly keen.
“hey! what’s that?” lord calverly had been staring at hilda and heard the faint ejaculation; “what is your dog called?”
“palamon.” hilda’s voice was reserved; she had already thought that she did not like lord calverly, and now that he looked at her, spoke to her, she was sure of it.
“what funny names you give your dogs,” said alicia. “the other is called darwin,” she added, looking at lord calverly with a laugh; “but palamon is pretty—prettier than the monkey gentleman. what made you call him that?”
“it is out of ‘the knight’s tale,’” said katherine; “hilda is very fond of it, and called her dogs after the two heroes, palamon and arcite.”
lord calverly had been trying to tease hilda by the open admiration of his monocled gaze; the fixed gravity of her stare, like a pretty baby’s, hugely amused him.
“so you like chaucer?” hilda averted her eyes, feeling very uncomfortable. “strong meat that for babes,” lord calverly added, looking at alicia, who contemplated the children with pleasant vagueness.
“never read it,” she replied briskly; “not to remember. if i had had literary tastes in my infancy i might have read all the improper books without understanding them; now i am too old to read them innocently.”
katherine listened to this dialogue with scorn for the speakers (she did not care for chaucer, but she knew very well that to dispose of him as “improper” showed depths of philistinism), and hilda listened in alarm and wonder. alicia’s expressive eyebrows and gayly languid eyes made her even more uncomfortable than lord calverly’s appreciative monocle—the monocle turning on her more than once while its wearer lounged with abrupt, lazy laughs near alicia. hilda wondered if mrs. odd liked a man who could so laugh and lounge, and a vague disquiet and trouble, a child’s quick but ignorant sense of sadness stirred within her, for if katherine had been right, then mr. odd must be unhappy. she sprang up with a long breath of relief and eagerness when he came in. odd, with a half-humorous, half-cynical glance, took in the situation of his two little guests; alicia was evidently taking no trouble to claim them hers. he appreciated, too, hilda’s glad face.
“i’m sorry i have kept you waiting; are you ready for strawberries?”
he shook hands, smiling at them.
“don’t, please, put yourself out, odd, in looking after my offspring,” called the captain; “they can find their way to the garden without an escort.”
“but it won’t put me out to take them; it would put me out very much if i couldn’t,” and odd smiled his kindliest at hilda, who stood dubious and hesitating.
katherine thought it rather babyish to go into the garden for strawberries. she preferred to await tea in this atmosphere of unconscious inferiority; these grown-up people who did not talk to her, and who were yet so much duller than she and hilda. when hilda went out with mr. odd she picked up some magazines, and divided her attention between the pictures and the couples. papa and mrs. marchant did not interest her, but she found alicia’s low, musical laughter, and the enjoyment with which she listened to lord calverly’s half-muffled utterances, full of psychological suggestions that would read very well in her journal.
“he is probably flattering her,” thought katherine; “that is what she likes best.”
meanwhile hilda had forgotten lord calverly’s stare and alicia’s frivolity; she was so glad, so glad to be with her big friend again. he took her first to the picture gallery—having noticed as they went through a room that her eyes swerved to a turner water-color with evident delight. hilda was silent before the great velasquez, the holbein drawings, the chardin and the corot; but as they went from picture to picture, she would look up at odd with her confident, gentle smile, so that, after the half-hour in the fine gallery, he felt sure that the child cared for the pictures as much as he did; her silence was singularly sympathetic. as they went into the garden she confessed, in answer to his questions, that she would love to paint, to draw.
“all the beautiful, beautiful things to do!” she said; “almost everything would be beautiful, wouldn’t it, if one were great enough?”
the strawberry beds were visited, and—
“shall we go down to the river and have a look at the scene of our first acquaintance?” asked peter; “we have plenty of time before tea.” but, seeing the half-ashamed reluctance in hilda’s eyes, “well, not there, then, but to the river; there are even prettier places. our boating-house is a mile from yours, and i’ll give you a paddle in my canadian canoe,—such a pretty thing. you must sit very still, you know, or you’ll spill us both into the river.”
“i shouldn’t mind, as you would be there,” laughed hilda; and so they went through the sunlit golden green of the beechwoods, and hilda made the acquaintance of the canadian canoe and of a mile or so of river that she had never seen before, and she and peter talked together like the best and oldest of friends.
