CHAPTER XXXII
St. John has arrived; he has jumped down from the dog-cart that brought him from the station, wrapped up in a huge greatcoat lined with otter-skin, that makes him look like "three single gentlemen rolled into one." His nose, always rather a salient point in his face, is reddened by the east winds, and his eyelids purple with want of sleep, as he has been travelling night and day – not from any violent hurry to reach his destination, but because boats and mail-trains suited – from the South of Ireland, where for the last ten days he has been daily shooting the wily woodcock, and nightly putting into practice the excellent resolution expressed in the song of "not going home till morning," with some rather fast bachelor-friends, who, like himself, are as yet destitute of household angels, to bring heaven to their hearths, to take away their cues, blow out their cigars, and reduce the number of their brandies and sodas. Neither a good-looking nor a good-tempered young man does he look as he makes his descent. The first he cannot help – the second he can. His ill-humour is owing partly to a violent headache; partly to the information, just imparted to him by the butler, that "the family dines at six o'clock now reg'lar– no difference made whatever company there may be – on account of the old squire's 'ealth."
Perhaps, had St. John known that a woman was watching his arrival, he might have endeavoured to smooth his features into an expression of greater amiability. Had he known that that woman was Esther Craven, the look of bored annoyance would certainly have given way to a stronger one, whether of pleasure or pain. Crouched on one of the paintless window-seats in the China gallery, she watches his coming, as she had watched his going; only that now she makes no smallest effort to attract his attention – cowers away rather in the dark, while he stands, unconscious and grumbling, in the patch of red light that comes through the open hall-door. He has been here half an hour now – half an hour spent in the hot airtight saloon, where the giant fire draws a strong woolly smell from Miss Blessington's winter dress, as she sits right into the fire – a practice not permitted by the autocrat of Felton, and consequently largely indulged in by his subjects when away from his master-eye.
The old squire has requested St. John to come round to his other side – to draw his chair closer to his – to speak more distinctly. The old lady has explained to him the exact manner in which the draught comes through the middle window, and catches her just at the back of the neck, so that when she wakes in the morning it is so stiff that she can hardly turn it a quarter of an inch one way or another. Miss Blessington has expressed one fear that he had had a cold journey down, and another that he had not been able to get a foot-warmer at Shoreditch; there were always so shamefully few there, particularly these afternoon trains, that all the business-men came down from their offices by. Constance had certainly never spoken a truer word, than in saying that she and her lover were not fond of public demonstrations; the question that their acquaintance asked each other was, whether they were any fonder of private ones.
As the clock strikes half-past five, Miss Blessington rises and floats away lightly, and without noise, to dress. Not for a kingdom would she rob one second from the sacred half-hour – all too short already – though the toilette to be made is only for the benefit of two purblind old people, who cannot see it, and of a young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry," and who has seen her in short frock and trousers, in long dress and chignon, in court-dress, in ball-dress, in walking-dress, in driving-dress, in staying-at-home dress, any thousand number of times during the last seventeen years.
Momently the hot close atmosphere is making Gerard's headache worse; momently the prospect of the six-o'clock dinner becomes more intolerable to him. Heroically, however, he enters into conversation with his great aunt-in-law elect.
"So you have been trying an experiment, I hear," he says, scratching the cat's ear and cheek and chin as she successively lifts them to him for titillation, – "set up a 'companion,' haven't you? Do you find it work well?"
"You must ask grandpapa," replies the old lady, looking towards her husband, who, with head sunk on chest, lips protruded, and eyes closed, seems at the present moment hardly in a condition to be put through a catechism on any subject; "he has more to say to her than I have. You see it was too great a strain on dear Constance's strength reading to him every day, and he dislikes Gurney's reading" (Gurney is the valet): "he says he never minds his stops, and bawls at him; and so we thought it better to get a person of more education, who would be always on the spot, and – "
"And whose strength," interrupts St. John, a little ironically, "unlike Constance's, would be warranted un-overworkable?"
"Exactly," answers the old lady, innocently.
"And she is a satisfactory beast of burden, I hope?" says Gerard, yawning till the tears come into his eyes; "fetches and carries well?"
"She seems a nice, quiet, ladylike person enough," replies Mrs. Blessington, leaning back placidly in her chair, with her hands, in black kid half-gloves, lying folded in her lap – "only, unfortunately, over-sensitive: those sort of people always are. Why, it was only yesterday that she rushed from this room with such violence that she nearly shook Constance and me out of our chairs, because I made some slight observation about a brother of hers who died lately, and to whom, it seems, she was much attached. I'm sure I had no intention of hurting her feelings, poor girl!"
"Girl!" repeats St. John, laughing; "that means a gushing thing of fifty, I suppose?"
"More like fifteen. By-the-by, she said something the other day about having known you."
"Known me!" cries the young man, opening his quick grey eyes. "Well, 'more know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.' I never knew any one in my life that had a 'companion' – of this sort, I mean. What may my unknown friend's name be?"
But at this juncture, before the name of his unknown friend can be confided to him, the old squire, waking up, urgently requests to be told what they are talking about, which information is communicated, in a succession of long dull roars, into his good ear. St. John takes advantage of the diversion to leave the room, and, running upstairs, knocks at Constance's door.
"Constance!"
"Who's there?" (Voice rather muffled – from under an avalanche of hair apparently).
"I. Can you come out and speak to me for a minute, if you are not in too great deshabille?"
"Certainly."
Ordinarily, Miss Blessington is a prude; but to appear for an instant before her betrothed in light-blue cashmere lined with blue satin, and her hair in golden rain about her shoulders, is, she thinks, for once permissible. Has he come to make some demonstration of affection? – to give her some warmer greeting than the nonchalant handshake with which they met? Or has he, has he – oh sweeter, warmer thought! – brought her a present from Ireland? Visions of Irish poplin, Irish lace, bog-oak and gold, cunningly fashioned together into bracelet or necklace, float before her mind's eye. In a moment, with a little affected coyness on her face, she stands before him; stands before him – and he does not even see her! He has opened one of the rusty casements in the passage, and thrust his head out, feeling the keen eastern blast blow against his throbbing brow with a sense of relief. He has evidently no gift in his hand, nor does he seem to be assailed by any very overpowering temptation to embrace her, blue and gold and white miracle though she be. Hearing her he turns, and the expression of his countenance is glum.
"I say, does this sort of thing happen every day?"
"What sort of thing?" (with a little pique at the errand on which she has been called away from among her cosmetics).
"This feeding, I cannot call it dining, like savages, at mid-day?"
"It is a fancy of my uncle," replies Constance, with the door-handle still in her hand; "he imagines that, if he dined later, he should not have time to digest his food before going to bed."
St. John utters an impatient exclamation. "In Heaven's name let him digest in bed, then; or, if not, let him dine by himself! I'm sure no one would object to that arrangement. Poor old boy! he can't help it; but it does take away one's appetite to see a very old man mumbling his food, like a toothless old dog over a bone."
"I suppose he may dine at what hour he chooses in his own house?" says Constance, coldly.
"Of course he may. He may go back to the manners and customs of the ancient British," rejoins Gerard, impatiently; "he may get up in the middle of the night and paint himself in blue-and-white stripes, instead of wearing coat and waistcoat, if he chooses – only he can hardly expect civilized beings to join him."
"I always think it right, on principle, to humour old people's whims," answers Constance, taking the high moral tone that she has adopted more than once since their engagement in any discussion with her lover, a tone symptomatic of what the postnuptial line of attack is likely to be.
"A very excellent sentiment, my dear," says St. John, a little mockingly, "worthy of being copied by little boys and girls after they have mastered straight strokes and pothooks; but to-night I must request the aged to humour my whim, and my whim is to absent myself from this symposium. I have got a splitting headache, and am altogether pretty nearly dead-beat. I have hardly a leg to stand upon: if you won't take it as a personal insult, I have a good mind to turn in at once. I have not been in bed, for any time worth speaking of, for the last ten days."
"Indeed!" replies Constance, freezing up, and looking as though tortures should not wring from her any question as to what had been the vicious pursuits that had detained her lover from balmy slumbers. "You will please yourself of course."
"If every one pleased themselves, and no one else, this would be a much more passable world to live in," retorts St. John, with a little misanthropy; "for then each person would get their fair share of attention neither more nor less, which is what they do not now."
But the last half of his sentence is addressed to himself, as his madonna has retired again within her shrine.
Meanwhile, for the first time since her brother's death, the "companion" – the nice, quiet, young ladylike person, whose only fault is being over-sensitive – is, like Constance, making a toilette. Since Jack's death she has daily put on her clothes, as a necessary preliminary to the day's work; but it has been a task full of weariness – devoid of pleasure. To-night, like Constance, she makes a toilette, and like Constance, it is for the benefit of the young man who does not know gingham from "gaze de Chambéry." It is not, however, with any faintest hope that her Sunday frock, any more than her work-a-day one, will bring back her lost lover to her side, that she puts the former on. The very strength of her faith in his honour hinders the possibility of his turning away from the woman he has promised to marry to any other woman from entering her head. Only, seeing, as plainly as if it were another's and not her own, the ruin of the face that meets her, daily and nightly, in the dim oval of the old glass in its tarnished frame, she wishes that that ruin might be revealed slowly, and by degrees (not all at once), to him that had once thought her so fair. For this one night, she would fain look like her old self – would fain be pretty plump Esther Craven, whose face, dimpled and débonnaire, men used to turn round in the street to look after – instead of the thin depressed "companion," whom if men looked at at all, it was only to pity her sunken white cheeks and sombre mourning weeds. Her Sunday frock is a lugubrious combination of cheap black silk and crape, against which her artistic eye has been revolting ever since she heard of St. John's coming. A little white tucker will not make her any the less mindful of Jack. And so she has been devoting most of the short winter daylight to the inserting of such a tucker, and to cutting the funereal body square. The alterations have been effected, now the Sunday frock is on: if it had been costliest velvet or satin, instead of papery silk at two-and-sixpence a yard, its black could not have contrasted better with the milkwhite of the long lily throat and swelling bust. Esther has lost flesh a good deal lately; but, being small-boned and thoroughly well-made, no unsightly hollows show as yet, like salt-cellars, beneath her collar-bones – not yet are elbows or shoulders sharp. Brilliancy of colouring is gone; but the head, arched like the Clytie's, is still left, and great plenty of night-dark hair to clothe it. Instead of the unnatural protuberance of a chignon, she has arranged this hair in the thick plain twists with which in the old time Miss Blessington's betrothed used —
..... "to play
Not knowing – ,"
and, so playing, spoke in loving commendation of them. In like twists Miss Blessington herself often disposes her locks – twists purchased by her for a considerable price from M. Isidore, golden hair being hard to match, and consequently expensive.
It is five minutes to six. The toilette is finished, and Esther stands before the glass considering it; but with none of the triumphant self-content with which a fine woman usually regards the victory that art and nature, fighting side by side, have achieved on the battle-field of her face. Colour had been Esther's strong point, and colour has gone from her; as it goes from a violet sent in a letter, or from a poppy dried between the leaves of a love-song. A raging desire for rouge, raddle, plate-powder – anything to bring back that flower-flush that used to need no persuasion to stay with her – enters her mind. But neither rouge nor raddle is near, and for plate-powder she would have to apply to the butler – an effort for which not even her great wish to appear once more red-cheeked before her ex-lover can nerve her. Suddenly, her eyes fall on a spray of scarlet geranium, that, plucked this morning in the conservatory, she has worn all day in the breast of her dress. A recollection comes to her of having, when a child, crushed one of those dazzling flowers against the face of another child, and of having laughed with pleasure at the scarlet stain. She snatches up eagerly some of the petals, and rubs them on her cheeks; the hue produced, though too scarlet for nature, is vivid and beautifying. She sets to work on the other cheek.
Esther is not a very cunning artiste; she has no idea of softening off edges with cotton-wool – of working deftly from cheekbone downwards. She is only possessed by a great longing to get back, for this one night, something of her old brilliancy. And in this she partially succeeds. The result of her labours is, indeed, a too hectic bloom; but the bright colour seems to fill up somewhat the hollowed cheeks – seems to bring back a little of the old childish débonnaire grace. Her labour ended, she runs downstairs quickly – not giving herself time for remorse at the meretricious nature of her charms, and listens, trembling all over, at the saloon-door before entering. There is no sound except the rolling grunts with which, unheard by himself, the old gentleman accompanies every respiration. A footman crosses the hall; the "companion" must not be caught eavesdropping; she turns the door-handle and goes in.
The old squire, with coat-tails under his arms, standing on tottery old legs before the fire; the old lady, in her evening-cap, sunk in armchair and Shetland shawls; Miss Blessington, with blue bands binding close her waved golden hair, and an expression of face less bland than usual, on the ottoman. No one else.
"How smart you are, my dear!" the old lady says, not unkindly, her faded eyes straying slowly over the square-cut bodice, white tucker, and cabled hair. "Is that in honour of Mr. Gerard?"
"It is rather thrown away if it is," says Mr. Gerard's future owner, with some temper: "St. John has chosen to make an invalid of himself to-night, and has gone to bed."
No need now for the geranium dye: a great hot blush bums through it – burns throat and brow and neck; she has made herself up in vain.
"Gone to bed!" repeats Mrs. Blessington, raising herself a little from among her pillows – "at six o'clock! Dear me, love, I hope he is not ill! I thought he seemed rather absent when he was talking to me before I went to dress; and he left the room so abruptly too! Are you sure, Constance, that he would not like something sent up to him?"
"He is quite able to take care of himself, I assure you – thanks, aunt," replies Constance, not without a vexed ring in her low flute voice. "If we served him right, we should accept him as the invalid he pretends himself, and allow him nothing but a little water-gruel or arrowroot."
"It seems so unnatural, a young man going to bed without his dinner; I'm sure, dear, I hope it is nothing serious," cries the old lady, with that righteous horror of death and sickness which, by some strange contrariety, one finds so often amongst the aged, so seldom amongst the young.
"Nothing more serious than the natural results of ten days' Irish hospitality," replies Constance, with a laugh, which, though low and highbred, is not mirthful; "men are so fond of one another's society when they get together, that they never can take it in moderation. I dislike bachelor parties particularly."
"He is making the most of his time, my dear – he knows it is short," suggests the old lady, smiling and nodding, and looking wise.
"Quite right, too! – quite right! Sensible fellow – knows when he is well off! So did I when I was his age – eh, Mrs. Blessington?" chimes in the squire, who, for a wonder, has caught the drift of the talk; chuckling to himself at the recollection – perfectly clear, though he forgets what happened yesterday – of the pleasant immoralities that have the weight of over half a century lying upon them.
"Dinner!" announces the butler, coming close up to his master, and bawling unnecessarily loud.
"You'll have to be content with the old squire again, Conny, my dear," says the old man, putting out his feeble arm; "you'll find the old fellows are best, after all."
"I quite agree with you, uncle – I think they are," replies Constance, gravely; and so, the old man supported on one young girl's arm, and the old woman on another's, the procession toddles solemnly, at a snail's pace, into the carefully-warmed and shaded dining-room.
"What a brilliant colour you have to-night, Miss Craven!" says Constance that evening; endeavouring vainly to get a strong light thrown upon Esther's countenance – the one small lamp, with its deep green shade, effectually baffling her.
"I went out in the wind, and it caught my face," answers Esther, hurriedly: involuntarily raising her hands to her cheeks and then snatching them away again, in the fear that the scarlet dye, staining them, may betray her secret.
"But there was no wind to-day, and I did not think that you had been outside the doors?"
"Yes, I was; I went for a run in the park just before dressing-time."
"It must have been quite dark."
"It is never quite dark out-of-doors; total darkness is a human invention, I think; there is always a sort of owl light."
Constance shrugs her shoulders: "Chacun à son goût, I prefer leaving it to the owls."
"It stifles me staying indoors all day; I have never been used to it."
Miss Blessington unbuttons her great eyes a little: "Really?"
"Yes, really."
"But there was no wind, surely?" persists Constance.
"Not a breath!" replies the other, absently, forgetting her former excuse for her brilliant face. "There never is any wind worth calling a wind in these low countries; the winds keep to the mountains, and very wise of them too."
"But you said it was the wind that had caught your face?" says Constance, raising herself from her lounging attitude with more animation than is customary to her.
Esther starts. "Oh! so I did – I forgot; I meant the air, of course."
Constance looks slightly sceptical, but is too well-bred to pursue her inquiries further; merely saying, languidly, as she rearranges the cushions upon which her stately shoulders rest posed, "Glycerine-cream is the best thing in the world for a chapped face."
"Is it?" answers Essie, guiltily conscious that a little cold water is the only glycerine-cream needed to effect the cure of her chapped face.
"Have you seen St. John since he came?" asks Constance, presently; the links that connect his name with her artificially-reddened countenance being painfully evident to Miss Craven.
"No – yes – no, not to speak to."
"You were out when he came, I suppose, weren't you?"
"No, I was upstairs."
"I have not told him you are here; it will be a surprise to him to meet an old acquaintance."
Esther gives an involuntary start of dismay. "Why did not you tell him?" she asks, hurriedly.
"I! Oh, I don't know; I have the worst memory in the world. I have intended to tell him in every letter, but I have always forgotten."
"Will he stay here long?" asks Miss Blessington's unsuccessful rival, in a low voice, bending down her head.
"I don't know, I'm sure; he is always so full of engagements, and I never allow him to refuse a good invitation on my account."
"Will your wedding be soon, Miss Blessington?" (spoken quietly and firmly).
"I really have not thought about it" (with a little yawn, as if the subject were rather a wearisome one than otherwise); "'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' I don't suppose I shall be given more than two or three months longer; some time in the spring, I daresay."
"I always think it is a good omen when people are married in the spring," says the young companion, with a dreamy smile; "when the world is beginning all over again, it is right that people's new life should begin with it."
"Do you think so? I don't much believe in omens. May is certainly the best time for Paris. I have set my heart upon seeing the Grand Prix run for; unfortunately, St. John hates Paris."
"All men hate all towns, I think, except American men; 'good Americans when they die go to Paris,' somebody said, didn't they?"
"Did they? It was rather irreverent, don't you think? By-the-by, some one told me in the summer that you were engaged to be married; is it true? I hope you won't think me impertinent for asking."
"Not in the least; but it is not true."
"Really? How odd it is the way those sort of reports get about!"
"Very odd; people are singularly fond of pairing their neighbours, but they don't often hit upon the right pairs."
"Perhaps not," answers Constance, closing her eyes, and looking bored, whereupon Esther lapses into silence.
Every Jack has his Jill; but my Jill is probably in Siberia or Hong Kong, and yours is close at hand; so I marry yours, and you, being in Siberia or Hong Kong, marry mine, and we both rue it to our dying day.