Part 15 (1/2)

As he spoke a bell in the ivy wall began to jangle from outside, and Dolly and Rhoda both looked up curiously, wondering who it could be.

'Rules are absolutely necessary restrictions,' said Henley, stirring his coffee; 'we are lost if we trust to our impulses. What are our bodies but concrete rules?'

'I wonder if it could be George?' interrupted Dolly.

'Oh, no,' said Rhoda, quickly, 'because----' Then she stopped short.

'Because what, Rhoda?' said Lady Sarah, looking at her curiously. The girl blushed up, and seemed embarra.s.sed, and began pulling the ribbon and the cross round her neck. It had come out again the last few days.

'Have you heard anything of George?' Lady Sarah went on.

'How should I?' said Rhoda, looking up; then she turned a little pale, then she blushed again. 'Dolly, look,' she said, 'who is it?'

It was Mr. Raban, the giver of the diamond cross, who came walking up along the side-path, following old Sam. There was a little scrunching of chair-legs to welcome him. John Morgan shook him by the hand. Lady Sarah looked pleased.

'This was kind of you,' she said.

Raban looked shy. 'I am afraid you won't think so,' he said. 'I wanted a few minutes' conversation with you.'

Rhoda opened her wide brown eyes. Henley, who had said a stiff 'How-dy-do?' and wished to go on with the conversation, now addressed himself to Dolly.

'I always doubt the fact when people say that impulse is the voice of one's inner life. I consider that principle should be its real interpretation.'

n.o.body exactly understood what he meant, nor did he himself, if the truth were to be told; but the sentence had occurred to him.

'An inner life,' said Dolly, presently, looking at the birds. 'I wonder what it means? I don't think I have got one.'

'No, Dolly,' said Lady Sarah, kindly, 'it is very often only another name for remorse. Not yet, my dear--that has not reached you yet.'

'An inner life,' repeated Rhoda, standing by. 'Doesn't it mean all those things you don't talk about--religion and principles?' she said, faltering a little, with a shy glance at Frank Raban. Henley had just finished his coffee, and heard her approvingly. He was going again to enforce the remark, when Dolly, as usual, interrupted him.

'But there is _nothing_ one doesn't talk about,' said the Dolly of those days, standing on the garden-step, with all her pretty loops of brown hair against the sun.

'I wish you would preach a sermon, Mr. Morgan, and tell people to take care of their outer lives,' said Lady Sarah, over her coffee-pot, 'and keep _them_ in order while they have them, and leave their souls to take care of themselves. We have all read of the figs and the thistles. Let us cultivate figs; that is the best thing we can do.'

'Dear Aunt Sarah,' said Dolly prettily, and looking up suddenly, and blus.h.i.+ng, 'here we all are sitting under your fig-tree.'

Dolly having given vent to her feelings suddenly blushed up. All their eyes seemed to be fixed upon her. What business had Mr. Raban to look at her so gravely?

'I wonder if the c.o.c.ks and hens are gone to roost,' said my heroine, confused; and, jumping down from the step, she left the coffee-drinkers to finish their coffee.

Lady Sarah had no great taste for art or for _bric-a-brac_. Mr. Francis had been a collector, and from him she had inherited her blue china, but she did not care at all for it. She had one fancy, however,--a poultry fancy,--which harmlessly distracted many of her spare hours. With a cheerful cluck, a pluming, a spreading out of glistening feathers, a strutting and champing, Lady Sarah's c.o.c.ks and hens used to awake betimes in the early morning. The c.o.c.ks would chaunt matutinal hymns to the annoyance of the neighbourhood, while the hens clucked a cheerful accompaniment to the strains. The silver trumpets themselves would not have sounded pleasanter to Lady Sarah's ears than this crowing noise of her favourites. She had a little temple erected for this choir. It was a sort of pantheon, where all parts of the world were represented, divided off by various lat.i.tudinal wires. There were creve-coeurs from the Pyrenees, with their crimson crests and robes of black satin; there were magi from Persia, puffy, wind-blown, silent, and somewhat melancholy: there were Polish warriors, gallant and splendid, with an air of misfortune so courageously surmounted that fortune itself would have looked small beside it. Then came the Dorkings, feathery and speckly, with ample wings outstretched, clucking common-place English to one another.

To-night, however, the clarions were silent, the warriors were sleepy, the c.o.c.ks and hens were settling themselves comfortably in quaint fluffy heaps upon their roosts, with their portable feather-beds shaken out, and their bills snugly tucked into the down.

Dolly was standing admiring their strength of mind, in retiring by broad daylight from the nice cheerful world, into the dismal darkened bed-chamber they occupied. As Dolly stood outside in the sunset, peeping into the dark roosting-place, she heard voices coming along the path, and Lady Sarah speaking in a very agitated voice.

'Cruel boy,' she said, 'what have I done, what have I left undone that he should treat me so ill?'

They were close to Dolly, who started away from the hen-house, and ran up to meet her aunt with a sudden movement.

'What is it? Why is he----_Who_ is cruel?' said Dolly, and she turned a quick, reproachful look upon Raban. What had he been saying?