Part 6 (1/2)
The others followed her. The two elder men were left alone, and for a minute or two neither spoke.
Then Saltus said: ”They are all young, they have made no contact with real life yet. G.o.d does not always call in early life. To some people, the cross that is set so high over the world is like a great star,--it is not seen until the surrounding sky is darkened and the sun grows dim.”
”I am going into the chapel,” Lord Huddersfield said, ”to be alone for an hour. There must be many prayers going up to-day to G.o.d for the wrong these poor ignorant men have done.”
”Pray that they may be forgiven. And then, my dear Lord,” he continued, ”suppose we have a talk over the situation that has been created--if any situation beyond the purely local one _has_ been created.” A fighting look came into his face. ”We shall be wise to be prepared, to have our guns loaded.”
”Yes, Father,” Lord Huddersfield said rather grimly, ”we are not without power and influence, I am happy to think.”
CHAPTER IV
LUCY BLANTYRE AT THE CLERGY-HOUSE
Lucy Blantyre left Scarning Court on Thursday morning. James Poyntz travelled up to town with her. She was to go home to Park Lane for an hour or two, make one of the guests at a lunch party with Lady Linquest, and then, in the afternoon, drive down to Hornham.
She was alone in a first-cla.s.s carriage with James during the whole of the journey to London. The last three days had marked a stage in their intercourse. Both of them were perfectly aware of that. Intimacy between a young man and a girl is very rarely a stationary thing. It progresses in one direction or another. James began to talk much of his ambitions.
He told her how he meant to carve his way in the world, the place he meant to take. The Poyntz family was a long-lived one; Lord Huddersfield himself was only middle-aged, and might live another thirty years. James hoped that it would be so.
”I want to win my own way by myself,” he said. ”I hope the t.i.tle will not come for many years. It would mean extinction if it came now. You sympathise with that, don't you?”
She was very kind to him. Her answers showed a real interest in his confidences, but more than that. There was ac.u.men and shrewdness in them.
”You know,” he said, ”I do hate and detest the way the ordinary young man in my position lives. It is so futile and silly. I recognised it even at Oxford. Because of one's father, one was expected to be a silly fool and do no work. Of course, there were some decent fellows,--Dover, the Duke of Dover, was quiet and thought about things. But all my friends were drawn from the social cla.s.s which people suppose to be just below our own, the upper middle cla.s.s. It's the backbone of England. Men in it take life seriously.”
He stopped after a time, and gazed out of the window at the flying landscape. Suddenly he turned to her. ”I'm so glad you are my sister's great friend, Lucy,” he said.
It was the first time that he had spoken her first name to her. His tone was charged with meaning.
She looked up quickly, and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her.
”You are all very kind to me,” she said.
”Every one would be kind to you. I have been very happy since you have let me be your friend. Do you know that my work and my hopes seem dearer than ever to me now that I have told you so much of them. We have got to know each other very well, haven't we?”
”Very well.”
”We shall know each other better. It is my hope. I wonder if I might write to you now and then, and tell you some of my thoughts and how things are with me? Would such letters bore you?”
”I should value them, and think them a privilege. A woman is always gratified when a man confides his thoughts to her. So many men never allow a woman friend to see below the surface, and so many men--at any rate, men that I am in the way of meeting--have no thoughts to tell one even if they would.”
The train began to go more slowly as it rumbled through the dingy environs, and shook over the myriad points of Waterloo Station. Neither of them spoke again. There was no doubt in the mind of either as to the meaning of the situation.
The girl had gathered all his thoughts from his tone. It was very pleasant to be with him, this sane and brilliant young man with a great name and such powers. It made her happy to know how he regarded her--that out of all the girls he knew he had chosen her for a friend.
He would some day ask her to be something more; that also she knew, and knew that he was conveying it to her. She did not love him, love was a word not very real to her as yet. Her mental eyes had never visualised it, it was an abstraction. But she liked and admired him more than any other man of her set: he was a _man_. Well, there was time enough yet to think of all that. Meanwhile his deference was sweet; her heart warmed to him as his, she knew, was warm to her at that moment.
He saw her to the door of the waiting victoria, and stood chatting for a moment in the hurry of the station, making the footman mount his box again.
Then he gave the signal to start, and stood upon the platform by his hansom as she was driven rapidly away. Once she turned and waved a hand to him.