Part 17 (1/2)

”Jolly interesting! We don't take things so seriously now-a-days.

Good thing if we did. A book like that shows you that half the things we do aren't nearly as amusing as sticking at home in the country and looking about you.”

The Squire warmed to him. ”That's a very sensible thing to say. The nonsense people talk about the country being dull! Dull! It's the people that say it who are dull. They've got no resources in themselves. Now my grandfather--you can see what he knew about nature by his diaries. But that wasn't his only interest by any means. He had an electrical apparatus, when they weren't nearly as common as they are now. He read books--stiff books, some of them. He was a man of brains as well as muscle, and in the life he chose to lead he had time and opportunity for exercising his brains. Oh, I say that the country life is the best life, undoubtedly. And I go further, and say that those who have a stake in the country--own land, and so forth--are doing a criminal thing if they don't spend a good part of their lives on their properties, instead of spending the money they get from them elsewhere.”

”I quite agree with you,” said Bobby Trench, anxious to fix the good impression he had made, and also to put a point to these observations.

”Have your fling for a year or two when you're young, and then marry and settle down. You don't want to tie yourself by the leg, especially if you have a certain place in the world--House of Lords--Committees--all that sort of thing. But make your _home_ in the country, I say. Bring up your children in pure air--fresh milk, and all that. You know, Mr. Clinton, a house like Kencote makes you think how jolly a simple country life may be made for everybody concerned.

Early to bed, early to rise, church on Sundays, good food and drink, something to shoot, and all that sort of thing, and your family and relations coming down to liven you up--oh, it's life, that's what it is. All the rest is footle, compared with it.”

A Daniel come to judgment! Saul among the prophets! Never had the s.h.i.+ning example of Kencote, where wealth and ancestry adorned but did not overpower a G.o.d-fearing simplicity of life, received a more effective testimonial. Forgotten were Bobby Trench's offences against its ordered ways, withdrawn the Squire's strictures on his manners and character. He had found salvation. Kencote--and its owner--had triumphed exceedingly.

But Bobby Trench's speech, while offering most acceptable incense, had brought to mind the object with which he had installed himself at Kencote. This the Squire had, for the time, completely forgotten, and was not yet ready to exercise his mind upon it. So with a ”Well, I mustn't make you talk too much,” he took his leave, promising to come again shortly, and in the meantime to send other visitors.

These did not, on the first day of Bobby Trench's convalescence, include any of the ladies of the house; but, on the day after, Mrs.

Clinton, urged by the Squire, paid him a visit.

Bobby Trench could make no headway with her. She was solicitous as to his welfare, ready to talk in an unembarra.s.sed and even friendly fas.h.i.+on; but kept him, beneath her ostensible approach, so at arm's length that when she left him he had not found it possible to ask, as he had meant to do, that Joan or Nancy--he was prepared to blunt the point of his request by including Nancy--might pay him a visit. And what Bobby Trench did not find it possible to ask of anybody was not likely to come about of itself. For further female society he had to be content with that of Susan Clinton, who, on already intimate terms with him, promised to do what she could to make things ”easy all round.”

This she essayed to do by hymning his courage at the call of danger, patience in affliction, and amiability under all weathers; but found none to take up her praises, except Humphrey, to a politic degree of indifference, and the Squire, who admitted that he had been mistaken in that young fellow, and had found him with a head on his shoulders, and a very proper idea as to what he should do with his place in the world when he should succeed to it.

This positive praise, after a long course of unmeasured abuse, only seemed to Joan, listening to it dispiritedly, a flick of the lash to start her on the road along which she conceived her father wis.h.i.+ng to drive her, and caused her, if the ungallant simile may be carried out, to set her feet the more obstinately against it. It had much the same effect upon Mrs. Clinton, who foresaw herself plied with an enlargement on this theme, and forced either to obey, or else openly resist, directions founded upon it. Susan's intervention had only affected the already converted, except to insubordination, and would have been better omitted.

But what lover can eschew the use of weapons so ready to hand as the good nature of uninterested parties, or gauge their dangerous futility?

Only in the case of the adored object being predisposed to adore is intentionally distilled praise treated without suspicion, and likely to achieve its object; which in that case is already achieved.

CHAPTER VI

JOAN REBELLIOUS

Joan, more or less recovered from her indisposition, still looked upon the world as a place from which all happiness had for ever fled. She mooned about the house doing nothing, and only felt that youth had not altogether departed from her when she was with her mother, who, in her calm stability, was a refuge from the buffetings of life, but seemed to be holding aloof from the troubles she must have known her girl to be undergoing.

d.i.c.k had gone up to Yorks.h.i.+re to shoot with John Spence, and taken Virginia and Nancy with him. The invitation had been extended to Joan; but the Squire had said, with what she felt to be treacherous affection, ”Surely, you're not _both_ going to desert your old father!”

and she had refused; partly because she had dreaded lest acceptance should bring down upon her a direct prohibition, and the obliquity of a parent, whom she still wished to respect if she could, would stand revealed in all its nakedness; partly because Nancy had given her no encouragement, and as things were between them, it would be a relief to be apart for a time. Her mother had said nothing to influence her either way.

Walter had taken his wife and children back to London, leaving Bobby Trench in the care of the local surgeon. Frank had gone back to Greenwich, where he was taking a course. Humphrey and Susan were paying a flying visit to Hamps.h.i.+re, to arrange about the work to be done at Denny Croft. But there would be a mild recrudescence of Christmas gaieties in a week's time, when there was to be another ball, for which most of the party would rea.s.semble.

Joan was sitting in the schoolroom, feeling very low and miserable, and wondering what was coming of it all, when she was surprised by the entrance of her father, who visited this quarter of the house at intervals so rare as to have permitted it to a.s.sume the character of a retreat.

”Well, my girl,” he said paternally. ”The house seems so empty that I thought I'd come up for a little chat.”

It was the hour when Mrs. Clinton visited her rec.u.mbent guest, leaving the nurse free for an airing. Joan had occasionally accompanied her in her walks, but found them too apt to be filled with talk about her patient, couched in such laudatory language that Joan suspected the patient of having taken her into his confidence. In justice to him it must be said that the suspicion was unfounded, and in justice to the nurse that she had eyesight not less acute than the rest of her s.e.x.

There were times when Joan felt drawn to put her head on her father's broad shoulder, and receive the protective petting which in his milder moods he was as capable of administering as the most consistently doting of parents. This would have been one of those times if it had been possible to regard him as the solace as well as the occasion of her trouble. But enough of the impulse remained to cause her to welcome him with a sense of forgiveness, and to make room for him by her side on the broad sofa.

He would have done well to respond to the movement, but, instead, he took up his att.i.tude of harangue in front of her, with his back to the fire, and cleared his throat. She saw what was coming, and stiffened.

”Well, we shall have our invalid downstairs to-morrow,” he made his clumsy opening. ”Wonderful recovery! 'Pon my word I'm beginning to think that we shall see Walter a medical knight and I don't know what all, before we're much older.”