Part 37 (1/2)

And a sudden painful expression--of moral worry, remorse--pa.s.sed across the girl's face. Wharton knew that she had often been impatient of late with her father, and incredulous of his complaints. He thought he understood.

”One can often be of more use to a sick person if one is not too well acquainted with what ails them,” he said. ”Hope and cheerfulness are everything in a case like your father's. He will do well.”

”If he does he won't owe any of it--”

She stopped as impulsively as she had begun. ”To me,” she meant to have said; then had retreated hastily, before her own sense of something unduly intimate and personal. Wharton stood quietly beside her, saying nothing, but receiving and soothing her self-reproach just as surely as though she had put it into words.

”You are crus.h.i.+ng your flowers, I think,” he said suddenly.

And indeed her roses were dangling against her dress, as if she had forgotten all about them.

She raised them carelessly, but he bent to smell them, and she held them out.

”Summer!” he said, plunging his face into them with a long breath of sensuous enjoyment. ”How the year sweeps round in an instant! And all the effect of a little heat and a little money. Will you allow me a philosopher's remark?”

He drew back from her. His quick inquisitive but still respectful eye took in every delightful detail.

”If I don't give you leave, my experience is that you will take it!” she said, half laughing, half resentful, as though she had old aggressions in mind.

”You admit the strength of the temptation? It is very simple, no one could help making it. To be spectator of the _height_ of anything--the best, the climax--makes any mortal's pulses run. Beauty, success, happiness, for instance?”

He paused smiling. She leant a thin hand on the mantelpiece and looked away; Aldous's pearls slipped backwards along her white arm.

”Do you suppose to-night will be the height of happiness?” she said at last with a little scorn. ”These functions don't present themselves to _me_ in such a light.”

Wharton could have laughed out--her pedantry was so young and unconscious. But he restrained himself.

”I shall be with the majority to-night,” he said demurely. ”I may as well warn you.”

Her colour rose. No other man had ever dared to speak to her with this a.s.surance, this cool scrutinising air. She told herself to be indignant; the next moment she _was_ indignant, but with herself for remembering conventionalities.

”Tell me one thing,” said Wharton, changing his tone wholly. ”I know you went down hurriedly to the village before dinner. Was anything wrong?”

”Old Patton is very ill,” she said, sighing. ”I went to ask after him; he may die any moment. And the Hurds' boy too.”

He leant against the mantelpiece, talking to her about both cases with a quick incisive common-sense--not unkind, but without a touch of unnecessary sentiment, still less of the superior person--which represented one of the moods she liked best in him. In speaking of the poor he always took the tone of comrades.h.i.+p, of a plain equality, and the tone was, in fact, genuine.

”Do you know,” he said presently, ”I did not tell you before, but I am certain that Hurd's wife is afraid of you, that she has a secret from you?”

”From me! how could she? I know every detail of their affairs.”

”No matter. I listened to what she said that day in the cottage when I had the boy on my knee. I noticed her face, and I am quite certain. She has a secret, and above all a secret from you.”

Marcella looked disturbed for a moment, then she laughed.

”Oh, no!” she said, with a little superior air. ”I a.s.sure you I know her better than you.”

Wharton said no more.

”Marcella!” called a distant voice from the hall.

The girl gathered up her white skirts and her flowers in haste.