Part 13 (1/2)

”Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for?”

”I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!” said Daphne, quickly.

Roger was silent. Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and unapproached. In that one hour the ”muddy vesture” of common feeling and desire that closed in his manhood had taken fire and burnt to a pure flame, fusing, so it seemed, body and soul. He had not thought of it for years, but now that he was made to think of it, the old thrill returned--a memory of something heavenly, ecstatic, far transcending the common hours and the common earth.

The next moment he had thrown the recollection angrily from him.

Stooping to his wife, he kissed her warmly. ”Look here, Daphne! I wish you'd let that woman alone! Have I ever looked at anyone but you, old girl, since that day at Mount Vernon?”

Daphne let him hold her close: but all the time, thoughts--ugly thoughts--like ”little mice stole in and out.” The notion of Roger and that woman, in the past, engaged--always together, in each other's arms, tormented her unendurably.

She did not, however, say a word to Lady Barnes on the subject. The morning following Mrs. Fairmile's visit that lady began a rather awkward explanation of Chloe Fairmile's place in the family history, and of the reasons for Roger's silence and her own. Daphne took it apparently with complete indifference, and managed to cut it short in the middle.

Nevertheless she brooded over the whole business; and her resentment showed itself, first of all, in a more and more drastic treatment of Heston, its pictures, decorations and appointments. Lady Barnes dared not oppose her any more. She understood that if she were thwarted, or even criticized, Daphne would simply decline to live there, and her own link with the place would be once more broken. So she withdrew angrily from the scene, and tried not to know what was going on. Meanwhile a note of invitation had been addressed to Daphne by the d.u.c.h.ess, and had been accepted; Roger had been reminded, at the point of the bayonet, that go he must; and Dr. Lelius had transferred himself from Heston to Upcott, and the companions.h.i.+p of Mrs. Fairmile.

It was the last day of the Frenches' visit. Roger and Herbert French had been trying to get a brace or two of partridges on the long-neglected and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone out of fas.h.i.+on, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, _ore retundo_, must only ”hint a fault and hesitate dislike.” But, hide it as he might, there was an ethical and religious pa.s.sion in French that would out, and was soon indeed to drive him from Eton to a town parish.

He had been ordained some two years before this date.

It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's _menage_. It seemed to him necessary that Daphne should respect her husband; and Roger, in a state of complete idleness, was not altogether respectable.

So, with much quizzing of him as ”the Squire,” French tried to goad his companion into some of a Squire's duties. ”Stand for the County Council, old fellow,” he said. ”Your father was on it, and it'll give you something to do.”

To his surprise Roger at once acquiesced. He was striding along in cap and knickerbockers, his curly hair still thick and golden on his temples, his clear skin flushed with exercise, his general physical aspect even more splendid than it had been in his first youth. Beside him, the slender figure and pleasant irregular face of Herbert French would have been altogether effaced and eclipsed but for the Eton master's two striking points: prematurely white hair, remarkably thick and abundant; and very blue eyes, shy, spiritual and charming.

”I don't mind,” Roger was saying, ”if you think they'd have me. Beastly bore, of course! But one's got to do something for one's keep.”

He looked round with a smile, slightly conscious. The position he had occupied for some three years, of the idle and penniless husband dependent on his wife's dollars, was not, he knew, an exalted one in French's eyes.

”Oh! you'll find it quite tolerable,” said French. ”Roads and schools do as well as anything else to break one's teeth on. We shall see you a magistrate directly.”

Roger laughed. ”That would be a good one!--I say, you know, I hope Daphne's going to like Heston.”

French hoped so too, guardedly.

”I hear the Archdeacon got on her nerves yesterday?”

He looked at his companion with a slight laugh and a shrug.

”That doesn't matter.”

”I don't know. He's rather a spiteful old party. And Daphne's accustomed to be made a lot of, you know. In London there's always a heap of people making up to her--and in Paris, too. She talks uncommon good French--learnt it in the convent. I don't understand a word of what they talk about--but she's a queen--I can tell you! She doesn't want Archdeacons prating at her.”

”It'll be all right when she knows the people.”

”Of course, mother and I get along here all right. We've got to pick up the threads again; but we do know all the people, and we like the old place for grandfather's sake, and all the rest of it. But there isn't much to amuse Daphne here.”

”She'll be doing up the house.”

”And offending mother all the time. I say, French, don't you think art's an awful nuisance! When I hear Lelius yarning on about _quattro-cento_ and _cinque-cento_, I could drown myself. No! I suppose you're tarred with the same brush.” Roger shrugged his shoulders. ”Well, I don't care, so long as Daphne gets what she wants, and the place suits the child.”