Part 53 (1/2)

He had never ceased to be jealous of the brother whom she loved so much more fondly than she had ever loved, or even pretended to love, her husband; but he had left off expressing that jealousy in open unbraiding.

Once he had been in the habit of saying, 'You will have a boy of your own some day, and then Master Vernie will be nowhere;' but that hoped-for son had never come, and Vernon was still all in all to his sister. Brian knew that it was so, and submitted to his lot in sullen acquiescence. After all, his marriage had brought him much that was good--had smoothed his pathway in life; and if--if, by-and-by, some such fatality as that which had cleared the way for Reginald Palliser, should clear the way for Ida, his wife would be the owner of one of the finest estates in Suss.e.x. He wished no evil to the young baronet, he bore no grudge against him for Ida's idiotic fondness; but the fact remained that the boy's death would make Brian Walford Wendover's wife a rich woman. It is not in the nature of a man living among sharp-witted lawyers and men about town to ignore a fact of this kind. His friends had talked to him about it after the publication of Sir Reginald Palliser's will.

'A fine thing for you if that young gentleman were to go off the hooks,'

said they; but Brian protested that he had no desire for such promotion.

He was fond of the boy, and was very well satisfied with his own position.

'I daresay you do like the little beggar,' answered his particular friend, who was loafing away the earlier half of the afternoon in Mr.

Wendover's chambers, smoking Mr. Wendover's cigarette, and sipping Mr.

Wendover's Apollinaris slightly coloured with brandy--a very modest form of entertainment surely, and yet the cigarettes and the superfine cognac, which were always on tap in Elm Court, made no small appearance in the accounts of tobacconist and wine merchant. 'You would be sorry if anything were to happen to him, no doubt; just as I shall be sorry when the governor bursts up--poor old fellow! But I know I want his money very badly; and I think you could spend a good deal more than your present income.'

Brian admitted with a light laugh that his capacity for expenditure was considerably in excess of his resources.

'You know how quietly I live,' he began.

_'Comme ci, comme ca,'_ muttered his friend.

'And yet even now I am in debt.'

'And have been ever since I first knew you, and would be if you had fifty thousand a year!'

'Oh, that's inevitable,' said Brian. 'A man with an income of that kind must always be in debt. He never can know when he comes to the boundary line. When a man starts in life by believing he is enormously rich, and can have everything he wants, he is pretty sure to go to the dogs. That's the way the sons of millionaires so often drift towards the gutter.'

CHAPTER XXIV.

'FRUITS FAIL AND LOVE DIES AND TIME RANGES.'

Brian found Wimperfield duller as a place of residence after Sir Reginald's death; or it may be that he found London gayer, and his professional duties more absorbing. It was not often that his wife and mother-in-law were gratified by any public notification of his engagements; but now and then the name of Mr. Wendover appeared as junior counsel in some insignificant case, and Lady Palliser, who read the _Times_ and _Post_, diligently apprised Ida of the fact.

'You see Brian is getting on quite nicely,' she said approvingly, 'and by-and-by when he has plenty of work, you will have a small house in town, I suppose--somewhere about Belgravia--and only come to Wimperfield for your holidays.'

f.a.n.n.y Palliser had never left off compa.s.sionating Ida for her frequent separation from her husband. She had never divined that Ida was happier in Brian's absence than when he was with her. The wife had so borne herself that her husband should not be put to shame by her indifference.

She lived the larger half of her life apart from him; but Lady Palliser and her gossips believed that in so doing the young couple sacrificed inclination to prudence. So soon as they could afford to maintain a town house they would have one.

It was midsummer weather, and the rose garden at Wimperfield, that garden which had been Ida's own peculiar care for the last four years, the garden which she had improved and beautified with every art learned from that ardent rose-wors.h.i.+pper Aunt Betsy, was glorious with its first blooms. Sir Reginald Palliser had been dead a year and a half, but Ida still wore black gowns, and the widow had in no wise mitigated the severity of her weeds. The two women had lived peaceably and affectionately together ever since the baronet's death, leading a quiet but not unhappy life, the placid monotony of their existence agreeably varied by frequent intercourse with the family at Kingthorpe.

The only changes at The Knoll were of a gentle domestic character. No cloud of trouble had darkened that happy household. Bessie had become a brisk, business-like little matron, dividing her cares between her yearling baby and her husband's parish; troubled, like Martha, about many things, but only in such a manner as women of her temperament like to be troubled. Reginald had begun his University career as an undergraduate of Balliol, and talked largely about Professor Jowett, and Greek. Horatio was still a Wintonian. The Colonel had grown a little stouter, and his wife was too polite to cultivate a slimness which might have seemed a reproach to her husband's comfortable figure. Blanche was 'out,' a development of her being which meant that she was occasionally invited to a friendly dinner-party with her father and mother, that her clothes cost three times as much as they had cost while she was 'in,' that she had ideas about blue china and sunflowers, lamented the shabbiness of The Knoll drawing-room and the general untidiness of the household, and that she abandoned herself to despondency whenever there was a long interval between one garden party and another. The child Eva had become exactly what Blanche had been four years ago. Urania was still Urania Rylance, just a shade more self-opinionated, and more conscious of the inferiority of her fellow-creatures. These innate instincts had been ripened and developed by several London seasons, and were now accompanied by a flavour of sourness which was meant for wit. She had not been without offers, but there had been no offer tempting enough to induce her to abandon her privileges as Dr. Rylance's daughter. She had an idea that her marriage would be the signal for Dr. Rylance to take unto himself a second wife; and she was disinclined to give that signal. The more anxious her father seemed to dispose of her in the marriage market, the more tenaciously she clung to the privileges of spinsterhood.

'I hope you are not in a hurry to get rid of me, father,' she said at breakfast one morning, when Dr. Rylance urged the claims of a cultured youth in the War Office.

'No, my dear; I don't think I have shown any undue haste. This is your fifth London season.'

I hope you do not call my intermittent glimpses of town a season,'

sneered Urania.

'I have you here as often and as long as I can,' answered her father, becoming suddenly stony of countenance, 'and I take you out as much as I can. Mr. Fitz Wilson has seven hundred a year. I could give you--say three; and surely with a thousand a year two young people might live in very good style--even in these pretentious days.'