Part 26 (2/2)
”So that's Wagram Wagram!” he said to himself. ”Why, chalk from cheese isn't in it in the difference between him and that bright boy Everard.
Lord, Lord! it's a rum world. To think that now he should be turning me off, and soon I shall be turning him off--bag and baggage. But I hope it won't come to that. No; somehow or other I don't think it will. He has every inducement to be reasonable--oh, and I hope he will. He's a fine fellow, but--necessity knows no law.”
”I say, pater, that chap's got some cheek,” said Gerard as his father rejoined them. ”Look, he hasn't moved. Didn't you tell him to clear?”
”No; I told him he needn't hurry as he was here.”
And, indeed, the stranger seemed to have taken Wagram literally at his word, for he had climbed up again to his former position, and was placidly puffing at a pipe.
”Look at those three, Miss Calmour,” said Wagram presently, referring to the children, who had started some romping game; ”they can no more keep quiet for half-an-hour when they get together than a lot of kittens.
Yvonne is generally the one who sets it going. Look at her now--issuing her commands as usual.”
The tall, beautiful child was standing erect, her blue eyes sparkling, and cheeks flushed with the glow of health and exercise, tossing back the golden flash of her flowing hair. There was grace in each unstudied gesticulation, music in the high, sweet key in which she was expostulating rapidly with her playfellows.
”She is too sweet,” murmured Delia.
”Isn't she? By the way, you haven't told me yet what you think of my son and heir--”
Breaking off, the speaker turned. It was only the trespa.s.sing stranger, who raised his hat and pa.s.sed on his way.
”--Though, really, it's hardly a fair question, as coming from me.”
”I think he's one of the best-looking and best-mannered boys I've ever seen; Mr Haldane's son is the other.”
”You do us proud,” laughed Wagram. ”But Hilversea is a dullish place for one boy to get through his holidays in, shut up with two old fogeys, so he's generally over at Haldane's, or Haldane's boy is over here.
They divide it up between them, and get all the fun they want.”
Delia was about to reply that she could not imagine the word ”dull” in connection with Hilversea under any circ.u.mstances whatever; but it struck her that the remark would sound ba.n.a.l, and she refrained.
”We shall be going North on Thursday for the grouse,” he went on.
”Haldane and I always 'split' a moor. Then these young scamps will be in clover. We're going to let them take out a gun this time, and they're about half mad with antic.i.p.ation.”
”I expect so,” said Delia, to whom, however, the whole of this announcement brought a heart-sinking. She knew enough by this time of the manners and customs of Hilversea to be aware that such a move was probable; but somehow, now that it was on the eve of becoming an accomplished fact--well, she felt depressed. ”Does old Mr Wagram shoot?”
”Doesn't he! If he isn't quite so good at right and left now as a few years back, even yet he can hold his own with the great majority. We must round up those riotous children now and begin strolling homeward.”
Of late something had occurred to Wagram and set him wondering, and to-day it struck him more than ever. This was a certain unaccountable change which had come over this girl. She seemed of late to have acquired a subtle and unconscious refinement, not only in speech and manner but also in look, which certainly was not there when he had first made her acquaintance under dramatic circ.u.mstances; indeed, were that acquaintance to be made over again, and now, a.s.suredly one dictum in which he had summed her up would be omitted. The fact was there, but there was no explaining it. It puzzled him. To one other this change had become manifest, and her it did not puzzle at all. That one was Clytie; and, going over things in her mind, that extremely attractive schemer nodded her plotting head complacently and smiled to herself.
The westering sunlight flooded down upon the vernal sheen of tossing oak foliage and smoothly undulating gra.s.s with a richness of glow that was well-nigh unearthly in the sensuous stillness of the August evening.
One of this group sauntering there it thrilled through and through. The children, excited with their game, were laughing and chattering-- frequently all at once. But Delia, while bearing her part as brightly and intelligibly as ever in conversation with her host, was conscious of an absorbing _arriere-pensee_--that, if there were such a thing as a day of paradise, she was going through just that. The while a yet further back and subtle thread of thought kept crying aloud that the paradise was a fool's paradise.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
A FORCED HAND.
”Now then, old josser, where are you coming to? have you bought the whole room or only half, eh?”
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