Part 13 (1/2)
d.i.c.k had never seen his cousin so animated, so interested, in a word, so amused, for years. He was rather surprised.
”It'll be an awful bore,” he said slowly, ”and Richard--are you sure that you wish it? I think I could manage to put off most of these people--I mean without giving offence.”
”No, no, d.i.c.k! I know it'll give you a certain amount of trouble”--the older man looked attentively at the younger--”but I've felt lately that we didn't see enough people. I don't see why my state and Athena's selfishness”--he uttered the word very deliberately--”should force you to live such an unnatural life as you've now been leading for so long----” He waited a moment and then said, more lightly, ”I'm afraid that we both, you and I, have grown to believe that Jane Oglander's the only young woman in the world.”
Wantele gave him a swift look.
”She's the only woman in the world for me,” he muttered. ”Lingard may be a good fellow, Richard, but I wish--I would give a good deal to know what Jane sees in him.” He also was trying to speak lightly.
”Ah, one always feels that!” Richard Maule lay back in his chair. The short discussion had tired him. ”Then will you see about it all, d.i.c.k?”
”Yes,” cried Wantele hastily, ”of course I will! I agree that we've been too much shut up.”
He went back to Athena, and this time she welcomed him graciously. She also had received letters asking for a peep of their hero.
Wantele looked at his cousin's wife with reluctant admiration. He had not seen her looking as animated, as radiant as--as seductive as she looked now for a very long time.
”Don't you see the change in Richard?” she asked eagerly. ”He's become quite another creature since General Lingard came here. I've always thought you kept Richard far too much shut up, d.i.c.k----”
”You never said so before,” he said sharply.
She shrugged her shoulders. ”It was none of my business.”
Her face clouded, and with hasty accord they changed the subject, and with exactly the same words: ”Who had we better ask first?” And then they stopped, and laughed. For the moment these two, Richard Maule's heir and Richard Maule's wife, were on more cordial terms than they had been for years.
”You have now got all the letters,” she cried gaily--”Richard's, mine, and yours! Look them over, and make out a list--I'm sure you're much better at that sort of thing than I am!”
He left her to carry out her behest.
If there was anything like real entertaining to be done at Rede Place, all kinds of arrangements would have to be made, and the making of them must fall on d.i.c.k Wantele. Athena had told the truth when she had described herself to General Lingard as only a guest in her husband's house. But she had omitted to add that it was an arrangement which had hitherto suited her perfectly, and the only one she would have tolerated.
CHAPTER VIII
”To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
During the days that followed d.i.c.k Wantele's return home, it seemed to him as though a magic wand had been waved over Rede Place.
Mrs. Maule had no wish to keep her famous guest to herself. Even to the two men who watched her with a rather cruel scrutiny so much was clear.
She seemed, indeed, to delight in exhibiting General Lingard to the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood were only too willing to fall in with her pleasure.
The gatherings were small, when one came to think of it--eight or ten people to lunch, ten or twelve people to dinner.
How accustomed d.i.c.k grew to the formula which had at first so much surprised him! ”Dear Mrs. Maule,” or ”Dear Mr. Wantele” (as the case might be) ”We hear that General Lingard is staying at Rede Place. It would give us very great pleasure if you would bring him over to lunch or dinner, whichever suits you best.”
But there Athena wisely drew the line. No, she would not take General Lingard, or allow him to be taken, here and there and everywhere! He was at Rede Place for rest. But the agreeable people, the people who would amuse and interest him, and the people who if dull had, as it were, a right to meet the lion, were asked in their turn to come.
They would arrive about half-past one, filling the beautiful rooms generally so empty of human sounds, with a pleasant bustle of talk and laughter. They would lunch in the tapestry dining-room, none too young or too old to enjoy the far-famed skill of Richard Maule's Corsican chef; and then, according to their fancy, or according to Athena's whim, they would wander about the house, looking at the pictures and fingering the curios which enjoyed an almost legendary reputation; or better still stream out into the formal gardens, now brilliant with strangely tinted autumn flowers, and fantastically peopled with the marble fauns and stone dryads brought from Italy and Greece by old Theophilus Joy.