CHAPTER XVI.

‘NO MAN MAY ALWAY HAVE PROSPERITEE.’

Edgar Turchill did not go to the other end of the world to hide his grief and mortification at this second overthrow of his fondest hopes. He absented himself from South Hill for nearly a month, yet so contrived as that his absence should not appear the result of pride or anger. Mrs. Turchill’s annual sea-side holiday was as much an institution as the opening of Parliament, or the Derby: and she expected on all such occasions to be escorted and accompanied by her only son. She liked a fashionable watering-place, where there was a well-dressed crowd to be seen on parade or pier; she required to have her leisure enlivened by a good brass band; and she would accept nothing less in the way of lodgings than an airy bay-windowed drawing-room in the very best part of the sea front.

‘If I am not to come to the sea-side comfortably I would rather stay at home,’ she said to her confidante Deborah; an axiom which Deborah received as respectfully as if it had been Holy Writ.

‘Of course, mum. Why should you come away from Hawksyard to be cramped or moped?’ said Deborah. ‘You’ve all you can wish for there.’

Such murmurings as these had arisen when Edgar, sick to death of Brighton and Eastbourne, Scarborough and Torquay, had tempted his mother to visit some more romantic and less civilised shore; where the accommodation was of the rough-and-ready order, and where there was neither parade nor pier for the exhibition of fine clothes to the music of brazen bands. For picturesque scenery Mrs. Turchill cared not a jot. All wild and rugged coasts she denounced sweepingly, as dangerous to life and limb, and therefore to be avoided. The wildest bit of scenery she could tolerate was Beachy Head; and even that grassy height she deemed objectionable. Nor did she appreciate any watering-place which could not boast a smart array of shop-windows. She liked to be tempted by trumpery modern Dresden; or to have her love of colour gratified by the latest invention in bonnets and parasols. She liked a circulating library of the old-fashioned, Miss Burney type; where she could dawdle away an hour looking at new books and papers, soothed by the sympathetic strains of a musical-box. She liked to have her son well-dressed and in a top-hat, in attendance upon her during her afternoon drive in the local fly, along a smooth chalky high-road leading to nowhere in particular. She liked to attend local concerts, or to hear Miss Snevillici, the renowned Shakespearian elocutionist, read the Trial Scene in the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ followed by Tennyson’s ‘Queen of the May.’

To poor Edgar this sea-side holiday seemed always a foretaste of purgatory. It was ever so much worse than the fortnight’s hard labour in London, for in the big city there were sights worth seeing; while here, at the stereotyped watering-place, life was one dismal round of genteel inactivity.

But this year Edgar was seized with a sudden desire to hasten the annual expedition.

‘Mother, I think this lovely weather must break up before long,’ he said briskly, with a laborious affectation of cheerfulness, as he sat at dinner with his parent on the day after Daphne’s cruelty. ‘What should you say to our starting for the sea-side to-morrow?’

‘To-morrow! My dear Edgar, that would be quite impossible. I shall want a week for packing.’

‘A week! Surely Deborah could put your things into a portmanteau in six hours as easily as in six days.’

‘You don’t know what you are talking about, my dear. A lady’s wardrobe is so different from a man’s. All my gowns will want looking over carefully before they are packed. And I must have Miss Piper over from Warwick to do some alterations for me. The fashions change so quickly nowadays. And some of my laces will have to be washed. And I am not sure that I shall not have to drive over to Leamington and order a bonnet. I should not like to disgrace you by appearing on the parade with a dowdy bonnet.’

Edgar sighed. He would have liked to go to some wild Welsh or Scottish coast, far from beaten tracks. He would have liked some sea-side village in the south of Ireland—Dunmore, or Tramore, or Kilkee; some quiet retreat nestled in a hollow of the cliffs, where as yet never brass band nor fashionable gowns had come; a place to which people came for pure love of fine air and grand scenery, and not to show off their clothes or advertise their easy circumstances. But he knew that if he took his mother to such a place she would be miserable; so he held his peace.

‘Where would you like to go this year?’ he said presently.

‘Well, I have been considering that point, Edgar. Let me see now. We went to Brighton last year——’

‘Yes,’ sighed Edgar, remembering what a tread-mill business the lawn had seemed to him; how ineffably tiresome the Aquarium; how monotonous the shops in the King’s Road, and the entertainments at the Pavilion.

‘And to Scarborough the year before.’

‘Yes,’ with a still wearier sigh.

‘And the year before that to Eastbourne; and the year before that to Torquay. Don’t you think we might go to Torquay again this year? I hear it is very much improved.’

‘Very much built upon, I suppose you mean, mother. More smoky chimneys, more hotels, more churches, longer streets. I should think, judging by what it had come to when we saw it, that by this time Torquay must be a very good imitation of Bayswater. However, if you like Torquay——’

‘It is one of the few places I do like.’

‘Then let it be Torquay, by all means. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, mother. I’ll run down to Torquay to-morrow, find some nice lodgings for you—I think by this time I know exactly what you want in that way—and engage them for any day you like to name.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Edgar. But be sure you get some reference as to the landlady’s character, so that you may be certain there has been no fever case in the house during the last twelvemonth. And it would be as well to get a local architect to look at the drains. It would be a guinea well spent.’

‘All right, mother; I’ll do anything you like. I am longing for a blow of sea-air.’

‘But it will be at least a week before I can come. What will you do with yourself in the meantime?’

‘Oh, I shall contrive to amuse myself somehow. I might go on to Dartmouth, and charter a boat, and go up the Dart. I want very much to see the Dart. Only say on what day I may expect you at Torquay.’

‘Am I to travel alone, Edgar?’

‘You’ll have Deborah. And the journey won’t be difficult. You’ll join the express at Swindon, don’t you know——’

‘If you think I can trust to Deborah’s care of the luggage,’ said Mrs. Turchill dubiously. ‘She’s very steady.’

‘Steady! Well she ought to be at her age. You’ve only to get the luggage labelled, you see, mother——’

‘I never trust to that,’ answered the matron solemnly. ‘I like Deborah to get out at every station where the train stops, and see with her own eyes that my luggage is in the van. Railway people are so stupid.’

Edgar did not envy Deborah. Having thus adroitly planned an immediate departure he was off soon after daybreak next morning, and arrived at Torquay in time for dinner. He perambulated the loneliest places he could find all the evening, brooding over his disappointment, and wondering if there were any foundation for Gerald Goring’s idea that Daphne was to be won by him even yet. He slept at The Imperial, and devoted the next morning to lodging hunting; till his soul sickened at the very sight of the inevitable housemaid, who can’t answer the most general inquiry—not so far as to say how many bedrooms there are in the house, without reference to the higher powers—and the inevitable landlady, who cannot make up her mind about the rent till she has asked how many there are in family, and whether late dinners will be required. Before sundown, however, after ascending innumerable flights of stairs, and looking into a dismal series of newly-furnished rooms, he found a suite of apartments which he believed would satisfy his mother and Deborah; and having engaged the same for a period of three weeks, he went down to the water’s edge, to a spot where boating men most did congregate, and there negotiated the hire of a rakish little yawl, just big enough to be safe in a summer sea. In this light craft he was to sail at six o’clock next morning with a man and a boy.

‘How Daphne would enjoy knocking about this lovely coast in just such a boat!’ he thought. ‘If she were my wife, I would buy her as pretty a yacht as any lady could desire, and she and I would sail half round the world together. She must be tired of the Avon, poor child.’

Daphne was very tired of the Avon. Never had the days of her life seemed longer or drearier than they seemed to her just now, when her faithful slave Edgar was no longer at hand to minister to her caprices. A strange stillness seemed to have fallen upon South Hill. Sir Vernon was laid up with that suppressed gout which Daphne fancied was only another name for unsuppressed ill-temper, so closely did the two complaints seem allied. At such times Madoline was more than ever necessary to his well-being. She sat with him in the library; she read to him; she wrote his letters; and was in all things verily his right hand. The most pure and perfect filial love sweetened an office which would have seemed hard to an ungrateful or cold-hearted daughter. Yet in the close retirement of the stern-looking businesslike chamber, with its prim bookshelves and standard literature—not a book which every decently-read student does not know from cover to cover—she could but remember the bright summer days that were done; the aimless wanderings in meadow and wood; the drives to Goring Abbey; the tea-drinkings in the cloisters or in the gardens; the happy season which was gone. The knowledge that this one happy summer, the first she and Gerald had ever spent together as engaged lovers, was ended and over, made her feel as if some part of her own youth had gone with it—something which could never come again. It had been such an utterly happy period; such peerless weather; such a fair gladsome earth, teeming with all good things—even the farmers ceasing to grumble, and owning that, for once in a way, there was hope of a prosperous harvest. And now it was over; the corn was reaped, and sportsmen were tramping over the stubble; the plough-horses were creeping slowly across the hill; the sun was beginning to decline soon after five-o’clock tea; breathings of approaching winter sharpened the sweet morning breezes; autumnal mists veiled the meadows at eventide.

Gerald Goring had gone to Scotland to shoot grouse. It seemed to Daphne, prowling about gardens and meadows with Goldie in a purposeless manner that was the essence of idleness, as if the summer had gone in a breath. Yesterday she was here, that glorious, radiant, disembodied goddess we call Summer—yesterday she was here, and all the lanes were sweetened with lime-blossoms, and the roses were being wasted with prodigal profusion, and the river ran liquid gold; and to sit on a sunny bank was to be steeped in warm delight. To-day there were only stiff-looking dahlias, and variegated foliage, and mouse-coloured plants, and house-leek borders, in the gardens where the roses had been; and to sit on a grassy bank was to shiver or to sneeze. The river had a dismal look. There had been heavy rains within the last few days, and the willowy banks were hidden under dull mud-coloured water. There was no more pleasure in boating.

‘You may oil her, or varnish her, or do anything that is proper to be done with her before you put her away for the winter, Bink,’ Daphne said to her faithful attendant; ‘I shan’t row any more this year.’

‘Lor, miss, we may have plenty more fine days yet.’

‘I don’t care for that. I am tired of rowing. Perhaps I may never row again.’

She went into luncheon yawning, and looking much more tired than Madoline, who had been writing letters for her father all the morning.

‘I wish I were a hunting young woman, Lina,’ she said.

‘Why, dear?’

‘Because I should have something to look forward to in the winter.’

‘If you could only employ yourself more indoors, Daphne.’

‘Do I not employ myself indoors? Why, I play billiards for hours at a stretch when I have anyone to play with. I practised out-of-the-way strokes for an hour and a half this morning.’

‘I am sure, dear, you would be happier if you had some more feminine amusements; if you were to go on with your water-colour painting, for instance. Gerald could give you a little instruction when he is here. He paints beautifully. I’m sure he would be pleased to help you.’

‘No, dear; I have no talent. I like beginning a sketch; but directly it begins to look horrid I lose patience; and then I begin to lay on colour in a desperate way, till the whole thing is the most execrable daub imaginable; and then I get into a rage and tear it into a thousand bits. It’s just the same with my needlework; there always comes a time when I get my thread entangled, and begin to pucker, and the whole business goes wrong. I have no patience. I shall never finish anything. I shall never achieve anything. I am an absolute failure.’

‘Daphne, if you only knew how it pains me to hear you talk of yourself like that——’

‘Then I won’t do it again. I would not pain you for the wealth of this world—not even to have it always summer, instead of a dull, abominable, shivery season like this.’

‘Gerald says it is lovely in Argyleshire; balmy and warm; almost too hot for walking over the hills.’

‘He is enjoying himself, I suppose,’ said Daphne coldly.

‘Yes; he is having capital sport.’

‘Shooting those birds that make our dining-room smell so nasty every evening, and helping to stock Aunt Rhoda’s larder.’

‘He does not intend to stay after the end of this month. He will be home early in October.’

Daphne did not even affect to be interested. She was feeding Goldie, who was allowed to come in to luncheon when Sir Vernon was not in the way.

‘I had a letter from Mrs. Turchill this morning,’ said Lina; ‘she is enjoying herself immensely at Torquay. Edgar is very attentive and devoted to her, going everywhere with her. He is a most affectionate son.’

‘And a good son makes a good husband, doesn’t he, Lina? Is that idea at the bottom of your mind when you talk of his goodness to his very commonplace mother?’

‘I don’t want to talk of him, Daphne, to any one who values him so little as you do.’

‘But I value him very much—almost as much as I do Goldie—but not quite, not quite, my pet,’ she added reassuringly to the dog, lest he should be jealous. ‘I have missed him horribly; no one to tease; no one to talk nonsense with. You are so sensible that I could not afford to shock you by my absurdities; and Mr. Goring is so cynical that I fancy he is always laughing. I miss Edgar every hour of the day.’

‘And yet——’

‘And yet I don’t care one little straw for him—in the kind of way you care for Mr. Goring,’ said Daphne, with a sudden blush.

Lina sighed and was silent. She had not abandoned all hope that Daphne would in time grow more warmly attached to the faithful swain, whose society she evidently missed sorely in these dull autumnal days, during which the only possible excitement was a box of new books from Mudie’s.

‘More “Voyages to the North Pole”; more “Three Weeks on the Top of the Biggest Pyramid”; more “Memoirs of Philip of Macedon’s Private Secretary,”’ cried Daphne, sitting on the ground beside the newly-arrived box, and tossing all the instructive books on the carpet, after a contemptuous glance at their titles. ‘Here is Browning’s new poem, thank goodness! and a novel, “My Only Jo.” Told in the first person and present tense, no doubt; nice and light and lively. I think I’ll take that and Browning, if you don’t mind, Lina; and you shall have all the Travels and Memoirs.’

With the help of novels and poetry, and long rambles even in the wild showery weather, waterproofed and booted against the storm, and wearing a neat little felt wide-awake which weather could not spoil, Daphne contrived to get through her life somehow while her faithful slave was away. Was it indeed he whom she missed so sorely? Was it his footfall which her ear knew so well; his step which quickened the beating of her heart, and brought the warm blood to her cheek? Was it his coming and going which so deeply stirred the current of her life? Life had been empty of delight for the last three weeks; but was it Edgar’s absence made the little world of South Hill so blank and dreary? In her heart of hearts Daphne knew too well that it was not. Yet Edgar had made an important element in her life. He had helped her, if not to forget, at least to banish thought. He had sympathised with all her frivolous pleasures, and made it easier for her to take life lightly.

‘If I were once to be serious I should break my heart,’ she said to herself, as she sat curled up on the fluffy white rug by one of the morning-room windows, her thoughts straying off from ‘My Only Jo,’ which was the most frothy of fashionable novels.

Mrs. Turchill was so delighted with Torquay, in its increased towniness and shoppiness, its interesting Ritualistic services, at which it was agreeable to assist once in a way, however a well-regulated mind might disapprove all such Papistical innovations, that October had begun before she and her son returned to Hawksyard. Edgar had been glad to stay away. He shrank with a strange shyness from meeting Daphne; albeit he was always longing for her as the hart for water-brooks. He amused himself knocking about in his little yawl-rigged yacht, thinking of the girl he loved. Mrs. Turchill complained that he had grown selfish and inattentive. He rarely walked with her on the parade; he refused to listen to the town band; he went reluctantly to hear Miss Snevillici: and slumbered in his too-conspicuous front seat while that lady declaimed the Balcony Scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

‘If it were not for Deborah I should feel horribly lonely,’ complained Mrs. Turchill. ‘And it is not right that I should be dependent upon a servant for society.’

Gerald had not yet returned. He had gone on a yachting expedition with an old college chum. He was enjoying the wild free life, and his letters to Madoline were full of fun and high spirits.

‘Next year we shall be here together, perhaps,’ he wrote. ‘I think you would like the fun. It would be so new to you after the placid pleasures of South Hill. And what a yacht we would have! This I am now upon is a mere cockleshell to the ship I would build for my dear love. There should be room enough for you and all your pets—Fluff and the squirrel, your books, your piano, and for Daphne, too, if she would like to come; only she is such a wild young person that I should live in constant fear of her falling overboard.’

Madoline read this passage to Daphne laughingly. ‘You see that he remembers you, dear. The thought of you enters into his plans for the future.’

‘He is very kind: I am much obliged to him,’ Daphne answered icily.

It was not the first time she had responded coldly to Madoline’s mention of her lover. Her sister felt the slight against her idol, and was deeply wounded.

‘Daphne,’ she said in a voice that was faintly tremulous in spite of her effort to be calm, ‘you have said many little things lately—or perhaps it is hardly what you have said, but only your looks and tones—which make me think that you dislike Gerald.’

‘Dislike him! No, that is impossible. He has all the attributes which make people admired and liked.’

‘Yet I don’t think you like him.’

‘It is not in my nature to like many people. I like Edgar. I love you, with all my heart and soul. Be content with that, darling,’ said Daphne, kneeling by Madoline’s side, resting the bright head, with its soft silken hair, on her shoulder—the face looking downward and half hidden.

‘No; I cannot be content. I made up my mind that Gerald was to be as dear to you as a brother—as dear as the brother you lost might have been, had God spared him and made him all we could wish. And now you set up some barrier of false pride against him.’

‘I don’t know about false pride. I can hardly be very fond of a man who ridicules me, and treats me like a child, or a plaything. Affection will scarcely thrive in an atmosphere of contempt.’

‘Contempt! Why, Daphne, what can have put such an idea into your head? Gerald likes and admires you. If you knew how he praises your beauty, your fascinating ways! You would not have him praise you to your face, would you? My pet, I should be sorry to see you spoiled by adulation.’

‘Do you suppose I want praise or flattery?’ cried Daphne angrily. ‘I want to be respected. I want to be treated like a woman, not a child. I——Forgive me, Lina dearest. I daresay I am disagreeable and ill-tempered.’

‘Only believe the truth, dear. Gerald has no thought of you that is not tender and flattering. If he teases you a little now and then it is only as a brother might tease you. He wishes you to think of him in every way as a brother. It always wounds me when you call him Mr. Goring.’

‘I shall never call him anything else,’ said Daphne sullenly.

‘And if you do not marry as soon as I do——’

‘I shall never marry——’

‘Dearest, forgive me for not believing that. If you are not married next year you will have a second home at the Abbey. Gerald and I have chosen the rooms we intend for you; the dearest little boudoir over the porch, with an oriel window, just such a room as will delight you.’

‘You are all that is good: but I don’t suppose I shall be able often to take advantage of your kindness. When you are married it will be my duty to dance attendance upon papa, and to try and make him like me. I don’t suppose I shall ever succeed but I mean to make the effort, however unpleasant it may be to both of us.’

‘My sweet one, you are sure to win his love. Who could help loving you?’

‘My father has helped it all this time,’ answered Daphne, still moody and with downcast eyes.

* * * * *

Edgar and his mother stayed away till the third week in September. When they came back to Hawksyard cub-hunting was in full swing, and Mr. Turchill rose at five o’clock three mornings a week to ride to the kennels. He rode with two sets of hounds, making nothing of distance. He bought himself a fifth hunter—having four good ones already—which was naturally supposed to overtop all the rest in strength, pace, and beauty. His mother began to fear that the stables would be her son’s ruin.

‘Three thousand a-year was considered a large income when your father and I were married,’ she said; ‘but it is a mere pittance now for a country gentleman in your position. We ought to be careful, Edgar.’

‘Who said we were going to be careless, mother mine? I am sure you are a model among housewives,’ said Edgar lightly.

‘You’ve taken on a new man in the stable, I hear, Edgar—to attend to your new horse, I suppose.’

‘Only a new boy at fourteen bob a week, mother. We were rather short-handed.’

‘Short-handed! With four men!’

Edgar could not stop to debate the matter. It was nine o’clock, and he was eating a hurried breakfast before starting on his useful covert hack for Snitterfield, where the hounds were to meet. It was to be the first meet of the season, an occasion for some excitement. Pleasant to see all the old company, with a new face or two perhaps among them, and a sprinkling of new horses—young ones whose education had only just begun. Edgar was going to exhibit his new mare, an almost thoroughbred black, and was all aglow with pride at the thought of the admiration she would receive. He looked his best in his well-worn red coat, new buckskins, and mahogany tops.

‘I hope you’ll be careful, Edgar,’ said his mother, hanging about him in the hall, ‘and that you won’t go taking desperate jumps with that new mare. She has a nasty vicious look in her hind legs; and yesterday, when I opened the stable-door to speak to Baker, she put back her ears.’

‘A horse may do that without being an absolute fiend, mother. Black Pearl is the kindest creature in Christendom. Good-bye.’

‘Dinner at eight, I suppose,’ sighed Mrs. Turchill, who preferred an earlier hour.

‘Yes, if you don’t mind. It gives me plenty of time for a bath. Ta, ta.’

He had swung himself on to the thick-set chestnut roadster, and was trotting merrily away on the other side of the drawbridge, before his mother had finished her regretful sigh. The groom had gone on before with Black Pearl. These hunting mornings were the only occasions on which Mr. Turchill forgot his disappointment. The keen delight of fresh air, a fast run, pleasant company, familiar voices, brushed away all dark thoughts. For the moment he lived only to fly across the level fields, in a country which seemed altogether changed from the scene of his daily walks and rides; all familiar things—hedges, bills, commons, brooks—taking a look of newness, as if he were galloping through a newly-invented world. For the moment he lived as the bird lives—a thing of life and motion, a creature too swift for thought or pain or care. Then, after the day’s hard riding, came the lazy homeward walk side by side with a friend, and friendly talk about horses and dogs and neighbours. Then a dinner for which even a lover’s appetite showed no sign of decay. Then pleasant exhaustion; a cigar; a nap; and a long night of dreamless rest.

No doubt it was this relief afforded by the hunting season which saved Mr. Turchill from exhibiting himself in the dejected condition which Rosalind declared to be an essential mark of a lover. No lean cheek or sunken eye, neglected beard or sullen spirit, marked Edgar when he came to South Hill. He seemed so much at his ease, and had so much to tell about that first meet at Snitterfield, and the delightful run which followed it, that Daphne was confirmed in her idea that in affairs of the heart Mr. Turchill belonged to the weathercock species.

‘If he could get over your rejection of him, you may suppose how easily he would get over mine,’ she said to her sister.

Yet she was very glad to have Edgar back again: to be able to order him about, to beat him at billiards, or waltz with him in the dusky hall between five-o’clock tea and the dressing-bell, while Lina played for them in the morning-room. In this one accomplishment Daphne was teacher, and a most imperious mistress.

‘If you expect me to be seen dancing with you at the Hunt Ball, you must improve vastly between this and January,’ she said.