CHAPTER IX.

‘OF COLOUR PALE AND DEAD WAS SHE.’

‘And so you are Daphne?’ said Mr. Goring, taking both her hands, and looking at her with an amused smile, not without tender admiration of the fair pale face and widely-opened blue eyes. Months afterwards he remembered the scared look in those lovely eyes, the death-like pallor of the complexion; but just now he ascribed Daphne’s evident agitation to a school-girl’s natural discomfiture at being found out in a risky escapade.

‘And so you are Daphne?’ he repeated. ‘Why, you told me your father was a grocer in Oxford Street. Was not that what school-boys call a crumper?’

‘No,’ said Daphne, recovering herself, and a sparkle of mischief lighting up her eyes; ‘it was strictly true—of Martha Dibb’s father.’

‘And you adopted your friend’s parent for the nonce; a thoroughly Roman custom that of adoption, and in harmony with your Roman name. By the way, were you christened Poppæa Daphne, or Daphne Poppæa?’

He had been amusing himself with the squirrel for the last half-hour; but he found Daphne’s embarrassment ever so much more amusing than the squirrel. He felt no more seriously about the one than about the other.

‘Don’t,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘you must have known quite well from the first moment that my name wasn’t Poppæa, just as well as I knew that yours wasn’t Nero.’

‘Well, I had a shrewd suspicion that you were romancing about the name; but I swallowed the grocer. That was too bad of you. Do you know that you made me quite unhappy? I was miserable at the idea that such a girl as you could be allied with grocery. A ridiculous prejudice, was it not, in a man whose father began life as a day-labourer?’

Daphne had sunk into a low chair by the squirrel’s cage, and was feeding that pampered favourite with the green points of some choice conifer. She seemed more taken up by his movements than by her future brother-in-law. Her agitation had passed, yet she was pale still, only the faintest bloom in her fair cheek, the pink of a wild rose.

‘Please don’t tell Lina,’ she pleaded, with her eyes on the squirrel.

‘Oh, she doesn’t know anything about it then?’

‘Not a word. I dared not tell her. When I tried to do so, I became suddenly aware how horridly I had behaved. Martha Dibb and I were silly, thoughtless creatures, acting on the impulse of the moment.’

‘I don’t think there was much impulse about Miss Dibb,’ said Mr. Goring. ‘It seemed to me that she only looked on.’

‘It is disgustingly mean of you to say that!’ exclaimed Daphne, recurring to her school-girl phraseology, which she had somewhat modified at South Hill.

‘Forgive me. And I must really hold my tongue about our delicious picnics? Of course I shall obey you, little one. But I hate secrets, and am a bad hand at keeping them. I shall never forget those two happy days at Fontainebleau. How strange that you and I, who were destined to become brother and sister, should make each other’s acquaintance in that haphazard, informal fashion! It seemed almost as if we were fated to meet, didn’t it?’

‘Was that the fate you read in my hand?’

‘No,’ he answered, suddenly grave; ‘that was not what I read. Pshaw,’ he added in a lighter tone, ‘chiromancy is all nonsense. Why should a man, not too much given to belief in the things that are good for him to believe, pin his faith on a fanciful science of that kind? I have left off looking at palms ever since that day at Fontainebleau. And now tell me about your sister. I am longing to see her. To think that I should have stumbled on just the one particular afternoon on which she was to be so long away! I pictured her sitting by yonder bamboo table, like Penelope waiting for her Odysseus. Do you know that I have come straight through from Bergen without stopping?’

‘And you have not been home to your Abbey?’

‘My Abbey will keep. By-the-by, how is the place looking—the gardens all in their beauty, I suppose?’

‘I have never seen it.’

‘Never! Why, I thought Lina would be driving over once or twice a week to survey her future domain. I take it positively unkind that you have never seen my Abbey: my cloisters where never monk walked; my refectory, where never monk ate; my chapel, where no priest ever said mass. I should have thought curiosity would have impelled you to go and look at Goring Abbey. It is such a charming anomaly. But it pleased my poor father to build it, so I must not complain.’

‘I think you ought to be very proud of it when you consider how hard your father must have worked for the money it cost,’ said Daphne bluntly.

‘Yes, John Giles had to put a long career of honest labour behind him, before he became Giles-Goring and owner of Goring Abbey. He was a good old man. I feel sorry sometimes that I am not more like him.

‘Lina says you are like your mother.’

‘Yes, I believe I resemble her side of the house. It was by no means the more meritorious side, for the Heronvilles were always loose fish, while my father was one of the best men who ever wore shoe-leather. Do you think Lina will be pleasantly surprised by my return?’

‘Do I think it?’ echoed Daphne. ‘Why, she has been longing for your coming—counting every hour. I know that, though she has not said as much. I can read her thoughts.’

‘Clever little puss. Daphne, do you know I am quite delighted to find that my grocer’s daughter of Fontainebleau Forest is to be my new sister.’

‘You are very good,’ returned Daphne rather stiffly. ‘It is eight o’clock, so I think, if you’ll excuse me, I had better go and dress for dinner.’

‘Wait till your people come home. I’ve ever so many questions to ask.’

‘There is the carriage! You can ask them of Lina herself.’

She ran out of the room by the glass door leading into the conservatory, leaving Mr. Goring to meet his betrothed at the opposite door. She ran through the conservatory to the garden. The sun was sinking in a sea of many-coloured clouds, yonder on the edge of the hills, and the river at the bottom of the valley ran between the rushes like liquid gold. Daphne stood on the sloping lawn staring at the light like a bewildered creature.

She stood thus for some minutes motionless, with clasped hands, gazing at the sunset. Then she turned and walked slowly back to the house. There was no one to watch her, no one to think of her at this moment. Gerald and Lina were together in the drawing-room, steeped in the rapture of reunion.

‘Let me be rational, let me be reasonable, if I can,’ Daphne said to herself. She re-entered the house by an obscure door at the east end, and went up to her own room. There, in the soft evening light, she cast herself upon her knees by the bed, and prayed: prayed with all the fervour of her untried soul, prayed that she might be kept from temptation and led to do the thing that was right. Prayer so earnest in a nature so light and reckless was a new experience. She rose from her knees like a new creature, and fancied she had plucked the evil weed of a fatal fancy out of her heart. She moved about her room calmly and quietly, dressed herself carefully, and went back to the drawing-room, two minutes before the half-hour, radiant and smiling.

Madoline was still in the gown she had worn at the _déjeuner_. She had taken off her hat, and that was all, too happy in her lover’s company to spare five minutes for the revision of her toilet. Gerald had done nothing to improve his travelling attire. Even the dust of the long railroad journey from Hull was still upon his clothes.

‘Gerald tells me that you and he have made friends already, Daphne,’ said Lina in a happy voice.

She was standing by her lover’s side in front of the open window, while Sir Vernon sat in an easy-chair devouring his _Times_, and trying to make up for the lost hours since the post came in.

‘Yes; Daphne and I have sworn eternal friendship,’ exclaimed Gerald gaily. ‘We mean to be a most devoted brother and sister. It was quite wonderful how quickly we broke the ice, and how thoroughly at home we became in a quarter of an hour.’

‘Daphne is not a very terrible personage,’ said Madoline, smiling at her sister’s bright young face. ‘Well, darling, had you a happy day all by yourself? I was almost glad you were not with us. The coming of age was a very tiresome business. I had ten times rather have been in our own gardens with you.’

‘The whole entertainment was ineffably dull,’ said Sir Vernon, without looking from his paper.

And now the well-bred butler glided across the threshold, and gently insinuated that dinner was served, if it might be the pleasure of his people to come and eat it: whereupon Mr. Goring gave his arm to Madoline, and Sir Vernon for the first time since his younger daughter’s return felt himself constrained to escort her to the dining-room, or leave her to follow in his wake like a lap-dog.

He deliberated for a moment or two as to which he should do, then made a hook of his elbow, and looked down at her dubiously, as much as to say that she might take it or leave it.

Daphne would have much liked to refuse the proffered boon, but she was in a dutiful mood to-night, so she meekly slipped her little gloved hand under her parent’s sleeve, and walked by his side to the dining-room, where he let her hand drop directly they were inside the door.

Everyone at South Hill hated a glare, so the dining-room, like the drawing-room, was lighted by moderator lamps under velvet shades. Two large brazen lamps with deep-fringed purple shades hung a little way above the table; two more lighted the sideboard. The French windows stood wide open, and across a balcony full of flowers appeared the shadowy landscape and the cool evening sky.

Sir Vernon was tired and out of spirits. He had very little to say about anything except the proceedings of the afternoon, and all his remarks upon the hospitalities at which he had assisted were of an abusive character. He could eat no dinner, his internal economy having been thrown altogether out of gear by the barbarity of a solid meal at three o’clock. His discontent would have effectually damped the spirits of any human beings except lovers. Those privileged beings inhabit a world of their own; so Madoline and Gerald smiled at each other, and talked to each other across the roses and lilies that beautified the dinner-table, and seemed unconscious that anything unpleasant was going on.

Daphne watched them thoughtfully. How lovely her sister looked in the new light of this perfect happiness—how unaffectedly she revealed her delight at her lover’s return!

‘How good it was of you to come back a month sooner than you had promised, Gerald!’ she said.

‘My dear girl, I have been pining to come home for the last six months, but, as you and your father and I had chalked out a certain portion of Europe which I was to travel over, I thought I ought to go through with it; but if you knew how heartily sick I am of going from pillar to post, of craning my neck to look at the roofs of churches, and dancing attendance upon grubby old sacristans, and riding up narrow pathways on mules, and having myself and my luggage registered through from the bustling commercial city I am sick of to loathing after twenty-four hours’ experience, to the sleepy mediæval town which I inevitably tire of in ten, you would be able to understand my delight in coming back to you and placid Warwickshire. By-the-by, why didn’t you take Daphne to see the Abbey? She tells me she has never been over to Goring.’

‘I should have had no pleasure in showing her your house’—‘Our house,’ interjected Gerald—‘while you were away.’

‘Well, dearest, it was a loving fancy, so I won’t scold you for it. We’ll have a——’ He paused for an instant, looking at Daphne with a mischievous smile. ‘We’ll have a picnic there to-morrow.’

‘Why a picnic?’ grumbled Sir Vernon. ‘I can understand people eating out of doors when they have no house to shelter them, but nobody but an idiot would squat on the grass to dine if he could get at chairs and tables. Look at your gipsies and hawkers now—you seldom catch them picnicking. If their tent or their caravan is ever so small and stuffy they generally feed inside it.’

‘Never mind the hawkers,’ exclaimed Gerald contemptuously. ‘A fig for commonsense. Of course, everybody in his senses knows that such a dinner as this is much more comfortable than the most perfect picnic that ever was organised. But, for all that, I adore picnics; and we’ll have one to-morrow, won’t we, Daphne?’

He looked across the table at her in the subdued lamplight, smiling, and expecting to see a responsive smile in her eyes; but she was preternaturally grave.

‘Just as you like,’ she said.

‘Just as I like! What a chilling repulse! Why, unless Madoline and you approve of the idea, I don’t care a straw for it. I’ll punish you for your indifference, Miss Daphne. You shall have a formal luncheon in the refectory, at a table large enough for thirty, and groaning under my father’s family plate—Garrard’s, of the reign of Victoria, strictly ponderous and utilitarian. What a lovely light there is in the western sky!’ said Gerald, as Madoline and her sister rose from the table. ‘Shall we all walk down to the river, before we join Sir Vernon in the billiard-room? You’d like to try your hand against me, sir, I suppose, now that I come fresh from benighted lands where the tables have no pockets.’

‘Yes; I’ll play a game with you presently.’

Gerald and the two girls went into the verandah, and thence by a flight of shallow steps to the lawn. It was a peerless night after a peerless day. A young moon was shining above the topmost branches of the deodaras, and touching the Avon with patches of silvery light. The scene was lovely, the atmosphere delicious, but Daphne felt that she was one too many, though Madoline had linked an arm through hers. Those two had so much to talk about, so many questions to ask each other.

‘And you have really come home for good,’ said Madoline.

‘For good, dearest; for the brightest fate that can befall a man, to marry the woman he loves and settle down to a peaceful placid life in the home of his—ancestor. I have been a rover quite long enough, and I shall rove no more, except at your command.’

‘There are places I should love to visit with you, Gerald—Switzerland, Italy, the Tyrol.’

‘We will go wherever you please, dearest. It will be delightful to me to show you all that is fairest on this earth, and to hear you say, when we are hunting vainly for some undiscovered nook, where we may escape from the tourist herd—“After all, there is no place like home.”’

‘I shall only be too much inclined to say that. I love our own country, and the scenery I have known all my life.’

‘We must start early to-morrow, Lina. We have a great deal of business to get through at the Abbey.’

‘Business!’

‘Yes, dear; I want you to give me your ideas about the building of new hot-houses. With your passion for flowers the present amount of glass will never be enough. What do you say to sending MacCloskie over to meet us there? His opinion as a practical man might be of use.’

‘If Mr. MacCloskie is going to picnic with you I’ll stay at home,’ said Daphne.’ I admire the gentleman as a gardener, but I detest him as a human being.’

‘Don’t be frightened, Daphne,’ said Gerald, laughing. ‘It is a levelling age, but we have not yet come to picnicking with our gardeners.’

‘Mr. MacCloskie is such a very superior person,’ retorted Daphne, ‘I don’t know what he might expect.’

They had strolled down to the meadow by the river, a long stretch of level pasture, richly timbered, divided from the gardens by a ha-ha, over which there was a light iron bridge. They lingered for a little while by this bridge, looking across at the river.

‘Do you know that Daphne has started a boat,’ said Madoline, ‘and has become very expert with a pair of sculls? She rowed me down to Stratford the day before yesterday, and back against the stream.’

‘Indeed! I congratulate you on a delightful accomplishment, Daphne. I don’t see why girls should not have their pleasure out of the river as well as boys. I’ve a brilliant idea. The Abbey is only five miles up the stream. Suppose we charter Daphne’s boat for to-morrow. I can pull a pretty good stroke, and the distance will be easy between us two. Will your boat hold three of us comfortably, do you think, Daphne?’

‘It would hold six.’

‘Then consider your services retained for to-morrow. I shall enjoy the miniature prettiness of the Avon, after the mightier streams I have been upon lately.’

‘I don’t suppose Lina would like it,’ faltered Daphne, not appearing elated at the idea.

‘Lina would like it immensely,’ said her sister. ‘I shall feel so safe if you are with us, Gerald. What a strange girl you are, Daphne! A week ago you were eager to carry me to the end of the world in your boat.’

‘You can have the boat, of course, if you like, and I’ll pull if you want me,’ returned Daphne, somewhat ungraciously; ‘but I think you’ll find five miles of the Avon rather a monotonous business. It is a very lovely river if you take it in sections, but as both banks present a succession of green fields and pollard willows, it is just possible for the human mind to tire of it.’

‘Daphne, you are an absolute cynic—and at seventeen!’ exclaimed Gerald, with pretended horror. ‘What will you be by the time you are forty?’

‘If I am alive I daresay I shall be a very horrid old woman,’ said Daphne. ‘Perhaps something after the pattern of Aunt Rhoda. I can’t conceive anything much worse than that.’

‘Papa will be waiting for his game of billiards,’ said Lina. ‘We had better hurry back to the house.’

They were met on the threshold of the conservatory by Mrs. Ferrers. That lady had a wonderful knack of getting acquainted with everything that happened at South Hill. If there had been a semaphore on the roof she could hardly have known things sooner.

‘My dear Gerald, what a delightful surprise you have given us!’ she exclaimed. ‘I put on my hat the instant the Rector had said grace. I left him to drink his claret alone—a thing that has not happened since we were married—and walked over to bid you welcome. How well you are looking! How very brown you have grown: I am so glad to see you.’

‘It was very good of you to come over on purpose, Mrs. Ferrers.’

‘May I not be Aunt Rhoda instead of Mrs. Ferrers? I should like it ever so much better. Next year I shall be really your aunt, you know.’

‘And the Rector will be your uncle,’ said Daphne pertly. ‘He is mine already, and he is ever so much kinder than when I was only his parishioner.’

Mrs. Ferrers shot a piercing look, half-angry, half-interrogative, at her younger niece. The Rector had shown a reprehensible tendency to praise the girl’s beauty, had on one occasion gone so far as to offer her a patriarchal kiss, from which Daphne had recoiled involuntarily, saying afterwards to her sister that ‘one must draw the line somewhere.’

‘Vernon has gone to bed,’ said Aunt Rhoda; ‘he felt thoroughly wearied out after the gathering at Holmsley, which seems from his account to have been a very dull business. I am glad the Rector and I declined. A cold luncheon is positive death to him.’

‘Then we needn’t go indoors yet awhile,’ said Gerald. ‘It is lovely out here. Shall I fetch a wrap for you, Lina?’

Mrs. Ferrers was carefully draped in her China-crape shawl, one of Madoline’s wedding gifts to her aunt, and costly enough for a royal present.

‘Thanks. There is a shawl on a sofa in the drawing-room.’

‘Let Daphne fetch it,’ interjected Mrs. Ferrers; and her niece flew to obey, while the other three sauntered slowly along the broad terrace in front of the windows.

There were some light iron chairs and a table at one end of the walk, and here they seated themselves to enjoy the summer night.

‘As our English summer is a matter of about five weeks, broken by a good deal of storm and rain, we ought to make the most of it,’ remarked Gerald. ‘I hope we shall have a fine day for the Abbey to-morrow.’

‘You are going to take Lina to the Abbey?’

‘Yes, for a regular businesslike inspection; that we may see what will have to be improved or altered, or added or done away with before next year.’

‘How interesting! I should like so much to drive over with you. My experience in housekeeping matters might possibly be of use.’

‘Invaluable, no doubt,’ answered Gerald, with his easy-going, half-listless air; ‘but we must postpone that advantage until the next time. We are going in Daphne’s boat, which will only comfortably hold three,’ said Gerald, with a calm contempt for actual truth which horrified Madoline, who was rigidly truthful even in the most trivial things.

‘Going in Daphne’s boat! What an absurd idea!’

‘Don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda, for it’s my idea,’ remonstrated Gerald.

‘But I can’t help saying it. When you have half-a-dozen carriages at your disposal, and when the drive to Goring is absolutely lovely, to go in a horrid little boat.’

‘It is a very nice boat, Aunt Rhoda, and Daphne manages it capitally,’ said Lina.

‘I think it will be a delightfully dreamy way of going,’ said Gerald. ‘We shall take our time about it. There is no reason we should hurry. I shall order a carriage to meet us at the bottom of Goring Lane, where we shall land. If we prefer to drive home we can do so.’

‘My dear Gerald, you and Madoline are the best judges of what is agreeable to yourselves; but I cannot help thinking that you are encouraging Daphne in a most unbecoming pursuit.’

The appearance of Daphne herself with the shawl put a stop to the argument. She folded the soft woollen wrap round her sister, and then stopped to kiss her.

‘Good-night, Lina,’ she said.

‘Going to bed so early, Daphne? I hope you are not ill.’

‘Only a little tired after my rambles. Good-night, Aunt Rhoda; good-night, Mr. Goring,’ and Daphne ran away.

‘Aunt Rhoda might drive over and meet us at Goring, Gerald,’ suggested Madoline, who was always thoughtful of other people’s pleasure and did not wish her aunt to fancy herself ignored.

‘Certainly. I shall be charmed, if you think it worth your while,’ said Gerald.

‘Then I shall certainly come. My ponies want exercise, and to-morrow is one of the Rector’s parochial days, so he won’t miss me for an hour or two. What time do you contemplate arriving at the Abbey?’

‘Oh, I suppose between one and two, the orthodox luncheon-hour,’ answered Gerald.

Daphne was up and dressed before five o’clock next morning. She had set her little American alarum-clock for five; but that had been a needless precaution, since she had not slept above a quarter of an hour at a time all through the short summer night. She had seen the last glimmer of the fading moon, the first faint glow of sunlight flickering on her wall. She stole softly downstairs, unlocked doors and drew bolts with the silent dexterity of a professional housebreaker, feeling almost as guilty as if she had been one; and in the cool quiet morning, while all the world beside herself seemed asleep, she ran lightly across the dewy lawn, down to the iron bridge by which she had stood with Madoline and Gerald last night. Then she crossed the meadow, wading ankle-deep in wet grass, and scaring the placid kine, and thus to the boat-house.

She went in and got into her boat, which was drawn up under cover, and carefully protected by linen clothing. She whisked the covering off, and seated herself on the floor of the boat in front of the place of honour, above which appeared the name of the craft, in gilded letters on the polished pine—‘Nero.’

She took out her penknife and began carefully, laboriously, to scrape away the gilt lettering. The thing had been so conscientiously done, the letters were so sunk and branded into the wood, that the task seemed endless; she was still digging and scraping at the first letter when Arden church clock struck six, every stroke floating clear and sweet across the river.

‘What—an—utter—idiot I was!’ she said to herself, in an exasperated tone, emphasising each word with a savage dig of her knife into the gilded wood. ‘And how shall I ever get all these letters out before breakfast time?’

‘Why attempt it?’ asked a low pleasant voice close at hand, and Daphne, becoming suddenly aware of the odour of tobacco mixed with the perfumes of a summer meadow, looked up and saw Gerald Goring lounging against the door-post, smoking a cigarette.

‘Why erase the name?’ he asked. ‘It is a very good name—classical, historical, and not altogether inappropriate. Nero was a boat-builder himself, you know.’

‘Was he?’ said Daphne, sitting limply in the bottom of her boat, completely unnerved.

‘Yes; the vessel he built was a failure, or at any rate the result of his experiment was unsatisfactory, but the intention was original, and deserves praise. I am sorry you have spoilt the first letter of his name.’

‘Don’t distress yourself,’ exclaimed Daphne, jumping up and stepping briskly out of her boat. ‘I am going to change the name of my boat, and I thought I could do it this morning as a surprise for Lina; but it was a more difficult business than I supposed. And now I must run home as fast as I can, and make myself tidy for breakfast. My father is the essence of punctuality.’

‘But as half-past eight is his breakfast hour you need not be in a desperate hurry. It has only just struck six. Will you come for a stroll?’

‘No, thank you. I have ever so much to do before breakfast.’

‘Czerny’s “Studies of Velocity”?’

‘No.’

‘French grammar?’

‘No.’

‘Be sure you are ready to start directly after breakfast.’

Daphne scampered off through the wet grass, leaving Mr. Goring standing by the boat-house door, looking down with an amused smile at the mutilated name.