“HAS anything happened, papa? You are so late—nearly an hour. To-to has been almost mad with waiting—has there been an accident? We were all beginning to get frightened here.”
“No accident that I know of,” said Sir William. He cast a look of pleasure at the pretty equipage and the pretty charioteer—a look of proud proprietorship and paternal pride. Alice was his favourite, they all said. But notwithstanding, he would not join her till he had seen that all his portmanteaus had been got out and carefully packed on the dog-cart which had come for them. Sir William’s own gentleman, Mr. Roberts, a most careful and responsible person, whose special charge these portmanteaus were, superintended the operation; but this did not satisfy his master. He stood by the pony-carriage, talking to his daughter, but he kept his eyes upon his luggage. There were despatch-boxes, no doubt freighted with the interests of the kingdom, and too important to be left to the care of a valet, however conscientious, and a railway porter. It was only when they were all collected and safe that he took his place by the side of Alice.
“You may be sure, my dear,” he said, “that unless you take similar precautions you will always be losing something.” The ponies had gone off with such a start of delight the moment they were set free, that Sir William’s remark was jerked out of his mouth.
“It would be quite a novelty if that happened to you—it would be rather nice, showing that you were human, like the rest of us. Did you really never, never, lose anything, papa?”
“Never,” he said; and you had only to look at him to see that this was no exaggeration. Such a perfectly precise and orderly person was never seen; from the top of his hat to the tip of his well-brushed boots there was nothing out of order about him, notwithstanding his journey. His clothes fitted him perfectly; they were just of the cut and the colour that suited his age, his importance and position. That he would ever have neglected any duty, or forgotten any necessary precaution, seemed impossible. “However,” he added, “I must not say too much; when I was young I have no doubt accidents happened. What I object to is that the present generation seems to think it a privilege to be forgetful. I was taught to be ashamed of it in my day.”
“Oh yes, papa, we are very silly,” said Alice; “though mamma says I am a little old maid and never forget. I take after you, that is what they all say.”
Sir William looked at her with a benevolent smile. There is no more subtle flattery that a child can address to a parent than this of “taking after” him, though why it should please us so it would be hard to say. He leaned back in his seat with a sense of well-deserved repose, while the impatient ponies flew along, tossing their pretty heads, their bells jingling, their hasty little hoofs beating time over the dry summer road. “This is very pleasant,” he said. It was a perfect summer evening, cool after a hot day, and the road lay through a tranquil, wealthy country, so fresh after the burnt-up parks, yet full of harvest wealth; the sheaves standing in the fields, some golden breadths of corn still uncut, and the heavy richness of the full foliage throwing deep shadows eastward. The ponies flew like the wind, and Alice, holding them with firm little vigorous hands, turned her soft face to him, all lit up with pleasure at his return. A conscientious statesman, a man who has been broiling in the service of his country, sitting on committees, listening to endless wearisome discussions and all the bothers of the end of the session, it may be supposed what a pleasant relief it was to step into this little fairy carriage and be carried swiftly and softly through the happy autumn fields to his home. “All well?” he said. But a man who has a daily bulletin from his wife asks such a question tranquilly, without any anxiety for the reply.
“I wonder who that lady was in the pink bonnet,” said Alice. “Strangers so seldom come out at our station. I wonder who she is going to. Perhaps it is somebody for the vicarage. Oh, yes, they are all quite well. The boys came home on Friday week, and they have never been out of mischief ever since. They are in the woods all day; and the girls have begun their holidays too. Mademoiselle has gone. We wanted only you, papa, you—and Paul. But who could that lady with the pink bonnet be?”
This second expression of curiosity was added artificially to cover the allusion to Paul. Sir William did not take any notice of either one or the other. “So Mademoiselle has gone?” he said. “I hope you keep order, and that mamma does not let them be too irregular. They will be far happier for a little wholesome restraint.”
“I suppose so,” said Alice, dubiously. “Anyhow,” she added, “they have had nearly a fortnight all to themselves. We have all been idle; but we will settle down into right laws and proper habits now we have got you, papa.”
“That will be quite necessary,” he said; then, with a slightly impatient tone, “You spoke of Paul—what is your last news of Paul?”
To-to had a very sensitive mouth. At this moment he so resented some imperceptible pull of the reins, that he got into the air altogether, capering with all his four feet, and called for Alice’s complete attention. In the midst of this little excitement she said, “Paul is still at Oxford, papa. He does not write very often. Oh, you bad To-to, what do you mean by this?”
“He has got very fond of Oxford all at once.”
“He has all his friends there—at least some of his friends. Papa,” cried Alice, with an impulse of alarm, “I wonder who that lady can be. She is coming after us in the village fly. I saw her bonnet just now through the window, when To-to made that bolt.”
“My dear, it is quite unimportant who she is—unless you think she is one of your brother’s friends. Considering who his associates are, one could never be astonished at any arrival. It may be a lady lecturer, perhaps, on Female Suffrage and Universal Equality.”
“Oh, papa! because he knows one man like that! But I have something to tell you—something that makes mamma and me a little uneasy. A gentleman came on Monday—oh, not a common person at all, a gentleman, and very nice. We could not tell what to do, but at last, after many consultations, we made up our minds to invite him to stay.”
“My dear Alice!” cried Sir William, “what do you and your mother mean? Is my house to be made into an hotel? What is the meaning of it? Am I to understand that you have taken in another nameless person, another disreputable acquaintance of Paul’s? Good heavens! is your mother mad? But I will not put up with it. My house shall not be made a refuge for adventurers, a den of——”
“For that matter,” said Alice growing pale, “I suppose it is mamma’s house too.”
There are opinions that get into the air and spread in sentiment when most opposed to principle. Nobody could have been more horrified than Lady Markham at any claim for her of woman’s rights; but when her little daughter, generously bred, found herself suddenly confronted by this undoubted claim of proprietorship, a chord was struck within her which had perhaps only learned to vibrate of recent days. She looked her father in the face with sudden defiance. She had not intended it—on the contrary, the object of her mission, the chief thing in her thoughts, had been to conciliate him in respect to this visitor, and soften his probable displeasure. But a girl’s mind is a delicate machine, and there is nothing that so easily changes its balance by a sudden touch. A whole claim of rights, a whole code of natural justice, blazed up in her blue eyes. She forgot To-to in her sudden indignation, looking with all the severity of logical youth in her father’s face.
Sir William was altogether taken aback. He returned her look with a kind of consternation.
“You little——” But then he stopped. A man sometimes remembers (though not always) that when he is speaking to his children of their mother it is necessary to do so with respect. Unquestionably it was expedient that a girl should have full faith in her mother. Besides (it gleamed upon Sir William) Alice was not a child. She was a reasonable little creature, able, after all, more or less, to form an opinion for herself. Perhaps he was more disposed to grant this privilege to the girl who was not likely to make any extravagant use of it, than to the boy; or perhaps his ill success in respect to the boy had taught him a lesson. Anyhow he paused. “Of course,” he said, “it is also, as you say, your mamma’s house. A friend of hers, I need not tell you, would be as welcome to me as a friend of my own. Do I ever attempt to settle without her who is to be asked? but with your sense, Alice, you must be aware there is a difference. I must interfere to prevent your excellent mother, who is only too good and kind, from being imposed upon by those disreputable acquaintances of Paul.”
“I beg your pardon, papa,” said Alice, who had been waiting breathless for the end of his address to make her eager apologies. “But,” she added, not unwilling to bring him down summarily from his elevation, “the gentleman I have been speaking of declares that he is your friend, and not Paul’s.”
“My friend! Then I daresay it is quite simple,” said Sir William, relapsing into his previous state of perfect repose and calm. “My friends are your mother’s friends too.”
“Ah, but this is different. (Papa, I am certain that woman is following us.) This is quite different. It is an old friend, whom none of us ever heard of. If we had known even his name we should not have been afraid. But do not be frightened, he is very nice. We all like him. He says he knew you in the West Indies, and the thing that alarmed us was that none of us, not even mamma, ever knew you had been there at all.”
“The West Indies!” Was it possible that Sir William started so much as to shake the pony carriage in which he sat? A cloud came suddenly over his serene countenance. He did not say, as Alice fancied he would, “I know nothing about the West Indies.” On the contrary, he paused, cleared his throat, and asked in a curiously restrained, yet agitated voice, “What does he—call himself?—what is his name?”
Alice was half alarmed by the effect she had produced. She did not understand it. She wanted to soften and do away with any disagreeable impression.
“Oh, he is very nice,” she said. “It is not any one you will mind, papa. And he is all right; he is in the Army List; we looked him up at once; we took every precaution; and there he was, just as he said, J. St. John Lenny, 50th West India Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel. After that, of course, and when he said he had known you so well, we could not hesitate any more.”
“Lenny!” Sir William said. It was with a tone of relief. He drew a long breath “as if he had expected something much worse,” Alice said afterwards. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. To be sure it was a warm evening. But there was something very strange to the girl in her father’s agitation. She did not understand it—he who was always so calm, who never allowed anything to put him out.
“Then were you really in the West Indies, papa?”
“I was in a great many places in my youth,” he said. “I was not taken care of as my boys have been. I was the youngest, and I did pretty much as I liked—a bad thing,” he added, after a pause; “a very bad thing, though you children never understand it. It led me into places and among people whose very names I seem to have forgotten now.”
There was a pause. Alice was very curious, but she did not venture to say more. She did not like even to look at her father who was so unusually disturbed. What could make him so unlike himself? The idea that there might be a mystery in Sir William’s life was more than impossible, it was ludicrous. She tried to fix her attention upon the ponies, who were going so beautifully. Then her ear was caught by the steady roll of wheels coming after them. Certainly it was the fly from the village; and certainly it was following on to the gates of the Chase which were now in sight. This was not the way to the vicarage or to any other house to which a stranger who had stopped at the station of Markham Royal could be going. She had not really believed it possible that the lady in the pink bonnet could be coming to the Chase; but now it seemed almost certain. What could be the meaning of it? Her heart jumped up into sudden excitement. She nourished her whip and touched the ponies till they flew. She could not bear the heavy rolling of that fly, a long way behind, yet always following with the steadiness of fate. This distracted her thoughts at once from her father, and a thousand conjectures rushed into the girl’s head. Could it be somebody from Paul? The fly came pounding heavily along, nothing stopping it. What could she do to stop it or conjure its passenger away? If it was bad news that was coming in it, what doubt that it would arrive quite safely? Paul! what could a woman in a pink bonnet have to do with Paul? Could he be ill? Could he be going to marry somebody, to do something foolish? Alice became herself so excited that she could not think of her father. And her father for his part took little notice of Alice. His mind was full of thoughts that would have been very incomprehensible, very startling to her. The stranger’s name had fallen upon him in his tranquillity as a stone falls into still waters. The calm surface of his mind was all broken, filled with widening and ever-widening circles of recollection. He felt dizzy like a man in a dream. The past was so long past, that, thus suddenly recalled to him, after such an interval of years, Sir William had a moment of giddy uncertainty as to whether it had actually existed at all, whether it was not a mere fable, something he had read in a book. Forty years ago—is a man responsible for things he did forty years ago? Can he be blamed if he forgets them? Can he be expected to remember? He who was so systematic, so careful, who never lost anything, who had for years been in a position to set every one else right: was it possible that he had once been foolish as other men? He himself did not understand it. He could not believe it. Lenny? Yes, he remembered there had been a man—the West Indies—ah, yes! things had passed there which he would not care now to talk about, which had been forgotten, which were to him as if they had never been. Had they ever been? he could scarcely tell. The ponies skimmed along the road, the bells jingled, the gates of the house were in sight, another minute and they would have reached the avenue. And then—instead of his gentle wife, and his innocent children, and universal respect, service, comfort, and worship of every kind, would it be the past in bodily presence that would have to be encountered, painful explanations, revelations, which might make a sudden rending asunder of the beauty and the happiness of life? Sir William wiped his forehead again as they turned in at the gate to the shelter of the familiar trees.
And still there was the dull rumbling of the fly behind. He did not so much as hear it, having been swept away on this torrent of thought. But Alice cast a troubled glance behind as she turned round to go in at the open gate, and made sure that it was coming after her. The girl’s head was buzzing and her heart throbbing with mingled fear and excitement. “Would you mind driving up the avenue yourself, papa? I have something to say to Mrs. Lowry at the gate,” she said, faltering. Her father scarcely seemed to hear her; he said, “Go on, go on,” with an impatient wave of his hand. She knew nothing about his alarms, nor he about hers. Perhaps, after all, the anxious desire of Alice to intercept what her hasty imagination had concluded to be a messenger of evil had something in it of that eager youthful curiosity which burns to forestall every new event. But if so disappointment was her fate. The little carriage flashed on under the trees and through the slanting lines of sunshine in a breathless silence, both its occupants being far too much absorbed to speak. Half way up the avenue two figures were visible advancing towards them. Lady Markham had been joined by Colonel Lenny a few minutes before. They stood aside, one on each side of the road as the pony-carriage came up. And here on every other occasion Sir William had got down and walked back with his wife to the house. It was part of the formula of his return, which was never omitted. This time, however, when Alice drew up her impatient ponies, he greeted his wife without moving from the carriage.
“We have had a very tedious, dusty journey,” he said. “I will go home at once, my love, pardon me, and shake my dust off.”
Lady Markham, in the midst of her anxiety, grew pale with surprise at this unusual proceeding. She pressed close to the side of the little carriage—“William,” she said, “do you know who it is that is with me?”
The baronet turned round to the long brown figure on the other side. “Alice has told me,” he said. “Lenny, is it possible? I did not think I could have recognised you after all these years.”
“Nor I you, my fine fellow,” said the Colonel. “I’d have passed you if I had met you in Bond Street, Markham; but meeting you here, and knowing it’s you, makes a great deal of difference. We’ve both of us altered in forty years.”
“Is it as long as that?” Sir William said. There was no pleasure in his face such as, these innocent ladies thought, should always attend a meeting with an old friend. But on the other hand he cast no doubt upon Colonel Lenny (as indeed how could he, seeing the Colonel’s name was in the Army List?), but addressed him unhesitatingly, and acknowledged him, which set the worst of Lady Markham’s fears at rest. “Go on,” he said, in an undertone to his daughter, then waved his hand to the pedestrians. “In ten minutes I shall be with, you,” he cried.
The rumbling of the fly had stopped; had it gone further contrary to all Alice’s anticipations? This idea gave her a little relief, but she was in so nervous a mood that the sudden jerk with which she urged the ponies forward once more upset To-to’s temper, who was his mistress’s favourite. He darted on through the lines of trees like a mad thing, wild with the jar to his delicate mouth and the vicinity of his stables.
“Do you want to break your own neck and mine?” Sir William said; “that pony will not bear the whip.”
“Why shouldn’t he bear it as well as Ta-ta?” said Alice; “is he to be humoured because he is the naughty one? It should be the other way.”
“It seldom is the other way,” said Sir William, moralising with a self-reference, though Alice did not understand it. “You spoke a greater truth than you are aware of. It is not the best people who are humoured in life. It is the naughty ones who get their way. If you make the worst of everything circumstances will yield to you: but act anxiously for the best and all the burden falls on your shoulders.”
“Papa! that is like Thackeray; it is cynical. I never heard you speak so before.”
“Nevertheless it is true,” said Sir William. His straight and placid brow was ruffled with care. “One does everything one can to be secure from evil, and evil comes.”
Could he be thinking about Paul? She turned her ponies (to their great disappointment) as soon as Sir William had stept out of the carriage. Charles indeed had to come to To-to’s head and lead him round, so unwilling was that little Turk to turn away from his comfortable stable again. “I will go back and bring mamma home, she was looking tired,” the girl said. She was impatient to make sure about the fly that had followed from the station, and the lady in the pink bonnet, and to be in the midst of it, at least, if anything were going to happen. Her mother was still a long way down the avenue. But Alice had scarcely turned when she perceived that there were three figures instead of two in the group she had so lately left. Three figures—and a brilliant speck of colour making itself apparent like a flag at the head of the little procession. Alice felt her heart rush to the scene of action more quickly than the ponies, which still resisted, tossing their little wicked heads. The lady with the pink bonnet had fallen into the advancing rank. She was tall, and that oriflamme towered over Lady Markham’s hat with its soft gray feathers. But their pace was quite moderate, unexcited, showing no sign of trouble. Lady Markham moved along with no appearance of agitation. Perhaps, after all, this new-comer, whoever she might be, had nothing to do with the absent brother, and was no messenger of evil tidings after all.