CHAPTER V—LUCK TURNS IN MY FAVOR

The Ransby Chronicle had a full account of the averted bathing fatality. In a small world of town gossip it was a sensation almost as important as a local murder. Columns were filled up with what Vi’s landlady said, and Joe Tuttle, and Mrs. Cardover, and even Dorrie. They tried to interview me without success; they couldn’t interview Vi, for she was in bed. From the landlady they gleaned some facts of which I was ignorant. Vi was Mrs. Violet Carpenter, of Sheba, Massachusetts. Her husband was the owner of large New England cotton factories. She had been away from America upwards of a year, traveling in Europe. She expected to return home in a month. The history of my parentage was duly recorded, including an account of my father’s elopement. All the old scandal concerning my mother was raked up and re-garnished.

Knowing what my intentions had been toward Vi, my grandmother was terribly flustered at the discovery that Vi was a married woman. She was hurt in her pride; she wanted to blame somebody. Her sense of the proprieties was offended, and she felt that her reputation was secretly tarnished. An immoral situation was existing under her roof—at least, that was what she felt. She wanted to get rid of Vi directly, but the doctor forbade her to be moved.

“And to think I should ’ave come to this!” she kept exclaiming, “after livin’ all these years honored and respected in my little town! Mind, I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame ’er. Poor things! You couldn’t ’elp it. But I can’t get over it—there was you a-proposin’ in my spare bedroom to a married woman, and she a-lyin’ in bed! What would folks say if they was to ’ear about it? And in my ’ouse! And me so honored and respected!”

Her horror seemed to center in the fact that it should have happened in the spare bedroom of all places, where all her dead had been laid out.

She took it for granted that Vi and I would part forever, as soon as she was well enough to travel. “By all showings, it’s ’igh time she went back to ’er ’usband,” she said.

She suffered another shock when I undeceived her. “You’re playin’ with fire, Dante; that’s what you’re doin’. Take the word of an old woman who knows the world—friendship will drift into familiarity and, more’n likely, familiarity ’ll drift into something else. A Cardover’s bad enough where wimmen is concerned, but an Evrard’s the devil. It’s the gipsy blood that makes ’em mad.”

I turned a deaf ear to all her protests. Vi and I had done nothing wicked, and we weren’t going to run away from one another as though we had. A mistake had occurred which concerned only ourselves; we had nothing to be ashamed of. Then my grandmother threatened to send for Ruthita so that, at least, we might not be alone together. I was quick to see that Ruthita’s presence would be a protection, so agreed that she should be invited down to Ransby provided she was told nothing. Meanwhile no meetings between Vi and myself were allowed. My grandmother guarded the spare bedroom like a dragon.

But in a timid way, in her heart of hearts, she was proud of the complication. It intrigued her. It made us all interesting persons. She wore the indignant face of a Mother Grundy because she knew that society would expect it of her; in many little sympathetic ways she revealed her truer self. She would take her knitting up to Vi’s bedside—Mrs. Carpenter as she insisted on calling her—and would spend long hours there. When conversing with me in the keeping-room late at night, she would grow reminiscent and tell brave stories of the rewards which came at length to thwarted lovers. I learnt from her that Mr. Randall Carpenter was much older than either Vi or myself. If he were to die——!

On the second morning that Vi had been in the house I returned from a desultory walk to find my grandmother in close conference with a stranger. He was a dapper, perky little man, white-haired, bald-headed, whiskered, with darting birdlike manners and a dignified air of precision about him. He had the well-dressed appearance of a city gentleman rather than of a Ransbyite. He wore a frock-coat, top-hat, gray trousers, shiny boots, and white spats. I judged that he belonged to a profession.

Apologizing for my intrusion, I crossed the keeping-room, and was on the point of mounting the stairs when the little man rose, all smiles.

“Your grandson, Mrs. Cardover, I presume? He’s more of an Evrard than a Cardover—all except his mouth.”

He was introduced to me as Mr. Seagirt, the lawyer.

“Happy to know you, Mr. Cardover. Happy to know you, sir.” He pulled off his gloves and shook hands in a gravely formal manner. “We shall see more of one another as time goes on. I hope it most sincerely. In fact, I may say, from the way things are going, there is little doubt of it.”

We all sat down. There was a strange constrained atmosphere of excitement and embarrassment about both Mr. Seagirt and my grandmother. They balanced on the edge of their chairs, flickering their eyelids and twiddling their thumbs. Lawyer Seagirt kept up a hurried flow of procrastinating conversation, continually limiting or overemphasizing his statements.

“I have heard of what you did a day or two ago, Mr. Cardover—we have all heard of it. You have created an excellent impression—most excellent. The papers have been very flattering, but not more so than you deserve. Ransby feels quite proud of you. Though you are a Londoner, you belong to Ransby—no getting away from that. I suppose you’d tell us that you belong to Oxford. Ah, well, it’s natural—but we claim you first.”

All the time he had been talking he and my grandmother had been signaling to one another with their eyes, as though one were saying, “You tell him,” and the other, “No, you tell him.”

When they did make up their minds to take me inta their secret, they did it both together.

“Your grandfather—Sir Charles Evrard,” they began, and there they stuck.

At last it came out that my grandfather had expressed a wish to see me, and had sent Lawyer Seagirt to make the necessary inquiries about me. This action on his part could have but one meaning.

Two days later I was invited over to Woadley Hall to spend a week there. Before I went, I had an interview with Vi, in my grandmother’s presence. She promised me that she would not leave Ransby until after I returned. My fear had been that some spasm of caution might make her seize this opportunity to return to America.

I drove out to Woadley Hall late in the afternoon, planning to get there in time for dinner. I felt considerably nervous. I had been brought up in dread of Sir Charles since childhood. I did not know what kind of conduct was expected from me or what kind of reception I might expect.

As we swung in through the iron gates and passed up the long avenue of chestnuts and elms which led through the parkland to the house, my nervousness increased into childish consternation. The pride of ancestry and the comfortable signs of wealth filled me with distress. I belonged to this, and was on my way to be examined to see whether I could prove worthy. I was not ashamed of my father’s family, but I was prepared to be angry if anyone else should show shame of them.

Far away, on the edge of the green grassland, just where the woods began to cast their shadow, I could see dappled fallow-deer grazing. Colts, hearing us approaching, lifted up their heads and stared, then whisking their tails galloped off to watch us from behind their dams. Turrets and broken gables of the old Jacobean Hall rose out of the trees before us. Rooks were coming home to their nests in the tall elms, cawing. The home-farm lay over to our left; the herd was coming out from the milking, jingling their bells. A streak of orange lay across the blue of the west—the beginning of the sunset.

Immediately on my arrival, I was shown to my bedroom to dress. I began to have the sense of “belonging.” The windows looked out on a sunken garden, all ablaze with stocks, snap-dragon, sweet-william, and all manner of old-world flowers. In the scented stillness I could hear the splash of a fountain playing in the center. Beyond that were other gardens, Dutch and Italian, divided by red walls and terraces. Beyond them all, through the shadowed trees one caught glimpses of a lake, with swans and gaily-painted water-fowl sailing like toy-yachts upon its surface.

When the servant had left me, I commenced to dress leisurely. After that I sat down, waiting for the gong to sound. I wondered if this was the room where my mother had slept. How much my father’s love must have meant to her that she should have sacrificed so much prosperous certainty to share his insecure fortunes. Yet, as I looked back, it was a smiling face that I remembered, with no marks of misgiving or regret upon it.

I did not meet my grandfather until the meal was about to be served. I think he had planned our first encounter carefully, so that our conduct might be restrained by the presence of servants. His greeting was that of any host to any guest. Our conversation at dinner was on impersonal, intellectual topics—the kind that is carried on between well-bred persons who are thrown together for the moment and are compelled to be polite to one another. The only way in which he betrayed nervousness was by crumbling his bread with his left hand while he was conversing.

Finding that I was not anxious to force matters, he became more at his ease. He addressed me as Mr. Cardover, with stiff and kindly courtesy. We took our cigars out on to the terrace to watch the last of the sunset. He was talking of Oxford, and the changes which had taken place in the University since he was an undergraduate.

“I believe you are a Fellow of Lazarus, Mr. Cardover?”

“Yes.”

“I had a nephew there a few years ago, Lord Halloway, the son of my poor brother-in-law, the Earl of Lovegrove. You may know him.”

“Only by hearsay. He was before my time.”

My grandfather knocked the ash from his cigar. Then, speaking in a low voice, very deliberately, “I’m afraid you have heard nothing good about him. He has not turned out well.”

He paused: I felt that I was being tested. When I kept silent, he continued, “I have no son. He was to have followed me.”

Shortly afterwards he excused himself, saying that he was an old man and retired early to bed.

For six days we maintained our polite and measured interchange of courtesies. I was left free most of the time to entertain myself. He was a perfect host, and knew exactly how far to share my company without appearing-niggardly of his companionship or, on the other hand, intruding it on me to such an extent that we wore out our common fund of interests. For myself, I wished that I might see more of him. Never by any direct statement did he own that there was any relationship between us. Yet gradually he began to imply his intention in having me to visit him.

I would have been completely happy, had it not been that Vi was absent. I reckoned up the hours until I should return. All day my imagination was following her movements. I refused to look ahead to the certainty of approaching separation—it was enough for me that I could’ be near her in the present.

It was strange how poignant the world had become, how subtly, swiftly suggestive, since I had discovered her presence in it. All my sensations, even those outwardly unrelated to her, grouped themselves into a memory of her sweetness. It was a blind and pagan love she had aroused—one which recognized no standards, but craved only fulfilment.

There were times when I stood back appalled, as a man who comes suddenly to the edge of a precipice, when I realized where this love was leading. Then my awakened conscience would remind me of my promise—that we would be only friends.

These were the thoughts which now made me glad, now sorrowful, as I rode through the leafy lanes round Woadley at the side of my proud old grandfather. I would steal guilty glances at him, marveling that no rumor of what I was thinking had come to him by some secret process of telepathy. He looked so cold and unimpassioned, I wondered if he had ever loved a woman.

I began to love the Woadley country with the love which only comes from ownership. The white Jacobean Hall, with the chestnuts and elm-trees grouped about it and the doves fluttering above its gables, became the starting point for all the future chapters of my romance. I began to see life in its prosperous, substantial aspect. The stately dignity of my environment had its subconscious effect upon my lawless turbulence. In the morning I would wake with the rooks cawing and, going to the window, would look out on the sunken garden, the peaches ripening against the walls, the dew sparkling on the trim box-hedges, and the leaves beating the air like wings of anchored butterflies as the wind from the sea stirred them. Everywhere the discipline of history was apparent—the accumulated, ordered effort of generations of men and women dead and gone. I had been accustomed to regard myself as an isolated unit, responsible to myself alone for my actions.

The last evening on entering my bedroom, I noticed that there had been a change in the ornaments on my dressing-table. A gold-framed miniature had been placed in the middle of the table, face up, before the mirror. It was a delicate, costly piece of work done on ivory. I held it to the light to examine it, wondering how it had come there.

It must have been taken in the heyday of my mother’s girlhood, when all the county bachelors were courting her. The gray eyes looked out on me with bewitching frankness. The red lips were parted as if on the point of widening into laughter. The long white neck held the head poised at an angle half-arch, half-haughty. As I gazed on it, I saw that the similarity between our features was extraordinary. It was my grandfather’s way of expressing to me the tenderness that he could not bring himself to utter. .

After breakfast next morning, he led the way into the library. He looked graver and more unapproachable than ever. “Mr. Cardover, your visit has been a great pleasure to me. Mr. Seagirt will be here before you leave. Before he comes I wish to say that I want no thanks for what I am doing. It is more or less a business matter. All your life there have been strained relations between myself and your father, which it is impossible for any of us to overlook or forget. So far as you are concerned, you owe him your loyalty. I do not propose to bring about unhappiness between a father and a son by encouraging your friendship further. This week was a necessary exception; I could not take the step I have now decided on without knowing something about you.”

He cleared his throat and rose from his chair, as if afraid that I might lay hold of him. He walked up and down the library, with his head bowed and his right hand held palm out towards me in a gesture that asked for silence. He halted by the big French window, on the blind before which years ago I had watched his shadow fall. He stood with his back towards me, looking down the avenue. Then he turned again to me. The momentary emotion which had interrupted him had vanished. His voice was more cold and polite than ever. Only the twitching of the muscles about his eyes betrayed the storm of feeling that stirred him.

“In any case,” he said, “you would have inherited my baronetcy. Perhaps, you did not know that. I could not alienate that from you. The patent under which it is held allows it to pass, for one generation, through the female line to the next male holder. Until recently my will was made in the favor of my nephew, Lord Halloway. Circumstances have arisen which lead me to believe that such a disposal of my estate would be unwise. We Evrards have had our share of frailties, but we have always been noted as clean men. Something that I saw about you in the papers brought your name before my notice. I made up my mind then and there that, if you proved all that I hoped for, I would make you my successor. As I have said, this is a business transaction, in return for which I neither expect nor wish any display of gratitude.”

While we had been speaking I had heard the trot of a horse approaching. Just as he finished Mr. Seagirt entered.

“Mr. Seagirt,” said Sir Charles, “I have explained the situation to Mr. Cardover. Any communications he or I have to make to one another relative to the estate, we will make through you. If you have brought the will, I will sign it.”

He was fingering his pen, when I startled him by speaking. “Sir Charles, you have spoken of not encouraging my friendship. I am a grown man and of an age to choose my own friendships where I like, and this without offense to my father. I have another loyalty, to my dead mother—a loyalty which you share. If you care to trust me, I should like to be your friend.”

He took my hand in his and for one small moment let his left hand rest lightly on my shoulder. We gazed frankly into one another’s eyes without pretense or disguise. Then the shame of revealing his true feelings returned.

“We shall see. We shall see,” he muttered hastily; “I am an old man.”