The Half-Hearted, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  LADY MANORWATER'S GUESTS

  When the afternoon train from the south drew into Gledsmuir station, agirl who had been devouring the landscape for the last hour with eagereyes, rose nervously to prepare for exit. To Alice Wishart the countrywas a novel one, and the prospect before her an unexplored realm ofguesses. The daughter of a great merchant, she had lived most of herdays in the ugly environs of a city, save for such time as she had spentat the conventional schools. She had never travelled; the world of menand things was merely a name to her, and a girlhood, lonely andbrightened chiefly by the companionship of books, had not given herself-confidence. She had casually met Lady Manorwater at some politicalmeeting in her father's house, and the elder woman had taken a strongliking to the quiet, abstracted child. Then came an invitation toGlenavelin, accepted gladly yet with much fear and searching of heart.Now, as she looked out on the shining mountain land, she was full ofdelight that she was about to dwell in the heart of it. Something ofpride, too, was present, that she was to be the guest of a great lady,and see something of a life which seemed infinitely remote to herprovincial thoughts. But when her journey drew near its end she wasfoolishly nervous, and scanned the platform with anxious eye.

  The sight of her hostess reassured her. Lady Manorwater was a smallmiddle-aged woman, with a thin classical face, large colourless eyes,and untidy fair hair. She was very plainly dressed, and as she dartedforward to greet the girl with entire frankness and kindness, Aliceforgot her fears and kissed her heartily. A languid young woman wasintroduced as Miss Afflint, and in a few minutes the three were in theGlenavelin carriage with the wide glen opening in front.

  "Oh, my dear, I hope you will enjoy your visit. We are quite a smallparty, for Jack says Glenavelin is far too small to entertain in. Youare fond of the country, aren't you? And of course the place is verypretty. There is tennis and golf and fishing; but perhaps you don'tlike these things? We are not very well off for neighbours, but we arelarge enough in number to be sufficient to ourselves. Don't you thinkso, Bertha?" And Lady Manorwater smiled at the third member of thegroup.

  Miss Afflint, a silent girl, smiled back and said nothing. She had beenengaged in a secret study of Alice's face, and whenever the object ofthe study raised her eyes she found a pair of steady blue ones beamingon her. It was a little disconcerting, and Alice gazed out at thelandscape with a fictitious curiosity.

  They passed out of the Gled valley into the narrower strath of Avelin,and soon, leaving the meadows behind, went deep into the recesses ofwoods. At a narrow glen bridged by the road and bright with the sprayof cascades and the fresh green of ferns, Alice cried out in delight,"Oh, I must come back here some day and sketch it. What a Paradise of aplace!"

  "Then you had better ask Lewie's permission." And Lady Manorwaterlaughed.

  "Who is Lewie?" asked the girl, anticipating some gamekeeper orshepherd.

  "Lewie is my nephew. He lives at Etterick, up at the head of the glen."

  Miss Afflint spoke for the first time. "A very good man. You shouldknow Lewie, Miss Wishart. I'm sure you would like him. He is a greattraveller, you know, and has written a famous book. Lewis Haystoun ishis full name."

  "Why, I have read it," cried Alice. "You mean the book about Kashmir.But I thought the author was an old man."

  "Lewie is not very old," said his aunt; "but I haven't seen him foryears, so he may be decrepit by this time. He is coming home soon, hesays, but he never writes. I know two of his friends who pay a PrivateInquiry Office to send them news of him."

  Alice laughed and became silent. What merry haphazard people were theseshe had fallen among! At home everything was docketed and ordered.Meals were immovable feasts, the hour for bed and the hour for risingwere more regular than the sun's. Her father was full of proverbs onthe virtue of regularity, and was wont to attribute every vice andmisfortune to its absence. And yet here were men and women who got onvery well without it. She did not wholly like it. The littledoctrinaire in her revolted and she was pleased to be censorious.

  "You are a very learned young woman, aren't you?" said Lady Manorwater,after a short silence. "I have heard wonderful stories about yourlearning. Then I hope you will talk to Mr. Stocks, for I am afraid heis shocked at Bertha's frivolity. He asked her if she was in favour ofthe Prisons Regulation Bill, and she was very rude."

  "I only said," broke in Miss Afflint, "that owing to my lack of definitelocal knowledge I was not in a position to give an answer commensuratewith the gravity of the subject." She spoke in a perfect imitation ofthe tone of a pompous man.

  "Bertha, I do not approve of you," said Lady Manorwater. "I forbid youto mimic Mr. Stocks. He is very clever, and very much in earnest overeverything. I don't wonder that a butterfly like you should laugh, butI hope Miss Wishart will be kind to him."

  "I am afraid I am very ignorant," said Alice hastily, "and I am veryuseless. I never did any work of any sort in my life, and when I thinkof you I am ashamed."

  "Oh, my dear child, please don't think me a paragon," cried her hostessin horror. "I am a creature of vague enthusiasms and I have the senseto know it. Sometimes I fancy I am a woman of business, and then I takeup half a dozen things till Jack has to interfere to prevent financialruin. I dabble in politics and I dabble in philanthropy; I write reviewarticles which nobody reads, and I make speeches which are a horror tomyself and a misery to my hearers. Only by the possession of a sense ofhumour am I saved from insignificance."

  To Alice the speech was the breaking of idols. Competence,responsibility were words she had been taught to revere, and to hearthem light-heartedly disavowed seemed an upturning of the foundation ofthings. You will perceive that her education had not included thatvaluable art, the appreciation of the flippant.

  By this time the carriage was entering the gates of the park, and thethick wood cleared and revealed long vistas of short hill grass, risingand falling like moorland, and studded with solitary clumps of firs.Then a turn in the drive brought them once more into shadow, this timebeneath a heath-clad knoll where beeches and hazels made a pleasanttangle. All this was new, not three years old; but soon they were inthe ancient part of the policy which had surrounded the old house ofGlenavelin. Here the grass was lusher, the trees antique oaks andbeeches, and grey walls showed the boundary of an old pleasure-ground.Here in the soft sunlit afternoon sleep hung like a cloud, and the peaceof centuries dwelt in the long avenues and golden pastures. Anotherturning and the house came in sight, at first glance a jumble of greytowers and ivied walls. Wings had been built to the original squarekeep, and even now it was not large, a mere moorland dwelling. But thewhitewashed walls, the crow-step gables, and the quaint Scots baronialturrets gave it a perfection to the eye like a house in a dream. ToAlice, accustomed to the vulgarity of suburban villas with Italiancampaniles, a florid lodge a stone's throw from the house, darkened toowith smoke and tawdry with paint, this old-world dwelling was a patch ofwonderland. Her eyes drank in the beauty of the place--the great bluebacks of hill beyond, the acres of sweet pasture, the primeval woods.

  "Is this Glenavelin?" she cried. "Oh, what a place to live in!"

  "Yes, it's very pretty, dear." And Lady Manorwater, who possessed half adozen houses up and down the land, patted her guest's arm and lookedwith pleasure on the flushed girlish face.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Alice, having completed dressing, leaned out of herbedroom window to drink in the soft air of evening. She had not broughta maid, and had refused her hostess's offer to lend her her own on theground that maids were a superfluity. It was her desire to be a verypractical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet shehad taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent manyminutes before the glass. Looking at herself carefully, a growingconviction began to be confirmed--that she was really rather pretty.She had reddish-brown hair and--a rare conjunction--dark eyes andeyebrows and a delicate colour. As a small girl she had lamentedbitterl
y the fate that had not given her the orthodox beauty of the darkor fair maiden, and in her school days she had passed for plain. Now itbegan to dawn on her that she had beauty of a kind--the charm ofstrangeness; and her slim strong figure had the grace which a wholesomelife alone can give. She was in high spirits, curious, interested, andgenerous. The people amused her, the place was a fairyland and outsidethe golden weather lay still and fragrant among the hills.

  When she came down to the drawing-room she found the whole partyassembled. A tall man with a brown beard and a slight stoop ceased toassault the handle of a firescreen and came over to greet her. He hadonly come back half an hour ago, he explained, and so had missed herarrival. The face attracted and soothed her. Abundant kindness lurkedin the humorous brown eyes, and a queer pucker on the brow gave him theair of a benevolent despot. If this was Lord Manorwater, she had nofurther dread of the great ones of the earth. There were four othermen, two of them mild, spectacled people, who had the air of studentsand a precise affected mode of talk, and one a boy cousin of whom no onetook the slightest notice. The fourth was a striking figure, a man ofabout forty in appearance, tall and a little stout, with a rugged facewhich in some way suggested a picture of a prehistoric animal in an oldnatural history she had owned. The high cheek-bones, large nose, andslightly protruding eyes had an unfinished air about them, as if theirowner had escaped prematurely from a mould. A quantity of bushy blackhair--which he wore longer than most men--enhanced the dramatic air of hisappearance. It was a face full of vigour and a kind of strength,shrewd, a little coarse, and solemn almost to the farcical. He wasintroduced in a rush of words by the hostess, but beyond the fact thatit was a monosyllable, Alice did not catch his name.

  Lord Manorwater took in Miss Afflint, and Alice fell to the dark manwith the monosyllabic name. He had a way of bowing over his hand whichslightly repelled the girl, who had no taste for elaborate manners. Hisfirst question, too, displeased her. He asked her if she was one of theWisharts of some unpronounceable place.

  She replied briefly that she did not know. Her grandfathers on bothsides had been farmers.

  The gentleman bowed with the smiling unconcern of one to whom pedigreeis a matter of course.

  "I have heard often of your father," he said. "He is one of the localsupports of the party to which I have the honour to belong. Herepresents one great section of our retainers, our host another. I amglad to see such friendship between the two." And he smiled elaboratelyfrom Alice to Lord Manorwater.

  Alice was uncomfortable. She felt she must be sitting beside some verygreat man, and she was tortured by vain efforts to remember themonosyllable which had stood for his name. She did not like his voice,and, great man or not, she resented the obvious patronage. He spokewith a touch of the drawl which is currently supposed to belong only tothe half-educated classes of England.

  She turned to the boy who sat on the other side of her. The younggentleman--his name was Arthur and, apparently, nothing else--was onlytoo ready to talk. He proceeded to explain, compendiously, his doings ofthe past week, to which the girl listened politely. Then anxiety gotthe upper hand, and she asked in a whisper, _a propos_ of nothing inparticular, the name of her left-hand neighbour.

  "They call him Stocks," said the boy, delighted at the tone ofconfidence, and was going on to sketch the character of the gentleman inquestion when Alice cut him short.

  "Will you take me to fish some day?" she asked.

  "Any day," gasped the hilarious Arthur. "I'm ready, and I'll tell youwhat, I know the very burn--" and he babbled on happily till he saw thatMiss Wishart had ceased to listen. It was the first time a pretty girlhad shown herself desirous of his company, and he was intoxicated withthe thought.

  But Alice felt that she was in some way bound to make the most of Mr.Stocks, and she set herself heroically to the task. She had never heardof him, but then she was not well versed in the minutiae of thingspolitical, and he clearly was a politician. Doubtless to her father hisname was a household word. So she spoke to him of Glenavelin and itsbeauties.

  He asked her if she had seen Royston Castle, the residence of his friendthe Duke of Sanctamund. When he had stayed there he had been muchimpressed--

  Then she spoke wildly of anything, of books and pictures andpeople and politics. She found him well-informed, clever, and dogmatic.The culminating point was reached when she embarked on a stray remarkconcerning certain events then happening in India.

  He contradicted her with a lofty politeness.

  She quoted a book on Kashmir.

  He laughed the authority to scorn. "Lewis Haystoun?" he asked. "Whatcan he know about such things? A wandering dilettante, the worst typeof the pseudo-culture of our universities. He must see all thingsthrough the spectacles of his upbringing."

  Fortunately he spoke in a low voice, but Lord Manorwater caught thename.

  "You are talking about Lewie," he said; and then to the table at large,"do you know that Lewie is home? I saw him to-day."

  Bertha Afflint clapped her hands. "Oh, splendid! When is he comingover? I shall drive to Etterick to-morrow. No--bother! I can't goto-morrow, I shall go on Wednesday."

  Lady Manorwater opened mild eyes of surprise. "Why didn't the boywrite?" And the young Arthur indulged in sundry exclamations, "Oh,ripping, I say! What? A clinking good chap, my cousin Lewie!"

  "Who is this Lewis the well-beloved?" said Mr. Stocks. "I was talkingabout a very different person--Lewis Haystoun, the author of a foolishbook on Kashmir."

  "Don't you like it?" said Lord Manorwater, pleasantly. "Well, it's thesame man. He is my nephew, Lewie Haystoun. He lives at Etterick, fourmiles up the glen. You will see him over here to-morrow or the dayafter."

  Mr. Stocks coughed loudly to cover his discomfiture. Alice could notrepress a little smile of triumph, but she was forbearing and for therest of dinner exerted herself to appease her adversary, listening tohis talk with an air of deference which he found entrancing.

  Meanwhile it was plain that Lord Manorwater was not quite at ease withhis company. Usually a man of brusque and hearty address, he showed hisdiscomfort by an air of laborious politeness. He was patronized for abrief minute by Mr. Stocks, who set him right on some matter ofagricultural reform. Happening to be a specialist on the subject and anenthusiastic farmer from his earliest days, he took the rebuke withproper meekness. The spectacled people were talking earnestly with hiswife. Arthur was absorbed in his dinner and furtive glances at hisleft-hand neighbour. There remained Bertha Afflint, whom he hadhitherto admired with fear. To talk with her was exhausting to frailmortality, and he had avoided the pleasure except in moments ofboisterous bodily and mental health. Now she was his one resource, andthe unfortunate man, rashly entering into a contest of wit, foundhimself badly worsted by her ready tongue. He declared that she wasworse than her mother, at which the unabashed young woman replied thatthe superiority of parents was the last retort of the vanquished. Heregistered an inward vow that Miss Afflint should be used on the morrowas a weapon to quell Mr. Stocks.

  When Alice escaped to the drawing-room she found Bertha and her sister--ayounger and ruddier copy--busy with the letters which had arrived by theevening post. Lady Manorwater, who reserved her correspondence for thelate hours, seized upon the girl and carried her off to sit by the greatFrench windows from which lawn and park sloped down to the moorlandloch. She chattered pleasantly about many things, and then innocentlyand abruptly asked her if she had not found her companion at tableamusing.

  Alice, unaccustomed to fiction, gave a hesitating "Yes," at which herhostess looked pleased. "He is very clever, you know," she said, "andhas been very useful to me on many occasions."

  Alice asked his occupation.

  "Oh, he has done many things. He has been very brave and quite themaker of his own fortunes. He educated himself, and then I think heedited some Nonconformist paper. Then he went into politics, and becamea Churchman. Some old man took a liking to him and left him his money,and that was the condition. So I believe h
e is pretty well off now andis waiting for a seat. He has been nursing this constituency, and sincethe election comes off in a month or two, we asked him down here tostay. He has also written a lot of things and he is somebody's privatesecretary." And Lady Manorwater relapsed into vagueness.

  The girl listened without special interest, save that she modified herverdict on Mr. Stocks, and allowed, some degree of respect for him tofind place in her heart. The fighter in life always appealed to her,whatever the result of his struggle.

  Then Lady Manorwater proceeded to hymn his excellences in anindeterminate, artificial manner, till the men came into the room, andconversation became general. Lord Manorwater made his way to Alice,thereby defeating Mr. Stocks, who tended in the same direction. "Comeoutside and see things, Miss Wishart," he said. "It's a shame to miss aGlenavelin evening if it's fine. We must appreciate our rarities."

  And Alice gladly followed him into the still air of dusk which made hilland tree seem incredibly distant and the far waters of the lake mergewith the moorland in one shimmering golden haze. In the rhododendronthickets sparse blooms still remained, and all along by the stream-sidestood stately lines of yellow iris above the white water-ranunculus.The girl was sensitive to moods of season and weather, and she hadalmost laughed at the incongruity of the two of them in modern clothesin this fit setting for an old tale. Dickon of Glenavelin, the swornfoe of the Lord of Etterick, on such nights as this had ridden up thewater with his bands to affront the quiet moonlight. And now hisdescendant was pointing out dim shapes in the park which he said wereprize cattle.

  "Whew! what a weariness is civilization!" said the man, with comicaleyes. "We have been making talk with difficulty all the evening whichserves no purpose in the world. Upon my word, my kyloes have the bestof the bargain. And in a month or so there will be the election and Ishall have to go and rave--there is no other word for it, MissWishart--rave on behalf of some fool or other, and talk Radicalism whichwould make your friend Dickon turn in his grave, and be in earnest forweeks when I know in the bottom of my heart that I am a humbug and carefor none of these things. How lightly politics and such matters sit onus all!"

  "But you know you are talking nonsense," said the serious Alice. "Afterall, these things are the most important, for they mean duty and courageand--and--all that sort of thing."

  "Right, little woman," said he, smiling; "that is what Stocks tells metwice a day, but, somehow, reproof comes better from you. Dear me!it's a sad thing that a middle-aged legislator should be reproved by avery little girl. Come and see the herons. The young birds will beeverywhere just now."

  For an hour in the moonlight they went a-sightseeing, and came back verycool and fresh to the open drawing-room window. As they approached theycaught an echo of a loud, bland voice saying, "We must remember ourmoral responsibilities, my dear Lady Manorwater. Now, for instance--"

  And a strange thing happened. For the first time in her life Miss AliceWishart felt that the use of loud and solemn words could jar upon herfeelings. She set it down resignedly to the evil influence of hercompanion.

  In the calm of her bedroom Alice reviewed her recent hours. Sheadmitted to herself that she would enjoy her visit. A healthy andactive young woman, the mere prospect of an open-air life gave herpleasure. Also she liked the people. Mentally she epitomized each ofthe inmates of the house. Lady Manorwater was all she had picturedher--a dear, whimsical, untidy creature, with odd shreds of clevernessand a heart of gold. She liked the boy Arthur, and the spectacledpeople seemed harmless. Bertha she was prepared to adore, for behindthe languor and wit she saw a very kindly and capable young womanfashioned after her own heart. But of all she liked Lord Manorwaterbest. She knew that he had a great reputation, that he was said to beincessantly laborious, and she had expected some one of her father'stype, prim, angular, and elderly. Instead she found a boyish personwhom she could scold, and with women reproof is the first stone in thefoundation of friendship. On Mr. Stocks she generously reserved herjudgment, fearing the fate of the hasty.