 CHAPTER V. OF SONS OF FIRE Alan recalled the story which Mrs. Mornington had told him of Mr. Warnock's marriage and the mysterious birth of his son-in-air, mysterious in that it was a strange thing for an English gentleman with a fine estate to carry off his wife to a foreign country before the birth of her first child and to remain in exile from home and property until his son was three years old. Mystery of some kind, a secret sorrow or a secret shame must have been at the root of conduct so unusual and might not that secret include the story of the young wife's sin. Alan Carew had heard of husband so beneficent as to forgive that sin which to the mind of the average man lies beyond reach of pardon. Husbands who have taken back runaway wives and set the fallen idol once again in the temple of home life, husbands who knowing themselves old, ugly and unlovable have palliated and pardoned the passionate impulses of undisciplined girlhood, the sin in which there has been more of romantic folly than of profligate inclination. Husbands who have asked themselves whether they were not the darker sinners in having possessed themselves of creatures so lovely and so frail, so unadapted for a passionless work-a-day union with gray hairs and old age. It might be Alan thought that Mr. Warnock was one of these and that he had conveyed his young wife away from the scene of her sin and the influence of her betrayer and had hidden her shame and his dishonor in that quiet valley among the snow peaks and the glaciers. But if Mrs. Warnock had so sinned in the early days of her married life there must be people at Matjim who would remember the lover's presence at Discomb even although his real character had been undiscovered by the searching eyes of village censors. Lady Emily went back to her husband and her farm after a week at Beechhurst, a pleasant and busy week in which the mother's experience and good sense had been brought to bear upon all the details of the son's household and domestic possessions. Jade and linen, glass and china, books and ornaments. If it were not for your smoking room or drawing room or whatever you may be pleased to call it, your house would be obviously Philistine, said Lady Emily, but that is a really fine room and there are some pretty things in it. Some pretty things? Yes, there are a few, answered Alan, laughing at her tone of patronage. I was offered five hundred pounds for that piece of tapestry which hangs in front of the conservatory doors by a man who thinks himself a judge of such things. The room is full of treasures from the summer palace. My brother must have looted in utmost audacious manner. No, he bought the things afterwards, mostly from the French sailors who were licensed to steal or destroy. I believe the bronze is in porcelain and ivories and embroideries that the admiral bought for a few hundreds or worth as many thousands, but there they are and I must be very hard at before I disturb them. Alan called upon Mrs. Mournington the day after his mother's departure and was lucky enough to find that lady at home and alone. She was sitting in her veranda, sewing with a large basket of plain work on the ground beside her and her scissors and other implements on a wicker table in front of her, with climbing roses for background and a sunny lawn, a sunk fence and a paddock dotted with Jersey cows as an outlook. I'm at work for the guild, she said apologetically after shaking hands with Alan and she went on herring boning a flannel waistcoat, a waistcoat of that stout flannel which is supposed to have a kind of affinity with the skin of the agricultural laborer, although it can be worn comfortably by no other class. Alan knew nothing about the guild but was accustomed to see Mrs. Mournington's superfluous energy expending itself in some kind of needlework. He seated himself in the comfortable armchair to which she invited him and prepared himself for a long talk. Of course, he could not begin it once upon the subject of Mrs. Warnock that would have to be introduced casually. He talked about his mother and her regret of not having been able to stay till the following week when Mrs. Mournington was to give a small dance to which Lady Emily and her son had been invited. She can't be as sorry as I am or as she'd have managed to stay, replied Mrs. Mournington in her blunt style. She has my father to think of, she is never long away from him. Why don't he come too? I hope to get him for a week or so before the summer is over. He promises to come and look at my surroundings but he is very much of a recluse. He lives in his library. I daresay he will contrive to come when Philip and I are away on our August holiday. We always take a month on the continent just to keep us in touch with the outside world and to remind us that the earth doesn't end on the other side of Salisbury. Do you know why I am giving this dance? I'm sure it is from our conscientious motive to pay your debts. I find that most ladies' hospitalities are founded upon a system of exchange and barter. Cutlet for cutlet, as Lady London Derry called it. It is very rude of you to say that as if women had no real hospitality, no Mr. Carew, I owe no one anything in the dancing line and I'm not making one evening party pay for a whole year's dinners. I've known that done. I assure you, no, I am turning my house out of windows and making poor Phil utterly miserable for the sake of a certain young half-French niece of mine who is coming to live in this neighborhood with my brother Bob, her thoroughly English father. You mean General Vincent? Someone told me that he was related to you. Related? I should think he was related to me. He used to pull my hair. We wore long plaques in those days, don't you know, with a ferocity only possible in an elder brother. Poor dear old Bob, I am monstrously pleased at the idea of having him near me in our old age. He has been tossed and beaten about the world for the last 30 years at home and abroad and now he is to enjoy enforced leisure and the noble income which our country bestows upon a retired Lieutenant General. He has a little money of his own, fortunately, and a little more from his wife, so he will be able to live comfortably at Marsh House in a very quiet, unpretentious way, beyond en tendue. He is a widower, I conclude. Yes, his pretty French wife died 15 years ago. He met her in Canada, but she was a Parisian, poor son, and of a very good family. She had gone to Montreal with her mother to visit some relations, uncle, cousin, or whatnot. It was a very happy marriage and Suzette is a very charming girl. She is a papers with a faint sign, which of course is a pity, but even in spite of that she is a very sweet girl worthy that you should turn your house out of window in order to introduce her to the neighborhood in the pleasantest possible manner, said Allen. My greenhouse is only a bachelor's idea of glass, but any flowers there are shall be sent to add to your decorations, at least if you don't despise such poor aid. How truly nice of you every flower will be useful. I want to make the rooms pretty, since nothing can make them spacious. If I had only the manor house now, those noble rooms of which Mrs. Warnock makes so little use. Allen seized his opportunity. Mrs. Warnock is the most singular woman I've ever met. He exclaimed quickly, lest Mrs. Mornington should diverge to another subject. I took my mother to call upon her. Had she called upon Lady Emily, asked Mrs. Mornington, surprised. No, it was all together out of order. My mother told me, but I rather insisted upon her going to disco. I wanted her to see Mrs. Warnock, and I must say that Lady's Manor was calculated to excite wonder rather than admiration. I never saw a woman of mature years receive a visitor so awkwardly. Her shyness would have been remarkable in a bread and butter mist, just escape from the school room. That is so like Mrs. Warnock. The ways of society are a foreign language to her. Had you taken her a German organist with long hair or a spiritualist or an esoteric Buddhist, she would have received him with open arms. She would have been sympathica to the highest degree and would have impressed him with the idea of a sensitive nature, an intemperment akin to genius, while I dare say Lady Emily thought her a fool. She certainly did not give the Lady credit for superior intelligence. Of course not. She is not even average intelligence in affairs of social life. She has lived all these years at disco. She might be in touch with some of the best people in the county, and she has learned nothing except to play the organ. I believe she has toiled it that, concluded Mrs. Mornington contemptuously. I have have forgotten what you told me about her in the first instance. I think you spoke up a mystery in her early life. The only mystery was that old Warnock should have married her and that he should have told us nothing about her belongings. Had she been a lady, we must have heard something about her people in the last five and twenty years, yet there is a refinement about her which makes me think she could not have sprung from the gutter. The gutter, no indeed. She has an air of exceptional refinement. I should take her to be the offspring of an effete race, a crystallization. In her early married life, when she and Mr. Warnock were living together, at disco, she had friends, I presume. They must have had visitors occasionally, a house party. Not they, you must remember that it was not more than six months after Mr. Warnock brought his young wife home when he took her away again. But in the interim, interrupted Allen, eagerly they must have had visitors in the house. He would be proud to exhibit his pretty young wife. There must have been men and friends of his coming and going during that time. I think not. He was a very dry chip. And I don't think he had made many friends in the forty years he had reigned at disco and never heard of anyone staying in the house, either at that time or previously. He was hospitable in a casual way to the neighborhood while he was a bachelor, gave a hunt breakfast every winter and a good many dinners, but he was not a man to make friends. He was an ardent politician and an ardent radical and would have quarreled with anyone who wasn't of his way of thinking. A blank here, no hint of a two frequent visitor of one figure standing out against the quiet background of home life, of one person who's coming and going, had been marked enough to attract attention. Allen breathed more freely. It was no prurient curiosity which led him to pry into the secrets of the past. He wanted to know the truth. Yet it would have been agony to him to discover anything that would lessen his reverent admiration for his father, for his belief in his father's honor and high principle. Sitting idle in the sunshine beside Mrs. Mournington, he tried to think that there might be nothing more than eccentricity in Mrs. Warnock's conduct, no indication of a dark secret in her fainting fit or in her embarrassed manner during his mother's visit. Mrs. Mournington went back to the subject of her dance, her niece, her brother, his income, his establishment, and how much or how little he could afford to spend. She lamented the dearth of dancing men. Both my boys were away, she said, Luke with his regimen in Burma, Fred in London. He might run down for the evening if he liked, but you know what young men are, or perhaps you are more civilized than Frederick. He pretends to hate dancing parties, yet when we spent the winter a can, he was at a ball nearly every night. He despises my poor little dance. I'm sure your little dance will be delightful. I hope it will not be dull. I am straining every nerve to make it a sick, says. I shall have the house full of nice young people, and I shall have decent music. Only four men, but they will be very good men, and four will make quite enough noise in my poor little rooms. Mrs. Mournington's poor little rooms included a drawing room 30 feet long, opening into a spacious conservatory. There was a wide bay at the end of the room, which would accommodate the grand piano and the four musicians. Allen had to make a tour of inspection with the mistress of the house before he left, and to express his approval of her arrangements. There would be a comfortable old-fashioned sit-down supper, she said. Finally, I've asked a good many middle-aged people, and they will have to be fed. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, like the moth to the flame. A small dance in a bright airy country house on a balmy summer evening is about as pleasant a form of entertainment as can be offered to the youthful mind, not utterly satiated by metropolitan entertainments, by balls in park lane, where the flowers alone cost the price of an elderly spinster's annuity. Bachelor's balls and guard's balls, American balls in Calton Gardens, patrician balls in grand old London houses, built in the days when rank was as much apart from the herd and the newly rich as royalty. When rank and royalty moved hand in hand on a plateau of privilege and splendor as high above the commonality as Madrid is above the sea, Machin, which gave itself the airs common to all village communities, pretended to make very light of Mrs. Mornington's dance, a summer dance when everybody worth meeting was or ought to be in London. Happily for Mrs. Mornington, the inhabitants of Machin were a stay-at-home race who had neither money nor enterprise for much guiding. To go to Swanage or Budley, Salterton for a month or so while the leaves were falling was the boldest flight that Machin people cared about. There was always so much to do at home, golf, tennis, shooting, hunting, falconry, fishing for the enthusiasts of rod and line, and one's garden and stable all the year round, needing the eye of master and mistress. Except for the absence of the great shipbuilder's family at Hillerby height, three miles on the other side of Salisbury, the circle of Machin society was complete and the answers to Mrs. Mornington's cards were all acceptances. Alan went cheerfully enough to the party, but he did not go very early, and he had something of the feeling which most young men entertain or affect about dances, the feeling that he was sacrificing himself at the shrine of friendship. He danced well and he did not dislike dancing, liked it indeed when blessed with a good partner, but it is so rarely that a young man can escape the chances of partners that are not altogether good, and Alan felt very doubtful as to the dancing capacities of Machin. Those healthy out of door young women who went to about half a dozen dances in a year would hardly waltz well enough to make waltzing anything but toil and weariness. He approached the grove in that state of placid indifference with which a man generally goes to meet his destiny. He looks back in after time and remembers that equable frame of mind, hoping nothing, expecting nothing, content with his lot in life and in no wise eager to question or forestall fate. The grove was a long, low, stuccoed house built at the beginning of the century, a house spread over a considerable extent of ground. Tonight, with lights and flowers and all the doors and windows open to the summer gloom and lace draperies where doors had been and white gowned girls moving to and fro and the sound of a Strauss waltz, mixing with the voices of the idlers sitting in the hall. Mrs. Mornington's house was as pretty as a fairy palace and as much unlike itself in its workaday guise. Mrs. Mornington in black lace and diamonds with a black ostrich fan loomed with commanding bulk on the threshold of the dancing room. She wanted no steward, no master of the ceremonies to help her. Alone, she did it. Mr. Mornington walked about and pretended to be useful, but it was Mrs. Mornington who did everything. She received the guests. She introduced a few strange young men to the many local young ladies, as for the local young men whom she had seen grow up from sailor suits and mud pies to pink coats which marked them members of the South Serum hunt. Her dominion over these was absolute. She drove them about with threatening movements of her large black fan. She would not allow them rest or respite, would not let them hang together in corners to discuss the hunters. They were summering or the hunters they were thinking of buying or the probable changes in the management of the canals or any other subject dear to the minds of rusty youth. You have come here to dance, Billy Walcott, and not to talk of those wretched old screws of yours, said Mrs. Mornington. You can have that all out in the saddle room tomorrow when you are smoking with your grooms. Let me look at your program Sidney, not half full, I declare. Now go over to Miss Rycroft this instant and engage her for the next walls. Come now, Mrs. Mornington, that's rather too rough on me. A man may marry his grandmother, and surely there's some kind of law to forbid his dancing with a woman who looks like his great aunt. Sidney loved to oblige me. The dear old thing is gone to the expense of a new frock. She might have bought a little more stuff while she was about it, murmured the youth, on purpose for my dance, and somebody must give her a waltz. Come boys, who shall it be? Let's go into the garden and toss up, said Sidney Heathfield, but the other youths protested that they were engaged for every dance, and Sidney, who had come late and whose program was only half full, had to submit. I'll do it, Mrs. Mornington, he said, with serial comic resignation, on condition you give me a dance with Miss Vincent afterwards. If I do, she will have to cheat somebody else. Her program was full a quarter of an hour after she came into the room. My niece is a success. Young Heathfield made his way to a distant bench, where an elderly young lady of expansive figure, set off by a pink gauze frock, had been sitting for an hour and a half, smiling blindly upon her friends and acquaintance with a growing sense of despair. What had come over the young men of the present generation, when good dancers were allowed to sit partnerless and forlorn, it all came of the absence of men of standing and mature age at evening parties. Sensible men were so disgusted by the slang and boldness of chits, just escape from the school room that they held themselves aloof, and ballrooms were given over to boys and girls, and to romping gallops and kitchen lancers. Here was one sensible boy at least, thought poor, Miss Ryecroft, as Sidney Heathfield, tall, slim, studiously correct, stood looking solemnly down upon her asking for the next walls. Little did Miss Ryecroft dream of the pressure which had been put upon the youth by yonder matron whose voice was now heard loud and lively on the other side of the lace curtains. Mrs. Mornington was talking to Alan, how horribly late you are, Mr. Karoo, you don't deserve to find one nice girl disengaged. Even if I don't, I know one nice woman with whom I would as soon sit and talk common sense, as danced with the prettiest girl in matrim. If you mean me, said Mrs. Mornington, there will be no common sense talk for you and me tonight. I have all these young men to keep in order. Now Billy, suddenly attacking Mr. Walcott, who was talking mysteriously to a bosom friend about someone or something that was seven off with capped hocks, but a splendid leper. Billy, haven't I told you that you were here to dance, not to talk stables? There's Miss Follander, the girl from Torquay, who plays golf so well, sitting like a statue next to Mrs. Paddington Brown. Oh, Mrs. Mornington, grown the youth as he strolled off. What a life you lead us. I hope you don't call this hospitality. Am I not at least to be introduced to Miss Vincent, the heroine of the evening, asked Alan. The heroine of the evening is behaving very badly, said Mrs. Mornington. I don't think I'll ever give a summer dance again. I wish it had rained cats and dogs. Look at the dancing room half empty. Those young people are all meandering about the garden, picking my finest roses, I dare say, just to pluck them to pieces in the game of he loves me, he loves me not. What better use could be made of a garden and roses? As long as you have only the true lovers and no Mephistopheles or Martha, your garden is another Eden. But I must insist upon being introduced to Miss Vincent before the evening is over. I will do my best, said Mrs. Mornington, and then in a lower voice she told him that she had ordered her niece to keep a late number open for his name. She is a very nice girl and I think you are a nice young man and I should like you to know each other, concluded the lady with her bluff straightforwardness. Mr. Mornington, and an elderly stranger with iron gray hair and iron gray mustache, came across the hall at this moment. Here is my brother, cried Mrs. Mornington, Robert. I want to introduce Mr. Karoo to you. He is a new neighbor but a great favorite of mine. Alan stopped in the hall for about a quarter of an hour talking to General Vincent and Mr. Mornington and then he too was called to order by his hostess and was marched into the dancing room to be introduced to a dresden china young lady pink and white and blue eyed like Saxony Porcelain who had been brought by somebody and who was a stranger in the land. He waltzed with this young creature who was pretty and daintily dressed and who asked him various questions about Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge evidently with the idea that she was adapting her conversation to the locality. When the dance was over she refused his offer of an ice and suggested a turn in the garden. So Alan found himself among the meanderers under the starlit sky but there was no plucking of roses or marmering of loves me not loves me loves me not. No thought of Gretchen's impassioned love dream as the dresden china young lady and he promenaded solemnly up and down the broad gravel terrace in front of the open window still conversing sagely about Salisbury Cathedral and the decoration of the chapter house. While parading slowly up and down Alan found his attention wandering every now and then from the young lady at his side to another young lady who passed and repast with an elderly cavalier a tall slim young lady with black hair and eyes a pale brunette complexion and an elegant simplicity of dress and chevelure which Alan at once recognized as Parisian. No English girl he thought ever had that air of being more plainly dressed than other girls and yet more distinguished and fashionable. He'd seen no frock like this girl's frock but he felt assured that she was dressed in that Parisian fashion which is said to and to date London fashion by a 12 month. She was in white from head to foot and her gown was made of some dead white fabric which combined the solidity of satin with the soft suppleness of gauze. The bodice was rather short-waisted and the young lady wore a broad satin belt clasped with a diamond buckle which flashed with many colored gleams in the moonlight as she passed to and fro and whereas most young women at that time displayed a prodigious length of arm broken only by a narrow shoulder strap this young lady wore large puffed sleeves which recall the portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. The large puffed sleeves became common enough a year later but they were unknown when Mrs. Mornington gave her dance. The damsel silky black hair was coiled with artistic simplicity at the back of the prettily shaped head while a cloud of little careless curls clustered above the broad intelligent forehead. She was talking gaily with her companion Colonel Fording Bridge a retired engineer settled for some 15 years in the outskirts of Matchum and an intimate friend of Mr. Mornington's. He was telling her about the neighborhood holding it up to contempt and ridicule in a good-natured way which implied that after all it was the best neighborhood in the world. It soots an old fellow like me Alan heard him say plenty of sport of a mildish order hunting, fishing, shooting, hawking and golf. Hawking cried the young lady do you really mean that? I thought there were no more hawks left in the world why it sounds like the Middle Ages. Yes and I'm afraid you'll say it looks like the Middle Ages when you see a flight on the hills near Matchum. The members of the Falconry Club in this neighborhood are not all boys but the hawks exclaimed she where where can one see them. Have you really hawks? Inquired Alan's young lady who had exhausted Salisbury Cathedral and caught eagerly at another local subject. How utterly delightful do you go out with them very often? I blushed to admit that I've not even seen them though I know there are such birds kept in the neighborhood I've even been invited to become a member of the society and I'm seriously thinking about offering myself for election seriously thinking since two minutes ago be it understood for until he caught that speech from the unknown young lady he had hardly given the hawks a thought. She and her companion had disappeared when he and his porcelain lady turned at the end of the terrace do you know that girl who was talking about the hawks he asked yes I've been introduced to her she is the girl of the house I'm afraid you are missing a dance said Alan with grave concern we'd better go in had we not yes I fear I am behaving badly to somebody but it is so much nicer here than in those hot rooms infinitely preferable but one has a duty to one's neighbor they met a youth in quest of the porcelain girl oh Miss Mercer how could you desert me so long our walls is half over Alan breathed more freely having handed over Miss Mercer he made his way quickly to the hall where Mrs. Mornington was still on guard receiving the latest comers sending the first batch into the supper room and dictating to everybody I shall not leave your elbow do you have introduced me to Miss Vincent he said planting himself near his hostess if you don't take care you will have to give me some supper replied chief I'm beginning to feel sinking and I think it would be a good plan for me to supper early in order to see that things are as they should be Alan's heart also began to sink he knew what it meant to take a matron in to supper the leisurely discussion of salmon and cutlets the half bottle of champagne the gossip lasting half an hour at the least and while he was ministering to Mrs. Mornington what chance would he have of becoming acquainted with Mrs. Mornington's niece I should be proud to be so honored but think how many persons of greater age and dignity you will offend Colonel Fording Bridge for instance such an old friend Colonel Fording Bridge has just gone in with my niece oh in that case let me have the honor exclaimed Alan eagerly almost dragging Mrs. Mornington towards the supper room I should not like to have offended dear old Fording Bridge we may get seats at their table perhaps I told Suzette to go to one of the cozy little tables at the end of the room Suzette what a coquettish enchanting name he pushed past the long table where two rows of people were talking laughing gobbling as if they never died and had hardly tasted food for a week he pushed on to the end of the room where on each side of the fireplace now a mass of golden lilies and palms Mrs. Mornington had found space for a small round table a table which just held four people snugly if not commodiously one table had been made to accommodate six the other had just been left by the first batch of supper eaters Miss Vincent and Colonel Fording Bridge were standing there while a servant rearranged the table that's lucky said Mrs. Mornington Suzette I want to introduce my friend Mr. Carew to you Mr. Carew Miss Vincent and after supper he can take you to your father whom I haven't seen for the last hour I'm afraid he has gone home replied the young lady after smilingly accepting the introduction I heard him ask Mrs. Fording Bridge to take care of me if he should feel tired and be obliged to go home he can't bear being up late at night no wonder when he is out and about at daybreak the mornings are so nice said Suzette yes for people like you who can do without sleep people who have quick silver in their blood one learns to be fond of the early morning in India explained Suzette because every other part of the day is intolerable said Colonel Fording Bridge they were seated by this time and Mrs. Mornington was sipping her first glass of champagne with an air of supreme content while Alan helped her to lobster mayonnaise Suzette was on his other side and even while ministering to the elder lady his looks and his thoughts were on the younger how pretty she was and how interesting it seemed to him that he had never cared for English beauty the commonplace pinkness and whiteness chubby cheeks blunt noses cherry lips those delicate features that pale dark skin those brilliant dark eyes and small white teeth flashing upon him now and then as she smiled with the most bewitching mouth a mouth that could express volumes in a smile or by a pouting movement of the flexible lips it was a face that seemed all movement and sparkle eyes and lips danced with the guillotine of the young glad heart Alan and she were good friends in about five minutes he was questioning and she answering surely surely she did not like India as well as England a life of exile a life under torrid skies surely surely yes there were a hundred things that she loved in India those three years of her life in the northwest provinces had been years in fairyland it must have been because you were worshiped he said you lived upon adulation I'm afraid when a young lady is fond of India it means that she is not altogether innocent of vanity it is very unkind of you to say that how sorry you must feel when I tell you that the happiest half year I spent in India was when father was road making and the only other officer in camp was a fat married major an immense major as big as this table and you were happy how in all manner of ways writing rambling botanizing sketching and looking after father my niece is a miss Crichton she has all the accomplishments said Mrs. Mornington oh aunt that is a dreadful character to give me it means that I do nothing well Alan had asked her for a dance and there had been an examination of her program which showed only one blank auntie told me to keep that wall she said I don't know why I do it was kept for me I am the favored one but why she asked not evenly why you more than anyone else who can say will you call me vain if I tell you that I think I'm a favorite with your aunt she looked at him laughingly with a glance that asked the question you don't see any reason why I should be preferred said Alan but remember there never is any reason for such preferences clever women are full of prejudices he could perhaps imagine a region which he would not have had Suzette no perhaps among all the available young men in Mrs. Mornington circle he was the best placed with an ample income in the present and an estate that must be his in the future the best place of all except the young master of disco manner and the lord of disco was away while he alan was on the spot the thought of jeffrey warlock suggested a question they had left the little table to mrs. Mornington and colonel forwarding bridge who were able to take care of each other alan and miss benchin were going to the dancing room not by the nearest way but through a french window into the garden shall we take a little turn before we go back to the house I should like it of all things and you are not afraid of catching cold on such a night as this white in the hills I lived out of doors you have been at matching before I suppose yes father and I stayed here with auntie once upon a time long ago ages ago when I wore short petticoats and wasn't allowed late dinner heartless tyranny wasn't it I didn't know what to do with myself in the long summer evenings I used to go and look in at the dining room window where they were all sitting at dessert and auntie would wave me away go and play child play indeed even the gardeners had gone home and the dogs were shut up for the night I was glad when it was nine o'clock in bedtime poor victim of middle-aged egotism dear auntie she is so good but people don't understand children they forget what their own feelings were when they were little alas yes a child is as great a mystery to me today as if I've been born at one and twenty I can't even understand or interest myself in a lot of 15 he seems such an incongruous unnecessary creature stupid lumbering in everybody's way I can't realize the fact that he will ever get any better he is there complete in himself a being of a race apart I should feel insulted if anyone were to tell me I had ever been like him how true that is a sentence is that gaily I've felt just the same about girls I only began to wear my hair in a knot three years ago and yet there seems hardly one point of union between me and a girl with her hair down her back I've got beyond her as somebody says how sad that one should be always getting beyond things father detests India talks only the climate well to me it was all enchantment perhaps if I were to go back to the east a few years hence I should hate it very likely going back is always a mistake there was nothing exalted or out of the common in their talk but at least there was sympathy in it all and they were telling each other their thoughts as freely as if they had been friends of long years it was very different from being obliged to talk of Salisbury Cathedral and theorize on the history of Stonehenge and then there was the glamour of the garden and the moonlight the mysterious light and shade of shrubbery walks the blackness of the cedars that spread a deeper dark across the lawn mrs. mornington had taken care to choose a night when the midsummer moon should be at the full and she had abstained from cockney fine the garden with artificial light from those very lamps or chinese lanterns which are well enough within the narrow limits of a suburban garden but which could only vulgarize spacious grounds like these I'm glad you are almost a stranger to imagine mrs. vinson said allen after the first brief pause in their talk why because it is such a pleasure to meet someone who does not know jeffrey warlock and pray who is jeffrey warlock ah how delightful how refreshing it is to hear that mrs. vinson i am your devoted friend from this moment your friend did i say i am your slave command my allegiance and everything please be tranquil what does it all mean oh forgive me know then that hitherto everybody i have met in this place has greeted me by an expression of surprise at my resemblance to one jeffrey warlock happily now absent with his regiment in the east nobody has taken any interest in me except on the score of this likeness to the absent warlock my face has been criticized my features discounted upon one by one in my hearing i've been informed that it is in this or that feature in this or that expression that the likeness consists while i naturally don't care tuppence about the likeness or about warlock and to meet someone who doesn't know my double who will accept me for what i am individually oh mrs. vinson we ought to be friends say that we may be friends please don't rush on in such a headlong fashion you talk like the girls at the convent who wanted me to swear eternal friendship in the first half hour and perhaps turned out to be very disagreeable girls when one came to know them i hope i shall not turn out disagreeable i did not mean to be rude but friendship is a serious thing at present i have no friend except father and two girls with whom i've kept up a correspondence since i left the sacré cur one lives in bornmouth and the other in paris so our friendship is dependent on the post i think we ought to go back to the dancing room now i have to report myself to mrs. fording bridge and not to keep her later than she may wish to stay alan felt that he had been talking like a fool that he had presumed on the young lady's unconventional manner she had talked to him rightly and unrestrainedly and he had been pushing and impertinent the moonlight the garden the pleasure of talking to a bright vivacious girl had made him forget the respect due to the acquaintance of an hour he was silent on the way back to the ballroom silent and abashed but five minutes afterwards he was waltzing with susette who was assuredly the best waltzer of all that evening's partners and he felt that he was treading on air into chapter six chapter seven of sons of fire by mary elizabeth bradden this liverbox recording is in the public domain oh the rare springtime alan called it the grove two days after the dance called it the friendly hour when there was a certainty of afternoon tea that mrs. moornington were at home and when he thought it likely that mrs. vincent would be with her aunt she will almost live at the grove he thought as he walked towards that comfortable mansion which was nearly a mile from beach hearse marsh house is so near there is a path across the meadows by which she can walk in dry weather a girl living alone with her father will naturally turn to her aunt for companionship will take counsel with her upon all household affairs and will run in and out every day it was a disappointment after having made up his mind in this way to see no sign of susette's presence in the drawing room at the grove mrs. moornington was sitting in the veranda with her inevitable work basket just as he had found her a fortnight before when her brother's advent at marsh house and the dance at the grove were still in the future she received him with her accustomed cordiality but she did not ask him what he thought of her niece though he was dying to be questioned an unwanted shyness prevented his beginning the subject he sat meekly sustaining a conversation about the parish the wrongs and rights of the last clerical squabble till his patients could hold out no longer i hope general vincent likes match him he said at last not daring to touch nearer to the subject which absorbed his thoughts oh yes he likes the place well enough he has lived his life and can amuse himself with his poultry yard and will potter about with the hounds now and then when the cub hunting begins but i don't know how it will suit her you think miss vincent would prefer a livelier place of course she would prefer it the question is will she put up with this she has never lived in an english village though she has lived in out of the way places in india but then that was camp life adventure the sort of thing a girl likes her father idolizes her and has taken her about everywhere with him since she left the sakre kerr at 14 years of age she has lived at plummet at york at luck now she has had enough adulation to turn a wiser head than hers and yet so far as a man may venture to judge within the compass of an hour i don't think her head has been turned said alan growing bolder that says maybe she has a clever little way of seeming wiser than she is the nuns gave her that wise i think they have a wonderfully refining effect up on their pupils do you think her good looking good looking is an odious epithet to apply to such a girl she is exquisitely pretty i'm glad you admire her yes it is a dainty kind of prettiness ain't it exquisite is far too strong a word but i think she is a little superior to the common run of english girls i hope she may be able to endure it match them after all the country round is tolerably interesting oh i believe she will put up with it for her father's sake if he is happy here only no doubt she will miss the adulation she must not be allowed to miss it all the young men in the neighborhood will be her worshipers mrs. mournington shrugged her shoulders pursed up her lips and made a long slashing cut in a breadth of substantial calico the young men of the neighborhood will hardly fill the gap she said yourself accepted there is not an idea among them that is to say not an idea unconnected with sport if a girl doesn't care to talk about hunting shooting or golf there's no such thing as conversation for her in match them before alan could reply the drawing room door was thrown open and mrs. mournington rose to receive a visitor her seat in the veranda commanded the drawing room as well as the garden and she was always on the alert for arrivals alan rose is quickly expecting to see miss vincent mrs. warknock announced the youthful footman with a grand air perfectly cognizant of the lady's social importance to alan the appearance of the lady of disco was as startling as if she had lived at the other end of england yet mrs. mournington had told him that she and mrs. warknock exchanged three or four visits in the course of the year mrs. mournington greeted her guests with cordiality and the two women came out to the veranda together they offered a striking contrast and as types of the sex were the opposite poles of woman one of the world worldly large strongly built loud voiced resolute commanding a woman whose surplus power was accentuated by the petty sphere in which she lived the others lender and youthful and figure with a marked fragility of frame pale ethereal and with a girlish shyness of manner not wanting in mental power perhaps but likely to be thought inferior from the lack of self-possession and self-esteem all the social advantages which surrounded mrs. warknock of disco had been insufficient to give her the self-confidence which is commonly super abundant in the humblest matron who has passed her 40th birthday she gave a little start of surprise at finding allen in the veranda but the smile with which she offered him her hand was one of pleasure she took the seat which mrs. mournington offered her the most comfortable chair in the veranda and then began to apologize for having taken it i'm afraid this is your chair no no no sit where you are for goodness sake right mrs. mournington i never indulge myself with an easy chair till my day's work is done we're going to have our tea out here the servants were bringing table and tray as she talked i'm very glad you came to see me this afternoon for i dare say my niece will be running in presently my brother robert's daughter and i want you to call upon her i told you all about her the other day when i was at the manor would she like me to call do you think of course i will call if you wish it but i hardly think she will care i know that she will care replied mrs. mournington busy at the tea table she's not a great performer but she is almost as enthusiastic about music as you are she is a roman and those old masses of which you are so fond to mean more to her than they do to most of us allen's spirits have risen with the expectation of miss vincent's appearance he had been right in his conclusions after all he resumed his seat which was near enough to mrs. warnock's chair for a confidential talk you have quite deserted me mr. caru she said was gentle reproachfulness i thought you would have been to see me before now i did not want to seem intrusive you could not seem or be intrusive you are so much more to me than a common friend you remind me of the past of my son you would be almost as another son to me if you would let me think of you like that if she spoke quickly almost passionately and her low voice had a thrill of feeding in it which touched him deeply what a strange impulsive creature this woman was in spite of the timidity and reserve that had kept her aloof from that rural society over which she might have reigned as a queen before allen could reply to mrs. warnock's unfinished speech there came a welcome diversion in the shape of a large black poodle which rushed vehemently across the lawn stood on end beside mrs. morningsons gown for a moment or two sniffed the tea table wheeled round and rushed off again in a diagonal line towards the point whence he had come this sudden black appearance was followed by an appearance in pale lavender cambrick and a tall slim form of a very elegant young woman whose simple attire as at the ball bore the true peresian stamp that indescribable air of unlikeness to british dress which is rather a negative than a positive quality the brilliant dark eyes splashed a smile upon allen as the young lady allowed him to take her hand out langlaise after she had spoken to her aunt and been introduced to mrs. warnock your poodle is a little too bad susie he nearly knocked me and the tea table cleaned over that is one of the aunts innocent exaggeration said susette lappingly if you know her as well as i do mrs. warnock you must know that she always talks in a large way poor caro he is only a puppy and i think for a puppy his manners are perfect caro was crouching at her feet breathing hard for the space of half a minute as she spoke and then he rushed off again circling the lawn three or four times with spasmatic halts by his mistress or by the tea table he is rather a ridiculous dog at present apologize susette fondly watching these maneuvers but he is going to be very clever he has begun to die for his queen and he will do wonderful things when he is older i've been warned not to teach him too much while he is a puppy for fear of addling his brain i don't believe he has any brain to be addled or at least he must have added it for himself with that absurd rushing about said mrs. moornington dealing out the tea cups which allen meekly handed to the two ladies he had been to so many afternoon tea parties of late that he felt as if handing cups and sauces and cream and sugar were a kind of speciality with him in supplic he had never troubled about these things his time had been taken up with shooting or fishing yet allowed all social amenities to be performed by his mother unaided by him that match him he had become a new being a person to be called upon and to return calls with all the punctiliousness of a popular curate he wondered at himself as he performed these novel duties mrs. warnaught began to talk to susette constrainedly at first but the girls frank the vastity soon put her at her ease and then allen joined in the conversation and in a few minutes there were all three on the friendliest terms although the elder lady gradually dropped out of the conversation save for a word or two now and then when addressed by the other two she seemed content to sit by and listen while those two talked as much interested in them as they were interested in each other she was quick to perceive allen's subjugation quick to understand that he was surrendering himself without a struggle to the fascination of a girl who was not quite as other girls who had nothing hackneyed or conventional in person or manner after tea they all went round the lawn headed by mrs. mornington to look at her roses incarnations flowers which were her peculiar pride and care if i had such a garden as yours a day dreaming gardens i don't suppose i should take any trouble about a few beds of dwarf roses and picates she said to mrs. warnaught but these flower beds are all i have to console me for the philistinism of my surroundings oh but you have a really fine shrubbery urged allen remembering that promenade of the other night among the lights and shadows and the perfume of dewy conifers that built the deodara and arbiters and wrote addendrons and this fine expansive level lawn ought to satisfy any lady's ambition no doubt this garden of mine always reminds me of the church catechism it suggests that state of life to which it has pleased god to call me an eminently respectable upper middle-class garden most detestably modern while the grounds at discomb carry one back three centuries and one expects to meet fine gentlemen and roughs and doublets with roses on their shoes and talking like that book whose name i forget are abusing the new and detestable custom of smoking tobacco you will be in love with mrs. warnaught's garden susette and will give up all idea of improving the marsh house flower beds no i shan't give up however much i may admire protested susette sturdily if i had only a cottage garden i would toil early and late to make it beautiful there's plenty of room at marsh house that mrs. warnaught and the garden is capable of improvement when will you bring miss vincent to see me at my peacocks mrs. mournington pray let it be soon your niece and i have at least one taste in common and i think we ought to be good friends will you come to lunch and tomorrow you and miss vincent and you mr. crew if you are all disengaged for my part i would throw over any engagement that was capable of being evaded said mrs. mournington cheerly and then in an undertone to allen she added it will be a new sensation to eat a meal at the manner this burst of hospitality is almost a miracle allen accepted the invitation i'm hesitatingly and began to think mrs. warnaught the most delightful of women and to be angry with himself forever having suspected evil in her past history whatever was strange in her conduct in relation to himself and to his father must be accounted for in some way that would be consonant with godlessness and goodness that luncheon at disco menna was the beginning of a new phase in allen crew's existence all things must begin someday and love serious and earnest love is one of the things which have their beginning and his beginning is sweeter than all the other first fruits of life it is not to be supposed that allen was altogether a stranger to tender emotions that he had come to five and twenty years of age without ever having fancied himself in love he had had his boyish loves and they had ended in disappointment the blighting wind of satiety had swept across his budding loves before they had time to flower all those youthful goddesses of his have shown him too soon and too plainly that there was very little of olympian grandeur about them as an only son with good prospects he had been rudely awakened to the cruel truth that the average young lady has a sharp eye to the main chance and that he allen crew was measured by his expectations rather than by his merits very early in his youth he made up his mind that he would never let his heart go out to any woman who contemplated marriage from a business standpoint and he had been keenly on the watch for the canker of worldliness among the flowers and luckily for his chances of matrimony the prettiest girls he had met here the two have been the most worldly trained perhaps to worldliness on account of their marketable qualities much as he admired high-mindedness in woman he was not high-minded enough to seek out virtue under an unattractive exterior so he had almost made up his mind to follow his uncle's example and go through life a bachelor as a bachelor he might count himself rich and for a bachelor beachhurst was an admirable dwelling place the house had been built for a bachelor the rooms were spacious but few twice as many bedrooms best and secondary would be required for a family man thinking vaguely of the possibility of marriage allen had shuttered as he thought of an architect exploring that delightful upper floor measuring walls and tapping partitions and discussing the best point at which to throw out a nursery wing and where to add three or four servants bedrooms and behold now this prudent far-seeing young man whose philosophy hitherto had been the philosophy of pure selfishness was allowing himself to fall in love with a young lady who for all he could tell might be just as mercenary and worldly minded as the girls he had met in Suffolk shooting parties or in London ballrooms he had no reason to suppose her any better than they her father was a man of moderate means and according to all the rules of modern life it would be her duty to make a good marriage he remembered how mrs. mornington had ordered her knees to save a dance for him and he might conclude from that another small fact that the aunt would favor him as a suitor for the knees yet the idea of worldly mindedness never entered his thoughts in relation to susette he abandoned himself to the charm of her delightful individuality without the faintest apprehension of future disillusion he thought indeed but little of the future the joys of the present were all sufficing to talk with her in unrestrained frivolity glancing from theme to theme but always with a grain of sentiment or philosophy in their talk to walk the cider in those stately alleys at disco or to linger in the marble temple to follow the peacocks along the grass walks to look for the nests of the thrushes and blackbirds in the thick walls of laurel to plan garden plays twelve night midsummer nights dream in that grassy amphitheater which reminded allen of the baboli gardens these things made a happiness that filled mind and heart to the exclusion of all thought of the future i can understand the lilies better now than when i was first told to consider them said allen one day as he stood with susette beside a great bed of liliam r-rautum how do you mean because i am as happy as they are and take no more heat of the future than they do i feel as they feel when they sway gently in the summer wind and bask in the summer sun fed with the dues of night having all things that are good for flowers satisfied and happy you are as foolish as i am i can't help dancing sometimes that flowers are alive and can feel the sun and the glory of the blue sky to be always looking up at the sky dumb lifeless not knowing one would hardly care for flowers if one could realize that they have neither sense nor feeling yet i suppose one does realize that cruel fact sometimes i know when i have been looking at the roses and delighting in their beauty caro meets me as i go back to the house as he leaps and frisks about me the difference between him and the flowers strikes me very keenly they so beautiful and so far off he's so near and dear the precious living thing ah that is the crown of things miss vissen life dead loveliness is nothing in comparison no said susette and what a blessing that life is beautiful in itself one can love ugly people one may adore an ugly dog but who ever cared for an ugly chair or could become attached to an ugly house not knowingly but i've known people fondly attached to the most hideously furnished rooms i know how humiliating it is for middle-aged people like my mother to be obliged to admit that the things we think hideous were accounted beautiful when they were young this easy trivial talk was the growth of more than one lunch and a good many tea drinkings in the music room or in the gardens of disco missus warlock had opened her heart and her house to susette as she had never before done to any young lady in the neighborhood and susette warmly reciprocated the kindness of the recluse she ran in at the manor house almost as unceremoniously as she ran in at the grove he was understood by the servants that their mistress was always at home to miss vissen and as alan had previously been made free of the manor house it was only natural that he and susette should meet very often under mrs warlock's mild chaperoneage mrs mournington knew of these meetings and indeed often dropped in while the young people were there coming to take susette home in her pony carriage or to walk with her through the lanes she showed no sign of disapproval yet as a woman of the world it may have occurred to her that since mrs warlock was so fond of susette it might be wise for susette to refrain from attaching herself to alan karoo while a superior party remained in the background in the person of mrs warlock's only son happily for alan mrs mournington although essentially mundane was not a schemer she had made up her mind that alan was a good deal better than the average young man and that beechhurst was quite good enough for her niece whose possessions and expectations were of a very modest order there had been no mock humility in mrs mournington's statement of facts when she told alan that her brother's income from all sources was just big enough to enable him to live respectively at marsh house the foliage was beginning to show gleams of gold and red amidst the somber green of late summer the hounds were beginning to meet at seven o'clock in the crisper clear mornings of september and alan karoo was beginning to feel himself the bond slave of a young lady about whose sentiments towards himself he was still entirely in the dark did she care for him much a little not at all alan karoo was continually asking himself those questions and there was no oracle to answer him no oracle even in his inner consciousness which told him nothing of susette's feelings he knew that he loved her but he could recall no word or look of hers which could assure him that she returned his love it was certain that she liked him and that his society was pleasant to her they had an infinite series of ideas in common they thought alike upon most subjects and she seemed no more too weary of his society than he of hers yet there were times when he thought he might have been near winning her love had she liked him less her friendship seemed too frank even to ripen into love he would have liked to see her start and bludge at his coming she didn't either but received him with her arius grace and had always her laughter ready for his poor jokes her intellect on the alert for his serious speech about books or men she was the most delightful companion he had ever known but a sister could not have been more at her ease with him i sometimes think you take me for one of your old convent friends he said one day when she had prided to him of her housekeeping in her garden as they walked up and down the long grass alley while the music of the organ came to them now loud with the lessening distance now sinking slowly to silence as they walked further from the house oh no i should never take you for anyone so patrician and distinguished as lauri de bovet or athenaeus de la roge she answered laughingly i should never dare to talk to them about eggs and butter the obstinacy of a cook at 25 pounds a year the ignorance of a garden who is little better than a day laborer but perhaps i'm wrong to talk to you of these everyday cares i will try to talk as i would to athenaeus i will dispute the merit of la martine's wiring as compared with hugo's ode to the king of rome i was for hugo athenaeus for la martine we used to have terrible battles and now athenaeus is married to a financier and as a palace in the park mong so and gives balls to all paris and i'm living with father in a shabby old house with remades and a man of all work talk to me as you like he said talk to me as your surf your slave and then without a moment's pause in which to arrange his thoughts surprised into a revelation which he had intended indefinitely to defer he told her that he was in very truth her slave and that he must be the most miserable of men if this avowal of his love touched no answering court in her heart she who was habitually so gay grew suddenly great almost to sadness and looked at him with an expression which was half-rightened half-reproachful oh why do you talk like this she cried we have been such friends so happy shall we be less friends or less happy when we are lovers that word when touched her keen sense of the ridiculous when we are lovers she echoed smiling at him you take everything for granted i have no alternative between confidence and despair really really now am i really necessary to your happiness you are my happiness i come here or i go to the grove and i find you and i'm happy when i go away i leave happiness behind me except the reflected light of memory except the dreams in which your image floats about me in which i hear your voice the sweet voice that is kinder in my dreams than it ever is in my waking hours surely i am never unkind no but in my dreams you are more than kind you are my own and my love you are what i hope you will be soon susette soon life's morning is so short let us spend it together they were in the temple at the end of the cypress walk and in that semi-sacred solitude his arm had stolen round her waist his lips were seeking hers gently yet with the force which it needed all her strength to oppose no no you must not i can promise nothing yet i've had no time to think no time oh susette you must have known for the last six weeks that i adore you indeed i'm not vain enough to imagine myself adored i think i knew that you liked me almost from the first liked and admired you from the very first interrupted alan my aunt said things hinted and laughed and was all together absurd but ones can spoke are so vain yes when they have a goddess born among them oh please don't be too ridiculous you know that i like you but as for loving i must have a long long time to think about that you shall think as long as you like so long as you do not withdraw your friendship i cannot live without you why should i cease to be your friend only promise that you will never again talk or behave as foolishly as you have done this afternoon i promise solemnly promise until you give me leave to be foolish he concluded with a touch of tenderness he felt that he had been precipitated that he might by this temerity have brought upon himself banishment from the eden in which he was so happy he'd been overbold in thinking that the time which had sufficed for the growth of passionate love on his part was enough to make this charming girl as fond of him as he was of her he was ashamed of his own arrogance the degrees of their merit were so different she are being whom to know was to love he a very commonplace young man susette was quite as easy in our manner with him after that little outbreak as she had been before he had promised not to renew the attack and in her simple truth from this she believed all promises sacred between well-bred people mrs. morrington dropped in at tea time ready to drive her niece home it was a common thing now for susette to spend the whole day at discom playing classical duets with mrs. warlock or sitting quietly by her side reading or musing while she played the organ the girl's religious feeling gave significance to that noble music of the old german and italian masses which to other heroes were only music the acquaintance between the elder woman and the younger had ripened by this time into a friendship which was not without affection mrs. warlock is my second aunt and discom is my second home said susette explaining the frequency of her visits and the grove does not that count as home asked mrs. morrington with an offended air it is so much my home that i don't count it at all it is more like home than marsh house both for father and for me later when the pony carriage was taking aunt and niece along the road to match him susette said suddenly after a silent auntie would it be a shock to your nerves if i were to tell you something that happened today my nerves are very strong susie what kind of thing was it and did it concern mr caru par exempla how clever you are at guessing yes it was mr caru he proposed to me and of course you accepted him of course oh auntie what do you think i made up i've only known him about two months what of that if you had been brought up in the french fashion and a very sensible fashion it is to my thinking you would have only seen him two or three times before you marched up to the altar with him surely you did not reject him i may not have said positively no but i told him that it was much too soon that i could not possibly love him after such a short acquaintance and that if we were to go on being friends he must never speak of such a thing again never i think the word was never or at any rate for a long long time and he promised he will keep his promise no doubt well susette all i can say is that you must be very difficult to please i don't believe there is another girl in matchin who would have refused alan caru what are all the young ladies in matchin so much alike that the same young man would suit them all have they know individuality they have individuality enough to know a good young man with an excellent position in life when they see one i believe your father will be as disappointed as i am disappointed because i'm not in a hurry to leave him i don't know my father if he is capable of such unkindness susette that little mind of yours is full to the brim of high flow notions retorted her aunt impatiently dear auntie surely you are not angry yes susie i am angry because i have a very high opinion about alan caru i consider him a pearl among young men really aunt and if he were a poor curate or a barrister without what do you call him briefs yes briefs would he be a pearl then he would be just as good a young man but not a husband for you don't expect romantic ideas from me susette if i ever was romantic it was so many years ago that i've quite forgotten the sensation and you cannot conjure back your youth in order to understand me said her niece musingly you are not like mrs warlock whose mind seems always dwelling upon the past has she talked to you of her youth mrs morrington asked quickly not directly but she has talked vaguely sometimes of feelings long dead and gone of the dead whom she loved her father whom she lost when she was 17 and whose spirit as she thinks holds communion with her in her long solitary daydreams at the organ he was a musician like herself passionately fond of music i hope you will not take up any of mrs warlock's fads not unless you call music of that no no music is well enough and i like you to practice and improve your playing but i hope you will never allow yourself to believe in port mrs warlock's nonsense about spirit wrapping and communion with the dead you must see that the poor woman is okay i see that she is dreamy and i'm not carried away by her dreams i think you're the most interesting woman i ever met don't be jealous auntie darling i should never be as fond of her as i am of you i hope not only i can't help being interested in her she is sympathica sympathica i hate the word i never heard anyone talked of as sympathica who hadn't to be in her bonnet i really don't know if your father ought to allow you to be so much at the manner i'm going to take him to see mrs warlock tomorrow afternoon i know he will be in love with her it would be a very good thing if he were to marry her and make a sensible woman of her mrs warlock with a second husband the idea is hateful she would cease to interest me if she weren't so commonplace as to marry i prefer her infinitely with what you call her fads craved age and youth cannot live together said mrs warrington quoting one of the few poets with whom she had any acquaintance you and i would never think alike i suppose young woman and so you refused mr crew and told him never to talk to you of love or wedlock and you refused beachers yonder pointing with her whip across the heath to where the white walls of allen crew's house smiled in the afternoon sunlight i know what your uncle warrington will say when i tell him what a little fool you have been auntie why is it you want me to marry mr crew susette asked pleadingly is it because he is rich is it for the sake of beachers no miss minx it is because i believe him to be a good young man a gentleman and as true as steel susette gave a little sigh and for a minute or so was dumb do you know why i have always been glad that my father is an englishman she asked presently why because he is an englishman i suppose i should think any girl would be english if she could no auntie i'm not so proud of my father's country as all that i've been glad of my english father because i knew that english girls are allowed to make their own choice in marriage and the very pretty use you are going to make of your privileges refusing the best young man in the neighborhood if you were my daughter i should be half inclined to send for one of those whipping ladies we read about and have you brought to your senses that way no you wouldn't auntie you wouldn't be unkind to daughter or to niece well you have your father to account to what will he say i wonder only that his susie is to do just as she likes do you know that i refused a young subaltern up at the hills a young man with an enormous fortune whomever so many girls were trying to catch girls and widows too he might have had a large choice and what did my brother say to that he only laughed and told me that i knew my own value mrs morrington was thoughtful for the rest of the way perhaps after all it was a good thing for a girl to be difficult to please a girl as bright and as pretty as susette could afford to give herself airs allen would be sure to propose to her again and then there was jeffrey warlock who was expected home before christmas who could tell if jeffrey might not be as deeply smitten with this charming hybrid as allen and this home was to be cherished as sunlight into moonlight in extensiveness and value and yet i would rather she should marry caru muse mrs morrington i should be afraid of young warlock end of chapter seven chapter eight of sons of fire by mary elizabeth bradden this liber rocks recording is in the public domain not yet allen was dashed by susette's refusal to accept him on any other footing and that of friendship and he was angry with himself for having spoken too soon the only comfort left him was her willingness to consider him still her friend and this was cold comfort and in some wise more disheartening than if she had been more angry yet in his musings he could but think that she liked him better than a mere average acquaintance and now and then they're still across his mind the flattering hope that she liked him better than she herself knew he recalled all those happy hours they had spent together with only mrs warlock to make a third mrs warlock who so often crept away to her beloved organ and left them to loiter in the gardens or sit in one of the deeply recessed windows quite alone alone and talking in whispers while the music filled the room or a string far off in the stately plazance where their light laughter could not disturb the player they had talked together often enough and long enough to have explored each other's minds and imaginations and they had found that about all great things they thought alike while their differences of opinion about the trifles of life gave them subjects for merciful argument occasions for disagreeing only to end in agreement susette complained that alan's university training made all argument unfair how could she an illogical prejudiced woman maintain her ground against a master of dialectics in all their companionship he could remember no moments of ennui no indication upon the young lady's part that she could have been happier elsewhere than in his company this was at least encouraging the dual solitude seemed to have been as pleasant to her as it was to him she had confided in him in the frankest fashion she had told him story after story of her convent life of her friends and chosen companions she had talked to him as a girl might talk to a cousin whom she liked and trusted and how often does such liking ripen into love an attachment truer and more lasting than that hot headed love at first sight born of the pleasure of the eye and taking shallowest root in the mind alan's musings ended in a determination to cultivate the friendship which had not been withheld from him and to trust her time for the growth of love he was anxious to see susette as soon as possible after that premature avowal which had stirred the calm current of their companionship less she should have time to ponder upon his conduct and to feel embarrassed at their next meeting she had told him that she was going to the golf links for practice before breakfast on the following morning so at eight o'clock alan made his appearance on the long stretch of rather rough common land which boarded the salisbury road half a mile from beachhurst and which was distinguished from other waste places by the little red flags of the golf club she was there as fresh as the morning in her blue surge frock and sailor hat attended by a small boy and with the vicar's youngest daughter for her companion she blushed as they shook hands blushed and then distinctly laughed and the laugh frank as it sounded was the laugh of a triumphant co-cat for she was thinking of her aunt's indignation yesterday afternoon and thinking how little it mattered her refusing a man who was so absolutely her slave proposed to her again for soothe why of course he would propose to her again and again and again as that foolish young subaltern had done at similar where all men as foolish susette wondered and had all young women as much liberty of choice she glanced involuntarily at the vicar's youngest daughter regretted by her family as the flower of the flock but of a very humble degree in the floral world a fresh colored putting face girl with small eyes and a pugnose but with a tall well-developed figure of the order that is usually described as fine the gulf went on in a desultory way alan strolling after the players and venturing a remark now and then as suggested by a single summer's experience at st andrew's when the hour's practice was over and it was time for the two young ladies to hasten home to their respective breakfast tables he accompanied them on their way and after having left miss bessie edgefield at the vicarage gate he had susette alter himself for something under a quarter of a mile they met mrs. mournington a little away from marsh house selling out for her morning conference with butcher and fish monger the business of providing mr. mournington's dinner being too important to be left to the hazards of cook and shopkeeper it was necessary that mrs. mournington's own eye should survey saddle or sirloin and measure the thickness of to her bow or soul she greeted the two young people with jovial heartiness and rejoice beyond measure at seeing them together after all perhaps susette had done well in refusing the first offer the poor young man was evidently her slave or if jeffrey should fall desperately in love with her and use mrs. mournington on her way to the village street not quite heroic enough to put the owner of disco manor altogether out of her calculations but no i shouldn't care about that it would be too risky that which mrs. mournington would not care about was the mental tendency that jeffrey might inherit from his mother whom the strong-minded clear-headed lady regarded as a visionary if not a harmless lunatic no jeffrey was clever interesting fascinating even but he was not to be compared with allen whose calm common sense had won mrs. mournington's warmest liking after that morning on the links and the friendly home would walk allen felt more hopeful about susette but he was not the last bent upon bringing to bear every influence which might help him to win her for his own before any other suitor should come forward to dispute the prize with him happily for him there were few eligible young men in the neighborhood and those few thought more of horses and guns than of girlhood and beauty lady emily had promised her son a visit in the autumn allen hoped that his father would accompany her he wanted to bring susette into the narrow circle of his home life to bring her nearer to himself by her liking for his mother and father with this intent he urged on the promised visit delighted at the thought that his mother's presence would enable him to receive susette as a guest in the house very hoped she would someday be mistress he wrote to his father reminding him of his assurance that he would not always remain a stranger to his son's home and this letter of his which dwelt earnestly upon certain unexplained reasons why he was especially anxious for his father's early presence at beechhurst was not without effect the recluse consented to leave his library which perhaps was no greater sacrifice on his part than lady emily made in leaving her white farm indeed one of the inducements which allen held out to his mother was the promise of a pair of white peacocks from mrs. warlock finer and whiter than the birds at then dyke mr. karoo professed himself pleased with his son's surroundings your house is like the good man who bequeathed to you he said after his tour of inspection essentially comfortable solid and commonplace the admiral had a grand solidity of character but even your mother will not deny that he was commonplace lady emily nodded a cheery assent she always agreed with her husband on all points that did not touch the white farm there her opinions were paramount and she would not have submitted to dictation in so much as the ears of a rabbit i could hardly forgive my brother for building such a house if he hadn't left it to your son interrupted her husband no george that is not what i was going to say i could not forgive his philistine taste if he had not brought home all those delicious things from china and built the mandarin's room that is the redeeming feature which makes the house worth having everyone admits that it is a fine room said allen there is no such room in the neighborhood except at discomb your father must see discomb allen we must introduce him to mrs. warlock i think not mother he would be insufferably bored by a woman who believes in spirit wrapping sees visions and plays the organ for hours at a stretch his father looked at him intently who is this person he asked quickly a rich widow whose son is lord of the manner of discomb one of the most important places between here and salisbury and she believes in spiritualism curious and that lady living in the country i thought that kind of thing had died out with home and the famous article in the cornhill magazine we have had later prophets eglinton for instance with his materializations and his slate writing i don't think the spiritualistic idea is dead yet in spite of the ridicule which the outside herd has cast upon it i hope the widow lady is not beguiling you into sharing her delusions allen the son had seen a look in the father's face which spoke to him as plainly as any spoken words that look had told him that his description of mrs. warlock conjured up some thrilling image in his father's mind he saw that startled wondering look come and go slowly fading out of the grave and gentle face as the mind dismissed the thought which allen's words had awakened surely it was not a guilty look which have troubled his father's mild countenance rather a look of awakened interest of eager questioning i should hate to see allen taking up any nonsense of that kind said lady emily with her practical air but really if this mrs. warlock were not 20 years older than he i should suspect him of being in love with her she is a pretty delicate looking woman with a shy girlish manner and looks ridiculously young to be the mother of a grown-up son oh she has a grown-up son has she asked mr. karoo she belongs to this part of the country i suppose and is a woman of good family he looked at his son but for some reason of his own allen parried the question i know hardly anything about her except that she is a very fine musician and that she has been particularly kind to me he said there george cried lady emily didn't i tell you so the foolish boy is half in love with her you will not say that after tomorrow mother shall i not but why you will lose all interest in tomorrow if i tell you go on wondering mother dear till tomorrow and tomorrow i will tell you a secret but remember it is not to be talked about to anyone in matching should i talk of a secret allen i don't know i have an idea that secrets are the staple of tea table talking of village poor village for how much it has to bear the blame and yet people are worse gossips and mayfair and belgravia only because they have more to talk about allen had arranged a luncheon party for the following day his courage had failed at the idea of a dinner the lengthy ceremonial the fear of failure if he demanded too much of his cook the long blank space after dinner with its possibility of ennui luncheon was a friendlier meal and would less heavily tax the resources of a bachelor's establishment and then there was the chance of being able to wander about the garden with susette after dinner the hope of keeping her and her father till tea time when the other people had gone home though people do not disperse so speedily after a country luncheon as in town and it might be that everybody would stop to tea no matter if he could steal away with susette to look at the single dalleys in the west garden fenced off from the lawn by a clip laurel hedge leaving lady emily and mrs moornington to entertain his guests he'd asked mr and mrs moornington general vencent and his daughter mr edgfield the vicar and his daughter besi susette's antagonist at gall mr mrs robach a youngish couple who prided themselves on being essentially of the great world towny cosmopolitan anything but rusty and who insisted on talking exclusively of london and the river era to people who rarely left their native gardens and paddocks mr robach had been officially civil to ellen and he had felt constrained to invite him the invitation was on mrs moornington's principle of payment for value received ellen had invited mrs warlock he had even pressed her to be of the party but she had refused i don't care for society she said i'm out of my element among smart people there will be very little smartness only the robux and one may say of them as be it for a set of benedict it is a wonder they will still be talking for nobody minds them seriously now mrs warlock i should like you to meet my father you are very kind but you must excuse me don't think me brood or ungrateful ungrateful why it is i who ask a favor but i am grateful for your kindness and wishing to have me at your house i will go there someday with susette when you are quite alone and you shall show me the mandarin room that is too good of you mind i shall exact the performance of that promise you are very fond of susette i think mrs warlock yes i'm very fond of her she is the only girl with whom i have ever felt in sympathy just as you are the only young man except my son for whom i have ever cared you link us together in your thoughts i do alan she answered gravely and i hoped to see you linked by and by in a lifelong union that is my own fondest hope he said how did you discover my secret your secret my dear alan i've known that you were in love with susette almost from the first time i saw you together yes even that afternoon at the grove you were very sympathetic very quick to read my thoughts i owned that i admired her immensely even at that early stage of our acquaintance and admiration soon grew into love it has been such happiness for me to watch the growth of that love to see you two young creatures so trustful and so happy together walking about that old garden yonder which has seen so little of youth or of happiness i felt almost as a mother might have felt watching the happiness of her son indeed alan you have become to me almost as a second son and you are becoming to me almost as a second mother he said bending down to kiss the slim white hand which lay languidly upon her open book never till today had she called in alan never before had she spoken to him so freely of her regard for him alan she repeated softly you don't mind my calling you by your christian name mind i'm flattered that you should so honor me alan she repeated again musingly why were you not called george after your father because alan is an old family name on my mother's side of the house her father and grandfather were alans he left her almost immediately taking leave of her briefly with a sudden revulsion of feeling that question of hers and that mention of his father's name chilled and angered him in the very moment when his heart had to move by her sympathy and affection there was something in the familiar mention of his father's name that reawakened those suspicions which he had never altogether banished from his mind it was perhaps on this account that he had spoken bitterly of mrs warknock when lady emily suggested that he should make her known to his father that question about the name had seemed to him a fresh link in the chain of circumstantial evidence susette and her father were the first arrivals at alan's luncheon party the general was a martinet in the matter of punctuality and having taken what he called his chota hasry at half past six that morning was by no means inclined to feel indulgently disposed towards dilatory arrivals who should keep him waiting for his tiffin nor could he be made to understand that a quarter to two always meant two o'clock the morning tens appeared at five minutes before to the vicar and his daughter as the clock struck the hour and then their father the quarter of an hour of obvious waiting during which alan showed susette the chinese enamels and ivories and the arsenal of terrible looking swords and daggers displayed against the wall of the mandarin room while the morning tens were discussing with lady emily and her husband the merits of matchin in particular and wiltshire in general as compared with suffix this delay at which general vincent was righteously angry was occasioned by the robux who sauntered in with a leisurely air at a quarter past two the wife on the best possible terms with herself and her new taylor gown the husband puffed up at having read his times before anyone else and loquacious upon the merits of the crushing reply made last night by lord hadfield had windermere to the abominable ferago of lies in mr. henry wilks's oration the night before last at kendall i dare say it was a very good speech said the general grimly but you might have kept it for after luncheon it would have been less injured by waiting than mr. caru's joint if he's going to give us one are we late to exclaim mrs. robuck who had endured a quarter of an hour's agony in front of her shovel glass before the new taylor bodice could be made to come to are we really late our very naughty of us please please don't be angry good people we beg everybody's pardon clasping two tightly gloved hands with a prettily beseeching gesture don't mention it said the general we all like waiting but if caru has got a mug cook i won't give him much for the state of her temper at this moment we'll send a pretty message to the cook after luncheon if she has been clever enough not to spoil her dishes the ladies lady emily and mrs. morrington discounting on gardens and glass all the way went in a bevy to the dining room the men following mr. robuck still quoting lord hatfield and the way in which he had demolished the radical orator the worst of it is he don't make him laugh said mr. morrington nobody can make him laugh as wilks does town or country hodge or mechanic he knows the length of their foot to a fraction and knows what will hit them and what will tickle them the cook was sufficiently mugged to have been equal to the difficulties of 20 minutes delay and the luncheon was admirable not too many courses not too many dishes but everything perfect after its kind nor was the joint that item dear to elderly gentlemen forgotten for after a first course of fish and a second of curry and creme de the lyre there appeared a saddle of wilt shirt mutton to which the elderly gentleman did ample justice while the ladies who had lunched upon the more sophisticated dishes supplied the greater part of the conversation my father will quote your cook for the next six months at susette by whose side allen had couldn't drive to place himself during the casual dropping into seats at the large round table for yours is the only house where has seen bombay ducks served with the curry did you not tell me once that your father has a weakness for those absurd little fish did i really was i capable of talking such absolute twiddle it was not twiddle it was very serious it was on a day when i found you looking worried and absent and able to appreciate either mrs. warnach's music or my conversation and i'm being closely questioned you confessed that the canker at your heart was dinner the general had been dissatisfied the cook was stupid you had done your utter most you had devoted hours to the reading of cookery books which seemed all of them hopelessly alike you had studied all his fancies you had given him bombay ducks with his curry did i say all that how silly of me and how ridiculous of you to remember memory is not a paid servant but a most capricious aerial one cannot say to oneself i will remember this or that my memory is far from a useful servant but there is one thing in which it can be relied on i remember everything about you or you say to me or you do even to the gowns you wear susette laughed a little and blushed a little bit did not look offended you had about five minutes talk with my mother before i took you to see the enamels how do you like her immensely lady emily is charming she was telling me about her white farm it would have been odd if you had escaped hearing of that even in the first five minutes i was deeply interested lady emily has promised me some white promise i'm going to start a white poultry yard i cannot aspire higher than poultry but i am determined that every bird shall be white pretty foolishness and so you like my mother very very much she is one of those people with whom one feels at one's ease from the first moment she looks as if she could not say or even think anything unkind i don't believe she could do either and yet she is human feminine human and can enjoy an interesting scandal local if possible she enjoys it passively she does nothing to swell the snowball and will hardly help to roll it along she remains perfectly passive and never goes further than to say that she is shocked and disappointed and yet i believe she enjoys it it is only the excitement that one enjoys we had scandals even in the convent girls who behave badly dishonorably about their studies cheating in order to get a better chance of a prize i'm afraid we were all too deeply interested in the crime and the punishment it was something to think about and talk about when life was particularly monotonous lady emily was watching them from the other side of the table and lending rather an indifferent ear to mr robuck's account of hamberg and the people he and his wife had met there they had only just returned from that exhilarating scene he could talk of nothing but hr h's condescension the dear duchess lady this lord the other and the prodigious demand there had been for himself and his wife in the very smartest society four picnics a day are hardly conducive to the cure of suppressed gout said mr robuck and there were ever so many days when we had to cut ourselves up into little bits lunching with one party taking coffee with another driving home with somebody else going to tea fights all over the place dinner engagements i positively set my face against mimosa and i were there for rest and recuperation after the season positively washed out both of us you have no idea what a rag my wife looked when we took our seats in the club train happily for lady emily who had been suffering this kind of thing for half an hour the cake and the coffee had gone round and at her first employing glance mrs moornington rose and the ladies left the dining room yet even this relief was but temporary for mrs robuck appropriated lady emily in the garden and entertained her with her own view of hamberg which was smarter in as much as it was more exclusive than mr robuck's a hard place of the lady one meets all one's london friends mixed up with a herd of foreign royalties whom one is expected to call the day i used to send richard to all the gayities while i stopped at home and let my maid companion read to me we shall go to mary and bat next august and one could be at hamberg without people knowing one was there the place might be tolerable i've been told the scenery is very fine hazarded lady emily oh the scenery is well enough but one knows it and one has seen so much finer things in that way then one has been across the cordilleras it is absurd to be asked to worship some poor little hills in germany i've seldom been out of suffolk except to visit some of my people in scotland ben loman and ben nevis are quite big enough for me oh the scotch hills of dear things with quite a character of their own and the scotch dear force is the finest thing of its kind all over the world the dukes is 60 000 acres and dick and i always enjoy ourselves at ultima thule castle but after being lost in a snowstorm in the cordilleras lady emily stifled or despairing yawn not a word had she been able to say about her would best wick cows which he was inwardly comparing with alan's black muzzle jerseys grazing on the other side of the sunk fence heartfelt was her gratitude to mrs mornington when that lady suddenly wheeled round from a confidential talk with the vicar and interrupted mrs roebuck's journey across the cordilleras by an inquiry about the suffolk branches of the guild for supplying warm and comfortable raiment to the deserving poor i hope you have a branch at millfield she said yes indeed we have i'm a slave to the guild all the winter one can't make flannel petticoats and things in summer you know i can retorted mrs mornington decisively what on a broiling day in august when the very side of flannel puts one in a fever i'm not so impressionable the things are wanted in october and july and august are quite late enough for getting them ready i subscribe to these institutions mrs roebuck remarked languidly i never worked for them life isn't long enough then you never have the right kind of feeling about your poor fellow creature said mrs mornington it is the doing something for them using one's own hand and eye and fought for the poor toiling creatures sacrificing some little leisure and some little fad to making them more comfortable it is that kind of thing which brings the idea of that harder world home to one how nice it is to view dear ladies to sacrifice yourselves like that but you couldn't do it after a june and july in london if you had seen what a poor creature i looked when we took our seats in the club train for hamberg mrs mornington tucked her arm under lady emily's and walked her away i want you to tell me all about your farm she said and then in a rather loud aside i can't stand that woman and i wish your son hadn't been so conscientious in asking her while emptiness and on we prevailed on the terrace in front of the mandarin room there were a pair of wanderers in the shrubbery whose talk was unleavened by worldliness or pretense of any kind alan had stolen away from the smokers in the dining room and was escorting susette and her friend bessie edgefield around his modest domain the shrubberies the paddocks nearest the house which have been planted and educated into a kind of park the greenhouse and hot house which were just capacious enough to supply plenty of flowers for drawing room and dinner table but not to grow grapes or peaches everything was on a modest unassuming scale alan felt that after the mansion and gardens at disco his house suggested the abode of a retired tradesman asking sexual hosier or bootmaker might create for himself such a home soap or lucifer matches or cocoa would require something far more splendid modest as the place was the two girls admired or seem to admire all its details the conifers of 30 years growth the smiling meadows the fawn colored cows a sunny september afternoon showed those fertile pastures and trim gardens at their best alan felt exquisitely happy walking about those smooth lawns and gravel paths with the girl he loved at every word of approval he fancied she was praising the place in which she would be content to live after that a vow of his the other day it seemed to him that her kindness meant much more than it had meant before she knew her power she could not be so cruel as to mock him with the promise of her smiles her sweet words her undisguised pleasure in his company yes he was perfectly happy he thought of her refusal the other day is only the prelude to her acceptance she had not said no she had only said not yet besie edgefield was one of those sweetly constituted girls whose varied nature is to be a third party in a love affair never to play the heroine in white satin but always the confidant in white muslin she walked beside her friend placid silence say for an occasional monosyllable and was of no more account than susette's shadow the robux are taking leave exclaims is that looking across the lawn to the groups on the terrace mr. crew i'm afraid you are a sadly inattentive host have i neglected you miss vincent you have neglected mrs. roebuck which is much worse she will be talking of your want of savoire beaver all over match him let her talk she's been boy my mother with a cruelty worthy of torque key moda she forgets that torture was illegal in england even in bacon's time see they are all going away but you and the general and mrs. edgefield must stay to tea even if the vicar is too busy to stop the vicar had quietly vanished to resume the round of perished duties quite content to leave his besie in comfortable quarters the robux were going and the morningtons were following their example but general vincen had no objection to stop to tea if his daughter and miss fudgefield desired him to do so he was smoking a charoute comfortably seated in a sheltered part of the terrace a corner facing south screened from east and north by an angle of the house where the mandarin room projected from the main building and he was absorbed in a discussion of indian legendary lore with mr. karoo who owned to some knowledge of sanskrit and had made eastern fable and legend and a special study susette and her father stayed till nearly seven o'clock when alan insisted on walking home with them having suddenly discovered that he had had no walking that day he'd been cub hunting from seven in the morning till nine but he declared himself in need of walking exercise lady emily went with them to the gate and parted with susette as with a favorite of longstanding alan was enraptured to see his mother's friendliness with the girl he loved and it was all he could do to restrain his feelings during the walk to marsh house perhaps it was only that gay temper of hers that readiness to laugh at him and at all things in creation which held him at a distance he had made up his mind that she was to be his that if she were to refuse in 20 times in 20 capricious moods of her light and airy temperament there was somewhere in her nature a vein of serious feeling and by that he would win her and hold her you like miss vinson mother he asked that evening when he was sitting with his father and mother in the mandarin room after dinner the evening was warm to saltiness and there were several casements open in the long window which built one end of the room a window with richly card sashes and panels of cedar and latticework alternating with the glass there was another window in the western wall less elaborate a door window which formed the usual exit to the garden this was closed but not curtain the large room was lighted only with shaded lamps which lighted the tables and the spaces around them but left the corners in shadow lady emily was sitting at one of the tables her fingers occupied with a large piece of work which she carried about with her wherever she went in which to the eye of the uninitiated never appeared to make any progress towards completion it was destined eventually to cover the grand piano at fendai and it was to be something very rare and precious in the way of embroidery the basis of a collector rotten shawl pattern handkerchiefs overlaid by lady emily with embroidery in many colored silks in japanese gold thread this piece of work was a devouring monster in the matter of silk and lady emily was always telling her friends the number of skeins which were required for its maintenance and the cost of the gold thread which made so faint an effect in the oriental labyrinth of palms and sprigs and arabesques and medallions i'm afraid i shall never live to finish it lady emily would conclude with a sigh throwing herself back in her chair after an hour's steadfast labor her eyes fixed in a kind of ecstasy upon the little corner of palm which he had encrusted with satin stitch and gold but if i do i really think it will repay me for all my trouble tonight her mind was divided between her embroidery and her son who sat on a three-cornered chair beside her meekly threading her needles while he tried to get her to talk about susanne his father was seated almost out of earshot at a table near the open window reading the 19th century by the light of a shaded lamp which shone full upon his lowered eyelids and on the thoughtful brow and sensitive mouth as he sat in a reposeful attitude in the low deep chair do i like miss vincent repeated lady emily when she had turned her critical corner in the leafy edging of a scroll i wonder how often you will make me tell you that i think her a very no ellen the light peacock please not that dark shade very sweet girl bright unaffected and exquisitely lovely interjected her son as he handed her the needle full of silk there you exaggerate awfully she is certainly a pretty girl but her nose is well i hardly know how to describe it but there is a fault somewhere in the nose and her mouth might be smaller but on the other hand she has fine eyes her manners are really charming that pretty little peresian air which is so fascinating and a hybrid peresian but oh ellen can you really mean to marry her i really mean to try my hardest to achieve that happiness and i shall think myself the luckiest man in wiltshire or in england or in europe if i succeed but ellen have you reflected seriously she tells me that she is a roman catholic if she were a fire worshiper i would run the risk of failure in converting her to christianity if she were a buddhist i should be inclined to embrace the faith of gautama but since she is only a conformer to a more ancient form of the religion of which you and i are followers i don't see why her creed should be a stumbling block to my bliss lady emily shook her head sagely and breathed a profound sigh differences of religion are so apt to make unhappiness in married life i'm not religious enough to distress myself because my wife believes in some things that are incredible to me we shall both follow the same master both hope for reunion in the same heaven ellen she believes in purgatory think how inconsistent your ideas of the future must be ellen did not pursue the argument he was smiling to himself at the easy way in which he had been talking of his wife their future their very hopes of heaven making so sure that she was to be his he looked at his father sitting alone with them but not of them and thought of his father's married life as he had seen it ever since he was old enough to observe or understand the life around him so peaceful so in all things what married life should be and yet overall there had been that faint shadow of melancholy which the sun had felt from his earliest years that absence of the warmth and the romance of a marriage where love is the bond of union here ellen told himself the bond had been friendly regard convenience the world's approval family interests and lastly the child as connecting link and chief point of sympathy love had been missing from the life of yonder pale student using over half a dozen pages of modern metaphysics ellen rose and moved slowly towards that tranquil figure and feeling the night air blowing cold as he approached that end of the room he asked his father if he would like the windows shut no thank you ellen not on my account mr. curry answered without looking up from his book had he looked up he would have seen ellen standing between the lamp light and the window like a man transfixed a pale one face had that moment vanished in the outward darkness a face which a moment before had been looking in at one of the open lattices a face which ellen had recognized at the first glance he went to the glass door opened it quietly and went out to the terrace so quickly and so silently that his disappearance attracted no attention from father or mother one absorbed in his book the other bent over her work the face was the face of mrs. war not mrs. war not must be somewhere between the terrace and the gates there was no moon but the night was clear and the sky was full of stars ellen went swiftly round the angle of the house to the terrace outside the large window but the figure that he had seen from within was no longer stationed outside the window the terrace was empty he went round to the front of the house whence the carriage drives wound with a gentle curve to the gates between shrubberies of laurel and arbiters cypress and deodara yes the figure he had expected to see vanished round the curve of the drive as he drew near the porch a slender figure in dark raiment with something white about the head and shoulders he ran along the drive and reached the gate just in time to see mrs. war knocks broom standing in the road at a distance of about 50 yards and to see mrs. war knock open the door and step in another moment affording him no time for pursuit had he even wished to pursue her and the carriage drove away ellen had no doubt as to the motive of this conduct she had come by stealth to look upon the face of the man whom she had refused to meet in the beaten way of friendship end of chapter eight