CHAPTER II.
Elizabeth was nearly eighteen when she left school; and whatever life might have in store to try her strength, she was better equipped for the battle than most girls of her age. Her fine natural parts had been fortified by contact with a mind whose grasp of realities produced a certain shock to persons indisposed to look facts in the face. She knew something of sin and its consequences. She had read a great deal, she had thought a great deal; but she was not suspicious, and as yet had had no opportunities of applying her abstract knowledge of mankind to the solution of any of life's problems. To an independence of judgement, she joined a decision in action which made her the leader of her companions, and the most trusted of all by the principal of the school. She had very sharply defined limits of right and wrong; and when she did wrong, she never stooped to gloze, or attempted to excuse it. She was still wilful at times, and not always considerate for others, but she was incapable of meanness; and her attachments, though few, were strong.
In appearance she was still lanky, and her movements were too abrupt to be graceful; but she had a noble, well-shaped head, the strong, waving hair planted low upon the broad brow, beneath which shone two expressive eyes, so thickly shadowed by dark lashes as to appear black. Probably few admired who passed the girl in the street, but she could not fail to arrest attention, and in a room she would probably keep it. The impression she first made was that of pride—a certain remoteness which held her apart. As this wore off, the keen interest she took in whatsoever she saw, and above all, in whatsoever she heard, rendered her face so expressive that to many it appeared beautiful. But this it was not.
Before leaving England on a six months' term, Anthony Shaw thought well to see his old solicitor in London, Joshua Twisden, of Gray's Inn, and introduce Elizabeth to him. He said—
"In case I die, it is well that you should personally know a man whom I regard as a friend—a man whom I have trusted for years, and to whom I should wish you to apply for advice or help in any emergency. I have appointed your uncle as your sole guardian and co-trustee with Twisden, till you are one and twenty, until which time all the income at your disposal will be five hundred a year. That is to enable you to feel free. The trustees will administer the estate, and pay all outgoing expenses. Your uncle will do all that—seeing to the farm, and so on. It is just the sort of thing he can do well. But in any important matter, Elizabeth, you had better consult Twisden."
"Why do you talk like this—as if you were going to die to-morrow?" said the girl, almost angrily. "It spoils all my pleasure!"
"My dear, it doesn't make me die a bit sooner, to be prepared, and to try to prepare you. I may live for the next twenty years; but I want to arrange everything—to make everything as easy for you as I can, if I should be summoned away suddenly. I hope you will marry early; but until you do, I should like you to live with your uncle and aunt. Mind, I don't oblige you to do so. But they are fond of you, and you like them; and, if I should be taken, they are your natural protectors."
This was said in the brougham, as they drove one foggy morning to Gray's Inn. In the outer office sat a young man, who looked fixedly over his desk at Mr. and Miss Shaw as they passed through to the inner sanctuary, where his uncle, Mr. Twisden, awaited them. George Daintree had been for three years in the office. He was an astute young man, with great business capacity, and an excellent address. His uncle had implicit confidence in him, and had found him so clever, that no doubt (being childless) he would ultimately take him into partnership. George was not absolutely good-looking, but he had a fresh Saxon look; clean shaven, with light curly hair, keen blue eyes, and brilliant teeth. It would have been difficult to say what his features were; no matter, the impression left was agreeable, being one of acute intelligence and perfect temper. His linen appeared unusually white, and he was scrupulously neat. Some people produce an effect of cleanliness and neatness which is unfair on others. Daintree was of the number. Anthony had seen the young man once or twice, and shook hands with him on leaving the office. He was not introduced to Elizabeth, who just glanced at him, and murmured, "Pears' soap," as she followed her father downstairs.
Six months later Anthony Shaw was dead. He never reached his home, but died in London, of a fever caught abroad, it was said, from bad drains. William saw his brother before his death, and received his last wishes; and when all was over, and Elizabeth had followed her father to the grave, her uncle carried her off to Farley, where his wife awaited them, with regulation-mourning, and what our neighbours call a figure de circonstance. She folded her arms round her niece; she kissed her effusively; she said, "Now your home is here, remember,for as long as you are unmarried." The pale, crashed girl could not fitly respond to all this, but no doubt the kind intention touched her. Between Mrs. William and herself she felt that there was a bridge incapable of supporting more than very light material. Demand too much of it, and it would give way. She could not be comforted; for it seemed to her then that she had lost the only being on earth she cared for, or could ever care for. No one might ever replace her dear, noble father—so unselfish, so wise, so perfect in every relation of life! What an ensample he must ever be to her; and how every word of loving counsel that had fallen from his lips must be treasured by his child!
She constantly recalled what he had said about her uncle and aunt. To Elizabeth all places were alike in those first months; but there is no doubt she would have preferred solitude to the life at Farley, if her father's wishes had not weighed with her. The slowly encroaching tide of visitors—though Mrs. William always declared she could not possibly have any company—irritated the girl. She knew this was unreasonable. Her aunt could not be expected to shut the door on her numerous friends three months after her brother-in-law was dead. It was natural that her uncle's hunting companions should drop in in on their way home, and have some refreshment. Then gradually those who lived afar, when the meet was near Farley, were asked to sleep there the previous night. Few ladies came. Elizabeth did not ask herself why; she only was glad. Women required some attention; men she could leave her aunt to entertain—and, no doubt, she did entertain them. As a rule, they rather fought shy of the dark-browed girl in mourning, who offered them so little encouragement. Colonel Wybrowe, she heard, was in Africa, shooting tigers, but was expected home in the spring. He was the only man she had ever met at Farley in whom she felt any interest, and that was of the mildest description. She thought of him as a picture rather than a man—a Titian or Velasquez, seen by her in one of those great galleries abroad, and never quite forgotten.
Thus the winter passed, and its wounds began to be healed under the sweet breath of spring: the birds lifted up their voices, and the streams which had been frozen about the girl's heart flowed once more. Elizabeth was too healthy, physically and morally, not to feel the influences of the season. She was eighteen, and she was strong. All life was before her; she had been stunned for a time, but now she must be up and doing. She went over to Whiteburn with her uncle and inspected the farm; she rode to the meet with her aunt, and began a portrait of her on horseback.
It is surprising, clever as Elizabeth was, that she should have remained so long blind to the fact that Mrs William's life was built up of small deceptions as regarded her husband. The first lie the girl detected smote her like a blow in the face. It was a thing of no importance, as it seemed to her at that time. Afterwards she remembered that its effect was to prevent her uncle's going to a certain place, on a certain day. He was devoted to his wife, and the least suspicious of men. She, on her side, though bent on amusement, was never unmindful of her husband's comfort, and when she discouraged his accompanying her to a ball, some miles distant, and said she was sure he would be happier remaining at home with Bessie, he regarded it as an instance of her unselfish consideration for him. Elizabeth did not believe that—no. Her eyes had been gradually opened to the possibility of her aunt being actuated by other motives. Admiration was the breath of her nostrils; and though there was no harm in this—for does not every human being enjoy "appreciation," as we call it, by a graceful euphuism?—perhaps Uncle William's presence might render the atmosphere a little heavy; the incense would not rise so freely. Elizabeth had never taken her aunt very seriously; she did not do so now. Mrs. William was a bright butterfly, fluttering through life, without the moral sense of the housewifely bee; but, also, without its sting. Elizabeth was sorry her aunt told white lies—it shook the girl's faith in her: but she ought never to have looked for figs from thistles; and there was no real harm in her uncle's wife, she felt sure.
One day in April Mrs. William announced to her niece that she had some shopping to do in London, and should be absent two nights. Elizabeth would keep her uncle company; ride with him to the meet, and play backgammon with him after dinner. She added, truly enough, that her husband would be bored to death in London, and annoyed at missing one of the best meets of the year, and he laughingly agreed with her. She went with her maid, and the morning after her departure Mr. Shaw received the following telegram:—
"Colonel Wybrowe just returned. Can come to us for a week. Have asked him to accompany me home to-morrow. Send carriage to meet six-thirty train."
Elizabeth felt a slight thrill of pleasure at the announcement, and was surprised to feel it. What could it signify to her whether this Adonis came to Farley or not? Well, physical beauty had a great attraction for her. Some people said they did not care about it; she never pretended not to care. It would be a pleasure to see again a figure, the image of which often rose up before her eyes as the type of manly vigour and comeliness. Perhaps, if he stayed at Farley some days, she might succeed in making a sketch of his head. As to the man himself, she was not much concerned as to what he was; but, being fresh from Africa, he must have something to tell better worth listening to than the local gossip, and horse-and-dog talk, which was all she ever heard from the men who frequented Farley.
It was dusk when they arrived: Mrs. Shaw flushed, excited, voluble, laden with parcels (one of which was a present of a grey embroidered dress for Elizabeth); Colonel Wybrowe calm and high-bred as ever, curiously languid for a lion-hunter, and—except that he was bronzed—absolutely unchanged in all respects.
Uncle William, who had just returned from hunting, greeted his guest with great cordiality. He asked a certain number of obvious questions, which Wybrowe answered; but Mrs. Shaw did most of the talking. It was by a happy chance, she said, that she had called at the Traveller's to inquire if Colonel Wybrowe had returned to England, and had found him there, just arrived. He gave her a dinner at the Savoy, and they went to see The Pink Dominoes. It was too amusing; she had laughed till she was ashamed of herself. She wished Elizabeth could see it, but that was impossible. It was not a play a girl could see—it was too improper. Of course, for a married woman of ten years' standing, like herself, it was different; she might see anything with impunity. Here Elizabeth broke in with—
"I once went to a play, when I had to pretend not to understand, for father wanted to take me away. I was curious to see the end, of course, and so I stayed; but I didn't like it."
Mrs. Shaw and Colonel Wybrowe laughed.
"I'm glad to hear it," said Uncle William. "When we are in London, Bessie, we'll go the opera—you'll love that."
"I am afraid I shan't," she replied. "All that caterwauling doesn't appeal to me in the very least."
"Perhaps you don't know the Trovatore, Miss Shaw?" said Wybrowe (he called it the "Trover-Tory"). "I remember, when I was hunting in Africa, how often I used to hum,'Non ti scordar di me;'" and he glanced from one of his fair auditors to the other, as he stood facing them, with his back to the fire.
"I have heard the song; it is pretty, but I don't know what it means. I like to understand the words, and I don't speak Italian."
"Oh, it is an appeal from a fellow in prison to the woman he loves not to forget him. It's awfully touching, I think."
"So do I," responded Mrs. Shaw, warmly. "When the tenor who sings it behind the scenes is good-looking, I always feel choky."
"If he is behind the scenes, I shouldn't think it signified what he is like," said Elizabeth.
"Dear Bessie! you are not sentimental. When I have once seen the man, if he is a short, stout, puddingylooking creature, all the romance is over. He may sing like an angel, he can't affect me."
"Drat that girl!" cried Coco, irrelevantly, from his perch.
"You darling!" laughed Mrs. Shaw. "I'm not the kitchenmaid."
"I am afraid the remark was addressed to me," echoed Elizabeth.
"Molly is such a terrible one for good looks," said Uncle William, slyly, glancing with a smile at the figure opposite him, who leant against the mantelpiece, standing on one leg, and warming the other at the fire. The face was half in light, half in shadow. Elizabeth longed to paint him as he stood there.
But the dressing-gong for dinner sounded; and Mrs. Shaw started up, without replying to her husband's sally.
There were no other guests that evening, which was the pleasantest Elizabeth had known since she came to Farley. Uncle William and Mr. Shaw between them made Wybrowe recount some of his African experiences. He was not a boastful man, perhaps hardly a fluent talker; but the very absence of art in his narratives rendered them more convincing. He described the dangers to which he had been exposed, and the narrow escape he had once had from a lion, with perfect simplicity. It was impossible to doubt that he had both nerve and courage. The deliberation of his utterance, which almost amounted to a drawl, seemed to Elizabeth to heighten the effect of what he said. It was odd it should do so; but, thinking over it afterwards, in the silence of her own room, she came to the conclusion that, in so big and brave a man, a soft voice and hesitating delivery were distinctly attractive. He might have been loud and self-asserting. Modesty was an unexpected grace in so godlike a looking creature.The fact is, Elizabeth had met but few highly bred men; and Rupert Wybrowe, whatever his defects, was outwardly a perfect gentleman.
The next morning she went, as usual, to her studio (a large north room had been given up to her by Mrs. Shaw for that purpose), and had been painting for some time, when she heard her aunt's voice, and, after a knock at the door, for form's sake, that lady entered, smiling, followed by Wybrowe. She began at once in her high-pitched voice—
"We have come to beard you in your den, Bessie. I have brought the colonel, who is awfully fond of pictures. I think it would be so nice if you'd paint his portrait. She has done me on horseback. Oh, there it is! Isn't the horse good? I'm not quite so dumpy as that; and my nose isn't 'tip-tilted,' is it? That Frenchman who painted me five years ago said my features were classical. 'Vénus en petit,' he called me. Ha, ha! But, anyway, for a likeness on horseback, I think Bessie's very good. Don'u yon think he would look splendid in armour, Bessie? A sort of Sir Galahad! There is that fine suit in the hall; suppose we try to get him into that?"
Elizabeth was a little taken aback by this volubility. Certainly she desired nothing better than to paint Colonel Wybrowe's head; but she felt somehow as if the proposition should have come more gradually, and that the sitter should be allowed to express his readiness, if not his desire, to sit. She hesitated for a moment; and seeing that, he said with a smile—
"You are placing Miss Shaw in a painful predicament. Her politeness forbids her to say she had rather not. As to that armour," he added, laughing, "it wouldn't come near me. It is made for a man of five foot six!"
Then she said quickly, "Armour or not, of course I shall be glad to try to paint your head; but—I have never had so difficult a subject. My aunt, you see, is not satisfied with her portrait. You must not be vexed if I make a dreadful thing of yours."
"I shall not be vexed—whatever you do. Miss Shaw."
"But if it is only to be the head," struck in Mrs. Shaw, "I am bent on your trying on the breastplate and shoulder-piece. Never mind if they don't meet behind. It will look so much better than a stand-up collar and a tie."
Elizabeth agreed with her aunt. The victim shrugged his broad shoulders; the armour was brought up. He tore off the reprobated collar and tie, and bared his powerful throat, which rose like a bronze column from the pieces of armour, which they adjusted with pack-thread around him. All this was effected with a running accompaniment of laughter from Mrs. Shaw. Elizabeth, happily, had a fresh canvas ready; she began at once her charcoal sketch, when she had decided at which angle the head looked best. Seen at three-quarters, the cast in the eye was hardly perceptible, and the long yellow moustache shaded the somewhat too prominent under lip. The contrast between the steel corselet and his fair hair and beard was certainly becoming; no painter had ever a finer model, Elizabeth thought.
After a time Mrs. Shaw departed, and left them alone. There was not much interchange of words. Wybrowe had not the infirmity of thinking it necessary to "make" conversation; Elizabeth was absorbed in her work. Her sitter was beginning to feel rather sleepy, when the gong for luncheon roused them both. She laid down her palette and brushes.
"How patient you have been, Colonel Wybrowe! I never had such a good sitter. I am so much obliged, for it must be an awful bore."
She came and helped to release him from the armour. Her hands rested on his strong shoulders as she untied the knots of string. He looked down smilingly upon her from his altitude of six feet two.
"It can never be a bore to come and sit with you. I am only sorry that I can stay here so short a time now—three or four days at the most—not long enough for the portrait to be finished."
"I am very sorry," said the girl. "Perhaps you will return."
"Perhaps."
Something in his tone, in the manner, as he said that one word, made a curious impression on Elizabeth. Was it fancy? It seemed as though that simple rejoinder had been charged with some special meaning.
Mrs. Shaw had to pay a visit of ceremony, a visit of gratified social ambition, some miles distant, that afternoon. A great lady—the greatest, indeed, in the county—who had hitherto ignored Mrs. Shaw, had lately left cards upon her. It was rumoured that this condescension was not wholly unconnected with Elizabeth's appearance at Farley. The duchess had a second son, a clever young man, in Parliament, of whom great things were expected, but he was very poor. The duchess was anxious he should "marry money." This was said with many winks and shakes of the head. Mrs. Shaw had heard the insinuation, but it did not affect the satisfaction afforded by a recognition she had wished and waited for so long. She was now to return the visit in state, but she thought it unnecessary that Elizabeth should accompany her. Uncle William having a Board of Guardians to attend, her niece and Colonel Wybrowe could ride out together; and both acceded to this suggestion. The man, indeed, could hardly do otherwise; the girl was nothing loth.
Elizabeth rode well and fearlessly, and she was mounted on her beloved Bruno, which her father had given her the year before he died. She looked to greater advantage on horseback than anywhere, and so her companion thought. They galloped across the downs, and hardly spoke a word until they entered a wood of young larch and birch trees, through the burgeoned lilac tips and tender greens of which the pale blue sky of May looked bluer overhead. Her cheek was flushed with the exercise; her dark eyes gleamed. "She looks positively handsome," the soldier said to himself, and his lips were opened. What he uttered is of small account. Thinking over their ride afterwards, Elizabeth could recall no single thing that he had said; but the general effect of his conversation was as a soothing accompaniment played to an admirably devised tableau—the fair stalwart knight upon his white horse, lit by the flickering sunlight through the delicate tracery of boughs; the fleecy clouds, like flocks chasing each other across the blue sky, overhead; the mossy turf, starred with anemones, underfoot. Years afterwards that picture remained painted on her mind unfaded. Subsequent troubles could never efface or injure it. It was a picture—nothing more. It stood in its little frame apart, untouched by any deep feeling, and so unembittered by regret.
Three days passed, much upon this wise. He sat for his portrait each morning, and each afternoon they were together; not always alone, though occasions for their being left so, which could hardly be the result of pure accident, were not infrequent. Elizabeth's work did not progress as rapidly or as satisfactorily as she had hoped. She could not get the modelling of the head right, and the wonderful transparent shadows on the flesh were translated opaquely. She saw it. She had lost the beauty of colouring; the obliquity of vision seemed intensified; the expression she had caught was a transient one, and unpleasing. There was likeness, but it was the likeness of a cheap photograph. She dashed down her palette and brushes on the fourth morning, the morning of the day on which the colonel was to leave Farley, and cried—
"It is of no use! Vandyck would have painted you, but I can't. It is a daub—a caricature. I shall destroy it!"
"Oh no, you won't," he said quietly. "You must turn its back to the wall, and not look at it till I come back. You will look at it then with a fresh eye."
"You are coming back, then?" she asked quickly.
"Your uncle and aunt wish me to do so. Shall I?"
"I shall be very glad," she replied quickly.
He had risen from his chair, and walked a step or two forwards, looking down full into her face before he replied slowly—
"When would you wish me to come?"
The second question might be taken, of course, as still referring to the portrait; and it was as such that she accepted it.
"Oh, I feel now as if I never could go on with this beastly thing. But if you are really kind enough to sit again whenever you return, perhaps I might try, or—or begin another head."
"You mustn't destroy that one," he said very softly. "Looking at it by-and-by will bring back such awfully nice recollections of these hours to me, I'm sure."
"To you? Oh, but I don't mean you to have it!" laughed the girl, gaily. "No one wants to look at his own picture."
"Then will you, in return, do me a picture of yourself? If you have mine, it's only fair I should have yours, don't ye know?"
She stared at him. "I could never paint my own portrait." Then she turned away, and deliberately wiped her brushes. "Of course, if you had rather I did not keep yours, it is better I should destroy it," she added, with her back towards him.
"No, you mustn't do that. I am awfully pleased that you should wish to keep my portrait; and if you'll let me sit again, perhaps you'll get on better with it. I may be able to return here in about a fortnight or three weeks."
"Then I will turn its face to the wall, as you suggest, and not look at it till then."
He went away that afternoon. Mrs. Shaw drove him to the station after luncheon, during which the conversation was general; the parrot, from his perch, taking a prominent part in it. Uncle William shook his guest cordially by the hand at parting, and bade him telegraph when he could return to Farley. They were not going to leave home this spring. He might run up for the Derby; but Mrs. Shaw had decided not to take a house in London this season, as her niece had no wish to go into society. If they were inclined in June, they might go to an hotel for a week; but this was uncertain, and in the mean time he hoped to see the colonel again at Farley. Between Elizabeth and him nothing passed but a few commonplace words as they shook hands. Then he jumped up on the box beside her pretty aunt, who held the reins, and the dog-cart drove rapidly away.
Uncle William stood under the porch, watching them. His pot-hat was at an angle of forty-five degrees over his eyes, his hands were in his capacious breeches' pockets, his pipe was in his mouth. Elizabeth, who stood beside him, slipped her arm within his.
"Come and take a turn in the garden, uncle."
Then, when they were out of earshot, she continued—
"Have you known Colonel Wybrowe long?"
"Well, let me see. It'll be over two years. He came down here to hunt first, three winters ago. A fine man, ain't he?"
"Yes. Was he ever in the Guards?"
"He was, but he had to leave. He ran through a lot of money, I have heard."
"What does he do—besides hunt lions?"
"T don't know. He has a place somewhere, which is let; but it's not worth much."
"But has he no occupation? Doesn't he do anything for a livelihood, if he is poor?"
"No. What could he do? He has enough left to get on, I suppose, somehow."
"Do you think he is a humbug, uncle?"
"A humbug, Bessie? No! What should make you think that? Because he is such a favourite with the ladies? He is a plucky chap, and rides straight; and I never heard aught against him, except that he had been a bit too free with his money—and—and things."
Elizabeth at once turned the conversation into another channel, and never again asked her uncle any more questions touching her sitter.
But when her uncle left her presently to go to his farm, the girl sat down on a garden-bench and did—what she seldom did—nothing, for more than half an hour. She questioned herself; she questioned the impression that remained with her of the man who had suddenly and unexpectedly begun to engross her thoughts. Was it a monstrous self-delusion, or did this "favourite with all the ladies" show signs of beginning to care for her more than his undemonstrative manner permitted him to show?
The glamour of his personal beauty, of his grand manner and persuasive simplicity, which in its very silence expressed more than the volubility of others, had not been without their effect on the girl, who, with all her cleverness, all her emancipation from the susceptibilities and sentimentalities of her age, was practically ignorant of the world. Except the few youths she had met at Farley, redolent of the stables, and with limited capacities for stirring the female imagination, she knew but little of men under forty. Her father's friends, whom she had seen at home, were all solid business men, well on in middle life. They had been to her as so many stocks and stones; the young Nimrods latterly as so many pebbles on the pathway. But now loomed against her horizon something like a column, the superscription on which she could not read. It puzzled her, not only because of the difficulty in deciphering it, but by reason of the uncertainty she felt in determining her own sentiments with respect to those hieroglyphics. Was there more than admiration and curiosity? Could she admit to the weakness of a deeper interest built upon such slight knowledge? She said to herself emphatically "no." And yet she was perplexed.
Mrs. Shaw, on her return from the station, learning that Elizabeth was in the garden, followed her there. The little lady's eyes sparkled, and an odd smile crossed her lips, as she came upon her niece seated under a tree, her elbows planted on her knees, her firm chin resting in her hand, her clear dark eyes fixed on the bed of forget-me-nots before her. It was not thus the elder woman was used to see the resolute, active girl, to whom relaxation never meant inaction.
"Well, dear," she began, as she approached, "I saw the colonel safely off. But he was very low—very low indeed. He says he is afraid you don't like him."
Elizabeth flushed. "What nonsense! How could that make him low, aunt? A man like that! Even if it were true—and it is not. I don't know him well enough to—to like him or dislike him."
"Then he need not despair. I shall tell him so. He said if you hated him, perhaps he had better not return here. The truth is, he admires you very much, but he wants encouragement. He is proud—and not at all expansive, as you see. He generally takes no notice of girls."
Elizabeth's lip curled sarcastically. "Perhaps he expects them to fall down on their knees before him. I am not going to do so."
"He is not a bit conceited, really," returned her aunt, with a smile. "On the contrary, he is almost shy, until he is quite at his ease in women's society. If he was snubbed, he would make no effort to remove a prejudice. He would let things slide, and—never return."
"As he proposed to do so, that I may finish his portrait, I suppose he does not consider himself snubbed," said Elizabeth, rising, and stooping to gather some forget-me-nots. She placed them in the breast of her black gown; and her aunt, understanding that the girl did not desire to pursue the conversation turned towards the house, humming a tune as she went.