VIII
SIR REGINALD
Cicely Farmond and Malcolm Cromarty walked up the avenue together, he pushing his bicycle, she walking by his side with a more than usually serious expression.
"Then you won't tell me where you've been?" said he.
"You won't tell me where you've been!"
He was silent for a moment and then said confidentially:
"We might as well say we've been somewhere together. I mean, if any one asks."
"Thank you, I don't need to fib," said she.
"I don't mean I need to. Only" he seemed to find it difficult to explain.
"I shall merely say I have been for a walk, and you need only say you have been for a ride—if you don't want to say where you have really been."
"And if you don't want to mention that you were driving with Ned Cromarty," he retorted.
"He only very kindly offered me a lift!"
She looked quickly at him as she spoke and as quickly away again. The glint in her eye seemed to displease him.
"You needn't always be so sharp with me, Cicely," he complained.
"You shouldn't say stupid things."
Both were silent for a space and then in a low mournful voice he said:
"I wish I knew how to win your sympathy, Cicely. You don't absolutely hate me, do you?"
"Of course I don't hate you. But the way to get a girl's sympathy is not always to keep asking for it."
He looked displeased again.
"I don't believe you know what I mean!"
"I don't believe you do either."
He grew tender.
"Your sympathy, Cicely, would make all the difference to my life!"
"Now, Malcolm" she began in a warning voice.
"Oh, I am not asking you to love me again," he assured her quickly. "It is only sympathy I demand!"
"But you mix them up so easily. It isn't safe to give you anything."
"I won't again!" he assured her.
"Well," she said, though not very sympathetically, "what do you want to be sympathised with about now?"
"When you offer me sympathy in that tone, I can't give you my confidence!" he said unhappily.
"Really, Malcolm, how can I possibly tell what your confidence is going to be beforehand? Perhaps it won't deserve sympathy."
"If you knew the state of my affairs!" he said darkly.
"A few days ago you told me they were very promising," she said with a little smile.
"So they would be—so they are—if if only you would care for me, Cicely!"
"You tell me they are promising when you want me to marry you, and desperate when you want me to sympathise with you," she said a little cruelly. "Which am I to believe?"
"Hush! Here's Sir Reginald," he said.
The gentleman who came through a door in the walled garden beside the house was a fresh-coloured, white-haired man of sixty; slender and not above middle height, but very erect, and with the carriage of a person a little conscious of being of some importance. Sir Reginald Cromarty was, in fact, extremely conscious of his position in life, and the rather superior and condescending air he was wont to assume in general society made it a little difficult for a stranger to believe that he could actually be the most popular person in the county; especially as it was not hard to discover that his temper could easily become peppery upon provocation. If, however, the stranger chanced to provide the worthy baronet with even the smallest opening of exhibiting his extraordinary kindness of heart—were it only by getting wet in a shower or mislaying a walking stick, he would quickly comprehend. And the baronet's sympathy never waited to be summoned; it seemed to hover constantly over all men and women he met, spying for its chance.
He himself was totally unconscious of this attribute and imagined the respect in which he was held to be due to his lineage, rank, and superior breeding and understanding. Indeed, few people in this world can have cut a more dissimilar figure as seen from his own and from other men's eyes; though as both parties were equally pleased with Sir Reginald Cromarty, it mattered little.
At the sight of Cicely his smile revealed the warmth of his feelings in that direction.
"Ah, my dear girl," said he, "we've been looking for you. Where have you been?"
"I've been having a walk."
She smiled at him as she answered, and on his side it was easy to see that the good gentleman was enraptured, and that Miss Farmond was not likely to be severely cross-examined as to her movements. Towards Malcolm, on the other hand, though his greeting was kindly enough, his eye was critical. The young author's tie seemed to be regarded with particular displeasure.
"My God, Margaret, imagine being found dead in such a thing!" he had exclaimed to his wife, after his first sight of it; and time had done nothing to diminish his distaste for this indication of a foreign way of life.
Lady Cromarty came out of the garden a moment later; a dark thin-faced lady with a gracious manner when she spoke, but with lips that were usually kept very tight shut and an eye that could easily be hard.
"Nearly time for lunch," she said. "You two had better hurry up!"
The young people hurried on to the house and the baronet and his lady walked slowly behind.
"So they have been away all morning together, Reginald," she remarked.
"Oh, I don't think so," said he. "He had his bicycle and she has been walking."
"You are really too unsuspicious, Reggie!"
"A woman, my dear, is perhaps a little too much the reverse where a young couple is concerned. I have told you before, and I repeat it now emphatically, that neither Cicely nor Malcolm is in a position to contemplate matrimony for an instant."
"He is your heir—and Cicely is quite aware of it."
"I assure you, Margaret," he said with great conviction, "that Cicely is not a girl with mercenary motives. She is quite charming"
"Oh, I know your opinion of her, Reggie," Lady Cromarty broke in a trifle impatiently, "and I am fond of her too, as you know. Still, I don't believe a girl who can use her eyes so effectively is quite as simple as you think."
Sir Reginald laughed indulgently.
"Really, my love, even the best of women are sometimes a trifle uncharitable! But in any case Malcolm has quite enough sense of his future position to realise that his wife must be somebody without the blemish on her birth, which is no fault of dear Cicely's, but—er—makes her ineligible for this particular position."
"I wish I could think that Malcolm is the kind of young man who would consult anything but his own wishes. I have told you often enough, Reggie, that I don't think it is wise to keep these two young people living here in the same house for months on end."
"But what can one do?" asked the benevolent baronet. "Neither of them has any home of their own. Hang it, I'm the head of their family and I'm bound to show them a little hospitality."
"But Malcolm has rooms in town. He needn't spend months on end at Keldale."
The baronet was silent for a moment. Then he said:
"To tell the truth, my dear, I'm afraid Malcolm is not turning out quite so well as I had hoped. He certainly ought to be away doing something. At the same time, hang it, you wouldn't have me turn my own kinsman and heir out of my house, Margaret; would you?"
Lady Cromarty sighed, and then her thin lips tightened.
"You are hopeless, Reggie. I sometimes feel as though I were here merely as matron of a home for lost Cromartys! Well, I hope your confidence won't be abused. I confess I don't feel very comfortable about it myself."
"Well, well," said Sir Reginald. "My own eyes are open too, I assure you. I shall watch them very carefully at lunch, in the light of what you have been saying."
The baronet was an old Etonian, and as his life had been somewhat uneventful since, he was in the habit of drawing very largely on his recollections of that nursery of learning. Lunch had hardly begun before a question from Cicely set him going, and for the rest of the meal he regaled her with these reminiscences.
After luncheon he said to his wife:
"Upon my word, I noticed nothing whatever amiss. Cicely is a very sensible as well as a deuced pretty girl."
"I happened to look at Malcolm occasionally," said she.
Sir Reginald thought that she seemed to imply more than she said,, but then women were like that, he had noticed, and if one took all their implications into account, life would be a troublesome affair.