Читать книгу The Lord of the Manor - Fred M. White - Страница 6

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As matters turned out, Clifford Warrener was destined to something besides the conventional meal temptingly offered by May Castlerayne. He had come down to stay for a day or two with some friends in the neighbourhood; he had telegraphed to say that they might expect him about dinner-time; his kit-bag had gone on in advance. Outside the gate of the Towers a messenger awaited him with a note. It appeared that the telegram had been delayed, the which is a pleasing malady with the average railway station telegraph-office, where labour is scanty and electric message importunity of little favour. There was nobody at home at The Haven, and the butler, who had been away all day, had taken the liberty of opening the telegram. A wandering gamekeeper had chanced to see Mr. Warrener, and thus his movements had been recorded. Meanwhile, the kit-bag and its contents awaited the good pleasure of the owner thereof.

'Very awkward,' Clifford muttered. 'The Marchmonts are all away. I did not know that when I telegraphed last night. Perhaps I had better have my bag sent over to the Royal Hotel at Hardborough. There is a train about six, and——'

'Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind,' May said with decision. 'We will send the donkey-cart to fetch your bag, and you will stay here to-night.——Aunt Gertrude, will you be so good as to neglect your precious flowers for a moment? This is Mr. Warrener, who is belated and stranded by the way, with no rest for the sole of his dress-slippers, so to speak. Come and persuade him to dine and spend the night here.'

Aunt Gertrude came slowly down the grass path below the rose-bushes. There was a flush on her pale face, a questioning in her eyes as they fell upon Warrener's tall figure. She seemed to be looking into the past, beyond the events of the cold, dead years. She breathed just a little faster; her lips were parted.

'I am glad to see you,' she said. 'My dear boy, you are very, very like your father.'

Warrener took the slim hand extended to him and raised it to his lips.

'I am more than pleased to meet you,' he said. 'I have heard so much of you from my father. He used to allude so frequently to the Towers. He spoke of it as one of the most charming houses he had ever been in, and I am bound to say that he did not exaggerate. After the rush and fret of a great town, this is utterly restful and soothing.'

Clifford spoke with a deep sincerity in his voice. His gaze wandered from the short, thick turf at his feet to the rose-garden, and from the garden to the gray walls of the house in its frame of deeper, more frowning gray, and the vivid trees beyond. Verily, here was a place to be envied. It looked as if trouble and war could not live here, as if the burdens of the world had been left on the other side of the stream.

But Warrener knew better than that; he knew of the grim poverty that lurked behind the smiling flowers. He knew of the pride that pinches, the pitiful arrogance of the decaying race. And he was in a position to alter this with a wave of his wand. He could scatter aside all those carking cares and take the wrinkles out of Mr. Castlerayne's brows. He would not have been sanguine but for the forces arrayed behind him.

'Mr. Warrener is going to stay here to-night,' May said. 'There has been a mistake over a telegram, and he is stranded here. I will send the donkey-cart over to The Haven for the luggage.'

'Of course,' Aunt Gertrude observed as if it were the most natural thing in the world, 'it is a genuine pleasure to have a Warrener here. Your father and my brother were such great friends in the past. Come into the hall and have some tea.'

Warrener hesitated. It was hard not to see Angela again; it was equally hard to stay there and partake of the hospitality of a man whose prejudices the guest was going to violate ruthlessly and mercilessly a little later on. But the great oak door of the hall opened at the same moment, and Angela stood there with the amber light of the fading sun on her face. She stood there tall and fair and stately, a slender figure in white. She started, and her face coloured strangely as she saw Warrener. It seemed to him that her look was one of cold surprise.

'I did not expect to see you down here,' she said.

'We are ever the sport of circumstance,' Warrener replied lightly. 'I have been over the Common with your sister. My idea was to stay with the Marchmonts to-night; but I find that they are away from home. Miss Castlerayne has very kindly offered to put me up this evening. I feel like an intruder, really; but——'

Angela smiled gloriously. Whatever her feelings might have been, a lack of hospitality certainly was not one of them. A Castlerayne could not possibly have been guilty of that failing. The girl extended her hand to Warrener quite warmly.

'Of course you will stay the night,' she said. 'I was just coming to call the others in to tea. You have certainly arrived at the psychological moment.'

Warrener passed into the dim hall, full of cool brown shadows and sweetly fragrant of roses. The light filtered through the stained-glass windows; it fell on the dainty tea-service, flickered on the facets of old silver that shone as only old silver can. There were comfortable lounges here and there, the suggestion of comfort that only a refined English home can give. Warrener abandoned himself to the exquisite pleasure of the moment.

Mr. Castlerayne was glad to see him when he came presently from the study. It was a great pleasure to him to have the son of his old friend under his roof. Perhaps the host was secretly surprised to find that contamination with trade had left no brand on Warrener. Perhaps he had expected to see a man in loud clothes, with a loud voice, who talked a jargon of discounts and par values and the fluctuation of stocks and shares. So far as Warrener was concerned, he, like Gallio, might have cared for none of these things.

Tea came to an end at length. There was a lovely hour spent in the garden, and then dinner. It was a plain dinner, though the wine was excellent; so, too, were the peaches and nectarines gathered fresh and ruddy from the ripe south wall of the garden. Warrener lingered afterwards over a cigarette and a glass of claret the like of which he had never tasted before. He felt just a little ashamed of himself; he was a kind of traitor in the camp. He wandered off presently to the drawing-room, where the lamps were not yet lit. Angela was alone there, playing some soft and soothing melody on the piano.

'We did not expect you quite so soon,' the girl said. 'The others are in the garden. Shall we join them? Really, it is a most exquisite night.'

It was indeed an exquisite night, full and warm, and gently lighted by a crescent moon. A pearly diaphanous mist was rising over the Common. Beyond it the great belt of pines loomed out like the masts of ships in a summer sea.

'The Common always looks like a pearly land at this time,' Angela said. 'It seems almost a pity to get near enough to destroy the illusion.'

'All people do not take the same view of it.' Warrener laughed. They had paused before the old sundial. Angela stood leaning on it with an arm that gleamed like ivory in the moonlight. 'I am told that there are prosaic eyes on the sacred spot.'

'I suppose you got that from May,' Angela said a little coldly. 'Some people in Hardborough want to start a hotel here. Of course the idea is preposterous. Fancy our Common being made the abiding-place of Saturday till Monday people, who smoke cheap cigars and drink beer! My father would never listen to such a suggestion.'

The speaker looked proud and scornful in the moonlight. Lady Clare Vere de Vere might have presented no more contemptuous a figure. She seemed a being of another world, a race apart. And yet in its way it was not devoid of cheapness, the juggling of theatrical show. Angela had no sympathy with the lower classes, yet she did not so much mind being dependent on these creatures for little things she could not pay for.

'Is your father likely to have the last word?' Warrener asked.

'Well, really, I suppose so,' Angela said. 'I dare say May has told you everything. There is a man called Craggs who has advanced some preposterous claim——'

'I would not run away with that idea if I were you. I believe that Craggs and the hospitallers are quite within their rights in this claim. I have gone into the matter carefully. To do Craggs justice, he is as much averse to the hotel idea as you are. At the same time, he naturally looks to the Common to provide the money income to keep up the hospital. Poor old Craggs is just as proud in his way as you are.'

'My dear Mr. Warrener, does the moonlight always make you talk nonsense?'

'I am talking no nonsense,' Clifford repeated. 'Do you know what I would do with you if I had my own way? I would make you get your own living amongst the people whom in your heart of hearts you so despise! You should go amongst them and discover for yourself that there is as much pride and dignity in labour as there is in the caste. I have seen enough of it, and I ought to know. When I was quite a young man I lodged for a time in the cottage of an artisan—I could afford no better quarters. That man taught me more than I ever learnt at school. His feelings and sentiments were those of a refined gentleman; his wife was his equal in every way. He is one of my managers to-day, respected and liked by all who know him. It is only a matter of refinement and education. Craggs would have been a statesman and a Cabinet Minister if he had only had the chance of the modern boy. If you took a little girl from the slums of London—the child of the gutter, I mean—and educated her properly, do you suppose that anybody could guess what her parentage had been?'

Angela smiled faintly, with her proud head uplifted to the stars. It was strange how this man always thrilled her, how exalted she always felt in his company. The girl regarded his lapse into trade as an obsession, the backsliding of a gentleman. Perhaps it was contamination with soap that made him talk in that way.

'I should not be in the least interested,' she said. 'I am quite content with my lot.'

'But how long is it likely to be your lot?' Warrener proceeded. 'Forgive me if I speak too plainly; only recollect the interest I take in your future welfare. Have you ever thought what is likely to take place if anything happens to your father? He may die at any time—we all have to die sooner or later. I understand the estate——'

'It is very polite of you to call it by that name,' Angela said with some bitterness.

'Goes to the next of kin. It passes from you altogether. Angela, have you——'

The girl faced round on Warrener almost angrily. Her eyes were blazing.

'Really,' she said—'really, Mr Warrener, you forget yourself! Your only excuse——'

'Is the excuse that every man has in the presence of the woman he loves. I have never told you that I cared for you, for the simple reason that there is no necessity. You know it. If you can look me in the face and say honestly that you did not know it——'

'I think that will do,' Angela interrupted. 'We had better go and find the others.'

She flung her glorious head high in the air. The dignity of her manner was queenly, and yet down in her heart was a certain wealth of gladness; her lips, red and full, were curved in a little smile.