Читать книгу Behind the Throne - William Le Queux - Страница 17

The Thornby Flower-Show was held a week later in the rectory grounds, the work of arrangement chiefly devolving upon the bluff, good-natured rector and his nephew George.

The little rural fête, encouraged by the richer residents, was, like other village flower-shows, the annual occasion for the cottagers to exhibit their “twelve best varieties of vegetables,” their “six best pot-plants,” the ferns from their windows, and such-like horticultural possessions. Though quite a small show, it was typically English, well managed, and therefore always attended by people from the big houses in the neighbourhood, whose gardeners themselves competed in the open classes.

The judges—three gardeners from a distance—had inspected the exhibits in the marquee, and having made their awards, had, together with the committee, consisting of the local butcher and baker and two or three cottagers, all in their Sunday clothes and wearing blue rosettes, been entertained to luncheon by Mr Sinclair, when just before two o’clock the village band in uniform filed in at the garden-gate and put up their music-stands on the lawn. Then, as the church clock struck two, the villagers were admitted, each exhibitor making a rush for the tent, anxious to ascertain whether his exhibit bore the coloured card indicative of a prize.

At half-past two several smart carriages had driven up, and at last came the Morini landau, containing Mr Morini and his wife and daughter Mary. Basil Sinclair and George having welcomed them at the gate, Mr Morini was conducted to a small platform on the lawn, where, after a few words of introduction from the rector, he made a short speech in fairly good English, declaring the flower-show open.

Afterwards the party were conducted round the show by Sinclair, while George, of course, walked with Mary, who looked cool and sweet in a simple gown of pale grey voile, with a large grey hat to match.

As they walked around the tent, close beneath the noonday sun and heavy with the odour of vegetables and perfume of flowers, she congratulated him upon the success of the show.

Thornby always looked forward to the flower-show, for it was a gala day for the village; its four shops were closed, across the road at the top of the hill the committee stretched a string of gay bunting, and when dusk came the rectory garden was illuminated and there was dancing on the lawn. Thornby made every occasion an excuse for a dance, and the annual al fresco ball on the rector’s lawn was the chief event of the year.

It was His Excellency’s first visit to the rectory, therefore Mr Sinclair showed him the old-fashioned house, the grounds, the quaint old fifteenth-century church with its curious sculptured tombs, old carved oak and monumental brasses, while Mrs Morini, meeting several ladies of her acquaintance on the lawn, left Mary free to walk and talk with George Macbean.

For a whole long week of never-ending days he had been eagerly anticipating that meeting. Never for one moment had he ceased to think of her. The sweet, fair-faced girl was in peril, he knew, and if it were possible he intended to save her. But how? Ah! that was the question.

Although so deeply in love with her, he was judicious enough to save appearances, knowing well that the eyes of the whole countryside were upon him. The rustic is ever on the alert to discover defects in his master, and gossip in a village generally errs on the side of ill-nature. Therefore he was careful to appear gallant, and yet not too pressing in his attentions—a somewhat difficult feat with the strong ardour of love burning within him.

They were strolling together through the quaint old flower-garden sloping gently away towards the placid river, where they found themselves alone, when Mary, turning her beautiful face to him, suddenly said—

“I had no idea, Mr Macbean, that you had met my father in Rome. He was very much interested the other day, and after you had gone made quite a lot of inquiries about you.”

“It was very kind of him,” was the young man’s laughing reply. “I merely went as interpreter to Mr Morgan-Mason, who had business at your Ministry of War.”

Then, as they halted beneath the trees at the water’s edge, where there was a cool, refreshing breeze, she exclaimed suddenly, with a slight sigh, “Ah, how I wish we always lived in dear old England! I always look back upon my schooldays by the sea as the happiest in all my life; but now,”—and she drew a long breath again. “It is so different in Italy.”

Yes. She was sad, he recognised—very sad. But why? Her young heart seemed oppressed by some hidden grief. He saw it in her fine dark eyes at the moments when she was serious. Time after time, as he spoke to her and she answered, he recognised that upon her mind rested some heavy burden which oppressed and crushed her. Her resolute yet gentle spirit, her simple, serious, domestic turn of mind distinguished her from all the other women of his acquaintance. Her reveries, her simplicity, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing, even though that of a cosmopolitan, were the characteristics of a womanly woman—a woman who would struggle unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, meeting with unshaken constancy reverses and disasters such as would break the most masculine spirit.

George Macbean recognised all this, and more. He saw that she was at heart a thoroughly English girl, fond of tennis, hockey, and a country life, who had been transplanted into an artificial world of glare and glitter, of empty etiquette and false friendships, and yet who, at the same time, seemed to be held transfixed by some secret upon her conscience.

What was it? he wondered. Was he, after all, mistaken?

The longer he remained in her company, the more mystified did he become. He knew too well the character of Jules Dubard; he knew that she was marked down a victim, and he intended to stand as her friend—her champion if need be—even at peril to himself.

As she leaned over the old wooden rail at the river brink, gazing across the calm, unruffled waters, she chatted with gay vivacity about their mutual friends in the neighbourhood, and related her failure at a tennis tournament held on the previous day by a colonel’s wife on the other side of Rugby.

“I suppose you often see Count Dubard in Rome,” he said at last, with some attempt at indifference. “He is in Italy a great deal nowadays, I have heard.”

“He was in Rome this winter,” she answered. “He often came to my mother’s receptions.”

“He has a very wide circle of acquaintances, has he not?”

“Yes, mostly military men. He seems to know half of the officers in Rome. I thought I knew a good many, for crowds come to us every Thursday, but he knows far more.”

“And of course your father sends him cards for the official receptions at the Ministry of War?”

“Certainly—why?” she asked, glancing quickly at her companion with some surprise.

“Oh, nothing,” he laughed uneasily. “I was only reflecting that he must have a very pleasant time in Italy, that’s all.”

“I believe he enjoys himself,” she said. “But every foreigner who has money and is recognised by his Embassy can have a pleasant time in Rome if he likes.”

“But not every foreigner enjoys the friendship of the Minister of War,” he remarked—“nor of his daughter,” he added, with a smile.

Her cheeks flushed slightly.

“Ah!” she protested, with one of those quaint little foreign gestures. “There you are again, Mr Macbean! Teasing me because these ignorant people here say that I’m engaged to the count. It is really too bad of you! Did I not assure you the other day that it is quite untrue?”

“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, raising his panama hat, bowing as though she were an entire stranger, and yet laughing the while. “I had no intention of giving offence. Envy is permitted, however—is it not?”

“Oh, it hasn’t given me offence at all?” she laughed frankly. “You see, there’s no truth in the rumour, therefore I can afford to laugh.”

Her words struck him as very strange. They seemed to convey that if the engagement were really a fact it would cause her regret and annoyance.

“I wanted to meet Dubard so much,” he remarked in a tone of regret. “I suppose there is no chance he will return to Orton?”

“Not this summer, I think. He left us to go direct to Paris, and then I believe he goes to his estate in the Pyrenees.”

“But he came here intending to spend a week or so at Orton, did he not?”

“Yes; but he received a letter recalling him to France,” she said. “Father says he didn’t receive any letter. If he really didn’t, he surely could have left without telling us a lie.”

Macbean smiled. How little she knew of the real character of Jules Dubard, the plausible élégant who was such a prominent character at the Jockey Club and in the Bois.

“Very soon,” she added, in a tone of regret, “we shall have to return. My father is due back at the Ministry on the fourth of next month, and while he is there we shall go up to San Donato, our villa above Florence, and stay for the vintage, which, to me, is the best time in Italy in all the year.”

“Ah yes,” he sighed. “I have always heard so. Myself I love Italy—I only wish I could escape from this country with its long dismal winters and live in sunshine always.”

“You would very soon tire of it,” she assured him, looking him straight in the face with her fine eyes. “Even our bright sun gives one fever, and our blue sky becomes so monotonous that one longs for the calm of a grey English day.”

“I would like to try it for a year or two,” he declared wistfully.

“Then why don’t you?”

He was silent, and their eyes met again.

“Because I am not my own master, Miss Morini,” was his low response. “My living, such as it is, lies here in England. I am the factotum of a man who has elevated money to be his god, and I am compelled to serve him in silence and without complaint because it happens to be my lot in life.”

“A rather unhappy and uncomfortable one, I should imagine,” she remarked, suddenly growing grave.

“At times, yes,” was his brief reply. He did not wish to burden her with his own disappointments and misfortunes. She knew what was his position, a mere secretary, and that was sufficient. What hope could he ever have of daring to aspire to her hand? He might stand as her friend, but become her lover, never!

And when, a week later, he called at Orton to wish her farewell, as his vacation was at an end and he was compelled to return to his chambers in the Temple, and to that room in Mr Morgan-Mason’s flat in Queen Anne’s Mansions, he looked in vain in her eyes for some sign of genuine regret. There was none. No, she too had realised that on account of his position love was forbidden him.

“We shall meet here again, I hope, Mr Macbean—next summer,” she exclaimed, laughing airily, as she gave him her small white hand.

“I hope so,” was his fervent reply in a low, meaning voice, as their hands clasped.

And then, with sinking heart and full of grave apprehensions regarding her future, he bowed and left her, left her, alas! to Jules Dubard—Jules Dubard of all men!