For several days after the scene in which Mr. Malkin unconsciously played an important part, Marcella seemed to be ill. She appeared at meals, but neither ate nor conversed. Christian had never known her so sullen and nervously irritable; he did not venture to utter Peak’s name. Upon seclusion followed restless activity. Marcella was rarely at home between breakfast and dinner-time, and her brother learnt with satisfaction that she went much among her acquaintances. Late one evening, when he had just returned from he knew not where, Christian tried to put an end to the unnatural constraint between them. After talking cheerfully for a few minutes, he risked the question:
‘Have you seen anything of the Warricombes?’
She replied with a cold negative.
‘Nor heard anything?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Nothing at all. I have seen Earwaker. Malkin had told him about what happened here the other day.’
‘Of course.’
‘But he had no news.—Of Peak, I mean.’
Marcella smiled, as if the situation amused her; but she would not discuss it. Christian began to hope that she was training herself to a wholesome indifference.
A month of the new year went by, and Peak seemed to be forgotten. Marcella had returned to her studious habits, was fenced around with books, seldom left the house. Another month and the brother and sister were living very much in the old way, seeing few people, conversing only of intellectual things. But Christian concealed an expectation which enabled him to pass hours of retirement in the completest idleness. Since the death of her husband, Mrs. Palmer had been living abroad. Before the end of March, as he had been careful to discover, she would be back in London, at the house in Sussex Square. By that time he might venture, without indelicacy, to call upon her. And after the first interview——
The day came, when, ill with agitation, he set forth to pay this call. For two or three nights he had scarcely closed his eyes; he looked ghastly. The weather was execrable, and on that very account he made choice of this afternoon, hoping that he might find his widowed Laura alone. Between ringing the bell and the opening of the door, he could hardly support himself. He asked for Mrs. Palmer in a gasping voice which caused the servant to look at him with surprise.
The lady was at home. At the drawing-room door, before his name could be announced, he caught the unwelcome sound of voices in lively conversation. It seemed to him that a score of persons were assembled. In reality there were six, three of them callers.
Mrs. Palmer met him with the friendliest welcome. A stranger would have thought her pretty, but by no means impressive. She was short, anything but meagre, fair-haired, brisk of movement, idly vivacious in look and tone. The mourning she wore imposed no restraint upon her humour, which at present was not far from gay.
‘Is it really Mr. Moxey?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, I had all but forgotten you, and positively it is your own fault! It must be a year or more since you came to see me. No? Eight months?—But I have been through so much trouble, you know.’ She sighed mechanically. ‘I thought of you one day at Bordighera, when we were looking at some funny little sea-creatures—the kind of thing you used to know all about. How is your sister?’
A chill struck upon his heart. Assuredly he had no wish to find Constance sunk in the semblance of dolour; such hypocrisy would have pained him. But her sprightliness was a shock. Though months had passed since Mr. Palmer’s decease, a decent gravity would more have become her condition. He could reply only in broken phrases, and it was a relief to him when the widow, as if tiring of his awkwardness, turned her attention elsewhere.
He was at length able to survey the company. Two ladies in mourning he faintly recognised, the one a sister of Mr. Palmer’s, comely but of dull aspect; the other a niece, whose laugh was too frequent even had it been more musical, and who talked of athletic sports with a young man evidently better fitted to excel in that kind of thing than in any pursuit demanding intelligence. This gentleman Christian had never met. The two other callers, a grey-headed, military-looking person, and a lady, possibly his wife, were equally strangers to him.
The drawing-room was much changed in appearance since Christian’s last visit. There was more display, a richer profusion of ornaments not in the best taste. The old pictures had given place to showily-framed daubs of the most popular school. On a little table at his elbow, he remarked the photograph of a jockey who was just then engrossing public affection. What did all this mean? Formerly, he had attributed every graceful feature of the room to Constance’s choice. He had imagined that to her Mr. Palmer was indebted for guidance on points of aesthetic propriety. Could it be that——?
He caught a glance which she cast in his direction, and instantly forgot the troublesome problem. How dull of him to misunderstand her! Her sportiveness had a double significance. It was the expression of a hope which would not be subdued, and at the same time a means of disguising the tender interest with which she regarded him. If she had been blithe before his appearance, how could she suddenly change her demeanour as soon as he entered? It would have challenged suspicion and remark. For the same reason she affected to have all but forgotten him. Of course! how could he have failed to see that? ‘I thought of you one day at Bordighera’—was not that the best possible way of making known to him that he had never been out of her mind?
Sweet, noble, long-suffering Constance!
He took a place by her sister, and began to talk of he knew not what, for all his attention was given to the sound of Constance’s voice.
‘Yes,’ she was saying to the man of military appearance, ‘it’s very early to come back to London, but I did get so tired of those foreign places.’
(In other words, of being far from her Christian—thus he interpreted.)
‘No, we didn’t make a single pleasant acquaintance. A shockingly tiresome lot of people wherever we went.’
(In comparison with the faithful lover, who waited, waited.)
‘Foreigners are so stupid—don’t you think so? Why should they always expect you to speak their language?—Oh, of course I speak French; but it is such a disagreeable language—don’t you think so?’
(Compared with the accents of English devotion, of course.)
‘Do you go in for cycling, Mr. Moxey?’ inquired Mrs. Palmer’s laughing niece, from a little distance.
‘For cycling?’ With a great effort he recovered himself and grasped the meaning of the words. ‘No, I—I’m sorry to say I don’t. Capital exercise!’
‘Mr. Dwight has just been telling me such an awfully good story about a friend of his. Do tell it again, Mr. Dwight! It’ll make you laugh no end, Mr. Moxey.’
The young man appealed to was ready enough to repeat his anecdote, which had to do with a bold cyclist, who, after dining more than well, rode his machine down a steep hill and escaped destruction only by miracle. Christian laughed desperately, and declared that he had never heard anything so good.
But the tension of his nerves was unendurable. Five minutes more of anguish, and he sprang up like an automaton.
‘Must you really go, Mr. Moxey?’ said Constance, with a manner which of course was intended to veil her emotion. ‘Please don’t be another year before you let us see you again.’
Blessings on her tender heart! What more could she have said, in the presence of all those people? He walked all the way to Notting Hill through a pelting rain, his passion aglow.
Impossible to be silent longer concerning the brilliant future. Arrived at home, he flung off hat and coat, and went straight to the drawing-room, hoping to find Marcella alone. To his annoyance, a stranger was sitting there in conversation, a very simply dressed lady, who, as he entered, looked at him with a grave smile and stood up. He thought he had never seen her before.
Marcella wore a singular expression; there was a moment of silence, for Christian decidedly embarrassing, since it seemed to be expected that he should greet the stranger.
‘Don’t you remember Janet?’ said his sister.
‘Janet?’ He felt his face flush. ‘You don’t mean to say—? But how you have altered! And yet, no; really, you haven’t. It’s only my stupidity.’ He grasped her hand, and with a feeling of genuine pleasure, despite awkward reminiscences.
‘One does alter in eleven years,’ said Janet Moxey, in a very pleasant, natural voice—a voice of habitual self-command, conveying the idea of a highly cultivated mind, and many other agreeable things.
‘Eleven years? Yes, yes! How very glad I am to see you! And I’m sure Marcella was. How very kind of you to call on us!’
Janet was as far as ever from looking handsome or pretty, but it must have been a dullard who proclaimed her face unpleasing. She had eyes of remarkable intelligence, something like Marcella’s but milder, more benevolent. Her lips were softly firm; they would not readily part in laughter; their frequent smile meant more than that of the woman who sets herself to be engaging.
‘I am on my way home,’ she said, ‘from a holiday in the South,—an enforced holiday, I’m sorry to say.’
‘You have been ill?’
‘Overworked a little. I am practising medicine in Kingsmill.’
Christian did not disguise his astonishment.
‘Medicine?’
‘You don’t remember that I always had scientific tastes?’
If it was a reproach, none could have been more gently administered.
‘Of course—of course I do! Your botany, your skeletons of birds and cats and mice—of course! But where did you study?’
‘In London. The Women’s Medical School. I have been in practice for nearly four years.’
‘And have overworked yourself.—But why are we standing? Let us sit down and talk. How is your father?’
Marcella was watching her brother closely, and with a curious smile.
Janet remained for another hour. No reference was made to the long rupture of intercourse between her family and these relatives. Christian learnt that his uncle was still hale, and that Janet’s four sisters all lived, obviously unmarried. To-day he was disposed to be almost affectionate with anyone who showed him a friendly face: he expressed grief that his cousin must............