"Any letter of interest?" Sir Francis asked of his sister, who, breakfast being over, was glancing again through the correspondence the morning's post had brought her.
"One from Reggie."
"He having a good time?"
"He says not. He says he hates travelling. Mountains and churches and picture-galleries, he says, bore him till he cries. He talks about coming home. I shall write and remind him he went for a year, and has only been away eight months. A young man with money in his pocket who can't amuse himself somewhere on the Continent of Europe must be deficient, Francis."
"Poor Reggie is not a very cultivated person. And I suppose he is—in love." He paused on that, seeming to turn something over in his mind. "He may as well come back," he finished. "I decided last night to tell him he can come back if he likes."
"If he likes!" repeated an astonished Ada. "Then, of course he'll come, and at once! He is best away. Tell him to stay where he is."
"I can't always expect to keep the boy in leading-strings. He has always been very decent in doing the things I wish; but, as a fact, I have no longer the slightest authority over him, or hold upon him, and he knows it."
"Then, leave it. Say nothing. Don't write for him to come."
"I decided, last night, to write to him."
Miss Forcus was silent to show that she did not approve. She never argued with her brother. "It is fortunate, then, that Deleah Day is going," she said presently.
"We could not possibly have Reggie here with her. That silly affair would be on again, in no time."
"As to that, I withdraw my objection. The boy must play his own game."
"Francis!" unbounded astonishment sat on the good, plain face of Ada Forcus.
Her brother left his place on the hearthrug, and walked over to the broad window at the end of the room. He stood there, tall, and fine, and upright, his back to her, his hands lightly clasped behind him.
"Deleah is a sweet girl, Francis; but in a marriage there is more than that to consider."
"Yes. There is a good deal to consider; but it is for Reggie and the girl to consider—not for me."
"But surely you, too, Francis!"
"Well, then, I have considered."
"It is not Reggie alone—but all of us. You must think for all of us, Francis. You always have done. It is not a connection to desire."
"I agree with you. The last in the world to desire. But it concerns the pair of them, primarily. He is—he no doubt believes he is—in love with her; and she is, I suppose, in love with him. No one has the right to interfere."
"Think how differently you married, Francis! A rich girl of high family."
"I did not marry for that. It happened—that was all. I married Marion for the same reason that impels Reggie to marry this girl. I remember how little such things weighed with me in my marriage; how, once having felt the inclination to marry her, I should have married my wife all the same if she had been, say, the daughter of William Day. It is because I remember that I decline any longer to interfere, or to take upon my shoulders any responsibility in this matter."
"You are wrong, Francis. Reggie won't thank you for it, later on."
"Oh, do I want any one to thank me!" Sir Francis said with sudden, all unusual petulance, turning round on his astonished sister, who jumped in her chair at his tone, instantly repentant. To incur the anger of the head of her house was the thing of which she was most on earth afraid.
"Do what you think right, of course, Francis."
"Of course I shall do what I think right."
He went to his own room, settled himself in his chair by the open window, tore open the morning paper which it was his custom to read there. The window opened upon a long oblong of flower-bordered lawn, enclosed by thick square-cut yew hedges on two sides; at the end a series of glass houses shut out the view. The eyes of Sir Francis strayed from the pages of the newspaper to the sunshine and shadow of the freshly-cut lawn. At the door of one of the greenhouses beyond, Deleah, in her black muslin dress and wide black hat, was standing in conversation with Jarvis, the head-gardener. Part of her duty, he had been told, was to wheedle Jarvis out of the flowers Miss Forcus liked to see in her rooms, but of which he resented the cutting.
Sir Francis looked at the pair—they were too far off for him to read their faces, but he know how the girl would be playing her part, smiling shyly, with appealing eyes; how Jarvis was probably denying her, being human, for the mere delight of being asked. Presently the newspaper dropped from his hand, and he passed out into the morning sunshine, and walked down the flagged path dividing the lawn, the mosses growing grey and green between the stones.
It was a morning of unclouded skies, the soft air laden with the scent of flowers. A morning to be alive in—yes, to be happy in, spite of regrets and doubts and cares; spite, even, of death and loss and buried love. On such a morning a man might think of his dead wife, perhaps. Might say to himself, "the pity of it!" but he could but be conscious that he, himself, was alive still; that in him, solemn, responsible, middle-aged as he might be, the fires of youth were not yet extinguished. He must feel the fragrant wind upon his cheek, the scent of delicious airs in his nostrils, must even, in spite of himself, use the eyes in his head to see what was fair and sweet and gracious.
Jarvis, with his finger to his cap, retreated to his carnation-house, the entrance of which he had been guarding.
"So you are leaving us?" Sir Francis began at once, stopping before Deleah. "My sister has been telling me. We shall miss you very much."
"I shall never forget how good you have both been to me," Deleah said in her shy voice, and playing with the flowers in her hands. "But I think I ought to go."
"You will do what you think you ought, I am sure," he said; and her heart sank at the ease with which he acquiesced.
She turned to walk towards the house, and he walked beside her. "You will come to me if I can help you?" he said.
"If I might use your name in case no one will let me a house?"
"Of course. But you are not going to-day?"
She had not meant to do so, but since he seemed to expect it, found herself saying that she was.
"There is another matter," he said, "and it is that I came out to speak about. My brother Reginald is coming home."
"Really? Is that so?" She spoke without any show of interest. "I thought he had gone for a year."
"That was the original plan. But he went because I wished it—at that time. He has always been to me a docile, dear fellow, and I fear I presumed on that. I had no right to order his goings and comings—to order his life. None."
"I think it was Franky's death. I think he was glad to go—"
"That is as may be. I am going to tell him, now, to come back."
Deleah, feeling that this was a matter in which she had no concern, walked on, saying nothing.
"And now," Sir Francis went on, "I am going to ask you to alter your mind about leaving us. Since Reggie is coming back to us, won't you stay?"
Deleah lifted her head, and regarded him in silent astonishment.
He went on. "You have not forgotten what I said to you on a certain matter some months ago, although you have sweetly held yourself as if you did not remember. I now wish to recall the words I said then."
He waited. It was difficult to carry on a conversation in which she would take no part.
"I see that I was wrong. That which I feared might be for Reggie's undoing, I now believe would be for his good. Will you do me the great kindness to forget that former talk we had; or if you cannot forget, to act as though it had not taken place?"
Their walk had brought them opposite the morning-room window at which Miss Forcus was now standing looking out, wondering what Francis had found to say to the girl to whom he so seldom spoke.
Deleah with an effort found her voice. "That time—when you spoke to me about your brother—I had not promised to marry him."
"I know," he said very gently, for her voice showed him that she was distressed. "But Reggie wished it very much. And, perhaps, but for my having taken action, you would have done?"
"I don't know," Deleah said, her head hung over the flowers in her hands. Her hat was big, he could not, if he would, see her face. "Mama and Bessie wished it—"
"And—but for me—you would have wished it?"
"I don't know."
She gave him an instant's imploring glance. Surely he must understand how difficult it was for her to explain to him how she felt about Reggie! The Reggie he was so nobly offering her. The Reggie, that not only her mother and Bessie, but now Sir Francis himself wished her to marry, and that therefore, undoubtedly she would have to marry. She could not tell him this, could only stand before him—for they had come to a pause in the middle of the gravel sweep before the big hall door—with hanging head, pulling nervously at the stalks of her flowers, and repeat with a childishness he must despise, "I don't know."
"Well, we shall see," he said encouragingly. "But at least you will not hurry away? You will stay with us until Reggie comes home? Go to my sister and tell her so. Will you?"
"If you wish it," Deleah said.
Miss Forcus, who under no circumstance could have been cold or inhospitable, received the intimation that Deleah was to stay until Reginald came home with less than accustomed warmth.
"Of course, my dear! You know I hated the thought of your going; but why is it to be for Reggie especially? Were you and Reggie such friends?"
Deleah admitted without enthusiasm that they were certainly friends.
"Then, no doubt he will be glad to see you," Miss Forcus said, and thought to herself that now she was going to have the daughter of a felon for her sister-in-law.
By way of solace to her family pride she turned from the impending, disastrous marriage of the step-brother to that satisfying alliance her own brother had made. The daughter of a baronet had been his wife—the sister-in-law of a peer. The baronet was a banker, and rich. If the little son had lived he would have inherited his grandfather's fortune which now had gone to the son of Lord Brace. Lord Brace, who was an Irish peer, wanted the money more than Francis, certainly, who had a sufficient fortune of his own, even without that considerable one his wife had received from her mother, and had left to him.
All such facts, which Ada Forcus generally accepted as a matter of course, she now produced for the benefit of Deleah, meekly counting the stitches of the Madonna lily, which when worked in beads, grounded in amber silk and framed in gold, would be converted into a screen, to hang on the marble mantelpiece in the Cashelthorpe drawing-room.
About the wife whom Sir Francis had loved and lost, who had lived for two years in this beautiful home, sitting to read, and eat, and sew, in her husband's company, walking the gardens by his side, cared for and tended and watched over by him, Deleah had dreamed many dreams. Beautiful as an angel she had pictured her, and with an angel's nature, to be so loved, so inexpressibly mourned by him. She had dreamed dreams, but had asked no questions. She asked them now.
"Was she so very beautiful—Lady Forcus?"
Not to say strictly beautiful; which had surprised them all, Francis having ever been a beauty lover. She had what was called a dear face. And such manners! Such a dignity! Such an air of high-breeding! "I used to say to myself, 'Small wonder that Francis is your slave.'"
"And was he?"
"He was, indeed. Bound to her, hand and foot; with no thought but to please her, no wish but what was hers."
Deleah sighed for very fullness of heart.
"But only because of his love for her, understand. Not because she had him in the very least under her thumb."
Deleah shook a sympathetic head. "I am sure he could not be that."
"He has never been the same since her death. Never! And never will be again."
"One would not wish him to be. It would spoil it," Deleah sighed.
Miss Forcus echoed the sigh. "Well, I do not know," she admitted. "People die, but the world has to go on, Deleah. If the child had lived it would have been different; but it seems to me a pity there should be no one to come after Francis, to bear his name, and inherit his fortune. Of course there is Reggie; but—"
She stopped there, remembering that in all probability the son of Reggie would be the grandson of William and Lydia Day—felon, and bankrupt grocer. The thought choked her. Had Francis remembered it? "Whoever marries Reggie will marry a rotten reed," she said impetuously. "I pity the girl who does it, from my heart."
"So do I," said Deleah quietly, and knitted her brow, chasing a tiny fugitive bead with the point of her needle.
Miss Forcus heard with surprise and satisfaction, yet was afraid to believe. What penniless girl, whose hand was her own to bestow, would refuse the wealthy young Forcus? Longing for further assurance, and greatly daring, she risked the question: "You knew Reggie so well, then, yet did not fall in love with him?"
"I? Oh, no!" Deleah said. She lifted her head from the frame over which she was stooping and looked calmly in the other woman's face; and Miss Forcus was struck with the perception of what a gentle dignity the girl had. A dignity less arresting, perhaps, than that she had admired so much in Francis's wife, but as effective.
"Ah, well!" she smiled, immensely relieved, and overjoyed to find she might again take her protÉgÉe to her heart. "We shall see who there is that will be good and great enough for you, Deleah. He will have to be both to deserve you."
"He will have to be both before I love him," Deleah said calmly, but with the colour in her cheeks. She put her head on one side to contemplate the lily growing so slowly under her fingers. "'I needs must love the highest when I see it,'" she said, half to herself.
For while she had been talking and listening she had been thinking of that sacrifice which she had but now thought was demanded of her; and she had made up her mind not to make it.
When Sir Francis came in, that evening, he found lying on his writing-table a little note with the signature "Deleah Day." "I hope you will excuse me that I have altered my mind and decided to go home at once," it ran. "I think I am wanted there. I hope you will not think I do not feel all your kindness. I do feel it with all my heart."
Carrying this scanty missive open in his hand, Sir Francis sought his sister.
"Yes, she has gone," that lady said. "She evidently wished it, and I drove her back to-day."
"Then how about Reggie?"
"You were quite deceived about Reggie, Francis. You are, indeed. Deleah will never marry Reggie. She as good as told me so. I never was more thankful. It would have been so terribly unsuitable. She told me she was writing to you. What does she say?"
Sir Francis did not choose to see the hand held out for Deleah's little note. He folded it, and walked to the window, looking out thoughtfully upon the garden, his hands behind his back, the letter, held by its corner in one of them, waggling up and down.
"She told me she had written," Miss Forcus said again, by way of reminder.
"She simply says she has gone."
"I shall miss her dreadfully. She is the dearest girl. Never have I seen one so lovely and so little vain."
"She is too lovely to be vain," Sir Francis said.
And at the tone rather than the words Miss Forcus lifted a startled head, and gazed and gazed upon her brother's stately back, upon the hands clasped behind it, holding the letter, waggling up and down, he would not let out of his keeping.
Over another letter which Sir Francis received the next morning, he laughed as he read. He tossed it across the table to his sister. "What a fellow!" he said.
"From Reggie? I wish you had not written to him to come home, Francis."
"He's not coming. Don't alarm yourself. He says the Worradykes have turned up at Nice—"
"They followed him! They've no doubt taken Daisy. I would stake my existence they've taken Daisy!"
"You are quite right. Daisy is there. Reggie has promised to go on with them to Rome."
"Now she'll catch him!" prophesied the lady. "Good gracious! Supposing things were as you thought and Deleah had waited to welcome him home! What a quandary we should have been in then, Francis!"
