Lady Merton, Colonist Part 29

"Yes, mademoiselle, I know him quite well. I have just been staying with him."

She clasped her hands eagerly.

"How _very_ interesting! I know him a little. _Isn't_ he nice?"

"No," said Mariette resolutely. "He is magnificent--a saint--a scholar--everything--but not nice!"

The girl looked a little puzzled, then angry, and after a few minutes'

more conversation she returned to her young men, conspicuously turning her back on Mariette.

He threw a deprecating, half-penitent look at Elizabeth, whose faced twitched with amus.e.m.e.nt, and sat down in a corner behind her that he might observe without talking. His quick intelligence sorted the people about him almost at once--the two yeoman-squires, who were not quite at home in Mrs. Gaddesden's drawing-room, were awkward with their tea-cups, and talked to each other in subdued voices, till Elizabeth found them out, summoned them to her side, and made them happy; the agent who was helping Lady Merton with tea, making himself generally useful; Philip and another gilded youth, the son, he understood, of a neighbouring peer, who were flirting with the girl in white; and yet a third fastidious Etonian, who was clearly bored by the ladies, and was amusing himself with the adjutant and a cigarette in a distant corner. His eyes came back at last to the _pasteur_. An able face after all; cool, shrewd, and not unspiritual. Very soon, he, the parson--whose name was Everett--and Elizabeth were drawn into conversation, and Marietta under Everett's good-humoured glance found himself observed as well as observer.

"You are trying to decipher us?" said Everett, at last, with a smile.

"Well, we are not easy."

"Could you be a great nation if you were?"

"Perhaps not. England just now is a palimpsest--the new writing everywhere on top of the old. Yet it is the same parchment, and the old is there. Now _you_ are writing on a fresh skin."

"But with the old ideas!" said Mariette, a flash in his dark eyes.

"Church--State--family!--there is nothing else to write with."

The two men drew closer together, and plunged into conversation.

Elizabeth was left solitary a moment, behind the tea-things. The buzz of the room, the hearty laugh of the Lord Lieutenant, reached the outer ear. But every deeper sense was strained to catch a voice--a step--that must soon be here. And presently across the room, her eyes met her mother's, and their two expectancies touched.

"Mother!--here is Mr. Anderson!"

Philip entered joyously, escorting his guest.

To Anderson's half-dazzled sight, the room, which was now fully lit by lamplight and fire, seemed crowded. He found himself greeted by a gentle grey-haired lady of fifty-five, with a strong likeness to a face he knew; and then his hand touched Elizabeth's. Various commonplaces pa.s.sed between him and her, as to his journey, the new motor which had brought him to the house, the frosty evening. Mariette gave him a nod and smile, and he was introduced to various men who bowed without any change of expression, and to a girl, who smiled carelessly, and turned immediately towards Philip, hanging over the back of her chair.

Elizabeth pointed to a seat beside her, and gave him tea. They talked of London a little, and his first impressions. All the time he was trying to grasp the ident.i.ty of the woman speaking with the woman he had parted from in Canada. Something surely had gone? This restrained and rather cold person was not the Elizabeth of the Rockies. He watched her when she turned from him to her other guests; her light impersonal manner towards the younger men, with its occasional touch of satire; the friendly relation between her and the parson; the kindly deference she showed the old Lord Lieutenant. Evidently she was mistress here, much more than her mother. Everything seemed to be referred to her, to circle round her.

Presently there was a stir in the room. Lord Waynflete asked for his carriage.

"Don't forget, my dear lady, that you open the new Town Hall next Wednesday," he said, as he made his way to Elizabeth.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"But you make the speech!"

"Not at all. They only want to hear you. And there'll be a great crowd."

"Elizabeth can't speak worth a cent!" said Philip, with brotherly candour. "Can you, Lisa?"

"I don't believe it," said Lord Waynflete, "but it don't matter. All they want is that a Gaddesden should say something. Ah, Mrs.

Gaddesden--how glorious the Romney looks to-night!" He turned to the fireplace, admiring the illuminated picture, his hands on his sides.

"Is it an ancestress?" Mariette addressed the question to Elizabeth.

"Yes. She had three husbands, and is supposed to have murdered the fourth," said Elizabeth drily.

"All the same she's an extremely handsome woman," put in Lord Waynflete.

"And as you're the image of her, Lady Merton, you'd better not run her down." Elizabeth joined in the laugh against herself and the speaker turned to Anderson.

"You'll find this place a perfect treasure-house, Mr. Anderson, and I advise you to study it--for the Radicals won't leave any of us anything, before many years are out. You're from Manitoba? Ah, you're not troubled with any of these Socialist fellows yet! But you'll get 'em--you'll get 'em--like rats in the corn. They'll pull the old flag down if they can. But you'll help us to keep it flying. The Colonies are our hope--we look to the Colonies!"

The handsome old man raised an oratorical hand, and looked round on his audience, like one to whom public speaking was second nature.

Anderson made a gesture of a.s.sent; he was not really expected to say anything. Mariette in the background observed the speaker with an amused and critical detachment.

"Your carriage will be round directly, Lord Waynflete," said Philip, "but I don't see why you should go."

"My dear fellow--I have to catch the night train. There is a most important debate in the House of Lords to-morrow." He turned to the Canadian politely. "Of course you know there is an autumn session on.

With these Radical Governments we shall soon have one every year."

"What! the Education Bill again to-morrow?" said Everett. "What are you going to do with it?"

Lord Waynflete looked at the speaker with some distaste. He did not much approve of sporting parsons, and Everett's opinions were too Liberal to please him. But he let himself be drawn, and soon the whole room was in eager debate on some of the old hot issues between Church and Dissent.

Lord Waynflete ceased to be merely fatuous and kindly. His talk became shrewd, statesmanlike even; he was the typical English aristocrat and Anglican Churchman, discussing topics with which he had been familiar from his cradle, and in a manner and tone which every man in the room--save the two Canadians--accepted without question. He was the natural leader of these men of the land-owning or military cla.s.s; they liked to hear him harangue; and harangue he did, till the striking of a clock suddenly checked him.

"I must be off! Well, Mrs. Gaddesden, it's the _Church_--the Church we have to think of!--the Church we have to fight for! What would England be without the Church--let's ask ourselves that. Good-bye--good-bye!"

"Is he talking of the Anglican establishment?" muttered Mariette. "_Quel drole de vieillard!_"

The parson heard him, and, with a twinkle in his eyes, turned and proposed to show the French Canadian the famous library of the house.

The party melted away. Even Elizabeth had been summoned for some last word with Lord Waynflete on the subject of the opening of the Town Hall.

Anderson was left alone.

He looked around him, at the room, the pictures, the panelled walls, and then moving to the window which was still unshuttered, he gazed out into the starlit dusk, and the dim, stately landscape. There were lights in the church showing the stained gla.s.s of the perpendicular windows, and a flight of rooks was circling round the old tower.

As he stood there, somebody came back into the room. It was the adjutant, looking for his hat.

"Jolly old place, isn't it?" said the young man civilly, seeing that the stranger was studying the view. "It's to be hoped that Philip will keep it up properly."

"He seems fond of it," said Anderson.

"Oh, yes! But you've got to be a big man to fill the position. However, there's money enough. They're all rich--and they marry money."

Anderson murmured something inaudible, and the young man departed.

A little later Anderson and Elizabeth were seated together in the Red Drawing Room. Mrs. Gaddesden, after a little perfunctory conversation with the new-comer, had disappeared on the plea of letters to write. The girl in white, the centre of a large party in the hall, was flirting to her heart's content. Philip would have dearly liked to stay and flirt with her himself; but his mother, terrified by his pallor and fatigue after the exertion of the shoot, had hurried him off to take a warm bath and rest before dinner. So that Anderson and Elizabeth were alone.

Conversation between them did not move easily. Elizabeth was conscious of an oppression against which it seemed vain to fight. Up to the moment of his sailing from Canada his letters had been frank and full, the letters of a deeply attached friend, though with no trace in them of the language of love. What change was it that the touch of English ground--the sight of Martindale--had wrought? He talked with some readiness of the early stages of his mission--of the kindness shown to him by English public men, and the impressions of a first night in the House of Commons. But his manner was constrained; anything that he said might have been heard by all the world; and as their talk progressed, Elizabeth felt a miserable paralysis descending on her own will. She grew whiter and whiter. This old house in which they sat, with its splendours and treasures, this environment of the past all about them seemed to engulf and entomb them both. She had looked forward with a girlish pleasure--and yet with a certain tremor--to showing Anderson her old home, the things she loved and had inherited. And now it was as though she were vulgarly conscious of wealth and ancestry as dividing her from him. The wildness within her which found its scope and its voice in Canada was here like an imprisoned stream, chafing in caverns underground. Ah! it had been easy to defy the Old World in Canada, its myriad voices and claims--the many-fingered magic with which an old society plays on those born into it!

"I shall be here perhaps a month," said Anderson, "but then I shall be wanted at Ottawa."