THE STAINED-GLASS MAN

Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room. Thea Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking. From the look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been born; he hastily withdrew. Descending to the hall, he came on Mr. Dennant crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking papers.

"Ah, Shelton!" said he, "you look a little lost. Is the shrine invisible?"

Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking. He was not fortunate. In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of books.

"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said. "Everybody 's readin' this thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because she's got a title."

"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.

"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because other people do them, and I sha'n't get it."

"Good!"

Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.

"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house. And there's Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's always so refined. But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's? They say that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you know"; and over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like eyes.

Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and slightly sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to her to trust her instincts. It was quite pathetic. Still, there was always the book's circulation to form her judgment by.

"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you? Were you lookin' for Antonia? If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say I want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance. I can understand his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."

Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went. He took a despairing look into the billiard-room. Antonia was not there. Instead, a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache, called Mabbey, was practising the spot-stroke. He paused as Shelton entered, and, pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,

"Play me a hundred up?"

Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to go.

The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of some surprise,

"What's your general game, then?"

"I really don't know," said Shelton.

The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round, knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for the stroke.

"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition. "Curious dark horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.

Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when he was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine—a slight-built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of thin veins. His face had something of the youthful, optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in his hand.

"Ah, Shelton!" he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such an easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to take the air?"

Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the stained-glass man.

"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the latter said.

Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other people's business, smiled.

"Do I look like it?" he asked.

The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man. It had never occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must look like it; he examined Shelton with some curiosity.

"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not." His eyes, so carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey, also seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.

"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.

The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush. "Yes," he said; "it suits me very well. I get lots of time for my art work."

"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."

"Never had a hobby!" said the stained-glass man, brushing back his hair (he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"

Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.

"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always something going on, as far as I can see."

The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his bright glance swept over his companion.

"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he said.

"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good enough for me."

"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of regarding life itself as interesting.

"That's all very well, but you want something more than that. Why don't you take up woodcarving?"

"Wood-carving?"

"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."

"I have n't the enthusiasm."

The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his moustache.

"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get old, then where 'll you be?"

It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay," for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.

"You've given up the Bar? Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.

Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that being in love was in itself enough to do. To do nothing is unworthy of a man! But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.

"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other side. Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil. "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round it once again.

His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just a little. A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the Spectator a confession of commercialism.

"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all its charm."

His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully genuine.

"Couldn't I?" he said. "By Jove! I thought so. 1690! The best period." He ran his forger round the sundial's edge. "Splendid line-clean as the day they made it. You don't seem to care much about that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.

They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy searching every patch of shade. He wanted to say "Can't stop," and hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them quite impossible. "Feelings!" that person seemed to say; "all very well, but you want more than that. Why not take up wood-carving? . . . Feelings! I was born in England, and have been at Cambridge."

"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton. "I go on to Halidome's to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there? Good, chap, old Halidome! Collection of etchings very fine!"

"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.

"Ah!" said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"

Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a gooseberry, and muttered, "Yes."

"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her. I thought she was a particularly nice girl."

Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave him the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light upon her. He grunted hastily,

"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"

"Really!" said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear, iron-committal glance swept over Shelton—"really! I didn't know. Congratulate you!"

It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would go well in almost any drawing-room!"

"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is. If you'll excuse me, I want to speak to her."

CHAPTER XXIV

PARADISE

Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself. Shelton saw the stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn, casting away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft tune.

In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he a part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his; together they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk of them, as one; and this would come about by standing half an hour together in a church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of their names.

The sun was burnishing her hair—she wore no hat flushing her cheeks, sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through and through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the air, she was all motion, light, and colour.

She turned and saw Shelton standing there.

"Oh, Dick!" she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these flowers in, there 's a good boy!"

Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and cool as ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that corner; the sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth again. The sight of those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining round the flower-stalks, her pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant, stole the reason out of Shelton. He stood before her, weak about the knees.

"Found you at last!" he said.

Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!" and with a sweep of both her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.

Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on his knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks, to hide the violence of his feelings. Antonia went on picking flowers, and every time her hand was full she dropped them on his hat, his shoulder, or his arms, and went on plucking more; she smiled, and on her lips a little devil danced, that seemed to know what he was suffering. And Shelton felt that she did know.

"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted. These are the bedroom-flowers—fourteen lots. I can't think how people can live without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried her face in pinks.

He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and forced himself to answer,

"I think I can hold out."

"Poor old Dick!" She had stepped back. The sun lit the clear-cut profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her blouse. "Poor old Dick! Awfully hard luck, is n't it?" Burdened with mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his shoulder, but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating heart, he went on sorting out the flowers. The seeds of mignonette rained on his neck, and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume fanned his face. "You need n't sort them out!" she said.

Was she enticing him? He stole a look; but she was gone again, swaying and sniffing at the flowers.

"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."

She laughed.

"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!" and as she spoke she flung a clove carnation at him. "Does n't it smell good?"

"Too good Oh, Antonia! why are you doing this?"

"Why am I doing what?"

"Don't you know what you are doing?"

"Why, picking flowers!" and once more she was back, bending and sniffing at the blossoms.

"That's enough."

"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.

"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."

"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.

Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was her face.

"I'm not a bit like you," she said. "What will you have for your room?"

"Choose!"

"Cornflowers and clove pinks. Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks too—"

"White," said Shelton.

"And mignonette too hard and—"

"Sweet. Why cornflowers?"

Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure was so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.

"Because they're dark and deep."

"And why clove pinks?"

Antonia did not answer.

"And why clove pinks?"

"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on her skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."

"Ah! And what flowers shall t give YOU?"

She put her hands behind her.

"There are all the other flowers for me."

Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard, sweet mignonette, and held it out to her.

"There," he said, "that's you." But Antonia did not move.

"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed the petals of a blood-red poppy. She shook her head, smiling a brilliant smile. The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her, and kissed her on the lips.

But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come to him. She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had kissed a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.

"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and anger. "What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his troubled watch upon her face.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RIDE

"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they turned up High Street, Oxford City. "I won't go back the same way, Dick!"

"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice, and get home that way; but you 'll be tired."

Antonia shook her head. Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat threw a curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.

A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she was the same good comrade, cool and quick. But as before a change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was affected by the inner change in her. He had made a blot upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and it was ineffaceable. Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose creed is "Let us love and hate, let us work and marry, but let us never give ourselves away; to give ourselves away is to leave a mark, and that is past forgive ness. Let our lives be like our faces, free from every kind of wrinkle, even those of laughter; in this way alone can we be really civilised."

He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort. That he should give himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but that he should give her the feeling that she had given herself away was a very different thing.

"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he said, as they passed the old hotel.

A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though the writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter. It was dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as follows:

IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL, FOLKESTONE. MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,

This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you, but, having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting better days. Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I had not thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not even now if I should have found the necessary spirit. 'Les choses vont de mal en mal'. From what I hear there has never been so bad a season here. Nothing going on. All the same, I am tormented by a mob of little matters which bring me not sufficient to support my life. I know not what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall I return here another year. The patron of this hotel, my good employer, is one of those innumerable specimens who do not forge or steal because they have no need, and if they had would lack the courage; who observe the marriage laws because they have been brought up to believe in them, and know that breaking them brings risk and loss of reputation; who do not gamble because they dare not; do not drink because it disagrees with them; go to church because their neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the mid-day meal; commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other fashion, they are not obliged. What is there to respect in persons of this sort? Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of Society. The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes, never use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs of life for fear they should get bitten.

Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the inquiring look that he had come to dread. In that chilly questioning she seemed to say: "I am waiting. I am prepared to be told things—that is, useful things—things that help one to believe without the risk of too much thinking."

"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to himself.

I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'. I see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free thought." Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas m'oter cela'! I see no future for me here, and certainly should have departed long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told you, all that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'. 'Je me sens ecceuye'. Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads; you know what a pessimist I am. 'Je ne perds pas courage'.

Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I subscribe myself,

Your very devoted

LOUIS FERRAND.

He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious turmoil which Ferrand excited in his heart. It was as though this foreign vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave forth moans of a mutiny.

"What does he say?" Antonia asked.

Should he show it to her? If he might not, what should he do when they were married?

"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly cheering."'

"What is he like, Dick—I mean, to look at? Like a gentleman, or what?"

Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.

"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a wine merchant."

Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.

"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything I ought not."

But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite effect. His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from whom the half of life must be excluded.

"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."

"Oh, all right!" she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in front. "I hate dismal things."

Shelton bit his lips. It was not his fault that half the world was dark. He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always at a sign of her displeasure, was afraid. He galloped after her on the scorched turf.

"What is it?" he said. "You 're angry with me!"

"Oh no!"

"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful. We have eyes," he added, quoting from the letter.

Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.

"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't see why YOU should. It's wicked to be discontented;" and she galloped off.

It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men, a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her experience! "What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs, "has our class to patronise? We 're the only people who have n't an idea of what life really means." Chips of dried turf and dust came flying back, stinging his face. He gained on her, drew almost within reach, then, as though she had been playing with him, was left hopelessly behind.

She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with dock-leaves:

"Aha, Dick! I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually darkening with sweat.

"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."

"Don't be cross, Dick!"

"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in condition. We'd better go home the way we came."

Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.

"There 's no fun in that," she said. "Out and back again; I hate a dog's walk."

"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!

The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia lay disclosed in waves of wood and pasture. Their way branched down a gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the mare's off-flank.

Antonia's profile conjured up visions. She was youth itself; her eyes so brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her brow unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked something resolute and mischievous. Shelton put his hand out to the mare's mane.

"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.

She smiled.

"Well, what made you?"

"I?" cried Shelton.

She slipped her hand over his hand.

"Oh, Dick!" she said.

"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you. Do you think I shall?"

"Of course!"

Of course! The words seemed very much or very little.

She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving silver line. "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we might do."

Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might understand each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the old time-honoured way?

They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence, while the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens. And all the beauty of the evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and lighted campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the witchery and shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling, and the splash of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted. The flighting bats, the forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier perfume-she summed them all up in herself. The fingermarks had deepened underneath her eyes, a languor came upon her; it made her the more sweet and youthful. Her shoulders seemed to bear on them the very image of our land—grave and aspiring, eager yet contained—before there came upon that land the grin of greed, the folds of wealth, the simper of content. Fair, unconscious, free!

And he was silent, with a beating heart.

CHAPTER XXVI

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 768