CHAPTER XXX. MR. MARRABLE AGAIN.
The doctor was troubled by the slowness of the girl’s convalescence, and by her own lack of a strong desire to get well again. He recommended change for one thing, and cheerful society. Now the one was as difficult to get as the other. Change could only be got by sacrificing a situation to the disadvantages of which Mrs. Abercarne had grown accustomed, while its advantages she appreciated more every day. Cheerful society seemed more out of the question still.
It was therefore with a feeling almost of gratitude that Mrs. Abercarne, while sitting by her daughter’s sofa one morning, heard that Miss Lilith Graham-Shute was downstairs, and that she wanted to know if she could see Miss Abercarne.
“Show her up, Corbett,” said Mrs. Abercarne. And turning to Chris, she said: “You would like to see her, my dear, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Chris.
The two girls, indeed, had felt a mutual attraction, and had only been prevented by the fierce enmity which raged between their respective mothers from becoming very good friends indeed.
When Lilith came in, smiling, bright-eyed, cheery, and suffering from a valiant attempt to subdue her usual exuberance of voice and manner, her entrance was like a ray of sunshine. She came to the side of the sofa on tip-toe, which was quite unnecessary, and caused her to be so unsteady of gait that she knocked over a basket of flowers which had been placed on a little stand beside the sofa.
“Oh, look what I’ve done!” she cried, as she stooped down in haste to repair the mischief.
“Oh, you needn’t trouble about those things!” cried Chris, ungratefully, with a little look which girls’ freemasonry enabled Lilith to understand.
Miss Graham-Shute’s big brown eyes grew round with delight at the prospect of a little bit of interesting gossip, if they should get a chance to be alone together. She nodded discreetly, as she went down on her knees to rearrange the scattered daffodils and lilies of the valley.
“I’m such a clumsy creature!” cried she, in feigned distress. “Donald always says I’m like a bull in a china shop. Oh!” she cried, as she buried her little retroussé nose in a bunch of Parma violets, “I should like to be ill if I could get such attentions bestowed upon me! You are a lucky girl, Chris! And an ungrateful one too!” she added in a lower voice, with a glance at Mrs. Abercarne, whose back was for the moment turned.
“You can have the flowers, if you like,” said Chris quickly. “Yes, do take them,” she added, eagerly as Lilith made a gesture of refusal, “I shall be so glad if you will. They—they are too strongly scented,” she added, as an excuse, as she noticed a look of pain and annoyance on her mother’s face.
“Oh, well, they are not too strongly scented for me,” said Lilith, drily. “Thank you awfully, dear. I’ll be sure to remember to bring back the basket.”
“No, don’t; keep it, I don’t want to see any of it again.”
She spoke petulantly, for the handsome gift had been accompanied by a message from Mr. Bradfield, almost demanding permission to see her.
Then Mrs. Abercarne, moved to wrath, spoke:
“I think you are very ungrateful, Chris. Those flowers were sent from Covent Garden expressly for you, and at great expense.”
She was not unwilling to annoy the Graham-Shutes, by proving in what high estimation “the Abercarnes” were held at Wyngham House.
“Chris, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, you really ought,” said Lilith, gaily, as she got up from her knees. “Now, don’t let me knock anything else over. You haven’t any silver tables, or anything of that sort, luckily.”
She glanced merrily round her, in all innocence; but Mrs. Abercarne, always rather too ready to feel insulted, chose to consider this speech as a barbed one.
“No; unfortunately we are not rich enough to buy unnecessary things,” she said acidly; “and we are not refined enough to look upon silver tables as necessaries.”
“You needn’t talk at me as if I were mamma, Mrs. Abercarne,” cried Lilith, brightly. “I know we buy unnecessary things, and leave the necessary ones unbought. I know we spend money on toys which are supposed to be ancient silver, when in reality they are modern pewter, and have to darn our gloves. I know we do lots of things which are foolish, and get us laughed at, but, after all, you can laugh at us, and you ought to be grateful for that!”
The girl’s sense of fun was infectious, and Chris laughed aloud. Lilith went on:
“The latest—no, not the very latest craze, but the latest but one, is for me to blossom out into a great dramatic writer, and to buy a house for us all in Kensington Palace Gardens. Mamma says I am brimming over with talent (and perhaps I am, but it hadn’t troubled me much till it was pointed out to me), and there is a dearth of dramatists, and I am to ‘supply a long-felt want,’ as the advertisements say. And all on the strength of my little play the other day, which, by-the-bye, I have sent up to a London manager to read. Of course, I’m hoping he’ll take it, but it seems almost too good to be possible, doesn’t it?”
The girl spoke playfully, but with just enough wistfulness in her tone for the other ladies to see that she was full of the most forlorn of all forlorn hopes. Mrs. Abercarne began to perceive that even Graham-Shutes may be human, moved with like passions to our own. And when Corbett appeared again, asking if she could speak to Mrs. Abercarne for a minute, that lady left the room with the pleasant consciousness that the visit of the lively girl was doing Chris good.
No sooner were they alone, than Lilith drew near to her companion mysteriously.
“Chris, tell me, is it true that you don’t like Mr. Bradfield, and don’t mean to marry him if he asks you?”
“Indeed it is,” answered Chris hotly, with more energy than she had shown since the beginning of her illness. “I wouldn’t marry him if he were the richest and the most charming person in the world!”
“Then I think you’re very silly.”
Chris laughed a little.
“It’s lucky Mrs. Graham-Shute can’t hear you say so.”
Lilith burst into a laugh of delightful merriment.
“Yes, indeed it is,” she admitted heartily. “It’s the greatest dread of her life that you should become Mrs. John Bradfield, of Wyngham House. And nothing will induce her to believe that you are not trying to bring it about. For my own part,” she went on, prosaically, as Chris shook her head, “I should think much better of you if you were.”
Chris looked at her in amazement.
“What? This from you!” cried she. “They do say, you know, that you are always in love, and always with somebody who hasn’t any money at all.”
“Well, I suppose they’re right. Men who have money are always horrid, aren’t they? Still, if one of the horrid creatures were to ask me, I should have to have him, I suppose,” she went on with a sigh. “And as no girl can ever fall in love with a rich man, I may just as well be in love with a poor man first, and know something of the sentiment.”
“Who is it now?” asked Chris, smiling, and rather interested.
“Oh, it’s still the same one, the mysterious stranger I saw in the barn on the evening of the tableaux vivants.”
“What!” said Chris, turning suddenly crimson, while the tears rushed into her eyes. “It is more than two months since then. This is constancy indeed.”
“It’s so easy to be constant down here,” sighed Lilith. “And I admit that I might have wavered a little before now in my devotion if I hadn’t seen, or thought I had seen, my handsome stranger in town the other day, when I went up with mamma to do some shopping.”
To her astonishment, Chris sprang up from her sofa in great excitement.
“You saw him? You saw him?” cried she, all her old animation in her face, the old ring in her voice.
Lilith looked at her in amazement.
“Why, Chris, who was he? You pretended you didn’t know.”
But the light had already died out of her companion’s eyes. Sighing heavily she answered:
“Indeed it was true that I did not then know whom you meant. And if you did really see him yesterday, why, then he was not the person I have since supposed him to have been.”
Lilith, who had heard rumours of the flirtation, or attachment between Chris and the alleged lunatic, was full of interest and curiosity.
“Why, Chris,” said she, “was that the person they called Mr. Richard? If so, I don’t wonder you liked him better than cousin John.”
But Chris would confess nothing, and rather irritated Lilith by her reticence.
“What do people say about him? How do they account for his having disappeared?”
“Well,” said Lilith, lowering her voice, “they say that he set the place on fire in order to escape, and that he’ll come back some day and murder cousin John!”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Chris, sharply. “A lunatic might do that, but not Dick.”
“Dick, oh!” said Lilith, raising her eyebrows. “You have confessed something at any rate, now, haven’t you?”
But for answer Chris burst into tears, so that Mrs. Abercarne, returning, looked at Lilith with stern reproach.
“I’m so sorry,” said Lilith, penitently; “but, Mrs. Abercarne, it’s really better for her to cry than to lie all day looking as if she wanted to! And oh! I’d nearly forgotten what I came for; mamma sent me to borrow a box of sardines.”
Mrs. Abercarne suppressed a smile at this characteristic errand.
“I’m afraid we haven’t such a thing in the house,” she said. “A friend of Mr. Bradfield’s has just arrived from town unexpectedly, so we have been running our eyes over the stores to see what we could give him to eat to stave off his hunger until Mr. Bradfield comes home to luncheon.”
“Who is it, mother?” asked Chris, in whom Mrs. Abercarne noted this curiosity as a sign that Lilith’s visit had done her good.
“Oh, the unfortunate person who sprained his ankle on Christmas day.”
“Mr. Marrable!” Chris clasped her hands with a fresh access of excitement. “Mother, let me see him at once. Do let me.”
Both the other ladies were a good deal surprised at this demand, and the vehemence with which it was expressed. But there was no resisting her importunity; and therefore, as soon as Lilith had reluctantly taken her departure, Mr. Marrable, as shy and nervous as ever, was shown up into the Chinese-room.
He expressed his delight at the honour Miss Abercarne had done him by admitting him, and was proceeding to utter some old-fashioned compliments which he had been preparing on the way upstairs, when Chris, by a look at her mother, induced that lady to leave the room. Then the girl turned to Mr. Marrable, and exhibited a sudden energy which startled that rather flaccid gentleman.
“Mr. Marrable,” she said imperiously, “I have heard you talk of an old friend of yours and Mr. Bradfield’s, named Gilbert Wryde.”
At the mention of the name, Mr. Marrable started violently.
“Yes, yes, er—er—I may have mentioned him; I say I may have mentioned him,” he answered feebly, looking round as if he hoped to find a way of escape.
“This Gilbert Wryde had a son, I think you said?”
“Oh, my goodness!” murmured poor Mr. Marrable; and then, seeing that she was determined, he admitted that he might have mentioned that too.
“Tell me, and tell me the truth, mind,” continued the young girl, earnestly, “when you knew that son, years ago that was, of course, when he was a child, was there anything the matter with him?”
Mr. Marrable stared at her piteously, as if feeling he could hope for no mercy from this excited female.
“Nothing,” murmured he feebly, “nothing of any consequence, that is to say, beyond, of course, being deaf and dumb.”
To his horror, the young lady sprang up with a wild cry, clasping her hands as if she had received a revelation.
“Deaf—and—dumb!”
And, uttering these words, she sank back fainting on the sofa.