Chapter Two.
An Agreement.
Jack’s slumbers were far too sacred in the eyes of his aunt for her to think of disturbing them; she was preparing to retreat carefully, when he looked up and began to laugh.
“I was not asleep, I give you my word.”
“Oh, well, my dear,” she said, happy again now that the shade on his face was gone, “I am sure it would not have been wonderful if you had dozed off after your journey, though I really don’t know where you have dropped from; and I shall be quite glad to sit down and have a long talk, for you know there is a great deal to be told.”
“Well, yes, I suppose there is.”
But he did not seem inclined to begin, though Miss Cartwright looked wistfully at him. She said presently, with rather a quavering voice, “There is no bad news?”
Just enough of a pause followed her question to make her heart sink, then he said quickly—
“Certainly not. What has come to you, Aunt Mary? You never used to indulge in these sort of fancies. If Cartouche makes you nervous I shall take him away. But I know what it is, Miss Preston has been scolding you for all the wickedness of the world. Even in Florence that woman is as bad as three fogs and an east wind.”
And he rattled on with more nonsense of the sort, but it was so evident that he was making talk to avoid some subject closer to each of them, that Miss Cartwright almost grew vexed.
“My dear,” she said, “do leave poor Miss Preston alone.”
“She won’t leave you alone, that is what I complain of. Come now, hasn’t she got some unhappy clergyman of whom she falls foul?”
“Well, she did say she thought the new chaplain had too much self-possession for so young a man, and I said I did not think he was so very self-possessed, because when he makes a mistake he always coughs, which obliges one to notice it the more.”
“Worse and worse,” said Jack gravely; “she’s making you as severe as she is herself.”
“My dear, you don’t really think I was unkind? I am sure I only thought what I could say for the poor young man, she seemed so annoyed about it. You don’t really mean it, you are only laughing, and after all there is so much to say.”
He jumped up suddenly, and walked a few steps away from his chair. The pretty quiet little garden was full of light and colour and keenly-edged shade; the beautiful glossy leaves stood up against the blue sky. Over the wall they could see other houses and other trees, and catch here and there a little glimpse of the opposite hill with its occasional cypresses. The great bell of the Duomo was clanging, all the glory of the day changing softly into another glory, deeper and more mysterious. Was it of all this of which Jack was thinking? Miss Cartwright followed him and laid her hand gently on his arm.
“My dear boy!” she said imploringly.
He looked round at once and laughed at her pleading face.
“Well, it’s all—right, if that’s what you want to know.”
“You—”
“I’m engaged, yes, hard and fast. Why,” he said, with a quick anxiety in his voice, “what’s the matter? Sit down, sit down,” he went on, dragging over a chair, and putting her into it very tenderly, for the delicate colour had quite faded out of her face. But she smiled at him the next moment.
“It is very silly of me, but I have been thinking so much about it; and somehow I fancied from your manner that things were not going straight, and I was foolishly anxious.”
“You shouldn’t care so much about me,” said the young man with real remorse; “nobody else in the world would trouble themselves as you do. I should have told you directly, if it had entered my head that you were taking it to heart like this. Let me go and get you a glass of water or sal-volatile or something, you are as shaky as possible.”
But Miss Cartwright sat up cheerfully.
“It is nothing at all, Jack; I am quite well again, and your news is the best thing for me, if I really wanted anything. Is it all settled?”
“Yes,” he said with a little restraint again, and pulling a magnolia leaf as he spoke. “Phillis is at Bologna with the Leytons, we all came out together. Yes, it is true; I expected it to astonish you.”
“Don’t tell me anything more for a minute or two,” said his aunt gently, putting up her hands; “it is one thing on another. Phillis at Bologna? I don’t quite understand.”
“But you like the news, don’t you?” said Jack, turning suddenly on her.
“Like it! how could I fail? Such a good girl, and all that money, and your uncle wishing it so much. Nothing could be so desirable, only, my dear boy—”
“What?” sharply.
“Sometimes you get odd touches of perversity, and the very fact of a thing being quite unexceptional sets you against it. I remember it so well when you were a boy. It would have been a sad misfortune in this case, though, of course, it is too momentous a matter for me to have said much about it beforehand. I suppose that is the reason you did not know how anxious I felt, but I assure you I have scarcely thought of anything else. And Phillis is at Bologna! When do they come on?”
“To-morrow—Saturday. I don’t exactly remember. I suppose you know the terms of the agreement?” said Jack, looking at her.
“My dear!”
“Well, it is an agreement,” he said perversely; “what else would you call it? I, Peter Thornton, of Hetherton Grange, in the county of Surrey, Esquire, do hereby declare you, John Francis Ibbetson, barrister—how shall I put the London lodgings, second floor, to best advantage?—to be the heir of all my estates and properties—excluding, let us hope, his gout and his temper—on condition that you take as your wife my step-niece, Mary Phillis Grey, to have and to hold with the timber, freeholds, messuages, and other etceteras of the said estate. If that is not an agreement, I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Miss Cartwright, leaning forward, tried to look into her nephew’s face.
“My dear,” she said slowly, “of course you are in joke, but I don’t think I like to hear you talk in such a way. I should be miserable if I did not feel sure you were quite happy.”
Jack turned round and took her soft hand very kindly in his own.
“Well, then, don’t be miserable,” he said lightly; “why, you know it stands to reason that every one must be perfectly happy directly he or she is engaged to be married. What shall I do to prove my load of bliss?”
But she shook her head.
“I sometimes fancy it would be better if money were not mixed up with marriages at all. I don’t think it was so much thought about in old days.”
“It is a stronger necessity now.”
“Your father would willingly increase your allowance.”
“I don’t choose to live on that woman’s fortune. Aunt Mary, I thought you would be the first to congratulate me on the splendour of my prospects!”
“My dear, and so I do,” she said quickly, laying her hand on his shoulder; “I do, with all my heart. If I ask these questions it is only that I care so very, very much, that I was afraid, Jack, whether you might have rushed into this without quite thinking enough beforehand. But I dare say that was only my foolish fancy. Tell me one thing: if you had not married Phillis would your uncle have left the estates to her?”
“Not he,” said the young man, flinging a stone into the bushes where Cartouche was still annoying the cat. “He told me in so many words, that unless I married her she would be penniless, and the money would go to some tenth cousin or so.”
“I hope the poor girl did not know this,” said Miss Cartwright uneasily.
“He is not the man to keep that sort of pressure to himself.”
“Jack, you liked her before there was any talk of these estates?”
“Of course I did.”
He spoke impatiently, as if the subject were already exhausted, whereas Miss Cartwright, longing for fuller details, felt as if it were only beginning.
“I wish I had known Phillis before,” she said sighing, and at the sigh the young fellow’s heart reproached him again.
“She said the same,” he said, turning towards her and speaking gravely; “I fancy you’ll get on with her—everybody doesn’t, you know. She’s—but there’s no good in attempting to describe her, I was never good at that sort of thing; the only thing I could say about you was that you weren’t tall or black.”
Miss Cartwright brightened. She had a warm corner ready in her kind heart for the girl who was to be Jack’s wife; no jealousy made the prospect bitter, she was already planning, welcoming, sympathising. Jack himself jumped up; he said he would go to the hotel where he was putting up and come back to dinner. It was a concession, for he would encounter Miss Preston, but he had not the heart to disappoint his aunt that first evening, and afterwards he acknowledged that it had not been so bad. The window was open, the moon was sailing through blue, profound skies, her light fell like silver on the glossy leaves, and there was a sort of happy hum in the air, distant talk and gay laughter. Miss Preston fell asleep, Jack and his aunt sat near the window, sometimes silent, sometimes chatting. As for Cartouche, he pleased himself in his own way, rushing every now and then into the garden in pursuit of a foe who he was quite conscious did not exist, and returning with the proud air of one who has discomfited his enemy.
As Ibbetson strolled home that night he was thinking of many things, half against the grain, as it were, for he would willingly have put them aside. There were enough outer things to interest him if once he could have got them uppermost, but we cannot do that always, try as we will. The Arno was running along, bright with the moonshine, lights were twinkling across the bridges, clambering up the hill opposite; black shadows stood out strongly, and as you looked, all sorts of strange memories seemed to rush towards you. But they took no real hold on Jack, who was only conscious of them in a vague, dreamy way. The people were strolling in all directions, enjoying the evening, as they do in Italy, chatting, whispering, half-a-dozen, perhaps, linked together, taking the whole breadth of the pathway, or coming mysteriously out of the dark shadowy streets. In front of the Ognissanti a little lamp threw its dim radiance upon the beautiful blue and white Luca della Robbia over the door; the grave and sweet figures in their perpetual adoration seemed nearer and yet more delicate than by day. Jack noted this as he passed, but all the while it was not really Florence in which he was living, but a more homely and pastoral country. He was provoked with himself; he had not wanted to go over the old ground; he had said to himself a dozen times, that having taken a certain step, there was no need for mentally retracing it.
Only something seemed always to be carrying him back.
Would he have had it different? He said No, resolutely, when the question took so keen a shape. He had always felt a quiet liking for Phillis Grey, and it moved him deeply when he heard Mr Thornton’s rough declaration that if he, Jack, did not marry her she would be left with no more than a miserable pittance. His uncle, after all, showed some knowledge of the character of the man with whom he had to deal, for the personal advantages did not really affect Jack half so much, although he took pains to assure himself that they did. He used to go over them to himself with a half-comic, half-serious air of business, as if he were quite convinced of their value—independence, position, idleness—the worst of it was that, try as he would, he found each carrying a sort of contradiction with it, which prevented him from enjoying it comfortably. But poor Phillis, how could she bear the loss of everything? Why should he not marry her? He liked no one better, or so well. It was the course which gave the least trouble to everyone. It offered palpable good, and there was no drawback on which he could exactly lay his finger. Jack Ibbetson’s mind wandered away, up and down, this way and that, but all the time it was tending slowly in one direction, so that on the evening of the day when his uncle had made his announcement, a walk round the shrubberies and a couple of cigars brought him to the window where Phillis was sitting in her white dress, and when he had asked her to come out, it was not difficult, especially on that quiet tender evening, to ask her to marry him. It was not difficult, it was almost pleasant. There was a tremulous happiness in the girl’s answer, and yet all the time Jack was conscious, and hating the consciousness, of what he was saving her from. If it had not been for that, he thought—but there it was, and, after all, was it not one motive?
Before this happened it had been decided that Phillis should go abroad with some friends, and Peter Thornton would have no change. His wife wanted the wedding to have been from Hetherton, but he scouted the idea so fiercely that no one dared to repeat it. Phillis should go, and Jack could go too. As for the marriage, he did not care where it took place, so long as they did not lose any time about it, and then if they wanted to honeymoon it in Italy they would be on the spot. And having announced his wishes, he took refuge in such a violent fit of the gout, that contradiction became an actual impossibility, and the odd little party started. It seemed more unreal to Jack every day as they came flying on. He had been rather unkind about the journey. Mrs Leyton felt attractions in Paris. Captain Leyton, who went about with a very elaborate sketching apparatus which provided against rain, sun, and all possible evils of flood or field, and contained a larger supply of paints than could be used in a lifetime, was desirous to turn aside into the country of the Italian lakes, but Jack was obstinately determined to go directly to Florence, and somehow carried his day so far as to get them all to Bologna. There he graciously permitted them to rest; and indeed Ward, the lady’s maid, was in a state of rebellion, while Mrs Leyton, who was good-natured but sometimes plaintive, went about declaring that having come abroad as much for society as anything else, it was a little hard to be whirled through the country at a rate which prevented your seeing anyone but the horrid people to be met with in the trains.
As for Phillis—but Phillis must wait. Jack was very kind and polite to her, and sometimes amused by her inexperience. He would have been surprised beyond measure if any objection to his plans had come from her.