IV
When Mrs. Bolingbroke heard that Henry Pontycroft and Lucilla Dor were on the sea, bound for America, she could not contain herself.
“Good gracious, Ruth, what are they comin' for?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, gazing at Ruth.
“Don't know,” said Ruth, putting her nose into a bowlful of fresh roses from Rutherford's hot-houses. “Oddly enough, to see me, perhaps?” she added, laughing, and she made an effort to look her friend squarely and jocosely in the face.
“Richard,” said Mrs. Bolingbroke penetratedly to her husband, “Ruth Adgate is either the most consummate actress or the most innocent dove the good God has ever, in His ability, wrought from the dust of which we are made. If the Pontycrofts are on the sea it's for some extraordinary reason. Ruth either suspects that reason, or she doesn't. But she looked at me with those clear guileless eyes of hers, when she mentioned their coming, and I, for one, can imagine any man telling her he'd burn Troy Town for such a glance. Yet there's that Mr. Rutherford—crazily in love with her, I'm told,—a splendid match as Americans go. She could marry him and his money to-morrow if she liked. And since she's so daft about New England, she could send him into politics and have quite a life. It will be interesting to see how the Pontycrofts will act when they find the sources of her income are swept away.”
“That's not a proper remark for you to make, my dear,” replied the Honourable Richard Bolingbroke, in a tone of unexpected severity. “Henry Pontycroft's a sensitive, quixotic, high-minded, honourable English gentleman. He's rich, moreover. Money plays no part in his coming. Lady Dor I've known since I was a boy. She was a delightful girl, just as now she's a charming woman. They'll be admirable additions to the house party, and that's all that concerns you or me. Pontycroft will keep us in roars of laughter and I'm curious to meet him in New England. You may be sure he'll like this wonderful old place. He'll feel all the arid romance of this aristocratic passionate bleak land. Who knows? He may be the Prince come to wake it, humanise it, with a kiss. Oldbridge will not have looked upon his like—it won't have heard anything to compare with him, either, in its three hundred years of existence; never will again; I hope it may make the best of its opportunity to give him a royal welcome.”
“I feel crushed,” pouted Mrs. Bolingbroke. “How should I, who've never met Henry Pontycroft—know he's the paragon of wit and chivalry?”
“That's precisely what Henry Pontycroft is,” her husband answered gravely, “He is the paragon of wit and chivalry!”
These young folk were pacing side by side in the moonlit garden after the excellent New England repast, called supper; while Miss Adgate and her uncle were busy with callers, upon the veranda. The night was the first of a long series of warm May nights, the moon hung, majestic and round, over the fringes of wood termed the Wigwam. A rustic bench stood invitingly under the big syringa, now a perfumed canopy of white. As they stood on the upper terrace it was easy to distinguish descending terraces marked by rows of silvery budding irises swollen or in bloom.... The magic smells of white and purple lilac were touched with a whiff of apple blossoms from the hill and beyond—below—the Mantic gleamed in the moonlight amid trees all a feathery, spring incrustation of minute green foliage.
“This is a divine spot,” said Bolingbroke, suddenly kissing his wife, “but we must rejoin the others.”
Lucilla Dor and Harry Pontycroft arrived the following day and were installed in the Morris House at the other side of the hill, where two neat Irish girls waited upon them under the enlightening, tempered instruction of Pontycroft's man and of Lucilla's maid.