III
On the evening of his unexpected return to the villa, an evening long to be remembered by him, Wantley dressed early and made his way into the Picture Room. He went expecting to find an ill-assorted party, for Mrs. Robinson was one of those women whose own personal relationship to those whom they gather about them is the only matter of moment, and whose guests are therefore rarely in sympathy one with another.
All that Wantley knew concerning those strangers he was about to meet was that he would be called upon to make himself pleasant to an elderly Roman Catholic spinster, and to her niece, a girl closely associated with the work of the Melancthon Settlement; and the double prospect was far from being agreeable to him.
He was therefore relieved to find the Picture Room empty, save for the immobile presence of Lady Wantley. She was sitting gazing out of the window, her hands clasped together, absorbed in meditation. As he came in she turned and smiled, but said no word of welcome; and he respected her mood, knowing well that she was one of those who feel the invisible world to be very near, and who believe themselves surrounded by unseen presences.
Lady Wantley's personality had always interested and fascinated the young man. Even as a child he had never sympathized with his mother's dislike of her, for he had early discerned how very different she was from most of the people he knew; and to-night, fresh as he was from the company of cheerful dowagers who were of the earth earthy, this difference was even more apparent to him than usual.
Penelope's mother doubtless owed something of her aloofness of appearance to her singular and picturesque dress, of which the mode had never varied for twenty years and more. The long sweeping skirts of black silk or wool, the cross-over bodice and the lace coif, which almost wholly concealed her banded hair, while not hiding the beautiful shape of her head, had originally been designed for her by the painter to whom, as a younger woman, she had so often sat. Since the great artist had first brought her the drawing of the dress in which he wished once more to paint her, she had never given a thought to the vagaries of fashion, so it came to pass that those about her would have found it impossible to think of her in any other garments than those composing the singular, stately costume which accentuated the mingled severity and mildness of her pale cameo-like face.
After Melancthon Robinson's death, his widow had at once made it clear that she had no intention of returning to her mother; but every winter saw the two ladies spending some weeks together in London, and each summer Lady Wantley became her daughter's guest at Monk's Eype.
The rest of the year was spent by the elder woman at Marston Lydiate, the great Somersetshire country-seat to which she had been brought as a bride, and for which she now paid rent to her husband's successor. To Wantley the arrangement had been a painful one. He would have much preferred to let the place to strangers, and he had always refused to go there as Lady Wantley's guest.
As he stood, silent, by one of the high windows of the Picture Room, he remembered suddenly that the next day, August 8th, was his birthday, and that no human being, save a woman who had been his mother's servant for many years, was likely to remember the fact, or to offer him those congratulations which, if futile, always give pleasure. The bitterness of the thought was perhaps the outcome of foolish sentimentality, but it lent a sudden appearance of sternness and of purpose to his face.
Mrs. Robinson, coming into the room at that moment, was struck, for a moment felt disconcerted, by the look on her cousin's face. She was surprised and annoyed that he had returned so soon from the visit which, of course unknown to him, she had herself arranged he should make, in order that he might be absent at the time of the assembling of her ill-assorted guests.
Penelope feared the young man's dispassionate powers of observation; and as she walked down the long room, at the other end of which she saw first her mother's seated figure, and then, standing by one of the long, uncurtained windows, the unwelcome form of her cousin, her heart beat fast, for the little scene with Cecily Wake, added to other matters of more moment, had set her nerves jarring. She dreaded the evening before her, feared the betrayal of a secret which she wished to keep profoundly hidden. Still, as was her wont, she met danger halfway.
'I am glad you are back to-night,' she said, addressing Wantley, 'for now you will be able to play host to Sir George Downing. I met him abroad this spring, and he has come here for a few days.'
'The Persian man?' She quickly noted that the young man's voice was full of amused interest and curiosity, nothing more; and, as she nodded her head, assurance and confidence came back.
'Well, you are certainly a wonderful woman.' He turned, smiling, to Lady Wantley, who was gazing at her daughter with her usual almost painful tenderness of expression. 'Penelope's romantic encounters,' he said gaily, 'would fill a book. Such adventures never befall me on my travels. In Spain a fascinating stranger turns out to be Don Carlos in disguise! In Germany she knocks up against Bismarck!'
'I knew the son!' she cried, protesting, but not ill-pleased, for she was proud of the good fortune that often befell her during her frequent journeys, of coming across, if not always famous, at least generally interesting and noteworthy people.
'And now,' concluded Wantley, 'the lion whom most people—unofficial people of course I mean'—he spoke significantly—'are all longing to see and to entertain, is bound to her chariot wheels!'
'Ah!' she cried eagerly, 'but that's just the point: he has a horror of being lionized. He's promised to write a report, and I suggested that he should come and do it here, where there's no fear of his being run to earth by the wrong kind of people. I don't suppose Theresa Wake knows there's such a person in the world as "Persian Downing."'
'And the niece, the young lady who is to be my special charge?' Wantley was still smiling. 'She's sure to know something about him—that is, if you take in a daily paper at the Settlement.'
'Cecily?' Mrs. Robinson's voice softened. 'Dear little Cecily won't trouble her head about him at all.' She turned away quickly as Lady Wantley's gentle, insistent voice floated across the room to where the two cousins were standing.
'George Downing? I remember your father bringing a youth called by that name to our house, many years ago, when you were a child, my love.' She hesitated, as if seeking to remember something which only half lingered in her memory.
Her daughter waited in painful silence. 'Would the ghost of that old story of disgrace and pain never be laid?' she asked herself rebelliously.
But Lady Wantley was not the woman to recall a scandal, even had she been wont to recall such things, of one who was now under her daughter's roof. Her next words were, however, if a surprise, even less welcome to one of her listeners than would have been those she expected to hear.
'There was an American Mrs. Downing, a lady who came with an introduction to see your father. She wished to consult him about a home for emigrant children, and I heard—now what did I hear?' Again Lady Wantley paused.
Mrs. Robinson straightened her well-poised head.
'You probably heard, mamma, what is, I believe, true: that Lady Downing, as she is of course now, is not on good terms with her husband. They parted almost immediately after their marriage, and I believe that they have not met for years.'
Wantley looked at his cousin with some surprise; she spoke impetuously, a note of deep feeling in her voice, and as if challenging contradiction. Then, suddenly, she held up her hand with a quick warning gesture.
Her ears had caught the sound of footsteps for whose measured tread she had learnt to listen, and a moment later the door opened, and the man of whom they had been speaking, advancing into the great room, stood before them.