II
When Miss Lestrange received the announcement of her brother’s engagement she replied by return of post, congratulating him on his prospective happiness. She called it prospective, but she allowed that it was happiness. She offered to give up her residence at Mallows, Horace’s place in the country, and suggested that perhaps she could take a villa by the seaside.
“This,” she wrote, “would be very suitable for Leslie as well.” She took entirely for granted that she should keep the boy. Then she said to herself: “Edith Walton! What extraordinary people Horace picks up! One has never heard of her! There was a Lady Walton I remember meeting at Bournemouth; her husband probably got knighted for patent biscuits, or some vulgar charity; the Lindleys knew her. I will call on the Lindleys.”
When Horace returned to London he found his home, as usual, the perfection of order. He was not a rich man, and he did not desire luxury or extravagance. He had never needed to desire them, for his sister had that genius for management which results in other people’s comfort. She oiled the wheels of life for her brother, and as yet she had charged him nothing for the oil. She was dressed for going out, but on his arrival she laid her card-case and parasol on the table and gave him her cheek to kiss. Miss Lestrange had been a plain, angular girl, without charms; but she was a distinguished-looking middle-aged woman with a pleasant manner. Her pleasant manner entirely hid from the world that she had a will of iron and an absorbing passion for her little nephew. She was famous for her kind heart, and made an excellent confidante; people talked of her as “a dear, kind old thing.”
Her brother looked at her a little nervously.
“You have received my letter?” said Miss Lestrange, sitting down again, and drawing on her gloves. “But, of course, there is a great deal to be talked over, isn’t there? We needn’t begin now. Do you want a meal or anything? Or do they give it to you on the train? It is so long since I have been on the Continent, but I understand that in America you can be shaved and have your corns cut, probably simultaneously, as you travel.”
“I think I’ll ring for tea,” said Horace. “Where is the boy?”
“I am afraid he is out with Mr. Flinders. I should have kept him in, of course, to meet you; but Mr. Flinders said it was such a perfect afternoon it seemed a pity to keep him in, and I never like to interfere with the tutor’s arrangements. Leslie sent you his love.”
“Thanks,” said Horace, a little dryly. He fidgeted about the room; he hardly knew quite what he expected from Etta, but, by Jove! she needn’t go on smoothing her gloves--it made him feel cold between the shoulders.
“I hope the cake is not heavy,” said his sister, rising to pour out his tea. “Mrs. Devon can’t make cakes--it is her only weakness; but there are some rather nice pink things over there from the confectioner’s.”
Horace cleared his throat.
“I wish you would take off your things, Etta,” he said with sudden irritation, “or not look as if you were being kept in by force, and meant to go out the moment I had swallowed my tea; it makes me nervous.”
“Nervous, my dear boy? Lestranges are never nervous. What is the matter with you? I was going out calling, and I supposed you would want to go upstairs and tidy after your journey. But, of course, if you are nervous, and have anything on your mind--”
Etta began unbuttoning her gloves. Her brother groaned.
“No, hang it all, Etta; I’d rather wait till after dinner!”
“Just as you like,” said Miss Lestrange. “I hope Miss--er--Walton, isn’t it?--is quite well?”
“Oh, yes, Edith is all right, thanks. You might tell them, Etta, to let the little chap come into my study when he gets in from his walk.”
“Oh, of course, Horace!”
It may have been intention, or it may have been one of those fortunate accidents which happen to well-trained fighters, but Miss Lestrange’s attention was suddenly caught by a crooked picture. She turned back to a portrait of Annette hanging over the mantelpiece.
“It is not hung quite straight,” she said in her pleasant, commonplace voice. “There, that’s better! Is there anything more you want, Horace?”
Her brother’s answer was made from his teacup; it sounded very like “Damn!”
Horace continued to be extremely nervous. He had meant to go and see Edith after dinner; she and her aunt, Lady Walton, had returned to town with him, but he couldn’t go to Edith, having arranged nothing whatever, and not even having mentioned that he intended to keep his boy.
All through dinner Etta held the conversation and guided it as she chose. Mr. Flinders, the tutor, responded admirably.
Miss Lestrange had a perfect tone with the tutor; she treated him with that deference which marks the difference in social value. Her delicate flattery was a restraint; it put him at once on the footing of an inferior position where she could afford to be delightful to him without his ever meeting her on her own level. It was too fine for condescension, too gracious for patronage; it was an “invulnerable nothing”; and yet you could no more have passed it than have walked through bayonets; and there was this added attraction, that the bayonets were garlanded with flowers.
“It was such a pity Leslie behaved so badly this afternoon,” Miss Lestrange began. “Mr. Flinders felt that such direct disobedience must be punished, especially when it led to such a decided risk as the boy’s playing with whooping-cough children in the Park. So instead of being allowed to come and see you, Horace, he had to be packed off, supperless, to bed; but you will go up after dinner, I suppose?”
“I should have gone up before,” interrupted Horace, “but they said--”
“Yes, I think authority must be upheld,” said his sister. “You see, dear Horace, Mr. Flinders had already warned Leslie about the punishment.”
She looked across at her brother, as if to say that the punishment was an absurd blunder of Mr. Flinders, which they must overlook, because although he was a very clever fellow, of course, and a clergyman’s son, and really quite a gentleman, still--
Horace understood the look, and dropped the subject. He was a man who took almost everything very easily; but not quite everything.
Mr. Flinders began to make some explanation, which Miss Lestrange promptly checked. She asked his advice about a book, and somehow or other Leslie’s punishment remained the tutor’s blunder, though this was the first time he had ever heard of it. He had probably misunderstood something Miss Lestrange had said to him; she had often observed that she was not a lucid talker; there were certain advantages which Mr. Flinders had had, and she had not, and this made it such a comfort to listen to him! Possibly this was one of the occasions in which the disadvantages had told.
After dinner Horace went upstairs to see his boy; there were traces of tears on the child’s face, and he looked pathetically like his dead mother. He flung his arms around his father’s neck and began to sob. Leslie had inherited Annette’s weak constitution; he was a highly-strung, delicate little boy.
“Oh, daddy, don’t--don’t--don’t!” he sobbed. “Oh, please, dear daddy, don’t! I will be good if you won’t marry her!”
His father’s face grew suddenly very stern; he had meant to be the first to tell his son about Edith.
“My dear old chap,” he said tenderly, sitting down on the bed beside the boy. “Edith is such a jolly girl; you will like her. Why, she’s pretty and kind, and awfully fond of boys! You have no idea what fun we’ll have. She has asked you to go with her to-morrow to the Zoo.”
“I have been to the Zoo,” said Leslie.
A firm little line came around his mouth. It used to come round his mother’s when she meant to get her way and she did not find it easy. Horace had not seen it often enough to remember it.
“Oh, daddy, don’t make me go with her; I want to go away with auntie--oh, I do want to go away with auntie!” The sobs began to shake him again. “I have always had auntie,” he cried. “You see, daddy, I’ve always had auntie!”
“But, boy, you don’t want to go away from me?” asked his father.
There was a moment’s constrained silence, and then the child dragged himself out of his father’s arms and threw himself face downwards on his pillow.
“Yes, I do,” he muttered petulantly. “I won’t stay with this new woman! I do want to go away!”
The lines of pain on Horace’s face deepened. His heart seemed to contract as he looked at the golden curls on the pillow, and remembered those long golden curls he had played with and kissed. For a moment he turned away, regretful, sick, and undesirous as the child himself of “this new woman.” Then his manhood reasserted itself, and he remembered that this was after all only a childish fit of ignorant tears.
He was not angry with the child; it did not occur to him to ask him who had given him this cruel fear of Edith. There were a good many things that never occurred to Horace Lestrange. They might have been convenient things to do; possibly they might have made life easy and happy for him, only he did not do them, that was all; he could not make the child tell tales.
There was some one to be very angry with; that was a simplification. It might be Etta, but Lestrange was slow to think so. Hadn’t she congratulated him at once? And besides, he couldn’t think that Etta could poison a child’s mind. Perhaps it was that fool Flinders; he seemed a perfectly incompetent chap, and he might possibly have some sentimental theories on step-mothers. Anyhow, he would go downstairs and talk to Etta; meanwhile he stooped over the child and shook his shoulder gently.
“Don’t cry, old man,” he said quietly. “I promise you, you will like this new friend. She doesn’t want to take your mother’s place, or anything; she is just a new friend. To-morrow you shall see her, and tell me what you feel. You needn’t go to the Zoo. Aunt Etta isn’t going away at present, and you shall see her whenever you like.”
“Mr. Flinders said there was going to be great changes,” sobbed the boy.
The father closed his lips suddenly; there was going to be one great change--and that would be Mr. Flinders. He recalled his sister’s glance at dinner; evidently Etta thought the man a fool too. He felt vaguely relieved to have found out that it was Flinders.