Sir Harry: A Love Story

by Archibald Marshall

So these remote but clear-sighted and kindly people judged of the situation at the Castle, and on the whole approved of it. As for Harry himself they one and all adored him. They were the only friends he had had outside his home from his childhood, and they were real friends. There was not one of them, man, woman or child, who had not some special feeling for him different from that of the rest. He knew them all, and was interested in them all, with a purely human sympathy. When the time came for him to take the reins, he would be dealing not with an impersonal aggregate, but with those whose interests were also his; and he would be regarded with a loyalty and affection which is enjoyed by few landowners.

Wilbraham kept himself more to himself, as was said of him, but had his friends too at Royd. It was he who brought Harry's heart to his mouth this afternoon by the announcement, made in a casual voice: "There is an artist come to stay at Mrs. Ivimey's. He rejoices in the name of Michael Angelo Bastian, which ought to mean that he is a very fine artist; but I've never heard of him. Have you?"

"No," said Lady Brent, who had been addressed. "But I did not know that Mrs. Ivimey let rooms. I think she should have asked me first. Nobody at Royd has done it hitherto."

"I wonder how she could get any one to take rooms in such an out-of-the-way place as hers," said Mrs. Brent.

"I can tell you that," said Wilbraham. "I had it all from Prout." Prout combined the occupations of shoemaker and postman at Royd. "Mrs. Ivimey has a sister who lives in London and lets lodgings. Michael Angelo Bastian lodges with her. The rest is plain to the meanest intelligence."

Harry was faced with the immediate alternative of acknowledging that he was aware of the fact stated or of affecting ignorance of it. If he kept silence now it would be deliberate and purposeful silence, and he might later on be called upon to explain it. He had not faced this; he had not faced anything in connection with Viola that had to do with the future.

Perhaps he would have spoken, if his mind had not been so full of his late disappointment, and of his reviving hopes of still meeting Viola that evening. He could not bring himself immediately to the point of making a decision, and when Lady Brent had next spoken, and Wilbraham had answered her, the time had gone by for him to speak. His not having done so directly Bastian's name had been mentioned would need explanation now. With a mental shrug of the shoulders he kept silence, and felt a warm delicious glow as he took the further step towards a fenced and guarded intimacy with Viola which no one outside must penetrate. The pleasure of hugging his secret afresh swamped the half-guilty feeling which had preceded it in his mind. He did not even ask himself why it should have come to him, but his attitude towards his elders underwent a slight change from that moment. His youth was to be defended from them; it had its rights, which could brook no interference.

As he hurried off again to the trysting-place, he was glad once more that he had refrained from betraying his secret, as he had been glad that he had resisted the impulse to confide in his mother the night before. He knew now that they would have disapproved. Some breath from the outside world, which divides people up into categories in a way he had never had to take into account, had come to him from the discussion he had just listened to. His grandmother had shown persistent concern at Mrs. Ivimey's having let her rooms without consultation with her. Such a thing had never happened before in Royd. You didn't know what sort of people you might get, if it became a practice. An artist—there was no great harm perhaps in an artist; but— The postman had evidently not known, or if he had he had not told Wilbraham, that this particular artist had invaded the sanctities of Royd accompanied by a daughter, but Harry had felt instinctively that her presence would have increased the objections expressed by Lady Brent to Mrs. Ivimey's taking in anybody at all. It had come to him somehow that Viola's delicious charm would have done nothing to recommend her, had she been known, and that his mother would by no means have taken the confidence that it had been in his mind to make to her the night before in the spirit in which it would have been offered.

The reasons for all this were not clear to him. He had of course no idea that he was to be preserved at all costs from falling into unauthorized love; he had no more than a purely academic knowledge of what falling in love meant, and no idea as yet that he was already very deep in it himself. There were many things in which his inclinations had clashed with the rules formulated by his elders—as, for instance, in the matter of visits to the stables, during his early childhood. This was one of them, but he was not to be bound now by the views of his elders, and it was not necessary to examine their origin. There was a vague discomfort in the idea that he was setting himself against them, but no admission in his mind that he was in any way wrong in doing so. And even the slight discomfort was more than balanced by the feeling that his secret must certainly now be guarded, which had the effect of somehow bringing him and Viola more closely together.

It had been decided chat Wilbraham was to seek out the artist, and if he found him to be the sort of person who could be asked to Royd, he was to ask him there. Harry smiled to himself, as he thought of the possibilities ahead. He must tell Viola, and he and she must decide what was to be done about it. It gave him a thrill to think of their deciding anything together. He quickened his steps. There were such oceans to talk to her about. He had no doubts now about her coming to meet him; he had almost persuaded himself that she would be there waiting for him.