“I’d have liked to take Delia Calmour with us,” went on the girl. “She’s so companionable and intelligent, and takes such interest in everything; never talks the silly idiotic bosh most girls do. She’d have enjoyed it so much, too.”
“Poor girl!” said Haldane. “It’s a thousand pities she’s so confoundedly handicapped. She’ll never get a show now on the strength of those awful relatives. Yes; it’s a thousand pities.”
In saying that the absent Squire of Hilversea was missed by none more than by the Haldanes we should have recorded an exception, and it was named Delia Calmour. To her it seemed that the light of day had gone out. And yet, why? It had been seldom enough she had seen him of late before his departure; and even on such occasions, a little ordinary conversation in his quiet genial way. That was all. And yet—and yet—the girl would cheerfully have yielded up life itself to have heard once more the sound of his voice in just one of those ordinary conversations. To such a pass had things come.
But she kept her own counsel heroically. Never by word or look did she betray herself. Even Clytie was puzzled. She had read through her up to a certain point, but had failed to credit her sister with the secretiveness and self-control to the highest point of which the latter had nearly attained. So she was puzzled.
To her dying day Delia would never forget the announcement of that departure. It had been made to her one Sunday when she had cycled over to Hilversea by Wagram himself, in his pleasant easy manner, and she had received it with a frank natural regret, that came from her well. Not all at once did she realise that she had received a blow between the eyes.
“Be missed?” he had repeated, echoing her words. “Well, I am selfish enough to hope I shall be missed a little. One thing is certain: I sha’n’t stop away any longer than I can help. I’m not going for fun, anyhow.”
Then he had invited her in for lunch. The Haldanes were there, and Father Gayle, and on this occasion four or five other people; in fact, it was a sort of “send-off” affair, for he was to start early on the following morning.
“I shan’t stay away any longer than I can help,” had been the words, uttered in an easy natural way. Yet he who uttered them knew that in the event of his quest proving successful he would stay away—for ever. But there he sat, chatting with his guests easily, smilingly, as though his very heart were not half broken over the thought of what was about to pass away from him and his for ever. And the girl? She too was chatting, outwardly light-hearted, with her immediate neighbours, or joining in the general conversation, and the while she, too, in her innermost heart was thinking what an awful blank this man’s departure would leave in her life; in it, moreover, as long as it should last. Here was an instance of the extraordinary freaks which may run through life’s tragedies. Who would have thought of the ghastly canker which lay behind Wagram’s easy gaiety? Who would have guessed at the yearning ache which underlay Delia Calmour’s ready conversational flow?
“Who is that Miss Calmour?” one of the guests had remarked to Yvonne after they had left the table. “Such a pretty girl, and talks so well and brightly. So nice-mannered and refined. Does she belong to this neighbourhood?”
And Yvonne had replied evasively, though not seeming to do so, that she did, and that she was all the other had said; that the dear old Squire had taken to her wonderfully shortly before his death, and that she herself had grown very fond of her. Then she let drop that Delia was a recent convert, which at once prepossessed the inquirer in her favour, as she intended it should.