The Swing of the Pendulum

by Frances Mary Peard

The question he had never yet been able to answer. He muttered something to the effect that principals knew best in such a matter. It seemed to him likely.

“Wrong, sir, wrong. Hugh has told me one thing, and you another, and my own sense, if it isn’t what it was, may be trusted for the rest. She’s one of those creatures that like to keep men dangling round them. Tell you what, Dick. When you write a book about them, call it The World’s Curse.”

When Wareham read the notice in the World, he tried to persuade himself that it was with an indifferently critical eye. If Anne could turn so swiftly from one to the other—let her! He even smiled over it, acknowledging the aptness of the possible marriage. If love were out of the question, as well one man or the other, the betterness consisted in the income, and he mentally took off his hat, and stepped aside. His persuasions, however, were open for his heart to argue with. Lord Milborough might love, but women such as Anne do not invariably carry out what the worlds judgment insists must be their action; the Anne he believed himself to have discovered was too complex to be counted upon. His heart wandered in meadows where hope sprang and budded, for if she held a thought of him, she would not be unfaithful to it, and in a few weeks’ time his lips would be unsealed. Free to love her—free to woo. Wareham’s blood leapt at the thought! Hitherto he had never seen her except in bonds, in fetters; a passion of wild words flew to his lips at the bare dream of permitted speech. Once he caught himself muttering, “I love you, I love you!” when Sir Michael was uttering his usual tirade against her, and something hasty which he uttered in defence gave the old man a suspicion. He thundered out—

“You’re not playing the fool too, Dick?” Wareham pulled himself together.

“I hope not, but if you saw her, you’d understand her charm.”

“Saw her? Don’t let her come here. I couldn’t trust myself. D’ye hear?”

There was difficulty in soothing him, and his suspicion died in the greater disturbance.

Two or three large estates covered the neighbourhood, so that of actual neighbours Firleigh had not many. The houses had shooting-parties filling them, with whom the Forbes’ in their trouble had, of course, nothing to do; the ladies of the houses drove over to see Ella, who escaped from them as much as she could, clinging to solitude.

Wareham used to take a gun and a dog and go across the fields, more by way of pleasing his host, who believed that here was enjoyment, than because he cared about it himself. He was not in the mood for sport; what, however, he did like was the rich ripeness of the time, the filmy cobwebs glittering on the grass, the pale yellow of the reaped corn-fields against the earth-brown. To sit on a log, and let fancy weave other cobwebs, blue and white smiling down upon him from above, had its pleasantness, and, what was more, its peace. Report of the birds he brought back did not satisfy Sir Michael, who was always wanting to bribe him into staying by the best inducements he could offer.

“We must get Dick a day with Ormsleigh,” he said to his daughter, one day. “Pottering about here is miserable work for a young man. He’ll be off before we can look round.”