“How many carriages have come?” the master asked from his place at the window.
“Four, Your Grace—and a break with some wreaths and Lord Chobham’s man and a maid—I think it is Lady Cressage’s maid.”
“Who has come—outside the family?”
“Three gentlemen, Your Grace—one of them is Mr. Soman. Barlow thinks they are all solicitors.”
Christian mused briefly upon the presence of Lord Julius’s man of business. Since that first evening of his on English soil, at Brighton, he had not seen this Mr. Soman. He remembered nothing of him, indeed, save his green eyes. And now that he thought of it, even this was not a personal recollection. It was the remark of the girl on the boat, about his having green eyes, which stuck in his memory. He smiled, as he looked idly out on the hills.
The girl on the boat! Was it not strange that his mind should have applied to her this distant and chilling designation? Only a few days ago—it would not be a week till to-morrow—she had seemed to him the most important person in the world. A vision of his future had possessed him, in which she alone had a definite share. How remote it seemed—and how curious!
He recalled, quite impersonally, what he had heard in one way or another about her family. Her father was some sort of underling in the general post office—a clerk or accountant, or something of the kind. There was a son—of course, that would be the brother Cora had spoken of—and the ambition of the family had expended itself in sending this boy to a public school, and to the university. The family had made great sacrifices to do this—and apparently these had been wasted. He had the distinct impression of having been told that the son was a worthless fellow. How often that occurred in England—that everything was done for the son, and nothing at all for the daughters! Then in fairness he reflected that it was even worse in France. Yes, but somehow Frenchwomen had a talent for doing for themselves. They were cleverer than their brothers—more helpful, resourceful—in spite of the fact that the brothers had monopolized the advantages. Images of capable, managing Frenchwomen he had known rose before his mind’s eye; he saw them again accomplishing wonders of work, diligent, wise, sensible, understanding everything that was said or done. Yet, oddly enough, these very paragons of feminine capacity had a fatal unfeminine defect; they did not know how to bring up their sons. Upon that side they were incredibly weak and silly; it was impossible to prevent their making pampered fools of their boys.
Suddenly his vagrant fancies were concentrated upon the question of how Frances Bailey would bring up a boy—a son of her own. It was an absurd query to have raised itself in his mind—and he put it away from him with promptitude. There remained, however, a kind of mental protest lodged on her behalf among his thoughts. He perceived that in his ruminations he had done her an injustice. She was not inferior in capability or courage to any of the self-sufficient Frenchwomen he had been thinking of, and in the matter of intellectual attainments was she not immeasurably superior to them all? The translucent calm of her mind—penetrating, far-reaching, equable as the starlight—how queer that it should be coupled with such a bad temper! She always quarreled with him, and bullied him, when they were together. Even when she was exhibiting to him the sunniest aspects of her mood, there was always a latent defiance of him underneath, ready to spring forth at a word. He remembered how, at the close of their first meeting, she had refused to tell him her name. He saw now that this obstinacy of hers had annoyed him more than he had imagined. For an instant it assumed almost the character of a grievance—but then his attention fastened itself at random upon the remarkable fact that he had seen her only twice in his life. Upon reflection, this did seem very strange indeed. But it was the fact—and in the process of readjusting his impressions of the past six months to fit with it, the figure of her receded in his mind, grew less as she moved away under a canopy of dull yellowish-green, which vaguely identified itself with the trees on the Embankment. She dwindled thus till he thought of her again, with a dim impulse of insistence upon the phrase, as the girl on the boat. The transition to thoughts of other things gave his mind no sort of trouble.
He pondered some of these other things—formlessly and light-heartedly—while he stood at the library table, and picked morsels here and there from the dishes laid for him. His absence of appetite he referred tacitly to the warmth of the day, as it was sunnily developing itself outside. Here on this shaded side of the castle, it was cool enough, but there was the languor of spring in the air. He scrutinized this new library of his afresh. Until Barlow had opened it for him, shortly after his arrival yesterday, it could not have been used for years. Most of its appointments had a very ancient look; no doubt they must date back at least to the seventh Duke’s time. It was incredible that his grandfather, the eighth Duke, should have been inspired to furnish a library. There were many shelves of apparently very old books as well, but there was also a vast deal of later rubbish—stock and sporting annuals, veterinary treatises, county directories and the like—which he would lose no time in putting out. He saw already how delightful a room could be made of it. It had the crowning merit of being connected with the suite of apartments he had chosen for his own. From the door at the side, opposite the fine old fireplace, one entered the antechamber to his dressing-room. This gave to the library an intimate character, upon which he reflected with pleasure. Here he would come, secure from interruption, and spend among his books the choicest and most fruitful hours of his leisure. It was plain to him that henceforth he would do a great deal of reading, and perhaps—why not?—of writing too.
There was a rap upon the door, and then Falkner, opening it, announced Lord Julius and his son. They came in together, diffusing an impalpable effect of constraint. The elder man seemed in Christian’s eyes bigger than ever; his white beard spread over the broad chest like a vine run wild. Emanuel, who lapsed in the wake of his father, was unexpectedly small by comparison. The shadows, where the two stood, emphasized the angular peculiarities of his bald head. His thin face took an effect of sallow pallor from his black clothes. Already he had his black gloves in his hands.