"I BELONG TO THEE"
Lord Gowerhurst justly prided himself on the "Stanwys manner" which he had to perfection. If he were formal he carried his formality with grace, he was studiously polite, he was courteous, urbane—and a wet blanket.
He crushed utterly those four jolly City gentlemen, who would have been ten times happier if his lordship and his manner had not been there. Sir Josiah, seated on the right hand of his daughter-in-law, perspired freely from sheer nervousness, mingled with a kind of admiration and awe. Jobson and Cutler were noticeably ill at ease, and consumed by anxiety lest they might say or do the wrong thing. Mr. Coombe was resentful and would have been sarcastic had he dared.
That man, sitting facing Mr. Coombe, fingering the stem of his wineglass with his delicate white fingers, monopolising the conversation with his confounded drawling aristocratic voice and his infernal air of superiority, who was he? Was not he the same man who one day had come cringing into his, Coombe's, office hoping to raise a loan of two thousand on some rotten securities; was not he the same man who had well nigh wept when the loan had not materialised?
"And there he sits," thought Coombe, "there he sits, treating us all as if we were dirt, looking down on us, the rotten, humbugging, insolvent old—old—beast."
No one could find fault with the dinner, indeed his lordship gracefully congratulated his daughter on the excellence of her chef. Good Mrs. Crozier had watched over everything and had seen to everything, and a lady of her experience was scarcely likely to allow a dinner to go to table that would not be a credit to the household over which she ruled.
The wines, too, were above reproach, Sir Josiah had spared no expense in this matter, but there was something wrong with the atmosphere, yes the atmosphere was all wrong. Sir Josiah could not find one word to say. Even Cutler was unable to introduce an observation concerning the island of Demauritius, its Governor and the Governor's wife, his daughter. Jobson was frankly and noticeably unhappy, and in his agitation had splashed his white shirt front with gravy. Coombe was oppressed, angry and bitter, trying hard to find something to say that would take the wind out of the sails of that drawling, dandified, supercilious aristocrat on the other side of the table.
Kathleen had her own thoughts and the subject of them was sitting beside her on her left, facing Sir Josiah. She could feel his eyes on her now and again, she tried to laugh and to talk frankly and freely, but she was conscious of a weight, of a fear, of joy, she hardly knew what.
And Allan, too, his thoughts had strayed away from that unhappy dining table. They were out in the garden, not in the garden as it was now, all shrouded in the soft darkness of the summer night, but in a garden filled with sunshine, sunshine that touched and glorified a little head of gold, that lighted up a sweet, oval face and glistened on eyes as blue as the skies.
Why, why, why? He asked himself and could scarce frame the question. How much less the answer to it. Better that she should go, but poor child, how unfair to her. Yet he could not go; how could he? And to live here, under the same roof, to see her, perhaps every day, to have that strange memory, which was yet no memory, recalled every time he saw her. How could it be, how could he be loyal to Kathleen? Why should that girl, that child whom he had seen but once, mean so much to him? How were their lives connected; what could some unknown past have held, a past that affected their present and their future so greatly?