'Jerry must have been making his innings,' thought he, 'to be there. He has surely been seized with a most unusual cacoethes scribendi. I have not heard from the fellow for months, and now he sends me nearly sixteen pages. What can they all be about? Perhaps the marriage, but more likely that alluring ignis fatuus, Ida.'
And once more filling his pipe, he composed himself to peruse the letter of his old chum, Jerry, who ran on thus:—
'I suppose you have long since heard how Sir Carnaby Collingwood made a fool of himself at St. George's. He has now gone on his wedding tour, and I am thankful he is out of the way. It is ungracious to write these lines of one's host, and still more so of one I would fain be more nearly connected with; but it is the old story of Doctor Fell, and you know I never liked Sir Carnaby. How difficult it is to analyse sympathy. By Jove, Trevor, it is a thing that no fellow can understand, for it takes possession of us whether we will or no; hence it is that we are unconsciously attracted or repelled by some of those we meet at first sight. And why? No one can tell. Hence, a magnetic influence draws us sometimes even to those we should shun, or compels us to shun sometimes those whom, from policy, we should attract, and in whom we should confide.' ('Has Jerry had a sunstroke?' thought Trevor; 'what is all this about?') 'And thus it was that a magnetic influence led me to love Ida at first sight, and at the same time to dislike Sir Carnaby, and I fear the feeling will never pass away, so far as he is concerned.
'I know not where this may find you; but any place is better than London at this season. You know what it is in August and September, with its pavement fit only for a salamander or a fireman. After Ascot, the Collingwoods—the three ladies, at least—left London in the height of the season, and went to Carnaby Court. I was with them—Ida and Clare, I mean—on Rakes' drag on the Royal Heath on the Cup day. Don't you envy me, old fellow? I am sure you do. We spoke much of you among ourselves, anyhow, and Clare looked her brightest and her best when we did so. By not starting early, we were delayed waiting for the young engaged couple; we lost the first two races, but that was nothing.
'It was with quiet anger the girls saw the half-concealed billing and cooing of the old baronet and the fiancée, and with what excellent grace he lost some heavy bets to her brother, the Guardsman, and others to the lady herself, which she entered in a dainty little book with a jewelled pencil, and laughing girlishly as she buried her pretty nose in a hot-house bouquet of the colours affected by Sir Carnaby.
'Desmond's animal was nowhere; but, perhaps, you won't be sorry for that. Some say he has lost a pot of money, and may have to leave the Brigade; anyway, it did not prevent him from returning with some dolls in his hat-band. For some reason—gout, it was whispered—the baronet did not go to the Derby, so the fair Evelyn agreed with him that it was only fit for boys, and declined to go either. Why should a gentleman go, to have his clothes covered by dust or flour, his hat, perhaps, banished by a cocoa-nut; and why a lady, to see and hear all the horrid things that were said or done? Yet, in times past, she had gone and faced all these things and more, so it suited her to play propriety on that Derby Day; but when Ascot came, she was there making bets, even 'ponies,' in full swing.
'I came here at first to have a shot or two at the birds for a week, by express invitation, as I told you, and then I may, perhaps, join you on the Continent after all. Ida matronises the household, and a lovely matron she makes, with her sweet, sad grace. Sir John and Lady Oriel are here, old Colonel Rakes and his wife, and that titled parvenu, Lord Brixton, with some others, to await the return of the "young couple" from Germany, whither they have gone to hide their blushes; and the tenantry are getting up an enormous triumphal archway at the avenue gate; the public-house at the village is getting a new signboard; the ringers are practising chimes in the old Saxon spire; the schoolmaster is composing an epithalamium, and the Carnaby volunteer artillery are to fire a salute on the lawn. But I wonder how I can write so frivolously, for something occurred on the third day after I came that has caused me much discomfort and perplexity.
'There is an arbour in the garden, one of many, but before this I mean there stands a marble Psyche.'
(How well Trevor Chute could remember that arbour—a kiosk—with all its iron lattice-work and gilded knobs, and the masses of roses and clematis, Virginia creeper and ivy, all matted and woven in profusion over it. Many a time had he sat there with Clare, and often in a silence that was not without its eloquence. 'Well; and what of the arbour?' thought he, turning again to the letter of Jerry.)
'When passing among the shrubberies, I saw Ida seated in that arbour, with a book in her lap, and, to all appearance, lost in thought. A flood of amber light, shed by the evening sun, poured aslant through an opening in the greenery upon her white neck and lustrous auburn hair, which shone like gold, as her hat was off and lay beside her. A great joy filled my heart as I thought of the hopes given me during the meeting at Rakes' house, and after watching her beauty for a minute or so in silence I was about to join her, when she looked upward, and then there appeared, what I had not before perceived, so absorbed had I been in her, a man, unknown to me, looking down upon her—a man with whom she seemed to be in close conversation.