"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"
"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were rumours of an alarming kind about her health—her mental health. Our own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about her. 'Was it serious?' people asked—for I suppose you know that in a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen at a particular house very often, people will ask questions of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that. Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip. By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives, and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our men-folk."
"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"
"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the future owner of Discombe to be born in—Grindelwald—at the sign of the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to the house in which he ought to have been born—a poor little fragile Frenchified object, hanging on to a French bonne, and speaking nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"
Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she were describing the events of yesterday.
"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.
"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He was very active and intelligent—hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible, matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing—what can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as those?—a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses? I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing to go. What can one do with such a woman?"
"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"
"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."
"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.