“Interesting to you perhaps, who knew the history of the race,” answered Lord Cheriton, “but very uninteresting to a stranger. I think I’ve made an improvement over there. That plate is a splendid bit of colour, and lights up a dark corner. But that was not my motive. I wanted to make such trifling alterations as would change the aspect of the hall for Juanita, without any ostensible refurnishing. I have done the same thing in the library. The changes there are slight, but the room is not as it was when she and her husband occupied it.”
“I should like to show Ramsay the Strangway portraits, if they are get-at-able.”
“They are not just at present. The canvases were rotting, and I have sent them to London to be lined. You can show them to your friend by-and-by, when I get them back.”
Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts seemed a long way from the Strangway portraits this afternoon, although he had expressed a curiosity as to the lineaments of that luckless race. He was out in the garden—in Lady Cheriton’s rose garden—with Juanita and her son, and was giving further proofs of his adaptability to infantile society. The grandmother was of the party, looking on with profound admiration at that phase of awakening intellect which is described as “taking notice.” It was held now as an established fact that the infant Godfrey James Dalbrook took notice, and that his notice dwelt with especial favour upon Cuthbert Ramsay.
“I think it must be because you are so tall and big,” said Juanita lightly. “He feels your power, and he wants to conciliate you.”
“Artful little beggar! No, that is much too low a view. There is a magnetic affinity between us—love at first sight. When babies do take a fancy they are thoroughly in earnest about it. Loafing about in the New Cut sometimes, studying human nature from the Saturday night point of view, I have had a poor woman’s baby take a fancy to me—a poor little elfin creature, a year old perhaps, and not half so big as this bloated aristocrat, a sour-smelling baby which would give you mal au cœur, Lady Carmichael; and the wretched little waif would hook on to my elephantine finger and cleave to me as if I were its mother. Oh, how sorry I have felt for such a baby—with the pure starry eyes of infancy shining in the flabby withered face that has grown old for want of cold water and fresh air! For such infancy and for stray dogs I have suffered acutest agonies of pity—and yet I have done nothing—only pitied and passed on. That is the worst of us. We can all pity, but we don’t act upon the divine impulse. You may be sure the Levite felt very sorry for the wounded traveller, though he did not see his way to helping him.”
This was one of Cuthbert’s tirades, which he was wont to indulge in when he found himself in congenial society; and Juanita’s society was particularly congenial to him. He felt as if no other woman had ever sympathized with him or understood him—and he gave her credit for doing both. Never had he felt so happy in the society of any woman, as he felt in this sunlit garden to-day, among the roses which were just now blooming in a riotous luxuriance, the branching heads of standards top-heavy with great balls of blossom, swaying gently in the summer wind.
He had expected to see her a gloomy creature, self-conscious in her grief—but the child’s little fingers had loosened her heartstrings. If she was not gay, she was at least able to endure gaiety in others. She listened to the young man’s rhapsodies and paradoxes with a gentle smile; she admired her mother’s roses. She cast no shadow upon the quiet happiness of the summer afternoon, that tranquil contentedness which belongs to the loveliness of Nature, and which makes a blessed pause in the story of human passion and human discontent. It was one of those summer afternoons which make one say to oneself, “Could life be always thus what a blessed thing it were to live!” and then the sound of evening bells breaks the spell, and the shadows creep across the woods, and it is dinner time, and all that halcyon peace is over.
How lovely she looked in her simply-made black gown, with its closely-fitting bodice and straight flowing skirt, of that thick lustreless silk which falls in such statuesque folds! The plain little white crape cap seemed in perfect harmony with that raven hair and pure white forehead. She was unlike any other woman Cuthbert Ramsay had ever known. There was not one touch of society slang, nor of the society manner of looking at life. She had passed through the fiery ordeal of two London seasons unscorched in the furnace. Love had been the purifying influence. She had never lived upon the excitement of every-day pleasures and volatile loves, the intermittent fever of flirtations and engagements that are on and off half a dozen times in a season. The influence that guided all her thoughts and all her actions had been one steadfast and single-minded love. She had cared for no praises but from her lover’s lips; she had dressed and danced, and played and sung, for none other than he. And now in her devotion to her child there was the same concentration and simplicity. She did not know that she was looking her loveliest in that severe black gown and white cap; she did not know that Cuthbert Ramsay admired her far too much for his peace. She only felt that he was very sincere in his devotion to the baby, and that he was a clever young man whose society suggested new ideas, and made her for the moment forgetful of her grief.
It was evening before she left Cheriton. She had stayed later than usual, and the shadows were creeping over the park as she walked to the west gate with Theodore and his friend, the carriage following slowly with nurse and baby ensconced among light fleecy wraps, lest vesper breezes should visit that human blossom too roughly. Theodore had proposed the walk across the park, and Juanita had assented immediately.