"Dear Miss Vancourt,"
At this, he threw down his pen altogether. Too familiar! By all the gods of Greece, whom he had almost believed in even while studying Divinity at Oxford, a great deal too familiar!
"It is just as if I knew her!" he said to himself in vexation. "And I don't know her! And what's more, I don't want to know her! If it were not for this business of the Five Sisters, I wouldn't go near her. Positively I wouldn't!"
A mellow chime from the old eight-day clock in the outer hall struck on the silence. Three o'clock! The train by which Miss Vancourt would arrive, was timed to reach Riversford station at three,—if it was not late, which it generally was. Nebbie, who had been snoozing peacefully near the study window in a patch of sunlight, suddenly rose, shook himself, and trotted out on to the lawn, sniffing the air with ears and tail erect. Walden watched him abstractedly.
"Perhaps he scents a future enemy in Miss Vancourt's dog, Plato!" And this whimsical idea made him smile. "He is quite intelligent enough. He is certainly more intelligent than I am this afternoon, for I cannot write even a commonplace ordinary note to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,—but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,—he knew her father, and I didn't;—it will be much better to send Bainton."
Having made this resolve, his brow cleared, and he was more satisfied. Tearing up the last half sheet of wasted note-paper he had spoilt in futile attempts to address the lady of the Manor, he laughed at his failures.
"Even if it were etiquette to use the old Roman form of correspondence, which some people think ought to be revived, it wouldn't do in this case," he said. "Imagine it! 'John Walden to Maryllia Vancourt,—Greeting!' How unutterably, how stupendously ridiculous it would look!"
He shut all his writing materials in his desk, and following Nebbie out to the lawn, seated himself with a volume of Owen Meredith in his hand. He was soon absorbed. Yet every now and again his thoughts strayed to the Five Sisters, and with persistent fidelity of detail his mind's eye showed him the grassy knoll so soft to the tread, where the doomed trees stood proudly and gracefully, clad just at this season all in a glorious panoply of young green,—where, as the poet whose tender word melodies he was reading might have said of the surroundings:
"For moisture of sweet showers, All the grass is thick with flowers."
"Yes, I shall send Bainton up to the Manor with a civil message," he mused—"and he can—and certainly will—add anything else to it he likes. Of course the lady may be offended,—some women take offence at anything—but I don't much care if she is. My conscience will not reproach me for having warned her of the impending destruction of one of the most picturesque portions of her property. But personally, I shall not write to her, nor will I go to see her. I shall have to pay a formal call, of course, in a week or two,—but I need not go inside the Manor for that. To leave my card, as minister of the parish, will be quite sufficient."