“No. I shall go myself. I deserve it.”
“You deserve—!” He stopped himself. “Look here,” he said, “send Gunner. No, he’s changing. Send young Chaveney.”
She opened her eyes—fatal use! “Is Mr. Chaveney here? I thought he said——”
Wilbraham chuckled. “Did you suppose he’d go when it came to the point? Not he! Why, before we’d played half a set he came to borrow some clothes off me.”
He glided smoothly into the library. Mrs. Germain fetched her book.
II
REFLECTIONS ON HONEYMOONS AND SUCHLIKE
The years fly, we know, and come not again, and there’s balm in that for the wounds they leave. For we forget a good deal, and Hope is a faithful lover, and never quits us for long together; and then there’s honest Use-and-Wont, surely our friend. Because you were a fool yesterday, you’re wise to-day; and if you’re a fool to-morrow—why, the alternation is established. There’s a progression; it is like the rotation of crops.
There’s a mort of healing in a brace of longish years. The county, which had found little Mrs. Germain stiff when she came home from her honeymoon, now looked to her for stiffness when it felt relaxed. Her idiosyncrasy was accepted, you see; once admitted to be a person, she became a personage. And, discovered by the county, she discovered herself. She found out that she had a character; she had never known that before, nor had any others who had had to do with her: Mrs. James, to wit, Miss de Speyne, her husband. The process of these discoveries ought to entertain us for a chapter, and its resolution shall be attempted. But the county learned it first, when it came to rely upon her stiffness. The Chaveneys, the Gerald Swetebredes, the Trevor-Waynes, the Perceforest people, before the two years were over, forgot that they had ever eyed each other, with brows inquiring “Colonial?” or spelling “Hopeless, my dear!” Such looks had passed, but now, on the contrary, they leaned—some heavily. Lady Chaveney was one. “She is charming with Guy,” she said more than once, “quite charming. An influence—in the nicest way.” She added, once, as if the news was sacred, “I believe he’s told her everything.” Guy was the Chaveney heir, the florid, assured youth whom we met just now on our visit; he had been pronounced “wild” by Mr. Germain; and he had told her everything. She took herself quite seriously with Guy, in the elder-sister fashion, Mr. Germain, at first approving, as, at first, he had approved every sign of her making way. He came, before the end of two years, to feel differently, lost touch with the sense of his benevolence, felt to be losing grip of many things. But in the early days he had approved, there’s no doubt—in those days of stress and taut nerves when, returning from a honeymoon by much too long, she had found Mrs. James pervading the great, orderly house, and had, without knowing it, braced herself for a tussle, and unawares found herself in it, and amazingly the winner. Her husband had backed her up there, in his quiet way. Short, quick, breathless work it had been—a fight in spasms. She had been crossing the hall when the great lady came out of the Little Library.
“Ah, Mary—A Mrs. Burgess has called, I see—wife of some one in Farlingbridge. She called while you were out. A politeness very natural under the circumstances—but not the custom here, I think. Lady Diana, I happen to know, never—I suppose you will send cards by the carriage. That would answer the purpose very well. We have never known the townspeople, you know—in that sort of way. There is a tenants’ party in the summer. They come to that.”
Mary had listened. She was pale, but her eyes smouldered.