David Varens is to play his part on the stage now, but there is to be no sudden change in the music to waltz time, nor cries of the villagers, “But here comes the Prince! Gay and dancing, bright and prancing, sing we now our welcome,” nor will the light fade and moon children glide out from under trees and sit upon their mushrooms while he sings, “Queen of the dusk and lodestar of my dreams.” He comes on like Cyril’s millionaire, “walking quite unaffectedly” among a number of ordinary people. It was not until Teresa and her mother went away on Monday that she began seriously to prefer him to Mrs. Potter. It may be difficult for anyone who is unacquainted with the love of Beauty for the Beast to understand what a disappointment it was to her to find that her heart had betrayed her and was transferring its allegiance to a normal object. It was something between childish terror of the sea and the remorse of a pilgrim whose prayers have grown cold that followed on the joy his presence gave her. “How happy I am,” she thought, and then, as a ghostly voice demanded the truth, she added, “and I don’t care a hang what Mrs. Potter is doing.”
There were other people staying in the house, but she did not notice them and no more need we. Lady Varens and Susie talked and knitted and drove, and Lady Varens liked Susie, because it was impossible not to on a slight acquaintance, and Susie liked Lady Varens because there was mystery about her and she had great charm, with her soft eyes that saw much and told nothing, and her sensitive mouth whose utterances led to conversation, but also told nothing. Susie admired in her the ideal woman, and “we are so much alike” was what she chiefly thought of her. Cyril enjoyed his hunting and sat up late in the smoking-room.
“I hope you will come and see us, Mr. Varens,” said Susie before they left. “Your mother, I know, hardly ever leaves this lovely place, and no more should I if it were mine. But I know you do come into town sometimes. We can always give you lunch and it will be such a change to hear about the beautiful country things in the middle of all our ugliness; I never get used to it. I shall be so anxious to hear whether that dear black cow gets all right again. Cows are such mothers, you know; one feels so sorry for them having to be parted from those sweet calves. You are going to manage the estate now, Sir Richard told me. How delightful that will be, and what a saving of anxiety to him.”
“Yes,” said David, “I come in two or three times a week to the University. Perhaps you would let me come one of those days, may I? Thanks very much.”
He took Teresa through the woods that morning. She said less than usual, and presently he noticed this. “You look worried,” he remarked. “Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know that you can call it wrong,” she answered, “but I feel almost sick at the thought of going back to Emma Gainsborough and her office. It doesn’t seem any use from here. I was bent on teaching music to Albert Potter the day I came, and now I want to turn him into a calf or a frog. What is the good of Emma going on sending different kinds of splints for him and telling Mrs. Potter how to put them on? The money I have eaten since I came here would have saved him from getting like that a year ago.”
“Look here,” said David seriously, “I have been along that road while I was at Oxford, and it leads nowhere, except into a sort of maze where you lose yourself and die for want of a fresh argument. If I had ideas I would come down to your place and do what you are doing for as long as you wanted me, but I haven’t got any ideas and I have got fields—or rather my father has, and can’t look after them as he used to—and I am going to see what is to be got out of them.”
“I have neither ideas nor fields,” she said, “but I had an enormous family when I left home last week, and now I have been happy and forgotten them.”
“Did you forget them?” he asked.
“Yes, quite,” she answered sadly.