‘You were more interested, Mr. Renton,’ she said, with soft reproach, ‘when we talked together last,—oh, so much more interested! If I did not know you so well, I could scarcely think it was the same.’
‘That is true,’ said Ben; ‘but you taught me some things, Mrs. Rich, and I profited by the lesson. I doubt whether but for your assistance I could ever have been the man I am.’
‘Ah! then I have at least something to do with you?’ said Millicent. ‘Come and tell me, will you? It is not like London, where one was always being interrupted. In the country there is so much time for talk.’
‘But I have no time,’ said Ben. ‘After to-morrow I shall probably go away again; and when I tell you I have profited by your instructions, I think that is all I have to say.’
‘You are angry with me because of,—because of,—poor Henry,’ said Millicent, with tears coming to her eyes. ‘But ah, Mr. Renton!—ah, Ben, if you only knew!’
Ben sprang impatiently to his feet. To him, as to any other generous man, it felt like a personal pang and shame to see a woman thus humiliate herself. He made a long step towards the window, with a flush on his face. ‘Here they come!’ he said, though at the moment he was not thinking much of their coming. And then there ensued a sudden inevitable flutter in the family which affected the guests. Alice, who had been charitably talking to the Guardsman, jumped up with a little cry of excitement, and sat down again, ashamed of herself, but with all possibilities of conversation quenched out of her; and Mrs. Renton, whom Mrs. Tracy had been occupying to the best of her ability to leave Millicent free for her important interview with Ben, was suddenly overcome, and cried a little, lying back on her pillows. ‘Oh Ben, my dear! I don’t know how I am to bear it,’ she said, holding fast by her son’s hand. Laurie was the only one who was perfectly steady. He came forward immediately from the background, and raised his mother up, supporting her on his arm. ‘You will bear it beautifully, mamma, as you always do,’ said Laurie. ‘Come and give us our luncheon. You forget we are not alone.’
And he supported her into the dining-room, holding her hand caressingly in his. As for Ben, he turned and gave his arm to Millicent, ‘As if I had been a cabbage,’ she said afterwards, indignantly. None of her pathetic glances, not the soft little pressure of her hand upon his arm, gained the slightest response. His face was set and stern, full of thoughts with which she had nothing to do. Mrs. Tracy ventured to whisper as she followed, ‘Ah, how sweet it is to me to see you two together again!’ But Ben did not even hear what she said. He waved his hand to Mr. Ponsonby in the distance as he went across the hall. The beautiful face at his side had no more effect upon him than if it had been a hideous mask. He was absorbed in his own business, and careless of her very existence. Millicent, in her fury, could have struck him as he took her into the dining-room. Was this to be the end?
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WILL.
It was Hillyard’s behaviour at this meal which gained him the regard of the various members of the Renton family. He took such pains to attend to the strangers, and give to the agitated group the air of an ordinary party, that all of them who were sufficiently disengaged to observe his exertions felt grateful to him. Millicent sat next to Ben on one side, but Hillyard had placed himself between her and Mary Westbury on the other, and in all the intervals of his general services to the company Mrs. Rich had his attention, for which Mary blessed him. She herself, overcome by many emotions, was but a pale spectator, able to take little part in what was going on, saying now and then a languid word to the unfortunate Guardsman, but capable of nothing more except watching, which she did with a sick excitement beyond all description. Mary was so pale, indeed, and watchful and excited, that her mother was alarmed, and made signs to her across the table which she did not feel capable of understanding. ‘She will cry if she does not mind, and make a scene,’ Mrs. Westbury said to herself; and set it all down to the score of Ben, which was true enough, but not as she thought. As for Ben, he inclined his ear specially to Mrs. Tracy, who was at his other hand, and hoped she liked The Willows, and that her rheumatism was better, and a hundred other nothings. There was, it is true, nothing very remarkable about this party, looking at it from the outside. They were well-dressed people, gathered round a well-appointed table, getting through an average amount of talk, smiling upon each other like ordinary mortals; but yet underneath how different it was; Mrs. Renton was consoled, and ate her luncheon, sustained by her son Laurie’s attentions; but Mrs. Frank Renton trembled so that she could scarcely keep up the fiction of eating, and grew pale and flushed again six times in a minute, and nervously consulted the countenance of her husband, who, very silent and self-absorbed, drank his sherry, and more of it than he wanted at that hour, taking little notice of any one; then, at the other end of the table, there was Mrs. Tracy, hanging with ostentatious, artificial interest on every word uttered by Ben; and Millicent, very pale, with an excited gleam in her eyes, casting tender, wistful looks at him, which he never saw; and Hillyard talking enough for six, helping everybody, introducing a hundred indifferent subjects of conversation, which ran a feeble course half-way round the table and then died a natural death. Mrs. Westbury, one of the few people who was calm enough to remark upon the appearance of the others, concluded within herself that, after all, the strangers were a mistake. If the family party had been alone, their excitement would have been nothing beyond what was natural; but her own child, Mary, who ought at least to have been one of the calmest of the party, sat by that unhappy Guardsman pale as a ghost, once in ten minutes saying something to him, and looking as if she were about to faint; and all the others were equally under the sway of agitation and self-restraint. When this uncomfortable meal came to an end, everybody rose with an alacrity which showed how glad they were that it was over. And then there ensued another moment of supreme embarrassment. If the strangers had any sense of the position they would go away instantly, the family felt; but instead of that, Millicent moved at once to the upper end of the room, where there stood upon a crimson pedestal a bust of the last Benedict Renton, and humbly begged of Ben to explain to her who it was; and while the others stood about waiting, he had to follow and describe his grandfather, and fulfil the duties of showman, Mrs. Tracy rushing to join the group.
‘Benedict Renton—your name!’ Millicent said, with again another attempt upon his feelings, while Ben stood angrily conscious of the effort and contemptuous of the fooling, scarcely concealing his eagerness to be at liberty. ‘And this portrait, Mr. Renton? I can trace the family resemblance,’ said Mrs. Tracy. And all this while Mr. Ponsonby’s blue bag waited outside, and the family murmured, standing round in agonies of suspense to know their fate. Then once more Hillyard stood forth, vindicating his claim to be called Ben’s right-hand man.