Bertram felt that he was a conspirator. He gave a furtive glance at the others who knew different. He could see that Lucy grew scarlet, but not a word was said.
“You are mistaken, mother,” said Mr. Wradisley, with his calm voice, “I sometimes do take a little giro in the evening.”
“Oh, a giro;” said his mother, as if that altered the matter; “however,” she added, “there never was any question about the party; that she fully knew we expected her for; but I wanted her to come for lunch that she might make Ralph’s acquaintance before the crowd came; but it doesn’t matter, for no doubt they’ll meet often enough. Only when you men begin to shoot you’re lost to all ordinary occupations; and so tired when you come in that you have not a word to throw at—a lady certainly, if you still may have at a dog.”
“I am not so bent on meeting this widow, mother, as you seem to think,” said Ralph.
“You need not always call her a widow. That’s her misfortune; it’s not her character,” said Lucy, unconsciously epigrammatic.
“Oh, well, whatever you please—this beautiful lady—is that better? The other sounds designing, I allow.”
“I think,” said Mr. Wradisley, “that we have perhaps discussed Mrs. Nugent as much as is called for. She is a lady—for whom we all have the utmost respect.” He spoke as if that closed the question, as indeed it generally did; and going across the room to what he knew was the most comfortable chair, possessed himself of the evening paper, and sitting down, began to read it. Mrs. Wradisley had by no means done with her evening paper, and that Reginald should thus take it up under her very eyes filled her soul with astonishment. She looked at him with a gasp, and then, after a moment, put out her hand for her knitting. Nothing that could have happened could have given her a more bewildering and mysterious shock.
All this, perhaps, was rather like a play to Bertram, who saw everything with a certain unconscious exercise of that literary faculty which he had just found so little impressive to the people among whom he found himself. They were very kind people, and had received him confidingly, asking no questions, not even wondering, as they might have done, what queer companion Ralph had picked up. Indeed, he was not at all like Ralph, though circumstances had made them close comrades. Perhaps if they could have read his life as he thought he could read theirs, they might not have opened their doors to him with such perfect trust. He had (had he?) the ruin of a woman’s happiness on his heart, and the destruction of many hopes. He had been wandering about the world for a number of years, never knowing how to make up his mind on this question. Was it indeed his fault? Was it her fault? Were they both to blame? Perhaps the last was the truth; but he knew very well he would never get her, or any one, to confess or to believe that. There are some cases in which the woman has certainly the best of it; and when the man who has been the means of bringing a young, fair, blameless creature into great trouble, even if he never meant it, is hopelessly put in the wrong even when there may be something to be said for him. He was himself bewildered now and then when he thought it all over, wondering if indeed there might be something to be said for him. But if he could not even satisfy himself of that, how should he ever satisfy the world? He was a little stirred up and uncomfortable that night, he could scarcely tell why, for the brewing troubles of the Wradisleys, if it was trouble that was brewing, was unlikely to affect a stranger. Ralph, indeed, had been grumbling in his beard with complaints over what was in fact the blamelessness of his brother, but it did not trouble Bertram that his host should be too perfect a man. He had quite settled in his own mind what it was that was going to happen. The widow, no doubt, was some pretty adventuress who, by means of the mother and sister, had established a hold over the immaculate one, and meant to marry him and turn her patronesses adrift—the commonest story, vulgar, even. And the ladies would really have nothing to complain of, for Wradisley was certainly old enough to choose for himself, and might have married and turned off his mother to her jointure house years ago, and no harm done. It was not this that made Bertram sleepless and nervous, who really had so little to do with them, and no call to fight their battles. Perhaps it was the sensation of being in England, and within the rules of common life again, after long disruption from all ordinary circumstances of ordinary living. He to plunge into garden parties, and common encounters of men and women! He might meet some one who knew him, who would ask him questions, and attempt to piece his life together with guesses and conjectures. He had a great mind to repack his portmanteau and sling it over his shoulder, and tramp through the night to the nearest station. But to what good? For wherever he might go the same risk would meet him. How tranquil the night was as he looked out of the window, a great moon shining over the openings of the park, making the silence and the vacant spaces so doubly solitary! He dared not break the sanctity of that solitude by going out into it, any more than he dared disturb the quiet of the fully populated and deeply sleeping house. He had no right, for any caprice or personal cowardice of his, to disturb that stillness. And then it gave him a curious contradictory sensation, half of relief from his own thoughts, half of sympathy, to think that there were already here the elements of a far greater disturbance than any he could work, beginning to move within the house itself, working, perhaps, toward a catastrophe of its own. In the midst of all he suddenly stopped and laughed to himself, and went to bed at last with the most curiously subdued and softened sensation. He had remembered the look of the child whom he had lifted from the ground at the little gate of Greenbank—how she had suddenly been stilled in her childish mischief, and fixed him with her big, innocent, startled eyes. Poor little thing! She was innocent enough, whatever might be the nest from which she came. This was the thought with which he closed his eyes.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Wradisley had never been known to give so much attention to any of his mother’s entertainments before. Those which were more exclusively his own, the periodical dinners, the parties of guests occasionally assembled in the house either for political motives or in discharge of what he felt to be his duty as an important personage in the county, or for shooting—which was the least responsible of all, but still the man’s part in a house of the highest class—he did give a certain solemn and serious attention to. But it had never been known that he had come out of himself, or even out of his library, which was in a manner the outer shell and husk of himself, for anything in the shape of an occasional entertainment, the lighter occurrences of hospitality. On this occasion, however, he was about all the morning with a slightly anxious look about his eyes, in the first place to see that the day promised well, to examine the horizon all round, and discuss the clouds with the head gardener, who was a man of much learning and an expert, as might be said, on the great question of the weather. That great authority gave it as his opinion that it would keep fine all day. “There may be showers in the evening, I should not wonder, but the weather will keep up for to-day,” he said, backing his opinion with many minutiæ about the shape of the clouds and the indications of the wind. Mr. Wradisley repeated this at the breakfast table with much seriousness. “Stevenson says we may trust to having a fine day, though there may be showers in the evening,” he said; “but that will matter less, mother, as all your guests will be gone by that time.”