For the first half-hour of that walk, to which Miss Carew has thus valiantly braced herself, it seems as if her resolution were to be wasted, since her companion’s thoughts are plainly running in a groove other than that for which Mrs. Darcy has prepared her. He stumps along, digging his stick into the muddy ground, in that perfect silence which is possible only to complete intimacy. Not till the high-road is left, and the King’s Wood entered, does the little business of putting the quivering, tantalized Dachs Geist on the chain produce a word from him, and then it is only a “Steady, old man!” to the dog, who with moist nose working and upbraiding eyes, is testifying against the inhumanity of shackling him just when the sound of the rabbit begins to be loud in the land.
“Poor Geist!” says Lavinia, stooping to pat the satin of the long, low, red back. “Wait till we get to Madeley’s, and you shall run the hens!”
This is a promise always made and never fulfilled at the entrance to the forbidden paradise; but it sends them all on in better spirits. Sir George half smiles, too, though he says disdainfully—
“Geist!”
The name has been bestowed by Rupert, in memory of Mat Arnold’s immortal favourite; but as his father is equally unacquainted with the author and the poem, he can seldom forbear some ejaculation of contempt for so senseless an appellation; and again the silence is unbroken, as they step along the ride between the undergrowth of Spanish chestnuts, through whose still adhering dead leaves the wind blows cracklingly. They are for use and beauty too, these chestnut growths. To-day they are a covert, warm and colourful; to-morrow they will be hop-poles, round which the vine of England will wind the tenderness of her green embrace.
“We must try and get him here!” says Sir George, suddenly, arriving, as often happens, at a point in his ruminations when utterance to his one confidant is a relief, and without the slightest doubt that she will have followed the wordless course of his meditations, and be able to pick up his thought, whatever it may be, at the moment when he wishes it to become oral. She is mostly equal to the occasion; and to-day divines at once that the allusion is to the young officer whom Bill had died to save.
“I am sure that he will wish to come,” she answers, in instantly ready response.
“You know, of course, to whom I am alluding?” her uncle inquires, with one of those sharp turns of suspicion, even of her, to which he is liable.
“Surely to Captain Binning,” she replies very softly.
“We have nothing to offer him when he does come,” pursues her companion, gloomily—“no sport—nothing that a fine manly chap like that would care for. Twenty years ago it would have been a different thing!”