CHAPTER XLII
THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME
Give what you have; to some it may be better than you dare to think.
—LONGFELLOW.
The Possible stands by us ever fresh,
Fairer than aught which any life hath owned,
And makes divine amends.
—JEAN INGELOW.
Two years had passed away since Malcolm had uttered his passionate protest in the Priory garden that May morning, when the white petals of the Guelder roses in Elizabeth's hand lay like snow on the gravel path, and all this time he had sternly adhered to his resolution.
In those two years he had only paid four visits to the Wood House, and on two of these occasions Elizabeth had been absent. Each time he had come on Dinah's invitation, to give her the help and counsel she needed, and more than once he had met her at 27 Queen's Gate.
For Cedric had had his way, and had effected an introduction between his sisters and Mrs. Herrick; and as they had mutually taken to each other, a pleasant intimacy had been the result, and Anna had paid two or three visits to the Wood House. From the first moment of their meeting Anna had fallen in love with Dinah. "You must not think that I do not care for Miss Elizabeth Templeton," she had observed rather shyly to Malcolm, after her first visit to Staplegrove—"for I admire and like her more than I can say, and I am never tired of talking to her—but I do love my dear Miss Dinah!" And indeed Dinah accepted the girl's innocent worship with great kindness. "She is a dear child, and Elizabeth and I are very fond of her," she wrote once to Malcolm; "the thought that some one else is fond of her too makes me very happy." For at this time it was evident to all Cedric's friends that a mutual attachment was growing up between him and Anna.
The years had not been unfruitful to Malcolm, and his name as a powerful and successful author was firmly established. He no longer held his appointment, and had given up his dingy chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His own work fully occupied him, and thanks to his literary receipts and his mother's generosity, he realised a good income.
To his own regret and to his friends also, he was no longer a member of the Keston menage. He had outgrown his homely quarters, and now occupied one of the new flats in Cheyne Walk, and lived in quite a palatial fashion, though many a pipe was still smoked in Amias's studio. Malcolm had emerged from his shell, and mixed freely in society. His was a name to conjure with, and all the people best worth knowing gathered round him and delighted to do him homage. Elizabeth used to read his name sometimes in the columns of the Times and the Morning Post. "He seems to go everywhere, and to know every one," she observed once to Dinah; "I am afraid he will be terribly spoiled." But she only said it to tease Dinah. She knew that Malcolm Herrick had no overweening estimate of himself—that, in spite of his success and his many friends, and all the smiles and adulation lavished on him, at heart he was a lonely man. Perhaps in her way Elizabeth was lonely too. In spite of her devotion to David's father, there were times when the narrowness of her life oppressed her—when her broad sympathies and strong vitality seemed to cry out for a larger life, for a wider outlook—when she trod the woodland paths with a sense of weariness—the same path day after day.