“What are they?” inquired Raymond.
“Well, I count it a virtue in a wet day to hold out the hope to you of seeing it clear up at any moment; whereas, in countries that are blessed with a good climate, once the day sets in wet, you know your doom; there’s nothing to hope for till to-morrow.”
“There is something in that, I grant you,” replied Raymond thoughtfully; “but the argument works both ways. If the day sets in fine here, you never know what it may do before an hour. In fact, it proves, what I have long ago made up my mind to, that there is no climate in England—only weather. Just now it is redeeming itself; I never saw a lovelier day in France. Shall we come out of doors and enjoy it?”
They stepped out on to the terrace, and turned from the flowery parterre, with its fountain flashing in the sunlight, into a shady avenue of lime-trees.
Clide felt very little interest in Raymond’s private opinion of the climate. He wanted to make him talk of himself, as a preliminary to talk of his daughter; and, as usual when we want to lead up to a subject, he could hit on nothing but the most irrelevant commonplaces. Chance finally came to his rescue in the shape of a stunted palm-tree that was obtruding its parched leaves through the broken window of a neglected orangery. Sir Simon had had a hobby about growing oranges at the Court, and had given it up, like so many other hobbies, after a while, and the orangery, that had cost so much money for a time, was standing forlorn and half-empty near the flower-garden, a trophy of its owner’s fickle purpose and extravagance.
“Poor little abortion!” exclaimed the count, pointing to the starved palm-tree, “it did not take kindly to its exile.”
“Exile is a barren soil to most of us,” said Clide. “We generally prove a failure in it.”
“I suppose because we are a failure when we come to it,” replied Raymond. “We seldom try exile until life has failed to us at home.” He looked up with a quick smile as he said this, and Clide answered him with a glance of intelligent and respectful sympathy. As the two men looked into each other’s face, it was as if some intangible barrier were melting away, and confidence were suddenly being established in its place.
Clide had never pronounced his wife’s name since the day he had let his head drop on the admiral’s breast, and abandoned himself to the passion of his boyish grief. It was as if the recollection of his marriage and its miserable ending had died and been buried with Isabel. The admiral had often wondered how one so young could be so self-contained, wrapping himself in such an impenetrable reserve. The old sailor was not given to speculating on mental phenomena as a rule; but he had given this particular one many a five minutes’ cogitation, and the conclusion he arrived at was that either Clide had taken the matter less to heart than he imagined, and so felt no need of the solace of talking over his loss, or that the sense of humiliation which attached to the memory of Isabel was so painful to him, as a man and a De Winton, that he was unwilling to recur to it. There may have been something of this latter feeling mixed up with the other impalpable causes that kept him mute; but to-day, as he paced up and down under the fragrant shade of the lime-trees with M. de la Bourbonais, a sudden desire sprang up in him to speak of the past, and evoke the sympathy of this man, who had suffered, perhaps, more deeply than himself. They were silent for a few minutes, but a subtle, magnetic sympathy was at work between them.
“I too have had my little glimpse of paradise, only to be turned out, like so many others, to finish my pilgrimage alone,” said Raymond abruptly.