It is most certain that woman's most womanly affections
are the likeness of affections which have their pure
and perfect fountain in the nature of God.
—PULSFORD.
After supper that evening Malcolm found himself alone with Dinah. Elizabeth and Cedric had gone down to the Pool to find a book she had left there in the afternoon, and he had been on the point of following them when he saw a wistful look in Miss Templeton's eyes, and immediately sat down again.
"You want to speak to me," he said pleasantly. He was quite aware that Elizabeth had carried off her brother with intent and purpose, and smiled to himself over her little ruse.
"She is very clever. I wonder if the missing book is a figment of her imagination," he thought; but in this he wronged her, for that little red-edged copy of Keble's Christian Year was very dear to Elizabeth.
"Yes, I want to speak to you," returned Dinah, and her tone was rather anxious and flurried. "The time is growing so short now, and to-morrow there will not be a moment, and so Elizabeth said—" and here again a flickering smile played over Malcolm's face.
"And she has carried Cedric off because you wanted to speak to me about him." Dinah was so hesitating in her manner that he thought it best to finish her sentence for her. "I hope nothing is troubling you on his account. In my opinion he is very much improved."
"Oh, I am so glad you think so," and all Dinah's mother-soul shone out of her mild eyes. "Elizabeth was only saying last night how strong and manly he has grown. But, Mr. Herrick, I am rather anxious about one thing. You know Cedric is to row in the Oxford and Cambridge race."
"I am certainly aware of the fact," replied Malcolm drily. The Jacobis and the University race had been the two standing dishes with which Cedric had regaled him. "I have heard of little else, I can assure you. Well, he is a lucky fellow; it is not every one who gets the desire of his heart."
"Then you approve of it?" questioned Dinah; but her tone was so dubious that he looked at her with unfeigned astonishment.
"My dear Miss Templeton, how could I do otherwise? It will be valuable training for Cedric; the discipline and self-denial that it entails will be the making of him. Of course his head is rather turned at present, and he is crowing like a bantam cock who wants to challenge the world, but he will soon be all right."
"You and Elizabeth think alike, then," replied Dinah; "she only laughs at me and calls me old-fashioned. I suppose I am not up-to-date," with a touching little smile; "it seems to me such waste of time and energy. And then there is the Civil Service Examination."
"Oh, we need not trouble our heads about that for another eighteen months."
"You think not?" still more anxiously. "Both Mr. Charrington and Mr. Carlyon tell me that it is a terribly hard examination."
"Well, it is pretty stiff, of course, and Cedric will have to work hard. You must give him his head for the present, Miss Templeton," he continued. "When he has taken his beating like an Englishman—for perhaps you are not aware there is a very poor chance for Oxford next year; their best men have left, and they have to lick a lot of raw recruits into shape. Well, what was I saying?—when Cedric has taken his beating and cooled down a bit, he will settle to work like a navvy."
Dinah looked a little comforted. "Then you think he will pass?"
Malcolm almost laughed outright at her simplicity.
"Miss Templeton, am I to prophecy smooth things to you, or am I to answer in the spirit of Micaiah the son of Imlah?"
"Oh, please tell me exactly what you think."
"Well, then," with obvious reluctance, "in my opinion Cedric stands a very poor chance." Here Dinah's face fell. "He has plenty of abilities, but I doubt his staying power; he works too much by fits and starts—there is no method or application. But of course he may turn over a new leaf. It is just possible that he may pass by some lucky fluke. It is not always the best workers who get through. You will give him a coach, of course. Oh, I see," reading Dinah's expression correctly, "he may have a dozen coaches if he needs them; but if you care to consult me when the time comes, I think I know the right man for cramming."
"Oh, thank you—thank you!" in a fervent tone of gratitude; "how good you are to listen to me so patiently!"
"My dear lady—" in a friendly tone of remonstrance. "But there is something else you want to say."
"Only this: if Cedric does not pass, what are we to do with him? You know he has utterly refused to enter the Church or to study for the law. He has no taste for engineering or architecture, and we should not care for him to be a business man."
"Need we consider the point at present?" returned Malcolm gently. "There is a limited number of professions, certainly. What do you say to a mastership in a public school? I fancy the life would suit Cedric; his love of boating would score there." Then Dinah brightened visibly.
"We never thought of that; even Elizabeth, who is so full of ideas, only suggested his going to an agricultural college to learn farming."
"Oh, that would never suit him," replied Malcolm in an off-hand manner. "He likes to have his bread ready buttered for him; cornfields and flour-mills are not in his line at all. Ah, here comes the search-party," and Malcolm looked a little curiously at the book in Elizabeth's hand.
"Oh, we have had such a hunt for it." Elizabeth looked quite hot and tired. "Cedric found it at last wedged between two boulders. I wonder he did not fall into the Pool while he was trying to get it out."
"Oh, Cedric, you ought to be more careful."
"Why on earth did you say that, Betty?" rather crossly. "Don't you see Die is wearing her grannie face?"
"But the Pool is so deep," in a terrified tone.
"Of course it is deep. Well, what of that; can't I swim like a fish? Oh, these women, Herrick!" and Cedric shrugged his shoulders. "I wonder how often I have taken a header into the Pool before breakfast!"
"You would have been sorry to lose the book," remarked Malcolm sympathetically, as they went into the house.
"Yes," returned Elizabeth hurriedly, "it was given to me by a friend." And then she bade him good-night.
Dinah followed her into her room. "I am so glad you found it, Betty dear," she said kindly. "It was the copy David gave you at Christmas, was it not?" Elizabeth nodded.
"I do so love it," she said frankly; "and the limp leather binding and red edges are just to my taste. I always care so much more for books that are given me than for those I buy myself." Elizabeth spoke with such complete unconsciousness that Dinah thought she had made a mistake in imagining that she specially prized the book.
"Oh, I want to tell you, dear, how very kind Mr. Herrick has been." And then with many little feminine interpolations Dinah related the substance of their conversation. She was almost childishly pleased when Elizabeth graciously approved of Malcolm's suggestion.
"It really is a good idea, Die."
"And to think it never entered our heads! Don't you wonder Mr. Carlyon never thought of it?"
"Well, you see he has never taken Cedric's future into serious consideration. But what fun it would be! We would furnish his rooms so beautifully, and we could stay with him sometimes. And when he married we could build him a house that would be the envy of all the masters. Fancy Cedric marrying and our having a dear little sister-in-law of our own."
"Oh, how I shall love her!" murmured Dinah with a happy little coo of satisfaction. This was not the first time they had talked on the subject. That her darling would marry, and that she would dearly love his wife, was a foregone conclusion to Dinah.
The little fair-haired girl of her dreams was not Tina Ross, nor even pretty Nora Brent—no one that Dinah knew was quite good enough for her boy.
"You ridiculous grannie," Elizabeth once said to her, for she and Cedric often called her grannie, probably from her careful, loving, old-womanish ways, "do you suppose such a rara avis exists in Earlsfield or Rotherwood? Let me see," ticking off each qualification on her fingers, "young Mrs. Cedric Templeton must be pretty—oh, very pretty; fair, because Cedric has a fancy for fair women with blue eyes; not tall—oh, decidedly not tall; petite, graceful, and je ne sais quoi—"
"Now, Betty—"
"Betty has not finished, and does not like to be interrupted. This Blanche—shall we call her Blanche? it is short and handy—Blanche is also full of gentle animation; she is docile, yielding, and has nice caressing ways that grannie loves. Indeed, she is such a guileless, simple little creature that it is difficult to believe that she is grown up—just eighteen, I think you said, Dinah, or was, it nineteen, dear?" But Dinah refused to hear any more.
Elizabeth might laugh at her and call her grannie, but in her secret thoughts Dinah cherished a fond idea of a little fair-haired girl whom she would mother for Cedric's sake.
And now first Malcolm and then Elizabeth had given her this charming new idea.
"I am afraid you will be shocked," she said presently, "but I do not think I shall be so dreadfully disappointed if Cedric does fail in his Civil Service Examination. He might have to go to India, you see, and it would be so much nicer to keep him in England."
"The heart of man, and woman too, is deceitful and desperately wicked," and Elizabeth heaved a deep sigh. "To think that you can be so selfish, Die, as to build up your happiness on the poor lad's ruined hopes," and then she burst out laughing and took her sister by the shoulders. "Grannie," she said solemnly, "you just idolise that boy. If it would do him any good you would lie down and let him trample on you. Have I not often warned you that if you go on like this you will turn him out a full-fledged tyrant? Human nature—masculine human nature I mean," correcting herself—"will not stand it. An enfant gate is always odious to sensible people. Now, if you were to try and spoil me," expanding herself until she looked twice her size, "I should only bloom out into fresh beauty—approbation, commendation, blindfold admiration would be meat and drink to me. I have the digestion of a young ostrich," continued Elizabeth blandly—"nothing would be too difficult for me to swallow. As for satiety, my dear creature, you need never expect to hear me call out, 'Eheu, jain satis.'"
"Dear Betty, how you do talk," Dinah's usual formula; "and how I do love to hear you," she inwardly added. "But it is very late, and we shall have a tiring day to-morrow."
Dinah spoke in her cheery way, but when she was in her own room her sweet face grew pensive and a little sad. Was there not an element of truth under Elizabeth's jokes? Did she not make an idol of her young brother? Was she altogether reasonable on the subject?
"If I am weak, I trust such weakness will be forgiven me," she whispered as she stood in the perfumed darkness, with a wandering summer wind playing refreshingly round her, and tears from some hidden fount of sadness stole down her cheeks. "If he were my own child he could not be dearer to me. I remember my stepmother once told me so. 'My boy has two mothers, Dinah,' these were her very words. Well, he is my Son of Consolation," and Dinah heaved a gentle sigh, as though the motherhood within her, the divine maternal instinct inherent in all true women, felt itself satisfied.
At breakfast the next morning Malcolm proffered his services; but Elizabeth assured him that Cedric and Johnson would do all that was required, so he spent his morning indolently down by the Pool—reading and indulging in his favourite daydreams—until Cedric joined him.
Cedric looked heated and tired.
"I never saw such a person as Betty for getting work out of a fellow," he grumbled. "She would do splendidly on a rice plantation—wouldn't the niggers fly just! Why, she set me rolling the tennis lawn, because she wanted Johnson; and then I had to bicycle over to Rotherwood for something that had been forgotten. I took it out in cool drinks though, I can tell you. My word, Bet does know how to make prime claret cup"—and Cedric smacked his lips with the air of a veteran gourmand; and then he sparred at Malcolm, and called him an absent-minded beggar, and asked if he had finished his ode to the naiad of the Pool, and made sundry other aggravating remarks, which proved that he was in excellent spirits and only wanted to find a safety-valve.
Just before the first carriage drove up, Malcolm, who was standing by Elizabeth on the terrace, suggested that she and Mr. Carlyon should give him and Cedric their revenge; but she told him quite seriously that they must not think of it for the present.
"The sets are all arranged, and Dinah and I must devote ourselves to our guests," she remarked; and as this was only reasonable, Malcolm said no more.
"I am going to introduce you to Tina Ross," she continued. "There she and her sister Patty are just coming up the drive now. She is a very good player, and your opponents will be Nora Brent and Mr. Carlyon."
"We are under orders, Herrick," observed David with mock humility; and then the introduction was made and the little white and blue fairy walked off demurely enough with Malcolm.
Tina Ross was certainly a very pretty girl; she had one of those babyish sort of faces that appeal so strongly to some men; her manners were kittenish and full of vivacity, and she had a way of glancing at a person from under her long curling lashes that was considered very alluring. "Do please be good and kind to a poor little harmless thing like me," they seemed to say to each fresh comer, "for you are such a nice man;" but Malcolm, who saw plenty of girls in town, took no notice of a little country chit's airs and graces; indeed, he thought Nora Brent far more attractive—human kittens not being to his taste.
"I don't think much of the fine gentleman from London," whispered Tina rather venomously to Nora when the game was finished. "I hate a town prig like poison."
"Anyhow he played splendidly, and has given us a regular beating," returned her friend, who would willingly have exchanged partners. There was nothing exciting in playing with an old friend like David Carlyon, who was a sort of connection of the Brents, indeed, a distant, a very distant cousin: but Malcolm's dark intellectual face and rather melancholy eyes somewhat attracted Nora.
Nora had her wish presently, and again Mr. Carlyon was Malcolm's opponent; this time a Miss Douglas was his partner. It was a well-contested game, but again Malcolm was the victor; but he wore his honours meekly.
"Bravo, Mr. Herrick, and you too, Nora," exclaimed Elizabeth, clapping her hands, "you both played splendidly; now come into the hall and let me give you some claret cup;" but she lingered a moment until Mr. Carlyon came up with his partner.
"I am not in good form to-day," he said, sinking into an easy-chair as though he were tired. "I feel Mondayish—do you know what I mean, Herrick?"
"I can guess. It is a purely clerical term. You have taken it out of yourself, and then you feel a sort of reaction—or rather, to speak more correctly, a sort of depression;" but as he spoke, he realised for the first time the truth of Elizabeth's assertion that Mr. Carlyon was not strong.
Elizabeth had never looked better in Malcolm's opinion than she did that afternoon; if he had not admired her before, he must have owned then that she was a distinguished-looking woman.
She wore a gray dress of some soft material, which Malcolm, who was rather a connoisseur on feminine attire, decided in his own mind was a Paris gown,—strange to say, he was right,—and the black Gainsborough hat and feathers suited her exactly. It was evident Mr. Carlyon agreed with him, for Malcolm saw him once looking at her intently under his hand.
A little while afterwards Malcolm, who was too hot to play any more, strolled off by himself down one of the woodland paths to get cool, but to his chagrin he heard voices which told him the speakers were parallel with him, and the next minute he heard Tina Ross say pettishly—
"Did you ever see any one so ridiculous as Elizabeth Templeton; just fancy wearing her Paris gown at a trumpery little home affair like this! Talk of coquetry," in a disgusted voice, "do you suppose she did not know what she was doing when she pinned those La France roses in her dress! It is not as though she were our age; she is thirty—thirty; why, that is quite an old maid!"
"How can you be so absurd, Tiny?" It was Nora Brent who spoke. "Fancy calling Miss Elizabeth Templeton an old maid. Mamma was only saying how handsome she looked." Here Malcolm coughed rather loudly, but no one took any notice.
"Handsome is as handsome does," returned Tina, in rather a vixenish tone. "I hope you noticed, Nora, that I was never allowed to have Mr. Carlyon for a partner. Talk of Queen Elizabeth indeed—we have Queen Elizabeth the second at Staplegrove. If one spoke to the poor man it was 'hands off—don't poach on my preserves,' just as though she thought him her own property, which he is not, and never will be."
"Really, Tina, you are too bad; you ought not to say such things of our dear Miss Elizabeth. You had Mr. Herrick for your partner."
"Oh, he is a town prig," began Tina recklessly; but here Malcolm, who had cleared his voice in vain, now began to whistle with such unmistakable purpose that a dead silence ensued.
"What a spiteful little toad!" thought Malcolm, who cared nothing for fluffy hair and curling eyelashes if a shrewish tongue accompanied them.
He thought both the girls avoided him in rather a guilty fashion when he passed them on the terrace; and he was inwardly disgusted when, most of the guests having taken their leave, and supper being announced, Elizabeth asked him to take Miss Tina Ross into the dining-room; Nora followed with Mr. Carlyon, but the width of the table separated him. Malcolm paid the young lady proper attention; that is to say, he kept her plate supplied with good things, but otherwise he took very little notice of her, and talked to gentle-looking Mrs. Brent, who was on his other side.
But Tina was not used to being ignored, and by this time she had made up her mind that Malcolm could only have heard a fragment of their talk in the woodlands, so she addressed him pointedly, and obliged him to break off something he was saying to the elder lady.
"So you dined at the vicarage on Saturday, I hear. How dreadfully bored you must have been! Mr. Charrington is an old dear, but he is rather a prig. I mean"—transfixed by the sudden gleam in Malcolm's eyes—"I mean, that is—that he is so learned."
"Oh, I am quite aware of your meaning, Miss Ross," returned Malcolm quietly, "but I am rather an embryo prig myself." Then for the remainder of the meal Tina was absolutely dumb.
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