Chapter 21
"Ah, so it is. How stupid of me to make the mistake!" says Cyril, who in reality knows as much about roses as about the man in the Iron Mask.
As he speaks, two or three drops of rain fall heavily upon his face,--one upon his nose, two into his earnest eyes, a large one finds its way cleverly between his parted lips. This latter has more effect upon him than the other three combined.
"It is raining," he says, naturally but superfluously, glancing at his coat-sleeve for confirmation of his words.
Heavier and heavier fall the drops. A regular shower comes pattering from the heavens right upon their devoted heads. The skies grow black with rain.
"You will get awfully wet. Do go into the house," Cyril says, anxiously glancing at her bare head.
"So will you," with hesitation, gazing with longing upon the distant arbor, toward which she is evidently bent on rus.h.i.+ng.
"I dare say,"--laughing,--"but I don't much mind even if I do catch it before I get home."
"Perhaps"--unwillingly, and somewhat coldly--"you would like to stand in the arbor until the shower is over?"
"I should," replies Mr. Chetwoode, with alacrity, "if you think there will be room for two."
There _is_ room for two, but undoubtedly not for three.
The little green bower is pretty but small, and there is only one seat.
"It is extremely kind of you to give me standing-room," says Cyril, politely.
"I am very sorry I cannot give you sitting-room," replies Mrs.
Arlington, quite as politely, after which conversation languishes.
Cyril looks at Mrs. Arlington; Mrs. Arlington looks at Marshal Neil, and apparently finds something singularly attractive in his appearance. She even raises him to her lips once or twice in a fit of abstraction: whereupon Cyril thinks that, were he a marshal ten times over, too much honor has been done him.
Presently Mrs. Arlington breaks the silence.
"A little while ago," she says, "I saw your brother and a young lady pa.s.s my gate. She seemed very pretty."
"She is very pretty," says Cyril, with a singular want of judgment in so wise a young man. "It must have been Lilian Chesney, my brother's ward."
"He is rather young to have a ward."
"He is, rather."
"He is older than you?"
"Unfortunately,
"You, then, are very young?"
"Well, I'm not exactly an infant,"--rather piqued at the cool superiority of her tone: "I am twenty-six."
"So I should have thought," says Mrs. Arlington, quietly, which a.s.sertion is as balm to his wounded spirit.
"Are your brother and his ward much attached to each other?" asks she, idly, with a very palpable endeavor to make conversation.
"Not very much,"--laughing, as he remembers certain warlike pa.s.sages that have occurred between Guy and Lilian, in which the former has always had the worst of it.
"No? She prefers you, perhaps?"
"I really don't know: we are very good friends, and she is a dear little thing."
"No doubt. Fair women are always to be admired. You admire her very much?"
"I think her pretty; but"--with an indescribable glance at the "nut-brown locks" before him, that says all manner of charming things--"her hair, to please me, is far too golden."
"Oh, do you think so?" says Mrs. Arlington, surprised. "I saw her distinctly from my window, and I thought her hair very lovely, and she herself one of the prettiest creatures I have ever seen."
"That is strong praise. I confess I have seen others I thought better worthy of admiration."
"You have been lucky, then,"--indifferently. "When one travels, one of course sees a great deal, and becomes a judge on such matters."
"I didn't travel far to find that out."
"To find what out?"
"A prettier woman than Miss Chesney."
"No?" with cold unconcern and an evident want of interest on the subject. "How lovely the flowers look with those little drops of rain in their hearts!--like a touch of sorrow in the very centre of their joy."
"You like the country?"
"Yes, I love it. There is a rest, a calm about it that to some seems monotony, but to me is peace."
A rather troubled shade falls across her face. An intense pity for her fills Cyril's breast together with a growing conviction (which is not a pleasing one) that the dead and gone Arlington must have been a king among his fellows.
"I like the country well enough myself," he says, "but I hardly hold it in such esteem as you do. It is slow,--at times unbearable. Indeed, a careful study of my feelings has convinced me that I prefer the strains of Albani or Nilsson to those of the sweetest nightingale that ever 'warbled at eve,' and the sound of the noisiest cab to the bleating of the melancholy lamb; while the most exquisite sunrise that could be worked into poetry could not tempt me from my bed. Have I disgusted you?"
"I wonder you are not ashamed to give way to such sentiments,"--with a short but lovely smile.
"One should never be ashamed of telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant it may be."
"True!" with another smile, more prolonged, and therefore lovelier, that lights up all her face and restores to it the sweetness and freshness of a child's.
Cyril, looking at her, forgets the thread of his discourse, and says impulsively, as though speaking to himself, "It seems impossible."
"What does?" somewhat startled.
"Forgive me; I was again going to say something that would undoubtedly have brought down your heaviest displeasure on my head."
"Then don't say it," says Mrs. Arlington, coloring deeply.
"I won't. To return to our subject: the country is just now new to you, perhaps. After a while you will again pine for society."