Daisy's Aunt

CHAPTER XXVI

Easter fell late next year, but spring had come early, and had behaved with unusual sweetness and constancy, for from the middle of March to mid-April there had been a series of days from which winter had definitely departed. In most years April produces two or three west-wind days of enervating and languorous heat, but then recollects itself and peppers the confiding Englishman with hail and snow, blown as out of a pea-shooter from the northeast, just to remind him that if he thinks that summer is going to begin just yet he is woefully mistaken. But this year the succession of warm days had been so uninterrupted that Lady Nottingham had made the prodigious experiment of asking a few people down to Bray for a week-end party at Easter itself.

She was conscious of her amazing temerity, for she knew well that anything might happen; that the river, instead of being at the bottom of the garden, might so change its mind about their relative positions that in a few hours the garden would be at the bottom of the river, or, again, this bungalow of a house might be riddled and pierced with arctic blasts.

But, in spite of these depressing possibilities, she particularly wanted to have a few, a very few, people down for that Sunday. They had all a special connection with Bray. Things had happened there before, and it was a party of healed memories that was to gather there. If, after all, the weather turned out to be hopelessly unpropitious, they could all sit in a ring round the fire, holding each other's hands. She felt sure they would like to do that. Probably there would be a great many tête-à-têtes in various corners, or, if it were warm, in various punts. But she felt sure that they would all hold hands in the intervals of these.

Jeannie and Victor had been married in the autumn, and since then they had practically disappeared, surrounded by a glow of their own happiness. They had sunk below the horizon, but from the horizon there had, so to speak, come up a brilliant illumination like an aurora borealis.

But Lady Nottingham considered that they had aurora-ed quite long enough. They had no right to keep all their happiness to themselves; it was their duty to diffuse it, and let other people warm their hands and hearts at it. She had written what is diplomatically known as a "strong note" to say so, and she had mentioned that she was not alone in considering that they were being rather selfish. Tom Lindfield thought so too. He openly averred that he was still head-over-ears in love with Jeannie, and he wished to gratify his passion by seeing her again, and having copious opportunities given him of solitary talks with her. He did not object (this was all part of the message that Lady Nottingham sent Jeannie from him) to Victor's coming with her, but he would be obliged if Victor would kindly make up his mind to efface himself a good deal. Otherwise he had better stop away.

Tom proposed to come down to Bray for Easter, and would be much obliged if Jeannie would come too. He did not ask her to set aside any other engagements she might have, because he was perfectly well aware that she had no other engagement than that tiresome and apparently permanent one of burying herself in the country with Victor.

Jeannie received this letter at breakfast down at their house in Hampshire. She read it aloud to her husband.

"What a darling he is," she said. "Victor, I shall go. I love that man."

"I know you do. He isn't a bad sort. Do you want me to come too?"

"Oh, I shan't go unless you do," said Jeannie, quickly.

"Right. It's a confounded nuisance, though, but I suppose you must. How many days do you want to stop there?"

"Oh, till Tuesday or Wednesday, I suppose. Perhaps Tom would come back with us here after that."

Victor got up and moved round the table, till he stood by his wife's chair.

"No, I don't think he will," he said. "Fact is, Jeannie, I asked him to come here a week or two ago, and he wrote me an awfully nice letter back, but said he thought he wouldn't. I didn't tell you before, for there was no use in it. But after that I don't think I should ask him if I were you."

Jeannie was silent a moment.

"But he wants to see me now," she said.

"I know. But I don't think he wants to be with us alone. You understand that, I expect."

Jeannie sighed.

"Poor Tom!" she said. "Yet I don't know why I say 'poor.' I think he likes life."

"I don't think he loves it as you and I do."

Jeannie's eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"I am awfully sorry for that," she said. "Sometimes I feel frightfully guilty, and then suddenly on the top of that I feel innocent. Oh, to be plain, I feel more than innocent. I feel dreadfully laudable. And then, to do me justice, I put up a little prayer that I may not become a prig or a donkey."

He laughed.

"Please, don't," he said. "I should not know you. But you made a man of him."

"Ah, yes; he has told you that. It is not the case. He made a man of himself."

Victor held up his hand.

"I don't want to know what happened," he said. "I am quite content to leave it. He became a man, and you were always my beloved."

Some backward surge of memory stirred in Jeannie.

"Quite always?" she said. "You never wanted to ask me about it?"

"No, dear, never," he said. "Not because I was complacent or anything of that kind, but simply because we loved each other."

This, then, was the foundation of Lady Nottingham's Easter party. Jeannie and her husband would come, and so, as a corollary, Lord Lindfield would come. Then there would be the newly-engaged couple, namely, Daisy and Willie Carton. Either of them would go, as steel filings go to the magnet, wherever the other was, and without the least sense of compunction Lady Nottingham told each of them separately that the other was coming to her. She had been rather late in doing this, and, as a matter of fact, Willie, no longer hoping for it, had made another engagement. But he did not even frown or consider that. He wrote a cheerful, scarcely apologetic note to Mrs. Beaumont, merely saying he found he could not come. Nature and art alike – and Mrs. Beaumont was a subtle compound of the two – allow much latitude to lovers, and she did not scold him.

At this stage in her proceedings Lady Nottingham suddenly abandoned the idea of a party at all. There was Victor and Jeannie, and their corollary, Tom Lindfield; there was Daisy and her corollary, Willie; there was herself. Gladys would be there too, and – and it was necessary to provide light conversation in case everybody was too much taken up with everybody else, and Jim Crowfoot would, no doubt, supply it. A very short telephonic pause was succeeded by the assurance that he would.

CHAPTER XXVII

Two days before this little gathering of friends was to assemble Jeannie left Itchen Abbas for town. Victor did not go with her, for the unpunctual May-fly was already on the river, and, since subsequent days had to be abandoned, he preferred to use these. He thought it (and said so) very selfish of Jeannie to go, since who cared what gowns she wore? But it seemed that Jeannie thought this nonsense, and went. Also a tooth, though it did not ache, said that it thought it might, and she arranged an appointment in Old Burlington Street for Saturday afternoon. She would meet Victor down at Bray.

The tooth proved a false alarm. It was tapped and probed and mirrored, and she was assured that she need feel no anxiety. So in the elation of a visit to the dentist over, she emerged into the street. There was a willing but unable motor there that puffed and snorted, and did not do anything. And immediately she heard a familiar voice.

"Why, Jeannie," it said, "what confounded and stupendous luck! Never thought to meet you here. Going to Bray, aren't you? And so am I. Old Puffing Billy is having his fit here this time. Or do you think he'll have another on the road? I'll go down by train with you, or I'll take you down in Puffing Billy. But we'll go together. By Jove, you look ripping!"

Jeannie gave him both her hands.

"Oh, Tom," she said, "what fun! Let's go down in Puffing Billy. I've been to the dentist, and there isn't anything."

Puffing Billy gave out a volume of blue smoke.

"Good old chap," said Tom sympathetically. "Hope he'll stick again on the level. – Is it all right for the present, Stanton? – Get in, Jeannie. Never saw such luck! Who would expect Puffing Billy to break down opposite a dentist's, when you needn't have gone there at all. Jove! it is good to see you."

The incredible happened. Once again the car broke down on the level, and once again Stanton had to go upon his belly, like the snake, while his passengers sat on a rug by the wayside.

"We shall be late again," said Tom. "Do you know, it is nearly six months since I saw you last?"

Jeannie remembered the invitation he had received and refused.

"That's your fault," she said.

"I know. Your man asked me. Awfully good of him."

"Why didn't you come, then?"

The inimitable Stanton ceased to be a snake, and, becoming erect, touched his cap.

"Car's all right, my lord," he said.

"Oh, is it? Get in, then. – I didn't know if you wanted me to come, Jeannie. I'm not sure if I wanted to either. But I expect the two are one. It's funny, isn't it? Try me again."