Chapter IV: Dinner and a Little Music

Barbara was the first to reappear in the yellow drawing-room. She had gone away, laughing carelessly; she came back shyly, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes. She had put on a dress which was reserved for important occasions, and she was conscious of her splendour. She felt the strings of amber beads that were wound loosely round her throat, and that rose and fell with her quickened breathing. Nay, she was conscious to the utmost end of the folds of black drapery, that followed her with a soft sound, as of a summer sea, when she crossed the pavement of the hall. For Barbara's dress was black, and its special adornment was some handsome black lace that her grandmother had given her. Something of lighter hue and texture might have better suited her age, but there was no questioning the fact that the dignified richness of her gown was admirably becoming to the girl. One hardly knew whether to call her childish or stately, and the perplexity was delightful.

Her heart was beating fast, half in apprehension and half in defiance. Over and over again while she waited she said to herself that she had _not_ put on her best dress for Mr. Harding's sake, she had _not_. She did not care what he thought of her. He might come and go, just as other people might come and go. It did not matter to her. But his coming seemed somehow to have brought all the Rothwells back to life, and to have revealed the desolate pride of the old house. When she looked from Reynold's face to Anthony's, she suddenly felt that she must put on her best dress for their company. It was no matter of personal feeling, it was an instinctive and imperative sense of what the circumstances demanded. She had never been to such a dinner party in all her life.

The feeling did her credit, but it was difficult to express. Feelings are often difficult to express, and a woman has an especial difficulty in conveying the finer shades of meaning. There is an easy masculine way of accounting for her every action by supposing it aimed at men in general, or some man in particular; and thus all manner of delicate fancies and distinctions, shaped clearly in a woman's mind, may pass through the distorting medium to reach a man's apprehension as sheer coquetry. The knowledge of this possibility is apt to give even innocence an air of hesitating consciousness. Barbara was by no means certain that her uncle would understand this honour paid, not to any living young man, but to the traditions of Mitchelhurst Place, and her blushes betrayed her shame at his probable misreading of her meaning. And what would Mr. Harding himself think?

He came in with his languid, hesitating walk, looking very tall and slender in his evening dress. He had telegraphed home for that dress suit the day before. The fact that he was travelling for a week or two, with no expectation of dining anywhere but in country inns, might naturally have excused its absence, but the explanation would have been an apology, and Harding could not apologise. He would have found it easier to spend his last shilling. Perhaps, too, he had shared Barbara's feeling as to the fitness of a touch of ceremony at Mitchelhurst.

At any rate he shared her shyness. He crossed the room with evident constraint, and halted near the fire without a word. Barbara's shyness was palpitating and aflame; his was leaden and chill. She did not know what to make of his silence; she waited, and still he did not speak; she looked up and felt sure that his downcast eyes had been obliquely fixed on her.

"Uncle is last, you see," she said. "I knew he would be."

"I was afraid I might be," he replied. "A clock struck before I expected it. I suppose my watch loses, but I hadn't found it out."

"Oh, I ought to have told you," she exclaimed penitently. "That is the great clock in the hall, and it is always kept ten minutes fast. Uncle likes it for a warning. So when it strikes, he says, 'That's the hall clock; then there's plenty of time, plenty of time, I'll just finish this.' And he goes on quite happily."

"I fancied somehow that Mr. Hayes was a very punctual man."

"Because he talks so much about it. I think he reminds other people for fear they should remind him. When I first came he was always saying, 'Don't be late,' till I was quite frightened lest I should be. I couldn't believe it when he said, 'Don't be late,' and then wasn't ready."

"You are not so particular now?"

"Oh yes, I am," she answered very seriously. "It doesn't do to be late if you are the housekeeper, you know."

A faint gleam lighted Harding's face.

"Of course not; but I never was," he replied, in a respectful tone. "How long is it since you came here?"

"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull."

"I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?"

"Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it--father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it."

"Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words.

"Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for somebody. But _I_ feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them to-morrow."

The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "_That's_ five minutes slow," she said.

"And the other was more than ten minutes fast."

"Yes, it gains. Do you know," said Barbara, "I always feel as if the great clock were _the_ time, so when it fairly runs away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too."

"Some people would be uncommonly glad to do that," said Harding; "or even to make time go backward for a while."

"Well, I don't mind for a quarter of an hour. But I don't want it to go back, really. Not back to pinafores and the schoolroom," said Barbara with a laugh, which in some curious fashion turned to a deepening flush. The swift, impulsive blood was always coming and going at a thought, a fancy, a mere nothing.

Harding smiled in his grim way. "I suppose it's just as well _not_ to want time to run back," he said at last.

"Uncle might find himself punctual for once if it did. Oh, here he comes!" The door opened as she spoke, and Mr. Hayes appeared on the threshold with an inquiring face.

"Ah! you are down, Barbara! That's right. Dinner's ready, they tell me."

Reynold looked at Barbara, hesitated, and then offered his arm. Mr. Hayes stood back and eyed them as they passed--the tall young man, pale, dark-browed, scowling a little, and the girl at his side radiantly conscious of her dignity. Even when they had gone by he was obliged to wait a moment. The sweeping folds of Barbara's dress demanded space and respect. His glance ran up them to her shoulders, to the amber beads about her neck, to the loose coils of her dusky hair, and he followed meekly with a whimsical smile.

They dined in the great dining-room, where a score of guests would have seemed few. But they had a little table, with four candles on it, set near a clear fire, and shut in by an overshadowing screen. "We are driven out of this in the depth of winter," said Mr. Hayes. "It is too cold--nothing seems to warm it, and it is such a terrible journey from the drawing-room fire. But till the bitter weather comes I like it, and I always come back as soon as the spring begins. We were here by March, weren't we, Barbara?"

The girl smiled assent, and Harding had a passing fancy of the windy skies of March glancing through the tall windows, the upper part of which he saw from his place. But his eyes came back to Barbara, who was watching the progress of their meal with an evident sense of responsibility. The crowning grace of an accomplished housekeeper is to hide all need of management, but this was the pretty anxiety of a beginner. "Mary, the currant jelly," said Miss Strange in an intense undertone, and glanced eloquently at Reynold's plate. She was so absorbed that she started when her uncle spoke.

"Why do you wear those white things--asters, are they not? They don't go well with your dress."

Barbara looked down at the two colourless blossoms which she had fastened among the folds of her black lace. "No, I know they don't, but I couldn't find anything better in the garden to-day."

"It wouldn't have mattered what it was," Mr. Hayes persisted, with his head critically on one side. "Anything red or yellow--just a bit of colour, you know."

"But that was exactly what I couldn't find. All the red and yellow things in the garden are dead."

"Why not some of those scarlet hips you were gathering yesterday?" said Reynold.

"Oh! Those!" exclaimed Barbara, looking hurriedly away from the scratch on the cheek nearest her, and then discovering that she had fixed her eyes on his wounded hand. "Do you think they would have done? Well, yes, I dare say they might."

"I should think they would have done beautifully, but you know best. Perhaps you did not care for them? You threw them away?" He was smiling with a touch of malice, as if he had actually seen Barbara in her room, gazing regretfully at a little brown pitcher which was full of autumn leaves and clusters of red rose-fruit.

"Of course they would have done," said Mr. Hayes.

"Yes, perhaps they might. I must bear them in mind another time. Uncle, Mr. Harding's plate is empty." And Barbara went on with her dinner, feeling angry and aggrieved. "He might have let me think I had spared his feelings by giving them up," she said to herself. "It would have been kinder. And I should like to know what I was to do. If I had worn them he would have looked at me to remind me. I can't think what made uncle talk about the stupid things."

During the rest of the meal conversation was somewhat fitful. The three, in their sheltered, firelit nook, sat through pauses, in which it almost seemed as if it would be only necessary to rise softly and glance round the end of the screen to surprise some ghostly company gathered silently at the long table. The wind made a cheerless noise outside, seeking admission to the great hollow house, and died away in the hopelessness of vain endeavour. At last Miss Strange prepared to leave the gentlemen to their wine, but she lingered for a moment, darkly glowing against the background of sombre brown and tarnished gold, to bid her uncle remember that coffee would be ready in the drawing-room when they liked to come for it.

Mr. Hayes pushed the decanter to his guest. "Where is John Rothwell now?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Harding, listlessly. He was peeling a rough-coated pear, and he watched the long, unbroken strip gliding downward in lengthening curves. "Somewhere on the Continent--in one of those places where people go to live shabbily."

Mr. Hayes filled the pause with an inquiring "Yes?" and his bright eyes dilated.

"Yes," the other repeated. "Didn't you say he took some pictures away with him? They must be all gone long ago--pawned or sold. How would you raise money on family portraits? It would look rather queer going to the pawnbroker's with an ancestor under your arm."

"But there was his mother's portrait. He would not----"

"Hm!" said Harding, cutting up his pear. "Well, perhaps not. Perhaps he had to leave in a hurry some time or other. A miniature would have been more convenient."

"But this is very sad," said Mr. Hayes. He spoke in an abstract and impersonal manner.

Harding assented, also in a general way.

"Very sad," the other repeated. Then, quickening to special recollection--"And your uncle was always such a proud man. I never knew a prouder man than John Rothwell five-and-twenty years ago. And to think that he should come to this!"

He leaned back in his chair and slowly sipped his wine, while he tried to reconcile old memories with this new description. The wine was very good, and Mr. Hayes seemed to enjoy it. Reynold Harding rested his elbow on the table, and looked at the fire with a moody frown.

"Some pride can't be carried about, I suppose," he said at last. "It's as bad as a whole gallery of family portraits--worse, for you cannot raise money on it."

Mr. Hayes nodded. "I see. Rooted in the Mitchelhurst soil, you think? Very possibly." He looked round, as far as the screens permitted. "And so, when this went, all went. But how very sad!"

The young man did not take the trouble to express his agreement a second time.

"And your other uncle," said Mr. Hayes briskly, after a pause. "How is he?"

"My other uncle?"

"Yes, your uncle on your father's side--Mr. Harding."

"Oh, he is very well--getting to be an old man now."

"But as prosperous as ever?"

"More so," said Harding in his rough voice. "His money gathers and grows like a snowball. But he is beginning to think about enjoying it--he is evidently growing old. He says it is time for him to have a holiday. He never took one for some wonderful time--eighteen years I think it was; but he has not worked quite so hard of late."

"Well, he deserves a little pleasure now."

"I don't know about that. If a man makes himself a slave to money-getting I don't see that he deserves any pleasure. He deserves his money."

The old gentleman laughed. "Let the poor fellow amuse himself a little--if he can. The question is whether he can, after a life of hard work. What is his idea of pleasure?"

"Yachting. He discovered quite lately that he wasn't sea-sick; he hadn't leisure to find it out before. So he took to yachting. He can enjoy his dinner as well on board a boat as anywhere else, he can talk about his yacht, and he can spend any amount of money."

"You haven't any sympathy with his hobby?"

"I? I've no money to spend, and I _am_ sea-sick."

"You are? I remember now," said Mr. Hayes, thoughtfully, "that your grandfather and John Rothwell had a great dislike to the water."

"Ah? It's a family peculiarity? A proud distinction?" Harding laughed quietly, looking away. He was accustomed to laugh at himself and by himself. "It's something to be able to invoke the Rothwell ancestry to give dignity to one's qualms," he said.

Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. He did not really require respect for the Rothwell sea-sickness, but it hardly pleased him that the young fellow should scoff at his ancestry, just when it had gained him admission to Mitchelhurst Place. "Bad taste," he said to himself, and he returned abruptly to the money-making uncle. "I suppose Mr. Harding has a son to come after him?"

"Yes, there's one son," Reynold replied, with a contemptuous intonation.

"And does he take to the business?"

"I don't know much about that. I fancy he wants to begin at the yachting end, anyhow."

"Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at young Harding as if a question were on his lips; but the other's face did not invite it, and the subject dropped. There was a pause, and then the elder man began to talk of some Roman remains which had been discovered five miles from Mitchelhurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, balanced himself idly, and listened with dreary acquiescence.

It was some time before the Roman remains were disposed of and they rejoined Barbara. They startled her out of her uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half-lying, half-sitting, with all her black draperies about her, too much absorbed in a novel to hear their approach. Harding, on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand that propped her head, before Miss Strange was on her feet and ready for her company.

Mr. Hayes, stirring his coffee, demanded music. He liked it a little for its own sake, but more just then because it would take his companion off his hands. He was tired of entertaining this silent young man, who stood, cup in hand, on the rug, frowning at the portraits of his forefathers, and he sent Barbara to the piano with the certainty that Harding would follow her. As soon as he saw them safely at the other end of the room he dropped with a sigh of relief into the chair which she had quitted, and took up his book.

The girl, meanwhile, turned over her music and questioned Reynold. He did not sing?--did not play? No; and he understood very little, but he liked to listen. He turned the pages for her, once or twice too fast, generally much too slowly, never at the right moment. Then Barbara began to play something which she knew by heart, and he stood a little aside, with his moody face softening, and his downward-glancing eyes following her fingers over the keys, as if she were weaving the strands of some delicate tissue. When she stopped, rested one hand on the music-stool on which she sat, and turned from the piano to hear what her uncle wished for next, he saw, as she leaned backward, the pure curve of her averted cheek, and the black lace and amber beads about her softly-rounded throat.

"Oh, I know that by heart, too!" she exclaimed.

He took up a sheet of music from the piano, and gazed vaguely at it while she struck the first notes. He read the title without heeding it, and then saw pencilled above it in a bold, but somewhat studied, hand,

"ADRIAN SCARLETT."

For a moment the name held his glance; and when he laid the paper down he looked furtively over his shoulder. He knew that it was an absurd fancy, but he felt as if some one had come into the room and was standing behind Barbara.