Chapter XVI

At lunch, a few days later, May announced that she had met Miss Anna Birch that morning.

“She wanted to know when Mr. Rusk was coming over to paint a picture of their garden. She says he promised to do one ages ago, and they’re beginning to think he’s trying to draw out of it.”

Rusk, in fact, though he had been to call on the Miss Birches half a dozen times since his first visit, had not yet set up his easel among their flower-beds.

“They asked me to go over this afternoon,” May continued, “and I am to bring Mr. Rusk with me if I can; and you, mamma, and Amy if she cares to come.”

“Which she doesn’t. You and dear Hubert can go alone. That will be a nice surprise for you both.”

May answered nothing, for at that moment Rusk and his pupil entered, with apologies for being late. The message was repeated.

“I’ll go,” said Denis. “Mamma and I will go and talk, while Mr. Rusk and May do their drawings.”

Mrs. Bracknel looked up mildly. “But you always shut yourself up in the library, dear, and you’d be much better out in the open air such a lovely day.”

“Oh, I get plenty of the open air--besides, one must be polite.”

All through lunch Amy sat in enigmatic silence. As they were leaving the table she rang the bell and ordered the motor to be round in ten minutes--she was going into town.

“What do you want to do in town, dear?” her mother asked, lingering by the door. “Hadn’t you better come with us?”

“To sit all the afternoon with Harriet and Anna Birch?--thank you for nothing.”

She turned her back and drummed impatiently with her fingers on the window-pane. When Rusk and May started off alone they left her on the door-step talking to Dixon, the chauffeur. She took no notice of them as they went by. The others had arranged to come over later, but the artists wished to take full advantage of the fine afternoon. There was a golden quality in the sunlight, in the colouring of everything--something which seemed to combine the richness of summer with the first change of approaching autumn. Rusk and May walked over the dark close turf in the green shadow of the trees, Rusk carrying the instruments of their craft, May swinging a parasol lightly as she stepped beside him. She was dressed in pale colours and had a big garden hat that shaded her face. She seemed to her companion to be very fresh and cool and pretty in the hot afternoon, with just the kind of prettiness he liked, full of gaiety and animation. They had only gone a short distance when Amy passed them in the motor. She did not look at them and in a moment she had turned round the bend and was lost to sight.

“I know papa wants the car this afternoon,” May said. “Isn’t it like Amy to take it?”

“But the chauffeur will tell her.”

“I’m sure he _has_ told her; but you don’t know Amy, if you think that will make any difference. She’s like papa himself: when she once takes a thing into her head it sticks and sticks. She has taken it into her head this afternoon that she’s going to drive about town, and she’ll do it, whatever Dixon or anybody else may say.”

Rusk thought this highly probable. “She has taken something into her head concerning me,” he presently remarked. “I mean, I have managed to offend her in some way. She has hardly spoken to me or looked at me for the last week.”

“You asked her not to interrupt Denis at his lessons, didn’t you?”

“Did she tell you that? I said very little.”

“It was evidently enough.”

“I am sorry. I really can’t think it was my fault though. I’m sure I didn’t want to annoy her, but what else could I do?”

“You were perfectly right. Amy is always like that. She gets hold of the most extraordinary notions and nothing can put them away. The best thing is just to leave her alone. Of course you couldn’t have her poking about when you were working with Denis. The thing was ridiculous. If she had had any sense or any tact she would have seen it for herself. But she hasn’t the slightest grain of either. None of us have much, but she has least of all. You saw how she wouldn’t come with us to-day. It was just because she has taken a violent dislike to the Birches, on account of something Anna once said to her about Jimmy Temple, who was staying with them at the time. He is their nephew, and Amy was rather gone on him. But ever since Anna made that remark nothing can be bad enough for the whole Birch family. Of course she can be very decent when she wants to. She has got Alfred out of heaps and heaps of scrapes.... She likes you too,” May went on, “only she thinks you don’t care for her.”

She looked at him, as she gave utterance to these words, with an air of brightness and candour Rusk found it not quite easy to meet. “I’m sure I don’t know why she should think anything so--so extraordinary,” he murmured.

“Isn’t it true then?” May asked innocently. “I thought it was true myself.”

“But why?”

“Oh, one just forms an opinion--it is easy to do so about you. You are very ingenuous.”

Rusk was somewhat taken aback. He had cherished a conviction that his behaviour to Amy had been a model of discretion, and he did not see how anyone could have gathered from it what he had not intended to show. He felt disconcerted and somewhat irritated. “I hope I haven’t been rude?” he said.

But May smiled up at him with a delightful sweetness. “I can’t imagine your being rude.”

“Am I to take the ingenuousness as a compliment, then?”

She appeared to consider this a moment before replying. “I should think you might,” she then said “I’m sure it is a quality you admire in other people.”

He laughed. “Perhaps that is only another proof that I possess it?”

May again pondered while she turned her parasol on her shoulder. There was a subtle flattery in the way she seemed to weigh his remarks, as if they were informed with a profound suggestiveness. “You know,” she answered, “you told me yourself you were like that, on the first evening you came.”

“Did I? I must have been trying to attract your sympathy!”

“It’s a kind of gift.”

“What is? Your sympathy?”

“No; ingenuousness. You can’t _make_ yourself like that.”

“Isn’t it sometimes the result of stupidity?”

“I like stupid people. When they are nice they have a kind of niceness clever people never have.”

“You are very generous.”

“No; it isn’t that. I mean it. But you needn’t talk as if you thought _you_ were stupid, for you know you don’t. And you wouldn’t like me to think it either.”

“But I should--that is, if it made you at the same time think me nice.” He laughed boyishly.

“Mr. Rusk, that is not sincere.”

“Of course it is. I should like that awfully.”

“Why?”

“Oh, for lots of reasons.”

“I don’t see that it can matter very much.” She looked up at him again from under the broad brim of her big hat, her eyes full of seriousness and innocence. “You aren’t ingenuous a bit,” she pouted. “You are just the reverse.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes. You don’t mean a single bit what you say.”

“Ah, I can’t follow you,” he sighed. “You should remember that you’ve told me I am stupid.”

“You should remember that I altered my opinion directly afterwards. I’m now beginning to think you very deep.”

He laughed again. As she walked beside him there was a delightful appeal in her femininity. He decided that her hat was wonderfully becoming and ventured to tell her so.

She blushed charmingly. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” she murmured.

“Do you? Was it very impertinent?”

“No; but I won’t be able to wear it now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If I do you’ll think I put it on just to please you.”

“And why shouldn’t you please me?” He made her promise that she would wear it. Also he argued with her that there was no reason why she shouldn’t wish to please him. This point took a great deal of discussion, and he was only beginning to convince her when they reached the Birches’ garden gate.

The afternoon was to prove a most delightful one. They set up their easels not far from the library window, and beside them, within easy conversing distance, the two Miss Birches sat. Presently Mrs. Bracknel joined them there, while Denis, as usual, went indoors to look for a book. Mrs. Bracknel seemed more at her ease than Rusk had ever yet seen her. She appeared to be perfectly happy, and her contentment lent her a kind of rejuvenescence in which he could even find the lovely girl of Miss Anna’s portrait. Her beautiful voice seemed of as rare a quality as the tone of a fine violin, and she talked easily and lightly, though not abundantly, to him and to her two old friends. The roses were still blooming in a rich glory of crimson and yellow and pink, but Rusk was principally occupied with a superb bed of poppies that stretched away from the porch which figured in the background of his sketch; and as he worked he wondered if he really cared whether May liked him or not. He watched her as she busied herself with her colours. She was certainly very pretty. And there was something natural and unaffected about her, something which made her easy to get on with. He imagined she was nearly always happy; and that meant so much so far as one’s own happiness was concerned--it was nearly the whole secret of a pleasant companionship. Yet it seemed to him that his feeling for her was quite platonic. He was not conscious of anything else; he never had been, even when they had been alone together. To find himself close to her did not in the least trouble him; to hold her hand did not make his blood run faster....

It was very quiet and delightful. From time to time his pupil would lean out over the window-sill to see how they were getting on. At last he came out altogether to compare Rusk’s drawing with May’s. Everybody except the individual artist concerned declared both to be excellent. Mrs. Bracknel thought it would be very nice if Denis were to learn to draw under Rusk’s tuition, and Rusk himself had a theory that it was “rather a good thing to sketch a bit”--especially if one went abroad--and that anyone could do it more or less. It helped one to keep one’s eyes open. One made one’s own discoveries. They were all agreed that it was a most desirable accomplishment, and Miss Birch recollected a time when she had adorned various domestic articles with groups of chrysanthemums and sweet peas--it had been before she had taken up embroidery. She had never got so far as drawing from nature, however--not even the sweet peas.

Denis moved about with his hands in his pockets. In his grey eyes a light gleamed and danced just as the sunlight was glimmering among the leaves. He declared that to his mind what was most worth sketching at present was his mother, sitting there among the roses. He was charming himself as he said it, and Rusk saw an almost imperceptible flush come into Mrs. Bracknel’s cheeks. There were a good many not very brilliant jokes in the air, but they dropped softly into a general atmosphere of pleasantness that rounded them off and made them fulfil their easy purpose.

When the drawings were finished and the painters had sat for a while resting from their labours and Denis had borrowed an armful of books, the visitors rose to go. The Miss Birches accompanied them part of the way. It was getting late; the evening sun was already dipping down to the trees; and birds were flying home in the softly coloured light.

* * * * *

If the pleasantness of the afternoon had exercised a certain charm, however, it was broken rudely enough an hour later, at dinner. Mr. Bracknel had been kept late for an appointment. The motor had not called for him, though he had given Dixon all his instructions in the morning perfectly plainly. It had not even called to bring him home: he had been obliged to come by train, and now he could find no trace of Dixon anywhere. The car was there, but nobody seemed to know where the chauffeur was, nor what had happened to him. He must have been drinking; he would really have to dismiss him if that was the case.

“You needn’t bother dismissing him, for he has gone already,” Amy interrupted brusquely. “I had a row with him in town this afternoon--he wouldn’t do what I told him to--and he left on the spot. I had to send round to Henderson’s to get a man to drive me home.”

Mr. Bracknel stared at her, his soup dropping from the ends of his moustache. He could hardly believe his ears, and he sat back farther in his chair, while a look of amazement overspread his face. “So it was _you_, miss, who prevented him from coming for me! It was _you_ who countermanded my orders!” The very enormity of the offence overpowered him.

“I didn’t countermand anybody’s orders,” Amy replied pertly. “I told him to drive me home, and he said he hadn’t time, which was a lie; he had plenty of time; if he had hurried he wouldn’t have been more than five minutes late in calling for you.”

“Five minutes late!” Mr. Bracknel repeated weakly.

“He wouldn’t do what I told him. It was sheer insolence.”

“Insolence!”

“Yes, papa; you needn’t repeat everything I say.”

“What right had you to tell him anything, miss? You had no business taking the car at all. You know I’ve forbidden you to use it. Do you hear me? Don’t sit like that. Don’t look at me like that. Leave the room this instant.”

Amy raised her eyebrows. “Really, papa, one would think, to listen to you, I was a child! You only make yourself ridiculous when you talk like that. How could I prevent the man from going away? It wasn’t very pleasant for me to have to send round for somebody to drive me home; you don’t appear to have realized that.”

Her father choked. To all appearance he had realized quite enough. But Amy went on perfectly calmly with her dinner, and the servants moved noiselessly about the room, with fixed, inscrutable faces. There was a kind of painful absurdity in Mr. Bracknel’s position which made Rusk, for once, sympathize with him. He had always regarded him as a fairly strong man, but he now began to doubt the penetration of this judgment, and to wonder if what he had taken for strength had not been merely a knack of using other people’s weaknesses. These frequent puerile outbursts of anger in the bosom of his family, though the present one he admitted to be perfectly justifiable, were more neurotic than anything else. And there could be no denying that Amy had come off victorious. There was in fact a kind of insolence in her triumph which must have been particularly galling to her father. To Rusk the man’s whole existence seemed a pretty miserable affair. He glanced round the table with a peculiar curiosity. He looked from one to another of those sitting there. There was a strange lack of restraint about the whole lot of them--a want of balance--a something which had it been carried to a higher power would positively have amounted to hysteria. What other people could have been so insensible to the indecency of squabbling this way in public? He could imagine the scene that had taken place in town that afternoon between Amy and the chauffeur. Probably there had been a little crowd gathered to witness it! For himself, he was now quite accustomed to such happenings, but what must other people think? Surely they must be very much talked about, must have an extraordinary reputation! Of course it was horribly unfair to lump them all together like this. Denis he had always considered apart; but Mrs. Bracknel and May also were different from the others--from Amy and Alfred and the father. Only, was there not something wrong there too?--might there not be even more than he was yet aware of? He began to feel suspicious. May, for instance, was very pleasant and intelligent; but would one, after living as he had lived, in the family, marry her? He very much doubted it. He raised his eyes and encountered those of Mrs. Bracknel fixed upon him--large, dark, and strange, burning with that wasting, feverish light that seemed never to grow dim, that seemed never to find rest.