Chapter I: Plans and Dreams and Promises

I

Three women were counting the years now. The years were rolling up--curtain by curtain, like mists from a distant hillside; and behind them the ultimate prospects for which Lady Burdon waited, Mrs. Espart waited, and Aunt Maggie waited began to be revealed. Mrs. Espart had conveyed to Lady Burdon her ambition--formulated long ago--with regard to Dora and Rollo. Lady Burdon reckoned the union as very desirable and gave its consummation a first place among her aspirations for her Rollo. Aunt Maggie saw the hour of her revenge approaching so that its years might now be estimated on the fingers of one hand.

So near the desirable ends were approaching that the women began to name dates for their arrival. Youth, with only a few years lived and so enormous an experience gained in those years (as youth believes), cannot endure the thought of planning ahead for a space that is a fair proportion of its whole lifetime. Five years is a monstrous, an insupportable period to youth that has lived but four times five or less. Age, with fewer years to live than have been lived, and with the knowledge of how little a decade has to show, will plan for five years hence with nothing near so much of sighs and groanings as youth will suffer if it must wait five months.

The women began to name dates. Those very close friends, Lady Burdon and Mrs. Espart, spoke of dates frequently. Mrs. Espart and Dora had already "come into the family" as Mrs. Espart smilingly expressed it, when, at Lord Burdon's death, and on being acquainted with her dear friend's intention to let the Mount Street house on a short lease and retire to Burdon Old Manor, she had offered herself as lessee. The offer had been most gratefully, most gladly accepted. The great town house was made over to Mrs. Espart for a seven years' term and thus, in Mrs. Espart's phrase, "remained in the family"--ready for Rollo and Dora, as the ladies plotted.

And now they were naming dates. "When Rollo is twenty-four," Lady Burdon said to Mrs. Espart, come over from Abbey Royal to lunch at the Manor one day, "look, dear, he is just on twenty now. You know my plans. Next year he is to go to Cambridge. His illness has thrown him back. But next year will be time enough. Three years at Cambridge, then, and that will bring him almost to twenty-three. Then I wish him to go abroad--to travel for a year. That is so good for a young man, I think. Then when he comes back he will be ready to settle down and he will come back just the age for that tradition of ours--celebrating comings-of-age at twenty-four instead of twenty-one. That would be so splendid for the wedding, wouldn't it?"

"Splendid!" Mrs. Espart agreed. "Splendid! That old Mr. Amber of yours was trying to tell me the other day how that twenty-four tradition arose. But, really, he mumbles so when he gets excited--!"

"Oh, he's hopeless," Lady Burdon agreed. Her tone dismissed his name as though she found his hopelessness a little trying, and she went back to "Yes, splendid, won't it be? When I look back, Ella, everything has gone wonderfully. From the very beginning, you know--the very beginning, I planned a good marriage for Rollo. It was so essential. To be your Dora--well, that makes it perfect; yes, perfect!"--and Lady Burdon stretched out her hands and gave a happy little sigh as though she put her hands into a happy future and touched her Rollo there.

"And I for Dora," Mrs. Espart said. "From the very beginning, too, I arranged great matches for Dora in my mind. That it should be your Rollo,"--she gave a little laugh at her adaptation of the words--"that it should be your Rollo--why, really, perfect is the word!"

They were silent for a space, enjoying the beauty of the hillside that the thinning years were disclosing.

"You've never said anything to Rollo?" Mrs. Espart asked.

"Oh, no--no, not directly, anyway. It will come about naturally, I feel that. They are so much together. And in any case Dora--Dora is so wonderfully beautiful, Ella. I couldn't conceive any man not falling in love with her. In a year or so's time, developing as she is--why, you'll change your mind perhaps--when they're all worshipping her!"

She laughed, and her laugh was very reassuringly returned. "But it is Rollo she will marry," Mrs. Espart smiled. "With her it is as you say with him--it will come naturally. In any case--well, she is being brought up as I was brought up. She is dutiful. You find so many girls encouraged in independence nowadays. Nothing is so harmful for a girl ultimately, I think."

Lady Burdon nodded her agreement. "How happy Rollo will be!" she said, and spoke with a little sigh so caressingly maternal and with eyes so fondly beaming that Mrs. Espart put out a hand to touch her and told her, "I love your devotion to Rollo, Nellie."

"He is everything to me," Lady Burdon said softly. "Everything!"

"I know he is. Why, you look different again when you speak of him even! Do you know, you were looking wretchedly ill when I came this morning, I thought."

"I had slept badly." Lady Burdon looked hesitatingly at her friend as though doubtful of the expediency of some further words she meditated. Then, "I had my nightmare," she said; and at the question framed on Mrs. Espart's lips went on impulsively: "Ella, I've never told you about my nightmare. I think I shall. It worries me. Do you know, just after we came into the title a girl came to see me and said she was the former Lord Burdon's wife."

"_No_! What happened?"

"Oh, nothing, of course--nothing serious. I sent her away. She said she would bring proofs; but I never saw her again."

"You wouldn't, of course. One of those creatures, I suppose," and Mrs. Espart curled her lip distastefully and added: "I suppose some young men will do those things--no doubt that's what it was; but it's rather disgusting, isn't it? And how very horrible for you! But, Nellie, where does the nightmare come in?"

"With the girl," Lady Burdon said and gave a little uneasy movement as though even the recollection worried her. "With the girl. I dream of her whenever--that's the odd thing--whenever something particular happens. See her just as I saw her then and say 'I am Lady Burdon,' and she says 'Oh, how can you be Lady Burdon?' Then I get that dreadful nightmare feeling--you know what it is--and say 'I hold!' and she says 'No, you do not--Nay, I hold!' It's too silly--but you know what nightmares are. And it only comes when something particular happens--or rather is going to happen. The night before we heard of old Lady Burdon's death, that was once. Then the night before we came down here for that stay when Rollo met his friend Percival and we began to come regularly. Then the night my husband died." She stopped, smiled because Mrs. Espart was smiling at her indulgently, as one smiles at another's unreasonable fears, but went on, "and now last night!"

Mrs. Espart laughed outright: "Why, what a hollow moan, Nellie!--'and now last night!' I'd no idea you were such a goose. You've let the silly thing get on your silly nerves."

"Only because things have always happened with it."

Her concern, however foolish, was clearly so genuine that Mrs. Espart changed banter for sympathetic reassurance. "Why, Nellie, really you must be more sensible! Why, dreaming it last night proves how silly it is. What's happened to-day? Look, I'll tell you what's happened to-day, and it's something to settle your wretched girl and your omens once and for all. She nightmared you last night and to-day we've settled how happy we are all going to be with our young folk married! There! Tell her that with my compliments if she ever comes again!"

Her air was so brisk and stimulating that Lady Burdon was made to laugh; and her facts were so convincing that the laugh was followed by a little sigh of happiness, and Lady Burdon said: "Why, Ella, it's funny, isn't it, how in this life some things _do_ go just as one wishes, for all that people say to the contrary?"

That was to be proved. Down at "Post Offic," while the ladies planned, a date was also being named.

II

"But when? When?" Percival was saying to Aunt Maggie. "I'm eighteen--eighteen, but you still treat me like a child. I ought to be doing something. I'm just growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising. But when I tell you, you ask me to wait and say I've no need to be anxious and that I shall be glad I waited when I know what it is you are planning for me."

"You will be, Percival," Aunt Maggie said.

But he made an impatient gesture and cried again: "But when? When? That satisfied me when I was a boy. It doesn't now. I'm not a boy any longer. That's what you don't seem to see."

That indeed he was boy no more was written very clearly upon him as he stood there demanding his future--not for the first time in these days. He was past his eighteenth birthday: his bearing and his expression graced him with a maturer air. The mould and the poise of head and body that as a child had caused a turning of heads after him were displayed with a tenfold greater attraction now that they adorned the frame of early manhood. There was about the modelling of his countenance that air of governance that is the first mark of high breeding. The outlines and the finish of his face were extraordinarily firm, as though delicate tools had cut them in firm wax that set to marble as each line was done. The chin was rounded from beneath and thrown forward; and to that firm upward round the lower jaw ran in a fine oval from where the small ears lay closely against the head; deeply beneath the jaw, cut cleanly back with an uncommon sweep, was set the powerfully modelled throat that denotes rare physical strength. The eyes were widely opened, of a fine grey--unusually large and of a quality of light that seemed to diffuse its rays over all the brow. The forehead was wide, with a clear, sound look. Outdoor life had tinted the face with the clean brown that only a fine skin will take; the hair was of a tawny hue and pressed closely to the scalp. He was of good height and he carried his trunk as though it were balanced on his hips--thrown up from the waist into a deep chest beneath powerful shoulders. He held his arms slightly away from his sides in the fashion of sailors and boxers whose arms are quick, tough weapons. After all this and of it all was a gay, alert air, as though he were ever poised to spring away at the call of the first adventure that came whistling down the road. His face was not often in repose. Ardent life was forever footing it merrily up and down his veins, delighting in motion and in its strength, and his face was the mirror of its discoveries.

Just now, voiced in his "I'm growing up an idler that every one will soon be despising," it was discovering restrictions that his brow mirrored darkly. "It's not fair to me, Aunt Maggie," he said. "I ought to be doing something for myself. I must be doing something for myself. But you put me off like a child. You tell me to wait and won't even tell me what it is. You tell me to wait--when? when?"

Aunt Maggie said pleadingly: "Soon, Percival, soon."

"No, I've heard that--I've heard that!" he cried. "I want to know when."

She named her date. "When you are of age, dear. When you are twenty-one."

He cried: "Three years! Go on like this for three years more!"

He swung on his heel and she watched him go tremendously down the path and through the gate.