Читать книгу: «The Following of the Star: A Romance», страница 3

"I will come," said David. She paused with her hand on the door, looking back at him over her shoulder. Her tall head nearly touched the top of the archway.

"If you do," she said, "we must consider the question of your church, your schools, your printing-press, and your steamer. So, au revoir, to-morrow."

She threw him a little reassuring smile, and passed out.

The fragrance of violets, the sound of her low voice, the card upon the table, remained.

David took up the pen and made the entry in the vestry book: two pounds, eight shillings, and seven pence halfpenny. Then he gathered up all the little piles of silver and copper, and put them into his coat pockets; but Diana's sovereign he slipped by itself into one waistcoat pocket, and her card into the other.

Then suddenly he realised – poor David – that she had stood beside him during the whole interview, while he had sat on the vestry stool.

He sprang to his feet. "Oh I say!" he cried. "Oh – I say!"

But there was nothing to say; and no one to whom to say it.

Poor David!

He sat down again, put his elbows on the table, and dropped his head into his hands.

Diana Rivers of Riverscourt! Patron of four livings! Acknowledged leader of the gayest set in the county; known far and wide for her independence of character and advanced views!

Bones came shuffling up the chancel, rattling the church keys. There was also a sovereign of Diana's in his waistcoat pocket, and he showed no irritation as he locked up the vestry book, and returned David's good-night.

"A 'appy Christmas, sir," he said, "an' many of 'em; if they 'ave 'em in them wild parts."

As David plodded home through the snow, his mind dwelt, with curious persistence, on one question: "Now who on earth is 'Chappie'?"

CHAPTER V
THE NOISELESS NAPIER

"I am morally certain 'Chappie' is a poodle," thought David to himself, at breakfast. "It would be just like her to have a large black poodle, abnormally clever, perfectly clipped, tied up with green ribbons to match her hat, and treated in all respects as a human being; excepting that, of course, his opinion on the cut of her guests' clothes would not matter. 'Chappie does not count,' she said; but I'll be bound he counts a lot, in most respects. I hope Chappie will like me. How does one whistle to a poodle?"

David was standing on the hearthrug, practising various seductive ways of whistling to Chappie, when Sarah came in, to clear the breakfast table.

Sarah had put a Christmas card on David's plate that morning, and had kept nervously out of the way, while he opened the envelope. The card had evidently been chosen with great care, and an eye to its suitability. A large bunch of forget-me-nots figured in the centre, tied with a lover's knot of blue ribbon. Above this, two embossed hands – Sarah's and David's of course – were clasped. Above these again, flew two turtle-doves. They carried a scroll between them, depending from either beak, bearing in gold lettering, "The Compliments of the Season." At the bottom of the card were two blank lines beginning with "To – " and "From – ". Sarah had filled in, with much labour, and rather brown ink:

To the Reverant David rivers

From Yours rispectfully Sarah

David, delighted, stood the card in the place of honour on the mantel-piece, in front of the clock. When Sarah came in, he stopped whistling to Chappie, went forward at once and shook hands with her, thanking her warmly for the Christmas card.

"The only one I received, Sarah; and I do think it most awfully pretty."

Sarah admitted that it was that; explained at great length where she got it, and why she chose it; and described a good many other cards she had nearly bought but eventually rejected in favour of the forget-me-nots, thinking they would "look home-like in them outlandish places," and ensure David's kind remembrance of her.

David protested that, card or no card, he would never forget Sarah, and all her thoughtful care of him; and Sarah wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron, and only wished there was more of him to care for.

David felt this rather embarrassingly personal, and walked over to the window to throw crumbs to a robin. Then he turned, as Sarah, having folded the cloth, was preparing to leave the room.

"Sarah," he said, "I have had an invitation. I am dining out to-night."

Sarah's face fell. "Oh, Mr. Rivers, sir! And me going to a chicking, being as it was Christmas!"

"Well, Sarah, you see my friend thought it was dull that I should dine by myself on Christmas night. And if you had gone to a chicken, I should indeed be left alone."

"Get along, sir!" chuckled Sarah. "You know my meaning. And, if it's Smiths or Joneses, I misdoubt if you'll get so good a dinner – "

"It isn't Smiths or Joneses, Sarah. It is Miss Rivers, of Riverscourt. And she has promised me a turkey, and a plum-pudding, and possibly – only I must not count too much on those – possibly, mince-pies!"

Sarah's face expanded. "Oh, if it's Miss Diana, sir, you can't do better. There's none like Miss Diana, to my thinking. And we can have the chicking on Boxing-day. And, with your leave, if I'm not wanted, I'm asked out to friends this evening, which I hadn't no intention of mentioning. And Mr. Rivers, sir; mark my words. You can't do better than Miss Diana. We've known her from a babe, master an' me. Folks talk, because she don't hold with getting married, and because she don't do much church-going; but, begging your pardon, sir, I don't hold with either, m'self. Marriage means slaving away, with few thanks and fewer ha'pence; and church-going mostly means, for women-folk, a vieing with one another's bonnets. I don't go to feathers, m'self; always having been well-content with beads. And I pay my respects to Almighty God, at home."

"'Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is,'" quoted David. "You forget the injunction of the writer to the Hebrews, Sarah."

"That don't hold good for now, Mr. Rivers, sir," replied Sarah, with conviction; "any more than many other hepistolic remarks."

"They all hold good for now, Sarah," said David, gravely.

"Then what about 'let your women keep silence in the churches'? Hark to them rowdy Miss Joneses in the choir!"

"They do make a row," admitted David, off his guard.

"And 'if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home'?" Sarah was evidently well up in her Bible.

"Well, why not?" queried David.

"Why not, Mr. Rivers, sir?" repeated Sarah, scornfully. "Why not? Why because stay-at-home husbands ain't likely to be able to teach go-to-church wives! And, even if they did, how about me an' Miss Diana, as has none?"

This seemed unanswerable, though it had nothing whatever to do with the point at issue. But David had no suggestions to offer concerning the limitations contingent on the spinsterhood of Sarah and of Miss Diana. It therefore gave Sarah the last word; which, to the female mind, means victory; and she bore away the breakfast cloth in triumph.

When she brought in tea that afternoon, she lingered a few minutes, giving the fire a little unnecessary attention, and furtively watching David, as he put salt on his hot-buttered toast.

Then she said tentatively: "Mr. Rivers, sir, there are one or two things about Miss Diana you might as well know, before you go over there."

"No, thank you, Sarah," said David, with decision. "Whatever Miss Rivers wishes me to know, she will tell me herself. Anything she does not herself tell me, I prefer not to hear from others."

Sarah surveyed him; and her look expressed amazement and disapproval.

"Well I never!" she exclaimed. "You are different from master! All I hear in the village I tell master while I wait on him at dinner. He says: 'You may as well tell me what you hear, my good Sarah; and then I can judge how to act.'"

David smiled. He had already discovered the good Rector's love of gossip.

"But you see, Sarah," he said, "being only a locum tenens, I do not, fortunately, have to act."

"Don't disparage yourself, sir," advised Sarah, still disappointed, almost aggrieved. "And even if folks here have called you so, you won't be that to Miss Diana."

"Oh, no," said David, cheerfully. "I do not propose to be a locum tenens to Miss Diana!"

The motor glided up to the Rectory gate at seven o'clock, to the minute. David saw the flash of the acetylene lamps on his bedroom blind.

He ran down the stairs, filled with a delightful sense of holiday-making, and adventure.

His one clerical suit was carefully brushed, and Sarah had "pressed it," a mysterious process from which it emerged with a youthful, unwrinkled air, to which it had for long been a stranger. His linen was immaculate. He had shaved with extreme care. He felt so festive, that his lack of conventional evening clothes troubled him no longer. He slipped Sarah's Christmas card into his pocket. He knew Diana would appreciate the pathos and humour of those clasped hands and forget-me-nots.

Then he went down the garden path, and entered the motor. The footman arranged the fur rug over his knees, showed him how to switch off the electric lights if he preferred darkness, shut the door, took his seat beside the motionless chauffeur, and instantly they glided away down the lane, and turned into the high road leading to Riversmead.

It seemed wonderful to David to be flying along in Diana's sumptuous motor. He had never before been in a powerful noiseless Napier car, and he found it somewhat of an experience. Involuntarily he thought of the time when he had been so deadly weak from African fever, and his people had had somehow to get him to the coast; the rough little cart on wheels they made to hold him and his mattress, and tried to draw him along the apology for a road. But the shaking and bumping had been so absolutely unbearable, that he had eventually had to be slung and carried as far as the river. Even so, there had been the perpetual dread of the agonising jerk if one of his bearers stumbled over a stone, or stepped unexpectedly into a rut. And to all this he was so soon returning. And quite right, too. No man should glide through life on cushioned tyres. For a woman, it was quite otherwise. Her womanhood constituted a sufficient handicap, without any roughness or hardship being allowed to come her way. He liked to know that Diana would always – literally and metaphorically – glide through life in a noiseless Napier. This method of progression need be no hindrance to her following of the star.

He looked at his watch. In ten minutes they would reach Riverscourt.

He switched off the lights, and at once the flying trees and hedges became visible in the pale moonlight. He enjoyed watching them as they whirled past. The great car bounded silently along the road, sounding a warning note upon the horn, if the distant light of any cart or carriage came in sight ahead of them; but passing it, and speeding on in the snowy darkness, before David had had time to look out and see what manner of vehicle it was.

They rushed through little villages, the cottage windows bright with seasonable festivity. In one of them David caught a glimpse of a Christmas-tree, decked with shining candles, and surrounded by the curly heads of happy little children. It was many years since he had seen a Christmas-tree. It brought wistful thoughts of home and boyhood's days. The first Christmas-tree he could remember had yielded to his enraptured hands a wooden popgun, which expelled a cork with great force and a terrifying sound, sufficiently loud to make all grown-up people jump, if it was done exactly behind their heads, when they were unaware of its near vicinity. This effect upon grown-ups, produced by his own popgun, had given him a sense of power which was limitless; until the sudden forcible confiscation of the popgun had set thereto an unexpected limit. He then mentioned it as a flute, and asked for it back; pointing out that its popgun propensities were a mere accident; its real nature was to be a flute. He received it back as a flute, upon condition that it should not immediately accidentally develop again into a popgun. He spent the remainder of that day blowing blissfully into the eight holes punched in the strip of red wood gummed to the side of the popgun. The resultant sounds were melancholy and fitful to a degree; and it is doubtful which was the greater trial to the nerves of the grown-ups, the sudden explosion of the popgun, or the long drawn out piping of the flute. Anyway when his treasure suddenly and unaccountably disappeared, they assisted his tearful search in a half-hearted sort of way, and when eventually his unaided efforts discovered it, carefully concealed in one of their own wardrobes, his infantine faith in the sincerity of adult human nature had received its first rude shock.

David lay back in the motor and wondered whether life would ever hold for him a scene so enchanting as that first Christmas-tree, or a gift so priceless as that popgun-flute.

The motor sped through the old-world town of Riversmead, scarcely slacking speed, for the streets were clear; all its inhabitants were indoors, merry-making; and the one policeman they passed, saluted. Diana's car was well-known and respected.

Then in at great iron gates, standing wide, and up an avenue of stately beeches, coming to sudden pause before the portico of a large stone house, gay with lighted windows.

CHAPTER VI
DAVID MAKES FRIENDS WITH "CHAPPIE"

The door into the great hall opened as David stepped out of the motor. A footman took his overcoat, and he found himself following an elderly butler across the spacious hall toward a door, which he flung open, announcing in confidential tones: "The Reverend David Rivers"; then stood aside, that David might enter.

David had already been looking right and left for Chappie; and, even as he walked into the drawing-room, he had a seductive whistle ready in case the poodle came to meet him, before he could reach Diana's friendly hand.

But neither Diana nor the poodle were in the drawing-room.

Instead, on a large sofa, at right angles with the fireplace, in the midst of heaped up cushions, sat a very plump elderly lady, of haughty mien, clad in claret-coloured velvet, a nodding ornament in her white hair, and much jewellery on her fat neck. She raised a lorgnon, on a long tortoiseshell handle, and looked through it at David as he advanced toward her.

There was such awe-inspiring majesty in the action, that David felt certain she must be, at the very least, a duchess.

He seemed to be hours in reaching the sofa. It was like one of those long walks taken in dreams, covering miles, yet only advancing yards; and as he walked his clerical jacket grew shorter, and his boots more patently not patent leather.

When, at last, he reached the hearthrug – nothing happened. The plump lady had, apparently, no disengaged hand; one held the lorgnon; the other, a large feather fan.

"D'y do?" she said, in a rather husky voice. "I conclude you are Diana's missionary."

This was an almost impossible remark to answer. David was not Diana's missionary; yet he was, undoubtedly, the missionary Diana had asked to dinner.

In his embarrassment he held his warm hands to the blaze of the log-fire, and said: "What a beautiful Christmas-day!"

The plump lady ignored the remark. She declined to recognise anything in common between her Christmas-day and David's.

"Where is your sphere of work?" she demanded, hoarsely.

"Central Africa," replied David, in a meek voice, devoutly wishing himself back there.

At that moment the door burst open, by reason of a bump against it, and a black poodle trotted in, identical with the dog of David's imagining, excepting that its tufts were tied up with red ribbon.

David whistled joyfully. "Hullo, Chappie!" he said. "Come here, old fellow."

The poodle paused, surprised, and looked at him; one fore-paw uplifted.

The plump lady made an inarticulate sound, and dropped her lorgnon.

But David felt sure of his ground. "Come on, Chappie," he said. "Let's be friends."

The poodle trotted up and shook hands. David bent down and patted his beautiful coat.

Then Diana herself swept into the room. "A thousand pardons, Cousin David!" she cried. "I should have been down to receive you. But Knox broke all records and did the distance in eighteen minutes!" In a moment her hand was in his; her eyes were dancing with pleasure; her smile enveloped him in an atmosphere of welcoming friendliness.

All David's shyness left him. He forgot his terror of the majestic person on the sofa. "Oh, that's all right" he said. "I have been making friends with Chappie."

For a moment even Diana looked nonplussed. Then she laughed gaily. "I ought to have been down to introduce you properly," she said. "Let me do so now. Cousin David, this is Mrs. Marmaduke Vane. Chappie dear, may I present to you my cousin, David Rivers?"

David never knew why the floor did not open and swallow him up! He looked helplessly at Diana, and hopelessly at the plump lady on the sofa, whose wrathful glance withered him.

Diana flew to the rescue. "Now, Chappie dear," she said, "the motor is at the door, and Marie has your fur cloak in the hall. Remember me to the Brackenburys, and don't feel obliged to come away early if you are enjoying the games after dinner. The brougham will call for you at eleven; but James can put up, and come round when you send for him. If I have gone up when you return, we shall meet at breakfast." She helped the plump lady to her feet, and took her to the door. "Good-bye, dear; and have a good time."

She closed the door, and came back to David, standing petrified on the hearthrug.

"Mrs. Vane is my chaperon," she explained. "That is why I call her 'Chappie.' But – tell me, Cousin David; do you always call elderly ladies by their rather private pet-names, in the first moments of making their acquaintance?"

"Heaven help me!" said poor David, ruefully, "I thought 'Chappie' was the poodle."

Diana's peals of laughter must have reached the irate lady in the hall. She sank on to the sofa, and buried her golden head in the cushions.

"Oh, Cousin David!" she said. "I always knew you were unlike anybody else. Did you see the concentrated fury in Chappie's eye? And shall we improve matters by explaining that you thought she was the poodle? Oh, talk of something else, or I shall suffocate!"

"But you said: 'There will only be myself and Chappie; and Chappie doesn't count,'" explained David. "If that was 'Chappie,' she counts a lot. She looked me up and down, until I felt positively cheap; and she asked me whether I was your missionary. I made sure she was a duchess, at the very least."

"That only shows how very little experience you have had of duchesses, Cousin David. If Chappie had really been a duchess, she would have made you feel at home in a moment, and I should have found you seated beside her on the sofa talking as happily as if you had known her for years. Chappie has a presence, I admit; and a ducal air; which is partly why I keep her on as chaperon. But she says: 'D'y do,' and looks down her nose at you in that critical manner, because her father was only a doctor in a small provincial town."

"My father was a doctor in a little country village," said David, quickly, "yet I hope I don't look down my nose at people."

"Ah," said Diana, "but then you are a man, and no foolish friends have told you that you look like a duchess, thus turning your poor head. Chappie is a kind old thing, at heart, and must have attractive qualities of sorts, seeing she has been married no less than three times. She was my governess, years ago, before her first marriage. And when Uncle Falcon died, I had her back as chaperon; partly because she is very poor, and couples with that poverty an inordinate love of creature comforts, which is quite pathetic; partly because she makes an imposing figure-head, yet I can do with her exactly as I like. How would you define a chaperon, Cousin David?"

"We don't have them in Central Africa, Miss Rivers."

"Well, a chaperon is a person who should be seen and not heard. And she should be seen by the right people; not by those she is chaperoning, but by the tiresome people who think they ought to be chaperoned. My good Chappie satisfactorily fulfils these conditions. She is, to all intents, chaperoning you and me, this evening; yet, in reality, she is dining with friends of hers in Riversmead; thus sparing us the unnecessary restraint of her presence, and the undesirable infliction of her quite mindless conversation."

David found himself wondering whether he ought not to have allowed Sarah to tell him "one or two things about Miss Diana," before he adventured over to Riverscourt.

At that moment the staid butler opened wide the door, with a murmured sentence about dinner.

Diana rose, with a gentle grace and dignity which reminded David of his Lady of Mystery's first progress up Brambledene church; and, laying her hand within his arm, guided him to the dining-room.

A small round table stood in the centre of the great oak-panelled room. It gleamed with glass and silver, wax candles and snowy linen. The decoration was Parma violets and lilies of the valley.

David sat at Diana's right hand, and when she leaned toward him and they talked in low voices, the old man at the distant sideboard could not overhear their conversation.

The poodle had followed them to the dining-room, and lay down contentedly in front of the log-fire.

Diana was wearing perfectly plain white satin. A Medici collar, embroidered with pearls, rose at the back of her shapely head. She wore violets at her bosom, and a dainty wreath of violets in her hair. Her gown in front was cut square and low, and embroidered with pearls. On the whiteness of her skin, below the beautiful firm neck, sparkled a brilliant diamond star. David hated to see it there; he could hardly have explained why. It rose and fell lightly, with her breathing. When she laughed, it scintillated in the light of the wax candles. It fascinated David – the sparkling star, on the soft flesh. He looked at it, and looked away; but again it drew his unwilling eyes.

He tried to master his aversion. Why should not Miss Rivers wear a diamond star? Why should he, David, presume to dislike to see a star so worn?

Before they reached the second course, Diana said to the butler: "Send Marie to me."

In a few moments her French maid, in simple black attire, with softly braided hair, stood at her elbow. Diana, still talking gaily to David, lifted both arms, unclasped the thin gold chain from about her neck, and handed the pendant to her maid.

"Serrez-moi ça," she said, carelessly.

Then she turned her clear eyes on David. "You prefer it in the sky," she said. "I quite agree with you. A woman's flesh savours too much of the world and the devil, to be a resting-place for stars. It can have no possible connection with ideals."

She spoke so bitterly, that David's tender heart rose up in arms.

"True, I prefer it in the sky," he said, "and I prefer it not of diamonds. But I do not like to hear you speak so of – of your body. It seems to me too perfectly beautiful to be thus relegated to a lower sphere; not because it is not flesh; but because, though flesh, it clothes a radiant soul. The mortal body is but the garment of the immortal soul. The soul, in mounting, lifts the body with it."

"I do not agree with you," said Diana. "I loathe bodies; my own, no less than other people's. And how little we know of our souls. I am afraid I shall shock you, Cousin David, but a favourite theory of mine is: that only a certain number of people have any souls at all. I have always maintained that the heathen have no souls."

David's deep eyes gleamed.

"The young natives of Uganda," he said, "sooner than give up their new-found faith, sooner than deny the Lord Who had bought them, walked calmly to the stake, and were slowly roasted by fire; their limbs, while they yet lived, being hacked off, one by one, and thrown into the flames. Their holy courage never failed; their last articulate words were utterances of faith and praise. Surely bodies would hardly go through so much, unless souls– strong immortal souls – dwelt within them."

"True," said Diana, softly. "Cousin David, I apologise. And I wonder how many of us would stand such a soul-test as slow-fire. I can't quite imagine Chappie, seated on a gridiron, singing hymns! Can you?"

"We must not judge another," said David, rather stiffly. "Conditions of martyrdom, produced the noble army of martyrs. Why should not Mrs. Vane, if placed in those conditions, rise to the occasion?"

"I am certain she would," said Diana. "She would rise quite rapidly, – if the occasion were a gridiron."

Much against his will, David burst out laughing.

Diana leaned her chin in her hands; her luminous grey eyes observed him, gravely. Little dimples of enjoyment dented either cheek; but her tone was entirely demure.

"I hope you are not a prig, Cousin David," she said, gravely.

"I have never been considered one," replied David, humbly. "But, if you say so – "

"No, no!" cried Diana. "You are not a prig; and I know I am flippant beyond words. Have you found out that I am flippant, Cousin David?"

"Yes," he said, gently. "But I have found out something besides that."

Her eyes challenged him.

"And that is – ?"

"That you take refuge in flippancy, Miss Rivers, when you want to hide a deeper anxiety and earnestness of soul than you can quite understand, or altogether cope with."

"Really? Then you must explain it to me, and cope with it for me. I hope our Christmas dinner has come up to the dinner of Sarah's intentions. Have another pear; or some more nuts? I did not order crackers, because we are both grown up, and we should look so foolish in paper caps; and yet, if we had had them, we could not have resisted putting them on. Don't you know, at children's parties, the way in which grown-ups seize upon the most outré of the coloured head-gear, don them, in a moment of gay abandonment, and – forget them! I can remember now, the delight, after one of the Christmas parties in my childhood, of seeing Chappie go gravely in to say good-night to grandpapa, completely unconscious of a Glengarry bonnet, tilted waggishly on one side, or, on another occasion, of a tall peaked fool's cap, perched on her frizzled 'transformation'. Oh, to be a little child again, each Christmas-day! Yet here am I – twenty-eight! How old are you, Cousin David?.. Twenty-nine? Well, I am glad you are not quite thirty. Being in another decade would have been like being in a cassock… Why a cassock? How dense you are, my reverend cousin! My mildest jokes require explaining. Why because it would have removed you so far away, and I want you quite near this evening, not perched in a distant pulpit! You cannot really help me, unless you fully sympathise and understand. And I am in such sore straits, Cousin David, that I look upon myself as a drowning man – why do we always say 'drowning man' as if there never were any drowning women? – about to sink for the third time; and you as the rope, which constitutes my only hope of safety. Let us go to the drawing-room."