“I might have let her fall on that inclined plane,” growled Vansittart. “Capital for tobogganing, but very dangerous for a young lady in satin shoes.”
“Poor girl, I wonder where her next satin shoes will come from,” said Hubert.
“Is the Colonel so very hard up?”
“Very, I should think, since he is always in debt to the little tradespeople about here.”
“And on the strength of that you all talk about those three girls as if they were lepers,” retorted Vansittart. “I have no patience with the pettiness of village society.”
V
Teatime in Arcadia
It was long since Vansittart had been haunted by the face of a woman as he was haunted by the face of Eve Marchant. He had not come to nine and twenty years of age without one or two grandes passions, which had begun out of a mere fancy, a glance—like one of those once fashionable toys called Pharaoh’s Serpents—had swollen to colossal dimensions, and had ended, like the serpent, in a puff of smoke. This time he wondered at his own feelings when he found himself so deeply interested in the girl he always thought of as Titania. He was inclined to ascribe this sudden interest to the eccentric manner of their first meeting, the three pretty faces springing out of a turn in the wooded road, like sylphs in fairyland, the light, silvery laughter, and the something of sadness in the fate of this bright, lighthearted girl which appealed to his deeper feelings.
To whatever cause he might ascribe his interest, the fact remained that he was interested; for he found himself thinking about Eve Marchant a great deal more than he had ever thought of any one subject, except that one fatal subject of his misadventure at Venice; and he found himself very bad company for other people in consequence.
For ten days after the ball at Mandelford he lived in expectation of seeing Miss Marchant again, somewhere, somehow; and to further that desire of his heart he lived in a state of perpetual locomotion; now driving one of the Hartley dogcarts to Mandelford or Midhurst, Fernhurst or Haslemere, as the case might be; and anon patrolling those towns and villages on foot, in the ardent expectation of meeting Colonel Marchant’s daughters upon some shopping or visiting expedition.
Go where he would he drew blank. Could it be that the Colonel was so deep in debt to the local tradespeople that his daughters dared not show themselves in those rural streets, where, after all, as the local gentry said condescendingly, one could really get almost everything one wanted?
He walked, he drove, he haunted the great pond in Redwold Park, which was thrown open to the public for skating, and where the men and maidens of the neighbourhood came daily to disport themselves: but vainly did he look for the Marchants.
“I thought the Miss Marchants were skaters,” he said to Miss Green, on the third morning, as he helped her to put on her Mount Charles skates.
“So they are. They almost lived on this pond before Christmas. Perhaps they have worn out their boots, and are obliged to stay at home.”
Those ten days of expectancy and disappointment made Jack Vansittart desperate. It seemed to him ages since the night of the ball. He began to think he should never see Eve Marchant again, and panic-stricken at this idea, he started after a morning’s pheasant shooting to walk to the Homestead, Fernhurst, to make a formal call upon the sisters. Surely he had the right to call and inquire how they had survived the fatigue of the dances, the perils of the cold drive home. He was quick to make up his mind that he had such a right, and no walk taken for pleasure or for health had ever been more exhilarating than that tramp from the westward shoulder of Blackdown to the further side of Fernhurst. The roads were hard and dry, the wind was northwest, and the sun was going down in wintry splendour. It was late in the afternoon to make a ceremonious visit, but there was all the better hope that he would find Colonel Marchant’s daughters within doors.
The house stood high above the road, on a ridge of meadow-land which had been encroached upon for half an acre of garden. It was a long, low house, with steep gable ends, and a high slanting roof, red tiled and lichen grown. Originally only a farm labourer’s cottage, it had been expanded and improved by more than one tenant, the last addition being made by Colonel Marchant, who at the beginning of his tenancy had built a comfortable covered porch, which served as vestibule, and a large room on the ground floor, which had been first known as the nursery, then as the schoolroom, and which was now simply the parlour, or general living-room for the whole family. The resident governess, that element of respectability, had shake the dust of Colonel Marchant’s Bohemian dwelling-place off her feet a year ago, and had vanished into space, leaving a long arrear of salary behind her.
It was twilight, the grey twilight of a frosty winter day. Vansittart noted the snowdrops peeping over the box border as he walked up the steep gravel path that made the only approach to the Marchant dwelling. Carriage approach there was none. The Marchant girls’ cheap satin slippers had to trip along that gravel path, in fine weather or foul, when they went to a party, and the poor little feet inside the slippers had to dance away any feeling of chilly dampness which the sodden gravel might occasion.
Vansittart looked about him in the evening grey as he waited for the opening of the door. He had rung a bell that sounded twice too loud for the size of the house, and had set up much barking of indoor and outdoor dogs.
There were
