“Did you ever hear of a man worth anything who was a general favourite?” grumbled the Colonel. “Yes, I like Sefton. Sefton is a gentleman to the marrow of his bones—the son and grandson and great-grandson of gentlemen. His ancestors were gentlemen before Magna Charta. If you want to know what good blood is, you have a fine example in Sefton—a staunch friend, a bitter enemy, standoffish to strangers, frank and free with the people he likes. He’s the only man in this part of the country that I can get on with; and I am not ashamed to confess my liking for him.”
Vansittart watched Eve’s face while her father was praising his friend. It was a very grave face, almost to pain; but there was no confusion or embarrassment in countenance or manner. She stood silent, serious, waiting for her father to say his say, and for the guest to leave. And then, without a word, she shook hands with Vansittart, who made the round of the sisters before he was solemnly escorted to the porch by Colonel Marchant.
He walked home through the fine, clear night, by hedgerows powdered with snow, through a landscape which was somewhat monotonous in its black and white, past woods and hills, above which the frosty stars shone out in almost southern brilliancy.
No, he did not believe that Eve Marchant cared for Wilfred Sefton. There had been no emotional changes from white to red in the fair face he studied, only a serious and somewhat anxious expression, as if the subject were painful to her. No, he had no rival to fear in Sefton; and yet—and yet—there was some lurking mysteriousness in their relations, some secret understanding, or why those tears? Why that confidential conversation, and those stray sentences, which seemed to mean a great deal? “I sincerely regret your disappointment.” “It was a false scent.” There must be some meaning deeper than the trivialities of everyday life in such words as these.
He thought, and gloomily, of Colonel Marchant as a possible father-in-law. A most unpleasant person to contemplate in that connection—a soured, disappointed man, at war with society, and quick to sneer at men whom he disliked only because they were more fortunate than himself. That he should sneer at Hubert Hartley, a universal favourite, who from boyhood to manhood had been known to all his friends and neighbours as “Bertie,” a familiar style which testified to his popularity! Would Bertie take the hounds on an emergency? Would Bertie do this or that for the common weal?—Bertie being always relied on for liberality and good-fellowship. It was intolerable that this out-at-elbows Colonel should presume to sneer at Bertie Hartley because the wealth which he dispensed so nobly had been earned in trade.
That second visit to the Homestead had a dispiriting effect, and again Vansittart told himself that he would take his time; that having breathed no word of love in Eve Marchant’s ear, he was free to carry her image away in his heart, and brood over it, and find out in the course of much sober meditation whether he really loved her well enough to sacrifice all worldly advantages, and to disappoint his mother and sister in the great act of marriage, that act upon which hangs the happiness or misery of all the after life.
A man who has few belongings, and who has been to those belongings as a hero, has need to give some consideration to his people’s prejudices before he lead his bride home to the family hearth, where she is to take her place forever in the family history, either as an ornament or a blot upon a fair record.
No, he would go no further. He would not be the slave of a foolish passion for a lovely face. He was free to come to Redwold Towers whenever he pleased. He might see Eve Marchant as often as he pleased in the year that was so young. He would take his time.
And if, while he hesitated and meditated, some bolder wooer were to appear and snatch the prize—what then? Well, that was a risk which he must run; but he told himself that the chances were against any suitor for the daughter’s hand while the father was to the fore. Colonel Marchant’s children were heavily handicapped in the race of life.
VIII
A Face in the Crowd
Vansittart spent five weeks at Merewood, hunting a good deal, dining with some of his neighbours once a week or so, and occasionally entertaining them at dinner or luncheon; tiring himself prodigiously with long rides to cover, or railway journeys before and after the chase, and falling asleep of an evening by the drawing-room fire, lulled by the monotonous click of his mother’s knitting needles, or the flutter of the turning leaves as she read.
Those fireside evenings after the chase in January and February were delightful to Mrs. Vansittart. She rejoiced with an exceeding joy at having brought her son safe and sound out of the cave of the syren, having no suspicion of those serious thoughts of the syren which occupied his mind. There were half a dozen girls in the neighbourhood, two of them heiresses, any one of whom would be welcome to her as a daughter-in-law, for any one of whom she would have resigned her place in that household without a murmur, almost without a regret. But she shuddered at the idea of a girl brought up in a Bohemian fashion; a girl who had suffered all the disadvantages which poverty carries with it; the skimped education; the vulgarizing influence of petty household cares; a girl whose father never went to church. Such a girl would be unspeakably distasteful to her. If Eve Marchant were to reign at Merewood, Mrs. Vansittart’s grey hairs must go down
