the priory gardens were looking lovely under the rays of the hot sun of the fading august afternoon; but the harmonious tints of tree and lawn, of bank and blossom, faded into an indistinct mass before the eyes of gerard buckland as he turned away from rachel davison, after a low-voiced greeting which he uttered mechanically, without knowing what he said.
if she had been unmoved at the meeting, or if her manner and look had been different, he would not have been so much perturbed as he was. but it was not merely that she looked infinitely surprised, startled, and alarmed at the sight of him, but that there was in her face an expression which seemed to bear only one possible interpretation: she looked guilty.
try as he would to forget the impression her face made upon him at that first moment of astonishment at the meeting, he could not banish the disagreeable impression.
she had turned at once from him, after the first words of greeting, to speak again to arthur aldington, and to make inquiries after the rest of his family.[159] but gerard saw in this rapid turning away from himself only another proof of guilty consciousness on her part that he was there and that he was watching her.
he turned away into the gardens, leaving the terrace and going down towards the broad fish-pond, which lay in a hollow at the end of a series of velvety lawns broken up by flower beds which were a mass of tall, handsome, flowering plants.
the gardens were one of the sights of the county, and even in the state of uneasiness and anxiety from which he was suffering, gerard was conscious of their beauty.
so, too, were other people. for wandering about among the high hedges of yew and over the soft lawns, he found a dozen groups of two and three persons, enjoying the warm summer air, and gathering under the shade of the lime trees where mrs. van santen was pouring out tea.
the lady threw at gerard the apprehensive glance with which she greeted everyone who approached her whom she did not know well. he looked at her narrowly, but there was nothing in the least suspicious about her; she was a plain-featured, motherly woman who gave the impression of being more used to a simple, homely style of life than to the state which now surrounded her; and the gentleness with which she evidently tried to live up to the new life prepossessed him in her favor.
[160]she smiled at him rather shyly, and invited him to take a seat beside her.
“i’m new to this,” she said, with a strong american accent, as she poured him out a cup of tea; “to all this company, i mean. i’m used to a quieter sort of life altogether; and your smart british society folks make me shiver some!”
“well, i hope you won’t look upon me as belonging to the people who make you shiver,” said gerard, much taken with her gentle looks and her homely form of speech. “so you don’t like us, mrs. van santen, so much as your friends on the other side of the atlantic?”
“i don’t say that,” replied mrs. van santen, in the slow drawl which gerard found rather attractive. “i’ve no doubt many of the people who frighten me because i’m not used to them only need to be better known. but it’s just this, mr. buckland, when you’ve been used to a quiet, homely kind of life, and you get suddenly plunged into a livelier sort, why, it takes you time for you to feel your feet, you know!”
“of course it does. but why should you be forced to lead anything but the kind of life you like, and you’re used to?”
“well, it’s like this,” said the good lady confidentially; “you britishers think a mighty deal more of the dollars than folks do over on the other side!”
[161]“what!” cried gerard in amazement. “we always think it’s the other way about!”
she shook her head shrewdly, and brushed back the braids of her grayish hair, which she wore parted in the middle and done in a severely plain knot behind.
“i never knew the value of money,” she said emphatically, “till i came over here. where we come from there are many who have money, and nobody thinks much of us; but over here we find friends among the smart people, and yet there’s nothing to make us stand out from other folks!”
“i think there is, by what i hear—and what i see,” added gerard courteously. “your younger daughter, miss cora, has a voice that we very rarely hear except on a professional platform, and everyone says you give entertainments which are unique.”
she laughed.
“i don’t see anything so special about them,” she said simply, “except that perhaps we’re not so stiff as you english people. but i should have thought that was against us, instead of being in our favor!”
he laughed.
“there’s a great deal of pretense and what we call cant about us english,” admitted gerard. “we have bound ourselves by very rigid rules; but we like to escape from them sometimes, and we do it by going abroad, or by visiting people of wider notions than our own.”
[162]“oh, that’s it, is it? well, i daresay, you’re about right. but it’s puzzling too, to see how your great ladies and your smart men come to see us, when on our own side we’re not thought much of.”
it was impossible not to like this simple homely creature, with her lasting wonder at the ease with which she and her family had established themselves in london society, and the freedom with which they had been “taken up.”
gerard found it less surprising than she did. the very mixture of simplicity and homeliness, as represented by the gentle middle-aged woman who disdained the aid of much extravagance in dress, and frankly spoke her mind about herself and her family, with the grace and accomplishments of the daughters, and the devotion to cards of the sons, formed a combination new and attractive to people who were tired of more commonplace households.
and the cleverness with which the van santens had chosen to locate themselves in one of the prettiest places near london, and the taste with which they had respected the beauties in which they found themselves, all combined to make the priory the most popular resort of the moment with a considerable portion of the great world.
a few belated stayers in london, who found a delightful sunday resort in the priory, and a great many people staying in the country houses and river villas came over each week-end in their motor-cars[163] to spend a few hours in the merry atmosphere, unburdened with sabbatarian restrictions, of the lively americans.
while he was still sipping tea and chatting with mrs. van santen, the sight of rachel davison, coming slowly from the house, accompanied on one side by the younger and better-looking of the two male van santens, made gerard frown with displeasure.
miss davison was exquisitely dressed, as usual, and looked exceedingly handsome in a gown of black lace with a long train and lines of jet upon it, finished with enormous jet tassels. a large number of tassels, similar in design, but of smaller size, dangled from her bodice; and from underneath the short, full black sleeves and up to the throat from the slightly open black bodice, an underbodice and sleeves, very full and of creamy white transparent material, peeped out, finishing the costume with a relieving touch.
her dark hair, coiled high and fastened by amber and jet combs and pins, set off the delicate pallor of her face.
gerard, who had never conquered the jealousy with which he looked upon any other man who seemed to attract any of her attention, frowned when he noted the evident admiration of the younger van santen, who was tall, broad-shouldered, and good-looking.
perhaps it was because he hated the sight of a good-looking man near miss davison that gerard[164] took an instinctive and strong dislike to this denver van santen, and told himself that the fellow was ill-mannered, presumptuous, and “bad-form” altogether.
on the other side of miss davison was an englishman, a young baronet, who was already making himself conspicuous by the rapidity with which he was dissipating the fortune which he had recently inherited with the title.
gerard, uneasily glancing from the one to the other, and from these three to the groups of gay visitors who were laughing and talking around them, wondered what sort of position the rest of the guests held, and whether there were many present of the type represented by the spendthrift young baronet.
there were two or three racing ladies, women of birth and position, whose rank enabled them to go fearlessly wherever they fancied, without calling down upon themselves the decree of banishment which lesser mortals can only avoid by extreme discretion.
gerard wondered whether the ladies he saw were all of that venturesome type, and whether it was considered rather a daring thing to visit these bridge-playing americans in the snug retreat they had chosen for themselves.
meanwhile miss davison had been brought to the group under the lime trees, and placed in a comfortable chair, and waited upon assiduously by the[165] two young men who had accompanied her from the house.
sir william gurdon, the young baronet, was complaining of his ill-luck at poker. denver van santen laughed at him.
“wants a cool head—poker,” he remarked; “and to keep your mind on what you’re doing. that cora and her singing were enough to distract anybody. we’ll get farther away from the music this evening, if we play any more.”
“yes,” assented sir william. “i should awfully like to play again, but i don’t want to make such a duffer of myself as i did this afternoon.”
“i don’t think you’re cut out for a poker-player. if i were you i should give it up,” said denver, in a decided tone.
sir william resented this as an imputation that he was not cool-headed.
“i don’t know why you should say that,” he said rather sharply. “i suppose poker has to be learned like everything else, and probably you play it better now than when you first began.”
denver shook his head modestly.
“not always,” he said; “sometimes i’m an arrant duffer at it. why the other day i was cleaned out, absolutely cleaned out, by a fellow who hadn’t played half a dozen times in his life. i did feel a fool, i can tell you!”
“you shall try again with me this evening,” said[166] the baronet. “i’m not going to be beaten without a struggle, at that or at anything else.”
denver, however, tried to dissuade him.
“you’ll only get licked,” he said simply. “whatever sort of a player you may make some day, and if you go on trying i suppose you will do all right in time, you’re not strong enough to play with old hands like me and the two others who were with us to-day.”
mrs. van santen shrugged her shoulders.
“it’s an almighty shame to play cards all sunday!” she said, in her homely way. “i wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself, denver, to start it!”
“well, so i am, perhaps,” said he good-humoredly; “but i love cards, and if anyone else wants to play, i’m ready to take him on, you bet!”
miss davison, seated near mrs. van santen, was sipping tea and nibbling bread and butter. gerard, when the other two young men grew warm in discussion of poker and moved away a little, took the seat beside her.
“different this, from the way the aldingtons spend their sunday!” said he, in a low voice as soon as their hostess had turned to talk to someone else.
“yes,” said rachel. “it’s rather shocking—till you get used to it.”
“i think it would always seem shocking to me,”[167] said gerard. “i don’t think i have any strong sabbatarian instincts, but i suppose the old puritan survives in us english, for i must confess that to see cards played all day on sunday grates upon me; and i should have thought,” he added quickly, in a lower voice, “that it would have grated on you too.”
this home-thrust made her blush.
“one has to make allowance,” she said, “for other people’s ways. it’s quite true, as you say, that one’s puritan instincts revolt from the continual card-playing; but i suppose that very strict people would say it’s just as wrong to amuse oneself as one does at the aldingtons’, with music and conversation.”
“i don’t see how there could be the same objection to that.”
“it’s only a question of degree.”
“so that you really wouldn’t mind if we all, at the aldingtons’, were to sit down to poker and baccarat, instead of spending the sundays there as we do?”
she turned to him quickly.
“i really don’t see that we are called upon to decide those questions,” she said. “each one must lay down his own laws of conduct. as a matter of fact, it’s a sentiment, and not any law, human or divine, that guides us in the matter, isn’t it? you can’t pretend that card-playing comes under the head of work, can you?”
[168]stung by what he took to be her indifference, gerard made a very indiscreet speech.
“work! i’m not so sure of that,” said he.
miss davison turned to him quickly.
“pray, what do you mean?” she asked sharply.
but he did not venture to say more. indeed, he felt that he had nothing to say. he could not well have defined the secret instinct which made him vaguely suspect that there was something wrong about the play, just because miss davison was in the house at the time.
he certainly would not have liked to avow that that was his reason for his faint suspicions. but that it was because rachel, who had been concerned none the less he knew, at the bottom of his heart, in other dubious transactions, was present at the priory, that he suspected, on hearing that arthur aldington had lost his money, that all was not as fair as it looked in the play.
he stammered and would have changed the subject; but she would not let him.
“surely you don’t imagine,” she said, “that you would meet lady sylvia and the marchioness at houses where there was anything wrong! i’m afraid, mr. buckland, you let your puritanism carry you a great deal too far.”
she spoke with so much emphasis that he felt ashamed of what he had said, the more so that he really had no grounds for supposing that the two[169] wealthy young americans would do anything that was not fair. indeed, he had himself heard one of them trying to persuade a silly fellow not to play poker any more.
“well,” he said, in a shame-faced manner, “i admit that there’s something so distasteful to me in seeing men win money under their own roof, that i said what i had no right to say.”
“i’m glad you admit so much,” said rachel with dignity. “it is not a very nice suggestion to make that my friends, the people in whose house i am staying, are other than honorable.”
remembering what he was forced to suspect concerning her, gerard could not help casting at her a quick glance, at which she blushed again.
she knew very well that he suspected her of complicity in other risky adventures, and she had no right to challenge him.
“well,” said he, “i suppose i ought to apologize, but i confess that if i am forced to play cards here, and one feels awkward at refusing always, when one is asked, i shall feel very despondent at having to pit myself against such a lot of good players.”
a change came over rachel’s face. for a moment she sat silent, but then she rose from her chair, and with a glance which invited him to follow her, sauntered away to a flower-border, where she stopped, as if to admire the mass of gorgeous blossom in front of her.
[170]he looked at her, as she stood, a beautiful and even queenly figure, in her glittering black dress against the green of the foliage and the rich coloring of the flowers; and if she had turned at that moment she would almost have been able to read in gerard’s face the feeling at his heart, the passionate wistful longing to know the truth, the whole truth about her, to learn, for good or ill, the secret which he knew was gnawing at her heart, to be able to tell, once for all, whether the woman who attracted him in spite of his knowledge, in spite of his judgment, was worthy or unworthy of an honest man’s love.
