Tiny Luttrell. Hornung Ernest William
Holland came to treat her as a sister, and to understand her more or less.
In Australia he had seen very little of her, though enough to regard her at the time as an arrant little heartless flirt, for whom sighed silly swains innumerable. That she was, indeed, a flirt there was still no denying; but as his knowledge of her ripened, Holland was glad to unharness the opprobrious epithets with which Ruth's sister had first driven herself into his mind. He discovered good points in Christina, and among them a humor which he had never detected out in Australia. Probably his own sense of it had lost its edge out there, for love-making blunts nothing sooner; while Ruth, for her part, was naturally wanting in humor. Holland had never been blind to this defect in his wife, but he seemed resigned to it; one can conceive it to be a merit in the wife of an amusing man.
Some people called Erskine amusing – it is not hard to win this label from some people – but at any rate he was never likely to find it difficult to amuse Ruth. Now no companion in this world is more charming for all time than the person who is content to do the laughing. As a novelty, however, Christina had her own distinctive attraction for Erskine Holland. And they got on so well together that presently he saw more in Tiny than her humor, which others had seen before him; he saw that her heart was softer than she thought; but he divined that something had happened to harden it.
"She has been falling in love," he said to Ruth – "and something has happened."
"What makes you think so? She has told me nothing about it," Ruth said.
"Ah, she is sensitive. I can see that, too. It's her bitterness, however, that makes me think something has turned out badly."
"She is sadly cynical," remarked Ruth.
"Cynically sad, I rather think," her husband said. "I don't fancy she's languishing now; I should say she has got over the thing, whatever it has been – and is rather disappointed with herself for getting over it so easily. She has hinted at nothing, but she has a trick of generalizing; and she affects to think that one person doesn't fret for another longer than a week in real life. I don't say her cynicism is so much affectation; something or other has left a bad taste in her mouth; but I should like to bet that it wasn't an affair of the most serious sort."
"Her affairs never were very serious, Erskine."
"So I gathered from what I saw of her before we were married. It's a pity," said Erskine musingly. "I'd like to see her married, but I'd love to see her wooed! That's where the sport would come in. There would be no knowing where the fellow had her. He might hook her by luck, but he'd have to play her like fun before he landed her! There'd be a strong sporting interest in the whole thing, and that's what one likes."
"It's a pity I didn't know what you liked," Ruth said, with a smile; "and a wonder that you liked me, and not Tiny!"
"My darling," laughed her husband, "that sort of sport's for the young fellows. I'm past it. I merely meant that I should like to see the sport. No, Tiny's charming in her way, but God forbid that it should be your way too!"
Now Ruth was such a fond little wife that at this speech she became too much gratified on her own account to care to discuss her sister any further. But in dismissing the subject of Tiny she took occasion to impress one fact upon Erskine:
"You may be right, dear, and something may have happened since I left home; but I can only tell you that Tiny hasn't breathed a single word about it to me."
And this is an early sample of the disingenuous streak that was in the very grain of Ruth. Christina, indeed, had told her nothing, but Ruth knew nearly all that there was to know of the affair whose traces were plain to her husband's insight. Beyond the fact that the name of Tiny Luttrell had been coupled in Melbourne with that of Lord Manister, and the on dit that Lord Manister had treated her rather badly, there was, indeed, very little to be known. But Ruth knew at least as much as her mother, who had written to her on the subject the more freely and frequently because her younger daughter flatly refused the poor lady her confidence. There was no harm in Ruth's not showing those letters to her husband. There was no harm in her keeping her sister's private affairs from her husband's knowledge. There was the reverse of harm in both reservations, as Erskine would have been the first to allow. Ruth had her reasons for making them; and if her reasons embodied a deep design, there was no harm in that either, for surely it is permissible to plot and scheme for the happiness of another. I can see no harm in her conduct from any point of view. But it was certainly disingenuous, and it entailed an insincere attitude toward two people, which in itself was not admirable. And those two were her nearest. However amiable her plans might be, they made it impossible for Ruth to be perfectly sincere with her husband on one subject, which was bad enough. But with Christina it was still more impossible to be at all candid; and this happened to be worse, for reasons which will be recognized later. In the first place, Tiny immediately discovered Ruth's insincerity, and even her plans. Tiny was a difficult person to deceive. She detected the insincerity in a single conversation with Ruth on the afternoon following Lady Almeric's ball, and before she went to bed she was as much in possession of the plans as if Ruth had told her them.
The conversation took place in Erskine's study, where the sisters had foregathered for a lazy afternoon.
"Oh, by the way," said Ruth, apropos of the ball, "it was a coincidence your dancing with Lord Manister."
"Why a coincidence?" asked Christina. She glanced rather sharply at Ruth as she put the question.
"Well, it is just possible that we shall see something of him in the country. That's all," said Ruth, as she bent over the novel of which she was cutting the pages.
Christina also had a book in her lap, but she had not opened it; she was trying to read Ruth's averted face.
"I thought perhaps you meant because we saw something of him in Melbourne," she said presently. "I suppose you know that we did see something of him? He even honored us once or twice."
"So you told me in your letters."
The paper knife was still at work.
"What makes it likely that we shall see him in the country?"
"Well, Mundham Hall is quite close to Essingham, you know."
"Mundham Hall! Whose place is that?"
"Lord Dromard's," replied Ruth, still intent upon her work.
"Surely not!" exclaimed Christina. "Lord Manister once told me the name of their place, and I am convinced it wasn't that."
"They have several places. But until quite lately they have lived mostly at the other side of the county, at Wreford Abbey."
"That was the name."
"But they have sold that place," said Ruth, "and last autumn Lord Dromard bought Mundham; it was empty when we were at Essingham last year."
For some moments there was silence, broken only by the leisurely swish of Ruth's paper knife. Then Christina said, "That accounts for it," thinking aloud.
"For what?" asked Ruth rather nervously.
"Lord Manister told me he knew of Essingham. He never mentioned Mundham. Is it so very close to your rectory?"
"The grounds are; they are very big; the hall itself is miles from the gates – almost as far as our home station was from the boundary fence."
"Surely not," Tiny said quietly.
"Well, that's a little exaggeration, of course."
"Then I wish it wasn't!" Tiny cried out. "I don't relish the idea of living under the lee of such very fine people," she said next moment, as quietly as before.
"No more do I – no more does Erskine," Ruth made haste to declare. "But we enjoyed ourselves so much there last August that we said at the time that we would take the rectory again this August. We made the people promise us the refusal. And it seemed absurd to refuse just because Lord Dromard had bought Mundham; shouldn't you have said so yourself, dear?"
"Certainly I should," answered Tiny; and for half an hour no more was said.
The afternoon was wet; there was no inducement to go out, even with the necessary energy, and the two young women, on whose pillows the sun had lain before