When Ghost Meets Ghost. William De Morgan
A man of very good family too. So—altogether! … This was the expression used by Miss Smith-Dickenson's core, almost unrebuked. "Of course, I remember the poem about the collie-dog," she added aloud.
"Can you remember the name of the dog? Wasn't it Aeneas?"
"No—Achilles."
"I meant Achilles. Well—his dog's Achilles."
"I thought you said there was no name on the collar."
"No more there was. But I understand that Gwen met him yesterday evening—down by Arthur's Bridge, I believe—and had some conversation with him, I gather."
"Oh!"
"But why? Why 'Oh!'—I mean?"
"I didn't mean anything. Only that she was looking so scared and unhappy at breakfast, and that would account for it."
"Surely. … "
"Surely what?"
"Well—does it want accounting for? A man shot dead almost in sight of the house, and by your own gamekeeper! Isn't that enough?"
"Enough in all conscience. But it makes a difference. All the difference. I can't exactly describe. … It is not as if she had never met him in her life before. Now do you see? … "
"Never met him in her life before? … " The Hon. Percival stands waiting for more, one-third of his cigar in abeyance between his finger-tips. Getting no more, he continues:—"Why—you don't mean to say? … "
"What?"
"Well—it's something like this, if I can put the case. Take somebody you've just met and spoken to. … " But Mr. Pellew's prudence became suddenly aware of a direction in which the conversation might drift, and he pulled up short. If he pushed on rashly, how avoid an entanglement of himself in a personal discussion? If his introduction to this lady had been days old, instead of merely hours, there would have been no quicksands ahead. He felt proud of his astuteness in dealing with a wily sex.
Only he shouldn't have been so transparent. All that the lady had to do was to change the subject of the conversation with venomous decision, and she did it. "What a beautiful dark green fritillary!" said she. "I hope you care for butterflies, Mr. Pellew. I simply dote on them." She was conscious of indebtedness for this to her sister Lilian. Never mind!—Lilian was married now, and had no further occasion to be enchanting. A sister might borrow a cast-off. Its effect was to make the gentleman clearly alive to the fact that she knew exactly why he had stopped short.
But Miss Smith-Dickenson did not say to Mr. Pellew:—"I am perfectly well aware that you, sir, see danger ahead—danger of a delicate discussion of the difference our short acquaintance would have made to me if I had heard this morning that you were shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its owner—or slave—from capture or entanglement by dangerous single women with no property. You would have been perfectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations as an Adonis had been less equivocal." She said no such thing. But something or other—can it have been the jump to that butterfly?—made Mr. Pellew conscious that if she had worded a thought of the kind, it would have been just like a female of her sort. Because he wasn't going to end up that she wouldn't have been so very far wrong.
A name ought to be invented for these little ripples of human intercourse, that are hardly to be called embarrassments, seeing that their monde denies their existence. We do not believe it is only nervous and imaginative folk that are affected by them. The most prosaic of mankind keeps a sort of internal or subjective diary of contemporary history, many of whose entries run on such events, and are so very unlike what their author said at the time.
The dark green fritillary did not stay long enough to make any conversation worth the name, having an appointment with a friend in the air. Mr. Pellew hummed Non piu andrai farfallon amoroso, producing on the mind of Miss Dickenson vague impressions of the Opera, Her Majesty's—not displaced by a Hotel in those days—tinctured with a consciousness of Club-houses and Men of the World. This gentleman, with his whiskers and monocular wrinkle responding to his right-eye-glass-grip, who had as good as admitted last night that his uncle was intimate with the late Prince Regent, was surely an example of this singular class; which is really scarcely admissible on the domestic hearth, owing to the purity of the latter. Possibly, however, these impressions had nothing to do with the lady's discovery that perhaps she ought to go in and find out what "they" were thinking of doing this morning. It may be that it was only due to her consciousness that you cannot—when female and single—stand alone with a live single gentleman on a terrace, both speechless. You can walk up and down with him, conversing vivaciously, but you mustn't come to an anchor beside him in silence. There would be a suspicion about it of each valuing the other's presence for its own sake, which would never do.
"Goin' in?" said the Hon. Percival. "Well—it's been very jolly out here."
"Very pleasant, I am sure," said Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson. If either made a diary entry out of this, it was of the slightest. She moved away across the lawn, her skirt brushing it audibly, as the cage-borne skirt of those days did, suggesting the advantages of Jack-in-the-Green's costume. For Jack could leave his green on the ground and move freely inside it. He did not stick out at the top. Mr. Pellew remained on the shady terrace, to end up his cigar. He was a little disquieted by the recollection of his very last words, which remembered themselves on his tongue-tip as a key remembers itself in one's hand, when one has forgotten if one really locked that box. Why, though, should he not say to a maiden lady of a certain age—these are the words he thought in—that it was very nice on this terrace? Why not indeed? But that wasn't exactly the question. What he had really said was that it had been very nice on this terrace. All the difference!
Miss Dickenson was soon aware what the "they" she had referred to was going to do, and offered to accompany it. The Countess and her daughter and others were the owners of the voices she could hear outside the drawing-room door when at liberty to expand, after a crush in half a French window that opened on the terrace. Her ladyship the Countess was as completely upset as her husband's ancestry permitted—quite white and almost crying, only not prepared to admit it. "Oh, Constance dear," said she. "Are you there? You are always so sensible. But isn't this awful?"
Aunt Constance perceived the necessity for a sympathetic spurt. She had been taking it too easily, evidently. She was equal to the occasion, responding with effusion that it was "so dreadful that she could think of nothing else!" Which wasn't true, for the moment before she had been collating the Hon. Percival's remarks and analysing the last one. Not that she was an unfeeling person—only more like everyone else than everyone else may be inclined to admit.
CHAPTER XII
HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WALKED OVER TO THE VERDERER'S HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS. THE ACCIDENT WAS NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN OLD GENERAL WHO MADE A POOR FIGURE AS A CORPSE. HOW THE WOUNDED MAN'S FATHER AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW HE HIMSELF WAS TO BE CARRIED TO THE TOWERS
There was no need for a reason why Lady Gwendolen and her mother should take the first opportunity of walking over to the Lodge, where this man lay either dead or dying; but one presented itself to the Countess, as an addendum to others less defined. "We ought to go," said she, "if only for poor old Stephen's sake. The old man will be quite off his head with grief. And it was such an absolute accident."
This was on the way, walking over the grassland. Aunt Constance felt a little unconvinced. He who sends a bullet abroad at random may hear later that it had its billet all along, though it was so silent about it. As for the girl, she was in a fever of excitement; to reach the scene of disaster, anyhow—to hear some news of respite, possibly. No one had vouched for Death so far.
Sir Coupland was already on the spot, having only stayed long enough to give particulars of the catastrophe to the Earl;