The Yellow House; Master of Men. E. Phillips Oppenheim
utter and miserable failure.”
“On the whole,” I remarked, resuming my chair, “it is perhaps well that he has not called. I might not like him.”
Lady Naselton’s hard little laugh rang out upon the afternoon stillness. The idea seemed to afford her infinite but bitter amusement.
“Like him, my dear! Why, he would frighten you to death. Fancy any one liking Bruce Deville! Wait until you’ve seen him. He is the most perfect prototype of degeneration in a great family I have ever come in contact with. The worst of it, too, that he was such a charming boy. Why, isn’t that Mr. Ffolliot coming?” she added, in an altogether different tone. “I am so glad that I am going to meet him at last.”
I looked up and followed her smiling gaze. My father was coming noiselessly across the smooth, green turf towards us. We both of us watched him for a moment, Lady Naselton with a faint look of surprise in her scrutiny. My father was not in the least of the type of the ordinary country clergyman. He was tall and slim, and carried himself with an air of calm distinction. His clean-shaven face was distinctly of the intellectual cast. His hair was only slightly grey, was parted in the middle and vigorously mobile and benevolent. His person in every way was faultless and immaculate, from the tips of his long fingers to the spotless white cravat which alone redeemed the sombreness of his clerical attire. I murmured a few words of introduction, and he bowed over Lady Naselton’s hand with a smile which women generally found entrancing.
“I am very glad to meet Lady Naselton,” he said, courteously. “My daughter has told me so much of your kindness to her.”
Lady Naselton made some pleasing and conventional reply. My father turned to me.
“Have you some tea, Kate?” he asked. “I have been making a long round of calls, and it is a little exhausting.”
“I have some, but it is not fit to drink,” I answered, striking the gong. “Mary shall make some fresh. It will only take a minute or two.”
My father acquiesced silently. He was fastidious in small things, and I knew better than to offer him cold tea. He drew up a basket-chair to us and sat down with a little sigh of relief.
“You have commenced your work here early,” Lady Naselton remarked. “Do you think that you are going to like these parts?”
“The country is delightful,” my father answered readily. “As to the work—well, I scarcely know. Rural existence is such a change after the nervous life of a great city.”
“You had a large parish at Belchester, had you not?” Lady Naselton asked.
“A very large one,” he answered. “I am fond of work. I have always been used to large parishes.”
And two curates, I reflected silently. Lady Naselton was looking sympathetic.
“You will find plenty to do here, I believe,” she remarked. “The schools are in a most backward condition. My husband says that unless there is a great change in them very soon we shall be having the School Board.”
“We must try and prevent that,” my father said, gravely. “Of course I have to remember that I am only curate-in-charge here, but still I shall do what I can. My youngest daughter Alice is a great assistance to me in such matters. By the by, where is Alice?” he added, turning to me.
“She is in the village somewhere,” I answered. “She will not be home for tea. She has gone to see an old woman—to read to her, I think.”
My father sighed gently. “Alice is a good girl,” he said.
I bore the implied reproof complacently. My father sipped his tea for a moment or two, and then asked a question.
“You were speaking of some one when I crossed the lawn?” he remarked. “Some one not altogether a desirable neighbor I should imagine from Lady Naselton’s tone. Would it be a breach of confidence——”
“Oh, no,” I interrupted. “Lady Naselton was telling me all about the man that lives at the Court—our neighbor, Mr. Bruce Deville.”
My father set his cup down abruptly. His long walk had evidently tired him. He was more than ordinarily pale. He moved his basket-chair a few feet further back into the deep, cool shade of the cedar tree. For a second or two his eyes were half closed and his eyelids quivered.
“Mr. Bruce Deville,” he repeated, softly—“Bruce Deville! It is somewhat an uncommon name.”
“And somewhat an uncommon man!” Lady Naselton remarked, dryly. “A terrible black sheep he is, Mr. Ffolliot. If you really want to achieve a triumph you should attempt his conversion. You should try and get him to come to church. Fancy Bruce Deville in church! The walls would crack and the windows fall in!”
“My predecessor was perhaps not on good terms with him,” my father suggested, softly. “I have known so many unfortunate cases in which the squire of the parish and the vicar have not been able to hit it off.”
Lady Naselton shook her head. She had risen to her feet, and was holding out a delicately gloved hand.
“No, it is not that,” she said. “No one could hit it off with Bruce Deville. I was fond of him once; but I am afraid that he is a very bad lot. I should advise you to give him as wide a berth as possible. Listen. Was that actually six o’clock? I must go this second. Come over and see me soon, won’t you, Miss Ffolliot, and bring your father? I will send a carriage for you any day you like. It is such an awful pull up to Naselton. Goodbye.”
She was gone with a good deal of silken rustle, and a faint emission of perfume from her trailing skirt. Notwithstanding his fatigue, my father accompanied her across the lawn, and handed her into her pony carriage. He remained several minutes talking to her earnestly after she had taken her seat and gathered up the reins, and it seemed to me that he had dropped his voice almost to a whisper. Although I was but a few paces off I could hear nothing of what they were saying. When at last the carriage drove off and he came back to me, he was thoughtful, and there was a dark shade upon his face. He sat quite still for several moments without speaking. Then he looked up at me abruptly.
“If Lady Naselton’s description of our neighbor is at all correct,” he remarked, “he must be a perfect ogre.”
I nodded.
“One would imagine so. He is her godson, but she can find nothing but evil to say of him.”
“Under which circumstances it would be as well for us—for you girls especially—to carefully avoid him,” my father continued, keeping his clear, grey eyes steadily fixed upon my face. “Don’t you agree with me?”
“Most decidedly I do,” I answered.
But, curiously enough, notwithstanding his evil reputation—perhaps because of it—I was already beginning to feel a certain amount of unaccountable interest in Mr. Bruce Deville.
CHAPTER II
ON THE MOOR
After tea my father went to his study, for it was late in the week, and he was a most conscientious writer of sermons. I read for an hour, and then, tired alike of my book and my own company, I strolled up and down the drive. This restlessness was one of my greatest troubles. When the fit came I could neither work nor read nor think connectedly. It was a phase of incipient dissatisfaction with life, morbid, but inevitable. At the end of the drive nearest the road, I met Alice, my youngest sister, walking briskly with a book under her arm, and a quiet smile upon her homely face. I watched her coming towards me, and I almost envied her. What a comfort to be blessed with a placid disposition and an optimistic frame of mind!
“Well, you look as though you had been enjoying yourself,” I remarked, placing myself in her way.
“So I have—after a fashion,” she answered, good humoredly.