The Yellow House; Master of Men. E. Phillips Oppenheim
Once more the hall was filled with white light.
There was a moment’s breathless silence, and then the thunder came crashing over our heads. When it was over she was leaning forward with her face buried in her hands. She did not look up immediately.
“The thunder is awful!” I remarked. “I never heard it more directly overhead. I am afraid it is making you uncomfortable, is it not?”
She did not move her hands or answer me. I rose to my feet, frightened.
“What is the matter?” I cried. “Are you ill? Shall I call any one?”
She raised her head and looked at me, motioning me to sit down with a little wave of her hand. Evidently the storm had affected her nerves. Her face was paler than ever save where her clenched fingers seemed to have cut into her cheeks and left red livid marks on either side. Her dark eyes were unnaturally bright and dry. She had lost that dignified serenity of manner which had first impressed me.
“No; please sit down,” she said, softly. “I am all right—only very foolish. That last crash was too awful. It was silly of me to mind, though. I have seen worse storms. It is a sign of advancing age, I suppose.”
I laughed. She was still regarding me fixedly.
“So we are neighbors, Miss Ffolliot?” she remarked.
“Close ones,” I answered. “There is only a little belt of trees between us.”
“I might have guessed who you were,” she said. “For the moment, though, it did not occur to me. You are not,” she said, with a faint smile, “at all what one looks for in a country clergyman’s daughter.”
“I have lived abroad nearly all my life,” I said. “I was at school in Berlin and Heidelberg. My sister has always been my father’s helper. I am afraid that parish work does not appeal to me at all.”
“I am not surprised at that,” she answered. “One needs a special disposition to interest one’s self in those things, and, without being a physiognomist, I can tell you that you have not got it.”
“People in the country are so stupid, and they take so much for granted,” I remarked. “If I were a philanthropist, I should certainly choose to work in a city.”
“You are quite right,” she answered, absently. “Work amongst people who have learned to think a little for themselves is more inspiring.”
We were silent for a moment or two. She was evidently not interested in the discussion, so I did not attempt to carry it on. I turned a little in my chair to watch the storm outside, conscious all the time that her eyes scarcely left my face.
“I had grown so used,” she said, presently, “to the rectory being empty, that I had quite forgotten the possibility of its being occupied again. The vicar used to live several miles away. I wonder that Mr. Deville did not know anything about you—that he did not know your name, at any rate.”
Now I was sorry that she had mentioned Mr. Deville. I was doing my best to forget all that I had heard from Lady Naselton, and to form an independent judgment; but at her words the whole substance of it returned to me with a rush. I leaned back in my chair, and looked at her thoughtfully. She was a woman whose age might be anything between thirty-five and forty. She was plainly dressed, but with a quiet elegance which forbade any idea of a country dressmaker. She was too thin for her figure to be considered in any way good; but she was tall and graceful in all her movements. Her thick, brown hair, touched here and there with grey, was parted in the middle and vigorously brushed away from a low, thoughtful forehead, over which it showed a decided propensity to wave. Her features were good and strongly marked, and her skin was perfect. Her eyes were bright and dark, her mouth piquant and humorous. She had no pretence to beauty, but she was certainly a very attractive and a very well-bred woman. I had never in all my life seen any one who suggested less those things at which Lady Naselton had hinted.
Perhaps she saw the slight change in my face at Mr. Deville’s name. At any rate, she turned the conversation.
“Have you been living in the country before you came here, or near a large city?” she asked. “You will find it very quiet here!”
“We came from Belchester,” I answered. “My father had a church in the suburbs there. It was very horrid; I was not there long, but I hated it. I think the most desolate country region in the world is better than suburbanism.”
“I don’t think that I agree with you,” she smiled. “In a large community at any rate you are closer to the problems of life. I was at Belchester not long ago, and I found it very interesting.”
“You were at Belchester!” I repeated in surprise.
“Yes; I was electioneering. I came to help Mr. Densham.”
“What! The Socialist!” I cried.
She nodded, and I could see that the corners of her mouth were twitching with amusement.
“Yes. I thought that Belchester was rather an enlightened place. We polled over four thousand votes. I think if we had another week or two, and a few less helpers we might have got Mr. Densham in.”
“A few less helpers!” I repeated, aimlessly.
“Yes. That is the worst of Labor and Socialist meetings. There is such a terrible craving amongst the working classes to become stump orators. You cannot teach them to hold their tongues. They make silly speeches, and of course the newspapers on the other side report them, and we get the discredit of their opinions. One always suffers most at the hands of one’s friends.”
I looked at her in silent wonder. I, too, had helped at that election—that is to say, I had driven about in the Countess of Applecorn’s barouche with a great bunch of cornflower in my gown, and talked amiably to a lot of uninteresting people. I had a dim recollection of a one-horse wagonette which we had passed on the way preceded by a brass band and a lot of factory hands, and of Lady Applecorn raising her gold-rimmed eyeglass and saying something about the Socialist candidate.
“Did you make speeches—and that sort of thing?” I asked, hesitatingly.
She laughed outright.
“Of course I did. How else could I have helped? I am afraid that you are beginning to think that I am a very terrible person,” she added, with a decided twinkle in her rich brown eyes.
“Please don’t say that!” I begged. “Only I have been brought up always with people who shuddered at the very mention of the word both here and abroad, and I daresay that I have a wrong impression about it all. For one thing I thought it was only poor people who were Socialists.”
For a moment she looked grave.
“True Socialism is the most fascinating of all doctrines for the rich and the poor, for all thoughtful men and women,” she said, quietly. “It is a religion as well as the very core of politics. But we will not talk about that now. Are you interested in the new books? You might like to see some of these.”
She pointed at the box. “I get all the new novels, but I read very few of them.”
I looked them over as she handed the volumes out to me. I had read a good many books in which she was interested. We began to discuss them, casually at first, and then eagerly. An hour or more must have slipped away. At last I looked at the clock and sprang up.
“You must have some tea,” she said, with her hand on the bell. “Please do not hurry away.”
I hesitated, but she seemed to take my consent for granted, and I suffered myself to be persuaded.
“Come and see my den while they bring it.”
She opened a door on the left hand of the hall, and I passed by her side into a large room of irregular shape, from which French windows led out on to the trim little lawn. The walls