The Girl from Keller's. Harold Bindloss
“You don't look forward to seeing the Daltons to-morrow,” she remarked.
“That's so,” Festing admitted. “I didn't quite know what I'd undertaken when I gave my promise. The thing looks worse in England. In fact, it looks very nearly impossible just now.”
“But you are going?”
Festing spread out his hands. “Certainly. What can I do? Charnock hustled me into it; he has a way of getting somebody else to do the things he shirks. But I gave him my word.”
“And that's binding!” remarked Muriel, who was half amused by his indignation. She thought Charnock deserved it, but Festing could be trusted.
“I wish I could ask your advice,” he resumed. “You could tell me what to say; but as I don't know if Charnock would approve, it mightn't be the proper thing.”
Muriel was keenly curious to learn the truth about her friend's love affair, but she resisted the temptation. Because she liked Festing, she would not persuade him to do something for which he might afterwards reproach himself.
“No,” she said, “perhaps you oughtn't to tell me. But I don't think you need be nervous. If you have the right feeling, you will take the proper line.”
Then they went into the house where the curate was talking to Gardiner.
CHAPTER VI
FESTING KEEPS HIS WORD
Next afternoon Festing leaned his borrowed bicycle against the gate at Knott Scar and walked up the drive. He had grave misgivings, but it was too late to indulge them, and he braced himself and looked about with keen curiosity. The drive curved and a bank of shrubs on one side obstructed his view, but the Scar rose in front, with patches of heather glowing a rich crimson among the gray rocks. Beneath these, a dark beech wood rolled down the hill. On the other side there was a lawn that looked like green velvet. His trained eye could detect no unevenness; the smooth surface might have been laid with a spirit level. Festing had seen no grass like this in Canada and wondered how much labor it cost.
Then he came to the end of the shrubs and saw a small, creeper-covered house, with a low wall, pierced where shallow steps went up, along the terrace. The creeper was in full leaf and dark, but roses bloomed about the windows and bright-red geraniums in urns grew upon the wall. He heard bees humming and a faint wind in the beech tops, but the shadows scarcely moved upon the grass, and a strange, drowsy quietness brooded over the place. Indeed, the calm was daunting; he felt he belonged to another world and was intruding there, but went resolutely up the shallow steps.
Two white-haired ladies received him in a shady, old-fashioned room with a low ceiling. There was a smell of flowers, but it was faint, and he thought it harmonized with the subdued lighting of the room. A horizontal piano stood in a corner and the dark, polished rosewood had dull reflections; some music lay about, but not in disorder, and he noted the delicate modeling of the cabinet with diamond panes it had been taken from. He knew nothing about furniture, but he had an eye for line and remarked the taste that characterized the rest of the articles. There were a few landscapes in water-color, and one or two pieces of old china, of a deep blue that struck the right note of contrast with the pale-yellow wall.
Festing felt that the house had an influence; a gracious influence perhaps, but vaguely antagonistic to him. He had thought of a house as a place in which one ate and slept, but did not expect it to mold one's character. Surroundings like this were no doubt Helen Dalton's proper environment, but he came from the outside turmoil, where men sweated and struggled and took hard knocks.
In the meantime, he talked to and studied the two ladies. Although they had white hair, they were younger than he thought at first and much alike. It was as if they had faded prematurely from breathing too rarefied an atmosphere and shutting out rude but bracing blasts. Still they had a curious charm, and he had felt a hint of warmth in Mrs. Dalton's welcome that puzzled him.
“We have been expecting you. Bob told us you would come,” she said in a low, sweet voice, and added with a smile: “I wanted to meet you.”
Festing wondered what Bob had said about him, but for a time they tactfully avoided the object of his visit and asked him questions about his journey. Then Mrs. Dalton got up.
“Helen is in the garden. Shall we look for her?”
She took him across the lawn to a bench beneath a copper beech, and Festing braced himself when a girl got up. She wore white and the shadow of the leaves checkered the plain dress. He noted the unconscious grace of her pose as she turned towards him, and her warm color, which seemed to indicate a sanguine temperament. Helen Dalton was all that he had thought, and something more. He knew her level, penetrating glance, but she had a virility he had not expected. The girl was somehow stronger than he portrait.
“Perhaps I had better leave you to talk to Mr. Festing,” Mrs. Dalton said presently and moved away.
Helen waited with a calm that Festing thought must cost her much, and moving a folding chair, he sat down opposite.
“I understand Bob told you I would come,” he said. “You see, he is a friend of mine.”
“Yes,” she replied with a faint sparkle in her eyes. “He hinted that you would explain matters. I think he meant you would make some defense for him.”
Festing noted that her voice was low like her mother's, but it had a firmer note. He could be frank with her, but there was a risk that he might say too much.
“Well,” he said, “I may make mistakes. In fact, it was with much reluctance I promised to come, and if Bob hadn't insisted——” He paused and pulled himself together. “On the surface, of course, his conduct looks inexcusable, but he really has some defense, and I think you ought to hear it, for your own sake.”
“Perhaps I ought,” she agreed quietly. “Well, I am willing.”
Festing began by relating Charnock's troubles. He meant her to understand the situation and supplied rather confusing particulars about prairie farming and mortgages. For all that, the line he took was strong; he showed how Charnock's embarrassments prevented his offering her comforts she would find needful and saving her from the monotonous toil an impoverished farmer's wife must undertake. In the meantime, but unconsciously, he threw some light on Charnock's vacillating character.
When he stopped Helen mused for a few minutes. Although she had got a shock when Charnock gave her up, she knew her lover better than when she had promised to marry him. He came home once in the winter and she had remarked a change. Bob was not altogether the man she had thought; there were things that jarred, and his letters gradually made this plainer. Still she had meant to keep her promise, and his withdrawal hurt. She had borne something for his sake, because her mother and her relations had not approved the engagement. Then she roused herself and turned to Festing.
“You have done your best for your friend and Bob ought to be grateful, but you both start from a wrong point. Why do you take it for granted that I would shrink from hardship?”
“I didn't imagine you would shrink,” Festing declared. “For all that, Bob was right. The life is too hard for a girl brought up like you.” He hesitated a moment. “I mean for a girl brought up in your surroundings.”
Helen smiled and he knew it was a sign of courage, but had a vague feeling that he understood why she did so as he looked about. The sighing in the beech tops had died away and the shadows did not move upon the lawn. A heavy smell of flowers came from the borders and the house seemed to be sleeping in the hot sunshine. Everything was beautiful,