Antony Gray-Gardener Part 34

Mrs. Arbuthnot brightened visibly.

"They're inside a green envelope on the writing-table. You'll find a small pair of very sharp scissors there too. The dark edges are so unsightly if not trimmed. You're sure you don't mind, dearest? It really will be quite a pleasant occupation. It is so dreadfully wet. And Maunder will give you the stickphast. There is clean blotting-paper on the writing-table too, and Maunder can find you anything else you want. Well, that's all right. Maunder is in my room now. She will be going to her tea in ten minutes, so perhaps you might go to her at once. And she is sure to be downstairs for at least an hour and a half, if not longer. Servants always have so much to talk about, and take so long saying it. Why, I can't imagine. It always seems to me so much better not to waste words unnecessarily. So you will have the room to yourself, till she comes to put out my evening things. And I must go back to the drawing-room at once, or they will be waiting Bridge for me. And Lady Fortescue hates being kept waiting. It puts her in a bad temper, and when she's in a bad temper she is extraordinarily erratic as to her declarations. Though, for that matter, she is seldom anything else. I don't mean bad-tempered, but seldom anything but erratic. So, dearest, I mustn't let you keep me any longer. Don't forget to ask Maunder for the stickphast, and anything else you want. And the prints and the scissors----"

"Yes, I know," nodded Trix cheerfully, "on the writing table. Hurry, Aunt Lilla, or they'll all be swearing."

"Oh, my dearest, I trust not. Though perhaps interiorly. And even that is a sin. I remember----"

Trix propelled her gently but firmly from the room. Doubtless Mrs.

Arbuthnot continued her remembrances "interiorly" as she went down the pa.s.sage and descended the stairs.

Ten minutes later, Trix, provided with the stickphast, the green envelope, the scissors, and the clean blotting-paper, and having a very large alb.u.m spread open before her on a table, was busily engaged with the prints. They were mainly views of Llandrindod Wells, though there were quite a good many groups among them, as well as a fair number of single figures. Trix herself appeared chiefly in these last,--Trix in a hat, Trix without a hat, Trix smiling, serious, standing, or sitting.

For half an hour or so Trix worked industriously, indefatigably. She trimmed off dark edges, she applied stickphast, she adjusted the prints in careful positions, she smoothed them down neatly with the clean blotting-paper. At the end of that time, she paused to let the paste dry somewhat before turning the page.

With a view to whiling away the interval, she possessed herself of a sister alb.u.m, one of the many relations stacked against a wall, choosing it haphazard from among the number.

There is a distinct fascination in photographs which recall early memories. Trix fell promptly under the spell of this fascination. The minutes pa.s.sed, finding her engrossed, absorbed. Turning a page she came upon views of Byestry, herself--a white-robed, short-skirted small person--appearing in the foreground of many.

Trix smiled at the representations. It really was rather an adorable small person. It was so slim-legged, mop-haired, and elfin-smiled. It was seen, for the most part, lavis.h.i.+ng blandishments on a somewhat ungainly puppy. One photograph, however, represented the small person in company with a boy.

Trix looked at this photograph, and suddenly amazement fell full upon her. She looked, she leant back in her chair and shut her eyes, and then she looked again. Yes; there was no mistake, no shadow of a mistake. The boy in the photograph was the man with the wheelbarrow, or the other way about, which possibly might be the more correct method of expressing the matter. But, whichever the method, the fact remained the same.

Trix stared harder at the photograph, cogitating, bewildered. Below it was written in Mrs. Arbuthnot's rather sprawling handwriting, "T. D., aged five. A. G., aged fourteen. Byestry, 1892."

Who on earth was A. G.? Trix searched the recesses of her mind. And then suddenly, welling up like a bubbling spring, came memory. Why, of course A. G. was the boy she used to play with, the boy--she began to remember things clearly now--who had tried to sail across the pond, and with whom she had gone to search for pheasants' eggs. A dozen little details came back to her mind, even the sound of the boy's voice, and his laugh, a curiously infectious laugh.

Oh, she remembered him distinctly, vividly. But, what--and there lay the puzzlement, the bewilderment--was the boy, now grown to manhood, doing with a wheelbarrow in the grounds of Chorley Old Hall, and, moreover, dressed as a gardener, working as a gardener, and speaking--well, at any rate speaking after the manner of a gardener? Perhaps to have said, speaking as though he were on a different social footing from Trix, would have better expressed Trix's meaning. But she chose her own phraseology, and doubtless it conveyed to her exactly what she did mean. Anyhow, it was an amazing riddle, an insoluble riddle. Trix stared at the photograph, finding no answer to it.

Finding no answer she left the book open at the page, and returned to the sticking in of prints. But every now and then her eyes wandered to the big volume at the other end of the table, wonderment and query possessing her soul.

Maunder appeared just as Trix had finished her task. Helpful, business-like, she approached the table, a gleam spelling order and tidiness in her eye.

"Leave that alb.u.m, please," said Trix, seeing the helpful Maunder about to shut and bear away the book containing the boy's photograph.

Maunder hesitated, sighed conspicuously, and left the book, occupying herself instead with putting away the stickphast, the scissors, the now not as clean blotting-paper, and somewhat resignedly picking up small shreds of paper which were scattered upon the table-cloth and carpet. In the midst of these occupations the dressing-gong sounded. Maunder p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, actually almost, as well as figuratively.

Ten minutes elapsed. Then Mrs. Arbuthnot appeared.

"What, finished, dearest!" she exclaimed as she opened the door.

"Splendid! How quick you've been. And I am sure the time flew on--not leaden feet, but just the opposite. It always does when one is pleasantly occupied. Developing photographs or a rubber of Bridge, it's just the same, the hands of the clock spin round. And I've won six s.h.i.+llings, and it would have been more if it had not been for Lady Fortescue's last declaration. Four hearts, my dearest, and the knave as her highest card.

They doubled us, and of course we went down. I had only two small ones. I had shown her my own weakness by not supporting her declaration. Of course at my first lead I led her a heart, and it was won by the queen on my left. A heart was returned, and Lady Fortescue played the nine. It was covered by the ten which won the trick. She didn't make a single trick in her own suit. It is quite impossible to understand Lady Fortescue's declarations. And did you put in all the prints? They will have nearly filled the last pages. I must send for another alb.u.m. Are these they?"

She crossed to the open volume.

"No," said Trix, "that's an old volume. I was looking at it. Who's the boy in the photograph, Aunt Lilla?"

Mrs. Arbuthnot bent towards the page.

"'A. G., aged fourteen.' Let me see. Why, of course that was Antony Gray, Richard Gray's son. But I never knew his father. He--I mean the boy--was staying in rooms with his aunt, Mrs. Stanley. She was his father's sister, and married George Stanley. Something to do with the stock exchange, and quite a wealthy man, though a bad temper. And his wife was not a happy woman, as you can guess. Temper means such endless friction when it's bad, especially with regard to things like interfering with the servants, and wanting to order the kitchen dinner. So absurd, as well as annoying. There's a place for a man and a place for a woman, and the man's place is not the kitchen, even if his entry is only figurative. By which I mean that Mr. Stanley did not actually go to the kitchen, but gave orders from his study, on a sort of telephone business he had had fixed up and communicating with the kitchen. So trying for the cook's nerves, especially when making omelettes, or anything that required particular attention. She never knew when his voice wouldn't shout at her from the wall. A small black thing like a hollow handle fixed close to the kitchen range. Quite uncomfortably near her ear. Worse than if he himself had appeared at the kitchen door, which would have been normal, though trying. And Mr. Stanley never lowered his voice. He always spoke as if one were deaf, especially to foreigners who spoke English every bit as well as himself. Mrs. Stanley gave excellent wages, and even bonuses out of her dress money to try and keep cooks. But they all said the voice from the wall got on their nerves. And no wonder. And then unpleasantness when the cooks left. As if it were poor Mrs. Stanley's fault, and not his own. She once suggested they should give up their house and live in an hotel. He couldn't have a telephone arrangement to the kitchen there. But he was more unpleasant still. Almost violent. And he died at last of an attack of apoplexy. Such a relief to Mrs. Stanley. Not the dying of apoplexy, which was a grief. But the quiet, and the being able to keep a cook when he had gone." Mrs. Arbuthnot paused a moment to take breath.

"Do you know what became of the boy?" asked Trix.

Mrs. Arbuthnot considered for an instant.

"I believe he went abroad. Yes; I remember now, hearing from Mrs. Stanley just before she died herself, poor soul--ptomaine poisoning and a dirty cook, some people seem pursued by cooks, figuratively speaking, of course,--that her brother had lost all his money and died, and that Antony had gone abroad. We are told not to judge, and I don't, but it did seem to me that Mrs. Stanley ought to have made him some provision, if not before her death, at least after it. By will, of course I mean by 'after'! which in a sense would have been before death. But you understand. Instead of which she left all her money to a deaf and dumb asylum. No doubt good in its way, but not like anything religious, which would have been more justifiable, though she was a Protestant. And teaching dumb people to speak is always a doubtful blessing. They have such an odd way of talking. Scarcely understandable. But perhaps better than nothing for themselves, though not for others. Though with a penniless nephew and all that money I _do_ think--But, as I said, we are told not to judge."

"And you don't know what became of him after that?" asked Trix.

Mrs. Arbuthnot looked almost reproachful.

"My dearest, how could I? Mrs. Stanley in the family grave with her brother,--she mentioned that particularly in her will, and not with her husband, I suppose she could not have had much affection for him,--I could not possibly hear any more of the young man. There were no other relations, and I did not even know what part of the world he was in. Nor should I have thought it advisable to write to him if I had, unless it had been a brief letter of consolation as from a much older woman, which I was. But even with age I do not think a correspondence between men and women desirable, unless they are related, especially with Mrs. Barclay's novels so widely read. Not for my own sake, of course, as I do not think I am easily given to absurd notions. But one never knows what ideas a young man may not get into his head. And now, dear child, I must dress.

Maunder has been sighing for the last ten minutes, and I know what that means. And you'll be late yourself, if you don't go."

Much later in the evening, Trix, in a far corner of the drawing-room with a novel, found herself again pondering deeply on her discovery.

She was absolutely and entirely certain that the man with the wheelbarrow was none other than Antony Gray, the boy with whom she had played in her childhood. She remembered now that his face had been oddly familiar to her at the time, though, being unable to put any name to him, she had looked upon it merely as a chance likeness. But since he was Antony Gray, what was he doing at Chorley Old Hall?

Her first impulse had been to write to the d.u.c.h.essa, tell her of her certainty, and ask her to find out any particulars she could regarding the man. She had abandoned that idea, in view of the fact that she would have to say where she had met him, which would very probably lead to questions difficult to answer.

One thing she would do, however, and she gave a little inward laugh at the thought, when she was next at Byestry, if she saw him again, she would ask him if he remembered the pond and the pheasants' eggs. It would be amusing to see his amazed face.

CHAPTER XXVIII

FOR THE DAY ALONE

Probably there are times in the life of every human being, when the only possible method of living at all, would seem to be by living in the day--nay, in the moment--alone, resolutely shutting one's eyes to the mistakes behind one, refusing to look at the blankness ahead. And this is more especially the case when the mistakes and the blankness have been caused by our own actions. There is not even stolid philosophy to come to our aid, a shrugging of the shoulders, a foisting of the blame on to fate. It may be that the majority of the incidents have been forced upon us, that we have not been free agents in the matter, but if we must of honesty say,--Here or there was the mistake which led to them, and I made that mistake of my own free will,--we cannot turn to philosophy regarding fate for our comfort.

To Antony's mind he had made a big mistake. Fate had been responsible for his receipt of that letter, it had had nothing to do with himself; he might even consider that, having received it, fate was largely responsible for his journey to England and his meeting with the d.u.c.h.essa, but he could not possibly accuse fate of his acceptance of those mad conditions attached to the will. He had been an entirely free agent so far as they were concerned; they had been put before him for him to accept or reject them as he chose, and he had accepted them. It had been a huge blunder on his part, and one for which he alone had been responsible.

Of course he might quite justly declare that he could not possibly have foreseen all the other moves fate had up her sleeve; but then no living being could have foreseen them. Fate never does show her subsequent moves. She puts decisions before us in such a way, that she leaves us to imagine we can shape our succeeding actions to our own mind and according to the decision made. She leaves us to imagine it is simply a question whether we will reach our goal by a road bearing slightly to the right or to the left, by a road which may take a long time to traverse and be a fairly smooth road, or a road which will take a short time to traverse and be a rough one. Or, even, as in Antony's case, she will leave us to imagine there is one route and one route only by which we may reach our goal. And then, whatever our choice, she may suddenly plant a huge barrier across the path, labelled,--No thoroughfare to your goal in this direction.

Sometimes it is possible to defy fate, retrace our steps, and start anew towards the goal. Occasionally we will find that we have burnt our bridges behind us; we are up against an obstacle, and there we are bound to remain helpless. And here fate appears at her worst trickery.

And even supposing we are minded to call it not fate, but Providence, who does these things, it will be of remarkably little comfort to us when we are aware of our own blunders in the background.

A hundred times Antony reviewed the past; a hundred times he blamed himself for the part he had chosen. It is true that, so far as he could see, none other would have had the smallest chance of leading him to his desired goal, yet any other could not have raised the enormous barrier he now saw before him.

He had angered her: she despised him.

To his mind nothing, no subsequent happening, could alter that fact.

There was the thought he had to face, and behind him lay his own irredeemable blunder.

Well, the only thing now left for him was to live his life as it was, minus one spark of brightness. Certainly he didn't feel like singing, but whining was no earthly good. And since he could not sing, and would not whine, silence alone was left him. He would work as best he could till the year was out. He had no intention of going back on his bargain, despite the uselessness of it. At the end of the year, the Hall being his own property, he would sell the place, and travel. Perhaps he would go off shooting big game, or perhaps he would go round the world. It did not much matter which, so long as it prevented him from whining.

And quite possibly, though he would never have any heart for singing, the day might come when he would again be able to whistle.