The Tree of Knowledge Part 21

"You would try to sit still, if it would be a help to Miss Allonby, I am sure?"

"I don't think she means it," cried the tortured Elsa, with a sob.

"I meant it, of course," said Wynifred, very sorry to have been so unintentionally distressing. "But I am ashamed of having asked so much.

Sitting is very tedious, and takes up a great deal of time."

"I should be very anxious to see what you would make of her," said Mr.

Fowler, with interest. "Elsa, little woman, you must see if you can't keep still, if Miss Allonby is so kind as to take so much trouble about you."

"Trouble! It would be both pleasure and education," said Wyn, with a smile; "she will make a delicious study, if----"

"If?" said Lady Mabel, turning swiftly as she hesitated.

"If I might do her hair," said Wyn, laughing, and throwing a look of such arch and friendly confidence towards Elaine that the shy girl smiled back at her with a sudden glow.

"Oh, you may do as you like with my hair, if the aunts will only let me sit to you!" she said, with eager change of feeling.

"Leave the aunts to me, Elsie--I'll manage them," said Mr. Fowler, rea.s.suringly.

"To think that I must go home and lose all this interest and enjoyment,"

cried Lady Mabel, in some feigned, and a good deal of real regret.

"Why need you go, Mab?" asked Claud.

"Oh, my dear boy, I must! Edward is coming down to fetch me, and there are my darlings to see after. My holiday is over. But I shall comfort myself with hoping to have Elsa to stay with me when I am settled.

Edward writes me word that we shall be obliged to have a house in town this winter--my husband has been so ill-advised as to get into Parliament," explained she to Mr. Fowler.

"Oh, yes; I remember hearing very gladly of his success," was the cordial response. "Also that his electioneering was most ably a.s.sisted by Lady Mabel Wynch-Frere, who was received with an ovation whenever she appeared in public."

He was bending over her as he spoke, handing her the strawberries, and she smiled up at him with sudden pa.s.sion of Irish eyes.

"Any effort in the good cause," she said, with fervency.

"Exactly, in the good cause," he responded. "You may speak out--we are all friends here."

"How do you know?" asked Claud. "You don't suppose I sympathize with Mab's political delusions, do you? A younger son must be a Radical, as far as I can see. The idea of plunder is the only idea likely to appeal to his feelings with any force."

Mr. Fowler laughed pleasantly.

"You put me in a difficulty," said he. "I was going to try to persuade you to come and take up your quarters in my bachelor diggings in the Lower House for awhile and try my shooting; but if you are going to vote against the government----"

"You'll have to drive me out of the Lower House--stop my mouth with a peerage, eh?" cried Claud.

"Miss Allonby doesn't see the joke," said Mr. Fowler; "my dwelling is called the Lower House," he proceeded to explain, "receiving that t.i.tle merely because it happens to be further down the valley than Edge Willoughby."

"I see," said the girl, laughing. "Well! as a representative of law and order, I'm shocked to hear you advocating shooting, Mr. Fowler!"

"To an Irishman, eh? Yes, it's risky, I own. But what say you, Mr.

Cranmer, seriously? Come and try my covers?"

It was exactly the invitation Claud wanted. He had no compunction in becoming the guest of a well-to-do bachelor, whose birds were probably pining to be killed; and it would keep him in this lovely part of the country, and within reach of Allonby and his mystery, not to mention Elsa Brabourne.

His face lighted up with pleasure.

"But----" he began.

"But it's not the 12th, yet--no, you're right. I can offer you a trout-stream to begin with, and a horse if you care about riding. If you are bored, you can run up to town, and come down again for the shooting."

"I shan't be bored," said Claud.

In point of fact, the whole thing promised most favorably.

A visit to a house with no mistress--where doubtless you might smoke in your bed-room, and need never exert yourself to get off the sofa, or put on a decent coat, or make yourself entertaining, or go to church twice on Sundays.

His bachelor soul rejoiced.

All this, with the ladies within reach if by chance he wanted them or their society, why, it was the acme of luxury!

"I was wondering how you were going to begin shooting so soon," said Lady Mabel; "but I a.s.sure you, Claud will be perfectly happy if only you let him loaf about and dream by himself. He likes a contemplative existence."

"Yes," said Claud, modestly and even cheerfully accepting this description of himself. "I like leisure to congratulate myself that I have none of the vices, and few of the failings, of my fellow-creatures in this imperfect world."

"_Few_ of the failings--have you _any_?" asked Miss Allonby, with innocent surprise, holding a strawberry ready poised for devouring. "Do you really admit so much? I am curious to know to what human weakness you are free to confess?"

"Would you really like to know? Well--it is a very interesting subject to me, so doubtless it must be interesting to other people," said Claud, in his debonair way. "Know, then, that I have a fault. Yes, I know it, self-deception was never a vice of mine; I see clearly that I am not without a defect; and I deeply fear that time will not eradicate it, though haply indigestion may do so. This weakness is--strawberries." He heaved a deep sigh, and helped himself to his fourth plateful with melancholy brow.

"Only one consolation have I," he went on, placing a thick lump of cream on the fruit. "It is that the period of degradation is transient. A few short weeks in each year, and I recover my self-respect until next June.

Peaches smile on me in vain, dusky grapes besiege my constancy. My friends tempt me with pine-apples, and wave netted melons before my dazzled vision; but I remain temperate. Strawberries are my one vulnerable point; which, being the case, I know you'll excuse my further conversation."

"Say no more," said Wyn, in solemn accents. "A confidence so touching will be respected by all."

"Ah! sympathy is very sweet," sighed he. "Have you a failing, by chance, Miss Allonby?"

"I am sure I do not know," she answered, with great appearance of reflective candor. "My self-knowledge is evidently not so complete as yours. If I were conscious of one, I fear I should not have your courage to avow it; perhaps because my defect would most likely be chronic, and not a mere pa.s.sing weakness like yours."

During this pa.s.sage, Lady Mabel had been abundantly occupied in studying Elsa's face. Its expression of incredulity and dismay was strange to behold. That, two grown-up persons should deliberately set to work to talk the greatest nonsense that occurred to them at the moment had never struck her as in any way a possibility. What made them do it? Were they in earnest? Their faces were as grave as judges, but Mr. Fowler was laughing. She hoped that n.o.body would ever speak to her like that, and expect her to reply in the same vein. It overwhelmed, it oppressed her.

Involuntarily she drew near Lady Mabel, and shrank almost behind her, as if for protection from the two who were, like Cicero, speaking Greek.

Lady Mabel amused herself in thinking what Miss Charlotte Willoughby's verdict would have been, had she been present.

"I am sure you both have a pretty good opinion of yourselves," she might have remarked, or more probably still, "Strawberries are wholesome enough when eaten in moderation, but I am sure such excessive indulgence must be bad for anybody."

"I don't wonder," said Mr. Fowler, with sly playfulness, "that Miss Allonby is unwilling to follow Mr. Cranmer's fearless example, and proclaim herself uninteresting for eleven months out of twelve."

"Uninteresting!" cried Claud.

"What so uninteresting as perfection? I am glad I first made your acquaintance when you were under the influence of your one defect. I doubt I shouldn't have invited you to Lower House if I had met you a month later."

"Ah! you have invited me now, and you must hold to it," cried Claud, in triumph; "but, as I must admit I have deceived you, and owe you reparation, why--to oblige you--I will try to hatch up a special defect for August."