A Life For a Love Part 14

"How do you do, Miss Wyndham? How do you do, Miss Lilias?" said Carr in a brisk tone. "It is very good of you both to let me into this pleasant room after the cold and snow outside. And how busy you are! Surely, Miss Wyndham, your family don't require such a vast amount of re-clothing."

"Yes," said Marjory, "these bales of goods are for my s.h.i.+vering widows," and she pointed to the red flannel and unbleached calico. "And those are for my pretty orphans--our pretty orphans, Lilly darling, twenty-four in the West Refuge, twenty-four in the East; the Easterns are apparelled in red, the Westerns in blue. Now, Mr. Carr, I'll put it to you as our spiritual pastor, is it right for Lilias to sit and croak instead of helping me with all this prodigious work?"

"But croaking for nothing is not Miss Lilias' way," said Carr, favoring her with a quick glance, a little anxious, a little surprised.

Lilias sprang up with almost a look of vexation. Valentine's letter fell unheeded on the floor.

"You are too bad, Maggie," she said, with almost a forced laugh. "I suppose there are few people in this troublesome world who are not now and then attacked with a fit of the blues. But here goes. I'll shake them off. I'll help you all I can."

"You must help, too," said Marjory in a gay voice, turning to Carr.

"Please take off your great coat--put it anywhere. Now then, are your hands strong? are your arms steady? You have got to hold this bale of red merino while Lilly cuts dress lengths from it. Don't forget, Lil, nine lengths of three-and-a-half yards each, nine lengths of four yards each, and six lengths of five yards each. Oh, thank you, Mr. Carr, that will be a great a.s.sistance."

Carr was a very energetic, wide-awake, useful man. He could put his hands to anything. No work, provided it was useful, was derogatory in his eyes--he was always cheerful, always bright and obliging. Even Gerald Wyndham could scarcely have made a more popular curate at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold than did this young man.

"If anything could provoke me about him, it is that he is too sunny,"

Marjory said one day to her sister.

Lilias was silent. It occurred to her, only she was not sure, that in those dark, quick, keen eyes there could come something which might sustain and strengthen on a day of clouds as well as suns.h.i.+ne.

It came now, when Marjory suddenly left the room, and Carr abruptly let the great bale of merino drop at his feet.

"Are you worried about anything?" he asked, in that direct fas.h.i.+on of his which made people trust him very quickly.

Lilias colored all over her face.

"I suppose I ought not to be silly," she said, "but my brother--you see he is my only brother--his marriage has made a great gulf between us."

Carr looked at her sharply.

"You are not jealous?" he said.

"I don't know--we used to be great chums. I think if I were sure he was happy I should not be jealous?"

Carr walked to the fireplace.

"It would not be folly if you were," he said. "All sisters must face the fact of their brothers taking to themselves wives, and, of course, loving the wives best. It is the rule of nature, and it would be foolish of you to fret against the inevitable."

He spoke abruptly, and with a certain coldness, which might have offended some girls. Lilias' slow earnest answer startled him.

"I don't fret against the inevitable," she said. "But I do fret against the intangible. There is a mystery about Gerald which I can't attempt to fathom. I know it is there, but I can't grapple with it in any direction."

"You must have some thought about it, though, or it would not have entered into your head."

"I have many thoughts, but no clues. Oh, it would take me a long, long time to tell you what I fear, to bring my shadowy dread into life and being. I have just had a letter from Valentine, a sweet nice letter, and yet it seems to me full of mystery, although I am sure she does not know it herself. Yes, it is all intangible--it is kind of you to listen to me. Marjory would say I was talking folly."

"You are talking as if your nerves were a little out of sorts. Could you not have a change? Even granted that there is trouble, and I don't suppose for an instant that anything of the kind is in store for your brother, it is a great waste of life to meet it half way."

Lilias smiled faintly.

"I am silly," she said. And just then Marjory came into the room, followed by Augusta, and the cutting out proceeded briskly.

Carr was an invaluable help. Some people would have said that he was a great deal too gay and cheerful--a great deal too athletic and well-knit and keen-eyed for a curate.

This was not the case; he made an excellent clergyman, but he had a great sense of the fitness of things, and he believed fully in a time for everything.

Helping three merry girls to cut out red and blue merino frocks, on a cold day in January, seemed to him a very cheerful occupation. Gay laughter and light and innocent chatter filled the room, and Lilias soon became one of the merriest of the party.

In the midst of their chatter the rector entered.

"I want you, Carr," he said, abruptly; he was usually a very polite man, almost too ceremonious. Now his words came with a jerk, and the moment he had uttered them he vanished.

As Carr left the room in obedience to this quick summons. Lilias' face became once more clouded.

The rector was pacing up and down his study. When Carr entered he asked him to bolt the door.

"Is anything the matter, sir?" asked the young man.

Mr. Wyndham's manner was so perturbed, so unlike himself, that it was scarcely wonderful that Carr should ask this question. It received, however, a short and sharp reply.

"I hope to goodness, Carr, you are not one of those imaginative people who are always foreboding a lion in the path. What I sent for you was--well----" the rector paused. He raised his eyes slowly until they rested upon the picture of Gerald's mother; the face very like Gerald's seemed to appeal to him; his lips trembled.

"I can't keep it up, Carr," he said, with an abandon which touched the younger man to the heart. "I'm not satisfied about my son. Nothing wrong, oh, no--and yet--and yet--you understand, Carr, I have only one son--a lot of girls, G.o.d bless them all!--and only one son."

Carr came over and stood by the mantel-piece. If he felt any surprise, he showed none. His words came out gently, and in a matter-of-fact style.

"If you have any cause to be worried, Mr. Wyndham--and--and--you think I can help you, I shall be proud to be trusted." Then his thoughts flew to Lilias, and his firm, rather thin lips, took a faint smile.

"I have no doubt I am very foolish," replied the rector. "I had a letter this morning from Gerald. He tells me in it that he is going to Australia in March, on some special business for his father-in-law's firm--you know he is a partner in the firm. His wife is not to accompany him."

The rector paused.

Carr made no answer for a moment. Then he said, feeling his way--

"This will be a trial for Mrs. Wyndham."

"One would suppose so. Gerald doesn't say anything on the subject."

"Well," said the rector, "how does it strike you? Perhaps I'm nervous--Lilly, poor girl, is the same, and Marjory laughs at us both.

How does this intelligence strike you as an outsider, Carr? Pray give me your opinion."

"Yes," said Carr, simply. "I do not think my opinion need startle anyone. Doubtless, sir, you know facts which throw a different complexion on the thing. It all seems to me a commonplace affair. In big business houses partners have often to go away at short notice. It will certainly be a trial for Mrs. Wyndham to do without her husband. I don't like to prescribe change of air for you, Mr. Wyndham, as I did for Miss Lilias just now, but I should like to ask you if your nerves are quite in order?"

The rector laughed.

"You are a daring fellow to talk of nerves to me, Carr," he said. "Have not I prided myself all my life on having no nerves? Well, well, the fact is, a great change has come over the lad's face. He used to be such a boy, too light-hearted, if anything, too young, if anything, for his years--the most unselfish fellow from his birth. Give away? Bless you, there was nothing Gerald wouldn't give away. Why, look here, Carr, we all tried to spoil the boy amongst us--he was the only one--and his mother taken away when he so young--and he the image of her. Yes, all the girls resemble me, but Gerald is the image of his mother. We all tried to teach him selfishness, but we couldn't. Now. Carr, you will be surprised at what I am going to say, but if a man can be unselfish to a _fault_, to a fault mind you--to the verge of a crime--it's my son Gerald. I know this. I have always seen it in him. Now my boy's father-in-law. Mortimer Paget, is as selfish as my lad is the reverse.

Why did he want a poor lad like mine to marry his rich and only daughter? Why did he make him a partner in his house of business, and why did he insure my boy's life? Insure it heavily? Answer me that. My boy would have taken your place here, Carr; humbly but worthily would he have served the Divine Master, no man happier than he. Is he happy now? Is he young for his years now? Tell me, Carr, what you really think?"

"I don't know, sir. I have not looked at things from your light. You are evidently much troubled, and I am deeply troubled for you. I don't know Wyndham very well but I know him a little. I think that marriage and the cares of a house of business and all his fresh responsibilities may be enough to age your son's face. As to the insurance question, all business is so fluctuating that Mr. Paget was doubtless right in securing his daughter and her children from possible want in the future. See here, Mr. Wyndham, I am going up to town this evening for two or three days. Shall I call at Park-lane and bring you my own impressions with regard to your son?"