Trevlyn Hold Part 50

They--as you remember--proceeded immediately to Trevlyn Farm; and words were spoken between them which no time could efface. Impulsive words, telling of the love that had long lain in the heart of each, almost as suppressed, quite as deep, as the great dread which had made the skeleton in Mr. Chattaway's.

The hilarity of the evening had progressed, as they found on entering.

The company were seated round the table eating the good things, and evidently enjoying themselves heartily. The parlour-door was crowded with merry faces. Mrs. Ryle and others were at one end of the large room; George steered Maude direct to the parlour; the group made way for her, and welcomed her noisily.

But there came no smile to the face of Octave Chattaway. With a severe eye and stern tones, she confronted Maude, her lips drawn with anger.

"Maude, what do you do here? How dare you come?"

"Is there any harm in it, Octave?"

"Yes, there is," said Miss Chattaway, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. "There is harm because I desired you not to come. A pretty thing for Mrs. Ryle to be invaded by half-a-dozen of us! Have you no sense of propriety?"

"Not a bit of it," gaily interrupted George. "No one understands that in connection with a harvest-home. I have been to the Hold for Maude, Octave; and should have brought Edith and Emily, but they were in bed."

"In bed!" exclaimed Caroline Ryle, in surprise.

"Having retired in mortification and tears at being excluded from the delights of a harvest-home," continued George, with mock gravity. "Miss Chattaway had preached propriety to them, and they could only bow to it.

We must manage things better another time."

Octave's cheeks burnt. Was George Ryle speaking in ridicule? To stand well with him, she would have risked much.

"They are better at home," she quietly said: "and I have no doubt Mrs.

Ryle thinks so. Two of us are sufficient to come. Quite sufficient, in my opinion," she pointedly added, turning a reproving look on Maude. "I am surprised you should have intruded----"

"Blame me, if you please, Miss Chattaway--if you deem blame due anywhere," interrupted George. "I have a will of my own, you know, and I took possession of Maude and brought her, whether she would or no."

Octave pushed her hair back with an impatient movement. Her eyes fell before his; her voice, as she addressed him, turned to softness. George was not a vain man; but it was next to impossible to mistake these signs; though neither by word nor look would he give the faintest colouring of hope to them. If Octave could only have read the indifference at his heart! nay, more--his positive dislike!

"Did you see anything of Rupert?" she asked, recalling his attention to herself.

"I saw nothing of any one but Maude. I might have laid hands on all I found; but there was no one to meet, Maude excepted. What makes you so cross about it, Octave?"

She laughed pleasantly. "I am not cross, George," lowering her tones, "sometimes I think you do not understand me. You seem to----"

Octave's words died away. Coming in at the door was the tall, conspicuous form of the parsonage guest, Mr. Daw. Maude was just then standing apart, and he went deliberately up to her and kissed her forehead.

Startled and resentful, a half-cry escaped her lips; but Mr. Daw laid his hand gently on her arm.

"My dear young lady, I may almost claim that as a right. I believe I was the first person, except your mother, who ever pressed a kiss upon your little face. Do you know me?"

Maude faltered in her answer. His appearance and salutation had altogether been so sudden, that she was taken by surprise; but she did not fail to recognise him now. Yet she hesitated to acknowledge that she knew him, on account of Octave Chattaway. Rupert had told her all about the stranger; but it might be inconvenient to say so much to an inmate of Trevlyn Hold.

"It was I who christened you," he resumed. "It was I who promised your father to--to sometimes watch over you. But I could not keep my promise; circ.u.mstances worked against it. And now that I am brought for a short time into the same neighbourhood, I may not call to see you."

"Why not?" exclaimed Maude, wondering much.

"Because those who are your guardians forbid me. I went to the Hold and asked for you, and then became aware that in doing so I had committed something like a crime, or what was looked upon as one. Should Rupert, your brother, regain possession of his father's inheritance and his father's home, then, perhaps, I may be a more welcome visitor."

The room stood in consternation. To some of them, at any rate, these words were new; to the ears of Octave Chattaway they were tainted with darkest treason. Octave had never heard anything of this bold stranger's business at Barbrook, and she gazed at him with defiant eyes and parted lips.

"Were you alluding to the Hold, sir?" she asked in a cold, hard voice, which might have been taken for Chattaway's own.

"I was. The Hold was the inheritance of Rupert Trevlyn's father: it ought to be that of Rupert."

"The Hold is the inheritance of my father," haughtily spoke Octave. "Is he mad?" she added in a half-whisper, turning to George.

"Hush, Octave. No."

It was not a pleasant or even an appropriate theme to be spoken of in the presence of Mr. Chattaway's daughters. George Ryle, at any rate, thought so, and was glad that a burst of rustic merriment came overpoweringly at that moment from the feasting in the other room.

Under cover of the noise, Octave approached Nora. Nora immediately drew an apple-pie before her, and began to cut unlimited helpings, pretending to be absorbed in her work. She had not the least inclination for a private interview with Miss Chattaway. Miss Chattaway was one, however, not easily repulsed.

"Nora, tell me--who is that man, and what brings him here?"

"What man, Miss Chattaway?" asked Nora, indifferently, unable to quite help herself. "Ann Canham, how many are there to be served with pie still?"

"_That_ man. That bold, bad man who has been speaking so strangely."

"Does he speak strangely?" retorted Nora.

"His voice is gruff certainly. And what a lot of plum-pudding he is eating! He is our young master's new waggoner, Miss Chattaway."

"Not _he_!" shrieked Octave, in her anger. "Do you suppose I concern myself with those stuffing clodhoppers? I speak of that tall, strange man amongst the guests."

"Oh, he!" said Nora, carelessly glancing over her shoulder. "Nanny, here's unlimited pie, if it's wanted. What about him, Miss Chattaway?"

"I asked you who he was, and what brought him here."

"Then you had better ask himself, Miss Chattaway. He goes about with a red umbrella; and that's about all I know of him."

"Why does Mrs. Ryle invite suspicious characters to her house?"

"Suspicious characters! Is he one? Madge Sanders, if you let Jim cram himself with pie in that style, you'll have something to do to get him home. He is staying at the parsonage, Miss Chattaway; an acquaintance of Mr. Freeman's. I suppose they brought him here to-night out of politeness; it wouldn't have been good manners to leave him at home. He is an old friend of the Trevlyns, I hear; has always believed, until now, that Master Rupert enjoyed the Hold--can't be brought to believe he doesn't. It is a state of things that does sound odd to a stranger, you know."

Octave might rest a.s.sured she would not get the best of it with Nora.

She turned away with a displeased gesture, and regained the sitting-room, where refreshments for Mrs. Ryle's friends were being laid. But somehow the suns.h.i.+ne of the evening had gone out for her. What had run away with it? The stranger's ominous words? No; for those she had nothing but contempt. It was George Ryle's unsatisfactory manner, so intensely calm and equable. And those calm, matter-of-fact manners, in one beloved, tell sorely upon the heart.

The evening pa.s.sed, and it grew time to leave. Cris Chattaway and Rupert had come in, and they all set off in a body to Trevlyn Hold--those who had to go there. George went out with them.

"Are you coming?" asked Octave.

"Yes, part of the way."

So Octave stood, ready to take his arm, never supposing that he would not offer it; and her pulses began to beat. But he turned round as if waiting for something, and Octave could only walk on a few steps. Soon she heard him coming up and turned to him. And then her heart seemed to stand still and bound on again with fiery speed, and a flush of anger dyed her brow. He was escorting Maude on his arm!

"Oh, George, do not let Maude trouble you," she exclaimed. "Cris will take care of her. Cris, come and relieve George of Maude Trevlyn."

"Thank you, Octave; it's no trouble," replied George, his tone one of indifference. "As I brought Maude out, it is only fair that I should take her home--the task naturally falls to me, you see."