A Yellow Aster · II

CHAPTER XVIII.

“To look at the fellow one would never give him credit for half the grit he has,” thought Strange as he glanced round for a cab at the street corner. “If I had money I should send him to Paris,” he went on as soon as he had settled himself comfortably, “the Kensington methods are no manner of use to him. It’s the deuce of a shame too, that he has to attempt finished work for a living when he should be swatting over the primaries; and that colour mania—that will get chronic and overgrow him, and then God help him!”

As it happened Lady Mary was at home and quite wide-awake. As a rule this was not the case until much later in the day, but just now various things combined to keep off sleep.

When Strange was announced, she was sitting well screened from the small bright fire, gazing in soft meditation at her plump white hands, with the corners of her mouth slightly drawn downwards, and her smooth round forehead wrinkled up in a way that would have gone to the heart of a stone to see in such a picture of comfort as she was made to be.

“Humphrey!” she exclaimed, making a vain try at a spring and flopping down again limply, “Humphrey!”

“Myself and no other,” said Strange, receiving her kiss cheerfully, and settling himself into a chair after he had shaken it to see if it would bear. “I needn’t ask you how you are, Aunt Moll, you look just as you always did, like a catkin.”

“A what, Humphrey?” she enquired anxiously.

“A catkin, we used to call them goslings, soft, oval, pale gold, silky, fluffy masses—you have a weakness for adjectives I know, judging from the line in literature you patronize. The harshest wind has never been known to ruffle a gosling, it always skips them, they always feel warm to the touch, as if the sun were on them, they are delicious things. The sun is always on you, Aunt Moll, ain’t it?”

“Ah, Humphrey, you little know, you can make but a faint guess at my troubles, the death of my dear——”

“Aunt Moll, we’ll skip that!” interrupted Strange, with a twinkle.

He knew quite well what an unmixed relief the deceased peer’s removal was to all his kith and kin, more especially to his wife.

“If you recollect, before I went to Algeria we agreed to let my uncle rest undisturbed in his present retreat, which, from what we know of his past, must be unexceptionable—whatever his faults may have been no one can deny that he was a most exclusive person and had a very just notion of his position.”

“Dear Humphrey! That flippancy! I had hoped that the many dangers you have experienced, the many times you have come face to face with death—and, Humphrey—with Eternity—would have brought the seriousness of life before your eyes.”

“Aunt Moll, the sight of you there in that chair brings that view of the case more clearly before me than ever the sight of death did.”

Lady Mary again looked anxious, her nephew always made her feel like that, his eyes seemed to rake her from stem to stern and to find some mute amusement in the process. Suddenly she gave a little start.

“What have I been thinking of?” she murmured. “Humphrey,” she began again, “we must speak of your prospects.”

She was bubbling over with them as it happened, besides, they would keep him off her.

“What are you thinking of doing now?”

“What I have always been thinking of doing and have never done yet, making the result of my face to face encounters with death—and Eternity—of some practical value to the world in general and to myself in particular, by filling my trousers’ pockets, which at this present moment contain one pound six and threepence, and that’s mostly due for beer.”

“Humphrey! Have you heard nothing? Your letters?”

“I never read them. For Heaven’s sake, speak, divulge, I’m ready for anything!”

“Your great-uncle is dead—died last month. Before he went he confessed a heavy sin that had lain for years on his soul, poor dear creature. That great lanky son of his, about whom, as you know, I always had a nasty feeling, as if he were not altogether quite right, as if somehow he was not one of us. This now proves to have been a quite prophetic instinct, he turns out to be—ahem—illegitimate, and you, you, Humphrey, are the heir.”

“I say! It’s beastly hard lines on Tom!”

Strange was quite as staggered with the news, as any other younger son in his condition would have been. It vibrated through and through him, but as one cannot clothe thunder in harmonies any more than one can a tumultuous muddle of sensations in speech in the presence of a woman inclined to gush and stoutness, he swallowed his muddle and was flippant.

“Humphrey!” said Lady Mary with dignity, wondering a little if Humphrey himself were quite right. “This minute you have ten thousand a year, and you, my nephew, are Sir Humphrey Strange.”

“Am I? You’ll be astonished to hear I don’t feel a bit like it, I feel exactly as I did before. Is there any difference to the naked eye, if so, do you mind telling me?”

Lady Mary stirred uneasily and crossed her hands.

“Dear Humphrey!” she cried at last, with a soft wailing bleat, “I confess I did expect some show of proper feeling from you on this occasion. It is a shock to me to see you in your present frame of mind, it seems like flying in the face of Providence, and may end in bringing down a judgment on your head.”

Lady Mary sighed and continued, lowering her voice to a coo, “When I heard the news, Humphrey, I went down on my knees and prayed that my poor sinful uncle might be forgiven for foisting that counterfeit young man off on our family, and that you, my nephew, might face your responsibilities with a seriousness befitting the occasion. My dear, if you knew what it costs me to kneel, now that I have grown a little stout, you might perhaps appreciate this act.”

Humphrey grinned.

“Aunt Moll, my feelings are always too deep for expression, it would upset you for a month if I were to give you the merest glimpse of the emotions that are ravaging me this minute. These inward upheavals are frightfully wasting, your acts of prayer and thanksgiving are a fool to them—There doesn’t happen to be any tea going, does there?”

“Tea! Is it five o’clock? What can have happened? Pray ring. The misery I have to endure with servants! I wonder my hair isn’t even greyer than it is, and my poor face more worn.”

“Your hair is as brown as a nut, and there isn’t a crease in your dear, soft young face. What was wrong with you when I came in, the corners of your mouth were turned the wrong way?”

Lady Mary reflected as she made his tea.

“Ah, it was Gwen, she has thrown aside another most unexceptionable match, the third in three months.”

“Gwen, what?”

“Gwen Waring, she is with me for the season.”

“Ah, that queer, sulky, imperturbable, long-legged girl, belonging to those wonderful young fossils at Waring Park. I shouldn’t have thought she’d have got the chance to throw over any match, let alone three unexceptionable ones——”

“Humphrey!”

“What’s up? Gru!—”

He sprang to his feet.

A tall superb girl with a face like a hothouse flower, was standing in the middle of the room, looking at him with a cool aloofness that made his blood run cold. She had heard every word, she must have, his voice was a big one.

This magnificent dominant creature, before whom he felt as a worm, was only an enlarged completed edition of the “sulky, long-legged” slip he used to catch fitful glances of, in his stays with his aunt.