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A little packet of letters lay beside Gerald's plate and a larger one by Althea's, hers mainly from America as she saw, fat, friendly letters, bearing the Boston postmark; a thin note from Franklin in London also, fixing some festivity for the coming week no doubt; but Sally and Mrs. Peel engaged her attention, and she postponed the reading until after they were gone.
The way was happily very short, but he had so nearly fainted that Gerald, hurrying on faster uphill than the horse to reassure his aunt, lifted him out, not far from insensible, and carried him with Sibby's help to his bed in the room on the ground-floor, where the remedies were close at hand, Geraldine and nurse anxiously administering them; when the first sign of revival he gave was pointing to Gerald's dripping condition, and signing to him to go and take care of himself.
She heard him laugh with his usual gaiety. "Yes, he's a truthful little soul. He takes after me. What was it?" Susan made a wry mouth in the dark. "Nothing at all," she said, "I just telephoned I thought we might go out somewhere together." "GREAT HEAVEN, WE'RE ENGAGED!" she reminded her sinking heart, fiercely. "Oh, too bad! I was at the Gerald's, at one of those darn rehearsals." A silence.
This immediately roused a poignant pity and allegiance in Gerald's heart, always shadowed by contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in reaction against Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it assumed supremacy in the inner life, and he could not confute it. So he was partly subject to that which his father stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now he could not save himself.
The shadows surprised them on their height, and they had to make their way among them over the farm paths and by the dry beds of the torrents to the carriage road far below. They had been that walk only once before, and Lanfear failed of his reckoning, except the downward course which must bring them out on the high-road at last. But Miss Gerald's instinct saved them where his reason failed.
Osborn got up with a disturbed look. "Mother cannot have much to give and I have nothing at all. I'm afraid Gerald's talent for begging will be used in vain." She went out with Mrs. Osborn and when they had gone Osborn, crossing the floor to the sideboard, filled his glass to the top. This was his regular habit and its futility escaped him, although he knew his wife and daughter knew.
Near at hand was the gardener from the Manor House, waiting with his hands full of Miss Arundel's favourite flowers, and there stood old Betty Lapthorn and her grandchild, Gerald's nurse who had married, and the old man to whom the children had so often carried the remains of their dinner; all the school children too, and Grace in the middle of them, waiting for the last view of Miss Arundel and little Sir Gerald.
I must explain: I said that both Gerald and myself corresponded privately with Montreuil; we were both bound over to secrecy with regard to you; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you rendered an easy obligation to both; I say my temper, for I loved to think I had a secret not known to another; and I carried this reserve even to the degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of the correspondence between me and the Abbe.
"Still, my brother and I came in after you," said Daisy Burton suddenly. And then she smiled and reddened. Mrs. Dampier must certainly have overheard Gerald's remark. "It was an awful job getting a cab after that play, father, and it must have been nearly one o'clock when we got in.
She didn't at all care for Japanese prints, and Gerald's sketches looked to her rather like Japanese prints. She really didn't imagine that he intended her to take them seriously, and when he had brought them out and shown them to her she had said, 'Pretty, very pretty indeed, dear; really you have talent, I'm sure of it.
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