The Half-Hearted. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ day,” gasped the hilarious Arthur. “I’m ready, and I’ll tell you what, I know the very burn—” and he babbled on happily till he saw that Miss Wishart had ceased to listen. It was the first time a pretty girl had shown herself desirous of his company, and he was intoxicated with the thought.

      But Alice felt that she was in some way bound to make the most of Mr. Stocks, and she set herself heroically to the task. She had never heard of him, but then she was not well versed in the minutiae of things political, and he clearly was a politician. Doubtless to her father his name was a household word. So she spoke to him of Glenavelin and its beauties.

      He asked her if she had seen Royston Castle, the residence of his friend the Duke of Sanctamund. When he had stayed there he had been much impressed—

      Then she spoke wildly of anything, of books and pictures and people and politics. She found him well-informed, clever, and dogmatic. The culminating point was reached when she embarked on a stray remark concerning certain events then happening in India.

      He contradicted her with a lofty politeness.

      She quoted a book on Kashmir.

      He laughed the authority to scorn. “Lewis Haystoun?” he asked. “What can he know about such things? A wandering dilettante, the worst type of the pseudo-culture of our universities. He must see all things through the spectacles of his upbringing.”

      Fortunately he spoke in a low voice, but Lord Manorwater caught the name.

      “You are talking about Lewie,” he said; and then to the table at large, “do you know that Lewie is home? I saw him to-day.”

      Bertha Afflint clapped her hands. “Oh, splendid! When is he coming over? I shall drive to Etterick to-morrow. No—bother! I can’t go to-morrow, I shall go on Wednesday.”

      Lady Manorwater opened mild eyes of surprise. “Why didn’t the boy write?” And the young Arthur indulged in sundry exclamations, “Oh, ripping, I say! What? A clinking good chap, my cousin Lewie!”

      “Who is this Lewis the well-beloved?” said Mr. Stocks. “I was talking about a very different person—Lewis Haystoun, the author of a foolish book on Kashmir.”

      “Don’t you like it?” said Lord Manorwater, pleasantly. “Well, it’s the same man. He is my nephew, Lewie Haystoun. He lives at Etterick, four miles up the glen. You will see him over here to-morrow or the day after.”

      Mr. Stocks coughed loudly to cover his discomfiture. Alice could not repress a little smile of triumph, but she was forbearing and for the rest of dinner exerted herself to appease her adversary, listening to his talk with an air of deference which he found entrancing.

      Meanwhile it was plain that Lord Manorwater was not quite at ease with his company. Usually a man of brusque and hearty address, he showed his discomfort by an air of laborious politeness. He was patronized for a brief minute by Mr. Stocks, who set him right on some matter of agricultural reform. Happening to be a specialist on the subject and an enthusiastic farmer from his earliest days, he took the rebuke with proper meekness. The spectacled people were talking earnestly with his wife. Arthur was absorbed in his dinner and furtive glances at his left-hand neighbour. There remained Bertha Afflint, whom he had hitherto admired with fear. To talk with her was exhausting to frail mortality, and he had avoided the pleasure except in moments of boisterous bodily and mental health. Now she was his one resource, and the unfortunate man, rashly entering into a contest of wit, found himself badly worsted by her ready tongue. He declared that she was worse than her mother, at which the unabashed young woman replied that the superiority of parents was the last retort of the vanquished. He registered an inward vow that Miss Afflint should be used on the morrow as a weapon to quell Mr. Stocks.

      When Alice escaped to the drawing-room she found Bertha and her sister—a younger and ruddier copy—busy with the letters which had arrived by the evening post. Lady Manorwater, who reserved her correspondence for the late hours, seized upon the girl and carried her off to sit by the great French windows from which lawn and park sloped down to the moorland loch. She chattered pleasantly about many things, and then innocently and abruptly asked her if she had not found her companion at table amusing.

      Alice, unaccustomed to fiction, gave a hesitating “Yes,” at which her hostess looked pleased. “He is very clever, you know,” she said, “and has been very useful to me on many occasions.”

      Alice asked his occupation.

      “Oh, he has done many things. He has been very brave and quite the maker of his own fortunes. He educated himself, and then I think he edited some Nonconformist paper. Then he went into politics, and became a Churchman. Some old man took a liking to him and left him his money, and that was the condition. So I believe he is pretty well off now and is waiting for a seat. He has been nursing this constituency, and since the election comes off in a month or two, we asked him down here to stay. He has also written a lot of things and he is somebody’s private secretary.” And Lady Manorwater relapsed into vagueness.

      The girl listened without special interest, save that she modified her verdict on Mr. Stocks, and allowed, some degree of respect for him to find place in her heart. The fighter in life always appealed to her, whatever the result of his struggle.

      Then Lady Manorwater proceeded to hymn his excellences in an indeterminate, artificial manner, till the men came into the room, and conversation became general. Lord Manorwater made his way to Alice, thereby defeating Mr. Stocks, who tended in the same direction. “Come outside and see things, Miss Wishart,” he said. “It’s a shame to miss a Glenavelin evening if it’s fine. We must appreciate our rarities.”

      And Alice gladly followed him into the still air of dusk which made hill and tree seem incredibly distant and the far waters of the lake merge with the moorland in one shimmering golden haze. In the rhododendron thickets sparse blooms still remained, and all along by the stream-side stood stately lines of yellow iris above the white water-ranunculus. The girl was sensitive to moods of season and weather, and she had almost laughed at the incongruity of the two of them in modern clothes in this fit setting for an old tale. Dickon of Glenavelin, the sworn foe of the Lord of Etterick, on such nights as this had ridden up the water with his bands to affront the quiet moonlight. And now his descendant was pointing out dim shapes in the park which he said were prize cattle.

      “Whew! what a weariness is civilization!” said the man, with comical eyes. “We have been making talk with difficulty all the evening which serves no purpose in the world. Upon my word, my kyloes have the best of the bargain. And in a month or so there will be the election and I shall have to go and rave—there is no other word for it, Miss Wishart—rave on behalf of some fool or other, and talk Radicalism which would make your friend Dickon turn in his grave, and be in earnest for weeks when I know in the bottom of my heart that I am a humbug and care for none of these things. How lightly politics and such matters sit on us all!”

      “But you know you are talking nonsense,” said the serious Alice. “After all, these things are the most important, for they mean duty and courage and—and—all that sort of thing.”

      “Right, little woman,” said he, smiling; “that is what Stocks tells me twice a day, but, somehow, reproof comes better from you. Dear me! it’s a sad thing that a middle-aged legislator should be reproved by a very little girl. Come and see the herons. The young birds will be everywhere just now.”

      For an hour in the moonlight they went a-sightseeing, and came back very cool and fresh to the open drawing-room window. As they approached they caught an echo of a loud, bland СКАЧАТЬ