Re-entering the house, Owen ran down the pa.s.sage with hasty feet. Mrs.

Blades, who had a tendency to what she called "chronical brownkitis,"

had not ventured to brave the night air; and Owen found her still regarding the Little Ladies, who burned trimly on the tray before her.

"All right, Mrs. Blades--I've only left some papers!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed them up as he spoke, and crammed them into the pocket of his leather coat.

"That's all--now I'm really off."

He patted her carelessly on the shoulder as he pa.s.sed her; but to his surprise she put out a veined hand to stay his progress.

"Mr. Owen"--her voice shook--"do you really mean that you're going to marry the young lady?"

"Of course, Blades." Unconsciously Owen pulled himself together. "Why should I say such a thing if I did not mean it?"

"Because..." the old woman faltered "... Miss Gibbs ain't the sort of lady you ought to marry. She ... she's not like the other lady you were going to bring here as mistress of Greenriver ... the one as was presented at Court with all them lovely feathers in her hair."

An expression such as she had never seen before crossed Owen's face. He shook off her hand impatiently.

"Oh, you're an old silly, Blades." His voice was grating. "Miss Gibbs is a thousand times more suitable to be the mistress of Greenriver.

The--the other lady thought very small beer of us all down here--she wasn't our sort, I a.s.sure you!"

"Neither is this one." The old woman stuck to her guns with the obstinacy of age. "Mr. Owen, I remember your father bringing home his bride--a girl she was, only eighteen--but the highest lady in the land couldn't have been evened to her. Miss Gibbs is pretty and a good girl, I'm sure, but--but she ain't like your mother, Mr. Owen; and you ought to look higher when you marry than her!"

"Don't be a fool, Blades!" Owen spoke angrily now. "If I think Miss Gibbs good enough to be my wife that's quite sufficient for everyone.

After all, I'm not such a great catch," he added bitterly.

"Nay, Mr. Owen, don't be vexed with me!" Too late the old woman regretted her foolish words. "I'm growing old, and maybe I'm in my dotage ... ah, he's gone--I've driven the lad away with my folly!"

It was indeed so. Owen had flung out of the door angrily; and as she listened, half-afraid, she heard his steps receding down the pa.s.sage towards the hall. There was impatience in his very tread; for, truth to tell, Owen felt a kind of hot anger welling in his heart as he remembered the words she had spoken.

At first he was merely annoyed at what he called her presumption--induced, he supposed, by her long connection with the family. But suddenly a feeling of vague uneasiness descended upon him, and he paused before going out to join Toni in the car.

"She only saw Toni for a moment--barely heard her speak--and yet she speaks as though I were making an unsuitable marriage." He frowned thoughtfully, anger dying before some feeling whose nature he could not, yet, recognize. "I wonder--what could she mean?"

He stood in the quiet hall, fighting down a host of surmises, of unwelcome doubts which sprang, it would seem, out of the twilight, brought to birth by an old woman's homely words; and in those illuminating seconds Owen allowed himself to wonder whether, after all, he had committed an action which he would find cause to regret.

But somehow the idea seemed a treachery towards the girl who sat waiting so trustfully, so happily for his coming; and with a sudden uplifting of his head, Owen went resolutely out to the car.

But Mrs. Blades, left alone, shod a few of the difficult tears of age as she went over the little scene. She felt suddenly old; and for the first time in her busy, self-satisfied life she questioned her own wisdom.

Then she too shook off her uncomfortable thoughts, and calling the rosy Maggie to her, delivered into her hands the Ten Little Ladies, who still waited patiently upon the tray for their nightly release.

CHAPTER VIII

On a beautiful midsummer morning Antonia Rose crept softly down the broad old staircase of Greenriver and crossed the hall with so fairy-light a tread that never a soul in the house could hear a footstep.

It was very early, barely half-past five; but the glorious summer morning was calling, calling insistently to Toni to come and share its glories; and the call was not one to be disregarded, by Antonia at least.

Not a thing stirred. In the gallery the Ten Little Ladies grew wan and faded before the vitality of the daylight; and when, after some difficulty, Toni unlocked the big hall door and let in a flood of sunshine, they gave up the unequal contest and expired quietly.

Ah! What a world of beauty burst upon Toni's gaze as she stood, thrilling delightfully with a sense of adventure, on the big stone steps outside the great door.

A rush of perfume from the tall lilies greeted her first; followed by a perfect shower of fragrance from the pink and creamy roses growing beside the door. Other scents there were--a dozen of them--from the flowers ma.s.sed in glowing ranks in the beds; but the lilies and the roses had it all their own way; and Toni laughed with delight as they a.s.sailed her with their sweetness.

There was music, too, in this pearly dawn. In the trees the birds were astir, twittering their songs of morning; and already the velvety brown bees were beginning to hum their spinning chorus as they hovered here and there among the tall flowers which stood in rows before the windows, like marriageable maidens waiting for inspection.

Beyond the terrace lay the river, shining with that strange, ethereal effect of silver which water has beneath the early morning sky; and away beyond the river the thin, delicate mists of the night were rising like vaporous ghosts, to dissolve in the fresh, clean atmosphere of dawn.

"Oh, how beautiful it all is! What a lovely world G.o.d made when He made--this!" Toni stood on the steps with arms outstretched, like some young priestess of a pagan faith welcoming the sun. "And why do we lie asleep in stuffy beds when all the birds and flowers have been awake for ages!"

She pulled the big door gently to behind her, and then ran through the gardens and across the terrace to the big grey bal.u.s.trade which kept the boundary of the garden from the towing path beyond. Leaning her arms on the stone she looked out over the shining river, and in fancy her spirit roved here and there--to the violet-strewn mountain slopes of Italy where she had pa.s.sed her childhood ... to the wonderful, rocky coast of Cornwall where her honeymoon had been spent.

At the thought of the Cornish seas she caught her breath. Those marvellous green billows, foaming in the sunshine, dashing against the cliffs with a sound like thunder; the gentler wavelets creaming over the snow-white sands in lines of lotus-blue; the pools, deep and limpid, where in the aquamarine water all kind of strange sea-creatures lived; the jagged, tooth-like rocks springing from the depths of the ocean, ready to destroy the pa.s.sing ships; the still more wonderful lighthouses, rising, some of them, like tall white needles into the turquoise sky; the gulls, flashing grey and white in the sunshine; the salt scent of the sea mingling with the pungent fragrance of the yellow gorse, hot with the sun ... surely the Cornish coast was a very favoured spot, and the Scilly Isles, to which pa.s.sage could be taken in a queer, cranky boat, were indeed the Fortunate Isles, cradled by the bluest, most magical, most romantic waters in the world!

Thoughts of the ocean were indissolubly bound up with all Toni's thoughts of her honeymoon. Acting on a hint from Barry, Owen had taken his bride straight away from the Registrar's dingy office to Paddington, thence to Cornwall; and he would never forget the sight of Toni's face when first she saw the sea, lying purple and green beneath a stormy sky.

During the long journey she had said very little, shyness enveloping her as in a mantle; but when the train began to run along the sea sh.o.r.e, so that the whole expanse of ocean lay spread before the window, Toni's face changed, her eyes sparkled, and she turned to Owen with a spontaneous expression of delight.

Now, looking back, it seemed to Toni that never for an instant had the voice of the sea been out of her ears during all those wonderful days and nights. Its song had helped her to bear herself properly during the long hours alone with the man she had married. Again and again, when embarra.s.sment threatened to overcome her at this unusually prolonged _tete-a-tete_, the sea whispered to her to take courage; and each night she fell asleep to its murmured lullaby.

During the fortnight which they spent down in the genial West Country, Owen gave himself up entirely to the service of his young wife. He divined pretty well what she was feeling--guessed that her marriage, after only three weeks' engagement, must have meant a complete upheaval of her entire life; and the very fact that he did not love her gave an added gentleness to his intercourse with her; for he could not rid himself of a sensation that somehow she had been cheated in this bargain, had been cajoled into giving the pure gold of love in return for the counterfeit of mere liking.

True, he did not repent his marriage. Rather it seemed to him that it might turn out successful after all; and since they spent the days exploring the coast, which was new to both of them, there was plenty to be said, an abundance of interesting subjects to discuss.

Only once--on the last night of their stay in Cornwall--was there the slightest suspicion of a shadow between them; and Owen blamed himself entirely for the occurrence.

It happened that Owen was suffering from a very severe headache--a not uncommon complaint since his accident--and the afternoon post brought him the proofs of an article required for the next number of the _Bridge_. An urgent note from Barry accompanied the papers, begging for an early revision; and after dinner Owen sat down to run through the article in preparation for dispatch in the morning.

But his brain refused to work. His eyes felt as though each eyeball were aflame; and his forehead was contracted with the severe pain which had racked him all day, so that consecutive thought was almost impossible.

He tried, again and again, to do the work; but at length, so acute was the agony in his eyes, he threw aside the papers with a groan.

Immediately Toni looked up from the magazine she was reading.

"May I help you?" She put the question rather timidly, and by way of answer he tossed the bundle of proofs into her lap.

"Thanks awfully, dear. I simply can't see out of my eyes--neuralgia, I expect. Do your best, won't you? You know how to read proof as well as I do, now."

"Yes." So she did, for Barry had taught her thoroughly; and she had applied herself to his lessons with every fraction of her intelligence.

What he had not taught her, however, was an extensive knowledge of the master poets and their works; and Toni's ignorance betrayed her hopelessly.

At the old-fashioned school she had attended, few poets were considered fit for the girls' reading; Tennyson, of course, was included in the pupils' studies, and Shakespeare, carefully edited, was a standby; but of the works of Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, Keats, Toni was lamentably ignorant.

When, therefore, in the article before her she found a quotation from one of Robert Browning's poems, followed almost immediately by a line from one of the poet's wife's writings, she concluded, hastily, that the printers were at fault, and cheerfully amended the latter initials to the one magic R. In the same way she confused Keats and Yeats; and finished by ascribing to Christina Rossetti one of Dante Gabriel's most impa.s.sioned utterances; thus destroying whatever value the article might have had, as a critical appreciation of the various writers' work.