This girl of the people, coming from who knew where, destined for who knew what--this young, not very beautiful, not even clever child, with nothing but a sort of queer haunting naivete' to give her charm --might even be a finger used by Fate! Cecilia sat very still before that sudden vision of the girl. There was no staid mare to guard that foal with the dark devotion of her eye. There was no wise whinnying to answer back those tiny whinnies; no long look round to watch the little creature nodding to sleep on its thin trembling legs in the hot sunlight; no ears to prick up and hoofs to stamp at the approach of other living things. These thoughts passed through Cecilia's mind and were gone, being too far and pale to stay.
Turning the page which she had not been reading, she heaved a sigh.
Thyme sighed also.
"These worms are fearfully interesting," she said. "Is anybody coming in this afternoon?""Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace was going to bring a young man in, a Signor Pozzi-Egregio Pozzi, or some such name. She says he is the coming pianist." Cecilia's face was spiced with faint amusement. Some strain of her breeding (the Carfax strain, no doubt) still heard such names and greeted such proclivities with an inclination to derision.
Thyme snatched up her book. "Well," she said, "I shall be in the attic. If anyone interesting comes you might send up to me."She stood, luxuriously stretching, and turning slowly round in a streak of sunlight so as to bathe her body in it. Then, with a long soft yawn, she flung up her chin till the sun streamed on her face.
Her eyelashes rested on cheeks already faintly browned; her lips were parted; little shivers of delight ran down her; her chestnut hair glowed, burnished by the kisses of the sun.
'Ah!' Cecilia thought, 'if that other girl were like this, now, Icould understand well enough!'
"Oh, Lord!" said Thyme, "there they are!" She flew towards the door.
"My dear," murmured Cecilia, "if you must go, do please tell Father."A minute later Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace came in, followed by a young man with an interesting, pale face and a crop of dusky hair.
Let us consider for a minute the not infrequent case of a youth cursed with an Italian mother and a father of the name of Potts, who had baptised him William. Had he emanated from the lower classes, he might with impunity have ground an organ under the name of Bill; but springing from the bourgeoisie, and playing Chopin at the age of four, his friends had been confronted with a problem of no mean difficulty. Heaven, on the threshold of his career, had intervened to solve it. Hovering, as it were, with one leg raised before the gladiatorial arena of musical London, where all were waiting to turn their thumbs down on the figure of the native Potts, he had received a letter from his mother's birthplace. It was inscribed: "Egregio Signor Pozzi." He was saved. By the simple inversion of the first two words, the substitution of z's for t's, without so fortunately making any difference in the sound, and the retention of that i, all London knew him now to be the rising pianist.
He was a quiet, well-mannered youth, invaluable just then to Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, a woman never happy unless slightly leading a genius in strings.
Cecilia, while engaging them to right and left in her half-sympathetic, faintly mocking way--as if doubting whether they really wanted to see her or she them--heard a word of fear.
"Mr. Purcey."
'Oh Heaven!' she thought.
Mr. Purcey, whose A.i. Damyer could be heard outside, advanced in his direct and simple way.
"I thought I'd give my car a run," he said. "How's your sister?"And seeing Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, he added: "How do you do? We met the other day.""We did," said Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, whose little eyes were sparkling. "We talked about the poor, do you remember?"Mr. Purcey, a sensitive man if you could get through his skin, gave her a shrewd look. 'I don't quite cotton to this woman,' he seemed saying; 'there's a laugh about her I don't like.'
"Ah! yes--you were tellin' me about them."
"Oh, Mr. Purcey, but you had heard of them, you remember!"Mr. Purcey made a movement of his face which caused it to seem all jaw. It was a sort of unconscious declaration of a somewhat formidable character. So one may see bulldogs, those amiable animals, suddenly disclose their tenacity.
"It's rather a blue subject," he said bluntly.
Something in Cecilia fluttered at those words. It was like the saying of a healthy man looking at a box of pills which he did not mean to open. Why could not she and Stephen keep that lid on, too?
And at this moment, to her deep astonishment, Stephen entered. She had sent for him, it is true, but had never expected he would come.
His entrance, indeed, requires explanation.
Feeling, as he said, a little "off colour," Stephen had not gone to Richmond to play golf. He had spent the day instead in the company of his pipe and those ancient coins, of which he had the best collection of any man he had ever met. His thoughts had wandered from them, more than he thought proper, to Hilary and that girl. He had felt from the beginning that he was so much more the man to deal with an affair like this than poor old Hilary. When, therefore, Thyme put her head into his study and said, "Father, Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace!" he had first thought, 'That busybody!' and then, 'I wonder--perhaps I'd better go and see if I can get anything out of her.'
