The letter came at breakfast-time. Alys and her brother were by themselves, Miss Winstanley’s sore throat preventing her coming down as early as usual. Mr Cheviott read it, and tossed it across the table to his sister.
“So provoking!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Alys, “it is tiresome just when you were so particularly anxious to go home. But I see no help for it; when nurse takes to her ‘feelings,’ what can we do? No doubt the house is in a terrible mess, and if we persisted in going down at once, I really believe she would have a fit. If we wait a few days, as she suggests, you may trust her to have everything ready for us; and indeed, Laurence, I was thinking just before nurse’s letter came that it seemed hardly kind of me to go away when aunt is ill and all alone. She will be able to come with us to Romary in a week, she says, if we can wait till then.”
Mr Cheviott did not at once answer.
“It is unlucky,” he said at last; “but, as far as I am concerned, I must not put off going home, and Mrs Golding’s feelings must just make the best of it. But you had better stay here a week or so, Alys, I see that, so you can tell my aunt so.”
“Thank you,” said Alys; “but I wish you could stay too.”
But “No, it is really impossible,” was her brother’s reply, and soon after he went out.
Alys did not see him again till about an hour before dinner-time.
“Is my aunt up yet?” he inquired, as he came in, and even in the tone with which he uttered the two or three words she could perceive a cheerfulness which had not been his in the morning.
“No,” she replied, “but she says she will come into the drawing-room after dinner. She is much better.”
“Ah, well, then, if I am not to see her till after dinner, you must tell her from me that I have taken the liberty of inviting a friend to dinner in her name. Fancy, Alys, almost the first person I ran against this morning was Arthur. He only came up to town yesterday for a few days to settle something about this new farm-house that his head’s running upon – so lucky we met!”
“Yes, very. I shall be so glad to see him,” said Alys, heartily. “But what a pity, Laurence, that you have to go just as he has come. It would have been so nice for all of us to go home together.”
Mr Cheviott hesitated.
“I am not, after all, perfectly certain that I shall go down to Romary quite so soon as I said. Part – in fact, the chief part – of my business was with Arthur, and if he stays in town a few days too, we may all go down to Romary together, as you wish.”
“That’s very nice of you, Laurence. I really think my training is beginning to do you good. Aunt, of course, will be delighted to see Arthur, but I will go and tell her about it now.”
She was leaving the room when her brother called her back. “Remember,” he said, “I haven’t promised,” but Alys laughed and shook her head, and ran off.
“I can manage Arthur,” she thought, “if it depends on him. But I am sure there is something Laurence has not told me that has annoyed him lately, though he looks happier to-night – I wonder what it is all about.”
Captain Beverley was a great favourite with Miss Winstanley, whose affection for her nephew – her half-brother’s son – Laurence Cheviott, was considerably tempered with awe. But with Arthur she always felt at ease.
“It is not that I mind being laughed at, now and then,” she would confide to Alys, pathetically, “but with Laurence I really never feel sure if he is laughing at me or not. Of course he is never wanting in real respect, and he is the best of nephews in every way, but I can’t deny that I am frightened of him, and, however you laugh at me, my dear, you can’t laugh me out of it. I always have been afraid of Laurence, ever since he was a baby, I believe. He has had such a dreadfully superior sort of way of looking at one, and saying, ‘What for does you do that?’”
“What a dreadful baby he must have been! I always tell him he was never snubbed as much as would have been for his good,” Alys would reply, upon which her aunt would observe, with a sigh, that it was “far too late in the day to think of anything of the kind now.”
Her spirits rose greatly when she heard that Arthur was coming to dinner.
“I really think I feel well enough to dine with you, after all,” she said to Alys. “It would certainly seem more hospitable, as Arthur is coming, and I don’t like to get the character of exaggerating my ailments,” and Alys agreed with her that if she were “well wrapped up,” the exertion of going down two flights of stairs to the dining-room was not likely to do her any harm.
“But you know, aunt, you mustn’t eat too much at dinner,” said Alys, gravely, “for if you feed a cold you’ll have to starve a fever. A little soup and a spoonful of jelly – anything more might be very dangerous.”
“Naughty girl, you are laughing at me now,” remonstrated poor Miss Winstanley, but Alys assured her solely that she was “quite, quite in earnest.”
And the partie carrée was a very cheerful one. Laurence seemed more light of heart than he had been for some time; Arthur, whose state of spirits was, to give him his due, seldom such as to cause his friends much anxiety, was even gayer and merrier than usual, almost feverishly so, it seemed to Alys once or twice, and yet again, when she caught his eyes fixed upon her with a sort of appealing anxiety in their expression that she never remembered to have seen in them before, she could have fancied, were such a fancy possible in connection with so light-hearted and thoughtless a being, that he, in his turn, had something on his mind. Could the mantle of Laurence’s recent anxiety have fallen upon him? she asked herself. It seemed so strange to associate anxiety of any kind with Arthur that she tried to dismiss the idea, and told herself that she must have grown morbid from being so much alone with Laurence, and fancying he was vexed or annoyed whenever he looked dull.
“Then it is all nicely settled about our staying in town, and going down to Romary together. It all depends on you, Arthur.”
Captain Beverley looked surprised.
“On me!” he exclaimed, “how do you mean? I thought it all depended on Miss Winstanley’s sore throat.”
“Oh! no. Laurence’s staying has nothing to do with aunt. He said he had business with you, but that you could settle it in town as well as at Romary, if you could stay – and so you will stay, won’t you? It would be so much nicer to go down all together.”
Captain Beverley looked increasingly mystified.
“I don’t understand – ” he was beginning, but Mr Cheviott, whose attention had been caught by the sound of his own name, interrupted him.
“It is Alys herself who does not understand,” he said, good-humouredly, but not without a little constraint. “If you had been still at that delightful farm-house of yours, Arthur, I would have joined you there, and talked over these improvements. But that can wait, I dare say, and if you care to go into the financial part of it, we can do that in town as well. You are not in a hurry to go back to your new quarters, are you? You will wait and go back with us to Romary, as Alys wishes, won’t you?” Captain Beverley looked a little surprised, and a little disconcerted. He was not prepared for his cousin’s sudden interest in his improvements at Hathercourt, and hardly understood it, for hitherto Mr Cheviott had looked somewhat coldly on the schemes Arthur was full of, and he was still less prepared to be cross-questioned as to his length of stay in town, which in his own mind he had decided was to be a very short one.
“Thank you,” he said, with a little hesitation. “I should like to go over the plans for the Edge with you very much. But as to my staying in town another week, I really can’t say. I only ran up for a couple of days, and there are lots of things waiting for me to settle about at Hathercourt.”
“You are becoming quite a man of business, I see,” and Alys fancied that Arthur winced a little.
She