“I know,” said mother regretfully, “and with our having been away so much, I seem to have rather fallen out of touch with my own old friends, some of whom have daughters of about your age. I have been thinking a great deal about it lately.”
No more was said at the time, but I still felt far from anxious to make acquaintance with the new arrivals. The very thought of it overpowered me with shyness.
Strange to say, the acquaintance was brought about by the only one of us three who had seen nothing to admire in the pretty sisters.
I think it was on the third day after they had come, that Moore burst into our room one afternoon, his face rosy with excitement.
“Mother?” he said, “Reggie! I – I really couldn’t help it, but – I couldn’t be rude, you know! Those people that you’ve been talking about – the girl you think so pretty – well, they were sitting near me while I was having my afternoon coffee,” – Moore loved of all things to have his coffee out in the garden by himself at a little table – “and listening to the band, and I heard them talking about the excursion to Oberwald, where we went last week, you know, and they were all in a muddle about it. They wanted to walk part of the way, and they had a map that they couldn’t make out; and at last one of them – the youngish-looking man, turned to me and said, ‘If you have been here some time, perhaps you can explain this route to us,’ and of course I could, and I put them right in a minute. I told them the best way was to drive to that funny little inn where we had dinner, you remember, and then to walk the rest up to the view place, and get their carriage again when they came back; and they thanked me awfully, and – ” Here Moore paused at last, half out of breathlessness, half, I shrewdly suspected, because he felt a little shy of relating the sequel of his story. “They’re not bad sort of people,” he concluded somewhat lamely, “and I think the girl is rather pretty when you see her close to.”
“Rather pretty,” I repeated; “why, she’s perfectly lovely, my dear boy. But you haven’t finished. What more have you to tell? Did they invite you to be their guide?”
I spoke jestingly, but, to my surprise, I saw that my words had hit the mark, for Moore’s fair face, which was already flushed with excitement, grew still redder.
“Not exactly,” he said; “but I saw they’d have liked to ask me, so I said if it would be any good I wouldn’t mind going with them – it’s to-morrow they want to go – and – and – that I daresayed my sister would come too.”
“Moore!” I exclaimed, aghast. And “My dear boy!” said mother.
Our exclamations put Moore on the defensive.
“Well,” he said, rather indignantly, “I don’t see that there’s any harm in it. You’ve been awfully wanting to know them – ”
“I’m sure I haven’t,” I interrupted.
“Well, any way, you were awfully down on me because I didn’t think the girl was the most beautiful person in the world. And I don’t think she is stuck-up, after all I’m sure you’d like her very much, and they seemed quite pleased when I said you’d come too – quite jolly about it. I told them mother couldn’t walk so far, and that we had come here because she’d been ill.”
“Indeed! and what did you not tell them?” I said, in an icy tone. But my heart misgave me as soon as I had uttered the words – Moore looked so thoroughly unhappy. Mother, as usual, interposed to smooth things down.
“After all, there is no harm done,” she said. “I see no objection to Moore’s going with them, and we can easily make some little excuse for you, Regina, if it is necessary. To begin with, there would not be room for so many in the carriage.”
“Oh, yes, there would,” said Moore, dejectedly. “They’re going to have a much bigger one, which holds five inside and one on the box – or even two – by the driver. And the girl looked so pleased when I said you’d come. I shall feel as ashamed as anything if you don’t; I know that, Reggie.”
I had not the heart to tell him it was his own fault, and mother just said to him that he might trust her to put it all right. So in a minute or two he brightened up again, and it seemed as if the matter were at an end.
It was not so, however. When a thing is to be, it often seems as if even the most trivial events conspire to lead up to it. So it was in this case.
At supper that evening Moore turned his chair, so that he – or at least his face – should not be visible by his new acquaintances. I was sorry for him; he was feeling rather “small” and mortified, I could see, and I wished I had not snubbed his boyish officiousness so unmercifully. I had almost arrived at the point of hoping that some occasion would offer itself for endorsing his friendly overtures, when my glance fell on an envelope lying – hitherto unnoticed – by my plate, and I realised by a flash of inspiration that here in my hands was the very opportunity I had been thinking of.
It was a letter addressed to —
“James Wynyard, Esq., Hotel Augusta, Weissbad, etc, etc.”
I felt certain it was for one of the two men at the neighbouring table, and almost certain, though I had no grounds for being so, that it was for the elder, the father of the two young women. And even if I were mistaken, its having been deposited on our table gave an excellent excuse for speaking to them. Letters, as a rule, came in the morning – English letters, that is to say – but there was a second post late in the evening, and anything it brought was laid on the supper-tables. I touched mother’s arm and showed her the address, saying in a low voice, “Shall I ask if it is for them?” when to my surprise she started. “Wynyard?” she said, “James Wynyard! Why, that was the name of Maud Prideaux’s husband. How curious if – if it should be – ”
She glanced up. Her face was aglow with excitement, as had been Moore’s. But before she finished her sentence, I saw a look of new expectancy in her eyes, and turning in the same direction, I caught sight of “the father,” as we called him, coming towards us, a letter in his hand also, and a look of inquiry and surprise in his face.
“I think,” he was beginning, as he reached our table. But mother cut him short.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, “you are Mr Wynyard, and I – you must remember me? – I am your Maud’s old friend – Geraldine Terence – now Geraldine Fitzmaurice.”
Chapter Two.
An Embryo Novelist
So it was. A minute or two’s conversation sufficed to establish for each the other’s identity, and to gather up the loosened threads of former acquaintanceship. Worse than loosened indeed, for mother’s face grew sad when Mr Wynyard told her of the death of her old friend, Maud, his wife, which had occurred several years previously.
“I had no idea of it,” she said. “We were so much abroad for some years that many changes may have taken place without my hearing of them. And curiously enough, I have been thinking of her – of your wife, Mr Wynyard, quite specially of late.”
“Don’t you find that that is often the case?” was the reply. “When some old link is about to be renewed, one has a sort of foreshadowing of it. Was it possibly,” he added with a little hesitation, “the involuntary association of some likeness to her in either of my daughters, if you have happened to notice them?”
“Who could help doing so?” said mother in her pretty, gracious manner. “But no,” she went on, “I don’t think it was that! It was even before your arrival here that I was thinking of Maud. When I know them better I shall probably see some likeness in your daughters, but it has not struck me.”
“We think Margaret the most like her,” said the father. “Margaret is Mrs Percy – she and her husband are travelling with us,” and he nodded his head in the direction of his own party. “But your supper