Renny gazed fascinated. He had never before witnessed a scene like this: the poverty of the little room, its warm seclusion, — for a stove was glowing hotly, — the two engrossed in feminine intimacy. He had expected a look of gloom about the place, depression, apprehension in the women’s faces. He had expected to see a heavy elderly woman in the aunt — not this haggard one with gypsy eyes and a small, red-lipped mouth. The two had the same sharp, delicately cut features, but Elvira’s hair was brown. She rose and went to the stove, and Renny saw the fullness of her young body. It was true what Maurice had said, she was going to have a child.
He had a sudden feeling of shame at having spied upon her. He turned away and would have left as silently as he had come, but a cock in the outhouse heard his movements and gave a loud crow; the hens were disturbed and filled the air with alarmed cacklings. The older woman was on her feet in a swift, catlike movement. Before Renny could retreat she had glided through the door and had seen his figure against the hedge. He came toward her then, stepping into the shaft of lamplight. He spoke nervously.
“I hope I haven’t frightened you.”
“Oh, no,” she answered coolly. “That is — I was a bit scared when I thought someone was after my hens — but, as soon as I saw you just standing there —” She gave a little laugh. “You’re young Mr. Whiteoak, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agreed, trying to see her face, trying to make her out.
“I don’t suppose you know who I am,” she went on, with a peculiar, teasing note in her voice. “Folks who live in big houses with a lot of land about them never even hear the names of poor people.”
“I know the names of everyone in the village,” he returned. “How could I help? I’ve lived here all my life.”
A frank warm tone came into her voice when she next spoke. “You’re a great friend of young Mr. Vaughan’s, aren’t you?”
He answered abruptly — “He and I have been talking over this affair today. This is why I have come to see you.”
A flicker passed over her face. She looked disappointed, he thought.
He asked tentatively — “Will you tell me when I can meet Elvira to give her the money?”
She answered rather sharply: “Elvira isn’t meeting folks now. You had better bring it here to me.”
“All right.”
“Come tomorrow night. About this time? You and I could have a little talk. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and read your fortune from the leaves. I’m good at that. I was just reading Elvira’s when you came.”
“Oh.” He wondered why Elvira had shown no interest in what had brought her aunt hurrying to the door. “What is Elvira’s fortune?”
“She’s going to have a daughter. A beautiful daughter who is to move in high society. But I’d like to tell your fortune. You’ve a face for a fortune out of the ordinary. I’ll bet I could tell you things that would surprise you.”
“Could you?”
“I can tell you one thing without ever looking in a teacup. You’re going to be fascinating to women. You can have love for the asking. I guess you’ve had some already, eh?”
He gave her a dark, wary glance.
“Me! Why, I’m not twenty yet.”
“Years don’t matter. You came of age in love many a month ago.”
Without answering he moved a little nearer to her and looked into her eyes. They were narrow, startling eyes that looked like jewels in this light.
“Strange where you got them,” he said. “They’re not quite human.”
“What?”
“Your eyes.”
“I’ll tell you all about myself tomorrow night. I’m young, you know. I’m only ten years older than Elvira. We’ll be alone. I’ll read your fortune and tell you how I got my eyes.” She gave a daring laugh and suddenly put her hand on his head. “My goodness, but you are fascinating!”
At this instant the lamp in the kitchen was lowered. Now it sent out only a pale bluish gleam. The cock, still restless, uttered a plaintive, protesting crow. He fell from his perch and could be heard scrambling back to it with troubled flapping of wings, and complaining from his hens.
There was something almost Biblical in the interruption — the dimmed light, the crowing cock. Renny cast an apprehensive glance at the woman, and, muttering that he would bring the money the next night, he leaped across the bit of garden where the spears of young green onions were pushing up and went out through the hedge.
On the walk home beside the dark stream that alternately revealed and hid itself like a woman longing for love, his mind was full of thoughts of Elvira and her aunt.
But the next night he did not go into the cottage. He knocked at the door, and when the girl opened it he thrust the envelope Maurice had given him into her hand, with a swift glance into her startled face, and disappeared.
IV
Sir Edwin and Lady Buckley and Malahide Court
A renewed furbishing of the house took place on the eve of the coming of the relations from England. Eliza, in starched print dress and flawless white apron, went about with brush and duster seeking imaginary dust in the corners of the drawing room. Philip’s entrance into the house filled her with conflicting emotions — horror of the mud he would almost certainly bring with him, pleasure at the sight of his stalwart figure and good-humoured face. Eliza was a fussy, irritable, energetic woman, yet, with all her being, she admired these opposite qualities of the master of the house. Indeed she gloried in his untidiness and would stalk down the stairs to the basement kitchen with the ashes he had knocked from his pipe to the floor, or the burrs he had pulled from his dog’s tail and hidden under his chair, proudly displayed on her dustpan for the shocking of the cook and the kitchenmaid.
Beatrice, the kitchenmaid, usually called “Beet” by Renny, most appropriately because of her purplish complexion, was now polishing the walnut newel post which was carved in a design of grapes and their leaves and never passed without a caress from Adeline Whiteoak.
Adeline was immensely interested in the preparations, for she was full of pent up vitality which her aging body could not relieve. She had that year begun to carry a stick for the first time, and its aggressive thud could be heard through the house at all hours when she was neither eating, playing backgammon, nor taking a nap.
She pooh-poohed all the fuss that was being made, yet she wanted the house to look its best, not so much for her daughter and her son-in-law as for Malahide Court, whom she had never seen. He was a cousin, several times removed, of a branch of her family which she had always hated because of a feud long before her day. She had a prideful desire to impress him with the elegance of her surroundings, for she knew that her family had looked on her as buried in this colony. She was also greatly curious about the man himself. All the Courts were interesting. Devils they might be, but never dull or without distinction.
She stroked the polished grapes of the newel post and looked up at her husband’s sword, hung in its scabbard on the wall.
“Ha,” she said, panting a little, for she had just ascended the basement stairs after an inspection of the preparations down there. “You’ve a good polish on the old newel, Beattie, a very good polish. Nothing like elbow grease. Beats