“Yes; but I had to screw up my courage very considerably to do so,” she returned, flashing up at him a very winning smile. “You see, I had heard that anybody might come.”
“Of course. But what were you afraid of? That you would be spirited away and privately burnt at the stake? Or only thumb-screwed?”
“No, no—of course not. Don’t chaff me, Mr. Wagram; it’s unkind. You ought rather to pity my ignorance. Do you often have a ceremony like that?”
“Only once a year hitherto. This ought, strictly speaking, to have been held last Thursday, or Sunday, but we couldn’t make it anything like as imposing on either day. We couldn’t have got the convent school for one thing, nor such a muster of clergy. They can’t conveniently leave their own missions on those days. Now come up to the house. There’s ‘cup’ and all sorts of things going; tea, too, if you prefer it—and I can’t allow you to break away as you did last time. Where did you leave your bicycle?”—with a glance at her skirt.
“I stood it against the chapel railing. Will it be safe there?”
“We’d better take it along to make sure.”
She would not let him get it for her. Someone might detain him if once he left her side. Indeed, she could hardly realise that she was awake and not dreaming. In saying that she had screwed up her courage to come she was speaking the literal truth, and even then would have given up at the last moment but for Clytie, whom, feebly, she had besought to accompany her.
“Not I, my dear child,” had been the decisive response. “If I were to get into that crowd some kind soul would be safe to pass the word: ‘Hullo! There’s Damages.’ Then what sort of show would Damages’ little sister have? No, no; you must play this innings off your own bat.”
But Delia, to do her justice, had resolved in no way to second her sister’s great and audacious scheme. It made her feel mean to realise that she had even heard it mooted. Her presence there to-day was not due to any wish to further it, but to a legitimate desire not to let slip so good an opportunity of furthering the acquaintance so strangely begun.
“I have never seen a more picturesque sight,” she went on as they walked towards the house. “The effect was perfect—the procession moving between these great tree trunks—the avenue all strewn with roses—and all that flash as of gold here and there, and the scarlet and white of the choir boys. And how well they seemed to do it—no fuss or blundering. Did you organise it all, Mr. Wagram? You seemed here, there, and everywhere at once.”
“I generally do master of ceremonies—a very much needed official, I assure you, on these occasions.”
“So I should imagine. And all those little tots in muslin and white wreaths—even the plainest of them looked pretty. Tell me, Mr. Wagram, who was that lovely girl who carried one of the banners? She didn’t look as if she belonged to that convent school.”
“Yvonne Haldane. No, she doesn’t.”
“Is she French?”
“There’s nothing French about her but her name, unless that she speaks it uncommonly well. She’s staying with us—she and her father. The peculiarity about them is that they are rarely seen apart.”
“Really? How nice. You don’t often find that.” And the speaker’s thoughts reverted to another sort of parent, abusive or maudlin, red-faced, and semi or wholly intoxicated. “But, Mr. Wagram, who is the priest who seemed to do all the principal part? Such a fine-looking old man!”
“Monsignor Culham. He and my father have known each other all their lives. Ah, here they all are,” as the tall forms of the prelate and his host appeared round the end of the house. With them was a sprinkling of black coats.
“I believe I’m a little afraid,” said Delia hesitatingly.
“You needn’t be. They are very good-natured men. They wouldn’t wish to burn you for the world. They prefer the ‘Stakes of Smithfield’ with the ‘e’ transposed.”
“Now you’re chaffing me again. But, really, I’m always a little shy of ‘the cloth.’ I never know what to talk about.”
“Make your mind easy. We shall find the lay element abundantly represented on the lawn, never fear. But first come and say a word or two to my father.”
Remembering the episode of the gnu, Delia was a little shy of meeting the old Squire. But she need not have been, for his denunciation of the house of Calmour notwithstanding, his greeting of this scion thereof was all that was kind and cordial.
“So this is the famous big game slayer?” he said after a word or two of welcome. “What do you think of that, Monsignor? You don’t meet every day with a young lady who can boast of having shot big game—dropped a fine specimen of the brindled gnu dead in his tracks.”
“No, indeed. In South Africa, I suppose?”
“South Africa? No. Here—right here. But it was to save someone from being badly gored.”
“Which is one more instance to show that pluck and readiness of resource are not prerogatives of our sex entirely,” said the prelate, quick to notice the look of embarrassment which had come over the girl’s face.
It was even as Wagram had said, the lay element was represented on the lawn, as a fair sprinkling of sunshades and vari-coloured light summer dresses and hats bore token. Likewise refreshment, and while in process of procuring some for his charge Wagram felt a pull at his sleeve.
“Who’s that you’ve got there, Wagram? Is Damages here too?”
“Eh? Oh, by the way, Haldane, which of them is Damages?”
“Not this one; a sister; the tall one: Clytie, I think they call her.”
“Oh! Well, this one isn’t responsible for her sister, and she’s a very nice sort of girl. She’s the heroine of the gnu adventure, you know, and I want Yvonne to go and talk to her a little.”
“Of course I will,” said Yvonne, moving off with that intent.
“Look at her!” exclaimed Haldane as they watched this tall child cross the lawn; straight, erect, gait utterly free and unstudied, the great golden mantle of her hair rippling below her waist. “Just look at her, Wagram! Did you ever see such a child in your life? And they talk about ‘the awkward age.’ Yvonne never had an awkward age.”
“I should think not,” assented Wagram, who ran her father very close in his admiration for the beautiful child.
“How many girls of her age,” went on Haldane, “would unhesitatingly go and talk to an entire stranger like that? They’d kick against it, object that they didn’t know what to say, that someone else had better undertake the job, and so on. Yet look at her; she’s as self-possessed as a woman of fifty, and as devoid of self-consciousness as a savage, and she’s talking to the other girl as if she’s known her all her life.”
And such, indeed, was the case. So entranced was Delia with the charm of this child-woman that she almost forgot to do justice to the strawberries and champagne cup which Wagram had procured for her, almost forgot furtively to watch Wagram himself as he moved here and there attending to other guests; forgot entirely any little gêne she might have felt, remembering that, after all, this was not her world, that she was in a sort of fish-out-of-water state. They talked of bicycling, then of post-card collecting, then of the solemnity they had just witnessed, and here especially the blue eyes would kindle and the whole face light up, and Yvonne would describe graphically and well other and similar ceremonies she had witnessed in some of the great cathedrals of the world. Her listener thought she could have sat there for ever in that atmosphere of refinement and ease; and this lovely child, who had drawn her with such a magnetic fascination—they would probably never hold converse together again. How could they, belonging as they did to different worlds, and in this connection the thought of the atmosphere of