It was a relief, at least to her mother's mind, when young Mrs. Harcourt returned, and without a word took up the reins again. No one disputed her claims. Now and then there would be a lazy protest from Audrey—a concealed sarcasm that fell blunted beneath the calm amiability of the elder sister. Geraldine was always perfectly good-tempered; the sense of propriety that guided all her actions never permitted her to grow hot in argument; and when a person is always in the right, as young Mrs. Harcourt believed herself to be, the small irritations of daily life fall very harmlessly. It is possible for a man to be so cased in armour that even a pin-prick of annoyance will not find ingress. It is true the armour may be a little stifling and somewhat inconvenient for work-a-day use, but it is a grand thing to be saved from pricks.
Mrs. Harcourt was presiding at the little tea-table in the Woodcote drawing-room; there were only two other persons in the room. It was quite an understood thing that the young mistress of Hillside should walk over to Woodcote two or three afternoons in the week, to give her mother the benefit of her society, and also to discuss any little matter that might have arisen during her brief absence.
Mrs. Harcourt was an exceedingly handsome young woman; in fact, many people thought her lovely. She had well-cut features, a good complexion—with the soft, delicate colouring that only perfect health ever gives—and a figure that was at once graceful and dignified. To add to all these attractions, she understood the art of dressing herself; her gowns always fitted her to perfection. She was always attired suitably, and though vanity and self-consciousness were not her natural foibles, she had a feminine love of pretty things, and considered it a wifely duty to please the eyes of her lord and master.
Mrs. Harcourt had the old-fashioned sugar-tongs in her hand, and was balancing them lightly for a moment. 'It is quite true, mother,' she said decisively, as she dropped the sugar into the shallow teacup.
Mrs. Ross looked up from her knitting.
'My dear Geraldine, I do hope you are mistaken,' she returned anxiously.
Mrs. Ross had also been a very pretty woman, and even now she retained a good deal of pleasant middle-aged comeliness. She was somewhat stout, and had grown a little inactive in consequence; but her expression was soft and motherly, and she had the unmistakable air of a gentlewoman. In her husband's eyes she was still handsomer than her daughters; and Dr. Ross flattered himself that he had made the all-important choice of his life more wisely than other men.
'My dear mother, how is it possible to be mistaken?' returned her daughter, with a shade of reproof in her voice. 'I told you that I had a long talk with Edith. Michael, I have made your tea; I think it is just as you like it—with no infusion of tannin, as you call it'; and she turned her head slowly, so as to bring into view the person she was addressing, and who, seated at a little distance, had taken no part in the conversation.
He was a thin, pale man, of about five or six and thirty, with a reddish moustache. As he crossed the room in response to this invitation, he moved with an air of languor that amounted to lassitude, and a slight limp was discernible. His features were plain; only a pair of clear blue eyes, with a peculiarly searching expression, distinguished him from a hundred men of the same type.
These eyes were not always pleasant to meet. Certain people felt disagreeably in their inner consciousness that Captain Burnett could read them too accurately—'No fellow has a right to look you through and through,' as one young staff officer observed; 'it is taking a liberty with a man. Burnett always seems as though he is trying to turn a fellow inside out, to get at the other side of him'—not a very eloquent description of a would-be philosopher who loved to dabble a little in human foibles.
'I have been listening to the Blake discussion,' he said coolly, as he took the offered cup. 'What a wonderful woman you are, Gage! you have a splendid talent for organisation; and even a thorough-paced scandal has to be organised.'
'Scandal!—what are you talking about, Michael?'
'Your talent for organisation, even in trifles,' he returned promptly. 'I am using the word advisedly. I have just been reading De Quincey's definition of talent and genius. He says—now pray listen, Gage—that "talent is intellectual power of every kind which acts and manifests itself by and through the will and the active forces. Genius, as the verbal origin implies, is that much rarer species of intellectual power which is derived from the genial nature, from the spirit of suffering and enjoying, from the spirit of pleasure and pain, as organised more or less perfectly; and this is independent of the will. It is a function of the passive nature. Talent is conversant with the adaptation of means to ends; but genius is conversant only with ends."'
'My dear Michael, I have no doubt that all this is exceedingly clever, and that your memory is excellent, but why are we to be crushed beneath all this analysis?'
'I was only drawing a comparison between you and Audrey,' he replied tranquilly. 'I have been much struck by the idea involved in the word "genial"; I had no conception we could evolve "genius" out of it. Audrey is a very genial person; she also, in De Quincey's words, "moves in headlong sympathy and concurrence with spontaneous power." This is his definition, mark you; I lay no claim to it: "Genius works under a rapture of necessity and spontaneity." I do love that expression, "headlong sympathy"; it so well expresses the way Audrey works.'
Mrs. Harcourt gave a little assenting shrug. She was not quite pleased with the turn the conversation had taken; abstract ideas were not to her taste; the play of words in which Captain Burnett delighted bored her excessively. She detected, too, a spice of irony. The comparison between her and Audrey was not a flattering one: she was far cleverer than Audrey; her masters and governesses would have acknowledged that fact. And yet her cousin Michael was giving the divine gift of genius to her more scantily endowed sister; genius! but, of course, it was only Michael's nonsense: he would say anything when he was in the humour for disputation. Even her own Percival had these contentious moods. The masculine mind liked to play with moral ninepins, to send all kinds of exploded theories rolling with their little ball of wit; it sharpened their argumentative faculties, and kept them bright and ready for use.
'Mother and I were talking about these tiresome Blakes—not of Audrey,' she said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. 'If you were listening, Michael, you must have heard the whole account of my conversation with Mrs. Bryce.'
'Oh, you mean Harcourt's sister, with whom you have been staying. Did I not tell you that I had heard every word, and was admiring your admirable tactics? The way in which you marshalled your forces of half-truths and implied verities and small mounted theories was grand—absolutely grand!'
Mrs. Harcourt was silent for a moment. Michael was very trying; he often exercised her patience most severely. But there was a threefold reason for her forbearance; first, he was her father's cousin, and beloved by him as his own son would have been if he had ever had one; secondly, his ill-health entitled him to a good deal of consideration from any kind-hearted woman; and thirdly, and perhaps principally, he had the reputation for saying and doing odd, out-of-the-way things; and a man who moves in an eccentric circle of his own is never on other people's plane, and therefore some allowance must be made for him.
Mrs. Harcourt could, however, have heartily endorsed Mrs. Carlyle's opinion of her gifted son, and applied it to her cousin—'He was ill to live with.' Somehow one loves this honest, shrewd criticism of the old North-Country woman, the homely body who smoked short black pipes in the chimney-corner, but whom Carlyle loved and venerated from the bottom of his big heart. 'Ill to live with'—perhaps Michael Burnett, with his injured health and Victoria Cross, and the purpose of his life all marred and frustrated, was not the easiest person in the world.
Mrs. Harcourt was silent for an instant; but she never permitted herself to be ruffled, so she went on in her smooth voice:
'I felt it was my duty to repeat to mother all that Edith—I mean Mrs. Bryce—told me about the Blakes.'
'Please