Read Ebook: Antony Gray—Gardener by LM Leslie Moore

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Ebook has 193 lines and 9130 words, and 4 pages

"Find another heir, then," he announced after a moment.

Nicholas shook his head. "You hardly encourage me to do so. My present failure appears so palpable, I am not very likely to make a second attempt in that direction."

Again there was a silence. Antony moved further back into the room.

"You rather force my hand," he said coldly.

"You mean you accept the inheritance?" asked Nicholas eagerly. His eagerness was almost too blatant.

"I will accept it," replied Antony dispassionately, "and will see justice done to your tenants. It will not be incumbent on me to make personal use of your money."

Nicholas let that pass.

"And for the present?" he asked.

"Concerning the matter of the contract," said Antony stiffly, "I would point out to you that I undertook to work for you for a year as Michael Field, gardener. Well, I will abide by that contract, and prolong it if necessary." He did not say till the day of Nicholas's death. But Nicholas understood his meaning.

"I trust you consider that I am now treating you fairly," said Antony still stiffly, and after a slight pause.

Nicholas bowed his head.

"Fairly, yes," he said in an odd, almost pathetic voice, "but hardly--shall we call it--as a friend."

Antony looked suddenly amazed.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"I wanted you to help me to get even with Curtis," he replied regretfully. His tone was somewhat reminiscent of a rueful schoolboy.

Despite himself Antony smiled.

Antony laughed aloud. For the life of him he could not help it. And then, as he laughed, he realized in a sudden flash, almost as Trix had realized, the odd pathos, the utter loneliness which could find interest in the mad business he--Nicholas--had invented.

Suddenly Antony spoke.

"You may as well carry out your original programme," he said, and almost good-humouredly annoyed at his own swift change of mood.

The library door opened.

"Mr. Spencer Curtis," announced Jessop on a note of solemn gloom.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRIFLES

It was not till a good many hours later that the anticlimax of the recent situation struck Trix. Excitement had prevented her from realizing it at first. In the excitement of what the thing stood for, she had overlooked the utter triviality of the thing itself. When, later, the two separated themselves in a measure, and she looked at the thing as apart from what it indicated, the ludicrousness of it struck her with astounding force.

Nicholas Danver would give a tea-party.

And it was this, this small commonplace statement, which had kept the Duchessa, Miss Tibbutt, Doctor Hilary, and herself in solemn and amazed confabulation for at least two hours. It was infinitely more amazing even than the whole story of the past months, and Trix had given that in fairly detailed fashion, avoiding the Duchessa's eyes, however, whenever she mentioned Antony's name. Yes; it was what the tiny fact stood for that had astounded them; though now, with the fact in a measure separated from its meaning, Trix saw the almost absurdity of it.

Fifteen years of a living death to terminate in a tea-party!

It was an anticlimax which made her almost hysterical to contemplate. She felt that the affair ought to have wound up in some great movement, in some dignified action or fine speech, and it had descended to the merely ludicrous, or what, in view of those fifteen years, appeared the merely ludicrous. And she had been the instigator of it, and Doctor Hilary had called it a miracle. Which it truly was.

And yet, banishing the ludicrous from her mind, it was so entirely simple. There was not the faintest blare of trumpets, not a whisper even of an announcing voice, merely the fact that a solitary man would once more welcome friends beneath his roof.

The only real touch of excitement about the business would be when Antony Gray learnt the news, and he and the Duchessa met. And yet even that somehow lost its significance before the absorbing yet quiet fact of Nicholas's own resurrection.

"He is looking forward to it like a child," Trix had said.

And Miss Tibbutt had suddenly taken off her spectacles and wiped them.

"It's an odd little thing to feel choky about," she had said with a shaky laugh.

Presently she had left the room. A few moments later Doctor Hilary had also taken his leave. Trix and the Duchessa had been left alone. Suddenly the Duchessa had looked across at Trix.

"What made you do it?" she had asked.

Trix understood the question, and the colour had rushed to her face.

"What made you do it?" the Duchessa had repeated.

"For you," Trix had replied in a very small voice.

"You guessed?" the Duchessa had asked quietly.

The Duchessa had got up from her chair. She had gone quietly over to Trix and kissed her. Then she, too, had left the room.

Trix stared thoughtfully into the fire. Its light was playing on the silver-backed brushes on her dressing-table, gleaming on the edges of gilt frames, and throwing her shadow big and dancing on the wall behind her. The curtains were undrawn, and without the trees stood ghostly and bare against the pale grey sky. There was the dead silence in the atmosphere which tells of frost.

It was just that,--the oddness of little things, and their immense importance in life, and simply because of the influence they have on the human soul. It was this that made the fact of Nicholas Danver giving a tea-party of such extraordinary importance, though, viewed apart from its meaning, it was the most trivial and commonplace thing in the world.

Trix got up from her chair, and went over to the window.

Not a twig of the bare trees was stirring. The earth lay quiet in the grip of the frost king; a faint pink light still lingered in the western sky. She looked at the rustic seat and the table beneath the lime trees. How amazingly long ago the day seemed when she had sat there with Pia, and heard the little tale of wounded pride. How amazingly long ago that very morning seemed, when she had seen the sunlight flood her window-pane with ruby jewels. Even her interview with Father Dormer seemed to belong to another life. It had been another Trix, and not she herself who had propounded her difficulty to him, a difficulty so astoundingly simple of solution.

She heaved a little sigh of intense satisfaction, and then she caught sight of a figure crossing the grass.

The Duchessa had come out of the house and was going towards the garden gate.

A FOOTSTEP ON THE PATH

Antony was sitting in his cottage. It was quite dusk in the little room, but he had not troubled to light the lamp. A mood of utter depression was upon him, though for the life of him he could not tell fully what was causing it. That very fact increased the depression. There was nothing definite he could get a grip on, and combat. He was in no worse situation than he had been in three hours previously, in fact it might be considered that he was in an infinitely better one, and yet this mood was less than three hours old.

Of course the thought of the Duchessa was at the root of the depression. But why? If he met her again--and all things now considered, the meeting was even more than probable--what earthly difference would it make whether he met her in his r?le of Michael Field, gardener, or as Antony Gray, agent? And yet he knew that it would make a difference. Between the Duchessa di Donatello and Michael Field there was fixed a great social gulf. He himself had assured her of that fact. Keeping that fact in view, he could deceive himself into the belief that it alone would be accountable for the aloofness of her bearing, for the frigidity of her manner should they again meet. Oh, he'd pictured the meetings often enough; pictured, too, and schooled himself to endure, the aloofness, the frigidity.

"I rubbed it well in that I am only a gardener, a mere labourer," he would assure his soul, with these imaginary meetings in mind. Of course he had known perfectly well that he was deceiving himself, yet even that knowledge had been better than facing the pain of truth.

But now the truth had got to be faced.

There would be the aloofness, sure enough, but there would no longer be that great social gulf to account for it. The true cause would have to be acknowledged. She scorned him, firstly on account of his fraud, and secondly because he had wounded her pride by his quiet deliberate snubbing of her friendship. Whatever justification she might presently see for the first offence, it never for an instant occurred to his mind that she might overlook the second. He had deliberately put a barrier between them, and it appeared to him now, as it had appeared at the moment of its placing, utterly and entirely unsurmountable. She would be civil, of course; there would not be the slightest chances of her forgetting her manners, but--his mind swung to the little hotel courtyard, to the orange trees in green tubs, to the golden sunshine and the sparkle of the blue water, to the woman then sitting by his side.

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