The American Senator. Anthony Trollope
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did say many severe things against his former landlord. He hated people who were unsocial and averse to dining out, and who departed from the ways of living common among English country gentlemen. Mr. Mainwaring was, upon the whole, prepared to take the other side.
Reginald Morton, though he was now nearly forty, was a young-looking, handsome man, with fair hair, cut short, and a light beard, which was always clipped. Though his mother had been an innkeeper's daughter in Montreal he had the Morton blue eyes and the handsome well-cut Morton nose. He was nearly six feet high, and strongly made, and was known to be a much finer man than the Secretary of Legation, who was rather small, and supposed to be not very robust.
Our lonely man was a great walker, and had investigated every lane and pathway, and almost every hedge within ten miles of Dillsborough before he had resided there two years; but his favourite rambles were all in the neighbourhood of Bragton. As there was no one living in the house—no one but the old housekeeper who had lived there always—he was able to wander about the place as he pleased. On the Tuesday afternoon, after the meeting of the Dillsborough Club which has been recorded, he was seated, about three o'clock, on the rail of the foot-bridge over the Dill, with a long German pipe hanging from his mouth. He was noted throughout the whole country for this pipe, or for others like it, such a one usually being in his mouth as he wandered about. The amount of tobacco which he had smoked since his return to these parts, exactly in that spot, was considerable, for there he might have been found at some period of the afternoon at least three times a week. He would sit on this rail for half an hour looking down at the sluggish waters of the little river, rolling the smoke out of his mouth at long intervals, and thinking perhaps of the great book which he was supposed to be writing. As he sat there now, he suddenly heard voices and laughter, and presently three girls came round the corner of the hedge, which, at this spot, hid the Dillsborough path—and he saw the attorney's three daughters.
"It's Mr. Morton," said Dolly in a whisper.
"He's always walking about Bragton," said Kate in another whisper. "Tony Tuppett says that he's the Bragton ghost."
"Kate," said Mary, also in a low voice, "you shouldn't talk so much about what you hear from Tony Tuppett."
"Bosh!" said Kate, who knew that she could not be scolded in the presence of Mr. Morton.
He came forward and shook hands with them all, and took off his hat to Mary. "You've walked a long way, Miss Masters," he said.
"We don't think it far. I like sometimes to come and look at the old place."
"And so do I. I wonder whether you remember how often I've sat you on this rail and threatened to throw you into the river?"
"I remember very well that you did threaten me once, and that I almost believed that you would throw me in."
"What had she done that was naughty, Mr. Morton?" asked Kate.
"I don't think she ever did anything naughty in those days. I don't know whether she has changed for the worse since."
"Mary is never naughty now," said Dolly. "Kate and I are naughty, and it's very much better fun than being good."
"The world has found out that long ago, Miss Dolly; only the world is not quite so candid in owning it as you are. Will you come and walk round the house, Miss Masters? I never go in, but I have no scruples about the paths and park."
At the end of the bridge leading into the shrubbery there was a stile, high indeed, but made commodiously with steps, almost like a double staircase, so that ladies could pass it without trouble. Mary had given her assent to the proposed walk, and was in the act of putting out her hand to be helped over the stile, when Mr. Twentyman appeared at the other side of it.
"If here isn't Larry!" said Kate.
Morton's face turned as black as thunder, but he immediately went back across the bridge, leading Mary with him. The other girls, who had followed him on to the bridge, had of course to go back also. Mary was made very unhappy by the meeting. Mr. Morton would of course think that it had been planned, whereas by Mary herself it had been altogether unexpected. Kate, when the bridge was free, rushed over it and whispered something to Larry. The meeting had indeed been planned between her and Dolly and the lover, and this special walk had been taken at the request of the two younger girls.
Morton stood stock still, as though he expected that Twentyman would pass by. Larry hurried over the bridge, feeling sure that the meeting with Morton had been accidental and thinking that he would pass on towards the house.
Larry was not at all ashamed of his purpose, nor was he inclined to give way and pass on. He came up boldly to his love, and shook hands with her with a pleasant smile. "If you are walking back to Dillsborough," he said, "maybe you'll let me go a little way with you?"
"I was going round the house with Mr. Morton," she said timidly.
"Perhaps I can join you?" said he, bobbing his head at the other man.
"If you intended to walk back with Mr. Twentyman—," began Morton.
"But I didn't," said the poor girl, who in truth understood more of it all than did either of the two men. "I didn't expect him, and I didn't expect you. It's a pity I can't go both ways, isn't it?" she added, attempting to appear cheerful.
"Come back, Mary," said Kate; "we've had walking enough, and shall be awfully tired before we get home."
Mary had thought that she would like extremely to go round the house with her old friend and have a hundred incidents of her early life called to her memory. The meeting with Reginald Morton had been altogether pleasant to her. She had often felt how much she would have liked it had the chance of her life enabled her to see more frequently one whom as a child she had so intimately known. But at the moment she lacked the courage to walk boldly across the bridge, and thus to rid herself of Lawrence Twentyman. She had already perceived that Morton's manner had rendered it impossible that her lover should follow them. "I am afraid I must go home," she said. It was the very thing she did not want to do—this going home with Lawrence Twentyman; and yet she herself said that she must do it—driven to say so by a nervous dread of showing herself to be fond of the other man's company.
"Good afternoon to you," said Morton very gloomily, waving his hat and stalking across the bridge.
CHAPTER VI.
NOT IN LOVE.
Reginald Morton, as he walked across the bridge towards the house, was thoroughly disgusted with all the world. He was very angry with himself, feeling that he had altogether made a fool of himself by his manner. He had shown himself to be offended, not only by Mr. Twentyman, but by Miss Masters also, and he was well aware, as he thought of it all, that neither of them had given him any cause of offence. If she chose to make an appointment for a walk with Mr. Lawrence Twentyman and to keep it, what was that to him? His anger was altogether irrational, and he knew that it was so. What right had he to have an opinion about it if Mary Masters should choose to like the society of Mr. Twentyman? It was an affair between her and her father and mother in which he could have no interest; and yet he had not only taken offence, but was well aware that he had shown his feeling.
Nevertheless, as to the girl herself, he could not argue himself out of his anger. It was grievous to him that he should have gone out of his way to ask her to walk with him just at the moment when she was expecting this vulgar lover—for that she had expected him he felt no doubt. Yet he had heard her disclaim any intention of walking with the man! But girls are sly, especially when their lovers are concerned. It made him sore at heart to feel that this girl should be sly, and doubly sore to think that she should have been able to love such a one as Lawrence Twentyman.
As he roamed about among the grounds this idea troubled him much. He assured himself that he was not in love with her himself, and that he had no idea of falling in love with her; but it sickened him to think that a girl who had been brought up by his