“My dear, this is Mrs. Lenny,” said Lady Markham. “She has kindly taken
us on her way to the north.”
“How do you do, my dear young lady? The Colonel wrote me word about you
all, praising you up, one more than another, and I thought I’d like to
come and see. But, Lenny, you never told me how like she was to her
father at her age. I think I see him before me, as handsome a boy----”
“Mrs. Lenny!” cried Alice, in consternation, yet relief. She turned to
her mother a pair of questioning, wondering eyes. But Lady Markham could
make no answer. She slightly shrugged, so to speak, not her shoulders,
but her eyebrows. She was very polite and very hospitable, but this
second arrival was almost too much for her. “I thought you looked
tired, mamma,” Alice continued. “I came back to drive you home.”
Lady Markham shook her head. She was almost cross--as near that
unpleasant state as it was possible for her to be. “Perhaps Mrs. Lenny
would like to drive, Alice? She has had a long journey. I am not at all
tired. I will wait and meet your papa.”
“How cool it is under these delicious trees,” said the lady of the pink
bonnet. “Yes, indeed, if the young lady will have me, it will be a treat
to be behind those beautiful ponies. Pretty creatures! like their
mistress. I have not seen anything so pretty, Lenny, since we left the
regiment. Ah, that was a foolish step. But one never knows when one is
well off. ‘_Lay mew_,’ as the French say, is the enemy of ‘_lay bieng_.’
Thank you, my dear. Now this _is_ delightful! I wish, instead of being
within sight, we were three or four miles from the house.”
“Take Mrs. Lenny round by the fishpond,” said Lady Markham. She sighed
with relief at getting rid of this new claimant upon her attention,
though she was so polite. Mrs. Lenny was tall like her husband, and like
him, brown and soldierly. She made the light little carriage bend on
one side as she got in. Her brown face within the pink shade of the
bonnet was wreathed with smiles. She was delighted like a child with the
pretty equipage, and the promised drive--much more delighted than Alice
was, who, though relieved of her terrors about Paul, drove off in no
very happy state of mind. Yet she could not help taking a little
pleasure in her own discrimination.
“I knew you were coming here the first moment I saw you,” she said. “I
kept asking papa who you were. But he had not seen you--he did not know
you; he never knows any one--not even, if he were to see us at a
distance, mamma or me.”
“Nor I,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I should no more have known him! for you may
be sure I took a good stare at the station, seeing it was somebody of
consequence. He is so changed--oh, not for the worse, my dear; but when
you see a nice little old gentleman instead of a pretty young one, it’s
a shock, that can’t be denied. You have to count up and think back how
many years it is. Somehow one never feels old one’s self. You think the
world has stood still with you, though it goes so fast with all the
rest.”
“I don’t feel at all like that,” said Alice. “Sometimes I feel so
old--older a great deal, I am sure, than mamma.”
This statement was received by her companion with laughter, which
disconcerted Alice. She drew herself up. She was not so polite as her
mother.
“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” she said. “Age does not go only
by years--when you have a great deal to think of----”
“You darling!” cried Mrs. Lenny. “Did the old woman laugh? But I’d laugh
just the same if your dear mamma herself was to talk of feeling old.
There’s what I call a lovely woman! Lenny never told me half what a dear
she was. Old! but don’t you gloom at me, my pretty pet; I was once
seventeen myself, though you wouldn’t think it. The birds now on the
trees, I daresay they feel old between one Valentine’s day and another.
It is not years that does it, as you say. When we come to my time of
life the days go on one after another as fast as they can pelt: they’re
all flyin’, flyin’, like the echoes in the song. But at your age they’re
longer--they pass more slow--and when there’s much to think about did
you say? Ah, but that’s true! When I was your age I had a great deal to
think about. We were a large family, six girls of us, and not a penny
among the lot. We were just ruined with the emancipation in the West
Indies, and all that our parents said to us was, ‘Get married! There’s
the officers,’ they said, ‘a set of simpletons! What’s the good of them
but to marry the poor girls that know how to play their cards.’ Ah! I
thought when I was after Lenny that to be married meant to be well off,
and have everything that heart could desire. And so we all thought. We
weren’t bad girls, don’t you think it; but that was how were brought up.
Get married! and you’ll be well off directly. You never had anything
like that said to you to make you old with thinking--”
“Oh, no, no,” said Alice, horrified. She scarcely knew whether to be
offended by the familiarity of the stranger or interested in her talk.
It was an experience altogether different from anything Alice knew of
life.
“No, I should think not,” said the lady of the pink bonnet, nodding that
article vigorously. “Just figure to yourself, my dear, what you would
feel if you had to leave this beautiful place, and live down in a house
in the town, and have _that_ said to you. You would be shocked, wouldn’t
you? But it did not shock us. That was how we were brought up. We had to
marry by hook or by crook; and we all did marry. Well, there’s Lenny, he
has made me a very good husband; but marrying him wasn’t like coming
into a fortune, was it now?--though we’ve always been the best of
friends. It was lucky in one way that we never had any children; it left
us free to look after ourselves. Nowadays we live a great deal among our
friends. We don’t interfere with each other, but we’re always glad to
come together again. When I’m comfortable anywhere I send him word, and
when he’s comfortable he sends me word. You mustn’t think my coming
means more than that, and you must tell your dear mamma so. We’ve not
come to do her any harm or her pretty family. Your papa is startled to
see us, but he won’t mind in the end. I daresay you have often heard him
talk of Barbadoes and the Gavestons? We were six handsome girls, though
I say it that shouldn’t. You must have heard of us by name.”
Alice, whom this speech had filled with wonder, shook her head. “I
never heard the name in my life,” she said.
“Well, that is odd,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I couldn’t believe it even though
Lenny said so. That’s thorough,” she added, with a little laugh. A flush
came over her brown cheek. “Never mind, my dear, it is not your fault,”
she said.
Alice was more and more mystified. She could not imagine what this
strange woman could mean. If she had been at first disposed to resent
her familiarity, that offence had altogether evaporated. Mrs. Lenny
looked and spoke as if she had something to do with the family; her eyes
and her tone were full of kindness even when she evidently resented the
fact that Alice had never heard of her. She spoke of herself without any
kind of effort, as if it were natural that the girl should be
interested; and Alice could not but wish to hear more. It was like a new
story, original and out of the common. The momentary pause that ensued
alarmed her lest it should be coming to an end.
“Did you all marry officers?” she asked at last.
“Did we all marry officers? We did that, every one--except the one that
one that married---- Ah! I mean Gussy, that was the youngest. She
married--a civilian--and died, poor girl. The rest of us all took the
shilling. Ah! some of the girls are dead, and the rest are
scattered--one in Australia, two out in India, me, wandering about the
world as you see me, Lenny and I; most likely I’ll never see one of them
again. We had but one brother; all the little the family had, he got it.
It was he that took Gussy’s boy--did I tell you she left a boy? Poor
Gussy! she died at twenty. It is like as if she never had married or
been more than a child. When I think of the past it’s always she that
comes uppermost--the little one, you know, the pet--and she never lived
to get parted from us like the rest.”
Alice looked vaguely interested. It seemed to her that she was hearing
the prologue of a novel. She did not draw any moral from it, or ask
herself whether her own brothers and sisters might ever be dispersed
like this about the world; but she wanted to hear more.
“Have the others no children?” she asked.
“Dozens, my dear,” said Mrs. Lenny, “here, and there, and everywhere.
I’ve nephews in the service in every country under the sun, and nieces,
all married in the army; it runs in our blood. But Gussy’s boy is the
one I think of most. He’s not a boy now. He’s five-and-thirty if he’s a
day, and my brother is dead that adopted him, and the property has gone
from bad to worse, and I don’t know what is to be done. Lenny’s head is
full of him. Perhaps if I were to speak a good word to your papa----”
“Could papa help him?” cried Alice, eagerly; “then you may be sure,
quite sure, that he will do it. I will speak to him myself. They all say
he always listens to me.”
“Will you?” said Mrs. Lenny. She grasped suddenly at the firm little
hand in which Alice held the reins, and put down her head as if to kiss
it, then looked up with a nervous laugh, winking her eyes rapidly to
cast off some tears. “You are a dear little angel!” she cried. “But
Lenny will do that, and I’ll do it. I won’t ask it of you, my pretty
darling. It would be more than was right.”
Alice was somewhat affronted at this rejection of her proposal. She was
bewildered by her companion’s demeanour altogether. Why should she cry?
and then refuse her assistance when she could have been of real use?
But that was, of course, as Mrs. Lenny pleased.
“This is the fishpond,” she said, more coldly. “It is very old, and
there are some carp in it that are supposed to be very old too.”
The fishpond was a piece of clear and beautiful water embosomed in the
richest wood. It was the very centre of all the beauties of the Chase to
the Markhams. A little brook trickled into it over a little fall which
made music in the silence, itself unseen, mingling a more liquid silvery
tone with all the songs of the birds and the murmur of the trees. A
little path wandered along by one side, the others were sloping banks of
greensward. The trees on all sides stooped as if leaning over each
other’s shoulders to see themselves in that fairy mirror, where they all
fluttered and trembled in reflection between the glimmer of the water
and the blue circle of sky, which filled up all the middle with blueness
and light. Some light and graceful birches upon the bank seemed to have
pressed further forward like advanced posts to get nearest the pool; a
great cluster of waterlilies filled up one corner. Even the impatient
ponies stood still in this soft coolness and shadow; perhaps they had
caught a glimpse of their pretty tossing heads and arched necks. Mrs.
Lenny’s bonnet shone in that mirror like an exotic bird, poised over it,
and her exclamation of delight broke the quiet with something of the
same effect.
“What a lovely place!” she said; “and it’s I that would live long if I
were a fish in such a sweet spot. Dear, dear, if one lived here it would
be a tug to die at all. And you have been here, my darling, all your
life?”
“Oh, yes,” said Alice, with a little laugh at the ignorance of the
question. “This is home, where else could I be? This is only the second
season I have ever been to town. I went for a little while last year
though I was not out. This summer I have been introduced,” she said,
with a little innocent ostentation. “I am out now. I go wherever mamma
goes.”
“Introduced?” said Mrs. Lenny, with a little awe, “to her Majesty--her
very self? Tell me how she looked, and all about her. Dear lady! what
I’d give to hear a word out of her mouth!”
“I did not mean that,” said Alice, feeling important and splendid;
“introduced means going out into society. I was presented too--of
course I had to be presented. Oh, there are the children down that
opening--do you see them? It is holiday time, and they are all
together.”
Mrs. Lenny looked round with eager interest, again swaying the little
carriage to one side.
“Are you the eldest?” she said; “and you have two little brothers?--only
these two?”
She looked quite anxiously in Alice’s face.
“Only these two--except Paul--and we are three girls--just the same
number of each.”
“Who is Paul?”
“Who is Paul?” said Alice, laughing; “that is the strangest question
here. Paul is the eldest of all--he is my brother. We all come in pairs.
There is Harry and Bell, Roland and Marie--and Paul is mine. He is not
very much at home now,” she said, her face clouding with the
recollection. “He is grown up--he is at Oxford. In the holidays he does
not always come home like the little ones. No one could expect him to be
like the little ones. He is a man.”
To a cooler observer Alice’s eager explanations would have betrayed the
family anxiety, of which Paul was the object. But Mrs. Lenny had other
thoughts in her mind. She clasped her hands together in her lap, and
said, “Dear me, dear, dear me!” with suppressed dismay. This suddenly
reawakened all the girl’s fears. Had it been a mistake, a pretence after
all? Was it no old connection, nothing to do with papa’s business? (what
could papa’s business matter, it would not go to any one’s heart like
the other) but after all some new evil that was threatening Paul?
“Mrs. Lenny,” she cried, “oh tell me first, for I can bear it; is it
about Paul? Has he got into any trouble? Is it something about _him_ you
have really come to tell us! Oh, tell me, tell me! and keep it from
mamma.”
“My dear,” cried Mrs. Lenny, confused, “what do I know about your
brother? I never heard of him before, and oh, I wish I had not heard of
him now. Do you think I would harm him if I had the power to help it?
Not I--not I! if there was anything in my power!”
And with this the good woman let fall upon her gloves, which were green,
a few tears. Why should she cry because of Paul if she did not know him?
Fortunately for Alice the ponies at that moment gave her no small
trouble. She had been thinking of other things and they took the
advantage. They wanted to take her home the back way into the stables.
Greedy little brutes! as if they had not everything that heart of pony
could desire--plenty of corn, plenty of ease, and the prettiest stable
with enamelled mangers and everything handsome about them. She stopped
them as they began to twist round in the wrong direction, tossing their
heads aloft. If they thought to take Alice unawares they were mistaken.
Thus she was obliged to withdraw her attention altogether from Mrs.
Lenny and fix it upon this rebellious pair, getting them past the
dangerous byway and bringing them up with a sweep and dash to the steps
of the great door.