LORD ST. QUENTIN
By the time she had been a week at Castle St. Quentin, Sydney felt as
though the old happy life in London were years away.
She did not even look like the same Sydney, in the dainty frocks with
which Lady Frederica replaced the clothes mother had packed so carefully.
“Miss Lisle has not a thing fit to wear, my lady,” had been Ward’s
verdict, when Lady Frederica made inquiries into the state of Sydney’s
wardrobe, and Lady Frederica’s own dressmaker in London received a
lengthy order marked “Immediate” that very night.
The frocks were all ankle-length. “We will not put your hair up till
you are presented in March,” said Lady Frederica; but she only laughed
when Sydney threw out a timid suggestion that perhaps in that case the
old frocks might do till she came out. All these new clothes for four
months’ use only: it hardly seemed possible to believe.
Sydney’s wardrobe replenished, Lady Frederica took her education in hand
with undiminished energy. And the girl, although of no very studious
disposition, quite hailed the idea of lessons. Something to do would be
indeed a comfort, was the conclusion she arrived at by the end of the
first week. Writing had lost its zest now she had unlimited time in which
to do it, and even story-books palled when read all day. Solitary walks
were most decidedly forbidden by Lady Frederica, when she heard of the
girl’s adventure on the morning after her arrival; and when Mr. Fenton
left the Castle, as he did in a day or two, her life was lonely indeed.
St. Quentin was worse, and confined to his room for the whole week,
seeing no one but his man and Dr. Lorry; and Lady Frederica was never
down until the two o’clock luncheon.
If it had not been for a long letter of loving understanding counsel
from mother, Sydney would have been more than half inclined to give up
the early rising and other old home ways which made the mornings seem so
long. But mother must not be disappointed in her, and she thought of Mr.
Seaton’s words, and determined to try hard to make the interests which
did not seem inclined to make themselves.
It was on a dull afternoon a week after her arrival that she met
the doctor as he came from the library, where St. Quentin had been
reinstalled for the first time since the night she came.
Dr. Lorry was an elderly man, very kind-hearted and a teller of good
stories by the yard. He held out his hand to Sydney with a smile.
“Come in and see your cousin for a little while this afternoon, my dear
young lady,” he suggested. “I think a visitor would do him good to-day.”
Sydney followed him obediently into the library—a handsome but rather
sombre room, where what little of the wall could be seen for well-filled
book-cases was covered by Spanish leather, and the furniture wore the
same sober tint of dark brown.
St. Quentin’s couch was drawn up near the fire: he looked considerably
more ill now she saw him in daylight. His face was very worn and his eyes
sunken.
“Well, Lord St. Quentin, I’ve brought you a visitor, you see,” the doctor
said, drawing the girl forward. “She is not to chatter you to death—are
you a great talker, Miss Lisle?—but just to quietly amuse you. Good-bye,
I’ll look in again to-night.”
And he went out quietly, with an encouraging nod of his head to Sydney.
“Sit down,” said her cousin. “There, by the fire; you look cold. You
needn’t stay above five minutes if you find it bores you.”
“But I want to stay,” Sydney said. Her glance was the direct one of a
child. “I have been wanting to see you to say thank you for all those
lovely things you have given me—in my rooms, you know. And Lady Frederica
says I am to have a horse, and riding lessons too. It is _awfully_ good
of you!”
She pulled up in confusion at the “awfully” which had escaped her, but
her cousin did not seem to notice it.
“Oh, you like the notion of a horse; that’s right,” he said. “I wrote up
to Braemuir, who’s a pretty fair judge, to choose one suited for a lady,
and to send it down. You ought to look rather well on horseback.”
He looked critically at the slight figure dressed in soft green, touched
with creamy lace, before him. “I’m glad Aunt Rica didn’t make you put
your hair up yet,” he said.
“At home they said I must put it up on my eighteenth birthday,” Sydney
volunteered.
“At ‘home’?” questioned the marquess, with raised eyebrows.
“I mean in London,” she explained, speaking rather low. “Mother always
said I must not keep it down after I was eighteen, but Hugh didn’t want
it to go up.”
“Who is Hugh?” St Quentin’s tone was rather sharp; Sydney wondered if he
were in pain.
“Hugh is the eldest of us, but not a bit stuck-up or elder-brotherish
because of that. He is such a dear boy and very clever too. Why, he has
an appointment at the Blue-Friars’ Hospital that most men don’t get till
they’re _ever_ so old, over thirty! And Hugh is so nice too, at home; he
and I are special friends——”
Sydney could not understand what made her cousin’s voice sound so
unpleasant as he interrupted her with another question:
“How old is this paragon?”
“Twenty-four last birthday, Cousin St. Quentin.” She no longer felt
inclined to enlarge upon Hugh’s merits.
“Does he write to you?”
“Of course he does.”
“Don’t answer his letters, if you please. I have no doubt your
Chichesters are excellent people, but a correspondence between you and
this young paragon is most unsuitable.”
The colour flamed into Sydney’s face. “I don’t know what you mean, Cousin
St. Quentin,” she cried hotly, “and Hugh will think me so—so _horrid_ if
I never answer his letters!”
The cynical smile deepened round his mouth. “The sooner you understand
that playing at brother and sister is out of the question now the
better,” he said quietly.
Sydney set her teeth to keep the tears back and stared hard into the
fire. She would not cry before St. Quentin, but his tone, even more than
his words, made her desperately hot and angry. There was silence in the
room for full five minutes: then the footman came in with a note for Lord
St. Quentin.
He opened it, and read it half aloud with a sneer.
“What’s this ... ‘Miss Lisle ... help in the Sunday School ... small
class ...’ (confound the fellow’s insolence!) ‘subject of course to my
approval ...’ (He won’t get that, I can tell him!)”——
“Oh, Cousin St. Quentin!” Sydney cried, springing to her feet, “is it
about my class in the Sunday School? I told Mr. Seaton I should like to
take one. You will let me, won’t you?”
“Nonsense! You know nothing about it!” he assured her. “You wouldn’t like
it, and I don’t choose you to be always after parsons. Sit down there
at the writing-table—you’ll find pens and paper—and decline his offer,
please!”
“But I promised that I would, Cousin St. Quentin!”
“Well, now you find you can’t! Write—‘DEAR SIR.’”
Sydney wrote obediently, but with rebellion in her heart.
“I regret to find myself unable to take a class in your Sunday School,”
dictated Lord St. Quentin. “Yours faithfully, SYDNEY LISLE.”
But Sydney paused before the “yours faithfully” and faced round with
troubled eyes.
“He was very kind to me, and that sounds rather rude, doesn’t it? Mayn’t
I just put something else before the signature, for politeness?”
“Oh, say your brute of a cousin won’t allow you to do anything you want,”
the marquess suggested, with a rather mocking smile.
Sydney reddened, and, without remark, finished the letter that he had
dictated. Then she directed the envelope to “The Rev. Paul Seaton,”
and, rising, put it in her cousin’s hand. “I couldn’t say a thing like
that, you know,” she said, and he noticed that the childish figure had a
dignity of its own. “Shall I ring for one of the footmen to take it to
the Vicarage?” she added.
“I will,” said her cousin rather sharply, reaching out his arm. His
couch stood rather farther off from the bell than usual, and he turned
a little on his side in the attempt to reach it. The next moment Sydney
saw him fall back with a stifled exclamation of suffering, while his face
grew ashen and his brows contracted. She sprang forward. “Ring twice for
Dickson,” he gasped, “and go!”
She pealed the bell furiously, then, with a remembrance of father, looked
on the little table beside him.
Yes, sure enough, there was the bottle with, “Five drops to be taken in
water when the pain is acute.”
The water was there all ready. She held it to her cousin’s lips, raising
his head carefully. “It is the stuff in the blue bottle, Cousin St.
Quentin. Dickson said you took it when the pain was bad.”
When Dickson came hurrying in, breathless with his run from the distant
servants’ quarters, he found his master lying still with closed eyes,
while Sydney dabbed his forehead with cologne and water.
“Bless me, miss, that ain’t no good!” gasped the servant, forgetting
manners in the exigency of the moment. “That blue bottle, please, miss,
and the water!”
The strained look was passing from St. Quentin’s face, and he opened his
eyes again. “It’s all right, Dickson, Miss Lisle has already given me the
dose, as well as any doctor. Don’t stay now, child; Dickson will look
after me.”
Sydney did not see her cousin again that evening, but Dr. Lorry looked in
and reported him a little better.
And the next afternoon, as Sydney was driving through the village by
Lady Frederica’s side in the great landau, Mr. Seaton came up, and Lady
Frederica stopped the carriage to speak to him.
Sydney, remembering the note she had so unwillingly written him, grew
scarlet and shrank back into a corner of the carriage, but he greeted her
and Lady Frederica as though nothing disagreeable had occurred.
Presently he asked, turning to the girl, “How is Lord St. Quentin to-day?
I thought it so good of him to write himself and explain why you cannot
help us in the Sunday School at present.”
“Did Cousin St. Quentin write to you?” Sydney cried, finding it hard to
believe her ears.
“Yes, I heard from him late last night, explaining what great things you
are going to do in the way of education, Miss Lisle. Naturally he does
not wish you to undertake anything more just now.”
“Yes, Miss Lisle will be presented in March, and till that time we are
going to educate her,” broke in Lady Frederica. “I wish we were not such
a frightful distance from London, for I suppose the Donisbro’ masters
will have to do, unless I carry her off straight to town, which would be
much the best thing to do!”
“Only of course you would not wish to leave Lord St. Quentin in his
present state of health,” said Mr. Seaton rather pointedly, and Lady
Frederica sighed and said she supposed not, but these lingering illnesses
were very inconvenient.
Then the carriage drove on.
As soon as they reached the Castle, Sydney ran to the library, knocked,
and went in. St. Quentin seemed immersed in a book. She went and stood
beside his couch, her hands behind her.
“Cousin St. Quentin,” she said, “we met Mr. Seaton, so I know now that my
note did _not_ go to him.”
“It went into the fire,” said St. Quentin, without raising his eyes from
his book. “Your hand-writing isn’t precisely a credit to the aristocracy,
you know. You’d better do some copies before you turn into a marchioness.”
But Sydney was not to be put off by his tone.
“I’m very sorry I was cross,” she said earnestly. “It was _ever_ so good
of you to write him a nice note instead!”
St. Quentin went on reading in silence for a minute, then looked up.
“If you are going to remain,” he said, “and pray do, if you feel
inclined, shut the door and don’t talk nonsense!”