The House begins to Fill.
Beatrix was fond of her father, who was really a good-natured man, in
the common acceptance of the term, that is to say, he had high animal
spirits, and liked to see people pleasant about him, and was probably as
kind as a tolerably selfish and vicious man can be, and had a liking,
moreover, for old faces, which was one reason why he hated the idea of
his housekeeper's leaving him. But Beatrix was also a little in awe of
him, as girls often are of men of whom they see but little, especially
if they have something of the masculine decision of temper.
"You may all go away now," said the Baronet suddenly to the servants,
who had waited at dinner; and when the liveried phantoms had withdrawn,
and the door had closed on the handsome calves of tall and solemn
Jenkins, he said--
"Nothing all day--no adventure, or visitor, Trixie--not a word of news
or fun, I dare say?"
"Nothing--not a creature, papa; only the birds and dogs, and some new
music."
"Well, it is not much worse than Wardlock, I suppose; but we shall have
a gay house soon--at all events plenty of people. Old General Lennox is
coming. His nephew, Captain Drayton, is very rich; he will be Lord
Tewkesbury--that is, if old Tewkesbury doesn't marry; and, at all
events, he has a very nice property, and does not owe a guinea. You need
not look modest, Trixie. You may do just as you please, only I'd be
devilish glad you liked one another--there, don't be distressed, I say;
I'll mention it no more if you don't like; but he'll be here in a few
days, and you mayn't think him so bad."
After this the Baronet drank two glasses of sherry in silence, slowly,
and with a gloomy countenance, and then, said he--
"I think, Trixie, if you were happily placed, I should give the whole
thing up. I'm tired of that cursed House of Commons. You can't imagine
what a bore it is, when a fellow does not want anything from them, going
down there for their d----d divisions. I'm not fit for the hounds
either. I can't ride as I used--egad! I'm as stiff as a rusty hinge when
I get up in the morning. And I don't much like this place, and I'm tired
to death of the other two. When you marry I'll let them, or, at all
events, let them alone. I'm tired of all those servants. I know they're
robbing me, egad! You would not believe what my gardens cost me last
year, and, by Jove, I don't believe all that came to my table was worth
two hundred pounds. I'll have quite a different sort of life. I haven't
any time to myself, looking after all those confounded people one must
keep about them. Keepers, and gardeners, and devil knows who beside. I
don't like London half as well as the Continent. I hate dinner-parties,
and the season, and all the racket. It doesn't pay, and I'm growing
old--you'll not mind if I smoke it?" (he held a cigar between his
fingers)--"a complaint that doesn't mend by time, you know. Oh! yes, I
_am_ old, you little rogue. Everybody knows I'm just fifty; and the fact
is I'm tired of the whole thing, stock, lock, and barrel; and I believe
what little is to be got of life is best had--that is, if you know how
to look for it--abroad. A fellow like me who has got places and
properties--egad! they expect him to live _pro bono publico_, and not to
care or think twopence about himself--at least it comes to that. How is
old Gwynn?"
"Very well, I think."
"And what has she to say for herself; what about things in general?"
"She's not very chatty, poor old Gwynn, and I think she seems a
little--just ever so little--cross."
"So she does--damnably cross. She was always a bit of a vixen, and she
isn't improving, poor old thing; but don't be afraid, I like old Donnie
for all that, though I don't think I ever quite understood her, and I
don't expect either." These observations concluded the conversation
subsided, and a long silence supervened.
"I wonder who the devil he is," said the Baronet abruptly, as he threw
the stump of his cigar into the fire. "If it's a fluke, it's as like a
miracle as anything I ever saw."
He recollected that he was talking without an interlocutor, and looked
for a moment hesitatingly at his daughter.
"And your grandmamma told you nothing of her adventure in church?"
"No, papa--not a word."
"It seems to me, women can hold their tongues sometimes, but always in
the wrong places."
Here he shook the ashes of his cigar into the grate.
"Old Granny's a fool--isn't she, Trixie, and a little bit vicious--eh?"
Sir Jekyl put his question dreamily, in a reverie, and it plainly needed
no answer. So Beatrix was spared the pain of making one; which she was
glad of, for Lady Alice was good to her after her way, and she was fond
of her.
"We must ask her to come, you know. You write. Say I thought _you_ would
have a better chance of prevailing. She won't, you know; and so much the
better."
So as the Baronet rose, and stood gloomily with his back to the fire;
the young lady rose also, and ran away to the drawing-room and her desk;
and almost at the same moment a servant entered the room, with a letter,
which had come by the late post.
Oddly enough, it had the Slowton postmark.
"Devilish odd!" exclaimed Sir Jekyl, scowling eagerly on it; and seating
himself hastily on the side of a chair, he broke it open and read at the
foot the autograph, "Guy Strangways."
It was with the Napoleonic thrill, "I have them, then, these English!"
that Sir Jekyl read, in a gentlemanlike, rather foreign hand, a
ceremonious and complimentary acceptance of his invitation to Marlowe,
on behalf both of the young man and of his elder companion. His
correspondent could not say exactly, as their tour was a little
desultory, where a note would find them; but as Sir Jekyl Marlowe had
been so good as to permit them to name a day for their visit, they would
say so and so.
"Let me see--what day's this--why, that will be"--he was counting with
the tips of his fingers, pianowise, on the table--"Wednesday week, eh?"
and he tried it over again with nature's "Babbage's machine" and of
course with an inflexible result. "Wednesday week--Wednesday," and he
heaved a great sigh, like a man with a load taken off him.
"Well, I'm devilish glad. I hope nothing will happen to stop them now.
It can't be a _ruse_ to get quietly off the ground? No--that would be
doing it too fine." He rang the bell.
"I want Mrs. Gwynn."
The Baronet's spirit revived within him, and he stood erect, with his
back to the fire, and his hands behind him, and when the housekeeper
entered, he received her with his accustomed smile.
"Glad to see you, Donnie. Glass of sherry? No--well, sit down--won't
take a chair!--why's that? Well, we'll be on pleasanter terms
soon--you'll find it's really no choice of mine. I can't help using that
stupid green room. Here are two more friends coming--not till Wednesday
week though--two gentlemen. You may put them in rooms beside one
another--wherever you like--only not in the garrets, of course. _Good_
rooms, do ye see."
"And what's the gentlemen's names, please, Sir Jekyl," inquired Mrs.
Gwynn.
"Mr. Strangways, the young gentleman; and the older, as well as I can
read it, is Mr. Varbarriere."
"Thank ye, sir."
The housekeeper having again declined the kindly distinction of a glass
of sherry, withdrew.
In less than a week guests began to assemble, and in a few days more old
Marlowe Hall began to wear a hospitable and pleasant countenance.
The people were not, of course, themselves all marvels of agreeability.
For instance, Sir Paul Blunket, the great agriculturist and eminent
authority on liquid manures, might, as we all know, be a little livelier
with advantage. He is short and stolid; he wears a pale blue muslin
neck-handkerchief with a white stripe, carefully tied. His countenance,
I am bound to say, is what some people would term heavy--it is frosty,
painfully shaven, and shines with a glaze of transparent soap. He has
small, very light blue round eyes, and never smiles. A joke always
strikes him with unaffected amazement and suspicion. Laughter he knows
may imply ridicule, and he may himself possibly be the subject of it. He
waits till it subsides, and then talks on as before on subjects which
interest him.
Lady Blunket, who accompanies him everywhere, though not tall, is stout.
She is delicate, and requires nursing; and, for so confirmed an
invalid, has a surprising appetite. John Blunket, the future baronet, is
in the Diplomatic Service, I forget exactly where, and by no means
young; and lean Miss Blunket, at Marlowe with her parents, though known
to be older than her brother, is still quite a girl, and giggles with
her partner at dinner, and is very _naïve_ and animated, and sings arch
little chansons discordantly to the guitar, making considerable play
with her eyes, which are black and malignant.
This family, though neither decorative nor entertaining, being highly
respectable and ancient, make the circuit of all the good houses in the
county every year, and are wonderfully little complained of. Hither also
they had brought in their train pretty little Mrs. Maberly, a cousin,
whose husband, the Major, was in India--a garrulous and good-humoured
siren, who smiled with pearly little teeth, and blushed easily.
At Marlowe had already assembled several single gentlemen too. There was
little Tom Linnett, with no end of money and spirits, very good-natured,
addicted to sentiment, and with a taste for practical joking too, and a
very popular character notwithstanding.
Old Dick Doocey was there also, a colonel long retired, and well known
at several crack London clubs; tall, slight, courtly, agreeable, with a
capital elderly wig, a little deaf, and his handsome high nose a little
reddish. Billy Cobb--too, a gentleman who could handle a gun, and knew
lots about horses and dogs--had arrived.
Captain Drayton had arrived: a swell, handsome, cleverish, and
impertinent, and, as young men with less reason will be, egotistical. He
would not have admitted that he had deigned to make either plan or
exertion with that object, but so it happened that he was placed next to
Miss Beatrix, whom he carelessly entertained with agreeable ironies, and
anecdotes, and sentiments poetic and perhaps a little vapid. On the
whole, a young gentleman of intellect, as well as wealth and
expectations, and who felt, not unnaturally, that he was overpowering.
Miss Beatrix, though not quite twenty, was _not_ overpowered, however,
neither was her heart pre-occupied. There was, indeed, a shadow of
another handsome young gentleman--only a shadow, in a different
style--dark, and this one light; and she heart-whole, perhaps
fancy-free, amused, delighted, the world still new and only begun to be
explored. One London season she had partly seen, and also made her
annual tour twice or thrice of all the best county-houses, and so was
not nervous among her peers.