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THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
_Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons_
BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920
Published October, 1912
by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
TO
ANSTEY GUTHRIE
[Illustration: Archibald Marshall.]
CONTENTS
I A Court Ball
II In the Bay of Biscay
III The Clintons of Kencote
IV Clintons Young and Old
V Melbury Park
VI A Good Long Talk
VII The Rector
VIII By the Lake
IX The Question of Marriage
X Town Versus Country
XI A Wedding
XII Food and Raiment
XIII Ronald Mackenzie
XIV The Plunge
XV Bloomsbury
XVI The Pursuit
XVII The Contest
XVIII After the Storm
XIX The Whole House Upset
XX Mrs. Clinton
XXI Cicely's Return
XXII The Life
CHAPTER I
A COURT BALL
"I recollect the time," said the Squire, "when two women going to a ball
were a big enough load for any carriage. You may say what you like about
crinolines, but I've seen some very pretty women in them in my time."
There were three people in the carriage passing slowly up the Mall in
the string, with little jerks and progressions. They were the Squire
himself, Mrs. Clinton, and Cicely, and they were on their way to a Court
Ball.
The Squire, big, florid, his reddish beard touched with grey falling
over the red and gold of his Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, sat back
comfortably beside his wife, who was dressed in pale lavender silk, with
diamonds in her smooth, grey-yellow hair. She was short and rather
plump. Her grey eyes, looking out on the violet of the night sky, the
trees, and the crowd of hilarious onlookers who had not been invited to
Buckingham Palace, had a patient and slightly wistful expression. She
had not spoken since the carriage had left the quiet hotel in which they
were staying for their fortnight in London.
Cicely sat on the back seat of the carriage. On such an occasion as this
she might have been expected to be accorded the feminine privilege of
sitting at the side of her mother, but it had not occurred to the Squire
to offer it to her. She was a pretty girl, twenty-two years of age, with
a fair skin and abundant brown hair. She was dressed in costly white
satin, her gown simply cut. As she had stood before her glass, while her
mother's maid had held for her her light evening cloak, her beautiful
neck and shoulders had seemed warmly flushed by contrast with the dead
pallor of the satin. She also had hardly spoken since they had driven
off from their hotel, which was so quiet and private that it was hardly
like an hotel, and where some of the servants had stood in the hall to
see them get into their carriage, just as they might have done at home
at Kencote.
It was a great occasion for Cicely. Her brothers--Dick, who was in the
Grenadier Guards, and Humphrey, who was in the Foreign Office--were well
enough used to the scenes of splendour offered by a London season, but
Cicely had hardly ever been in London at all. She had been brought up
four years before to be presented, and had been taken home again
immediately. She had seen nothing of London gaieties, either then or
since. Now she was to enjoy such opportunities of social intercourse as
might be open to the daughter of a rich squire who had had all he wanted
of town life thirty years before, and had lived in his country house
ever since. A fortnight was as long as the Squire cared to be away from
Kencote, even in the month of June; and a fortnight was to be the extent
of Cicely's London season. This was to be the crowning night of it.
The Squire chattered on affably. He had had a good dinner and had not
been hurried over it, or afterwards. That was the worst of those
theatres, he would say; they didn't give you time even to drink your
glass of wine; and he had not been affable with his wife and daughter
the evening before, when driving to the play. But now he was rather
pleased with himself. He did not care for all this sort of thing, of
course; he had had quite enough of it as a subaltern, dancing about
London all night, and going everywhere--all very well for a young
fellow, but you got tired of it. Still, there was a certain flavour
about a Court Ball, even for a one-time subaltern in the Blues, who had
taken part in everything that was going on. Other people scrambled for
such things--they had to if they wanted them, and why they should want
them if they didn't come to them naturally, the Squire couldn't tell. To
a man of the importance of Edward Clinton of Kencote, they came as a
matter of course, and he accepted them as his due, but was pleased, too,
at having his social importance recognised in such a way, without his
stirring a finger. As a matter of cold fact, a finger had been stirred
to procure this particular honour, although it had not been his. But of
that he was not aware.
The carriage drove slowly with the rest into the big court-yard, where a
military band was playing bright music. Cicely suddenly felt exhilarated
and expectant. They drove up before the great entrance, red-carpeted,
brightly lit, and went through the hall up the stairs into the
cloak-room. Cicely had a flush on her cheeks now as she waited for her
mother, who seemed to be taking an interminable time to settle her lace
and her jewels. Mrs. Clinton looked her over and her eyes brightened a
little. "Are you nervous, darling?" she asked; and Cicely said, "No,
mother, not a bit." The scent of flowers was in her nostrils, the
strains of the music expectantly in her ears. She was going to dance in
a royal palace, and she was such a country mouse that she was excited at
the prospect of seeing royalty at close quarters. She had been far too
nervous to take in anything when she had been presented, and that had
been four years ago.
They went out and found the Squire waiting for them. He did not ask
them, as he generally did, why they had been so long.
They seemed to go through interminable wide corridors, decorated in red
and gold, with settees against the walls and beautiful pictures hanging
above them, but came at last to the great ball-room.
Cicely drew her breath as she entered. This was better than the
Meadshire County Ball, or the South Meadshire Hunt Ball. The women were
mostly in white, or pale colours, but their jewels were beyond anything
she had ever imagined. The lights from the great lustre chandeliers
seemed to be reflected in those wonderful clusters and strings and
devices of sparkling gems. Cold white and cold fire for the women,
colour for the men. Scarlet and gold pre-dominated, but there were
foreign attaches in uniforms of pale blue and silver, and other
unfamiliar colours, eastern robes and dresses encrusted with jewels or
richly embroidered in silks. It was gorgeous, a scene from fairyland.
There was a sudden ebbing of the tide of chatter. The band in the
gallery began to play "God save the King." Doors were thrown open at the
end of the great room, and the royal party came in slowly, passed down
the open space on the red carpet between the lines of bowing and
curtseying guests, and took their places on the dais. Cicely gazed her
fill at them. They were just as she had seen them a hundred times in
pictures in the illustrated papers, but more royal, and yet, more human.
They danced their opening quadrille, and after that every one could
dance. But of all the people there Cicely knew no one who would be
likely to dance with her. She sat by her mother on one of the raised
settees that ran in four rows the length of the room. The Squire had
found friends and was talking to them elsewhere. Her brother Dick, who
she knew was to have been there, she had not yet seen. Everything
depended upon him. Surely, people did not come casually late to a Court
Ball! If something had prevented his coming at all, it seemed to her
that she would have to sit there all the evening.
Her eyes brightened. There was Dick making his way towards them. He
looked very smart in his guardsman's uniform, and very much at home with
himself, as if the King's ball-room was no more to him than any other
ball-room. He was always provokingly leisurely in his movements, and
even now he stopped twice to talk to people whom he knew, and stood with
them each time as if he would stay there for ever. Really, Dick could be
almost as provoking as the Squire, where their womenfolk were concerned.
But at last he came, smiling very pleasantly. "Hullo, mother!" he said.
"Hullo, Siskin! Now you've seen the Queen in her parlour, eh? Well, how
do you like yourself?"
He was a good-looking fellow, Dick, with his well-shaped, closely
cropped head, his well-trained moustache, his broad, straight shoulders
and lean waist and hips. He was over thirty, but showed few signs as yet
of the passing of youth. It was quite plain by the way he looked at her
that he was fond of his sister. She was nearly ten years younger than he
and still a child to him, to be patronised and petted, if she was taken
notice of at all. He didn't take much notice of his mother, contenting
himself with telling her that she "looked as smart as any of 'em." But
he stood and talked to Cicely, and his eyes rested on her as if he were
proud of her.
In the meantime the delicious strains of a valse were swinging through
the great room, and the smooth floor was full of dancers, except in the
space reserved for the royalties, where only a few couples were
circling. Cicely's feet were moving. "Can't we dance, Dick?" she said.
"Come on," said Dick, "let's have a scurry," and he led her down on to
the floor and floated her out into a paradise of music and movement.
Dick was the best partner she had ever danced with. He had often snubbed
her about her own dancing, but he had danced with her all the same, more
than most brothers dance with their sisters, at country balls, which
were the only balls she had ever been to. He was a kind brother,
according to his lights, and Cicely would have liked to dance with him
all the evening.
That, of course, was out of the question. Dick knew plenty of people to
dance with to-night, if she didn't. In fact, he seemed to know half the
people in the room, although he gave her the impression that he thought
Court Balls rather mixed affairs. "Can't be certain of meeting your
friends here," he said, and added, "of course," as admitting handsomely
that people might be quite entitled to be asked who did not happen to be
his friends. "You're not the only country cousins, Siskin," he said,
which gave Cicely somehow a higher opinion of herself, his dissociation
of himself in this matter of country cousinhood from his family striking
her as nothing unreasonable. Indeed, it was not unreasonable with regard
to the Clintons, the men taking their part, as a matter of course, in
everything to which their birth and wealth entitled them, so long as
they cared to do so, the women living, for the most part, at home, in a
wide and airy seclusion.
"Want to dance, eh?" said Dick, in answer to her little plea. "All
right, I'll bring up some young fellows."
And he did. He brought up a succession of them and delivered them
off-hand to his mother and sister with a slight air of authority, doing
his duty very thoroughly, as a kind brother should.
Most of them were quite young--as young, or younger than Cicely herself.
Some of them wore the uniform of Dick's own regiment, and were
presumably under his orders, professionally if not in private life. Some
of them were amazingly patronising and self-possessed, and these did not
ask Cicely to dance again. She felt, when they returned her to her
mother, that she had not been a success with them. Others were boyish
and diffident, and with them she got on pretty well. With one, a modest
child of nineteen or so with a high-sounding title, she was almost
maternally friendly, and he seemed to cling to her as a refuge from a
new and bewildering world. They ate ices together--he told her that he
had been brought up at home in Ireland under a priest, and had never
eaten enough ices at a sitting until he had joined his regiment a
fortnight before. He could not dance well, indeed hardly at all,
although he confessed to having taken lessons, and his gratitude when
Cicely suggested that they should go and look at some of the rooms
instead, warmed her heart to him and put their temporary friendship on
the best possible footing.
They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace,
explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the
buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been
school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of
grown-ups. The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with
unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay
away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he
explained. But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd
again her partner was haled off with a frightened look to the royal
circle, and she found her mother standing up before the seat on which
she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes,
and her father by her side.
An old man, looking small and shrunken in his heavy uniform, but
otherwise full of life and kindliness, with twinkling eyes and a short
white beard, was with them, and she breathed a sigh of relief, for if
she was not frightened of what her mother might say about her long
absence, she rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to
pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very
kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent
feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve
her from the results of her fault if she had committed one.
"Well, my dear," he said in an affectionate, rather asthmatical voice,
"you've brought us some of the Meadshire roses, eh, what? Hope you're
enjoying yourself. If you had come a little earlier, I would have asked
you to dance with me."
"Where have you been so long, Cicely?" asked her mother, but the twinkle
in Lord Meadshire's eyes showed that a joke was in progress, and he
broke in hurriedly, "Forty or fifty years earlier, I mean, my dear," and
he chuckled himself into a fit of coughing.
The Squire was not looking quite pleased, but whatever the cause of his
displeasure it was not, apparently, Cicely's prolonged absence, for he
also asked if she was enjoying herself, and looked at her with some
pride and fondness. Going home in the carriage, she learned later that
Lord Meadshire, who would have done a great deal more to provide her
with social gaiety if he had not been living, now, mostly in retirement
with an invalid wife, had procured those commands which had brought them
up to London, and are not generally bestowed unasked on the belongings
of a country squire, however important he may be in the midst of his own
possessions.
Lord Meadshire stayed with them for some little time and pointed out to
her some of the notabilities and the less familiar royalties. Then Dick
came up and took her away to dance again. After that she sat by her
mother's side until the end. She saw the boy with whom she had made
friends eying her rather wistfully. He had danced a quadrille with a
princess, and the experience seemed so to have shattered his nerve that
he was not equal to making his way to her to ask her to bear him company
again, and she could not very well beckon him, as she felt inclined to
do. The ball became rather dull, although she looked a good deal at the
King and Queen and thought how extraordinary it was that she should be
in the same room with them.
Before she had quite realised that it had begun, the ball was over. The
band played "God save the King" again. Everybody stood up and the royal
procession was formed and went away to supper. With the light of royalty
eclipsed, her own supper seemed an ordinary affair. At country dances
she had shirked it whenever she could, taking advantage of a clearer
floor to dance with some willing partner right through a valse or a
two-step from beginning to end. After supper she danced once or twice,
but as she drove back to the very private hotel at about half-past one,
she only felt as if she had not danced nearly enough, and as she
undressed she hardly knew whether she had enjoyed herself or not.