to let her go up-stairs alone.
“I can find my way quite well, and I know I shall have everything I
want in my room.”
“Very well,” said Felicia, kindly. “I think I can trust your maid, from
what you say of her, to look after you properly. And our dear old
Shepton really does love to make people comfortable, especially if they
are relations.”
Nothing could have been more gratifying. And how delightful not to have
to wait till she could write home for sympathy in her satisfaction!
“Oh, Phil,” she exclaimed, as she carefully shut the door of her room
where her sister was already awaiting her. “Oh, Phil, darling, I am
awfully sleepy, I can scarcely keep my eyes open, but I am longing to
tell you how well I have got on. Everything has been as nice as
possible.”
“I am so glad,” said Philippa, warmly. “But, Evelyn dear, you must not
talk to-night. Even I am feeling very tired. I believe I had fallen
asleep while I was sitting here waiting for you.”
And Philippa, who could be resolute in little things as well as in big,
carried her point. Half an hour later both sisters were in bed and
asleep, and though Philippa did not know it, her care of Evelyn had
saved herself from a disturbed and perhaps sleepless night. For Mrs
Headfort could certainly not have narrated the events of the evening in
any detail without repeating her conversation with both the Greshams,
and thereby awakening much graver anxiety in Philippa’s mind than what
she had felt herself.
As it was, Philippa slept soundly, her dreams being no more than an
amusing jumble of the experiences of the day before. When she awoke, it
was from a peculiarly absurd one, in which Solomon was seated at the
end of the housekeeper’s table, doing the honour in Mrs Shepton’s
place, with Philippa’s own spectacles on his nose, assuring her that
his master was the same Mr Gresham whom she had met at Dorriford, and
that it was only the fact of his travelling second-class which had made
her imagine him less good-looking than before.
But though her dreams had been thus concerned with the realities of the
preceding day, Miss Raynsworth felt strangely confused when she first
awoke. It was daylight, though not yet very clear, for the morning was
cloudy—so cloudy, indeed, that in most parts of the country one would
have imagined it must be raining. The girl’s eyes strayed round the
little room, and for a moment or two she could not imagine where she
was. Gradually things took shape in her memory, and she half started up
in affright.
“It must be late,” she thought, “and of all things I must be ready
early in the morning.”
But her fears were exaggerated; she took her watch to the window and
found that it was only half-past six. There was plenty of time to get
ready for her own breakfast at eight, and to carry in Evelyn’s early
cup of tea.
She peeped cautiously through the door of her sister’s room, as soon as
she was dressed, and was pleased to see her still sleeping peacefully.
“She must not get up to breakfast if she is very tired,” thought
Philippa. “Mrs Shepton was sure they would not mind her staying in bed,
especially this first morning. But if I am to judge her by myself, I
rather think she will wake feeling quite rested and invigorated; the
air here must be wonderfully bracing.”
She had returned to her own little room, and sat down beside the window
which she had already thrown open. It was not cold, though a fresh
breeze, to Philippa’s fancy laden with the scents of the surrounding
moors, blew on her face gently.
“Only a quarter past seven,” she said to herself. “I know what I’ll do.
I will go down-stairs and have a little run, or walk, I suppose—it
would never do for a maid to be seen running—before the breakfast-bell
rings. I can keep away from the front of the house, for fear of
possibly meeting any one who might notice me.” With the impulsiveness
so curiously mingled with her habit of careful consideration, this was
no sooner said than done. Two minutes later the slight, black-clad
figure of young Mrs Headfort’s maid might have been seen making its way
through some of the paths thickly strewn with fir “needles,” among the
woods, which at one side of the house almost extended to the walls.
“Yes,” she thought. “It is quite charming here, though perhaps in time
one would get tired of the monotony of these fir-trees. If only I were
free, and not obliged to be in to breakfast till half-past nine, how I
would enjoy a rush across the moor beyond! I do hope I shall have some
chance of a solitary ramble now and then while I am here. For one thing
I will _not_ do, and that is, go out walks with the other ladies’ maids
who are staying in the house, who, ten to one, would be inviting the
valets to accompany them. All I should want would be a—”
At that instant, as if in reply to her uncompleted sentence, came the
rush and scamper of a long-bodied, four-footed creature across the
crackly ground.
“Solomon!” exclaimed Philippa, with mingled joy and dismay. “My dear
boy, where have you come from? And how did you know I was here?” for
that he did recognise her and was full of delight at the meeting, was
only too evident! He jumped up on her, he pawed her, he snuffed her,
ending by trotting off a few paces and looking back wistfully with
unmistakable invitation in his affectionate eyes.
Half thoughtlessly Philippa followed him.
“Where do you want to go to?” she said, laughingly. “Do you think I
don’t know the way back to the house?—And, by-the-by, I must be quick,”
she added, “or I shall be too late for breakfast.”
But as this misgiving struck her she came to a sudden standstill.
Chapter Nine.
Mingled Feelings.
For there before her, as might most naturally have been expected, stood
Solomon’s master, Mr Gresham the younger. He was clad in a rough
shooting-suit, which, even in that moment of annoyance, struck Philippa
as becoming him better than his more civilised attire of the day
before.
“He is ugly,” she thought, “but far from insignificant. That square,
sturdy sort of figure has something manly about it,” and as at that
moment a slight involuntary smile parted his lips, and she caught sight
of two rows of perfect teeth, another item in his favour was added to
her estimate of the outer man of Michael Gresham.
So swiftly, however, did these impressions pass through her, that
almost before she realised them she felt conscious of the vivid colour
rushing to her face.
What was he smiling at?—or rather, what was he staring at, now that the
smile had faded? Was there anything extraordinary in her appearance?
Mechanically she raised her hand to her hair, which had indeed got
blown out of the prim neatness which was an important part of her
present personification, but it was not the touch of the truant locks
which startled her fingers as they touched her face.
“Oh, dear,” she ejaculated, “my spectacles!” For in the exuberance of
her enjoyment of the fresh morning air, and her sense of momentary
freedom from notice, she had drawn them off and slipped them into her
pocket.
It was too late now to undo the mischief, if any, that had been done by
their absence. Drawing herself together she glanced up almost defiantly
at the young man standing motionless before her, and when she caught
sight of the expression of his face, which from that of surprise had
darkened into gravity, almost approaching disapproval, it was all she
could do to keep silent.
“What business is it of yours whether I wear spectacles or not? What
have you to do with me in any possible way, I should like to know?”
were the words she would have given worlds to utter in the excess of
her annoyance at this new _contretemps_, heightened by her disgust of
herself for the blushes which still remained in angry glow upon her
cheeks.
Not the least discomposed of the trio was poor Solomon. In his doggy
way he had meant to act the friendly part of reintroducing to each
other the two who had seemed not uncongenial companions the day before,
and now, though no words had passed the lips of either his dearly
beloved master or the new and charming friend who had made him so
comfortable in the train, he was conscious that something was
amiss—very much amiss, indeed. He stood there glancing from one to the
other almost, as Philippa afterwards thought to herself, as if there
had been tears in his eyes, so profound was his look of distress and
mortification. She was on the point of stooping to restore his spirits
by a little caress—she could not resist wishing to do so—when with a
sudden gruff “Come along, Solomon,” the young man turned on his heel,
slightly raising his cap as he did so, and strode off in another
direction.
“I must go, I’m very sorry, but I _must_ go! I don’t know what’s making
him so cross this morning!” said Solomon’s wistful gaze, as obediently,
but most dejectedly, he trotted away—even his tail a different member
of society from what it had been a few moments previously.
“Horrid, detestable man,” thought Philippa to herself, feeling more
than half inclined to cry, partly from anger, partly from anxiety, a
good deal from pity for Solomon.
She replaced the unlucky spectacles and soberly made her way back to
the house, her little fit of elation completely over, feeling, indeed,
as if all the mischievous imps in creation had conspired to thwart and
embarrass her. To her relief, the being late for breakfast was not
added to her other misfortunes, for by the big stable-clock, which she
glanced at as she hurried in, she saw that it still wanted ten minutes
to the hour, and when the bell rang she was ready to leave her room and
come down-stairs in orthodox propriety.
Mrs Shepton welcomed her with a kindly “Good-morning,” placing her as
near herself as was compatible with the etiquette of precedence so
vigorously exacted in such formal society.
The meal passed in silence, for this was one of the rules at Wyverston
Manor—talking only being allowed at certain repasts. And here it may be
as well to say that the girl’s experiences of the manners and customs
of the servants’-hall fell short of what her imagination had pictured.
Thanks to Mrs Shepton’s good management, the household was really to a
great extent a model one, and so far at least as the upper servants
were concerned, Philippa came across nothing of a coarse or jarring
nature. The extreme reserve of her own manner she did not attempt to
relax, for she thought she saw that the housekeeper approved of it,
though she endeavoured to temper it by gentleness and courtesy on all
occasions.
“Do tell me,” she said, to Mrs Shepton, a day or two after her arrival,
“do you like the way I behave? I was never in the same position
before—among a number of others, you know, in a large house like this.
There is no need for me to get intimate with any one, is there? Being
here only for such a short time; and yet I would not like to seem to
hold myself aloof in any stiff and unusual way.”
Mrs Shepton’s own voice had a trifle of stiffness in it as she replied:
“You have no need, my dear, to be either familiar or stand-off; our
upper servants are all of a superior class, and, indeed, the younger
ones too are most respectably connected.”
Philippa in an instant saw her mistake.
“Oh, pray,” she said, eagerly, “pray don’t think I was hinting at
anything of that kind. I mean,”—and she could not help reddening as she
spoke—“any sort of ‘giving myself airs’ as it is called. I really want
your advice and opinion as to my behaviour.”
The housekeeper softened in a moment.
“Any one could see,” she said, “that you have been brought up in a
superior way. It is not giving yourself airs to be what you have
naturally come to be, and no one of this house will like you the less
for the advantages it’s plain you’ve had—” She hesitated and stopped.
The good woman was as little of a gossip as it was possible for one in
her position to be, but she had begun to look for some kind of
confidence on the young girl’s part, some allusion to her home and
childhood, to her parents and bringing up, in return for what she
herself had already related to “Phillis Ray” of her own past history.
For something about Philippa had almost at once appealed to her
sympathy, and this want of response was just a trifle disappointing.
Mrs Shepton glanced at her again. Philippa’s eyes were cast down;
indeed, the spectacles at all times made it rather difficult to judge
of their expression. More than once the housekeeper had been on the
point of begging her to lay them aside for a little, that she might see
“how she looked without them.” Just now, however, it was impossible not
to notice by her whole attitude and bearing that she was somewhat
anxious and depressed, and the elder woman’s kind heart was touched;
there might be reasons why the girl _could_ not tell her more.
“I think, perhaps,” she went on after the little pause of half
expectation, “as you wish me to speak frankly, that you might join
rather more in the conversation—at supper especially. There’s that maid
of Mrs Worthing’s—I don’t know her well, she’s never been here
before—has not looked at you very pleasantly sometimes, and it doesn’t
do in this world to make enemies if you can help it.”
Philippa started slightly.
“Do you mean the one they call Miss Bailey?” she said. “I really have
scarcely noticed her. I—”
“That’s just it,” interrupted Mrs Shepton; “not being noticed offends
some people more than anything you could say to them.”
Philippa looked grave.
“Thank you for warning me,” she said. “I will try to be more am—more
friendly to Miss Bailey in future.”
But unfortunately the mischief was already done.
“Mrs Shepton,” Philippa began again, after a moment’s pause, lifting
her head impulsively, “Mrs Shepton, I know what you are thinking—that I
might tell you more about myself, and I cannot tell you how much I wish
I could. But there are reasons which make it quite impossible—I can
tell you one of them—it would displease my—Mrs Marmaduke, exceedingly,
if I explained to you how I came to enter her service.”
“Say no more, my dear,” interposed the housekeeper, cordially. “Saying
what you have shows your confidence in me, and that is enough. I have
seen too much of life, and in my position one comes across stranger
stories than you would believe, not to know that the most candid and
straightforward people are sometimes forced, by no fault of their own,
into positions where they can’t be outspoken.”
“Yes,” said Philippa, feeling rather guilty, though to the housekeeper
her tone only sounded sad, “yes; that must be the case sometimes.
I—honestly, I may say for myself that I am naturally _very_ frank. I
would give anything at the present moment, dear Mrs Shepton, to tell
you all about myself and my friends.” She raised her charming eyes to
the kind woman’s face—charming they were, and not only so in respect of
their undeniable beauty, but also, and in perhaps still greater
measure, from their candid and true expression. And in spite of the
intervening spectacles, Mrs Shepton read them aright.
“I will not distrust her in any way,” she thought, “whether I ever come
to understand her or not.—There is just one thing I should like to
say,” she began again, after a little pause, “something I should like
you to promise me—if you are in any trouble or difficulty while you are
here, something, perhaps, that you would not like to worry your lady
about, don’t be afraid of telling me. I will give you the best advice I
can.”
“Thank you,” said Philippa, heartily. “I will certainly promise you
what you so kindly ask, and I suppose it is possible, with my being so
inexperienced, that I might make mistakes. But you don’t think, I
hope,” she continued, with a touch of anxiety, “that Mrs Worthing’s
maid has taken a dislike to me? I should not like to get anybody’s
ill-will.”
That she had some reason for fear was evident, and it added to the
housekeeper’s sympathy for her, little as she could understand it.
Her reply was not altogether reassuring; she was too honest to make it
so.
”‘Ill-will’ is a strong word,” she said, “but I can’t say that I think
Miss Bailey likes you; that was why I gave you the little warning about
seeming so stand-off,” “I will be very careful,” said Philippa.
And as the days went on, Miss Raynsworth felt more and more glad to
have had this conversation with the housekeeper, for, as she realised
increasingly the complications to which by her rash action she was
exposing herself and her sister, she grew conscious of many little
awkwardnesses which she had never thought of or in the least foreseen,
and which might have aroused the suspicion of a commoner-minded woman
than the good old housekeeper. Among these was the fact of her
apparently receiving no letters, the importance of which she perhaps
exaggerated, from Bailey’s drawing attention to it once or twice when
the servants’-hall correspondence was distributed at table. In reality
the letters she had received, under cover to Evelyn, had enormously
added to her anxiety and caused her the greatest distress—distress
which was all the more hard to bear as she had to endure it alone, for
her parents charged her on no account to upset Evelyn, under the
circumstances of her present surroundings especially, by telling her of
their very grave displeasure.
“I cannot conceive,” wrote her mother, “how you ventured to do such a
thing, so utterly to set at nought all your father and I _could_ not
but feel at a daughter of ours placing herself in such a position. Your
father was on the point at first of setting off, at all costs, to bring
you back again, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I
persuaded him to give up doing so, by reminding him on whom the ‘costs’
in this case would fall—I mean poor Evelyn and her husband. Such an
_esclandre_ would certainly have been utterly fatal to the Headforts
thinking well of Duke’s wife or her family. We are very annoyed with
Evelyn herself, too, for not _insisting_ on your returning the moment
she found you were in the train, and to prevent her doing so you must
have made an unjustifiable use of your greater strength of character
and determination to carry out your own way. I shall say as little as
possible to your sister till you are both home again. I am counting
every day—indeed every hour, till this visit is over, and I only pray
that no terribly disastrous consequences may follow on what you have
done.”
It _was_ hard to bear, feeling conscious, as she did, that at least
three-fourths of her motives had been purely unselfish, and only now
did Philippa allow to herself that a certain love of adventure—a touch
of the reckless impulsiveness and defiance of conventionality which
Maida Lermont, though vaguely, had been conscious of in her young
cousin—only now did it dawn upon the girl that these less worthy
incentives had gone far to make up the remaining balance.
“I have never meant to be wild or headstrong,” she said to herself. “I
have always thought I was almost too practical and unimpulsive. I
planned all this so carefully and even cautiously. I never dreamt of
papa and mamma taking it up so severely; I don’t think they ever have
been really angry with me before in my life. And after all,” with a
touch of half-humorous defiance, as she dashed away the tears which she
dared not indulge in, for fear of her sister’s discovering them, “after
all, I do _not_ know what Evelyn would have done without me. I am
perfectly certain she would not have got on so well; most assuredly she
would not have _looked_ as she has done!”
For Philippa’s rule over her sister had been a very stringent one. Mrs
Marmaduke Headfort was not allowed to overtire herself by walking too
far or driving too long, by sitting up too late, or spasmodically
getting up too early, all of which vagaries she was addicted to when
her own mistress. Her tonic was never forgotten, nor her stated hours
of resting curtailed. In consequence of all these precautions, Evelyn
looked and felt wonderfully invigorated. The credit of this was
attributed by her well-pleased hosts, and in part by herself, to the
bracing air of Wyverston, and Philippa was too unselfish and generous
to feel annoyed at this, though she secretly hugged herself with
satisfaction as to what she knew had been her own share in this good
state of things.
“I don’t think mamma _can_ be so vexed with me when I tell her about
it,” she thought. “She does know that Evelyn is not fit to take care of
herself.”
There was really, for the moment, no crumpled rose-leaf in young Mrs
Headfort’s path. To her facile nature, in spite of her capacity for
“fussing,” it came easy to accept things as she found them. Long before
the first week was at an end she had got used to the anomalous position
in which her sister, and, to a certain extent through her sister, she
herself were placed. Beyond this, she even allowed herself the
gratification of claiming Philippa’s admiration for her strong-minded
behaviour.
“I really think I have managed beautifully,” she said. “I have not
worried about you at all, Phil, and I have determined not to be
homesick for Bonny and Vanda, though,” with a sudden realisation of
what she owed to her sister, “I’m quite sure my good spirits are
principally owing to your being here.”
And Philippa felt rewarded.
By this time Miss Raynsworth had begun to breathe more freely. No
further _contretemps_ had as yet occurred. She had been most careful to
keep out of the way of the guests in the house, more especially the two
Greshams, for, after hearing from Evelyn of her conversation on the
night of her arrival with the elder of the cousins, she could no longer
deceive herself as to his identity with the handsome, silent man whose
personality had somehow impressed her at Dorriford, and she was even
more afraid of coming across _him_ than of again meeting Solomon’s
master.
To poor Solomon himself she had more than once been obliged to be
positively cruel, for whenever she caught sight of his tan-coloured
person she was seized with terror lest her other travelling companion
should be near at hand. In those days it is to be feared that the
dachshund’s belief in the stability of woman’s friendship received some
severe shocks. One afternoon in particular he happened to run against
Miss Raynsworth in one of the back passages not far from Mrs Shepton’s
room, and the girl, thinking herself for once safe from dangerous
observation, stooped down and patted him affectionately. No sooner had
she done so than she bitterly regretted it, for coming towards her, but
a few paces off, she descried his master’s familiar figure. The dog by
this time was in a state of frantic delight; at all costs she must get
rid of him.
“Down, down,” she said, in a cruelly repressive tone, which poor
Solomon would have understood even without the stern “Come here, sir,”
from Michael Gresham which followed; and as she hurried along the
passage she could not resist glancing back over her shoulder in pity
for her four-footed admirer. Mr Gresham was not to be seen—what had
become of him?—but Solomon was sitting on the mat outside the
housekeeper’s room, looking profoundly miserable and feeling doubly
deserted—by his master as well as by his friend. For Michael had shut
the door in the dog’s face.
“Poor old boy,” thought Philippa. “I wonder why he has settled himself
there.”
For she knew that Mrs Shepton was not specially addicted to dogs. She
liked them, she said, in “their proper place;” in other words, when
they were entirely out of her sight and with no opportunity of jumping
on sofas, eating rugs, or going to sleep on her best eiderdown quilts.
Chapter Ten.
“Merle-in-the-Wold.”
Miss Raynsworth would have been considerably surprised had she known
the reason of Solomon’s encampment in his present quarters.
“I have left my dog outside,” his master was at that moment saying to
the housekeeper, “so I hope you’ll be pleased with me, ‘Mrs Shepton,
ma’am!’” using the rather absurd title which had clung to his old
friend since the days when she had been his nurse.