AN EXTRAORDINARY LETTER.
It did not take George Clay five minutes to write his acceptance of his
friend's invitation; but his sister did not find her letter quite so easy
to write, and she sat at the pretty Chippendale table biting the end of
her pen for more than that length of time before she began to write in
desperation, only to tear up the letter in despair.
'It's all very well for George to talk; but it's not so easy to sit down
and tell a girl you are not a lady, and, what's more, that your parents
are not gentlefolks,' said Sarah aloud to herself.
Then she started again, and wrote a friendly invitation, without any
embarrassing explanations or apologies.
'George may be able to say that kind of thing in a gentlemanly way--he
always does say the right sort of thing--but I shall just chance it,' she
muttered to herself, as she sealed up the letter and sent it off by
Naomi, without showing it to any one or taking any one's advice upon it.
To have done so would have been quite contrary to Sarah's habits, for she
was of a very independent character, and the circumstances of her whole
life no doubt fostered this characteristic.
'So we've got a grand young lady from London coming up to stay with us
plain folk,' said Mr Mark Clay when he saw his daughter at dinner that
evening.
'I've asked one of my schoolfellows to come to stay with me; but I don't
know that she will come, and I don't know that you will think her grand.
She dresses very plainly,' replied Sarah.
'Then she'll be all the more willing to come if she's poor,' said Mr
Clay.
'She's not in the least poor. It's not the fashion for schoolgirls to
dress very grandly,' said Sarah hastily.
'Nonsense! People dress as they can afford; and, I'll be bound, I could
buy up her father twice over,' said Mark Clay in his boastful way.
Sarah's lips curled scornfully. 'You couldn't buy his rank. I hope to
goodness she won't come,' she said.
No notice was taken of this remark, which was put down to Sarah's
contradictoriness, and no one knew how heartily the girl repented of her
invitation.
Meanwhile Horatia Cunningham opened the letter from her friend, without
in the least expecting it to contain an invitation to visit the
schoolfellow whom they all talked of as the millionaire's daughter. Great
was her surprise on reading it, for Sarah never talked at school of her
people or her home, and the girls vaguely imagined that she was unhappy
in her home.
'Mamma, just listen to this letter,' Horatia cried, as she read the
letter aloud at the breakfast-table:
'"DEAR HORATIA,--Will you come and spend as much of the holidays as
you can spare with me? We live on a hill outside Ousebank, so that
you will not be in a manufacturing town, and we can go for plenty
of walks or rides and drives and play tennis as much as you like. I
shall be all alone, as my brother is going to stay with friends in
Scotland.--Your affectionate friend, SARAH CLAY."'
'What an extraordinary letter! She is not gushing,' said Lady Grace
Cunningham, as she continued to pour out the coffee.
'Is she an orphan, and what does she mean by being all alone? Has she no
guardian or chaperon?' inquired Horatia's father.
'She has a father and a mother. She is the daughter of a millionaire
blanket-maker named Clay.'
'I believe I've heard the name; but I don't know what I've heard of him,'
said Mr Cunningham.
'That would account for her odd way of writing,' said his wife.
'What is odd about it?' demanded Horatia.
'Her writing without mentioning her mother's name, and she never says she
would like to see you. Besides, to begin with, as a matter of politeness,
Mrs Clay should have written to me,' objected Lady Grace Cunningham.
'Sarah is very independent, and I expect she does as she likes at home,'
said Horatia. 'But she is a very nice girl, mamma, and I may go, mayn't
I?' she begged.
'Do you really want to go? You know these people, though they have great
riches, are very often very unrefined. What is the girl like?'
'I'll show you her photograph, and she looks like a queen when she
walks,' said Horatia; and in her eagerness to get leave to pay the visit
she ran upstairs to fetch the photo, and came back with a portrait of a
boy and girl.
'Dear me, what a handsome couple!' exclaimed Lady Grace Cunningham; 'and
most refined,' she added, as she passed the photo to her husband for his
inspection and opinion.
'A very fine face--the girl's, I mean; the young fellow looks rather
effeminate. I don't think you'd learn anything but good from that girl;
but she looks proud. I should never have taken her for a tradesman's
daughter,' he remarked, as he put the photo down.
'She is not. He is a manufacturer,' protested Horatia.
'Some of our merchants are of good old stock, and as refined as
ourselves, if I may be allowed that piece of boasting,' replied his wife.
'And no doubt these people are. Well, personally, I have no objection to
Horatia's going to them, if you have not,' said Mr Cunningham; and he
buried himself in his newspaper.
'Hurrah!' cried Horatia, clapping her hands.
'Why this excitement? Are you so fond of this schoolfellow, or do you
find home dull?' inquired Lady Grace Cunningham.
'Oh no, mamma; of course I am never dull at The Grange, and I don't know
that I am so fond of Sarah. I do like her very much, but I shall see her
in another month; so, if you like, I will write and refuse the
invitation.'
'By no means. I wish you to grow up large-minded; but you have not
explained why you were so delighted at the thought of going to spend a
month with these strangers. I don't suppose their riches attract you.'
'Oh no; I don't think one could have a nicer home than this. I believe
the real truth is that I should like to see a mill. I read a story about
mill-girls once; how they wore pattens on their feet and shawls on their
heads, and talked so broadly that you couldn't understand them, and threw
mud at strangers. I would like'----
'To have mud thrown at you?' exclaimed her mother. 'Well, there's no
accounting for tastes!'
Horatia gave a merry laugh, such an infectious laugh that both her mother
and father joined in it.
'No; I should keep out of their way, and look at them through a window,'
she remarked.
'Perhaps they'd throw a stone through the window and break it,' observed
Horatia's practical sister.
'Well, I promise to duck my head if I see one coming,' she assured them,
laughing.
'I don't suppose there will be any need. I fancy mill-hands, as I believe
they call them, are very much civilised, and dress quite grandly now,'
said her mother.
'Oh, I hope not! I shall be disappointed if they do,' cried Horatia.
Thus it came about that two mornings after she had despatched her letter
Sarah had an answer from Horatia Cunningham, accepting her friend's kind
invitation with pleasure, and announcing her arrival at the end of the
week.
'So you were right, and she is coming,' Sarah said gloomily to her
brother, as she twisted the letter in her fingers.
'That's very nice. You must think of nice expeditions to take her. There
is lovely scenery within reach, especially if she's fond of motoring,' he
said.
'I wish to goodness the visit were over. I have a presentiment that it
will be a failure,' his sister persisted.
'Don't be absurd! It won't be a failure if you try to make it a success;
and, if you don't mind my giving you a hint, be civil to the governor
before Miss Cunningham, at all events; it's such bad form not to be, you
know,' said George.
'I wish you'd give the governor, as you call him, a hint or two. He's the
one who'll make the visit a failure, if it is one. Well, she's going to
come, so it's no use groaning about it now,' said Sarah.
'Now, Sally, what are you looking so glum about? I suppose you don't
think we're grand enough for your duchess-friend? Never you mind, we'll
put our best foot forward. She shall have the royal suite of rooms. I've
made up my mind to do the thing handsome,' said Mr Clay.
'Oh Mark, that is good o' you! I 'ope the young lady won't spoil 'em,'
said his wife.
The royal suite of rooms, it should be explained, consisted of a bedroom,
anteroom, sitting-room, and bathroom, which had been so sumptuously
decorated that the workmen called them the 'royal suite;' and Mr Clay,
overhearing them, had said the royal suite they should be called. Perhaps
it would be prophetic, for stranger things had to come to pass than
royalty coming to stay with the Mayor of Ousebank, as he had been, and
probably would be again.
Sarah knew she ought to express her gratitude to her father for the
honour he was showing to her friend; but no words would come. Sarah Clay
was, unfortunately, more in the habit of uttering unpleasant truths than
making pretty speeches to her father; and, if the truth be told, she was
not altogether pleased at the honour shown, for the rooms were not very
suitable for a young girl, and Sarah had an idea that the grandeur would
be wasted on Horatia, who, she suspected, would rather have a room near
hers.
George, as usual, came to the rescue. 'That is very kind of you, father;
but perhaps, as Miss Cunningham is very young, and is coming for the
first time among strangers, she would prefer to be in the west wing near
some one she knows. There's the anteroom, next Sarah's; that is very
pretty for a girl, and they could share the boudoir.'
Sarah shot a grateful look at her brother; but his pains were thrown
away, for Mr Clay, who was not a man to be easily turned from his plan,
said, 'She'll soon get used to us, and she can have her maid to sleep
next door. No; I've promised she shall have the royal rooms, and I'll not
go back on my word.'
'Let's hope she'll appreciate them,' said George in a non-committal tone.
Sarah spent the intervening two or three days in a state of suppressed
excitement and unsuppressed irritability; and George at last began to
regret, like herself, that her friend was coming, and was sorry for
having made the suggestion. He would even have given up his visit to the
north if Sarah had accepted his sacrifice; but the latter declared
brusquely, 'You couldn't do much good; and, considering that my excuse
for asking her here was that I should be alone, it would look rather odd
if you didn't go away, after all.'
So George went off, his parting words to Sarah being, 'Don't worry. Just
be as nice to her as you can, and don't, for goodness' sake, be ashamed
of being what you are, for you have nothing to be ashamed of.'
'I don't think that,' said Sarah.
'We need be ashamed of nothing in this world except doing wrong,' said
George; and the motor started with a hoot of approval of this worthy
sentiment.
Sarah waved her hand to her brother, and stood watching him until the
motor was hidden behind the trees and a bend in a long avenue, and then
turned back to the house, her head bent towards the gravel-path, the
pebbles of which she kicked with her feet, to the distinct disapproval of
the young gardener who had just rolled it, and viewed this destruction of
his work from a distance.
'Ashamed of nothing but doing wrong!' she soliloquised. 'That's not true.
One is ashamed of having dirty hands or muddy boots; there's nothing
wrong in that.' She turned impulsively as if to say this to her brother,
and have the last word; but that being an impossibility, she was reduced
to arguing the question out with herself, as Sarah had a habit of doing.
The only person she ever consulted, or whose advice or criticism she
accepted, was her uncle Howroyd. But this question she could not ask him,
for Sarah hardly liked to own to herself that she was a little ashamed of
her uncle Howroyd; at least, not exactly ashamed, but she did not mean
to take Horatia Cunningham to see him or the old-fashioned mill-house in
which William Howroyd and his father had lived for three or four
generations.
So Sarah was reduced to herself as an authority upon this question for
the present, and not being by any means a safe authority, she did not get
a wise answer, which might have saved her a great deal of vexation and
annoyance; for Sarah decided that George was quite wrong. There were
things which were not wrong, and yet one could not help being ashamed of
them; and one thing Sarah was ashamed of was having parents who were not
only uneducated, but had unrefined ideas.
Sarah had one day-dream, absurd as it may seem, of which she never spoke.
Sarah always cherished the hope that she might some day find that she and
her brother were not really George and Sarah Clay, but adopted children
of Mark Clay, and that by-and-by the news would be broken to them. And
yet Sarah was a well-educated, intelligent girl of sixteen, and lived in
the twentieth century. The fancy arose from a remark her father once made
when she was quite a child: 'They are not my children; they are a cut
above me. They've got their mother's features, but they'll have nothing
of me but my money.' And upon this half-bitter, half-proud speech of Mark
Clay's Sarah built her romance, which varied as she invented different
explanations of the mystery from time to time; but her favourite one was
that her mother first married a lord who was ashamed of his wife, and
would not acknowledge his children until they were grown up and properly
educated; and Sarah used to picture the reconciliation between them and
their proud relatives, for whose benefit she composed many fine speeches
full of reproof and final forgiveness.
This may be a little excuse for her want of respect to her father, Mark
Clay, by speaking of whom, it will be remembered, as 'your husband' she
used to anger her mother. She even half-thought of telling Horatia this
tale; but Horatia had a way of turning everything into ridicule, and one
of the many things that Sarah could not stand was being laughed at.
The same motor that took George Clay to the station took Sarah that
afternoon to meet Horatia Cunningham, who was to arrive at six o'clock,
and who persisted in arriving at that hour, although Sarah had written to
her and warned her it was the hour when the mill-hands came out; she said
she did not mind at all, and supposed that she would be quite safe in a
motor with its smart chauffeur; and Sarah, looking so fresh and dainty
that many a one turned and looked after the millionaire's pretty
daughter, started off for the station, and not one of them guessed she
was feeling nervous, and wished with all her might that she were going on
another errand. The girl even wished that something might have happened
to prevent her friend from coming; but when the train stopped she saw the
wish was vain, for Horatia's face was smiling at her from a window, and
Sarah forgot her fears for the moment, and smiled back a welcome.