a characteristic flash of shrewd good sense through her quaint humor,
“we never reckoned where this thing would land us, and we found we
were paying a hundred pounds, not only for the Desboroughs, but all the
people they'd MARRIED, and their CHILDREN, and children's children, and
there were a lot of outsiders we'd never heard of, nor wanted to hear
of. Maw once thought she'd got on the trail of a Plantagenet, and
followed it keen, until she found she had been reading the dreadful
thing upside down. Then we concluded we wouldn't take any more stock in
the family until it had risen.”
During this speech the consul could not help noticing that, although her
attitude was playfully confidential to him, her voice really was pitched
high enough to reach the ears of smaller groups around her, who were not
only following her with the intensest admiration, but had shamelessly
abandoned their own conversation, and had even faced towards her. Was
she really posing in her naivete? There was a certain mischievous,
even aggressive, consciousness in her pretty eyelids. Then she suddenly
dropped both eyes and voice, and said to the consul in a genuine aside,
“I like this sort of thing much better.”
The consul looked puzzled. “What sort of thing?”
“Why, all these swell people, don't you see? those pictures on the
walls! this elegant room! everything that has come down from the past,
all ready and settled for you, you know--ages ago! Something you haven't
to pick up for yourself and worry over.”
But here the consul pointed out that the place itself was not
“ancestral” as regarded the present earl, and that even the original
title of his predecessors had passed away from it. “In fact, it came
into the family by one of those 'outsiders' you deprecate. But I dare
say you'd find the place quite as comfortable with Lord Beverdale for a
host as you would if you had found out he were a cousin,” he added.
“Better,” said the young lady frankly.
“I suppose your mother participates in these preferences?” said the
consul, with a smile.
“No,” said Miss Desborough, with the same frankness, “I think maw's
rather cut up at not finding a Desborough. She was invited down here,
but SHE'S rather independent, you know, so she allowed I could take care
of myself, while she went off to stay with the old Dowager Lady Mistowe,
who thinks maw a very proper womanly person. I made maw mad by telling
her that's just what old Lady Mistowe would say of her cook--for I can't
stand these people's patronage. However, I shouldn't wonder if I was
invited here as a 'most original person.'”
But here Lord Algernon came up to implore her to sing them one of “those
plantation songs;” and Miss Desborough, with scarcely a change of voice
or manner, allowed herself to be led to the piano. The consul had
little chance to speak with her again, but he saw enough that evening to
convince him not only that Lord Algernon was very much in love with
her, but that the fact had been equally and complacently accepted by the
family and guests. That her present visit was only an opportunity for a
formal engagement was clear to every woman in the house--not excepting,
I fear, even the fair subject of gossip herself. Yet she seemed so
unconcerned and self-contained that the consul wondered if she really
cared for Lord Algernon. And having thus wondered, he came to the
conclusion that it didn't much matter, for the happiness of so
practically organized a young lady, if she loved him or not.
It is highly probable that Miss Sadie Desborough had not even gone so
far as to ask herself that question. She awoke the next morning with a
sense of easy victory and calm satisfaction that had, however, none of
the transports of affection. Her taste was satisfied by the love of
a handsome young fellow,--a typical Englishman,--who, if not exactly
original or ideal, was, she felt, of an universally accepted,
“hall-marked” standard, the legitimate outcome of a highly ordered,
carefully guarded civilization, whose repose was the absence of struggle
or ambition; a man whose regular features were not yet differentiated
from the rest of his class by any of those disturbing lines which people
call character. Everything was made ready for her, without care or
preparation; she had not even an ideal to realize or to modify. She
could slip without any jar or dislocation into this life which was just
saved from self-indulgence and sybaritic luxury by certain conventional
rules of activity and the occupation of amusement which, as obligations
of her position, even appeared to suggest the novel aspect of a DUTY!
She could accept all this without the sense of being an intruder in
an unbroken lineage--thanks to the consul's account of the Beverdales'
inheritance. She already pictured herself as the mistress of this fair
domain, the custodian of its treasures and traditions, and the dispenser
of its hospitalities, but--as she conscientiously believed--without
pride or vanity, in her position; only an intense and thoughtful
appreciation of it. Nor did she dream of ever displaying it
ostentatiously before her less fortunate fellow countrywomen; on the
contrary, she looked forward to their possible criticism of her casting
off all transatlantic ties with an uneasy consciousness that was perhaps
her nearest approach to patriotism. Yet, again, she reasoned that, as
her father was an Englishman, she was only returning to her old home.
As to her mother, she had already comforted herself by noticing certain
discrepancies in that lady's temperament, which led her to believe that
she herself alone inherited her father's nature--for her mother was, of
course, distinctly American! So little conscious was she of any possible
snobbishness in this belief, that in her superb naivete she would have
argued the point with the consul, and employed a wit and dialect that
were purely American.
She had slipped out of the Priory early that morning that she might
enjoy alone, unattended and unciceroned, the aspect of that vast estate
which might be hers for the mere accepting. Perhaps there was some
instinct of delicacy in her avoiding Lord Algernon that morning; not
wishing, as she herself might have frankly put it, “to take stock” of
his inheritance in his presence. As she passed into the garden through
the low postern door, she turned to look along the stretching facade of
the main building, with the high stained windows of its banqueting-hall
and the state chamber where a king had slept. Even in that crisp October
air, and with the green of its ivied battlements against the gold of
the distant wood, it seemed to lie in the languid repose of an eternal
summer. She hurried on down the other terrace into the Italian garden, a
quaint survival of past grandeur, passed the great orangery and numerous
conservatories, making a crystal hamlet in themselves--seeing everywhere
the same luxury. But it was a luxury that she fancied was redeemed
from the vulgarity of ostentation by the long custom of years and
generations, so unlike the millionaire palaces of her own land; and, in
her enthusiasm, she even fancied it was further sanctified by the grim
monastic founders who had once been content with bread and pulse in the
crumbling and dismantled refectory. In the plenitude of her feelings she
felt a slight recognition of some beneficent being who had rolled this
golden apple at her feet, and felt as if she really should like to “do
good” in her sphere.
It so chanced that, passing through a small gate in the park, she saw
walking, a little ahead of her, a young girl whom she at once recognized
as a Miss Amelyn, one of the guests of the evening before. Miss
Desborough remembered that she played the accompaniment of one or two
songs upon the piano, and had even executed a long solo during the
general conversation, without attention from the others, and apparently
with little irritation to herself, subsiding afterwards into an
armchair, quite on the fringe of other people's conversation. She had
been called “my dear” by one or two dowagers, and by her Christian name
by the earl, and had a way of impalpably melting out of sight at times.
These trifles led Miss Desborough to conclude that she was some kind of
dependent or poor relation. Here was an opportunity to begin her work of
“doing good.” She quickened her pace and overtook Miss Amelyn.
“Let me walk with you,” she said graciously.
The young English girl smiled assent, but looked her surprise at seeing
the cynosure of last night's eyes unattended.
“Oh,” said Sadie, answering the mute query, “I didn't want to be 'shown
round' by anybody, and I'm not going to bore YOU with asking to see
sights either. We'll just walk together; wherever YOU'RE going is good
enough for me.”
“I'm going as far as the village,” said Miss Amelyn, looking down
doubtfully at Sadie's smart French shoes--“if you care to walk so far.”
Sadie noticed that her companion was more solidly booted, and that
her straight, short skirts, although less stylish than her own, had
a certain character, better fitted to the freer outdoor life of the
country. But she only said, however, “The village will do,” and gayly
took her companion's arm.
“But I'm afraid you'll find it very uninteresting, for I am going to
visit some poor cottages,” persisted Miss Amelyn, with a certain
timid ingenuousness of manner which, however, was as distinct as Miss
Desborough's bolder frankness. “I promised the rector's daughter to take
her place to-day.”
“And I feel as if I was ready to pour oil and wine to any extent,” said
Miss Desborough, “so come along!”
Miss Amelyn laughed, and yet glanced around her timidly, as if she
thought that Miss Desborough ought to have a larger and more important
audience. Then she continued more confidentially and boldly, “But it
isn't at all like 'slumming,' you know. These poor people here are not
very bad, and are not at all extraordinary.”
“Never mind,” said Sadie, hurrying her along. After a pause she went on,
“You know the Priory very well, I guess?”
“I lived there when I was a little girl, with my aunt, the Dowager Lady
Beverdale,” said Miss Amelyn. “When my cousin Fred, who was the young
heir, died, and the present Lord Beverdale succeeded,--HE never expected
it, you know, for there were two lives, his two elder brothers, besides
poor Fred's, between, but they both died,--we went to live in the Dower
House.”
“The Dower House?” repeated Sadie.
“Yes, Lady Beverdale's separate property.”
“But I thought all this property--the Priory--came into the family
through HER.”
“It did--this was the Amelyns' place; but the oldest son or nearest male
heir always succeeds to the property and title.”
“Do you mean to say that the present Lord Beverdale turned that old lady
out?”
Miss Amelyn looked shocked. “I mean to say,” she said gravely, “Lady
Beverdale would have had to go when her own son became of age, had
he lived.” She paused, and then said timidly, “Isn't it that way in
America?”
“Dear no!” Miss Desborough had a faint recollection that there was
something in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence against
primogeniture. “No! the men haven't it ALL their own way THERE--not
much!”
Miss Amelyn looked as if she did not care to discuss this problem. After
a few moments Sadie continued, “You and Lord Algernon are pretty old
friends, I guess?”
“No,” replied Miss Amelyn. “He came once or twice to the Priory for the
holidays, when he was quite a boy at Marlborough--for the family weren't
very well off, and his father was in India. He was a very shy boy, and
of course no one ever thought of him succeeding.”
Miss Desborough felt half inclined to be pleased with this, and yet half
inclined to resent this possible snubbing of her future husband. But
they were nearing the village, and Miss Amelyn turned the conversation
to the object of her visit. It was a new village--an unhandsome village,
for all that it stood near one of the gates of the park. It had been
given over to some mines that were still worked in its vicinity, and to
the railway, which the uncle of the present earl had resisted; but the
railway had triumphed, and the station for Scrooby Priory was there.
There was a grim church, of a blackened or weather-beaten stone, on the
hill, with a few grim Amelyns reposing cross-legged in the chancel, but
the character of the village was as different from the Priory as if it
were in another county. They stopped at the rectory, where Miss Amelyn
provided herself with certain doles and gifts, which the American
girl would have augmented with a five-pound note but for Miss Amelyn's
horrified concern. “As many shillings would do, and they would be as
grateful,” she said. “More they wouldn't understand.”
“Then keep it, and dole it out as you like,” said Sadie quickly.
“But I don't think that--that Lord Beverdale would quite approve,”
hesitated Miss Amelyn.
The pretty brow of her companion knit, and her gray eyes flashed
vivaciously. “What has HE to do with it?” she said pertly; “besides, you
say these are not HIS poor. Take that five-pound note--or--I'll DOUBLE
it, get it changed into sovereigns at the station, and hand 'em round to
every man, woman, and child.”
Miss Amelyn hesitated. The American girl looked capable of doing what
she said; perhaps it was a national way of almsgiving! She took the
note, with the mental reservation of making a full confession to the
rector and Lord Beverdale.
She was right in saying that the poor of Scrooby village were not
interesting. There was very little squalor or degradation; their poverty
seemed not a descent, but a condition to which they had been born; the
faces which Sadie saw were dulled and apathetic rather than sullen
or rebellious; they stood up when Miss Amelyn entered, paying HER the
deference, but taking little note of the pretty butterfly who was with
her, or rather submitting to her frank curiosity with that dull consent
of the poor, as if they had lost even the sense of privacy, or a right
to respect. It seemed to the American girl that their poverty was more
indicated by what they were SATISFIED with than what she thought they
MISSED. It is to be feared that this did not add to Sadie's sympathy;
all the beggars she had seen in America wanted all they could get, and
she felt as if she were confronted with an inferior animal.
“There's a wonderful old man lives here,” said Miss Amelyn, as they
halted before a stone and thatch cottage quite on the outskirts of
the village. “We can't call him one of our poor, for he still works,
although over eighty, and it's his pride to keep out of the poorhouse,
and, as he calls it, 'off' the hands of his granddaughters. But we
manage to do something for THEM, and we hope he profits by it. One of
them is at the Priory; they're trying to make a maid of her, but her
queer accent--they're from the north--is against her with the servants.
I am afraid we won't see old Debs, for he's at work again to-day, though
the doctor has warned him.”
“Debs! What a funny name!”
“Yes, but as many of these people cannot read or write, the name is
carried by the ear, and not always correctly. Some of the railway
navvies, who come from the north as he does, call him 'Debbers.'”
They were obliged to descend into the cottage, which was so low that it
seemed to have sunk into the earth until its drooping eaves of thatch
mingled with the straw heap beside it. Debs was not at home. But his
granddaughter was there, who, after a preliminary “bob,” continued the
stirring of the pot before the fire in tentative silence.
“I am sorry to find that your grandfather has gone to work again in
spite of the doctor's orders,” said Miss Amelyn.
The girl continued to stir the pot, and then said without looking
up, but as if also continuing a train of aggressive thoughts with her
occupation: “Eay, but 'e's so set oop in 'issen 'ee doan't take orders
from nobbut--leastways doctor. Moinds 'em now moor nor a floy. Says 'ee
knaws there nowt wrong wi' 'is 'eart. Mout be roight--how'siver, sarten
sewer, 'is 'EAD'S a' in a muddle! Toims 'ee goes off stamrin' and
starin' at nowt, as if 'ee a'nt a n'aporth o' sense. How'siver I be
doing my duty by 'em--and 'ere's 'is porritch when a' cooms--'gin a' be
sick or maad.”
What the American understood of the girl's speech and manner struck
her as having very little sympathy with either her aged relative or her
present visitor. And there was a certain dogged selfish independence
about her that Miss Desborough half liked and half resented. However,
Miss Amelyn did not seem to notice it, and, after leaving a bottle of
port for the grandfather, she took her leave and led Sadie away. As they
passed into the village a carriage, returning to the Priory, filled with
their fellow guests, dashed by, but was instantly pulled up at a word
from Lord Algernon, who leaped from the vehicle, hat in hand, and
implored the fair truant and her companion to join them.
“We're just making a tour around Windover Hill, and back to luncheon,”
he said, with a rising color. “We missed you awfully! If we had known
you were so keen on 'good works,' and so early at it, by Jove! we'd have
got up a 'slummin' party,' and all joined!”
“And you haven't seen half,” said Lord Beverdale from the box. “Miss
Amelyn's too partial to the village. There's an old drunken retired
poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it's death to
approach, except with a large party. There's malignant diphtheria over
at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the keeper's, and an old
woman who has been bedridden for years.”
But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling. She thanked him,
but said she had just seen an old woman “who had been lying in bed for
twenty years, and hadn't spoken the truth once!” She proposed “going
outside of Lord Beverdale's own preserves of grain-fed poor,” and
starting up her own game. She would return in time for luncheon--if she
could; if not, she “should annex the gruel of the first kind incapable
she met.”
Yet, actually, she was far from displeased at being accidentally
discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim of
the morning. One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her frocks
and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now by this
butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society, and soil
her pretty wings on the haunts of the impoverished, with only a single
companion,--of her own sex!--and smiled approvingly. And in her present
state of mind, remembering her companion's timid attitude towards Lord
Beverdale's opinions, she was not above administering this slight snub
to him in her presence.
When they had driven away, with many regrets, Miss Amelyn was deeply
concerned. “I am afraid,” she said, with timid conscientiousness, “I
have kept you from going with them. And you must be bored with what you
have seen, I know. I don't believe you really care one bit for it--and
you are only doing it to please me.”
“Trot out the rest of your show,” said Sadie promptly, “and we'll wind
up by lunching with the rector.”
“He'd be too delighted,” said Miss Amelyn, with disaster written all
over her girlish, truthful face, “but--but--you know--it really wouldn't
be quite right to Lord Beverdale. You're his principal guest--you know,
and--they'd think I had taken you off.”
“Well,” said Miss Desborough impetuously, “what's the matter with that
inn--the Red Lion? We can get a sandwich there, I guess. I'm not VERY
hungry.”
Miss Amelyn looked horrified for a moment, and then laughed; but
immediately became concerned again. “No! listen to me, REALLY now! Let
me finish my round alone! You'll have ample time if you go NOW to reach
the Priory for luncheon. Do, please! It would be ever so much better for
everybody. I feel quite guilty as it is, and I suppose I am already in
Lord Beverdale's black books.”
The trouble in the young girl's face was unmistakable, and as it suited
Miss Desborough's purpose just as well to show her independence by
returning, as she had set out, alone, she consented to go. Miss Amelyn
showed her a short cut across the park, and they separated--to meet at
dinner. In this brief fellowship, the American girl had kept a certain
supremacy and half-fascination over the English girl, even while she was
conscious of an invincible character in Miss Amelyn entirely different
from and superior to her own. Certainly there was a difference in the
two peoples. Why else this inherited conscientious reverence for Lord
Beverdale's position, shown by Miss Amelyn, which she, an American alive
to its practical benefits, could not understand? Would Miss Amelyn and
Lord Algernon have made a better match? The thought irritated her, even
while she knew that she herself possessed the young man's affections,
the power to marry him, and, as she believed, kept her own independence
in the matter.
As she entered the iron gates at the lower end of the park, and glanced
at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still above, she was
conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and that a few clouds
had gathered. As she walked on down the long winding avenue, the sky
became overcast, and, in one of those strange contrasts of the English
climate, the glory of the whole day went out with the sunshine. The
woods suddenly became wrinkled and gray, the distant hills sombre, the
very English turf beneath her feet grew brown; a mile and a half away,
through the opening of the trees, the west part of the Priory looked
a crumbling, ivy-eaten ruin. A few drops of rain fell. She hurried
on. Suddenly she remembered that the avenue made a long circuit before
approaching the house, and that its lower end, where she was walking,
was but a fringe of the park. Consequently there must be a short cut
across some fields and farm buildings to the back of the park and the
Priory. She at once diverged to the right, presently found a low fence,
which she clambered over, and again found a footpath which led to a
stile. Crossing that, she could see the footpath now led directly to the
Priory,--now a grim and austere looking pile in the suddenly dejected
landscape,--and that it was probably used only by the servants and
farmers. A gust of wind brought some swift needles of rain to her cheek;
she could see the sad hills beyond the Priory already veiling their
faces; she gathered her skirts and ran. The next field was a long one,
but beside the further stile was a small clump of trees, the only ones
between her and the park. Hurrying on to that shelter, she saw that the
stile was already occupied by a tall but bent figure, holding a long
stick in his hand, which gave him the appearance, against the horizon,
of the figure of Time leaning on his scythe. As she came nearer she saw
it was, indeed, an old man, half resting on his rake. He was very
rugged and weather-beaten, and although near the shelter of the trees,
apparently unmindful of the rain that was falling on his bald head, and
the limp cap he was holding uselessly in one hand. He was staring at
her, yet apparently unconscious of her presence. A sudden instinct came
upon her--it was “Debs”!
She went directly up to him, and with that frank common sense which
ordinarily distinguished her, took his cap from his hand and put it
on his head, grasped his arm firmly, and led him to the shelter of the
tree. Then she wiped the raindrops from his face with her handkerchief,
shook out her own dress and her wet parasol, and, propping her companion
against the tree, said:--
“There, Mr. Debs! I've heard of people who didn't know enough to come in
when it rained, but I never met one before.”
The old man started, lifted his hairy, sinewy arm, bared to the elbow,
and wiped his bare throat with the dry side of it. Then a look of
intelligence--albeit half aggressive--came into his face. “Wheer beest
tha going?” he asked.
Something in his voice struck Sadie like a vague echo. Perhaps it was
only the queer dialect--or some resemblance to his granddaughter's
voice. She looked at him a little more closely as she said:--
“To the Priory.”
“Whaat?”
She pointed with her parasol to the gray pile in the distance. It was
possible that this demented peasant didn't even UNDERSTAND English.