Lady Jane walked into the room squarely, with her short skirts and her
close jacket. She looked as if she were quite ready to walk back the
four miles of muddy road between her house and the Cliff. And so indeed
she was, though she had no intention of doing so to-day. She came in,
pushing aside the footman, as I have said, who was very much frightened
of Lady Jane. When she saw the dark figures of Mrs. Shanks and Miss
Mildmay sitting against the large light of the window, she uttered a
suppressed sound of discontent. It might be translated by an “Oh,” or it
might be translated, as we so often do as the symbol of a sound, by a
“Humph.” At all events, it was a sound which expressed annoyance. “You
here!” it seemed to say; but Lady Jane afterwards shook hands with them
very civilly, it need not be said. For the two old cats were very
respectable members of society, and not to be badly treated even by Lady
Jane.
“That was your funny little carriage, I suppose,” she said, when she had
seated herself, “stopping the way.”
“Was it stopping the way?” cried Mrs. Shanks, “the midge? I am
astonished at Mr. Perkins. We always give him the most careful
instructions; but if he had found one of the servants to gossip with, he
is a man who forgets everything one may say.”
“I can’t undertake what his motives were, but he was in the way,
blocking up the doors,” said Lady Jane; “all the more astonishing to my
men and my horses, as they were brought out, much against their will, on
the full understanding that nobody else would be out on such a day.”
“It is a long way to Steephill,” said Miss Mildmay, “so that we could
not possibly have known Lady Jane’s intentions, could we, Jane Shanks?
or else we might have taken care not to get into her way.”
“Oh, the public roads are free to every one,” said Lady Jane, dismissing
the subject. “What rainy weather we have had, to be sure! Of course you
are all interested in that bazaar; if it goes on like this you will have
no one, not a soul to buy; and all the expense of the decorations and so
forth on our hands.”
“Oh, the officers will come over from Newport,” said Miss Mildmay;
“anything is better than nothing. Whatever has a show of amusement will
attract the officers, and that will make the young ladies happy, so that
it will not be thrown away.”
“What a Christian you are!” said Lady Jane. “You mean it is an ill wind
that blows nobody good. I have several cousins in the garrison, but I
don’t think I should care so much for their amusement as all that.”
“Was there ever a place,” said Mrs. Shanks, with a certain tone of
humble admiration, which grated dreadfully upon her companion, “in which
you had not a number of cousins, Lady Jane? They say the Scotch are the
great people for having relatives everywhere, and my poor husband was a
Scotchman; but I’m sure he had not half so many as you.”
Lady Jane answered curtly with a nod of her head and went on. “The rain
is spoiling everything,” she said. “The men, of course, go out in spite
of it when they can, but they have no pleasure in their work, and to
have a shooting party on one’s hands in bad weather is a hard task. They
look at you as if it were your fault, as if you could order good weather
as easily as you can order luncheon for them at the cover side.”
“Dear me, that is not at all fair, is it, Ruth Mildmay? In my poor
husband’s lifetime, when we used to take a shooting regularly, I always
said to his friends, ‘Now, don’t look reproachfully at me if it’s bad
weather. We can’t guarantee the weather. You ought to get so many brace
if you have good luck. We’ll answer for that.’”
“You were a bold woman,” said Lady Jane; “so many brace without knowing
if they could fire a gun or not! That’s a rash promise. Sir John is not
so bold as that, I can tell you. He says, ‘There’s a bird or two about
if you can hit ’em.’ Katherine, you may as well let me see those things
of yours for my stall. It will amuse me a little this wet day.”
“They are all upstairs, Lady Jane.”
“Well, I’ll go upstairs. Oh, don’t let me take you away from your
visitors. Stella, you can come with me and show them; not that I suppose
you know anything about them.”
“Not the least in the world,” said Stella very clearly. Her face, so
delicately tinted usually, and at present paler than ordinary, was
crimson, and her attitude one of battle. She could propitiate and play
with the old cats, but she dare not either cajole or defy Lady Jane.
“Then Katherine can come, and I can enjoy the pleasure of conversation
with you after. Shall I find you still here,” said Lady Jane, holding
out her hand graciously to the other ladies, “when I come downstairs
again?”
“Oh, we must be going----”
Mrs. Shanks was interrupted by Miss Mildmay’s precise tones. “Probably
you will find _me_ here, Lady Jane; and I am sure it will be a mutual
pleasure to continue the conversation which----”
“Then I needn’t say good-bye,” said the great lady calmly, taking
Katherine by the arm and pushing the girl before her. Stella stood with
her shoulders against the mantel-piece, very red, watching them as they
disappeared. She gave the others an angry look of appeal as the door
closed upon the more important visitor.
“Oh, I wish you’d take me away with you in the midge!” she cried.
“Ah, Stella,” cried Mrs. Shanks, shaking her head, “the times I have
heard you making your fun of the midge! But in a time of trouble one
finds out who are one’s real friends.”
Miss Mildmay was softened too, but she was not yet disposed to give in.
She had not been able to eat that special muffin which Stella had
re-toasted for her. Lady Jane, in declining tea curtly with a wave of
her hands, had made the tea-drinkers uncomfortable, and especially had
arrested the eating of muffins, which it is difficult to consume with
dignity unless you have the sympathy of your audience. It was cold now,
quite cold and unappetizing. It lay in its little plate with the air of
a thing rejected. And Miss Mildmay felt it was not consistent with her
position to ask even for half a cup of hot tea.
“It has to be seen,” she said stiffly, “what friends will respond to the
appeal; everybody is not at the disposal of the erring person when and
how she pleases. I must draw a line----”
“What do you say I have done, then?” cried Stella, flushing with lively
wrath. “Do you think I went out in that boat on purpose to be drowned or
catch my death? Do you think I wanted to be ill and sea-sick and make an
exhibition of myself before two men? Do you think I wanted them to see
me _ill_? Goodness!” cried Stella, overcome at once by the recollection
and the image, “could you like a man--especially if he was by way of
admiring you, and talking nonsense to you and all that--to see you _ill_
at sea? If you can believe that you can believe anything, and there is
no more for me to say.”
The force of this argument was such that Miss Mildmay was quite startled
out of her usual composure and reserve. She stared at Stella for a
moment with wide-opened eyes.
“I did not think of that,” she said in a tone of sudden conviction.
“There is truth in what you say--certainly there is truth in what you
say.”
“Truth in it!” cried the girl. “If you had only seen me--but I am very
thankful you didn’t see me--leaning over the side of that dreadful boat,
not minding what waves went over me! When you were a girl and had men
after you, oh, Miss Mildmay, I ask you, would you have chosen to have
them to see you _then_?”
Miss Mildmay put the plate with the cold muffin off her knees. She set
down her empty cup. She felt the solemnity of the appeal.
“No,” she said, “if you put it to me like that, Stella, I am obliged to
allow I should not. And I may add,” she went on, looking round the room
as if to a contradictory audience, “I don’t know any woman who would;
and that is my opinion, whatever anybody may say.” She paused a moment
with a little triumphant air of having conducted to a climax a potent
argument, looking round upon the baffled opponents. And then she came
down from that height and added in soft tones of affectionate reproach:
“But why did you go out with them at all, Stella? When I was a girl, as
you say, and had--I never, never should have exposed myself to such
risks, by going out in a boat with----”
“Oh, Miss Mildmay,” cried Stella, “girls were better in your time. You
have always told us so. They were not perhaps so fond of--fun; they were
in better order; they had more--more--” said the girl, fishing for a
word, which Mrs. Shanks supplied her with by a movement of her lips
behind Miss Mildmay’s back--“disciplined minds,” Stella said with an
outburst of sudden utterance which was perilously near a laugh.
“And you had a mother, Ruth Mildmay?” said the plotter behind, in tender
notes.
“Yes; I had a mother--an excellent mother, who would not have permitted
any of the follies I see around me. Jane Shanks, you have conquered me
with that word. Stella, my dear, count on us both to stand by you,
should that insolent woman upstairs take anything upon her. Who is Lady
Jane, I should like to know? The daughter of a new-made man--coals, or
beer, or something! A creation of this reign! Stella, this will teach
you, perhaps, who are your true friends.”
And Miss Mildmay extended her arms and took the girl to her bosom.
Stella had got down on her knees for some reason of her own, which girls
who are fond of throwing themselves about may understand, and therefore
was within reach of this unexpected embrace, and I am afraid laughed
rather than sobbed on Miss Mildmay’s lap; but the slight heaving of her
shoulders in that position had the same effect, and sealed the bargain.
The two ladies lingered a little after this, hoping that Lady Jane might
come down. At least Miss Mildmay hoped so. Mrs. Shanks would have stolen
humbly out to get into the midge at a little distance along the drive,
not to disturb the big landau with the brown horses which stood large
before the door. But Miss Mildmay would have none of that; she ordered
the landau off with great majesty, and waved her hand indignantly for
Perkins to “come round,” as if the midge had been a chariot, a
manœuvre which Stella promoted eagerly, standing in the doorway to
see her visitors off with the most affectionate interest, while the
other carriage paced sullenly up and down.
In the meantime Lady Jane had nearly completed her interview with
Katherine in the midst of the large assortment of trumpery set out in
readiness for the bazaar. “Oh, yes, I suppose they’ll do well enough,”
she said, turning over the many coloured articles into which the Sliplin
ladies had worked so many hours of their lives with careless hands.
“Mark them cheap; the people here like to have bargains, and I’m sure
they’re not worth much. Of course, it was not the bazaar things I was
thinking of. Tell me, Katherine, what is all this about Stella? I find
the country ringing with it. What has she done to have her name mixed up
with Charlie Somers and Algy Scott--two of the fastest men one knows?
What has the child been doing? And how did she come to know these men?”
“She has been doing nothing, Lady Jane. It is the most wicked invention.
I can tell you exactly how it happened. A little yacht was lying in the
harbour, and they went up to papa’s observatory, as he calls it, to look
at it through his telescope, and papa himself was there, and he
said----”
“But this is going very far back, surely? I asked you what Stella was
doing with these men.”
“And I am telling you,” cried Katherine, red with indignation. “Papa
said it was his yacht, which he had just bought, and they began to argue
and bet about who it was from whom he had bought it, and he would not
tell them; and then Stella said----”
“My dear Katherine, this elaborate explanation begins to make me
fear----”
“Stella cried: ‘Come down and look at it, while Kate orders tea.’ You
know how careless she is, and how she orders me about. They ran down by
our private gate. It was to settle their bet, and I had tea laid out for
them--it was quite warm then--under the trees. Well,” said Katherine,
pausing to take breath, “the first thing I saw was a white sail moving
round under the cliff while I sat waiting for them to come back. And
then papa came down screaming that it was the _Stella_, his yacht, and
that a gale was blowing up. And then we spent the most dreadful evening,
and darkness came on and we lost sight of the sail, and I thought I
should have died and that it would kill papa.”
Her breath went from her with this rapid narrative, uttered at full
speed to keep Lady Jane from interrupting. What with indignation and
what with alarm, the quickening of her heart was such that Katherine
could say no more. She stopped short and stood panting, with her hand
upon her heart.
“And at what hour,” said Lady Jane icily, “did they come back?”
“Oh, I can’t tell what hour it was. It seemed years and years to me. I
got her back in a faint and wet to the skin, half dead with sickness and
misery and cold. Oh, my poor, poor little girl! And now here are wicked
and cruel people saying it is her fault. Her fault to risk her life and
make herself ill and drive us out of our senses, papa and me!”
“Oh, Stella would not care very much for her papa and you, so long as
she got her fun. So it was as bad as that, was it--a whole night at sea
along with these two men? I could not have imagined any girl would have
been such a fool.”
“I will not hear my sister spoken of so. It was the men who were fools,
or worse, taking her out when a gale was rising. What did she know
about the signs of a gale? She thought of nothing but two minutes in the
bay, just to see how the boat sailed. It was these men.”
“What is the use of saying anything about the men? I dare say they
enjoyed it thoroughly. It doesn’t do them any harm. Why should they
mind? It is the girl who ought to look out, for it is she who suffers.
Good Heavens, to think that any girl should be such a reckless little
fool!”
“Stella has done nothing to be spoken of in that way.”
“Oh, don’t speak to me!” said Lady Jane. “Haven’t I taken you both up
and done all I could to give you your chance, you two? And this is my
reward. Stella has done nothing? Why, Stella has just compromised
herself in the most dreadful way. You know what sort of a man Charlie
Somers is? No, you don’t, of course. How should you, not living in a set
where you were likely to hear? That’s the worst, you know, of going out
a little in one _monde_ and belonging to another all the time.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lady Jane,” cried Katherine, on the edge of
tears.
“No; there’s no need you should know what I mean. A girl, in another
position, that got to know Charlie Somers would have known more
or less what he was. You, of course, have the disadvantages of
both--acquaintance and then ignorance. Who introduced Charlie Somers to
your sister? The blame lies on her first of all.”
“It was--they were all--at the hotel, and Stella thought it would be
kind to ask Mrs. Seton to a picnic we were giving----”
“Lottie Seton!” cried Lady Jane, sitting down in the weakness of her
consternation. “Why, this is the most extraordinary thing of all!”
“I see nothing extraordinary in the whole business,” said Katherine, in
a lofty tone.
“Oh, my dear Katherine, for goodness’ sake don’t let me have any more of
your innocent little-girlishness. Of course you see nothing! You have
no eyes, no sense, no---- Lottie Seton!--she to give over two of her own
men to a pretty, silly, reckless little thing like Stella, just the kind
for them! Well, that is the last thing I should have expected. Why,
Lottie Seton is nothing without her tail. If they abandon her she is
lost. She is asked to places because she is always sure to be able to
bring a few men. What they can see in her nobody knows, but there it
is--that’s her faculty. And she actually gave over two of her very
choicest----”
“You must excuse me, Lady Jane,” said Katherine, “if I don’t want to
hear any more of Mrs. Seton and her men. They are exceedingly rude,
stupid, disagreeable men. You may think it a fine thing for us to be
elevated to the sphere in which we can meet men like Sir Charles Somers.
I don’t think so. I think he is detestable. I think he believes women to
exist only for the purpose of amusing him and making him laugh, like an
idiot, as he is!”
Lady Jane sat in her easy-chair and looked sardonically at the passion
of the girl, whose face was crimson, whose voice was breaking. She was,
with that horrible weakness which a high-spirited girl so resents in
herself, so near an outbreak of crying that she could scarcely keep the
tears within her eyes. The elder lady looked at her for some time in
silence. The sight troubled her a little, and amused her a little also.
It occurred to her to say, “You are surely in love with him yourself,”
which was her instinct, but for once forbore, out of a sort of awed
sense that here was a creature who was outside of her common rules.
“He is not an idiot, however,” she said at last. “I don’t say he is
intellectual. He does think, perhaps, that women exist, &c. So do most
of them, my dear. You will soon find that out if you have anything to do
with men. Still, for a good little girl, I have always thought you were
nice, Katherine. It is for your sake more than hers that I feel inclined
to do that silly little Stella a good turn. How could she be such a
little fool? Has she lived on this cliff half her life and doesn’t know
when a gale’s coming on? The more shame to her, then! And I don’t doubt
that instead of being ashamed she is quite proud of her adventure. And
I hear, to make things worse, that Algy Scott went and caught a bad cold
over it. That will make his mother and all her set furious with the
girl, and say everything about her. He’s not going to die--that’s a good
thing. If he had, she need never have shown her impertinent little nose
anywhere again. Lady Scott’s an inveterate woman. It will be bad enough
as it is. How are we to get things set right again?”
“It is a pity you should take any trouble,” said Katherine; “things are
quite right, thank you. We have quite enough in what you call our own
_monde_.”
“Well, and what do you find to object to in the word? It is a very good
word; the French understand that sort of thing better than we do. So you
have quite enough to make you happy in your own _monde_? I don’t think
so--and I know the world in general better than you do. And, what is
more, I am very doubtful indeed whether Stella thinks so.”
“Oh, no,” cried a little voice, and Stella, running in, threw herself
down at Lady Jane’s feet, in the caressing attitude which she had so
lately held in spite of herself at Miss Mildmay’s. “Stella doesn’t think
so at all. Stella will be miserable if you don’t take her up and put
things right for her, dear Lady Jane. I have been a dreadful little
fool. I know it, I know it; but I didn’t mean it. I meant nothing but a
little--fun. And now there is nobody who can put everything right again
but you, and only you.”