OUT OF JOINT
Constance had, of course, to spend her Christmas holidays at home, where
she had not been for nine months.
Her brother met her at the London terminus to go down with her, and
there, to her great joy, she also saw Rose Rollstone on the platform.
Herbert, whose dignity had first prompted him to seek a smoking carriage
apart from his sister, thereupon decided to lay it aside and enter with
them, looking rather scornful at the girls' mutual endearments.
'Come, Conny, Miss Rollstone has had enough of that,' he said, 'and here
are a lot going to get in. Oh my, the cads! I shall have to get into
the smoking carriage after all.'
'No, don't. Sit opposite and we shall do very well.'
Then came the exchange of news, and--'You've heard, of course, Rosie?'
'I should think I had,' then an anxious glance at Herbert, who answered--
'Oh yes, mother and Ida have been tearing their hair ever since, but it
is all rot! The governor's very welcome to the poor little beggar!'
'Oh, that's right! That's very noble of you, Herbert,' said both the
girls in a breath.
'Well, you see, old Frank is good to live these thirty or forty years
yet, and what was the good of having to wait? Better have done with it
at once, I say, and he has written me a stunning jolly letter.'
'Oh, I was sure he would!' cried Constance.
'I'm to go on just the same, and he won't cut off my allowance,' pursued
Herbert.
'It is just as my papa says,' put in Rose, 'he is always the gentleman.
And you'll be in the army still?'
'When I've got through my exams; but they are no joke, Miss Rose, I can
tell you. It is Conny there that likes to sap. What have you been doing
this time, little one?'
'I don't know yet, but Miss Astley thinks I have done well and shall get
into the upper form,' said Constance shyly. 'I got on with my German
while I was abroad, trying to teach Uncle Frank.'
At which Herbert laughed heartily, and demanded what sort of scholar he
made.
'Not very good,' owned Constance; 'he did forget so from day to day, and
he asked so many questions, and was always wanting to have things
explained. But it made me know them better, and Mrs. Bury had such nice
books, and she helped me. If you want to take up French and German,
Bertie--
He shrugged his shoulders.
'Don't spoil the passing hour, child. I should think you would be glad
enough to get away from it all.'
'I do want to get on,' said Constance. 'I must, you know, more than ever
now.'
'Oh, you mean that mad fancy of going and being a teacher?'
'It is not a bit mad, Herbert. Rose does not think it is, and I want you
to stand by me if mamma and Ida make objections.'
'Girls are always in such a hurry,' grumbled Herbert. 'You need not make
a stir about it yet. You won't be able to begin for ever so long.'
Rose agreed with him that it would be much wiser not to broach the
subject till Constance was old enough to begin the preparation, though,
with the impatience of youth to express its designs and give them form,
she did not like the delay.
'I tell you what, Con,' finally said Herbert, 'if you set mother and Ida
worrying before their time, I shall vote it all rot, and not say a word
to help you.'
Which disposed of the subject for the time, and left them to discuss
happily Constance's travels and Herbert's new tutor and companions till
their arrival at Westhaven, where Constance's welcome was quite a
secondary thing to Herbert's, as she well knew it would be, nor felt it
as a grievance, though she was somewhat amazed at seeing him fervently
embraced, and absolutely cried over, with 'Oh, my poor injured boy!'
Herbert did not like it at all, and disengaging himself rapidly, growled
out his favourite expletive of 'Rot! Have done with that!'
He was greatly admired for his utter impatience of commiseration, but
there was no doubt that the disappointment was far greater to his mother
and Ida than to himself. He cared little for what did not make any
actual difference to his present life, whereas to them the glory and
honour of his heirship and the future hopes were everything--and
Constance's manifest delight in the joy of her uncle and aunt, and her
girlish interest in the baby, were to their eyes unfeeling folly, if not
absolute unkindness to her brother.
'Dear little baby, indeed!' said Ida scornfully. 'Nasty little wretch, I
say. One good thing is, up in that cold place all this time he's sure
not to live.'
Herbert whistled. 'That's coming it rather strong.' And Constance, with
tears starting to her eyes, said, 'For shame, Ida, how can you be so
wicked! Think of Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary!'
'I believe you care for them more than for your own flesh and blood!'
exclaimed her mother.
'Well, and haven't they done a sight deal more for her?' said Herbert.
'You turning on me too, you ungrateful boy!' cried Mrs. Morton.
Herbert laughed.
'If it comes to gratitude,' he said, and looked significantly at the
decorations.
'And what is it but the due to his brother's widow?' said Mrs. Morton.
'Just a pittance, and you may depend that will be cut down on some
pretext now!'
'I should think so, if they heard Ida's tongue!' said Herbert.
'And Constance there is spitefulness enough to go and tell
them--favourite as she is!' said Ida.
'I should think not!' said Constance indignantly. 'As if I would do such
a mean thing!'
'Come, come, Ida,' said her mother, 'your sister knows better than that.
It's not the way when she is only just come home, so grown too and
improved, "quite the lady."'
Mrs. Morton had a mother's heart for Constance, though only in the third
degree, and was really gratified to see her progress. She had turned up
her pretty brown hair, and the last year had made her much less of a
child in appearance; her features were of delicate mould, she had dark
eyes, and a sweet mouth, with a rose-blush complexion, and was pleasing
to look on, though, in her mother's eyes, no rival to the thin, rather
sharply-defined features, bright eyes, and pink-and-white complexion that
made Ida the belle of a certain set at Westhaven. The party were more
amicable over the dinner-table--for dinner it was called, as an assertion
of gentility.
'Are you allowed to dine late,' asked Ida patronisingly of her sister,
'when you are not at school?
'Lady Adela dines early,' said Constance.
'Oh, for your sake, I suppose?'
'Always, I believe,' said Constance.
'Yes, always,' said Herbert. 'Fine people needn't ask what's genteel,
you see, Ida.'
That was almost the only breeze, and after dinner Herbert rushed out for
a smell of sea, interspersed with pipe, and to 'look up the inevitable
old Jack.'
Constance was then subjected to a cross-examination on all the
circumstances of the detention at Ratzes, and all she had heard or ought
to have heard about the arrival of the unwelcome little Michael, while
her mother and sister drew their own inferences.
'Really,' said Ida at last, 'it is just like a thing in a book.'
Constance was surprised.
'Because it was such a happy surprise for them,' she added hastily.
'No, nonsense, child, but it is just what they always do when they want a
supposititious heir.'
'Ida, how can you say such things?'
'But it is, Conny! There was the wicked Sir Ronald Macronald. He took
his wife away to Belgrade, right in the Ukraine mountains, and it--'
'Belgrade is in Hungary, and the Cossacks live in the Ukraine in Russia,'
suggested Constance.
'Oh, never mind your school-girl geography, it was Bel something, an
out-of-the-way place in the mountains anyway, and there he pretended she
had a child, just out of malice to the right heiress, that lovely Lilian,
and he got killed by a stag, and then she confessed on her death-bed. I
declare it is just like--'
'My dear, don't talk in that way, your sister is quite shocked. Your
uncle never would--'
'Bless me, ma, I was only in fun. I could tell you ever so many stories
like that. There's Broughton's, on the table there. I knew from the
first it was an impostor, and the old nurse dressed like a nun was his
mother.'
'I believe you always know the end before you are half through the first
volume,' said her mother admiringly; 'but of course it is all right, only
it is a terrible disappointment and misfortune for us, and not to be
looked for after all these years.'
The last three Christmastides had been spent at Northmoor, where it had
been needful to conform to the habits of the household, which impressed
Ida and her mother as grand and conferring distinction, but decidedly
dull and religious.
So as they were at Westhaven, perforce, they would make up for it,
Christmas Eve was spent in a tumult of preparation for the diversions of
the next day. Mrs. Morton had two maids now, but to her they were still
'gals,' not to be trusted with the more delicate cookeries, and Ida was
fully engaged in the adornment of the room and herself, while Constance
ran about and helped both, and got more thanks from her mother than her
sister.
Ida was to end the day with a dance at a friend's house, but she was not
desirous of taking Constance with her, having been accustomed to treat
her as a mere child, and Constance, though not devoid of a wish for
amusement, knew that her uncle and aunt would have taken her to church,
where she would have enjoyed the festal service.
Her mother would not let her go out in the dark alone, and was too tired
to go with her, so she had to stay at home, while Herbert disported
himself elsewhere, and Constance underwent another cross-examination over
the photographs she had brought home, but Mrs. Morton was never unkind
when alone with her, and she had all the natural delight of youth in
relating her adventures. Mrs. Morton, however, showed offence at not
having been sent for instead of Mrs. Bury.--'So much less of a relation,'
and Constance found herself dwelling on the ruggedness of the pass, and
the difficulties of making oneself understood, but Mrs. Morton still
persisted that she 'could not understand why they should have got into
such a place at all, when there were plenty of fashionable places in the
newspaper where they could have had society and attendance and
everything.'
'Ah, but that was just what Uncle Frank didn't want.'
'Well, if they choose to be so eccentric, and close and shy, they can't
wonder that people talk.'
'Mamma, you can't mean that horrid nonsense that Ida talked about! It
was only a joke!'
'Oh, my dear, I don't say that I suspect anything--oh no,--only, if they
had not been so close and queer, one would have been able to contradict
it. I like people to be straightforward, that's all I have to say. And
it is terribly hard on your poor brother to be so disappointed, after
having his expectations so raised!' and Mrs. Morton melted into tears,
leaving Constance with nothing to say, for in the first place, she did
not think Herbert, as yet at least, was very sensible of his loss, and in
the next, she did not quite venture to ask her mother whether she thought
little Michael should have been sacrificed to Herbert's expectations. So
she took the wiser course of producing a photograph of Vienna.