During the long years of Sainty’s minority there had been but a moderate
establishment kept at Belchamber. Lady Charmington had been anxious the
boys should be brought up there, and have the early associations which
alone make a place a home, though it would have been simpler and much
more comfortable to have lived in the dower-house, and some of her
relations had blamed her for not doing so.
Sainty had hardly ever been into the great central body of the house,
where what were called the State Apartments seemed only to exist to be
shown to tourists by the housekeeper. A whole wing of guests’ and
servants’ rooms had been permanently closed, and was only occasionally
aired and inspected. Sometimes, when the boys were little, they had
played at hide-and-seek in the long vista of empty chambers; but for the
most part the family lived entirely in the west wing, much like royal
pensioners to whom a set of apartments had been granted in some unused
palace. Sainty had exactly the intense love for the place, not unmixed
with awe, which might have been felt by the child of a custodian. His
mother’s long habit of unquestioned and unquestioning authority, not
less than her constant inculcation of a sense of stewardship and
responsibility to a certain abstraction known as ‘the estate,’ had
combined with his natural modesty and self-effacement to eliminate all
sensation of personal ownership.
In the stable one pair of carriage horses, Lady Charmington’s cobs and
favourite hack, the boys’ old ponies, and a riding horse or two, had
sufficed for all their needs; and old Bell the coachman had never wanted
more than the groom and a couple of stable-lads under him, cheerfully
doing much of the work himself. The butler, who had been with them
fourteen years, was perhaps rather practical than ornamental, but could
turn his hand to anything, and the two footmen were lads from Lady
Charmington’s own bible-class in the village, released by their
proficiency in the scriptures from the necessity of following the
plough, to wear the badge of servitude upon their shining buttons. The
housekeeper and her ladyship’s maid held sound evangelical views, and
the morals and health of the under-servants were looked after with equal
care and sternness. Lady Charmington was thoroughly versed in the
spiritual state of the odd man, and could have told without a moment’s
hesitation the date of the third housemaid’s confirmation, or when the
scullery-maid last had a quinsy.
Now, however, all was to be changed. Sainty came home to an atmosphere
of expansion and innovation. He found his uncle, Lord Corstorphine--whom
in future we must remember to call Lord Firth, the old earl having been
dead some years at the date of his grandson’s majority--in constant
consultation with his mother, consultations in which, to his extreme
embarrassment, he was expected to take part. He discovered that he had
absolutely no views as to the proper functions of a groom of the
chambers, or the relative undesirability of keeping a lot of young men
unemployed when you were alone, or having extra liveries into which, on
the occasion of a large party, temporary hirelings could be hastily
inducted; about whom, as Lady Charmington truly remarked, you could know
nothing, and who might steal the spoons and flirt with the maids. Old
carriages that had not seen the light of day for years were dragged from
their retirement and unveiled before him, while all the horse-dealers in
the county brought animals for his inspection of every shade of
unfitness for the duty of drawing them. Lord Firth’s political
engagements made his presence necessarily intermittent; he could but
seldom be there; and in his absence Lady Charmington would look
anxiously at her son, hoping for some expression of opinion from him,
but Sainty’s ignorance was only equalled by his indifference. He tried
in vain to care whether, supposing the carriages were worth doing up at
all, they should be sent to London or confided to a provincial
renovator.
As to the horses, as Bell scornfully told him, he ‘had never knowed one
end of a ‘oss from the other.’ On general principles he was on the side
of the least expenditure. If he had said what he really felt, it would
have been ‘Why need we live any differently because I shall be
twenty-one next month than we did when I was twenty? We have always had
all we wanted; why spend all this money on things that are not going to
give me the smallest pleasure--rather the reverse?’ But these are the
things one must not say. He looked at his mother’s wistful face and
strove manfully to show the interest in all these questions which was
expected of him.
Arthur, when presently he came home, having just left Eton for good,
flung himself into the whole business with very different gusto. The
spending of money, either his own or other people’s, was always a
genuine pleasure to this young man, and the horse-coping afforded
opportunities for displaying to an admiring audience a knowingness quite
amazing in one so young, and a pair of irreproachable riding-breeches.
Once when Sainty was walking in the shrubbery that masked the
stable-yard he overheard the dealer from Great Charmington expressing
himself to Bell with a freedom in which he would not have indulged had
he known who was behind the wall.
‘I’d a deal rather have to do with Lord Arthur,’ he was saying, ‘than
with either my lord or my lady. His lordship, he don’t want no horse at
all; Lady Charmington, she knows a good horse when she sees ‘im, but she
don’t want to pay for ‘im; but Lord Arthur, he wants a good article, and
he’s willing to pay a good price. He’s a gentleman, he is.’
‘Ah!’ answered Bell, ‘it’s a pity ’e wasn’t the eldest; ’e’d ’ave made
something like a markis, ’e would.’
It was the old old story; the one thing poor Sainty seemed able to do
was to stand between his younger brother and the position for which the
very stablemen saw his superior fitness.
Arthur had been allowed to stay at Eton over his nineteenth birthday
that he might once more represent his school at Lord’s. A finer-looking
young fellow it would have been hard to find at this time, tall and fair
and ruddy, of athletic proportions and agreeable manners, a most
attractive personality, and as Sainty felt sadly, admiringly, but
without a touch of envy, a most complete contrast to his elder brother.
No one but Sainty, and he only imperfectly, knew the selfishness, the
carnal appetites, the imperious need of enjoyment, the lack of moral
sense, that lay beneath that smiling surface, or suspected the rock of
primitive obstinacy above which the floating growth of apparent
pliability waved so prettily in the tides of circumstance. Arthur had
not been at home a week before the usual demand for money made its
appearance. There is no doubt the younger brother had been extremely
useful to the elder just then; his happy presence had eased the strain
between Lady Charmington’s strenuous eagerness and Sainty’s
incompetence, and lent quite a spice of amusement to the fearful
upheaval in house and stable. The boys were together in what had been
their common sitting-room ever since it had been their schoolroom.
Sainty had had thoughts of asking for a study of his own, having much
need of somewhere to work undisturbed; but it seemed ungracious to ask
for the one thing that would have added to his comfort, when so much was
being done for him that gave him no pleasure whatever.
Arthur, arrayed in a new pair of yellow boots, spotless white
‘flannels,’ and a lovely pink shirt, was whistling the airs from the
latest musical farce while oiling his favourite bat and sadly shaking
the table at which Sainty was trying to write a treatise on Epictetus.
‘I don’t suppose, dear old boy,’ he said suavely, ‘that you could oblige
your little bwuvver with a small sum of money?’
Sainty looked up quickly. ‘Why, Arthur,’ he said, rather sternly, ‘I
heard you tell mother you didn’t owe a penny now. You know she offered
to pay any debts you had at Eton when you left, and you said you had
given her a complete list.’
‘So I did, poor dear, and it made her hair curl. I even took my bill and
sat down quickly and wrote fifty,’ which was a hint I had got from the
passage of scripture she had read to us at prayers, so as to have a
little to go on with; but the fact is, dear boy, I’ve been cursedly
unlucky----’
‘Arthur! you haven’t been betting?’
‘Yes; you see that’s just what I have been doing. Damn it all, Sainty,
don’t look as if I’d been robbing a church. Every fellow has a little
something on his favourite horse: it’s not a crime.’
Sainty stared aghast. He had often wondered how Arthur managed to get
rid of so much money at Eton, where, as he knew, though the boys were
absurdly extravagant, the opportunities for spending were not unlimited.
Now he understood, and a bottomless gulf seemed to open at his feet.
‘Of course it’s only a temporary thing,’ Arthur went on. ‘I made a good
thing over Ascot, but I’ve been unlucky with the Eclipse; one can’t
always win, you know. Unfortunately these things have to be paid up,
don’t yer know. My bookie’s a very good sort of chap, but he’s got to
pay his losses, and he naturally wants his money. You can call it a
loan, if you like. I’ve got a splendid tip for the Leger----’
Sainty looked down at his paper. Epictetus seemed to have gone a long
way off and become suddenly very unimportant since he had looked up from
it. He knew how useless it would be to expostulate; but he wanted time
to adjust his mind to this new terror.
‘How did you come to know _how_ to bet?’ he asked; ‘I mean the machinery
of the thing. Who introduced you to a bookmaker?’
Arthur laughed aloud. ‘Upon my word I don’t remember,’ he said; ‘but I
assure you it’s not difficult. Half the fellows I know have a book on
all the meetings. I rather think it was Claude told me of this chap;
he’s a very good sort. The man I went to before when I won a pony over
the Derby wrote and said my telegram had come too late. I wasn’t going
to stand that kind of thing, so I cut him, naturally----’
Of course Arthur got what he wanted; it wasn’t, as it happened, a very
large sum. But Sainty was left with an abiding dread. He wondered
sometimes how it was that he saw so clearly the dangers that menaced his
brother, while Arthur himself remained so sublimely unconscious and
untroubled. The mention of Claude’s name in the matter, too, had
reawakened an old anxiety. He had supposed that after his cousin left
Eton Arthur would not be likely to have much to do with him except at
Belchamber, and under his own eye. Claude’s was an influence he
particularly dreaded for his brother, and it was evident that they had
at least been corresponding. He wondered if he ought to say anything to
his cousin about it, but he remembered the small effect such
interference on his part had always produced.
The Morlands were among the first to arrive for the coming-of-age
festivities. Lady Eva had said, when she proposed it, that there must be
heaps of things to attend to, and she should love to be of use. It need
hardly be said that she was not. Her notion of offering assistance was
to look in when Lady Charmington was busy, and say, ‘Dear Sarah, I see I
should be dreadfully in the way just now; you will do much better
without poor silly me. I will take a book out under the trees.’
Claude, on the other hand, was extraordinarily helpful. He was capable,
when it suited him, of taking immense pains, and he had a genius for
order and detail which was of incalculable service to his aunt and
cousin. He helped Lady Charmington and the housekeeper to arrange the
long disused rooms, he settled who should occupy each, and wrote out
lists of every kind of thing and person, in a beautiful, neat, clear
little handwriting. He was gay, tactful, amusing, good-humoured. Sainty
was overcome with gratitude, and felt it more than ever impossible to
take this smiling, affectionate person to task for such a little thing
as introducing Arthur to a bookmaker. After all, it was not his _first_
introduction to a gentleman of that profession, and apparently all his
cousin had done was to substitute an honest for a dishonest member of
the ring.
Claude’s attentions to his grandmother had not proved fruitless, for
when he failed, no one quite knew why, to pass his examinations for
diplomacy, she had persuaded the duke to take him as his private
secretary; and his experiences in that capacity made him now of
incalculable use in coping with the new groom of the chambers, a young
man of Olympian beauty, with a sepulchral voice and manner, who had been
the duchess’s footman, and in keeping the peace between him and the
butler, who regarded this recent acquisition with unconcealed distrust
and aversion. The establishment was now more or less on its new footing,
the unwieldy machine beginning to act, with much creaking and groaning
and a need of all the oil that Claude and Sainty could supply between
them.
Old Lady Firth had been for some time installed in the warmest spare
bedroom in the family wing, with her maid next door to her, and her son
came down as soon as the session was over, giving up the ‘Twelfth’ with
a sad heart, but promising himself to fly to the golf-links and moors of
his native land as soon as he had done this last duty for his ward.
Sainty appreciated the sacrifice his uncle was making for him, and much
wanted to thank him for it, but only succeeded in feeling and looking
embarrassed.
‘I’m sure it’s very good-natured of you coming here for this boring
business, Uncle Cor,’ he said suddenly one evening. ‘I feel sure you’d
rather be in the north.’
‘I don’t know, my dear boy,’ answered his uncle patronisingly, ‘why you
should not give me credit for a natural interest in being present on
what is really rather a big occasion in your life.’
‘It is so ungracious of Sainty,’ said Lady Charmington, ‘to persist on
looking on the whole thing merely as a bore, when we are all doing our
utmost to mark our sense of the event.’
My dear mother,’ Sainty cried, ‘don’t think I don’t appreciate----’
‘Oh, I don’t want to be thanked,’ his mother made haste to interrupt;
‘nor, I’m sure, does your uncle. We are only doing what we feel is our
duty; but it would be pleasant to know you took a little interest. I
believe no one takes so little interest in your coming of age as you do
yourself.’
‘It does sometimes seem about the worst thing I could have done,’ Sainty
said bitterly, a remark not calculated to soothe his mother’s
susceptibilities. He wondered why, whenever he tried to express any
kindly feeling, it always appeared that he had said something
disagreeable, with the result that by the end of the conversation he
generally had actually done so.
‘Who comes to-morrow, Aunt Sarah?’ inquired Claude tactfully. ‘I declare
I’ve forgotten, though we went through them only this morning.’
‘Let me see,’ said Lady Charmington, swiftly reabsorbed in her duties as
mistress of the house; ‘Ecclestons, three; de Lissacs, three; my sister
Susan and Johnny, two; and a young man Firth has asked, Mr. Pryor. Algy
Montgomery has written that he can’t come till Monday; he will come with
his father and the duchess and the Rugbies. When do your Cambridge
friends come, Sainty?’
‘Johnson comes to-morrow with the Ecclestons, mother: he’s Tommy
Eccleston’s friend more than mine; Parsons on Monday; Gerald Newby, I’m
afraid not till Tuesday.’
It will be seen that a tolerably large party was being gathered
together. The actual festivities were to occupy two days--Wednesday,
which was Sainty’s birthday, and the following day; and not only was
Belchamber being once more filled with guests, but Hawley and the
Grange, and even some bigger houses further afield were preparing to
bring over large contingents for the garden party and ball.
‘Do you think we had better dine in the big dining-room to-morrow
night?’ Lady Charmington asked.
‘Oh, not till Monday,’ Sainty pleaded; ‘surely that’ll be time enough,
mother. This room is quite big enough for to-morrow’s dinner.’
Lady Firth, who was dreading the draughts in the great banqueting-hall,
and secretly wondering if she would not dine upstairs the first night it
was used, and let the rest of the party air it for her, was strongly of
Sainty’s opinion.
‘Do let’s stay a family party as long as we can,’ said Lady Eva. ‘With
mamma’s advent on Monday we shall inevitably become very _mondain_. Who
are all these smart people she has insisted on adding to the party?’
‘The Nonsuches are cousins and old friends,’ Lady Charmington answered
grimly; ‘but your mother wished Lord and Lady Dalsany asked, and Lady
Deans; I confess I don’t quite see why. I suppose she thought she would
be bored here unless she provided her own company.’
Lady Eva laughed as if her sister-in-law had said something witty.
‘Oh! is Vere Deans coming? That will be nice!’ exclaimed a young lady
who had come with Lady Eva. Amy Winston dabbled in literature, and spelt
her name Aimée. She always wore black, white, or yellow, and still
looked remarkably handsome in the evening. ‘She is a dear, and so
clever,’ Lady Eva had said of her; ‘writes, you know, and dresses so
well on simply nothing. You would love her.’
If Lady Charmington did love Miss Winston, she disguised the feeling
with perfect success. ‘Is Lady Deans a friend of yours?’ she asked
coldly.
‘Oh no!’ said Miss Winston; but I’m simply dying to know her. She’s so
handsome, and has such splendid jewels, and they say she’s so wicked.’
‘I hope not,’ Lady Charmington returned, with an increase of severity;
‘but if she were, it seems a strange reason for wishing to know her.’
Every day now some of the renovated carriages rolled up from the
station, bringing recruits to the house party, in one of whom the reader
will be pleased to recognise an old friend. The Mrs. de Lissac, of whom
mention has several times been made, was no other than Sainty’s former
governess, Miss Meakins. Outwardly in rustle of silks and flash of
diamonds, and the deference with which the world treated her, Alice de
Lissac was a very different person from Alice Meakins, but inwardly she
was just the same kindly, tender, sentimental creature as ever. Riches,
which have such a corroding effect on some people, had left that shy
gentle heart quite untouched; they represented to her only delightful
means of doing good to her less fortunate brethren, and she was still
wondering why all the great ones of the earth were so kind to a poor
humble little creature like herself. It has been related in a former
chapter how this kind lady had entered the service of a Jewish family,
when she left Belchamber, as governess to two little girls.
Mrs. Isaacs, her new employer, was a little, fiery, black-eyed woman of
immense social ambition, which grew with the steady growth of her
husband’s carefully accumulated wealth. She would have been the Napoleon
of London society, had she only lived, so instinctively did she grasp
the market value of her possessions in the exchange to which she brought
them. She had already effected the removal of the family from Lancaster
Gate to Grosvenor Square, and the metamorphosis of Isaacs into de
Lissac, when Death, who, alas! is no respecter of even the largest
fortunes, put a term to all her hopes. It seemed as though the very
energy that spurred her to ever fresh exertions was a fever burning in
her blood, and sapping while it stimulated her vital forces. Poor Madame
de Lissac!--as she insisted on being called--she died within sight of
the goal. To the end she fought her illness, and would stand with
trembling limbs and head aching under the weight of a huge tiara, while
the names of half the peerage shouted in her staircase gave her strength
to bear the pain that was killing her. Her widower remarked truly,
between his sobs, that it ‘would have been a comfort to Rachel’ to have
seen the cards that snowed on the hall table for days after the funeral.
He, poor man, cared little for all this. He had been glad Rachel should
have it, just as he liked to give her superb presents on her birthday,
and anything else his money could buy for her. Personally, his interest
was in his work; he did not like the great people who had eaten his food
and been rude to him. After a hard day in the city, he wanted his carpet
slippers, a big strong cigar, and a volume of Schiller by the fire, or
perhaps a sonata by Mozart or Beethoven.
Alice Meakins was an angel in the bereaved household; the little girls
adored her, and gradually Mr. de Lissac found that he could not do
without her. The girls were just coming to an age when most of all they
needed the care of a mother; if she, of whom they were all so fond,
abandoned them, what would become of them? Poor Alice had a terrible
struggle. She was sincerely attached to the good man who had been the
most generous and considerate of employers, and she loved her charges
with all her heart. The great luxurious easy house had been the kindest
home to her. How could she turn away from all this warmth and affection?
‘You know--you know how I respect, how I love you, if I may say so,’
cried the poor girl, with tears in her eyes; ‘and I’d lay down my life
for the children. But oh! Mr. de Lissac, feeling as I do about things, I
couldn’t marry any one who wasn’t a Christian.’
And now the most wonderful thing came to pass. Her principles inspired
this shyest and humblest of human beings, who blushed if she had to
correct a pupil’s mistake, and to whom a difference of opinion was
almost a physical pain, with something of the spirit of the early
martyrs. She herself always considered that she had been miraculously
aided; perhaps a certain pagan divinity, whose assistance she would have
made haste to repudiate, counted for something in the matter. But
certain it is, that she was the means of leading a whole family after
her into the fold, and it may be imagined the excitement she was to Lady
Charmington under the circumstances. Mr. de Lissac had not been a very
fervent Jew, and he made a most unenthusiastic Christian; but he was
nominally converted. Instead of not attending the synagogue, he now
stayed away from church, and that satisfied his not very exacting
helpmate, to whom the permission to bring up her stepdaughters in her
own faith gave the last brimming happiness in her cup of blessing. They
at least supplied all the warmth and devotion she demanded. An eminent
co-religionist of her husband’s, in the city, remarked to a friend:
‘Isaacs can shanshe his name, and shanshe his religion, but he cannot
shanshe his nose.’ Neither could he change his habits. He accompanied
his wife once to the rectory, and once to Belchamber, where the
rejoicing of the angels embarrassed him to the point of regretting that
he had not stayed in the wilderness; but his wife mostly made her
excursions to the scenes of her youth without him, and the present
occasion was no exception to the rule.
Mrs. de Lissac was always fluttered and excited when she came to
Belchamber, and Sainty’s coming of age was just the sort of occasion to
appeal to her imagination. The young ladies were fine-looking girls: the
eldest, Gemma, whose biblical name Jemima had been thus abbreviated
about the time of the removal to Mayfair, was tall and slight, with a
clear olive paleness and almond eyes. Nora was more like her father,
shorter, and with more pronounced features, but with her mother’s
brilliant colour and black burning orbs. They were both a marked
contrast to Cissy Eccleston, who was the fairest, pinkest, and whitest
creature imaginable, with a little button of a nose, a more refined
etherealised edition of her brother Thomas. Lady Eccleston, too, had
been fair, but had grown a little red and wrinkled with time. She had an
astonishingly slight and youthful figure, with rather an elderly face.
Her hair, having a choice in the matter, had very naturally elected to
stay young with her waist rather than grow old with her countenance;
indeed, its adherence to the party of youth seemed to become more marked
with each succeeding year.
This lady was slightly known to Sainty as a rather unlikely friend of
his mother; she was, in point of fact, of the nature of a favourite sin
to Lady Charmington. Her late husband, Sir Thomas Eccleston, K.C.B., had
been a permanent official in one of the Government offices, and had left
her with a moderate competence, and a colossal visiting-list. She was
essentially in and of London, a Belgravian to the marrow of her bones.
Nothing but insufficiency of income could have prevented her living in
Eaton Square. As it was, she worshipped at its temple, the church of St.
Peter, and lived as immediately round the corner as her means permitted.
She shopped in Sloane Street, she had her books from Westerton’s, she
visited a ward in St. George’s Hospital; she also took a fashionable
interest in a poor East-end parish. In short, she mingled religion and
philanthropy with the punctual performance of her immense social duties
in exactly the proportion demanded by the society of which she was a
living, breathing, integral part. Much in so mundane a personage was at
first rather alarming to Lady Charmington; but they met in the committee
rooms of charity, who, among the multitude of sins she covers, could
surely spare a corner of her mantle for the few venial transgressions of
such a respectable devotee as Lady Eccleston. The very worldliness of
her relations made her a powerful factor for good works. She might
always be confidently relied upon for a duchess or minor royalty to head
a list of patronesses, or a rich friend ready to lend a big house for
drawing-room meetings; and even her deplorable habit of asking
theatrical people to dinner on Sundays had been proved to have its good
side, the professional gentlemen and ladies being very useful in giving
their services in aid of many deserving funds. No one was a more
practical hand at organising bazaars, concerts, tableaux, the various
conduits which brought to the objects of her own interest the
fertilising stream of other people’s money. She and Mrs. de Lissac and
their families had travelled from town together. Alice was made for Lady
Eccleston, who feasted at her expense, used her carriage, copied her
bonnets, directed her charities, and revised her visiting-list. They
were allies in many good works. The girls adored Cissy as only dark
girls can adore a creature composed of rose-leaves and sunlight, though
they were a little shocked at the triviality of her ideals, and the way
she occasionally spoke of her mother.
The visitors arrived about tea-time. Five o’clock tea had never been the
institution at Belchamber that it is in most country-houses, the
domestic altar where the high priestess makes her little daily sacrifice
of blue spirit flame and fragrant herb. Lady Charmington did not drink
tea as an everyday thing; being a rigid abstainer, she kept it for a
stimulant when she was tired, which was not often. When there was
company, a tray of half-cold cups ready poured out used to be handed
round by one of the footmen, the other following with cream and sugar,
and the butler bringing up the rear with a plate of bread and butter and
some spongecakes in a silver basket.
For the present party, the wonderful Claude had brought about a charming
revolution. A pleasant table with its white cloth and gleaming silver
was spread under the cedars, at which he and Arthur and Aimée Winston
dispensed good things to the tired and dusty travellers.
‘How good tea is after a journey,’ Lady Eccleston remarked, beaming on
the company.
‘I never touch it,’ said Lady Firth, with a shudder; ‘it is destruction
to the nerves. This habit of five o’clock tea is having the most
deplorable effect on the younger generation. My maid, who has been with
me five-and-twenty years, always brings me a glass of taraxacum and hops
at half-past four; it is wonderfully strengthening.’
‘Oh dear! it is very dreadful of me to like tea so much,’ cried poor
Lady Eccleston. ‘And I so agree with you, dear Lady Firth; we do all
live on our nerves so much, too much, nowadays. I declare now you put it
like that, I shall be quite afraid to drink it; but taraxacum----’
‘Let me send for some for you,’ said Lady Firth earnestly; ‘you can’t
think the good it does you. I gave some to the dear bishop of
Griqualand, after that drawing-room meeting at my house, when he spoke
for two hours and a half, and was quite exhausted.’
Hardly was Lady Eccleston able to escape the proffered refreshment by
tender and well-timed inquiries after the dear bishop and his mission.
Sainty, by reason of his lameness, was not expected to hand about
eatables. He sat, as he usually did, a little drawn back from the circle
about the table, talking little, noticing everything--Lady Eccleston’s
striving after cheap popularity, Mrs. de Lissac’s parted lips as she
listened to his mother, for whom she had retained all her old
reverential admiration, his uncle Firth’s bored expression as his Aunt
Susan Trafford held forth on some small bill that had been too hastily
passed at the end of the session, and the easy grace with which Claude
moved about among the groups, dispensing sugar or fruit, and saying
little laughing nothings to every one. ‘Really, he is marvellous,’
Sainty thought; ‘it is impossible not to love him.’ Claude was solemn,
brief, and official with Sir John Trafford, the young M.P., knowing and
mysterious with Austin Pryor of the Stock Exchange, playful with Arthur,
_empressé_ with the young ladies, and kindly civil to Tommy Eccleston
and Johnson, who were very shy, while always ready to fill the teapot
for Miss Winston, or hand a third cup to Lady Susan, who, like all great
talkers, was a thirsty soul.
But something else seemed vaguely perceptible to Sainty, watching from
his low chair under the cedars, a sense of some secret bond or
understanding between his cousin and the tea-maker. What gives these
sudden intuitions? What silent, mysterious voice speaks to what inner
sense, when with all our outward senses we are receiving quite different
impressions? Claude failed in no shade of pretty deferential politeness
to Miss Winston; his manner had just that touch of insolence which it
had to all women, and which many of them take as a compliment. They were
the centre of a large party, and bathed in the clear golden light of a
summer afternoon. Sainty intercepted no meaning glance between them, no
contact of monitory fingers, yet he felt as if a curtain had been
momentarily withdrawn from some secret thing that he should not have
seen.
He roused himself with a start that was almost guilty, to find that Miss
Eccleston, who was sitting near him, had addressed a remark to him which
he had not heard.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said; ‘I didn’t know you were speaking to me.’
Cissy laughed a little, clear, bubbling laugh.
‘You were a thousand miles away,’ she said. ‘I wonder what you were
thinking of; but I am not so indiscreet as to ask; it was evidently none
of the present company. I hope I haven’t broken into some important
thing you were thinking out. I’m told you’re awfully clever and deep,
and read a lot.’
‘You mustn’t believe all the harm you hear of people,’ Sainty said, with
a weak attempt at persiflage. He was thinking how pretty this fresh
young creature was, the childish face shaded by a great hat, the small
head rising flower-like from among the laces at her throat. No young
monk in his cloister had had less to do with girls than Sainty; it was a
curious fact that in his generation there were none in the family. Lady
Susan Trafford, like her sister and Lady Macbeth, had ‘brought forth men
children only.’ No early intimacy with sisters or girl cousins had
taught him any of their ways.
‘You must have had a hot journey down,’ he remarked politely.
‘Oh! it was unbearable,’ cried Cissy; ‘the carriage was like a furnace.
You can’t think how fresh and sweet it all seems here, after London.’
‘We were on the Montagues’ yacht for Cowes, and did Goodwood from it;
you can’t think how delightful it was,’ said Lady Eccleston in a
slightly raised voice to Lady Eva. ‘They wanted us to go on a cruise
with them afterwards, but there were so many things I had to see to, I
was obliged to go back to town for a day or two before coming here, and
I wouldn’t have missed _this_ visit for anything.’
Cissy drew her chair a little nearer to Sainty, and dropped her voice
to a confidential whisper. ‘Isn’t that like mamma? She heard me say we
had come from London, and all that was put in for fear you should think
we had stayed in town after the season was over.’
‘For fear _I_ should think?’ Sainty repeated, slightly bewildered.
‘Oh! you or any one else,’ said Cissy. ‘Mamma would die if any one
thought she hadn’t more invitations than she could accept. I do wish she
wouldn’t listen to me when I’m talking to men; it makes me furious.’
‘I’m sure you never say anything you would mind her hearing,’ said
Sainty rather priggishly.
‘I wouldn’t answer for that, you know,’ rejoined Cissy, with an arch
expression of something not unlike contempt.
If Sainty had been old Lady Firth, he could not have felt himself more
outside the sphere of the ordinary attraction of man to maid. When his
eye rested with admiration on Cissy Eccleston, his first thought had
been what a charming couple she and Arthur would make. He thought it
very kind of this pretty young lady to take pity on his disabilities,
but he felt that it was hard on her to be left to talk to him; he didn’t
want to monopolise her, and he looked round to see if some more suitable
companion were not within reach. As if in answer to his thought, Claude
came towards them at the moment.
‘It is cooler now, Miss Eccleston,’ he said. ‘Some of us are going to
the kitchen-garden in search of gooseberries; do you care to come, or do
you despise gooseberries?’
Cissy rose with alacrity. ‘I love ’em,’ she said simply.
Sainty was quite inconsistently annoyed at the sight of the two standing
there before him. Had Arthur or one of the other boys come for her, he
would have been glad, but he felt on a sudden that in the light of what
he had half surprised between his cousin and Miss Winston, Claude had no
right to come making eyes at this fair young creature. An impulse
stirred in him to snatch her away, to save her from he did not quite
know what. He rose too. ‘I am sure Miss Eccleston is tired,’ he said;
‘it’s a long way to the kitchen-garden; she had much better come in and
rest.’
‘Oh, I’m never tired, except when I’m bored,’ said Cissy.
‘I know who _is_ tired,’ said Claude, with affectionate solicitude. ‘You
look quite done up, old chap; you ought to lie down before dinner.
Remember you’ve a lot before you.’ Sainty saw in a second how silly and
unreasonable he was being.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said; ‘I am tired. I’ll go in.’
Claude and Cissy moved off in the rear of the little procession of young
people that was beginning to stream across the lawn, and Sainty stood a
moment watching them. As he turned towards the house, he saw Miss
Winston, who had not gone with the others, also looking after the
retreating couple.