AT THE HOW.
Saturday shows bright and fair, a fine winter day, hoar frost on
the hedges. The roads are dry, but not too hard for the horses; the
minster towers stand out, sharply defined against the clear cold
blue; rooks are screaming loud in the ragged elm boughs; robins
singing merrily; a blithe day in the new born-year, a day which
inspires Redcastle with the idea that trade is brisker than it has
been, and things in general looking up, so potent is the influence of
fine weather.
Never has Marion Faunthorpe felt so proud or happy as when her
uncle’s carriage calls for her and her boxes, and she takes her seat
opposite Mr. Trenchard, who, by right divine of his threescore years
and ten, occupies the post of honour wrapped to the chin in sable,
and with a tigerskin rug over his knees.
‘Did you shoot that tiger yourself, dear uncle?’ asks Marion, bent on
making herself agreeable.
‘No, child,’ replies the dear uncle rather snappishly, ‘I had
something better to do in India than to shoot tigers.’
‘But it’s very nice shooting big game, isn’t it, uncle? Some people
go to India on purpose for that, don’t they?’
‘Fools do, perhaps. There’s no accounting for their taste.’
The little surgeon has come out to the gate to see his niece off.
Nay, he has actually stolen an hour from the parish in order to
behold the glory of her departure. He seems as pleased to see her
happiness as if he himself were going to the How, and at the last
moment the girl feels touched.
‘You dear, darling old uncle,’ she says, hanging round his neck, and
forgetting the possibility of damage to her new hat, ‘how good you
always are!--always--always--always, and I’m an ungrateful wretch.’
‘My love, you are not ungrateful, and you have very little to be
grateful for.’
‘Everything you mean, uncle Robert. I shall think of you ever so many
times a day at the How; and if the dinners are very nice I shall so
wish you could be with us.’
‘Thank you, my dear. I shall think of you, and miss you very much.’
‘I’m going to keep house,’ exclaims Jenny, lolling against the gate,
and swaying to and fro distractingly as she talks; ‘and make tea and
all; nobody to tell me not to take too much butter; and Hester will
give us my favourite puddings, I know, if I quill her cap borders.’
So after embracing the doctor in this demonstrative fashion, Marion
enters the carriage with tears in her eyes, to the aggravation of
Stephen Trenchard, who hates tears and fuss and emotion of all kinds,
except the thrill of delight which accompanies a successful stroke of
business.
‘Crying again,’ he exclaims testily. ‘What’s the matter now?’
‘There’s nothing the matter, dear uncle. Only I’m so happy; and I
felt a little overcome at leaving uncle Robert.’
‘It’s a pity you should leave him at all if the parting is so
pathetic,’ sneers Mr. Trenchard.
‘Oh, Sibyl, I’ve had such a nice little note from Miss Cardonnel to
confirm Sir Wilford’s invitation,’ says Marion; and she exhibits a
formal note, in which the polite Phœbe expresses her satisfaction
at having heard from her brother that Miss Marion Faunthorpe has
promised to accompany her sister on Saturday.
The drive is delightful for any one with an unburdened mind, and even
Sibyl feels the sweetness of the clear winter air, and determines to
make the best of an awkward concatenation of events. After all, it
is better to be lolling in uncle Trenchard’s carriage on one’s way
to a delightful old country house than to be grinding at French or
German verbs in Mrs. Hazleton’s cheerless second-floor schoolroom,
badly warmed by a fire that seems always made of the dullest coals
that ever came from the bosom of the earth. And all this is but the
filling up of a gap in her life. This chasm of time bridged over
and she will be with Alexis once more, and they will have uncle
Trenchard’s money to spend and be happy ever afterwards. She has
persuaded herself that let Alexis make what protestations he pleases
in the present, he will take her to his heart again gladly when the
fitting time comes.
‘And in the meantime there is no use in my moping and making myself
miserable,’ reflects Sibyl, her spirits elevated by atmospheric
influences, and the prospect of being the object of general
admiration.
‘I wonder if there will be many people there?’ she speculates
presently.
‘People with titles,’ suggests Marion; ‘a duke perhaps. I should like
to see a duke--or a duchess. That would be better still. Think of her
dresses, Sib. Mustn’t they be magnificent!’
Sibyl smiles the languid smile of contempt at her sister’s simplicity.
‘As if there were a sliding scale for the toilet,’ she says. ‘Why,
cotton spinners’ wives dress as well as duchesses now-a-days. They
employ the same milliners, and pay their bills quicker.’
‘It’s dreadful to think of,’ replies Marion. ‘It seems like turning
things topsy-turvy, you know.’
They are at the How by this time, a domain which Marion enters
open-eyed and dumb with awe. Sir Wilford comes out into the porch to
receive them, and gives directions about their luggage, and makes
himself generally busy. Then he calls out Phœbe and introduces Marion
to her, at which Marion, being almost tongue-tied by shyness, says,
‘Thank you.’
‘You show the Miss Faunthorpes their rooms, Phœbe,’ says the
hospitable baronet; but this is a length to which Miss Cardonnel will
not go, though she conducted her dearest Cecilia to her apartment
half an hour ago with her arm round Cecilia’s severely trained waist.
‘Perker knows all about the rooms,’ she says, whereupon appears
the essence of respectability in a black silk gown and smart cap,
otherwise Mrs. Perker the housekeeper.
Sibyl and Marion follow this personage up the broad oak staircase to
a long perspective of corridor, in which Mrs. Perker opens two doors
next each other, and reveals twin bedchambers neatly furnished with
maple and chintz.
‘I thought you two ladies would like to be next each other,’ remarks
the housekeeper obligingly, as if the choice of the rooms were
entirely her own.
‘We do, very much,’ exclaims Marion, who regains her power of speech
in this inferior presence. ‘I’m very glad I’m to be near Sibyl. I
should be awfully afraid of ghosts in this great rambling house.’
Mrs. Perker smiles condescendingly, as if she were a superior order
of being, accustomed to large houses and family spectres.
‘It is a rambling old place,’ she says, ‘but I shouldn’t fancy myself
in one of your fine lightsome modern houses, all glare and gilding.’
‘And there is a ghost, I dare say,’ says Marion, with thrilling
interest.
The housekeeper screws up her lips and smiles significantly, as if
she could, and if she would, tell of as many apparitions as appear in
the tragedy of ‘Macbeth.’
‘There has never been a ghost owned to at the How,’ she says, ‘and
I wouldn’t breathe the name of such a thing in Miss Cardonnel’s
hearing, but people _have_ been frightened--strangers. It may have
been rats, or it may have been the wind. I can’t say. But there are
friends of the family who wouldn’t sleep in this corridor, no, not
for a thousand pounds.’
Marion shudders, and almost wishes herself back in the shabby old
house at the end of Redcastle.
‘So here are your rooms, young ladies, opening into each other.’
‘How nice!’ exclaims Marion.
Never in her life has she felt more warmly attached to Sibyl than she
does at this moment.
Fires burn cheerily in both rooms, and each apartment has that
thoroughly comfortable and convenient air only to be seen in a
well-ordered country house, and altogether distinct from the
cheerless precision of an hotel bedchamber.
There is the nice little writing-table, with all things needful for
correspondence, in front of the fire; the easy chair; the candles,
and pincushion, and a hothouse flower or two in a slender glass on
the dressing-table. All smiles a welcome to the stranger--not Miss
Cardonnel’s welcome, by the way, but Mrs. Perker’s.
‘I’ve given your maid a nice room on the second floor, within easy
reach of this, ma’am,’ says the housekeeper, at which Marion’s eyes
open wide with wonder.
‘I have no maid,’ replies Sibyl, unabashed by that humiliating fact;
‘I am accustomed to wait upon myself.’
‘Indeed, ma’am. Some young ladies prefer it, I know. For my own part
I couldn’t bear anybody fidgeting about me. And if you should require
any assistance Miss Cardonnel’s maid will be very happy.’
‘Thanks, no, my sister can help me if I want her.’
And Sibyl proceeds to open her handsome portmanteaus, while Marion
contrives to stand before the shabby receptacle which contains her
property, lest the scrutinizing eye of Mrs. Perker should behold its
dilapidation.
The housekeeper bustles off, and leaves the two girls to themselves.
‘It’s rather like going to school again, isn’t it, Sibyl?’ inquires
Marion, whose spirits have sunk a little, oppressed by the unfamiliar
splendours of the How. ‘I feel just as I did the day we went to Miss
Worries, and I can’t help fancying we shall be told off into our
different classes when we go downstairs.’
The sound of the luncheon-bell reminds the sisters that they have no
time to waste, and they go downstairs together presently, conscious
that they are looking nice enough to face even unfriendly criticism.
Sir Wilford is lounging in the hall, and they go in to luncheon under
his wing. Fred Stormont is near the dining-room door, and rushes to
meet Sibyl and her sister; and Mrs. Stormont gives a friendly bow
from the other end of the table, where she sits among the stately
matrons and the bald-headed fathers of the land; and they begin to
feel themselves more at home, as Marion whispers to her sister.
The conversation at luncheon runs more continuously upon the present
company’s absent brothers and sisters, and cousins, and nieces, and
sons and daughters-in-law, than is quite congenial to the feelings
of a stranger totally unacquainted with these relations, but Marion
manages to get up a little talk about nothing particular with Fred
Stormont, which, beheld from afar, looks like flirtation, and causes
the young man’s anxious mother to put up her gold eye-glass and look
at him through it, wondering how that silly Frederick can be so
ridiculous as to waste his attentions upon the wrong sister.
‘I suppose Mr. Trenchard will leave the girl five thousand pounds or
so,’ thinks Mrs. Stormont, ‘but what would be the use of that to a
young man with Fred’s expensive habits?’