"Who was this gentleman-friend, and whence?"
_Lavender Lady_.
About ten days later, a sad little group was assembled in the pretty
drawing-room of the Villa Martine. It was a lovely evening, but the
sunshine outside was not reflected on the young faces of Lettice Morison
and her brother and sister. Lotty and Auriol, the children of the
family, were amusing themselves quietly enough on the balcony, though
now and then a little laugh made itself heard from their direction,
causing Lettice to look up with a slight frown of disapproval on her
pale face.
"How _can_ they?" she said in a low voice, and she was moving to check
them, when Nina held her back.
"Don't be vexed with them," she said deprecatingly, "they are only
children. _She_ would not be vexed--indeed, I think she would be glad
for them not to be too crushed down." Lettice's eyes filled with
tears--they were never far to seek in these days--and she sank down
again in her seat with a sigh. The boy beside her, a slight,
dark-haired fellow, with soft eyes like Nina's, put his arm caressingly
round her waist.
"Dear Lettice," he said, "I can't bear to see you looking so _very_
unhappy."
Lettice submitted to the caress, but scarcely responded to it. "I can't
help it, Arthur," she replied. "I do not give way to grief wrongly, for
I do not allow it to make me neglect any duty. I have been very busy
to-day, getting in all the bills and so on that we owe here, writing to
the landlord, and all kinds of things. You don't know all there is upon
me."
A slight glance, which Lettice did not see, passed between Nina and
Arthur. It seemed to encourage the boy to say more.
"I know," he said. "I have seen how busy you have been. But are you
sure that it was necessary? You know none of us have any legal
authority--we are all minors--and our trustees _must_ settle these
things. And it would be so much less painful for you not to force
yourself to do it all yourself. Godfrey Auriol will be here to-morrow;
he is coming on purpose to get all settled."
"Godfrey Auriol!" repeated Lettice with a slight tone of contempt.
"What can _he_ know about such things? His trusteeship is merely
nominal. Of course it was natural and right to name him, our only
relative, though not a very near one. But I have _never_ thought of him
as really to be considered."
"You will find yourself mistaken, then, I suspect," said Arthur, a touch
of boyish love of teasing breaking through even his present subdued
mood.
Lettice drew herself away from his arm.
"How _can_ you?" she exclaimed, her tears flowing still more freely.
"Nina, speak to him. How _can_ he? And--and--Arthur, you can't know
what we have gone through, or you wouldn't speak so. You weren't here;
you--"
"Oh, Lettice, don't say that to him," interrupted Nina. "It is the not
having been here that has been the cruellest of all to him, and he has
not been selfish about it. Still, Arthur, you shouldn't say _anything_
to hurt Lettice;" for Nina was always assailed at her weakest point, by
any approach to "appeal" on the part of her elder sister.
"I am very sorry. I didn't mean it. That's a stupid thing to say, but
it's true," said Arthur penitently.
"And I'm sorry too. I didn't mean what it sounded like," said Lettice.
"I know it has been worse for you than for any of us," she went on,
looking up in Arthur's face with her tearful eyes.
Lettice was one of the few people in the world who seldom show to
greater advantage than when in tears. Her eyes were not so fine as
Nina's and Arthur's soft brown ones; they were grey--good, sensible,
"well-opened" eyes, but in a general way with a want of depth and
tenderness in them. And this want the tears supplied. Her recent
sorrow, too, had, as it were, etherealised and softened her whole face
and its expression, whose real beauty was often marred by a certain
hardness which seemed to render square and angular the outlines intended
by nature to be curved and graceful. The thought struck Nina as her
glance fell upon her.
"How _very_ sweet and lovely Lettice looks just at this moment."
And the thought, though not in quite the same form, struck another
person who just at that moment entered the room.
He had never seen her before.
"What a lovely girl! Can that be Lettice? I have always heard that
Nina was the beauty, but this girl is too dark to be Nina," were the
reflections that rushed through his mind in far less time than it takes
to tell them. And in a moment his ideas were confirmed, for another
girl, whose face had been completely hidden, turned at the slight sound
of his approach, and by her exceedingly fair hair and complexion he
recognised the Nina who had been described to him. But his eyes turned
quickly from her to her sister.
"I beg your pardon a thousand times," he said, his own face colouring a
little as he spoke.
"I rang, but as no one answered, and as the front door was open, I
ventured to come in. You know who I am,"--for all the three young
people had started to their feet, too surprised as yet to find their
voices. "I am Godfrey--Godfrey Auriol, your cousin, I hope I may call
myself."
By this time Lettice and the others had recovered their wits. Lettice
came a step or two forward and held out her hand.
"Our cousin," she repeated; "yes, certainly, Mr Auriol, we should be
very sorry not to count you our cousin--you who are, I may say, our only
relation;" and at these words an expression crossed her face which
Godfrey saw but did not understand. But it was gone before it had time
to settle there, or to spoil the first pleasing impression which he had
received.
"I was so grieved," he went on, while he shook hands with them all, "so
very grieved that I could not be in time; that it was utterly impossible
for me to come over in time for--" He stopped short, but they all knew
what he meant.
Lettice's lips quivered.
"I wish you could have come," she said softly, and again the expression
that so embellished it stole over her face. "Indeed, that was really
the only reason for your coming so far at all; you will not find much to
see to, I think," and she smiled a little, so that Mr Auriol felt
puzzled. Her tone was too gentle for him to suspect any assertion of
independence to be intended. "But we all knew you could not help it,"
she added.
"You are always very busy, are you not?" said Nina, speaking for the
first time.
"Pretty well," said Godfrey, smiling. "I lost no time on the journey,
and I was very glad to get off a day sooner than I had expected. I came
straight here from the station, trusting to you to tell me what hotel I
had better go to."
"You came straight from the station? Then you've had nothing to eat.
How thoughtless of us!" exclaimed Lettice, and, looking round, she saw
that Nina had already disappeared.
"There is an hotel close by," said Arthur. "I'll go round with you if
you like, as soon as you've had some dinner."
"Thank you," said Mr Auriol. "I'm very sorry to give you so much
trouble, but I wanted to look you up at once. I can only stay so very
short a time: I must be back in England within the week."
"How can you talk of giving us trouble?" said Arthur; "it is you who are
giving yourself a great deal for us;" and he glanced at Lettice as if to
hint to her that she should endorse his speech. But she said nothing;
only later in the evening, when their visitor was just about leaving,
she said to him in a quiet but somewhat studied voice--
"I hope you will be able to see something of the neighbourhood while you
are here. There are so many pretty excursions, and in a week one can do
a good deal. Arthur himself has not seen much; he has only been three
weeks with us all the months we have been here. And he would enjoy
going about with you."
Godfrey Auriol was not deficient in perception, still less in quick
resolution when he saw occasion for it. He hesitated, but for half a
second only, before he replied.
"Yes," he said calmly, "it would be very pleasant were it feasible. But
you know, Miss Morison, it is not for _pleasure_ I have come all this
way. There is a great deal of business to be seen to, and for some of
it I must have your attention, though I would gladly spare you all
trouble if I could. At what hour to-morrow may I come? It is no use
putting off what has to be done, however painful."
Lettice's colour rose high--all over her face; she felt the
mortification doubly, since it was in the presence of her younger sister
and brother. But she did her best not to show what she felt, and to any
one not knowing her well, her emotion might have passed for what was
only natural and almost seemly under the circumstances. And even in the
tone of her voice as she answered, it required a nice and skilled
observer to detect the latent armour of resistance in which she was
determined to clothe herself. Unfortunately for her, her three
companions, the two younger ones thanks to their intimate knowledge of
her peculiarities, the third by dint of unusual and cultivated power of
discrimination, which she herself had raised to suspicion, were not
deceived by her words, in themselves perfectly unexceptionable.
"At any hour you like," she said. "Of course it is best that we should
know all about our money, though I really do know already all that is
practically necessary. But these kind of formalities must be gone
through, I suppose. So I can be ready at any hour you like. Will ten
o'clock do?"
"Perfectly, if it will suit you _all_?" said Mr Auriol, glancing
inquiringly at Nina and Arthur. "I shall want you all three. The two
little ones, of course, it would be absurd to talk to on such matters;
but you three are much in the same position. You are all minors.
Besides, it is not _only_ about money matters I want to speak to you."
These last two or three sentences were bitter pills for Lettice to
swallow. Arthur and Nina had the consideration not to look at her.
Once she opened her lips as if about to speak, but thought better of it
and said nothing.
"I can put all that right at the proper time," she reflected. "No use
beginning about it now. But it is really too absurd, Nina and Arthur
counted on a par with _me_!"
And it did seem so very absurd that she felt she could afford to smile
at it, and with this consideration her calm returned. So that her
brother and sister, and even Mr Auriol himself, were surprised, and
somewhat impressed, by the perfectly unruffled tone in which she said
pleasantly--
"Very well, then; to-morrow morning at ten o'clock we shall _all_ be
ready."
"She must be extremely sweet-tempered," thought Godfrey, when Arthur,
having shown him to his hotel, had left him alone for the night.
"I am afraid I was rather rough to her. Her little assumption of
independence was really only touching, poor child," he went on to
reflect, little dreaming, deluded man, of what was before him! "And
Nina is very pretty and very attractive--I don't wonder at Dexter--
though she is not to be compared with Lettice for real beauty of feature
and expression."
Few words passed between the sisters after their guest had left them.
When Arthur came in he found Lettice sitting alone. Nina had gone to
bed, and she too was tired and meant to follow her at once.
"And don't you like him?" Arthur could not help saying, as he kissed
his sister for good night.
"Like him--whom?" said Lettice, as if awaking from a brown study. "Mr
Auriol? Oh yes, I like him very well. He is much what I expected;" and
Arthur said no more.
Notwithstanding his long journey of the preceding days, Mr Auriol was
awake and up betimes the following morning. It was several years since
he had been out of his own country, and the sights and sounds about him
struck him almost as freshly as if he saw and heard them for the first
time. The early morning sunshine was softer and less monotonous than
the midday effulgence which Lettice had complained of, and seemed to add
vividness without glare to every detail of the picturesque scene on
which his windows looked out. For it was market-day at Esparto, and the
border-land town was a meeting-place for the denizens of many widely
varying districts.
There were the country people from the near neighbourhood. The women,
plain-looking save for their brilliant eyes, weather-beaten and
prematurely aged through hard work and exposure, their brown
leather-like skin showing harder and browner from the contrast with the
light-coloured silk kerchiefs skilfully knotted round their heads, yet
as a rule seemingly contented and cheerful enough as they chattered and
chaffered round the great ancient fountain, the centre of the "Place."
The men, far less numerous and far less energetic, handsome fellows many
of them, though less so than the gaudily attired Spanish mountaineers
lured to Esparto by the work sometimes to be had there in plenty, while
yet looking as if labour or exertion of any kind was completely beneath
their lordly selves. And here and there, recognisable at once by those
acquainted with their peculiar type, Basques, descendants of that
mysterious race whose origin and language have so long puzzled the
learned in such subjects. Nor were there wanting specimens of still
more remote nationalities. Two or three negro servants were bargaining
and purchasing for their masters; and some little fair-haired English
children, who had coaxed their maids to get up extra early before it was
hot, to see the fun and bustle in the market-place; while a Russian
nurse, gorgeous in scarlet and gold embroidery, indolently surveyed the
scene from a balcony opposite.
It was picturesque in the extreme, and amusing. But after a while,
staring out of the window being a diversion he most rarely indulged in,
Mr Auriol tired of it, and after his modest breakfast of coffee and a
roll, finding it was barely nine o'clock, he strolled out for a walk,
though his ideas were of the vaguest as to what direction he should
take.
"I have nearly an hour before they will expect me at the Villa Martine,"
he said to himself. "I have no wish to rub Mistress Lettice the wrong
way by turning up too soon. It strikes me she would look upon that as
almost worse than being too late. Where shall I go?"
He was turning the corner of the street, or Place, rather, as he asked
himself this question, and before he had time to answer it he almost
knocked against a young man who was hurrying in his direction.
"Pardon," was on the lips of both, when both exchanged it for a more
friendly greeting.
"Dexter!"--"Auriol!" they respectively exclaimed, and then the new-comer
added--
"I was just going to the hotel to ask if you had come, or were coming.
Arthur Morison told me some days ago that you were expected. I met him
accidentally."
"They did not expect me till to-day, and I came yesterday, so there has
not been time for them to tell you. You see them sometimes, do you
not?"
"You mean, do I visit them? Scarcely. I used to go there sometimes
before Mrs Morison got so very ill. _She_ was always kindness and
cordiality itself to me. You know I had got to know the second Miss
Morison very well a year ago in England, when she was staying with some
neighbours of ours."
"Yes, I remember," said Mr Auriol. But he spoke absently.
"And it is all that horrid family feud. When they--at least I don't
know why I should say `they;' I believe it is only Lettice--found out my
connections, the difference was most marked, though before then they had
been quite friendly, and I had hoped to introduce them and my sister to
each other. Those sorts of things are really too bad, carrying them
down to the younger generation."
Godfrey bent his head in acquiescence, but did not speak.
"Do you," Philip went on again after a moment's pause, and with some
little embarrassment--"do you think her as pretty as you had been told?"
"_Far_ more so. `Pretty!'--pretty is not at all the word for her. I
think her distinctly beautiful," Mr Auriol replied, with a sort of
burst of enthusiasm which somehow seemed rather to disconcert Philip.
"I thought you would. That fair hair with such dark eyes is so very
uncommon," he replied quietly. And instantly it flashed upon Mr Auriol
that they were speaking at cross purposes. He smiled to himself, but
for reasons of his own, and being perfectly unaware of the impression
his words had made upon his companion, he decided not to explain his
mistake.
"Your sister, Mrs Leyland, is much better, I was glad to hear?" he said
courteously, thinking it just as well to change the subject.
"Oh, much better, thank you; quite well, indeed. We shall be leaving
immediately. In fact, we should have left already, but, to tell you the
truth, when it became evident that Mrs Morison was sinking I persuaded
Anna to stay on a little, just to see if perhaps we could be of some
service to those poor children. They seemed so lonely."
"It was very good of you," said Godfrey warmly.
"I--I thought my uncle and aunt would have wished it, and Anna thought
so too," said Philip.
"But it was no use. I believe Lettice would rather have applied to any
utter stranger than to us."
"Really," said Godfrey, surprised, and even a little shocked. "I had no
idea they still felt so strongly. Perhaps it's just as well you told
me, for I see I shall have some rather ticklish business to manage. But
forewarned is forearmed. I may call on Mrs Leyland some evening, I
hope? I shall have very few here."
"Oh, certainly," said Philip. "She will be delighted to see you."
Then the conversation drifted into general matters. Philip escorted Mr
Auriol to one or two points of interest in the little town, and at ten
o'clock precisely the latter found himself at the gate of the Villa
Martine.