THICKER THAN WATER.
The weather was altogether favourable for the thirty-mile drive. The
wagonette with its scratch team and a couple of smart grooms, was at the
Homestead gate at ten o'clock, and after picking up Miss Wendover and her
companion, went on to The Knoll for Bessie and Blanche, and then to Dr.
Rylance's for Urania, who had accepted the invitation most graciously.
Kingthorpe was unwontedly excited by this gorgeous apparition, and the
inhabitants remained at garden gates and cottage doors while so much as a
horse's tail was visible. Everybody was pleased to see the young squire
driving four-in-hand. It had been supposed that as a bookish young man,
given over to Greek and Latin, he must needs be a poor hand with horses.
But this morning's exhibition gave rise to more hopeful views.
'We shall see the squire setting up his coach, and settling down at the
Abbey,' said one.
'Ay, when he gets married,' said another; 'that's what'll settle he. I
believes as him is sweet on that young 'ooman at the Homestead. Her be a
clipper, her be.'
Over the hills and far away went the scratch team--a little fresh, but
behaving beautifully. Aunt Betsy sat beside her nephew, and watched his
coachmanship with a jealous eye, conscious that she could have kept the
team better in hand herself, but still with moderate approval. The girls
and the grooms were in the back of the vehicle--Bessie, Blanche, and Ida
full of talk and merriment, Urania thoughtful. This day's entertainment
was too much in Ida's honour to be pleasant to Miss Rylance; yet she
could not deny herself the painful privilege of being there. She wanted
to see what happened--how far Mr. Wendover was disposed to make an idiot
of himself. She saw more than enough in the glances of the charioteer,
when he turned to talk to the girls behind him--now to point out some
feature in the landscape, now to ask some idle question, but always with
looks that lingered upon one face, and that face was Ida Palliser's.
It was a long cross country drive, by rustic lanes and dubious roads, but
Mr. Wendover took things easily. He had sent forward a second scratch
team over night to a village half way, and here they changed horses,
while he and his party spent half an hour pleasantly enough exploring an
old gray church and humble graveyard, where the tombstones all bore
record of unrenowned lives that had slowly rusted away in a pastoral
solitude, Blanche, whose schoolroom appetite was wont to damp its keen
edge upon bread and butter at this hour, felt it rather a hard thing that
no one proposed a light refection at the lowly inn; but she bore her
inward gnawings in silence, conscious of the dignity of a frock which
almost reached her ankles, and desirous to prove that she was worthy to
be the associate of grown-ups.
Half way between this village inn and Wimperfield they met a couple of
horsemen. These were no other than Sir Vernon and his brother Peter, who
had come to meet their guests, and show them the nearest way, which from
this point became especially intricate.
Brian walked his team gently up a gentle hill, while Sir Vernon and his
brother walked their horses beside him, and during this ascent all
necessary introductions were duly made, everybody being properly
presented except Blanche, who felt that she was being treated with
contumely.
'I am very glad to see you at last, cousin Ida,' said Sir Vernon,
pleasantly. 'I have been hearing of you all my life, but we seemed fated
not to meet.'
He was a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a frank,
fresh-coloured countenance, auburn whiskers, and curly brown hair. His
brother was after the same pattern, hair a little lighter, no whiskers,
eyes rather a brighter blue. They were as much alike as brothers can be
without being mistaken for each other. There was nothing romantic looking
about either of them, Bessie thought, regretfully. She would have liked
Sir Vernon to have resembled her favourite hero in fiction (the man she
always put in confession books), and to have fallen desperately in love
with Ida at first sight. And here he was, a most matter-of-fact looking
young man, riding behind the wagonette in a provokingly matter-of-fact
way.
Yet perhaps there was a providence in this; for if Brian of the Abbey
were in love with Ida, as Bessie shrewdly suspected, it would have been a
terrible thing for him to have found a rival in a titled cousin. If Ida
were ambitious, the title might have turned the scale.
'And I have so set my heart upon having her for my cousin, thought
Bessie. 'The other Brian was a failure, but this Brian may win the
prize.'
Mr. Jardine had not been able to leave his parish for a long day; so
Bessie had plenty of leisure to speculate upon the possible loves of
other people, instead of enjoying the blissfulness of her own love
affair.
Wimperfield was a mansion built in the Italian manner which prevailed
about a century ago, a style about as uninteresting as any order of
domestic architecture, but which makes a house a good feature in a fine
landscape. The Corinthian façade of Wimperfield stood boldly out against
the verdant slope of a hill, backed and sheltered on either side by
woods. Behind that classic portico there was the usual prim range of
windows, and there were the usual barrack-like rooms. The furniture was
of the same heavy and substantial character, rich dark rosewood, amber
satin hangings faded by a quarter of a century; Spanish mahogany in
dining-rooms and bedrooms; Gillow's fine workmanship everywhere, but the
style dating back to the very infancy of that ancient house.
The large, finely-lighted hall, which looked like the vestibule of some
learned institute, was adorned with four Carrara marble statues, placid
gods and goddesses smirking at vacancy, on pedestals of verde antico. The
only pictures in the reception-rooms were family portraits, and a few of
those large Dutch landscapes, battle scenes, sea-pieces and fruit-pieces,
which cry aloud that they are furniture pictures, and have been bought to
fit the panelling of the rooms.
But for its noble situation this temple of English domestic life would
have been utterly without charm; but the situation was superb, the
gardens were in beautiful order, and the stables, as Aunt Betsy declared
after personal inspection, were perfect.
Sir Vernon did the honours of his house in a frank, friendly manner.
He took his guests round the gardens and stables, showed Ida the old
nursery in which his father and her father had spent their infancy; the
gun-room in which their first guns were carefully preserved; the very
rocking-horse on which they had ridden, and which now occupied a recess
in an obscure lobby opening into the garden.
'Peter and I didn't care to ride him,' said Sir Vernon. 'We had Shelties
when we were three-year-olds; but I know when I began Virgil I used to
think the wooden horse that got into Troy was an exaggerated copy of this
one.
He showed his cousin the room in which her grandfather and grandmother
died--an immense apartment, wherein stood, grim and tall, a gigantic
mahogany four-poster, draped with dark green velvet.
'I can't fancy anybody doing anything else in such a room,' said Ida, to
whom the spacious chamber looked as gloomy as a charnel-house. 'I beg
your pardon. I hope you don't sleep here.'
'No, my diggings are at the other end of the house, looking into the
stable-yard. I like to be able to put my head out of window and order my
horse--saves time and trouble. We keep the rooms at this end for
visitors.'
The gong boomed loud and long, much to the relief of poor Blanche, whose
spirits had been slowly sinking, in unison with her inward cravings, and
who had begun to think that the promised luncheon was a delusion and a
snare, which would end in the fashionable frivolity of afternoon tea.
Sir Vernon offered his arm to Miss Wendover, and asked Brian to take Miss
Palliser, while Peter was told off to Miss Rylance, leaving Bessie and
the clinging Blanche like twin cherries on one stem. It was curious for
Ida to find herself seated presently beside the wealthy cousin of whom
she had heard as a far-off and almost mythical personage, of very little
account in her life; since it was so improbable that any of his wealth
would ever come her way.
The luncheon was of the old-fashioned and ponderous order, excellent of
its kind: the orchard-houses had given up their finest peaches and
nectarines and their earliest grapes to do honour to the occasion. Miss
Rylance contemplated the table decorations with mute scorn, which she
hardly cared to disguise. No Venetian wine-flasks, no languorous lilies
swooning in Salviati goblets, no pottery of the new green and yellow
school, but massive silver, and heavy diamond-cut glass--gaudy
Staffordshire china of 'too utterly quite' the worst period of art.
Everything essentially Philistine.
Sir Vernon had placed his cousin on his left hand, and he talked to her a
good deal during luncheon--asking questions as to her past life, which
she answered with perfect candour. It was only when he spoke of her
future that the fair brow clouded, and the cheeks reddened with a painful
glow.
'I hope, now that the ice has been broken, that we are not going to be
strangers any more,' said Vernon, pleasantly. 'To think that you should
be such a near neighbour of mine, and that I should know nothing about
it! You have been at Kingthorpe since last November, you say? How long
are you going to stay there?'
'For a good many Novembers, I hope,' said Aunt Betsy, 'unless she gets
tired of rural solitude, or unless a husband steals her away from me.'
'Ah, that is what all young ladies anticipate. They never are but always
to be blest,' replied Vernon, laughing. He was one of those open-hearted
souls who always appreciate their own mild jokelets.
Brian, who saw Ida's pained expression, made haste to change the
conversation, by an inquiry about Sir Vernon's plans for the autumn,
which set that gentleman on a sporting tack, and spared Miss Palliser all
further trouble.
After luncheon they went to look at the hot-houses, and dawdled away the
time very agreeably until afternoon tea, Miss Rylance doing her best to
improve the occasion with Peter, who was not educated up to the standard
of metropolitan or South Kensingtonian young ladyhood, and who came out
very badly under the process of development; for when talked to about
Ruskin he was at first altogether vacuoous, but, on being pushed har
believed there was a biggish swell of some such name among the Oxford
dons, about whom he could not fairly be expected to know anything, as he
and his brother were Cantabs: while on being languidly asked his opinion
of Swinburne's last tragedy, he grew cheerful, and said he had seen him
play the King to Irving's Hamlet, and that it was a very fine
performance, the actor in question being a good stayer.
The thing was hopeless, and Miss Rylance felt she was wasting herself
upon a dolt. After this she hardly took the trouble to suppress her
yawns; yet if she had condescended to question Peter about his Alpine
adventures, or to talk about his horses, guns, and dogs, she would have
found him lively enough as a companion; but an education of musical 'at
homes' and afternoon teas had tuned Miss Rylance's slender pipe to one
particular strain, which did not suit everybody's dancing. She was heavy
at heart, feeling that the whole business of the day had conduced to Ida
Palliser's glorification. To be the daughter of a man born in that
substantial family mansion--scion of a respectable old county family--was
in itself a distinction far beyond anything Miss Rylance could boast, her
grandfather having been a chemist and druggist in an obscure market town,
and her father the architect of his own fortunes. She had done her best
to forget this fact hitherto, but it was brought home to her mind
unpleasantly to-day, when she saw the articled pupil, whose three pairs
of stockings had moved her to scornful wonder, strolling about her
ancestral home by the side of her first cousin, and that first cousin a
baronet of Charles II's creation.
Sir Vernon and his brother were full of cordiality for their cousin, full
of anticipations of future meetings, and of hopes that Captain Palliser
would come to them in October for what they called a 'shy' at the
pheasants.
Ida had good cause to remember that parting in front of the classic
portico in the warm afternoon sunlight, the two brothers standing side by
side, with frank, bright faces, looking up at their departing guests, all
smiles and cheerful pleasure in this world's pleasantest things--a Dandie
Dinmont and a big black-and-tan colley looking on at their master's
knees--the _beau idéal_ of young English manhood--frank, generous,
outspoken, fearless--the men who can do and die when the need comes. Her
eyes lingered affectionately on that picture as the wagonette drove away
by the broad gravel sweep towards the avenue; and those two figures in
the sunlight haunted her memory in the days to come.