WILLIAM IS SUMMONED
Mrs. Kincton Knox had no less than seven notes and letters, her husband
one, and Miss Clara two crossed manuscripts, which engrossed her
speedily; and, possibly, these figures would have indicated pretty
accurately their relative influence in the household.
The matron deigned no account of her letters to mortal and exacted from
all others an habitual candour in this respect; and so much had it grown
to be a matter of conscience with her husband, that I don’t think he
could have slept in his bed if he had failed to submit any one such
communication to her inspection.
Her own were now neatly arranged, one over the other, like the discarded
cards in piquet, beside her plate.
“Well, my dear, what is it?” she said to her husband, accompanying the
inquiry with a little motion, like a miniature beckoning, of her
fore-finger.
“Something about the _Times_—the tutor,” he began.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Kincton Knox, interrupting, with a warning nod and an
awful look, and a glance at Master Howard, who was fortunately so busy
in tying bits of paper, in imitation of a kite-tail, on the string of
the window-blind, that he had heard nothing.
“Oh!” murmured Mr. Kincton Knox, prolonging the interjection softly—he
was accustomed, with a guilty and abject submission, every now and then,
to receive that sort of awful signal—“I did not know.” And he whistled a
little through his round mouth, and looked a little frightened, and
ashamed of his clumsiness, though he seldom knew in what exactly the
danger consisted.
“Howard, my precious rosebud, I’ve told Rogers he may fire the pistol
for you three times this morning; he says he has powder, and you may go
now.”
So away ran Master Howard to plague Rogers the footman; and Mrs. Kincton
Knox said with a nod,—
“_Now._”
“Here,” said he mildly, pushing the letter towards her, “_you’ll_
understand it better;” and she read aloud—
“MY DEAR SIR,—I venture to renew an old acquaintance at the instance
of a young friend of mine, who has seen your advertisement in the
_Times_ for a tutor, and desires to accept that office. He is
capitally qualified, as your advertisement says, ‘to prepare a boy
of twelve for school.’ He is a fair scholar, and a gentleman, and
for his character, I can undertake to answer almost as for my own. I
feel pretty certain that you will like him. There is but one
condition, to which I am sure you will not object.”
“He shan’t smoke or sit up all night, if that’s it,” said the lady
loftily, by way of gloss.
“He and I agree,” she read on, “that he should be received under the
name of William Herbert.”
This paragraph she read twice over very deliberately.
“As I have pressed upon him, for reasons which, you will readily
believe, are not dishonourable—what strikes me as a strong objection
to his accepting the position you offer under his own name.”
“That’s very odd, it strikes me. Why shouldn’t he tell his name?”
observed Mrs. Kincton Knox, with grim curiosity.
“I dare say he’s a low person, and his name is not pretty,” sneered Miss
Clara, carelessly.
“Who is that Mr. Edmund?—Edward Sprague?” inquired the matron.
Mr. Kincton Knox testified to his character.
“But, just stop a moment—it is very odd. Why should he be, if he is a
fit person to be received at Kincton—why should he be ashamed of his
name?” repeated Mrs. Kincton Knox, grandly.
“Perhaps it may be as well to let it drop,” suggested Kincton Knox, in
the hope that he was anticipating his wife’s wishes. But that grave lady
raised her nose at his remark, and turned away, not vouchsafing an
answer.
“Of course; I don’t say it is not all quite proper; but say what you
may, and take it how you please, it is a very odd condition.”
There was a pause here. Clara did not care enough to engage in the
discussion, and old Kincton Knox rumpled his _Times_ uneasily, not
knowing whether he was called on for a solution, and not caring to
hazard one, for he was seldom lucky.
“Well, and what do you propose to do?” demanded his wife, who thus
sometimes cruelly forced the peaceable old gentleman into debate.
“Why,” said he, cautiously, “whatever you think best, my dear.”
“I’m not likely to receive much assistance from you, Mr. Kincton Knox.
However, provided I’m not _blamed_ for doing my best, and my servants
stormed at for obeying me⸺”
Mr. Kincton Knox glanced unconsciously and penitently at the walnut
tree.
“I suppose, as something _must_ be done, and nothing will be done
otherwise, I may as well take _this_ trouble and responsibility upon
myself.”
“And what am I to say to Sprague?” murmured Mr. Kincton Knox.
“I suppose the young man had better come. Mr. Sprague, you say, is a
proper person, and I suppose we may rely upon what he says; I _hope_ so,
I’m sure, and, if he does not answer, why he can go about his business.”
In due course, therefore, Mr. Kincton Knox’s reply, which he had
previously read aloud to his wife, was despatched.
So Fate had resolved that William Maubray should visit Kincton Hall,
while Aunt Dinah was daily expecting the return of her prodigal to
Gilroyd.
“If I don’t hear from William Maubray before Sunday, I shall write on
Monday morning to Doctor Sprague,” said she, after a long silence at
breakfast.
She looked at Violet, but the young lady was looking on the cloth, and
with her finger-tips stirring hither and thither some flowers that lay
there—not her eyes, only her long eyelashes were visible—and the
invitation to say something conveyed in Aunt Dinah’s glance, miscarried.
“And I think it very strange—not what I should have expected from
William—that he has not written. I don’t mean an apology, that’s a
matter between his own conscience and his Maker. I mean some little
inquiry. Affection, of course we cannot command, but respect and
courtesy we may.”
“I had thought better of William. I think Doctor Sprague will be
surprised,” she resumed. “I did not think he could have parted on the
terms he did, and never written a line after for nearly a week. He seems
to me quite a changed person.”
“Just at that age,” said Miss Violet, in a low tone, looking nearer to
her flowers, and growing interested in a rose whose rumpled leaves she
was adjusting with her finger-tips, “some one says—I read it lately
somewhere—I forget who—they grow weary of home and home faces, and want
change and adventure, that is action and danger, of one kind or another,
what they are sent into the world for, I suppose—that and liberty.” She
spoke very low, as if to her flowers, and when she ceased Miss Perfect,
finding she had no more to say, added—
“And a wise business they make of it—fifty blunders in as many days, and
begin looking out for wives before they know how to earn a guinea.”
Violet looked up and smiled, and popped her rose gently into the water
glass beside her, and went on adjusting her flowers.
“Wives, indeed! Yes—just what his poor father did before him, and his
grandfather, old Sir Everard, he was married, privately, at twenty! It
runs in the blood, my dear, like gaming or drinking: and the next I
shall hear of William, I dare say, will be a note to ask my blessing on
his marriage!”
Again Miss Violet laughed softly, and smiling for a moment, with a
pretty slip of verbena in her fingers, she added it to the growing
bouquet in the glass.
“You may laugh, my dear, but it is what I’m afraid of. I assure you I am
serious.”
“But it may turn out very happy, or very splendid, you know; he may meet
with a young lady more foolish than himself, and with a great dot.”
“No, my dear, he’s a soft, romantic goose, and I really think if it were
not imprudent, the romance would lose all its attraction. I tell you, it
runs in the family, and he’s not a bit wiser than his father, or his
grandfather before him.”
“This will never do without a bit of blue. May I run out to the
flowers?”
“Certainly, dear;” and Aunt Dinah peered through her spectacles at the
half made-up bouquet in the glass.
“Yes, it does—it wants blue. Isn’t there blue verbena?”
And away ran Violet, and her pretty figure and gay face flitted before
the windows in the early sun among the flowers. And Aunt Dinah looked
for a moment with a smile and a sigh. Perhaps she was thinking of the
time when it was morning sun and opening flowers for her, and young
fellows—one of whom, long dead in India, was still a dream for her—used
to talk their foolish flatteries, that sounded like muffled music in the
distant air; and she looked down dreamily on the back of her slim
wrinkled hand that lay on the table.
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