Preparations for Mrs Thornton's garden-party went on uninterruptedly
during the next week, and grew in fervour as the great day approached.
Everybody had accepted, as the hostess announced with a groan and a
laugh; and the vicar threatened to be called abroad on urgent business,
so alarmed was he at the prospect of the fashionable throng which was to
invade his shabby precincts. When, however, Mrs Thornton made up her
mind to carry out a plan, she was not easily damped; and aided by Mollie
and the younger members of her brood, she weeded, and forked, and
clipped at the over-grown garden, until it really began to assume quite
a presentable appearance.
"I daren't weed," Mollie explained, "for I'm a poor town thing, who
would probably pull up your most cherished seedlings; but my arms are so
strong that I can mow with the best, so I'll take the grass in hand, if
someone else will trim the borders."
"But your face, my dear--your face!" cried Mrs Thornton, staring with
dismay at the crimsoned countenance beneath the straw hat. "I'm ashamed
to let you work so hard! What would your uncle say if he saw you now?"
"Something uncomplimentary, no doubt. I know I am magenta, but
fortunately it isn't lasting. I asked Mr Druce if he would help me
this morning, and do a little rolling into the bargain, but he would not
give up his ride."
Mrs Thornton pursed up her lips, stared first at the ground, then at
the sky, then across into Mollie's face.
"He is very fond of riding!" she said mysteriously. "I see him pass
every morning, going in the same direction, and always alone. How is it
that none of you ever go with him?"
"Jack Melland is still lame, and Ruth and I are only beginners. We have
little canters together in the afternoons sometimes, but in the mornings
he prefers to be free to go longer distances. He goes ever so far--
miles and miles. One morning last week he met Lady Margot Blount
somewhere near the Moat."
"And one morning this week also, for my husband saw them together, and
if I were inclined to gossip, I should say it was oftener than once. My
dear Mollie, how charming! Are we going to have a love-story to enliven
the summer? Nobody ever gets engaged or married in this sleepy place,
and this would be truly exciting! But I thought at one time--excuse my
saying so, won't you, dear?--I quite thought he admired your sister, and
that there might be a match there!"
"Of course, he admired her--no one could help it; but please never hint
at anything of the sort to Ruth. She is very reserved, and would hate
to be talked about!" cried Mollie hastily.
Across the lawn Ruth's graceful figure could be seen kneeling in front
of a bed of flowers which she was fastening to supporting sticks in her
usual neat, methodical fashion. No one could have recognised that bed
as the same confused broken-down mass of blossom which it had been an
hour earlier.
"There! now they do look as if someone loved them," said Ruth to
herself, straightening her weary back, and brushing the soil off her
fingers.
After the Thorntons' more casual work was over, she had made a careful
round of the beds, giving those dainty finishing touches which add so
largely to the effect. Now her work was finished, and, seeing Mrs
Thornton and Mollie standing together, she rose stiffly, and walked
across the lawn to meet them.
"Have you finished? I think I have really come to the end of the beds,
and everything looks delightfully `cared for'! I shall bring my camera
down on Thursday, Mrs Thornton, and take some snapshots of your guests
in pretty corners of the garden. Did you know I had taken the
photographic fever? I bought myself a really, really nice camera, and I
want to take mother a collection of views of the Court when we go home.
She will value it more than anything else, for I shall snap all her
favourite bits in the grounds, and take the interiors with time-
exposures. They will be nice to look at when we are away, and someone
else reigns in our stead!"
She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke, and Mrs Thornton patted her
arm with kindly encouragement.
"Nonsense--nonsense! You are tired, dear, and that makes you look at
things through blue spectacles. Come into the house, and we will have
tea, and discuss the great question of where my guests are to sit, if
anything so dreadful as a shower should happen! Two armchairs, you see,
half a dozen small ones, more or less unstable (if anyone over seven
stone attempts the green plush there'll be a catastrophe!), and one
sofa. Now, put your inventive brains together, and tell me what I can
do. There is plenty of room for more furniture, but no money to buy it,
alas!"
"Let them sit on the floor in rows; it would be ever so sociable!" said
naughty Mollie.
Ruth knitted her brows thoughtfully.
"Have you any chair-beds? We could make quite elegant lounges of them,
pushed up against the wall, covered with rugs and banked up with
cushions; or even out of two boards propped up at the sides, if the
worst came to the worst!"
"Oh-oh! Chair-beds! What an inspiration! I have two stored away in
the attic. They are old and decrepit, but that doesn't matter a bit.
They will look quite luxurious when the mattresses are covered with
sofa-blankets; but I don't know where the cushions are to come from. I
only possess these three, and they must stay where they are to hide the
patches in the chintz. I might perhaps borrow--"
"No, don't do anything of the kind. Use your pillows, and Ruth and I
will make frilled covers out of art-muslin, at threepence a yard. They
will look charming, and lighten up the dark corners. We are used to
that sort of work at home. We made a cosy corner for the drawing-room
out of old packing-cases and a Liberty curtain, and it is easier and
more comfortable than any professional one I ever saw. The silly
upholsterers always make the seats too high and narrow. We made a music
ottoman of the inside, and broke our backs lining it, and our nails
hammering in the tacks; but, dear me, how we did enjoy it, and how proud
we were when it was accomplished for seventeen-and-six!
"I'm beginning to doubt," repeated Mollie solemnly, "whether it is half
so amusing to be rich as it is to be poor. When you can get everything
you want the moment you want it, you don't appreciate it half so much as
when you have pined for it, and saved up your pennies for it, for months
beforehand. When we get a new thing at home, the whole family pay
visits to it like a shrine, and we open the door and go into the room
where it is, one after the other, to study the effect, and gloat over
it. It _is_ fun; isn't it, now? Confess that it is!"
"Ye-es," agreed Mrs Thornton doubtfully. "But where you have to wait
too long, the sense of humour gets a little bit blunted, especially as
one grows older, Mollie dear!"
She sighed as she spoke, and her eyes roved pensively round the
discoloured walls, those same walls whose condition had fired Mollie to
make her unsuccessful appeal. The girl's thoughts went back to that
embarrassing interview, not altogether regretfully, since it had ended
in bringing about a better understanding between her uncle and herself.
Perhaps, though he had refused her request, it would linger in his mind,
and lead to good results. Nothing but the unexpected was certain about
Uncle Bernard.
The next afternoon the vicarage drawing-room presented a rather chaotic
appearance, as Mrs Thornton and her assistants prepared the important
couches. Ruth sat in the middle of the floor running up lengths of
brightly coloured muslins on a sewing-machine, while the other two
wrestled with the difficulties which attend all make-shifts. With the
greatest regard for ease and luxury, the beds were pronounced decidedly
too low to look genuine, and the rickety legs had to be propped up with
foundations manufactured out of old bound volumes of magazines, bricks
from the garden, and an odd weight or two from the kitchen scales. The
sofa-blankets also turned out to be too narrow, and persisted in
disclosing the iron legs, until, in desperation, one end was sewn to the
mattress, allowing the full width to hang down in front.
At last the work was finished, and the hot and dishevelled workers
retired to the hall, and, re-entering the room to study the effect, in
true Farrell manner, pronounced the "divans" to look professional beyond
all fear of detection.
The next achievement was to place a tapering bank of plants against a
discoloured patch of wallpaper, and many and varied were the struggles
before the necessary stand was arranged. Eventually an old desk formed
the bottom tier, a stool the second, and the baby's high chair the third
and last. Draped with an old piece of green baize, with small pots of
trailing _Tradescantia_ fitted into the crossbars of the chair, and the
good old family _Aspidistras_ ("as old as Mabel!" explained Mrs
Thornton, stroking one of the long green leaves affectionately) taking
the place of honour, the effect was so superior and luxurious that the
vicar had to be dragged from his study to exclaim and admire.
"There, just look at our divans! Did you ever see anything look more
luxurious? Who could ever suspect they were only a make-up? Sit down
and see how comfortable this is!" cried Mrs Thornton volubly; whereupon
the vicar sat down heavily in the centre of the seat, and promptly
descended to the floor amidst a heaped-up pile of bedding, pillows,
_Sunday at Homes_, and broken bricks.
He gasped and groped wildly with his hands, and the sight of him sitting
prone among the ruins was so comical that both girls went off into peals
of laughter. The humorous side of the accident was not, however, quite
so apparent to the mistress of the ceremonies.
"That tiresome, tiresome bed! I might have known as much! It used to
collapse with me regularly when I was nursing Mabel with scarlet-fever!"
she cried impatiently. "Now we shall have to begin from the beginning,
and make it up again. How tiresome of you, Arthur, to be so heavy!"
"I will spare you the obvious retort, dear. Let us be thankful that I
was the victim, and not Lady Elstree, whom you would certainly have
escorted to the seat of honour to-morrow. If you will allow me to help,
I think I could manage to make things fast."
At this critical moment a loud rat-tat sounded at the door, and Mrs
Thornton rushed to peep out of the window.
"Horrors, a visitor! Mary will show her into the room, I know she will!
That girl has no more sense than a doll! Ruth--Mollie--Wallace! pick
up the things on the floor; throw them behind the sofa! Pull the
sewing-machine to the wall! There's no room for anyone to tread! Of
all the tiresome, aggravating--"
"Nonsense, dear--nonsense!" cried the vicar, laughing. "Leave things as
they are. You have quite sufficient excuse in the fact of expecting a
hundred people to-morrow. There will be no room to tread then, if you
like!"
He turned towards the door as he spoke, and Mrs Thornton hastily
smoothed her hair as it opened wide, and Mary's eager voice announced--
"If you please, mum, a 'amper!"
"A _what_?"
The vicar and his wife pressed forward eagerly, and, lo! on the well-
worn oilcloth of the passage lay a large wicker hamper, addressed to
"Mrs Thornton, The Vicarage, Raby," and bearing on the label the name
of a well-known London fruiterer. To cut the string and tear it open
was the work of a moment, when inside was revealed such treasures of
hothouse fruits as left the beholders dumb and gasping with admiration.
There in profusion were grapes, peaches, giant strawberries of the
deepest red, pineapples,--each one more perfect and tempting than the
last, in their dainty, padded cases.
The vicar stood looking on, stroking his chin, and smiling with
enjoyment at his wife's delight, as she bent over her treasures,
exclaiming and rapturising like a girl in her teens.
"How lovely! How charming! How delightful! My fruit-table will be a
triumph! This is exactly what I needed to give the finishing touch to
my preparations! I've never seen finer fruit--never! Wallace, Wallace,
won't we be grand?"
"So grand that I am afraid the churchwardens will have serious doubts as
to the school funds," said the vicar, laughing. "I have twenty pounds
in hand at the present moment, and really--"
"Oh, don't be a goose! Of course, everyone will guess that it is a
present. I shall say so myself on every opportunity. But who from?
Who can have thought of such a thing?" Her eyes turned with sudden
questioning to the two girls. "Ruth, Mollie--did you?"
"Indeed, no! I didn't think of it, I am sorry to say!" said Ruth; and
added honestly, "I am too hard up to pay for all those lovely things!"
"And you know nothing about it, really?"
"Really and truly, not a thing!"
"You don't think that perhaps the squire--"
Mollie recalled the snubbing which she had received on suggesting the
improvements to the vicarage, coupled with the various cynical remarks
to which Mr Farrell had given utterance on the subject of this very
garden-party, and felt convinced that he was not the anonymous donor;
but these things were not to be repeated, so she remained silent, while
Ruth and Mrs Thornton wondered and speculated.
No one could be thought of more likely than the squire, for the
parishioners, as a rule, were not overburdened with money, nor the few
who were, with generosity.
"I have never had such a thing done for me all the years I have been
here--never once!" cried Mrs Thornton, waxing almost tearful in her
excess of gratitude. "And to send it anonymously, too--so modest and
unassuming! The dear, kind, thoughtful creature. I shall never rest
until I know who it is?"