‘AND SPENDING SILVER HAD HE RIGHT YNOW.’
At ten o’clock Daphne was down at the boat-house again, ready for
the aquatic excursion, looking as fresh and bright as if nothing had
ever occurred to vex her. She wore a workmanlike attire of indigo
serge—no gay fluttering scarlet ribbons this time. Her whole costume
was studiously plain, from the sailor hat to the stout Cromwell shoe
and dark blue stocking, the wash-leather glove and leathern belt with
a broad steel buckle. Madoline’s flowing muslin skirts and flowery hat
contrasted charmingly with her sister’s more masculine attire.
‘This looks like business,’ said Gerald, as Bink ran the boat into the
water, and held her while the ladies stepped on board. ‘Now, Daphne,
whichever of us gets tired first must forfeit a dozen pairs of gloves.’
‘I think it will be you, from the look of you,’ returned Daphne, as
she rolled up her sleeves and took hold of an oar in an off-hand
waterman-like manner. ‘When you are tired I’ll take the sculls.’
‘Well, you see I am likely to be in very bad form. It is four years
since I rowed in the ‘Varsity race.’
‘What, you rowed in the great race? What affectation to talk about
being in bad form. I should think a man could never forget training of
that kind.’
‘He can never forget the theory, but he may feel the want of practice.
However, I fancy I shall survive till we get to Goring Lane, and that
you’ll win no gloves to-day. I suppose you never wear anything less
than twelve buttons?’
‘Madoline gives me plenty of gloves, thank you,’ replied Daphne with
dignity. ‘My glove-box is not supported by voluntary contributions.’
‘Daphne, do you know that for a young woman who is speedily to become
my sister you are barely civil?’ said Gerald.
‘I beg your pardon, I am practising a sisterly manner. I never met with
a brother and sister yet who were particularly civil to each other.’
They were rowing quietly up the stream, lowering their heads now and
then to clear the drooping tresses of a willow. The verdant banks,
the perpetual willows, were beautiful, but with a monotonous beauty.
It was the ripe middle of the year, when all things are of one rich
green—meadows and woods and hills—and in a country chiefly pastoral
there must needs be a touch of sameness in the landscape. Here and
there a spire showed above the trees, or a gray stone mansion stood
boldly out upon the green hillside.
Daphne had so arranged cushions and wraps upon the principal seat as to
conceal the mutilated name. Gerald rowed stroke, she sat in the bows,
and Madoline reclined luxuriously in the stern with the Maltese terrier
Fluff in her lap.
‘If we are lucky we shall be at the Abbey an hour and a half before
your aunt and her ponies,’ said Gerald. ‘It was extremely obliging of
her to volunteer the inestimable boon of her advice, but I fancy we
should get on quite as well without her.’
‘It would have been unkind to let her think we didn’t want her,’ said
Madoline deprecatingly.
‘That is so like you, Lina; you will go through life putting up with
people you don’t care about, rather than wound their feelings,’ said
Gerald carelessly.
‘Aunt Rhoda is my father’s only sister. I am bound to respect her.’
‘I’ve no doubt the Old Man of the Sea was a very estimable person in
the abstract,’ said Gerald, ‘but Sindbad shunted him at the first
opportunity. Don’t look so distressed, dearest. Aunt Rhoda shall
patronise us, and dictate to us all our lives, if it please you.
By-the-by, what has become of your devoted slave and ally, Turchill? I
expected to find him on the premises when I arrived at South Hill.’
‘He went up to London last week with his mother, to make a round of
the theatres and picture-galleries. They will be home in a few days, I
daresay.’
‘I wonder he can exist out of Warwickshire. He is so thoroughly
bucolic, so permeated by the flavour of his native soil.’
‘He is very kind and good and true-hearted,’ protested Daphne, flushing
indignantly; ‘and he is your old friend and kinsman. I wonder you can
speak so contemptuously of him, Mr. Goring.’
‘What, my vixenish little Pop—Daphne,’ cried Gerald, colouring at
this slip of the tongue, ‘is it thus the cat jumps? I would not
underrate Edgar for worlds. He is out and away the best fellow I know;
but, however much you may admire him, little one, that his mind is
essentially bucolic is a fact—and facts are stubborn things.’
‘You have no right to say that I admire him. I respect and esteem him,
and I am not ashamed to own as much, though you may think it a reason
for laughing at me,’ retorted Daphne, still angry. ‘He taught me to row
this very boat. He used to get up every morning at a ridiculously early
hour, in order to be at South Hill in time to give me a lesson before
breakfast.’
‘A man might do twice as much for your _beaux yeux_, and yet deem it no
self-sacrifice.’
‘Don’t,’ cried Daphne. ‘Didn’t I tell you ages ago that I detest you
when you flatter me?’
Madoline looked up with momentary wonder at that expression ‘ages
ago;’ but Daphne was so given to wild exaggerations and a school-girl
latitude of phrase, that ‘ages ago’ might naturally mean yesterday.
‘Daphne dearest, what has put you out of temper?’ she asked gently.
‘I’m afraid you’re getting tired.’
‘If she give in before we get to Goring Lane I shall claim a dozen
pairs of gloves.’
‘I am not the least little bit tired; I could row you to Naseby, if you
liked,’ replied Daphne haughtily; whereupon the lovers began to talk
of their own affairs, somewhat lazily, as suited the summer morning
and the quiet landscape, where a light haze that yet lingered over the
fields seemed the cool and misty forecast of a blazing afternoon.
Goring Lane was an accommodation road, leading down from the home farm
to the meadows on the river bank, and here they found a light open
carriage and a pair of strong country-made gray horses waiting for them.
Gerald had sent his valet over before breakfast to make all
arrangements for their reception. The man was waiting beside the
carriage, and to Daphne’s horror she beheld in him the grave gentleman
in gray who had helped to convey provisions for the Fontainebleau
picnic: but not a muscle of the valet’s face betrayed the fact that he
had ever seen this young lady before.
At the end of the lane they came into a shady park-like avenue, and
then to a gray stone gateway, pillared, mediæval, grandiose; on the
summit of each granite pillar a griffin of the most correct heraldic
make grasped a shield, and on the shield were quarterings that hinted
at a palmer’s pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and a ragged staff that
suggested kindred with the historic race of Dudley.
The lodge-keeper’s wife and her three children were standing by the
open gate, ready to duck profusely in significance of delight in their
lord’s return. The male bird as usual was absent from the nest. Nobody
ever saw a man at an entrance lodge.
The avenue of limes was of but thirty years’ growth, but there was
plenty of good old timber on the broad expanse of meadow-land which
Mr. Goring had converted into a park. There was a broad blue lake in
the distance, created by the late Mr. Goring, an island in the middle
of it, also of his creation; while a fleet of rare and costly foreign
aquatic birds of Mr. Goring’s importation were sailing calmly on the
calm water. And yonder, in the green valley, with a wooded amphitheatre
behind it, stood the Abbey, built strictly after the fashion of the
fifteenth century, but every block of stone and every lattice obviously
of yesterday.
‘It wouldn’t be half a bad place if it would only mellow down to a
sober grayness, instead of being so uncomfortably white and dazzling,’
said Gerald as they drew near the house.
‘It is positively lovely,’ answered Madoline.
She was looking at the gardens, which thirty years of care and outlay
had made about as perfect as gardens of the Italian style can be. They
were not such old English gardens as Lord Bacon wrote about. There was
nothing wild, no intricate shrubberies, no scope for the imagination,
as there was at South Hill. All was planned and filled in with a Dutch
neatness. The parterres were laid out in blocks, and in the centre
of each rose a fountain from a polished marble basin. Statues by
sculptors of note were placed here and there against a background of
tall orange-trees, arbutus, or yew. Everything was on a large scale,
which suited this palatial Italian manner. Such a garden might have
fitly framed the palace of a Medici or a Borgia; nay, in such a garden
might Horace have walked by the side of Mæcenas, or Virgil recited a
portion of his Æneid to Augustus and Octavia. There was a dignity, a
splendour, in these parterres which Daphne thought finer than anything
she had seen even at Versailles, whither Madame Tolmache had escorted
her English pupils on a certain summer holiday.
‘The rose-garden will please you better than this formal pleasaunce,
I daresay,’ said Gerald. ‘It is on the other side of the house, and
consists wholly of grass walks and rose-trees. My dear mother gave her
whole mind to the cultivation and improvement of her gardens. I believe
she was rather extravagant in this one matter—at least, I have heard my
father say so. But I think the result justified her outlay.’
‘And yet you want to build more hot-houses on my account, Gerald.
Surely arrangements that satisfied Lady Geraldine will be good enough
for me,’ said Madoline.
‘Oh, one ought to go on improving. Besides, you are fonder of exotics
than my mother was. And the rage for church decoration is getting
stronger every day. You will have plenty of use for your hot-houses.
And now we will go and take a sketchy survey of the house, before we
interview the worthy MacCloskie. Has Miss Lawford’s gardener arrived?’
Gerald asked of the gentleman in gray, who had occupied the box-seat,
and was again in attendance at the carriage-door, while a portly butler
and a powdered footman, both of the true English pattern, waited in the
Gothic porch.
‘Yes, sir; Mr. MacCloskie is in the housekeeper’s room.’
‘I hope they have given him luncheon.’
‘No, sir, thank you, sir. He would take nothing but a glass of claret
and a cigar. He has taken a stroll round the gardens, sir, so as to be
prepared to give an opinion.’
The house was deliciously cool, almost as if ice had been laid on in
the pipes which were used in winter for hot water. The hall was as
profoundly Gothic as that at Penshurst—it was difficult to believe
that the reek of a log fire piled in the middle of the stone floor had
never gone up through yonder rafters, that the rude vassals of a feudal
lord had never squatted by the blaze, or slept on yonder ponderous
oaken settles. Nothing was wanting that should have been there to tell
of an ancient ancestry. Armour that had been battered and dented at
Cressy or Bannockburn, or at any rate most skilfully manipulated at
Birmingham, adorned the walls. Banners drooped from the rafters; heads
of noble stags that had been shot in Arden’s primeval wood, spears
and battle-axes that had been used in the Crusades, and collected in
Wardour Street, gave variety to the artistic decoration of the walls,
while tapestry of undoubted antiquity hung before the doorways.
These things had given pleasure to Mr. Giles-Goring, but to his son
they were absolutely obnoxious. Yet the father had been so good a
father, and had done such honest and useful work in the world before
he began to amass this trumpery, that the son had not the heart to
dislodge anything.
They went through room after room—all richly furnished, all strictly
mediæval: old oak carving collected in the Low Countries; cabinets that
reached from floor to ceiling; sideboards large enough to barricade a
Parisian boulevard; all the legends of Holy Writ exemplified by the
patient Fleming’s chisel; polished oaken floors; panelled walls. The
only modern rooms were those at one end of the Abbey, which had been
refurnished by Lady Geraldine during her widowhood, and here there was
all the lightness and grace of modern upholstery of the highest order.
Satinwood furniture and pale-tinted draperies; choice water-colours
and choicer porcelain on the walls; books in every available nook.
‘How lovely!’ cried Daphne, who had not been impressed by the modern
mediævalism of the other rooms. ‘This is where I should like to live.’
Lady Geraldine’s morning-room looked into the rose-garden. She had not
been able to do away with the mullioned windows, but a little glass
door—an anachronism, but vastly convenient—had been squeezed into a
corner to give her easy access to her favourite garden.
Madoline looked at everything with tender regard. Lady Geraldine had
been fond of her and kind to her, and had most heartily approved her
son’s choice. Tears dimmed Lina’s sight as she looked at the familiar
room, which seemed so empty without the gracious figure of its mistress.
‘I fancied you would like to occupy these rooms by-and-by, Lina,’ said
Gerald.
‘I should like it of all things.’
‘And can you suggest any alterations—any improvements?’
‘Gerald, do you think that I would change a thing that your mother
cared for? The rooms are lovely in themselves; but were they ever so
old-fashioned or shabby, I should like them best as your mother left
them.’
‘Lina, you are simply perfect!’ exclaimed Gerald tenderly. ‘You are
just the one faultless woman I have ever met. Chaucer’s Grisel was not
a diviner creature.’
‘I hope you are not going to try my sister as that horrid man in the
story tried Grisel,’ cried Daphne, bristling with indignation. ‘I only
wish I had lived in those days, and had the reversion of Count Walter,
as a widower. I’d have made him repent his brutality.’
‘I have no doubt you would have proved skilful in the art of
husband-government,’ said Gerald. ‘But you needn’t be alarmed. Much
as I admire Grisel I shan’t try to emulate her husband. I could not
leave my wife in agony, and walk away smiling at the cleverness of my
practical joke. Well, Lina, then it is settled that in these rooms
there is to be no alteration,’ he added, turning to Madoline, who had
been taking up the volumes on a little ebony bookstand and looking at
their titles.
‘Please make no alteration anywhere. Let the house be as your father
and mother arranged it.’
‘My sweet conservative! And we are to keep all the old servants, I
conclude. They are all of my father’s and mother’s choosing.’
‘Pray keep them all. If you could any way find room for MacCloskie,
without offending your head gardener——’
‘MacCloskie shall be superintendent of your own special hot-houses, my
darling. It will be an easy, remunerative place—good wages and plenty
of perquisites.’
A grinding of wheels on the gravel, and a tremendous peal of the bell
at the principal entrance proclaimed the advent of a visitor.
‘Aunt Rhoda, no doubt,’ said Gerald. ‘Let us be sober.’
They went back to the hall to greet the new arrival. It was Mrs.
Ferrers’s youthful groom, a smart young gentleman of the tiger species,
who had made that tremendous peal. Mrs. Ferrers’s roan ponies were
scratching up the gravel; but Mrs. Ferrers was not alone; a gentleman
had just dismounted from a fine upstanding bay, and that gentleman was
Edgar Turchill.
‘So glad to see you here, Aunt Rhoda,’ cried Gerald. ‘Why, Turchill,
they told me you were in London!’
‘Came home last night, rode over to South Hill this morning, overtook
Mrs. Ferrers on the way, and——’
‘I asked him to come on with me and to join in our round of
inspection,’ said Aunt Rhoda. ‘I hope I did not do very wrong.’
‘You did very right. I don’t think Turchill feels himself much of a
stranger at the Abbey, even though it has been a very inhospitable
place for the last year or so. And now before we go in for any
more business let’s proceed to luncheon. Your boat has had a most
invigorating effect on my appetite, Daphne. I’m simply famished.’
‘So you came in Daphne’s boat. She rows pretty well, doesn’t she?’
asked Edgar, with a glance of mingled pride and tenderness at his pupil.
‘She might win a cup to-morrow. You have reason to be proud of her.’
They all went into the refectory, where, under the lofty open timber
roof, a small oval table looked like an island in a sea of Turkey
carpet and polished oak flooring.
‘It would have served you right if we had had the long dinner-table,’
Gerald said to Daphne, as he passed her with Mrs. Ferrers on his arm.
‘I thought we were going to picnic in the park,’ said Madoline.
‘Daphne——Neither you nor Daphne seemed to care about it,’ replied
Gerald.
‘This is a great deal more sensible,’ remarked Mrs. Ferrers.
‘Oh, I don’t know; it’s awfully jolly to eat one’s luncheon under the
trees in such weather as this,’ said Edgar.
‘For Mr. Turchill’s particular gratification, we will have afternoon
tea in the cloisters,’ said Gerald. ‘Blake,’ to the butler, ‘let there
be tea at half-past four on the grass in the cloisters.’
Daphne could eat or drink very little, though Edgar, who sat next
to her, was pressing in his offers of lobster mayonnaise, and cold
chicken, cutlets, sole à la maître d’hôtel, Perigord pie. She was
looking about her at the portraits on the walls.
Facing her hung Prescott Knight’s picture of the man who began his
career by wheeling barrows, and who ended it by building mighty
viaducts, levelling hills, filling valleys, making the crooked paths
straight. It was a brave honest English face, plain, rugged even, the
painter having in no wise flattered his sitter; but a countenance that
was pleasanter to the eye than many a handsome face. A countenance that
promised truth and honour, manliness and warm feelings in its possessor.
Daphne looked from the portrait on the wall to the present master of
the Abbey. No; there was not one point of resemblance between Gerald
Goring and his father.
Then she looked at another portrait hanging in the place of honour
above the wide Gothic mantelpiece. Lady Geraldine, by Buckner: the
picture of an elegant high-bred woman of between thirty and forty,
dressed in amber satin and black lace, one bare arm lifted to pluck a
rose from a lattice, the other hand resting on a marble balustrade,
across which an Indian shawl had been flung carelessly. Face and figure
were both perfect after their kind—figure tall and willowy, a swan’s
neck, a proud and pensive countenance, with eyes of the same doubtful
colour as Gerald’s, the same dreamy look in them. Then Daphne turned
her gaze to the other end of the room, where hung the famous Sir Peter
Lely, a replica of the well-known picture in Hampton Court, for which
replica Mr. Giles-Goring had paid a preposterous price to a poor and
proud member of his wife’s family, who was lucky enough to possess it.
Strange that a singleminded, honest-hearted man like John Giles-Goring
should have been proud of his son’s descent from a king’s mistress, and
should have hung the portrait of Felicia, Countess of Heronville, above
the desk at which he read family prayers to his assembled household.
Yes; Lady Heronville’s eyes were like Gerald’s, dreamily beautiful.
Everybody at the table had plenty to say, except Daphne. She was
absorbed by her contemplation of the pictures. Edgar was concerned at
her want of appetite. He tried to entertain her by telling her of the
plays and pictures he had seen.
‘Your father ought to take you to town before the season is over.
There is so much to see,’ he said; ‘and though I am told that all the
West End tradespeople are complaining, it seems to me that London was
never so full as this year. Hyde Park in the morning and afternoon is
something wonderful.’
‘I should like to go to the opera,’ said Daphne rather listlessly.
‘Madame Tolmache took us to hear “Faust” one evening. She said that
an occasional visit to the opera was the highest form of cultivation
for the youthful mind. I believe she had a box given her by the
music-master, and that she turned it to her own advantage that
way—charging it in her bills, don’t you know. I shall never forget
that evening. It was at the end of August, and Paris was wrapped in a
white mist, and the air had a breathless, suffocating feeling, and the
streets smelt of over-ripe peaches. But when we got out of the jolting
fly that took us from the station to the theatre, and went to a box
that seemed in the clouds, we had to go up so many stairs to reach it,
and the music began, and the curtain went up, it was like being in a
new world. I felt as if I were holding my breath all the time. Even
Martha Dibb—that stupid, good-natured girl I told you about—seemed
spell-bound, and sat with her mouth open, gasping like a fish. Nilsson
was Marguerite, and Faure was Mephistopheles. I shall remember them to
the end of my life.’
‘You’ll hear them again often, I hope. Nilsson was singing the other
night, when I took my mother to hear Wagner’s great opera. The music
is quite the rage, I believe; but I don’t like it as well as “Don
Giovanni.”’
Luncheon was over by this time—a formal ceremonious luncheon, such as
Daphne detested. It was her punishment for having been uncivil last
night when the picnic idea was mooted. And now they all repaired to the
gardens, and perambulated the parterre, and criticised the statues:
Leda with her swan, Venus with an infant Cupid, Hebe offering her cup,
Ganymede on his eagle—all the most familiar personages in Lemprière.
The fountains were sending up their rainbow spray in the blazing
afternoon sun. The geraniums, and calceolarias, and pansies, and
petunias, and all the tribe of begonias, and house-leeks, newly bedded
out, seemed to quiver in the fierce bright light.
‘For pity’s sake let us get out of this burning flowery furnace,’ cried
Gerald. ‘Let’s go to the rose-garden; it’s on the shady side of the
house, and within reach of my mother’s favourite tulip-trees.’
The rose-garden was a blessed refuge after that exposed parterre facing
due south. Here there was velvet turf on which to walk, and here were
trellised screens and arches wreathed with the yellow clusters of
the Celine Forestier, and the Devoniensis. Mrs. Ferrers was a person
who always discoursed of flowers by their botanical or fashionable
names. She did not call a rose a rose, but went into raptures over a
Marguerite de St. Armand, a Garnet Wolseley, a Gloire de Vitry, or an
Etienne Levet, as the case might be.
Here, smoking his cigar, which he politely suppressed at their
approach, they discovered Mr. MacCloskie, the hard-faced, sandy-haired
Scottish gardener.
‘You have been taking a look at my grounds, I hear, MacCloskie,’ Mr.
Goring said pleasantly.
‘Yes, sir; I’ve looked about me a bit. I think I’ve seen pretty well
everything.’
‘And the hot-houses leave room for improvement, I suppose?’
‘Well, sir, I’m not wishing to say anything disrespectful to your
architect,’ began MacCloskie, with that deliberation which gave all
his speeches an air of superior wisdom, ‘but if he had tried his
hardest to spend the maximum of money in attaining the minimum of space
and accommodation—to say nothing of his ventilation and his heating
apparatus, which are just abominable—he couldn’t have succeeded better
than he has—unconsciously.’
‘Dear me, Mr. MacCloskie, that’s a bad account. And yet the gardeners
here have managed to rub on very decently for a quarter of a century,
with no better accommodation than you have seen to-day.’
‘Ay, sir, that’s where it is. They just roobed on, poor fellows. And I
can only say that it’s very creditable to them to do as well as they
have done, and if they’re about a quarter of a century behind the times
nobody can blame them.’
‘Then we must build new houses—that’s inevitable, I conclude.’
‘Yes, sir, if you want to grow exotics.’
‘Yet I used to see a good deal of stephanotis about the rooms in my
father’s time.’
‘Ay, there’s a fine plant growing in a bit of a glass—shed,’ said
Mr. MacCloskie with ineffable contempt. ‘Necessity’s the mother of
invention, Mr. Goring. Your gardeners have done just wonders. But with
all deference to you, sir, that kind of thing wouldn’t suit me. And
if Miss Lawford has any idea of my coming here by-and-by——’ with a
respectful glance at his mistress, as he stood at ease, contemplating
the spotless lining of his top-hat.
‘Miss Lawford would like you to continue in her service when she is
Mrs. Goring. Perhaps you will be good enough to give me an exact
specification of the space you would require, and the form of house you
would suggest. I wish Miss Lawford to be in no way a loser when she
exchanges South Hill for Goring Abbey.’
‘Thank you, sir, you are very good, sir,’ murmured the Scotchman, as
if it were for his gratification the houses were to be built. ‘This is
a very fine place, sir; it would be a pity if it were to be behind the
times in any particular.’
The head gardener bowed and withdrew, everyone—even Aunt
Rhoda—breathing more freely when he had vanished.
‘Isn’t he too utterly horrid?’ asked Daphne. ‘If there is a being I
detest in this world it is he. Were I in Lina’s place I should take
advantage of my marriage to get rid of him; but she will just go down
to her grave domineered over by that man,’ concluded Daphne, mimicking
MacCloskie’s northern tongue.
‘He is not the most agreeable person in the world,’ said Lina; ‘but he
is thoroughly conscientious.’
‘Did you ever know a disagreeable person who did not set up for being a
paragon of honesty?’ exclaimed Daphne contemptuously.
They roamed about the rose-garden, which was a lovely place to loiter
in upon a summer day, and lingered under the tulip-trees, where there
were rustic chairs and a rustic table, and every incentive to idleness.
Beyond the tulip-trees there was a shrubbery on the slope of the hill,
a shrubbery which sheltered the rose-garden from bleak winds, and
made it a thoroughly secluded spot. While the rest of the party sat
talking under the big broad-leaved trees, Daphne shot off to explore
the shrubbery. The first thing that attracted her attention was a large
wire cage among the laurels.
‘Is that an aviary?’ she asked.
‘No,’ answered Gerald, rising and going over to her. ‘These are my
father’s antecedents.’
He pulled away the laurel branches which had spread themselves in front
of the cage, and Daphne saw that it contained only a shabby old barrow,
a pickaxe, and shovel.
‘Those were the stock-in-trade with which my father began his career,’
he said. ‘I don’t believe he had even the traditional half-crown. I’ve
no doubt if he had possessed such a coin his mates would have made him
spend it on beer. He began life, a barefooted, ignorant lad, upon a
railroad in the north of England; and before his fortieth birthday he
was one of the greatest contractors and one of the best-informed men
of his time; but he never mastered the right use of the aspirate, and
he never could bring himself to wear gloves. It was his fancy to keep
those old tools of his, and to take his visitors to look at them, after
they had gone the round of house and gardens.’
‘I hope you are proud of him,’ said Daphne, with a bright penetrating
glance which seemed to pierce Mr. Goring’s soul. ‘I should hate you
if I thought that, even for one moment in your life, you could feel
ashamed of such a father.’
‘Then I’m afraid I must endure your hate,’ said Gerald. ‘No; I have
never felt ashamed of my father: he was the dearest, kindest, most
unselfish, most indulgent father that ever spoiled an unworthy son.
But I have occasionally felt ashamed of that barrow, when it has been
exhibited and explained to a new acquaintance, and I have seen that the
now acquaintance thought the whole thing—the mock mediæval abbey, and
the barrow, and my dear simple-hearted dad—one stupendous joke.’
‘I should be more ashamed of Felicia, Countess of Heronville, than of
that barrow, if I were you,’ exclaimed Daphne, flushed and indignant.
‘You little radical! Mistress Felicia was by no means an exemplary
person, but she was one of the loveliest women at Charles’s court,
where lovely women congregated by common consent, while all the ugly
ones buried themselves at their husbands’ country seats, and thought
that some fiery comet must be swooping down upon the world because of
wickedness in high places. Don’t be too hard upon poor Lady Heronville.
She died in the zenith of her charms, while quite a young woman.’
‘Do you think she ought to be pitied for that?’ demanded Daphne. ‘Why,
it was the brightest fate Heaven could give her. The just punishment
for her evil ways would have been a long loveless old age, and to
see her beauty fade day by day, and to know that the world she loved
despised and forgot her.
“Whom the gods love die young, was said of old;
And many deaths do they escape by this.”’
‘Where did you find those lines, little one?’
‘In a book we used to read aloud at Madame Tolmache’s, “Gems from
Byron.”’
‘Oh, I see! Mere chippings, diamond dust. I was afraid you’d been at
the Koh-i-noor itself.’
‘Are we to have some tea, Gerald?’ asked Madoline, crossing to them and
looking at her watch as she came. ‘It is half-past four, and we must be
going home soon.’
‘To the cloisters, ladies and gentlemen, to all that there is of the
most mediæval in the Abbey.’
They passed under a Gothic archway and found themselves on a square
green lawn, in the midst of which was another fountain in a genuine old
marble basin, a Roman relic dug up thirty years ago in the peninsula
of Portland. A cloistered walk surrounded this grass-plot. A striped
awning had been put up beside the fountain, and under this the
tea-table was spread.
‘Now, Lina, let us see if you can manage that ponderous tea-kettle,’
said Gerald.
‘It is the handsomest I ever saw,’ sleepily remarked Mrs. Ferrers, who
had found the afternoon somewhat dreary, since nobody had seemed to
want her advice about anything. ‘But I must confess that I prefer the
Rector’s George the Second silver, and old Swansea cups and saucers, to
the highest exemplars of modern art.’