‘She is outwardly
All that bewitches sense, all that entices,
Nor is it in our virtue to uncharm it.’
It is a week later, and the village is now stirred to its depth. Such
gaieties! Such gaddings to and fro! Such wonderful tales of what Lady
Forster wore and Sir William said, and how Miss Prior looked. Gossip is
flowing freely, delightfully, and Miss Ricketty, whose shop is a general
meeting-place, is doing a roaring business in buns and biscuits.
The Park, in fact, is full of guests.
‘Every corner,’ says Miss Blake to Mrs. Hennessy, in a mysterious
whisper, ‘is full to overflowing. I hear that some of the servants have
to be accommodated outside the house, and that Mr. Crosby has painted
and papered and done up the loft over the stables in the latest Parisian
style for the maids and valets.’
‘My dear!’ says Mrs. Hennessy, in an awful tone—very justly shocked;
then, ‘You forget yourself, Maria!’
‘Faith I did,’ says Miss Blake, bursting into an irrepressible giggle.
‘Law, how funny y’are! But they’re safely divided, I’m told, one at one
side o’ the yard, the other at this, as it were. Like the High churches
we hear of in England. The goats and the sheep—ha, ha!’
‘But where are the maids?’
‘Over the stables at the western side, some of them.’
‘You don’t say so!’ says Mrs. Hennessy. ‘Bless me, but they wouldn’t
like—you know, the—er—the atmosphere!’
‘Oh, there’s ways of doing away with that too,’ says Miss Blake, with a
knowing air. ‘But you’ll come in for a cup of tea, won’t you? Jane’s
dyin’ to have a chat with you.’
Miss Blake is hardly to be trusted in matters such as these, her
imagination being extraordinarily strong. And, indeed, the idea of those
stables rose alone from her great mind. But although there are still
corners in the splendid old Hall to let, it must be confessed that it is
pretty full at present.
Guests at the Park! Such a thing had not been heard of for many years.
Not for the last eight years, at all events.
Then Crosby, who was about twenty-five, came home from Thibet, and his
sister Katherine, who was quite a girl—being six years his junior—had
been brought over from England by her aunt to freshen up her old love
for him, and to stay with him for his birthday. Not longer. The birthday
came off within the week of their arriving. Lady Melland was a woman of
Society, who hated earwigs, and early birds, and baa-lambs, and insisted
on bringing quite a big company ‘on tour’ with her on this
re-introduction of the brother to the sister, and had organized a
distinct rout at the Hall during her memorable stay. It had created a
fearful, if pleasurable, impression at the time, and people are
beginning now to wonder in this little village if Lady Forster will be a
worthy representative of her aunt. Or if perchance the aunt will again
take up the deal; for Lady Melland has, they say, come here with her.
However, for once ‘they say’ is wrong. Katherine Crosby had married Sir
William Forster two years after the termination of that remarkable
visit, and nothing had been seen of her since that, until now. She had,
however, in between shaken off Lady Melland.
She has brought an innumerable company in her train, thus justifying the
idea of Curraghcloyne that she would probably follow in her aunt’s
footsteps, and, as I have said, the village has waked to find itself no
longer deserted, but the centre of a very brilliant crowd.
Yesterday was the first of August, Saturday, and a most unendurable one
on the small platform of the railway-station. Possibly during its brief
existence so many basket-trunks have never been laid upon its modest
flags before. To-day is Sunday, and possibly also the parish church has
never had so large a congregation within its whitewashed walls. Even the
Methodists, quite a large portion of the Curraghcloyne people, have
deserted their chapel for the orthodox church. Even Miss Ricketty has
been heard to say with distinct regret that she ‘wished she was a
Protestant for once.’
The Hall pews, which number four, and for which Mr. Crosby, during all
his wanderings, has paid carefully, are all filled, and the three seats
behind them again, that have vacant sittings in them, are all filled
also with the servants of the people in the four front seats. Never was
there such a display in the small church of Curraghcloyne! And it was
acknowledged afterwards by everyone in the town that though the Rector
did not ‘stir a hair,’ the curate was decidedly ‘onaisy.’ The curate was
unnerved beyond a doubt. He grew fatter and stouter as the service went
on, and he does not know to this day how he got through his sermon. He
says now, that people oughtn’t to spring people on one without a word of
preparation.
Susan tried to keep her eyes off the Hall pews, but in spite of herself
her eyes wandered. Betty did not try to keep her eyes off at all, so
they wandered freely. She was able, half an hour later, to tell Susan
not only the number of guests Mr. Crosby had, but the exact colour of
each gown the women wore, and she told Susan privately that she thought,
if ever she were a rich woman, she would never let her servants wear red
ribbons in their bonnets in church.
Mr. Haldane rushes through his sermon at the rate of an American liner,
and presently the service is over, and all move, with the cultivated
leisurely steps that are meant to hide the desire to run, towards the
open door.
Some of the other Rectory people have gone through the side-door, and,
with Bonnie’s hand fast clasped in hers, Susan is following after them,
when a well-known voice calls to her:
‘Susan, my sister wants very much to know you. Will you let me introduce
you to her?’
Susan turns her face, now delicately pink, and she sees a small, dainty,
pretty creature holding out her hand to her with the prettiest smile in
the world.
Is this Mr. Crosby’s sister?
‘How d’ye do?’ says Lady Forster, in a very clear if low voice. ‘George
was chanting your praises all last night, so naturally I have been
longing to see you. George’s friends, as a rule, are frauds; but—’
She pauses, evidently amused at the girl’s open surprise, not so much at
her words as at her appearance.
‘I’m not a bit like George, am I?’ says she.
No, she is not. Crosby is a big man, if anything, and she is the tiniest
creature. Her features are tiny too, but exquisitely moulded. The
coquettish mouth, the nose ‘tip-tilted like a flower,’ the well-poised
dainty head, the hands, the feet—all are small, and her figure slender
as a fairy’s. She is wonderfully pretty in a brilliant fashion, and her
bright eyes are alight with intelligence. She is altogether the last
person in the world Susan would have imagined as Crosby’s sister. And
yet there is certainly a likeness between them—a strange likeness—but,
of course, his sister should have been large and massive, not a little
thing like this. Susan has always told herself that she should be
dreadfully afraid of his sister—but to be afraid of this sister!
Lady Forster, indeed, is one of those women who look as if they ought to
be called ‘Baby’ or ‘Birdie,’ but in reality she was named Katherine at
her birth, with a big and a stern K, not a C—which we all know is much
milder—and never did Susan hear her called anything less majestic by
anyone. Not even by her brother or her husband. And this was probably
because, beneath her charming butterfly air, there lay a good deal of
character and a strength of will hardly to be suspected in so slight a
creature.
‘No,’ says Susan shyly. She smiles, and involuntarily tightens her
fingers on those she is holding—Lady Forster’s fingers. ‘But—’ A still
greater shyness overcomes her here, and she grows quite silent. The
‘but,’ however, is eloquent.
‘You see, George! She thinks I am infinitely superior to you. How lovely
of her!’ She laughs at Susan and pats her hand. ‘You will come up and
lunch with us to-morrow, won’t you? It is George’s birthday. And
considering the slap you have given him just now, you can hardly refuse.
It will be a little sop to his pride, and that’s frightful! He thinks
himself a perfect joy! I’m told that in Darkest Africa the belles—’
Here Crosby gives her a surreptitious but vigorous nudge, and she breaks
off her highly-spiced and distinctly interesting, if slightly
unveracious, account of his doings in Uganda.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks she, whispering, of her brother, who
whispers back to her many admonitory things. She turns again to Susan:
‘We shall expect you to-morrow, then. It will be a charity to enliven
us, as we hardly know what to do with ourselves, being strangers in a
strange land.’
‘Thank you,’ says Susan faintly. How on earth can she ever summon up
courage enough to go and lunch up there with all these fashionable
people? It is she who will be the stranger in a strange land.
‘That is settled then,’ says Crosby quickly. Had he feared she would go
on to say something more—to say that she had an engagement? ‘I will call
for you at twelve.’
‘Oh no,’ says Susan. ‘I’—confusedly—‘I can walk up. It—it is too much
trouble.’
‘George doesn’t think so,’ says Lady Forster, with a faint grimace. ‘Is
this your brother?’
She bends in her quick way, and turns up Bonnie’s beautiful little face
and looks at it earnestly.
‘What a face!’ cries she. ‘Is everyone beautiful down here? I shall come
and live here, George—no use in your putting me off! I’m determined. It
is a promise, then’—to Susan, smiling vivaciously—‘that you will come
to-morrow, and another day. We must arrange another day—you will bring
me up this small Adonis,’ patting Bonnie’s cheek as he smiles at her
(children love all things pretty) ‘to see me?’
‘I shall be very glad,’ says Susan tremulously. Then Lady Forster trips
away to rejoin her friends, who are standing beside the different
carriages, and quarrelling gaily as to who shall go home with whom, and
for a second Crosby is alone with Susan.
‘You said it was a promise.’
‘Yes,’ says Susan, ‘but—I have not known any very—very—’
‘Smart folk,’ says Crosby, laughing. ‘Well, you’ll know them to-morrow,
and I expect you’ll be surprised how very little smart they are.’
‘But—’
‘There shan’t be a “but” in the world.’
‘It is only this’—miserably—‘that I shall be shy, and—’
‘Not a bit of it. And even if you are’—he looks at her—‘you may depend
on me. I’ll pull you through. But don’t be too shy, Susan. Extremes are
attractive things—fatally attractive sometimes.’ He pauses. ‘Well, so
much for the shyness, but what did your “and” mean?’
‘It meant,’ says Susan, with deep depression, ‘that they will all hate
me.’
‘I almost wish I could believe that.’ He laughs again as he says this,
and gives Bonnie’s ear a pinch, and follows his sister. Two minutes
later, as Susan rejoins her own people at the little gate that leads by
a short-cut to the Rectory, she sees him again, talking gaily, and
handing into one of the carriages a tall and very handsome girl, dressed
as Susan had never seen anyone dressed in all her life. It seems the
very perfection of dressing. She lingers a moment—a bare moment—but it
is long enough to see that he has seated himself beside the handsome
girl, and that he is still laughing—but this time with her—over some
reminiscence, as the carriage drives away.