"IT IS REALLY ELLA."
"What shall we do? What can be the matter?" said Madelene, when after
an instant's silence she began to take in the fact of Ella's arrival.
"Receive her cordially of course. What else in Heaven's name can you
do?" Sir Philip replied with a touch of impatience. "After all there
is nothing so extraordinary in a girl's coming to her own father's
house--even taking refuge there if, as is possible--"
"She has been turned out of her aunt's," interrupted Ermine. "Yes, I'm
certain that's it--she and old Burton have come to blows and Ella's high
spirits or high temper have proved too much for him."
"Ermine," said Philip, warningly, "you should really," and he glanced in
Barnes's direction.
But if Barnes did hear what they were saying he at least appeared so
absolutely unconscious that Philip's remonstrance fell rather flat. The
butler had retired to a few paces distance, where he stood awaiting
orders with an irreproachably blank expression.
"Is the young--is Miss Ella St Quentin in the library?" asked Sir Philip
suddenly.
"Yes, my--I beg pardon--yes, Sir Philip," Barnes replied. His former
master had been a peer, and even after some years of serving a commoner
Barnes found it difficult to ignore the old habit.
"Then go and tell her Miss St Quentin; mind you, say it distinctly, no
Miss Madelene or Miss Ermine--the young lady is, as you supposed, Miss
Ella St Quentin--say that Miss St Quentin will be with her immediately.
You'd better go at once, Maddie."
"She couldn't have meant to call herself Miss St Quentin--it was just an
accident, no doubt," said Madelene nervously.
"Of course, but it's just as well from the first to remind her that she
is _not_ Miss St Quentin," said Philip. "Stupid of her aunt to have let
her get into the habit. But Madelene--"
"Yes, yes. Ermine, hadn't you better get some fresh tea?--this will be
cold," said Madelene, touching the teapot. "Philip, hadn't Ermine
better come too?"
No one could have believed it of her--no one ever did believe it
possible that the cold, stately Madelene was in reality a martyr to
shyness and timidity. But the two or three who knew her well, knew the
fact and pitied her intensely, her cousin Philip among them. But he
knew, too, the best way to treat it, cruel as it sometimes seemed.
"No," he said, "decidedly not. You will get on much better alone,
Maddie. Off with you, there's a good girl. And good-bye. I'm going
round to the stable-yard and I'll mount there. I'm dying with
curiosity, but all the same I'm too high-principled to indulge it. It
wouldn't do for me to stay--you and Ermine are quite enough for the poor
child to face at first."
"Oh, Philip," said Madelene, stopping short again, for by this time she
had got a few yards on her way, "I thought you would have stayed to help
us."
"Not I," Philip called after her. "It's much better not, I assure you.
I'll look in to-morrow to see how you're all getting on, and to hear the
whole story. And if I meet Uncle Marcus on his way home, as I dare say
I shall, I'll tell him of the arrival, so as to save you having to break
it to him."
"And do beg him to come home as quickly as he can," replied Madelene.
Philip got up from his seat and moved to go.
"Good-bye, Ermine," he said.
Ermine looked at him dubiously.
"Are you in earnest, Philip?" she said. "I have more than half an idea
that you are going off out of cowardice, and--and--that all your regard
for Ella's feelings, etc, is--"
"What?" said Philip, smiling.
"Talk," Ermine replied curtly.
Philip laughed.
"No, truly," he said. "All things considered it is much better for me
to leave you. And it's quite true about my curiosity. I'm awfully
curious both to hear about it all and to see this little personage who
has descended among us in this thunder-and-lightning, bomb-shell sort of
way. By Jove--" and he stopped short, while a different expression came
into his face--"what a nuisance it is to think that all our jolly times
together are over! I was grumbling at it prospectively this morning--to
think that it has already come to pass."
He sighed. Ermine sighed too.
"Yes," she said, "it is horrid. For I know--as positively as if I could
hear what is at this moment passing in the library--that the child has
come to stay."
"Oh Lord, yes," Philip exclaimed, "not a doubt of it."
"I only wish she _were_ a child," pursued Ermine. "It might be more of
a bother in some ways, but in others--seventeen's an awful sort of age--
most girls then are really children and full of fancying themselves
grown-up, and standing on their dignity, and all the rest of it, and yet
not really grown-up enough to be proper companions to--"
"Two full-fledged old maids like you and Maddie," put in Philip.
"Exactly," said Ermine.
"Well, good-bye again," he said, lifting his hat as he turned away in
the direction of the stables.
Miss St Quentin made her way slowly to the house. She looked outwardly
calm, indeed to look anything else had scarcely ever in her life
occurred to Madelene, but inwardly she was greatly perturbed. To begin
with, she was as I have said, a sufferer from intense shyness; shyness
of that kind most painful and difficult to contend with, better perhaps
defined as moral timidity, which shrinks with almost morbid horror from
giving or witnessing pain or discomfort, which, but for the constraining
and restraining force of a strong sense of duty, would any day gladly
endure personal suffering or neglect, or allow wrong-doing to go
unrebuked, rather than attempt the slightest remonstrance. Madelene
could enter a roomful of strangers without a touch of nervousness, but
the thought of reproving a servant would keep her awake for nights! and
that something in the action of her young half-sister was about to call
for rebuke or disapproval she felt instinctively certain. Then there
were other reasons for her feeling far from able to meet Ella with the
hearty welcome she would have wished; housekeeper's considerations were
on her mind!
"I did so want to have the rooms arranged the way Ermine and I were
planning," she said to herself. "It would have been so much better to
have begun regularly at once. Now I really don't know what to do. Papa
would certainly be displeased if I gave her one of the long corridor
ones, and yet the two or three empty rooms in the south wing are so
small and would seem shabby. But I am afraid there is nothing else to
do. I must explain to her that the rooms intended for her can't
possibly be ready for some time. And about the maids too--we had
planned it so well. Now, there will really be no one able to look after
her, for I can't trust Melanie; she is so injudicious with that
chattering tongue of hers."
Meantime, the cause of all these discussions was waiting alone in the
library. She had seated herself when first shown in, in a
matter-of-course, unrestrained manner, as if quite at her ease. But
this had been for the benefit of Barnes and his subordinates. No sooner
was she left alone, than the girl got up and strolled nervously towards
the window, where she stood looking out. Now that the deed was done,
her courage began to flag.
"I wonder," she said to herself, clasping her little hands together, "I
_wonder_ what they'll say. They surely can't blame me, when I tell them
how unendurable it was, and that even Aunt Phillis, in her heart, though
she wouldn't own it, wished I were gone, for I know she did. She'll
have got my telegram by now. How delighted old Burton will be--that's
the only bit of it I hate to think of! Still, staying there to spite
him would have been quarrelling with my nose--is that it?--no,
quarrelling with my face--oh bother, I can't get it right, I do so
wonder what they'll all say here."
There was nothing to help her in what she saw outside--not a human being
was in sight--only the lovely, perfectly kept grounds, looking perhaps
at their very best in the soft mellowness of the summer afternoon.
"How delightful it is here!" she thought next; "what a beautiful room,
and what splendid books," and her girlish heart swelled with
satisfaction to think that here was her home, the spot on earth where
she had an undoubted, an unquestionable right to be! "How poky auntie's
house would seem in comparison--and Mr Burton's `mansion' even worse,
for any way there was nothing vulgar or _parvenu_ about our little
house. Still--it does seem rather a shame that I should have been out
of it all, all these years, I, that have just as good a right, as poor
old Harvey used to tell me, to everything here as Madelene and Ermine.
I do hope I shall be able to like them--of course I must not let myself
be `put upon,' but still--I consider they have kept the best of things
to themselves hitherto and--oh I wish she'd be quick and come. I don't
want to seem nervous and yet I _am_, horribly so."
She tapped her parasol on the floor, then she glanced furtively in a
mirror to see how she was looking.
"My hair's rather rough," she thought, "but otherwise I don't think I
look bad. I wish I didn't seem quite so young--and, oh, I do wish I
were a little taller!"
She was small certainly, but as she was also slight and very well
proportioned, this did not really detract from her--_beauty_, one could
scarcely call it. Ella St Quentin was not beautiful; she was just
exceedingly pretty. Her hair was brown, a shade lighter than Ermine's
perhaps, but dark in comparison with Madelene's fair coils, and her eyes
were hazel, lovely eyes, pathetic and merry by turns, as it suited their
capricious little owner to make them, and her features were all
charming. There were good points in this pretty face too, real
sweetness in the curves of the mouth, frankness and honesty in the
forehead and no lack of resolution in the chin--but the whole was the
face of a child rather than a woman--a well-meaning, but fitful and
undisciplined child, who had known little of life and its graver
lessons, whom one would tremble to expose to the storms which, sooner or
later, in one form or another, all must face. Yet there was latent
strength too, if one looked more closely; it was a face to make one
anxious but hopeful also.
She was well but simply dressed. Save for the extreme neatness of
everything about her, she would have looked a mere school-girl; but the
sweeps of her grey draperies, the poise of her head, nay, the very fit
of her gloves, at once removed her from any possibility of being
relegated to the category of girlish hobbledehoys. She had not a trace
of awkwardness about her; she had passed through all the stages of
teeth-changing, hair "doing up," skirts lengthening and such crises, as
one to the manner born--awkwardness and Ella were not to be thought of
in the same century.
The door opening at last, Ella flashed round from the window--was it the
door, or her fancy only? For now all seemed still again, no, yes--the
handle was moving a very little--truth to tell, Madelene holding the
outside knob, was making a last effort to screw up her courage so as to
meet her young sister affectionately but with all her wits about her
nevertheless.
There was no drawing back now that she had begun to turn the handle, and
with a sigh which Ella could not hear, Miss St Quentin came in. Ella
gasped slightly--"how beautiful," was her first thought, to be however
instantly followed by a second, "but how cold, and how horribly
stuck-up! No, I feel it already--I shall never like her."
But Madelene, pale and calm, was advancing across the room.
"Ella?" she said, as if till that moment she had had some lingering
doubt on the matter, "Ella--it is really you! What a surprise--no, I
would not have known you again in the least. Tell me, there is nothing
wrong? Nothing the matter with your aunt, I hope?"
She had stooped to kiss the young girl as she spoke. It would be untrue
to say that the kiss was a very affectionate one, but on the other hand
there was no intentional coldness about it. But Ella was not of this
opinion.
"No, thank you," she replied, after submitting to, though not in any
wise returning, the sisterly embrace. "Aunt Phillis is quite well--at
this moment she must be, I am afraid, rather upset, for she will have
got my telegram. I sent her one from Weevilscoombe station when I
arrived."
"And why should that upset her?" asked Madelene; "she asked you to
telegraph your safe arrival, I suppose? But you didn't travel alone?"
"Yes, indeed I did," said Ella with a slight laugh. It was a nervous
laugh in reality, but to her sister it sounded hard and a little
defiant. "I not only travelled alone, but I came off without any one
knowing. In fact auntie would only know that I _had_ left her for good,
when she got my telegram."
Miss St Quentin's pale face flushed a little, then the momentary colour
faded, leaving her paler than before. She sat down, and motioned to her
sister to do the same.
"I am very sorry, very, very sorry to hear this," she said, nerving
herself to speak. "Ella, I am afraid you have done very wrong, and
foolishly. It is not using Mrs Robertson well after all her care of
you--replacing a mother to you and giving you a home all these years.
And--it is not a good beginning of your future life with us, to have
done what we--what papa cannot approve of."
Ella half rose from the chair on which she had only that moment seated
herself. Her eyes sparkled ominously, her face flushed too, but after a
different fashion from Madelene's.
"I don't know anything about your not approving, and as for papa--well
at least he can tell me himself what he thinks. But as for Aunt
Phillis--I am sorry if I have grieved her. I would not have done so if
I could have helped it, but I don't see that I could. It isn't my fault
that she is going to marry a vulgar, purse-proud old snob, who had
already begun to cast up to me, yes, actually to cast up to _me_, the
daughter of Colonel St Quentin of Coombesthorpe, what his wife-to-be had
done for me and spent on me as if I were a charity-child! And that
touches on the point of the whole. I am grateful to poor auntie for all
her love and care," and here the young, excited voice quivered a little,
"but I don't see that I need to be grateful to her for what you may call
substantial things--she didn't _need_ to give me a home, as you say, or
to spend her money on me--and a good deal of what was spent was my own
money, or at least papa's, which is the same thing; she has told me so
herself. I had my own home, just as you and Ermine have--I am papa's
daughter just as much as you two are, even though we hadn't the same
mother. Do you think now--in the name of common-sense--do you see that
I should be grateful for being taken away from my own proper home, such
a home as _this_--for no reason at all that I can see except that auntie
herself wished it."
Madelene's face looked unspeakably pained.
"It was your own mother's wish," she said, in a low voice.
"So I have been told--but--do you think dead people's wishes should be
allowed to affect the welfare of the living to such an extent?" asked
the child in her sharp downright fashion. "For I don't. Still that's
not the point--it was done and we'll take it for granted it was done for
the best. But now it was coming to an end--old Burton wasn't going to
have any trouble about me--he's never been asked and never will be to
spend a penny upon me, except once when he paid a fly for me and
quarrelled with the driver, and on my last birthday when he gave me a
_very_ shabby prayer-book--sham ivory backs, you know, the kind that
splits off--and it was auntie's own doing, so I _don't_ see that I could
have been expected to put up with his rudeness."
"Had you done anything to irritate him?" asked Madelene.
Ella opened her eyes in surprise.
"Oh dear, yes," she said, "heaps of things. I don't suppose I ever did
anything but irritate him. My very existence, at least my presence, in
auntie's household irritated him. I understand it all now," she went
on, speaking more and more naturally with the interest of the subject.
"Don't you see he didn't know anything about us when he first made
auntie's acquaintance and began to think she'd just suit him for a wife,
and he thought I was a homeless orphan, a poor dependent, and that he'd
have to take me too. It was rather irritating, I'll allow," she
continued, smiling to herself a little, "for he saw we'd never get on,
and if he'd only been a little nicer when he found I wasn't in his way,
after all, we might have `parted friendly,' as servants say. But he was
thoroughly put out by me--I _couldn't_ help trying to annoy him. And
last night it came to a sort of crisis--he said I was impertinent and
other things he had no business to say to papa's daughter, who is no
relation of _his_, and at last he told auntie, poor auntie, that she
must choose between him and me."
"And what did Mrs Robertson say?" asked Madelene.
"She didn't say much. Indeed I didn't give her any opportunity. She
had a headache this morning, no wonder, and didn't come down. So I just
packed up a few things and told the servants to say I'd gone out, and I
went to the railway and--came off here. _Naturally_ I came here," she
repeated, her tone acquiring again a shade of defiance, in reality the
veil of some unacknowledged misgiving.
Madelene did not at once reply. She sat there, her eyes gazing out of
the window before her, in what Ella thought a very aggravating way.
"Do you not agree with me?" the younger sister asked after a moment's
silence. Shyness was unknown to Ella, as were hesitation and patience
when she was much concerned about anything.
Madelene turned round and looked at her.
"She's angry," thought Ella. "It is not any other feeling that makes
her look like that." And she kept her own bright eyes fixed upon her
sister, which did not add to Miss St Quentin's composure.
"Of course if you were obliged to go _anywhere_ in this--this strange
sort of way, you did right to come here," said Madelene quietly. "But
that is not the question at all. Were you right to leave your aunt's
house as you have done? That is the thing."
"Yes," said Ella coolly, "under the circumstances I think I was quite
right."
"Without consulting papa, without talking it over with Mrs Robertson,
without--without," Miss St Quentin went on, a sudden sensation of
something very like temper nerving her to say it--"without in the least
considering our--Ermine's and my--convenience?"
Ella gazed at her in unfeigned surprise, for a moment or two she was too
astonished to feel indignant.
"I don't understand you," she said. "Is it usual for sisters to be upon
such terms? Is a daughter expected to beg and apologise like a
stranger, before getting leave to come home--home where she has a right
to be, and from which she was banished without her wishes being
consulted in the least?"
"You were a baby," said Madelene. "You could not have been consulted.
And--well the thing was done and this has _not_ been your home, and it
is no use talking in that exaggerated, theatrical sort of way, Ella. I
shall do my best, my very best," and here there was a little tremor in
her voice, "to make you happy and content with us, and so I know will
Ermine, but I can't say that in what you have done to-day I think you
have acted wisely, or--or rightly. What papa will say about it I don't
know. I--I did not mean to put forward any inconvenience to myself, or
ourselves, in any prominent way."
She had already regretted the allusion to her sister and herself that
she had made. It was, she felt, both unwise and inconsistent with the
resolution she had come to.
Ella did not answer.
"Will you come out for a little?" Madelene went on. "We have been
having tea--Ermine and I and--and our cousin--on the lawn. You would
like a cup of tea, would you not? I am afraid your room will not be
ready yet. We have been making some changes, and the rooms we intend
for you are to be papered and painted next week. In the meantime we
must consider how best to arrange."
"I am sorry to give you so much trouble," said Ella coldly. "I should
have thought--it surely cannot be difficult for the third daughter to
have a room just as you and Ermine have. But of course you are right--I
_am_ a stranger, and it is no good pretending I am not."
"That was not what I meant at all," said Madelene. But again Ella made
no reply.
"I must take care what I say," she was thinking to herself, "or I shall
be called `exaggerated' and `theatrical,' again."
Madelene opened the window and stepped out. "Shall we go this way?" she
said. "It is nearer than round by the front door."
Ella followed her.
"I am to be a younger sister when it comes to questions of precedence
and that kind of thing, it appears," she thought. "But a stranger when
it suits the rest of the family to consider me so."
There was something soothing however to her impressionable feelings in
the beauty all around her; it was a really exquisite evening and the
girl was quick to respond to all such influences.
"How lovely!" she said impulsively.
Madelene turned. There was a smile on her face, almost the first Ella
had seen there; the quiet, somewhat impassive countenance seemed
transfigured.
"Yes," she said, "it _is_ lovely. I am glad for you to see it again for
the first time on a day like this, though to us, and I think you will
agree with us when you have lived here long enough, Coombesthorpe has a
charm of its own in every season."
Ella opened her lips to reply, but before she had time to do so, she
caught sight of a figure hastening towards them over the lawn.
"Oh," said Madelene, "here is Ermine. Yes! Ermie," she called out,
before the new-comer was quite close to them, "it is she--it is really
Ella."