Ella spent the afternoon of her sisters' departure in praiseworthy
fashion. She acted up that is to say to the _role_, she had chosen to
adopt. She prepared her lessons perfectly, she practised the most
uninteresting of her piano exercises for an hour and a half; then she
went up to her own room and looked out her oldest and shabbiest clothes,
to see if she could not find anything in want of repair among them. It
was not easy to do so. Stevens, who was an excellent needlewoman, kept
Ella's things by Madelene's directions in perfect order, and it took
some hunting on the girl's part, before she succeeded in finding a
stocking or two with incipient holes, or a skirt which looked as if it
would not be the worse for a new braid round the edge.
On these she set to work, huddling herself up in shawl, for it was very
cold, and sitting on the straightest-backed and hardest chair in her
room.
"I wish they would give me an allowance for my clothes, however small,"
she said to herself. "I could save out of it, I am sure, for I could
dress much more plainly than I do even, which would certainly not
distress my sisters. And I would have a right to what I saved in that
way, surely. Every child can claim food and clothing from its parents
till it is of age," and she smiled bitterly. "Perhaps if I can make
Madelene see that it would cost less to give me a small allowance, I may
persuade her to make papa agree to it."
Just then her meditations were interrupted by a knock at the door, and
old Hester, the head housemaid, who had been deputed by Madelene to take
care of Ella, so far as her material comforts were concerned, came in.
"Miss Ella," she exclaimed, "whatever are you about? Sitting up here
without a fire when it's as cold as cold. Wouldn't the Colonel be in a
taking if he knew! You could have had a fire lighted if you'd only said
the word. And there's the library, and the little drawing-room as
bright and cheery as can be, at your service."
"I am busy working, thank you, Hester," Ella replied primly. "I could
not take work like this down stairs."
She did not resent Hester's reproaches, for the housemaid was an old
servant, who had been at Coombesthorpe during the life of Ella's mother,
and was much attached to her.
Hester looked at what Ella was sewing.
"Darning stockings," she exclaimed. "Now upon my word, I do call that
too bad of Stevens. Not but what it's a very right thing for a young
lady, be she who she may, to know how to turn her hand to darning a
stocking, but you've your studies, my dear, and other things to see to,
and--"
"It's--it's not exactly Stevens' fault, Hester," said Ella, too honest
to leave Hester under such a mistaken idea. "She does mend all my
things; it is not often she overlooks a hole. But I prefer to do more
myself, and I want to accustom myself to going without fires and little
things like that, for there is no knowing how I may be placed some day,
and I want to be independent."
Hester looked at her in surprise and perplexity. She knew that the
second wife had been portionless, and she knew too, though vaguely, that
Coombesthorpe and the bulk of the family revenues had come from the
mother of the two elder daughters--but she could not believe that they
would ever allow their half-sister to realise this practically in any
painful way.
"We none of us know how we may be placed any day for that matter, Miss
Ella, my dear. The best of us is in God's hands and subject to His
will, and even if it seems hard we must bow to it. But--you've a good
home and kind friends--it's a sort of tempting of Providence like, for
you to speak that way."
She looked at Ella half-inquiringly as she spoke; she wondered how much
"the child," as she mentally called her, knew. "They might have left
her in her innocence a bit," she said to herself half indignantly. On
her side Ella was struck by Hester's tone.
"She speaks almost as she might if I had been an _adopted_ child, with
no real right here," she said to herself. "It just shows--"
"And of course, Hester," she replied haughtily, "it must _seem_ as if I
were one of the last women in the world ever to have to think of
managing for myself or earning my own livelihood, but there are things
that it is better not to explain. I may have my own feelings."
"To be sure," Hester replied, more and more perplexed. "But any way,
Miss Ella, you'll let me light a fire for you. It'd be far from
independent if you was to fall ill of a bad cold, and your papa ill
already, and just for this day or two with no one but you to see to
him."
Ella started.
"I forgot," she said. "I forgot about papa. Perhaps I had better go
and see if there is anything I can do for him."
She was not exactly to blame for this thoughtlessness. Since her coming
to Coombesthorpe her relations with her father had continued uncertain
and constrained, and Madelene had judged it better to trust to time to
bring about a better state of things, for the least effort on her part
to force this would have been at once perceived and resented by Colonel
St Quentin.
"Don't tell that child to look after me while you and Ermine are away,"
had been almost his last words to Madelene before she left. "If she
thinks of it of herself that would be a different matter."
And in ordinary circumstances the chances are that Ella would not have
gone near her father. But Hester's words reminded her that he was ill,
and her conscience struck her.
"I'll go to papa now," she said. "He is in the study, isn't he, Hester?
He was to get up after luncheon."
"Yes, Miss Ella, you'll find him in the study. But maybe he's asleep.
Tap gently at the door."
Ella's tap revealed the fact that her father was awake.
"Come in," he said, his voice sounding rather sharp and irritable.
"Cross old thing," muttered Ella to herself, "I wish I hadn't come down.
Can I do anything for you, papa?" she asked aloud as she entered the
room. "Would you like me to read to you, perhaps?"
Colonel St Quentin was lying on a couch by the fire; his books and
newspapers on a little stand beside him. He glanced at Ella
hesitatingly. He was feeling very lost and dull without his two elder
daughters, and his eyes were tired.
"No, thank you," he began to say, but his tone was not very decided.
"I--I think I read aloud pretty well," the girl went on. Her quick
impressionable nature was touched by her father's looks: he was very
pale, and she knew that he had suffered a good deal. "How selfish of
them to have left him," was her next reflection. "Do let me try, papa,"
she went on more eagerly and naturally, "it must be rather dull for you
alone, when you can't get about."
"And for you too, my dear," he said kindly. "What have you been doing
with yourself all day--since your sisters left, I mean?"
Ella grew rather red.
"Oh," she replied, "I've been practising, and doing my French and
German--much the same as usual. And then I've been sewing."
It did not sound very lively. The "much as usual," struck Colonel St
Quentin too, and again he glanced at his youngest daughter. It struck
him that she looked paler and thinner than formerly, and less bright and
spirited. The fact was that Ella was blue and pinched with having sat
in her fireless room for more than an hour, but this her father did not
know. He moved uneasily on his couch.
"You can read to me if you like," he said. "I think I have exhausted
the papers, but this book is rather interesting. Madelene is reading it
to me but she can finish it to herself afterwards."
Half pleased and half frightened, Ella took the book. She had done
herself scant justice in saying she read "pretty well." She read very
well indeed, and at the end of three-quarters of an hour Colonel St
Quentin looked up with real gratification.
"Thank you, my dear," he said. "That is a good place to stop at, I
think. I have enjoyed it very much. Now I shall rest a while, for I
hope to be able to come in to dine with you. It would be too dreary for
you all alone."
Ella did not reply, but her father saw that her face flushed again a
little.
"You are not looking as well as I should like to see you," he said. "Do
you not feel well?"
"Oh, yes," said Ella, touched in spite of herself. "I'm quite well,
thank you, papa, but," and here, in spite of all her heroic resolutions
to endure in silence, the girl's impulsive nature burst out--"it is
rather dull. I have tried to do as you wished about my lessons and
practising, and I like them, but it is rather dull," she repeated.
"While your sisters are away, you mean? Just this day or two?" asked
Colonel St Quentin.
"No, I meant altogether," answered Ella frankly. "I--I've been
accustomed to more variety I suppose, and at auntie's I wasn't
considered a mere child. I think it's that that makes it seem so dull."
Colonel St Quentin made no reply for a moment or two. He sat, leaning
his head on his hand, considering deeply. It seemed as if what Madelene
had tried to warn him of had come true. Had he made a mistake in the
tone he had insisted upon being taken with Ella? He had never liked her
so well as to-day, nor felt so drawn to her, and quite unreasonably he
became almost inclined to blame his elder daughters for not "managing
better."
"I have given in to their wish that no formal explanations should be
made to her, not," they said, "till they had gained her affection and
confidence."
"I certainly don't think they are much nearer doing so than they were
the day she came. It is an uncomfortable state of things altogether,"
he said to himself.
Suddenly he looked up.
"How old _are_ you, Ella?" he said abruptly.
"Nearly eighteen, papa. I shall be eighteen in two months," she replied
promptly.
"That is seventeen and ten months," Colonel St Quentin replied dryly.
"Well now, my dear, you can run away. I think I shall manage to get
into the dining-room by dinner-time."
Ella went off.
"`Run away,' indeed," she repeated to herself, "as if I were about
three! I wonder he doesn't ring for my nurse to fetch me."
Still, on the whole, the interview with her father had raised her
spirits.
"I _almost_ think," reflected Ella, "I _almost_ think that if it were
all to come over again, papa would tell Madelene I _was_ to go. Nobody
scarcely but would pity me, left here alone, and it would have seemed so
much more natural for me to go than either of the others, who have had
years and years of it. I'm quite sure, when I'm as old as Madelene I
shan't care about dances and things like that, _especially_ if I'm an
old maid."
The evening passed tranquilly. Colonel St Quentin dined with his
daughter, Ella greatly enjoying her seat at the head of the table. And
after dinner they spent an hour together in the drawing-room, when Ella
very prettily volunteered to play, for her father to judge of her
improvement.
Colonel St Quentin was pleased and touched.
"You must have practised diligently, my dear," he said. "You find it
less tedious now, do you not?"
Ella hesitated.
"I shall never care much for playing," she said. "But I am glad you
think I have improved. May I sing to you a little?"
"Certainly--you are sure you have no cold? You must never sing if you
have the least cold," said her father anxiously.
But Ella's clear notes set all such fears at defiance. She chose two or
three of the songs which she knew to have been her mother's favourites,
and she felt that she sang them beautifully. Her father said little,
but she knew that she had pleased him.
A few minutes' silence followed; then Colonel St Quentin said he felt
tired and would go to his own room.
"I hope to be quite well to-morrow, or nearly so at least," he said as
he kissed Ella. "I really begin to hope I may escape easily this time,"
for the poor man was from time to time a martyr to gout. "I am only
sorry to have to leave you so early, but it gives me a better chance for
to-morrow. Good-night, my dear."
"Good-night, papa," said Ella dutifully. "It isn't very early. I
generally go to bed at ten, and it is half-past nine," this with the
tiniest of tiny sighs. "What will they be doing to-night, papa? Do you
think they will be dancing, just the party in the house, to try the
floor, perhaps?"
"I can't say, I'm sure. No, no, I should scarcely think so," replied
Colonel St Quentin, half consolingly, half irritably. Ella's small
shaft had gone home.
And Ella went up to her own room, and as she settled herself comfortably
in the old nursery easy chair before the now brightly blazing fire, a
"Mudie book," which Madelene had thoughtfully provided for her in her
hand, she did not look altogether an object of pity.
"Yes," she said to herself, "I really do think if it came over again,
papa would make them take me. I'll try again to-morrow to make him
understand better."
But to-morrow, alas! brought disappointment. To begin with, the weather
was atrocious. It continued bitterly cold, with the aggravation of just
falling short of frost, and by nine o'clock the rain set in again, the
cruel, pitiless winter rain, blurring the sky and the land with its grim
veil.
Ella, who had planned a brisk walk early in the morning, gazed out of
the dining-room window in despair.
"What _can_ I do all day long?" she thought, and then as her eyes fell
on the table where breakfast was waiting, she moved from it impatiently.
"They might have let me have my meals in one of the smaller rooms," she
thought. "It looks too ghastly--that table and only poor me. I wish I
had pretended to have a cold and stayed in bed."
Just then her father's servant came in with a message--a message not
calculated to raise her spirits. Colonel St Quentin was not so well,
very much less well this morning indeed. He was very sorry, the man
went on, not to be able to get up. He would send for Miss Ella later in
the day, but just now he was going to try to sleep a little.
"It's too bad," thought Ella, "just as we seemed to be getting to know
each other better! And very likely Madelene and Ermine will make out
that I've made him ill, somehow. Oh dear, I wish I hadn't quarrelled
with old Burton and then I could have asked auntie to have me on a
visit?"
She had been so diligent the day before, that this morning there was
even less than usual for her to do, and after the hour-and-a-half's
piano practising there was literally no obligation on her of any kind.
The library books were in perfect order, the flowers in the drawing-room
had been all attended to, and if not, thought Ella bitterly, what was
the use of dressing up the room for nobody to see!
The morning seemed interminable. Tired of the big, empty rooms Ella at
last went off up stairs to give herself another dose of
stocking-darning, as a preparation for the governessing which again
began to fill her imagination as the only possible escape from this
unendurable state of things.
The fire was not lighted. Hester had felt so certain that her
remonstrance of the day before would be effectual, that she had not
thought it needful to take further precautions. Hence it came about
that Ella was seated like the day before, muffled up in a shawl, which
did not prevent her looking blue and pinched, her eyes slightly reddened
by tears of sympathy with her own woes, when, in answer to her rather
startled "come in," (Ella's conscience made her cowardly of Hester) a
tap at the door was followed by an unexpected apparition.
"_Godmother_," the girl exclaimed, scarcely able to believe her eyes,
and starting to her feet as she spoke.
"Yes, godmother herself," said Lady Cheynes, coming forward. "But, my
dear child, what are you thinking of--what is everybody thinking of to
allow it?--you sitting up here in the cold on a bitter day like this?
Do you want to get ill? Why it's enough to give you a sore throat or
bronchitis or a frightful cold in your head to say the least."
"I don't feel so very cold, thank you, godmother," said Ella meekly. "I
don't catch cold easily, and I want to make myself hardy. I--I had some
little things to do up in my own room."
Lady Cheynes glanced at the stockings Ella had not had time to put out
of sight.
"Darning stockings!--hum--can't one of the maids do that for you? You
don't mean to say Madelene expects you to do this sort of thing. And--
surely--if you do want to sit up in your own room you can give orders to
have a fire lighted, can't you?"
Lady Cheynes frowned. Ella had never seen her look so stern.
"Oh--I'm sure--Hester would have lighted it if I had wanted it. And I
might have stayed down stairs only--it's very dull," she burst out
nervously. "Papa isn't any better to-day--he can't leave his room, and
down stairs it all seems so big and lonely."
Ella's voice quivered before she got to the end of the sentence; she was
so very sorry for herself. Her godmother eyed her keenly.
"When do Madelene and Ermine come home?" she asked. "This afternoon, I
suppose."
"Oh, no," said Ella. "The ball--the dance at the Belvoirs' is only this
evening. They are staying, I think, till to-morrow."
"Humph," said Lady Cheynes. "You don't care for dancing, I suppose?"
This was too much. Ella's face was a study. "_Me_" she exclaimed, "not
care for dancing. Who ever said so?"
The old lady laughed a little.
"I don't know--nobody perhaps. I was judging by circumstantial
evidence. A girl of your age, who did care for it, would have managed
by hook or by crook to get leave to go."
Ella gasped.
"Do you really think so?" she exclaimed. "Why, godmother, the question
was never raised in the least; the _possibility_ of such a thing was
never alluded to. If I had thought there was the faintest chance of it
I should have nearly gone out of my mind."
"Did you never tell your sisters how much you would have liked to go?"
asked Lady Cheynes.
"No," said Ella. "They may have guessed it, but we hardly alluded to it
at all. But oh, godmother, please don't say _now_ there might have been
any chance of my going. It is--it is more than I can bear to think of
it."
She clasped her hands together and looked up in the old lady's face, her
lovely brown eyes brimming over with tears.
Lady Cheynes said nothing. She walked to the window and stood there
looking out.
"How well I remember the view from this room," she said dreamily,
speaking as much to herself as to Ella. "This was our nursery, too. I
recollect one day my doll's falling out, between the bars, and when she
was picked up and brought to me her face was all disfigured and cracked.
Wax dolls cost a small fortune in those days. I remember thinking I
never _never_ could be happy again! Dear me--it is only a question of
proportion after all--a child's bitter sorrow is as bad to it, as what
seem more real sorrows are to older people. It seems a pity to--to
add," but here she stopped, rather abruptly.
Ella had left off crying in the interest of listening to her godmother.
She was disappointed that Lady Cheynes said no more.
"Yes?" she said insinuatingly; "what were you saying, godmother? `A
pity to add to'?"
"Never mind, child. I was thinking aloud. Now, take off that shawl and
run down to the warm library, like a sensible girl. If you must finish
darning your stockings, take one or two of them with you. There is no
one but Barnes to be shocked. I am going to see your father if he is
not asleep, and then I shall ask you to give me a scrap of luncheon. I
only came home last night, and I heard Marcus was ill and drove over at
once."
Ella obeyed. The two went down stairs together. Then in reply to Lady
Cheynes' message came one from her nephew, saying that he was awake, and
begged her to go to see him.
Ella sat alone in the library. She felt considerably less desolate and
depressed, and it certainly was more comfortable than up stairs in the
cold. She was very glad to have her godmother's company at luncheon,
anything was better than sitting alone through the meal with Barnes and
his subordinates fidgeting about. And she was by no means sorry that
the old lady should have come upon her as she had done, for however fond
she was of her grand-nieces Ella felt certain Lady Cheynes did not
approve of the present state of things.
"If she had been at home, I do believe I should have gone," thought
Ella.
Suddenly the door opened and her godmother reappeared. Her eyes looked
very bright, there was a slight flush upon her soft old cheeks and a
smile, a peculiar smile, flickered about her mouth.
"Godmother," exclaimed Ella, as she had done up stairs in her own room.
"What is it?" she went on, feeling a sort of vague excitement. "You
look as if you had something to tell me. You are smiling, so it can't
be anything wrong. What have you been talking about to papa?"
Lady Cheynes drew a chair close to Ella's, and sat down.
"Supposing I were a _fairy_ godmother, Ella, just for fun, you know,
what would you ask me to do to cheer you up a little this dreary day?"
Ella opened her eyes wide, very wide--and I almost think she opened her
mouth too.
"Godmother?" she said, while a rosy colour crept over her face, "oh,
godmother, what _do_ you mean?"