Lady Wolfer led Nell to her ladyship's own room. It was as unlike a
boudoir as it well could be; for the furniture was of the simplest kind,
and in place of the elegant trifles with which the fair sex usually
delight to surround themselves, the tables, the couch, and even the
chairs were littered with solid-looking volumes, blue books, pamphlets,
and sheets of manuscript paper.
There was a piano, it is true; but its top was loaded with handbills and
posters announcing meetings, and the dust lay thick on its lid. The
writing table was better suited to an office than a lady's "own room,"
and it was strewn with the prevailing litter.
Lady Wolfer cleared a chair by sweeping the books from it, and gently
pushed Nell into it.
"Now, you sit down for a moment while I ring for a maid to take you to
your room. Heaven only knows where it is, or in what condition you will
find it! You see, I quite forgot you were coming. Candid, isn't it? But
I'm always candid, and I begin at once with you. By the way, oughtn't
you to have come earlier--or later?"
Nell explained that she had had her breakfast at the station, and spent
an hour in the waiting room, so as not to present herself too early.
"How thoughtful of you!" said Lady Wolfer. "You don't look--you look so
young and--girlish."
"I'm not very old," remarked Nell, with a smile. "Perhaps I'm not old
enough to fill the position."
"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't throw a doubt upon your staying!" said
her ladyship quickly. "I'm so tired of old, or what I call old, people,
and I am sure you will do beautifully. For, though you are so young, you
look as if you could manage; and that is what I can't do--I mean manage
a house. I can talk--I can talk the hind leg off a donkey, as Archie
says"--she stopped, looking slightly embarrassed for a moment, and Nell
supposed that her ladyship alluded to Lord Wolfer--"but when it comes to
details, fortunately there is always somebody else."
While she had been speaking, Lady Wolfer had taken off her hat and
jacket, and flung them onto the book-and-paper-strewn couch.
"I'm just come in from a breakfast meeting to attend this one at home,"
she explained. "And I've got to go out again directly to a
committee--the Employment of Women Bureau. Have you ever heard of it?"
Nell shook her head.
"No? I'm half inclined to envy you. No, I'm not! If it weren't for my
work, I should go out of my mind."
She put her hand to her head, and for an instant a wearied, melancholy
expression flitted across her face, as if some hidden trouble had reared
its head and grinned at her.
The door opened, and a maid appeared.
"Burden, this is Miss Lorton," said Lady Wolfer. "Is her room ready?"
Burden looked exceedingly doubtful.
"I expected it! Please have it got ready at once; and send some wine and
biscuits, please."
A footman brought them, and Lady Wolfer poured some wine out for Nell.
"Oh, but you must! Heaven knows when we shall have lunch; they'll very
likely consider that scramble downstairs as sufficient. But you'll see
to all that for the future, won't you?"
"You must tell me, Lady Wolfer----" began Nell, but her ladyship, with a
grimace, stopped her.
"My dear girl, I can't tell you anything, excepting that Lord Wolfer
takes his breakfast early--not later than nine--is seldom in to lunch,
and still less frequently at home to dinner; but when he does dine here,
he dines at eight. The cook, who is, I believe, rather a decent sort of
man, knows what Lord Wolfer likes, and you can't go very far wrong, I
fancy, if you have a joint of roast beef or a leg of mutton on the menu;
the rest doesn't matter."
Nell began to feel daunted. There was just a little too much carte blanche
about it.
"And as to the other servants, why, there's an old person named
Hubbard--Old Mother Hubbard, I call her--who is supposed to look after
them."
Nell could not help smiling.
"I don't quite see where I come in," she remarked.
Lady Wolfer laughed.
"Oh, don't you?" she replied, as if she had been explaining most fully.
"You are the figurehead, the goddess of the machine. You will see that
all goes right, and give Lord Wolfer his breakfast, and preside at the
dinner when I'm out on the stump----"
"On the what?" asked the mystified Nell.
"Out speaking at meetings or serving on committees," said Lady Wolfer.
"And you will arrange about the dinner parties and--and all that kind of
thing, you know--the stupid things that I'm expected to do, but which I
really haven't any time for. Do you quite see now?"
"I will do all I can," Nell said, and she laughed.
Lady Wolfer glanced at her rather curiously.
"How pretty you look when you laugh--quite different. You struck me as
looking rather sad and sobered when I first saw you; but when you
laugh----I should advise you not to laugh when you first see Lord
Wolfer, or he'll think you too absurdly young and girlish for the post.
Do take your hat and jacket off! It will be some time before your room
is ready. Let me help you."
Nell got her outdoor things off quickly, and Lady Wolfer looked at her
still more approvingly.
"You really are quite a child, my dear!" she said, and for some reason
or other she sighed. "Why didn't Wolfer tell me about you before, I
wonder? I wish he had; I should like to have had you come and stay with
us. But he is so reserved----" she sighed again. "But never mind; you
are here now. And how tired you must be! You are looking a little pale
now. Why don't you drink that wine? When you are rested--quite
rested--to-night, after dinner, perhaps--let me see, am I going
anywhere?"
She consulted a large engagement slate of white porcelain which stood
erect on the crowded table.
"Hem! yes, I have to speak at the Sisters of State Society. Never mind;
to-morrow, after lunch--if I'm at home. Yes, I can see that we shall be
great friends, and that is what I wanted. The others--I mean your
predecessors--were such terrible old frumps, without any idea above
cutlets and clean sheets, that they only bored and worried me; but you
will be quite different----"
"Perhaps I shan't be able to rise to the cutlet and clean sheets,"
suggested Nell diffidently; but her ladyship laughed.
"Oh, yes, you will!" she declared. "I am an excellent judge of
character--it's one of my qualifications for the work I'm engaged
in--and I can see that you are an admirable manager. I suppose you ran
the house at home?"
Nell smiled.
"'Home' meant quite a small cottage," she said. "This is a mansion."
"Same thing," commented Lady Wolfer encouragingly. "It's all a question
of system. I haven't any; you have; therefore you'll succeed where I
fail. You've got that quiet, mousy little way which indicates strength
of character----What beautiful hair you have, by the way."
Nell blushed.
"It's no prettier than yours. Why do you wear it so short, Lady Wolfer?"
Lady Wolfer laughed--just a little wearily, so it struck Nell.
"Why? Oh, I don't know. All we advanced women get our hair cut. I
imagine we have a right to do so, and that by going cropped we assert
that right."
"I see," said Nell. "But isn't it--a pity?"
Lady Wolfer looked at her curiously, with an expression which Nell did
not understand at that early period of their acquaintance.
"Does it matter?" she said. "We women have been dolls too long----"
"But there are short-haired dolls," said Nell, with her native
shrewdness.
Lady Wolfer did not seem offended.
"That was rather smart," she remarked. "Take care, or we shall have you
on a public platform before long, my dear."
"Oh, I hope not! I mean--I beg your pardon."
"Not at all," said Lady Wolfer, with no abatement of her good humor.
"There's no danger--fortunately, for you. No, my dear; I can see that
yours is a very different metier. Your role is the 'angel of the
house'--to be loved and loving." She turned to the desk as she spoke,
and did not see the flush that rose for an instant to poor Nell's pale
face. "You will always be the woman in chains--the slave of man. I hope
the chain will be of roses, my dear."
She stifled a sigh as she finished the pretty little sentence; and Nell,
watching her, saw the expression of unrest and melancholy on her
ladyship's face again. Nell wondered what was the matter, and was still
wondering when there came a knock at the door.
"Come in!" said Lady Wolfer; and a gentleman entered. He was young and
good-looking, his tall figure clad in the regulation frock coat, in the
buttonhole of which was a delicate orchid. The hat which he carried in his
lavender-gloved hands shone as if it had just left the manufacturer's
hands, and his small feet were clad in the brightest of patent-leather
boots.
"I beg pardon!" he began, in the slow drawl which fashion had of late
ordained. "Didn't know you weren't alone. Sorry!"
At the sound of his voice a faint flush rose to Lady Wolfer's rather
pretty face.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said, nodding familiarly. "I thought it was
Burden."
"I've come to take you to the meetin'," said the beautifully dressed
gentleman, clipping off his "g" in the manner approved by the smart set.
"Thanks. This is Sir Archie Walbrooke," said Lady Wolfer, introducing
him; "and this is my cousin--we are cousins, you know, my dear--Miss
Lorton."
Sir Archie bowed, and stared meditatively at Nell.
"Goin' to the meetin', too?" he asked. "Hope so, I'm sure. Great fun,
these meetin's."
"No; oh, no," explained Lady Wolfer. "Miss Lorton has come to set us all
straight, and keep us so, I hope."
"Trust I'm included; want it," said Sir Archie--"want it badly."
"Oh, you're incorrigible--incorrigibly stupid, I mean," retorted Lady
Wolfer. "She has come to take care of us--Wolfer and me."
"Run the show--I see," he said gravely. "If it isn't a rude question, I
should like to ask: 'Who's goin' to take care of Miss Norton?'"
"Lorton, Lorton," corrected Lady Wolfer. "And it is a rude question, to
which you won't get an answer. Go downstairs and smoke a cigarette. I'll
be ready presently."
"All right--delighted; but time's up, you know," he said; and, with a
bow to Nell, sauntered out.
Lady Wolfer sat down at the desk, and wrote rapidly for a moment; then
she said casually--a little too casually, it would have struck a woman
of the world:
"That is a great friend of mine--and Lord Wolfer's," she added quickly.
"He is an awfully nice man, and--and very useful. He is a kind of tame
cat here, runs in and out as he likes, and plays escort when I'm
slumming or attending meetings. I hope you'll like him. He's not such a
fool as he looks, and though he does clip his 'Gees'--sounds like a
pun, doesn't it?--and cuts his sentences short, he--he is very
good-natured and obliging."
"He seems so," said Nell, a little puzzled to understand why Lady Wolfer
did not take her maid or one of her lady friends to her meetings,
instead of being taken by Sir Archie Walbrooke.
Burden knocked at the door at this moment, and announced that Miss
Lorton's room was ready.
"Very well," said Lady Wolfer, as if relieved. "Be sure that Miss Lorton
has everything she wants. And, oh, Burden, please understand that all
Miss Lorton's orders are to be obeyed--I mean, obeyed without hesitation
or question. She is absolutely in command here."
"Yes, my lady," responded Burden respectfully.
Nell followed her to a corridor on the next floor, and into a large and
handsomely furnished room with which the bedchamber communicated. Her
box had been unpacked, and its modest contents arranged in a wardrobe
and drawers. The rooms looked as if they had been got ready hurriedly,
but they were handsome and richly furnished, and Burden apologized for
their lack of homeliness.
"I'll get some flowers, miss," she said. "There's a big box of them
comes up from the country place every morning. And if you think it's
cold, I'll light a fire----"
"Oh, no, no," said Nell, as brightly as she could.
"And can I help you change, miss? I'm your maid, if you please."
Nell shook her head, still smiling.
"It is all very nice," she said, "and I shall only be a few minutes. I
should like to go over the house," she asked, rather timidly.
"If you ring that bell, miss, I will come at once; and I will tell Mrs.
Hubbard that you want to go round with her," said Burden.
Nell, after the ardently desired "wash and change," sat down by the
window and looked onto the grimy London square, whose trees and grass
were burned brown, and tried to convince herself that she really was
Nell of Shorne Mills; that she really was housekeeper to Lady Wolfer;
that this really was life, and not a fantastic dream. But it was
difficult to do so. Back her mind would travel to Shorne Mills and
to--to Drake.
What had he done and said when he had got her letter? Ah, well, he would
understand; yes, he would understand, and would take it as final. He
would go away, to Lady Luce. They would be married. She would not think.
Providence had sent her work--work to divert her mind and save her from
despair, and she would not look back, would not dwell upon the past.
But how her tender, loving heart ached and throbbed with the memory of
those happy weeks, with the never-to-be-forgotten kisses of the man who
had won her heart, whose face and voice haunted her every moment of the
day.
She sprang to her feet and rang the bell, and Burden came in and led her
along the broad corridors and across the main hall. A middle-aged woman
in a stiff, black dress stood waiting for her, and gave her a stately
bow.
"I am Mrs. Hubbard, miss," she began, rather searchingly; but Nell's
sweet face and smile melted her at once. "I shall be pleased to take you
hover, miss," she commenced, a little less grumpily. "It's a big 'ouse,
and not a heasy one to manage; but per'aps, your ladyship--I beg your
pardon, miss--per'aps you have been used to a big 'ouse?"
"No, indeed," said Nell, whose native shrewdness told her that this was
a woman who had to be conciliated. "I have never lived in anything
bigger than a cottage, and I shall need all your help, Mrs. Hubbard. You
will have to be very patient with me."
Mrs. Hubbard had been prepared to fight, or, at any rate, to display a
haughty stand-offishness; but she went down before the sweet face and
girlish voice, and, if the truth must be told, by a certain something in
Nell's eyes, which shone there when the _Annie Laurie_ was beating
before a contrary wind; a directness of gaze which indicated a spirit,
not easily quelled, lurking behind the dark-gray eyes.
Mrs. Hubbard instantly realized that this beautiful girl, young as she
was, was compounded of different material to the "old frumps" who had
preceded her, and whom Mrs. Hubbard had easily vanquished, and the old
lady changed her tactics with rather startling promptitude.
She conducted Nell over the large place; the footmen and maidservants
stood up, questionably at first, but respectfully in the end, and Nell
tried to grasp the extent of the responsibility which she had
undertaken.
"I think it all rests with you, Mrs. Hubbard," she said, as she sat in the
housekeeper's room, Mrs. Hubbard standing respectfully--respectfully!--in
front of her. "I am too young and inexperienced to run so large a place
without your help; but I think--I only think--I can do it, if you stand by
me. Will you do so? Yes, I think you will."
She looked up with the smile which had made slaves of all Shorne Mills
in her gray eyes, and Mrs. Hubbard was utterly vanquished.
"If you come to me every morning after breakfast, we can talk matters
over," said Nell, "and can decide between us what is to be done, and
what not to be done; but you must never forget, please, that I know so
little about anything."
And Mrs. Hubbard went back to the servants' hall with her mouth and her
eyes set firmly.
"Now, mind," she said, with an imperial dignity to the curious and
expectant servants, "there's to be no more goings-on from this time
forth. No more coming in by the area gate after eleven, and no more
parties in the servants' 'all when 'is lordship and ladyship is dining
out! An' I'll 'ave the bells answered the first time, an' no waitin'
till they're rung twice or three times, mind! An' if you want to see the
policeman, Mary Jane, you can slip out for five minutes; he don't come
into the house, you understan'!"
Little dreaming of the domestic reformation she had brought about, Nell
went back to her room, and resumed her endeavor to persuade herself that
she was not moving in a dream.
Presently a gong sounded, and, guessing that it rang for lunch, she went
down to the smaller dining room, in which Mrs. Hubbard had told her that
meal was usually served.
The butler and footman were in attendance, but, though covers were laid
for three, there was no one present but herself.
She looked round the richly decorated and handsomely furnished room, and
felt rather lonely and helpless, but it occurred to her that either Lord
or Lady Wolfer might come in, and that it was her place to be there; so
she sat at the head of the table--where the butler had drawn back her
chair for her--and began her lunch.
By this time, she was feeling hungry--for she had eaten nothing since
her very early breakfast, excepting the biscuit in Lady Wolfer's room;
and she was in the middle of her soup when the footman went in a
leisurely manner to the door and opened it, and a gentleman entered.
Now, Nell, from Mrs. Lorton's talk of him, and his letter, had imagined
Lord Wolfer as, if not an old man, one well past middle age; she was,
therefore, rather startled when she saw that the gentleman who went
straight to the bottom of the table, thus proving himself to be Lord
Wolfer, was anything but old; indeed, still young, as age is reckoned
nowadays. He was tall and thin, and very grave in manner and expression;
and Nell, as with a blush she rose and eyed him, noticed, even in that
first moment, that--strangely enough--his rather handsome face wore the
half-sad, half-wistful expression which she had seen cross Lady Wolfer's
pretty countenance.
He had not noticed her until he had gained his chair, then he started
slightly, as if aroused from a reverie, and came toward her.
"You are--er--Miss Lorton?" he said, with an intense gravity in his
voice and eyes.
"Yes," said Nell. "And you are--Lord Wolfer?"
"Your cousin--I am afraid very much removed," he responded. "When did
you arrive? I hope you had a pleasant journey?" he replied and asked as
he sank into his seat.
Nell made a suitable response.
"You will take some soup? Oh, you have some. Yes; it was a long journey.
Have you seen my wife--Lady Wolfer? Yes? I'm glad she was in. She is
very seldom at home." He did not sigh, by any means; but his voice had a
chilled and melancholy note in it. "And Sophia--Mrs. Lorton--is, I hope,
well? It is very kind of you to put in an appearance so soon. I'm afraid
you ought to be in bed and resting."
Nell laughed softly, and he looked as if the laugh had startled him, and
surveyed her through his eyeglasses with a more lengthened and critical
scrutiny than he had hitherto ventured on. The fresh, young loveliness
of her face, the light that shone in her dark-gray eyes, seemed to
impress him, and he was almost guilty of a common stare; but he
remembered himself in time, and bent over his plate.
"I am not at all tired, Lord Wolfer," said Nell. "I am not used to
traveling--this is the first long journey I have made--but I am
accustomed to riding"--she winced inwardly as she thought of the rides
with Drake--"and--and--sailing and yachting."
The earl nodded.
"Put the--the cutlets, or whatever they are, on the table, and you may
go," he said to the butler; and when the servants had left the room he
said to Nell:
"I seldom lunch at home, and I like to do so alone."
Nell smiled. Grave as he looked, she did not feel at all afraid of him.
"I did not mean that," he said, with an answering smile. "I meant
without the servants. And so you have come to our assistance, Miss
Lorton?"
"I don't know whether that is the way to put it," said Nell, with her
usual frankness. "I'm afraid that I shall be of very little use; but I
am going to try."
His lordship nodded.
"And I think you will succeed--let me hand you a cutlet. Our great
trouble has been--may I trouble you for the salt? Perhaps you would
prefer to have the servants in the room?"
"No, oh, no!" replied Nell, quickly, as, reaching to her fullest extent,
she pushed the salt. "It is much nicer without them--I mean that I am
not used to so many servants."
He inclined his head.
"As you please," he said courteously. "Our great trouble has been that
my wife's public duties have prevented her from taking any share in
domestic matters. She is--er--I presume she is not coming in to lunch?"
he asked, with a quick glance at Nell, and an instant return to his
plate.
"N-o; I think not," replied Nell. "Lady Wolfer has gone to a
meeting--I'm sorry to say I forget what it is. Some--some Sisters--no, I
can't remember. It is very stupid of me," she wound up penitently.
"It is of no consequence. Lady Wolfer is greatly in request; there is no
movement of the advanced kind with which she is not connected," said his
lordship; and though he spoke in a tone of pride, he wound up with a
stifled sigh which reminded Nell of the sigh which she had heard Lady
Wolfer breathe. "She is--er--an admirable speaker," he continued, "quite
admirable. Did she go alone?"
The question came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and apparently so
irrelevantly, that Nell was almost startled.
"No," she replied. "A gentleman went with her."
The earl laid down his knife and fork suddenly, then picked them up
again, and made a great fuss with the remains of his cutlet.
"Oh! Did you--er--did you hear who it was?"
"Yes," said Nell, "but I can't remember his name. It has quite gone for
the moment;" and she knit her brows.
The earl stared straight at the epergne.
"Was it--Sir Archie Walbrooke?" he said, in a dry, expressionless voice.
Nell laughed, as one laughs at the sudden return of a treacherous
memory.
"Of course, yes! That was the name," she said brightly. "How stupid of
me!"
But Lord Wolfer did not laugh. He bent still lower over the cutlet, and
worried the bone a minute or two in silence; then he consulted his
watch, and rose.
"I beg you will excuse me," he said. "I have an appointment--a
meeting----"
He mumbled himself out of the room, and Nell sat and gazed at the door
which had closed behind him.
She was too innocent, too ignorant of the world, to have even the
faintest idea of the trouble which lowered over the house which she had
entered; but a vague dread of something intangible took possession of
her.