Lord Walderhurst coming toward her. He looked exceedingly clean in his
fresh light knickerbocker suit, which was rather becoming to him. A
gardener was walking behind, evidently gathering roses for him, which he
put into a shallow basket. Emily Fox-Seton cast about for a suitable
remark to make, if he should chance to stop to speak to her. She
consoled herself with the thought that there were things she really
_wanted_ to say about the beauty of the gardens, and certain clumps of
heavenly-blue campanulas, which seemed made a feature of in the
herbaceous borders. It was so much nicer not to be obliged to invent
observations. But his lordship did not stop to speak to her. He was
interested in his roses (which, she heard afterward, were to be sent to
town to an invalid friend), and as she drew near, he turned aside to
speak to the gardener. As Emily was just passing him when he turned
again, and as the passage was narrow, he found himself unexpectedly
gazing into her face.
Being nearly the same height, they were so near each other that it was a
little awkward.
"I beg pardon," he said, stepping back a pace and lifting his straw hat.
But he did not say, "I beg pardon, Miss Fox-Seton," and Emily knew that
he had not recognised her again, and had not the remotest idea who she
was or where she came from.
She passed him with her agreeable, friendly smile, and there returned to
her mind Lady Maria's remarks of the night before.
"To think that if he married poor pretty Lady Agatha she will be
mistress of three places quite as beautiful as Mallowe, three lovely old
houses, three sets of gardens, with thousands of flowers to bloom every
year! How nice it would be for her! She is so lovely that it seems as if
he _must_ fall in love with her. Then, if she was Marchioness of
Walderhurst, she could do so much for her sisters."
After breakfast she spent her morning in doing a hundred things for Lady
Maria. She wrote notes for her, and helped her to arrange plans for the
entertainment of her visitors. She was very busy and happy. In the
afternoon she drove across the moor to Maundell, a village on the other
side of it. She really went on an errand for her hostess, but as she was
fond of driving and the brown cob was a beauty, she felt that she was
being given a treat on a level with the rest of her ladyship's generous
hospitalities. She drove well, and her straight, strong figure showed to
much advantage on the high seat of the cart. Lord Walderhurst himself
commented on her as he saw her drive away.
"She has a nice, flat, straight back, that woman," he remarked to Lady
Maria. "What is her name? One never hears people's names when one is
introduced."
"Her name is Emily Fox-Seton," her ladyship answered, "and she's a nice
creature."
"That would be an inhuman thing to say to most men, but if one is a
thoroughly selfish being, and has some knowledge of one's own character,
one sees that a nice creature might be a nice companion."
"You are quite right," was Lady Maria's reply, as she held up her
lorgnette and watched the cart spin down the avenue. "I am selfish
myself, and I realise that is the reason why Emily Fox-Seton is becoming
the lodestar of my existence. There is such comfort in being pandered to
by a person who is not even aware that she is pandering. She doesn't
suspect that she is entitled to thanks for it."
That evening Mrs. Ralph came shining to dinner in amber satin, which
seemed to possess some quality of stimulating her to brilliance. She was
witty enough to collect an audience, and Lord Walderhurst was drawn
within it. This was Mrs. Ralph's evening. When the men returned to the
drawing-room, she secured his lordship at once and managed to keep him.
She was a woman who could talk pretty well, and perhaps Lord Walderhurst
was amused. Emily Fox-Seton was not quite sure that he was, but at least
he listened. Lady Agatha Slade looked a little listless and pale. Lovely
as she was, she did not always collect an audience, and this evening she
said she had a headache. She actually crossed the room, and taking a
seat by Miss Emily Fox-Seton, began to talk to her about Lady Maria's
charity-knitting which she had taken up. Emily was so gratified that she
found conversation easy. She did not realise that at that particular
moment she was a most agreeable and comforting companion for Agatha
Slade. She had heard so much of her beauty during the season, and
remembered so many little things that a girl who was a thought depressed
might like to hear referred to again. Sometimes to Agatha the balls
where people had collected in groups to watch her dancing, the
flattering speeches she had heard, the dazzling hopes which had been
raised, seemed a little unreal, as if, after all, they could have been
only dreams. This was particularly so, of course, when life had dulled
for a while and the atmosphere of unpaid bills became heavy at home. It
was so to-day, because the girl had received a long, anxious letter from
her mother, in which much was said of the importance of an early
preparation for the presentation of Alix, who had really been kept back
a year, and was in fact nearer twenty than nineteen.
"If we were not in Debrett and Burke, one might be reserved about such
matters," poor Lady Claraway wrote; "but what is one to do when all the
world can buy one's daughters' ages at the book-sellers'?"
Miss Fox-Seton had seen Lady Agatha's portrait at the Academy and the
way in which people had crowded about it. She had chanced to hear
comments also, and she agreed with a number of persons who had not
thought the picture did the original justice.
"Sir Bruce Norman was standing by me with an elderly lady the first time
I saw it," she said, as she turned a new row of the big white-wool scarf
her hostess was knitting for a Deep-Sea Fisherman's Charity. "He really
looked quite annoyed. I heard him say: 'It is not good at all. She is
far, far lovelier. Her eyes are like blue flowers.' The moment I saw
you, I found myself looking at your eyes. I hope I didn't seem rude."
Lady Agatha smiled. She had flushed delicately, and took up in her slim
hand a skein of the white wool.
"There are some people who are never rude," she sweetly said, "and you
are one of them, I am sure. That knitting looks nice. I wonder if I
could make a comforter for a deep-sea fisherman."
"If it would amuse you to try," Emily answered, "I will begin one for
you. Lady Maria has several pairs of wooden needles. Shall I?"
"Do, please. How kind of you!"
In a pause of her conversation, Mrs. Ralph, a little later, looked
across the room at Emily Fox-Seton bending over Lady Agatha and the
knitting, as she gave her instructions.
"What a good-natured creature that is!" she said.
Lord Walderhurst lifted his monocle and inserted it in his unillumined
eye. He also looked across the room. Emily wore the black evening dress
which gave such opportunities to her square white shoulders and firm
column of throat; the country air and sun had deepened the colour on her
cheek, and the light of the nearest lamp fell kindly on the big twist of
her nut-brown hair, and burnished it. She looked soft and warm, and so
generously interested in her pupil's progress that she was rather sweet.
Lord Walderhurst simply looked at her. He was a man of but few words.
Women who were sprightly found him somewhat unresponsive. In fact, he
was aware that a man in his position need not exert himself. The women
themselves would talk. They wanted to talk because they wanted him to
hear them.
Mrs. Ralph talked.
"She is the most primeval person I know. She accepts her fate without a
trace of resentment; she simply accepts it."
"What is her fate?" asked Lord Walderhurst, still gazing in his
unbiassed manner through his monocle, and not turning his head as he
spoke.
"It is her fate to be a woman who is perfectly well born, and who is as
penniless as a charwoman, and works like one. She is at the beck and
call of any one who will give her an odd job to earn a meal with. That
is one of the new ways women have found of making a living."
"Good skin," remarked Lord Walderhurst, irrelevantly. "Good hair--quite
a lot."
"She has some of the nicest blood in England in her veins, and she
engaged my last cook for me," said Mrs. Ralph.
"Hope she was a good cook."
"Very. Emily Fox-Seton has a faculty of finding decent people. I believe
it is because she is so decent herself"--with a little laugh.
"Looks quite decent," commented Walderhurst. The knitting was getting on
famously.
"It was odd you should see Sir Bruce Norman that day," Agatha Slade was
saying. "It must have been just before he was called away to India."
"It was. He sailed the next day. I happen to know, because some friends
of mine met me only a few yards from your picture and began to talk
about him. I had not known before that he was so rich. I had not heard
about his collieries in Lancashire. Oh!"--opening her big eyes in
heart-felt yearning,--"how I wish I owned a colliery! It must be so
_nice_ to be rich!"
"I never was rich," answered Lady Agatha, with a bitter little sigh. "I
know it is hideous to be poor."
"_I_ never was rich," said Emily, "and I never shall be. You"--a little
shyly--"are so different."
Lady Agatha flushed delicately again.
Emily Fox-Seton made a gentle joke. "You have eyes like blue flowers,"
she said. Lady Agatha lifted the eyes like blue flowers, and they were
pathetic.
"Oh!" she gave forth almost impetuously, "sometimes it seems as if it
does not matter whether one has eyes or not."
It was a pleasure to Emily Fox-Seton to realise that after this the
beauty seemed to be rather drawn toward her. Their acquaintance became
almost a sort of intimacy over the wool scarf for the deep-sea
fisherman, which was taken up and laid down, and even carried out on the
lawn and left under the trees for the footmen to restore when they
brought in the rugs and cushions. Lady Maria was amusing herself with
the making of knitted scarfs and helmets just now, and bits of white or
gray knitting were the fashion at Mallowe. Once Agatha brought hers to
Emily's room in the afternoon to ask that a dropped stitch might be
taken up, and this established a sort of precedent. Afterward they began
to exchange visits.
The strenuousness of things was becoming, in fact, almost too much for
Lady Agatha. Most unpleasant things were happening at home, and
occasionally Castle Clare loomed up grayly in the distance like a
spectre. Certain tradespeople who ought, in Lady Claraway's opinion, to
have kept quiet and waited in patience until things became better, were
becoming hideously persistent. In view of the fact that Alix's next
season must be provided for, it was most awkward. A girl could not be
presented and properly launched in the world, in a way which would give
her a proper chance, without expenditure. To the Claraways expenditure
meant credit, and there were blots as of tears on the letters in which
Lady Claraway reiterated that the tradespeople were behaving horribly.
Sometimes, she said once in desperation, things looked as if they would
all be obliged to shut themselves up in Castle Clare to retrench; and
then what was to become of Alix and her season? And there were Millicent
and Hilda and Eve.
More than once there was the mist of tears in the flower-blue eyes when
Lady Agatha came to talk. Confidence between two women establishes
itself through processes at once subtle and simple. Emily Fox-Seton
could not have told when she first began to know that the beauty was
troubled and distressed; Lady Agatha did not know when she first slipped
into making little frank speeches about herself; but these things came
about. Agatha found something like comfort in her acquaintance with the
big, normal, artless creature--something which actually raised her
spirits when she was depressed. Emily Fox-Seton paid constant kindly
tribute to her charms, and helped her to believe in them. When she was
with her, Agatha always felt that she really was lovely, after all, and
that loveliness was a great capital. Emily admired and revered it so,
and evidently never dreamed of doubting its omnipotence. She used to
talk as if any girl who was a beauty was a potential duchess. In fact,
this was a thing she quite ingenuously believed. She had not lived in a
world where marriage was a thing of romance, and, for that matter,
neither had Agatha. It was nice if a girl liked the man who married her,
but if he was a well-behaved, agreeable person, of good means, it was
natural that she would end by liking him sufficiently; and to be
provided for comfortably or luxuriously for life, and not left upon
one's own hands or one's parents', was a thing to be thankful for in any
case. It was such a relief to everybody to know that a girl was
"settled," and especially it was such a relief to the girl herself. Even
novels and plays were no longer fairy-stories of entrancing young men
and captivating young women who fell in love with each other in the
first chapter, and after increasingly picturesque incidents were married
in the last one in the absolute surety of being blissfully happy
forevermore. Neither Lady Agatha nor Emily had been brought up on this
order of literature, nor in an atmosphere in which it was accepted
without reservation.
They had both had hard lives, and knew what lay before them. Agatha knew
she must make a marriage or fade out of existence in prosaic and
narrowed dulness. Emily knew that there was no prospect for her of
desirable marriage at all. She was too poor, too entirely unsupported by
social surroundings, and not sufficiently radiant to catch the roving
eye. To be able to maintain herself decently, to be given an occasional
treat by her more fortunate friends, and to be allowed by fortune to
present to the face of the world the appearance of a woman who was not a
pauper, was all she could expect. But she felt that Lady Agatha had the
right to more. She did not reason the matter out and ask herself why she
had the right to more, but she accepted the proposition as a fact. She
was ingenuously interested in her fate, and affectionately sympathetic.
She used to look at Lord Walderhurst quite anxiously at times when he
was talking to the girl. An anxious mother could scarcely have regarded
him with a greater desire to analyse his sentiments. The match would be
such a fitting one. He would make such an excellent husband--and there
were three places, and the diamonds were magnificent. Lady Maria had
described to her a certain tiara which she frequently pictured to
herself as glittering above Agatha's exquisite low brow. It would be
infinitely more becoming to her than to Miss Brooke or Mrs. Ralph,
though either of them would have worn it with spirit. She could not help
feeling that both Mrs. Ralph's brilliancy and Miss Brooke's insouciant
prettiness were not unworthy of being counted in the running, but Lady
Agatha seemed somehow so much more completely the thing wanted. She was
anxious that she should always look her best, and when she knew that
disturbing letters were fretting her, and saw that they made her look
pale and less luminous, she tried to raise her spirits.
"Suppose we take a brisk walk," she would say, "and then you might try a
little nap. You look a little tired."
"Oh," said Agatha one day, "how kind you are to me! I believe you
actually care about my complexion--about my looking well."
"Lord Walderhurst said to me the other day," was Emily's angelically
tactful answer, "that you were the only woman he had ever seen who
_always_ looked lovely."
"Did he?" exclaimed Lady Agatha, and flushed sweetly. "Once Sir Bruce
Norman actually said that to me. I told him it was the nicest thing that
could be said to a woman. It is all the nicer"--with a sigh--"because it
isn't _really_ true."
"I am sure Lord Walderhurst believed it true," Emily said. "He is not a
man who talks, you know. He is very serious and dignified." She had
herself a reverence and admiration for Lord Walderhurst bordering on
tender awe. He was indeed a well-mannered person, of whom painful things
were not said. He also conducted himself well toward his tenantry, and
was patron of several notable charities. To the unexacting and
innocently respectful mind of Emily Fox-Seton this was at once
impressive and attractive. She knew, though not intimately, many noble
personages quite unlike him. She was rather early Victorian and
touchingly respectable.
"I have been crying," confessed Lady Agatha.
"I was afraid so, Lady Agatha," said Emily.
"Things are getting hopeless in Curzon Street. I had a letter from
Millicent this morning. She is next in age to Alix, and she says--oh, a
number of things. When girls see everything passing by them, it makes
them irritable. Millicent is seventeen, and she is too lovely. Her hair
is like a red-gold cloak, and her eyelashes are twice as long as mine."
She sighed again, and her lips, which were like curved rose-petals,
unconcealedly quivered. "They were _all_ so cross about Sir Bruce Norman
going to India," she added.
"He will come back," said Emily, benignly; "but he may be too late. Has
he"--ingenuously--"seen Alix?"
Agatha flushed oddly this time. Her delicate skin registered every
emotion exquisitely. "He has seen her, but she was in the school-room,
and--I don't think--"
She did not finish, but stopped uneasily, and sat and gazed out of the
open window into the park. She did not look happy.
The episode of Sir Bruce Norman was brief and even vague. It had begun
well. Sir Bruce had met the beauty at a ball, and they had danced
together more than once. Sir Bruce had attractions other than his old
baronetcy and his coal-mines. He was a good-looking person, with a
laughing brown eye and a nice wit. He had danced charmingly and paid gay
compliments. He would have done immensely well. Agatha had liked him.
Emily sometimes thought she had liked him very much. Her mother had
liked him and had thought he was attracted. But after a number of
occasions of agreeable meetings, they had encountered each other on the
lawn at Goodwood, and he had announced that he was going to India.
Forthwith he had gone, and Emily had gathered that somehow Lady Agatha
had been considered somewhat to blame. Her people were not vulgar enough
to express this frankly, but she had felt it. Her younger sisters had,
upon the whole, made her feel it most. It had been borne in upon her
that if Alix, or Millicent with the red-gold cloak, or even Eve, who was
a gipsy, had been given such a season and such Doucet frocks, they would
have combined them with their wonderful complexions and lovely little
chins and noses in such a manner as would at least have prevented
desirable acquaintances from feeling free to take P. and O. steamers to
Bombay.
In her letter of this morning, Millicent's temper had indeed got
somewhat the better of her taste and breeding, and lovely Agatha had
cried large tears. So it was comforting to be told that Lord Walderhurst
had said such an extremely amiable thing. If he was not young, he was
really _very_ nice, and there were exalted persons who absolutely had
rather a fad for him. It would be exceptionally brilliant.
The brisk walk was taken, and Lady Agatha returned from it blooming. She
was adorable at dinner, and in the evening gathered an actual court
about her. She was all in pink, and a wreath of little pink wild roses
lay close about her head, making her, with her tall young slimness, look
like a Botticelli nymph. Emily saw that Lord Walderhurst looked at her a
great deal. He sat on an extraordinarily comfortable corner seat, and
stared through his monocle.
Lady Maria always gave her Emily plenty to do. She had a nice taste in
floral arrangement, and early in her visit it had fallen into her hands
as a duty to "do" the flowers.
The next morning she was in the gardens early, gathering roses with the
dew on them, and was in the act of cutting some adorable "Mrs. Sharman
Crawfords," when she found it behoved her to let down her carefully
tucked up petticoats, as the Marquis of Walderhurst was walking straight
toward her. An instinct told her that he wanted to talk to her about
Lady Agatha Slade.
"You get up earlier than Lady Agatha," he remarked, after he had wished
her "Good-morning."
"She is oftener invited to the country than I am," she answered. "When I
have a country holiday, I want to spend every moment of it out of doors.
And the mornings are so lovely. They are not like this in Mortimer
Street."
"Do you live in Mortimer Street?"
"Yes."
"Do you like it?"
"I am very comfortable. I am fortunate in having a nice landlady. She
and her daughter are very kind to me."
The morning was indeed heavenly. The masses of flowers were drenched
with dew, and the already hot sun was drawing fragrance from them and
filling the warm air with it. The marquis, with his monocle fixed,
looked up into the cobalt-blue sky and among the trees, where a
wood-dove or two cooed with musical softness.
"Yes," he observed, with a glance which swept the scene, "it is
different from Mortimer Street, I suppose. Are you fond of the country?"
"Oh, yes," sighed Emily; "oh, yes!"
She was not a specially articulate person. She could not have conveyed
in words all that her "Oh, yes!" really meant of simple love for and joy
in rural sights and sounds and scents. But when she lifted her big kind
hazel eyes to him, the earnestness of her emotion made them pathetic, as
the unspeakableness of her pleasures often did.
Lord Walderhurst gazed at her through the monocle with an air he
sometimes had of taking her measure without either unkindliness or
particular interest.
"Is Lady Agatha fond of the country?" he inquired.
"She is fond of everything that is beautiful," she replied. "Her nature
is as lovely as her face, I think."
"Is it?"
Emily walked a step or two away to a rose climbing up the gray-red wall,
and began to clip off blossoms, which tumbled sweetly into her basket.
"She seems lovely in everything," she said, "in disposition and manner
and--everything. She never seems to disappoint one or make mistakes."
"You are fond of her?"
"She has been so kind to me."
"You often say people are kind to you."
Emily paused and felt a trifle confused. Realising that she was not a
clever person, and being a modest one, she began to wonder if she was
given to a parrot-phrase which made her tiresome. She blushed up to her
ears.
"People are kind," she said hesitatingly. "I--you see, I have nothing to
give, and I always seem to be receiving."
"What luck!" remarked his lordship, calmly gazing at her.
He made her feel rather awkward, and she was at once relieved and sorry
when he walked away to join another early riser who had come out upon
the lawn. For some mysterious reason Emily Fox-Seton liked him. Perhaps
his magnificence and the constant talk she had heard of him had warmed
her imagination. He had never said anything particularly intelligent to
her, but she felt as if he had. He was a rather silent man, but never
looked stupid. He had made some good speeches in the House of Lords, not
brilliant, but sound and of a dignified respectability. He had also
written two pamphlets. Emily had an enormous respect for intellect, and
frequently, it must be admitted, for the thing which passed for it. She
was not exacting.
During her stay at Mallowe in the summer, Lady Maria always gave a
village treat. She had given it for forty years, and it was a lively
function. Several hundred wildly joyous village children were fed to
repletion with exhilarating buns and cake, and tea in mugs, after which
they ran races for prizes, and were entertained in various ways, with
the aid of such of the house-party as were benevolently inclined to make
themselves useful.