amusing. Nobody objected to looking on, and some were agreeably
stimulated by the general sense of festivity. But Emily Fox-Seton was
found by Lady Maria to be invaluable on this occasion. It was so easy,
without the least sense of ill-feeling, to give her all the drudgery to
do. There was plenty of drudgery, though it did not present itself to
Emily Fox-Seton in that light. She no more realised that she was giving
Lady Maria a good deal for her money, so to speak, than she realised
that her ladyship, though an amusing and delightful, was an absolutely
selfish and inconsiderate old woman. So long as Emily Fox-Seton did not
seem obviously tired, it would not have occurred to Lady Maria that she
could be so; that, after all, her legs and arms were mere human flesh
and blood, that her substantial feet were subject to the fatigue
unending trudging to and fro induces. Her ladyship was simply delighted
that the preparations went so well, that she could turn to Emily for
service and always find her ready. Emily made lists and calculations,
she worked out plans and made purchases. She interviewed the village
matrons who made the cake and buns, and boiled the tea in bags in a
copper; she found the women who could be engaged to assist in cutting
cake and bread-and-butter and helping to serve it; she ordered the
putting up of tents and forms and tables; the innumerable things to be
remembered she called to mind.
"Really, Emily," said Lady Maria, "I don't know how I have done this
thing for forty years without you. I must always have you at Mallowe for
the treat."
Emily was of the genial nature which rejoices upon even small occasions,
and is invariably stimulated to pleasure by the festivities of others.
The festal atmosphere was a delight to her. In her numberless errands to
the village, the sight of the excitement in the faces of the children
she passed on her way to this cottage and that filled her eyes with
friendly glee and wreathed her face with smiles. When she went into the
cottage where the cake was being baked, children hovered about in groups
and nudged each other, giggling. They hung about, partly through
thrilled interest, and partly because their joy made them eager to
courtesy to her as she came out, the obeisance seeming to identify them
even more closely with the coming treat. They grinned and beamed rosily,
and Emily smiled at them and nodded, uplifted by a pleasure almost as
infantile as their own. She was really enjoying herself so honestly that
she did not realise how hard she worked during the days before the
festivity. She was really ingenious, and invented a number of new
methods of entertainment. It was she who, with the aid of a couple of
gardeners, transformed the tents into bowers of green boughs and
arranged the decorations of the tables and the park gates.
"What a lot of walking you do!" Lord Walderhurst said to her once, as
she passed the group on the lawn. "Do you know how many hours you have
been on your feet to-day?"
"I like it," she answered, and, as she hurried by, she saw that he was
sitting a shade nearer to Lady Agatha than she had ever seen him sit
before, and that Agatha, under a large hat of white gauze frills, was
looking like a seraph, so sweet and shining were her eyes, so
flower-fair her face. She looked actually happy.
"Perhaps he has been saying things," Emily thought. "How happy she will
be! He has such a nice pair of eyes. He would make a woman very happy."
A faint sigh fluttered from her lips. She was beginning to be physically
tired, and was not yet quite aware of it. If she had not been physically
tired, she would not even vaguely have had, at this moment, recalled to
her mind the fact that she was not of the women to whom "things" are
said and to whom things happen.
"Emily Fox-Seton," remarked Lady Maria, fanning herself, as it was
frightfully hot, "has the most admirable effect on me. She makes me feel
generous. I should like to present her with the smartest things from the
wardrobes of all my relations."
"Do you give her clothes?" asked Walderhurst.
"I haven't any to spare. But I know they would be useful to her. The
things she wears are touching; they are so well contrived, and produce
such a decent effect with so little."
Lord Walderhurst inserted his monocle and gazed after the straight,
well-set-up back of the disappearing Miss Fox-Seton.
"I think," said Lady Agatha, gently, "that she is really handsome."
"So she is," admitted Walderhurst--"quite a good-looking woman."
That night Lady Agatha repeated the amiability to Emily, whose grateful
amazement really made her blush.
"Lord Walderhurst knows Sir Bruce Norman," said Agatha. "Isn't it
strange? He spoke of him to me to-day. He says he is clever."
"You had a nice talk this afternoon, hadn't you?" said Emily. "You both
looked so--so--as if you were enjoying yourselves when I passed."
"Did he look as if he were enjoying himself? He was very agreeable. I
did not know he could be so agreeable."
"I have never seen him look as much pleased," answered Emily Fox-Seton.
"Though he always looks as if he liked talking to you, Lady Agatha. That
large white gauze garden-hat"--reflectively--"is so _very_ becoming."
"It was very expensive," sighed lovely Agatha. "And they last such a
short time. Mamma said it really seemed almost criminal to buy it."
"How delightful it will be," remarked cheering Emily, "when--when you
need not think of things like that!"
"Oh!"--with another sigh, this time a catch of the breath,--"it would be
like Heaven! People don't know; they think girls are frivolous when they
care, and that it isn't serious. But when one knows one _must_ have
things,--that they are like bread,--it is awful!"
"The things you wear really matter." Emily was bringing all her powers
to bear upon the subject, and with an anxious kindness which was quite
angelic. "Each dress makes you look like another sort of picture. Have
you,"--contemplatively--"anything _quite_ different to wear to-night and
to-morrow?"
"I have two evening dresses I have not worn here yet"--a little
hesitatingly. "I--well I saved them. One is a very thin black one with
silver on it. It has a trembling silver butterfly for the shoulder, and
one for the hair."
"Oh, put that on to-night!" said Emily, eagerly. "When you come down to
dinner you will look so--so new! I always think that to see a fair
person suddenly for the first time all in black gives one a kind of
delighted start--though start isn't the word, quite. Do put it on."
Lady Agatha put it on. Emily Fox-Seton came into her room to help to add
the last touches to her beauty before she went down to dinner. She
suggested that the fair hair should be dressed even higher and more
lightly than usual, so that the silver butterfly should poise the more
airily over the knot, with its quivering, outstretched wings. She
herself poised the butterfly high upon the shoulder.
"Oh, it is lovely!" she exclaimed, drawing back to gaze at the girl. "Do
let me go down a moment or so before you do, so that I can see you come
into the room."
She was sitting in a chair quite near Lord Walderhurst when her charge
entered. She saw him really give something quite like a start when
Agatha appeared. His monocle, which had been in his eye, fell out of it,
and he picked it up by its thin cord and replaced it.
"Psyche!" she heard him say in his odd voice, which seemed merely to
make a statement without committing him to an opinion--"Psyche!"
He did not say it to her or to any one else. It was simply a kind of
exclamation,--appreciative and perceptive without being
enthusiastic,--and it was curious. He talked to Agatha nearly all the
evening.
Emily came to Lady Agatha before she retired, looking even a little
flushed.
"What are you going to wear at the treat to-morrow?" she asked.
"A white muslin, with _entre-deux_ of lace, and the gauze garden-hat,
and a white parasol and shoes."
Lady Agatha looked a little nervous; her pink fluttered in her cheek.
"And to-morrow night?" said Emily.
"I have a very pale blue. Won't you sit down, dear Miss Fox-Seton?"
"We must both go to bed and sleep. You must not get tired."
But she sat down for a few minutes, because she saw the girl's eyes
asking her to do it.
The afternoon post had brought a more than usually depressing letter
from Curzon Street. Lady Claraway was at her motherly wits' ends, and
was really quite touching in her distraction. A dressmaker was entering
a suit. The thing would get into the papers, of course.
"Unless something happens, something to save us by staving off things,
we shall have to go to Castle Clare at once. It will be all over. No
girl could be presented with such a thing in the air. They don't like
it."
"They," of course, meant persons whose opinions made London's society's
law.
"To go to Castle Clare," faltered Agatha, "will be like being sentenced
to starve to death. Alix and Hilda and Millicent and Eve and I will be
starved, quite slowly, for the want of the things that make girls' lives
bearable when they have been born in a certain class. And even if the
most splendid thing happened in three or four years, it would be too
late for us four--almost too late for Eve. If you are out of London, of
course you are forgotten. People can't help forgetting. Why shouldn't
they, when there are such crowds of new girls every year?"
Emily Fox-Seton was sweet. She was quite sure that they would not be
obliged to go to Castle Clare. Without being indelicate, she was really
able to bring hope to the fore. She said a good deal of the black gauze
dress and the lovely effect of the silver butterflies.
"I suppose it was the butterflies which made Lord Walderhurst say
'Psyche! Psyche!' when he first saw you," she added, _en passant_.
"Did he say that?" And immediately Lady Agatha looked as if she had not
intended to say the words.
"Yes," answered Emily, hurrying on with a casual air which had a good
deal of tact in it. "And black makes you so wonderfully fair and aërial.
You scarcely look quite real in it; you might float away. But you must
go to sleep now."
Lady Agatha went with her to the door of the room to bid her good-night.
Her eyes looked like those of a child who might presently cry a little.
"Oh, Miss Fox-Seton," she said, in a very young voice, "you are so
kind!"
Chapter Four
The parts of the park nearest to the house already presented a busy
aspect when Miss Fox-Seton passed through the gardens the following
morning. Tables were being put up, and baskets of bread and cake and
groceries were being carried into the tent where the tea was to be
prepared. The workers looked interested and good-humoured; the men
touched their hats as Emily appeared, and the women courtesied
smilingly. They had all discovered that she was amiable and to be relied
on in her capacity of her ladyship's representative.
"She's a worker, that Miss Fox-Seton," one said to the other. "I never
seen one that was a lady fall to as she does. Ladies, even when they
means well, has a way of standing about and telling you to do things
without seeming to know quite how they ought to be done. She's coming to
help with the bread-and-butter-cutting herself this morning, and she put
up all them packages of sweets yesterday with her own hands. She did 'em
up in different-coloured papers, and tied 'em with bits of ribbon,
because she said she knowed children was prouder of coloured things than
plain--they was like that. And so they are: a bit of red or blue goes a
long way with a child."
Emily cut bread-and-butter and cake, and placed seats and arranged toys
on tables all the morning. The day was hot, though beautiful, and she
was so busy that she had scarcely time for her breakfast. The household
party was in the gayest spirits. Lady Maria was in her most amusing
mood. She had planned a drive to some interesting ruins for the
afternoon of the next day, and a dinner-party for the evening. Her
favourite neighbours had just returned to their country-seat five miles
away, and they were coming to the dinner, to her great satisfaction.
Most of her neighbours bored her, and she took them in doses at her
dinners, as she would have taken medicine. But the Lockyers were young
and good-looking and clever, and she was always glad when they came to
Loche during her stay at Mallowe.
"There is not a frump or a bore among them," she said. "In the country
people are usually frumps when they are not bores, and bores when they
are not frumps, and I am in danger of becoming both myself. Six weeks of
unalloyed dinner-parties, composed of certain people I know, would make
me begin to wear moreen petticoats and talk about the deplorable
condition of London society."
She led all her flock out on to the lawn under the ilex-trees after
breakfast.
"Let us go and encourage industry," she said. "We will watch Emily
Fox-Seton working. She is an example."
Curiously enough, this was Miss Cora Brooke's day. She found herself
actually walking across the lawn with Lord Walderhurst by her side. She
did not know how it happened, but it seemed to occur accidentally.
"We never talk to each other," he said.
"Well," answered Cora, "we have talked to other people a great deal--at
least I have."
"Yes, you have talked a good deal," said the marquis.
"Does that mean I have talked too much?"
He surveyed her prettiness through his glass. Perhaps the holiday stir
in the air gave him a festive moment.
"It means that you haven't talked enough to me. You have devoted
yourself too much to the laying low of young Heriot."
She laughed a trifle saucily.
"You are a very independent young lady," remarked Walderhurst, with a
lighter manner than usual. "You ought to say something deprecatory or--a
little coy, perhaps."
"I shan't," said Cora, composedly.
"Shan't or won't?" he inquired. "They are both bad words for little
girls--or young ladies--to use to their elders."
"Both," said Miss Cora Brooke, with a slightly pleased flush. "Let us go
over to the tents and see what poor Emily Fox-Seton is doing."
"Poor Emily Fox-Seton," said the marquis, non-committally.
They went, but they did not stay long. The treat was taking form. Emily
Fox-Seton was hot and deeply engaged. People were coming to her for
orders. She had a thousand things to do and to superintend the doing of.
The prizes for the races and the presents for the children must be
arranged in order: things for boys and things for girls, presents for
little children and presents for big ones. Nobody must be missed, and no
one must be given the wrong thing.
"It would be dreadful, you know," Emily said to the two when they came
into her tent and began to ask questions, "if a big boy should get a
small wooden horse, or a little baby should be given a cricket bat and
ball. Then it would be so disappointing if a tiny girl got a work-box
and a big one got a doll. One has to get things in order. They look
forward to this so, and it's heart-breaking to a child to be
disappointed, isn't it?"
Walderhurst gazed uninspiringly.
"Who did this for Lady Maria when you were not here?" he inquired.
"Oh, other people. But she says it was tiresome." Then with an illumined
smile; "She has asked me to Mallowe for the next twenty years for the
treats. She is so kind."
"Maria is a kind woman"--with what seemed to Emily delightful
amiability. "She is kind to her treats and she is kind to Maria Bayne."
"She is kind to _me_," said Emily. "You don't know how I am enjoying
this."
"That woman enjoys everything," Lord Walderhurst said when he walked
away with Cora. "What a temperament to have! I would give ten thousand a
year for it."
"She has so little," said Cora, "that everything seems beautiful to her.
One doesn't wonder, either. She's very nice. Mother and I quite admire
her. We are thinking of inviting her to New York and giving her a real
good time."
"She would enjoy New York."
"Have you ever been there, Lord Walderhurst?"
"No."
"You ought to come, really. So many Englishmen come now, and they all
seem to like it."
"Perhaps I will come," said Walderhurst. "I have been thinking of it.
One is tired of the Continent and one knows India. One doesn't know
Fifth Avenue, and Central Park, and the Rocky Mountains."
"One might try them," suggested pretty Miss Cora.
This certainly was her day. Lord Walderhurst took her and her mother out
in his own particular high phaeton before lunch. He was fond of driving,
and his own phaeton and horses had come to Mallowe with him. He took
only his favourites out, and though he bore himself on this occasion
with a calm air, the event caused a little smiling flurry on the lawn.
At least, when the phaeton spun down the avenue with Miss Brooke and her
mother looking slightly flushed and thrilled in their high seats of
honour, several people exchanged glances and raised eye-brows.
Lady Agatha went to her room and wrote a long letter to Curzon Street.
Mrs. Ralph talked about the problem-play to young Heriot and a group of
others.
The afternoon, brilliant and blazing, brought new visitors to assist by
their presence at the treat. Lady Maria always had a large house-party,
and added guests from the neighbourhood to make for gaiety. At two
o'clock a procession of village children and their friends and parents,
headed by the village band, marched up the avenue and passed before the
house on their way to their special part of the park. Lady Maria and her
guests stood upon the broad steps and welcomed the jocund crowd, as it
moved by, with hospitable bows and nods and becks and wreathed smiles.
Everybody was in a delighted good-humour.
As the villagers gathered in the park, the house-party joined them by
way of the gardens. A conjurer from London gave an entertainment under a
huge tree, and children found white rabbits taken from their pockets and
oranges from their caps, with squeals of joy and shouts of laughter.
Lady Maria's guests walked about and looked on, laughing with the
children.
The great affair of tea followed the performance. No treat is fairly
under way until the children are filled to the brim with tea and buns
and cake, principally cake in plummy wedges.
Lady Agatha and Mrs. Ralph handed cake along rows of children seated on
the grass. Miss Brooke was talking to Lord Walderhurst when the work
began. She had poppies in her hat and carried a poppy-coloured parasol,
and sat under a tree, looking very alluring.
"I ought to go and help to hand cake," she said.
"My cousin Maria ought to do it," remarked Lord Walderhurst, "but she
will not--neither shall I. Tell me something about the elevated railroad
and Five-Hundred-and-Fifty-Thousandth Street." He had a slightly rude,
gracefully languid air, which Cora Brooke found somewhat impressive,
after all.
Emily Fox-Seton handed cake and regulated supplies with cheerful tact
and good spirits. When the older people were given their tea, she moved
about their tables, attending to every one. She was too heart-whole in
her interest in her hospitalities to find time to join Lady Maria and
her party at the table under the ilex-trees. She ate some
bread-and-butter and drank a cup of tea while she talked to some old
women she had made friends with. She was really enjoying herself
immensely, though occasionally she was obliged to sit down for a few
moments just to rest her tired feet. The children came to her as to an
omnipotent and benign being. She knew where the toys were kept and what
prizes were to be given for the races. She represented law and order and
bestowal. The other ladies walked about in wonderful dresses, smiling
and exalted, the gentlemen aided the sports in an amateurish way and
made patrician jokes among themselves, but this one lady seemed to be
part of the treat itself. She was not so grandly dressed as the
others,--her dress was only blue linen with white bands on it,--and she
had only a sailor hat with a buckle and bow, but she was of her
ladyship's world of London people, nevertheless, and they liked her more
than they had ever liked a lady before. It was a fine treat, and she
seemed to have made it so. There had never been quite such a varied and
jovial treat at Mallowe before.
The afternoon waxed and waned. The children played games and raced and
rejoiced until their young limbs began to fail them. The older people
sauntered about or sat in groups to talk and listen to the village band.
Lady Maria's visitors, having had enough of rural festivities, went back
to the gardens in excellent spirits, to talk and to watch a game of
tennis which had taken form on the court.
Emily Fox-Seton's pleasure had not abated, but her colour had done so.
Her limbs ached and her still-smiling face was pale, as she stood under
the beech-tree regarding the final ceremonies of the festal day, to
preside over which Lady Maria and her party returned from their seats
under the ilex-trees. The National Anthem was sung loudly, and there
were three tremendous cheers given for her ladyship. They were such
joyous and hearty cheers that Emily was stirred almost to emotional
tears. At all events, her hazel eyes looked nice and moistly bright. She
was an easily moved creature.
Lord Walderhurst stood near Lady Maria and looked pleased also. Emily
saw him speak to her ladyship and saw Lady Maria smile. Then he stepped
forward, with his non-committal air and his monocle glaring calmly in
his eye.
"Boys and girls," he said in a clear, far-reaching voice, "I want you to
give three of the biggest cheers you are capable of for the lady who has
worked to make your treat the success it has been. Her ladyship tells me
she has never had such a treat before. Three cheers for Miss Fox-Seton."
Emily gave a gasp and felt a lump rise in her throat. She felt as if she
had been without warning suddenly changed into a royal personage, and
she scarcely knew what to do.
The whole treat, juvenile and adult, male and female, burst into three
cheers which were roars and bellows. Hats and caps were waved and tossed
into the air, and every creature turned toward her as she blushed and
bowed in tremulous gratitude and delight.
"Oh, Lady Maria! oh, Lord Walderhurst!" she said, when she managed to
get to them, "how _kind_ you are to me!"
Chapter Five
After she had taken her early tea in the morning, Emily Fox-Seton lay
upon her pillows and gazed out upon the tree-branches near her window,
in a state of bliss. She was tired, but happy. How well everything had
"gone off"! How pleased Lady Maria had been, and how kind of Lord
Walderhurst to ask the villagers to give three cheers for herself! She
had never dreamed of such a thing. It was the kind of attention not
usually offered to her. She smiled her childlike smile and blushed at
the memory of it. Her impression of the world was that people were
really very amiable, as a rule. They were always good to her, at least,
she thought, and it did not occur to her that if she had not paid her
way so remarkably well by being useful they might have been less
agreeable. Never once had she doubted that Lady Maria was the most
admirable and generous of human beings. She was not aware in the least
that her ladyship got a good deal out of her. In justice to her
ladyship, it may be said that she was not wholly aware of it herself,
and that Emily absolutely enjoyed being made use of.
This morning, however, when she got up, she found herself more tired
than she ever remembered being before, and it may be easily argued that
a woman who runs about London on other people's errands often knows what
it is to be aware of aching limbs. She laughed a little when she
discovered that her feet were actually rather swollen, and that she must
wear a pair of her easiest slippers. "I must sit down as much as I can
to-day," she thought. "And yet, with the dinner-party and the excursion
this morning, there may be a number of little things Lady Maria would
like me to do."
There were, indeed, numbers of things Lady Maria was extremely glad to
ask her to do. The drive to the ruins was to be made before lunch,
because some of the guests felt that an afternoon jaunt would leave them
rather fagged for the dinner-party in the evening. Lady Maria was not
going, and, as presently became apparent, the carriages would be rather
crowded if Miss Fox-Seton joined the party. On the whole, Emily was not
sorry to have an excuse for remaining at home, and so the carriages
drove away comfortably filled, and Lady Maria and Miss Fox-Seton watched
their departure.
"I have no intention of having my venerable bones rattled over hill and
dale the day I give a dinner-party," said her ladyship. "Please ring the
bell, Emily. I want to make sure of the fish. Fish is one of the
problems of country life. Fishmongers are demons, and when they live
five miles from one they can arouse the most powerful human emotions."