effects upon the rusticity of the neighbourhood, but appalling when
considered in connection with fish. One could not dine without fish; the
town was small and barren of resources, and the one fishmonger of weak
mind and unreliable nature.
The footman who obeyed the summons of the bell informed her ladyship
that the cook was rather anxious about the fish, as usual. The
fishmonger had been a little doubtful as to whether he could supply her
needs, and his cart never arrived until half-past twelve.
"Great goodness!" exclaimed her ladyship when the man retired. "What a
situation if we found ourselves without fish! Old General Barnes is the
most ferocious old gourmand in England, and he loathes people who give
him bad dinners. We are all rather afraid of him, the fact is, and I
will own that I am vain about my dinners. That is the last charm nature
leaves a woman, the power to give decent dinners. I shall be fearfully
annoyed if any ridiculous thing happens."
They sat in the morning-room together writing notes and talking, and as
half-past twelve drew near, watching for the fishmonger's cart. Once or
twice Lady Maria spoke of Lord Walderhurst.
"He is an interesting creature, to my mind," she said. "I have always
rather liked him. He has original ideas, though he is not in the least
brilliant. I believe he talks more freely to me, on the whole, than to
most people, though I can't say he has a particularly good opinion of
me. He stuck his glass in his eye and stared at me last night, in that
weird way of his, and said to me, 'Maria, in an ingenuous fashion of
your own, you are the most abominably selfish woman I ever beheld.'
Still, I know he rather likes me. I said to him: 'That isn't quite true,
James. I am selfish, but I'm not _abominably_ selfish. Abominably
selfish people always have nasty tempers, and no one can accuse me of
having a nasty temper. I have the disposition of a bowl of bread and
milk."
"Emily,"--as wheels rattled up the avenue,--"_is_ that the fishmonger's
cart?"
"No," answered Emily at the window; "it is the butcher."
"His attitude toward the women here has made my joy," Lady Maria
proceeded, smiling over the deep-sea fishermen's knitted helmet she had
taken up. "He behaves beautifully to them all, but not one of them has
really a leg to stand on as far as he is responsible for it. But I will
tell you something, Emily." She paused.
Miss Fox-Seton waited with interested eyes.
"He is thinking of bringing the thing to an end and marrying _some_
woman. I feel it in my bones."
"Do you think so?" exclaimed Emily. "Oh, I can't help hoping--" But she
paused also.
"You hope it will be Agatha Slade," Lady Maria ended for her. "Well,
perhaps it will be. I sometimes think it is Agatha, if it's any one. And
yet I'm not sure. One never could be sure with Walderhurst. He has
always had a trick of keeping more than his mouth shut. I wonder if he
could have any other woman up his sleeve?"
"Why do you think--" began Emily.
Lady Maria laughed.
"For an odd reason. The Walderhursts have a ridiculously splendid ring
in the family, which they have a way of giving to the women they become
engaged to. It's ridiculous because--well, because a ruby as big as a
trouser's button _is_ ridiculous. You can't get over that. There is a
story connected with this one--centuries and things, and something about
the woman the first Walderhurst had it made for. She was a Dame
Something or Other who had snubbed the King for being forward, and the
snubbing was so good for him that he thought she was a saint and gave
the ruby for her betrothal. Well, by the merest accident I found
Walderhurst had sent his man to town for it. It came two days ago."
"Oh, how interesting!" said Emily, thrilled. "It _must_ mean something."
"It is rather a joke. Wheels again, Emily. Is _that_ the fishmonger?"
Emily went to the window once more. "Yes," she answered, "if his name is
Buggle."
"His name _is_ Buggle," said Lady Maria, "and we are saved."
But five minutes later the cook herself appeared at the morning-room
door. She was a stout person, who panted, and respectfully removed beads
of perspiration from her brow with a clean handkerchief.
She was as nearly pale as a heated person of her weight may be.
"And what has happened now, cook?" asked Lady Maria.
"That Buggle, your ladyship," said cook, "says your ladyship can't be no
sorrier than he is, but when fish goes bad in a night it can't be made
fresh in the morning. He brought it that I might see it for myself, and
it is in a state as could not be used by any one. I was that upset, your
ladyship, that I felt like I must come and explain myself."
"What _can_ be done?" exclaimed Lady Maria. "Emily, _do_ suggest
something."
"We can't even be sure," said the cook, "that Batch has what would suit
us. Batch sometimes has it, but he is the fishmonger at Maundell, and
that is four miles away, and we are short-'anded, your ladyship, now the
'ouse is so full, and not a servant that could be spared."
"Dear me!" said Lady Maria. "Emily, this is really enough to drive one
quite mad. If everything was not out of the stables, I know you would
drive over to Maundell. You are such a good walker,"--catching a gleam
of hope,--"do you think you could walk?"
Emily tried to look cheerful. Lady Maria's situation was really an awful
one for a hostess. It would not have mattered in the least if her
strong, healthy body had not been so tired. She was an excellent walker,
and ordinarily eight miles would have meant nothing in the way of
fatigue. She was kept in good training by her walking in town, Springy
moorland swept by fresh breezes was not like London streets.
"I think I can manage it," she said nice-temperedly. "If I had not run
about so much yesterday it would be a mere nothing. You must have the
fish, of course. I will walk over the moor to Maundell and tell Batch it
must be sent at once. Then I will come back slowly. I can rest on the
heather by the way. The moor is lovely in the afternoon."
"You dear soul!" Lady Maria broke forth. "What a boon you are to a
woman!"
She felt quite grateful. There arose in her mind an impulse to invite
Emily Fox-Seton to remain the rest of her life with her, but she was too
experienced an elderly lady to give way to impulses. She privately
resolved, however, that she would have her a good deal in South Audley
Street, and would make her some decent presents.
When Emily Fox-Seton, attired for her walk in her shortest brown linen
frock and shadiest hat, passed through the hall, the post-boy was just
delivering the midday letters to a footman. The servant presented his
salver to her with a letter for herself lying upon the top of one
addressed in Lady Claraway's handwriting "To the Lady Agatha Slade."
Emily recognised it as one of the epistles of many sheets which so often
made poor Agatha shed slow and depressed tears. Her own letter was
directed in the well-known hand of Mrs. Cupp, and she wondered what it
could contain.
"I hope the poor things are not in any trouble," she thought. "They were
afraid the young man in the sitting-room was engaged. If he got married
and left them, I don't know what they would do; he has been so regular."
Though the day was hot, the weather was perfect, and Emily, having
exchanged her easy slippers for an almost equally easy pair of tan
shoes, found her tired feet might still be used. Her disposition to make
the very best of things inspired her to regard even an eight-mile walk
with courage. The moorland air was so sweet, the sound of the bees
droning as they stumbled about in the heather was such a comfortable,
peaceful thing, that she convinced herself that she should find the four
miles to Maundell quite agreeable.
She had so many nice things to think of that she temporarily forgot that
she had put Mrs. Cupp's letter in her pocket, and was half-way across
the moor before she remembered it.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed when she recalled it. "I must see what has
happened."
She opened the envelope and began to read as she walked; but she had not
taken many steps before she uttered an exclamation and stopped.
"How very nice for them!" she said, but she turned rather pale.
From a worldly point of view the news the letter contained was indeed
very nice for the Cupps, but it put a painful aspect upon the simple
affairs of poor Miss Fox-Seton.
"It is a great piece of news, in one way," wrote Mrs. Cupp, "and yet me
and Jane can't help feeling a bit low at the thought of the changes it
will make, and us living where you won't be with us, if I may take the
liberty, miss. My brother William made a good bit of money in Australia,
but he has always been homesick for the old country, as he always calls
England. His wife was a Colonial, and when she died a year ago he made
up his mind to come home to settle in Chichester, where he was born. He
says there's nothing like the feeling of a Cathedral town. He's bought
such a nice house a bit out, with a big garden, and he wants me and Jane
to come and make a home with him. He says he has worked hard all his
life, and now he means to be comfortable, and he can't be bothered with
housekeeping. He promises to provide well for us both, and he wants us
to sell up Mortimer Street, and come as quick as possible. But we
_shall_ miss you, miss, and though her Uncle William keeps a trap and
everything according, and Jane is grateful for his kindness, she broke
down and cried hard last night, and says to me: 'Oh, mother, if Miss
Fox-Seton could just manage to take me as a maid, I would rather be it
than anything. Traps don't feed the heart, mother, and I've a feeling
for Miss Fox-Seton as is perhaps unbecoming to my station.' But we've
got the men in the house ticketing things, miss, and we want to know
what we shall do with the articles in your bed-sitting-room."
The friendliness of the two faithful Cupps and the humble Turkey-red
comforts of the bed-sitting-room had meant home to Emily Fox-Seton. When
she had turned her face and her tired feet away from discouraging
errands and small humiliations and discomforts, she had turned them
toward the bed-sitting-room, the hot little fire, the small, fat black
kettle singing on the hob, and the two-and-eleven-penny tea-set. Not
being given to crossing bridges before she reached them, she had never
contemplated the dreary possibility that her refuge might be taken away
from her. She had not dwelt upon the fact that she had no other real
refuge on earth.
As she walked among the sun-heated heather and the luxuriously droning
bees, she dwelt upon it now with a suddenly realising sense. As it came
home to her soul, her eyes filled with big tears, which brimmed over and
rolled down her cheeks. They dropped upon the breast of her linen blouse
and left marks.
"I shall have to find a new bed-sitting-room somewhere," she said, the
breast of the linen blouse lifting itself sharply. "It will be so
different to be in a house with strangers. Mrs. Cupp and Jane--" She was
obliged to take out her handkerchief at that moment. "I am afraid I
can't get anything respectable for ten shillings a week. It was very
cheap--and they were so nice!"
All her fatigue of the early morning had returned. Her feet began to
burn and ache, and the sun felt almost unbearably hot. The mist in her
eyes prevented her seeing the path before her. Once or twice she
stumbled over something.
"It seems as if it must be farther than four miles," she said. "And then
there is the walk back. I _am_ tired. But I must get on, really."
Chapter Six
The drive to the ruins had been a great success. It was a drive of just
sufficient length to put people in spirits without fatiguing them. The
party came back to lunch with delightful appetities. Lady Agatha and
Miss Cora Brooke had pink cheeks. The Marquis of Walderhurst had behaved
charmingly to both of them. He had helped each of them to climb about
among the ruins, and had taken them both up the steep, dark stairway of
one of the towers, and stood with them looking over the turrets into the
courtyard and the moat. He knew the history of the castle and could
point out the banquet-hall and the chapel and the serving-places, and
knew legends about the dungeons.
"He gives us all a turn, mother," said Miss Cora Brooke. "He even gave a
turn yesterday to poor Emily Fox-Seton. He's rather nice."
There was a great deal of laughter at lunch after their return. Miss
Cora Brooke was quite brilliant in her gay little sallies. But though
she was more talkative than Lady Agatha, she did not look more
brilliant.
The letter from Curzon Street had not made the beauty shed tears. Her
face had fallen when it had been handed to her on her return, and she
had taken it upstairs to her room with rather a flagging step. But when
she came down to lunch she walked with the movement of a nymph. Her
lovely little face wore a sort of tremulous radiance. She laughed like a
child at every amusing thing that was said. She might have been ten
years old instead of twenty-two, her colour, her eyes, her spirits
seemed of a freshness so infantine.
She was leaning back in her chair laughing enchantingly at one of Miss
Brooke's sparkling remarks when Lord Walderhurst, who sat next to her,
said suddenly, glancing round the table:
"But where is Miss Fox-Seton?"
It was perhaps a significant fact that up to this moment nobody had
observed her absence. It was Lady Maria who replied.
"I am almost ashamed to answer," she said. "As I have said before, Emily
Fox-Seton has become the lodestar of my existence. I cannot live without
her. She has walked over to Maundell to make sure that we do not have a
dinner-party without fish to-night."
"She has _walked_ over to Maundell," said Lord Walderhurst--"after
yesterday?"
"There was not a pair of wheels left in the stable," answered Lady
Maria. "It is disgraceful, of course, but she is a splendid walker, and
she said she was not too tired to do it. It is the kind of thing she
ought to be given the Victoria Cross for--saving one from a dinner-party
without fish."
The Marquis of Walderhurst took up the cord of his monocle and fixed the
glass rigidly in his eye.
"It is not only four miles to Maundell," he remarked, staring at the
table-cloth, not at Lady Maria, "but it is four miles back."
"By a singular coincidence," said Lady Maria.
The talk and laughter went on, and the lunch also, but Lord Walderhurst,
for some reason best known to himself, did not finish his. For a few
seconds he stared at the table-cloth, then he pushed aside his nearly
disposed-of cutlet, then he got up from his chair quietly.
"Excuse me, Maria," he said, and without further ado went out of the
room, and walked toward the stables.
* * * * *
There was excellent fish at Maundell; Batch produced it at once, fresh,
sound, and desirable. Had she been in her normal spirits, Emily would
have rejoiced at the sight of it, and have retraced her four miles to
Mallowe in absolute jubilation. She would have shortened and beguiled
her return journey by depicting to herself Lady Maria's pleasure and
relief.
But the letter from Mrs. Cupp lay like a weight of lead in her pocket.
It had given her such things to think of as she walked that she had been
oblivious to heather and bees and fleece-bedecked summer-blue sky, and
had felt more tired than in any tramp through London streets that she
could call to mind. Each step she took seemed to be carrying her farther
away from the few square yards of home the bed-sitting-room had
represented under the dominion of the Cupps. Every moment she recalled
more strongly that it had been home--home. Of course it had not been the
third-floor back room so much as it had been the Cupps who made it so,
who had regarded her as a sort of possession, who had liked to serve
her, and had done it with actual affection.
"I shall have to find a new place," she kept saying. "I shall have to go
among quite strange people."
She had suddenly a new sense of being without resource. That was one of
the proofs of the curious heaviness of the blow the simple occurrence
was to her. She felt temporarily almost as if there were no other
lodging-houses in London, though she knew that really there were tens of
thousands. The fact was that though there might be other Cupps, or their
counterparts, she could not make herself believe such a good thing
possible. She had been physically worn out before she had read the
letter, and its effect had been proportionate to her fatigue and lack of
power to rebound. She was vaguely surprised to feel that the tears kept
filling her eyes and falling on her cheeks in big heavy drops. She was
obliged to use her handkerchief frequently, as if she was suddenly
developing a cold in her head.
"I must take care," she said once, quite prosaically, but with more
pathos in her voice than she was aware of, "or I shall make my nose
quite red."
[Illustration: The Marquis of Walderhurst]
Though Batch was able to supply fish, he was unfortunately not able to
send it to Mallowe. His cart had gone out on a round just before Miss
Fox-Seton's arrival, and there was no knowing when it would return.
"Then I must carry the fish myself," said Emily. "You can put it in a
neat basket."
"I'm very sorry, miss; I am, indeed, miss," said Batch, looking hot and
pained.
"It will not be heavy," returned Emily; "and her ladyship must be sure
of it for the dinner-party."
So she turned back to recross the moor with a basket of fish on her arm.
And she was so pathetically unhappy that she felt that so long as she
lived the odour of fresh fish would make her feel sorrowful. She had
heard of people who were made sorrowful by the odour of a flower or the
sound of a melody but in her case it would be the smell of fresh fish
that would make her sad. If she had been a person with a sense of
humour, she might have seen that this was a thing to laugh at a little.
But she was not a humorous woman, and just now----
"Oh, I shall have to find a new place," she was thinking, "and I have
lived in that little room for years."
The sun got hotter and hotter, and her feet became so tired that she
could scarcely drag one of them after another. She had forgotten that
she had left Mallowe before lunch, and that she ought to have got a cup
of tea, at least, at Maundell. Before she had walked a mile on her way
back, she realised that she was frightfully hungry and rather faint.
"There is not even a cottage where I could get a glass of water," she
thought.
The basket, which was really comparatively light, began to feel heavy on
her arm, and at length she felt sure that a certain burning spot on her
left heel must be a blister which was being rubbed by her shoe. How it
hurt her, and how tired she was--how tired! And when she left
Mallowe--lovely, luxurious Mallowe--she would not go back to her little
room all fresh from the Cupps' autumn house-cleaning, which included the
washing and ironing of her Turkey-red hangings and chair-covers; she
would be obliged to huddle into any poor place she could find. And Mrs.
Cupp and Jane would be in Chichester.
"But what good fortune it is for them!" she murmured. "They need never
be anxious about the future again. How--how wonderful it must be to know
that one need not be afraid of the future! I--indeed, I think I really
must sit down."
She sat down upon the sun-warmed heather and actually let her tear-wet
face drop upon her hands.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she said helplessly. "I must not let
myself do this. I mustn't, Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"
She was so overpowered by her sense of her own weakness that she was
conscious of nothing but the fact that she must control it. Upon the
elastic moorland road wheels stole upon one without sound. So the wheels
of a rapidly driven high cart approached her and were almost at her side
before she lifted her head, startled by a sudden consciousness that a
vehicle was near her.
It was Lord Walderhurst's cart, and even as she gazed at him with
alarmed wet eyes, his lordship descended from it and made a sign to his
groom, who at once impassively drove on.
Emily's lips tried to tremble into a smile; she put out her hand
fumblingly toward the fish-basket, and having secured it, began to rise.
"I--sat down to rest," she faltered, even apologetically. "I walked to
Maundell, and it was so hot."
Just at that moment a little breeze sprang up and swept across her
cheek. She was so grateful that her smile became less difficult.
"I got what Lady Maria wanted," she added, and the childlike dimple in
her cheek endeavoured to defy her eyes.
The Marquis of Walderhurst looked rather odd. Emily had never seen him
look like this before. He took a silver flask out of his pocket in a
matter-of-fact way, and filled its cup with something.
"That is sherry," he said. "Please drink it. You are absolutely faint."
She held out her hand eagerly. She could not help it.
"Oh, thank you--thank you!" she said. "I am _so_ thirsty!" And she drank
it as if it were the nectar of the gods.
"Now, Miss Fox-Seton," he said, "please sit down again. I came here to
drive you back to Mallowe, and the cart will not come back for a quarter
of an hour."
"You came on purpose!" she exclaimed, feeling, in truth, somewhat
awe-struck. "But how kind of you, Lord Walderhurst--how good!"
It was the most unforeseen and amazing experience of her life, and at
once she sought for some reason which could connect with his coming some
more interesting person than mere Emily Fox-Seton. Oh,--the thought
flashed upon her,--he had come for some reason connected with Lady
Agatha. He made her sit down on the heather again, and he took a seat
beside her. He looked straight into her eyes.
"You have been crying," he remarked.
There was no use denying it. And what was there in the good gray-brown
eye, gazing through the monocle, which so moved her by its suggestion of
kindness and--and some new feeling?
"Yes, I have," she admitted. "I don't often--but--well, yes, I have."
"What was it?"
It was the most extraordinary thump her heart gave at this moment. She
had never felt such an absolute thump. It was perhaps because she was
tired. His voice had lowered itself. No man had ever spoken to her
before like that. It made one feel as if he was not an exalted person at
all; only a kind, kind one. She must not presume upon his kindness and
make much of her prosaic troubles. She tried to smile in a proper casual
way.
"Oh, it was a small thing, really," was her effort at treating the
matter lightly; "but it seems more important to me than it would to any
one with--with a family. The people I live with--who have been so kind
to me--are going away."
"The Cupps?" he asked.
She turned quite round to look at him.
"How," she faltered, "did you know about them?"
"Maria told me," he answered, "I asked her."
It seemed such a human sort of interest to have taken in her. She could
not understand. And she had thought he scarcely realised her existence.
She said to herself that was so often the case--people were so much
kinder than one knew.
She felt the moisture welling in her eyes, and stared steadily at the
heather, trying to wink it away.
"I am really glad," she explained hastily. "It is such good fortune for
them. Mrs. Cupp's brother has offered them such a nice home. They need
never be anxious again."
"But they will leave Mortimer Street--and you will have to give up your
room."
"Yes. I must find another." A big drop got the better of her, and
flashed on its way down her cheek. "I can find a room, perhaps, but--I
can't find----" She was obliged to clear her throat.
"That was why you cried?"
"Yes." After which she sat still.
"You don't know where you will live?"
"No."
She was looking so straight before her and trying so hard to behave
discreetly that she did not see that he had drawn nearer to her. But a
moment later she realised it, because he took hold of her hand. His own
closed over it firmly.
"Will you," he said--"I came here, in fact, to ask you if you will come
and live with me?"
Her heart stood still, quite still. London was so full of ugly stories
about things done by men of his rank--stories of transgressions, of
follies, of cruelties. So many were open secrets. There were men, who,
even while keeping up an outward aspect of respectability, were held
accountable for painful things. The lives of well-born struggling women
were so hard. Sometimes such nice ones went under because temptation was
so great. But she had not thought, she could not have dreamed----