The news that young Mr. Wingfield had come not only into possession of
the property which he had inherited, after the interval made compulsory
by the will, but into residence at the Manor House as well, did not take
long to spread round Framsby. Framsby was ready to receive him to her
great motherly heart. The fact of his being a prodigal did not interfere
in the least with the warmth of the maternal embrace which Framsby was
preparing for him; nay, it actually increased the enthusiasm with which
the sentiment of his coming was hailed. Is it not well known that the
prodigal son is the nearest to the mother’s heart of all her family?
Now, nothing was known of the details of Jack Wingfield’s prodigality;
but the terms of his grandfather’s will had assumed that his prodigality
would be a matter of course, and all Framsby were ready to stand by the
inference of so interesting a legal document. If there was any doubt
in the matter, they were quite ready to give him the benefit of it by
assuming that the piquancy of prodigality was attached to him. He would
make the money fly, no fear! was the prediction of the men who winked
at one another in the evening over the pewter measures of the “Field
and Furrow”; and the tradesmen of Framsby hoped with all their heart and
soul that he would. A prodigal during the first few years of his career
is the idol of the tradesmen; later on they think of Jeroboam the son of
Nebat first, and of the fate that befell his house, and of Pharaoh the
monarch of Egypt afterwards. They turn away from the worship of idols
and harden their hearts at the suggestion of credit.
But of course it was the representatives of the right set at Framsby
who were most interested in the news that Jack Wingfield had come to
the Manor House. The truth was that eligible men were not numerous in
Framsby or the neighbourhood; and this was, socially speaking, rather a
pity, considering what a number of eligible women there were. The worst
of a country society, or, for the matter of that, the society in any
community, is that every woman is “eligible,” but only a man here and
there. Every girl in Framsby considered herself eligible, and her mother
agreed with her; but there the matter began and ended. The select set
was not the set from which eligible men made their selection, and the
consequence was that the number of unmarried young women of various ages
between twenty and forty-six became oppressive to any statistician
who was thinking with interest, increased by alarm, of the future
generation.
But none of them gave up all hope. Some of them hunted a little and got
themselves splashed thoroughly with the mud of many ditches, and torn
woefully with the briars of many gaps, and the barbarities of numerous
fences--they made themselves blowsy at hockey and brown at golf, hoping
that they would be taken for young women still; but they would not have
minded being taken for middle-aged women or elderly women, if only they
would be taken. It seemed, however, as if no man would take them at any
estimate. Their devotion to sport was keen, but, unhappily, keenness
does not invariably mean proficiency. It means talk, and there was
consequently plenty of talk at Framsby about golf and hockey and lawn
tennis and croquet, but the examples of play given by the exponents of
every one of these games were deplorable. The Tennis and Croquet Club,
however, absorbed practically the whole time of the members of the right
set throughout the summer; but when it became known that the Manor House
was occupied by Mr. Wingfield and his mother, the civility of these
representatives of Framsby society caused them to steal some hours from
the courts to pay their respects to the newcomers; and within a week
Mrs. Wingfield and her son received twenty-five visitors, and an equal
number of offers to propose them as members of the Lawn Tennis and
Croquet Club. Unfortunately, Mr. Wingfield had not an opportunity of
making the acquaintance of any of those visitors, the fact being that he
had slipped out upon that convenient terrace which went round the front
and the side of the house, the moment that the approach of the visitors
became imminent. In two cases he was just half a minute too late to be
absolutely free from any charge of impoliteness: the French window of
the drawing-room, by which he was escaping, was stiff and jerky in one
case, and in the other the edge of one wing got caught in the curtains,
thereby detaining him most awkwardly for several seconds. The back view
of him which the callers obtained did not afford them sufficient data
for a detailed description of young Mr. Wingfield, but they made the
most of it in conversation with their less fortunate associates the next
day.
“Have you called on the Manor people yet? What, not yet? We were there
yesterday. My husband knew old Mr. Wingfield very well, you know. Mrs.
Wingfield is a charming person--quite handsome still. She had been
looking forward to seeing us. She feared that there were no families
with whom she could make real friends in this neighbourhood.”
“Was the son there? Did you see the son?”
“Ah, yes, we saw him--only for a short time, however; he had to hurry
off to keep an appointment. What is he like? Oh, quite nice--rather
retiring, I should say.”
“We heard some rather dreadful stories about him. Did he seem wild?”
“Oh, nothing to speak of. It doesn’t do to believe all that one hears
about young men like that. I hear that the property, even allowing
for the unlet farms, amounts to something close upon twenty thousand a
year.”
And then the audience raised interested eyebrows and smiled complete
acquiescence in the obvious truth that one should be slow to believe
anything to the discredit of an eligible bachelor with an income
approaching twenty thousand pounds a year.
It so happened, however, that Jack Wingfield was something of a lawn
tennis player, and he had already entered for an open tournament to be
held on the Framsby ground the first week in June; and he was glad
when his mother told him that she had accepted the offer of Mrs.
Bowlby-Sutherst to put up his name and her own for the club. Jack
Wingfield belonged to Ranelagh and Hurlingham and a couple of lawn
tennis clubs, and he had snatched a second-class prize now and again at
Cannes and Mentone. He had been told encouragingly by the men who had
beaten him that he had in him the making of a first-class player;
and perhaps he had, but he had also in him an inherited trait of
self-depreciation which prevented him from working hard to attain
anything. He thought very poorly of himself all round; and when urged by
competent advisers to give himself a chance, he had invariably given his
shrug, saying, “What’s the good? I’ll never be anything but a plater or
an ‘also ran.’ I get some fun out of it as it is, but I’ll never do more
than I have done.”
So it was with cricket and polo. He never took every ounce out of
himself in fighting for anything.
Framsby’s lawn tennis week begins on the first Monday in June, and the
tournament being an open one, and several champions and ex-champions
coming to take part in it, some good play was certain to be seen when
the Framsby folk were got rid of, which was usually during the first
day’s play. Moreover, there was a “gate” during this week, so that the
ground, sacred for the rest of the year to the members, was invaded by
outsiders with shillings in their hands--five shillings for the week.
And that was how it came that Priscilla Wadhurst contrived to put in an
appearance at the club from the membership of which she was excluded by
the engineering of the select and the elect.
This was the first time she was seen by the Framsby people since her
name had appeared in the local papers in brackets at the foot of the
account of the loss of the barque _Kingsdale_; and there was a consensus
of opinion in the pavilion that she showed rather more than doubtful
taste in exhibiting herself to the public--the phrase was Mrs.
Gifford’s. Mrs. Gifford was the senior member of the select, the wife
of the colonial gentleman with a pension. “But it was just what might be
expected from her,” another of the set whispered to her when Priscilla
passed in front of the pavilion. The pair took good care to be so
engrossed in conversation together that even an ambitious young woman
like Priscilla could hardly have looked for a recognition from them.
(She was on nodding terms with the most exclusive ladies in Framsby, but
only when they met her in the street--not upon special occasions when
important strangers were present, who might go away with the notion that
they were intimate with her.)
But whatever bad taste Priscilla showed in appearing in a public place
so soon after the death of the man who had tried to wreck her life, no
one could suggest that any detail of her dress was not tasteful. All
that people might have found fault with was her dress as a whole. And
a good many of her own sex availed themselves of such a chance. She
was undoubtedly a widow, and yet she bore no token of widowhood in her
dress; and so the right set either turned their eyes toward each others’
faces as she passed, or gazed at some point in space a considerable
distance above her head. Thus they avoided hurting her feelings by
letting her see how shocked they were.
But all the same she knew that they wished it to be known that they
were shocked; and she also knew that they would not have been so greatly
shocked if her dress had not fitted so extremely well. A chastened
spirit and a misfit invariably go together in some people’s minds.
Priscilla knew what it was to dress well, and she was quite aware of the
difference there is between a garden party and a lawn tennis meeting.
She wore the simplest hat and the simplest frock; both white, and
neither relieved by the least touch of colour. But the hat and the frock
and the shoes and the gloves and the sunshade were the best that money
could buy. They were the sort of things that owed their distinction to
the wearer, and only when she had served them in this way did they show
their generosity by conferring distinction upon her.
“Who is that exquisite creature?” said one of the strangers in the front
row of the pavilion seats, as Priscilla moved past without so much as
casting a glance at the occupants of any of the seats.
“An exquisite creature, indeed!” said the one to whom the remark was
addressed. “She walks like a goddess; and what hair!”
The two of the right set smiled each in the other’s face, with the
corners of their lips turned down. They could hardly resist giving the
strangers the information that she was not an exquisite creature, but
only a farmer’s daughter.
But before they had straightened their lips once more the ladies in
front of them, who had followed Priscilla with their eyes, were becoming
excited.
“Dear me!” cried one. “Cynthia is speaking to her. I hope she will bring
her here.”
“How nice of Cynthia!” said the other.
The Framsby people, by putting their heads slightly forward, saw that a
big girl in tennis costume and with a racket in her hand had sprung up
from a seat where she had been resting between games, and flung herself
upon Priscilla, kissing her impetuously and then roaring with laughter.
Priscilla had received her onslaught only a trifle more sedately, and
they stood together on the turf beside one of the courts, chatting like
old friends who have not met for years.
And now the Framsby people saw that the young girl was pointing with her
racket to the pavilion, and then leading Priscilla back by the way she
had come. She led her, still chatting briskly, until they were both
beside the two strangers in the front row.
“Mother,” said the girl, “your chance has come at last;--this is
Priscilla the Puritan maiden.”
The lady got upon her feet.
“Not Miss Wadhurst?” she said. “But of course you are Miss Wadhurst.
I should have known you from Cynthia’s photograph, only you are older
now--more--what shall I say?--no, not more--less, yes, you are less of a
girl.”
“That is charmingly put, Lady Gainsforth,” said Priscilla.
The Framsby ones gasped. So that was the Countess of Gainsforth, and
that girl was her daughter, Lady Cynthia Brooks, the great tennis
player, who was waiting for the mixed doubles. They gasped together; and
then each tried to outdo the other in an attempt to catch Priscilla’s
eye. One of them succeeded, but somehow Priscilla missed seeing her even
with the eye that she caught, and the next moment Priscilla was being
presented to the second lady, whose name was Mrs. Marlowe.
And then the four began to chat of matters far beyond the horizon of
Framsby folk--of the old school where it seemed the girls had been
together--of Lady Gainsforth’s kindness in asking Priscilla to stay
at Gainsforth Towers during the Cowes week, which Priscilla so greatly
appreciated, only regretting that she had promised to go with the Von
Hochmans to their villa at Honnef-on-Rhine; and after all the Count had
been ill, so that they had nothing of him or his opera. Oh, yes, the
opera was produced at Frankfort and afterwards at Nice.
“Why, did they not sing your old English song in it?” asked Lady
Gainsforth.
“Oh, yes,” replied Priscilla. “It was highly praised too in one of the
papers. This is what they said about it”--here followed half-a-dozen
phrases in French, which might have been Sanscrit to the listening
Framsby folk--and Priscilla went on:
“Vanity, was it not, committing the criticism to memory?”
“Shocking vanity!” laughed Lady Cynthia, and when Lady Cynthia laughed
the people in the furthest court looked round, and then they laughed
also.
But the Framsby folk did not laugh, although they were closer to the
cyclonic centre. They were, however, ready to smile should Priscilla
give them the chance. But Priscilla was a hard woman; she could so
easily have spoken to them; and after that it would have been a simple
matter introducing them to Lady Gainsforth and Mrs. Marlowe as the
leaders of society in Framsby; but Priscilla would not do it, just
because they had taken some pains to cut her a quarter of an hour
earlier. Oh, she was a hard woman for one so young!
Lady Cynthia had, however, betrayed her whereabouts by her laugh, and
one of the officials of the Association sent her a message to the effect
that the second of the Mixed Doubles would be played when the court
would be vacant at the end of the Gentlemen’s Singles.
“I must rush,” she cried. “I have a good fighting chance for the M.D.s.,
though not a ghost of one for the L.S.s. Come round with me, Prissy.”
Priscilla said _au revoir_ to Lady Gainsforth and Mrs. Marlowe and
strolled away with Lady Cynthia’s arm through hers; but before she had
turned the corner of the pavilion she found herself face to face with
Mr. Wingfield, and he took off his cap and greeted her also as if he
was an old friend--it seemed that he had been talking to Lady Cynthia
earlier in the day.
Framsby gaped and then gasped.