Nan shot a side-glance at the perfect curve of her sister’s cheek. “Mauve’s the one colour that simply murders me. But nobody who sees you will bother to notice what you’ve got on.”
“You little silly, you, shut up… Look, there’s Conchita and the poodle!” cried Virginia in a burst of reassurance. For there, on the edge of the drive, stood their friend, in a crumpled but picturesque yellow muslin and flapping garden hat, and a first glance at her smiling waving figure assured the two girls of her welcome. They sprang out, leaving the brougham to be driven on with maid and luggage, and instantly the trio were in each other’s arms.
“Oh, girls, girls—I’ve been simply pining for you! I can’t believe you’re really here!” Lady Richard cried, with a tremor of emotion in her rich Creole voice.
“Conchita! Are you really glad?” Virginia drew back and scanned her anxiously. “You’re lovelier than ever; but you look terribly tired. Don’t she look tired, Nan?”
“Don’t talk about me. I’ve looked like a fright ever since the baby was born. But he’s a grand baby, and they say I’ll be all right soon. Jinny, darling, you can’t think how I’ve missed you both! Little Nan, let me have a good look at you. How big your eyes have grown… Jinny, you and I must be careful, or this child will crowd us out of the running…”
Linked arm in arm, the three loitered along the drive, the poodle caracoling ahead. As they approached the great gateway, Conchita checked their advance. “Look, girls! It is a grand house, isn’t it?”
“Yes; but I’m not a bit afraid any more,” Nan laughed, pressing her arm.
“Afraid? What were you afraid of?”
“Virginia said you’d be as grand as the house. She didn’t believe you’d be really glad to see us. We were scared blue of coming.”
“Nan—you little idiot!”
“Well, you did say so, Jinny. You said we must expect her to be completely taken up with her lords and ladies.”
Conchita gave a dry little laugh. “Well, you wait,” she said.
Nan stood still,, gazing up at the noble façade of the great house. “It is grand. I’m so glad I’m not afraid of it,” she murmured, following the other two up the steps between the mighty urns and columns of the doorway.
It was a relief to the girls—though somewhat of a surprise—that there was no one to welcome them when they entered the big domed hall hung with tall family portraits and moth-eaten trophies of the chase. Conchita, seeing that they hesitated, said: “Come along to your room—you won’t see any of the in-laws till dinner”; and they went with her up the stairs, and down a succession of long corridors, glad that the dread encounter was postponed. Miss Jacky March, to whom they had been introduced by Miss Testvalley, had assured them that Lady Brightlingsea was the sweetest and kindest of women; but this did not appear to be Conchita’s view, and they felt eager to hear more of her august relatives before facing them at dinner.
In the room with dark heavy bed-curtains and worn chintz armchairs which had been assigned to the sisters, the lady’s-maid was already shaking out their evening toilets. Nan had wanted to take Miss Testvalley to Allfriars, and had given way to a burst of childish weeping when it was explained to her that girls who were “out” did not go visiting with their governesses. Maids were a new feature in the St George household, and when, with Miss Jacky March’s aid, Laura Testvalley had run down a paragon, and introduced her into the family, Mrs. St George was even more terrified than the girls. But Miss Testvalley laughed. “You were afraid of me once,” she said to Virginia. “You and Nan must get used to being waited on, and having your clothes kept in order. And don’t let the woman see that you’re not used to it. Behave as if you’d never combed your own hair or rummaged for your stockings. Try and feel that you’re as good as any of these people you’re going about with,” the dauntless governess ordained.
“I guess we’re as good as anybody,” Virginia replied haughtily. “But they act differently from us, and we’re not used to them yet.”
“Well, act in your own way, as you call it—that will amuse them much more than if you try to copy them.”
After deliberating with the maid and Conchita over the choice of dinner-dresses, they followed their friend along the corridor to her own bedroom. It was too late to disturb the baby, who was in the night-nursery in the other wing; but in Conchita’s big shabby room, after inspecting everything it contained, the sisters settled themselves down happily on a wide sofa with broken springs. Dinner at Allfriars was not till eight, and they had an hour ahead of them before the dressing-gong. “Tell us about everything, Conchita darling,” Virginia commanded.
“Well, you’ll find only a family party, you know. They don’t have many visitors here, because they have to bleed themselves white to keep the place going, and there’s not much left for entertaining. They’re terribly proud of it—they couldn’t imagine living in any other way. At least my father-in-law couldn’t. He thinks God made Allfriars for him to live in, and Frenshaw—the other place, in Essex; but he doesn’t understand why God gave him so little money to do it on. He’s so busy thinking about that, that he doesn’t take much notice of anybody. You mustn’t mind. My mother-in-law’s good-natured enough; only she never can think of anything to say to people she isn’t used to. Dick talks a little when he’s here; but he so seldom is, what with racing and fishing and shooting. I believe he’s at Newmarket now; but he seldom keeps me informed of his movements.” Her aquamarine eyes darkened as she spoke her husband’s name.
“But aren’t your sisters-in-law here?” Virginia asked.
Conchita smiled. “Oh, yes, poor dears; there’s nowhere else for them to go. But they’re too shy to speak when my mother-in-law doesn’t; sometimes they open their mouths to begin, but they never get as far as the first sentence. You must get used to an ocean of silence, and just swim about in it as well as you can. I haven’t drowned yet, and you won’t. Oh—and Seadown’s here this week. I think you’ll like him; only he doesn’t say much either.”
“Who does talk, then?” Nan broke in, her spirits sinking at this picture of an Allfriars evening.
“Well, I do; too much so, my mother-in-law says. But this evening you two will have to help me out. Oh, and the Rector thinks of something to say every now and then; and so does Jacky March. She’s just arrived, by the way. You know her, don’t you?”
“That little Miss March with the funny curls, that Miss Testvalley took us to see?”
“Yes. She’s an American, you know—but she’s lived in England for years and years. I’ll tell you something funny—only you must swear not to let on. She was madly in love with Lord Brightlingsea—with my father-in-law. Isn’t that a good one?” said Conchita with her easy laugh.
“Mercy! In love? But she must be sixty,” cried Virginia, scandalized.
“Well,” said Nan gravely, “I can imagine being in love at sixty.”
“There’s nothing crazy you can’t imagine,” her sister retorted. “But can you imagine being in love with Miss March?”
“Oh, she wasn’t sixty when it happened,” Conchita continued. “It was ages and ages ago. She says they were actually engaged, and that he jilted her after the wedding-dress was ordered; and I believe he doesn’t deny it. But of course he forgot all about her years ago; and after a time she became a great friend of Lady Brightlingsea’s, and comes here often, and gives all the children th° loveliest presents. Don’t you call that funny?”
Virginia drew herself up. “I call it demeaning herself; it shows she hasn’t any proper pride. I’m sorry she’s an American.”
Nan sat brooding in her corner. “I think it just shows she loves him better than she does her pride.”
The two elder girls laughed, and she hung her head with a sudden blush. “Well,” said Virginia, “if mother heard that she’d lock you up.”
The dressing-gong boomed through the passages, and the sisters sprang up and raced back to their room.
The Marquess of Br
ightlingsea stood with his coat-tails to the monumental mantelpiece of the red drawing-room, and looked severely at his watch. He was still, at sixty, a splendid figure of a man, firm-muscled, well set-up, with the sloping profile and coldly benevolent air associated, in ancestral portraits, with a tie-wig, and ruffles crossed by an Order. Lord Brightlingsea was a just man, and having assured himself that it still lacked five minutes to eight he pocketed his watch with a milder look, and began to turn about busily in the empty shell of his own mind. His universe was a brilliantly illuminated circle extending from himself at its centre to the exact limit of his occupations and interests. These comprised his dealings with his tenantry and his man of business, his local duties as Lord Lieutenant of the County and M.F.H., and participation in the manly sports suitable to his rank and age. The persons ministering to these pursuits were necessarily in the foreground, and the local clergy and magistracy in the middle distance, while his family clung in a precarious half-light on the periphery, and all beyond was blackness. Lady Brightlingsea considered it her duty to fish out of this outer darkness, and drag for a moment into the light, any person or obligation entitled to fix her husband’s attention; but they always faded back into night as soon as they had served their purpose.
Lord Brightlingsea had learned from his valet that several guests had arrived that afternoon, his own eldest son among them. Lord Seadown was seldom at Allfriars except in the hunting season, and his father’s first thought was that if he had come at so unlikely a time it was probably to ask for money. The thought was excessively unpleasant, and Lord Brightlingsea was eager to be rid of it, or at least to share it with his wife, who was more used to such burdens. He looked about him impatiently; but Lady Brightlingsea was not in the drawing-room, nor in the Vandyke saloon beyond. Lord Brightlingsea, as he glanced down the length of the saloon, said to himself: “Those tapestries ought to be taken down and mended”—but that too was an unpleasant thought, associated with much trouble and expense, and therefore belonging distinctly to his wife’s province. Lord Brightlingsea was well aware of the immense value of the tapestries, and knew that if he put them up for sale all the big London dealers would compete for them; but he would have kicked out of the house any one who approached him with an offer. “I’m not sunk as low as Thwarte,” he muttered to himself, shuddering at the sacrilege of the Titian carried off from Honourslove to the auction-room.
“Where the devil’s your mother?” he asked, as a big-boned girl in a faded dinner-dress entered the drawing-room.
“Mamma’s talking with Seadown, I think; I saw him go into her dressing-room,” Lady Honoria Marable replied.
Lord Brightlingsea cast an unfavourable glance on his daughter. (“If her upper teeth had been straightened when she was a child we might have had her married by this time,” he thought. But that again was Lady Brightlingsea’s affair.)
“It’s an odd time for your mother to be talking in her dressing-room. Dinner’ll be on the table in a minute.”
“Oh, I’m sure Mamma will be down before the others. And Conchita’s always late, you know.”
“Conchita knows that I won’t eat my soup cold on her account. Who are the others?”
“No one in particular. Two American girls who are friends of Conchita’s.”
“H’m. And why were they invited, may I ask?”
Honoria Marable hesitated. All the girls feared their father less than they did their mother, because she remembered and he did not. Honoria feared him least of all, and when Lady Brightlingsea was not present was almost at her ease with him. “Mamma told Conchita to ask them down, I think. She says they’re very rich. I believe their father’s in the American army. They call him ‘Colonel’.”
“The American army? There isn’t any. And they call dentists ‘Colonel’ in the States.” But Lord Brightlingsea’s countenance had softened. “Seadown…” he thought. If that were the reason for his son’s visit, it altered the situation, of course. And, much as he disliked to admit such considerations to his mind, he repeated carelessly: “You say these Americans are very rich?”
“Mamma has heard so. I think Miss March knows them, and she’ll be able to tell her more about them. Miss March is here too, you know.”
“Miss March?” Lord Brightlingsea’s sloping brow was wrinkled in an effort of memory. He repeated: “March—March. Now that’s a name I know…”
Lady Honoria smiled. “I should think so, Papa!”
“Now why? Do you mean that I know her too?”
“Yes. Mamma told me to be sure to remind you.”
“Remind me of what?”
“Why, that you jilted her, and broke her heart. Don’t you remember? You’re to be particularly nice to her, Papa; and be sure not to ask her if she’s ever seen Allfriars before.”
“I—what? Ah, yes, of course… That old nonsense! I hope I’m ‘nice’, as you call it, to every one who comes to my house,” Lord Brightlingsea rejoined, pulling down the lapels of his dress-coat, and throwing back his head majestically.
At the same moment the drawing-room door opened again, and two girls came into the room. Lord Brightlingsea, gazing at them from the hearth, gave a faint exclamation, and came forward with extended hand. The elder and taller of the two advanced to meet it.
“You’re Lord Brightlingsea, aren’t you? I’m Miss St George, and this is my sister Annabel,” the young lady said, in a tone that was fearless without being familiar.
Lord Brightlingsea fixed on her a gaze of undisguised benevolence. It was a long time since his eyes had rested on anything so fresh and fair, and he found the sensation very agreeable. It was a pity, he reflected, that his eldest son lacked his height, and had freckles and white eyelashes. “Gad,” he thought, “if I were Seadown’s age…”
But before he could give further expression to his approval another guest had appeared. This time it was some one vaguely known to him; a small elderly lady, dressed with a slightly antiquated elegance, who came toward him reddening under her faint touch of rouge. “Oh, Lord Brightlingsea—” and, as he took her trembling little hand he repeated to himself: “My wife’s old friend, of course; Miss March. The name’s perfectly familiar to me—what the deuce else did Honoria say I was to remember about her?”
XI.
When the St George girls, following candle in hand the bedward procession headed by Lady Brightlingsea, had reached the door of their room, they could hardly believe that the tall clock ticking so loudly in the corner had not gone back an hour or two.
“Why, is it only half past ten?” Virginia exclaimed.
Conchita, who had followed them in, threw herself on the sofa with a laugh. “That’s what I always think when I come down from town. But it’s not the clocks at Allfriars that are slow; my father-in-law sees to that. It’s the place itself.” She sighed. “In London the night’s just beginning. And the worst of it is that when I’m here I feel as dead with sleep by ten o’clock as if I’d been up till daylight.”
“I suppose it’s the struggling to talk,” said Nan irrepressibly.
“That, and the awful certainty that when anybody does speak nothing will be said that one hasn’t heard a million times before. Poor little Miss March! What a fight she put up; but it’s no use. My father-in-law can never think of anything to say to her.—Well, Jinny, what did you think of Seadown?”
Virginia coloured; the challenge was a trifle too direct. “Why, I thought he looked pretty sad, too; like all the others.”
“Well, he is sad, poor old Seedy. The fact is—it’s no mystery—he’s tangled up with a rapacious lady who can’t afford to let him go; and I suspect he’s so sick of it that if any nice girl came along and held out her hand…”
Virginia, loosening her bright tresses before the mirror, gave them a contemptuous toss. “In America girls don’t have to hold out their hands—”
“Oh, I mean, just be kind; show him a little sympathy. He isn’t easy to amuse; but I saw him laugh once or t
wice at things Nan said.”
Nan sat up in surprise. “Me? Jinny says I always say the wrong thing.”
“Well, you know, that rather takes in England. They’re so tired of the perfectly behaved Americans who are afraid of using even a wrong word.”
Virginia gave a slightly irritated laugh. “You’d better hold your hand out, Nan, if you want to be Conchita’s sister-in-law.”
“Oh, misery! What I like is just chattering with people I’m not afraid of—like that young man we met the other day in London who said he was a friend of yours. He lives somewhere near here, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, Guy Thwarte. Rather! He’s one of the most fascinating detrimentals in England.”
“What’s a detrimental?”
“A young man that all the women are mad about, but who’s too poor to marry. The only kind left for the married women, in fact—so hands off, please, my dear. Not that I want Guy for myself,” Conchita added with her lazy laugh. “Dick’s enough of a detrimental for me. What I’m looking for is a friend with a settled income that he doesn’t know how to spend.”
“Conchita!” Virginia exclaimed, flushed with disapproval.
Lady Richard rose from the sofa. “So sorry! I forgot you little Puritans weren’t broken in yet. Goodnight, dears. Breakfast at nine sharp; and don’t forget family prayers.” She stopped on the threshold to add in a half-whisper: “Don’t forget, either, that the day after tomorrow we’re going to drive over to call on him—the detrimental, I mean. And even if you don’t care about him, you’ll see the loveliest place in all England.”
“Well, it was true enough, what Conchita said about nobody speaking,” Virginia remarked when the two sisters were alone. “Did you ever know anything as awful as that dinner? I couldn’t think of a word to say. My voice just froze in my throat.”
“I didn’t mind so much, because it gave me a chance to look,” Nan rejoined.
“At what? All I saw was a big room with cracks in the ceiling, and bits of plaster off the walls. And after dinner, when those great bony girls showed us albums with views of the Rhine, I thought I should scream. I wonder they didn’t bring out a magic lantern!”
Edith Wharton - Novel 21 Page 10
