by Grant Allen
But the lady settled herself down in her seat, and spoke with such unassuming and sprightly graciousness to Faith that even that national schoolmistress’ proud heart was melted by degrees, and before the two had reached Wilmington Junction they were hard at work in conversation with one another.
“Dear me, where’s my lunch-basket?” the lady said at last, looking around for the racks which did not exist in the commodious horsebox; “is it over your side, my dear?”
She said “My dear,” so simply and naturally, that Faith could hardly find it in her heart to answer, “I think your footman — or, at least, the gentleman in tight silk stockings who saw you off — put it under the seat there.”
The lady laughed a good-natured laugh.
“Oh, he’s not my footman,” she answered, stooping down to look for it. “He belongs to some friends where I have been spending Christmas. It doesn’t run to footmen with me, I can assure you. If it did, I wouldn’t be traveling third this morning.”
“No?” Faith queried coldly.
“No,” the lady answered, with a gentle but very decisive smile; “nor you either, if it comes to that. Nobody ever travels third by preference: so don’t pretend it! There are people who tell you they do, but then they’re snobs, and also untruthful. They’re afraid to say they do it for economy. I’m not. I travel third because its cheap. As Pooh-Bah says in the play, I do it, but I don’t like it. Now say the truth yourself; wouldn’t you, if you could, always travel first or second?”
“I’ve never tried,” Faith answered evasively. “I’ve never had money enough.”
“Now, that’s right!” the stranger exclaimed warmly, opening her lunch-basket, and taking out some cold grouse and a flask of claret. “That shows at once you have blue blood. I’m a great admirer of blue blood myself — I firmly believe in it.”
“I don’t precisely see what blue blood’s got to do with the matter,” Faith answered, bewildered. “I come from a little country town in Surrey, and I’m a national schoolmistress.”
“Exactly,” the lady echoed. “The very moment I set eyes on you I felt sure you had blue blood. I saw it in your wrists, and I wasn’t mistaken. You mayn’t know it, perhaps — a great many people have got blue blood and aren’t aware of it. But it’s there for all that, as blue as indigo; and I, who am a connoisseur in matters of blood, can always spot it.” And she proceeded to take out from a dainty case a knife, fork, spoon, and a couple of drinking-glasses.
“But how did you spot it in me just now?” Faith asked with a smile, not wholly unflattered.
“Because you weren’t ashamed to say you’d never traveled anything but third; and because you insisted then with unnecessary zeal on the smallness and humility of your own surroundings. Only blue blood ever does that. Everybody’s descended from a duke on one side and a cobbler on the other. Snobs try always to bring forward their duke and conceal their cobbler. Blue blood’s prouder, and franker too. It insists upon its cobbler being duly recognized.”
“Well, I’m not ashamed of mine. I’m proud of him,” Faith answered, coloring up; “but all the same I don’t like blue blood. It’s so hard and unfeeling. It makes me mad sometimes. You wouldn’t believe how it keeps people waiting for their money.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like it,” the lady said, with the same soft smile as before and a bewitching look, “for then you won’t like me. I’m blue, very blue, as blue as the sky, and I don’t pretend to deny it. Will you take a little grouse, and a glass of claret?”
“Thank you,” Faith answered coldly, flushing up once more. “I have my own lunch here in my own parcel.”
“What have you got?” the lady asked, with the inquiring air of a profound gourmet.
“Hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches,” Faith said, half-choking.
“Well, Lady Seaminster didn’t give me any hard-boiled eggs,” the lady said, searching in vain in her basket. “May I have one of yours? Let’s share our provisions.”
Faith could hardly say no, though she saw at once through the polite ruse; so she passed an egg to the lady with an “Oh, of course, I shall be delighted;” and proceeded herself to eat a very dry sandwich.
“Have some grouse,” the lady said, passing her over a piece on a little electro-plated dish. “And a glass of claret.”
“I’ve never tasted claret,” Faith answered grimly. “I don’t know if I’ll like it.”
“All the better reason for trying it now,” the lady replied, still cheerfully kind in spite of rebuffs, “And so you thought that elegant gentleman in silk stockings was my servant, did you? What a capital joke! But people at Oxford can’t afford to keep footmen in tights, you know. We’re as poor as church mice there — poor, but cultured.”
A flash of interest gleamed for a second in Faith’s eyes at the mention of Oxford. “Oh, you live there, do you?” she said. “I should like to see Oxford.”
“Yes, my husband’s professor of Accadian,” the lady remarked. “His name’s Douglas. But I dare say you don’t know what Accadian is. I didn’t, I’m sure, till I married Archie.”
A fuller flush came on Faith’s cheek. “I’ve heard of it from my brother,” she said simply. “I think it was the language spoken in Assyria before the Assyrians went there, wasn’t it? Ah, yes, Paul told me so. And I’ve heard him speak of your husband too, I fancy.”
“Have you a brother at Oxford, then?” the lady asked with a start.
“Yes, at Christ Church.”
“Why, that’s Archie’s college,” the lady went on, smiling. “What’s his name? I may know him.”
“I don’t think so. His name’s Gascoyne.”
Mrs. Douglas fairly jumped with her triumph. “There! Didn’t I tell you so?” she cried, clapping her hands in her joy. “You have blue blood. It’s as clear as mud. Archie’s told me all about your brother. He’s poor but blue. I knew you were blue. Your father’s a baronet.” Faith trembled all over at this sudden recognition. “Yes,” she answered with some annoyance. “But he’s as poor as he can be. He’s a cabdriver too. I told you I wasn’t ashamed of my cobbler.” —
“And I told you I was sure you had blue blood,” Mrs. Douglas echoed, delighted. “Now — this is quite too lovely, trying to pass yourself off for a roturier like that. But it’s no use with me. I see through these flimsy disguises always. Have some more claret — it’s not so bad, is it? And so you’d love to go to Oxford?”
“Yes,” Faith faltered. “Paul’s told me so much about it.”
“Guard,” the lady cried, as they stopped at a station, “do we change here? Mind you tell us when we get to Hillborough Junction.”
She had enjoined this upon him already more than a dozen times since they started on their journey, and the guard was beginning to get a little tired of it.
“All right, mum,” he said in a testy voice. “Don’t you be afeard. I’ll see you all right. Jest you sit where you are until I come and tell you.”
“Why, that’s where I have to change,” Faith observed, as Mrs. Douglas withdrew her head from the window.
“Well, that’s all right,” Mrs Douglas replied, with a cheery nod. “Now we can have such a nice tête-à-tête together. You must tell me all about your brother and yourself. Do you know, my husband thinks your brother’s awfully clever?”
She had found the right way to Faith’s heart at last. Thus adjured, Faith began to gossip with real good will about Paul, and her mother, and the business at Hillborough, and the life of a schoolmistress, and the trials she endured at the hands (and throats) of those unconscious infants. She talked away more and more familiarly as the time went on, till dusk set in, and the lamp in the horsebox alone was left to light them. Mrs. Douglas, in spite of her prejudice in favor of blue blood, was really sympathetic; and by dexterous side-questions she drew out of Faith the inmost longings and troubles of her heart — how the local Hillborough grandees owed long bills which they wouldn’t pay; how Paul was cramped at Christ Church for want of
money; how her father was growing rheumatic and too old for his work; how hard a time they often had in the winter; how fond she was of Paul, and. Paul of her; how he had taught her in his holidays all he learned himself; how they two read Daudet and Victor Hugo together; and how she longed with all her heart and soul to be free from the indescribable bondage of the infants. Everything she told — Mrs. Douglas was so excellent and friendly a wielder of the pump — save that one hateful secret about Mr. Solomons. There, Faith was always discreetly silent. She hated that horrible compact so thoroughly in her soul that she could never so much as bring herself to speak of it, even in the family circle.
They talked so long, and talked so earnestly, that they quite forgot about Hillborough Junction.
At last, as the clock was sounding seven, they arrived at a big and noisy station where porters were shouting and trains were puffing and the electric light was fizzing and spluttering. Mrs. Douglas put her head out of the window once more and called out to the guard, “Now is this Hillborough Junction?”
The guard, with a righteously astonished air, cried back in reply, “Hillborough Junction! Why, what are you thinking of, mum? We passed Hillborough Junction a clear two hours ago.”
Faith looked at Mrs. Douglas, and Mrs. Douglas looked at Faith. They stared in silence. Then the elder woman burst suddenly into a good-natured laugh. It was no use bullying that righteously astonished guard. He was clearly expostulation-proof by long experience. “When can we get a train back?” she asked instead, with practical wisdom.
And the guard answered, in the same business-like tone, “You can’t get no train back to-night at all. Last’s gone. You’ll have to stop here till to-morrow morning.”
Mrs. Douglas laughed again; to her it was a mere adventure. The Lightbody’s carriage, which was sent down to meet her, would have to go back to the Rectory empty — that was all. But tears rushed up suddenly into poor Faith’s eyes. To her it was nothing less than a grave misfortune.
“Oh, where can I go?” she cried, clasping her hands together nervously. “And mother’ll be so dreadfully, dreadfully frightened!”
Mrs. Douglas’s face grew somewhat graver. “You must come with me to a hotel,” she answered kindly.
Faith looked back at her with eyes of genuine dismay. “I can’t,” she murmured in a choking voice. “I — I couldn’t afford to go to any hotel where you’d go to.”
Mrs. Douglas took in the whole difficulty at a glance, “How much have you got with you, dear?” she asked gently.
“Four-and-sixpence,” Faith answered with a terrible gulp. To her that was indeed a formidable sum to have to spend unexpectedly upon a night’s lodging.
“If I were to lend you a few shillings—” Mrs. Douglas began. But Faith shook her head.
“That would be no use, thank you — thank you ever so much,” she replied, gasping. “I couldn’t pay it back. I mean, I couldn’t afford to pay so much for — for a mistake of my own in not getting out at the right station.”
“The mistake was mine,” Mrs. Douglas said with prompt decision. “It was I who misled you. I ought to have asked.” She hesitated for a moment. “There’s a good hotel here, I know,” she began once more timidly; “if you’d only be so nice as to come there as my guest.”
But Faith shook her head more vigorously than before.
“You’re a dear, kind thing,” she cried, grasping her new friend’s hand and pressing it warmly; “and I’m ever so grateful. But I couldn’t — I couldn’t — oh, no! I couldn’t. It may be pride, and it may be the blood of the cobblers in me, I don’t know which, but I never Could do it — I really couldn’t.”
Mrs. Douglas had tact enough to see at once she really meant it, and that nothing on earth would shake her firm resolve; so she paused a moment to collect her thoughts. Then she said once more, with that perfect good humor which seemed never to desert her, “Well, if that’s so, my dear, there’s no other way out of it. The mountain won’t come to Mahomet, it appears, so I suppose Mahomet must go to the mountain. If you won’t come to my hotel, my child, I’ll just have to go and stop at yours to take care of you.”
Faith drew back with a little cry of depreciation. “Oh, no,” she exclaimed; “I could never let you do that, I’m sure, Mrs. Douglas.”
But on that point Mrs. Douglas was firm. The rock of the convenances on which she founded her plea could not have been more immovable in its fixity than herself. “There are no two ways about it, my dear,” she said, after Faith had pleaded in vain every plea she knew to be let go alone to her own sort of lodging-house; “the thing’s impossible. I’m a married woman, and older than you, and I know all about it. A girl of your age — a baronet’s daughter, too — can’t be permitted to go by herself to an inn or public-house, especially the sort of inn you seem to imply, without a married woman to guarantee her and chaperon her. As a Christian creature, I couldn’t dream of allowing it. Why, that dear mother of yours would go out of her senses if she only knew you’d been passing a night alone in such a place without me to take care of you.” A sudden thought seemed to strike her all at once. “Stop here a second,” she said, “I’ll soon come back to you.”
Faith stopped on the platform by her one small portmanteau for five minutes or more; and then Mrs. Douglas returned triumphant. “This is what I’ve said,” she exclaimed, brandishing a piece of white paper all radiant before her: “I’ve sent off a telegram: ‘Mrs. Douglas, Pendlebury, to Gascoyne, Plowden’s Court, Hillborough, Surrey. Your daughter has missed her train, but is here and safe. Will return to-morrow. I am taking her to a respectable inn for the night. I am a friend of the Light-bodys, of Cheriton Rectory.’”
“How did you know my address?” Faith gasped, astonished.
“My dear,” Mrs. Douglas replied, “I happen to possess a pair of eyes. I read it on the label, there, on your portmanteau.”
How much did it cost?” Faith cried, all aghast.
“I refuse to be questioned about my private correspondence,” Mrs. Douglas answered firmly. “That’s my affair. The telegram’s mine, and sent in my own name. And now, dear, we’ve got to go out into the town and hunt about for our four-and-sixpenny lodging.”
CHAPTER XIII.
BROTHER AND SISTER.
“So what did you do then?” Paul asked two days later, as his sister and he sat hand in hand, comparing notes over their winter’s adventures.
“So then,” Faith went on, continuing her tale with unusual animation, “we ran about to two or three little places, to see which one would take us cheapest. And Mrs. Douglas, oh, she’s a wonderful one at bargaining — you and I would never dare to do it. We wouldn’t have the face to beat people down so. ‘No,’ she said, ‘that won’t suit us — we want bed and breakfast for half-a-crown,’ and you’ll hardly believe it, at last she got it.”
It was the luncheon hour on the first day of Faith’s return to the slavery of the infants; but Faith had not gone home for her midday meal. She had got Paul to bring it out to her in her father’s tin up to the Knoll, the heath-clad height that overhangs Hillborough, and from which the town derives its name. A little wooden summer-house, in form like a small Ionic temple, consisting only of a circular roof supported by heavy wooden columns, in the quaint bad taste of the eighteenth century, crowns the summit: and here, on that bright, frosty January morning, in spite of the cold, Faith preferred to eat her lunch undisturbed under the clear blue sky, in order to enjoy an uninterrupted interchange of confidences with her newly returned brother. In the small houses of the laboring classes and the lesser bourgeoisie a tête-à-tête is impossible. People in that rank of life always go outdoors to say whatever they have most at heart to one another: a fact that explains much in their habits and manners whereat the unreflecting in the classes above them are apt to jeer beyond what is seemly. So, brusque as was the change to Paul from the lemon-groves of Mentone to the bare boughs and leafless trunks of the beeches and chestnuts on the Knoll at Hillborough, he was glad
to embrace that chance of out-pouring his soul to his one intimate friend and confidante, his sister, in the rococo summer house on the open hilltop, rather than in the narrow little parlor at the ancestral abode of the Gascoyne family.
“We couldn’t have done it ourselves,” Paul mused in reply. “But that’s always the way with people who feel sure of their ground, Faith. They’ll bargain and haggle ten times as much over a shilling as we will. You see, they’re not afraid of losing caste by it.”
“That’s just it,” Faith went on. “She was as bold as brass about it. ‘Half-a-crown and not one penny more we pay,’ she said, putting her little foot down smartly — just like this; ‘and we don’t want any supper; because, you see, Faith, you and I can sup in our own room, to save expense, off the remains of the sandwiches and the grouse and claret.’”
“No! She didn’t say that out loud before their faces?” Paul exclaimed, aghast.
“Yes she did, before their very faces, my dear; and me there, just ready to drop at her side with shame and annoyance. But, Paul, she didn’t seem to care a pin. She was as high and mighty as if she had ordered a private room, with champagne and turtle. She held up her head like a thorough lady, and made me feel quite bold myself, merely by dint of her good example.”
“And you slept together?” Paul asked.
“And we slept together,” Faith answered. “She said she didn’t mind a bit sharing the same room, though she would with some people, because I had blue blood — she was always talking that nonsense about blue blood, you know — and blue blood was akin all the world over. And I said I’d always understood, from the documents in the case, that mankind was made of one flesh, everywhere alike, no matter what might be the particular color or quality of its circulating fluid; and for my part I didn’t care a brass farthing whether her blood was blue, or pink, or yellow, or merely red like us common people’s: for she was a dear, good thing, anyhow, and I liked her ever so. And then she took my face between her hands, like this, and kissed me so hard, and said, ‘Now we two are friends for good and always, so we’ll talk no more nonsense about debatable questions.’ And, Paul, she’s really such a sweet, kind soul, I could almost forgive her for being such a dreadful aristocrat. Why, do you know, she says she pays everybody weekly, and never kept even a washerwoman waiting for her money, not a fortnight in her life, and wouldn’t either!”