Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  That she did keep them back, lonely little soul, was to her credit — men have gone on forlorn hopes and have won medals and crosses at less cost.

  Suddenly they swerved off the road that ran like pale ribbon across the moorland. They began to descend, and about them solitary thorn-trees, gnarled and ghostly, started up, breaking the waste. Presently they were driving through dark woods, they passed between two stone pillars — gateless — they rolled smoothly along a grand avenue flanked by a black wall of trees set far back on either side. At length — for to her trembling in her corner the avenue seemed to be endless — the postboys cracked their whips, the jaded horses mustered a canter, she saw before her a long pile of building, in which a meagre light or two showed at one end.

  “Thank God, that’s over!” her companion muttered. “We are there!” He yawned as he stretched his long legs and prepared to alight.

  CHAPTER IV

  AT QUEEN’S FOLLY

  MRS. JEMMETT set down her breakfast-cup on the round table and took a leisurely look at Rachel. She had looked at the girl “a many times” before, as she said later in the day, but her doubts remained unsolved. The housekeeper was a comfortable-looking woman who filled her bodice as efficiently as she filled her place, but she had considering eyes and a close-shut mouth which did not always let her thoughts escape. “Some is touchy, particularly at the start,” she continued. “But I thought that you would be as well here, miss, until the family returns.”

  “I think it is very nice here,” Rachel replied. And in truth the housekeeper’s homely room, which looked on a plot of rough grass, cut off from the garden by a beech hedge, had seemed to her a very haven of rest on her arrival the evening before. “I should have been lonely upstairs — until,” she added with a sudden remembrance of Dr. South and her mother’s caution, “the family returns.”

  “Well, so I thought. Besides,” Mrs. Jemmett added candidly, “it would have been a heap more trouble to wait on you upstairs and me short-handed. Indeed I’d fine work to get a bed aired at such short notice.

  And what her ladyship—”

  “Yes?” Rachel said, for the housekeeper had paused.

  “Oh, nothing, miss. Only perhaps her ladyship may like to make her own arrangements when she comes.”

  “There’s no one here now, then?”

  “Only the Captain. He’s a dockyarding or what not, at Southampton, and goes and comes. He’s been to London and goes to-morrow. The children come down on Monday and her ladyship follows Tuesday — that’s this day week. To be sure, we shall have Mr. Girardot Friday, and he’s like a smile in the house. He livens everybody up, I will say that; but don’t you lose your heart to him, miss,” she added with a thin smile.

  Rachel winced. “Who is Mr. Girardot?” she asked.

  “The tutor, miss, and everybody’s favourite, except, maybe, the Captain’s. I don’t know as he does favour him, but there, there couldn’t be two more different, and the Captain would be no worse if he were a little more like him on the outside.”

  “That was Captain Dunstan who brought me yesterday?”

  “To be sure, miss. Captain the Honourable George Dunstan, his lordship’s brother.”

  “Then Lord Ellingham does not come with the family?”

  “No, not at once. You’ve not,” she continued with an odd searching look at the girl, “met his lordship?”

  “No.”

  “Then — if I may ask, miss — who made the arrangement?”

  The same question! Rachel began to tire of it, to find something strange in it. But she answered it once more. “Lady Elisabeth, who lives at Exeter.”

  “Ah!”

  “I suppose — she is often here?”

  “No, miss, not often.” The housekeeper rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “Indeed I don’t know when she was here. The truth is, Lady Elisabeth and her ladyship don’t hit it off — not over well, so to speak.” Well, that was good news at any rate. With Lady Elisabeth at a distance and the Captain leaving tomorrow, she might hope for better things. Rachel’s heart was lightened, and when Mrs. Jemmett offered to conduct her to the schoolroom she rose with alacrity.

  It proved to be a small room on the second floor, and dull and shabby as became its purpose — what children’s room in that age was other than dull, or was furnished with aught that had not seen its best days elsewhere?

  A door covered with red baize and closing with a spring shut it off, and Rachel’s bedroom with it; and from the long corridor, just outside this door, a narrow staircase ran down to a side entrance, which the housekeeper hinted that the governess was expected to use.

  “You’ll live and have your meals here, miss,” she explained. “The young ladyship’s room, and her maid’s, are underneath these. She’ll take her tea with you I expect, and Lord Bodmin when he’s a mind.”

  Rachel had not yet savoured the monotony of a lonely life, and she eyed her little domain with relief and even with satisfaction. Dull the room was, but its single window looked on the green forest-glades that on that side ran up to the house; and below the window the sun was shining on stately oaks, here lifting themselves from a carpet of moss, there standing foot-deep in fern. A brace of forest ponies were feeding a hundred paces away, and wood-pigeons cooed in neighbouring branches. She gazed with pleasure on a scene so novel and did not stay to consider what its aspect might be when the trees dripped, bare and leafless, under a February sky.

  “Well, miss, I must go now,” the housekeeper continued briskly. “And you’d best learn your way about. The Captain is out with his gun and you’ll be free to go where you please. When the family is back it will be another thing.”

  Rachel availed herself of the offer, and before she descended peeped into the rooms on the upper floors, wondering at their number, at the size of some and the shrouded splendour of others — of one in particular, that panelled in blue silk and furnished with giltlegged chairs and tables, strewn with bibelots and framed work, she judged to be Lady Ellingham’s boudoir. The grand staircase, flanked by a descending line of tall grim portraits, of ladies caressing dogs, and officers grasping sword-hilts, struck her with awe, which the entrance hall, with its stags’ heads and its old armour, did not lessen. Pushing a heavy mahogany door she found herself in a vast dining-room, and here were more portraits; gentlemen in blue with collarless coats, and ladies in white with tuckers that, it seemed to her, might have been higher. Beyond this she entered, feeling all the time as if she were watched, a sombre library, where walls of dull quartos and folios looked down on the antics of a monstrous faun that held the middle of the floor and seemed to be capering for the amusement of the white marble Venuses that lurked each in her corner — a silent tomb-like room, the legacy she guessed of a past generation.

  In one of the great sheeted reception rooms the housekeeper found her, and with the air of one conferring a favour twitched the linen cover from a glass cabinet. “There, miss,” she said with pride, “there’s the gold inkstand as the Queen gave her ladyship when she finished her waiting, and the gold needle-case as the Princess Royal gave her, and the miniature as the Queen gave her on her birthday. She married out of her waiting — very young she was, and maybe she’d ha’ been wiser if she’d waited until—”

  “Yes?” Rachel said, for Mrs. Jemmett’s voice had trickled into silence.

  The housekeeper coughed discreetly. “Well, she was young to marry,” she said. And covering the cabinet, she presently went away, murmuring something about her work.

  Feeling her insignificance in the spacious rooms, Rachel wandered out and viewed the long white front of the house, embayed in the middle where the entrance looked on a semicircular space framing four plots of lawn and enclosed by an ironwork railing, gilt in parts and pierced by three grand entrances. Each of these opened on a separate avenue that, running through the forest, presented to the eye a solemn vista, narrowing till it reached the sky-line.

  Rachel liked that side least. Even on a bright day
its gloomy magnificence oppressed her. It was a relief to find her way round the house to the gardens in the rear, and so by an iron gate to the open glades, where the cawing of rooks, the hum of bees and the chirr of grasshoppers, rejoicing in the warmth, gave life to the scene.

  It did not occur to her as she wandered about, grateful for this unlooked-for respite, that she was matter for discussion. But in the housekeeper’s room a good deal was being said about her by Mrs. Jemmett and Bowles the butler. Bowles was a widower living in his own cottage and at present pleasantly off duty.

  The housekeeper rubbed her nose. “To look at her,”; she decided, “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but what she knows and what she don’t know passes me. A little slip of a girl, you’d think the mother’s milk wasn’t dry on her lips. I don’t know as we’ve a right to suspect his lordship, for it’s not like him, wild as he is! But with my lady knowing no more of her coming than the babe unborn, I do say it is queer.”

  “But if she’s not good-looking, Mrs. J.?”

  “I’d not say that, Bowles. Handsome she’s not, but there’s a look in her eyes that maybe’d fetch a man that had a taste that way, and her nose tilts in a taking sort. And though she’s on the small side she’s a pretty shape what there is of her.”

  “I like ‘em plump myself,” Bowles said, with an appraising eye on the lady’s ample bodice. “Give me a woman with something to her, ma’am.”

  “Well,” the housekeeper replied impartially, “that’s as may be, Bowles. And she carries her head well, meek as she is — and meek she is to all appearing. I’m sure I don’t know What to think. And it’s my belief as the Captain’s puzzled too, he was that short with her at the door. He asked me straight how long I had known she was coming, and black he looked when I said that she had written herself, and said it was by Lady Elisabeth’s direction.”

  “I suppose the old lady did engage her?”

  “And little it will help her! Why, if that be all it will set my lady against her as never was. The old lady has always taken my lord’s side, and would put her hand in the fire for him. If all be true one hears, she was a gay piece herself in her day and not over particular.”

  Bowles nodded. “And what do you think, Mrs. Jemmett, ma’am, her ladyship will do?”

  “Ah!” and the housekeeper gave the word its full weight, “I wish I knew, Bowles. She may pack her off with a flea in her ear — and that’s most likely I’m thinking. And again — she mayn’t. Her ladyship is that proud.”

  “Have you written to the Square?”

  “No, and I’m not going to.”

  “Perhaps that’d be safest.”

  “Safest and best. You may spit on your fingers but red-hot is red-hot and best left alone. But whether her ladyship takes it rough or not, the girl will not be here long. Lady Ann will see to that. She’s a monkey for tricks and a terror in her tantrums — and that’s most times!”

  “Spoiled, ma’am.”

  “You never said a truer word, and her mother’s to thank for it. I don’t know that anyone can manage her if it’s not the Captain.”

  “Mr. Girardot?”

  “Ay, man, when he goes her way. But that’s all, only he’s clever enough to hide it, and so my lady thinks the world of him. I’ve an eye and he’s glass to me. He don’t take me in with his fine words and his curly hair. But mark me, whether this is one of my lord’s little games or no, I’m no true prophet if miss is here this day fortnight. My lady puts up with a lot as I wouldn’t stand, but if she puts up with this I’m mistaken.”

  Meanwhile Rachel, little suspecting the interest that she was arousing, was arranging her scanty possessions. She found a few dog’s-eared lesson-books in a corner, and had soon made herself familiar with the involved hieroglyphics which she took to stand for Ann Dunstan. What she had heard of her charge would have alarmed her more seriously if she had not decided that it was Captain Dunstan’s design to frighten her, and if she had not made up her mind not to be frightened. Her spirits, rebounding from the depression of the previous day, soared high; she had no immediate trial to fear, and she carolled as she moved to and fro, setting things in order with the neatness that was a habit. No one came near her, silence reigned in that secluded wing, she was free to try on her caps and even the white muslin if she pleased. It was a blessed reprieve, and for the time she asked for nothing better.

  From her bedroom window, which looked to the front, she saw the Captain return, gun on shoulder, a keeper attending him; and for a moment she had a spasm of alarm, thinking that he might send for her and repeat his hateful advice. But nothing happened and she sat down to write to her mother, her relief and satisfaction finding place in her letter. All that she described, the housekeeper’s kindness, the house, the forest, wore rose-colour; and to do her justice they had been almost as warmly painted had the reality proved worse. She said little of Captain Dunstan — he had happened on her in a fortunate moment and saved her the cost of posting — a typical seaman, she added, rather brusque and rough. It was all read at the breakfast-table at the cottage two days later, and laughed over and cried over and read again and again.

  “Thank God,” Mrs. South sighed, “she is safely there and I do think comfortable. I only hope her ladyship will be satisfied with her.”

  “Oh, she’s sure to be. But I wish she’d said more about the Captain. What fun she must have had with him. I’m sure he’d think her pretty.”

  “My dear Ruth, I wish you would not be so foolish. If Rachel were as feather-headed as you, I should not have a moment’s peace.”

  CHAPTER V

  A VERY PLEASANT HELP

  ON a morning some three days later, Rachel was busy in the schoolroom. The first newness of the position had worn off, for nearly a week she had seen and spoken to none but servants, and she was beginning to feel home-sick. There is a dullness, mild sister to suspense, that at once desires and dreads a change; and she was suffering from this when she heard the baize door, which squeaked on its hinges, give its signal. The door was her boundary, whoever passed it must have business with her, and she looked up, startled. She heard the thud as it closed, an impetuous step stalked down the passage, a hand knocked smartly. She was mustering courage to say ‘Come in!’ when, without waiting for her bidding, a young man, whose black garb set off his slender shape, appeared on the threshold. He paused a moment, smiling and taking in the scene — the small figure seated at the table, the timid surprised face raised to his. Then with an exaggerated air he clapped his hat to his breast and bowed, as Rachel rose, curtsying.

  “And how is the Queen of the Blue Stockings?” he said in a musical voice. “My charming ally in the service of the Muses? Of Clio! Of Melpomene! Of the divine Urania! The tamer of the wild filly of the Forest! Ah! Deep, I see, in study which I have interrupted! Engaged in — Lord, now, what is she engaged in?” And coolly, before Rachel, taken by surprise, could interpose, he lifted from the table the paper on which she had been employed. “Ten o’clock,” he read, his eyes dancing with fun, “French dictation — I only wish you may get her, ma’am, as early! Eleven o’clock. Geography and the use of the Globes — have a care there, I beg you, for Ann knows all of that that her uncle can teach her, and I shouldn’t be surprised if she can take an observation and correct a reckoning as well as Urania herself! Twelve to twelve-thirty—”

  “Oh, please, please!” Rachel cried, blushing to the roots of her hair, and, had she known it, presenting a very pretty picture of confusion. “It was not meant, sir, — indeed, it was not meant—”

  “For vulgar eyes?” He raised it calmly out of her reach. “Heaven forbid that such should light upon it! Twelve to twelve-thirty, reading from Dr. Johnson and the use of the Dictionary — why, in heaven’s name, ma’am, who is to turn over those monstrous quartos? Not those little hands, I swear! But there!” he continued with a sudden change to the most sympathetic gravity as Rachel stood gazing at him in an agony of shyness, “I let my spirits run away with me. I di
splease you. There, ma’am,” laying down the paper, “you see I am all obedient. Yet I will wager,” he declared, with a moderate return to his rallying manner, “that I have learned one thing about you. You have no brothers.”

  “No,” she faltered.

  “For if you had you would have made a fight for your paper. But you are no tomboy. No, I see you are not. And now,” this with gravity — and the man’s good looks were so astonishing that they dazzled the girl—” let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Girardot, and for a time, Miss South, it will be our lot to inhabit the same house, to share the same solitude, to tread the same backstairs, to meet the same troubles — troubles of which, believe me, ma’am, you have but a faint notion as yet. It may be in the power of one of us to help the other. It follows that we should be acquainted, and to that end, may I,” he bowed with a courteous gesture, “invite you to resume your chair of office! You permit?”

  Poor Rachel had never in her life felt so uncertain of herself. She had had no experience of men, and to be thus addressed in a manner which she did not know whether to take for jest or earnest, covered her with a confusion of which she was the more painfully sensible as the gentleman was completely at his ease. Tongue-tied and conscious of her gaucherie, she sat down again.

  Probably he saw that he had produced the effect that he desired, for again he changed his manner, and now he was all softness and humility. “You say nothing?” he resumed. “I broke in on you with too little ceremony! With too great precipitation! You cannot forgive me? But I own my fault. Where my interest is engaged I let my spirits, which are perhaps too little bridled, carry me beyond bounds. But not,” he added with a charming smile, “I trust beyond forgiveness?”