For there were happenings, and a to-do in the house that at another time would have excited her. Housemaids were lighting fires and flickering in and out of rooms, footmen were pressing state-liveries, in the gunroom the head ranger was laying out his guns, and in my lady’s sitting-room the cook was assuring my lady with a flushed face that she would do her justice — but meringues a la creme she had never heard of. Everywhere petticoats were whisking, brooms sweeping, grooms hissing, chimneys, that had not been used for months, smoking; men swearing at maids and maids snapping at men, and a mighty confusion of tongues.
For — rare event! — my lord was coming, and with him a party of friends, and there would be great doings and deep drinking and banquets and what not; was not the best wine being drawn from the cellar, and the service of plate being taken from its chest? There would be guests in hall as well as in parlour, maids and strange men, and who knew what might not come of it? Even the scullery wench whose ears the cook had boxed in her heat about the meringues, and who was even now crying over the sink, felt a lift of the heart, and an expectation of she knew not what. A servant, riding post, had brought the letter that morning, and not later than to-morrow my lord might be expected.
Mrs. Jemmett looked into the dining-room and found Bowles dressing the sideboard. He was poising a silver-gilt salver on its edge, and, satisfied with his work, glanced at her for approval. “Well, it will stir us up a bit, Mrs. J.,” he said—” put a bit of life into us.”
But Mrs. Jemmett did not respond. “I wish good may come of it,” she said.
“Well” — after a glance at the door that assured him it was closed—” there’s no knowing and no telling, ma’am, while her ladyship has the figure she has. He’ll have seen no finer, no, nor face either, wherever he has been! But there it is, she’d put her hand in the fire before she’d let on to feel anything. It will all be as before: she’ll meet him in the hall — always takes care to meet him before us, ma’am — and it’ll be “Hallo, Kitty! blooming as usual, my lady!” and “I fear you have had a cold journey!” from her. And no more until the parson comes drunk into the drawing-room and her ladyship sweeps out, so stiff that, damme, Mrs. J., you could hear her train crackle!”
“Where’s he coming from this time?”
“Them Barrymores.”
“By Maidenhead?”
“Well,” cautiously, “it might not be far off.”
Mrs. Jemmett sniffed virtuously. “There never come no good of that lot, woman or man. I suppose my lady knows?”
“Oh, la, yes, and very pinched about the lips when she give her orders. But there, you can’t wonder: my lord’s young, and there’s all sorts going on there, dancing and dicing and drinking, and—”
“And worse!” said Mrs. Jemmett severely. “I’m surprised at you, Bowles, taking his side!” She took herself off.
Bowles spared a moment to look after her. “Ah, woman, woman!” he said, shaking his head sapiently. “They sticks together, and there’s where they has it over us.”
But to Rachel all this meant little; and less as the hours passed and that which she expected, that which she had so fondly, so confidently expected, did not happen. With ears ever on the stretch for the squeak of the baize door, her heart hungered for the step that she knew so well. A sound, no matter what, and the blood flew to her face. But he did not come, and her heart grew hour by hour more sick with hope deferred. And gradually a feeling which was not far from resentment began to stir within her. That day passed, and the night, and half of the next day; and, though her heart pleaded a hundred excuses for him, it was impossible to think that he had not opportunities, that he could not fly to her side if he wished to fly, that he could not come if he wished to come. Why did he keep away from her if he was true?
Then, about noon on the third day, when her heart was very low indeed, and she was moping with a pale face, pretending to occupy herself she knew not how, a message was brought to her, and she learned that after all Lord Ellingham’s coming was to be something to her.
“If you please, miss, her ladyship desires you will be in the drawing-room after dinner this evening,” Priscilla announced, her eyes big with her message, “as her ladyship’s alone.”
“Alone?” Rachel exclaimed, taken aback.
“As there’s no other ladies, miss.”
She was very miserable, but she was young, and the prospect offered a change. Still it was but sadly and slowly that she went about her preparations for the new scene, getting out the white muslin and the black sash — the blue sash she had no heart to wear; and she sighed often. She was almost glad that her glass reflected a pale, woebegone face. To the new experience that lay immediately before her she told herself that she was worse than indifferent, that it held neither hope nor fear for her. What mattered it how she looked!
But as she descended the grand staircase that evening, a little slender figure with brooding eyes and hair too heavy for her small head, she found that this was not so. She discovered that she still had nerves. The hall with its hurrying servants, and the murmur of voices behind closed doors, increased the feeling; and when she crept into the reception-rooms which she had hardly entered since the day after her arrival, and saw their stately length lit by innumerable wax candles, their two fires burning in silence, and the glitter and splendour of the uncovered furniture, shyness grew into awe. She seated herself on a low chair in a modest place beyond the farther hearth, and sank under the sense of her insignificance. She was nothing in this great house — nothing to him, nothing to anyone!
For half an hour she sat alone, and no sound except the crackling of a burning log broke the long, vacant splendour of the room. Then a door opened without, she caught a burst of laughter, the hum of voices. A servant threw wide the door of the room in which she sat, and my lady swept in, proud, superb, impassive.
Nevertheless, Lady Ellingham’s first action belied her looks and surprised the watcher. She paused before a mirror and deliberately, almost scornfully, surveyed herself. Apparently she was not satisfied, though to Rachel’s eyes she looked gloriously handsome. She set a curl straight, pressed home a comb, raised her dress a trifle on one shoulder. Then she glided on, acknowledged Rachel’s curtsy by an unsmiling nod and, taking up a book, she seated herself at some distance from the girl. “You had better find a book,” she said, and dropping her eyes on the page before her, she became lost in thought.
An hour, a long tedious hour passed, while the girl now wondered impatiently why she had been summoned, now relapsed into her own sad reflections. Then at last a tumult of voices burst forth, scattered steps crossed the hall, and a crowd of men — a crowd it seemed to Rachel, who knew none of them — streamed into the room. A young dandy, flushed, bright-eyed and confident, led the way; in his ear an older man, tall, dark, spare, buttoned-up, dropped the last word of some cynical tale. A second dandy, stouter and more full-blown, followed, and behind him a parson, moist-eyed and red about the gills, was urged in by the last-comer, on whom Rachel, guessing that this was Lord Ellingham, bent her attention. She was curious to divine what he was like, of whom such strange things had been hinted, and involuntarily she liked his looks. His handsome face — he appeared to be little above thirty — wore some of the marks of dissipation, but they were not yet stamped deeply upon it, and his smile was boyish, quizzical, kindly. To judge by it he found the present situation droll. He had a little the air of a bad boy who had misbehaved and awaits the result of a naughty trick, with more interest in the event than fear of the results.
The men who entered first moved over to Lady Ellingham — a little diffidently and uncertainly, Rachel thought. But the girl ceased to notice them. Her attention was caught by an exclamation that fell from the parson. “Damme, who’s the filly?” he hiccoughed. “I didn’t know that you kept a —— —”
My lord silenced him with something like an oath, and pushed him away towards the pianoforte. “There, you are safest there!” he said, dropping a laughing
eye on Rachel. “Go, sing, canary, sing!”
“We’re good boys to-night,” the young dandy began, pulling out the ruffle of his shirt, and addressing Lady Ellingham. “The landlord whipped us in, and George cut off the skirters.” His eyes travelled to Rachel, inspected her and returned. They fell on my lady’s book. “That’s Castle Rackrent, I bet a penny! Know the cover. See it everywhere. Monstrous good book!”
“A remarkable book for a girl to write,” Lady Ellingham said.
“In her thirties,” corrected the tall, spare man. “Father’s a bore, a confounded bore— ‘pon my honour, insufferable!” He had taken his stand with his back to the fire, and was calmly appraising “the filly.”
By this time my lord had got the parson to the piano, and he left him and strolled up to the others. His eyes met Rachel’s and he gave her a smiling nod, but did not approach her. “Good boys all, Kitty,” he said. “Best behaviour, this evening.”
“But — the nearer the church, the farther from her ladyship!” murmured Colonel Ould, the man on the hearth, with a glance at the clergyman, who was fumbling with the music.
The dandy laughed. “I’m not sure that I ought not to be in a middle-hell,” he said, with a smothered hiccough. He was little more than a boy.
“Perhaps safer to sit down,” said the Colonel.
“Yes, sit down, Bobbie,” my lord said, and seizing him by the shoulders pressed him into a chair. “Now, Filmer,” to the parson, “pipe up! When the tea comes — —”
“It will mend the man but spoil the voice!” said Ould.
“Meantime, my lady, give us some credit,” my lord continued, looking whimsically at Rachel, it might be, to see how she took the conversation. “Ah! Here comes George at last! Bad boy, wouldn’t leave his bottle!”
“You be hanged!” said the Captain. “Kitty knows better! Hallo!” He turned about, standing with his hands in his pockets and viewing the parson at the piano. “Can he sing?”
“Better when he’s cut than when he’s sober!”
“Ay, but what will he sing?”
“Perhaps the young lady will play for him,” Ould suggested. As he spoke he took a seat by Lady Ellingham, turning a shoulder on the rest of the company. “The governess? Indeed? Is she?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I was wondering.”
“What?”
“Whether your ladyship was guarding the young lady, or the young lady was playing sheep-dog to your ladyship.”
“If there are wolves,” the Countess said negligently, “I do not think that they are wearing their own skins, Colonel Ould. At any rate, I do not deem their teeth very formidable.”
Lord Robert — he was the young dandy — overheard the answer and giggled, but his laugh was lost in the first notes of a fine tenor voice. Not for nothing was the parson dubbed “the Canary.”
“Yes, loving is a painful thrill,
And not to love more painful still.
But, oh, it is the worst of pain
To love and not be loved again!”
The words chimed in so unpleasantly with the secret thoughts of two of his listeners that they might have been painfully affected if the singer had not become maudlin with the last line. His head drooped over the keys in a manner so absurd that even Lady Ellingham joined in the laughter that rewarded him. “Go on, dear dying duck!” cried Bobbie.
“Put the tears into it!”
“Affection now has fled from earth,
Nor fire of genius, noble birth,
Nor heavenly virtue can beguile
From beauty’s cheek one favouring smile.”
But at that point the singer broke down altogether and wept real tears. “Too, too touching!” he maundered. “Too touching!”
“Too, too full!” said the Captain bluntly. “But thank heaven it’s no worse. Lord knows what he might have sung!” And as the procession bearing tea came in, he moved across to Rachel.
“All taut again, eh, Miss South! Shipshape and none the worse, I hope?” he said.
Rachel, aware that all eyes were on her, murmured shyly that she was none the worse.
“Well, it was the devil of an adventure!” returned the Captain. “They nearly cut you out, by gad!”
“An adventure?” Lord Robert cried, pricking up his ears. “What was it? And who was the knight-errant?”
“Well, luckily for Miss South, he was not a carpet knight, Bobbie, like you.”
“Oh, that’s not fair!” replied Bobbie, unabashed. “But come, I say, let us hear the adventure!”
Lady Ellingham interposed. “Another time,” she said. “Spare us who have heard it. Miss South, will you make the tea?” And Rachel, perforce and with a flushed face, rose and went to the side-table.
Lord Robert, however, was not to be put off. “I’m a great hand at holding the cups,” he lisped, and he rose to follow. But my lord cheerily thrust him down in his seat again.
“You’ll have enough to do to carry your own!” he said, and himself followed Rachel to the table. He stood smiling down at her. “Find Ann a handful?” he said, bridging in a moment the distance between them, and speaking as if he had known her all his life.
“I do, rather,” she murmured.
“Regular bag of tricks, eh! Calls me Ellingham, and the other day, because she did not win at speculation, threw the cards in my face. I ought to have spanked her,” he continued, with his eyes on the little head bent shyly over the teapot. “But no doubt she’ll be growing wings now. Heard all sorts of good things of you, Miss South — from George, you know.”
She looked up, and he saw that she did not understand.
“My brother,” he explained. “Your knight-errant, you know,” he added, with a mischievous smile.
“Oh, I didn’t—” But she did not finish her sentence. Her glance in falling from his face caught Lady Effingham’s eyes, and Lady Ellingham was looking at her -with so odd, so hard an expression, that it startled her. “I will take Lady Effingham her tea,” she said, rising hurriedly.
“No, that’s my business. Or, here, Bobbie! Take Kitty her tea if you are steady enough! No, parson, no,” as Filmer, hazy and stuttering, wavered up to the tea-board and stood regarding the two with roguish eyes. “You are a cup too full. Sheer off, man, and find another port, as George would say.”
But the parson was too far gone to take a hint, however broad. He goggled at them. “‘Nother little lady, eh? ‘Nother pretty lady! And my lady looking this way! Oh, fie, fie!”
“Sink it, you d — d fool!” my lord said in another tone.
“Oh! oh!” Mr. Filmer raised his hands in tipsy reprehension. “Mustn’t swear before the cloth! Bad — bad form!”
“Miss South!” my lady’s clear, cold voice rose above the murmur, “if you have had your tea, I think we will—” She rose without completing the sentence.
Colonel Ould rose also, looking anything but pleased. He had flattered himself that he was making himself agreeable to the Countess, and he ventured to remonstrate. “Don’t — don’t be so cruel!” he said in a low tone. “Won’t you stay ten minutes more, ma’am?” Then, seeing that she persisted, and with a glance at the group about the tea-table, “Oh, I see,” he continued, in the same low tone and with a meaning smile. “I see! Too bad! Really too bad! Incorrigible!”
If my lady understood the insinuation she betrayed it only by the depth of her curtsy and the coldness of her look. She disengaged herself, gathered up Rachel by a gesture, and, with a chilly word or two as she passed the other men, she swept from the room.
And thus closed, rather abruptly, Rachel’s first evening in society.
Three hours later in another room the men were breaking up. On a table, amid lights that had burned down to the sockets, lay dice and casters and a medley of glasses. The parson snored heavily on a couch, his neckcloth loosened and one arm dangling to the floor.
Captain Dunstan was busy lighting candles at a side-table. The other men stood here and there, yawning and waiting for them.
“Neat little girl!” said Ould thoughtfully. “Eh, Fred?”
“A d — d plucky little girl!” the Captain struck in. And, while they stood about, he told the story of the bracelet.
“Then you are first in the field, George,” Ould commented. “A good thing too,” he went on, with a look at “the landlord.”
“Take it from me, Fred, you should never have ‘em in the house. Never does, master and maid. By the way, have you got that handsome boy-switcher still?”
“Girardot? Yes, you’ll see him to-morrow. Why?” Lord Ellingham asked, rather shortly.
“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t keep him either. Same principle — never does.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why, too good-looking by half to have about the place. Nature abhors a — you know the rest. True old tag, though we learned it at school. I’d see his back if I were you!”
“Why?” It was the Captain who this time asked the question, and he thrust himself forward rather roughly.
“Why?” Ould answered, with a yawn. “Before harm comes of it. He might” — with an ugly smile—” Oh, he might cut you out with the little filly, George!” But that was not what he had had in his mind.
And the Captain knew that it was not, and said so. “I don’t believe you meant that!” he said.
“Oh, let’s have no brabbling!” my lord struck in good-humouredly. “We can none of us count the candles or say Meso — Mesopotamia! To bed! To bed! Who’ll see the parson to his downy?”
The Captain volunteered, and the party, with some hugging of the door-posts, steered their way up the stairs and along the passages.
CHAPTER XIII
A COURT OF LOVE
IT would be vain to deny that the glimpse of another life that she had enjoyed had to some extent distracted Rachel’s thoughts from her own troubles; it would be equally vain to say that the command which Lady Ellingham had issued, as she ascended the stairs, that the girl should appear the next evening, did not divert her mind. But between times — and never had time passed more slowly — Rachel succumbed to the old spell. She felt her heart leap with every footfall that passed the swing-door — and passed it, alas! only to tantalize her. She pined, she sickened with hopes ever thwarted. And though with the passage of each hour expectation sank lower, and a wholesome resentment, pricked into life by pride and self-respect, began to stir within her, Girardot’s image still dominated, still possessed her.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 720