Читать книгу My Lady Bountiful - Fred M. White - Страница 3

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I. — THE SETTING OF THE GEM

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Everything was leisurely, courtly, high shouldered at Caradoc. The lingering impressiveness of the bell ceremony was reminiscent of mouldy ceremony. The Right Honourable Charles Merrion, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, remarked that it suggested the funeral of some very important but exceedingly disagreeable personage, followed by dinner in a chastened mood, but not so chastened as to render one indifferent to the lack of cayenne in the savoury.

The clanging had not died away when a tall figure in black velvet and diamonds and lace appeared at the head of the staircase. Leaning on the arm of a footman, she came leisurely down into the hall, where the oak pillars and the armour and the tapestry had been any time for the last three hundred years. Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram never forgot the fact that there had been a Caradoc House standing in the same spot since the days of Edward the Confessor.

The aforesaid Secretary for Foreign Affairs was standing with his back to the wood fire on the wide hearth in the drawing-room as his hostess entered. The footman bowed her into an armchair, and placed a table with a reading-lamp at her elbow. The quaint, old-world room, all black oak from floor to rafters, was lighted by candles in silver sconces. To the mind of the right honourable gentleman the funeral suggestion and sarcophagus effect was thus heightened.

"I had hoped to see you earlier, Charles," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said. There was just the shade of reproach in her voice. The Minister inclined his head meekly. Even a Foreign Secretary has calls upon his time. "But you look worried, Charles."

The speaker was calm enough. She was tall and dark, and whilst owning pleasantly enough to nearly seventy years of age, there was not a grey hair on her smooth head. Her features were handsome and haughty, as befitted Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram, of Caradoc; her eyes were restless and changeable.

The dominant note on her features was pride. But then there had been Wolframs at Caradoc for over a thousand years. No doubt existed on this head. The pedigree of the Wolframs was written in history.

Time was when the late Christopher Eldred-Wolfram had been an important figure in politics. As a holder of office his wife had of necessity seen something of the world. But she had never cared for it; she had never for one moment forgotten Caradoc and the pedigree of a thousand years. The death of her husband had relieved her of the necessity of being polite to comparatively new creations and society leaders, whose social edifice was firmly rooted in beer barrels and the like. For Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram had been related to her husband, and the aegis of the pedigree was as a halo about her head.

For seventeen years now she had never moved from Caradoc. On the face of it, hers seemed to be a lonely life. She had openly proclaimed the fact that there were not two families in the county worth knowing, and the county had resented the ultimatum accordingly.

Everything was merged into the glory of the Eldred-Wolframs. The queen regnant seemed to forget that she had no more than a life interest in the estate. She spent her money freely, regally; if her tenants were unfortunate, and could not pay their rents, they had only to come hat in hand to the throne and say so, and there was an end of the matter. It was an open secret that Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram had mortgaged her income to the last penny, but the glory of the house was as bright as the crests in the great mullioned windows. There was the costly racing stud that never raced in the stables, there was a small army of servants and footmen and gardeners. There were no finer peaches and grapes in the county, and yet every tradesman was paid to the day. It was all very strange, but there it was.

If "My Lady Bountiful," as she was generally called, condescended to take advice from anybody, that fortunate individual was the Right Honourable Charles Merrion. Old Lord Saltoun declared openly that Maria Wolfram would have so far forgotten herself as to marry him—despite the fact that his pedigree failed to go beyond a Speaker of the House of Commons circa Charles II.—only that family claims came first. Be that as it may, Merrion was one of the only men who ever passed the lodge gates of Caradoc.

"I met the boat," Merrion explained.

"You have seen the girl?" Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram asked, after a long pause.

"As I wrote to you, the young lady was to have come down with me this afternoon. At the last moment she decided to mote as far as Castleford with the Wiltshires."

Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram gasped. Merrion had never seen that stately lady gasp before, and he was properly impressed.

"My unhappy sister and her family!" she said. "Charles, how did the girl get entangled with those deplorable people? And she not landed more than four-and-twenty hours from Australia!"

"The explanation is fairly simple," Merrion replied. "The Wiltshires have been round the world in their yacht. Very naturally they looked up your brother in Australia some little time before he died, poor fellow. Hence the acquaintanceship. One of the Wiltshire boys came back with Miss Kathleen Wolfram on the Comus, and there you are."

The listener closed her eyes with pious resignation. All the same, it was a dreadful blow. The idea of a child of her brother's on terms of friendship with the Wiltshires! Of course, the Wiltshires were popular figures in what passed in these degenerate days for society. But Major Wiltshires sire had made his money out of a horrid East End brewery.

"I parted with my sister in sorrow more than anger," she said. "When she married John Wiltshire there was an end of all intercourse. It was in vain that I implored her to remember that, as the widow of Jasper Eldred, her boy would one day be head of the family. When I die, Reginald Eldred will reign here. Lucy pointed out the fact that she was horribly poor and that she liked John Wiltshire. I pointed out that if she married him the boy Reginald would have all his principles sapped in an atmosphere of beer."

"He is a splendid young fellow," Merrion said warmly.

"Well, he is one of the family, after all. We must try and make my poor boy's daughter properly appreciate her position. But to come down close to Caradoc in a motor! And with the Wiltshires! My dear Charles, the mere idea of it makes me feel quite faint!"

Merrion nodded with the polite sympathy of the statesman who always keeps a large stock of that kind of thing on hand. As a matter of fact, he was thinking that his hostess was a little sillier and more childishly proud than usual. Perhaps the loss of her only brother a few months ago in Australia had made a difference. Charles Eldred had always been delicate, so delicate that he could not live in England, hence the fact that he had migrated to Australia and married years ago. It was the only child of this brother that Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram was so impatiently waiting.

"I had a telegram just now," Merrion explained. "The motor broke down on the road. Miss Kathleen says she shall drive over from Castleford. Probably she will get here before we have finished dinner."

"Perhaps the mistake has not been hers," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said magnanimously. "The atmosphere of Caradoc will not be without its influence. But you have not yet told me what the child is like. Of course, she is tall and dark, like all our family. I selected my poor brother's wife for him, so there is no cause for uneasiness on that score. She is refined and haughty; she is a true descendant of an ancient race, in fact. At the same time, I trust she is not too haughty."

Merrion bent down and replaced a log of wood on the fire. His clean-shaven lips trembled as if at the recollection of some subtle humour.

"Well, no," he said thoughtfully, with his fine eyes still on the refractory log. "I don't fancy Kathleen will be a martyr to that infirmity."