Читать книгу My Lady Bountiful - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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The Foreign Secretary scented comedy. He had a deal of humour for a mere Minister, a blessed gift that rendered even the House of Commons entertaining. There seemed to be all the elements of high comedy here. The shade of Sheridan would have revelled in it.

Out in the hall, under the very shadow of the decorous clock, the clear, rich whistling went on. Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram turned a cold, critical eye on Cedric as if he was responsible for the outrage. The butler shook his head with the air of a man who finds a chastened resignation in the decrees of Providence.

"Go and see what it means," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram commanded. "If it is one of the footmen—but that is impossible."

Cedric felt his way from the room like a Chesterfield walking in his sleep. Almost immediately the whistling ceased. There were the notes of a strange voice, a very pleasant voice, and clear laughter.

"Charles," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram whispered, "can it possibly be——"

"I am afraid," Merrion responded with proper gravity, "that it is."

The door opened as if some strange energy were behind it, and a girl entered.

She was rather short, with a beautiful figure; her pretty face was full of vivacity. The restless grey eyes suggested mischief, whilst at the same time there was something demure, almost saintly, in her expression. It was a face of contrasts, and all the more fascinating for that. The slight figure in the close-fitting coat and skirt of grey advanced smilingly and with the most perfect self-possession. The light from the candles gleamed on her shining chestnut hair, dark or burnished, just as the shadows fell.

"My dear aunt," she cried, "I am so glad to see you."

She threw her arms about Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram's neck and kissed her heartily, to the speechless admiration of the twins.

"Of course, I am Kathleen," the newcomer went on. "I got here a quarter of an hour ago. I would not let them disturb you as I managed to get a dinner of sorts at Castleford. So I thought I could explore this perfect gem of an old house. I had just started when that magnificent butler of yours came and took me in custody. I fancy he took me for a member of the swell mob. Now, didn't you?"

Miss Kathleen Eldred flashed a dazzling smile at Cedric. All the traditions of the house were toppling about the unhappy butler. Kathleen dropped demurely into a seat, and unfolded her serviette.

"Really, I fancy I could eat something," she said. "But, my dear aunt, don't have anything brought back for me."

"Have you no word for me?" Merrion asked.

Kathleen nodded. Something that turned out to be an eyeglass flashed on her silk shirt front. She screwed it into her right eye quite professionally, and regarded Merrion with critical approval.

"Put down that thing immediately," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said. "I desire that you never appear with it in my presence, in anyone's presence, again."

"You dear old goose," said Kathleen with engaging sweetness, "I can't see without it. And it is so much better than pince-nez. Champagne, Cedric."

Cedric emerged from the gloomy corner by the buffet. Nobody spoke. The petrifaction of the twins was complete. The cause of the cataclysm sat quite calmly there, sedately eating an entree, and sipping the champagne that the wondering Cedric had poured out for her. He slopped a little on the table-cloth, but Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram was too dazed to notice.

Only the Foreign Secretary was cool and collected. He was interested. To hear anybody call his hostess a dear old goose was a sensation in itself—like a showerbath on a hot afternoon.

"And so you are my brother's child," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said in a hollow voice. "My child, where have you been educated."

"Well, promiscuously," Kathleen laughed. "I always had pretty well my own way. You see, Australian girls come out so much earlier than English ones. They say I don't look it, but I'm twenty-one, you know. And for the last five years I have had the run of Government House, and all that kind of thing. All the same, I'm glad to come home. I shall love this grand old place. In my mind there is no place on earth like a good English country house."

All this with an air of perfect self-possession, patronage almost. Merrion watched the pretty, animated face with pleasure. Of course, the girl had been most abominably spoilt, but nothing could ruin that sunny nature. The vapid artificiality of the twins was a painful contrast.

Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said nothing. The dazed feeling had not left her yet. Her exile of seventeen years from society and the trend of fashion had rendered her terribly out of date. She had no idea that she was face to face with the modern type of girl, and a very good type too, had she only known it. But nothing like this had ever crossed the threshold of Caradoc. Edna and Phillipa were as near the model of what a young girl should be as their relative could make them. Kathleen was regarding them critically through her eyeglass. The satisfaction was not all on one side.

The dinner had drawn to an end at length. The artistic confusion of silver and gleaming crystal and fruit on old Dresden made a pleasing spot of colour for the eye. Merrion was significantly playing with his cigarette case. It was a dreadful innovation at Caradoc, but the mistress allowed it.

"Children, you can go to the music room," she commanded. "And take your cousin with you. Charles, I shall be glad to have a few words with you here."

"What, whilst I smoke?" Merrion asked, fixedly.

"Certainly. What does it matter for once? What does anything matter after the dreadful events of the evening? Charles, what am I to do with her?"

"What's the matter with the child?" Merrion asked. "She has a charming face, and she's pure and innocent, despite her savoir faire. Of course she is quite different from those two dolls—er—I mean Edna and Phillipa. They are perfectly trained. Nobody could imagine them being guilty of the least breach of decorum."

"It is my reward," Mrs. Eldred-Wolfram said in a 'nunc dimittis' frame of mind.

It was well for the speaker's peace that she lacked the gift of double sight. Like a prisoner in moral custody, Kathleen walked to the music room between the twins. A long passage cut the music room off from the rest of the house, there were two heavy doors between. The passage was traversed in stony silence. Kathleen was looking as demure as her guardians.

The second door closed. A subdued gloom of candles faintly illuminated the dark old room. In the uncertain light Kathleen was not quire sure of her eyes. But surely the dolls were showing signs of animation. They were smiling. Really, they were not bad-looking girls at all, despite their ridiculous attire.

"Oh, we're not wax," said Edna, nodding in a birdlike manner. "If you press our young and unsophisticated bosoms, we don't say 'mama' and 'papa' in a voice like a penny whistle. Now, ain't we guys?"

"To be perfectly frank," Kathleen said cheerfully, "you are. But why?"

"Because we are the models of what young ladies should be," Phillipa laughed bitterly. "We are moulded on the best examples of eighteenth century samplers. We are nineteenth century monstrosities. Would any modern young man look at us? Could the fancy of a girl whose hair is dressed like mine lightly turn to thoughts of love?"

Phillipa pushed back her hair from her forehead and dexterously twisted it behind. Before an oval Florentine mirror Edna did the same. The lid of a large box ottoman was raised, and therefrom came two evening blouses of blue silk, prettily trimmed with lace. In the twinkling of an eye the girls were transformed. It was like some enchanting conjuring trick.

"Oh, it's all right," Edna cried as Kathleen glanced at the door. "Aunt never moves from the drawing-room after dinner. Nobody sees us except our maid, who is in the secret. We do our utmost to be up to date. We get all the best of the ladies' papers smuggled in here, and all the recent novels. We probably know more of Court and theatrical and society gossip than girls really in the swim. Look here."

Down in the roomy box ottoman were various periodicals and novels.

"Up-to-date, you see," Edna smiled. "Have you read 'A Curious Courtship?'"

"I wrote it," Kathleen said casually. "It was such fun."

The twins gasped. It was an evening of delightful surprises. 'A Curious Courtship' was 'the novel' of the season. The papers were full of paragraphs about it. It had been attributed to various social lights, from Royalty downwards. It was political, and social, and daring. The critics were unanimous in the praise of its freshness and originality. And here was the actual author sitting here as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"I wrote it for fun," she said, "for my own amusement. Most of the characters were English people that I met out yonder. I happened to show it to an English novelist who was on a tour, and he said he would get it published for me. And when I got to England I found I was a celebrity."

"I should just think you are!" Phillipa said in an awed voice.

"But I never expected it," Kathleen said. "It seems such a joke still. In London I had people pestering me for interviews all day long. There were lots of papers that could never be happy without my photograph. I was asked to lecture at three institutions. They didn't seem to mind what subject. And everybody who knows me tells me I am a great author. Those good kind critics have found qualities in my book that I never expected. They say I have a wonderful gift for introspective analysis. It's rather entertaining, because I don't know what introspective analysis is."

Kathleen laughed in the freest and most unaffected manner. It was clear that she regarded her new fame in the light of a stupendous joke. There was none of the dignity that goes with successful letters about her. She sat on the edge of the box ottoman with a smile on her pretty animated face.

"But I am going to have a rest from those people down here," she said. "I'm going to settle down here and become respectable. Now, what do you do as a rule?"

"Mark Twain's diary," Edna said crisply. "Mark Twain's diary sums up the daily whirl of our giddy life?"

"Mark Twain once kept a diary," Phillipa explained. "It consisted in writing under each day in painful monotony the information that he got up and washed, and went to bed. That is what we do—get up, wash, and go to bed. Nothing expresses our daily existence better than that."

"That sounds inviting," said Kathleen. "And our dear aunt?"

"Aunt Maria is one of the best women in the world," said Edna. "If only the family dignity was not a madness of hers she would be perfect. There isn't a man, woman, or child, for miles round who does not rise up and call 'My Lady Bountiful' blessed. Anything that her tenants want has to be done. And if they won't pay their rent they don't."

"It's nice to be rich," Kathleen said thoughtfully, as she gazed into the log fire with the lights leaping on the quaint blue tiles.

"She hasn't got a penny," said Phillipa. "Oh, you may well look astonished. The house and estates are magnificently administered; we don't owe anybody anything. This is a huge house, a perfect storehouse of treasures. The Eldred-Wolframs have been accumulating treasures for centuries. There is no artistic period that is not represented here in the very best examples—old silver and copper and brass and pewter, old work and old china, pictures, prints, engravings. The Wallace collection is no finer. And everything is authenticated. Aunt Maria is overdrawn at the bank, say; she wants £10,000 or £20,000. She goes into the Saxon wing, which is never used, with some snuffy old expert who comes down from London. Then a van comes and goes away with a few prayer chests or a set of Cromwell brasses or a picture that looks like a study in treacle, and a day or two after you see in the 'Times' that so and so has fetched the record price of fourteen thousand guineas, and there you are. We don't want the things, they are never missed; some parts of the house are packed with them. It's delightfully simple."

Kathleen followed them with the rapt attention of the born novelist who has found something quite new and strange.

"I have a passion for art," she said. "I shall revel in this house. How I should like to show a gentleman I met in Australia the place. It was he who first awakened my perceptions. He goes miles to see houses like this. Do you happen to know the name of Christopher Broadway?"

"My dear, we know the names of no men except the vicar and Mr. Dennison, who is a doctor in these parts," said Edna, mournfully. "We are born to blush unseen. You see, we do not possess your monumental cheek. We should as soon think of dancing a hornpipe on the lawn as addressing Aunt Maria as a dear old goose, as you did to-night. But you are a novelist with an original mind. Perhaps you may find some way to pave the path for a social revolution."

"Have you ever tried yourselves?" Kathleen asked.

"Yes," Phillipa said darkly, "we have."

"Well, hope for the best," Kathleen said. "Now, do you mind relapsing into the dolly stage again, and showing me something of the house?"

By the dim light of candles the manifold treasures were unfolded before Kathleen's delighted eyes. The carvings in themselves were a revelation. Everything was old, and everything was artistic. There were pictures with a history of their own, cabinets of China absolutely priceless. The spirit of the ages seemed to tread over those silent corridors. And presently, to add to the effect, the notes of a mellowed old organ stole upon the air. The whole place seemed to be flooded with a silver melody. Kathleen paused, delighted.

"Who is it?" she asked. "What a touch, what expression! A genius!"

"It is Margaret," said Phillipa, with a reproachful blush. "Edna, we have quite forgotten Margaret. Kathleen, you must see no more treasures, do nothing more till we have presented you to Margaret."