Читать книгу The Third Miss St Quentin - Molesworth Mrs. - Страница 2

Summer, not spring now. But the same garden and the same people in it – three of them, that is to say, little chance though there might be at the first glance, of our recognising them.

They were sitting together on the lawn – the two sisters Madelene and Ermine and their cousin Philip. They were less changed than he perhaps – Madelene especially, for she had always been tall, and at fourteen had looked older than her years, whereas now at five-and-twenty one could scarcely have believed her to be as much. She had fulfilled the promise of her girlhood for she was an undoubtedly beautiful woman, though to those who knew her but superficially, she might have seemed wanting in animation, for she was quiet almost to coldness, thoughtful and self-controlled, weighing well her words before she spoke and slow in making up her mind to any decision.

Ermine, brown-haired and brown-eyed, brilliantly handsome, was more popular than her elder sister. But rivalry or the shadow of it between the two was unknown. Never were two sisters more completely at one, more trusted and trusting friends.

“They are all in all to each other and to their father,” was the universal description of them. “Almost too much so indeed,” some would add. “It must be because they are so perfectly happy as they are that neither of them is married.”

For why the Misses St Quentin did not marry was every year becoming more and more of a puzzle to their friends and the world at large.

Sir Philip Cheynes got up from the comfortable garden chair on which he had been lounging and leant against the elm under whose wide-spreading branches the little party had established themselves. A table was prepared for tea, Ermine had a book on her knee which she imagined herself to be or to have been reading, Madelene was knitting.

“It will spoil it all,” said Philip at length after a silence which had lasted some moments, “spoil it all completely.”

“What?” asked Madelene, looking up, though her fingers still went on busily weaving the soft snowy fleece on her lap.

“Everything, of course. Our nice settled ways – this satisfactory sort of life together, knowing each other so well that we never have misunderstandings or upsets or – or bothers. Your father and my grandmother are a model aunt and nephew to begin with, and as for us three – why the world never before saw such a perfection of cousinship! And into the midst of this delightful state of things, this pleasant little society where each of us can pursue his or her special avocation and – and perform his or her special duties – for we’re not selfish people, my dears – I’m not going to allow that – into the midst of it you fling helter-skelter, a spoilt, ill-tempered, restless unmanageable school-girl – eager for amusement and impatient of control – incapable of understanding us or the things we care for. I never could have imagined anything more undesirable – I – ”

“Upon my word, Philip, I had no idea you could be so eloquent,” interrupted Ermine. “But it is eloquence thrown away, unless you want to prove that you yourself, if not we, are the very thing you have been denying, without having been accused of it.”

“Selfishness – eh?” said Philip.

“Of course, or something very like it.”

Philip was silent. To judge by his next remark Ermine’s reproof had not touched him much.

“I don’t know that, for some time to come at least,” he said, “it will matter much to me. I shall probably be very little here till Christmas and then only for a few weeks.”

His cousins looked up in some surprise.

“Indeed,” they said. “Where are you going? Abroad again?” – “You will miss all the hunting and shooting,” Ermine added.

“I know that,” said Philip. “I’m not going for pleasure. I am thinking of taking up my quarters at Grimswell for a while. The house there is vacant now, you know, and my grandmother thinks it a duty for me to live on the spot and look after things a little.”

Madelene’s eyes lighted up.

“I am so glad,” she said. “I quite agree with Aunt Anna.”

“I thought you would,” said Philip, “and so would never mind who. I can’t say I exactly see it myself – things are very fairly managed there – but still. I’m the sort of fellow to make a martyr of myself to duty, you know.”

Ermine glanced at him as he stood there lazily leaning against the tree – handsome, sunny and sweet-tempered, with a half mischievous, half deprecating smile on his lips, and a kindly light in his long-shaped dark eyes.

“You look like it,” she said with good-natured contempt.

“But to return to our – ” began Philip.

“Stop,” cried Ermine, “you are not to say ‘muttons,’ and I feel you are going to. It is so silly.”

“Really,” Philip remonstrated. “Maddie,” and he turned to Miss St Quentin appealingly, “don’t you think she is too bad? Bullying me not only for my taken-for-granted selfishness but for expressions offensive to her ladyship’s fastidious taste which she fancies I might be going to use.”

“My dear Philip, you certainly have a great deal of energy – and – breath to spare this hot afternoon,” said Ermine, leaning back as if exhausted on her seat, “I know you can talk – you’ve never given us any reason to doubt it, but I don’t think I ever heard you rattle on quite as indefatigably as to-day. One can’t get a word in.”

“I want you both to be quiet and let me talk a little,” said Madelene breaking her way in. She scented the approach of one of the battles of words in which, in spite of the “perfect understanding” which Philip boasted of between his cousins and himself, he and Ermine sometimes indulged and which were not always absolutely harmless in their results. “As Philip was saying when you interrupted him, Ermie, let us go back to our – subject. I mean this little sister of ours. I wish you would not speak of her return, or think of it as you do, Philip.”

“That’s meant for me too, I wish you to observe, Phil,” said Ermine. “It’s a case of evil communications, and Maddie is trembling for my good manners to the third Miss St Quentin when she makes her appearance among us.”

“On the contrary, Ermine,” said Madelene gravely, “if you are influenced by Philip’s way of speaking it is that the ground with you is ready for the seed.” Philip began to whistle softly – Ermine grew rather rosier than she was before.

“If so – well – what then? Go on, Maddie,” she said.

She got up from her seat and half threw herself on the grass beside Madelene. But Madelene did not speak. “Of course,” Ermine went on, “I know it’s all quite right, and not only right but inevitable. And you’re as good and wise as you can be, Maddie. It was only that this morning I felt rather cross about it, and Philip and I couldn’t help showing each other what we felt. But go on, Maddie – say what you were going to say.”

“It is only the old thing,” said Madelene. “I think, and I shall always think what I did at the time, though I was only a child then, that it was a mistake to send Ella away to be brought up out of her own home and separated from her nearest relations. Of course it was not anticipated that the separation would be so long and complete a one as it has turned out – at least I suppose not.”

“I don’t know why it need have been so,” said Ermine, “only every time there has been anything said of her coming to us her aunt has put difficulties in the way.”

“There seemed sense in what she said,” Madelene replied; “it was not much use Ella’s coming here, just to get unsettled and her lessons interrupted, for a short visit. And then, of course, papa’s long illness was another reason.”

“And Mrs Robertson’s own wishes – the strongest reason of all,” added Ermine. “She may be a kind and good enough woman, but I shall always say she is very selfish. Keeping the child entirely to herself all these years, and now when she suddenly takes it into her head to marry again in this extraordinary way – she must be as old as the hills – poor Ella goes to the wall!”

“That’s probably the gentleman’s doing,” said Philip.

“Well then she shouldn’t marry a man who would do so,” said Ermine.

“I quite agree with you,” he replied drily, “but we all know there’s no fool like an old fool.”

“It is hard upon Ella, with whomever the fault lies – that is what I’ve been trying to get to all this time,” said Madelene. “If she had always looked upon this as her home, and felt that we were really her sisters, she would have grown up to understand certain things gradually, which, now when the time comes that she must know them, will fall upon her as a shock.”

“You mean about our money and this place?” asked Ermine.

“Of course – and about papa’s being, though I hate saying it, in reality a poor man.”

“Do you think there is any need for her to know anything about it for some time to come?” asked Philip gently, completely casting aside the bantering tone in which he had hitherto spoken.

Madelene looked up eagerly.

“Oh, do you think so, Philip?” she said. “I am so glad. It is what I have been thinking, but I know papa respects your opinion and it will strengthen what I have said to him.”

“Decidedly,” said Philip. “It seems to me it would be almost – brutal – I am not applying the word to any person, but to the situation, as it were – to meet the poor child, already sore probably at having been turned out of the only home she can really remember, with the announcement that the new one she is coming to is only hers on sufferance, and that her future is, to say the least, an uncertain one.”

“It would not be so for another day if we had more in our power,” said Madelene hotly.

“No, I know that – know it and understand it. But – a child of – how much? fifteen, sixteen?”

“Seventeen, seventeen and a quarter.”

“Well, even of seventeen and a quarter would have the haziest notions about law and legal obligations. No, gain her love and confidence first, by all means.”

“It is papa,” said Madelene rather disconsolately. “The best of men are, at times I suppose, a little unreasonable. Though he has given up the idea of a formal explanation to poor little Ella, still I am afraid he will wish us to be more – I don’t know what to call it, less treating her just like ourselves, than Ermie and I would wish,” and she looked up appealingly, her blue eyes quite pathetic in their expression.

“And she may misunderstand it – us,” added Ermine.

“But it is right, necessary to a certain extent that she should not be placed in exactly the same position that she would have as your very own sister,” said Philip firmly. “People should think of these awkward complications before they make second marriages, but once awkward positions do exist, it’s no good pretending they don’t. However, I think you are exaggerating matters, Maddie; unnecessarily anticipating an evil day which may, will, I feel sure, never come. Before this much-to-be-pitied young lady has to learn that she is not an heiress like her sisters, she may have learnt to love and trust those sisters as they deserve, and love casteth out other ugly things as well as fear.”

“Thank you, dear Philip,” said Miss St Quentin.

“And – grand discovery!” he exclaimed. “She’s not ‘out’. You can easily treat her more like a child at first, till she has got to know you. She cannot have been accustomed to much dissipation under the roof of the worthy Mrs Robertson.”

“No, none at all I fancy. But she has had her own way in everything there was to have it in I feel sure,” said Madelene. “And if we begin by snubbing her – ”

“Snubbing her, not a bit of it. It will make her feel herself of all the more importance if you will tell her Uncle Marcus thinks it better for her not to come out till she’s eighteen – neither of you came out till then?”

“I was nineteen,” said Ermine; “you know we were abroad all the year before. I thought it very hard then, but now I’m very glad. It makes me seem a year at least younger than I am,” she added naïvely.

“It’s only staving off, after all, I’m afraid,” said Madelene. “When she is eighteen or even nineteen, and has to come out, and wonders why papa won’t let her have everything the same as us and – ”

“Oh, Maddie, don’t fuss so,” said Ermine.

“Twenty things may happen before then to smooth the way.”

“I hope so,” said Miss St Quentin. But her tone was depressed.

“Scold her, Philip, do,” said Ermine. “If she worries herself so about Ella it will make me dislike the child before I see her, and that won’t mend matters.”

“When does she come?” Sir Philip asked.

“Next month,” Madelene replied.

“Do you think she feels it very much – the leaving her aunt, and coming among strangers as it were?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She cannot but be fond of her aunt, but she has said distinctly that she would not wish to go on living with her and her new husband. And of course it is time and more than time for her to come to us if this is ever to be her home. And though Mrs Robertson is marrying a wealthy man, she loses all she had as a widow, and certainly we should not have liked our sister to be dependent on a stranger.”

“You could have given Mrs Robertson a regular allowance for her, if that had been the only difficulty. But if this Mr what’s his name?”

“Burton,” said Ermine.

“If that Burton fellow is rich he would possibly have disliked any arrangement of that kind,” said Philip.

“He evidently wants to get rid of her,” said Madelene, smiling a little. “Some things in Mrs Robertson’s letters make me imagine that the third Miss St Quentin has a will of her own, and a decided way of showing it. She speaks of ‘dear Ella’s having a high spirit, and that Mr Burton was not accustomed to young people.’”

“And Ella called him ‘old Burton’ in a letter to papa,” added Ermine. “We told papa she must have left out the ‘Mr’, but for my part, I don’t believe she did. I think that expression has made me more inclined to like her than anything else,” said Ermine, calmly.

“Ermine!” said Madelene.

But Philip turned to her with another question.

“Are you sure,” he said, “that Mrs Robertson may not already have explained things to Ella? If so, it would be better to know it.”

“I am sure she can’t have told her what she doesn’t know herself,” said Madelene. “Papa’s losses made no practical difference to her; she has always received anything she wanted for Ella – to do her justice she has never been the least grasping – from us, but in his name just as before. We begged him to let it be so, and it has never come to much.”

“Then do you think she has brought the child up very simply?” asked Philip.

“No – that is to say, I fancy she has been indulged a good deal as to her personal wishes. Mrs Robertson was comfortably off, though she had not a large house. I think all she has ever taken from papa or us has been literally spent on little Miss Ella herself. And they went to the South of France two winters, you know.”

Philip did not speak for a minute or two.

Then he said slowly, —

“As things are, perhaps it is as well that Ella does not know more. But – had they remained as they were, I don’t know but that Mrs Robertson had a right to be told of Uncle Marcus’s losses. Indeed, it might have influenced her plans, possibly have prevented her marrying again, had she known the child had nothing to look to in the future.”

Madelene reddened.

“She has something to look to in the future,” she said, “she has us. And I’m quite sure nothing of the kind would have stopped her aunt’s marrying again.”

”‘No fool like an old fool,’ and everybody knows there’s nothing on earth as obstinate as a fool. You’re forgetting what you just said, Phil,” said Ermine.

“No, I’m not. I didn’t say it would have stopped it once she had got it into her head. I meant it might have prevented her ever thinking of it,” Philip replied.

“I don’t see that it would have made any difference. Mrs Robertson could never have left Ella anything except savings, which couldn’t have come to much. But do leave off talking about money, Philip – I perfectly hate it. Ermie and I have been driven into hating it in the last two or three years since we came of age.”

“And leave off talking about Ella, too, for a bit, do,” said Ermine. “I mean to do my duty by her when she comes, but oh! I am so tired of the subject! Don’t you think we might have tea now, Maddie? I don’t believe papa will be back for ever so long.”

“Certainly – it would be nonsense to wait for him – will you – oh, thank you, Philip, yes, just ring the bell at the side-door, twice. They understand. What a comfort it is to have some one who knows our little ways!”

“A tame cat,” said Philip meekly, “Well, thank you. You are not so lavish of civil speeches to me, you and Ermine, as to make me inclined to quarrel with even the ghost of one.”

“Come now, that’s not quite fair,” said Ermine, as the kettle and hot cakes duly made their appearance, “one doesn’t make civil speeches to one’s best friends, one keeps them, like calling cards, for acquaintances.”

“Well, not civil speeches then – nice, gratifying speeches.”

“I should have thought you must be tired of that sort of thing,” Madelene replied.

Philip looked at her with an expression of inquiry, but of annoyance, too.

“Do you mean, Maddie, that you think I am spoilt?” he said. “If you do, I wish you would say so plainly.”

Madelene felt a little conscience-stricken.

“No,” she said, “I don’t really. But I think it is a great wonder that you are not. You are a fair prey to flattery – rich, handsome, clever – ”

“Madelene, stop,” exclaimed Philip. “I might retaliate – why are you and Ermine not spoilt then?”

Miss St Quentin hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said at last naïvely. “I don’t think women – girls – do spoil so easily. And then – there are heaps of girls, here in England, as good-looking and far better-looking than we are – it is much rarer to find a man as handsome as you, Phil. And then – we have had more anxieties and responsibilities than you, and they keep one from being spoilt.”

“I have granny,” said Philip. “I don’t mean that she is an anxiety or a responsibility, but she is – pretty sharp on one, you know. She wouldn’t let me be spoilt.”

“No,” said Madelene, “she is very sensible. And after all you needn’t look so cross, Philip. I didn’t say you were spoilt – I said on the contrary it was great credit to you that you were not.”

“You didn’t,” said Philip, “you allowed me no credit whatever in the matter. I do think it’s rather hard on me to have all this severe handling just because I said I liked nice speeches from people I cared for – mind you, people I care for. That’s quite a different thing from being open to flattery.”

“Well, of course, it is,” said Madelene. “We don’t seem to be understanding each other with our usual perfection of sympathy, somehow, to-day.”

“It’s all because of that tiresome child’s coming,” said Ermine crossly. “I’m afraid Philip is right in dreading it. ‘Coming events cast their shadows before them.’ I can’t say I think Ella’s advent is likely to add to our sunshine.”

Just then came the sound of wheels up the avenue. “What can that be?” said Madelene.

“Callers,” Philip suggested.

“No, it is getting too late. Besides – it sounds too slow and heavy for a carriage or pony-carriage. It is more like – ” and she hesitated.

“Maddie won’t commit herself,” said Ermine laughing. “She sets up for a sort of ‘Fine Ear’ in the fairy-story, don’t you know, Philip?”

“No,” said Madelene. “It isn’t that. I only hesitated because what I was going to say seemed so silly. I thought it sounded so like the old Weevilscoombe fly – and what could it be coming here for at this time? The old Miss Lyndens hire it when they come out for their yearly visit, but that is over and past a fortnight ago.”

That it was an arrival of some kind, however, became clear. In another minute the hall bell was heard to ring – it was a bell of ponderous clang, impossible to mistake for any other.

Then the figure of Barnes, the butler – Barnes who never disturbed himself except on occasions of peculiar importance – was seen hastening along the terrace. The three cousins stared at each other.

“What can it be?” said Madelene, growing rather pale. “Can papa have met with an accident?”

The same thought had struck Sir Philip: he did not reply, but looked apprehensively towards Barnes.

“If you please, ma’am,” said that functionary, puffing a little with excitement and quick movement, “if you please, ma’am, it’s – it’s a lady. A young lady, with luggage – from Weevilscoombe, I suppose – anyhow, it’s the Weevilscoombe fly as has brought her – ” but though there was plenty of time for Madelene to have here exclaimed “I knew it,” she did not avail herself of Barnes’s pause, for this purpose.

“A young lady;” she repeated; “there must be some mistake. We are not expecting any one. What is her name – she gave it, I suppose?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Barnes, hesitating still more – though he had all the air and bearing of an old servant he had not been more than five or six years in their service – “she did and she said as her name was ‘Miss St Quentin’.”

The three looked at each other again.

“Miss St Quentin,” they at last repeated, simultaneously, though not perfectly so – Madelene was a little behind the others and her “tin” came out last.

“I thought,” began Barnes again, “I took the liberty of thinking, it must be a mistake. From what I have ’eard, ma’am, I should say it was, so to say, a slip of the tongue, the young lady being accustomed to be so addressed, living at a distance, if so be as I shrewbly suspect that her rightful desergnation is Miss – Hella St Quentin, the third Miss St Quentin, ma’am.”

And again – too startled to feel any inclination to smile at the butler’s grandiloquence, which was often, almost more than any one’s risible nerves could stand unmoved – the three cousins looked at each other. And again they made simultaneously the same exclamation; this time consisting of but one word, —

“Ella!” they all three ejaculated.