Читать книгу The Lie Circumspect - Rita - Страница 5

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The old manor house of Torbart Royal was ablaze with lights. Fires burned cheerily in every room and open doors showed pleasant vistas of comfort and homeliness on which no modern luxury had set its fantastic seal. The old housekeeper, arrayed in rustling black silk and full of importance as befitted her position, passed in dignified silence from room to room, pausing at last in the hall, where the logs crackled and blazed in the open fireplace.

"They should be here by now," she said, and summoned the staff of servants she had been told to engage, in order to give a fitting welcome to the new arrivals.

Her critical glance swept over caps and aprons. The butler was her own husband, and, like herself, a family retainer, well-seasoned and of befitting dignity. Housemaids, parlormaids, cook, all bore her surveillance with equanimity. It had surprised her that no lady's maid was needed. The omission made her somewhat curious about her new mistress.

"Where is Connor?" she asked suddenly.

"I'm here, ma'am," answered a voice rich in possibilities of brogue, held in check by due consciousness of its strangeness in comparison with the mincing English tongue.

Disapproval shone in Mrs. Burton's' eyes. "You have no cap on," she said sternly.

"I never wore one in all my life, ma'am," was the reply. "And if her ladyship the Countess of Cullagh didn't require it of me I'm thinking I'll do very well for plain 'mistress' in this country."

"That is not the way to speak to me," said Mrs. Burton sternly. "And if you mean to keep you place you will have to mend your manners; let me tell you that."

"It was sore need of repair they were in before I came to this country to mend them," retorted the rebuked person, who was a comely-looking woman of some thirty years, with a pale face of Madonna-like beauty, and soft brown hair that rippled on either side of it in a fashion that scorned the power of caps to humiliate or adorn. The other servants tittered. Mary Connor had only been two days in the house, but already had asserted a prerogative of free speech.

"There are the wheels," exclaimed the butler suddenly.

A sense of alertness at once expressed itself in the little crowd, and Irish Mary (engaged as nurse for the little daughter of the new arrivals), stepped slightly out of the rank and bent an eager gaze upon the open door.

The wheels stopped and in another moment the travellers entered. A party of three. A tall man, whose thick iron-grey hair contrasted oddly with his youthful face, and a slight, graceful woman, holding by the hand a little child of some six years of age.

The housekeeper gave a stately curtsey and murmured conventional greeting.

"I trust you will find everything satisfactory, madam," she concluded.

"I am sure I shall," said her new mistress, with a smile so sweet that Irish Mary's heart went out to her at once. Her eyes fell from the mother to the child, and the roguish beauty of the little face completed her conquest.

She advanced to announce herself—regardless of etiquette. "You are kindly welcome, ma'am," she said. "And the darling little lady, too, God bless her; with a face for all the world like sunshine on a May morning. It's I am to be your nurse, darling. Mary Connor at your service. Of Waterford county; that's my native place. Oh, we'll be the great friends intirely when we get to know one another, won't we, me pretty one? Sure and not one of the little countesses beyant where I've been living could hold a candle to ye for beauty and style."

"You—you are the nurse?" said the lady, a half smile touching her pale lips.

"I am, ma'am—as Mrs. Burton here can tell ye."

"Then will you please take my little girl to the nursery and get her some tea. She is tired, I am sure. Burton, will you see about the luggage. My little girl's things are in the trunk marked No. II. What time will dinner be ready?"

"In half an hour, madame, if convenient. Shall I show you your rooms?"

"If you please." She hesitated and glanced at her husband. "Will you come also, Lawrence?"

His glance had been wandering from point to point, taking in the luxury and comfort and beauty of the place with critical eye. He had no right of possession in it whatever save that of owing its inheritor as wife. Unexpectedly and by a curious chain of circumstances the estate had come to her. Its late owner had been an uncle whom she had not seen since childhood. She had never set foot in the house from the time she was as young as her own little girl—yet it seemed to her familiar and unchanged.

A sense of pleasure in its possession swept over her as her eyes wandered from the glowing hall to the richly-carpeted stairs, the oak seats and tables, the quaint pottery, the tapestry and pictures, and spoils of chase and hunting field. Involuntarily she stretched out her hand to her husband. "Do you like it, dear?" she asked softly. "Is it not homelike and beautiful?"

"Yes," he said, throwing off his fur-lined coat and hat. "A nice old place. You described it very well."

The housekeeper's eyes flashed a sudden indignant glance at the indifferent face of the speaker.

"A nice old place!" To hear a house whose age was traditional in the county, whose family history was renowned, described as "a nice old place," and by one to whom it only came through marriage with one of the family. Times were indeed changed.

She led the way up the staircase and across the corridor and showed her new mistress her bedroom with a silent dignity that she hoped was impressive. It might have been had that mistress been less preoccupied by her own thoughts and memories. The housekeeper, bent on maintaining dignity, merely threw open doors to various announcements. "Your bedroom, madam. Mr. Haughton's dressing-room—your boudoir—the bathroom." So she went on. "The nurseries are above, as perhaps you remember?"

A peal of laughter and the sound of eager feet gave due assurance of that fact.

"You gave no orders about a lady's maid," continued the housekeeper. "Shall I assist you for to-night?"

"Thank you—no. I need no one," was the quick answer. "I am used to wait on myself, and prefer it."

Mrs. Burton's physiognomy expressed faint surprise.

"One of the other maids can do what little I require," continued her mistress. "At least for the present. Now, if you will see that my luggage is brought up, I will dispense with your kind offices. We shall not dress for dinner to-night, we are too fatigued."

The housekeeper curtsied again and retired, murmuring that the new successor to the family honors was certainly a very strange lady and apparently unused to the ways of good society.

"No lady's maid, no dressing for dinner. Well, well, what a change for Torbart Manor."

She discussed the newcomers very seriously with her husband, when dinner was over and his duties completed.

Their late master had been somewhat of a recluse. A scholarly, silent, self-absorbed man, caring little for the world around or about him, going nowhere and entertaining no one. Early in life he had married a cousin of his own. She had died and left him childless. The brother, who was next of kin, lived chiefly abroad. They rarely corresponded, and never met. It was to this brother's only child that the property had now descended. All that Mrs. Burton knew of her was that she had married and lived abroad in some part of France ever since. Her husband had assumed the family name with the family inheritance, but neither of them had apparently been in undue haste to take possession. Two whole years had elapsed and only at their expiration had the new owners appeared on the scene.

Naturally, the housekeeper and butler, with stories of "old families" and their behaviour in their possession, found plenty to complain of and criticise here.

"It's being all new and strange to them must make a difference," said the butler. "Living in them foreign countries must be deteriorating in its effects."

Harbury Burton loved long words, and affected a certain scholarly style founded on his late master.

"Deteriorating!—stuff and nonsense. She's married beneath her, that's what it is," snapped the housekeeper. "And she's lowering her dignity to keep pace with his. There's something about that husband of Mrs. Haughton's that I don't like. He don't look you straight in the face. He don't seem masterful and sure as if he had his own rights and his own duties, and meant to do them. It's a thousand pities that Mr. Anthony Haughton hadn't a son. Property in the female line always loses its value. Strangers stepping in and upsetting what's gone before. That's how it will be with Torbart Royal. You'll see if I'm not right."

"Little Miss Valerie is a beautiful child," said the old man suddenly.

"She is, I grant you, but a handful, or I'm no judge. Eyes like her's mean mischief."

"Well, well, it's early days for faulting the family," said the old man. "After all it's dying out fast. What's left is only in the female line again."

"Mrs. Haughton is young enough to have a family of sons!" exclaimed Mrs. Burton. "Though she does look delicate." The old man shook his head. "There's something weighing on her heart, I'm sure of it. And there's fear in her face. Fear of—what, Susan?"

"I'm sure I don't know. What should there be?"

"It's not for me to say. But I caught it. It's in her eyes, her voice sometimes. Perhaps there's a secret in the background of her life."

"Stuff and nonsense. Secret! You're in your dotage Harbury. Secrets! Why, if ever there was a family open and above board, and straight as a die, it's the Haughtons. Quiet, well-conditioned folk, not a scandal among them."

"That's doesn't prevent one coming into their records, Susan."

"Of course it doesn't. But what's the good of looking for it. Sorrows are none too fond of lagging behind us that we should be whipping them up for fear of delay."

"True," he answered. "True. I hope you're right, Susan. But what I saw in her face was fear, I tell you. And when there's fear in the background there's a reason for it."

"Well, they've taken care to bring no one who can tell tales, if so be there's any to tell. No valet, no maid, no nurse. Whatever's to find, Harbury, we've only our own eyes and ears to trust to. Not that I want to make any discovery that's not to the credit of the family, but, all the same, if there's one thing on earth I can't do with, it's secrecy and underhandedness. And I tell you, Harbury, straight, I don't like the new master of Torbart Royal!"