CHAPTER X. MRS. GRAHAM-SHUTE MANŒUVRES.
It was ten days later that Mrs. Graham-Shute arrived, according to her promise, at Wyngham House.
Chris, much against her will, was stationed, by Mr. Bradfield’s special request, to receive the visitors. Mrs. Abercarne tried to persuade him that he himself ought to meet such distinguished guests, but he laughed, and said “he couldn’t stand the old woman’s gush; if a reception by Miss Christina wasn’t good enough for them, they might do without one altogether, and be hanged to them.”
So Christina amused herself at the piano until Mrs. Graham-Shute was announced. The girl came forward modestly to receive the new-comers, who were talking loudly as they entered. At the first moment she thought it was an affectation to put her out of countenance, but she soon found out that the Graham-Shutes never did anything without making four times as much noise over it as anybody else would have done.
Thus, Mrs. Graham-Shute came in with rustling skirts and jingling bonnet ornaments, while Donald laughed in a deep bass voice, and entered with a tread as heavy as a dragoon’s.
“My dear John, where are you? It was quite too sweet of you to——”
Suddenly becoming aware that “dear John” was nowhere to be seen, and that there was only a slender and remarkably pretty girl bowing and smiling to her rather timidly, Mrs. Graham-Shute stopped short, drew in her extended hand, and stared at Chris with a face which had in an instant lost its air of expansive good humour.
Chris, who had been reassured by the good-natured expression which she had at first seen on the visitor’s face, felt a chill come over her. She was not afraid of this self-important lady, but she perceived at once that there would be “unpleasantness” between her and “mamma.” With the quickness of budding womanhood, she had taken in at a glance every detail of the new-comer’s appearance, and had had time for a peep at the young people behind.
And what she had seen was a woman of medium height, enormously stout, with a large, many-chinned face, in which were a pair of eyes which ran over her interlocutor for a few moments with frank curiosity, and then grew dull, while her tongue still ran on, and her mind occupied itself with some subject foreign to her words.
So that while her words to Chris were, “Dear me! So very sorry that Mr. Bradfield was too busy to receive us himself! The poor dear man really does work too hard with his collections, and his philanthropical projects!” her thoughts were: “I wonder who on earth you are, and what you’re doing here! And I hope, whoever you are, that we shall be able to turn you out!”
Unfortunately, her thoughts spoke through her looks more eloquently than her words. Between her suspicions of the real state of the case, and the possibility that this young lady might be a relation of Mr. Bradfield’s, the poor lady felt uncertain how to treat her, and alternated between the most distant coldness and bursts of confidential effusiveness. When, however, Chris said: “Would you like to go up to your rooms? My mother thought you would like what we call the lighthouse room at the end,” Mrs. Graham-Shute stared at her with unmistakable hostility.
“Your mother is staying here with you, then?” she said shortly.
“My mother is the housekeeper,” answered Chris, with a blush.
Poor Mrs. Graham-Shute’s extensive person seemed to expand still further under the influence of her just indignation. To be received by this minx of a housekeeper’s daughter! A girl whose very existence, to judge by her face and figure, was a danger and an insult to all Mr. Bradfield’s relations who had any expectations from him. What was dear John thinking about? She called her children much as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings at approaching danger, and they bustled and bounced out of the room.
Chris was mortified, but she had expected something of the sort, so she conquered the feeling easily. She would not go up to her mother, who was dressing for dinner, to delay her and worry her by a description of the new arrivals. Mrs. Abercarne could take her own part whatever happened, and there was no need to let her anticipate evil more than she had already done.
In the meantime, Mrs. Graham-Shute had not dared to make any comment on the situation until she was well past the study door. But upstairs, meeting her husband, who had gone straight to the stables for a cigar after his journey, she poured out her wrath in a ceaseless torrent.
Mr. Graham-Shute was a small, inoffensive man, and he looked smaller and more inoffensive still when in the company of his wife. He was the grandson of a man who had been a great poet, and there is no need to say more about him than that he was a striking example of the fact that genius is not hereditary. Being used to his wife’s harangues, he listened indifferently to this one; and the only point in it which excited him to any attention was her account of the good looks of the interloper.
“Pretty girl, is she?” said he, with interest, when his better half took breath for a moment. “I must make haste and dress and run down and have a look at her!”
The poor lady was hardly more fortunate with her children. Lilith was rather pretty, Rose was rather plain; the former had dark eyes and a loud voice, and the latter had light eyes and no voice at all. They both thought that mamma was making a great fuss about a small matter, and Lilith told her so.
Unable to get any sympathy from this quarter, Mrs. Graham-Shute tried her son. Donald, who was the apple of his mother’s eye, had been coarsely and aptly described by Mr. Bradfield before his arrival as a rough young cub. He was a great, loud-voiced, awkward hobbledehoy, who had remained at this stage much longer than he would otherwise have done through the injudicious management of his mother. He couldn’t be made to see things from his mother’s point of view at all. Chris was an “awfully pretty girl,” and looked like an “awfully jolly one.” In consequence of her presence he looked forward to having a very much pleasanter time at Wyngham House than he had ever had there before.
“I shouldn’t worry myself about it, mother. In fact, I don’t know what you are worrying about,” he said, when she paused for breath. “The girl’s a lady, and——”
“Why, you idiot! don’t you see that’s the danger?” gasped his mother. “She’s a lady, and she’s young and good-looking. And if she gets him to marry her, there’ll be an end of any hope of his doing anything for you, or for any of us!”
“Gets him to marry her!” roared Donald, indignantly. “Why, the old fool might think himself precious lucky if he were to get her to marry him! Why, she’s one of the most charming——”
“Sh—sh!” said his mother, pinching his arm in her terror lest he should be overheard. “For goodness’ sake hold your tongue. I’ve no doubt these people have their spies about, and if we’re not very civil to them, they’ll persuade cousin John to be rude to us, or something dreadful.”
“You needn’t fear that I shall be anything but civil to that girl,” said Donald, as if conscious that his civility was rather a precious thing.
And Mrs. Graham-Shute left her son with a sigh of self-pity at obtaining so little sympathy from her “own people.”
She was an inventive woman, however, where her own little schemes were concerned, and an idea had come into her head. If it should prove, as she feared, that there was any danger of “dear John’s” being enslaved by the housekeeper’s pretty daughter, why should she not put “a drag” across the scent in the shape of her son? He was handsome and fascinating beyond all men, and was twenty-five years younger than John Bradfield. He was already attracted by the girl, who could not fail to be flattered by his admiration, whatever her designs might be upon the master of the house. If Donald would have the sense to make love to her without exciting the jealous suspicions of his cousin, he might draw off the girl’s attention, and give his mother time to “look round” in the interests of herself and her family.
In the meantime, she made up her mind to “be civil.”
This proved a more difficult task than she had expected. At dinner she found Mrs. Abercarne installed in the place of the mistress of the house. She saw “dear John,” who had welcomed her without effusiveness, casting sheep’s eyes in the direction of Miss Abercarne. As she expressed it afterwards to her husband, who was delighted with Chris:
“You couldn’t move for Abercarnes. It was ‘Mrs Abercarne, will you do this?’ and ‘Miss Abercarne can tell you that,’ from morning till night!”
On the whole, dinner was a calamitous function. Mr. Graham-Shute, who was neither a busybody nor a schemer, but simply an easy-going gentleman, without any great measure of tact, made, in spite of frowns of warning from his wife, more than one awkward remark. In the first place, he asked John Bradfield, across the table, whether he still kept his private lunatic on the establishment.
“Because if you do, you know, my dear fellow,” he went on, “I sha’n’t be able to sleep a wink.”
Mr. Bradfield answered, very shortly:
“I don’t see what that can have to do with your sleeping!”
“Don’t you? Why, John, your memory’s going. Have you forgotten the row he kicked up last time we were here, and how we all thought he would bring his door down? And the man who looks after him, or, at least, who did then, man named Stelfox, said he always went on like that when there were visitors in the house. I declare I shouldn’t have dared to come to-day if I thought you’d got him still!”
“Why didn’t you ask me, then?” said John Bradfield, drily. “I didn’t want to have you here against your will.”
“Really, William,” broke in Mrs. Graham-Shute, in an agony, “I don’t know how you can be so absurd. How can it matter to you who is in one part of a large house like this, when you are far away in the other?”
“Oh! of course, it’s all right as long as he’s safely locked up,” said her husband, as he helped himself to an olive, with more attention to that than to the discussion in hand. “But at my time of life a man prefers to die a natural death, and not to run the chance of being tomahawked in his bed.”
Luckily the young people took this as a joke, and laughed; so that difficulty was got over. But when they had got as far as the sweets, the doomed man began again:
“By-the-bye, Bradfield,” he asked casually, as he tried to make up his mind between orange-jelly and ice-pudding, “what’s become of those two fellows who were out in the bush with you?”
“Don’t know what two fellows you mean,” answered Mr. Bradfield, in a tone which would have warned off any person less obtuse. “I met a good many fellows when I was out there.”
By this time Mr. Graham-Shute had caught his wife’s eye, seen her frowns, watched her agonised attempts to kick his foot under the table; but he was as quietly obstinate in his way as she was loudly determined in hers, so he glared at her across the flowers, and persisted in his ill-advised remarks.
“Oh! come, you must know. Two fellows who went out with you, or whom you met soon after you got out there, and chummed up with. Marrable—yes, Alfred Marrable was the name of the one, and——” Here he paused, trying to recollect the second name. “I can’t remember the name of the other. What’s become of them? What’s become of Marrable?”
Mrs. Graham-Shute could hardly have been trusted alone with her husband with a weapon in her hand at that moment. For she saw that the rich cousin from whom so much was expected was looking as much displeased as only a sallow-faced and black-haired man can look. If William were going on like this, they might just as well settle at John-o’-Groat’s as at Wyngham. John Bradfield no longer pretended, however, to have forgotten the existence of his old chums.
“Dead, I believe, both of them,” he answered, curtly. “Did no good, either of them.”
“And what was the name of the other man?”
“Don’t remember.”
William looked at him incredulously, though he could not go so far as to contradict him.
His wife rushed in to the rescue.
“And what are we going to do to pass the time away between this and Friday?” she asked, with a great assumption of buoyancy and good spirits. “We ought to try to ‘get up’ something, ought we not?”
This question almost restored John Bradfield’s good humour. It was so characteristic of his cousin Maude. She was always “getting up” something, always at short notice, and always badly. It was her custom to forget some one or other of the necessary preparations, and to leave the work to be done in the hands of others. But she liked the excitement, the glory of being the prime mover of everything, however small, the feeling that she was making herself talked about; above all, she liked the “fuss.”
Lilith and Rose looked at each other. Their eyes said, “So like mamma!”
“All right, Maude,” said her cousin, with restored gold humour. “What shall it be? A sack race? Or distribution of buns to the oldest inhabitants? It’s all the same to you, I suppose?”
It was her turn to look offended. She raised her head so far that her cousin could scarcely see more than the chins as she answered, in stately tones:
“Oh! of course, if I’m only to be laughed at, I withdraw the suggestion. But I thought, as we are in a beautiful house like this, where there is plenty of room and plenty of people to do everything, it seems a pity not to take advantage of it, and——”
“And get a line in the local paper,” added her husband.
There was a laugh at this, subdued on the part of her daughters, boisterously loud from Donald, who had been enjoying his cousin’s champagne immensely, and bestowing more and more of his attention on the unresponsive Chris.
They all knew that her project, if she could yet be said to have anything so definite, was not nipped in the bud, but would spring up to its full growth at a not remote period. For the moment, however, Mrs. Graham-Shute said no more about it, but rather disdainfully gave to Mrs. Abercarne the signal for the ladies to retire, instead of waiting for that lady to give it to her.