Chapter Eight.
A Tempting Tea.
Mrs Fortescue’s morning had been so exciting that she really could not settle down at searching through her house linen for possible or impossible holes during the afternoon. It was her bounden duty to go to see the Arbuthnots. She ought to visit them after the delightful dinner they had given her on Christmas Day. Accordingly, putting on her most becoming dress, she started off between three and four o’clock in the direction of their house. She must meet the train which would bring her darlings back to her between six and seven, but during the intervening hours she might spend her time quite comfortably with Susie, chatting to her, of course—not on the subject, but on every possible subject which led towards it, approaching it, as it were, by every devious path within her knowledge.
Susie was upright, honest as the day. Mrs Fortescue was a crooked-minded woman; but very straight people are, as a rule, apt not to see the crookedness of their friends. Susie liked every one at Langdale, just as much as the Colonel liked them. She was heartily pleased to see her friend, and told her so, frankly. Susie was not wearing her grey barège, and the supporting silk lining could not therefore sustain her; but she was very neatly dressed in an old black serge which she had altered with her own clever fingers, and which fitted her plump form to perfection. Round her neck she were a neat linen collar, and had linen cuffs round her plump wrists. Her hands were ringless and very fat. Her face, always highly coloured, was a little redder than usual, because she had been taking advantage of the fine morning and spending it in the garden. She loved gardening, and there was not a day, either summed or winter, which did not give her something to do in her favourite employment.
“Now,” she said, when she saw Mrs Fortescue; “this is good! You have come to tea, of course. I will order some hot cakes. They can be made in a twinkling. I have desired cook to do them from a new recipe which I happened to cut out of a penny paper last week. How nice you look, Mrs Fortescue! and how are the darling girls? What a decided beauty Florence is turning into!”
“Of course you know,” said Mrs Fortescue, throwing meaning into her tone, “that both girls went to London this morning to spend the day with their guardian and lawyer, Mr Timmins, of Pye’s Court.”
“No, I didn’t know it,” said Susie. Then she added, seeing that something was expected of her: “Did they go alone?”
“Well, they went together first-class, and were met at the station by Mr Timmins’ confidential clerk. They are coming back to night.”
“Dear children!” said Susie, in her sweet voice. “I am so fond of them both.”
“And they are fond of you, Susie.”
“I wonder what they will do in the future,” said Susie. “Is it really true that they have left school?”
“Yes, it is quite true,” said Mrs Fortescue. “I am sorry,” answered Susie.
“Sorry? What do you mean? Florence is eighteen and Brenda nineteen.”
“Yes,” said Susie; “but one only begins to appreciate school at that age. Before, one is too young and lessons seem a useless drudgery. One’s mind is not big enough or broad enough to take in the advantages of learning. It is a great, great pity that Mr Timmins does not give them two more years at Newnham or Girton or some such place.”
“Oh, my dear?” said Mrs Fortescue, throwing up her hands. “How can you say anything so horrible! Newnham or Girton! They would be simply ruined; and men do so hate learned women.”
“Do they?” said Susie. She paused reflectively. “I have known one or two,” she said, after a pause, “whom men have loved very much. I don’t think it is the learning part that men hate; it is something else which now and then the learned woman possesses. Perhaps it is pride in her own attainments. Surely no sensible man can dislike a woman for knowing things.”
“They do—they all do,” said Mrs Fortescue. “My dear late lamented did. He told me he could not even have looked at me if I had had a smattering of Latin or Greek; and I have heard many other men say the same.”
“Then they must be quite worthless,” said Susie, “and we needn’t bother about them. Ah! and here comes the tea. Put it here, please, Peters.”
The servant arranged the very tempting tea on a little table, and Susie stood up to perform her duties as hostess. She was certainly remarkably plain, but, somehow, no one ever thought her plain when they looked at her, for goodness shone out of her eyes and seemed to radiate from her stout little person. Mrs Fortescue was quite ready to do justice to the excellent tea, the rich cream, the plum cake, and that new recipe for hot cakes which Susie’s cook had so successfully carried out and which resulted in such appetising, melting morsels, that the good woman was consoled for the loss of one of her few bottles of champagne, and for the fact that she knew very well that Major Reid had hated his lunch.
“Do you know,” she said, as she finished her meal, “that I never enjoy my tea anywhere as I do here. Besides, I had a hot lunch to-day. Who do you think came and had lunch with me?”
“How can I guess?” said Susie. “I suppose you were all alone, as the girls were in London.”
“No: I was not alone. I had a visitor—a man.”
“A man?” said Susie, opening her round eyes.
“Yes; no less a person than Major Reid. Now, what do you think of that?”
“Oh; I like him very much,” said Susie.
“Do you, now? I wonder why?”
“Why,” said Susie, “because I think he is nice. He is very poor, of course, but he makes the best of his poverty, and he is very intelligent and fond of reading.”
“Perhaps you like Michael too,” said Mrs Fortescue.
“I am exceedingly fond of Michael,” said Susie. “He is a dear boy.”
“A boy?” said Mrs Fortescue. “Do you call him that? He is a man; he is twenty-four.”
“I call twenty-four quite a boy,” answered Susie. “Mike is a great friend of mine: we have always been chums, and always will be, for that matter.”
Mrs Fortescue sat quite still. She longed to add something further; but Susie sat smiling to herself, for she remembered Michael’s request that he might take Florence into dinner on Christmas night, and she also remembered the fact that he had walked through the snow and slush in order to secure his heart’s desire. It would in Susie’s eyes be a delightful match if Mike and Florence married. But she was not going to speak of it. Mrs Fortescue’s small black eyes sparkled.
“Well, well,” she said; “we all have our tastes. I will own that in a place like Langdale one is apt to appreciate any fairly good-looking young man. But out in the great world where one meets them in shoals—simply in shoals—a person like Michael Reid would not have much chance.”
“Do you think so?” said Susie very quietly. “I am sorry for the great world, then.”
“You know nothing about it, Susie.”
“That is true,” answered Susie, who might have retorted, “No more do you,” but it was not her habit ever to say anything unkind.
“Well,” said Mrs Fortescue, “I suppose I must be going. I have to meet the dear girls, and they will have lots to tell me. In all probability, Susie, I shall be leaving Langdale myself this spring, for no doubt Mr Timmins will wish me to undertake the chaperonage of my two sweet girls until they marry. I look to their both making great matches, with their wealth and good looks; for they are both good-looking. They ought to do exceedingly well in the marriage market.”
“If you mean by that,” said Susie, the colour rushing into her face, “that they will marry men worthy of them—I mean good in the best sense of the word—good, and true and brave, then I trust they will. But if you mean anything else, Mrs Fortescue; if you mean men who will seek them for their wealth—for I presume they are rich, although really I know nothing about it, and what is more, I don’t care—then I sincerely trust they won’t marry that sort of man.”
“Oh,” said Mrs Fortescue, “you don’t understand—you don’t care whether they are rich or not—”
“Not one scrap,” said Susie. “How can riches add to the brightness of Florence’s eyes or the affection of Brenda’s manner? But if riches make them a little more comfortable, I hope they will have sufficient, though we don’t require much money, do we, Mrs Fortescue? I know that is not what the world would call rich,” (Mrs Fortescue hated Susie for making this remark) “and most certainly father and I are not. We just contrive and contrive, and always have enough for a jolly Christmas dinner when we can really entertain our friends. I don’t believe any two people in all the world are happier than my darling dad and myself, and it doesn’t come from riches, for we have to be very careful. Oh, no; rich people are not the happiest, I do assure you on that point.”
Mrs Fortescue could not help saying, “I do not agree with you, Susie,” and she could not help giving a contemptuous glance at the old-fashioned, very plump little figure with the red face and honest round eyes. But having eaten as much as she could of Susie’s very excellent food, and found it quite impossible to draw Susie Arbuthnot into any conversation of what she considered a truly interesting nature, she left the house and amused herself doing some shopping until it was time to go to the railway station to meet the girls.
There Florence alone confronted her—Florence, with a white and anxious face, although all trace of that fit of weeping which had overcome her when she parted from Brenda had disappeared from her features.
“Why, Flo—Flo, darling! Where is your sister? Where is my Brenda?”
“Brenda is staying for a few days with Lady Marian Dixie.”
“But I knew nothing of this. She did not take up any clothes.”
“We are to send her some. Mr Timmins has sent his clerk down with me, and he is coming back to the house with us now in order that I may pack some of Brenda’s things and send them to town by him. If we are quick we shall catch the half-past seven train, and she will get what things she most requires by to-night.”
“I have a cab waiting for you, my love. This is very unexpected. Did you say Lady Marian Dixie?”
“Yes,” said Florence; “an old friend of my mother’s.”
“Well, you will have a great deal to tell me,” said Mrs Fortescue; “and how very tired you look, dear.”
“I am not specially tired, but I should like to get home as fast as possible in order to give Andrews a trunk full of clothes to take back to Brenda.”
“Oh, surely Brenda won’t be away so long as that.”
Florence made no reply. She motioned to Andrews to get on the box beside the driver, and they returned to Mrs Fortescue’s house almost in silence. Mrs Fortescue felt that something had happened, but did not dare to inquire. She kept repeating to herself at intervals during their drive back—
“Lady Marian Dixie—a friend of the girls’ mother! It sounds very nice; still, it is queer. Surely, surely Mr Timmins could not be so mad as to allow Lady Marian to conduct the girls about in London society! It would be too cruel to me, after all I have done for them.”
When they reached the house, the cabman was desired to wait. Florence ran up to their room and, with Mrs Fortescue’s help, filled a trunk with Brenda’s smartest things. Mrs Fortescue talked all the time, but Florence was almost silent. The trunk was speedily packed, and the old clerk took it back to London with him.
Then the two ladies, the old and the young, went into the drawing-room and faced each other.