Chapter Twenty Three.
At East Moddersham.
“It was all so touching,” said Lady Marth. “I cannot tell you how patient Hebe was, thinking of every one more than of herself. I don’t know any one else who would have behaved so beautifully through such a trial.”
And her somewhat hard though handsome features softened as she spoke, and her dark eyes looked almost as if there were tears in them.
Sir Adam, on his side, felt that he had perhaps been judging her too sharply.
“Of course,” he thought to himself, “but for their being friends of my own, I would never have known or cared whether she was kind to the Derwents or not. And I suppose one should try not to be personal; still—”
At that moment a slight pause in the conversation at the other end of the table allowed Lady Harriot’s rather harsh, unmodulated voice to be heard very distinctly. She was speaking to a lady seated opposite to her, a visitor at East Moddersham, and not a resident in the neighbourhood.
“Yes,” she said, “you positively must get Lady Marth to drive you into Blissmore to see their things. I have been getting them all the custom I could, and I do think, now they have made a good start, they may get on well, poor things.”
“I’ll make a point of giving them an order,” the lady replied good-naturedly. “One does feel so sorry for them.”
Sir Adam was an old man, and a man of the world; but his face reddened perceptibly.
“Excuse me, Lady Harriot,” he said very clearly—and somehow every one stopped speaking to listen—“If you are alluding to Mrs Derwent and her daughters, I must not leave any misapprehension about them. There will soon be no need for any one to patronise them, however kind the motive. Their being in their present position has been the result of a complete misapprehension, for which, I must confess, I am myself to blame.”
Lady Harriot stared.
“My dear Sir Adam,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me so before?”
But Sir Adam had already turned to Lady Marth, and did not seem to hear the question. Lady Harriot nodded across the table confidentially.
“Never mind,” she said in a low voice. “Be sure you go to see their things, all the same.”
Lady Marth had looked up in astonishment at Sir Adam’s speech.
“Are you talking of some people who took a house on Pinnerton Green and have left it again already?” she said. “I had no idea they were friends of yours! I remember Hebe rather took up the daughters in connection with that guild of hers that she’s so enthusiastic about.”
Sir Adam’s face was grave and his tone very cold as he replied.
“You cannot possibly have met them,” he said, “or your discrimination would have shown you that, whether friends of mine or not, they are very different from what you have evidently imagined them.”
“Why, you seem quite vexed with me,” said Lady Marth, trying to carry it off lightly. “How can I be expected to know all about the good people on the Green, or to have guessed by instinct that the Derwents had anything to do with you?”
“Lady Hebe found out enough to make her show them all the kindness in her power,” he replied. “Lady Harriot called on them, poor dear soul, meaning to do her best, and Mrs Harrowby surely mentioned them to you?”
“Perhaps she did,” replied Lady Marth carelessly; “but the vicar’s wife, you know, Sir Adam, doesn’t count in that way. It’s her rôle, or she thinks it is, to ignore all class distinctions.”
“In this case there were none to ignore,” said Sir Adam, still more frigidly.
“I don’t say there were,” she replied. “Of course not with friends of yours. But how was I to know that? Now, you’re not to be vexed with me, for you’ve really no cause to be.” But as she said this, a certain afternoon in the vicarage drawing-room recurred to her memory—a beautiful, fair-haired girl, standing near her, a faint flush rising to her face as she—Lady Marth—drew herself back with words, to say the least, neither courteous nor amiable. Her tone to Sir Adam softened still more. “Of course,” she continued, “I shall be more than delighted to pay any attention in my power to Mrs Derwent—that is to say, if you wish it.”
“Thank you,” he answered, gratified, in spite of himself, by her evident sincerity. “I will tell you more about them some other time. I may see Hebe after dinner, may I not?” he went on. “Archie said something about her wishing it.”
“Oh yes,” replied Lady Marth. “She is counting upon it, I know. If you will follow us into the drawing-room a little before the other men, I will take you to her. She is really quite well in herself, but we daren’t risk any glare of light for her as yet. Isn’t it nice to see poor Norman looking so much happier?”
“Yes; of the two, I think he does more credit to their travels than young Dunstan,” Sir Adam replied thoughtlessly.
He regretted the remark as soon as he had made it, but a glance at Lady Marth’s face reassured him. She was in utter unconsciousness that Archie Dunstan and Blanche Derwent had ever met.
“Not that I have much ground for the idea, though,” he said to himself. “I wonder if Hebe can possibly enlighten me.”
They were approaching the end of dinner, and the rest of the conversation between himself and his hostess was on general subjects. But as she followed her guests to the drawing-room, she touched him gently on the arm.
“I shall expect you in a few minutes,” she said; and a quarter of an hour or so later, Sir Adam found himself following her up the first flight of the broad oak staircase, along a passage, the rooms of which, since her first coming there as a little child, had always been appropriated to Sir Conway’s ward.
“Poor dear child,” thought the old man to himself. “Things don’t seem so unequal, after all, in life. Stasy’s children have had more than Hebe, heiress though she is. She has never known what ‘home’ really is as they have done?”
But it was a very happy Hebe who rose from a low seat near the fireplace in her pretty boudoir, to greet him as he followed Lady Marth into the room.
“Now, I shall leave you alone,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve heaps to say to each other.”
They had more to talk of even than the lady of the house suspected. For long after Hebe had replied to all her old friend’s inquiries about herself—the result of the operation, and the still necessary precautions to be observed—and had told him the happy hopes for the future she now dared to entertain, they still went on talking earnestly and eagerly.
“I think our marriage will be early in the spring,” Hebe had said, and the allusion seemed to send Sir Adam’s thoughts in a further direction.
“Hebe,” he said, “I want to speak to you about my friends the Derwents, whom I am delighted to find you’ve got to know on your own account.”
The girl’s face lighted up with the keenest interest. “I too want to talk about them to you,” she said. “I have just been wondering if I may speak to you quite openly.”
“Certainly you may do so—it is just what I have been hoping for,” replied Sir Adam, and the hands of the pretty clock on Hebe’s mantelpiece had very nearly made their accustomed journey of a full hour before it suddenly struck Sir Adam that he was scarcely behaving with courtesy to his hosts in spending so much of the evening away from the rest of the party.
Just then Norman Milward put his head in at the door.
“I’m most sorry to interrupt you,” he said. “But Lady Marth thinks that perhaps—”
“Of course,” said Sir Adam, rising as he spoke; “I had no business to stay so long.—Then you’ll expect us to-morrow afternoon, my dear child? I will explain it to Lady Marth.—You’ll stay up here, I suppose, Milward?”
“Yes,” the young man replied; “I’ve scarcely seen her yet. It seems all too good to be true.”
Sir Adam glanced back at them as he left the room, standing together on the hearthrug, the firelight dancing on the two bright heads, on the two young faces so very full of happy gratitude.
“I scarcely feel like a childless old fogy, after all,” he thought, as he made his way down-stairs. “It seems to me I have a good many children. That little Stasy now—Blanche is charming, but Stasy is perfectly irresistible.”
About four o’clock the next afternoon the Alderwood brougham might have been seen on the road from Blissmore to East Moddersham. There were two people inside it—Blanche Derwent and Sir Adam. It was a cold day, for the autumn was now advancing rapidly.
“Dear me,” said Blanche, with a slight shiver, as she glanced out of the window at her side, “this road is beginning to look quite wintry. It is just about a year since mamma and Stasy and I drove along here for the first time, the day we came down to look at Pinnerton Lodge—only a year!”
Sir Adam stooped and drew the fur rug a little more closely round her.
“Blanche, my dear,” he said, “you are a sweet, good child, I know, but I’m very angry with you, nevertheless. You really might have helped me to make your mother see things more reasonably.”
“But if I don’t see them ‘reasonably’ myself?” said Blanche. “I can’t help quite agreeing with what mamma feels; and after all, Sir Adam, it is only a few months’ delay.”
“But a few months mean a good deal at my age,” he persisted. “Your mother promises to look upon me—for the years, certainly not many, that still remain to me—entirely as a father. Why should we put off acting upon this at once, for a scruple which, after all, need be of no importance?” Blanche hesitated.
“I can’t feel that,” she said. “To me it seems so much better, from every point of view, to carry out our plan for the time arranged. And you know, Sir Adam, it will not practically make much difference. You couldn’t risk all the winter in England, and mamma thinks it better not to interrupt Herty’s and Stasy’s lessons, though, of course, these are secondary reasons; the real one is our promise to Miss Halliday and—”
“And what?”
“Perhaps it is selfish,” said Blanche. “But somehow it seems to me more dignified not to give up what we are doing, so hurriedly, as if—almost as if we were at all ashamed of it;” and she blushed a little.
“There’s something in that perhaps,” replied her old friend. “Perhaps in my heart I agree with you to some extent. But I am tired of wandering about by myself. I am longing to feel I have got a home again, and daughters to care about me in my last days.”
“Dear Sir Adam,” said Blanche, “you don’t know how I love to hear you speak like that! The winter will seem as bright as possible to us with the looking forward to going back to Pinnerton in the spring. You’re going to see our house to-day, aren’t you, while I am with Lady Hebe? You mustn’t be disappointed in its size. It isn’t at all large, you know, but those half-finished rooms mamma was telling you about can easily be made very nice.”
“Yes, I’m sure of it,” said Sir Adam. “I’ve no love for very big houses and the worries they entail. The Bracys are very good-natured, and will let us make plans beforehand, so as to lose no time. They turn out in May next year, don’t they? And by then your beloved Miss Halliday will have found an assistant to suit her—not as difficult a matter as a moneyed partner, which she will not now require. Then, as I was saying, I shall take a house in London for a short time, and all of you must join me there. We must give Stasy a pleasanter impression of London than she has, poor child. But here we are—”
Blanche looked up with interest at the fine old house. It was the first time she had seen more of it than its gables and chimneys through the trees, even though for several months they had been within a stone’s-throw of the lodge gates.
“I will take you up at once to Hebe’s room,” said Sir Adam, “as she is expecting you;” and he led the way across the hall to the wide staircase.
“And how shall I meet you again?” said Blanche, who was not above a certain sensation of nervousness at the thought of encountering the formidable Lady Marth in her own house.
“It will be all right,” Sir Adam replied, laying his hand lightly on her shoulder as he spoke. “Hebe will look after you,” for he was quick enough to perceive her slight timidity, and liked her none the less for it. His kind tone reassured her, but had she known who was at that moment crossing the hall below them, it is very certain that Blanche’s habitual calm would have been still more seriously disturbed.
She forgot all about Lady Marth and everything else for the moment in the pleasure of seeing Hebe Shetland again—her “girl with the happy face,” chastened perhaps, somewhat paler and thinner than she remembered her, but sweeter still, and best of all, with the same bright sunny eyes, bearing no traces of the suffering they had gone through.
Hebe caught her by both hands and kissed her.
“Dear Blanche,” she said.
The words and gesture surprised Blanche a little, but pleased her still more; while to Hebe it was an immense gratification to feel that she and the girl she had instinctively chosen as a friend could now meet on equal ground, with no constraint.
“It is so good of you to come,” she said to Blanche.
“So good of Sir Adam to bring you”—But Sir Adam had already disappeared. “I have been looking forward so very much to seeing you again. I only wish you were at Pinnerton Lodge, and then you would come to see me often, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Blanche heartily, thinking to herself with satisfaction that, thanks to Sir Adam, there could no longer be any complication in the matter. “But we shall not be at Pinnerton for a good while—not till next summer; however, I will come to see you whenever I can, you may be quite sure.”
“I’m afraid I shan’t be allowed to go as far as Blissmore just yet,” said Hebe; “I have to guard against any chill. But I had quite hoped you were coming back to the Lodge soon, from what Sir Adam said last night.”
“Dear Sir Adam,” said Blanche. “I could never tell you how good he is to us! But still, things must stay as they are for a while.” And then she went on to explain to Hebe the position of affairs with regard to Miss Halliday, and how much they felt themselves indebted to her, adding simply: “At that time she really seemed our only friend.”
Hebe stroked Blanche’s hand.
“I quite understand how you feel,” she said, “and I have no doubt you are right. But Sir Adam was so full of it last night, he was sure he’d get your tenants to turn out at once, and—he’s such an old man now, Blanche—he can’t have many years to live. Don’t you think perhaps, for his sake, you should not be quite so scrupulous?”
“It may be possible to arrange things a little sooner,” said Blanche. “Of course his wishes will be almost our first thought now. But, you see, in any case he must not risk the winter in this climate.”
“I was forgetting that,” said Hebe regretfully. “He seems so much stronger lately.”
Then they went on to talk of other things, Hebe giving a few details of all she had gone through.
“I can bear to think of it now that it is all so happily over;” and in the interest of their conversation time passed rapidly.
Hebe started when the silvery sound of a gong reached them from the hall below.
“That’s the tea-gong,” she said. “I am allowed to go down to tea, for Josephine keeps the room in a half-light for me. I had no idea it was so late.”
The two girls went down the staircase together; the drawing-room door stood open, and a hum of voices reached their ears before they entered the room. Then Lady Marth’s clear, decided tones rang out conspicuously above the others.
“Nonsense!” she was saying. “You can both stay if you choose—you know you are always welcome.”
“That must be Norman,” said Hebe gladly, “and—”
But Blanche heard no more, for by this time they were inside the room, and Lady Marth was addressing her.
“How do you do, Miss Derwent? My hands are full of teacups, you see. I persuaded Sir Adam to stay to tea.”
Some one came forward from the little group near the fire. It was almost too dark to distinguish faces at the first moment, but Hebe’s, “This is Norman, Blanche,” prepared her for his cordial greeting.
“Here’s a nice corner for you both,” said Mr Milward. “No foot-stools to stumble over!”
“I see better in the dark than the rest of you, I think,” said Hebe laughingly; “it is too bad for you all to suffer for my sake.—Oh,” she exclaimed, “is that you, Archie? I didn’t know you were coming back again to-day.”
“Norman brought me over,” Mr Dunstan replied.
“And he’s pretending he can’t stay to dinner,” put in Lady Marth.—“As if your aunt would mind, Archie!”
He did not at once reply. He was shaking hands with Blanche.
“How do you do, Miss Derwent?” he said easily. “I hope Mrs Derwent is well, and that famous little brother of yours?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Blanche, in a tone which she endeavoured to render unconstrained, though feeling for once nervous, and ill at ease and disgusted at herself for being so, especially as Mr Dunstan struck her as his airiest, most conventional self.
“I really can’t stay,” he went on, turning again to Lady Marth. “Auntie is counting upon me, as she has got a man too few, and some people are coming to dinner.”
“It’s only to take in Rosy,” said Norman, with a brother’s brutality.
“Only Rosy!” repeated Lady Marth. “My dear Norman, if Rosy were any one but your sister, I don’t think you would be quite so much at a loss to account for Archie’s obstinacy.”
Archie laughed a hearty unconstrained laugh. “Archie’s taste is not peculiar; every one loves a tête-à-tête with Rosy, when they have a chance of it,” said Hebe, with apparently uncalled-for warmth.
“Of course they do,” said Sir Adam, speaking for the first time.—“And now, my dear Blanche, if you’ve had a cup of tea, I think we must be off—I have to get back to Alderwood in time for dinner, too, Master Archie. By-the-bye, we’ve got the large brougham—will you come with us viâ Blissmore, though it is rather a round?”
“Well no, I think I prefer Norman’s cart, which is here,” said Mr Dunstan lightly. “Though many thanks, all the same.”
“And how is Norman going to get home, then?” said Lady Marth. “You’re not going to force him away too?”
“The cart can come back,” said Archie.
“Thank you,” said Norman, somewhat grimly. “Pray, be on no ceremony.”
“There comes our brougham,” said Sir Adam, shaking hands with Lady Marth, Blanche following his example.
Then came a more affectionate farewell from Hebe, who accompanied them to the drawing-room door.
“I mustn’t go farther,” she said; but Norman Milward crossed the hall to see them off, Mr Dunstan having contented himself with a regulation hand-shake, when standing beside his hostess on the hearthrug.
The air outside felt chilly as they stepped into the carriage, but not so chilly as a strange, unreasonable breath of disappointment, which seemed to pass through Blanche, though, even to herself, she would have shrunk from calling it by such a name.