Chapter Fourteen.
Differences of Opinion.
As Philip was leaving that afternoon, Ella, whom he had not seen since luncheon, met him in the hall.
“Will you be so kind,” she began, “if it is not too much trouble—would you mind taking this little parcel to my godmother?” and she held up a small packet just twice the size of the one that had been transferred from his keeping to hers that same morning.
“Is it the shoes?” he said; “ah, I supposed so. Certainly I will give them to her. Shall I say you forgot them before?”
“No,” said Ella, colouring a little, “for that would not be true. Still I would rather she did not know of my having so nearly lost one; it would distress her and seem as if I had been careless. I don’t think you need say anything; just give her them from me.”
“Without telling her of their adventures?—very well. But, Ella,”—she looked a little surprised at his thus addressing her—“I must call you Ella; anything else would be absurd,”—he interpolated.
“Well, yes; I suppose so,” she said rather stiffly.
“You must warn Madelene—your sisters—that you don’t want my lady to know of the accident, otherwise she might very likely allude to it, especially with my having had the good luck to find it.”
Ella’s face fell.
“Oh, then,” she said, “you had better tell my godmother all about it yourself. It would be enough for me—I mean, Madelene would very probably make a matter of conscience of telling it, if I asked her not. She—my sisters do not give me credit for much good as it is,” she added with a slight smile, more bitter than playful, “However, it doesn’t matter. I will write by to-night’s post and confess all my sins myself to my godmother.”
“I think it would be both foolish and unnecessary to tell her anything about it,” said Sir Philip, who had his own reasons for not wishing anything more to be said about the episode of the shoe. “I can, if you like, say a word of warning myself to Maddie,” he went on, turning back as he spoke to the library. “At the same time,” as Ella made an eager gesture of assent, “I don’t agree with you about Madelene being so—so ill-natured and unfeeling and indeed, worse—hypocritical—as you seem to think her.”
His tone was quiet, but very grave. Ella started a little. It was not so much that he convinced her by what he said, as that she was shocked at hearing her opinion of her sister translated into the words of others.
“I—I did not exactly mean that,” she said confusedly.
“No,” Philip returned. “I am sure of that. Besides, of course anything you may say to me—in a moment of thoughtlessness or irritation, and we are all subject to such moments—about your sisters, cannot possibly do any harm.”
He smiled at her a little as he spoke—and Philip’s smile was very sweet—and then disappeared again into the library. Ella went slowly up stairs to her own room; a bright fire was blazing there.
“That speech may tell two ways,” she said to herself; “if he is such a very privileged and neutral sort of person, I suppose he will listen to all they say against me. What a fool I was to think he would sympathise with me!” and her cheeks glowed with annoyance. “Yet he might really have been a friend, for I know dear old godmother cares for me. I just wish I had chanced to meet them both elsewhere, quite independently of all the associations and influences here, for I am sure,” and a little smile flickered over her face, “I am sure Sir Philip did like me the other night—and now,” the smile quite fading away, “he will just look upon me as they all do—as a tiresome, spoilt little fool that needs any amount of sitting upon. Indeed, but for meeting me incognito, I don’t suppose he would ever have been nice to me at all. And the very thing they took advantage of to prevent our getting to know each other well and naturally, had just the opposite effect, my dear sisters! But why did godmother join in it?” and Ella’s brows contracted in perplexity. “I suppose Ermine can get her to do whatever she likes,” she decided, though the conclusion was not a thoroughly satisfactory one.
Just then Hester knocked at the door. She had come “to see to the fire,” she said, Miss St Quentin having given orders that during this very severe weather a good one was to be kept up in Miss Ella’s room all day.
“Did you go telling tales about my sitting up here in the cold then?” asked Ella, ungraciously enough.
“Not I, Miss Ella,” said Hester, calmly. “If you had gone for to do it again I’d have spoke up to the young ladies likely enough; but you’d have known of it, Miss Ella—I’m not one as goes aught but straightforrard.”
“Am I not one of the young ladies then?” said Ella.
“You’re just a contrary baby, Missie; sweet enough, I’ll not deny, when it suits you.”
Ella laughed, but her laugh was rather contemptuous.
“So you’ve had Sir Philip here, Miss Ella,” the old servant went on. “Wasn’t I right about him—he is a nice gentleman, isn’t he?” And Hester looked rather scrutinisingly as she spoke. Hester was not without a little harmless love of gossip.
“I’m sure I don’t remember what you said,” Ella replied indifferently. “If you mean that he’s nice-looking, yes; he’s not bad.”
But while she spoke she congratulated herself that she had not told Hester more particulars of the dance at the Manor.
“Not much chance of his ever being my prince,” she thought with a sigh, realising now the place which for the last day or two she had allowed “the stranger,” as they say in the old romances, to occupy in her vague, pretty day-dreams. For the girlish imagination at eighteen “gallops apace.”
Down stairs in the library meanwhile Ella’s two sisters were sitting together. Philip had left, after giving, as if of himself, the suggestion as to not mentioning to Lady Cheynes the narrow escape of the slipper—a suggestion at once appreciated and accepted. Madelene was writing; Ermine, under cover of a book and some work at hand on a little table beside her, was in reality doing nothing, except from time to time glancing at her sister.
“Maddie,” she said at last.
Miss St Quentin stopped writing and looked round with a slight touch of impatience.
“What is it, Ermine?” she said. “If it is anything very particular I’ll leave off, but I do want to finish this letter. It must go to-morrow, and you know I can never count upon doing anything in the evening.”
“It is a letter for the Indian mail then, I suppose?” said Ermine.
“Yes.”
“I—I wish you’d tell me what you are saying, Maddie,” said Ermine hesitatingly. “You know I don’t ask out of officiousness or curiosity.”
“I don’t suppose you do; all the same I wish you would leave the subject. It doesn’t do any good and it only makes it harder for me.”
“Tell me at least what you have said,” urged Ermine.
“You know the only thing I can say—the old story—while papa lives it is impossible.”
“And that is all Bernard Omar has won by five—six years’ waiting!” exclaimed Ermine indignantly.
“My dear Ermine, be just to me,” said her sister sadly. “I have never wished him to wait, nor encouraged him in the least to do so. And now—you must see for yourself that it is less possible than ever.”
“Because of Ella?”
“Yes, of course. I can’t leave this place. It would be wrong, considering it is mine, though eventually I feel sure it will be yours. But it would be too much, far too much to put on you alone, Ermine—the care of this place and papa, as he now is, and, in addition, Ella! No blessing would follow me if I acted so selfishly.”
“But if Bernard agreed to give up his profession and come and live here?” said Ermine. “He would not do so six years ago, and I think he was right then. But now—Heaven knows he has gained his laurels if ever a man did; and as for being idle, he would have plenty to do here in looking after the place and with his own writing.”
“Stop, Ermine,” said Madelene decidedly. “Such an arrangement is absolutely out of the question. Bernard would never feel he had a wife, nor I that I had a husband: coming into the midst of a family like ours would certainly not be the kind of thing he would like, and every existing difficulty would be increased.”
“You mean Ella, I suppose?” said Ermine; “and yet you are indignant with me for wanting Philip to fall in love with her and marry her. That would make everything easier. It would leave me at liberty to go hopping about a little, and perhaps somebody decent might take a fancy to poor me at last. Nobody ever has, you know, hitherto.”
“Nonsense, Ermie. Lots have, but you’ve snubbed them all, you know. Why don’t you go about more as it is?”
“And leave you alone for all the home worries? No, indeed—if you had a husband to help you, now.”
“Oh, Ermine, do leave the subject,” said Madelene wearily. “Of course, as far as we are concerned it would be delightful for Ella to marry Philip—it would make a different man of papa, I do believe; but neither papa nor we are the chief people to be considered. And I will not do anything to help on a marriage in that way—above all, with the grave doubts I have as to how it would turn out.”
“Well then, it’s to be hoped nobody ever will take pity on me,” said Ermine, dryly, “for assuredly I will never leave you here as things are.”
“It is fortunate then that the contingency in question, according to you, has not yet arisen,” said Madelene calmly, turning again to her letter.
Yes—Ermine had spoken truly. It was really six years since Madelene St Quentin had agreed to consider herself engaged to Bernard Omar, with the understanding that no one but her sister and Bernard’s old friend, Philip Cheynes, were to be taken into their confidence. For it was at that time that Colonel St Quentin’s health had begun to fail, and any additional anxiety or excitement was forbidden for him. Besides this, the engagement could not have been but an indefinite one; for Madelene, though but nineteen, had many responsibilities on her hands, and Bernard, three years her senior, was on the point of starting with his regiment for India. It had been due to an accident that an understanding, even between the two themselves had ever been come to, for Mr Omar was poor and Madelene was rich, and both were proud. But they had known each other since Madelene’s childhood; their mutual trust and confidence were entire; and trying though the long delay had been, it had yet been the great happiness of both lives.
Once only during those six years had Bernard, now Captain Omar, returned to England on a few months’ leave. He and Madelene had not seen very much of each other, for during some part of the time the St. Quentins had been abroad. But little as they were together, the two separated more deeply attached to each other, if that were possible, than before, and with fervent, if vague, hopes for the future. These hopes, however, were rendered vaguer still by Colonel St Quentin’s increased illness, aggravated, if not caused, by his money troubles, which made Madelene entirely renounce all idea of ever leaving him even for a few years’ sojourn in India. For some time she looked forward to Captain Omar’s retirement as the goal which was to see all difficulties set straight; but with the advent of Ella on the scene, her father’s morbid irritability, and her own ever-increasing duties, she began to despair. Breaking off the engagement seemed to her the only alternative, and she wrote to India to this effect, entreating Bernard not to dream of renouncing his profession for her sake, but to try to forget her and the weary years which had but led to ever-repeated disappointment. To this letter she had just received an answer. Captain Omar refused to come to any decision till they should again have met and discussed matters; in order to do this he had applied for leave and expected to be in England in the course of the next six mouths. But the tone of his letter seemed to Madelene cold, and her heart was very sore.
“He is getting tired of it at last,” she thought.
The situation was a complicated one, for though Captain Omar had distinguished himself both as an officer and a writer, in the eyes of the world his marriage with Miss St Quentin would be looked upon as greatly to his advantage; furthermore, he felt keenly that in offering to renounce his profession for Madelene’s sake he was giving the strongest possible proof of his devotion—devotion which it now seemed to him, or would have done so had he known her character less perfectly, was but faintly appreciated.
The letter was completed, folded, and directed. Ermine made a face at it when she saw it lying ready for the post on the side-table of their little sitting-room up stairs.
“I suppose Maddie has written to say that he need not give himself the trouble of coming here at all, or something of that kind. I do think it’s too bad. She is sacrificing any—ah, well, it’s no use thinking of that. I don’t believe the Marchants are going to ask me after all—and negatively, so to say, sacrificing Ella, too. I’m sure Philip admires her more than he has ever admired anybody before, but Madelene has such influence over him—a cold look or glance of hers would prejudice him—even without her meaning it in the least. And if I were Bernard I wouldn’t stand it, no I wouldn’t, and in one side of my heart I hope he won’t.”
Ermine stamped her foot—there was no one to see—with an energy which would have gone far to prove her relationship to fiery little Ella. “I won’t tell Madelene of the Marchants’ invitation, if it does come, till too late. If she is so obstinate I have no choice—I must follow suit, I suppose.”
The next day or two passed uneventfully enough. The weather continued bitterly cold, and Colonel St Quentin scarcely ventured to leave his room. One or other of his elder daughters was almost constantly in request to read or talk to him or write his letters. Ella paid him little duty visits and was always kindly received, but the sort of affectionate and almost familiar tone which had begun between the father and daughter while they were alone, seemed to have disappeared. Again there came over the girl the cold mortifying sensation of being but an outsider in her own home, and the vague scheme for her future which had momentarily, in the excitement of her visit to the Manor and the appearance of Philip on the scene, been half-forgotten, began again to haunt her restless little brain.
“This life is too dreary,” she said to herself, “day after day the same. No one to sympathise with me—no one to care what I do or feel or anything. It is becoming unendurable.”
But on the third morning of this unendurable existence—the fourth that is after Sir Philip’s visit to Coombesthorpe—something did happen. The post brought an invitation from Lady Cheynes to Madelene and Ella, to drive over the following afternoon to dine and stay the night with her.
“Ella!” exclaimed Miss St Quentin, involuntarily. “Not you, Ermine?”
“Why not, Ella?” said Ermine, and had she been speaking to any one but her adored Madelene, one would have been inclined to call her tone testy, if not snappish; “why shouldn’t it be Ella? You don’t want to set off like the graces, or the ‘three old maids of Lea,’ or any unfortunate trio of spinsters you like to name, whenever we go a visiting, do you? And I was spending the whole day at Cheynesacre yesterday.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you bring the invitation verbally, or at least you might have told me of it,” said Madelene. “You know Ella is not—”
“Madelene would have liked to hear of it privately, so that I should never have known of it,” thought Ella, while aloud Ermine exclaimed impatiently.
“Not out, are you going to say, Maddie? You can’t give that as an excuse to Aunt Anna, for she certainly thinks she has a right to a voice in Ella’s concerns. And late events show she means to claim her rights too! As for my not bringing the invitation or telling you of it, I was not told to do so by Aunt Anna—you know she has her own ways of doing things.”
Madelene looked,—not annoyed,—but dissatisfied still.
“Did you know she was going to invite us?” she said again to Ermine.
But Ermine was at that moment busily reading a letter of her own, and either did not, or wished to seem as if she did not, hear the question. Be that as it may, Madelene got no answer. Ella, secretly enjoying her elder sister’s discomfiture, happened just then to catch sight of her face. It looked more than anxious; pale and weary and almost worn. Something in its expression touched Ella’s impressionable feelings.
“Poor Madelene,” she thought, with a rush of a kind of generous pity which she would have found it difficult to explain to herself. “I am sure she means to do right. And after all—if she does want Sir Philip to—to care for Ermine, why shouldn’t she? Ermine is her very own sister. Only—I wish it had all been settled and Ermine married to him before I came here.”
The softened feeling—as most feelings did with Ella—expressed itself.
“Madelene,” she said half timidly. “I am of course quite willing to do as you like—I mean as you think best—about going out at all or not. I know—I quite understood at the time that my godmother’s taking me to the Manor dance was an exception—a sort of extra thing altogether. And I am sure she couldn’t be vexed if you said it was best for me not to go out any more just yet, and if Ermine went instead. I do believe Ermine,” with a grateful glance in her second sister’s direction, “I do believe Ermine planned it to please me, and asked godmother to invite me instead of her.” Madelene looked relieved at this—some diplomacy had been exerted by Ermine the day before at Cheynesacre, she felt sure, and she was glad to think it had been thus simple—but Ermine, though she reddened a little, replied rather abruptly.
“No, Ella. I did not really. The inviting you was Aunt Anna’s own idea.”
“I will tell papa about it, Ella, and see what he thinks,” Madelene said. “But thank you, dear, for what you say. I shall be so glad for you to believe that interfering with any pleasure for you is my very last wish.”