CHAPTER IV
LADY PATON was a thin, graceful woman, her slenderness emphasized, like her daughter’s, by a very small head. Since her husband’s death she had worn black, and even now it seemed to invade her delicate whiteness rather overwhelmingly, rising closely about her throat, falling over her fragile hands, enfolding her with a soft solemnity. Her white hair was smoothed thickly under the transparent cambrics of an exquisite cap, and framed the sweetness of a faded face, in profile like Camelia’s. Camelia’s eyes were her father’s, and her smile; Lady Paton’s eyes were round like a child’s, and her smile half-frightened, half-explanatory. With all the gentlewoman’s mild dignity, her look was timid, as though it besought indulgence for a lifelong sense of insignificance, a look that aroused in Perior his grimmest scorn for a world in which such flower-like moral loveliness is inevitably victimized by garish egotisms. He had known Sir Charles, a charming companion, a good fellow—in the somewhat widely licensed sense the term implies, but not fit to untie his wife’s shoe-strings when it came to a comparison. Camelia now had stepped upon her father’s undeserved pedestal, and Perior, watching the new epoch of incense-burning, had smiled more and more grimly. He was devoted to Lady Paton, and had been so since the days when a raw, sensitive, high-strung youth, fresh from college, her Madonna head had roused in him poetical idealizations, and her husband’s gay indifference a chafing resentment. With years he had grown rather fond of Sir Charles, could make allowances for him, and, too, had no longer idealized Lady Paton; but though he now saw her, sweet but dull, lovely in unselfishness, yet weak in all except a submission noble in its own way, the fragrant charm still stirred him with an almost paternal tenderness, a pity, even a reverence. She was too obtuse to see her own cramped and imprisoned life, but he saw it, and her unconsciousness was part of the pathos. He was very fond of her, and she of him, so that with all his protective partisanship there was, too, a willing filial deference.
This little corner of appreciation and affection was the softest spot in Perior’s character. He took both her hands now and said, looking at her with a whimsical gentleness, “So you are back at last! And glad to be back, too, are you not?”
“Oh, very. And Camelia seems to like it so much,” she smiled round at her daughter; “she was beginning to look quite fagged; already the country has done her good.”
Camelia smiled back with a humoring lightness.
Mary Fairleigh stood quietly behind her aunt. Her expressionless face certainly did suggest a lacteal dulness. The Fairleighs were not responsible for her short nose and clumsily-cut mouth. Impecunious Maurice Fairleigh, third son, had “done for himself” when he married his younger sisters’ nursery governess. Maurice had no money—and not many brains, and poor Miss Hockey had neither brains nor beauty, nor family nor money. Her flaxen hair and vacant blue eyes captured Maurice’s vagrant fancy during a lazy summer. He was very young, that fact was the only excuse possible; but, as the Fairleighs said, there was no accounting for Maurice’s folly. Maurice himself, after a very little time, could no longer account for it. He was a good-natured fellow, and his wonder at himself did not become too painfully apparent to his wife; but the short years of their married life were by no means a success. Maurice was very delicate, and the struggle to make both ends meet was but grudgingly aided by disapproving relatives. Lady Paton, only, was sympathetic, practically sympathetic too; but during the greater part of Maurice’s matrimonial venture she was in India, and, as the other Fairleighs said, Angelica never had the wit to resent anything. Maurice died at Davos-Platz, and Mrs. Fairleigh, when her daughter was sixteen, departed her seemingly very pointless existence. Her last years had been sweetened by Lady Paton’s devoted kindness, and she left Mary to this guardian angel. Since that time Mary had lived at Enthorpe Lodge; a grave, good little girl, solemnly submissive to her cousin, painstaking in dutiful gratitude toward her aunt. Camelia had always found this gratitude irritating, and Mary’s manner—as of one on whom Providence had laid the patiently-borne burden of obscurity and dependence, very vexing. Camelia intended as little as her mother to recognize a difference, and did not realize that her own dominant characteristics necessitated Mary’s non-resistance.
She laughed at Mary’s gravity, tried to tease her out of her stolid acceptance of the rôle of poor relation, but, inevitably, she came to treat Mary with the tolerant carelessness she seemed only to expect. As for Lady Paton, she never surmised about Mary, nor analyzed her. Lady Paton accepted people and things as they appeared, and without conjecture. Mary was a dear, good girl. It was indeed impossible that her uninteresting virtues should arouse enthusiasm, and her aunt’s appreciation from its very fulness was calmly unemotional.
Lady Paton having become in these latter days a sort of decorative adjunct to her daughter—for Camelia used her mother to the very best advantage,—lace caps, sweetness and all,—it was upon Mary that the duller duties fell. Mary managed bills and servants, and household matters; wrote little notes, ran little errands, chose embroidery silks, and sent for the books to Mudie’s,—the tender books with happy matrimonial endings that Lady Paton liked. She read these books aloud, and talked to her aunt—as Camelia never did, never could. Lady Paton listened to her daughter, but she and Mary talked about her. Mary’s conversation required no adjustment of amazed faculties, no quelling of old-fashioned alarms, nor acceptance of a wondering incompetence.
The little prattle of gardening and gowns, and Camelia’s doings went on happily, unless hushed in an absorbed observance of that young heroine herself,—flinging pretty missiles of speech far above the heads of her mother and cousin.