Chapter Nineteen.
Marshalling the Company.
“I never did see any use in making pretences. People always see through them, and then where are you? If I did try to look as if I had thousands to spare, not a soul would believe me. Nothing answers like telling the truth.”
This beautiful sentiment was uttered by Lady Haredale one bright afternoon, some few weeks after the arrival of the party from Silverfold at the house in Eaton Square.
The big drawing-rooms were flooded with all the sunlight that a spring day in London could supply, perhaps in illustration of Lady Haredale’s contempt of pretences; for their handsome fittings and furniture had seen many sets of tenants for the season, and were by no means in their first freshness. But, as Lady Haredale said, “Who cared?—There were some houses, she believed, where people were asked to come and see the furniture, but she asked people to come and see herself and her girls—and they generally came.”
Liberally supplied with flowers, and filled with graceful inhabitants, the effect of the shabby, elegant drawing-room, with its open windows and fearless daylight, was not amiss.
Indeed, there was a touch of genius in the way Lady Haredale faced the situation, and, spite of the ineffaceable memories behind her, Amethyst was sometimes almost bewitched into believing her mother to be the most ingenuous of women. Lady Haredale often bought trifles for herself or for her daughters, which took her fancy, and which were always tasteful and becoming, quite regardless of the cost; but she never bought anything, or chose anything, to conceal the fact that they had less than the usual amount to spend on their clothes. She forestalled the comments of acquaintances by the simplest confession.
“You see,” she would sometimes say, with her wide-open eyes and her sweet smile, “we have scraped every farthing we can get together, and joined with Miss Haredale’s nice little heiress to give our girls a chance. We think Amethyst is so pretty, that it is quite a duty to make a great effort. Of course we shall have to pay for it afterwards, or perhaps we shan’t—Dear me!—one can’t always, you know. We can no more afford, properly, to have a London season, than we can fly, but I can’t sacrifice such a beauty as I think my girl is, and I’ve brought all her sisters to town, that they may get a little pleasure when they can. Perhaps we shall never be able to come up again. But here we are—and so enjoying it. We have to do it all simply, but we don’t mind that the least little bit.”
Simplicity is comparative, but it was quite true that Lady Haredale wasted far less regret than most women would have done, on the defects of the turn-out in which she drove in the park with her beautiful daughter.
“What does it matter?” she would say. “My lord has had good horses more than once, and every one knows that he has always had to sell them.”