A severe-looking old housekeeper came out at the sound of the wheels.
“So you’ve come back, Master Ralph,” she said looking him over critically to see that he was clean and presentable. “That’s a good job, for Sir Matthew has been here ten minutes or more, and the lawyer from London with him. Are you coming in, Miss?” she added glancing with no great favour at Miss Tresidder, and calling to mind how often in past days she had led Ralph through bush and through brier to the great detriment of his clothes.
“No, I will not come in,” said Mab, “and this is not my real good-bye to you, Ralph, for I shall stay and speak to you to-morrow morning after the service.”
She waved her hand to him, and drove swiftly off, while old Mrs. Grice muttered something uncomplimentary about “new-fangled” ways, and not liking females at a funeral.
Ralph, meanwhile, had carefully hidden away the basket containing the bullfinch, and now stood in the little hall with a heavy heart. The quiet of the house was terrible, and the low murmur of strange voices in the study accentuated the misery and desolateness, which seemed to grow more and more oppressive every moment.
“For goodness sake!” exclaimed old Mrs. Grice, “don’t stand there staring at nothing, like a tragedy actor, but go in and make yourself agreeable to the gentlemen; wait a bit, wait a bit, your hair’s all rumpled up, not seen a brush since the morning, I’ll be bound.”
Ralph, made meek by his misery, obediently turned into the room to the right of the door, his own special sanctum where he had worked and played ever since he could remember, and having brushed his wavy brown hair into a state of immaculate order went slowly back once more to the silent little hall which was not even enlivened now by the presence of old Mrs. Grice. Nothing was to be heard save the ticking of the clock and the low murmur of voices from the adjoining room, not a creature was there to take compassion on the shy desolate boy. He looked up at the black representation of Lord John Harsick and Katharine his wife, which hung upon the wall above the old oak chest, and the tears started to his eyes as he remembered how he had helped his father to mount this rubbing from a brass, some two or three years before. The stately old couple stood there holding each others’ hands, he fancied that they looked down on him with a sort of pity because he was left so utterly alone. He stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the study, dreading to enter, but at length impelled to move by a worse fear.
“If they come out and catch me here they’ll think I’m eavesdropping!” he thought to himself, and therewith manfully turned the handle, and walked in.
The study was in reality the drawing-room of the Rectory, a pretty room with a verandah and French windows opening on to it, and upon one side of the fireplace there was a cosy little recess where the Rector had been wont to keep his choicest flowers, and where the light from a little western window fell upon the marble bust of a sweet-faced woman—the mother whom Ralph could remember just in a vague dreamy fashion. Seated now at his father’s writing-table was an old gentleman with a kindly, astute face, and remarkably thick white hair. Standing with his back to the fireplace was a middle-aged man whom Ralph at once recognised from the photographs he had seen as his godfather, Sir Matthew Mactavish.
He looked up anxiously into the shrewd Scottish face, with its reddish hair just touched with grey, its keen steel-coloured eyes, its somewhat wrinkled forehead and ready smile. It was a powerful and an attractive face, but with something about it curiously different to the faces to which Ralph had been accustomed; the genial country squires, and the country parsons had nothing in common with this brisk, managing man of the world.