“Thanks to you, Lasher,” Jem was kind enough to say with a flourish of his whip.
The dignity was now ebbing fast, and by the time that the clever little cob swung round the gate-post into the avenue of Stagholme, Jem and Lasher were fully re-established on the old familiar footing.
There was a bright moon overhead, and at the end of the avenue beyond the dip where the lake gleamed mysteriously, the gables and solid towers of Stagholme stood peacefully confessed.
Jem Agar was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme, and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places. Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only approached by a private road.
Inside the gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in the very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour over the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to Stagholme, despite the vicissitudes through which all ancient families run.
Jem, however, whose childhood and youth had been passed amidst companions with names as good as his, had learnt long ago to keep his pride to himself. He was Jem Agar, and the family name seemed somehow to belong exclusively to his father still, although that thorough old sportsman had lain for three years and more beneath the quiet turf of the little churchyard within his own park gates.
As he pulled up at the door this was thrown open, and within its frame of light he saw the gracious form of his stepmother waiting to welcome him. Behind her, in the shadow, and amidst the decoration of staghorns, ancient pike and hanger, loomed a tall dark figure startlingly in keeping with the semi-monastic architecture of the house. This was Sister Cecilia. She was always thus—behind Mrs. Agar, with clasped hands and a vaguely approving smile, as if Mrs. Agar conferred a benefit upon suffering humanity by the mere act of existing.
A slightly bored expression came into Jem's patient eyes. It was not that he had very much in common with his stepmother, although he had an honest affection for her; but he instinctively disliked Sister Cecilia and all her works. These latter were of the class termed “good.” That is to say, this lady, the spinster daughter of a former rector in the neighbourhood, considered that the earthly livery of a marvellous black bonnet which was almost a cap, and quite hideous, justified a shameless interference in the most intimate affairs of her neighbours, rich and poor.
Under the cover of charity she committed a thousand social sins. She constituted herself mother-confessor to all who were weak enough to confide in her or seek her advice, and in soul she was the most arrant time-server who ever flattered a rich woman.
Jem distrusted her soft and “holy” ways, more especially her speech, which had the lofty condescension of the saved towards the damned in prospective. In his calmly commanding way he had, months before, forbidden Dora Glynde to kiss Sister Cecilia, because that ostentatiously virtuous person was in the habit of kissing the maids when she met them; and he maintained that this Christian practice, if very estimable theoretically, was socially an insult either to the mistress or the maid.