When Arden was reached the position improved, for stationmaster and porters alike flew to hover round the great lady of the neighbourhood, and Darsie sunned herself in the novel consciousness of importance. Outside the station a cart was waiting for luggage, and a large, old-fashioned barouche with two fat brown horses, and with two brown-liveried servants upon the box. The village children bobbed curtsies as the carriage bowled through the village street, and Darsie smiled benignly and bent her yellow head in gracious acknowledgment. As niece and guest of the Lady of the Towers, these greetings were surely partly intended for herself. She felt an exhilarating glow of complacence, and determined to describe the scene to Vie Vernon on the earliest possible opportunity.
The Towers was a large, very ugly, stucco house, surrounded by a beautiful rolling park. Inside, the rooms were huge and square, and one and all characterised by a depressing pitch of orderliness, which made it almost impossible to believe that they could be used as ordinary human habitations!
Darsie was escorted to a bedroom with ponderous mahogany furniture, so complete a contrast from her own shabby, cheery little den that the sight of it added the final touch to her depression. She refreshed herself by a long splash in hot water, brushed out her tangled mane, put on her Sunday dress, and descended in state to partake of dinner, which was served an hour earlier than usual in consideration of the travellers’ hunger and fatigue.
Despite her weariness and nervous exhaustion, Lady Hayes had made what appeared to Darsie’s unsophisticated eyes a magnificent toilette for the meal, and she eyed the Sunday frock with a criticism which was anything but approving. “But it’s the best I’ve got, except the party one, and I can’t wear that for one old lady,” said Darsie to herself as she followed meekly behind the moire antique train, and seated herself at the end of the dining-table. Two men-servants stood at attention—two! one for each diner, solemn, immovable-looking creatures who seemed to move on wheels and who kept their eyes glued upon every mouthful you ate, ready to pounce upon your plate and nip it swiftly and noiselessly away. They were stricken with dumbness also, if you were to trust the evidence of your senses, but had certainly ears, and could drink in every word you said.
For the rest, it might be soothing to one’s pride to live in a big country house, but it was certainly abnormally dull. The day’s programme never varied by a hair’s breadth, and Aunt Maria, though kind, possessed the failing of all others most trying to the youthful mind. She fussed! She fussed about clothes, she fussed about food, she fussed about draughts, she fussed about manners, deportment, speech, the way you sat down, the way you got up, the way you laughed, yawned, sneezed, crossed the room, and did your hair. From morning to night, “My dear, don’t!” or “My dear, do!” rang in Darsie’s ears, till she was almost beside herself with irritation.
Honestly and laboriously she tried to practise her father’s advice: to put the thought of the seaside party aside, make the most of the good points of her own position, and “fight the good fight,” but the effort seemed to exhaust her physically, as well as mentally, until by the end of the day she looked white and drooping, pathetically unlike her natural glowing self. Aunt Maria noticed the change, and fussed about that, too, but with an underlying tenderness that was upsetting to the girl’s strained nerves.
“You look very tired to-night, my dear! Are you not well? Is there anything the matter?”
“Quite well, thank you. Only—lonely!” replied Darsie, with a plaintive accent on that last word which brought Lady Hayes’s glance upon her in quick inquiry—
“Lonely! But, my dear, you haven’t been a minute alone all day long.”
“No,” agreed Darsie meekly, and said no more, but the little monosyllable was more eloquent than any disclaimer. Lady Hayes flushed, and knitted her brows in thought.