HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY.
CHAPTER I.
At Markham Chase there had been great wonder and consternation at the sudden departure of the elders of the family. Bell had been called to her mother’s room in the morning, and the morals of the house, so to speak, placed in her hands. She was thirteen, a great age, quite a woman. “Harry will help you: but he is careless, and he is always out. You will promise to be very careful and look after everything,” Lady Markham had said. Bell, growing pale with the solemnity of this strange commission, gave her promise with paling cheek, and a great light of excitement in her eyes; and when they heard of it, the others were almost equally impressed. “There is something the matter with Paul,” Bell said; and when the carriage drove away the solemnity of the great house all to themselves made a still greater impression upon them. It is true that Mrs. Fry showed signs of thinking that she was the virtual head of the establishment, and Brown did not pay that deference to Bell’s orders which she expected as mamma’s deputy to receive; but still they all acknowledged the responsibility that lay upon them to conduct themselves better than girls and boys had ever conducted themselves before. The girls naturally felt this the most. They would not go out with their brothers, but stayed indoors and occupied themselves with various rather grimy pieces of needlework begun on various occasions of penitence or bad weather. To complete them felt like a proper exercise for such an occasion; and Bell caused the door to be shut and all the windows in front of the house. She and Marie established themselves in their mother’s special sanctuary—the west room; where after a while the work languished, and where the elder sister, with a sense of seniority and protection, pointed out all the pictures to Marie, and gave her their names. “That is me, when I was a baby,” said Bell, “just below the Rafil.”
“The Raffle,” said Marie. “I thought a raffle was a thing where you drew lots.”
“So it is,” said the elder with dignity, “but it is a man’s name, too. It is pronounced a little different, and he was a very fine painter. You know,” said the little instructress with great seriousness, “what the subject is—the beautiful lady and the little boy?”
“I know what they all are quite well,” said Marie, impatient of so much superiority; “I have seen them just as often as you have. Mamma has told me hundreds of times. That’s me too as well as you, underneath the big picture, and there’s Alice, and that’s papa—as if I didn’t know!”
“How can you help knowing Alice and papa; any one can do that,” said Bell; “but you don’t know the landscapes. That one is painted by two people, and it is called Both. At least, I suppose they both did a bit, as mamma does sometimes with Alice. There is some one ringing the bell at the hall door! Somebody must be coming to call. Will Brown say ‘My lady is not at home,’ or will he say ‘The young ladies are at home,’ as he does when Alice is here? Oh, there it is again! Can anything have happened? Either it is somebody who is in a great hurry, or it is a telegram, or, Marie, quick, run to the schoolroom and there we can see.”
As they neared the hall they ran across Brown, who was advancing in a leisurely manner to open the door. “Young ladies,” said Brown, “you should not scuttle about like that, frightening people. And I wonder who it was that shut the hall door.”
Bell made no reply, but ran out of the way, and they reached the schoolroom window in time to see what was going to happen. At the door stood some one waiting. “A little gentleman” in light-coloured clothes, with a large white umbrella. There was no carriage, which was one reason why Brown had taken his time in answering the bell. He would not, a person of his importance, have condescended to open the door at all but for a curiosity which had taken possession of him, a certainty in his mind that something of more than ordinary importance was going on in the family. The little gentleman who had rung the bell had walked up the avenue slowly, and had looked about him much. He had the air of being very much interested in the place. At every opening in the trees he had paused to look, and when he came to the open space in front of the house, had stood still for some time with a glass in his eye examining it. He was very brown of hue, very spare and slim, exceedingly neat and carefully dressed, though in clothes that were not quite like English clothes. They fitted him loosely, and they were of lighter material than gentlemen usually wear in England; but yet he was very well dressed. He had neat small feet, most carefully chaussés; and he had carried his large white umbrella, lined with green, over his head as he approached the door. When Brown threw the great door open, he was startled to see this trim figure so near to him upon the highest step. He had put down his white umbrella, and he stood with a small cardcase between his finger and thumb, as ready at once to proclaim himself who he was.