Laurel Cottage was not much of a place for a peer to take up his abode in, but even peers must live according to their means. It was a little, white, two-storied house, containing only eight or nine rooms in all. Its front windows looked on to a circular grass-plot and a tiny carriage drive that opened from the main road. From its back windows could be seen a lawn, bordered by a terrace, and interspersed with clumps of flowers, with meadow after meadow beyond. Stable and coach-house were hidden away behind a shrubbery to the left.
Such as it was it was quite big enough for the needs of Lord Loughton, and he at once secured it. There was one stipulation connected with the letting of it which posed him for a moment, but for a moment only. It was a sine quâ non that the substantial, old-fashioned furniture should be taken at a valuation by the incoming tenant. The valuation was fixed at two hundred pounds. To this the earl, when he had walked slowly through the rooms, made no demur. The same evening he wrote as under to the dowager countess:
"My Dear Aunt,,--I have taken Laurel Cottage, near this place, for a term of years, as I told you that I should do. It contains nine rooms. The rent is £60 a year, and it will suit me admirably. But I could not obtain possession till I agreed to take the furniture, which has been valued at £200. As it was an impossibility to live in a house without furniture, the opportunity seemed to me too good a one to be missed. Will you therefore kindly send me a check for the amount in question as early as possible, and oblige,
"Your affectionate nephew,
"Loughton."
After three days came the following laconic reply:
"Check for £200 enclosed, but don't do this sort of thing again. An agreement is an agreement, and no further demands beyond the usual allowance will receive attention."
The letter was undated and unsigned, but it was evidently in the countess's own writing. A few days later the earl removed to his new home.
He started his modest establishment with two women and one man servant. A gardener was engaged to come once a week to attend to the lawn and flowers. When the earl had paid his hotel bill and a few other expenses he found that upwards of two thirds of his 1150 had gone already, while more than two months of the quarter had yet to run. But this did not trouble him. He calculated, and rightly, that when once he was established in Laurel Cottage he might go on credit for everything he wanted for several months to come. As a matter of fact, he was inundated with offers from tradespeople of all kinds, so that his only difficulty lay in choosing which of them he should patronize. Even horses and carriages were pressed on him, but he decided that for the present both stable and coach-house should remain empty. He might, perhaps, have afforded to buy a cheap cob if an opportunity for doing so had offered itself however, there would be time enough to think about such luxuries by and by. But in this matter, as in most others, he was probably actuated by some motive other than appeared on the surface.
Long before the earl had got quietly settled down one carriage after another came flashing up to the little green gate of Laurel Cottage. His lordship was at home to everybody that called. Everybody was charmed with his affability and the simple kindliness of his demeanor. "What delightful manners!" exclaimed the ladies, with one accord. "What ease and polished courtesy! A thorough man of the world, evidently." Could these fair dames have seen his lordship six weeks previously, as he sat behind a long pipe in the coffee-room of the B. B., with his brandy-and-water in front of him, what would their thoughts of him have been?