Book 2 - Chapter 7

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_ BOOK II CHAPTER VII

It was odious weather, the afternoon of the 15th. Our eight guns had arrived in time for tea, some with wives, some without--one with a playful, giddy daughter. Men predominated.

There were some two or three decent people from the county round. The remainder, commercial connections, friends of the past.

One terrible woman, with parted, plastered hair and an aggressive voice and rustling silks, dominated the conversation. She is the wife of the brother of the late Mr. Gurrage's partner who "died youngish."

This couple come apparently every year to the best partridge drive. "Dodd" is their name.

Mrs. Dodd was extremely ill at ease among the other ladies, but was determined to let them know that she considered herself their superior in every way.

At the moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the shortcomings of one of her local neighbors, the butler announced:

"Sir Antony Thornhirst."

Our ninth gun had arrived.

"So good of you to ask me," he said, as he shook hands, and his voice sounded like smooth velvet after the others. And for a minute there was a singing in my ears.

"Jolly glad to see you," Augustus blustered. "What beastly weather! You motored over, I suppose?"

Sir Antony sat down by me.

I remembered the ways he would be accustomed to and did not introduce him to any one.

He had exchanged casual "How do you do's" with the neighbors he knew.

I poured him out some tea.

"I don't drink it," he said, "but give me some, and sugar, and cream, and anything that will take time to put in."

I laughed.

"It is very long since we met at Harley, and I began to think you were going to forget me again, Comtesse!"

"Is that why you came here?"

"Yes--and because they tell me your keeper can show at least a hundred and fifty brace of partridges each day!"

"Augustus was right, then."

"What about?"

"He said you would come because of the number of the birds. I--I--felt sure you would be engaged."

"Your note was not cordial nor cousinly, and I was engaged, but the attraction of the game, as Mr. Gurrage says, decided me."

His smile had never looked so mocking nor his eyes so kind.

"Might I trouble you for a second cup, please, Mrs. Gussie?" the female Dodd interrupted, loudly, from half across the room, "Mr. McCormack is taking it over to you. And a little stronger this time, please. I don't care for this new-fangled taste for weak tea--dish-water, I call it--only fit for the jaded digestions of worn-out worldly women."

"Who owns this fog-horn?" my kinsman whispered. "Will it come out shooting to-morrow? The game-book record will be considerably lower if so!"

"It won't shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.

Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there with--Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must remember.)

I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.

Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.

All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has exactly grandmamma's manner of finding a general company simply furniture.

He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of teaspoons and china--and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn exclaimed:

"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea makes me sick."

I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention, and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to Antony:

"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."

"Virtuous Comtesse!"

But he rose, and crossed over to the fat wife of the member for this division, and soon her face beamed with smiles.

I soothed Mr. McCormack, who somehow felt the sugar had been his fault.

Augustus mollified the fog-horn Dodd, and peace was restored all around.

It is a long time between tea and dinner when the days are growing short. It was only half-past six when every excuse for lingering over the teacups had expired.

What on earth could one do with this ill-assorted company for a whole hour?

Augustus, with a desire to be extremely smart, had commanded dinner at half-past eight.

Mercifully, the decent people and some of the men played bridge, and were soon engaged at one or two tables. Augustus, who is growing fond of the game, made one of the fourth, thus leaving five of our guests hanging upon my hands.

"Shall I show you your rooms? Perhaps you would like to rest before dinner," I said to the ladies, who were good enough to assent, with the exception of Mrs. Dodd, who snorted at the idea of resting.

"Wullie," she said to Mr. Dodd. She had evidently picked up the Scotch pronunciation of his name from him, a quiet, red-haired man originally from Glasgow. He was hovering in the direction of one of the bridge-tables. "Wullie, don't let me see you playing that game of cards. There are letters to be written to Martha and my mother. Come with me," she commanded.

Mr. Dodd obeyed, and they retired to the library together.

They are evidently quite at home here, and did not need any attention from me.

Antony Thornhirst was the only other guest unemployed, and he immediately rose and went to write letters in the hall, he said. He had refused to play bridge on account of this important correspondence.

So at last I got the two women off to their rooms, and was standing irresolutely for a second, glancing over the balustrade after closing the last door, when my kinsman looked up.

"Comtesse," he called, softly, "won't you come down and tell me when the post goes?"

I descended the stairs. He was standing at the bottom by one of the negro figures when I reached the last step.

"Have you not some quiet corner where we might sit and talk of our ancestors?" he asked, with a comic look in his cat's eyes. "This place is so draughty, and I am afraid of the bears! And we should disturb that loving couple in the library and the bridge-players in the drawing-room. Have you no suggestions for my comfort? I am one of your guests, too, you know!"

"There is Mrs. Gurrage's boudoir, that has straight-up, padded chairs and crimson satin, and there is my own, that is mustard yellow. Which could you bear best before dinner?" I said, laughing.

"Oh! the yellow--mustard is stimulating and will give me an appetite."

So we walked up the stairs again together and he followed me down the thickly carpeted passage to my highly gilded shrine.

For the first time since I have owned it, I felt sorry I had been too numb to make it nice. The house-maids arrange it in the morning, and there it stays, a monument of the English upholsterer's idea of a Louis XV. boudoir.

As I told Hephzibah, the little copy of La Rochefoucauld and the miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie are the only things of mine--my own--that are here, besides all my new books, of course.

I sat down in the straight-backed sofa. It has terra-cotta and buff tulips running over the mustard brocade. The gilt part runs into your back.

Antony sat at the other end.

A very fat, rich cushion of "school of art" embroidery, with frills, fell between us. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met, and we both laughed.

"You remind me of a picture I bought last year," Antony said. "It was a little pastel by La Tour, and the last owner had framed it in a brand-new, brilliant gilt Florentine frame."

Suddenly, as he spoke, a sense of shame came over me. I felt how wrong I had been to laugh with him about this--my home. It is because, after all these months, I cannot realize that Ledstone is my home that I have been capable of committing this bad taste.

I felt my cheeks getting red and I looked down.

"I--I like bright colors," I said, defiantly. "They are cheerful and--and--"

"Sweet Comtesse!" interrupted Antony, in his mocking tone, which does not anger me. "Tell me about your books."

He got up lazily, and began reading the titles of a heap on the table beyond.

"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you these?"

"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."

He did not speak for a few moments.

"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."

"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things, and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one forget when it rains."

"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and _Maximes_, and love poems--clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."

He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my chatelaine has--the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an "A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

"My knife," I said.

"Tell me all about her--A.E. de C.," he commanded, seating himself on the sofa again.

"She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined. See--I will show you her miniature," and I took it from its case on the writing-table. I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the old, paste frame. It has doors that shut, and I don't let her look too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

"What an extraordinary likeness!" Antony exclaimed, as he looked at it. "Are you sure I am not dreaming and you are not your own great-great-grandmother?"

"No, I am myself. But I am supposed to be like her, though."

"It is the very image of you. She has your air and carriage of the head, and--and--" he looked at it very carefully under the electric light which sprouts from a twisted bunch of brass lilies on the wall, their stalks suggesting a modern Louis XV. nightmare.

"And what?"

"Well, never mind. Now I want to hear her story." And we both sat down again for the third time on the tulip-sofa.

I told him the history just as I had told him the outline of my life the day in the Harley woods. Only, as then I felt I was speaking of another person, now I seemed to be talking of myself when I came to the part of walking up the guillotine steps.

"And so they cut her head off--poor little lady!" said Antony, when I had finished, and he looked straight into my eyes.

The pillow of art-needlework and frills had fallen to the floor--even it could not remain comfortably on the hard seat! There was nothing between us on the sofa.

Antony leaned forward, close to me. His voice was strangely moved.

"Comtesse!" he began, when McGreggor knocked at the door.

"Mr. Gurrage is calling you, ma'am," she said, in her heavy, Scotch voice, "and he seems in a hurry, ma'am."

"Ambrosine!" echoed impatiently in the hall.

"Why, it must be dressing-time!" said Antony, calmly, looking at his watch. "I must not keep you," and he quietly left the room as Augustus burst in from my bedroom door.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said, crossly. "That Dodd woman has been driving us all mad! Willie Dodd came and joined us at bridge and took McCormack's place, and the old she-tike came after him and chattered like a monkey until she got him away. Where were you that you did not look after her?"

"I was here, in my sitting-room, talking to Sir Antony Thornhirst," I said, almost laughing. The picture of Mrs. Dodd at the bridge-table amused me to think of. Augustus saw me smiling, and he looked less ruffled.

"She is an old wretch," he said. "I wish I had not to ask Willie Dodd every year, but business is business, and I'll trouble you to be civil to them. We will weed out the whole of this lot, gradually, now. The mater will go off to Bournemouth at this time of the year, and so, by-and-by, we can have nothing but smart people."

The evening passed in an endless, boring round. This sort of company does not adapt itself as the people at Harley did. With my best endeavors to be a good hostess, the uneasiness of my guests prevented me from making them feel comfortable or at home.

Mrs. Dodd's impertinence would have been insupportable if it had not been so funny.

She complained of most things--the draughts, the inconvenience of the hours of the train departures, and so on.

She was gorgeously dressed and hung with diamonds. Without being exceptionally stout, everything is so tight and pushed-up that she seems to come straight out from her chin in a kind of platform, where the diamonds lose themselves in a narrow, perpendicular depression in the middle.

Antony sat next me at dinner, at one side; on the other was old Sir Samuel Wakely. Mr. Dodd on his left hand had Miss Springle, the playful, giddy daughter of one of the guns.

She chaffed him all the time, much to the annoyance of his life's partner, who was sitting opposite, and who, owing to an erection of flowers, was unable to quite see what was going on.

"Yes," we heard Mr. Dodd say, at last, "I nearly bought it in Paris at the Exhibition. Eh! but it was a beautiful statue!"

"I like statues," said Miss Springle.

"Well, she was just a perfect specimen of a woman, but Missus Dodd wouldna let me purchase her, because the puir thing wasna dressed. I didna think it could matter in marble."

"What's that you are saying about Mrs. Dodd?" demanded that lady from across the table, dodging the chrysanthemums.

"I was telling Miss Springle, my dear, of the statue of 'Innocence' I wanted to buy at the Exhibition at Paris," replied Mr. Dodd, meekly, "and that you wouldna let me on account of the scanty clothing."

"Innocence, indeed!" snorted Mrs. Dodd. "Pretty names they give things over there! And her clothing scant, you call it, Wullie? Why, you are stretching a point to the verge of untruth to call it clothing at all--a scarf of muslin and a couple of doves! Anyhow, I'll have it known I'll not have a naked woman in my drawing-room, in marble or flesh!"

The conversation of the whole table was paralyzed by her voice. My eye caught Antony's, and we both laughed.

"There, there, my dear, don't be even suggesting such things," said Mr. Dodd, soothingly.

"La! Mrs. Dodd, you make me blush," giggled Miss Springle.

I wondered what Antony thought of it all, and whether he had ever been among such people before. His face betrayed nothing after he laughed with me, and he seemed to be quietly enjoying his dinner, which, fortunately, was good.

It was only for a few minutes before we all said good-night that we spoke together alone.

"Shall you be down to breakfast, Comtesse?" he asked me.

"Oh yes," I said, "These people would never understand. They would think I was being deliberately rude if I breakfasted in my room."

"At nine o'clock, then?"

"Yes."

"Lend me your La Rochefoucauld to read to-night?" he asked.

"With pleasure. I will have it sent to your room."

"No, let me get it from your mustard boudoir myself. I shall be coming up, probably, to change into a smoking-coat, and my room is down that way, you know."

"Very well."

So we said good-night.

Half an hour afterwards, I was standing by my sitting-room fire when Antony came into the room. He leaned on the mantel-piece beside me and looked down into my face.

"When will you come over to Dane Mount, Comtesse? I want to show you _my_ great-great-grandmother. She was yours, too, by-the-way," he said.

"When will you ask us?"

"In about a fortnight. I have to run about Norfolk until then. Will you come some time near the 4th of November?"

"I shall have to ask Augustus, but I dare say we can."

He frowned slightly at the mention of Augustus.

"Of course. Well, I will not have a party, only some one to talk to--your husband. The ancestors won't interest him, probably."

"Oh! Do ask Lady Tilchester," I said. "I love her."

He bent down suddenly to look at the Dresden clock.

"No, I don't think so. She will be entertaining herself just then," he said, "and probably could not get away. But leave it to me, I promise to arrange that Augustus shall not be bored."

He picked up La Rochefoucauld and opened it.

"I see you have marked some of the _maximes_."

"No. Grandmamma and the Marquis must have done that. Look, they are all of the most witty and cynical that are pencilled. I can hear them talking when I read them. That is just how they spoke to one another."

He read aloud:

"'_C'est une grande folie de vouloir etre sage tout seul_!' Don't be '_sage tout seul_,' Comtesse. Let me keep you company in your _sagesse_," he said.

I looked up at him. His eyes were full of a quizzical smile. There is something in the way his head is set, a distinction, an air of command. It infinitely pleases me. I felt--I know not what!

"Now I will say good-night. I am tired, and it is getting late," I said.

"Good-night, Comtesse," and he walked to the door. "I shall be down at nine o'clock."

And so we parted. _

Read next: Book 2: Chapter 8

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