"Yes, mother and father both, ages ago, in the days when I was a hard-hearted little wretch, and thought it a treat to go into mourning, and rather nice to be able to tell everybody, "Uncle Walford"s dead. He had a fit, and he never speaked any more." It was news, you know, and in a village that goes for something."
After a lengthy discussion, and some squabbling, it was decided that the children were to have the benefit of the jaunting-car for the homeward journey, and that Dr. Rylance and the three young ladies were to walk, attended by Reginald, who insisted upon attaching himself to their service, volunteering to show them the very nearest way through a wood, and across a field, and over a common, and down a lane, which led straight to the gate of Aunt Betsy"s orchard.
Urania wore fashionable boots, and considered walking exercise a superst.i.tion of medical men and old-fashioned people; yet she stoutly refused a seat in the car.
"No, thanks, Horatio; I know your pony too well. I"d rather trust myself upon my own feet."
"There"s more danger in your high heels than in my pony, retorted Horatio. "I shouldn"t wonder if you dropped in for a sprained ankle before you got home."
Urania risked the sprained ankle. She began to limp before she had emerged from the wood. She hobbled painfully along the rugged footpath between the yellow wheat. She was obliged to sit down and rest upon a furzy hillock on the common, good-natured Bess keeping her company, while Ida and Reginald were half a mile ahead with Dr. Rylance. Her delicate complexion was unbecomingly flushed by the time she and Bessie arrived wearily at the little gate opening into Miss Wendover"s orchard.
There were only some iron hurdles between Aunt Betsy"s orchard and the lawn before Aunt Betsy"s drawing-room. The house was characteristic of the lady. It was a long red-brick cottage, solid, substantial, roomy, eschewing ornament, but beautified in the eyes of most people by an air of supreme comfort, cleanliness, and general well-being. In all Kingthorpe there were no rooms so cool as Aunt Betsy"s in summer--none so warm in winter. The cottage had originally been the homestead of a small gra.s.s-farm, which had been bequeathed to Betsy Wendover by her father, familiarly known as the Old Squire, the chief landowner in that part of the country. With this farm of about two hundred and fifty acres of the most fertile pasture land in Hampshire and an income of seven hundred a year from consols, Miss Wendover found herself pa.s.sing rich. She built a drawing-room with wide windows opening on to the lawn, and a bed-room with a covered balcony over the drawing-room. These additional rooms made the homestead all-sufficient for a lady of Aunt Betsy"s simple habits.
She was hospitality itself, receiving her friends in a large-hearted, gentleman-like style, keeping open house for man and beast, proud of her wine, still prouder of her garden and greenhouses, proudest of her stables; fond of this life, and of her many comforts, yet without a particle of selfishness; ready to leave her cosy fireside at a moment"s notice on the bitterest winter night, to go and nurse a sick child, or comfort a dying woman; religious without ostentation, charitable without weakness, stern to resent an injury, implacable against an insult.
A refreshing sight, yet not altogether a pleasant one for Miss Rylance, met the eyes of the two young ladies as they neared the little iron gate opening from the orchard to the lawn. A couple of tea-tables had been brought out upon the gra.s.s before the drawing-room window. The youngsters were busily engaged at one table, Blanche pouring out tea, while her brothers and small sister made havoc with cake and fruit, home-made bread and b.u.t.ter, and jams of various hues. At the other table, less lavishly but more elegantly furnished, sat Miss Wendover and Ida Palliser, with Dr. Rylance comfortably established in a Buckinghamshire wickerwork chair between them.
"Does not that look a picture of comfort?" exclaimed Bessie.
"My father seems to be making himself very comfortable," said Urania.
She hobbled across the lawn, and sank exhausted into a low chair, near her parent.
"My poor child, how dilapidated you look after your walk," said Dr.
Rylance; "Miss Palliser and I enjoyed it immensely."
"I cannot boast of Miss Palliser"s robust health," retorted Urania contemptuously, as if good health were a sign of vulgarity. "I had my neuralgia all last night."
Whenever the course of events proved objectionable, Miss Rylance took refuge in a complaint which she called her neuralgia, indicating that it was a species of disorder peculiar to herself, and of a superior quality to everybody else"s neuralgia.
"You should live in the open air, like my sunburnt young friends yonder,"
said the doctor, with a glance at the table where the young Wendovers were stuffing themselves; "I am sure they never complain of neuralgia."
Urania looked daggers but spoke none.
It was a wearisome afternoon for that injured young lady. Dr. Rylance dawdled over his tea, handed teacups and bread and b.u.t.ter, was a.s.siduous with the sugar basin, devoted with the cream jug, talked and laughed with Miss Palliser, as if they had a world of ideas in common, and made himself altogether objectionable to his only child.
By-and-by, when there was a general adjournment to the greenhouses and stables, Urania contrived to slip her arm through her father"s.
"I thought I told you that Miss Palliser was my favourite aversion, papa," she said, tremulous with angry feeling.
"I have some faint idea that you did express yourself unfavourably about her," answered the doctor, with his consulting-room urbanity, "but I am at a loss to understand your antipathy. The girl is positively charming, as frank as the sunshine, and full of brains."
"I know her. You do not," said Urania tersely.
"My dear, it is the speciality of men in my profession to make rapid judgments."
"Yes, and very often to make them wrong. I was never so much annoyed in my life. I consider your attention to that girl a deliberate insult to me; a girl with whom I never could get on--who has said the rudest things to me."
"Can I be uncivil to a friend of your friend Bessie?"
"There is a wide distance between being uncivil and being obsequiously, ridiculously attentive."
"Urania," said the doctor in his gravest voice, "I have allowed you to have your own way in most things, and I believe your life has been a pleasant one."
"Of course, papa. I never said otherwise."
"Very well, my dear, then you must be good enough to let me take my own way of making life pleasant to myself, and you must not take upon yourself to dictate what degree of civility I am to show to Miss Palliser, or to any other lady."
Urania held her peace after this. It was the first deliberate snub she had ever received from her father, and she added it to her lengthy score against Ida.
CHAPTER VI.
A BIRTHDAY FEAST.
Ida Palliser"s holidays were coming to an end, like a tale that is told.
There was only one day more left, but that day was to be especially glorious; for it was Bessie Wendover"s birthday, a day which from time immemorial--or, at all events, ever since Bessie was ten years old--had been sacred to certain games or festivities--a modernized worship of the great G.o.d Pan.
Sad was it for Bessie and all the junior Wendovers when the seventh of September dawned with gray skies, or east winds, rain, or hail. It was usually a brilliant day. The clerk of the weather appeared favourably disposed to the warm-hearted Bessie.
On this particular occasion the preparations for the festival were on a grander scale than usual, in honour of Ida, who was on the eve of departure. A cruel, cruel car was to carry her off to Winchester at six o"clock on the morning after the birthday; the railway station was to swallow her up alive; the train was to rush off with her, like a fiery dragon carrying off the princess of fairy tale; and the youthful Wendovers were to be left lamenting.
In six happy weeks their enthusiasm for their young guest had known no abatement. She had realized their fondest antic.i.p.ations. She had entered into their young lives and made herself a part of them. She had given herself up, heart and soul, to childish things and foolish things, to please these devoted admirers; and the long summer holiday had been very sweet to her. The open-air life--the balmy noontides in woods and meadows, beside wandering trout streams--on the breezy hill-tops--the afternoon tea-drinking in gardens and orchards--the novels read aloud, seated in the heart of some fine old tree, with her auditors perched on the branches round about her, like gigantic birds--the boating excursions on a river with more weeds than water in it--the jaunts to Winchester, and dreamy afternoons in the cathedral--all had been delicious. She had lived in an atmosphere of homely domestic love, among people who valued her for herself, and did not calculate the cost of her gowns, or despise her because she had so few. The old church was lovely in her eyes; the old vicar and his wife had taken a fancy to her. Everything at Kingthorpe was delightful, except Urania. She certainly was a drawback; but she had been tolerably civil since the first day at the Abbey.
Ida had spent many an hour at the Abbey since that first inspection. She knew every room in the house--the sunniest windows--the books in the long library, with its jutting wings between the windows, and cosy nooks for study. She knew almost every tree in the park, and the mild faces of the deer looking gravely reproachful, as if asking what business she had there. She had lain asleep on the sloping bank above the lake on drowsy afternoons, tired by wandering far a-field with her young esquires. She knew the Abbey by heart--better than even Urania knew it; though she had used that phrase to express utter satiety. Ida Palliser had a deeper love of natural beauty, a stronger appreciation of all that made the old place interesting. She had a curious feeling, too, about the absent master of that grave, gray old house--a fond, romantic dream, which she would not for the wealth of India have revealed to mortal ear, that in the days to come Brian"s life would be in somewise linked with hers. Perhaps this foolish thought was engendered of the blankness of her own life, a stage on which the players had been so few that this figure of an unknown young man a.s.sumed undue proportions.
Then, again, the fact that she could hear very little about Mr. Wendover from his cousins, stimulated her curiosity about him, and intensified her interest in him. Brian"s merits were a subject which the Wendover children always shirked, or pa.s.sed over so lightly that Ida was no wiser for her questioning; and maidenly reserve forbade her too eager inquiry.
About Brian Walford, the son of Parson Wendover, youngest of the three brothers, for seven years vicar of a parish near Hereford, and for the last twelve years at rest in the village churchyard, the young Wendovers had plenty to say. He was good-looking, they a.s.sured Ida. She would inevitably fall in love with him when they met. He was the cleverest young man in England, and was certain to finish his career as Lord Chancellor, despite the humility of his present stage of being.
"He has no fortune, I suppose?" hazarded Ida, in a conversation with Horatio.
She did not ask the question from any interest in the subject. Brian Walford was a being whose image never presented itself to her mind. She only made the remark for the sake of saying something.
"Not a denarius," said Horry, who liked occasionally to be cla.s.sical.
"But what of that? If I were as clever as Brian I shouldn"t mind how poor I was. With his talents he is sure to get to the top of the tree."
"What can he do?" asked Ida.
"Ride a bicycle better than any man I know."
"What else?"
"Sing a first-rate comic song."
"What else?"