CHAPTER XXIIIMUFFIN MAKES HER APPEARANCE AT PEN-Y-GROS CASTLE
IT was now July, and in spite of Goodwood, and Lord’s, and a constant succession of parties, Miss Perry remained faithful in her allegiance to the Acacias. Her attendance at the wooden structure in the small Balham back garden was not absolutely necessary, because the picture was in quite an advanced stage, but there can be no question that her presence was a great aid to the artist. As a rule, Lord Cheriton conceived it to be his duty to accompany her on these pilgrimages. With that disinterested benevolence, for which he was well known, he feared lest the mazes of traffic in which the vast metropolis abounded should overwhelm that ingenuous but charming child of nature. And further, he seemed to find Mrs. Lascelles a singularly agreeable woman.
While the great things of art were toward across the garden, Mrs. Lascelles and Lord Cheriton would sit in the tiny drawing-room with the French window open to the grass plot, and the fierceness of the obtrusive Balham sunshine mitigated by a sunblind, striped green and red. Here in a couple of wicker-workchairs with ingenious arrangements for the feet they could recline, with half an eye upon the wooden structure at the other side of the lawn, where the wonderful Miss Perry was just visible inchiaroscurothrough the open door. They discoursed of the great days when Cheriton was a younger son, and at the Embassy at Paris, and used to wear a stripe down the leg of his trousers.
The world was younger in those days, and giants lived in it. That fellow Gautier, who used to swagger at the play in a coat of plum-colored velvet and a yellow dicky; and the dandies, the poets, the painters, the musicians, the men in politics and diplomacy, the gay, careless, brilliant, cosmopolitan company that thronged the French capital before the Fall—yes, those were the days to live in and to remember! But where were they now? Where were the snows of the year before last?
Let us drink of the cup, for we know not what the morrow holds for us, was the burden of Cheriton’s reflections. He had seen the great hulking beslobbered Germans at Versailles in ’71, and he had seen the mutilated city after peace.
“War is sobête,” said he. “And everything is that makes us unhappy. I don’t believe that any fragrant thing ever sprang out of misery. All the things we live for are wrought of happiness. I am sure, Mrs. Lascelles, it gave you great pleasure to write the first chapter of your novel.”
Jim’s mother smiled charmingly. She had been prevailed upon to read her simple and unpretendingnarrative of life as she saw it, which could find no publisher, because “there was not enough in it” for the public taste.
“We must respect the public,” said Cheriton. “And of course we must respect those who diagnose its need. But what a joy it must have been to you to compose your little prelude to, shall I say, the works of Stendhal!”
“Mon pauvre Arrigo Beyle!” said Jim’s mother, with a little blush of pleasure that was really very becoming.
There was a perceptible movement in the wooden structure. A form, divinely tall and divinely fair, appeared upon the grass plot. It was accompanied by a stalwart, velvet-coated cavalier.
“A short interval for strawberries and cream,” said Jim.
“Most rational, my dear Lascelles,” said the lazily musical voice of his patron from the depths of his wicker chair, “and most proper. As I was observing to your accomplished mother, the great things of art require an atmosphere of natural and spontaneous gladness in which to get themselves created. Strawberries and cream, by all means. Do not spare that national delicacy if you wish to get a final and consummate glow upon your masterpiece.”
The attention of Miss Perry was wholly diverted by the rich display of the national delicacy in question upon the tea-table.
“Aren’t they beauties?” said she, in thrilling tones. “I am sure Muffin has picked the largest inthe garden; and when I wrote to her, I specially told her not to.”
“Among the select but ever-widening circle of persons,” said Cheriton, “whom I desire to meet in the Elysian Fields, my dear Miss Goose, is your sister, Muffin.”
“She is too sweet,” said Miss Perry. “Aren’t they beauties? I am sure you would like her so much.”
After some liberal and copious refreshment—the afternoon was indeed very hot—Miss Perry and Jim Lascelles returned to the service of art. Jim’s mother was prevailed upon to open the little rosewood piano. This time she played Brahms. Her touch, in the opinion of her listener, was deliciously sensitive. She promised to accompany him on the Friday following to the Opera to hear Calve inLa Bohème. They discussed the theaters, and waxed enthusiastic over the artless witchery of Duse as Mirandola.
“And soon, my dear Mrs. Lascelles,” said Cheriton, with his paternal air, “I suppose you will be off to the sea.”
“Yes,” said Jim’s mother, hopefully, “if the little study of the Tuscan woman in the field of olives finds a purchaser.”
“One feels sure it will,” said Cheriton, with perhaps a better grounded optimism.
Cheriton was justified of it, however. Jim Lascelles contrived a few days later to sell that not specially significant little work for forty pounds. In his own judgment, and in that of others, this sum was every penny of what it was worth. It was soobviously a picture in which he was seeking to find the right way in that carelessly happy era before the right way had come to him so miraculously.
The sale of the Tuscan woman in the field of olives was curiously providential coming when it did, for Jim himself had abandoned all hope of the sea for that year. Yet neither he nor his mother was really surprised that a corner was found for her in one of the lesser reception rooms at Cheriton House.
“It is a great bargain,” said Jim’s mother. “Really she is worth so much more.”
“A modest fiver represents her merits,” said Jim, who was without illusions upon the subject.
Nevertheless Jim and his mother proposed to spend a whole month in Normandy upon the proceeds of the sale. Cheriton, who had inherited a certain quantity of suppressed gout along with the ancestral acres, made his annual pilgrimage to Harrogate to drink the waters; and the Hill Streetménagewas removed to a dilapidated fortress in Wales. And it was to this retreat, by a signal act of grace, of which few would have suspected its authoress to be capable, that Muffin was summoned from Slocum Magna to spend a fortnight with her sister, “who, all things considered, had been a good girl.”
Miss Perry wept large round tears of delight when she communicated this glad news to Tobias. That stay of her solitude had, by the guilty connivance of Miss Burden, been provided during the second week of his sojourn in the vast metropolis with a morehygienic and commodious structure than a wicker basket.
Muffin arrived at Pen-y-Gros Castle on a sultry August afternoon, in a somewhat antiquated fly which took an hour to come from the railway station at a place called Dwygyfy, or words to that effect. It appeared that the train was due to arrive at that center of civilization at seven o’clock the previous evening, but for some mysterious reason did not arrive there until the next day. At least, according to Muffin’s thrilling narrative of her adventures upon the Cambrian railway, she had found herself at a quarter to eleven the previous night at a place called Llan-something, where they have the mountains, with only four shillings and ninepence in her chain purse, together with a return ticket from Dwygyfy, and a canary in a wicker cage, which she had brought from Slocum Magna for Aunt Caroline.
However, “All’s well that ends well,” as Shakespeare says. Muffin accepted the situation in the philosophical spirit for which she had already acquired a reputation. She curled herself upon three chairs in the first-class waiting-room at the railway station at Llan-something, with Polly’s luggage basket for her pillow and the canary by her side, and she awoke just in time to catch the train to Dwygyfy about noon the next day.
Muffin’s hair was not quite so yellow as her sister’s. Her eyes were not quite so blue; her appetite was not quite so big; her physique not quite so stupendous. Nor was her drawl quite so ridiculous; she was notquite such a “silly”; but her nature was equally docile and responsive. When Muffin arrived in triumph, wearing her wonderful adventures like a heroine in a romance, Aunt Caroline was in her boudoir. In a former and more warlike epoch it had been the armory, but it was now transformed by the art of Waring and Maple into a most comfortable sanctuary where an olddévotecould tell her beads. Not that the occupant of the boudoir was thus engaged, when Miss Perry led her sister proudly by the hand, canary and all, into the presence of her august and formidable relation.
“Aunt Caroline, this is Muffin!” announced that Featherbrain, breathlessly. “Isn’t she a sweet?”
Aunt Caroline put up her glass in her time-honored manner. But there was something about Muffin that disarmed her. Whether it was Muffin herself, or her famous mauve, which, although in its third season, and decidedly rumpled owing to long exposure on the Cambrian railway, was certainly very becoming, or whether it was the canary, or her charming docility, or her candor and simplicity, it would be wrong to say positively, but Aunt Caroline accepted the present and a most cordial embrace in the spirit in which they were proffered.
“I have brought you this, Aunt Caroline,” said Muffin, “because you have been so kind to Araminta, and because it is so dear of you to have me.”
“Thank you, my dear,” said Aunt Caroline.
Aunt Caroline actually said, “My dear!”
Certainly it may have been that a recent illnesshad lowered her vitality; yet it is hard to believe that that can have been really the case, for she was still a very resolute minded old lady. But Miss Burden was amazed that she should permit herself such an unparalleled license of expression. Ponto was also. Indeed, he appeared to resent it, for he sat up and looked daggers at the canary. Dogs are so jealous, pugs particularly.
In every way Muffin’s fortnight was a great success. She took the frankest pleasure in ascending mountains, bestriding waterfalls, in leaping chasms, in descending precipices, and in tearing her frock on the slightest possible pretext. Not her mauve, of course. Thepièce de résistanceof her extremely limited wardrobe was kept in reserve for high days and holy days. But she gave up the golden hours to the sheer delight of soaking her shoes and stockings in sloughs and mud and watercourses which an unerring instinct enabled her to discover in the most unlikely places; in rending her garments—second best, of course, so they really did not matter—in tearing her fingers upon briars and boulders and furze-bushes; and in using the brand-new straw the general outfitter at Slocum Magna had supplied her with for the sum of one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny—there is only one price for straw hats at Slocum Magna provided you pay cash—to convey rare ferns andrecherchéspecimens of the fauna and flora of the neighborhood.
Muffin was a singularly learned creature. She could tell you who was the lawful owner of the pinkegg with brown spots, or the gray egg with cream ones. She could point out the tracks of the weasel; she could discern where a squirrel lurked among the foliage when the ordinary person would have been baffled completely. She was familiar with the habits and appearance of the stoat. Every tree and bush enabled her to unfold her knowledge. Not only did it embrace all the objects in nature, but also she had a passion for collecting every wayside flower and every herb that grew.
Her store of information and her desire for its acquisition were not confined to dry land merely. In the numerous rills and small lakes in which the mountains abounded she spent many choice hours. Sometimes she removed her shoes and stockings; sometimes she did not. It depended upon whether she happened to remember that she was wearing these encumbrances before wading in in search of trout or minnows or mere botanical knowledge. However, as became a natural leader of fashion at Slocum Magna, she generally contrived in some sort to kilt her dress.
In all undertakings of this character, whether by flood or field, Muffin was pre-eminent. But it must be said that her sister Goose was a very willing, assiduous, and by no means inefficient lieutenant. Of course one so accomplished as Muffin despised her attainments really. For instance, she was never absolutely clear as to which was a weasel and which was a stoat, and whether a plover made a whirr with its wing like a partridge, and which kind of fish it was that herons cared for most particularly; butGoose, although rather a “silly,” was full to the brim with zeal and docility. Docility was, indeed, her great characteristic. She was incapable of questioning the most arbitrary command of her natural superior.
Elizabeth was Muffin’s name in baptism, and that, of course, was the name Aunt Caroline called her by. From the moment of her arrival, as you have seen, her august relation relented towards her. Why she should have done so baffled all who had an expert knowledge of the character of that old woman. Perhaps she felt instinctively that there was something in Elizabeth. If that was the case, her instinct did not lead her astray.
There was certainly no guile in Muffin. But she had a way with her. She was a very handsome girl too, although whether she was of the style to take the town, as her sister had done, is perhaps a matter for conjecture. But for some reason Aunt Caroline took to her from the beginning. She even deigned on fine mornings to accompany Elizabeth into the woods which enfolded Pen-y-Gros Castle on every side, walking quite nimbly with the aid of her stick, and with Ponto waddling beside her. She would endure Elizabeth’s discourse upon the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; and she would even go to the length of carrying personally the specimens Elizabeth selected of the flora of the district. And the manner in which Elizabeth navigated the lake at the foot of the mountains, or the stream at the back of the castle, filled her with amusement.
Two days before the fortnight was at an end Aunt Caroline did a thing without precedent. She actually invited Muffin to stay a fortnight longer. Muffin crowed with delight when she received the invitation. She adored her sister Goose for one thing. Each had brought up the other, and neither had a thought which the other did not share. And in her fearless and impulsive way Muffin had formed in her own mind an ardently idealist picture of her formidable relation. And neither good report nor ill could possibly disturb it.
“The girl has sense, Burden,” said Aunt Caroline, on the day the edict was issued that Elizabeth was to remain a fortnight longer at Pen-y-Gros Castle. “She appears to favor me much more than she does Polly. I think George Betterton ought to see her. Bring me some ink and a pen with a broad point.”
There and then this old lady of ripe years composed a letter for the benefit of the Duke of Brancaster in a hand that was remarkably firm and full of character.
Pen-y-Gros Castle, North Wales, 25 August, 190—Dear George,—If you are returned from Homburg, come and spend a week-end here. Wales is looking very well just now, and the lake is full of trout. I should like you to have your revenge at piquet.Believe me,Very sincerely yours,Caroline Crewkerne.
Pen-y-Gros Castle, North Wales, 25 August, 190—
Dear George,—If you are returned from Homburg, come and spend a week-end here. Wales is looking very well just now, and the lake is full of trout. I should like you to have your revenge at piquet.
Believe me,Very sincerely yours,Caroline Crewkerne.
No sooner had this letter been composed than the Fates themselves began to take an active interest in affairs. The air in that particular corner of the Welsh Principality became charged with magnetism.
The letter to George Betterton had scarcely been posted an hour when a communication bearing the Harrogate postmark was delivered to the Countess of Crewkerne, Pen-y-Gros Castle. It said—
My Dear Caroline,—Having effected my annual cure, and feeling in consequence immeasurably the better able in mind and body to cope with the things of this world, I have proposed to myself to spend the week-end with you in your Welsh fastness. You will be interested to learn that I have given a certain matter the most anxious and careful consideration, which I do not need to remind you is demanded by its highly critical nature. I am now in a position to make a definite offer, provided there has been no foreclosure.I remain, my dear Caroline,Always yours,Cheriton.
My Dear Caroline,—Having effected my annual cure, and feeling in consequence immeasurably the better able in mind and body to cope with the things of this world, I have proposed to myself to spend the week-end with you in your Welsh fastness. You will be interested to learn that I have given a certain matter the most anxious and careful consideration, which I do not need to remind you is demanded by its highly critical nature. I am now in a position to make a definite offer, provided there has been no foreclosure.
I remain, my dear Caroline,Always yours,Cheriton.
Having read this letter twice very carefully, the recipient proceeded to tear it up into small pieces. There was a dangerous light in her eye.
“Humph!” said she, ominously. “I am not sure, Cheriton, that you have not overstayed your market.”
All the same, the second communication did not appear wholly to displease the person to whom it was addressed.