CHAPTER XXXIIBARNE MOOR
ABOUT tea-time on the following Monday Jim Lascelles found himself at Barne Moor. The house was a bleak upstanding place in the north of Yorkshire. It was in a fold of the moors, and, although its size was impressive, it was architecturally hideous.
Jim had been very unhappy all the way up from London. The change oflocale, however, raised his spirits a little. The contemplation of the five hundred pounds and a period of definite employment did something to help him also. And hardly had he set foot in the house than a great surprise was in store for him.
Almost the first person he saw was the Goose Girl. She had been out with the guns, and was now consuming tea and hot buttered cakes. It was nearly six weeks since they had parted in Wales. In that period each had changed. With his artist’s eye Jim could not help noticing that she was still the elemental creature of the Devonshire lanes. Her candor and simplicity were not less than they were, but somewhere in her was a kind of reserved inclosure, an expanse of deep feeling hidden away, which only those who held her secret would ever be able to discover.
Perhaps Jim Lascelles was glad to notice it. It did honor to the slow-witted immobile creature, and it did honor to him. Yes, she was true blue. There was nothing in her words and very little in the manner of her greeting to suggest that a creature so primitive as herself had this reserved space in her. She was just as she always was, and yet at her first words of greeting Jim knew that she was much more.
“Why, it’s Jim!” she exclaimed in just the old way; and putting her cake in her saucer, she said, “I can’t shake hands with you, Jim, because my fingers are all over butter.”
Jim hardly knew whether to rejoice at her presence or to be dismayed by it.
“Why, Goose Girl,” said he, “whoever could have thought of seeing you here?”
“Aunt Caroline is here,” said she, “and Miss Burden, and Lord Cheriton too.”
“How strange that we should meet again like this!” said Jim, rather lamely.
Yet it was scarcely so strange as Jim thought it was. Aunt Caroline, in spite of her years and her increasingly difficult temper, still had certain houses open to her, and Barne Moor was one of them. Her store of energy was by no means exhausted; she liked still to keep in the world, to know what was doing; and she liked her rubber. It would not, perhaps, be strictly true to say that she was welcome at Barne Moor, but when Wales began to bore her she resolutely turned her face in that direction, because she knew that at that time Yorkshire would contain achoice collection of her friends and her enemies, and would be infinitely more diverting than Pen-y-Gros Castle or London itself in the absence of Parliament.
At Barne Moor Jim of course was a nobody, and was treated as such. His hostess, who was of the strain of the former Whig oligarchy, like so many to be found under that ample roof, was not so much exclusive as she was indifferent to those outside the circle. She was a ponderous, neutral kind of woman, who bullied her husband and had very definite views about religion. From the first Jim Lascelles did not find her in the last easy to get on with. It must be confessed that he did not try to get on with her particularly.
Still, during the time Jim spent at Barne Moor things did not go amiss. The Goose Girl was still the child of nature she had always been. The old woman of Hill Street was reasonably civil; quite as civil, in fact, as Jim expected her to be. Miss Burden, in a curiously delicate manner, showed that she understood the tragedy. As for Cheriton, who was an old friend of the house, and for some reason high in the esteem of everybody, he extended the same genial kindness to him that he had always done.
The only other of Jim’s acquaintances among the score or so people that were gathered under the hospitable roof of Barne Moor was George Betterton. No announcement had yet been made upon the subject, but it was common knowledge that “an arrangement” was likely to be forthcoming with a daughter of the house.
Jim Lascelles supposed that “the old sportsman” knew his own business best, but he rather hoped that “it wouldn’t come off.” In Jim’s opinion “George was a genuine fellow,” and Jim personally had not the least admiration for the fair Priscilla. For one thing he had to paint her to order; and that of course did not tell in her favor with the temperament of genius.
She had not the least sense of pose. She was just a wooden sort of Englishwoman, as neutral as her mother, who clipped her g’s and powdered her nose, with dull red hair and pale green eyes, who took very little interest in anything or anybody. But she shot well and rode well, and went to church twice on Sunday.
She sat half a dozen times, and the rising artist did what he could with her. Jim’s special talent lay in his color and his sense of values. He used the dark oak of the gloomy old library for his background, and he painted Priscilla’s hair a warm and glowing Titian color, with a striking and distinguished pallor for the face; and for the eyes a shade of blue which was extremely daring but successful. The picture in its style and its distinction was absurdly unlike Priscilla herself; yet somehow it was sufficiently like her to pass muster with those who cared more for Priscilla than they did for her counterfeit presentment.
About the fifth day of Jim’s sojourn Cheriton announced that the picture of Priscilla was going to turn out very fine. He exhorted Kendal publicly tosend it to the next Royal Academy, and complimented him upon having had the foresight and good sense to obtain the man of the future to do the work. The bullet-headed Yorkshireman was pleased, of course, since every bullet-headed Yorkshireman likes to be complimented on his foresight and good sense by an acknowledged expert.
“I wonder if he would paint my wife,” said Mr. Crosby of the Foreign Office.
“You can ask him, my dear fellow,” said the expert.
“Would he want a stiff figure?” said Mr. Crosby, who had a very practical mind.
“It would cost you a cool thousand, I dare say,” said Cheriton, before Kendal could announce that it had cost him five hundred.
“Stiff, ain’t it, for an unknown man?” said Mr. Crosby.
“He is going to betheman, my dear fellow,” said Cheriton. “What do you say, Caroline? You have seen some of his work.”
“I agree with you, Cheriton,” said the flattered Caroline, who knew as much about pictures as Ponto did. “He has painted two of my nieces, and in my opinion they are excellent likenesses.”
“Have you two nieces, Caroline?” said the Marquis. “That is interesting. When are we to have the opportunity of seeing the other one?”
“Next season—perhaps.”
As yet there had been no formal announcement of Cheriton’s engagement, but it was known to many.It is true that those who were best acquainted with him maintained an attitude of incredulity. So many times in the past had there been talk of entertaining at Cheriton House. Yet there was a consensus of opinion that he really meant to settle down at last; and while all disinterested people could not fail to admire his taste, the critical were a little inclined to doubt his wisdom. Still, there was no doubt about the beauty and the docility of his choice, and in her quaint way she had unmistakably thebelair. She was a good honest girl, a Wargrave, and the old woman of Hill Street could well afford to do something in the matter. Still, the knowing ones “could not see it at all”; those who were not so knowing thought that “Cheriton might have done worse.”
All the same, Miss Perry was famous and she was popular. Her simplicity was something that was growing very rare; she was unaffectedly good to everybody, and everybody could not help being grateful to her for her goodness, because it sprang straight from the heart. No matter whether people were important or unimportant, it made no difference to her. Great beauty and an absolute friendliness which is extended to all, which keeps the same gracious smile for the odd man about the stables that it has for the wearer of the Garter, will go far towards the conquest of the world.
Miss Perry had conquered her world. All agreed that Cheriton had done well. Yet the creature was not in the least happy. So much practice, however, had the Wargraves had in the course of the centuriesin dissembling their unhappiness and in offering their heads to the block, that only four persons were able to suspect that a brave, smiling, and bountiful exterior concealed a broken heart.
Jim Lascelles was one. He knew for certain. Miss Burden was another. Caroline Crewkerne was no believer in broken hearts. For one thing, she had never had a heart of any sort to break. But she had seen those great damp splotches on the correspondence with her father, she had noticed that the creature’s appetite was not what it was; and there were half a dozen other symptoms that enabled her to put two and two together. As for the fourth person, it was Cheriton himself. He was a man of immense practical sagacity. The Lascelles affair was perfectly familiar to him in all its bearings. He himself was primarily responsible for it. And none knew better than did he that youth will be served.
During Jim’s stay at Barne Moor, Cheriton went out of his way to show him consideration. He behaved like a habitually courteous and broad-minded man of the world, who, so to speak, knew the whole alphabet of life, and if necessary could repeat it backwards.
“You have no right to be here, my dear fellow,” he said tacitly to Jim Lascelles; “but since my Yorkshire friend, Kendal, has blundered, as one’s Yorkshire friends generally do, and you find yourself in the wrong galley, behave just as you would under ordinary circumstances, and, if you have the courage, take up the parable more or less where you left it.After all, you were brought up together, and I am only an interloper, and an old one at that.”
It was bold and it was generous of Cheriton to take this course. But the young fellow Lascelles had behaved so well that he was bound to respect him. And he had a genuine liking for him too. Therefore he raised no objection to their spending long hours upon the moors with only one another for company, while he gossiped and shot birds, and fribbled and idled away his time indoors among more mature persons.
Still, it was trying Jim Lascelles somewhat highly. The test was a severer one than perhaps Cheriton knew. For Jim was confident that he had only to speak the word for the Goose Girl to marry him by special license at Barne Moor parish church. Once, indeed, they found themselves in it, since the Goose Girl was by way of being a connoisseur in churches; and they had a pleasant and instructive conversation with the vicar.
However, all’s well that ends well, as Shakespeare informs us. Jim Lascelles did not obtain a special license, but returned to his mother like a good son and, shall we say, a man of honor. For it would have been such a fatally easy and natural thing to marry the Goose Girl at Barne Moor parish church. If you came to think about it, why should she be offered for sacrifice? Dickie, of course, would be able to go to Sandhurst, and Milly would be able to go to the boarding school; but all the same, it was desperately hard on the Goose Girl.