Bright sunshine greeted Sydney when she awoke on the first morning in her new home.
It fell softly through the shading blinds upon the dainty fittings of her luxurious room, and on Ward, as she stood beside her with a tray, containing a fairy-like tea-set for one.
“Oh, whatisthe time?” cried poor Sydney in dismay. Surely she had overslept herself, and Ward was bringing her a rather unsubstantial breakfast in bed!
“Eight o’clock, ma’am,” the maid answered softly, placing the tray on a little table by her bedside. “Would you wish me to draw the blinds up, or shall I leave them down till you get up?”
“What time is breakfast?” Sydney asked.
“Lady Frederica breakfasts in her bedroom, Miss Lisle,” said Ward; “and so of course does his lordship since his accident. Mr. Fenton commonly likes his about ten o’clockwhen staying here, I have heard. He breakfasts downstairs. Lady Frederica thought you would wish to take yours in bed.”
“I would much rather get up,” said poor Sydney. “I am not at all tired now, and I get up at seven at home.”
Ward never seemed to be surprised at anything.
“Yes, ma’am; what time would you wish to get up?” she inquired.
“When I have drunk my tea, please,” the girl said; “that is—unless you think Lady Frederica would mind?”
A very faint smile did part Ward’s lips for a moment, but only for a moment. “I am sure her ladyship would wish you to do exactly as you please, ma’am,” she said, and withdrew to desire a housemaid to bring up Miss Lisle’s hot water.
“Exactly as I please; thisisan odd place!” thought Sydney, as she sipped her tea out of a Dresden china cup and ate the wafer bread and butter provided.
She took heart of grace and rejected Ward’s services over her morning toilet: the sunshine had given her fresh courage, and she felt quite a different being from the tired-out, homesick Sydney of last night.
She was dressed by a quarter to nine, and stood looking from her window at the green park, with its great bare spreading trees below her. Only a quarter to nine! What should she do with herself till breakfast time? At this hour at home, breakfast would be a thing of the past, and father and Hugh have gone off to the hospital. And mother would have done a hundred and one things before settling down to teaching the girls; and the boys would have been off—the younger ones to school, and Hal to King’s College. And Sydney herself would have been practising, or hearing Prissie practise, on that old shabby school-room piano. How odd it felt!
Five minutes passed by very slowly; Sydney went and knelt down by the fire that the housemaid had lit when she brought the water. One hour and ten minutes before breakfast-time—perhaps more, if Mr. Fenton were late!
“I know!” she cried, rising quickly to her feet, and hurrying into thick boots, coat and scarlet tam-o’-shanter. She would go out and explore the park till ten o’clock.
She ran downstairs to the great hall, meeting nobody until she came out on the splendid flight of marble steps, which a man was cleaning.
He got up from his knees and stared, when he saw a young lady march out of the double doors, with the evident intention of going for a walk.
“Good-morning!” Sydney cried brightly, as she ran down the steps, leaving the man still staring after the slight figure and red cap.
“Well, I’m blowed!” he said at last, returning to his work.
The park was rather wet, but Sydney’s boots were thick, and she scorned the plain, uninteresting road along which she had driven last night. She cut across the grass at right angles, running at intervals to keep herself warm, and startling the deer not a little. Never having seen these animals outside the Zoological Gardens, she was much excited by their discovery, and made many unsuccessful attempts to coax them to her.
By-and-by she came to the boundary of the park. There was no gate, but a convenient gap in the hedge; through which she climbed without difficulty.
“Sydney’s dash forward was not a bit too soon.”(Page 59)
“Sydney’s dash forward was not a bit too soon.”
(Page 59)
As she dropped from the gap into the road beneath, she became aware that somebody a good deal smaller than herself was going to do the same thing on the other side of the road. Through a thin hedge topping a high grassybank appeared, first, two small kicking legs, and then something fat and roundabout in blue, surmounted by a crop of red curls. Sydney’s dash forward was not a bit too soon, for the creature rolled down the bank at a prodigious pace, alighting fortunately in her arms. It wriggled from her in a moment, and regained its feet. Then Sydney saw that it was a round-faced, red-haired little boy, dressed in a navy blue serge smock, just now extremely muddy.
He stopped to pull on the wet strapped shoe which the mud in the ditch had nearly sucked from his foot, pulled down his belt about his bunchy little petticoats, and observed affably, “Hullo, big girl!”
“You have scratched your face, dear, getting through that hedge,” Sydney said, looking him over; “doesn’t it hurt you?”
The small boy beamed all over in a condescending smile.
“Scwatches don’t hurtboys!” he assured her, with a strong emphasis upon the last word.
“What is your name, dear?” she asked him.
“I’m Pauly Seaton,” he explained confidentially, “and I’m going to be five quite soon. Big girl, shall we go home now, ’cause I’m daddy’s boy, and he doesn’t like me to be lostened?”
He put his hand into Sydney’s quite confidingly. “But where do you live, Pauly dear?” she asked.
“Vicarwidge, of course,” he said; “come on, big girl!”
They went a few steps together; then Pauly stopped, with an expression of dismay on his round baby face. “Oh, bover, big girl, my shoe is stuck like my teef in toffee!”
Sydney knelt down to investigate, and extract the little shoe which had stuck so tightly in the mud. But, alas! in the tug Pauly had given it the frail bottom had come off.
Sydney picked up the sodden shoe and put it in his hand.
“Get on my back, Pauly, and I’ll carry you.”
Pauly liked this idea, and shouted gleefully, as, with much effort upon Sydney’s part, his sturdy little form was hoisted to her shoulders, and his muddy toes, one shoeless, put into her hands.
“Oh, Pauly, youarewet!” she cried. “I expect your mother will put you into dry socks the minute you get home.”
“Me and daddy haven’t got no muvvers,” Pauly said. “There’s ‘In Memorwy of Wose’ in the churchyard. God wented and wanted muvver, that was why. Gee-up, horse!”
Poor Sydney! the “geeing-up” was not so easy. Pauly was no light weight. Her face grew scarlet and her breath a little gasping. She sincerely hoped the vicarage was not far away, and was not sorry when, as they turned into its drive, a tall figure came hurrying to meet them.
“Daddy!” shouted Pauly gleefully, and, as Mr. Seaton hastened to remove the burden from the tired horse, he explained: “Got frew the hedge of the kitchen garden, daddy, and fell down a gweat big way, and there was this gweat big girl there, and she caught me in her gweat big hands!”
The Vicar reached round his small son, to give his hand to Sydney, with a smile that she liked.
“You seem to have been very good to my little scamp,” he said, “and I’m afraid you’re quite done up with carrying the great lump—that’s what you are, Pauly! Come in and have some milk or something; and then, if you’ll tell me where you live, I’ll drive you home.”
“I am Sydney Lisle,” she answered shyly, “and I have just come to live at St. Quentin Castle.”
They had reached the pretty gabled Vicarage by now. Mr. Seaton looked at her with akindly, amused scrutiny as he held the door open for her. “So you are Miss Lisle?” was all he said.
A maid was sweeping the hall. “Would you fetch a glass of milk and some cake, Elizabeth?” the Vicar said. “Now, Miss Lisle, shall I leave you to rest and refresh yourself in the dining-room, or will you like better to come to Pauly’s nursery, while I put him into dry clothes?”
“Oh, the nursery, please!” said Sydney.
Pauly led the way up the steep uncarpeted nursery stairs, guarded at the top by a wicket gate, and would have liked to do the honours of “my wocking horse” and “my own bed,” but his father quietly checked him.
“Go into the night nursery and take your shoes and socks off, Pauly. Now, Miss Lisle, sit down in that chair, please. Here comes the milk—that’s right.”
He put the milk and cake on a small table beside her, and retired into the night nursery to find dry clothes for his little son. Sydney drank the milk and ate a noble slice of cake, finding herself really very hungry now that she had time to think about it.
Mr. Seaton redressed his little son with a speed which showed he was not playing nursefor the first time, and the two came back into the day nursery, the Vicar carrying sundry little muddy garments to hang on the high nursery guard. He talked very pleasantly to Sydney all the time, asking where she had lived before, and whether she knew Blankshire at all.
“No, we usually go somewhere near London for our holidays,” she explained. “You see, there are a good many of us.”
“You’ll miss them,” said the Vicar, noticing the little tremble in her voice, as she spoke of home. “I am afraid it will be rather dull for you here at first. But you will make your own interests before long. Life has a knack of growing very interesting, you will find, wherever we are called upon to live it.”
Sydney had heard things like this in sermons before, but somehow the fact that this was said to her in the homely surroundings of a nursery made it strike her more. Certainly Mr. Seaton himself did not look like a man who found life uninteresting. She smiled and looked up frankly.
“They are all so kind,” she said, “and say, ‘Do what you like.’ But it doesn’t seem that there is anything to do.”
“Plenty,” said the Vicar briskly, “and you’ll find it if you look for it. I wonderwhether Lord St. Quentin would allow you to take a little class in the Sunday School, for one thing?”
“Oh, I should just love to!” Sydney cried. “Mother always said I might when I was eighteen, and my birthday is next month. Only I don’t know a great deal.”
She noticed that the Vicar did not comment upon her acceptance.
“Thank you very much for your willingness to help,” he said. “I will write to your cousin.”
“I am certain he won’t mind,” the girl said happily. “He is very kind, you know, and told Lady Frederica to put the loveliest things into my rooms. But, please, I think I ought to be going now, for Mr. Fenton has his breakfast at ten.”
The Vicar laughed. “I am afraid Mr. Fenton will have breakfasted alone this morning, owing to my little scamp here. Do you know what the time is?”
“No.” Sydney was rather frightened.
“Ten-thirty.”
She sprang up with a cry of dismay. “Oh, how dreadful! I must run!”
“You won’t do any such thing!” said the Vicar firmly. “I am going to drive you tothe Castle in my pony-cart, and explain your disappearance.”
“I come, too!” Pauly cried, scrambling up from the centre of the hearth-rug in a great hurry.
“No,” said the Vicar gravely. “I told you not to go into the kitchen garden alone, Pauly. You must be obedient before daddy takes you out with him.”
Pauly did not cry, as Sydney half expected. He twisted his fingers in and out of his belt in silence for a minute; then observed defiantly, “Bad old Satan come along and said, ‘Pauly, go into the kitchen garden.’”
“Yes,” said the Vicar gravely, “but what ought Pauly to have done?”
Pauly slowly stumped across the room, and stood looking wistfully from the barred window.
“Wis’ I’d punc’ed his head!” came in a subdued murmur from the bunchy little figure in the sunshine.
Mr. Seaton smiled and stroked the red hair gently. “Next time Pauly will say ‘No,’ that will be better.”
Then he opened the door for Sydney, and they went out together.
The Vicar brought round the little cart with its shaggy pony. Sydney got in, and theydrove off. From the nursery window a fat hand was waving to them with an affectation of great cheerfulness. “Poor little chap!” said Pauly’s father.
Mr. Fenton was waiting about rather anxiously on the steps of the Castle, and came forward with a look of unmistakable relief as he recognised Sydney.
He shook hands with the Vicar and thanked him warmly for “bringing home Miss Lisle,” but Sydney noticed that he did not ask him to come in. He said that neither Lady Frederica nor Lord St. Quentin were yet down, but the servants had been much alarmed by Sydney’s disappearance. She and Mr. Seaton between them explained its cause; Mr. Fenton reiterated his thanks, and the Vicar got into his pony-cart and drove away, with a shy hand-shake from Sydney and a request that he would give her love to little Pauly.
“Was it wrong to go out for a walk?” Sydney asked, as she and the old lawyer went into the Castle.
“Oh no, not wrong, my dear young lady!” he assured her, “only perhaps rather injudicious.”
By the time she had been a week at Castle St. Quentin, Sydney felt as though the old happy life in London were years away.
She did not even look like the same Sydney, in the dainty frocks with which Lady Frederica replaced the clothes mother had packed so carefully.
“Miss Lisle has not a thing fit to wear, my lady,” had been Ward’s verdict, when Lady Frederica made inquiries into the state of Sydney’s wardrobe, and Lady Frederica’s own dressmaker in London received a lengthy order marked “Immediate” that very night.
The frocks were all ankle-length. “We will not put your hair up till you are presented in March,” said Lady Frederica; but she only laughed when Sydney threw out a timid suggestion that perhaps in that case the old frocks might do till she came out. All these newclothes for four months’ use only: it hardly seemed possible to believe.
Sydney’s wardrobe replenished, Lady Frederica took her education in hand with undiminished energy. And the girl, although of no very studious disposition, quite hailed the idea of lessons. Something to do would be indeed a comfort, was the conclusion she arrived at by the end of the first week. Writing had lost its zest now she had unlimited time in which to do it, and even story-books palled when read all day. Solitary walks were most decidedly forbidden by Lady Frederica, when she heard of the girl’s adventure on the morning after her arrival; and when Mr. Fenton left the Castle, as he did in a day or two, her life was lonely indeed.
St. Quentin was worse, and confined to his room for the whole week, seeing no one but his man and Dr. Lorry; and Lady Frederica was never down until the two o’clock luncheon.
If it had not been for a long letter of loving understanding counsel from mother, Sydney would have been more than half inclined to give up the early rising and other old home ways which made the mornings seem so long. But mother must not be disappointed in her, and she thought of Mr. Seaton’s words, anddetermined to try hard to make the interests which did not seem inclined to make themselves.
It was on a dull afternoon a week after her arrival that she met the doctor as he came from the library, where St. Quentin had been reinstalled for the first time since the night she came.
Dr. Lorry was an elderly man, very kind-hearted and a teller of good stories by the yard. He held out his hand to Sydney with a smile.
“Come in and see your cousin for a little while this afternoon, my dear young lady,” he suggested. “I think a visitor would do him good to-day.”
Sydney followed him obediently into the library—a handsome but rather sombre room, where what little of the wall could be seen for well-filled book-cases was covered by Spanish leather, and the furniture wore the same sober tint of dark brown.
St. Quentin’s couch was drawn up near the fire: he looked considerably more ill now she saw him in daylight. His face was very worn and his eyes sunken.
“Well, Lord St. Quentin, I’ve brought you a visitor, you see,” the doctor said, drawingthe girl forward. “She is not to chatter you to death—are you a great talker, Miss Lisle?—but just to quietly amuse you. Good-bye, I’ll look in again to-night.”
And he went out quietly, with an encouraging nod of his head to Sydney.
“Sit down,” said her cousin. “There, by the fire; you look cold. You needn’t stay above five minutes if you find it bores you.”
“But I want to stay,” Sydney said. Her glance was the direct one of a child. “I have been wanting to see you to say thank you for all those lovely things you have given me—in my rooms, you know. And Lady Frederica says I am to have a horse, and riding lessons too. It isawfullygood of you!”
She pulled up in confusion at the “awfully” which had escaped her, but her cousin did not seem to notice it.
“Oh, you like the notion of a horse; that’s right,” he said. “I wrote up to Braemuir, who’s a pretty fair judge, to choose one suited for a lady, and to send it down. You ought to look rather well on horseback.”
He looked critically at the slight figure dressed in soft green, touched with creamy lace, before him. “I’m glad Aunt Rica didn’t make you put your hair up yet,” he said.
“At home they said I must put it up on my eighteenth birthday,” Sydney volunteered.
“At ‘home’?” questioned the marquess, with raised eyebrows.
“I mean in London,” she explained, speaking rather low. “Mother always said I must not keep it down after I was eighteen, but Hugh didn’t want it to go up.”
“Who is Hugh?” St Quentin’s tone was rather sharp; Sydney wondered if he were in pain.
“Hugh is the eldest of us, but not a bit stuck-up or elder-brotherish because of that. He is such a dear boy and very clever too. Why, he has an appointment at the Blue-Friars’ Hospital that most men don’t get till they’reeverso old, over thirty! And Hugh is so nice too, at home; he and I are special friends——”
Sydney could not understand what made her cousin’s voice sound so unpleasant as he interrupted her with another question:
“How old is this paragon?”
“Twenty-four last birthday, Cousin St. Quentin.” She no longer felt inclined to enlarge upon Hugh’s merits.
“Does he write to you?”
“Of course he does.”
“Don’t answer his letters, if you please.I have no doubt your Chichesters are excellent people, but a correspondence between you and this young paragon is most unsuitable.”
The colour flamed into Sydney’s face. “I don’t know what you mean, Cousin St. Quentin,” she cried hotly, “and Hugh will think me so—sohorridif I never answer his letters!”
The cynical smile deepened round his mouth. “The sooner you understand that playing at brother and sister is out of the question now the better,” he said quietly.
Sydney set her teeth to keep the tears back and stared hard into the fire. She would not cry before St. Quentin, but his tone, even more than his words, made her desperately hot and angry. There was silence in the room for full five minutes: then the footman came in with a note for Lord St. Quentin.
He opened it, and read it half aloud with a sneer.
“What’s this ... ‘Miss Lisle ... help in the Sunday School ... small class ...’ (confound the fellow’s insolence!) ‘subject of course to my approval ...’ (He won’t get that, I can tell him!)”——
“Oh, Cousin St. Quentin!” Sydney cried, springing to her feet, “is it about my class in the Sunday School? I told Mr. SeatonI should like to take one. You will let me, won’t you?”
“Nonsense! You know nothing about it!” he assured her. “You wouldn’t like it, and I don’t choose you to be always after parsons. Sit down there at the writing-table—you’ll find pens and paper—and decline his offer, please!”
“But I promised that I would, Cousin St. Quentin!”
“Well, now you find you can’t! Write—‘Dear Sir.’”
Sydney wrote obediently, but with rebellion in her heart.
“I regret to find myself unable to take a class in your Sunday School,” dictated Lord St. Quentin. “Yours faithfully,Sydney Lisle.”
But Sydney paused before the “yours faithfully” and faced round with troubled eyes.
“He was very kind to me, and that sounds rather rude, doesn’t it? Mayn’t I just put something else before the signature, for politeness?”
“Oh, say your brute of a cousin won’t allow you to do anything you want,” the marquess suggested, with a rather mocking smile.
Sydney reddened, and, without remark, finished the letter that he had dictated. Then she directed the envelope to “The Rev. PaulSeaton,” and, rising, put it in her cousin’s hand. “I couldn’t say a thing like that, you know,” she said, and he noticed that the childish figure had a dignity of its own. “Shall I ring for one of the footmen to take it to the Vicarage?” she added.
“I will,” said her cousin rather sharply, reaching out his arm. His couch stood rather farther off from the bell than usual, and he turned a little on his side in the attempt to reach it. The next moment Sydney saw him fall back with a stifled exclamation of suffering, while his face grew ashen and his brows contracted. She sprang forward. “Ring twice for Dickson,” he gasped, “and go!”
She pealed the bell furiously, then, with a remembrance of father, looked on the little table beside him.
Yes, sure enough, there was the bottle with, “Five drops to be taken in water when the pain is acute.”
The water was there all ready. She held it to her cousin’s lips, raising his head carefully. “It is the stuff in the blue bottle, Cousin St. Quentin. Dickson said you took it when the pain was bad.”
When Dickson came hurrying in, breathless with his run from the distant servants’ quarters,he found his master lying still with closed eyes, while Sydney dabbed his forehead with cologne and water.
“Bless me, miss, that ain’t no good!” gasped the servant, forgetting manners in the exigency of the moment. “That blue bottle, please, miss, and the water!”
The strained look was passing from St. Quentin’s face, and he opened his eyes again. “It’s all right, Dickson, Miss Lisle has already given me the dose, as well as any doctor. Don’t stay now, child; Dickson will look after me.”
Sydney did not see her cousin again that evening, but Dr. Lorry looked in and reported him a little better.
And the next afternoon, as Sydney was driving through the village by Lady Frederica’s side in the great landau, Mr. Seaton came up, and Lady Frederica stopped the carriage to speak to him.
Sydney, remembering the note she had so unwillingly written him, grew scarlet and shrank back into a corner of the carriage, but he greeted her and Lady Frederica as though nothing disagreeable had occurred.
Presently he asked, turning to the girl, “How is Lord St. Quentin to-day? I thoughtit so good of him to write himself and explain why you cannot help us in the Sunday School at present.”
“Did Cousin St. Quentin write to you?” Sydney cried, finding it hard to believe her ears.
“Yes, I heard from him late last night, explaining what great things you are going to do in the way of education, Miss Lisle. Naturally he does not wish you to undertake anything more just now.”
“Yes, Miss Lisle will be presented in March, and till that time we are going to educate her,” broke in Lady Frederica. “I wish we were not such a frightful distance from London, for I suppose the Donisbro’ masters will have to do, unless I carry her off straight to town, which would be much the best thing to do!”
“Only of course you would not wish to leave Lord St. Quentin in his present state of health,” said Mr. Seaton rather pointedly, and Lady Frederica sighed and said she supposed not, but these lingering illnesses were very inconvenient.
Then the carriage drove on.
As soon as they reached the Castle, Sydney ran to the library, knocked, and went in. St. Quentin seemed immersed in a book. Shewent and stood beside his couch, her hands behind her.
“Cousin St. Quentin,” she said, “we met Mr. Seaton, so I know now that my note didnotgo to him.”
“It went into the fire,” said St. Quentin, without raising his eyes from his book. “Your hand-writing isn’t precisely a credit to the aristocracy, you know. You’d better do some copies before you turn into a marchioness.”
But Sydney was not to be put off by his tone.
“I’m very sorry I was cross,” she said earnestly. “It waseverso good of you to write him a nice note instead!”
St. Quentin went on reading in silence for a minute, then looked up.
“If you are going to remain,” he said, “and pray do, if you feel inclined, shut the door and don’t talk nonsense!”
A companion-governess was procured for Sydney, the daughter of the vicar of one of the churches near Donisbro’. The girl was unfeignedly delighted at the prospect of a companion, even of the rather advanced age, as it seemed to her, of three-and-twenty.
She grew quite excited over the arranging of Miss Osric’s room, and would have liked to decorate it with some of the pretty things from her own. But this Lady Frederica would not allow.
“You can have anything you like for her in reason, child,” she said, “without stripping yourself. What, you don’t think there are enough pictures in her room? Well, you may drive in with Ward to Dacreshaw this afternoon, and get some, if you like. There is a good print-shop there. Put the bill down to St. Quentin.”
But that was not necessary, for Sydney received a summons to the library before she set out that afternoon.
Her cousin laid his pen down on her entrance; she saw he had been signing a cheque.
“I haven’t started you on a dress-allowance, Sydney,” he said, “because you had better let Aunt Rica rig you out at present. She knows how to do the thing, you see. But you’ll want some money to play with, so there’s your first quarter.” He held out the cheque.
Sydney gasped. “It isn’t for me, is it?”
“Yes, it is; there, put it in your purse. You can change it at the Bank at Dacreshaw, where I hear you’re going. Good-bye, don’t spend it all on chocolates!”
For the first time since her arrival at St. Quentin Castle, Sydney felt almost happy. What Christmas presents she could get now for every one at home! Should she choose them at Dacreshaw, or wait till she went to Donisbro’ for the lessons in drilling and deportment she was to take with a very select class of girls in the cathedral city?
She sat in a happy dream all through the drive, and only roused herself when she reached the print-shop.
The Castle carriage was known, and the owner of the shop came forward at once to serve the young lady, leaving the customer he had been attending—a tall, graceful girl, some years Sydney’s senior, with great calm, clear eyes.
Sydney found the shopman most obliging. He bowed repeatedly; he seemed willing to reach down every picture in the shop for her to look at, regardless of the trouble, and he asked with real anxiety after the health of “his lordship, Lord St. Quentin.”
The tall girl had come rather near to them to examine a picture Sydney had laid down. She started at the shopman’s question, looked irresolutely for a minute at the younger girl, then came across to her with a smile.
“Miss Lisle,” she said, “you will not know me, but I know Lady Frederica very well, and have stayed at Castle St. Quentin. I am Katharine Morrell.”
“Mr. Fenton told me about you,” Sydney said, brightening instantly. Speaking to another girl felt like meeting a countryman in a strange and savage land. “Do you live near?” she added eagerly.
“Some distance off; at Donisbro’,” she said; “my father is the Dean of Donisbro’ Cathedral.I hear you are coming to the calisthenic class at Lady Helmsley’s. Perhaps I shall see something of you, for I am taking a little cousin to it.”
“I amsoglad you will be there,” Sydney said, brightening still more. The girl had a lovely face, she thought, its slight look of sadness only adding to its beauty. She was like some bygone saint.
“I am busy choosing a picture,” said Miss Morrell, “and you are, of course, on the same errand. I am executing a commission for my father; perhaps you are for your cousin? By the way, how is he?”
“He has been worse, but seems better these last few days,” Sydney answered, rather doubtfully. “Dr. Lorry never tells us much about him.”
“They never do,” Miss Morrell said, in a low voice. “We are left to eat our hearts out in ignorance, because, forsooth, they think a woman cannot bear the truth. Oh, how much easier it would be if we might know, and care, and be miserable if we wished!”
Sydney felt vaguely puzzled. Miss Morrell had spoken quietly, but her voice vibrated, as though the words she spoke were almost forced from her, and, as she turned away at theshopman’s approach, the girl saw her hands were shaking. But, after that outburst, her manner returned to its usual calm, and she busied herself with real kindness in helping Sydney in that difficult thing—choice.
Four charming prints in sepia of well-known pictures were at length decided on, and the man managed to fit them with frames from his store, while Sydney was giving her opinion on the comparative merits of “The Angelus” in sepia or black-and-white for the benefit of her new friend.
“You must come and have some tea with me at Grayson’s before you drive home,” said Miss Morrell, when both had paid for their pictures, and Sydney’s had been placed in the brougham. “Oh, yes, you must: you cannot possibly be back at the Castle till long past tea time, and I have to wait for papa, who is at a meeting. Tell your maid to go and get tea for herself; the coachman will know, I expect, if he ought to put the horses up.”
Greaves evidently thought he had better do so.
“Very good, ma’am. Call for you in ’arf an hour, ma’am,” he said, and drove off to the St. Quentin Arms in the next street.
Sydney soon found herself at home withMiss Morrell, and the two girls talked happily over the cream-cakes and fragrant tea for which Grayson’s of Dacreshaw is noted. Ward drank hers in the room below with an easy mind. She had heard enough of Miss Morrell in the servants’ hall of Castle St. Quentin to feel certain that there could be no objection to Miss Lisle associating with her.
Sydney took the larger share in the conversation. Miss Morrell had a knack of drawing people out, and the girl found herself telling of the Chichester family at home, and making her new friend laugh over funny anecdotes of Fred and Prissie.
“You must have found it dull at the Castle just at first, after being used to so large a party,” Miss Morrell said.
“I did,” Sydney owned frankly, “and I find it rather dull still. But Lady Frederica is kind and amusing, and I like—yes—I do quite like, Cousin St. Quentin.”
Miss Morrell had stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped while Sydney was speaking. She took rather a long time in doing so, and when her head appeared again there was a lovely colour in her face.
“I am afraid I hear your carriage now, dear,” she said, rising, “and we must not keep thehorses standing, must we? No, put away your purse; Iaskedyou to tea. I expect we shall find your maid waiting for you downstairs.”
“I do hope I shall see you at the calisthenic class!” Sydney said earnestly, and Miss Morrell smiled and said she hoped so too.
“Well, what do you think of Dacreshaw?” asked Lord St. Quentin, as Sydney peeped into the library about an hour later, with a large parcel under her arm.
She came and sat down beside him, and undid the string with business-like gravity.
“It is a perfectly lovely place!” she assured him, “and the print-shop is delightful. The pictures were all so nice that I hardly knew how to choose among them. Look at that Greuze, Cousin St. Quentin, isn’t her face just sweet? I’ve seen the original of that in the Wallace collection. Hugh took Mildred and Dolly and me there one day last year.”
“That eternal Hugh!” muttered the marquess, but beneath his breath, and Sydney chattered on without hearing.
“I couldn’t settle foreverso long whether to have the girl with the broken pitcher, or with the lamb, but Miss Morrell said——”
“Who?”
“Miss Morrell. She was there in the shop, Cousin St. Quentin, and oh, she was so nice! She helped me choose, and we had tea together. She knows Lady Frederica, but I don’t think she knows you—she didn’t say so, but she asked how you were. Why, Cousin St. Quentin, would you like some more drops, or shall I ring for Dickson?”
“No, I don’t want anything or anybody; it’s all right. Only you had better go off to Aunt Rica. I’m tired to-night,” he said, turning away.
She was gathering up her pictures and going obediently, when he asked, still with his head averted, “Which did you say was the picturesheliked?”
“The Broken Pitcher,” Sydney answered wonderingly.
“Well, you might leave me one to look at—that will do—the pitcher one, I mean.”
Sydney propped her Greuze upon the table where he could see it comfortably, and went out.
Miss Osric arrived at the Castle on the afternoon following Sydney’s expedition to Dacreshaw.
A carriage was sent to meet the 4 o’clock train, and Sydney, in spite of an uncomfortably shy sensation at the bottom of her heart, begged leave to go and meet her governess.
“Certainly not! it would be most unsuitable!” said Lady Frederica, in her most decided manner, and she walked away, leaving Sydney to wonder why everything she wished to do was either unsuitable or absurd. The words were unknown at No. 20, in that dull old square not far from Euston Station, which was home.
Still, Miss Osric should have a welcome at the Castle if she could not at the station, and Sydney hung up the pictures she had bought at Dacreshaw, and coaxed some lovely hot-house flowers out of the head-gardener, Macintosh, to fill the vases in her governess’s room.
St. Quentin was rather amused by her extensive preparations. “But you see,” Sydney remarked, when he made a laughing comment on them, “Miss Osric may be feeling just as shy and wretched as I did when I came here, and it will make a difference if somebody is really pleased to see her.”
“Didn’t you think we were pleased to seeyou?” asked her cousin.
“You were all very kind,” Sydney said doubtfully, “but, you didn’t exactlywantme, did you? It is only at home one is really wanted.”
She stopped, remembering his snub on the subject of calling the Chichesters’ house home; but he only said, with a little smile, “Well, go and make your governess welcome in your own way, child. I hear wheels now.” And, as the girl flew out, her long hair streaming behind her, he said half aloud, “I wonder how it would feel to have anyone to care if one were wretched or no!”
Sydney was on the steps to receive Miss Osric, and certainly her shy but eager welcome made a good deal of difference to the feelings of the young governess, bewildered by this plunge into the outside world, made for the sake of the younger ones at home, who neededbetter education than her father’s means allowed. Mary Osric, just returned from a brilliant career at Lady Margaret Hall, had begged to be allowed to help towards providing some of the advantages she had herself enjoyed for her juniors; and a friend had mentioned her name to Lady Frederica as that of a clever girl, likely to fill suitably the double post of governess and companion to Miss Lisle.
Miss Osric had been considered shy at College, despite her cleverness, and the idea of teaching a strange girl in an absolutely strange place was terrible to her. But she always declared afterwards that the worst was over when Sydney came running out into the hall to welcome her.
“You must be cold!” the girl cried. “Would you like to come straight to your room and take your hat off before tea? Let me carry your umbrella. Be careful how you walk; the floors are very slippery.”
“It is lovely—just like a picture,” said Miss Osric, beginning suddenly to feel less homesick. There was something very winning about Sydney’s tone.
The room where the new arrival was to sleep bore traces also of the same care for her comfort. A bright fire burnt in the grate,a vase of hot-house flowers was on the writing-table, the pictures from Dacreshaw looked charming on the walls, and a little book-case was filled with a selection of Sydney’s best-loved books.
“What a charming room!” the young governess exclaimed, and Sydney, colouring a little, murmured she “was glad Miss Osric liked it.” She stayed with her governess while she took off coat, hat, and fur, and then brought her to the morning-room, where the shaded lamp shed a delicate rose glow over everything and the little tea-table was drawn up to the fire.
“I am so very glad you have come,” said Sydney, as she poured out tea and handed muffins, and Miss Osric began to realise that the duty she had set herself need not necessarily prove a hard one.
“Well, do you like the mentor?” asked St. Quentin, as Sydney came into the library to wish him good-night. “Are you going to be quite happy now you have another girl to play with?”
And Sydney, meeting the real anxiety in his eyes, said “Yes.”
“But sheisstill hankering after those confounded Chichesters!” her cousin said tohimself, when the girl had left him, in which conclusion he was not far wrong.
With the coming of Miss Osric, the “do as you please” system ceased.
Lady Frederica might be lax as regarded solid education. “There’s no need whatsoever to behave as though you are to be a governess, my dear,” she said to Sydney, but she was horrified by the girl’s lack of accomplishments.
“The one and only thing the child can do is to look pretty,” his aunt complained to St. Quentin, “and beauty without style is very little good. Of course, we must be thankful for small mercies—one seldom has big ones to be thankful for—and she might have been fat and podgy! But what in the world those doctor people were about not to give her drill and calisthenic lessons, I can’t think!”
“There were herds of them, I fancy,” said her nephew. “Whenever Sydney mentions them, which isn’t seldom, she springs a new one upon me. They would make an excellent third volume to thePillars of the House. I don’t suppose there was overmuch cash to spare for accomplishments.”
“I never can think why it is that those people who cannot afford it always have such enormous families,” pursued the lady.
“If we had done our duty by Sydney as we should, there would have been one less all these eighteen years,” her nephew suggested, and Lady Frederica changed the subject, as she always did when St. Quentin had what she called a “conscientious craze.”
“It’s your health makes you talk like that, my dear boy,” she declared. “You are really getting quite ridiculous about Sydney!”
The round of accomplishments now began in good earnest.
Sydney and Miss Osric breakfasted at eight-thirty, after which, when the weather was at all possible, Sydney took her ride on her new mare “Bessie,” a charming creature, whom she learned to love! Even Lady Frederica owned that, after a few lessons from old Banks, who had taught the present marquess to ride long ago, Sydney passed muster well enough on horseback. She and Bessie understood each other, and she bade fair to make a graceful and a fearless horsewoman.
“Of course she can ride; all the Lisles can ride anything that has a back to it,” St. Quentin said, when Lady Frederica condescended to approve the girl’s horsemanship; but, though his tone was careless, there was no doubt he was gratified by the fact thathis young cousin took after the family in that respect.
On three mornings in the week Sydney had masters from Donisbro’ for French, piano, and singing, and every Saturday a sergeant with a huge black moustache came to teach her fencing in the long “Gallery-at-Arms,” where the third marquess of St. Quentin was said to have fought a duel with the famous Duke of Marlborough one wild morning when a stormy dawn peered through the mullioned windows, and to have spared his life as being host.
Sydney came to enjoy her lessons, as soon as she had grown used to the strange sensation of having every bit of instruction to herself, with only Miss Osric sitting by to chaperone her pupil.
She had a fresh young voice of no special power, nor was her playing in the least above the average. She longed that Dolly, who would do her teachers so much more credit, might enjoy these music lessons in her stead; but the wish was futile.
She and Miss Osric lunched at two with Lady Frederica, and, if possible, managed a brisk walk before lunch. Miss Osric was as energetic as Sydney herself, and always ready to go out, whatever the weather. Sometimesthey had only time for a stroll in the Park, but often extended it to the picturesque little village, where the broken-down cottages, with their moss-covered thatch and ivied walls, made Miss Osric long for the summer and time for sketching.
In the afternoon Lady Frederica generally liked a companion on her drive and took Sydney, but the girl always managed to find a few minutes to run into the library to see her cousin; who, except on his worst days, was wheeled from his bedroom to the library next door about two o’clock.
After the drive there was tea, then usually another visit to St. Quentin, followed by practice, preparation for her masters, and finishing, not infrequently, with something she and Miss Osric were reading together.
They dined at eight with Lady Frederica, and afterwards sat in one of the drawing-rooms till 9.30, when Sydney was despatched to bed.
This was rather a come-down after ten o’clock bed-time at home, but Lady Frederica was firm on that point.
“I am here to turn you into the right kind of girl for your position,” she explained to Sydney, “and one of the most important things for it is a good complexion. I went to bedat seven every night of my life till I was seventeen and came out, and I don’t think there was a complexion to match mine in London. Yours will never equal it, my dear, though St. Quentin does say silly things about you. Yes, my complexion was perfect, and so was my way of entering a room (you poke, rather!) and getting in and out of a carriage; and though I never could remember why Romeo wrote Juliet, or whether Chaucer or Pope was the author of ‘In Memoriam,’ I married Tim Verney, the millionaire, at the end of my first season!”
Poor Sydney used to listen to such conversations with a vague and increasing sense of discomfort. Was this to be her life, only this? Was this where all the accomplishments were leading? Was this, only this, what mother had meant by “making the best in every sense of this new life”?
Sydney felt quite sure that it was not!
She grew graver and distinctly more homesick; St. Quentin noticed the change in her, and put it down to rather too many lessons. By his decree the ride was lengthened; but it was something more than mere amusement that poor Sydney wanted. Perhaps the want she was most conscious of herself was mother.
The drill and fencing lessons were supposed to give the girl that “deportment” of which Lady Frederica spoke so constantly, but she was herself Sydney’s most effective teacher. The girl grew very weary of the constant instructions. “Don’t run downstairs, Sydney!—never seem in a hurry. My dear, don’t shake hands that way. Miss Osric, kindly give her your hand again. No, that’s not right! Dear me! I think they might have taught you such a simple thing as to shake hands gracefully at your doctor’s.”
If Sydney failed in any way, Lady Frederica was surprised that she had not been taught better at “the doctor’s.” It made the girl grow hot with indignation for the dear home people, but she was quite aware that Lady Frederica would only raise her eyebrows and say, “Gracious, child, don’t be absurd!” if she expressed a tithe of what she felt.
The bi-weekly calisthenic lessons came as a welcome relaxation. The drive to Donisbro’ was in itself a pleasure, for, after the first novelty had worn off, Lady Frederica sent Miss Osric with her pupil.
The class comprised only about a dozen girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, who met at a private house and were taught bya master who bestowed instructions upon royalty.
It felt like meeting an old friend to Sydney to see Katharine Morrell’s clear-cut face and calm eyes among the mothers and governesses, and she enjoyed introducing Miss Osric and telling eagerly the unimportant little details of her daily life to an ear which was always sympathetic.
She began to look forward to Tuesdays and Fridays as the best days in the week, and save up the nicest bits of news to tell Miss Morrell—Hugh’s last success—Madge’s Latin prize at the High School—or some kindness shown her by St. Quentin.
Katharine Morrell seemed interested in all and everything that Sydney had to tell,evenin the news of the Castle, which seemed to its teller so infinitely less worth hearing than the doings of the Chichesters and home.
On a clear, cold December evening a month after Sydney’s arrival, the grand old castle of St. Quentin seemed to have cast off for the moment its habitual sombreness.
Sounds of talk and laughter came from the brilliantly-lit dining-room, and the great hall, though empty still, was gay with flowers—great pots of chrysanthemums and arum lilies standing against walls where more than one cannon ball was embedded.
On this night Lord St. Quentin had elected to give a dinner to his principal tenants, and afterwards to formally present Sydney to them as his heir.
It was in vain Dr. Lorry urged that excitement was bad for his patient; it was in vain Sydney begged to be excused the ordeal. The Lisles of history had been renowned for their obstinacy in the days when halfthe Castle had been shattered by cannon, and the present head of the house was not behind his ancestors in that respect.
“The child has been brought up in a corner,” he said, “but her acknowledgment is going to be as public as I can make it. The tenantry may just as well know something of her before she comes to rule over them.”
So the preparations were made and the guests bidden.
Lady Frederica groaned a good deal over “St. Quentin’s fads,” as she called them. “If he wants to entertain, he might just as well have consultedmypleasure by giving a dinner or a dance to our own set,” she complained; “but to expect me to be enthusiastic over the coming of a lot of old farmers is a little too much!”
Sydney did not remember that St. Quentin had asked Lady Frederica to be enthusiastic, or indeedbeanything exceptbethere, but of course she did not say so.
Lord St. Quentin asked his cousin Lord Braemuir to come down to stay at the castle, and take the head of the table at the dinner.
He was a bluff, hearty-looking man, and Sydney took a fancy to him because he spokekindly of her young mother and father, and seemed to think they had been hardly treated.
“I never could see the girl was to blame,” he told St. Quentin, when they were alone together. “She was a child and poor Frank was another, and if only Gwenyth had let well alone, there would have been no harm done. But perhaps it was just as well she did interfere, for you’ve got a charming little girl for your heir, Quin, my boy. Well, how things turn out! Fancy little Miss Henderson’s child coming to be Marchioness of St. Quentin!”
The ladies dined in the library with St. Quentin that night—Lady Frederica very magnificent in green and gold, with the Verney topazes gleaming in her hair. Sydney was all in white, and wore no jewelry. Lady Frederica was rigid in her views upon the etiquette of dress for girls not yet “out.”
The girl had insensibly improved very much during the past month in style and dignity. She held herself better, and had grown to be considerably less shy. St. Quentin watched her with approval as she sat down after dinner beside Miss Osric, and began a low-toned conversation, which should not interfere with Lady Frederica’s rather high-pitched stream then flowing over him.
She was looking very pretty too, he thought; with a colour in her small delicately-cut face and an earnest look in the great grey eyes. “Yes, Braemuir was right,” he thought to himself, “Ihavegot a very charming heir!”
Steps were heard outside, and Lord Braemuir entered, sending his jolly voice before him. “Are you ready, Quin, my boy, and you, my dear? Yes, dinner went off splendidly, St. Quentin, and your farmers quite appreciated it, I assure you. Where is the presentation to take place? Oh, the great hall, is it? Here, shall I wheel your couch in?”
“Thanks, ring for Dickson, please,” said St. Quentin. “Will you go and bring the tenants to the hall, Braemuir, and then come back here and take in Aunt Rica. Sydney, walk beside my couch, please—don’t be frightened—nobody shall eat you!”
“I am not afraid,” said Sydney, drawing herself up, and they went into the great hall together, she walking by his side.
Lady Frederica followed, on the arm of Lord Braemuir, and Mr. Fenton, who had come down for this great occasion, gave his to Miss Osric.
All eyes were turned upon the girl as she walked slowly up the hall, her colour comingand going, but showing otherwise no sign of nervousness. They came to the great fireplace and there stopped. St. Quentin raised his head a little, and spoke, his hand on Sydney’s.
“Well, gentlemen, I’m very glad to see so many of you here to-night. You all know, I think, why I asked for the pleasure of your company when I am incapable of entertaining you myself. It is to present to you my cousin and heir, Miss Lisle.”
Several people cheered at this point, and Mr. Fenton rubbed his hands together with a little smile. He detected the undercurrent of pride in St. Quentin’s voice at having such an heir to present. And he remembered well enough the tone in which the marquess had said, only five weeks ago, “Wemusthave the girl here, I suppose!”
“A good many of you here to-night will remember her father, Lord Francis,” St. Quentin went on.
“Yes, my lord,” was heard on many sides.
“Well, Fate and my motor-car between them, have put the title into Miss Lisle’s hands,” pursued the marquess. “I shouldn’t altogether wonder if she makes a better hand of the landlord business than I’ve done, whenher time comes to govern for herself. Gentlemen, I have much pleasure in presenting you my heir.”
One sentence in St. Quentin’s speech was standing out in Sydney’s mind, and repeating itself over in her head, making her deaf for the moment to all else going on around her. “I shouldn’t wonder if she makes a better hand of the landlord business than I’ve done.” Then there was something she was called upon to do in this new life, besides moving gracefully and shaking hands in the newest manner! St. Quentin had to touch her on the arm to rouse her attention to his next remark.
“Will Mr. Hudder be good enough to come forward? Miss Lisle will like to shake hands with our oldest tenant. Mr. Hudder held his farm in my grandfather’s time, Sydney,” he explained to her.
Sydney did not feel quite certain as to the proper procedure in such a case. She went forward and put her hand in the old farmer’s great brown one. “I am so pleased to meet you, Mr. Hudder.”
The old man retained the little hand, and slowly shook it up and down. “Man and boy I’ve held my farm under the Marquesses of St. Quentin, miss,” he said solemnly. “They’vebeen good landlords to me, and I’ve been a good tenant to them. I’m very pleased to see you here among us, miss; though I’ll not deny but that wedidhope to see his lordship there, marry and bring up a family at the old place and——”
“Bravo!” said a voice from behind the tapestry, and a gentleman, in a faultless overcoat, drew it aside and walked across the polished floor. The old farmer dropped Sydney’s hand in some confusion: the new-comer took a comprehensive glance around him through the monocle screwed into one of his rather cold blue eyes. “Hope I don’t intrude?” he inquired.
“Not at all,” said the Castle’s owner, “glad to see you.” But the smile which had been upon his face, as he watched Sydney and the old man, disappeared.
The monocle located the couch by the fire: the new visitor went towards it with outstretched hand. “Hullo, Quin, heard you got smashed up!” he remarked.
“Well, now you see for yourself,” was the dry answer.
“Awfully sorry—quite cut up about it,” he explained; “thought several times of dropping you a postcard to inquire.”
“Really?” said the marquess; “but one could hardly expect such a literary effort from you. Aunt Rica, may I introduce Bridge, I don’t think you know each other. Sir Algernon Bridge—Lady Frederica Verney—Miss Lisle. Now, my dear chap, you’d better go and dine. Braemuir, you’ll look after him, as I can’t, won’t you?”
Lord Braemuir had been standing apart since the entrance of this fresh guest, with an unusually grave expression on his good-humoured face.
At St. Quentin’s words he came slowly forward, and gave his hand to the new-comer, still without a smile. “How are you, Bridge?” he said.