Chapter XIV: Making Ready for Victory

The fair spring days flit by; the violets and primroses, bluebells and wind-flowers, fade in the copses, unseen, unknown, uncared for, save by a few peasant children; the white blossoms of the pears--the pinky bloom of the apples--have drifted away on the light west winds like summer snow; ferns uncurl their tender fronds in thicket and lane, and stand up to hail the summer. The cuckoo’s last call dies in the silence of the wood, the skylark’s clear carol rings out above the tall green corn. Summer has come--summer has come--and the little children of Redcastle--the children of the commonality, at least--wander far afield under the midday sun, and lose themselves in distant woods, and drain the cup of summer joys to the dregs. The children of the _élite_ regard summer as a period in which they wear starched frocks, find French and German grammar more than usually oppressive, and entertain hopes of going to the sea-side.

Sibyl welcomes June and the roses with a languid greeting. That smooth, easy life has begun to pall a little on Stephen Trenchard’s niece. Despite its pleasantness, it is at best a monotonous existence, and youth’s eager spirit revolts against monotony. Not willingly would Sibyl confess even to herself that she is tired of Lancaster Lodge and Redcastle dinner parties, Redcastle compliments, Redcastle life altogether.

She wishes that her uncle would extend the circle of his acquaintance, yet is obliged to admit that it would not be easy for him to do so at Redcastle. The county people have not called upon Mr. Trenchard. Aloof in their fastnesses among the hills and moors, the county people refuse to bow to the golden calf, hug themselves in their social privileges, and do not recognise the fact of an old gentleman having made money in India as a reason why they should go out of the beaten track to take notice of him. From their lofty region of territorial estate they look down with an equal disdain upon professional and commercial people who live in a town and call five acres of garden and paddock _land_. Stephen Trenchard’s million is nothing to them, or if they think of his wealth at all, it is with resentment, as a sign of the times, and an irrefutable proof that England is going to the dogs.

Perhaps it is the very fact of the county people’s exclusiveness which makes Sibyl regard them with a certain amount of interest. Those big broad-shouldered young men she has seen ride past her window in the hunting season, sitting their horses much more easily than Frederick Stormont sits his chair, glorious in ‘pink’ and buckskins, loud voiced, large whiskered, seem to her of a different race from young Groshen, or young Stormont, or Dr. Mitsand’s pale-faced spectacled son, whose manly vigour has degenerated into brains, Mr. Twells the curate, or Mr. Jewson the lawyer. To her fancy there is something grand about these sons of the soil, a rough nobility, an outspoken contempt for the petty conventionalities which constitute the small despotism of Redcastle society. _Cæsar est supra grammaticam._ The county people are above good manners--that is to say, good manners as understood in Redcastle.

The town and the county meet occasionally in the hunting-field, where the county looks on with a smile at some of the town’s feats in horsemanship, leaves the town three fields behind for the most part, and now and then deposits the town in ditches or hangs it out to dry on a stiff bullfinch.

Twice in every year town and county meet on equal ground. Redcastle, small and obscure as it is in the eyes of the outer world, boasts a racecourse, and as pretty a course in a small way as any in England. Less than a mile out of the town, on that broad open common known as Redcastle Woods, gleam the white posts of the course, and the white walls of the stand, a permanent and substantial building. Redcastle has its spring and summer meeting, two days on each occasion--and just the merriest two days in that part of the world. Granted that horses of much weight or _prestige_ rarely appear at Redcastle; the fact only leaves the ground open to the horses of the local aristocracy, and makes the races so much the more interesting to Redcastle itself.

Sibyl has never seen a race in her life, and it was not without a struggle that she declined Mrs. Stormont’s invitation to join her party at the spring meeting. Now comes the summer meeting, and another invitation from the leader of Redcastle society.

‘Rose and Violet,’ the dear girls are named after those favourite flowers--five feet ten each of them, and with the complexions of cookmaids;--‘Rose and Violet will be so disappointed if you refuse to join our party, my dear Sibyl. Of course I say nothing of Fred’s feelings.’

‘Why don’t you go with them, child?’ asks Mr. Trenchard, when Sibyl reads him the letter, laughing as she reads.

‘I don’t care for pleasures that you cannot share, uncle.’

‘Nonsense, my dear! I could share this if I liked. For my part, I could never understand what people could see in a race, unless as a hazardous investment with the possibility of enormous returns. I can fancy a bookman enjoying the races in a business-like way; but for people to sit in their carriages to look on at other people winning or losing, and call it pleasure, that passes my comprehension.’

‘I should like to see a race for once in my life,’ says Sibyl, languishing for any novel sensation that may ruffle the mill-pond of her existence.

‘Then write and accept Mrs. Stormont’s invitation, my dear.’

‘You won’t think me unkind for going without you?’

‘I should think you much more unkind if you wanted me to go with you.’

So it is settled. Sibyl tells her dear Mrs. Stormont that she is charmed to accept her kind invitation, and summons Miss Eylett to immediate counsel. She has ever so many pretty dresses in her wardrobe, but she must have something new for this occasion, with a view to crushing dear Violet and Rose by the exhibition of a dress they have never seen before. The invitation has been given a week before the races, so there is time for preparation. The council is a solemn one, and by the intensity of Sibyl’s desire to look her best may be measured her hatred of dear Rose and Violet.

‘Now mind, Miss Eylett,’ she begins, after she has looked through _Le Follet_ and pronounced all the illustrations ‘hideous,’ ‘I must have nothing that can possibly look like a shopkeeper’s wife’s Sunday gown--no flaming pink or blue that people can see a mile off----’

‘Mauve, or a rich voylet, now,’ suggests Miss Eylett, in her persuasive voice.

‘My dear Eylett, mauve and violet are the colours vulgar people choose when they want to be genteel.’

‘A sweet French grey.’

‘Give me a housemaid’s afternoon gown at once.’

‘A cinnamon brown.’

‘A doctor’s wife’s dinner dress. No, I must have some pale indistinct colour softened with a cloud of India muslin. A dress which looks nothing particular at a distance, but which is fit for a princess when you come to look into it. Mr. Trenchard gave me an embroidered Indian muslin, which will be just the thing, over a pale maize corded silk,--you know the shade I mean, straw-colour shot with apricot.’

Sibyl opens a huge camphor chest, in which she keeps her treasures, and displays a muslin dress fine as a cobweb, and covered with embroidery.

‘Exquisite!’ exclaims Miss Eylett; ‘what taste you have, Miss Faunthorpe!’

She would have been just as enthusiastic had Sibyl suggested pickled-cabbage colour, picked out with pea-green.

‘And you must make me a bonnet exactly to match the dress.’

‘Of course, Miss Faunthorpe, I’ll go round to Carmichael’s at once, and see if they’ve got the colour; and if they haven’t I’ll take the three o’clock train to Krampston.’

This question settled, Sibyl feels easy in her mind, and looks forward to next week with pleasure. The summer is at its height--mid July,--and a delicious July, warm, dry, ripening roses and ripening corn, swelling the peaches on the wall, and reddening the apples in the orchard--all the land basking in the sun, and Redcastle High Street a place to look at blinkingly between two and five in the afternoon, and a burning ploughshare to walk upon. Marion and Jenny come toiling along the sun-baked pavement in the very hottest hour of the afternoon to visit their prosperous sister,--Jane splendid in the peach-coloured silk and new boots, and a hat that is too small for her large round head, with its thick brown hair in curls that no application of the hair-brush will reduce from their disorder to the smoothness of civilization.

Sibyl receives her sisters languidly, under the plane trees, exhausted by her interview with Miss Eylett. Marion’s temper is not improved by the warm walk, or by the labour of getting Jenny up in a style befitting Lancaster Lodge.

‘There never was such a troublesome child,’ she complains as she sinks into a rustic arm-chair, conscious that her face is the colour of a boiled lobster, while Sibyl, in cream-coloured Indian silk, and a turquoise blue sash, is looking divinely pale. ‘Look at her legs. She has grown out of that frock already; and as for ever keeping her decently dressed, I defy you. There’s the print of a slice of bread and butter on the front breadth, and smears of marmalade all over the sleeves, though she’s only worn the frock on Sundays.’

‘Let her wear it every day and wear it out,’ says Sibyl, generously; ‘she shall have another for best.’

‘Oh, you dear!’ cries Jenny; ‘but if you knew what a life Marion leads me when I’ve a good frock on you might think it a greater charity never to give me one.’

‘You ungrateful minx,’ exclaims Marion, ‘didn’t I stand half an hour this broiling afternoon doing your hair?’

‘Pulling it, you mean,’ responds Jenny. ‘If you’d combed it with a hay-fork and brushed it with a bush harrow you couldn’t have hurt me more.’

‘There’s gratitude!’ ejaculates Marion, pointing to the offender.

‘_My_ idea of gratitude is thankfulness for things we want,’ reasons Jenny, who is good at argument. ‘I didn’t want my hair pulled.’

‘Well, Sibyl,’ says Marion, ‘is uncle Trenchard going to the races?’

Everybody thinks and talks of the races at this time. It is the one subject of conversation in Redcastle. A rare thing for Redcastle to have so much as one subject of conversation; as a rule, the town contrives to be conversational about nothing.

‘No, uncle Trenchard hates races. I am going with the Stormonts.’

‘Indeed! I thought you wouldn’t go anywhere without your uncle.’

‘No more I would in an ordinary way, but I felt a kind of interest in the races. One hears so much of them.’

‘I feel a kind of interest in them too,’ says Marion, with an injured air. ‘I’ve been hearing about Redcastle races ever since I left school, and yet, living so near, I’ve never seen them. Uncle Robert has got a pony that would take us, but he has not got the spirit. You might have asked uncle Trenchard to let you take us all in his barouche. I dare say uncle Robert would have gone if you’d taken him.’

Sibyl looks doubtful as to the delight of such a family party.

‘I’ve accepted Mrs. Stormont’s invitation, you see,’ she replies, apologetically.

‘Oh yes, of course, catch you putting yourself out of the way for anybody! Another girl in your position might have thought of her poor relations. What are you going to wear?’

Sibyl describes the costume which she and Miss Eylett have arranged that morning. Poor Marion listens in an agony of envy.

‘What a lot of money uncle Trenchard must give you!’ she exclaims.

‘No, he doesn’t give me much, but he allows me to keep an account at Carmichael’s.’

‘Well,’ sighs Marion, ‘I would give a year of my life to go to the races this day week.’

‘What a pity our lives are not transferable like railway stock,’ says Sibyl, airily. She is not deeply moved by Marion’s piteous condition. Her mind is occupied with a prophetic vision of her triumphs next Wednesday. She will see and be seen by the county. That idea is more inspiring than the prospect of a day spent with the Stormonts, whom she knows by heart, or even the privilege of beholding Mrs. Groshen’s raiment, which is sure to be resplendent and of the very latest fashion, however hideous in the abstract and individually unbecoming that fashion may be.