Chapter XI: At the How

Saturday shows bright and fair, a fine winter day, hoar frost on the hedges. The roads are dry, but not too hard for the horses; the minster towers stand out, sharply defined against the clear cold blue; rooks are screaming loud in the ragged elm boughs; robins singing merrily; a blithe day in the new born-year, a day which inspires Redcastle with the idea that trade is brisker than it has been, and things in general looking up, so potent is the influence of fine weather.

Never has Marion Faunthorpe felt so proud or happy as when her uncle’s carriage calls for her and her boxes, and she takes her seat opposite Mr. Trenchard, who, by right divine of his threescore years and ten, occupies the post of honour wrapped to the chin in sable, and with a tigerskin rug over his knees.

‘Did you shoot that tiger yourself, dear uncle?’ asks Marion, bent on making herself agreeable.

‘No, child,’ replies the dear uncle rather snappishly, ‘I had something better to do in India than to shoot tigers.’

‘But it’s very nice shooting big game, isn’t it, uncle? Some people go to India on purpose for that, don’t they?’

‘Fools do, perhaps. There’s no accounting for their taste.’

The little surgeon has come out to the gate to see his niece off. Nay, he has actually stolen an hour from the parish in order to behold the glory of her departure. He seems as pleased to see her happiness as if he himself were going to the How, and at the last moment the girl feels touched.

‘You dear, darling old uncle,’ she says, hanging round his neck, and forgetting the possibility of damage to her new hat, ‘how good you always are!--always--always--always, and I’m an ungrateful wretch.’

‘My love, you are not ungrateful, and you have very little to be grateful for.’

‘Everything you mean, uncle Robert. I shall think of you ever so many times a day at the How; and if the dinners are very nice I shall so wish you could be with us.’

‘Thank you, my dear. I shall think of you, and miss you very much.’

‘I’m going to keep house,’ exclaims Jenny, lolling against the gate, and swaying to and fro distractingly as she talks; ‘and make tea and all; nobody to tell me not to take too much butter; and Hester will give us my favourite puddings, I know, if I quill her cap borders.’

So after embracing the doctor in this demonstrative fashion, Marion enters the carriage with tears in her eyes, to the aggravation of Stephen Trenchard, who hates tears and fuss and emotion of all kinds, except the thrill of delight which accompanies a successful stroke of business.

‘Crying again,’ he exclaims testily. ‘What’s the matter now?’

‘There’s nothing the matter, dear uncle. Only I’m so happy; and I felt a little overcome at leaving uncle Robert.’

‘It’s a pity you should leave him at all if the parting is so pathetic,’ sneers Mr. Trenchard.

‘Oh, Sibyl, I’ve had such a nice little note from Miss Cardonnel to confirm Sir Wilford’s invitation,’ says Marion; and she exhibits a formal note, in which the polite Phœbe expresses her satisfaction at having heard from her brother that Miss Marion Faunthorpe has promised to accompany her sister on Saturday.

The drive is delightful for any one with an unburdened mind, and even Sibyl feels the sweetness of the clear winter air, and determines to make the best of an awkward concatenation of events. After all, it is better to be lolling in uncle Trenchard’s carriage on one’s way to a delightful old country house than to be grinding at French or German verbs in Mrs. Hazleton’s cheerless second-floor schoolroom, badly warmed by a fire that seems always made of the dullest coals that ever came from the bosom of the earth. And all this is but the filling up of a gap in her life. This chasm of time bridged over and she will be with Alexis once more, and they will have uncle Trenchard’s money to spend and be happy ever afterwards. She has persuaded herself that let Alexis make what protestations he pleases in the present, he will take her to his heart again gladly when the fitting time comes.

‘And in the meantime there is no use in my moping and making myself miserable,’ reflects Sibyl, her spirits elevated by atmospheric influences, and the prospect of being the object of general admiration.

‘I wonder if there will be many people there?’ she speculates presently.

‘People with titles,’ suggests Marion; ‘a duke perhaps. I should like to see a duke--or a duchess. That would be better still. Think of her dresses, Sib. Mustn’t they be magnificent!’

Sibyl smiles the languid smile of contempt at her sister’s simplicity.

‘As if there were a sliding scale for the toilet,’ she says. ‘Why, cotton spinners’ wives dress as well as duchesses now-a-days. They employ the same milliners, and pay their bills quicker.’

‘It’s dreadful to think of,’ replies Marion. ‘It seems like turning things topsy-turvy, you know.’

They are at the How by this time, a domain which Marion enters open-eyed and dumb with awe. Sir Wilford comes out into the porch to receive them, and gives directions about their luggage, and makes himself generally busy. Then he calls out Phœbe and introduces Marion to her, at which Marion, being almost tongue-tied by shyness, says, ‘Thank you.’

‘You show the Miss Faunthorpes their rooms, Phœbe,’ says the hospitable baronet; but this is a length to which Miss Cardonnel will not go, though she conducted her dearest Cecilia to her apartment half an hour ago with her arm round Cecilia’s severely trained waist.

‘Perker knows all about the rooms,’ she says, whereupon appears the essence of respectability in a black silk gown and smart cap, otherwise Mrs. Perker the housekeeper.

Sibyl and Marion follow this personage up the broad oak staircase to a long perspective of corridor, in which Mrs. Perker opens two doors next each other, and reveals twin bedchambers neatly furnished with maple and chintz.

‘I thought you two ladies would like to be next each other,’ remarks the housekeeper obligingly, as if the choice of the rooms were entirely her own.

‘We do, very much,’ exclaims Marion, who regains her power of speech in this inferior presence. ‘I’m very glad I’m to be near Sibyl. I should be awfully afraid of ghosts in this great rambling house.’

Mrs. Perker smiles condescendingly, as if she were a superior order of being, accustomed to large houses and family spectres.

‘It is a rambling old place,’ she says, ‘but I shouldn’t fancy myself in one of your fine lightsome modern houses, all glare and gilding.’

‘And there is a ghost, I dare say,’ says Marion, with thrilling interest.

The housekeeper screws up her lips and smiles significantly, as if she could, and if she would, tell of as many apparitions as appear in the tragedy of ‘Macbeth.’

‘There has never been a ghost owned to at the How,’ she says, ‘and I wouldn’t breathe the name of such a thing in Miss Cardonnel’s hearing, but people _have_ been frightened--strangers. It may have been rats, or it may have been the wind. I can’t say. But there are friends of the family who wouldn’t sleep in this corridor, no, not for a thousand pounds.’

Marion shudders, and almost wishes herself back in the shabby old house at the end of Redcastle.

‘So here are your rooms, young ladies, opening into each other.’

‘How nice!’ exclaims Marion.

Never in her life has she felt more warmly attached to Sibyl than she does at this moment.

Fires burn cheerily in both rooms, and each apartment has that thoroughly comfortable and convenient air only to be seen in a well-ordered country house, and altogether distinct from the cheerless precision of an hotel bedchamber.

There is the nice little writing-table, with all things needful for correspondence, in front of the fire; the easy chair; the candles, and pincushion, and a hothouse flower or two in a slender glass on the dressing-table. All smiles a welcome to the stranger--not Miss Cardonnel’s welcome, by the way, but Mrs. Perker’s.

‘I’ve given your maid a nice room on the second floor, within easy reach of this, ma’am,’ says the housekeeper, at which Marion’s eyes open wide with wonder.

‘I have no maid,’ replies Sibyl, unabashed by that humiliating fact; ‘I am accustomed to wait upon myself.’

‘Indeed, ma’am. Some young ladies prefer it, I know. For my own part I couldn’t bear anybody fidgeting about me. And if you should require any assistance Miss Cardonnel’s maid will be very happy.’

‘Thanks, no, my sister can help me if I want her.’

And Sibyl proceeds to open her handsome portmanteaus, while Marion contrives to stand before the shabby receptacle which contains her property, lest the scrutinizing eye of Mrs. Perker should behold its dilapidation.

The housekeeper bustles off, and leaves the two girls to themselves.

‘It’s rather like going to school again, isn’t it, Sibyl?’ inquires Marion, whose spirits have sunk a little, oppressed by the unfamiliar splendours of the How. ‘I feel just as I did the day we went to Miss Worries, and I can’t help fancying we shall be told off into our different classes when we go downstairs.’

The sound of the luncheon-bell reminds the sisters that they have no time to waste, and they go downstairs together presently, conscious that they are looking nice enough to face even unfriendly criticism. Sir Wilford is lounging in the hall, and they go in to luncheon under his wing. Fred Stormont is near the dining-room door, and rushes to meet Sibyl and her sister; and Mrs. Stormont gives a friendly bow from the other end of the table, where she sits among the stately matrons and the bald-headed fathers of the land; and they begin to feel themselves more at home, as Marion whispers to her sister.

The conversation at luncheon runs more continuously upon the present company’s absent brothers and sisters, and cousins, and nieces, and sons and daughters-in-law, than is quite congenial to the feelings of a stranger totally unacquainted with these relations, but Marion manages to get up a little talk about nothing particular with Fred Stormont, which, beheld from afar, looks like flirtation, and causes the young man’s anxious mother to put up her gold eye-glass and look at him through it, wondering how that silly Frederick can be so ridiculous as to waste his attentions upon the wrong sister.

‘I suppose Mr. Trenchard will leave the girl five thousand pounds or so,’ thinks Mrs. Stormont, ‘but what would be the use of that to a young man with Fred’s expensive habits?’