Chapter VII

“The worldly Hope, men set their Hearts upon,
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two—is gone.”

RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

An event was at last going to happen at Overham, Lady Middleton, Daphne’s stepmother, was going to take a house in the neighbourhood for three months. It is perhaps one of the things that is most to be envied in possessors of riches, that they can take houses, really beautiful houses, in places of a thousand lovely kinds, and sink into them as naturally as to-morrow follows to-day for a few months, and then drift out of them with equal ease and comfort to other places also prepared for them.

The rich are not indifferent to pain, nor cruel to poverty, they are merely ignorant of daily bread, and the efforts required to attain it. They have much of the happy-go-lucky fatalism to be found among the outcasts of society, and the tramps in hedges; only the one class learns it in defiance of an experience that has proved too hard, and the other from an absence of experience which has proved too comfortable.

Lady Middleton was of this latter sort. She had been known to scold a poor governess for walking on a cold winter’s day without furs, and when the governess had remarked with some spirit that she had not got them, she became very vague indeed, and said she supposed that there was a society for that sort of thing. Then she rang for some cold milk and biscuits for the governess.

Lady Middleton’s first child had married well, she had three thousand a year pin money, and she had known little of her husband. Daphne, her stepdaughter, she had taken great trouble over, and Daphne was much prettier than her own daughter, but she was more wilful. She even said she wished to know before-hand something of her husband, which Lady Middleton had felt was not quite nice. However, she meant to do her duty by her, and for that purpose had taken a place at Overham, filled it with servants and pretty things, and had invited suitable guests. Among them Lady Cheston and her twin daughters Alice and Maude, who, if they had not worn different ribbons on their clothes, could scarcely have been told apart. The difficulty, as Lady Cheston herself explained, was obviated by the fact that it didn’t make the slightest difference, as nobody cared, except perhaps, Alice and Maude.

With them came their brother Reggie, whom no one except the servants seemed to remember as Lord Cheston, and David Grey, who owned a good deal of property and the handsomest head in London. There was also a young American said to be literary, and certainly amusing. The men almost at once began to call him Russell, and the women equally soon discovered that his first name was Bert. The party was finished off by the lion of the season, a certain well-known surgeon, who had added hypnotism to his other talents.

Lady Middleton wished Daphne to marry David Grey, or, if the child preferred an alternative, she had no real objection to Reggie, though he had little money. Sir Henry Middleton came down for Sundays. He was ten years younger than his wife.

Lady Middleton went to call at once upon Mrs. Fordington. “You must really let me borrow Daphne,” she said, looking at Mrs. Fordington’s afternoon dress, and deciding that she was “impossible.” “I have not seen the dear child for so long. A few days with some of her old friends may do her good, don’t you think?” She added in the same breath, “I should so much like to live in a vicarage. Don’t you find it charming?”

Mrs. Fordington had not asked herself this question. “The house is rather too small,” she said, “and the garden too large——”

“Oh, but _can_ a garden be too large, dear Mrs. Fordington?” said Lady Middleton looking intensely earnest, and wondering whether Daphne would come in. “I never feel as if I could breathe without an horizon.”

“I was thinking of gardeners,” said Mrs. Fordington, “they are an additional expense.”

“Oh, yes! of course,” said Lady Middleton with enthusiasm; “but then, they wear such _nice_ hats, don’t they?—and know the names of flowers—I do think it’s _so_ clever of them! I have often wanted to ask some one who knew. Do you really think they’re _good_, Mrs. Fordington?”

“_My_ gardeners are,” said the Vicar’s wife, “but then I keep my eye on them.”

“_How_ clever of you! I wish I could, but I always say to them, ‘Now, my dear creatures, please _don’t_ turn up in the wrong places, and _never_ appear suddenly in secluded corners,’ and then, you see, they keep out of the way, and I can assure you they are no trouble at all. But I’m so glad that you think they’re _good_.”

The Vicar entered at this moment, much to his wife’s relief.

Lady Middleton stretched out both her hands to him. “My dear Wilfred,” she said, “how unspeakably like dear John you are!” And then she burst into tears. Mrs. Fordington looked hopelessly at the bell-rope, and then at the family bible. She was seldom at a loss when there was anything to be done, but for a moment she stood paralyzed before she opened a window.

“Oh, thank you _so_,” said Lady Middleton, whose dress she had trod on as she passed, “_how_ kind you both are to me! I know you’ll let me have Daphne for a few days—she will be such a comfort to me.”

“Of course you can have Daphne,” said her brother-in-law, but he did not refer to “dear John.”

A few minutes later Lady Middleton was telling them both of a wonderful cure for sin. “It’s all _so_ easy,” she explained. “You are hypnotised by a really good man, who says to you, ‘When you wake up, such and such a sin will be loathsome to you,’ and whatever it is, debt, or drink, or betting, you just wake up hating it, and in the same way you get to love your neighbour, and make sacrifices, and go to church regularly, and be nice to your maid, and do real good in every possible way—and don’t you think, dear Wilfred, we might try it on here?” The Vicar gasped.

Mrs. Fordington’s patience was at an end. “My dear Lady Middleton,” she said with some firmness, “your suggestion is absolutely unpractical, and, though I am sure you do not mean to be so, it strikes me as exceedingly irreverent.”

Lady Middleton got very red. “You misunderstand, Mrs.—er—Fordington,” she said. “I was speaking to your husband.”

Mrs. Fordington rose, and swept majestically to the door. “Good-afternoon, Lady Middleton,” she said, facing her adversary with an intense indignation that was not becoming. “In that case, I will leave you with my husband!”

“How clever of you,” murmured Lady Middleton, then she turned to the Vicar with her sweetest smile. “I’m so sorry to have vexed your wife, dear Wilfred,” she said, “but women who have not read, or thought, or _lived_ deeply, scarcely understand these things. I feel barely on the threshold of them myself.”

The Vicar smiled. “If you take my advice, Vera,” he said, “you will remain on the threshold. I am afraid the agricultural mind is not receptive to new ideas. Why not try your theory, if you feel sure of its efficacy, upon some of your personal friends?”

“It requires active willingness, and a blank mind,” explained Lady Middleton.

“Well, surely,” said the Vicar, “you could supply both those requirements—outside the labouring classes.”

Lady Middleton looked discouraged, but a happy thought struck her. “I will find a child,” she exclaimed, “that is what I want, a school child for a penny an hour——”

The Vicar cut her short. “Not a single school child from this parish, Vera,” he said sternly; “I do not approve of experiments upon children.”

Lady Middleton’s face fell again, but at that moment she saw through the window Katherine Linton and Daphne crossing the lawn.

The Vicar had scarcely time to open the long French window, and free her dress from a nail, before she made a graceful dash out into the garden, and caught Daphne in her arms. “My dearest, dearest child!” she said, kissing her passionately, “at last I have you!”

Daphne looked startled and annoyed; unconsciously she clung to Katherine’s hand as if she were afraid. “I did not know you would be here—so soon,” she answered finally. Lady Middleton poured out her plan for Daphne’s visit. “I have not introduced you to Katherine,” said Daphne, after she had listened carefully to all her stepmother said, and wondered not a little, as to what she meant, and didn’t say. “She is to have a holiday for a week, may she come with me?”

Lady Middleton’s eyes turned hard for a moment, but a glance at Daphne showed her that she must change her attitude, or lose her game. Unconsciously the two girls faced her, as if they were her enemies. She smiled charmingly. “You must let me call you Katherine, dear,” she said, “and I should quite _love_ to have you both. Will you come to-morrow?”

Katherine was silent and perplexed. She would have refused at once, but for what looked like fear in Daphne’s face. The two had grown, in the last few weeks, into a friendship for each other so profound and absorbing that they seemed capable of a communion as much beyond words as it was independent of them.

She smiled, and said naturally, “I am afraid, Lady Middleton, I have no decent clothes.”

Lady Middleton was quite shocked, and became vague in a moment. “You dear child!” she said, “come in anything! Daphne will help you. It is all quite simple. I don’t _believe_ in luxury, it always seems to me to be not really Christian, I like _quiet_ comfort.”

Daphne met her stepmother’s eyes again. “Comfort is so expensive,” she said, “isn’t it? I mean one’s own comfort.”

“Dear child!”—murmured Lady Middleton. She kissed her good-bye, and shook hands caressingly with Katherine.

The Vicar took her to her carriage, before she got in she handed him a cheque for £50. “My dear Wilfred,” she said, “please buy something really _nice_ for your people with this. It might provide Christmas trees, mightn’t it? or spring clothes for the children? I think it never does to be indefinite, don’t you? But you will know best, I am sure, as to what is most suitable. I will send the carriage to-morrow for dear Daphne. It was a great grief to me to give the child up, but I felt that I owed it to _you_. After all I am only her stepmother!”

“Thank God for that!” said the Vicar solemnly to himself. He did not tell Lady Middleton that it was kind of her to give him the cheque. She wondered a little afterwards at his omission, but decided to herself that his breath had been taken away by her generosity. As a matter of fact, the Vicar said to himself that Lady Middleton was paying a little hush money to Providence. He wondered what for, but Daphne knew.