A Woman-Hater Part 43

No ringing of bells nor knocking. Even as the coachman tightened his reins, the great hall door was swung open, and two footmen appeared.

Harris brought up a rear-guard, and received the party in due state.

A double staircase, about ten feet broad, rose out of the hall, and up this Mr. Harris conducted Severne, the only stranger, into a bedroom with a great oriel window looking west.

"This is your room, sir," said he. "Shall I unpack your things when they come?"

Severne a.s.sented, and that perfect major-domo informed him that luncheon was ready, and retired cat-like, and closed the door so softly no sound was heard.

Mr. Severne looked about him, and admitted to himself that, with all his experiences of life, this was his first bedroom. It was of great size, to begin. The oriel window was twenty feet wide, and had half a dozen cas.e.m.e.nts, each with rose-colored blinds, though some of them needed no blinds, for green creepers, with flowers like cl.u.s.ters of grapes, curled round the mullions, and the sun shone mellowed through their leaves.

Enormous curtains of purple cloth, with cold borders, hung at each side in mighty folds, to be drawn at night-time when the eye should need repose from feasting upon color.

There were three bra.s.s bedsteads in a row, only four feet broad, with spring-beds, hair mattresses a foot thick, and snowy sheets for coverlets, instead of counter-panes; so that, if you were hot, feverish, or sleepless in one bed, you might try another, or two.

Thick carpets and rugs, satin-wood wardrobes, prodigious wash-hand stands, with china backs four feet high. Towel-horses, nearly as big as a donkey, with short towels, long towels, thick towels, thin towels, bathing sheets, etc.; baths of every shape; and cans of every size; a large knee-hole table; paper and envelopes of every size. In short, a room to sleep in, study in, live in, and stick fast in, night and day.

But what is this? A Gothic arch, curtained with violet merino. He draws the curtain. It is an ante-room. One half of it is a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in gla.s.s cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time. Thereat he wondered.

But the truth is, it was a house wherein precision reigned: a tuner and a clockmaker visited by contract every month.

This, and two more guest-chambers, and the great dining-hall, were built under the Plantagenets, when all large landowners entertained kings and princes with their retinues. As to that part of the house which was built under the Tudors, there are hundreds of country houses as important, only Mr. Severne had not been inside them, and was hardly aware to what perfection rational luxury is brought in the houses of our large landed gentry. He sat down in an antique chair of enormous size; the back went higher than his head, the seat ran out as far as his ankle, when seated; there was room in it for two, and it was stuffed--ye G.o.ds, how it was stuffed! The sides, the back, and the seat were all hair mattresses, a foot thick at least. Here nestled our sybarite; with the sun shining through leaves, and splashing his beautiful head with golden tints and transparent shadows, and felt in the temple of comfort, and incapable of leaving it alive.

He went down to luncheon. It was distinguishable from dinner in this, that they all got up after it, and Zoe said, "Come with me, children."

f.a.n.n.y and Severne rose at the word. Vizard said he felt excluded from that invitation, having cut his wise-teeth; so he would light a cigar instead; and he did. Zoe took the other two into the kitchen garden--four acres, surrounded with a high wall, of orange-red brick, full of little holes where the nails had been. Zoe, being now at home, and queen, wore a new and pretty deportment. She was half maternal, and led her friend and lover about like two kids. She took them to this and that fruit tree, set them to eat, and looked on, superior. By way of climax, she led them to the south wall, crimson with ten thousand peaches and nectarines; she stepped over the border, took superb peaches and nectarines from the trees, and gave them with her own hand to f.a.n.n.y and Severne. The head gardener glared in dismay at the fair spoliator. Zoe observed him, and laughed. "Poor Lucas," said she; "he would like them all to hang on the tree till they fell off with a wasp inside. Eat as many as ever you can, young people; Lucas is amusing."

"I never had peaches enough off the tree before," said f.a.n.n.y.

"No more have I," said Severne. "This must be the Elysian fields, and I shall spoil my dinner."

"Who cares?" said f.a.n.n.y, recklessly. "Dinner comes every day, and always at the only time when one has no appet.i.te. But this eating of peaches--Oh, what a beauty!"

"Children," said Zoe, gravely, "I advise you not to eat above a dozen. Do not enter on a fatal course, which in one brief year will reduce you to a hapless condition. There--I was let loose among them at sixteen, and ever since they pall. But I do like to see you eat them, and your eyes sparkle."

"That is too bad of you," said f.a.n.n.y, driving her white teeth deep into a peach. "The idea! Now, Mr. Severne, do my eyes sparkle?"

"Like diamonds. But that proves nothing: it is their normal condition."

"There, make him a courtesy," said Zoe, "and come along."

She took them into the village. It was one of the old sort; little detached houses with little gardens in front, in all of which were a few humble flowers, and often a dark rose of surpa.s.sing beauty. Behind each cottage was a large garden, with various vegetables, and sometimes a few square yards of wheat. There was one little row of new brick houses standing together; their number five, their name Newtown. This town of five houses was tiled; the detached houses were thatched, and the walls plastered and whitewashed like snow. Such whitewash seems never to be made in towns, or to lose its whiteness in a day. This broad surface of vivid white was a background, against which the clinging roses, the cl.u.s.tering, creeping honeysuckles, and the deep young ivy with its tender green and polished leaves, shone lovely; wood smoke mounted, thin and silvery, from a cottage or two, that were cooking, and embroidered the air, not fouled it. The little windows had diamond panes, as in the Middle Ages, and every cottage door was open, suggesting hospitality and dearth of thieves. There was also that old essential, a village green--a broad strip of sacred turf, that was everybody's by custom, though in strict law Vizard's. Here a village cow and a donkey went about grazing the edges, for the turf in general was smooth as a lawn. By the side of the green was the village ale-house. After the green other cottages; two of them

"Quite overcanopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

One of these was called Marks's cottage, and the other Allen's. The rustic church stood in the middle of a hill nearly half a mile from the village. They strolled up to it. It had a tower built of flint, and clad on two sides with ivy three feet deep, and the body of the church was as snowy as the cottages, and on the south side a dozen swallows and martins had lodged their mortar nests under the eaves; they looked, against the white, like rugged gray stone bosses. Swallows and martins innumerable wheeled, swift as arrows, round the tower, chirping, and in and out of the church through an open window, and added their music and their motion to the beauty of the place.

Returning from the church to the village, Miss Dover lagged behind, and then Severne infused into his voice those tender tones, which give amorous significance to the poorest prose.

"What an Arcadia!" said he.

"You would not like to be banished to it," said Zoe, demurely.

"That depends," said he, significantly. Instead of meeting him half way and demanding an explanation, Zoe turned coy and fell to wondering what f.a.n.n.y was about.

"Oh, don't compel her to join us," said Severne. "She is meditating."

"On what? She is not much given that way."

"On her past sins; and preparing new ones."

"For shame! She is no worse than we are. Do you really admire Islip?"

"Indeed I do, if this is Islip?"

"It is then; and this cottage with the cl.u.s.ter-rose tree all over the walls is Marks's cottage. We are rather proud of Marks's cottage," said she, timidly.

"It is a bower," said he, warmly.

This encouraged Zoe, and she said, "Is there not a wonderful charm in cottages? I often think I should like to live in Marks's. Have you ever had that feeling?"

"Never. But I have it now. I should like to live in it--with you."

Zoe blushed like a rose, but turned it off. "You would soon wish yourself back again at Vizard Court," said she. "f.a.n.n.y--f.a.n.n.y!" and she stood still.

f.a.n.n.y came up. "Well, what is the matter now?" said she, with pert, yet thoroughly apathetic, indifference.

"The matter is--extravagances. Here is a man of the world pretending he would like to end his days in Marks's cottage."

"Stop a bit. It was to be with somebody I loved. And wouldn't you, Miss Dover?"

"Oh dear, no. We should be sure to quarrel, cooped up in such a mite of a place. No; give me Vizard Court, and plenty of money, and the man of my heart."

"You have not got one, I'm afraid," said Zoe, "or you would not put him last."

"Why not? when he is of the last importance," said f.a.n.n.y, flippantly, and turned the laugh her way.

They strolled through the village together, but in the grounds of Vizard Court f.a.n.n.y fairly gave them the slip. Severne saw his chance, and said, tenderly, "Did you hear what she said about a large house being best for lovers?"

"Yes, I heard her," said Zoe, defensively; "but very likely she did not mean it. That young lady's words are air. She will say one thing one day and another the next."

"I don't know. There is one thing every young lady's mind is made up about, and that is, whether it is to be love or money."

"She was for both, if I remember," said Zoe, still coldly.

"Because she is not in love."

"Well, I really believe she is not--for once."

"There, you see. She is in an unnatural condition."

"For her, very."